Comic relief.

As an author, later in the day, I let my hair down. Afternoons are my dreaming time. This bustier set is super-comfy. I wear it when I'm brainstorming. Coffee in the morning. Mint tea in the afternoon. Around 5pm, I switch to champagne. pic.twitter.com/UEW2MRs61u

— Jane Harris (@blablafishcakes) April 11, 2018

Also, of course, I write sitting on the floor, using an ancient manual typewriter. Doesn’t everyone?

To be fair, I'm not sure all of Twitter has enough irony to entirely appreciate these tweets.

— Jane Harris (@blablafishcakes) April 11, 2018

As an author, screenwriting is another feather in my career. I tend to have a swim in the early evening, then head to my screening room where I view rushes of my latest film, while editing my current script. #BeAmazing #imaniceperson #lovemyjob pic.twitter.com/lJ2ORwRAuk

— Jane Harris (@blablafishcakes) April 11, 2018

I find it most comfortable to write on a broken old typewriter at an angle that plays havoc with my sciatica, wearing only some pretend glasses, a pair of white cotton gloves and a really tight minidress. pic.twitter.com/9XdaTv02et

— Lucy Strange (@theLucyStrange) April 11, 2018

As an author, I find I write best when communing with nature in the grounds of my country mansion. I work leaning on my elbows, because the pain helps me focus and empathise with my characters' sufferings. pic.twitter.com/DXjGbbj0IS

— Frances Owen (@ARebelHand) April 11, 2018

Meanwhile, as the agents sift through all those files from Michael Cohen’s office and house and hotel room, there’s the issue of Trump and The Trump Organization and Panama.

Lawyers representing President Donald Trump’s namesake business appealed directly to Panama’s president for help in a dispute over a luxury Panama City hotel, The Associated Press reported Monday.

The AP said it obtained a letter dated March 22 in which the law firm Britton & Iglesias asked Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela to intervene in the legal dispute, arguing that the courts denied the Trump Organization due process and violated a bilateral treaty.

The letter also warned that there could be consequences for Panama if he didn’t, the AP reported.

The firm responded Monday to the AP’s story. In a statement provided to Business Insider by the Trump Organization, Britton & Iglesias wrote that the purpose of the letter, which was sent to Panama’s executive, legislative, and judicial branch, was to “warn the Panamanian Government of possible violations of the Investment Protection Treaty, which could be derived by the actions taken by some owners of the hotel units, and that, in our opinion, could result in a possible ‘procedural fraud.'”

“We categorically reject any assumption or assertion that the letter sought to ‘pressure’ the President of the Republic of Panama or any other official of the government of Panama,” the firm continued. “The drafting of this type of letter to the Governments in matters of International Investment Arbitration (ICSID) is very common, and was sent as part of our legal representation of Trump Panama Hotel Management, LLC.”

That might be true (or it might not)…but the fact remains that the Trump Organization is the president’s business, so the appearance that the president is leaning on the government of Panama to help his business is unavoidable. Rules about conflicts of interest are very much about appearances as well as realities.

Panama’s vice president and foreign secretary, Isabel Saint Malo, said her office was copied on the letter, which she described as urging the executive branch “to interfere in an issue clearly of the judicial branch.”

So that hints that it’s probably not true that “The drafting of this type of letter to the Governments in matters of International Investment Arbitration (ICSID) is very common” – or that it’s seen as inappropriate even if it is common. In non-authoritarian countries the judicial branch is supposed to be independent of the executive – that’s a major part of what makes them non-authoritarian.

Instead of divesting himself of his businesses or placing them into a blind trust before taking office, Trump passed control to his two sons and a senior Trump Organization executive — a move ethics experts said did not go far enough in addressing potential conflicts of interest.

Experts told Business Insider last month that Panama provided an example of such a conflict.

“The president can obviously have a great impact on American foreign policy toward Panama,” Jordan Libowitz, a spokesman for the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told Business Insider in March. “How could this affect that? We don’t know, but it’s not good that we have to ask.”

Conflicts of interest mean always having to ask.

Originally a comment by Anna Y on A really big blind spot here.

Peak meta indeed, since Harris isn’t even paying much attention to things coming out of his mouth in the course of this discussion itself. I think Klein is (maybe intentionally, to avoid pushing Harris’ buttons) missing a really low hanging fruit in what Harris says to defend his position.

