The Commentariat -- July 17, 2015
Internal links removed.
Afternoon Update:
Richard Fausset, et al., of the New York Times: "The 24-year-old gunman who killed four Marines in an attack on two military sites here traveled to Jordan last year for about seven months, a senior intelligence official said Friday, one of several trips to the country in recent years. The official said that investigators were combing through the computer, cellphone and social media contacts of the gunman, identified as Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez, to determine whether he was in touch with any extremist groups in Jordan before or during this trip."
Stephanie Clifford of the New York Times: "Michael G. Grimm, a former New York congressman who resigned from office after pleading guilty to tax fraud, was given an eight-month sentence on Friday. A federal investigation that initially focused on Mr. Grimm's campaign fund-raising turned into a 20-count indictment related to his running of a restaurant in Manhattan, Healthalicious. Prosecutors said he underreported wages and revenue to the government and filed false tax documents as a result.... [Now for a hilarious side-note:] He is now working as a consultant to start-up businesses." ...
... CW: What's your advice to start-ups, Mikey? To cut costs, pay employees under the table. AND If the building inspector gives you grief, tell him you want to show him something on the roof, then threaten to toss him off.
If we keep taking steps toward a more perfect union, and close the gaps between who we are and who we want to be, America will move forward. -- Barack Obama, this week
** It's the perfect response to the Confederate flag wavers. -- Dana Milbank
*****
Peter Baker of the New York Times: President Obama "came to the El Reno Federal Correctional Institution [in Oklahoma] on Thursday to get a firsthand look at what he is focused on. Accompanied by aides, correctional officials and a phalanx of Secret Service agents, he crossed through multiple layers of metal gates and fences topped by concertina wire to tour the prison and talk with some of the nonviolent drug offenders he says should not be serving such long sentences.... Where other presidents worked to make life harder for criminals, Mr. Obama wants to make their conditions better":
CW: Matt Bai is kind of a jerk, but I think he's right to suggest that President Obama has -- since the last election -- transitioned from the 20th century to the 21st. This of course is what his opponents can't stand about him, caught as they are in a mist of nostalgia for a mythological past when everything was wonderful (and everybody knew her place).
Julie Davis of the New York Times: "More than 100 former American ambassadors wrote to President Obama on Thursday praising the nuclear deal reached with Iran this week as a 'landmark agreement' that could be effective in halting Tehran's development of a nuclear weapon, and urging Congress to support it. 'If properly implemented, this comprehensive and rigorously negotiated agreement can be an effective instrument in arresting Iran's nuclear program and preventing the spread of nuclear weapons in the volatile and vitally important region of the Middle East,' said the letter, whose signers include diplomats named by presidents of both political parties." Includes copy of the letter.
Suzanne Goldenberg of the Guardian: "... Al Gore has made a rare criticism of Barack Obama as Royal Dutch Shell prepares to drill an exploratory well in the Arctic Ocean, denouncing the venture as 'insane' and calling for a ban on all oil and gas activity in the polar region."
** Chris Geidner of BuzzFeed: "The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has ruled that existing civil rights law bars sexual orientation-based employment discrimination a groundbreaking decision to advance legal protections for gay, lesbian, and bisexual workers.... The ruling -- approved by a 3-2 vote of the five-person commission -- applies to federal employees' claims directly, but it also applies to the entire EEOC, which includes its offices across the nation that take and investigate claims of discrimination in private employment."
... CW: The ruling seems so obvious to me that I wondered how anyone could think otherwise. ...
... Well, here's how. Dale Carpenter of the Washington Post: "The EEOC’s view on sexual orientation, however, runs counter to the rulings of several circuit courts. These courts have reasoned that 'sexual orientation' is not among the list of prohibited bases for employment action, that Congress did not intend to eliminate anti-gay discrimination when it enacted Title VII, and that Congress has repeatedly refused to add 'sexual orientation' to employment protections. The EEOC calls these earlier circuit court decisions 'dated,' and some of them have been undermined by subsequent precedents in the same circuits recognizing that gender stereotyping, including gender stereotypes evidenced by anti-gay comments, is sex discrimination.... The EEOC's views on the scope of Title VII are considered persuasive, but not binding, authority on the courts."
Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times: "For this first time in 14 years, the Senate on Thursday approved a revised version of No Child Left Behind, the signature Bush-era education law that ushered in an era of broadly reviled high-stakes standardized testing. But the passage of the bill on an 81-17 vote, coming just a week after the House narrowly passed its own version, sets up a showdown between the two chambers, both controlled by Republicans, and leaves the fate of a final measure in doubt." ...
... Strange Bedfellows. Libby Nelson of Vox: "Hidden behind Thursday's overwhelmingly bipartisan Senate vote to get rid of No Child Left Behind is one of the strangest alliances in politics: Teachers unions have joined hands with Republicans. That's because they share two goals. They both want to get rid of the testing and accountability regimen of No Child Left Behind, and they want to cut back on Education Secretary Arne Duncan's influence."
Samar Khurshid of Roll Call: "Rep. Tim Murphy [R-Pa.], a member of the House Pro-Life Caucus and chairman of the Energy and Commerce subcommittee looking into the video [of a Planned Parenthood doctor talking to sting operators about fetal tissue & organ transfers to research organizations], said at a Wednesday news conference he'd seen the clip weeks before. Asked afterward why he and others waited until this week to take action, Murphy struggled for an answer before abruptly ending the interview with CQ Roll Call, saying he should not be quoted and remarking, 'This interview didn't happen.'... Another Pro-Life Caucus and Judiciary committee member, GOP Rep. Trent Franks [R] of Arizona, said Wednesday he had also seen the video about a month ago." Via Paul Waldman.
Jeffrey Young of the Huffington Post: "Alaska would become the latest state to sign on to a major expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act through a plan announced by Gov. Bill Walker on Thursday. Walker, a Republican-turned-independent elected in 2014 on a platform that included Medicaid expansion, had been courting the Republican-led state legislature on the issue. But after lawmakers failed to advance his proposal in their latest session, he decided to carry out the policy on his own authority, he said during a press conference at the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium headquarters in Anchorage. Absent legislative action to halt or alter the plan, the expansion will take effect Sept. 1, the governor said."
Adam Goldman, et al., of the Washington Post: "Four Marines were killed Thursday in shootings at a pair of military facilities in Tennessee by a gunman who is being investigated for possible ties to Islamist terrorist groups, U.S. law enforcement officials said." ...
... Craig Whitlock & Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post: "The gunman who targeted U.S. military service members in a late-morning shooting Thursday in Tennessee was a 24-year-old electrical engineer who had grown up in Chattanooga as part of a conservative Muslim family. Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez was born in Kuwait but moved with his family to the United States as an infant after the start of the Persian Gulf War and became a U.S. citizen, according to accounts given by friends and one of his sisters."
Paul Waldman: "... the Little Sisters [of the Poor] (and other religious organizations that have their own cases) are suing on the grounds that having to sign a letter declaring that they do not want to provide contraception coverage is itself an intolerable burden on their religious freedom.... Having to sign a letter opting out of contraception coverage is just too much to bear.... This week, the Little Sisters ... lost before a federal appeals court.... Not surprisingly, since this case is an attack on a provision of the ACA, every Republican everywhere has sided with the organizations demanding relief from their letter-signing burden. Yet at the same time that they see government's crushing hand there, they want government to put as many obstacles as possible in the way of women who need abortions." (Emphasis added.) ...
... CW: Aw, c'mon Paul. Signing a letter is a burden. Ow, my hand is cramped. Holy Mother, I can't find my glasses. We're poor, for God's sakes; forever stamps are expensive.
Annals of "Justice," Ctd. Another It-Could-Happen-to-You Edition. Dahlia Lithwick: In Charlottesville, Virginia, a "fanatical" prosecutor won the conviction of an innocent man despite overwhelming (& suppressed) evidence he committed no crime. The "man was finally freed, but that doesn't mean the system worked."
Alison Smale of the New York Times: "German lawmakers on Friday approved entering into detailed negotiations for a Greek bailout amid a simmering international debate over providing more debt relief to Athens and intensifying questions about whether Greece would be better off leaving the European common currency." ...
... Melissa Eddy of the New York Times: "... in negotiating a new deal this week to bail out Greece, Germany displayed what many Europeans saw as a harder, more selfish edge, demanding painful measures from Athens and resisting any firm commitment to granting Greece relief from its crippling debt. And that perception was fueled on Thursday when the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, suggested that Greece would get its best shot at a substantial cut in its debt only if it was willing to give up membership in the European common currency." ...
