Monday, December 31, 2018
America’s new year’s resolution: impeach Trump and remove him | Robert Reich | Opinion | The Guardian
Robert Reich
After his first bizarre year, Donald Trump’s apologists told us he was growing into the job and that in his second year he would be more restrained and respectful of democratic institutions.
Wrong. He’s been worse.
Exhibit one: the “wall”. After torpedoing Mitch McConnell’s temporary spending deal to avert a shutdown, he’s holding hostage more than 800,000 government employees (“mostly Democrats”, he calls them, disparagingly) while subjecting the rest of America to untoward dangers.
On-site inspections at power plants have been halted. Hazardous waste cleanup efforts at Superfund sites are on hold. Reviews of toxic substances and pesticides have been stopped. Justice department cases are in limbo.
Meanwhile, now working without pay are thousands of air traffic controllers and aviation and railroad safety inspectors, nearly 54,000 Customs and Border Protection agents, 42,000 coast guard employees, 53,000 TSA agents, 17,000 correctional officers, 14,000 FBI agents, 4,000 Drug Enforcement Administration agents, and some 5,000 firefighters with the US Forest Service.
Some Americans no longer see his antics for what they are – escalating attacks on core democratic institutions
Having run the Department of Labor during the 1995 and 1996 shutdowns, I’m confident most of these public servants will continue to report for duty because they care about the missions they’re upholding. But going without pay will strain their family budgets to the point that some will not be able to.
Shame on him for jeopardizing America this way in order to fund his wall – which is nothing but a trumped-up solution to a trumped-up problem designed only to fuel his base.
In his second year, he’s also done even more damage to the nation’s judicial-criminal system than he did before.
At least twice in the past month he has reportedly raged against his acting attorney general for allowing federal prosecutors to reference him in the crimes his former bagman Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to committing.
This is potentially the most direct obstruction of justice yet. He’s now pressuring an official whom he hand-picked and whose entire future depends on him, to take actions that would impair the independence of federal prosecutors.
Last month he blasted Jon Tigar as an “Obama judge”, after Tigar blocked the administration’s limits on asylum eligibility to ports of entry, a decision summarily upheld by the ninth circuit court of appeals and sustained by the supreme court.
Chief Justice Roberts issued a rare rebuke. “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges,” he wrote, adding that an “independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for”.
Which prompted this rejoinder: “Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have ‘Obama judges,’” followed by a baseless and incendiary claim that “they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country” and their “rulings are making our country unsafe! Very dangerous and unwise!”
In his second year, he has displayed even less commitment to keeping the military non-partisan than he did initially. During a teleconference with US troops and coast guard members last month he continued his rampage against the judiciary, calling the ninth circuit “a big thorn in our side” and “a disgrace”.
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Then he turned last week’s surprise visit to American troops in Iraq and Germany into a political rally: praising troops wearing red “Make America Great Again” caps, signing a “Trump 2020” patch, and accusing Nancy Pelosi and other leading Democrats of being weak on border security.
Some Americans are becoming so accustomed to these antics that they no longer see them for what they are – escalating attacks on core democratic institutions.
Where would we be if a president could simply shut down the government when he doesn’t get his way? If he could stop federal prosecutions he doesn’t like and order those he wants? If he could whip up public anger against court decisions he disapproves of? If he could mobilize the military to support him, against Congress and the judiciary?
We would no longer live in a democracy. Like his increasing attacks on critics in the press, these are all aspects of his growing authoritarianism. We normalize them at our peril.
America’s democratic institutions remain strong, but I’m not sure they can endure two more years of this. Trump must be removed from office through impeachment, or his own decision to resign in the face of impeachment, as did Richard Nixon.
Republican members of Congress must join with Democrats to get this task done as quickly as possible. Nothing is more urgent. It must be, in effect, America’s new year’s resolution.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good.
Va. 6th District Rep. Goodlatte Blocking Bill Aimed at Helping A - WVIR NBC29 Charlottesville News, Sports, and Weather
FARGO, N.D. (AP) - A departing Republican congressman from Virginia who's blocking a bill by a departing senator from North Dakota intended to help abused Native American women says the measure is unfair to law enforcement.
Virginia Rep. Bob Goodlatte tells The Roanoke Times that he agrees with the intent of North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp's plan to improve the federal government's response to violence against American women. However, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee says it hurts agencies that have no link to tribal communities and therefore cannot fulfill requirements for grants.
The Senate unanimously passed the initiative. With the House adjourned until further notice, the measure known as Savanna's Act will likely expire at the end of the year.
Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has said she will reintroduce the bill when lawmakers return to Washington.
Opinion | None of Us Deserve Citizenship - The New York Times
'
By Michelle Alexander, Author of "The New Jim Crow"
"On what moral grounds can we deny others rights, privileges and opportunities that we did not earn ourselves?
Members of the caravan of thousands from Central America trying to reach the United States, at the border wall in Tijuana, Mexico, last week.Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters
Members of the caravan of thousands from Central America trying to reach the United States, at the border wall in Tijuana, Mexico, last week.Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters
Late last month, 19-year-old Maryury Elizabeth Serrano-Hernandez reportedly scaled a wall along the United States-Mexico border while eight months pregnant and gave birth within hours of placing her feet on American soil. She was part of a widely publicized Central American caravan and traveled more than 2,000 miles from Honduras propelled by the dream of giving her new baby, as well as her 3-year-old son, a life free from the violence and grinding poverty she endured back home. She views her child’s birth in the United States as a “big reward” for her courage, perseverance and faith. As she explained to Univision, which documented parts of her family’s journey, “With faith in God, I always said my son will be born there.”
For some Americans, Ms. Serrano-Hernandez’s story is nothing short of heroic, given the suffering she endured and the extraordinary obstacles she overcame to give her children a chance at a better life. For others, her story represents everything that’s wrong with our immigration system. The Border Patrol said that Ms. Serrano-Hernandez and her family were released on their own recognizance. Her newborn is, for many, just another “anchor baby,” proof that a more aggressive and unforgiving approach to illegal immigration is warranted and that Trump is right to call for an end to birthright citizenship.
No matter what side of the debate one gravitates toward, stories like Ms. Serrano-Hernandez’s highlight the moral quagmire that we’ve created by treating the migration of desperately poor people as a problem that can best be addressed by border walls, tear gas, detention camps, militarized policing and mass deportation — except, of course, for the relative few, truly “deserving” individuals who may be granted legal citizenship (typically after years of waiting and hundreds or thousands of dollars in attorney’s fees) if they can win asylum.
Questions abound: Does Ms. Serrano-Hernandez’s baby son deserve citizenship because he was born here but not his 3-year-old sibling? Does everyone in the family deserve citizenship now that one member has been born here? Or does no one in the family deserve citizenship, even the baby, because the parents crossed the border illegally?
Answering these questions may be easy legally, but they’re more difficult morally. After all, none of us born here did anything to deserve our citizenship. On what moral grounds can we deny others rights, privileges and opportunities that we did not earn ourselves?
Jose Antonio Vargas’s powerful book “Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen” wrestles with the moral, emotional and psychological dimensions of America’s perennial question: Who deserves citizenship? With remarkable sensitivity to the extraordinarily wide range of people whose lives are affected by our nation’s immigration policies, he writes from the perspective of someone who was brought to this country illegally at the age of 12 to live with his grandparents, leaving his mother in the Philippines. Ever since his grandfather confessed to him, at age 16, that “you are not supposed to be here,” he has battled deep feelings of unworthiness and has striven to earn the right to belong. Yet no matter how much he achieved or contributed — indeed, even after winning a Pulitzer Prize for journalism — he still had the nagging feeling that he didn’t deserve to be here. Only after being arrested near the border and held in a cell with a group of terrified undocumented boys who had been separated from their families did he have an awakening: It was suddenly obvious to him that the boys huddled near him deserved safety, security and a place they could call home — a place where they could not only survive but also thrive. If they deserved such a thing, he did too. “Home is not something I should have to earn,” he wrote. It’s something we all have a right to.
