Category Archives: Politics

Helping Helps

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The Biden administration and House Democrats are working on legislation that would send monthly checks to people with children:

In one draft of the proposal, the IRS would deposit checks worth $300 every month per child younger than 6 and $250 every month per child age 6 to 17. This would give parents $3,000 per year for each child between the ages of 6 to 17, and $3,600 per child under age 6. . . .

Eligibility for the benefit, similar to the stimulus checks, would be based on family income for the prior tax year and be phased out at a certain income amount . . . 

Paul Krugman thinks it’s a very good idea: “it could, among other things, cut child poverty in half”:

America stands out among wealthy countries for its failure to provide much help to families with children. U.S. expenditures on family benefits as a share of G.D.P. are less than a third the rich-nation average. Largely as a consequence, we have a much higher rate of child poverty than our peers.

Our stinginess does a lot of harm. Economists have shown that previous extensions of aid to families with children, like the gradual rollout of food stamps in the 1960s and 1970s and the expansion of Medicaid in the 1980s, didn’t just improve children’s lives in the short run; children who received the aid grew into healthier, more productive adults than those who didn’t receive the aid. By not doing even more for children, we are stunting their future, and that of the nation as a whole.

And aid to children would achieve what proponents of the tax cut promised but failed to deliver: an improvement in America’s long-run economic prospects. If the children we help today grow up into healthier, more productive adults than they would otherwise — which they will — that will eventually mean higher G.D.P.

And aid to children would also indirectly help the budget, because those children would later pay more in taxes and be less likely to call on safety net programs. These fiscal benefits might even be big enough that helping children pays for itself, and in any case they mean that the true cost of aiding children, even in narrowly fiscal terms, would be less than it might appear.

All in all, then, increased aid to families with children is a really good idea. It would immediately improve millions of Americans’ lives, it would make us stronger in the future, and it would have only modest budget costs. 

By “modest”, Krugman means it would cost around half of the 2017 Republican tax cut, which mainly benefited the rich. Of course, there will be Republican opposition:

We’ll surely hear some version of the standard conservative argument that any policy reducing misery reduces the incentive to be self-sufficient — you know, unemployment insurance encourages people to stay unemployed, food stamps encourage them to be lazy, and so on. Making this argument about a broad-based program to help children will be hard, but they’ll find a way.

He discusses a broader issue in his NY Times newsletter:

What should we do about Americans with low income — and their children? Should we make a new push to reduce or eliminate poverty, and if so, what should it involve?

. . . As with everything else in modern America, the two parties have starkly different positions on this issue. . . . I don’t believe that the Republican position on this, or for that matter on any major policy issue I can think of, reflects a good-faith attempt to figure out what works best. But the expressed views of the parties do show a big divide about how the world works.

The Republican view is basically that anti-poverty programs aren’t the solution, they’re the problem. How so? When you have “means-tested” programs — programs that are only available to people with sufficiently low incomes, or that phase out as income rises — you are in effect imposing high marginal tax rates on the relatively poor. That is if, say, a single mother manages to increase her earnings from $15,000 to $20,000 a year, she will find much of that extra $5,000 taken away in the form of reduced benefits.

This high de facto taxation, conservatives say, discourages efforts to break out of poverty. And they also say that it fosters a culture of dependency. So they argue that to help the poor we should, well, offer them less help.

Progressives don’t deny that incentives can matter. To use one of my favorite examples, countries that offer generous benefits to people who retire early, like France, end up with many people, you guessed it, retiring early.

But economists on the center left generally argue that the disincentives created by anti-poverty programs are exaggerated, and that the main thing actually trapping people in poverty is a lack of resources: It’s hard to get an education, start a business, even move to a place where jobs are available, when you have no money in the bank and are living hand-to-mouth.

Also, being poor imposes a lot of cognitive stress: It’s hard to focus on self-improvement when you’re constantly worrying about where the next rent check will come from or how to pay medical bills.

