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Daily Archives: February 7, 2017
Trump’s cabinet: No fear of the best – ValdostaToday.com
Posted: February 7, 2017 at 8:47 am
When men live by tradeit is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and the highest ability, so says Francisco DAnconia of Atlas Shrugged fame, Ayn Rands 1957 blockbuster.
Rands iconic classic defined the coming bureaucratic, collectivist state that would put mediocrity over achievement since the latter, who achieved by thought, hard work, and action, would accumulate more wealth than the former, who are content with less since contentment requires no ambition. In a word: state enforced egalitarianism.
That this state is here and now, courtesy of the eurosocialist Democratic Party, is irrefutable. Ayn Rand accurately prophesied that the accepted political mantra would become from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
Or, as the Democrats put it, income redistribution.
And just as they no longer attempt to confuscate their agenda regarding taxing and spending, the eurosocialists have now declared open warfare on competency, achievement, and success. Theirs is a world where those with these attributes have no place in government.
One need look no further than their shamelessness currently displayed during President Trumps cabinet nominee confirmation process.
Trumps cabinet nominees are clearly men and women of the best judgment and the highest ability, as evidenced by their exceptional success in the private sector.
And the Democrats will have nothing of it. Certainly there is a place for civil inquiry and, perhaps, advised skepticism. Thats the job of the opposition party. Savaging these nominees, however, is another matter entirely. Boycotting committee hearings and votes is simply petulance.
As Harry Reid once said, This doesnt feel like America.
In 2005, for example, Barack Obamas nominees for Secretary of State (Hillary Clinton), Treasury (Timothy Geithner), Commerce (Gary Locke), and Health and Human Services (Kathleen Sebelius), were all career politicians with little or no private enterprise experience. None of them started a business, worked in a business, or ever created aprivate sector job but they did have law degrees.
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What does Paul Ryan stand for? – The Week Magazine
Posted: at 8:47 am
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Paul Ryan, who used to regularly signal his displeasure with Donald Trump, has backed the president to the hilt since the election. And so the newest meme has been born: Paul Ryan has no spine. Andy Borowitz and ClickHole have columns riffing on the Spineless Paul Ryan meme, and somebody even edited the Wikipedia invertebrate page to add the House Speaker.
It is true that Ryan does not care about the principles he claims to care about. But it's inaccurate to imagine him as merely a soulless careerist. Ryan does have serious principles. He is deeply committed to the principle of liberating the affluent from the burdens of progressive taxation. That description may sound like an arch comment to those of us who don't share Ryan's bent. But to people like Ryan, it is a moral conviction of the highest order.
Ryan has repeatedly cited the influence in his younger days of such works as Wealth and Poverty, by George Gilder; The Way the World Works, by Jude Wanniski, plus, of course, Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. These books treat the struggle against progressive taxation as the fundamental project of politics. The central problem of mass-participatory politics, in this view, is its tendency to allow the masses of voters to gang up on the rich (whether through democratic or undemocratic means) and redistribute their deserved rewards to themselves. It is tempting to dismiss his fixation with the top tax rate as greed on behalf of his donors, but to adherents of this ideology there is nothing more serious.
Obviously, the defense of the right of the one percent to keep its earnings is an unpopular basis for political messaging. And so Ryan has an ecumenical view of the political message needed to sell his policies. He is happy to posture as a fanatical debt hawk if debt-hawkery is a promising vehicle to advance the goal of cutting taxes for the rich, but he will also support and even demand massively higher deficits if that is what is needed. Ryan has promoted outreach to Latinos and other socially moderate constituencies as a practical step toward expanding his party's base. Ryan continued to defend those policies before the election, when it looked probable that Trump would lose, and he would need to rebuild in the wake of the expected defeat. But he is also perfectly willing to abandon those policies if he happens to have a race-baiting Republican prepared to sign his cherished tax cuts into law.
Ryan might supplicate himself to limitless acts of corruption or misrule by Trump, but he would never stand silent if Trump attempted to implement even a tiny tax increase on the highest-earning one percent. I happen to find Ryan's belief system to be rather deranged. But it is a belief system.
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Why Should a Libertarian Take Universal Basic Income Seriously? – Niskanen Center (press release) (blog)
Posted: at 8:46 am
February 6, 2017 by Edwin G. Dolan
Edwin G. Dolan is an economist and educator whose writings regularly appear at EconoMonitor.The Niskanen Center is excited to welcome him as a new Poverty and Welfare adjunct focusing on Universal Basic Income research.
In recent post on EconLog, Bryan Caplan writes, Im baffled that anyone with libertarian sympathies takes the UBI [universal basic income] seriously. I love a challenge. Let me try to un-baffle you, Bryan, and the many others who might be as puzzled as you are. Here are three kinds of libertarians who might take a UBI very seriously indeed.
