-- Eric Trump allegedly told a reporter in 2014 that the funding stream for his family’s golf courses comes from Russia.

The Hill’s Paulina Firozi reports: In an interview with Boston’s WBUR Friday, golf reporter James Dodson recalled meeting Donald Trump in in 2014 and being invited to play golf at his property in Charlotte. When Dodson asked Donald Trump how he was paying for the courses, he says Trump “sort of tossed off that he had access to $100 million.” He then questioned Eric Trump, who was along for the day: "I said, 'Eric, who’s funding? I know no banks — because of the recession … have touched a golf course. It’s dead in the water the last four or five years,'” he recalled. "And this is what he said. He said, 'Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.' I said, 'Really?' And he said, 'Oh, yeah. We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and they’re really invested in our programs. We just go there all the time.’"

The percentage of children ages 5 to 17 who are hospitalized for suicidal thoughts or actions has more than doubled from 2008 to 2015,

Dylan Minnette as Clay Jensen and Katherine Langford as Hannah Baker in Netflix’s “13 Reasons Why.” (Beth Dubber/Netflix)

1.  According to an alarming new report, presented at the 2017 Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting in San Francisco. children between the ages of 15 to 17 accounted for slightly more than half of the incidences, and researchers noted a slight increase in hospitalizations coinciding with the beginning and the ending of the school year. (Travis M. Andrews). 

Macron Decisively Defeats Le Pen in French Presidential Race

-- Emmanuel Macron overwhelmingly defeated anti-E.U. firebrand Marine Le Pen in France’s presidential election Sunday, bringing Europe’s populist tide to a crashing halt as voters selected the centrist political neophyte by a nearly 2-1 margin. At just 39, Macron will be France's youngest head of state since Napoleon Bonaparte. Griff Witte, James McAuley and Isaac Stanley-Becker report: “The result brought to a close a tumultuous and polarized campaign that defied prediction at nearly every turn, although not at the end. Pre-election polls had forecast a sizable Macron victory, and he delivered — winning some 66 percent of the vote."

 

Emmanuel Macron 

66.1%20,703,694 votes

Centrist, supports the E.U.

Marine Le Pen

10,637,120 votes33.9%

Far-right nationalist, anti‑E.U.

 

100% of communes reporting

“In a pointed endorsement of European unity, Macron strode to the stage at his raucous [victory party] to the strains of Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ theme, the European Union’s anthem. Alluding to the deep divisions laid bare by the campaign, he said Le Pen backers had ‘expressed an anger, a dismay, and I respect that. I will do everything possible in the five years to come so that they have no reason to vote for the extremes.' At her own gathering at a Paris restaurant and events center, a downcast Le Pen conceded defeat, telling her demoralized supporters that the country had ‘chosen continuity’ and that the election had drawn clear lines between ‘the patriots and the globalists.' The repudiation of Le Pen by French voters will soothe Europe’s anxious political establishment. But the outcome instantly puts pressure on Macron to deliver on promises made to an unhappy French electorate, including reform of two institutions notoriously resistant to change: the E.U. and the French bureaucracy."

Emmanuel Macron holds hands with his wife Brigitte  (AP/Thibault Camus)

Trump, who declined to formally endorse but clearly favored Le Pen, tweeted his congratulations to Macron: “I look very much forward to working with him!” he posted.

-- Macron's unlikely path to the presidency --> "His story is of a highly improbable ascent in a system that typically rewards entrenched political dynasties," James McAuley writes. “Macron, who has never held elected office, has now been elected to one of the most powerful executive positions in the Western world and will be the leader of Europe’s second-largest economy. He did it, analysts say, through a combination of luck and a campaign message attuned to a new political moment. In France, 2017 proved an ideal year to run as an independent candidate. A rare political vacuum emerged, and Macron — a former Socialist economy minister who stepped down from his post in July — was able to take full advantage. Macron perceived that the ‘new divide’ among French voters was not between left and right but rather between an open and closed society [and] defending an open, multicultural society was a central component of En Marche, the movement Macron launched in 2016. 'Globalization can be a great opportunity,' he said at one point on the campaign trail. 'There is no such thing as French culture,' he said at another. 'There is culture in France, and it is diverse.'"

