Tag Archives: Washington Post

New York Times Lines Up with Bezos

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Yesterday was a great day in our country. Millions of Americans participated in peaceful protests all over the country, including cities in  Red States and even other countries. Millions. Hopefully, this signals the beginning of the early end of the Trump administration and the clowns he has appointed, with Republican Party complicity, to destroy the government and our international standing.

In reviewing the remarkably clever signs created by protesters around the country and marveling at the size of many of the crowds, I turned to the New York Times online, expecting to see the top headline and at least a photo from the huge turnout in New York City, despite bad weather. But, lo, what did my eyes behold but a photo of Donald Trump and, well, see for yourself:

If you skip the dog story and the “Analysis” whose title suggests everything is going to be ok, scroll down a screen, you see this:

A presidential seal and another photo of Trump dominate the page. In the lower left corner, you finally  reach the report about the nationwide protests over Trump’s attempt to destroy the federal government.

Do the editors of the New York Times now thing a story about dogs in the workplace and talking about women’s cleavage there is more important? This presentation reminded me of how CNN had promoted Trump in the run-up to the 2016 election, showing constant pictures of podiums while waiting for Trump to appear. This is a Washington Post type presentation in the post-Bezos-ownership era.

The Times owes the world an explanation.

Time to Face Reality

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As Trump’s proposed cabinet of losers, criminals, and traitors continues to take shape, it is perhaps time to face certain realities. I am reminded of the statements of several wise people over the years.

Alan Bennett, 90-year-old English playwright and creator of The History Boys, wrote, “History? It’s just one f***ing thing after another…”

You no doubt recall the famous line attributed to the philosopher George Santayana, but here is the full quote:

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Many others, Winston Churchill among them, have reiterated the last line, usually as a warning, usually ignored.

A variation attributed to Eugene O’Neill was that “There is no present or future – only the past, happening over and over again – now.”

And, of course, President Lincoln stated in his address on June 16, 1858, at what was then the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield, after he had accepted the Illinois Republican Party’s nomination as that state’s US senator, an election he lost:

A house divided against itself, cannot stand.”

I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.

I do not expect the Union to be dissolved – I do not expect the house to fall – but I do expect it will cease to be divided.

It will become all one thing or all the other.

Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become lawful in all the States, old as well as new – North as well as South.

The wisdom of these statements is often overlooked. Not now.

The Republican Party needs a new name. The Republican Party is no longer conservative or patriotic. In the hands of Donald Trump, the GOP is threatening to reduce the federal government to a shadow of its current self and turn such political power as remains outside Trump’s personal dictator hands to the states.

So, let us take a spin through some history that Trump and his billionaire shills have either forgotten, never knew, or simply don’t think is relevant.

I refer to the Articles of Confederation. The Articles were the first “constitution” adopted during the Revolutionary War. The ConstitutionCenter.org explains it this way:

The Second Continental Congress approved the document on November 15, 1777, after a year of debates. The British capture of Philadelphia helped to force the issue.  The Articles formed a war-time confederation of states, with an extremely limited central government.  The document made official some of the procedures used by Congress to conduct business, but many of the delegates realized the Articles had limitations.

Two days later, Congress submitted the Articles to the states for immediate consideration. However, it took until March 1, 1781, for this “immediate” consideration to become final.

Here is a quick [edited] list of the problems that occurred, and how these issues led to our current Constitution.

    1. The central government was designed to be very, very weak.The Articles established “the United States of America” as a perpetual union formed to defend the states as a group, but it provided few central powers beyond that. But it didn’t have an executive official or judicial branch.
    2. The Articles Congress only had one chamber and each state had one vote.This reinforced the power of the states to operate independently from the central government, even when that wasn’t in the nation’s best interests.
    3. Congress needed 9 of 13 states to pass any laws.Requiring this high supermajority made it very difficult to pass any legislation that would affect all 13 states.
    4. The document was practically impossible to amend.The Articles required unanimous consent to any amendment, so all 13 states would need to agree on a change. Given the rivalries between the states, that rule made the Articles impossible to adapt after the war ended with Britain in 1783.
    5. The central government couldn’t collect taxes to fund its operations.The Confederation relied on the voluntary efforts of the states to send tax money to the central government. Lacking funds, the central government couldn’t maintain an effective military or back its own paper currency.
    6. States were able to conduct their own foreign policies.Technically, that role fell to the central government, but the Confederation government didn’t have the physical ability to enforce that power, since it lacked domestic and international powers and standing.
    7. States had their own money systems.There wasn’t a common currency in the Confederation era. The central government and the states each had separate money, which made trade between the states, and other countries, extremely difficult.
    8. The Confederation government couldn’t help settle Revolutionary War-era debts.The central government and the states owed huge debts to European countries and investors. Without the power to tax, and with no power to make trade between the states and other countries viable, the United States was in an economic mess by 1787.

George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Dickinson and others met and proposed that all 13 states meet in Philadelphia to resolve the debacle. The current Constitution emerged from that meeting, was ratified, and then promptly amended by the Bill of Rights to cure certain glaring omissions in the original version. Constitution-making is hard work.

