Our Industrial Policy Is the F-35

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screen-shot-2016-12-01-at-10-14-03-am

Lockheed photo.

With the news of Donald Trump’s deal to keep 1,100 of 2,100 Carrier jobs in Indiana, coastal elites appear to have just discovered tax-supported Midwestern manufacturing jobs, even as they continue to ignore tax-supported defense contractor (manufacturing) jobs.

As best as I can understand it from the details released so far, the deal may be best understood as a mix of typical state-level efforts combined with the leverage of a federal level effort. Over 25% of the jobs saved will be engineer and headquarter jobs — important for retaining technological capacity in the US, but not a big help to blue collar workers.

The package is reportedly substantially similar to one IN Governor and soon to be Vice President Mike Pence already offered.

UTC agreed to retain approximately 800 manufacturing jobs at the Indiana plant that had been slated to move to Mexico, as well as another 300 engineering and headquarters jobs. In return, the company will get roughly $700,000 a year for a period of years in state tax incentives.

Some 1,300 jobs will still go to Mexico, which includes 600 Carrier employees, plus 700 workers from UTEC Controls in Huntington, Ind.

That has commentators on all sides — from economists to Bernie Sanders — complaining that Trump just made it more likely companies will demand bribes to retain US based jobs in the future.

That’s of course a fantasy. Companies already demand bribes to keep jobs in particular states (or in the US generally).* This is just a typical deal — indeed, it was a typical failed deal until the guy making it became Vice President-elect thanks in part to his new boss’ running on making a better deal.

The way companies arbitrage states and countries to get the best deal to preserve jobs is not a good thing — at all. But it’s one that must be solved at a systematic level, a point Jared Bernstein made in the WaPo.

This sort of production cannot be sustained as some sort of non-competitive museum model, where we push back on trade-induced job losses through tax breaks and government contracts. True, governors and mayors commonly dole out such goodies as bribes to factories to settle in one state vs. another, but that’s a zero-sum game, and often ends up as a big waste of precious resources. Meanwhile, it’s also a game of corporate whack-a-mole. While Trump et al. were brokering this deal, nearby factories were packing up for Mexico.

As I recently wrote, we’ve generally failed to even try to implement a solution to this problem of global competition eroding our manufacturing base. A systemic approach, as opposed to what Trump is up to here, will require reducing our trade deficit in manufactured goods by pushing back against countries that manage their currencies to make our exports expensive and their exports cheap. It will require investments in advanced manufacturing so we can close the wage gap with productivity. It will require systemic state and older city economic development of the type economist Tim Bartik describes here and here. It may require direct job creation to employ displaced workers when none of the above comes through.

The key twist on this story, however, is that Carrier was convinced to deal when Trump started threatening that federal contracts with Carrier’s parent company, United Technologies, might be at risk if they didn’t.

John Mutz, a former Indiana lieutenant governor who sits on the [Indiana Economic Development Corporation’s] 12-member board, told POLITICO that Carrier turned down a previous offer from IEDC before the election. He said he thinks the choice is driven by concerns from Carrier’s parent company, United Technologies, that it could lose a portion of its roughly $6.7 billion in federal contracts.

“This deal is no different than other deals that we put together at the IEDC to retain jobs, but the fact is that the difference is that United Technologies depends on the federal government for lots of business,” Mutz said.

Kevin Drum — while citing a lot of health care and finance jobs (both heavily supported by federal policy) as the true job leaders in Indianapolis — considers the pressure on United Technologies to be an outrage.

This would be a massive abuse of power, of course, but who wants to take a chance that Trump cares? Probably not UT.

I actually think the deal ought to elicit a more interesting discussion of industrial policy — the kind of systematic intervention that Bernstein talks about that might actually do something about the hollowing out of America’s manufacturing base.

Such a discussion has long been forbidden in American political discourse, in part because the same economists pretending such whack-a-mole bribes haven’t become the norm in American political life also pretend that an unfettered “free” market (always defined to include mobile capital and goods, but not labor) will benefit everyone.

Yet even during the period when any discussion of industrial policy has been forbidden, we’ve had one.

Our industrial policy consists of massive US investments in manufacturing war and intelligence toys that we then sell to foreign governments. When done with Middle Eastern petro-states like Saudi Arabia, that trade goes a long way to equalize our foreign trade deficit, but it contributes directly to instability that then requires us to intervene and build more war toys. That investment in war leads, in turn, to a disinvestment in publicly funded infrastructure that could also provide jobs in the heartland.

The most obvious symbol of our unacknowledged industrial policy is the F-35, a trillion dollar federal investment for a plane that has yet to meet basic requirements, one beset by years of rework. As it happens, one of many causes of problems with the F-35 is big reliability problems with engines used in the plane. That makes those faulty engines, made by United Technologies subsidiary Pratt & Whitney, just another direct taxpayer investment in UTC jobs. Yet reliability problems didn’t prevent P&W from getting another contract for the F-35 engine earlier this year. Nor did P & W’s provision of attack helicopter technology to the Chinese via a Canadian subsidiary.

Our current industrial policy, you see, feeds so few prime contractors that they are virtually immune from the competition that might pressure them to deliver quality goods. Which leads, in turn, to rework, contract overruns, and contractors walking out of the building with our government’s most closely guarded secrets, all with no consequences.

Let’s stop pretending (as this piece does) that America’s manufacturing, increasingly dominated by the production of war toys, exists in a a real market, shall we?

Once we do that, we might begin to address the diseases of our defense contracting and — more importantly — rediscover the value of investing in other kinds of manufacturing that our country needs to have. Justify these investments by some future defense need, I don’t give a damn (though there are military officials who will soberly explain the risks of the hollowing out of our manufacturing base). But invest in the technologies the US needs to stay competitive and retain a manufacturing base.

There was a brief moment when Obama tried to do this by investing in battery factories in MI and other Rust Belt states, an investment justified because the US lagged so far behind South Korea on this critical technology. The investments were badly executed, and then later undermined by the KORUS trade deal. Republicans made them toxic with the Solyndra faux scandal. And so, rather than siting one after another killer app in locales whose older economies had failed, such efforts largely ended.

Imagine how the climate change negotiations might have changed, though, if they came with key investments in alternative energies in coal mining areas of West Virginia and Kentucky?

But this Carrier deal — no matter how much of a gimmick — should be an opportunity to shift the discussion. Trump (and Pence) just federalized the kind of deal every state makes out of desperation, pitting states against each other and Mexico and China. If they can do that, in part by leveraging federal contracting, then they can also pursue an honest industrial policy, one not dependent on selling war toys to our belligerent authoritarian friends overseas.

I doubt Trump will do that. But his Carrier deal ought to at least invite a debate about it.

