thenation--2020-10-27--Trump Attempts One More Preelection Power Grab

With a week to go until Election Day , I am wracking my brains to remember if I have ever heard l a closing argument as incoherent as Trump ’ s , and I can ’ t .
If Trump had espoused a coherent ideological vision , no matter how much I opposed it , I might have had to accept that at least it was internally consistent .
But there ’ s no there there .
Trump ’ s reelection bid has devolved into the world ’ s most destructive vanity project .
When CBS ’ s Lesley Stahl @ @ @ @ @ @ @ campaign , the pandemic , and his plans for a second term , he got so irate that he walked out of the interview—and then tried to puncture the impact of his on-camera tantrum by leaking the White House tape of the interview days before it was due to air .
Noise , Noise , and yet more Noise .
More recently , at one of his Covid super-spreader campaign rallies , this time in Lumberton , N.C. , Trump again bemoaned what he believes to be a mega-conspiracy to hype the disease @ @ @ @ @ @ @ defeat .
Trump Sinks to New Depths of Deceit and Depravity He said that for the television news programs , it was all “ ” Covid , Covid , Covid ” —and then added bitterly that if a plane with 500 people goes down , the media pays no heed to it .
Ponder that inane comment for a moment , coming as it did on the day America posted a high of more than 83,000 new coronavirus cases , meaning that a few weeks from now the country will likely see a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the idea that the media routinely ignores mass-casualty plane crashes is simply untrue .
The last time ( in fact , the only time ) that many people died in the United States as a result of planes crashing was on September 11 , 2001 .
And while I know memory can play strange tricks , I ’ m fairly certain that the media , not just in the United States but globally , devoted more than passing attention to the horrors of that day .
In fact , whenever a jet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ headlines .
Witness Boeing ’ s travails in the wake of the 737 Max crashes in Indonesia and in Ethiopia .
When I key “ Boeing 737 Max Crash in Indonesia ” into Google search , it instantly generates more than a million results .
When I search under “ Missing Malaysian Flight MH370 ” to find information on the ghost flight that simply vanished off tracking radars in 2014 , the search generates nearly 400,000 results .
But , second , even if it somehow were true that the media routinely ignored @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than 220,000 dead Americans from Covid-19 to a single air crash demonstrates , if any more evidence were needed , the combination of ineptitude and staggering uncaringness that Trump is , bizarrely , pitching to the public as a personality plus in his reelection bid .
In fact , day in day out , ever since the administration lost control of the virus ’ s spread back in the late winter , the daily death toll has been the equivalent of between one and three packed 747 planes going down in mid-flight .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s offensive analogy , the country has lost more than 440 jumbo jets ’ worth of passengers , with hundreds more planes on the runway just waiting to be destroyed over the coming months .
Trump might not want to see it , but that vast scale of devastation is precisely why the media and the general public are paying close attention to the pandemic and to the administration ’ s criminally inept response .
No .
45 , by contrast , is focusing on other things .
He is , for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ grab Senate Republicans have carried out this past month in their Operation Warp Speed effort to hold hearings for and confirm—a week before Election Day—a new Supreme Court justice .
All in one-tenth the time that majority leader Mitch McConnell sat on the Merrick Garland nomination back in 2016 .
And Trump is using his executive-order pen to lock into place new hiring-and-firing practices for federal employees that will , if he is reelected , inevitably lead to a Trumpification of almost the entire civil service , since they will permit what are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and purges for huge numbers of career officials .
The executive order in effect strips much of the civil service work force of union protections , and if anyone is deemed to be a “ poor performer ” —read , non-loyalists—makes it far easier to fire them .
This really is banana republic territory .
In fact , the change is so stunning in its implications , so destructive of the very concept of a professional , politically independent federal bureaucracy , that in most weeks it would have dominated the headlines and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ week , it became a reality that received almost no public attention .
For the final Signal this week , there is of course the ongoing effort to challenge vote counts around the country .
First , Trump tried to slow down the Postal Service so that votes wouldn ’ t arrive in time to be counted .
When that didn ’ t work , he began to challenge the vote count itself .
Late last week , the Trump team went to court to try to stop the counting of early votes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ includes Las Vegas and its environs and is thus critical to Democratic hopes of victory in that state .
Although a judge denied the Trump attorneys ’ initial motion to stop the count , the case will be heard more fully later this week .
Trump ’ s lawyers are arguing that there isn ’ t adequate oversight of the count , in particular that observers aren ’ t being given an opportunity to see how signatures are being verified , and they are claiming that not enough votes are being rejected during @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into Team Trump ’ s likely postelection strategy , a throw-it-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks effort to gum up the vote count in the courts , in the key weeks leading up to December 8—when states need to certify their votes so that electors can vote in the Electoral College—wherever it looks like things aren ’ t going Trump ’ s way .
Which brings me back to the core issue .
There is no room for complacency in this final week , no room to simply assume that things will work out in this election , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ If you haven ’ t yet voted , do so .
If your friends and colleagues and family members haven ’ t yet voted , don ’ t be shy about badgering them to make the time to cast their ballots .
For the larger the vote margins against him in key states , the harder it will be for Trump to implement successfully his democracy-destroying , burn-it-all-down strategy .

With a week to go until Election Day, I am wracking my brains to remember if I have ever heard a closing argument as incoherent as Trump’s, and I can’t.
If Trump had espoused a coherent ideological vision, no matter how much I opposed it, I might have had to accept that at least it was internally consistent. But there’s no there there. Trump’s reelection bid has devolved into the world’s most destructive vanity project.
When CBS’s Lesley Stahl asked Trump about the tone of his campaign, the pandemic, and his plans for a second term, he got so irate that he walked out of the interview—and then tried to puncture the impact of his on-camera tantrum by leaking the White House tape of the interview days before it was due to air. Noise, Noise, and yet more Noise.
More recently, at one of his Covid super-spreader campaign rallies, this time in Lumberton, N.C., Trump again bemoaned what he believes to be a mega-conspiracy to hype the disease just long enough to ensure his election defeat. More Signal:Noise Trump Sinks to New Depths of Deceit and Depravity Sasha Abramsky Trump Is Butchering Our Regulatory Infrastructure Sasha Abramsky
He said that for the television news programs, it was all “”Covid, Covid, Covid”—and then added bitterly that if a plane with 500 people goes down, the media pays no heed to it.
Ponder that inane comment for a moment, coming as it did on the day America posted a high of more than 83,000 new coronavirus cases, meaning that a few weeks from now the country will likely see a sharp increase in daily deaths.
First, the idea that the media routinely ignores mass-casualty plane crashes is simply untrue. The last time (in fact, the only time) that many people died in the United States as a result of planes crashing was on September 11, 2001. And while I know memory can play strange tricks, I’m fairly certain that the media, not just in the United States but globally, devoted more than passing attention to the horrors of that day. Current Issue View our current issue
In fact, whenever a jet plane goes down, it makes world headlines. Witness Boeing’s travails in the wake of the 737 Max crashes in Indonesia and in Ethiopia. When I key “Boeing 737 Max Crash in Indonesia” into Google search, it instantly generates more than a million results. When I search under “Missing Malaysian Flight MH370” to find information on the ghost flight that simply vanished off tracking radars in 2014, the search generates nearly 400,000 results. 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
But, second, even if it somehow were true that the media routinely ignored massive air crashes, to compare more than 220,000 dead Americans from Covid-19 to a single air crash demonstrates, if any more evidence were needed, the combination of ineptitude and staggering uncaringness that Trump is, bizarrely, pitching to the public as a personality plus in his reelection bid. In fact, day in day out, ever since the administration lost control of the virus’s spread back in the late winter, the daily death toll has been the equivalent of between one and three packed 747 planes going down in mid-flight. At this point, to push Trump’s offensive analogy, the country has lost more than 440 jumbo jets’ worth of passengers, with hundreds more planes on the runway just waiting to be destroyed over the coming months.
Trump might not want to see it, but that vast scale of devastation is precisely why the media and the general public are paying close attention to the pandemic and to the administration’s criminally inept response.
No. 45, by contrast, is focusing on other things.
He is, for example, reveling in the vast power grab Senate Republicans have carried out this past month in their Operation Warp Speed effort to hold hearings for and confirm—a week before Election Day—a new Supreme Court justice. All in one-tenth the time that majority leader Mitch McConnell sat on the Merrick Garland nomination back in 2016.
And Trump is using his executive-order pen to lock into place new hiring-and-firing practices for federal employees that will, if he is reelected, inevitably lead to a Trumpification of almost the entire civil service, since they will permit what are, in essence, political loyalty tests and purges for huge numbers of career officials. The executive order in effect strips much of the civil service work force of union protections, and if anyone is deemed to be a “poor performer”—read, non-loyalists—makes it far easier to fire them.
This really is banana republic territory. In fact, the change is so stunning in its implications, so destructive of the very concept of a professional, politically independent federal bureaucracy, that in most weeks it would have dominated the headlines and created huge pushback pressures. But this week, it became a reality that received almost no public attention.
For the final Signal this week, there is of course the ongoing effort to challenge vote counts around the country. First, Trump tried to slow down the Postal Service so that votes wouldn’t arrive in time to be counted. When that didn’t work, he began to challenge the vote count itself. Late last week, the Trump team went to court to try to stop the counting of early votes in Clark County, Nev., which includes Las Vegas and its environs and is thus critical to Democratic hopes of victory in that state. Although a judge denied the Trump attorneys’ initial motion to stop the count, the case will be heard more fully later this week.
Trump’s lawyers are arguing that there isn’t adequate oversight of the count, in particular that observers aren’t being given an opportunity to see how signatures are being verified, and they are claiming that not enough votes are being rejected during the count.
This is a glimpse into Team Trump’s likely postelection strategy, a throw-it-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks effort to gum up the vote count in the courts, in the key weeks leading up to December 8—when states need to certify their votes so that electors can vote in the Electoral College—wherever it looks like things aren’t going Trump’s way.
Which brings me back to the core issue. There is no room for complacency in this final week, no room to simply assume that things will work out in this election, in which everything is at stake. If you haven’t yet voted, do so. If your friends and colleagues and family members haven’t yet voted, don’t be shy about badgering them to make the time to cast their ballots. For the larger the vote margins against him in key states, the harder it will be for Trump to implement successfully his democracy-destroying, burn-it-all-down strategy.


