What did the left actually say about Trump and collusion?

I read it all the time from conservatives: The left was sure Trump colluded with Russia in the 2016 election. 

Did the left actually believe that? Ok, I'll use google to find out. Looking at June 2016 until mid-September, I don't see declarations that Trump was colluding. I see discussions of Trump's financial ties, his statements about Russia, his choices of advisers, and how Russians apparently hacked the DNC and gave the documents to Wikileaks. I don't see claims that Trump colluded with Russians. 

CNN 7/26/16. Discussion on Russian meddling, no accusation of collusion or conspiracy involving Trump. 

Lawfare 7/27/16. Q&A, no charges of conspiracy or collusion.

Washington Post 7/29/16. Q&A, no charges of conspiracy or collusion.

The Guardian 7/30/16. Long article. Direct collusion "probably not happening."

Vox 8/15/16. Conspiracy theorizing is wild but grounded in Trump's Russia ties. 

Reuters 8/25/16. Focus on Carter Page, who was one of many advisers who had close Russian ties. 

Politico 9/5/16. Russia is interfering, but no accusation against Trump except for spreading hate. 

After leaks of the Steele dossier

So now I'll look for how it was discussed after parts of the Steele dossier was leaked to Yahoo, and was published in its entirety in January 2017. 

NPR 1/10/17. Reports on the dossier, which was published that day by Buzzfeed. "NPR is not detailing the contents of the brief because it remains unverified....." but characterized it as discussing efforts to cultivate Trump, blackmail possibilities, and secret mettings with aides. 

NYT 2/14/17. Unnamed sources say Trump campaign had repeated contacts with Russian intelligence. Alarming, but sources say no evidence of collusion this far. 

USA Today 2/15/17. Timeline of contacts. Not veering into speculation. 

Politico Magazine March/April 2017. Trump/Russia connections in 7 charts. Looks solid and not veering into speculation. 

The Guardian 3/22/17. Comey testifies that Trump is being investigated. Speculation on effect of that news, but not about possible actions by Trump and his campaign. 

Politico 3/22/17. Schiff claims the evidence for collusion is more than circumstantial. He can't say what it is. 

PRI 3/30/17. Very accusatory tone, but still couched as investigations and suspicions. 

CNBC 4/6/17. Clinton says potential collusion should be looked into. 

The Guardian 4/13/17. British spy services warned US intelligence dating back to 2015. An unnamed source states there is "concrete.... evidence of collusion" and that's the strongest statement in the article. 

Reuters 5/18/17. More contacts between Trump officials and Russians disclosed. Sources say no evidence of wrongdoing or collusion. 

I also checked some further left media. Many have told me that Rachel Maddow pushed the collusion story night after night. This video would be one example. I didn't watch her so I don't know how representative it is, but it does push the story hard, with statements like the evidence is growing and the Repubs were meeting with Russians just as Russians were hacking the elections. 

Keith Olbermann was always a human flamethrower and he continues it, though from a very shoddy video studio with terrible lighting. He latches onto the accusations from Louise Mensch, a name I had forgotten. Well, she was a bit correct but also going deep into nutcase territory. 

Personal memories

What I recall about the Russian collusion story: I was tentative on it, preferring to wait for hard evidence. Evidence was being uncovered frequently, so it was very reasonable to wait and see. I was dubious about the Steele dossier and the way it was released encouraged wariness. It was labeled as unverified from the very beginning. 

In contrast, most of the information covered in the Mueller report had been leaked beforehand, and the solid news organization were right on most of it. I read the indictments as they came out, and they were loaded with info. So I never had to correct mistaken claims I made because I was cautious and conservative. The Mueller report wasn't a relevation. The good MSM sources continued being fairly good, including when they reported that the Steele dossier was financed by the Clinton campaign. Now that was quite an Aha! moment. 

So I was cautious in what I believed, and I recall most on the left being that way too. Maybe because I don't watch MSNBC or Keith Olbermann. My conclusion is that conservatives downplay the actual events of Russian interference and overhype the collusion/conspiracy speculation on the left. 

Image: The Intercept

Don't let a pandemic stop the partisanship

Very few people are letting go of partisanship. Some examples: GOP senators want to increase the quarter-trillion dollar small business loan fund because it was exhausted in about 2 weeks. But they don't want to allow Pelosi any of her projects that would help other sectors, like state governments and hospitals. So no deal. Our way or the highway, I guess.

Republican-leaning folks are protesting lockdowns in various states, and getting encouragement from Trump. Are the protesters considering the implications in terms of life and health? Are they asking for a plan? Or are they stomping their feet was though this was all a hoax? Michigan had the biggest protest so far, and here's the view from a Michigander of the divisions within the state. It's the equivalent of 'Let 'em die.'

Election Looming

So let's strip away the dressing and lay it bare. Republicans are desperate to get the economy back on track because it was looking quite good and greatly helped their chances in the upcoming November elections.

But where are the Democrats in this? Some Republicans suspect that the Dems are gleeful over this disaster if it dooms Trump's chance at reelection, and maybe also hands the Senate to the Dems. That's a suspicion, but would any Dems in office actually try to worsen the epidemic or the economy for the electoral advantage? That's pretty bloodthirsty. However, it's clear from many comments I read that it's exactly what some Republicans think. Good luck trying to prove otherwise. It's a nasty accusation that they won't be able to back up, but they throw it to cause the suspicion and to blacken their opponents.

Dems aren't going to be completely honest either. Most aren't giving Trump credit for closing down a lot of the travel from China. They are giving him a hard time for his lack of leadership, but he richly deserves that. There was a lot of time wasted not getting prepared for this epidemic. There were warnings and information coming in to those paying attention that this virus was spreading quickly around the world, starting with areas with more travel.

This is largely a rant, so I'll follow my rules for rants, whatever they might be today. I haven't seen Dems trying to gain political advantage except for pointing out that the economy might be wrecked and the stock market is way down, so Trump can no longer claim successes with them. That's a bit weak on the causation, but fair on the result. Trump can't claim good things about the economy now because we are in a massively different situation, and it's not one caused by the Dems. It's partially caused by this black swan event, and partially by Trump's poor handling of this black swan event.

I've seen Republicans make all kinds of different arguments trying to avoid the obvious. This is fucking terrible for Trump's reelection prospects. One pundit I read has written for years that presidents will tend to get reelected unless there's a major crisis or a war that's not going well. If there's a crisis, well, the president might well be toast. This appears to be crisis beyond Trump's ability to manage. Maybe not, but probably. So Trump is clearly in trouble. I hope that isn't in dispute among the honest.