Many people will sympathize with Mr. Vargas’s story but recoil at his bold conclusion, as it seems to imply support for open borders — a position that no Republican or Democratic member of Congress supports or even takes seriously. This reaction seems misplaced. The deeper question raised isn’t whether our borders should be open or closed (generally a false dichotomy) but rather how we ought to manage immigration in a manner that honors the dignity, humanity and legitimate interests of all concerned.
Reaching for a radically more humane immigration system is not pie-in-the-sky, utopian dreaming. But it does require a certain measure of humility on the part of those of us who have benefited from birthright citizenship. Rather than viewing immigrants as seeking something that we, Americans, have a moral right to withhold from them, we ought to begin by acknowledging that none of us who were born here did anything to deserve our citizenship, and yet all of us — no matter where we were born — deserve compassion and basic human rights.
It’s tempting to imagine that our position as gatekeepers is morally sound — since we’re frequently reminded that “all nations have a right to defend their borders” — but our relationship to those who are fleeing poverty and violence is morally complex. Not only does birthright citizenship bestow upon us a privileged status that we haven’t earned; our nation’s unparalleled wealth and power, as well as our actual borders, lack a sturdy moral foundation. But for slavery, genocide and colonization, we would not be the wealthiest, most powerful nation in the world — in fact, our nation would not even exist. This is not hyperbole; it’s history. There’s good reason some Mexicans say: “We didn’t cross the border. The border crossed us.” That is, in fact, what happened.
Of course, it can be argued that virtually all modern nation-states were created through violence, exploitation and war. But we claim to be unlike most nation-states; indeed, we insist that we’re “exceptional.” We are the only nation that advertises itself as “a nation of immigrants” and the “land of the free,” an advertising campaign complete with a Statute of Liberty whose pedestal includes a plaque of a poem that reads in part:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
The founders of our nation did not merely wax poetic about the virtues of liberty; our nation was birthed by a Declaration of Independence, a document that insists that “all men are created equal” with “certain inalienable rights” including “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” After centuries of struggle, including a Civil War, we now claim to understand that all people — not just propertied white men — are created equal with basic, inalienable human rights. If this is true, on what moral grounds can we greet immigrants with tear gas and lock them in for-profit detention camps, or build walls against the huddled masses yearning to breathe free? After all, what was Ms. Serrano-Hernandez doing if not pursuing life, liberty and happiness for herself and her family? Did she not display a level of courage, fortitude and determination to win freedom for herself and those she loved comparable to that of those who helped birth our nation?
Even if we’re tempted to treat as irrelevant the circumstances of our nation’s founding, we cannot ignore the fact that our recent and current foreign policies, trade agreements and military adventures — including our global drug wars — have greatly contributed to the immigration crisis that our nation is now trying to solve through border walls and mass deportation. Would Ms. Serrano-Hernandez and her family even be knocking at our door today if it weren’t for the disastrous policies our government has pursued in Honduras for decades?
The anthropologist Margaret Mead famously said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” Today a relatively small group of courageous noncitizens — people like Mr. Vargas, Ms. Serrano-Hernandez, the Dreamers and the thousands who joined the caravan — are challenging us to see immigrants not only as fully human, created equal, with certain inalienable rights but also morally entitled to far greater care, compassion and concern than we have managed to muster to date."
Opinion | None of Us Deserve Citizenship - The New York Times:
By Michelle Alexander
Too Old to Be a Freshman in Congress? Donna Shalala Doesn’t Care - The New York Times
The woman who signed my college degree at Hunter, CUNY.
"WASHINGTON — The Georgetown waterfront apartment where Donna Shalala has spent part of the last two decades is half sanctuary, half résumé.
There is a signed photo of Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state, walking with Ms. Shalala when both were in Bill Clinton’s cabinet. A gold coffee table is adorned with the visages of the kings of Persia, a reminder of her time in pre-revolutionary Iran as a Peace Corps volunteer. Against a bookshelf a set of golf clubs rests in a bag emblazoned with the trademark orange and green “U” from the University of Miami, the 17,000-student private institution where she was president until 2015.
The shoulder bag left on a chair by the door with a different seal — the House of Representatives — seems like a bit of a letdown. But nevertheless, as she will repeatedly tell you, Ms. Shalala is excited for the next chapter in a career spanning decades: backbench freshman.
Taking office a little over a month before her 78th birthday, Ms. Shalala, who once presided over a sprawling bureaucracy and budget as secretary of health and human services, will take on a new role: the oldest freshman in her class and one of the oldest true freshmen in congressional history. (Representative James Bowler of Illinois, elected at 78 in 1953, still maintains the distinction of being the oldest first-term freshman.)
Under the circumstances of the moment, her greatest strength — being historically old and experienced in a historically young and diverse freshman class — could become a huge liability.
“Do they see her skill set as an asset or is she sort of dismissed as the old guard who’s out of touch with how the world is now?” asked Scott Klug, a former Wisconsin Republican representative who introduced Ms. Shalala at her 1992 cabinet confirmation hearing. He answered, “Donna, just by the force of her personality, will have a presence.”
Ms. Shalala with Hillary Clinton in 1994. Ms. Shalala’s affiliation with the Clintons could be a challenge in a younger, more diverse Democratic Party.Charles Tasnadi/Associated Press
Ms. Shalala with Hillary Clinton in 1994. Ms. Shalala’s affiliation with the Clintons could be a challenge in a younger, more diverse Democratic Party.Charles Tasnadi/Associated Press
In a freshman class where some first-time candidates may be reluctant to transition to governing, Ms. Shalala is unlikely to Instagram her way through office, like Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, or joust with Twitter trolls the way Representative-elect Ilhan Omar of Minnesota does. (She does maintain accounts on both platforms.)
The newcomers may come to value the woman nicknamed Hurricane Donna, who wrestled with a Republican Congress and spent years testifying before the senior lawmakers she now calls colleagues. But in the meantime, the adjustment could well be brutal for someone who has led staffs of thousands and controlled budgets of millions, or even billions.
“She’ll be the chief executive of her congressional office, but that is all,” Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the retiring Republican whose South Florida seat Ms. Shalala is taking. She spent time meeting with Ms. Shalala during the transition to help her adjust. “I want her to understand that she’s used to being the chief, and Congress puts you in your place.”
Ms. Shalala, who weathered a surprisingly competitive primary challenge and general election race, understands the persistent disbelief from both Republicans and Democrats over her decision to run. (“I got pissed off,” she says, watching President Trump doing something — she can’t remember what, but something — on TV.)
And she concedes that her new junior status will be a challenge.
“In my head, I assume it’s a new job, and I’ve got to be careful about not bringing the last job or the last experience to it,” she said, standing in her kitchen with a cup of black coffee.
Ms. Shalala does have some challenges in a Democratic Party that is younger, more diverse and more liberal than Mr. Clinton’s. She must communicate with her district’s significant Hispanic population without fluency in Spanish. As president of the University of Miami, she clashed with custodial workers striking over low pay, though she later earned the support of union workers during the campaign. She enraged Miami environmentalists by selling sensitive and protected land, a decision she insists was within her jurisdiction as university president.
Then there is the affiliation with the Clintons: She served eight years in Mr. Clinton’s cabinet and a year as president of the vilified Clinton Foundation as a personal favor to Hillary Clinton. “Fight Song,” the theme to Mrs. Clinton’s presidential bid, remains Ms. Shalala’s ringtone. (It is her form of resistance, she says.)
Ms. Shalala weathered a surprisingly competitive primary challenge and general election race.Saul Martinez for The New York Times
Ms. Shalala weathered a surprisingly competitive primary challenge and general election race.Saul Martinez for The New York Times
An eclectic arsenal of “Donna stories” has preceded the return to Washington of a woman who preferred to campaign in dog parks, but happily greets everyone from second-grade soccer players to old Republican adversaries on Capitol Hill.
