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**OCTOBER 6, 2023**
On the Prospect website
* Lee Harris: Metal from seawater?
* Lily Geismer: Clinton's fabulous failure
* Jarod Facundo: No appreciation for rural letter carriers
Kuttner on TAP
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**** Friday Roundup
Several items to contemplate over the holiday weekend
Milley for President? Wouldn't it be sweet if Gen. Mark Milley, the
outgoing Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, decided to enter Republican
primaries? At his farewell ceremony, Milley said
, "We don't take an
oath to a king, or a queen, or to a tyrant or dictator, and we don't
take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We don't take an oath to an
individual. We take an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath to
the idea that is America, and we're willing to die to protect it."
Trump responded by suggesting that Milley deserved execution
.
Seriously? Might Milley want to get even, the way we do it in
democracies? Having the decorated Milley in the Republican field, win or
lose, would shame the other candidates who wrap themselves in the flag
but dishonor the Constitution. How do you run against a four-star
general who protected America from Trump's most dangerous delusions?
Milley would probably lose the nomination to Trump, given the MAGA base;
but he'd humiliate and weaken Trump along the way. A Milley candidacy
is a long shot, but then so was General Eisenhower's run in 1952.
Is Dean Phillips Serious? Last week, on the other side of the aisle, the
Minnesota congressman went even further than in his previous statements
that he is considering entering Democratic primaries, not because he
wants to be president but to demonstrate Biden's vulnerability and
thus to coax first-tier challengers into the race. ("The country is
begging for alternatives. Whether that's me, whether it's somebody
else, time will tell
.")
Phillips's reward was that he had to resign from a leadership position
as co-chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications
Committee-which now frees him to be even more explicit in pursuing his
idea.
Is this crazy? It depends on how much you think Biden will be a drag on
the ticket and his own re-election chances. But Phillips is saying out
loud what lots of other Democrats are whispering.
Another Victory Lap for Warren? Those who listened to the oral arguments
before the Supreme Court in the case challenging the funding mechanism
of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau came away thinking that most
of the justices weren't buying it, including at least two of Trump's
appointees. Here's the analysis of the
**Prospect**'s David Dayen
.
As a unit of the Federal Reserve, which has plenty of its own money, the
CFPB doesn't need direct appropriations from Congress. Several other
federal agencies, going back to the customs offices of the early
republic, operated on their own revenues without direct appropriations.
The CFPB and its funding mechanism were the brainchild of Elizabeth
Warren, who was able to create the bureau as part of the Dodd-Frank Act.
With its independence and resolute director in Rohit Chopra, the CFPB is
the most effective of consumer agencies, and has the financial industry
spitting mad. Let's not count chickens yet, but indications are that
the republic can be grateful to Warren once again.
Just What We Need. Our errant
**Prospect** alum Matt Yglesias is promoting the idea of a bipartisan
"fiscal commission
" that
would agree on a mechanical formula to reduce the deficit. Where to
begin ...? Didn't the Bowles-Simpson Commission and its stepchild, the
sequester, do damage enough? Would any bipartisan group agree to raise
taxes on the rich, the only reasonable way of cutting the deficit, or
would the lowest common denominator as usual be cutting social spending?
The rising debt is the subject of much conservative commentary, but the
high interest rates are entirely the result of bad Federal Reserve
policy, not the federal debt.
Is this really a moment to think that bipartisanship could accomplish
anything worth having on the taxing-and-spending front? Was Yglesias
perhaps on Jupiter during the ongoing debacle over keeping government
functioning at all?
~ ROBERT KUTTNER
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Metal From Seawater
A startup aims to restore American magnesium production. BY LEE HARRIS
Rural Letter Carriers Receive New Route Changes
Some saw gains. Others saw further cuts. But the rural letter carriers
are still frustrated by the lack of transparency over the data creating
new routes. BY JAROD FACUNDO
It's the Global Economy, Stupid
A new book on the Clinton presidency reveals how it abandoned a
progressive vision for a finance-led agenda for economics and
geopolitics. BY LILY GEISMER
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