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How Mitch McConnell’s do nothing Republicans are killing you

The Senate adjourned and left town without even trying to pass a COVID disaster relief bill. By the time they return on November 30, based on current trends, an additional estimated 16,000 Americans will have died from COVID-19.

We pay these elected officials to keep us safe, and they’ve failed us. To them I ask: How much death and suffering must the American people endure before you act?

Remember: House Democrats passed a comprehensive relief bill all the way back in May. 

You, Mitch McConnell, have refused to lift a finger for months, and Senate Republicans have been happy to follow your lead.

Countless Americans are now paying the price for your malicious inaction. 
You should have learned lessons about COVID during its first horrific wave last spring.

First, there’s no tradeoff between COVID and the economy, and no way to get the economy back until COVID is under control. As the virus surges and more shutdowns loom, the millions of jobs we’ve added since April are about to disappear again. I’ve said this since March and I’ll say it again: The only way to get our economy back to full strength is to control the virus.

Second, more shutdowns are necessary. Businesses like Tesla in Alameda County, California, and Tyson meat packing plants in Iowa remained open during previous shutdowns, and both companies suffered COVID outbreaks. No exceptions this time around.

Third, and most importantly, shutdowns are only viable if accompanied by disaster relief so Americans can survive financially.  So pass disaster relief.

Re-up expanded unemployment benefits. The extra $600/week provisioned in the CARES Act expired on July 31st, and all federal relief will expire on December 31st. Expanded unemployment benefits were a financial lifeline for millions during the first and second waves, and must be instituted again to keep millions out of poverty this winter. Don’t listen to people who claim that we have to get people back to work, or keep them working. The best way to stop the spread is to pay people to stay home.

Stop evictions and foreclosures. It would be the height of cruelty to force even more people out onto the streets in the middle of winter as the virus surges. And with more job losses around the corner, we must ensure that a missed rent or mortgage payment isn’t a death sentence.

Distribute another round of Paycheck Protection Program loans to businesses, with strict oversight to ensure the funds actually go to businesses that need them, not massive, publicly-traded companies that have plenty of other options. 

Shore up state and local budgets. State and local governments are facing huge budget shortfalls. Without federal aid, vital public services are on the chopping block – schools, childcare, supplemental nutrition, mental health services, low-income housing, healthcare – when the public needs them more than ever. And local governments need funds to shelter unhoused residents, especially as temperatures drop and COVID intensifies.

Protect essential workers. Tens of thousands of workers on the frontlines have contracted COVID over the past 10 months – including nearly 20,000 Amazon warehouse workers. At a minimum, they need generous hazard pay and paid sick leave.

When the last COVID relief package was passed on March 27th, there were 18,093 new cases that day. Now, there are over 100,000 new cases every day. With hospitalizations lagging behind cases, and deaths lagging behind hospitalizations, it’s clear that this is going to get much, much worse unless people shelter in place. But most Americans can’t do this without relief.

The writing is on the wall. Do your job, Mitch McConnell. Our lives depend on it. 

Trump campaign lawsuits are failing — judges offer some scathing rulings

Out of the nearly three-dozen failed lawsuits the Trump campaign has filed challenging the 2020 election results, judges have fired back at the campaign’s effort in notable scathing ways, and the New York Times has compiled some of their snarky rulings.

Pennsylvania:

“Perhaps Plaintiffs are right that guards should be placed near drop boxes, signature-analysis experts should examine every mail-in ballot, poll watchers should be able to man any poll regardless of location, and other security improvements should be made,” said Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, on October 10. “But the job of an unelected federal judge isn’t to suggest election improvements, especially when those improvements contradict the reasoned judgment of democratically elected officials.”

Texas:

“At virtually any point, but certainly by October 12, 2020, plaintiffs could have filed this action,” said Judge Andrew S. Hanen of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, on November 2. “Instead, they waited until October 28, 2020 at 9:08 p.m. to file their complaint and did not file their actual motion for temporary relief until midday on October 30, 2020 — the last day of early voting.”

Georgia:

“To halt the certification at literally the 11th hour would breed confusion and disenfranchisement that I find have no basis in fact and law,” said Judge Steven D. Grimberg of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, on November 19.

Read more at The New York Times.

Judge rules against Trump ploy to force elderly into nursing homes

Team Trump lost a court battle that could have pushed our nation’s low-income elderly, disabled and blind out of their own homes and into deathtrap nursing homes during the coronavirus  pandemic.

A California federal judge called the Trump rule that bars states from withholding part of the paychecks of some home healthcare workers for things like health insurance and voluntary union dues a “legal error.”

Judge Vince Chhabria wrote the Trump rule appears “contrary to the overall purpose” of the Medicaid law. He noted that improving working conditions for home health workers, who have median hourly pay of $10.49, improves the quality of care the workers provide for Medicaid patients.

“It is unclear how barring the payroll practices would serve the purposes of the Medicaid program,” wrote Chhabria, an Obama appointee. He threw out that provision of the law and sent it back to the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services to rewrite it.

California and five other states challenged the law. The states in the lawsuit could have lost $6 billion in federal Medicaid funding if they didn’t comply.

“This ruling is a victory for our state and for the collective bargaining rights of home care workers who play a vital role in our healthcare system,” said California Attorney General Xavier Becerra.

“Regulatory slop”

The defeat is yet another loss for Team Trump, which is so bad at the basics of writing law that George Washington University law professors Robert Glicksman and Emily Hammond termed their effort “regulatory slop.”

Administrations usually win 70% of the cases brought against them, but the Trump administration won only about 16% of 132 decided lawsuits. That is according to research by Bethany Davis Noll, litigation director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law.

Team Trump claimed the new rule could prevent fraud. It repealed a 2014 rule that said payments can be made to a third party for benefits such as health insurance, skills training and other customary benefits for employees.

After Congress established Medicaid, doctors and other healthcare professionals provided services to Medicaid patients. Instead of submitting claims for reimbursement themselves, they would sell claims to companies for a percentage of their value. The companies would keep the reimbursement payments. The practice often led to the submission of inflated or false claims.

Risk of losing home care

The workers the Trump rule targeted are hired by the people they care for and paid with Medicaid dollars to help them stay in their homes. Medicaid programs in California and the other states that sued over the Trump rule serve more than 700,000 people at risk of being put in nursing homes without care from home health workers.

Nursing homes have become Trump death traps during the pandemic as Team Trump rolled back fines and proposed to weaken rules for infection prevention employees. So far, more than 67,500 people have died from COVID-19 in these traps.Brian Ballard, the former chairman of Trump’s fundraising committee, is one of the 37 lobbyists of the American Health Care Association which represents nursing homes.

Economists call for $3 trillion COVID relief package to stop nation’s descent into ruin

To forestall the nation’s ongoing plunge into financial devastation as some crucial relief programs expire and others are recklessly terminated by the Trump administration, economists are calling for a $3 trillion debt-financed coronavirus stimulus package that includes enhanced unemployment benefits, robust fiscal aid to state and local governments, nutrition assistance, and other safety net expansions.

In a detailed memo released Tuesday morning amid a backdrop of surging hunger, a looming eviction crisis, and an intensifying pandemic that has taken more than 250,000 lives in the U.S., Economic Policy Institute research director Josh Bivens implores Congress to “use debt, go big, and stay big, and be very slow when turning off fiscal support.”

Pointing to federal government’s timid response to the financial collapse of 2008-2009 as a cautionary tale, Bivens argued that “roughly $3 trillion in debt-financed fiscal support now, with the first $2 trillion hitting the economy between now and mid-2022,” is necessary to avoid another crushingly slow recovery and “ensure a return to a high-pressure, low-unemployment labor market by mid-2022.”

“The Senate’s failure to provide crucial relief and recovery aid has left families without a lifeline and will severely damage prospects for recovery,” Bivens said in a statement. “Policymakers must prioritize a high-pressure labor market characterized by low unemployment and strong public investments.”

Specifically, Bivens calls on Congress to approve a relief package containing, at minimum:

  • A $600-per-week federal boost to unemployment benefits until mid-2022;
  • $500 billion at an annualized rate in aid to state and local governments;
  • $100 billion at an annualized rate for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and rental assistance; and
  • “Public investments in early child care and education and in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions that ramp up immediately and reach peak levels of $400 billion annually by the fourth quarter of 2021.”

Emphasizing the importance of funding the relief package with debt rather than taxation, Bivens writes that “the point of federal spending now is to boost aggregate demand growth (spending by households, businesses, and governments), so financing this support with taxes would make it less effective.”

Bivens also stressed the need for sustained fiscal support instead of relief that expires before the economy has fully recovered.

“Policymakers should not phase out funding too quickly and must continue fiscal support through the end of 2024,” said Bivens. “We have to be careful not to think of this as jumpstarting an engine and instead think of it like towing a car out of a rough patch to smoother ground. If large fiscal support is removed quickly, the fiscal contraction can overwhelm private sources of growth and tip the economy back into recession.”

While the economic case for a strong relief package appears unimpeachable — officials at the Federal Reserve have issued similar calls for a large stimulus — major political obstacles remain in the way of passage of bold legislation, particularly during a lame-duck session in which austerity-obsessed Republicans remain in control of the Senate.

President-elect Joe Biden has voiced support for passage of coronavirus relief during the lame-duck period before he takes office in January — when Democrats have an opportunity to take back the Senate with a pair of Georgia run-offs — but recent talks between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Democratic leaders have yielded little indication of progress toward an agreement.

“People across the country are going hungry, Covid is set to explode, and Mitch McConnell dismissed the Senate last week,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., tweeted Monday, referring to the Republican leader’s decision to adjourn the Senate for Thanksgiving recess without passing additional relief.

“I don’t know how these people can sleep at night,” said the New York Democrat. “I really don’t.”

Since Congress passed the $3.5 trillion CARES Act in March, persistent Republican obstruction has prevented another large spending package from advancing despite deteriorating economic conditions and soaring coronavirus cases nationwide. On December 26, the day after Christmas, an estimated 12 million Americans will lose unemployment insurance if Congress fails to extend key CARES Act jobless programs.

“Senate Republicans are failing the American people,” said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif. “Families will not be able to survive the holiday season and some of the darkest days of this pandemic without relief.”

Advice for “Emily in Paris” season 2: Drop the Americanized fantasy and get to know the real city

As we all settle in for a challenging winter, the Netflix series “Emily in Paris” promises a deliciously indulgent escape from our troubles: a shimmering fantasy of Paris, filled with sophisticated haute couture, gourmet food and, of course, romance. Yet within this delightful vision, executed by “Sex and the City” creator Darren Star with characteristic flare, there is a glaring absence that sorely diminishes the potential of Emily and her viewers to truly encounter another culture. Working- and middle-class Parisians, the racially diverse multi-cultural residents of the city, are all but erased from Emily’s friend group and workplace, and are invisible in the cafés and cobblestone streets and glittering Marais nightclubs. French culture is portrayed in a way that corresponds to American consumerist fantasies but does not question the tourist’s idealized gaze. To solve this conundrum, here are five pieces of advice for Emily in season two.

Take a reading tour of the “Capital of the Nineteenth Century” with dandy extraordinaire Charles Baudelaire.

Nineteenth-century poet Charles Baudelaire depicted the seductive grit and grime of Paris in the Flowers of Evil and Paris: Spleen. These works, so racy for their time that some poems were censored, helped usher in a new modernist aesthetics, depicting an accelerating urban lifestyle, and a blurring of public and private spaces where the voyeuristic flâneur might aimlessly stroll and encounter a diversity of subjects, crossing paths with factory workers, beggars, dandies (or “hipsters” in today’s parlance), artists and their muses, writers, and aristocrats, who could all in turn learn from their encounters with one another.

Unlike Baudelaire, Emily’s adventures in Paris are strikingly limited in geographical scope, racial diversity, and social class. Baudelaire lamented the “gentrification” (to use an anachronistic term) of Paris by the Baron von Haussmann, the architect responsible for its iconic uniform white-grey buildings and wide picturesque airy boulevards. Haussmann believed that he was clearing disease and poverty out of the city and preventing revolutionary uprisings that had once occurred in narrow medieval streets. However, much like Emily’s Disney-land version of Paris, the result was far too commercial, clean, bougie and boring.

Set yourself free from the centrally located arrondissements, where only the wealthiest Parisians and international elite can afford to work and live.

While there are a number of museums, restaurants and tourist attractions in these neighborhoods, and they deserve to be visited and appreciated at least once, there is a great deal to be seen beyond these areas. Try heading to the Parc Montsouris featured in Agnès Varda’s classic French New Wave film “Cléo de 5 à 7.” Or explore the enormous post-modern Parc de la Villette, located at the city’s northeastern edge in the 19th arrondissement. This dreamlike complex is architectural deconstructivism at its finest (the anti-Haussmann if there ever was one), dominated by fire-truck red metal arches and arabesques, kaleidoscopic graffiti murals along a charming canal, metal orbs floating in whimsical reflecting pools, and a quirky amusement park — all mirroring the bold iconoclasm that Emily emanates in her own clothing, personality and style. This is a place to encounter Parisians of all ages, social classes, and ethnic and religious origins, and to experience shows and outdoor festivals at major concert venues, including the Conservatoire de Paris and the Centre National de la danse.

Enjoy food from all over the world that Paris has to offer.

From Senegalese yassa and mafé to Vietnamese báhn xèo and Moroccan tagine, Paris has it all. My preferred spot after a long day is Le Petit Dakar, a cozy Senegalese restaurant in the Marais with a mafé dish to die for. This creamy-spicy peanut sauce with beef over rice goes beautifully with a glass of fresh ginger juice (or jus de gingembre). However, if you are in a rush and looking for cheap fast food, my personal favorite from my student days is the doner kebab: pita bread overflowing with meat shavings, French fries, lettuce, tomato and onions, and sauce blanche, a mayo-yogurt sauce.

Take the metro!

It’s very straightforward, especially compared to NYC or Chicago. But before you do, drop the oversized berets. They are utterly ringard (or cheesy and in poor taste) and will garner lots of stares from your fellow stylish commuters.

Emily avoids taking the metro, preferring cabs or rides on her gorgeous neighbor’s scooter. While this might make sense during the pandemic, in normal times this aversion for public transportation belies an unwillingness to mix with those who don’t own a car, or who can’t walk to work because high real-estate prices have pushed them to the city outskirts (i.e. most Parisians). I assure you that there is no better place to encounter the daily lived stories that make Paris what it is, than amid the hustle and bustle of the metro.

Keep learning French, and throw in some politics too.

Emily and her colleagues at the marketing firm Savoir discuss the fact that Americans often “live to work,” while the French “work to live,” — enjoying generous lunch breaks, a work day that starts at 10 a.m., and several weeks of paid vacation. When Emily gets “fired” by her boss Sylvie, her co-workers comfort her with reminders of the protections that make it difficult to actually get fired, and the government services that buoy the under- and unemployed.

Yet neither Emily nor her colleagues acknowledge the blood, sweat, and tears (one need only think of the revolutions and uprisings of 1789, 1830, 1832 — cue “Do you Hear the People Sing” from “Les Miserables” — 1848, the Paris Commune or the protests of May ’68), and class solidarity that helped to secure these benefits, along with the right to maternity and paternity leave, state funded health care and paid sick leave, and a relatively robust pension system.

These working conditions, for which the French Left has fought for generations, threaten to be eroded at this very moment as France too succumbs to global neoliberalist policies, exemplified when Emily’s American pharmaceutical company buys out Savoir. I would argue that it is not the French who must learn from Emily’s online marketing skills, but rather her American viewers who ought to draw inspiration from their French counterparts, and demand the same protections from their own government and employers.

Conservative women often don’t perceive sexism as a social problem. Here’s why

A recent study found that conservative women who experience sex-based discrimination are less likely to become politically active, or to believe that sexism is a systemic problem, than their liberal counterparts.

“Women who have experienced gender discrimination report higher levels of political participation and a higher chance of voting in the general election,” writes Dr. Alexa Bankert of the University of Georgia in a paper published in American Politics Research. “However, among conservative women, personal experience with sexism is not associated with this participatory impetus.” In other words, the experience of being discriminated against seems to activate liberal women and encourage them to vote and be involved in politics. Peculiarly, that wasn’t the same for conservative women. 

