Tag: news

US Composite PMI Hovers Near 3-Year Lows: Manufacturing Slowdown Spreads To Services

With the global composite manufacturing PMI tumbling into contraction, hope remains high that ‘services’ can save the world and Markit’s Services PMI did indeed offer some hope today with a small rebound from May’s 39-month lows.

US Services PMI rose from 50.9 to 51.5 in June (up from the flash 50.7 print also) but remains very close to 3 year lows with business expectations dropping to 58.7 from 59.2 in May, this is the lowest reading since June 2016 (pre-Brexit vote).

ISM Services bounced in May and was expected to slow in June, but slowed more dramatically, falling to 55.1 from 56.9, the lowest since July 2017.

Three of the ISM survey’s four components slipped, with employment dropping by the most in 16 months and new orders declining to the lowest level since December 2017.

Commenting on the PMI data, Chris Williamson, Chief Business Economist at IHS Markit said:

“A major change since the first quarter has been a broadening-out of the slowdown beyond manufacturing, with the service sector growth now also reporting much weaker business activity and orders trends than earlier in the year.

“Hiring was hit as firms scaled back their expansion plans in the face of weaker than expected order inflows and gloomier prospects for the year ahead. Jobs growth was the weakest for over two years and future expectations across both services and manufacturing has slipped to the lowest seen since comparable data were first available in 2012.

“Trade wars and geopolitical concerns topped the list of companies’ worries about the year ahead, alongside forecasts of slower economic growth. Progress in US-China trade talks could therefore be key to helping lift confidence in coming months.”

Finally, Williamson notes the impact on GDP:

“An improvement in service sector growth provides little cause for cheer, as the survey data still indicate a sharp slowing in the pace of economic growth in the second quarter.

The PMI data for manufacturing and services collectively point to GDP expanding at an annualised rate of 1.5%.”

Is all of this enough to spook The Fed to cut by 50bps?

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2KWPh9G Tyler Durden

Mysterious Trader Dodges US Sanctions To Buy Maduro’s Oil 

A new report from Bloomberg exposes how international traders can skirt around US sanctions to buy and sell Venezuelan oil, which allows the Maduro regime to remain in power.

Dragoslav Ilic, a Serb with a Panamanian trading company, trades Venezuelan oil and avoids US sanctions in global markets by bartering oil and reselling to third parties. MS Internacional Corporation exchanges crude for gasoline and gasoline components, allowing the Maduro regime to supply heavily subsidized fuel to his faithful supporters.

Bloomberg notes, until the last several months, no one in the business has ever heard of Ilic or his company.

Francisco Monaldi, a professor at Rice University’s Baker Institute, said the emergence of new traders reminds him of those who helped the Venezuelan government survive the strike of 2002–2003.

“These tiny trading houses are doing the same, helping out the regime to either get cash or gasoline or dilutents to produce crude oil,” Monaldi said.

Along with new trading houses, Russia’s state-controlled oil company Rosneft, Indian refiners and China are supporting Petróleos de Venezuela, SA (PDVSA) with billions of dollars in loans for the chance to purchase oil.

The mystery trader has been in the headlines: Ilic was accused — and acquitted in a drug-trafficking scandal in Argentina about a 12 years ago. The scheme was known as Vinas Blancas, or White Vineyards, in which drug runners would smuggle Colombian cocaine to Europe in wine bottles.

Venezuela’s economy is mostly the energy sector. In 2014, total trade amounted to 48.1% of the country’s GDP. Exports accounted for 16.7% of GDP, and crude accounted for about 95% of those exports.

A decent portion of the exported oil ends up in Cuba, which in return, they provide Maduro with military supplies, military personnel, and critical intelligence, according to US officials.

Venezuelan crude production fell from 3.71 million barrels per day to 741,000 as the country descends into collapse with the inflation rate of 53,798,500% between 2016 to April 2019.

The Trump administration unsuccessfully tried to overthrow the Maduro regime earlier this year. More than 50 nations across the world recognize Juan Guaido as the legitimate interim president.

To further suppress Maduro, Trump slapped even more crippling sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry in May.

Guaido’s movement against Maduro has slowed since the April 30 riot. Attendance at Guaido’s public rallies has dropped.

Maduro, who has the full support of Russia and China, has branded Guaido an American puppet.

Bloomberg notes that purchasing oil from Venezuela was almost a privilege, according to traders.

