Mueller Wants To Ask Trump About Obstruction Of Justice

Amid speculation that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation is approaching its end and just hours after Trump told Jeff Sessions on Twitter to end the Mueller probe “right now“, ABC reports that the Mueller wants to ask President Donald Trump about obstruction of justice, citing sources close to the White House. ABC also notes that the president learned “within the last day” that the special counsel will limit the scope of questioning and, despite Rudy Giuliani’s vehement opposition, would like to ask questions both orally and written for the President to respond to.

The ABC sources report that the genesis of Trump’s early morning tweet storm was learning of Mueller’s request. Trump took to twitter in one of his strongest attacks against the federal probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, saying:

“This is a terrible situation and Attorney General Jeff Sessions should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now, before it continues to stain our country any further. Bob Mueller is totally conflicted, and his 17 Angry Democrats that are doing his dirty work are a disgrace to USA!”

It is unlikely that the Trump team will agree to Mueller’s request. Negotiations over the scope of a potential presidential interview with the special counsel have gone on for months, through several different iterations of the Trump legal team.

Rudy Giuliani, the President’s current lead attorney, told ABC News a week ago that his team had submitted a response to Mueller asking to limit the scope of an interview with Trump especially as it relates to obstruction of justice.

“We have a list of questions that are fairly narrowed but we are waiting on the special counsel’s response,” Giuliani said..

On Wednesday, Giuliani told reporters that he had received a response from the special counsel’s office without getting into details. “They took about 10 days and yesterday we got a letter back for them. Now we’re in the process of responding to their proposal,” Giuliani said.

Then, in an interview on CNN, Giuliani said that “they should render their report,” of the special counsel and his team, adding they should “Put up or shut up. The president has done anything wrong. They don’t have any evidence he did anything wrong.”

Giuliani also echoed White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sander’s Wednesday assertion that Trump did not command Attorney General Jeff Sessions to end the Mueller investigation in a widely circulated tweet. Giuliani and Sanders both said Trump was merely expressing himself in the tweet.

The President has said many times he would be willing to speak with Mueller but would await his legal teams guidance.

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Democratic Socialists Set Up Shop On Campuses Nationwide

Authored by Grace Gottschling via Campus Reform,

The Young Democratic Socialists of America organization now claims to have more than 250 chapters on campuses across the country, a dramatic increase from just 15 chapters in 2016.

YDSA is the student-focused branch of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) which is “a political and activist organization” that seeks to “empower working people” and has several ongoing campaigns, including Medicare for AllStrong Unions, and Electoral Power.

The YDSA mission is to “build the power of students, campus communities, and youth to fight for equality, justice, and democratic socialism,” according to its constitution, which was last updated in August 2017.+

In June 2017, YDSA launched a “Fall Campus Drive” with the goal of registering 100 new chapters by the fall semester, noting that it had already expanded from just 15 chapters to 50 chapters in 27 states over the preceding year.

“When we originally launched the YDSA fall campus drive, we set the bold target of 100 campuses across the country,” the recognized chapter list states. “Currently, we’ve received over 250 campuses register for the fall drive! This explosion in interest shows that this semester will be the biggest ever for YDSA. We will be able to build a mass movement for democratic socialism and justice at campuses across the country.”

While YDSA states that more than 250 chapters are now registered, the list includes only 218 groups, 27 of which are high school chapters.

Democratic Socialist students will be convening in Minneapolis this August for YDSA’s 2018 Summer Convention, which will focus on “key decisions” for the academic year, electing new NCC members, and holding “skills trainings” where student attendees will be able to “learn from other young socialists in order to hit the ground running” during the school year.

Past summer conventions have included “Anti-Oppression Caucuses & Ally Groups” where students can share “experiences and strategies for combating oppression” and workshops on topics including “socialist feminism, history of the Labor Movement, Ecosocialism, Democratic Socialism, Social Media Strategies, and more.”

Membership in YDSA is open to any full- or part-time student (including high school students), campus workers, and “youth who accept the aims, constitution, resolutions, and the decisions of the organization,” though the organization’s constitution notes that nobody over 30 years of age may hold elective office in the organization. 

Each chapter must have a minimum of three members to qualify for official recognition, and three or more chapters can combine to form a city-wide organization (if they have 15 or more members between them) or a State Council (if they have at least 25 members total).