Libertarian pragmatists
Philosophical issues aside, what galls many libertarians most about government is the failure of many policies to produce their intended results. Poverty policy is Exhibit A. By some calculations, the government already spends enough on poverty programs to raise all low-income families to the official poverty level, even though the poverty rate barely budges from year to year. Wouldnt it be better to spend that money in a way that helps poor people more effectively?
A UBI would help by ending the way benefit reductions and welfare cliffs in current programs undermine work incentives. When you add together the effects of SNAP, TANF, CHIP, EITC and the rest of the alphabet soup, and account for work-related expenses like transportation and child care, a worker from a poor household can end up taking home nothing, even from a full-time job. A UBI has no benefit reductions. You get it whether you work or not, so you keep every added dollar you earn (income and payroll taxes excepted, and these are low for the poor).
But, wait, you might say. Why would I work at all if you gave me a UBI? That might be a problem if you got your UBI on top of existing programs, but if it replaced those programs, work incentives would be strengthened, not weakened. In which situation would you be more likely to take a job: one where you get $800 a month as a UBI plus a chance to earn another $800 from a job, all of which you can keep, or one where your get $800 a month in food stamps and housing vouchers, and anything extra you earn is taken away in benefit reductions?
Or, you might say, a UBI might be fine for the poor, but wouldnt it be unaffordable to give it to the middle class and the rich as well? Yes, if you added it on top of all the middle-class welfare and tax loopholes for the rich that we have now. No, if the UBI replaced existing tax preferences and other programs that we now lavish on middle- and upper-income households. Done properly, a UBI would streamline the entire system of federal taxes and transfers without any aggregate impact on the federal budget.
Classical liberals
Not all of those with libertarian sympathies are anarcho-capitalist purists. Many classical liberals, even those whom purist libertarians lionize in other contexts, are more open to the idea of a social safety net as a legitimate function of a limited government.
In his book Law, Legislation, and Liberty, classical liberal Friedrich Hayek wrote,
The assurance of a certain minimum income for everyone, or a sort of floor below which nobody need fall even when he is unable to provide for himself, appears not only to be a wholly legitimate protection against a risk common to all, but a necessary part of the Great Society.
Philosophically, classical liberals see social insurance of this kind as something to which they would willingly assent if they considered it behind a veil of ignorance, where they did not know if they themselves would be born rich or poor. Once the philosophical hurdle is overcome, the practical advantages of a UBI become highly attractive. In terms of administrative efficiency and work incentives, a UBI wins hands down over the current welfare system, and beats even the negative income tax famously championed by Milton Friedman, another classical liberal,.
Lifestyle libertarians
The libertarian sympathies of still others arise from the conviction that all people should be able to live their lives according to their own values, so long as they dont interfere with the right of others to do likewise. These lifestyle libertarians are drawn to a UBI because of its contrast with the nanny state mentality that characterizes current policies. Why should social programs treat married couples differently from people living in unconventional communal arrangements? Why should welfare recipients have to undergo intrusive drug testing? Why should food stamps let you buy hamburger and feed it to your dog, but not buy dog food?
Writing for Reason.com, Matthew Feeney urges libertarians to stop arguing in principle against the redistribution of wealth. Instead, he says, scrap the welfare state and give people free money. Feeney sees a UBI as an alternative that promotes personal responsibility, reduces the humiliations associated with the current system, and reduces administrative waste in government.
So there you are. A UBI is a policy for pragmatic critics of well-intentioned but ineffective government, for classical liberals, and for advocates of personal freedom. No wonder so many libertarians take the idea seriously.
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Libertarian Party Chairman Repeats Lie About MILO Outing Illegals At Berkeley – Breitbart News
Posted: at 8:46 am
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George Ciccariellowas the first person to claim that MILO was planning this:
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MILO responded to Ciccariellos tweet on his Facebook shortly afterwards. This is a total fabrication. A complete lie. I had no intention of doing so. Watch out for the old reliable sources very often a sign youre being lied to, he wrote. However, this did not stop Sarwark from repeating it on his page.
Sarwark did not mention MILO by name, referring to him only as a gentleman who was scheduled to speak at a University of California campus. He decried MILOs fabricated potential actions as despicable behaviour, and even argued that it helped why others made the choice to use violence to try to stop or disrupt his speech.
Sarwark went on to say that the only thing more despicable is that we have a government that will forcibly remove peaceful people from our country because they were born on the wrong side of an imaginary line.He then went on to claim in the comments that the point holds whether the rumors are correct or not.
Unfortunately for Sarwark, not every libertarian agrees with him, and he faced significant backlash in the comments. Shane Trejo thanked God that Milo is not a coward like so many Libertarians clearly are because of smug full-of-shit pussies like Nicholas Sarwark, no self-respecting person can call even publicly themselves a libertarian these days without feeling embarrassed.
