ET Williams

The Doctor of Common Sense

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Jerry and Swarzenegger head to D.C. to address Social Issues

Dumb and Dumber is running California.

California Gov. Jerry Brown doesn’t travel much out of state, but amid intensifying conflict with Washington over health care, climate change, immigration and more, the governor of the nation’s most populous state will head east next week — his first trip to the nation’s capital since President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

The visit will come less than a week after Trump released a budget proposal that would cut deeply into social service programs and begin an easing of national vehicle emission standards — both anathema to policies in Brown’s heavily Democratic state. The governor called the environmental action “an unconscionable gift to polluters,” and California officials this week filed a motion in federal court to intervene in a lawsuit automakers brought against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Brown’s office included only one specific meeting in its announcement of the four-day trip, which begins Monday: a meeting of the Nuclear Threat Initiative’s board of directors, which Brown joined earlier this year. In a statement Saturday, Brown’s office said “additional meetings with government leaders and others will be added to the schedule.”

It’s unclear with whom Brown will seek meetings — or if they will include any Trump administration officials. The lack of scheduling is typical of the fourth-term Democrat, who eschews public schedules for the flexibility they deny him.

Brown traveled regularly out of state during his previous time as governor, from 1975 to 1983, and as in his three failed bids for president. Since returning to office in 2011, however, the 78-year-old Brown has largely limited his travel to events related to climate change. He skipped a meeting of the nation’s governors in Washington in February.

But Trump’s first months in office have expanded the range of issues with which California and Washington stand in conflict. On Twitter, Brown described a proposal by Republicans to repeal former President Barack Obama’s landmark health care overhaul as a “harebrained scheme” and “a really dumb idea” that he said would result in widespread suffering.

The state budget relies on more than $105 billion in federal funding. Following Trump’s budget release this week, Brown’s finance director, Michael Cohen, said in a prepared statement that “it’s hard to know where to begin.”

“The President’s Budget proposes a complete withdrawal of the federal government’s commitment to working with states to solve the critical issues of the country – from environmental protection and emergency preparedness to transportation and other infrastructure,” he said.

While Brown prepared to travel to Washington, his predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was expected to follow soon after, angered by proposed cuts to after-school programs, a cause of Schwarzenegger’s since before he was governor.

“It looks like I’ll be making another trip to Washington,” Schwarzenegger, who appeared on Capitol Hill in 2013 to lobby against proposed cuts to after-school programs, said on Twitter. “We’ve fought this fight over & over, and we’re undefeated.”

White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney on Thursday defended reductions to after-school programs, saying there is no evidence that they are effective.

While Brown has promised to confront Trump on issues ranging from immigration to health care and the environment, he has held out hope that Trump could prove helpful on infrastructure spending.

Brown is seeking to build a high-speed rail system and a $15.5 billion Delta water conveyance. Of Trump’s $1 trillion infrastructure proposal, Brown said in his State of the State address in January, “I say, amen to that, man!

http://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2017/03/jerry-brown-heads-to-dc-with-schwarzenegger-right-behind-him-110484

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Al Franklen Crowned best Senator for the Trump Era

Sen. Al Franken works with staff in his office on Capitol Hill. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

It was a half-hour before one of the sparsely attended committee hearings that take place almost every day on Capitol Hill — in this case, a session on energy infrastructure so dry it would not merit even the presence of a C-SPAN camera.

But in Al Franken’s suite of offices in the Hart Senate Office Building, the man still known best as one of the early stars of “Saturday Night Live” was going through an intense rehearsal with four aides.

How much, Franken wanted to know, are the Chinese spending on clean technology research? Where do things stand on the University of Minnesota’s study of torrefaction, a roasting process that produces better fuel for biomass energy production? And might there be a chance to ask a question about one of his favorite causes, loan guarantees for Native American reservations?

“I just want to keep bringing it up, so they keep hearing it,” Franken said, with a trace of a sigh.

Everyone is hearing a lot more from Minnesota’s junior senator these days.

At the dawn of a presidency that stretches the limits of late-night parody, and at a moment when an out-of-power Democratic Party is trying to find its voice, the former comedian and satirist may be having a breakout moment as a political star.

