Rotten To Its Core

Max Boot used to be a Republican cheerleader. He's not cheering now. Things, he writes, have changed:

I’m old enough to remember when the Republican Party was known as the “party of ideas.” That was in the 1980s. Since then it has become the party of pseudo-scandals.

The change began with Newt Gingrich:

The change occurred, as the Princeton historian Julian Zelizer documents in his book “Burning Down the House,” because of the efforts of Newt Gingrich, then a Republican backbencher, to bring down House Speaker Jim Wright in the late 1980s. Casting about for dirt he could use, Gingrich focused attention on the fact that the speaker had published a book that was bought in bulk by lobbyists. While the book deal looked bad, it was not against the law or House rules. But it didn’t matter: Gingrich thundered that Wright was “the most corrupt speaker in the 20th century” and compared him to Mussolini. Wright was pressured into resigning, Gingrich soon became speaker himself, and the GOP was off to the races.

Since Gingrich's ascension, it's been all downhill:

Since then, the Republican Party, in cahoots with media partners such as Fox “News” and Rush Limbaugh, has manufactured one pseudo-scandal after another: Vince Foster’s suicide, Whitewater, Mena airport, John Kerry’s Swift Boat service, Barack Obama’s birth certificate, the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton’s emails, among others.

The party has become thoroughly focused on pseudo scandals. And, under Donald Trump, that focus has been turbocharged:

The process has been turbocharged under President Trump, who is even more ruthless and unscrupulous than Gingrich. The former reality-TV star won the 2016 election by defaming a former secretary of state and first lady as “Crooked Hillary” and demanding that she be locked up for unspecified offenses. Now he is trying to run the same playbook on Joe Biden.

Trump got himself impeached by trying to blackmail Ukrainian officials into accusing Biden and his son Hunter of wrongdoing. That didn’t stop Trump’s attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, from working with shady Ukrainian contacts — including a lawmaker described as a Russian agent by Trump’s own Treasury Department — to produce dirt on Biden. Until recently, this had resulted in a few audiotapes of interest only to One America News Network.

Then Giuliani turned over to the New York Post the supposed contents of a laptop supposedly belonging to Hunter. The alleged emails have never been authenticated, and the New York Times revealed that the New York Post’s own journalists had so little faith in the story that the lead reporter refused to put his name on an article he had written. The Washington Post reported that Trump’s own national security adviser told him that “any information Giuliani brought back from Ukraine should be considered contaminated by Russia,” and more than 50 former intelligence officers warned that the emails have “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” (Trump’s director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe, denies that the laptop is part of a Russian operation, but he has scant credibility.)

The second non-scandal is the claim that Joe Biden was part of a 2017 deal with Hunter Biden involving a Chinese oil company. Even if true, this also wouldn’t be wrong, because Joe Biden was a private citizen then. But it’s not true. The Wall Street Journal reports that the venture “never received proposed funds from the Chinese company or completed any deals” and that “corporate records … show no role for Joe Biden.” So this was a deal that never occurred and that Joe Biden wasn’t involved in. Some scandal.

As if that weren’t bad enough, right-wing rumormongers have been spreading even more vile accusations against Hunter Biden that are straight out of QAnon. Donald Trump Jr. claimed to Fox News, with no evidence, that Hunter is linked to “human trafficking and prostitution rings.” How low can you go?

Trump knows no bottom. Nor does the Republican Party. It's rotten to its core.

The Decline Of Common Purpose

At the end of World War II, the American historian Arthur Schlesinger  wrote: 

Voluntary institutions have provided people with their greatest school of self-government.  Rubbing minds as well as elbows, they have been trained from youth to take common counsel, choose leaders, harmonize differences, and obey the express wishes of the populace.  In mastering the associative way, they have mastered the democratic way.

During the present election -- more than ever -- that notion is being put to the test. Glen Pearson writes that "the associative way" is also being put to the test in Canada:

People have confused politics with democracy, and as they have turned away from its endless partisanship, they have left the heart of their nation to political masters, not empowered citizens.  Citizenship is hard to quantify and even qualify for modern media, who have chosen instead to latch on to the endless drama streaming out of political capitals.  Citizens, on the other hand, including millions of Canadians, have opted to jump into the stream of social media and cable news to stay informed or to confirm their opinions.  The difficulty is that they can do so fully separate from others.  It’s democracy in a box, which one can open at home, scrutinize for a time, then put it back in the closet.

The trend has been going on for a long while. But COVID has offered a chance to change that trend:

Then came COVID – a precarious time when those institutions once rejected were at the forefront of ensuring the essentials of life for Americans and their families, just as in Canada and other nations.  That experience gradually sidelined the president’s rantings and ravings against those depositories of American democracy that the people were suddenly finding essential.  The more he criticized front line workers, medical experts, bureaucrats charged with protecting the country, equality movements,  hospitals, military veterans, the nation’s open-door policy, and, naturally, the Democratic party itself, the harder it became for him to retain supporters other than his loyal base.

In other words, people in democracies around the world are looking to the same institutions they were in the process of rejecting just months earlier.  People aren’t as interested in political shenanigans as their own pain.  They wish to recapture prosperity, not the petty politics that characterized their governments before COVID arrived.

At first, it looked like we might see a rebirth of the associative way. However,

The new patterns are increasingly reflecting the old ones.  Polarization is normal.  Political dysfunction is normal.  The loss of democracy’s allure is normal.  And the lack of ability to build a new and more inclusive nation is normal.

We really can't afford to go back to the old ways. Our public health -- and the health of the planet -- are at stake.

Image: pinterest.com

An Empty Head

Jennifer Rubin is a former Republican who saw through Trump from the very beginning. This morning, she writes a six-point column which slices and dices Trump's performance in last night's presidential debate:

First, Trump appeared subdued at the onset. Deprived of the opportunity to interrupt by the mute button, he rambled and repeated self-congratulations during his time allotments. He insisted he could raise as much money as Biden has (claiming incorrectly that Biden’s had received the bulk of his money from Wall Street), but chose not to. Trump is plainly sensitive that he was clobbered in the money race. He has never learned what matters to voters. 

Second, Trump still has not come up with a realistic plan to fight covid-19. He has yet to develop any sense of compassion, and he remains unable to take responsibility for the crisis. “I take full responsibility," he said during the debate, before adding: “It’s not my fault that [the virus] came here.” Most galling, he insisted we are “learning to live with” the pandemic. Biden pounced to reiterate that more than 220,000 Americans have died from the disease. Once more, Trump was illogical and nonsensical: “We have the best testing in the world by far — that’s why we have so many cases!"

Third, Trump was so intent on spinning strange and convoluted conspiracy theories that it is doubtful anyone outside the loony-tunes world of right-wing media understood what he was talking about. (At one point, Trump said something about Biden selling pillows and sheets.)

Fourth, Biden was strongest on health care, reminding us that Trump has no plan and has never had one. He reiterated his support for a public option, not for Medicare-for-all. His best line may have been: "Ten million people now have pre-existing conditions because of the president’s handling of covid. What are they going to do?” As Trump insisted Biden wanted to destroy private health insurance, Biden responded, "He’s a very confused guy. He thinks he’s running against someone else. He’s running against me, Joe Biden.”

