Last Call For That Worker (Pay) Shortage

Unemployment is super low right now and we've actually reached the point where corporate America is grousing about not having enough people to fill jobs.  In a supply-and-demand universe, basic macroeconomics tells us that as demand for labor goes up and the supply of labor decreases, the price of labor that businesses offer to workers goes up.  But we're in Trump's America in 2018, and that's the last thing that's going to happen, as Mike Hiltzik at the LA Times explains.

“America’s labor shortage is approaching epidemic proportions,” reported CNBC, “and it could be employers who end up paying.” Well, yes. That’s how things are supposed to work: Businesses pay more to attract workers in a tighter, more competitive market for labor.

The rhetoric coming out of the employer lobby would leave one to believe that workers are somehow the guilty party in this — they simply won’t accept jobs that pay them less than they’re worth.

The underlying cause of the “labor shortage” is hiding in plain sight. It’s the long-term trend of funneling the gains from labor productivity not to the workforce, but to shareholders. As with any addiction, this process produces short-term euphoria, reflected in share prices, but long-term pathology, reflected in income inequality, poverty and social unrest.

But it’s been going on so long that the addicts, that is, corporate CEOs and their mouthpieces, have forgotten how to respond. The CNBC piece observed, as though this is a new discovery, that “employers are going to have to start doing more to entice workers, likely through pay raises, training and other incentives.” The harvest will be lower corporate earnings, Goldman Sachs has warned.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Goldman’s economists“predict that every percentage-point increase in labor-cost inflation will drag down earnings of companies in the S&P 500 by 0.8%.” That money won’t disappear, of course—it will go into the pockets of workers, and then find its way back into the coffers of corporate America via higher sales.

The narrow attitude that wage growth is bad for business is exemplified by the pummeling that American Airlines suffered from Wall Street a year ago, when it announced healthy wage increases for pilots and flight attendants, even before their union contracts expired. As we reported at the time, the airline's shares lost more than 8% in value over the ensuing two trading sessions, a loss of about $1.9 billion in market value in 48 hours. 

"Labor is being paid first again," Kevin Crissey, an airlines analyst for Citigroup, bellyached to clients after the announcement. “Shareholders get leftovers." Hardly: From 2014 through 2016, American had authorized $9 billion in share buybacks to fatten the shareholders’ take. By contrast, the pay raises will cost American $1 billion over three years.

What a shock.

And of course you'll hear the screams for miles: corporate profits will be "down" and shareholders will be the "big losers".  We'll have all kinds of gnashing of teeth over American workers making more money being a terrible thing.

Expect Trump to get in on the action, and soon. 

The New Guy's Paper Trail

Brett Kavanaugh, Trump's pick to succeed Anthony Kennedy on the US Supreme Court, has a paper trail a mile long and all of it is on the right side of the road. Josh Marshall explains:

We’re hearing a lot about how Kavanaugh thinks presidents should be largely immune from lawsuits, subpoenas and prosecutorial scrutiny while they serve as president. This appears to have been attractive to President Trump, unsurprisingly. These arguments stem mainly from a 2009 Minnesota Law Review article. The publication date was 2009. But it appears to have been first presented at a symposium in late 2008, while President Bush was still President. 

But this wasn’t Kavanaugh’s first take on presidential power. 

Kavanaugh was a young legal gun (early 30s) on one of the most thoroughly corrupt and brazenly partisan investigations in American history, the do-over Independent Counsel investigation which Ken Starr ran for most of the 1990s, investigating almost every aspect of Bill Clinton’s time in office and the decades which preceded his presidency. Kavanaugh, in addition to being part of the investigation, was also a or the principal author of the notorious Starr Report, a voluminous and gratuitous play-by-play narration of the Clinton-Lewinsky Affair and a brief for impeachment. 

In that document, Kavanaugh argued for a comically broad theory of what constituted obstruction of justice and impeachable offenses. He suggested that Clinton’s efforts to delay being interviewed by the Independent Counsel amounted to obstruction of justice and that lying to his staff and the American people were impeachable offenses. Needless to say, by this standard, President Trump commits numerous impeachable offenses every single day. 

Many commentators are now arguing that the youthful Kavanaugh had one view while the more seasoned District Court Judge saw the matter differently a decade later. Please. Kavanaugh showed a judicious flexibility to allow his views to evolve as they were applied to either Democrats or Republicans, to political foes or friends. There is nothing more pressing and relevant in this political moment than the President’s subservience to the rule of law. Kavanaugh has been all over the map on that question, depending on whether the President was a Republican or Democrat. That all needs to be sorted out before he becomes the deciding vote on whether President needs to answer to the law.

Oh, but it gets worse, as Politico is reporting today.  The fix for Kavanaugh was in from the beginning.

After Justice Anthony Kennedy told President Donald Trump he would relinquish his seat on the Supreme Court, the president emerged from his private meeting with the retiring jurist focused on one candidate to name as his successor: Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Kennedy’s former law clerk. 

Trump, according to confidants and aides close to the White House, has become increasingly convinced that “the judges,” as he puts it, or his administration’s remaking of the federal judiciary in its conservative image, is central to his legacy as president. And he credits Kennedy, who spent more than a decade at the center of power on the court, for helping give him the opportunity.

So even as Trump dispatched his top lawyers to comb though Kavanaugh’s rulings and quizzed allies about whether he was too close to the Bush family, potentially a fatal flaw, the president was always leaning toward accepting Kennedy’s partiality for Kavanaugh while preserving the secret until his formal announcement, sources with knowledge of his thinking told POLITICO. 

Trump, who spent more time with Kavanaugh than the other finalists, was impressed with the judge’s credentials, long judicial record and fidelity to the Constitution, according to administration officials. What was listed as a deal-breaker to some on the right — his long paper trail — was actually the thing that drew Trump to Kavanaugh. 

Administration officials said Trump was taken with Kavanaugh even before his conversation with Kennedy. But Kennedy, in leaving the impression with Trump that Kavanaugh would be a great candidate for the job, helped the president make up his mind.

It's looking more and more like Kennedy made a deal with Trump to name his own successor to the Supreme Court.

Source familiar tells NBC that Justice Kennedy had been in negotiations with the Trump team for months over Kennedy’s replacement. Once Kennedy received assurances that it would be Kavanaugh (his former law clerk) Kennedy felt comfortable retiring - @LACaldwellDC & @frankthorp

— Geoff Bennett (@GeoffRBennett) July 10, 2018

Under these circumstances, with Trump under investigation, and with this evidence that there may have been a deal months in the making for Kennedy to retire and name his law clerk as a successor, there is no way Democrats should allow Kavanaugh to be confirmed. 

We'll see what happens.  Dems may not be able to do much of anything, frankly.

But dear God, they have to try.

The Economic Anxiety Experiment

If the key to winning back disaffected Obama voters is to address economic anxiety through Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren-style populism, then the test case is Ohio's Richard Cordray, the Democratic candidate for Governor.  Whether or not he can win in a state Trump won by eight points is another thing entirely.

In early May, Richard Cordray was wrapping up a two-day campaign sprint during which he spoke to crowds of plumbers, pipefitters, ironworkers, teachers, firefighters, furniture workers, and now, as dusk settled over a low-slung Cleveland union hall, a hundred or so food and commercial workers. Cordray, who stepped down as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau last December, was making a last-minute pitch to Ohio Democrats to choose him as their nominee for governor. Ostensibly, he was campaigning to defeat liberal gadfly Dennis Kucinich in the next day’s party primary (which he did, handily). But in a larger sense, Cordray was—is—trying to redeem a Democratic Party blindsided by Donald Trump’s 2016 victory and searching for a path forward.