While the issues with the Articles of Confederation were clear, by the time of the Constitutional Convention white people in the southern states were deeply entrenched in the system of slavery on which their economy depended. Compromises were required and made in order to reach a constitutional document that could be promoted among the states for ratification. Without those compromises there would have been no Constitution and no country, at least not one comprised of all the former colonies and territories. Even then, ratification consumed two years and eight months. Ratification of the Bill of Rights took another year.

A very detailed history of the events leading to the Constitution may be found in https://www.britannica.com/topic/American-colonies/The-decision-for-independence if you have interest in it.

What lessons can be learned from this early experience with nation-making?

One is that in the modern world of, say, the post-WWII era, a “nation” in which the major powers are dispersed among many widely spread and independent entities (read “states”) is extremely vulnerable to nations with more power concentrated in a central authority. It’s true, of course, that the separation of what became the United States of America was driven in major part by rejection of the totally centralized power of the King of England. But that king’s authority resided in one person and was absolute.

Under the Constitution (not the Articles of Confederation), the power of the central authority, the federal government, was strong but restrained by several features built into the system, not least of which was the division of federal power into the three co-equal branches we call the Executive (President), Legislative (Congress) and Judiciary (Courts). The idea was that each would serve as a check against the power of the other two. And, among the many brilliant elements of the new Constitution was the principle that the church and state must remain separate so that individuals would always be free to practice, without interference from the government, whatever religion, or none, that they chose.

Over time amendments were judged necessary as the country grew and society recognized that further centralization of certain principles was essential to secure the freedom that the Framers, and the Americans who fought the Revolutionary and Civil Wars to create and preserve the union, sought to protect in perpetuity. For example, the requirements of ‘equal protection’ and ‘due process of law’ apply to both the federal government and the states.

It is now clear that the constitutional regime thus formed has several serious flaws, not least of which is the unplanned for development of political parties. The operation of the Electoral College has also proved to be quixotic at best.

It is also apparent that the widespread rhetorical framework under which Americans claim to a special place in the world is a myth. American “exceptionalism” viewed against the reality of lingering racism, fear of “foreigners,” and fear of the future leads to the inevitable awareness that Americans are no more exceptional than the people of other countries. The US history of intervention in other countries has not endeared the nations of the world to unqualified respect for the intentions of this country.

The threat of climate change and our newly realized vulnerability to disease should be sufficient to bind all peoples together in a common effort to protect the species by protecting the only planet we’re ever going to know. But that’s not what’s happening.

The United States has one of the strongest economies in the world. Our people overall enjoy a standard of living far above most of the rest of the planet. Yet fear of change, fear of the “other” and fear of displacement have led the people to elect a convicted felon as national leader. That same “leader” is plainly guilty of other crimes that will never be adjudicated, including his leading an insurrection against the government to overturn the 2020 election and his theft, and refusal to return, highly confidential government documents.

The Supreme Court, laced with conflicts of interest and outright corruption, has held that the President of the United States may not be held accountable for crimes committed in office if, for example, they are committed while conducting “official acts.” Thus, the Court held that the President may with complete immunity enlist the Department of Justice to join him in a criminal enterprise by simply “discussing” the matter with leaders within the Department.

Trump has made clear that he and his cronies intend not to lead the federal government but to dismantle it. His initial selection of incompetent and blatantly unqualified departmental and other senior leaders is conclusive proof that he has no intention of complying with the oath of office he will nominally take on January 20, 2025.

Trump is literally free, per Supreme Court decision, to ignore the law and proceed with his agenda. Little stands in his way, given the composition of the Congress and the abdication of responsible jurisprudence by the high court. What then?

Many large companies, like Meta and Apple, have surrendered by providing massive funds for Trump’s inauguration, ignoring the advice of Prof. Timothy Snyder not to comply in advance. Trump knows these economically influential entities and their leaders will not resist him. Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post, stopped the paper from endorsing Kamala Harris.

Perhaps even more remarkably, the Post’s Editorial Board has published a list of some Trump key appointments and indicated they should be confirmed. The list includes the likes of election-deniers Elise Stefanik and Pam Bondi (Trump’s second choice behind the disgraced and grossly unqualified Matt Gaetz. Also Kelly Loeffler, rejected by the voters of Georgia. The only ones who fail to pass the Post’s low bar are Robert Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, and Russell Vought.

Granted the Post spend little effort in explaining itself, but the criteria it chose to mention are, well, mind-blowing.

First, the Post says:

We would not have picked any of his choices for our hypothetical Cabinet. But, as we have argued for decades, that is not the standard we — or U.S. senators — should apply when evaluating potential executive nominees for Senate confirmation. The president-elect won the election. He deserves deference in building his team, and the Americans who elected him deserve an operational government, absent disqualifying deficiencies in competence, temperament or philosophy.

By that standard, all but two of Trump’s planned Cabinet nominees seem confirmable — as well as all but two of his picks for Cabinet-rank jobs that require confirmation.

But then the Post describes some of the nominees this way:

Marco Rubio for Secretary of State – “The son of immigrants, Rubio is respected by Senate colleagues and understands the vital importance of American leadership.”

My comment: this was news to me given Rubio’s post-2020 obeisance to Trump and the MAGA crowd. No sources are cited.