Bankert told PsyPost that the difference related to how one perceives sexism, as a one-off thing or systemic. “Among conservative women, the perception dominates that sexist behavior consists of isolated incidents while liberal women view sexism as a more systemic problem,” she said. That interpretation fits with a fundamental truth about the right-left divide, namely, the tendency of the right to deny the existence of the social sphere and view social problems rather as individual ones — whereas the left understands social issues as structural, related to large-scale cultural and social factors that must be changed at a political level. “This might explain why experienced sexism amplifies liberal women’s political engagement but there is not a similar participatory impetus among conservative women,” Bankert mused.

Salon reached out to Bankert about her paper and how she went about her research.

“I used observational and experimental data to test my hypotheses,” Bankert wrote to Salon. “The former [meaning observational data] relies on women’s self-reported experiences with sexism and their political behavior,” Bankert says. The experimental data consisted of “an experiment in which I prime female respondents’ experience with sexism and then ask about their interest in various forms of political participation (i.e. donating, going to a meeting, etc.). I expected to see an increase in participation among women with these experiences for several reasons.”

In her paper, Bankert argues that feminism is closely linked to left-wing political positions in American politics including on issues like paid family leave, the gender pay gap, the Me Too movement and reproductive freedom.

“As liberal women experience sexism firsthand, further bolstering the belief in widespread gender discrimination, they are likely to turn to the political domain for solutions,” Bankers writes in her paper. “This expectation is grounded in liberals’ convictions that it is the government’s responsibility to address intergroup inequalities and protect the rights of disadvantaged members of society. From this perspective, liberal women’s personal experience with sexism should boost their political engagement.”

By contrast, she argued that conservative women are more likely to perceive personal experiences through an ideological lens and reject interpretations that seem to align with left-wing perspectives.

“Conservative women, on the other hand, have actively distanced themselves from the feminist ideology, despite agreement on many policy issues,” Bankert writes. “A close inspection of the social media campaigns of conservative organizations like ‘Concerned Women for America’ suggests that a large share of conservative women openly reject the feminist identity label citing concerns for traditional family models and individual responsibility, as well as the rejection of victimhood.”

Bankert posits that “ideology is more than just a summary description of political issue positions. It also serves as a lens through which women interpret and derive legitimacy of their role in society.”

After noting that women are more likely to take left-leaning positions than men, Bankert adds that this does not automatically mean they identify as left-wing. Conservative women are more likely to develop their political beliefs based on religious or cultural philosophies.

“Since many conservative women reject the feminist label and its associated battle against sexism, it is possible that conservative women either dismiss or rationalize their own personal experience with sexism,” Bankert explains. “In fact, past research has demonstrated that women who endorse traditional gender stereotypes are also more likely to blame themselves for experiencing sexual harassment.”

Bankert notes that “conservatism has been linked to higher levels of rape myth acceptance” and adds that “even when conservative women acknowledge personal experiences with sexism, they might not see politics as a plausible domain to address gender inequalities and instead turn to other support systems such as religious or civic groups. Thus, conservative women might simply not translate their experiences into a desire for more political engagement.”

South Carolina and Georgia: A contemporary tale of two southern states

On December 20, 1860, my native state of South Carolina seceded from the Union of the United States of America. There were diverging opinions about the legality of this move. Above all, President-Elect Abraham Lincoln thought secession was illegal.

Another man, nearer to the case, thought it was not only illegal but also just plain stupid. Firmly positioned on the side of what we now call “the rule of law,” James L. Petigru had served as South Carolina’s Attorney General. 

He had also argued — and won — a case before the S.C. Court of Appeals that held that allegiance to the federal government prevailed over allegiance to the state. 

That did not sit well with many people in his home state. Nor did his opinion expressed upon the secession of South Carolina:

South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum.

A republic or an insane asylum?

Following the act of secession, South Carolina’s General Assembly combined two military academies and readied for a war that would leave their state in ruins and backward for at least a century. I would contend that it has politically held that status for longer than that. 

On January 9, 1861, Citadel Cadets fired the first shots of the Civil War, which still remains the United States’ most brutal war experience.

Ramming against the rule of law in 2020

Now that Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani have continually rammed their noses up against the wall of the rule of law, one would think — as the judge in Pennsylvania intimated — that without evidence, they should quit trying. But no, not a chance. 

Not unlike the “boys” from the Citadel in their fever for a great war to justify their way of life and the “peculiar institution” of slavery, Trump continues to advocate the myth of MAGA (“Make America Great Again”) — and to spin stories about election fraud. 

Georgia on our minds

Like the southern boys from The Citadel using cannons for their first time in real conflict in 1861, Mr. Trump is playing with fire: His persistence could have an effect on the Georgia run-off election for the U.S. Senate. 

Election Day, the last day to cast ballots, for that race is January 5, 2021, with in-person early voting beginning on December 14 and absentee ballots being mailed out starting November 18.

It must be said yet again that in the 2020 presidential election in the United States, the system worked, as has the rule of law since then. 

It worked in large part because of honest local administrators all across the country. It was a matter of their honesty, their honor and their patriotism that they were determined to have a fair election. Their often-partisan preferences and backgrounds played no role. 

No doubt, the task to secure elections in the future remains a big issue, not just in Georgia. The country-wide system needs updating and securing, as Steven Hill has argued in these pages. But for now, because of efforts of both federal and local officials, it worked.

Let us now praise not-so-famous men (and women)

Among the men and women who deserve praise because they worked hard for a fair election, is the Republican Secretary of State of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger. 

He defended the integrity of Georgia’s election, despite pressure from the two U.S. Senate Republican candidates, Trump himself and the senior U.S. Senator from none other than neighboring South Carolina, Lindsey Graham. 

It is intriguing how South Carolina tends to take the losing side and to continually be on the cutting edge of idiocy. 

According to Mr. Raffensperger, Senator Graham purportedly pressured him to find ways to overturn the Georgia election. 

Graham denies that. But if one understands what a chameleon he is, one doesn’t doubt that he encouraged his fellow Republican to do something, well, if not fraudulent, at least untoward. 

The simple solution of honesty and data

Still, Brad Raffensperger decided according to the data, citing his engineering background. That’s just too straight, too supremely simple, for Graham or for Trump. 

Raffensperger decided correctly about the election — even though he said he personally had wanted Trump to win. 

And he says the senatorial candidates should work on their election campaigns, instead of spewing conspiracy theories, so that they might prevail over their Democrat opponents.

The liar tweets tonight

Meanwhile, Donald Trump continues to lie and tweet, attacking not only Georgia’s Secretary of State, but also its Republican Governor. 

He is also revving up groups of his base given to conspiracy and to influence by the likes of convicted felon Roger Stone.

In a sense, what Trump is doing — once again — is to follow what a former President, Lyndon B. Johnson, once so pointedly expressed: 

“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”

Make my day and boycott the Georgia election

And so, it comes as no surprise that right-wing conspiracy theorists are suggesting a particular kind of revenge for the electoral “theft” that robbed Trump of a victory in Georgia in the November presidential election. 

They are advocating to Republicans to sit out – i.e. to boycott — the run-off election for the two senatorial seats in Georgia. Talk about idiocy.

Now the Democrat in me wants to lean back and say, “Well, if they want to be that stupid, by all means let them be. It betters Democrats’ chances of winning two more seats in the Senate.” 

After all, democracy tolerates stupidity with impunity (look at the last four years!). But it also makes at least equal room for correction.

The democrat in me, then, takes counsel from people like Brad Raffensperger or Christopher Krebs, and says, “Everyone should vote” — calmly, legally, generously (toward the other side) — exercising what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.”

This article is republished from The Globalist: On a daily basis, we rethink globalization and how the world really hangs together.  Thought-provoking cross-country comparisons and insights from contributors from all continents. Exploring what unites and what divides us in politics and culture. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.  And sign up for our highlights email here.

In fallout over polls, “margin of error” gets new scrutiny

When pollsters, journalists, and pundits want to signal that an opinion poll may not be right on target, they often turn to a familiar metric: the margin of error. The figure — usually rendered as something like “+/- 3 percentage points” — is generally, but not entirely accurately, understood to suggest that, for example, if 29 percent of Americans say they favor chocolate ice cream over vanilla, the true number might be as low 26 percent, or as high as 32 percent. The AP Stylebook, which sets standards widely used by U.S. media organizations, instructs journalists to include the figure in any coverage of polling results.

But some polling experts question whether margin of error is actually a useful metric. The problem, critics charge, is that few people understand what “margin of error” really means — and that, taken alone, the specific statistical error captured in the metric offers an incomplete and even misleading way to convey uncertainty. “As pollsters, all we have right now, and all we give people, is the margin of error,” said Courtney Kennedy, the director of survey research at the Pew Research Center, describing it as a “fatally flawed metric.”

Joshua Clinton, a political scientist at Vanderbilt University and the chair of a major polling-field taskforce evaluating 2020 election poll performance, agreed. “The margin of error is such a misleading and horrible term,” he said. “I wish we’d just banish it from our vernacular.”

Those concerns have taken on new urgency after the 2020 election. Major polls in key swing states underestimated President Donald J. Trump’s eventual share of the votes and overstated the chances for several Democratic Senate candidates. Coming after similar polling lapses in the 2016 election, the polling performance has elicited public backlash and mockery from prominent Republicans, as well as unfounded accusations of pollster fraud, including from the president.

The shortfall has led some pollsters to reevaluate their methods, even as they characterize some criticisms as unfair. But it has also led to frustration from some polling experts, who say the public often fails to grasp the intrinsic fuzziness of even the best polls and election forecasts. “I’m just honestly not sure how much more loudly or more repetitively I can scream about uncertainty and the potential for error,” HuffPost polling editor Ariel Edwards-Levy wrote on Twitter a week after the election.

Margins of error may seem like a natural place to make changes — and, indeed, the 2016 election postmortem report from the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), led by Kennedy, suggested reevaluating the way the metric is reported and explained. Experts say that replacing the margin of error, though, may be challenging. And the persistence of the metric, despite its limitations, points to the mixed incentives that pollsters face as they try to convey uncertainty while competing for attention in a crowded market.

Opinion polling depends on a simple statistical principle: the law of large numbers. If you take, say, a tub of one million blue marbles and one million red marbles and start pulling them out at random, the first 10 probably won’t yield an even 50-50 split. As that sample gets larger — 100 randomly selected marbles, or 500 — the red-blue proportion will move closer to the true composition of the giant marble tub. But, even then, there will often be a little swing: 240 blue and 260 red, for example, instead of an even 250 for each side.

The margin of error is a way of calculating how big that swing is likely to be. The larger the sample, the smaller the error margin. If the marble sample shows that 49 percent of the marbles are red, with a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points, that means that if someone ran the survey again many times, most of the outcomes — usually 95 percent —would fall somewhere within 3 percentage points of 49 percent.

Opinion polling, though, is not pulling marbles from a giant tub. Every marble summoned to represent the whole, after all, shows up. A typical opinion survey, by contrast, is a chancier affair, with phone calls sometimes going out to thousands of people in the hope that a few hundred will pick up the phone and make time to tell a total stranger, or sometimes just an automated voice, about their opinions. (Pew’s survey researchers, for example, say that they reach less than 10 percent of the people they call.)

For election polls, the people who are willing to respond to pollsters are not necessarily representative of the people who show up to vote. Sometimes even careful interviewers can unconsciously influence or nudge answers, too, inadvertently muddying the results. It’s also likely that at least some subset of people who do respond to surveys will have misunderstood the questions. Others — hopefully a small number, but almost certainly more than zero — will mislead with their answers.

Contrary to what many ordinary readers — and even many journalists — might believe, none of this additional fuzziness gets factored into the cold math of the margin-of-error calculation. “The problem is the margin of error ignores all those other error sources, and it suggests to the audience that they just don’t exist,” said Kennedy. “And so, when you tell people, ‘It’s this percentage plus or minus three,’ that is just factually untrue.”

That nuance does not necessarily come across in coverage of polls. Even poll-savvy people sometimes misrepresent the margin: After the 2016 election, one political scientist wrote an article about polling lapses for The Conversation, a portal for writing by academics, explaining that “the margin of error simply means how accurate the poll is.”

Speaking in general about the margin of error, Clinton said the opposite: “It’s not a statement of how accurate the poll is,” he said.

Indeed, final election results often fall well outside polls’ margins of error. Before the 2016 election, a group of researchers analyzed more than 4,000 election polls. Their results, eventually published in the Journal of the American Statistical Association, showed that the “average survey error” for those polls was “about twice as large as that implied by most reported margins of error.”

“I tell my students, every time you see a margin of error, at least double it,” said Clinton.

More recently, Don Moore, a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, and a student analyzed 1,400 polls from presidential primaries and general elections. He said their analysis, which has not been peer reviewed, found that “a week before the election, a poll’s margin of error includes the actual election result about 60 percent of the time.”

These findings are not breaking news to pollsters. For example, in a 1988 report, a veteran pollster, Irving Crespi, analyzed 430 election polls from the 1980s. On average, the polls were nearly 6 percentage points off — an error, Crespi wrote, that was “roughly three to four times as large as what would be expected through chance alone.”

Harris Insights and Analytics, a large market and political research firm that conducts the Harris Poll, has long avoided use of the term “margin of error” in its surveys — expressly because it is misunderstood by the public, and fails to capture they myriad potential sources of error in any analysis. Margins of error arguably “confuse more people than they enlighten,” the firm declared in a 2007 press release, “and they suggest a level of accuracy that no statistician could justify.”

* * *

It’s not clear what an alternative metric to margin of error would be. “Quantifying all this other error is not that simple,” said Brian Schaffner, a political scientist at Tufts University and academic survey researcher. “It’s not easy to put into a single number,” he continued, “and journalists are probably not going to want to spend two paragraphs of a story about a poll talking about all the different measures of uncertainty that we should be thinking about in this poll.”

One alternative, Schaffner suggested, would be for the industry to adapt the rule of thumb used by Clinton and others, and just consistently report a doubled margin of error. But, he cautioned, that’s just “a shorthand rule,” and not a precise measure. Another approach, some experts say, could be to use the historical performance of polls to produce metrics that estimate how likely a poll is to miss the mark.

Implementing such changes, though, could face several obstacles. For one thing, there’s no single body that controls how polls are reported. While AAPOR is influential, it only issues recommendations, and not all polling firms or media outlets follow them.

Pollsters may also have incentives to overstate the precision of their results. “If everyone else is saying their polls are really precise, do you want to be the first one who comes out and says, ‘And here’s my poll result, and it’s plus or minus 30’?” said Clinton. “If everybody else is using margin of error, then you’re basically saying that your poll is not as good as the other polls, in the eyes of people who may not fully appreciate all that.”

Charles Franklin, a political scientist who runs the prominent Marquette Law School Poll, has experienced that dynamic firsthand. Franklin began running the Marquette poll in 2012, after more than two decades doing academic survey research. He said he thought his background in statistics and academia would give him “the ability to convey more about margin of error and uncertainty than I thought public polling typically did.” As part of that effort, he decided to be more transparent about a little-appreciated quirk in margin of error calculations.

That quirk works something like this: Take an imaginary poll that suggests that Joe Biden is leading Donald Trump by 5 percentage points: Biden is favored by 50 percent of the sample, and Trump by 45 percent. If the poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, that represents a 3-point margin around Biden’s total, and a 3-point margin around Trump’s total. But the 5 percentage-point gap between the two has its own margin of error — and that margin will be much larger than 3 points. That’s because it captures the potential of oversampling one candidate while undersampling the other. As Pew explains it: “If the Republican share is too high by chance, it follows that the Democratic share is likely too low, and vice versa.” As a result, the margin of error for the candidate’s lead is roughly double the reported margin of error of the poll – in this example, 6 percentage points, rather than 3.

Put simply, if a journalist describes the poll above as having “Biden ahead by five points,” the lead might be another six points in either direction, just from chance variation – and that’s before accounting for other sources of error that can affect survey results.

This is “survey statistics 101,” said Franklin. “So I naively wrote that up in my very first press release,” he recalled, “only to have The Washington Post characterize our results as having ‘an unusually large margin of error.'” The poll looked bad, and Franklin felt burned.

