But it was quickly upstaged by Kanye West, who arrived in a pair of slip-on sandals that were oddly undersized for his feet. The gray slides, described by some Twitter users as resembling orthopedic shoes, were so small that his heels dangled over the edge. West paired them with a mint green Louis Vuitton suit that he wore without a shirt and, in true Miami retiree style, light-colored socks.
Like many things that West does, the sandals quickly became a source of debate.
Behold Western civilization, once a shimmering blue and green lagoon for the likes of Ovid and Euclid and Shakespeare, now a fetid cesspool for Kanye West and Donald Trump. I feel so proud.
Billionaires and corporations that reaped millions of dollars in tax cuts are pumping some of that windfall into the Congressional Leadership Fund, a “super PAC” closely aligned with Speaker Paul D. Ryan….The fund’s donors include the casino magnate, Sheldon Adelson, who has given $30 million, and whose company, Las Vegas Sands, reported a nearly $700 million windfall from the tax law earlier this year; Timothy Mellon, chairman and majority owner of Pan Am Systems, a privately held collection of companies that includes rail, aviation and marketing services, who has contributed $24 million; Valero Services, a Texas oil refining company that reported a $1.9 billion benefit from tax cuts in the first quarter, and which has given $1.5 million; and a collection of other corporations, executives and financial fund managers.
Needless to say, the Congressional Leadership Fund is not using this money to talk about tax cuts for millionaires. They’re using it to scare the rubes yet again with hordes of illegal immigrants; Nancy Pelosi turning American into a socialist hellhole; crime waves overtaking peaceful towns; Nancy Pelosi; profane black rappers; outsourcing jobs to China; and Nancy Pelosi.
And why not just tout the tax bill that they’re so proud of instead? This is why:
That’s where my bill comes in. The Accountable Capitalism Act restores the idea that giant American corporations should look out for American interests. Corporations with more than $1 billion in annual revenue would be required to get a federal corporate charter. The new charter requires corporate directors to consider the interests of all major corporate stakeholders—not only shareholders—in company decisions. Shareholders could sue if they believed directors weren’t fulfilling those obligations.
This approach follows the “benefit corporation” model, which gives businesses fiduciary responsibilities beyond their shareholders….My bill also would give workers a stronger voice in corporate decision-making at large companies. Employees would elect at least 40% of directors.
Warren’s basic idea is that workers have lost power over the past few decades and therefore have seen sluggish wage growth. At the same time, this has allowed management and shareholders to pocket the rising profits of corporations since they don’t have to fight workers for a bigger share. She’s certainly right about that. Labor and management shares of income vary a bit during booms and recesssions, but the overall trend since the Reagan era is crystal clear:
But here’s the thing I don’t get. Warren’s theory is that this has happened largely because workers have lost negotiating power over the past four decades. Even conservatives, I think, wouldn’t argue too strongly against this notion. It’s pretty plain that the demise of unions has stripped workers of wage bargaining power and this has reduced their ability to claim the same share of overall corporate income that they used to.
But if that’s the case, why introduce a bill that primarily changes the composition of corporate boards? My objection isn’t that it won’t work. It might. But we know that making it easier for workers to unionize would work, and Republicans will fight just as hard against one as the other. So why choose an oddball proposal that sounds European and vaguely socialist even to the American working class?
Why not instead propose a truly simple and powerful proposal to boost unionization throughout the American economy? If your goal is to increase the power of the working class, this is the way to do it. It’s been done in America before, notably during the “Golden Age” of the 40s and 50s when America was supposedly greater than it is now. It produced a strong economy. It didn’t pauperize the rich. It’s easy for workers to understand. And you’re going to need a Democratic president and 60 Democratic senators to pass it, just like Warren’s bill. If the Democratic Party is ready for Warren’s new idea, it’s ready for my old idea. What’s not to like?
Prominent US climate scientists have told the Guardian that the Trump administration is holding up research funding as their projects undergo an unprecedented political review by the high-school football teammate of the US interior secretary.
Oh, come on. Just because the guy used to play high-school ball with Zinke doesn’t make his PhD in geophysics worth less than anyone else’s. We should probably cut him some—
Steve Howke, one of Zinke’s high-school football teammates, oversees this review. Howke’s highest degree is a bachelor’s in business administration. Until Zinke appointed him as an interior department senior adviser to the acting assistant secretary of policy, management and budget, Howke had spent his entire career working in credit unions.
BREAKING NEWS: Trump says he plans to revoke security clearance for Justice Department official Bruce Ohr “very quickly”
Bruce Ohr used to be an associate deputy attorney general and presumably still has a job at that level—although DOJ refuses to say exactly what he does. It’s likely that he can’t operate without security clearance, which means that Trump is basically firing him from his current job. Maybe demoting him too, since I’m not sure anyone at that level can operate without security clearance.