He is also finding it safe to be funny again.

Franken, now 65, barely made it to the Senate, taking his oath in July 2009 after a ballot recount that took eight months to resolve. So he spent his first term trying to prove he was not a joke — buttoning up his wit, buckling down on esoteric issues and sidestepping all but his home-state media.

“I won by 312 votes, right?” he said in an interview. “I had to show people that I was taking the job seriously, and I had come here for serious purposes, and I am still here for serious purposes. So I think I just felt like I was on probation.”

That diligence paid off in 2014, a disastrous year for Democrats nationally, when Franken was reelected with a double-digit margin.

In between, he developed a reputation on Capitol Hill for policy chops and penetrating questions — skills that have been on display during confirmation hearings of President Trump’s Cabinet nominees.

Franken “had an instinct for the legislative process, but the one talent that surprised me a little bit beyond that was his talent for cross-examination,” said political scientist Norman Ornstein, a close friend. “He has that Perry Mason quality.”

An exchange with Franken tripped up Jeff Sessions, then a fellow senator and now the attorney general, during his appearance before the Judiciary Committee.

Franken inquired what Sessions would do if he learned that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign had communicated with the Russian government in 2016.

He was trying to nudge Sessions into recusing himself, and he was startled when the Alabama senator offered information he had not asked for.

“I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign, and I did not have communications with the Russians,” Sessions said.

After The Washington Post revealed that Sessions had met with the Russian ambassador twice last year, the attorney general did indeed have to promise to step aside from any Justice Department investigations of the 2016 presidential campaign.

In his grilling of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Franken revealed her lack of familiarity with one of the big debates in the education field, which is whether student achievement should be measured by proficiency or growth.

Franken later declared it “one the most embarrassing performances by a nominee in the history of the United States Senate.”

“We wouldn’t accept a secretary of defense who couldn’t name the branches of the military,” he argued as the Senate prepared to vote. “We wouldn’t accept a secretary of state who couldn’t find Europe on a map. We wouldn’t accept a treasury secretary who doesn’t understand multiplication.”

Although one had to withdraw (Andrew Puzder, Trump’s first nominee for labor secretary), all of Trump’s other nominees have been approved by the Senate, a reflection of two realities: Republicans have 52 votes, and Democrats, when they had the majority in 2013, did away with the power to filibuster Cabinet picks, a procedure that requires 60 votes to surmount.

But Franken’s questions have left a mark. He will be at it again starting Monday, when Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch goes before the Judiciary Committee.

When he met privately with Gorsuch, Franken said, the nominee “seemed evasive, on pretty much everything I asked him.”

So given the chance to grill Gorsuch publicly, “I’m really going to be going to certain areas that serve what I consider his pro-corporate bias, which I think has been the bias of the court, the Roberts court,” Franken said.

The Minnesota senator spent the last eight years proving that he’s good enough, smart enough, and doggone it, people like him. (Don’t groan. Reporters who write about him should be allowed the indulgence of using at least one of his signature lines from SNL.)

Nearing the halfway mark of his second term, Franken said, he feels “a little freer to be myself, and so every once in awhile, something comes out.”

At the end of May, Franken has a book coming out — part memoir, part policy prescriptive — that he has wryly titled: “Al Franken, Giant of the Senate.”

Franken has a laugh that bursts like a Tommy gun, and it does not take much to get it going. His staff keeps track of him on the Senate floor by listening for eruptions on their office televisions.

But the best stage to see Franken-style legislative improv is the hearing room. One recent exchange went viral.

“Governor, thank you so much for coming into my office. Did you enjoy meeting me?” he asked former Texas governor Rick Perry, who was up for confirmation as energy secretary.

“I hope you are as much fun on that dais as you were on your couch,” Perry replied. In the awkward laughter that followed, Perry added: “May I rephrase that?”

“Please,” Franken said, shuddering. “Oh my lord.”

Those moments aside, and with Donald Trump in the White House, “I don’t think my role to play here has anything to do with humor,” Franken said. “I don’t think humor is the tool I’m supposed to be using.”