Another user agreed: It seems like libertarian, for many, is just a code word for social justice warrior.
Prominent libertarians also have contradicting views to Sarwark on the concept of open borders itself. Ron Paul, beloved by libertarians in both the LP and Republican party, has argued for the abolishing of birthright citizenship.Hans Herman Hoppe, Murray Rothbards protege, noted that open borders are an infringement on private property rights, and that people should be physically removed from a society if they provide a threat to the libertarian way of life.
Otherlibertarians raise the issue of the social ramifications of permitting mass immigration from cultures that are not friendly to libertarian ideals. Would we have allowed thousands of Bolsheviks to emigrate during the Cold War? asks libertarian commentator Lauren Southern. I dont think we would, because we knew they didnt believe in a free society. In her video, Southern applies the analogy to argue against Muslim immigrationfrom a libertarian perspective.
MILOs provided a short response to Sarwarks post: this idiot should stick to what libertarians actually know about weed, Bitcoin and hacking and leave slanderous rumor where it belongs. On CNN.
DANGEROUS is available to pre-order now via Amazon, in hardcover and Kindle editions. And yes, MILO is reading the audiobook version himself!
Jack Hadfield is a student at the University of Warwick and a regular contributor to Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @ToryBastard_, on Gab @JH or email him at jack@yiannopoulos.net.
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Scholars: ‘Liberal’ Reputation of 9th Circuit Overblown – ABC News
Posted: at 8:45 am
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is weighing the appeal concerning President Donald Trump's executive order on immigration, is the federal appeals court conservatives have long ridiculed as the "nutty 9th" or the "9th Circus."
Covering a huge swath of territory nine western states plus Guam the San Francisco-based court handles far more cases than any other federal appeals court, including some rulings that have invoked furor from conservatives over the years. Among them: finding that the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional, that the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military was problematic long before President Barack Obama's administration ended it, and that states can force pharmacies to dispense emergency contraceptives.
But some legal scholars say the 9th Circuit's liberal reputation is overblown and that the court has moved to the middle as some of President Jimmy Carter's appointees who were considered extremely liberal have taken semi-retired "senior" status or passed away. A Democratic Congress nearly doubled the number of judges on the court during Carter's tenure, and his appointees faced easy confirmation in the Senate.
President George W. Bush appointed six of the court's 25 active judges, but 18 have been appointed by Democrats, though the seven appointed by President Barack Obama are generally considered moderate, said University of Richmond Law School Professor Carl Tobias.
Tobias called the notion that the 9th Circuit is liberal "dated." Arthur Hellman, a federal courts scholar at University of Pittsburgh Law School, said the picture of where the court stands in relation to other circuits has become muddier.
"The reputation is certainly deserved based on the history of the last 40 years or so," Hellman said Monday. "It's been more liberal, by which we mean more sympathetic to habeas petitioners, civil rights plaintiffs, anti-trust cases, immigration cases. But it's less of an outlier now than it was."
That history has prompted repeated, unsuccessful efforts to split the 9th Circuit most recently in proposals filed this year by Arizona's congressional delegation. A bill introduced last week by Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake would put Arizona in a new 12th Circuit with Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Washington while leaving California, Hawaii and Oregon plus Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands in the 9th Circuit.
A House version previously introduced by Reps. Andy Biggs and four other Arizona Republican representatives would leave Washington in the 9th Circuit.
In a news release, Biggs said his aim was "to free Arizona from the burdensome and undue influence of the 9th Circuit Court."
"As a promise to my constituents last year, I introduced this bill to protect Arizona from a federal circuit court that does not reflect the values nor laws of our state," he said. "The Ninth Circuit cannot handle the number of states currently entrapped within its jurisdiction, causing access to justice to be delayed."
Tobias said that while the 9th Circuit could use more judges, it makes little sense to split the circuit. California generates so many cases that the 9th is always going to have a heavy workload it handled 11,888 of the 56,244 cases handled by all federal appeals courts in the 12 months ending last June. And Tobias said he doesn't consider the sort of judicial gerrymandering Biggs seeks as a valid reason to split the court.
Judge Alex Kozinski, the circuit's former chief judge, once joked in a New York Times interview that far from splitting the 9th, he was hoping to acquire more territory. He had his sights on Utah, for the good skiing, he said.
The three judges weighing Trump's travel ban are on the case by virtue of having been randomly assigned to the circuit's motions panel for this month. Senior Circuit Judge William C. Canby Jr. was appointed by Carter in 1980; Senior Circuit Judge Richard R. Clifton was appointed by Bush in 2002; and Circuit Judge Michelle T. Friedland was appointed by Obama in 2014.
