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Column: Here’s why the GOP smears everything it doesn’t like as ‘socialism’

Column: Here’s why the GOP smears everything it doesn’t like as ‘socialism’

Michael Hiltzik                       
WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 14: Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) speaks during a news conference after the GOP Conference Chair election on Capitol Hill on Friday, May 14, 2021 in Washington, DC. House Republicans formally selected Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) Friday to replace Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY). (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

 

There are two things one can be sure of when politicians denigrate government programs as “socialist.” One is that they don’t know anything about “socialism.” The other is that they don’t know anything about the programs they’re trying to smear.

So here comes Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), the third-ranking member of the House Republican leadership, with an especially absurd example of the genre.

Marking the birthdays of Medicare and Medicaid, which were enacted on July 30, 1965, she took to Twitter to celebrate “the critical role these programs have played to protect the healthcare of millions of families.” Then she pivoted to add, “To safeguard our future, we must reject Socialist healthcare schemes.”

The cry of socialism has been patented by the powerful interests that desire to put a damper on progressive legislation….for over a quarter century.

Al Smith, Democratic candidate for President, in 1928

Stefanik’s remark was particularly incoherent in part because of the history of Republican opinion on Medicare and Medicaid: Almost universally, they derided the programs as “socialism.”

The Medicare and Medicaid bill placed before Congress by President Lyndon Johnson was “not only socialism — it is brazen socialism,” declared Sen. Carl Curtis (R-Neb.).

During his 1964 presidential campaign against Johnson, Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) asked: “Having given our pensioners their medical care in kind, why not food baskets, why not public housing accommodations, why not vacation resorts, why not a ration of cigarettes for those who smoke and of beer for those who drink?”

Ronald Reagan, functioning in 1961 as a mouthpiece for the American Medical Assn., reviled a precursor bill to the Medicaid/Medicare legislation as “simply an excuse to bring about what [Democrats] wanted all the time, socialized medicine.”

Reagan’s AMA patrons were only sticking to a successful script — their cry of “socialized medicine” had helped them defeat an effort by Harry Truman to enact a public healthcare plan in 1945. (The AMA also derided Truman and his aides as “followers of the Moscow party line.”)

More recently, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced that the GOP strategy in the 2020 election would be to present itself as “the firewall that saves the country from socialism.”

Did it work? This was the election that turned McConnell from Senate majority leader to Senate minority leader.

Stefanik, who has been making a name for herself on Capitol Hill as someone who will say anything if she thinks it will bring her advancement, wasn’t clear in her tweet what she meant by “Socialist healthcare schemes.”

Perhaps she meant the public option, a government-sponsored program to compete with private insurance. The public option was rejected during the debate preceding enactment of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, though it has lately gained new attention. But Stefanik didn’t need to be that specific; her goal was to place the term “socialism” out there.

Stefanik was using the term as a shibboleth — a code word directed at her political base, much as her GOP colleagues have used “vaccine passport” to demonize vaccination requirements designed to protect public health, or “Faucism” to undermine vaccination, or “critical race theory” to manipulate education standards.

Stefanik didn’t expect to be heard by the public at large, and certainly not by Democrats. She was merely sending a signal to her peeps that she was one of them.

The effectiveness of shibboleths doesn’t depend on an understanding of a particular term’s meaning — in fact, any such understanding would work against its effectiveness as a partisan dog whistle. It’s useful to recall that one of the rallying cries against the enactment of the ACA was “keep your government hands off my Medicare.”

Nevertheless, before looking at the technique’s long, discreditable history, we should be reminded that true socialism is defined as a belief that the means of production should be publicly, not privately, owned. That encompasses manufacturing plants and their machines and tools. Such conditions imply an economy in which output and the use of labor are publicly directed and social benefits evenly distributed.

Any functioning economy, then, comprises purely capitalist elements as well as those that might be labeled socialist. But the programs denigrated as socialist by the American right tend to place private enterprise at their center.

That includes the ACA, which dictates that all Americans must carry a form of health insurance and subsidizes their purchase by the working and middle class, but relies on private insurers to provide the coverage. In Medicaid and Medicare, the government sets the prices for procedures and services, but leaves it up to doctors and hospitals to decide whether to join.

The American system also recognizes that market capitalism, for all its virtues, has its flaws — chiefly that all participants don’t enter the marketplace with equivalent power. That’s why we have a safety net of social insurance programs aimed at ensuring that nobody is left entirely out of the market — the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid and Medicare, food stamps and child tax credits, free COVID-19 testing and vaccinations, to name a few.

As I’ve reported before, the branding of progressive programs, especially those proposed by Democrats, as “socialist” is not a new stratagem. The “socialism” smear has long since become so common that it’s easy — almost too easy — to ridicule.

The best example dates back to January 1936 and a gala dinner sponsored by the American Liberty League, a splinter group of wealthy business leaders and old-guard Democrats opposing Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Its star was former New York Gov. Al Smith, who had run for president on the Democratic ticket in 1928 as a progressive leader and then thrown in his lot with the party’s Wall Street wing.

No one was ever quite sure what motivated Smith’s apostasy, whether personal resentment of his former ally FDR or the financial blandishments of his new friends. FDR had a withering opinion of the Liberty League, describing it as “an organization that only advocates two or three out of the Ten Commandments…. [They] say you shall love God and then forget your neighbor.”

At the league gala, Smith told his audience, “Make a test for yourself. Just get the platform of the Democratic Party and get the platform of the Socialist Party and lay them down on your dining-room table, side by side…. After you have done that, make your mind up to pick up the platform that more nearly squares with the record, and you will have your hand on the Socialist platform.”

A thunderstruck FDR remarked to his Labor Secretary, Frances Perkins: “Practically all the things we’ve done in the federal government are like things Al Smith did as governor of New York. They’re things he would have done if he had been president of the United States. What in the world is the matter?”

But he also had an ace up his sleeve — a speech Smith had delivered during the 1928 campaign in which he ridiculed the same charge of “socialism” from Republicans that he now leveled against Roosevelt.

“The cry of socialism,” Smith declared, “has been patented by the powerful interests that desire to put a damper on progressive legislation. Is that cry of socialism anything new? Not to a man of my experience. I have heard it raised by reactionary elements and the Republican Party … for over a quarter-century.”

Nearly a century later, the GOP is still at it. The cry of “socialism” is still used to put a damper on progressive legislation, whether it’s requiring the wealthy to pay their fair share of taxes instead of enjoying the lowest tax rates in 50 years, or looking for further means to ensure universal healthcare. It’s been a tried-and-true method for decades, but as Stefanik’s inept version shows, it’s getting a little threadbare.

Oil producers used Facebook to counter President Biden’s clean energy message, a study shows.

The New York Times

Daily Business Briefing

Oil producers used Facebook to counter President Biden’s clean energy message, a study shows.

Hiroko Tabuchi                          August 5, 2021

 

An Exxon Mobile oil refinery in Channahon, Ill. The oil giant was one of the largest users of paid ads promoting fossil fuels on Facebook’s U.S. platforms in 2020.
Credit…Tannen Maury/EPA, via Shutterstock.

Soon after Joseph R. Biden Jr., then a presidential candidate, released his $2 trillion climate plan last year that promised to escalate the use of clean energy in the United States, the world’s major oil and gas dialed up their presence on Facebook.

 

Overnight on Facebook’s U.S. platforms, 25 of the biggest oil and gas producers, industry lobby groups and advocacy organizations unleashed a surge in ads promoting fossil fuels, according to ad spending data analyzed by InfluenceMap, a London-based watchdog that tracks corporate influence on climate policy.

By the following week, collective ad spend by the companies like Exxon Mobil — as well as powerful lobby groups like the American Petroleum Institute — had risen more than 1,000 percent, from a seven-day rolling average of about $6,700 a day to more than $86,000 a day, according to the data, based on disclosures by Facebook and tallied by InfluenceMap. For the whole of 2020, some 25,147 ads logged more than 431 million views, bringing Facebook almost $10 million in advertising revenue on those ads.

“Do you support America’s pipelines? We all depend on this critical infrastructure for affordable energy supplies!” said an ad run by Exxon starting on July 15, 2020, the day after Mr. Biden’s climate announcement. “Natural gas is already clean, affordable and efficient — and it’s getting better every day,” said an ad by the American Petroleum Institute starting on July 20.

An Exxon Mobil ad that appeared on Facebook. Ad spending by oil groups surged on the platform last year.Credit…via Facebook

Of the 25 companies and groups, Exxon and API were the largest users of paid ads on Facebook’s U.S. platforms in 2020, accounting for 62 percent of the total ads analyzed by InfluenceMap. The analysis found that ads were shown to more men than women overall, though there were some variations: posts that focused on fossil fuels as part of the climate solution were shown to more women, while those that argued oil and gas were a pragmatic choice economically were shown to more men.

