Monday, July 31, 2017
Sunday, July 30, 2017
Wednesday, July 26, 2017
Tuesday, July 25, 2017
The World's Largest Humanitarian Crisis Is Basically Being Blacked Out by Western Media @alternet
The World's Largest Humanitarian Crisis Is Basically Being Blacked Out by Western Media @alternet: The United States is fueling a conflict that has resulted in war crimes and famine. A day ago, a Saudi jet fired on a convoy of cars in Mawzaa district, Yemen. The strike is reported to have killed at least twenty civilians, many from the same family. These cars carried families who were fleeing renewed fighting near the city of Taiz in southwest Yemen. ‘Nowhere in Yemen is safe for civilians,’ said Shabia Mantoo of the UN’s Refugee Agency (UNHCR).
Sunday, July 23, 2017
Thursday, July 20, 2017
Wednesday, July 19, 2017
VoxCare: Trump hates Obamacare. He’s also in charge of running it.
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Tuesday, July 18, 2017
Monday, July 17, 2017
Saturday, July 15, 2017
Friday, July 14, 2017
Asylum seekers share harrowing journeys to Canada
Two
men who say they're on the run from death threats in Somalia and a
Kenyan refugee camp sought asylum in Canada after journeys spanning
some 400 days and costing tens of thousands of dollars
Aaahhhhhpocalypse Now!: 10 Dark Visions Headed Your Way @alternet
Aaahhhhhpocalypse Now!: 10 Dark Visions Headed Your Way @alternet: First, the bad news. Things are not looking good out there. Manmade climate change has already led to widespread devastation, with more unimaginable horrors on the way. For half a generation, the United States has been immersed in futile wars that have only made the world more unsafe, and recent saber-rattling suggests more conflict is on the horizon. This country has too many guns, too many prisons and too few people holding nearly all the wealth. On top of it all, a hotheaded bully is charged with deciding when to whip out our great big missiles.
Thursday, July 13, 2017
Tuesday, July 11, 2017
Monday, July 10, 2017
My Black Rose
After the Navy I went to the Detroit suburbs and soon married a white woman that my mother introduced me to. It was 14 of the worst years of my life. It was not her fault. It wasn't my fault. I was on my way up the ladder. I became a CPA and was close to becoming a partner in a medium sized high prestige firm. I was going to parties attended by wealthy people. Going out on large boats. I had a house in a subdivision with a lake and a dock with a 16 foot sail boat named "for sail" Something was missing. Happiness.
I became a drunk and soon lost everything.
I was at a clients topless bar. I was drinking double 151 rum and coke. A fight broke out and a body went flying over my head. I ordered another double. I had a Kiwanis club meeting and so I left to pick up the neighbor and take him.
We got to the meeting and the 151 hit me. I was supposed to introduce him so I got up and forgot his name. I said, "Gentlemen, I would like you to meet, ugh ugh ugh, Who in the hell are you?" I never went back.
One morning I came to the car and there was a big dent in the car that looked like a fence post. I didn't know how it got there. I told the wife that it happened in at the mall while I was parked. I don't think she believed me. I didn't care.
Ten years later I was walking down the street and remembered what happened. It was winter and snowing. I turned on a street and ended up in a barbed wire fence. I had to pull the fence post off the car. I had to move the barbed wire so that I could back out.
Another time I was traveling on a winding road. It was raining and 3 am. I went around a 90 degree turn spun out. I ended up with my rear bumper at some guy's front porch. I had about 100 feet to get to the road. The ruts from my back tires had to be 4 inches deep.
Some how I never got a drunk driving ticket. Never got pulled over for it. I would leave my office at 11 am and go to the bar for lunch. I would leave the bat at 5pm and be home by 6pm. As soon as I hit the door I was drunk.
I went into a bar and on stage was my future wife #2. She looked like Donna Summers. She is the most beautiful women I ever knew. She was intelligent, black and beautiful. I ware a t-shirt that said, "The love of my life is My Black Beauty." She had everything I wanted in a woman. (She also had the best damn booty I ever did see.)
Ebony was a dancer and an ex-cop.
Suddenly I went from the lily white suburbs to the mostly black hood in Detroit. My friends went from 100% white to 99% black. I found that I was suddenly happy. (I also found out that white folks don't know how to have fun.) I felt as if I was finally with my people. (10 years later I was told by two psychics that I had a black soul in a white body. I was supposed to be a black man but I got the wrong body. Now I know what a transsexual means when they say they are a woman trapped in a man's body. )
Many of my experiences are in the following web pages along with my philosophy. I hope you read them all and learn from them.
