The jury summons came in the mail, posing the classic dilemma: do my civic duty, or try to weasel out?
This time, at least, I opted for duty and showed up at Circuit Court on Church Circle in Annapolis at the appointed hour.
8:00 a.m. Checked into the jury room and was promptly given three crisp $5 bills, my juror’s per diem. A total of 180 jurors has been summoned on this day. We are seated in long rows of chairs facing a lectern flanked by flags.
8:10 a.m. A 14-minute video, complete with music, entitled “You the Jury” plays on the two large television monitors in the jury waiting room,
8:25 a.m. Marci Mustachio, the Jury Commissioner, comes to the lectern to announce that there are 16 criminal cases on the docket today in which the defendants may, or may not, ask to be judged by a jury of their peers. So, she says, enjoy the television or check out the library, which she warns is mostly stocked with romance novels. The jurors start to get restless, wondering if we are going to get a trial or just wait.
8:30 a.m. Bailiff announces that it is going to take time to work through the docket, so we get our first break, until 9 a.m. Entire juror pool troops to the cafeteria, where a small coffee, “Columbia Bold,” goes for $1.44, the “egg and meat” sandwich, $3.45.
8:45 a.m. “CBS This Morning” is on the television. Feature entitled “Kung Fu Writing” tells us that Bruce Lee’s new memoir “packs a philosophical punch.” Charlie Rose looks dubious.
9:05 a.m. Judge Mark Crooks addresses the jurors and gets a nice laugh about his last name. He thanks us for our service and tells us that “seeing you here this morning restores my faith in democracy.” Jurors smile and shift in their seats, getting more restless.
9:15 a.m. “Today” is on the TV. Weatherman Al Roker, wearing a Northern Michigan Wildcats sweatshirt, is bounding about the set wildly excited about something. Jurors are not wildly excited.
9:45 a.m. Bailiff announces 20-minute break, explaining that the Judge is till working through the docket. The wheels of justice are grinding slowly. Man seated on my left groans, says: “I’ve got to call my office.” Woman in front row dozes off.
10:30 a.m. “Let’s Make a Deal” on TV. Contestants wildly excited. Jurors not.
10:45 a.m. Sudden activity! Bailiff summons 60 of the 180 jurors to empanel a jury in an armed robbery case. They troop out to the courtroom for voir dire, the selection process. The rest of us sit back and watch “The Price Is Right” on TV. Man seated on my right is grumpy: “If this was a business,” he growls, “they’d be bankrupt.”
11:15 a.m. Class dismissed! Bailiff announces that remaining 15 cases have either been settled or the defendants have chosen to have their fates decided by a judge alone. Jurors, delighted, head out the door.
For the next three days, as instructed by my summons, I call the Circuit Court recording after 5 p.m. to learn, with a mixture of relief and disappointment, that I am not needed the next day. Duty fulfilled. Sort of.
Frustrated and not a little bit annoyed by the whole process, I call Marci Mustachio to ask if, in this age of the internet and social media, there is not a more streamlined way to produce the jurors that the courts need and not keep hundreds of others waiting, watching daytime TV. Some 800 jurors were summoned this week, only a fraction of whom were empaneled on juries.
In essence, the cheerful Ms. Mustachio, says no, not really. On a typical day, two or three cases will require juries. She needs to be ready to meet the needs of the judges. Besides, jurors used to be kept on call for two weeks. Social media won’t work, she says, “because not everybody is on the internet. My father, for instance, wants no part of it.”
Also, neighbors who have actually served on juries report that it is a fascinating experience, well worth the time. One, who found the defendant guilty of a felony after a draining, four-day trial and two days of deliberation, described it as “an intensely human experience.”
Did he emerge thinking that justice had been done? I asked. Had the system worked? He thought about that for a minute and said: “Yes, in this case, it did.”
Media in the Age of Trump
For news organizations, the early months of the Age of Trump have been, perversely, the best of times and the worst of times.
The worst, because of the 45th President’s vitriolic assault on the media as dishonest, disloyal “enemies of the people.”