There is the one where she thwarted a robbery by curling her already small five-foot frame into a fetal position and screaming. Or there are the days from her Little League softball career under the guidance of George Steinbrenner, the longtime owner of the New York Yankees. (Ms. Shalala said she recently accepted an invitation to join the congressional women’s softball team, likely setting another age-related record.)
Her freshman classmates have been learning about her by, among other things, revisiting their memories of Ms. Shalala’s tenure during Mr. Clinton’s impeachment, including recollections of her confrontation with Mr. Clinton over his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
“She’s smart; she knows the game,” said Representative-elect Deb Haaland of New Mexico, who said she considers Ms. Shalala a mentor. “It’s not about age. It’s about strength, humanity — it’s about willingness to step up and fight.”
Almost forgotten are the opening days of the Clinton administration, when the right deemed Ms. Shalala “the farthest to the left and most controversial” of the Clinton cabinet nominees.
“I’m like a chameleon — I adjust to the job as it is,” she said.
Decades later, Ms. Shalala acknowledges that in this freshman class, she is more centrist than leftist — and on the other side of the generational change she once advocated. She scoffs at the suggestion that she should have stepped aside for the next generation of Democrats.
“What am I stepping aside for? Do they have better ideas than I have?” she said. “The answer is, no.”
Too Old to Be a Freshman in Congress? Donna Shalala Doesn’t Care - The New York Times:
Sunday, December 30, 2018
Opinion | Portraits From a Caravan
"Has any other word in 2018 been as responsible for so much as “caravan”?
By definition, a caravan is a company of people traveling through a hostile region. You travel in a caravan for protection. When you feel powerless, traveling in a group gives you some sense of power. But there is no protecting the caravan of migrants who have journeyed to Donald Trump’s America.
To President Trump and his supporters, a caravan is made up of invaders and criminals. A caravan carries drugs and diseases. A caravan must be stopped at all costs, even if it means shutting down the United States government.
Jennifer left Honduras with her daughter, Lucia. She said that life there was very hard and had become increasingly difficult because of the persistent violence.
Jennifer left Honduras with her daughter, Lucia. She said that life there was very hard and had become increasingly difficult because of the persistent violence.
As a word, “caravan” is a politically expedient bludgeon, part of a decades-long project started by anti-immigrant groups (NumbersUSA, Center for Immigration Studies and Federation for American Immigration Reform, to name a few) using dehumanizing vocabulary to describe immigrants in nefarious, fear-inducing ways. “Illegal aliens” having “anchor babies” arriving in a “caravan.” At its most effective, this is language as a barrier. It says: “You’re an alien — you’re nothing like me.” It’s also a source of misinformation, as it is not illegal to apply for asylum. This is language as a weapon.
Junior sat with his mother, Maria, behind him in front of a police blockade during a migrant protest. His father was said to have been killed by by the maras, or gangs, in Honduras.
Stanley, from Honduras, and Elsa, from Guatemala, met on the road to Tijuana, Mexico. Stanley recalled how dangerous and difficult life was for him and his family in his country.
Defending the use of tear gas on the caravan that trekked up from Central America this year, which included children, President Trump said, “First of all, the tear gas is a very minor form of the tear gas itself — it’s very safe.” Then he asked, “Why is a parent running up into an area where they know the tear gas is forming and it’s going to be formed and they’re running up with a child?”
Because as long as parents love their children, they will run toward anything that may, just may, give them a shot at a better life, even if it means hurting them.
The history of the United States is a history of caravans arriving from different parts of the world. Why did they have to leave? What did they leave behind when they left what they had to leave? What did they take with them? How do they hold on to hope?
Maeli, 17, said she joined the caravan with her young son because she feared for their safety in Honduras. They’ve been largely met with kindness on the long journey north, but things have been tense in Tijuana. She and other migrants had been staying in a makeshift camp on the beach when a crowd of local residents threw stones at them. She and the child later moved to the another camp.
Maeli, 17, said she joined the caravan with her young son because she feared for their safety in Honduras. They’ve been largely met with kindness on the long journey north, but things have been tense in Tijuana. She and other migrants had been staying in a makeshift camp on the beach when a crowd of local residents threw stones at them. She and the child later moved to the another camp.
Juan Carlos, 16, selling cigarettes near Tijuana. The maras, or gangs, who he said killed two of his uncles, were pressuring him to join and he fled Honduras to save his own life.
Joenne, from Honduras, slept outside the migrant camp at the Benito Juarez Sports Complex in Tijuana, which the government closed because of unsanitary conditions.
Juan, a former agricultural worker in Honduras, hoped to find a job across the border and send back money to his family. “I'm good,” he said in a call home. “God will look after me.”
Juan, a former agricultural worker in Honduras, hoped to find a job across the border and send back money to his family. “I'm good,” he said in a call home. “God will look after me.”
Walter, from El Salvador, holding a Mexican newspaper that published a photo of him with his eyes blacked out. He had been accused of aggravated robbery, but was later found to be innocent, he said. His goal was to cross legally into the United States, but he heard a rumor that Canada was going to give 3,000 visas to the migrants. “Now there’s a place I would like to go!” he said.
Walter, from El Salvador, holding a Mexican newspaper that published a photo of him with his eyes blacked out. He had been accused of aggravated robbery, but was later found to be innocent, he said. His goal was to cross legally into the United States, but he heard a rumor that Canada was going to give 3,000 visas to the migrants. “Now there’s a place I would like to go!” he said.
Ernesto, his wife, Yesenia, and their youngest daughter, Rachel, on the Chaparral bridge crossing at the Mexico-United States border. They said they had learned about the caravan on Facebook and made the journey to Tijuana from Guatemala. Ernesto said that if they didn’t make the cut legally, a relative in Los Angeles had offered to pay someone to take them across the border.
Ernesto, his wife, Yesenia, and their youngest daughter, Rachel, on the Chaparral bridge crossing at the Mexico-United States border. They said they had learned about the caravan on Facebook and made the journey to Tijuana from Guatemala. Ernesto said that if they didn’t make the cut legally, a relative in Los Angeles had offered to pay someone to take them across the border.
At 52, Nelson is older than many of the migrants on the long and arduous trip from Honduras. He said he has three children in Philadelphia and is legally allowed to enter the United States. But Nelson said he wanted to experience the solidarity of the caravan, so he was traveling with them. He will wait until the rest are able to cross, he said, before he does.
At 52, Nelson is older than many of the migrants on the long and arduous trip from Honduras. He said he has three children in Philadelphia and is legally allowed to enter the United States. But Nelson said he wanted to experience the solidarity of the caravan, so he was traveling with them. He will wait until the rest are able to cross, he said, before he does.
Marina and Kenny are from Honduras. Kenny said the maras in Honduras had insisted that he join the gang and threatened him. Refusing would risk being hurt or even killed, he said, so he decided to leave with the caravan. Marina chose to come with him. When asked if they were in love, they responded, “Si...mucho!” A lot!Photographs by Russell Monk for The New York Times
Marina and Kenny are from Honduras. Kenny said the maras in Honduras had insisted that he join the gang and threatened him. Refusing would risk being hurt or even killed, he said, so he decided to leave with the caravan. Marina chose to come with him. When asked if they were in love, they responded, “Si...mucho!” A lot!Photographs by Russell Monk for The New York Times."
Opinion | Portraits From a Caravan
A Day, a Life: When a Medic Was Killed in Gaza, Was It an Accident? - The New York Times
KHUZAA, Gaza Strip — A young medic in a head scarf runs into danger, her only protection a white lab coat. Through a haze of tear gas and black smoke, she tries to reach a man sprawled on the ground along the Gaza border. Israeli soldiers, their weapons leveled, watch warily from the other side.
Minutes later, a rifle shot rips through the din, and the Israeli-Palestinian drama has its newest tragic figure.