Notably, the constitution also stipulates specific gender- and race-based leadership quotas for the National Coordinating Committee (NCC), which oversees YDSA between annual conferences, mandating that at least half of the committee’s members must be “self-identified women or gender non-binary people,” and that at least half must also be “people of color.”

If those quotas are not met for any reason, the NCC is required to recruit additional at-large members until it achieves the required degree of diversity.

DSA supplies the YDSA chapters with materials and initiatives to support the democratic socialist movement, including an “Organizing Manual” that contains detailed instructions on “How to Support a Union Organizing Drive or Strike on Your Campus” and “Weaving Democratic Socialism Into Your Work.”

“In the case of an organizing drive or a strike, community pressure on the university is an important element in the campaign,” the handbook states. “Call to the university’s avowed commitment to freedom of debate if the administrators refuse to allow union organizers or activists equal time to compensate for anti-union activists. You may also want to flood the campus newspapers with letters to the editor in support of the union.”

The manual gives individual chapters relatively wide latitude to select their own campaigns, noting that “there are plenty of struggles that YDSA supports, such as defending affirmative action, increasing access to reproductive and sexual healthcare, including abortion, for all, ending U.S. imperialist conquest abroad, shifting away from our reliance on dirty and unhealthy energy sources, and ending environmental racism, and redirecting our collective tax dollars to benefit all of us through quality public services.”

Students at campuses with active YDSA chapters, though, say the organization is better at disrupting conservative speech than advancing its own policy agenda.

“Members of YDS at [George Washington University] are not interested in genuine activism or attempting to talk to others who disagree with them,” asserted Campus Reform Correspondent Abigail Marone. “Instead, they’re content with causing a scene without a clear message.”

“I think the group’s inability to have a cohesive message on my campus is a great representation of the democratic socialist movement’s inability to have a clear, cohesive message,” Marone added. “Candidates like Ocasio-Cortez want to get involved in as much left-wing activity as possible without even having a clear message of what they stand for or an understanding of basic policy.”

Campus Reform Correspondent Daniel Weldon, meanwhile, offered a more harrowing account of YDSA’s activities at the University of Florida.

“At the University of Florida, socialism has been growing at a staggering rate,” Weldon said. “Recently, I spoke with an elected official who will not use the word ‘capitalism’ on campus since it has become such a dirty word. In my three years on campus, groups like Young Democratic Socialists of America have ballooned in size and scope.”

“I’ve witnessed them tear down signs for conservative events I’ve hosted, attempted to shut down a Dinesh D’Souza Speech which required a police presence, and even assault a conservative student,” Weldon added. “At Florida, YDSA has pushed for the abolition of ICE, government controlled healthcare, and making UF a sanctuary campus.”

Campus Reform reached out to YDSA for comment, but has not received a response.

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Biden Leads Trump In Early 2020 Poll: Politico

Politico is out with a very early poll which estimates that former Vice President Joe Biden leads President Trump by 7 percentage points in a head-to-head match up in 2020, according to their POLITICO/Morning Consult poll. 

A plurality of registered voters, 44 percent, said they’d choose Biden in the 2020 presidential election, while 37 percent of voters said they would vote for Trump.

The percentage of Democrats who would choose Biden — 80 percent — was slightly higher than the 78 percent of Republicans who would vote for the president‘s reelection. The former vice president, who ran for the White House in 1988 and 2008, has been floated as a 2020 contender, and Biden himself has said he’s not ruling out a third try. –Politico

Because everybody remembers how accurate polls were in the last election…

The Poll surveyed 1,993 registered voters from July 26 through July 30. 

That’s not saying much, however…

The poll also reveals that among Democrats, “an unnamed generic Democrat runs 9 points better than Biden in a match-up with Trump.” 

89 percent of Democrats say they would vote for a generic Democrat over Trump, but only 80 percent of Democrats say they prefer Biden over Trump.”

The poll also found bipartisan support for Trump’s promise to send aid to American farmers impacted by his retaliatory tariffs. Fifty-seven percent of voters overall approve the strategy — more than twice as many as disapprove (26 percent). Among Republicans, 79 percent said they support Trump’s aid to farmers, compared to 48 percent of Democrats. –Politico

“President Trump’s decision to provide aid to farmers hurt by the trade war is a hugely popular move with rural voters,” said Morning Consult Managing Director, Tyler Sinclair. “Sixty-three percent of rural voters support the assistance. Additionally, 30 percent of this group ‘strongly’ approve of Trump’s job performance overall.” 