I want to break down his points and emphasize the assumptions he is making, thereby demonstrating precisely what that fruit is:

“Well, what I mean by identity politics is that you are reasoning on the basis of skin color, or religion, or gender, or some particular trait, which you have by accident, which you can’t change — YOU FELL INTO THAT BIN THROUGH NO PROCESS OF REASONING ON YOUR OWN, YOU COULDN’T BE CONVINCED TO BE WHITE OR BLACK”

— in other words, you are white or black because YOU reasoned your way into it: it’s something in YOUR mind, rather than something in the minds of all (or almost all) of the people around you who treat you differently based on whether THEY think you are black or white.

” — AND TO REASON FROM THAT PLACE AS THOUGH, because you’re you, BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE SKIN COLOR YOU HAVE, CERTAIN THINGS ARE TRUE and very likely incommunicable to other people who don’t share your identity. […] PEOPLE HAVE THESE VARIOUS STORIES OF VICTIMOLOGY THAT IF YOU DO ARITHMETIC ONE WAY, ONE GROUP TRUMPS ANOTHER.”

— translation: your skin color is in your head the same way mine is in mine, and we can both come up with stories of how that’s been bad for us. That is LITERALLY his point here. Rather than focusing on ALL the reasons why it is an outrageous thing to think and say, I’ll take the most generous possible perspective: this alone demonstrates that Harris, just like faaaaar too many people on both the left and the right, is failing to understand something that should be glaringly obvious but apparently isn’t: whatever your “inside identity” is (i.e. what YOU think of yourself and how YOU identify) is completely irrelevant to other people because THEY can’t read YOUR thoughts. It is OTHER PEOPLE who look at you and “identify” you as “white” or “black” (or male, or female) and TREAT YOU ACCORDINGLY. This basic fact doesn’t sit right with a lot of people, especially a lot of Americans, because individualism is sort of an unofficial national religion here, and, as a corollary, the most popular collective delusion is that of being able to control how other people perceive and treat you. But, as a matter of actual fact, any given individual has NO control and very little ability to influence how other people see or treat them. This is actually a terrifying thought — it’s been a source of terror and despair for me personally for many years — so it’s understandable that Harris, among others, wouldn’t want to seriously entertain it. The problem is, however, that wishing something were true doesn’t make it so, as I’m sure Harris would agree (in a different context). He also happens to have been extremely lucky to randomly receive traits that are viewed favorably by people around him (his complaints about how unpopular being a white male is these days notwithstanding), and, given his favorable view of himself, he seems to much prefer to take credit for somehow earning that baseline favorable treatment from others (which is, again, understandable, especially given the alternative).

A side point about things being “incommunicable” to other people: I personally find that literally anything can be incommunicable if the people I try to communicate it to don’t want to hear it. I’ve gone to quite embarrassing lengths to try to get around such unwillingness of people to be communicated to, and found that this is very much a subset of the larger problem of being unable to control and having little influence over how other people treat you. So when Harris says certain things are incommunicable to other people who don’t share your identity, he may be unwittingly sharing how often he’s found people to be so frustrated with trying to communicate something to him (that he wasn’t interested in taking on board) that they basically threw up their hands in frustration and quit (though, again, to be fair, the pain and frustration of trying to communicate vitally important [to you] information to an unreceptive audience is so common among certain groups that the refusal to be drawn into yet another pointless session has become a common collective stance at this point).

So after having just said what he said, he turns around and says:

“This strikes me as a moral and political and intellectual dead end because THE THINGS THAT ARE REALLY TRUE, THE THINGS THAT WILL REALLY MOVE THE DIAL WITH RESPECT TO HUMAN WELLBEING — I view my career as being totally committed to amplifying good ideas and criticizing bad ideas, insofar as they relate to the most important swings of human wellbeing. My concern is, how can the future be better than the past? HOW CAN WE GET TO A WORLD WHERE WE CANCEL THE WORST EFFECTS OF BAD LUCK, GIVEN THAT SOME PEOPLE ARE HUGELY LUCKY AND SOME PEOPLE AREN’T? How can we cancel this, with respect to wealth and health and everything else? How can we get to a world where the maximum number of people thrive?”

— and it doesn’t appear to break his irony meter. Because, apparently, cancelling the worst effects of bad luck has NOTHING whatsoever to do with, oh, I don’t know, maybe not treating black people worse because they are black or female people worse because they are female — clearly this must be because being being black or female (or gay, or just fill in the blank, because it varies from place to place) is just a matter of some individuals being convinced that they are black or female or whatever, and if they just quit thinking that, everybody else will instantaneously go blind and deaf and amnesiac and just start treating them exactly the way they treat a white male. So yes, Harris has totally committed his career to amplifying good ideas and criticizing bad ideas, insofar as they relate to the wellbeing of people like Harris, who are SO incredibly rational that they KNOW their skin and cranium are actually transparent, forcing others to judge them by the contents of their character (unless those others are too irrational because of their commitment to identity politics, and obviously you can’t have a truly rational conversation with them).

