The Asian Century Is Over

Beset by conflicts, stagnating economies, and political troubles, the region no longer looks set to rule the world -- says Michael Auslin.  It is a most iconoclastic article and  clearly makes some important points.

I am inclined to take a middle road on the matter.  Auslin is clearly right that cultural rigidities could hold China back and the failure of Japan to make much progress in the 21st century is a clear warning sign that Asian economies are far from miracle economies once they pass a certain point.  They approach an economic asymptote

The arrival of President Xi in China could well strangle China.  He represents the end of the Dengist era and a return to traditional Chinese authoritarian government.  He is getting close to becoming Emperor Xi.  My Sinophilic friends despair of him.  He is a definite roadblock to China's progress towards becoming a modern developed nation. And, sadly for China, there seems to be an iron law that an authoritarian nation will never be a rich one.  Even the DDR only ever approached midddle-income status, with its GDP per capita being only half the West German figure

ON THE OTHER HAND:  If Maoism ended, might not the same be true of Xi-ism?  How fragile is Xi's position?  He strives mightily to strengthen it but who knows how well he will last?  Could it be that the experience of prosperity and the taste of freedom might make enough forces in China bold enough to overthrow him in favour of a return to Dengism?

Though even Dengism had its limits.  Large State-owned businesses continued and were never very efficient.  And the party never looked even close to relinquishing control.  It could be that even Dengism cannot break the asymptote; it perhaps cannot support the final stages of modernization.

My take on China has been influenced by a positive "law" that is at least as strong as the negative law that authoritarian nations do not prosper economically.  I am referring to the stark correlation between national wealth and national average IQ.  And China has a VERY high national average IQ.  We always thought that once China threw off the dead weight of socialism it would prosper.  And exactly that happened up until recently. But is a high national IQ sufficient to rein in authoritarian rule?  The auguries are not good -- UNLESS China undergoes a significant FALL in living standards.  That would undoubtedly be energizing  -- JR.


The air forces of four of Asia’s leading powers nearly came to blows in the skies over the Sea of Japan, or East Sea, last week. As Russia and China conducted their first joint aerial patrol, South Korean fighters fired more than 300 warning shots at a Russian command and control aircraft that crossed into South Korea’s air defense identification zone. Meanwhile, Japanese fighters scrambled in case Japanese territory came under fire.

The unprecedented encounter was just one more reminder of the risks that threaten peace in the Indo-Pacific—and that the “Asian Century,” once heralded by writers such as Kishore Mahbubani and Martin Jacques, is ending far faster than anyone could have predicted. From a dramatically slowing Chinese economy to showdowns over democracy in Hong Kong and a new cold war between Japan and South Korea, the dynamism that was supposed to propel the region into a glorious future seems to be falling apart.

Asia’s geopolitical turbulence has been long in the making. In fact, the region’s weaknesses were for decades ignored by those certain that China would dominate the world, that the region would begin to manifest a shared sense of “Asian values,” that the United States’ influence was on the wane, and that the global future would be determined more in Beijing and New Delhi than in Washington. But underneath the region’s glittering new cities, the foundations of its rise were already beginning to crack.

Enter an earthquake. U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war with Beijing, including 25 percent tariffs on nearly half of China’s exports to the United States, accelerated China’s economic decline. The country’s growth rate last quarter was the slowest in nearly three decades, since its economy took off in the early 1990s. Even if the 6.2 percent growth figure can be trusted, it reveals not only the effect of Trump’s trade actions but the general weakness of an economy in which meaningful reform has stalled and inefficiencies are as prevalent as ever.

Chinese exports to America have collapsed. Its exports to the rest of the world have shrunk, too. Meanwhile, dozens of major companies, from Google to Dell, are reducing or eliminating their production in China, exacerbating the slowdown and reshaping global supply chains. Worse for China’s economic future, perhaps, is a recent report that the country’s total debt, from corporations, households, and the government, now tops 300 percent of GDP—and much of it is caught up in opaque and complicated transactions that could become a ticking time bomb.

It isn’t only China that faces economic travails.It isn’t only China that faces economic travails. In developed nations, such as South Korea and Japan, sluggishness continues despite years of reform, while India’s once red-hot growth has halved in recent years, raising questions about how much further it can develop a middle class. Such fears are prevalent throughout Southeast Asia, as well.
Economics are just part of the problem. China’s ongoing attempts to squeeze Hong Kong and Taiwan’s democracies reveal just how tenuous political stability in the region really is. In Hong Kong, seven weeks of anti-China, pro-democracy protests are coming dangerously close to forcing Beijing to decide whether or not to intervene. If it deploys troops to restore order, it could lead to the bloodiest clashes since Tiananmen Square 30 years ago.

Even democracies in Asia are sailing in dangerous waters. Japan and South Korea are perilously close to a complete rupture in relations, thanks to Seoul’s continued pressing of World War II claims through its courts. Tokyo has responded by cutting the supply of chemicals critical for Korea’s electronics industry. In late 2018, Japan claimed that a South Korean naval vessel turned its fire-control radar on a Japanese patrol aircraft, nearly precipitating a military crisis. Meanwhile, Vietnam is facing off against China over oil exploration in the South China Sea, with maritime vessels shadowing and intimidating each other.

Conflicts in the region are also threatening security around the world. Despite three rounds of presidential summits, North Korea remains a nuclear-capable state that is also engaged in online offensives around the world. The global battle over civil liberties is also tilting toward greater state control, in part through China’s perfection of high-tech surveillance systems that it is keen to export, even to Western democracies. Many believe that Huawei, among other Chinese companies, is a security risk for any nation adopting its technology. And the FBI has warned that China is the greatest espionage threat to the United States, on campuses, in Washington, and in major corporations.

U.S. policymakers bet that China’s economic modernization and peaceful rise would lead to an era of global prosperity and cooperation. That was wrong.

U.S. policymakers bet that China’s economic modernization and peaceful rise would lead to an era of global prosperity and cooperation, linking advanced economies in Asia with consumers in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. That was wrong. Similarly, years of attempts to bring U.S. allies Japan and South Korea closer together have foundered. It is time for a reconsideration of Asia’s future.

SOURCE 

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Sorry If You’re Offended, but Socialism Leads to Misery and Destitution



On the same day that Venezuela’s “democratically” elected socialist president, Nicolas Maduro, whose once-wealthy nation now has citizens foraging for food, announced he was lopping five zeros off the country’s currency to create a “stable financial and monetary system,” Meghan McCain of “The View” was the target of internet-wide condemnation for having stated some obvious truths about collectivism.

During the same week we learned that the democratic socialist president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, is accused of massacring hundreds of protesters whose economic futures have been decimated by his economic policies, Soledad O’Brien and writers at outlets ranging from GQ, to BuzzFeed, to the Daily Beast were telling McCain to cool her jets.

In truth, McCain was being far too calm. After all, socialism is the leading man-made cause of death and misery in human existence. Whether implemented by a mob or a single strongman, collectivism is a poverty generator, an attack on human dignity, and a destroyer of individual rights.

It’s true that not all socialism ends in the tyranny of Leninism or Stalinism or Maoism or Castroism or Ba’athism or Chavezism or the Khmer Rouge—only most of it does. And no, New York primary winner Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t intend to set up gulags in Alaska. Most so-called democratic socialists—the qualifier affixed to denote that they live in a democratic system and have no choice but to ask for votes—aren’t consciously or explicitly endorsing violence or tyranny.

But when they adopt the term “socialism” and the ideas associated with it, they deserve to be treated with the kind of contempt and derision that all those adopting authoritarian philosophies deserve.

But look: Norway!

Socialism is perhaps the only ideology that Americans are asked to judge solely based on its piddling “successes.” Don’t you dare mention Albania or Algeria or Angola or Burma or Congo or Cuba or Ethiopia or Laos or Somalia or Vietnam or Yemen or, well, any other of the dozens of other inconvenient places socialism has been tried. Not when there are a handful of Scandinavian countries operating generous welfare state programs propped up by underlying vibrant capitalism and natural resources.

Of course, socialism exists on a spectrum, and even if we accept that the Nordic social program experiments are the most benign iteration of collectivism, they are certainly not the only version. Pretending otherwise would be like saying, “The police state of Singapore is more successful than Denmark. Let’s give it a spin.”

It turns out, though, that the “Denmark is awesome!” talking point is only the second-most preposterous one used by socialists. It goes something like this: If you’re a fan of “roads, schools, libraries, and such,” although you may not even be aware of it, you are also a supporter of socialism.

This might come as a surprise to some, but every penny of the $21,206 spent in Ocasio-Cortez’s district each year on each student, rich or poor, is provided with the profits derived from capitalism. There is no welfare system, no library that subsists on your good intentions. Having the state take over the entire health care system could rightly be called a socialistic endeavor, but pooling local tax dollars to put books in a building is called local government.

It should also be noted that today’s socialists get their yucks by pretending collectivist policies only lead to innocuous outcomes like local libraries. But for many years they were also praising the dictators of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the nation’s most successful socialist, isn’t merely impressed with the goings-on in Denmark. Not very long ago, he lauded Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela as an embodiment of the “American dream,” even more so than the United States.

Socialists like to blame every inequity, the actions of every greedy criminal, every downturn, and every social ill on the injustice of capitalism. But none of them admit that capitalism has been the most effective way to eliminate poverty in history.

Today, in former socialist states like India, there have been big reductions in poverty thanks to increased capitalism. In China, where communism sadly still deprives more than a billion people of their basic rights, hundreds of millions benefit from a system that is slowly shedding socialism. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the extreme poverty rate in the world has been cut in half. And it didn’t happen because Southeast Asians were raising the minimum wage.

In the United States, only 5 percent of people are even aware that poverty has fallen in the world, according to the Gapminder Foundation, which is almost certainly in part due to the left’s obsession with “inequality” and normalization of “socialism.”

