Citizen Cartwright

Biden’s concern as he departs: Oligarchy of the ultrawealthy

In his Oval Office farewell speech Wednesday night, the president said, “I want to warn the country of some things that give me great concern … the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultrawealthy people, and the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked. 

 

“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.”

 

(Federal Reserve data show that the wealthiest 0.1 percent of Americans hold more than five times the wealth of the bottom 50 percent combined, The Associated Press reports.) 

 

“More than a century ago, the American people stood up to the robber barons back then and busted the trusts,” Biden said. “They didn’t punish the wealthy. They just made the wealthy play by the rules everybody else had. Workers want rights to earn their fair share. You know, they were dealt into the deal, and it helped put us on the path to building the largest middle class, the most prosperous century any nation the world has ever seen. We’ve got to do that again.”

 

Biden said: “You know, in his farewell address [in 1961], President Eisenhower spoke of the dangers of the military-industrial complex. He warned us that about, and I quote, ‘The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power.’”

 

“I’m equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech-industrial complex that could pose real dangers for our country as well.”

 

Biden also said: “We need to get dark money — that’s that hidden funding behind too many campaign contributions — we need to get it out of our politics. We need to enact an 18-year time limit, term limit, time and term, for the strongest ethics — and the strongest ethics reforms for our Supreme Court. We need to ban members of Congress from trading stock while they are in the Congress. We need to amend the Constitution to make clear that no president, no president is immune from crimes that he or she commits while in office.”

 

Biden expressed his thanks to the American people and said that after his 50 years of public service, “Now it’s your turn to stand guard. May you all be the keeper of the flame. May you keep the faith. I love America. You love it, too.”

 

Here is the full transcript of Biden’s speech, from The New York Times.

What special council’s report on Trump effort to overturn 2020 election says

Jack Smith, the special counsel who indicted President-elect Trump on charges of illegally seeking to hold on to power after losing the 2020 election, said in a final report released early Tuesday that the evidence would have been sufficient to convict Trump in a trial, if his 2024 election victory hadn't made it impossible for the prosecution to continue.

“The department’s view that the Constitution prohibits the continued indictment and prosecution of a president is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the government’s proof or the merits of the prosecution, which the office stands fully behind,” Smith wrote.

“Indeed, but for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the presidency, the office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial,” he wrote.

Trump was indicted in August 2023 on charges of working to overturn the election, but the case was delayed by appeals and ultimately significantly narrowed by the conservative-majority Supreme Court, which held for the first time that former presidents have sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts, The Associated Press notes. 

The Justice Department delivered the 137-page volume — half of Smith’s overall final report— to Congress just after midnight on Tuesday, says The New York Times.

The release of this volume of the report came less than a day after Judge Aileen Cannon, who oversaw Trump’s other federal case — about classified documents — issued a ruling allowing it to be made public.

She, also prohibited the Justice Department from immediately releasing — even to Congress — the second volume of Smith’s report, which is about the documents case. Cannon has scheduled a hearing for Friday in her home courthouse in Fort Pierce, Fla., to discuss how to handle that volume.

In a social media post shortly before 2 a.m. Tuesday, Trump said, “Jack is a lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the Election, which I won in a landslide. THE VOTERS HAVE SPOKEN!!!”

Here is the text of the report.

ABC News succumbed to Trump’s pressure; will others?

By John Dineen
Columnist, One dog barking

There’s a theme emerging in some of the news recently. It began just before the election, when owners of the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times both killed plans by their editorial boards to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris to be president.

 

Since Donald Trump was elected, more stories have followed the same theme:

— Several tech CEOs have made $1 million contributions to Trump’s inaugural committee.

— Tech leaders also have made the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago

— And the tech bro who got there first with the most, Elon Musk, may already be seeing return on his investment: According to Reuters, the Trump transition team plans to kill a regulation requiring the reporting of accidents involving self-driving vehicles — most of which involve cars by Musk’s Tesla.

— This follows Trump’s announced plan to nominate Jared Isaacman, a tech billionaire with close ties to Musk and SpaceX, to head NASA.

 

Of course, where there are carrots, there are sticks: The Senate had a press protection bill pending that had passed the House with bipartisan support; it would have barred the federal government from compelling reporters to reveal confidential information, such as sources. Trump announced his opposition, and Senate Republicans blocked floor action.

 

Most notable of all was the decision by ABC News, revealed last weekend, to settle a libel suit filed by Trump. The decision is striking, given the difficulty facing public figures under U.S. law to win such suits in the absence of particularly egregious behavior.