Is there a free speech right to bully?

Fox’s Laura Ingraham is wrapping herself in the free speech flag.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham returned to her show Monday night following a week vacation in the middle of a mass exodus of the program’s advertisers over controversial remarks she made about a Parkland shooting survivor. Ingraham focused on freedom of speech in her first show back, and attacked the left’s alleged stifling of conservative voices.

Ingraham was returning to her show after announcing on March 30 she would be out the following week for an Easter break to spend time with her children. The announcement came at the end of a week in which more than a dozen sponsors of her show pulled advertising over her criticism of Parkland shooting survivor and gun control advocate David Hogg.

The Fox News host had taken to Twitter in late March to mock the 17-year-old for getting turned down for admission by multiple colleges.

See, that’s not “criticism,” nor is it a simple matter of “conservative voices.” That’s a middle-aged adult with a Fox News megaphone making fun of a teenage boy for getting college rejections. That’s not political debate, it’s not philosophical disagreement, and it’s not “free speech” as normally understood. It’s “free speech” in the bare minimum sense that it’s not a legally punishable crime, but there’s a lot of territory between “not a crime” and “okay.” It’s not a violation of Laura Ingraham’s free speech for her employer to tell her to go away for awhile when she bullies a teenager in public.

Ingraham focused on the left as a whole on Monday and announced a new segment called “Defending the First,” a recurring feature which she said will “expose the enemies of the First Amendment, of free expression, and every thought, while showcasing those brave voices making a difference.”

Brave? Really? So it’s brave for a famous Fox News “personality” to try to humiliate a teenager in public? That’s making a difference? A difference of the good kind?

“I have been the victim of a boycott,” Ingraham said. “It is wrong. You shouldn’t do this by team. It is the modern way of cutting off free speech.”

But bullying children isn’t “free speech” in the sense she’s using it there. She wasn’t bravely stating an unpopular principle, she was insulting a kid. Nothing is lost if that kind of “free speech” is cut off.

Notice, for instance, that I’m saying this without resorting to personal insults aimed at Ingraham. I’m saying she’s wrong in what she said yesterday and what she said about David Hogg, without bringing anything personal into it. Notice how easy it is to do that.

More of the Harris-Klein conversation, starting where I paused this morning.

Ezra Klein

At the beginning, when you’re talking about why you chose to have Glenn on the show, you say, “My goal was to find an African American intellectual, who could really get into the details with me, but whom I also trusted to have a truly rationale conversation that wouldn’t be contaminated by identity politics.” To you, engaging in identity politics discredits your ability to participate in a rational conversation, and it’s something, as far as I can tell, that you do not see yourself as doing.

So here’s my question for you: On that specific quote, what does it mean to you, particularly when you’re talking about something like race, to have your ideas contaminated by identity politics?

Sam Harris

Well, what I mean by identity politics is that you are reasoning on the basis of skin color, or religion, or gender, or some particular trait, which you have by accident, which you can’t change — you fell into that bin through no process of reasoning on your own, you couldn’t be convinced to be white or black — and to reason from that place as though, because you’re you, because you have the skin color you have, certain things are true and very likely incommunicable to other people who don’t share your identity. I view this as this as the most unhappy game of Dungeons and Dragons ever. People have these various stories of victimology that if you do arithmetic one way, one group trumps another. Another way it gets reversed.

But that’s a very idiosyncratic idea of identity politics. What do I think it means to people who use it as a pejorative? Treating sex and race and sexual orientation as sacred, paying too much attention to them, taking them too seriously, policing everything everyone says in defense of them, “virtue signaling” about them whenever possible. That kind of thing. But maybe that is what Harris means after all, since he mentions “victimology” at the end of that paragraph.

This strikes me as a moral and political and intellectual dead end because the things that are really true, the things that will really move the dial with respect to human wellbeing — I view my career as being totally committed to amplifying good ideas and criticizing bad ideas, insofar as they relate to the most important swings of human wellbeing. My concern is, how can the future be better than the past? How can we get to a world where we cancel the worst effects of bad luck, given that some people are hugely lucky and some people aren’t? How can we cancel this, with respect to wealth and health and everything else? How can we get to a world where the maximum number of people thrive?

He doesn’t half think well of himself, does he. He basically calls himself a humanitarian saint there. I think one could argue that his career is totally committed to quarreling with everyone in sight. I don’t really think he’s devoting his life to achieving a world where we cancel the worst effects of bad luck, because he’s too damn prickly for that. I’m quite prickly myself, but then I don’t claim to be making a contribution to human wellbeing.

