Innehållsförteckning för October 28/November 4, 2019 från The Nation

@thenation.com Shades of Whitewashing The unique power of public art stems from its very nature: creative expression paid for by the people to be viewed not by a limited few in a sterile museum room but by anyone in a public space in the real world. Public art can beautify, decorate, or bring sunshine to a dreary day. It can also spark new ideas, generate passionate debate, and force us to consider the world from a perspective other than our own. The insightful article “Don’t Look Now!” by Robin D.G. Kelley [Sept. 23] demonstrated this power of public art by illuminating a host of ways the 13 New Deal–funded frescoes by Victor Arnautoff at George Washington High School in San Francisco have brought complex conversations about representation, history, and artistic…

On October 4, the Bureau of Land Management announced that it was ending a five-year moratorium on the selling of oil and gas drilling leases on public lands on California’s Central Coast. The bureau will soon be seeking bids for drilling on 725,000 acres of land across 11 of California’s most beautiful counties. This is just the latest in a series of extraordinary efforts by the Trump administration to slap down California, the front line of states’ resistance to Trumpism, and to use federal powers to dilute the state’s environmental protections, arguably its proudest political achievement of recent decades. Donald Trump has been stewing about the Golden State ever since it voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton in 2016, helping ensure that he lost the popular vote nationwide by more than…

Eight major banks have said they will divest from the private prison and immigrant detention industry. Together these banks have provided Geo Group and CoreCivic, the industry’s two largest companies, with $2.35 billion, or about 87 percent of their financing. In an August conference call CoreCivic’s chief executive, Damon Hininger, blamed organizers for the banks’ decisions to pull out. “Clearly,” he said, the banks “had bowed down to a small group of activists.” But the fight isn’t over. The private prison industry incarcerates 75 percent of immigrant detainees, a share that could grow as Geo plans to make 5,700 detention beds available by the end of this year. Government funding is not likely to disappear, as Geo and CoreCivic have poured nearly $10 million into candidates’ coffers and more than…

GUN CONTROL DACA LGBTQ RIGHTS ABORTION RIGHTS THE SUPREME COURT HEARD ITS FIRST CASE OF THE TERM ON MONDAY, OCTOBER 7. PROGRESSIVES WOULD BE BETTER OFF IF THE JUSTICES stayed home. All of the efforts by Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and President Donald Trump to reshape the Supreme Court—stealing a seat from President Barack Obama, installing a vindictive partisan who has been credibly accused of attempted rape—are about to pay off for Republicans. As a famous man once said, “We are entering a period of consequences.” This year the court will wrongly decide cases that will be devastating to individual rights and the rule of law. The single biggest reason for the court’s aggressive posture over the next year is the presence there of one man: Justice Brett Kavanaugh.…

ACROSS 1 What often follows. (Simple gripe) (8) 5 Reversed circuits capturing Rhode Island wind (6) 10 Otherwise, teach girl to be low-energy (9) 11 Fabulist with a retro stance (5) 12 In the West, Rastafarians are uncommon (4) 13 Rearranging 23 is forever greedy (10) 15 Shot puts around midfield leading to unexpected defeat (5) 17 With no time to lose, someone occupying the kitchen doesn’t start to remove lid from spicy dish (2,1,5) 20 “Axe Party Corruption!”—one who supports the government (8) 21 A place where archaeologists go, for example, and coordinate physical therapy (5) 23 Modify 13 to make 6 (10) 25 Jack Gardner’s hot drink (4) 28 Frank’s opening sequence from musical title made famous by Judy Garland (5) 29 Prerogative of bluenose to conceal abhorrent…

After weeks of ever-worsening news about how Donald Trump, according to multiple accounts, held up military aid to Ukraine until the country promised to investigate Joe Biden’s (fabricated) corruption and Trump’s nutty conspiracy theories about the origins of the Russia probe, it remains remarkable how this godless New York grifter so thoroughly took over a political party that pretended to be about sober conservatism, Christian piety, and balanced budgets. Let’s look at four administration stalwarts up to their necks in this mess: Vice President Mike Pence, Attorney General William Barr, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. Together they represent the four tent poles of the modern GOP circus: the extreme Christian right, the stolid GOP establishment, the corporate Koch brothers wing, and…