The best, oddly, because the chaos surrounding the Trump ascension has given birth to some remarkable investigative reporting. The New York Times, the Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, especially, have been topping each other repeatedly with penetrating reports about the inner workings, conflicts and contradictions of the new Administration and — get this — people are paying for it. It is an on-going newspaper war in the best sense of the word.
And not just newspapers. The New Yorker magazine, renowned for its prose and commentary, has been breaking news about the curious and continuing Trump-Russian connections. The venerable Atlantic magazine, a monthly, has published an in-depth look at what it calls the autocratic aspects of Trumpism.
Most major organizations have beefed up their Washington and investigative staffs since election day. The New York Times has assigned six top reporters to cover the White House full-time. (When I was The Times’ chief White House correspondent in the 1970’s, I was “chief” of myself and one deputy.)
The Washington Post and CNN have added to the collective reporting muscle by building new investigative teams.
It is the best of times, as well, because readers and viewers have responded to the tumultuous times by forking over cash for subscriptions to the most reliable of the “lamestream” media, as Sarah Palin once dubbed them.
The Times, which has been struggling financially in recent years from a crippling loss of print advertising, is experiencing a remarkable surge. The Grey Lady added 300,000 new digital subscriptions since election day. The Washington Post has topped 300,000 paid digital subscriptions for the first time. The New Yorker has picked up 250,000 subscribers in the last three months. Subscriptions to The Atlantic were up 210 per cent in January over the same month the year before.
The timing is hardly coincidental.
These new readers are not just reacting to Trump’s attacks on the press; they are hungry for reliable journalism in an uncertain world. And they are paying for it. Stephen Colbert once dubbed it “truthiness,” and people want it.
The cable news networks, all of which have tasted Trump’s wrath at one time or another, are enjoying an across-the-board
ratings boost. Fox, Trump’s favorite, leads the pack, but even CNN, which the President has labeled “fake news,” is up sharply. Jeff Zucker, CNN’s worldwide president, calls it a “renaissance in American Journalism.”
Have there been mistakes and excesses in the coverage? Of course. But you will get a clearer picture of the Administration in the media than from Kelly Anne Conway and the other Trump spokespeople.
Incidentally, the other great beneficiaries of the Trump Bump have been Colbert, John Oliver and, of course, Saturday Night Live. Late night television satire has never been better — or more popular.
Meanwhile, the normally adversarial relationship between the press and the White House has descended into daily hostilities between Sean Spicer, the beleaguered press secretary, and the reporters who question him. The televised battles have become a daytime hit as Spicer gamely tries to defend his boss’s twitter outbursts.
It is hard at this point to see where all this chaos leads us. David Brooks doubts that Trump can last a year. But the President’s base seems solidly behind him and largely satisfied that he is fulfilling his campaign promises. The Republicans in Congress will not challenge him as long as they believe he will sign their agenda into law.
In the main, reporters have been keeping their heads down, doing their jobs, digging for the truth and, fortunately, not taking the Presidential attacks personally. Most realize it is not about them. This is not a popularity contest, which is a good thing, since neither side would win. But it is reminder that, as the old saying goes, “politics ain’t beanbag.”
News Obsessive Disorder
Are you suffering from News Obsessive Disorder (NOD)?
Do the headlines out of our nation’s capital give you a headache? Does page-one make you anxious? Do you find yourself watching cable news non-stop?
You are not alone. NOD is endemic in the Age of Trump, and growing.
Fortunately, the doctor is in.
Valium might help, or Xanax. But the recommended remedy here is travel. Take a trip, a long trip, preferably outside the circulation area of your favorite paper, ideally to where the internet connection is spotty and wi-fi rare.
My wife and I recently sought such relief.
We left Annapolis on January 22, with the inauguration and Women’s March on the Mall and in Annapolis still ringing in our ears. We flew to Panama, boarded a ship, transited the Canal and turned south along the Pacific coasts of Ecuador, Peru and Chile, crossing the equator and basking in the full summer of the southern hemisphere. It was a speaking assignment for me on a cruise ship, a journey of some 8,500 miles in all, and it came at just the right time to detox from Trumpworld.
It is not a miracle cure for NOD, mind you. The news still gets through. The ship has a satellite that brings in some of the cable channels and sometimes the uplink to the internet works. But — here is the good news — as Washington slips further and further behind you, the headlines seem more remote, less immediate, less threatening.
