GOP insider Bruce Bartlett: “The Republican Party needs to die”

Salon

GOP insider Bruce Bartlett: “The Republican Party needs to die”

Onetime Reagan White House aide Bruce Bartlett on the media’s massive failure and his own party’s living death

Bruce Bartlett (Credit: Getty/Drew Angerer)

Chauncey Devega November 23, 2017

American democracy is in crisis, a fact that should be obvious to everyone but that too many people keep ignoring. The president of the United States, Donald Trump, does not believe in or respect basic norms of democratic governance. His words and behavior reveal a deep affinity for fascism.

Over the last few decades there has been an increase in authoritarian values among American voters, and this is especially true for Republicans and other conservatives.

The Citizens United decision defined corporate money as free speech. This undermines American democracy by allowing the most powerful business interests and the richest individuals to overrule and veto the desires of the American people.

The United States is an oligarchy.

Recent research shows that the country’s elected officials are most responsive to the rich, business interest groups and others with the resources to buy access.

The Republican Party uses gerrymandering and voter suppression to remain in power. It has ceased to believe in any form of compromise or negotiation with Democrats or liberals. This has made consensus politics and a healthy, responsive, functioning government all but impossible.

Public faith in basic social institutions is declining and the American public, broadly speaking, lacks civic literacy. This is a recipe for the American authoritarianism and demagoguery embodied by Trump and the Republican Party.

Journalists, the so-called Fourth Estate, were supposed to sound the alarm about these developments. Instead, the corporate news media has all too often defaulted to a naïve belief that America’s democratic institutions are healthy and strong, thus able to resist any challenge or corruption. Instead of being truth-tellers who balance power by informing the public so the latter can make good decisions, the corporate media empowered Donald Trump and the Republican Party through a slavish devotion to “fairness” and “balance” and a “both sides do it” narrative.

How has the truth been assaulted by Donald Trump and the Republican Party? What role did Trump’s incessant lies and his talking points about “fake news” play in his election? How does the myth of the “liberal media” empower the American right? Is there any space for a liberal or centrist alternative to Fox News and the broader right-wing disinformation-propaganda machine? Can the Republican Party in its present form be saved? Does the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia during the 2016 presidential election reflect a larger cultural and political problem?

In an effort to answer these questions I recently spoke with Bruce Bartlett. He was a former White House adviser under President Ronald Reagan and also served under President George H.W. Bush. Bartlett is a regular contributor to the New York Times and has appeared on CNN, MSNBC and other major news networks. He is the author of the new book “The Truth Matters: A Citizen’s Guide to Separating Facts From Lies and Stopping Fake News in Its Tracks.”

A longer version of this conversation can be heard on my podcast, which is available on Salon’s Featured Audio page.

How do you think Donald Trump was able to get elected?

I admit that I was dismayed by the election results. As I thought about how it happened, it just seemed to me that a big part of the story is the media. The media is broken and has adopted certain conventions that I think have normalized Trump’s craziness as well as the craziness of the Republican Party.

Why do you think the mainstream news media was so reluctant to directly confront and expose Trump’s lies?

When the mainstream media began to downsize to cope with the loss of revenue from advertising and subscribers, the first thing they did was lay off their most senior reporters. They were able to save a lot of money that way. The problem is that a lot of journalistic training takes place informally in the newsroom, where young reporters learn from the old veterans who have been around for a long time. One of the things that you learn in that way that can’t be taught in the university is how to tell when somebody is lying.

There is also “he said, she said” journalism, where in order to gain access to a source that can now go around the traditional news media through Twitter and other methods you have to give them whatever they want.

Your source has to be convinced that you’re going to be good to them and get their message out the way they want it to be gotten out, so reporters are now almost forced to be stenographers. Now, obviously the reporters can’t just do that, but neither can they inject themselves into the story and say, “OK, here’s what my source inside the campaign is saying but my reporting and examination of the facts says this is all bullshit, that it’s a lie.” They can’t do that because then they burn their source, the source will never talk to them again if they tell the truth.

Instead, they go to the Clinton campaign and say, “What do you think about this statement that was just given to me by somebody in the Trump campaign?” They will say whatever it is they say and the reporter will take that down. “Trump said this, Clinton said that,” and that’s all you get. You don’t get the follow-up, you don’t get the reporting, the analysis, the fact-checking that would tell you which one is right and which one is wrong.

Conservatives have also created a cudgel with the myth of the “liberal news media.” It intimidates the press into being subservient to their agenda in the interest of “fairness” and “balance.”

Yes, but I also think that organizations like the New York Times bend over much too far backwards. I don’t know why they bother. Conservatives don’t read the New York Times; they’re not going to lose any subscribers by telling the truth.

If you were to pick a moment when the media landscape changed in a way that helped to birth Donald Trump’s presidency, what would it be?

I think there are several inflection points. I would go back to 1969 as the beginning, because that was the year that Spiro Agnew gave his famous speech attacking the media. It set the tone for everything conservatives have thought about the media ever since, which is that it is “elitist,” opposed to their values, and hopelessly liberal. It was nonsense then and it’s certainly nonsense now.

As a consequence, conservatives I think have long drifted away from the mainstream media and sought out alternative media. Even before talk radio, it was very common that conservatives would get much of their news from newsletters and small magazines like Human Events. The fact that conservatives had an alternative media network actually put them in a good position once the mainstream media began to decline.

I think liberals, by contrast, have always been very happy with the mainstream media. I think Democrats really depended on the New York Times to come up with good ideas for policies and hearings and so on. Then came the ending of the Fairness Doctrine, which immediately gave rise to Rush Limbaugh and others of his ilk. I think the next inflection point was of course the Republican takeover of Congress [in 1994] and then the creation of Fox News very shortly thereafter.

Why do you think there has not been a successful counter to right-wing talk radio, and right-wing media more generally, from liberals and centrists?

Well I think the simple answer is that liberals and centrists are perfectly content with the mainstream media. They’re very happy with the New York Times and the Washington Post exactly as they are; they’re happy with ABC, CBS, NBC and NPR. People forget that NPR is essentially liberal talk radio, and that’s one reason why a more explicitly liberal type of talk radio couldn’t compete. NPR, like Limbaugh, is very, very good at what it does. I think that’s a big part of the problem.

And of course liberals never had a chip on their shoulder — they never felt that the media was biased against them and they never felt that their ideas were ridiculed the way Republicans and conservatives have always believed. The soil is simply not conducive to something that would be more explicitly liberal.