Update: Added a link to the deferred prosecution for when Pratt & Whitney dodged export restrictions to provide technology to China.

Update: The other day Bloomberg did a review of the Department of Energy’s Loan Program Office, which funded Solyndra (but which, as was covered at the time, actually dates to W’s Administration) actually has been very successful.

Not only has the program’s loan portfolio generated about $1.65 billion in interest payments to date, its mission to support major energy projects fits into Trump’s goal of stimulating investment in the U.S., said Jonathan Silver, a former head of the loan programs office.

“The President-elect was talking directly about significant investments in infrastructure,” Silver said in an interview Monday at Bloomberg headquarters in New York. The program is intended to support not just clean-energy projects, but also industries Trump championed during the campaign, including coal, among other advanced fossil fuels. “This is infrastructure. It doesn’t get any more infrastructure-ish than this.”

The office dates to the George W. Bush administration and was designed to offer loan guarantees to innovative energy projects that struggle to get financing from commercial and investment banks. In some cases it also approved loans funded through the Federal Financing Bank.

It supported the first big solar farms in the country and helped commercialize solar-thermal systems, advanced nuclear designs, molten-salt storage and other technologies. It has yet to finance an advanced fossil-fuel project.

*Disclosure: My spouse works for a manufacturing company often touted, locally and nationally, as a huge success; it receives state tax credits.

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Seven Democrats Write Obama Asking Him to Declassify More Information on Russian Involvement in the Election

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Ron Wyden, five other Democrats, and Dem caucusing Independent Angus King just wrote Obama a cryptic letter. The entire body of the letter reads:

We believe there is additional information concerning the Russian Government and the U.S. election that should be declassified and released to the public. We are conveying specifics through classified channels.

Thank you for your attention to this important matter.

Aside from the fact that this suggests (as Wyden’s cryptic letters always d0) there is something meaty that we really ought to know, I find the list of signers rather curious. In addition to Wyden, the following Senators signed the letter:

  • Jack Reed
  • Mark Warner
  • Barb Mikulski
  • Martin Heinrich
  • Angus King
  • Mazie Hirono

That is, every Democratic SSCI member except current Chair Dianne Feinstein, plus Senate Armed Services Chair Jack Reed, signed the letter. So every Democrat except DiFi and Majority Leader Harry Reid signed the letter, suggesting it is something that got briefed to the full Senate Intelligence Committee as well as the Ranking Members of SASC (the latter of which suggests NSA or CYBERCOM may be involved).

I’m as interested in the fact that DiFi and Reid didn’t sign as that the others did sign. It can’t be that Reid is retiring and DiFi is heading to SJC (it’s still unclear whether she’ll remain on SSCI or not). After all, Mikulski is retiring as well.

Plus, Harry Reid wrote a far more explicit letter last month to Jim Comey — apparently following up on a non-public letter send months earlier — alluding to direct coordination between Trump and Russia.

In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government – a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Trump praises at every opportunity. The public has a right to know this information. I wrote to you months ago calling for this information to be released to the public. There is no danger to American interests from releasing it. And yet, you continue to resist calls to inform the public of this critical information.

Finally, what to make of the fact that not even John McCain signed onto this letter? Reed’s inclusion makes it clear that McCain, too, must have been briefed. He has been outspoken about Trump’s moves to cozy up to Putin. If he has seen — and objects to — such coordination, why not sign onto this letter and give it the patina of bipartisanship?

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The Stein Recount Needle and the Damage Done

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vote-recountI stated earlier my issues with the Jill Stein fueled “recount” effort. Since that time, there seems to be a hue and cry to the effect of “irrespective of Stein, these will be helpful and are especially needed after Trump’s lie!”.

There are many instances of that thought, but this from Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Inquirer/Daily News, a friend whom I admire and like greatly, is indicative:

The stakes are too high to calculate. But there is one other thing about Trump’s big lie about the 2016 election. Ironically, before today, the case for a recount in the three states was a tad shaky. While the threat of Russian (or other) hacking has been a valid concern, little in the way of actual evidence of a stolen election has emerged since November 8. But now that Trump has alleged massive fraud, the integrity of the American system demands that the result be audited and properly certified. So let the re-counting begin.

I disagree rather strongly.

As said, I already stated my objection to Stein’s effort, as initially targeted to Wisconsin. Let’s take a look at the situation in Pennsylvania, where Stein has putatively filed today, the last possible day legally. A quote from Pennsylvania election lawyer Gregory Harvey in local Pennsylvania press is instructive:

The biggest obstacle to this getting anywhere may be deadlines. The recount petitions come on the very last day, and if they’re designed to generate enough evidence to contest the election, that’s going to be a stretch.

Harvey, the election lawyer says the deadline for an election contest, which must spell out the specific conduct that merits overturning the result, is also Monday, Nov. 28. With a compelling case you can always ask the court to make an exception, but they tend to be pretty strict about election law — that thing about not changing the rules after the game is played.

Harvey said Steins’ prospects for success are so remote that “raising money to do something in Pennsylvania must be intended only to publicize the Green Party.”

Again, remember, there is a difference between rote “recounts” and comprehensive “audits”. This is especially germane to WI as noted previously, but also to Pennsylvania, and Michigan, should it come too. Even if the recount found something, and there is no basis to believe it will, the legal timeframe is blown. And, no, courts are not likely to remedy such laches. (So, where has Stein been for weeks since the election and before she so conveniently glommed on to, and misrepresented, Halderman et al’s report?) Ah, late breaking, indeed Wisconsin has already denied the last second recount by hand from Stein and Stein is now suing to try to overcome the administrative ruling:

Unless Stein wins her lawsuit in Dane County Circuit Court, officials in each of Wisconsin’s 72 counties would decide on their own whether to do their recounts by hand. That could mean some counties perform recounts by machine and some by hand.

Yes, shocking! And good luck with that. Again, as I have relentlessly stated, once you approach administrative boards and, even more so, courts, you need actual demonstrable bases for your argument of fraud, mistake etc. Which is something Jill Stein and her effort simply have never had. That does not cut it. Ooops!

Stein has until Wednesday to file in Michigan, but there is no reason to think the effort will be any more focused, intelligently drafted, nor timely, than has been displayed to date in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

But there are bigger issues here than Jill Stein’s folly, right? Right! Indeed there are, and Stein’s cynical effort only hurts those larger picture items. But, irrespective of all of the above, it is a wonderful thing that the votes are being recounted, right? Maybe, and quite arguably, maybe not.

If this effort involved intelligent and targeted meaningful “audits” of voting in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, that would truly yield the data we need to answer a variety of questions, I would agree wholeheartedly. But that is not what is afoot here via Stein. These are rote last second “recounts”, likely through the same tabulation mechanisms originally used, and are almost guaranteed to produce the same results, give or take minuscule deviation.

