The failing New York Times took a deep dive into how the current occupant of the White House made his fortune. John Cassidy summarized the report in The New Yorker magazine and concluded:
He is a shameless flim-flam man with practically no regard for the truth or the quaint notion that wealthy people like him have a civic duty to pay their fair share of taxes.
While Republicans were noisily reminding us what they think of women, they were quietly reminding us what they think of science.
The Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to merge two of its science offices: the Office of Science Policy with the Office of Science Advisor. The stated purpose of the merging is “in order to reduce redundancies.” Critics say the real purpose is to mute the voice of science.
The Office of Science Advisor manages scientific standards throughout the agency and is tasked with providing unbiased advice to the EPA administrator. This action will reduce its role in the agency, putting it further down in the bureaucracy’s pecking order.
“By dissolving the science adviser’s office and putting it several layers down in ORD [Office of Research and Development], that greatly accelerates the decay of science advice within the EPA administrator’s office,” said Michael Halpern, deputy director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “That kind of coordination is much more difficult to do if they’re buried down inside an office.”
Even if you don’t know Michael Lewis, you probably are familiar with movies based on his non-fiction books: “Moneyball,” “The Big Short,” “Flashboys,” “The Blind Side,” and others. Lewis is very good at explaining financial esoterica in terms that even I can understand. Lewis’s latest offering, “The Fifth Risk,” an account of the dismantling of the government by the current occupant of the White House. The English newspaper, The Guardian, has published an excerpt focused on Chris Christie and the president-elect’s transition team. Fun anecdote from the book:
Christie had made sure that Trump knew the protocol for his discussions with foreign leaders. The transition team had prepared a document to let him know how these were meant to go. The first few calls were easy – the very first was always with the prime minister of Great Britain – but two dozen calls in you were talking to some kleptocrat and tiptoeing around sensitive security issues. Before any of the calls could be made, however, the president of Egypt called in to the switchboard at Trump Tower and somehow got the operator to put him straight through to Trump. “Trump was like … I love the Bangles! You know that song Walk Like an Egyptian?” recalled one of his advisers on the scene.
The state of Texas is doing something about all those women cluttering up history books. After years of fighting the battle against left-wing bias in classrooms, the State Board of Education, acting on the recommendation of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills committee, voted to eliminate some non-essential historical figures from its curriculum. The committee said the state required Texas schoolchildren to learn about too many historical persons.
Purged from Texas textbooks is the first deaf-and-blind person – of any sex – to earn a Bachelor-of-Arts degree (Helen Keller) and the first woman to run for president as the nominee of a major political party (you know who).
So who cares what Texas does?
The Texas Board approves textbooks for use in all the state’s schools. The Texas market is large enough for textbook publishers to accede to their requirements. Local districts in other states do not have the Lone Star State’s leverage of volume purchases. Thus what publishers make available to your school district has already been decided by Texas.
With all the noise lately about Federalist Society protege Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, let’s reminisce about the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas fiasco. (This was originally published December 6, 2017.)
Anita Hill, a professor at Brandeis University, grew up in Lone Tree, Oklahoma, a speck on the map, about a hundred miles east of Oklahoma City, and thirty-some miles west of Muskogee. She graduated as valedictorian from her local high school and went on to earn a bachelor’s degree with honors from Oklahoma State University. She earned her law degree with honors from Yale Law School in 1980. In 1989, she became the first tenured black professor at the University of Oklahoma College of Law.
Anita Hill – 2015
Three years later, after a nationwide fundraising campaign initiated by a feminist group, and matching state funds, the Anita F. Hill professorship was endowed at the University of Oklahoma Law School. Oklahoma legislators promptly demanded Ms. Hill’s resignation and introduced a bill to prohibit the university from accepting out-of-state donations and even attempted to close the law school. School officials attempted to revoke her tenure. After five years of this, Hill resigned. The law school defunded the professorship in 1999, the position having never been filled.
Clarence “Long Dong” Thomas
What could a person have done to provoke such reaction in her home state? Anita Hill had the temerity to testify before the 1991 Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Joseph Biden, considering Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, for whom she had worked when Thomas was in charge of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The FBI had previously questioned Hill. When that interview was leaked, the Senate committee called her to testify. She told the committee that Thomas had asked her out several times and she had always refused. His work conversations regularly addressed such topics as women having sex with animals, pornographic movies about group sex and rape, and “his own sexual prowess,” referring to himself as “Long Dong Silver,” an homage to a contemporary porn star. She also famously related his examining a can of soda on his desk and asking, “Who has put pubic hair on my Coke?”
The invective directed at her came quickly and forcefully. Thomas, of course denied it and went further, saying it was “high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves.” Republican Senator Orrin Hatch said , “Hill was working in tandem with ‘slick lawyers’ and interest groups bent on destroying Thomas’ chances to join the court.” Contemporaneous opinion polls showed most people believed Thomas.
Ms. Hill took and passed, a polygraph test; Thomas refused to take a test. Four other women were waiting to testify but the committee chose not to hear them. Thomas, with all of one year’s experience as a federal judge, was confirmed. He has since distinguished himself as the least-inquisitive justice, often going months without asking a question or making a comment, and its most predictably conservative voter, including his dissent against affirmative action, something from which he benefited during his education.
A documentary film, “Anita,” about her experiences was released in 2014. HBO presented a dramatic film, “Confirmation,” starring Kerry Washington, in 2016.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. (The more things change, the more they stay the same.)
“Given the scope of the tragedy from last week, I am glad to reassure the people of New York … that their air is safe to breathe and the water is safe to drink.”
– Christine Todd Whitman, E.P.A. Administrator
“The air quality is safe and acceptable.”
– Rudy Giuliani, New York City Mayor
Since the E.P.A. head and the soon-to-be-declared “America’s Mayor” made these comments the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund has nearly exhausted the money allotted to compensate first responders, cleanup workers and close-by residents. Thousands of claims are still coming in from victims who developed respiratory ailments and cancer. All of the 400 tons of asbestos used in constructing the World Trade Center twin towers was released into the air during the 9/11 attacks.
Almost 90,000 have registered with the World Trade Center Health Program. About 10,000 of them have cancer. To date, an estimated 2,100 have died. By the twentieth anniversary of 9/11, more people will have died from related illness than died in the attack.
Fun Giuliani fact: Against all advice, the Mayor sited the city’s emergency communication center close to the World Trade Center, which suffered a bombing in 1993. The center, an easy walk from City Hall, also served as a convenient trysting sanctuary.
“Giuliani’s office had a humidor for cigars and mementos from City Hall, including a fire horn, police hats and fire hats, as well as monogrammed towels in his bathroom. His suite was bulletproofed and he visited it often, even on weekends, bringing his girlfriend Judi Nathan there long before the relationship surfaced. He had his own elevator.”