Back in the 1960s, the political scientist and historian Richard Hofstadter famously wrote about the power that anti-intellectualism and the “paranoid style,” i.e., conspiracy theories, held over American conservatives. Decades later, fringe narratives are now the mainstream in American conservative thought and media. This is extremely dangerous for democracy. How can we find solutions to problems when we can’t agree on the nature of empirical reality?

I think you’ve touched on one of the most disturbing aspects of the Fox News phenomenon, which is that it normalizes and mainstreams a lot of nutty crackpot conspiracy crap that would otherwise stay in the fever swamps of the far right.

I have an idea, and tell me if you think it is viable. The so-called experts and other talking heads who appear on the TV news should have their qualifications, professional relationships (i.e., who is paying them) and political affiliations listed under their names. This would help the public to understand the agenda at work. Do you think that would actually help our public discourse?

Well, I don’t know if it would help, but I do think it is genuinely desirable. There is no reason why that information could not at a minimum be posted online. You reminded me of another moment that changed my thinking about how this all operates. Many years ago when cable news became ubiquitous, I was working for a conservative think tank and I was often invited to be a talking head on various networks.

In the very early years I would usually be on with somebody like myself — for example, a senior fellow at a liberal think tank. The problem from the point of view of producers was there were no fireworks because we respected each other. We understood what the data was, we understood what the literature was, our differences were not that great and we often agreed with each other. Producers hated this.

I noticed after a few years that I was no longer being put on against a peer but instead people that I had no idea who they were. For example they were a “Democratic consultant” or a “liberal activist” — very vague terms. I’d never heard of these people and in fact when I would go online to look them up I couldn’t find anything. It was as if they literally didn’t exist. Another problem was that these people I was up against clearly had gotten media training. All the networks have the same attitude about talking heads, which is that they want somebody who’ll give the rote repetition of the Republican line of the day and someone else who’ll give the rote repetition of the Democratic line of the day. There will be absolutely zero agreement and preferably they’ll yell at each other and scream and we’ll have fireworks, which are good for ratings.

With your many years of experience in Washington, with the news media, and now your new book on “fake news,” how much does the Russia scandal remind you of Watergate? Or do you think what Robert Mueller uncovers about Donald Trump and his associates will be even worse?

I hope not. But I am prepared for it. Trump is clearly the most incompetent president we’ve ever had in our lives. Richard Nixon may well have been the smartest. Nixon was cursed by paranoia, and I think Trump is as well. The question then becomes: Is this incompetence a good thing or a bad thing? Is it more dangerous to have a paranoid incompetent than it was to have a highly intelligent paranoid person as president? I don’t think we can tell. When I hear Trump talk, I sometimes have this feeling that he literally had no idea what was going on in his own campaign. He can deny these allegations and be perfectly truthful in his own mind because nobody told him.

He’s a useful idiot.

That’s one way of describing him. It may be that he is the person who will be the most shocked when the truth finally comes out. He may say, “Oh my God, I had no idea my son-in-law was doing such stupid things.”

To watch the national and global calamity that is Trump’s presidency in real time is unbelievable. If someone had told me 10 years ago that the country would be in such a crisis I would have said they were crazy. Do you feel the same way, or did you see it coming given how extreme the Republican Party has become over the last few decades?

Well, it’s vastly worse than I could possibly have imagined. I had this naïve idea that Trump had been a successful businessman because he had competent staff. I just assumed that Trump’s company had an army of lawyers and vice presidents with MBAs from Harvard Business School who went around like the guy behind the elephant in the parade with a broom and a shovel cleaning up his messes and fixing the contracts and getting the deals done properly that their boss was too incompetent to do himself. I just assumed that once he got into the White House we’d find these people would just come in and run things. I was shocked that that wasn’t the case. There was nobody.

If someone were to ask you why Trump’s voters backed him, how would you answer?

That’s the $64,000 question. Certainly a big part of it was voter fatigue. As far as the Democrats are concerned it has been true since at least the post-World War II era that each party gets eight years — and only eight years. There is only one exception to that rule and it was George H.W. Bush. It was probably in the cards that whoever got the Republican nomination was in a much better position to win than was generally assumed. Of course, Hillary Clinton turned out to be a historically poor candidate not just in a general way but also technically. From what I’ve read about her campaign, Hillary didn’t do statewide polling in the last couple of weeks before the election and really had no idea what was going on in critical battleground states.

The Comey letter [to Congress in late October] was horribly timed of course. I think there’s been this idea in American politics for a very long time that outsiders have some kind of special gift as compared to professional politicians. Moreover, Republicans just love the idea of bringing in a businessman to run the government. What they don’t realize is what you end up with is somebody who has absolutely no training for the job. The most successful presidents in recent memory were men with massive amounts of skill, namely [Lyndon B.] Johnson and Nixon. They had been in government their whole lives.

How did today’s Republican Party, in your estimation, become the way it is? Can it be saved?

The Republican Party needs to die. It’s already a zombie. It’s brain dead.

Chauncey DeVega is a politics staff writer for Salon. His essays can also be found at Chaunceydevega.com. He also hosts a weekly podcast, The Chauncey DeVega Show.

New dynamic score shows the Senate tax bill raises debt by more than advertised

Vox

New dynamic score shows the Senate tax bill raises debt by more than advertised

The math just doesn’t work

By Matthew Yglesias, Vox November 24, 2017

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Kent Smetters was in the trenches in the Newt Gingrich-era Congressional Budget Office and he’s a veteran of George W. Bush’s Treasury Department. His well-regarded new analysis just concluded the Republican tax plan won’t raise nearly as much revenue as its proponents say, or provide a meaningful boost to economic growth.

The problem, according to a pair of new analyses by the Penn-Wharton Budget Project, is that the Senate Republicans’ tax bill would increase federal debt by more than advertised, and increased debt accumulation would counteract much — or potentially all — of the positive growth impact of tax cuts. The result will likely be lower incomes for the bottom half of the income distribution even before considering the negative impact of inevitable spending cuts to offset the surprisingly low federal tax intake.

This is technical, in-the-weeds stuff, but that’s where tax policy happens. And you can bet that business lobbyists and the donor class aren’t afraid of delving into it.

To comply with the terms of the Byrd Rule that allows Senate Republicans to bypass a Democratic filibuster, the tax plan must meet two conditions. On the one hand, it needs to comply with the budget resolution’s mandate to raise the deficit by no more than $1.5 trillion over 10 years. According to Penn-Wharton, it does that. But on the other hand, it needs to not increase the long-term deficit in the years following.