For a few days in June, the world took notice of the death of 20-year-old Rouzan al-Najjar, killed while treating the wounded at protests against Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip. Even as she was buried, she became a symbol of the conflict, with both sides staking out competing and mutually exclusive narratives.
A Day, a Life: When a Medic Was Killed in Gaza, Was It an Accident? - The New York Times
Saturday, December 29, 2018
Opinion | Will the Supreme Court Save Obamacare Again?
"The last time Chief Justice John Roberts took it upon himself to write the opinion fending off a challenge to the Affordable Care Act, he seemed to signal that he was done entertaining existential threats to the law.
Opinion | Will the Supreme Court Save Obamacare Again?
“In a democracy, the power to make the law rests with those chosen by the people,” he wrote in King v. Burwell in 2015. “Our role is more confined — to say what the law is. That is easier in some cases than in others. But in every case we must respect the role of the Legislature, and take care not to undo what it has done.”
His message was quite clear: Stop trying to get us to blow up Obamacare. If you don’t like it, go see Congress.
Except Republicans in Congress couldn’t agree on what they wanted to do with the law. All lawmakers could muster the votes for was the elimination of the tax penalty associated with the so-called individual mandate — the law’s central requirement that most people buy health insurance.
That should have been the end of it. But earlier this month a federal judge in Texas went where Congress was unwilling to go and ruled that an individual mandate without teeth means that the entirety of the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional — under a theorythat legal scholars across the ideological spectrum have found, for lack of a better word, ridiculous. The judge, Reed O’Connor, has a record of ruling against Democratic policies. This time he said the A.C.A.’s individual mandate cannot be separated from the rest of the law — and so all of it, down to Obamacare’s minutest detail, must go.
Now there’s a real possibility that the Supreme Court may yet again be faced with a demand to settle the fate of the law.
One way the Supreme Court can avoid getting dragged into another drama over health care is if the appeals court set to review the Texas ruling, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, finds grounds to reverse it. That would give the justices cover to duck the issue altogether by declining to review whatever the Fifth Circuit decides.
But one of the few accomplishments of President Trump’s first two years in office has been the appointment of conservative judges to federal appellate courts. In the Fifth Circuit alone, already very conservative, President Trump has placed five right-leaning judges.
So there’s a chance that the entire Fifth Circuit will end up affirming the Texas ruling.
And with more judges jumping on board, suddenly a legal theory that should have been doomed from the start will have attracted enough credibility to force the Supreme Court to weigh in and have the final say. Again.
The effects of Judge O’Connor’s ruling, if upheld, could be devastating, including a sharp rise in the number of uninsured and a substantial weakening of coverage guarantees.
This is a repeat of what happened in 2010 and 2013, as long-shot challenges to Obamacare that were once largely academic gained traction in the lower courts. And, with that, something else happened: Politicians began rallying behind the lawsuits. The media covered the cases. Legal academics debated and wrote about the disputes. The public started paying attention. Before long, the cases slithered their way to the nation’s highest court.
Rinse, repeat.
Jack Balkin, a professor at Yale Law School, calls this the off-the-wall/on-the-wall theory of constitutional change. “The history of American constitutional development, in large part, has been the history of formerly crazy arguments moving from off the wall to on the wall, and then being adopted by courts,” Mr. Balkin wrote in an article in The Atlantic in 2012, as the Supreme Court was readying its first big ruling on Obamacare.
In Mr. Balkin’s view, the reason that seemingly bizarre legal arguments reach the mainstream is that politicians and others in power get behind them. Yes, support from the academy or from social movements moves the needle as well. But it is only when political actors — parties, elected officials, institutions — speak in favor of a position that it stands a chance of being taken seriously by the courts.
So it matters that attorneys general and officials from Texas and 19 other states brought the latest lawsuit. And that the Trump administration, which otherwise has a duty to defend duly enacted laws, agreed with the shakiness of their argument. Now a federal judge has given the green light, and Mr. Trump is loving it. Soon the Fifth Circuit will get a bite at the apple.
For now, nearly every actor with a stake in this controversy is in agreement that Obamacare should stay put while the ruling gets sorted out.
A day after the new ruling, Professor Balkin applied his off-the-wall/on-the-wall theory to the circumstances of this case. “I have seen this movie before,” he wrote in his popular legal blog, Balkinization. But he added that aside from victory laps from Mr. Trump and a few other Republicans, the response this time around is much more muted..."
Friday, December 28, 2018
Thursday, December 27, 2018
Michael Cohen’s cellphone was reportedly near Prague at time of alleged Russia meeting.
More evidence of a conspiracy between Donald Trump's campaign and the Russian government.
"In a small development that could have potentially huge implications, four sources tell McClatchy that Michael Cohen’s cellphone appears to have been briefly around Prague in late summer of 2016. That was at the height of the presidential campaign and around the same time when President Donald Trump’s longtime lawyer and fixer allegedly met with Russian officials there. That at least was a key contention of the infamous dossier by former British spy Michael Steele that detailed the supposed collusion between Trump and the Kremlin. The dossier claimed Cohen met with Russian officials in Prague to try to limit the information that could be made public of Kremlin’s ties to Trump.
According to McClatchy, the cell phone signal is not the only thing that suggests Cohen was indeed in or near Prague. During late August or early September, an Eastern European intelligence agency was eavesdropping on a conversation among Russians in which one said that Cohen was in Prague. All this information has been shared with special counsel Robert Mueller."
Michael Cohen’s cellphone was reportedly near Prague at time of alleged Russia meeting.
Wednesday, December 26, 2018
Did a Queens Podiatrist Help Donald Trump Avoid Vietnam? - The New York Times
"...For 50 years, the details of how the exemption came about, and who made the diagnosis, have remained a mystery, with Mr. Trump himself saying during the presidential campaign that he could not recall who had signed off on the medical documentation.
Now a possible explanation has emerged about the documentation. It involves a foot doctor in Queens who rented his office from Mr. Trump’s father, Fred C. Trump, and a suggestion that the diagnosis was granted as a courtesy to the elder Mr. Trump...."
Did a Queens Podiatrist Help Donald Trump Avoid Vietnam? - The New York Times
Tuesday, December 25, 2018
Monday, December 24, 2018
Sunday, December 23, 2018
Chaos at home, fear abroad: Trump unleashed puts western world on edge | US news | The Guardian
"While a government shutdown and a key resignation grabbed headlines, diplomats were stunned by US actions over Yemen
Julian Borger
The defense secretary, James Mattis, handed in his resignation on Thursday, over Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to pull US troops out of Syria. On Saturday another senior official joined the White House exodus. Brett McGurk, the special envoy for the global coalition to defeat Isis and the US official closest to America’s Kurdish allies in the region, was reported to have handed in his resignation on Friday.
That night, senators flew back to Washington from as far away as Hawaii for emergency talks aimed at finding a compromise on Trump’s demand for nearly $6bn for a wall on the southern border, a campaign promise which has become an obsession. The president tweeted out an illustration of a very pointy, very high metal fence which he called “our Steel Slat Barrier which is totally effective while at the same time beautiful!”
Earlier in the week, it appeared a deal had been reached to allow the funding of normal government functions into the New Year. But Trump abruptly changed his mind, most likely after watching rightwing pundits criticise the fudge on television.
Trump has no real clear objective but has a destructive America First perspective on the world
Evelyn Farkas
The immediate consequences were that 380,000 federal workers were placed on compulsory unpaid leave and another 420,000 would have to work through the holidays unpaid. About a quarter of government functions ceased for lack of funding. On Saturday the Senate adjourned without a solution, ensuring the shutdown will continue until Thursday at the earliest.
The mood of uncertainty accelerated an already precipitous stock market dive, the Dow Jones Industrial Average suffering its worst December fall since 1987.
Trump was left to brood alone in Washington. The first lady, Melania, and their son, Barron, flew off on Friday to Mar-a-Lago, the president’s private club in Florida.
