This morning I saw in comments an assertion about corporate political contributions that I recognized not to be true so I thought I’d comment on it. The site Open Secrets posts statistics about political contributions. Based on their figures for the most recent cycle, here’s how political contributions stack up so far:

Counterintuitive, no? I suppose you could further subdivide that between large for profit corporations on the one hand and not for profits, unions, etc. on the other hand but contributions by for profit corporations still don’t go lopsidedly to Republicans. Large corporations tend to hedge their bets, contributing to both political parties. To which company they contribute more tends to depend more on who the incumbents are in the states in which they have operations.

Similarly, large individual contributions tend to be split between the two major political parties.

So, following the lead of the large fact checking sites, I would characterize the claim that large organizations give overwhelmingly to Republicans as false and the characterization that large for profit companies give overwhelmingly to Republicans as mostly false.

The lesson here is phrase your claims about political contributions very carefully. If you phrase it narrowly enough, you can prove practically anything you care to.

Chicago has only seen measurable snow on Halloween six times in its history. Yesterday, Halloween, Chicago received the greatest Halloween snowfall in recorded history. In my neighborhood it was around 3.5″. In some places it was as much as 6″. Basically, it’s a mess. Snow-covered trees in full leaf, a few so burdened down with snow that branches have fallen.

The Chicago Teachers Union and the Chicago Mayor Lori Lighfoot have reached an agreement after 12 days of strike, an agreement that might have been reached without a strike at all. The CTU are getting large raises, there will be more hiring, and the city will pay for half of the strike. Here’s the assessment of the editors of the Wall Street Journal:

The mayor is touting the new contract as the most generous in Chicago history, and she’s right. Even before the strike, the city had given in to most of the union demands. The new contract includes a 16% raise over five years (not including raises based on longevity), a three-year freeze on health insurance premiums, lower copays, caps on class sizes, and more than 450 new social workers and nurses.

Estimated cost to follow, but you can bet it will be expensive. Last week the mayor proposed a slew of tax increases including levies on ride-hailing services and restaurant meals. This week her staff suggested that property taxes may have to increase . . . again. Michelle Obama the other day complained that white people were leaving the city to escape minorities who are moving in. No, they’re fleeing Chicago’s high taxes and lousy schools—and so are minorities

Unfortunately for all of us, Mayor Lightfoot is unable to pay for these commitments. Her present budget already relies heavily on two assumptions: a generous refinancing of the city’s debt and a bailout from Springfield, neither of which are likely to come to pass.

The Chicago Public Schools are one downgrade from being unable to borrow at all. Chicago’s sales tax is already the highest of any major city in the country. Property taxes, also the highest in the country, are rising fast. My annual tax bill is already 10% of the original purchase price of my house and housing prices haven’t risen here in 25 years. No one doubts that our property taxes will rise. Those taxes will fall most heavily on the poor. Both the prosperous and less so are leaving the city in numbers.

The firefighters and police officers are next in line. They’ve been working without a contract for more than a year. Expect them to match or exceed the teachers’ demands.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal remark on the now-official impeachment inquiry that has begun in the House:

The question is why Mrs. Pelosi thinks this helps the impeachment cause. She must know that a partisan impeachment will be less credible with the public. It is unlikely to change the minds of swing voters, much less of Republicans who could sway Senators.

Then again, maybe she and Democrats don’t care. Perhaps they believe, in these polarized times, that they are unlikely to change many minds. Maybe they want to charge ahead on a partisan basis simply to satisfy the Democratic voters and interest groups that have long wanted Mr. Trump gone. Brand the President with the scarlet I and use that as another tool for motivating Democratic voters in 2020.

This is defining impeachment down. Holding Presidents accountable under the Constitution is among the most serious issues in American democracy. Bill Clinton committed a crime by lying under oath to a grand jury. Democrats said that wasn’t impeachable. Richard Nixon was forced to resign when the tapes revealed he had obstructed justice by ordering a cover-up of the Watergate break-in. When the facts were fully known, Republicans and most of the country agreed.

Democrats want to impeach Mr. Trump for asking a foreign government to investigate his political rival for corruption, though the probe never happened, and for withholding aid to Ukraine that in the end wasn’t withheld. Assuming the facts bear this out, the attempt was self-serving and reckless and a long way from the “perfect” behavior Mr. Trump claims.

But Democrats will need more than the facts on the public record so far to justify short-circuiting a Presidency. Their partisan rush to impeachment suggests that their real purpose is revenge for the humiliation of having lost in 2016 to a man they think is unworthy of the office. The impeachers have the burden of showing why this shouldn’t all be left to the judgment of American voters in 2020.

This is impeachment as part of the continuous campaign. Speaker Pelosi seeks to hold her caucus together, retain the Speakership, and motivate Democratic voters to come out in 2020. The risk is that she will fail in holding her caucus together, motivate Republican voters to come out in 2020, and has lowered the bar for impeachment sufficiently that every succeeding president is likely to face impeachment when his or her party does not hold the House.

I have said in the past that I consider Nancy Pelosi the worst Speaker of the House of Representatives of my lifetime. The last three months has not changed my view. We’ll see how things work out.

Rather than bloviating about the impeachment inquiry and attending matters, I’ll just make some predictions:

1. The House will vote to authorize an impeachment inquiry.
2. The House will vote to impeach President Donald Trump. All they need is a simple majority and the House leadership would not have allowed their inquiry to go on as long as it has if they didn’t have the votes. They really don’t have any choice if they want to hold onto their jobs and hold their fractious caucus together.
3. The House vote will be entirely or nearly entirely along party lines.
4. The impeachment vote will take place before Thanksgiving.
5. A bipartisan majority of the Senate will vote to convict.
6. But it won’t be enough senators to convict because not enough Republicans will join the majority.

I don’t have any insight into how long the Senate trial will take. I know what I’d do if I were Mitch McConnell but I’m not.

In his Wall Street Journal column Daniel Henninger is alarmed at the Democratic presidential aspirants’ anti-corporate rhetoric:

Naturally, the Democrats running for their party’s presidential nomination needed a bogeyman, and they have created one even scarier than the Trump monster. It’s them—“corporations!” At their recent presidential debate, one candidate after another claimed corporations were wrecking the country.

Elizabeth Warren, who knows a thing or two about scaring people: “They have no loyalty to America. They have no loyalty to American workers. They have no loyalty to American consumers. They have no loyalty to American communities. They are loyal only to their own bottom line.” And by the way, “I have a plan.” Yikes.

Cory Booker ranted about “corporate tax incentives,” and Amy Klobuchar wants a rollback of “what we did with the corporate tax rate.” Beto O’Rourke somehow related a woman he said was working four jobs with “some of these corporations,” and Tom Steyer, billionaire, said we have to “break the power of these corporations.”

Finally Joe Biden, seeing where this was going, invoked the “corporate greed” of companies that are “not investing in our employees.”

The one of those plaints I want to consider in a little more detail is Joe Biden’s. It isn’t greed that deters large companies from “investing in its employees” but prudence. Why spend money training your present employees to ensure that they have the skills you want when you can call an Accenture, Wipro, or Infosys and get temps, whether here in the United States or offshore, with precisely the skills, experience, and qualities you need? Under the circumstances doing anything else would be irresponsible. It is no accident that month after month employees in the category “business services” continue to increase in numbers in the labor situation reports.

That those affordable outsourced workers design planes that crash or provide poorer service than the workers they replaced is a mere bagatelle.

The solution to that isn’t retraining programs, which are nearly always backwards looking and have spotty track records. The solution is removing the incentives that have been put in place that move companies to outsource, when onshore or off. There are plenty of them.

But that brings me to the real conclusion. I don’t think that Mr. Henninger need worry about some anti-corporate fervor seizing the Democratic Party. Sure, the candidates will rail against “corporate greed” but after the election is over and they’ve satisfied their union and populist supporters, they’ll fail to enforce antitrust laws, rescue big companies when they get themselves into trouble, expand patent and copyright terms, provide breaks for specific companies, and generally be as corporatist as their Republican opponents would have been. They need those big companies. They need their money, both while running for office and when they leave office and are looking for a cozy sinecure that pays the big bucks.

Even Elizabeth Warren, that bugaboo of banks and financial services companies, will be able to tell her friends from her enemies.

That’s the real competitive advantage of large corporations. They can offer incentives to politicians that can’t be matched by small ones.

I find myself in partial agreement with New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo:

But lately my affinity for my home state has soured. Maybe it’s the smoke and the blackouts, but a very un-Californian nihilism has been creeping into my thinking. I’m starting to suspect we’re over. It’s the end of California as we know it. I don’t feel fine.

It isn’t just the fires — although, my God, the fires. Is this what life in America’s most populous, most prosperous state is going to be like from now on? Every year, hundreds of thousands evacuating, millions losing power, hundreds losing property and lives? Last year, the air near where I live in Northern California — within driving distance of some of the largest and most powerful and advanced corporations in the history of the world — was more hazardous than the air in Beijing and New Delhi. There’s a good chance that will happen again this month, and that it will keep happening every year from now on. Is this really the best America can do?

Probably, because it’s only going to get worse. The fires and the blackouts aren’t like the earthquakes, a natural threat we’ve all chosen to ignore. They are more like California’s other problems, like housing affordability and homelessness and traffic — human-made catastrophes we’ve all chosen to ignore, connected to the larger dysfunction at the heart of our state’s rot: a failure to live sustainably.

but I don’t think he quite understands California’s problem. It isn’t just an assumption of infinitude. I would say it’s more a rejection of history and reluctance to manage the implications of your choices. California was and has been settled by people eager to leave their prior lives behind, to assume new identities and new lives in a new state. Go West! As Horace Greeley put it:

I believe that each of us who has his place to make should go where men are wanted, and where employment is not bestowed as alms. Of course, I say to all who are in want of work, Go West!