But since the economy crashed, buyers have the upper hand with PDVSA. US sanctions dictate to whom PDVSA sells are often ignored. US refiners including Valero, Phillips 66 and Chevron Corp., stopped buying its oil. Trafigura Group Ltd. and Lukoil PJSC also cut ties with PDVSA.

“We are aware of companies buying and selling Venezuelan oil despite the US sanctions,” Jose Ignacio Hernandez, special prosecutor for the interim government, said in an interview in New York.

“Maduro is using support he’s getting from companies transacting Venezuelan oil to buy loyalty from companies and countries, including Cuba,” he said.

With MS Internacional and other small trading shops filling the void, PDVSA continues to trade oil despite US sanctions. This means that the Maduro regime will continue to stay in power, further angering the Trump administration.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/302cxGG Tyler Durden

Defense Department Computers Among Top Sharers of Child Pornography

Defense Department computers are among the top distributors of child pornography. An untold number of Department of Defense (DOD) employees and contractors have subscriptions to child pornography websites, and the problem is apparently so pervasive it requires new technical solutions to address it.

“Hundreds of DoD-affiliated individuals” were recently identified as suspects in child pornography cases, according to an investigation by the Defense Criminal Investigative Service.

So far, authorities have only looked into about 20 percent of these cases. But already, they’ve found “several” individuals “using their government devices to download or share said pornographic material.”

Last year, an investigation by the National Criminal Justice Training Program found DOD Computers were among the top networks nationwide for sharing pornographic images of minors. DOD’s network ranked 19th out of 2,891 computer networks studied.

To prevent such widespread abuse going forward, the “End National Defense Network Abuse Act” would “crack down on this activity by upgrading the training and technical capacity of military criminal investigative organizations to confront the misuse of DoD computers, facilities, and equipment,” according to a press release. It would also arrange for DOD authorities to work more closely with civilian law enforcement on these cases.

“The notion that the Department of Defense’s network and Pentagon-issued computers may be used to view, create, or circulate such horrifying images is a shameful disgrace, and one we must fight head on,” said Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D–Va.), who co-sponsored the bill with Rep. Mark Meadows (R–N.C.).

A companion bill in the senate has been introduced by Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R–Alaska) and Brian Schatz (D–Hawaii).

AROUND REASON

Let freedom ring: Reason’s offering a special Fourth of July subscription rate of two years (that’s 22 issues) for $17.76. Sign up here.

P.S. Roundup will be taking a holiday hiatus tomorrow and Friday. See you again on Monday, July 8.

FREE MINDS

What could go wrong? In order to protect the press, Democratic presidential candidate Eric Swalwell wants the federal government to decide who is and isn’t a journalist.

FREE MARKETS

Land of the Free? “After nearly six years of fighting…I will once again be able to legally plant vegetables in my front yard,” said Hermine Ricketts after a lengthy battle in Florida. “I’m grateful to the legislature and the governor for standing up to protect my freedom to grow healthy food on my own property.”

QUICK HITS

  • I may be reading too much into this image, but…

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2xq2b7a
via IFTTT

It’s Donald Trump’s America, We Just Live in It. Or Is It?

Tomorrow’s “Salute To America” seemingly lays bare a fact that many of us have been struggling to avoid since January 2017: It’s Donald Trump’s world, we just live in it. In many things, it seems as if the president always eventually gets his way—or some reasonable facsimile of it. How you feel about that will depend on whether you’re a MAGA-loving deplorable, a member of The Resistance, or a conscientious objector from The War To Politicize Everything (the fight over Nike’s Betsy Ross sneakers is the most recent clash in this pathetic conflict), but there’s an equally important corollary we should all also never forget: In Donald Trump’s America, all things are possible, including successfully opposing Donald Trump.

Tomorrow’s display of military might on the National Mall is an example of the president’s ability to eventually get what he wants. The event will feature tanks, flyovers by Air Force One and the Blue Angels, military bands up the wazoo, top brass attendees from the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines, and a speech by the president. Trump reportedly got the hots to have a military parade after witnessing a Bastille Day celebration in France in 2017. His plans for a Veteran’s Day parade in 2018 were shot down after the Department of Defense estimated the price tag at $92 million, or about $80 million more than originally planned. Tomorrow’s event will certainly cost less than that, but will likely cost at least $10 million, and that’s not including costs related to a shutdown of Reagan National Airport due to all those flyovers (administration officials are refusing to say how much they expect the event to cost).

