Guest post: They are disposable humans

Apr 12th, 2018 10:50 am | By

Originally a comment by iknklast on He calls all of them “welfare.”

Of course, it isn’t just conservatives who refer to that all as welfare; I see the same pattern in my liberal (or so-called liberal) friends who often describe situations of people being “on welfare” for life, even though welfare benefits are only available for 5 years under the Clinton-era “reforms”.

And the way they do the work requirement under TANF is disgusting and counterproductive. When I was unemployed, having just come off an extended period of disability (complete with Social Security, so I was recognized by the government as disabled), I tried to apply for TANF to help support myself and my teenage son until I could find work. It was…an eye-opener.

This was right after the new laws were passed, in the mid-late 90s. I was told I was eligible for $75/month, but could not receive that unless I applied for and interviewed for 10 jobs a week…and I could not tell them that there were any hours I could not work. I had to take any job that was offered, regardless of pay or schedule, or I would lose any benefits. I asked if they were saying I needed to drop out of college; they said, well, it doesn’t always come to that, but…yes. Job training was an integral part of that “reform”, but…they got to select what sort of jobs you could be trained for. And I wasn’t eligible for that, anyway, since I already had a bachelor’s degree and was working on my masters – which was my hope for lifting myself out of the poverty we were living in.

In the end, I turned down the $75. I struggled for a few months, and nearly lost my home, but managed to find a job at the eleventh hour. It wasn’t a great job, but it was decent pay, above minimum, and I was still eligible for food stamps, so that worked for me. But a lot of people wouldn’t be so lucky. I was fortunate to have the requisite skills to look for, and find, a job that would pay me a below-poverty level wage that was just enough to keep us from drowning. And it gave me just enough to talk to a lawyer and file papers on my ex to get him to start paying child support, which gave us a little breathing room once the checks started arriving.

The goal of these programs isn’t to end poverty, it is to maintain it by forcing people into ever lower-paying jobs. It feeds the job pool with desperate applicants who won’t say much about working conditions or salaries because they have too much to lose. It stigmatizes poverty, a condition in many ways created by those who support these obnoxious views. It generates a permanent class of citizens who are unable to enjoy the full rights of citizenship because they are unable to participate significantly in the market economy that serves as the God to which our country genuflects. They are (I was) disposable humans, not worth giving any thought to, and seen as a suck on the money that the corporate leaders believe rightfully belongs in the pockets of the already wealthy.

The entire system is a disgrace. In the richest country in the world, no one should be going to bed hungry at night. And no one should be callously covering the world with cheap, tacky gold while refusing to give even a crumb of food to the starving people that go largely unnoticed in our world.

Have I said today that I hate these people? If not, it’s time to rectify that. I hate him. I hate them. I want to see them pushed out of office, and preferably thrown onto the tender mercies of the programs that they have gutted, while their assets are redistributed among those who once populated those programs.

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Nothing but the best for Scott

Apr 12th, 2018 10:12 am | By

They’re attacking welfare, while Scott Pruitt stays in luxury hotels on our dime.

Scott Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, insisted on staying in luxury hotels that were costlier than allowed by government standards, while also pushing to fly on an airline not on the government’s approved list so he could accrue more frequent flier miles, one of his top former deputies at agency has told congressional investigators.

The new allegations are detailed in a scathing six-page letter signed by two senators and three House lawmakers — all Democrats — whose staff members met this week with Kevin Chmielewski, who served as the E.P.A.’s deputy chief of staff until he was removed from his post after raising objections to this and other spending.

Isn’t there a law against firing whistleblowers?

Mr. Chmielewski told congressional staff members during a meeting this week that Mr. Pruitt would often seek to schedule trips back to Oklahoma, where he still owns a home, so he could stay there for weekends. “Find me something to do,” were the instructions Mr. Pruitt gave his staff, after telling them he wanted to travel to particular destinations, the letter says, quoting Mr. Chmielewski, who was expected to sign off on the trips.

When planning a trip to Italy, Mr. Pruitt “refused to stay at hotels recommended by the U.S. Embassy, although the recommended hotel had law enforcement and other U.S. resources on site,” according to the letter, which was written and sent to Mr. Pruitt, asking him to turn over documents related to the letter’s claims. Instead, Mr. Pruitt chose to stay “at more expensive hotels with fewer standard security resources,” while bringing along his own security team “at taxpayer expense.”

