Is 'wokeness' responsible for US and European heat waves? Absolutely.

 With record temperatures steam-pressing the United States and much of Europe, Africa and Asia, many in my Science-Is-A-Hoax Facebook group have posed a sensible question: Is "wokeness" to blame for these heat waves?

As a white man with access to the internet and an unwillingness to care about anyone besides myself, I can tell you the answer is, indisputably, yes. Liberal wokeness is causing temperatures to rise and forcing me to leave my Hummer idling in the driveway with the AC on and the doors open in an attempt to cool the air around my house.

President Joe Biden and his windmill-hugging liberal minions will tell you the soaring temperatures have something to do with “climate change” or “global warming” or “humanity’s unwillingness to stop destroying the planet, thereby guaranteeing its own extinction.”  Well, if you believe that, I have a coastal bridge to sell you! (FULL DISCLOSURE: Bridge is currently underwater and will require minor heightening and repairs.)

On Tuesday, the National Weather Service, which notoriously attempts to influence conservatives with left-wing concepts like “facts” and “data,” forecast “dangerous heat” across the country, ranging from the high 90s to triple digits. 

In a heat advisory, the Weather Service wrote: “Take extra precautions if you work or spend time outside. When possible reschedule strenuous activities to early morning or evening. Know the signs and symptoms of heat exhaustion and heat stroke.”

You don’t get to tell me what to do, you Marxist meteorologists. I’m an American, and if I want to go out in the backyard and dump used motor oil in the pond while breathing in the welcoming smoke of my neighbor’s tire fire, I will do so without knowing the signs and symptoms of heat exhaustion, thank you very much. Commies.

Now back to why wokeness is to blame for the heat, and for everything I don’t want to be forced to care about.  Wokeness is an effort to get a person like me to treat people who aren’t exactly like me with some level of basic human decency, usually through onerous requests like respecting their identity or faith, not making offensive jokes at their expense or having to make almost immeasurably small adjustments to the way I speak or live my life.

It could involve a person saying, "I use he/him pronouns and would appreciate you using them when you refer to me," and me saying, "That would require me to be considerate, and I can't do that because my brain is busy figuring out new ways to 'own the libs' on Twitter."

Or it could involve a teacher giving my child the historical context of racism in America so he can grow up with a full understanding of our nation's complicated past, when I would prefer that teacher stick to the teachings of Sean Hannity, who once said: "The U.S. is the greatest, best country God has ever given man on the face of the earth.“

When confronted with wokeness, I have two options: Listen, understand and do my best to make another person’s life better (HAH!); or get extremely angry and vent about it online.

Obviously, I always choose the second option, which is bad for global temperatures because getting angry online causes my brain to start functioning, and the friction involved in firing dormant synapses generates SERIOUS heat.

Now imagine how many of me there are in this country and around the world and how much heat our brains are cranking out when we get angered by woke-ism. Is that enough to explain why the United Kingdom shattered its previous high-temperature records on Tuesday, with one village in eastern England hitting 104.5 degrees Fahrenheit?

No, not quite. The other woke-induced issue contributing to these heat waves is the voluminous hot air released by Republican politicians and right-wing pundits when they are angry about wokeness, which is all the time.

Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin recently released a weather-changing blast of hot air when he blamed school shootings like the one in Uvalde, Texas, on wokeness: “We stopped teaching values in so many of our schools. Now we’re teaching wokeness, we’re indoctrinating our children with things like CRT, telling some children they’re not equal to others, and they’re the cause of other people’s problems.”

Nikki Haley, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and possible GOP presidential candidate, spiked the room temperature in Fox News’ studio Tuesday, saying America needs to "get rid of all this woke stuff” and start fighting for “normal people.” 

Do you see the harm you’re doing to the environment, you woke warriors? You’re causing people like Haley to warm the earth’s atmosphere with fired-up comments suggesting you’re not normal. Should she have kept that thought to herself and never admitted she had it to anyone, anywhere, ever? Yes. But you folks in the “let’s all take the infinitesimally small measures necessary so everyone can be their true selves” crowd forced Haley to say it out loud in a billowing puff of hot air and now WE HAVE FLIGHTS GETTING CANCELED BECAUSE AIRPORT RUNWAYS ARE MELTING!!

Shame on all of you for trying to force us normals to think about someone other than ourselves. You woke-ists have nobody but yourselves to blame for these heat waves.  Either that or I typed this column outdoors by the tire fire without knowing the signs and symptoms of heat exhaustion.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/is-wokeness-responsible-for-us-and-european-heat-waves-absolutely/ar-AAZMHNs?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=c99e491693c84d17b89a2463959b05a6 

School Shootings: The GOP’s Only Answer To School Shootings Didn’t Help In Uvalde, Texas

(By Alex Yablon, Slate, 25 May 2022)

 In the recent annals of American political rhetoric, there have been few more consequential statements of ideology than NRA chief Wayne LaPierre’s post–Sandy Hook truism that “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”  The line has gone from crisis PR spin to Republican Party dogma. But while the “good guy with a gun” mantra has the ring of tough guy common sense, the empirical evidence suggests armed cops and civilians do less than nothing to deter mass shooters.

Look no further than Texas Republicans’ responses to this week’s mass shooting in the small town of Uvalde, the deadliest at an elementary school since Sandy Hook. Speaking to Newsmax, Attorney General Ken Paxton, the top law enforcement and public safety officer in the state, said: “We can’t stop bad people from doing bad things. … We can potentially arm and prepare and train teachers and other administrators to respond quickly. That, in my opinion, is the best answer.”

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Of course, this is Texas. It’s not like potential good guys with guns were thin on the ground in Uvalde. Law enforcement actually engaged the shooter before he got into the elementary school. Indeed, as the Austin American-Statesman reported, it was actually a school guard—a good guy with a gun—who confronted and failed to prevent the shooter’s entry. For years, though, Texas has encouraged teachers to pack heat. In the wake of a 2018 shooting at a high school in Santa Fe, Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation that encouraged schools to do exactly what Ken Paxton now demands. It mattered little back then that Abbott was responding to killings at a school that already had two armed guards and a plan to put guns in the hands of teachers.

As Republicans like Abbott and Paxton double down on the same pro-gun proliferation response to every mass shooting, evidence accumulates that weapons are rarely effective means of deterring or stopping mass shootings.  Last year, a group of public health scholars published a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association examining 133 school shootings from 1980 to 2019. An armed guard was present in about a quarter of the incidents in the study. Those schools actually suffered death rates nearly three times higher than schools without armed guards. Similarly, a 2020 review of gun policy research by the RAND Corporation think tank found no evidence that the presence of more guns had any effect on gun violence. Criminologists at Texas State University found that unarmed staff or the shooters themselves are far more likely to bring a school shooting to an end than someone with a gun returning fire.

So-called good guys with guns fail to effectively deter or end mass shootings for a variety of tactical and psychological reasons.  For one thing, it’s actually very hard to shoot straight in a situation like a mass shooting. RAND analysts have found that even highly trained NYPD officers only hit their intended target in 19 percent of gunfire exchanges. Winning a gunfight with a shooter only becomes more difficult when the perpetrator carries a semi-automatic rifle like an AR-15, as the Uvalde suspect and many others have done. These weapons have a much longer range and are far more accurate than the kinds of pistols typically used by police and civilian concealed carriers, allowing shooters to keep responders far enough away that their own weapons will be of little use. The Uvalde gunman, for instance, managed to overpower two officers whom he encountered on his way to the elementary school.