“I am in the White House, working hard. News reports concerning the Shutdown and Syria are mostly FAKE,” the president tweeted.
Trump has been spending an increasing amount of time in his private quarters, appearing for work in the Oval Office later and later in the morning. His aides call it “executive time” but it is clear from his Twitter feed it is mostly spent watching TV and responding viscerally to what he sees and hears.
With the departure of two retired generals, the chief of staff John Kelly and the defense secretary James Mattis, the administration has lost two war veterans not afraid of standing up to Trump. In 2019, that insulation between Trump’s impulses and the rest of the world will no longer be there."
Chaos at home, fear abroad: Trump unleashed puts western world on edge | US news | The Guardian
Fox News demanded a government shutdown. They got one. - Vox
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The right wing got what they wanted.
"If the government shuts down tonight over President Donald Trump’s demand for $5 billion for a border wall, feel free to blame conservative punditry.
This week Ann Coulter described Trump as a gutless “sociopath” who, without a border wall, “will just have been a joke presidency who scammed the American people.”
Radio host Rush Limbaugh said on his show Wednesday that without the $5 billion, any signing of a budget stop gap would show “Trump gets nothing and the Democrats get everything.”
Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy said that without wall funding, “the swamp wins,” adding that Trump will “look like a loser” without wall funding and stating, “This is worth shutting down” the government.
There’s no way around it: A lot of people on the right are very upset with Trump (and each other) right now. And they’re taking it out on the president — on his favorite television network, on talk radio, on podcasts, and online — and it’s worked to put the pressure on him. Trump has abruptly changed course to demand $5 billion for a border wall (a demand the Senate isn’t likely to give in to). And now the government is facing a “very long” shutdown.
In the words of Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), referring to Coulter and Limbaugh, “We have two talk-radio show hosts who basically influenced the president, and we’re in a shutdown mode. It’s just—that’s tyranny, isn’t it?”
Fox News demanded a government shutdown. They got one. - Vox
Russia Gloats: ‘Trump Is Ours Again’
"The Kremlin is awash with Christmas gifts from Washington, D.C. and every move by the Trump administration seems to add to that perception. On Wednesday, appearing on the Russian state TV show “The Evening with Vladimir Soloviev,” Director of the Moscow-based Center for Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies Semyon Bagdasarov said that the U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis is “struggling to keep up” with the flurry of unexpected decisions by the U.S. President Donald Trump. The news that Mattis decided to step down sent shock waves across the world, being interpreted as “a dangerous signal” by America’s allies.
Meanwhile, the Mattis departure is being cheered in Russia. Konstantin Kosachev, head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Upper House of the Russian Parliament, has said that “the departure of James Mattis is a positive signal for Russia, since Mattis was far more hawkish on Russia and China than Donald Trump.” Kosachev opined that Trump apparently considered his own agenda in dealing with Russia, China and America’s allies to be "more important than keeping James Mattis at his post," concluding: "That’s an interesting signal, and a more positive one” for Russia."
Russia Gloats: ‘Trump Is Ours Again’
Saturday, December 22, 2018
Why Fights Over Immigration Keep Shutting Down The Government | FiveThirtyEight
"We’re facing the third government shutdown in less than a year this Friday thanks, in part, to a fight over immigration policy. President Trump wants $5 billion for a border wall — an amount that is unlikely to make it through the Senate. Back in January, a disagreement over the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program caused a partial government shutdown.1 So it’s worth taking a step back and asking: Why is immigration such a stumbling block?
After all, it wasn’t always like this. Conservatives once backed more liberal immigration policies, and liberals have at times backed more restrictionist ones. In 1986, for example, Ronald Reagan signed a law that granted amnesty to nearly 3 million undocumented immigrants. Reagan and George H.W. Bush both used their executive powers to declare that children of undocumented immigrants affected by the Reagan-era law could not be deported. In 2006, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who were both then senators, voted for 700 miles of additional fencing on the U.S.-Mexico border as part of a provision to satisfy conservatives concerned about a rise in illegal immigration.2
But over the past couple of decades — as the number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. rose steeply and then began to decline — immigration policy has come to symbolize the two parties’ broader values and electoral coalitions. The battle over immigration policy is about way more than just immigration, in other words, in the same way that the tensions between the two parties on health policy reflect deeper fault lines. The politics of immigration today are notably more divided and partisan than they were 10 or 20 years ago, and there are a few reasons why.
First, there are the party coalitions. Compared to the mid-2000s, the Democratic Party of today includes fewer non-Hispanic white voters: 67 percent people who are or lean toward being Democrats were non-Hispanic whites in 2007, but that number had dropped to 59 percent in 2017, according to the Pew Research Center. Forty percent of self-identified Democrats are now nonwhite. Republicans too have grown more racially diverse, but only barely, and they are still overwhelmingly white: 88 percent in 2007, compared to 83 percent in 2017. About 12 percent of Democrats are Hispanic, roughly double the percentage of Republicans who are of Hispanic descent.
So the Democrats have a huge bloc of people in their party who have racial, ethnic and cultural ties to America’s most recent immigrants, who are largely Asian- and Latino-American. And while “minorities” and “people of color” are fraught terms that often ignore differences both between and within racial and ethnic groups, the Democrats are essentially now the home party for Americans who might feel that U.S. society treats them as “other.”
Secondly, while both parties have undergone ideological shifts, Democrats have shifted more dramatically. Pollsters ask a variety of questions to measure public opinion on immigration, but they all show the same thing: Democrats have become far more pro-immigration in recent years.
According to Pew, in 2006, 37 percent of Democrats3 said that legal immigration to the U.S. should be decreased, compared to 20 percent who said it should increase.4 Pew found a huge reversal in those numbers earlier this year: 40 percent of Democrats back higher immigration levels, compared to 16 percent who want them lowered. According to Gallup, 85 percent of Democrats now feel immigration is a “good thing” for America, compared to 69 percent who said the same in 2006. Republicans haven’t actually become more anti-immigration, according to Pew and Gallup. But, per Pew, there are more Republicans5 who want immigration decreased (33 percent) than who want it increased (22 percent).
As a result, the gap between the parties on questions about immigration has become a chasm:
And immigration is indicative of a broader shift: Democratic voters have grown more liberal on issues of race, gender and identity generally. That includes white Democrats.
The voters are not alone. Elites in each party have moved toward the ideological poles on immigration policy. Liberal-leaning activists and Democratic politicians argue that policies like the wall aren’t just bad or ineffective, they are immoral and racist. Trump and other conservatives have suggested that more immigration could both hurt the U.S. economy and lead to more crime.
Let me avoid making this a both-sides story: For the most part, Democrats are more aligned with overall public opinion on immigration. The majority of voters want undocumented young people who were brought to the U.S. as children to be protected from deportation, and Democrats’ demand for that provision that led to last winter’s shutdown. Likewise, most voters don’t support a border wall, but Trump is driving toward a shutdown in pursuit of a wall, an idea that many congressional Republicans are fairly lukewarm about.
That said, America did elect a president (in 2016) and a Senate majority (in 2016 and 2018) who belong to the party that is generally less supportive of immigration, so either there is some appetite for a middle ground or immigration is not a deal-breaker issue for many Americans. Either way, it would be logical for the two sides to find a compromise. But the shifts the parties have undergone in the last 10 or so years make such a compromise hard to execute. Democratic leaders can’t easily sign on to any funding for a wall that their base thinks is a physical monument to racism, particularly since the top Democratic leaders are white but much of the party base is not. Trump can’t easily give up on the wall, since he basically campaigned on the idea that America needs a wall to remain a great nation.
So we’re already at two shutdowns involving immigration policy in the Trump era — and I would not rule out a few more."