Nearly half of American millennials would rather live in a socialist society than in a capitalist one, according to a YouGov poll. That said, only 71 percent of those asked were able to properly identify either. We can now see the manifestation of this ignorance in our elections and “The View” co-host Joy Behar.

But if all you really champion are some higher taxes and more generous social welfare, stop associating yourself with a philosophy that usually brings destitution and death. Call it something else. If not, McCain has every right to associate you with the ideology you embrace.

SOURCE 

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Sanders: Medicare for All Will Require Higher Taxes on the Middle Class

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) sided with former Vice President Joe Biden, arguing that Medicare for all would require increased taxes on the middle class during an appearance on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday.

Host Jake Tapper showed Sanders a clip of Biden commenting on Sen. Kamala Harris's (D., Calif.) claim that she would not raise taxes on the middle class to fund Medicare for all.

"Well I find the people who say they're for Medicare for all, but they're not going to tax the middle class because you don't need to do that, come on. Is this a fantasy world here?" Biden asked.

"Do you agree with Vice President Biden that Senator Harris is in a fantasy world?" Tapper asked Sanders.

Sanders pointed out that in a Medicare for all system people would not pay premiums or deductibles, but argued "that in a progressive way people will have to pay taxes."

"The wealthy will obviously pay the lion's share of those taxes but at the end of the day, the vast majority of the American people will pay substantially less for the health care than they now receive because we're going to do away with hundreds of billion dollars of administrative waste. We're going to do away with the incredible profiteering of the insurance companies and the drug companies. So people will be paying in some cases more in taxes but overall because they're not gonna pay premiums, deductible or co-payments, they'll be paying less for their health care," Sanders continued.

"So is Vice President Biden correct that anybody who says Medicare for all is going to happen, but we're not gonna raise taxing on anybody or on the middle class is in a fantasy world?" Tapper pressed.

"Well obviously health care is not free. We pay for it through premiums and out-of-pocket expenses and in Canada it is paid through taxes. We'll have to do that," Sanders said.

Earlier this month, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) estimated his Medicare for all proposal would cost up to $40 trillion over 10 years. Sanders has also said he would raise taxes, including for the middle class, to pay for Medicare for all, and that "there will be pain" in a transition to a single-payer system.

Former Vice President Joe Biden's healthcare plan, released on Monday, does not go as far as Medicare for All. His proposal includes a public option to buy into a Medicare-like plan and wouldn't eliminate private health insurance.

The Kaiser Family Foundation found that Americans' view of the single-payer plan "can shift significantly after hearing information." 56 percent of those surveyed support "Medicare for All," while 42 percent oppose it.

58 percent oppose the plan, however, if told it would eliminate private health insurance plans, and 60 percent oppose it if it requires higher taxes.

SOURCE 

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Trump's Economic Policies Raise Wages for 99% of workers

The Bureau of Economic Analysis released annual revisions to its personal-income report on Tuesday, and the data should encourage everyone: Americans’ wages have been increasing at a healthy rate since President Donald Trump took office. The Wall Street Journal reports, “The revisions show that employee compensation rose 4.5% in 2017 and 5% in 2018 — some $4.4 billion and $87.1 billion more than previously reported. The trend has continued into 2019, with compensation increasing $378 billion or 3.4% in the first six months alone. Wages and salaries were revised upward to 5.3% from 3.6% in May year over year. And in June wages and salaries grew at an annual rate of 5.5%, which is a rocking 4.1% after adjusting for inflation.”

Counter to the Leftmedia’s erroneous narrative that credits Barack Obama and not Trump for America’s current economic growth, the Journal notes, “Employee compensation has increased by $150 billion more in the first six months of 2019 than all of 2016. Compensation increased 42% more during the first two years of the Trump Presidency than in 2015 and 2016. This refutes the claim by liberals that the economy has merely continued on the same trajectory since 2017 as it was before.”

The fact of the matter is that today “Americans are earning more and relying less on government.” So, how does this reality comport with the leading Democrat presidential candidates’ socialist message of ever more government-provided “free” stuff — stuff that can only be “given” by taking more of the wages of hard-working Americans? For all the overwhelmingly negative press Trump receives, at the very least his policies are proving effective in putting/leaving more money in the pockets of hard-working Americans, giving them more freedom to spend and invest as they see fit. Once again, it’s capitalism, not socialism, that is lifting everyone’s boats.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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CA Governor signs law barring Trump's name from the primary ballot without releasing his tax returns

As usual, the Left have no foresight.  There are more states run by Republicans than Democrats so what is to stop red states enacting similar laws to ban Democrat front-runners from ballots in their states?  A banning contest might HELP the GOP
   
California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill Tuesday that would bar President Donald Trump’s name from appearing on the state’s 2020 primary ballot unless he discloses his tax returns. Newsom “justified” the bill, arguing, “These are extraordinary times and states have a legal and moral duty to do everything in their power to ensure leaders seeking the highest offices meet minimal standards, and to restore public confidence.” So, the party that loudly opposes any form of voter ID laws out of faux concern for potential voter suppression has now put forth a draconian piece of voter-suppression legislation. Even former Democrat Gov. Jerry Brown wouldn’t dare go this far, as he vetoed a similar measure over concerns that it was unconstitutional.

However, in this era of Trump Derangement Syndrome, Democrat concern for constitutionality is no longer even feigned. But they would have done well to listen to Brown, who argued, “It sets a ‘slippery slope’ precedent. Today we require tax returns, but what would be next? Five years of health records? A certified birth certificate? High school report cards? And will these requirements vary depending on which political party is in power? A qualified candidate’s ability to appear on the ballot is fundamental to our democratic system. For that reason, I hesitate to start down a road that well might lead to an ever escalating set of differing state requirements for presidential candidates.”

Brown’s argument is a cogent one. What stops Texas, Georgia, or Florida from coming up with their own laws clearly aimed at suppressing the ability of a Democrat presidential candidate from getting his or her name on the ballot?

Obviously, this move is meant to once again highlight the long-running Democrat complaint that Trump has not released his long-form tax returns. That’s an action most modern presidential candidates have willingly taken, but one the Constitution does not require.

Clearly, however, this law is ripe for legal action.  The bill also violates the 1st Amendment right of association since California can’t tell political parties which candidates their members can or cannot vote for in a primary election.” It would seem the one-party oligarchs in California disagree.

Another 10 states are considering similar legislation.

SOURCE 

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Obama’s legacy undermined from within

Sam Clench

Years after he left office, Barack Obama’s legacy is under serious threat from the unlikeliest of sources. This time it has nothing to do with Donald Trump.

For six hours this week, across two separate debates, the candidates fighting for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination slugged it out on stage.

Because I’m a nerd and apparently a bit of a masochist, I watched the whole tedious exercise. One thing stood out.

While the Democrats spent plenty of time bashing Donald Trump and his “dark psychic energy” — that’s a real quote, I promise — he was not their only target.

Many of them also took aim at his predecessor Barack Obama.

It is hard to understate just how stunning that sentence is.

Think back to January of 2017 when Mr Obama left office as one of the most popular presidents in American history. The idea of any mainstream Democrat criticising his record was pretty much unthinkable. Now it is commonplace.

As Democratic voters decide who will confront Mr Trump next year and, they hope, become Mr Obama’s successor, they are wrestling with just how much of his legacy to preserve — and how much to reject.

Two major policy areas are at the heart of the argument. The first is healthcare.

Mr Trump won the presidency promising to repeal Mr Obama’s signature achievement, Obamacare, which expanded health insurance coverage to millions more Americans. The President ultimately failed to follow through. He couldn’t find enough votes in Congress.

But having stubbornly defended the healthcare law from his efforts, some of the top tier Democratic candidates now want to scrap it and start again.

Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris all support replacing Obamacare with some form of “Medicare for all”.

That could mean something along the lines of Australia's system, where everyone is covered by Medicare but private insurance is still available. Or it could be more radical. Ms Warren and Mr Sanders both want to ban private health insurance entirely.

Obamacare barely passed after an extremely ugly legislative fight a decade ago. It was seen, by his own party at least, as a historic achievement. Now many in that same party believe it did not go nearly far enough.

The only major candidate vociferously defending it is Joe Biden — and he has no real choice in the matter, having served as Mr Obama’s vice president. He can hardly disown the policies he helped craft.

A number of candidates are also being fiercely critical of Mr Obama’s record on immigration, particularly his administration’s mass deportation of three million undocumented migrants.

Many of them support decriminalising the act of crossing the border as a means to remove the legal justification for locking migrants — including children — in detention centres.

On stage this week, Mr Biden came under fire from Mr Obama’s former housing secretary Julian Castro, a leading advocate of that approach. Mr Biden was pressured to explain whether he had argued against the mass deportation policy from his position of influence in the White House. He refused.

“I found that the secretary, we sat together in many meetings, I never heard him talk about any of this when he was the secretary,” Mr Biden said in frustration.

“It looks like one of us has learned from the lessons of the past and one of us hasn’t,” Mr Castro shot back, getting large cheers from the crowd. “What we need are some politicians who actually have some guts on this issue.”

The clear implication was that Mr Biden, and by extension Mr Obama as well, did not show the necessary fortitude when they were in power.

Mr Biden continued to defend his former boss, bristling at suggestions Mr Obama had been almost as harsh on undocumented migrants as Mr Trump. “To compare him to Donald Trump, I think, is absolutely bizarre,” he said.

Democrats are still reluctant to slam Mr Obama explicitly and directly by name. But there is no denying much of the current political debate is being framed around a rejection of his policies.

The party has moved conspicuously to the left since 2016, making positions that used to be untenable a core part of several candidates’ platforms. But going too far in that direction could prove disastrous if it costs the eventual nominee swing voters in the general election.