And here’s where Penn-Wharton says that there’s a problem: “We estimate that the Senate TCJA continues to reduce revenue in years beyond the 10-year budget window.”

Critically, this conclusion does not change when they attempt a “dynamic” score that considers the potential growth-boosting effects of tax cuts. Instead, they find that “the Senate Tax Cuts and Jobs Act reduces federal tax revenue in both the short- and long-run relative to current policy. In the near term, there is a small boost to GDP, but that increase diminishes over time.”

Senate Republicans would like you to look past ugly distributive numbers and thing about broad growth effects. But the bottom line here is not even Republicans can make that math work out when they need to plug it into a rigorous model.

Penn-Wharton thinks gimmicks will reduce revenue

The tax bill has a three-part structure:

There’s a permanent tax cut for business owners.
That’s offset by a permanent tax increase for individuals.
In the short-term, the tax increase for individuals is offset by a temporary middle-class tax cut.

The goal, then, is to deliver a big business tax cut without increasing the long-term deficit. Penn-Wharton’s model suggests that this won’t work as well as the bill’s authors believe it will work, since individuals — especially rich ones who pay a lot of taxes and have good accountants — will engage in deliberate income shifting to take advantage of the temporary tax cuts, as well as “reclassification of income to exploit differences in marginal tax rates, potentially permanent or due to sunsets.”

In short, the Senate GOP leadership wrote a bill that’s designed to game the system with phase-ins and phase-outs, and Penn-Wharton thinks taxpayers will respond in kind — gaming the gamed system, reducing federal revenue, and increasing the long-term deficit.

Penn-Wharton Budget Model

The result is a plan that raises long-term deficits by significantly more than the bill is supposed to, even before you consider the impact of higher debt service costs.

Dynamic scoring doesn’t save the plan

For years, Republicans have hinted that they would ultimately enact a tax plan by engaging in dynamic scoring — i.e., a form of economic analysis that tries to argue tax cuts will boost economic growth and therefore tax collection and therefore be more affordable than they appear in a static context.

Yet curiously, the Trump Treasury Department has not yet produced a dynamic analysis of the president’s pet legislative project. The most likely reason for this is that the last time we had a Republican administration and its Treasury Department tried to do a rigorous dynamic analysis they found that they couldn’t make it work. The growth-boosting impact of lower marginal tax rates was largely offset by the growth-slowing impact of more government borrowing. To generate a scenario in which tax cutting boosted growth, the George W. Bush Treasury had to invoke the idea of a tax plan that was offset by large, unspecified spending cuts.

There’s no reason to believe an honest Treasury analysis of the Trump tax plan would show anything different.

And, indeed, that’s what the Penn-Wharton dynamic analysis shows: Growth is faster in the short-term because of Keynesian effects but it slows down in the longer-term because of more debt accumulation. Under optimistic assumptions, the economic pie gets slightly bigger but under pessimistic assumptions the economic pie gets slightly smaller.

Penn-Wharton Budget Model

These small-or-maybe-nonexistent growth impacts aren’t nearly enough to let the tax cuts pay for themselves. And the economic gains involved are very unequally distributed across the population.

The rich get richer

Penn Wharton finds that in the long-term, labor income will rise by somewhere between 1.2 percent and 0.2 percent as a result of the Senate’s tax plans.Penn-Wharton Budget Model

But recall that in the long-term, the tax plan actually raises taxes on most middle-class Americans.

This chart from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, based on Joint Committee on Taxation data, shows that households earning less than $50,000 will lose more from tax increases than they would gain from these dynamic boosts to labor income.

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

In other words, the overall economic pie gets very slightly bigger. But the maldistribution is so bad that households in the bottom half of the income distribution end up with less money anyway — more than 100 percent of the aggregate gains go to the affluent.

Then, of course, you get to the matter of the increased debt. If that ends up being paid for by cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security (and honestly where else are Republicans going to get the money) then poor and middle-class households will end up even worse off.

Here’s what would happen if the supervolcano under America erupted, experts say

Yahoo News UK Science

Here’s what would happen if the supervolcano under America erupted, experts say

Rob Waugh, Yahoo News UK November 24, 2017

The Yellowstone supervolcano under America could erupt with terrifying power – expel up to 250 cubic miles of volcanic rock and ash at once.

The eruption could blanket large areas of America in ash – and possibly plunge Earth into a ‘volcanic winter’.

NASA has said that supervolcano eruptions are a bigger threat to life than any asteroid – but what would actually happen?

Yellowstone Volcano Observatory’s Scientist-In-Charge, Dr Michael Poland, told IFLScience that the eruption would shoot a column of burning ash and lava up to 16 miles into the air.

Rumors are circulating that the super volcano in Yellowstone National Park will erupt sooner than expected. Scientists say the eruption would blanket most of the U.S. in ash, sending the earth into a volcanic ice age.

Poland said ‘If people were present in the vicinity of the eruption, say, within a few tens to perhaps a few hundred kilometers – they would be in peril.

But the real damage woould come from ‘volcanic fallout’, which would clog roads, short out electrical grids and make millions of homes uninhabitable, Poland says.

Nearby cities such as Salt Lake City would be buried in three feet of ash, and other cities such as Los Angeles would see an inch of ash rain from the sky.

Flights would be grounded across America and the knock-on effects would be felt across the world as a ‘volcanic winter’ began to bite, with years and possibly decades of cooling.

Yellowstone’s last super-eruption happened 631,000 years ago, and Poland says it’s highly unlikely to erupt now.

He says, ’Right now, much of Yellowstone’s magma body is partially solidified, and you need a lot of magma to feed a large eruption.’

Thanksgiving 2017

John Hanno November 23, 2017

For last years Thanksgiving Day post, I recounted my pure joy and feelings of hopefulness after Barack Obama was elected in 2008. After 8 years of the Bush administration’s blunders in Iraq, the avoidable financial collapse and a major Republi-cession, most of America was ready for a political reset.

The new president was left with a monumental mess; but with help from Speaker Pelosi, Harry Reid and a Democratic controlled Congress, his administration reluctantly bailed out the banks, saved the auto industry, reversed the monthly loss of 800,000 jobs, cut the unemployment rate by half, tripled the stock market and spent a significant amount of good will and political capital, giving 30 million American healthcare, many for the very first time. And all that in the face of unprecedented opposition from the Republi-cons.

That all changed last November, when America’s rust belt states decided they had nothing to lose by voting for an egotistical flim-flam candidate like Trump.