When I went through my first divorce I was broke. Ebony supported me for about 6 months until I got on my feet. I got a job with an accounting firm and had some clients of my own. The day I left the first wife I quit drinking to excess. I married Ebony about a year after the divorce.
My children from the first marriage learned that there is a another society. They saw the poor and found out that the poor black kids are no different than the wealthy white kids. When they were with me they were with blacks. They saw people on drugs (black and white) and learned what drugs can do to a person. They saw people eating out of garbage cans.
The divorce decree said that I could not be with the kids in the company of an unwed woman. (my girlfriend) After the wedding I had it changed to every other weekend and every other holiday. The first time the kids met my wife they really liked her. They said she was beautiful. I told them on the way home not to say anything about how good she was. If asked just say she was OK. My daughter said, "Oh mama she was so nice and beautiful." Their mama blew a gasket.
The next visitation weekend she said they did not want to come. I took her to court.
Before she and her lawyer came in the judge, my lawyer and I another lawyer were talking. She said, "Yesterday a woman was brought before me for non payment of child support. The son had 6 months before he was 18. The husband said the support could go into a trust fund and when he was 18 it would go to the son. She said no so I had to send her to jail."
She and her lawyer came in and the Judge asked my lawyer to talk. He told her how she would not let the kids come because they suddenly decided they did not want to come. He was quick and to the point.
Her lawyer got up and surprised everyone. He said, "Your honor I realize I am probably wrong but here is my case. She took the children to a child psychologist and this is her report."
He gave the judge a report that said the mixed marriage was bad for them.
The judge blew a gasket and said, I don't care what the psychologist said. She is wrong. It is not up to the children if they see their father but it is up to me. He bought a bigger house. Built a bedroom in the basement so they would each have a bedroom. You will make the children go with their father."
If this wasn't bad enough she added, "The next time you come before me in the matter, bring the kids and I will teach them the facts of life. If you come again bring your tooth brush because you will go to jail and your ex-husband will get custody."
As if it was timed as soon as she said it the woman she talked about earlier was brought into the court room in shackles.
She did everything she could to turn them against me. She especially got upset when her husband complemented my wife.
We had many problems when we went to the suburbs. Restaurants would give us poor service. Whites who came in after we did would get served first. We found glass in our food. We got dirty looks.
We did get some compliments too. In the city we would be remembered when we would come back and treated well.
We were in a grocery store and a gay couple came to use. One said, "You are a beautiful couple. We are watching the acceptance of mixed couples because we feel once you are accepted we will be close behind."
My new family had a lot of parties. These parties were fantastic. When I got married my boss, who looked like Robert Gullet, was my best man. He said his girl friend could not come so he was going to bring his wife. (They were going to get a divorce soon.) I told him that 50 of the most beautiful women would be there. He brought his wife and she messed up his evening. (Including my family only about 10 whites were there) He still said when he remarried and asked my wife and I to come that his would not be as much fun as our wedding. We didn't leave until 5 AM and the last people left at 11 AM.
I was on the way up to my parents house about 100 miles north of the city. My wife and our nephew were with me. A cop was on the median facing the south. He turned around and came after us. The speed limit was 55 and I was doing 70. I pulled over and the cop got out.
My nephew said happily, "The cop is black. We have it made."
I looked at him and said, "Look at me."
He said, "Oh I forgot. We're in trouble."
The cop said there was a car going the other way. One of us was doing 65 and the other 70. He gave me a ticket for 65.
Ebony said, "It would have been easier for him to get the other car but since we were a mixed couple he came after us."
I agreed.
Our son is a very intelligent young man. When he was in kindergarten he was one of two mixed children in the school. The rest were black. He was as light as me if not lighter. He came home from school and asked. "Mama, am I black or am I white?"
Mama said, "You are black."
He put his arm next to mine and said, "If I am black, then Daddy's black."
My father-in-law was the wisest man I knew. (except my father) He reminded me of Lou Gossett, Jr. He looked like him, sounded like him and acted like him. He quit school in third grade to work in the coal mines and take care of his family but he was wiser than the most educated. Wisdom comes from life not school. All of the education in the world can not make a person wise. I wish I could write some of the things he said but a white man can not say it the way he did.
My mother-in-law was prejudice against whites. She would forget that I was white and say things in front of me than apologize. I told her not to worry because she was right. Many of my friends did not like whites but I was accepted. If anything was said they said I was not white. Didn't know what I was but I wasn't white.
My wife's uncle (now her aunt) dressed as a woman. He took hormones to give him breasts. In his day he could convince any man that he was a woman. He did look good as a woman. When the wife met a guy she would go to his house and leave the guy with him and go downstairs and visit friends. When his hands got to the genitals there would be a scream and she would dump the guy.