thenation--2020-10-27--Along the Keystone XL Pipeline, Hoping for a Miracle

The ongoing struggle for racial justice .
The future for immigrant families .
The health and well-being of all Americans .
The very fate of our fragile planet .
The United States faces a crossroads in this year ’ s elections .
Seeking out the stories flying under the national radar , The Nation and Magnum Foundation are partnering on What ’ s At Stake , a series of photo essays from across the country through the lenses of independent imagemakers .
Follow the whole series here .
This installment was produced with support from the Economic Hardship Reporting Project @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the leaves were beginning to change color and the sun shed a warm , golden hue across the vast landscape in Northeastern Montana .
Lance Fourstar and Angeline Cheek , community organizers and activists from Fort Peck Indian Reservation , weaved their way through bumpy and rugged terrain in a dark green Ford crew cab , having driven through this land countless times before .
They were headed to the Missouri River , where a large , controversial infrastructure project is planned that will cut through just south of the reservation .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ and dense prairie .
Fourstar stopped at the edge of a lookout onto the Missouri River , North America ’ s longest river .
“ This is it , ” he said , referring to the point to which his GPS device had led him on a previous visit .
Fourstar spread his arms wide , pointing in the direction that TransCanada , the Canadian energy company , plans for the Keystone XL pipeline to cross the river .
This proposed crossing sits two miles upriver from the spillway of Fort Peck dam @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Water Supply System that will provide drinking water for up to 30,000 people .
Cheek and Fourstar also worry about the contamination of their traditional medicine , including sage and other things that are integral to their community ’ s practices and ceremonies .
Fort Peck Indian Reservation lies to the North of the Missouri River , and Fort Peck tribes have treaty rights to the waters , yet they were not consulted about the construction of the pipeline .
The proposed route will also pass directly through burial grounds and sacred sites @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Keystone XL pipeline because of the impact the project was having on Indigenous women .
In 2017 , I began reporting a series of stories about the ways Indigenous women were being targeted in Saskatchewan , the Canadian province I ’ m from , directly north of Montana .
In the past few years , however , I expanded this work across the border into Montana and North Dakota and learned that the extractive industry that is increasingly driving the economy of this region is directly linked to the violence facing women and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ project .
The influx of workers—mostly young , mostly men—who come to work on the infrastructure projects , and the destruction of land that ensues , has immeasurable consequences on the many communities that make their homes near the pipeline route .
Since the Keystone XL pipeline was first proposed in 2008 , it has become one of the most controversial energy projects in North America , stirring conflict across the political spectrum and among the communities in this small corner of Montana .
I traveled back to the region this fall , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in order to understand how communities living along the proposed route view the project now .
I focused on the individuals and communities who stand to lose the most if the United States continues to prioritize fossil fuels over all else .
The pipeline , expected to be operational in 2023 , would transmit 830,000 barrels of crude oil a day from Alberta ’ s tar sands to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico , crossing through the US Midwest .
Environmentalists believe that should the pipeline succeed , it will commit North @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , dooming any realistic effort to curb climate change .
“ The reality of the footprint is so much beyond what the pipeline itself is just doing .
[ There are ] spills and leaks and those kinds of risks , but folks living there are already experiencing increased truck traffic and risks of Covid , ” said Gabby Brown , the senior press secretary of the environmental organization Sierra Club .
Frank Smith , a senator from Poplar , Mt.
, who actively opposes the pipeline , shared similar concerns .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the pipe , ” he told me .
“ We know from history that the question is not if a pipeline spills but when .
This tar sands oil is nasty stuff that is impossible to clean up when it leaks .
Our water system will be destroyed by a KXL spill .
We refuse to sacrifice our water for the sake of a Canadian oil company , ” he said at a rally in Billings on October 29 , 2019 .
In November 2015 , then-President Barack Obama killed the $ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would cause climate-change-accelerating emissions and would do little to drive the American economy .
But two months after taking office , President Donald Trump signed an executive order bringing both the Keystone XL pipeline and the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline back to life .
Since then , TransCanada has faced intense opposition from environmentalists , tribes , and politicians for failing to adequately assess the impacts the project will have on waterways , wildlife , and the people who live along the pipeline route .
The US Army Corps of Engineers has attempted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fast-track water crossing permit .
But a federal judge , in response to a lawsuit filed in July of last year by members of the Northern Plains Resource Council and other environmental groups , prohibited the Corps from using this permit .
Plaintiffs claim that the Corps violates the Clean Water Act and challenges the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act .
“ The idea that a foreign country could impose imminent domain and violate the sovereignty of another country with the support of our so-called leaders is unbelievable… .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ short-term jobs and longtime destruction ?
” Dena Hoff , a plaintiff and member of the Northern Plains Resource Council , said to me this month .
The fight over the pipeline comes in the midst of extreme weather patterns throughout the state : Annual temperatures in Montana have increased more than they have in the rest of the nation , and some farmers are losing crops at increased rates , which many attribute to climate change already underway .
Wade Sikorski , a plaintiff with the Northern Plains Resource Council and a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ The thing that I worry about most is the impact [ the pipeline ] will have on global warming and how it will affect extreme weather events.
” Sikorski fears that “ extreme weather events could put us out of business in just a few decades… .
basically , it comes down to food or oil , ” he said .
Despite strong opposition to the pipeline , the northeastern corner of the state , where the pipeline will pass , is still a Republican stronghold .
Frank Mehling , a rancher @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but doesn ’ t really favor either candidate in the presidential election .
He will be voting for President Trump , however , because he believes a higher national minimum wage—a policy Joe Biden has endorsed—would put him out of business .
The wrangling over the Keystone XL project has put the very future of our environment on the ballot this November .
Biden has vowed to kill the pipeline—Trump will forge ahead with it .
“ We need elected officials who are going to be helping to pave the path forward to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be moving towards renewable energy… .
We don ’ t need a Trump administration propping up the fossil fuel industry , locking us into decades of climate polluting fossil fuel infrastructure… .
That has never been more clear , ” Gabby Brown told me .
Next week , Americans will decide whether they want to invest in oil or food .