Not His Fault!

Some of the ludicrous stuff that Trump supporters have been saying: It's no worse than the flu! Trump was being impeached [so that makes it the Dems fault???]. The Chinese lied to us. Dems attacked Trump for blocking flights. Trump did a lot of things to prevent the spread. It's a lie that the National Security pandemic team was dismantled. It's a bunch of fearmongering. Don't panic. Don't buy up all the toilet paper, you idiots. Dems said we'd have a million people dead by now but it hasn't happened, so they're complete liars. Trump did take it seriously. Lockdowns aren't necessary. Lockdowns will ruin the economy just to save a few lives. Dems don't care about people losing their jobs and businesses. Dems love this, that we're all dependent on the government giving us money to survive. The suicide, murder and abuse rates are already shooting up. People aren't going to be able to take this lockdown for very long. Just wash your hands - no need to shut down the economy. It's only bad in dirty places that have Democratic governors and mayors; the rest of us shouldn't have to shut down. It's because of poor Dem hygiene practices. The governors are happy with Trump's leadership. The governors are in mutiny. This death rate isn't higher at all. Lots of deaths are labeled as covid but that's to get extra money... or make the GOP look bad. Go check your hospital and see if it's overwhelmed, or is it just a hoax? <--- And I didn't even get into the arguments about testing or personal protective equipment (PPE).

Yes, I have seen a conservative saying each one of these. I'm not making up any of them.

Dems are bashing Trump regularly, and not completely honestly either. They don't say that any leader, GOP or Dem, would be facing very difficult circumstances. Decisions have to be made with imperfect information, and not all of them will be right. So the impulse to attack everything Trump does is wrong, but many Dems are still doing that, just today bashing Trump for putting a hold on immigration. If lockdowns make sense, so does a hold on immigration, duh!

So there is reasonable cricism of Trump, and a lot of it, and there is stupid criticism of him.

Anti-News, Anti-Science

A big problem is that a lot of people won't believe information that doesn't come to them except from their stilted media. So if Fox News isn't telling them this pandemic is real, they aren't going to believe it even with the availability of reports from Lombardy, Spain, New York City, Seattle, and New Orleans. It gets even worse than that. They won't believe anyone who says something similar to MSM or experts. They are very effectively vaccinated against believing anything from anyone remotely associated with the suspect media and politicians. So they will never be convinced short of nearly dying or having someone in their family nearly die.

This total resistance to anything from experts or MSM media means that there will always be a cadre who can mutually reinforce each other. They will also fight the most sensible, well-supported information. They will attack good idea, good arguments, and good people simply because they are always on the offense, and think anyone with different ideas is brainwashed. I'm seeing so much of this.

I see Trump supporters who think that anyone who criticizes Trump over his handling of covid-19 is gleeful that people are dying by the thousands. Many people are feeling vindicated that Trump is so clearly out of his depth. I'm among those who thought that Trump would be a disaster if he ever had to handle a major crisis, and now that's exactly what he has to do, and he is handling it as poorly as we always suspected he would. There is no 'rising to the challenge' from him.

Covid flips the campaigns

Sadly, we're in this situation as the US presidential campaign heats up, so the stakes are very high. Prior to this pandemic, it looked like Trump had a very good chance of being reelected based on the economy if nothing else. But this huge crisis and the economic toll, his chances are diminished a lot, and his supporters know this. Trump and his supporters are desperate to reverse the economic losses, which accounts for their push to reduce stay-at-home orders and reopen states as soon as possible, whether it is safe or not, whether there are good plans in place or not. Reopen Now!! is what a lot are saying, and they aren't interested in evaluating the risks and rewards. Are Dems desperately trying to prevent this for electoral advantage? Not that I know of, but GOPers accuse them of this. This is also playing out in the issue of vote-by-mail.

Planning for how to handle a pandemic wouldn't generally be easy, but this one is harder than the last. This virus spreads more easily, kills somewhat more people, is mutating (not unusual), affects several organ systems, is a type of virus that isn't conducive to a vaccine, and perhaps not to immunity through antibodies either. This might be a long slog, like it was with HIV, except that this can affect many more people, but luckily our technology is much more advanced.

Advanced or not, we are in some uncharted territory. We haven't had a pandemic like this in a hundred years, and our expectations have risen very high in terms of the safety we expect. What would it be like, being on the team that has to plan the reopening of a state or country, knowing that there is no cure, no certain prevention, and more danger of death that we're accustomed to?

Image: theweek.com

Extras. A program for small businesses to continue to pay workers ran out of money in just two weeks. The parties in Congress took several extra days to sort out how to provide more funds, partly because Dems wanted to fund other groups and GOPers wanted to limit it. Both stances are based on constituencies. GOPers only want to support businesses, and Dems want to support hospitals, states, and businesses that are very small. Dems were holding the money for business ransom, trying to force Republicans to help broader groups. The GOP mostly won this time. Dems were only able to get aid earmarked for the very small businesses.

Some examples of conservative media and what they are saying about Dems reveling in this pandemic. Most are from Rush Limbaugh  (archive  here). Time series: Limbaugh1, Limbaugh2, Limbaugh3, Limbaugh4, Limbaugh5, Limbaugh6, Limbaugh7. This started with Limbaugh saying it was nothing but Dems hope it will be something  (CHECK), then it's well under control but Dems are going try to spin that Trump lied about it being under control, it's something that isn't in control but it's being weaponized against Trump. It's not just Limbaugh, it's also Townhall. Columbia Journalism Review looks at this.

Aid to red states - Good. Aid to blue states - waste. Same as with hurricane relief.

Opinions about which drug is most effective against covid are based on partisanship. That makes no sense because it should be based on test data, right? But there's the chloroquine and the remdesivir camp, and data be damned!

Opinions on masks could be based on partisanship. <Eye roll> More of that proud animosity to those wimpy scientists, liberals, and SJWs.

April 28, over 59K deaths, and someone is still declaring this a hoax.

To kill the bad guys or not

The US military/administration found a top Iranian military leader in a vulnerable position and they blew his two-car convoy to kingdom come. As a bonus they got a top Iraqi militia leader, who maybe was conferring with Iranian on new year's resolutions or maybe the next moves in Iraq's current riots.

When I was young, I was taught always to doubt the actions of the US government, as though they were thoroughly untrustworthy, though not as evil as, say, the Nazis. At some point I wised up and I started to look at reality instead of propaganda, and the US didn't look so bad.

