Sports gambling in Las Vegas. Photo (cc) 2022 by Sarah Stierch.
A new study out of Northwestern University shows that betting on sports is having a devastating effect on lower-income families as they gamble away their savings in the hopes of a big payoff that never comes. Michael Jonas of CommonWealth Beacon writes:
The study found that legalization of online sports betting has not led people to divert money from other forms of entertainment to this new sector, but has instead led them to overextend their budgets at the expense of saving money through investment accounts, especially among the most financially vulnerable households.
The study linked sports betting to “a large decrease” in deposits to brokerage accounts, accompanied by “decreased credit availability, increased credit card debt, and a higher incidence rate of overdrawing bank accounts.” In all, say the researchers, access to online sports betting “exacerbates financial difficulties faced by constrained households.”
Elected officials’ ever-expanding pursuit of easy tax money has led them to ignore their responsibility to the public welfare. The state lottery goes back to the ’70s, but there was no need for it to add addictive games such as scratch tickets or — coming soon to a digital device near you — allow online gambling.
Legalizing casino gambling was a massive mistake, and sports gambling is worse. But such are the times we live in.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Photo (cc) 2019 by nrkbeta.
I’m thinking through what it means to say that Kamala Harris has united the Democratic Party’s disputatious factions. The media tend to refer to those on the left as “liberals” and “progressives” as though the terms are interchangeable. They’re not.
I’m not going to try to tease out the various positions that define the factions. Instead, I’ll take a shot at who’s in what camp. This is unscientific to say the least, but:
• Liberals. Also known as the center-left. This is where the bulk of the party is today, and where it’s been most of the time since FDR. Leading exemplars: Kamala Harris and Joe Biden.
• Progressives. The left, which I’ll arbitrarily define by citing Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Bernie Sanders would be in here if he were actually a Democrat.
• Centrists. Now this is slippery. Bill Clinton for sure. Joe Manchin*? Does anyone know if he’s still a Democrat? It’s tempting to say that he’s a conservative, but he votes with President Biden most of the time. Barack Obama governed as a centrist, but I’m not sure whether that was his preference or if he was just playing the hand he was dealt.
What unites them all, incredibly, is not just support for Harris but genuine enthusiasm and excitement.
*Note: Manchin used to be a Democrat, but he’s now an independent.
Thirty-two days ago, President Biden ended his campaign and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris. It seems like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it? Biden seemed destined to lose; this morning, Harris is up by an average of 3.6% in the national polls, which is in the range of what a Democratic candidate needs to overcome the Republicans’ inherent advantage in the Electoral College.
On Thursday night, Harris delivered her acceptance speech, and it was memorable, mixing her personal story, her dedication to improving life for the middle class, her deep sense of patriotism, and the authoritarian threat posed by Donald Trump. Although words alone are not substance, she also did a better job than Biden of expressing support for Israel and horror at the humanitarian toll of the war in Gaza.
Although Trump’s menacing incoherence can’t really be described in policy terms, Harris made it clear that she’s running to his left on domestic issues and to his right on foreign policy. “I will not cozy up to tyrants and dictators like Kim Jong-un, who are rooting for Trump,” she said, adding:
And as president, I will never waver in defense of America’s security and ideals, because in the enduring struggle between democracy and tyranny, I know where I stand and I know where the United States belongs.
This is muscular liberalism in the tradition of Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy and, well, Joe Biden. Traditionally, the views she expressed Thursday night have defined what it means to be a mainstream, patriotic American.
Harris also called the 2024 election “not only the most important of our lives, it is one of the most important in the life of our nation.” Elections shouldn’t be that important. In a healthy democracy, every election would be Barack Obama versus Mitt Romney, or Bill Clinton against Bob Dole. The fate of the country shouldn’t depend on Harris’ defeating Trump and then overcoming the legal and extra-legal chaos that is sure to follow.
But that’s where we find ourselves. Trumpism has got to be defeated once and for all. This week helped move us closer to that goal.
The media fact-checkers have not distinguished themselves this week, torturing the language to find fault with statements by Democrats that, in some cases, are actually true.
