thenation--2020-10-19--How Did American Cities Become So Unequal?

As the coronavirus ricocheted through New York City this spring , among its many casualties was a certain image of life in the Big Apple .
The foodie destinations , posh galleries , and pricey cocktail lounges sat deserted while city hospitals long scorned as antiquated , clunky , and ineffective became crowded , bustling centers of activity and pandemonium .
If they didn ’ t abscond to their second homes , financiers and lawyers huddled in their apartments , and grocery store employees , doormen , UPS drivers , and postal workers all became consummate risk-takers .
Spaces segregated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ homes , jails—were revealed as inextricably linked to the rest of the city on a microbial level , as the virus could not be kept out or contained within .
In the pandemic city , the oft-praised prosperity of New York in the early years of the 21st century proved illusory or at least misdirected : a world of glittering condos and luxe hotels that somehow could not provide enough hospital masks to its nurses or figure out a way to keep its children safe .
Saving America ’ s Cities : Ed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ America in the Suburban Age The virus held up a mirror to the city that revealed a very different image from that of a gleeful elegance and striving opportunity : a distorted , cruel urban landscape divided between those with the means and resources to depart and those who had no choice but to keep taking the subway , even as the viral wave crested .
Zip code maps showing infection rates in the Bronx , Brooklyn , and Queens compared with those in Manhattan told the story .
When George Floyd was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to magnify the vulnerability , racism , and exclusion already evident , and New York , like many other places in the United States , justifiably erupted in protest .
As cities across the country and around the world struggle to cope with the ongoing pandemic , it is an opportune time to read Saving America ’ s Cities , Lizabeth Cohen ’ s excellent study of postwar urban planning .
The period she chronicles is at once near and far from our own .
Over the years that followed World War II @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the problems of urban poverty and deindustrialization through a series of attempts at urban renewal .
Much of the historical literature on these programs has focused on their failings—especially and most damningly with regard to public housing , which created what scholar Arnold Hirsch , writing about Chicago , called a “ second ghetto.
” Cohen , by contrast , views the contradictory legacy and aspirations of postwar urban liberalism as having much within them to admire , a case she makes by taking up the life of urban planner Ed Logue .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ today , but he was a renowned figure in the mid-20th century , dubbed “ Mr .
Urban Renewal ” by The New York Times and the “ Master Rebuilder ” by The Washington Post .
He brought federal redevelopment money to New Haven .
He used public money to rebuild downtown Boston .
He built the apartment towers on Roosevelt Island for New York City as well as affordable housing elsewhere throughout the state .
For Cohen , his career was representative of a certain liberal hope : that professional expertise and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , suburban flight , unemployment , and disinvestment that plagued American cities in the second half of the 20th century .
Cohen makes a compelling case that a renewed faith in the public sector and the active participation of the federal government in rebuilding urban infrastructure and public housing are essential for any progress today , and she argues that Logue ’ s work demonstrates the potential of this approach as well as some of its successes , however partial .
Yet at the same time , Saving America ’ s Cities is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in urban liberalism ’ s failings and of the profound pressures that always constrained and shaped its aspirations and accomplishments .
In the end , Logue ’ s career—which began with his trademark sunny confidence and brash appeal but ended with his back against the wall of declining federal money and slipping public support— can not help but suggest the limits of postwar urban renewal as much as its possibilities .
Ed Logue hailed from the heart of urban America , Philadelphia .
Born in 1921 , he grew up the oldest of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
His father was a tax assessor , a well-paid public sector job that enabled him to send his children to private school and to summer at the Jersey shore .
But after he died when Logue was just 13 , the family fell into near poverty .
The charity of an uncle enabled them to avoid destitution .
Despite the family ’ s travails , Logue went to Yale on a scholarship .
During his time in college , he became involved in New Haven ’ s labor movement .
He worked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a reputation as a firebrand ; a supervisor later told the FBI that Logue had been known for spreading “ malicious rumors ” about management , calling Yale administrators “ dictators ” and “ slave drivers.
” After he graduated , he went to work as an organizer for the local that represented the university ’ s janitors , maids , and maintenance workers .
He may have been a radical , but he was also a committed anti-communist , skeptical of the Communist Party ’ s role in local politics and dismissive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ puts it , he was a “ rebel in the belly of the establishment beast , ” a New Dealer who believed in the role of the federal government and in the power of labor unions , but he was not someone who sought broader social transformation .
Logue fought in World War II and then attended Yale Law School on the GI Bill .
But he was quickly bored and alienated by the life of an attorney .
“ The law is a whore ’ s trade , ” he explained to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ don ’ t want a nice law practice for anything but the income , and I ’ m a son of a bitch if I ’ ll throw away ten or twenty years of my life building up an income.
” He considered a career in labor law , but here , too , his ambitions were larger than the role .
Being a labor lawyer meant serving the labor movement but not leading it .
Logue found himself drawn to politics instead , albeit not as a politician but as the labor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ New Dealer ( and head of the Office of Price Administration , which regulated prices during World War II ) who had become the governor of Connecticut .
Logue then traveled with his boss to India when Bowles became the US ambassador , observing with great interest the community development work the Ford Foundation was doing in rural parts of the country .
In 1954 , Logue returned to New Haven to work with the city ’ s new mayor , Richard Lee .
Federal support for suburban development was most evident in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ homeowners as well as road construction , but there was still ample money available for cities , and Logue was able to win more than $ 130 million in federal aid ( over $ 1 billion in today ’ s dollars ) .
Cohen details how Logue and Lee used this money to make New Haven a “ model modern city ” and an example of “ what can be accomplished when a full-scale attack on blight and poverty is undertaken.
” With federal aid as well as foundation money , Logue and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ center , and helped reshape the downtown commercial district .
Logue also helped give shape to an increasingly familiar figure in East Coast cities : the urban planner who would operate with political reserve to create a city in the best interests of all .
With the emergence of civil rights and Black activism in New Haven , many of the problems with Logue ’ s model of urban planning came to the fore .
The kind of renewal that Logue promoted at times involved displacing poorer residents and people of color .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ rule by experts rather than the voices and power of the people most directly affected .
Throughout the United States , the anti-communist liberalism embodied in Logue ’ s top-down urban planning was coming under pressure from below—from the civil rights movement and the New Left , from people who did not want to fight in Vietnam , and from those who rejected the terms of the postwar affluent society .
The tensions in Logue ’ s liberalism were on full display in New Haven .
At first , the city ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , recognizing that it held the potential for them to gain better housing .
But over time these hopes faded , especially as many displaced by redevelopment found it difficult to find new homes and were often relocated in neighborhoods or projects that were no improvement over what they left behind .
Community organizers began to show up at public meetings to criticize Logue and his fellow planners for making decisions about their city without consulting the people who would feel the strongest impact of those choices .
As one area resident said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Senator Paul Douglas on redevelopment in New Haven , “ You people have listened to the Mayor .
How about listening to us ?
” By the time of that forum , Logue had left for Boston .
He claimed he moved on because of his program ’ s success .
“ I had done about as much as I could do in New Haven except stay the course and see it through , ” he recalled .
“ After a while there ’ s not much challenge in that.
” But it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sense of optimism about New Haven as a model city was unjustified .
As early deindustrialization set in , the city ’ s racism and racial inequality became only more glaring .
Local white resistance to school desegregation expanded , and Yale continued to benefit far more from its relationship to the city than the city ’ s residents did , especially those of color .
Logue ’ s time in Boston was equally marked by victories and frustrations .
There , too , he relied centrally on leveraging federal money to stimulate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ challenges of a declining industrial economy and white resistance .
He began his time in the city with ambitious plans to rebuild its downtown .
He oversaw the construction of Government Center , a new set of headquarters for city , state , and federal offices that helped encourage commercial development .
Building on this success , he embarked on a series of renewal programs in Boston ’ s neighborhoods , where he sought to encourage racial integration by improving housing and constructing infrastructure and services , including better public schools .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to live side by side in racially integrated neighborhoods was far harder than it looked on paper .
Logue had trouble building as much affordable replacement housing as the city needed , which meant that Bostonians were displaced by his projects , leading only to further segregation and housing inequality .
Logue claimed to want to work with the neighborhoods to make sure his programs fit the needs and visions of residents , but he was more comfortable with communities that were willing to accept his expert knowledge , and in fact , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ organizing that resisted his urban renewal efforts or sought to redirect them in a way that more closely fit local needs .
When he tried to run for mayor of Boston in 1967 , he finished fourth in the primary—well behind Louise Day Hicks , whose claim to fame was her vigorous defense of segregation in Boston ’ s public schools .