Angeline Cheek, an environmental activist, stands beside the Missouri River. “This is our medicine,” she said, referring to the the plants and herbs used among Native American communities for medicinal and ceremonial purposes, which she fears could be contaminated by a pipeline spill. (Sara Hylton / Redux Pictures)
The ongoing struggle for racial justice. The future for immigrant families. The health and well-being of all Americans. The very fate of our fragile planet. The United States faces a crossroads in this year’s elections. Seeking out the stories flying under the national radar, The Nation and Magnum Foundation are partnering on What’s At Stake, a series of photo essays from across the country through the lenses of independent imagemakers. Follow the whole series here. This installment was produced with support from the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.
On a warm afternoon in October, the leaves were beginning to change color and the sun shed a warm, golden hue across the vast landscape in Northeastern Montana. Lance Fourstar and Angeline Cheek, community organizers and activists from Fort Peck Indian Reservation, weaved their way through bumpy and rugged terrain in a dark green Ford crew cab, having driven through this land countless times before. They were headed to the Missouri River, where a large, controversial infrastructure project is planned that will cut through just south of the reservation.
They parked and walked through sage brush and dense prairie. Fourstar stopped at the edge of a lookout onto the Missouri River, North America’s longest river. “This is it,” he said, referring to the point to which his GPS device had led him on a previous visit.
Lance Fourstar, an environmental activist from Fort Peck Indian Reservation, worries that the pipeline could have disastrous consequences for his community. (Sara Hylton / Redux Pictures)
Fourstar spread his arms wide, pointing in the direction that TransCanada, the Canadian energy company, plans for the Keystone XL pipeline to cross the river. This proposed crossing sits two miles upriver from the spillway of Fort Peck dam and threatens the Assiniboine and Sioux Rural Water Supply System that will provide drinking water for up to 30,000 people. Cheek and Fourstar also worry about the contamination of their traditional medicine, including sage and other things that are integral to their community’s practices and ceremonies. Fort Peck Indian Reservation lies to the North of the Missouri River, and Fort Peck tribes have treaty rights to the waters, yet they were not consulted about the construction of the pipeline. The proposed route will also pass directly through burial grounds and sacred sites.
A view from the Fort Peck dam. TC Energy plans to build the pipeline two miles upriver from the spillway of the dam, and the pipeline will cross 28 feet under the spillway. (Sara Hylton / Redux Pictures)
I first became interested in the Keystone XL pipeline because of the impact the project was having on Indigenous women. In 2017, I began reporting a series of stories about the ways Indigenous women were being targeted in Saskatchewan, the Canadian province I’m from, directly north of Montana. In the past few years, however, I expanded this work across the border into Montana and North Dakota and learned that the extractive industry that is increasingly driving the economy of this region is directly linked to the violence facing women and Indigenous communities along the length of the project. The influx of workers—mostly young, mostly men—who come to work on the infrastructure projects, and the destruction of land that ensues, has immeasurable consequences on the many communities that make their homes near the pipeline route.
A “no trespassing” sign outside of what activists believe to be the construction of a “man camp” near Baker, Mt. According to Sikorski, a map made by TC Energy shows this location as slated to hold a large man camp that would include housing for hundreds if not thousands of men to work on the Keystone XL and related projects. (Sara Hylton / Redux Pictures)
Since the Keystone XL pipeline was first proposed in 2008, it has become one of the most controversial energy projects in North America, stirring conflict across the political spectrum and among the communities in this small corner of Montana. I traveled back to the region this fall, with the looming elections in mind, in order to understand how communities living along the proposed route view the project now. I focused on the individuals and communities who stand to lose the most if the United States continues to prioritize fossil fuels over all else.
The pipeline, expected to be operational in 2023, would transmit 830,000 barrels of crude oil a day from Alberta’s tar sands to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico, crossing through the US Midwest. Environmentalists believe that should the pipeline succeed, it will commit North America to continued investment in fossil fuels, dooming any realistic effort to curb climate change.
Sections of pipe that will be used to construct the Keystone XL pipeline are stored in a field near the border of Montana and North Dakota. While the actual laying of the pipe has been halted because TC Energy and its employees do not have the proper permits, preconstruction activities have continued. (Sara Hylton / Redux Pictures)
Vermae Taylor spent time in Standing Rock opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline and continues to fight against the construction of TC Energy’s Keystone XL. “They’re going to ruin the water.… [there are] tens of thousands of people downstream who depend on the Missouri.… I guess I will always be anti-KXL for as long as I live.” (Sara Hylton / Redux Pictures)
“The reality of the footprint is so much beyond what the pipeline itself is just doing. [There are] spills and leaks and those kinds of risks, but folks living there are already experiencing increased truck traffic and risks of Covid,” said Cathy Collentine, the senior press secretary of the environmental organization Sierra Club.
Frank Smith, a state senator running to be a state representative. “We know from history that the question is not if a pipeline spills but when,” he told a rally in Helena. “Our water system will be destroyed by a KXL spill.” (Sara Hylton / Redux Pictures)
Frank Smith, a senator from Poplar, Mt., who actively opposes the pipeline, shared similar concerns. “The vibration alone may cause a break in the pipe,” he told me. “We know from history that the question is not if a pipeline spills but when. This tar sands oil is nasty stuff that is impossible to clean up when it leaks. Our water system will be destroyed by a KXL spill. We refuse to sacrifice our water for the sake of a Canadian oil company,” he said at a rally in Billings on October 29, 2019.
Frank Smith displays a printout of where the Keystone XL pipeline would cross in the region—the small circles are burial sites or grounds sacred to the tribes that live in the area, he said. (Sara Hylton / Redux Pictures)
In November 2015, then-President Barack Obama killed the $8 billion project, arguing that it would cause climate-change-accelerating emissions and would do little to drive the American economy. But two months after taking office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order bringing both the Keystone XL pipeline and the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline back to life. Since then, TransCanada has faced intense opposition from environmentalists, tribes, and politicians for failing to adequately assess the impacts the project will have on waterways, wildlife, and the people who live along the pipeline route.
The US Army Corps of Engineers has attempted to push through construction under Permit 12—a fast-track water crossing permit. But a federal judge, in response to a lawsuit filed in July of last year by members of the Northern Plains Resource Council and other environmental groups, prohibited the Corps from using this permit. Plaintiffs claim that the Corps violates the Clean Water Act and challenges the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. “The idea that a foreign country could impose imminent domain and violate the sovereignty of another country with the support of our so-called leaders is unbelievable…. What is the benefit? A few short-term jobs and longtime destruction?” Dena Hoff, a plaintiff and member of the Northern Plains Resource Council, said to me this month.
In 2015, a pipeline that crosses Dena Hoff’s land in Glendive, Mt., leaked 40,000 gallons of crude oil into the Yellowstone River, contaminating the water supply. “This river, the Milk River, the Missouri River, iconic, historic, environmentally important, economically important and they’re going to risk destroying it for what? Because Trump and his buddies are invested?” (Sara Hylton / Redux Pictures)
The fight over the pipeline comes in the midst of extreme weather patterns throughout the state: Annual temperatures in Montana have increased more than they have in the rest of the nation, and some farmers are losing crops at increased rates, which many attribute to climate change already underway. Wade Sikorski, a plaintiff with the Northern Plains Resource Council and a farmer in Baker, told me, “The thing that I worry about most is the impact [the pipeline] will have on global warming and how it will affect extreme weather events.” Sikorski fears that “extreme weather events could put us out of business in just a few decades…. basically, it comes down to food or oil,” he said.
Wade Sikorski’s corn crop was partially destroyed by a hail storm. “It was the worst hail storm of my life,” he said. Extreme weather events have become more common in the region, according to Sikorski. (Sara Hylton / Redux Pictures)
Despite strong opposition to the pipeline, the northeastern corner of the state, where the pipeline will pass, is still a Republican stronghold. Frank Mehling, a rancher around Baker, opposes the pipeline, but doesn’t really favor either candidate in the presidential election. He will be voting for President Trump, however, because he believes a higher national minimum wage—a policy Joe Biden has endorsed—would put him out of business.
Frank and Charlene Mehling own 12,000 acres of land and all of their income is from livestock. Mr. Mehling doesn’t care much for either presidential candidate, but will be voting for Trump nevertheless. “The future worries me a whole bunch, but I guess we won’t be around much longer to worry about it.” (Sara Hylton / Redux Pictures)
The Mehlings’ ranch near Baker, Mt. (Sara Hylton / Redux Pictures)
Spencer Wahl works on the Mehlings’ ranch. A big Second Amendment supporter, Wahl said he will be voting for Trump. (Sara Hylton / Redux Pictures)
Bill Whitehead, chairman of the Assiniboine Sioux Rural Water Supply System and member of the Northern Plains Resource Council. “I’ve been involved in three lawsuits against the state,” he said. “Fighting for our rights.… we’re not like white people.… we have a responsibility for seven generations. That’s why so much of our identity is the water, the land, the air, and the responsibility for our people.… we never give up. I’m not done until I die.” (Sara Hylton / Redux Pictures)
The wrangling over the Keystone XL project has put the very future of our environment on the ballot this November. Biden has vowed to kill the pipeline—Trump will forge ahead with it. “We need elected officials who are going to be helping to pave the path forward to expedite how quickly we are going to be moving towards renewable energy…. We don’t need a Trump administration propping up the fossil fuel industry, locking us into decades of climate polluting fossil fuel infrastructure…. That has never been more clear,” Cathy Collentine told me.
Next week, Americans will decide whether they want to invest in oil or food.