The fact is, Mr Obama was aggressively centrist compared with most members of the current Democratic field, and he is still wildly popular — particularly among Democratic voters, with whom he has an average approval rating of more than 85 per cent.

Rejecting his successful, election-winning political philosophy in favour of something markedly more progressive would be a tremendous gamble.

“It was weird for me to watch about 40 minutes of primarily attacks on the Obama administration’s policies,” said MSNBC’s Joy Reid after the debate on Wednesday night. “It was an odd strategy to me. It’s almost as if the debate forgot who was president.”

Former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough, who now hosts a morning news program, echoed her. “These candidates are attacking Barack Obama’s policy positions more than Donald Trump. That is politically stupid and crazy,” he said. “Hit Trump. Not Obama. It’s not that hard, folks.”

Mr Biden remains the odd one out. His entire campaign is premised on the calculation that Americans are nostalgic for the Obama years. If anything, he risks clinging too tightly to the former president.

That problem was summed up pretty well earlier this year on National Best Friends Day when Mr Biden posted this cringe-worthy tweet. "Happy #BestFriendsDay to my friend, @BarackObama."

Even after being roundly mocked for overegging it, Mr Biden has continued to invoke his relationship with Mr Obama, often using his former boss as a shield against criticism.

It’s a strategy that doesn’t work quite so well when his opponents are perfectly willing to criticise Mr Obama’s record. On immigration, for instance, Mr Biden simply can’t escape his share of the blame. “You can’t have it both ways. You invoke President Obama more than anyone else in this campaign. You can’t do it when it’s convenient and then duck it when it’s not,” one rival, Cory Booker, said on Wednesday night.

But Mr Booker and the other Democrats are arguably trying to have it both ways as well.

On the one hand, they will inevitably want voters to associate them with Mr Obama. You can guarantee the former president will appear often on the campaign trail next year, regardless of who claims the nomination.

On the other, they are distancing themselves from huge parts of his record, including his one signature achievement.  Ultimately, Mr Obama’s own party might undermine his legacy more thoroughly than Donald Trump ever could.

SOURCE 

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The Trump economy remains strong as 2020 fast approaches

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew at an inflation adjusted 2.1 percent in the second quarter of 2019, upping the ante for the remaining quarters in order to get to 3 percent growth for the year, according to data compiled by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The U.S. economy has not grown above 4 percent since 2000, and not above 3 percent since 2005.

2018 got close, growing at 2.93 percent, the best year since 2005, according to the most recent data. That was better than 2015, which came in at 2.91 percent.

The first quarter the economy grew at 3.1 percent, but with the slowing in the second quarter, now, the economy must catch up in order to get back on track for 3 percent for the year.

Suffice to say, that’s probably not going to happen. Most likely, the economy winds up in mid-2’s somewhere for the year. Which is not great but not terrible, either.

The Trump economy is still markedly improved from the preceding years. Unemployment remains at a 50-year low of 3.7 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Almost 4.9 million more Americans say they have jobs since Trump took office in Jan. 2017.

Wage growth from 2017 forward is the best seen since the financial crisis, most recently at 2.8 percent growth in the first quarter of 2019. Those are good numbers.

For 16-to-64-year-old working age adults, the economy is definitely improving. While the population of working age adults has increased by about 1 million between 2016 and 2018, the civilian labor force grew by 2.1 million. In 2019, labor participation is still increasing for that group, too, so we’re still on the right track.

SOURCE 

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Trump increases pressure on China for trade deal with new 10 percent tariff on the other $300 billion of goods while Chinese economy reels

China has proven itself to be an unreliable trade partner in its negotiations, says President Donald Trump, and now he is levying another 10 percent tariff on $300 billion of Chinese goods that were untaxed.

This comes atop the 25 percent tariff on another $250 billion of goods that was hiked in May, which is expected to raise more than $50 billion in revenue this year to the U.S. Treasury.

Trump cited failure by Chinese President Xi Jinping to follow through on commitments he has made, stating on Twitter, “Our representatives have just returned from China where they had constructive talks having to do with a future Trade Deal. We thought we had a deal with China three months ago, but sadly, China decided to re-negotiate the deal prior to signing. More recently, China agreed to… buy agricultural product from the U.S. in large quantities, but did not do so. Additionally, my friend President Xi said that he would stop the sale of Fentanyl to the United States — this never happened, and many Americans continue to die!”

The President still held out hope that a deal could be reached, with the tariffs being a bit of additional incentive, writing, “Trade talks are continuing, and… during the talks the U.S. will start, on September 1st, putting a small additional Tariff of 10% on the remaining 300 Billion Dollars of goods and products coming from China into our Country. This does not include the 250 Billion Dollars already Tariffed at 25%… We look forward to continuing our positive dialogue with China on a comprehensive Trade Deal, and feel that the future between our two countries will be a very bright one!”

The breakdown of trade talks in May led directly to Trump putting the 25 percent tariff on $200 billion of goods — it had been at 10 percent — in addition to the 25 percent that had been levied on another $50 billion of goods.

The trade deal was said to have been in its final stages, but at the eleventh hour, Beijing changed the terms of the deal and promptly walked back prior concessions. According to a May 8 Reuters report, “In each of the seven chapters of the draft trade deal, China had deleted its commitments to change laws to resolve core complaints that caused the United States to launch a trade war: Theft of U.S. intellectual property and trade secrets; forced technology transfers; competition policy; access to financial services; and currency manipulation.”

Adding to the mix, the trade in goods deficit with China hit a record high in 2018 at $419.1 billion according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And that was with some of the tariffs in place.

Ostensibly, the only reason China had come to the table in the first place was President Trump’s threat of further tariffs and an attempt string along negotiators in the hopes of avoiding them. It appears to have been designed to test Trump, betting that perhaps he would not follow through on the tariffs.

Which, it’s hard to blame China for miscalculating. It’s used to just getting its way with the U.S. without consequence or blowback. Since China entered the World Trade Organization in 2001, U.S. manufacturing market share has dropped from 13.4 percent to 7.5 percent in 2017, according to World Bank data. China has risen from 5.3 percent to 16.6 percent in 2017, although their percent of global manufacturing market share has peaked in 2015 at 18.8 percent. During that time, the U.S. economy has not grown above 4 percent since 2000, and not above 3 percent since 2005 on an annual basis.

What they didn’t plan on was Trump. Now, there’s tariffs on $550 billion of goods. Either way, the decision to end the deal may have been so it could wait Trump out with 2020 right around the corner.  If Trump loses his bid for reelection, their problem is solved.

For Trump’s part, he seems to be betting China has more to lose in a trade war than the U.S. According to data by the U.S. Trade Representative. China’s $539.5 billion of goods exports to the U.S. comprised almost 4.1 percent of its $13.28 trillion Gross Domestic Product in 2018 and about 22.5 percent of its $2.4 trillion of goods exports. In contrast, American goods exports to China were $120.3 billion, comprising 0.58 percent of the 2018 annual GDP of $20.5 trillion, and comparatively 7.2 percent of its $1.66 trillion of goods exports.

And Trump may be right.

On June 17, “The Coming Collapse of China” author Gordon Chang on Fox Business reported to host Neil Cavuto, “China right now has an economy which is crumbling, could have been contracting last month. We saw that with bellwether car sales down 16.4 percent, the eleventh straight month of decline, the worst monthly decline eves. And imports were down 8.5 percent year on year, a real indication of declining domestic demand.”

Chang added, “This is an economy that is in severe trouble. They need the U.S. market desperately.”

So, maybe the tariffs are working. In this confrontation, Trump does not need a deal as much as China does, for he can inflict damage merely by encouraging manufacturers to move their business elsewhere, whether back to the U.S. or somewhere else. In “The Art of Deal,” Trump wrote, “Use your leverage.” That’s exactly what he’s doing — and it’s about time.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Robert Mueller’s Feet of Clay

If your knowledge of the Robert Mueller fiasco in the United States is informed by any news service then you are ignorant of the facts. Therefore, let me give you the unvarnished facts as I see them.

First fact: Donald Trump is the most innocent politician in the world. How do I know this, you might ask? Nineteen, Hillary-loving, radical Democrat activists with law degrees, posing as impartial lawyers, investigated the heck out of him for two years on an unlimited budget and with the power to coerce witnesses, to threaten their families, to financially ruin them and to jail them. And yet they came up with squat. There is no other politician in the world who would have survived this kind of inquisition. None. Hence my conclusion that Trump is cleaner than Mother Teresa.

Second fact: Mueller had nothing to do with his own probe. He was titular. He came in each day to have coffee and engage in sheltered-workshop activities. Andrew Weissmann led the probe. He was the de facto Special Counsel. He hired all of the conflicted activists to assist him. He oversaw the writing of the report and the public statement that Mueller made after the report came out; sensibly instructing the doddery Mueller to take no questions about the report of which he had only passing acquaintance.

Third fact: Mueller escaped Weissmann’s supervision to attend Congress where he proceeded not only to reveal his ignorance of the report but of information about the events which precipitated the probe, which he was supposed to have led. For example, he knew nothing of Fusion GPS, the firm commissioned by Clinton’s lawyers to recruit Christopher Steele (the ex-British spy) to find, or as it turned out make up, Russian dirt on Trump.  I doubt you could find a backwoodsman out of telecommunication range with less knowledge.

Fourth fact: The Weissmann report set a French Revolutionary standard of jurisprudence by explicitly finding no prosecutorial evidence of obstruction of justice by the President but of finding insufficient evidence to exonerate him. To wit: the presumption of innocent defenestrated in the space of a few words in a dodgy and tendentious report. Look, take my word for it, I have never murdered anyone but I doubt you could find a court that would completely exonerate me from having ever murdered someone, somewhere, at some time. I’ll just have to live with it.

