The Trump Papers

 #Jill Lepore, "The Trump Papers," The New Yorker, November 23, 2020. -  "No real record exists for five meetings Trump had with Vladimir Putin during the first two years of his presidency." "In 2017, Trump, unable to distinguish between private life and public service, carried his practice of requiring nondisclosure agreements into the Presidency." "(Unlike the suit against Trump's former national-security adviser John Bolton, relating to the publication of his book, 'The Room Where It Happened,' there is no claim that anything in Wolkoff,' book [a good friend of Melania Trump, who published a memoir of their friendship] is, or was, ever classified.)" 

It took a very long time to establish rules governing the fate of Presidential records. Trump does not mind breaking rules, and in the course of a long life he has done so with impunity." "National archives uphold a particular vision of a nation and its power, and, during transitions of power in nations that are not democratic, archives are not infrequently attacked."

Congress, in 1978, passed the Presidential Records Act, which describes what goes into the public          domain, and allows the public to see those records after a period of time ranging from five to  twelve years. Lloyd Cutler, who served both Carter and Clinton as White House counsel, said in an oral history conducted in 1999, that "Independent counsels ask for every scrap of paper under the sun. In this Administration [not specifying which one] I would guess ten, fifteen lawyers are kept busy all of the time digging up documents by the thousands." Columbia Law School's David Pozen has argued that: 
'Transparency does not always advance good government: it can interfere with the deliberative process, make deal-making impossible, and promotes a culture of suspicion and mistrust.' "

"Donald Trump, if he wants a Presidential library, is far more likely to build a Presidential museum, or even a theme park, and would most likely build it in Florida."

#Jeet Heer, "At Liberalism's Crossroads," The Nation, October 19-26, 2020. - "For the young [Richard] Hofstadter, the liberal consensus that set the parameters of American politics, prevented the nation from moving beyond an outdated, money-grubbing individualism to become a true democracy." "Stalin was a nightmare, but as a former Communist and a Jew, he recognized that McCarthyism and anti-Semitism were ever-present nightmares as well." 

"Hofstadter was drawn to the Progressive vision of class conflict in American history. But he had two critiques of their account -- first, that it did not address the divisions of 'commonality' of religion, ethnicity, of race, and, second, that it failed to answer the question all Marxists grapple with: How does the ruling class stay on top in a class-riven society?" "Racism was a defining problem in American history, but so too was liberalism's persistent allegiance to an individualism that  thwarted the solving of social problems."

"For Hofstadter, [Adlai] Stevenson was proof that liberals were the true conservatives, not just because they had come to appreciate the stabilizing necessary of tradition but also because their foes, the revanchiets of McCarthyism, were the true radicals." " 'Populism' became his catchall term for these movements, which he saw as prone to extremism, conspiracy-mongering and anti-intellectualism." Hofstadter said that his 'own interest has been drawn to this side of Populism and Progressivism -- particularly of Populism -- which seems very strongly to foreshadow some aspects of the chancy pseudo-conservatism of our times.' "

"Farmers were being inmiserated by an  economy stacked against them by the ultrawealthy. The gold standard (supported by the bipartisan political elite) ensured decades of deflation after the Civil War, which meant framers were going deeper into debt, no matter what they did -- a situation exasperated by the corporate consolidation of key industries like the railroads." "After all, Goldwater libertarians were merely the latest veriation on the property-owing individualism that Hofstadter himself had shown was the consensus for the vast majority of American history."

"The Red Scare was not a product of the extreme Right, but instead was [installed] by Wilson's liberal administration. The apparatus of McCarthyism -- the Smith Act, the House Un-American Activities Committee, the loyalty oaths -- was created under Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. J. Edgar Hoover was far more responsible for red-hunting than McCarthy, and enjoyed the support of every president from Coolidge to Nixon."

Jeet Heer adds: "From the three-fifths compromise in the Constitution to the Missouri Compromise of 1820, from the Kansas-Nebraska Act to the Compromise of 1877, which ended Reconstruction, the most important accommodations in American consensus-making all ended up hurting Black Americans."

#Bryce Covert, "The Visible Hand," The Nation, December 14-21. 2020. - "Once you put on your 'monopoly decoder ring,' says David Dayen, who writes in his new book, 'Monopolized Life in the Age of Corporate Power,' you start to see how this power influences every part of our lives." "As Dayen shows, monopolies make it harder for workers to wield power when there are fewer employers to choose from. This makes the economy less dynamic, and by amassing so many resources, they are able to amass the power to protect those resources. Monopolies are ever a threat to our very democracy, drowning out the  voices of the people."

"As Dayen notes, four hog firms control two-thirds of today's market." "More than 240,000 US homes are now in the hands of investors, mostly private equity firms. Because they own so many properties, these companies can jack up rents and fees, while slow-walking upkeep and repairs."

#Ed Mytoales, "Privatizing Puerto Rico," The Nation, December 14-21, 2020. - "Figieroa Jaronillo's message -- keep  public goods public and give Puerto Rico a fair chance to right its economy without punishing austerity -- is a popular one on the island, but it hasn't received the same coverage as the endless parade of government scandals, and this year's fraught gubernatorial contest."

"Hundreds of schools have closed, government workers' pensions are threatened with cuts, municipalities are being defunded, and the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) is slated to be fully privatized as part of the solution to its $9 billion debt." "According to a study which used increases in PREPA's 2019 restructure agreement as a guideline for LUMA pricing [LUMA is a consortium between Houston-based Quanto Services, and Canadian-based ATCO].  "The average household in the bottom 20% of income distribution, will pay, after the [agreement] increase, an average of $991.25 per year in electrical charges -- a hefty bill, given that the island's median annual income is only $20,166, much lower than that of any other state."

"The privatization of Puerto Rico's utility has been at the  heart of the FOMB's agenda [FOMA is the Financial Oversight and Management Board]..."

ADDENDUM:

*The entire budget of the National Archives is about the cost of  a single C-17 military transport plane.