He sounds like a real prince, doesn’t he.

The letter says that while Mr. Pruitt was living last year in a Capitol Hill condominium rented from the wife of an energy lobbyist, complaints came in to the E.P.A. from the lobbyist, J. Steven Hart, that “you had never paid any rent to him, and that your daughter damaged his hardwood floors by repeatedly rolling her luggage across the unit when she was staying there.”

Takes after daddy.

Pruitt made one of his aides “act as your personal real estate representative, spending weeks improperly using federal government resources and time to contact rental and seller’s agents, and touring numerous properties in which you might wish to reside.” He also retaliated against people who objected to all this.

A prince among men.

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He calls all of them “welfare”

Apr 12th, 2018 9:36 am | By

The usual. Reward the rich and punish the poor. Pass a huge tax cut for the rich, blow up the deficit, then go to even greater lengths to make sure poor people starve and freeze and die when they get sick.

President Trump quietly signed a long-anticipated executive order on Tuesday intended to force low-income recipients of food assistance, Medicaid and low-income housing subsidies to join the work force or face the loss of their benefits.

The order, in the works since last year, has an ambitious title — “Reducing Poverty in America” — and is directed at “any program that provides means-tested assistance or other assistance that provides benefits to people, households or families that have low incomes,” according to the order’s text.

As if Trump had the slightest interest in reducing poverty in the US.

The order gave all cabinet departments 90 days to produce plans that impose work requirements on able-bodied aid recipients and block ineligible immigrants from receiving aid, while drafting “a list of recommended regulatory and policy changes” to push recipients off the rolls and into jobs.

“President Trump has directed his administration to study policies that are failing Americans,” said Andrew Bremberg, the president’s domestic policy chief, who briefed reporters on the order’s contents in a telephone call late Tuesday. Journalists were not provided with copies of the document beforehand.

The aim, Trump aides said on the call, is to prod federal and state officials to take a tougher stance with aid recipients — millions of whom currently receive exemptions from existing work requirements because they are in training programs, provide care for relatives or volunteer their labor.

Get tough with those bastards! Meanwhile, get cuddly with polluters, frauds, exploiters, crooks.

The order — signed in private on a frenzied news day dominated by congressional testimony from Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook chief executive, a potential military response in Syria and the president’s rage at the raid on Monday on his personal lawyer’s office — tries to redefine “welfare” to fit the catchall term Mr. Trump used in campaign speeches.

The word “welfare” — politically loaded and often pejorative, especially among the president’s conservative supporters — has historically been used to describe cash assistance programs such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

The Trump administration wants to change the lexicon. On Tuesday, Mr. Bremberg sought to stretch the term to encompass food aid and Medicaid — programs even many conservative lawmakers view as a necessary safety net for families and individuals on the economic margins through no fault of their own.

“Our country suffers from nearly record high welfare enrollments,” Mr. Bremberg said. But Temporary Assistance for Needy Families payments to poor people are approaching record lows.

Mr. Trump, several aides said, is unconcerned — or perhaps even unaware — of the distinction between cash assistance and other safety-net programs.

He calls all of them “welfare,” they said.

What does he call all the money we spend on his trips to Florida and his sons’ trips all over the globe to market his businesses?

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At all costs

Apr 12th, 2018 8:37 am | By

The Post has more on the RNC plan to save Trump by vilifying the Republican former FBI director.

With the Mueller probe escalating — including the FBI raid this week of Trump’s personal lawyer’s home and office in Manhattan — Comey’s media appearances could pose a major public relations challenge for the White House.

“I’ve been around politics a long time, and I know fear when I see it,” said Jim Manley, a lobbyist and former senior aide to former Senate minority leader Harry M. Reid. “This White House reeks of fear. … This shows me that they are prepared to use a scorched-earth strategy to undermine the FBI’s credibility. The party of law and order has become the party of trying to protect Trump at all costs.”

That’s the part that’s so astonishing – Republicans pissing all over a Republican prosecutor turned Deputy Attorney General in the Bush 2 admin turned FBI director. You can’t get much better Republican cred than that! Yet they’re willing to go on the record calling him Lyin’ Comey in a desperate attempt to defend the lying cheating thieving corrupt bullying pussygrabbing fraud that is Donald Trump. It’s like turning away from a meal prepared by a four star French chef to jump into a cesspit to pluck out and eat a Big Mac.