South Americans know about Trump, of course, but they don’t obsess about him. They have their own worries. In Ecuador, they are still rebuilding from a terrible earthquake, in Peru there is a water shortage, in Chile, where they are in the fifth year of a drought, wild fires are raging.
On board the ship, when the satellite is working, the inescapable headlines from Washington tumble across the television screen: a blizzard of executive orders, a travel ban against Muslims that the President says is not really a travel ban against Muslims and that the courts say is illegal, the Alice-in-Wonderland comment from White House counselor Kelly Anne Conway that the Administration is not lying, but offering “alternative facts.”
President Trump holds phone conversations with a dozen world leaders and hangs up on some of them. Mexico is said to be furious, Australia confused and the French mystified.
Annapolis news is mystifying as well. The Capital Gazette website reports that Mayor Pantelides has fired the Annapolis police chief because he wants to go in a “new direction.” What is that all about?
Every day brings a new headline stranger than the day before. But as you sail further south, it all seems far away, like another planet. It is sunny and warm. You relax and read your book; your blood pressure goes down, you take a nap.
*
Eventually, the trip is over and you come home, back to the world of non-stop “Breaking News” about the chaos at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The television is on morning and night. NOD again.
Once again, you are drinking from a news fire hose: The President has fired his national security adviser after only 24 days in office, the billionaire he nominated for Labor Secretary is out before he was in, North Korea fires a missile, a Russian spy ship is off the coast of Connecticut. The scent of scandal is in the air.
On MSNBC, political director Chuck Todd warns: “Hunker down, this is a Category 5 political hurricane that’s hitting Washington.”
Then last Thursday, the President emerges in the East Room to give a 77-minute news conference like no other. It is mostly a rambling, disjointed assault on the news media, whom he loves and hates and loves to hate. NOD again.
Vacation over, it is time to pay attention and remember some hard realities: critical news about Trump is not “fake news,” leaks are not the problem, lies are. Truth is more important — and more difficult to discern — than ever. It is up to the viewer and reader to decide.
That’s unfair, I know, but in the Age of Trump and the era of “alternative facts,” that’s the way it is.
Terence Smith, who lives in Eastport, is a former White House correspondent for The New York Times and CBS News.
A Three-way Race for Mayor of Annapolis
“Gavin 2017.” That was the bumper sticker I saw in a parking lot the other day. It was the first sign that the 2017 race for mayor of Annapolis is underway. Buckle up. It may get lively.
“Gavin” is Gavin Buckley, the outgoing 53-year-old owner of, it seems, most of the restaurants on West Street, including Metropolitan, Lemongrass, Tsunami, and Sailor. Born in South Africa, raised in Australia, Buckley is Annapolis’ Crocodile Dundee. He sailed into town 23 years ago from Bermuda and never left. He has already filed to run in the Democratic primary next September, hoping to challenge Republican Mayor Mike Pantelides, 33, who has declared for a second term.
State Sen. John Astle, 73, is probably running for the Democratic nomination as well.
“I’m thinking seriously about it,” he says, with a grin and a mischievous lilt in his voice that makes you think he’s made up his mind. “I’m giving it a good hard look.” That is the careful answer of a 22-year senator who is currently enmeshed in another legislative session and doesn’t have to file his papers until July 31.
So, 10 months before the balloting, three candidates are already raising money and shaking every hand they can find.
Who, you might ask, in his or her right mind would want to be the 137th mayor of Annapolis? Most of the mayor’s time is spent arguing with the eight-member City Council over nearly every issue that comes up: new developments, selling the golf course, even promoting the noisy spectacle known as the Nitro Circus. Everything is a battle, everything takes forever.
“This job is a struggle to get to five” votes, Mayor Pantelides explained, referring to the simple majority on the City Council necessary to get anything done. But, he quickly added last week, “I love the job. I enjoy meeting different people and I want to build on what we’ve accomplished in my first term.”