Fifth, Biden made hay of his focus on working- and middle-class Americans, pointing out that Trump’s measure of success is the stock market. "Where I come from in Scranton and Claymont, the people don’t live off the stock market,” Biden said. His emphatic support for a $15 minimum wage was likely a winner in critical swing states. When Trump started trashing “Democrat cities,” Biden shot back that he would be the president for all of Americans.

Sixth, Trump’s utter lack of decency came when he insisted conditions for kids at the border were just swell. ("They are so well taken care of. They are in facilities that were so clean,” Trump said.) Biden emotionally hit back, “Separating children from their parents violates every value we hold as a nation.” 

Trump doesn't have a problem with what in radio is called "dead air." He fills the air with words. But, unfortunately, there are no ideas behind the words. He's an empty suit with an empty head.

Any Bets?

Justin Trudeau's government survived yesterday. But the Conservatives are already serving up another motion. Susan Delacourt writes:

The first wave of COVID-19 may have bridged some differences between the parties in the minority Parliament, but the second wave is hardening them.

Normally, political parties can ride out public anger about an unnecessary election, which tends to fade after a few days into the campaign. The stakes in 2020 are higher, and the anger might well have become an undercurrent right up to voting day, making results as unpredictable as the coronavirus.

On the face of it, Trudeau might well have the most to gain from an election before this year is out. Successive elections, at home and abroad, have shown that votes held during the pandemic tend to favour the government in charge and even offer the real prospect of gains.

But, when voters are angry -- really angry -- all bets are off:

The second wave of COVID-19 is basically an endurance test, and this is essentially the climate in which politics is now being conducted at the federal level. Just as we learned how many Canadians were living paycheque to paycheque in the first wave, Canada’s minority Parliament is lurching from one breaking point to another as 2020 draws to a close.

Is anyone taking bets on how long the present government can survive?

Image: tryQA.com

An Election?

By this evening, we'll know whether we're headed into a federal election. Bruce Anderson and David Coletto at Abacus Data have surveyed Canadians on the prospect of an election:

About a third of those surveyed say they have been following this situation very or pretty closely. One in five Canadians (20%) hadn’t heard of it. The rest had only a vague recollection. Compared to our norms this indicates a relatively low level of public engagement so far.

Conservative supporters are slightly more likely to be following the events closely, but about a third of all four major party supporters say they are following the events at least pretty closely.

A majority (55%) of those surveyed would prefer to see the vote to create the committee passed and an election triggered. Just under half (45%) would prefer MPs act to prevent an election.

Conservative voters are broadly in favour (76%) of triggering the election, although 1 in 4 (24%) of them do not want this outcome.

Just over a third of Liberal supporters prefer to see an election, but 62% would prefer to avoid one at this time. For NDP leader Jagmeet Singh his voters are roughly evenly split with 55% preferring to avoid an election while 45% willing to go to the polls.

It appears that Singh has his ear to the ground and will vote against the Conservative motion. The motion itself should come as no surprise. The Conservatives have been itching to bring Trudeau down since he became prime minister. M. Blanchet also has been itching for an election.

I suspect that the NDP's coffers need some time to be replenished. Political self-interest is driving the decision.

We await the future.

Image: Port Credit BIA

The Same Old Crew

Erin O'Toole is trying to give the Conservative Party a facelift. But they're still the same old crew. Consider Pierre Poilievre's recent attack on the Bank of Canada. Andrew Jackson writes:

On October 15, Poilievre accused the Bank of Canada of being “an ATM for Trudeau’s insatiable spending appetites” and alleged that monetary policy was becoming ideological and “more and more political.”

It is fair game for parliamentarians and all Canadians to debate the merits of current monetary policy. But the opposition finance critic provided not a shred of evidence that the Bank of Canada is driven by motives of political partisanship or has been instructed to act in a particular way by the federal Liberal government.

Poilievre failed to note Conservative support for Trudeau government policies:

Mr. Poilievre failed to even note that the Conservatives have supported the major spending measures to support businesses and workers legislated to date by the federal Liberal government in response to the pandemic. If it were not for a major change in monetary policy, the cost of these measures and the deficit today would be even greater since the government would not have had access to ultra cheap money.

Currently, the federal government is financing the deficit by selling long term bonds with a very low interest rate, 0.5% for a ten year bond. Most conservative commentators, such as former Bank of Canada Governors, argue that the monetary policy response has been appropriate and that there is no short-term problem given that inflation is very low and the economy is operating well below capacity.

Mr. Poilievre says it is “insane” to think that “governments can just print money to pay their bills.” It would be even more crazy to let the economy fall into a deep depression by not responding through aggressive monetary and fiscal policy.

Context means nothing to Poilievre. He's repeating classical Conservative economic rhetoric. Good economists pay attention to context:

It is true that some concerns have been raised by economists as to how long very loose monetary policy can last. But inflation is not a threat, and the Bank of Canada does not need to change course until it deems necessary.

The Conservatives remain so devoted to orthodox finance and balanced budgets that they are afraid to act even in times of dire emergency.

O'Toole looks different than Stephen Harper or Andrew Scheer. But the Conservatives still smell the same.

Image: medium.com

Incompetent and Obtuse

Assuming that Donald Trump loses the election, the people who work for him will soon be looking for employment. Jennifer Rubin writes that they might have trouble finding their next jobs:

First, members of this administration probably acquired bad habits (ignoring gross misconduct, lying for their boss, etc.), practiced a great deal of willful ignorance and rationalized unethical conduct. The administration, aside from its corruption and moral rot, was also grossly incompetent in its day-to-day operations. Staffers coming out of Trump’s orbit would likely have to unlearn misconceptions about how functional workplaces operate.

Second, those seen as ethically obtuse and tolerant of racism pose a business risk. Clients and customers might not want to be associated with a firm that features someone who just months ago promoted their boss’s ludicrous lies or remained silent as he winked at QAnon conspiracy theories. Alumni of the Trump administration do not suffer from a political association but rather from their willingness to enable someone who betrayed his country’s highest ideals.

In other words, these ex-Trump figures do not bring desirable skills or valuable experience; they come more as a potential liability.

Human Resources professionals operate under one basic assumption: Past performance is the best predictor of future performance. There are exceptions. But it's not wise to bet on an exception.

If the Trump alumni are seeking jobs, you might think they'd spend a little time in rehabilitation:

These Trump alumni might seek to make up for perpetuating racism and xenophobia, for their attacks on democratic institutions and norms, and for their efforts to sow division and undermine objective reality. They might consider community service. They might donate time or money to groups fighting racism, helping immigrants, defending press freedoms and teaching good citizenship.

But don't bet on that either. Because -- like their boss -- they're both incompetent and obtuse.

