Rosemary, Mint & Year's End

(This is from New Year’s Eve 2012, thirteen years ago. Oddly, it begins by referencing a New Year’s Eve thirteen years earlier than that one. To me, it’s a reminder that somehow it always seems to be the worst of times, but there’s always a new day tomorrow, and in all of these cases, a New Year.)

As we prepare for a likely fall over the fiscal cliff, the doomsday warnings remind me of December 31, 1999 and the y2k theory. I remember filling our car up with gas in Maryland, where we lived at the time, before traveling around the Beltway to wait out the impending crisis at my sister’s house in Virginia that New Year’s Eve.

The predicted disaster did not come to pass that time around, and maybe we’ll get lucky again.

This time it is not a technology issue but a political one. Competing theories of government’s role in a capitalist economy have come forehead to forehead, with neither side inclined to blink. Watching CNN tonight, I can see that the rhetoric chosen by Democrats and Republicans is still aimed at nothing more than public relations, as whatever backroom deal they may be negotiating succeeds or fails to pass the House, in the only vote that matters.

The Senate has had the votes to pass a reasonable compromise all along. Inside the Beltway, it is known as the house of Congress where the “adults” work, as opposed to the other chamber.

Be that as it may, the House is theoretically more representative of the nation, since every state, large or small, has two Senators, regardless of population. The House, by contrast, has 435 members allocated by the population distribution -- thus California has the largest delegation in that chamber, followed by other populous states.

From my time in Washington, covering the political system up close, what I remember most vividly is how much all the politicians I met there were image-oriented. There was the occasional policy wonk, who cared more about what would actually change things for the better, but most seemed far more concerned about looking good, raising money for their next election cycle, and cutting down their opposition.

In a similar vein, during the brief time my roommate in Mill Valley was a U.S. Senator, I learned just how much of his time had to be devoted to raising money and/or talking to donors. Basically, it was every available hour outside of meetings with his colleagues in the Senate.

Nothing I saw in either case increased my confidence in our federal government. And don’t even get me started about our state government in Sacramento, which I’ve also witnessed up close.

I actually have more faith in local government, which despite many problems, remains more closely in touch with citizens and their concerns — and therefore more accountable.

Not that our city and county officials do a good job of addressing those concerns much of the time. But we have a fairly responsive government here in the city of San Francisco. Come to think of it, I must find someone at City Hall to discuss the mess transit officials has made along my route from here in the Mission to Bernal.

They’ve screwed up the intersection of Bryant and 24th, and as I drive this route a thousand times every year, it really matters to me. More than the fiscal cliff, if you want to know the truth.

I don’t earn enough money to owe anything in taxes at the moment and I don’t rely on any publicly funded services, other than Medicare, so if they go over the cliff, I doubt it will matter much to me personally. On the other hand, I’m thinking of my country as a whole, and wondering whether it really can be a world leader much longer with such a dysfunctional political standoff, led not by leaders but elected officials refusing to lead.

So with all of that said, Happy New Year?

HEADLINES:

• Trump bombs Venezuelan land for first time: Is war imminent? (Al Jazeera)

• US military carries out 30th strike on alleged drug boat (AP)

• Taiwan stays on high alert as Chinese ships pull back after massive drills (NBC)

• Trump administration says it’s freezing child care funds to Minnesota (NPR)

• Ukraine seeks to contain diplomatic fallout over Vladimir Putin’s attack claim (Financial Times)

• Russia’s losses in Ukraine rise faster than ever as US pushes for peace deal (BBC)

• Russia’s Descent Into Tyranny (Foreign Affairs)

• How Social Security has gotten worse under Trump (WP)

• Performers cancel concerts at Kennedy center after Trump renaming (AFP)

• The Year That Shattered American Science (Atlantic)

• ‘I Was Just So Naïve’: Inside Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Break With Trump (NYT Mag)

• Inside RFK Jr.’s reshaping of public health in Trump’s first year (WP)

• Trump warns Iran of further US strikes if it reconstitutes nuclear program (AP)

• The Tiny Japanese Island on the Front Lines of China’s Feud (NYT)

• After Saudi Arabia’s Yemen strike, UAE rejects support for separatists (Al Jazeera)

• Looking for friends, lobsters may stumble into an ecological trap (ArsTechnica)

• Japan’s Births Predicted To Hit Lowest Level Since Records Began (Newsweek)

• Meta to Buy Manus, an AI Startup With Chinese Roots (Bloomberg)

• New framework simplifies the complex landscape of agentic AI (Venture Beat)

• Lights, camera, algorithm: Why Indian cinema is awash with AI (BBC)

• ‘Godfather’ of AI says he’s ‘more worried’ today about AI (The Hill)

• The Problem With Letting AI Do the Grunt Work (Atlantic)

• The New Billionaires of the A.I. Boom (NYT)

• Trump Appoints Self To Divine Muses (Onion)

The Bottom Line

As the year winds down, I’ve been thinking about money.

