Author: A.T.

Neither will make you money, but both are amazing.  Bill Broder’s Red Notice is subtitled: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice.  I listened to it on tape.  Sam Polk’s For the Love of Money is a riveting memoir.  I read it with my eyeballs.

Both are the stories of super-driven young men, one of whom became very, very rich; the other of whom could have.

Enjoy!

You know the Sondheim lyric — “Careful the things you say / children will listen.”  (Don’t know or remember it well? Listen.)

It turns out, kids are listening to Donald Trump.

‘The Trump Effect’: Hatred, Fear And Bullying On The Rise In Schools
A new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center shines a light on a disturbing trend.

Summarized here on the Huffington Post or read the whole report here.

What kind of nation do we want to be?

Two Washington Post headlines tell it all:

Young Brits are angry about older people deciding their future, but most didn’t vote

Three-quarters of Brits aged 18-24 voted to remain in the E.U.  But only 36% of them turned out — versus 83% of those over 65.

Brexit leaders are walking back some of their biggest promises

Guess what: much of what the “leave” proponents promised simply wasn’t true.

As my mother used to say, “Let it be a lesson to us all.”

Register, kids. Turn out to vote.

Or you get Bush (“by far the vast majority of [my proposed tax cuts],” he lied, “go to people at the bottom of the economic ladder”).

Or Trump.

By way of exquisite contrast, here is President Obama, profiled in the New York Times. To say we’ve been fortunate to have him these past seven-and-a-half years is — to my mind — spectacular understatement.  My favorite anecdote: the “white / medium” story.

Finally, to return to Brexit, here may be the solution.  Parliament should say:

Though we are not legally bound by the referendum, we respect the will of the people and will follow it. It is for precisely that reason we are driven to a highly unusual — but we believe essential — course of action. Because the will of the people — now that more facts are out and attention has truly focused — seems strongly to “remain,” we feel an obligation to be certain the will of the people truly is to “leave.” If it is, as it may be — so be it. But too much is at stake not to be sure. If a significant majority of the population prefer to remain — especially the young, who will live with the consequences of this decision so much longer than their grandparents — then it is our duty to take that fully into account.

No?

Two Washington Post headlines tell it all:

Young Brits are angry about older people deciding their future, but most didn’t vote

Three-quarters of Brits aged 18-24 voted to remain in the E.U.  But only 36% of them turned out — versus 83% of those over 65.

Brexit leaders are walking back some of their biggest promises

Guess what: much of what the “leave” proponents promised simply wasn’t true.

As my mother used to say, “Let it be a lesson to us all.”

Register, kids. Turn out to vote.

Or you get Bush (“by far the vast majority of [my proposed tax cuts],” he lied, “go to people at the bottom of the economic ladder”).

Or Trump.

By way of exquisite contrast, here is President Obama, profiled in the New York Times. To say we’ve been fortunate to have him these past seven-and-a-half years is — to my mind — spectacular understatement.  My favorite anecdote: the “white / medium” story.

Finally, to return to Brexit, here may be the solution.  Parliament should say:

Though we are not legally bound by the referendum, we respect the will of the people and will follow it. It is for precisely that reason we are driven to a highly unusual — but we believe essential — course of action. Because the will of the people — now that more facts are out and attention has truly focused — seems strongly to “remain,” we feel an obligation to be certain the will of the people truly is to “leave.” If it is, as it may be — so be it. But too much is at stake not to be sure. If a significant majority of the population prefer to remain — especially the young, who will live with the consequences of this decision so much longer than their grandparents — then it is our duty to take that fully into account.

No?

Michael Arnovitz writes (“Thinking About Hillary — A Plea for Reason”):

. . .the claim that Hillary is innately dishonest is simply accepted as a given. It is an accusation and conviction so ingrained in the conversation about her that any attempt to even question it is often met with shock. And yet here’s the thing: it’s not actually true. Politifact, the Pulitzer prize-winning fact-checking project, determined for example that Hillary was actually the most truthful candidate (of either Party) in the 2016 election season. And in general Politifact has determined that Hillary is more honest than most (but not all) politicians they have tracked over the years.

Also instructive is Jill Abramson’s recent piece in the Guardian. Abramson, a former reporter for the Wall Street Journal as well as former Executive Editor of the New York Times, had this to say about Hillary’s honesty: “As an editor I’ve launched investigations into her business dealings, her fundraising, her foundation and her marriage. As a reporter my stories stretch back to Whitewater. I’m not a favorite in Hillaryland. That makes what I want to say next surprising. Hillary Clinton is fundamentally honest and trustworthy.”

. . .In January of 1996, while Whitewater investigations were underway but unfinished, conservative writer William Safire wrote a scathing and now-famous essay about Hillary Clinton entitled, “Blizzard of Lies”.

. . . I am no political historian, but as far as I can tell this short essay was the birth of the “Hillary is a Liar” meme. Now to be clear, most conservatives already strongly disliked her. They had been upset with her for some time because she had refused to play the traditional First Lady role. And they were horrified by her attempt to champion Universal Health coverage. But if you look for the actual reasons people didn’t like her back at that time, you won’t see ongoing accusations of her being “crooked” or a “liar”. Instead, the most common opinion seemed to be that she was a self-righteous leftist who considered anyone with other views to be morally inferior. In short, the prevailing anti-Hillary accusation was not that she was unrelentingly dishonest, but that she was just intolerably smug.

