Cap, Gown, Vote! April 30, 2018April 27, 2018 So there are three things every high school senior should get in June: a diploma, my book, and a voter registration card. To which end, Jason Kander’s Let America Vote — in partnership with Rock The Vote — has launched CAP, GOWN, VOTE! High schools compete to see who can register the most new voters. If you know any high school juniors or seniors, send them that link. Cap, Gown, Vote! is in its very first days; but, with dozens of mayors signing on to promote it, should grow fast. In many states, you don’t have to be 18 to register — you can pre-register. Even if you’re 15 or 16 and too young to register yourself, you’re not too young to help your high school register others Not a bad thing for a junior to be able to add to her college application — “was an active CGV! participant, registered 31 new voters” This could be the year, thanks to the Parkland tragedy and social media, it finally becomes cool for young people to vote. High school seniors will feel the impact of the election results 10 times as long as the treasured 85-year-olds who never fail to vote. Indeed, maybe we should give folks under 30 three votes, folks 30-59 two, and just one to everybody else. But failing that, how about young people at least use their precious right to help shape their world? Clearly, we old folks have not been doing a perfect job on that score.
So God Made A Dog April 27, 2018 Two minutes. (Thanks, Mel!) And then He split an infinitive. Or maybe not, but being God, surely could have. And now we can, too! It’s okay, says the Economist. (Thanks, Brian!) I’m glad. It was a concept – like “never end a sentence with a preposition” — to which I could never get used. Here’s a three-minute quiz designed to promote New Power, the book I plugged Tuesday. The quiz is interesting on three fronts. First, as an engaging marketing tool that might give you ideas for a marketing tool of your own. Second, as a quick way to get a sense of how different “old power” is from new, and what this widely-praised book is driving at. Third, to give you a sense of where you stand on its grid. (I’m roughly equidistant from Theresa May, Travis Kalanick, and Pope Francis.) It requires no email or credit card data to get your results. Finally, because you’ve likely heard so much about the President on Fox yesterday morning, here’s the full half hour. They finally had to cut him off. (Lawrence O’Donnell’s theory is that Rupert Murdoch grew increasingly alarmed for Trump as he watched, finally calling the control room to order him shut down.) Let’s hope Trump makes a lasting peace for the people of the Korean peninsula, with full denuclearization. A major achievement, if it happens, like Nixon opening up China or Nixon founding the Environmental Protection Agency or Nixon launching the Earned Income Tax Credit. Compared to Trump, Nixon was magnificently competent, thoughtful, moral, honest, and dignified. And I need hardly tell you that Nixon was in a number of ways unforgivably awful.
The Gospel Truth April 26, 2018April 25, 2018 Carl G.: “There is one thing I never see you write about is why Evangelicals support Trump so much. I think the reason is that their leaders worship the same thing… money. This is most obviously demonstrated in what is known as the ‘prosperity bible’ which seems to ignore what Jesus said about greed, the rich, and helping the poor. The LITERAL bible says nothing about abortion — preachers selectively edit it to claim that it does — yet Jesus is very clear what he thinks in Mark 10:17-31 which Evangelicals love to ignore or find excuses for. “Evangelical leaders have become multi-millionaires by conning the elderly and ignorant to give them money to spread the word that instead gets funneled into multiple mansions, private planes, and exorbitant luxury. These leaders also become narcissists with the worship of their crowds who believe they have an exclusive hotline to God. They also know that to appeal to their ‘believers’ they must convince them they’re better than people who look different, have different sexual orientations or different beliefs so as to also ignore Mark 12:31 (Love thy neighbor) and Matthew 7:1-3 (Judge not). In other words, our Evangelical leaders see a soulmate in our President. “Conservative Cal Thomas has a great article asking whom Evangelicals really serve.” This may well paint all Evangelical leaders with too broad a brush; but it’s hard for me to imagine that Jesus, were he back with us today, would oppose closing the gun-show loophole, the carried interest-loophole, or expanding Medicaid to all 50 states.
Around the World In 30 Minutes — For $1,500 April 25, 2018April 24, 2018 Yesterday, communicating with the internet directly from your brain. Today, the TED interview I told you about with Gwynne Shotwell, who runs SpaceX for Elon Musk. Not that I’m in any hurry to climb into one of these rockets — I never even took the Concorde (Charles took it lots). But what a time to be alive, no? Enjoy.
