Bolton lamented in the February 21 remarks that Russian president Vladimir Putin has “not yet met effective opposition” in part because “America doesn’t have a coherent strategy… to deal with Russia.” He further observed that “Russian penetration of the Middle East” had been enabled in part by the Trump administration’s inaction. “I don’t think the administration has dealt strategically with the Middle East,” Bolton said. And in his most pointed criticism, Bolton added, “The notion that the Russians can help us with terrorism, I think, is ultimately delusional.”

Bolton has made similar, if less sharply critical, comments in the past; on a March 26, 2017, appearance on Fox News, he said it would be “be difficult if not impossible for the United States to cooperate with Russia on counter-terrorism measures.”

Forging counter-terrorism cooperation with Russia was one of the hallmarks of the foreign policy agenda Trump espoused during the 2016 presidential campaign. As far back as September 2015, Trump famously declared: “If you look at Syria. Russia wants to get rid of ISIS. We want to get rid of ISIS. Maybe let Russia do it. Let ’em get rid of ISIS. What the hell do we care?” And while in office, Trump has continued President Barack Obama’s information-sharing and military partnership with Russia in Syria, and personally discussed counter-terrorism issues with Putin.

“I think the Administration made a mistake at the beginning by continuing to follow the Obama Administration’s approach to dealing with ISIS,” Bolton said at the February event.

If Bolton were to become national security advisor, this plank of Trump’s agenda could be in for a major overhaul.

John Bolton Called Trump’s Russia Strategy “Delusional” was originally published in The Young Turks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The firing of several individuals for their participation in last weekend’s white nationalist rally in Charlottesville has raised some interesting, yet fraught, questions about employment law, free speech, and related issues. At the outset it should be clarified, with unyielding insistence, that to examine these questions is in no way to make excuses for or “defend” Nazis, white nationalists, or anyone else of their kin. Such people espouse beliefs which are very obviously repugnant and worthy of unqualified condemnation.

That being said, The Atlantic’s Gillian B. White explored some of these uncomfortable issues in an August 14 post entitled: “Is Being a White Supremacist Grounds for Firing?” Commenting on the social media campaign which culminated in several rally-goers getting terminated, White writes:

Of course, the consequence of this dynamic is that taboo political ideas of all stripes can lead to workplace sanctions. While many on the political left are now lauding firings as a way to hold white supremacists accountable, it’s also worth remembering that pressuring employers to sever ties based on political activities, or social and racial beliefs, has historically been targeted in the other direction. McCarthyism involved reporting Communists and Communist sympathizers and pushing them out of the workforce, and Hollywood in particular. And as Walter Greason, a historian and professor at Monmouth University said in an interview, “Historically it’s more dangerous as an employee to be associated with racial justice and the NAACP, than it was to be affiliated with the KKK.”

The point, obviously, is not to suggest that the rally-goers should evade censure. To the contrary, they deserve forceful censure for taking part in that shameful event and for holding views which are inherently dehumanizing. But the rejoicing on the part of liberals and leftists in response to their termination glosses over deeper issues: do we wish to empower employers — especially, in this case, large corporate employers like Uno pizzeria and Lucky supermarket — to be the ones doing the censuring?

Here’s the crux: the fact is that these employees were apparently terminated on the basis of legal political activity. As repugnant as their activity was, and as morally blameworthy, it was still legal (hence the ACLU’s advocacy for them in court). If we are going to cheer employers’ willingness to terminate employees for engaging in legal political speech, we should be aware of the wider implications, and be cognizant of how such a principle might be used against people with whom we share political affinity.

In making these points I’ve been frequently rebuffed by people claiming that at-will employment has been a “thing” for ages, and if these disreputable losers should suffer for it, so be it. I agree that at-will employment has been a thing for ages, and if anyone is going to suffer for it, better it be white nationalists and/or Nazis than people with less odious politics. But organized labor objects to at-will employment for a reason: it vastly strengthens the hand of employers in the employee/employer power dynamic.

The reason to raise concerns when this power dynamic is wielded to penalize Nazis is thus: if even the most vile workers, such as Nazis, are due free speech safeguards, an arbitration process, and attendant protections, then that strengthens and universalizes the underlying principle that all workers are owed such protections. Including pro-Palestine ralliers, Occupy ralliers, or even Stalinist ralliers. All workers: irrespective of the political beliefs they’re espousing.

To reiterate, if even these Nazi scumbags were to have been afforded basic worker protections — again, the kind that organized labor advocates for as a central premise of its existence — then that would strengthen and universalize the underlying principle: that workers should be judged on the basis of what they do while they are on the job, and that employers don’t have total domain over what they do in the rest of their lives.

Also at The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf proposes several criteria for when it might be warranted to fire workers on the basis of their legal political speech. Friedersdorf is correct to note that the firings of the white nationalist rally-goers bring to bear two norms which are, potentially, in friction with one another. The first norm is that workers ought to be able to engage in off-hours political speech without fear of punishment from their employers. The second norm is that societal resources ought to be marshaled to discourage people from embracing repugnant beliefs, such as Nazism. Both norms are products of reasonable moral intuition.

A norm it would be prudent to protect is that workers — especially workers under the thumb of large, profitable corporations — should be judged for their workplace, on-hours activity rather than their off-hours, legal activity. That way, a Palestine liberation activist couldn’t be terminated because her ardently pro-Israel manager finds her views repugnant and/or sees his “safety” as being jeopardized, even though she hasn’t tangibly done anything on-the-job to jeopardize his safety. Per this norm, individuals are afforded maximum liberty to express political views, even repugnant views, so long as those views don’t translate into physical violence.

As Friedersdorf’s colleague pointed out, had these white nationalist losers been federal government employees, it would’ve likely been illegal to fire them on the grounds they were fired on by Uno and Lucky. That’s because they apparently didn’t do anything illegal, and federal government workers enjoy much greater protections which allow them to engage in political activity without having to fear workplace retribution. That’s the fundamental tension here. Had the kind of protections, which organized labor has been advocating for eons, been in effect at these men’s workplaces, it would’ve been much harder to terminate them so quickly.