Logue ’ s efforts could not keep open expressions of racism from surging to the forefront of the city ’ s politics .
From Boston , he went to Albany , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Logue to lead the Urban Development Corporation .
After the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 , Rockefeller established the UDC with a mandate to construct affordable housing in the state .
Under Logue ’ s leadership , the UDC was responsible for building about 25 percent of government-subsidized housing there , for some 100,000 people .
Among these were three “ new towns ” built from the ground up , including on Roosevelt Island .
In contrast to Logue ’ s earlier efforts , undertaken in the heyday of postwar @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the same way on federal money .
Instead , it sought to combine some public money ( from the state as well as the federal government ) with private investment raised through moral obligation bonds that carried no legal obligation to repay and thus did not require voter approval .
Logue and the UDC relied on Rockefeller ’ s close connections to real estate developers and the financial community .
( Rockefeller ’ s brother David Rockefeller was , after all , the president of Chase Manhattan Bank . )
But after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vice president under Gerald Ford , the problems with relying on the bond market to carry out the construction of affordable housing quickly became evident .
With the absence of public money , it was difficult to build low- and moderate-income housing that would be profitable—and unless it was , private lenders would call in their debt .
The UDC faced serious political obstacles as well .
When it sought to build low-income housing in Westchester County , just north of New York City , the proposals seemed crafted to mollify the residents @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Scarsdale , with projects that contained no more than 100 units of low-income housing mixed with moderate-income units , with veterans , area residents , employees of local businesses , and town and school district staffers to be given priority for them .
Instead , the plans met with intransigent opposition from suburbanites who had no intention of allowing their towns to become more diverse racially or economically .
As Cohen puts it , “ In town after town , something like a civil war broke out.
” Organizations like United Towns for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
At one point , a barn that the UDC was planning to convert into a community center was burned to the ground .
Logue received death threats and was taunted at community meetings : “ Get out , we don ’ t want you in Bedford !
” Meanwhile , the Nixon administration imposed a moratorium on the housing subsidies that had been key to the UDC ’ s financial projections , and Nelson Rockefeller ’ s departure meant that the UDC no longer had a key ally in Albany .
Still @ @ @ @ @ @ @ build , using the moral obligation bonds even though he no longer had a clear way of repaying the debt the UDC was accumulating .
By the mid- ’ 70s , the declining commitment of the federal and state governments to build affordable housing , the resistance the UDC faced locally , and Logue ’ s general indifference to the finances of the agency created a perfect storm .
Banks began refusing to lend to the UDC , and in February 1975 the agency defaulted on more than $ 100 million in debt @ @ @ @ @ @ @ put it , the underlying problem was that “ social goals are funded one way in this country and economic goals another.
” Logue and the UDC ’ s leaders had assumed that their obligation was to the people who might live in the homes they built , not to the bondholders , but the corporation officials soon realized their mistake .
An agency like the UDC could not fund itself through ever-increasing piles of debt .
The rules of the game for people like Logue had been changing even as they played @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the UDC ’ s failure suggested was that only a massive public commitment of resources could address the housing crisis .
Relying on the bond markets only empowered the financiers .
As Logue said , “ We can not allow basic public policy of this importance to be made in corporate board rooms and issued to public men by fiat.
” The problem was that in the absence of taxes and redistributive mechanisms that enabled social resources to be used for public goods like housing , there was no choice but to rely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mean that corporate boardrooms , in the end , made the rules .
Logue ’ s reputation was seriously tarnished by the UDC debacle .
It marked not only the failure of the agency but also the failure of the kind of urban liberalism to which he had devoted his life .
His last major project was an effort at redemption of sorts .
In New York City he headed the South Bronx Development Office under Mayor Ed Koch .
No love for him was lost upstate , and people in the governor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from his new post .
The new governor of New York , Hugh Carey , insisted , “ I don ’ t want any of my money to go to him.
” Despite the governor ’ s hostility to Logue , the SBDO undertook a variety of projects aimed at rehabilitating the South Bronx , including the construction of Charlotte Gardens : 90 single-family homes , subsidized for purchase , a pocket of suburbia abutting the area ’ s crumbling apartment towers .
Relying less and less on federal or state money , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on private foundations like Ford to help finance the construction .
The Charlotte Gardens project incorporated input from the Black and Puerto Rican neighborhood in which he worked and broke from his early top-down centralism , pointing toward a more democratic and inclusive model of urban renewal .
Yet at the same time , the project ’ s scale was much more limited and its ambitions smaller than those that defined his earlier career .
Logue retired from the SBDO in 1985 and returned to Massachusetts , where he was involved in local @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
He wrote letters to the editor and got in touch with his contacts in city government and at The Boston Globe to share his thoughts on public matters .
“ In a way he tried to go about doing things the same way he had done when he had the power , ” said one former colleague .
“ I think it was hard for him.
” Logue died suddenly in 2000 at almost 79 .
It is hard not to see in Logue ’ s story a parable for many of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the political dilemmas this legacy creates today .
On the one hand , he always believed in the importance of the public sector , especially the federal government , as a force that had the capacity to transform cities .
The problems of urban poverty , racism , inequality , and substandard housing were for Logue profound moral and political issues—ones that the private sector alone could never resolve and that required the commitment of the state .
It is as true today as it was in the mid-20th century that landlords @ @ @ @ @ @ @ housing that people so desperately need and that the consequences of overcrowded housing , rent instability , and eviction wreak havoc .
But on the other hand , the political framework Logue relied on frustrated his biggest goals .
Instead of seeing the key problems in terms of money , resources , and power , he treated the challenges posed by deindustrializing cities as issues of development—problems that could be solved by intelligent men working rationally and capably from above .
The issue was not simply one of participatory democracy versus top-down control @ @ @ @ @ @ @ never really had the power they wanted to begin with .
They tried to execute their visions and plans , but they did so in a context that favored suburbia , in which capital had free rein to leave the cities , in which bondholders had the final say , and in which white homeowners saw Black neighbors as a threat to all they held dear .
Logue and his ilk also tried to do so in a context in which they purposefully distanced themselves from the political ideas and radical social movements @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a more egalitarian outcome , one that took more seriously questions of power , class , race , and resources .
In other words , midcentury urban planning failed not because it was too ambitious but because from its outset , it was not ambitious enough , never really getting at the deeper inequalities that structured American society .
It stayed at the level of urban policy when what was needed was a challenge to power .
With deep archival research and a narrative sweep that fixes her subject in the arc of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vividly , illuminating his forcefulness , his passion , his masculine confidence .
She also provides a painful account of what he and so many liberals of his generation were up against .
The contrast between these two aspects of her story—Logue ’ s certitude crashing into the limits of what he was able to accomplish—at times makes Saving America ’ s Cities read a bit like a claustrophobic horror story .
Logue is increasingly hemmed in , his dreams and aspirations frustrated by the ever-dwindling federal resources on which they depended .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Lear of urban planning , following a dimming star of liberalism that was so clearly inadequate to its time .
The limits of Logue ’ s vision are evident all around us today .
The 21st century city in the United States has all but abandoned the ideals of integration and affordability .
Instead , American cities are organized around accumulated wealth , racial disparities , and delivering luxury consumption to a rarefied elite .
Given where we have ended up , it is hard to see Ed Logue and the political tradition @ @ @ @ @ @ @ between what they sought to achieve and the outcome was too great .
After the collapse of the UDC , the journalist Joseph Fried wrote a postmortem in The Nation in which he argued that the “ fundamental issue ” the UDC raised was that “ only a long-range , public effort will make possible the construction and rehabilitation needed ” for millions of Americans “ to live in decent housing and decent neighborhoods.
” The “ skittish and volatile ” private market could not accomplish this ; “ the job must be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ survey the failures of local and federal bodies today is to hear Fried ’ s words echo down the years .
The problems of American cities remain , as he put it then , a “ harsh and vivid reminder that American society is still a long way from meeting a moral obligation of its own .
”

This article appears in the November 2/9, 2020 issue.