Canby, who is based in Phoenix, was a first lieutenant in the Air Force in the 1950s before becoming a Peace Corps administrator in Ethiopia and Uganda in the 1960s. Clifton, who keeps his chambers in Honolulu, came to the bench from private practice, as did Friedland, who is based in San Francisco.
They were scheduled to hear arguments by phone Tuesday on whether to maintain a temporary restraining order issued by Seattle U.S. District Judge James L. Robart that blocked enforcement of the travel ban concerning seven majority-Muslim nations.
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All liberals are hypocrites. I know because I am one – Quartz
Posted: at 8:45 am
Demagogues like Donald Trump thrive on simplicity. One of the keys to his ascendancy has been the lumping together of his many enemies into a single entity, a group to blame for all the economic anxiety and cultural dispossession felt by a vocal subset of his constituency. And so, various strains of right-wing anger have for some time now been congealing around a single vague word: liberal.
As a political philosophy, liberalism is an untidy confection. But Im pretty sure I am one, at least in part because I subscribe to liberalisms first principlethat everyone has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Insofar as I advocate for equality, reason and individual freedom, I guess that makes me the special snowflake sneered at by a billion alt-right Twitter accounts.
And, like all self-identifying liberals in the age of Trump, recent events have plunged me into a sea of doubt. Which is why I think its important to say this: As well as being a liberal, I am also a xenophobe.
That statement requires some immediate qualification. I am not your garden-variety racist. I do not cultivate hatreds based on skin color or nationality. I do not have an Aryan Viking or a colored egg as my Twitter avatar. A child of the 1980s, and an urbanite, pluralism is part of my cultural inheritance. But the truth is that, for someone who has spent the last decade as a travel writer and literary cheerleader for foreign people and places, I often have a hard time transcending stark cultural differences.
I think its important to say this: As well as being a liberal, I am also a xenophobe.Some examples from my rap-sheet include a month in China, during which my girlfriends red hair invited the kind of swivel-eyed scrutiny you might expect if shed had two heads, was enough to turn me against the entire country. The disdain for punctuality common to Latin America and Africa drives me to distraction. In abject fulfillment of the British stereotype, the worlds widespread inability to queue drives me to silent, haughty outrage. Whilst I am adept at reciting the worlds capital cities, Im also an authority on being judgmental.
Such observations dont generally make the final copy of daily opinion columns, but theres nothing especially novel or incendiary about them. (I suspect few members of the liberal chattering classes can watch the Broadway classic Avenue Q without a wry, self-conscious chuckle at the musicals most famous number, Everybodys a little bit racist.) However, at a time when liberalism as a concept is under attackwhen half of America is blaming it for all the worlds problems, and the other half are catastrophizing about the implications of its demisethis mea culpa may help formulate a better understanding of what liberalism is, and why it is in crisis today.
Crucially, the idea that a liberal can also be a bigot presupposes that a persons politics do not depend on the purity of their soul, but rather on the extent to which their anxiety about human nature supersedes their susceptibility to prejudice. Or, to put it more simply, being liberal does not necessarily make you a better person. It just means you believe base humanity is flawed and needs to be contained within a framework of social mores and ethical absolutes.
Liberalism, wrote the controversial philosopher Slavoj Zizek, is sustained by a profound pessimism about human nature. Where the nostalgic conservative sees a past of white picket fences and peaceful cultural homogeneity, the liberal sees centuries of genocide, sectarian war, colonization and enslavement. A right-winger might call it hysteria. A liberal would call it a rational reading of human fallibility. Viewed through this pessimists lens, political correctness is a safeguard, a levee against the dark rivers of our intolerant tribalism.To put it more simply, being liberal does not necessarily make you a better person.
Against this backdrop, a person opposed to liberal ideals comes across as either willfully foolish or worse. Liberals dont brand such people as racist because we think they are. We brand them as racist because we know they are. Because deep down, we know we are too.
And thats the problem. The central weakness of modern liberalism is that the self-criticism required in order to disown this instinctive bias has become a form of blindnessof our own moral imperfection, and of our tendency to offer a prescription for society to which we ourselves struggle to adhere. Three months on from Trumps election victory, and with the anti-liberal backlash continuing to shape politics across western democracies, the vulnerabilities in this picture grow starker by the day.
In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill, among the founding fathers of modern liberalism, wrote that Whatever crushes individuality is despotism. But it seems unlikely that he could ever have imagined how future generations would see, in the ideology he championed, a haunting echo of that same oppression. What emerged as a philosophy of opposition to structural prejudice started to grow sclerotic the moment it assumed the mantle of orthodoxy. The resultan inflexible dogma rooted in secularism and identity politicshas ended up provoking the vengeance of those who feel marginalized by it.