Things were going good for us. I became a partner and a year later bought out my partner. I had a nice house in one of the best neighborhoods of the city.
One day a big caddie pulled up to my office. A big black man in a high priced pinstriped suit got out with a lady. They were starting a loan company and they wanted my help. The next meeting was at a motel and I met the owner of a large realty and mortgage company. They also had a letter from a prominent widow (real rich).
The banks were against them. They carried guns and including automatics.
I got into an argument with them and we broke off our dealings.
A while later I heard on the radio that there was a gunfight at a nearby motel.
The paper said that they were con artists. The reporter called me because they found my card. He did not use the interview because he was saying that they were con artists. My story was that they were actually starting a loan company.
This is the Street version that I believe.
The sons loved their mama and you did not touch her in a threatening way. Before the cops came they were told that there was a contract out on the mother and the a cop was going to be the hit man.
The cops had a warrant for a bounced check.
The cop that was killed grabbed mama's arm and the sons started shooting.
The son I met was #1 son. He had a bad case of diabetes and when the trial came he was in a wheel chair. He died soon after. Mama and the other son's are in prison.
One time we gave was a retirement party for my father-in-law. We rented a hall that held 200 people. The DJ broke a higher paying gig to do our party. We invited 175 people and 225 came. Our parties had all kinds of people.
My brother-in-law told me he wanted to dance with a woman. I looked and noticed an Adams Apple. I said, "You don't want to dance with him."
He said, "Every man out there is trying to dance with her. I want to dance with her."
Again I said, "You do not want to dance with HIM!!"
"You mean that's a man."
"Yes."
One of the most beautiful women on the dance floor was a man.
My office was in a predominately redneck suburb. I had two white tax preparers working for me and they both left at the beginning of tax season. I hired two black men and my wife came to work for me.
The next tax season business dropped in half and I lost the office and had to move into the city. I saw that I was going broke. The wife was insanely jealous. The marriage was going down hill. I did not want her and our son to go down with me so before we lost everything I signed the house over to her. I had made extra payments and in four years we cut the mortgage in half. Then the equity was probably $60,000. She had a good job that payed well. She had a lot of cash.
The funny thing is that a psychic (Who worked for me.) said that I would leave my wife on July 31. We gave no indication that we had a problem. She was right. She also made other predictions that happened. She said I had a black soul. (She was white.)
I left and went broke.
Here comes the fun. I am single and alone for the first time in 24 years. I am 45 and starting a new life again.
Angelica
Angelica
I was living in a motel and I met Angelica. She was a letter
carrier. The instant we met we became friends. She was a beautiful
woman. She was intelligent and I thought a wonderful person.Sadly she had a boyfriend who was a complete asshole.
One night she came to me and she was crying. They each had their own rooms and he started bringing in another woman. She saw him with her and she was heart broken.
She said, "Lee, I need you. Willy is cheating on me and I do not know what to do."
I thought this is my chance to win her over to me. I didn't want her coming to me on the rebound then going back to him when he gets rid of the other girl.
I said, "Angelica, you know that I would do anything for you. You are one of my favorite people and I will always be here for you. I want to tell you to dump the bastard and come to me. It is too soon. You need to let him go. Even if he gets rid of her the odds are that he will do it again. Try to put him out of your mind. Enjoy life with out him. Do not see anyone for a while. I will be around for you to talk to. I hope we can be together but you must be sure that we will stay together. If you find someone else I will still be your friend and I will always be available for you."
That night she wanted to stay with me. I went into the shower the next thing I knew she was in was washing my back. I turned around and saw the most beautiful medium brown body I have ever seen. All of the parts were perfect. The mountains were firm and smooth. The valleys soft to the touch. I was in love and in lust.
I dried her and carried her to the bed.
We kissed and explored each other and a voice in me said, "No, not now."
I said, "Honey, I want to make love to you. I want to make you forget about him. But this is not the time. I will be doing you more harm than good if we do this."
She kissed me and agreed. We held each other and went to sleep.
The next night she called me. She did not sound right. She sounded as if she was drugged.
She said, "Lee, I need you. I took some pills."
I ran over to her room and she was laying on the bed. She was almost out and I tried to get her to tell me what she took. She said the bottle was in the garbage. I grabbed the bottle and called poison control. They told me to take her to the hospital which was 5 minutes away. I took her to the emergency room and they took her right in. I had her purse with me and gave the her insurance card and what information they had.
The nurse said, "We are not supposed to let you be with her but since you are the only one she has and I can see that you have deep feelings for her so you can stay with her. She will be OK, You saved her life."
I asked, "What's going to happen to her now?"