Image: amazon.com

Repairing the Damage

Robin Sears is positive -- almost positive -- that Donald Trump will lose the election. Then, he writes, there will be a flurry of activity:

The impact this vile man had on partisanship, turning senators into quislings and too many voters toward violence, has been sad to watch. But his outrageousness gave many Democrats the courage to try on creative and even radical new ideas. Trump’s attacks opened a new policy dialogue and helped elect an impressive next generation of politicians. Democrats flirtation with Wall Street and neo-liberalism, and most revoltingly their cowardice in the face of the gun makers, will not soon return.

The GOP will face an ideological fork in the road, as well. Will they end their 50 year flirtation with racism, pushed from a dog whistle in Nixon’s day to loud racist rhetoric from Trump and his creepy children? Will they follow the path of the Lincoln Project, that impressive group of political consultants, former candidates and donors who launched a hilarious and undermining ad campaign against Trump. As one of its leaders recently said with a chuckle, he never would have thought it was shady political operatives who would light the path back to ethical conservatism.

The first order of business should be protecting the electoral system:

America’s electoral system has always been the weakest, most fragmented, and too often used to suppress voters access, than in any other G7 nation. It continues to be shockingly vulnerable to foreign intervention, local skulduggery, and even technical incompetence. Now there will be a rising demand to clean it up and strengthen it.

Trump, even in defeat, will not go away. But he has always been about the show:

It has always been about attention and money, more than power. Trump’s fascination with and expertise in manipulative TV programming may have another attraction: to help him defend himself against an array of criminal charges and angry creditors.

That said, he's done an horrendous amount of damage. And the damage has to be repaired. But for all this to happen, Trump must lose -- decisively.

Image: republicworld.com

Easy Marks

Donald Trump's supporters believe that he is there to help them. But the evidence belies that notion. Helaine Olen writes:

Trump and Republicans have played a neat trick these past four years, claiming to act on behalf of the economically and politically disenfranchised, and then getting them to turn a blind eye to the fact that their own actions in office are designed to line the pockets of elite supporters. But as the coronavirus pandemic continues to claim victims and disrupt lives, the evidence of Trump’s perfidy is harder than ever to ignore. Little wonder some turn to outlandish conspiracies such as QAnon to justify their continued belief in Trump. As crazy as it is, it’s less embarrassing than admitting you are just another patsy in Trump’s lifelong con.

The New York Times came up with the receipts this week. First, there was yet another installment in its series on Trump and his taxes, this one centered more on his activities in the White House — or, as the Times put it, “the swamp that Trump built.” It quickly became known among lobbyists and those seeking favor from the administration that joining Mar-a-Lago, (where the initiation fee doubled shortly after Trump was elected president, and is now $250,000) buying drinks at the Trump International Hotel in D.C., and hosting meetings and conventions at family-owned properties was a way to make a favorable impression.

Many people, including The Post’s David A. Fahrenthold, have made these point again and again, so much so that Norm Eisen, co-founder of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, told me in 2018, “The president is essentially holding out a tin cup and shaking it.” But the Times put the pieces together in a devastating way. Somehow the deep state so desperate to stop Trump couldn’t put an end to that epic money-making spree.

Con men succeed because they can spot easy marks. And there is truly a remarkable number of Americans who are easy marks.

Image: You Tube

Eyes On The Prize

COVID exposed the inequalities in our system. Now it is exacerbating them. Frances Ryan writes in The Guardian:

There are times in which it feels as if we are running two worlds in parallel. Billionaires have seen their fortunes hit record highs during the pandemic, seeing their wealth climb by 27%. Meanwhile, living standards have plunged for some of the UK’s poorest families. Research by Save the Children shows those already struggling are financially even worse off since lockdown: 60% have had to cut down on meals, and more than a third have turned to charity for food and clothes.

It is a longstanding feature of a rigged system: while the poorest suffer in a crisis, the wealthiest profit from it. This was highlighted in the aftermath of the financial crash, and is all the more relevant as coronavirus spreads. And yet the truth of inequality in the UK does not necessarily cut through to the public. Recent research by Tax Justice found that while 72% of Labour voters felt that billionaires shouldn’t exist alongside foodbanks, just 52% of the public as a whole agreed. It’s not that people don’t support higher taxes on wealth – they overwhelmingly do, and this has only increased during the pandemic – but that many feel alienated by “divisive” anti-wealth language and see the accumulation of money as a moral positive in providing security.

This is where the language we use becomes seminal:

The language we use is going to be vital in this. Faced with upsetting social problems, the left instinctively provides details of them – I’ve done this many times myself – but this can often be counterproductive. Research by the Frameworks Institute shows framing problems in terms of a crisis feeds a sense of fatalism. Far from a wake-up call to inspire action, this sort of language is more likely to dampen engagement. This doesn’t mean we should stop talking about social ills. As child poverty rockets across the Midlands and the north of England, explaining the scope – and causes – of the damage we see is vital. But we have to balance highlighting the problems with proposing solutions to them.

I’ve often said that the greatest challenge the left has is convincing people that better things are possible. Cynicism, as much as rightwing ideology, is what blocks change. One very simple thing that progressive groups are encouraging critics of the Tories to do is to say “this government” rather than “the government”, when they issue attack lines. With trust in politicians low, such strategies help keep open the possibility that a better government can change lives.

During the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, African Americans kept repeating, "Keep your eyes on the prize." In this very difficult moment, we should do the same.

Image: PictureQuotes.com

The Government You Buy

 

Doug Ford says he can't be bought. But his behaviour suggests otherwise. Martin Regg Cohn writes:

Ahead of the last election, after a series of investigative columns in this newspaper exposing the Wild West of Ontario politics under the last Liberal government, all parties came together to support the cleanup (because all parties were part of the problem). Ontario’s legislature banned contributions from business and labour unions in 2016, so that vested interests wouldn’t trump voter interests.

To compensate for the millions of dollars that all major parties were forsaking, the province followed the old federal model of public funding based on per-vote allocations. Every vote would count, not just at the ballot box but in annual remittances to the parties based on their performance in the last election — initially set at $2.71 per ballot cast.

(Based on the results of the 2018 election, the victorious Tories were in line to receive $6.3 million annually while the NDP would get $5.2 million, the Liberals about $3 million, and the Greens around $700,000.)

But then Ford won the election — not only overthrowing the Liberals, but also overruling his own Progressive Conservatives to overturn the all-party consensus on public funding. Lashing out at the idea of “subsidies” to political parties, as if they are somehow unethical and antithetical to democracy, he ordered them phased out by the end of next year.

Forget Ford's rhetoric. Cohn believes politics is operating as it has for decades -- for the benefit of the wealthy:

Democracy is based on laws and level playing fields. Not trust in tilted gameboards behind closed doors.

By defending subsidies for the well off, and demonizing “per-vote” allocations for everyone else, Ford is playing favourites — and playing footsie with our democracy.

Ford’s old campaign sloganeering against “subsidies” was based on a flawed assumption wrapped in a glaring contradiction. Upon taking power, he set back campaign finance without thinking ahead.

Today, the premier gets that in a pandemic, it’s not politics as usual. Why then should it be business as usual — as before — for big donors, at the expense of the rest of us?

Plus ca change.