thenation--2020-10-27--The Very Human Labor That Powers Artificial Intelligence

In 2015 , Caroline Sinders was working as a design researcher at IBM when she began to have questions about how Watson , the company ’ s artificial intelligence system , was being developed .
AI systems like Watson must be “ trained ” with data sets—for example , given a large batch of confirmed photographs of stop signs from different angles , in different lighting , and of different quality to be able to recognize stop signs on their own .
Sinders was curious about these data sets : The process of correctly categorizing millions of data points seemed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ right ; where , exactly , was all this data coming from ?
“ A lot of my coworkers were like , ‘ I don ’ t know why you ’ re asking us these questions , we ’ re just supposed to build this system out , ’ ” she recalls .
While Sinders ’ s coworkers may have been able to push the question aside , finding the answer of where the data sets necessary to train artificial intelligence systems come from eventually led her to the world of crowd-working platforms @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other platforms such as Fiverr , Clickworker , Microworker , and Crowdcloud allow employers to offer workers repetitive , task-based assignments at flat rates .
Because all the work is digital , workers from around the world perform tasks on these platforms—and given that crowd-workers are considered independent contractors , minimum wage laws don ’ t apply .
Artificial intelligence systems , Sinders discovered , still depend on very human grunt work for their raw material .
To illustrate the human cost of artificial intelligence—the millions of hours of work that have gone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ making the most profitable AI possible—Sinders created the Technically Responsible Knowledge Wage Calculator .
How Crowdworkers Became the Ghosts in the Digital Machine As its name suggests , the TRK Wage Calculator allows users to calculate earnings for crowd-working assignments .
The calculator features three sliders : number of images to label ( labeling data is a common task in artificial intelligence development ) , price per task , and time per task .
The results are bleak .
According to the calculator , an average assignment , labeling 3,200 images for 32 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ minutes per image , would yield a worker less than $ 63 per day—which , the calculator points out , works out to less than minimum wage in Washington , the state in which Amazon is headquartered .
The TRK Wage Calculator does not capture the full complexity of crowd-working , nor is it intended to .
While most workers on Mechanical Turk reside in the United States ( there are more than a million workers worldwide ) , it goes without saying that they aren ’ t all found in Washington .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ it is both the state with the highest minimum wage in the United States and home to Amazon .
These details contribute to the conception of the TRK Wage Calculator as a “ mathematical provocation , ” rather than a genuine tool—an artful way of calling out Amazon for allowing the ruthless exploitation of workers , which it could easily prevent by setting parameters for pricing .
( Amazon did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this article . )
Sinders created the TRK Wage Calculator as part of her residency @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is responsible for the development of the Firefox web browser and , more generally , is dedicated to keeping the Internet open and accessible .
Sinders ’ s prompt during her residency was to explore artificial intelligence , which she decided to pursue because of lingering questions from her time at IBM and her own ongoing project , Feminist Data Set , examining how the development of artificial intelligence can integrate feminist values like fair compensation .
“ Using intersectional feminism as a way to interrogate machine learning—that ’ s an interrogation of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” she explains .
“ So then you have to think about labor , right ?
” For further perspective into the development of artificial intelligence , Sinders joined Mechanical Turk as a worker and interviewed other crowd-workers in the United States and India .
( After the United States , India is the second most prevalent nationality of workers on Mechanical Turk . )
The experience and interviews revealed how even an apparently fruitful crowd-working assignment can become a morass of additional tasks .
“ What I realized was that time isn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the interfaces , but time is a major component of how you do work , ” Sinders explains .
With crowd-work priced per assignment or per task , the amount of time involved is obscured .
A $ 50 assignment might involve six hours of work—or 16 hours of work .
The former is one day of work at the federal minimum wage in the United States ; the latter is two days of work well below the minimum wage ( or one especially hellish day of overtime at the same rate ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ may underestimate the amount of time necessary to complete their assignments , especially if they lack experience completing the tasks themselves and fail to account for realities like fatigue , to say nothing of break time for meals or bathroom visits .
Such genuine misestimation is compounded by outright lowballing , resulting in Mechanical Turk workers ’ earning an estimated $ 2 per hour on average .
“ When you don ’ t think about time , it doesn ’ t account for how you can be paid radically differently , ” says @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ‘ Please label these 1,000 images and here ’ s $ 50 , ’ that may sound really good at first—except if you ask how long it takes.
” Besides Mechanical Turk , one of the other crowd-working platforms that Sinders focused on when creating the TRK Wage Calculator was CrowdFlower , which was acquired by Appen in 2019 .
Appen now provides artificial-intelligence-related services to Amazon , Microsoft , Adobe , and other tech companies .
“ Appen collects and labels images , text , speech , audio , video , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to build and continuously improve artificial intelligence systems , ” explains Brian Reavey , a director at the company .
“ Our platform allows clients to specify tasks needed for their specific project .
For example , a company working on voice commands to improve a vehicle ’ s infotainment system might request spoken words or phrases that are commonly used while driving a vehicle in a variety of languages and dialects.
” “ We have over 1 million crowd-workers around the world , ” says Reavey , “ and our ‘ Crowd @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to pay fair wages to all members of the crowd.
” While Reavey touts Appen ’ s code of ethics , the commitment regarding fair pay is vague , stating only that it is the company ’ s goal to pay above minimum wage .
Appen says that it tries to comply with local minimum wage standards in the 130-plus countries where it operates by utilizing AI to predict how long specific tasks should take—which only brings us full circle back to the black box of AI development , and Sinders ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ data sets were coming from .
Yet whether Appen is as rigorous in its determination of minimum wage as the TRK Wage Calculator is exactly the sort of question that Sinders hoped to elicit with her project .
“ It can be used by workers themselves as an advocacy tool , ” she explains , “ but I was more interested in trying to have smaller start-ups , research labs , artists , and individuals who use things like Mechanical Turk , Fiverr , and CrowdFlower really understand that when they offer to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t have an understanding of time and how much that work really costs , they are complicit in underpaying .
”