Scott Bessent for Secretary of Treasury — a “hedge fund billionaire, who seeks to stimulate growth and reduce the deficit, is among Trump’s most reasonable intended nominees.”

My comment: Again, no sources or authority cited. Maybe “billionaire” is sufficient for the Post’s purposes. It certainly is for Trump.

Pam Bondi for Attorney General – “Florida’s former attorney general is qualified; lawyers who have worked with her report that she is serious.”

My comment: Bondi is a 2020-election-denier and apparently has lobbied for foreign governments in the past. She’s serious alright. Bondi will be the perfect accomplice to Trump’s continuing efforts to use the Justice Department, with his Supreme Court’s approval, to commit further crimes without accountability.

Doug Burgum for Secretary of Interior – “The outgoing North Dakota governor and Stanford MBA built a successful software company that he sold to Microsoft.”

My comment: Being a software entrepreneur is not an obvious qualification for managing our natural resources. Prepare to lay your body down in front of a national park.

Howard Lutnick – Secretary of Commerce – “The co-chair of Trump’s transition team is a natural fit for a job traditionally held by a presidential friend.”

My Comment: A founding member of DOGE. Billionaire. His pinned Twitter/X account says: “Welcome to DOGE. We will rip the waste out of our $6.5 Trillion budget. Our goal: Balance the Budget of the USA. We must elect Donald Trump President. @elonmusk @realDonald Trump” The accompanying photo is of Lutnick & Elon Musk!

Balance the budget – riiight. Standard Republican rhetoric. Balance the budget and destroy the economy. A “natural fit.”

Lori Chavez-DeRemer – Secretary of Labor – “The former congresswoman from Oregon maintains surprisingly unorthodox views on organized labor.”

My comment: what “unorthodox views” means we are left to guess, and I’m guessing they are not good for unions.

Scott Turner – Secretary of Housing & Urban Development – “The former motivational speaker has never run a big organization, but that is not disqualifying.”

My comment: Lack of experience is self-evidently irrelevant in a Trump administration.

Sean P. Duffy – Secretary of Transportation – “The former reality TV star is also a former congressman from Wisconsin. He’ll still need to study.”

My comment: …..

Chris Wright – Secretary of Energy – “The Colorado oil and gas executive acknowledges that climate change is real.”

My comment: I suspect he also agrees the Earth is not flat. Prepare to lay your body down in front of a national park.

Linda McMahon – Secretary of Education – “The other co-chair of the president-elect’s transition team led the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term.”

My comment: Betsy Devos redux? Her SBA experience definitely, certainly, obviously, assuredly qualifies her to lead American education policy, though her opportunities to do more damage to our education system may be brief if Trump fulfills his plan to eliminate the Department.

Douglas Collins – Secretary of Veterans Affairs – “He was a firebrand as a congressman from Georgia, but his heart seems to be in the right place in caring for veterans.”

My comment: You can’t make this stuff up. The most the Post has to say is that the nominee cares about veterans.

Kristi L. Noem – Secretary of Homeland Security – “Dog jokes aside, she has served in Congress and two terms as governor of South Dakota.”

My comment: The Post apparently thinks Noem’s shooting her dog was a joke! And, South Dakota being at the center of our national security concerns, Noem is imminently qualified for … something, though not the complex task of securing the homeland against attacks, especially with Trump in charge.

Interestingly, the Post did not mention Trump’s anointing of Kash Patel as inside man at the Department of Justice with instructions, redundant in his case, to get even or better with many of Trump’s main enemies list.

You get the picture, I’m sure. This is the “government” that Trump promised and that the American people chose, albeit by the slimmest of margins.

The United States is in the deepest trouble.

Corporate America is lining up to bend the knee to Trump. Under Donald Trump the United States seems destined to become a weak state and an international pariah as Trump in turn bends the knee to dictators like Vladimir Putin.

Thus far, the Democratic Party, reeling from the loss of the presidency and both houses of Congress, and with a Supreme Court having conferred immunity for the president’s crimes in office, has nothing much to say. Everyone, it seems, is waiting to see the actual shape of the catastrophe about to begin. It won’t be long now.

This Is How It’s Done!

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The following is verbatim the published endorsement of Kamala Harris by the Seattle Times:

Hell yes! The Seattle Times edit board endorses Harris for president 

Oct. 29, 2024 at 3:53 pm

The Seattle Times editorial board endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president on Sept. 1. (Courtesy of the White House)

By Frank Blethen and Kate Riley

Seattle Times publisher and Times editorial page editor

As one of the country’s very few family-owned and -operated metro newspapers left, The Seattle Times is also apparently one of the few whose editorial board is willing to endorse presidential candidates. (For the record, the board, which operates independently of the newsroom, backed Vice President Kamala Harris Sept. 1.)

This is unfathomable, given that the other leading candidate clearly threatens the foundation of our 248-year-old American democracy and the rule of law.

How does it happen that someone as selfish and destructive as former President Donald Trump could actually become our president — again? After he fanned the Jan. 6 insurgency, after his felony convictions and after a civil court ruled he committed sexual assault?