Image: democracywatch.ca

Second Place

COVID numbers are rising sharply in Ontario. Which raises the question, "Who is directing the province's response to the pandemic?" Bruce Arthur writes:

As the pandemic has progressed in Ontario, Doug Ford has made a show of deferring to his medical advisers, and two above all. Dr. David Williams, the much-criticized chief medical officer of health, and the health command table. Those are far from his only medical advisers; they are, however, the ones he mentions most.

Ford loves to mention his health command table, but the province refuses to name the participants, and Ford has, too, when asked. Unlike the public health advice in all 34 public health units in the province, no provincial-level public health advice — from Public Health Ontario, the health table, the health measures table, or the other advisory tables that feed into the health table — is ever made public.

Which means the health table acquired a sort of mythic quality. But while the premier might cite it as a reason to do or not do things, multiple sources insist it is not pulling the strings, or pushing things forward. It is primarily made up of government officials from a wide range of ministries and sources, and a few outside advisers.

As is the case south of the border, politics are calling the shots:

One source familiar with the process says the table primarily gets recommendations from the ministry, and discusses them, but “you can’t really have a decision-making body with 80 people on a phone call when you don’t know who’s there.”

But the decision on moving Toronto, Peel and Ottawa back into Stage 2 last week was driven more by the health measures table, which consists of seven current and former medical officers of health. One source familiar with the process was asked who is really directing Ontario’s epidemic response. They said: “Doug Ford.” 

Which, on the face of it, isn't surprising. But, when push comes to shove, I suspect that science and medicine take second place in Ford's calculations.

Image: Huffington Post

A More Stable World?

As absurd as the notion might seem, we may be on the verge of a more stable world. Glen Pearson writes:

That violent brand of populism that introduced paroxysms of fear through the developed world has quietly been tamped down.  It will never go away – it’s an historical constant – and it will always be nipping at the heels of established democracies.  But its power to affect the masses has been kept in tenuous abeyance.  COVID has provided some breathing space for reassessment.

It's most apparent in the United States. But what is happening in the United States is also happening around the world:

Some European nations have been given a brief reprieve from the endless populist chaos.  Nevertheless, in places like India, Brazil, China, and, to a lesser extent, Britain, a burgeoning sense of nationalism and racism continues to push their citizens to the edge – a reality causing Freedom House International to claim that 2020 still sees democracy in decline and authoritarianism as a continual threat.

Yet, in numerous established democracies, a second chance seems to be emerging.  Fatigue with all the chaos and commensurate effects on economies is bringing on a growing tide of millions seeking not just stable, but better government.  In places like New Zealand, Denmark, Sweden, Australia, and, yes, Canada, democracy has remained resilient, defying the efforts of crippling extreme right-wing chaos.  Even Germany and France have achieved a certain level of stability that many thought impossible a year ago.

We still don't know for sure whether or not Donald Trump will go down his golden toilet. But the evidence seems to suggest that's what's going to happen. Last week, Peggy Noonan -- Ronald Reagan's speechwriter -- wrote in the Wall Street Journal:

This is also the week that journalists and politicos in Washington began wondering about something they never expected to be thinking about this year.  They are wondering if November 3 won’t be a win for Joe Biden but a blowout, a landslide in a polarized country that doesn’t produce landslides anymore. 

Time will tell. But, if the political winds shift, there will be a lot of work to do:

For nations like Canada, a Democratic sweep in America will usher in a larger world of collaborative internationalism – an arena in which this country can hold its own.  The fact that Canadians kept their act together while living so close to the epicentre of democratic dysfunction proves not only that we still have great reserves of accountability and goodwill, but that we can also export them to a more open world.  It isn’t a world incapable of moving forward, but it must now decide it is time to do so.

We await the future. 

Image: knowledge@wharton -- University of Pennsylvania

A Death Cult

Lisa O'Neill is worried. She went to the same high school as Amy Coney Barrett -- whose Senate confirmation process starts today. O'Neill writes:

Like the late Justice Scalia, for whom she clerked, Barrett is a self-described textualist and originalist; she interprets the US constitution based on its plain language and an attempted understanding of the intent and mindset of the original drafters. Barrett has also written that, in her view, it is appropriate and legitimate for judges to overturn precedents when they conflict with their personal interpretation of the constitution. Obedience to the exact original meaning of the constitution without current context is problematic. These laws were made by white, cisgender men who enslaved other human beings and never intended to include a vast sum of Americans–like women and people of color–in their quest for equal rights.

The founders did great work. But they realized that their nation would always have to strive for a "more perfect union." Retreating to the past was a way of denying that need to evolve and improve. And Coney Barrett's views suggest she's not concerned about making people's lives better:

With Barrett’s nomination, I worry about the lives and futures of my fellow Americans. I worry about the lives of over 20 million Americans who depend on the Affordable Care Act for healthcare when Barrett criticized the supreme court decision upholding Congress’ authority to enforce it. I worry about the lives of women and all those with uteruses when Barrett has referred to abortion as “always immoral” and stated that judges may overturn precedents according to their interpretation of the constitution.

I worry about the lives of LGBTQ+ families when Barrett defended supreme court dissenters on the landmark marriage equality case Obergefell v Hodges. I worry about the lives of Black, Native, Asian and Latinx Americans when Barrett has pointed out what she perceives as flaws in Brown v The Board of Education: the landmark case that desegregated schools. I worry about the lives of transgender youth and adults when, in lectures, Barrett stated she did not know if transgender bathrooms were necessary given the text of Title IX and when she misgendered transwomen, calling them “physiological males.”

Coney Barrett is precisely the kind of judge Donald Trump wants on the Supreme Court. He's not concerned with the lives of other people. To date, 215,000 Americans have died from COVID and there will be tens of thousands of more deaths.

The man quite literally leads a death cult.

Image: Wall Street Journal

Kamala In Westmount

Dan Bilefsky is a Canadian correspondent for the New York Times. He grew up in Westmount, where Ms. Harris and her mother and sister moved after her mother divorced her father. Her mother did cancer research at McGill. Bilesky has been talking to people who knew Kamela then:

Her childhood friends recalled a confident young woman who showed seeds of activism, found cultural affirmation in her Black identity and complained about French class.

Mara Rudzitis, an art teacher at Westmount High for 22 years, recalled Kamala sometimes spent her lunch hour making art in the arts and crafts studio, where students would come to paint and make ceramic masks.

“We didn’t get the cream of the crop at Westmount High — many of those kids would go to private schools — we got more of the sour cream,” she told me. “Kids are very impressionable at that age and Kamala was exposed to people from all walks of life and nationalities.”

Ms. Kagan told me that while Ms. Harris was a diligent student, her limited exposure to French before coming to Canada disadvantaged her at a high school where the students in the French immersion section received more attention and resources. Ms. Harris arrived in Montreal knowing a handful of French words learned from ballet classes and was placed in the English section, Ms. Kagan said.

Montreal was a multicultural city long before Canada adopted multiculturalism as a policy. Hers was a much different environment than the one Donald Trump -- and many Americans -- have grown up in. Certainly, it's the polar opposite of the world Donald Trump knows.

