September 17, 2018

Rip Van Kevin Wakes Up and Surveys the Day

Behold the fabulous new Apple Watch, which for some reason will not be subject to Donald Trump's new tariffs. Lucky Apple.Apple Inc.

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Under normal circumstances, Thursday is evil dex day and Sunday is crash day. This is just the nature of the beast. Three days after taking the stuff, it wears off and I crash for five or six hours.

But this week I took the dex on Friday, so today was crash day. But this was no ordinary crash: I think the lights went out around 10 am and I didn’t fully pull out of it until 6 pm. I have no idea what made it so extreme this time, but I’m now seriously thinking of following my doctor’s advice (or permission, I suppose) to just go ahead and reduce the dex from 20 mg to 12 mg each week. This is ridiculous.

So what happened while I was basically in a coma?

  • Donald Trump decided to raise taxes on American consumers yet again, this time by $20 billion. This tax is known as a “tariff” by some, but it’s still a tax. Where is Grover Norquist when you need him?
  • Trump has also decided to unilaterally declassify a bunch of documents related to the Russia investigation. This is insane. It’s an ongoing investigation, and he’s obviously doing this solely in the desperate hope that somewhere in all the texts and warrants and interviews there will be some snippets he can use to fuel yet more Twitter rants about how unfairly he’s being treated. How long are Republicans going to let him do this?
  • Larry Kudlow went on TV this morning and said our deficits are too high. But this is absolutely not because of the Republican tax bill. No way. The problem is that we’re spending too much on entitlements and they need to be cut—after the election, of course. “Entitlements” is code for either (a) Social Security and Medicare, or (b) spending on the poor. I’m going to take a wild guess and say that Kudlow is probably thinking of (b).

If we’re grading on a curve, I suppose this counts as a pretty average day. Of course, we’re also dealing with the aftermath of a huge hurricane and we have a Supreme Court nominee who’s been credibly accused of attempted rape. In the Trump Era, though, I suppose even this isn’t enough to nudge the needle very far off normal.

BY THE WAY: This came up at the panel discussion I was on last Thursday, so I’m going to repeat it now. Despite the intense craziness of the Trump presidency, I still fundamentally believe the world is plodding along pretty normally. Liberal democracy is doing fine. Anti-immigrant sentiment is temporary. Brexit is a fluke. It’s unsurprising that a couple of eastern European countries are backsliding on authoritarianism. The economy is OK.

On a scale of zero to World War II, the current threats to liberal democracy are barely noticeable. Donald Trump is an insect compared to Mao or Stalin or Hitler or even peanuts like Nasser or Noriega. Brexit is stupid, but Britain will survive. Vladimir Putin may want to recreate the Soviet empire, but so far he’s managed to recover only a few square miles. And the Middle East is the same as it’s been for the past half century.

I sure hope everyone helps prove me right—or at least helps to get the ball rolling on proving me right—in November.

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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