Category Archives: Liberal

Hoping to convert liberals despair at President Trump into action, progressive groups are beginning to host resistance training seminars, saying the anger the presidents opponents feel can be channeled into a concrete movement.

Spurred by the massive showing at Januarys womens marches in Washington and around the country, the groups say theyre looking to arm activists to go beyond demonstrations and to be prepared to defend those snared by Mr. Trumps immigration plans, affected by the travel ban or in danger of losing health coverage under his Obamacare agenda.

Wednesdays Day Without a Woman protest was the latest example, with feminist organizers hoping to demonstrate the political and economic power of women opposed to Mr. Trump.

Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union is hosting its first resistance training on Saturday in Miami, with webcasts across the country to enlist activists desperate for some direction.

Right after the election the ACLU started receiving tons of money and email addresses from people who were asking us how they could get involved. What can I do? How can I do it with others? Faiz Shakir, national political director of the ACLU, told The Washington Times. The public has engaged in a game of Tag, youre it, and it has told us, the ACLU, that you are the leader of the resistance.

He said the ACLU, which has already taken to the courts to try to stop some Trump moves, figured it needed to go broader to say See you in the streets.

While its a new role for the venerable organization, its ground well trod by other liberal groups that are also ramping up their resistance efforts.

Progressive groups including MoveOn.org, Indivisible, the Working Families Party and the Center for Popular Democracy have held five Ready to Resist emergency telephone calls giving activists a chance to share stories of their anti-Trump protests and offer training tips on how to organize, recruit and gain the interest of media outlets.

Victoria Kaplan, the organizing director for MoveOn, set the tone in the first call, telling the thousands that listened in that the purpose of this emergency call is to prepare to stop Trump by stiffening Democrats spines and weakening pro-Trump Republican resolve.

In another call, Jennifer Epps-Addison, president of the Center for Popular Democracy, said the resistance was making an impact and highlighted how former House Speaker John A. Boehner predicted GOP lawmakers will probably not repeal Obamacare.

I think we have to make sure, and I know you all are, that our message to Democrats is that we cannot give an inch, Ms. Epps-Addison said. We have to resist this agenda at every place and point we can.

Others, meanwhile, have held educational forums in churches on the rights on immigrants, and groups like Showing up for Racial Justice have training sessions for White folks on showing up with accountability and commitment to actions organized and led by people of color, with a focus on immigrant-led actions.

Indivisible, which was launched by former Capitol Hill staffers, held a phone call Tuesday night urging members to rise up against the GOPs efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare, which includes the defunding of Planned Parenthood. The group said the fight will help set the tone for the Trump administration, offering the chance to take some wind out of its sails early on.

The group also authored a guide for resisting the Trump agenda that says progressives disagree with the principles and positions of the tea party, but that there are lessons to be taken from its focus on grass-roots advocacy and refusing to give any wiggle room when it came to pressuring members of Congress to block the Obama agenda.

If a small minority in the Tea Party could stop President Obama, then we the majority can stop a petty tyrant named Trump, the guide says.

But Taylor Budowich, executive director of Tea Party Express, said progressives and the media have misread the success of the tea party movement.

They think it has to be about the tactics the tea party used because they think we couldnt have won on the issues, Mr. Budowich said, arguing the movements message of fiscal responsibility, limited government and economic growth appeared to a broad swath of voters. It shows how out of touch they are.

He said the tea party was more than an opposition force and rallied around candidates that shared its vision. I struggle to understand what this [resistance] movement stands for other than not liking this president. But that is a hashtag not a movement, Mr. Budowich said.

Mark J. Rozell, dean of the School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, said progressive groups believe they are building a sustainable political movement that will keep activists engaged and help avoid another election cycle of Republican gains.

But the question is whether hounding Republican lawmakers in public will translate into broader support and more votes for progressive causes and candidates, or will it fuel a stronger countermobilization of Trump supporters and others who dont like these tactics. Its politically very risky and could backfire ultimately, he said.

As an early success, groups pointed to the airport rallies that occurred in late January in the hours after Mr. Trumps initial extreme vetting executive order left hundreds of immigrants and visitors struggling to gain admission to the U.S.

Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly has said the rallies were more disruptive to the airports than the travel ban itself.

Activists have also disrupted Republican lawmakers town halls, drawing intense coverage from the press, which ran some of the confrontational clips on repeat loops last month.

Ms. Epps-Addison said one of her personal favorites came out of Arkansas when a 7-year-old boy challenged Sen. Tom Cotton on why President Trump wanted to slash funding for PBS and erect a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

You are onto something when even a child knows that you should not try to cut PBS to try to build a xenophobic and hateful wall, she said.

On the resistance calls, activists have touted the importance of interfaith marches and urged participation in cacerolazo protests in which people make noise banging pots and pans.

Julia Gallagher, of Michigans Peoples Campaign, got a glowing review for the creativity her group has shown. Activists were threatened with trespassing after a group including someone sporting a chicken suit showed up at Rep. David A. Trotts local office to demand a meeting.

But we got it on video, posted it on Facebook, and it has gone viral, Ms. Gallagher said.

In an upcoming call, Mark Anthony Johnson, director of Health and Wellness at Dignity and Power Now in Los Angeles, is slated to lead a virtual workshop in strategies and actions to build our personal and collective resilience for the resistance.