And when it comes to trade policy, 31% of those surveyed say the United States has benefitted less than other countries on free trade, while 26% say it has benefitted equally. 12% meanwhile, say that the US has benefitted more.

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Krugman Skeptical About Crypto, Predicts Collapse

Authored by Max Yakuboeski via CoinTelegraph.com,

Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman has expressed his skepticism about the value of cryptocurrencies in a New York Times Opinion piece published July 31.

image courtesy of CoinTelegraph

Krugman, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2008, explains his position as a “crypto skeptic” by noting the high transaction costs and an “absence of tethering” associated with cryptocurrencies.

Krugman describes how the history of money has been slowly moving away from gold and silver coins, to banknotes, and now to credit cards and other “digital methods,” all of which served the purpose of making purchases less costly.

According to Krugman, those that celebrate cryptocurrency – which he notes has a relatively high cost of doing business – are thus “effectively celebrating the use of cutting-edge technology to set the monetary system back 300 years.” Krugman further poses the query:

“Why would you want to do that? What problem does it solve? I have yet to see a clear answer to that question.”

In regards to crypto’s lack of “tethering,” Krugman notes that “total collapse is a real possibility:”

“If speculators were to have a collective moment of doubt, suddenly fearing that Bitcoins were worthless, well, Bitcoins would become worthless.”

The economist goes on to note that in the future, while there might be a “potential equilibrium” where only Bitcoin — out of all cryptocurrencies — survives simply for use in “black market transactions and tax evasion,” the reality is that “disappointment will probably collapse the whole thing.”

Krugman concludes by noting that he could be wrong, adding a call to all crypto enthusiasts to prove his crypto skepticism false:

“But if you want to argue that I’m wrong, please answer the question, what problem does cryptocurrency solve? Don’t just try to shout down the skeptics with a mixture of technobabble and libertarian derp.”

Other well-known traditional financial figures and economists have shown similar pessimistic views about the nature of cryptocurrencies and blockchain tech. Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman Charlie Munger referred to Bitcoin this spring as “freshly harvested baby brains,” and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak said in June that blockchain is a “bubble.”

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Ontario Ends UBI Experiment Two Years Early

A Canadian province’s planned three-year experiment with a universal basic income (UBI) is ending after just one year.

Ontario’s previous government implemented the pilot program last July, estimating that it would cost about CA$150 million. Instead of traditional welfare benefits, around 4,000 randomly selected low-income or jobless residents would be provided with yearly stipends of CA$16,989 per person (or CA$24,027 per couple). Participants with jobs had to give the government half of their work income. According to The Guardian, the experiment was meant to determine “whether the funds would improve health, education and housing outcomes.”

But Ontario just ousted the Liberal Party and elected a new Progressive Conservative government, and the new regime had other ideas. Provincial Social Services Minister Lisa MacLeod said yesterday that Ontario would be ending the “quite expensive” experiment. “It was certainly not going to be sustainable,” MacLeod said. She didn’t provide any data to back that up, so it’s not clear whether the program was costing more than expected or if the new government just has different ideas about how this was likely to end.

The announcement came several months after Finland decided not to extend its own UBI experiment, which distributed monthly stipends of 560 euros to about 2,000 residents. But other countries are still considering a UBI. Italy and the Netherlands are both implementing UBI trials, and some Scottish cities are mulling it over as well. And a privately funded basic-income experiment is now underway in Kenya.

The UBI’s basic premise is not new. (Reason‘s Jesse Walker has documented the idea’s history here.) But it remains controversial, even among libertarians. Some libertarians are firmly against the idea, arguing that it is as unjust as any other forms of wealth redistribution. Others say a UBI would be less intrusive and more cost-effective than a traditional welfare state, and therefore would be a step toward smaller government.

In the United States, the idea is far from dead. Stockton, California, is ready to test its own version of a UBI, and lawmakers in Chicago have proposed a similar experiment.

