The December 14, 2016 Thread

Eugene Robinson:

The president-elect appears to be assembling not a government but an anti-government. He said Sunday that “nobody really knows” whether climate change is real, though 97 percent of climate scientists say it is, and he intends to appoint a fervid skeptic as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. He seeks to install a labor secretary who does not believe there should be a minimum-wage increase, an education secretary who shows little or no commitment to public education, and a housing secretary whose only relevant experience is having lived in houses. Is this a recipe for American greatness? Or for incompetence and failure?

Mapped: US states ‘decoupling’ ec growth and emissions | Nice work via @CarbonBrief using our @BrookingsMetro data https://t.co/k8AOPIGjcw

— Mark Muro (@MarkMuro1) December 13, 2016

A really fascinating piece from Deputy Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on America’s influence:

America’s allies in Europe and Asia are fixated on whether the Donald Trump administration will reject the re-emergence of spheres of influence or embrace them. They worry that, in his campaign, Mr. Trump seemed to approve of the “strong” leadership of autocrats and favor a transactional approach to Mr. Putin. He showed little concern about Russia’s cybermeddling in our election or aggression in Ukraine while suggesting that NATO is “obsolete.” He argued that the United States should get out of the business of “defending the world” and described Japan and South Korea as free riders that should pick up the burden of their own defense and nuclear deterrence. […]

A sphere-of-influence world would not be peaceful or stable; the United States will not be immune to its violent disruptions. Hegemons are rarely content with what they’ve got; the demand to expand their zones as well as cycles of rebellion and repression within them will lead to conflicts that draw us in. The United States would have to accept permanent commercial disadvantage as economic spheres of influence shut us out or incite a race to the bottom for workers, the environment, intellectual property and transparency.

America’s greatest contribution to peace and progress has been laying the foundation for an open, rules-based, connected world. Now we have to decide whether to continue to defend, amend and build upon that foundation or become complicit in dismantling it.

Trump's Secretary Of State pick is part of a group pushing for TPP https://t.co/inGNaQqgej

— john r stanton (@dcbigjohn) December 13, 2016

A new Kaiser Family Foundation study was released this week.

A new study finds that 52 million non-elderly Americans have the sort of pre-existing conditions insurers cited to deny them health insurance coverage in the pre-Affordable Care Act world. The study, released Monday by the Kaiser Family Foundation, notes that a majority of those Americans are covered by group health plans where they would not face such medical underwriting. But it adds that, due to market churn, many more than just the 8 percent or so of consumers who currently receive coverage through the individual marketplace stand to be affected if the pre-existing conditions provision of Obamacare is dismantled.

“For many people, the need for individual market coverage is intermittent, for example, following a 26th birthday, job loss, or divorce that ends eligibility for group plan coverage, until they again become eligible for group or public coverage,” the study said.

Trump already on path to extradite a man Turkish president wants and who is using blackmail on Trump biznes to get. https://t.co/Fg94tsBA1e

— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) December 13, 2016

First Read: “Donald Trump officially announced ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson to be his secretary of state pick. And that move has triggered a fight that could define Trump’s first few months in office — between Team Trump and Senate Republican hawks (John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio) over the issue of Russia.”

“Indeed, by tapping Tillerson (who was awarded Russia’s “Order of the Friendship” honor in 2013, and who opposed the U.S.-led sanctions against Russia for its intervention in Crimea), Trump has made this confirmation fight a referendum on this very issue. Tillerson’s confirmation probably wouldn’t be a problem under any other incoming president, or if Russia’s intervention in the 2016 election (and Trump’s denial of it) wasn’t the story it has become.”

“But here we are, and the result is Trump picking a fight with a key part of his own party — something that we never saw Barack Obama do at this same point in time. And when you pick a high-profile fight like this, you better win.”

Here @paulwaldman1 argues that Trump is never actually going to do anything to address his conflicts, ever: https://t.co/2UIg0f2CKn

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) December 13, 2016

Matt Yglesias:

Democrats have a deep, dark worry that they can’t express publicly. After long, frustrating years of trying and failing to get congressional Republicans to agree to do some fiscal stimulus to boost the economy, they’re worried that Trump is now going to get the cooperation they couldn’t. Enormous tax cuts will widen the deficit and stimulate the economy, and the cuts will be paired with a substantial infrastructure program that further boosts growth.

“Well, sometimes you have to prime the pump,” Donald Trump told Time magazine, explaining blithely how he plans to brush aside years of conservative anti-Keynesian rhetoric.

The hypocrisy here is truly stunning, though in a sense conservatives have consistently (since the Reagan Era) adhered to the view that big deficits are good if and only if there’s a Republican in the White House.
But, beyond hypocrisy, the bad news for America — albeit good news for Democratic Party politicians — is that it won’t work.

Which is too bad, because there is reason to believe stimulus could work and help raise wages and put a few million extra people back to work. It’s just that to make it work Trump would have to make some additional changes that there’s no indication he wants to make.

NEW: Inside Rex Tillerson’s long romance with Russia https://t.co/owguMSAehq by me @washingtonpost

— Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) December 13, 2016

Paul Krugman: “Did the combination of Russian and F.B.I. intervention swing the election? Yes. Mrs. Clinton lost three states – Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania – by less than a percentage point, and Florida by only slightly more. If she had won any three of those states, she would be president-elect. Is there any reasonable doubt that Putin/Comey made the difference?…And it wouldn’t have been seen as a marginal victory, either. Even as it was, Mrs. Clinton received almost three million more votes than her opponent, giving her a popular margin close to that of George W. Bush in 2004…And when, as you know will happen, the administration begins treating criticism as unpatriotic, the answer should be: You have to be kidding. Mr. Trump is, by all indications, the Siberian candidate, installed with the help of and remarkably deferential to a hostile foreign power. And his critics are the people who lack patriotism?…Everything we’ve seen so far says that Mr. Trump is going to utterly betray the interests of the white working-class voters who were his most enthusiastic supporters, stripping them of health care and retirement security, and this betrayal should be highlighted.”

In a year of fantastic political cons, Jill Stein draining $7 million from liberals for basically no outcome really stands out.

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) December 13, 2016

“Alarmed that decades of crucial climate measurements could vanish under a hostile Trump administration, scientists have begun a feverish attempt to copy reams of government data onto independent servers in hopes of safeguarding it from any political interference,” the Washington Post reports.

Oh.

‘Assange’ Doc Suggests Russia Knew In Advance Ed Snowden Would Spy on NSA https://t.co/aExXX6E0xv via @heatstreet

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) December 13, 2016

Clint Watts and Andrew Weisburd: “As analysts who have spent years studying Russia’s influence campaigns, we’re confident the spooks have it mostly right: The Kremlin ran a sophisticated, multilayered operation that aimed to sow chaos in the U.S. political system, if not to elect Trump outright. But you don’t need a security clearance or a background in spycraft to come to that conclusion. All you need to do is open your eyes.”

“It wasn’t by hacking election machines or manipulating the results, as some have suggested. That would be too crude. The Kremlin’s canny operatives didn’t change votes; they won them, influencing voters to choose Russia’s preferred outcome by pushing stolen information at just the right time—through slanted, or outright false stories on social media. As we detail in our recent report, based on 30 months of closely watching Russia’s online influence operations and monitoring some 7,000 accounts, the Kremlin’s troll army swarmed the web to spread disinformation and undermine trust in the electoral system.”

“And America was just the latest target. These ‘active measures’ are techniques Moscow has honed for decades, continually adapting its formula to changing technology and new circumstances. All of it is in service of Putin’s grand strategy of breaking up the European Union and NATO from the inside out—without even firing a shot.”