One answer is the demise of local newspapers across our country.

Once the pride of rural communities and big cities alike, about half the country’s daily newspapers have been lost. Too many of the rest are inferior products being milked to death by absent mercenary investors.

Since my great-grandfather, Alden Blethen, founded The Seattle Times in 1896, the Blethen family has proudly guided The Seattle Times. Our current fourth generation has been in control since 1985.

We take our journalism and community service very seriously. We have been preparing our fifth generation for Times leadership when I step down at the end of 2025. And members of the sixth interned in our newsroom this summer.

So it is with consternation that I and editorial page editor Kate Riley learned that the publishers of two of America’s most venerable newspapers on both coasts decided not to weigh in at all, even though their editorial boards were preparing Harris endorsements.

The decisions appear to have been made by the billionaire owners — Jeff Bezos of The Washington Post and Patrick Soon-Shiong of the Los Angeles Times. That prompted protests and resignations at both papers. The reasons given were about political divisions, wanting to let voters make up their own minds and to restore public trust, according to the Columbia Journalism Review.

Bezos, founder of Amazon, explained his decision in an op-ed on the Post’s Opinion page. Read it here: st.news/bezos

“Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, ‘I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.’ None,” Bezos wrote. “What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.”

At The Times, we have a wall between the newsroom and the editorial board. Editorial writers do not ask news staff about their opinions, nor do we get involved in their coverage. We do our own reporting.

We were pleased The New York Times joined our editorial board in endorsing Kamala Harris. In fact, NYT Opinion doubled down, making a dramatic statement by filling the front of its Sunday section with just 23 words. In large, bold type, the NYT editorial board made this indictment:

DONALD TRUMP SAYS HE WILL
PROSECUTE HIS ENEMIES
ORDER MASS DEPORTATIONS
USE SOLDIERS AGAINST CITIZENS
ABANDON ALLIES
PLAY POLITICS WITH DISASTERS
BELIEVE HIM.

Trump has become shameless in his pronouncements of his plans and his denouncements of so many Americans. He can only set the country back and put our nation at risk.

The Seattle Times editorial board, and the Blethen family, enthusiastically endorse Kamala Harris.

Frank Blethen; is publisher of The Seattle Times and the great-grandson of the 128-year-old company’s founder. 

Kate Riley; is the editorial page editor at The Seattle Times: kriley@seattletimes.com; on Twitter: @k8riley.

No Sale, Mr. Bezos

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Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post has published an “Opinion” piece defending his decision to stop endorsing presidential candidates weeks before the election. The piece was entitled, The hard truth: Americans don’t trust the news media https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/28/jeff-bezos-washington-post-trust/ He was right about that part at least.

At last look, the article had received more than 15,000 comments and growing rapidly. It has also been reported that since the Post’s announcement there have been more than 200,000 subscription cancellations, about 8 percent of the subscriber base. If so, that number likely continues to grow and may be the real and only reason Bezos has now elected to speak out.

Here was my posted comment on Bezos’ Opinion:

“The reasons for the distrust you cite seem reasonably clear. One, the Trump acolytes bought his nonsense about Fake News from his earliest days in politics. Two, papers like the Post practiced and still practice both-sides-ing critical issues. Just a day or two ago the Post promoted KellyAnne Conway speaking about abortion. You have featured Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley & a multitude of election-denying, deflecting, dishonest Republican hyper-partisans in videos and opinion pieces.

Complaints about these practices have fallen on deaf ears. Now, at the last minute, the Post departs from a practice it has followed since 1976, almost 50 years!, by refusing to endorse the presidential candidate, who, whatever her flaws, is not a convicted criminal, did not attempt to overthrow the government following the last election, and who has not declared, as Trump has, that she will only accept the 2024 outcome if she wins.

Mr. Bezos, your explanation fails on its merits because you haven’t addressed the real issue behind it and the Post’s journalistic practices. If the endorsement doesn’t influence votes, as you suggest, there is no harm in just doing what has been done. Instead, you claim to be following a principle that the paper has failed to follow since Trump emerged from the sludge of America’s lowest politics to be an attractant of attention, however misplaced. If the Post doesn’t stand up for what is right, then it stands for nothing and deserves to die.”

Upon further reflection, there are other issues with the Post owner’s Opinion. One is that the Post has endorsed a multitude of other candidates for federal and state offices. Surely Mr. Bezos is aware of that, yet he ignores it in arguing that endorsements are meaningless or worse because they sow mistrust.

The reality is that mistrust is sown by behaving in an untrustful manner. If I lie constantly, make up false stories, violate the law, demean others in racist and misogynistic ways, refuse to acknowledge science and on and on, I deserve to be distrusted. I have, of course, described Donald Trump and those who worship him. The Post’s owner dissembles when he claims, essentially, that the paper’s endorsement, and presumably therefore the endorsements of every other major paper in America, have no value but to sew distrust. He ignores the many accurate Post stories condemning Trump’s vile politics and establishing beyond a reasonable doubt that he is unfit to serve as President again.