The urge to condemn the event as profoundly un-American, as Democratic candidate Marianne Williamson has done, is understandable but ultimately misplaced.

It’s indisputable, I think, that such displays cut against the American grain. Our Fourth of July celebrations are more likely to include fire trucks than tanks, and that speaks to a commendable, peace-loving part of our national character.

But in the end, the Salute To America is small beer and getting bent out of shape over Trump’s vanity production on the Mall obscures the ways in which he routinely loses political and cultural battles. Just yesterday, for instance, the Department of Justice announced that it was dropping its attempt to include a contentious question about citizenship in the 2020 Census. That reversal came after the Supreme Court ruled against the administration last week.

The president also just signed a bill that spends $4.6 billion to address humanitarian and other concerns on the border between the United States and Mexico. While the law frustrated progressives who felt it didn’t adequately address policies related to the detention of children, it more significantly didn’t include any funding for Trump’s signature border wall.

That he signed it is an indication that the president, like his predecessors, knows the limits of his ability to do whatever he wants (despite his bravado, last fall’s midterm elections drove home that point with even more clarity). The larger question of immigration shows Trump is losing cultural battles as well. Even as the president and his allies are working to reduce legal immigration, record levels of Americans are pro-immigrant and immigration, with “two-thirds of Republicans, 75 percent of all adults, and 85 percent of Democrats now agree[ing] with the statement that ‘immigration is a good thing’ for the country today.”

Indeed, for all the continuing fears about the president’s “norm-shattering brazenness,” it’s worth noting that the current moment is one in which all sorts of things are up for grabs. That Donald Trump is president is a sign of this, and so are discussions about the meaning and benefits of socialism that would have been unthinkable even a decade or so ago. There are many reasons to worry that we are sliding toward an authoritarian moment, but it’s equally true that whole new alliances—such as the one between George Soros and the Koch brothers helping to fund a non-interventionist think tank—are busting out all over the place.

It turns out that the very forces that made Donald Trump possible make all sorts of other things possible, too. That’s something worth celebrating this Fourth of July.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2YqZttY
via IFTTT

H.L. Mencken on Independence Day: ‘We Have Borne Rascality Since 1776, and We Continue To Survive’

You might imagine H.L. Mencken would have been a fan of impeachment. After all, he rarely had a kind word to say about the powerful.

For him, the Constitution and Bill of Rights were sacred documents, and only sound principles could protect them. “Nothing restrains the criminal impulse quite so effectively as the certain knowledge that consequences will be swift and sure,” wrote Mencken. But when it came to impeaching a president, he r2ecognized the process was essentially “a political and not a judicial process,” “cumbersome,” and often impeded. This left Congress—as the country’s “grand inquisitor”—enormous powers to complete the task, but here again he recognized its “pusillanimity.” Half the time impeachment fails or the culprit is treated as a martyr, “received with music and prayer.”

There remained only one agency that could bring an unscrupulous administration to terms, according to Mencken: the press. One of its clearest duties is “to keep a wary eye on the gentlemen who run this great nation, and only too often slip into the assumption that they own it.”

“Every public official with large powers in his hands should be held in suspicion until he proves his case: and we should keep him at all times in a glare of light,” Mencken warned his colleagues. He advised against a radical press from the right or left, of journalistic”rogues” who groveled and worshipped power, thereby making them no more than “an ante-chamber” to a king’s court. 

As a chronicler of democracy, Mencken noted: “Ambitious demagogues can hear the murmur of mob dissent” before anyone else. Such politicians, he said, know how to arouse their fears: “Around such demagogues clusters all the romance that used to hang about a King.” A demagogue, like a king, had the special talent of a performer, “with a special gift of inflaming the childish imagination of the masses,” full of “envy and prejudices, nursing grievances in vast wastelands where jobs were scarce.” 

