Archive: Year: 2022

Yesterday’s FBI search of Mar-a-Lago is a turning point, but like the people who lived through Watergate, we’re transfixed and filled with foreboding.Photo by Luke Harold, Women’s March LA 2019The first episode of Slow Burn, Leon Neyfakh’s brilliant podcast series reconstructing many of the biggest political scandals of modern American history, delivered an absolutely critical insight about the Watergate years: Once the break-in to Democratic National Committee headquarters was public and the ties of the burglars back to the Nixon re-election campaign exposed, no one quite knew where the scandal was going. Looking back at Watergate, it seems obvious now that Nixon was going down. But that wasn’t at all clear to people who lived through it. And so they obsessively...

Even if the Inflation Reduction Act is filled with compromises, its passage is a huge win for the party that wants to use government to solve big problemsBIDEN / HARRIS VICTORY CELEBRATIONS at Black Lives Matter Plaza, Washington DC on Saturday afternoon, 7 November 2020 by Elvert Barnes PhotographyFrom 1918 to 2004, the Boston Red Sox led a cursed existence, making it to the World Series just four times and losing each in seven games. On top of that, the team won its division several times but lost again and again in league championship series. Growing up in New York, I was a Mets fan and my kids (who were born in the Bronx) came up as Yankees fans, but because...

Public goods that serve everyone are under attack, a recurring story in AmericaWhen a wealthy suburban town votes to defund its own public library while continuing to fund other public amenities like road improvements and the fire department, you know something is deeply dysfunctional in America. But that’s exactly what just happened in Jamestown Township, a conservative community southwest of Grand Rapids, Michigan, after a small but vocal group of about 50 local residents started demanding this spring that the library remove books depicting LGBTQ people and same-sex relationships in a positive light.According to Bridge, a nonprofit newsite that covers Michigan, the attacks got personal quickly. The director of the Patmos Library in Jamestown, Amber McLain, who is gay, was harassed...

The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision has woken the pro-abortion majority, as conservative Kansas (!) just demonstrated yesterdayAbortion rights advocates celebrating their victory last night in a Wichita, KS barAccording to Vote.org, a nonpartisan website that helps people register to vote, after the Supreme Court released its opinion in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on June 24, there was “a huge uptick in traffic to our website and on our voter tools. Nationally, we saw a 563 percent increase in registrations after the decision, compared to the week before.” Few noticed, though in early July the Kansas City Star’s Natalie Wallington reported that the jump was twice as big as that in Kansas, with the number of people registering...

Third parties in America sound good until you try to stand one upNew York City Mayoral candidate Andrew Yang during a rally at City Hall Park in Manhattan on May 24, 2021 (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)Former failed Democratic presidential candidate and failed NYC mayoral candidate Andrew Yang and two retired Republican elected officials, Christine Todd Whitman, former governor of New Jersey, and David Jolly, a former congressman from Florida, have announced that they are launching a new political party, the Forward Party, in the hopes of saving America from “divisiveness and extremism” and giving a new home to the “moderate, common-sense majority.” It’s almost certainly not going to work.Here’s why. It’s one thing to cite polls showing that a...

A lesson in aging gracefully and a reminder of the power of song in a dark timeNewport, RI — July 24: Brandi Carlile introduces Joni Mitchell for a special Joni Jam at the 2022 Newport Folk Festival at Fort Adams State Park on July 24, 2022. (Photo by Carlin Stiehl for The Boston Globe via Getty Images)Woke up, it was a Monday morning and the first thing that I thought was: what do I write about today? Another column about the dark clouds hanging over our heads and the challenges we face with our climate, our democracy, and the disconnect between our leaders and the public?Not today.Today I’m celebrating a gift from a living legend, a parcel of poetry and song so powerful it...

This buzzy new tactic is being touted as a silver bullet to help Democrats stave off disaster this fall, but it’s a bandaid, not a cure.Jon Ossoff campaign, 2020Imagine you are in charge of a legacy enterprise, a company that’s been in business for decades, even longer. You still have some loyal customers, but a lot of people loathe your product and the rest are indifferent. You’ve tried all kinds of ways to get more customers, including hiring new celebrity brand messengers, fancy TV ads, and sophisticated digital marketing that lets you target people individually. Still, you’re not getting through much, because people are bombarded with too many ads already. But now you’ve got a brilliant new idea for how you’re...

What pain, injury and illness can teach us about how to be a conscious citizen in today’s worldEast Matunuck State Beach, RI, a few days ago (Photo by Micah Sifry, 2022)Today I woke up with a nasty muscle spasm behind my right shoulder. On a scale of zero to ten, the pain is a seven — just barely tolerable. I tried lying on the floor with a tennis ball underneath me to try to find the trigger point that could help the muscle release, and now I’m writing this column while on my back with my knees propped up. I have no idea why my shoulder seized up overnight. Maybe I slept hard on it. Or maybe my body is sending me a message...

Startling testimony and powerful words have to lead to action, but so far no one has offered a plan for what to do nextThe hearings of the House Select Committee on January 6th have been going great. Each session has offered a gripping narrative of the efforts of President Trump and a small army of his acolytes to corruptly hold onto power after losing the 2020 election first in the balloting and then in their court challenges to those results. Every hearing has included shocking new revelations, often from the direct testimony of members of the White House staff or other Republicans and sometimes from contemporary documents or communications discovered by the committee during its investigation. The committee’s members have each...

How a leading journalism philanthropy is continuing to drop the ballThe most important statement Donald Trump ever made to a journalist was a truthful one. That was when he told CBS 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl, back in July 2016, when he was just a candidate and not yet president, why he spent so much time attacking the media. According to Stahl, “He said, ‘You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.’”Once you undermine public trust in the free press, all kinds of lies become easy to tell and sustain. That’s the central problem with authoritarians who seek power...