As the coronavirus ricocheted through New York City this spring, among its many casualties was a certain image of life in the Big Apple. The foodie destinations, posh galleries, and pricey cocktail lounges sat deserted while city hospitals long scorned as antiquated, clunky, and ineffective became crowded, bustling centers of activity and pandemonium. If they didn’t abscond to their second homes, financiers and lawyers huddled in their apartments, and grocery store employees, doormen, UPS drivers, and postal workers all became consummate risk-takers. Spaces segregated from the middle class—homeless shelters, nursing homes, jails—were revealed as inextricably linked to the rest of the city on a microbial level, as the virus could not be kept out or contained within. In the pandemic city, the oft-praised prosperity of New York in the early years of the 21st century proved illusory or at least misdirected: a world of glittering condos and luxe hotels that somehow could not provide enough hospital masks to its nurses or figure out a way to keep its children safe. Books in Review Saving America’s Cities: Ed Logue and the Struggle to Renew Urban America in the Suburban Age By Lizabeth Cohen Buy this book
The virus held up a mirror to the city that revealed a very different image from that of a gleeful elegance and striving opportunity: a distorted, cruel urban landscape divided between those with the means and resources to depart and those who had no choice but to keep taking the subway, even as the viral wave crested. Zip code maps showing infection rates in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens compared with those in Manhattan told the story. When George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis, his death seemed to magnify the vulnerability, racism, and exclusion already evident, and New York, like many other places in the United States, justifiably erupted in protest.
As cities across the country and around the world struggle to cope with the ongoing pandemic, it is an opportune time to read Saving America’s Cities, Lizabeth Cohen’s excellent study of postwar urban planning. The period she chronicles is at once near and far from our own. Over the years that followed World War II, the federal government sought to address the problems of urban poverty and deindustrialization through a series of attempts at urban renewal. Much of the historical literature on these programs has focused on their failings—especially and most damningly with regard to public housing, which created what scholar Arnold Hirsch, writing about Chicago, called a “second ghetto.” Cohen, by contrast, views the contradictory legacy and aspirations of postwar urban liberalism as having much within them to admire, a case she makes by taking up the life of urban planner Ed Logue.
Logue’s name is little known today, but he was a renowned figure in the mid-20th century, dubbed “Mr. Urban Renewal” by The New York Times and the “Master Rebuilder” by The Washington Post. He brought federal redevelopment money to New Haven. He used public money to rebuild downtown Boston. He built the apartment towers on Roosevelt Island for New York City as well as affordable housing elsewhere throughout the state. For Cohen, his career was representative of a certain liberal hope: that professional expertise and federal funds could reverse the racial inequalities, suburban flight, unemployment, and disinvestment that plagued American cities in the second half of the 20th century.
Cohen makes a compelling case that a renewed faith in the public sector and the active participation of the federal government in rebuilding urban infrastructure and public housing are essential for any progress today, and she argues that Logue’s work demonstrates the potential of this approach as well as some of its successes, however partial. Yet at the same time, Saving America’s Cities is, purposefully or not, a study in urban liberalism’s failings and of the profound pressures that always constrained and shaped its aspirations and accomplishments. In the end, Logue’s career—which began with his trademark sunny confidence and brash appeal but ended with his back against the wall of declining federal money and slipping public support—cannot help but suggest the limits of postwar urban renewal as much as its possibilities. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
Ed Logue hailed from the heart of urban America, Philadelphia. Born in 1921, he grew up the oldest of five children in an Irish Catholic household. His father was a tax assessor, a well-paid public sector job that enabled him to send his children to private school and to summer at the Jersey shore. But after he died when Logue was just 13, the family fell into near poverty. The charity of an uncle enabled them to avoid destitution.
Despite the family’s travails, Logue went to Yale on a scholarship. During his time in college, he became involved in New Haven’s labor movement. He worked in the Yale dining room and gained a reputation as a firebrand; a supervisor later told the FBI that Logue had been known for spreading “malicious rumors” about management, calling Yale administrators “dictators” and “slave drivers.” After he graduated, he went to work as an organizer for the local that represented the university’s janitors, maids, and maintenance workers. He may have been a radical, but he was also a committed anti-communist, skeptical of the Communist Party’s role in local politics and dismissive of its broader program. As Cohen puts it, he was a “rebel in the belly of the establishment beast,” a New Dealer who believed in the role of the federal government and in the power of labor unions, but he was not someone who sought broader social transformation. Current Issue View our current issue
Logue fought in World War II and then attended Yale Law School on the GI Bill. But he was quickly bored and alienated by the life of an attorney. “The law is a whore’s trade,” he explained to a law school mentor. “I don’t want a nice law practice for anything but the income, and I’m a son of a bitch if I’ll throw away ten or twenty years of my life building up an income.” He considered a career in labor law, but here, too, his ambitions were larger than the role. Being a labor lawyer meant serving the labor movement but not leading it. Logue found himself drawn to politics instead, albeit not as a politician but as the labor secretary to Chester Bowles, a former New Dealer (and head of the Office of Price Administration, which regulated prices during World War II) who had become the governor of Connecticut. Logue then traveled with his boss to India when Bowles became the US ambassador, observing with great interest the community development work the Ford Foundation was doing in rural parts of the country.
In 1954, Logue returned to New Haven to work with the city’s new mayor, Richard Lee. Federal support for suburban development was most evident in subsidized home loans and tax breaks for homeowners as well as road construction, but there was still ample money available for cities, and Logue was able to win more than $130 million in federal aid (over $1 billion in today’s dollars). Cohen details how Logue and Lee used this money to make New Haven a “model modern city” and an example of “what can be accomplished when a full-scale attack on blight and poverty is undertaken.” With federal aid as well as foundation money, Logue and Lee rebuilt schools, developed an industrial center, and helped reshape the downtown commercial district. Logue also helped give shape to an increasingly familiar figure in East Coast cities: the urban planner who would operate with political reserve to create a city in the best interests of all.
With the emergence of civil rights and Black activism in New Haven, many of the problems with Logue’s model of urban planning came to the fore. The kind of renewal that Logue promoted at times involved displacing poorer residents and people of color. It also privileged a certain kind of rule by experts rather than the voices and power of the people most directly affected. Throughout the United States, the anti-communist liberalism embodied in Logue’s top-down urban planning was coming under pressure from below—from the civil rights movement and the New Left, from people who did not want to fight in Vietnam, and from those who rejected the terms of the postwar affluent society.
The tensions in Logue’s liberalism were on full display in New Haven. At first, the city’s Black residents greeted urban renewal with optimism, recognizing that it held the potential for them to gain better housing. But over time these hopes faded, especially as many displaced by redevelopment found it difficult to find new homes and were often relocated in neighborhoods or projects that were no improvement over what they left behind. Community organizers began to show up at public meetings to criticize Logue and his fellow planners for making decisions about their city without consulting the people who would feel the strongest impact of those choices. As one area resident said at a 1967 hearing held by former Illinois Senator Paul Douglas on redevelopment in New Haven, “You people have listened to the Mayor. How about listening to us?”
By the time of that forum, Logue had left for Boston. He claimed he moved on because of his program’s success. “I had done about as much as I could do in New Haven except stay the course and see it through,” he recalled. “After a while there’s not much challenge in that.” But it was already becoming clear that his complacent sense of optimism about New Haven as a model city was unjustified. As early deindustrialization set in, the city’s racism and racial inequality became only more glaring. Local white resistance to school desegregation expanded, and Yale continued to benefit far more from its relationship to the city than the city’s residents did, especially those of color.
Logue’s time in Boston was equally marked by victories and frustrations. There, too, he relied centrally on leveraging federal money to stimulate development and also came up against the challenges of a declining industrial economy and white resistance.
He began his time in the city with ambitious plans to rebuild its downtown. He oversaw the construction of Government Center, a new set of headquarters for city, state, and federal offices that helped encourage commercial development. Building on this success, he embarked on a series of renewal programs in Boston’s neighborhoods, where he sought to encourage racial integration by improving housing and constructing infrastructure and services, including better public schools. In practice, getting white and Black Bostonians to live side by side in racially integrated neighborhoods was far harder than it looked on paper. Logue had trouble building as much affordable replacement housing as the city needed, which meant that Bostonians were displaced by his projects, leading only to further segregation and housing inequality.
Logue claimed to want to work with the neighborhoods to make sure his programs fit the needs and visions of residents, but he was more comfortable with communities that were willing to accept his expert knowledge, and in fact, he was often surprised by the community organizing that resisted his urban renewal efforts or sought to redirect them in a way that more closely fit local needs. When he tried to run for mayor of Boston in 1967, he finished fourth in the primary—well behind Louise Day Hicks, whose claim to fame was her vigorous defense of segregation in Boston’s public schools. Logue’s efforts could not keep open expressions of racism from surging to the forefront of the city’s politics.
From Boston, he went to Albany, where New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller tapped Logue to lead the Urban Development Corporation. After the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, Rockefeller established the UDC with a mandate to construct affordable housing in the state. Under Logue’s leadership, the UDC was responsible for building about 25 percent of government-subsidized housing there, for some 100,000 people. Among these were three “new towns” built from the ground up, including on Roosevelt Island.