Recent research has highlighted that though natural gas is a cleaner-burning fuel than coal or oil, releasing less greenhouse gases that are the driver of global warming, there are heavy emissions associated with producing the gas. Scientists, environmentalists and, increasingly, regulators have called out the portrayal of gas as a low-carbon fuel as misleading.

In a statement, Facebook pointed out that similar ads run on many platforms, including television, and that the social networking platform offered transparency by making its ad data available. (Many large traditional news organizations, including The New York Times, also accept oil-company advertising.) Facebook’s advertising policies also ban ads containing misleading information, and require those on social or political issues to be clearly labeled.

“We reject ads when one of our independent fact-checking partners rates them as false or misleading and take action against pages, groups, accounts, and websites that repeatedly share content rated as false,” Facebook said.

An Exxon spokesman, Todd M, Spitler, said the oil producer believed “that sound public policy is achieved when a variety of informed voices participate in the political process. For these reasons, Exxon Mobil exercises its right to support and participate in policy discussions.” An API spokeswoman, Megan Bloomgren, said that the lobby group’s social media spending was “a fraction of the robust investments our companies are making every day into breakthrough technological research to shape a lower carbon future.”

Geoffrey Supran, a Harvard University researcher who has examined the fossil fuel industry’s climate messaging, said aspects of InfluenceMap’s findings were consistent with his research. InfluenceMap identified several different types of messaging in the Facebook ads — including presenting oil and gas as part of the solution on climate change — that had become part of the industry’s playbook, he said.

An Exxon Mobil ad that appeared on Facebook. “Exxon Mobil exercises its right to support and participate in policy discussions,” a spokesman said.
Credit…via Facebook

 

“What our research has shown is that over the past decade or so, the industry has gradually shifted from outright disinformation about climate science to more subtle and insidious messaging,” he said. But those messages “work to muddy the waters to the same end — which is to stop action on climate change,” he said. “Media and communication platforms need to stop being used — they need to stop being pawns of fossil fuel propaganda and to protect the public.”

The analysis comes as a big part of Mr. Biden’s climate vision, his $1 trillion infrastructure package, moves forward in Congress, with substantial investments aimed at addressing climate change. But it is far from the broader package that Mr. Biden had sought, and has also angered climate advocates for extending a lifeline to fossil fuels by allocating some funds to natural gas infrastructure.

Facebook temporarily suspended new political ads ahead of the U.S. presidential elections in November to reduce misinformation and interference. The social networking site has since lifted that ban, and most of the groups tracked by InfluenceMap continue to run ads.

“While this research focused on 2020,” said Faye Holder, who authored the InfluenceMap report, “the reality is the oil and gas sector is continuing to use Facebook as a key tool.”

Hiroko Tabuchi is an investigative reporter on the climate desk. She was part of the Times team that received the 2013 Pulitzer for explanatory reporting.

Fracking in Pennsylvania used toxic ‘forever chemicals’ as Pa. officials maintain willful ignorance

The Philadelphia Inquirer – Opinion

Fracking in Pennsylvania used toxic ‘forever chemicals’ as Pa. officials maintain willful ignorance | Editorial

The Editorial Board                August 5, 2021

 

The Inquirer’s editorial board identified the use of PFAS in eight fracking wells. Only the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection can shed light on the full scope.

The drill platform at the Cabot Oil & Gas Corp Flower drill site, outside of Dimock. Pa. An analysis by The Inquirer's editorial board of 280 chemicals used in fracking found that all but 48 had been assigned a safety warning.
The drill platform at the Cabot Oil & Gas Corp Flower drill site, outside of Dimock. Pa. An analysis by The Inquirer’s editorial board of 280 chemicals used in fracking found that all but 48 had been assigned a safety warning.  MICHAEL BRYANT / Staff Photographer

 

When Physicians for Social Responsibility published a bombshell report last month about the use of toxic, so-called forever chemicals in fracking, many questions remained for Pennsylvania and the health risks for our state.

Through Freedom of Information Act requests, the health professionals’ environmental advocacy group found that in 2011, the Environmental Protection Agency authorized the use of a group of chemicals known as PFAS in fracking. That’s despite warnings from agency scientists that these chemicals pose health hazards — including the risk of cancer, liver problems, immune disorders, and adverse effects on fetuses and breastfeeding babies. The physicians group identified the use of the chemicals in at least 1,200 wells in six states, not including Pennsylvania.

» READ MORE: Fracking’s use of EPA-approved toxic chemicals shows again that regulators prioritize industry over health | Editorial

An analysis of public data by this editorial board identified the use of one of these “forever chemicals” in at least eight Pennsylvania fracking wells between 2012 and 2014. Our findings should raise concerns for all Pennsylvanians.

What we found

Since 2012, Pennsylvania law and the Department of Environmental Protection require well operators to disclose chemicals used in the fracking process to the FracFocus database.

Using information from the database, we matched 280 chemicals to the PubChem library of the National Center for Biotechnology Information; the library includes safety information about each substance, including health and environmental warnings. A chemical can be assigned multiple warnings, and many are. This board identified 28 chemicals with an “acute toxicity” warning — the most serious safety label — and 106 with a health warning, an environmental warning, or both. Of the 280 chemicals on the list, 48 had no warning.

The “forever chemical” identified by the board is polytetrafluoroethylene, commonly known as Teflon — which PubChem reports is “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen.” According to David Andrews, a chemist and senior scientist at the Environmental Working Group, while polytetrafluoroethylene is a relatively stable compound and direct exposure is of low concern, “the real issue” is it “often has contaminants and byproducts in it.”

The compound could break down into fragments that, according to Andrews, are “incredibly persistent” and “known to cause toxic effects.” BiologistMaricel V. Maffini adds that this persistence “increases the likelihood of exposure and toxicity.”

State environmental officials have been testing water for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, but not with fracking in mind when targeting water sources. Instead, the state tested water sources within half a mile of military bases, fire training sites, landfills, and manufacturing facilities because they are known sources of contamination.

Four of the wells in which polytetrafluoroethylene has been used are in Washington County, where state officials did not test a single water source.

Steps needed

Now that the use of these chemicals in fracking is known, the commonwealth should test water near wells and waste ponds where “forever chemicals” were used.

Asked to comment on polytetrafluoroethylene being identified in at least eight wells, a Department of Environmental Protection spokesperson replied by email that the agency “is dedicated to ensuring that Pennsylvanians have safe drinking water, and in cases of water supply contamination, the supply must be replaced with water that meets or exceeds safe drinking water standards. Further, DEP understands that PFAS, an emerging environmental issue, is a serious concern that we are working to address.”

PFAS is an abbreviation for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, chemicals that were developed to prevent staining and corrosion; they are often contained in nonstick cookware and food packaging.

Other hazardous materials mayhave been used in Pennsylvania fracking. State officials maintain a list of about 430 chemicals protected from disclosure as trade secrets and say they can identify each. Asked whether the state would audit the list for “forever chemicals” — not disclosing the name of the substance or other details — a spokesperson wrote that such review is “possible” but time-consuming as “staff will need to review approximately 90 individual paper submissions” to identify the chemicals.

» READ MORE: PFAS found in 72% of drinking-water samples in Philly’s suburbs

Compared with Pennsylvania’s important efforts to test water for those substances, reviewing 90 paper submissions for critical information about potential risk seems a minor cost.

Why it matters

The use of a chemical in fracking doesn’t necessarily mean that chemical reached water sources. But fracking waste water has spilled, and chemicals from fracking fluids have previously been found in Pennsylvania’s water.

Even if fracking fluids pollute water, the potential harm to people or the environment depends on the quantity of chemicals and their interaction with water. But the mere existence of a chemical in fracking fluid creates the risk of a harmful spill. Between Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s report chastising state environmental officials for failing to regulate fracking, and industry’s rejection of the notion that fracking could contaminate water, Pennsylvanians can’t have much confidence that if something goes wrong it will be addressed promptly, thoroughly, and transparently.

There are tangible reasons to be concerned. A cluster of rare cancer in children prompted Gov. Tom Wolf to award $2.5 million toward studying the relationship of fracking and health. While waiting for the results — expected by the end of 2022 — a sensible step is for the Department of Environmental Protection to review the trade secret records to verify the extent to which toxic substances were injected into the commonwealth’s soil.

The only way to gain a full picture of those substances in Pennsylvania, and to prevent resulting harm, is for state environmental officials to answer: Are there “forever chemicals” on the list of substances used in fracking and registered as a trade secret? If more of those chemicals were used, and that information sat with environmental officials without disclosure or proper review, that would be a miscarriage of justice — and a violation of Pennsylvanians’ constitutional right to “pure water.”

Published 

Aug. 5, 2021
The Inquirer Editorial Board
The Inquirer Editorial Board

This opinion was written by a group of journalists who work separately from the newsroom to debate matters of public interest.

Louisiana needs sand to rebuild its coast. Old oil and gas pipelines are blocking the way.