Originally posted here:

Liberal groups host Trump 'resistance training' for change - Washington Times

March 8, 2017 In November I had a conservative friend tell me about being berated by a co-worker who thought she voted for Donald Trump. She didnt actually say whether she had or had not voted for President Trump, but her co-worker blamed her for the election of Trump nonetheless.

In progressive areas like San Francisco and my hometown Berkeley, conservatives tend to keep a low profile. It grieves me that so many people feel that revealing their political leanings would be dangerous and that their fears are reasonable.

As the cofounder ofMoveon.org, I am steeped in the progressive culture. I often hear the argument that we must win by overwhelming the conservatives with greater numbers. I admit that Id be much more comfortable in a world where the voices of my progressive friends blaze our path forward, solving our shared challenges with or without the support of Trump voters.

However, true progress requires stretching myself beyond comfort. There is anotherapproach that I ask my progressive friends and everyone to consider "love thy neighbor."

Last week Nicholas Kristof wrote a New York Times op-ed about why we shouldnt otherize Trump voters.

Go ahead and denounce Trumps lies and bigotry. Stand firm against his disastrous policies. But please dont practice his trick of otherizing people into stick-figure caricatures, slurring vast groups as hopeless bigots. Were all complicated, and stereotypes are not helpful including when theyre of Trump supporters.

Mr. Kristof described the political cost of dismissing 63 million Americans, but there is a deeper cost. When we fail to recognize our common humanity we lose valued relationships. We also make our lives smaller, divide our communities, and fail to benefit from everyone's best ideas.

As the founding partner ofLivingRoomConversations.org, I have intentionally sought out friends with very different political beliefs. WithAllSides for Schools, I work to bring this practice to the next generation. I strive to better understand the political opportunities and challenges we face together. Despite the discomfort of challenging the progressive ideas that I hold close to my heart, I have found treasured friends who might seem like my polar opposite.

By connecting around our shared human experience we are discovering that there are opportunities to improve citizen representation in government that satisfy conservative and progressive values. Left and right efforts on criminal justice work has already begun to reduced prison populations.

Even in the area of climate change, meaningful opportunities are multiplying. Efficiency, energy independence through renewable energy, clean tax cuts all show promise for moving us toward shared goals.

When we care about each other and want to meet each others basic needs, much becomes possible. Even though I have not persuaded my good friend Jacob that climate is a critical concern, he cares more now in part because he cares about me. Also because I did not insist that he accept my view of climate science.

Instead I noted that I dont need proof that climate change is happening. Even if there is only a 10 percent chance that we are destroying the planets capacity to support future generations, I find that unconscionable. I dont allow my children to play Russian roulette.

This gave Jacob the space to consider the possibility that climate change is an unacceptable risk rather than react to a demand. And Jacob has caused me to see that climate change is the progressive end times story.

This is not a one-way exchange. I care about Jacobs concern that as religious conservatives he and his community are becoming marginalized. We have remarkably different beliefs, but we are learning to hold the tension of our differences and listen to each other with humility.

More and more of us are working to spark a movement of respect, using simple listening practices that open our hearts. I hope that honoring each others humanity will lead to more compassionate political discourse and elected leaders that we can all respect, even if they werent our first choice.

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Why I've left my liberal comfort zone and found conservative friends - Christian Science Monitor

Liberal backbench MPs joined forces with opposition partiesWednesday evening to reject attempts by the government to gut agenetic discrimination bill, overwhelmingly passing the legislation and defying the wishes of cabinet.

Recently retired Liberal senator Jim Cowan watched from the viewing gallery as 222 MPs voted in favour of his legislation, something he has long fought for through successive parliamentary sessions.

All cabinet ministers and most parliamentary secretaries in attendance voted against the bill. Only four Liberal backbenchers sided with the government, a rare displayof disunity within the Grit ranks.

Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybouldwas opposed to the bill andsaid she believes the legislation is unconstitutional as it could infringe on the provinces' right to regulate the insurance industry.

Bill S-201 will add genetic characteristics as a protected ground under the Canadian Human Rights Act, introducepenalties for discrimination, and forbid employers from subjecting job applicants to a genetic test.

The legislation will also allow people to refuse to disclose the results of a genetic test to anybody. Medical experts have said the legislation is necessary to counter the fears associated with potentially life-saving genetic testing, which could produce resultsthat would help doctors better tailor health treatments.

A breach of the law could result in a fine of up to $1 million, or five years behind bars.

Aspreviously reported by CBC NewsTuesday, AnnaGainey, president of thefederal Liberals, penned a letter during the last election promising protections against genetic discrimination if elected.

Some have suggested the Liberal flip-flop was the result ofaggressivelobbying tactics by the insurance industry.

Theindustryhas not hidden its opposition to Cowan's private member'sbill, a piece of legislation that easily passed the Senate last April and the House of Commons justice committee inDecember.

"The life and health insurance industry is extremely disappointed that Bill S-201 was passed today in the House of Commons without significant amendment.

"The industry agrees with the federal government's position as expressed by the prime minister and the minister of justice, as well as a number of provinces, that an important element of the bill is unconstitutional," Wendy Hope, a spokesperson for theCanadian Life and Health Insurance Association, said in an emailed statement to CBC News after the vote.

The federal government has to consider multiple factors when making decisions, Trudeau said Wednesday ahead of the vote, noting it needs to ensure it is defending the rights of Canadians and upholding their freedom from discrimination.