In the most extreme cases, a single gunman with a semi-automatic rifle can stymie an entire SWAT team for hours: Back in 2015, a single gunman assaulting a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood with an AK-style rifle held off police for the better part of a day before surrendering.  The idea that armed guards and teachers could deter shootings in the first place presumes mass shooters behave rationally, weighing risks, when in fact the opposite is true. As the JAMA authors noted, “many school shooters are actively suicidal, intending to die in the act, so an armed officer may be an incentive rather than a deterrent.”  Considering the long odds of taking down a determined shooter equipped with an assault rifle, armed police and bystanders sometimes have difficulty motivating themselves to actually engage at all, as happened so infamously in the Parkland shooting when two sheriff’s deputies apparently hid from the gunman.

So Republicans’ preferred response to mass shootings operates in the realm of fantasy. The standard-issue liberal response—to ban guns in a country where they outnumber people—is at this point not much more realistic. That’s not to say there is no way to prevent a lot of mass shootings, however.  Civil gun seizure orders, known as “red flag” laws, are a promising but underutilized means of preemptively intervening when gun owners show signs they will hurt themselves or others. If a gun owner makes a threat or behaves dangerously—committing violent misdemeanors or torturing animals, for example—“red flag” laws allow family, school workers, medical professionals, and law enforcement to petition a judge for an emergency temporary order confiscating the dangerous person’s weapons.

The laws function like more commonplace personal restraining orders. Many states created civil gun seizure procedures in the wake of the 2018 Parkland shooting (though not Texas), and the NRA even offered limited support for the measures. A 2019 case study of California’s law, passed in the wake of the 2014 Isla Vista shooting, found the orders were used in 21 cases where gun owners had made credible threats of mass shootings. It’s at least conceivable that this law prevented other possible atrocities.

Good guys with guns fail to stop bad guys with guns in the moment because mass shootings are rare, surprising, and unpredictable events. Red flag laws are effective because mass shooters are, by contrast, pretty predictable: They almost always display clear warning signs that they are a danger to society and themselves. The Uvalde shooter was no exception: According to friends, he engaged in self-harm, shot a BB gun at strangers, and expressed a desire to kill. He also posted frequently on social media about his desire for guns. If Texas had the appropriate legal machinery in place, the people in the shooter’s life who had been so alarmed by his behavior might have had an opportunity to act before it was too late.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/05/gop-school-uvalde-shooting-response-guys-with-guns.html

COVID Effects On Businesses

How The Pandemic Pushed Restaurant Workers Over The Edge

(By Eli Rosenberg, Washington Post, 24 May 2021)

 Jim Conway started working in restaurants in 1982, making $2.13 an hour, plus tips.  And though the world has changed significantly in the nearly 40 years since then, his hourly wage has not. At the Olive Garden outside of Pittsburgh where he worked when the pandemic hit last year, he was making $2.83 an hour, the minimum wage for tipped workers in Pennsylvania, plus tips. So after being furloughed for months last spring, Conway, 64, decided to retire.

Being paid the rough equivalent of a chocolate bar an hour from the chain was little incentive for him to stick it out longer in the industry after so many years, especially with tips no longer a reliable source of income and lingering health concerns about covid-19.  “The main issue for me was safety,” Conway said. “There are lots of people who don’t want to participate in the old ways.”

Conway is one of the millions of workers who left the restaurant industry during the pandemic and haven’t come back. The industry has 1.7 million fewer jobs filled than before the pandemic, despite posting almost a million job openings in March, along with hotels, and raising pay 3.6 percent, an average of 58 cents an hour, in the first three months of 2021.

Restaurant chains and industry groups say a shortage of workers like Conway is slowing their recovery, as the sector tries to get back on its feet amid sinking covid cases, falling restrictions and resurgent demand in many areas around the country.

The issue has quickly become political, with Republicans blaming the labor crunch on the Biden administration’s move to boost federal unemployment insurance supplement, which has been a central part of the government’s response to the pandemic for most of the past year. GOP leaders and business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce say the extra unemployment insurance is a disincentive for some workers to return to work.

In interviews with The Washington Post, 10 current and former workers expressed a wide range of reasons they are or were reluctant to return to work. Some, like Conway, have left the industry or changed careers, saying they felt like the industry was no longer worth the stress and volatility.  Others said jobs that didn’t pay enough for them to make ends meet no longer felt appropriate to them. Others left after disputes with managers — over issues around safety and pay — and other flash points that have emerged in the past year.

All described the pandemic as an awakening — realizing that long-held concerns about the industry were valid, and compounded by the new health concerns. And forced to stop working or look for other jobs early on in the pandemic, many realized they had other options.  “The staffing issue has actually a lot more to do with the conditions that the industry was in before covid and people not wanting to go back to that, knowing what they would be facing with a pandemic on top of it,” said Crystal Maher, 36, a restaurant worker in Austin, who’s become more active on the industry’s labor issues in the past year. “People are forgetting that restaurant workers have actually experienced decades of abuse and trauma. The pandemic is just the final straw.”

Tonya Breslow, the owner of Mis en Place, a restaurant staffing firm, said a huge number of restaurants she works with are dealing with shortages.  The firm recently surveyed 2,000 line cooks and back-of-the-house restaurant workers nationally and found just over a quarter, 26 percent, reported leaving the industry, while 41 percent of workers said they were still employed in the industry. That left about a third of respondents who had not gone back to work.  Of that group, most workers said they were not yet back, because they were either looking for the right opportunity, they had concerns about safety during the pandemic, or they did not plan to return to the industry.

A turbulent industry

The restaurant industry is famously volatile, home to strong personalities, tense workplaces, grinding hours and unpredictable scheduling. Issues like tip and wage theft, sexual harassment, and drug and alcohol abuse can be widespread, and there is often little in the way of formal job benefits such as health care, vacation time, sick pay or a livable minimum wage, though many workers do well in tips during flush times.

Turnover is a way of life; the average job tenure for hourly food service workers is less than two months, according to data compiled by Mis en Place.  This constant churn was affecting Jazz Salm’s life even before the pandemic.  The 37-year-old had worked for Carrabba’s Italian Grill, a Florida-headquartered chain, at different locations for more than 15 years, but said she had to find another job after one of the restaurants’ outposts, near Miami, burned down.  She got a job at a Chili’s in that area in early March of last year, but was furloughed when the pandemic shuttered the business after her first week.

It took her months to get approved for unemployment insurance in Florida, as the state’s system struggled to process the flood of applications in the early months of the crisis.  By the end of summer, Salm found a job at a Walmart, after moving back in with her mother in Sarasota. But shortly after starting work there, she registered a fever during the screening the store administered to workers before they clocked in, and was sent home to quarantine. The company required a two-week, quarantine, she said, even though she had tested negative days a few days before developing the fever.

Walmart pays employees if they’re sent home for failing a health screening, but Salm said she was unaware of the benefit, and thought she’d have to go two weeks without a paycheck.  She decided to quit the job and drive up the coast to go stay with a friend who had invited her to come live at her house in Upstate New York. She slept in her car along the way.  She said she tried to find a job at a restaurant but couldn’t. So she started taking care of her friend’s 81-year-old father-in-law, who had just returned from the hospital after receiving chemotherapy for throat cancer. The money takes care of her rent, groceries and some spending money.