By one measure, Franken’s career has come full circle. In a 1991 “Saturday Night Live” skit, he played a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. A week ago, on an episode of SNL’s “Weekend Update,” cast member Alex Moffat portrayed Franken in what is now a real-life role on that panel.

He has many sides. During slow periods in committee hearings, Franken sometimes sketches elaborate portraits on a notepad. If he does not take them when he leaves, Senate staffers scoop up the Franken doodles as collector’s items.

But celebrity is a tricky thing in the Senate chamber, a place already well stocked with ego and ambition.

Franken said he found an early mentor in Tamera Luzzatto, who was Hillary Clinton’s Senate chief of staff at the time. Luzzatto had previously worked for Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), another famous name.

Luzzatto advised Franken to keep a low profile, take care of his state and always show up well prepared.

“What we really talked about is, there is still an opportunity in the Senate to get to know each other, and impress one another with your work ethic,” Luzzatto recalled. “The way one handles fame as an elected official — senators in particular — can help or harm you.”

When Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), then the minority leader, made a speech on the Senate floor in 2010 opposing the confirmation of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, he noticed Franken rolling his eyes. The impropriety was made worse by the fact that Franken was presiding over the Senate at the time.

“This isn’t ‘Saturday Night Live,’ Al,” McConnell said.

Franken apologized.

As it happens, Franken’s arrival in Washington marked the very moment that Democratic power reached a pinnacle.

His belated arrival in 2009 gave the party its 60th vote in the Senate, the one that made their agenda filibuster-proof and opened, among other things, the possibility of passing President Obama’s health-care law on Democratic support alone.

But that dominance did not last long. The following January, Republicans picked up a Massachusetts Senate seat and began a long march back to the majority, which they won in 2014, the year Franken was reelected.

And with Trump’s election, the party is shut out of power at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Franken brings a set of skills for navigating the wilderness they are in, Ornstein said. “It’s clear they need focused champions who can use the tools available to the minority to make points and frame issues and put people on the defensive and unmask things that need to be unmasked.”

Where it took Franken nearly six years to agree to his first Sunday show appearance as a senator, he now shows up on them frequently. There has even been talk of his potential as a presidential candidate.

“No. No,” he said. “I like this job. I really like this job. I like representing the people of Minnesota. I feel like I’m really beginning to know this job.”

Voters in Minnesota — a traditionally Democratic state that Trump lost by only a point and a half — also are paying attention to Franken’s emergence.

With another celebrity in the White House, “the context has completely changed,” said Kathryn L. Pearson, a political-science professor at the University of Minnesota. “There’s no question that his Democratic constituents are enthusiastic about his high-level role at the national level, but it certainly is riskier [with] Republicans in Minnesota, and even independents.”

The night before a hearing, Franken takes the prepared testimony of witnesses home and pores over it for weaknesses and inaccuracies. If a study is cited in a footnote, he will read that too, he said.

“Very often, when I think someone isn’t being truthful, that gets my ire up,” Franken said. He cited a skirmish in the Sessions confirmation hearing over a questionnaire in which the Alabama senator claimed to have “personally” litigated several important civil rights cases when he was a U.S. attorney. Other lawyers involved said Sessions’ role had actually been minimal.

Pressing Sessions on the discrepancy, Franken got him to admit that his role in some of the cases had consisted of “assistance and guidance” and that he “had been supportive of them.”

Republican senators objected to such rough treatment of one of their own. “It is unfortunate to see members of this body impugn the integrity of a fellow senator with whom we have served for years,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said.

But for Franken, the moment was sweet: “That was fun for me.”

But he is also part of the club. When the bells rang for a vote on a recent afternoon, Franken and four colleagues crowded onto a Senate subway car.

“We have Franken here to make us laugh!” Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) announced.

Which they all did.

“The first time Franken presided,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) told them, “I was sitting and looking at his profile, and all I could think was ‘Saturday Night Live.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/al-franken-has-found-a-new-role-in-the-trump-era/2017/03/18/247737bc-0b54-11e7-a15f-a58d4a988474_story.html?utm_term=.cb6ec6d9f3fc

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Are Republicans Trump’s Worst Enemy?

