Month: January 2019

Be a shame if anything happened to it

by digby

The administration is demanding the wall but also an additional $800 million for “urgent humanitarian needs” like medical support, transportation and temporary facilities for processing and housing detainees.

The New York Times sums it up:

Translation: Mr. Trump’s mass incarceration of migrant families is overwhelming an already burdened system that, without a giant injection of taxpayer dollars, will continue to collapse, leading to ever more human suffering.

The situation is an especially rich example of the Trump Doctrine: Break something, then demand credit — and in this case a lot of money — for promising to fix it.

His doctrine is just a Mafia thug “protection” shakedown. He threatens to burn it all down unless he gets money in return. Now he’s created a “humanitarian crisis” at the border by putting migrant children in cages, separating them from their parents, and forcing others to escape their desperate situation by crossing into the most treacherous part of the desert or living in terrible conditions at border crossings.

Oh, and the president’s answer to the issue in their home countries that are motivating their desperate journey to safety is to threaten to withhold any aid to those governments because “they haven’t done anything for us” by which he means they’ve failed to keep their citizens inside their home countries (another wall perhaps?) where they face death and torture from criminals.

The Trump Doctrine is: “nice little world you have here. Be a shame if anything happened to it.”

Recall:

During a 2004 panel at the Museum of Television and Radio, in Los Angeles, Trump claimed that “every network” had tried to get him to do a reality show, but he wasn’t interested: “I don’t want to have cameras all over my office, dealing with contractors, politicians, mobsters, and everyone else I have to deal with in my business. You know, mobsters don’t like, as they’re talking to me, having cameras all over the room. It would play well on television, but it doesn’t play well with them.”

QOTD: A Trump voter

by digby

She works at a federal prison in Florida and isn’t getting paid:

Ms. Minton, a 38-year-old secretary, said she had obtained permission from the warden to put off her Mississippi duty until early February because she is a single mother caring for disabled parents. Her fiancé plans to take vacation days to look after Ms. Minton’s 7-year-old twins once she has to go to work.

The shutdown on top of the hurricane has caused Ms. Minton to rethink a lot of things.

“I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” she said of Mr. Trump. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”

Yep. That’s what it’s all about.

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Crybabies

by digby

Remember this?

It didn’t work out so well for them the last time. But they’re doing it again:

Graham said Republicans are “not going to put any offers on the table as long as people in charge of these negotiations accuse all of us who want a wall of being a racist and see our Border Patrol agents as gassing children. Until you get that crowd put to the sidelines, I don’t see anything happening.”

“Why would you negotiate with someone who calls you a racist?” Graham said.

Boo-fucking-hoo. They’re all a bunch of whiners.

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Stop letting lobbyists, pundits and media decide who is electable in 2020

by Spocko

 On the January 2nd episode of The Majority Report, Sam Seder talked about the folly of deciding on ‘electability” now.

“Making the electability argument is the most detrimental force to getting a better candidate from the perspective of the left. Because “electability” is exactly what you will hear to discount anyone coming from the left.”

It’s a great point. He goes on to explain that the center right wants to define electability. He points out that there are people and industries that want to set what is electable for the left, especially in certain issues, like health care.

Then they illustrated this with clips of two democrats who were auditioning for lobbyist positions for drug companies and health insurance companies following the 2020 elections.

The drug companies and health insurance firms will want to influence whomever is running for president on the left. Since nobody knows exactly who it will be, they will cover all their bets. They hire former politicians as lobbyists on the left, betting that in 2020 a Democrat president will be in power.

The drug and insurance companies want to determine what is “electable” FOR THEM. They want to set what is a “reasonable” position on any health care changes. Part of this process is teeing up the lobbyists right now. Currently they are looking to hire Democrats who will help them slow down any change from the status quo.  Check out the Sen. Joe Donnelly’s audition tape below. He’s looking for a lobbying position for the health insurance industry.

The drug companies want these Democratic politicians who will soon be lobbyists to first make public statements about what is a “reasonable” policy on health care. If they mention “Medicare for All” they will quickly talk about why this is impossible, then pivot to something amenable to the industry.  In private these Democrat lobbyists will explain to senators, and Democratic presidential candidates in 2020, what the problems will be if they don’t pre-compromise their position to something “doable” or “reasonable.” What is “reasonable?” Whatever the drug and insurance companies say it is.

These Democratic lobbyists will talk about how Medicare for All is “job killing” or it is “too much too soon” or that the country just can’t handle this change. Arguments will range from moral hazard “If you give people free health care they will use it all up” to covert racism. The new Democratic lobbyists will use whatever tools they can, based on the situation at the moment and the people in place at the time. 