After the Safire piece however, this all changed. Republicans, who learned from Nixon never to let a good propaganda opportunity pass if they could help it, repeated the accusations of mendacity non-stop to anyone who would broadcast or print them. And if you doubt the staying power of Safire’s piece, type the phrase “congenital liar” into a Google search along with “Hillary Clinton” and see what happens. To this day, that exact phrase is still proudly used by many on the right. This, even though Safire was eventually proven wrong about everything he had written. And despite the fact that he stated himself that he would have to “eat crow” if she were ever cleared, Safire never apologized or even acknowledged his many errors once that happened. Because as we all know, swift-boating means never having to say you’re sorry. . . .

☞ Ironically, to those who say Hillary is dishonest, the truth doesn’t matter.

There’s much more to the piece than this, so if you are anti-Hillary but have an open mind . . . or pro-Hillary but wish you liked her better . . . or a huge Hillary fan but need help persuading others . . . read the whole thing.

Have a great, long, patriotic weekend.  It’s okay to recognize that the previous eight Clinton years were a time of peace and all-boats-rising prosperity.  It’s okay to recognize that the last seven-and-a-half Obama years brought us back from the brink of depression and would have had us truly soaring if the Republican Congress had not blocked the jobs act that would have put millions to work revitalizing our infrastructure, had not blocked the minimum wage hike that would have decreased reliance on government welfare while increasing consumption, had not blocked the Senate-passed comprehensive immigration reform that economists agreed would have boosted our economy still further.

It’s okay to hold leaders like Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and, yes, for sure, Hillary Clinton — none of them perfect, but each of them awesomely talented, their entire lives dedicated to making a better, fairer, more sustainable world — in the highest regard.  It’s not fashionable, but it’s okay.  And — especially when you grade them on a curve with folks like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Dan Quayle, and (preposterously) Donald Trump — it’s spot on.

China is urging its citizens to halve their meat consumption — for a big climate impact. Watch Arnold Schwarzenegger and Avatar director James Cameron make the pitch.

Good for your health, good for your wallet, good for the planet.

(Thanks, Stephen.)

Michael Wolff’s Donald Trump Conversation in the Hollywood Reporter.  Deftly observed.

How did “blue” states come to be controlled by Republican legislatures and represented in Congress by Republicans?

This compelling New Yorker article, based on David Daley’s new book, Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America’s Democracy, explains.

. . . So skillfully were the lines drawn that in 2012—when President Obama carried Pennsylvania by three hundred thousand votes and the state’s Democratic congressional candidates collectively outpolled their G.O.P. rivals by nearly a hundred thousand votes—Republicans still won thirteen of Pennsylvania’s eighteen seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. . . .

LA Times correspondent Vincent Bevins nails nails it:

Both Brexit and Trumpism are the very, very wrong answers to legitimate questions that urban elites have refused to ask for thirty years. . . . Since the 1980s* the elites in rich countries have overplayed their hand, taking all the gains for themselves and just covering their ears when anyone else talks, and now they are watching in horror as voters revolt.

That’s it.

I can’t speak for other countries, but here in America . . .

If Gore had been allowed to serve instead of Bush, tax rates on the wealthiest would have not been slashed.

If the Republicans hadn’t blocked Obama’s American Jobs Act (and so much else), millions would have been put to work at good jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, the minimum wage would have been raised, federal student loans would have been refinanced at today’s low rates, Medicaid would have been expanded — all things that would have allowed average folks, and not just the elites, to do a little better.

*Reagan

Conservative George Will has left the Republican Party, says we must defeat Trump.

Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson says country over party:  we must defeat Trump.

Whitney Tilson:

I find it ironic that Republicans on my email list accuse me of partisanship because I’m a Democrat when this is what Republicans have said about Trump:

• Marco Rubio: a “fraud,” “con man” and “lunatic”
• Mitt Romney: Trump in the White House could “change the character of the generations of Americans that are following” and might result in “trickle-down racism,” “trickle-down misogyny” and “trickle-down bigotry.” “Just seeing this breaks your heart.”
• Lindsey Graham: a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot” and “a con artist”
• Bobby Jindal: a “madman who must be stopped”
• Rick Perry: a “barking carnival act.”

Because Friday’s Brexit-etc. post was so long, you may never have gotten to the end: The Inside Story Of How The Clintons Built A $2 Billion Global Empire. Where Trump University was a fraud that did zero of real use, the Clinton Foundation has been a tremendous, ground-breaking force for good.

First of all: ugh.

You have to love this headline: The British Are Frantically Googling What The E.U. Is, Hours After Voting To Leave It.

So maybe, once they see what they’ve done, there will be another, better informed referendum, overturning the first.

But maybe not.

So . . . ugh.