Besides, Pantelides has some $150,000 in his campaign account and no likely Republican opposition for the nomination. He has got much of the business community behind him and the wind at his back. He won by 59 votes last time, out of some 8,000, and plans to do better this time. “I’d be hard to beat for the Republican nomination,” he says cheerfully.
“I enjoyed the job,” says Ellen Moyer, mayor from 2001 to 2009. “I enjoyed helping people.” Then she adds: “But I don’t enjoy the lack of civility, the nastiness of the rhetoric and the character assassination that comes with it.”
Buckley doesn’t sound worried about that. He was inspired to run by his ongoing court battle with the Historic Preservation Commission over the modernist mural on the facade of Tsunami, one of his restaurants. He wants to stand up for freedom of expression and for the arts community. Beyond that, he wants to breathe some life into the city, re-imagine Main Street and City Dock and make Annapolis a draw, like Boulder, Colorado, or Asheville, North Carolina, or Austin, Texas, or Burlington, Vermont.
“I appreciate the city’s history,” he says, “but the historic buildings can be a backdrop to a lot of cool stuff” like music festivals, a cafe culture and, yes, murals. “The mayor should be the promoting officer for the city, its biggest promoter.”
Astle has lived in Annapolis for 46 years. “I love this city,” he says, “I’d like to fix the interior workings of the city, make its government work the way it should.” Describing himself with a smile as “a Democrat who loves dogs, guns and pickups,” he says his has been a life of service, as a Marine helicopter pilot in Vietnam, a pilot who flew the vice president for four years and retired as a colonel, a police officer in Baltimore, District 30 delegate for a dozen years and senator for 22.
Astle ran for mayor in 1981 and lost by 243 votes. Listening to him, you get the impression he’d like to correct that record.
Then there are the practical considerations: his last three Senate elections have been squeakers he won by less than 1 percent of the vote. He is sure to have strong Republican opposition if he tries again. And, he adds with a good-natured laugh, “It’d be a pay raise!”
A state senator makes $50,000, the mayor $98,000.
Sounds like we have a lively three-way race coming this year.
Campaign Autopsy: Clinton’s 1,000 Cuts
A month after the most surreal, bizarre Presidential election in my lifetime, I find I have almost as many questions as answers.
Not about Donald Trump’s Electoral College victory, which seems clear, unless the Michigan recount and the Electors who actually cast their votes on December 19, decide otherwise.
Nor about Hillary Clinton’s defeat, which, in hindsight, I guess more of us should have seen coming.
Rather, my questions are about why:
Why did Trump win? What combination of the man, the moment, his message, his blatant manipulation of facts and brilliant self-marketing caused the upset?
Why did tens of millions of voters describe Trump as not qualified to be President and vote for him anyway?
Why did Clinton lose? What combination of the woman, the moment, her message and largely self-inflicted wounds caused the result?
Donald Trump’s victory is history-making and fascinating. To come from nowhere, politically, with no prior experience in elective office, little understanding of the issues or the world and a questionable personal reputation, especially with 52 per cent of the population, is nothing short of amazing.
Indisputably, Trump tapped into some deep-seated sentiments in the voting public, exploited them shamelessly and against all odds, pulled off the most remarkable electoral achievement in modern political history. He broke all the rules of American politics, and won. He lost the popular vote, but won the presidency.
Hillary Clinton’s loss is amazing as well.
Arguably the most qualified person to run for the presidency, with deep experience and an intimate knowledge of the issues confronting the nation, the support of her party and a vast campaign chest, she nonetheless lost. She played by the rules of American politics, and lost. She won the popular vote by more than 2 million votes, and lost.
Why?
It is not an easy answer. The question was put to 20-some veteran Democratic operatives, many of them White House alumni, at a private dinner Wednesday night in a plush, paneled dining room in Washington. It was a collective autopsy of a campaign they all expected to win. The mood was set at the outset by the host, who passed out “Emergency Canadian Residence Applications” as a gag.
Then, seated beneath a glowering portrait of a long-dead Civil War general, the guests were uniformly critical of the strategy and execution of the Clinton campaign. More in sadness than anger, they described a defeat inflicted by a thousand cuts.