New Power / Brain Power / Flower Power April 24, 2018April 23, 2018 New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World–and How to Make It Work for You. It’s a book by Jeremy Heimans, whom I know a little, and co-author Henry Timms, who runs the 92nd Street Y where I made a paper mâché duck when I was 10 while the cool kid in my class was playing basketball. A situation so embarrassing it left scars — but I digress. David Brooks calls it “the best window I’ve seen into this new world.” Check it out. And if you missed “60 Minutes” Sunday (really? why would you do that?), check out MIT’s Media lab and — among much else — the guy who can search Google with his mind . . . a precursor to our all being able to interface with the web just by thinking. You won’t have to say “Alexa,” you’ll just think your request. As a species, we are on the cusp of becoming not just erectus (kangaroos can do that too), and not just sapiens (a bigger deal: show me a kangaroo with an imagination), but deus — as detailed in the aforeplugged Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari. But there are so many ways this could go wrong (speaking of gods, and humans not getting along, I love this Charles Barsotti cartoon) — even if all the world’s leaders were truly thoughtful, brilliant, and well motivated, like Obama, the Pope, Angela Merkel, Tim Cook, Malala Yusafzai, Mitt Romney, Al Gore. Instead, some of the world’s leaders are murderers and liars — or friendly with murderers and liars — whose motivation seems to be their own wealth and power more than a vision to guide mankind successfully into the future. Which is why, after a long day of doing all you can to register folks and turn them out to vote (fund that effort here), it makes sense to kick back with a beer: It’s not available all that widely, and better on tap then in bottles, but it’s almost summer, and time for Flower Power! (No, I don’t own a piece of the company.)
Two Minutes on Golf April 23, 2018 There’s a line in L’il Abner (the most underrated Broadway musical ever) — in the song, “Progress Is The Root Of All Evil” with the refrain, “bring back the good old days!” — in which the rich guy complains “I went to see the President / They asked me to wait / And though I knew that he was swamped / With matters of state / A fella named Ben Hogan / Walked right through the front gate! Bring back the good old days!” Eisenhower liked to golf. (Ben Hogan was the Tiger Woods of his day.) I thought of this during Chris Hayes’ Thing One, Thing Two segment Friday night. You gotta love these two minutes.
Getting Your $4,000 April 20, 2018April 19, 2018 Billionaire Nick Hanauer summarizes: Paul Ryan and Donald Trump promised you a $4,000 raise. They said the rich and corporations would give it you after they got giant tax cuts. But guess what? It’s not coming. That’s because their entire economic theory of growth is a scam. Here’s the reality: If Trump wanted to give you a raise, he wouldn’t rely on trickle-down lies to do it. A mere $2 increase in the minimum wage would give millions of hard-working Americans a $4,000 raise. A modest updating of our overtime regulations would give a $4,000 raise to tens of millions more. Let’s hold these trickle-down clowns accountable. We can, and we will, vote them out of office this November. If you can, chip in a few dollars so we can drive more action and hold these scam artists accountable. Chip in $5 to fight trickle-down BS. So I did. And read his full piece in USA Today. And re-viewed his seminal 6-minute TED talk — “the rich are not the job creators.” Have a great weekend!
Not About Trump April 19, 2018 But first: discriminating against babies on religious grounds? Really? Watch this just-released 60-second PSA from the Ad Council. And now: This Isn’t About Trump. (But of course it is.) It’s a note to the writer’s Trump-supporting friends. If you have some (I have one!), pass it on. I did — to an older gay friend, Princeton grad, from a liberal neck of the woods, who still supports Trump (go figure). I sent the link and asked for his thoughts. He responded: “This is whiny nonsense. Trump is (a) addressing national problems for far too long ignored or downplayed by admins of both parties (e.g.: NorKorea), (b) advancing the national interest on multiple fronts, and (c), to general astonishment, trying hard to fulfill his election promises. This is understandably unsettling to many folks. Among the very few commentators who have a clue are Selena Zito and Conrad Black. I commend to you this assessment from the National Review, which I think is likely substantially correct. Cheers!” Needless to say, I see it differently.