As a 27-year-old British friend texted this morning (bleeped to protect your sensibilities):

I’m livid.  The vote was carried by a load of baby boomers who are secure in their pensions and it doesn’t really matter a flying f— to, other than they want to regain nostalgic feelings of 50-year-ago Briton viewed thru rose tinted backwards looking spectacles.

There was so little facts in this referendum it’s invalid. Democracy only works if the electorate can make an informed decision on their best interests based on the facts.  If they’re fed a load of shit and vote as a result it’s not democracy, it’s fraud!

Never again will I hold a slightly smug sense of superiority when we talk about American partisan politics. Turns out we’re all fucked.  Led by the lowest common denominator and peddled to with misinformation and barefaced lies and controlled by an unaccountable media.

I think I’ve aged a decade this morning and firmly arrived as a grumpy, cynical man.

(I watched a “leave” voter on the BBC this morning say she thought it was outrageous that Scotland were calling for another independence referendum and that this was a time for unity!! WHAT THE F— DID YOU THINK WOULD HAPPEN YOU STUPID HYPOCRITICAL F—WIT?!)

But that is indeed too often how it works.

Texas Governor George W. Bush proclaimed, preposterously, that “by far the vast majority” of his proposed tax cuts would go to people “at the bottom of the economic ladder” and promised “a humble foreign policy” even as he was planning to invade Iraq.  It’s hard to overstate how much harm his presidency did. But the second time, he even got a majority of the vote — with 70% of his voters believing, erroneously, that Iraq had played a role in the 9/11 attack.

And now Trump is promising ridiculous things — he’s going to bring millions of $1-an-hour jobs back from China?  And somehow make their employers pay a good wage even though he opposes the minimum wage?  And force consumers around the world to buy products made here with $20-an-hour labor instead of the same products made in China with $1-an-hour labor? Even though, as a businessman, he sources his own products from overseas?  And this is all just going to magically happen because he’ll bring back torture and defeat ISIS in a matter of weeks and is the king of debt and will build a beautiful wall?

Trump’s main focus will be destroying his opponent.  He will say anything that pops into his head — or even say outrageous things in prepared remarks.  (E.g., she was “sleeping” during the Benghazi crisis.  Challenged for proof, he explained to NBC News’ Lester Holt that she might have been sleeping — “how do you know she wasn’t?” — and that was, to his mind, basis enough for the charge.)

Jim Burt:  “We know Trump is going to dig up and attempt to reanimate the corpse of every accusation and calumny that’s ever been directed at Hillary or Bill Clinton.  That wouldn’t be so bad, since for people over 40 it’s all old news; but there’s a huge slice of the electorate who are too young to have heard most of these attacks and unaware how little there has ever been there. My suggestion is that the mantra of Hillary’s surrogates be words to this effect:”*

Every aspect of her public and private life — and Bill’s too — has been the subject of Republican attacks for more than 30 years. Like that they murdered Vince Foster — or that Obama wasn’t born here or Kerry shot himself to get a medal or Gore claimed to have invented the Internet — this is what Republicans do.  Every one of the attacks on Hillary has been investigated to death. Seven congressional committees on Benghazi alone — concluding she did nothing wrong.

She has not in every case used perfect judgment. Taking George Bush at his word to invade Iraq only as a last resort — as so many progressive Democrats also did, like Joe Biden, John Kerry, and Tom Harkin — proved far too trusting. A mistake she admits. Setting up her email server at home — another. But balance that against her lifetime of fighting for working families, the poor, women, children, and the oppressed around the world?

Hillary is the most thoroughly vetted, investigated, and experienced presidential candidate in the history of this country.  Trump is, according to almost every leading Republican, a con-man totally unfit to lead the country.

“That’s what I’m telling people,” Jim concludes.  “That’s what we can all be telling people.  That’s what younger voters and low-information voters need to hear to ‘clear the air.’  And then we can start talking about policy.”

☞ Which leads me, at last, to the Clinton Global Initiative.  The truth is, far from a scandal or a fraud like Trump University, CGI has been an extraordinary catalyst for good around the world.  When you encounter skeptics, perhaps offer this recent backgrounder from the Washington Post:  The Inside Story Of How The Clintons Built A $2 Billion Global Empire.

. . . The evolution of the foundation, which began as a modest nonprofit focused largely on the ex-president’s library in Arkansas, is a nearly perfect reflection of the Clintons themselves. It was not designed as a master plan but rather has grown, one brainstorm at a time, in accordance with the ambitious, loyal, restless and often scattered nature of its primary namesake. Many programs were sparked by chance encounters in Bill Clinton’s life. A meeting with a Harlem shopkeeper. A friend’s plan to fight AIDS. The flight to Davos. Emergency heart surgery.

The foundation now includes 11 major initiatives, focused on issues as divergent as crop yields in Africa, earthquake relief in Haiti and the cost of AIDS drugs worldwide. In all, the Clintons’ constellation of related charities has raised $2 billion, employs more than 2,000 people and has a combined annual budget of more than $223 million.

In the middle of it all is Bill Clinton, a new kind of post-presidential celebrity: a convener who wrangles rich people’s money for poor people’s problems. . . .

Or he could have stayed at home and painted his dog.

*Which I have paraphrased liberally. — A.T.