I view identity politics as among the worst pieces of software you can be running to try to get there. I want to get to a world where, I mean, it’s Martin Luther King’s claim about the content of your character, rather than the color of your skin. That is the goal, and if you want to reverse engineer that goal, giving primacy to identity is one of the worst things you can do. That is my, that’s how I would frame it.

Sigh, yes, it’s always “Martin Luther King’s claim about the content of your character, rather than the color of your skin.” That’s the bromide all the enemies of “political correctness” like to trot out as if we’d never heard it before. King didn’t make a claim about it, he expressed a hope for it – a hope for a time when people’s identities weren’t despised and so they could be judged on more cogent criteria. That time was not then, and he wasn’t saying it was, nor was he complaining about political correctness. Sam Harris is along with everything else woefully tin-eared about such things.

Ezra Klein

That’s super helpful. Here’s my criticism of you. I don’t think you realize that the identity politics software is operating in you all the time and, I think it’s strong.

When you look at literature on the conversation about race in America, you often see the discussion broken into racists and anti-racists. That’s something that you’ll read often in this debate. I think there’s something else, particularly lately, which you might call anti-anti-racism, which is folks who are fundamentally more concerned, or fundamentally primarily concerned, with the overreach of what you would call the anti-racists. And, actually that’s where I think you are.

One of the things that I hear in you is that, whenever something gets near the questions of political correctness — the canary and the coal mine for the way you yourself have been treated — you get very, very, very strident. They’re in bad faith. They’re not being able to speak rationally. They’re not being able to have a conversation that is actually going forward on a sound evidentiary basis. The thing that I don’t think that you’re self-reflective enough about — and I apologize, because I know that “I” statements are better than “you” statements, but I do want to push this idea at you for you to think about it — is that there are things that are threats to you. There are things that are threats to your tribe, to your future, to your career, and those threats are very salient.

You see what happens with Charles Murray, the kind of criticism he gets, and that sets off every alarm bell in your head. You bring him on the show and you’re like, “We’re going to fix this. I’m going to show that they can’t do this to you.” You look around and you say, “Ezra, you think we shouldn’t take away all efforts to redress racial inequality? But that’s a bias. You’re just being led around by your political opinions, where I am standing outside the debate acting rationally.”

To me that’s actually not what’s happening at all. I think you’re missing a lot, because you are very radically increasing the salience of things that threaten your identity, your tribe — which is not the craziest thing to do in the world, it’s not a terrible thing to do, we all do it — without admitting, or maybe even without realizing, that’s what you’re doing.

I think that there is a lot of discussion like this in the public sphere just generally at the moment. There are a lot of white commentators, of which I am also one, who look at what’s happening on some campuses, or look at what happens on Twitter mobs, or whatever, and they see a threat to them. The concern about political correctness goes way, way, way, way up. Then the ability to hear what the folks who are making the arguments actually say dissolves. The ability to hear what the so-called social justice warriors are actually worried about dissolves. I think that’s a really big blind spot here. I think it’s making it hard for you to see when people have a good faith disagreement with you, and I also think it’s making harder for you to see how to weight some of the different concerns that are operating in this conversation.

I think that’s exactly right.

It’s interesting how the people Trump hires to run bits of his administration like to give big raises to the people they hire. Scott Pruitt did it, and Mick Mulvaney did it.

Mick Mulvaney, President Donald Trump’s appointee to oversee the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has given big pay raises to the deputies he has hired to help him run the bureau, according to salary records obtained by The Associated Press.

Mulvaney has hired at least eight political appointees since he took over the bureau in late November. Four of them are making $259,500 a year and one is making $239,595. That is more than the salaries of members of Congress, cabinet secretaries, and nearly all federal judges apart from those who sit on the Supreme Court.

When libbruls do it it’s Big Gummint. When Trumpists do it it’s Winning.

Mulvaney, as Trump’s budget director, has long railed against government spending. One of his first directives as acting CFPB director was to announce he needed zero dollars in funding to run the agency, pledging to spend down the bureau’s surplus fund this quarter before requiring more money from the Fed — the CFPB is funded by the Fed and not through the traditional congressional budget process.

In his Jan. 17 letter to the Fed, Mulvaney said he was asking for zero dollars because of the need to be “responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars.” But that tight-fisted approach apparently was not used with his staff’s salaries. Further, it appears that at least two people that Mulvaney hired for his office are for positions that did not exist under the previous administration, at an additional taxpayer cost of $259,500 per employee.

He’s redistributing the wealth. It’s very compassionate.