Indholdsfortegnelse for November 12, 2018 i The Nation

The Nation opened the 2018 election season with a list of 10 candidates we were keeping our eyes on: politicians who proposed “not just a change in party, but an end to status-quo politics.” Eight of them eventually triumphed in their primaries and will be on November ballots across the country, including gubernatorial contenders Stacey Abrams in Georgia and Ben Jealous in Maryland, as well as Wisconsin lieutenant-governor candidate Mandela Barnes. The same goes for Jocelyn Benson, a voting-rights activist running for secretary of state in Michigan, and January Contreras, an advocate for victims of human trafficking, who is running for attorney general in Arizona. Two House candidates, Scott Wallace in Pennsylvania and Liz Watson in Indiana, also won their primaries and are now mounting races vital to flipping control…

1 The financial industry has a massive number of workers: 8.6 million That’s 5.7% of all US employment. 2 The vast majority are low-level bank workers who need higher pay: $13.52 an hour is the median wage for the 502,700 bank tellers in the US. 3 They could be a fraud solution: Organized, empowered workers could help regulate the industry from below. $12 billion Amount the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau returned to 29 million defrauded customers between 2010 and 2017. Wells Fargo workers were pressured into opening 3.5 million fake accounts. Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics; author’s calculations; Financial Services Committee 2018 Infographic: Tracy Matsue Loeffelholz…

The Supreme Court upheld a law on October 9 that effectively disenfranchises thousands of Native American voters in North Dakota. With less than a month before the midterms, Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp is facing a tight contest in her run for reelection, and the Court’s decision could easily cost her and the Democrats a Senate seat. In North Dakota, many Native American reservations do not use street addresses, with residents typically relying on a post-office box to receive mail. But after Heitkamp won a Senate race in 2012 by fewer than 3,000 votes, North Dakota Republicans passed a law requiring voters to present identification with a residential address at the polls—blocking many Native Americans, whose tribal IDs list only the number for a PO box, from exercising their democratic rights.…

Hubert Humphrey The Conscience of the CountryBy Arnold A. OffinerYale University Press. 512 pp. $35 I used to hate Hubert Humphrey. Fifty years ago, the only part of this oncerenowned liberal’s career that mattered to me was his unflinching support for the despicable war in Vietnam. In late August of 1968, I traveled to the Democratic Convention in Chicago to protest his nomination for president. That fall, with other radicals, I organized a demonstration urging everyone to boycott the election. “Vote with your feet, vote in the streets!” we shouted as we marched up to the State House in Boston. In my small, disruptive fashion, I probably helped elect a president who made American politics a whole lot worse. Under Richard Nixon, the nation began to move rightward, a shift from…

94% Percentage of young people in China, ages 12–15, who are optimistic about their country’s future, the highest of the 15 nations recently surveyed by Ipsos 50% Percentage of young people in France who are optimistic about their country’s future, the lowest in the survey 63% Percentage of young people in Saudi Arabia who say their political leaders care about them, the highest in the survey 16% Percentage of young people in Brazil who say their political leaders care about them—tied with France for the lowest in the survey 49% Percentage of young people in the United States, ages 12–17, who think they can make a difference in how their country is governed…

Academic and activist Zephyr Teachout has joined The Nation’s editorial board to advise on issues close to her work combating corruption and crony capitalism. Together with her fellow edboard members (see the masthead on page 26), she will help advance our mission of providing a deeper understanding of the world as it is—and as it could be. “It is an honor to join The Nation’s esteemed editorial board,” Teachout said. “The integrity of our democratic system is under attack by forces that would undermine the rule of law and the sanctity of truth. The Nation’s role trumpeting an equitable and just society and government is more vital now than ever, and I look forward to bringing my robust experience as an activist and advocate to help advise the important work…

The Toronto Star’s Daniel Dale has been tracking Donald Trump’s lies since Inauguration Day, and in the first week of October, the number of falsehoods reached the second-highest point of his presidency, with 129. But Dale’s cut-off date meant that he didn’t include the October 10 op-ed signed by Trump attacking Democratic proposals for Medicare for all, which USA Today, incredibly, agreed to run. The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler, who has also been tabulating Trump’s lies, concluded that “almost every sentence contained a misleading statement or a falsehood.” As if he were purposely trolling the fact-checkers, Trump actually linked to one of Kessler’s items that had previously debunked a false claim he was now making again. At first, USA Today’s editors appeared pleased with themselves, defending the op-ed’s lies with…

