February 2019 - Robert Kuttner

In Case You Missed It: Rep. Adam Schiff Channels Pastor Niemöller

In the middle of a Washington Post opinion piece the other day, Rep. Schiff, who heads the House Intelligence Committee, wrote this: To my Republican colleagues: When the president attacked the independence of the Justice Department by intervening in a case in which he is implicated, you did not speak out. When he attacked the press as the enemy of the people, you again were silent. When he targeted the judiciary, labeling judges and decisions he didn’t like as [...]

By Robert Kuttner|2019-02-25T19:01:23-04:00February 25th, 2019|Kuttner on TAP|0 Comments

About that North Carolina Do-Over Election

As you have probably read or heard by now, the ballot fraud in North Carolina’s Ninth Congressional District was so brazen and so toxic that even the Republicans on the state election commission felt compelled to order a new election. Think about this for a moment. For years, Republicans have been justifying voter suppression measures on the bogus premise that ballot fraud was rampant among Democrats. A presidential commission on the subject, headed by former Kansas Secretary of State [...]

By Robert Kuttner|2019-02-22T15:06:30-04:00February 22nd, 2019|Kuttner on TAP|0 Comments

Back to the Progressive Future

Elizabeth Warren keeps getting whacked by the right for proposing big, bold public programs. The latest is universal, high-quality child care. But take a close look, and you’ll see that Warren’s program is actually a bit more modest than the proposed Mondale-Brademas Comprehensive Child Development Act of 1971. That act was passed by both houses, overwhelmingly in the Senate, and was ultimately vetoed by President Nixon. In the proposed 1971 act, subsidy and certification of a range of local [...]

By Robert Kuttner|2019-02-20T19:56:19-04:00February 20th, 2019|Kuttner on TAP|0 Comments

Remind Me, Why Does Amazon Get to Own Everything?

Good for New York, especially for New York’s unions, for making it clear that the town was not for sale. But everything else seems to be. I admit that I patronize Whole Foods, now owned by Amazon. There’s one in my neighborhood, and if you shop carefully and also go to the supermarket, it needn’t be Whole Paycheck. But lately, since Amazon bought the chain and started cutting corners to maximize profits, I’ve noticed a distinct deterioration in quality [...]

By Robert Kuttner|2019-02-16T12:34:00-04:00February 16th, 2019|Kuttner on TAP|0 Comments

Embarrassment of Riches

The word on the street is that Sherrod Brown and Bernie Sanders will soon join Elizabeth Warren as economic populists contending for the Democratic nomination. There has been a lot of argument in the press and among Democratic operatives and kibitzers about whether the party is better off with a populist or “someone who can win.” That’s a lot of hooey. It’s precisely a populist message and candidate who has what’s needed to win. The risk is that Warren, [...]

By Robert Kuttner|2019-02-13T16:35:15-04:00February 13th, 2019|Kuttner on TAP|0 Comments

Kevin McCarthy’s Strange Love of the Jewish People

What a pleasure to see House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy deploring anti-Semitism in the context of Representative Rashida Tlaib’s comments about AIPAC. The suddenly philo-Semitic McCarthy tweeted: “Anti-Semitic tropes have no place in the halls of Congress. It is dangerous for Democrat leadership to stay silent on this reckless language.” How very neighborly of the Republican leader, how very Christian. So let’s see, where was Kevin McCarthy and the rest of the Republican leadership when… Donald Trump used a [...]

By Robert Kuttner|2019-02-11T17:38:14-04:00February 11th, 2019|Kuttner on TAP|0 Comments

This Just In: Mother Teresa Will Not Be On the Ballot

Could we please get real about Elizabeth Warren and the great DNA brouhaha? The story so far: Warren listed Native ancestry on a questionnaire and on a Texas bar application. It’s already been thoroughly documented that none of this furthered her career. Every university that hired or promoted her assumed she was a white women—in that era of gender discrimination, this was barrier-breaking all by itself. And she never claimed tribal identity, only some Native ancestry. Which happens to be true. [...]

By Robert Kuttner|2019-02-08T18:52:58-04:00February 8th, 2019|Kuttner on TAP|0 Comments

Yes, Virginia, There is a Double Standard

For the past several decades, Republican state governments have systematically targeted black citizens to deny them the right to vote. Republican courts have colluded. We have a new Republican Supreme Court justice, Brett Kavanaugh, who sure as hell looked as if he flat-out lied under oath in the face of persuasive evidence by a credible woman that he had sexually assaulted her. Not to mention a Republican president who brags about his serial sexual predations of women. The common [...]

By Robert Kuttner|2019-02-06T21:18:29-04:00February 6th, 2019|Kuttner on TAP|0 Comments

State of the Union

Trump doesn’t appreciate it, but Nancy Pelosi did him a big favor when she put off his State of the Union address. And now, Trump has blundered once again when he decided to go ahead with it tomorrow, before the issue of reopening the government is resolved. Trump has two challenges—tone and content—and he is playing a very weak hand on both. On tone, he can either be defiant and belligerent, his default setting; or he can be conciliatory. In recent public [...]

By Robert Kuttner|2019-02-04T16:14:10-04:00February 4th, 2019|Kuttner on TAP|0 Comments

Race, Economics, Identity, and the Democrats’ 2020 Nightmare

When I had my 15 minutes of fame in the summer of 2017 and managed to help Steve Bannon get himself fired, Bannon told me this: “The Democrats—the longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.” Well, brother Bannon may get his wish. I’ve been arguing for as long as [...]

By Robert Kuttner|2019-02-01T16:27:01-04:00February 1st, 2019|Kuttner on TAP|0 Comments

Monthly Archives: February 2019