At present, there are about 3,000 billionaires in the world, 900 of them in the U.S. Each of them have more money, at least on paper, than they could ever actually spend, no matter how long they lived nor how many things they purchased.

By contrast, most people spend our adult lives working for wages and worrying about how we are going to pay our bills. For today’s college students, it will be all too easy to acquire a mountain of debt that may take most of their lifetimes to pay off. 

Wealth disparity is getting worse and it represents the single greatest threat to the future of democracy. Billionaires want to be free to acquire an obscene amount of wealth, but they don’t want the rest of us to be free to redistribute a tiny fraction of that wealth through taxes and social welfare programs to achieve a more equitable set of outcomes.

There’s a name for this — class warfare.

So Marx was right. (Sigh) 

But since the vast majority of us will never be in favor of violent political change, we are stuck with the messy work of elections and political parties and leaders we don’t like or trust.

Politically speaking, 2025 was a disaster, but 2026 is a new year, and therefore our next best chance to wage peaceful class warfare, even if nobody wants to call it that. 

HEADLINES:

• Trump on Putin call: ‘We have a few very thorny issues’ (The Hill)

• Ukraine denies drone attack on Putin’s residence (BBC)

• Trump says Ukraine and Russia are ‘closer than ever’ to peace after talks with Zelenskyy (AP)

• Tensions flare between Russia and Ukraine after Trump’s peace talks (WP)

• Trump praises Netanyahu as leaders meet to discuss next steps of ceasefire plan (CBC)

• Iran sends conflicting signals on its missiles as Israeli concerns rise (WP)

• The 2025 Agenda (Atlanta)

• Trump says U.S. took out a ‘big facility’ as part of strikes on alleged drug boats near Venezuela (NBC)

• The Department of Justice May Not Survive Pam Bondi (TNR)

• Musk’s return to Trump’s side revives alliance that could remake — or rupture — MAGA (WP)

• It Was a Bad Year for the American Military (The Bulwark)

• US pledges $2B for UN humanitarian aid as Trump slashes funding (AP)

• How frogs went from right-wing meme to anti-ICE protest symbol (BBC)

• Thousands in Kabul attend Afghanistan’s national buzkashi championship (Al Jazeera)

• On to 2050: Life in a shrinking Japan (Japan Times)

• AI Chatbots Linked to Psychosis, Say Doctors (WSJ)

• OpenAI faces a make-or-break year in 2026 (Economist)

• From A.I. to Chips, Big Tech Is Getting What It Wants From Trump (NYT)

• Tech Billionaires Threaten To Flee California Over Proposed Vest Tax (Onion)

 

Monday Mix

HEADLINES:

• The U.S. offers Ukraine a 15-year security guarantee for now, Zelenskyy says (NPR)

• Trump Greets Ukrainian President Zelensky at Mar-a-Lago (C-Span)

• China holds military drills around Taiwan as warning to ‘separatist forces’ (BBC)

• Trump and Netanyahu to meet in Florida for crucial talks on Iran and Gaza (NBC)

• How Oil, Drugs and Immigration Fueled Trump’s Venezuela Campaign (NYT)

• Winter storm brings heavy snow and ice to busy holiday travel weekend (NPR)

• New winter storm brings dangerous wind, snow and ice (ABC)

• Why the Supreme Court Is Giving ICE So Much Power (Atlantic)

• ‘We are the free world now’ — Europe declares war on free speech in the US (The Hill)

• What America Might Look Like With Zero Immigration (NYT)

• ‘Ghost resorts’: as hundreds of ski slopes lie abandoned, will nature reclaim the Alps? (Guardian)

• Santa’s good and bad economies list (Financial Times)

• China expands nuclear warhead manufacturing capacity, research finds (WP)

• The Slow, Inevitable Death of the Bowl Game (Atlantic)

• Humanoid Robots Keep Slipping Into the Future, Much Like Fusion (CleanTechnica)

• Cat Clinging To Side Of Christmas Tree Admits That Was Extent Of Plan (Onion)

 

Before the Song

Sometimes in journalism you get the chance to make a difference in one person’s life.