Trump’s unexpected strength in Midwest swing states such as Ohio, where he trounced Hillary Clinton by eight points, exposed a deep erosion of Democratic support in swaths of the country you have to carry if you want to win the White House. Ohio has voted for the winner in 14 straight presidential elections. That Clinton’s brand of Wall Street-friendly, establishment Democratic politics wasn’t even competitive in this presidential bellwether underscored the scope of the party’s problem.

“Ohio’s not a right-wing state,” Ted Strickland, the former Democratic governor, insists. “Trump came along and captured the zeitgeist of the moment, but I don’t think that’s a permanent thing.”

What’s indisputable is that Ohio revealed a host of shortcomings Democrats must address. While Obama twice won the state with strong minority support, black voter turnout fell sharply in 2016. So did Democratic support in struggling manufacturing hubs such as the Mahoning Valley in Northeast Ohio, where many union members defected to Trump. Meanwhile, suburban voters didn’t turn out in nearly the numbers Democrats needed.

Clinton’s loss raised a host of thorny questions the party has been debating ever since: Was the problem Clinton, or is it broader than that? Should Democrats make more explicit appeals around race and gender to activate disaffected voters? Or should they embrace the full-throated economic populism of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren?

Cordray’s race will offer some interesting clues—he’s as pure an exponent of Warren-style populism as anyone on this year’s ballot. Because he lacks a Trump-like persona or a desire to litigate the president’s misdeeds, Cordray is embarking on what amounts to a laboratory experiment in the power of progressive economic populism to win back lost voters. Trump showed that hard-right populism can resonate in Ohio; what’s as yet unclear is whether that message can resonate from the left, when shorn of its anti-immigrant, anti-Clinton attacks and dialed back from Trumpian bombast to Cordray’s scout-leader calm.

Recruited by Warren herself to the CFPB after a stint as Ohio’s attorney general, Cordray has turned the agency’s mission of protecting consumers from Wall Street predations into a campaign message. “My job at the CFPB, as President Obama told me when he interviewed me, was to stand on the side of people in the financial marketplace and see that they were treated fairly,” Cordray told a group of Cincinnati firefighters. “We did that—and got back $12 billion for 30 million Americans who had been cheated or mistreated by large financial institutions.” Cordray also touted his role as Ohio’s financial avenger after the 2008 crisis. “We recognized that our pension system had been abused—a pension system that supports our police, firefighters, and public servants,” he continued. “We got back $2 billion from Wall Street that never should have been taken from them and put it back into Ohio taxpayers’ pockets.” 

His Robin Hood record notwithstanding, Cordray, 59, is about the furthest thing from the tub-thumping populists of yore. Tall and sandy-haired, he has a hangdog visage and the soft-spoken demeanor of the late PBS kids’ show host Mr. Rogers. “It makes me mad to see people in government serving themselves at our expense,” Cordray, sounding not the least bit mad, told a union crowd in Lima earlier that day.

While he rarely puts a charge in his audience, Cordray drove Republicans in Washington to fits, quickly emerging as Public Enemy No. 2 (behind Warren) for his aggressiveness in clawing back those billions of dollars for consumers. Conservatives viewed him as the embodiment of rapacious government overreach and made him the target of furious criticism throughout his CFPB tenure. “For conducting unlawful activities, abusing his authority, denying market participants due process, Richard Cordray should be dismissed by our president,” Jeb Hensarling, the Republican chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, declared last year, as part of an unsuccessful campaign to pressure Trump to fire him.

Cordray’s challenge now is to get Ohio voters half as fired up as Republicans like Hensarling. His backers suggest, somewhat hopefully, that his low-wattage personal style will contrast favorably with Trump’s exhausting, nonstop fusillade. “His personality is not like Elizabeth’s or Bernie’s, but his economic policy chops sure are,” says Sandy Theis, former executive director of the liberal nonprofit ProgressOhio. “If you’re looking for a candidate who’ll give you clickbait and headlines, that’s not Rich,” echoes Matt Alter, president of the Cincinnati Firefighters Union, IAFF Local 48. “But he’ll run the state and get things done.” Cordray is fortunate that his Republican opponent, former U.S. Senator and current Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, is no more endowed with charisma than he is. As one labor official quipped, the race could turn out to be “the Battle of the Blands.”

If the heartland now wants safe, boring, stable white Democrats like Cordray (and Andy Beshear here in neighboring Kentucky) to bring sanity back, he should have no trouble.  DeWine on the other hand has a long list of extremist positions and is second only to Kansas's Kris Kobach in the voter suppression department.

Personally I think Cordray is a pretty solid guy who can get the job done, but whether or not that's enough to get him elected in the era of Trump, I don't know.  We'll see.

I do know that if Cordray loses, Democrats might want to, you know, pay attention to their actual base and who they are rather than who they want that base to be.

Just saying.

StupidiNews!

• A fifth former Ohio State wrestler has come forward to say that Ohio GOP Rep. Jim Jordan knew about sexual abuse going on during the time Jordan was the team's assistant coach.
• A federal judge has rejected the Trump regime's request to allow detention of immigrant children for more than 20 days, calling the request "unconvincing" and "dubious".
• Eleven of the thirteen people trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand have been rescued, officials are hopeful that all thirteen will be rescued by the end of the day.
• Donald Trump's long-time personal driver for more than 25 years is suing Trump over 3,300 hours of unpaid overtime, the latest in a string of employees and contractors suing Trump.
• China is now churning out its own x86 server processor chips as state investment in technology is pushing out American chipmakers amid Trump's trade war with Beijing.

Last Call For Meet The New White Guy...

...same as, well, yeah.

President Trump selected Brett Michael Kavanaugh, a federal appeals court judge in Washington with powerful conservative credentials, on Monday to succeed Justice Anthony M. Kennedy on the Supreme Court.

Judge Kavanaugh was just 38 when he was first nominated to a federal appeals court in Washington. But he had already participated in an extraordinary number of political controversies, attracting powerful patrons and critics along the way.

He served under Kenneth W. Starr, the independent counsel who investigated President Bill Clinton, examining the suicide of Vincent W. Foster Jr., the deputy White House counsel, and drafting parts of the report that led to Mr. Clinton’s impeachment. He worked on the 2000 Florida recount litigations that ended in a Supreme Court decision handing the presidency to George W. Bush. And he served as a White House lawyer and staff secretary to Mr. Bush, working on the selection of federal judges and legal issues arising from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

He was “the Zelig of young Republican lawyers,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, said at Judge Kavanaugh’s first confirmation hearing, in 2004. “If there has been a partisan political fight that needed a good lawyer in the last decade, Brett Kavanaugh was probably there.”

But Judge Kavanaugh, 53, has also formed lifelong friendships with liberals, many of whom praise his intellect and civility. In his professional life, before he became a judge, he was often a moderating force.

Working for Mr. Starr, Judge Kavanaugh concluded that Mr. Foster had in fact killed himself. He opposed the public release of the narrative portions of Mr. Starr’s report detailing Mr. Clinton’s encounters with a White House intern. As staff secretary to Mr. Bush, he said in 2006, he strived to be “an honest broker for the president.” 

As a judge, though, he has been a conservative powerhouse, issuing around 300 opinions. His dissents have often led to Supreme Court appeals, and the justices have repeatedly embraced the positions set out in Judge Kavanaugh’s opinions.

He has written countless decisions applauded by conservatives on topics including the Second Amendment, religious freedom, the environment and campaign finance. But they have particularly welcomed his vigorous opinions hostile to administrative agencies, a central concern of the modern conservative legal movement.

So yeah.  This guy may be even to the right of Gorsuch.

Again, allowing Trump to pick a justice while under investigation, when the same justice will be the deciding vote on the inevitable Constitutional questions regarding that investigation, is ludicrous.  The Dems can choose to make this as excruciating as possible to boot.