I’ve often been asked: how can you expect workers of color, Jews, or others to tolerate working alongside people who espouse such dehumanizing views? My answer: you shouldn’t expect that. Workers of color would be more than justified in finding this situation intolerable. But let’s say a worker of color in the public sector found out that her colleague was a bonafide Nazi. If the colleague didn’t engage in any intimidating, racist, or otherwise harmful behaviors while actually on-the-job, it’s unclear what recourse she would have to seek the colleague’s termination (I’m open to being educated more here on the specifics, as I’m not an expert on employment law).

Again, it’s worth adding an additional qualifier—because there can never be enough—that the people who attended this rally, and were eager to find common cause with avowed Nazis, were shameful. But the operative question here pertains to the employee/employer power dynamic, which in these circumstances were weighted so heavily in favor of the employer that the employees had little or no opportunity to contest their firings. And that opportunity should be available, ideally, to all workers, especially low-wage workers, even if they are vile people. Because if you give protections even to vile people, you enshrine the principle that these protections are universal, rather than contingent on someone’s personal character or political views.

Friedersdorf suggests several criteria for when the “off-hours political speech ought not to result in termination” norm might be worth violating. The first is, “is this person hateful” — as in, if the person’s political beliefs are expressed especially hatefully, it might be justified to fire him on that ground. But there’s a distinction to be drawn here. If we are talking about whether an individual expresses overt hatefulness — aggressively upbraiding others, speaking vulgarly and/or confrontationally — that could be put in a different category than someone who harbors “hateful” ideology. For instance, a person might have the most uncontroversial political views imaginable — let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the person is a generic, milquetoast liberal — and yet expresses those views in a way that is vulgar, confrontational, or even hateful: “You didn’t vote for Hillary? You sack of shit, sub-human lowlife prick.”

Whereas, on the other hand, a person who harbors political views which are themselves intrinsically hateful — such as Nazism or some other view which advocates the forced expulsion of minority groups — might communicate those views in a manner which is decidedly non-confrontational or not overtly aggressive/hostile. In fact, the most successful proponents of repugnant ideologies are frequently those who can maintain an air of decorum about themselves, who don’t run around spewing outwardly brash hatefulness—even if their beliefs are themselves fundamentally hateful. If we’re talking about how to dole out employment penalties, it’s not clear how these categories could be distinguished, even if they are patently distinguishable categories.

The next criterion Friedersdorf suggests for when it’s proper to terminate a person for their political views is when the person espouses views which are “inseparable from violence.” But again, this category is inherently hazy, and would invariably come down to the subjective whim of the employer. Suppose a worker takes the view that Israel should not be a Jewish state. The worker believes that non-Jews should be forcibly integrated into Israeli society so as to eliminate the society’s Jewish character. There are plenty of Israelis who might regard a view such as this as “inseparable from violence” because, by their lights, it compromises their safety. Couldn’t such a view be grounds for termination, under this criterion?

Take another example: a worker is staunchly pro-war, and wants the United States government to invade, say, Iran. The worker has a set of political beliefs that view a US invasion of Iran as a moral necessity. How could that belief be regarded as anything other than “inseparable from violence,” if the explicit aim of the view is to call for violence? Are we not putting state violence in the same category as ‘regular’ violence? If so, why not? That would beget yet another long discussion. Which goes to show the ultimate subjectivity of these categories.

Another factor that Friedersdorf suggests be taken into account is “persuadability” — that is, if a person is persuadable, and demonstrates a potential to be talked out of their repugnant beliefs, then perhaps this should be taken into consideration by an employer when contemplating whether to fire the person. But yet again, this gets to the problem of subjectivity. Why should it be within an employer’s charter to persuade an employee out of repugnant beliefs? First of all, couldn’t the employee simply present a facade in order to save his job, and insist to the employer that he has in fact abandoned the repugnant beliefs, even though deep down he has not? Do we really want employers probing the deepest, darkest interior thoughts of an employee, or is that perhaps not the proper role of a corporate managerial bureaucrat?

This is not to say that people who harbor repugnant beliefs can’t be persuaded out of them, or as Friedersdorf puts it, “deprogrammed.” It’s simply to say that asking employers, or managers, or other superiors on the corporate hierarchical ladder to engage in “deprogramming” opens all kind of questionable doors. Would we want the ardently pro-Israel manager to try his hand at “deprogramming” his pro-Palestine subordinate? After all, the pro-Israel manager may well view the subordinate’s beliefs as “violent.”

These reservations should not be construed as a belief that firing avowed Nazis from their jobs is somehow impermissible under all circumstances. I can imagine cases where the firing of Nazis is not just permissible but morally compulsory. It’s just to say that firing people for engaging in off-hours, legally-protected speech raises serious questions about the employee-employer power dynamic that people should be cognizant of — and further, that if organized labor’s preferred employment laws were on the books, such firings would be much harder to carry out so quickly, and may in fact be illegal. These are questions worth considering, and to raise the questions is no defense of Nazis who — for the umpteenth time — are repugnant.

On Firing Nazis was originally published in The Young Turks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

After the harrowing events of last weekend in Charlottesville, Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia has blamed the ACLU of Virginia for the public disorder which culminated in the death of Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old protester struck by a car. But it’s the government officials working under McAuliffe’s auspices — as well as McAullife himself — who still have much to answer for.

In its rebuttal to McAulliffe’s attempts at what it decried as “scapegoating,” the ACLU of Virginia noted in a Monday statement that police behavior on the day of the rally raised all manner of grave concerns:

“It is the responsibility of law enforcement to ensure safety of both protesters and counter-protesters. The policing on Saturday was not effective in preventing violence. I was there and brought concerns directly to the secretary of public safety and the head of the Virginia State Police about the way that the barricades in the park limiting access by the arriving demonstrators and the lack of any physical separation of the protesters and counter-protesters on the street were contributing to the potential of violence. They did not respond. In fact, law enforcement was standing passively by, seeming to be waiting for violence to take place, so that they would have grounds to declare an emergency, declare an ‘unlawful assembly’ and clear the area.”

If law enforcement indeed “stood passively by” and knowingly enabled the conditions whereby an “unlawful assembly” could be declared — as a means of circumventing a federal injunction that the ACLU had obtained on the white nationalists’ behalf — then this conduct ought to be aggressively investigated, and police should be regarded as bearing a large share of the responsibility for the ensuing violence. Of course, this is in no way any kind of defense of the white nationalists’ rhetoric, which is inherently provocative and almost guaranteed to generate a ‘disorderly’ backlash.

If the state officials charged with ensuring public safety effectively circumvented a court order and declared a “State of Emergency” on pretextual grounds in order to shut down the rally, then there’s no reason why the same routine could not be deployed against leftist demonstrators or demonstrators of any other stripe sometime in the near future; government actions create precedents that are enshrined both legally and by custom.

Racially inflammatory speech, sadistic speech, and overtly hateful speech absolutely must be regarded as legally protected speech. If those voicing such speech had their rights violated by state authorities, then it’s imperative that they be given the representation required to seek legal recourse — not because their speech is wonderful in substance or merits amplification, but because the measures used to deny them speech rights will get entrenched into precedent, giving the government greater latitude to restrict speech overall.

The most clear sign that the city’s attempted revocation of the white nationalists’ permit was based on the content of their speech — and would thus constitute prior restraint — was that the city had issued a number of additional permits to counter-protesters, and it was stated by city officials that these counter-protests would attract greater numbers of attendees than the white nationalist rally. Yet, the city made no attempt to revoke the counter-protesters’ permits.

If government officials can claim the power to revoke permits on the grounds of vague “safety concerns,” without even substantiating these concerns, then they have an ever-present tool to simply cancel demonstrations they dislike for any reason at any time. As federal judge Glen E. Conrad wrote in the injunction sought by the ACLU, the city of Charlottesville “cited no source for those concerns and provided no explanation for why the concerns only resulted in adverse action being taken on Kessler’s permit,” rather than on all the permits.

State officials denying or revoking permits on spurious “public safety” grounds has a long history, and the reason the ACLU is so diligent in contesting these speech-hindering tactics — even when the content of the speech is repugnant — is because when state officials get away with hindering speech, precedent gets codified (whether informally or formally) and subsequently the state gains additional tools in its arsenal to suppress speech across the board, including among marginalized communities. Here is the Boston superintendent of police invoking just such grounds (‘public safety’) all the way back in 1921 to deny speech rights to supporters of the anarchist duo Sacco and Vanzetti, as described by The New Republic:

In the more recent past, dubious permit issuance policies were clearly used as a pretextual mechanism by municipal officials who wished to blunt the various iterations of the Occupy movement but needed an extraneous justification to do so. In May 2012, the city of Cleveland provoked the ACLU’s ire when it revoked an Occupy demonstration permit shortly after several demonstrators were arrested on unrelated charges — effectively punishing an entire group for the actions of a few, and preventing speech in the process.

Invoking “public safety” in some fashion was a constant factor as city officials throughout the country justified speech-curtailment measures designed to stymie Occupy. “Health and safety conditions became intolerable,” declared then-New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg on November 15, 2011, when he authorized a dead-of-night police raid (in defiance of a court order) to oust the flagship Zuccotti Park encampment, resulting in mass arrests.

Another Occupy-offshoot group in Seattle was beset by onerous restrictions which the ACLU argued gave officials arbitrary discretion in their ability to deny permits and thereby hinder the speech of advocates for the homeless. Explaining their representation of the group, the ACLU stated: “In joining the Real Change litigation, the ACLU seeks to ensure the Seattle Parks and Recreation permitting process comports with the First Amendment. All speakers, regardless of their message, need to be treated equally when they apply for permits.”

It’s that very same logic which the ACLU of Virginia sought to bring to the Charlottesville affair: all speakers, regardless of their message, need to be treated equally when they apply for permits. Preserving that equitability is not solely for the benefit of white nationalists; it’s for the benefit of everyone.

The ACLU of Virginia ought to be commended for not wavering in its commitment to the absolute necessity of defending free speech, even in circumstances where it is proving extremely unpopular among certain of its constituencies and/or donors, and even where it results in melodramatic resignations and repudiations by the Governor of Virginia. After all, the Governor’s fidelity to the truth is increasingly questionable, after his post-Charlottesville media tour included multiple pronouncements that the state authorities were somehow “outgunned” by the rally-goers, which by every rational account couldn’t possibly be true.

Simply put, the ACLU prevailed on behalf of its client because the City of Charlottesville could not provide a rationale for canceling the rally that did not hinge on the speech-content of the rally-goers. By ensuring that free speech was upheld, the ACLU didn’t enable violence. Violence prevention is the purview of police and the politicians who command the police; any “blame” should therefore lie with them.

It’s Not Just Charlottesville: Government Officials Routinely Revoke Permits To Stymie Speech was originally published in The Young Turks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Nevada’s new marijuana program caught the state by surprise in its first weekend with an unforeseen influx of customers, according to internal state emails obtained by TYT through a records request. The emails show just how lucrative those first two days were for a number of dispensaries.

Among seven dispensary companies discussed in the emails, approximately $1,166,547 in revenue came in during the first two days that marijuana was legal, July 1 and 2.

“Demand has been so strong that we are currently out of some of our most sort [sic] after items. It will only be a matter of days before we have to turn away patients,” read one email to Deonne Contine, executive director of the tax department. The sender’s name and email address were redacted by the state on that email and the others obtained by TYT.

The potential for lost revenue was raised as early as the third day of legal sales. Two emails noted that sales “demonstrate how much the state will be losing if this doesn’t get resolved.”

Thirteen dispensaries would be sold out within the first week of legal sales and two more within the first 10 days, according to records provided to TYT. Nevada has 47 dispensaries cleared to sell recreational marijuana and about 100 licensed growers.

“Right now, only companies that are also licensed to distribute liquor in Nevada are able to bring marijuana to dispensaries,” Nevada Public Radio’s Casey Morell reported. “The dispensaries say that’s why they’re running out of the drug.”

One dispensary, according to an email provided to TYT, made $130,000 the first two days from 1,100 customers, or about $118 per customer. These amounts were unanticipated.

“I will be out of several products and specific strains by end of day Friday. Some strains have already sold out, and at least 50% of the strains on hand will be sold out after or by Friday July 7th,” another person wrote.

The Nevada Dispensary Association estimates that between July 1 and 4 the state did $3 million in sales, bringing in $500,000 in state tax revenue.

But there’s still the issue of supply. “The capacity of only liquor wholesalers to serve the market seems lacking,” Contine said last week. “I think the evidence is fairly clear today that this market needs to be opened up,” she said.

A state judge, however, recently ruled that the Independent Alcohol Distributors of Nevada will be the only legal distributors of recreational marijuana for 18 months.

Gov. Brian Sandoval issued an emergency regulation last month to address the shortage: He adjusted state rules to let dispensaries sell from their own supplies. Previously, dispensaries could only sell marijuana from licensed distributors of alcohol.

Terra Tech, a cannabis agriculture company, reported in an earnings call that they made $2.2 million in Nevada in July at four dispensaries.

“State and local governments have been great,” said Derek Peterson, chairman and CEO of the company. “They have been working with us to find out what works well on the regulatory process, what’s cumbersome in the regulatory process and the industry associations and groups that we put together have suggested changes to the laws and the regulations.”

Terra Tech avoided the shortages that other dispensaries faced: “My management team in Nevada [was] smart enough to build up inventories significantly prior to the implementation of this. So we never had any type of a sales glut because of low inventories or no access to products, so we built up some significant reserves,” Peterson said.

“Naturally, it will drop off because the first day was a novelty,” Nevada Dispensary Association Executive Director Riana Durrett told USA Today. “I think [sales] will stay healthy because this market exists now, and I think people will be relieved to come out of the shadows.”

Internal Emails Show the Root of Nevada’s New Weed Business: Money was originally published in The Young Turks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In the eyes of much of the media and political establishment, questioning any of the premises undergirding the Russia Mega-Narrative is now tantamount to either treason or unhinged, unreconstructed conspiracism. None would dare contest the sacred findings of the Intelligence Community, they reckon, even though what limited findings have actually been produced to the public are conspicuously flimsy, the motives of the Community Officials responsible for widespread leaking and narrative-juicing are highly suspect, and the terminology used to describe what is being alleged (interference, meddling, etc.) is kept purposely vague. No matter. The foundational assumptions of the “Russia Narrative” are so ingrained that every single day, politicians spout them without challenge, and the compliant media dutifully follow suit.

On Wednesday, one media outlet went against the grain, and judging by the furious reaction they might as well have murdered a toddler in broad daylight. The Nation published a synopsis of a report which questions the prevailing theory about the DNC “hack” of 2016. The author, Patrick Lawrence, correctly notes that “a great edifice has been erected” using the DNC hack as an origin story — and yet, details around the supposed hack remain very much unsettled, notwithstanding the surety with which it is discussed by Russia-obsessed Congresspeople and media stars.

A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year's DNC Hack

The article is worth reading for oneself. But most intriguing may be the Editor’s Note that was subsequently appended:

Nobody is saying that the article or the analysts it cites present incontrovertible proof that the DNC “hack” wasn’t a hack at all, but an internal leak. Rather, the article presents evidence and argumentation for why at least entertaining the plausibility of that theory is warranted. What’s most irritating about the reaction to this article, and the reaction to anyone who questions aspects of the Russian Interference mega-narrative, is the reflexive smug dismissals of dissenting views by self-assured media elites. It’d be one thing if the evidence for the various claims around “Russian interference” was just so overwhelming that no sane person could ever question it. But that’s simply not the case. At least with regard to the DNC and Podesta ‘hacks,’ hard evidence substantiating the Intelligence Community’s claims about their provenance still hasn’t been produced; we still, even now, have only the uncorroborated word of Intelligence Officials to go on.

The DNC, in its petulant little statement, demands that all responsible citizens meekly concur with what “U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded,” even in the absence of tangible evidence. To the contrary, responsible citizens ought to do exactly the opposite. And the fact that it’s left to Trump and his most ardent supporters to raise concerns about the Intelligence Community’s fidelity to truth is a very sad commentary on how far evidentiary standards have sunk, how short the establishment’s memories are, and how easy it is to swindle Sober and Serious elites into joining a collective frenzy — no matter how destructive the potential consequences.

The real reason why the DNC would be so up-in-arms about this story is that it appearing in The Nation means it can’t be immediately dismissed as right-wing agitprop, which is the most convenient way nowadays to discount facts you don’t like. Portray any line of inquiry as “pro-Trump” and it can be summarily discredited without further contemplation by everyone in right-thinking society. The Nation, to its great credit, publishing stories skeptical of the predominant Russia alarmist narrative complicates the ability of partisan DNC apparatchiks to denigrate any countervailing opinion on this topic as somehow inherently Trumpist — and the DNC unsurprisingly takes umbrage.

The DNC also engages in the classic, time-honored tactic of baselessly accusing anyone who presents inconvenient arguments or evidence of being a “conspiracy theorist,” as a means of not addressing their points on the merits.

I don’t know if the analysis detailed in The Nation article is true. But after more than a year of wild claims, speculation — and yes, conspiracy theories — there’s still been no dispositive evidence presented as to the provenance of the 2016 DNC email data exfiltration incident(s). As such, a responsible, scrupulous media ought to be seeking alternate explanations for this and related events, which now are now so central to the contemporary conception of American politics. Instead, for the most part the instinct among the Savvy media types is to dismiss and deride as “conspiratorial” anyone who’s not satisfied with the current level of evidence, or who has continuing doubts about the veracity of the mega-narrative which has so corroded discourse in this country — and who resents being told they are “pro-Trump” for voicing such apprehension.

There’s plenty of bona fide paranoid nonsense percolating on the outer edges of Russia Narrative Skepticism, and much of it has come to be tied in with right-wing, Trump loyalist talking points. But a responsible, diligent media would be able to sort out the junk and actually cover this intelligently — in a way that doesn’t simply regurgitate what James Clapper, the Atlantic Council and Bill Kristol are screeching. But there’s little-to-no desire to go down this road in mainstream precincts, which reinforces the notion that the pathologies which have so crippled the credibility of US media after a period of prolonged, sustained failure still very much endure.

Update: Anyone Who Questions The Russia Narrative Is A Conspiracy Theorist was originally published in The Young Turks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

My guiding assumption going into the Democratic Socialists convention in Chicago this past weekend was to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Increasingly, I am inclined to extend the benefit of the doubt to anybody making a conscious attempt to organize outside the decrepit two-party system, so long as they’re not overtly awful/racist/scammy. My basic takeaway is that there is a lot to appreciate about what DSA is doing. Their exponential growth has to be close-to-unprecedented just in terms of the rate at which people are joining the organization. As I noted on Twitter, if an “alt-right” event of comparable size were held someplace, you could be sure that the entire national press corps would flood in breathlessly to give it wall-to-wall coverage.

Michael Tracey on Twitter

Quick thought on media coverage of left-wing activism versus media coverage of right-wing activism

But for a variety of complex reasons that I won’t discuss here in great depth, left-wing organizing has always been inherently less interesting to elite media, who are much more inclined to exoticize and amplify right-wing populism.

One interesting dynamic at the convention which perhaps went under-discussed is the subtle way that “coastal bias” manifests in the organization, and the steps taken to remedy that. New York City alone has more than 1,000 DSA members, and theoretically it could unilaterally dominate the organization if it were to vote as a bloc. Coupled with the California delegations, it’s obvious that more rural constituencies often feel as though they are an afterthought or at the very least, their interests are not prioritized.

Michael Tracey on Twitter

Houston DSA worries that "coastal" delegations (CA+NY) are too dominant in setting national priorities. An intractable trend in US politics.

What’s tricky about navigating this dynamic is, “coastal bias” seldom manifests as active malice. Far more often it’s observed in the form of subtle slights or lack of cognizance about the peculiarities of rural places, and how the culture of, say, North Texas differs from Brooklyn. Further, Brooklynites frequently evince a sincere desire to bridge these cultural gaps, so as to better foster unity or, in the socialist parlance, comradely solidarity. But it’s tricky. In such a vast country, reconciling geographic differences is never going to be easy.

Antifa 🌹 Senpai on Twitter

@mtracey As a North Texas delegate I found some of the talk on labor and non costal chapters to be slightly patronizing but not purposefully so

In a deeper sense, it’s likely an unavoidable facet of American life and American national politics that there should be geographic divisions which complicate collective political action. This was a theme throughout the 2016 election and afterwards, when it was briefly considered by the national media that having their intelligentsia clustered almost entirely in a handful of select coastal enclaves may… bias their political coverage, or at least make their coverage insufficiently attentive to how life operates elsewhere in the massive country they’re supposed to be keeping abreast of. Cross-regional discord has always been a feature of American politics, and in a country so large it’s never going to not be an issue. But that it should also manifest even in a relatively small organization whose guiding ethos is attaining maximum nationwide solidarity shows how intractable the problem is. It’s not the fault of any one individual, but a systemic problem that at the very least people charged with holistically analyzing the U.S. polity ought to be cognizant of and take regular steps to address.

Again, DSA delegates were definitely mindful of this dynamic and did take some steps to mitigate it. But — and maybe this is a byproduct of my having traveled to outlying, under-served areas so frequently over the past year — I do think that it’s necessary for anyone interested in accurately representing the interests of the whole country to make incorporating rural and/or “conservative” America into their overall analytical paradigm a more urgent priority. Here’s an interview I did with Zac Echola, a DSA delegate from North Dakota who spoke to the nuances required to translate the DSA message into a Great Plains context:

Echola was later elected to the national DSA committee, which again tells me that the membership was cognizant of the imperative to more tangibly integrate “non-coastal” perspectives into the national agenda. Rural America is what delivered victory to Trump, and given the structural inequities of the American constitutional system, Rural America is why the GOP has been able to dominate Congress. That’s just a reality of life in the United States, and barring far-fetched constitutional amendments or some other institutional upheaval, Rural America is going to continue exerting outsized influence on the composition of the U.S. Government.

Interestingly, the (reasonable) desire among DSA delegates to placate their forlorn Southern and/or Rural comrades seems to have resulted in the inadvertent election of a Police Union organizer to the national committee, which has understandably resulted in some post-hoc consternation. (See this thread for details.) If I were someone who wanted DSA to continue its current promising trajectory, I’d hope that this strange event wouldn’t discourage members from affirming the principle that rural/Southern American constituents ought to be actively cultivated.

Something else that was amusing to observe was people who’d known one another solely from Twitter finally meeting IRL. This can be awkward at times, but also endearing. One rural delegate told me about how he could sometimes go a month plus without interacting physically with any DSA members, so was reliant on Twitter for “comradeship” and had spent much of the convention trying to place real-life faces with their Twitter personas. (I, for one, had the good fortune of accidentally meeting Trillburne, a longtime favorite Twitter persona.)

My takeaway from this is that there’s a tendency to deride Twitter-based social bonds, but the reason so many people are invested in the medium is that it really does have the potential to produce meaningful relationships that never otherwise would have come about. You’ll often see people hugely indebted to Twitter for professional or social reasons bashing the platform or downplaying its significance. And of course, there’s definite downside to Twitter; as most everyone knows, it can be exhaustingly negative. But it also has played a vital role in fostering true camaraderie and kinship, and I wish more people would openly recognize that rather than maintaining this air of self-deprecatory detachment about it. Without Twitter I really doubt the DSA convention would have been what it was.

On a personal note, I just wanted to add that it was very heartening to see how nice everybody was. I know at times I’ve probably irritated people within the organization for one reason or another, but everybody I met was absolutely amiable and friendly, and that was nice in a very basic way. Speaking of the downsides of Twitter: it can tend to amplify negativity to a disproportionate degree, but I encountered no such thing in Chicago. Everyone was very earnest, and that was a welcome counterweight to the irony-infused Twitter culture which DSA has come to be associated with. As Emmett Rensin mentioned in our discussion, it’s probably necessary for group cohesion to foster a distinctive internal culture; the meme-heavy jokey stuff is just one manifestation of that. For the most part, people are interested in doing serious political work. Leavening that with some lulz can’t hurt.

Nice People Doing Good Things: Notes On The DSA Convention was originally published in The Young Turks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Last night, hours after Trump signed the Russia/North Korea/Iran sanctions bill that Congress had voted overwhelmingly to approve, Agence France-Presse reported that Iran had declared the Iran Deal violated:

AFP news agency on Twitter

BREAKING Iran says nuclear deal violated by new US sanctions

It’s worth repeating the astonishing fact that not a single Democrat — out of 194 total — voted against this bill in the House of Representatives. Only one, Bernie Sanders, voted against it in the Senate. The lack of dissension or even consideration of the easily-predictable adverse consequences of this sanctions package was glaring. It wasn’t as if it was impossible to discern that the Iran sanctions component of the bill could jeopardize the Iran Deal; Sanders, for one, had voiced concerns in this vein dating back to his No vote against an earlier iteration of the legislation in June.

Bernie Sanders on Twitter

I believe that these new sanctions against Iran could endanger the very important nuclear agreement. That is not a risk worth taking.

And the leading organization providing information on Iranian-American affairs, the National Iranian American Council, had been sounding the alarm:

Buried within the Russia and North Korea sanctions are dangerous and controversial Iran sanctions that will likely backfire against us. These Iran sanctions are a threat to the nuclear agreement and give Donald Trump new tools to significantly escalate tensions in the Middle East…

The alarm bells should be ringing but instead of restraining Trump’s reckless inclinations on Iran, Congress appears to be actively encouraging him…

“The Iran sanctions also risk pushing the U.S. into violation of the nuclear accord by obligating the Trump administration to redesignate entities scheduled for sanctions relief.

But Democrats ignored these warnings in service of furthering short-term political goals. It’s not an exaggeration to say that in complete unison and with virtually zero contestation, the party decided to blow up Obama’s foreign policy legacy because they wanted to inflict short-term damage on Trump. That’s the definition of petty, pathetic politics, made all the more pathetic by Democrats’ mindless conformity on the issue. And Republicans are hardly any better: only three members of the House, all from the GOP Liberty Caucus, voted against the bill. (Rand Paul voted against it in the Senate.)

But of course Democrats and their media allies spent the entire day Wednesday not warning about the potential harmful effects of the bill, but attacking Trump for not being sufficiently enthusiastic about its passage. This despite… Trump signing the bill. So Trump signs a bill, but he doesn’t satisfy Russia conspiracy obsessives because he registered some minor complaints about how the bill restricted executive power — something virtually all presidents have complained about at one point or another.

Because Democrats and kindred media luminaries’ brains are so irreparably warped by nonstop Russia furor, they can’t see foreign policy debate through any lens other than “WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE COLLUSION ANGLE.” It’s pathetic, craven, and unbelievably short-sighted. The Iran Deal wasn’t just the result of painstaking diplomatic efforts over a span of years, it was Obama’s premier foreign policy achievement by a long shot. And Democrats were willing to just throw it down the garbage chute — for what? The thrill of embarrassing Trump for a few news-cycles? Pure spite? Sincere fear of “Russian aggression”? (Most likely, some unseemly combination of the three.)

The Iran Deal was a genuinely impressive diplomatic accomplishment by Obama and John Kerry, and it significantly reduced the likelihood of catastrophic military conflict. Obama took genuine political risk in brokering the deal, which resulted in him incurring furious backlash from various “pro-Israel” factions, and which culminated in Benjamin Netanyahu excoriating his policy before a Joint Session of Congress and invoking the specter of the Holocaust to scare legislators against supporting the Deal. Even, evidently, elements of the current Administration — despite Trump’s scattershot hardline anti-Iran rhetoric — have determined that the Deal yields enough benefit to be worth preserving in the short-term.

In consideration of this recently-passed sanctions bill, where was the sustained, serious discussion about what it would mean for the future of the Iran Deal? Such discussion was almost entirely absent. And any apprehension about its effects on the Iran Deal was not evident in congressional Democrats’ votes, because not a single one of them other than Sanders opposed the legislation.

The primary reason for this incredible failure by Democrats is that their conception of politics has been utterly distorted by the unyielding dominance of the Trump/Russia story.

Voting against the sanctions package would have been a political nightmare for the average Democrat. It’s not out of the question that that vote alone could’ve spurred a primary challenge — just imagine the ads: “Congressman So-And-So Voted To Protect Trump And Putin.” The climate is just so obviously toxic, and nobody seems to care that of course this is eventually going to have a downstream effect on policy, even policy which ostensibly has nothing to do with Russia, such as the Iran Deal.

And in another predictable dereliction of duty, US media was too busy heralding the bipartisan triumph that this bill supposedly represented to sort out the real-world implications of its passage… such as wrecking the Iran Deal, thereby making war vastly more likely. They’re so eager to situate the sanctions bill into the What Will Happen Next With Regard To This Trump/Russia Thing mega-narrative that any substantive discussion was either drowned out or never existed.

It’s a sick political culture when something like this could happen in plain view, with virtually nobody raising any objections until it’s too late.

Democrats Sabotage Obama’s Chief Foreign Policy Accomplishment was originally published in The Young Turks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

On July 27, the Senate was wracked by familiar partisan polarization over healthcare policy. But earlier that day, in a display of heartwarming cross-party comity, differences were put aside and legislative accord was achieved. Senators across the spectrum rejoiced in their ability to come together and near-unanimously (98–2) levy sanctions against Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Bernie Sanders voted No, but rushed to clarify before anyone drew any improper conclusions that he was absolutely not against sanctioning Russia or North Korea, and that his objection was solely to do with Iran. Only Rand Paul seemed to take an all-encompassing stance against sanctions.