 

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Congressional Republicans have a lot to say about their new president.

Donald Trump’s proposed budget is “draconian, careless and counterproductive.” The health care plan is a bailout that won’t pass. And his administration’s suggestion that former President Barack Obama used London’s spy agency for surveillance is simply “inexplicable.”

With friends like these, who needs Democrats.

Less than two months in, Republicans have emerged as one of the biggest obstacles to Trump’s young administration, imperiling his early efforts to pass his agenda and make good on some of his biggest campaign promises.

Trump’s embrace of a House GOP plan to overhaul the country’s health system faces deep opposition from across the party, as does his push to get U.S. taxpayers to pay for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Republicans largely rejected his thin, 53-page first budget, joking that there’s a “fat chance for skinny budget” on Capitol Hill. And his tax reform and infrastructure plans have yet to gain any real traction in Congress.

Trump insisted on Friday that he is leading a party that is coalescing behind him.

“I think we have a very unified party. I think actually more unified than even the election,” he said at a White House news conference with German leader Angela Merkel. “You see when they talk about me, I seem to be very popular, at least this week within the party.”

Long a divisive political figure, Trump entered office with historically low approval ratings and a popular vote loss of nearly 3 million. Still, he claimed a sweeping mandate when he arrived in Washington, fiercely pushing back on any suggestion that he won with less than a historic margin and moving quickly on a series of controversial executive orders.

Now, his administration has reached the limits of what it can achieve without Congress, leaving Trump struggling to lead his party on Capitol Hill — starting with the health care bill.

After years of campaign promises to repeal and replace “Obamacare,” the bill presents the first major test of whether Trump and Republican leaders can marshal a fractious GOP caucus behind a major legislative initiative. GOP leaders fear that failure could chip away at Trump’s already thin political capital, dooming future efforts on tax reform and infrastructure.

Trump’s early missteps have overshadowed one of the administration’s smoothest-sailing moves — the nomination of Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court. Confirmation hearings begin Monday.

“A president only has so much political capital to expend and so much moral authority as well, and so any time your credibility takes a hit I think in many ways it weakens the officeholder,” said Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., who had described the surveillance claims as “inexplicable.”

The furor over Trump’s unproven claim that Obama wiretapped his New York skyscraper prompted Republican Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma to suggest Trump owes his predecessor an apology.

Republicans almost immediately balked at Trump’s budget, with Kentucky Rep. Hal Rogers uttering the “draconian” complaint and others questioning why Trump’s core supporters took a hit.

“Rural America stepped up to the plate behind the president in his last election, and we’re wholeheartedly behind him. We need to make sure that rural America at least gets its fair share,” said Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala.

Trump is hardly the first president to clash with members of his own party. Few congressional Democrats felt a personal connection to Obama, who came under criticism for his hands-off approach to Congress, and his lack of interest in schmoozing with lawmakers or using the trappings of his office to woo them.

While Trump has hosted Republicans for bowling, pizza and other White House events, he’s been hampered by his inexperience with governing and his distance from establishment GOP politics. A businessman, Trump has never lined up lawmakers behind a bill, crafted a political coalition or passed a budget — nor have many of his closest aides.

During his campaign, he embraced a populist platform, rejecting traditional conservative positions on issues like trade and cutting costly mandatory programs like Social Security.

Many congressional Republicans, from House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., on down, were slow to embrace Trump’s candidacy, and some of those concerns linger.

His series of false claims since the election haven’t helped the relationship, distracting from his agenda on Capitol Hill and forcing Republicans to answer near-daily questions about his accusations.

But Trump also seems eager to keep some wiggle room between his presidency and a bill some friends and allies believe is a political trap. They fear the legislation — they’ve dubbed it Ryancare — could violate some of Trump’s populist campaign promises, like providing health insurance for all Americans and preserving Medicaid, for a conservative Republican agenda led by Ryan.

“Speaker Paul Ryan and the establishment GOP have pulled a fast one on President Trump,” wrote Eric Bolling, a Fox News host with close ties to Trump, in an op-ed.

