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In an out-of-character move, the New York senator dropped the f-bomb a handful of times during a speech at the Personal Democracy Forum at New York University, which explores technology's impact on politics, government and society.

Speaking about President Donald Trump's accomplishments in the White House, Gillibrand said, "Has he kept his promises? No. F--- no."

When asked if Gillibrand considered it acceptable to use such language publicly, a spokesperson for her office said: "I think it's appropriate for a senator to be exactly who they are -- Kirsten is going to continue to be exactly who she is and always has been."

With children on stage behind him, Perez told an audience in Las Vegas in April that Trump "doesn't give a shit about health care."

Perez, President Barack Obama's former labor secretary, made similar comments earlier this year.

"They call it a skinny budget, I call it a shitty budget," Perez said in Portland, Maine.

The swearing follows a campaign in which Trump, known for his blunt talk and his love of bashing political correctness, made swearing a part of his stump speech.

Trump regularly said he would "bomb the shit out of ISIS," and labeled an instance of his opponents' cooperating as "political bullshit."

CORRECTION: This story was updated to clarify that the Personal Democracy Forum took place at New York University.

Originally posted here:
Kirsten Gillibrand drops f-bomb during speech on democracy - CNN International

For months, President Trump has been calling the Russia investigation fake news. He has insisted that China or some other country could have been behind the hack of Democratic Party organizations computers and the effort to meddle in our elections. In his eyes, its all a plot to undermine him, and he is vindicated when it was confirmed that at the time former FBI director James B. Comey left the FBI, there was no investigation with his name on it.

Contrast that with this line of questioning from Thursdays hearing:

SEN. RICHARD BURR (R-N.C.): Do you have any doubt that Russia attempted to interfere in the 2016 elections?

COMEY: None.

BURR: Do you have any doubt that the Russian government was behind the intrusions in the D triple-C systems [the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee] and the subsequent leaks of that information?

COMEY: No, no doubt.

BURR: Do you have any doubt the Russian government was behind the cyber intrusion in the state voter files?

COMEY: No.

BURR: Are you confident that no votes cast in the 2016 presidential election were altered?

COMEY: Im confident. When I left as director, I had seen no indication of that whatsoever.

In that same vein, Comey explained how definitive was the information:

SEN. MARTIN HEINRICH (D-N.M.): The president has repeatedly talked about the Russian investigation into the U.S. or Russias involvement in the U.S. election cycle as a hoax and fake news. Can you talk a little bit about what you saw as FBI director and, obviously, only the parts that you can share in this setting that demonstrate how serious this action actually was and why there was an investigation in the first place?

COMEY: Yes, sir. There should be no fuzz on this whatsoever. The Russians interfered in our election during the 2016 cycle. They did it with purpose. They did it with sophistication. They did it with overwhelming technical efforts. It was an active measures campaign driven from the top of that government. There is no fuzz on that. It is a high-confidence judgment of the entire intelligence community, and the members of this committee have seen the intelligence. Its not a close call. That happened. Thats about as unfake as you can possibly get. It is very, very serious, which is why its so refreshing to see a bipartisan focus on that. This is about America, not about a particular party.

HEINRICH: That is a hostile act by the Russian government against this country?

COMEY: Yes, sir.

One simply cannot square the presidents persistent public assertions that the Russia investigation was fake news or a hoax with such a definitive assessment from the former FBI director and the rest of the intelligence community. This raises the question as to why Trump kept suggesting that the Russians couldnt be fingered.

Perhaps Trump knew that Russia was responsible (everyone in the intelligence community told him it was beyond dispute) but lied to the American people so as to convince them that he really, really won. Maybe Trump is unable to process facts or think logically, preferring rumors, conspiracy theories and the like. In other words, maybe he honestly did not understand what was going on. Then again, Trump if he was trying to remain in Russian President Vladimir Putins good graces could have simply been covering for the former KGB lieutenant colonel. Whatever the reason, he persistently told the public an obvious falsehood, pretending that there had been no assault on American democracy. He needs to explain this disparity.