She will be taken to the Psychiatric ward of Oak View hospital. She will be there for at least 30 days for observation. I visited her 3 to 4 times a week. After the 30 days were up she was released and I picked her up. While she was in the hospital I kept her room paid for. She said she would pay me back but I said no.
She went back to the asshole.
A month later she came to me. She said she was going crazy and wanted me to see if I could get her back in. I called the hospital and they said I would have to commit her. They no longer allowed voluntary commitments.
I took her in to the hospital and signed the commitment papers. She was in to another 30 days. She was diagnosed as manic depressive. There were a couple of times in the past that I thought she might be. That was what was wrong with my fatal attraction.
I had been working 50 miles north of the city and commuting. I was getting tired. I started working 70 hours a week and the drive was getting difficult.
She got out of the hospital and went back to the same guy. I decided to move to where I was working. I went to see her before I left and her boyfriend was there. He told me he didn't like me telling her to leave him. I told him if she kills herself because of him he will be a dead man.
Almost 3 years later I was back. A couple that I knew before said that she stabbed him and almost killed him. She is now in the state hospital for the criminally insane. She will probably never get out.
A Day in the Life of a Homeless Person.
There was a man who slept in a place like this even when it was below freezing.
During the warm parts of the year he sleeps on park benches, in alleys, in abandoned buildings, bus stop shelters or anywhere else he can lay down and go to sleep. During the winter if the shelters are full he tries to find something inside. It may not be heated he has some blankets to help keep the cold out of his body.
All of his belongings are in a plastic bag. In the morning he gets up and heads for the garbage cans and dumpsters. He looks for bottles that he can turn in for the deposit money, food or something to drink. He likes the dumpsters behind the restaurants because they sometimes have food, especially after meal times. If he is lucky he will not have to spend money on food. That gives him more for his liquid refreshment.
Joe is at the bus stop and when the bus stops he gets on and asks if anyone can help him with bus fare. If there is a sucker he gets the fare and jumps off. He can't do this to often because each driver remembers him and will eventually stop picking him up. When he gets enough for a cheap half pint he goes to the liquor store and buys the cheapest half pint he can find.
Some times someone will take him to get food. Then he sells it for more cheep booze. Many of those on the streets are drug addicts too. Some have lost a limb or two because of their addiction. You see them on crutches, in wheel chairs or hopping around on one leg. During the day they are downtown begging from the office workers and shoppers. If the aren't causing problems the police look the other way.
Joe's day is spent walking, begging, checking garbage and having an occasional nap. As night falls he starts to think about where he will sleep. He finds a place in an abandoned building. He has a bottle that he will drink until he passes out. If he is lucky he will wake up in the morning. Maybe if he is lucky he will not wake up in the morning. If it's cold he may freeze to death. He may be killed by another homeless person or some sick killer. He may die from the cheap booze.
How lucky he is depends on his living or if his death is painless. No one will miss him. No one will care. He is a lost and forgotten soul. Maybe is he is gone someone may wonder what happened to that bum that used to beg here. Maybe one person will miss him. I may miss him.
When we go if one person realizes we are gone then we were not totally lost.
Is Trump Simply the Worst Human Being We Can Imagine? 14 Experts Weigh In @alternet
Is Trump Simply the Worst Human Being We Can Imagine? 14 Experts Weigh In @alternet: Not only did Trump quickly become the worst president ever, he may just be the most hated person alive. No doubt, there are historians who are already willing to call Donald Trump the worst president in history. It is hard to imagine how, in such a short time, an elected president could reveal how truly bad he is; how ignorant, insensitive, mendacious, dysfunctional, self-centered, and at times borderline psychotic. But all this may add up to more than just 'worst president.' Trump may be the worst human being alive—the most hated person in America and throughout the world today.
France Is Banning Gasoline-Powered Cars by 2040
Flickr/Luc Mercelis
The overwhelming majority of cars built today depend on fossil fuels.
Global Citizen By Joe
McCarthy
You
won’t be able to drive a car that runs on gasoline or diesel in
France beyond the year 2040, according to the country’s new
environmental minister, Nicolas Hulot.
The
decision will accelerate France’s transition to a carbon-neutral
society by 2050, and it continues president Emmanuel Macron’s
elevation of environmental initiatives since he took office earlier
this year.
During
a press conference, Hulot also said that France will stop using coal
to produce electricity by 2022, more than $4.5 billion will be spent
to improve energy efficiency, nuclear power will be scaled back, and
that imports of products that drive deforestation like palm oil will
be ended.
Take
Action: Stand
With Climate Change Refugees
"We
want to demonstrate that fighting against climate change can lead to
an improvement of French people's daily lives," he said.