Why Fights Over Immigration Keep Shutting Down The Government | FiveThirtyEight
After all, it wasn’t always like this. Conservatives once backed more liberal immigration policies, and liberals have at times backed more restrictionist ones. In 1986, for example, Ronald Reagan signed a law that granted amnesty to nearly 3 million undocumented immigrants. Reagan and George H.W. Bush both used their executive powers to declare that children of undocumented immigrants affected by the Reagan-era law could not be deported. In 2006, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who were both then senators, voted for 700 miles of additional fencing on the U.S.-Mexico border as part of a provision to satisfy conservatives concerned about a rise in illegal immigration.2
But over the past couple of decades — as the number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. rose steeply and then began to decline — immigration policy has come to symbolize the two parties’ broader values and electoral coalitions. The battle over immigration policy is about way more than just immigration, in other words, in the same way that the tensions between the two parties on health policy reflect deeper fault lines. The politics of immigration today are notably more divided and partisan than they were 10 or 20 years ago, and there are a few reasons why.
First, there are the party coalitions. Compared to the mid-2000s, the Democratic Party of today includes fewer non-Hispanic white voters: 67 percent people who are or lean toward being Democrats were non-Hispanic whites in 2007, but that number had dropped to 59 percent in 2017, according to the Pew Research Center. Forty percent of self-identified Democrats are now nonwhite. Republicans too have grown more racially diverse, but only barely, and they are still overwhelmingly white: 88 percent in 2007, compared to 83 percent in 2017. About 12 percent of Democrats are Hispanic, roughly double the percentage of Republicans who are of Hispanic descent.
So the Democrats have a huge bloc of people in their party who have racial, ethnic and cultural ties to America’s most recent immigrants, who are largely Asian- and Latino-American. And while “minorities” and “people of color” are fraught terms that often ignore differences both between and within racial and ethnic groups, the Democrats are essentially now the home party for Americans who might feel that U.S. society treats them as “other.”
Secondly, while both parties have undergone ideological shifts, Democrats have shifted more dramatically. Pollsters ask a variety of questions to measure public opinion on immigration, but they all show the same thing: Democrats have become far more pro-immigration in recent years.
According to Pew, in 2006, 37 percent of Democrats3 said that legal immigration to the U.S. should be decreased, compared to 20 percent who said it should increase.4 Pew found a huge reversal in those numbers earlier this year: 40 percent of Democrats back higher immigration levels, compared to 16 percent who want them lowered. According to Gallup, 85 percent of Democrats now feel immigration is a “good thing” for America, compared to 69 percent who said the same in 2006. Republicans haven’t actually become more anti-immigration, according to Pew and Gallup. But, per Pew, there are more Republicans5 who want immigration decreased (33 percent) than who want it increased (22 percent).
As a result, the gap between the parties on questions about immigration has become a chasm:
And immigration is indicative of a broader shift: Democratic voters have grown more liberal on issues of race, gender and identity generally. That includes white Democrats.
The voters are not alone. Elites in each party have moved toward the ideological poles on immigration policy. Liberal-leaning activists and Democratic politicians argue that policies like the wall aren’t just bad or ineffective, they are immoral and racist. Trump and other conservatives have suggested that more immigration could both hurt the U.S. economy and lead to more crime.
Let me avoid making this a both-sides story: For the most part, Democrats are more aligned with overall public opinion on immigration. The majority of voters want undocumented young people who were brought to the U.S. as children to be protected from deportation, and Democrats’ demand for that provision that led to last winter’s shutdown. Likewise, most voters don’t support a border wall, but Trump is driving toward a shutdown in pursuit of a wall, an idea that many congressional Republicans are fairly lukewarm about.
That said, America did elect a president (in 2016) and a Senate majority (in 2016 and 2018) who belong to the party that is generally less supportive of immigration, so either there is some appetite for a middle ground or immigration is not a deal-breaker issue for many Americans. Either way, it would be logical for the two sides to find a compromise. But the shifts the parties have undergone in the last 10 or so years make such a compromise hard to execute. Democratic leaders can’t easily sign on to any funding for a wall that their base thinks is a physical monument to racism, particularly since the top Democratic leaders are white but much of the party base is not. Trump can’t easily give up on the wall, since he basically campaigned on the idea that America needs a wall to remain a great nation.
So we’re already at two shutdowns involving immigration policy in the Trump era — and I would not rule out a few more."
Why Fights Over Immigration Keep Shutting Down The Government | FiveThirtyEight
Trump’s Family Fortune Originated in a Canadian Gold-Rush Brothel
These are the type of immigrants we need to keep out of the country. Trump's grandfather was a gangster who ran a brothel. We need to keep these kinds of criminals out of the country from crossing the Canadian border. "Buried in a ghost town in Canada’s subarctic are the roots of the family fortune that paved Donald Trump’s path to prominence.
Only shards of glass bottles remain on the lake shore in Bennett, British Columbia—remnants perhaps of the lively establishment operated by Trump’s grandfather that was known for good food, booze and ready women. A church sits further up the slope, its lonely spire peeking out from a thicket of pines.
Bennett was once a thriving transit point for prospectors in the Klondike gold rush at the turn of the 20th century, and Friedrich Trump made a killing running a restaurant and bar. The nest egg he generated in just two years grew into the fortune that has supported his grandson’s bid for the U.S. presidency.
“Who else can say that someone running for president of the United States of America owes his fortune to your hometown?,” says Scott Etches, 55, a shop owner hawking Trump t-shirts in Whitehorse, Yukon, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) north of Bennett. “It doesn’t matter whether you support or oppose Trump. It’s actually a great history.”
More than a century after Trump’s grandfather left the Yukon, Canadian developers and entrepreneurs are torn over whether to exploit the connection to one of the most recognized surnames on the planet. A luxury wilderness resort is planned for Bennett, complete with a lodge that would look just like Trump’s watering hole.
“There’s so much history, so many stories around here—Trump is just one of them,” says Nelson Lepine, who runs the development arm of an indigenous group leading the project.
The Trump family’s gold-rush story began when Fred, as he was known, left Germany at the age of 16 with little more than a suitcase. He headed to New York to work as a barber before venturing west in search of riches. Following stints in Seattle and now-defunct Monte Cristo, the gold fever carried him to Bennett, where he and partner Ernest Levin built the Arctic Restaurant, which touted itself as the best-equipped in town.
It was open around the clock with “private boxes for ladies and parties,” according to an advertisement in the Dec. 9, 1899 edition of the Bennett Sun newspaper. The boxes typically included a bed and scale for weighing gold dust used to pay for “services,” according to a three-generational biography by Gwenda Blair, who traced the origins of the Trump family’s wealth. Of course, in the rough-and-tumble frontier towns of that era, the Arctic’s business model built on food, booze and sex was common.
The Arctic sat a stone’s throw from Bennett Lake in the heart of the township, amid a row of similar establishments and a sea of white canvas tents set up by prospectors. It was constructed of milled lumber and stocked fresh oysters, extravagant luxuries in a place where supplies were brought over arduous overland routes.
“I would advise respectable women travelling alone, or with an escort, to be careful in their selection of hotels at Bennett,” according to a letter penned by “The Pirate” in the Yukon Sun on April 17, 1900. For single men, the Arctic offered excellent accommodations but women should avoid it “as they are liable to hear that which would be repugnant to their feelings and uttered, too, by the depraved of their own sex.”
Trump quickly saw where the real profits lay amid the gold-rush frenzy. An estimated 100,000 prospectors set out for the Klondike, of which only a third actually made it, and a mere 4 percent ever struck gold. Given those odds, Trump’s willingness to lay down his pick was “a shrewd move," according to Blair. “He was mining the miners.”
Bennett was a key hub for prospectors, who trudged from Alaska across frozen mountains and floated rickety rafts down the treacherous rapids of the Yukon River to Dawson City in search of elusive gold. The town lost its allure with the construction of a railway link from Skagway, Alaska to Whitehorse, allowing miners to bypass Bennett.