The Post’s owner cannot have it both ways. Sadly, for our country and the world, there are many other examples of distrust that can be cited, many traceable to Trump in one way or another. I refer to the outrageous conflicts of interest of Justice Thomas and his wife, the open flaunting of religious and political bias by Justice Alito and, most recently, the worst decision in the history of the Supreme Court where it’s Trump-appointed justices held that the President of the United States may commit with “absolute immunity” crimes, including attempts to overthrow the government, as long as the crimes are committed in “discussions” with, for example only, the Justice Department. See Trump v United States, decided July 1, 2024, opinion viewable at https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf

Mr. Bezos’ dissembling cannot excuse or conceal what is going on here. The Post’s decision, delivered on Friday on the eve of the election, was certain to elicit the response it has and yet Mr. Bezos waited until the next Monday to speak out. This may indeed be the death knell for the Post brought about by the arrogance of wealth and indifference or even hostility to the welfare of the nation. If so, too bad. Just another casualty of the cowardice inspired by Donald Trump’s example.

Goodbye, Washington Post

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Reluctantly, I have canceled my subscription to the Washington Post.  This decision is driven by the Post’s decision to change its long-standing policy of endorsing candidates for the office of President of the United States in this, the most consequential election perhaps in the entire history of the country but certainly in modern times. The Post‘s decision to do this less than two weeks before the election is an egregious act of cowardice or, worse, malice, in that it must surely know that its decision can only help Donald Trump’s quest to become dictator of the United States. I cannot, will not, condone such a heinous act. So it is written, so let it be done.

No One Rules If No One Obeys

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Reading about the disgusting decisions of the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post to withhold endorsements of presidential candidates at the behest of their billionaire owners, I was reminded of a meme I saw on, as I recall, Facebook. On the left was the face of a police officer and on the right the Guy Fawkes mask associated with Anonymous. Wikipedia describes Anonymous as

a decentralized group of anonymous online activists … a label used by high-profile hackers to make themselves unrecognizable to law enforcement as well as the public. They are associated with many online and offline protests. These protests commonly relate to freedom of speech. They often protest against … censorship.

Their tagline: “We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.”

The meme was posted during the disruptions arising from the murder of George Floyd.

The message is apt now, especially as I read the pablum-like statement published by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein describing the Post’s decision as “surprising and disappointing.” I have only read of one resignation so far, Robert Kagan, the editor-at-large. Others are likely considering a similar step. I say: DON’T RESIGN! Not yet.

This is not the time to yield to the fascist forces of darkness without a fight.

The Post is likely dead as a journalistic force and hopefully also as a viable economic entity. Many subscribers are canceling their relationship with the paper. Ironically, I had just received an email from the Post advising of the auto-renewal next month of my own subscription. Not a chance. If the Post wants to be Fox-light, I have no interest in reading it.

Jeff Bezos’ compromise of the Post’s editorial independence will, I believe, justly be met with the destruction of his investment. He may not care, given his wealth, but his decision to align the Post with Donald Trump, and make no mistake – that is what has happened – will lead to massive disaffection of readers and, one hopes, advertisers.

So, what to do? Instead of resigning, the remaining staff of the Post should publish the paper’s endorsement of the Harris/Walz ticket as it had planned. Just do it! Force Bezos’ hand. He may fire you, but your chances of long-term employment at the Post are slim at best in the face of its journalistic suicide. So, DO NOT OBEY. RESIST! Publish the endorsement.

If Bezos starts firing staff, walk out together and leave the ashes of this once great newspaper for Bezos to clean up. With no employees, he can’t produce a newspaper in hard copy or online. Refuse to be the fake news that Donald Trump has always accused you of and stand for what is right before it is too late. And, one hopes, the union(s) representing the Post’s staff will bring suits against the company and the people behind the decision to destroy the paper’s editorial independence while maintaining the now-ludicrous slogan that Democracy Dies in Darkness. The Darkness is here in the form of Donald Trump and everything he represents. In the words made famous by the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas: “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Trump’s “Defenses”

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As she often does, Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post has written a compelling piece  entitled, The trifecta that could sink Trump’s favorite defense https://tinyurl.com/3xrvzdam As often happens in criminal conspiracy cases, some of the defendants, in this case three former Trump attorneys and an Atlanta bail bondsman have proffered evidence against Trump in exchange for plea deals. Uncommonly, videos of some of their statements to prosecutors were leaked to the press by one of their attorneys. Time will tell what effect that decision has on the lawyer’s future.

But what is clear as the proverbial bell here is that three of Trump’s co-conspirators have chosen to save themselves at Trump’s expense. Anyone watching Trump for the past seven years can readily anticipate how he will react, but what is most interesting is the impact of their proffers on Trump’s defense that he truly, genuinely, authentically believed he won the 2020 election and that he lacked the necessary criminal intent to overturn the election through extra-legal or illegal means because he was acting on the advice of his attorneys.

The testimony of many participants in Trump’s scheme are aligning now in close harmony around a couple of key ideas: (1) Trump’s attorneys did not advise him that he won the election; indeed, many of them advised the opposite was true; Trump simply chose to act on the statements of those who told him what he wanted to hear but which he had every reason to know was false; (2) even if Trump somehow truly believed he won, for which point no credible evidence has thus far emerged, that belief is not a defense to the several unlawful actions he took to overturn the election result through extralegal means, such as offering phony electors and the January 6 assault on the certification process.

