Innehållsförteckning för January 15/22, 2018 från The Nation

@thenation.com The Long Con I wish I could muster the optimism of Richard Kreitner, Lawrence Lessig, and others regarding the theoretical progressive benefits of a constitutional convention [“Conventional Wisdom,” Nov. 20/27]. Kreitner daydreams of “lively and profitable discussion,” while Lessig writes in his book Republic, Lost that “The key is a simple compromise. We get to consider our proposals if you get to consider yours.” This sounds great in theory— presuming that all sides approach the project with a good-faith willingness to consider proposals from across the ideological divide. However, this presumption flies in the face of the observed behavior of the Republican Party over the past decade. This is the party that, in opposition, obstinately said no to everything President Obama tried. This is the party that, in leadership,…

Howell Raines is a legendary figure in journalism, an Alabama native who joined The New York Times in 1978 and served as executive editor of the paper from 2001 to 2003. He has also published a novel, two memoirs, and an unforgettable oral history of the civil-rights movement, My Soul Is Rested. —Jon Wiener JW: A lot of people everywhere are now saying, “Thank you, Alabama!” HR: It took us years to throw off the dead hand of George Wallace. It feels good to me—a native son who has criticized the state but always loved her—to see national gratitude raining down on Alabama. JW: The Republican Party stuck with Roy Moore, despite his being the worst candidate in memory. HR: They were conflicted. The Alabama Republican Party is like the…

The confirmation of Kansas Governor Sam Brownback to a post in the Trump administration is currently languishing in the Senate’s backlog of presidential nominations. In July, Trump tapped him to be the next ambassador for international religious freedom, despite Brownback’s extraordinarily low job-approval ratings in his own state. As governor, Brownback has slashed taxes on corporations and the rich, privatized Medicaid, and instituted an “Office of the Repealer” to throw out regulations. The results have been disastrous: plummeting job growth, a downgraded state credit rating, and meager state revenues that have triggered massive cuts to government services. No wonder Brownback is eager to leave the governor’s seat for the comforts of an ambassadorship. While these economic policies have earned him bipartisan enmity in Kansas, Brownback’s social policies are arguably worse.…

I’m a misogynist. I’m a black man who likes to think of himself as a feminist. I’m a progressive. I’m gay. Hopefully, I’m a relatively decent guy; I certainly mean well. Still, I’m also a misogynist. How could I not be? I’ve spent my entire life in a society that, by every imaginable measure, devalues and dismisses women. It’s the case for politics: In the nearly 230-year history of the US Senate, we have elected just 50 women to serve; nearly half of that number are in office now. It’s the case for wages: Women still make roughly 80 cents on the dollar that’s paid to men. It’s the case for families: “Single mother” remains a casual, if coded, slur in a great many minds, shorthand for a jezebel who’s…

It just so happened that as Republicans were ramming a $1.5 trillion tax bill through Congress without a single Democratic vote, Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, was finishing up a fact-finding mission in the United States. Alston visited places like Georgia, Alabama, and West Virginia, which voted for Donald Trump, but he also stopped in California, which went for Hillary Clinton, and Puerto Rico, which wasn’t allowed to vote for president at all. A veteran diplomat with tours in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, and Albania, Alston was nonetheless shocked by what he saw here, in the richest country in the world. His devastating report described the conditions facing the one in eight Americans who live in poverty: rotting teeth, crushing debt, homelessness, hunger, drug…

Shortly after Hurricane Maria battered Puerto Rico in September, President Trump told reporters that the federal emergency response on the island was “incredible.… People can’t believe how successful that has been.” This, of course, was not true. A new report by the humanitarian group Refugees International lambastes federal and Puerto Rican authorities for their “largely uncoordinated and poorly implemented” disaster-relief efforts, which have only been “prolonging the humanitarian emergency on the ground.” And the grim news shows no signs of slowing. After recent investigations suggested that many more people—over 1,000—had died as a result of the hurricane than the government tally of 64, Governor Ricardo Rosselló announced a review of the official death count. To make matters worse, the new Republican tax bill will treat companies with operations on the…

2017 was just the worst, wasn’t it? But we got out of bed, girded our loins, and got to work—hurray, Alabama! Whether at home or in the developing world, these excellent organizations need your generous help to climb the mountain that is 2018. § Indivisible. There are several organizations devoted to winning back our country for Democrats and/or progressives, but Indivisible is the most grassroots-oriented, with 5,800 groups across the country. Some of you may belong to a local Indivisible group already—if not, be sure to put it on your to-do list for 2018. If Indivisible were a rightwing organization, it would be rolling in money from the Mercers, Kochs, and other reactionary zillionaires—but since it isn’t, we have to fill the kitty ourselves. We can do that! secure.act blue.com/contribute/page/indivisibleproject…

This past october, on a saturday afternoon in a unitarian church in philadelphia, about 50 people were seated in a loose configuration of folding chairs, taking turns raising their hands to speak. Most were in their mid-20s; they wore jeans, sweaters, the occasional nose ring, and backpacks decorated with pins. The gathering was an “open strategy” session of the local Democratic Socialists of America chapter to talk through DSA’s nascent Medicare for All campaign. A poster affixed to the door showed a line representing the cardiac-rhythm strip of an ECG monitor and featured a rose, an old socialist symbol that DSA has adopted as its logo. Volunteers stood up and shared their experiences knocking on doors and explaining the benefits of single-payer health care on a canvassing trip through the…