I wrote then that I was afraid Trump would show us “who he really was”: ‘Like probably 80% of Americans who did not vote for Mr. Trump, I’m worried for America’s children and grandchildren, the poor, our middle class, labor, the environment, our Democracy and half of the rest of the world. And I worry that Trump will try to undo 60 to 75% of what President Obama accomplished. President Obama set the bar high with his performance in repairing the economy after the Republicans drove it into a ditch, by repairing our reputation around the world and by his integrity and concern for all human beings. If the Trump Administration can do half as well, I will be surprised. I sincerely hope I’m proved wrong.’

Unfortunately I was all too right! Trump proves daily why a 3 million majority of voters chose Hillary and not him. Every worry I had about how Trump would govern has come to fruition, including how he would attempt to undo every one of President Obama’s and the Democrat’s accomplishments. He has a sick and maniacal obsession with erasing every speck of President Obama’s legacy. Many of us realized early on, that the cabinet he would assemble, would not drain the swamp but would construct a diabolical cabal of self dealing, self absorbed, self interested billionaires and multi-millionaires, who couldn’t care less about 99% of American’s health care, employment, education, financial protections, environment; and who are so thoroughly incapable and unwilling to “Make America Great Again.” And the cowardly and unpatriotic Republi-cons in congress are willing to go along with any of Trump’s hair brained ideas, as long as they can pay back their rich campaign contributors with lucrative tax breaks favoring the rich and powerful.

But I’m thankful the “Resistance” is as strong today (if not stronger) as it was when Trump was installed by hook or crook or collusion with a foreign evil doer last November.

In spite of the dread and chaos that has enveloped our Republi-con Federal governance, I’m thankful for special prosecutor Robert Mueller and his team of truth finders. Hopefully, they can prove to the world that America’s Democracy is not for sale and can’t be undermined by a ruthless despot like Vladimir Putin and his conspirators in the Ult-Right Grand Old Party.

I’m thankful there are patriotic professional athletes like Colin Kaepernick, who might be willing to forsake a lucrative career in order to stand up for what they believe in. And the NFL should be ashamed for not whole-heartedly standing by these thoughtful and principled young people.

I’m thankful my fellow Veterans will stand strong against Trump and the Republi-cons in congress attempts to privatize the V.A. health system.

I’m thankful the climate deniers pushing the Keystone XL, including Trump and his fossil fuel pandering EPA chief Scott Pruitt, will be tied up for at least 2 more years, because by then it will be obvious, this toxic tar sand pipeline is already obsolete.

I’m thankful women everywhere are now stepping forward and demanding they are more than just sexual objects to be exploited or abused.

I’m thankful some of the critters now populating the new GOP are finally standing by these women.

One of them is not serial abuser Donald J. Trump, who has enthusiastically endorsed sexual predator Judge Roy Moore. He and ultra-partisan Alabama governor Kay Ivey would rather vote for a man barred from shopping malls and high school sporting events because he prayed on under-aged girls, instead of a decent democrat like Doug Jones for U.S. Senator. They believe a reliable Republican Senate vote is more important than moral integrity; and this from the family values pretenders.

Alabama voters will ultimately prove how far we’ve come in healing America’s political, gender and racial divides, when it decides whether they want to be represented in the U.S. Senate by a pedophile who was booted off the Alabama Supreme Court twice or by a Democrat with a high moral reputation and long and honorable history of advocating for under-represented Americans, like the murdered little girls killed when Ku Klux Klan members planted sticks of dynamite beneath the steps of their church.

Image may contain: 1 person, smiling, suit and text

Repeated from last years post: I’m thankful for all the organic and sustainable farmers like myself, who feed their neighbors without spoiling the earth. And I’m thankful for the organizations like MOSES who promote and teach the next generation of protectors.

Also repeated from last year: ‘And in spite of how hard Mr. Trump, his exploitive cabinet, the fossil fuel pandering Republican controlled Congress and the evil doers in the fossil fuel industry work, to overturn progress made by the Obama Administration, to reverse climate change and global warming, they can’t stop the march to a cleaner more sustainable world. Alternative energy is cheaper than coal, oil and gas, it’s sustainable and 10’s of millions of people around the world are already enjoying it’s benefits. The world is using less coal, more wind, solar and alt energy, emitting less carbon dioxide and growing and farming more sustainably. More than 100 large corporations have pledged to become 100% renewable. Corporations, utilities, countries, states, cities and communities have promoted and invested in renewable energy. Even oil companies and insurance companies have woken up to the new sustainable world order. We are plodding forward. Trump, his fellow billionaires and the big banks who are heavily invested in fossil fuel assets will attempt to extract every ounce before America says, enough is enough. But they’re on the wrong side of preserving humanity.’

I’m thankful I’m able to post almost daily, stories about the progress entrepreneurs, cities, states, nations and businesses are making battling climate change and global warming. Countries on every continent, Including ultra-polluters China and India are taking serious the existential climate threats to humankind. In spite of the powerful and entrenched deniers, human progress will not be abated.

And above all, I’m thankful (if we’re to believe the polls) America is waking up to the fact they elected a despot who would do anything, tell any lie, jeopardize any environment and demonize any opposition, in order to elevate himself and his families wealth and power, and his insatiable ego.

The Alabama election in December may portend what we have to look forward to in the 2018 mid-term elections. Most of America is standing firm against the assault on our democracy, by a GOP fully embedded with their incredibly rich and powerful patrons. And our journalists and free press are working overtime, uncovering the diabolical conspiracies that have replaced America’s once proud and principled leadership in the world. If they prevail, next Thanksgiving just might bring much more to be thankful for.

Meet the wind farm that’s using digital tools to connect 60+ turbines, helping it to run efficiently.

Axios with GE. Sponsored

Meet the wind farm that’s using digital tools to connect 60+ turbines, helping it to run efficiently. #DRONEWEEK

Meet the wind farm that’s using digital tools to connect 60+ turbines, helping it to run efficiently. #DRONEWEEK

Posted by Axios on Monday, October 9, 2017

The Pilgrims Had No Idea How to Farm Here. Luckily, They Had the Native Americans

Modern Farmer – Farm Food Life

The Pilgrims Had No Idea How to Farm Here. Luckily, They Had the Native Americans

By Andrew Amelinckx November 23, 2017

The First Thanksgiving, painting by Jean Louis Gerome Ferris. Wikimedia Commons

Half-starved, sick from scurvy, suffering from exposure and a variety of diseases, the English colonists also had little in the way of practical farming experience as they tried to survive their first year in the Plymouth Colony. Worse, they had poor soil to contend with on the rocky Massachusetts coast that spring of 1621 when they began planting their crops.