In almost telegraphic shorthand, they ticked off the campaign’s failings: No message…took minorities and women for granted…essentially promised a third Obama term…assumed urban supporters would out-number rural opponents, as they had twice for Obama… failed to address economic concerns of white working class men…expected Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania to be in the bag, and on and on.
Victory was always going to be tough, they said, given widespread Clinton fatigue…sclerosis of the Democratic Party…polarizing nature of the economic divide over the last 25 years…public disgust with “the establishment”…the challenge of a “change” election, etc.
Hillary herself came in for sharp criticism for mishandling her email controversy, the on-again FBI investigation, especially Director Comey’s bombshell 11 days before the vote, her sarcastic “basket of deplorables” and her remote style and reluctance to answer questions. She ran like a 20th-century candidate, it was said, in a 21st century election where all the old rules went out the window.
Then a single question stopped the conversation cold. Is it possible, one former senior official said ruefully, that running a woman candidate on the heels of the first black president may have been “a step too far” for the average American voter? “Not a pretty thought,” muttered one guest in the silence that followed.
As the dinner broke up, the guests consoled themselves with the thought that American politics have always been cyclical, that parties that seem devastated usually rise from the ashes, and that, as used to be said among enlisted men in the U.S. Army, nothing very good or very bad lasts very long.
Americans Afloat Choose Change
Some cheered when Donald Trump went over the top, some groaned, some said it was the dawn of a new era, some said it was the end of history, some made comments not suitable for a family newspaper and just about everybody expressed shock.
Six hundred strong, they were part of a floating focus group aboard Crystal Symphony, one of two luxury cruise ships operated by Crystal Cruises, a top-rated company with the questionable judgment to engage me occasionally as a “World Affairs” lecturer, this time aboard a 16-day cruise from Miami to San Diego via the Panama Canal.
It was not a formal focus group, but it functioned as one, with discussions and panels on the campaign before and after Election Day. The group included 20 different nationalities, but the great majority were U.S. citizens and most said they had sent in absentee ballots or participated in early voting, as I did in Annapolis on Oct. 28, before boarding the ship a week before Election Day.
As Crystal Cruises guests, they were not typical; they are older, well-educated, affluent and mostly white. They included more Republicans than Democrats, more avowed conservatives than liberals, some open supporters of Donald Trump, some outspoken backers of Hillary Clinton and a fair number who said they didn’t like either candidate and couldn’t wait for the endless campaign to be over.
In a poll taken Friday, during a final panel discussion, they disclosed how they actually voted: 52 percent for Trump, 38 percent for Clinton and 10 percent for other candidates. It was a more lopsided pro-Trump tally than the national vote, but not different in the outcome. At the same time, a striking 47 percent said they did not believe the president-elect would keep his campaign promises. About 20 percent thought he could and would; the balance said “maybe.”
Using handheld devices, the audience indicated that it thought the most pressing issue in the new president’s in-box was the nomination of a new Supreme Court justice. The audience selected defeating ISIS and dealing with world terrorism as the most urgent foreign policy issue, and creating jobs, repairing the nation’s crumbling infrastructure and improving the educational system as the top domestic priorities. Donald Trump, take notice.
The passengers from other countries – they included Brits, Canadians, Australians, Latinos and representatives of perhaps a dozen European and Asian nations – seemed to follow the campaign and election every bit as closely as the Americans. To a person, they seemed shocked by the outcome and worried about the impact a Trump presidency might have on their countries and economies.
The Americans showed their political colors by which cable channel they chose to watch for the election night coverage, The ship stayed studiously neutral by putting CNN on the big screen in one theater and Fox News in another. MSNBC and two British channels – Sky News and the BBC – were available in the staterooms.
Most of the cheering came from the Fox crowd as it became clear that Trump would prevail. Most of the groans came from the CNN-watchers.
Even before Election Day, a man from Florida came up to me after a lecture on the campaign and said, “You know those people who won’t tell pollsters whether they support one candidate or the other and then vote for Trump? Well, I am one of those people. I voted for him before I left Florida.”
When I asked him to explain his choice, he said, “Change. We need change.”
A Florida woman, on the other hand, told me, “I’m a Republican who votes for Republicans. But not this time – not Trump. I couldn’t bring myself to vote for him.”