Back in the 1990s, I was in my office at Mother Jones one morning when the front desk buzzed me to say there was someone who would like to talk to an editor. It was the week following the Rodney King beating by police in L.A. and there had been destructive riots with looting in downtown San Francisco.

My visitor was a soft-spoken young man carrying a large package. He asked me if we could speak privately.

Back in my office, he explained the purpose of his visit. He’d been caught up in the anger of the moment, he said, and had been angry and frustrated by yet another act of police violence against his community — he’d grown up in South Central L.A. -- when he had joined the rioters and broken into a Radio Shack and stolen a computer monitor.

“I knew it was wrong almost the minute I did it, and now I feel bad,” he told me. “I’d like to ask if you’d return it.”

I looked closely at my young visitor. He was perhaps 21 years old with an honest face and a sincere manner.

“Tell you what,” I said. “I will return it for you if you’ll tell me why you stole it in the first place and what you wanted it for.”

He agreed and I assured him that we would protect his identity in any article that I might publish based on our conversation. 

So we started talking. He described growing up in poverty, surrounded by violence and family tragedy (he’d lost a brother in a random shooting) but told me how he had avoided getting into the worst things himself, largely due to his passion for music. His hope was to learn how to make music of his own and he had grabbed the monitor in the mistaken belief it could help him with synthesizing.

A few days later I arranged for the monitor to be returned to Radio Shack, which eventually led to a call from the D.A.’s office asking me to identify my informant so he could be charged for a crime.

I flatly refused and asked, “How many of the hundreds of rioters that looted have even offered so much as to turn the stuff they stole back in?”

“He’s the only one.”

That was the last I heard from the D.A., who couldn’t make a case without my testimony, but an editor over at the San Francisco Examiner read our piece in Mother Jones and asked to reprint it.

That set off a completely unanticipated seres of events, including a flood of donations from the public to help the young man buy a real computer, which in turn could help him pursue his musical dreams.

I made sure he got the money and that’s where this story ends, as far as my involvement is concerned. But often when one story ends, another begins.

And in this case, the young man sent me word a few years later that he was performing in local bars in a hip-hop band under a pseudonym.

But that's his story to tell.

HEADLINES:

• The life of an immigrant day laborer in Berkeley (Berkeleyside)

• Flight delays and cancellations pile up at JFK as snowstorm jams post-Christmas travel in the Northeast (CNN)

• The Supreme Court Cast Its Lot With Trumpism. It Should Be Very Worried. (Slate)

• The U.S. sank the alleged narco-terrorists’ boat — and let them go (WP)

• Europe Tried to Slam the Door on Russian Energy. It Didn’t Account for Turkey. (WSJ)

• Russia strikes Ukraine’s capital and kills at least 1 person a day before Zelenskyy-Trump meeting (AP)

• Zelenskyy focuses on security guarantees ahead of Trump visit (Politico)

• Good Intentions Gone Bad (Atlantic)

• Fear and confusion in Nigerian village hit in US strike, as locals say no history of ISIS in area (CNN)

• So Long, GPT-5. Hello, Qwen (Wired)

• He Said, Xi Said (Puck)

• As A.I. Companies Borrow Billions, Debt Investors Grow Wary (NYT)

• Santa Tracker Shows Sleigh Stopped For 40 Minutes Outside Old Girlfriend’s House (Onion)

 

A President Who Rocked

One of the major pieces I published in Rolling Stone was also one of my first in-depth efforts to document the global trade in banned drugs and chemicals.

Not exactly what you’d expect from a Rock ‘n Roll magazine, perhaps.

It was called “For Export Only” and it was summarized like this: “What do the multimillion-dollar U.S. pesticide and drug industries do when government agencies ban the use of their products? They find new markets in underdeveloped countries.”

The article appeared in the magazine’s February 10, 1977 issue, which had Peter Frampton featured on the cover as “The Rock Star of the Year” in a profile written by 19-year-old Cameron Crowe.