She said she may return eventually to the food service industry in Florida, where restaurant owners have complained vociferously about the worker shortage, but it will take her time. She won’t be fully vaccinated until mid-June, for starters. And she wonders about getting trained and going into medical caregiving full time.  “I’m trying to trust the process and hope that this all works out and there’s not another spike or anything else,” she said. “The restaurant industry really doesn’t guarantee the money that I used to make, with this pandemic. Because if it flares up again, or God forbid something happens in the restaurant, you have to close it down, you’re out of work for weeks and there’s nothing you can do to make money. Other than find another job.”

Losing the city’s best

Allan Creasy, 39, had worked in restaurants and bars for more than two decades, most recently as a bartender at Celtic Crossing, an Irish bar in Memphis, where he was voted the city’s best bartender three times over the years by readers of the city’s alt-weekly newspaper, the Memphis Flyer.  Like others, Creasy said the pandemic proved to be the tipping point for him, exacerbating long-standing labor issues in the industry and drawing attention to how low his wages were: $2.13 an hour before tips — the minimum wage for tipped positions in Tennessee and at the federal level. 

After three months back at the bar after the initial lockdown, Creasy decided to quit and pursue a career change.  “I didn’t come back to the same job I left previously,” he said. “It was very difficult to constantly have to police people about mask-wearing. It was very difficult to try to bartend and run out to the back parking lot to deliver to-go food, and to deal with Uber Eats drivers and the like, while making significantly less money than I’d been making previously.”

And the pay had gotten worse — with his income dropping from about $60,000 a year around 2011 to less than $40,000 before the pandemic, he said.  “I’ve seen the number of people who are passionate about the restaurant industry slowly ebb away over the last 20 years,” he said. “In my opinion, it’s because the server’s minimum wage hasn’t changed. There is this belief that servers and bartenders are interchangeable.”  Creasy, who has a bachelor’s degree in history, has been doing fundraising and social media work for a local political action committee since. He’s making about the same amount of money he did at the bar but doing something that feels closer to his heart with less risk.  “You had so many folks working in the industry because they loved it, but now so many folks found a job in a warehouse making $15 an hour, or making as much money driving for Uber Eats, all these different businesses,” he said. “It’s not that we’re on unemployment. We did our unemployment stint, and we found something else.”

Nathaniel Santiago, 20, who works at a McDonald’s in the Fort Lauderdale area in Florida, said he believes the industry’s low wages are playing a role.  He had to move back in with his parents last year after losing his job at a manufacturing facility, before finding work at the fast-food chain, where he said he’s making $11 an hour — just $1,760 per month for full-time work, with no health care. That’s about $4 an hour below what is estimated to be a living wage for a single person with no children in that area — the minimum amount calculated for a person to be able to meet basic standards of living.

He also believes unemployment insurance is playing a role in the shortage, saying he’s heard from some friends and family members who say they are happy getting by with support from the government in the meantime.  “We need to pay workers $15 an hour at the moment,” he said. “People want to talk about inflation or that if you pay everybody $15 an hour, everything is going to get more expensive, but it already is. Food, clothing, gasoline, rent — you name it.”  Peter DeQuattro, 36, a line cook in Memphis who recently left a job because it paid less than $15 an hour, said he thinks the pandemic has changed the paradigm for low-wage workers — giving people more confidence to demand better wages.  “There is a growing movement of people, including myself, that just flat out refuse to work for somebody that isn’t willing to pay a living wage,” he said.

Companies dangle bonuses, incentives, appetizers

There are signs that businesses are reacting to the shortage.  Companies that pay less than $15 an hour — the amount many liberal economists and labor advocates say should be a baseline to provide people with something closer to a living wage in many areas of the country — are increasingly dangling incentives, bonuses and pay raises in front of workers in the hopes of staffing up. Pay is increasing in the industry as well: The median wage for nonmanagement restaurant and bar workers rose 70 cents an hour, to $14.50, in the past three months — a significant 5.1 percent jump.

Costco, Chipotle and McDonald’s are among the publicly traded companies that have announced wage increases in recent weeks, and others, like Target, raised their wages in 2020 as the pandemic drew more attention to the plight of workers.  Local media outlets have been flooded with tales of the worker shortage, written mostly from the perspective of businesses, from Santa Fe to Connecticut. A brewery in Albuquerque is offering workers a free 64-ounce growler of beer after every shift; Applebees is offering free appetizers to people who apply to jobs, as it seeks to hire thousands of workers across the country.

Breslow, the owner of the staffing firm Mis en Place, knows restaurant owners who are offering bonuses as high as $3,000 to new hires, and others who are adding health insurance and 401(k) benefits to employee incentive packages.  “The country is scrambling to get that 33 percent,” Breslow said, referring to those workers who have not returned to the industry. “The leverage is unreal.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/05/24/restaurant-workers-shortage-pay/

 

 

The Perfect Storm Making Everything You Need More Expensive

(By Hanna Ziady, CNN Business, 9 June 2021)

 Steel, lumber, plastic and fuel. Corn, soybeans, sugar and sunflower oil. Houses, cars, diapers and toilet paper. Prices are rising almost everywhere you look.  The post-pandemic recovery is in full swing and the global economy is struggling to keep up. Following a collapse at the start of the pandemic as businesses closed and millions of workers lost jobs, demand has rebounded with a vengeance, spurred by government stimulus and consumers flush with savings.

But companies that idled factories or put workers on furlough during lockdowns are now unable to secure enough raw materials to build the houses, make the cars or assemble the appliances that are suddenly in high demand.  Companies are furiously trying to restock inventories following last year's global recession, straining supply chains already reeling from the pandemic to breaking point. A shortage of shipping containers and bottlenecks at ports have made matters worse and increased the cost of moving products around the world. Throw in accidents, cyberattacks, extreme weather and the huge disruption caused by the desperate hunt for cleaner sources of energy, and you have a perfect storm.

There's no telling how long demand will outpace supply, especially as the pandemic continues to rampage through some of the world's biggest economies. But there have already been shortages of everything from microchips and chicken to chlorine and cheese, and prices are spiking.

The big question is whether shortages and price hikes are temporary byproducts of the pandemic, or if the global economy is changing in ways that could permanently hike the cost of doing business and usher in a new era of inflation. The answer has huge implications for workers, investors, companies and governments. 

What is certain is that, for now at least, inflation is back and it's widespread.  Inflation in countries that belong to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development surged in April to the highest level since 2008. Energy price hikes boosted average annual inflation across OECD countries to 3.3%. But prices are rising even when volatile food and energy costs are excluded.

How did we get here?

With US gasoline prices at a seven-year high, it's easy to forget that oil futures crashed last year. Brent crude, the global benchmark, briefly plunged below $20 a barrel last April, as coronavirus lockdowns cratered demand from airlines, motorists and manufacturers.  Brent has since shot up to over $70 a barrel on a dramatic turnaround in demand. US oil hit $70 a barrel on Sunday for the first time in nearly three years. A similar phenomenon is playing out across a host of commodities, industries and products.  "We've never really had anything quite that violent and rapid, both in terms of the change down and the change back up," said George Calhoun, director of the quantitative finance program at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey. "It's clear that [the economic rebound] created a lot of disruptions, not just in supply chains, but in business models."

Take the auto industry, a prime example of how the events of the past year have upended supply chains, changed consumer behavior and are now fueling price pressures.  The pandemic temporarily shuttered car factories last year, while the recession that followed torpedoed sales. When automakers responded by cutting back vehicle production and thus orders for microchips, semiconductor manufacturers reassigned spare capacity to companies making smartphones, laptops and gaming devices — products in high demand from housebound consumers.