If you see resources as the main problem for the poor, the answer to poverty is to provide more resources; this doesn’t just improve the lives of the poor in the short run, it also increases their chances of breaking free of the poverty cycle.

This is the kind of debate that should be settled with evidence. And for what it’s worth, there is growing evidence that the resources view of poverty is much closer to the truth than the incentives view. . . . This is especially true for programs that help families with children, which seem to improve the lives of those children long after they’ve matured past receiving aid.

Three Weeks Listening to the QAnon Tribe Talk to Each Other

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I don’t know if typical QAnon believers are relatively affluent or struggling. Are they worried about losing their privileged position in society or making ends meet? Do they have more problems than the rest of us (aside from being QAnon believers)?

New York Times journalist Stuart Thompson spent the past three weeks listening to an online QAnon chat room and came away with some impressions. (The Times story is fairly long and includes recorded conversations not included below.)

As President Biden’s inauguration ticked closer, some of Txxxx’s supporters were feeling gleeful. Mr. Txxxx was on the cusp of declaring martial law, they believed. Military tribunals would follow, then televised executions, then Democrats and other deep state operatives would finally be brought to justice.

These were honestly held beliefs. Dozens of Txxxx supporters spoke regularly over the past three weeks on a public audio chat room app, where they uploaded short recordings instead of typing. In these candid digital confessionals, participants would crack jokes, share hopes and make predictions.

“Look at the last four years. They haven’t listened to a thing we’ve said. Um … there’s going to have to be some serious anarchy that goes on. Otherwise, nothing is going to change.”

I spent the past three weeks listening to the channel — from before the Jan. 6 Washington protest to after Mr. Biden’s inauguration. It became an obsession, something I’d check first thing every morning and listen to as I fell asleep at night. Participants tend to revere Mr. Txxxx and believe he’ll end the crisis outlined by Q: that the world is run by a cabal of pedophiles who operate a sex-trafficking ring, among other crimes. While the chat room group is relatively small, with only about 900 subscribers, it offers a glimpse into a worrying sect of Txxxx supporters. . . .

“If the Biden inauguration wants to come in and take your weapons and force vaccination, you have due process to blow them the [expletive] away. Do it.”

There’s a persistent belief that the online world is somehow not real. Extreme views are too easily dismissed if they’re on the internet. While people might say things online they would never do in person, all it takes is one person for digital conspiracies to take a deadly turn. . . . Listening to the conspiracists — unfiltered and in their own voices — makes that digital conversation disturbingly real.

To participants, the channel is mainly a way to share and “fact-check” the news, cobbling theories together from fringe right-wing websites, posts on Facebook, and private channels on the messaging apps Telegram and Signal. They say their main focus is reinstituting paper ballots.

The most commonly used phrase is some version of “I heard,” followed by a theory . . .

_________________________________________________________________________

If the Q movement had a slogan, it would be “Do your research.” The conspiracy is designed like a game. Discovering clues that clarify Q’s cryptic missives produces a eureka effect, which offers a hit of dopamine and improves memory retention. It’s the same satisfaction that comes from solving a puzzle or finding the answer to a riddle.

Believers apply the same approach to everyday news: Find information that confirms any existing beliefs, then use it to augment their understanding of the conspiracy. Reject facts or information that counter the existing beliefs. It’s one of the reasons they struggle to recruit their family members, unless they’re persuaded to do research themselves.

I wondered what would happen in the days after Mr. Biden’s inauguration. Rather than re-evaluate their approach in the wake of Q’s failures, many doubled down. The problem wasn’t that the whole worldview was false, just that they had been led astray by inaccurate reports and misinterpretations. Their response was to improve their process. They would develop a list of sources, vet credentials, link to original material, and view unconfirmed information skeptically. They were, in a sense, inventing journalism. . . .

_________________________________________________________________________

What should Q’s followers inspire in us? Anger? Sympathy?