It also has to defend the Constitution and the balance between federal and provincial jurisdictions, he added.

"The government has taken a position that one of the elements in the proposed bill is unconstitutional," Trudeau told a news conference.

"That is the recommendation we had and the government position is to vote against that particular ... element in the bill."

The Liberal government hadproposed stripping the bill of everything except the power to make genetic characteristics a prohibited ground of discrimination under the Canadian Human Rights Act, but those amendments were rejected Wednesday evening.

The bill has now cleared both the House of Commons and the Senate but will only become law when it receives royal assent, which could take place in the next few days.

The rest is here:

Liberal backbenchers defy cabinet wishes and vote to enact genetic discrimination law - CBC.ca

WA Nationals leader Brendon Grylls is livid over planned cuts to regional spending.

WA Nationals leader Brendon Grylls would rather send West Australians back to the polls than form a minority government with the Liberals if his alliance partner does not drop plans to redirect funding from his signature Royalties for Regions policy.

Less than 48 hours before West Australians go to the polls, Mr Grylls attacked Mr Barnett for plans to "realign" $800 million from the Royalties for Regions to underpina return to surplus in 2018-19.

Premier Colin Barnett defended the decision and warned Mr Grylls that as the major party, the Liberals set the agenda.

"If we are elected we will form government," he said. "We will form government and will invite the National party to be part of that but we are the major party and we will set the agenda."

If the Liberals are able to withstand an expected massive swing to Labor it is likely to only be able to form government with the support of the Nationals.

"While they are bigger than us, if you don't have the votes to form government then it means nothing," Mr Grylls said.

"I will not be part of any government that plans to take $800 million from Royalties for Regions." Mr Grylls said the move represented a 40 per cent cut to the overall program.

Asked if he could form government with Labor, Mr Grylls said Labor's cuts to Royalties for Regions would be worse.

He said both major parties were preferring to hurt regional residents rather than tap a new revenue source from BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, referring to his $3 billion a year plan to lift a royalty charge for the two miners.

Royalties for Regions aimed to quarantine 25 per cent of the state's mining royalties for regional spending above and beyond general government expenditure.

The fund has been raided before in 2013 more than $500 million was redirected to general expenses. But this was done by agreement with the Nationals.

In a press conference twice interrupted by costumed protesters, Mr Barnett denied the Liberals' relationship with the Nationals had been damaged beyond repair. The Liberals infuriated the Nationals by cutting a preference deal with Pauline Hanson's One Nation. The Liberals will preference One Nation ahead of the Nationals in upper house seats.

"It is the middle of an election, people say all sorts of things," Mr Barnett said.

"Let's wait and see what the results are. Brendon and I get on fine, we always have."

It came as Labor released an independent assessment of its costings, which forecasta surplus of $205 million in fiscal 2020.

The Liberals' plan, costed by Treasury, would return the state to a$417 million surplus in 2019.

Shadow treasurer Ben Wyatt said Labor's forecast spendingof $2.78 billion over four years would be covered by $2.98 billionof funding.

The Liberals have attacked Labor for not sending its costings to Treasury.

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WA election: Liberal-National alliance hits breaking point - The Australian Financial Review

A 26-year-old high school teacher has defeatedformer provincial cabinet minister Yolande James for the Liberal nomination in the riding of Saint-Laurent.

Emmanuella Lambropoulos beat James and law professor Marwah Rizqy Wednesday night to secure the nomination.

She credited her win with a lot of work in the riding.

"I really went every day, door-to-door, with one or two other people. We worked really hard,"Lambropoulostold Radio-Canada.

She said that leading up to the party vote the media didn't pay much attention to her candidacy and that often, people didn't even know there was a third candidate running.

Lambropoulos, 26, is a high school teacher in Montreal's Rosemont neighbourhood. (Radio-Canada)

Lambropoulos and her team couldn't hold back their surprise at beating James, the woman considered to be the Liberal party favourite.

James was reportedly approached by the party to run and served as provincial immigration minister between 2007-2010 under former Quebec premier Jean Charest.

Lambropoulos is a high school teacher in Montreal's Rosemont neighbourhood and has worked for the Saint-Laurent riding association.

The Saint-Laurent riding has been Liberal for decades and is considered a safe seat for the party in the April 3 byelection.

The seat was left empty whenStphane Dionaccepted the role ofambassador to the EU and Germany.

The race has stirred upcontroversy, as long-serving St-Laurent borough mayorAlan DeSousawas blocked from seeking the nomination by the party without explanation. His appeal of the decision was unsuccessful.

A Liberal member at Wednesday's votewho has lived in the riding for 13 years,Bilal Hamideh, told CBC it was unfortunate DeSousa was not allowed to run.

"In general, I think it's discouraging to participate in the [nomination]system," Hamidehsaid.

"It does weaken the system in a way if it is not clearly explained why he wasn'tallowed."

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Liberals to pick candidate for Saint-Laurent tonight - CBC.ca

Washington Times

Liberals threaten Democrats over support for Gorsuch Washington Times Liberal activists are increasingly upset at what they see as too little opposition to President Trump's Supreme Court nominee and are even threatening to run primary challengers against Democrats in the Senate who end up supporting Judge Neil Gorsuch. Liberal groups: A vote for Gorsuch is a vote to get yourself primariedHot Air Liberals threaten to primary over GorsuchThe Hill Liberals to Senate Democrats: Step up the Gorsuch fightPolitico Daily Caller -E&E News all 169 news articles »

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Liberals threaten Democrats over support for Gorsuch - Washington Times

Treasury costings of WA Liberal promises have shown the party's estimates are reasonable.

