Please shield your eyes and watch your step as you emerge, blinking and confused, from the 2016 Survival Shelter. Welcome to 2017. The good news? 2016 is over. The bad news? It wasn’t a dream.
However, you will notice that the shelter door has been solidly closed and locked behind you. You can only go forward. Sorry about that. Take a few deep breaths. In about, oh, let’s say twenty days, that New Year smell may start to wear off. Enjoy it until then.
Since this is a new year, we’re going to do something different on APR: a morning sing along! Yes, really. Seriously. Really, seriously. Wherever you are, listen to the song, and then start it over and sing along. While you do so, picture thousands of other DK-folk waving their morning coffee mugs and joining the chorus. If you want the lyrics, they’re right here.
Trust me. You’re gonna need this.
I am gathering the tools together. I'm preparing to do my part
Now that you’re awake, come on in. Let’s read some pundits.
A bit more housekeeping before we get down to business.
As you can tell, we here in the future are still using the fantastic infographics from Compound Interest that have seen us through many a Sunday APR since 2014. But, beleaguered traveler from the past, that is soon to change, so brace yourself for something new. I mean it this time. If you have suggestions, send them along. And let me know what you think of the Sing Along. We could make it a thing.
Okay, back to work …
Annie Duflo and Jeffrey Mosenkis want to tell you that 2016 was a very good year, for a very good reason.
Those of us who live in the world of poverty research and rigorous measurement have watched many global indicators improve consistently for the past few decades. Between 1990 and 2013 (the last year for which there is good data), the number of people living in extreme poverty dropped by more than half, from 1.85 billion to 770 million. As the University of Oxford’s Max Roser recently put it, the top headline every day for the past two decades should have been: “Number of people in extreme poverty fell by 130,000 since yesterday.” At the same time, child mortality has dropped by nearly half, while literacy, vaccinations and the number of people living in democracy have all increased.
Here’s a New Year’s resolution from me: I will strive to put more of these vastly important facts into my posts, including bringing more attention to areas of the world where momentous, but under-reported, events are happening each week.
One thing that came up in international poverty research this year that we’ve also seen in the US.
Give the poor cash. Studies in Kenya and elsewhere show that the simplest way to help is also quite effective. We also know that if we give cash, the poor won’t smoke or drink it away. In fact, a recent look at 19 studies across three continents shows that when the poor are given money, they are less likely to spend it on “temptation goods” such as alcohol and tobacco.
Repeated studies in the US have demonstrated the same thing. The myth of the “welfare queen” is just that, a myth. So is the myth of the parent using food stamps to indulge themselves in drugs, alcohol or insert-designated-luxury-item-here. We need to spend more time debunking those myths, and also pushing for the same conclusion that international researchers have found. You want to stop the current welfare and food stamp programs? Sure thing. Give the poor cash, and let them spend it how they want.
Nicholas Kristof reminds us that “really good year” doesn’t apply to the media.
Despite some outstanding coverage, over all we misled many people into thinking that Donald Trump would never win the Republican nomination, let alone the White House. Too often we followed what glittered, yapped uselessly at everything in sight and didn’t dig hard enough or hold politicians accountable for lies.
When a reporter such as David Fahrenthold did spend time digging for the truth, he or she was often a one-person show, while teams of reporters dashed about to discuss Trump’s latest tweet.
In 2008, the three broadcast networks, in their nightly news programs, devoted over the entire year a total of three hours and 40 minutes to issues reporting (defined as independent coverage of election issues, not arising from candidate statements or debates). In 2016, that plummeted to a grand total of just 36 minutes.
The media not only treated a single controversy from Clinton as equal to a daily stream of should-be-campaign-sinkers from Trump, but reached new heights in generating both-sides-isms and false comparisons designed to prop up Trump’s tottering campaign.
ABC and NBC had just nine minutes of issues coverage each; CBS had 18 minutes. So ABC and NBC each had less than one minute of issues coverage per month in 2016.
And you can bet that 55 seconds of that minute was complaining that the candidates didn’t want to talk about the issues. And now, back to Hillary’s email server!
Chris Mooney is sure that climate deniers’ delusions will be melted … by enough melting.