Fifth fact: It is curious on its face to suggest that someone trying to impede a process designed to bring false charges against him (in this case conspiracy to collude with a foreign power) is obstructing justice. But, be that as it may, Trump’s only ‘crime’ was to sound off in understandable frustration. A thought crime, as Orwell’s Winston Smith might put it. He did nothing of practicality to impede the Weissmann probe. He allowed White House staff to give testimony. He supplied all of the millions of pages of documents requested. He allowed the probe to run its course.

Sixth fact: The Democrats can’t let it go, however baseless is the case against Trump (and, vindictively, his family) because they have nothing else to run on. Theoretically they could run on policies on health care, climate change, inequality and immigration. But, in all of these areas, their agenda has been hijacked by callow far-left fruitcakes; prominently, though not only, by ‘the squad’: Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Thus, you get the complete takeover of health insurance by government and the provision of this insurance at taxpayers’ expense to illegal immigrants; you get the Green New Deal, confiscatory taxation, reparations for descendants of slaves, and open borders. And you see all of the twenty-plus Democratic candidates for president putting up their hands in unison for most or all this agenda; which, without doubt, has President Kennedy turning in his grave and would have only been a wet dream for even President Obama.

Seventh fact: The relentless attack on Trump the man has been become all the more vehement as his polices have produced enormous economic success. And, to rub it in, particular beneficiaries of this success are blacks and Hispanics, whom the Dems like to think are welded on to them. The Dems are caught in a pincer. Fighting against successful policies with looney-tune policies. Distraction is their only option.

Eighth fact: Western civilisation is disintegrating. As just a few disparate examples: witness police in the US being shirt-fronted and doused with water and doing nothing about it because they know that no one has their back among the great and good; witness the erosion of free speech in the UK; witness the overturning of the sanctity of millennia-old traditional marriage in the blink of an eye; witness the inculcation of gender confusion among school children; witness the erosion of the presumption of innocence when it comes to sexual assault allegations; witness Christian and Jewish clerics playing footsie with disciples of a noxious creed; witness economically-damaging and, more critically, culturally-undermining immigration policies. And, finally, in this abridged list, witness identity politics retribalizing nations. However, be sort of comforted, despite all of this woe, things have not yet gone so far downhill that a majority of Americans will vote for suicidal polices or be swayed by patently inane manoeuvrings to impeach Trump.

Ninth and best fact: Trump will win again.

SOURCE 

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When murders increase, so does support for capital punishment

Jeff Jacoby

WHEN ATTORNEY GENERAL William Barr announced last week that the federal government would resume executing Death Row inmates after a hiatus of more than 16 years, opponents were swift to object.

Within hours of Barr's announcement, Representative Ayanna Pressley introduced a bill to abolish capital punishment for federal crimes. The American Civil Liberties Union said it would challenge the new policy in court. And more than a dozen Democratic presidential candidates condemned the Trump administration and the death penalty. Among them was former Vice President Joe Biden, a longtime supporter of executing murderers who had switched his position just two days earlier.

The Justice Department has scheduled five men to be executed in December and January. Alfred Bourgeois, Dustin Honken, Daniel Lee, Lezmond Mitchell, and Wesley Purkey were all convicted of unspeakably cruel and depraved murders. Their victims ranged in age from 2 to 80, and most were tortured and terrorized before they were killed. There is no question about the guilt of these killers, nor any claim that they have been denied scrupulous due process of law.

Those who deplore Barr's decision make no attempt to argue that these men deserve to live. Instead, they denounced capital punishment itself, and accuse the administration of changing its policy out of "raw political calculus" (Slate) and as "one more stunt to distract Americans" (The Atlantic).

Of course politics were involved in Barr's move. But in carrying out the executions, the federal government will also be doing justice and upholding the rule of law. It wasn't the Trump Administration that convicted and sentenced these killers. It was independent judges and jurors who saw the evidence, observed the witnesses, heard the lawyers, and then concluded — unanimously — not only that the defendants were guilty of capital murder, but that death was the proper punishment.

If anyone is being political, it is Democrats like Biden, who favored the death penalty when it had widespread public support, and didn't turn against it until it became unpopular among Democrats. As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in the 1990s, Biden championed a crime bill that created 60 new death penalty offenses. "We do everything but hang people for jaywalking in this bill," he proudly declared at the time. That measure passed by sweeping majorities in the Democratic-controlled House and Senate, and was signed into law by a Democratic president, Bill Clinton.

What has changed since the Clinton era? Why has there been such a marked decline in the share of Americans who say that they support the death penalty for murderers? Death-penalty abolitionists credit themselves with making better, stronger, or more effective arguments. Here's a more likely explanation: Public opinion shifted because of murder rates, not policy debates.

In the 1990s, when Americans approved the death penalty by sky-high percentages, Americans were also being killed with sky-high frequency. There were fewer than 10,000 homicides annually in the United States in the early 1960s, but three decades later there were more than 24,000. The nation's murder rate soared over the same period from 5 per 100,000 to 9.5 per 100,000.

It was against that background that support for capital punishment, which had been falling since the 1950s, began to climb. In 1966, Gallup found that only 42 percent of the public favored executing murderers: an all-time low. In 1994, the year Clinton signed that crime bill, pro-death-penalty sentiment had risen to 80 percent: an all-time high.

And just as Americans embraced the death penalty when killings were on the rise, they backed away from it as killings decreased.

After hitting 9.5 in 1994, the murder rate began a downward plunge that criminologists are still trying to understand. It sank all the way to 4.4 in 2014 — and as it did, so did public approval of the death penalty. According to the Pew Research Center, the fraction of Americans supporting capital punishment dropped to 49 percent in 2016, the lowest level in four decades.

And since then? In 2014, the pendulum shifted again. Murders and the murder rate began moving back up. Sure enough, support for the death penalty did too. It rose to 54 percent in 2018.

To be sure, correlation doesn't prove causation. But six decades of correlation are hard to discount: The willingness of the public to put murderers to death rises and falls with the threat murderers pose. If homicides are back on an upward trend, more and more Americans will want killers put to death — and more and more politicians will decide they do, too.

SOURCE 

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A Sign of Hope for Affordable Health Care

The forthcoming rule will allow employees to pay for their health care needs using funds deposited by their employer.

A final rule on health reimbursement arrangements set to take effect in August could expand opportunities for American workers and their families to attain affordable health care, increase access to health care for employees of small businesses, and create new competitive market forces that will increase coverage charges for all.

The rule, which would loosen many of the restrictions that have limited the scope and utility of health reimbursement arrangements, represents a large step in shifting the rigid defined-benefits insurance structure toward a defined-contributions structure that allows patients to direct their health care spending.

“We want more decision-making and power in the hands of the consumer and worker over how to finance their health care,” said Brian Blase of the National Economic Council in summarizing the goal of the rule change.

A health reimbursement arrangement is an employer-based, tax-advantaged account that allows employees to pay for their health care needs using funds deposited by their employer. Employees can then use the funds to pay for health care expenses as agreed upon with the employer in the terms of the arrangement.

Funds deposited by the employer will not be taxed, and funds used by employees will not be taxed as income. Furthermore, funds in the account may roll over year to year depending on the terms set by the employer.

This rule change will create two new health reimbursement arrangements—the individual coverage HRA and the excepted benefits HRA—and allow funds in a health reimbursement arrangement to be applied to purchasing health insurance plans.

Small employers who cannot afford a traditional group plan, or employees dissatisfied with their employer’s group health plan, instead can be offered a health reimbursement arrangement to purchase a plan from the individual market.

Health reimbursement arrangements, which don’t have the administrative expenses of normal health insurance plans, can be much less costly than traditional employer-based group health insurance, an important consideration for small businesses.

Blase said a quarter of small businesses in 2010 stopped offering health insurance, and he expects changes in this rule will reverse that trend. In fact, he expects that in five years, 800,000 businesses will take advantage of these new plans, and 90% will be small businesses, covering 90 million workers and their dependents.

The administration expects that with hundreds of thousands of new consumers shopping for individual plans, the individual market will expand and grow robust competition in favor of the consumer.

Excepted benefits HRAs, capped at $1,800 annually, can be used for benefits that are exempted from the Affordable Care Act and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act provisions and, importantly, can be used to purchase limited-duration health insurance plans.

Because they are exempted from minimum essential coverage requirements, these plans can be offered at low prices with high deductibles but broad networks.

Excepted benefits arrangements must be offered along with traditional group plans. An employee who turns down an employer’s traditional group plan would be able to use tax-advantaged funds in an excepted benefits plan to purchase a short-term limited-duration plan.

Blase noted 27% of employees of small businesses choose to turn down their employer’s group health plan because it was a bad fit for their individual needs.

With an excepted benefits plan, employers still will be able to contribute to employee health even if they turn down the employer’s group health plan, giving both employee and employer increased flexibility in their health care choices.

In August 2018, the administration finalized changes to rules governing short-term limited-duration plans to make them less cumbersome to use, lengthening their maximum duration to one year, renewable up to three years. The previous administration had limited these plans to no longer than three months.

Individual Coverage HRAs, in contrast to excepted benefits plans, have no limits on tax-advantaged contributions. They can be used to cover out-of-pocket expenses or services not otherwise covered by an existing health insurance plan. The new rule should make them much more practical and easy to use.

The Affordable Care Act added certain provisions to the Public Health Service Act that were nearly impossible for health reimbursement arrangement to comply with, including a ban on annual and lifetime limits on spending, and the requirement to cover a large selection of preventative health services without cost sharing.

These plans also were not previously integrated with individual market plans, so they would be ineligible even if used to purchase a fully compliant health plan on the individual market.

