This time last week I said I found arguments about "secret Donald Trump voters" more persuasive than other observers have, but the incomparable Digby lets us know that Hillary Clinton may actually be more likely to have "secret voters" -- namely, women who live in fairly right-leaning households whose husbands are all voting for Mr. Trump and who have to "maintain their standing in their conservative communities." That's at least as persuasive as any Trump "secret voter" argument, I'll admit, but I still don't agree that the "secret voter" argument stands at odd with "the swashbuckling, politically incorrect, in-your-face ethos of the Trump movement" -- as I said, a lot of folks are with Trump precisely because he says the things they can't, and presumably don't, and I'll bet some of them are not only married to liberals, but live in liberal communities.
Julia Lurie at Wired tells the story of "How One Company Contaminated Pittsburgh’s Drinking Water" -- with lead, that is. Long story short: Pittsburgh's public water utility was doing a bad job, so the city turned to a private corporation to help fix their water infrastructure -- and wound up having safety and water quality managers laid off and replaced one corrosion control chemical with another, cheaper one that, well, didn't work. The Paris-based corporation "consulting" with the city perpetrated other shenanigans as well; the lesson seems to be that we have to watch our public agencies a lot more closely or we'll wind up with public-private partnerships (or totally privatized agencies!) that are even worse.
And now, from the "Nobody Could Have Predicted!" file: the Obama Administration is telling federal agencies involved in counterterrorism to get involved in anti-bullying initiatives at local and state levels. Because they'd be so good at that! They're likely to tell us (though they seem unwilling to answer questions from journalists about it at present) that they can find future terrorists in today's bullies, which is, as usual, totally the wrong way to go about pre-empting terrorism. The best way to pre-empt terrorism? Stop trying to steal things that belong to other people, like oil.
The Trans-Pacific "Partnership" is wildly unpopular, thanks to popular pressure, but that doesn't prevent the "liberal" media from offering up things like this fluff interview with Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, in which she summarizes all the lame arguments favoring the TPP. America will lose face with the rest of the world if we don't follow through, the TPP will help fight violent extremism, China booga-booga, and by the way Ms. Pritzker doesn't really understand why people are so "anxious." Neither does the article's writer, who never asks about, you know, the investor-state tribunals that would nullify our laws.
Jean Trounstine at TruthOut introduces us to some family members of crime victims who work toward rehabilitation of criminals rather than punishment. I'm not anti-punishment, actually, but most politicians take it way too far, and not, I suspect, out of a sincere interest in justice, but out of a base desire to stoke rage in their supporters. And if the vast majority of crime victims say treatment and crime prevention are more important than punishment, can't the rest of us conjure up some mercy, too? Of course we can. (As an aside, I always like to see Mural Arts Philadelphia get press for its good works.)
Finally, Trump voter Terri Rote faces felony charges of voter fraud in Iowa after trying to vote twice, fearing her first vote for Mr. Trump would be changed because "(t)he polls are rigged." I wonder where she might have heard that? Of course, if we asked Ms. Rote if she was a good, law-abiding person, she'd say yes, and recent events notwithstanding we probably wouldn't doubt it. But this is what right-wingers have been doing to good Americans since time immemorial: convince them to do bad things because they "have to." Come to think of it, the only way to get a good person to do a bad thing is to make them think they have to.
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