While many liberals complain about the implications of anthropogenic climate change, how many of us refuse to fly?Often, the accusations of hypocrisy marshaled in opposition to liberal points of view are more absurd than effectivewitness, to name one recent example, the thousands of Trump apologists disparaging womens marchers on the premise that those same people hadnt been holding weekly sit-ins to protest the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia. Yet the overarching criticism is valid, for how many liberals can say with sincerity that they are immune to instinctive bias? Can any of us truly claim that we feel as much sympathy for thousands of innocent Syrians immolated by Assads barrel-bombs as we do for European terror victims? While many liberals complain about the implications of anthropogenic climate change, how many of us refuse to fly?
Indeed, the words do as I say, not as I do could be the catchphrase for the entire liberal orderfrom the everyday leftie who decries gentrification while secretly celebrating the increased value of their house to figureheads we eulogize. As people around the world lamented the end of Barack Obamas administration, many pointed out that the man elected US president on a tide of hope and optimism, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize within months of taking office, vacated the White House as the first American president in history to have been at war for every day of his tenure. It doesnt require a huge leap of empathy to understand how someone anathematized to his politics might have seen, in the deluge of liberal tears that accompanied his departure, evidence of an intractable contradiction.
None of this is to say that social liberalism needs to be disavowed. The Trump era, if anything, looks set to demonstrate its importance anew. And while populists would have us believe that 2016 heralded the start of liberalisms downfall, we must keep faith that most people, if pushed, would choose a more self-aware liberal future to Steve Bannons nihilistic vision of religious war.None of this is to say that social liberalism needs to be disavowed.
But as todays progressives confront a newly energized right-wing populism, we must recognize the shortcomings in liberalism that have led us to this juncture. We should be able to acknowledge that, in seeking absolution for our worst instincts, we may have overcompensated by acquiescing to a status quo that has overseen rampant inequality and catastrophic foreign wars. And we should admit that the reactionary ideas fueling the right-wing surgenativism, nationalism, and American exceptionalism among themare understandable, albeit execrable, responses to our transparent balancing act. Trump is sticking a middle finger up to a liberal consensus teetering on feet of clay.
Everyone carries a shadow, wrote the psychoanalyst Carl Jung, and the less it is embodied in the individuals conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. It seems likely, were he alive today, that Jung might suspect liberals of possessing the biggest shadows of all. Perhaps we need to embrace our shadows before we can properly push them away.
Follow Henry on Twitter at @henrywismayer. Learn how to write for Quartz Ideas. We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.
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Cory Bernardi says he resents being used in Liberal party ‘proxy war’ – The Guardian
Posted: at 8:45 am
Cory Bernardi says he did not support the decision to change prime minister from Tony Abbott to Malcolm Turnbull, and he does not agree with the idea of changing again. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
Cory Bernardi has fired a parting shot at his former conservative colleagues, including Tony Abbott, declaring he was being used in a proxy war against Malcolm Turnbull in the build-up to his departure from the Liberal party.
In an interview with Guardian Australias Politics Live podcast, Bernardi said he did not want his split from the Liberal party to be any sort of trigger point for the destabilisation of Turnbulls prime ministership by his conservative opponents.
Bernardi said he had opposed moves to remove Abbott as prime minister in 2015, and despite his significant philosophical differences with Malcolm Turnbull, any move against him would be wrong too.
Acknowledging that some conservatives were intent on using his departure as fresh material to weaken Turnbull, Bernardi said categorically he did not want his defection to be used for political purposes.
Its the principle, Bernardi said on Tuesday night. You have an elected prime minister, and they are getting rolled because of the polls, or because of poor decisions. They are collective decisions of the cabinet. They are collective decisions of the party room, and they are hurt and they are terrible, but youve got to be prepared to fight.
It is the principle for me in that entire thing.
And where I resented some of the things you have suggested [about positioning by conservatives] is I was being used in a proxy war, and in my dealings with the [press] gallery over the last 12 months, I have made it abundantly clear, I am not involved in this I am not doing anyone elses bidding.
If I am the rebel Senator ... it is not because I am carrying a torch for anyone else. I dont want to see a change of leadership, its always been about the policy.
Abbotts office has been contacted for comment.
Bernardis comments about the Coalitions corrosive internals come after his statement to the Senate on Tuesday confirming his attention to resign from the Liberal party and start a new conservative political movement.
Former colleagues rounded on the South Australian over the course of Tuesday, arguing it was a complete betrayal of the voters of South Australia to stand for election as a Liberal Senator for a six year term, only to quit the party just over six months in.
Bernardi told Guardian Australia on Tuesday evening he had been inspired to launch his own insurgency after watching Donald Trumps successful grassroots campaign in the United States, but he said he had no interest in importing Trumps political tactics into the Australian landscape, such as decrying coverage he didnt approve of as fake news, or trying to muddy up facts.
He also suggested he could compete with One Nation successfully for the conservative vote, and many conservative leaning people looking for a political alternative would be reassured by his long history within the Liberal party.