Announcing
the car ban more than two decades ahead of schedule is meant to give
automakers enough time to adapt and consumers enough time to prepare.
Even
still, the decision is ambitious.
The
overwhelming majority of cars built today depend on fossil fuels.
But
that’s beginning to change as automakers improve technologies,
prices for electric vehicles come down, and countries around the
world push for greater sustainability measures.
Further,
an even vaster majority of the cars in operation today are fossil
fuel-powered. Getting these cars off the road for good will be
challenging, but the French government said that it is prepared to
provide subsidies to poorer households as they make the switch to
electric vehicles.
Going
after cars could make a huge impact in the fight against climate
change. After all, the transportation sector accounts for 14% of
global emissions, according
to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Other
countries are going after cars as well.
The
US, which is largest market for cars in the world, has enacted
escalating emissions standards for cars. In China, the government
is investing
heavily in electric vehicle infrastructure.
Germany and India want all new cars to be electric by 2030, and the
Netherlands and Norway want to hit that target by 2025.
With
so much pressure at the national level to get rid of car emissions,
automakers might see electric vehicles as the only viable path
forward.
And
if that happens, France probably won’t be dealing with much air
pollution anymore.
Emma Stone: Male Co-Stars Have Taken Pay Cuts to Promote Gender Equality
Flickr/Gage
Skidmore
Stone’s experience is the exception, not the rule.
It’s
2017, but it took a movie about a 1973 tennis match to spark yet
another conversation about the gender pay gap in Hollywood.
Speaking
to tennis champion and feminist idol Billie Jean King and fellow
actress Andrea Riseborough in Out Magazine about her new film “Battle
of the Sexes,” actress Emma Stone opened up about the men who have
reduced their pay grade to promote equal pay.
“In
my career so far, I’ve needed my male co-stars to take a pay cut so
that I may have parity with them,” Stone said in
the interview. “If my male co-star, who has a higher quote than me
but believes we are equal, takes a pay cut so that I can match him,
that changes my quote in the future and changes my life.”
Riseborough,
Stone’s “Battle of the Sexes” female co-star, had a different
perspective, however.
“I
don’t know how many films I’ve been in—20, 25 films, something
like that,” she said, “And I’ve never had the experience of a
guy taking any sort of pay cut. In fact, I’ve been number 1 in
films before and been paid a lot less.”
Overall,
female actresses are drastically underpaid. In 2016, top grossing
male actor, Dwayne
“The Rock” Johnson earned
$64 million, well above top-grossing female actress, Jennifer
Lawrence at
$46 million.
The
top 10 female actresses, together, brought in just over $200 million
last year — certainly a hefty sum of money.
The
top 10 men? Over $450 million.
Not
only are women underpaid in film, they are also often oversexualized.
According to a USC-Annenberg study, taking place between 2007 and
2012, 26.2% of female actors in the top 500 films were shown
partially naked, compared to just 9.4% of men.
“Battle
of the Sexes” flips the script on this narrative. The movie
dramatizes a much-feted tennis match between female pro Billie Jean
King and Bobby Riggs, a retired, chauvinistic tennis player twenty
years her elder.
King
won the match, and the begrudging respect of the male-centric sports
world, in a televised broadcast watched by an estimated
90 million people.
King
also struggled with her sexual orientation, and was publicly outed as
a lesbian eight years later — a major through-line in the movie,
slated for release this September.
Image:
Flickr/Gage Skidmore
“I
just hope [the film] helps somebody out there who is struggling,”
King said in the Out interview. “But most important to me, I hope
this film will tell people to be their authentic selves.”
Sunday, July 9, 2017
Present at the Destruction: How Rex Tillerson Is Wrecking the State Department
I worked in Foggy Bottom for 6 years. I’ve never seen anything like this.
WASHINGTON AND THE WORLD By MAX BERGMANN - Politico
The deconstruction of the State Department is well underway.
As I made the rounds and spoke with usually buttoned-up career officials, some who I knew well, some who I didn't, from a cross section of offices covering various regions and functions, no one held back. To a person, I heard that the State Department was in “chaos,” “a disaster,” “terrible,” the leadership “totally incompetent.” This reflected what I had been hearing the past few months from friends still inside the department, but hearing it in rapid fire made my stomach churn. As I walked through the halls once stalked by diplomatic giants like Dean Acheson and James Baker, the deconstruction was literally visible.
Furniture from now-closed offices crowded the hallways. Dropping in on one of my old offices, I expected to see a former colleague—a career senior foreign service officer—but was stunned to find out she had been abruptly forced into retirement and had departed the previous week. This office, once bustling, had just one person present, keeping on the lights.
