LyrArc Article Gist
The CEO of the New York Times and the former director general of the BBC, takes a look at the public discourse in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and in the Brexit campaign, and finds some troubling changes. The use of words that can eaily be picked up by Twitter and social media to attack opponents, the complete disregard for facts, and outright attempts to denigrate and destroy using rhetorical tactics, and a section of the public that has turned away from the facts or is disinterested in facts, is deeply troubling for Mark Thompson. When the public discourse fails, then the politics as a whole starts to collapse, says Thompson. We are children of the enlightenment, says Thompson, and were taught to look underneath statements to discern the truth. This is a crisis in public discourse. Worse it is one in which truth telling by people who say they are outsiders and tell it like it is, is not about telling the truth. Which is what makes it so dangerous. Thompson cites the statement by Michael Gove that "people in this country have had enough of experts," as another dangerous sign. He says it is time that experts make themselves understandable and talk in a way the public can understand. The media needs to explain issues in clear ways, and professional policymakers language of discourse needs to be conveyed in better ways that the public can grasp, in which the Brexit Remain campaign failed, says Thompson. Its important to acknowledge the problem, as the health of our democracies depends on finding solutions to what has happened in 2015-2016 to change the public discourse and let it deteriorate to unimaginable levels.  ...

LyrArc Article Gist
There are similarities in the Republican and Democratic party platforms in 2016. One area of agreement is in the reinstatement of Glass Steagall Act. That legislation made in the Depression period to separate commercial banking from investment banking was changed  when president Clinton made changes in a deal with Senators Phil Gramm and Jim Leach in 1999. The too big to fail problems of banks and the problems of investment banks during the 2008 financial crisis are attributed to the lack of Glass Steagall protections for financial stability and safety. The result is that in the post 2016 environment banks can expect a tougher regulatory environment. Another are is in trade where both parties are expected to take tougher positions to protect U.S. interests. The Republican platform calls for "better negotiated trade agreemets that put America first."

LyrArc Article Gist
Confessore describes ways in which the Republican Party agenda moved away from the interests of ordinary American working class voters in the last decade, ignoring some of the effects of the 2008 financial crisis and the deep recession in the years that followed.

LyrArc Article Gist
Following the fifth North Korean nuclear test DW.com talks with Rudiger Frank about the test and what this means. Frank says the negotiations with North Korea and efforts to limit the program so far have been a colossal failure. Tests have continued and without a change in strategy more tests will be followed by the usual condemnations by world leaders and further sanctions. Frank says this change in strategy would include recognizing North Korea as a nuclear state, and getting North Korea to ensure the weapons are safe and secure in the country, getting a clear idea of what and where the weapons are. The International Atomic Agency would be asked to go in and make inspections. The next step would be to freeze the program at some level agreed to. This is a tough step to take but it only recognizes the reality of the situation, and continued development by North Korea of nuclear weapons if no steps for change are taken. 

LyrArc Article Gist
Prof. Cherlin of John Hopkins University's sociology department tells us why it is important to revive the term "working class" in America after it has fallen into disuse. He points out that lumping the "working class" with the middle class, as most political leaders including Obama have done, is a serious mistake. As disparities have increased between college educated Americans and non-college educated Americans with only a diploma or less ( who comprise 54% of the adult population with children under age 18), and as the lifestyles, living standards, and educational opportunities of children have diverged for these two groups, this no longer makes sense. One reason for the disuse was that the term was seen as derogatory at some point in time because of media stereotypes of working class people. Yet only by reviivng the term and facing up to the problems faced by this group can America really address its problems as a society, or as a people. Even economic recovery could be elusive without increasing the consumer spending, and by this the incomes and future prospects of the working class. Underneath this is something more important, which has shaped the lives of people throughout the world in the 20th century and into the 21st- the sense of hope and opportunity, of upward economic and social mobility, especially for children of all classes. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Op-ed contributor Reno writes about the cultural decline of the middle class and its lost sense of participation in the nation's politics. He describes the effects of social decline with use of drugs, children born outside of marraige, and children raised by grandparents. Political elites on the right and left see the white middle class as not being part of a multicultural and globalized future, which they hope to run, leading to its alienation and support for candidates such as Trump and Sanders, says Reno.

LyrArc Article Gist
Frederick Harris of Columbia University says there is a price to be paid for a black president and it may just be too much for the average black person. There is a difference betwen symbols and substance, betwen a role model and accountability in a representative democracy, which is sadly lacking when the black elites, clergy and politicians fail to debate the issues about the problems facing the black community. Problems related to the increasing poverty among black Americans, and the 14% unemployment for black people. There is he says a strange reticience among the black elite to hold the president accountable on these issues just as they would have done for any Democratic president, even one who was as popular with blacks as Mr. Clinton. He says the experience with Obama is not even remotely comparable to the transformative nature of the work of Rev. Martin Luther King in the black community. It may stem from Obama's multiracial background, growing up in many countries, his elite education and being part of a liberal elite more than of the black community. The price is too high in economic and social terms for the poor or average black person and it has created a divide between the average black person and the black elite, with different concerns and different priorities. Harris points out that poor and poverty are words not mentioned often by Obama. Related to this is the foreclosure crisis in which ordinary black people were hardest hit with no effective help from the president to homeowners badly needing relief. Sheila Bair of the FDIC and Martin Feldstein advocated aggressive help for homeowners under water which did not come from the president. Showing not just the limits of a black presidency, but false hopes, inexperience and lack of leadership in issues that mattered to all Americans in the housing and foreclosure crisis. A populist from Kansas, as Sheila Bair describes herself, had the right instincts and courage of convictions which the president lacked and the entire country needed....