They won't, I fully expect Kavanaugh to be confirmed by Labor Day recess with at minimum 54 votes, if not as many as 57. And while it's imaginable that Kavanaugh's first order of business will be to wreck any hope of affirmative action, voting rights, and/or abortion as health care, I honestly think he'll get to weigh in on Trump and the legality of his inevitable attempt to fire Robert Mueller.

We'll see what happens, but this is the part where the massive damage to the classic liberalism of the last 80 years starts in earnest.

The Be-Return Of the Beshear

As widely expected after his 2016 election as KY Attorney General, Democrat Andy Beshear is throwing his hat in the ring for his dad's old job against KY GOP Gov. Matt Bevin next year.

Attorney General Andy Beshear announced Monday he is running for Kentucky governor with educator Jacqueline Coleman as his running mate.

Beshear, a Democrat, is the first candidate of either party to announce a candidacy for governor in 2019. Republican Gov. Matt Bevin has not yet said whether he will seek re-election. 

“As governor, I will work every day to bring Kentuckians together to tackle our most pressing problems,” Beshear said at a press conference Monday morning at the Kentucky Center for African American Heritage in Louisville.

Beshear, 40, became the state's 50th Attorney General in 2016, where he defeated Republican candidate Whitney Westerfield by a margin of less than 1 percent. His father, Steve Beshear, was governor of Kentucky from 2007 to 2015.

As tensions between teachers and Kentucky lawmakers grow after a tumultuous year filled with protests over pension reform legislation, Beshear's pick of Coleman for running mate sends a message.

"We will make public education a priority," he said Monday. "We will work to fund every single public school and every single public university to give opportunity to every child," he said. 

"... I will continue to fight for our teachers. They will be respected, our state will keep our state promises to them, and they will have a seat at the table. ... Their voice is a critical voice."

Coleman, of Harrodsburg, is an assistant principal at Nelson County High School. In 2014, Coleman ran unsuccessfully to represent Kentucky's 55th House District. Her father, Jack Coleman, was a state representative in that same district — Mercer, Washington and parts of Jessamine County — from 1991 to 2004.

Since nearly the beginning of his term as attorney general, Beshear has repeatedly filed lawsuits challenging the legality of actions of Bevin, his father's successor as governor.
In 2016, Beshear won a lawsuit against Bevin over funding cuts to state universities. The Kentucky Supreme Court ruled that the governor violated his executive power by cutting universities' budgets after funding had already been appropriated by the General Assembly.

Bevin's popularity is tanking pretty hard, and he's basically already pissed off everyone he'd need to have in his corner to get re-elected, so believe it or not I think Beshear can win.   The last two years have been Beshear fighting Bevin anyway, so everyone's already used to it around here.

Whether or not people will actually show up in KY's infamous off-year gubernatorial election in 2019 is another thing, but I'm betting Beshear will do a better job of it than Jack Conway did.

Bevin may not run for a second term.  Who the GOP does put up in his place in that situation could make things pretty interesting.

Keep an eye on this race.

Grifting Is Mother's Milk To Trump

America under the Trump regime is such an obvious corporate autocracy that the US went officially on record against breastfeeding because it hurts the bottom line of baby formula makers.

A resolution to encourage breast-feeding was expected to be approved quickly and easily by the hundreds of government delegates who gathered this spring in Geneva for the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly.

Based on decades of research, the resolution says that mother’s milk is healthiest for children and countries should strive to limit the inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes.

Then the United States delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upended the deliberations.

American officials sought to water down the resolution by removing language that called on governments to “protect, promote and support breast-feeding” and another passage that called on policymakers to restrict the promotion of food products that many experts say can have deleterious effects on young children.

When that failed, they turned to threats, according to diplomats and government officials who took part in the discussions. Ecuador, which had planned to introduce the measure, was the first to find itself in the cross hairs.

The Americans were blunt: If Ecuador refused to drop the resolution, Washington would unleash punishing trade measures and withdraw crucial military aid. The Ecuadorean government quickly acquiesced.

Oh, but it gets worse.

The showdown over the issue was recounted by more than a dozen participants from several countries, many of whom requested anonymity because they feared retaliation from the United States.

Health advocates scrambled to find another sponsor for the resolution, but at least a dozen countries, most of them poor nations in Africa and Latin America, backed off, citing fears of retaliation, according to officials from Uruguay, Mexico and the United States.

“We were astonished, appalled and also saddened,” said Patti Rundall, the policy director of the British advocacy group Baby Milk Action, who has attended meetings of the assembly, the decision-making body of the World Health Organization, since the late 1980s.

“What happened was tantamount to blackmail, with the U.S. holding the world hostage and trying to overturn nearly 40 years of consensus on the best way to protect infant and young child health,” she said.

In the end, the Americans’ efforts were mostly unsuccessful. It was the Russians who ultimately stepped in to introduce the measure — and the Americans did not threaten them.

Corrupt, profit-driven greed is what the Trump regime does best...unless our real masters at the Kremlin say otherwise.

Then our government obeys without question.

 

StupidiNews!

• Rescue workers in Thailand have rescued 4 of the 12 boys trapped in an underground cave, attempts will be made today to rescue the 8 remaining boys from the youth soccer team and their coach.
• The death toll in Japan has hit over 100 from last week's unprecedented flooding, the fear now is record heat combined with power loss from landslides could cause widespread heatstroke.
• Donald Trump is expected to name his nominee to the US Supreme Court tonight, the short list of four potential nominees to succeed retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy are all predictably conservative.
• UK PM Theresa May is facing revolt after two key Brexit ministers quit her Cabinet today after supposedly delivering a final Brexit plan to parliament last Friday.
• The FCC says it will follow-through with the decision to raise broadband internet prices on Native residents by eliminating a $25/month Lifeline subsidy program for most Tribal areas.

Sunday Long Read: Trains Of Thought

After success running transit authorities in London, Sydney and Toronto, Andy Byford has arrived in the toughest subway system on Earth:  New York City's public transit in the Trump Era.  Saving the subways will take nothing short of a miracle, but if there's anyone who can do it, it's this soft-spoken Brit who aims to get the NYCTA running on track again.

On a cold Tuesday morning in March, Andy Byford, the president of the New York City Transit Authority, was working the subway turnstiles—the gates, as he calls them—at the Chambers Street station, in Tribeca. Byford was seven weeks into the job, which had come with a seemingly impossible mission: to rebuild the city’s beleaguered public-transit system, after years of chaotic decline and stark dysfunction. He had vowed to visit every one of New York’s subway stations—there are four hundred and seventy-two—and to ride every bus route, in an effort that was part good-will tour, part reconnaissance mission.

“How was your trip?” he asked a commuter.

No reply. Waves of passengers rumbled past. He reminded himself to look for people who weren’t wearing earphones. Making eye contact was key.

“How was your trip?”

A young woman, not breaking stride, did a double take. “Uh, good,” she said.

Between customers, Byford straightened a pile of free newspapers. He had already introduced himself to the station agent, several platform cleaners, and the conductors on a couple of downtown trains. Each employee stared at the metal nametag pinned to his navy-blue suit. Yep, it was the president, the new guy. “Everything O.K.?” he asked. The employees seemed disarmed by his enthusiasm and his English accent. He shook hands and told people, “We’re one team.”

Byford was new to the city—new to the country—and was still perturbed by things that most locals accepted as inevitable. “That brown tiling,” he said, pointing at a rust-streaked wall. He took a photograph with his phone. Down on the platform, Byford regarded the track bed. It looked, as nature intended, like hell: filthy water, strewn garbage. “My customers shouldn’t have to look at that,” he said. “We’ve ordered three vacuum cars. They’ll suck up all of this.”