As long as health reimbursement arrangement funds are used to purchase a compliant plan on the individual market, it will satisfy the requirements of the Public Health Service Act under the new rule.

According to Blase, compliant plans “can be grandfathered coverage … on Obamacare exchange coverage, or off Obamacare exchange coverage.”

He said the administration expected “the vast majority of people” would “use the individual coverage HRA to purchase an Obamacare plan off the exchange.”

Blase said the rules could do for health coverage what 401(k) and 403(b) did for retirement planning. This rule change greatly expands the potential uses of these accounts and makes it much more affordable for small businesses to offer their employees health care coverage.

If Blase’s expectations pan out, Americans will be directing a large part of their own health care spending, shifting the market power away from the insurance companies to patients, where it belongs.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Democrats slowly giving money for the wall

Brick by brick, figuratively speaking, with a serious assist from the Supreme Court ruling that reprogramming $2.5 billion of counter-narcotics monies may be used, Donald Trump is fulfilling his promise to get the southern border wall built.

In a 5 to 4 decision to stay an injunction by a federal district court that sought to slow down usage of the funds from the Department of Defense, the nation’s highest court said, “the Government has made a sufficient showing at this stage that the plaintiffs have no cause of action to obtain review of the Acting Secretary’s compliance with Section 8005” of the Department of Defense and Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Act, 2019.

That’s because the law is clear. It states in part “Upon determination by the Secretary of Defense that such action is necessary in the national interest, he may, with the approval of the Office of Management and Budget, transfer not to exceed $4,000,000,000 of working capital funds of the Department of Defense or funds made available in this Act to the Department of Defense for military functions (except military construction) between such appropriations or funds or any subdivision thereof, to be merged with and to be available for the same purposes, and for the same time period, as the appropriation or fund to which transferred…”

The $2.5 billion specific to the court case were to be used for enforcing 10 U.S.C. Section 284(B)(7), entitled, “Support for counterdrug activities and activities to counter transnational organized crime,” which explicitly authorizes “Construction of roads and fences … to block drug smuggling corridors across international boundaries of the United States.”

In other words, the case was such a slam dunk for the federal government that Supreme Court majority chuckled it out of court stating there was simply “no cause of action” to enjoin the spending of the monies. The plaintiffs lacked standing to bring the case in the first place. The outcome is that the money will be spent and Trump will get some new wall built.

It also likely means that the legal cases for the rest of the $5.6 billion Trump reprogrammed from military construction and other funds will similarly be upheld. The White House had also identified “[a]bout $601 million from the Treasury Forfeiture Fund… [and u]p to $3.6 billion reallocated from Department of Defense military construction projects under the President’s declaration of a national emergency (Title 10 United States Code, section 2808)…” that is reprogrammable under federal law.

That comes atop the $1.6 billion that Congress passed in 2018 for replacing existing fencing with new steel barriers and the $1.375 billion in 2019 for more steel barriers that was approved after the partial government shutdown earlier this year.

It also comes after Congress voted for another $4.5 billion the Trump administration had requested to deal with the humanitarian crisis on the border.

While some critics are moaning about the decision, given the law it was all but inevitable. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi complained on Twitter, “This evening’s Supreme Court ruling allowing @realDonaldTrump to steal military funds to spend on a wasteful, ineffective border wall rejected by Congress is deeply flawed. Our Founders designed a democracy governed by the people — not a monarchy.”

Here’s the best part: Democrats voted for all of it. Specifically, the National Defense Authorization Act of 2019, the bill which allowed the $2.5 billion for counter-narcotics barriers to be built, passed with 185 Democrats voting in the affirmative in the House. Every Democrat except for Sen. Bernie Sanders voted for it in the Senate. Similarly, overwhelming Democratic majorities voted for all the aforementioned bills as well.

Meaning, in 2020 when Democrats are promising to tear down Trump’s wall, which is getting built — the Army Corps of Engineers reports about 450 miles will be completed by the end of 2020 — they’ll have to first explain why they voted for it in the first place.

They built that.

SOURCE 

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Is it Trump who has driven the Democrats to the far Left?

From a Leftist writer

IN THE EARLY-morning hours of Nov. 9, 2016 - the shock of the biggest political upset in modern American history still fresh - the president-elect took the stage at a hotel in midtown Manhattan and made a pledge to all the unemployed factory workers and struggling waitresses at the mythic heart of his campaign.

"The forgotten men and women of our country," he said, "will be forgotten no longer."

He was hardly the first politician to speak to the economic anxieties of the 21st-century American voter.

But he harnessed those anxieties like no one else, smashing both the Bush and Clinton dynasties in a matter of months - and dealing a grievous blow to the Washington consensus they represented.

Power, it was now clear, could be found - maybe must be found - in the rubble of the American Dream.

Trump's economic message was, not so subtly, a racial one, too. His "forgotten men and women" were unmistakably white - a patriotic petit bourgeois set apart from the "rapists" he insisted were pouring over the Mexican border and the Black Lives Matter protesters who hated their country.

Trump, of course, did not conjure American racism, any more than he conjured our industrial decay or the bad behavior that led to the #MeToo revolt. And he has done little to solve these problems; on the contrary, he's done everything he can to exploit them.

But he has done more than any single figure of the last half-century to put these challenges - the essential challenges of post-industrial, post-civil-rights-era America - at the center of our politics. He has forced a reckoning. And only now are we glimpsing its startling potential.

Start with race. Much of the focus, these past couple of weeks, has been on the political right - on the contemptible failure of mainstream Republican politicians to call out the president's racist slander of "the Squad."

But if the party had been truly Trumpified on race, leading Republicans like Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and House minority leader Kevin McCarthy would be offering full-throated endorsements of the president's comments, rather than tepid - if still despicable - half-embraces. "The president," the two leaders said, in identical statements, "is not a racist."

It seems likely that, after Trump leaves office, the GOP will more or less return to its previous posture on race - hardly enlightened, but not so openly, and corrosively, cruel.

The real action is on the left.  Trump's rise, as Jess McIntosh, a Democratic strategist and former senior adviser on Hillary Clinton's campaign, told me, "crystallized a problem that many people of color have known about for a very long time - but that a lot of white progressives were simply surprised by."

There is, indeed, ample evidence that rank-and-file Democrats have been repelled - and galvanized - by Trump's race baiting.

One study showed that Clinton voters' views on race actually shifted more sharply than Trump voters' in 2016, with white liberal sympathy toward minority groups "soar[ing] to the highest levels ever recorded" and support for policies like affirmative action surging.

Another survey showed a sharp spike in the share of white Democrats who believe inequality is caused by discrimination, rather than individuals' lack of initiative.

And a 2017 analysis by the Pew Research Center shows that Democrats, always more concerned about prejudice than Republicans, are now twice as likely to call racism "a big problem" - the gap between the two parties more than doubling after Trump's election.

The heightened, party-wide concern appears to be playing out in the Democratic presidential primary.

It's telling that the first major shift in the race, the shrinking of former vice president Joe Biden's once-yawning lead in the polls, came in the face of a highly charged confrontation over race, with Senator Kamala Harris taking a headline-grabbing swipe at the front-runner over his decades-old opposition to busing.

"There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day," Harris said, in the first round of debates. "That little girl was me."

That it was busing that shook up the contest - an idea that even the most liberal Democrats have kept at a safe remove for decades - speaks to the sharpness of the Trump-era turn.

And now that the Democratic contest has opened up - now that a Harris, or Bernie Sanders, or Elizabeth Warren, or Pete Buttigieg, or Cory Booker victory seems plausible - the transformative potential of the field's racial justice proposals has come into focus.

Take Warren, the Massachusetts senator who has staked her campaign on a fierce critique of inequity. She's calling for $7 billion in grants for entrepreneurs of color. That's start-up capital for an estimated 100,000 businesses - and a serious attempt at narrowing a racial wealth gap that can only be called grotesque.

The median white family in this country now has 10 times more wealth than the median black family, according to the Federal Reserve; and almost 1 in 5 black families have zero or negative wealth. "Because the government helped create the wealth gap with decades of sanctioned discrimination," Warren said, when she announced the plan, "the government has an obligation to address it head on - with bold policies that go right at the heart of the problem."

Many of her rivals for the Democratic nomination seem to agree. Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., has proposed a sprawling "Douglass Plan," named after abolitionist Frederick Douglass, that would establish a $10 billion fund for black entrepreneurs, invest sizable sums in historically black colleges, and aim to cut the disproportionately black and Latino prison population in half.

The size of the program is stunning; Buttigieg says it would be on the order of the Marshall Plan, which saw the United States put about $100 billion in today's dollars toward the reconstruction of Europe after World War II.

A plan of that size is unlikely to make it through even a Democratic-controlled Congress. But even one-tenth of the spending - on some of the less controversial proposals - could have a significant impact.

What may be the most intriguing idea in the entire contest would be even cheaper on an annual basis: Booker's "baby bonds" proposal, which would provide every child born in the United States with a $1,000 savings account.

The US senator from New Jersey would tier the government's annual contributions by family income; a child growing up in a family of four earning less than $25,100 would get $2,000 per year, with the amount lowered as families move up the income ladder.

Recipients, who could access the money at age 18, would only be allowed to spend it on "wealth-building" activities like paying for education, investing in a business, or buying a home.

The proposal is race-neutral, which is politically advantageous; many of the struggling white families in Appalachia and the Midwest who supported Trump would benefit. But a study by a Columbia University researcher shows that, with its tilt toward low-income families, it would nearly eliminate the wealth gap separating black and white young people.

That would have to count among the most powerful blows for racial equality since the civil rights movement.

Booker would cover the $60 billion annual cost by closing capital gains tax loopholes, imposing a surtax on very wealthy estates, and restoring the estate tax rate to 2009 levels; in short, he would transfer wealth from the rich to the middle class and the poor.