Washington Post – Climate and Environment

Louisiana needs sand to rebuild its coast. Old oil and gas pipelines are blocking the way.

By Sara Sneath       August 5, 2021

Energy companies, many of them now bankrupt, have been allowed to abandon infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico without penalty
The cutter head dredge R.S. Weeks pumps sand and water from the Gulf of Mexico to a Louisiana barrier island five miles away on July 28, 2021, as part of a Louisiana Coastal Restoration and Protection Authority project to add about 400 acres of beach, dune and marshland to Grand Terre Island. (AP Photo/Janet McConnaughey)

A Houston-based energy company is asking a federal bankruptcy court for permission to walk away from its aging infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico. Fieldwood Energy is attempting to shift responsibility for removing 1,715 wells, 276 platforms and 281 pipelines to oil and gas companies that previously held leases for the same area, according to court documents.

Under existing federal regulations, companies remain liable for decommissioning infrastructure on areas of federally owned seafloor where they previously produced oil and gas. But the former holders of the Fieldwood leases — including Chevron, BP and Shell — are attempting to get out of that obligation because of the cost, estimated at $9 billion.

It’s a familiar story. A recent U.S. Government Accountability Office report found that oil and gas companies have been allowed to abandon 97 percent of offshore pipelines in place without penalty. The abandoned infrastructure poses environmental concerns, but it has also created another problem: The pipelines are blocking access to the sand that Louisiana and other gulf states desperately need to rebuild their coastlines in the face of rising seas.

The Gulf of Mexico swallows a football field of Louisiana coastline every 100 minutes on average. Barrier islands that have historically acted as speed bumps to hurricanes headed toward coastal communities are among the areas losing ground. Without them, the state is more vulnerable to climate change and severe weather.

Geologists estimate that up to 11,000 million cubic meters of sediment are needed to restore the state’s coastline, but about 58 percent of the offshore sediment in the gulf that could be used to rebuild Louisiana’s coast is blocked by pipelines, said Syed Khalil, a geologist with the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority. While there is enough sand for the coastal restoration projects that Louisiana has planned in the short term, the state’s fight to fend off rising seas will require more.

“We need every grain of sand for the restoration of coastal Louisiana,” Khalil said.

Other Gulf Coast states are facing the same problem. But the issue has come to a head in Louisiana, where coastal land is disappearing faster than anywhere else in the nation. Flood control levees built along the Mississippi River are partly to blame for the Bayou State’s land loss. Levees block off the supply of sediment once carried by the river into coastal wetlands.

Canals dug through the wetlands to build and service pipelines — which create pathways for saltwater to flow into the marsh — are also partly to blame for Louisiana’s coastal erosion. Now, those pipelines are hindering the solution.

Federal regulations require the removal of offshore pipelines once they are decommissioned, but the rules are rarely enforced. The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, the Interior Department agency that regulates offshore energy, has been mostly unsuccessful at getting companies to pay for the removal of pipelines decommissioned in place when they are later determined to be in the way.

The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) was established after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion in 2010 to address the conflicting interests of the Minerals Management Service, which was tasked with collecting lease payments from oil and gas companies and enforcing environmental and safety regulations for those same companies.

But oil and gas companies have continued to benefit from lax enforcement for decommissioning pipelines, said Megan Milliken Biven, a public policy expert who worked for the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM). The BSEE allows major oil companies to sell their leases to smaller operators, such as Fieldwood, that lack the resources to clean up when wells are drained.\

“There’s no revenue from cleaning up after yourself,” she said. “Every incentive is to avoid it.”

Often, previous pipeline operators have gone bankrupt or fight the decision by appealing to the Interior Board of Land Appeals. The previous operators of more than 100 miles of pipelines buried in sediment no longer exist, according to the GAO report. This number is expected to increase as more companies go bankrupt because of a drop in oil prices and the growth of onshore fracking that has priced out offshore gas.

Louisiana has identified the best places to get sand and sediment to rebuild its coast. But all of these underwater sediment deposits in federal waters, called “borrow areas,” contain pipelines that dredges have to navigate around, said Jessica Mallindine, a marine biologist for BOEM’s Marine Minerals Program in the Gulf of Mexico.

Dredges used to suction up sand from the bottom of the gulf are not allowed to excavate within 1,000 feet of pipelines. This is to keep the pipelines intact and to ensure the safety of workers. It is estimated that a pipeline one kilometer long (0.6 miles) — in addition to the required offset — will make about 2.3 million cubic yards of sand inaccessible. The pipelines also force dredges to operate in smaller footprints, which increases the price tag of coastal restoration projects.

It’s the difference between mowing a large, open backyard compared to mowing a small yard with garden hoses in the way. “Every time a dredge turns, it costs money, or more money than to go in a straight line,” Mallindine said. “By reducing the efficiency of the design, you’re increasing project costs.”

In 2009, BOEM sent a letter to oil and gas companies leasing federal land in the Gulf of Mexico discouraging them from leaving inactive pipelines in areas where sediment could be used for coastal restoration. In 2016, BOEM sent a letter to the BSEE with the same message: Pipelines in these areas must be removed when they are no longer in use.

Before 2016, the safety and environmental enforcement bureau allowed 3,405 miles of decommissioned pipelines to be left in these areas, BSEE spokesman Mike O’Berry said. Now when BSEE gets a request from a company to decommission a pipeline in place, the agency defers to BOEM for recommendations to remove such pipelines — or portions of pipelines — in significant sediment resource areas. In cases where BOEM recommends removal of the pipeline, BSEE denies the operator’s request to decommission in place.

Since 2016, the two agencies authorized 195 miles of pipeline to be left in areas of the gulf with sediment deposits, he said. The agency has the authority to require removal ​of previously decommissioned-in-place pipelines when it is determined that the pipeline is an obstruction.

But BSEE has had difficulty in getting those companies to retroactively remove pipelines because the companies are not required to set aside money for pipeline removal, and they may be bankrupt or liquidated. The agency is currently reviewing its regulations related to pipelines and is expected to release its recommendations for rule changes this year for public comment, O’Berry said.

Milliken Biven expressed doubt that a change in BSEE policy would stop oil and gas companies from abandoning pipelines in the Gulf. “The regulations are such that they should be removing pipelines,” she said. “What makes you think they’ll follow new regulations, if they don’t follow old regulations?”

A gas transmission pipeline cuts the landscape in St. Bernard Parish, La., on July 21, 2018. Pipelines run from the Gulf of Mexico to refineries in coastal Louisiana. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

Just Go Away! (Trump)

DC Report

Just Go Away!

Terry H. Schwadron                       

Trump Sues 3 High Tech Firms

ABC News screengrab
The Former Grifter-in-Chief Won’t Disappear Like a Respectable Ex-President Should

It’s no good trying to ignore Donald Trump.

He keeps popping up in the news. The stories reflect more his insults and influence-bending than actual guidance for the country, more about legal problems than help on getting people vaccinated, say, and more about his fund-raising even as he continues to pump money from those efforts into his private businesses.

Trump may have proved right about one thing. Love or hate aside, we have trouble quitting him.

So, even as efforts continue to reconcile unethical deeds over time and pundits seek to find signs of declining reign over willing Republicans, with $100 million in the bank Trump continues to be the would-be next candidate for president.

Trump keeps coming on, twisting truth or actual events for convenience and letting even friends and allies fall by the wayside on his way to the never-ending spotlight.

Some see as bad signs for Trump an election loss in Texas of his designated candidate and the pending Joe Biden victory of winning bipartisan support for an infrastructure bill that Trump never could get passed.

“The weakness Trump showed this week is real, but it isn’t new. His power over the GOP has always been limited: As president he often found himself balked on policy by congressional Republicans, and his impressive endorsement record reflects a lot of cautious winner-picking, not aggressive movement-building,” says New York Times columnist Ross Douthat.

Even as New York prosecutors are cornering Trump on fraud charges, even as new disclosures show more outrageous attempts to use the Justice Department for his personal political ends, as new orders show he must share his taxes with Congress, Trump keeps coming. He continues twisting truth or actual events for convenience and letting even friends and allies fall by the wayside on his way to the never-ending spotlight.

Again and Again

He is the new Old Faithful.

Among the week’s Trump tally:

  • Undermining Election Results: “Just Say the Election Was Corrupt and Leave the Rest to Me and the Republican. congressmen,” Trump told Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen in January, according to notes of the near-daily conversations with Trump disclosed by The Times. Though they had found no instances of widespread fraud, so that Trump and his allies in Congress could use the assertion to try to overturn the election results, Trump told him, though this weekend, Trump insisted that “overturn” means “guaranteeing election integrity.” Whatever translation from truth you want to accept, Trump crossed another big line trying to bully the Justice Department in violation of every ethical, governmental, maybe even legal interpretation available. To anyone but Team Trump, bad news.
  • Surrendering Tax Filings. The Justice Department said the Treasury Department must turn over Trump’s tax returns to congressional investigators on the House Ways and Means Committee as part of its review of the Internal Revenue Service’s presidential audit program. The Trump administration stymied the request for years and the committee sued to obtain the documents. Still, it was an unusual victory, however it turns out, for Truth in Government, since present Attorney General Merrick Garland continues to surprise all with how reluctant he is proving to be in demanding that Trump officials own up to legal abuses of the last administration.