Now, I’m going to confess that I was not following the fact-checkers during the Republican National Convention. But what I have found going back a number of years — as I wrote for HuffPost way back in 2011 — is that organizations like PolitiFact often twist themselves into knots to find negative observations to make about Democrats so they can achieve some sort of balance with Republicans, who were often untethered from the truth even before the rise of Donald Trump.
Fact-checkers for The New York Times and The Washington Post have both come under fire during this week’s Democratic National Convention. But I want to focus on PolitiFact, a Pulitzer Prize-winning project, which has produced some fact-checks that make you scratch your head. I’ve been following PolitiFact on Threads. Here are a few examples:
• On Tuesday, PolitiFact gave President Biden a “false” on its Truth-O-Meter for claiming that billionaires pay an average tax rate of 8.2%. The post linked back to a PolitFact story from last January that said:
The White House report found that if you include unrealized gains in the income calculations of the 400 richest U.S. families, then their taxes paid would account for just 8.2% of their income.
Economists and policymakers have long debated whether the government should tax unrealized gains. But Biden made it sound as if 8% was the standard rate today, not what would happen under a potential future proposal.
In other words, Biden was correct under PolitiFact’s own analysis.
• On Wednesday, PolitiFact slapped J.B. Pritzker on the wrist: “Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Trump told ‘us to inject bleach’ during the pandemic. That’s Mostly False. Trump’s 2020 comments about treatments were criticized, but he didn’t tell people to inject or ‘take a shot’ of anything.”
Pritzker’s statement was labeled as “mostly false.” Yet here’s a BBC report from 2020 that quotes Trump’s exact words: “And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?”
Pritzker was right on the facts, the nuance and the context. Full stop.
• Two more from Biden: PolitiFact said the president’s assertions that Trump wants to cut Medicare and Social Security were “mostly false” because — God help us — “When he was president, Trump released annual budgets that proposed cutting Medicare but he has repeatedly pledged throughout the 2024 presidential campaign that he will not cut the program” and “Trump has said in the past that he’s open to cutting Social Security, but this isn’t his current position.”
I’m sorry, but that’s just embarrassing.
The late show
A number of observers, me included, have been puzzled by the DNC’s schedule, which has resulted in the main speaker of the night taking the podium after 11 p.m. The swing states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia and most of Michigan are all in the Eastern time zone, and presumably you don’t want soft supporters and undecided voters to go to bed before hearing from the Obamas, Tim Walz and, tonight, Kamala Harris.
But it may not have made much difference. According to Craig Harrington of the liberal organization Media Matters for America, the audience for President Biden fell off only 2%. “Not ideal, but not disastrous either,” he wrote on Twitter/X.
I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that no one is going to invest a couple of hours tonight and then tune out just before Harris comes on. Still, it strikes me that it would have been a good idea to wrap up each night’s proceedings before viewers decide they’ve had enough.
Walz from the heart
Tim Walz’s short, punchy address and Oprah Winfrey’s speech were pitch-perfect.
Those who thought that Harris should have picked Josh Shapiro as her running mate may have changed their minds Wednesday night, as Shapiro delivered a perfectly serviceable but rather generic address. Walz, by contrast, was folksy and empathetic, speaking to the heartland in a way that the Democrats haven’t done in many years. You had to love his former football players taking the stage, too.
What can I say about Bill Clinton? It was interesting to see that some women I follow on Threads were tuning out. Given his history, I couldn’t believe that he glommed onto the dick joke President Obama indulged in — funny coming from Obama, creepy from Clinton.
Clinton also spoke way too long and just sort of rambled. I know that some viewers loved it, and I’ve heard from a few. I also understand that a former president can’t be denied his place at the podium. But I was glad when it was over.
Barack and Michelle Obama in 2008. Photo (cc) by Luke Vargas.
Twenty years ago, when the Democratic National Convention gathered in Boston, a young senator named Barack Obama delivered the speech that launched him to the presidency.
I was covering the convention for The Boston Phoenix, but I wasn’t in the hall. No regrets — I reported from four national conventions, and I thought the best way I could serve our audience was to spend as little time in the building as possible, focusing instead on alternative events, protests, what the media were up to and the like. Still, that was a big one to miss.