In contrast to Logue’s earlier efforts, undertaken in the heyday of postwar liberalism, the UDC could not rely in the same way on federal money. Instead, it sought to combine some public money (from the state as well as the federal government) with private investment raised through moral obligation bonds that carried no legal obligation to repay and thus did not require voter approval. Logue and the UDC relied on Rockefeller’s close connections to real estate developers and the financial community. (Rockefeller’s brother David Rockefeller was, after all, the president of Chase Manhattan Bank.) But after the governor left the state to become vice president under Gerald Ford, the problems with relying on the bond market to carry out the construction of affordable housing quickly became evident. With the absence of public money, it was difficult to build low- and moderate-income housing that would be profitable—and unless it was, private lenders would call in their debt.
The UDC faced serious political obstacles as well. When it sought to build low-income housing in Westchester County, just north of New York City, the proposals seemed crafted to mollify the residents of leafy enclaves such as Bedford and Scarsdale, with projects that contained no more than 100 units of low-income housing mixed with moderate-income units, with veterans, area residents, employees of local businesses, and town and school district staffers to be given priority for them. Instead, the plans met with intransigent opposition from suburbanites who had no intention of allowing their towns to become more diverse racially or economically. As Cohen puts it, “In town after town, something like a civil war broke out.” Organizations like United Towns for Home Rule sprang up to marshal resistance. At one point, a barn that the UDC was planning to convert into a community center was burned to the ground. Logue received death threats and was taunted at community meetings: “Get out, we don’t want you in Bedford!” Meanwhile, the Nixon administration imposed a moratorium on the housing subsidies that had been key to the UDC’s financial projections, and Nelson Rockefeller’s departure meant that the UDC no longer had a key ally in Albany. Still, Logue kept building and borrowing to build, using the moral obligation bonds even though he no longer had a clear way of repaying the debt the UDC was accumulating.
By the mid-’70s, the declining commitment of the federal and state governments to build affordable housing, the resistance the UDC faced locally, and Logue’s general indifference to the finances of the agency created a perfect storm. Banks began refusing to lend to the UDC, and in February 1975 the agency defaulted on more than $100 million in debt. As a spokesperson for the bankers put it, the underlying problem was that “social goals are funded one way in this country and economic goals another.” Logue and the UDC’s leaders had assumed that their obligation was to the people who might live in the homes they built, not to the bondholders, but the corporation officials soon realized their mistake. An agency like the UDC could not fund itself through ever-increasing piles of debt.
The rules of the game for people like Logue had been changing even as they played, but above all else, what the UDC’s failure suggested was that only a massive public commitment of resources could address the housing crisis. Relying on the bond markets only empowered the financiers. As Logue said, “We cannot allow basic public policy of this importance to be made in corporate board rooms and issued to public men by fiat.” The problem was that in the absence of taxes and redistributive mechanisms that enabled social resources to be used for public goods like housing, there was no choice but to rely on the credit markets—and that would always mean that corporate boardrooms, in the end, made the rules.
Logue’s reputation was seriously tarnished by the UDC debacle. It marked not only the failure of the agency but also the failure of the kind of urban liberalism to which he had devoted his life. His last major project was an effort at redemption of sorts. In New York City he headed the South Bronx Development Office under Mayor Ed Koch. No love for him was lost upstate, and people in the governor’s office sought to divert funding from his new post. The new governor of New York, Hugh Carey, insisted, “I don’t want any of my money to go to him.”
Despite the governor’s hostility to Logue, the SBDO undertook a variety of projects aimed at rehabilitating the South Bronx, including the construction of Charlotte Gardens: 90 single-family homes, subsidized for purchase, a pocket of suburbia abutting the area’s crumbling apartment towers. Relying less and less on federal or state money, Logue found himself forced to depend primarily on private foundations like Ford to help finance the construction. The Charlotte Gardens project incorporated input from the Black and Puerto Rican neighborhood in which he worked and broke from his early top-down centralism, pointing toward a more democratic and inclusive model of urban renewal.
Yet at the same time, the project’s scale was much more limited and its ambitions smaller than those that defined his earlier career. Logue retired from the SBDO in 1985 and returned to Massachusetts, where he was involved in local development efforts but moved increasingly into obscurity. He wrote letters to the editor and got in touch with his contacts in city government and at The Boston Globe to share his thoughts on public matters. “In a way he tried to go about doing things the same way he had done when he had the power,” said one former colleague. “I think it was hard for him.” Logue died suddenly in 2000 at almost 79.
It is hard not to see in Logue’s story a parable for many of the problems of postwar liberalism and some of the political dilemmas this legacy creates today. On the one hand, he always believed in the importance of the public sector, especially the federal government, as a force that had the capacity to transform cities. The problems of urban poverty, racism, inequality, and substandard housing were for Logue profound moral and political issues—ones that the private sector alone could never resolve and that required the commitment of the state. It is as true today as it was in the mid-20th century that landlords and developers will not provide the affordable housing that people so desperately need and that the consequences of overcrowded housing, rent instability, and eviction wreak havoc.
But on the other hand, the political framework Logue relied on frustrated his biggest goals. Instead of seeing the key problems in terms of money, resources, and power, he treated the challenges posed by deindustrializing cities as issues of development—problems that could be solved by intelligent men working rationally and capably from above.
The issue was not simply one of participatory democracy versus top-down control; it was that men like Logue never really had the power they wanted to begin with. They tried to execute their visions and plans, but they did so in a context that favored suburbia, in which capital had free rein to leave the cities, in which bondholders had the final say, and in which white homeowners saw Black neighbors as a threat to all they held dear. Logue and his ilk also tried to do so in a context in which they purposefully distanced themselves from the political ideas and radical social movements that might have pushed urban liberalism toward a more egalitarian outcome, one that took more seriously questions of power, class, race, and resources. In other words, midcentury urban planning failed not because it was too ambitious but because from its outset, it was not ambitious enough, never really getting at the deeper inequalities that structured American society. It stayed at the level of urban policy when what was needed was a challenge to power.
With deep archival research and a narrative sweep that fixes her subject in the arc of midcentury US history, Cohen sketches Logue vividly, illuminating his forcefulness, his passion, his masculine confidence. She also provides a painful account of what he and so many liberals of his generation were up against. The contrast between these two aspects of her story—Logue’s certitude crashing into the limits of what he was able to accomplish—at times makes Saving America’s Cities read a bit like a claustrophobic horror story. Logue is increasingly hemmed in, his dreams and aspirations frustrated by the ever-dwindling federal resources on which they depended. He comes to seem like the King Lear of urban planning, following a dimming star of liberalism that was so clearly inadequate to its time.
The limits of Logue’s vision are evident all around us today. The 21st century city in the United States has all but abandoned the ideals of integration and affordability. Instead, American cities are organized around accumulated wealth, racial disparities, and delivering luxury consumption to a rarefied elite. Given where we have ended up, it is hard to see Ed Logue and the political tradition he embodies as saviors. The gap between what they sought to achieve and the outcome was too great. After the collapse of the UDC, the journalist Joseph Fried wrote a postmortem in The Nation in which he argued that the “fundamental issue” the UDC raised was that “only a long-range, public effort will make possible the construction and rehabilitation needed” for millions of Americans “to live in decent housing and decent neighborhoods.” The “skittish and volatile” private market could not accomplish this; “the job must be done by American society generally.” To survey the failures of local and federal bodies today is to hear Fried’s words echo down the years. The problems of American cities remain, as he put it then, a “harsh and vivid reminder that American society is still a long way from meeting a moral obligation of its own.”
A previous version of this article incorrectly implied that Paul Douglas was an active US Senator during a 1967 hearing on New Haven redevelopment. At the time, he was chairman of the National Commission on Urban Problems, appointed by President Lyndon Johnson after losing his Senate seat the previous fall.


thenation--2020-10-19--What Joe Biden Can Learn From Jacinda Ardern

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern accepted her landslide reelection win Saturday with a message for her country and the rest of the world : “ We are living in an increasingly polarized world , a place where more and more people have lost the ability to see one another ’ s point of view .
I hope that this election , New Zealand has shown that this is not who we are .
That as a nation , we can listen and we can debate .
After all , we are small to lose sight of other people ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ always great at bringing people together , but they also don ’ t need to tear one another apart.
” Ardern , the 40-year-old leader of New Zealand ’ s social democratic Labour Party , did not explicitly mention the highest-profile election of this fall .
But it was hard not to recognize in her victory speech a nod to voters in the United States , especially when she said , “ This has not been an ordinary election and it ’ s not an ordinary time .
It ’ s been full @ @ @ @ @ @ @ set out to be an antidote to that.