Unfortunately, that liberal middle-class distrust of anything military still exists as unchanging lumps in the heads of many a liberal or progressive, including my mother and some siblings. I also see it every single time the US military does something. Some silly, mindless liberal or progressive denouncing the action reflexively, with no knowledge and seemingly no effort to understand the situation. Liberals are supposed to understand context, but not in these situations. Thank God I'm not like anymore, and haven't been for decades.

There is hand-wringing about the US escalated conflict, as though that US must never respond to attacks. Well, that's obviously stupid, but I wonder what responses would bring out hand-wringers. Of course it brought out the idiotic liberal celebrities, who aren't much different in their mindlessness but are considerably more photogenic than your average liberal.

Iraq has been awash in rioting, and I've got to wonder if that has something to do with this targeted military action. Lo and behold, the US embassy in Baghdad was attacked six days ago on 12/31/19.

Other countries have their idiots too, and the Iraqi parliament has voted to ask the Americans to leave. Yes, the Americans who helped save Iraq when it was overrun by ISIS. Did Iraq turn to Iran for help then, or to people who could definitely help?

The hand-wringing and American-damning forces aren't overwhelming, though. The world is largely being attentive, but not overly worried. Well, maybe not the whole world, but the oil traders. I like to be reassured by the markets, though they aren't infallible. However, Iran hasn't been able to do anything spectacular yet. The biggest victory was hacking the webpage for a US federal library program. If that's the best they can do when they've probably pulled out all the stops, I'm not going to get into a sweat. Yes, there may be repercussions, but I don't think this will be a killing I'm going to regret. The Iranian military aren't good guys, and killing a top guy is probably a favor to the world, not a frightening miscalculation.

DEAD

Image: freep.com

Update 1/7/20. Someone in the Pentagon mistakenly sent out a letter saying that the US and Iraq had better nail down this withdrawal. Oops, folks, that letter went out by mistake. The Iraqi prime minister is demanding an explanation of the mistake, but didn't his country just vote to throw 'em out? This is funnier than the Keystone Kops.

Update 1/9/20. The Iranians responded by shooting a bunch of missiles at bases in Iraq. However, they unofficially put the word out and all personnel were able to hunker down in fortified places. So a bit of damage was down and no one was hurt... in Iraq that is. It's possible that Iran accidentally hit a commercial flight, killing almost 200 people. Oh, the stupidity and waste. Maybe hand-wringers will blame it on the US somehow.

Late July links

Manafort's trial will bare Putin's methods. Excellent article that clarifies the issues and the importance of Manafort's trial. It will reveal how Putin buys influence. See it with Manafort and multiply by hundreds.

Russian trolls still active. Facebook uncovers some. Same sort of tricks. No, it's not a hoax perpetrated by the deep state. Details here--screen after screen after screen.

Russia timeline. I'm parking the link because I may want to look at this again. Seems fairly complete, but I didn't look all that closely.

Socialists in the Dems. What they want now and in the future. Their hopes for the future include an end to capitalism. Yep, they are communists and want to nationalize the oil companies. Maybe communists-lite. Like Venezuela.

Scary loners. A detailed look at online groups for men angry that they aren't getting laid. They blame women, blame society, blame other men, and fantasize about horrific actions. These men are called 'incels' for involuntary celibates. Portrait of a scare loner/mass shooter. The Las Vegas police released their report on their invetigation into the man who killed 58 people using his arsenal in a hotel room. This is good, readable summary. In his case, there weren't enough warning signs.

Yet another conspiracy group. Yawn. This one is called QAnon. I'm not going to waste my time on a summary, but again Dems are running pedophile rings.

How to assess Trump. Ignore him, ignore what he says. Look only at what gets done. I kind of agree with this. Trump is trying to capture attention, but it's pretty useless to look at what he says. So I agree. Ignore him. Stay educated about what he's saying, but put no stock in it. Ignore the distraction and home in on what actually happens. A good read, and solid advice... for now.

Journalist survives her tweets. A controversial hire by the New York Times won't be fired even though she lashed out at white people. Good. Context is important, and so is putting the matter into perspective.

Image: pinterest.com

Antifa and the MSM

I don't remember what month I first heard of Antifa, which is a loosely organized anti-fascist organization. I do remember how I heard of it. It was mentioned by some right-wing commenters. They implied Antifa were leftists, so I looked up what Antifa was. I thought it was probably some imaginary conspiracy group, like the elitist pedophile ring Hillary runs.

It turns out that Antifa isn't a figment of a nutjob's imagination. It's real, and my usual news sources (Google News with occasionally visits to American Conservative, National Review, Fox News, and Breitbart) had failed me.

I'm not sure why the MSM had barely reported on Antifa until August. It's not that Antifa didn't make appearances. They were involved in the Berkeley riots, and I was certainly aware of those. They were also involved in property destruction on Inauguration Day, and various other demonstrations.

However, the MSM wasn't mentioning that Antifa was a group, and wasn't emphasizing how protesters were violent and coordinated in dress and action. Was the MSM giving cover to Antifa? We probably won't find out unless reporters and/or editors talk about either their lack of knowledge or their suppression of information.

I've been able to confirm the lack of coverage by the MSM through a Google search. From December 2016 to March 2017, the top mentions of Antifa USA are by (in order): Al-Jazeera,  The Guardian, the BBC, The Nation, and Hot Press. In contrast, the top mentions of Antifa USA today are by: USA Today, Facebook, Wikipedia, CNN, The Daily Wire, and The Atlantic. It's definitely a failure by the MSM that the media sources of right-wingers are faster on the information than the MSM is.

It's not that Antifa was totally unknown in the MSM. Here's an article from the New York Times dated 2/2/17 that reports on Antifa. Yet Antifa wasn't referenced in this WaPo article. I recall arguments about whether the violent protesters were students or not, whether they were outsiders who took an opportunity to vandalize. News organizations didn't seem to know... or perhaps a few reporters did, but the information didn't percolate up to the top editor and anchors.

Right wing media perhaps wanted to pretend the violence was by typical leftists, not a violent fringe. Left wing media perhaps wanted to pretend that it wasn't an organized group of violent anti-fascist protesters. Nor were there organized, violent groups who tried to close down Trump rallies. Those anti-Trumpers were individuals who were concerned about Trump's rhetoric, not an organized violent fringe.

Now Antifa is too well known. The MSM still isn't investigating its ties with BLM organizations. They don't delve too far into their communist views, or how they fight violently even when confronting non-violent opponents, or how they're happy to destroy corporate property. Conservative media is pretending Soros, Antifa, and BLM are all one and all violent. Who can you trust? No one.