This is how diplomacy dies. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. With empty offices on a midweek afternoon.
When Rex Tillerson was announced as secretary of state, there was a general feeling of excitement and relief in the department. After eight years of high-profile, jet-setting secretaries, the building was genuinely looking forward to having someone experienced in corporate management. Like all large, sprawling organizations, the State Department’s structure is in perpetual need of an organizational rethink. That was what was hoped for, but that is not what is happening. Tillerson is not reorganizing, he’s downsizing.
While the lack of senior political appointees has gotten a lot of attention, less attention has been paid to the hollowing out of the career workforce, who actually run the department day to day. Tillerson has canceled the incoming class of foreign service officers. This as if the Navy told all of its incoming Naval Academy officers they weren’t needed. Senior officers have been unceremoniously pushed out. Many saw the writing on the wall and just retired, and many others are now awaiting buyout offers. He has dismissed State’s equivalent of an officer reserve—retired FSOs, who are often called upon to fill State’s many short-term staffing gaps, have been sent home despite no one to replace them. Office managers are now told three people must depart before they can make one hire. And now Bloomberg reports that Tillerson is blocking all lateral transfers within the department, preventing staffers from moving to another office even if it has an opening. Managers can’t fill openings; employees feel trapped.
Despite all this, career foreign and civil service officers are all still working incredibly hard representing the United States internationally. They’re still doing us proud. But how do you manage multimillion-dollar programs with no people? Who do you send to international meetings and summits? Maybe, my former colleagues are discovering, you just can’t implement that program or show up to that meeting. Tillerson’s actions amount to a geostrategic own-goal, weakening America by preventing America from showing up.
State’s growing policy irrelevance and Tillerson’s total aversion to the experts in his midst is prompting the department’s rising stars to search for the exits. The private sector and the Pentagon are vacuuming them up. This is inflicting long-term damage to the viability of the American diplomacy—and things were already tough. State has been operating under an austerity budget for the past six years since the 2011 Budget Control Act. Therefore, when Tillerson cuts, he is largely cutting into bone, not fat. The next administration won’t simply be able to flip a switch and reverse the damage. It takes years to recruit and develop diplomatic talent. What Vietnam did to hollow out our military, Tillerson is doing to State.
What we now know is that the building is being run by a tiny clique of ideologues who know nothing about the department but have insulated themselves from the people who do. Tillerson and his isolated and inexperienced cadres are going about reorganizing the department based on little more than gut feeling. They are going about it with vigor. And there is little Congress can seemingly do—though lawmakers control the purse strings, it’s hard to stop an agency from destroying itself.
At the root of the problem is the inherent distrust of the State Department and career officers. I can sympathize with this—I, too, was once a naive political appointee, like many of the Trump people. During the 2000s, when I was in my 20s, I couldn’t imagine anyone working for George W. Bush. I often interpreted every action from the Bush administration in the most nefarious way possible. Almost immediately after entering government, I realized how foolish I had been.
For most of Foggy Bottom, the politics of Washington might as well have been the politics of Timbuktu—a distant concern, with little relevance to most people’s work. I found that State’s career officials generally were more hawkish than most Democrats, but believe very much in American leadership in international organizations and in forging international agreements, putting them to the left of many Republicans. Politically, most supported politicians that they thought would best protect and strengthen American interests and global leadership. Many career officials were often exasperated by the Obama administration and agreed with much of the conservative critique of his policies—hence the initial enthusiasm for Tillerson. By the end of my tenure, many of my closest and most trusted colleagues were registered Republicans, had worked in the Bush White House or were retired military officers. I would have strongly considered staying on in a normal Republican administration if asked.
I don’t believe my experience is unique: When you see a lot of Bush-era veterans attacking the Trump administration, it’s likely because they had a similar experience. In government—and especially in the foreign policy and national security realms—you work for your country, not a party.
What is motivating Tillerson’s demolition effort is anyone’s guess. He may have been a worldly CEO at ExxonMobil, but he had precious little experience in how American diplomacy works. Perhaps Tillerson, as a D.C. and foreign policy novice, is simply being a good soldier, following through on edicts from White House ideologues like Steve Bannon. Perhaps he thinks he is running State like a business. But the problem with running the State Department like a business is that most businesses fail—and American diplomacy is too big to fail.
What is clear, however, is that there is no pressing reason for any of these cuts. America is not a country in decline. Its economy is experiencing an unprecedented period of continuous economic growth, its technology sector is the envy of the world and the American military remains unmatched. Even now, under Trump, America’s allies and enduring values amplify its power and constrain its adversaries. America is not in decline—it is choosing to decline. And Tillerson is making that choice. He is quickly becoming one of the worst and most destructive secretaries of state in the history of our country.