In fact, as close as I can discern from reportage, even in Stein’s first state, Wisconsin, to perform a truly different full hand count analysis requires leave of a court. And it is hard to see leave of court being given without a substantive evidentiary basis being proffered, of which there is, of course, none to date. In Pennslyvania, the outlook is no better, and arguably even more lame and adverse. That is before we ever get to Michigan, which the last second for Stein is Wednesday.

There are a lot of truly intelligent and proper purposes for all Americans, and currently Democrats, to want to test and audit the vote in this country. It is that important, and that germane to our democracy.

By the same token, it is also too important to be driven by a crass vanity project at the last second by a bit player glomming on for self promotion. This is the lifeblood of American plebiscite and democracy, and we deserve better.

But the current action is not just a curiosity that “can’t hurt” or that is suddenly necessary to react to some idiotic tweet by Trump. The stakes are higher than that. Stein’s effort is ill advised, ill counseled legally, ill targeted, ill executed and ill timed by every metric I can see.

And, yes, there can be real harm therefrom. An effort like this that does nothing but confirm the general overall propriety of the 2016 vote does nothing but confirm Trump’s election. But, more importantly, it lends a larger argument that our voting system is fair and accurate, and thus not in need of further reform and updating.

Sure, it may, for the next few weeks, counter the blindered fascination of many as to rebutting Trump’s idiotic tweet on “millions of illegal voters”, but that is transient and short sighted. In the long run, it will just feed the larger GOP effort, and they now hold both houses of Congress and the Presidency, to not reform and improve American voting mechanisms, but indeed to accept that it is all fine technologically and then go about further voter suppression and restriction measures generally.

Greg Sargent discussed this at the Washington Post Plumline this morning:

Trump has now made national news with this tweet, a response to reports that Hillary Clinton’s campaign will join a recount effort in Wisconsin and possibly Michigan and Pennsylvania as well
….
As Glenn Kessler explains, there is zero evidence that this happened. Trump will continue to reach deep into the fever swamps to shape reality for himself and his supporters — only now he’ll do so in the position as most powerful person in the world. Trump also tweeted that there was “serious voter fraud” in three states that the media refuses to report upon.

But all this may also telegraph something concrete that we might see under a Trump presidency: A far more ambitious effort to restrict access to voting than we might have expected.

“My concern is that this might be a signal that we will see an assault on voting rights,” Wendy Weiser, the director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, told me today. “Claims of nonexistent voter fraud and noncitizen voting are precisely the kinds of baseless justifications that we’ve seen for the wave of laws in the past couple of years restricting voting access.”

Yes, indeed. I think this is exactly what I am, and have been, saying. Well put by Sargent.

Democrats, and yes Greens to the extent they really care, should stop playing the game that is already lost, and 2016 is already lost, and start playing smartly as to the future. You want comprehensive and meaningful actual voting audits, as opposed to rote recounts, of the vote? Excellent! Let’s work on that for the future. Let’s do that for all states, and not just the three that Jill Stein glommed onto to self promote.

There is a fight out there to be won, but the instant “recount” effort is ill advised and not going to do squat to win it.

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Ari Fleischer Calls for a Return of Jeff Gannon

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Remember Jeff Gannon? He was the gay sex worker who invented a news outlet that joined the White House on daily press passes for two years. He would routinely bail press secretaries Ari Fleischer or Scott McClellan out of tough jams. He was (literally) exposed after he asked President Bush a question about working with Senate Democrats that invoked a fake Rush Limbaugh attack on Harry Reid and had the punch line, “How are you going to work – you’ve said you are going to reach out to these people – how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?” People started looking into him, his media outlet, and the graphic advertisements for him on line to understand why such a prop was part of the White House press corps. That led to discoveries that White House visitor logs showed him not checking out overnight (though Gannon denied any sleepovers) and allegations of plagiarism.

In short, Gannon is an example of the kind of poor vetting that happens with a press office tries to set up more puff coverage for itself.

Well, Ari Fleischer wants Gannon back.

Less than two months ago, Fleischer (who was investigated for his role in the leak of Valerie Plame’s CIA identity) argued, of Trump’s threat to jail Hillary, “Winning candidates don’t threaten to put opponents in jail. Presidents don’t threaten prosecution of individuals. Trump is wrong on this.”

A month later he attempted a last minute, chronologically-challenged self-rehabilitation, claiming he would not vote for Trump.

I was supposed to be a delegate to the GOP convention, but I decided not to go. I’d vote for Trump, but I wasn’t going to sing his praises. It felt rude to go to Cleveland and say negative things about him on the air. I watched from home, and I said at the time that I still wanted him to win but doubted he could.

Then Trump lost control of himself and his message. He veered recklessly off track, attacking an American judge for his Mexican heritage, criticizing a war hero’s family, questioning the legitimacy of the election and otherwise raising questions about his judgment. If this race were about change, Clinton or policy, Trump could win it. But he made it about himself. Because he is one of the most unpopular people ever to run for president, that was a big mistake.

[snip]

I will vote for Republicans up and down the ballot. But when it comes to the presidency, I’m going to leave my ballot blank.

Now Ari’s back, calling on the Trump White House to admit more Jeff Gannons.

The briefing room itself, the place where reporters sit, and the adjacent space in which they are provided offices reflect the power of the mainstream press, based largely on the media-consuming habits of the American people from decades ago. The Associated Press, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and Fox News, for example, sit in front-row seats that have their names on them. The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, the Washington Post and NPR sit right behind them. While approximately 750 reporters hold White House credentials, the briefing room holds 49 seats, and they are occupied overwhelmingly by mainstream media reporters, with barely any assigned to the new dot-com world.

The White House press secretary used to decide who got what seats, but this authority was given to the White House Correspondents Association in the middle of the George W. Bush administration. Nothing prohibits the incoming administration from taking it back. The valuable West Wing real estate occupied by the White House press corps isn’t the property of the press. It belongs to the U.S. government.

Note, this seems to be an outdated notion, as outlets like Yahoo, HuffPo, Politico, and Buzzfeed are respected members of the White House press corps.

Ari goes on to suggest the dot-com problem is really an ideological one.

It isn’t only Trump who is complaining. A September Gallup poll showed that trust and confidence in the mass media “to report the news fully, accurately and fairly” had dropped to its lowest level in Gallup polling history. An October Pew poll showed that only 5% of the public report they have a “great deal” of confidence in the news media, while 61% have “no confidence” or “not much confidence,” a level surpassed only by the low regard the public has for elected officials.

Reporters are aware of these surveys, but they don’t change. They remain mostly liberal and largely made up of the same elites who couldn’t imagine Mr. Trump winning the nomination, let alone the presidency.