By the way, this may be the closest thing to the Antifa motto:

You fight them by writing letters and making phone calls so you don’t have to fight them with fists. You fight them with fists so you don’t have to fight them with knives. You fight them with knives so you don’t have to fight them with guns. You fight them with guns so you don’t have to fight them with tanks.

They do seem to emphasize the fighting. Let's enjoy some violence for a noble cause... or close enough.

Image: redspark.nu

Extras. According to this video, a lot of Antifa are sociology majors who want to be heroes but don't know much about fighting. That fits with what I've seen. Antifa disrupt a peaceful rally in Berkeley.

A bundle of important stories

Conservative media fabrication revealed. This should be so big. Fox News fell for a peddled fake story about (murdered) Seth Rich and Wikileaks. Now there's a suit, and the papers filed contain a wealth of evidence about how the lies got on the air. Update 8/2/18. The suit was dismissed by the judge for not being egregious enough--not rising to the necessary standard of 'intentional infliction of emotional distress.'

CNN skews its reporting. "Federal investigators ... seized on Trump and his associates' financial ties to Russia as one of the most fertile avenues for moving their probe forward... The web of financial ties could offer a more concrete path toward potential prosecution than the broader and murkier questions of collusion..." This is supposed to be an investigation, not a fishing expedition bent on prosecution. CNN seems to have forgotten that.

Sessions skews his condemnation of leaks. Great story with analysis of a logical trick that Sessions uses. He probably does it knowingly.

Lies are the family business. Donald jr. lied about a meeting with a Russian lawyer. Well, lied at first and then told the truth. It turns out Donald sr. lied about it too. Is anyone surprised?

Stats about the cost of tax deduction. This is important hard information. What costs the government more: mortgage interest deduction, 401K's, or the earned income tax credit? It didn't know, and I was a bit surprised.

Trump the wimp. Putin is disrespecting America, and what is Donald doing about it? Why?

Image: thecoldplayer.deviantart.com

Another roundup of links

What to do about North Korea. This is very tricky, until you realize that the answer from history is obvious. Sometime last year I spent many hours listening to a podcast detailing the history of nuclear strategy. From that I learned that you don't go crazy and make a pre-emptive strike. You sit down and sanely wait things out. That's how the least number of people will die--hopefully none will die. A friend from South Korea was relieved to find an American who gets it. Here's a great article that explains most of the situation, and it only takes minutes to read. As someone who has spent hours and days reflecting, I endorse the article. As my friend says, a pre-emptive strike would mean the destruction of all of Korea. I vote for a waiting stance, and hoping no one fires the first missile.

Black Lives Matter. A good but painful article by Jamelle Bouie on the acquittal of a police officer who shot a black man. Bouie explains that there is fear, and fear will be considered a valid reason. Makes me wonder if there's any way out.

Meme goes viral and then the shit really hits the fan. Trump tweeted out a tasteless meme of himself beating up a CNN logo. A freelance journalist identified the original creator. The journalist is pelted with violent threats. There's pushback against CNN for threatening to out the creator and extorting an apology from him. (I'm sure about the ethics of CNN threatening to out him, but his apology reads like actual, honest, well-deserved contrition.) Finally, there is the Daily Stormer, laughing at the journalist and all the threats leveled at him. Basically, they act like threats are completely justified. That should be enough of this slimy underbelly of American culture.

Real assessment of fake news - retractions. Finally, a believable story of what CNN and other MSM have gotten wrong in the Russia megastory. It should come with a reminder of what they got right, like Flynn lying, Sessions lying, Russia hacking here, there, there, and there...

Voter fraud that looks for real. Here's a report on voter fraud in Virginia. Unfortunately, it's written for outrage instead of clarity. However, it looks like Virginia has had several thousand illegal votes in the past seven years, perhaps more.

How to punk Trump. This is a guide for Putin on how to fool our foolish president. I'm not overly worried because Donald doesn't stand by his promises, so any promises he foolishly makes to Putin won't matter.

Important ACA factoid. This is an important nugget. The medical risk profile of people in the individual market isn't getting worse. That means healthier people aren't being driven out--if this report is true. No death spiral yet. We will have to see how it pans out.

Image: speedwealthy.com

Left-leaning fake news: Found one. Sort of.

I see lots of fake news from the right, less from the left. The MSM media employs a different approach to its bias. It will not report on issues (bias by omission), downplay the importance, not follow up, or latch onto a convenient explanation when they should be digging deeper. They rarely do the outright lie. When they do and they're caught, they have standard procedures: correction, apology, and if the lie was bad enough, someone gets fired. So outright lies are much more the province of the conservative media.

This is one rare article where a lazy reader could be left believing a clear lie. Start with the headline:

Did Yiannopoulos secretly send more than 100 thugs to Berkeley to break up his own speech?

(By the way, if you don't know who Milo Yiannopoulos is, it's my displeasure to tell you he enjoys being a provocateur at Breitbart who somewhat admires the alt-right and 4chan types. So, well paid scum. Also gay.)

The headline is nice use of a question to imply the incorrect info, but still allow the author to deny lying. "I am only asking a question" -- I think that was a standard line of Glenn Beck as he drew his infamous charts showing the evil machinations of whomever.

Then I had to scroll down through the equivalent of about five screens before the author casts doubt on this speculation. Up till that point, it's a description of what's known about the event that supports this conspiratorial speculation.

However, this article is generally better than the conservative media because the impression is corrected if you read far enough down. So, it's not like the rest of the fake news I complain about, like Clinton going to Pedophile Island and lies like that.

So even when I see something that looks like fake news in the MSM, it isn't. Conservative media still has a near monopoly of this particularly form of despicable behavior.

Image: forward.com

Extra. More reporting on the campus police's weak response to the rioting. Compare these two responses to the riots.

Update 8/29/19. A MSNBC host rushed a poorly-source scoop (about backing of loans to Trump) onto the air. A day later, he's apologizing, correcting, and explaining what he did wrong. Funny, but Fox News doesn't behave this way when they muck up their reporting... cough ... Seth Rich... cough ... MI6 bugging Trump Tower.

Media bias check using Powell email hack

So, here was a great opportunity for a quick check on media bias. Colin Powell's emails were leaked this afternoon. Who is reporting what? I did a quick survey of six sources.