... Anthony Faiola & Stephanie Kirchner of the Washington Post: "... just like that, the image of the 'cruel German' is back. Germany -- more specifically, its chancellor, Angela Merkel -- has faced years of derision for driving a hard bargain with financially broken Greece, which has received billions in bailouts since 2010. But for both Germany and Merkel, the concessions extracted this week to open fresh rescue talks with Athens appear to have struck a global nerve. By insisting on years more of tough cuts and making other demands that critics have billed as humiliating, Berlin is wiping out decades of hard-won goodwill.... In its online edition, even Germany's own Der Spiegel magazine decried the Berlin-led demands as 'the catalogue of cruelties.'" ...
... Whaddaya mean, cruel? "Politics is hard sometimes." ...
... Update. Also, Angela Lied to Crying Child. Dylan Matthew of Vox: "Merkel, to be clear, is a liar. Germany can in fact manage more than the 400,000 people a year it let in as of 2012. It currently lets in fewer permanent migrants, as a share of its population, than do many other developed nations."
NOAA: "2014 was earth's warmest year on record. In 2014, the most essential indicators of Earth's changing climate continued to reflect trends of a warming planet, with several markers such as rising land and ocean temperature, sea levels and greenhouse gases ─ setting new records. These key findings and others can be found in the State of the Climate in 2014 report released online today by the American Meteorological Society (AMS). ...
Presidential Race
Niall Stanage of the Hill: "Bernie Sanders is making a push for support from black and Hispanic voters as he seeks to intensify his challenge to Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination." Sanders has spoken recently on a black-oriented radio program & at a La Raza meeting. "Sanders' embrace of minority concerns and sensibilities can hardly be called opportunistic. His involvement with civil rights stretches back to his youth, when he attended the 1963 March on Washington where Martin Luther King gave his most famous speech, organized financial support for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and was arrested for protesting segregation."
Paul Krugman: Hillary "Clinton's [economic] speech reflected major changes, deeply grounded in evidence, in our understanding of what determines wages. And a key implication of that new understanding is that public policy can do a lot to help workers without bringing down the wrath of the invisible hand.... There's just no evidence that raising the minimum wage costs jobs, at least when the starting point is as low as it is in modern America." ...
... Kyle Blaine of BuzzFeed: "Hillary Clinton on Thursday wouldn't commit to supporting a $15 national minimum wage but said she is working with Democrats in Congress who are determining how high it can be set. 'I support the local efforts that are going on that are making it possible for people working in certain localities to actually earn 15,' Clinton said in a response to a question from BuzzFeed News during a press availability in New Hampshire on Thursday."
** digby in Salon: "The GOP's deranged foreign-policy dream: Build a wall around America -- and then prepare for World War III." But here's a big problem: "... we still don't know if the Democrats and Hillary Clinton will have the fortitude to resist their provocations and wage their 2016 campaign based on reason instead of paranoia. This is an old fault line in postwar American politics and Democrats have traditionally had a difficult time traversing it."
Meaner than a Junkyard Dog. Paul Waldman: "... Scott Walker ... is hell-bent on making sure that anyone who gets food stamps in Wisconsin has to endure the humiliation of submitting to a drug test. First the Wisconsin legislature sent him a bill providing that the state could test food stamp recipients if it had a reasonable suspicion they were on drugs; he used his line-item veto to strike the words 'reasonable suspicion,' so the state could test any (or all) recipients it wanted. And now, because federal law doesn't actually allow drug testing for food stamp recipients, Walker is suing the federal government on the grounds that food stamps are 'welfare,' and welfare recipients can be tested. This is why Scott Walker is never going to be president of the United States.... Walker isn't trying to solve a practical problem here. He wants to test food stamp recipients as a way of expressing moral condemnation.... there is no inherent connection between drug use and food stamps.... Walker ... practically oozes malice...." ...
... Charles Pierce on Walker's state supreme court victory (see yesterday's Commentariat): "If you're keeping score at home, the same organizations that were the subject of the criminal probe gave hundreds of thousands of neatly laundered dollars to the judges who ruled that those same organizations did nothing wrong on behalf of Scott Walker because fk you, that's why. If this happened in Myanmar or Kazakhstan, we'd all be laughing at it. Instead, let's once again congratulate Justice Anthony Kennedy for his immortal observation that: "...independent expenditures do not lead to, or create the appearance of, quid pro quo corruption." ...