And that's a theme that runs through the Democratic candidates' approaches to the second great concern of the Trump era: an economy that increasingly favors the affluent at the expense of the rest.

From World War II to the 1970s, income gains were broadly shared up and down the economic ladder. But from 1979 to 2017, the top 1 percent saw their real annual wages increase by 157 percent, while the average American's purchasing power stalled.

Here again, Democratic voters are moving left. The share who say government should do more to help the needy has spiked since 2011 - with a particularly sharp uptick since Trump came on the scene. And there's overwhelming support for taxing the rich.

Warren's wealth tax is among the most sweeping proposals. She would put a 2 percent levy on fortunes of more than $50 million and a 3 percent levy on those of $1 billion or more. There are some legitimate questions about whether the super-rich would find ways to evade the tax; that is, in part, why wealth taxes are falling out of favor in many of the world's richest countries. But if Warren can extract anything like the $2.75 trillion over 10 years that her advisers estimate, it could make a real difference in the lives of the lower-income people she aims to help.

Even the "moderate" candidates in the race are proposing measures unlike anything on offer in the 2016 presidential primary - putting billions of dollars directly in the pockets of poor and middle-class people.

One such proposal, Harris's "Rent Relief Act," offers a refundable tax credit for those making $100,000 or less and spending at least 30 percent of their income on rent - going right at the biggest and most painful expense for many urban families. The program, according to a Columbia University study, would lift some 7.8 million people out of poverty.

It's the sort of tangible benefit for working people that is rarely taken up in Washington. And suddenly, it seems possible.

WOULD HARRIS HAVE proposed hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies for the poor, even if Trump weren't president?

Would most of the leading Democratic candidates for president be voicing support for some form of reparations for slavery, an idea that the country's first black president, Barack Obama, and the party's 2016 nominee, Clinton, explicitly rejected?

Maybe. Politics are, in no small part, a product of their time - and this is a time of gross inequality.

But politics are also highly contingent, shaped by the particular personalities in power. Bill Clinton gave us George W. Bush, who gave us Barack Obama, who gave us Donald Trump. And the peculiar personality in the White House right now offers the country a rare opportunity to tackle some of its biggest problems.

Where most Republican politicians elide questions of race and economic inequity - or search for subtle ways to exploit them - this one has tossed them, raw and quivering, into the public square. At the same time, he's built one of the least popular first-term presidencies of our time.

That combination has opened the door to the sort of challenger who would normally struggle to get traction: a genuine change agent. And liberal activists like Adam Green, cofounder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which is backing Warren, are determined to take advantage.

"Things have been so bad under Donald Trump - norms are shattered and people are hurting - that we actually have an opportunity to put someone genuinely inspiring and transformational in there," he said. "Why cut ourselves short by settling for someone who is merely going to return us to the status quo?"

But the choice is not quite as simple as Green suggests. His status quo "someone" - Joe Biden, of course - has been tacking to the left on some of the issues that liberals care about most.

When the former vice president teased a "middle ground" approach to climate policy in April, he faced an avalanche of criticism from environmentalists and lawmakers like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, co-author of the "Green New Deal."

"This is a deal breaker," she tweeted. "There is no `middle ground' w/ climate denial & delay."

But the plan Biden eventually released went much further than anything the Obama administration ever pursued. And it was on par with his opponents' most ambitious approaches: $1.7 trillion in spending, a tax on planet-warming pollutants, and a goal of eliminating the country's net carbon emissions by 2050.

That sort of proposal presents progressives with a genuine quandary: With polls showing Biden performing better in head-to-head matchups with Trump than his Democratic rivals, should they be so quick to dismiss him?

There is also the question of governing. If someone like Warren took the White House - and managed to win a thin Democratic majority in Congress along the way - she would probably have to sweep away the Senate filibuster to have any reasonable shot at pushing through her ambitious agenda. And that would be a challenge.

Several Democratic senators have voiced misgivings about such a move, worried that the next Republican majority would be empowered to gut some of the country's most important social programs.

Ultimately though, the arguments for a more cautious approach aren't as strong as they seem. On the electoral front, Biden is not the safe bet his supporters suggest. He's been a weak campaigner in the past. And recent experience suggests that candidates who stir voters' passions - candidates like Obama and Trump - are more likely to prevail in general elections.

The latest polls show Warren and Sanders leading the president. And it's not clear liberal candidates would cede so much ground to Trump in the center, given that he seems unwilling - or unable - to moderate.

When it comes to governing, the filibuster may not be the critical safeguard some Democrats suggest.

The fact is, in the early part of the Trump administration, Senate Republicans could have used a process known as "budget reconciliation" to gut Obamacare and slash Medicare on a simple majority vote. But they weren't able to summon the political will. Why? The programs they targeted are too popular. They've helped curb the worst excesses of our market economy. They've lifted millions out of poverty. And their example may be the best argument we have for going big this election season.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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‘National Conservatives’ Set Out to Define Future of Politics on Right

What is the future of conservatism in America? That was the subject of consideration last week as scholars, thinkers, and attendees gathered at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, D.C. Speakers gave special focus to the future of America and conservatism in the age of Trump.

The conference featured an eclectic group of speakers, from TV personality Tucker Carlson to tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel, to Sen. Josh Hawley, the freshman Republican from Missouri.

Though speakers differed in their definitions of “nationalism” and what policies are needed for the future, they agreed on several big themes: National sovereignty is a huge issue of growing importance around the world, identity politics erodes national unity, and cultural issues are ascendant.

Perhaps most importantly, the conference highlighted how both major parties failed to address the concerns of a huge swath of voters, which led to the election of Donald Trump.

How We Got Here

Salena Zito, a Washington Examiner columnist and co-author of “The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics,” said the most important thing that she’s learned through her reporting is that “what happened in 2016, Donald Trump did not cause. He is the result of it.”

Party leaders, the media, and America’s elite entirely missed the warning signs that a huge electoral shakeup was coming.

Zito said she realized something was changing in America back in 2006 when Democrats swept the midterm elections during the presidency of George W. Bush. Social conservatives who felt disconnected from the Republican Party over the Iraq War and the party’s economic policies turned out for the Democratic Party to send a message.

Yet these voters were soon disappointed by the Democrats who went on to spend an enormous amount on programs like the Troubled Asset Relief Program (or TARP), “Cash for Clunkers,” various bailouts, the economic stimulus, and Obamacare. These voters threw out the Democrats in 2010 in another wave election.

These signs should have been a warning, Zito said, that a huge electoral shakeup was coming for a presidential candidate who could tap into this populist energy. Ultimately, it was Trump who filled that void.

This populist angst wasn’t new to America, Zito said. In the 1890s, America went through a similar set of convulsive wave elections as the country dealt with the economic changes brought on by the Industrial Revolution, and voters sought answers from their leaders.

Many voters today face a similar economic anxiety as the technological revolution reshapes the economy. American society has also been rocked by cultural dissolution, such as the erosion of families and the opioid epidemic.

While the dominant narrative is that these voters are “angry,” this isn’t really the case, Zito said. Many of Trump’s voters were doing fine economically and socially and were personally content.

What these voters were looking for was leaders who affirmed “the dignity of work” and emphasized the community, Zito said. These voters looked around and saw their communities disintegrating.

The populist-conservative coalition that brought Trump to the presidency in 2016 is here to stay, she said.

“It is ripe with opportunity for conservatives from the old guard to bring them together with the ideas and ideals that are important to you, but it is also ripe with opportunities for them to show you what life has been like outside of the major urban centers,” Zito said.

National Unity vs. Identitarian Division

As many speakers at the conference noted, a major source of national disintegration and anxiety is the rise of identity politics, which threatens the idea of “e pluribus unum,” or “out of many, one.”

The left has maligned the concept of the “nation,” an idea that has been a source for much good, several speakers noted. The nation has not only enabled human flourishing, but has often placed an important check on to tribalism.

Critics of nationalism, noted Mary Eberstadt, a writer and fellow at the Hoover Institution, have offered no real alternative as a way to organize society. Eberstadt asked in her remarks, “What, after all, is an alternative to nationalism?”

“Anti-nationalism? Antipathy to one’s fellow citizens because they are one’s fellow citizens? Pathological aversion to one’s own country? A narcissistic flight to group identities that treat everyone outside those identities as somehow un-American? The questions answer themselves,” Eberstadt said.

The rise of modern identity politics is highly corrosive to the country, said David Azerrad, director of The Heritage Foundation’s B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics. It teaches nothing but grievance for those deemed to be oppressed, and self-flagellation for those deemed to be oppressors.

“The net effect of this relentless identitarian propaganda is to encourage passive resignation in the American people,” Azerrad said. “The goal is to get us to believe that identity politics is the engine that drives history with a capital ‘H,’ and that we must all submit to it.”

“To put it simply, identity politics is fundamentally incompatible with the idea of a nation,” Azerrad said.

The end result of it will be disunity and tribalism, he added. The only way to counteract this inevitability is to “accentuate our common ties as Americans.”

To counter the advance of identity politics, Azerrad suggested taking cues from Trump: We should boldly confront “identitarian fanaticism” and give a “spirited defense of civic nationalism.”

Competing Views of Nationalism

The conference, in part, focused on setting national conservatism apart from other kinds of “conservatism,” especially libertarianism. Many of the speakers advocated government intervention to address certain societal problems in a way that libertarians tend to reject.

Speakers such as “Hillbilly Elegy” author J.D. Vance and Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson blasted what they considered the libertarian bent of conservative politics in recent decades.

“I believe that conservatives have outsourced our economic and domestic policy thinking to libertarians,” Vance said. “… What I’m going after in my talk is this view that so long as public outcomes and social goods are produced by free individual choices, we shouldn’t be too concerned about what those goods ultimately produce.”