The audio chat offers a clearer picture of these believers than the Facebook pages and Telegram channels where they also gather. The all-caps screeds of the internet give way to gentler moments, like when they talk about their pets or babysitting their grandkids. Many members were struggling in some way — financially or emotionally, with legal troubles or addiction. As Covid-19 swept their states, many got sick, and some family members died. A few members were recently out of prison. Another was living in a sober house.

“I don’t think they understand that we’re not all evil,” one member said about how the left views them. “Like you said, we’re not evil. We’re not bad people.”

As I listened over these three weeks, I saw that they’re drawn to Q and Mr. Txxxx for many reasons. The political status quo wasn’t working for them. Mr. Txxxx was an antidote to Washington and was beholden to neither party. And Q offered not just a political orientation but also a way to place themselves in a bigger narrative that explains life’s shortcomings. Many believers have paid a price for their views. Some were shunned by friends and family. Apps and social networks, like this audio chat room, stepped in, offering a welcoming community with shared beliefs.

“Does anybody else’s family members on here think you’re crazy?” one asked.

“I have family that think that way. I think they’re crazy for not seeing what the heck’s going on,” another replied.

“I’ve stopped talking to every single person that isn’t on board with this,” another said.

“I can’t even express it enough — I’m so thankful for every person in this group.”

In the process, followers have become more isolated, stuck inside an echo chamber from which they may never escape.

Beneath the anger in their voices is often pain or confusion. When the chat dies down to just a few members, they’ll share stories about their struggles with affording health insurance or the shame of going on government assistance. Hearing them talk with one another, I could start understanding the pull of conspiracy communities — how they exploit the vulnerable and create a worldview out of shared enemies. Then you can watch those views harden. And while none of it excuses participation in a dangerous collective delusion, it takes the complex process of radicalization and gives it a human dimension. What seemed like a preposterous descent into a kind of madness made slightly more sense.

“Not every politician is bad. Not every Democrat is bad. But we’re going to automatically assume that they’re deep state. So, I mean, you have people, a small few, that makes the majority look bad.”

As I spent more time in the group, I understood why the conspiracy has such gravitational pull. And while I didn’t lose my way, I was taken aback by the experience. It turned my brain to mush. I was left rattled and deeply concerned. About what would become of this group when I left. And more important, how one can lessen the appeal of a conspiracy that gives so much purpose to people’s lives.

Listening in, I came to realize what extremism researchers and cult experts have long known to be true: You cannot just destroy a community and expect it to disappear when it is load bearing. If we are to deradicalize Q believers in a Biden era, how will we do it? What can we offer them in its place?

One woman had an idea for how to solve some of these problems. They could try hearing from their opponents directly. Maybe they could understand their point of view, learn what motivates them. But then she paused. “I’d love to get into their heads, but it scares the [expletive] out of me,” she said. “So I keep my distance and stay with you patriots.”

When There’s Disunity About Unity

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President Biden spoke a lot about unity in his inaugural address:

Few periods in our nation’s history have been more challenging or difficult than the one we’re in now. . . . To overcome these challenges – to restore the soul and to secure the future of America – requires more than words. It requires that most elusive of things in a democracy: Unity. Unity. . . .

Today, on this January day, my whole soul is in this: Bringing America together. Uniting our people. And uniting our nation. I ask every American to join me in this cause. Uniting to fight the common foes we face: Anger, resentment, hatred. Extremism, lawlessness, violence. Disease, joblessness, hopelessness.

With unity we can do great things. Important things. . . .

I know speaking of unity can sound to some like a foolish fantasy. I know the forces that divide us are deep and they are real. . . . Our history has been a constant struggle between the American ideal that we are all created equal and the harsh, ugly reality that racism, nativism, fear, and demonization have long torn us apart. The battle is perennial. Victory is never assured.

Through the Civil War, the Great Depression, World War, 9/11, . . . enough of us came together to carry all of us forward. And, we can do so now. History, faith, and reason show the way, the way of unity.