The legal system provides methods by which proper challenges could have been brought and, indeed, more than 60 were filed in courts across the country. None of them succeeded.

Trump’s most effective defense, the one on which he has principally relied for his entire life, is delay. In that he has a chance. The Fulton County Georgia DA has just requested an August 2024 start date which, if adopted, will virtually assure that the trial is ongoing at the time of the 2024 election. If the country were to lose its collective mind and elect Trump to the presidency, he would almost certainly try to pardon himself and would offer, for a price, pardons to everyone who might still be a threat to him. The notion that a president can pardon himself is preposterous on its face but with the current Supreme Court stacked with Trump appointees, there is no assurance he would not be “exonerated.”

The obvious and best solution, other than Trump’s earlier conviction and sentencing in one of the other felony cases, would be for him to be defeated at the ballot box. He would, of course, claim the election was rigged and start the challenge process all over again, perhaps including another attempt at a violent coup.

This pathetic situation has resulted, in part, due to the failure of the various charging parties to coordinate their activities and, in part, due to the pro-Trump preference demonstrated repeatedly by Judge Aileen Cannon in the Mar-a-Lago documents case. All the judges in all the cases are putting up with conduct that would never be accepted for any other defendant than Trump. If it is true that there is a two-tiered justice system, as many Republican Trump worshippers have claimed, it favors Trump rather than prejudicing him.

Time will tell, as usual. Meanwhile, the best offense against Trump remains producing an overwhelming election defeat in 2024. There may be no other way.

Everyone Should Watch This

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 I recently decided that I had to cull my old emails. There are more than 9,000 in my inbox alone. Many remain from the horrors of the pandemic in New York City. I accumulated them with the idea that, at some point, I would find time and inspiration to write about them. I still aspire to do that, but realistically it seems improbable.

In any case, in the course of reviewing them, and deleting as many as possible, I came across this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/aocs-speech-about-ted-yohos-apology-was-a-comeback-for-the-ages/2020/07/23/524e689a-cb90-11ea-91f1-28aca4d833a0_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most

I don’t recall many things about our year in the epicenter of the COVID pandemic and I do not recall watching this. But I watched it today. Standing alone, it is remarkable in many ways. But it doesn’t stand alone. It is an exemplar, I believe, of the core problem that faces our country and indeed the world. That problem, our curse as a species, is the dehumanization of the “other” with whom I/you/we disagree about something/many things/everything. It is the problem that Donald Trump did not create but that he authenticated, that he promoted, that he legitimized in the minds of many.

AOC, you will observe, was not reading a speech, not following closely a long set of notes, not reading from a teleprompter. This one came from the heart.

Guns In Schools – American Shame

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If you haven’t seen it recently, or ever, you should watch the YouTube video of Jeff Daniels’ answer to a college sophomore’s question: why is America the greatest country in the world? It’s here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2HKbygLjJs, from a great TV show called The Newsroom, well worth watching in its entirety.

I don’t know whether the data Daniels cites in the excerpt is accurate today but in general terms it likely is. That’s a hard pill for many Americans to swallow. Fear and loathing are rampant throughout the country, especially in the so-called “red states,” where Republicans promote the decline of the United States for political gain but have no solutions to offer except blaming others for what are distinctly American failures.

No better example exists than the data on guns in schools. Guns are seized in U.S. schools each day. The numbers are soaring. https://tinyurl.com/55hxzkm5

More than 1,150 guns were seized in K-12 schools last year

Nationwide, 1 in 47 school-aged children attended a school where at least one gun was found and reported on by the media in the 2022-2023 school year.

One high school student described his school as a “war zone” following the discovery of two guns at school in the first five days of his junior year. Both pistols were loaded.

That student’s experience was typical of “students of every age in every state throughout the school year, a bleak reflection of a society awash in firearms.”

Last school year, more than six guns were seized each day, on average. Nationally, 1.1 million students attended a school where at least one gun was found and reported by the media. Data collection limitations, including the fact that many school districts don’t bother to track the information, make it clear that those figures grossly understate the true magnitude of the danger.

A Washington Post survey of 51 of the country’s largest school systems showed that 58 percent of seizures in those districts last academic year were never publicly reported by news organizations. Those same districts said the number of guns recovered on campus rose sharply in recent years, mirroring the growing prevalence of firearms in many other public places.

In some cases, quick action by other students and school administrators almost certainly prevented mass murders of students and teachers. But reports indicate that some school districts are more concerned about avoiding scrutiny and causing alarm than they are interested in protecting students and school staff.

Police in Golden Valley, Minn., complained in March that middle school officials waited five days to notify them of two boys who appeared to be posing for social media pictures while holding a gun in the school bathroom; a spokesperson for the Robbinsdale Area Public Schools district said officials have worked since then to improve the school-police partnership.

That sounds like, “we take our peoples’ security very seriously. Their safety is our top priority.” Those are probably the most common, and meaningless, clichés in modern American language.