In his remarks, Carlson said: “The main threat to your ability to live your life as you choose does not come from the government anymore, but it comes from the private sector.”

There was also some clear disagreement among the panelists about how to define “national conservatism.”

Yoram Hazony, author of “The Virtue of Nationalism,” explained why he believes it is necessary to restore nationalism as a vital, positive concept and expressed skepticism toward abstract or universal ideas as the basis for politics.

Hazony defined “national conservatives” as people who are “united in rejecting the idea of universal liberal empire,” and who reject the lens that views the world in terms of an economics of individualism, where political problems are reduced to economic theory.

The real political world, according to Hazony, is not simply comprised of atomized “free-choosing individuals.”

“The real political world is one of competing tribes and nations, it’s the real existence of tribes and nations that generates political phenomena such as national borders, independent national governments, national traditions, national cohesion, and national dissolution,” Hazony said.

Not everyone shared this exact account of “nationalism,” though.

Charles Kesler, a professor of government at Claremont-McKenna College in California, said that defining nationalism or national conservatism involves some paradoxes and gave some critiques of Hazony’s perspective.

Kesler argued that national tradition is simply not enough to carry the nation forward, that ideas still matter in how we define a positive kind of nationalism.

When nationalism is turned into an “ism,” Kesler said, “you are tending to diminish the distinctiveness of each nation.”

America, for instance, has a distinct history and creedal elements that set it apart from Europe, Kesler said. He argued that it’s impossible to separate America’s national self from its creedal nature, and it would be unwise to do so.

Kesler set himself apart from those who would define America purely on the basis of an idea or on a culture.

After all, Kesler said, the American founding rejected certain Anglo-Protestant cultural traditions—it did away with kings, lords, and an established national church—even though some cultural norms, like the English language, were preserved.

The American creed developed organically from within, but also against the predominant Anglo-American culture.

“The Revolution justified itself ultimately by an appeal to human nature, not to culture,” Kesler said. “And in the name of human nature and the American people, and God as supreme creator and lawgiver, judge, and executive, the revolutionaries set out to form an American union with its own culture.”

The cultural approach to natural identity, Kesler said, ultimately runs into problems if one doesn’t make distinctions between cultures.

Today, liberalism has set itself against America’s founding ideas. Progressives have jettisoned the timeless creed of the founding and adopted an evolving doctrine of progress.

To defeat this progressivism, America needs not just a tribal or national identity, but a cultural one.

“The American creed is the capstone of American identity, but it requires a culture to sustain it,” Kesler concluded. “And our task as national conservatives—nationalist conservatives—is to recognize the indispensability of the creed but also the absolute necessity of a hospitable culture, which combined with political wisdom can help shape a people to live up to its own principles.”

SOURCE 

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After race hustler Sharpton calls out Donald Trump’s racism, Trump calls him a ‘troublemaker’

​President Trump laid into the Reverend Al Sharpton on Monday, calling him a “conman, a troublemaker” after the civil rights activist announced he would hold ​a ​news conference to talk about the president’s comments about Baltimore.

​”I have known Al for 25 years. Went to fights with him & Don King, always got along well. He ​​loved Trump! ​’ He would ask me for favours often​,” Mr Trump wrote on Twitter about the founder of the National Action Network, the New York Post reported. “Al is a conman, a troublemaker, always looking for a score. Just doing his thing. Must have intimidated Comcast/NBC. Hates Whites & Cops! ​”

Mr Sharpton announced on his Twitter account late Sunday that he and former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, who was also a former lieutenant governor of Maryland, would “address Mr Trump’s remarks & Bi-Partisan [sic] outrage in the black community.”

He responded via Twitter.  Reverend Al Sharpton:

“Trump says I’m a troublemaker & conman. I do make trouble for bigots. If he really thought I was a conman he would want me in his cabinet,” Mr Sharpton posted.

The president, in his string of tweets on Monday, continued to take aim at politician Elijah Cummings after describing his Maryland congressional district as a “rat and rodent infested mess” over the weekend.

“Baltimore, under the leadership of Elijah Cummings, has the worst Crime Statistics in the Nation. 25 years of all talk, no action! So tired of listening to the same old Bull … Next, Reverend Al will show up to complain & protest,” Trump tweeted on Monday. “Nothing will get done for the people in need. Sad!”

SOURCE 

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Congress should learn from EU failed sugar experiment and reciprocally end subsides globally

By Rick Manning

The European Union succumbed to pressure from its candy industry and foreign sugar exporters to unilaterally end sugar subsidies in 2006 with the promise that consumers would be the big winners, an argument that is all too frequently heard in the halls of Congress.  Now, with the benefit of hindsight, the EU experiment can be put to rest as an abject failure.

A series of studies by Patrick Chatenay, the President of ProSunergy (UK) Ltd, conducted over the past thirteen years have shown that while initially prices did go down as foreign subsidized sugar flooded the market, as the European sugar producers were wiped out, prices climbed by 2012 to, “10% above what they were before the reform.  As any business manager will tell you, additional risk entails additional costs.  Since the end of 2010, the EU sugar market has been characterized by high and volatile prices, and a shortage of supplies – thus mirroring world market gyrations.  The sugar users who lobbied hard for the reform – companies such as Nestle, Coca-Cola and Kraft – are complaining just as loudly as before.”

The job costs in the first six years of the disastrous experiment totaled 120,000, as the unilateral action caused 83 sugar mills to close across the continent.

Because Newton’s Third Law of Physics, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, seems to apply to political swings, the European Union’s reaction to the job losses and the new dependency upon foreign sugar exporters was equally catastrophic as the EU put sugar subsidies back in place to the tune of $665 million a year in 2015.

To make matters even worse, Chatenay reports in a newly released report titled, “The European Union Sugar Industry at World Market Prices” that the remaining, weakened European sugar producers are continually pressured by an approximately 20 percent drop in prices which Chatenay predicts will lead to an additional “10 to 20 sugar (EU) factories closing within 5 years…”

Shockingly, or perhaps not, while the sugar producers are getting crushed in the system wrought by the initial unilateral ending of sugar subsidies, Chatenay identifies the large industrial sugar buyers as huge winners having gaining $3.4 billion, “with no discernable advantage” to the consumer.

Pretty sweet deal for Nestle and others, but for European taxpayers and the actual people who grow and process European sugar, it has been a nightmare with the consumer seeing little to no benefit.

While this outcome probably doesn’t surprise anyone who pays attention to corporate cronyism in America, there is a better, smarter path to ending sugar and other agricultural subsidies using the basic trade rule of seeking international reciprocity rather than engaging in the unilateral dropping of government subsidies.

Representative Ted Yoho, (R-Fla.) has legislation known as Zero for Zero, through which the U.S. government would end sugar subsidies upon the President certifying that other countries had done the same.  By providing up front Congressional action, U.S. government representatives will have a powerful negotiating tool to gain reciprocal actions from other sugar exporting nations.

It is time for conservatives to rally behind the Zero for Zero plan as it provides a rational road toward ending subsidies without destroying U.S. sugar producers due to unfair trade practices.

And President Trump with his emphasis on establishing fair, reciprocal trade agreements with economic partners around the globe is the right person to end sugar and many other agricultural subsidies if Congress will just take the bold step of giving him the cudgel of already approved sugar subsidy elimination contingent upon our trading partners doing the same.

Europe tried the unilateral approach and the only beneficiaries were heavily subsidized foreign sugar producers like Brazil and industrial sugar buyers who raked in billions at the expense of farmers and more than 100,000 jobs, while the consumer saw little to no benefit.

It is time for Congress to get smart, learn from the mistakes of the EU, and adopt the Yoho bill. Let’s give President Trump the tool he needs to end sugar subsidies, while keeping America’s farmers strong and competitive.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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I am not going to name any of them but many conservative writers have recently posted strong criticisms of the Trump/Pelosi spending deal

The spending being envisaged goes far beyond  what taxes will bring in so where is the money coming from?

There are two answers to that:  Borrowing money and simply printing any extra money you need.  But you can't do that! many people will say.  You just can't print money willy nilly!  Sadly, you can -- if you are President of the United States or some other country.  And ever since the gold standard was abolished, all governments have been doing just that.  Normally, however, governments are pretty cautious about how much new money they create. Milton Friedman's recommendation that the money supply should be expanded by no more than 4% p.a. is normally somewhere in the ballpark.

Obama, however, really got the bit between his teeth and created a huge pile of new money.  He was no Friedmanite and if he wanted to spend money on something he spent it.  And the media stayed Shtumm about it.

Now normally, that should have created galloping inflation.  The buying power of the greenback should have dropped sharply.  In Weimar Germany, Zimbabwe and Venezuela that has happened.  Runaway spending shot all prices up to previously unimagined levels, which completely destroyed people's savings.  Even big savings could no longer buy much.  Money that could once have bought a car might now only buy you a cup of coffee.

So why has that not happened in the USA? That's the big question.  Economists have no clear answer to it.  Some of the new money has gone into increased real estate prices and some has gone into historically low interest rates and some has gone into increased reserves held by financial institutions but there must be something more.  But what? And how long will the party go on?  Nobody knows.

But Trump is a qualified economist so he can see clearly what has happened and has decided that he will join the party.  He has decided that Obama must not have all the fun.  So he is in fact set to outspend Obama, which gives all conservative economists severe heartburn.

So is he wrong?  Is he building up a financial disaster for all Americans? Conventional economic theory says he is but actual practice in the Obama era says he isn't.  We are in an era of great gaps between economic theory and economic reality.  But that gap does create an opportunity for "free" infrastructure spending.  Obame spent the "free" money he created on gifts to Iran etc. So big infrastructure spending is at least a lot better than that.  Trump is simply using the time-out from economic orthodoxy on projects which will have lasting value.  He is very canny to have seen the opportunity and seized it.  He should be congratulated, not condemned for his wise spending  -- JR.