We can see each other not as adversaries but as neighbors. We can treat each other with dignity and respect. We can join forces, stop the shouting, and lower the temperature.

For without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury. No progress, only exhausting outrage. No nation, only a state of chaos. This is our historic moment of crisis and challenge, and unity is the path forward.

In a phrase, I’d say he was asking that we work together for the common good.

Tom Malinowski, the Democrat who represents New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District, put it this way:

Unity doesn’t mean Republicans must become Democrats, or vice versa. We just need unity around telling the truth, respecting the law, defending democratic outcomes, rejecting violence — and restoring some sense of shame and accountability for those who refuse.

The Washington Post editorial board offered their opinion:

The nation’s political system is designed to manage and channel disagreement peacefully and, ideally, with a level of respect and decorum. . . . That system ensures that no one gets everything they want and everyone has a fair chance to appeal to the people.

Unity in such a system requires, first, that the actors within it recognize that one can disagree in good faith. Those with different views are not the enemy of the people, and they should be listened to seriously. Second, unity requires that politicians prioritize achieving things for the country over ruining their political opponents. They should look for win-win scenarios. Third, it requires respect for the process. Leaders should refrain from abusing the system to rout the other side, either when wielding power or obstructing its use.

Mr. Biden appears to be teeing up big initiatives that should appeal to many Republicans, if they intend to meet the president’s calls for unity with good faith. These include further Covid-19 relief, historic investment in U.S. infrastructure and bipartisan immigration reform. . . . 

Republicans should allow Mr. Biden to exercise the usual powers of the presidency without accusations that he is promoting disunity by advancing policies he campaigned on. They can note principled disagreements without resorting to divisive invective. Then they should seek to have their views represented in Covid, infrastructure, immigration and other bills through good-faith negotiation. That’s what unity, in a democracy, should look like.

That all sounds reasonable. But there’s this from Sahil Kapur of NBC News:

When President Joe Biden seeks to fulfill his urgent plea for unity, he will confront a dissonance between the two parties’ definitions of the word . . . Republican leaders have pitched a vision of unity in which Biden refrains from actions that antagonize their base of voters, who, polls say, falsely doubt the legitimacy of his election, give [the former president] high approval ratings and want their leaders to resist Biden’s agenda [or the caricature of Biden’s agenda as “far left” delivered by Fox News]. . .

A poll by the Pew Research Center taken this month captures the asymmetry. Democrats said by a 25-point margin that Biden should work with Republicans to accomplish things, even if it means disappointing some of his voters. But Republicans said the opposite: By a 21-point margin, they said GOP leaders should “stand up to Biden” on big issues even if that makes it harder to tackle critical problems.

“Republicans are saying, ‘We can’t do anything with you if you’re radioactive with our base, so please don’t say anything that makes you radioactive to our base,'” said Republican consultant Michael Steel, a former House leadership aide.

As an example, after Biden lifted the ban on transgender troops imposed by his predecessor, Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas gave a sarcastic response:

Another “unifying” move by the new Administration?

To which Kyle Griffin of MSNBC responded:

The senator is confused. Or uninformed.

Gallup 2019: In U.S., 71% Support Transgender People Serving in Military.

Military Times: Two-thirds of troops support allowing transgender service members in the military, Pentagon study finds.

We have a new president who believes in unity, by which he means working together for the common good. That can be understood to some extent as embracing policies preferred by a majority of Americans (e.g. raising the minimum wage, increasing taxes on the rich, protecting the environment, less military spending, not putting children in cages, and so on).

We also have a cohort of Republican politicians who define “the common good” as whatever pleases their most radical supporters, a minority who wanted four more years like the last four and keep pushing their party further and further to the right.

Nobody said this would be easy, but it would help a lot if we could first unify around a common definition of “unity”. Since the odds are strongly against that, Biden and the Democrats need to constantly and quickly work for the common good, even when that makes Fox News’s audience unhappy.