Then, when car sales bounced back faster than expected, manufacturers found themselves at the back of the line for chips. Widespread shortages have forced the likes of Ford (F), Volkswagen (VLKAF), Fiat Chrysler (FCAU) and Nissan (NSANF) to slash production and idle plants in some cases.  That has pushed the price of new cars higher and boosted demand for used vehicles, which are now one of the main sources of inflation in the United States.  Rental car companies, which sold thousands of vehicles early on in the pandemic to shore up their finances, are adding to the crush of demand and holding on to stock that would otherwise have been put up for sale.  At the same time, stimulus checks and low interest rates have made vehicle purchases more accessible to households, many of which want to avoid public transportation and carpooling during the pandemic.

The price of used cars and trucks in the United States jumped 10% over the previous month in April — the biggest increase since 1953, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Prices were up 21% compared with a year earlier, making used cars the primary driver of April's surge in US consumer prices.  "Demand continues to exceed supply for new vehicles and we expect this to continue through 2021, in part due to the production disruption," Mike Jackson, the CEO of AutoNation (AN), one of America's biggest car dealers, said on an earnings call with analysts in April.  "More important though, interest rates and consumer preference for vehicle ownership versus ride share and public transportation are supporting demand," he added. "Americans want individual transportation."

Commodity prices surge

As the pandemic recovery takes hold, the cost of raw materials needed to produce consumer goods and power vast infrastructure spending in China is soaring. US President Joe Biden's infrastructure proposal would only increase demand if approved by Congress.  Booming investment into green technologies is also adding to strong demand for metals such as aluminum and copper, which are used in electric vehicles. Tesla (TSLA) recently added $2,000 to the price of its Model 3. CEO Elon Musk blamed rising raw materials costs.  Iron ore, copper and steel, used to make cars, houses and electrical appliances, have hit record price levels in recent weeks. The Bloomberg Commodity Spot Index, which tracks price changes across a range of metals and agricultural commodities, has jumped roughly 60% over the past year.

In Shanghai, the price of rebar, a type of steel used to reinforce concrete, has fallen from record levels in May but is still 16% more expensive than at the end of last year.  Rising costs have pushed producer price inflation in China to its highest level in nearly 13 years. The country's producer price index — which measures the cost of goods sold to businesses — soared 9% in May from a year ago, according to government data released Wednesday.  In the United States, lumber shortages tied to sawmill shutdowns earlier on in the pandemic have spiked prices, adding nearly $36,000 to the price of an average new home, according to an analysis by the National Association of Home Builders Association.

It's not just the construction sector that's feeling the heat. The rising costs of resin and pulp, for example, are prompting Procter & Gamble (PG) and Kimberly-Clark (KMB) to increase the prices of household staples such as tampons, diapers and toilet paper.  A growing list of crises on the supply side has exacerbated the commodities crunch. The Suez Canal blockage delayed goods shipments in March. Drought in South America has weighed on corn and sugar output. A deep freeze in Texas and the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack tightened the market for plastic and fuel, while India's Covid-19 outbreak disrupted ports and supply chains.  "It's really been a perfect storm," said Warren Patterson, head of commodities strategy at ING.

The latest problem: JBS Meat, a major beef and pork producer, suffered a cyberattack that forced the company to shut down plants in North America and Australia last week. Factories have since come back online but the disruption could cause wholesale meat prices to jump, analysts said.  Food prices are already rising due to a surge in demand for agricultural commodities such as corn and soybeans driven by China, where demand for animal feed is soaring as hog herds recover from an African swine fever outbreak, according to Patterson. The government has also been rebuilding depleted domestic corn reserves, he added.

On the supply side, dry weather in Brazil, Thailand and Europe has weighed on crop yields, while Russia, the world's leading wheat exporter, has implemented an export tax to bolster domestic supplies and cool prices.  Global food prices rose for a twelfth consecutive month in May and at their fastest monthly rate in more than a decade, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. The FAO Food Price Index, which tracks a wide range of products, was nearly 40% higher last month than its level a year ago.

While the cost of raw ingredients accounts for a small portion of the price that consumers pay for goods in supermarkets and restaurants, food companies such as Nestlé (NSRGY) and Unilever (UL) have already announced price increases on certain product lines in response to commodity inflation.  An increase in supply could ease prices gains, particularly because at these levels there is strong incentive for farmers to plant more crops, Patterson said. In other words, the trend could be temporary.  "The move we've seen across most commodities is part of the usual recovery, a cyclical uplift," he added. "As we see the global economy normalize, once we've recovered, demand will ease off and I expect prices to. I'm not of the view that we're in a commodities super cycle."

Logistics and labor costs climb

Commodities are not the only factor driving prices higher, however.  Logistics and labor costs have also increased and a shortage of workers in some industries could intensify pressure on companies to raise wages even further.  "When it comes to the economy we're building, rising wages aren't a bug; they're a feature," Biden said in a speech during a recent visit to Cleveland, Ohio.  Labor shortages, which have also become a problem in Europe, are partly related to the speed at which economies reopened and are likely to normalize once welfare payments dry up, stimulus checks have been spent and workers in sectors such as hospitality and travel feel more confident that businesses won't be forced to shut again, said Andrew Kenningham, chief Europe economist at Capital Economics.

But that's little consolation to companies trying to get products out the door. For Whirlpool (WHR), which makes washing machines, fridges and ovens, the rising cost of commodities, labor and logistics has led to several rounds of price increases.  "That's the only way to mitigate significant cost inflation," CEO Marc Bitzer said in an interview with Bloomberg Television last month. "There is talk or hope that this is a temporary blip. We see it elevated for a sustained period," he added.  Supply chain constraints have forced the company to make products based on the goods it has available rather than on customer orders. "That is anything but efficient or normal but that's how you have to run it right now," Bitzer said. "The supply chain is pretty much upside down."

In Germany, the industrial heart of Europe, supply chain disruptions exacerbated by the Suez Canal blockage offer one possible explanation for an unexpected drop in industrial orders in April, according to Carsten Brzeski, head of research at ING.  A growing list of companies around the world have flagged higher supply chain costs — from engine manufacturer Cummins (CMI) to exercise equipment maker Peloton (PTON) — partly driven by soaring shipping charges, which have made it much more expensive to move goods. If demand remains elevated, more firms may opt to pass these costs on to customers.

The Logistics Managers' Index, a US economic indicator, attests to rising cost pressures in supply chains. The monthly gauge asks corporate supply chiefs where they see future expenses relating to inventory, transportation and warehousing.  In May, respondents predicted that over the next 12 months costs across all three categories would experience their highest increase in the nearly 5-year history of the index.

The end of easy choices

With price hikes apparent on store shelves and in official data, inflation expectations among businesses and consumers are rising, according to various surveys. That in itself poses a challenge. If businesses and consumers think that higher prices are here to stay, they may change their behaviors in ways that cause price pressures to persist.  For example, workers might demand higher wages, forcing companies to increase the price of their goods and placing additional upward pressure on salaries.

At least for now, central bankers are of the view that price hikes will prove transient and are unlikely to lead to persistently higher inflation — even as some economists including former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and former Bank of England governor Mervyn King sound the alarm.  "Neglecting inflation leaves global economies sitting on a time bomb," Deutsche Bank economists warned in a research note this week. If central banks wait too long to raise interest rates they will be forced into "abrupt" policy changes, causing significant disruption to markets and the economy, they argued.