1. Drudge Report. Just one link:

Colin Powell Urged Hillary Clinton’s Team Not to Scapegoat Him for Her Private Server, Leaked Emails Reveal

2. Fox News. Just one link:

Powell warned Clinton not to make him fall guy over email scandal, leaked messages reveal

3. Breitbart. Two links:

Hacked Colin Powell Email: Bohemian Grove Attendees Will Vote Against Trump, Some Support Third Party Candidate

Colin Powell Mocks Clintons: Hillary ‘Greedy’ — Bill Home With ’Bimbos’ 

4. NPR. Just one link:

Powell: Trump A 'National Disgrace'; Clinton 'Screws Up' Everything 'With Hubris' 

5. ABC News. Just one link:

Colin Powell Is Not a Fan of Either Presidential Candidate, Hacked Emails Show

6. CNN. Two links:

Powell: Trump is 'an international pariah'

Colin Powell calls Benghazi a 'stupid witch hunt' in DCleaks emails 

So, three out of three conservative sources have skewed links. Two out of three MSM sources have balanced stories, and one is skewed. Which looks more biased, conservative media or MSM?

Image: wikiquote.org

Loads of good posts

My tab bar is overflowing. Time to clean it up, share, and let this post be the archive.

The tracking average of polls that I've been using is from RealClearPolitics. I like the readability.

Perhaps the best post of all of these: Avik Roy, a conservative with a focus on medical policy, talks about how the GOP and conservatives have become a cloak for white nationalism. The leadership of the party winked at concerns about racism and lack of appeal to minorities, so they didn't see the extent to which it was happening... until this year. My prediction is that the GOP has at least another 4 years of chaos ahead before there is any semblance of unity.

At National Review, there is a long but fast-paced article about the problems with conservative media. The overwhelming problem is that non-conservatives don't get their news and don't trust conservative sources. Then the author inadvertently show why people shouldn't trust conservative media source when he talks about coverage of economics. He used a purely statistical argument to conclude Obama has done worse with the economy, ignoring the context that Obama inherited the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. By the same author, conservative media personalities enrich themselves and conservative media is a hive of charlatans. Conversely, the liberal media has been crying 'wolf' for years before they got someone like Trump who is actually terrifying.

We can't leave the topic of conservative media without some schadenfreude at the infighting between various conservative media outlets over whether Trump is great or an abomination.

All politicians tend to ignore issues that show their weakness. According to Kilgore, terrorism is a weakness among Dems. I agree. It's a serious issue that any government in power needs to deal with. Don't stand there pretending that there aren't dangers because that's denialism.

Trump calling for his supporters to monitor polling places is not only scary, it may be illegal.

A list of Trump's threats and insults. Another list suggesting 33 actions/statements that Trump might regret if he ever decides to get specific about what he might have said that he regrets.

Finally, a completely different sensibility in the analysis/theory that Clinton is trying to reach out to GOPers instead of tarring them as disgusting Trumpettes.

Image: fasthaul.com

Update 9/1/16. More on conservative media, seconding what was already written, but maybe a few good points besides. By Bill Kristol's choice for president.

Blaming the talkers, not the shooters

Is Harry Reid right when he blames the murders and shooting at the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood on Republican politicians?

There are some good arguments for leveling some of the blame on them. Many of them aren't moderate in their statements, but instead ramp up the anger at those who support and provide abortions to the women who want them. They don't take the extra few seconds to remind people to try to stop abortion only through rational, respectful discussion. The GOPers as a whole have quite a history of lying about abortion, like 90% of what Planned Parenthood does is abortion. Shouldn't the GOP be held responsible when lies like this influence someone to kill? When I put it like this, yes, it seems they should be partially blamed.

But then I tried a thought experiment--do I feel the same about protest movements that I have more sympathy for? How much do I blame the Black Lives Matter movement for execution-type shootings of police? The answer to that one is easy--I don't blame Black Lives Matter, or the vast majority of their advocates and supporters. A few protesters have encouraged the shooting of police, but very few. And even then, they weren't directly involved in shootings, so they aren't guilty of incitement or conspiracy. I'm not even sure there is a crime for what they did, if all they did is yell.

So, am I going to have a different standard for conservatives and their causes than for liberals and their causes? It might be tempting, but I'm not. People are morally responsible to the lies they tell, or for the hate speech they mutter or shout, but they're not responsible when someone else pulls the trigger--unless they cross the gray line between advocating a position and advocating specific violence.

Am I right about this position? I'm not totally sure. However, I don't want to choose what is expedient, but what is fair.

Is it a lie? Is it incitement?

Image: lifenews. com

Extra. Ed Kilgore, a mildly progressive blogger whom I read often, makes a good argument for assigning more blame. But I'm not convinced, because sometimes the shoe is on the other foot.

The liberal blogosphere misread Paul Ryan

I'm not sure why, but most of the liberal-leaning blogs I read incorrectly predicted what would happen with Paul Ryan. In a previous post, I referred to this Bernstein article where commenters were overwhelmingly wrong in understanding the situation.

Here is Ezra Klein, also not understanding the situation:

"Ryan should hope he doesn't get the job."

No, Ryan hoped that he would get the job. He hoped that he would bridge enough of the divides in the House GOP caucus. It was important (to him) that the various factions would look like they can unite and actually accomplish something. It presents a horrible picture when people within the same party can't decide on a leader. Why should such people be entrusted with any more power, like, say, the presidency?

This was the grim picture facing Republicans. Most Republicans knew it. They knew that their chances of winning the presidential election were dropping if the House GOP continued to joust and wound one another.

Of course some House Republicans are so blinded by their principles that they don't acknowledge that shutdowns and default threats hurt their standing. You can't make the willfully blind see, and no one can convince some of these hardliners to stop the tactics. (Well, unless their money dries up.) But enough of the hardliners saw that, and accepted Ryan. And of course, Ryan would want the GOP to have good chances for the 2016 election, so of course he wanted this infighting to end. So it wasn't that hard to predict it would happen.

Blind to the signs

... or maybe it's harder than I thought. The hardliners were strong enough to oust Boehner and nix McCarthy. Was it predictable that they would accept Ryan? The conservative press was pushing against Ryan with stories about him being for bailouts, and especially amnesty--that most heinous of sins in the hard-conservative world.

Maybe I could see the signs that, despite the barrage, Ryan was on track. Others couldn't see those signs. They were fixated on the idea that this hard rump of the caucus wanted to run things, or that no sane GOP rep would take the thankless task. They didn't see any hardliners as seeing or being wary of the major negative consequences of the GOP House not being able to choose a leader.

