The GOP Once Trump Leaves January 25, 2019January 23, 2019 From the Huffington Post: Two Years In, The Republican Party Faces An Uncertain Future In Trump’s Image Whether by resignation, impeachment, a 2020 loss or finishing a second term, Donald Trump one day will no longer lead the GOP he has so radically transformed. So then what? By S.V. Date . . . Trump’s chaotic, fact-free personality cult thus far has no obvious heir apparent. At the same time, the president’s daily dishonesties, repeated insults of large segments of the electorate and likely collusion with a foreign power to win his election may have poisoned his adopted party’s brand for many elections to come. “We’re in a demographic death spiral,” said Republican consultant John Weaver, a top aide to former Ohio GOP Gov. John Kasich. “If we were Coca-Cola or Delta or any product on the market, would you be happy that your customers, your base of support, were old, white and closed-minded?” . . . . . . “He hijacked our party, and people went along with it,” said Weaver, who had previously worked for Arizona Sen. John McCain. “And we have try to fix it for the sake of the country.” That, though, may be easier said than done . . . For Weaver, the danger of leaving behind a “Trump party” is the biggest threat of all ― a generation of local, state and federal elected officials mimicking Trump’s verbiage. “How do you bottle up all that racism and misogyny that homophobia that he’s unleashed on the country?” he said. “The party is going to pay a heavy price for this, and they should.” If they can nominate people of decency, integrity, and competence — of whom they have many — the Republicans may attract enough votes to make up for the torch carriers they’ll lose (“some of them very fine people,” according to Trump). But can people of decency, integrity, and competence make it through a Republican primary in this new world Trump has created? I like to think so. Have a great weekend.
What Happens If Putin Wins? January 24, 2019January 23, 2019 So far, Putin’s managed, via Trump, to end the American Century, weaken our alliances, decimate our State Department, shut down our government, coarsen our discourse, and deepen our divisions. What, Salon asks Ambassador McFaul, if he wins?
Your New iPhone January 23, 2019January 22, 2019 Well, okay — my new iPhone. An XR, which is a little bigger — and a good bit cheaper — than the XS. Upgrading was seamless; and look at all the new things you can do! One feature that looked amazing was the ability to say, “Hey, Siri, what song is this?” So I said to the trusty Echo Show that sits to the left of my computer: “Alexa, play Forever Young.” And as it started to play, I said — to the thin air, because the phone was someplace on the table behind me — “Hey, Siri, what song is this?” And she said, “Okay, let’s listen.” After a few seconds — even before Alphaville had begun singing or the lyrics had begun scrolling up Echo’s screen — Siri said, “It sounds like ‘Forever Young’ by Alphaville.” To which I replied, “That’s —-ing amazing.” I had never even heard of Alphaville. I had been thinking of the Bob Dylan and Rod Stewart originals (backstory here). So then I got Alexa to play Bob Dylan’s version — and again, even before he started singing, Siri nailed it: “I’m pretty sure that’s ‘Forever Young’ by Bob Dylan.” Shazam! (Shazam was the app that invented this capability years ago. Apple bought it last year.) I said, “Hey, Siri: show my pictures of Italy.” Moments later: an album of all 234 pictures I took in October 2017. There’s more. I know Androids are cool, too, and cheaper. But wow. FANH: First suggested here at $5.40, when it topped $30 a year ago I suggested selling half (and did). It’s back down to $22 — in part on a nasty report by short sellers who say it’s a fraud. My friend who owned a ton doesn’t think it’s a fraud. He calls it a “hold.” I’ve sold all the shares I had in my IRA, where there’s no tax to pay; but am holding some I had elsewhere . . . nervous about the headwinds, but thinking it might do just fine.
Are We There Yet? January 22, 2019January 20, 2019 The case, as argued in the Atlantic, grows more compelling by the day. Republican senators might prefer resignation so they don’t have to be seen as having voted against him. Trump might well prefer it as well, if a deal were struck to mitigate his family’s legal jeopardy. — Pat Bagley in the Salt Lake Tribune
McConnell’s Norm January 20, 2019January 19, 2019 I’ve testified on Capitol Hill a total of once: to a Senate subcommittee. The chair was Mitch McConnell and on the issue at hand — moderate, sensible tort reform* — I was on his side. He was unpleasant anyway. In the 20-some years that have followed, it’s my view that McConnell is right up there with Dick Cheney in the warmth of his spirit and the harm he’s done. So it was with some interest that I read “How Mitch McConnell’s weak-kneed cowardice makes him the perfect target for agents of power and influence.” (And this from the Dallas Morning News: “How Putin’s oligarchs funneled millions into GOP campaigns.”) It is a norm, not a law, that only the Majority Leader can bring a bill to the floor for a vote. It’s time to suspend that norm and reopen the government. *Read it here (chapter 4) or get a glimpse here.