Harris's education has been broad and deep. Trump hasn't learned anything since he was ten years old. He was, William T. Kelley -- one of his professors at the University of Pennsylvania -- said, "the  dumbest goddamn student I ever had."

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Image: The New York Times

Who's He Talking To?

Bruce Arthur writes that Doug Ford seems to be confused. When asked about Thanksgiving:

He said stick with 10 people, indicated he would do the same, denied he said it, said stick to your household without specifying what the household was, tweeted to clarify afterwards, deleted the tweet, and tried again. It still didn’t specify that his immediate household is two people, not 10.

Perhaps he's getting bad advice:

So who is giving him advice? CMOH Dr. David Williams, whose advice has often seemed wayward? Associate medical officer of health Dr. Barbara Yaffe, who said she hadn’t seen the worrisome Toronto neighbourhood positive test data reported by the Star until she read it in the paper, and which the federal health minister is now concerned about?

The numbers in Ontario are spiking -- as they are around the world:

But the seven-day average, with old cases excluded, is 601. Two weeks ago it was 386. The lineups and testing backlog muddy the waters. There is no way to look at the state of Ontario’s epidemic and say the curve is flattening. Not yet.

COVID fatigue has set in. And Doug Ford's confusion does nothing to stop the growth of that fatigue.

Image: toronto.ctvnews.ca

Completely Noodled

Donald Trump claims he's been cured. But his insanity grows as he lurches toward defeat. Consider his interview with Maria Bartiromo. Edward Keenan writes:

Over the course of the hour-long appearance, Trump attacked vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris as a “monster” and a “communist” who wants “killers and murderers and rapists to enter our country.” He attacked his Attorney General Bill Barr for not locking Biden and former president Barack Obama up in jail on unspecified charges of the “greatest political crime in American history.” He said polls showing him trailing ever-further behind Biden didn’t match the evidence he sees: “They have a boat thing, they have 5,000 boats, they have thousands of trucks all over the country. I don’t believe the polls.” He again refused to say he’d peacefully transfer power if he lost, saying falsely that “thousands and thousands of ballots” marked with his name have been found in rivers. And he called Nevada election officials “cheaters” and “con men” and suggested postal carriers there would be indicted.

As Trump has seen his position in the polls sink — all 11 national polls noted Thursday by aggregator fivethirtyeight.com showed Trump trailing by at least eight points, and eight of them showed Biden with a double-digit lead — he seems to have entered a Mad King-era in his campaign: furiously retweeting conspiracy videos; impulsively announcing he’d put an end to congressional stimulus talks that the American public overwhelmingly favours (before maybe having second thoughts and calling for some kinds of stimulus again); telling Americans who have lost loved ones to COVID-19 not to be afraid of the virus, suggesting both that “when you catch it you get better, and then you’re immune” (sadly, neither part of that sentence is always true) and that getting it personally was a “blessing from God.”

So the question no longer is, "Will he lose the election?" It's "What will he do when he loses the election?"

Image: nymag

No Bobble Head

I have always enjoyed reading E.J. Dionne's columns. Perhaps that's because I feel a distant kinship with his French Canadian forebears. Dionne writes that Kamela Harris did a superb job last night -- by keeping the focus on Donald Trump's failures and Joe Biden's character:

No matter how hard, in his quiet and earnest way, that Vice President Pence tried to turn Wednesday’s vice-presidential debate into an assault on Joe Biden, Sen. Kamala D. Harris and reality itself forced the discussion back again and again to the failures of the Trump administration.

If Pence’s goal was to disrupt the trajectory of an election that has been moving the Democrats’ way, he plainly failed. And Harris succeeded by declining to make herself a center of attention. She acted instead as advocate for Biden and a sharp, detailed but tonally restrained critic of the current occupant of the White House.

Around our house, we have come to refer to Pence as "Oily Mike." Despite Pence's calm demeanor, that characterization was on full display last night:

Pence’s reserved demeanor may have done more to harm than help the candidate whose cause he was promoting, by reminding viewers of Trump’s extreme lack of discipline.

And, when Pence attacked Biden, Harris was ready with information, not spin:

She was skilled at using Pence’s attacks to provide listeners with new information helpful to her ticket.

Thus, when Pence accused Democrats of being anti-Christian for their handling of Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, Harris pointed out that both she and Biden were “people of faith.” She said that she was “insulted” by Pence’s attacks and noted that Biden would, in fact, be only the second Catholic president.

And when Pence attacked Biden’s economic plans, Harris used his criticisms to place herself and Biden in the great tradition of lunch-bucket Democrats — and managed to convey more detail about Biden’s plans than Biden himself had in his own debate. She spoke of how Biden would make it easier for young people to attend college, for all Americans to get health care — and stressed that Biden would not raise taxes on anyone earning less than $400,000 a year.

When Pence accused her of being a lousy District Attorney, she responded that she "would not be lectured" by Pence. She will not be a bobble-headed vice president -- something Pence has been for the last four years.

Image: amazon.sg

When the Doctors Disagree

The public health professionals at Queens Park and in Toronto disagree. Bruce Arthur writes:

The two sides, while wasting three days, have their lawyers figuring that out. With a virus that we now know moves faster than traditional public health measures, every hour can count. The city and the province are wasting plenty of them.

But the jurisdictional disagreements are a sideshow for the real thing, because the actual divide is clear. Toronto medical officer of health Dr. Eileen de Villa looks at the data, looks at the backlog, looks at her resources, and thinks the city should take the extraordinary steps of closing indoor dining and restricting all unnecessary travel. And the province — chief medical officer of health Dr. David Williams, and Premier Doug Ford — looks at the same data, listens to her and Mayor John Tory, runs it through their advisory tables, and disagrees.

Between Sept. 20 and 26, 44 per cent of Toronto outbreaks involved restaurants, bars and entertainment venues. Two cases at Yonge Warehouse and Regulars Bar created a combined 2,300 possible exposures, which is enough to jam contact tracing if nothing else happens. Sources say Toronto Public Health has shared all its data with the province.

Then there is the data obtained by the Star’s Kate Allen and Jennifer Yang. Test positivity data shows the virus is again surging in Toronto’s most vulnerable neighbourhoods, but also across the city. And remember, the picture’s incomplete.

The battle again is between dollars and bugs. For Doug Ford, dollars have always driven policy. The irony is that, until the bugs outrank the dollars, there will be far fewer dollars driving the bus.

Image: cbc.ca

Pope Francis Chimes In

Pope Francis is not afraid to take on the issues of his time. Last week he issued an encyclical on the problems that beset us. Catherine Pepinster writes:

In this weekend’s document he makes it clear that populism and nationalism – of the kind Trump typifies – are damaging, warning that “a concept of popular and national unity influenced by various ideologies is creating new forms of selfishness and a loss of the social sense under the guise of defending national interests”.