Also ignored were signs that hardliners were moving to Ryan. Jason Chaffetz dropped his candidacy and endorsed Ryan. The Freedom Caucus was split. While pressure was put on those to stay strong and keep the fight, the number declared against Ryan was conspicuously low, only 9 or 10 out of a purported 40 members on the day I checked, which was 10/21. I could read this as a likely victory for Paul Ryan, but most commenters (or pundits) couldn't. Why so blind? I don't know. Of course, I was tipped off by Harry Reid, so I had that advantage.

Image: cagle.com

Extras. I didn't survey much of the huge liberal blogosphere to see who else was wrong, but I checked two favorites. In these three posts from Washington Monthly, no one mentions the threat to GOP presidential chances, ignoring this huge motivation to settle the issue. Jonathan Chait has a very good take on the situation. The GOP needs the presidency, and Ryan knows this. It's just a question of whether enough of the Freedom Caucus can see that Ryan is the best chance they have.

Of course, none of this is a guarantee that the wingnut factions of the GOP won't do something to ruin or greatly lessen the GOP's chances in 2016. I wouldn't ever rule that out.

Why I don't care about Hillary's emails

A commenter on Bernstein says: "This is not about party politics silly but ABUSE OF POWER, something we all should be united against."

Well, maybe, kinda, sorta. Hillary probably wanted more control over her documents than the rules gave her, so she went the private email route, which supposedly other Sectaries of State took before her.

She also didn't want to relinquish that control when she left office, so she took her emails with her. When she had to turn some over, again she wanted control, so she sorted them and gave what she felt like giving. This is a bit high-handed of her, but certainly not more than most (or all?) presidents, which is the office she aspires to. And I haven't noticed that we turned a president out of office for not sharing all the information he should have.

That's long way of saying that she behaves like many of her peers. Which means that we have to question why she should be held to higher standard. Sure, I'd like her to follow a higher standard, but I'm not going to eliminate her from consideration as a presidential candidate over this.

Another funny idea is that, in this age of hacks of Sony, the IRS, etc. and hacks by Wikileaks, Manning, and Snowden, it's possible that Hillary did a better job protecting her emails than the State Department would have.

So, again, what am I supposed to be all angry about? She doesn't follow the government rules--I don't follow all of them either. She abuses her power--like so many in top posts, but is she significantly worse? If so, explain how. She didn't secure government secrets--well, she did it better than many other officials, you have to admit that.

I'm sorry, but this just isn't stoking my moral outrage very much. Can't Hillary just do something really, terribly, and clearly awful and unforgivable, like hiring an assassin to kill Jeb Bush, or giving our negotiating strategy to the Iranians, or going to Trump's underground wedding to three 16-year-olds? That would make it easier to summon some outrage.

Then I'd have to hope the Republicans didn't top it the next day...

Everyone looks worse under the microscope.

Image: legalinsurrection.com

Update 7/29/16. Well a lot has happened. The biggest is that the director of the FBI said that Hillary was extremely careless with classified documents, but not to the point that she can be prosecuted. GOPers are outraged that HRC isn't headed to prison. Curses, foiled again. What the FBI Director James Comey said in his statement and in his testimony to Congress.

No, Candidate Huckabee didn't say that.

Candidate says he'd use soldiers to stop abortions

Well, he didn't exactly say that, despite the screaming headlines.

Usually it's the conservative media that goes overboard on a trumped up story, a gaff, or an outright lie. This time it's the left-wing media.

Usually I don't read the left-wing media. I get plenty of soft-left spin in the regular media, from CNN to NPR to Bloomberg. However, this one made it onto the Google US news ticker. So I read it. The story was decidedly not as advertised. Here's the real story (abridged from Media Matters):

In response to a question from the audience at the Pizza Ranch in Jefferson, Iowa, Huckabee said he would "invoke the Fifth and 14th Amendments for the protection of every human being."...

"I will not pretend there is nothing we can do to stop this," Huckabee said at the event, where a Topeka Capital-Journal correspondent was present.

At his next stop, in Rockwell City, Huckabee answered follow-up questions from the correspondent, saying: "All American citizens should be protected."

Asked by another reporter how he would stop abortion, and whether this would mean using the FBI or federal forces to accomplish this, Huckabee replied: "We'll see, if I get to be president."

That's it. A reporter asked if Huckabee would use troops, and Huckabee didn't answer. So what media outlets, other than Media Matters, are reporting that Huckabee said he'd use troops to stop abortions?

Here's the [dis]honor roll, though it's probably not a complete list: The Telegraph (UK), Pajamas Media (but they seem to specialize in sensational and questionable stories), Think Progress, Benchmark Reporter, Byron Shire News (whatever that is), and, most shameful of all, Mother Jones.

However, this isn't nearly as bad as Breitbart, which has pushed such lies as the Shirley Sherrod story and the purchased allegations against Senator Menendez. Still, this is Really. Awful. Journalism.

Image: abcnews.go.com

Did you notice we survived 2014?

 Image: gopixpic.com

According to conservatives, the world was almost certainly going to end in 2014. The Russians were overrunning Ukraine (due to Obama's incompetence), ISIS was going to take over the Middle East and launch massive attacks on western countries (due to Obama's incompetence), and Ebola was going to decimate the US (due to Obama's incompetence).

If these things didn't happen, does that mean that Obama isn't as incompetent as portrayed? According to classic symbolic logic (if X, then Y), yes, it means Obama isn't as incompetent as stated. But, honestly, 1) conservatives aren't interested in logic and 2) classic symbolic logic is so limited as to be pretty useless. Here's a little known fact--logic doesn't deal with actual causation. 'If then' isn't necessarily a causal statement in classic logic. This is deeply disappointing.

Crisis contained - Russia and Ukraine

I think Obama did pretty well in each of these crises, mostly by not flipping out. Instead of starting a war with heavily armed Russians, he encouraged the Ukrainians to stand up for themselves, which is a VERY GOOD THING. More countries should do this instead of whining for the US to intervene and also conveniently bear most of the costs. The sanctions have hurt, but what's even better is that Obama has let the Russians show their true nature--militaristic liars. If we had gone to war, the narrative could have been that the US is the world-wide bully, and the Russians are heroes making a stand against the US. Instead, the Russians are the local bully, and the Ukrainians are the heroes. Other countries around Europe are seeing that you can make a stand against Russia. (At least I hope this analysis is correct. World affairs isn't my strength.)