After arriving in Massachusetts Bay in November 1620 following a harrowing 66-day Atlantic crossing, the 105 Pilgrims (as they are known today) spent the first winter aboard their ship the Mayflower. It’s likely we wouldn’t be celebrating Thanksgiving today at all if not for a saintly Native American named Tisquantum, also called Squanto, a member of the Pawtuxet tribe who spoke English and taught the colonists how to plant native crops (like corn), tap the maple trees for sap, and fish in the Bay. If he hadn’t befriended the Pilgrims it’s possible they would have perished before their first harvest in the fall of 1621. As it was, around half of the passengers and crew died their first winter in the New World.

The Wampanoag grew corn, squash, and beans—crops known as the “Three Sisters”.

Saintly is the only way to describe Squanto. He learned English after being kidnapped with other members of his tribe by an English sea captain named Thomas Hunt in 1614 and sold into slavery in Spain before he was able to make his way to England. From there, Squanto was able to secure passage back home to Massachusetts in 1619 only to find that his tribe had been decimated by smallpox, tuberculosis, or possibly some other disease contracted through their contact with Europeans (there seems to be some dispute on exactly what killed them).

Some folks might not have taken too kindly to the English after such rough treatment. Squanto apparently didn’t hold a grudge since he helped forge an alliance between the Pilgrims and a local tribe, the Wampanoag, another way in which he helped prop up the shaky colony. These skilled Native American farmers knew how to get the most out of the poor coastal soil and taught the Pilgrims to do the same. Unlike the soil of southern England, which is deep, nutrient-rich, loamy and easy to hand till, the soil in coastal Massachusetts is shallow, sandy and stony, making it hard to work by hand, according to the Soil Science Society of America.

Before learning the best crops to grow in their new home, the Pilgrims would have probably tried (and failed) to grow rye, barley and wheat and a variety of English garden vegetables, according to Soil scientist Tom Sauer, who is with the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service.

The Wampanoag grew corn, squash, and beans—crops known as the “Three Sisters” that make a potent growing team, especially in poor, sandy soil that doesn’t retain nutrients or water. The three plants work well together to create fertile soil. Beans are nitrogen fixers, pulling nitrogen from the air, and with the help of soil microbes, turning the nitrogen into plant food. The corn provides the beans a support on which to grow and the squash helps in water retention and with weed control.

The Wampanoag also used wood ash and fish as plant fertilizers. Sauer says wood ash “would have been a relatively concentrated nutrient source” that contains calcium, which acts as a liming agent to raise the pH level. It also contains potassium and smaller amounts of phosphorous and other nutrients.

“Since the yields weren’t very high, applying wood ash would probably have replaced quite a lot of the potassium and phosphorous removed with the crop,” Sauer tells Modern Farmer in an email.

Using fish as a fertilizer was a common practice by many of the Native peoples of the East Coast and provided nutrients and amino acids to help in plant growth, according to tradition. Fish fertilizer, albeit in liquid form, is still in use today. Sauer, on the other hand, doesn’t believe fish is a great plant nutrient source, but says that it would have helped the soil somewhat since “any organic material will release some nutrients when it decomposes. It may have also added organic matter that helped retain water near the seed so maybe it was more than just a nutrient source.” Either way, Native American farming practices helped save Pilgrims from starving to death.

In November 1621, the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag celebrated the colonists’ first successful corn harvest. The festivities lasted three days and included a bounty from both field and sea, but unlike today’s typical Thanksgiving, there was no pumpkin pie—obviously, ovens weren’t yet a thing and sugar was in short supply. There was lobster, goose, and venison, though, along with the new crops that the English had learned to grow thanks to the original inhabitants of Massachusetts.

Turkey farmers facing squeeze after Trump kills agriculture rules

Politico – Agriculture

Turkey farmers facing squeeze after Trump kills agriculture rules

A USDA decision is giving significant power to the multibillion-dollar meat industry, potentially crushing the smaller turkey farmers.

Turkey farmer Ike Horst is pictured. | POLITICO Turkey farmer Ike Horst is one of the independent businessmen caught up in the Trump administration’s government-wide deregulation frenzy. | M. Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO

By Christine Haughney November 22, 2017

Ike Horst raises 22,000 turkeys a year on his farm in the rolling hills of south-central Pennsylvania, selling them to a processing company that was providing him with enough of a nest egg that he hoped he could sell the farm and retire.

But a Trump administration decision to block proposed agriculture regulations may blow up those plans, preserving the multibillion-dollar meat industry’s power over the smaller turkey farmers whose birds will grace the tables in millions of American homes this Thanksgiving.

Horst is one of the independent businessmen caught up in the Trump administration’s government-wide deregulation frenzy.

Obama-era rules that had yet to take effect would have given smaller farmers more power to set the terms of their deals with massive meat companies, empowering the growers to sue and better define abusive practices by processors and distributors under federal law. Trump’s Agriculture Department killed two of the proposed rules, one of which would have taken effect in October.

Major agribusinesses like Cargill and Butterball fought the rules, saying they would lead to endless litigation between farmers and global food companies.

Trump’s deregulatory strike — lauded by big business — has consequences, even for the mom-and-pop turkey farmers who raise free-range, antibiotic-free turkeys that have seen increasing demand as Americans become more socially conscious about the production of their foods.

Horst is afraid a planned sale of his farm will fall through because Plainville Farms, a major organic food producer and the primary customer for his turkeys, is requiring the buyer to install upgrades including fans, tunnel ventilation and a stationary generator if it wants to continue supplying to the company.

Under the rules Trump killed, Horst’s buyer could have resisted such new costs.

“That was my retirement,” said Horst, who is selling his farm for health reasons and is scheduled to close the sale in January.

In the days leading up to Thanksgiving, some turkey farmers said the processing and distribution companies already have been setting tougher terms. Farmers who produce birds for Plainville received letters in October amending their contracts by cutting performance incentives and demanding that they invest in equipment upgrades. They blame the Trump administration.

If Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue hadn’t done away with the proposed rules, “the companies wouldn’t be doing things like this,” said Mike Weaver, a West Virginia poultry grower and president of the Organization for Competitive Markets, who has been contacted by Plainville’s turkey growers about their fears. “We think this has emboldened the companies to abuse the growers.”