Subscribe to The Nation Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
Get The Nation’s Weekly Newsletter Fridays. The best of the week. Email By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Fridays. The best of the week.
Thank you for signing up for The Nation’s weekly newsletter.
Repro Nation A monthly newsletter on the global fight for reproductive freedom. Email By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here.
Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue
Subscribe to The Nation Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
Support Progressive Journalism The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter.
Sign up for our Wine Club today. Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine?
In 2015, Caroline Sinders was working as a design researcher at IBM when she began to have questions about how Watson, the company’s artificial intelligence system, was being developed. AI systems like Watson must be “trained” with data sets—for example, given a large batch of confirmed photographs of stop signs from different angles, in different lighting, and of different quality to be able to recognize stop signs on their own. Sinders was curious about these data sets: The process of correctly categorizing millions of data points seemed like a herculean task in its own right; where, exactly, was all this data coming from?
“A lot of my coworkers were like, ‘I don’t know why you’re asking us these questions, we’re just supposed to build this system out,’” she recalls.
While Sinders’s coworkers may have been able to push the question aside, finding the answer of where the data sets necessary to train artificial intelligence systems come from eventually led her to the world of crowd-working platforms. Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and other platforms such as Fiverr, Clickworker, Microworker, and Crowdcloud allow employers to offer workers repetitive, task-based assignments at flat rates. Because all the work is digital, workers from around the world perform tasks on these platforms—and given that crowd-workers are considered independent contractors, minimum wage laws don’t apply.
Artificial intelligence systems, Sinders discovered, still depend on very human grunt work for their raw material. To illustrate the human cost of artificial intelligence—the millions of hours of work that have gone, and continue to go, into making the most profitable AI possible—Sinders created the Technically Responsible Knowledge Wage Calculator. Crowdlabor How Crowdworkers Became the Ghosts in the Digital Machine Moshe Z. Marvit
As its name suggests, the TRK Wage Calculator allows users to calculate earnings for crowd-working assignments. The calculator features three sliders: number of images to label (labeling data is a common task in artificial intelligence development), price per task, and time per task. The results are bleak. According to the calculator, an average assignment, labeling 3,200 images for 32 cents each at a speed of two minutes per image, would yield a worker less than $63 per day—which, the calculator points out, works out to less than minimum wage in Washington, the state in which Amazon is headquartered.
The TRK Wage Calculator does not capture the full complexity of crowd-working, nor is it intended to. While most workers on Mechanical Turk reside in the United States (there are more than a million workers worldwide), it goes without saying that they aren’t all found in Washington. The location was selected by Sinders because it is both the state with the highest minimum wage in the United States and home to Amazon. These details contribute to the conception of the TRK Wage Calculator as a “mathematical provocation,” rather than a genuine tool—an artful way of calling out Amazon for allowing the ruthless exploitation of workers, which it could easily prevent by setting parameters for pricing. (Amazon did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this article.) 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
Sinders created the TRK Wage Calculator as part of her residency with the Mozilla Foundation. The foundation is responsible for the development of the Firefox web browser and, more generally, is dedicated to keeping the Internet open and accessible. Sinders’s prompt during her residency was to explore artificial intelligence, which she decided to pursue because of lingering questions from her time at IBM and her own ongoing project, Feminist Data Set, examining how the development of artificial intelligence can integrate feminist values like fair compensation. Current Issue View our current issue
“Using intersectional feminism as a way to interrogate machine learning—that’s an interrogation of how you label and frame data,” she explains. “So then you have to think about labor, right?”
For further perspective into the development of artificial intelligence, Sinders joined Mechanical Turk as a worker and interviewed other crowd-workers in the United States and India. (After the United States, India is the second most prevalent nationality of workers on Mechanical Turk.) The experience and interviews revealed how even an apparently fruitful crowd-working assignment can become a morass of additional tasks.
“What I realized was that time isn’t really listed a lot in the interfaces, but time is a major component of how you do work,” Sinders explains.
With crowd-work priced per assignment or per task, the amount of time involved is obscured. A $50 assignment might involve six hours of work—or 16 hours of work. The former is one day of work at the federal minimum wage in the United States; the latter is two days of work well below the minimum wage (or one especially hellish day of overtime at the same rate). Even well-meaning employers on crowd-sourcing platforms may underestimate the amount of time necessary to complete their assignments, especially if they lack experience completing the tasks themselves and fail to account for realities like fatigue, to say nothing of break time for meals or bathroom visits. Such genuine misestimation is compounded by outright lowballing, resulting in Mechanical Turk workers’ earning an estimated $2 per hour on average.
“When you don’t think about time, it doesn’t account for how you can be paid radically differently,” says Sinders. “If someone were like, ‘Please label these 1,000 images and here’s $50,’ that may sound really good at first—except if you ask how long it takes.”
Besides Mechanical Turk, one of the other crowd-working platforms that Sinders focused on when creating the TRK Wage Calculator was CrowdFlower, which was acquired by Appen in 2019. Appen now provides artificial-intelligence-related services to Amazon, Microsoft, Adobe, and other tech companies.
“Appen collects and labels images, text, speech, audio, video, and other data used as training data to build and continuously improve artificial intelligence systems,” explains Brian Reavey, a director at the company. “Our platform allows clients to specify tasks needed for their specific project. For example, a company working on voice commands to improve a vehicle’s infotainment system might request spoken words or phrases that are commonly used while driving a vehicle in a variety of languages and dialects.”
“We have over 1 million crowd-workers around the world,” says Reavey, “and our ‘Crowd Code of Ethics’ is our commitment to pay fair wages to all members of the crowd.”
While Reavey touts Appen’s code of ethics, the commitment regarding fair pay is vague, stating only that it is the company’s goal to pay above minimum wage. Appen says that it tries to comply with local minimum wage standards in the 130-plus countries where it operates by utilizing AI to predict how long specific tasks should take—which only brings us full circle back to the black box of AI development, and Sinders’s first question of where IBM’s data sets were coming from. Yet whether Appen is as rigorous in its determination of minimum wage as the TRK Wage Calculator is exactly the sort of question that Sinders hoped to elicit with her project.
“It can be used by workers themselves as an advocacy tool,” she explains, “but I was more interested in trying to have smaller start-ups, research labs, artists, and individuals who use things like Mechanical Turk, Fiverr, and CrowdFlower really understand that when they offer to pay for work, if they don’t have an understanding of time and how much that work really costs, they are complicit in underpaying.”