“I am not going to look backward,” Garland has said, in interviews that are deeply unsatisfying to Democrats, government watchdogs and anyone who wants catharsis after four years of Trump’s insistence on his ‘absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department,’ as he put it to The New York Times in 2017,” notes The Washington Post Magazine.

“Those voices are calling for investigations of the politicization of the department under Trump, a public reckoning of the damage done, the spectacle of heads rolling. They speak of ‘truth commissions’ and ‘de-Trumpification.’ That is how you restore confidence in the institution, they say.”

  • A subpoena to the Jan. 6 investigation is looming, says The Post, among others, for Trump to give an accounting of his role in amassing, inciting and failing to stop the rioting at the U.S. Capitol. It’s a tricky thing to require Trump’s testimony, if the committee can sidestep executive privilege claims without having to go to court, because it gives Trump the ultimate platform for repeating his election rigging nonsense. But it also represents testimony under oath, and that is something Trump never wants to do, any more than his acolytes among Republican members of Congress. The number of open questions about Trump’s role continues to increase.
  • Meanwhile, Big Steal rolls along, amid widening reports that the Arizona re-count or re-creation of Election Day in Mariposa County is a sham, with even Republican sponsors in that state fleeing before final creative writing reports are being produced in secret. The continuing theme is that unless Cyber Ninjas makes it all up, there was little to sustain a turnaround in vote counts. Still, the efforts to do similar audits are moving to Michigan, where Republicans seem quite torn about it, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where Trump troops are going door to door asking people how they voted, as if that is somehow OK. But daily, we’re hearing about Republican punishments for anyone veering from the Trump fraud line.
  • Following the Money. Yes, Federal Election Commission reports confirm that Trump’s fund-raising efforts have topped $100 million for the last six months, though the Trump spending reports have gotten less attention. Money from the several Political Action Committees for Trump are sending payments to Trump properties for meetings and housing, reports The Post, with one PAC paying Trump $68,000 during the same time period. Since Trump entered the presidential race in June 2015, he has used his political campaigns and associated committees to pump more than $19 million into his own businesses, according to a Washington Post analysis of federal campaign-finance records. The Post also reported that it could not find evidence that Trump donated his last six months of salary, as pledged, nor his ample pension. The perception of Trump as a grifter also continues unabated.
Not Leaving

Still, none of the fictionalizing seems to halt seeing Trump presenting himself as if he actually still is president, any more than persistent legal and business problems. His supporters remain most comfortable blaming others for any negative news and keep faith with their idea of an iconoclastic bull in the china shop of intellectualism.

Former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows reported this week without explanation that Trump’s “Cabinet” of advisers were meeting with him at the Trump Bedminster, N.J. golf resort, as if it were a shadow presidency interested in anything other than promoting Trump.

The MAGA rallies are back, if a tad more subdued, the insult machine is alive and well, cranking out criticism for a lengthening list of enemies and the hints of an announced re-play of the election mix with the constant reporting about whether Pillow Talk Guy has identified another day in which magically Trump ousts Biden as a legitimate election winner.

I’d be happy never to see Trump again in any form, but we’re not even close.

Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York. As an editor, Terry created new approaches in newsrooms, built technological tools and digital media. He pursued efforts to recruit and train minority journalists and in scholarship programs. A resident of Harlem, he volunteers in community storytelling, arts in education programs, tutoring and is an active freelance trombone player

Starving cows. Fallow farms. The Arizona drought is among the worst in the country

Starving cows. Fallow farms. The Arizona drought is among the worst in the country

Jaweed Kaleem                          
Casa Grande, Arizona-July 21, 2021- Nancy Caywood stands beside the corn that her son Travis Hartman farms using leased land that has water rights. The family hopes the profit from the corn (feed) will help pay the taxes and water dues they own on their own land Caywood Farms. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angels Times)
Nancy Caywood stands beside the corn that her son Travis Hartman farms using leased land that has water rights. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

 

The cotton’s gone.
The alfalfa barely exists.

“Can you even call this a farm?” asked Nancy Caywood, standing on a rural stretch of land her Texas grandfather settled nearly a century ago, drawn by cheap prices and feats of engineering that brought water from afar to irrigate central Arizona’s arid soil.

The canals that used to bring water to the fields of Caywood Farms have gone dry due to the drought.
The canals that used to bring water to the fields of Caywood Farms have gone dry due to the drought. In Arizona, 99% of the land is undergoing a years-long drought. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

 

On the family’s 247 acres an hour south of Phoenix, Caywood grew up tending to cotton and alfalfa, two water-intensive crops that fed off melted mountain snows flowing from a reservoir 120 miles away. She grew up understanding the rhythms of the desert and how fields can blossom despite a rugged, sand-swept terrain where sunlight is a given but water is precious.

Now more than ever. Looking out at her farmland recently, Caywood held back tears.

The eastern Arizona reservoir that provided much of her water was drying up, leaving empty the canals and ditches that surround her property. Bigger-than-usual summer rains did not prove ample to rescue dead fields. The drought was at her door.

Across the U.S. West, shifting climate patterns are wreaking havoc. An early start to fire season is scorching rural Oregon and parts of Northern California. Record temperatures have led to deaths of hundreds of residents of Seattle and Portland, Ore. Lake Mead, the massive Colorado River reservoir outside Las Vegas, is at its lowest point since its 1935 federal construction, threatening water supplies to Arizona, Southern California, Nevada and Mexico.

Saguaros, which are native to the desert, are still susceptible to damage under extreme conditions.
Saguaros, which can naturally withstand drought better than non-native plants, are still susceptible to damage under extreme conditions. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

 

In Arizona, 99% of the land is undergoing years-long drought that has accelerated. Large swaths of the region are now in extreme distress and the picture may well get worse, with less reliable mountain snowfall to feed streams and a morphing monsoon season that has only proved a temporary reprieve and even led to flooding. The state, where more than a third of all water can trace itself up the Colorado River to Lake Mead, will also be forced to make do with less beginning next year because of the lake’s dwindling supply.

“Arizona is pretty much an irrigated state and we’ve managed our water resources generally well,” said Stephanie Smallhouse, a fifth-generation cattle rancher on the far outskirts of Tucson who is the president of the Arizona Farm Bureau. “But it’s near impossible to manage yourself out of a drought.”

The history of Arizona is the history of water. Before European colonizers and American settlers moved in, Indigenous people relied on the Gila, Salt and Verde rivers outside Phoenix. The Colorado River flowed on what’s now the state’s western edge, while snowmelt from New Mexico’s Black Mountain Range formed the Gila River that came from the east to meet the Colorado, creating a lifeline for tens of thousands of subsistence farmers in Native American communities.

But as technological advances led to the construction of dams and reservoirs in the early 20th century to divert rivers for new residents — like Caywood’s grandfather — Native land went fallow, leading to sickness and poverty. As cities such as Tucson and Phoenix and farmlands between them grew over the decades, they were aided by another feat in water engineering when construction on the Central Arizona Project launched in 1973. Today, the intricate canal system carries Colorado River water hundreds of miles from Lake Havasu on the California-Arizona border to taps and irrigation ditches across central Arizona.

The Hayden-Rhodes Aqueduct, fed by the Colorado River, runs through Scottsdale, Ariz.
The Hayden-Rhodes Aqueduct, fed by the Colorado River, runs through Scottsdale, Ariz. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

 

It’s a history that informs who wins and loses amid drought. The state has dozens of irrigation districts that tax customers in exchange for regulating water flow from different sources. The map they form can at times resemble gerrymandered congressional districts, with it not unusual for neighboring farms to get water from canals that lead to mountains and reservoirs in opposite directions.

Longevity also goes into the equation.

“Water policy in Arizona is also rooted in the idea that a person who comes and diverts water for a beneficial use should have higher priority than the next one who comes along if there is a risk for shortage,” said Sarah Porter, the director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University.

When it comes to water, one city or farm is not always equal to the other in the state where the $23-billion agriculture industry uses up more than 70% of irrigated water, a large chunk of it on crops the federal government encourages with subsidies, such as cotton. In central Arizona, city dwellers and tribal lands tend to get first dibs on water before farms. Still, nearly everyone is preparing. Cities are raising water prices. The state is locked in a battle with hundreds of lush golf courses over demands that they cut back on water.

Yuma, a major farming region known as the “Salad Bowl” for growing broccoli, lettuce and leafy greens that are shipped across the country each winter, is in many ways spared. It has priority over water from the nearby Colorado River in part because irrigated agriculture has taken place there for more than a century. Vegetables also need significantly less water than crops that are popular inland.