The Clinton enthusiasts were harshly critical of Trump before the election, calling him totally unqualified. After his victory, they were mostly subdued. “Aren’t you worried?” a woman asked me after Trump’s victory. “I am.”
I am, too.
Grace Under Pressure?
While sensible people are focused on the Annapolis Boat Show, the weather or even Sunday night football, tens of millions of us will tune in tonight to the second Presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Second debates in a series of three are not generally all that consequential. But this one could really matter, especially given Trump’s vulgar taped comments on women and his sexual prowess.
Tonight’s encounter at Washington University in St. Louis will establish whether the Republican nominee can control himself and finally seem presidential, and whether the Democratic nominee can keep her cool under pressure and still make her points. A smile now and then wouldn’t hurt either of them.
The first debate at Hofstra University was the most fractious, chaotic and dystopian Presidential encounter in recent memory. In the aftermath, sports metaphors were overworked but apt. Hillary Clinton clearly scored a TKO, if not a knockout, and got a significant bump in the polls in the process. She nailed Trump on race and gender issues and demonstrated a grasp of foreign and security policy that left him flailing about.
Clinton deftly turned Trump’s graceless attack on her “stamina” around and used it to question his. Some of her better lines (“Trumped-up trickle-down”) sounded rehearsed and shopworn, but they made a point.
Trump was focused at first, scoring points on trade and the economy and repeatedly characterizing Clinton as part of the team responsible for current shortcomings at home and abroad. His implicit message: Hillary and the Democrats got you into this mess; I’m the change agent who can get you out.
But, as the debate went on — watch for this tonight — Trump lost his focus, repeated himself , was belligerently defensive about not paying taxes and his bankruptcies and wandered far afield, ascribing the hacking of the Democratic National Committee to an unidentified 400-pound man texting in his pajamas. How’s that again?
Lester Holt, the journeyman moderator, went missing for periods of time and let the candidates punch and counter-punch. Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker’s resident funnyman, even tweeted a missing-persons alert on Holt at one point. But Holt’s restraint also served to reveal the candidates’ competitive instincts.
Tonight, the moderators will be Anderson Cooper and Martha Raddatz, no shrinking violets, who will likely be more assertive. But half the questions are to come from the audience in the town hall format. We’ll have to see how that affects the candidates.
The forecast for tonight’s debate is stormy. Both candidates know there is a lot at stake, and both have ammunition they didn’t use in the first exchange.
Trump can resurrect the “pay-for-play” allegations about the Clinton Foundation, and charge that foreign donors got special treatment from the former Secretary of State in exchange for their contributions. He has already promised to bring up Bill Clinton’s infidelities, even though in the first debate with Chelsea Clinton in the first row he said “It’s inappropriate…not nice.” Apparently it is nice enough when you are behind in the polls in the key swing states.
Clinton has plenty of fodder to use against Trump if she chooses: his latest bragging about his way with women, the undisputed reports that he lost a breathtaking $916 million in one tax year and likely paid no federal income taxes for nearly two decades, and his continued refusal to release his current tax returns. There is the Trump University fraud, the Trump Foundation scam, his more outrageous campaign promises to wall off Mexico, bar Muslims and deport 12 million undocumented immigrants. The list goes on.
Entertainment suggestion: watch carefully tonight when Clinton gets under Trump’s skin, as she is likely to do; watch his reaction and what it does to his train of thought and debate strategy. Then imagine how he might respond to a similar challenge in the Oval Office.
Increasingly, this bizarre campaign is coming down to questions of temperament and emotional stability. Debates reveal those characteristics better than anything. By the end of 90 minutes tonight, we will have a deeper insight into the candidates’ personalities and their grace under pressure — or lack thereof.
Tune in. You can always record Sunday night football.
The Times, It Is a Changin’
The Times, It Is A Changin’
You see it on the front page of The New York Times, live on NBC and across the spectrum: reporters, not commentators or columnists, calling out Donald Trump for lying.
That role used to be reserved for fact-checkers and editorial writers. The reporters would report, others would analyze, or, leave it to the readers.