He meditated how Americans were more gullible than most, blindly following “freak economic schemes” and “the most blatant and absurd sort of charlatans in politics.” It is one of the main reasons why he insisted voting privileges should only be given to those who could clearly understand the Constitution. When a politician of vigorous mind and intellect is not appreciated by the voters, Mencken noted, the odds are on choosing the presidential candidate who is “the most devious and mediocre—the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum,” concluding: “As democracy is perfected, the office represents more and more closely the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

As much as Mencken despised demagogues such as Andrew Jackson or William Jennings Bryan, his chief ire rested on Franklin D. Roosevelt. According to Mencken, one of his many crimes was his use of his attorney general for his own bidding, forcing lawyers for the Justice Department to function merely as the president’s yes men. At one point Mencken seriously believed that the United States was entering a sort of totalitarianism. Forms of democracy would still be maintained, he wrote bitterly, “but the thing itself is dead.” He left a careful record of his archives primarily “for the future student of journalism.” One day, he warned, the United States would develop “a super Roosevelt,” that would make FDR “seem honest and even cautious.”

One of the attributes that continues to make Mencken such inspirational reading is that he provides a glimmer of hope that may satisfy even the most pessimistic among us: the independent citizen, on guard and on edge, gloomily nursing a scotch after digesting the evening news. 

I would remind Mencken’s critics of what he said about democracy, even during this dark period. Democracy may have its failings, but “we have borne rascality since 1776, and we continue to survive.” As he put it, “I have witnessed, in my day, the discovery, enthronement and subsequent collapse of a vast army of uplifters and world-savers, and am firmly convinced that all of them were mountebanks….Nevertheless we survive, and not only survive, but flourish.”

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2XHh8R3
via IFTTT

40% Of Americans Think A Recession Is Looming

Authored by Damir Kaletovic via SafeHaven.com,

Despite the fact that the American economy is going strong, with high GDP growth and the lowest level of employment in 40 years, a survey from Bankrate. com shows that nearly 40 percent of Americans believe the next recession is already here or awaits us in the next 12 months. 

 So, why do experts insist the economy is good, if not excellent, when the Average Joe has an entirely different sentiment?

Indeed, the BankRate survey noted that 88 percent of “experts” say the economy is “good,” and 11 percent even describe it as “excellent.

(Click to enlarge)

Source: bankrate.com

The disconnect between the two groups is difficult to understand at a time when the U.S. economy has achieved its longest growth record without recession. In fact, we’re looking at a 10-year growth spurt. In other words, 121 months of straight growth.

(Click to enlarge)

Source: CNBC

Q1 GDP growth was 3.1 percent–topping last year’s 2.9 percent. For the last few months, the unemployment rate has stood at 3.6 percent, marking its lowest level in four decades. 

Still, 39 percent of Americans say the economy is “not so good”.

Part of the reason for the disconnect may be simply psychological: Something’s got to give when things are plugging along for 10 years without a hitch. Many Americans may simply be waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

Recent history has shown us that good times never last forever. Our generations have witnessed several cycles of expansion and recession. In the past 20 years, there have been two recessions. Statistically speaking, then, we’re due for one soon.  

The last recession hasn’t been forgotten. Fears linger. So does the knowledge that after the last recession, more than six million Americans had been out of work longer than six months.

But the disconnect also comes from other economic data that belies GDP and unemployment figures: Only 35 percent of average consumers have a minimum of 3-5 months of emergency savings. In other words, times might be good, but few have a safety net.  

“If you haven’t had a raise in a few years, if you’re still living paycheck-to-paycheck not making any headway, it’s tough to feel like the economy is doing great. The unemployment is the lowest in 50 years – doesn’t mean that everybody’s got a job, doesn’t mean that everybody’s doing great,” says Bankrate chief financial analyst Greg McBride.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell at the start of the year said he doesn’t think a recession will hit in 2019, but he is concerned about slowing global growth in places such as China and Europe.

U.S. GDP growth–despite the strong showing–remains a cause for concern. One of the key tools for tracking it is the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow tracker,which shows Q2 coming in at 1.5 percent–a far lower gain than Q1. 

And if you’re watching Wall Street as your barometer, it’s hard to get a clear picture. While half of Wall Street might not be worried about a recession, many are worried about downside risks, particularly with corporations suggesting they won’t meet Wall Street earnings estimates the next time around. 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2NJPW0r Tyler Durden

Defense Department Computers Among Top Sharers of Child Pornography

Defense Department computers are among the top distributors of child pornography. An untold number of Department of Defense (DOD) employees and contractors have subscriptions to child pornography websites, and the problem is apparently so pervasive it requires new technical solutions to address it.

“Hundreds of DoD-affiliated individuals” were recently identified as suspects in child pornography cases, according to an investigation by the Defense Criminal Investigative Service.

So far, authorities have only looked into about 20 percent of these cases. But already, they’ve found “several” individuals “using their government devices to download or share said pornographic material.”