In response, Trump dismantled the restaurant and its precious lumber and rebuilt it in Whitehorse. A photo in Blair’s book shows a mustachioed Fred Trump in a white apron. He’s standing at the bar near a wall of drapes behind which women, known as “sporting ladies,” entertained miners in privacy.
Trump was a rich man when he left Whitehorse in 1901 to return to his native Kallstadt, Germany, where he later deposited savings of 80,000 marks in the village treasury, Blair recounts. Unable to regain German citizenship, he returned to New York with his riches. That amount—equivalent in purchasing power to about half a million euros in 2014—ended up funding the Trump family’s first residential real estate investments in the New York area, later carried on by his son Fred and grandson Donald.
Trump, who claims in his memoir that his grandfather was Swedish, told the New York Times in August that Blair’s portrayal of Friedrich’s business was “totally false.” Trump’s spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, didn’t reply to two voice mails and an e-mail requesting comment.
The Yukon’s rolling hills, cerulean lakes and aurora displays have long been a magnet for intrepid travelers, canoeists and hunters on pricey expeditions. Capitalizing on its indigenous history and links to a business tycoon like Trump could forge a tourist mecca, according to a 2014 plan drafted by the economic development arm of a First Nation community, the Carcross Tagish Management Corp., along with the Parks Canada government agency.
Justin Ferbey, then-chief executive officer of the Carcross group who is now Yukon’s deputy minister of economic development, said he tried to get a resort proposal into Donald Trump’s hands. The plans called for a luxury wilderness camp in Bennett, including a replica of the Arctic Restaurant to serve as the central guest lodge.
Trump either didn’t bite or never saw it, though the project has proceeded without him. Four wooden platforms overlooking the lake are nearly complete and will be fitted with luxury tents housing antique furnishings, wrought-iron bed frames, and high-end mattresses. Guests, limited to eight at a time, will dine at a central guest lodge with a modern kitchen made of old-growth fir reclaimed from a Klondike mine. A four-day, all-inclusive package—including a float plane transfer—is tentatively priced at C$1,675 ($1,250) a person. A soft opening is planned for next summer with full operations by 2018.
“They’ll be wined and dined; we’ll serve top-notch foods. But you’ll still be connected to nature—there’ll only be one piece of canvas between you and the bears,” says Lepine, CEO of Carcross Tagish. “It’s the kind of experience people are really seeking out.”
Lepine and Michael Prochazka, a product development officer at Parks Canada, aren’t as keen as their predecessors to play the Trump card. The central lodge with its arched facade, gabled roof, scrollwork and pine cladding bears a striking resemblance to photos of Trump’s eatery. Prochazka says it’s not a replica of the Arctic, more an archetype of designs common at the time.
Meanwhile in Whitehorse, Etches has a different take on the Trump connection potential. In a shopping mall on the site of the former transplanted restaurant, he’s rented a tiny storefront called “The Arctic.” A sign outside notes the birthplace of the Trump family fortune. Inside, he sells T-shirts, black and white prints, and posters like “The Arctic Under New Management. No Liquor, Whores or Gambling Until Further Notice.”
While Etches acknowledges that sales fall “a bit short” of covering his C$200 in monthly rent, he still believes the Trump story is a potential boon for the region.
“We could get every single American tourist on the Alaskan highway pulling over just to see where that fortune was made,” he says. “It doesn’t matter whether they support or oppose Trump. They’d still come off the highway and spend money.”
Trump’s Family Fortune Originated in a Canadian Gold-Rush Brothel
Friday, December 21, 2018
Thursday, December 20, 2018
'A moral disaster': AP reveals scope of migrant kids program
"Decades after the U.S. stopped institutionalizing kids because large and crowded orphanages were causing lasting trauma, it is happening again. The federal government has placed most of the 14,300 migrant toddlers, children and teens in its care in detention centers and residential facilities packed with hundreds, or thousands, of children.
As the year draws to a close, about 5,400 detained migrant children in the U.S. are sleeping in shelters with more than 1,000 other children. Some 9,800 are in facilities with 100-plus total kids, according to confidential government data obtained and cross-checked by The Associated Press."
'A moral disaster': AP reveals scope of migrant kids program
Opinion | It Is So Much Worse Than I Thought - The New York Times
"By Charles M. Blow, www.nytimes.com December 19th, 2018
How can a family that can’t run a charity run a country?
Opinion Columnist
Nearly every aspect of Trump’s life is now under investigation.
Photo by: Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times
I will be going on book leave soon — today is my last column for a while because of the holiday schedule — to write what I believe to be the most important thing that I’ve ever written.
No, it’s not about Donald Trump, just in case you were wondering.
But since I have written almost exclusively about Trump for more than two years, please allow me this parting assessment: It is so much worse than I thought.
My original objections to Trump, the things that pushed me into the Resistance, were his immorality, dishonesty, fraudulence and grift.
I freely admit now that I was seeing only the pointy edge of an enormous machine. I had no idea how immoral Trump actually is.
The same month that Trump pulled the outrageous stunt of inviting women who had accused Bill Clinton of inappropriate sexual behavior to his debate with Hillary Clinton, his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, apparently under his instructions, facilitated a $130,000 payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels to prevent her from telling America that she had a sexual encounter with Trump, who was married with a small child. This payment was a few months after Cohen had helped arrange a $150,000 deal between American Media Inc., the parent company of The National Enquirer, to buy the story of the Playboy model Karen McDougal, who also claimed a sexual relationship with Trump.
According to prosecutors, both were campaign finance violations — federal crimes — and now a judge has sentenced Cohen to three years in prison for that and other crimes.
The fact that Trump would be directly implicated in a federal crime that took place on the verge of the election and may have helped hand that election to him is mind-blowing to me.
Trump, for his part, lied about these payments and denied them — while also having those around him lie about them on his behalf — until he could simply no longer lie about them anymore. Then came the roulette wheel of revolving explanations that makes one dizzy because of their silliness.
Just this week, the Trump Foundation agreed to dissolve under pressure from the New York attorney general, who found that the foundation functioned “as little more than a checkbook to serve Mr. Trump’s business and political interests” and engaged in “a shocking pattern of illegality,” including coordinating with Trump’s presidential campaign.
How can a family that can’t run a charity run a country?
But of course, that is not all. Nearly every aspect of Trump’s life is now under investigation for wrongdoing, something I could not have foreseen.
I could not have predicted the extraordinary lengths to which the president would go to obstruct justice and undermine the rule of law, nor that he would do these things in full view, for everyone to see.
I could not have predicted, when I first wrote that Trump was a pathological liar, that his rate of lying would increase with his time in office, rather than decrease. As The Washington Post Fact Checker put it in September:
“Trump’s tsunami of untruths helped push the count in The Fact Checker’s database past 5,000 on the 601st day of his presidency. That’s an average of 8.3 Trumpian claims a day, but in the past nine days — since our last update — the president has averaged 32 claims a day. When we first started this project for the president’s first 100 days, he averaged 4.9 claims a day. He passed the 2,000 mark on Jan. 10 — eight months ago.”
Just this month, the newspaper’s Fact Checker was forced to create a new category of lying just for the Trump era: the “Bottomless Pinocchio” for “when a politician refuses to drop a claim that has been fact checked as three or four Pinocchios, keeps saying it over and over and over again, so that it basically becomes disinformation, propaganda.”
I could not have predicted the overwhelming number of contacts that would have existed between people in Trump’s orbit and the Russians during the campaign, or the number of people who would take plea deals and ultimately be charged, indicted or convicted of lying about those contacts.
I couldn’t have predicted any of it, but here we are, and the president, his congressional backers and his citizen supporters are continuing to tell us that this doesn’t matter as much as we think, that this is a politically driven prosecution, that everyone does what Trump has done.
They are all wrong. This is huge, and the longer we pretend that it isn’t, the more damage we do to the health and stability of our own country.