It’s Getting Better All the Time: A List

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Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post celebrates 50 changes since Biden arrived less than a week ago (it’s a good list, not a perfect list): 

1. You can ignore Twitter

2. The White House briefing room is not an Orwellian nightmare of lies

3. We are now confronting white domestic terrorism

4. We are not paying for golf trips

5. There are no presidential relatives in government

6. The tenor of hearings is sober and serious

7. Qualified and knowledgeable nominees have been selected for senior spots

8. We have a first lady who engages with the public

9. We have not heard a word from presidential children

10. We are now tough on Russian human rights abuses

11. We get normal readouts of sane conversations between the president and foreign leaders

12. The White House philosophy is to underpromise and overdeliver, not the other way around

13. Manners are in, bullying is out

14. You feel calmer after hearing the president

15. Fact-checkers are not overworked

16. Quality entertainers want to perform for the White House

17. We have seen the president’s tax records

18. The president is able to articulate policy details, coherently even

19. The worst the press can come up with is the president’s watch

20. We have a White House staff that looks like America

21. We have a national covid-19 plan

22. Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony S. Fauci is liberated, sounds happy and even looks younger

23. Fauci, not the president, briefs on the science of covid-19 and efficacy of vaccines

24. Masks and social distancing in the White House

25. The White House has policy initiatives and proposals, not merely leaving it all to Congress

26. The administration is committed to releasing information, not covering it up, on the slaughter of journalist Jamal Khashoggi

27. The Muslim ban is gone

28. It is the Republicans not the Democrats who are in disarray

29. The national security adviser has not been fired for lying to the FBI

30. No Soviet-style fawning over the president by his subordinates

31. The president takes daily, in-person intelligence briefings

32. The president does not care about Air Force One colors

33. We have a president familiar with the Constitution

34. Real cable news outlets get high ratings, others not so much

35. President Andrew Jackson is out of the Oval Office, Benjamin Franklin is in

36. Voice of America is back in the hands of actual journalists

37. We get memes about Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), not crowd size

38. We are back in the Paris climate accord and the World Health Organization

39. Instead of running it like a business, the new administration will try running government competently

40. We have a president who doesn’t think military service is for “suckers” and who doesn’t send his “love” to people assaulting law enforcement

41. The secretary of treasury nominee has her own Hamilton lyrics

42. Amanda Gorman is a household name

43. More than two-thirds of Americans approve of the White House covid-19 approach.

44. No more work-free “executive time” in the presidential living quarters

45. We have a churchgoing president “who has spent a lifetime steeped in Christian rituals and practices.”

46. We have first dogs

47. The vice president’s spouse does not teach at a school that bars LGBTQ students

48. The White House takes the Hatch Act seriously

49. The administration wants as many people as possible to vote

50. The president will talk more to our allies than to Russian President Vladimir Putin

Hazardous to Public Health and National Security

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Margaret Sullivan, former public editor of The New York Times, now writes about the media for The Washington Post. Today, she unloads on Fox News and suggests a corporate boycott. Her column is called “Fox News is a hazard to our democracy. It’s time to take the fight to the Murdochs”: 

I happened to be watching Fox News on election night when the network startled the political world by calling Arizona for Joe Biden.

It was a weird moment, without the fanfare that usually accompanied the announcement that a state was being put in one column or another. A few hours later, the Associated Press made the same call.

But many other news organizations, including The Washington Post, took days to reach that daring conclusion. For them, Arizona’s vote count simply remained far too close. . . .

And Txxxxworld was enraged. Losing the traditionally red state would make it that much harder to proclaim that the election was so close that it must in fact have been stolen by the Democrats. It would disrupt the Big Lie narrative. Former president Donald Txxxx’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, even called Fox honcho Rupert Murdoch to complain. But Fox News stood behind the call, which turned out to be correct.