The harder the ground is for universal health care, the easier it will be for the “reasonable” ideas of the health insurance industry to be pitched to the Democratic politicians who will be in power in 2020.

It’s Overton Window Moving Time Right NOW. 

All the candidates on the left will have a health care position.  Our job is to keep talking about the need for Universal Health care. The insurance industry and drug companies will be backing trucks of cash up to the doors of former democratic politicians to help that message get out.

The pundits will set up what is a “reasonable” policy on health care. The media will then play their part. They will interview Democrats who have a “reasonable” position on heath care. These Democrats’ JOB is to talk about how impossible something like Medicare for all is.

I will always suggest going after Republicans and right-wing media rather than our own people. But if you still have a need to attack a Democrat in the 2020 campaign instead of a Republican, look into folks like Joe Donnelly

You can also attack any of those GOP candidates who fought ACA, voted to repeal it and then went on the stump and said they would protect it. They won’t have as much value to the drug companies and health insurance firms as Democratic lobbyists, but they will be trotted out nonetheless.

The insurance and drug companies go to the people who will be able to influence whomever is in power. They are the enemy to progress in universal health care.

New old ideas
by Tom Sullivan

Hadrian’s wall just east of Cawfields quarry, Northumberland in October 2005. Public domain.

Here’s some news that isn’t from Huffington Post:

America has been doing income taxes wrong for more than 50 years.

All Americans, including the rich, would be better off if top tax rates went back to Eisenhower-era levels when the top federal income tax rate was 91 percent, according to a new working paper by Fabian Kindermann from the University of Bonn and Dirk Krueger from the University of Pennsylvania.

The top tax rate that makes all citizens, including the highest 1 percent of earners, the best off is “somewhere between 85 and 90 percent,” Krueger told The Huffington Post.

The above appears under the headline, “Economists Say We Should Tax The Rich At 90 Percent.” The article dates from October 2014.

Nobel laureate in economics Paul Krugman believes 2019 data suggests the ideal figure is more like 73 percent, or maybe 80 percent, depending on which experts one consults.

Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (AOC, for short), Democrat of New York, is the occasion for the discussion, you may have heard. In an interview with Anderson Cooper of 60 Minutes, AOC proposes a “Green New Deal” for moving the U.S. economy to renewable energy in 12 years, funded with a top marginal tax rate of “60 or 70 percent.”

Thus, in her first week in office, AOC set conservatives’ hair ablaze by saying the U.S. tax structure should resemble something more like the radical days of Dwight Eisenhower. The retired World War II general initiated construction of the now-crumbling interstate highway system in 1956. That national investment paid for in part by a more progressive tax policy has produced untold economic benefits for the country ever since, and explosive growth that would have been impossible without the 41,000 miles of tax-funded roads.

The alarmism and retro red-baiting on the right over AOC’s proposal elides that little detail, writes The Week’s Ryan Cooper. Sensible countries use such rates to pay for things such as “roads, bridges, trains, airports, and so on,” national goods that benefit almost everyone. “Deliberately leaving the benefit part out of the tax equation is a hallmark of a great deal of conservative ‘policy analysis,'” Cooper writes:

Sweden, by contrast, has a top marginal tax rate of 70 percent that kicks in at a mere $98,000 (and does not suffer any notable economic harms as a result, by the way). Here’s how one Swedish person thinks about the high tax level:

I was very grateful to live in Sweden when the triplets were born.The operating room was swarming with highly skilled professionals; one team of doctor and nurses for every triplet, one team to handle the Cesarean.I thought "I'm spending every krona I ever paid in tax right now." pic.twitter.com/q1RlbAMsiz— @sweden (@sweden) June 25, 2018

Indeed, a friend in Massachusetts once brushed off the state’s outdated reputation as Taxachusetts. She did not mind paying state taxes and felt the state-funded services were of real benefit, especially her kids’ schools. No big deal. Grover Norquist would be drowning himself in the bathtub.

Cooper continues:

The second thing missing is that most Americans still have to pay for the things they don’t get through taxation. Americans still need health insurance, child care, a college education, and so on (depending on circumstances) — we just have to finance some or all of that privately, and it often strains Americans’ budgets terribly.

That minor detail is missing from plans for privatization of public services, public-private infrastructure partnerships, and fee-based access to what used to be covered by Americans pooled taxes. But no, the anti-tax gospel demand middlemen nickel-and-dime us — and hold our health and safety hostage — for what civilized countries provide as a matter of course. Free-market cultists believe America can no longer afford Americans.