Except it’s not even like that because this will be on their record forever. They’re placing all their bets on corrupt incompetent bullying monstrosity. It seems a tad shortsighted.

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An extensive campaign

Apr 12th, 2018 7:52 am | By

Strange times.

President Donald Trump’s allies are preparing an extensive campaign to fight back against James Comey’s publicity tour, trying to undermine the credibility of the former FBI director by reviving the blistering Democratic criticism of him before he was fired nearly a year ago.

The battle plan against Comey, obtained by CNN, calls for branding the nation’s former top law enforcement official as “Lyin’ Comey” through a website, digital advertising and talking points to be sent to Republicans across the country before his memoir is released next week. The White House signed off on the plan, which is being overseen by the Republican National Committee.

“Lyin’ Comey” ffs – is everybody 6? Are we all reverting to childhood now? Should we just shrug and resign ourselves to living in Twittervania from here on out?

“Comey is a liar and a leaker and his misconduct led both Republicans and Democrats to call for his firing,” Republican chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement to CNN. “If Comey wants the spotlight back on him, we’ll make sure the American people understand why he has no one but himself to blame for his complete lack of credibility.”

What has he lied about? I think what he did in October 2016 was terrible and had horrendous consequences,  but that doesn’t make him a liar. What has he lied about? Let’s have the specifics.

Republicans hope to remind Democrats why they disliked Comey by assailing his credibility, shining a new light on his conduct and pointing out his contradictions — or the three Cs.

An old quotation from Clinton is prominently displayed on the “Lyin’Comey” website, with Trump’s former Democratic rival saying that Comey “badly overstepped his bounds.”

Indeed, but that’s not the same thing as lying.

The White House is bracing for Comey to share his story, with aides fearful of how the President will react and how it could influence the escalating Mueller investigation. The well-orchestrated RNC strategy could, of course, be upended by the President himself through a tweet or off-the-cuff comments about Comey.

Or it could just fall of its own weight because everyone knows by now what a chronic shameless liar Trump is. It’s easy to give, or to find, specifics of Trump’s lies; Comey not so much.

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Fame at last

Apr 12th, 2018 7:18 am | By

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It’s not personal

Apr 11th, 2018 3:25 pm | By

New details about the warrant: the Times has them.

The F.B.I. agents who raided the office and hotel of President Trump’s lawyer on Monday were seeking all records related to the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Mr. Trump was heard making vulgar comments about women, according to three people who have been briefed on the contents of a federal search warrant.

The search warrant also sought evidence of whether the lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, tried to suppress damaging information about Mr. Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Also documents related to the efforts to silence two of Trump’s women on the side.

The new details from the warrant reveal that prosecutors are keenly interested in Mr. Cohen’s unofficial role in the Trump campaign. And they help explain why Mr. Trump was furious about the raid. People close to Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen regard the warrant as an attempt by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, to pry into Mr. Trump’s personal life — using other prosecutors as his proxy.

Mr. Trump’s personal life, as in trying to silence women who had sex with him. That’s not really entirely personal, is it, since it’s about things he did (allegedly) to other people.

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He cuts corners, he lies, he cheats

Apr 11th, 2018 3:04 pm | By

The Times editorial board to Trump: they’re cominna getcha.

Let’s take a step back and think about this, they suggest. What are we looking at here?

Early Monday morning, F.B.I. agents raided the New York office, home and hotel room of the personal lawyer for the president of the United States. They seized evidence of possible federal crimes — including bank fraud, wire fraud and campaign finance violations related to payoffs made to women, including a porn actress, who say they had affairs with the president before he took office and were paid off and intimidated into silence.

That evening the president surrounded himself with the top American military officials and launched unbidden into a tirade against the top American law enforcement officials — officials of his own government — accusing them of “an attack on our country.”

You see what they’re saying there – they’re saying that Trump’s behavior bordered on trying to nudge the military into staging a coup. They’re saying that it has a whiff of the treasonous to talk that way to an audience of military boffins. They’re saying, at least, that it’s wildly inappropriate for a president to talk about civilian law enforcement and justice that way to a bunch of generals.