But that old formula is not sufficient for The Age of Trump. The lies come so fast and frequently, piling up, one news cycle after another, that in some cases, at least, they have to be dealt with immediately, in the initial report. There won’t be time to sort it out later.
Take Michael Barbaro’s excellent news analysis on page one of The Times on Saturday, September 17. The editors chose to make it the two-column lead of the paper, with the news story inside, on page 10. That was another departure: before The Age of Trump, the editors would usually lead the paper with the news story and either twin it with a news analysis or put the news analysis inside, on the jump.
But this lie was so flagrant, so bald-faced, The Times had to deal with it in the headline: “Trump Gives Up a Lie, But Refuses to Repent.” The lie in question, of course, was Trump’s years of insinuations that President Obama was not born in the United States and therefore not qualified to be President.
Barbaro recounted Trump’s assertions to that effect since 2011 and wrote: “It was never true, any of it.”
Katy Tur, on MSNBC, similarly flatly rejected Trump’s claim that it was Hillary Clinton who started the racially-tinged “Birther Movement” and that he, Trump, had “finished it.” Not true, Tur said immediately.
This is not instant analysis, it is competent journalism, a faithful reporting of facts. It is different, necessary in The Age of Trump, and good.
Rising Waters
Lisa Craig’s office window looks out on Main Street, across from Kilwin’s ice cream shop and the Helly Hanson store. Every heavy rain, she gets a vivid reminder of just how vulnerable Annapolis is to the freaky weather that somehow seems normal these days.
“Main Street becomes a river,” she said the other day, “the water pours down over the bricks and curbs into the harbor.”
Lisa Craig’s title is Chief of Historic Preservation for the city of Annapolis. A more apt title would be Chief Drum Beater. Her mission: wake up the people of Annapolis to the existential threats posed by flooding, storm surges, torrential rains and the slow, silent danger of sea level rise.
“When I took this job five years ago, I barely thought about sea level rise,” she says. “Now, I spend 50 per cent of my time on it.”
The most vulnerable portion of Annapolis is arguably its most important: the Historic District, a National Historic Landmark since 1965 that contains 180 of the finest 18th century and later homes and commercial buildings in the country. Total estimated value: $288 million.
The greatest threat to Annapolis and the Chesapeake is unmistakable and beyond argument: as polar ice melts, the oceans warm and the land subsides, the average sea level will rise. Scientists forecast anywhere from one to three feet of elevation by 2100, maybe more.
In that event, the so-called “nuisance flooding” that we saw around City Dock over Labor Day weekend would become more than annoying. Newman Street would become the Newman Canal, unless something is done to prevent it. (The large family of ducks clearly enjoy themselves on the watery pavement now, but even they would have to swim for it.)
Storm surge from a hurricane like Isabel is another grave threat to downtown Annapolis, especially in an era when 100-year storms seem to come along every decade or so.
Last Sunday, The New York Times featured a page-one takeout headlined “Global Warming’s Mark: Coastal Inundation,” with a subhead that read: “Decades of Warnings by Scientists Are No Longer Theoretical.”
Inside, The Times ran a dramatic, full-length graphic of the east coast, showing endangered cities from Boston to Key West. Annapolis was just above the fold, showing a sharp increase in “sunny day” flooding over the last 65 years, from fewer than 10 days-a-year in 1950 to more than 60 days in 2015.
By contrast, low-lying Norfolk, Virginia had just 10 such days in 2015, lower-lying Miami just 14.
That’s the reality and trend line that Lisa Craig is trying to impress upon the Annapolis public consciousness. She has made some progress: under the catchy rubric “Weather It Together,” a loose coalition of city, county, state and Federal agencies have been beating the drum.
They turned out a large crowd to hear oceanographer and author John Englander discuss the threat to Annapolis, and a smaller but interested audience for a day-long, planning seminar on practical solutions. They have held more than a dozen community presentations and enlisted over 1,250 people in public engagement activities.
But, human nature being what it is, namely, not inclined to worry about a problem until it is lapping at the doorstep, no members of the public turned out last Thursday at an open City Hall meeting of the Weather It Together core group to hear a presentation on the devastating flooding in historic Ellicott City in July.