It is also possible that Trump and the intelligence community were talking past one another. Trump thinks of the Russia investigation as a cloud over him. If the story was that Trump personally colluded with Russia, then it had to be fake news. That, after all, was the reason he was frantic to have Comey clear his name. This truly is a case in which Trump considered the Russia investigation to be only about him.

The intelligence community and Comey, specifically, were of course definitive about an attack on American democracy. Comey declared:

The reason this is such a big deal. We have this big messy wonderful country where we fight with each other all the time. But nobody tells us what to think, what to fight about, what to vote for except other Americans. And thats wonderful and often painful. But were talking about a foreign government that using technical intrusion, lots of other methods tried to shape the way we think, we vote, we act. That is a big deal. And people need to recognize it. Its not about Republicans or Democrats. Theyre coming after America, which I hope we all love equally. They want to undermine our credibility in the face the world. They think that this great experiment of ours is a threat to them. So theyre going to try to run it down and dirty it up as much as possible. Thats what this is about and they will be back. Because we remain as difficult as we can be with each other, we remain that shining city on the hill. And they dont like it.

That entire concept the threat to democracy, the danger to our system of government, the violation of American self-government by a hostile power seems to mean nothing to Trump. Its a non-issue. What more evidence do we need that Trump cannot fulfill his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States? Trumps psyche is geared to preserve, protect and defend Trump. A president who could care less about an attack on American sovereignty is by definition incapable of performing the most fundamental part of his job: acting as commander in chief.

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Trump feels 'vindicated,' but what about the assault on our democracy? - Washington Post (blog)

In this social media age, when every minutia of our lives can be voted thumbs up or down, the notion of there being too much democracy offends modern sensibilities. So conditioned are we to exalt individual choice that anyone who suggests certain policy decisions are best left to elected representatives (or gasp experts) risks the accusation of being a dread elitist.

But Britains election last week reminds us that there is, in fact, such a thing as too much democracy.

That some things should not be put up to popular vote membership in the European Union, for instance is a lesson youd think theyd have learned in Britain. The tussle over Brexit has led to political and economic instability for months. And it will now be prolonged by the surprising results of Thursdays snap general election, which wiped out Prime Minister Theresa Mays Conservative Party majority and resulted in a hung Parliament.

In 2013, when Mays predecessor, David Cameron, announced a national referendum on Britains EU membership, he hoped to settle a long-running intra-party feud over Europe. But the decision to put it up to a plebiscite was completely arbitrary. Of all issues, surely a countrys involvement in a multinational institution a 40-year relationship comprising many complex arrangements that affect everything from fisheries to security cooperation should not be determined by something so reductionist as a stay-or-go popular vote. Economists, trade experts, and security officials not to mention parliamentarians (whose job it is to understand such matters more deeply than those who elect them) all agreed that leaving the EU carried few discernible benefits, yet entailed great risks.

No matter. This country has had enough of experts, one pro-Leave politician infamously said on the eve of Brexits success.

The people that expression beloved of Third World tyrants and increasingly adopted by leaders in advanced industrial democracies got their say. The vote was purely advisory; Parliament could have ignored the result. When Britains High Court ruled that the government required parliamentary assent for a measure initiating Brexit, the tabloid Daily Mail excoriated the judges with a front-page headline screaming, ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE.

Its not just the nationalist right that has a fetish for the masses. Until 2015, the Labor Party had chosen its leaders through an electoral college that gave equal weight to the votes of elected MPs, union members, and dues-paying party members. All that changed when the party decided to let anyone register and vote online for a one-time, 3-pound fee. In swarmed over 100,000 leftist activists, many of them members of fringe parties historically opposed to Labor. They in turn propelled the hard-left backbencher Jeremy Corbyn to power.

Beneath Corbyns avuncular exterior lies an extremist, one who, from the very beginning of his political career, has expressed alarming sympathy for his countrys enemies, from the fascist Argentinian junta to the Irish Republican Army to Vladimir Putins Russia. That this man today has even a chance of becoming prime minister of the worlds fifth largest military power is clearly traceable to two instances of democratic overzealousness: the opening of the Labor leadership race to every Tom, Dick and Harry, as well as Mays unnecessary and opportunistic decision to call a snap election. Like Camerons Brexit referendum, which was disguised as serving the national interest even though its origins lay in partisan politics, Mays desire for a mandate from the people will have chaotic consequences.