Mr. Trump has spent his career in the company of developers and celebrities, and also of grifters, cons, sharks, goons and crooks. He cuts corners, he lies, he cheats, he brags about it, and for the most part, he’s gotten away with it, protected by threats of litigation, hush money and his own bravado. Those methods may be proving to have their limits when they are applied from the Oval Office. Though Republican leaders in Congress still keep a cowardly silence, Mr. Trump now has real reason to be afraid. A raid on a lawyer’s office doesn’t happen every day; it means that multiple government officials, and a federal judge, had reason to believe they’d find evidence of a crime there and that they didn’t trust the lawyer not to destroy that evidence.

On Monday, when he appeared with his national security team, Mr. Trump, whose motto could be, “The buck stops anywhere but here,” angrily blamed everyone he could think of for the “unfairness” of an investigation that has already consumed the first year of his presidency, yet is only now starting to heat up. He said Attorney General Jeff Sessions made “a very terrible mistake” by recusing himself from overseeing the investigation — the implication being that a more loyal attorney general would have obstructed justice and blocked the investigation. He complained about the “horrible things” that Hillary Clinton did “and all of the crimes that were committed.” He called the A-team of investigators from the office of the special counsel, Robert Mueller, “the most biased group of people.” As for Mr. Mueller himself, “we’ll see what happens,” Mr. Trump said. “Many people have said, ‘You should fire him.’”

Everyone is bad and crooked and wrong except him…according to him.

Among the grotesqueries that faded into the background of Mr. Trump’s carnival of misgovernment during the past 24 hours was that Monday’s meeting was ostensibly called to discuss a matter of global significance: a reported chemical weapons attack on Syrian civilians. Mr. Trump instead made it about him, with his narcissistic and self-pitying claim that the investigation represented an attack on the country “in a true sense.”

No, Mr. Trump — a true attack on America is what happened on, say, Sept. 11, 2001. Remember that one? Thousands of people lost their lives. Your response was to point out that the fall of the twin towers meant your building was now the tallest in downtown Manhattan. Of course, that also wasn’t true.

The tackiest?

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People in the room were stunned

Apr 11th, 2018 11:14 am | By

Well this should be interesting. (I suppose Trump will start shelling Syria at 9:55 Eastern on Sunday night.) Stephanopoulos sits down for a heart to heart with Comey. A source who was there says it’s going to shock King Donald.

The source said Comey’s comments, in his first interview since being fired by President Trump last May, will generate headlines and “certainly add more meat to the charges swirling around Trump.”

  • In an ABC promo, Stephanopoulos says Comey compared Trump to a mob boss.

According to the source:

  • The Comey interview left people in the room stunned — he told George things that he’s never said before.
  • Some described the experience as surreal. The question will be how to fit it all into a one-hour show.
  • Comey answered every question.
  • If anyone wonders if Comey will go there, he goes there.

Should be interesting, if we’re still alive.

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Recused

Apr 11th, 2018 10:38 am | By

Ah, that US Attorney for NY who recused himself is the one Trump weirdly interviewed last fall; I’d forgotten about that.

ABC News reported Tuesday that Geoffrey Berman, the interim US attorney for the Southern District of New York, recused himself from the investigation into Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.

Two sources told ABC News that Berman was not involved in the decision to raid Cohen’s office and residences on Monday because of that recusal, which Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein approved.

Other attorneys in the Southern District handled the FBI raid, which a federal judge approved, ABC News said.

It’s unlikely that Trump had such a situation in mind when he made the eyebrow-raising move to interview Berman personally for the job, Politico reported in October.

Eyebrow-raising because 1. presidents don’t do that, and 2. Southern District of New York is where Trump does his corrupt business.

The report said Trump interviewed candidates for the Southern District of New York and the Eastern District of New York, as well as for Washington, DC — three locales that could prove instrumental in any investigation involving the president.

Politico reported that Trump had not personally interviewed candidates for any other jurisdiction.

Not that there’s anything at all suspicious about that.

Berman, meanwhile, worked at the same law firm as Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who’s a close ally of Trump’s, and donated to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Also he’s Trump’s half-brother.

Just kidding, but he might as well be.