A worker moves irrigation tubes on a farm in Pinal County.
A worker moves irrigation tubes on a farm in Pinal County. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

 

It’s farmers in the center of the state who are most worried as shortages loom. Among the hardest-hit are those in Pinal County, a largely rural patchwork of farms and cattle and dairy ranches nestled between Phoenix and Tucson where family farmers live alongside exurbs that are rapidly expanding as agriculture recedes.

Along Interstate 10, typically green farms have turned brown, skinny cattle are left with little grass to graze and saguaros lie dead. “For sale” signs advertise desperate owners looking to sell their land at discount for solar power panels and housing developments.

“There’s nothing nefarious about how the water is divided,” said Paul Orme, an attorney who represents several irrigation districts in the county. “But because of agreements that have been negotiated and where these farmers have fell in those, you could see up to 30% of farmland in Pinal County no longer irrigated over the next few years.”

For those like Caywood, that time has already come.

Casa Grande, a city of 55,000 founded in 1879 as a mining town that’s named after a structure built by the ancient Hohokam people, is one of those places at the center of the water crisis. Home to dozens of alfalfa, cotton, wheat and corn farms and as well as dairy and beef ranches, it’s long been sustained by a mix of rains, aquifers and canals drawing on the Colorado River, among other reserves.

Caywood stands in what used to be an alfalfa field.
Caywood stands in what used to be an alfalfa field. It went fallow after her family lost access to irrigated water from the San Carlos reservoir because its water levels were too low. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

 

The Caywood farm has a different source. When Caywood’s grandfather, Lewis Storey, established it in 1930, he agreed to pay for water from canals connected to the San Carlos reservoir 130 miles away. Storey thought the reservoir, formed on the Gila River, would be plentiful for generations with its 19,500 acre-feet supply. An acre-foot covers the amount of water that could seep a foot deep across a football field.

The family had long used that water to grow cotton that made up towels and sheets found in big-box stores. The seeds went separately for cattle feed. Alfalfa was cut and baled for ranches across the Southwest.

This summer, the San Carlos reservoir hit zero acre-feet.

“If you want to eat ice cream, you need people like us growing the feed,” Caywood said recently as she sat in the small, wooden shed on the property where she keeps a digital slideshow of the once-lively green and white fields to show kids who still come by on field trips. All that survived now were old mesquite and cottonwood trees on the edges of the land.

“We’re wiped clean,” Caywood said. “You can’t grow.”

Cattle go up for sale at Marana Stockyards in Marana, Ariz.
Cattle go up for sale at Marana Stockyards in Marana, Ariz. “If you can’t grow grass, you buy it. But the hay is too expensive because there’s less water to grow it and less water expected down the line,” said Clay Buck Parsons, who runs the auction house with his father, Clay Parsons. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
Emaciated cattle are often sold at Marana Stockyards.
Emaciated cattle are often sold at Marana Stockyards, which has seen an increase in sales amid the decreased feed availability that the drought has caused. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

 

An hour south of the the Caywood property at the Pinal County line, the ranchers who show up each week at Marana Stockyards are feeling the trickle-down effects of the drought. The Parsons family has auctioned cattle here for 25 years. Business is picking up.

Dozens of men in cowboy hats and leather boots arrive each Wednesday to watch their bulls, cows and calves sold off. Clay Buck Parsons, a third-generation rancher and auctioneer, ushers cattle into holding pens outside the red barnyard-like building while Parsons’ dad mans a computer as locals in the stands make bids and buyers log in online.

“We’ve sold 12,000 more head this year already than last year,” said Parsons, 29. Most go to Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma.

“You can’t feed the animals without grass,” he said, looking out at dozens of black Angus mother cows whose shoulders and ribs jutted out from grazing on dying fields.

“If you can’t grow grass, you buy it. But the hay is too expensive because there’s less water to grow it and less water expected down the line. So the ranchers are cutting down on their herd to maintain smaller numbers where they can still make a profit.”

Clay Parsons owns Marana Stockyards, which he runs with his son.
Clay Parsons owns Marana Stockyards, which he runs with his son, Clay Buck Parsons. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
Rancher Mike Mercer, left, regularly buys and resells cows at Marana Stockyards.
Rancher Mike Mercer, left, regularly buys underweight cows at Marana Stockyards. He feeds them for a few months before reselling them for profit. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

 

Buck said it costs up to $4 a day per cow for hay, four times more than grazing on grass. The cost of raising beef can be several thousand times more than some vegetables, such as lettuce. But ranchers here said family history — and profits — had until recently seemed worth holding on to.

One of the regulars to come that day was Mike Mercer. At 54, he has been ranching since his teens. For many years, his land in Mammoth, a village of 1,650, provided for 700 mother cows. Now, he can’t have more than 100 at a time as grass disappears.

“You can’t run cattle. It’s just — everything’s gone,” Mercer said. “A lot of guys are switching into copper mining or welding or trucking.”

These days, Mercer buys skinny, sickly cows, feeds them for a few months on hay in a covered feedlot, and resells them at a profit. On that day, he sold 88 to buyers in Texas and Oklahoma.

The Parsons family's auction house has sold 12,000 more cows this year than last year.
The Parsons family’s auction house has sold 12,000 more cows this year than last year. Many ranchers can no longer afford to feed their cattle because of the drought. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

 

A Christian who believes God is responsible for the drought, he prayed for a change.

“You just keep saying we can’t have another year this bad and then we have another year even worse…. Leave it in God’s hands. Because I don’t know what else to do. You pray for rain. Oh, God, yeah. Pray for rain.”

Caywood, a former farming teacher at the University of California Agricultural and Natural Resources Division in El Centro, Calif., also questions those who say climate change is to blame for her struggles.

“I don’t believe in it. I believe things are cyclical. But I can’t believe that it’s happening so quickly,” said Caywood, who has a master’s degree in agricultural education.

Nancy Caywood, left, and her grandson Thomas Hartman, age 14.
Nancy Caywood, left, and her grandson Thomas Hartman, 14, stand at the office of Caywood Farms. Hartman is learning to farm, raising steer and chickens. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

 

Her son, Travis, built a home on the farm where he lives with two sons. She is thankful that he has continued in the family tradition. But she is more thankful that he is also a firefighter and EMT, a job that provides a stable income. Her `14-year-old grandkids Thomas and Cameron are learning to farm, raising steer and chickens. She has encouraged them but also told them to consider backup plans.

In the good years, the farm would easily make tens of thousands of dollars in profits, more than enough to cover $22,000 in annual property taxes. This year, Caywood, who had hoped to retire, may dip into savings to cover the bill.

Recently, her son leased two 80-acre plots in different irrigation districts that have access to canal water from the Colorado River. Just a few miles from Caywood Farms, corn stalks reach 5 feet into the air. They’ll be chopped up for dairy cow feed.

The family didn’t want more farming land but found it necessary to cover the taxes on its dying historic property.

Except there’s one problem.

Because of the drought, Arizona will have 18% less water from the Colorado River next year. Farms like Caywood’s son’s will be hit hardest because of rules governing how water is divided in the state.

"We have no cotton. It's gone. It's dead. The alfalfa barely exists," Caywood said.
“We have no cotton. It’s gone. It’s dead. The alfalfa barely exists,” Caywood said. She may be forced to use her savings to cover taxes on the farm, which isn’t making money anymore. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

 

“It seems there’s really no way out of drought,” Caywood said the other week, browsing old photos of her parents and son standing by cotton bales.

Sometimes, she felt as though it wasn’t just a farm but a family and way of life slipping away. Her father, Tommy, died in January at 98. Her 94-year-old mother, Sammie, was in and out of the hospital.

All around her, farms were disappearing. Next door, the Wuertzes sold much of theirs for solar panels. Down the street, an abandoned construction project stood where alfalfa once grew. Caywood had gotten offers from buyers too. She rejected them.

She looked at the barren fields where her grandfather taught her how to examine the changing color of a cotton blossom to tell where the plant was in its life span. She thought back to when water flowed freely in the dried-up irrigation canals where she would sneak away to swim as a kid.

Days like those seemed long gone. She prayed for them to come back again.

Our leaders look climate change in the eyes, and shrug

Our leaders look climate change in the eyes, and shrug

Hamilton Nolan                       
<span>Photograph: Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock</span>
Photograph: Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock

 

If you have cultivated an Edgar Allen Poe-like appreciation for the macabre, there is a certain sort of amusement to be had in watching the developed world deal with the insistent onslaught of climate change. Like many horror stories, this one features a main character full of futile determination to maintain a sense of normalcy even as the ominous signs of doom become ever more impossible to ignore. We can chuckle knowing that the monster is going to come for our designated protectors. We stop chuckling knowing that it’s coming for all of us next.