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Microsoft Rolls Out “Election Defense Technologies”

Microsoft is piloting an enhanced cybersecurity program aimed at providing enhanced protection for political campaigns and election authorities. Launched at the end of July and first noted by Bleeping Computer, the “AccountGuard” program is being rolled out ahead of the 2018 US midterm elections.

According to the pilot’s website, AccountGuard “provides additional security and threat monitoring for Microsoft accounts belonging to participating US campaigns, political committees, campaign tech vendors, and their staff, who are likely to be at a higher risk in the lead up to elections.” -Bleeping Computer

Political and election related entities can sign up for the “Election Defense Technologies,” and is offered by invitation only on what is described as a “non-partisan basis.” Eligible groups include: 

  • US-based political campaigns
  • US-based political committees
  • Select campaign technology vendors
  • Select individuals may also participate, if invited by eligible campaigns and affiliated organizations

Upon enrollment, users will receive notifications when Microsoft detects a “cyber incident” targeting an account – while the Redmond, WA tech giant already monitors Microsoft accounts for threats such as malware, phishing emails and suspicious logins. 

With AccountGuard, users will also receive “reactive remediation support through standard channel,” and “prescriptive best-practice security guidance” to proactively prevent incidents, Bleeping reports. 

The new feature is part of Microsoft’s “Defending Democracy Program,” an initiative launched in April to safeguard the electoral process. The campaign aims to “Protect campaigns from hacking through increased cyber resilience measures, enhanced account monitoring and incident response capabilities,” according to a Microsoft blog post.

Threats to our democratic processes from cyber-enabled interference have become a critical concern. We’ve seen attempts by nation-states to target and exploit key building blocks of our democratic system including voting systems and the technology infrastructure of political campaigns. We have also endured the manipulation of social media platforms to sow misinformation.

Addressing this threat to democracy will require significant new efforts by governments, technology companies – both individually and in partnership – as well as academia and civil society.

An important early focus of our new effort will be the November 2018 midterm elections in the U.S. for which we are piloting new cross-industry protections, as well as the U.S. presidential elections in 2020. The scope of our new program is global, however, as we scale our efforts to engage around the world with other democratic countries in protecting their institutions and processes in the years to come. –Microsoft

Microsoft hasn’t made a formal announcement and the service is not yet indexed by any search engine. 

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Trying to Clarify Why He Didn’t Arrest Michael Drejka for Killing Marcus McGlockton, Sheriff Muddies Matters More

Yesterday Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri responded to criticism that he had misrepresented Florida’s “stand your ground” self-defense law while explaining his decision not to arrest Michael Drejka for fatally shooting Markeis McGlockton. But in attempting to set the record straight during a press conference that lasted nearly an hour, Gualtieri misrepresented his own public comments about the case and the test for arresting someone who uses deadly force.

Drejka shot McGlockton during an altercation at a convenience store in Clearwater on July 19. Surveillance video shows McGlockton, responding to an argument between his girlfriend and Drejka over her decision to park in a handicapped spot, pushing Drejka to the pavement. Drejka, still sitting on the ground, draws a pistol, prompting McGlockton to back away, at which point Drejka shoots him in the chest.

Under Florida law, the shooting was justified only if Drejka “reasonably believe[d]” it was “necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm.” At a press conference the day after the shooting, Gualtieri said this test is “largely subjective,” a claim that was contradicted this week by three key legislators who had a hand in writing the law and the National Rifle Association lobbyist who helped get it passed.

Now the sheriff says he was misunderstood. “It is an objective standard,” he said yesterday, “but it has a subjective component to it because it has to be considered through the lens of the person who used force.” In other words, he explained, “what that person knew, how they knew it, and other factors that are in their heads” are relevant in deciding whether his actions were objectively reasonable “under the circumstances of the time.” That formulation is fine as far as it goes, since the law requires a judgment based on what a reasonable person would have done in the same situation. But that is not what Gualtieri said at his July 20 press conference.

“‘Stand your ground’ allows for a subjective belief by the person that they are in harm’s way,” the sheriff said then, and “we don’t get to substitute our judgment for Drejka’s judgment.” The question, he said, is not “what I would do, what you would do, what the public would do, what someone else would do.” What really matters, he suggested, is “the person’s subjective determination of the circumstance they were in” and “the fear that they had.”