While I am away, I will enjoy not having to follow the hourly insanities too closely, but every day I will worry about the republic in which we live. Trump has the capacity to damage or even destroy it. That’s not hyperbole. That’s an observation informed by a close reading of history."
Opinion | It Is So Much Worse Than I Thought - The New York Times
Wednesday, December 19, 2018
Tuesday, December 18, 2018
Monday, December 17, 2018
Brown v. Board of Ed: Key Cold War weapon. People are feigning surprise at the fact that Russians targeted African Americans to try and suppress voting for Democrat candidates in 2016.
People are feigning surprise at the fact that Russians targeted African Americans to try and suppress voting for Democrat candidates in 2016. This is not new. Americans refuse to face our own history. As a member of the Army's "Counter Intelligence Corp" during the early years of WWII my Dad was an undercover agent in both the "Black Dragon's" and the "Socialist Workers Party" where Soviets and Japanese were trying to weed away Black support from the war effort as a result of America's continuing racism. A brief by the US Attorney General in the 1954 Brown v Board of Education case specifically addressed the Soviets attempts to suppress Black support for the American system: Americans stubbornly and lazily refuse to learn basic American history. Most colleges refuse to teach it.
"The brief, submitted by Attorney General James P. McGranery, said, “The United States is trying to prove to the people of the world of every nationality, race, and color, that a free democracy is the most civilized and most secure form of government yet devised by man…. The existence of discrimination against minority groups in the United States has an adverse effect upon our relations with other countries. Racial discrimination furnishes grist for the Communist propaganda mills.” It also featured an excerpt from a letter by Secretary of State Dean Acheson, described as “an authoritative statement of the effects of racial discrimination in the United States upon the conduct of foreign relations.”
Russian propagandists targeted African Americans to influence 2016 US election | US news | The Guardian
"The new reports said that while it was well known that Russian trolls flooded social media with rightwing pro-Trump material, their subtler efforts to drive black voters to boycott the election or vote for a third-party candidate were under-appreciated.
One popular bogus Facebook account created by the Russians, Blacktivist, attracted 4.6 million “likes”. It told followers in the final weeks of the campaign that “no lives matter to Hillary Clinton”, that black people should vote for the Green Party candidate Jill Stein, and that “not voting is a way to exercise our rights”.
Some black Americans were even weaponised as unwitting “human assets” for the Russian campaign, according to the researchers, who said operatives in St Petersburg worked to recruit people in the US to attend rallies and hand out literature.
The Oxford researchers found black Americans were also targeted with more advertisements on Facebook and Instagram than any other group. More than 1,000 different advertisements were directed at Facebook users interested in African American issues, and reached almost 16 million people.
The material was intended to inflame anger about the skewed rates of poverty, incarceration and the use of force by police among black Americans to “divert their political energy away from established political institutions,” the report said, adding that similar content was pushed by the Russians on Twitter and YouTube.
The New Knowledge researchers agreed that the “most prolific IRA efforts” on Facebook and Instagram were aimed at black Americans in what they called an “immersive influence ecosystem” connecting many different pages posting information and reinforcing one another.
In addition to the online posts telling black people their votes would not matter or urging them to vote third-party, Russian operatives tricked people with “vote by text message” scams and tweets designed to create confusion about voting rules, according to New Knowledge.
New Knowledge said the social media propaganda campaign should be seen as the third front in Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, together with the hack and theft of Democratic party emails that were passed to WikiLeaks, and the attempt to hack online voting systems across the US.
The Oxford researchers said the lack of human editors on platforms such as Facebook was enabling propagandists. “Obviously, democracies need to take computational propaganda seriously as a threat to their public life,” they said."
Russian propagandists targeted African Americans to influence 2016 US election | US news | The Guardian
Opinion | Julián Castro and the Cordial Candidacy - The New York Times
"By Charles M. Blow, www.nytimes.com December 16th, 2018
I’m listening for something arresting, a vision and a vocabulary that will rally and inspire.
Julián Castro talking about the possibility of running for president in 2020, at his home in San Antonio this month.
Photo by: Eric Gay/Associated Press
Julián Castro really wants to be president.
That much was clear on Thursday when I sat down with him and his identical twin brother, Joaquín, for an interview over dinner in a Midtown Manhattan steakhouse.
Julián, a self-described progressive, is the former secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the former mayor of San Antonio, who last week announced the formation of a presidential exploratory committee. Joaquín is a congressman in Texas who would be Julián’s campaign chairman.
When we begin the interview, Castro is careful with his answers nearly to the point of being cagey. You can see him doing the calculations in his head, trying not to overstate a position or appear too absolute on a topic that he has not fully considered.
Can a sitting president be indicted?
“Well, I think we’re going to find that out.” Later he adds, “I know what I hope. I hope we can bring anybody to justice.”
Do you believe that Trump should be indicted?
“I believe the walls are closing in on him.”
If you were president and prosecutors attempted to prosecute a then former President Trump, would you pardon him as Gerald Ford did for Richard Nixon?
“That is a tough decision. My inclination is to say no, that I would not, but I think some of that also depends on where we’re at as a country.”
But, as the dinner wears on, he loosens and his quickness to laugh emerges. He dispenses with the knife and fork he has been using to negotiate his roast chicken and, in a move that would have made Emily Post squirm but makes me smile, he hoists it with his hands. He is comfortable now, and this man I like: imperfect but not impertinent. Human. Relatable.
We discuss Castro’s rather standard Democratic stances on major issues: in favor of common-sense gun regulations, wants to roll back the Trump tax cut, and wants to take a multinational approach to the issues driving Trump’s tariffs. He’s in favor of universal pre-K, free public college across the board, and Medicare for all.
I’m listening for something enlightening, something arresting, a vision and a vocabulary that will rally and inspire. It never fully manifests. He talks of summoning a “common sense of purpose, of common national identity.” He chides Donald Trump’s divisiveness and churlishness. But somehow, it all flattens for me. I’m too familiar with the framing.
And yet, there is something genuine about Castro, a nice guy who made it. He’s not straining to impress, and that, in and of itself, is impressive.
Because Castro’s relative youth is so apparent in his appearance and comportment, it occurs to me that if elected, Castro, who is now 44, would become one of America’s youngest presidents. And this gives me pause. There is a young man’s ease and airiness about Castro, a disarming charm that arrests the attention because of its counterintuitiveness, but I struggle to imagine it in the Oval Office.
Thinking about the campaign, too, it is hard to imagine Castro in a bare-knuckled brawl with Trump and the Republicans.
For instance, how would he respond when confronted with what he told The New York Times Magazine in 2010? “Joaquín and I got into Stanford because of affirmative action,” Castro told the magazine. “I scored 1210 on my SATs, which was lower than the median matriculating student. But I did fine in college and in law school. So did Joaquín. I’m a strong supporter of affirmative action because I’ve seen it work in my own life.”
Trump would have a field day with this.
It is important to note here that Castro is unlikely to be the only young candidate this cycle. Indeed, there may be a whole raft of hopefuls in their 40s, and even 30s, who throw their hats into the ring.
But youth has a way of making itself known, of peeking through the curtain of the mature persona one tries to craft.
Castro’s first task is to secure the nomination. One could see a scenario in which this Southern Hispanic would have particular advantages on the primary calendar, but it remains to be seen how an incredibly diverse party will respond to an incredibly diverse slate of candidates. Will people hew to tribalism and regionalism in their choices, or will those things be of little consequence in the end?
Castro has been talked about for years as a rising star in the Democratic Party, one who could someday become this country’s first Hispanic president.
One question for me is whether this is that moment for Julian, or if interest in him peaked before his opening appeared. There are now other stories and educational pedigrees just as compelling as Castro’s and they are attached to people with higher profiles, access to more donors and, quite frankly, more of a craven desire to rise to power.
This nice guy may not always finish last, but can he come close enough to the top in Iowa and New Hampshire to confirm his viability?"
Opinion | Julián Castro and the Cordial Candidacy - The New York Times
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