“I quickly came to the conclusion that I could only complicate and confuse things by insisting in our press releases in reporting that correct margin of error for a difference between two percentages,” Franklin said. “And I kind of despair about that, because you want to be technically correct.”

* * *

Communicating uncertainty, of course, is something that has long dogged not just pollsters, but scientists writ large. Many climate scientists, epidemiologists, and meteorologists are tasked with juggling uncertain variables in order to understand and, as best they can, predict how complex systems will behave given certain inputs. Instead of clear-cut answers, those models yield ranges of outcomes, often rendered as probabilities. In the case of climate models and epidemiological models, those results, despite the uncertainty, can have serious political implications.

The reading public has, for the most part, learned to accept probabilities, and the underlying uncertainties, when it comes to, say, the weather. Few people are surprised or upset when a 25 percent chance of rain ends up delivering showers. But on other fronts — particularly those freighted with political baggage — many people respond to uncertainty with confusion, disappointment, and even anger.

In a conversation the week after the election, Franklin said he was feeling vexed over how to communicate uncertainty. He acknowledged that margin of error is an imperfect metric, and he’s interested in alternatives. But, he said, margin of error is a more straightforward, transparent calculation than whatever metric would likely replace it. And, Franklin said, an excess of precision can actually detract from the work of pollsters. “We’ve got to remember that the purpose of public polling of this sort is to facilitate a public conversation about public affairs and elections,” he said. A public-facing poll, he added, is not like a scientific paper, trying “to produce the most precise estimate and statements of confidence and hypothesis test.”

While that argument may not convince all polling critics, some analysts also caution that even metrics that reflect uncertainty don’t necessarily help people evaluate polls more soberly. “The problem that I’ve seen in a ton of my research is just that people are very good at suppressing uncertainty, even when you give them something like a probability,” said Jessica Hullman, a professor of computer science and journalism at Northwestern University who studies representations of data, including in election forecasting.

The basic problem, she said, goes beyond any one metric — not least because many people approach polls with high degrees of motivated thinking. It’s “the fact that people are so hard-wired to want answers when they’re looking to polls, when they’re looking to election forecasts,” Hullman said. Many people, she added, “are consulting them because they want some information to make them feel less anxious about the future.”

Hullman, though, does think statistical literacy can improve, albeit slowly. She praises people like Nate Silver, the prominent election forecaster, who essentially combine their election forecasts with miniature lessons in statistics, and who focus their analysis on the inherent uncertainty of polling. Over the past decade, she said, she has seen many people become more sophisticated at interpreting polls and forecasting models.

“I do think readers can get used to things,” she said. “And I think uncertainty is something that, as a society, we are slowly getting better at.”

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

Trump races to weaken environmental and worker protections, and implement other last-minute policies

Six days after President Donald Trump lost his bid for reelection, the U.S. Department of Agriculture notified food safety groups that it was proposing a regulatory change to speed up chicken factory processing lines, a change that would allow companies to sell more birds. An earlier USDA effort had broken down on concerns that it could lead to more worker injuries and make it harder to stop germs like salmonella.

Ordinarily, a change like this would take about two years to go through the cumbersome legal process of making new federal regulations. But the timing has alarmed food and worker safety advocates, who suspect the Trump administration wants to rush through this rule in its waning days.

Even as Trump and his allies officially refuse to concede the Nov. 3 election, the White House and federal agencies are hurrying to finish dozens of regulatory changes before Joe Biden is inaugurated on Jan. 20. The rules range from long-simmering administration priorities to last-minute scrambles and affect everything from creature comforts like showerheads and clothes washers to life-or-death issues like federal executions and international refugees. They impact everyone from the most powerful, such as oil drillers, drugmakers and tech startups, to the most vulnerable, such as families on food stamps, transgender people in homeless shelters, migrant workers and endangered species. ProPublica is tracking those regulations as they move through the rule-making process.

Every administration does some version of last-minute rule-making, known as midnight regulations, especially with a change in parties. It’s too soon to say how the Trump administration’s tally will stack up against predecessors. But these final weeks are solidifying conservative policy objectives that will make it harder for the Biden administration to advance its own agenda, according to people who track rules developed by federal agencies.

“The bottom line is the Trump administration is trying to get things published in the Federal Register, leaving the next administration to sort out the mess,” said Matthew Kent, who tracks regulatory policy for left-leaning advocacy group Public Citizen. “There are some real roadblocks to Biden being able to wave a magic wand on these.”

In some instances the Trump administration is using shortcuts to get more rules across the finish line, such as taking less time to accept and review public feedback. It’s a risky move. On the one hand, officials want to finalize rules so that the next administration won’t be able to change them without going through the process all over again. On the other, slapdash rules may contain errors, making them more vulnerable to getting struck down in court.

The Trump administration is on pace to finalize 36 major rules in its final three months, similar to the 35 to 40 notched by the previous four presidents, according to Daniel Perez, a policy analyst at the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center. In 2017, Republican lawmakers struck down more than a dozen Obama-era rules using a fast-track mechanism called the Congressional Review Act. That weapon may be less available for Democrats to overturn Trump’s midnight regulations if Republicans keep control of the Senate, which will be determined by two Georgia runoffs. Still, a few GOP defections could be enough to kill a rule with a simple majority.

“This White House is not likely to be stopping things and saying on principle elections have consequences, let’s respect the voters’ decision and not rush things through to tie the next guys’ hands,” said Susan Dudley, who led the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget at the end of the George W. Bush administration. “One concern is the rules are rushed so they didn’t have adequate analysis or public comment, and that’s what we’re seeing.”

The Trump White House didn’t respond to requests for comment on which regulations it’s aiming to finish before Biden’s inauguration. The Biden transition team also didn’t respond to questions about which of Trump’s parting salvos the new president would prioritize undoing.

Many of the last-minute changes would add to the heap of changes throughout the Trump administration to pare back Obama-era rules and loosen environmental and consumer protections, all in the name of shrinking the government’s role in the economy. “Our proposal today greatly furthers the Trump administration’s regulatory reform efforts, which together have already amounted to the most aggressive effort to reform federal regulations of any administration,” Brian Harrison, the chief of staff for the Department of Health and Human Services, said on a conference call with reporters the day after the election. Harrison was unveiling a new proposal to automatically purge regulations that are more than 10 years old unless the agency decides to keep them.

For that proposal to become finalized before Jan. 20 would be an exceptionally fast turnaround. But Harrison left no doubt about that goal. “The reason we’re doing this now is because,” he said, “we at the department are trying to go as fast as we can in hopes of finalizing the rule before the end of the first term.”

Easier to Pollute, Harder to Immigrate

One proposal has raced through the process with little notice but unusual speed — and deadly consequences. This rule could reintroduce firing squads and electrocutions for federal executions, giving the government more options for administering capital punishment as drugs used in lethal injections become unavailable. The Justice Department surfaced the proposal in August and accepted public comments for only 30 days, instead of the usual 60. The rule cleared White House review on Nov. 6, meaning it could be finalized any day. The Justice Department didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Once finalized, this rule might never be put into practice. The Trump administration executed a federal prisoner in Indiana on Nov. 19 and plans five more executions before Jan. 20, all with lethal injections. After that, Biden has signaled he won’t allow any federal executions and will push to eliminate capital punishment for federal crimes.

Other less dramatic-sounding rules could prove harder to unravel and have broader consequences. In particular, the Environmental Protection Agency is on the cusp of finalizing several rules that would make it harder to justify pollution restrictions or lock in soot levels for at least five years. The agency wants to keep the soot standard unchanged over the objections of independent scientific advisers and despite emerging evidence that links particulate pollution to additional coronavirus deaths.

An EPA spokesman declined to comment on the timing of these rules. “EPA continues to advance this administration’s commitment to meaningful environmental progress while moving forward with our regulatory reform agenda,” the spokesman, James Hewitt, said.

While those rules have developed over years, others were launched later and officials are taking shortcuts to finish in time. Reviews by the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs that normally take 90 days or more are now wrapping up in as few as five days.

The White House is close to completing several rules that would extend Trump’s record of restricting immigration and make the changes harder for the Biden administration to reverse. The pending rules would make it more difficult to claim asylum by excluding people with criminal convictions (even those that have been expunged), drastically shortening the application time and giving immigration judges more latitude to pick and choose what evidence to consider. The departments of Justice and Homeland Security didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Some rules read like Trump’s stump speeches translated into policy legalese. The Department of Energy is racing to loosen efficiency standards for showerheads and laundry machines, evoking Trump’s recurring bits about bathroom water pressure. “Do you ever get under a shower and no water comes out?” Trump said at an October rally in Nevada. “And me, I want that hair to be so beautiful.”

Notably, the trade group representing washer manufacturers actually opposes the administration’s proposal, saying it’s unnecessary because many machines already have short-cycle options. The proposed rule is supported by small-government advocates such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Water and electric companies warn it could lead to higher consumption and waste. The Energy Department didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The administration is also bucking business groups with proposals to restrict high-skilled immigration; in October, the departments of Homeland Security and Labor unveiled regulations to raise wage and education requirements for H-1B visas, which are often used in the information-technology industry. (The proposal drew opposition from theSmall Business Administration, saying the higher costs would stifle innovation and growth.) But while raising the wage scale for skilled immigrants, the administration is pushing a different new rule to lower wages for “low-skilled” immigrant farmworkers. A spokesperson for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (part of DHS) told ProPublica that “Any delay in responding to an economic emergency and high unemployment in a way that protects American workers and ensures the H-1B program is administered consistent with statutory requirements could cause real harm to the U.S. economy.” The Department of Labor didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Other rules are more clearly accommodating powerful business interests. A rule completed on Nov. 13 would restrict pension managers from considering social and environmental impacts (known in the industry as ESG) when choosing investments. Another Labor Department rule would make it easier for companies like Uber to withhold benefits by classifying workers as independent contractors instead of full employees. Both proposals had a truncated public comment period of only 30 days. A spokesman said the agency considers all comments regardless of how long the period lasts and that the department is working to complete all regulations on its agenda.

Chicken Plants on the Fast Track

Such shortcuts still might not be enough to finish some new rules that are just starting out now. Still, these tactics have raised alarms about the USDA’s proposal to speed up chicken factories, even though a regulatory change like that would ordinarily take two years or more. The USDA has not provided a timeline, and the proposal is not yet public while the White House reviews it. An agency spokesman said the department is following the standard process.

The rules change has the support of the National Chicken Council, an industry trade group, which argues that the timing is not political. Spokesman Tom Super called the proposal “the most deliberative and studied proposed rule that has ever been issued. It spans three decades, four administrations — Republican and Democrat — countless scientific studies and various court cases.”

The USDA has been laying the groundwork for the rule change for years. Even though safety concerns scuttled the USDA’s previous attempt to raise speeds from 140 birds per minute to 175, in 2018 the agency started granting one-off waivers to individual plants that sought permission to run faster.

The performance of those plants could equip the USDA to argue that the speed limit should go up in all of them. Although the agency has not yet released its formal justification for the new proposal, officials have referenced a new study in the journal Poultry Science that concluded that inspectors in plants with faster speeds did not detect higher average levels of salmonella contamination.

The USDA funded the study through a no-bid contract worth up to $500,000 awarded in 2018 to Louis Anthony “Tony” Cox Jr., a statistician who consults for business interests such as the American Petroleum Institute and the American Chemistry Council, according to the Center for Investigative Reporting.

Cox declined to share data he secured exclusively from the USDA or to be interviewed for this article. In emailed answers to written questions, he defended his methodology but acknowledged there’s room for further study.

Other evidence, however, suggests faster speeds could make chicken less safe to eat. In a September article in the journal Frontiers in Veterinary Science, USDA researcher Jeremy Marchant-Forde and a co-author found that USDA inspectors threw out record-low amounts of chicken when the agency let more plants speed up since May. The authors called this “a major threat to public health” to the extent it suggests inspectors were failing to find contaminated carcasses (rather than the birds having suddenly become much cleaner). But the authors cautioned they’re not food safety experts and declined to comment further.

While the food safety issues are debated, there’s already clear evidence that running faster lines poses higher worker risks, both repetitive strain injuries like carpal tunnel and traumatic injuries like cuts and amputations. But the USDA maintains that it is responsible only for food safety; worker safety is the job of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

That’s exactly the kind of interagency dialogue that the White House is supposed to coordinate when planning new regulations — and the kind of process that could be shortchanged in the final months of an administration, according to the American Public Health Association’s Occupational Health and Safety Section. An OSHA spokeswoman declined to say whether the agency has weighed in on the USDA’s proposal. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has not yet commented on the proposal but plans to, a spokeswoman said.

“This last-minute push for an ill-advised rule change could be deadly for essential workers in slaughterhouses,” said Jessica Martinez, co-executive director of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, an advocacy group for safer working conditions.

Leasing Against the Clock

Since many finalized Trump rules are currently under court challenges, the Biden administration might be able to let some of them wither or die in litigation — especially where judges have blocked or struck down the regulations and the new Justice Department could decide not to appeal.

It will also have to wrestle with other changes the Trump administration is rushing to implement, using tactics other than rule-making.

The Trump administration is also pressing ahead with opening up more federal lands to oil and gas development, despite low prices, sluggish demand and complaints from environmental groups that drilling would encroach on wildlife habitats and national parks. Bids are starting at just $2 an acre for more than 445,000 acres of public land with leases for sale to energy companies through the Bureau of Land Management, according to data from EnergyNet.com.

The leases could expand dramatically as the BLM finalizes a plan to allow oil and gas drilling on an additional 6.8 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, a habitat for bears, musk oxen, caribou and birds. Spokespeople for the BLM didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Separately, the Interior Department will open up drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The agency is spending 30 days asking companies for bids, and then sales need another 30 days to take effect — just enough time to beat the clock before the inauguration.

An Interior Department spokesman said the agency is taking “a significant step” to implement Congress’ direction in the 2017 Republican tax bill to start drilling in ANWR. “The department will continue to implement President Trump’s agenda to create more American jobs, protect the safety of American workers, support domestic energy production and conserve our environment,” the spokesman, Conner Swanson, said. He didn’t say whether the leases would be done by Jan. 20.

Leases that have not yet been issued would be easier for the Biden administration to drop, but even finalized leases could be withdrawn if officials decide they were improperly issued or too environmentally dangerous, according to Erik Grafe, an attorney with Earthjustice in Anchorage. (Leaseholders might argue they deserve to be compensated.)

In addition, even once leases are issued, companies need permits and authorizations before actually taking action on the ground, Grafe said. Those steps would take more time and face legal challenges. Earthjustice and other groups are already suing to block the Arctic drilling program as a whole.

“We have been protecting this place forever,” said Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwich’in steering committee representing indigenous hunting communities in northeast Alaska. “This fight is far from over, and we will do whatever it takes to defend our sacred homelands.”

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What can the left expect from a Biden-Harris administration? Pretty much nothing

On Nov. 7 of this year, the United States let out a collective roar that rippled across the nation, resonating the crowds of blue-clad people swelling the streets and the squares, and causing buildings to tremble as those inside broke out the champagne and began to dance. The celebrations lasted long into the night. For those few precious moments, it felt as though a curse had been lifted, a nightmare abated. Trumpism had ground itself to a resounding and decisive halt and it seemed that political space on the left, and on the center ground, had finally begun to open again.

A scion of 21st-century reality TV, Trump was a vulgar presence; a combination of incompetence and inanity, hitched to the bombast and braggadocio of a circus ringmaster, and rounded off with all the ethical inclinations of a CEO of a napalm factory. Trump was a president of pantomime proportions: In the White House he single-handedly invigorated the satire industry, as the mirth to be made from his perpetual claims to greatness (his level of expertise in every scientific field would have made Joseph Stalin blush) was recycled into comedy skit after comedy skit on “Saturday Night Live” (a “very stable genius,” anyone?)

And yet, as Karl Marx noted so many years ago, the flipside to farce is so often tragedy. While Trump continued to strut, parade and self-promote there was a more sinister aspect to the spectacle of his absurdity. Gaudy, grandiose language of “greatness” and the innate superiority of the “nation” began to filter through the fourth wall of political PR, reaching deeper, darker and more undisclosed regions. The rallying cry “Make America Great Again” started to prick the ears of shady extremists, and forces on the far right began to stir from within the shadows.