The implication is that if Drejka sincerely feared for his life, he was justified in killing McGlockton, even if that fear was not reasonable in the circumstances. That is plainly not what the law says. Yet Gualtieri continues to imply that it is improper to second-guess Drejka’s assessment of the situation. “Do I think that I would have shot in that situation?” he said in an interview with The New York Times yesterday. “No. But just because I would not have, or don’t believe I would have, doesn’t mean he’s not within the boundaries of the law.”

At yesterday’s press conference, Gualtieri added to the confusion by claiming that Drejka was immune from arrest because it was not “absolutely clear” that the shooting was unlawful. “To arrest,” he said, “it must be so clear that as a matter of law ‘stand your ground’ does not apply in any way to the facts and circumstances that you’re presented with. That is not the situation here. The facts are not so clear that this is absolutely outside the boundaries of ‘stand your ground.'”

Again, that is not what the law says. It says a law enforcement agency “may not arrest the person for using or threatening to use force unless it determines that there is probable cause that the force that was used or threatened was unlawful.” Probable cause, usually defined as a “fair probability,” is by no means the same as absolute clarity or certainty. Even if you assume that probable cause means something is more likely than not to be true (and it’s not at all clear that it does), it looks like Gualtieri would have been justified in arresting Drejka, since he conceded that Drejka “probably could have” defended himself by brandishing the gun without firing it.

Gualtieri cited the Florida Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Dennis v. State, which established that defendants raising a self-defense claim have a right to a pretrial hearing on that question, since people who use force lawfully are immune from prosecution under the 2005 “stand your ground” law. The law “grants defendants a substantive right to not be arrested, detained, charged, or prosecuted as a result of the use of legally justified force,” the court said. “The statute does not merely provide that a defendant cannot be convicted as a result of legally justified force.” According to Gualtieri, that means the “stand your ground” law “has taken away law enforcement discretion to arrest unless there is no ‘stand your ground’ [defense] as a matter of law.”

In other words, if Drejka had said he shot McGlockton because he did not like his looks, Gualtieri could have arrested him, because that is not a legal justification. But since Drejka said he shot McGlockton because he reasonably feared for his life, Gualtieri was legally barred from arresting him, because that is a valid justification, no matter how implausible it might seem in this particular case. That reading of the law flies in the face of the authority to arrest someone when there is probable cause to believe his use of force was unlawful. Two weeks ago, Gualtieri said “we don’t have probable cause” to arrest Drejka. Now he seems to be saying something more than probable cause is necessary.

Muddying the waters further, Gualtieri said a 2017 law that changed the rules for pretrial self-defense hearings factored into his decision. Defendants used to have the burden of proving by “a preponderance of evidence” that their use of force was lawful. Now prosecutors have the burden of proving by “clear and convincing evidence” that the defendant’s use of force was not lawful. “The recently created burden that the state has to prove the shooter is not entitled to ‘stand your ground’ immunity by clear and convincing evidence is relevant at this stage too,” Gualtieri said, because people like Drejka have a right “not to sit in jail while all this is sorted out on an issue where the burden on the state is high.”

The logic here is murky. The prosecution’s burden at trial, which is to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant’s use of force was unlawful, remains unchanged. So does the standard for an arrest, which is still probable cause.

“Absent that immunity from arrest and the recently created burden on the state to prove by clear and convincing evidence that Drejka is not entitled to this immunity,” Gualtieri said, “Drejka would be sitting in jail right now, and the system would be working to figure it out.” In Gualtieri’s view, “when the legislature created Florida’s ‘stand your ground’ law, it said we don’t want people who have arguably acted within [the] law to sit in jail while the state attorney’s office spends weeks or months considering whether to file formal charges.”

Much depends on what Gualtieri means by “arguably,” since someone could have an arguable self-defense claim even if there was probable cause to doubt it. Rejecting the charge that Drejka got a pass because he is white and McGlockton was black, the sheriff noted that he had recently arrested white shooters in cases that the state attorney for Pinellas and Pasco counties, Bernie McCabe, decided not to pursue. But those examples illustrate a point that Gualtieri seems bent on obscuring: The standard for arresting someone who uses deadly force is much weaker than the standard for going to trial or winning a conviction.

Gualtieri emphasized that the McGlockton case is still open and that McCabe will ultimately decide whether to charge Drejka. But if there really is no probable cause to arrest Drejka, how could McCabe hope to convict him?