And yet, the inquisitors of government waste, fraud, and abuse partially shut down the government until the deal-less president gets billions in taxpayer funding for a yet-undesigned wall (or fence or barrier, depending on the speech and day of the week) of indeterminate length that Mexico was supposed to pay for. This, to help us to keep out people who desperately want to be Americans, contribute to our economy, and pay into our treasury by requesting entry at official gates in the wall.

“The right way”

by digby

Remember Trump’s talks with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte?

The Intercept obtained a transcript of the call and is publishing it in full. On the call, Trump enthusiastically endorsed Duterte’s murderous “drug war” and repeatedly addressed the possibility of a U.S. nuclear strike on North Korea.

Then he invited him to the White House.

Recall his earlier talk, referred to in the first exchange, in which Trump told Duterte that he was dealing with the drug problem “the right way.” Duterte was engaging in mass extra-judicial killings at the time. When they met, they hit it off grandly:

A spokesman for Duterte said there was no mention at all of human rights or extrajudicial killings during their conversation.

The meeting between the two presidents was one of the most anticipated at the summit of East and Southeast Asian leaders in Manila, with human rights groups pressing Trump to take a tough line on Duterte over his bloody war on drugs, in which thousands of people have been killed.

“The conversation focused on ISIS (Islamic State), illegal drugs, and trade,” said White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders. “Human rights briefly came up in the context of the Philippines’ fight against illegal drugs.”

Duterte’s spokesman, Harry Roque, told a news conference the Philippine president had explained his antidrug policy at length to Trump, who “seemed to be appreciative of his efforts.”

“There was no mention of human rights, no mention of extralegal killings,” he said.

That picture above is a current illustration of jails in the Philippines:

For some inmates of the Manila City Jail, making the bed means mopping up sludgy puddles, unfolding a square of cardboard on the tile floor and lying down to sleep in a small, windowless bathroom, wedged in among six men and a toilet.

On one recent night at the jail, in Dorm 5, the air was thick and putrid with the sweat of 518 men crowded into a space meant for 170.

The inmates were cupped into each other, limbs draped over a neighbor’s waist or knee, feet tucked against someone else’s head, too tightly packed to toss and turn in the sweltering heat.

Since President Rodrigo Duterte’s violent antidrug campaign began in 2016, Philippine jails have become increasingly more packed, propelling the overall prison system to the top of the World Prison Brief’s list of the most overcrowded incarceration systems in the world.

In the Manila City Jail, sleep is the most precious commodity.

If an inmate has money, he can buy a spot in a “kubol,” a small, improvised cubicle shared by two or more men, separated from the crowds with plywood walls and a curtain.

Otherwise, it’s the floor, or perhaps a bathroom, or on a stairway fashioned from two-by-fours; if an inmate falls off one of those steps, he takes everyone below with him.

Trump admires him a lot.

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A national security crisis? Really?

by digby

Oh look. They lied again:

U.S. Customs and Border Protection encountered only six immigrants on the U.S-Mexico border in the first half of fiscal year 2018 whose names were on a federal government list of known or suspected terrorists, according to CBP data as of May 2018 obtained by NBC News.

The low number contradicts statements by Trump administration officials, including White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, who said Friday that CBP stopped nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists from crossing the southern border in fiscal year 2018.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen told reporters on Monday the exact number, which NBC News is first to report, was classified but that she was working on making it public. The data was provided to Congress in May 2018.

Overall, 41 people on the Terrorist Screening Database were encountered at the southern border from Oct. 1, 2017, to March 31, 2018, but 35 of them were U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents. Six were classified as non-U.S. persons.

On the northern border, CBP stopped 91 people listed in the database, including 41 who were not American citizens or residents.

Border patrol agents, separate from CBP officers, stopped five immigrants from the database between legal ports of entry over the same time period, but it was unclear from the data which ones were stopped at the northern border versus the southern border.

The White House has used the 4,000 figure to make its case for building a wall on the southwest border and for closing the government until Congress funds it. They have also threatened to call a national emergency in order to get over $5 billion in funding for the wall.

I won’t be surprised if he announces it tomorrow night. The shutdown is starting to be a political problem and it’s his only way out in the short term.

It’s also impeachable.

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Dealmaking for Dummies

by digby

People actually thought this was real

This piece by Tim O’Brien is spot on about Trump’s bogus image as a deal-maker:

“We need a PRESIDENT with strength, stamina, heart and incredible deal making skill if our country is ever going to be able to prosper again!” he tweeted a few months after launching his presidential bid in 2015.