In spring 2016, some months before Trump’s election, Andrew Anglin — founder of the prominent neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer — had predicted, “Jews, Blacks, and lesbians will be leaving America if Trump gets elected — and he’s happy about it. This alone is enough reason to put your entire heart and soul into supporting this man.” A year later, on the campus of American University in Washington, which had just elected its first black female student president, nooses began to appear — courtesy, in fact, of the same Daily Stormer site, which had mobilized far right elements in a campaign of hate and harassment against her. 

A couple of months after that came the notorious spectacle of Charlottesville, when large numbers of bare-chested, belligerent white men lumbered through the streets chanting, “Jews will not replace us!” Alongside the assorted confederate flags and spidery black of swastikas, T-shirts and caps featuring Trump’s MAGA slogan were increasingly on display. When the forces of the left mounted a counter demonstration, a white supremacist — unable to bottle a visceral sense of rage — drove his car into them, killing one demonstrator and injuring several others. In the aftermath of the atrocity, Trump remarked that there were “some very fine people on both sides” and expressed the view that “both sides” were culpable for the violence — a clear wink-wink, nod-nod to the murderer and the toxic, protean forces that had generated him.  

That Trump’s presidency had bolstered and emboldened such elements surely explains the mass eruption of joy and celebration which greeted the news of his departure. But those who would look toward the partnership of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and the commissioning of a new Democratic leadership, to inaugurate an epoch of reason and enlightenment and thereby banish the darkness should undoubtedly look again. For one thing, it bears remembering what brought Trump to power in the first place. Trumpism arrived at the White House, not with a bang, but with a whimper. 

Trump did not win in 2016 on the back of a broad right-wing social movement which was then translated into a vast hike in the number of Republican votes. Inasmuch as Trump “won” at all — in two presidential elections, he hasn’t even come close to winning the popular vote — he did only marginally better than John McCain had done in losing what was generally viewed as a landslide election in 2008. Trump won 46.1% percent of the popular vote in 2016, while McCain had won 45.7% eight years earlier. 

The real difference was on the other side of the ledger: In 2008, Barack Obama had won 52.9% of the popular vote, while in 2016 Clinton only managed to procure 48.2%. In other words, the Democratic vote share had fallen by almost four million votes (even before we take into account the significant increase in population between 2008 and 2016). 

Although many tried to lay the blame for this at the door of shady Russian hackers or dodgy tech companies such as Cambridge Analytica, their effect was marginal, perhaps imperceptible. The real reason for this electoral demise can be found in the eight years of Democratic administration that preceded it. Those were the years in which Obama’s abstract and facile exhortations toward “hope” and “change” were extinguished in the fiery wastelands of the battle-scarred Middle East and beyond, as his administration prosecuted military attacks in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan, and the use of drone technology became endemic. 

On the domestic front, the situation was no less grim. Having facilitated perhaps the largest economic crisis in history through their rapacious and often illegal financial dealings, the great banking oligarchs remained untouched and unrepentant, shielded as they were by the same government whose campaign coffers those CEOs had so generously filled in the run-up to the 2008 election. (Goldman Sachs was Obama’s top corporate donor that year, headlining a large number of other Wall Street contributors.) 

Indeed behind closed doors, beyond the smooth façade of his presidential image, Obama spoke to the big banking heads with prosaic candor: “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.” This pithy quote, leaked into the public sphere, casts a light on the inner sanctum, the way political strategy is negotiated behind the back of the population. More importantly, it reveals the attitude of the Obama administration itself to the powerful, and to the people; i.e., the admission that its function is to protect the former from the latter (themselves regarded with patrician contempt as little more than pitchfork-wielding yokels).

The Democrats lost in 2016 because they had failed to provide a genuine political alternative. Both major political parties had followed the neoliberal economic line that privileged and protected the interests of those at the top, and offered an increasingly narrow vision of “choice” to an increasingly weary and disillusioned electorate. Fewer and fewer people turned out to vote, and it was on this basis that Trumpism would step into the void. Voter turnout dramatically improved this year, to be sure. But the question now becomes: What type of choice does the Biden-Harris administration provide?’ What type of political alternative can it offer?

One key selling point is the fact that Harris will be the first Black female vice president in U.S. history. That’s not to be scoffed at, especially considering the potent injection of racism and national chauvinism the country has suffered at the hands of Trumpism. At the same time, it does Harris something a disservice, inasmuch as it does not speak to her actual politics. Once we examine these in detail, the record that emerges is a somewhat murky one. For instance, during her tenure as attorney general of California the state Supreme Court ruled that prison overcrowding represented “cruel and unusual punishment,” yet Harris fought against the early release of prisoners, with her legal team arguing that such a measure would deplete the prison population and therefore deprive the state of a cheap source of labour. 

This of course reflected the same political process of neoliberalism that underlay the fusion of private capital with the prison system and had led to the draconian prison reforms carried out under Bill Clinton in the ’90s and continued by both the Bush and the Obama administrations. This led to a vast number of people, disproportionately Black or Latino, languishing in “correctional” facilities for little more than misdemeanors or minor infractions. The profit motive — driven by neoliberal administrations of both the Democrat and Republican stripe — has eaten into the correctional system like a corrosive acid, warping its raison d’être such that Time Magazine, in a 2016 exposé, discovered “that approximately 39% of the nationwide prison population (576,000 people) is behind bars with little public safety rationale.”

And then there are the ubiquitous and tragic cases of those who are imprisoned and later discovered to have been falsely convicted — cases like that of Daniel Larsen, who spent more than a decade in prison before the Innocence Project was able to overturn his conviction. In the event, even after Larsen’s innocence had been established, Harris’ office tried to keep him incarcerated on the bureaucratic and rather spiteful grounds that his legal team had filed for release too late, after an official deadline had expired. (Larsen, thankfully, was released anyway.)

In any case, it seems likely that Harris will be an effective component in an administration likely to reprise many themes from the Obama era, including facilitating the march of private capital into various state sectors, fortifying the armed forces, protecting Wall Street and the financial elite, and cultivating U.S. military interests abroad in robust and murderous fashion. On the subject of Wall Street, it is worth noting that, in the run-up to the 2020 election, Biden boasted the backing of 131 billionaire donors to Trump’s 99, with the banking elite clearly registering in a Biden administration a safe pair of hands to steer the course of financial capital. Indeed, Biden’s selection as his White House chief of staff, Ron Klain, has a long-established career in venture capital.

On the question of military spending and foreign policy, this year a majority of Senate Democrats, including Harris, voted against and defeated an amendment that would have diverted 10% from a bloated military budget of some $740 billion into jobs, health care and education. Although it is still early days, the president-elect’s political team has already “underscored his deep commitment to the defence of Japan and U.S commitments under Article 5.” That’s a clear shot across the bow of China and an expression of a deepening Democratic commitment to a more aggressive stance toward the biggest economic rival to the U.S., one which some commentators have inferred (correctly, in my view) could lay the basis for a new Cold War.

In other words, the Biden administration shuffles onto the scene already a revenant; it can only offer a revivified formula of the same neoliberal strategy which has already exhausted itself in earlier decades. It is difficult to imagine that it will offer the electorate either something qualitatively new or something that’s likely to genuinely uplift the economic interests of the vast majority. The cloud of euphoria — which was more about the exorcism of Trump than about the ascension of Biden — is likely to dissipate rather quickly under the grind of the neoliberal machine. While Trump himself will eventually depart from the White House, the electoral core he has carved out for himself will remain very much in place.

Importantly, Trump’s most recent provocation — his efforts to call into question the validity of the democratic process, both before and after the election — on the surface the last-ditch cry of foul by a gaudy vulgarian, will in fact act as a potent rallying point for a political base all too ready to congeal around the notion that a liberal elite has robbed the “anti-establishment” candidate of his rightful win.

And the more the Democratic Party pursues its pro-Wall Street policies, the more it will reveal itself as the party of an elite minority — and the more such a conspiracy theory will gain traction in the minds of the bewildered, the small business owners flayed by the economic downturn, those in the traditional rural heartlands who find their prospects and their lands shrinking, those on the edge of destitution. Not to mention those whose sense of social inferiority, isolation and neglect is salved by the potency of the purest racial hatred and the longing for a nostalgic vision of a more traditional Americana in which white skin was the emblem of a pioneer spirit, conferring on its owner both innate privilege and automatic respect. 

The slick brand of managerial capitalism which encompasses high finance and a new era of global imperialism, which Biden’s administration is almost certainly set to offer, could well create the perfect conditions in which a new type of far-right demagoguery can metastasize; something which will unite the anguished fury of the lower-middle classes with the most rabid fringes of the far right, fusing them into a toxic and potentially lethal brew. 

For this reason, radicals must resist and protest the Biden administration from the outset. To provide it with support — to see in it the liberal antidote to Trumpism — is to make a critical error of the first order, one that will allow the most virulent elements of the Republican Party, in the words of Thomas Frank, to become “ever bolder in their preposterous claim to be a ‘workers’ party’ representing the aspirations of ordinary people.”

Malcolm X once wrote that the perception of the viciously right-wing character of the Republican Party works to cloak the establishment essence of the Democrats; in showing a voter “the wolf,” he argued, the ruling class is able to drive that same voter “into the open jaws of the smiling fox.” What Malcolm X would not live to see is the era we have inherited, the one in which fox begets wolf.  

The delight of HBO’s bizarre docuseries “How to With John Wilson” is found in the detours

There’s no way that I could have anticipated how deeply “How to With John Wilson” would make me miss life before the pandemic, nor how much it would make me want to change how I live once it’s all over. After all, HBO advertised the six-episode show as a “comedy docuseries,” which can mean a lot of things (for reference, IMDb classifies “Jackass” as a comedic documentary). 

The trailers promised some of the same, unapologetic meditations on social awkwardness that Nathan Fielder’s Comedy Central series “Nathan for You” — of which I’m a devoted fan — provided. Fielder, as well as “Nathan for You” alums Michael Koman and Clark Reinkin, are executive producers on the show.

And the premise of “How To” is simple. Wilson, a documentary filmmaker, meticulously records the events of an everyday life, much in the same way other people keep a diary. He uses those clips to investigate one new topic over the course of each episode. These include things like scaffolding, small talk, splitting the check and covering furniture.

But, much like “Nathan for You,” the original premise of the episode leads to some zany places. The episode on memory, for instance, takes Wilson to a convention about the multiverse theory, led by amateurs out of a Best Western conference room. Meanwhile, Wilson’s dogged attempts to learn about how to more fairly split the check land him a seat at an award dinner for Manhattan soccer referees. 

That kind of tenacious pursuit of a topic is absolutely delightful to me, a kind of bizzaro form of documentary filmmaking, but it’s not just for laughs. Through Wilson’s unpolished, slightly awkward commentary, he invites viewers to behold his vulnerabilities, and perhaps assess their own. I mean, who among us hasn’t wanted a primer on making better small talk so we can more easily make acquaintances of strangers, and eventually friends of those acquaintances?

But for me, the potential emotional revelations of “How To with John Wilson” pale in comparison to what it can teach viewers about what we probably used to take for granted when operating in public spaces. 

This series is built on some of the most meticulously captured B-roll I have ever seen in my life. I’m talking about things that, to the average passerby, would fall below notice: misspelled street signs, a fire hydrant being drained into a busy intersection, a person doing pull-ups on a bar of scaffolding, a couple where one partner slouches away from the other’s touch, a small dog toddling down the street in a color-block sweater. 

With those little snippets, Wilson crafts visual punchlines that elicit belly laughs and landscapes that will make you ache for the days you could have been outside, actually noticing things. 

Of course I remember some of the stranger things that I’ve seen in public — the time that I watched a drunk man drag a lobster leg, dripping with butter, across his date’s face while slurring, “Hello, darling” still looms large in my mind, for instance — but I don’t mentally retain or physically capture, on paper or film, the kinds of things that Wilson does. Would my interior life and creative work be richer if I did? 

Almost certainly. 

Wilson beautifully showcases what would happen if folks would go where their curiosity leads them (for him, that’s a deeply uncomfortable trip to Cancun during spring break after practicing small talk with a travel agent), if they’d tack an extra five-minute excursion onto their walk home, or if they’d check out what was behind the doors that have always interested them. That’s how Wilson ends up face-to-face with a class full of students attempting to master the (plastic) lightsaber. 

“How to With John Wilson” takes delight in demonstrating how poignant detours, even small ones, can be. These days, I don’t take too many detours. My schedule has become regimented and my paths are determined — even my trips to the grocery store, a place I used to love to explore, are now predetermined missions. 

But as I’ve watched this series over the last several weeks, I’ve noticed my patterns shifting (safely, of course). I’ve started more walks, allowing myself to veer off the most logical path. I’ve begun noticing things I hadn’t before: the neighbor who lovingly drapes her cactuses in bedsheets overnight and uncovers them for morning sunshine, the two side-by-side yards that contain two nearly identical black poodles, the man who walks the same route every day while peddling his new gospel CD. 

In and of themselves, these things aren’t important. They’re not exciting or life-changing in any meaningful way. And yet, I think about what John Wilson would do if he captured them — he’d transform them into something that’s more poignant than the sum of its parts. I think that’s the ultimate message of “How To,” and that’s the message I want to carry with me even once, or perhaps especially when, normalcy returns.

“How to With John Wilson” is available to stream on HBO Max.

What could Trump do to tank the economy out of vengeance? What Republicans have done for years

Less than a week before the 2020 election, I interviewed a number of psychologists who speculated that if President Donald Trump lost to former Vice President Joe Biden, his narcissism might cause him to lash out by deliberately tanking the economy. Now it seems like that prediction might have been correct — although the reasons may have as much to do with the Republican Party’s longstanding traditions as Trump’s individual flaws.

Last week Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin inexplicably decided to allow a number of federal programs sponsored by the CARES Act to expire on Dec. 31. These programs, which have allowed the government to lend up to $4.5 trillion in various financial markets to stave off economic pain that would otherwise be felt by municipalities, businesses and workers, could still be revived by incoming Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen if she strikes an agreement with the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

Because Biden will not take office until Jan. 20, however, Mnuchin’s actions are likely to hurt people economically in the intervening span, a point that the Federal Reserve itself acknowledged when it publicly disagreed with Mnuchin.

“The Federal Reserve would prefer that the full suite of emergency facilities established during the coronavirus pandemic continue to serve their important role as a backstop for our still-strained and vulnerable economy,” the central bank said in a public statement. As High Frequency Economics chief economist Carl Weinberg told CNBC at the time, “I don’t think there is a good economic or public health or social reason to explain why they want to cut these programs at this particular time, so it has kind of got to be politics, doesn’t it?”

Mnuchin made another vengeful economic decision this week, announcing that $455 billion in unspent CARES Act funds will be placed into an account that Yellen will not be able to access without congressional authorization. Bharat Ramamurti, a member of the COVID-19 Congressional Oversight Commission that oversees the use of stimulus funds, responded to Mnuchin’s latest move by stating “the good news is that it’s illegal and can be reversed next year.” Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon echoed those views, declaring in a statement that “Secretary Mnuchin is engaged in economic sabotage, and trying to tie the Biden administration’s hands.” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes also referred to the move as “flat-out sabotage.”

Salon reached out to several experts for their thoughts on Mnuchin’s actions and the Trump administration’s overall behavior since losing the election to Biden.

“I’ve been extremely dismayed to watch how Trump and his minions are deliberately salting the earth as they exit, planting economic and legal landmines and time bombs everywhere, as though they’d much rather see the incoming Biden administration fail miserably and the American people suffer than see either the pandemic or the economy have a decent chance at recovery,” Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe wrote to Salon when asked about Mnuchin’s actions last week. “Delaying the transition is just one example. Their whole approach is the very opposite of what anyone who gives a damn about America or its people would have been doing.”

Although previous presidential administrations had “at times played silly pranks on those who would occupy the White House after their departure” on lower levels, Tribe emphasized that “never in our history have we witnessed such an overwhelming triumph from the highest levels of government of vindictiveness over patriotism, of ego over superego. These people are the scum of the earth, and their scorched earth departure will mark them as such for all time.”

