Can Anything Be Done to Assuage Rural Rage?

[Daily Kos Morning Roundup]( A morning roundup of worthy pundit and news reads, brought to you by Daily Kos. [Click here to read the full web version.]( - [Can Anything Be Done to Assuage Rural Rage?]( Can Anything Be Done to Assuage Rural Rage? Paul Krugman / NY Times Ironically, however, the policy agenda of the party most rural voters support would make things even worse, slashing the safety-net programs these voters depend on. And Democrats shouldn’t be afraid to point this out. But can they also have a positive agenda for rural renewal? [As The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent recently pointed out](, the infrastructure spending bills enacted under President Biden, while primarily intended to address climate change, will also create large numbers of blue-collar jobs in rural areas and small cities. They are, in practice, a form of the “place-based industrial policy” some economists have urged to fight America’s growing geographic disparities. Will they work? The economic forces that have been hollowing out rural America are deep and not easily countered. But it’s certainly worth trying. - [Bad news: Daily Kos revenue is down, and we might not be able to do all we do. Good news: You are a big part of the solution, and small donors have never let us down. Donate $5 TODAY.]( - [The Specter of 2016](: The Specter of 2016, Timothy Snyder / Substack McGonigal, Trump, and the Truth about America We are on the edge of a spy scandal with major implications for how we understand the Trump administration, our national security, and ourselves. (...) The reporting on this so far seems to miss the larger implications. One of them is that Trump’s historical position looks far cloudier. In 2016, Trump's campaign manager (Manafort) was a former employee of a Russian oligarch (Deripaska), and owed money to that same Russian oligarch. And the FBI special agent (McGonigal) who was charged with investigating the Trump campaign's Russian connections then went to work (according to the indictment) for that very same Russian oligarch (Deripaska). This is obviously very bad for Trump personally. But it is also very bad for FBI New York, for the FBI generally, and for the United States of America. Another is that we must revisit the Russian influence operation on Trump’s behalf in 2016, and the strangely weak American response. Moscow’s goal was to move minds and institutions such that Hillary Clinton would lose and Donald Trump would win. We might like to think that any FBI special agent would resist, oppose, or at least be immune to such an operation. Now we are reliably informed that a trusted FBI actor, one who was responsible for dealing with just this sort of operation, was corrupt. And again, the issue is not just the particular person. If someone as important as McGonigal could take money from foreigners while on the job at FBI New York, and then go to work for a sanctioned Russian oligarch he was once investigating, what is at stake, at a bare minimum, is the culture of the FBI's New York office. The larger issue is the health of our national discussions of politics and the integrity of our election process. - [A Pitched Battle on Corporate Power]( A Pitched Battle on Corporate Power, David Dayen / TAP Biden’s expansive executive order seeks to restore competition in the economy. It’s been a long, slow road to get the whole government on board—but there are some formidable gains. Flanked by Cabinet officials and agency heads, Biden [condemned]( Robert Bork’s pro-corporate legal revolution in the 1980s, which destroyed antitrust, leading to concentrated markets, raised prices, suppressed wages, stifled innovation, weakened growth, and robbing citizens of the liberty to pursue their talents. Competition policy, Biden said, “is how we ensure that our economy isn’t about people working for capitalism; it’s about capitalism working for people.” The executive order outlines a whopping 72 different actions, but with a coherent objective. It seeks to revert government’s role back to that of the Progressive and New Deal eras. Breaking up monopolies was a priority then, complemented by numerous other initiatives—smarter military procurement, common-carrier requirements, banking regulations, public options—that centered competition as a counterweight to the industrial leviathan. - ['There Is a Real Sense That the Apocalypse Is Coming']( ‘There Is a Real Sense That the Apocalypse Is Coming,’ Ian Ward / Politico A former evangelical tracks the rise of white Christian nationalism — and looks ahead to where the movement goes next. Premised on the belief that America is a white Christian nation whose laws and culture should reflect its biblical heritage, Christian nationalism has attracted fresh scrutiny in recent months thanks to endorsements from prominent Republicans like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and failed Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano. But what’s been missing from the broader conversation about the movement, Onishi argues in his new book, [Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism — and What Comes Next](, is a nuanced sense of how contemporary strains of white Christian nationalism relate to earlier iterations of conservative Christian politics. - [The Putin Super Power Myth](: The Putin Super Power Myth, Julia Ioffe / Puck: Putin destroyed in a year an energy business that took three generations to build. As it turns out, Russia needed Europe far more than Europe needed Russia. When the policy was first floated, late last spring, it seemed internally contradictory: why would a country cooperate with a scheme like this, producing oil at prices that were designed to keep it from profiting off of what is under its soil? Moreover, how would such a price cap even be enforced? And who would enforce it? And what would the price cap be? Well, after much negotiation and haggling—the price cap was set at $60 per barrel for Russia’s unique Urals crude—the measure was rolled out on December 5. The mechanism was that companies from G7 or E.U. countries (plus Australia) were forbidden from providing services—like insurance, say, or marketing, or logistics—to any entity selling Russian crude or oil from a Russian tanker, or from one leaving a Russian port, unless they abide by the price cap. Vladimir Putin immediately slammed the measure, saying that Russia would never sell to any country or company that cooperated. But given the sheer economic magnitude of the G7 plus the E.U., and the vagueness of the punishment, as well as falling energy prices this winter, the price cap has so far been successful, largely to everyone’s surprise. “It’s worked much better than would have been expected,” Daniel Yergin, the world’s preeminent expert on Russian oil and author of The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations, told me. “What was originally a topic for an economics graduate seminar has turned into a rather clever piece of statecraft.” - [How Marjorie Taylor Greene Became Kevin McCarthy’s Best Friend](: How Marjorie Taylor Greene Became Kevin McCarthy’s Best Friend, Tim Miller / The Bulwark Not that long ago, the new speaker’s bosom buddy was ranting online about crazy, offensive conspiracy theories. Tim Miller: From QAnon crazy to Queen of the GOP, the rise of Marjorie Taylor Greene. Ben Stone (Seth Rogen in Knocked Up): How the f*** did this happen? Miller: This is “Not My Party,” brought to you by The Bulwark. This week, the New York Times reported on the unlikely political marriage of the ultimate establishment insider, Kevin McCarthy, and the most bombastic outsider the GOP has produced since He Who Shall Not Be Named, Marge Taylor Greene. Rachel Goldberg (Shiri Appleby on UnREAL): That woman’s crazy. Miller: This alliance paid dividends as MTG used her MAGA street cred to help Kevin get his coveted speakership. And now he’s poised to pay her back. Stan Smith (from American Dad): I won. I won! Peter Griffin (from Family Guy): But at what cost? ICYMI: Major stories from the past week you won't want to miss: - [We now know how Diamond of 'Diamond & Silk' died]( - [‘I’m sorry’: March for Life attendee is stumped into silence by one question about the Bible]( - [McCarthy turns into snarling jackass over questions about Santos. More of that, please!]( Want even more Daily Kos? 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