Trump, in reality, was never a peerless or even a particularly skillful dealmaker, and many of the most significant business transactions he engineered imploded. Instead, he made his way in the world as an indefatigable self-promoter, a marketing confection and a human billboard who frequently licensed his name to buildings and products paid for by others.

In Trump’s professional life, his inept dealmaking often came home to roost in unmanageable debts and serial bankruptcies. In his more recent political and presidential life it has revealed itself through bungled, hapless efforts to overturn the Affordable Care Act; forge a nuclear agreement with North Korea; wage trade wars with China, Mexico and Canada; retain control of the House of Representatives; turn military and diplomatic strategy on its head; lay siege to sensible immigration policy; and, now, force a government shutdown to secure funding for a prized project — a wall along the U.S.’s southern border.

Striking lasting deals requires intimacy with the finer points of what every party wants out of a negotiation, realistic goals, maturity, patience, flexibility — and enough leverage so the other side can’t simply stall or walk away from the table. Trump hasn’t met any of those prerequisites in his repeated efforts to fulfill his campaign promise to build a wall, a promise that played to the most xenophobic and bigoted portion of his base while not addressing any of the real shortcomings or necessary enhancements of federal immigration policy.

“Policy” and “Trump” don’t really coexist, of course. The president lacks the interest or sophistication to steep himself in policy details, so he enters the immigration debate and dealmaking for his wall at a distinct disadvantage. For as much as he disparages politicians and public service, Trump is surrounded by Democrats and Republicans who have immersed themselves in immigration discussions for years. Expertise does matter, after all — and Trump doesn’t have it.

The most visible reminder of the raw amateurism that has undermined Trump’s dealmaking came in December during a memorable White House visit with a pair of Democrats, Representative Nancy Pelosi and Senator Charles Schumer. As the trio gradually became unsettled over policy differences that could lead to a government shutdown, Trump, ready to perform for the media he had invited to observe the chat, sallied forth in a burst of bravado.

“I am proud to shut down the government for border security,” Trump told Schumer. “I will take the mantle. I will shut it down. I’m not going to blame you for it.”

Unforced error.

Trump — undoubtedly content to prove he’s willing to burn things down to get his own way — needlessly publicized himself as the author of the shutdown that ultimately arrived. Hmmm. Let’s think about that. Doesn’t every politician in Washington with a sense of the town’s history know that voters grow weary of government shutdowns and tend not to like those responsible for them? Newt Gingrich, whom Trump has occasionally solicited for input, surely knows this. Back in 1995 and 1996, when Gingrich was speaker of the House, then-President Bill Clinton maneuvered to hang a government shutdown around the speaker’s neck — inflicting permanent political damage on the once-ascendant Gingrich.

A word to the wise: If you get saddled with a reputation as a guy who likes to blow up things it can be hard to orchestrate deals. (“President Trump is a terrible negotiator,” Schumer recently said, highlighting how much leverage the president has lost in the wall negotiations.)

Trump also missed chances last year, when Republicans still controlled the House, to seal deals that might have given him significantly more funding for a wall than the $5 billion he wants — and is unlikely to get — now. Early in the year, hampered by his inability to be flexible or understand the other side’s needs, Trump opposed a bipartisan Senate proposal that offered $25 billion for a wall as long as a path to citizenship was opened for 1.7 million young, undocumented immigrants living in the U.S.

Just before Christmas, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell got Republicans behind a short-term funding package to keep the government open until February. That proposal didn’t include money for a wall, and Trump was prepared to support it until backlash from conservative media pundits Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham convinced him to retreat. Lacking clear goals for a deal — did he want to keep the government open or did he want to dig in behind a wall? — Trump left his own party befuddled and empowered Democrats.
[…]
Good dealmakers prepare their teams so they can get the support they need to move a negotiation across the finish line. But Trump has apparently overlooked the fact that his administration’s signature accomplishments — landing two conservative justices on the Supreme Court, pushing through a major tax overhaul, and passing criminal justice reform — had been initiated and guided by Republican dealmakers more able than him.

Building a wall, on the other hand, has been Trump’s personal piece of performance art and he has invoked fantasies to promote it (like, for example, compelling Mexico to foot the bill). He has also become so emotionally attached to the effort that he’s put himself at a strategic disadvantage. The president is now so consumed with appearing to win, that he may not win at all.
[…]
This, however, is who the president is. He’s focused on fostering his own, carnivalesque image, and he has little real interest in policy outcomes. And he’s been here before. In 1988, he overpaid in a deal for the Plaza Hotel because he was irrationally enamored of the property. A few years later he lost it in bankruptcy. Around the same time, he bungled negotiations for another project that would have made him a transformative figure in New York real estate because he couldn’t exercise the restraint, foresight and financial discipline needed to get the deal done. In 1996, he passed on selling a stake in one of his casinos that would have netted him about $180 million and helped prop up his struggling Atlantic City operation because he didn’t want his name removed from the property.