In those years, long before email, laptops or cellphones, the way we got feedback on our articles was through the mail. And usually there was a lot — we got hundreds of letters, for example, in response to our Patty Hearst stories.

By contrast, I only got one letter in response to “For Export Only.’ Yet it had an intriguing return address — 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington, D.C.

It was from a staff member to President Jimmy Carter indicating that my article had been included in his weekly briefing on new policy issues.

More significantly, Carter had decided to form an interagency task force to study the banned exports issue. Eventually he issued an executive order that for the first time in U.S. history restricted the trade in banned and restricted goods overseas.

This was a major policy victory on what until then had been an obscure issue few knew or cared about. Soon after the article appeared, I left Rolling Stone and co-founded the Center for Investigative Reporting, where one of our big early projects was the book I co-authored with Mark Schapiro on the same topic, “Circle of Poison: Pesticides and People in a Hungry World.”

That book helped launch a global movement to stem the tide of restricted hazards flowing around the globe — a movement that continues in many forms and many places to this day.

But Jimmy Carter was the first political leader to denounce the immorality of rich countries dumping dangerous goods in poor countries where regulatory structures are weak, causing heavy damage to human health and the environment.

Jimmy Carter was many things — a peanut farmer, politician, humanitarian, policy wonk, avid reader, big-time fan of rock music, but I’ll always remember him as the only person in power who recognized the ground-breaking potential of that seminal piece I published in Rolling Stone — and tried to fix it.

The Snowflake and the Witness

One distinct memory from my childhood is from the days leading up to Christmas. It was snowing outside, the flurries rushing this way and that, riding the wind.

It was cold out there, but I was inside and warm. I had my nose pressed up against the window. 

Someone had told me that every snowflake was unique — all million billion trillion of them.

As I was thinking about that, wondering how it could possibly be true, or even how anyone could be sure about it, one tiny snowflake crashed into the other side of the window, and melted away right before my eyes.

As I watched its watery trail side away, I thought that if that snowflake was truly one of a kind, I had just witnessed its last moment.

But it turned out the snowflake wasn’t really gone. When I looked a little while later, it had joined together with the other snowflakes hitting my window to form an icicle.

HEADLINES:

• Trump Takes America’s ‘Imperial Presidency’ to a New Level (NYT)

• Zelensky moves towards demilitarised zones in latest peace plan for Ukraine (BBC)

• New Epstein files mention Trump (NPR)

• Trump’s Vanity Fleet (Atlantic)

• Controversial pulled CBS segment featured work from Berkeley research students (SFGate)

• Supreme Court Refuses to Allow National Guard Deployment in Chicago (NYT)

• ACA subsidies are expiring. Here’s who the lapse will hit hardest (CNBC)

• Why restricting graduate loans will bankrupt America’s talent supply chain (Fortune)

• Student Loan Borrowers in Default Could See Wages Garnished in Early 2026 (NYT)

• America’s hidden economic crisis (Business Insider)

• Attys Say ICE Won’t Let Them Talk To Detained US Citizen (Law360)

• Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported, can spend Christmas with family (AP)

• Student Loan Borrowers in Default Could See Wages Garnished in Early 2026 (NYT)

• TPUSA Turns Charlie Kirk’s Death Tent Into Selfie Station at AmericaFest (Daily Kos)

• J. D. Vance Cozies Up to Anti-Semitism (Atlantic)

• The Trump administration has a new target as part of its broader attack on government policies aimed at boosting underrepresented groups in the country’s workforce — blind workers. [HuffPost] 

• Poll: Major allies see US as unreliable and destabilizing (Politico)

• FCC blacklists foreign-made drones over security, spying concerns (The Hill)

• Oil Futures Slip With Venezuela, Russia-Ukraine in Focus (WSJ)

• US strikes another alleged drug-smuggling boat in eastern Pacific (AP)

• The U.S. economy grew robustly as Americans continued to spend (NPR)

• She thought a predator was grooming her daughter. It was an AI chatbot. (WP)

• Trump, 79, Rants Incoherently About Robots and AI (Daily Beast)

• America’s risky bet on hydrocarbons might hurt it in the AI race (Financial Times)

• A godfather of AI shares the career advice he’d give to his 4-year-old grandson as AI displaces jobs (Business Insider)

• Why the A.I. Rally (and the Bubble Talk) Could Continue Next Year (NYT)

• Report Finds More Americans Using GoFundMe For Basic Necessities (Onion)

 

Letter to Young Journalists

“I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world.” —Rainer Maria Rilke

In the 1960s, like many of other young men, I was terrified at the prospect of being drafted and sent to Vietnam to fight in a war I didn’t believe in. And that prospect also made me very angry.