It’s also clear that Francis has seen through the neoliberal experiment and its alleged trickle-down benefits that have only served to create a class of the super-rich and left behind the people who are most in need – such as people with disabilities and, indeed, those who rely on state-provided education and healthcare. “If a society is governed primarily by the criteria of market freedom and efficiency, there is no place for such persons, and fraternity will remain just another vague ideal,” he warns.

Francis condemns unrestrained individualism. But he's no progressive either:

For Francis, fraternity is much more than an ideal, but a necessity if the world is to become a better place. But while his idealism sets Trump followers’ teeth on edge, he can also make Democrats on the left uncomfortable, too. There is no advocacy here of big government and welfare state narratives either. Instead, he is focused on the local and the small. And at the heart of his teaching in this document and all his papal pronouncements over the past seven years has been a strong stance on the right to life that takes him all the way from completely rejecting capital punishment to vetoing abortion, too.

There are lots of Catholics in the United States. In the last election, they broke 52% for Trump and 44% for Clinton. It'll be interesting to see what happens this time around.

Image: forbes.com

Believe It

Donald Trump is crashing and burning. But, as has been the case from the beginning, Donald lives in a permanent state of denial. Jennifer Rubin writes:

The national polls are stunning: Biden has a 14-point lead in the NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll (53 percent to 39 percent) taken before Trump announced that he had tested positive for the coronavirus. Biden has a 10-point led in the Reuters-Ipsos poll (51 percent to 41 percent). Biden led by at least eight points in all the polls released on Sunday. In the two most recent Pennsylvania polls, Biden leads by seven points. The FiveThirtyEight poll average shows Biden’s lead hovering around seven points in Michigan and Wisconsin.

Trump’s obnoxious and bullying routine in last week’s debate did not sit well with viewers. NBC-WSJ polling found that 49 percent said Biden won, 24 percent said Trump won and 17 percent said neither did (the “balance” punditry that both were bad gets the least support among actual voters).

But his spokesman still mocks Joe Biden for wearing a mask:

Campaign adviser Jason Miller went on the Sunday shows and continued to mock Biden for wearing a mask too frequently (“a prop,” he called it), showing how little Trump has learned from his own illness. Trump is in the hospital; Biden is traveling to battleground states.

Even worse, when confronted with the White House’s failure to follow guidelines for mask-wearing, Miller insisted that all is well since they test for the virus. This mentality led to a Rose Garden event where attendees were tested, yet no fewer than eight people, that we know of, have tested positive for the virus.

And on the weekend, Trump went on a joyride in an SUV to see his supporters. The other occupants of the vehicle were masked and gowned. Nothing about the virus has sunk into Trump's skull.

Stupidity can be terminal. Believe it.

Image: imgflip.com

There Comes A Time

There's been a lot of magical thinking about COVID. The most persistent magical meme is that we've turned the corner. Alan Freeman writes:

As we head indoors in our small family units for the next six months or so, there is no way we’re going to be partying at Christmas. Perhaps next Easter, but then only if we have an early spring. Hopefully, new efforts by authorities to slow the spread by reducing social contacts will soon have an impact. But if they do, will we want to plunge into another upward spiral by letting down our guard too soon as we did this summer?

The fact is that the pandemic is far from over. The pain, both social and economic, is likely to persist throughout 2021 and politicians should stop trying to make us feel better. They need to tell us the truth even if we don’t want to hear it.

Masks, distancing and hand washing will not be enough. Faster and more readily available testing will help but until there is a safe, effective and well-distributed vaccine, some activities are just not going to be safe. We are going to have make tough choices. If schools and factories are to stay open, bars, gyms, saunas and theaters will likely have to close, especially in hard-hit regions. And we’ll have to stop visiting friends and family indoors.

Unfortunately, there's been a lot of magical thinking in Quebec. The number of infections in la belle province keeps rising -- partially because Quebec keeps insisting that it will do its own thing in its own way:

From the start, Premier François Legault has seemed more interested in a distinct Quebec approach to the pandemic than the right approach. During the early weeks of COVID-19, Quebec officials compared the province’s performance with Portugal and Germany, not even deigning to look at the more successful approaches in B.C. and Alberta, let alone neighbouring New Brunswick, which essentially kept the virus out, reporting just two deaths since March.

When Canada’s chief science adviser, Mona Nemer, openly criticized Quebec in May for failing to put together an adequate testing and tracing strategy, Dr. Horacio Arruda, Quebec’s director of public health, hit back, declaring he wasn’t responsible to “this lady” and calling her a back-seat driver. Of course, she was right. It took months for Quebec to boost its testing numbers and its tracing efforts remain weak.

Thinking that Quebecers outside Montreal were somehow immune to the virus, Legault called on Quebecers to take their summer holidays throughout the province. They responded in droves, flooding places like Gaspé in July and August, turning summer vacation into a super-spreader event. By the end of September, the Gaspé region was reporting the highest active case rate in the province.

When schools reopened in the province, students were told to wear masks in corridors but not in the classroom. Of course, the decision was announced after Canada’s chief public health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, said it was a good idea to enforce mask wearing throughout the school day and Ontario had signed on to the idea for its schools. When an English-language school board in Montreal decided that it would rather be safe than sorry and made masks mandatory in class as well, it was overruled by Quebec City.

Quebec isn't the only place where magical thinking has flourished. We live in a town which depends on summer tourism. This summer all kinds of tourists raised a middle finger to the rules. Luckily,  COVID numbers here are still low. But there comes a time when your luck runs out.

Going Down

This week has been the worst week of Donald Trump's presidency. Tony Burman writes:

The announcement early Friday that he and first lady Melania Trump have tested positive was shocking, but it was not surprising.

For months, Trump has been reckless, even criminally negligent, about the threat of the pandemic, and U.S. public health experts have estimated this lack of leadership has led to tens of thousands of avoidable American deaths.

But it is ironic this latest blow to his election campaign came only two days after one of his most dismal public performances as president.

Burman believes that his debate performance provides a clear signal that Trump knows he's going to lose the election:

Trump knows by now that he will lose November’s election, probably by a wide margin. With the death toll from the pandemic at more than 200,000 Americans and an economy that has collapsed, voters are clearly turning against him, including in the key battleground states.

And Trump, however delusional that he often appears to be, must know that.

Faced with defeat,  he has concluded that he is going to take American democracy down with him:

Trump no longer appears to see Democratic challenger Joe Biden as his primary rival. To him, Biden is mere roadkill along the way to a more crucial target.

As four years of Trump’s presidency have revealed, he sees America’s multicultural democracy — and all the institutions that support it — as his enemy.

In other words, no less than American democracy is in Trump’s crosshairs.

As a friend of mine likes to say, Mr. Trump is a Weapon Of Mass Destruction.

Image: Modern War Institute

Well Deserved

Donald Trump has tested positive. Frank Bruni writes that there are at least two morals to be drawn from that news:

The most obvious is that the coronavirus has not gone away and there is no guarantee, contrary to the president’s sunny prophecies, that it’s going away anytime soon, certainly not if we’re cavalier about it.