” Since the former president of the International Union of Socialist Youth took office three years ago as a relative newcomer to national politics who cobbled together an unlikely multiparty coalition , Ardern has governed as the alternative to Donald Trump .
She has confronted white nationalism , racism , and xenophobia .
She has responded to a mass shooting that killed 51 Muslim worshippers by leading the charge to ban semiautomatic weapons ban and implement meaningful gun control regulations .
And she has met @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the necessary combination of “ science and solidarity ” that United Nations Secretary General António Guterres has identified as the formula for success .
That response has been so starkly distinct from Trump ’ s lies and neglect that the New Zealander has become a folk hero for thinking Americans .
The New York Times , which editorialized last year that “ America Deserves a Leader as Good as Jacinda Ardern , ” summed up in April the prevalent feeling about New Zealand ’ s response to Covid-19 : As the pandemic has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ national leaders across the globe have been severely tested .
Some have fallen short , sometimes dismally , but there are also those leaders who have risen to the moment , demonstrating resolve , courage , empathy , respect for science and elemental decency , and thereby dulling the impact of the disease on their people .
The master class on how to respond belongs to Jacinda Ardern , the 39-year-old prime minister of New Zealand .
On March 21 , when New Zealand still had only 52 confirmed cases , she told @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would follow in ramping up its response .
Her message was clear : “ These decisions will place the most significant restrictions on New Zealanders ’ movements in modern history .
But it is our best chance to slow the virus and to save lives.
” And it was compassionate : “ Please be strong , be kind and united against Covid-19.
” Ardern ’ s approach to the pandemic has not been a radical one .
It ’ s been a necessary one .
And it has worked .
New Zealand flattened @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and it has maintained its safe-and-healthy status with considerable success since then .
A country with just under 5 million people , New Zealand has reported fewer than 2,000 coronavirus cases and 25 deaths .
A relatively comparable US state , Wisconsin , with a population of 5.8 million , has had more than 175,000 cases and roughly 1,600 deaths .
New Zealand has been so successful in controlling the virus that—at a time when the United States is struggling with a deadly surge that has seen hot spots develop in Wisconsin and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ senses returned to normal .
Now , New Zealand voters have placed a big stamp of approval on Ardern ’ s efforts .
In a country where prime ministers have historically had to pull together multiparty coalitions in order to govern , Ardern ’ s Labour Party won 64 of 120 seats and could govern without a coalition .
Noting that “ the Jacinda Ardern-led New Zealand Labour party has swept to its largest election night victory since 1946 , winning 49.1 % of the party vote and 64 seats in parliament , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the result “ one for the history books.
” The Election Isn ’ t Over Until Trump ’ s Gone The Green Party , one of Labour ’ s 2017–20 coalition partners that ran to the left of Ardern ’ s party this year , won another 10 seats .
Progressives hope Labour and the Greens will align to form a more clearly left-leaning coalition that will encourage and embolden Ardern to reject caution and compromise when it comes to addressing inequality and the climate crisis .
The size of Labour ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coalition that extends from it , will matter because , while Ardern managed crises well during her first term , she will now be called on to keep a bold promise to “ build back better from the COVID crisis.
” The prime minister recognizes that her government must seize “ our opportunity to build an economy that works for everyone , to keep creating decent jobs , to up-skill and train our people , to protect our environment and address our climate challenges , to take on poverty and inequality , to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ times into cause for hope and optimism.
” “ Build back better ” sound familiar ?
It should .
Biden has framed much of his fall campaigning around the same message .
As Election Day in this year of Covid-19 approaches , he should double down on it .
New Zealand and the United States are different countries , and Ardern and Biden are dramatically different political figures .
Yet , the New Zealand result offers a lesson that an unapologetically bold response to the pandemic , and to the economic challenges that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and politically wise .
In the final weeks of the United States ’ 2020 campaign , Biden and Democrats running at the federal and state levels—especially in battlegrounds such as Wisconsin—should amplify their commitment to take every necessary step to control the virus that has killed 225,000 Americans , infected almost 8.5 million , and is currently surging at record levels in states across the country .
People are sick and tired of the lies , the mismanagement , and the grotesquely irresponsible behavior not just of Donald Trump but of Republicans at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the Democrats must recognize this in the waning days of the election and finish the 2020 campaign with a politics of science and solidarity that aims not just to beat Trump but to secure a result that is “ one for the history books .
”

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern accepted her landslide reelection win Saturday with a message for her country and the rest of the world: “We are living in an increasingly polarized world, a place where more and more people have lost the ability to see one another’s point of view. I hope that this election, New Zealand has shown that this is not who we are. That as a nation, we can listen and we can debate. After all, we are small to lose sight of other people’s perspective. Elections aren’t always great at bringing people together, but they also don’t need to tear one another apart.”
Ardern, the 40-year-old leader of New Zealand’s social democratic Labour Party, did not explicitly mention the highest-profile election of this fall. But it was hard not to recognize in her victory speech a nod to voters in the United States, especially when she said, “This has not been an ordinary election and it’s not an ordinary time. It’s been full of uncertainty and anxiety. And we set out to be an antidote to that.” Want more from John? Check out the first-ever Nation Festival featuring John Nichols alongside an extraordinary group of speakers. Nov. 18-21.
Since the former president of the International Union of Socialist Youth took office three years ago as a relative newcomer to national politics who cobbled together an unlikely multiparty coalition, Ardern has governed as the alternative to Donald Trump. She has confronted white nationalism, racism, and xenophobia. She has responded to a mass shooting that killed 51 Muslim worshippers by leading the charge to ban semiautomatic weapons ban and implement meaningful gun control regulations. And she has met the challenge of the coronavirus pandemic with the necessary combination of “science and solidarity” that United Nations Secretary General António Guterres has identified as the formula for success.
That response has been so starkly distinct from Trump’s lies and neglect that the New Zealander has become a folk hero for thinking Americans.
The New York Times, which editorialized last year that “America Deserves a Leader as Good as Jacinda Ardern,” summed up in April the prevalent feeling about New Zealand’s response to Covid-19:
Ardern’s approach to the pandemic has not been a radical one. It’s been a necessary one. And it has worked. New Zealand flattened its Covid curve by early May, and it has maintained its safe-and-healthy status with considerable success since then. A country with just under 5 million people, New Zealand has reported fewer than 2,000 coronavirus cases and 25 deaths. A relatively comparable US state, Wisconsin, with a population of 5.8 million, has had more than 175,000 cases and roughly 1,600 deaths.
New Zealand has been so successful in controlling the virus that—at a time when the United States is struggling with a deadly surge that has seen hot spots develop in Wisconsin and other states—the island nation has in many senses returned to normal. Now, New Zealand voters have placed a big stamp of approval on Ardern’s efforts. In a country where prime ministers have historically had to pull together multiparty coalitions in order to govern, Ardern’s Labour Party won 64 of 120 seats and could govern without a coalition. Noting that “the Jacinda Ardern-led New Zealand Labour party has swept to its largest election night victory since 1946, winning 49.1% of the party vote and 64 seats in parliament,” Massey University professor Claire Robinson declared the result “one for the history books.” More From John Nichols A GOP Debate Without Trump Is the Definition of Pointlessness August 11, 2023 A Win for Abortion Rights, a Win for Democracy: Ohio Voters Reject Issue 1 August 9, 2023 The Biggest Threat to Donald Trump Could Be the Constitution Itself August 4, 2023
The Green Party, one of Labour’s 2017–20 coalition partners that ran to the left of Ardern’s party this year, won another 10 seats. Progressives hope Labour and the Greens will align to form a more clearly left-leaning coalition that will encourage and embolden Ardern to reject caution and compromise when it comes to addressing inequality and the climate crisis.
The size of Labour’s win, and the nature of any coalition that extends from it, will matter because, while Ardern managed crises well during her first term, she will now be called on to keep a bold promise to “build back better from the COVID crisis.” The prime minister recognizes that her government must seize “our opportunity to build an economy that works for everyone, to keep creating decent jobs, to up-skill and train our people, to protect our environment and address our climate challenges, to take on poverty and inequality, to turn all of the uncertainty and hard times into cause for hope and optimism.”
“Build back better” sound familiar? It should. Biden has framed much of his fall campaigning around the same message. As Election Day in this year of Covid-19 approaches, he should double down on it.
New Zealand and the United States are different countries, and Ardern and Biden are dramatically different political figures. Yet, the New Zealand result offers a lesson that an unapologetically bold response to the pandemic, and to the economic challenges that extend from it, is both practically and politically wise. In the final weeks of the United States’ 2020 campaign, Biden and Democrats running at the federal and state levels—especially in battlegrounds such as Wisconsin—should amplify their commitment to take every necessary step to control the virus that has killed 225,000 Americans, infected almost 8.5 million, and is currently surging at record levels in states across the country.