In the interview, Bernardi shrugged off an apparent lack of interest from his close friend, the mining magnate Gina Rinehart, in bankrolling his new political movement.
Bernardi said he was looking to fund his organisation through many small donations from activists prepared to sign on to Australian Conservatives, which he was prepared to disclose in real time.
He said the sustainability of a political organisation is driven by memberships and the grass roots.
If I can get thousands upon thousands of people contributing modest amounts of money historically thats been the strength for my political fundraising, Bernardi said.
Ive tried to build relationships with people over a very long period of time. I have a weekly blog that goes out. Some of those people will be disappointed [about what Ive done] but there will be tens of thousands of people who will celebrate this decision and they are very supportive of me because Ive become their voice in the parliament.
I know who they are, Ive established a relationship. I can take the temperature of a great many conservatives in the nation very, very quickly.
He also signalled his donations above the disclosure threshold would be revealed publicly continuously, within 24 hours, rather than waiting 12 months for the legal requirement.
I dont know why people want to hide this.
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Cory Bernardi says he resents being used in Liberal party 'proxy war' - The Guardian
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Conservatives reject liberal humor in Trump era: Dave Berg – USA TODAY
Posted: at 8:45 am
Dave Berg Published 11:04 a.m. ET Feb. 6, 2017 | Updated 19 hours ago
Kate McKinnon and Hillary Clinton on SNL on Oct. 3, 2015.(Photo: Dana Edelson, AP)
The Trump administration regularly challenges the legitimacy of mainstream journalists, claiming theyall but openly favored Hillary Clinton during the recent presidential election. Many of Trump's supporters agreeand have turned to other news sources, such as Fox News, talk radio hosts and social media networks.
But thatrejection of the mainstream news media is only part of a larger story. Conservativesare wary of the entire liberal entertainment media, especially late-night comedians. While Jay Leno and Johnny Carson used to skewer both sides of the political spectrum with equal glee, todays hosts dish up humor that is anything but even-handed. Instead, they seem to be on a mission to destroy Trump and the Republican Party, doing monologues that often sound more like anti-Trump diatribes. In fairness, Jimmy Fallons only agenda is to entertain, but he is a notable exception.
As a result, many conservatives are clicking off the late-night showsand switching instead to right-leaning media, which is increasingly offering comedic material to fill the void left by the professional comedians. Some of the jokes are really funny. The go-to meme is mainstream journalisms bias against Trump such asPulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Michael Ramirezs depiction of an anchorman delivering these words: In other disturbing news President Donald Trump is doing what he promised in his campaign.
Nothing bothers conservatives more than liberals who sanctimoniously preach the virtues of tolerancebut dont take their own advice. Chicks on The Right recently ran a photo of a scowling woman pointing an elongated index finger with this caption: Im a tolerant liberal!Agree with me or else youre a racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, redneck, gun toting, America loving bigot.
USA TODAY
Hillary's late-night TV pals aren't funny: Dave Berg
USA TODAY
'Designated Survivor' misleads on Michigan: Column
When Clinton referred to half of Trumps supporters as a basket of deplorables during a campaign fundraiser, she unknowingly struck the rawest conservative nerve of all. Trumpsters" immediately saw this as confirmation that Clinton wasnt just talking about their candidate. She was wagging her menacing index finger at them as well.
This campaign game-changer was lost on most of the late-night joke writers, who saw it only as another opportunity to satirize Trump and his supporters. James Corden joked thatTrumps supporters wanted Clinton to apologize and also explain what deplorable means. But conservatives embraced the phrase as a badge of honor.Trump made an entrance at a Miami rally with a big screen image of French revolutionaries from the musical Les Miserables projected behind him. But the title was changed to Les Deplorables.
Retailers began selling T-shirts with funny versions of the meme, such as Team Deplorable and Friends Dont Let Friends Join the Basket of Deplorables.
One of Trumps inaugural balls was even called the Deploraball.
Hollywood celebrities provide some of the richest material. Not all of them, just the self-important, preachy, hypocritical ones. When the dour, pedantic actors at the nationally televised Screen Actors Guild Awards bashed Trump non-stop, Fox News'Tucker Carlson quipped: This spells trouble ahead for the new administration becausewhen you lose Hollywood, you dont just lose Hollywood. You also lose Santa Monica and some parts of Pacific Palisades. And thats not good. Conservative satirist Ann Coulter tweeted: Big rally last night by SAG Sharia Activist Group.
USA TODAY
Pay no attention to the Gorsuch hysteria: Christian Schneider
POLICING THE USA:Alook at race, justice, media
Talk show host Chelsea Handler smugly told Varietythat she wouldnt interview Melania Trump because she can barely speak English. It was an odd thing for her to say, as the first ladywould be a great get for Handlers struggling show. Besides, Trump speaks five languages, and Handler doesnt even have a college degree. The irony was not lost on the first ladys supporters, who vented on Twitter.