Last year, an investigation by the National Criminal Justice Training Program found DOD Computers were among the top networks nationwide for sharing pornographic images of minors. DOD’s network ranked 19th out of 2,891 computer networks studied.

To prevent such widespread abuse going forward, the “End National Defense Network Abuse Act” would “crack down on this activity by upgrading the training and technical capacity of military criminal investigative organizations to confront the misuse of DoD computers, facilities, and equipment,” according to a press release. It would also arrange for DOD authorities to work more closely with civilian law enforcement on these cases.

“The notion that the Department of Defense’s network and Pentagon-issued computers may be used to view, create, or circulate such horrifying images is a shameful disgrace, and one we must fight head on,” said Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D–Va.), who co-sponsored the bill with Rep. Mark Meadows (R–N.C.).

A companion bill in the senate has been introduced by Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R–Alaska) and Brian Schatz (D–Hawaii).

AROUND REASON

Let freedom ring: Reason’s offering a special Fourth of July subscription rate of two years (that’s 22 issues) for $17.76. Sign up here.

P.S. Roundup will be taking a holiday hiatus tomorrow and Friday. See you again on Monday, July 8.

FREE MINDS

What could go wrong? In order to protect the press, Democratic presidential candidate Eric Swalwell wants the federal government to decide who is and isn’t a journalist.

FREE MARKETS

Land of the Free? “After nearly six years of fighting…I will once again be able to legally plant vegetables in my front yard,” said Hermine Ricketts after a lengthy battle in Florida. “I’m grateful to the legislature and the governor for standing up to protect my freedom to grow healthy food on my own property.”

QUICK HITS

  • I may be reading too much into this image, but…

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2xq2b7a
via IFTTT

Iran To Sentence “Several US Spies” To Death

Just as Iran announced that it is set to breach limits on Uranium enrichment previously agreed to under terms of the JCPOA by Sunday, Iranian judicial officials also announced the imminent sentencing of several suspected US spies who are likely to receive the death penalty. 

Iranian judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili said on state television Tuesday the suspects are facing execution because of the “severity of their crimes,” as reported by NBC. The unnamed defendants were reportedly associated with the Iranian military and comes after Iranian authorities announced last August the arrest of “tens of spies” within the government, many identified as dual nationals. 

Iran already has the highest execution rate in the world. Image via Reuters.

Esmaili confirmed that prosecutors in military tribunals are bringing the death penalty; however he also said, “Two of the defendants, who were not military, have received long prison terms,” but without giving details. 

This comes after last month Iran claimed to have executed an individual identified as “a former contract employee of the defense ministry aerospace body” on charges of working for the CIA. 

However, concerning the latest trials neither the CIA nor State Department could confirm or deny the reports, which is standard procedure for the US government concerning suspected spies or assets abroad. 

Crucially, according to The Hill, “The suspects are accused of spying in military and nuclear bodies,” citing Iranian media reports. 

In loudly publicizing such information via state media Iran has been both reacting to the White House’s “maximum pressure” campaign, which has included new crippling sanctions especially on Iran’s oil exports, as welling as showing its own domestic population that it’s playing hardball with Washington. But rather than gaining leverage in the tense standoff, the announced capital crimes spy cases will likely only ratchet tensions further. 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2J8LpQC Tyler Durden

Italian Socialist Elected President Of Europe’s Parliament

A vote in the European Parliament, which began its new five-year term on Tuesday, has elevated the Italian socialist politician David Sassoli to the position of president of the EU Parliament, Reuters reports.

Of course, the anointing of a socialist to lead the European Union’s biggest body of lawmakers won’t exactly assuage the concerns of everybody who has worried that the EU Is beginning to too closely resemble another nominally Democratic ‘union’ of supposedly independent republics.

David

David Sassoli

Sassoli will succeed another Italian, conservative politician Antonio Tajani, who had served as speaker since 2017. Sassoli is a 63-year-old politician from Florence, who previously worked as a journalist before entering politics. He has been a lawmaker in the European Parliament for a decade.

Sassoli’s election follows the nomination of Christine Lagarde as the new head of the ECB, Ursula von der Leyen as president of the European Commission, Charles Michel as president of the European Council and Joseph Borrell – a Spanish socialist – as high representative for the union of foreign affairs and security policy.