People are sick and tired of the lies, the mismanagement, and the grotesquely irresponsible behavior not just of Donald Trump but of Republicans at the federal and state levels. Biden and the Democrats must recognize this in the waning days of the election and finish the 2020 campaign with a politics of science and solidarity that aims not just to beat Trump but to secure a result that is “one for the history books.”


thenation--2020-10-19--Trump Keeps Slinging Mud, but This Time It’s Not Sticking

A skilled entertainer , Donald Trump has a natural instinct for pleasing hardcore fans who never get tired of old favorites .
If he has a joke that gets a laugh , he ’ ll tell it again and again .
If a nickname like “ Crooked Hillary ” or a slogan like “ lock her up ” works up the crowd , he ’ ll keep hammering at it with no fear of being tiresome .
His rallies often seem less like political events than entertainment extravaganzas , where groupies eagerly hang on his words waiting for the greatest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ quality makes Trump all the more annoying to his political opponents .
But his willingness to work within the narrow ambit of a limited repertoire of catchphrases has served him well .
What works for rallies , though , might not apply to messaging aimed at a broader audience .
In keeping with his entertainer ’ s habits , Trump has tried to make 2020 a close sequel to 2016 , ignoring the fact that the country has changed under his watch .
The goal of mimicking the success of 2016 is most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the son of rival Joe Biden , Hunter .
Want more from Jeet ?
Check out the first-ever Nation Festival featuring Jeet Heer alongside an extraordinary group of speakers .
Nov. 18-21 .
Last Wednesday , the New York Post published an article claiming that the paper had obtained explosive e-mails and text messages from a laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden .
These documents purportedly showed the Biden family profiting from corrupt practices in Ukraine .
The article cited two sources , former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Trump adviser @ @ @ @ @ @ @ adopt the story and connect it with his campaign message .
In two unusually deft and pointed tweets on October 17 , Trump wrote : These words were a striking echo of his closing argument in the last weeks of 2016 : that Hillary Clinton was the personification of a corrupt elite that profited from globalization that impoverished ordinary Americans .
Democrats Should Welcome More Trump Town Halls Barrett ’ s Evasions Show Why Expanding the Court Is Necessary President Quack Is Ready to Hawk His Magic Elixir Some Trump allies used the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of his 2016 campaign : the false allegations of child sexual abuse against Clinton and her circle .
On Sunday , Fox News host Maria Bartiromo claimed that an FBI agent who investigates child pornography had subpoenaed the laptop .
She asked Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin to “ connect the dots.
” He replied , “ Well , I just think you made the connection.
” On social media , right-wing provocateurs are more explicit about trying to turn this lurid smear into Pizzagate redux .
Wayne Root , a reactionary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
My sources- as high up as it gets- watched videos on Hunter ’ s laptops TODAY .
Just told me point blank…no rumor…they saw Hunter raping & torturing little Chinese children…Chinese govt has the same videos…Biden is compromised .
Blackmailed .
Can NEVER be Prez.
” As of Sunday night , his tweet got more than 25,000 retweets .
So all the elements of the 2016 smear campaign are in place : hacked e-mails ; allegations of an FBI investigation , of Democratic self-dealing and corruption , and of depraved sex crimes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bannon and Giuliani .
Despite these similarities , it is unlikely that this pseudo-scandal will have the same impact as those that targeted Clinton .
One crucial difference is that Bannon and Giuliani have been much less successful at covering their tracks .
Bannon ’ s real coup in his previous caper was understanding how to plant stories in the mainstream media so they would get credibility .
In 2012 , Bannon and journalist Peter Schweizer created the nonprofit Government Accountability Institute ( GAI ) , a think tank allegedly investigating corruption .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to write the book Clinton Cash .
The findings of this book were reported in The New York Times as if they were news .
Clinton Cash was later subjected to devastating criticism , but it had already achieved its objective of spreading the idea that the Clinton Foundation was corrupt .
Bannon had found a cunning way to exploit the financial crunch faced by many news outlets , which no longer had the resources to carry out as many investigations as they would like .
“ The modern economics of the newsroom @ @ @ @ @ @ @ staffs , ” Bannon told Bloomberg Businessweek in 2015 .
“ You wouldn ’ t get a Watergate , a Pentagon Papers today , because nobody can afford to let a reporter spend seven months on a story .
We can .
We ’ re working as a support function.
” As Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Joshua Green observed , the GAI found “ the secret to how conservatives can hack the mainstream media.
” The contrast between Clinton ’ s various e-mail pseudo-scandals and the one around the laptop is striking .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ York Times but in the New York Post , a partisan tabloid .
Giuliani told the Times he gave the story to the Post because “ either nobody else would take it , or if they took it , they would spend all the time they could to try to contradict it before they put it out.
” Even within the Post , the story was regarded with suspicion .
A Times report makes clear that the article appeared in the Post only after strenuous internal battles : “ The New York Post @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on Wednesday was written mostly by a staff reporter who refused to put his name on it , two Post employees said .
Bruce Golding , a reporter at the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid since 2007 , did not allow his byline to be used because he had concerns over the article ’ s credibility , the two Post employees said , speaking on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.
” The byline was given to two other writers , one a former Fox News producer who had never had a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other a staff writer who learned that her name was on the article only after it was published .
The shifty origins of the article in the Post show why the current pseudo-scandal is unlikely to gain mainstream credibility .
The genius of the Trump campaign ’ s 2016 mudslinging was that Trump ’ s team figured out ways to do it behind the screen of trusted allegedly neutral parties : mainstream newspapers like Times , the FBI , even WikiLeaks .
None of these institutions were seen as partisan .
The fact @ @ @ @ @ @ @ find neutral validators is in no small part related to the difference between Clinton and Biden .
Clinton had in the course of her political career become subject to suspicion and sometimes hostility from the mainstream media and the FBI .
This animus was motivated by a mixture of misogyny as well as political disagreements .
Biden , for better or worse , is seen as a less disruptive figure than Clinton , certainly not someone to shake up gender hierarchies .
A Washington fixture , he ’ s accepted as one of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sense of the term .
The Trump campaign ’ s current mudslinging is similar in style to 2016 ’ s—but it has gotten much sloppier .
It is treated with much more suspicion by the mainstream media , which has been subjected to criticism for laundering Trump ’ s smear jobs in the past .
No longer able to hide behind the mask of nonpartisan allies , the Trump team will have a harder time reaching the persuadable voters they need .

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A skilled entertainer, Donald Trump has a natural instinct for pleasing hardcore fans who never get tired of old favorites. If he has a joke that gets a laugh, he’ll tell it again and again. If a nickname like “Crooked Hillary” or a slogan like “lock her up” works up the crowd, he’ll keep hammering at it with no fear of being tiresome. His rallies often seem less like political events than entertainment extravaganzas, where groupies eagerly hang on his words waiting for the greatest hits to echo again. This repetitive quality makes Trump all the more annoying to his political opponents. But his willingness to work within the narrow ambit of a limited repertoire of catchphrases has served him well.
What works for rallies, though, might not apply to messaging aimed at a broader audience. In keeping with his entertainer’s habits, Trump has tried to make 2020 a close sequel to 2016, ignoring the fact that the country has changed under his watch. The goal of mimicking the success of 2016 is most clearly visible in the manufactured scandal around the son of rival Joe Biden, Hunter. Want more from Jeet? Check out the first-ever Nation Festival featuring Jeet Heer alongside an extraordinary group of speakers. Nov. 18-21.
Last Wednesday, the New York Post published an article claiming that the paper had obtained explosive e-mails and text messages from a laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden. These documents purportedly showed the Biden family profiting from corrupt practices in Ukraine. The article cited two sources, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon.
Trump was quick to adopt the story and connect it with his campaign message. In two unusually deft and pointed tweets on October 17, Trump wrote:
Joe Biden is the living embodiment of the corrupt political class that enriched itself while draining the economic life and soul from our Country. For the last 47 years, Joe Biden shipped away your jobs, shut down your factories, threw open your borders, and ravaged our cities… …while sacrificing American blood and treasure in endless foreign wars. Joe Biden is a corrupt politician — and the Biden family is a criminal enterprise. This makes Crooked Hillary Clinton look like amateur hour!