None of those episodes humbled him.

“We need a dealmaker in the White House, who knows how to think innovatively and make smart deals,” he tweeted back in 2011.

We still don’t have one.

Remember, nearly every “deal” he made for decades had to be co-signed by his father. You can imagine what bankers and investors thought when this doofus swing his big hands around on the negotiating table, making no sense. Unless Daddy would underwrite the “deal” nobody on either side wanted anything to do with it.

“The Apprentice” created his image for the cult. It saved him by helping him build his “brand” and keeping the money flowing. He was a D-list celebrity who was turned into a reality TV star and a bunch of ill-informed people bought it.

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Buhleemee or bulee your lying eyes

by digby

He’s insisting that he never announced a precipitous withdrawal from Syria:

President Trump on Monday pushed back against media reports that he had altered the timeline for removing U.S. troops from Syria, denying his administration had issued a series of contradictory statements about plans for ending America’s role in the war.

“We will be leaving at a proper pace while at the same time continuing to fight ISIS and doing all else that is prudent and necessary!” the president said in a message on Twitter, referring to the Pentagon’s ongoing operation to defeat the Islamic State.

His comment, which differed from earlier promises of a swift departure for the more than 2,000 U.S. troops stationed in Syria, was the latest iteration of an envolving roadmap for concluding the military mission there.

Trump’s statement came a day after national security adviser John Bolton, speaking to reporters during a tour of the Middle East, said the troop departure would occur only after Islamic State militants are fully routed.

Both his comments and Trump’s conflict with officials’ initial statements following the president’s unexpected Dec. 19 announcement that all troops would come home in short order. Trump also declared victory against the Islamic State, contradicting military assessments.

“Our boys, our young women, our men, they’re all coming back and they’re coming back now. We won,” Trump said in a video message on Twitter.

That abrupt pronouncement upended plans for a continued presence in Syria, where U.S. troops work with Syrian Kurdish forces battling militants in the eastern part of the country.

The unexpected move shocked allies, and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis resigned after clashing with Trump over the plans.

While officials said Trump had initially ordered a 30-day departure, the White House later agreed to an exit within 120 days, which would permit troops more time to break down bases and safely remove equipment and personnel.

In recent days, White House and State Department officials have appeared to back away from plans for an immediate departure and from assertions that the battle against the militants was over.

Instead they have suggested the drawdown would be conditioned on the conclusion of fighting with the Islamic State and on a promise from Turkey, a NATO ally, that it would not attack Syrian partner forces, which Ankara views as an offshoot of a terrorist group.

This is a total walkback which I would normally find alarming but since Trump made this decision on the fly wihtout any discussion with allies and others, against theadvice of virtually everyone, perhaps a “pause” is at least in order so that the world can figure out what the hell is going on.

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by digby

It’s very interesting how the press is reluctant to investigate Ivanka as they do other women, particularly Democrats. If I didn’t know better I would think they see her as some kind of celebrity star instead of a senior White House adviser with serious conflicts of interest:

An ethics watchdog group asked the Justice Department on Friday to investigate whether President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka violated federal conflict-of-interest law by promoting an Opportunity Zone tax break program from which she could potentially benefit. 

The complaint from the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington follows an Associated Press investigation last month. The AP found that Trump and her husband Jared Kushner, both White House advisers, could benefit from the Opportunity Zones program they pushed that offers tax breaks to developers who invest in downtrodden communities. 

AP reported Kushner owns a $25 million to $50 million non-management stake in Cadre, a real estate investment firm which has announced plans to invest in several cities under the Opportunity Zones program. Separately, the couple has interests in at least 13 properties held by Kushner’s family firm that may qualify for the tax breaks because they are in Opportunity Zones in New Jersey, New York and Maryland. 

The CREW complaint says that, under federal law, Kushner’s financial interests are considered of value to Ivanka Trump as well. 

In a 12-page letter sent to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder said that as a result of the 2017 decision by Ivanka Trump and Kushner to “retain a sprawling portfolio of investments after entering government,” the couple “assumed responsibility for exercising due diligence to avoid participating in any particular matter that directly and predictably affects the interests of the companies they retained.” 

Ivanka Trump, Bookbinder wrote, “may have failed to live up to this responsibility.”

She is a crook, just like her daddy. Listen to this Pro-Publica-WNYC podcast called “Trump Inc.” She’s right in the middle of all the fraud and the money laundering. 

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