No Time For By-Standers April 18, 2018April 17, 2018 Roger Cohen, in the indispensable New York Times: Tethered to a Raging Buffoon Called Trump We are tethered to a buffoon. He rages and veers, spreading ugliness, like an oil slick smothering everything in its viscous mantle. He’s about to bomb Syria. He’s not about to bomb Syria. His attention span is nonexistent. He attacks the foundations of our Republic: an independent judiciary, a free press, truth itself. His cabinet looks terrorized, the way Saddam Hussein’s once did. President Donald Trump is dangerous. The main things mitigating the danger are his incompetence and cowardice. We live in a time that teaches how outrage can turn to a shrug, how the unthinkable repeated over and over can induce moral numbness, how a madman’s manic certainties can overwhelm reason. He is very busy; people resist; he opens another front; people shake their heads. It’s hard to remember on Friday what happened on Monday. Trump’s is the unbearable lightness of the charlatan. Disorientation spreads. Trump’s main war, beyond all the military bluster, is on truth. This reflects his instinct for the jugular: Once the distinction between truth and falsehood disappears, anything is possible. There are plenty of examples these days, from Moscow to Budapest, of how “democracies” can be manipulated to the point where they can yield only one result. This is Trump’s objective, and for it he needs a weakened Justice Department, a weakened press and an American public that will believe anything. He has had setbacks but is stubborn. In the mid-1930s, when the world was hurtling toward disaster, Robert Musil, the Austrian author of “The Man Without Qualities,” wrote this on the nature of civilization: “That which we call culture presumably does not directly have the concept of truth as a criterion, but no culture can rest on a crooked relationship to truth.” This passage is cited by Olaf Peters, the curator of a wonderful exhibition called “Before the Fall: German and Austrian Art of the 1930’s” at New York’s Neue Galerie. Peters writes of Hitler and the Nazis that they “ultimately came to power above all because they were against something and wanted to make Germany great again at the expense of others; they were against liberal democracy, against cultural modernism,” and hated both Marxism and Judaism, which they blamed for German humiliation. So, Hitler wanted to make Germany great again. Sure worked out. Trump, of course, also hates “cultural modernism.” He is about a Restoration he equates with restored greatness. Once upon a time the United States won wars, white men ruled, a factory worker in Michigan could afford a couple of quad bikes, and marriage was between a man and a woman. President Trump is about resisting economic, cultural, technological, gender and demographic change. He can’t think, read or reflect; he compensates with urges. History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as tweet. No, the United States is not Weimar, but then Weimar was not the Austro-Hungarian Empire of 1914, nor the French monarchy of 1789. It is not quite true that, as Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa observed, if we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change. Sometimes one gunshot ushers in the obliteration of empire and sumptuous palaces are left to attend to memories. In the best case, it will take a long time to recover from Trump. America’s word is near worthless today. It’s on America’s word that global security has rested since 1945. All the dumb noise Trump makes should not mask the fact that he is a symptom, not a cause. He reflects, and reinforces, a global counterrevolutionary moment, a reaction to the cry of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany that she was “alternativlos”— without alternative. The resurgent nationalists and nativists insist there are alternatives — alternatives to openness, to mass migration, to free trade, to secularism, to Europe’s ever closer union, to the legalization of same-sex marriage, to gender as a spectrum, to diversity, to human rights. They seek the homogeneous, a quest that exacted a terrible 20th century price. This is no time for bystanders. “Before the Fall” reminds us to be vigilant. On April 11, 1939, the future historian Fritz Stern, then age 13, wrote to Fiorello La Guardia, the mayor of New York, who had been outspoken in denouncing Hitler: “When I heard a few minutes ago over the radio that you, Honorable Mayor, don’t want to run once more as Mayor, I was deeply depressed. Although I am a refugee, coming from Germany only months ago, and only a schoolboy, I beseech you to run again. I am quite sure that 80% of all New Yorkers will elect you (and this without concentration camps and Gestapo!). You must stay in City Hall for the sake of this wonderful city and country. If you are no longer Mayor that ‘international gangster in the brown shirt’ will be all too glad.” I am grateful to Elisabeth Sifton, the editor and publisher, for passing along her late husband’s letter. The indignant voices of 13-year-olds are needed today on Trump. Stern would go on to write: “The fragility of freedom is the simplest and deepest lesson of my life and work.” So what specifically to do? I think the best way to help is NOT direct to candidates — though I give to them, too — because so much of that money gets saved up for advertising in the Fall. I don’t think advertising inspires people to register or motivates them to turn out to the polls – let alone to switch political leanings. It’s organizing – particularly in a mid-term – that has all the leverage. And that’s what the DNC exists to facilitate. It’s all about hiring organizers who recruit volunteers – now – who have time to recruit sub-volunteers – who have time to do the one-on-one work of registration and, ultimately, to drive people to the polls (sometimes literally). The organizing snowball grows biggest if it starts rolling from near the top of the hill (April) rather than the bottom (October). With the clock ticking, please don’t hesitate to dazzle MasterCard with your patriotism. I’ll see whatever you do –as many of you already have — to say thanks. I just have to think Washington and Jefferson and Adams (and Franklin and Hamilton and Lincoln) (and Eisenhower and Nixon!) are counting on us to do this. Meanwhile, the beat goes on. Adam Davidson concludes this remarkable piece in the New Yorker: “We are now in the end stages of the Trump Presidency.” No time for bystanders, indeed.