The Liberals have made more than $2.8 billion in promises, including the controversial Perth Freight Link project.

"The estimates have been based on a sound information set and methodologies," WA's Under-Treasurer Michael Barnes said on Wednesday.

Premier Colin Barnett said earlier on Wednesday he was confident the pledges would be roughly on the money.

"We have taken great care in 70 different policy areas to indicate what we believe the cost of each will be ... totally contingent on Western Power being sold," Mr Barnett told reporters.

"That is in sharp, sharp contrast to the Labor party."

Mr Barnett earlier lashed Labor for not subjecting $5 billion worth of promises, including $2.5 billion for its flagship Metronet rail project, to the same scrutiny.

Rather than hand Treasury its costings details, Labor has enlisted two former senior public servants, including former Public Sector Commissioner Mike Wood, to run the ruler over its numbers.

Labor has questioned the independence of Treasury, accusing the Liberals of planting a stooge in its briefing with the government department ahead of the 2013 state election.

Mr Barnett recently claimed Mr Wood had a close connection to former Labor premier Brian Burke, who was jailed for rorting travel expenses.

WA Labor leader Mark McGowan said he was confident the release of the party's costings on Thursday would rebut Barnett government suggestions they "don't add up".

- AAP

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Liberal costings for $2.8 billion worth of projects reasonable, says Treasury - WAtoday

If you like Modi so much, why dont you go, sleep with Modi? The first time someone asked me this question was in 2013 when I had just started writing on Facebook about my political beliefs. I was engaged in a fierce debate about Narendra Modi with a few people when this question landed in my comment box.

Thirteen words that changed my world view forever!

I was shocked not so much by the viciousness and venom of the question, but by the identity of the person who asked it. He was a mild-looking 65-year-old man with a flowing white beard. Almost Tagore-like in his looks, he was a self-professed Marxist who claimed to publish a dubious rag called Civil Society! Apparently, his idea of civil society allowed him to throw sexual slurs at a woman he did not even know personally.

It was my first brush with the intolerance of the liberals! Since then, I have been abused, threatened and ridiculed by people who call themselves liberals thousands of times. There are parody pages dedicated to me. Fake profiles are created in my name, and my photographs are morphed and circulated as Facebook and Twitter memes.

All in the name of liberalism, feminism and freedom of expression.

Once I had written about the feminist ploy of generalisation, of demonising all Indian men each time there is an incident of crime against women in India. I was told by someone who called herself a feminist to go back into the kitchen and stay there. Women like you dont deserve the right to speak, she announced rather grandly. This was not the first time I had faced ridicule from self-professed feminists. A supposedly liberal writer had once condescendingly called me a mediocre housewife turned columnist when he couldnt argue cogently about something that I had written.

Apparently, irony as a concept is unfamiliar to some Facebook feminists!

I refuse to label myself as a feminist, only because, at least in India these days, the term is being thrown about very casually. It has come to mean a rabid, blinding hatred of men. But that does not mean I condone gender discrimination.

I am appalled when I see rape threats and sexual slurs being bandied about by some people to silence the voice of women, regardless of which side of the political spectrum they choose to be on. As a woman who has been viciously attacked both in virtual as well as real life for daring to speak up, I can never be on the side of sexism and gender discrimination.

As a child raised by a freedom-fighter and a strong mother, I was always encouraged to speak up, to voice my opinions, to say what I think is right, rather than parrot a narrative that is 'au courant'. I grew up with a deep love for India ingrained in me. I had heard many stories about that tumultuous decade in my fathers life when he was an armed revolutionary fighting for Goas freedom from the Portuguese.

At 21, my father was declared the Most Wanted Rebel by the Portuguese regime for daring to lead a successful raid on a Portuguese armoury. I had seen the scars on my grand-uncles back, mementoes of the time when he was arrested, beaten and tortured by the Portuguese police because they wanted him to reveal information about my father. I had heard first hand, stories about how my father and his colleagues were chased for over eight hours by a Portuguese armoured van mounted with an automatic gun and how they walked 30 km on foot on an empty stomach through the night in a daring escape.

I inherited my love for India and my respect for the armed forces from my father. It was only when I joined the mass communication department of Pune University, to pursue my master's degree, that I realised that patriotism was a bad word in the liberal dictionary. Whenever I spoke in class about India and nationalism, there were voices dismissing it as rubbish sentimentalism.

Humanities students were not supposed to be such bigoted chest-thumping rabid hyper-nationalists, they said. When we were shown Anand Patwardhans movie Ram ke Naam in class, we were supposed to display the requisite feelings of revulsion and horror at the conduct of Hindu nationalists. When some of us felt that the movie was a poorly researched, very biased, one-sided narrative, we were not allowed to voice that thought.

In the brave new world of journalism, patriotism was pass!

After graduating from the University, I started my career in entertainment television, moved on to editing websites, writing freelance for newspapers on varied subjects like culture, travel, education and leisure. I steered clear of politics, for what I saw, sickened me. The convenient one-sided narrative that was being peddled by mainstream media as the only truth led me to question the credibility of mainstream media.