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President Trump Is No Friend to 3D Printed Plastic Guns, Says WH Press Secretary

|||Oliver Contreras/UPI/NewscomWhite House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed on Wednesday that President Trump supports bans against 3D-printed plastic guns.

As Reason‘s Brian Doherty previously reported, Defense Distributed is “a collective that organizes, promotes, and distributes technologies to help home gun-makers.” In early July, the Department of Justice (DOJ) reached a settlement with Defense Distributed in a long-running lawsuit based on government officials maintaining that the sharing of the gun-making files violated munitions export rules located in the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). Defense Distributed argued that the legal fight was a First Amendment issue, since what they wanted to distribute were computer software information already widely distributed in the public domain, not actual munitions.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik ruled in favor of eight states that sued in opposition of the federal government’s settlement with Defense Distributed. Lasnik issued a temporary restraining order against the website’s ability to distribute the files on the basis of that states’ “clear and reasonable fear that the proliferation of untraceable, undetectable weapons will enable convicted felons, domestic abusers, the mentally ill, and others who should not have access to firearms to acquire and use them.”

During a Wednesday press conference, Sanders answered a question about the president’s support of 3D printed plastic guns by saying that the DOJ made a deal without Trump’s approval. Still, Trump approved of the 1988 legislation that banned such devices if they are untraceable by metal detectors.

“This administration supports the decades-old legislation already on the books that prohibit the wholly ownership of a plastic gun,” she told reporters.

Trump previously tweeted that 3D printed plastic guns didn’t “make much sense.”

Following the court’s Tuesday decision, Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson announced that his website, DEFCAD.com, would go dark in compliance. Wilson removed the plans from the internet. Since that time, a mirror site from called CodeIsFreeSpeech.com appeared. Considering that the advocacy groups behind the new site were not listed as defendants in the suit, they are free from the ruling.

Bonus link: Watch Reason‘s February interview with Cody Wilson here.

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The 21st Century Misery Index: Labor’s Share Of The Economy & Real-World Inflation

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Isn’t it obvious that those at the top of the wealth-power pyramid don’t want us to know how much ground we’ve lost while they’ve gorged on immense gains?

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, an era of stagflation, the Misery Index was the unemployment rate plus inflation, both of which were running hot.

Now those numbers are at 50-year lows: both the unemployment rate and inflation are about as low as they can go, reaching levels not seen since the mid-1960s. (See chart below)

By these measures, the U.S. economy’s Misery Index has never been lower and hence prosperity has never been higher or more widespread.

But this simply isn’t true: the top 5% are indeed doing better than ever but the bottom 80% are losing ground and the middle 15% are only appearing to do well because asset bubbles have temporarily created illusory wealth.

I propose a 21st century Misery Index: Labor’s Share of the Economy and Real-World Inflation. Headlines about labor shortages and rising wages are popping up, suggesting the long-awaited boost in labor’s share of the economy’s growth is finally starting.

But these measures of increases are flawed. Median wage increases mask the fact that most of the gains are flowing to the top wage earners; gains are not equally distributed.

Analysts touting increases in compensation costs paid by employers don’t realize much of these increases aren’t going into paychecks–they’re rising because employee healthcare costs are soaring.

The one metric that counts is how much of the Gross Domestic Product is going to labor compensation. As the chart below illustrates, labor’s share of the economy has hit historic lows, and the recent bump up has been modest.

If we look at weekly wages for full-time employees, we find exceedingly modest gains on the order of $6 per week since the Great Recession of 2009–$300 a year.

But this inflation-adjusted number is bogus: if wages were adjusted for real-world inflation, which is on the order of 7% to 8% for those exposed to real-world prices, i.e. those whose expenses aren’t subsidized, then wages have lost purchasing power since 2009.

Here’s how your government figures inflation: your tuition rose by $25,000, your healthcare costs are $25,000 higher, your childcare went up by $10,000, but your last TV was $200 cheaper–mix it all up and inflation is 2%. This is of course beyond absurd, as this chart reveals:

How can 50%, 100% and 200% increases in big-ticket items that cost tens of thousands of dollars when added up be negated by tiny declines in the costs of occasional purchases of TVs and clothing?