thenation--2020-10-27--If Trump Loses, He Will Be A Ruthless Lame Duck

Donald Trump isn ’ t just inside the heads of his Trumpster base ; he ’ s long been a consuming obsession among those yearning for his defeat in November .
With barely more than a week to go before the election of our lifetime , those given to nail biting as a response to anxiety have by now gnawed ours down to the quick .
And many have found other ways to manage ( or mismanage ) their apprehensions through compulsive rituals , which only ratchet up the angst of the moment , among them nonstop poll tracking , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with friends , and repeated refrigerator raids .
As one of those doomsday types , let me briefly suggest a few of the commonplace dystopian possibilities for November .
Trump gets the majority of the votes cast in person on November 3 .
A Pew Research Center survey found that 60 percent of those supporting the president intend to vote that way on Election Day compared to 23 percent of Biden supporters ; and a Washington Post/University of Maryland poll likewise revealed a sizable difference between Republicans and Democrats , though not as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lose handily after all mail-in and absentee ballots are counted .
Once every ballot is finally tabulated , Biden prevails in the popular vote and ekes out a win in the Electoral College .
The president , however , having convinced his faithful that voting by mail will result in industrial-scale fraud ( unless he wins , of course ) , proclaims that he—and “ the American people ” —have been robbed by the establishment .
On cue , outraged Trumpsters , some of them armed , take to the streets .
Chaos @ @ @ @ @ @ @ president ’ s army of lawyers frenetically file court briefs contesting the election results and feverishly await a future Supreme Court decision , Mitch McConnell having helpfully rammed through Amy Coney Barrett ’ s nomination to produce a 6-3 conservative majority ( including three Trump-appointed Supremes ) that will likely favor him in any disputed election case .
Or the vote tally shows that Trump didn ’ t prevail in pivotal states , but in state legislatures with Republican majorities , local GOP leaders appoint electors from their party anyway , defying the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Section I , of the Constitution , which doesn ’ t flat-out prohibit such a stratagem .
That was one possibility Barton Gellman explored in his bombshell Atlantic piece on the gambits Trump could use to snatch victory ( of a sort ) from the jaws of a Biden victory .
Then there are the sundry wag-the-dog plots , including a desperate Trump trying to generate a pre-election rally-around-the-flag effect by starting a war with Iran—precisely what , in 2011 , he predicted Barack Obama would do to boost his chances for reelection @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is just part of a long list of nightmarish possibilities .
Whatever your most dreaded outcome , dwelling on it doesn ’ t make for happiness or even ephemeral relief .
Ultimately , it ’ s not under your control .
Besides , no one knows what will happen , and some prominent pundits have dismissed such apocalyptic soothsaying with assurances that the system will work the way it ’ s supposed to and foil Trumpian malfeasance .
Here ’ s hoping .
In the meantime , let ’ s summon what passes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ none of the alarmist denouements materializes .
Biden wins the popular vote tally and the Electoral College .
The GOP ’ s leaders discover that they do , in fact , have backbones ( or at least the instinct for political survival ) , refusing to echo Trump ’ s rants about rigging .
The president rages but then does go , unquietly , into the night .
Most of my friends on the left assume that a new dawn would then emerge .
In some respects , it indeed will .
Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
That ’ s no small matter .
By the middle of this year , Trump had made false or misleading pronouncements of one sort or another more than 20,000 times since becoming president .
Nor will we have a president who winks and nods at far-right groups or racist “ militias , ” nor one who blasts a governor—instead of expressing shock and solidarity—soon after the FBI foils a plot by right-wing extremists to kidnap her for taking steps to suppress the coronavirus .
We won ’ t have a president who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ office even if he loses the election .
We won ’ t have a president who can ’ t bring himself to appeal to Americans to display their patriotism through the simple act of donning masks to protect others ( and themselves ) from Covid-19 .
And we won ’ t have a president who lacks the compassion to express sorrow over the 225,000 Americans ( and rising ) who have been killed by that disease , or enough respect for science and professional expertise , to say nothing of humility , to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ experts squirm , that warm weather will cause the virus to vanish miraculously or that injections of disinfectant will destroy it .
And these , of course , won ’ t be minor victories .
Still , Joe Biden ’ s arrival in the Oval Office won ’ t alter one mega-fact : Donald Trump will hand him a monstrous economic mess .
Worse , in the almost three months between November 3 and January 20 , rest assured that he will dedicate himself to making it even bigger .
The motivation ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the position—we know that he will never accept any responsibility for his defeat—of facing what , for him , may be more unbearable than death itself : losing .
The gargantuan challenge of putting the economy back on the rails while also battling the pandemic would be hard enough for any new president without the lame-duck commander in chief and Senate Republicans sabotaging his efforts before he even begins .
The long stretch between Election Day and Inauguration Day will provide Donald Trump ample time to take his revenge on a people who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the best president ever .
More on Trump ’ s vengeance , but first , let ’ s take stock of what awaits Biden should he win in November .
To say that we are , in some respects , experiencing the biggest economic disaster since the Great Depression of the 1930s is anything but hyperbole .
The statistics make that clear .
The economy had contracted at a staggering annual rate of 31.4 percent during the second quarter of this pandemic year .
During the 2007–09 Great Recession , unemployment , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
This year ’ s high point , in April , was 14.7 percent .
Over the spring , 40 million jobs disappeared , eviscerating all gains made during the two pre-pandemic years .
There have been , however , some relatively recent signs of a rebound .
The Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank ’ s survey of economic forecasters , released in mid-August , yielded an estimate of a 19.1 percent expansion for the third quarter of 2020 .
But that optimism came in the wake of Congress passing the Coronavirus Aid , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) Act , on March 27 , which pumped about $ 2.2 trillion into the economy .
The slowdown in job growth between July and September suggests that its salutary effects may be petering out .
Even with that uptick , the economy remains in far worse shape than before the virus started romping through the landscape .
However , while useful , aggregate figures obscure stark variations in how the pain produced by a Covid-19 economy has been felt across different parts of American society .
No , we aren ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ together ” you mean anything remotely resembling equalized distress .
A Bureau of Labor Statistics ( BLS ) release , for instance , reveals that September ’ s 7.9 percent nationwide unemployment rate hit some groups far harder than others .
The jobless rate for whites dropped to 7 percent , but for Latinos it was 10.3 percent , for African Americans 12.1 percent .
Furthermore , high-skill , high-wage workers have gotten off far more lightly than those whose jobs can ’ t be done from home , including restaurant servers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; housecleaners ; agricultural laborers ; subway , bus , and taxi drivers ; first responders ; and retail and hotel staff , among others .
For workers like them , essential public health precautions , whether “ social distancing ” or stay-at-home decrees , haven ’ t just been an inconvenience .
They have proven economically devastating .
These are the Americans who are struggling hardest to buy food and pay the rent .
More than 25 million of them fall in the lowest 20 percent of the earnings scale and—no surprise @ @ @ @ @ @ @ meager savings .
According to the Fed ’ s calculations , of the bottom 25 percent of Americans , only 11 percent have what they require for at least six months of basic expenses and less than 17 percent for at least three .
Yes , unemployment insurance helps , but depending on the state , it covers just 30 to 50 percent of lost wages .
Moreover , there ’ s no telling when , or whether , such workers will be rehired or find new jobs that pay at least as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ isn ’ t encouraging .
The BLS reports that in September , 2.4 million workers had been unemployed for 27 weeks or more , another 4.9 million for 15 to 27 weeks .
These disparities and the steps the Fed has taken , including keeping interest rates low and buying Treasury bills , mortgage-backed securities , and corporate bonds , help explain why high stock prices and massive economic suffering have coexisted , however incongruously , during the pandemic .
The problem with bull markets , however , is that they don ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of American society that ’ s been hurt the most .
Nearly half of American households own no stock at all , according to the Federal Reserve Bank , even if you count pension and 401 ( k ) plans or Individual Retirement Accounts—and for Black and Latino families , the numbers are 69 percent and 72 percent , respectively .
Furthermore , the wealthiest 10 percent of households own 84 percent of all stock .
Trump preens when the stock market soars , as he did on April 10 , when 16 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Tweets trumpeting “ the biggest Stock Market increase since 1974 ” were cold comfort for Americans who could no longer count on paychecks .
Even such numbers don ’ t fully reveal the ways in which prolonged joblessness has upended lives .
To get a glimpse of that , consider how low-income workers , contending with extended unemployment , have struggled to pay for two basic necessities : housing and food .
Reuters reported in late July that Americans already owed $ 21.5 billion in back rent .
Worse yet , 17.3 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ million renter households couldn ’ t afford to pay the landlord and faced possible eviction .
A fifth of all renters had made only partial payments that month or hadn ’ t paid anything .
Again , not surprisingly , some were in more trouble than others .
In September , 12 percent of whites owed back rent compared to 25 percent of African Americans , 24 percent of Asians , and 22 percent of Latinos .
A May Census Bureau survey revealed that nearly 45 percent of African Americans and Latinos but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had little or no confidence in their ability to make their June rent payments .
( Households with kids were in an even bigger bind . )
The rent crunch also varied depending on a worker ’ s education , a reliable predictor of earnings .
Workers with high school diplomas earned only 60 percent as much as workers who had graduated from college and only 50 percent of those with a master ’ s degree .
And the more education workers had , the less likely they were to be laid off @ @ @ @ @ @ @ percent of employees with college degrees lost their jobs compared to nearly 11 percent of those who hadn ’ t attended college .
Those , then , are the Americans most likely to be at risk of eviction .
Yes , the federal government , states , and cities issued rent moratoriums , but the protections in them varied considerably and , by August , they had ended in 24 of the 43 states that enacted them ; nor did they release renters from future obligations to pay what they owe , sometimes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stays haven ’ t stopped landlords nationwide from taking thousands of delinquent renters to court and even , depending on state laws , seeking to evict them .
The courts are clogged with such cases .
Eventually , millions of renters could face what a BBC report called a potential “ avalanche ” of evictions .
Nor have homeowners been safe .
The CARES Act did include provisions to protect some of them , offering those with federal-backed mortgages the possibility of six-month payment deferrals , potential six-month extensions of that , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thereafter .
In many cases , however , that “ forbearance ” initiative hasn ’ t worked as intended .
Often , homeowners didn ’ t know about it or weren ’ t aware that they had to file a formal request with their lenders to qualify or got the run around when they tried to do so .
Still , mortgage forbearance helped millions , but it expires in March 2021 when many homeowners could still be jobless or have new jobs that don ’ t pay as well .
Just how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of course , on how strongly Covid-19 resurges , what future shutdowns it produces , and when it will truly subside .
Meanwhile , according to the Mortgage Bankers Association , the residential mortgage delinquency rate hit 8.22 percent as the second quarter of 2020 ended , the highest since 2014 .
Meanwhile , between June and July , mortgage payments overdue 90 or more days increased by 20 percent to a total unseen since 2010 .
True , we ’ re not yet headed for defaults and foreclosures on the scale of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that ’ s a very high bar .
As for hunger , a September Census Bureau survey reports that 10.5 percent of adults , or 23 million people , stated that household members weren ’ t getting enough to eat .
That ’ s a sharp increase from the 3.7 percent in a Department of Agriculture survey for 2019 .
In July , The Wall Street Journal reported , 12 percent of adults said their families didn ’ t have enough food ( compared to 10 percent in May ) .
A fifth @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their kids adequately , a three-percent increase from May .
Recent food-insecurity estimates for households with children range from 27.5 percent to 29.5 percent .
Meanwhile , enrollments in the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program ( known until 2008 as the Food Stamp Program ) grew by 17 percent between February and May , forcing the government to increase its funding .
Food banks , overwhelmed by demand , are pleading for money and volunteers .
In August , a mile-long line of cars formed outside a food bank in Dallas , one of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the country since the pandemic struck .
What Happens After the Election ?
For those who have lost their jobs , the CARES Act provided $ 600 a week to supplement unemployment benefits , as well as a one-time payment of $ 1,250 per adult and $ 2,400 for married couples .
That stipend , though , ended on July 31 when the Republican Senate balked at renewing it .
In August , by executive order , the president directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to step in with three weeks of $ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ another three .
That , however , was half what they would have received had the CARES supplement been extended and , by October , most states had used up the Trump allotments .
In the ongoing congressional negotiations over prolonging supplemental benefits and other assistance , Trump engaged , only to disengage .
With a September ABC News/IPSOS voter survey showing that just 35 percent of the public approved of his handling of the pandemic , and Biden having opened a double-digit lead in many polls , the president suddenly offered a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Act , only to encounter massive blowback from his own party .
And that ’ s where we are as the election looms .
If Trump loses ( and accepts the loss ) , he will hand Biden an economic disaster of the first order that he ’ s made infinitely worse by belittling mask-wearing and social distancing , disregarding and undercutting his administration ’ s own medical experts , peddling absurd nostrums , and offering rosy but baseless prognostications .
And between November 3 , Election Day , and January 20 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be to imagine—an angrier , more vengeful Trump .
For now , as his prospects for victory seem to dim , he has good reason to push for , or at least be seen as favoring , additional aid , but here ’ s a guarantee : If he loses in November , he won ’ t just moan about election rigging ; he ’ ll also lose all interest in providing more help to millions of Americans at the edge of penury and despair .
Vindictiveness , not sympathy , will be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , for whom he clearly has a barely secret disdain .
So accept this guarantee , as well : Between those two dates , whatever he does will be meant to undermine the incoming Biden administration .
That includes working to make the climb as steep as possible for the rival he ’ s depicted as a semi-senile incompetent .
He will want only one thing : to see his successor fail .
Once Trump formally hands over the presidency—assuming his every maneuver to retain power flops—he ’ ll work to portray any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the virus he helped let loose and to aid those in need as profligacy , and as “ socialism ” and governmental overreach imperiling freedom .
Last guarantee : He won ’ t waste a minute getting his wrecking operation underway , while “ his ” party will posture as the paragon of financial rectitude .
It won ’ t matter that Republican administrations have racked up the biggest budget deficits in our history .
The GOP , too , will ferociously resist Biden ’ s efforts to help millions of struggling Americans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , assuming Biden wins , as the “ good news .
”