The United States, and California especially, is no stranger to this plebiscitary obsession. Golden Staters waste a great deal of time and money voting on everything from plastic bags to requiring condoms on porn sets. Such democratic mania creates democratic exhaustion, discouraging citizens from participating in the elections that truly matter. In the recent special congressional election to replace Xavier Becerra, for instance, just over 10% of registered voters turned out.

This is a shame, because we live in a representative democracy, not a pure one. In that vein, its worth revisiting the words of Edmund Burke, the British MP whose elegantly brief Speech to the Electors of Bristol in 1774 remains the finest elucidation of republican government ever written. While it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents, Burke ultimately believed that Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays you instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

Amidst the global populist insurgency, our duly elected representatives should depend more upon their own judgment and worry less about the uninformed opinion of the masses.

James Kirchick is author of The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues and the Coming Dark Age. He is filling in for Doyle McManus.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook

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The British election is a reminder of the perils of too much democracy - Los Angeles Times

Some animals are more equal than others.

Remorselessly attacking the media, President Donald Trump advances a worldwide culture of impunity. Demagogues and despots flourish in his long shadow: Elected ones, presidents Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Vladimir Putin of Russia, as well as the house of Saud, use the opportunity to expand their power and crush their critics. But nowhere is the ongoing global assault on democratic norms as multi-pronged, devastating and poorly scrutinized as in India, ruled by a Hindu supremacist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

In recent months, there have been a series of mob attacks on people suspected of involvement in the beef trade, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi turned into a volatile electoral issue in 2014. Last week, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Indias main investigative agency, raided homes and offices of the founders of NDTV, the only major TV station to remain critical of Modis government.

The ostensible cause was a criminal complaint about an unpaid bank loan, filed three days before the raid by an individual (NDTV claims that it has paid back the loan). The real reason seems to be an on-air confrontation between a NDTV anchor and the BJP national spokesperson that ended with the latters expulsion.

Intimidation of the media by the government is nothing new in India. But the flimsiness of the CBIs case against NDTV, and the swift and draconian nature of its response, point to an emboldened mood in Modis government; they reveal, too, some ingeniously hybrid methods of repression that Erdogan and Putin can only envy.

For Modis government has managed to stoke a mass hysteria against various "anti-nationals" while also deploying the governments huge machinery to facilitate and legitimate violent acts. The chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Indias most populous state, a hardline priest appointed by Modi, personally unleashed the "Anti-Romeo" squads, vigilante groups that punish couples guilty of Western-style public displays of affection. The BJPs ministers have been quick to defend the recent mob assaults on suspected beef traders and beefeaters and to blame their victims.

Far from condemning such officially sponsored mayhem, and affirming the rule of law, anchors on news television channels help amplify mob fury. The synergy between a jingoistic media and the governments institutions was most recently on display in the case of an Indian army major in Kashmir who had tied a civilian to the bonnet of a jeep and then paraded him through several villages for nearly five hours.

Indias hyper-nationalist new army chief, promoted above his seniors by Modi, bestowed a certificate of recommendation upon the major, and hailed his method as a necessary "innovation" in Indias war with vicious anti-nationals in Kashmir. The major himself, exonerated by an army inquiry, appeared on a private television channel to defend his blatant violation of many international norms. His act then was endorsed by talking heads in television studios and the BJPs armies of internet trolls.

The machinery of rage and outrage went into overdrive when Twitter evidently forced a BJP member of parliament to delete a tweet demanding that the novelist Arundhati Roy, a longstanding critic of Hindu chauvinism, be tied to the bonnet of a jeep. Most recently, the respected Indian academic Partha Chatterjee was hounded on television for comparing the Indian armys use of human shields in Kashmir to the brutal methods of British colonialists in India.

Modi himself assumes a regal indifference as civil society in India is steadily destroyed by his allies and supporters.He certainly doesnt have to worry much about international disapproval, or even scrutiny. The world seems too distracted by Trumps antics, and the extreme volatility they inject into political and economic realms on several continents.