Macron supporters celebrate in front of the Louvre. (Patrick Kovarik/Getty)

France’s new president will face a considerable challenge as he attempts to form a government: "Given that he has no party structure behind him, he will be deeply affected by the results of the parliamentary elections, scheduled for June."

The Man to Blame for Our Culture of Fame.

JON MEACHAM, NY TIMES

Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images)

GOP HEALTH BILL ADVANCES:

"The latest bill’s changes allow states to opt out of many of the ACA’s key provisions, such as its protection of people with preexisting conditions," our colleagues write. "And to regain moderates’ support it lost with that change, an additional $8 billion was allocated to helping sick people afford their premiums — a figure even the conservative American Enterprise Institute says is not nearly enough." (Check out a full list of how each lawmaker voted.)
----

Now, the measure will head to the Senate to face a whole new set of obstacles. On Thursday, Republican leaders there sent an unmistakable message: When it comes to health care, we’re going to do our own thing. “I think there will be essentially a Senate bill,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), the fourth-ranking Senate Republican, told our colleagues. HuffPost’s Michael McAuliff reports that at least a half-dozen GOP senators have already expressed opposition to the tack the House was taking. It remains unclear how closely the Senate measure will resemble the one narrowly passed in the House, or whether Republican senators will resolve their own stark differences. 

-- Trump expressed confidence that it will pass the Senate – calling Obamacare “essentially dead.” "This is a great plan. I actually think it will get even better. This is a repeal and replace of Obamacare. Make no mistake about it," Trump told reporters.

-- Despite the new set of obstacles ahead, Trump and the House GOP had reason to celebrate.

-------

“Rather than embrace policy cobbled together to replace the 2010 Affordable Care Act, many Republicans simply decided the best move was to approve a flawed bill — and ram it through a flawed process — so that the Senate would get a chance to fix the House’s mistakes, setting up a major negotiation later," Paul Kane writes in his column. "House Republicans did so knowing that their votes will be portrayed by their Democratic opponents as ruthlessly denying millions of people health insurance … Inside the leadership team of [Ryan], there was a gripping fear of what failure would mean for its future overseeing a chamber seemingly incapable of moving important legislation. Ryan had already pulled his American Health Care Act from the floor once … [and] the initial game plan was to simply give up on repealing Obamacare and move on to a broad rewriting of the tax code. But inside the White House, [Trump’s] advisers became increasingly concerned about how little they had to show in terms of early victories. They helped nudge the hard-line House Freedom Caucus and some members of the moderate Tuesday Group back to the bargaining table. The consequence of failure — for a second time in six weeks, after the humiliating first retreat — became a compelling reason to vote ‘yes.’ The question is whether this short-term victory was worth the long-term squeeze.”

"Like y’all, I’m still waiting to see if it’s a boy or a girl," Sen. Lindsey Graham said of the House's health care bill. | Getty

-----

• Now the wildly unpopular bill heads to the Senate, where it is certain to face many obstacles before it has a chance at passing even on a totally partisan basis — which will take 51 votes. But the way the bill is written might make portions of it (in particular the insurance regulation changes) filibusterable, meaning that Republicans would need 60 votes, including eight Democrats, to include them. [Vox / Sarah Kliff]
• Republicans in the Senate seem utterly unimpressed by the House’s bill. Many have come out against both its substantive provisions and the reckless speed with which it was passed. [Politico / Burgess Everett, Jennifer Haberkorn]
• All eyes are on the Senate’s 13-member working group that is drafting their own bill. It’s a group composed entirely of Republican men, unsurprisingly. But it is also a group that includes hardliners such as Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz but also more mainstream senators like Lamar Alexander and Rob Portman, so it will be interesting to see if what they craft is nearly as extreme as the House’s bill. [Vox / Sarah Kliff]
• Meanwhile, the uncertainty that this whole process is creating for insurers was evident even before the bill passed. On Wednesday, Iowa’s largest remaining Affordable Care Act insurer threatened to leave the state marketplace. The same day, Aetna said it plans to leave Virginia’s individual marketplace. [Washington Post / Carolyn Y. Johnson]
• And Kentucky is already trying to roll back portions of its Medicaid expansion, even before Congress acts. [Reuters / Yasmeen Abutaleb, Robin Respaut​]