AP Congressional Correspondent Erica Werner contributed to this report.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/324327b3b6464025a234ab5b68d894f8/friends-these-trump-struggles-win-over-gop

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30 Countries Listed as Rejecting Illegals

(Dumb-Asses) Protesters march on East Seventh Street in St. Paul toward the Minnesota Capitol on Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017, as part of the national Day Without Immigrants event. (Pioneer Press: Richard Chin)

Approximately 30 countries are refusing to accept the deportations of illegal immigrants who have committed serious crimes in the U.S., according to Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar.

While these countries are refusing to accept the deportations of these criminals, the U.S. government is still issuing visas and student visas to citizens of those countries, according to the Texan congressman. There is already a law on the books which allows the U.S. to hold visas from a country that is not taking back its criminals, but according to Cuellar, the U.S. is not enforcing it.

“We’re not enforcing it, which is amazing. So now my intent is to go back to our committee on appropriations and affect their funding until they do that,” Cuellar told Sharyl Attkisson, host of Full Measure, in an interview.

Cuellar, a Democratic member of the House Committee on Appropriations, told Attkisson that the Supreme Court has ruled that illegal immigrants arrested for criminal activity can only be held for a certain period of time before they must be released.

“That means you’re releasing criminals into our streets because those countries refuse to take back those criminal aliens,” said Cuellar. “That’s wrong. And especially I think it’s even worse that this is already on the books, and we’re still issuing business tourist visas and student visas to countries that refuse to take back their criminal aliens. That’s wrong, and we’re hoping to change that.”

Cuellar has not been afraid to break with some of his party leadership on immigration issues in the past. He was known as one of former President Barack Obama’s fiercest critics on illegal immigration. Cuellar teamed up with Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn in 2014 to help pass a bill that would speed up the deportation of unaccompanied minors. His stance disappointed his fellow Democrats, including Sen. Harry Reid.

There are many foreign countries that refuse to retake illegal immigrants convicted of crimes, according to the congressman, including Vietnam, Cuba and China. Cuellar said that diplomacy plays a factor in the government’s refusal to enforce the law, as the Department of State and other federal agencies do not want to upset foreign partners.

But, for Cuellar, diplomacy is no excuse to put American lives in danger.

“But my response is, but we can upset our constituents, we can upset our way of life that we have here by allowing those criminals to be released?” said Cuellar. “And basically the response from the State Department is because you have to work with the State Department and Homeland Security. And the State Department, with all due respect, was focused on diplomacy.”

Cuellar noted that he understands the importance of diplomacy in these situations, but that it also important to prevent convicted criminals from returning to American neighborhoods. He told Attkisson that he plans to push for the U.S. government to withhold visas from countries that refuse to take back their convicted criminals.

You can watch Cuellar’s entire interview with Attkisson at Full Measure’s website Sunday at 9:30 a.m.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2017/03/18/30-countries-are-refusing-to-take-back-illegal-immigrants-convicted-of-serious-crimes/#ixzz4blCADUPz

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Where have you been Hilary?

SCRANTON, Pa. (AP) — Hillary Clinton said Friday she’s “ready to come out of the woods” and help Americans find common ground.

Clinton’s gradual return to the public spotlight following her presidential election loss continued with a St. Patrick’s Day speech in her late father’s Pennsylvania hometown of Scranton.

“I’m like a lot of my friends right now, I have a hard time watching the news,” Clinton told an Irish women’s group.

But she urged a divided country to work together to solve problems, recalling how, as first lady, she met with female leaders working to bring peace to Northern Ireland.

“I do not believe that we can let political divides harden into personal divides. And we can’t just ignore, or turn a cold shoulder to someone because they disagree with us politically,” she said.

Friday night’s speech was one of several she is to deliver in the coming months, including a May 26 commencement address at her alma mater, Wellesley College in Massachusetts. The Democrat also is working on a book of personal essays that will include some reflections on her loss to Donald Trump.

Clinton, who was spotted taking a walk in the woods around her hometown of Chappaqua, New York, two days after losing the election to Donald Trump, quipped she had wanted to stay in the woods, “but you can only do so much of that.”