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Jared Kushner Panics Over Collusion Report, Throws Donald Trump Jr Under The Russia Bus
This
is the part where they all get stupid and start blaming each other.
This evening the New York Times has published proof of a secret
meeting between several members of Donald Trump’s campaign team and
an attorney for the Kremlin. And now one member of the Trump family
who participated in the meeting is trying to throw the other under
the bus.
Everyone
from Donald Trump Jr. to Jared Kushner to Paul Manafort attended a
secret meeting during the campaign with notorious Kremlin attorney
Natalia Veselnitskaya (source),
which means they’re all guilty as hell of election collusion. But
rather than trying to deny the meeting took place, Donald Jr is
spanning this fantastic tale about how it was all about trying to
secure the option of Russian children. In other words, Donald Jr is
stupid. But that was just the beginning.
After
Donald Trump Jr finished stupidly ratting them all out for having
attended the meeting, his brother-in-law Jared Kushner said through
his attorney that he only “briefly attended at the request of his
brother-in-law Donald Trump Jr.”
And
so now, after Donald Jr confessed that they all attended a meeting
that will likely take the whole Trump administration down, Kushner is
throwing Donald Jr under the bus by insisting that it was
all his idea. Look for the blame game to continue.
When the rats start selling each other out, there’s no recovering.
Why Congress Can't Fix the Housing Crisis
The Agenda By LORRAINE WOELLERT
There aren’t enough homes where Americans want to live—and not even the president has the tools to change the market. What now?
Donald Trump campaigned on restoring the “American dream,” a 1931 metaphor for economic success that has become political shorthand for homeownership. But as president, Trump faces a unique challenge delivering on that promise: The country is in the grip of a new kind of housing crisis that Washington has virtually no power to solve.
The crisis is a shortage of houses. Nationally, the inventory of homes for sale has been shrinking for 24 straight months, stoking bidding wars for even the lowliest fixer-uppers. In January, a measure of supply hit its lowest in history, according to the National Association of Realtors. That scarcity has helped push the homeownership rate to a near 50-year low. As 83 million millennials approach homebuying age, the shortage is expected to get only worse.
The president claims to have the problem well in hand. “Homebuilders are starting to build again,” he told a cheering crowd in Iowa last month. But that’s wrong: Construction is at an eight-month low and builder optimism is waning. There were so few houses for sale in May that buyers pushed prices to a new record high. The scarcity has helped push homeownership among young adults to its lowest in at least a generation, according to Bank of America. Today’s millennials are less likely to be homeowners than their parents or grandparents were at their age.
But Washington, which has a centurylong track record of goosing the market to encourage buyers, has almost no leverage when those buyers have nothing to buy. The Trump administration has offered few plans for tackling the problem beyond rolling back a clean-water regulation that raised builders’ cost of doing business. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson has said building codes need to be updated to pave the way for inexpensive modular homes and other construction innovations, although he hasn’t gotten more specific.
The problem they’re facing is that American housing policy has always pointed one direction: encouraging people to own their own houses. Subsidized mortgages, tax breaks and, lately, crazy-low interest rates are all designed to boost the market for housing. And the market has usually cooperated: With the government juicing demand, builders swooped in and a steady supply of new houses typically followed.
But in recent years, that dynamic has broken down. Cities and towns that hold sway over residential construction have increasingly been derailing Washington’s demand-driven agenda. Ever since New York City pioneered land-use controls a century ago, local laws have tended to rein in homebuilding rather than accelerate it. Today’s not-in-my-backyard activists, environmentalists and preservationists are armed with arsenals of local and hyperlocal rules designed to keep development at bay. And the most in-demand cities and suburbs tend to have the tightest restrictions—putting a huge squeeze on people trying to live in the country’s most thriving areas.
As the mismatch between local and federal policies starts to look more like a collision, economists and housing leaders, including Mark Calabria, a top Trump administration official, and Shaun Donovan, Barack Obama’s HUD secretary, have sounded the alarm. But a fix might be out of Washington’s hands. “These rules are made at the micro, micro level,” said Harvard economist Edward Glaeser. “The federal ability to override local regulation is really pretty minimal.”
In job centers large and small, a lack of residential construction is reaching crisis proportions, prompting workers to shun high-cost cities such as Denver and San Francisco for more-affordable living in places like Atlanta and Dallas. It’s a historic shift. In the past, America’s urban economic engines were also construction boomtowns. From 1880 to 1910, Chicago’s population grew by an average of 56,000 each year, according to Glaeser. By contrast, from 1980 to 2010, as San Francisco was blossoming into the world’s tech capital, its population barely changed: annual growth averaged only 4,200.