Byford, who is fifty-two, got his start in mass transit as a station foreman on the London Underground. The work ran in his family. His grandfather drove a bus for London Transport for forty years; his father worked there for twelve. Byford earned degrees in German and French, but after college he went to work for the Underground, learning car maintenance, operations, customer service, safety. He later worked on Britain’s main-line railways, and then ran mass transit in Sydney, Australia. His last stop before New York was Toronto, where, by nearly all accounts, he turned around a troubled transit system with spectacular results.

Toronto’s troubles, however, seem quaint compared with New York’s. With eight million passengers a day, the city has the largest public-transit system in North America, and, by every important metric—financial, operational, mechanical—it is in crisis. Some days, on a crosstown bus or a stalled train or a jam-packed platform, with your nose pressed into a stranger’s sweat-beaded neck and the appointed hour of your business lunch, your second date, your big job interview long past, it can feel like the system is in a death spiral. Train delays now occur roughly seventy thousand times a month, up from twenty-eight thousand in 2012. The system’s on-time rate, already among the nation’s worst, fell to fifty-eight per cent in January, down from ninety a decade ago. Bus ridership is in steep decline, caught in a negative-feedback loop with increasing car and truck traffic, slower buses, and less reliable service.

This is where Byford comes in. “New York is really lucky to have Andy,” Mike Brown, the transport commissioner of London, told me. “If anybody can take on the combination of the complex politics and the service challenge, it’s Andy Byford.” That’s not a small “if.” The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the agency that hired Byford, is a huge and much maligned organization. The New York City Transit Authority—the M.T.A.’s largest division, with fifty thousand employees—handles subways, buses, and paratransit. Other divisions oversee commuter-rail services, tunnels, and bridges.

Physically, Byford is not imposing. He has the build of a distance runner, stands five-nine, shaves his head. If there were a contest for the palest man in the five boroughs, he would be a contender. He has blue eyes, a prominent nose, a sprightly step—he often takes stairs two at a time. A public-transportation purist, he has never owned a car. He and his wife, Alison, met while working for the Tube, and he proposed to her on a high-speed train. She’s a bank systems analyst, from Ottawa, and their vacations, he says, are nearly always “busman’s holidays—in every city, I have to check out the mass transit.” In our rambles together by subway and bus through the arteries and capillaries of what he calls, with a straight face, New York City’s “quite fabulous system,” I never saw him sit down. “The seats are for customers,” he says. More often than not, he’d start conducting customer-satisfaction surveys with randomly selected travellers, listening to their tales of riderly woe.

On the platform at Chambers Street, he studied a small group of workers, all in high-visibility orange vests, idling in a dim corner. “I wonder what they’re doing, or supposed to be doing,” he said. He decided against inquiring. “I’ve learned that it’s sometimes best not to just go steaming in.” But, when it comes to fixing the subways and buses, his approach will very much be to go steaming in. He wants to transform New York City’s mass transit—and had already committed himself to delivering a comprehensive plan within a hundred working days. “I don’t think they hired me to tweak things here and there,” he said. “This company needs a complete modernization.” 

America's penchant for kicking the can down the road when it comes to infrastructure is legendary.  It will take tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars to fix our roads, bridges, pipes, power lines, and mass transit in this country.

Oh, and Donald Trump personally hates the NYCTA and will do everything in his power to see the blue, non-Trump voting people of New York and New Jersey suffer without a dime of federal help more than Congress makes him give, and that's before Trump's policies start truly wrecking the economy that Obama left him.

Byford is, in short, completely doomed.  But he does have a plan, and it's pretty good, all things considered.

Good luck, man.

Second Verse, Same As The First

Donald Trump's "crowning diplomatic achievement" of a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has now been revealed to be nothing more than an embarrassing sham as Pyongyang unceremoniously dumped Secretary of State Mike Pompeo off without actually meeting Kim.

North Korea accused the Trump administration on Saturday of pushing a “unilateral and gangster-like demand for denuclearization” and called it “deeply regrettable,” hours after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said his two days of talks in the North Korean capital were “productive.”

Despite the criticism, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, still wanted to build on the “friendly relationship and trust” forged with President Trump during their summit meeting in Singapore on June 12. The ministry said Mr. Kim had written a personal letter to Mr. Trump, reiterating that trust.

The two sides have a history of veering between harsh talk and conciliation. Mr. Trump briefly called off the Singapore summit meeting over what he called North Korea’s “open hostility,” only to declare it back on after receiving what he called a “very nice letter” from Mr. Kim.

On Saturday, Mr. Pompeo and his entourage offered no immediate evidence that they had come away with anything tangible to show that North Korea was willing to surrender its nuclear and missile weapons programs. He did not meet with Mr. Kim but held talks with Kim Yong-chol, a senior official who has been country’s point person in talks with the United States, South Korea and China.

“These are complicated issues, but we made progress on almost all of the central issues,” Mr. Pompeo said before boarding a plane for Tokyo. He called the meetings “productive.”

But the North Korean Foreign Ministry’s assessment was decidedly less upbeat.

“The attitude and demands from the U.S. side during the high-level talks were nothing short of deeply regrettable,” the ministry said, accusing American “working-level” officials of trying to destroy the agreement struck in Singapore.

Mr. Pompeo came to Pyongyang to try to get the North Koreans to match their vague commitment to denuclearization — signed by Kim Jong-un in the June meeting with President Trump — with some kind of action. Among the first priorities were a declaration of weapons sites, a timeline of deconstruction efforts and, perhaps, a written statement that the North’s definition of denuclearization matched Mr. Pompeo’s.

Asked if he had gotten any of those, Mr. Pompeo declined to divulge details.

Spoilers: Pompeo got exactly nothing, including no chance of a meeting with Kim himself.  After all, the North Koreans have already won this round, recognized by the most powerful country on Earth as a legitimate nuclear power.  Any further diplomacy on Pyongyang's stance will be bilateral deals, with Kim holding his brand-new nuclear cards.

Besides, Pompeo knows full well he has lost.

Privately, Mr. Pompeo has said that he doubts the North Korean leader will ever give up his nuclear weapons. And those doubts have been reinforced in recent days by intelligence showing that North Korea, far from dismantling its weapons facilities, has been expanding them and taking steps to conceal the efforts from the United States.

Mr. Trump has said his summit meeting with Mr. Kim was a success, and he has declared the North “no longer a nuclear threat.” Squaring Mr. Trump’s evaluation with what increasingly seems like a more troubling reality has become one of Mr. Pompeo’s greatest challenges as the United States’ chief diplomat.

It was Mr. Pompeo’s third trip to Pyongyang, but the first time he had spent the night. Even so, it appeared to have been his least productive visit.

There had been hopes that Mr. Pompeo would get the North to agree to release the remains of American war dead. But Mr. Pompeo said that another meeting had been set up for July 12 for further talks on repatriating the remains, a dialogue that will be led by the Defense Department.

No such talks will happen.  North Korea now knows it can bring the world to the table by rattling its nuclear saber and that it can get away with making increasingly bellicose demands.  I'm not sure how the world will deal with a nuclear North Korean going forward, but I do know that the Trump regime is the least prepared and most ill-equipped American administration possible in being able to deal with it.

Trump's failures with Pyongyang this year will go down as one of the greatest international blunders in history.  He's likely to only eclipse that dubious honor as his term grinds on.

Last Call For That Poll-Asked Look

Generic ballot numbers in the last couple weeks have definitely favored the Democratic party, with Republicans wilting under the twin spotlights of Trump's trade war and Trump's immigration policy.  A new Quinnipiac University poll indicates that the divisions in America are stark, and women especially are abandoning the GOP in droves.

If the election for the U.S. House of Representatives were held today, 50 percent of American voters say they would vote for the Democratic candidate, as 41 percent say they would vote for the Republican candidate.

Independent voters back the Democratic candidate 49 - 35 percent.