NYT: Not Above The Law April 17, 2018April 17, 2018 WheelTug signed its third airline of the year. To my mind, BOREF remains a spectaculation. Taxes are due today — click here to file for an automatic extension. Also due: your first estimated 2018 payment — for which there is no extension. I’m guessing you’ve seen Sunday’s lead New York Times editorial. If not: “This great nation can tolerate a president who makes mistakes,” declared Senator Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican. “But it cannot tolerate one who makes a mistake and then breaks the law to cover it up.” No, Mr. Hatch wasn’t talking about Donald Trump. It was 1999, and he was talking about Bill Clinton. At that time, the American system — and the flawed yet sometimes heroic people their fellow Americans choose to lead them — underwent, and passed, a hard test: The president, his financial dealings and his personal relationships were painstakingly investigated for years. Prosecutors ultimately accused Mr. Clinton of lying under oath, to cover up a sexual affair. The House of Representatives impeached him, but the Senate declined to convict, and Mr. Clinton stayed in office. The public, which learned in detail about everything investigators believed Mr. Clinton had done wrong, overwhelmingly agreed with the judgment of the Senate. It was a sad and sordid and at times distracting business, but the system worked. Now Mr. Hatch and his fellow lawmakers may be approaching a harsher and more consequential test. We quote his words not to level some sort of accusation of hypocrisy, but to remind us all of what is at stake. News reports point to a growing possibility that President Trump may act to cripple or shut down an investigation by the nation’s top law-enforcement agencies into his campaign and administration. Lawmakers need to be preparing now for that possibility because if and when it comes to pass, they will suddenly find themselves on the edge of an abyss, with the Constitution in their hands. Make no mistake: If Mr. Trump takes such drastic action, he will be striking at the foundation of the American government, attempting to set a precedent that a president, alone among American citizens, is above the law. What can seem now like a political sideshow will instantly become a constitutional crisis, and history will come calling for Mr. Hatch and his colleagues. For months, investigators have been examining whether Mr. Trump’s campaign conspired with the Russian government to undermine American democracy, and whether the president misused his power by obstructing justice in an effort to end that investigation. Until the last few weeks, Mr. Trump had shown restraint, by his standards, anyway. He and his lawyers cooperated with investigators. Mr. Trump never tweeted directly about Robert Mueller, the special counsel, and spoke about him publicly only when asked. Alas, that whiff of higher executive function is gone. Mr. Trump is openly attacking both Mr. Mueller and Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, appointed by Mr. Trump himself. Mr. Rosenstein is overseeing the Russia investigation and signing off on Mr. Mueller’s actions. Of course, this president has been known to huff and puff, to bluff and bluster, and he may be doing no more than that now. He may choose not to fire either man. We know he has already twice told his aides he wanted Mr. Mueller fired, only to be talked out of such rash action. But if the president does move against the investigators, it will be up to Congress to affirm the rule of law, the separation of powers and the American constitutional order. The miserable polarization and partisan anger that have been rising in American life for decades will hit a new crescendo, and that will present congressional Republicans with a heavy burden indeed. Many of them are not fans of this president. Republicans used to warn the nation about Mr. Trump openly, back when they thought they could still protect their party from him. Here’s a short sampling: “malignant clown,” “national disgrace,” “complete idiot,” “a sociopath, without a conscience or feelings of guilt, shame or remorse,” “graceless and divisive,” “predatory and reprehensible,” flawed “beyond mere moral shortcomings,” “unsound, uninformed, unhinged and unfit,” “a character and temperament unfit for the leader of the free world,” “A bigot. A misogynist. A fraud. A bully.” Some still say these sorts of things, albeit anonymously. Just last week, one of the president’s defenders in Congress told a conservative columnist, “It’s like Forrest Gump won the presidency, but an evil, really [expletive] stupid Forrest Gump.” Yet if Mr. Trump goes after Mr. Mueller or Mr. Rosenstein, even