Interjection: it pains me, because I graduated from the same elementary school as Fleischer, that he doesn’t realize that if only 5% of the public has confidence in the press, then the problem is not that they are too liberal or are mean to Donald Trump. Here’s Ari again:

Too many live in a bubble in which they talk mainly to similar-minded journalists. They fail to understand that the combination of ideological bias and the loss of public confidence makes them vulnerable to the changes President Trump might seek.

In every era, the nation needs a fair and vigilant press to check the power of the president. Presidents might not like it, but it serves the country well. The daily briefing by the press secretary has long been a TV show, not a serious briefing, but it is still worth the effort. The mainstream media have a role to play, and so do a lot of other outlets. But when the press is too liberal or unfair, the media themselves put what they do at risk.

I don’t know what changes President-elect Trump will make, but he has extraordinary latitude. If he decides to go around the press entirely, abolish the daily briefing, give seats to different reporters, appoint a combative press secretary, or not take a press pool with him to dinner, the reason he’ll be able to get away with it is because the mainstream media lost the trust of the American people.

The push for the White House to reclaim authority granted to WHCA around the time Gannon was exposed is the most ironic aspect of this call from Fleischer.

But the utter lack of self-awareness is the most important.

After all, one of key reasons no one trusts the media anymore is because the media’s credulity about Iraq War claims — helped along by “combative press secretary” Ari Fleischer — led to their discredit. It’s not so much no one trusts the media because they are liberal, to the extent that is true. It has more to do with the fact that the last Republican Administration to inhabit the White House did so much to turn the press into willing collaborators.

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The White House Attempts to Unring the Election Integrity Fearmongering

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Over the weekend, the White House gave the NYT a statement on the integrity of our elections that deserves more attention. Here it is, in full:

The Kremlin probably expected that publicity surrounding the disclosures that followed the Russian Government-directed compromises of e-mails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations, would raise questions about the integrity of the election process that could have undermined the legitimacy of the President-elect. Nevertheless, we stand behind our election results, which accurately reflect the will of the American people.

The Federal government did not observe any increased level of malicious cyber activity aimed at disrupting our electoral process on election day. As we have noted before, we remained confident in the overall integrity of electoral infrastructure, a confidence that was borne out on election day. As a result, we believe our elections were free and fair from a cybersecurity perspective.

That said, since we do not know if the Russians had planned any malicious cyber activity for election day, we don’t know if they were deterred from further activity by the various warnings the U.S. government conveyed.

As the NYT noted in its introduction to this statement, the person who released this statement (my guess is Ned Price, but that’s just a wildarseguess) would not let him or herself be identified. While this is a long-time habit of the Obama Administration (one that merely exacerbated a Bush habit), consider what it means that a statement intended to increase confidence about our electoral process was issued anonymously.

You’re doing it wrong.

The statement itself highlights the perverse effect of all the fearmongering about Russia hacking our elections.

Let’s start with the last paragraph. “We do not know if the Russians had planned any malicious cyber activity for election day [… or] if they were deterred.” This suggests that at no time before the election did anyone in the White House know of plans to disrupt the election. That’s an important detail, because many sloppy journalists have consistently misread reports of the hacking of voter registration lists from a Russian hosting service but that may not have even been Russians must less the Russian state to mean that the Russian state was trying to hack the election itself. While there was one late report that suggests FBI may have gotten more reason to believe these polling list probes were Russian state entities, this statement seems to refute that.

Indeed, the second paragraph seems to back that. “The Federal government did not observe any increased level of malicious cyber activity aimed at disrupting our electoral process on election day.” The White House, now explicitly speaking for the entire Federal government, says that there was no increased malicious cyber activity aimed at disrupting election day, regardless of the actor. While it’s certainly possible known probes of registration lists continued, according to this statement they didn’t accelerate as the election drew near. This makes it more likely these probes were identity theft related, not Russian state tampering.

If there was no there there to all the claims of Russian hacking our election infrastructure (which is distinct from claims that Russia hacked the DNC and other political organizations, which is something our spooks do as well), then why didn’t the White House stop all the fearmongering about the election infrastructure beyond the joint ODNI/DHS statement that admitted there was no conclusive evidence that was happening?

That’s where this statement starts.

The Kremlin probably expected that publicity surrounding the disclosures that followed the Russian Government-directed compromises of e-mails from U.S. persons and institutions … would raise questions about the integrity of the election process that could have undermined the legitimacy of the President-elect.

They’re not even saying “rais[ing] questions about the integrity of the election” is what “the Kremlin” (“the Kremlin” has served as a very sloppy metonymy throughout this discussion) had in mind. They’re just guessing that the intent existed.

Throughout the discussion of Russian hacking, the entire point of it has been one of the weakest points of the allegations: no one ever provided a credible explanation for how releasing validated copies of real emails could undermine the election. The strongest case I saw made is that the emails provided something that Trump himself, his true-believers, Macedonian teenagers, and Russian propagandists could hang false stories onto; but that’s no different from what happened to official Hillary emails released under FOIA (to say nothing of FBI leaks about same) or actual events like Hillary’s pneumonia. Those people can make lies up about anything and they don’t need Podesta emails to do so. Trump, as Republicans have for decades, turned out to be perfectly capable of raising baseless concerns about election integrity (as he did again last night).

So here, when asked why, after dick-waving about an imminent Russian hack of the election, the White House wasn’t backing a review of the vote, this White House official who wouldn’t go on the record instead effectively said, “Who knows? ‘The Kremlin’ probably figured the damage was done.”

Which brings me to my complaint about the way the Russian hacking has been dealt with — largely fed by a deliberate Hillary effort to emphasize Trump’s Russian ties rather than all his shady dealings generally.

Who is responsible for doubts about the integrity of our election? The hack-and-leakers? Trump? Or the national security officials (who, in this case, won’t even go on the record) making uncertain claims that the Russians intend to undermine confidence in elections? At some point, those pounding the war drums are the ones who are undermining confidence, not the Russian hackers themselves.

And none of those actions take place in a vacuum. Even as both the Russians (allegedly) were undermining faith in our elections and national security types were hyping up concerns that people might lose faith in our elections which likely helped undermine faith in our elections, there were real reasons why Americans shouldn’t have faith in their elections. Consider this line: “As a result, we believe our elections were free and fair from a cybersecurity perspective.” This anonymous person at the White House is asserting there were no hacks of the election. But he or she is not asserting the election was free and fair.

Of course not. That’s because in a number of states — notably, in swing states NC and WI — the Republicans undertook known, documented efforts to ensure the elections weren’t free and fair by making it harder for likely Democratic voters to vote than Republican voters.