Distributors and large poultry growers, for their part, have praised the decision to ditch the proposed Obama-era regulations, which were developed under USDA’s Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration and are commonly referred to as the GIPSA rules. If allowed to go into effect, they “would have opened the floodgates to frivolous and costly litigation,” said Mike Brown, president of the National Chicken Council.

Meanwhile, turkey farmers have fewer and fewer choices about where to sell their birds. Contract farmers account for 69 percent of turkey production, according to the USDA. As of 2011, 58 percent of turkey slaughter was controlled by just four companies: Butterball, Jennie-O, Cargill, and Farbest Foods.

As the industry has consolidated, margins for turkey farmers have gotten thinner. Billy Turner, a Virginia-based grower who raises 54,000 turkeys annually for Cargill, noted that when he started working 25 years ago, he earned $2.25 to $2.50 for each bird he raised. Now he receives $1.35 a head. But he can’t get out of the business because Cargill asked him recently to make upgrades to his barns that he had to take out a $150,000 loan to pay for. He said those upgrades have raised his utility bills from $75 a month to $700 to $800 a month. He survives by raising corn and cattle as well. He said if he raised only turkeys, “I couldn’t do it. I would probably be bankrupt by now.”

Plainville is not a large-scale, mass-market distributor, but one that supplies the high-end organic food segment. It specializes in antibiotic-free and organic turkey meat for which consumers pay a premium. But Plainville’s farmers don’t get much of that: Farmers interviewed for this article said the new contracts cut what they receive on turkeys to 11 cents a pound from 13 cents. Cook’s Illustrated reported that these turkeys sell for more than 10 times more, for $1.19 a pound.

The farmers point out that Plainville’s parent company, Hain Celestial Group Inc., which promotes itself as a healthy food company and owns brands like Celestial Seasonings Tea, reported a 131 percent increase in profit in its most recent earnings statement.

When contacted by POLITICO, Mickey Baugher, vice president of operations for Plainville Farms, replied via a LinkedIn message that “our decision to modify the terms of our grower agreements were not influenced by any changes in GIPSA rules.” He noted that even with the updated contracts, growers make 20 percent more than the average industry grower. He added, “We do not believe that any modifications to our grower agreements will have any effect on the quality of our turkeys.”

The letter he sent to turkey growers also stated that “the decision to reduce grower pay was not made quickly or lightly” and that “having the best housing in the industry will benefit the welfare of our turkeys.”

Turkey farmer Ike Horst's farm in Orrstown, Pa., is pictured. Turkey farmer Ike Horst’s farm in Orrstown, Pa., is pictured. | M. Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO

Mike Lilburn, an Ohio State University professor and unit supervisor of the Poultry Research Center, explained that turkey farms are now raising larger birds much faster and require newer ventilation systems.

“It has to be done for the grower to be competitive, and it has to be done for the company to be competitive with other companies out there,” Lilburn said.

Several turkey farmers interviewed for this article, however, said that there are better, more cost-effective solutions. Horst, who has been raising turkeys since 1995, said that instead of installing expensive fans, he has let his turkeys go outside.

“The best thing is natural air,” he said.

Years ago, Horst said, the processing and distribution companies, known as integrators, would meet with farmers to discuss contract changes before implementing them. That no longer happens. “Integrators don’t want to hear the growers griping and complaining,” he said.

Despite his financial worries, he calls turkey farming a “low-stress job,” one made enjoyable by the comic antics of the birds. He talks to his turkeys and tells them he won’t eat them. Instead, this Thanksgiving, he’ll be eating an old German dish that involves stuffing a pig’s stomach with sausage and potatoes. He thinks his turkeys appreciate it.

“It’s like raising kids,” he said. “If you enjoy kids, they’ll do good for you. But if you mistreat your children, they’re going to be in trouble all the time.”

Insanity of GOP Tax Bill: They’re Coming For Your Social Security & Medicare

Daily Kos

Forbes Botton Lines Insanity of GOP Tax Bill:

They’re Coming For Your Social Security & Medicare

Why would they want to do that?

By Heavy Metal November 20, 2017

Today’s article in a Forbes oped contributor blog post describes how the current GOP tax bills are “the end of GOP economic sanity” and goes through a long list of problems that would never have been inflicted on the US populace before:

“If it’s enacted, the GOP tax cut now working its way through Congress will be the start of a decades-long economic policy disaster unlike any other that has occurred in American history.”

“There’s no economic justification whatsoever for a tax cut at this time. U.S. GDP is growing, unemployment is close to 4 percent (below what is commonly considered “full employment“), corporate profits are at record levels and stock markets are soaring. It makes no sense to add any federal government-induced stimulus to all this private sector-caused economic activity, let alone a tax cut as big as this one.”

After going through a list of problems it will cause, such as high inflation which monetary policy will no longer be able to affect, they come to this:

Without massive cuts in Social Security, Medicare and the Pentagon, it won’t be possible to reduce federal spending enough to do more than tweak the deficit.

And there it is. The only option that will be available to ameliorate the significant problems these tax cuts will cause is to cut these parts of the budget. None of the other options is feasible. And the Pentagon budget is sacrosanct. That leaves Social Security and Medicare.

This was a goal of the invasion of Iraq- explode the debt and deficit to the point where cuts to entitlements are the only solution. But that was staved off with a democratic president. And now we are back to square one. Only this time the super rich get a massive windfall in the bargain.

This is what they have wanted for decades. They have had their eyes on the prize and they see it getting closer and clearer. This won’t be an unintended consequence- it is the plan. The goal.

And the gall to try and sell a measly tax cut of a few hundred dollars as a boon for the “middle class”.

I’m sure Democratic legislators are well aware of this. My question- is it taboo for them to engage on this subject?

www.forbes.com/…

Forbes

GOP Tax Bill Is The End Of All Economic Sanity In Washington

Stan Collender, Contributor November 19, 2017

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

TWEET THIS

the GOP tax cut now working its way through Congress will be the start of a decades-long economic policy disaster unlike any other that has occurred in American history.

The GOP’s insanity is compounded by its moving ahead without having any idea of what this policy will actually do to the economy.

AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

No doubt many of you read the above headline and immediately started to tweet that the GOP tax bill can’t be the end of economic sanity in Washington because there never was any to begin with.

I have two responses.

First…please do tweet that, and link to this post when you do.

Second…you’re wrong. If it’s enacted, the GOP tax cut now working its way through Congress will be the start of a decades-long economic policy disaster unlike any other that has occurred in American history.

There’s no economic justification whatsoever for a tax cut at this time. U.S. GDP is growing, unemployment is close to 4 percent (below what is commonly considered “full employment“), corporate profits are at record levels and stock markets are soaring. It makes no sense to add any federal government-induced stimulus to all this private sector-caused economic activity, let alone a tax cut as big as this one.

This is actually the ideal time for Washington to be doing the opposite. But by damning the economic torpedoes and moving full-speed ahead, House and Senate Republicans and the Trump White House are setting up the U.S. for the modern-day analog of the inflation-producing guns-and-butter economic policy of the Vietnam era. The GOP tax bill will increase the federal deficit by $2 trillion or more over the next decade (the official estimates of $1.5 trillion hide the real amount with a witches brew of gimmicks and outright lies) that, unless all the rules have changed, is virtually certain to result in inflation and much higher interest rates than would otherwise occur.

The GOP’s insanity is compounded by its moving ahead without having any idea of what this policy will actually do to the economy. The debates in the Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committees and on the House floor all took place before the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis and, if it really exists, the constantly-promised-but-never-seen report from the Treasury on the economics of this tax bill.

Meanwhile, Congress has ignored other estimates like this one from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School showing that the tax bill won’t do what the GOP is promising.

In other words, the GOP tax bill may be enacted without anyone who votes for it having any understanding of the damage it could do to the economy. They have wishes, hopes and prayers but in reality nothing beyond the economic equivalent of pagan superstition.

On top of everything else, there is no reason to rush this debate as the GOP is doing. Given that it’s not really needed, a bill that is enacted next January or February will make as much economic sense as one signed into law by the end of this December. The must-do-it-by-Christmas deadline Trump has imposed is completely artificial and nonsensical.

The real economic insanity of the GOP’s tax bill will be felt in future years. Consider the following.

The $1 trillion a year budget deficit will not be the result of cyclical changes that will be reversed when the economy improves. These will be permanent structural deficit increases.
The tax hikes that will be needed to resolve the structural imbalance between federal spending and revenues will be impossible for political reasons.
Whenever the S. economy grows more slowly than expected or there’s a downturn, an annual deficit of $2 trillion could easily become the norm.
The federal government will have far less ability to respond to economic downturns unless previously unimaginable and politically intolerable deficits, tax increases or spending cuts suddenly become acceptable.
Reduce the national debt? As they say in New York, fuhgeddaboudit at least in the next decade.
Much more national debt plus rising interest rates means interest on the national debt will be the fastest growing part of the federal budget.
Without massive cuts in Social Security, Medicare and the Pentagon, it won’t be possible to reduce federal spending enough to do more than tweak the deficit.
Washington’s ability to invest in anything new that will improve the economy (think infrastructure, education and medical research) will be far less given the already-high deficits.
Even though the limits to monetary policy became obvious the past few years, the Federal Reserve will be the major economic policy maker in Washington over the next decade.

In other words, if the GOP tax bill is enacted, Congress and the president this year will give up almost all ability to deal with the U.S. economy for at least a decade even when, as almost certainly will happen, there’s a downturn. No one else will be able to fulfill this role.

That’s almost a textbook definition of economic insanity.

Follow Stan Collender on Twitter at TheBudgetGuy

House tax bill is littered with loopholes for Wall Street’s wealthiest

November 21, 2017

Crains – House tax bill is littered with loopholes for Wall Street’s wealthiest

Photo by Thinkstock

(Bloomberg)—Lawmakers who sped a bill through the U.S. House last week may have handed a few more goodies to Wall Street’s wealthiest than they realize.

Investors in billion-dollar hedge funds might be able to take advantage of a new, lower tax rate touted as a break for small businesses. Private equity fund managers might be able to sidestep a new tax on their earnings. And a combination of proposed changes might allow the children and grandchildren of the very wealthy to avoid income taxes in perpetuity.

These are some of the quirks that tax experts have spotted in the bill passed by the House on Nov. 16, just two weeks after it was introduced. Whether they were intentional or accidental, it will be up to congressional tax writers to keep or revise them before a final bill makes it to President Donald Trump’s desk—assuming both chambers can work out a compromise. Senate leaders plan to vote on their own version of tax legislation by the end of this month.

“There sure are a lot of glitches and loopholes, in large measure because there’s so much complexity in this bill that’s being raced through,” said Steven Rosenthal, a senior fellow with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, a Washington policy group.

Loopholes aside, the biggest features of the Republican tax plans in both chambers bear a mix of news for wealthy investors.

The good: a potential cut in the top marginal income tax rate; big cuts in business taxes; an end to the alternative minimum tax; and a cut or repeal of the estate tax. The bad: limits or the outright end of individual deductions for state and local taxes and tax hikes on the debt financing that fuels private equity deals.

The loopholes are deep in the details.

The House bill contemplates a major shift in how most American businesses are taxed. Right now, profits from “pass-through” entities, like sole proprietorships and partnerships, show up on their owners’ individual income taxes. The House bill replaces that with a new, 25 percent top tax rate on pass-throughs’ business income. Supporters describe the change as a boon for small business owners, a way to keep them relatively even with corporations, which stand to see their tax rate drop to 20 percent from 35 percent.

POSSIBLE WORKAROUND

The bill’s drafters probably didn’t mean for investors in partnerships like hedge funds to use the new pass-through rate, according to David S. Miller, a tax partner at Proskauer Rose LLP in New York. Capital gains, the kind of income these funds tend to generate, would be excluded.

But there may be a workaround. In a note published on Nov. 13, Miller highlights what he calls “an unusual set of drafting glitches.”

Here’s how it would work, according to Miller: A fund could choose to be taxed the same way a securities dealer is. It would have to mark its portfolio to market regularly and record any profits as ordinary income. Doing so would allow it to characterize the money it makes as “business income” rather than investing income, and qualify for the pass-through rate.

For a hedge fund that generates short-term capital gains, this strategy could have the effect of dropping an investor’s tax rate to 25 percent from 39.6 percent. The manager of the fund probably wouldn’t get the full benefit, Miller said.

The Senate bill, which was released Tuesday, would overhaul taxes for pass-through businesses in a completely different way.

CARRIED-INTEREST DISCREPANCY

Another provision in the House bill is aimed squarely at fund managers. It targets the so-called carried interest tax break that Trump called for ending during his campaign when he said “hedge fund guys are getting away with murder.”

Hedge fund and private equity managers typically get some of their pay in the form of carried interest — a percentage of their investors’ profits. Under current law, if those underlying profits stem from investments held for more than a year, the managers enjoy the same preferential, lower rate on the carried interest that their clients pay on their investments.