----

WHAT ELSE IS IN THE BOX:

• Planned Parenthood will be defunded for one year: “The women’s health provider stands to lose about 30 percent of its funding under a provision [in the bill] to block it from getting Medicaid reimbursements for one year, unless its hundreds of clinics stop offering abortions.” (Paige Winfield Cunningham)
• Those who obtain health insurance through their employers — about half the country — could be at risk of losing protections that limit out-of-pocket costs for catastrophic illnesses: “The provision … lets states obtain waivers from certain [ACA] insurance regulations. Insurers in states that obtain the waivers could be freed from a regulation mandating that they cover 10 particular types of health services, among them maternity care, prescription drugs, mental health treatment and hospitalization. … Under the House bill, large employers could choose the benefit requirements from any state—including those that are allowed to lower their benchmarks under a waiver, health analysts said. By choosing a waiver state, employers looking to lower their costs could impose lifetime limits and eliminate the out-of-pocket cost cap from their plans under the GOP legislation.” (Wall Street Journal)

• Democrats warn that the bill could increase costs for up to seven million veterans who are eligible to receive health care from the VA system: “An estimated 7 million veterans who qualify for such care do not receive it for a range of reasons: They may live too far away from a VA center, their incomes may be too high for them to be placed in a high-priority group for VA access, or they may have health issues unrelated to their service … By taking away the credits that Obamacare offered for those seeking insurance on their own, the GOP proposal effectively means a tax hike.” (HuffPost)

TEARS OF PAIN: OBAMACARE REPEALED IN THE HOUSE.

Alex Wong/Getty Images

After seven years of empty promises and meaningless floor votes, today the House passed a bill designed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. [Vox / Sarah Kliff]  The vote was extremely close; Republicans needed 216 yes votes to pass it — and got 217. In what is not even a little bit of an exaggeration, the New York Times called the vote “a remarkable act of political resuscitation, six weeks after House leaders failed to muster the votes to pass an earlier version of their bill” (…which kind of sounds like a review blurb for a really boring horror movie). [New York Times / Thomas Kaplan, Robert Pear]  Last-minute negotiations and phone calls from President Donald Trump himself won over undecided conservatives. But apparently, many Republican representatives don’t necessarily like the result (i.e., the bill they voted for). Some have already come out stating that they expect the bill to change if and when it goes to the Senate. And Trump, for his part, is reportedly concerned that if it passes and people lose health care, he will be blamed. [Politico / Josh Dawsey]  Congressman Greg Walden, Speaker Paul Ryan and Congressman Fred Upton  Bill Clark / Getty Images Part of the problem is that the Congressional Budget Office hasn’t yet scored the bill, which means it’s unclear how many people would lose health care and how much it could cost. Making matters murkier, some representatives have admitted that they didn’t actually read it before voting. [Washington Post / David Weigel]  The eleventh-hour negotiations to cobble together an alliance of enough conservatives, Trump loyalists, and moderates to get to 217 ultimately involved making compromises that render an already-under thought bill nearly incoherent. For example: the Upton amendment. It throws an extra $8 billion into a finite pool of money intended to offset the costs of people with preexisting conditions. But that money will make it easier for people who don’t maintain health coverage to sign up once they’ve developed a problem — exactly what the GOP has been trying to avoid by creating a penalty for people who lose insurance and then buy it again. [Vox / Dylan Scott]  But the much bigger population is the people who’d have a harder time affording health care to begin with under the AHCA. That list includes: pregnant women and new mothers; Planned Parenthood patients; families with chronic conditions that can cause health care costs to sky rocket; children in special education programs; low-income workers who gained Medicaid under Obamacare; low-income Americans who are not on Medicaid and relied on Obamacare tax credits to bring down the cost of insurance; anyone who qualified for Medicaid before Obamacare, like seniors and the disabled; seniors who buy insurance on the exchanges; and residents of states who choose to “block grant” Medicaid. Odds are you personally know more than a few people this bill would hurt. [Vox / Dylan Matthews:These are all the people the Republican health care bill will hurt.] Terminally ill patient Jim Staloch caresses a dove on October 7, 2009, while at the Hospice of Saint John in Lakewood, Colorado.  John Moore/Getty Images Democrats were united against the bill — and 20 Republicans joined them in voting no. Interestingly, of 23 districts represented by a Republican that went to Clinton in the presidential election, only nine voted against this bill. [New York Times / Gregor Aisch, et al]  House Republicans decamped to the White House after the vote to celebrate with Trump, who gave a victory speech that, incredibly, included mocking Paul Ryan’s leadership capacities. [Reuters / Yasmeen Abutaleb, David Morgan]  U.S. President Donald Trump (C) gathers with Congressional Republicans in the Rose Garden of the White House after the House of Representatives approved the American Healthcare Act, to repeal major parts of Obamacare and replace it with the Republican healthcare plan, in Washington, U.S., May 4, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria It was a weird celebration, and it likely won’t last long. Medical groups have come out strongly against the bill. But the most rain on the parade seems to be coming from the Senate — whose members appear to have no intention of taking up the House bill rather than writing their own. Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee literally said, “We’re writing a Senate bill and not passing the House bill.” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) characterized its problems succinctly: “Any bill that has been posted less than 24 hours, going to be debated three or four hours, not scored? Needs to be viewed with suspicion.” [Politico / Burgess Evertt, Jennifer Haberkorn]