And then, something wonderful happened. The remarkable phenomenon called 'social media'. For the first time, people like me had found a medium to voice our opinions, without any filters, censorship or editorial interference. The average Indian citizen was no longer a passive consumer of news as defined by mainstream media, but she could be an active contributor.

I started writing political blogs from my Facebook page. The first post that went viral was written in January 2013, when Rahul Gandhi was elevated to the vice president of the Congress party. Suddenly, my opinion had gone mainstream without needing the crutches of conventional media, and there were a lot of people out there who agreed with my point of view.

Since then, it has been quite a journey. It has been incredibly rewarding to have complete strangers reach out to tell me that they too are sick of mainstream media demonising the concepts of nationalism, patriotism and love for India. I have had readers approach me in places as far flung as Darjeeling, Sikkim, Kinnaur or Kanchi to tell me that I am voicing their opinion. Luckily, I have an extremely supportive husband and extended family that has helped me remain strong in the face of abuse and personal threats.

I think it was Martin Luther King Jr. who had said, Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

I am glad I chose to live!

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How I Learnt That Liberals In India Are Not Really Liberal - Swarajya

Wednesday, March 8, 2017 at 7 a.m.

High school newspapers tend to be faithful chroniclers of the mundane, featuring blow-by-blow updates from the student council, detailed reports from the past weekends volleyball tournament, and earnest editorials against littering.

But Representative David Stringer, a Republican from Prescott, worries that they could become a tool for left-wing indoctrination.

"I think it's pretty common knowledge that in many of our schools there's a strong liberal bias," Stringer said Monday in a meeting of the House Education Committee.

"And I can foresee the unintended consequence of protecting faculty members who are influencing the students or perhaps expressing their own views and biases using public resources to propagandize their own liberal views through what purport to be student publications," he added.

Stringers comments were made in reference to SB 1384, which would prevent administrators from censoring student newspapers at publicly funded schools, including high schools, community colleges, and universities.

The bill would also prevent schools from retaliating against faculty advisers who stand up for students First Amendment rights.

SB 1384 is something of a pet project for Senate Majority Leader Kimberly Yee, a Republican from Phoenix.

As a student journalist at Greenway High School in the 1990s, she'd grown frustrated that administrators routinely pulled items from the campus paper because they might potentially shed a bad light on the school.

It was interesting that Id be sitting in my government class and learning about First Amendment rights and freedom of speech, and then going on to my next class in journalism and seeing I was not able to exercise those rights, she said at an earlier committee hearing.

For the most part, the bill has gathered bipartisan support, passing unanimously through the Senate.

But Stringer seems to believe that shielding students from liberal propaganda outweighs the need to protect their First Amendment rights.

And before Stephen Miller became Trump's top policy adviser, he was writing essays with titles like "Political Indoctrination at My Public High School,"in which he complained about how his school paper had published anarticle that criticizedthe United States' military response to 9/11.

Despite Stringer's objections, the bill is moving forward.

Henry Gorton, a student journalist at Sunnyslope High School, managed to win over committee members by bringing up another issue beloved by conservatives: political correctness run amok.

He testified that hed wanted to publish a piece about Trump supporters views on illegal immigration in the school newspaper, but had been told that he couldnt because undocumented students might feel threatened.

That will get you some support here, Representative Don Shooter, a Republican from Yuma, told him.

Shooter was right: The bill passed the House Education Committee 10-1, with only Stringer voting in opposition. Its now up for a full vote in the House.

See the original post here:

Student Newspapers: Deserving of First Amendment Protection or Vehicles for Liberal Propaganda? - Phoenix New Times

A Plan Set Up To Fail

So now we know what Republicans have to offer as an Obamacare replacement. Let me try to avoid value judgments for a few minutes, and describe what seems to have happened here.

The structure of the Affordable Care Act comes out of a straightforward analysis of the logic of coverage. If you want to make health insurance available and affordable for almost everyone, regardless of income or health status, and you want to do this through private insurers rather than simply have single-payer, you have to do three things.

1.Regulate insurers so they cant refuse or charge high premiums to people with preexisting conditions 2.Impose some penalty on people who dont buy insurance, to induce healthy people to sign up and provide a workable risk pool 3.Subsidize premiums so that lower-income households can afford insurance

So thats Obamacare (and Romneycare before that): regulation, mandates, and subsidies. And the result has been a sharp decline in the number of uninsured, with costs coming in well below expectations. Roughly speaking, 20 million Americans gained coverage at a cost of around 0.6 percent of GDP.

Republicans have nonetheless denounced the law as a monstrosity, and promised to replace it with something totally different and far better. Which makes what theyve actually come up interesting.

For the GOP proposal basically accepts the logic of Obamacare. It retains insurer regulation to prevent exclusion of people with preexisting conditions. It imposes a penalty on those who dont buy insurance while healthy. And it offers tax credits to help people buy insurance. Conservatives calling the plan Obamacare 2.0 definitely have a point.

But a better designation would be Obamacare 0.5, because its really about replacing relatively solid pillars with half-measures, severely and probably fatally weakening the whole structure.

First, the individual mandate already too weak, so that too many healthy people opt out is replaced by a penalty imposed if and only if the uninsured decide to enter the market later. This wouldnt do much.