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CNN anchor Victor Blackwell chokes up on air after Trump rips ‘infested’ Baltimore

Blackwell seems to think that "whitey" is to blame.  How about placing blame on those who live there -- mainly blacks and their usual high crime-rate -- and those who have run the city for many years: the Democrats

A CNN anchor got choked up on air Saturday after President Trump ripped Rep. Elijah Cummings and the city, calling it “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.”

“Donald Trump has tweeted more than 43,000 times. He’s insulted thousands of people, many different types of people. But when he tweets about infestation, it’s about black and brown people,” Victor Blackwell said.

“The president says about Congressman Cummings’ district that no human would want to live there,” Blackwell continued.

“You know who did, Mr. President? I did, from the day I was brought home from the hospital to the day I left for college, and a lot of people I care about still do.”

SOURCE 

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'Speaking of failing badly, has anyone seen what is happening to Nancy Pelosi's district in San Francisco': Trump now attacks the House Speaker's city following his stinging attack on Baltimore and says Democrats 'always play the race card'

President Donald Trump is defending his verbal attack on the city of Baltimore and Rep. Elijah Cummings and has taken to Twitter to revile Nancy Pelosi and her district of San Francisco.

Trump sparked outrage on Saturday when he blasted Baltimore as a 'disgusting, rodent-infested mess' and Cummings as 'brutal bully', leading Speaker Pelosi and other Democrats to condemn the president for his harsh words.

But the president seemed unfazed and shifted his focus to Pelosi on Sunday writing, 'Speaking of failing badly, has anyone seen what is happening to Nancy Pelosi's district in San Francisco', adding 'it's not even recognizable lately'.

On Saturday Nancy Pelosi, who was born in Baltimore and is the daughter of a former Baltimore Mayor, came to Cummings' defense on Twitter.

'@RepCummings is a champion in the Congress and the country for civil rights and economic justice, a beloved leader in Baltimore, and deeply valued colleague. We all reject racist attacks against him and support his steadfast leadership,' she tweeted.

But Trump took her tweet as a chance to criticize her and call her a racist.

'Someone please explain to Nancy Pelosi, who was recently called racist by those in her own party, that there is nothing wrong with bringing out the very obvious fact that Congressman Elijah Cummings has done a very poor job for his district and the City of Baltimore. Just take a look, facts speak far louder than words!'

'Speaking of failing badly, has anyone seen what is happening to Nancy Pelosi’s district in San Francisco. It is not even recognizeable lately. Something must be done before it is too late. The Dems should stop wasting time on the Witch Hunt Hoax and start focusing on our Country!

He was likely referencing San Francisco's homelessness crisis that counted over 8,000 homeless people in the streets, according to a January tally. 

Trump also blasted Democrats for 'playing the Race Card' and making him out to be a racist for his digs at Cummings, who is black.

'The Democrats always play the Race Card, when in fact they have done so little for our Nation’s great African American people. Now, lowest unemployment in U.S. history, and only getting better. Elijah Cummings has failed badly!' he tweeted.

Trump first launched his Twitter attack on Cummings on Saturday after the Democrat criticized conditions at the Southern border.

The outraged president defended the border detention centers as 'clean, efficient and well run, just very crowded', calling the camps superior to Cummings' own district in Maryland.

'Cumming District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess. If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place,' Trump tweeted.

'Why is so much money sent to the Elijah Cummings district when it is considered the worst run and most dangerous anywhere in the United States. No human being would want to live there. Where is all this money going? How much is stolen? Investigate this corrupt mess immediately!' he added.

SOURCE 

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Bernie Sanders criticizes Trump for his 'racist' comments about Baltimore – four years after he compared the city to a 'Third World Country'

Bernie Sanders has launched a scathing criticism of the president following Trump's 'racist' remarks about 'rat infested' Baltimore - four years after he compared the city to a 'Third World Country'.

When Sanders was asked about the president's remarks, the senator said it was 'unbelievable that we have a President of the United States who attacks American cities, who attacks Americans, who attacks somebody who is a friend of mine.'

But a clip recorded on the campaign trail in 2015, during Sanders' first attempt to lead the Democrats, captured the candidate suggest the area showed no signs of being within a developed economy, referring to infrastructure and jobs.

The clip was dug up by a Twitter account called Trump's War Room and was shared in the wake of the backlash Trump received for saying Rep. Elijah Cummings' district was rat 'infested.'

Sanders' full comments at the time were: 'Anyone who took the walk that we took around this neighborhood would not think you're in a wealthy nation. You would think that you were in a Third World country.

'But today what we're talking about is a community in which half of the people don't have jobs. We're talking about a community in which there are hundreds of buildings that are uninhabitable.'

The comments were not the first time Sanders singled out the congressional district for particular criticism. In 2016 he again used Baltimore as an example of the America's disproportionate distribution of wealth.

SOURCE 

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Elizabeth Warren wants to break up big tech. Its workers don't want to break up with her

Twenty years ago, Jeff Few joined Amazon when it was still an upstart, aiming to break the grip of behemoths such as Barnes & Noble and Blockbuster in the market for books and movies.

"I saw it as this force that would finally enable something closer to a direct democracy," Few recalled.

Now, Amazon is a titan of e-commerce, and Few, who lives in Seattle and went on to work for Apple and Adobe, has embraced, and donated $300 to, a Democratic presidential candidate who has fiercely criticized his industry and called for the breakup of its biggest players - Senator Elizabeth Warren.

He is far from alone among tech employees. Although Warren has painted tech giants such as Google and Facebook as modern-day villains in her scathing picture of the American economy, she is emerging as a top choice for donations from tech workers, according to an analysis of campaign contributions by The Boston Globe.

With her denunciations of big tech and corporate greed, Warren has tapped into simmering discontent within the industry itself about the size, power, and ethics of its companies. So, while tech executives have often resisted calls from Washington to regulate the industry, employees are contributing to Warren and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, the candidates with the most aggressive positions on corporate oversight.

"I agree tech companies are becoming increasingly powerful," said Vicki Tardif, who works on search products at Google and helped organize a major protest there last fall. She says she has contributed to Warren. "I'm a citizen first - I'm a Google employee second."

Looking at just the big four tech companies that she wants to break apart - Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google - and some of their affiliates, Warren received some $144,000 in itemized donations from their employees over the first six months of the year.

Warren has been a particularly vocal critic of big tech in recent months. In March, she detailed a plan that would require the biggest companies - those with annual revenue of $25 billion - to separate their technology platforms from their e-commerce activities. So Google's massive ad-sales operation would split off from its ubiquitous search engine; Amazon could not have both an e-commerce platform and a sales business on it.

Warren looks to be setting the tone in a Democratic field that is generally taking a harder line toward the industry. Former vice president Joe Biden and Harris have said it is worth taking a look at her plan, but stopped short of a full-throated endorsement. Buttigieg has said he "potentially" agrees with it, but, during a town hall in March, raised questions about other aspects of big tech: "It's not how big they are, it's how they act." In May, Sanders said he agreed Facebook should be broken up.

Warren and other candidates have also called for big corporations such as Amazon to pay significantly more in taxes. But she, in particular, has drawn the ire of conservative tech mogul and Trump ally Peter Thiel, who called her the Democratic candidate he is most scared of.

In some ways, well-to-do tech employees backing populists such as Warren and Sanders are acting against their own interests. Both candidates are antitrust hawks who want to limit the reach of big corporations; both have supported job actions by low-wage workers at Amazon and drivers for Uber and Lyft.

Warren's and Sanders' success with tech workers is partially due to the industry's liberal leanings, and many employees interviewed for this story emphasized her overall candidacy in describing her appeal, not her specific positions on big tech.

"She's a wonk," said Alex Whitworth, a data scientist at Facebook who kicked $250 toward her campaign. "That's strongly appealing to me, as a wonk."

For other tech donors, their willingness to back candidates critical of their industry may also be due in part to tensions with their bosses. The tech industry has been roiled by walkouts and protests over contracts with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other government agencies and the military. There is also lingering anger over the role social media networks played in the disinformation campaign Russians used in the 2016 elections.

"We have this tech-lash phenomenon that's been building over the past few years," said Ben Tarnoff, editor of Logic magazine, which covers technology. "There's a large and vocal constituency in the tech sector that is making the case these companies have a responsibility for the tech they're building."

Interviews with tech employees who support Warren and Sanders reveal a well of reservations about the increasing power of big corporations and enthusiasm for candidates who are addressing it head-on.

"I like working at Amazon. It's been the best job of my career," said Michael Sokolov, a senior software development engineer who donated $250 to Warren. "However, I don't like the fact that our economy is dominated by gigantic super-corporations."

Many Democratic candidates have criticized the tech industry while mingling with its luminaries at fund-raisers. Warren's success among its employees could undermine her image as a fierce critic, although her campaign pointed out it has a policy of not holding private fund-raisers or reaching out directly to members of any industry.

And some of Warren's long-held positions align directly with demands of tech workers scrutinizing their own industry. Last fall, thousands of Google employees walked out in protest of the company's policy requiring workers to settle disputes in forced arbitration, instead of through lawsuits, which workers said has allowed Google to keep accusations of serious problems such as sexual assault secret. Warren has been a vocal opponent of forced arbitration for years and proposed prohibiting companies that use the practice from getting federal contracts.

"We've been advocating for an end to forced arbitration. We had to push our company for that," said Tanuja Gupta, another organizer of the Google walkouts, who has donated $333.82 to Warren's campaign. "I find it incredibly appealing that there's a political candidate who's willing to do that for all workers and end forced arbitration."

Several donors expressed reservations about Warren's plan to break up tech companies, including whether it would do enough to address the industry's problems.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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