These words were a striking echo of his closing argument in the last weeks of 2016: that Hillary Clinton was the personification of a corrupt elite that profited from globalization that impoverished ordinary Americans. More From Jeet Heer The Indigenous Roots of Robbie Robertson’s Rock and Roll Revolution August 14, 2023 Why Does This Racist Keep Getting Silicon Valley Money? August 11, 2023 When Phallocrats Go Limp August 4, 2023
Some Trump allies used the alleged laptop revelations to resuscitate another facet of his 2016 campaign: the false allegations of child sexual abuse against Clinton and her circle. On Sunday, Fox News host Maria Bartiromo claimed that an FBI agent who investigates child pornography had subpoenaed the laptop. She asked Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin to “connect the dots.” He replied, “Well, I just think you made the connection.” On social media, right-wing provocateurs are more explicit about trying to turn this lurid smear into Pizzagate redux. Wayne Root, a reactionary pundit, tweeted, “BREAKING NEWS. My sources- as high up as it gets- watched videos on Hunter’s laptops TODAY. Just told me point blank…no rumor…they saw Hunter raping & torturing little Chinese children…Chinese govt has the same videos…Biden is compromised. Blackmailed. Can NEVER be Prez.” As of Sunday night, his tweet got more than 25,000 retweets. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
So all the elements of the 2016 smear campaign are in place: hacked e-mails; allegations of an FBI investigation, of Democratic self-dealing and corruption, and of depraved sex crimes against children; and the machinations of Bannon and Giuliani.
Despite these similarities, it is unlikely that this pseudo-scandal will have the same impact as those that targeted Clinton. One crucial difference is that Bannon and Giuliani have been much less successful at covering their tracks. Bannon’s real coup in his previous caper was understanding how to plant stories in the mainstream media so they would get credibility.
In 2012, Bannon and journalist Peter Schweizer created the nonprofit Government Accountability Institute (GAI), a think tank allegedly investigating corruption. Schweizer used the resources of the GAI to write the book Clinton Cash. The findings of this book were reported in The New York Times as if they were news. Clinton Cash was later subjected to devastating criticism, but it had already achieved its objective of spreading the idea that the Clinton Foundation was corrupt.
Bannon had found a cunning way to exploit the financial crunch faced by many news outlets, which no longer had the resources to carry out as many investigations as they would like. “The modern economics of the newsroom don’t support big investigative reporting staffs,” Bannon told Bloomberg Businessweek in 2015. “You wouldn’t get a Watergate, a Pentagon Papers today, because nobody can afford to let a reporter spend seven months on a story. We can. We’re working as a support function.” Current Issue View our current issue
As Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Joshua Green observed, the GAI found “the secret to how conservatives can hack the mainstream media.”
The contrast between Clinton’s various e-mail pseudo-scandals and the one around the laptop is striking. The new pseudo-scandal appeared not in The New York Times but in the New York Post, a partisan tabloid. Giuliani told the Times he gave the story to the Post because “either nobody else would take it, or if they took it, they would spend all the time they could to try to contradict it before they put it out.”
Even within the Post, the story was regarded with suspicion. A Times report makes clear that the article appeared in the Post only after strenuous internal battles: “The New York Post’s front-page article about Hunter Biden on Wednesday was written mostly by a staff reporter who refused to put his name on it, two Post employees said. Bruce Golding, a reporter at the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid since 2007, did not allow his byline to be used because he had concerns over the article’s credibility, the two Post employees said, speaking on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.” The byline was given to two other writers, one a former Fox News producer who had never had a byline in the Post before and the other a staff writer who learned that her name was on the article only after it was published.
The shifty origins of the article in the Post show why the current pseudo-scandal is unlikely to gain mainstream credibility. The genius of the Trump campaign’s 2016 mudslinging was that Trump’s team figured out ways to do it behind the screen of trusted allegedly neutral parties: mainstream newspapers like Times, the FBI, even WikiLeaks. None of these institutions were seen as partisan.
The fact that the Trump campaign can’t find neutral validators is in no small part related to the difference between Clinton and Biden. Clinton had in the course of her political career become subject to suspicion and sometimes hostility from the mainstream media and the FBI. This animus was motivated by a mixture of misogyny as well as political disagreements. Biden, for better or worse, is seen as a less disruptive figure than Clinton, certainly not someone to shake up gender hierarchies. A Washington fixture, he’s accepted as one of the good old boys, in every sense of the term.
The Trump campaign’s current mudslinging is similar in style to 2016’s—but it has gotten much sloppier. It is treated with much more suspicion by the mainstream media, which has been subjected to criticism for laundering Trump’s smear jobs in the past. No longer able to hide behind the mask of nonpartisan allies, the Trump team will have a harder time reaching the persuadable voters they need.


thenation--2020-10-19--How Climate-Driven Disasters Threaten Climate Progress

At the start of September , the dramatic airlift evacuations of campers hemmed in by the Creek Fire at Mammoth Pool in Northern California captivated the country , presaging what has since become a horrifying season of conflagrations across the West .
The California Air National Guard ’ s harrowing rescue mission to Mammoth Pool drew national attention because it seemed to portray an idyllic wilderness landscape converted into a hellscape .
As California ’ s wildfires often do , it illustrated the threat of climate change in brutal monochrome .
Mammoth Pool , though , is not a wild @ @ @ @ @ @ @ entire Upper San Joaquin River watershed , are pieces of an elaborately engineered series of dams , reservoirs , penstocks , and power plants known as the Big Creek Hydroelectric Project .
Big Creek provides Southern California Edison , America ’ s second-largest electric utility , with its largest source of carbon-free power .
As the Creek Fire engulfed Mammoth Pool and raced south toward Big Creek ’ s other reservoirs , Southern California Edison evacuated the facility , losing nearly a gigawatt of flexible electric capacity in the midst of spiking power @ @ @ @ @ @ @ managed to avoid rolling blackouts that weekend by issuing an emergency statewide call for power conservation .
Over the past several years , explosive wildfires have emphasized the mounting threat that climate-exacerbated natural disasters pose to California ’ s electrical grid .
Sweeping Public Safety Power Shutoffs , which aim to prevent new fires by shutting off electrical service to targeted areas during risky weather conditions , have reinforced consumers ’ sense of that threat ; this past weekend , high heat and low humidity led electric utilities to cut off power to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s proliferating wildfires , which this year include six of the 20 largest fires in state history , are a predictable consequence of climate change , globalization , and misguided land management .
But even as climate change fans the fires , those fires also threaten efforts to combat climate change .
The crisis at Big Creek illustrates the mounting danger that worsening natural disasters pose to California ’ s renewable power systems in particular .
The first components of Big Creek were blasted out of the Sierra Nevadas over a century @ @ @ @ @ @ @ far-reaching campaign to secure new power sources for greater Los Angeles and its vast network of electric streetcars .
Constructed 240 miles from the population it served , Big Creek ’ s transmission lines remained the world ’ s longest and highest-voltage for decades , while Big Creek itself became a coveted vacation destination .
The facility ’ s reservoirs and a nearby company lodge drew Los Angeles ’ s well-to-do—the direct predecessors of the campers rescued from Mammoth Pool .
Over the subsequent decades , the Big Creek complex has expanded in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to become the largest source of hydroelectric power in a state studded with major dams .
In more recent years , as the state has turned its attention to climate change , Big Creek ’ s ability to provide both steady baseload power and rapid-response peaking power without emitting carbon dioxide has made it a vital piece of Southern California ’ s electricity supply .
Now , though , the company town of Big Creek has been evacuated and burned , and the fire-damaged facility itself remains offline .
Though generation at Big @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the preceding weeks , it played a crucial role in keeping lights and air conditioners on during California ’ s sweeping August heat waves , when capacity shortages forced California grid operators to order the state ’ s first rolling blackouts in nearly 20 years .
At the same time as those climate-exacerbated heat waves increase electrical demand , climate-exacerbated wildfires and droughts are taking renewable power plants offline .
Even as Big Creek lies idle , San Diego ’ s Sunrise PowerLink , one of California ’ s largest solar-power transmission @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by the Valley Fire .
Invasive grasses and shifting weather patterns are leading wildfire into even California ’ s deserts , potentially threatening the region ’ s vast solar farms .
And the massive smoke plumes that carpeted much of California—in themselves representing immense emissions of carbon dioxide—have also reduced the amount of sunlight reaching solar panels across the state .
Without a doubt , climate change threatens the reliability of fossil-fueled power stations as well .
Despite ill-informed claims to the contrary , during the recent power shortages renewable power resources proved @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and natural gas .
Nevertheless , California ’ s diverse portfolio of renewable energy technologies are especially threatened by climate-fueled wildfires and droughts precisely because they are intertwined with the landscape , drawing on pockets of reliable wind , stretches of plunging river , and expanses of uninterrupted sunshine .