When I was a freshman in college, a small but insistent minority of students protested against the war and organized to convince more of us to join their ranks. At the same time, other students were joining in civil rights marches led by Martin Luther King and wanted to do something about racism in our society.

Our the four years I was in school, the ranks of students willing to join the antiwar and civil rights demonstrations grew considerably until it felt like we were in the majority, though mathematically that was never the case. We were, however, in the words of the writer Jack Newfield, “A Prophetic Minority.”

Other movements emerged, led by feminist, LBGTQ and environmental activists. Since we were young, we underestimated how difficult it would be to achieve the fundamental changes we sought. We met plenty of resistance, which made some of us angrier and more determined to fight for change.

During those years, I read everything I could find about all of these issues and participated in protests for a while, though as I was finding my way as a journalist, increasingly I began covering the demonstrations rather than take part in them.

Our generation didn’t necessarily see a conflict between activism and journalism at first, although as we grew older and more experienced our attitudes evolved. By twenty years after my graduation, many media executives were actively prohibiting student journalists and young reporters from even attending demonstrations —to avoid any appearance of bias or conflict on contentious issues.

Those with my type of history were not happy about this but we gradually adapted and recommended that our interns and students and new hires make a difficult ethical choice. We told them if they wanted to be successful journalists they had to guard their credibility by not participating in demonstrations. Otherwise they would be seen as partisans, which might end up hurting their careers.

Fast forward to today. We have a President who tries to intimidate and silence journalists at every turn. Major media institutions like CBS appear to be caving in to his threats to take away their broadcast licenses and worse. Therefore, this would not appear to be an ideal time for young people to be entering the field.

But I disagree. This is a good moment to become a journalist. Our society needs you — urgently. So what is to be done about remaining impartial under these circumstances?

There is no reason to be open-minded or neutral about something as critical as witnessing our democracy slip into an autocracy. This beyond any challenge to journalistic ethics my generation ever faced. If it comes to that, you’ll have to know where you stand. It will be critical to build close connections with other journalists, young and old, as we all work our way through the difficult period ahead.

But our role as journalists is clear.

To tell the truth no matter who tries to silence us.

HEADLINES:

• The Economy Avoided a Recession in 2025, but Many Americans Are Reeling (NYT)

• Trump halts wind projects, including Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CNBC)

• CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss pulls 60 Minutes piece on Trump deportation policy hours before air (PBS)

• ICE agents in Twin Cities open fire after being hit by SUV (CNN)

• Trump’s Tariffs and the Secondary Global Damage (Asia Sentinel)

• Russian general killed by bomb under his car in Moscow (AP)

• Trump Appointment of Greenland Envoy Draws Angry Response From Denmark (WSJ)

• Denmark ‘deeply upset’ by Trump’s appointment of Greenland envoy who wants island to be part of US (CNN)

• Trump’s Venezuelan-Tanker Gamble (Atlantic)

• Japan took the final step to allow the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant, the world’s largest, to resume operations with a regional vote, a watershed moment in the country’s return to nuclear energy nearly 15 years after the Fukushima disaster. (Reuters)

• ‘I want that escape route’: once a sign of disloyalty, Americans seek dual citizenships under Trump (Guardian)

• Vance refuses to set red lines over bigotry as conservatives feud at Turning Point (AP)

• Heritage staffers walk out amid latest strife at MAGA institution (WP)

• How Kash Patel Ordered Himself a New Fleet of BMWs With FBI Money (TNR)

• Proposal to declassify nursing as ‘professional’ threatens ability to secure student loans (PBS)

• How Willie Nelson Sees America (New Yorker)

• AI Is Testing What Society Wants From Music (Atlantic)

• The Race to Build the World’s Best Friend (NYT)

• U.S. Battles China In AI Race But American Firms Quietly Embrace Cheap, Powerful Chinese Open-Source Models (EurAsian Times)

• Aldi CEO Chased Off From Whole Foods Dumpsters (Onion)