Mary Altaffer AP

New 2016 Autopsies: 99 WAYS TO LOSE YOUR ELECTION.

NEW YORK

-----

On Monday, a group of Democratic strategists released the findings of a months-long investigation into Hillary Clinton’s political demise. Here’s what they concluded, per McClatchy:

Obama-Trump voters … effectively accounted for more than two-thirds of the reason Clinton lost, according to Matt Canter, a senior vice president of the Democratic political firm Global Strategy Group. In his group’s analysis, about 70 percent of Clinton’s failure to reach Obama’s vote total in 2012 was because she lost these voters … His firm’s conclusion is shared broadly by other Democrats who have examined the data, including senior members of Clinton’s campaign and officials at the Democratic data and analytics firm Catalist.

 That same day, the Democratic super-PAC Priorities USA published the results of its focus groups and polls of Obama-Trump voters. The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent rounded up group’s most striking findings:

‌•

 Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images

50 percent of Obama-Trump voters said their incomes are falling behind the cost of living, and another 31 percent said their incomes are merely keeping pace with the cost of living.

‌•A sizable chunk of Obama-Trump voters — 30 percent — said their vote for Trump was more a vote against Clinton than a vote for Trump. Remember, these voters backed Obama four years earlier.

‌•42 percent of Obama-Trump voters said congressional Democrats’ economic policies will favor the wealthy, vs. only 21 percent of them who said the same about Trump. (Forty percent say that about congressional Republicans.) A total of 77 percent of Obama-Trump voters said Trump’s policies will favor some mix of all other classes (middle class, poor, all equally), while a total of 58 percent said that about congressional Democrats.

So: It was the Obama-Trump voters, in the Rust Belt, with the economic anxiety. Disaffected workers in deindustrialized America, who believed that Trump was a genuine populist — and sympathized with Bernie Sanders’s critique of the Democratic Party — cost Clinton the election.

But then, so did insufficient Democratic turnout. Here’s McClatchy again:

Democrats are quick to acknowledge that even if voters switching allegiance had been Clinton’s biggest problem, in such a close election she still could have defeated Trump with better turnout. She could have won, for instance, if African-American turnout in Michigan and Florida matched 2012 levels.

 (AP Photo / Matt Rourke) Cf, The Nation : sharply polarized along lines of racial tolerance

----

 And so did white America’s discomfort with the anti-racist, multicultural vision of our country that the Clinton campaign embraced. Analyses of postelection survey data have revealed that in 2016, the American electorate was more sharply polarized along lines of racial tolerance than it had been at any time in recent memory — and that “individuals with high levels of racial resentment were more likely to switch from Obama to Trump.”

And Clinton’s defeat was also, probably, caused by James Comey, as she herself claimed; and by the candidate’s own fatal combination of oratorical weakness and a (fair or unfair) reputation for coziness with malign special interests; and sexism; and her campaign’s distaste for deep canvassing; and its neglect of the Rust Belt.