The House bill preserves this break, but limits it by extending the holding period from one year to three.

Even that tax hike might be avoidable, according to Monte Jackel, a senior counsel at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP. Jackel notes that the provision doesn’t apply to corporations that hold carried interest. So a fund manager could collect his carried interest through a type of corporation that doesn’t itself pay taxes.

“It looks like that’s what they’ve written,” Jackel said, adding that it’s the type of discrepancy that’s likely to get fixed once someone notices it. The Senate bill contains identical language about corporations.

ESTATE TAX

Another quirk in the House bill is so glaring that Richard Levine, a special counsel at Withers Bergman LLP in New Haven, Connecticut, says he can’t believe it was accidental. This one involves the estate tax, a 40 percent levy that applies to the estates of a few thousand of the richest Americans each year.

The House bill would limit the tax to even fewer estates right away, and then eliminate it entirely in 2025. But it leaves in place a related measure that allows heirs to sell assets without having to pay income tax on the appreciation that took place before they inherited them.

Taken together, that means that a family whose fortune derives from a long-held asset—think Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., or the Walton family’s Wal-Mart Stores Inc.—might never have to pay tax on the bulk of that wealth at all. The founding generation could borrow against the stock to meet expenses, and the next generation could sell it income tax-free.

The last time the estate tax was repealed, during the single year of 2010, Congress changed the rules on inherited assets to avoid this result, said Robert Gordon, who advises clients on the tax implications of investments at Twenty-First Securities Corp. in New York.

He predicted the same thing will happen this time, but that it’s being held back as a negotiating tactic. (The Senate bill would limit the estate tax to fewer people but not repeal it.)

Levine helps wealthy individuals with tax planning, and he said the House proposal is “very welcome for my clients.”

“As a matter of tax policy it’s completely indefensible,” he said. “It permits income that is obviously income, in a constitutional sense, to go entirely un-taxed.”

When Our Allies Are Accused of Harassment

New York Times – Opinion

OP-ED COLUMNIST

When Our Allies Are Accused of Harassment

Sen. Al Franken on Capitol Hill last week. Credit Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Michelle Goldberg November 20, 2017

Last Thursday, after a photograph emerged of Senator Al Franken either groping or pretending to grope a sleeping woman, Leeann Tweeden, with whom he’d been traveling on a 2006 U.S.O. tour, I wrote that he should resign. Almost as soon as it was published I started having second thoughts. I spent all weekend feeling guilty that I’d called for the sacrifice of an otherwise decent man to make a political point.

Then I saw the news that a woman named Lindsay Menz accused Franken of grabbing her butt while they posed for a photo at the Minnesota State Fair in 2010, when he was a senator, and I read Franken’s lame non-denial: “I feel badly that Ms. Menz came away from our interaction feeling disrespected.”

Yet I am still not sure I made the right call. My thinking last week, when the first accusation emerged, was: cauterize the wound. It doesn’t matter that Franken’s transgression wasn’t on the same level as the abuses that the Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore or Donald Trump have been accused of. That photo — the unconscious woman, the leering grin — is a weight Democrats shouldn’t have to carry, given that they’ve lately been insisting that it’s disqualifying for a candidate to grab a woman sexually against her will. It seemed cruel to expect Democratic women to make Jesuitical arguments that the shadows under Franken’s hands meant he wasn’t really touching Tweeden’s chest. Especially since, with a Democratic governor in Minnesota, the party would maintain control of Franken’s seat.

But even as I made the case for resignation, I was relieved that it seemed as if Franken might stick around, because I adore him as a public figure. It’s easy to condemn morally worthless men like Trump; it’s much harder to figure out what should happen to men who make valuable political and cultural contributions, and whose alleged misdeeds fall far short of criminal. Learning about all the seemingly good guys who do shameful things is what makes this moment, with its frenzied pace of revelations, so painful and confounding.

Personally, I’m torn by competing impulses. I want to see sexual harassment finally taken seriously but fear participating in a sex panic. My instinct is often to defend men I like, but I don’t want to be an enabler or a sucker. I try not to be a hypocrite, while being aware that the right plays on the media’s desire to seem fair-minded, which is part of what led to wildly excessive coverage of Hillary Clinton’s emails during the presidential campaign, among other distortions.

It’s not a coincidence that the post-Harvey Weinstein purge of sexual harassers has been largely confined to liberal-leaning fields like Hollywood, media and the Democratic Party. This isn’t because progressive institutions are more sexist than others — I’m confident there’s at least as much sexual abuse in finance as in publishing. Rather, organizations with liberal values have suddenly become extremely responsive to claims of sexism. Feminists, enraged and traumatized by Donald Trump’s election, know they can’t expect accountability from Republicans, but they’ve forced it from people who claim to share their ideals. As a result, it sometimes feels as if liberal institutions are devouring themselves over sex while conservatives, unburdened by the pretense of caring about gender equality, blithely continue their misrule.

Adding to the confusion is the way so many different behaviors are being lumped together. Weinstein’s sadistic serial predation isn’t comparable to Louis C.K.’s exhibitionism. The groping Franken has been accused of isn’t in the same moral universe as Moore’s alleged sexual abuse of minors. It seems perverse that Franken could be on his way out of the Senate while Moore might be on his way in.

It’s possible that feminists, in trying to hold Democrats to standards that they wish were universal, risk unilateral disarmament. Kate Harding made this case in The Washington Post last Friday, arguing against Franken’s resignation. If Democrats “set this precedent in the interest of demonstrating our party’s solidarity with harassed and abused women, we’re only going to drain the swamp of people who, however flawed, still regularly vote to protect women’s rights and freedoms,” she wrote. And when the next Democratic member of Congress goes down, there might not be a Democratic governor to choose his replacement.

I’m partly persuaded by this line of reasoning, though conservatives mock it as the “one free grope” rule. It’s a strange political fiction that anyone can really separate partisanship from principle. In general, the character of the party that controls the government has a much greater impact on people’s lives than the character of individual representatives. Those who care about women’s rights shouldn’t be expected to prove it by being willing to hand power to people devoted to taking those rights away.

Yet just as there’s a cost for cutting good but imperfect men loose, there’s a cost to defending them from consequences we’d demand if the politics were reversed. It forces feminists to treat our own standards as unrealistic, to undermine our own arguments. Ultimately, however these dilemmas play out, we lose: either the moral high ground or men whom we need, admire and maybe even love.

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