Related: Wildfire fighters advance against biggest US blaze amid dire warnings

It is easy to imagine that a real live existential threat to our way of life would prompt any society to assume war footing and marshal everything it has to fight for survival. Unfortunately, this response only takes hold in actual war situations, where the threat is “other people that we can shoot and kill in glorious fashion”. When the threat comes not from enemy people, but from our own nature, we find it much harder to rise to the occasion. Where is the glory in recognizing the folly of our own greed and profligacy? Leaders are not elected on such things. We want leaders who will give us more, leading us ever onwards, upwards and into the grave.

The latest demonstration of this comes from the G20, that coalition that is as good a proxy as any for the combined will of the world’s richest countries. The latest G20 meeting wrapped up last week without firm commitments on phasing out coal power, or on what steps nations will promise to take to try to hold global warming to 1.5C. This goal is both necessary and, perhaps, unlikely – a report by scientists found that China, Russia, Brazil and Australia are all pursuing policies that could lead to a cataclysmic five degrees of warming.

The G20 is a perfect model of our collective failure to build institutions capable of coping with deep, long-term, existential problems that cannot be solved by building more weapons. On the one hand, the head of the United Nations says that there is no way for the world to meet its 1.5C warming goal without the leadership of the G20; on the other hand, a recent analysis found that G20 members have, in the past five years, paid $3.3tn in subsidies for fossil fuel production and consumption. The same group that claims to be bailing out humanity’s sinking ship with one hand is busily setting it aflame with the other hand. It is not good to be too pessimistic on climate change, because we must maintain the belief that we can win this battle if we are to have any hope at all. That said, it sure does seem like we’re screwed.

As overwhelming and omnipresent as the climate crisis is, it is not the core issue. The core issue is capitalism. Capitalism’s unfettered pursuit of economic growth is what caused climate change, and capitalism’s inability to reckon with externalities – the economic term for a cost that falls onto third parties – is what is preventing us from solving climate change. Indeed, climate change itself is the ultimate negative externality: fossil-fuel companies and assorted polluting corporations and their investors get all the benefits, and the rest of the world pays the price. Now the entire globe finds itself trapped in the gruesome logic of capitalism, where it is perfectly rational for the rich to continue doing something that is destroying the earth, as long as the profits they reap will allow them to insulate themselves from the consequences.

Capitalism is a machine made to squeeze every last cent out of this planet until there is nothing left

Congratulations, free market evangelists: this is the system you have built. It doesn’t work. I don’t want to lean too heavily on the touchy-feely, Gaia-esque interpretation of global warming as the inevitable wounds of an omniscient Mother Earth, but you must admit that viewing humanity and its pollution as a malicious virus set to be eradicated by nature is now a fairly compelling metaphor. Homo sapiens rose above the lesser animals thanks to our ability to wield logic and reason, yet we have somehow gotten ourselves to a place where the knowledge of what is driving all these wildfires and floods is not enough to enable us to do anything meaningful to stop it. The keystone experience of global capitalism is to gape at a drought-fueled fire as it consumes your home, and then go buy a bigger SUV to console yourself.

This year, the G20 is patting itself on the back for “[recognizing] carbon pricing as a potential tool to address climate change for the first time in an official communique”. This would have been encouraging 30 years ago, when we should have established a carbon tax after it became clear that carbon emissions cause tangible damage to the environment. In 2021, this sort of diplomatic marginalia is the equivalent of a child on the Titanic proudly showing his parents his completed homework, just as the ship slips beneath the waves.

Of course we need a price on carbon. Of course we need extremely strict emissions regulations, massive green energy investments, and a maniacal focus on sustainability fierce enough to radically change a society that is built to promote unlimited consumption. But, to be honest, there is little indication that we will get those things any time soon. The path we are on, still, is not one that leads to a happy ending. Rather, it is one that leads to the last billionaire standing on dry land blasting off in his private rocket as the rest of us drown in rising seas.

Capitalism is a machine made to squeeze every last cent out of this planet until there is nothing left. We can either fool ourselves about that until it kills us, or we can change it.

  • Hamilton Nolan is a writer based in New York

Trump’s lies win him the top Republican fundraiser spot

Trump’s lies win him the top Republican fundraiser spot

Trump continues to excel at his career-long tradition of making money off lying to people.
Zeeshan Aleem, MSNBC Opinion Columnist      August 3, 2021
Photo illustration: Donald Trump surrounded by piles of money.

Trump’s next chapter: the art of making a ton of money by lying to your supporters. Anjali Nair / MSNBC; Getty Images

According to filings made public over the weekend, former President Donald Trump is the most successful fundraiser in his party this year, having closed out the first six months of 2021 with over $100 million in his war chest.

Unfortunately, the former president’s latest bid to use deception for profit is a uniquely dangerous one.

For a politician out of office and banned from mainstream social media, that’s an astonishing amount. But perhaps even more remarkable than the sheer amount is the reminder that Trump is once again excelling at his career-long tradition of making money off of lying to people.

Unfortunately, the former president’s latest bid to use deception for profit is a uniquely dangerous one. The more money he makes from convincing people that the election was rigged, the more power he has to pressure the Republican Party to embrace and replicate that lie. With more cash, he can intervene more aggressively in next year’s campaigns and lobby more effectively for the political priorities he cares about most. Ultimately, he has the capacity to reshape the party to conform with his latest heist.

Unsurprisingly, Trump’s aides exaggerated how much he raised from January to June — some of the money came from transfers from other accounts that raised money last year — but still, he dwarfed the amount raised by any other politician in his party, the closest of whom was Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina (he raised $7.8 million online). Trump even pulled in more cash than “each of the three main fund-raising arms of the Republican Party itself,” according to The New York Times.

In his handful of campaign-style public appearances since he left the White House, Trump has showered adulating supporters with conspiracy theories about irregularities in the voting process.

There are plenty of reasons Trump’s massive haul is striking. It shows how enthusiastically he’s flouting the modern post-presidential tradition of stepping away from politics after leaving the White House. It also illustrates how he remains exceptionally popular within the party despite having left the White House mired in scandal and after having incited a ragtag insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and botched the American response to the coronavirus pandemic. But his unique and brazen use of outright deception to pull it off remains perhaps the most impressive one of all.

Trump’s premier fundraising tool is to hammer home the lie that the election was rigged against him. As The New York Times notes, Trump’s fundraising numbers correspond with his direct engagement with the public, such as through speeches and his ill-fated blog. And those interactions have been centered, to the point of obsession, on the idea that the election was stolen from him.

In his handful of campaign-style public appearances since he left the White House, Trump has showered adulating supporters with conspiracy theories  about irregularities in the voting process and impressed upon them the notion that he would have beaten President Joe Biden if some shadowy network of outsiders hadn’t intervened on Biden’s behalf.

A plurality of Trump’s messages on his blog and elsewhere were focused on lies about the election. He also regularly sends out fundraising emails based on false claims of “new evidence” of voter fraud, giving his supporters the illusion that their donations are helping fund some kind of long-term investigative operation.

Trump himself is open about the centrality of the “big lie” to his political focus for all of 2021: “On behalf of the millions of men and women who share my outrage and want me to continue to fight for the truth, I am grateful for your support,” he said in his statement about his fundraising this year.

Trump himself is open about the centrality of the “big lie” to his political focus for all of 2021.

And embedded within this fraud is another potential fraud. In 2020, the Trump campaign deployed a scheme of using donation forms that used distracting visuals and fine print to opt donors in to recurring donations unwittingly. Consumer advocates condemned the fundraising scheme, and the campaign eventually refunded tens of millions of dollars in response to fraud complaints, but monthly donations and fraud complaints continued into 2021 and may account for some of the money he’s raised this year.

Trump is a seasoned veteran of making money off of deception, fraud and corruption. His career in real estate was marked by illicit business practices, including the refusal to make mandatory disclosures of purchases to the Federal Trade Commission, the failure to pay people and small businesses the money they were owed and discrimination against Black tenants by lying about vacancies. Trump illegally siphoned off money from his charity to help his 2016 presidential campaign. Trump University was a brazen scam. And Trump used the White House to enrich himself and his family.

The trouble with Trump’s latest scam is that it’s not just about accumulating money at other people’s expense. He’s using lies to convince a huge proportion of the American public that they’ve been scammed and giving them more reason to become hostile to the possibility of functioning democracy.

‘A one-man scam Pac’: Trump’s money hustling tricks prompt fresh scrutiny

‘A one-man scam Pac’: Trump’s money hustling tricks prompt fresh scrutiny

Peter Stone in Washington               

<span>Photograph: Brandon Bell/Getty Images</span>
Photograph: Brandon Bell/Getty Images

 

Donald Trump’s penchant for turning his political and legal troubles into fundraising schemes has long been recognized, but the former US president’s money hustling tricks seem to have expanded since his defeat by Joe Biden, prompting new scrutiny and criticism from campaign finance watchdogs and legal analysts.