But what can you do? and how can your family help you? Your mother, I infer, is to be counted out as an effective worker. But what of the rest? And you – can you chop? Can you plow? Can you mow? Can you cut up Indian corn? I reckon not. And in the west it is hard to find such work as you have been accustomed to. The conditions of living are very rude there.

On the whole I say, stay where you are; do as well as you can; and devote every spare hour to making yourself familiar with the conditions and dexterity required for the efficient conservation of out-door industry in a new country. Having mastered these, gather up your family and Go West!

It is impossible to “live sustainably” when your economy is premised on continuing explosive economic growth in a fragile ecosystem. San Francisco and Los Angeles’s air qualities are poor because of the geographic conditions in those places and there are simply too many people living lifestyles in excess of what the land can support. They need too much space. Their ability to build up is limited both by risk and preference so they build out. They need too much water. They need too much electricity which they don’t care to produce themselves. They want the land to remain wild but their very presence calls for it to be managed.

This post was inspired by Katrina vanden Heuvel’s most recent WaPo column to which I won’t even bother to link because it’s paywalled. In it she characterizes the Democratic Party establishment as “panicking” because two of the three leading Democratic presidential aspirants, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, are not part of the club. She goes on to mention a dinner at which various names, e.g. Michael Bloomberg, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, were mentioned as possible last-minute saviors.

Ms. vanden Heuvel assumes facts not in evidence namely

1. That Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren could become the eventual nominee and
2. That either one of them could be elected.

I don’t think the Democratic Party can afford to have Bernie Sanders as its standard bearer but, to paraphrase Harry Truman, given a choice between a real socialist and a fake socialist, will Democrats still pick a real one every time?

Both the Democratic and Republican establishments are panicking but not for the reasons Ms. vanden Heuvel suggests. Each of our political parties has two wings. Among the Republicans it’s their ideological wing (whether libertarian or “conservative”) and their operational or establishment wing. The Democrats have their progressive and operational or establishment wings.

The temperaments and motivations of the ideological and operational wings are completely different. Members of the ideological wings of their respective parties do not have the interest or patience to deal with the boring, repetitive, mindless minutiae of actual governing. The members of the operational wings have clear, compelling motives to do that. They are thoroughly corrupt. They are motivated by personal gain.

The reason that the establishments are panicking is that the ideological wings of the two parties, largely due to the general incompetence of the operational wings, are gaining in influence at the expense of the operational wings and the corrupt operational wings realize that the gravy train is running dry.

In a piece at Rolling Stone Matt Taibbi laments the sorry state of today’s journalism:

During the Trump-Clinton presidential race three years ago, I wrote:

The model going forward will likely involve Republican media covering Democratic corruption and Democratic media covering Republican corruption. This setup just doesn’t work.

The al-Baghdadi story is a classic example of what happens when that dynamic is allowed to play out to its logical conclusion. From Fox to the New York Times, all of the major commercial outlets this weekend were more consumed with telling audiences who benefited politically from the al-Baghdadi mission, than getting the facts about that mission out.

This is a disservice to audiences, who deserve to know the basics. Who is al-Baghdadi? How did he come to be the leader of ISIS/ISIL? Why was he in Idlib? The story of this person ought to have been a mix of the enraging and the sobering. Al-Baghdadi was reportedly involved in all sorts of atrocities, from beheadings to crucifixions, but he seems to have become radicalized by America’s invasion of Iraq.

This ought to have been a moment to reflect on what’s happened in the last twenty years, and if our policies across multiple administrations have been the right ones. Would we even be launching operations against such a person if we hadn’t invaded Iraq all those years ago? What’s the endgame? What do the people of the region think?

All of this has been subsumed to the only story left that matters in the United States – who’s winning Twitter at any given moment, Trumpers or anti-Trumpers? News outlets are now so committed to pushing one or the other narrative that they are falling prey to absurdities like the Post’s “austere cleric” headline.

I have been criticized here for falling for “rightwing political correctness”. If I have fallen victim to rightwing agitprop, so has Matt Taibbi. I think a more accurate way of viewing my criticism of the WaPo’s headline which, like Mr. Taibbi, I thought was absurd, is that I am viewing it more as journalists used to as is Mr. Taibbi.

If we are going to separate into one set of media outlets aligned with the Democratic Party and another aligned with the Republican Party, neither particularly reliable, as it is openly in the United Kingdom, I think we should have libel and defamation laws like those in the UK. Here in the U. S. we have a very high standard. Actual malice must be proven to prevail in a libel suit while it is practically impossible for a public figure to prevail in a defamation suit against a media outlet. In the UK, the burden of proof in a defamation suit is on the defendant. That would be a drastic change.

I would prefer a more judicious media but, alas, that is probably not to be had.