Karl Widerquist, a professor of philosophy at Georgetown University–Qatar who has doctorates in political theory and economics, provided Salon with other examples of ways in which Trump seems to be sabotaging the economy.

“Trump is already doing dangerous economic damage — allowing drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Tongass National Forest, decreasing the size of national monuments, and virtually giving away the land to companies that want to drill, mine, or forest it and sell back to us the resources our government gave to them for free,” Widerquist wrote to Salon. “Look for things like this to intensify, and do not underestimate the long-term damage moves like this do to the country and to the world’s environment. Much of the economic damage he can do is with inaction. With good leadership we could have a clear Covid plan and an economic stimulus. We’ll get no movement on this in the last days of the Trump administration.”

Austan Goolsbee, an economics professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and former chair of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, told Salon by email that the Trump administration has “been trying to jam through the Fed appointments to last for years into the future, sign long term contracts for drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, and keep an eye on whether they complete the [Department of Defense] spectrum auction with a no-bid contract to a Republican-connected group.”

He added, “The main thing is that letting COVID-19 rage uncontrollably will ravage the economy. They know this and are still not doing anything.”

While some of Trump’s actions can be potentially explained by a narcissistic desire to punish Americans for not reelecting him, others are consistent with the Republican Party’s longstanding approach toward economics. As Dr. Richard D. Wolff, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told Salon, it is not at all uncommon for Republicans to make decisions that they know will hurt the working class in order to reap political benefit for themselves.

To understand how this has happened, Wolff told Salon that it is first important to understand the broader context of the decline of real wages in the 1970s after they had consistent gone up every decade since the 1820s. This caused people to work longer hours and go on a borrowing binge, which only exacerbated the overall sense of dwindling opportunity and economic distress.

“Here’s the stunning political reality,” Wolff explained. “This deterioration of the working class situation, which they feel and kind of understand, they see as something that their party — which coming out of the Great Depression was the Democratic Party — seemed to be powerless to stop. At best, they did it more slowly than the Republicans. They seemed to have been captured by the neoliberal ideologies, so that the two parties become more and more alike.”

As this was happening, “the Republican Party shifts attention away from the way it pushed all of these shifts — this neoliberalism, the globalization, the moving production out of the country, the automation and all the other things that contributed to the stagnant real wages — the Republicans don’t talk about that.” Instead, Wolff pointed out, they shifted the conversation toward social issues. They focused on supposedly “traditional” values to oppose civil rights, feminism and secularism and characterize themselves as the party of “reconstituting the family, reestablishing the hierarchy. God at the top, the man just below him and the women and children below the man and his, to the women and children, the equivalent deity that God is,” as well as stopping racial minorities from asserting their rights.

By conflating these social issues with economic ones, Wolff argued, Republicans learned that they could pass policies which would help the wealthy at the expense of everyone else because they could craft their populism off of appeals to unrelated issues.

“They could lead the way to smash the working-class thereby cementing their donations from the capitalists who appreciated the deregulation, who appreciated the celebration of the ‘genius’ of CEOs [like] Jack Welch, Lee Iacocca, any of the others,” Wolff explained. “So you sucked up to the capitalists and you were able to begin to really eat into the Democrats’ control of the working class.”

Indeed, Wolff pointed out that “it became possible to suggest to the white working class that the Democrats were somehow more responsible for the neoliberalism, which is not true, than the Republicans, but you could play it by wrapping it up” in various forms of prejudice.

Utah lawmakers accused of seeking to legalize drivers running over street protesters

Utah lawmakers are being condemned this week for advancing a bill with provisions penalizing demonstrators who obstruct traffic during a “riot” while absolving any driver who injures or kills a protester, as long as the motorist was fleeing in fear of their life, which critics denounced as an attempt to legalize running people over. 

John Hawkins, the Republican lawmaker who introduced the bill that the state legislature will consider during its upcoming general session, claimed that he doesn’t “think that purposefully using your vehicle to cause bodily injury is a normal situation that falls into this bill.”

But William Carlson, chief criminal justice policy adviser for the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office, pointed out that “creating a criminal defense for drivers” would make it “much more complicated” to prosecute drivers such as James Fields, the “white supremacist who in 2017 plowed his car into a crowd of  peaceful anti-racist protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia,” killing Heather Heyer. 

That’s because Fields might have qualified “for the legal defense proposed by Hawkins” if it were deemed that he was “fleeing from a riot and ‘under a reasonable belief’ that he [was] in danger of serious injury or death,” the Salt Lake Tribune reported.

Tribune cartoonist Pat Bagley quipped that “Utah legislators are considering a bill that would let drivers off the hook for mowing down protesters.”

Critics say that decriminalizing vehicular homicide in some instances, as state legislators have proposed, might encourage violence against protesters, especially given that, as the ACLU’s Marina Lowe put it, “one person’s protest is another person’s riot.”

Utah legislators’ lenient position on deadly car attacks is related, some observers noted, to their disapproving views on civil disobedience. Carlson argued that the bill would “create an affirmative defense for… individuals who may disagree with the protests.”

“The legislation… would also make it a third-degree felony to obstruct traffic during a riot,” the Tribune reported. “Protesters found guilty of the offense could face up to five years in prison.” 

According to the newspaper, the bill is “drawing opposition from prosecutors, defense attorneys, and civil liberties advocates,” who argue that it would criminalize “one of the defining features of American protests.”

The Tribune explained the legislation’s repressive implications:

While Utah law already prohibits obstructing a roadway or sidewalk, Hawkins’ bill would elevate this behavior to a felony if it’s part of a riot. State statute considers a riot to be a gathering of people who are engaging in “tumultuous or violent conduct” that can cause public alarm, and defense attorney Mark Moffat told lawmakers that a broad interpretation of this definition could encompass almost any demonstration.

Demonstrations “often involve hundreds, sometimes thousands, of individuals who are marching down the street in protest of a particular event that occurred in our community or nationally,” Moffat said.

If this bill were passed into law, Moffat added, “Every single one of those people could be charged with a felony.”

Bagley captured what he considers the reactionary nature of the Utah bill in a cartoon.

“Instead of addressing systematic problems in our society that led to protests of last summer,” one critic tweeted, “GOP lawmakers want to increase penalties for dissent, while allowing motorists to run over protesters with no legal sanction.”

Kelly Loeffler’s husband dumped his own stock this spring, breaking years-long pattern

Sen. Kelly Loeffler, the ultra-wealthy unelected Georgia senator facing a runoff election this January that may determine control of the U.S. Senate, came under the scrutiny of government and Senate investigators this spring amid press reports of stock trades made after she attended a private briefing in January about the coronavirus pandemic.

Loeffler argued that she and her husband, Jeffrey Sprecher, chair of the New York Stock Exchange, had complied with insider trading rules, which require executives of publicly traded companies to wall themselves off from market transactions by setting up a pre-planned investment schedule executed by a third-party broker.

The Republican-led Senate and the Department of Justice both investigated the trades, but both probes were later dropped. It is still unclear, however, what came of a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation. The Loeffler campaign released an ad this spring, called “Cleared,” which claimed that the “fake news” had “lied” about her trades.

But the broader context of Loeffler and Sprecher’s transaction history over the last several years shows that they made a number of significant changes to their pre-scheduled trading plan this year. Those revisions included Sprecher quadrupling sales of stock in his company, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange and one of the most influential financial institutions in the world.

A veteran corporate attorney who defends companies in securities cases told Salon that the couple’s trading patterns with ICE, especially Sprecher’s, got “blown out of the water this year.”

“These sales are not explicable based on his prior trading history,” the attorney said.

The changes appear to have come as Loeffler was appointed to her Senate seat by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, and two weeks before she received an unusually structured $9 million severance package from her husband’s company, where she had worked as CEO of a subsidiary that focused on cryptocurrency.

Public filings with the SEC show that the new plan doubled the frequency and more than doubled the volume and value of sales of the couple’s ICE stock. The tens of millions of dollars in sales present a separate issue from the hundreds of thousands in sales in individual stocks that first drew scrutiny this spring.

Overall, the couple’s 2020 capital gains income for ICE stock alone, $58 million, are more than double they amount they earned in any of the previous four years:

  • 2016: $18.8 million
  • 2017: $13.8 million
  • 2018: $25 million
  • 2019: $15.8 million
  • 2020: $58 million

Last week Loeffler was the subject of a Senate ethics complaint after she asked Georgia voters for “five or 10 bucks” during an interview in the halls of the Senate — a violation of Senate rules and federal law.

“Look, we know that hundreds of millions of dark, liberal money is pouring into our state,” Loeffler told Fox News anchor Sandra Smith in a Wednesday morning interview. “That’s why it’s so important that everyone across the country get involved. They can visit Kelly for Senate dot com to chip in five or 10 bucks and get involved, volunteer.”

The couple has so far poured $31 million into politics this year, $23 million of it to Loeffler’s campaign, according to FEC filings, beginning with a $5 million loan last Dec. 27. About $8 million went elsewhere, including a $1 million donation to a Trump-backing super PAC this April, shortly after the insider trading allegations.

Loeffler and Sprecher also bought a jet in December for Loeffler to use on the campaign trail and trips from Atlanta to Washington, though it appears they may have written off the cost entirely through a corporate loophole in Trump’s 2017 tax bill.

Loeffler’s Senate counterpart in Georgia, multimillionaire Republican David Perdue, was also accused of insider trading this spring. Last week Salon reported that his trades involving a defense contracting company were the subject of a Senate ethics complaint.

Both candidates now face runoffs. On Election Day, Loeffler edged out Republican rival Rep. Doug Collins, a Trump ally and fiscal hawk who attacked her wealth relentlessly throughout the year. Kemp had appointed Loeffler after the resignation of former Sen. Johnny Isakson, although Trump had recommended Collins.

“Kelly Loeffler is mainly supported by Kelly Loeffler, her super wealthy stock-exchange-owning husband and a bunch of lobbyists,” Collins’ campaign spokesperson Dan McLagan told ABC News in July. “She leads a very small and lonely parade.”

Loeffler, who now faces a January runoff against Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock, defended the timing of her ICE sales by pointing to an investment set up in advance and approved by the company. The SEC offers executives of publicly held companies the choice to trade through such an agreement, allowing them to access cash while guarding against the appearance of insider trading.

And as chairman of the NYSE, Sprecher must also abide by its rules, which define a conflict of interest as “when an individual’s private interest interferes in any way — or even appears to interfere — with the interests of the corporation as a whole.”

At the time of the trades, Loeffler sat on the Senate Agricultural Committee’s subcommittee on commodities, risk management and trade, which directly regulates her husband’s company. She recused herself after the trades became public, but still sits on the parent Agriculture Committee. (That committee also oversees her brother’s soybean operation.)

“If you worry about looking suspicious, you set this up in advance to say, ‘I have nothing to do with these trades,'” Marc Fagel, former director of the SEC’s San Francisco office, told Salon. “But that becomes a less meaningful defense when you change your plan, which may appear as if you have nonpublic information, and you risk losing the whole defense.”

Fagel concluded, “I’d counsel my clients hat you’d want to change your plan as infrequently as possible and make it as simple as possible. Generally the best practice is to have a regular sale, a set share amount and a set price. You want to have that new plan set up a quarter in advance.”

Loeffler and Sprecher’s trading appears to have fit that description for years. But this year they made major changes — perhaps to get tens of millions of dollars in extra liquidity in anticipation of funding Loeffler’s political activity.

The largest sales, however, were carried out indirectly through a company called Continental Power Exchange (CPEX), which Sprecher solely owns and which holds more than twice as many shares of ICE as he does in his own name. So far this year, Sprecher has sold 360,000 shares through CPEX for a total of $33 million. Previously he never sold more than 80,000 shares in one year.

In March, ICE responded to reports about the sales in a statement that said its policy included a 30-day waiting period: “Per ICE policy, all trading plans require a 30-day cooling off period from the time the trading plan is adopted to the date of the first transaction.”

To comply with that requirement, at the very latest the couple’s plan would have been changed the day before Kemp, the Georgia governor, nominated Loeffler to the Senate on Dec. 4: The couple unloaded $8.3 million of ICE stock 29 days later, on Jan. 2.

Those changes would also have been put in place two weeks before Loeffler departed the company on Dec. 20, with a severance package that ultimately totaled some $9 million, after stock options were exercised.

That package, The New York Times reported in May, included more than $1 million in restricted stock and options that would have expired had the company had not taken the unusual step of intervening to make them mature immediately.

Furthermore, filings show that Loeffler cashed in on those options almost immediately, selling 30,000 shares on Jan. 2, 75,000 shares on March 11 and another 26,675 shares in late May. (Previously, Loeffler had personally sold more than 10,000 shares on only two occasions.) All those sales coincided with major CPEX sell-offs.

Typically individuals do not exercise stock options and sell immediately, because the profits of a lump sum in a single year might push them into a higher tax bracket. But Loeffler, already in the highest bracket, would not have those concerns.

The March 11 sale stands out for another reason: For four years, Sprecher only sold on the fourth Wednesday of the month. It’s possible that in early December the couple chose the second Wednesday of March to make their largest sale yet — 175,000 shares between them, totaling $15 million — which happened to be just as the markets were crashing. It was also highly fortunate: Had they waited until their typical trading day, March 25, they would have missed out on $2 million in profits.

None of these sales were public at the time. It was only after their disclosure that Loeffler vowed to divest herself of all individual stocks. SEC filings show that she still holds upwards of $8 million in the company, however, and Sprecher currently holds about $475 million.

Furthermore, it is not clear how or when Sprecher structured his 10b5-1 plans to hit these dates. Neither ICE nor the Loeffler campaign would share documents with Salon. SEC experts Salon spoke with said that Sprecher undoubtedly changed his plans for himself and CPEX, upon learning his wife would be a U.S. senator.

Days after she was sworn in, Loeffler was named to the subcommittee that oversees regulation of her husband’s company.

“I have worked hard to comply with both the letter and the spirit of the Senate’s ethics rules and will continue to do so every day,” she said at the time. Loeffler recused herself from the subcommittee in early May, as she was submitting documents to investigators from the DOJ, SEC and Senate.

“There’s just not enough here to come to any conclusions, which is the biggest problem,” Ben Edwards, a securities law expert at the William Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, told Salon. Edwards called upon a metaphor: “That might be a fire in your neighbor’s yard, or he may have just put too many wood chips on the barbecue. It’s exactly why we need to reform our transparency laws in government.”

Fagel, the former SEC official in San Francisco, echoed the point. “Why should members of Congress be able to trade individual stocks, period?” he asked. “Just take it off the table. Then you don’t have this taint of corruption, and cases like this show that’s in everyone’s interest.”

ICE did not provide Salon with 10b5-1 plans for Sprecher or CPEX. The Loeffler campaign did not provide Salon with a 10b5-1 agreement.

In response to Salon’s multiple detailed questions, ICE spokesperson Josh King said in an email, “Why don’t you send me an email that says ‘let’s have an off the record conversation so I can be accurate and write smartly.'”

Salon declined. King would not comment further. It is unclear why he believed he could improve the accuracy of Salon’s reporting with off-the-record remarks, although it’s conceivable he did not want to offer public comments that could affect ICE’s market performance or reveal private information.

“They may fear that once they start answering questions they may get more questions,” Edwards remarked of the couple’s reluctance to transparency. “They may feel it’s intrusive and not want to make more than the legally mandated disclosures. It could be that some of their decisions, if they were public, could affect stock performance.”

While the Justice Department closed its investigation, it is unclear what became of the SEC’s probe into Loeffler and Sprecher. The campaign did not reply to questions, and the SEC would not comment on the existence of investigations. A senior law enforcement official not involved with the matter told Salon that in parallel probes like this one, the SEC’s enforcement arm typically makes any decisions about civil citations or settlements independent from the Justice Department.

“The law is one dimension here, and at least on the criminal side it seems like this case was pretty clear-cut,” the law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Salon. “But not all wrongs, ethical or otherwise, are crimes.”

