Daily Bread for 9.4.17

Good morning.

Labor Day in Whitewater will bring a high of seventy-seven, with a one-third chance of isolated thunderstorms. Sunrise is 6:23 AM and sunset 7:22 PM, for 12h 58m 57s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 96.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred ninety-ninth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1957, Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus called out the National Guard to prevent nine black students from entering Central High School in Little Rock.

Recommended for reading in full —

John Wagner observes that In action after action, Trump appeals primarily to his dwindling base:

President Trump pardoned a tough-on-immigration Arizona sheriff accused of racial profiling. He threatened a government shutdown if Congress won’t deliver border wall funding. He banned transgender people from serving in the military. And he is expected to end a program that shields from deportation young undocumented immigrants who consider the United States home.

These and other moves — all since Trump’s widely repudiated remarks about the hate-fueled violence in Charlottesville less than a month ago — are being heartily cheered by many of his core supporters. But collectively, they have helped cement an image of a president, seven months into his term, who is playing only to his political base.

Trump’s job-approval numbers remain mired in the 30s in most polls, and several new findings last week gave Republicans interested in expanding the party’s appeal fresh reason to worry. A Fox News survey, for example, found that majorities of voters think that Trump is “tearing the country apart” and does not respect racial minorities….

(Trump is playing to his base, and what’s left of that lumpen band is the very worst among us: ignorant, bigoted, xenophobic, excuse-making, unproductive. Trump’s glass now contains only the dregs.)

Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno writes that Trump Sells Snake Oil on Opioids:

….In a number of remarks, President Trump has stressed his priorities: ramping up federal drug prosecutions, getting “very, very tough” on the southern border and targeting the “pretty tough hombres” he says are responsible for the opioid crisis. His approach is all about doubling down on the most extreme policies of the failed war on drugs. And it’s a craven betrayal of those people in New Hampshire, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, and other states hard hit by opioid overdoses, where Trump’s preferred policies will do nothing to stem the wave of deaths he claims are his priority.

The reality is that the war on drugs — the billions of dollars that have been poured into the enforcement of laws criminalizing drug use, production, and distribution since the 1970s — has never actually prevented drug abuse. Drug use fluctuates but has largely remained steady over the decades. And far from preventing violence, the drug war has driven up drug profits, providing an endless source of wealth for international organized crime.

What the war on drugs has done very effectively is devastate black and Latino communities. Across the country, it has served as the justification for heavier policing of black neighborhoods in particular, even though black and white people use drugs at similar rates. Millions have been arrested, torn from their families, imprisoned, saddled with criminal records, deported, and even killed in the name of drug prohibition….

Nafeesa Syeed reports that Pro-Russian Bots Sharpen Online Attacks for 2018 U.S. Vote:

….“They haven’t stood still since 2016,” said Ben Nimmo, a senior fellow in information defense at the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council in Washington, which tracked the activity. “People have woken up to the idea that bots equal influence and lots of people will be wanting to be influencing the midterms.”

While special counsel and former FBI chief Robert Mueller keeps investigating the 2016 race, Nimmo’s work is among a number of initiatives cropping up at think tanks, startups, and even the Pentagon seeking to grasp how bots and influence operations are rapidly evolving. Blamed for steering political debate last year, bots used for Russian propaganda and other causes are only becoming more emboldened, researchers say.

They’re preparing “and sowing seeds of discord” and “potentially laying the groundwork for what they’re going to do in 2018 or 2020,” said Laura Rosenberger, senior fellow and director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund….

Lawrence Summers contends that It’s time to balance the power between workers and employers:

….What can be done? This surely is not the moment for lawmakers to further strengthen the hand of large employers over their employees. Sooner or later — and preferably sooner — labor-law reform should be back on the national agenda, especially to punish employers who engage in firing organizers. We should also encourage union efforts to organize people in nontraditional ways, even when they do not involve formal collective bargaining. And policymakers should support institutions such as employee stock ownership plans, where workers have a chance to share in profits and in corporate governance.

In an era when the most valuable companies are the Apples and the Amazons rather than the General Motors and the General Electrics, the role of unions cannot go back to being what it was. But on this Labor Day, any leader concerned with the American middle class needs to consider that the basic function of unions, balancing the power of employers and employees, is as important to our economy as it has ever been….

Great Big Story shows How the Japanese Craft the World’s Hardest Food: