The incomparable Thomas Frank writes about the Politico daily newsletter called Influence, and what it teaches us about this historical moment. A sort of celebrity magazine for Washington lobbyists, Influence describes "every squeaking turn of the revolving door" between influence-peddlers and our government "with a certain admiration," and conceives of the lobbying industry as a "community" that's "happy, prosperous, and joyously oblivious to the plight of the country once known as the land of the middle class." And yet it is so "brazen" in its celebration of the lobbying life that it also reveals real embarrassments -- protestors against the CFPB who admit they're actually "day laborers," "expert" witnesses giving "nearly identical written statements" to Congress. Could it, one day, be its own undoing? We can only hope!
Chris Morran at the The Consumerists describes SLAPP lawsuits in some depth. A SLAPP (or Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) is the very definition of a frivolous lawsuit, usually filed by some big actor to shut up some small actor merely exercising his or her right to free speech; they're betting that the target of their lawsuit won't want to spend the time or money fighting it. In some 28 states, you can fight SLAPPs to varying degrees, but no federal anti-SLAPP law exists -- and the bill that could create one, the SPEAK FREE Act, could also have unintended consequences.
Arun Gupta at Yes! magazine suggests that "(i)f we listen carefully to Trump's supporters, we can hear their desire for progressive policies." He's 100 percent right. Trump is what happens when weak Democrats don't offer voters anything of value -- and "at least I'm not an ogre like that guy" is not a thing of value, not least because even Republicans play that game against their brethren. I'm sure some folks think racists are irredeemable, but I don't -- real economic populism, versus the bait-and-switch kind peddled by Donald Trump, would go a long way toward bringing them back.
Donald Trump tweets, then deletes, an image of Hillary Clinton with the words "Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!" contained within an apparent Star of David, and then, of course, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski goes on TV and calls the controversy over the tweet "political correctness run amok." Which, of course, leads me to think Mr. Trump didn't fire him so much as he redeployed him. It's just "a simple star," he says; it's "the same star that sheriff's departments" use, he says -- and it's also a Star of David, and it doesn't take very much "reading into" to get there, and it wasn't the only way to get that message across, as Mr. Trump proved mere hours later when he put the tweet back up, but with a circle. Too many folks think they're proud of their bullshit-detector when they're just proud of their ignorance.
Finally, Obama Administration revises fossil fuel royalty regulations so that coal, oil, and gas corporations will have to pay more to our government for extracting resources from public lands. We advocated for this, and the revisions don't go as far as we would have liked, but it is nonetheless progress. And if coal/oil/gas drillers want to whine about "consumers having to pay more for energy as a result" -- which, of course, you'll recognize as a manufactured hostage crisis -- they may want to remember that drilling on public land means you follow the public's rules, and it also means you pay the public.
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