Private Government How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk About It) By Elizabeth Anderson Princeton. 224 pp. $27.95 It’s the rare person who works for a living and can’t easily recall their worst boss. In October, The New York Times and The New Yorker reported that for dozens of women in Hollywood, that boss was Harvey Weinstein. The revelations prompted a surge of women in other industries to come forward with their own accounts of sexual misconduct by their professional superiors. Among the still-ballooning roster of prominent men accused of lecherous or predatory behavior were Amazon Studios executive Roy Price, celebrity chef John Besh, and a number of high-status media personalities, including former Today host Matt Lauer, former talkshow host Charlie Rose, former New Republic literary editor…

In the 1930s, Romare Bearden contributed political cartoons to publications like The Crisis, the NAACP’s journal, then edited by W.E.B. Du Bois. In the 1940s, he began to enjoy some success as a painter—especially after joining New York City’s Samuel Kootz Gallery in 1945, which also represented such wellknown artists as Alexander Calder, Adolph Gottlieb, and Robert Motherwell. But then Kootz dropped him, and in the 1950s, as often happens to middle-aged artists, Bearden’s career seemed to fall into the doldrums. Bearden was one of what Mary Schmidt Campbell describes as “a significant number of black artists…working in isolation, for the most part, from one another”—a very different situation from the prewar years, when black artists were forming collectives and the Works Progress Administration was bringing artists of all ethnicities…

Deportations are down. In the 2017 fiscal year, which ended in September, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deported 226,119 people—14,000 fewer than the previous year. Barack Obama broke records by deporting more than 3 million people during his eight years in office. But no one should confuse a drop in deportations under Donald Trump with leniency. COMMENT There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of deportation: those people who are quickly kicked out of the country for getting caught crossing the US-Mexican border, and those who are already living in the United States and are rounded up from within the “interior.” One big reason for the decrease in deportations is that fewer people are crossing into the country from Mexico. That pool of easy stat-boosters had already been drying up under…

Signature-gatherers across Florida are on a last push to qualify the Voting Rights Restoration Initiative for the November 2018 ballot, a measure that, if it passes, would restore voting rights to well over 1 million Floridians. Organizers with the grassroots group Floridians for a Fair Democracy, which is pushing the proposal, are confident they will get the minimum number of signatures. If they do, the initiative could turn out to be the most important one in the country next November. The implications for how we define our democracy, and whom we include within it, are huge. In a sane society, such a reform would win near-universal support. Florida is one of a handful of states, mostly in the Deep South, that make it all but impossible for felons to regain…

An Amtrak train traveling at 80 miles per hour barreled into a curve and hurtled off an overpass near Tacoma, Washington on December 18. Three people died, and scores were injured. An investigation is focusing on driver distraction to explain why the train was going almost three times the speed limit for that part of the track. But the tragedy’s real culprits are in Washington, DC. Journalist Gregg Levine argues at TheNation.com that a decades-old technology known as “positive train control” could have automatically slowed the train down and prevented its derailment. In 2008, Congress mandated that PTC be operational across the country in seven years. But then the lobbyists stepped in. To avoid paying for the safety improvements, the rail industry spent $316 million on lobbying and donated another…

“Resistance” was the watchword for 2017. Resistance not just to Donald Trump, but to a status quo that gave our most powerful bully pulpit to an actual bully. Progressives not only refused to go backward in 2017; they demanded a new conversation that challenged old orthodoxies. The hashtag #MeToo became the bellwether for a national dialogue about sexual abuse, workplace discrimination, and equal rights that is opening the way for societal transformation. The stunning electoral victories of nontraditional candidates in unexpected places signaled that a new politics really is possible. What began as a frightening and frustrating year ended with Alabama voters rejecting one of Trump’s most vile allies in favor of a decent Democrat, Doug Jones, who claimed his victory in that state’s senatorial contest by citing one of…

Bats twin the skydrowsy from billowing hometo watch Night Court. I, Nikki, as a contemporarywoman: is bound to askwho’s spiraling in the faucet. If you keep no-lye relaxerson your hair past thesuggested time frame, the original crimple patternbecomes more defiant.Memories won’t comfort me, perhaps it’s best not to trustthe politics of people whohaven’t washed their owndishes in twenty years. O missile management,I request a transfer 4 the massesa happy howling cocktail showing instead of telling this countryThat. I. Cannot. With. You.A freed daylight may be possible, the revolt in us, I mean. Stemsare still holding like a grown upbut they snap. You pick me up, pour me another bath, a glassof something dry for the blisters,read Ted Joans’ Hand Grenades remember thatI’m not the only one and cry.…

ACROSS 1 Ultimately, saddest tear to go viral (5) 4 Those who aren’t expert mostly gather to admit true failing (8) 9 “Looking at the eyes of a cat” in slightly rewritten poetry (9) 10 Branch following Celsius scale (5) 11 Fifty-nine shredded sheets (5) 12 Pitiful distance holding back shows (9) 13 Proponent of government control “fudged” (sic) data (10) 15 Ford model accompanied by short fool (4) 17 Incapacitate a demonstrator, perhaps, in just a second (4) 19 Premium stocks (or, the thing I consider most important) (10) 22 To start diesel vehicle in South American country is a family responsibility (5,4) 24 Leaders of all the service economies are confused (2,3) 25 Contract rebel to smuggle arsenic (5) 26 When returning resinous substance the first time, to…