Voters — especially students and voters of color normally targeted in suppression efforts — shouldn’t be complacent about the integrity of our elections. Numerous circuit courts have found evidence showing they’re not free and fair. Our elections were not going to be free and fair well before Russian hackers targeted the DNC.

But rather than focusing on the things closer to home that we need to improve, we’re all worried the Russians are coming … to do what decades of Republican efforts have already done.

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The Self Serving Jill Stein Recount Scam

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ap_514085205775-021470928390Jill Stein, admittedly, always struck me as a bit of a naive and somewhat unhinged candidate. But, Stein was the “Green Party” candidate and, once Bernie Sanders lost, became the go to darling for ill advised voters and activists that were far too willing to wreck the world with Donald Trump than consider the circumstances and vote for an eminently qualified, albeit terribly flawed, candidate in the form of Hillary Clinton. It is hard to argue with anarchist, blow it all up, demagogues when trying to protect a lame, and status quo, candidate. Even when the ultimate opponent is a raging racist, bigoted, misogynistic, female choice hating and torture loving shill like Donald Trump.

So many otherwise Democratic voters went off and voted for Stein and/or Gary Johnson. Did it make the “final difference”? I have no idea, but there is certainly an argument that could be made.

Was it the Jim Comey FBI factor from the stunningly inappropriate rogue actions by the FBI Director putting his self righteous thumb on the electoral scale in both the start of the critical summer elections season and, then, yet again in the last two weeks before the election? It is easy to make that argument, irrespective of any other factor.

Was it that Hillary did not expend personal and campaign time and dime in Wisconsin and other Rust Belt states when she did a lost, but very much growing, cause venue such as Arizona? Easy case for that argument as well.

The actual data and competent reportage seems to indicate that all of the above were significant factors. It strikes me that is right.

All of the above factors fed into the defeat of Clinton and the election loss by her, if only by the electoral college, at the tiny hands of Trump. So be it. That is what happened under the electoral laws and process (yes, let us not forget the pernicious meddling of Russia and/or Wikileaks, whether they are coupled or not) pertinent to the 2016 US Presidential election. But, like the result or not, that was all pursuant to the Constitution and election laws as are currently extant in the United States. There is not one competent piece of evidence that the actual vote itself was “hacked” or “rigged”. Just none.

Which brings us to the much ballyhooed action of Jill Stein to crowd fund and conduct audits and or recounts in the key states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. The second she started her effort, I opined it was an attention grabbing craven play by Stein, and not a legitimate effort with any eye to any substantive results. On a more private forum I intoned:

But that is the thing: It IS bomb throwing, and stupidly so. There is NO evidentiary basis for fraud or mistake that I have seen. The guy who started it, [J. Alex] Halderman himself, admits as much legally when he says he thinks it is most likely poll inaccuracy, not anything nefarious.

I know all the beaten down, especially Clinton diehards, that cannot fathom how she blew this election, want to grasp for something. But it just isn’t there.

I stand by that completely. What Jill Stein is doing is blatant self promotion, list building, reputational repair where it is undeserved, and slush funding for an incoherent Green Party. It is detestable to the extreme. Stein has glommed onto this recount scam as a way to serve herself, she certainly is not serving anything else.

To quote a significant Democratic election law attorney, and longtime friend of this blog, Adam Bonin:

“If there were something to do here, there are a lot of us who would be jumping on it”

Early on the hashtag #AuditTheVote was attached to this chicanery. Here is the problem with that – two out of three of Stein’s target states already “audit the vote” as a regular matter of law without the need for Stein’s self serving injection into the matter. In fact, Stein’s primary target, Wisconsin, has a reasonably robust random audit provision in Wisconsin Revised Statute 7.08(6), which has been generally deigned to require:

The voting system audit procedures consist of two independent processes: an audit conducted by municipalities of reporting units randomly selected by the State Elections Board and an audit of reporting units conducted by the State Elections Board. Number of Reporting Units to Audit: Per the requirements of section 7.08(6), Wis. Stats., each type of electronic voting system in Wisconsin must be audited after the general election to ensure that each system does not exceed the error rate prescribed in the federal voting system guidelines. The State Elections Board will randomly select fifty (50) reporting units across Wisconsin which will be subject to municipal audit, including a minimum of five (5) reporting units for each voting system used in Wisconsin. If fewer than five (5) reporting units for any voting system are selected through the random selection process, then additional reporting units will be randomly selected by voting system until five reporting units per voting system have been selected. If there are fewer than 5 reporting units using a voting system the State Elections Board staff will audit those reporting units if the reporting units are not selected as part of the random draw. until five reporting units per voting system have been selected. If there are fewer than 5 reporting units using a voting system the State Elections Board staff will audit those reporting units if the reporting units are not selected as part of the random draw.

Well, that is actually pretty robust. And all of which would have been, and will be, performed without the preening self interjection of Jill Stein in her first state of concern, Wisconsin.

Just Wisconsin? Nope. Pennsylvania also has an inherent audit provision, though not quite as robust as Wisconsin. The bottom line is, though, there are already “audit the vote” provisions in two out of three of Jill Stein’s targets, even though she declined to say so in her propaganda seeking funding to stay in the spotlight and reconstruct her reputation. In fairness, Michigan has no such automatic audit provision, so there is that.

Next, you need to consider that there is a substantive difference between “audits” of the vote and flat out recounts. Stein has always been about recounts, despite the bogusly applied #AuditTheVote nomenclature applied by Stein and her glommers on. Recounts are expensive, labor intensive, and time consuming. And they are asinine where there is not a single shred of competent evidence to support fraud or mistake that could, even in the remotest possibility, change the outcome in a given state or states.

And, let us be crystal clear here, there is still NO competent evidence whatsoever of fraud, mistake or other irregularity that could change the result. None. And that is the thing, unless there is fraud, mistake or systematic error, recounts can do nothing to legally support a challenge to the election results. A challenge has to stand up in court. It cannot be thin and based upon rote supposition and suspicion. Even if Stein’s folly turns up a minor discrepancy here and there, that will not suffice.

The vote differential, again in Wisconsin for instance, between Clinton and Trump currently stands at 27,259 votes. Yes, that is less than the total of Stein, so despite the wild claim she threw the election that some Clinton supporters have thrown, I will not. Some Stein voters were never going to vote for Clinton; so while Stein’s vanity run deserves ridicule, it does not, in and of itself, “prove” Clinton would have won but for Stein. Close enough for ridicule given that Trump is the result? Sure. But, again that, too, holds for ridicule of Clinton’s own arrogant and detached campaign and the fatally pernicious effects of the completely rogue arbiter of his own justice, James Comey.