Republicans didn’t lose big in 2020 — they held onto the power to influence future elections

Election Day delivered a presidential victory for the Democratic Party and narrowed the partisan split in the U.S. House and Senate. But it was nevertheless a victory for Republicans in the battle every decade to draw state and congressional districts that favor their party.

Beginning in 2021, states will begin redrawing electoral boundaries for U.S. House districts and state legislative districts, using the results of the 2020 census to determine the partisan composition of Congress and statehouses through 2030.

Despite national Democratic success, the results of state legislative elections put Republicans in place to be the long-term winners of the election of 2020.

Legislative control is key

In most states, the legislature is responsible for drawing Congressional district boundaries, and it is common that the majority party draws the lines to give the advantage to its party members, a practice called gerrymandering. In most of these states, the governor can veto legislative maps, but it’s common to have a governor from the same party as dominates the legislature.

In the 2010 elections, Republicans gained unified control of 17 of the 30 legislatures that then had sole district mapmaking responsibility. And only two of those states, Minnesota and Missouri, had Democratic governors. All those legislatures, which collectively redrew 190 congressional districts, helped produce a congressional map that has been widely regarded as a pro-Republican gerrymander.

Republican-controlled legislatures in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, for example, produced maps that ultimately awarded Republicans with two-thirds of their state’s congressional seats despite the party capturing less than 50% of the statewide vote in the next federal election. These and similarly gerrymandered state maps helped the Republican Party maintain their 2010 majority in the House of Representatives, although Democratic candidates won a higher number of votes nationwide in 2012.

Republicans set to dominate redistricting

Republicans continue to dominate statehouses in the wake of the 2020 state legislative elections. Democrats had hoped to flip partisan control of at least one legislative chamber in states like North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota and Texas, where they could exert greater control over the upcoming redistricting process. But they didn’t flip any legislative chambers in their favor — and lost control of both chambers of the New Hampshire statehouse.

In the 2021 legislative season, Republicans will have unified control of 20 of the 28 legislatures that retain mapmaking responsibility. Democrats will control just seven. Power will be split only in Minnesota, where Republicans hold the majority in the Senate and Democrats control the House.

In seven states, Democrats will control the process, which will give them a smaller effect on the national congressional results. As a result of their greater control over district lines, Republicans may be advantaged in the 2022 House elections. But there are some forces that could counter the possibility of pro-Republican gerrymandering — including the states that have taken mapmaking power away from their partisan legislators.

The future of redistricting

In 2018, popular referenda in Colorado, Michigan and Utah created redistricting commissions that are independent from the legislatures. And in November 2020, Virginia voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure to amend the Constitution to create a bipartisan redistricting commission composed of state legislators and citizens.

In addition, Democratic governors in states where Republicans control both legislative chambers, such as Kentucky, Louisiana, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, may veto plans that contain egregious partisan gerrymanders — which would likely throw mapmaking responsibility to the state courts.

There are also forces pushing to preserve more partisan redistricting processes. On Nov. 3, Missouri voters narrowly approved a provision that takes redistricting out of the hands of a nonpartisan demographer and places it instead in the hands of a political commission appointed by the governor.

The measure also says districts will be drawn according to the rule of “one person, one vote” — which some believe may mean Missouri will draw its districts not based on total population, but only on the number of eligible voters. That highlights a growing controversy about whether to count noncitizens and others who are ineligible to vote, rather than the total population, for the purposes of creating electoral districts. Using total population is the current method, followed since the nation’s founding.

People seeking to battle partisan gerrymandering can no longer seek help from federal courts, which are barred from taking those cases by a 2019 Supreme Court decision that declared federal courts couldn’t review claims of partisan gerrymandering.

Republicans may be poised to launch another round of partisan gerrymandered districts that will last another decade, but 2020 is not 2010. Fewer states will have legislators draw district lines. Democratic governors may keep Republican-dominanted legislatures in check. Grassroots movements and activist groups battling against partisan gerrymandering have attracted high-profile support, such as from Eric Holder, a former U.S. attorney general in the Obama administration.

Opposition to redistricting reforms — and specifically the adoption of redistricting commissions — may also intensify, illustrated by the adoption of Amendment 3 in Missouri and challenges to Michigan’s new redistricting commission. How these opposing forces will play out over the next decade is an open question, but we are certain they will combine to keep issues of partisan gerrymandering in the spotlight for the foreseeable future.

What President Biden won’t touch

In this mystifying moment, the post-electoral sentiments of most Americans can be summed up either as “Ding dong! The witch is dead!” or “We got robbed!” Both are problematic, not because the two candidates were intellectually indistinguishable or ethically equivalent, but because each jingle is laden with a dubious assumption: that President Donald Trump’s demise would provide either decisive deliverance or prove an utter disaster.

While there were indeed areas where his ability to cause disastrous harm lent truth to such a belief — race relations, climate change, and the courts come to mind — in others, it was distinctly (to use a dangerous phrase) overkill. Nowhere was that more true than with America’s expeditionary version of militarism, its forever wars of this century, and the venal system that continues to feed it.

For nearly two years, We the People were coached to believe that the 2020 election would mean everything, that November 3rd would be democracy’s ultimate judgment day. What if, however, when it comes to issues of war, peace, and empire, “Decision 2020” proves barely meaningful? After all, in the election campaign just past, Donald Trump’s sweeping war-peace rhetoricand Joe Biden’s hedging aside, neither nuclear-code aspirant bothered to broach the most uncomfortable questions about America’s uniquely intrusive global role. Neither dared dissent from normative notions about America’s posture and policy “over there,” nor challenge the essence of the war-state, a sacred cow if ever there was one.

That blessed bovine has enshrined permanent policies that seem beyond challenge: Uncle Sam’s right and duty to forward deploy troops just about anywhere on the planet; garrison the globe; carry out aerial assassinations; and unilaterally implement starvation sanctions. Likewise the systemic structures that implement and incentivize such rogue-state behavior are never questioned, especially the existence of a sprawling military-industrial complex that has infiltrated every aspect of public life, while stealing money that might have improved America’s infrastructure or wellbeing. It has engorged itself at the taxpayer’s expense, while peddling American blood money — and blood — on absurd foreign adventures and autocratic allies, even as it corrupted nearly every prominent public paymaster and policymaker. 

This election season, neither Democrats nor Republicans challenged the cultural components justifying the great game, which is evidence of one thing: empires come home, folks, even if the troops never seem to.

The company he keeps 

As the election neared, it became impolite to play the canary in American militarism’s coal mine or risk raising Biden’s record – or probable prospects — on minor matters like war and peace. After all, his opponent was a monster, so noting the holes in Biden’s block of Swiss cheese presumably amounted to useful idiocy — if not sinister collusion — when it came to Trump’s reelection. Doing so was a surefire way to jettison professional opportunities and find yourself permanently uninvited to the coolest Beltway cocktail parties or interviews on cable TV.

George Orwell warned of the dangers of such “intellectual cowardice” more than 70 years ago in a proposed preface to his classic novel Animal Farm. “At any given moment,” he wrote, “there is an orthodoxy… that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it… Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness.” 

And that’s precisely what progressive paragon Cornel West warned against seven months ago after his man, Senator Bernie Sanders — briefly, the Democratic frontrunner — suddenly proved a dead candidate walking. “Vote for Biden, but don’t lie about who he really is,” the stalwart scholar suggested. It seems just enough Americans did the former (phew!), but mainstream media makers and consumers mostly forgot about the salient second part of his sentiment. 

With the electoral outcome now apparent — if not yet accepted in Trump World — perhaps such politeness (and the policing that goes with it) will fade away, ushering in a renaissance of fourth estate oppositional truth-telling. In that way — in my dreams at least — persistently energized progressives might send President Joe Biden down dovish alternative avenues, perhaps even landing some appointments in an executive branch that now drives foreign policy (though, if I’m honest, I’m hardly hopeful on either count).

One look at Uncle Joe’s inbound nieces and nephews brings to mind Aesop’sfabled moral: “You are judged by the company you keep.”

Think-tank imperialists 

One thing is already far too clear: Biden’s shadow national security team will be a distinctly status-quo squad. To know where future policymakers might head, it always helps to know where they came from. And when it comes to Biden’s foreign policy crew, including a striking number of women and a fair number of Obama administration and Clinton 2016 campaign retreads — they were mostly in Trump-era holding patterns in the connected worlds of strategic consulting and hawkish think tanking. 

In fact, the national security bio of the archetypal Biden bro (or sis) would go something like this: she (he) sprang from an Ivy League school, became a congressional staffer, got appointed to a mid-tier role on Barack Obama’s national security council, consulted for WestExec Advisors (an Obama alumni-founded outfit linking tech firms and the Department of Defense), was a fellow at the Center for New American Security (CNAS), had some defense contractor ties, and married someone who’s also in the game.

It helps as well to follow the money. In other words, how did the Biden bunch make it and who pays the outfits that have been paying them in the Trump years? None of this is a secret: their two most common think-tank homes — CNAS and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) — are the second- and sixth-highest recipients, respectively, of U.S. government and defense-contractor funding. The top donors to CNAS are Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and the Department of Defense. Most CSIS largesse comes from Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon. 

How the inevitable conflicts of interest play out is hardly better concealed. To take just one example, in 2016, Michèle Flournoy, CNAS co-founder, ex-Pentagon official, and “odds-on favorite” to become Biden’s secretary of defense, exchanged emails with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) ambassador in Washington. She pitched a project whereby CNAS analysts would, well, analyze whether Washington should maintain drone-sales restrictions in a non-binding multilateral “missile technology control“ agreement. The UAE’s autocratic government then paid CNAS $250,000 to draft a report that (you won’t be surprised to learn) argued for amending the agreement to allow that country to purchase American-manufactured drones. 

Which is just what Flournoy and company’s supposed nemeses in the Trump administration then did this very July past. Again, no surprise. American drones seem to have a way of ending up in the hands of Gulf theocracies — states with abhorrent human rights records that use such planes to surveil and brutally bomb Yemeni civilians.

If it’s too much to claim that a future defense secretary Flournoy would be the UAE’s (wo)man in Washington, you at least have to wonder. Worse still, with those think-tank, security-consulting, and defense-industry ties of hers, she’s anything but alone among Biden’s top prospects. Just consider a few other abridged resumes:

  • Tony Blinken, frontrunner for national security adviser: CSIS; WestExec (which he co-founded with Flournoy); and CNN analyst.
  • Jake Sullivan, a shoo-in for a “senior post in a potential administration”: the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (“peace,” in this case, being funded by 10 military agencies and defense contractors) and Macro Advisory Partners, a strategic consultancy run by former British spy chiefs.
  • Avril Haines, a top contender for CIA director or director of national intelligence: CNAS-the Brookings Institution; WestExec; and Palantir Technologies, a controversial, CIA-seeded, NSA-linked data-mining firm.
  • Kathleen Hicks, probable deputy secretary of defense: CSIS and the Aerospace Corporation, a federally funded research and development center that lobbies on defense issues.

An extra note about Hicks: she’s the head of Biden’s Department of Defense transition team and also a senior vice president at CSIS. There, she hosts that think tank’s “Defense 2020” podcast. In case anyone’s still wondering where CSIS’s bread is buttered, here’s how Hicks opens each episode:

“This podcast is made possible by contributions from BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and the Thales Group.”

In other words, given what we already know about Joe Biden’s previous gut-driven policies that pass for “middle of the road” in this anything but middling country of ours, the experiences and affiliations of his “A-Team” don’t bode well for systemic-change seekers. Remember, this is a president-elect who assured rich donors that “nothing would fundamentally change” if he were elected. Should he indeed stock his national security team with such a conflicts-of-interest-ridden crowd, consider America’s sacred cows of foreign policy all but saved. 

Biden’s outfit is headed for office, it seems, to right the Titanic, not rock the boat.

Off the table: a paradigm shift 

In this context, join me in thinking about what won’t be on the next presidential menu when it comes to the militarization of American foreign policy.

Don’t expect major changes when it comes to:

  • One-sided support for Israel that enables permanent Palestinian oppression and foments undying ire across the Greater Middle East. Tony Blinken put itthis way: as president, Joe Biden “would not tie military assistance to Israel to things like annexation [of all or large portions of the occupied West Bank] or other decisions by the Israeli government with which we might disagree.”
  • Unapologetic support for various Gulf State autocracies and theocracies that, as they cynically collude with Israel, will only continue to heighten tensions with Iran and facilitate yet more grim war crimes in Yemen. Beyond Michèle Flournoy’s professional connections with the UAE, Gulf kingdoms generously fund the very think tanks that so many Biden prospects have populated. Saudi Arabia, for example, offers annual donations to Brookings and the Rand Corporation; the UAE, $1 million for a new CSIS office building; and Qatar, $14.8 million to Brookings.
  • America’s historically unprecedented and provocative expeditionary military posture globally, including at least 800 bases in 80 countries, seems likely to be altered only in marginal ways. As Jake Sullivan put it in a June CSIS interview: “I’m not arguing for getting out of every base in the Middle East. There is a military posture dimension to this as a reduced footprint.”

Above all, it’s obvious that the Biden bunch has no desire to slow down, no less halt, the “revolving door” that connects national security work in the government and jobs or security consulting positions in the defense industry. The same goes for the think tanks that the arms producers amply fund to justify the whole circus.

In such a context, count on this: the militarization of American society and the “thank-you-for-your-service” fetishization of American soldiers will continue to thrive, exhibit A being the way Biden now closes almost any speech with “May God protect our troops.”

All of this makes for a rather discouraging portrait of an old man’s coming administration. Still, consider it a version of truth in advertising. Joe and company are likely to continue to be who they’ve always been and who they continue to say they are. After all, transformational presidencies and unexpected pivots are historically rare phenomena. Expecting the moon from a man mostly offering MoonPies almost guarantees disappointment.

Obama encore or worse?

Don’t misunderstand me: a Biden presidency will certainly leave some maneuvering room at the margins of national security strategy. Think nuclear treaties with the Russians (which the Trump administration had been systematically tearing up) and the possible thawing of at least some of the tensions with Tehran.

Nor should even the most cynical among us underestimate the significance of having a president who actually accepts the reality of climate change and the need to switch to alternative energy sources as quickly as possible. Noam Chomsky’s bold assertion that the human species couldn’t endure a second Trump term, thanks to the environmental catastrophe, nuclear brinksmanship, and pandemic negligence he represents, was anything but hyperbole. Yet recall that he was also crystal clear about the need “for an organized public” to demand change and “impose pressures” on the new administration the moment the new president is inaugurated.

Yet, in the coming Biden years, there is also a danger that empowered Democrats in an imperial presidency (when it comes to foreign policy) will actually escalate a two-front New Cold War with China and Russia. And there’s always the worry that the ascension of a more genteel emperor could co-opt — or at least quiet — a growing movement of anti-Trumpers, including the vets of this country’s forever wars who are increasingly dressing inantiwar clothing.

What seems certain is that, as ever, salvation won’t spring from the top. Don’t count on Status-quo Joe to slaughter Washington’s sacred cows of foreign policy or on his national security team to topple the golden calves of American empire. In fact, the defense industry seems bullish on Biden. As Raytheon CEO Gregory Hayes recently put it, “Obviously, there is a concern that defense spending will go way down if there is a Biden administration, but frankly I think that’s ridiculous.” Or consider retired Marine Corps major general turned defense consultant Arnold Punaro who recently said of Biden’s coming tenure, “I think the industry will have, when it comes to national security, a very positive view.”

Given the evidence that business-as-usual will continue in the Biden years, perhaps it’s time to take that advice from Cornel West, absorb the truth about Biden’s future national security squad, and act accordingly. There’s no top-down salvation on the agenda — not from Joe or his crew of consummate insiders. Pressure and change will flow from the grassroots or it won’t come at all.

Copyright 2020 Danny Sjursen

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The real reason Trump won’t concede

Joe Biden has decisively won the presidency. There is no way for Trump to overturn the results of the election, and his campaign’s post-election lawsuits have gotten dismissed left and right. 

That hasn’t stopped him from launching an “Official Election Defense Fund” and bombarding his supporters with fundraising appeals to supposedly finance the campaign’s ongoing litigation.

But the fine print tells a very different story.