More on the Conversation January 18, 2019January 16, 2019 How do we talk to each other? How do we consider ideas on their merits, not their sources? Today, Garrison Keillor tells a story. But handing the mike first to one of you, who asks that I use his initials only. J.L. writes: This winter I’ve started going to a CCC-era stone hut on a hill in Tallman Mountain state park near me. Something about the place has been attracting me as never before. A man showed up around 4 PM as I sat by the fire I had built and started talking about the remaining piece of the old Tappan Zee Bridge, about to be blown up on Tuesday morning. As you know, I tend to ramble and coax subjects in various directions, and after some talk about September 11, I brought up the subject of the wall. I found I had been talking with someone who believes in the wall. He said he has friends who work in law enforcement in Arizona and he described a situation that sounds like Trump’s description. But what amazed me the most: he claimed that the immigrants who come here are so hateful, they are using the lettuce as toilet paper in the fields on purpose to get back at Americans for having more than they do. He claimed it was a fact and I could look it up if I wanted. I recognize demonization when I hear it — but he was intelligent and had shown a caring attitude in how he had talked with me earlier, so I did my best to maintain my sense of compassion and my ability to help others expand themselves. Instead of attacking him, I examined out loud what he said, let him know I would respect his opinion yet not believe it. I shared the suffering I have been through in my life, how there have been times I needed the safety net, how I believe most people (including him) want to be good at heart and do right by others. I did my best to plant seeds in his heart and mind in hope that he may someday evolve. I tried to make the point that people tend to demonize the stranger. And as I said it, I though of Ancient Greek culture, and how revered the stranger was. And how “the stranger as guest” still is revered among my Cypriot Greek friends. I also brought up that even if everything he says about the immigrants pouring over the border were true, the wall is unlikely to work. Interestingly, he didn’t disagree with that point. I can’t readily explain the intensity of the experience, which ended as darkness fell so he needed to leave before his car got locked in the park for the night, but I had to share with you my sadness and shock at hearing the toilet paper story. Where there is hate, I try to sow love without being a fool. But after he drove off and I started walking home, I was seized with sadness and started to cry. Garrison Keillor’s posted last month about a time when people knew their neighbors: The annual marathon ran by our house in St. Paul Sunday morning, a phalanx of flashing lights of police motorcycles, followed by Elisha Barno of Kenya and other African runners, and later the women’s winner, Sinke Biyadgilgn, and a stream of thousands of others, runners, joggers, walkers, limpers. For the sedentary writer standing on the curb, it’s a vision of hard work I am very grateful not to have undertaken. In the time I’d spend training to run 26 miles and 385 yards, I could write a book. When you finish a marathon, all you have to show for it is a pile of damp smelly clothes. Our house is near the end of the course and so we stand yelling “You’re looking good!” at the runners and “It’s all downhill from here!” but after running 25 miles, most people don’t look so good. They look like refugees hustling to the dock to board the last ship leaving Gomorrah. And as the slower runners pass, it feels rather weird to be a bystander at the suffering of one’s fellow humans. Public whippings have been outlawed in this country for at least a century. It is unbecoming to take pleasure in the suffering of another. And that was when my neighbors turned their backs on the marathon and started commingling on the sidewalk, which is the true beauty of a marathon. It has become rare for neighbors in America to know each other. This avenue in St. Paul is a series of cloisters, people locked in small spaces and depending on media for their social awareness, and I am one of them. We work hard, fewer of us attend church, we shop at far-flung markets, and we don’t let our kids roam the neighborhood freely. And so, on Sunday morning, men and women in their skivvies jogging past, neighbors I barely know came over to say hi. This was embarrassing. I grew up in a tight semi-rural neighborhood back in the Fifties. Families of modest means who bought an acre of cornfield and built a house on it. My family was strict evangelical Christian who believed in the imminence of the Rapture and we had Catholics to the west and an outspoken atheist to the east. He believed that when you die, you go into a hole in the ground and that’s the end of the story. He and my dad had one thing in common — they each built their own home from the ground up — and so they shared tools, consulted each other on construction problems, and when it came time for Dad to raise the roof beam, Ted came over and helped. They did not discuss theology. Dad ignored Ted’s ever-present Pall Mall and the bottle of Grain Belt. Ted avoided bad language around my dad. We were neighbors, we made accommodations. Our family didn’t have a TV set — too worldly — but Mother adored Lucille Ball and so on Monday nights she found a reason to go next door and stand amid clouds of cigarette smoke and watch “I Love Lucy.” Once or twice, she may have given them a gospel tract, “Where Will You Spend Eternity?” But we got along. It was the children who bound the neighborhood together. Children roamed freely back then, formed alliances, invented their own fantasy games, rode their bikes around country roads, found abandoned barns and sheds to play in, were invited into the homes of people our parents had never met and maybe didn’t approve of. From the age of seven, I was able to walk out of the house and never be asked, “Where are you going?” I simply went. I saw what I saw, no supervision, no play dates. All the stories about angry divisiveness in the country — the neighbors standing in my driveway didn’t talk about that. What is of interest to us here are our kids, work, where we’ve been lately, and where to go to find the last of the fresh northern tomatoes. A man promised that if he found some at a roadside market he knows, he’d give me half, which is the sort of divisiveness I like. We did not talk about how remarkable it is that we have become so distant from people who live so near. It was good for my parents to live next door to an atheist. We need a neighbor-to-neighbor exchange program. Close the streets and commingle. You don’t learn manners from social media. I did look up “lettuce as toilet paper” and found this. It describes a problem not of hateful immigrants but of McDonald’s not adequately training employees in (at least) one of its U.S. 14,000 restaurants. The solution is not a 2000-mile wall. Have a great weekend. Invite your neighbor for a cup of hot chocolate?
Putin’s Sneak Attack: He’s Winning January 17, 2019January 16, 2019 As reported Tuesday: Trump Discussed Pulling U.S. From NATO WASHINGTON — There are few things that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia desires more than the weakening of NATO, the military alliance among the United States, Europe and Canada that has deterred Soviet and Russian aggression for 70 years. Last year, President Trump suggested a move tantamount to destroying NATO: the withdrawal of the United States. . . . [T]he president’s repeatedly stated desire to withdraw from NATO is raising new worries among national security officials amid growing concern about Mr. Trump’s efforts to keep his meetings with Mr. Putin secret from even his own aides . . . A move to withdraw from the alliance, in place since 1949, “would be one of the most damaging things that any president could do to U.S. interests,” said Michèle A. Flournoy, an under secretary of defense under President Barack Obama. “It would destroy 70-plus years of painstaking work across multiple administrations, Republican and Democratic, to create perhaps the most powerful and advantageous alliance in history,” Ms. Flournoy said in an interview. “And it would be the wildest success that Vladimir Putin could dream of.” . . . . . . An American withdrawal from the alliance would accomplish all that Mr. Putin has been trying to put into motion, the officials said — essentially, doing the Russian leader’s hardest and most critical work for him. It’s a much longer piece — read it all. But that’s the nub. America suffered a devastating sneak attack December 7, 1941 — but no one questioned that it was real, or who attacked (it was not some 400-pound guy sitting on his bed); and it served to unite the country in common purpose. America suffered another devastating sneak attack in 2016 — and about 40% of Americans still don’t even realize it happened. Or that it is ongoing. Or how it is weakening us. Instead, they’ve been made to fear immigrants (who are entering the country in ever lower numbers). Against a far more powerful adversary, judo master Putin is winning. Whether Trump is a witting or unwitting Putin tool, he has already done enormous damage. I inherited the happy gene, so I’m hoping for the best and enjoying every minute of my currently awesome life. (I have hot water! As much as I want! Any time I want it!) Yet even under the best of circumstances, these are challenging times. And with an incompetent lying sociopath in office, seemingly doing Putin’s bidding? And Republican enablers in the Senate? I’d say, “have a great weekend!” but it’s only Thursday. Tomorrow, something more upbeat: How we can lower the heat and talk to each other. We have loads of common ground.