Trump clearly has no excuse for this except for his threadbare theories about the involvement of Ohr and his “beautiful wife” in the FBI’s Russia investigation. Ohr was in occasional contact with Christopher Steele of “Steele dossier” fame during 2016 and 2017, thanks to the fact that he already knew Steele because they had both worked on organized crime issues. Beyond that, it’s not clear that he did much of anything since the FBI was aware of the Steele dossier well before Steele ever mentioned it to Ohr.
But it doesn’t matter. Trump is obsessed with him and considers him an enemy to be retaliated against. Will any Republican complain about this?¹ Or will they just shrug as usual? I guess my money is on shrug as usual.
That is, any Republican actually running for office in November.
Stormy Daniels: Clinton Wallace/Globe Photos/ZUMA; Michael Cohen: Tom Williams/Congressional Quarterly/Newscom via ZUMA
The Wall Street Journal reported something interesting today about Michael Cohen: back in September 2016, Stormy Daniels’ lawyer contacted him about making a hush money payment to keep Stormy quiet about her affair with Trump. Cohen told him to pound sand.
But a few weeks later, the Access Hollywood “grab ’em by the pussy” tape became public and Stormy’s lawyer decided to give Cohen another call. Sure enough, suddenly he was interested in cutting a deal. This suggests that the $130,000 payment they eventually agreed on wasn’t meant, say, to keep the affair secret from Melania. After all, why would you be indifferent about that in September but suddenly care deeply about it in October? Election law expert Rick Hasen explains what this means:
The Journal reports federal prosecutors view the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape as the “trigger” for Cohen’s payments to Daniels. That’s a big deal. Two important Republican election lawyers have attempted to set a high bar for how to tell when a payment in this context might be campaign-related rather than personal.
Charlie Spies told the Journal in February that the payment to Daniels was “an expense that would exist irrespective of whether Mr. Trump was a candidate and therefore should not be treated as a campaign contribution.” And former Federal Election Commission chair Brad Smith wrote in an April op-ed in the Journal that “FEC regulations explain that the campaign cannot pay expenses that would exist ‘irrespective’ of the campaign, even if it might help win election. At the same time, obligations that would not exist ‘but for’ the campaign must be paid from campaign funds.”
In other words, this is evidence that the $130,000 payment wasn’t “irrespective” of Trump’s campaign. The campaign was in full swing in September and Cohen didn’t care, but as soon as the Access Hollywood tape increased the damage that Stormy Daniels could do, he cared a lot. If a jury agrees, this becomes a serious, full-blown campaign finance violation. And all the evidence suggests that Trump knew about it.
Bill Clark/Congressional Quarterly/Newscom via ZUMA
Last December Republicans eliminated Obamacare’s individual mandate, which had required everyone to buy individual insurance. “By repealing the individual mandate at the heart of Obamacare,” Paul Ryan said, “we are giving back the freedom and the flexibility to buy the health care that’s right for you and your family.” However, repeal of the mandate also had a drawback. According to the CBO:
Average premiums in the nongroup market would increase by about 10 percent in most years of the decade…relative to CBO’s baseline projections.
A few weeks ago, Gov. Phil Murphy signed a bill that restored the individual mandate for the state of New Jersey. Today, Donald Trump’s administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Seema Verma, tweeted her approval:
👏 to New Jerseyans, who will see their premiums in the individual market ↓ by about 15% from the expected premiums because @NJGov took action to address the failures of Obamacare. Today, @CMSgov approved NJ’s 1332 State Innovation Waiver. https://t.co/xvX4kcVZLW
I know this is no longer a politically correct phrase, but can you even fathom the brass balls it takes to say this? Republicans repealed the individual mandate, which increased Obamacare premiums by about 10 percent. The Democratic governor and legislature of New Jersey restored the mandate, which eliminated the premium increase and maybe even reduced it a bit. And then the Republican CMS administrator responded by tweeting her congratulations for “addressing the failures of Obamacare.”
The CDC reports today that about 72,000 Americans died of drug overdoses last year. Of that, 49,000 died of opioid overdoses. That’s an opioid overdose rate of 15 per 100,000.
But as Keith Humphreys pointed out last night, 4,000 people died of opioid overdoses in Canada last year. Given their much smaller population, that works out to an overdose rate of 11 per 100,000. That’s the same as our overdose rate from about 18 months ago.
I have absolutely no point to make about this. I don’t know anything about drug policy in Canada. But I will say this: if opioid deaths are supposedly a big part of our epidemic of “deaths of despair,” then apparently Canada has a similar problem. If your explanation for this epidemic is inherently American, you might need to come up with a different theory.
This is Sentinel Rock in Yosemite National Park. The picture was taken late in the afternoon but before the sun got too low, which provides the warm yellow color. As I recall, I took this on the way toward Horsetail Fall, where we waited for the sun to go fully down and light up a corner of El Capitan bright red.
February 13, 2018 — Yosemite National Park, California
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