I didn’t miss Barack Obama’s speech last night, nor Michelle Obama’s, even if it was from the comfort of our TV room. Wow. Observers are trying to decide who delivered the better of what were two magnificent addresses. I thought hers was a superior piece of pure oratory but that his did more to advance the cause of getting Kamala Harris and Tim Walz elected. The two addresses complemented each other perfectly.
And soaring though their rhetoric was, it was pretty amusing to see the former president go there for what I believe was the first time since Marco Rubio made some awkward remarks about the size of Donald Trump’s, uh, hands.
Doug Emhoff’s speech was folksy and effective. All in all, it was another strong night for the Democrats.
Early print deadlines meant that three of our national newspapers, The New York Times, The Washington Post and USA Today, have no coverage of President Biden’s keynote address. All of them, needless to say, go big with Biden’s speech online. It makes you wonder who’s still bothering with the legacy press’ shrinking print editions.
A fourth national paper, the business-focused Wall Street Journal, did manage to get Biden’s speech on page one, though it’s not the lead. Locally, The Boston Globe leads with the president as well. I have to assume that’s a late edition.
Biden was supposed to go on at about 10:30 p.m., but the Democrats veered off schedule and he didn’t start for another hour. They’d better fix that — the last thing the party wants is for Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s acceptance speech on Wednesday and Vice President Kamala Harris’ on Thursday to get pushed out of prime time.
Stop talking at me
God bless C-SPAN. We tuned in around 9 p.m. and chose PBS, figuring the “NewsHour” crew would strike a good balance between carrying the speeches and offering a little bit of commentary and analysis. We were wrong. We missed Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s speech entirely. And when we finally switched over, we discovered that PBS had cut away from Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, a major figure in the party.
At least PBS carried New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose fiery populism was probably the highlight of the evening, though Hillary Clinton’s address conjured up all sorts of emotions. Yes, it should have been her.
I’m not going to try to assess Biden’s speech except to agree with other observers that I respect his successful presidency and am grateful that his deep sense of patriotism led him to step aside, even though it was evident that he’s still angry he was forced to make that move.
New Haven crew hits Chicago
Normally I like to see local news organizations stay mission-focused when big national events occur. But I’ll cut the New Haven Independent some slack. After all, founder Paul Bass is no longer the editor, and he’s as knowledgeable about politics as anyone I know.
Bass and staff reporter Nora Grace-Flood are in Chicago while Babz Rawls Ivy, the morning host at the Independent-affiliated radio station, WNHH-LP, is back in New Haven offering some commentary. Oakland-based cartoonist Fred Noland of the Independent Review Crew is in Chicago as well, though he hasn’t started drawing yet.
And it’s not all national. Here’s a funny story, with video and photos, about Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar squaring off with New Haven Democrats about the virtues of New Haven apizza versus Chicago-style deep-dish pizza.
The Washington Post: The early print bird misses the keynoteUSA Today: Protests but no convention coverage above the foldThe Wall Street Journal: Biden’s speech, yes, but wow, Edgar Bronfman!The Boston Globe: The president makes page one
I knew about his reign of terror in the 1950s, when he falsely accused government officials, Hollywood figures and others of being communists, ruining lives and leading to the still-used ephithet “McCarthyism.”
What I didn’t know was that he consorted with and defended actual Nazis — that is, German war criminals and their surprisingly numerous supporters in the U.S. And that there are some echoes down to the present day.
That’s the main takeaway from the second season of “Ultra,” a podcast series hosted by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. It’s good stuff, and you should listen to it if you get a chance. It’s a wide-ranging look at Nazis and their sympathizers in the U.S. after World War II — a follow-up to the first season, which examined the Nazi movement before and during the war.
And though “Ultra” features a wide cast of characters, the focus is on McCarthy, who defended German soldiers who massacred U.S. troops after they had already surrendered and whose entire Senate career was what you might call Nazi-adjacent.
Two interesting tidbits:
Although Richard Nixon graciously conceded after losing the 1960 presidential election to John F. Kennedy, behind the scenes both he and top Republican officials gave at least tacit support to efforts by extreme right-wing forces to overturn the results in several states and hand the election to Nixon.
And Trump thug Steve Bannon, currently behind bars, has favorably cited an Italian fascist who in turn wrote the introduction for “Imperium,” a Nazi screed written by American fascist Francis Yockey, a shadowy fugitive throughout “Ultra” who kills himself after he is finally taken into custody by the FBI.