(As an aside: This also bolsters the first lesson I learned that disproved a liberal tenet. Liberals said that demilitarization was good and morally superior. I learned, by observation, that being strong enough to defend your country was much more important, and the supposed moral superiority of demilitarization was hogwash. Liberals are so stupid sometimes that it boggles my mind.)

Crisis tested - ISIS

The surge of ISIS definitely was a crisis instead of being a faux-crisis trumped up by opponents. Obama reacted in way we haven't seen before--turning the crisis into a teaching moment. That may sound ridiculous--that you would allow a deadly crisis to play out instead of ending it as soon as possible. But I think this was the right approach.

In the Mideast, as in much of the world, too many people want the US to swoop in and save them (while also conveniently bearing most of the costs). It's a VERY GOOD THING for countries to get a reality check that the US might not be willing to do this, so they better be ready to defend themselves. Plus, they may want to identify threats early and do their best to avoid them.

Perhaps some people in Iraq finally learned the lesson this time. If you oppress large numbers of Sunnis, you create an angry insurgency that will try to take over the country. So don't oppress them. That's a relatively simple lesson that Iraq government under Nouri al-Maliki refused to learn. (Another aside--much of the Mideast, having been locked into strong-man dictatorships for so long, is now learning a lot of lessons. The learning process is important, so we shouldn't short-circuit it by swooping in like a helicopter parent.)

Crisis wildly overestimated - Ebola

The last threat that we survived was Ebola. The conservative response was so stereotypical as to be laughable. Talk about people not learning lessons--the conservatives really don't seem to understand science, and that the US response was going to be scientifically sound and based on evidence. So we brought a few infected citizens back to the US for treatment, and we learned from doing it. When we made mistakes, we learned and didn't repeat those mistakes. It is so incredibly simple, but partisan politicians seem not to know how to learn from mistakes. This is very strange, and I'll have to research why reality doesn't force politicians to learn.

Crisis for dollars - Underage immigrants

While we're reviewing crises that didn't pan out, there was one liberal crisis that didn't end up nearly as horrible as predicted. The crisis of immigrant minors crossing the US-Mexico borders supposedly required an infusion of $3.7 billlion. Not surprising, but the House did not dutifully comply with the request. Somehow, the Obama administration managed to deal with the crisis without the cash, so perhaps they didn't need the money after all.

Congratulations, everyone, we survived! Well, to be more specific, congratulations everyone except:

• Militaristic Russians
• ISIS and their sugar daddies
• Stubborn Iraqi politicians
• Overheated American conservatives
• Pollyanna American liberals

Trust whom?

Image: craftymcclever.wordpress.com

Post Mortem: "We're not the problem"

The Democrats may be on the cusp of being exiled in the wilderness for another period like the 70's and 80's, due to their leadership and money machine being too liberal/progressive. They've lost a lot of popularity between 2008 and now, but they are behaving like it's 'not their problem,' but a problem with midterm electorates. Maybe this is true, but it's a big gamble with 2016 coming up. Look at this popularity graph:

Imsge: gallup.com

Popularity of the GOP has been going up in the past year, while the Dems' popularity has dropped. Isn't it time for the Dems to try reversing that trend?

Deborah Wasserman Schultz, the first Dem to address the problem, says that it's not the policies that have to change. She's ordering a post-mortem with changes to be announced early next year. These reporters (obviously biased toward progressives) seem to think that only progressives Dems support a higher minimal wage and reform of overly long criminal sentences. And since these measures are popular, Dems need more progressives. I say that they're looking at a very skewed picture there. Lots or all Dems support those measures, not just progressives. Mistaken assumptions lead to mistaken conclusions.

If the progressives get their way, and the Dems become even more progressive, they don't have a bright future ahead in 2016. But maybe they'll have to run the experiment and find out (because the whole of the 1970's wasn't enough). It will only cost them... the presidency. No big deal.

Obama looks like a coward on immigration

Obama had a formal Rose Garden announcement back in June that he was going to take a unilateral executive action on illegal immigrants currently in the country. His announcement followed the admission by John Boehner that the House wasn't going to take up immigration legislation, The extent and details of the immigration program weren't decided at the time, but it would be done before the end of the summer.

Fast-forward to the week of Labor Day (unofficial end of summer), and an unnamed "Whitehouse official" floats the word to the Reuters news service that the bold action on immigration won't happen until after the mid-term elections in November.

Do over!

Obama has certainly bungled this one. He acted like the big man in June, announcing something bold. But when it looked like there was going to be a political cost, he became too indecisive to handle the issue before the elections. I seriously have to wonder about his thought process. Did he think there wouldn't be any negative consequences for fiat action on immigration? If so, that was uninformed thinking.

A change in the immigration policy of the magnitude he's considering wasn't likely to go easily. Giving legal status to 2 million, 4 million, or even 5 million was going to cause pushback, and fanfare around it would make it worse. Obama may have been lulled by the general acceptance of his temporary amnesty for foreign-born children brought by their families. However, these children, who grew up in the US, speaking English and going to American schools, were a sympathetic group of roughly 600K, far fewer in number than the adult illegal immigrants Obama is now considering legitimizing.

Oops--Forgot to check the weather

Obama also neglected to check the national scene for current and foreseeable immigration problems. Supposedly the problem of unaccompanied minors had already started at the end of 2013. Unless there was a massive increase, the officials in charge of immigrant detention should have anticipated that they would run out of space and money. Perhaps they expected a charitable response, but that's not what they got. The public became alarmed at the number of children, the extra expense, and the unintended and unforeseen consequences of the change in immigration policy. They aren't in the mood for yet more changes to the policy.

So Obama, seeing the winds shift, and getting frantic requests from vulnerable senators, has decided to delay the decision and announcement of changes to immigration policy. He says that he wants to better educate the public. The public is likely to smell the smokescreen, and become more suspicious. The delay isn't going to help Obama or the vulnerable Democratic senators. I can imagine the campaign ads already: "Obama has an immigration plan that is so drastic that he can't unveil it before the election. Is Senator X going to keep him in check, or do we need a Republican in the Senate to do that?"

Of course the Latino groups are furious. They were wooed for potential political gain, then dropped for more immediate political considerations. Yes, that burns.

So the vulnerable senators will suffer a double-whammy. Is there any upside? Probably not for the senators, but there probably will be some advantage for the Dems in the future. Obama is likely to carry out a change in immigration policy, and probably on the larger side instead of the smaller (more than 2 million). That means more illegal immigrants getting temporary legal status, and happier and more loyal Latino voters.