She told the Society of Irish Women that it’ll be up to citizens, not a deeply polarized Washington, to bridge the political divide.

“I am ready to come out of the woods and to help shine a light on what is already happening around kitchen tables, at dinners like this, to help draw strength that will enable everybody to keep going,” said Clinton.

Clinton was received warmly in Scranton, where her grandfather worked in a lace mill. Her father left Scranton for Chicago in search of work during the Great Depression, but returned often. Hillary Clinton spent summers at the family’s cottage on nearby Lake Winola.

She fondly recalled watching movies stretched across a bedsheet in a neighbor’s yard, and told of how the cottage had a toilet but no shower or tub.

“Don’t tell anybody this, but we’d go down to the lake,” she said.

https://apnews.com/ed32f63ccea44f07bb3dee5e843f4cab/Hillary-Clinton-says-she’s-‘ready-to-come-out-of-the-woods

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Tom Ford back in the U.S.?

Tom Ford

The big, flat box of Dunkin’ Donuts, assorted varieties, sits open, one column short of the dozen, the only non-minimalist appointment in sight. It graces a sleek table in the upstairs seating loft at Studio 2 at Spring Studios. Tom Ford swears that the box isn’t a regular-guy prop, that he has in fact feasted on the missing sugary quartet this morning. “Four doughnuts and three cups of coffee.” When I express skepticism, he insists it’s his typical morning intake. “What?” he fakes reciprocal dismay. “I only eat fish and vegetables the rest of the time.”

The balance works. Dressed in an impeccable lean-cut suit with shirt and tie, Ford looks as svelte as ever and classically debonair, having left the open-to-there shirts of his slightly younger self behind. Yet I wasn’t invited to talk doughnuts or Ford’s eternal good looks. The primary topic: his decision to “abandon” (his word) the see-now-buy-now approach to showing that only last season some progressive industry thinkers considered at the vanguard of best practices. Ford tried it, staging a tony, civilized affair at the former Four Seasons restaurant in New York. The show proved a crowd-pleaser and the clothes, impressive, garnered him an explosion of press and a major postshow selling spurt. But ultimately, the construct didn’t work, so he’s moving on.

That was just the start of his news. Beginning with spring 2018, Ford will show his women’s wear on the traditional schedule, but in New York rather than in his recent base, London, while continuing to present men’s in Milan, “and not mixing them, at least not regularly.” He’ll likely seek an early slot on the New York Fashion Week calendar. “I like going first,” Ford says. “People are in a good mood. You have to think of the psychology. People have had their summer, they’re not worn out yet from fashion.”

Ford is not only exiting fashion week in London. He and his family, husband Richard Buckley and son Jack, are moving from there to Los Angeles, where they’ve recently bought a heck of a house. It once belonged to Betsy and Alfred Bloomingdale, and had a reported, though most definitely unconfirmed, purchase price, of $39 million. (By the way, Ford offers that Jack is “adorable and freakishly smart.” A photo bears out the former condition; as for the latter, we’ll have to take the proud dad’s word.) And Ford has signed a lease on a studio space in L.A. — the old Regen Projects gallery (yes, Hedi Slimane’s former studio) — where he will relocate most of his women’s design staff, while keeping the men’s studio in London. Phew!

Ford came to New York for a day of press appointments on Thursday. Fall 2017 “is sold and done. But I wanted to bring it to New York and show New York editors,” he says. The trip was arranged hastily, as for a while, he was uncertain how or even whether to show fall after his decision to forego the runway this time out.

The reason: His preoccupation with thinking through his retreat from see-now-buy-now, and what other alternatives might exist. Since reentering the women’s arena, Ford has been in the forefront of experimentation with methods of showing, garnering high praise and vivisection for various efforts. He works from an almost scientific resolve, experimental in the true sense of the word: He goes all-in to test a promising hypothesis with a conviction rare in fashion.

“I don’t have fear,” Ford says. “You have to do what feels right, you have to try things. I don’t let fear stop me. It doesn’t mean I don’t second-guess myself constantly, right up until the end — ‘Oh my God, is this right, is that right? Should that be that? Should I have kept this off? God, should I make those skirts out of Lycra?’…And blah blah blah. But you can’t let that stop you.”