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Tips for writers

Apr 11th, 2018 10:00 am | By

Comic relief.

https://twitter.com/blablafishcakes/status/983993475640283139

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

https://twitter.com/blablafishcakes/status/984011803519782915

https://twitter.com/blablafishcakes/status/984051807013031937

 

 

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 7 comments


Telegraphing

Apr 11th, 2018 9:15 am | By

The Post performs contortions in the effort to frame Trump’s batshit tweet about Syria and Russia as a normal announcement of plans.

President Trump warned Wednesday that missiles “will be coming” toward Syria in response to a suspected chemical attack, and he taunted Russia for vowing to shoot down any incoming strikes.

That wasn’t a warning, it was a boast, an eruption, a look at me I can bomb things.

“Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and ‘smart!’” the president wrote on Twitter, referring to missile strikes that have appeared likely since the weekend deaths of more than 40 Syrian civilians, including children.

As if it were just normal for a president to “write on Twitter” in such a childish way.

Trump’s taunt was the first explicit U.S. statement that a military response is in the offing, and it marked a turnabout for a president who ridiculed his predecessor, Barack Obama, for allegedly telegraphing military strategy.

Or to put it another way, Trump’s boast-and-taunt spilled the beans about military plans because Trump was in the mood to brag and bully.

With his series of tweets, Trump did precisely what he vowed he would never to do: telegraph his moves.

During his 2016 campaign, Trump regularly attacked Obama for previewing U.S. military strategy, which he argued gave the enemy an advantage by allowing it to fortify itself for the coming attack.

“I have often said that General MacArthur and General Patton would be in a state of shock if they were alive today to see the way President Obama and Hillary Clinton try to recklessly announce their every move before it happens — like they did in Iraq — so that the enemy can prepare and adapt,” Trump said in an August 2016 speech on terrorism.

As president, Trump has boasted that he does not disclose his plans ahead of time. In April 2017, as he contemplated a strike in Syria, Trump said, “One of the things I think you’ve noticed about me is: Militarily, I don’t like to say where I’m going and what I’m doing.”

Maybe he thinks that saying it on Twitter doesn’t count because it’s not official. Maybe he thinks everyone sees it this way so that what he says on Twitter just magically doesn’t telegraph anything. Maybe he really is that stupid.

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Other than he fights back

Apr 11th, 2018 8:57 am | By

Trump’s morning of crazy:

Updating to add Maggie Haberman’s response to that:

/update

Sigh. When will he catch on to the fact that the 280 character limit makes it silly to do run-on tweets like that that stop mid-sentence?

Nice parenthetical admission of obstructing justice there.

Dear god.

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Too far

Apr 10th, 2018 4:01 pm | By

Tick tock tick tock tick tock.

NPR reports:

President Trump believes Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller has gone too far in his probe of potential ties between Trump’s campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 election, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said Tuesday.

Her statement to reporters did little to tamp down speculation that Trump may seek to fire Mueller — an authority that Sanders says Trump enjoys.

Well it wouldn’t, would it. Saying Trump thinks Mueller has gone too far would do nothing to tamp down speculation that Trump will try to fire him, because we know Trump is more than stupid enough and way more than criminal enough.

Asked about Trump’s comments, Sanders said at a White House briefing on Tuesday that Trump was frustrated by the special counsel’s investigation. She also seemed to assert that the president has the authority to fire Mueller directly — as opposed to, for example, needing to instruct Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to do so.

“We’ve been advised that the president certainly has the power to make that decision,” Sanders said. She would not say whether firing Mueller is under consideration.

By…? The person who does Trump’s hair? Michael Cohen? Sean Hannity?

Under Justice Department rules, a special counsel can only be fired for “good cause,” and some legal experts say that to remove Mueller, Trump would have to go through Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller after Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from investigations of the 2016 election.

Trump had harsh words for Sessions and Rosenstein on Monday, but Sanders would not say whether Trump would take any action to move them from their posts.

She likes to surprise us.

The political backlash that might follow a move by Trump to get rid of Mueller would be so intense that the White House has a powerful incentive not to attempt it, the thinking goes. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said Tuesday that Trump would be committing “suicide.”

Let’s hope so.

Alan Dershowitz is at the White House for dinner.