So, where does that leave us? With a Norma Desmond like self promoting grifter, dying to redeem her name and stay in some/any spotlight, in the form of Jill Stein. She was a cancer on the election (hey, her dinner with Putin and Mike Flynn was cool though!) that, at a minimum, helped elect Trump, and she is sticking around to create more hell now that said deed is done.

This is absurd. Jill Stein is a grifter and a fraud. And she is playing this opportunity to, first off, list build for herself and the Greens, secondly, resuscitate her and their name, thirdly, stay in the press, and lastly, create an amorphous slush fund to continue those things. Stein is succeeding beyond wildest expectations if your idea of the normal course of business is Donald Trumpian level grifting.

For a woman who raised only $3.5 million during her entire vanity run for President, Stein has now raised nearly $6 million dollars in far less than a week on this scam. That is NOT because Stein has dedicated Green Party followers wanting to bleed yet more money into their candidate after the election; no, it is because desperate Clintonians are seeking some way, any way, to stop Trump. And playing on that desperation is exactly the fraud of Jill Stein.

A common refrain I see is that, “golly, there is no harm, and much good, that can come from confirming the vote”. But that is just more self serving balderdash from the desperate and/or Stein acolytes. In fact, there is great harm that can come from Stein’s shenanigans. Here is Rick Hasen from the Election Law Blog, quoting the Wisconsin Journal Sentinel:

Wisconsin could be at risk of missing a Dec. 13 deadline to certify its 10 electoral votes if clerks can’t complete an expected recount by then.

Hitting the deadline could be particularly tricky if Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein is able to force the recount to be conducted by hand, Wisconsin’s top election official said.

Stein — who received just 1% of the vote in Wisconsin — has promised to file for a recount by Friday’s 5 p.m. deadline in Wisconsin. She is also planning to ask for recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania, which have deadlines next week.

A federal “safe harbor” law requires states to complete presidential recounts within 35 days of the election to ensure their electoral votes are counted. This year, that’s Dec. 13.

What is the upshot of this? Easy, Stein’s effort could easily place Wisconsin, in light of the December 13 deadline, of missing the deadline and disenfranchising all voters in Wisconsin. Yes, there are potential repercussions from actions like Stein is taking, especially when there is no known basis or grounds whatsoever evidentiary wise to support them. And that is just Wisconsin. Michigan and Pennsylvania are in even bigger jeopardy thanks to the self serving hubris of Jill Stein, should she actually continue on to file in those states as promised, without any rational basis for challenging the vote therein.

Lastly, while I have been writing the instant post, the attorney for the DNC and Clinton Campaign, Marc E. Elias, has weighed in on Medium with an official take for both himself and, by all appearances, the aforementioned campaign entities. The Reader’s Digest version, by my eyes, is that, while the DNC and Clinton camps are going to join into the Stein effort, they have never seen any basis for it, and are being dragged into a position of noticing their appearance and joinder simply in order to preserve their rights to be involved should Stein’s group go so far off the rails or, in the remotest of all potentialities, find anything. That is not joinder with enthusiasm, it is joinder to protect your legal voice. Trump is now doing the same for similar reasons. I do not blame either Clinton or Trump for doing so, in fact, Stein’s idiocy put both of said parties in that regrettable posture. Don’t cast your eye askew for one second at Elias and the Dems, nor even Trump and the Repubs, ….Stein and her idiotic self serving publicity play made them do it.

In short, this effort by Jill Stein is nothing more than a self promoting vanity play. If you want to donate to that grift, by all means, go ahead. But don’t blather about how it is going to help democracy or promote fair elections. That is absurd. In fact, just exactly as absurd as Jill Stein’s cynical grift on her current donors who are far different than her few and far between Green donors.

Stein is scamming the dispossessed. That is a Trumpian level fraud.

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Swear or Affirm, Protect and Defend

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The presidential oath of office, per Article II, Section One, Clause 8:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

This is the oath to be sworn by a man who has repeatedly criticized citizens and the press as they exercise their creator-endowed right of free speech, protected by the First Amendment.

This is the oath to be sworn by a man who has repeatedly violated laws including infringement of civil rights and fraud.

This is the same oath a man one heartbeat away must be prepared to swear — a man who has violated the civil rights of Indiana citizens by denying them equal rights based on their gender and sexual identity, denying effective approaches to disease control and endangering lives, denying their right to privacy in seeking medical care.

The vice-presidential oath of office, as prescribed by statute:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”

This the oath the man one heartbeat away from the presidency will swear, the same one that members of Congress also swear. This is the oath by his own acts as governor the vice-president-elect already violates by refusing to treat all citizens of his state as equals under the law.

This is the oath a Senator has taken though he continued to treat fellow citizens as less than equal under the law. His legal education and experience has been inadequate to the task if he cannot understand that grabbing a woman’s genitals without her consent is sexual assault, or that calling African American men “boy” during the execution of his duties as Senator is a discriminatory practice violating Constitutionally-protected civil rights. He has fought against treating all citizens as equals in so many ways throughout his career.

The oath of enlistment in U.S. military, according to federal statute 10 U.S.C. § 502:

“I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

And the oath of commissioned officers, according to the U.S. Army:

“I, _____ , having been appointed an officer in the Army of the United States, as indicated above in the grade of _____ do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter; So help me God.”

These are the oaths a man has already taken — a man who called an Abrahamic faith “a malignant cancer,” claiming it was not a religion but a political ideology, in opposition to the First Amendment

These oaths require them to act without discrimination, to uphold the Constitution as it exists today, not the Constitution they wish they had written themselves.

How is the entire U.S. population — including the plurality who did not vote for these officials — to believe these men will uphold the offices to which they will be sworn?

How are we to believe any other elected officials who’ve sworn the same oaths to serve as our representatives when they appear ready to aid and abet acts of bad faith and corruption?

— — —

As it’s a holiday week and many of us have more time to ponder, I’m going to republish over the next few dasy some progressives’ ‘roadmap’ posts I once wrote after a disappointing election. How quaint that time seems now.

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Trump Versus the [Dead-Ender] Spooks

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The big news from yesterday — aside from the blizzard of Mike Pence at Hamilton stories that drowned out news of Trump’s $25 million settlement for defrauding a bunch of Trump University students — is that NSA Director Mike Rogers had a meeting.

As the WaPo reported, Rogers met with Trump on Thursday morning without telling his bosses — Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

In a move apparently unprecedented for a military officer, Rogers, without notifying superiors, traveled to New York to meet with Trump on Thursday at Trump Tower. That caused consternation at senior levels of the administration, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal personnel matters.

Actually, that’s not the lead of the story. This is:

The heads of the Pentagon and the nation’s intelligence community have recommended to President Obama that the director of the National Security Agency, Adm. Michael S. Rogers, be removed.