From @mljackson12, "Perhaps Chelsea should give the interviewin French, German or Serbian? No wait Slovenian." And @ms_erika74, "Chelsea Handler speaksfluent vodka, thats about it."
Homegrown conservative humor has filled a need that late-night comedians have ignored for too long. They have done so at their own peril, as they will inevitably be facing stiffer competition from comedy shows hosted by comedians who understand the political sensibilities of people in the vast red political landscape of the country.
Dave Berg, author ofBehind the Curtain: An Insiders View of Jay Lenos Tonight Show, co-produced the show for 18 years. Follow him on Twitter @TonightShowDave.
You can readdiverse opinions from ourBoard of Contributorsand other writers ontheOpinion front page,on Twitter@USATOpinionand in our dailyOpinion newsletter.To submit a letter, comment or column, check oursubmission guidelines.
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Conservatives reject liberal humor in Trump era: Dave Berg - USA TODAY
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Cotton Calls for a $26B Uptick in Planned Defense Supplemental – USNI News
Posted: at 8:44 am
A member of the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence Committee is calling for a $26 billion addition to this years emergency defense spending bill to rebuild readiness starting with increased flying and training times and increasing the end-strength of the Army and Marine Corps.
Most [of the immediate spending agenda] comes from the service chiefs unfunded priority lists, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), said during his remarks at AEI on Monday.
We need more of just about everything, including modernized nuclear forces. Nuclear strategy can no longer be bilateral [between Washington and Moscow] because China and North Korea, both potential adversaries, are nuclear powers.
He added he also was backing a 15 percent increase in defense spending for the upcoming fiscal year.
Our defense budget is not responsible for our national debt, he said in answer to an audience question.
I think we can find the money for the supplemental increase and for the upcoming fiscal year and not upset the Freedom Caucus deficit hawks. In part, Cotton said this would come from having a new administration and a majority in Congress both saying that each dollar increase in defense spending does not have to be matched on domestic programs.
Cotton also warned allies and partners that no alliance should be a one-way street, and they need to spend two percent of their gross domestic product on their own security, not military pensions.
Right now we have to strengthen the bilateral alliances the United States has with Japan and South Korea and work for better ties with India and countries, such as Myanmar [Burma] that dont want to be vassal states of China. We have to give them more incentives to stay with us and that includes the Philippines and Thailand, two allies who have been distancing themselves from the United States in recent months.
The United States itself and all its partners need to understand they are engaged in global geo-political competition, particularly with Russia in Eastern Europe and China in the East and South China seas.
The Big Stick is important, Cotton said, not only recalling President Theodore Roosevelt, who first used the term in 1901 as a corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, but also President Ronald Reagans position on rebuilding the military and meeting the challenge from the Soviet Union when he took office in 1981.
In dealing with Moscow and Beijing, we have to negotiate with them in a position of strength.
Cotton said President Donald Trumps policy to the Russia is yet to be determined and should not be judged on a few comments he made. He cited Ambassador to the United Nations Nicki Haleys recent remarks condemning Russia on renewed fighting in eastern Ukraine as showing what the administrations policy will be.
In answer to a question, he said, We should not recognize a single inch of soil where Russian troops stand in Ukraine as belonging to Moscow. He added he doubted that Russia would have seized Crimea and backed separatists in eastern Ukraine if Kiev retained the nuclear arsenal on its soil when the Soviet Union collapsed.
As for the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin is KGB, always will be. Cotton was skeptical about working with Moscow in Syria, a country where the United States now find its allies fighting each other [Kurds fighting Turks]. He said other partners in the region are leery of involvement in the Syrian civil war. They are not going to install a [Muslim] Brotherhood or Quds Force government in Damascus to replace President Bashar al-Assad.
The Muslim Brotherhood briefly governed Egypt following the Arab Spring. The Quds Force is a special forces unit of Irans Revolutionary Guard and is operating in Syria in support of Assad
In his remarks, Cotton said Trumps America First rhetoric resonates with most of the public. He termed it plain spoken nationalism in the manner of President Andrew Jackson.
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Cotton Calls for a $26B Uptick in Planned Defense Supplemental - USNI News
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Republicans Move on Financial Deregulation; Fed Finalizes Stress Test Guidance – Lexology (registration)
Posted: at 8:44 am
Legislative Activity
President Trump Orders Review of Financial Regulations
Last Friday, February 3, President Trump issued an Executive Order related to financial services regulatory reform (generally) and an Executive Memorandum specifically targeting the Department of Labors (DOL) Fiduciary Rule. The Executive Order on Core Principles for Regulating the United States Financial System directs the Secretary of the Treasury to consult with the other Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) member agencies (CFTC, CFPB, FDIC, FHFA, Federal Reserve Board, NCUA, OCC, and SEC) and to report to the president within 120 days (June 3, 2017) on the extent to which existing laws, regulations, and guidance promote the following Core Principles:
The report must:
The first report is due June 3, 2017, and the Executive Order calls for subsequent periodic reports.