... Scottie's Big Day, Ctd. Kevin Draper of Deadspin: "Wisconsin Senate votes to give $250 million to billionaires.... The Wisconsin Senate voted 21-10 to approve $250 million in public financing for a new arena for the Milwaukee Bucks. The bill will now be sent to the state Assembly for approval.... Just a few days ago, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed a state budget that includes cuts of $250 million to the University of Wisconsin system, among other cuts to public education funding." CW: Scottie is the prime mover behind the big bucks for Bucks billionaires scheme. ...
... CW: I realize I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but I just want to remind readers how utterly ignorant was this shift of taxpayer dollars from higher education to a sports arena. Walker "sold" the Bucks deal as an "economic development" scheme that will require No New Taxes (because, um, bonds). Never mind that new sports facilities provide only a short-term economic boost (during the construction period) & merely shift entertainment dollars from other venues to the sports arenas. Meanwhile, an equal investment in higher education pays off for this generation of young people & for generations to come.
I have a message for my fellow Republicans and the independents who will be voting in the primary process. What Mr. Trump is offering is not conservatism, it is Trump-ism -- a toxic mix of demagoguery and nonsense. -- Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry
Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker: Sen. John McCain (R-Az.) "was particularly rankled by [Donald] Trump’s rally [in Phoenix]. 'This performance with our friend out in Phoenix is very hurtful to me,' McCain said. 'Because what he did was he fired up the crazies.' McCain, who has long supported comprehensive immigration reform and was a member of the so-called Gang of Eight that successfully pushed immigration legislation through the Senate in 2013, has been at war with the far right in Arizona for years.... McCain, who had a testy relationship with Senator Marco Rubio, another member of the Gang of Eight who is running for President, couldn't resist adding, 'Rubio backed away from it.'" ...
... "McCain Mocks Rubio for Pulling a McCain." Jonathan Chait: "Of course McCain also backed away from Rubio's immigration bill. And that's not all! In 2006, he sponsored a comprehensive immigration bill, and then when it interfered with his chance to win the Republican nomination, declared he would no longer support his own bill." ...
... digby: "The people who are angry about the border situation are ill-informed xenophobes who blame every perceived problem on someone else, usually people of color.... They are right wingers who, by the way, McCain also courted when he was running for the nomination and trying to hold on to his Senate seat. Mr Integrity isn't above a little demagoguery when it's necessary. Where does he think Trump got his ideas?
News Ledes
New York Times: "The Islamic State appears to have manufactured rudimentary chemical warfare shells and attacked Kurdish positions in Iraq and Syria with them as many as three times in recent weeks, according to field investigators, Kurdish officials and a Western ordnance disposal technician who examined the incidents and recovered one of the shells. The development, which the investigators said involved toxic industrial or agricultural chemicals repurposed as weapons, signaled a potential escalation of the group's capabilities, though it was not entirely without precedent."
Guardian: "Former Fifa vice-president Jeffrey Webb has been extradited to the United States following his arrest in Switzerland on racketeering and bribery charges filed by American prosecutors."
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Reader Comments (14)
The Jennifer Steinhauer piece in the Times, linked above, offers two sterling specimens of the ancient Greek philosophical problem known as the paradox.
First is the mention of the Many Children Left Behind legislation referred to without a whiff of irony, it seems, as the "signature Bush-era education law". There is no construction, in any language, crafted by the most adept linguistic pretzel makers that can successfully pair the word "Bush" with "education" resulting in anything but stupefaction. Not, at least, if one is referencing education of any value.
Second is the equally discombobulating news that "...two chambers, both controlled by Republicans..." will be responsible for drafting education legislation.
A supreme paradox! Idiots crafting a bill to make students smart?
Somewhere Zeno is laughing his ass off.
Re 'the cruel German'
Maybe we could learn something here. The states which receive the most federal spending vs taxes paid are predominately bright red and southern. Mississippi receives about 3 times more from the treasury than it pays in. This has been the case for many years, and the accrued deficit must now amount to many billions. What say we cut them off and impose some harsh austerity measures to make them shape up and learn to be self sufficient? It would do them a world of good -- wouldn't it? Perhaps Le Donald will take this up as a campaign theme.
D.C.,
What a great idea. Give those moochers a taste of good old fashioned GOP economic castor oil, the Paul Ryan brand. Privatize everything and make everyone pay through the nose. Austerity, baby.