In 51 of the 100 largest school districts, representing 6.3 million students, 515 guns were found during the last school year. Only 42 percent of those seizures were reported publicly. In DeKalb County, Ga., (includes Atlanta) with a 2020 population of 764,382, only two of the 24 guns were reported.

The 47 districts for which The Post was able to obtain five full school years of data saw a 79 percent increase in guns found on campuses over that time frame [past five years]. In many communities, the number of guns found has more than doubled, a trend that mirrors a precipitous rise in school shootings.

While many instances of guns in schools are the result of gross parental negligence, or worse, that is far from the whole story.

The gun brought to Rome High on the fourth day of school was stolen in Alabama. According to media reports, a gun stolen in Las Vegas found its way into the hands of a 16-year-old at a Lawrence, Mass., high school; another 16-year-old brought a gun stolen in Georgia to his Manchester, Conn., high school; in Columbus, Ohio, a high-schooler showed up with a gun stolen in Martin County, Fla.; and in Nashville, a 17-year-old came to school with two loaded pistols in his backpack, one of them stolen out of Madison, Ala. An 18-year-old was arrested at a high school in Ames, Iowa., for possession of a 9mm semiautomatic pistol that was stolen from the center console of a pickup truck in Cape Girardeau, Mo., according to a police report. The teen said he bought the gun from a stranger at a gas station in Missouri, seeking protection, the report said.

While it is tempting to blame the problem in large part on teenage “craziness,” the data indicates that many younger students are involved:

… authorities found guns on at least 31 students age 10 or younger during the 2022-2023 academic year …. As is the case in most school shootings, the majority of those guns were brought to campus by children who could not legally purchase a firearm on their own.

Common Threads

Several common themes leap out from the Washington Post and other reports about kids bringing guns to schools:

  • School administrators are often slow to act and slow to inform parents about incidents.
  • Administrators are sometimes more interested in protecting the school’s “image” than in protecting students and staff.
  • Administrators sometimes refuse to respond to legitimate questions about these incidents, despite their role as public officials with responsibility to protect students and staff.
  • Parents whose carelessness/indifference and/or active support for gun culture are usually not held accountable for the conduct of their children.
  • Kids who bring guns to schools are often sheltered from consequences because they are minors.

That last point raises a bigger question. American society generally is based on the view that minors are not fully accountable for their behavior. This policy is based on the science of brain development and a concern that “immature” behavior” attributed to individuals will haunt them later in life and that this is unfair.

Why, exactly, such accountability is unfair is unclear. Also unclear is why it is more appropriate to be concerned about the perpetrators than about their actual or potential victims, many of whom will be traumatized, possibly forever, by their encounter with a fellow student armed and prepared to kill.

There are other consequences too. Teacher shortages because teachers feel disrespected, unsupported, and endangered. Budget issues arising from lawsuits against school systems that failed to do the right, and difficult, thing when confronted with a gun situation. Distracted students wondering when the next threat will walk into their classroom when they should be paying attention to the lesson. And more.

I urge you to read the full Washington Post story that inspired these thoughts. https://tinyurl.com/55hxzkm5 Every American should be concerned that our submission to the prevailing gun culture has led us to a dark place where young school children must undergo training in case their school is the scene of a shooter. And to a place where school administrators are free to simply refuse to communicate about their failures and their self-interested conduct at the expense of students’ safety.

Teachers in dozens of communities raised similar concerns about school safety after gun incidents last school year. In Harper Woods, Mich., in June, the teachers union accused school officials of trying to cover up an incident in which a student with a gun escaped the school staff and evaded metal detectors; in April, the Massachusetts Teachers Association accused a superintendent of “total disregard for the safety of students and school personnel” after a student posted videos of himself on social media that showed him wielding a gun on campus. The Southbridge, Mass., school system disputed the union’s account and said it was working with police on lockdown drills and other safety procedures.

The WAPO story recounts how students evade security systems and why students are often wary of reporting what they see. Once it becomes clear that the school is more interested in its reputation than in preventing gun violence, most kids are not going to risk being called a “rat” when they report someone who is handled with kid gloves and often back in the school soon after.

The graph below tells the story as well as anything. It does not, of course, measure the trauma experienced by students and staff who managed, by luck or whatever, not to be killed or wounded. This is the price we pay for the American obsession with guns.

One of the comments submitted to the WAPO story argued that the data prove that the “fraction of criminal violators in school populations” is so low, we should stop “propagandizing” about the problem. One response posted said: “Gosh, when you put it that way the blood stains almost fade away…” But, of course, they don’t. Ever.

News About the News

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I am puzzled by an Opinion piece published in the Washington Post, entitled “It appears CNN and the New York Times forgot a lesson of the Trump years.” https://wapo.st/3v3aynM

The lead paragraph says,

Two of America’s most important news outlets, CNN and the New York Times, are signaling that they will continue and even increase some of the both sides-ism, false equivalence and centrist bias that has long impaired coverage of U.S. politics and therefore our democracy itself. I hope they reconsider.

The ensuing argument suggests that these decisions have something to do with limiting coverage intended “to reaching people whose views might not be in the mainstream,” including in particular Black people who “disproportionately lack power and influence.”

The changes, according to author Perry Bacon, Jr., are wrapped in the cloth of “independence,” citing, importunings that Times’ staff not use Twitter so much and a CNN memo saying the network “must return to largely covering ‘hard news.’”

Mr. Bacon notes that,

Twitter was essential to the rise of Black Lives Matter — and also was a useful platform for former president Donald Trump. Trump is now off Twitter, but it remains a powerful tool for movements and activists, particularly on the left and outside both parties’ establishments.

In terms of independence, let’s be honest, the Times and CNN are declaring freedom from the left — they are not worried about being cast as too aligned with the Republicans.… I suspect independence and not doing advocacy are just updated terms for problematic forms of objectivity and neutrality that mainstream news organizations have long favored. During Trump’s presidency, the Times and CNN played an important role in signaling to the nation that he was behaving in extreme and at times anti-democratic ways. This honest coverage was nothing to be ashamed of. Now, these news executives are implying some of that coverage was misguided and won’t happen in the future.

I worry that what these executives want in the future is for their coverage of political issues to be perceived as equally independent from Republicans and Democrats. Such an approach is likely to lead to false equivalence and obfuscation — for example, reporters being worried about forthrightly identifying inaccurate statements by politicians. It basically encourages Republicans to continue to lodge bad-faith claims of media bias. It will put Black reporters in a bind, since honestly describing that the aim of some GOP-sponsored voting laws is to make it harder for Black people to cast ballots might sound like what a civil rights advocate or a Democrat might say.

The problem here, I suspect, is that of which view of journalistic history we take here. My experience, and that of many, many others inside and outside of journalism, was that CNN helped Trump’s campaign and his presidency with its non-stop coverage of his every utterance, no matter how false or destructive. CNN became Fox-Light for a very long time. If there was a turn-around at all, it occurred during the worst days of the pandemic, when Trump’s dissembling, lying, incompetence and malfeasance regarding COVID, supported across the board by the Republican Party, was daily killing Americans by the thousands and tens of thousands.

Mr. Bacon speculates that what is coming is, “replacing political commentary with more reporters standing in front of buildings like the White House and summarizing the words of elected officials. Such an approach will no doubt limit anti-Republican commentary and make GOP officials happier. But the goal should be to inform the audience, not appease officials in each party equally. When I watch cable news, I learn the most from the commentators ….”

Maybe what’s at the root of the problem is that the Trump-era media, here looking mainly at New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and the old MSM networks, became confused about the distinction between actual “news” (what happened, when, etc. focusing on genuinely significant facts about significant events) and “arguments.” With the view that a 24-hour news cycle must be covered, and that “breaking news” was the only item of interest at any moment, it wasn’t surprising perhaps that major media bought into the Trump/Bannon “flood the zone” approach.

An alternative, still available, would be to revert to the model that worked well back in the day. For example, CBS’s Walter Cronkite, a news figure trusted by most Americans at the time, presented the “news” every evening. He was followed by Eric Sevareid who “analyzed” or “interpreted” a selection of important events. They did not need constant panels of political shills arguing endlessly and repetitively about what was happening, what it meant, and who was winning.

This is how Wikipedia summarizes Cronkite’s career:

Walter Leland Cronkite Jr. (November 4, 1916 – July 17, 2009) was an American broadcast journalist who served as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years (1962–1981). During the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as “the most trusted man in America” after being so named in an opinion poll. Cronkite reported many events from 1937 to 1981, including bombings in World War II; the Nuremberg trials; combat in the Vietnam War; the Dawson’s Field hijackings; Watergate; the Iran Hostage Crisis; and the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, civil rights pioneer Martin Luther King Jr., and Beatles musician John Lennon. He was also known for his extensive coverage of the U.S. space program …. Cronkite is known for his departing catchphrase, “And that’s the way it is”, followed by the date of the broadcast.

When Cronkite spoke editorially, it was clear what he was doing, as in his famous report on the Vietnam War after the Tet Offensive:

We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds. They may be right, that Hanoi’s winter-spring offensive has been forced by the Communist realization that they could not win the longer war of attrition, and that the Communists hope that any success in the offensive will improve their position for eventual negotiations. It would improve their position, and it would also require our realization, that we should have had all along, that any negotiations must be that – negotiations, not the dictation of peace terms. For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate…. To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy’s intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could. [https://bit.ly/3L3DxgY]

Clear separation between “news” – the facts – and “opinions, interpretations, evaluations” is still possible but it requires a major change of focus by the media, an end to click-bait headlines followed by often inaccurate and confusing mixtures of “what happened” and “what it means.” It also requires resistance to the idea that “news” consists of constantly covering the most clownish and false claims just because someone “famous” said them. The best case in point was the constant coverage of the daily “press conferences” held by Trump to promote himself and his administration’s alleged response to the pandemic.

The separation of news and opinion will require more work from editors to be sure that “reports” are factual, clear about the unknowns in situations in which facts are unclear, and free of opinions of reporters about the importance of “facts” reported. Have reporters stick to facts and interpreters do the evaluating. Forget the panels of political shills and when an interpreter makes claims that are false, tell the audience that there is no evidence to support the statements made. It’s not easy to do this, obviously, but being clear will be appreciated by the audience in the long run.