The reference to Bannon is the only direct tie Maddow makes to Donald Trump and his ongoing efforts to subvert democracy. But the Trump parallels are clear throughout, as they were during the first season.
If there’s a hopeful takeaway from “Ultra,” it’s this: We’ve defeated fascism in the U.S. before, and we can do it again.
A week ago today, The Washington Post reported (free link) that Donald Trump may have helped fuel his 2016 presidential campaign with an illegal, last-minute infusion of $10 million from the Egyptian government.
The FBI investigated the money trail but was called off the case by Attorney General Bill Barr — the same Bill Barr whose lies about the Mueller investigation into the Trump campaign’s collusion with Russia helped warp public perceptions.
So far, there has been very little follow-up — not by the Post and, most significant, not by The New York Times. I have to assume that the Post, at least, is still digging. But this story, if all the dots can be connected, amounts to a massive scandal that in saner times would drive a candidate out of the race.
Of course the media are to blame for not pushing this story. But so is the Democratic Party, which is guilty of malpractice for not opening an investigation in the Senate immediately. What makes a story stick is repetition — and without prominent Democrats coming out every day and giving journalists something to report on, it quickly withers away.
Today is not just the one-week anniversary of the Post’s Egypt story. It’s also the 50th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s resignation as president, a consequence of the Watergate scandal, which was pushed relentlessly by the press (especially the Post), elected officials and the courts.
And here’s a parallel that is worth pondering. Four years ago, Boston lawyer and journalist James Barron wrote that the Watergate break-in may well have been an attempt to steal documents from Democratic Party headquarters showing that Nixon had taken $549,000 from the Greek government in order to help finance his 1968 campaign.
Barron tells the story in his book “The Greek Connection: The Life of Elias Demetracopoulos and the Untold Story of Watergate.” Demetracopoulos, a liberal Greek journalist, tried to warn people in the U.S. that the right-wing junta then running his country had paid off Nixon, but his efforts came to naught.
In shades of today’s somnolent Democrats, Barron writes that party chair Larry O’Brien didn’t tell President Lyndon Johnson what he knew and turned down frantic requests from Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s campaign to use it in political ads. The Boston Globe tried to get at the story, but then-Globe reporter Christopher Lydon was unable to pierce the veil. In an interview for GBH News, Barron told me:
Watergate is a metaphor for abuse of power during the Nixon years. The scandal didn’t begin with the planning for the June 1972 break-in. Its roots are in the illegal financing of the 1968 election, the potential disclosure of which caused, in the words of the historian Stanley Kutler, the “most anxiety” in the Nixon administration “for the longest period of time.”…
There is strong circumstantial evidence that at least part of what the burglars were directed to find was whatever derogatory information the Democrats had on Nixon, especially financial documents related to foreign contributions.
These days, of course, Trump would just go running to Sean Hannity, and what should be a campaign-ending scandal, if proved, would simply degenerate into another muddle over the mainstream media and “fake news.” But that doesn’t mean journalists and Democrats shouldn’t be pounding away at this every day.
Anti-Sisi demonstration in London. Photo (cc) 2015 by Alisdare Hickson.
I want to make sure you have access to this astonishing story (free link) in The Washington Post reporting that Donald Trump may have boosted his 2016 presidential campaign with a last-minute, highly illegal $10 million payment from Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi.
The story, by Aaron C. Davis and Carol D. Leonnig, includes all kinds of provocative details: a meeting between Trump and Sisi in September 2016; a mysterious cash withdrawal of $10 million from an Egyptian bank; and Trump’s decision to put $10 million of his own money into his campaign, possibly in the expectation that he could pay it back with Egyptian money.
The FBI spent several years investigating the allegations but were eventually shut down by none other than Attorney General Bill Barr, whose lies about the Mueller report contributed to a public perception that there was less to the Russia collusion claims than was actually the case.
We watched Kamala Harris’ speech in Atlanta on YouTube, and it was extraordinary — her pitch-perfect message casting liberalism as patriotism, her taunting of Donald Trump, and the sheer joy she brought to the proceedings. I was impressed with her body language and comfort level as well. I don’t think we’ve seen anything like this for a long time, and I just hope it can continue.