When efforts haven’t worked, he’s admitted it. Now, he muses, only half-joking, that all the luxury types who pooh-poohed the buy-now concept — which were just about all the luxury types but for Ralph Lauren and Burberry’s Christopher Bailey — will garner some satisfaction from being proven right, for the moment.

Yet he still believes that immediacy is the ultimate way of the future. “Doesn’t everyone want everything now?” he queries, rhetorically. However, in the present, see-now-buy-now can’t work for a very simple reason: The industry’s numerous schedules aren’t in sync.

Ford notes he had no production issues — “we shipped in July” — and that during the three weeks immediately postshow, business boomed at retail. Overall, however, “The store shipping schedule doesn’t align with the fashion show schedule.” The bulk of fall ships in August, “but you can’t have a show with clothes that have been on the selling floor for a month.” Ford kept his off the floor until the day after the show, insisting that his retail partners did the same. “We lost a month of selling. We had merchandise sitting in stockrooms all over the world.” Many of those retailers, though at first excited by the prospect of see-now-buy-now, grew frustrated that the clothes had to be kept under wraps until September.

Ultimately, the focused frenzy didn’t make up for the loss of traditional long-lead press and the additional selling time. Spring would create a different issue, given its shorter lead time. “Our clothes are just now fully in the stores, and we have missed all the fashion weeks,” Ford notes.

Thus, his return to the traditional schedule. And his permanent (at least for now) runway migration to New York. After the success of his second directorial film effort, “Nocturnal Animals,” Ford wants to spend the next few years focusing solely on fashion. He is definitely in growth mode, particularly with women’s. Men’s accounts for about 60 percent of his business and women’s, 40, a ratio he’d like to reverse. But he admits to a stronger comfort level in the men’s arena. “I’m my own muse. On a good day, I can look 45. I’m a sample size 48, and if I want it for myself, I make it.” A recent addition, underwear, in store for fourth quarter, is men’s only for now. “I thought it was time my name was wrapped around the hips of 25-year-old men, boys. I’ve been waiting to say that,” he offers, in his typical deadpan delivery.

He thinks that having a regular presence on the traditional women’s schedule will support a structure that will benefit that side of the business. “I need a home for fashion shows and a consistency, so that you can start to think, ‘OK, this is where he shows, this is what it’s about, this is what he did last season, this is what he’s doing now. There’s a certain consistency,” he says. “Paris is crammed full of competition; Milan, been there, done that.… London, I’ve tried and tried and tried, and honestly London Fashion Week is not the same. It doesn’t attract the international press. So I needed to pick one. And the shows I’ve had in New York have worked very well.”

The residential move, from London to Los Angeles, is more nuanced. Having spent the better part of a year in Los Angeles because of the film, he was reminded of the appeal of sunshine after 18 years in “dark London.” That move is a homecoming of sorts, a concept that appeals to Ford now more than ever, as a family man who’s admittedly no spring chicken himself. “I grew up in the American West. The older I get, the more pulled back I am to a more rural…” perhaps conjuring images of his soon-to-be-residence, he rethinks “rural” “…I need sunshine. L.A. is the least city of all cities.” His parents live on the West Coast, as does his sister and her children. “Jack has a family there. A lot of it is personal.”

The presidential election also impacted Ford’s decision to move, surprisingly so. Unlike those celebrities who vowed in its lead-up to leave the country if Donald Trump won, Ford found an opposite pull. “Oddly, it made me want to come back even more,” he notes. “We have a tremendous number of people in this country who feel disenfranchised and clearly we are not relating to or speaking to them. I am at my core American, and it made me want to come back. It didn’t make me want to run away.

“I think when you sense that there is a divide in your country and that there are people who perhaps you’re not relating to, and that those of us who are fortunate enough to live in a world of very liberal human rights and privilege, it’s a wake-up call that we’re not addressing a big part of the country that does feel disenfranchised. It made me feel more nationalistic, if anything. The whole country is not like New York and L.A. and the world that I am used to living in.”

Bridget Foley’s Diary: Tom Ford, Coming Home