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.
Subscribe to The Nation Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
Get The Nation’s Weekly Newsletter Fridays. The best of the week. Email By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Fridays. The best of the week.
Thank you for signing up for The Nation’s weekly newsletter.
Repro Nation A monthly newsletter on the global fight for reproductive freedom. Email By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here.
Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue
Subscribe to The Nation Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
Support Progressive Journalism The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter.
Sign up for our Wine Club today. Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine?
Donald Trump isn’t just inside the heads of his Trumpster base; he’s long been a consuming obsession among those yearning for his defeat in November. With barely more than a week to go before the election of our lifetime, those given to nail biting as a response to anxiety have by now gnawed ours down to the quick. And many have found other ways to manage (or mismanage) their apprehensions through compulsive rituals, which only ratchet up the angst of the moment, among them nonstop poll tracking, endless “what if” doomsday-scenario conversations with friends, and repeated refrigerator raids.
As one of those doomsday types, let me briefly suggest a few of the commonplace dystopian possibilities for November. Trump gets the majority of the votes cast in person on November 3. A Pew Research Center survey found that 60 percent of those supporting the president intend to vote that way on Election Day compared to 23 percent of Biden supporters; and a Washington Post/University of Maryland poll likewise revealed a sizable difference between Republicans and Democrats, though not as large. He does, however, lose handily after all mail-in and absentee ballots are counted. Once every ballot is finally tabulated, Biden prevails in the popular vote and ekes out a win in the Electoral College. The president, however, having convinced his faithful that voting by mail will result in industrial-scale fraud (unless he wins, of course), proclaims that he—and “the American people”—have been robbed by the establishment. On cue, outraged Trumpsters, some of them armed, take to the streets. Chaos, even violence, ensues. The president’s army of lawyers frenetically file court briefs contesting the election results and feverishly await a future Supreme Court decision, Mitch McConnell having helpfully rammed through Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to produce a 6-3 conservative majority (including three Trump-appointed Supremes) that will likely favor him in any disputed election case.
Or the vote tally shows that Trump didn’t prevail in pivotal states, but in state legislatures with Republican majorities, local GOP leaders appoint electors from their party anyway, defying the popular will without violating Article II, Section I, of the Constitution, which doesn’t flat-out prohibit such a stratagem. That was one possibility Barton Gellman explored in his bombshell Atlantic piece on the gambits Trump could use to snatch victory (of a sort) from the jaws of a Biden victory. Then there are the sundry wag-the-dog plots, including a desperate Trump trying to generate a pre-election rally-around-the-flag effect by starting a war with Iran—precisely what, in 2011, he predicted Barack Obama would do to boost his chances for reelection. 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
And that, of course, is just part of a long list of nightmarish possibilities. Whatever your most dreaded outcome, dwelling on it doesn’t make for happiness or even ephemeral relief. Ultimately, it’s not under your control. Besides, no one knows what will happen, and some prominent pundits have dismissed such apocalyptic soothsaying with assurances that the system will work the way it’s supposed to and foil Trumpian malfeasance. Here’s hoping.
In the meantime, let’s summon what passes for optimism these days. Imagine that none of the alarmist denouements materializes. Biden wins the popular vote tally and the Electoral College. The GOP’s leaders discover that they do, in fact, have backbones (or at least the instinct for political survival), refusing to echo Trump’s rants about rigging. The president rages but then does go, unquietly, into the night.
Most of my friends on the left assume that a new dawn would then emerge. In some respects, it indeed will. Biden won’t be a serial liar. That’s no small matter. By the middle of this year, Trump had made false or misleading pronouncements of one sort or another more than 20,000 times since becoming president. Nor will we have a president who winks and nods at far-right groups or racist “militias,” nor one who blasts a governor—instead of expressing shock and solidarity—soon after the FBI foils a plot by right-wing extremists to kidnap her for taking steps to suppress the coronavirus. We won’t have a president who repeatedly intimates that he will remain in office even if he loses the election. We won’t have a president who can’t bring himself to appeal to Americans to display their patriotism through the simple act of donning masks to protect others (and themselves) from Covid-19. And we won’t have a president who lacks the compassion to express sorrow over the 225,000 Americans (and rising) who have been killed by that disease, or enough respect for science and professional expertise, to say nothing of humility, to refrain from declaring, as his own experts squirm, that warm weather will cause the virus to vanish miraculously or that injections of disinfectant will destroy it.
And these, of course, won’t be minor victories. Still, Joe Biden’s arrival in the Oval Office won’t alter one mega-fact: Donald Trump will hand him a monstrous economic mess. Worse, in the almost three months between November 3 and January 20, rest assured that he will dedicate himself to making it even bigger. Current Issue View our current issue
The motivation? Sheer spite for having been put in the position—we know that he will never accept any responsibility for his defeat—of facing what, for him, may be more unbearable than death itself: losing. The gargantuan challenge of putting the economy back on the rails while also battling the pandemic would be hard enough for any new president without the lame-duck commander in chief and Senate Republicans sabotaging his efforts before he even begins. The long stretch between Election Day and Inauguration Day will provide Donald Trump ample time to take his revenge on a people who will have forsaken, in his opinion, the best president ever.
More on Trump’s vengeance, but first, let’s take stock of what awaits Biden should he win in November.
Our Covid-Ravaged Economy
To say that we are, in some respects, experiencing the biggest economic disaster since the Great Depression of the 1930s is anything but hyperbole. The statistics make that clear. The economy had contracted at a staggering annual rate of 31.4 percent during the second quarter of this pandemic year. During the 2007–09 Great Recession, unemployment, at its height, was 10 percent. This year’s high point, in April, was 14.7 percent. Over the spring, 40 million jobs disappeared, eviscerating all gains made during the two pre-pandemic years.
There have been, however, some relatively recent signs of a rebound. The Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank’s survey of economic forecasters, released in mid-August, yielded an estimate of a 19.1 percent expansion for the third quarter of 2020. But that optimism came in the wake of Congress passing the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, on March 27, which pumped about $2.2 trillion into the economy. The slowdown in job growth between July and September suggests that its salutary effects may be petering out. Even with that uptick, the economy remains in far worse shape than before the virus started romping through the landscape.
However, while useful, aggregate figures obscure stark variations in how the pain produced by a Covid-19 economy has been felt across different parts of American society. No, we aren’t all in this together, if by “together” you mean anything remotely resembling equalized distress. A Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) release, for instance, reveals that September’s 7.9 percent nationwide unemployment rate hit some groups far harder than others.
The jobless rate for whites dropped to 7 percent, but for Latinos it was 10.3 percent, for African Americans 12.1 percent. Furthermore, high-skill, high-wage workers have gotten off far more lightly than those whose jobs can’t be done from home, including restaurant servers and cooks; construction workers; meatpackers; housecleaners; agricultural laborers; subway, bus, and taxi drivers; first responders; and retail and hotel staff, among others. For workers like them, essential public health precautions, whether “social distancing” or stay-at-home decrees, haven’t just been an inconvenience. They have proven economically devastating. These are the Americans who are struggling hardest to buy food and pay the rent.