The vast inequality in wealth among Americans is one of the most serious economic problems facing the country, but there is a very simple solution: a wealth tax. The top 1 percent of Americans have more wealth than the bottom 95 percent, and that gulf is growing. Those in the top 0.1 percent have doubled their share of the country’s wealth over the past four decades, from about 10 to 20 percent of all wealth. A wealth tax could blunt this inequality and fund a more just and humane society. In the eyes of the government, the wealthy are not like us. The vast majority of Americans earn their income by slogging through jobs. According to tax law experts Lily Batchelder and David Kamin, the bottom 95 percent of income…

The news that the Supreme Court will hear its first abortion case since Brett Kavanaugh replaced Anthony Kennedy has prompted many to wonder whether Roe v. Wade will finally, unfortunately, be overturned. The case, June Medical Services v. Gee, challenges a Louisiana law requiring clinic doctors to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. Sound familiar? In 2016 in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, the court struck down a Texas law over a similar requirement. You’d think that would have settled the matter, but no. The case is essentially the same, but the court is not. Abortion-rights advocates have been warning about the end of Roe for decades. So far, they’ve been wrong, and they may be wrong this time too. Overturning Roe so close to the elections would hurt…

IN APRIL 2003, BORIS JOHNSON STOOD, AWESTRUCK, IN BAGHDAD, STARING INTO THE REMNANTS OF A HOUSE BLOWN APART BY AN AMERican bomb. He was in Iraq on a fact-finding mission: He had voted for the invasion in his capacity as a Conservative Party lawmaker and was there to check out the aftermath. He was also working there as a journalist, documenting his experience in the British weekly The Spectator. “Crumbs,” he recalls thinking as he surveyed the scene. “Crumbs” is an affected British expression meaning “gosh.” It also referred to the fragments left of the house; Johnson explained the wordplay, in case we didn’t get it. The ruins, he went on, were a neat metaphor for what the United States had done to the Iraqi regime, as well as the…

88M Number of people in the United States over the age of 65 by the year 2050 50% Percentage of those who will have significant long-term service needs $266K Projected average annual cost for those with significant long-term service needs $11.57 Median hourly wage for a home care worker in the United States 87% Percentage of home care workers who are women—more than half of them women of color 1 Number of Democratic presidential candidates (Julián Castro) who have endorsed establishing a universal family care fund to make child care, elder care, support services for people with disabilities, and paid leave more affordable as of October 8…

It feels like years ago, but it was only this past August when the executive editor of The New York Times, Dean Baquet, held a series of interviews and staff meetings to defend his publication from charges that it was underplaying President Donald Trump’s racism. The catalyst was the paper’s August 6 headline “Trump Urges Unity vs. Racism.” To be fair, it was literally true regarding the remarks the president had recently (and apparently reluctantly) given. But his consistent use of Ku Klux Klan–level rhetoric obviously contradicts that one speech. While Baquet admitted that the headline was a mistake, he took issue with those who argued that by refusing to call a spade a spade—or in this case, a racist president a racist—the paper was deceiving its readers on Trump’s…

The Trump administration’s Department of Labor issued a rule on October 4 that expands the ability of states to drug test applicants for unemployment benefits. States may now subject employees laid off in occupations that require drug tests to undergo further testing to maintain their unemployment insurance eligibility. The rule allows the government to deny help to workers who just lost their jobs and are disproportionately poor. It also incentivizes employers to start drug testing at work—the more people who are denied benefits, the lower the costs of unemployment insurance. Workers’ rights advocates have attacked the rule as humiliating and cruel and as an unconstitutional violation of workers’ privacy. Legal groups are expected to challenge the regulation in court. Michele Evermore, a policy analyst with the National Employment Law Project,…

JUST A FEW DAYS AFTER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP INCITED HIS FANS TO chant “Send her back” at a rally in July, Representative Ilhan Omar and her staff fanned out down Lake Street in the heart of South Minneapolis. The road was closed off for a neighborhood festival, with sidewalks lined with informational booths, musicians, and people selling fruity drinks and local beers. People smiled and drew close to the then-36-year-old congresswoman. A trio of a cappella singers improvised songs about her. She played soccer with a few kids, skillfully nutmegging one of them. I’ve seen politicians work crowds before, and Omar moves with a different energy. Instead of drawing the attention toward herself and her agenda, she expands the spotlight to those around her. At her core, she’s still a…