When an election is decided by 80,000 votes, a plausible case can be made for the decisive impact of a wide variety of individual factors. And there is some evidence to support virtually every popular narrative for Clinton’s defeat.

Why did Trump win? New research by Democrats offers a worrisome answer. cf: Greg Sargent, Washington Post

-------------
[Elizabeth Drew, NY Review of Books:

Many were surprised to learn that the majority of white women voted for Trump and helped him to victory. Trump won 53% of white women, despite many onlookers predicting women would be repulsed by a recording of Trump bragging about making unwanted sexual advances on women, and enthused by the prospect of electing the first female president. The Guardian spoke with women who voted for Trump, who explained that economics and dislike for Clinton meant they were willing to overlook Trump’s rhetoric.

Then there was the effect of the third parties. According to exit polls, as was feared by the Clinton campaign, nearly 10 percent of millennials voted for third-party candidates. (Bernie Sanders’s efforts to persuade the millennials to vote for Clinton, after having painted her for months as a corrupt creature of Wall Street, weren’t successful enough.) On the reasonable assumption that by far most of those who voted for the third-party candidates would have otherwise gone for Clinton, Gary Johnson, the odd-duck Libertarian, with 3.2 percent of the popular vote, and Jill Stein, of the Green Party, receiving just 1 percent, damaged and perhaps destroyed Clinton’s chances. (Ah, not-so-sweet memories of Florida 2000.) Together they appear to have cost her critical states, though it was Johnson who made the principal difference. The national contest was nearly tied 47.7 percent to 47.4 percent, so Johnson’s and Stein’s combined just over 4 percent tipped the Electoral College Trump’s way.

 In Pennsylvania, Trump beat Clinton by a mere 67,902 votes, while Johnson got 142,608. In Michigan, Johnson drew more than fourteen times the number of votes that Trump beat Clinton by. And in Wisconsin, the result was 47.9 percent to 46.9 percent in Trump’s favor, while Johnson pulled 3 percent of the vote; Stein also received more votes than the margin of difference between the two main candidates. A CBS News exit poll found that if those who voted for Johnson or Stein had had to choose only between Clinton and Trump they would have supported Clinton by nearly two to one. It’s not a stretch to conclude that, absent the third-party candidates, Hillary Clinton would have won the election.-----In an important change from four years ago, only 26 percent of rural voters went for Clinton, in contrast with the 40 percent of them who supported Obama in 2012. Clinton came across to them as an creature from another, urban, world—a wealthy woman who liked big government and didn’t understand them. Her husband knew how to talk to them; he’d grown up around them and he spoke in their idiom.--Elizabeth Drew, NY Review of Books

-----

Peter van Agtmael/Magnum Photos

Election night, Times Square, New York City, November 8, 2016     [cf Elizabeth Drew, How it Happened, NY Review of Books]

That said, there appears to be a growing consensus that Obama-Trump voters were a much bigger problem for Clinton than superior Republican turnout: Global Strategy Group’s research actually found that Clinton won a majority of new voters in Ohio, even as she lost the state by eight points.

But when one focuses on the fact that roughly 40 percent of eligible voters didn’t turn out in 2012 and 2016 — and that this enormous, nonvoting population looks demographically and ideologically favorable for Democrats — putting outreach to Obama-Trump voters above efforts to expand the electorate can seem myopic. Particularly when one considers the large communities of unregistered Latino voters in Texas’s cities — and all the Electoral College problems they could one day solve for Team Blue.

Happily, the imperatives of persuasion and mobilization are in no way mutually exclusive. Priorities USA’s focus groups with “drop-off voters” — those who pulled the lever for Obama in 2012 and then stayed at home in 2016 — suggest they have much in common with “soft” Obama-Trump voters. Specifically, many in both groups feel that their incomes aren’t keeping pace with the cost of living, and oppose cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Obamacare.

Hillary Clinton, right, with her aide Huma Abedin talking on her campaign plane in October 2016. Cf, 'fatal combination,' NY TimesCredit       Doug Mills/The New York Times    

Tying Trump to the GOP’s regressive agenda — and stoking the class resentments of white workers in the Midwest — does not preclude efforts to increase black and Hispanic turnout in the Sun Belt. Pushing for state legislatures to expand automatic voter registration and expand early voting does not undermine attempts to craft an economic platform and message that will resonate in Kenosha County.