Yet Federal Reserve officials remain sanguine. "Although continued vigilance is warranted, the inflation and employment data thus far appear to reflect a temporary misalignment of supply and demand that should fade over time as the demand surge normalizes, reopening is completed, and supply adapts to the post-pandemic new normal," Lael Brainard, a Federal Reserve governor said in a speech last week.  Policymakers in the United States and Europe are "looking through" upward pressure on prices and "basing monetary policy decisions on where they think inflation will be in two years' time rather than in the next six to 12 months," said Kenningham of Capital Economics.

Still, whereas a year ago concerns centered on deflation, the risks now are "much more balanced and possibly tilted to the upside in some cases," Kenningham told CNN Business.  "The risks of inflation rising on a sustained basis are much higher in the United States than in Europe," he added, pointing to far more generous financial support for US households, which has propped up income and helped boost savings to levels not seen in more than 70 years.  "In brief," wrote the Deutsche Bank economists, "the easy policy decisions of the disinflationary 1980-2020 period appear to be behind us."

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/09/business/rising-prices-inventories-post-pandemic/index.html

‘You’re A Bunch Of Dopes And Babies’: Inside Trump’s Stunning Tirade Against Generals

(By Carol Leonnig & Philip Rucker, Washington Post, 17 January 2020)

There is no more sacred room for military officers than 2E924 of the Pentagon, a windowless and secure vault where the Joint Chiefs of Staff meet regularly to wrestle with classified matters. Its more common name is “the Tank.” The Tank resembles a small corporate boardroom, with a gleaming golden oak table, leather swivel armchairs and other mid-century stylings. Inside its walls, flag officers observe a reverence and decorum for the wrenching decisions that have been made there.

Hanging prominently on one of the walls is The Peacemakers, a painting that depicts an 1865 Civil War strategy session with President Abraham Lincoln and his three service chiefs — Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, Major General William Tecumseh Sherman, and Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter. One hundred fifty-​­two years after Lincoln hatched plans to preserve the Union, President Trump’s advisers staged an intervention inside the Tank to try to preserve the world order.

By that point, six months into his administration, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had grown alarmed by gaping holes in Trump’s knowledge of history, especially the key alliances forged following World War II. Trump had dismissed allies as worthless, cozied up to authoritarian regimes in Russia and elsewhere, and advocated withdrawing troops from strategic outposts and active theaters alike.

Trump organized his unorthodox worldview under the simplistic banner of “America First,” but Mattis, Tillerson, and Cohn feared his proposals were rash, barely considered, and a danger to America’s superpower standing. They also felt that many of Trump’s impulsive ideas stemmed from his lack of familiarity with U.S. history and, even, where countries were located. To have a useful discussion with him, the trio agreed, they had to create a basic knowledge, a shared language.

President Trump spoke about his former defense secretary at a Cabinet meeting Jan. 2, saying he was not "too happy" with how Jim Mattis handled Afghanistan. (The Washington Post)
So on July 20, 2017, Mattis invited Trump to the Tank for what he, Tillerson, and Cohn had carefully organized as a tailored tutorial. What happened inside the Tank that day crystallized the commander in chief’s berating, derisive and dismissive manner, foreshadowing decisions such as the one earlier this month that brought the United States to the brink of war with Iran. The Tank meeting was a turning point in Trump’s presidency. Rather than getting him to appreciate America’s traditional role and alliances, Trump began to tune out and eventually push away the experts who believed their duty was to protect the country by restraining his more dangerous impulses.

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The episode has been documented numerous times, but subsequent reporting reveals a more complete picture of the moment and the chilling effect Trump’s comments and hostility had on the nation’s military and national security leadership.

Just before 10 a.m. on a scorching summer Thursday, Trump arrived at the Pentagon. He stepped out of his motorcade, walked along a corridor with portraits honoring former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs, and stepped inside the Tank. The uniformed officers greeted their commander in chief. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Joseph F. Dunford Jr. sat in the seat of honor midway down the table, because this was his room, and Trump sat at the head of the table facing a projection screen. Mattis and the newly confirmed deputy defense secretary, Patrick Shanahan, sat to the president’s left, with Vice President Pence and Tillerson to his right. Down the table sat the leaders of the military branches, along with Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon was in the outer ring of chairs with other staff, taking his seat just behind Mattis and directly in Trump’s line of sight.

Mattis, Cohn, and Tillerson and their aides decided to use maps, graphics, and charts to tutor the president, figuring they would help keep him from getting bored. Mattis opened with a slide show punctuated by lots of dollar signs. Mattis devised a strategy to use terms the impatient president, schooled in real estate, would appreciate to impress upon him the value of U.S. investments abroad. He sought to explain why U.S. troops were deployed in so many regions and why America’s safety hinged on a complex web of trade deals, alliances, and bases across the globe.

An opening line flashed on the screen, setting the tone: “The post-war international rules-based order is the greatest gift of the greatest generation.” Mattis then gave a 20-minute briefing on the power of the NATO alliance to stabilize Europe and keep the United States safe. Bannon thought to himself, “Not good. Trump is not going to like that one bit.” The internationalist language Mattis was using was a trigger for Trump.  “Oh, baby, this is going to be f---ing wild,” Bannon thought. “If you stood up and threatened to shoot [Trump], he couldn’t say ‘postwar rules-based international order.’ It’s just not the way he thinks.”

For the next 90 minutes, Mattis, Tillerson, and Cohn took turns trying to emphasize their points, pointing to their charts and diagrams. They showed where U.S. personnel were positioned, at military bases, CIA stations, and embassies, and how U.S. deployments fended off the threats of terror cells, nuclear blasts, and destabilizing enemies in places including Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, the Korea Peninsula, and Syria. Cohn spoke for about 20 minutes about the value of free trade with America’s allies, emphasizing how he saw each trade agreement working together as part of an overall structure to solidify U.S. economic and national security.

Trump appeared peeved by the schoolhouse vibe but also allergic to the dynamic of his advisers talking at him. His ricocheting attention span led him to repeatedly interrupt the lesson. He heard an adviser say a word or phrase and then seized on that to interject with his take. For instance, the word “base” prompted him to launch in to say how “crazy” and “stupid” it was to pay for bases in some countries.

Trump’s first complaint was to repeat what he had vented about to his national security adviser months earlier: South Korea should pay for a $10 billion missile defense system that the United States built for it. The system was designed to shoot down any short- and medium-range ballistic missiles from North Korea to protect South Korea and American troops stationed there. But Trump argued that the South Koreans should pay for it, proposing that the administration pull U.S. troops out of the region or bill the South Koreans for their protection.  “We should charge them rent,” Trump said of South Korea. “We should make them pay for our soldiers. We should make money off of everything.”

Trump proceeded to explain that NATO, too, was worthless. U.S. generals were letting the allied member countries get away with murder, he said, and they owed the United States a lot of money after not living up to their promise of paying their dues.  “They’re in arrears,” Trump said, reverting to the language of real estate. He lifted both his arms at his sides in frustration. Then he scolded top officials for the untold millions of dollars he believed they had let slip through their fingers by allowing allies to avoid their obligations.  “We are owed money you haven’t been collecting!” Trump told them. “You would totally go bankrupt if you had to run your own business.”