There are wide gender and racial gaps: 

Men go Republican 50 - 42 percent as women go Democratic 58 - 33 percent; 

White voters are divided 46 - 46 percent.  Backing Democratic candidates are black voters 80 - 13 percent and Hispanic voters 60 - 35 percent. 

American voters disapprove 78 - 15 percent of the way Congress is handling its job.

Immigration is the most important issue in deciding how they will vote in November's election for the House of Representatives, 27 percent of voters say, with 23 percent citing the economy, 22 percent listing health care and 13 percent saying gun policy.

"Is it a signal of a blue wave? Four months until elections for the U.S. House of Representatives and 50 percent of American voters say they plan to vote for Democratic candidates," Malloy added.

Trump's trade policies are bad for the U.S. economy, voters say 50 - 39 percent and bad for their personal financial situation, voters say 46 - 35 percent.

Trump's trade policies will result in a trade war, voters say 52 - 38 percent and say 73 - 17 percent that a trade war would be bad for the U.S. economy. 

Democrats with a whopping 25-point lead among women though still may not be enough.  It's goog to see that white voters are at best tied between the parties, and that to me is a much better sign for the Dems overall, especially in states with smaller minority populations (like say, Kentucky.)

Still, if Dems are now running even with white voters, and up 25 points with women overall, the Republicans are going to get slaughtered.

We need to make sure that trend continues.  A lot can happen in four months still.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

Another week, another recap of the Mueller investigation into Donald Trump's collusion and corruption, and while the Trump regime keeps claiming that the Mueller probe will be over any tie now and that the pressure is on the special counsel to wrap up "or else", in fact just the opposite is true.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is tapping additional Justice Department resources for help with new legal battles as his year-old investigation of Russian interference with the 2016 election continues to expand.

As Mueller pursues his probe, he’s making more use of career prosecutors from the offices of U.S. attorneys and from Justice Department headquarters, as well as FBI agents -- a sign that he may be laying the groundwork to hand off parts of his investigation eventually, several current and former U.S. officials said.

Mueller and his team of 17 federal prosecutors are coping with a higher-than-expected volume of court challenges that has added complexity in recent months, but there’s no political appetite at this time to increase the size of his staff, the officials said.

According to his most recent statement of expenditures, more money is being spent on work done by permanent Department of Justice units than on Mueller’s own dedicated operation. The DOJ units spent $9 million from the investigation’s start in May 2017 through March of this year, compared with $7.7 million spent by Mueller’s team.

Mueller’s probe has come under attack from President Donald Trump and his allies who say it’s going on too long, expanding too far and costing too much. But the special counsel’s charter, issued by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, includes investigating whether Trump or associates colluded with Russia and “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.”

Investigators in New York; Alexandria, Virginia; Pittsburgh and elsewhere have been tapped to supplement the work of Mueller’s team, the officials said. Mueller has already handed off one major investigation -- into Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen -- to the Southern District of New York.

“Whatever you got, finish it the hell up because this country is being torn apart,” Republican Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina told Rosenstein during a June 28 hearing. Rosenstein said Mueller knows he must move expeditiously.

A heavy investigative load for Mueller had been anticipated from the start, the officials said. The special counsel has already issued 20 indictments and secured guilty pleas from five individuals, and some of the defendants are mounting stiffer-than-expected battles in court.

So no, the Mueller investigation is not "wrapping up soon" and while it would make political sense to do so before the November elections, it looks very much like the Mueller team is setting up multiple parallel investigations in case Trump starts ordering firings, something that is becoming increasingly likely as we get closer to the midterm contests on November 6.

As such, the Trump regime is laying down a new strategy to "work the refs" on public opinion by throwing down the gauntlet before Mueller's feet.

President Trump’s lawyers set new conditions on Friday on an interview with the special counsel and said that the chances that the president would be voluntarily questioned were growing increasingly unlikely.

The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, needs to prove before Mr. Trump would agree to an interview that he has evidence that Mr. Trump committed a crime and that his testimony is essential to completing the investigation, said Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s lead lawyer in the case.

His declaration was the latest sign that the president’s lawyers, who long cooperated quietly with the inquiry even as their client attacked it, have shifted to an openly combative stance.

Mr. Giuliani acknowledged that Mr. Mueller was unlikely to agree to the interview demands. Mr. Mueller could subpoena Mr. Trump to answer questions if he does not agree to voluntarily sit for an interview. Mr. Giuliani left open the possibility that the president, who has said in the past that he would be eager to sit down with the special counsel, would still agree to be interviewed.

Mr. Giuliani appeared to be in part trying to shift responsibility onto the special counsel for the lengthy negotiations over an interview — and was most likely prolonging them himself.

“If they can come to us and show us the basis and that it’s legitimate and that they have uncovered something, we can go from there and assess their objectivity,” Mr. Giuliani said in an interview. He urged the special counsel to wrap up his inquiry and write an investigative report. He said Mr. Trump’s lawyers planned to write their own summary of the case.

Can you imagine any other time where the subject of an investigation said "Show us all your evidence before we agree to cooperate" and wasn't laughed out of the halls of justice?  Me either, but this is where Trump, who clearly now believes that he not only is above the law, but is the law itself, thinks he is and thinks he has the power to use.

If Mueller is going to continue, then Trump will simply do what he does best: make up his own reality and tell the media to report it as such or lose access to the White House.  They've been playing along for 18 months now, and nothing makes me think anything will be different. Rudy's "summary of the case" will become the new narrative going forward, and tens of millions will believe Trump, confirming that the Mueller probe is "over".

It's far from over, as Trump will discover to his own detriment.

Prosecutors for special counsel Robert Mueller intend to present evidence at the trial of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort that a banking executive allegedly helped Manafort obtain loans of approximately $16 million while the banker sought a role in the Trump campaign. 

Manafort faces trial on bank fraud and other financial charges in the Eastern District of Virginia beginning July 25. Until now, there had been no indication that his role in the Trump campaign would become part of the trial, and he had asked the judge to keep details about his ties to President Donald Trump out of the trial. Prosecutors say any alleged collusion with the Russian government won't come up at the trial. 

The allegation of a possible quid pro quo came amid several court filings Friday as both sides count down the remaining weeks until the trial. While prosecutors filled in the Trump campaign details, Manafort's team was busy filing requests with the judge to move his trial location and date, to look into possible leaks from the prosecutors and to keep Manafort out of the public eye. 

"The government intends to present evidence that although various Lender D employees identified serious issues with the defendant's loan application, the senior executive at Lender D interceded in the process and approved the loan," according to the filing from Mueller's team. 

The bank executive "expressed interest in working on the Trump campaign, told (Manafort) about his interest, and eventually secured a position advising the Trump campaign," the filing said. The unnamed man "expressed an interest in serving in the administration of President Trump, but did not secure such a position." 

While the senior executive is unnamed in this filing, in a previous court filing prosecutors identified Lender D as The Federal Savings Bank. 

"Here, it would be difficult for the jury to understand why the loans were approved without understanding that the lender approved the loans, in spite of the identified deficiencies, because the senior executive factored in his own personal ambition," prosecutors wrote in the filing.

Not all of the Trump money laundering scheme leads to Russia, but following the money will lead you a lot of places where Trump doesn't want to revisit, and Mueller knows it.  The Manafort trial gets underway in less than three weeks, and it's going to be nothing but daily bad news for Trump.  Both sides know it.

Stay Tuned.

The Jordan Rules, Ohio Version

GOP Rep. Jim Jordan, leader of the House GOP Freedom Caucus, is now in the endgame of the "long-time enabler of sexual abuse finally facing justice" scenario that we've seen play out all too many times in the last year or so, especially with powerful Republicans.

New allegations in the Ohio State University sexual abuse scandal are threatening to intensify the political firestorm facing its onetime assistant wrestling coach, powerful GOP Rep. Jim Jordan.