Second, the ACA subsidies, which are linked both to income and to the cost of insurance, are replaced by flat tax credits which would be worth much less to lower-income Americans, the very people most likely to need help buying insurance.

Taken together, these moves would almost surely lead to a death spiral. Healthy individuals, especially low-income households no longer receiving adequate aid, would opt out, worsening the risk pool. Premiums would soar without the cushion created by the current, price-linked subsidy formula leading more healthy people to exit. In much of the country, the individual markets would probably collapse.

The House leadership seems to realize all of this; thats why it reportedly plans to rush the bill through committee before CBO even gets a chance to score it.

Its an amazing spectacle. Obviously, Republicans backed themselves into a corner: after all those years denouncing Obamacare, they felt they had to do something, but in fact had no good ideas about what to offer as a replacement. So they went with really bad ideas instead.

The big news from last nights speech is that our pundits is not learning. After all the debacles of 2016, they swooned over the fact that Trump while still lying time after time and proposing truly vile initiatives was able to read from a teleprompter without breaking into an insane rant. If American democracy falls, supposed political analysts who are actually just bad theater critics will share part of the blame.

But that aside, I was struck by Trumps continued insistence that hes going to bring back coal jobs. This says something remarkable both about him and about the body politic.

He is not, of course, going to bring back coal mining as an occupation. Coal employments plunge began decades ago, driven mainly by the switch to strip mining and mountaintop removal. A partial revival after the oil crises of the 70s was followed by a renewed downturn (under Reagan!), with fracking and cheap gas mainly delivering the final blow. Giving coal companies new freedom to pollute streams and utilities freedom to destroy the planet wont make any noticeable dent in the trend.

But heres the question: why are people so fixated on coal jobs anyway?

Even in the heart of coal country, the industry hasnt really been a major source of employment for a very long time. Compare mining with occupations that basically are some form of healthcare in West Virginia, as percentages of total employment:

Even in West Virginia, the typical worker is basically a nurse, not a miner and that has been true for decades.

So why did that state overwhelmingly support a candidate who wont bring back any significant number of mining jobs, but quite possibly will destroy healthcare for many which means jobs lost as well as lives destroyed?

The answer, Id guess, is that coal isnt really about coal its a symbol of a social order that is no more; both good things (community) and bad (overt racism). Trump is selling the fantasy that this old order can be restored, with seemingly substantive promises about specific jobs mostly just packaging.

One thought that follows is that Trump may not be as badly hurt by the failure of his promises as one might expect: he cant deliver coal jobs, but he can deliver punishment to various kinds of others. I guess well see.

For obvious reasons. Evidently the McCartney empire has been scrubbing almost all online versions; hope this lasts long enough for people to enjoy

Update: Searle, not Seattle. Damn spellcheck (or maybe the AI was making a Microsoft joke?)

Izabella Kaminska has a thought-provoking piece on the real effects of technology on wages, in which she argues that much recent innovation, instead of displacing manual workers, has displaced high-paying skilled jobs. As it happens, I sort of predicted this 20 years ago, in a piece written for the Times magazines 100th anniversary (authors were asked to write as if it was 2096, and they were looking back.)

I argued then that menial work dealing with the physical world gardeners, maids, nurses would survive even as quite a few jobs that used to require college disappeared. As it turns out, big data has led to more progress in something that looks like artificial intelligence than I expected self-driving cars are much closer to reality than I would have thought, and maybe gardening robots and post-Roomba robot cleaners will follow. Still, the point about the relative displacement of cognitive versus manual jobs seems to stand.

An aside: given the way Google Translate and such work, Seattles Searles Chinese Room Argument doesnt look as foolish as I used to think it was.

Anyway, Kaminskas point about the disruptiveness of such technological change is something we should take seriously. After all, it has happened before. The initial effect of the Industrial Revolution was a substantial de-skilling of goods production. The Luddites were, for the most part, not proletarians but skilled craftsmen, weavers who constituted s sort of labor aristocracy but found their skills devalued by the power loom. In the long run industrialization did lead to higher wages for everyone, but the long run took several generations to happen in that long run we really were all dead.

So interesting stuff. Id note, however, that it remains peculiar how were simultaneously worrying that robots will take all our jobs and bemoaning the stalling out of productivity growth. What is the story, really?

The WSJ reports that the Trump administrations budget planning assumes very high economic growth over the next decade between 3 and 3.5 percent annually. How was this number arrived at? Basically, they worked backwards, assuming the growth they needed to make their budget numbers add up. Credibility!

But the purpose of this post is mainly to explain why such a number is implausible not impossible, but not something that should be anyones central forecast.

The claimed returns to Trumpnomics are close to the highest growth rates weve seen under any modern administration. Real GDP grew 3.4 percent annually under Reagan; it grew 3.7 percent annually under Clinton (shhh dont tell conservatives.) But there are fundamental reasons to believe that such growth is unlikely to happen now.

First, demography: Reagan took office with baby boomers and women still entering the work force; these days baby boomers are leaving. Heres UN data on the 5-year growth rate of the population aged 20-64, a rough proxy for those likely to seek work:

Just on demography alone, then, youd expect growth to be around a percentage point lower than it was under Reagan.

Furthermore, while Trump did not, in fact, inherit a mess, both Reagan and Clinton did in the narrow sense that both came into office amid depressed economies, with unemployment above 7 percent:

This meant a substantial amount of slack to be taken up when the economy returned to full employment. Rough calculation: 2 points of excess unemployment means 4 percent output gap under Okuns Law, which means 0.5 percentage points of extra growth over an 8-year period.