As for the Fiduciary Rule, President Trump signed an Executive Memorandum (Memorandum) instructing DOL to examine the rule in order to determine whether it may adversely affect the ability of Americans to gain access to retirement information and financial advice. The Fiduciary Rule, which is set to take effect on April 10, 2017, requires financial advisers to act exclusively in their clients best financial interest when offering retirement advice.
The Memorandum calls for DOL to conduct a legal and economic review concerning the likely impact of the Fiduciary Rule. The review shall consider, among other things, the following:
If DOL makes an affirmative determination on any of the above provisions, then the Memorandum instructs DOL to rescind or revise the rule. Additionally, DOL is instructed to rescind or revise the rule if it concludes for any other reason that the rule is inconsistent with the Trump Administration priority to empower Americans to make their own financial decisions, to facilitate their ability to save for retirement and build the individual wealth necessary to afford typical lifetime expenses, such as buying a home and paying for college, and to withstand unexpected financial emergencies.
Not unexpectedly, Congressional Republicans praised the Trump Administrations moves. Of particular note, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-ID) applauded the reform efforts, emphasizing that financial regulators should review all rules and regulations in an effort to minimize unnecessary burdens on our financial institutions and promote economic growth, while ensuring the safety and soundness of the financial system. Similarly, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) supported the Presidents actions, stating that the Executive Order on regulatory reform closely mirrors provisions that are found in the Financial CHOICE Act to end Wall Street bailouts, end too big to fail, and end top-down regulations that make it harder for our economy to grow and for hardworking Americans to achieve financial independence.
Democrats, however, have come out in strong opposition to the Administrations efforts and are no doubt going to oppose any actions that would be seen as undermining financial regulation.
House Financial Services Committee Opens with Partisan Debate; Committee Democrats Get Subcommittee Posts
Last Thursday, the House Financial Services Committee held an organizational meeting to approve the Committees rules for the 115th Congress and welcome the Committees new members. Chairman Hensarling urged his fellow lawmakers to act in a bipartisan way; however, the hearing proved to be a partisan debate over the Committees rules. Ranking Member Maxine Waters (D-CA) and other Committee Democrats introduced several amendments aimed at increasing transparency and preventing conflicts of interest within the Committee. While all of the amendments were voted down, the contentious debate provided a glimpse into what may be in store for the Committee this Congress.
Separately, Ranking Member Waters announced subcommittee assignments for Democrats. Rep. Daniel Kildee (D-MI) will serve as the Committees Vice-Ranking Member.
This Weeks Hearings:
Regulatory Activity
SEC May Reconsider Conflict Minerals Rule; Congress Votes to Repeal SECs Resource Extraction Rule
Last week, Acting Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Michael Piwowar asked the agency to reconsider its public guidance for implementing a rule that requires companies to disclose information about how they extract conflict minerals in Africa. He requested that the public provide comment about the guidance the SEC issued in 2014 for its conflict minerals rule, which has been long opposed by Republicans.
Separately, the House and Senate voted last week to repeal a Dodd-Frank-required rule related to resources extraction by oil, gas, and mining companies. After the House voted in favor of the rules repeal, the Senate approved a resolution eliminating the resource extraction rule, which requires certain companies to publicly state the taxes and other fees they pay to governments. President Trump is expected to sign the bill providing for repeal of the law.
Federal Reserve Finalizes Stress Test Rules, Faces Criticism Over Basel Participation
Last week, the Federal Reserve finalized a rule aimed at simplifying the stress test process for banks with less than $250 billion in assets. The rule applies to banks with assets between $50 and $250 billion and average total nonbank assets of less than $75 billion. Pursuant to the rule, the Federal Reserve will no longer scrutinize those banks risk management systems as part of the stress tests. Moreover, having an on-balance sheet foreign exposure of above $10 billion is no longer an exception to the rule.
Note too, the Federal Reserve continues to receive criticism from Congressional Republicans. In fact, last week, Vice Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee Patrick McHenry (R-NC) called on the Federal Reserve to unilaterally disengage its work with the Financial Stability Board and Basel Committee on Banking Supervision until President Trump has installed his nominees on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Specifically, Rep. McHenry sent a letter to Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen noting that continued participation in those international standard setting forums is predicated on achieving the objectives set by the new Administration, thus the Federal Reserve must cease all attempts to negotiate binding standards burdening American business until President Trump has had an opportunity to nominate and appoint officials that prioritize Americas best interests.
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