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It is also true that, no matter how horrifying the news from India is, the country remains for many commentators in the West a mostly cuddly democracy and "rising" economic power. A recent article in the New York Review of Books was not untypical in this regard. "In NarendraModi, India now has dynamic leadership for the first time in many years," wrote Jessica T. Mathews, the former president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. After nodding briefly to criticism of Modi for restricting civil liberties, Mathews added, offering no evidence whatsoever, that "Modi may be consolidating enough political strength to force through long-needed reforms in New Delhi."

For those who breathe the toxic atmosphere of India today, such assessments spring from a cloud cuckoo-land of fantasy. For the rapid poisoning of Indias public culture renders the question of economic reform moot. The contemporary worlds greatest experiment in democracy is dying. It is a measure of the sad and crazy times we live in that we cannot even see this tragedy.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story: Pankaj Mishra at pmishra24@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Gibney at jgibney5@bloomberg.net

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India's Illiberal Democracy - Bloomberg - Bloomberg

Background: Frauke Petry (left), co-chair of Germany's Alternative for Germany party, and Marine Le Pen (right), of France's National Front. | wbur.org; inset: President Trump. | Alex Brandon/AP

PARIS Widening income inequality, in the U.S. and in other developed nations, threatens democracy, just as it did in the 1930s, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says.

Trumka issued that warning in early June at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) meeting in Paris. The OECD, which represents the most-developed nations in the world, invited outside experts to discuss the state of the world economy.

The AFL-CIO leader tied it to the state of world democracy.

Please, please understand, the alternative to addressing wage stagnation and the status of working people in the global economy is not more of the same elite-dominated globalization. The alternative is an escalating crisis where the false promises of authoritarianism and racism threaten to overwhelm the democratic ideal, he said.

Trumka did not name names of authoritarians on the rise, but political scientists cite French presidential candidate Marine LePen, right wing political parties in Europe, and Russian President Vladimir Putin as examples. Some cite authoritarian tendencies in U.S. President Donald Trump. The real problem, Trumka said, is the systems tilt against workers.

Globalization has meant rising inequality, whose cause turns out to be the decline in workers share of income and wages not keeping up with productivity, he explained.

That decline is due to the decline in workers bargaining power as a result of globalization being managed in ways that pit workers against each other. Underneath all of this is the decline of the percentage of workers belonging to unions and covered by collective bargainingThis is not my explanation. This is what the OECD says in its economic outlook.

And since the yawning gap between the rich and the rest of us is worldwide, it demands worldwide policy solutions to the root causes of this low (income) growth. Added Trumka: Stop trying to marginalize the crisis of low wages and stagnant growth as merely regional, or treat it as if it were somehow inevitable rather than being the product of policy choices.

But OECD and its member nations havent changed their policies, he chided. They still make excuses for the income gap. And OECD still issues recommendations to weaken collective bargaining, lower the minimum wage and weaken unemployment insurance exactly the policies that produced the serious economic and political crisis we now face. This schizophrenia really must stop if we are to solve it.

If the OECD nations, including the U.S., dont reverse those policies, democracy is endangered because its economic underpinning is endangered, he warned.

Anti-democratic forces are able to gain ground fundamentally because ordinary people believe democracy has come to mean inequality, poverty, and rising economic insecurity. A recent Harvard University public opinion study found only 30 percent of (U.S.) people born since 1980 think democracy is necessary for a good society, and 24 percent think democracy is harmful.

This is precisely why we must not allow the policy debate to become one between neoliberals and authoritarians. We must have a humane economic vision AND a human political vision. That requires rebuilding the collective power of working people, both in the workplace and in politics, Trumka said.

In a world of global corporations and big data, of Nissan and Uber, collective power is the only form of empowerment that actually exists for ordinary people.

The OECD ministers, meeting in Paris, agreed with Trumka on the widening gap between the rich and the rest. But they said globalization and technological change cause it.

They also didnt mention its threat to democracy or to workers. And they didnt endorse worker power through unionization or any other way as part of their package of solutions.

Instead, they said OECD nations, including the U.S., should enact policies that support skills, innovation, long-term investment and inclusive growth.

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Richard Trumka: Widening income inequality threatens democracy worldwide - People's World