Make America Great Again but making China greater

I leave tomorrow and will be gone for a week. The reason for the trip is to attend the United Methodist Reconciling Ministries Network Convocation held in Madison, Wisconsin. The denomination has removed the harmful language from the rule book that called homosexuality “incompatible with Christian teaching.” That was the basis for gay clergy bans and other bans, which are also now gone. But that does not mean every congregation is welcoming. That is the next step RMN will address. The Convo is a place to talk about it while celebrating through queer theology. I may post a report when I get back. When the Senate was debating the Big Brutal Bill one of the changes they made to the House version was to protect tax credits for wind and solar projects for a year instead of their immediate cancellation. Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported that change was one reason why Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted for the BBB. And six days after the Senate passed the bill the nasty guy issued an executive order canceling the credits in 45 days. Murkowski feels betrayed and duped that he “just pulls the rug out from underneath the deal.” He signed an executive order that goes against the bill he just signed. The nasty guy has a hatred of clean energy, likely because his rise to power was funded in part by oil barons, who want to protect their source of wealth and the power it brings them. And the EO will have bad effects on energy bills, with the highest increases in red states, along with increasing global warming. Which reminds me many months have gone by since I last saw a chart of the global average temperature and how quickly it is rising. Lisa Needham of Kos wrote:

President Donald Trump sees the government as having two key functions: to enrich himself and his pals, and to hurt everyone else. His rollbacks of key consumer and worker protections—or his administration standing aside while federal courts roll those back for him—combine both those ignoble impulses. He gets to reward corporate interests and the ultrarich while making life worse for the rest of us. What’s jarring about his moves is that there is no credible argument that doing so helps most Americans. The only underlying justifications are profit and cruelty.

As I understand it, the profit and cruelty are to enforce and maintain the social hierarchy with the ultrarich at the top. Here are the latest efforts in helping the rich and being cruel to everyone else. A ban on paying disabled workers a subminimum wage (as low as 25 cents an hour) was withdrawn. The rule to prevent data brokers from buying and selling your data without your consents is no longer aligned with the “current interpretation of the [Fair Credit Reporting Act].” That’s strange because the current interpretation is being revised. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is being gutted. The Department of Justice has disbanded the team tasked with determining if cryptocurrency exchanges enable criminal activity. That the nasty guy is engaging in corrupt crypto stuff has nothing to do with the DoJ actions. The effort to exempt medical debt from consumer credit reports has been tossed by a judge. And I’ve already mentioned the demise of the click-to-cancel rule. The administration is asking to pause a case requiring insurance companies to keep coverage for mental health and substance abuse treatment. The pause is because they will not enforce the underlying law. The DoJ is reconsidering the rule that raised the limit above which overtime didn’t need to be paid. The nasty guy overturned the minimum wage for federal contractors, dropping it from $15 an hour back to $13.30 (which is higher than the minimum wage for jobs that aren’t a part of federal contracts).

Not a single one of these actions benefits consumers or workers, but every one of them benefits the interests of those who make money by exploiting people. And since that is Trump’s natural constituency, he’s going to do everything he can to help them out. And this is only the beginning.

Oliver Willis of Kos wrote about the report titled “The Price of Retreat: America Cedes Global Leadership to China.” It was released by Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and gathered data from international charities, foreign officials, and US companies. The accompanying press release explains the nasty guy’s failure to have a “whole-of-government” strategy to international affairs has allowed China to to expand its global influence while harming American security and economic interests. A few things were highlighted in the report. One is the haphazard tariff policy. Another is the gutting of international aid. A third is cutting grants to universities and attacking them, which also drives away international talent. That combination allows China to surpass us in intellectual talent. A fourth is dropping the countering of disinformation (closing Voice of America) allowing the free flow of Chinese propaganda. In response approval of the US has dropped by quite a bit in many countries (a chart is included). The nasty guy ran on the slogan “Make America Great Again.” But the effect is to make China greater. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev started with a couple quotes about the recent election for the National Diet (parliament) in Japan. The Liberal Democratic Party (described as right-of-center, so I wonder what “liberal” means in Japan) does not have a majority in either chamber, the first time that has happened in 70 years. This time the challenge came not from the left, but from the right. From Martin Fackler of the New York Times:

The new nationalist parties have warned of unrestrained immigration and what they describe as excessive gender equality, but analysts say they have succeeded in large part because they tapped into the frustrations of working-age people living in a rapidly graying society. The new parties have succeeded by giving voice to younger voters who feel they are burdened with taxes to pay for the retirement of their parents’ generation, while policies protecting special interests block them from more entrepreneurial efforts to improve their lives.