Related: Revealed: the people who signed up to the Magacoin Trump cryptocurrency

Critics note Trump has built an arsenal of political committees and nonprofit groups, staffed with dozens of ex-administration officials and loyalists, which seem aimed at sustaining his political hopes for a comeback, and exacting revenge on Republican congressional critics. These groups have been aggressive in raising money through at times misleading appeals to the party base, which polls show share Trump’s false views he lost the White House due to fraud.

Just days after his defeat last November, Trump launched a new political action committee, dubbed Save America, that together with his campaign and the Republican National Committee quickly raked in tens of millions of dollars through text and email appeals for an “election defense fund”, ostensibly to fight the results with baseless lawsuits alleging fraud.

The fledgling Pac had raised a whopping $31.5m by year’s end, but Save America spent nothing on legal expenses in this same period, according to public records. Run by Trump’s 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, Save America spent only $340,000 on fundraising expenses last year.

In another move, Trump last month announced he was filing class-action lawsuits against Facebook, Google and Twitter, alleging “censorship” due to bans by the platforms after the 6 January Capitol attack that Trump helped stoke. But several legal experts panned the lawsuits as frivolous and a fundraising ploy.

Trump’s new legal stratagem raised red flags, in part because he teamed up with America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a nonprofit group led by ex-White House official Brooke Rollins. At a press briefing with Trump, Rollins told supporters they could “join the lawsuit” by signing up on a website, takeonbigtech.org, a claim belied by details on the website which featured a red button with the words “DONATE to AFPI”.

“Donald Trump is a one-man scam Pac,” said Paul S Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation with Common Cause. “Bait-and-switch is among his favorite fundraising tactics,” Ryan stressed, noting that Trump’s Save America Pac told “supporters he needed money to challenge the result of an election he clearly lost, and then wound up not spending nothing any on litigation last year.

“Now he’s at it again, with frivolous lawsuits filed [in July] against Facebook, Twitter and Google, accompanied by fundraising appeals,” Ryan added. “This time he’s got the unlimited dark money group America First Policy Institute in on the racket.”

Other experts voice strong concerns about Trump’s tactics.

He asked them to give money so he could contest the election results, but then he spent their contributions to pay off unrelated debts

Adav Noti

“The president deceived his donors. He asked them to give money so he could contest the election results, but then he spent their contributions to pay off unrelated debts,” said Adav Noti, a former associate general counsel at the Federal Election Commission and now chief of staff at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center.

Noti added: “That’s dangerously close to fraud. If a regular charity – or an individual who didn’t happen to be president of the United States – had raised tens of millions of dollars through that sort of deception, they would face a serious risk of prosecution.”

Such concerns have not deterred Trump’s fundraising machine from expanding further with the launch of a super Pac, Make America Great Again Action, which can accept unlimited donations. Both the Super Pac and Save America are run by Trump’s former campaign manager, Lewandowski, who did not return calls seeking comment.

The Super Pac has reportedly hosted at least two events for mega donors at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, and in Dallas, but it’s not known how much has been hauled in so far.

Both Pacs are seen as vehicles for Trump to raise more funds to influence 2022 congressional races, where he has vowed to defeat several politicians such as the anti-Trump Republican Liz Cheney, who voted to impeach him this year after the Capitol attack.

Campaign filings for the first six months of 2021 reveal that Trump’s political groups led by Save America raised $82m, an unprecedented total for a former president. Save America banked most of the funds while spending some to pay for Trump’s travel and other expenses, instead of challenging election results in states like Arizona, despite Trump’s false claims of fraud there.

Veteran campaign finance analysts say that the bevy of Trump-linked groups launched since his defeat raise new questions about his motives and political intentions.

Trump may be more interested in fundraising than actually running

Sheila Krumholz

“Trump’s aggressive fundraising, using a variety of committees and surrogates, raises questions about whether his continual hints at running in 2024 is primarily a ploy for donations,” said Sheila Krumholz, who leads the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics. “Trump may be more interested in fundraising than actually running, especially given how unprecedented his post-loss fundraising is.”

Besides Trump’s fundraising pitches for his new Pacs and nonprofits, some major Republicans groups have collaborated in fundraising appeals since his defeat, and keep piggybacking on his allure to the party base, despite Trump’s repeated falsehoods that the election was stolen.

In the eight weeks post-election, for instance, the RNC, the Trump campaign and Save America reportedly raised about $255m, but spent only a small fraction on lawsuits.

Further, Trump’s cachet with small donors is still exploited by party allies, including the National Republican Senatorial Committee, (NRSC) the fundraising arm for Republican senators.

For instance, the NRSC in July email fundraising pitches touted a free Trump T-shirt for a limited number of donors writing checks from $35 to $5,000 to “protect the America First Majority”.

Similarly, the RNC in a 19 July email alert rolled out a money pitch to become an “official 2021 Trump Life Member” for donors who chipped in $45 or more by midnight.

Charlie Black, a longtime Republican operative, said that Republican committees realize that Trump’s “name has the most popular appeal to the grassroots, so naturally they’re going to try to figure out ways to use his brand where they can to raise more funds”.

But legal analysts caution that Trump’s new fundraising modus operandi are different, and carry clear risks for unwitting donors and US campaign finance laws.

“Our nation’s campaign finance and anti-fraud laws have proven no match for Trump’s schemes,” said Ryan of Common Cause. “So my one piece of advice for Trump supporters, is donor beware!”

Column One: In drought-plagued northern Mexico, tens of thousands of cows are starving to death

Column One: In drought-plagued northern Mexico, tens of thousands of cows are starving to death

Kate Linthicum                              
BUENAVISTA, SONORA - JULY 22: Marco Antonio Gutierrez, 55, of Buenavista, a cattle rancher, poses for a photo next to dead livestock that died of starvation lie on the dry and barren ground on Thursday, July 22, 2021 in Buenavista, Sonora. Gutierrez, who has lost cattle during the drought, has had to take up fishing to help earn income to buy bales of alfalfa to feed his cattle. Many poor ranchers rely on the rain to grow grass to feed their cattle. With no rain because of the drought many ranchers&#39; cattle have died of starvation because there is no money to buy bales of alfalfa to feed livestock. Northern Mexico, Sonora ...drought has affected cattle ranching throughout Mexico and the U.S. but is also going to look at a larger question: In a warming world is there a future for cattle and most connected to the cattle industry. Trickle down effect. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
Marco Antonio Gutierrez, a cattle rancher in Buenavista, in Mexico’s Sonora state, stands among the carcasses of livestock who died of starvation. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

 

In the parched hills of southern Sonora, Marco Antonio Gutierrez paced around a clearing, counting the dead.

There were seven rotting carcasses — jutting ribs and shriveled hides — and two sun-bleached skulls. Nine cows, felled by heat and hunger.

“There’s nothing for them to eat,” said Gutierrez, a wide-brimmed hat shading his downcast eyes. “There used to be big ranches here. Now it’s pure sorrow.”

Two years of extreme drought have turned large stretches of northern Mexico into a boneyard. Between starvation and ranchers forced to prematurely sell or slaughter their livestock, officials say the number of cattle in Sonora has dropped from 1.1 million to about 635,000.

It’s an unimaginable loss for a state that is world-famous for its high-quality cows, and where beef is not just a central part of the diet and economy but also a tradition that binds families together.

This is a place, after all, with a bull on its state flag, and where families gather every Sunday around their charcoal grills. Red meat is considered a birthright: It’s not uncommon for folks here to eat beef three times a day — machaca scrambled with eggs for breakfast, arrachera for lunch and carne asada for dinner.

A man looks on as a bull trots through a fence opening
Rancher Manuel Bustamante Parra with one of his heifers. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

 

Gutierrez, 55, and pretty much everyone he knows was born ranching. By the age of 10, he and his friends had all learned from their fathers how to lasso, brand and even pull a calf from the womb.

Now, as they desperately watch the skies for rain, they wonder if there’s any future in it.

Gutierrez doesn’t use the phrase “climate change” to describe what’s happening, but he laments that every year seems drier and hotter than the last. In recent months, he has watched helplessly as 70 of his 100 cows have starved to death.

Over coffee and machaca at a restaurant owned by fellow rancher Julio Aldama Solis, the two friends mulled whether it was finally time to auction off their remaining cattle — or whether they should keep struggling.

Selling would be heartbreaking, Aldama said, a surrender not only of their cowboy identity but also their family legacy.

“Imagine the sadness — all the sacrifices of your grandparents and your parents for nothing,” said Aldama, the 56-year-old scion of a prosperous ranching family in the largely rural county of Cajeme.

Gutierrez sipped his coffee. There was a reason he had held on to his herd during the worst of the drought, even as the animals wasted away in front of him.

It was his father, long dead, who had taught him the arduous but rewarding ways of ranch life.

Healthy livestock drink water from a trough at Rancho La Ventana.
Healthy livestock drink water from a trough at Rancho La Ventana on La Noria de Cuco, Sonora. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

 

And Gutierrez had come to love his cattle, even giving names to some: Coyota, La Venada, Vellota.