So even if you (wrongly) give Reagan policies credit for the business cycle recovery after 1982, and believe (wrongly) that Trumponomics is going to do wonderful things for incentives a la Reagan, you should still be expecting growth of 2 percent or under.

Now, maybe something awesome will happen: either driverless or flying cars will transform everything, whatever. But you shouldnt be counting on it.

Everyone knows that stocks and interest rates have soared since the election; at the same time, if you arent worried about erratic policies from the Tweeter-in-chief, youre really not paying attention. So are markets getting it all wrong?

Ive been wondering about that and yes, in the first few hours after the election I thought, briefly and wrongly, that a crash was coming quickly. But anyway, I decided to crunch a few numbers and surprised myself. I still think markets are underrating the risk of catastrophe. But Im not as sure as I was that theres a huge Trump bubble buoying markets because when you actually look at the data, the market action has been much smaller than the hype.

Look first at stocks. Yes, theyre up since the election. But how does this rise compare with past fluctuations? Not very big, actually:

What about real interest rates? Ive been arguing that the widespread belief in serious fiscal stimulus is wrong, which means that a really big rise in real interest rates wouldnt be warranted. But it turns out that the movement isnt that big:

There was an overshoot early one, but at this point its only about 30 basis points, consistent with fiscal stimulus of maybe 1 percent of GDP. Still high, I think, but not yuge.

Inflation expectations are also up, but that may reflect various non-Trump things like growing evidence that we really are close to full employment.

I still think that markets are too sanguine. But the truth is that they havent moved nearly as much as the hype suggests, so the case for either a huge Trump effect or a huge Trump bubble is a lot weaker than you might think.

What Trump has done or tried to do over the past two years wait, its really only been two weeks? is incredibly bad. But spare a bit of attention to what doesnt seem to be happening. Has anyone heard anything, anything at all, about domestic policy development?

Remember, after the election Wall Street decided that we were going to see a big push on infrastructure, tax cuts, etc.. Some analysts were warning that progressives should be ready for the possibility that Trump would engage in reactionary Keynesianism. Worrying parallels were drawn between Trumpism and autobahn construction under you-know-who.

But if theres a WH task force preparing an infrastructure plan, its very well hidden; maybe theyre waiting to figure out how to turn on the lights. Seriously, Ive been saying for a while that there will be no significant public construction plan. Wall Street economists, at least, are starting to catch on.

Meanwhile, that Obamacare replacement is still nowhere to be seen, with GOP Congresspeople literally running away when asked about it.

Big tax cuts and savage cuts to social programs are still very much on the Congressional Republican agenda, and they could put it all together, hand it to Bannon, and have Trump sign it without reading. But Im starting to wonder: surely they planned to unveil things during the Trump honeymoon, with the public prepared to believe that it was all done with the little guys interests in mind. Even pre 9-11 Bush could count on media goodwill and supine Democrats to ram through his tax cuts.

But now? With massive public distrust, and media fully willing to do real reporting on the distribution of tax cuts, not Democrats say that the rich are the big winners? With the media infatuation on Serious, Honest Paul Ryan at least temporarily dented by his avid support for Muslim bans and all that? Maybe theyll do it anyway, but it seems a lot less certain than it did in November.

At this point Im starting to wonder whether there will be any real movement on economic policy, as opposed to random insults aimed at allies.

Its odd that the markets are, so far, not reflecting any of this; theyre basically unchanged from the levels they reached after the initial Trump Boom euphoria. But surely the odds have shifted, and theres now a real possibility that on domestic policy, at least, were in for a period of sound, fury, and tweets signifying nothing.

Cant imagine what made me think of this.

Peter Navarro, the closest thing Trump has to an economic guru, made some waves by accusing Germany of being a currency manipulator and suggesting that both the shadow Deutsche mark and the euro are undervalued. Leaving aside the dubious notion that this is a good target of US economic diplomacy, is he right?

Yes and no. Unfortunately, the no part is whats relevant to the US.

Yes, Germany in effect has an undervalued currency relative to what it would have without the euro. The figure shows German prices (GDP deflator) relative to Spain (which I take to represent Southern Europe in general) since the euro was created. There was a large real depreciation during the euros good years, when Spain had massive capital inflows and an inflationary boom. This has only been partly reversed, despite an incredible depression in Spain. Why? Because wages are downward sticky, and Germany has refused to support the kind of monetary and fiscal stimulus that would raise overall euro area inflation, which remains stuck at far too low a level.

So the euro system has kept Germany undervalued, on a sustained basis, against its neighbors.

But does this mean that the euro as a whole is undervalued against the dollar? Probably not. The euro is weak because investors see poor investment opportunities in Europe, to an important extent because of bad demography, and better opportunities in the U.S.. The travails of the euro system may add to poor European perceptions. But theres no clear relationship between the problems of Germanys role within the euro and questions of the relationship between the euro and other currencies.

And may I say, what is the purpose of having someone connected to the U.S. government say this? Are we going to pressure the ECB to adopt tighter monetary policy? I sure hope not. Are we egging on a breakup of the euro? It sure sounds like it but that is not, not, something the US government should be doing. What would we say if Chinese officials seemed to be talking up a US financial crisis? (It would, of course, be OK with Trump if the Russians did it.)