More than 25 million of them fall in the lowest 20 percent of the earnings scale and—no surprise here—have, at best, the most meager savings. According to the Fed’s calculations, of the bottom 25 percent of Americans, only 11 percent have what they require for at least six months of basic expenses and less than 17 percent for at least three. Yes, unemployment insurance helps, but depending on the state, it covers just 30 to 50 percent of lost wages. Moreover, there’s no telling when, or whether, such workers will be rehired or find new jobs that pay at least as much. The data on long-term unemployment isn’t encouraging. The BLS reports that in September, 2.4 million workers had been unemployed for 27 weeks or more, another 4.9 million for 15 to 27 weeks.
These disparities and the steps the Fed has taken, including keeping interest rates low and buying Treasury bills, mortgage-backed securities, and corporate bonds, help explain why high stock prices and massive economic suffering have coexisted, however incongruously, during the pandemic. The problem with bull markets, however, is that they don’t bring direct gains to the chunk of American society that’s been hurt the most.
Nearly half of American households own no stock at all, according to the Federal Reserve Bank, even if you count pension and 401(k) plans or Individual Retirement Accounts—and for Black and Latino families, the numbers are 69 percent and 72 percent, respectively. Furthermore, the wealthiest 10 percent of households own 84 percent of all stock.
Trump preens when the stock market soars, as he did on April 10, when 16 million Americans had just filed for unemployment. Tweets trumpeting “the biggest Stock Market increase since 1974” were cold comfort for Americans who could no longer count on paychecks.
The Signs of Suffering
Even such numbers don’t fully reveal the ways in which prolonged joblessness has upended lives. To get a glimpse of that, consider how low-income workers, contending with extended unemployment, have struggled to pay for two basic necessities: housing and food.
Reuters reported in late July that Americans already owed $21.5 billion in back rent. Worse yet, 17.3 million of the country’s 44 million renter households couldn’t afford to pay the landlord and faced possible eviction. A fifth of all renters had made only partial payments that month or hadn’t paid anything. Again, not surprisingly, some were in more trouble than others. In September, 12 percent of whites owed back rent compared to 25 percent of African Americans, 24 percent of Asians, and 22 percent of Latinos. A May Census Bureau survey revealed that nearly 45 percent of African Americans and Latinos but “only” 20 percent of whites had little or no confidence in their ability to make their June rent payments. (Households with kids were in an even bigger bind.)
The rent crunch also varied depending on a worker’s education, a reliable predictor of earnings. Workers with high school diplomas earned only 60 percent as much as workers who had graduated from college and only 50 percent of those with a master’s degree. And the more education workers had, the less likely they were to be laid off. Between February and August, 2.5 percent of employees with college degrees lost their jobs compared to nearly 11 percent of those who hadn’t attended college.
Those, then, are the Americans most likely to be at risk of eviction. Yes, the federal government, states, and cities issued rent moratoriums, but the protections in them varied considerably and, by August, they had ended in 24 of the 43 states that enacted them; nor did they release renters from future obligations to pay what they owe, sometimes with penalties. In addition, eviction stays haven’t stopped landlords nationwide from taking thousands of delinquent renters to court and even, depending on state laws, seeking to evict them. The courts are clogged with such cases. Eventually, millions of renters could face what a BBC report called a potential “avalanche” of evictions.
Nor have homeowners been safe. The CARES Act did include provisions to protect some of them, offering those with federal-backed mortgages the possibility of six-month payment deferrals, potential six-month extensions of that, and the possibility of negotiating affordable payment plans thereafter. In many cases, however, that “forbearance” initiative hasn’t worked as intended. Often, homeowners didn’t know about it or weren’t aware that they had to file a formal request with their lenders to qualify or got the run around when they tried to do so. Still, mortgage forbearance helped millions, but it expires in March 2021 when many homeowners could still be jobless or have new jobs that don’t pay as well. Just how desperate such people will be depends, of course, on how strongly Covid-19 resurges, what future shutdowns it produces, and when it will truly subside.
Meanwhile, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, the residential mortgage delinquency rate hit 8.22 percent as the second quarter of 2020 ended, the highest since 2014. Meanwhile, between June and July, mortgage payments overdue 90 or more days increased by 20 percent to a total unseen since 2010. True, we’re not yet headed for defaults and foreclosures on the scale of the Great Recession of 2007–08, but that’s a very high bar.
As for hunger, a September Census Bureau survey reports that 10.5 percent of adults, or 23 million people, stated that household members weren’t getting enough to eat. That’s a sharp increase from the 3.7 percent in a Department of Agriculture survey for 2019. In July, The Wall Street Journal reported, 12 percent of adults said their families didn’t have enough food (compared to 10 percent in May). A fifth of them lacked the money to feed their kids adequately, a three-percent increase from May. Recent food-insecurity estimates for households with children range from 27.5 percent to 29.5 percent.
Meanwhile, enrollments in the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (known until 2008 as the Food Stamp Program) grew by 17 percent between February and May, forcing the government to increase its funding. Food banks, overwhelmed by demand, are pleading for money and volunteers. In August, a mile-long line of cars formed outside a food bank in Dallas, one of many such poignant scenes in cities across the country since the pandemic struck.
What Happens After the Election?
For those who have lost their jobs, the CARES Act provided $600 a week to supplement unemployment benefits, as well as a one-time payment of $1,250 per adult and $2,400 for married couples. That stipend, though, ended on July 31 when the Republican Senate balked at renewing it. In August, by executive order, the president directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to step in with three weeks of $300 payments, which were extended for another three. That, however, was half what they would have received had the CARES supplement been extended and, by October, most states had used up the Trump allotments.
In the ongoing congressional negotiations over prolonging supplemental benefits and other assistance, Trump engaged, only to disengage. With a September ABC News/IPSOS voter survey showing that just 35 percent of the public approved of his handling of the pandemic, and Biden having opened a double-digit lead in many polls, the president suddenly offered a $1.8 trillion version of the CARES Act, only to encounter massive blowback from his own party.
And that’s where we are as the election looms. If Trump loses (and accepts the loss), he will hand Biden an economic disaster of the first order that he’s made infinitely worse by belittling mask-wearing and social distancing, disregarding and undercutting his administration’s own medical experts, peddling absurd nostrums, and offering rosy but baseless prognostications. And between November 3, Election Day, and January 20, Inauguration Day, expect—hard as it might be to imagine—an angrier, more vengeful Trump.
For now, as his prospects for victory seem to dim, he has good reason to push for, or at least be seen as favoring, additional aid, but here’s a guarantee: If he loses in November, he won’t just moan about election rigging; he’ll also lose all interest in providing more help to millions of Americans at the edge of penury and despair. Vindictiveness, not sympathy, will be his response, even to his base, for whom he clearly has a barely secret disdain. So accept this guarantee, as well: Between those two dates, whatever he does will be meant to undermine the incoming Biden administration. That includes working to make the climb as steep as possible for the rival he’s depicted as a semi-senile incompetent. He will want only one thing: to see his successor fail.
Once Trump formally hands over the presidency—assuming his every maneuver to retain power flops—he’ll work to portray any measure the new administration adopts to corral the virus he helped let loose and to aid those in need as profligacy, and as “socialism” and governmental overreach imperiling freedom. Last guarantee: He won’t waste a minute getting his wrecking operation underway, while “his” party will posture as the paragon of financial rectitude. It won’t matter that Republican administrations have racked up the biggest budget deficits in our history. The GOP, too, will ferociously resist Biden’s efforts to help millions of struggling Americans.
And think of all of this, assuming Biden wins, as the “good news.”


thenation--2020-10-27--Welcome to the Trump Tower of Terror

Welcome to the Trump Tower of Terror

Support independent cartooning : join Sparky ’ s List—and don ’ t forget to visit TT ’ s Emporium of @ @ @ @ @ book and plush Sparky !

Support independent cartooning: join Sparky’s List—and don’t forget to visit TT’s Emporium of Fun, featuring the new book and plush Sparky!