But a lot has changed since then. Last week, two key members of Fox News’s decision desk abruptly departed the network. One was laid off, the other has retired, and some insiders are calling it a “purge.”

Apparently, at a network that specializes in spreading lies, there was a price to pay for getting it right. (“Fox News isn’t a newsgathering organization,” surmised press critic Eric Boehlert, arguing in response to the purge that its White House credentials should be revoked.)

In recent days, Fox has taken a sharp turn toward a more extreme approach as it confronts a post-Txxxx ratings dip — the result of some of its farthest-right viewers moving to outlets such as Newsmax and One America News and some middle-of-the-roaders apparently finding CNN or MSNBC more to their liking.

With profit as the one true religion at Fox, something had to change. Ninety-year-old Rupert Murdoch, according to a number of reports, has stepped in to call the shots directly. Most notably, the network has decided to add an hour of opinion programming to its prime-time offerings. The 7 p.m. hour will no longer be nominally news but straight-up outrage production.

Why? Because that’s where the ratings are.

And in a move that should be shocking but isn’t, one of those who will rotate through the tryouts for that coveted spot will be Maria Bartiromo, whose Txxxx sycophancy during the campaign may well have been unparalleled. She was among those . . . recently forced under threat of a lawsuit to air a video that debunked repeated false claims on her show that corrupt voting software had given millions of Txxxx votes to Biden.

At the same time, Sean Hannity, who likes to blast Biden as “cognitively struggling,” and Tucker Carlson, who tries to sow doubt about the prevalence of White supremacy, have become even more outlandish as they try to gin up anti-Biden rage within their audiences.

Even James Murdoch, while not naming names, blasted the harm that his family’s media empire has done. “The sacking of the Capitol is proof positive that what we thought was dangerous is indeed very much so,” he told the Financial Times. “Those outlets that propagate lies to their audience have unleashed insidious and uncontrollable forces that will be with us for years.”

But it’s his father and his brother, Lachlan, who run Fox, not James.

How to get the Fox News monster under control? I do not believe the government should have any role in regulating what can and can’t be said on the air, although I often hear that proposed. That would be a cure worse than the disease. But let’s not count on the hope that the Fox-controlling Murdochs will develop a conscience.

No, the only answer is to speak the language that the bigwigs at Fox will understand: Ratings. Advertising dollars. Profit.

Corporations that advertise on Fox News [such as Procter & Gamble, Amazon, Kraft Heinz and Verizon] should walk away, and citizens who care about the truth should demand that they do so (in addition to trying to steer their friends and relatives away from the network).

Big companies would never do that, you say? Don’t be so sure.

The Post reported last week that the 147 Republican lawmakers who opposed certification of the presidential election have lost the support of many of their largest corporate backers. General Electric, AT&T, Comcast, Honeywell, PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG and Verizon all said they would suspend donations to members of Congress who voted against certifying Joe Biden as president.

This shows, at the very least, that there is a growing understanding that lying to the public matters, that it’s harmful — or “insidious,” in the words of James Murdoch. And that some corporations don’t want to be a part of that.

When you think about Fox News’s role in the 400,000 lives lost to the pandemic and in the disastrous attack of Jan. 6, it’s even fair to call it deadly.

So if reality-based America wants to communicate clearly with Fox News leadership, they’ll have to do it in a language they understand. The language of money.

Unquote.

Sullivan later called attention to an additional point of attack:

Your cable/satellite TV provider pays subscriber fee to carry @foxnews. That cost is passed directly to YOU. Typical household pays #FoxNews $2 per monthh = $20 per year via their cable satellite provider, regardless whether they watch it. DEMAND @comcast @Xfinity #UNFOXMYCABLEBOX.

It wouldn’t hurt if the rich and famous who appear on the Fox Network or rub elbows with the Murdoch clan or serve on their boards of directors began to exert pressure too. Unfortunately, for the most part, such people consistently ignore my suggestions.Â