RKuttner

So far, Iran’s response has been pretty feeble. And since Trump doesn’t do restraint, the Iranian leadership is coming under international pressure to display restraint. Iran seems to be seeking proportional forms of retaliation that don’t produce counter-retaliation by Trump. So far, the Iranians haven’t found anything that quite threads this needle. Score one for Trump. When you are certifiably nuts and capable of almost anything, that does tend to keep your adversaries off-balance. The Iranians must be thinking [...]

One of the accomplishments of Trump’s abrupt move to conduct foreign policy by assassination is to make Vladimir Putin look like one of the adults in the room. Putin has just invited Germany’s Angela Merkel to Moscow to explore how to prevent the crisis from deepening—and perhaps salvage something of the Iran nuclear deal, of which both Germany and Russia were major partners and guarantors. Putin has his own radical Islamists to contend with. Though he has had his own tactical [...]

The Democrats need four Republican senators to vote with them on the rules of the Senate impeachment trial. This could compel the calling of witnesses, and even perhaps require a final conviction vote by secret ballot. So far, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine have both declared that they expect a fair trial with the outcome not prejudged, much less with Mitch McConnell working hand in glove with the White House. But where’s Mitt? In the past, he [...]

It’s not hard to demonstrate all the soft spots in the economy that Trump keeps bragging about. What’s hard is to predict the political effect. Normally, incumbent presidents get re-elected when the economy is strong. A Yale economist named Ray Fair has even reduced this tendency to a mathematic model, with surprisingly good predictive power. But this is neither a normal president nor a normal economic boom. For starters, though wage growth is finally ticking upward, ordinary workers have nothing [...]

I’ve lost two much-admired friends this month. My former carrel-mate at The Washington Post, Bill Greider, died at 83 on Christmas Day. Bill became more of an intellectual and more of a radical as he got older and as American capitalism became more corrupted. I don’t think Bill’s core values changed; reality did. Bill earned his strong views through deep reporting. I learned from him that if you ask respectful, well-informed questions, the most improbable sources will give you the [...]

It’s not hard to demonstrate all the soft spots in the economy that Trump keeps bragging about. What’s hard is to predict the political effect. Normally, incumbent presidents get re-elected when the economy is strong. A Yale economist named Ray Fair has even reduced this tendency to a mathematic model, with surprisingly good predictive power. But this is neither a normal president nor a normal economic boom. For starters, though wage growth is finally ticking upward, ordinary workers have nothing [...]

The sheer ideological bias of the mainstream press continues to astound. Today’s offender is a piece in The New York Times (page B2 of the Monday print edition) with the headline “Democrats Are Cautious About Ideas on the Far Left.” The Times’ examples are Medicare for All and free public higher education. Call me old-fashioned, but I always thought “far left” referred to such ideas as nationalizing the means of production. You know: Lenin, Fidel, Chairman Mao. Free public higher education is about as far [...]

Tufts University has belatedly decided to remove the Sackler name from its medical school and buildings, pointing out that the Sacklers’ behavior in promoting and profiting from the opioid epidemic is inconsistent with the school’s mission. The Sacklers’ feelings are hurt. Their lawyer sent the university a wounded letter, objecting that Tufts chose “to prioritize optics over a fair process.” Optics! This is a family that hid some $10 billion in profits cynically gleaned from profound human suffering and is [...]

The NAFTA deal has hit a last-minute snag because one key provision in the House bill negotiated between the Democrats and Trump trade officials was not cleared with the Mexicans. This is the all-important provision giving U.S. inspectors the right to verify whether Mexico is carrying out its commitment to allow free trade unionism. Jesús Seade, Mexico’s chief trade negotiator on NAFTA, objected that this measure was news to him, and violated Mexico’s sovereignty. Mexico’s Senate had approved the new agreement [...]

While Democrats were focused on the details of the NAFTA negotiation, some of which represented genuine progress, Trump was focused on the headlines. Next year, as Democrats in the heartland claim credit for compelling Trump to agree to a better NAFTA, Trump will upstage them as the president who delivered the deal and got Democrats to vote for it. Advantage, Trump. And while the NAFTA deal provides new enforcement for labor rights in principle, the devil is in the [...]