Holding Banks to Account Re “Is the World Bank Group Above the Law?” [Oct. 22]: Barry Yeoman provides a great overview of the history of the International Finance Corporation and what’s at stake for small communities around the globe. If big money is allowed to run roughshod over people and the environment without ever taking responsibility for the results of their actions, we will all pay a high price as we watch our environment and food supplies slowly collapse all over the world. Our leaders must act to bridle the world finance system, which seems to operate without legal, moral, or ethical constraints. What is happening to this Indian community will one day happen here if our courts do not rule for the welfare of all. DENNIS HOHMAN A Radical…

Try to keep up with Noname’s voice: The 27-year-old rapper, born Fatimah Warner, can make it do vocal gymnastics. She can tighten it to a conspiratorial whisper, bend it into singsong irony, soften it until it’s a cushion. For her newest album, Room 25, she stretches it into a rhetorical taunt (“And y’all still thought a bitch couldn’t rap, huh?”), then snaps it back to attention (“Maybe this your answer for that”) in the same breath. All this is held at the same volume, a controlled stage murmur—as though you’d caught her talking to herself, just under her breath. This agility—one twitch of her voice, and she’s gone from a verbal eye-roll to a dreamy, far-off stare—points to Noname’s background as a slam poet. (At 18, she placed third in…

ACROSS 1 Ambitious to be like π (like 3.14) (12) 9 They say I have my dinner get very cold (3,2) 10 Party in Georgia: a Wagnerian plot element (9) 11 Wild 23 that may be hunted in spring (6,3) 12 Refuse to include 100 in total (4) 14 Most sage is found in the Occident (6) 15 Shared salary falls short with 60 percent of cash (2,6) 17 Digest donut with zest, eating one at beginning of week (8) 19 After mid-January, renovated patio is the perfect spot (6) 22 A pop made from fruit that’s initially cut (4) 23 Divide 11 bananas (9) 26 Lucky talent involves fish (9) 27 A musical composition (“Serenity”) heard… (5) 28 …before and after god of love gets up? That’s absurd (12)…

As President Trump and his fellow Republicans roll back banking regulations, many reformers are looking for other ways to build a safer and more accountable financial sector. Progressive politicians still call for breaking up the biggest banks and for similar top-down structural changes. But there’s another mechanism for accountability that needs to be more widely discussed: improving the working conditions of low-level employees. Why not unionize the financial sector as part of a reform agenda? This idea of “regulation from below”—a strategy coined by labor activists Stephen Lerner, Rita Berlofa, and Molly McGrath—would be an important fix. You can see how bad working conditions lead to bad behavior by looking at what went wrong at Wells Fargo. The bosses there insisted that workers meet punishing sales goals. They demanded that…

The alleged gruesome murder and dismemberment of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul has thrown a huge wrench into the Trump administration’s Middle East policy. Already, major corporate players like JPMorgan Chase, the Blackstone Group, and Ford have pulled out of a Saudi economic summit planned for late October, and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have begun speaking of placing sanctions on the Saudi officials they suspect of complicity in the murder, including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in crafting a Saudi-Israeli-US axis against Iran, had persuaded the president to put most of his eggs in the Saudi basket. The judgment of both men, long doubted in many quarters, has now been thrown into even sharper question. Turkish…

As she campaigns across all of georgia’s 159 counties—from fulton to brantley, gwinnett to chatham, glynn to DeKalb—Democrat Stacey Abrams’s pitch comes down to this: I’m one of you. “I’m not running to be governor of Atlanta; I’m running to be governor of Georgia” is one way she often puts it. If elected, Abrams would become the state’s first black and first female governor, so it’s understandable that her political gamble has a personal edge to it. Can she take the details of her impressive biography—devoted daughter of two ministers who were “genteel poor”; loving sister of five siblings; doting auntie; graduate of Spelman College, the University of Texas, and Yale Law School; small-business owner; tax attorney; the first woman leader in either house of the State Legislature; award-winning romance…

Christ’s editor becomes Christ’s martyr:band the newspaper columns blackfor Elijah P. Lovejoy, who fired back.They threw his first three presses into the river.They came with guns, stones, hatchets, hammers; they came with whiskey and a mind to attacksomething as they felt attacked, to breakLovejoy’s words before they got to paper.No one was arrested; it wasn’t a riot.At the wharf, the smashed-up pieces of his fourthpress. Although he signed his letters till deathor victory, the movement hadn’t thoughtit could happen to a journalist.Somebody had to be the first.…