A half-dozen ex-wrestlers told POLITICO they were regularly harassed in their training facility by sexually aggressive men who attended the university or worked there. The voyeurs would masturbate while watching the wrestlers shower or sit in the sauna, or engage in sexual acts in the areas where the athletes trained, the former wrestlers said.

Larkins Hall, the building that housed athletic teams, became such a well-known target that people who frequented it at the time have reminisced in anonymous postings online how easy it was to ogle naked members of the wrestling team.

The situation was so egregious that former wrestling head coach Russ Hellickson would at times have to physically drag the gawkers out of the building, several sources familiar with his actions at the time said. Hellickson also pleaded with the university multiple times to move their athletes to a private facility, the sources said. Jordan served as Hellickson’s No. 2, and the coach has been described as Jordan’s mentor.

The accusations could exacerbate Jordan’s troubles. He was the wrestling team’s assistant coach from 1986 to 1994 and has adamantly denied knowledge of any sexual abuse.

“I never knew about any type of abuse,” Jordan said in an interview this week. “If I did, I would have done something about it.”

The notion that Jordan had no idea this was going on for eight years is ludicrous to the point of insanity.  He looked the other way as it went on, something he continues to do today with his constant enabling of Donald Trump and other Republicans.

Though none of the wrestlers and coaches interviewed blamed Jordan for the inappropriate behavior they experienced in Larkins Hall, they said he would have had to know about it. One former wrestler told POLITICO he saw Jordan yell at male voyeurs to get out of the sauna, though Jordan’s office refuted this account. Even three wrestlers who defended Jordan said it would have been impossible for him not to notice the pervasive toxic atmosphere surrounding the team.

“Coaching my athletes in Larkins Hall was one of the most difficult things I ever did,” said a former wrestling coach who worked with Jordan but asked not to be named. “It was a cesspool of deviancy. And that’s a whole ’nother story that no one has addressed.”

“Was there some deviant behavior? … Was there behavior when guys were coming into the sauna and showers, was there sexual misconduct? No one is denying that,” said ex-OSU wrestler George Pardos of Larkins Hall in an interview. He defended Jordan as “one of the most honest men I’ve ever known.”

Multiple former wrestlers have accused Jordan, a National Wrestling Hall of Fame inductee, of being among the faculty members who turned a blind eye to inappropriate behavior by the late Richard Strauss, the university’s former athletic doctor. Strauss allegedly preyed on male students during physicals, groping them to the point of making them ejaculate, according to one nurse who witnessed it and recounted the story in a video produced by alleged victims and obtained by POLITICO.

Ohio State has launched an investigation into Strauss’ behavior. Strauss worked at the university from 1978 to 1998. He killed himself in 2005.

This scandal is an important reminder that systemic sexual abuse happens because the powerful enable it, and that men can be victims of sexual abuse as well as women.  It's about power and manipulation of the powerless.

Jordan is of course blaming the "Obama Deep State", because the "party of personal responsibility" takes none for itself.

Mr. Jordan, a 54-year-old congressman in his sixth term, was defiant Friday night on Fox News, in his first extended response to the emerging charges. He disparaged some of the former college wrestlers who have come forward to say he knew of allegations that the team doctor, Richard H. Strauss, had fondled them. He said he could not explain why other more friendly wrestlers had leveled similar charges.

“I never saw, never heard of, never was told about any kind of abuse,” said Mr. Jordan, whose in-your-face brand of politics has made him the choice for speaker of the House by an array of conservative groups. “If I did I would have dealt with it. A good coach puts the interests of his student-athletes first.”

When the show’s host, Bret Baier, read a quotation by a former Ohio State wrestler and Ultimate Fighting Championship star, Mark Coleman, that Mr. Jordan would have to have dementia to have forgotten what happened, the congressman offered little explanation.

“I feel sorry for him,” he said of Mr. Coleman. “It’s just not accurate.”

Instead, Mr. Jordan continued to fan conspiracy theories connecting the emergence of the charges to his aggressive questioning last month of Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, the man many Trump supporters hold responsible for the Russia investigation.

“I think the timing is suspect when you think about how this whole story came together after the Rosenstein hearing and the speaker’s race,” he said.

FOX News has been ruthlessly attacking the victims for days now, just as they did with the women who came forward to speak out against Donald Trump.

Fox News on Friday suggested one of the wrestlers accusing Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH) of ignoring sexual abuse claims at Ohio State had a “credibility problem” because he was recently released from jail.

Guest host Leland Vittert, filling in for America’s Newsroom anchor Bill Hemmer, was speaking with a panel of media guests during a segment of the show’s second hour about recent allegations against Jordan by former Ohio State wrestlers who claim he was dismissive of sex abuse claims involving former team doctor Richard Strauss in the 1990s. Jordan, an assistant coach there at the time, has denied the allegations, saying he was unaware of the sex abuse claims.

Strauss died in 2005.

“…You have the accusations going back more than a decade against Jim Jordan. How do you prove whether any of this is true?” Vittert asked the panel Friday. “You certainly think the timing is coincidental.”

James Freeman of the Wall Street Journal responded, suggesting Jordan may have made “a lot of enemies in Washington, often for good reason [because] he has been quite persistent demanding accountability out of federal agencies,” and adding that the case against him was likely shaky at best.

Vittert agreed, saying the issue was “interesting.”

“The one wrestler who claims that he directly reported this to Jim Jordan also reportedly had just gotten out of 18 months in jail for bilking investors out of about $2 million. Credibility problem […]?” he said.

The answer to "Why didn't the victims come forward until now?" is always "because they will be attacked by assholes like this."

Jordan's opponent in OH-4 is Democrat Janet Garrett, by the way.  She lost rather big in 2016.

I think it will be a lot closer this November.

Will Louisville Become The New Charlottesville?

Things could quickly turn ugly in Louisville today as armed white nationalists from our old friends, the Three Percenters, plan to show up Saturday to confront the ongoing Occupy ICE protest.

Louisville police are bracing for a clash outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement building downtown as a militia group confirmed it is planning to counter an ongoing demonstration on Saturday.

Occupy ICE Louisville has been posted outside the federal agency's downtown office for almost a week in opposition to President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown. The group's Facebook page says they are "aware of the intention of counterprotesters to make themselves known" at 9 a.m.

Gary Foreman, a spokesman for the Kentucky chapter of the Three Percenters, said on Friday the group would be stationed at 7th and York streets Saturday morning to "ensure everyone expresses their thoughts in a peaceful environment."

Foreman said the group applied for and received a permit for the protest from Louisville Metro Police. He expects somewhere near 100 people to attend, he said, including members of state chapters in Tennessee and Indiana.

Jesus Ibañez, a member of Occupy ICE, told the Courier Journal his group learned of the counterprotest through their attorneys and a review of social media.

"We're just going to get people up early and have brunch and rally," Ibañez said.

Metro Councilwoman Barbara Sexton Smith, who represents the downtown area, told the Courier Journal she spoke with Police Chief Steve Conrad on Thursday about this weekend’s protests. She said they didn’t talk about specific organizations, but that the police chief emphasized the importance of public safety.

"I do think folks should exercise caution and I do that based upon my own research," Sexton Smith said. "The chief wouldn’t have called me to inform me about their plans had he not thought this had risen to a level where we need to exercise caution."

And yes, the Three Percenters were among those at the Charlottesville white nationalism rally that turned deadly last year.  They happily provide "security" for neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and other white supremacist rally groups.

Now they are coming to Louisville, weapons in hand.

Conrad says @LMPD is asking the opposing sides to enter from different parts of the closed area. He mentions how they don't wanted what happened in #Charlottesville, Virginia to happen here but that residents should be prepared for violence.

— Philmonger (@phillipmbailey) July 6, 2018

It's going to be a long, hot summer here in Kentucky.