Scarcity has home prices rising at a rapid clip. From 2011 to 2016 — a period of economic sluggishness and weak wage growth—the median price of a new home went up nearly 34 percent, to $348,900.
“If we want housing to be more affordable, we need more houses,” said Sam Khater, deputy chief economist at CoreLogic, a housing data provider. “From a federal perspective there’s nothing being done.”
WHAT COULD BE done? The problem is, not much. Americans have repaired their credit since the financial collapse, and there’s no lack of appetite for homes, but the federal housing agenda is still fixated on boosting demand from buyers. Its toolkit consists of levers such as preserving homeowner tax breaks, access to credit, and the 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage—an American innovation that owes its existence to government-controlled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Federal policy has less to offer the supply side of the equation—builders—and the economic recovery has less been less kind to them. The number of homebuilding companies shrank 50 percent from 2007 to 2012, according to the most recent Census data, hitting their lowest level since 1997. The industry has yet to recover.
Those builders that remain can’t break ground fast enough to keep up with demand. They lack skilled workers, who fled the business during lean years and never came back. Smaller banks stunned by the housing collapse and flood of regulation that followed aren’t eager to offer development and construction loans. The cost of materials has skyrocketed and is bound to rise even more after the Trump administration said it would impose tariffs of up to 24 percent on Canadian lumber.
Calabria, chief economist to Vice President Mike Pence and an administration point person on housing, has warned about the inability of cities and counties to respond to big swings in buyer demand and population growth. Calabria is an advocate of zoning deregulation— he called land use a “crucial economic issue” for the whole country—but absent a big new idea or profound shift in thinking, the administration has little power to force localities to liberalize land-use laws.
Calabria, who is assembling a team to develop the Trump administration’s plan for housing reform, didn’t respond to questions about what he has in mind. Last fall, he tipped his hat to Obama after the president tried to jawbone cities and counties into easing up on zoning restrictions. “There are a lot of very strong economic reasons to worry about the constraints on housing supply that go beyond housing affordability,” Calabria told POLITICO. “It reduces mobility, it adds inequality.”
Indeed, a lack of residential construction is one reason Americans on the economic margins are still struggling after eight years of economic growth. Entry-level homes are seeing the biggest price gains, according to Khater, so the inventory crunch has hit lower-income households and first-time buyers the hardest.
WHAT NOW? TRUMP has few easy options. At the federal level, builders are pinning their hopes on infrastructure spending, looser bank rules and an immigration bill that will draw foreign workers back into construction, though it’s not likely those priorities can get political traction in Congress.
Washington, of course, can dial back its demand levers. Affordable housing groups are lobbying to cut the mortgage interest deduction, a tax break that flows largely to the wealthy and encourages people to buy bigger, more expensive houses, but they’re up against a deep-pocketed and powerful housing lobby, including bankers and real estate agents, aiming to preserve the status quo. Then there’s the risk that congressional tinkering with tax or mortgage rules could cause home prices to fall or sales to slow, a shift that would be felt well beyond Middle America, to Wall Street and the foreign investors who hold billions of dollars in U.S. home loans. That’s one reason Congress still hasn’t tackled mortgage reform nearly nine years after the crisis.
That leaves the supply side of the equation. Trump could, like Obama, use his bully pulpit to make the case for local land-use deregulation, a message that would appeal to libertarian ideals and cheer progressives fighting for more affordable housing.
But the best hope for a policy fix might lie somewhere between the White House and Main Street. States have the authority to curb local power and some, including Massachusetts, have already tried. Massachusetts builders can win zoning flexibility if they build affordable housing units where prices are high, for example. The state also can levy financial penalties against high-cost communities that refuse to greenlight new construction.
“I don’t think there’s anything in the Constitution that gives the federal government the right to override local rules,” Glaeser said. “The place you can make a difference is the statehouse.”
And a new breed of local revolutionaries outside the Beltway is doing what the federal government can’t — challenging the not-in-my-backyard establishment. A coalition of California renters established the YIMBY Party, which is taking root against NIMBYism in Denver, Austin and other high-cost cities. YIMBYs — it stands for “yes, in my backyard” and isn’t an actual political party — claimed their first victory last summer when they blocked a San Francisco ballot initiative that would have subjected zoning decisions to hyperlocal control.
While the group is focused on affordable rentals, its pro-growth agenda calls for higher density housing that will lift homeowners and tenants alike.
“The U.S. government has been totally hands off with this,” said Sonja Trauss, the YIMBY Party’s 35-year-old co-founder. “Someone has to get involved.”
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