But Mainly . . . There Is No Crisis January 16, 2019January 15, 2019 Libertarian Republican Senator Rand Paul is going to Canada for surgery. Better care than he can get here. If he were Canadian, it would even be free. The largest airline in Africa, Ethiopian, becomes the first of 2019 to sign with WheelTug. (Eight airlines signed in 2018.) Will we ever see our reward? It took a quarter century for anyone to make a dime from the invention of television. More than a quarter century of imprisonment before Nelson Mandela became President of South Africa. It is straws like these at which I grasp. From Politico: The Only Impeachment Guide You’ll Ever Need. No impeachment effort should be considered until the Mueller report is released. But I liked the title of the article, hoping it might drive subliminal sales. And by the way? As Ted Koppel notes elegantly and accurately here: however Trump leaves office (assuming, unlike Putin, Xi, et al, he at some point does), he won’t be gone at all. His twitter feed and tens of millions of believers will all too likely keep him close to center stage. The norm of leaving office for quiet retirement or amazing good works (The Carter Center, The Clinton Global Initiative, The Obama Foundation) — one assumes Trump will be no more respectful of this norm than any other. But mainly, here is Fareed Zakaria, writing in the Washington Post: Let’s be clear: There is no crisis. The number of undocumented immigrants in the United States has been declining for a decade. The number of people caught trying to sneak across the southern border has been on a downward trend for almost 20 years and is lower than it was in 1973. As has often been pointed out, far more people are coming to the U.S. legally and then overstaying their visas than are crossing the southern border illegally. But it’s important to put these numbers in context. More than 52 million foreigners entered the U.S. legally in fiscal year 2017. Of this cohort, 98.7 percent left on time and in accordance with their visas. A large portion of those remaining left after a brief overstay, and the best government estimate is that maybe 0.8 percent of those who entered the country in 2017 had stayed on by mid-2018. As for terrorism, the Cato Institute has found that, from 1975 to 2017, “there have been zero people murdered or injured in terror attacks committed by illegal border crossers on U.S. soil.” As for drugs, the greatest danger comes from fentanyl and fentanyl-like substances, which are at the heart of the opioid crisis. Most of this comes from China, either shipped directly to the United States or smuggled through Canada or Mexico. Trump has addressed the root of this problem by pressing the Chinese government to crack down on fentanyl exports, a far more effective strategy than building a physical barrier along the Mexican border. Even the Drug Enforcement Administration acknowledged in a report last year that while the southern border is the conduit for most of the heroin entering the United States, the drug typically comes through legal points of entry, hidden in cars or mixed in with other goods in tractor-trailers. In other words, a wall would do little to stanch the flow. And yet, the power of the presidency is such that Trump has been able to place this issue center-stage, shut down the government, force television networks to run an error-ridden, scaremongering Oval Office address, and now perhaps invoke emergency powers. This sounds like something that would be done by Presidents Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan or Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, not the head of the world’s leading constitutional republic. When the U.S. government has created this sense of emergency and crisis in the past, it has almost always been to frighten people, expand presidential powers and muzzle opposition. From the Alien and Sedition Acts to the Red Scare to warnings about Saddam Hussein’s arsenal, the United States has experienced periods of paranoia and foolishness. We look back on them and recognize that the problems were not nearly as grave, the enemy was not nearly as strong and the United States was actually far more secure. The actions taken — suspending civil rights, interning U.S. citizens and noncitizens of Japanese descent, taking the nation to war — were almost always terrible mistakes, often with disastrous long-term consequences. And yet, presidential powers have kept expanding. Modern media culture has made it easier for presidents to set the agenda, because the White House is a central and perpetual point of focus and now receives far more attention than it ever had. Trump has managed to use this reality and turn good news into bad, turn security into danger and almost single-handedly fabricate a national crisis where there is none. This whole episode highlights a problem that has become apparent in these past two years. The U.S. president has too many powers, formal and informal. This was not intended by the founders, who made Congress the dominant branch of government, and it is not how the country has been governed for much of its history. But over the past nine decades, the presidency has grown in formal and informal authority. I have been an advocate of a strong executive for most of my life. I don’t much like how Congress operates. I now realize that my views were premised on the assumption that the president would operate within the bounds of laws, norms and ethics. I now believe that an urgent task for the next few years is for Congress to write laws that explicitly limit and check the powers of the president. I would take polarization over Putinism any day. The only crisis is Trump. America suffered a devastating sneak attack December 7, 1941 — but no one questioned that it was real, or who attacked (it was not some 400-pound guy sitting on his bed); and it served to unite the country in common purpose. America suffered another sneak attack in 2016. It is tearing the country apart, shutting down the government, handing global leadership to China . . . and teaching what sorts of lessons to our kids? Against a far more powerful adversary, judo master Putin is winning, big-time.