In a floor speech touting the inspiring bipartisan achievement, Chuck Schumer made a very revealing statement. He affirmed that the idea for Russia sanctions had originated with John McCain and Lindsay Graham, and that the Senate’s uniform embrace of their priorities represented an amazing triumph for that august body:

SCHUMER: I wish to thank my colleagues. At the top of the list are Senators McCain and Graham, who early on had the idea to do this. Their strength against transgressions against this country is wonderful.

Absent from any of the discussion regarding this sanctions bill was even a modicum of debate as to whether 1) Complete bipartisan coalescence around the priorities of McCain and Graham ought to be lauded as good, rather than viewed with extreme suspicion 2) Sanctions are effective instruments of US power, and whether their application here is warranted 3) The levying of these sanctions could yield unintended consequences and needlessly inflame tensions, such as with — say — a nuclear-armed power.

One reason why dissent was so non-existent is most certainly due to the present political climate; any Democrat who voted against sanctions would’ve been immediately denounced by liberal and centrist media as a craven Putin abettor, which by extension somehow makes them a Trump Defender™. It’s seen as politically untenable for Democrats to do anything which even has the remote potential to be construed as in any way “pro-Trump,” and as such real debate over the use of US power is hopelessly constricted. Likewise, any Republican who voted against the bill would’ve been slammed as Covering For Trump, the worst offense anyone could ever commit, even if their reason for voting against the bill had less to do with Trump personally and more to do with skepticism that an unthinking march toward increased hostilities with Russia is advisable.

Earlier in the week, the House voted near-unanimously in favor of the sanctions package, with not a single Democrat voting against. Once again, it was left to a handful of heterodox Republicans to voice concerns about the utility or practicality of bolstering the US sanctions regime, encapsulated in the form of a bill melodramatically entitled the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act. Based on the near-total lack of disagreement, you’d almost think that US sanctions have a proven track record of unvarnished efficacy, rather than a very predictable record of backfiring and creating adverse, unintended consequences. (The European Union, which opposes the Russia sanctions, warned of exactly that: unintended consequences.)

Stephen Kinzer on Twitter

Senate 98-2 (Paul/Sanders) for new Russia sanctions. Sanctions always achieve their main goal: making those who vote for them feel good.

There is an additional irony to how all this proceeded, in that Congress seldom ever moves to meaningfully limit the President’s powers in the foreign policy arena — see the blocking of Rep. Barbara Lee’s AUMF repeal amendment earlier in July — but on this rare occasion, when they have in fact limited the president’s powers, the impact is to constrain his ability to use non-military options to address problems, and effectively force him to take a more belligerent posture. Should this bill formally become law, Trump (or any future president) would be barred from modifying the expanded and codified Russia sanctions regime without approval from Congress.

Democrats and allied media organs who cheered the passage of the sanctions bill have worked every step of the way to prevent Trump from achieving anything resembling diplomatic accord with Russia; they invariably view such efforts through the lens of nefarious “collusion” plots and the other offshoots of the “Russian interference” narrative that have utterly consumed domestic US discourse for over a year. It’s odd: in other circumstances, most are happy to concede that domestic dynamics tend to have a significant impact on the conduct of US foreign policy, but Democrats and all those who have been banging this drum seem oblivious that their narrative-mongering is having a tangible impact on worsening bilateral relations between the world’s two leading nuclear powers.

Michael Tracey on Twitter

Congratulations to "progressive media" for convincing rank-and-file Democrats that these headlines reflect desirable developments

That the domestic politics of a state influence its conduct of foreign affairs is taken as an uncontroversial axiom in international-relations theory, but, for whatever reason, that axiom is either denied or ignored when it comes to current US posturing toward Russia. There is no awareness that the frenzy that’s been raging month after month is having demonstrably deleterious effects.

Unsurprisingly, Russia has retaliated via the expulsion of American diplomats, confirming that the US has slipped into a Cold War-esque tit-for-tat. There’s been vanishingly little debate among politicians or Thought Leaders about the wisdom of entering into a New Cold War, and that stems in part from the stifling conformity this issue inevitably engenders — which was on display in Congress last week and is observable every single day in establishment media. There are many reasons to oppose the lurch into a New Cold War, but one of them is that such conflicts tend to oppressively restrict the contours of acceptable political opinion, leading to lazy thinking and the adoption of bad policy without debate.

Without Debate, Conformist Politicians Ramp Up The New Cold War was originally published in The Young Turks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A lot of people are identifying with Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Susan Collins (R-ME) today, but a closer look suggests that they aren’t the feminist heroes they’re being made out to be.

The two women, along with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) were “no” votes for Friday morning’s Obamacare “skinny repeal.” That makes them some of the more humane Senate Republicans, but the bar is pretty low.

Jenny Yang👲👲🏽🐉 on Twitter

Giving McCain the credit for defeating this repeal when female Senators Murkowski & Collins were early NOs is EVERY WORK MEETING EVER.

Elizabeth Plank on Twitter

Two female senators persisted to avoid this crisis, yet the final credit goes to a man with inconsistent votes.

The easiest explanation for why McCain is getting the attention and Collins and Murkowski aren’t is because we knew for several days that these two women would vote no. McCain was up in the air. The coverage focusing on McCain has more to do with his deranged theatricality, and the deranged theatricality of the news cycle itself, than it has to do with sexism.

Two Republicans do not good feminist icons make.

For example, Susan Collins offered a revisionist history of Attorney General Jeff Sessions during his confirmation hearing, defending him against accusations of racism. His policies, particularly the war on drugs, stand to ruin many innocent lives.

“Senator Collins is leading the fight to confirm the most racist, homophobic, anti-woman, anti-immigrant person we could possible imagine to be the defender of the U.S. Constitution,” former Maine State Representative Diane Russell told the Nation.

Collins also voted to silence Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) when Warren read a letter aloud from Martin Luther King Jr.’s late widow, Coretta Scott King, that criticized Sessions’ treatment of African Americans.

“After Warren was rebuked, three Democratic senators, all men, read the letter aloud without any senator invoking the rule,” the Portland Press Herald reported.