LyrArc Article Gist
This is an interview with Columbia University economic historian Adam Tooze about the international trade and economic issues brought about by globalization. The rapid emergence of China in manufacturing and overcapacity in steel has led to action on steel tariffs by president Trump. Tooze is typical of opinion that sees action by Trump not as limited action to level the playing field  as proposed by Trade Representative for the U.S., Robert Lighthizer, but as reckless move on trade.  Lyrarc.com shows articles from the WSJ and NYT showing how opinion got to this point in the U.S., on Robert Lighthizer's views that the U.S. was not facing a level playing field, and  on how trade has hurt communities across the U.S. a long distance away from Silicon Valley. President Trump's views reflect a different perspective that says the U.S. has to balance the favorable situation obtained by China and the European Union through moves of its own to protect U.S. interests. Political commentary that the U.S. was starting a trade war is not supported by the facts showing China's response as muted and a willingness by China to negotiate a balanced trading relationship as its trade surplus with the U.S. continues to grow. The trade surplus is so large that the Trump moves do not tell the real story. They are likely to be overshadowed by the increasing value of the U.S. dollar leading to a continued favorable situation for Chinese exports and a larger trade surplus in 2018, regardless of Mr. Trump's action.  Trump's moves are more significant in other areas- limiting China's access to advanced technologies, with the European Union also taking the same action. This is now the new field of competition for the major world economies. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
A new West Coast Model is emerging with ballot measures in the states of Washington, California and Oregon. The model is to make up for decades of faulty income distribution which favored tech communities in west coast states leaving behind people from minority communities and the working class outside tech hubs such as San Francisco, San Jose and Seattle. During this period budgets for education and healthcare, social services and essential infrastructure suffered as budgets were squeezed for local governments. Minimum wage also lagged behind and communities struggled to keep up. Washington votes for a ballot measure that raises the minimum wage to $13.25 statewide and mandate paid sick leave for workers. In California a ballot measure makes permanent an income tax surcharge on millionaires to use these funds for education. In Oregon measure 97 places a gross receipts tax on corporations with annual sales in Oregon over $25 million, raising $3 billion a year for schools, health care and other programs. The California and Washington measures are likely to pass, Oregon uncertain, say experts. And even in Oregon supporters have learned from the experience to put forward new proposals on the ballot. The Washington measure is supported by Nick Hanauer, and Zach Silk, president of Civic Ventures in Seattle, who say it is essential to put more money in workers wages to increase growth and to bring better lives outside the tech hub areas. Most of the tech booms of the last two decades have not touched the areas outside tech hub metropolitan areas. The conservative approach adopted in Louisiana and Kansas of reducing taxes first and then when holes in state budgets developed to cut education, health and other service expenditures has not worked, and it has led to the backlash in the form of the new West Coast Model, which is expected to be brought up in other states in the east and midwest. The tech hub areas have grown with the boom in tech but this has largely ignored the rural areas, communities just outside of the tech cities, and led to uneven and distorted growth shortchanging the working class and the middle class, and hurting investment in education and healthcare across each state. Bill Whalen, a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution conservative think tank ,says that its hard to deny that the balanced growth for all communities across the state has lagged far behind as the tech booms boosted growth in the economies of California, Oregon and Washington. An article in the German online site Zeit on Silicon Valley described this vividly showing how this can happen in communities sitting side by side in the San Jose area, with minority Hispanic communities and working class communties seeing very little of the benefits of growth. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
This report in the WSJ on a Gallup study with 87,000 interviews points to Trump supporters being affected more by racial isolation and cultural anxiety, health prospect anxiety,  than merely by being working class or in lower income groups affected by the shift in manufacturing jobs overseas. The report confirms previous observations that these Trump supporters are more likely to be whites without bachelors degrees. The information does'nt show that they face abnormally high degree of economic distress as those who have lost jobs in this recession, as they are shown to be less likely to be unemployed, more likely to be self-employed. The Gallup study does not show areas more adversely impacted by trade competition to have higher support for Trump. This is a critical finding.  An interesting finding is that Trump supporters are more likely to live in areas with higher mortality rates and poorer health outcomes, higher obesity rates, and lower rates of intergenerational mobility. This combines with living in much higher rates of being surrounded by whites, whiter and more racially isolated. The finding is that they have high cultural and economic anxiety from not finding their well being and prospects for children meet expectations. This may also explain the tendency not to be able to reason out possible outcomes based on policies of each candidate, less openness and more inward looking behaviours.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The unemployment rate in the U.S. state of Ohio drops to 7.2% in June 2012 from 10.6% in the second half of 2009. But polls show two thirds of the respondents see the economy as being worse or the same as in 2011. Because of lower wages in some industries such as auto manufacturing which are reviving there appears to be a lowering of incomes and expectations.

LyrArc Article Gist
Fred Hiatt of The Washington Post describes U.S. president Obama's mishandling of Syria during his second term as president leading to the situation today.

LyrArc Article Gist
Working America, an arm of the U.S. trade union the AFL-CIO, conducted conversations with 350,000 voters in 17 U.S. states. Here a representative of Working America, says the overwhelming response to the question "does it make a difference whether Democrats or Republicans are in power for my well being," is reflected in one of the responses- "does it even matter?"

The suggested approach here is for Democrats in particular who have represented working class voters in the past, to start with a fresh approach by creating new conversations with working class Americans.

LyrArc Article Gist
Gerson describes Obama's failure to connect in 2012, compared to the 2008 campaign. What is left is more of the politician from the South Side of Chicago, the idealism of an earlier campaign is gone. What is left is a supposed ruthlessness that is opportunistic at every turn, says Gerson.