Historian Timothy Snyder, who has written frequently about authoritarianism, calls it “obeying in advance.”

Margaret Sullivan commented:

“ABC News should never have caved. They might well have prevailed if they had hung in there. The legal bar is very high for libeling a public figure, and Trump is the ultimate public figure. Instead, this outcome encourages Trump in his attacks on the press — and he needs no encouragement.

“As one law professor told the Times, what ABC News did was very unusual,” she said. “News organizations generally don’t settle ‘because they fear the dangerous pattern of doing so and because they have the full weight of the First Amendment on their side.’”

“Why did ABC News throw in the towel? It‘s hard to know for sure, but gets easier if you are aware that the news organizations is owned by Disney, a huge corporation with a lot of turf to protect,” Sullivan said. “As the Times reported, the Disney executive who oversees ABC News had dinner with Trump’s top aide, Susan Wiles, just days before the settlement, as ‘part of a visit by several ABC News executives to Florida to meet with Mr. Trump’s transition team.’”

“Was this settlement, which includes ABC’s public expressions of regret, a simple case of kissing the ring? It sure looks that way. Trump has sworn to get revenge on his enemies and he values, above all, loyalty and kowtowing.”

Brian Stelter of CNN noted: “The president-elect has a long history of litigation, with numerous unsuccessful cases against news outlets in the past. Some media law experts believed ABC had a good chance of beating him at trial, given the inherent challenge of proving Stephanopoulos acted with ‘actual malice.’ But trials also add uncertainty and a risk of severe reputational damage – factors that ABC’s parent company, Disney, is now avoiding.”

 

Journalist Parker Molloy, writing in Nieman Lab’s predictions for 2025, argued that acquiescence won’t spare journalism organizations: 

“The bitter irony is that this voluntary surrender won’t protect these outlets from Trump’s attacks. He’ll continue using them as punching bags to rally his base, even as they bend over backwards to appear ‘fair’ to his administration. But their owners calculate that performative criticism is preferable to actual accountability journalism that might threaten their bottom lines.

“For those who remember post-9/11 journalism, this feels eerily familiar,” Molloy said. “But at least then, the press could claim they were caught off guard by an unprecedented national crisis. This time, they’re choosing compliance with eyes wide open, trading their watchdog role for a seat at the billionaire’s table.

 

“The question isn’t whether mainstream media will hold Trump accountable in his second term — they’ve already decided not to try. The question is whether enough independent voices can survive to fill the vacuum they’re leaving behind.”

 

Molloy’s prediction for 2025 is coming true early. The New York Times reported over the weekend that Trump and his allies were threatening more lawsuits.

 

In fact, on Monday, Trump sued the Des Moines Register and Iowa pollster Ann Selzer, seeking “accountability for brazen election interference” over a Nov. 2 poll that showed Kamala Harris up by 3 percentage points in Iowa.

 

According to Semafor, “news organizations are bracing” for more attacks:

“In an email shared with Semafor, Axios’ senior counsel told staff that the news organization anticipates the new administration will attempt to force reporters to out their sources, will ramp up lawsuits against news organizations for defamation, and could charge journalists with crimes using the Espionage Act,” Max Tani wrote.

One analysis suggests that voters elected Trump due in part to their revulsion at the “elites” — a category that, for many, includes legacy media. Trump and his billionaire allies — populists, apparently — are seizing that opportunity, wielding their wealth to intimidate and isolate news organizations. ABC News acquiesced, essentially waiving the protection of the First Amendment.

The near-universal dismay within the industry at ABC News’ decision may be mere bravado. Or it may indicate not every media enterprise will be so compliant. The quality of our democracy hinges on those decisions.

One dog barking is an occasional column by my husband, John Dineen. He is a former senior congressional staffer and media executive and founder of briefing.center, a policy news and information service.

The election: Legacy media is told, again, 'They’re just not that into you'

By John Dineen
Columnist, One dog barking

In a better world, there would be a period of quiet, of licking wounds, of taking stock, after the shock suffered by both Democrats and legacy media in the presidential election. But in this world, the world we’ve created, the demand for content — always fresh, yet always familiar — is unrelenting. Thus we are subjected to opinions without supporting facts, recriminations without self-reflection, certainty where none exists — and simple explanations for the collective decision of more than 153 million people.

“Devastated Democrats play the blame game,” reads a New York Times headline.

“Where Harris’ campaign went wrong,” CNN was prepared to tell us — on Nov. 6, the day after the election.

“This is all Biden’s fault,” the headline reads on a New York Times op-ed piece by the journalist Josh Barro, who at least took till Nov. 9 to have it all figured out.