Better yet, prior to getting a red cent from federal coffers filled by the rest of us, everyone in the state, starting with their legislative contingent, then the governor and all the state pols, has to line up and pee in a cup.
We won't bother with the tests, that's too expensive anyway. We just want the enjoyment of humiliating those takers. Maybe do it live on CSPAN.
I'll bring the popcorn.
Speaking about unempathic interactions, we can joke about extracting debt repayments in a humiliating way from loser states only because we have a Union of states which works pretty well.
Germany's rigid insistence on debt repayment runs the risk of blowing apart the EU. Christine Lagard of the IMF is already saying that they will not take part unless there is debt relief for Greece. And without the IMF, there is no "Troika". Without a financial "union", there really is no EU.
What a disaster: it's like watching a slow train wreck.
I'd rather watch a bunch of loser states behave badly than be in the EU right now.
@D.C. Clark & Akhilleus: According to this chart, Mississippi receives $2.02 in federal moneys for each dollar it pays in. (I'm not certain of the bases for these calculations.)
The trouble with just taking our money out of red states is that we would be hurting the poor & needy a lot more than we would be hurting many of such richy-riches as control these states' political "leaders."
For instance, the biggest chunk of the federal assistance to Mississippi goes "to Needy Families (TANF), Medicaid, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), and Community Development Block Grants." Another big chunk goes to kids -- school nutrition programs, etc. Also, food stamps, veterans' care, public housing assistance, etc.
These calculations don't include (not sure about the first one cited) the bazillions that flow to Mississippi via Social Security or military & other government worker pensions & benefits. I couldn't find a state-by-state breakdown of these benefit payments (it's probably out there somewhere; I just mis-Googled). Since the income average is so low there, Mississippians more than likely get more out of Social Security than they've paid in. Also, since Southern states tend to attract retired military, partly because of lower housing costs there, they almost certainly get higher-than-average share of military pension dollars.
Marie
Hi Marie,
I got the 3 to 1 figure here:
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/03/27/which-states-take-the-most-from-the-u-s-government/
chosen because the WSJ ain't some liberal rag. I've seen claims ranging from 2 to 3.
My point, of course, was to illustrate the right wing double think on makers and takers. Victoria is also right to point out that the US is, unlike the EU, a union. Or so some of us have been led to believe. One of the benefits of union is that we share our burdens. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." as someone once said. (don't tell the poorer states who said that, it would only upset them needlessly)
Marie,
Yeah, I think we all realize that simply subtracting money from any state, especially these moocher states, would hurt the poor first and most. The above was a nice little fantasy image of mine, seeing the Mississippi congressional delegation line up for their cup. Maybe for old time's sake we could have them bring along Trent Lott.
But the fact is that those richy-riches and their pet pols have no problem doing exactly that to poor people, then make them dance for whatever pittance they do get. And still Wall Streeters and Republican takers refer to these people living at barely subsistence levels as "Lucky Duckies".
For people who so loudly and insistently proclaim their love of Jesus, their actions bespeak a following of orders emanating from a region far south of Peace, Love, and Understanding.
Victoria,
Train wreck is exactly the right term. Spot on.
The EU, enforcing its diktats on Greece, have made it, in essence, an occupied country. Last week I heard the economist James Galbraith state that the EU would not survive this (still looking for that link if it exists). Right wing economic policies, especially the current mania for absolutist austerity (but only for them that don't got), have never, as far as I've been able to tell, created the conditions for long term growth and economic health. It's a short-sighted design put in place to humiliate the upstart Greeks who voted No in their recent referendum. The Germans decided to turn that No into a Yes by threatening to break their backs. Which brings us back to that train wreck.
In 1918, the defeated Germans surrendered to representatives of France and Britain in a railroad car of French President Foch's private train. The war reparations and crushing economic sanctions forced on Germany after the Treaty of Versailles created the conditions for an end to Europe just as surely as that continent had been unmade after the Great War. 22 Years later, the Nazis, used that same railroad car to accept the abject surrender of the French. Another beginning of the end for Europe as everyone knew it before the war.
Funny, the Germans didn't use that same car in which to make Alexis Tsipras bend over and grab his ankles.
This may be the beginning of the end for this current version of Europe.
Train wreck, indeed.
