As summer winds to an end and we continue our effort to keep you up-to-date on how money corrupts American government and politics, as well as other news of the day, we’re pleased to publish this daily digest compiled by BillMoyers.com’s Michael Winship. Have a great weekend!
Obama ignores Bobby Jindal’s “advice” –> Barack Obama shook Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s hand when the president arrived in New Orleans to mark the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina yesterday but paid no attention to the letter Jindal sent to him in advance, asking him to “respect this important time of remembrance by not inserting the divisive political agenda of liberal environmental activism.” In other words, please don’t mention — horrors! — “global warming” or “climate change.” Instead, interviewed by a local New Orleans anchor, Obama said, “We can build great levees. We can restore wetlands. But ultimately, what we also have to do is make sure that we don’t continue to see ocean levels rise, oceans getting warmer, storms getting stronger.”
ALSO, at Talking Points Memo’s “The Slice,” read Cheryl Wagner’s “You Wanna Talk Katrina? Here’s The Price I Paid By Staying In New Orleans.” AND, here’s an interesting piece from Carl Bialik at FiveThirtyEight.com about why “We Still Don’t Know How Many People Died Because of Katrina.”
Big win for labor –> The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) yesterday “made it substantially easier for unions to bargain for higher wages and benefits,” Noam Scheiber at The New York Times writes, “opening the door for organized workers at fast-food chains and other franchises to negotiate with corporations like McDonald’s and Yum Brands, rather than with individual restaurants, where they might have a harder time achieving their goals.” A lawyer for the US Chamber of Commerce told the Times, “The decision today could be one of the more significant by the N.L.R.B. in the last 35 years.”
Both sides of his mouth –> Donald Trump says repeatedly that being a billionaire means he doesn’t have to be beholden to any big contributors but Sara Murray and Shimon Prokupecz at CNNPolitics write that Trump keeps popping up at events attended by deep-pocketed donors, including one in Massachusetts today, the host of which told CNN, “You can never have enough money.”
Quote of the day 1 –> From Andy Parker, father of slain TV reporter Alison Parker: “Look, I’m for the Second Amendment, but there has to be a way to force politicians, who are cowards in the pockets of the NRA, to come to grips and have sensible laws so that crazy people can’t get guns. It can’t be that hard. And yet politicians from the local level, to the state level, to the national level — they sidestep the issue, they kick the can down the road. This can’t happen anymore.” ALSO, from German Lopez at Vox, “Gun violence in America, in 17 maps and charts.”
Quote of the day 2 –> From Hillary Clinton: “Extreme views about women? We expect that from some of the terrorist groups. We expect that from people who don’t want to live in the modern world. But it’s a little hard to take coming from Republicans who want to be the president of the United States.”
Those Planned Parenthood videos –> Jennifer Ludden at National Public Radio reports, “Planned Parenthood has paid forensic experts to comb through undercover videos released by anti-abortion activists, and their report finds significant distortions and misleading edits. The report has been handed over to Congress, which is investigating allegations that Planned Parenthood illegally profits from fetal tissue donation.”
NPR also covers the story that conservative groups are pressuring the National Portrait Gallery in Washington to remove a bust of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger because of her support for eugenics, “a discredited social movement that advocated selective breeding and sterilization to eliminate what proponents saw as inferior traits.” The museum refuses: “Bethany Bentley, the National Portrait Gallery’s head of communications and public affairs, told NPR that the exhibit doesn’t ignore ‘the less-than-admirable aspects of [Sanger’s] career.’ She adds that the Washington, DC, gallery is dedicated to history, which she says isn’t always pretty.”
Take a look –> Free Speech for People, the non-partisan group dedicated to campaign finance reform and ending “corporate personhood,” has created acrosstheaisle.us, an interactive blog “to share the thoughts of more than 150 Republican officials, prominent at the federal and state level, who oppose Citizens United.”
Weekend reads –> Evan Osnos in The New Yorker on Donald Trump and white nationalists. AND David Sirota at International Business Times on the all-too-cozy relationship between NY Governor Andrew Cuomo and General Electric. AND The New York Times’ Anemona Hartocollis, “Traveling in Europe’s River of Migrants.”
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