Talking heads gonna talk. Pontificators gotta pontificate. Our content-generation enterprises had airtime and screens to fill. And for members of the media, the Democratic defeat was a target-rich environment.

Pundits also scratched their heads at the failure of the public to heed their warnings about Donald Trump, but that didn’t seem to open the floodgates of self-reflection in the most influential newsrooms.

 
New Yorker staff writer Nathan Heller had a thoughtful piece about the way the flow of information had changed, a change that the Trump campaign understood and Harris’ didn’t. He concluded: “In a country where more than half of adults have literacy below a sixth-grade level, ambient information, however thin and wrong, is more powerful than actual facts. It has been the Democrats’ long-held premise that access to the truth will set the public free. They have corrected misinformation and sought to drop data to individual doors.

 
“This year’s contest shows that this premise is wrong. A majority of the American public doesn’t believe information that goes against what it thinks it knows—and a lot of what it thinks it knows originates in the brain of Donald Trump. He has polluted the well of received wisdom and what passes for common sense in America. And, until Democrats, too, figure out how to message ambiently, they’ll find themselves fighting not just a candidate but what the public holds to be self-evident truths.”

There’s a lot to unpack in that conclusion. Here’s what jumps out at me: While Heller poses “ambient information” as a puzzle for Democrats to solve, he makes no mention of journalists. 

 
But aren’t we are all living in an age of babel? The clash of ideas in the public sphere — for which journalism provides a stage — is no longer an intellectual contest. The truth may set you free, but if it can’t garner market share, it’s not winning the day. Election coverage with a primary goal of serving citizens would look very different from coverage with a need to make as much money as possible off the election.

Also, I wonder: How is any of this considered new? Newsrooms have been coping — unsuccessfully — with ambient information for years. A lot of news is now free. Journalism enterprises are struggling against free.  

 

Poynter reporter Angela Fu wrote last December:

“The U.S. has lost more than 130 newspapers — or 2.5 a week — this year, according to the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Since 2005, the country has lost nearly 2,900 newspapers and 43,000 journalists.

“‘A lot of news consumption is happening on social media and even from search,’ said Pew Research Center senior researcher Elisa Shearer. ‘You’re less likely to be getting something directly from a news outlet when you’re getting it in that way.’”

As we’ve discussed repeatedly, the business model on which newspapers were based for more than a century has collapsed, newsrooms have contracted, quality plummeted. News is everywhere in the air, plenty for the average consumer, and it doesn’t cost a thing.

Newsrooms have had a tendency to view the business model as a thing apart — someone else’s problem to solve — while they stayed focused on the important thing: their journalism, writing and editing narratives about the world.

 
But it’s not enough to believe that news is important. The product no longer meets the consumer need. Whatever else it was, the 2024 election was yet another reminder for legacy media that “they’re just not that into you.”

 

 

One dog barking is an occasional column by my husband, John Dineen. He is a former senior congressional staffer and media executive and founder of briefing.center, a policy news and information service.

Starting forward

Amid all the blame going around for Kamala Harris’ loss, there are some useful articles.

For example, the fallout from the 2008 financial crisis played a role in the appeal of Trumpism, according to articles by Robert Reich, Labor secretary under President Clinton, and Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser under President Obama.  

But we also know that the roots of the appeal of a strongman who will “fix it” go back much further.

As I’ve written here before, I was born in western Pennsylvania, in a declining industrial boomtown. I remember sitting on my grandmother’s front porch as a small child, listening to the adults in my father’s large family trying to decide what to do.
  
My dad moved my part of the family to a San Francisco suburb, a future boom area. The little three-bedroom house he moved us into isn’t for sale, but its estimated value on Zillow this morning is $2.7 million.

By contrast, a 40-room mansion in the town we left is for sale. The asking price is $735,000.

My relatives who stayed in that Pennsylvania town were frightened and very angry about its ongoing decline. Their anger could be so venomous that it was hard to be around them.

I knew the essential goodness of my relatives, despite their aggressive behavior. I could love their essential selves at the same time that I didn’t like the emotional survival skills their life circumstances had created. They and their children who are there were and are smart but for decades have sought answers that didn’t come.

So I understand why so many of our fellow humans are attracted to Trump.

Going forward, I’ll be reminding myself that hurt people hurt people.

In Donald Trump’s case, his mother was very sick and was unavailable to him during a crucial developmental time when he was a toddler, his niece Mary Trump told us in her 2020 book, "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man."

And she says Trump’s father liked Donald’s “killer” attitude, “even if it manifested as bad behavior.”