They had lived alongside his own family, and had helped sustain it financially. Every year the cows birthed calves that he could sell for about $600 each at auction.

At least now they were free from the misery of drought.

“They passed on to a better life,” he said.

‘THEY’RE DRY. COMPLETELY’

The cicadas were humming. That was a good sign.

Some people in these parts believe the buzz of cicadas — like the tambourine shake of a rattlesnake — means a thunderstorm is rolling in.

Gutierrez and Aldama scanned the sky. The sun was beating down, hot as ever, but a few cotton-like clouds loomed on the horizon.

“We’re all praying to the Virgin of Guadalupe that it rains,” Aldama said.

A malnourished cow forages for food
A malnourished cow forages for food along the roadside in Buenavista. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

 

They were touring the region’s ranches with another friend, Ricardo Alcala, who is the president of the Local Livestock Assn. of the Yaqui Valley. All three wore jeans with silver buckles and white cowboy hats.

There had been a couple of big storms in other parts of the state — enough to cause flooding in the border city of Nogales. Yet 97% of municipalities in Sonora remained officially in drought, and while sporadic rain here in the south had greened up the mesquite trees that dotted the landscape, it had not been enough to make grass grow.

A worker loads bales of alfalfa onto a truck
A worker loads alfalfa in Cocorit, Sonora. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

 

It wasn’t even noon yet, and the thermometer on Alcala’s truck read 104 degrees. As the friends drove, they passed people shielding themselves from the sun with umbrellas, and dogs and horses hugging the sides of buildings, desperate for shade.

And then there were the cattle, thousands of them, some so skinny they looked like skeletons wandering the hills.

For months, ranchers had depended on alfalfa grown in fields irrigated with water from private wells or a nearby dam. But when the dam levels fell dangerously low, authorities had cut off the supply to ranches and farms to conserve water for drinking, cooking and bathing. The price of alfalfa had doubled — putting it out of reach for many.

Alcala’s organization had pleaded with authorities to drill wells in the region so ranchers could grow their own food for their cattle. But water table levels have fallen too, making it clearer each day that wells are at best a temporary solution.

A fisherman on Agua Caliente reservoir
A fisherman tosses a net at Agua Caliente reservoir in Cajeme, Sonora. The drought has lowered the water level to below normal. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

 

Alcala pumped the brakes of his Ram truck when he saw a member of his association, Jesús Arvizu Valenzuela, cutting hay in a field that stood out for its lushness. But Arvizu, 68, told him the pasture would soon lie fallow — brown like the unirrigated land that surrounded it.

“They won’t give us water anymore,” he said.

“The wells aren’t working either?” Alcala asked.

Arvizu shook his head. “They’re dry. Completely.”

‘A MATTER OF IDENTITY’

Five hundred years ago, there were no cattle here.

The first cows were brought to Mexico by Spanish conquistadors in the 1500s. In Sonora, Jesuit missionaries encouraged Indigenous tribes, who had subsisted mostly on beans, corn and squash, to raise them.

By the second half of the 20th century, livestock had become big business here, with cattle roaming over 85% of the state. Tens of thousands of ranchers raised steers to sell at auction, many for export to the United States. Ranchers here say Sonora’s mix of native grasses give their beef a distinctive texture.

“Very juicy and soft,” Alcala proudly explained.

A ranch hand stands at a fence among cattle
Ranch hand Ernesto Flores Morales tends to healthy livestock at Rancho La Ventana in La Noria de Cuco, Sonora. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

 

There were always periods of drought that ranchers had to endure — but in recent decades, climate change has made things worse.

Average rainfall has been decreasing for years. By the second half of this century, climate experts predict that Sonora will receive 20% to 30% less rain than today and regularly see temperatures as high as 122 degrees.

América Lutz Ley, a social scientist at El Colegio de Sonora who studies land use, is one of a growing number of people in the state who believe cattle ranching in its current form is not sustainable, largely because of the huge amount of water required to grow food for the herds.

“We live in a desert yet we are in the business of exporting water in the form of livestock,” she said.

Then there’s the fact that cattle emit significant levels of methane, a major driver of global warming. Mexico’s 34 million cattle are responsible for about 10% of the nation’s total greenhouse gas emissions.

Lutz wishes there was more political will to promote alternatives to ranching. But she acknowledges that major changes are unlikely as long as prices for steers remain high and beef continues to be “a matter of identity” in Sonora.

She grew up spending weekends at carne asadas eating flour tortillas stuffed with salsa, guacamole and thin cuts of charred beef. It’s a family ritual so beloved here that even Lutz still indulges in it.

Rosendo Godinez, left, and his brother Cesar Godinez, remove the meat from cooked cows heads.
Rosendo Godinez, left, and his brother Cesar Godinez, remove the meat from cooked cows heads to later sell tacos de cabeza, or tacos made with the meat. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
Chefs prepare meat at an outdoor area
Manuel Medina, foreground, cuts carne asada for a customer at Carniceria Chihuahua in Ciudad Obregon, Sonora. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

 

It’s not easy changing culture.

Gutierrez knows that. For him and his friends, ranching is more than a livelihood — it’s a way of life.

As they drove on, the sky began to darken. A few fat raindrops hit the truck’s windshield. It seemed the cicadas had been right.

Alcala optimistically turned on his wipers. But a minute later, the rain stopped and he turned them off.

A PAINFUL DECISION

Early the next morning, Gutierrez and his two friends crowded into a different pickup, this time to check on Aldama’s ranch.

The sky was pink with sunrise. The radio was playing an accordion-heavy corrido about three brothers on horseback setting off at dawn to a party on a ranch.

As they turned off the highway onto Aldama’s property, Gutierrez exclaimed with delight.

“It rained, Julio!”

The storm they had driven through the day before had been more generous in this region. Butterflies flitted about orange and pink wildflowers that appeared to have bloomed overnight.

“It’s green and fresh and I’m happy because it rained,” said Aldama as his Chevy splashed through scattered puddles.

But he knew that one decent rain wouldn’t be enough.

Manuel Bustamante Parra, walks through a field of bones from dead livestock.
Manuel Bustamante Parra walks through a field of bones from dead livestock that died of starvation on the dry and barren ground. (Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times)

 

“The ranch is still in crisis,” Aldama said. “There’s no grass.”

He signaled to a field where a month ago his son and some friends had planted sorghum for his animals.

Weeks later, the field was barren except for the empty cans of Bud Light the young men had downed after finishing their work.

“It should have been a foot high by now,” Aldama said. “We planted sorghum but only beer has grown.”

They came to a pen where a ranch hand was milking cows. During the hottest months of the drought, Aldama had kept most of his cattle alive by feeding them carrots he had grown on another plot he owned.

He proudly appraised the half dozen calves, some just a few weeks old, that were competing with the ranch hand to get milk from their mother.

But selling all of the calves in a few months wouldn’t make up for the costs of keeping his herd alive, he said.

His grandparents founded this ranch, growing it from just a few cattle to a lucrative business. Lately their descendants had been talking, and had recently come to a painful decision.

Unless there are recurring, penetrative rains in August, the family will sell half of its herd. Where the cow pastures once grew, they are thinking about planting agaves — which require little water and are used to make a stiff local liquor called bacanora.

“I don’t see a future in ranching,” Aldama said, his voice cracking. “It’s a really good business when it rains, but lately it’s all losses.”

But the power of tradition is strong. Stronger, sometimes, than reason.

Fishermen on Agua Caliente reservoir
Fishermen clean their catch of tilapia on Agua Caliente reservoir. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

 

Gutierrez did everything he could to keep feeding his cows. To raise money, he started buying and selling tilapia and carp caught from the local dam. But that business tanked as the dam nearly went dry.

He and his wife, who works at a hospital, have decided that their two children should not have to endure such hardships. They are studying in Ciudad Obregon, the nearest city.

“I suffered a lot and I don’t want them to suffer,” Gutierrez said.

He still doesn’t know what he’ll do — try to rebuild his herd or give up.

On a recent hot afternoon, he was commiserating with Manuel Bustamante Parra, a 58-year-old friend in similar straits.

Bustamante used to have 28 cattle, but now has 19. He did his best to save the hungry animals in their final days — using a rope-and-pully system to haul them upright to eat when they were too weak to stand — but it wasn’t enough.

Every few days, Bustamante rides his horse to a different small chapel in the region. He asks for rain as he lights candles to the Virgin of Guadalupe. He and Gutierrez have been traversing these hills on horseback for as long as they can remember.

“I’m too old to learn something new,” Gutierrez said.

“We’ll keep ranching until all the cows die,” Bustamante told him. “Or we do.”

A man wipes his brow with his shirt
Manuel Bustamante Parra has seen his livestock die of starvation because of the drought. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

Cecilia Sánchez in The Times’ Mexico City bureau contributed to this report.