And we, in this country, should take heed not to allow the begrudgers and economic royalists and their poodles in congress to force such conditions on us. Right Wing economics seem, like Right Wing politics, to bring success and security only to those who already have them, to afflict the afflicted and comfort the comfortable.
The Unforeseen Consequences of Being Assholes
I had a thought this morning when considering how the president has so neatly glided right through the lame duck noose history had set for him and is now hellbent on tormenting Confederates until the last sub-atomic particle of Obamadom has exited the White House (and probably long after that).
It was quite easy, really. And the GOP has no one but itself to blame for the president's current stunning, and likely unprecedented, winning streak.
Nearly all presidents rely to some extent on help from the other side to get many and in some cases most of their plans from the drawing board into the law books. This becomes an important part of their MO. But during the last couple of years of their second term, former allies on the opposing side will often decamp in order to circle the wagons around their new savior, thus stranding the president without much of a paddle.
Obama has never had a paddle. He has never had the support of the other side so he's learned how to go it alone and how to use other gadgets in the presidential toolbox to get things done.
So it's no surprise that he's been riding rings around these dullards, they who can do nothing but scream NO. They have no plans, no vision, no ideas, no leaders. The only thing they can come up is a new way to try and screw the black guy. But he's seen them all and he is now adept enough to skip lightly over their obvious and sad attempts at stopping him.
So, McConnell's plan from Day minus one, to render this president impotent, has, interestingly enough, empowered him to do great things, much to the dismay and consternation of the begrudgers and assholes.
Heh-heh.
Fun House of the Clowns.
You know those rooms in fun houses? The ones with mirrors on every wall where you can't tell whether you're coming or going? That's gotta be the experience of running for president this year for the Confederates.
McCain stumbles into one room, looks at the image in the mirror, points at it and says "Rubio! You backtracked on immigration!"...."Oh shit...that's me in the mirror!" Then Rick Perry scrambles in, fixes his hair, adjusts his new GQ glasses that are supposed to make him look smart (not workin' Rick), gets out his cheat sheet so he can remember any lists that have more than two items and points at an image in the glass. "Demagogue spouting nonsense!" He squeals.
He's looking at himself.
Rand Paul slides in on a river of slippery oil, holds onto his wig then points at the multiple images all around him and yells "Flip floppers! All of you." Then he notices that they're all wearing Rand Paul Official Flip Flops. And they all have really, really bad toupées. Just like him.
Sad, really. 12 more months of this bullshit.
I wonder whether Jesus made the multitude pee in cups before distributing those loaves and fishes. Perhaps Reverend Huckster can tell us.
OK, sorry. That's enough snarks for one day. I'm done.
Victoria and all,
In case you missed it, PBS interviews Christine Lagard:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/imf-chief-europe-must-much-reduce-greek-debt/
@Victoria, Akhilleus, D.C. Clark and all,
Thank you for your comments about the current situation in the EU. And thanks again to Marie for her much appreciated ability to point to reliable sources.
Larry Elliott, the Guardian's economics editor, has an intriguing suggestion that the IMF's "reality stance" is a reflection of yet another subtle, intelligent exercise of authority by President Obama.
www.theguardian.com./business/2015/jul/15/imf-greece-future-analysis-bailout
It is said that fiction gets at the truth by speaking to the heart. Among all the sober, fact-based comments in response to a recent NYT article on the Greece situation, this one stood out, a short story buried in a collection of scholarly essays:
Greece is the happy, comfortable, long-time residents with a small, worn-down house that the new neighbors don't like. The old residents live simply; they work little, eat simply, play and spend a lot of time with family, and live long and healthily. They keep a couple of pigs that root on the lot and eat acorns. They invite the neighbors to a barbecue every year or two.
But the neighbors can only see the dilapidated home. They pass laws against pigs and grapevines. They raise taxes. They impose fines for peeling paint and long grass and acorns that are not cleaned up.
Finally they say, "you must update your home or we will condemn it." They offer loan money to tear down and rebuild. Finally the long time residents relent and take on the debt. Unsurprisingly, they don't complete the new home and they can't pay the loan off. Their previous life is gone; they are stressed, and sick. No grape vines, no pigs; their grandchildren have nowhere to play. Finally they sell off their ancestral home to the neighbors and eke out a miserable life in an apartment somewhere.
Western society does this to people all the time. It is cruel and a violation of basics rights to liberty and property.
And now Europe is doing it to an entire nation.