It is my goal to love the essential goodness in every member of our human family, even when their behavior makes it difficult. Even when their behavior is so harmful to the family as a whole that it must be stopped.

Here is an approach to our common humanity that I’ll be trying to keep in mind as you and I seek to limit harm to America’s democracy (don’t miss the backstory at the bottom).

Harris’ concession speech: Accepting the results, pursuing American ideals

The vice president conceded the election in a speech Wednesday at Howard University in Washington, her alma mater.

 

She said she’d told President-elect Trump that she’ll help him and his team with their transition and will engage in a peaceful transfer of power. Of course, on Jan. 6, 2025, as vice president, she’ll preside over Congress and count the electoral votes that will make him the 47th president of the United States.

 

"A fundamental principle of American democracy is that when we lose an election, we accept the results,” she said. "That principle as much as any other distinguishes democracy from monarchy or tyranny, and anyone who seeks the public trust must honor it. At the same time in our nation, we owe loyalty not to a president or a party, but to the Constitution of the United States, and loyalty to our conscience and to our God. My allegiance to all three is why I am here to say, while I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fuels this campaign, the fight for freedom, for opportunity, for fairness and the dignity of all people, a fight for the ideals at the heart of our nation, the ideals that reflect America at our best.

 

"And we will continue to wage this fight in the voting booth, in the courts and in the public square, and we will also wage it in quieter ways, in how we live our lives, by treating one another with kindness and respect, by looking in the face of a stranger and seeing a neighbor, by always using our strength to lift people up to fight for the dignity that all people deserve."

 

She urged young people to never give up trying to make the world a better place.

 

"This is not a time to throw up our hands. This is a time to roll up our sleeves,” she said. 

 

"I know many people feel like we are entering a dark time, but for the benefit of us all, I hope that is not the case. But here’s the thing, America, if it is, let us fill the sky with the light of a billion brilliant stars, the light of optimism, of faith, of truth and service.”

 

Here is the video of her speech.

 

And here is the transcript. 

What now

As I write this, Donald Trump has just gotten the electoral votes to win the election.

 

Here is what AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 115,000 voters nationwide, says has happened.

 

“The fate of democracy appeared to be a primary driver for Vice President Harris’ supporters. 

 

"By contrast, Trump’s supporters were largely focused on immigration and inflation.”

 

This blog is about being a citizen in a democracy, so let’s focus at this moment on the feelings that these election results bring up for democracy voters.

 

Here is a 6-minute self-compassion exercise from Chris Germer, a psychologist, co-founder of the Center for Mindfulness and Compassion, and a lecturer on psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

 

In this video, Chris Germer reminds us to notice that when we're feeling stressed, we're not alone. 

 

And when it comes to caring about democracy and facing what’s happening now, we're among millions of Americans. And among millions more people around the world.

 

So let’s process what’s happening now and together do what’s next.

Happy election day 2024!

Free and discounted rides to vote

 

Vote.gov: If you have any problems at your voting location, contact your local election office. You can also report violations to the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division online or by calling 1-800-253-3931.

Also on Vote.gov: information on your voting rights, FAQs

 

Election Protection hotlines to call if you have problems voting:

English 866-OUR-VOTE 866-687-8683

Spanish/English 888-VE-Y-VOTA 888-839-8682

Asian Languages/English 888-API-VOTE 888-274-8683

Arabic/English 844-YALLA-US 844-925-5287

 

Pizza to the Polls will bring you free pizza if the voting line is long.

 

AP: 'Explaining Election 2024' series of articles

Free and discounted rides to vote

 

Vote.gov: If you have any problems at your voting location, contact your local election office. You can also report violations to the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division online or by calling 1-800-253-3931.

Also on Vote.gov: information on your voting rights, FAQs

 

Election Protection hotlines to call if you have problems voting:

English 866-OUR-VOTE 866-687-8683

Spanish/English 888-VE-Y-VOTA 888-839-8682

Asian Languages/English 888-API-VOTE 888-274-8683

Arabic/English 844-YALLA-US 844-925-5287

 

Pizza to the Polls will bring you free pizza if the voting line is long.

 

AP: 'Explaining Election 2024' series of articles

The stakes or the horserace: A tale of two post mortems

By John Dineen
Columnist, One dog barking

 

Margaret Sullivan posted a piece Monday reflecting on whether political coverage was any better this year, or whether it was still the same old horserace approach. Her conclusion: Despite some exemplary moments, the coverage was largely unchanged and did not meet the moment.

Meanwhile, the newsroom leadership of the New York Times recently told its reporters and editors that the critics were wrong and the Times was right.