60 percent of a donation to Trump’s “Official Election Defense Fund” goes to Save America, Trump’s new leadership Political Action Committee that he set up less than a week after the election. The other 40 percent goes to the Republican National Committee. 

So if someone donates $500, Trump’s PAC gets $300, the RNC gets the other $200, and not a cent actually goes to the election defense fund.

Donations only start going to that fund once Trump’s PAC reaches the legal contribution limit of $5,000 – and the RNC gets $3,000. 

This means a supporter would have to donate over $8,000 before any money goes to the fund they think they’re supporting.

Apparently enriching himself on the taxpayer dime for the past four years wasn’t enough for Trump. Now he’s lining his pockets by attacking our elections and undermining our democracy — and swindling his supporters every step of the way.

Is this just a final grift before Trump leaves office? Or is there more at stake?

Trump certainly wants to keep the money flowing, and a leadership PAC is an easy way to do it. Trump’s PAC can be used to fund a lavish post-presidency lifestyle, as leadership PACs can use donors’ funds for personal expenses, like personal travel and events at Trump properties, while campaign committees cannot.

But there’s more at stake than just Trump’s personal greed. Creating a PAC solidifies Trump’s grip on the GOP, as he can distribute the funds to GOP candidates. It helps keep his base whipped up ahead of the Georgia runoffs. And the PAC allows him to start preparing for a potential 2024 run, an idea he’s already floated to his inner circle. 

In the grand scheme of things, Trump’s PAC also fuels the GOP’s cynical strategy to maintain power. The GOP has a permanent stake in stoking a cold civil war. 

A deeply divided nation serves the party’s biggest patrons, giving them unfettered access to the economy’s gains while the bottom 90% of Americans fight each other for crumbs. That division will persist even with Trump out of the White House, thanks to his bonkers claim of a stolen election, and a base more riled up from racist appeals than ever.

We may have defeated Trump, but we haven’t defeated Trumpism. We must work to push the Biden administration to tackle the systemic conditions that allowed Trump to seize power in the first place.

Come to “Forever Together” for the Knack and “My Sharona,” stay for Doug Fieger’s solo hooks

More than 40 years later, the story of the Knack has all the makings of a cautionary tale. It’s a riches-to-rags narrative, with the band achieving a global mega-hit with the 1979 power pop-anthem “My Sharona.” In short order, the rock press turned against the group, leaving them adrift after their awe-inspiring debut.

Which brings us to Doug Fieger’s “Forever Together,” a multi-disc retrospective of the lead singer’s career. Music fans will undoubtedly come for the Knack—this listener did—but they may be surprised when they end up staying for Fieger, whose solo work brims with pop hooks and guitar-rock melodies.

As the Knack’s front man, Fieger took the brunt of the band’s criticism. The group’s bestselling “Get the Knack” LP was overwrought with teenage angst and sexual frustration, as revealed in songs like “Good Girls Don’t” and “(She’s So) Selfish.” The Knack continued in this vein with “Baby Talks Dirty,” the lead single from their sophomore album “But the Little Girls Understand.”

In many ways, the critics were right, including Rolling Stone’s Dave Marsh, who took issue with what he perceived to be Fieger’s misogynistic overtones. But for all of the sexual excess, the Knack could really play. As a foursome, they had cut their teeth on the California club circuit, famously breaking onto the scene with a June 1978 show at the Sunset Strip’s Whiskey a Go Go.

When they made their album debut on Capitol Records, the Knack took the world by storm, with “My Sharona” registering a runaway single atop the charts. For one brief shining moment, the band could do no wrong, selling out a world tour and famously playing at Carnegie Hall at the apex of their stardom.

Check out Ken Womack’s new podcast “Everything Fab Four,” featuring fun and intelligent stories about the Beatles. Listen and subscribe today!

Co-written by Fieger and lead guitarist Berton Averre, “My Sharona” was an energizing, can’t-miss hit. But it was their songcraft and musicianship that ruled the day, rather than their penchant for smutty lyrics. In one of the finest instances in power-pop musical history, Averre steals the show with a two-minute solo outburst that lives at the heart of “My Sharona.”

This same brand of high-quality musicianship is on display with “Forever Together,” which is chockfull of previously unreleased studio and concert recordings — both from Fieger and the Knack alike. Fieger’s solo efforts are highlighted by his “First Things First” LP, along with “Hankerings,” his EP-length collection of Hank Williams covers. And there’s a healthy selection of concert performances by the Knack, including a sizzling take on “My Sharona.”

With “Forever Together,” Fieger and the Knack remind us that it’s the music that matters. While Fieger succumbed to cancer in 2010, his musical legacy has never shone brighter.

Will Biden ensure my family is reunited?

Millions of Americans are celebrating Donald Trump’s election loss. But for some of us, it’s also deeply personal. To my family, Trump’s loss means the possibility of reunification. My parents, who are Indian citizens living in the United Arab Emirates, have been waiting to spend their golden years with their daughter and grandchildren—a reward for decades of hard work that helped finance American college education for three daughters. But because of Trump, they remain alone and separated from me.

In April 2020, just as I was putting together the final stages of an arduous sponsorship application for my parents to obtain legal residency, President Trump signed an executive order upending our lives. Under cover of the COVID-19 pandemic, he enacted a 60-day suspension of most immigrant visas including those that enable citizens to sponsor their non-citizen parents. Two months later, Trump added more visa categories to the ban and extended it until the end of the year.

Although the authority to change immigration laws lies with Congress, Trump managed to push through many aspects of an anti-immigrant wish list he has been touting for years. Americans like me suddenly have no access to the same rule that first lady Melania Trump used to sponsor her parents from Slovenia.

While the horrifying cases of family separation at the U.S.-Mexico border have justifiably drawn public indignation, the spectrum of separation is broader than most Americans realize. According to the advocacy group Value Our Families, Trump’s green card ban affects people like my parents who are being sponsored by their adult U.S. citizen children, as well as the spouses and children of green card holders, and the children and siblings of U.S. citizens. An estimated 358,000 people attempting to immigrate through available legal processes are affected.

But Trump’s green card ban is just one aspect of a mind-numbingly difficult-to-navigate immigration system. Conservatives who have for years excoriated outsiders to “get in line” and “follow the rules” have little idea of how difficult it is to immigrate. For nearly 30 years, I experienced firsthand the onerous complexity of a system designed to frustrate. I first entered the United States at the age of 16 on an F-1 visa for undergraduate study at the University of Texas at Austin. Over nearly a decade of F-1 visa renewals and nerve-racking work permit applications (at one point immigration officials lost my paperwork, threatening my status in the country), I studied, graduated, and worked.

But my work permit was temporary, and once I completed my education, there were few avenues to remain in the country I had grown to love. Eventually, I applied for a green card because I married a man lucky enough to be a U.S. citizen. After waiting the requisite five years, I applied for citizenship and dutifully jumped through myriad and expensive hoops, only to be caught in the Bush administration’s post 9-11 anti-immigrant dragnet that delayed citizenship for thousands of people seeking naturalization. Three long years passed. It wasn’t until I became a lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit against the federal government that I was finally afforded my rights.

Today I face yet another obstacle. My family’s hopes are now pinned on President-elect Joe Biden—will he do the right thing to ensure my family can be together?

The good news is that there is a starting point for President-elect Biden. My congressional representative Judy Chu (D-CA) has introduced the Reuniting Families Act in the House, a bill that would, among other things, reduce the backlog of family-based visa petitions. The process for a U.S. citizen to sponsor a family member has always been arduous, expensive, and inordinately lengthy, but under Trump, the number of visas being processed fell dramatically (even before he enacted his green card bans), increasing the size of an already-formidable backlog. Chu’s bill would address the backlog by increasing the number of available visas.

The bill would also address how undocumented families are kept apart, indicating rightly that there is little difference in the pain felt by my family’s separation and that of someone who is here without papers. And it would broaden categories of sponsorship that enable families to be together.

As we wait for Biden to take the reins of government and do the right thing, my family will remain separated. Meanwhile, each day I can see from my backyard the newly built home, financed through the savings of my foreign-born parents, that sits empty and waiting for them.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

California law banning toxic chemicals in cosmetics will transform industry

A toxic chemical ban signed into law in California will change the composition of cosmetics, shampoos, hair straighteners and other personal care products used by consumers across the country, industry officials and activists say.

The ban, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom at the end of September, covers 24 chemicals, including mercury, formaldehyde and several types of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS. All the chemicals are carcinogenic or otherwise toxic — and advocates argue they have no place in beauty products.

When the law takes effect in 2025, it will mark the first major action to remove toxic substances from beauty products in almost a century. Federal regulation of cosmetics has not been updated meaningfully since 1938, and only 11 ingredients in personal care products are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. By contrast, the European Union bans more than 1,600 cosmetic substances and ingredients from cosmetics.

The California law, passed by wide margins in both houses of the legislature, “is a milestone for cosmetic safety in the United States,” said Emily Rusch, executive director of the California Public Interest Research Group, which was heavily involved in shaping the bill.

The Personal Care Products Council, which represents big companies like Amway and Chanel, was hesitant but eventually supported the bill and worked directly with legislators on its final form. The industry’s buy-in will help give the California law national repercussions.

“If you’re doing business in the United States, you’re doing business in California,” said Mike Thompson, senior vice president for government affairs at the council. “I would assume that this would really, in many ways, set up a new standard.”

Breast Cancer Prevention Partners, another activist group, advocated strongly for the measure because many of the banned chemicals have been linked to breast cancer, said Janet Nudelman, the group’s director of program and policy.

For salon workers like Kristi Ramsburg, the bill could offer the peace of mind that comes from knowing her workplace is freer of toxics. Over the 20 years she’s worked as a hairdresser in Wilmington, North Carolina, Ramsburg has done hundreds of straightening jobs on her clients’ naturally frizzy hair. Performing the procedure known as a Brazilian Blowout three to four times a week exposed her to harsh and dangerous/toxic products including formaldehyde and phthalates.

She experienced “sore throats, dizziness. My vision changed, definitely,” she said. “You’d be almost crying at first.”

Studies dating to the early 1900s show that inhaling even small quantities of formaldehyde can lead to pneumonia or swelling of the liver. It’s been classified as a carcinogen, according to the FDA.

Ramsburg believes her exposure severely damaged her health. Over six years, she had surgeries to remove her gallbladder, ovaries and appendix. After her liver swelled dangerously, she suspected, based on medical consults and studies she read, that the formaldehyde she had been breathing for decades was to blame.

“I was just inundated with toxins constantly. I literally almost died,” she said.

Horror stories like Ramsburg’s are what motivated legislators, as well as the cosmetic industry, to support the California law.

Federal legislation that would have given the FDA more power to control or recall products containing the 11 federally regulated ingredients failed to gain traction in either chamber in recent sessions, despite the support of celebrities like Kourtney Kardashian.

Advocates say the inadequacies in federal regulation have been apparent for years. Current law does not require cosmetics to be reviewed and approved by the FDA before being sold to consumers. And the agency can take post-marketing action only if a cosmetic’s ingredients were found to be tampered with or its labeling is wrong or misleading.

The FDA couldn’t even intervene when asbestos was found in cosmetics sold at the youth-oriented Claire’s and Justice stores. In a 2019 letter, then-FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb wrote that his hands were tied because “there are currently no legal requirements for any cosmetic manufacturer marketing products to American consumers to test their products for safety.” No action was taken.

FDA scientists moved to ban formaldehyde from hair straighteners as early as 2016, according to internal agency emails, but weren’t successful. A 2019 study by government investigators found that using hair straighteners was linked with a higher risk of breast cancer, which rose with increased use. The study also found that using permanent hair dye was linked with an increased breast cancer risk.

After the federal legislation stalled, advocates changed their focus to California. The Golden State’s liberal leanings made it a likely place to pass a bill, while its status as the world’s fifth-largest economy meant any new law would have national impact. That has previously been the case, as when California set its own limits on car emissions or demanded nutrition labels for restaurant menus.

“It plays that pivotal role nationwide and has such a large economy, and so much of the cosmetic industry has a huge base here,” said Rusch, of the California Public Interest Research Group. “This type of landmark legislation has the effect essentially of setting a national standard. That was our intent.”

The Personal Care Products Council was open to the ban since the chemicals on the list — after some pruning during negotiations on the bill — include only those already prohibited in the European Union.

“You don’t want a patchwork of rules, either around the country or around the world. You want consistency,” Thompson said. “A lot of our companies may be already there, because they’re designing products for the European Union. … It’s just simpler for them to put out one product versus two.”

In recent years, growing consumer demand for transparency in beauty products has led to the development of a “clean cosmetics industry” whose products make up about 13% of high-end sales, double the percentage four years ago, according to the market research company NPD Group.

Drug and department stores have also increasingly moved toward “clean” products. CVS in 2019 removed parabens, phthalates and chemicals that contain or can give off formaldehyde from its store-brand products.

Advocates argue that the state law will force all companies to provide transparency and consistency about what, exactly, is in the products consumers put on their hair and faces.

“In order to ensure and give assurance to the public that the worst of the worst stuff is out of cosmetics, we felt we really needed to standardize and to put that into statute,” Rusch said.

How the “Great British Baking Show” flaked out on us when we needed it most

Baking is tricky business that demands precision. You can have all the best ingredients, bring them to the right temperature, measure out the proportions just so, follow the prescribed bake time and the end product can nevertheless be an epic fail. As for why that is, there could be many reasons.

The oven thermometer could be off. Your appliance may heat unevenly. The room temperature could be too hot or too cold, the air too humid or too dry. Or maybe the problem is you, the baker. You over-kneaded. You under-flavored. You did not have the appropriate amount of love in your heart while making the dough.

Many of the hobby’s challenges bear similarities to those bedeviling television itself, which is why the general opinion that “The Great British Baking Show” failed in its latest season is understandable. We still gorged on it, mind you – nobody likes waste, and who’s counting calories these days anyway? Besides the show’s posh grand dame of a judge Prue Leith, I mean.

Compared to the fullness past seasons instilled in us, however, these felt like empty calories even though the components are more or less the same, save for a couple of ingredient swaps.

And there are those who argue, with merit, that those changes botched the leavening. Some of us never knew how much we’d miss Noel Fielding’s first co-host Sandi Toksvig until she stepped down and production replaced her with “Little Britain” star and acquired taste Matt Lucas. (It’s also tough for anyone to follow in the footsteps of O.G. hosts Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc; pour out an extra teaspoon of vanilla extract for them next time you stir up some batter.)

But one casting misfire doesn’t necessarily collapse the cake. No, for a number of reasons akin to the culinary X-factors listed above, these latest episodes simply couldn’t hold the increased weight of our expectations.

Regardless of how we feel about the 11th season of “The Great British Baking Show” (or “GBBO” for short, an acronym for its U.K. title “Great British Bake Off”) it is still one of the loveliest, most beautiful and genteel series on television. The fact that it is one of the few competitive reality shows where the contestants help each other instead of back-stabbing, compliment each other’s work, applaud each other’s successes and commiserate with those who stumble or are sent home, usually makes it the antidote to our anxiety.

And that’s strange to contemplate, given that the thrill of “GBBO” comes from the audience connecting to the heightened agita contestants experience as they struggle under impossible time constraints. In a pandemic defined by widespread disquietude and legions of first-time bakers soothing their angst by muddling through banana bread recipes, the show should be, and has been, both balm and inspiration. It is unapologetically positive and optimistic without being cloying.

That Season 11’s dozen contestants lived in a pandemic bubble themselves during filming should also lend another level of relatability and audience appreciation. These home bakers didn’t only sacrifice their time to compete on “GBBO,” some of them also committed to spending weeks apart from their families – all in the name of bringing us new TV at a time of boob tube scarcity. We should be hailing them as heroes.

And yet, by the finale episode, it seemed as if half the audience was angry at bread specialist and “Baking Show” dom Paul Hollywood for eliminating two-time Star Baker Hermine, a patisserie specialist, guaranteeing a place in the finale for Laura Adlington, a very charming woman defined by both her inconsistent performance throughout the season and her propensity for stumbling and dropping things.

Laura was joined in the finale contest by Dave Friday, who was competent and solid although far less remarkable than the season’s Boy Wonder Peter Sawkins who, at 20 years old, has been baking along with this series for half of the time that he’s been alive.

