The fate of American places is not a private concern of other people. Their struggles are our struggles. Their catastrophes are a cancer on our body politic. It is desperately urgent, the most urgent problem we face in my view, to mend some of the many ways that we find ourselves fraying as a nation.

A writer I really enjoy, if some of you are not familiar. 

By Alexia Fernandez Campbell @ Vox.com, April 20

[....] He’s vowed to make it harder for companies to buy cheap imported steel, and this week he announced plans to make all federal contractors use American steel in public infrastructure projects. On Thursday, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said he has launched an investigation to determine if blocking more steel imports is a matter of national security [....]

While cheap imports likely hurt American steelworkers, economists believe they’re hardly the main cause for the decline of the steel industry. And making it harder to import cheap steel will hurt other American industries that depend on steel, such as automakers and appliance manufactures.

This much is clear: Anti-dumping tariffs don’t do much to protect workers. It would take a drastic policy change to actually stop dumping. And anything that raises the price of steel actually hurts other American industries.

Low demand for steel and decades of automation are the main reasons jobs at American steel mills are disappearing, and no amount of tariffs on Chinese steel can change that tide.

“The deal with these kinds of protections is that they don’t change long-term trends,” says Michael Moore, an economics professor at George Washington University. “The thought that a 55-year-old worker is going to keep their job because you put a tariff on imports is ridiculous.”

Moore worked at a Texas steel mill in the late 1970s, when there were plenty of steel jobs that paid the equivalent of $30 an hour. But machines now do much of the assembly line work that he did. “Many of the guys I worked with have lost their jobs,” he says. “Back then, it took 10 workers to make a ton of steel. Now it takes one.” [.....]

By Kim Tong-Hyung @ The Associated Press (via Daily Press), April 19

Unpredictable. Unhinged. Dangerous.

Many South Koreans are using those words to describe the president of their most important ally, rather than the leader of their archrival to the North. They worry that President Donald Trump's tough, unorthodox talk about North Korea's nuclear program is boosting already-high animosity between the rival Koreas.

No matter whether Trump succeeds at getting North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons and missile programs, his actions, comments and tweets are changing how the region views the long-running conflict. Senior North Korean officials see their relations with Washington as even more volatile than before. China is appealing for calm, and possibly re-examining its role. Japan is weighing a retaliatory strike capability against the North. [.....]

By Sari Horowitz @ The Washington Post, April 18

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is making aggressive law enforcement a top priority, directing his federal prosecutors across the country to crack down on illegal immigrants and “use every tool” they have to go after violent criminals and drug traffickers.

But the attorney general does not have a single U.S. attorney in place to lead his tough-on-crime efforts across the country [....]

One of those "glass an eighth full" kind of guys.

@ CNN.com, April 19

A man fatally shot three people in less than two minutes in what police in Fresno, California, are calling a hate crime.The three victims from the shooting rampage Tuesday were white, and apparently chosen at random, police said. The suspect, Kori Ali Muhammad, 39, is black.

Muhammad had posted on social media a dislike for white people and government officials, Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer said. He also yelled "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest) when he was arrested Tuesday, officials said.

 

"We do not believe ... that this is a terrorist-related crime," Dyer told reporters. "This is solely based on race."

The FBI is assisting in the investigation [....]

By Robert Windhem @ NBCNews.com, April 18

Ryan job rating at 29%; Republicans view their party as divided

full report @ Pew Research Center, April 17

Nearly three months after the Republican Party took control of the White House and Congress, the public gives low job ratings to the president and even lower ratings to the speaker of the House.

though some see him as more aligned with Le Pen than any enlightened progressivism....