Republicans who have misgivings about the president might be inclined to fall into line. They may resent what feels like an endless investigation, one that is endangering their agenda; or they may resent partisan attacks on Mr. Trump. Such frustrations — like ones Democrats vented when Mr. Clinton was in investigators’ sights — are certainly understandable. Republicans may also find themselves tempted by the political running room they would have with the investigation ended and the three branches of government under their control. Maybe — and this is the scariest contingency to contemplate — Republican leaders would calculate that with their support, or mere acquiescence, Mr. Trump could get away with it. The overwhelming majority of Americans, including most Republicans, want Mr. Mueller to keep his job, and perhaps a groundswell of revulsion at unchecked presidential power would follow any action against the special counsel. But many Americans, weary of the shouting in Washington, might dismiss the whole thing as another food fight. We can be fairly certain that the pressure on Republican lawmakers from the minority of Americans who support Mr. Trump, as well as from the likes of Fox News and Sinclair, would be intense. Of course, it’s when overriding your principles is the easy thing to do that you have an urgent responsibility, and opportunity, to demonstrate that you have some. Look at what’s happening in Missouri right now. The state’s Republican governor, Eric Greitens, has been accused of sexual assault and coercion, and is scheduled to face trial next month on a felony charge of invasion of privacy. It’s a scandal of Trumpian proportions, and Mr. Greitens is responding with Trumpian bravado, calling the investigation and prosecution a “political witch hunt.” Yet the legislative report detailing his misbehavior was bipartisan, and top state Republicans have spoken out forcefully. They recognize that Mr. Greitens is unfit. (They also see a threat to their political interests, but the two can go hand in hand.) Or look at Watergate. We may think of it now as a two-year drama with an inevitable end, the takedown of a president who tried to cover up a criminal conspiracy. But many people forget how close President Richard Nixon came to surviving the affair. He was forced from office only because enough Republican leaders recognized the legitimacy of the investigation and stood up to him. And even then, it took the revelation of incriminating recordings. No recordings have come out this time — yet. A few senior Republicans have been saying the right things — including Mr. Hatch. He tweeted that anyone telling the president to fire Mr. Mueller “does not have the President or the nation’s best interest at heart.” Senator Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, warned Mr. Trump that firing Mr. Mueller would be “the beginning of the end of his presidency.” That’s all necessary and good. But it’s not enough. More Republicans need to make it clear that they won’t tolerate any action against either man, and that firing Mr. Mueller would be, as Senator Charles Grassley said, “suicide.” Mr. Mueller’s investigation has already yielded great benefit to the country, including the indictments of 13 Russians and three companies for trying to undermine the presidential election. None of us can know if prosecutors will eventually point the finger at the president himself. But should Mr. Trump move to hobble or kill the investigation, he would darken rather than dispel the cloud of suspicion around him. Far worse, he would free future presidents to politicize American justice. That would be a danger to every American, of whatever political leaning. The president is not a king but a citizen, deserving of the presumption of innocence and other protections, yet also vulnerable to lawful scrutiny. We hope Mr. Trump recognizes this. If he doesn’t, how Republican lawmakers respond will shape the future not only of this presidency and of one of the country’s great political parties, but of the American experiment itself. Embedded in the Times editorial are a box of Trump tweets and another of Republican quotes. So it’s better to read the Times directly. The tweets, especially: can this really be happening? Better still, have links to all the Times opinions delivered to your inbox daily. Still with me? [Spectaculation: noun, a spectacular speculation.] Still with me? It will be organizing, not advertising, that produces the turn-out we need to win big in November . . . and the organizing snowball grows biggest if it starts rolling from the top of the hill (April) rather than the bottom (October). Click here to leverage your resources and get the ball rolling.