Without spoiling anything, let’s just say that the member of that trio you’d most expect to win won. Which is as it should be. In the viewpoint of untold numbers of “Great British Baking Show” fans, however, Hermine’s elimination was unjust, and in response – nay, retaliation – legions of angry trolls heaped abuse on Laura on Twitter.

There’s no excuse for that behavior. There’s an explanation, sure. Maybe a few.

Start with the fact that millions of who are watching have run out of patience with fellow humans. Add the heightened awareness of unfairness in society right now – to women, to Black people, the kind that elites visit on the working class – and it could be that Hermine’s elimination became a symbol of all that’s wrong with the world.

Looking at her track record, she was more consistent than Laura throughout the season, had been one of the judge’s favorites four times, earning Star Baker in two of those instances. She was the only contestant this cycle to do so, by the way. Laura was in the danger zone several times and riding the middle in most challenges.

Her saving grace in the patisserie semifinal was flavor; her dessert presentation looked like a dog’s breakfast but, according to Hollywood, tasted wonderful. Hermine’s “stodgy” cubes looked slightly better than Adlington’s and tasted worse. Peter excelled, and Dave daved it, meaning he did better than worst but not good enough for the top.

In Paul’s point of view, style without substance is a sin, so sending Hermine home is on brand even if we don’t feel it is fair.

And this brings us to another culture-wide irritation boiling over of late, a general sense of being fed up with mediocrity being rewarded. Both the United States and Britain are currently being run by mediocre, unqualified men and women who failed upward despite their lack of qualifications. Some have opined that the mediocrity among the general pool of contestants this season was higher than usual. I don’t think that I necessarily agree with that, but in this particular season finale, three bakers faced off, and two of them are exemplars of mediocrity, although with lovely personalities.

To think about it, every final has had a mediocre person in it. Sometimes those folks surprise us. But that’s the thing about mediocrity – it actually receives more chances to surprise and succeed, whereas people who have been more frequently reliable and exhibit regular excellence may be knocked out after one or two screwups.

This very sentiment is the reason a year-old tweet featuring Hasan Minhaj kindly but honestly rating himself as more good-looking than Dax Shepard went viral. The clip originates from a Vanity Fair interview dated to December 2019 in which the interviewer asks Minhaj, who was hooked up to a lie detector, to rate Shepard on a scale of 1 to 10. Shepard had previously rated Minhaj a 9. Which is nice!

After much cajoling, a flustered Minhaj responds by assigning Shepard a hotness score of 6.5 or a 7. Or a 6.57. Either way, it was not a 9.

When the interviewer accuses Minhaj of being harsh, he replies with honest, faultless reasoning. “Dax is part of a thing where, in show business, there’s this whole movement of approachable white dudes whereas with, like, men of color, it’s like Idris Elba, Henry Golding, Zayn Malik, or you work in IT. There’s no middle.”

White performers who came up with him, he said, could be schlubby and make it in show business. But there’s little to no equivalent of that phenomenon with people of color. “You’ve gotta have, like, the V-taper in your abs if you’re gonna be Asian,” he said.

For the kicker the interviewer asks Minhaj he thinks he’s better looking than Shepard. “Yes,” Minhaj replies, “but I will not get the same opportunities that Dax does.” 

And this explains the anger over the Hermine elimination. She was more good than bad, often great, and superior more times than most. Her fatal flaw was that she stumbled at the wrong time and the adorable stumblebum failed with slightly more flair.

Hermine may even have bested the ultimate winner who, if “Baking Show” history holds, will receive endorsement opportunities and book deals and maybe even a show. In a better version of this season we might not have minded her loss if it meant more skillful and luckier bakers in the final.

But we did not get that season, which meant “The Great British Baking Show” reminded us that we are not living in such a year. Instead of helping us to entirely forget the woes pricking at us for a time, it ended up throwing them into sharp relief.

The good news is that a shot at redemption or, barring that, consolation, may soon arrive with the Dec. 4 arrival of “The Great British Baking Show: Holidays,” Season 3.

All episodes of the latest season of “The Great British Baking Show” are currently streaming on Netflix.

How Trump revealed the right’s “psychic longing for an American strongman”

Many Never Trump conservatives were hoping that if President Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, the GOP would reject Trumpism and return to a more traditional conservatism. Trump lost, and President-elect Joe Biden won 306 electoral votes in addition to defeating Trump by more than 6 million in the popular vote. But author Richard North Patterson, in an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark this week, laments that despite Biden’s victory, Trumpism will continue to plague the GOP for the foreseeable future.

Patterson, a former chairman of Common Cause and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, explains, “(Trump) inflicted on us a presidency which was ignorant, cruel, reckless, lawless, divisive and disloyal. Mendacity and bigotry became the mode of communication between America’s president and his party’s base. Not only did he worsen a deadly pandemic — by immersing an angry and alienated minority in his alternate reality, he is sickening our future.”

Trump, Patterson stresses, “did not materialize from the ether,” but rather, “rose from a political party bent on thwarting demographic change by subverting the democratic process; a party whose base was addicted to white identity politics, steeped in religious fundamentalism, and suffused with authoritarian cravings — a party which, infected by Trumpism, now spreads the multiple malignancies metastasized by Trump’s personal and political pathologies.”

The GOP’s brand, according to Patterson, is now “white grievance and anxiety,” and “racial antagonism” has become a “badge of pride” for Trump and his devotees. Trump, Patterson writes, “comprehends his audience all too well” — and that audience is an angry one.

“For many in the Republican base, he fulfills a psychic longing for an American strongman,” Patterson notes. “This will to autocracy as self-defense is supplemented by fundamentalist fanaticism. . . When electoral defeat augurs a religious apocalypse in the minds of evangelicals, democracy itself becomes their enemy.”

Patterson describes Trump’s refusal to accept the 2020 presidential election results as “banana Republicanism,” noting Trump’s “spate of bogus lawsuits seeking to invalidate many thousands of ballots in five critical states — particularly those cast by African-Americans in major cities like Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta and Milwaukee.”

“One danger has become abundantly clear: far too many elected Republicans are just fine with Trump’s anti-democratic moves, or at least would not honor their sworn responsibility to defend the Constitution from his depredations — often because they are simply too terrified of their party’s base, and the voracious right-wing media which inflames it,” Patterson observes.

Patterson wraps up his article by predicting that Trumpism will dominate the Republican Party long after Trump’s presidency ends.

“For the foreseeable future, Trumpism will define the GOP,” Patterson warns. “The path to regeneration runs not through reform but, one fears, must proceed from self-destruction. The wait time will be painful for the party — and fateful for the country.”

How to avoid another 2020 election

Throughout the 2020 U.S. presidential election, the ghosts of 2000, hanging chads and Bush v. Gore were rapping loudly at the door. 

For many members of the American public, voting has become a confusing ritual, even if one does not take the latest twist into account — a president who refused to accept that he lost the election.

With so much ongoing confusion over democratic procedures and norms in the middle of a pandemic, the United States is starting to look like a type of banana republic. This matters all the more gravely as it loves to lecture other nations about their democratic deficits and electoral shortcomings.

A decentralized hodgepodge

A key part of the prevailing confusion is that election management in the United States amounts to a decentralized hodgepodge spread across 3,000 counties and 9,000 townships — with few national standards to guide them. 

Imagine if U.S. railways, highways or airports had no consistent, national regulations. Travel from state to state would be mired in conflicting regulations and varying quality. 

The United States provides more oversight and security to the gaming industry and slot machines than it does to its election administration.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Whenever the Biden administration takes office, it should launch a bipartisan effort to make voting more efficient, effective and secure. 

Here are crucial steps toward realizing those goals.

1. A national election commission

Most established democracies around the world use a nonpartisan national election commission to establish nationwide standards and uniformity — as well as to foster accountability. 

A national commission in the United States could, for example, promote “best practices” in the use of mailed/absentee ballots, voter registration, testing and quality of voting equipment, voting equipment deployed per capita, recounts, poll worker training and many other details. 

Whenever a recount happens, it would be a comfort to know that well-researched “best practices” are being used for such a painstaking procedure that keeps partisanship out of the results.

The New York example

In New York’s June primary, there was mass confusion that led to upwards of 20% of absentee ballots being tossed out. But other election details are similarly problematic. 

For example, following an election, one of the best safeguards used to detect malfunctioning voting equipment or fraud is an audit consisting of a manual hand recount of randomly selected precincts. 

Yet, there is no uniform standard for the number of ballots that need to be hand recounted to provide adequate security. Some U.S. states require that 5% of precincts be recounted. Others require 4%. Still others require only 1%. 

Which number reflects best practice? Nobody seems to know — or is attempting to figure it out.

Just as the National Highway Board is empowered to set standards for highway design and construction, a national elections commission should have the authority to create minimum standards that states must follow to ensure the quality of elections. 

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission

Following the 2000 meltdown, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) was created. It had the potential to play this role. But its funding and authority have been consistently undermined by partisanship and state officials’ parochialism. 

For most of Donald Trump’s term, the EAC has lacked a fully-appointed commission — or even an executive director. Commissioner Ben Hovland told a House committee that the EACs entire budget is less than what Kansas City spends on pothole repair.

A more robust EAC could partner with the states and counties to establish nationwide standards for high-quality elections. It also could provide rigorous evaluation of what works and propagate best practices. 

Federal funding should be ongoing to help states pay for their critical needs for maintaining the nation’s electoral infrastructure.

2. Impartial and competent election officials

We Americans should have learned this lesson in the 2000 presidential election when Katherine Harris oversaw the Florida election as both secretary of state — and co-chair of GOP candidate George W. Bush’s election committee. 

In 2018 in Georgia, Secretary of State Brian Kemp, a Republican, oversaw the election in which he was running for governor (he won). 

Not to be outdone, a few years ago the (Democratic) secretary of state in West Virginia oversaw his gubernatorial election (he also won). 

The vast majority of chief election officials in two-thirds of U.S. states are partisans — as are about half of all local election officials. 

To avoid conflicts of interests, election officials should be forbidden from serving as co-chairs of campaigns, and clear regulations and ethical guidelines should restrict their partisan involvement or running their own elections.

Upgrading election administration

In addition to applying the principle of nonpartisanship, election administrations in the US should be upgraded to a professional civil service position as a way of ensuring competence and training. 

Running elections has become increasingly complex — involving multiple ways of voting (early, absentee, mailed, same-day and provisional). And they require a sophisticated knowledge of software, databases, voting equipment, organizational management and public relations. 

Yet, there are no vocational schools or degree programs where one can learn how to administer such a highly complex process. It’s all on-the-job training — or training by the voting equipment companies (that often have conflicts of interest). 

Election administrators should be highly trained civil servants who demonstrate proficiency in running elections, using digital technologies — and making the electoral process fair, transparent and secure.

3. Automatic voter registration

The United States has more problems with voter registration than any other established democracy. Only in the United States is registering voters obstructed by ridiculous levels of toxic partisanship

That is because the United States is one of the few democracies that does not practice automatic/universal voter registration. With automatic voter registration, everyone who is 18 or older and eligible to vote is automatically registered. 

There are no forms to fill out – and no partisan games played. In Iraq, a higher share of adult citizens are registered to vote than in the United States. Why? Because the Iraqi government sensibly assumes responsibility for registering its voters. 

Adding American voters

If the United States had automatic voter registration, it would immediately add another 70 million people to the voter rolls — or nearly one in three eligible voters, disproportionately minority, poor and young adults.

Automatic voter registration not only leads to more complete voter rolls, but also results in greater election security. 

That’s because registration occurs in an orderly, steady and rolling process. That’s very much unlike the current practice, in which voter registration drives occur in spurts right before major elections and are often contested by partisan organizations that have an incentive to manipulate the voter rolls. 

Rosemary Rodriguez, former chair of the EAC, said that problems related to partisan voter registration groups and pre-election litigation over voter eligibility would be minimized with automatic voter registration.

The current U.S. practice also is a major headache for election administrators, who must deal with a surge of late registrants — which can result in insufficient levels of equipment, polling stations and poll workers. 

Voters suffer by waiting in long lines. Hence, implementing automatic voter registration would be one of the most important civil rights gains since the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

A wake-up call

The United States’ embarrassing problems with something as basic as voter registration — as well as other parts of our creaking election infrastructure — should serve as a wake-up call. 

The United States’ antiquated practices are inadequate for the 21st century. It’s a wonder things run as well as they do. If we Americans cannot trust the integrity of our elections — whether because of poor administration, lousy technology or partisanship — it will result in widespread apathy and resignation. 

That, more than any single candidate or populist demogogue, will damage our democracy.

This article is republished from The Globalist: On a daily basis, we rethink globalization and how the world really hangs together.  Thought-provoking cross-country comparisons and insights from contributors from all continents. Exploring what unites and what divides us in politics and culture. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.  And sign up for our highlights email here.

Will the Biden administration take action to stop water shutoffs during the pandemic?

COVID-19 has brought the U.S. 99 problems, and water shutoffs are one of them.

As the pandemic rages on around the world, keeping many businesses closed or operating at reduced capacity, over 11 million Americans are currently unemployed. As a result, a rising number of households are struggling to pay bills. According to CNBC, roughly a third of households in some states were behind on utility payments this summer. (That number is normally under 10 percent.) As families are having a harder time paying for basic necessities like rent and food, utility payments often end up on the back burner — but that leaves residents vulnerable to utility companies potentially cutting off their service.

The pandemic is an especially dangerous time to be without access to water. Workers who are more likely to be exposed to the virus and older or immunocompromised people need to wash their hands and disinfect surfaces to avoid becoming infected. That’s why Food and Water Watch (FWW), a nonprofit that promotes corporate and government accountability, sent a public letter to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield last month, asking that the agency issue a federal moratorium on water shutoffs by utilities.

“The CDC must take urgent action to protect people right now. COVID cases are rising and hundreds of thousands of people are at risk of losing the water they need to wash their hands and protect themselves,” FWW Senior Organizer Rianna Eckel wrote in an email to Grist.

The letter, which was signed by more than 120 social justice organizations including Earthjustice, Greenpeace U.S., Friends of the Earth, and the NAACP, argued that widespread water shutoffs would create a public health disaster for those already at increased risk of infection from the novel coronavirus. It claims that the CDC director can invoke a section of the Public Health Services Act to legally assume the authority to issue a federal moratorium on water shutoffs for the remainder of the pandemic.

In states and cities across the country, hundreds of local shutoff moratoriums have been issued nationwide since the start of the pandemic, according to a spreadsheet compiled by FWW. However, over 100 of those moratoriums have already expired as of early this month. That leaves about 170 million Americans, roughly half of the U.S. population, unprotected from shutoffs as the pandemic enters its most active period yet.

With further coronavirus relief bills stalled in Congress, a unilateral moratorium issued by the CDC may be the only hope to stem the tide of shutoffs. Whether or not the incoming Biden administration is open to such a move remains an open question, but advocates feel that the new administration will be more open to drastic relief than the outgoing Trump administration.

“We do feel like the CDC will be more willing to act under a Biden/Harris administration,” Eckel said in an email to Grist. “Over the summer, Vice President-elect [Kamala] Harris co-authored this op-ed that explicitly calls for a national water shutoff moratorium. It’s clear that the incoming administration wants to get the pandemic under control.”

Eckel hopes that the new administration will direct the CDC to issue a moratorium on their first official day in office. In the meantime, elected officials in New York state, North Carolina, and Puerto Rico have all signed temporary legislation to stop statewide water shutoffs this year. But statewide moratoria are beginning to expire, and more than 10 states never took action to stop shutoffs in the first place.

Grist reached out to the CDC for comment and received an email response confirming that the agency had seen and acknowledged FWW’s letter.

“We understand the critical need for clean water in all communities. CDC has received and responded to the letter. Please visit this page for more information about hand hygiene and other steps people can take to protect themselves and others from the virus that causes COVID-19,” a CDC spokesperson told Grist in an email, without elaborating on whether or not the agency would consider issuing a nationwide moratorium.

FWW confirmed that the organization received a similar response from the CDC — but no indication of whether or not they were considering their request.

“This is a basic matter of public health,” Eckel said. “No one should be denied water during a pandemic.”