“Excessive gender equality” (!) Jio Kamata of The Diplomat wrote the far right parties gained seats by focusing on the economy and pushing hatred of “foreigners” – the usual way to rile up the citizens.

According to Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, populism is caused when established parties act in ways that reinforce the stereotypes that elites are corrupt and unresponsive.

Kev added Japan’s shift rightward is part of a global trend. Again disinformation was a problem. There are differences, such as Japan’s aging population. And:

Maybe the youth of Japan and the youth of other countries (France, Argentina, the U.S. to a lesser extent, for example) are sick and tired of being sick and tired and they are willing to reach for anything, however ill-informed they may be about their choices.

Jon Allsop of Columbia Journalism Review discussed the mainstream media response to the Epstein scandal.

I can’t avoid the conclusion that some of it has slipped all too eagerly from covering the conspiracy theories around him into indulging them (if, often, only implicitly). I find myself agreeing with a column that Ben Smith, of Semafor, published last night, in which he wrote that the Epstein story “brings out two of the worst traits in journalists and—to really point fingers here—in our audiences. First, the human tendency to fill in gaps with wild theories that flatter our prejudices; second, the bias toward what’s new over what’s known.” (The “larger Epstein belief system,” Smith added, “is QAnon for people who went to college.”) And I heartily cosign his conclusion: that “those of us trying to stay sane ought to keep in mind the distinction between evidence and speculation, fantasy and reality.”

Paul Farhi of The Atlantic discussed the defunding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and NPR as well as the general attack on the media.

“The independent press in the United States is facing what media outlets in too many other countries with aspiring autocrats have confronted,” the former Washington Post editor Marty Baron told me on Thursday. He compared Trump’s “repressive measures” to those of Hungarian President Viktor Orbán: “The playbook is to demean, demonize, marginalize, and economically debilitate” independent reporting. Ever since he launched his presidential campaign in 2015, Trump has fulminated against “the fake news.” But only in his second term has Trump gone beyond such rhetoric to wage a multifront war on media freedom with all of the tools at his disposal: executive actions, lawsuits, a loyal regulatory bureaucracy, a compliant Republican majority in Congress and a sympathetic Supreme Court. Each of his actions has been extraordinary in its own right; collectively, they represent a slow-motion demolition of the Fourth Estate. The principal question isn’t just whether anyone can stop Trump, but whether anyone in power really wants to.

Ari Shaw of Foreign Affairs wrote about the interdependence of LGBTQ rights and democratic institutions.

LGBTQ rights endure when they are written into or otherwise grounded in national constitutions; culturally normalized across partisan lines; upheld through strong, independent judiciaries; supported by civil society organizations that operate freely; and reinforced by regional or international human rights structures. Ultimately, the stronger a country’s liberal democratic institutions, the better protected the rights of LGBTQ people become. ... Threats to democratic institutions and threats to LGBTQ rights are mutually reinforcing, generating a vicious cycle that strengthens authoritarian control. Illiberal leaders deliberately exploit divisions over LGBTQ issues to consolidate political power, tapping into popular anxieties about changing social norms to build electoral coalitions and maintain public support. They proceed to undermine independent courts, free media, and civil society organizations—sometimes using their moral opposition to LGBTQ rights as justification. When democratic safeguards are weakened, LGBTQ rights lose their protection from further attack. Ensuring that LGBTQ people can live in safety and with equal opportunity therefore requires not only defending their rights but also addressing the crisis of democracy that renders them vulnerable.