Which suggests that, in retaliation for having a meeting without their approval, people close to Carter and Clapper decided to reveal that they had been planning on firing Rogers, but simply haven’t gotten around to it.

The reason for firing Rogers is more obscure.

Carter has concerns with Rogers’s performance, officials said. The driving force for Clapper, meanwhile, was the separation of leadership roles at the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command, and his stance that the NSA should be headed by a civilian.

[snip]

Rogers was charged with making sure another insider breach never happened again.

Instead, in the past year and a half, officials have discovered two major compromises of sensitive hacking tools by personnel working at the NSA’s premier hacking unit: the Tailored Access Operations. One involved a Booz Allen Hamilton contractor, Harold T. Martin III, who is accused of carrying out the largest theft of classified government material. Although some of his activity took place before Rogers arrived and at other agencies, some of it — including the breach of some of the most sensitive tools — continued on Rogers’s watch, the officials said.

[snip]

But there was a second, previously undisclosed breach of cybertools, discovered in the summer of 2015, which was also carried out by a TAO employee, one official said. That individual also has been arrested, but his case has not been made public. The individual is not believed to have shared the material with another country, the official said.

Rogers was put on notice by his two bosses — Clapper and Carter — that he had to get control of internal security and improve his leadership style. There have been persistent complaints from NSA personnel that Rogers is aloof, frequently absent and does not listen to staff input.

The NYT version of this story makes it sound like Rogers was supposed to be relieved of duty when the CYBERCOM/NSA split was announced but that got delayed because John McCain complained.

But the WaPo’s sources piled on, blaming Rogers for the Martin theft that started even before his tenure, another still unrevealed one, and (later in the article) for another hack during his tenure as head of the Navy’s CyberCommand.

Which has Devin Nunes — ostensibly in his role as House Intelligence Chair, and not his role on Trump’s transition team — calling an immediate hearing (perhaps before Obama can fire Rogers?).

Ostensibly, this is a hearing scheduling meeting.

Accordingly, I will convene an open-session hearing at the earliest possible opportunity so the
Committee may understand the veracity of the Post article and fully understand the impact of the
proposed separation of NSA and USCYBERCOM on the IC. Please provide, no later than November
21, 2016, at 5:00pm, a list of dates and times you are available to appear before the Committee between
now and the end of December 2016.

Of course, usually such discussions take place between aides. But by including that language in his letter, Nunes invented an opportunity to issue an implicit threat — that something in the WaPo story (perhaps the detail that another person had been arrested for stealing TAO files) remained classified.

I am also concerned that the article may contain unauthorized disclosures of classified
information.

And to provide a vote of confidence for Rogers.

Since Admiral Rogers was appointed as NSA Director in April 2014, I have been consistently
impressed with his leadership and accomplishments. His professionalism, expertise, and deckplate
leadership have been remarkable during an extremely challenging period for NSA. I know other
members of Congress hold him in similarly high esteem.
Given the Committee’s constitutional responsibility to conduct oversight of the Intelligence
Community (IC), I am asking you to provide a full explanation of the allegations contained in the Post
article.

Nunes went on to demand briefing on the planned split (he is supposed to be on the opposite side as McCain, hoping for CYBERCOM to remain under DOD and the House Armed Service Committee, but NSA to become entirely a House Intelligence Committee issue, but I wonder whether Trump has something else entirely in mind).

Consider: A big part of this presidential campaign involved weekly leaks about an FBI investigation into a national security issue (Hillary’s potential mishandling of classified information). All through that, Nunes was at best silent, if not a willing participant. But here he is insinuating that the WaPo leak (presumably from two Original Classification Authorities) was improper?

And consider this detail: Trump has already picked Mike Flynn to be his National Security Adviser, whom Clapper and Mike Vickers got fired in 2014. The Thursday meeting between Rogers and Trump was reportedly a meeting about whether Rogers should become Director of National Intelligence. Yesterday, Trump interviewed General James Mattis to be Secretary of Defense; Obama fired Mattis from CENTCOM in 2013 for opposition to Obama’s Iran deal. There are also rumors that Trump is considering Stanley McChrystal for some role.

In other words, Trump seems to be going out of his way to select military officers who have a grudge against the Obama Administration (which goes along perfectly with his policy of hiring people like Jared Kushner and Jeff Sessions, white men who harbor grudges against some past perceived wrong).

But if Trump creates a NatSec team entirely of generals who’ve been fired for cause or dissent, what will that do for a Commander in Chief’s ability to assert civilian control by firing generals going forward? What kind of incentive will that give top officers to intervene in the political process?

Stay tuned.

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When Trump Brought Romney To Heel, or Further Adventures in the Cabinet of Deplorables

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trump-romney-carKarma is a bitch, or so it is said. I think it is currently. Back in the day, Mittens was famous for being such a cheapskate cheeseball (yeah, despite the car elevator, which seems quaint now compared to Trump’s ostentatiousness) that he loaded the family dog into a small box coffin mounted to the top of the family station wagon to go on family vacations.

The dog was named Seamus, Mittens was an anus, and the incident became famous. But the long ago incident dogged Romney in the 2012 election. Sometimes, things come back to bite you in the ass.

Welp, here we are deep in 2016 and that dog bites Mitten man story is back. Romney, who seems a decent chap in relation to the current Cabinet of Deplorables under consideration by Team Transition Trump, is suddenly – supposedly – under consideration for a Cabinet post. Reportedly the Secretary of State slot, but possibly others as well.

But, wait, is Mitt Romney on the Trump Christmas Card List, much less cabinet appointment list?

Seems hard to square since Mittens was there ripping the Donald a new anus as recently as last March. But that was then, and this is now. And…..now…..the major media is all agog that the Trumpeter could be soooo rational and awesome as to be assembling the vaunted “Team of Rivals”. Here is everybody’s favorite Mark Halperin replacement stooge, Chris Cillizza of WaPo’s “The Fix”, milking the mad cow for every drop he can:

Again, this would, largely, run counter to how Trump ran his presidential campaign. But that would also make picking Romney all the more powerful a symbol. Campaigns are one thing, Trump would be saying, but being president is another. I want to be surrounded by the best people for the job — no matter what we said about each other in the past.

This is, of course, the whole “Team of Rivals” concept that garnered President Obama so much good press in his own transition period back in late 2008. Trump has further to go — a lot further to go — than Obama did to heal the rifts within his own party and answer doubts about his readiness to do the job to which he was elected. But the Romney meeting is a step in the right direction. Getting Romney to sign on would be an even bigger one.

This is, of course, a boatload of steaming shit. Hey, it is the Cillizza Fix, what did you expect? There are a plethora of others in the major media, including cable, deep diving into the same ridiculous bunk.