The Petermann Ice Shelf serves as a plug of sorts to one of Greenland’s largest glaciers, lodged in a fjord that, from the height of its mountain walls down to the lowest point of the seafloor, is deeper than the Grand Canyon. There’s enough ice piled up behind Petermann to raise oceans globally by nearly a foot someday.
… In part, the Petermann Ice Shelf has been slower to disintegrate simply because it is in a much colder place.
Mooney’s lengthy article on the breakup of the Petermann Ice Shelf provides both a terrific look at climate scientists in action, and a painful example of how scientists trying to do good science are put into tough positions by politics … sometimes even by politicians “on their side.” Research provides data, politicians want definitive answers, and those two things are rarely in perfect alignment. Go read it all.
Brent Scowcroft and Thomas Pickering push away the nonsense around the UN vote on Israeli settlements.
In recent days, the Obama administration has undertaken two significant actions regarding the Israeli-Palestinian issue. It refrained from vetoing a resolution at the U.N. Security Council that, among other things, detailed the devastating impact that Israeli settlement expansion is having on the prospects for a two-state peace agreement. And in a landmark speech, Secretary of State John F. Kerry warned that the trend toward a one-state reality is becoming increasingly entrenched, and he set out principles for a lasting peace based on a two-state solution.
He rightly pointed out that the demise of the two-state option is to nobody’s benefit — Israeli, Palestinian or American. We share Kerry’s concerns and applaud the Obama administration for having set out the conclusions of its peace efforts in a transparent and compelling manner.
Elsewhere in the Washington Post this morning, Charles Krauthammer bemoans the Obama administration’s actions as “shameful” and “sliding a knife into Israel’s back.” Which makes it pretty damn certain that Obama did nothing of the sort.
Support for Israeli-Palestinian peace predicated on an Israeli withdrawal to a border based on the 1967 lines and opposition to Israeli civilian settlements in occupied territories have been long-standing bipartisan principles of U.S. policy. …
When U.S. presidents assert their opposition to settlements and reaffirm their support for two states, they are doing what their oath of office requires — serving U.S. national security interests. Our commitment to Israel is right and unshakable, but it cannot extend to committing ourselves to erroneous policies that undermine U.S. interests, well-being and security.
Always look for the Krauthammer seal of disapproval. It’s how you know you’re getting sensible policy.
Eugene Robinson on what happens now in Israel.
When everyone stops shouting, Israel will remain one of the United States’ closest allies — and, courtesy of President Obama, the recipient of a $38 billion aid package over 10 years that will ensure the Jewish state’s military dominance over its neighbors. Palestinian leaders in the West Bank will remain wary of negotiating any sort of two-state deal from a position of weakness. And the passage of time will make facts on the ground — expanding settlements and the ongoing security threat — ever more stubbornly entrenched.
That’s what happens if sensible leadership exists on the US end of the equation. Quick let me look around … nope, that’s all packing to leave. In three weeks, we get “why can’t we use our nuclear weapons?” guy in the chair. So you can expect the US to do things that will show what a great pal we are to Israel—with the result of putting that nation in more danger than it has been in for decades.
What vexes Obama — and increasingly angers leaders in Europe — is that the map of a two-state solution was drawn years ago and is gathering dust on disappointed diplomats’ shelves.
Well, Trump will solve that particular issue. He’ll burn those maps.
The New York Times on Obama and public lands.
When historians get around to measuring President Obama’s record of protecting America’s public lands from commercial development — its national monuments, parks, forests, wilderness and wildlife refuges — they are likely to rank him high on a list of luminaries that includes both Roosevelts, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. What makes this all the more remarkable is that Mr. Obama came to office as a Chicago urbanite with no obvious passion for environmental stewardship, had no help from Congress and, for his first four years, made little use of his executive authority to protect the federal estate from commercial encroachment. Indeed, his second inaugural address said a great deal about using those lands to produce energy and very little about conservation.
Surprise! 2016 went out the door with two new national monuments. Take a hike, Jason Chaffetz. No, seriously. Get up to Bear's Ears and check it out. It’s lovely.
Susan Chira on the year of the anti-feminist.
This was supposed to be the year of triumph for American women.
A year that would cap an arc of progress: Seneca Falls, 1848. The 19th Amendment, 1920. The first female American president, 2017. An inauguration that would usher in a triumvirate of women running major Western democracies. Little girls getting to see a woman in the White House.