As parliamentary president, Sassoli’s is the first of the EU’s top jobs to be formally filled (Lagarde and the rest have all been nominated, but they must now be confirmed by the parliament). He will hold the job for half of the parliament’s five-year term, meaning the socialists and center-left will likely control the bloc for the first half of its term. In the second half, control will pass to the center-right.

According to the Financial Times, Sassoli beat rival candidates from the Greens, far-left and Eurosceptic right. The vote took two rounds after Sassoli failed to win a majority by seven votes in the first ballot.

Jan Zahradil, a Czech candidate from the Eurosceptic ECR, came in second, but Sassoli’s victory ensured that no candidates from Eastern Europe, a hotbed for populists and eurosceptics, will hold any of the bloc’s top jobs.

The Italian beat out Sergei Stanishev, a former Bulgarian prime minister, as the center-left’s nominee, despite the bloc’s stated wish for more ‘diversity’ – geographic, gender and otherwise – among its top representatives.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2KSKCpf Tyler Durden

H.L. Mencken on Independence Day: ‘We Have Borne Rascality Since 1776, and We Continue To Survive’

You might imagine H.L. Mencken would have been a fan of impeachment. After all, he rarely had a kind word to say about the powerful.

For him, the Constitution and Bill of Rights were sacred documents, and only sound principles could protect them. “Nothing restrains the criminal impulse quite so effectively as the certain knowledge that consequences will be swift and sure,” wrote Mencken. But when it came to impeaching a president, he r2ecognized the process was essentially “a political and not a judicial process,” “cumbersome,” and often impeded. This left Congress—as the country’s “grand inquisitor”—enormous powers to complete the task, but here again he recognized its “pusillanimity.” Half the time impeachment fails or the culprit is treated as a martyr, “received with music and prayer.”

There remained only one agency that could bring an unscrupulous administration to terms, according to Mencken: the press. One of its clearest duties is “to keep a wary eye on the gentlemen who run this great nation, and only too often slip into the assumption that they own it.”

“Every public official with large powers in his hands should be held in suspicion until he proves his case: and we should keep him at all times in a glare of light,” Mencken warned his colleagues. He advised against a radical press from the right or left, of journalistic”rogues” who groveled and worshipped power, thereby making them no more than “an ante-chamber” to a king’s court. 

As a chronicler of democracy, Mencken noted: “Ambitious demagogues can hear the murmur of mob dissent” before anyone else. Such politicians, he said, know how to arouse their fears: “Around such demagogues clusters all the romance that used to hang about a King.” A demagogue, like a king, had the special talent of a performer, “with a special gift of inflaming the childish imagination of the masses,” full of “envy and prejudices, nursing grievances in vast wastelands where jobs were scarce.” 

He meditated how Americans were more gullible than most, blindly following “freak economic schemes” and “the most blatant and absurd sort of charlatans in politics.” It is one of the main reasons why he insisted voting privileges should only be given to those who could clearly understand the Constitution. When a politician of vigorous mind and intellect is not appreciated by the voters, Mencken noted, the odds are on choosing the presidential candidate who is “the most devious and mediocre—the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum,” concluding: “As democracy is perfected, the office represents more and more closely the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

As much as Mencken despised demagogues such as Andrew Jackson or William Jennings Bryan, his chief ire rested on Franklin D. Roosevelt. According to Mencken, one of his many crimes was his use of his attorney general for his own bidding, forcing lawyers for the Justice Department to function merely as the president’s yes men. At one point Mencken seriously believed that the United States was entering a sort of totalitarianism. Forms of democracy would still be maintained, he wrote bitterly, “but the thing itself is dead.” He left a careful record of his archives primarily “for the future student of journalism.” One day, he warned, the United States would develop “a super Roosevelt,” that would make FDR “seem honest and even cautious.”

One of the attributes that continues to make Mencken such inspirational reading is that he provides a glimmer of hope that may satisfy even the most pessimistic among us: the independent citizen, on guard and on edge, gloomily nursing a scotch after digesting the evening news. 

I would remind Mencken’s critics of what he said about democracy, even during this dark period. Democracy may have its failings, but “we have borne rascality since 1776, and we continue to survive.” As he put it, “I have witnessed, in my day, the discovery, enthronement and subsequent collapse of a vast army of uplifters and world-savers, and am firmly convinced that all of them were mountebanks….Nevertheless we survive, and not only survive, but flourish.”

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2XHh8R3
via IFTTT