Take a look at who Trump has signed on to officially so far for his chosen team: Mike Flynn, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, Steve Bannon. Notice anything in common there? Perhaps near insane levels of bigotry, hatred and ostracization of others? Gannon may seem the most inert, but that is wrong, he is just the least known outside of the annals of white neo-Nazi Breitbart nationalism. But they are all of a core.

So, let us be honest, will the Senate Judiciary Committee put up any real roadblock to a dyed in the wool unreconstructed racist like Jeff Sessions? Hahahaha, no, of course not. Republicans own the SJC, and even the Dems will ultimately give in to Sessions’ nomination. They will put up a nominal “stern questioning” as DiFi has already so gallantly promised, and then they will cave completely.

Will discerning Republicans with morals object to Sessions’ nomination? Hell no. The single most quirky and sometimes actually moral GOP member of SJC, Jeff Flake, has already strongly and early come out in favor of Beauregard’s nomination. If you know SJC, this is over, and welcome to unreconstructed racist Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions as AG.

The point is that Trump is the racist bigot he has always promised to be. Do NOT buy in to the cloying clickbait rationalizing and normalizing pablum of the main and cable media. They already know they are under siege from Trump, and are already cowering in the midst. The media we ought be able to count on are already “asking questions” about what they will do, while they do nothing to stop the nonsense. It is already a stunning abdication, as if the performance during the election were not proof enough.

So, what does Trump’s meeting with Mitt Romney Saturday really mean?

That Trump is reasonable and might let Mittens, who insulted the hell out of Trump not long ago, be one of his key Cabinet members?

cxla1tsveaap5kiHahahaha, no. Don’t be foolish. This is a staged clownshow for the idiot media who, of course, are lapping it up. Secretary of State for Mittens? Hahahahaha, not likely, Trump is not that gracious, forgiving or intelligent. Heck, Mittens had to carry his own shoes through TSA, all by himself. If the Trumpalo wants you, that is not how it happens.

No, what is going on here is that Trump is bringing Romney, who insulted him and disrespected him, to heel. Like a dog. Chris Christie, who supplicated and humiliated himself over the better part of a year to support Trump, was sent packing like he had the plague. That was only because Christie had slighted the son-in-law’s father in the past.

Romney fired all his guns in anger in a direct broadside against Trump himself. Sure, yep, totally, Trump will now make Mittens Secretary of State.

Probably ought roll with that meme media members. Uh huh. Trump is taking you, and Mittens, on a ride if you think Romney is getting any significant policy post like SOS. Nope. Oh, but the way, Ted Cruz isn’t either. Give it a rest.

[The graphic at the top, which is totally awesome, is by the one and only TWolf, our friend for a long time. Follow Tom at @twolf10]

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BREAKING: President-Elect Trump Can’t Tell Difference between Lincoln Navigator MKC and Ford Focus

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The President Elect appears to be completely ignorant about American made cars.

That’s the most generous conclusion one can draw from these two tweets:

screen-shot-2016-11-17-at-10-28-00-pm

Perhaps Trump does know the difference between a Lincoln Navigator MKC and a Ford Focus. If so, then this is a cynical bullshit ploy to pretend he has saved American jobs.

Trump has been harping on Ford’s production siting decisions throughout his campaign since April, when Ford announced it was building a new plant in Mexico (I need to check but I believe Ford sources more cars in the US than any other US manufacturer).

Things heated up in September when Trump made several inflammatory claims about Ford’s sourcing, including that Ford will “fire all its employees in the United States.”

Ford responded that “they will be here forever.” That debunking was even among the stories that created the most Facebook impressions toward the end of the campaign.

Nevertheless, Trump threatened to tax any cars made in Mexico.

A few days ago Ford reiterated that it was, indeed, moving the C-platform production to Mexico as it said it would, even in spite of Trump’s claims, even while it reiterated that it would replace the production in the US with two other products.

Ford Motor is moving ahead with plans to shift production of small cars to Mexico from Michigan, while “two very important products” will be built in its U.S. factories, Chief Executive Officer Mark Fields told Reuters on Tuesday.

President-elect Donald Trump has criticized Ford for the decision to shift production of Focus small cars to Mexico in 2018, and said he would consider levying tariffs on Mexican-made Fords. Trump has also said he wants to scrap the North American Free Trade agreement, which also includes Canada, and to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border to stop undocumented immigrants.

“We’re going forward with our plan to move production of the Ford Focus to Mexico, and importantly that’s to make room for two very important products we’ll be putting back into Michigan plants,” Fields said in an interview on the sidelines of the Los Angeles Auto Show. “There will be no job impact whatsoever with this move.”

Note what we’ve seen so far: small cars. Focus. C-Max, Small cars (replaced by pick-ups in the US). Small cars.

The only thing Ford was ever talking about were small cars: Ford Focuses, mostly.

Which led to these Trump tweets: Lincolns in Louisville.

Ford (owner of Lincoln) has two plants in Kentucky. Both are truck/SUV plants. Along with a bunch of Fords, they make the Lincoln Navigator and the MKC. The Navigator is a such a nice car I’ve even seen one (I believe the first one ever) sold in Beijing for $100,000.

The reason American manufacturers make all their trucks in the US and their smaller cars offshore is margins: a Lincoln Navigator (and an MKC) have much bigger margins that Ford Focuses do, and Ford isn’t obliged to sell any MKCs to meet CAFE standards. (MKC is the same C-Segment, so it would help meeting CAFE standards.)

Lincoln Navigator production was never moving to Mexico. There are mixed reports about where Ford was considering moving MKC production (it’s possible that’s what it was going to move to MI). But that didn’t stop Trump from claiming that it was Mexico — and that he had saved the production. Bonus points, too, that it makes the Majority Leader, KY Senator Mitch McConnell, make good.

But ultimately, either Trump can’t tell the difference between a Navigator MKC and a Focus. Or he’s just lying.

Update: It appears Ford was considering moving the Lincoln MKC out of Louisville, not the Navigator.

The auto maker confirmed in a statement that production of the Lincoln MKC crossover will remain at its assembly plant in Louisville, Ky. Ford had initially planned to move output of the Lincoln model to another plant to boost production of the Escape, which is built at the same factory. The company didn’t say where it had planned to move production of the Lincoln crossover.

Ford communicated that plan to the United Auto Workers in 2015 as part of a broader contract negotiation. The Louisville plant, employing about 4,700 workers, wasn’t in danger of closing.

“We are encouraged that President-elect Trump and the new Congress will pursue policies that will improve U.S. competitiveness and make it possible to keep production of this vehicle here in the United States,” the company said.

This post has been updated accordingly.

Note, Ford’s language about competitiveness may mean Trump has already confirmed with Ford he’ll drop CAFE standards.

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