Instead, for those at the forefront of the women’s movement, there is despair, division and defiance. Hillary Clinton’s loss was feminism’s, too.
Hillary Clinton was the most respected woman in America. For fifteen years in a row. But that wasn’t enough to defeat one of the nation’s least respectable men.
A man whose behavior toward women is a throwback to pre-feminist days is now setting the tone for the country. The cabinet that Donald J. Trump has nominated includes men — and a few women — with public records hostile to a range of issues at the heart of the women’s movement. A majority of white women voted for him, shattering myths of female solidarity and the belief that demeaning women would make a politician unelectable.
Trump’s treatment of women—including his own wives and daughters—is simply sickening. And yet, that wasn’t enough. That’s not a condemnation of feminism. That’s a statement about the lack of basic decency and respect among a large section of America voters.
Fareed Zakaria and how liberal democracies transform into illiberal democracies.
What we think of as democracy in the modern world is really the fusing of two different traditions. One is, of course, public participation in selecting leaders. But there is a much older tradition in Western politics that, since the Magna Carta in 1215, has centered on the rights of individuals — against arbitrary arrest, religious conversion, censorship of thought. These individual freedoms (of speech, belief, property ownership and dissent) were eventually protected, not just from the abuse of a tyrant but also from democratic majorities. The Bill of Rights, after all, is a list of things that majorities cannot do.
You can have a perfect democracy, but one in which the majority stomps all over the rights of individuals because of race, religion, or politics. Ask Socrates.
In the West, these two traditions — liberty and law on the one hand, and popular participation on the other — became intertwined, creating what we call liberal democracy. It was noticeable when I wrote the essay, and even clearer now, that in a number of countries — including Hungary, Russia, Turkey, Iraq and the Philippines — the two strands have come apart. Democracy persists (in many cases), but liberty is under siege. In these countries, the rich and varied inner stuffing of liberal democracy is vanishing, leaving just the outer, democratic shell.
Where does that unraveling start? I blame the treatment of two groups: undocumented immigrants and enemy combatants. That may seem like an odd pairing, but in both cases there’s been an all too frequent assumption that rights that apply to citizens don’t extend to these groups. Which means … those things aren’t inherent rights after all. They’re just privileges that can be extended or denied. Moving the borders on who gets denied is an easy next step.
Instead of a new column how about a flashback to 1987 with Ron Rosenbaum, for some insight on Donald Trump’s foreign policy style on how to get Pakistan to stop their nuclear program.
“Maybe we should offer them something. I’m saying you start off as nicely as possible. You apply as much pressure as necessary until you achieve the goal. You start off telling them, ‘Let’s get rid of it.’ If that doesn’t work you then start cutting off aid. And more aid and then more. You do whatever is necessary so these people will have riots in the street, so they can’t get water. So they can’t get Band-Aids, so they can’t get food. Because that’s the only thing that’s going to do it—the people, the riots.”
Yes. A few riots. A little starvation. Because that’s when leaders of nuclear nations really make their best, most sensible decisions. By the way, Trump suggested we use the same tactics on our allies.
Jennifer Weiner challenges you to a New Year’s revolution.
No matter what bit of 2016 has left you feeling battered and bludgeoned and blue, the siren song of self-improvement has never sounded louder. We can’t heal the divides in the country, can’t stop violence, can’t keep death from taking the artists and actors who defined our youth. We can’t magically extend the term of a president who did not tweet as if he was channeling a furious, academically challenged 12-year-old, but maybe we can at least squeeze into our jeans from the era before it all went wrong. ...
Or you could focus on the political instead of the personal. If the weight-loss industry and the fitness industry and even, it seems, the president-elect would rather have you counting calories instead of all the frightening ways the world has changed since November, if they want you spending your money on commercial diet plans instead of giving it to Planned Parenthood, then you can recommit to self-acceptance, and on doing work that will ultimately matter more than the shape of your body.
Personally, I’m planning on taking the money that previous Januarys might have gone to Weight Watchers or the diet book of the moment, and using it instead on bus tickets from Philadelphia to Washington for the women’s march on Jan. 21.
The bolding is mine. The bold action? Let’s both have some of that.
One more thing … I appreciate the privilege to futz about on the wee hours of Sunday morning and hit you with the first fresh message of the new week. I really do. Happy New Year!
My dog demonstrates the best way to deal with 2016.