Last Call For Trump Trades Blows, Con't

As steep new retaliatory tariffs on US exports to China are now in effect, even the Wall Street Journal is warning that the biggest losers in Trump's trade war with China are the very "economically anxious" people who voted for him in rural, agricultural, mining, fracking, logging and manufacturing counties.

The fallout from President Donald Trump’s tariffs and China’s countertariffs—which formally went into effect on Friday—will have the greatest impact on the U.S. counties that voted Mr. Trump into office.

The U.S. tariffs on China will initially hit about $34 billion of goods, with plans in place to raise that total to $50 billion. The tariffs will fall mostly on Chinese aerospace products, information technology, auto parts and medical instruments. Beijing is retaliating with tariffs on $34 billion of American goods, aimed at farm products, cars and crude oil.

The U.S. tariffs will provide a protective buffer for some companies that compete with Chinese imports, but Beijing’s retaliation will affect huge swaths of the American heartland, according to an analysis from Moody’s Analytics, which calculated how much of gross domestic product in each county is in industries that would benefit from the protection or be hurt by the retaliation.

The retaliatory tariffs will fall especially hard—affecting more than 25% of a county’s economy—in nearly 20% of the counties that voted for Trump, affecting eight million people. Only 3% of the counties that voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton, with a total population of 1.1 million, would be so heavily hit. In contrast, only 8% of counties that voted for Mr. Trump, a Republican, have protective buffers for more than a quarter of their economy.

“The beneficiaries are pretty narrowly regionally concentrated, right in the industrial Midwest. Outside of that, it’s hard to identify anyone who benefits to any significant degree,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. “The areas that suffer are broader and more diffuse. The agricultural areas get nailed. Some of the manufacturing centers get hurt as well.”

The Trump administration has argued that China engages in unfair trade practices with the U.S. that need to be countered, even at the cost of pain to the U.S. economy.

U.S. regions with more than 25% of their economy affected by the Chinese tariffs are likely to feel a painful fallout if the tariffs remain in effect. Industries such as soybeans in the Great Plains, auto manufacturers in the upper Midwest and oil-producing regions in the Dakotas or Texas will be among the most affected. China imports the most soybeans in the world, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and was the second-biggest destination after Canada for U.S. crude-oil exports in 2017, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

These tariffs will be devastating for states like Texas, Oklahoma, Indiana, Nebraska, Kansas and the Dakotas, but they will also affect red counties in swing states like North Carolina, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida.  Where I live in Northern Kentucky there won't be much effect, but head south into the bluegrass farmlands or the Bourbon Trail and Kentucky too will be taking serious economic damage.

But there's an extremely good chance that the damage will spread and become far worse, leading to economic catastrophe.

Trump's threats to add more tariffs are what really worry business leaders, foreign governments and even fellow Republican officials. He says he's ready to put tariffs on another $400 billion of Chinese products if China punches back yet again, something most expect China to do either with more tariffs or harsher non-tariff barriers to trade like added inspections of cars and letting fruit rot in Chinese ports while it waits for clearance to come ashore.

And his team is investigating whether to place tariffs on the roughly $360 billion auto, truck and car parts that were imported from foreign nations last year. Either of those moves would immediately vault the number of imported goods subject to the extra tax to close to 20 percent, a far steeper hit. If Trump did both, a third of imported goods would be impacted, an amount that would almost certainly be felt when Americans go shopping.

The damage right now is on about 5% of imports to America.  That number could go higher very quickly, and almost certainly will.

So far, the damage from Trump's trade battle has mainly been on the diplomatic side. China says Trump is “opening fire” on its nation, and Canada, a longtime U.S. ally, called the tariffs “insulting” and “totally unacceptable.” The European Union sent the Trump administration a document Friday warning that adding the auto tariffs would “damage further the reputation of the United States.”

No one is backing down yet, and there's almost no high-level dialogue taking place that could bring an end to the standoff.

“The Chinese have a very high threshold for pain. I don’t think they are going to blink because of a little pain,” said Sung Won Sohn, a former economist in the Nixon administration. “After all, China used to be in much worse economic shape.”

So did we.  It's possible that the real pain might not come ahead of November's elections, but if it does, the blue wave will become a tsunami overnight.  When plants and farms start shutting down and truck and SUV prices skyrocket, when consumer prices jump and the cost of gas hits $4 or $5 a gallon?

People will start voting for "change" real damn fast.

Immigration Nation, Con't

Republicans are quick to claim they are "winning" the public opinion debate on immigration because Americans are against people crossing the border illegally, and that Democrats in turn want "open borders", "no enforcement", and even "anarchy" as Trump has blathered on this week on Twitter about.

Americans are broadly against illegal border crossings, especially in border areas, that's true, but the reality is that Trump's handling of immigration is just as unpopular as Trump himself is, as are the specific actions he's taking in the name of "enforcement".

Americans overwhelmingly oppose the Trump administration’s now-rescinded policy of separating immigrant children from their parents, and smaller majorities also disagree with the president’s call to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and to restrict legal immigration by limiting citizens from bringing parents and siblings to this country, according to a new Washington Post-Schar School poll.

On other aspects of the immigration debate, however, a more mixed picture emerges. Americans are more closely divided on the question of whether enough is being done to prevent illegal immigration and whether the country has gone too far in welcoming immigrants. Also, more people say they trust President Trump than congressional Democrats to deal with the issue of border security. The support for Trump on the border security issue is especially evident in congressional districts considered key battlegrounds in this fall’s midterm elections.

Democrats appear more energized than Republicans about the fall elections, especially in battleground districts. Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independent voters in those districts, 59 percent say the midterms are extremely important, compared with 46 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. Overall, registered voters say they prefer to vote for a Democrat over a Republican for the House, 47 percent to 37 percent. The margin on that question is not statistically larger in battleground districts, standing at 12 percentage points.

The nation remains deeply divided along party lines, as it has throughout and before Trump’s presidency. Two other divisions define the political environment of 2018. On issues of immigration, as well as questions about Trump’s presidency, the gaps between men and women and between white voters with and without college degrees are sizable. Women and white college-educated voters are far more dissatisfied with the president and his policies than are men and white voters without college educations. However, gaps based on education are less significant in battleground districts.

Trump’s overall approval stands at 43 percent, while his disapproval is 55 percent. Among men, 54 percent approve; among women, 32 percent approve.

His handling of immigration draws slightly higher disapproval, with 39 percent approving and 59 percent disapproving. More than twice as many say they strongly disapprove as say they strongly approve. Among men, 51 percent disapprove, but among women, 67 percent disapprove. Among whites with college educations, 68 percent disapprove, but among non-college whites, 56 percent approve.

Approval of Trump's separation policy at the border is a crushing failure for him, only 29% approve.  Even white voters hate it., 65% against and only 33% for.  Hispanic voters are the most opposed, 77-20% against. Independent voters are opposed 74-25%.

Only Republicans think this is a good idea, 61-36% in favor of it.

As far as who is to blame for the separation policy, Trump or immigrants, it's an even split. 37% blame Trump, 35% blame immigrants, and 25% blame both equally.  But there are a lot of splits, men blame immigrants more 43-33% with 23% sharing the blame, while women blame the Trump regime 41-28% with 27% sharing equal blame.

A similar split is among Hispanic respondents, 41-23% blame the Trump regime with 28% sharing the blame, among African-Americans it's also 41%, but a substantial 48% think both the Trump regime and immigrants bear responsibility.  Only 8% of African-Americans blame immigrants solely for Trump's policy, 89% think he shares part or all of the blame.

Any way you look at it, the numbers continue to be bad for Trump and good for Democrats with just four months to go to the midterms.