Joe Budge and Ross Arnett, the Aldermen who represent the most vulnerable areas of the city, were there, along with several dozen business and community leaders. They listened as Ellicott City and Annapolis were described as “eerily similar” in terms of vulnerability to flooding.
Alderman Budge, asked where on a scale of one-to-ten he believed Annapolis was in terms of public awareness of the dangers confronting it, he said: “Maybe three or four,” adding: “it will be another year, year-and-a-half before we will have a plan on how to deal with it and what it will cost.”
That is probably right, given that the city’s updated hazard mitigation and cultural resource plan is not expected to be approved before the end of 2017.
In the meantime, as Johnny Cash once sang, “If the Good Lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise,” Annapolis will stay dry and its historic heart preserved.
Dog Days and Donald’s Taxes
The Dog Days of Summer, that hot, humid period when the dog star, Sirius, rises and falls during the day, are normally a sleepy interlude in the political calendar.
Even in a presidential year, the freshly-minted nominees usually have the decency to take a break after the national political conventions until Labor Day, when the campaigns crank up full speed until election day. The Dog Days are supposed to a breather, when current and former Presidents can play golf on Martha’s Vineyard and harried campaign reporters can catch up on their overdue expense accounts.
Not this year.
In just this past crazy week, both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton delivered “major economic addresses,” (have there ever been “minor” economic addresses?) Trump appeared to invite “Second Amendment people” to dispatch Hillary and asserted repeatedly that President Obama and Clinton were “founders” of the Islamic State terror group.
The Clinton campaign fought back with its latest, lawyerly response about her emails and Hillary herself leveled strong denunciations of Trump’s temperament and qualifications for the nation’s highest office.
The coverage of all this has been non-stop, exhaustive and exhausting, taking up newspaper space and airtime that should rightly be devoted to the Rio Olympics and the hot, hot weather.
But one perennial campaign element is missing this year: the public release of the Republican nominee’s tax returns.
Every major party presidential candidate since 1972 has made his returns public. You can find both Hillary and Bill Clinton’s 1040s online back to 2000. Most of the primary candidates issued theirs shortly after filing them in April.
So, what is Donald Trump hiding?
Speculation abounds: interest on loans from Russian oligarchs? Paltry charitable contributions? Less actual income than he claims? Huge debts? Why has he stubbornly refused to release his returns?
The most likely answer is that he pays little or no federal taxes to help fund the government that he proposes to lead. Very possibly zero.
That was the speculative conclusion of tax experts interviewed by The New York Times last week.
“I would expect he’s paying little or no tax,” Steven Rosenthal, a veteran tax lawyer, told The Times. Other experts pointed out that this was likely, and probably legal, given the rich deductions and depreciation that real estate development offers.
Trump himself seemed to confirm zero taxes as his goal when he told George Stephanopoulos of ABC: “I fight hard to pay as little tax as possible.” Asked to name his tax bracket, he snapped: “None of your business.”
Zero or minimal taxes, even on a very large income, could pose a political, rather than legal, problem for Trump. Four years ago Mitt Romney was burned when he reluctantly released his returns and disclosed that he had paid only 14.1 per cent in federal taxes on an income in excess of $20 million. His modest bracket was legal, but politically awkward, contributing to his wealthy, privileged image. At the time, Trump was among the Republican voices arguing that Romney had no choice but to release his returns.
Sensing a political opening, Hillary Clinton released her 2015 personal tax return on Friday, revealing that she and her husband paid an effective federal tax rate of 34.2 per cent on $10.5 million in income from speeches, royalties and the like.
Clinton challenged Trump to do the same, charging that his refusal “defies decades-old tradition of disclosure” by Presidential candidates.
Trump will likely ignore her, arguing again that his returns are under audit. But another wealthy taxpayer, Warren Buffet, a Clinton supporter, said last week that he, too, is being audited and would be happy to meet Trump anywhere anytime to jointly disclose their respective returns.
“You’re only afraid if you’ve got something to be afraid about,” Buffet said.
None of this back and forth is likely to make much difference in November. But if Trump does change his mind and releases his returns, even in the Dog Days of Summer, it will pull back the curtain on a Presidential candidate the public still knows little about.