As I’ve explained before, it all depends on how much of one’s exposure to real-world costs are being subsidized by the government or an institution. Those without subsidies are experiencing runaway inflation in big-ticket expenses such as rent, junk fees, childcare, college tuition/fees and healthcare.

The point is: if costs are soaring, the institutions subsidizing the costs are absorbing the higher inflation; the cost of healthcare isn’t low because the subsidized patient pays $10 of a $1,000 bill.

Here’s official inflation, which is used to create an illusion of near-zero cost increases and phantom increases in wages:

Here’s labor compensation’s share of GDP: rising modestly off historic lows:

Wages are rising, but only at the top:

So wages have risen $300 a year, while real-world costs have risen $3,000:this is why people don’t feel more prosperity in their paychecks: they’ve been losing ground for a decade or even longer.

Can we be honest for moment? Isn’t it obvious that those at the top of the wealth-power pyramid don’t want us to know how much ground we’ve lost while they’ve gorged on immense gains? The 21st Misery Index isn’t as pretty as the the official propaganda, but choose wisely when choosing what to believe is an accurate measure of the real world.

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Trump’s Grocery Store Gaffe Matters, but Not for the Reason You Think

Donald Trump is basically gaffe-proof. But that doesn’t mean his factual flubs have nothing to tell us about the man or his policies.

Take what happened in Tampa Tuesday night. Speaking at a rally, the president freewheeled into a rant about the need for Voter ID laws. This is a pretty mainstream Republican idea. Long before Trump was the party’s figurehead, GOP politicians were rattling off the same talking point that Trump hit last night: You have to show ID to buy booze or smokes, you have to show ID before you can board a plane, so why shouldn’t you have to show ID before entering the Holy of Holies of American democracy, the voting booth?

But Trump added something new to the mix. “You know, if you go out and you want to buy groceries, you need a picture on a card, you need ID,” he said. “You go out and you want to buy anything, you need ID and you need your picture.”

To clarify: You do not have to show a photo ID before buying bread, eggs, and milk at the local Kroger.

The media jumped on the gaffe, because it was funny and because it made him seem out of touch. But in the same speech Trump said something just as stupid and far more consequential, and it got much less attention. Dismissing worries about his tariffs, Trump claimed that farmers have reacted to China’s retaliatory trade barriers by saying “it’s OK, we can take it.”

In fact, farmers tend to be pretty unhappy about being caught in the middle of Trump’s trade war. In Iowa alone, the tit-for-tat tariffs with China could cost them more than $600 million this year, according to an Iowa State study. Farmers and their representatives have been some of the loudest voices opposing Trump’s barriers to trade.

Most people in the White House know this. Presumably the president does too. That’s why he’s sending $12 billion in aid to farmers hurt by the tariffs, an effort that hasn’t necessarily won many of them over. “Imagine someone destroys your car and then says I’ll give you a ride to the next place you need to go. Well gee, thanks,” farmer Mike Petefish told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune last week.

Trump and his top economic advisers continue to be brush off the consequences of his trade war. The president has told supporters not to believe stories about steel-consuming businesses having to lay off workers or close their doors, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has claimed that job losses and higher prices are merely “hiccups along the way.”

But Trump has seemed genuinely stupified by the reaction. After being told by Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) that farmers “want markets, and not really a payment from the government,” the president expressed surprise. “I’ve never heard of anybody who didn’t want a payment from the government,” he said, according to an account Moran gave to the Associated Press. That’s way more worrying that Trump’s peculiar ideas about buying groceries.

I’m not sure many of Trump’s supporters will really care about his grocery gaffe. Where most politicians try to fake being a regular guy, Trump happily flaunts the extent to which he isn’t like everyone else. He puts his name on the side of huge buildings, rides golden escalators to press conferences, and brags about having never changed a diaper. Almost everything about his personal brand suggests that yes, he’s completely out of touch. That’s been true for years. It hasn’t held him back so far.

Almost anyone who has been successful in national politics is out of touch with regular life. When Hillary Clinton admitted in 2014 that she hadn’t driven a car since 1996, it was treated as a major gaffe. But she was just being honest. You can’t go grocery shopping or pick up your dry cleaning when you’re constantly in a motorcade.

It’s not ultimately very important that politicians can quote the price of milk—a classic “gotcha” question, particularly in Britain. But understanding how their policies affect the people who do have to go to the grocery store every week: That’s important.

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