Over the past few years , millions of Americans have begun to directly experience climate change in visceral , obvious , and often terrifying ways .
The West Coast ’ s horrific and inescapable fire season may just provoke broader climate action .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ comprehensive threat posed by climate change , that threat is itself expanding .
We are facing a vicious double bind , as climate change creates disasters which themselves undermine climate progress .
Grid operators and government regulators have yet to fully acknowledge this reality .
August ’ s power shortage stemmed originally from the state Public Utilities Commission ’ s years-long reluctance to order enough new renewable resources to replace closing fossil fuel plants .
When August ’ s climate-exacerbated heat waves prompted rolling blackouts , California regulators responded by extending the lifetimes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ power plants .
Four massive coastal natural gas plants , which had been slated to retire in response to strict state environmental regulations , have now been resurrected to help buttress California ’ s electrical grid against its increasingly inhospitable climate .
While those emergency decisions solved the immediate problem of insufficient power capacity , they also guaranteed that future heat waves will be even hotter .
Instead of such shortsighted measures , California needs to double down on climate solutions that will help our power system survive the coming decades ’ intensifying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gotten lots of buzz but little action in California , can shift major electrical loads to better accommodate future heat waves , while distributed renewables like rooftop solar and widespread electricity storage systems can make both urban and rural areas less vulnerable to transmission-line failures .
Climate-resilient design , which can be as straightforward—if expensive—as burying transmission lines , can make vital pieces of infrastructure both less vulnerable and less dangerous within changing landscapes .
Beyond such technological fixes , returning wild lands across the state to the traditional prescribed burning practices of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to ease wildfires ’ severity .
Southern California Edison , for its part , prevented even worse devastation at Big Creek by conducting regular prescribed burns in a tentative but encouraging partnership with the North Fork Mono Tribe , on whose lands Big Creek sits .
In the midst of breathtaking destruction , the Big Creek disaster demonstrates how solving climate change gets harder as the climate warms .
Adaptation remains possible , and offers vast rewards , but achieving those solutions will only become more challenging the longer we wait .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ private utilities nor state agencies are matching their spending to their ambitions .
But the costs of inaction are far , far higher .
Every American is witnessing how climate change itself threatens climate progress .
The only sane solution is to recommit to rapid , sweeping climate action .

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At the start of September, the dramatic airlift evacuations of campers hemmed in by the Creek Fire at Mammoth Pool in Northern California captivated the country, presaging what has since become a horrifying season of conflagrations across the West. The California Air National Guard’s harrowing rescue mission to Mammoth Pool drew national attention because it seemed to portray an idyllic wilderness landscape converted into a hellscape. As California’s wildfires often do, it illustrated the threat of climate change in brutal monochrome.
Mammoth Pool, though, is not a wild alpine lake. It, and the entire Upper San Joaquin River watershed, are pieces of an elaborately engineered series of dams, reservoirs, penstocks, and power plants known as the Big Creek Hydroelectric Project. Big Creek provides Southern California Edison, America’s second-largest electric utility, with its largest source of carbon-free power. As the Creek Fire engulfed Mammoth Pool and raced south toward Big Creek’s other reservoirs, Southern California Edison evacuated the facility, losing nearly a gigawatt of flexible electric capacity in the midst of spiking power demand.
California’s grid operators managed to avoid rolling blackouts that weekend by issuing an emergency statewide call for power conservation. Over the past several years, explosive wildfires have emphasized the mounting threat that climate-exacerbated natural disasters pose to California’s electrical grid. Sweeping Public Safety Power Shutoffs, which aim to prevent new fires by shutting off electrical service to targeted areas during risky weather conditions, have reinforced consumers’ sense of that threat; this past weekend, high heat and low humidity led electric utilities to cut off power to tens of thousands of customers. California’s proliferating wildfires, which this year include six of the 20 largest fires in state history, are a predictable consequence of climate change, globalization, and misguided land management. But even as climate change fans the fires, those fires also threaten efforts to combat climate change. The crisis at Big Creek illustrates the mounting danger that worsening natural disasters pose to California’s renewable power systems in particular.
The first components of Big Creek were blasted out of the Sierra Nevadas over a century ago, a distant outpost in a far-reaching campaign to secure new power sources for greater Los Angeles and its vast network of electric streetcars. Constructed 240 miles from the population it served, Big Creek’s transmission lines remained the world’s longest and highest-voltage for decades, while Big Creek itself became a coveted vacation destination. The facility’s reservoirs and a nearby company lodge drew Los Angeles’s well-to-do—the direct predecessors of the campers rescued from Mammoth Pool. Over the subsequent decades, the Big Creek complex has expanded in concert with Southern California’s population to become the largest source of hydroelectric power in a state studded with major dams. In more recent years, as the state has turned its attention to climate change, Big Creek’s ability to provide both steady baseload power and rapid-response peaking power without emitting carbon dioxide has made it a vital piece of Southern California’s electricity supply. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
Now, though, the company town of Big Creek has been evacuated and burned, and the fire-damaged facility itself remains offline. Though generation at Big Creek had already shrunk due to drought in the preceding weeks, it played a crucial role in keeping lights and air conditioners on during California’s sweeping August heat waves, when capacity shortages forced California grid operators to order the state’s first rolling blackouts in nearly 20 years.
At the same time as those climate-exacerbated heat waves increase electrical demand, climate-exacerbated wildfires and droughts are taking renewable power plants offline. Even as Big Creek lies idle, San Diego’s Sunrise PowerLink, one of California’s largest solar-power transmission conduits, has also been shut down by the Valley Fire. Invasive grasses and shifting weather patterns are leading wildfire into even California’s deserts, potentially threatening the region’s vast solar farms. And the massive smoke plumes that carpeted much of California—in themselves representing immense emissions of carbon dioxide—have also reduced the amount of sunlight reaching solar panels across the state.
Without a doubt, climate change threatens the reliability of fossil-fueled power stations as well. Despite ill-informed claims to the contrary, during the recent power shortages renewable power resources proved themselves at least as reliable as coal and natural gas. Nevertheless, California’s diverse portfolio of renewable energy technologies are especially threatened by climate-fueled wildfires and droughts precisely because they are intertwined with the landscape, drawing on pockets of reliable wind, stretches of plunging river, and expanses of uninterrupted sunshine. Current Issue View our current issue
Over the past few years, millions of Americans have begun to directly experience climate change in visceral, obvious, and often terrifying ways. The West Coast’s horrific and inescapable fire season may just provoke broader climate action. But as America belatedly awakens to the comprehensive threat posed by climate change, that threat is itself expanding. We are facing a vicious double bind, as climate change creates disasters which themselves undermine climate progress.
Grid operators and government regulators have yet to fully acknowledge this reality. August’s power shortage stemmed originally from the state Public Utilities Commission’s years-long reluctance to order enough new renewable resources to replace closing fossil fuel plants. When August’s climate-exacerbated heat waves prompted rolling blackouts, California regulators responded by extending the lifetimes of the state’s largest fossil-fuel-burning power plants. Four massive coastal natural gas plants, which had been slated to retire in response to strict state environmental regulations, have now been resurrected to help buttress California’s electrical grid against its increasingly inhospitable climate. While those emergency decisions solved the immediate problem of insufficient power capacity, they also guaranteed that future heat waves will be even hotter.
Instead of such shortsighted measures, California needs to double down on climate solutions that will help our power system survive the coming decades’ intensifying disasters. Demand-response programs, which have gotten lots of buzz but little action in California, can shift major electrical loads to better accommodate future heat waves, while distributed renewables like rooftop solar and widespread electricity storage systems can make both urban and rural areas less vulnerable to transmission-line failures. Climate-resilient design, which can be as straightforward—if expensive—as burying transmission lines, can make vital pieces of infrastructure both less vulnerable and less dangerous within changing landscapes. Beyond such technological fixes, returning wild lands across the state to the traditional prescribed burning practices of their indigenous residents also has the potential to ease wildfires’ severity. Southern California Edison, for its part, prevented even worse devastation at Big Creek by conducting regular prescribed burns in a tentative but encouraging partnership with the North Fork Mono Tribe, on whose lands Big Creek sits.
In the midst of breathtaking destruction, the Big Creek disaster demonstrates how solving climate change gets harder as the climate warms. Adaptation remains possible, and offers vast rewards, but achieving those solutions will only become more challenging the longer we wait. The best solutions are expensive, and neither private utilities nor state agencies are matching their spending to their ambitions. But the costs of inaction are far, far higher. Every American is witnessing how climate change itself threatens climate progress. The only sane solution is to recommit to rapid, sweeping climate action.