Which brings up another moral, also obvious but apparently necessary to articulate: There is a real risk in being cavalier. The president is now the embodiment of that. The first lady, too. Also Hope Hicks, one of his closest advisers, and who knows how many others in his immediate circle? That question exists because, from the start, there has been a culture of cavalier attitudes and behavior at the White House when it comes to the coronavirus.

Cavalier is an understatement. Denial is more accurate. Trump has spent his life denying facts. Now those facts have come home to roost:

That culture was on flabbergasting display during those evening briefings the president used to do, the ones that he used primarily to congratulate himself and his administration on their fantabulous job battling the pandemic. They battled it all the way to America’s exceptional status as the world leader in recorded cases of, and deaths associated with, the coronavirus.

That culture was evident in the rallies that the president arranged and insisted on doing over recent weeks. That culture persisted on Thursday, when, according to an article by Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman in The Times, Kayleigh McEnany, maskless, held a briefing with reporters after Hicks’s infection with the virus was confirmed and after McEnany was on a plane with her and exposed to her.

Whether this news will make a difference to Trump's supporters is difficult to say. It would be wrong to wish him ill. On the other hand, his fate -- whatever it turns out to be -- is well deserved.

Image: KING5.com

Mewling And Puking

 Like Donald Trump, Boris Johnson is a narcissist. John Crace writes:

Like most narcissists, Boris Johnson is unable to conceive of other people having an independent existence. Rather, they are mere satellites orbiting his ego. Mere objects whose only function is to do his bidding. And to be fair, it’s a world view that has served him well enough up to now as he’s cruised his way, with a flamboyant mixture of broken promises, outright lies and back-stabbing, to his life’s goal of becoming prime minister. Family, friends and colleagues that have been trampled upon along the way are just collateral damage.

He's always been the star of his own show. But, as is the case with Trump, people are beginning to change the channel:

There are growing signs that many people are increasingly deciding that enough is enough. Tory backbenchers have got fed up with being left out in the cold from the government’s coronavirus legislation and the Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, made no attempt to disguise his anger on Wednesday at the way parliament had been sidelined. But the person who most gets under Boris’s skin is Keir Starmer. Because more than six months in, he has yet to get the better of the Labour leader.

It must be driving Johnson mad. Prime minister’s questions was always meant to be the Boris Show. The half-hour in the week when the country laughed at his jokes and enjoyed his put-downs. Except it hasn’t worked out like that at all. Partly because the Labour leader is visibly better prepared, but mostly because he refuses to be cast in Johnson’s image. Keir is very much his own man: he keeps his questions short and direct and calls out Boris’s bluster for the bullshit it is.

Starmer is getting the best of Johnson:

Today, Johnson was wrongfooted from the start when Starmer wondered why Luton was the only town to have gone into extra lockdown restrictions and come out of them. Boris’s reply that Luton had “pulled together” won’t have gone down well with the 25% of the country who live in the other 47 regions that are still living under extra strict measures, as it rather implied they must have been taking the piss.

For the rest of the session Starmer walked rings round Johnson. He picked him up for not even knowing what restrictions he had put in place where. The best that Boris could come up with was that it was up to everyone in each area to find out the rules for themselves. Then Starmer tackled the prime minister on his definition of “viable businesses” and the level of support he was prepared to provide. “Putting an arm around the whole country” didn’t quite square with an angry email Starmer had received from a wedding planner in the chancellor’s Richmond constituency.

By the end, Boris was merely an infant “mewling and puking in his nurse’s arms” yet to advance beyond Jaques’s first stage of man. Unable to come up with any clever – or even not so clever – replies, he merely yapped out his distress that anyone should dare to question him on anything and to accuse the Labour leader of sniping from the sides.

There's a lot of mewling and puking going on these days.

Blowing Things Up

There wasn't a debate last night. Donald Trump blew up it up. Trump proved definitively that he is absolutely unfit for the office he holds. He was unfit when he won the office. He is unfit today. Jennifer Rubin writes:

When faced with questions about his actual record and policy, Trump threw up word salads, switched topics, made scurrilous accusations and convinced any rational viewer he is in over his head. He mostly interrupted, repeatedly and falsely accusing Biden of harboring positions that his more progressive opponents in the Democratic primaries held. Trump was a walking Twitter feed — no facts, all bluster and all insults. Unfortunately, moderator Chris Wallace was never able to control Trump, so the debate devolved into constant interruption.

Trump wound up arguing with Wallace, who correctly pointed out that Trump does not have a comprehensive health-care plan. Trump insisted he was lowering drug prices (he hasn’t) without addressing his lack of a replacement for Obamacare. Biden explained that he is not in sync with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Medicare-for-all, as Trump claimed. As Trump tried to interrupt again and again, Biden asked derisively, "Do you have any idea what this clown is doing?” At another point, Biden quietly said, “Will you shut up, man?” He made the point that Trump has never had a health-care plan.

Trump vomited out a lie a minute:

On the economy, Trump boasted of his “best-ever” economy, but Biden took the side of the little guy, pointing out that the economy may be bouncing back for the rich but not for ordinary workers. Biden then threw Trump’s tax avoidance back in his face, after which Trump refused to confirm whether he paid $750 in federal taxes in 2016 and 2017, as the New York Times recently reported. Trump then lied that he had relatively little debt (he reportedly owes $421 million) and insisted he paid “millions” in taxes. Biden heckled him, taunting him to release his tax returns.

Biden pointed to studies showing his own plan would create more jobs and grow faster under his proposals than under Trump’s. In response to Trump’s taunts, Biden said bluntly, “You are the worst president America has ever had.” Biden said they handed Trump a booming economy but Trump “blew it” and didn’t save manufacturing.

I'm not making any predictions. But Trump proved beyond a doubt that his former secretary of state was right. He truly is a vile, "fucking moron."

Image: vox.com

It's Here

The second COVID wave has arrived in Ontario. And things are not going well. Bruce McArthur writes:

On Monday, Ontario recorded a pandemic-record 700 new COVID-19 cases, and the premier said the second wave had arrived, and he announced a plan to hire 3,700 new front-line health-care workers, from, personal support workers to nurses, to deal with a surge. 

It's not easy, waiting to be saved in Ontario. The alarm bells have been blaring for weeks, and Ontario’s hapless chief medical officer of health, Dr. David Williams, is still calling 700 cases a “wake-up call” as if it wasn’t widely anticipated, and the government doesn’t appear to be listening anyway. Last week, many Ontario leading health-care figures signed a letter asking for increased restrictions on high-risk commercial spaces. Monday, the Ontario Hospital Association called on the province to immediately put high-COVID areas back to Stage 2 of reopening, from the current Stage 3.

So far, the Ford government has been working around the edges:

Provincial interventions thus far have been low-cost and minor: lowering private gathering sizes, closing strip clubs, earlier closing hours for bars and restaurants. Toronto, similarly, dropped bar and restaurant limits from 100 to 75, and maximum table sizes from 10 to six. Mayor John Tory raised concerns about banquet halls, which are closed in B.C., but not here.