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: The Green New Deal January 15, 2019January 15, 2019 [File your 4th quarterly estimated tax today (if any money is due). Here are the forms and instructions. You can skip this if you file your complete return by January 31.] Yesterday, I suggested that Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are not the unhinged lefties they are made out to be. Warren, the former moderate Republican, is in fact an ardent — enlightened — capitalist. So what about AOC? Unhinged? Well, for starters, she “believes in” science. That makes her more hinged than many of her Republican colleagues. From the Society for Science: . . . In 2007, Alexandria placed second in the International Science and Engineering Fair in the Microbiology category with her project on the effect of antioxidants on roundworms. . . . Alexandria chose compounds with the highest cited number of antioxidant capabilities and observed how they impacted longevity of the roundworms. In some cases, lifespan was prolonged for as many as 33 days, almost doubling the nematode’s normal lifespan. Her findings indicated that antioxidants could potentially help prevent degenerative illnesses induced by oxidative stress. Science was Alexandria’s first passion. According to an interview with the New Yorker, she had aspired to be an obstetrician-gynecologist, yet even as a young scientist, she saw politics in science research. As her high school science teacher Michael Blueglass recounted to the New York Times, “she was interested in research to help people in all areas, including developing nations, not just for the people with money.” Alexandria went on to attend Boston University, where she started out as a science major, but later graduated with a degree in economics and international relations. In Congress, Alexandria will certainly make use of the skills that helped her succeed in science fair: communication and public speaking skills in addition to persistence and a logical approach to problem solving. You can watch her recent interview on CBS News’ 60 Minutes with Anderson Cooper where she discusses her upbringing and what brought her to Capitol Hill. As you’ve probably seen, Ocasio-Cortez advocates for the Green New Deal. Something about eating free-range broccoli and composting your dryer lint, one presumes. (OK, I kid: it’s organic broccoli.) And yes: we should eat less meat and compost our dryer lint. Much less meat, in fact. But in case this is new to you, take 3 minutes to find out what the Green New Deal actually is — because you might find yourself advocating for it, too. As explained by a Nobel-winning economist: “The grassroots movement behind the Green New Deal offers a ray of hope to the badly battered establishment: they should embrace it, flesh it out, and make it part of the progressive agenda. We need something positive to save us from the ugly wave of populism, nativism, and proto-fascism that is sweeping the world.” In full: From Yellow Vests to the Green New Deal Jan 7, 2019 Joseph E. Stiglitz NEW YORK – It’s old news that large segments of society have become deeply unhappy with what they see as “the establishment,” especially the political class. The “Yellow Vest” protests in France, triggered by President Emmanuel Macron’s move to hike fuel taxes in the name of combating climate change, are but the latest example of the scale of this alienation. There are good reasons for today’s disgruntlement: four decades of promises by political leaders of both the center left and center right, espousing the neoliberal faith that globalization, financialization, deregulation, privatization, and a host of related reforms would bring unprecedented prosperity, have gone unfulfilled. While a tiny elite seems to have done very well, large swaths of the population have fallen out of the middle class and plunged into a new world of vulnerability and insecurity. Even leaders in countries with low but increasing inequality have felt their public’s wrath.1 By the numbers, France looks better than most, but it is perceptions, not numbers, that matter; even in France, which avoided some of the extremism of the Reagan-Thatcher era, things are not going well for many. When taxes on the very wealthy are lowered, but raised for ordinary citizens to meet budgetary demands (whether from far-off Brussels or from well-off financiers), it should come as no surprise that some are angry. The Yellow Vests’ refrain speaks to their concerns: “The government talks about the end of the world. We are worried about the end of the month.” There is, in short, a gross mistrust in governments and politicians, which means that asking for sacrifices today in exchange for the promise of a better life tomorrow won’t pass muster. And this is especially true of “trickle down” policies: tax cuts for the rich that eventually are supposed to benefit everyone else. When I was at the World Bank, the first lesson in policy reform was that sequencing and pacing matter. The promise of the Green New Deal that is now being championed by progressives in the United States gets both of these elements right. The Green New Deal is premised on three observations: First, there are unutilized and underutilized resources – especially human talent – that can be used effectively. Second, if there were more demand for those with low and medium skills, their wages and standards of living would rise. Third, a good environment is an essential part of human well-being, today and in the future. If the challenges of climate change are not met today, huge burdens will be imposed on the next generation. It is just wrong for this generation to pass these costs on to the next. It is better to leave a legacy of financial debts, which our children can somehow manage, than to hand down a possibly unmanageable environmental disaster. Almost 90 years ago, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt responded to the Great Depression with his New Deal, a bold package of reforms that touched almost every aspect of the American economy. But it is more than the symbolism of the New Deal that is being invoked now. It is its animating purpose: putting people back to work, in the way that FDR did for the US, with its crushing unemployment of the time. Back then, that meant investments in rural electrification, roads, and dams. Economists have debated how effective the New Deal was – its spending was probably too low and not sustained enough to generate the kind of recovery the economy needed. Nonetheless, it left a lasting legacy by transforming the country at a crucial time. So, too, for a Green New Deal: It can provide public transportation, linking people with jobs, and retrofit the economy to meet the challenge of climate change. At the same time, these investments themselves will create jobs. It has long been recognized that decarbonization, if done correctly, would be a great job creator, as the economy prepares itself for a world with renewable energy. Of course, some jobs– for example, those of the 53,000 coal miners in the US – will be lost, and programs are needed to retrain such workers for other jobs. But to return to the refrain: sequencing and pacing matter. It would have made more sense to begin with creating new jobs before the old jobs were destroyed, to ensure that the profits of the oil and coal companies were taxed, and the hidden subsidies they receive eliminated, before asking those who are barely getting by to pony up more. The Green New Deal sends a positive message of what government can do, for this generation of citizens and the next. It can deliver today what those who are suffering today need most – good jobs. And it can deliver the protections from climate change that are needed for the future. The Green New Deal will have to be broadened, and this is especially true in countries like the US, where many ordinary citizens lack access to good education, adequate health care, or decent housing. The grassroots movement behind the Green New Deal offers a ray of hope to the badly battered establishment: they should embrace it, flesh it out, and make it part of the progressive agenda. We need something positive to save us from the ugly wave of populism, nativism, and proto-fascism that is sweeping the world. One need not agree with every position AOC takes or everything she says or tweets to welcome her passion and eagerness to make progress on the challenges we face.
Elizabeth Warren: Not Who You Think January 14, 2019January 13, 2019 Before you buy into the notion that Elizabeth Warren — and, for that matter, young Alexandria Ocasio-Cortzez — are unhinged lefties, here are a couple of things you may not have known. Elizabeth Warren was a moderate Republican until her forties. “”I was a Republican because I thought that those were the people who best supported markets. I think that is not true anymore,” she explains. A young hedge-funder who just maxed out to her campaign tells me that “everything she’s advocating for is about protecting and promoting capitalism, in which she ardently believes. It’s just that something has gotten very messed up over the past few decades and it’s led to markets not functioning in ways that promote the public interest. For example, read Jonathan Tepper’s new book The Myth of Capitalism for its description of the collapse of antitrust enforcement. Antitrust enforcement is not at odds with free markets; it’s necessary for free markets to function. Without it, capitalism will become untenable over time and you’ll end up with public demand for straight-up socialists. Warren has been an advocate for a capitalism that works for her whole career. Watch this excellent documentary in which she and the great right-wing personal finance radio personality Dave Ramsey address the ways in which a perversion of markets is hurting people. The idea that promoting capitalism requires no price be paid by companies like Wells Fargo or the for-profit colleges is nuts. Her proposals are about promoting a return to the institutions of capitalism that led to the greatest period of widespread prosperity in global history. For instance, her proposal that workers have minority representation on corporate boards is about promoting the traditional role of public company boards. Contra what Paul Singer et al would like the public to think, corporate boards are not supposed to represent exclusively the interests of shareholders. This belief has led to the rise of predatory capitalism that hurts everyone, including, in the end, the shareholders. See Lynn Stout’s The Shareholder Value Myth: How Putting Shareholders First Harms Investors, Corporations, and the Public. In short, Warren is the only candidate who has devoted her entire career to fighting for the most important issue in America: free markets that work.” Tomorrow: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. [As to the shutdown, can someone please send this to Ann Coulter? Four minutes of common sense from the Mexican border.]