We begin today’s roundup with Sue Halpern at The New Yorker who details the dysfunction at the FEC and the deliberate choices in the administration and the Senate to refuse to enforce the law:
If the law of diminishing returns applied to American politics, the resignation of the vice-chair of the Federal Election Commission (F.E.C.), Matthew Petersen, on Monday, would be a single data point on the downslope of democracy. The F.E.C. is the sole agency tasked with overseeing and enforcing campaign-finance laws, and Petersen’s departure leaves it without a quorum to levy fines, initiate investigations, or respond to foreign interference. It’s not that the door is now wide open to dark money influencing politics (it was already ajar); it’s that the door is now off of its hinges, taking with it the pretense of genuine campaign oversight. [...]
In the tug-of-war between lawfulness and corruption, a functioning F.E.C. has been losing, hand over fist, to the pull of anti-democratic forces for more than a decade.
On the reports that President Trump wanted to simply grab private land and pardon the lawbreakers who followed his command, Barbara McQuade at The Daily Beast dedicates her piece to the administration’s familiar excuse of the president’s controversial comments by claiming he’s just “joking”:
Words can even become criminal under certain circumstances. Under federal solicitation law, if someone “commands, induces or procures” the commission of a crime, he is as guilty of the offense as if he committed it himself. If two or more persons agree to commit a crime, and one of them does an act in furtherance of the agreement, both can be charged with conspiracy. In both instances, a prosecutor would have to prove that the person acted knowingly and intended the crime to be committed, and that he was not “just joking.”
Of course, we have all learned by now that a sitting president cannot, or at least will not, be indicted. Trump is likely feeling emboldened by his experience with the special counsel. Despite findings by Mueller and his team of substantial evidence that Trump engaged in multiple acts to obstruct their investigation with a corrupt purpose, no criminal charges were filed.
Joan Walsh at The Nation:
All of these outrages have one thing in common: the thoroughgoing corruption that distinguishes the Trump administration, which is as central to it as its radically conservative white-nationalist ideology. But the corruption seems to be getting more brazen, raising the question of whether Congress’s failure to take seriously its impeachment responsibilities is emboldening Trump and his allies.
At USA Today, the editorial board says the business community needs to do more to address the inequities and injustices in our capitalist system:
When Americans look at U.S. business circa 2019, they don’t see rising wages. They see income inequality. They see CEOs who rationalize their seven-figure salaries by slashing jobs; banks and brokerages that routinely sell out their customers; blue-chip companies that promote dangerously addictive opioids; fossil fuel interests that endanger the planet; and a cruel, confiscatory health care system that charges an average $19,865 for a family insurance policy that expects people to spend an average of $3,020 per year out of pocket.
Yes, there are problems with capitalism, ones that can't be solved with vague policy statements.
One concrete step is to align executive compensation with long-term success rather than maximization of the next quarter's profits. CEOs of late have been paid fortunes by boosting bottom lines through the elimination of jobs — either through automation or outsourcing. This leaves the distasteful appearance that they are profiting from other people’s misery.
In a beautifully written piece, Jeva Lang at The Week highlights an critical issue of deforestation in our own country:
I know how quickly an old growth landscape can be taken away: The drive to Olympic National Park requires first passing through tracts of forest that aren't protected. The open wounds of clear cuts scar the hills around the rainforest a muddy-brown. Bare-limbed snags, left behind by the loggers, jut out of the cuts at random angles and intervals, like shards of mangled bone. [...] Earlier this week, President Trump instructed his agriculture secretary to look into opening up Alaska's Tongass National Forest to such a fate. It absolutely cannot be allowed to happen.
On a final note, in case you missed it, Neil Cavuto on Fox calls out Trump for lameting that Fox doesn’t “work” for him or his supporters any longer:
“These aren’t fake items,” Cavuto said after listing off a bunch of the president’s most notorious comments. “They are real items and you really said them, just like you never paid to silence a porn star until it turns out you did.”