Murkowski, for her part, is hardly better. In 2014, she added a provision to the Violence Against Women Act that made it so that Alaska’s native tribes had a harder time pursuing domestic-violence cases. Specifically, it made it so that Alaska tribal courts could not prosecute non-native tribe members in cases of domestic violence against a native tribe member. She later reversed her position after pressure from constituents, and the provision was repealed.

Anyway, I’m sure we can find some better icons than Collins or Murkowski. May I suggest that instead we “yaaaas kween” the activists who risked arrest to save Medicaid instead?

John Nichols on Twitter

They travelled to D.C. They slept outside in wheelchairs. They were arrested. They never lost faith. They saved Medicaid. @NationalADAPT

Murkowski and Collins Are Not the Feminist Heroes You Want Them To Be was originally published in The Young Turks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One of the three provisions in the “skinny repeal” of Obamacare that Senate Republicans reportedly are pushing actually enjoys broad support among congressional Democrats, especially among some who receive outsize amounts of cash from the medical-device industry, according to an analysis conducted for TYT Politics by the non-profit group MapLight.

The skinny repeal reportedly would end Obamacare’s penalties for individuals who forgo insurance and for some companies that don’t offer it, and also permanently repeal Obamacare’s 2.3 percent tax on medical devices. The tax was suspended, with bipartisan support, for two years but will resume in January unless it is permanently repealed.

Even if the GOP skinny repeal fails, leading congressional Democrats apparently are prepared to repeal the medical-device tax if it can be done through other, less controversial legislation. Some Democrats — especially from states with big med tech companies — opposed the tax from the start, and have consistently joined Republicans in seeking its demise.

Opposition to the tax is based on industry claims that it killed jobs and stalled spending on research and development. Analysts, however, have found that the industry continued to expand. As TYT Politics reported last month, big med tech companies continued to grow and spend more on R&D while the tax was in effect.

TYT Politics also reported that if the industry sees a windfall from suspension or repeal of the tax, companies may use it to fund the steep, one-time severance costs associated with layoffs and to invest in moving manufacturing overseas. Nevertheless, many prominent Democrats, including several leading progressives, continue to oppose the tax as a job killer.

In an interview this May, the president of the industry trade group AdvaMed, Scott Whitaker, said that repeal has bipartisan support in both chambers and that his group has been communicating with congressional leadership to ensure that repeal will be attached to some bipartisan bill this year. “I’ve been told by everybody, including leadership in the House and the Senate, one way or the other we’ll get it done this year,” Whitaker said.

“Every independent analysis has found that the economic impact of the device tax on the industry is too small to notice. The tax doesn’t shift employment offshore, and it has minimal effect on innovation,” said Paul Van de Water, senior fellow at the non-partisan research group the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

In an emailed statement to TYT Politics, Van de Water said, “Repealing the medical device tax is Robin Hood in reverse. Repeal would cost $19.6 billion through 2026 and would disproportionately benefit a few large, highly profitable device manufacturers.”

Asked why Democrats will try to repeal it, Van de Water said, “When industry executives and lobbyists assert that the device tax is costing jobs, no matter how weak the economic evidence, it’s hard for a politician to oppose repeal. Campaign contributions may also play a part.”

The campaign-donation analysis provided to TYT Politics by MapLight shows that the med-tech industry — including political action committees and individual employees — gives as much as double the money to its top supporters as it does to other members of Congress. In 2015, for instance, the 41 senators who sponsored the Medical Device Access and Innovation Protection Act — repealing the tax — received industry donations averaging $52,106 between 2010 and 2016, while non-sponsors averaged $30,904.

That bill never came up for a vote. In the House, however, members who voted to repeal the tax, including 46 Democrats, received an average of $7,500 during that congressional term, compared to just $3,200 for those who voted no.

The sponsors of the two bills — Sen. Orrin Hatch (S-UT) and Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-MN) — were also the industry’s top recipients of political donations.

Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, home to many big med tech companies, is the second-biggest beneficiary in the Senate. Even progressive Democratic leaders such as fellow Minnesotan Sen. Al Franken and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) have fought the tax and taken industry money.

The Intercept reported that an internal Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee memo indicated that lobbyists from GE — a massive producer of medical devices — pushed for repeal of the tax during a DCCC meeting apparently held in the spring of 2015. In a letter dated May 1 of that year, 18 House Democrats publicly urged congressional leadership for a vote to repeal the tax. The repeal passed on June 18.

According to data from MapLight, GE’s political action committee — and top executives including then-CEO Jeff Immelt — gave thousands of dollars to those 18 House Democrats around that time.

Most of the Democrats contacted by TYT Politics regarding their support for repeal did not respond. Franken Deputy Press Secretary Andy Osborne emailed a statement suggesting that killing the tax may not be a top priority at the moment. The statement said, “Sen. Franken supports ending the medical device tax and making up for the lost revenue by finding a better way to pay for affordable health care. But right now, he is focused on doing everything he can to stop the Republican health plan being crafted behind closed doors in the Senate, which would gut Medicaid and cruelly rip health coverage from millions of Americans.”

Warren, too, has suggested that Congress should not repeal the tax without replacing its revenues. A spokesperson for Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who also supports repeal of the tax, told TYT Politics that although the GOP has yet to reveal the details of the skinny repeal proposal, Schumer opposes it based on what his office has heard about it.

Regarding how to pass repeal outside of a GOP health-care bill, Democrats appear split on how far they’re willing to go.

AdvaMed wants to add repeal to an upcoming bill on fees that device makers pay to the Food and Drug Administration, but a Franken spokesperson said over the weekend he has no plans to offer such an amendment. A Klobuchar spokesperson said she remains committed to pursuing repeal in legislation but that it’s “unclear” whether this can be done in the FDA bill.

It’s also unclear whether anyone in either party will defend the tax if its repeal is attached to new legislation in the coming months. “Tax cuts are always popular,” Van de Water said, “so the fiscally responsible position is often a lonely one.”

Democrats May Resurrect Key Portion of GOP’s “Skinny Repeal” was originally published in The Young Turks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.