Thank You For Your Service, Suckers

If there's any doubt left that Defense Secretary Gen. James Mattis is still in control of the Pentagon rather than being Trump's lap dog (rather than Mad Dog!) then that just got put to rest with this shameful story.

Some immigrant U.S. Army reservists and recruits who enlisted in the military with a promised path to citizenship are being abruptly discharged, the Associated Press has learned.

The AP was unable to quantify how many men and women who enlisted through the special recruitment program have been booted from the Army, but immigration attorneys say they know of more than 40 who have been discharged or whose status has become questionable, jeopardizing their futures.

“It was my dream to serve in the military,” said reservist Lucas Calixto, a Brazilian immigrant who filed a lawsuit against the Army last week. “Since this country has been so good to me, I thought it was the least I could do to give back to my adopted country and serve in the United States military.”

Some of the service members say they were not told why they were being discharged. Others who pressed for answers said the Army informed them they’d been labeled as security risks because they have relatives abroad or because the Defense Department had not completed background checks on them.

Spokespeople for the Pentagon and the Army said that, due to the pending litigation, they were unable to explain the discharges or respond to questions about whether there have been policy changes in any of the military branches.

If you think for a second that the US Army doesn't know why it's discharging recruits, that's complete nonsense.

Eligible recruits are required to have legal status in the U.S., such as a student visa, before enlisting. More than 5,000 immigrants were recruited into the program in 2016, and an estimated 10,000 are currently serving. Most go the Army, but some also go to the other military branches.

To become citizens, the service members need an honorable service designation, which can come after even just a few days at boot camp. But the recently discharged service members have had their basic training delayed, so they can’t be naturalized.

Margaret Stock, an Alaska-based immigration attorney and a retired Army Reserve lieutenant colonel who helped create the immigrant recruitment program, said she’s been inundated over the past several days by recruits who have been abruptly discharged.

All had signed enlistment contracts and taken an Army oath, Stock said. Many were reservists who had been attending unit drills, receiving pay and undergoing training, while others had been in a “delayed entry” program, she said.

“Immigrants have been serving in the Army since 1775,” Stock said. “We wouldn’t have won the revolution without immigrants. And we’re not going to win the global war on terrorism today without immigrants.”

Stock said the service members she’s heard from had been told the Defense Department had not managed to put them through extensive background checks, which include CIA, FBI and National Intelligence Agency screenings and counterintelligence interviews. Therefore, by default, they do not meet the background check requirement.

“It’s a vicious cycle,” she said.

As with the family separations and permanent immigrant detainment/deportation regime that Trump has created, discharging immigrants from the Army is 100% being done on purpose and at Trump's command. 

Did anyone think that a government run by Donald Trump, a man who regularly stiffed customers,  contractors and vendors as a businessman and got away with it, would keep its word?

The people who voted for him do.  Even when they know he's lying to them.

Getting Out, Scott Free

If there were any more turnovers in the Trump regime, they'd have to hire Karl Malone.

Scott Pruitt, President Trump’s administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, resigned after facing months of allegations over legal and ethical violations.

Mr. Trump announced the resignation in a tweet on Thursday in which he thanked Mr. Pruitt for an “outstanding job” and said the agency’s deputy, Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, would take over as the acting administrator on Monday. In his resignation letter, Mr. Pruitt cited “unrelenting attacks on me personally” as one of the reasons for his departure, an apparent reference to the numerous investigations into his stewardship of the agency.

Mr. Pruitt had been hailed as a hero among conservatives for his zealous deregulation, but he could not overcome a spate of ethics questions about his alleged spending abuses, first-class travel and cozy relationships with lobbyists. Earlier on Thursday, The New York Times reported on new questions about whether aides to Mr. Pruitt had deleted sensitive information about his meetings from his public schedule, potentially in violation of the law.Mr. Pruitt also came under fire for enlisting aides to obtain special favors for him and his family, such as reaching out to the chief executive of Chick-fil-A, Dan T. Cathy, with the intent of helping Mr. Pruitt’s wife, Marlyn, open a franchise of the restaurant.

Reminder: he's almost certainly going to be indicted soon.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly told associates that Mr. Pruitt has done what he has wanted in terms of cutting regulations, so he has been reluctant to let him go. Mr. Pruitt has made himself available to the president as a confidant as well as a possible next attorney general.

But White House advisers for months have implored Mr. Trump to get rid of Mr. Pruitt, including his chief of staff, John F. Kelly. Ultimately, the president grew disillusioned with Mr. Pruitt after a cascade of accusations of impropriety and ethical missteps overshadowed Mr. Pruitt’s policy achievements.

In recent days, people who have spoken with Mr. Trump said he sounds exasperated with his EPA administrator’s negative headlines. “It’s one thing after another with this guy,” one person close to Mr. Trump quoted the president as saying.

Uh-huh. 

The real reason Pruitt was fired?

Mr. Pruitt is the subject of at least 13 federal investigations, and a government watchdog agency concluded that he had broken the law with his purchase of a $43,000 secure telephone booth. He was also under investigation for his 2017 lease of a bedroom in a condominium linked to a Canadian energy company’s powerful Washington lobbying firm, and for accusations that he demoted or sidelined E.P.A. employees who questioned his actions.

Of course, there is that whole "wants to be Trump's Supreme Court pick" thing.  Who knows.

By the way, you can argue that Pruitt's immediate replacement will actually be worse because Pruitt's deputy, Andrew Wheeler, is just as awful, but nowhere near as blatantly greedy.

We're still very screwed on climate change.

At Lady Liberty's Feet

Therese Patricia Okoumou climbed up on to the Statue of Liberty's dress on the 4th of July to protest the Trump regime's immigration policies for several hours before police were able to apprehend her.

A woman who climbed up to the robes of the Statue of Liberty to protest the separation of migrant families was taken into custody after a standoff with police on the Fourth of July. 

Authorities had tried to talk the woman down but she refused to leave. For nearly three hours, she crossed the base of the statue, at times sitting in the folds of the statue's dress and under Lady Liberty's sandal. The woman was identified as Therese Patricia Okoumou by a law enforcement source close to the investigation and another source who knows her. 

The woman was part of a group of protesters and had declared that she wouldn't come down until "all the children are released," a source with the New York Police Department told CNN. 

About 16 officers with the New York City Police Department's Emergency Service Unit -- a team trained to perform some of the most dangerous rescues in the city -- took part in the rescue/apprehension effort, Officer Brian Glacken said in a news conference Wednesday evening. 

"At first, she wasn't friendly with us, but we took the time to get a rapport with her so that took a while," said Glacken. 

"She just kind of mentioned the kids in Texas. I guess the whole debate that's going on about that. In the beginning, she threatened to push us off, push the ladder off, but we stayed with her," Glacken added. 

Finally, officers with ropes and climbing gear reached her. 

"At first she was being a little combative, then she was willing to cooperate with us. She actually apologized to us for having to go up and get her," Glacken told reporters. 

Officers put a harness and ropes on her to bring her down, and she crossed to the other side of the statue with the officers where a ladder was propped up on the base of the statue. 

Expect a lot more very public protests this summer and ahead as we move through the Trump era, but the real test will be November.  Trump is convinced that Republicans will not only keep the House and Senate but actually gain seats, and he's heading off to talk to the man who will almost certainly try to help make that happen later next week.

Also in another note, I have the rest of this week off, so posting will be light (as you've already figured out.)

Stay tuned.

Last Call For What It Means To Be A Citizen

As we watch fireworks and enjoy a cookout this evening as we celebrate America's birthday, remember that the Trump regime is actively engaging in not only eliminating asylum applications and all but ending legal immigration (seemingly for anyone who doesn't happen to be from Russia) but actively seeking to remove citizenship and deport previously naturalized citizens.

Oh, but Trump still can't book a real July 4th act at the White House.

So there's that, I guess.