Ontario’s welcome narrowing of testing eligibility last week will help alleviate unacceptable lab turnaround times. But while the 700 may be a one-day bulge, it’s part of a pattern. And it reflects new cases from 10-14 days ago, so it doesn’t include what schools might do to transmission, with a few already shutting down. Is pruning around the regulatory edges going to turn the tide?

The heart of the problem is the government's confused messaging:

Premier Doug Ford keeps pleading with people who aren’t listening to follow confusing and contradictory regulations. After all, it’s 10 indoors and 20 outdoors, but you can also fit 30 in a classroom, 75 in a bar, plenty more in houses of worship and banquet halls and stores. Besides, social circles of 10 were in ashes as soon as people sent their kids back to school in a province unwilling to adequately fund small class sizes.

It's become clear that's it's now up to individuals. And recent massive gatherings -- in places like Wasaga Beach -- suggest that large numbers of individuals don't give a damn.

Image: barrie.ctvnews.ca

Is It Any Wonder?

The New York Times has published ten years of Donald Trump's tax returns up to 2018. The Times reports that:

Together with related financial documents and legal filings, the records offer the most detailed look yet inside the president’s business empire. They reveal the hollowness, but also the wizardry, behind the self-made-billionaire image — honed through his star turn on “The Apprentice” — that helped propel him to the White House and that still undergirds the loyalty of many in his base.

“The Apprentice,” along with the licensing and endorsement deals that flowed from his expanding celebrity, brought Mr. Trump a total of $427.4 million, The Times’s analysis of the records found. He invested much of that in a collection of businesses, mostly golf courses, that in the years since have steadily devoured cash — much as the money he secretly received from his father financed a spree of quixotic overspending that led to his collapse in the early 1990s.

Indeed, his financial condition when he announced his run for president in 2015 lends some credence to the notion that his long-shot campaign was at least in part a gambit to reanimate the marketability of his name.

Trump's claim to fame was that he would bring his business acumen to the United States government. The documents reveal that Trump has no business acumen. They also reveal that, in the year he won the presidency, he paid $750 in taxes. After the first year of his presidency, he paid another $750 in taxes.

Is it any wonder that he has almost destroyed the republic?

It's In the Pipeline

Robin Sears writes that universal childcare has been on Canadians' radar for a long time:

Childcare in Canada has a long and twisting history — from pre-Confederation days when informal day nurseries were set up in some larger communities, to 1942 when subsidized daycare spaces were created for mothers working in war industries, to the boom created by the first feminist wave of the 70s. Like capital punishment, abortion and marriage equality, the cause was litigated brutally on each side, gaining traction slowly until one day becoming “inevitable.”

Events have now made universal childcare inevitable:

Why now? Because the fundamental economic logic of childcare has become overwhelming — not as a social justice card, but in purely liberal capitalist terms. More working women means a larger labour force, producing greater output and tax revenues, along with a stronger and more skills-diversified economy.

The evidence is no longer debatable: childcare, done well, really does make a nation richer, as well as fairer. And no, it is not a socialist plot to indoctrinate young children with poisonous ideas while trapped for hours every day in the hands of lefty propagandists — a claim one regularly heard whispered back in the day.

And, as was the case with Medicare, there is a working model in place -- not just in one province, but in two:

In Canada, it was partly the success of the Quebec subsidized system over more than 20 years, and B.C.’s more recent success since the election of the NDP under John Horgan. The pandemic sealed the case.

There will still be a lot of wrangling between the feds and the provinces. There always is. But universal childcare is in the pipeline.

Image: cbc.ca

Get Rid Of The Big Money

Everywhere, it seems, politics is corrupted by big money. That certainly has been the case in Ontario. Martin Regg Cohn writes:

Back in 2016, after a series of columns exposing the wild west of Ontario fundraising, the previous Liberal government clamped down on the worst abuses — so that politicians from all parties could cater to voter interests, not pander to vested interests.

But Doug Ford’s Tories unilaterally diluted those reforms after they took power two years later, revoking public financing of political parties (modest “per-vote” subsidies based on most recent election results). Now, COVID-19 has changed the equation.

Fundraising is falling on deaf ears because ordinary Ontarians are out of pocket. Which leaves deep-pocketed developers whispering in the ears of desperate politicians.

Cohn believes that it's time to re-instate the per vote political subsidy:

With the benefit of hindsight, the premier has every reason to restore the “per-vote” allocations that he unilaterally phased out (scheduled to end next year). And with a little foresight, Ford could go even further in leading a cleanup of dirty money.

The perfect storm of a pandemic is the ideal time for the premier to curb excessive campaign spending, better reflecting the virtual world of COVID-19. Why allow parties to spend (and therefore raise) as much as $10 million for a provincial election campaign that amounts to overkill?

Amid COVID-19, we are entering a new world of political outreach and campaign marketing that is more digital than ever before. The premier could make the best of a pandemic by forcing all politicians to collectively clean up their act — with sharp new limits on how much they spend to grease their lumbering campaign machines.

The old fashioned way of funding campaigns is very costly:

All those sumptuous fundraising dinners are obscenely inefficient ways to attract donors — with big sums (and fine wine) poured down the drain to keep the cash flowing, while politicians waste time prostituting themselves.

As for those costly and clunky whistle-stop campaigns, they are whistling past the political graveyard. Just ask Ford, who ditched the traditional “leader’s tour” in the 2018 election, forsaking the customary chartered aircraft and customized bus, while eschewing the companion “media bus” laid on (for a hefty fee) for travelling reporters. The leader’s tour tends to be a “loss leader” for parties keen to get “earned media” (coverage), but most cash-starved outlets dropped anyway (the Star was often one of the few organizations to tag along).

The pandemic has forced many changes on us. But a change in the way we finance political campaigns could be a blessing:

Image: brazilian.report

A Violent Holocaust

 

This week, early voting began in the American presidential election. Frank Bruni writes:

Trump supporters descended on a polling location in Fairfax, Va., and sought to disrupt early voting there by forming a line that voters had to circumvent and chanting, “Four more years!”

This was no rogue group. This was no random occurrence. This was an omen — and a harrowing one at that.

Republicans are planning to have tens of thousands of volunteers fan out to voting places in key states, ostensibly to guard against fraud but effectively to create a climate of menace. Trump has not just blessed but encouraged this. On Fox News last month, he bragged to Sean Hannity about all the “sheriffs” and “law enforcement” who would monitor the polls on his behalf. At a rally in North Carolina, he told supporters: “Be poll watchers when you go there. Watch all the thieving and stealing and robbing they do.”

It's going to be a helluva election. Bruni asks:

Is a fair fight still imaginable in America? Do rules and standards of decency still apply? For a metastasizing segment of the population, no.

Right on cue, we commenced a fight over Ginsburg’s Supreme Court seat that could become a protracted death match, with Mitch McConnell’s haste and unabashed hypocrisy potentially answered by court packing, among other acts of vengeance, if Democrats win the presidency and the Senate.

That’s a big if, because we’re also hurtling toward an Election Day that may decide exactly nothing — and I don’t mean that night. I mean for months. I mean forever.

It looks to me that the United States is on the verge of a violent holocaust. I hope I'm wrong.

Image: The New York Times