And, at least theoretically, you can do these things while also using Team Blue’s commitment to rationality and professionalism to make inroads with the moderate, college-educated white voters who find themselves discomfited by the know-nothing ethno-nationalists and far-right theocrats who have consumed America’s “center-right” party.

Of course, there will be some tension between these efforts. A sharp class message pitched at cautious Obama-Trump voters could alienate parts of “Panera land.” And energizing nonvoting blacks and Latinos may require bold stances on immigration and policing that could theoretically alienate otherwise reachable whites from Youngstown to the Atlanta suburbs. If nothing else, the party’s finite resources will force it to prioritize courting some voters over others, a fact that this year’s special elections have already highlighted.

But a glance across the aisle shows that it is possible for a major party to make few ideological compromises on the federal level, while also cultivating disparate regional identities to remain competitive in hostile states. In recent years, even as their national party became evermore radically reactionary, Republican candidates won gubernatorial races in Massachusetts, Maryland, and Illinois; last fall, the GOP put a far-right demagogue in the White House — and a Republican in Vermont’s governor’s mansion.

There are no easy answers to right-wing populism – but left-wing populism may be the best we’ve got. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images  cf: a surefire prophylactic against white nativist backlash, New York

----

But we’d all be well-served by resisting the temptation to project the certainty of our moral convictions onto empirical questions of political reality. Doing so makes us susceptible to ignoring inconvenient but potentially useful insights, like the fact that Trump really did dramatically outperform the typical Republican candidate with low-income voters — or that social democratic polices have not been a surefire prophylactic against white nativist backlash in other Western nations.

Progressives should relentlessly defend their visions of what should be; but maintain an open mind about what is, and what has been.

U.S. Unemployment Hits a 10-Year Low.

Job growth in the U.S. bounced back in April, according to new figures from the U.S. Department of Labor issued Friday. The numbers follow weak March results: 211,000 jobs were added last month, bringing the three-month average to 174,000. The unemployment rate ticked down to 4.4 percent from 4.5 percent, making it the lowest rate in more than 10 years. According to the report, wage gains were modest, but employers continue to complain about a shortage of employees, in particular for part-time work.

READ IT AT THE NEW YORK TIMES

BUZZFEED

The Trump Boom Is Happening On Paper, But Not In The Real World.

Consumers and CEOs are expressing confidence at historically high levels. But they're not celebrating by buying a new car just yet.

Fear of Diversity Made People More Likely to Vote Trump

The 2016 election was really a battle about having an open society. 

THE NATION

Don’t Assume That the Senate Will Bury Zombie Trumpcare

NEW YORK

David Axelrod Screenshot/CNN

'It takes a lot of work to lose to Donald Trump, let me tell you'

BUSINESS INSIDER

President Barack Obama's former senior adviser, David Axelrod, told CNN on Wednesday that Hillary Clinton should take full responsibility for her mistakes in the 2016 campaign, noting that "it takes a lot of work to lose to Donald Trump."

During an event with journalist Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday,Clinton said she was "on the way to winning" the election when FBI Director James Comey sent a letter to Congress 11 days before the election informing them that he had reopened the investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server. Clinton argued that this discouraged voters who otherwise would have supported her.

Axelrod conceded that Clinton has "legitimate beef" with Comey, but argued that the FBI's interference does not clear the Clinton campaign of responsibility for their own mistakes, including failing to spend enough time and resources in key states like Michigan and Wisconsin.

"Jim Comey didn't tell her not to campaign in Wisconsin after the convention, Jim Comey didn't say 'don't put any resources into Michigan until the final week,'" he said.

Axelrod, who was Obama's chief strategist on both of his winning presidential campaigns and advised him in the White House, argued that Clinton's reputation for dodging responsibility for her mistakes has hurt her in the past and is not a wise strategy going forward.

"One of the things that hindered her in the campaign was a sense that she never fully was willing to take responsibility for her mistakes, particularly that server," Axelrod said. "So if I were were her, if I were advising her, I would say, 'don't do this, don't go back and appear as if you're shifting responsibility off.'"