Mattis wasn’t trying to convince the president of anything, only to explain and provide facts. Now things were devolving quickly. The general tried to calmly explain to the president that he was not quite right. The NATO allies didn’t owe the United States back rent, he said. The truth was more complicated. NATO had a nonbinding goal that members should pay at least 2 percent of their gross domestic product on their defenses. Only five of the countries currently met that goal, but it wasn’t as if they were shorting the United States on the bill.

More broadly, Mattis argued, the NATO alliance was not serving only to protect western Europe. It protected America, too. “This is what keeps us safe,” Mattis said. Cohn tried to explain to Trump that he needed to see the value of the trade deals. “These are commitments that help keep us safe,” Cohn said.

Bannon interjected. “Stop, stop, stop,” he said. “All you guys talk about all these great things, they’re all our partners, I want you to name me now one country and one company that’s going to have his back.”

Trump then repeated a threat he’d made countless times before. He wanted out of the Iran nuclear deal that President Obama had struck in 2015, which called for Iran to reduce its uranium stockpile and cut its nuclear program.

 “It’s the worst deal in history!” Trump declared.

“Well, actually . . .,” Tillerson interjected.

 “I don’t want to hear it,” Trump said, cutting off the secretary of state before he could explain some of the benefits of the agreement. “They’re cheating. They’re building. We’re getting out of it. I keep telling you, I keep giving you time, and you keep delaying me. I want out of it.”

Before they could debate the Iran deal, Trump erupted to revive another frequent complaint: the war in Afghanistan, which was now America’s longest war. He demanded an explanation for why the United States hadn’t won in Afghanistan yet, now 16 years after the nation began fighting there in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Trump unleashed his disdain, calling Afghanistan a “loser war.” That phrase hung in the air and disgusted not only the military leaders at the table but also the men and women in uniform sitting along the back wall behind their principals. They all were sworn to obey their commander in chief’s commands, and here he was calling the war they had been fighting a loser war.  “You’re all losers,” Trump said. “You don’t know how to win anymore.”

Trump questioned why the United States couldn’t get some oil as payment for the troops stationed in the Persian Gulf. “We spent $7 trillion; they’re ripping us off,” Trump boomed. “Where is the f---ing oil?”  Trump seemed to be speaking up for the voters who elected him, and several attendees thought they heard Bannon in Trump’s words. Bannon had been trying to persuade Trump to withdraw forces by telling him, “The American people are saying we can’t spend a trillion dollars a year on this. We just can’t. It’s going to bankrupt us.”

“And not just that, the deplorables don’t want their kids in the South China Sea at the 38th parallel or in Syria, in Afghanistan, in perpetuity,” Bannon would add, invoking Hillary Clinton’s infamous “basket of deplorables” reference to Trump supporters.

Trump mused about removing General John Nicholson, the U.S. commander in charge of troops in Afghanistan. “I don’t think he knows how to win,” the president said, impugning Nicholson, who was not present at the meeting.  Dunford tried to come to Nicholson’s defense, but the mild-mannered general struggled to convey his points to the irascible president.  “Mr. President, that’s just not . . .,” Dunford started. “We’ve been under different orders.”

Dunford sought to explain that he hadn’t been charged with annihilating the enemy in Afghanistan but was instead following a strategy started by the Obama administration to gradually reduce the military presence in the country in hopes of training locals to maintain a stable government so that eventually the United States could pull out. Trump shot back in more plain language.  “I want to win,” he said. “We don’t win any wars anymore . . . We spend $7 trillion, everybody else got the oil and we’re not winning anymore.”

Trump by now was in one of his rages. He was so angry that he wasn’t taking many breaths. All morning, he had been coarse and cavalier, but the next several things he bellowed went beyond that description. They stunned nearly everyone in the room, and some vowed that they would never repeat them. Indeed, they have not been reported until now.  “I wouldn’t go to war with you people,” Trump told the assembled brass.  Addressing the room, the commander in chief barked, “You’re a bunch of dopes and babies.”

For a president known for verbiage he euphemistically called “locker room talk,” this was the gravest insult he could have delivered to these people, in this sacred space. The flag officers in the room were shocked. Some staff began looking down at their papers, rearranging folders, almost wishing themselves out of the room. A few considered walking out. They tried not to reveal their revulsion on their faces, but questions raced through their minds. “How does the commander in chief say that?” one thought. “What would our worst adversaries think if they knew he said this?”

This was a president who had been labeled a “draft dodger” for avoiding service in the Vietnam War under questionable circumstances. Trump was a young man born of privilege and in seemingly perfect health: six feet two inches with a muscular build and a flawless medical record. He played several sports, including football. Then, in 1968 at age 22, he obtained a diagnosis of bone spurs in his heels that exempted him from military service just as the United States was drafting men his age to fulfill massive troop deployments to Vietnam.

Tillerson in particular was stunned by Trump’s diatribe and began visibly seething. For too many minutes, others in the room noticed, he had been staring straight, dumbfounded, at Mattis, who was speechless, his head bowed down toward the table. Tillerson thought to himself, “Gosh darn it, Jim, say something. Why aren’t you saying something?”  But, as he would later tell close aides, Tillerson realized in that moment that Mattis was genetically a Marine, unable to talk back to his commander in chief, no matter what nonsense came out of his mouth.

The more perplexing silence was from Pence, a leader who should have been able to stand up to Trump. Instead, one attendee thought, “He’s sitting there frozen like a statue. Why doesn’t he stop the president?” Another recalled the vice president was “a wax museum guy.” From the start of the meeting, Pence looked as if he wanted to escape and put an end to the president’s torrent. Surely, he disagreed with Trump’s characterization of military leaders as “dopes and babies,” considering his son, Michael, was a Marine first lieutenant then training for his naval aviator wings. But some surmised Pence feared getting crosswise with Trump. “A total deer in the headlights,” recalled a third attendee.

Others at the table noticed Trump’s stream of venom had taken an emotional toll. So many people in that room had gone to war and risked their lives for their country, and now they were being dressed down by a president who had not. They felt sick to their stomachs. Tillerson told others he thought he saw a woman in the room silently crying. He was furious and decided he couldn’t stand it another minute. His voice broke into Trump’s tirade, this one about trying to make money off U.S. troops.

“No, that’s just wrong,” the secretary of state said. “Mr. President, you’re totally wrong. None of that is true.”

Tillerson’s father and uncle had both been combat veterans, and he was deeply proud of their service.

“The men and women who put on a uniform don’t do it to become soldiers of fortune,” Tillerson said. “That’s not why they put on a uniform and go out and die . . . They do it to protect our freedom.”

There was silence in the Tank. Several military officers in the room were grateful to the secretary of state for defending them when no one else would. The meeting soon ended and Trump walked out, saying goodbye to a group of servicemen lining the corridor as he made his way to his motorcade waiting outside. Mattis, Tillerson, and Cohn were deflated. Standing in the hall with a small cluster of people he trusted, Tillerson finally let down his guard.  “He’s a f---ing moron,” the secretary of state said of the president.

The plan by Mattis, Tillerson, and Cohn to train the president to appreciate the internationalist view had clearly backfired.  “We were starting to get out on the wrong path, and we really needed to have a course correction and needed to educate, to teach, to help him understand the reason and basis for a lot of these things,” said one senior official involved in the planning. “We needed to change how he thinks about this, to course correct. Everybody was on board, 100 percent agreed with that sentiment. [But] they were dismayed and in shock when not only did it not have the intended effect, but he dug in his heels and pushed it even further on the spectrum, further solidifying his views.”