Sullivan used as a prism the phrase coined by media critic and NYU professor Jay Rosen, who for years has urged journalists to focus on “not the odds, but the stakes.”

Sullivan wrote: “A couple of days ago, I talked with Rosen about how he thinks it all played out. The short answer? It made a difference but didn’t fundamentally change politics coverage, which for the most part continued down its frustratingly flawed path — the addiction to polls, pundits and 'neck and neck' predictions.”

Sullivan also discussed the media frenzy that accompanied President Biden’s comment about garbage, referring to Donald Trump’s extraordinary display at Madison Square Garden last week of hostility and derision toward so many elements of American society.

She wrote: “As Greg Sargent of the New Republic put it in a smart X thread: ‘The news hook is literally that it provided ‘grist’ to Republicans,’ and this in effect ‘outsources the judgment about the newsworthiness of the event to bad-faith actors.’ He’s right. It’s also classic false equivalence — as Trump devolves into simulating oral sex with a microphone, there must be something bad to say about Harris’ campaign, right?”

Sullivan also mentions that the New York Times coverage became increasingly stark in its characterization of Trump and his behavior.

She wrote: “A couple of weeks ago, I observed to a friend who works in Big Media that I thought the New York Times had reformed its coverage somewhat — including a new section in which previous stakes-related coverage had been compiled, as well as a strong endorsement of Harris and some effective special sections, both on the news side and the opinion pages.

“‘Has the Times finally gotten religion?’ I asked.“The half-joking response: ‘Deathbed conversion.’”

The New York Times newsroom leadership would beg to differ.

Max Tani of Semafor obtained a recording of an Oct. 24 internal Times question-and-answer session with Executive Editor Joe Kahn and Managing Editor Carolyn Ryan. Whatever the criticism, Kahn wasn’t having it.

In that meeting, according to Tani, Kahn said: “What [critics are] interested in is having us be a mouthpiece for their already predetermined point of view. That’s what the most vocal critics are asking for. They’re asking us to do a better job projecting their point of view to more people. That of course is not our role, that is actually the opposite of independent journalism. That’s agenda-driven partisan journalism. They want to see The New York Times reaffirming their own priors. They’re not really interested in fact-based reporting — or frankly, independent polling — that doesn’t line up with their priors.”

Tani wrote: “Kahn pointed out that despite the intense polarization, the Times’ audience had never been larger, with over 10 million subscribers and an enormous base of non-paying readers and listeners. The readers who angrily comment on New York Times stories represent just a fraction of the paper’s overall audience, he said, a sign that most people were not outraged by its coverage.”

In an interview in the spring with Ben Smith of Semafor, Kahn, in a similar moment of deep introspection, had cited public opinion polls to justify the Times’ coverage decisions.

I’m compelled to repeat the remarks of Kathryn Schulz, author of the book “Being Wrong,” a wonderful exploration of human error, when she posed the question to the audience at her related 2011 TED talk: “How does it feel to be wrong?”

The replies were what you might expect: “dreadful … thumbs down … embarrassing.”

Schulz then pointed out: “These are great answers, but they’re answers to a different question. You guys are answering the question, how does it feel to realize you’re wrong.”

Up until that point, she observed, “It does feel like something to be wrong; it feels like being right.”

As the campaign comes to a close, the Times, as a matter of course, is sure it’s right. Other observers are not so sure.

 

One dog barking is an occasional column by my husband, John Dineen. He is a former senior congressional staffer and media executive and founder of briefing.center, a policy news and information service.

Tools for stressful times: Deep, slow breathing

As we’ve noted many times before, we humans aren’t comfortable with uncertainty and change.

 

And here we are, facing this week’s high-stakes, toss-up 2024 election. It’s impossible to know who will be president or which party will be in the House and Senate majority, enacting or eviscerating the president’s agenda.

 

What helps me most in times like these is deep, slow breathing. I heard a top U.S. therapist say in a webinar a few years ago that this works because it tricks the body into thinking it can’t be anxious, or it would be breathing faster.

 

So I put one hand on my belly, to feel it expand as I breathe, and the other on my heart, in compassion for myself and for our human family.

 

And then I follow this 4-7-8 breathing technique that I’m seeing suggested pretty much everywhere these days:

 

— Inhale through your nose while counting slowly to four

— Hold your breath while counting to seven

— Exhale through your mouth while counting to eight (the slow exhale is the key)

 

Here is more on this technique from the Cleveland Clinic.

 

I like to think of our human family as a pile of puppies, cozy even as we gnaw each other's ears. I’m grateful to be in the pile of puppies with you, dear readers.