Pain vs. gain

What's so familiar about this immigration debacle is that all the moves have been based on expedience. There hasn't been a sound, thoroughly-considered formulation of policy. But that's the way immigration has been handled for decades. It's greatly benefited some powerful groups, and they've held sway. The winners have been the immigrants, their aligned voters, the Democratic party, and business owners. The losers have been the Americans who lost job opportunities to these migrants.

So, some definite winners and rather diffuse losers--no wonder the immigration policy doesn't change. Outside of the Tea Party (who fight all things that are not as they were in the 1950's), very few will speak against immigration. I'm even reluctant to speak against it, though I've decided that I should. (I realized back in January that immigration had to be severely tightened, but didn't write about until June.) How many people will stand against those who have an interest in the immigration status quo? Not many. So a bad immigration policy is the nearly inevitable result.

Image: latintimes.com

The Cloward-Piven conspiracy/strategy is REAL!

You can't trust anything out of Glenn Beck's mouth, so I was surprised to find out that the Cloward-Piven strategy actually existed.

The Truth According to Glenn Beck

Cloward and Piven were sociologists who came up with a strategy in the 1960s to increase government spending on welfare to the point of destabilizing government. At that point, the government would change to socialist or communist. Cloward and Piven executed a lot of their strategy in New York City, but there have been setbacks, such as welfare reform. Nonetheless, their strategy is still underpinning Democratic policies, such as the stimulus, ACA, Dodd-Frank, and any Democratic voting laws.

Strangely, Beck doesn't evaluate how well or poorly the strategy is going. He gives no current numbers on how many people are dependent on government or how soon that burden will topple us. I guess a reality check isn't Beck's thing when he's on a roll. Instead, he announces "case closed."

The Truth According to Wikipedia

This is where I learned the shocking truth that Glenn Beck wasn't totally full of shit. Cloward and Piven did indeed want to create a fiscal crisis, which they write frequently about here (a transcription of their original article). They advocated signing up as many poor people as possible for welfare and other programs, and making sure that they receive the maximum legal benefits. The reason was primarily to put huge strains on the government, but also to get more money into the hands of the poor, to rally the support among the poor for political change, and to provide a stronger, more reliable electoral base for the Democratic Party.

Contra Glenn Beck, the stated goal wasn't total annihilation of the government, but instead direct payment from the federal government to every person. This wasn't a well thought-out goal. There was no math in their proposal--how much the payments would be to each person, how that would affect the economy, how the money would be raised.

Cloward and Piven admit some problems with their plan:

"A welfare crisis would, of course, produce dramatic local political crisis, disrupting and exposing rifts among urban groups... Group conflict, spelling political crisis for the local party apparatus, would thus become acute as welfare rolls mounted and the strains on local budgets became more severe. In New York City, where the Mayor is now facing desperate revenue shortages, welfare expenditures are already second only to those for public education.

...welfare costs are generally shared by local, state and federal governments, so that the crisis in the cities would intensify the struggle over revenue... If the past is any predictor of the future, cities will fail to procure relief from this crisis... for state legislatures have been notoriously unsympathetic to the revenue needs of the city (especially where public welfare and minority groups are concerned).

If this strategy for crisis would intensify group cleavages, a federal income solution would not further exacerbate them... legislative measures to provide direct income to the poor would permit national Democratic leaders to cultivate ghetto constituencies without unduly antagonizing other urban groups, as is the case when the battle lines are drawn over schools, housing or jobs. Furthermore, a federal income program would ... permanently relieve them of the financially and politically onerous burdens of public welfare*--a function which generates support from none and hostility from many, not least of all welfare recipients.

... it should also be noted that there would be gains even in defeat."

Cloward and Piven were enamored with crisis as a vehicle for political change. They observed that the Great Depression and the black protests and riots were very effective in spurring legislation. However, they were quite wrong about the how the welfare burden crisis would play out. The federal government never came close to giving direct payments to every person. The closest was a short-lived proposal in 1972 by presidential candidate George McGovern, who was defeated in a landslide. Instead, welfare more and more became a target for derision as failed social engineering. Welfare reformers from the conservative side haven't been wonderfully successful in changing welfare dependency either.

Cloward and Piven moved on, and were leaders in the push for the Motor-Voter law. If not for Glenn Beck, we probably wouldn't know about this earlier plan of theirs.

The Truth According to the Daily Kos

An author at the Daily Kos points out that had Obama wanted to follow the Cloward-Piven strategy, he would have tried to torpedo TARP, causing even more disruption in employment. That would have provided an even bigger crisis, which would have allowed for nationalization of a bunch of industries, even larger increases in aid programs like food stamps and unemployment payments. The author also doubts that there was a Cloward-Piven strategy, but instead it was only one article.

Truth Filter

From my experience, I'm inclined to think that Cloward and Piven did have a plan, but that plan wasn't fully implemented and didn't work as mapped out. There were crises from welfare demands, but the solution didn't take the form of direct checks to the poor. I doubt that Cloward and Piven's vision was particularly influential. It's not was though welfare or community organizing didn't exist until Cloward and Piven created them. Welfare most likely would have developed just as it did, regardless of these two.

That's a big problem. These two saw welfare as a way to alleviate poverty and build a political base, but they didn't see welfare as a subsistence trap. They didn't discuss the perils of living off of guaranteed low-level income such as losing the drive to improve and losing the skills and habits of working. That consideration didn't seem to enter their consciousness at all.

Richard Cloward died in 2001, but Piven has continued their work. She still supports direct payment from the federal government to all citizens and residents. The payments should be substantial enough for people to live in dignity. This means that employers will have to pay even more since their competition is a substantial handout.

Piven doesn't see any difficulty with this idea. She doesn't question how tasks will get done if everyone could be paid for not working, or the effect of a surge in wages on living costs. She also states that the US is a fabulously rich country, rich enough to afford wars all over the globe. Piven clearly lives in a self-made fantasy world. She is incredibly clueless when it comes to economics. Sad that she's been a professor for decades now, so she's been teaching these economically ignorant ideas to a couple generations already.

I suppose the good news is that I don't hear many other people repeating those ideas. The vast majority of people want jobs, not payouts for just hanging around. Cloward and Piven never got the welfare system they wanted, the direct federal payment system they wanted, or the more socially equal society they wanted. Most people wised up and realized that world vision was an impossibility. That's good progress there.

Protest in Boston, 1966

Image: thenation.com

P.S. Direct connection between Barack Obama and Cloward-Piven: none except in Glenn Beck's mind.