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He sees himself as somehow immune to these impulses

Apr 10th, 2018 3:30 pm | By

Daniel Bastian on the Harris-Klein conversation:

What’s clear from the outset is that Harris’s ego is still perhaps the central problem blinding him to many of his own strong biases. This is literally how he frames the conversation from the get-go:

“I’m not saying that everyone who did the work, who listened to the podcast and read all the articles would take my side of it, but anyone who didn’t do the work thought that I was somehow the aggressor there and somehow, in particular, the fact that I was declining to do a podcast with you was held very much against me. That caused me to change my mind about this whole thing, because I realized this is not, I can’t be perceived as someone who won’t take on legitimate criticism of his views.”

Heaven forbid there is someone out there who thinks Harris backed down from a challenge. For someone so ostensibly committed to defending a person who subscribes to the intellectual inferiority of African Americans, Harris seems positively paranoid about any affront to his own intellectual standing.

And he also unabashedly puts his own precious reputation front and center, and apparently expects us to put his concern for his reputation ahead of our concern about the harm this blather about race and IQ scores does. On the one hand, millions of people; on the other hand, Sam Harris. Hmm, tough choice.

The reason this conversation never really made it off the ground is that their emphases were both in different places and, where they overlapped, were out of register with one another. Harris thinks Klein is underestimating the reputational hazards that attend participation in questions about the science of race and other precarious topics. Klein thinks Harris underappreciates the intricate social and historical context waiting around every corner of a conversation like the one he and Murray had. Harris, moreover, thinks these conversations run independently of one another; Klein thinks they’re more or less indissociable. And round and round they go.

Klein says something detailed and persuasive, Harris responds like a brick wall. Repeat, repeat, repeat. It’s funny how Harris is desperately concerned about his own reputation but can’t figure out how not to sound so obtuse.

I think we do in this conversation get a better sense of Harris’s understanding of ‘identity politics’. For him, IP is something that other people engage in to lend unjustified credence to their arguments and positions. While he describes the phenomenon as using one’s skin color or gender to gain undue leverage in debate, in practice he often uses the term as simple code for tribalism, or to describe people whose motives for engagement are suspect and unfounded.

At the same time, he sees himself as somehow immune to these impulses. He honestly sees himself as sitting above the fray, reasoning from a purely Rational™ standpoint. His position is borne of sound principles, the other side’s of ideology. His views are dispassionate, unbiased and uncorrupted, while the opposition — which must include the many well respected scientists who’ve responded to Murray’s work over the years — is contaminated by identity politics and political agenda.

When Klein offers that confirmation bias and motivated reasoning might just be at work in Harris’s own approach to these conversations and, indeed, might explain why he is so quick to ascribe bad faith and malice to his detractors, including Klein, Harris demurs and doubles down, insisting that he’s “not thinking tribally”. Rather, the default explanation is that he and Murray have been unfairly maligned by dishonest parties who happen to share all the same concerns about the social implications that he does.

He does it over and over and over again, while we all squirm in embarrassment.

The fact is that anti-social justice (what Klein refers to as “anti- anti-racism”) is its own tribe, with its own tendencies toward cognitive fallacies and moral panics and all the rest. And Harris has always seemed more concerned with defending this particular tribe (read: his tribe) than using his intellectual capital and zeal to speak truth to the injustices and abuses of power that actualize social change movements. As Klein suggests more than once, this might be because Harris sees a part of himself in folks like Murray. He feels threatened by the march of social justice, anxious that he’ll be the next Murray-esque casualty in the crusade against destructive speech.

I.e. because he’s a vain, prickly, self-absorbed man with all the affect of a lawnmower.

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No one talks about inferiority who’s actually having a dispassionate argument

Apr 10th, 2018 11:52 am | By

Let’s do the Klein-Harris again.

Ezra Klein

I think you’ve had two African Americans as guests. I think you need to explore the experience of race in American more and not just see that as identity politics. See that as information that is important to talking about some of things you want to talk about, but also to hearing from some of the people who you’ve now written out of the conversation to hear.

Sam Harris

So this is the kind of thing that I would be tempted to score as bad faith —

Ezra Klein

I’m shocked!

Sam Harris

In someone else, but actually, I think this is a point of confusion, but it is, nonetheless, confusion here.