A few days later, Pence’s national security adviser, Andrea Thompson, a retired Army colonel who had served in Afghanistan and Iraq, reached out to thank Tillerson for speaking up on behalf of the military and the public servants who had been in the Tank. By September 2017, she would leave the White House and join Tillerson at Foggy Bottom as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs.

The Tank meeting had so thoroughly shocked the conscience of military leaders that they tried to keep it a secret. At the Aspen Security Forum two days later, longtime NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell asked Dunford how Trump had interacted during the Tank meeting. The Joint Chiefs chairman misleadingly described the meeting, skipping over the fireworks.

“He asked a lot of hard questions, and the one thing he does is question some fundamental assumptions that we make as military leaders — and he will come in and question those,” Dunford told Mitchell on July 22. “It’s a pretty energetic and an interactive dialogue.”

One victim of the Tank meeting was Trump’s relationship with Tillerson, which forever after was strained. The secretary of state came to see it as the beginning of the end. It would only worsen when news that Tillerson had called Trump a “moron” was first reported in October 2017 by NBC News.

Trump once again gathered his generals and top diplomats in December 2017 for a meeting as part of the administration’s ongoing strategy talks about troop deployments in Afghanistan in the Situation Room, a secure meeting room on the ground floor of the West Wing. Trump didn’t like the Situation Room as much as the Pentagon’s Tank, because he didn’t think it had enough gravitas. It just wasn’t impressive.

But there Trump was, struggling to come up with a new Afghanistan policy and frustrated that so many U.S. forces were deployed in so many places around the world. The conversation began to tilt in the same direction as it had in the Tank back in July.  “All these countries need to start paying us for the troops we are sending to their countries. We need to be making a profit,” Trump said. “We could turn a profit on this.”

Dunford tried to explain to the president once again, gently, that troops deployed in these regions provided stability there, which helped make America safer. Another officer chimed in that charging other countries for U.S. soldiers would be against the law.  “But it just wasn’t working,” one former Trump aide recalled. “Nothing worked.”

Following the Tank meeting, Tillerson had told his aides that he would never silently tolerate such demeaning talk from Trump about making money off the deployments of U.S. soldiers. Tillerson’s father, at the age of 17, had committed to enlist in the Navy on his next birthday, wanting so much to serve his country in World War II. His great-uncle was a career officer in the Navy as well. Both men had been on his mind, Tillerson told aides, when Trump unleashed his tirade in the Tank and again when he repeated those points in the Situation Room in December.  “We need to get our money back,” Trump told his assembled advisers.

That was it. Tillerson stood up. But when he did so, he turned his back to the president and faced the flag officers and the rest of the aides in the room. He didn’t want a repeat of the scene in the Tank.  “I’ve never put on a uniform, but I know this,” Tillerson said. “Every person who has put on a uniform, the people in this room, they don’t do it to make a buck. They did it for their country, to protect us. I want everyone to be clear about how much we as a country value their service.”

Tillerson’s rebuke made Trump angry. He got a little red in the face. But the president decided not to engage Tillerson at that moment. He would wait to take him on another day.  Later that evening, after 8:00, Tillerson was working in his office at the State Department’s Foggy Bottom headquarters, preparing for the next day. The phone rang. It was Dunford. The Joint Chiefs chairman’s voice was unsteady with emotion.

Dunford had much earlier joked with Tillerson that in past administrations the secretaries of state and Defense Department leaders wouldn’t be caught dead walking on the same side of the street, for their rivalry was that fierce. But now, as both men served Trump, they were brothers joined against what they saw as disrespect for service members. Dunford thanked Tillerson for standing up for them in the Situation Room.  “You took the body blows for us,” Dunford said. “Punch after punch. Thank you. I will never forget it.”

Tillerson, Dunford, and Mattis would not take those body blows for much longer. They failed to rein in Trump’s impulses or to break through what they regarded as the president’s stubborn, even dangerous insistence that he knew best. Piece by piece, the guardrails that had hemmed in the chaos of Trump’s presidency crumpled.

In March 2018, Trump abruptly fired Tillerson while the secretary of state was halfway across the globe on a sensitive diplomatic mission to Africa to ease tensions caused by Trump’s demeaning insults about African countries. Trump gave Tillerson no rationale for his firing, and afterward acted as if they were buddies, inviting him to come by the Oval Office to take a picture and have the president sign it. Tillerson never went.

Mattis continued serving as the defense secretary, but the president’s sudden decision in December 2018 to withdraw troops from Syria and abandon America’s Kurdish allies there — one the president soon reversed, only to remake 10 months later — inspired him to resign. Mattis saw Trump’s desired withdrawal as an assault on a soldier’s code. “He began to feel like he was becoming complicit,” recalled one of the secretary’s confidants.

The media interpretation of Mattis’ resignation letter as a scathing rebuke of Trump’s worldview brought the president’s anger to a boiling point. Trump decided to remove Mattis two months ahead of the secretary’s chosen departure date. His treatment of Mattis upset the secretary’s staff. They decided to arrange the biggest clap out they could. The event was a tradition for all departing secretaries. They wanted a line of Pentagon personnel that stretched for a mile applauding Mattis as he left for the last time. It was going to be “yuge,” staffers joked, borrowing from Trump’s glossary.

But Mattis would not allow it.  “No, we are not doing that,” he told his aides. “You don’t understand the president. I work with him. You don’t know him like I do. He will take it out on Shanahan and Dunford.”

Dunford stayed on until September 2019, retiring at the conclusion of his four-year term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. One of Dunford’s first public acts after leaving office was to defend a military officer attacked by Trump, Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council official who testified in the House impeachment inquiry about his worries over Trump’s conduct with Ukraine. Trump dismissed Vindman as a “Never Trumper,” but Dunford stepped forward to praise the Purple Heart recipient as “a professional, competent, patriotic, and loyal officer. He has made an extraordinary contribution to the security of our nation.”

By then, however, Trump had become a president entirely unrestrained. He had replaced his raft of seasoned advisers with a cast of enablers who executed his orders and engaged his obsessions. They saw their mission as telling the president yes.



This article is adapted from “A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America,” which will be published on Jan. 21 by Penguin Press.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/youre-a-bunch-of-dopes-and-babies-inside-trumps-stunning-tirade-against-generals/2020/01/16/d6dbb8a6-387e-11ea-bb7b-265f4554af6d_story.html Subscriber sign in

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Jay-Z Didn’t ‘Sell Out’ By Dealing With The NFL. This Is Just How Activism Works.

(By Michael Eric Dyson, Washington Post, 23 August 2019)

In 1963, Malcolm X, who advocated armed self-defense of black folk in the face of white supremacy, flayed Martin Luther King Jr., who preached nonviolent resistance to social injustice. “The white man pays Rev. Martin Luther King, subsidizes Rev. Martin Luther King, so that Rev. Martin Luther King can continue to teach the Negroes to be defenseless,” Malcolm charged. He was a “modern Uncle Tom.” Elsewhere, Malcolm dubbed King “the best weapon that the white man . . . has ever gotten.”

I remembered these bitter charges as controversy dogged the announcement this month that Jay-Z’s company, Roc Nation, had signed a contract with the National Football League to advise on live music, entertainment and social justice projects. Jay had stood up for former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick. He wore Kaepernick’s jersey while performing on “Saturday Night Live,” advised other performers to boycott the Super Bowl halftime show and rapped on 2018’s “Apes---,” “I said no to the Super Bowl: You need me, I don’t need you/ Every night we in the end zone, tell the NFL we in stadiums, too.” Now he’s doing business with the organization that colluded to banish Kaepernick for kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial injustice. Associated Press sports columnist Paul Newberry called Jay a “total sellout,” suggesting he’d buried his conscience in cash. Kaepernick’s lawyer said Jay’s “cold blooded” move “crosses the intellectual picket line.” Jay’s justification : “I think we’ve moved past kneeling. I think it’s time for action.”

Kaepernick and Jay-Z are not the modern-day equivalents of Malcom and King, but those pairs reflect an eternal tension — the outside agitators who apply pressure and the inside activators who patrol the halls of power, bringing knowledge and wisdom — in civil rights and black freedom movements. King worked with the Eisenhower, Johnson and Kennedy administrations to better conditions for black folk and to craft civil rights legislation. Jay, for his part, has advocated for social justice in his music and beyond the stage for more than two decades — by writing op-eds and creating an organization to lobby for criminal justice reform; by bailing out Black Lives Matter protesters; by supplying legal help for black victims of racism; by creating documentaries about victims like Trayvon Martin and Kalief Browder; and by speaking out about police brutality and racial injustice.

The choice between Kaep and Jay, between Malcolm and King, is a false one. We need all of them, and it is far too early to judge what Jay will make of this opportunity with the NFL.

Jay’s action fits into a tradition of social protest, forged by Jesse Jackson, that extends King’s work: You protest a company — say a shoemaker or an auto dealership — for its unjust practices; you force those involved to acknowledge their error; you negotiate for better terms of engagement; you interact with the folk you once protested in an effort to make progress. In 1996, after several Texaco executives were taped making racist comments about 1,400 black employees who had filed a class-action discrimination suit against the company, Jackson organized a picket protest, then forged connections with Texaco board members that led to a corporate mea culpa and an out-of-court settlement of more than $175 million with the company’s black workers.

This reflected a shift in civil rights strategy from street protests to suite participation. Jackson leveraged the threat of boycotts and the rhetoric of persuasion to get more blacks placed on corporate boards, compel banks and major companies to direct more business to minority-owned contractors, and help integrate more black and other minority folk into the nation’s economic power base.

It is true that the NFL did not explicitly acknowledge wrongdoing in Kaepernick’s case, though the league did settle his grievance lawsuit in February, suggesting that it recognized his claim of collusion as a real legal threat. Jay cannot make a team hire Kaepernick, and perhaps Roc Nation could have refused a contract until Kaepernick got a job, which would have been a just outcome. But it is also true that social justice doesn’t hinge exclusively on Kaepernick’s employment. The fact that many team owners support an openly racist president demands an attempt to grapple with them. And it may be a sign of progress that those same owners got into business with a rapper who calls President Trump a “superbug.” Jay’s noisy opposition to white nationalism is just as important as how his partnership may provide the league cover.

Jay did not write off protest when he said we are “past kneeling.” He simply cast Kaepernick as a runner in a relay race rather than a boxer fighting alone in the ring. The Players Coalition, for instance, was founded in 2017 by Philadelphia Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins and former receiver Anquan Boldin to tie kneeling to serious and thoughtful action. It promotes social justice advocacy, education and distribution of resources on the local, state and federal levels. When it accepted nearly $90 million from the NFL to advance its agenda in November 2017, then-49ers safety Eric Reid, Kaepernick’s courageous compatriot, called the thoughtful Jenkins a “sellout” and a “neocolonialist.”

But consider its efforts so far. As part of the $89 million that the players got the NFL to commit over a seven-year period, $8.5 million was allocated in 2018. Players identified key issues of racial and social inequality where they thought they could make the biggest impact, including police and community relations, criminal justice reform, and educational and economic advancement. Players led the working group that distributed millions to the Advancement Project, the Center for Policing Equity, the National Juvenile Defender Center, the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, the Campaign for Black Male Achievement, the Civil Rights Corps and VOTE. After Trump canceled a White House invitation to celebrate the Eagles’ 2018 Super Bowl victory, Jenkins skipped a traditional news conference and drew attention with a series of signs clarifying that player protests weren’t about the national anthem but about social inequality.

When white institutions and individuals sincerely ask for help, it is a good thing to supply it. (That sincerity may be doubted and only later revealed to be genuine, or the request may begin as insincere but evolve with more contact and better understanding.) Malcolm X once famously rebuffed a young white student who tracked him down in New York to ask what she could do to help the cause. His response took her aback: “Nothing.” It makes for great theater and dramatic storytelling, but it was the wrong answer.

Things are never ideal, and systems of white oppression co-opt us all: teachers, leaders, advocates, athletes, organizers. Look at me. I have spent nearly five decades — in speeches, books, my courses — advocating for social justice. I also work at Georgetown University, a school that sold 272 enslaved souls, including children, to bankroll its future. This is how the world works: All of us have blood on our hands and dirt beneath our nails, and we can scarcely afford to reject every institution we encounter as irretrievably tainted.

The charge of being a sellout, and the instinct to “cancel” people indicted in this way, often comes full circle. (Malcolm was later deemed a traitor to his cause and murdered by members of his own group.) The language of betrayal cannot provide lasting moral satisfaction. Instead, we need a vocabulary of moral accountability and social responsibility that is nuanced and capacious, giving us air to breathe and room to grow.

Jay’s deal with the NFL represents a valid and potentially viable attempt to raise awareness of injustice to black folk, and to inspire the league to embrace just action for the black masses. It may fail — and it certainly should not be used to diminish Kaepernick’s noble, iconic battle — but the effort is not a repudiation of justice. It is an attempt to make justice real for black folk far beyond the elite circles in which Jay and Kaepernick travel. Jay-Z, whose résumé is suffused with activism that cost him money instead of accruing him profit, has earned the right to try this. Even if Jay stands to make a tidy sum with the NFL, his history suggests that he has put his money where his ethics are — and declined to let his capitalist instincts outweigh his ethical imagination. Alongside scolding, resisting, protesting and cajoling, there is a need for strategy, planning, listening, learning and moving forward to test the application of principles embodied by people like Kaepernick.

Jay and Kaepernick will not be the last civil rights activists who represent different poles of the movement. This history is rich: King, Rosa Parks, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Freedom Riders, the Congress of Racial Equality and a host of other organizations occasionally bickered over methods and messaging and strategy. Iconic figures got bruised (James Baldwin, iced from speaking at the 1963 March on Washington, felt wounded but still kept up the freedom fight), swept aside (Ella Baker didn’t get her due when working with King’s sexist organization) or minimized (grass-roots activist Fannie Lou Hamer wasn’t universally applauded by black elites when she lived).

It is not wrong for Kaepernick to receive every nickel he has earned from Nike and the NFL, or for Reid and Jenkins to continue to get paid for their talents in the league they push to do the right thing. And it is hardly wrong for Jay-Z to do well while doing good. They are all motivated by grand ideals and good ends. Even Malcolm X, once he freed himself from his earlier narrow views, concluded that “Dr. King wants the same thing I want — freedom!” So does Colin Kaepernick. So does Jay-Z. And so should we.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/jay-z-didnt-sell-out-by-dealing-with-the-nfl-this-is-just-how-activism-works/2019/08/23/17178210-c520-11e9-9986-1fb3e4397be4_story.html