Your accusation that I’m reasoning on the basis of my tribe here is just false. I mean, I spend, this is the whole game I play, this is my main focus in just constructing my worldview and having conversations with other people. When I’m thinking about things, that are true that stand a chance of being universal, that stand a chance of scaling, these are the kinds of things that are not subordinate to a person’s identity. They’re not the things that will be true by accident of birth, because you happen to have been born in India and are Hindu, right? I mean, this is the problem I have with religious sectarianism. This is the problem I have with nationalism or any other kind of tribalism that can’t possibly scale to a global civilization that’s truly cosmopolitan, where when you’re reasoning among strangers, you have to converge on solutions to problems that work independent of who you happen to be.

Point so utterly missed. Seeing “I think you need to explore the experience of race in American more and not just see that as identity politics” as an “accusation that I’m reasoning on the basis of my tribe” is just so dense, so clueless, so…well, dumb, frankly. It’s just dumb to think that one’s experience doesn’t shape how one thinks and especially what one knows.

Then he says he defends Ayaan Hirsi Ali all the time so obviously he’s no racist god damn it. Oddly enough he doesn’t mention the time he had Maryam Namazie on his podcast and spent two hours trying to bully her into agreeing with him instead of listening to her and having a conversation with her.

Sam Harris

There are so many layers of confusion here. I mean, this is just a, again it’s not just yours, it’s everybody’s. It’s got to be a majority of both our audiences. I want to say something about this notion of what’s at stake here, because in your recent piece you talk about Murray’s focus on the inferiority of blacks.

Ezra Klein

Intellectual inferiority.

Sam Harris

But you also use just inferiority of blacks are inferior as well. Go back and look at the piece.

But this notion of inferiority, I mean, no one talks about inferiority who’s actually having a dispassionate argument on this topic of IQ testing. It absolutely does not map on, I can only, I’m not going to pretend to be a mind reader, but it certainly doesn’t map on to my view of this situation.

I mean, for instance, I would bet my life that my IQ is lower than John von Neumann’s was.

Oh god oh god oh god how does one even try to reason with someone who claims that insisting that black people have “lower IQs” on average is not at all calling them inferior?

Ezra Klein

Two things here. One, when I talk about what Murray says specifically I do use intellectual inferiority. I got the piece out in front of me.

I do think, 100 percent, without doubt, that when we have, in American life, over and over and over again, said that African Americans are intellectually less capable than whites, that has been — yes, that is a way of saying that they are inferior and it has been a way of treating them as if they are inferior. It has been a way of justifying social outcomes that are unbelievably unequal and unfair that have been going on until, I mean, they’re going on in the present day.

Of course it has, just as it has with women.

There’s a lot more after that but I think I’ve had enough.

All this conversation did is further convince me that Sam Harris is a blight on the intellectual landscape.

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All we stand for

Apr 10th, 2018 10:51 am | By

Philip Bump at the Post points out that Trump’s “witch hunt” is being carried out by Republicans.

“It’s a disgrace,” Trump said Monday night, talking about the FBI’s searches earlier in the day of the home and office of his longtime attorney Michael Cohen. “It’s, frankly, a real disgrace. It’s an attack on our country, in a true sense. It’s an attack on what we all stand for.” He went on to criticize Attorney General Jeff Sessions and to call Mueller’s investigators “the most biased group of people,” people who “have the biggest conflicts of interest I’ve ever seen.”

The problem, though, is that the people leading the investigation — and the people behind the search of Cohen’s properties — were all Republicans, Trump donors or Trump appointees.

Like Rosenstein and Mueller for instance.

On the other hand a lot of the lawyers working for Mueller donated to the Clinton campaign.

This is the “conflict of interest” to which Trump is referring. There is no evidence that these lawyers are actually exhibiting any bias, mind you. Most are career professionals who, between them, have decades of experience working for Democratic and Republican presidents at the Justice Department.

But also…”Republican” and “Democratic” aren’t the only relevant categories here. There are also the categories of competent v incompetent, ethical v unethical, lawyer v real estate huckster, adult v child. There were compelling reasons to prefer Clinton that had little or nothing to do with party.

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A deep and detailed pattern

Apr 10th, 2018 9:49 am | By

In which Trump says one stupid thing after another.

Chuck Schumer responds.

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Nice little country you got here

Apr 10th, 2018 9:28 am | By

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.

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Guest post: The assumptions Harris is making

Apr 10th, 2018 9:01 am | By

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).

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