So yes, Navarro has a point about Germanys role within the euro. And if he were unconnected with the Bannon administration, he would be free to make it. But in the current context, this is grossly irresponsible.

Ive noted in the past that I get the most vitriolic attacks, not when I denounce politicians as evil or corrupt, but when I use more or less standard economics to debunk favorite fallacies. Sure enough, lots of anger over the trade analysis in todays column, assertions that its all left-wing bias, etc..

So maybe its worth noting that Greg Mankiws take on the economics of DBCFT is basically identical to mine: subsidy or tax cut on employment of domestic factors of production, paid for by sales tax. Greg and I disagree on whether replacing profits taxes with sales taxes is a good idea, but agree that all of this has nothing to do with trade and international competition because it doesnt.

I suspect, however, that Greg is being nave here in assuming that were just seeing confusion because border tax adjustment sounds as if it must involve competitive games. Theres some of that, for sure, but one reason the competitiveness thing wont go away is that its an essential part of the political pitch. Lets eliminate taxes on profits and tax consumers instead is a hard sell, even if you want to claim that the incidence isnt what it looks like. Claiming that its about eliminating a dire competitive disadvantage plays much better, even though its all wrong.

To be fair, these tax-and-trade issues are kind of two-ibuprofen stuff at best. But confusions persists even longer than usual when they serve a political purpose.

Cardiff Garcia has a nice piece trying to figure out what might happen to the economy under Trump, taking off from the classic Dornbusch-Edwards analysis of macroeconomic populism in Latin America. Garcia notes that surging government spending and mandated wage hikes tend to produce a temporary sugar high, followed by a crash. Nice idea but I suspect highly misleading, because Trump isnt a real populist, he just plays one on reality TV.

The Dornbusch-Edwards essay focused on the examples of Allendes Chile and Garcias Peru; an update would presumably look at Argentina, Venezuela, and others. But how relevant are these examples to Trumps America?

Allende, for example, was a real populist, who seriously tried to push up wages and drastically increased spending. Heres Chilean government consumption spending as a share of GDP:

Thats huge; in the U.S. context it would mean boosting spending by almost $1 trillion each year.

Is Trump on course to do anything similar? Hes selected a cabinet of plutocrats, with a labor secretary bitterly opposed to minimum wage hikes. He talks about infrastructure, but the only thing that passes for a plan is a document proposing some tax credits for private investors, which wouldnt involve much public outlay even if they did lead to new investment (as opposed to giveaways for investment that would have taken place anyway.) He does seem set to blow up the deficit, but via tax cuts for the wealthy; benefits for the poor and middle class seem set for savage cuts.

Why, then, does anyone consider him a populist? Its basically all about affect, about coming across as someone wholl stand up to snooty liberal elitists (and of course validate salt-of-the-earth, working-class racism.) Maybe some protectionism; but theres no hint that his economic program will look anything like populism abroad.

In which case, why would we even get the sugar high of populisms past? A tax-cut-driven boom is possible, I guess. But there wont be much stimulus on the spending side.

Not the usual concert joint with the NOW Ensemble, with Elliss (the songwriters) classical-trained roots very much on display. But still a great experience; their sound is like nobody elses, and theres really nothing like live performance. And the new album, which Ive been listening to (blogging has its privileges) is great. Shot on my smartphone!

Trump tantrums aside, you may be finding the whole border tax adjustment discussion confusing. If so, youre not alone; Ive worked in this area my whole life, I co-wrote a widely cited paper (with Martin Feldstein) on why a VAT isnt an export subsidy, and I have still had a hard time wrapping my mind around the Destination-Based Cash Flow Tax border adjustment that sort-of-kind-of constituted the basis for the Mexico incident.

But I have what I think may be a (relatively) easy way to think about it, which starts with the competitive effects of a VAT, then analyzes the DBCFT as a change from a VAT.

So, first things first: a VAT does not give a nation any kind of competitive advantage, period.

Think about two firms, one domestic and one foreign, selling into two markets, domestic and foreign. Ask how the VAT affects competition in each market.

In the domestic market, imports pay the border adjustment; but domestic firms pay the VAT, so the playing field is still level.

In the foreign market, domestic firms dont pay the VAT, but neither do foreign firms. Again, the playing field is still level.

So a VAT is just a sales tax, with no competitive impact.

But a DBCFT isnt quite the same as a VAT.

With a VAT, a firm pays tax on the value of its sales, minus the cost of intermediate inputs the goods it buys from other companies. With a DBCFT, firms similarly get to deduct the cost of intermediate inputs. But they also get to deduct the cost of factors of production, mostly labor but also land.

So one way to think of a DBCFT is as a VAT combined with a subsidy for employment of domestic factors of production. The VAT part has no competitive effect, but the subsidy part would lead to expanded domestic production if wages and exchange rates didnt change.

But of course wages and/or the exchange rate would, in fact, change. If the US went to a DBCFT, we should expect the dollar to rise by enough to wipe out any competitive advantage. After the currency adjustment, the trade effect should once again be nil. But there might be a lot of short-to-medium term financial consequences from a stronger dollar.

I think this is right, and I hope it clarifies matters. Oh, and no, none of this helps pay for the wall.

Its hard to focus on ordinary economic analysis amidst this political apocalypse. But getting and spending will still consume most of peoples energy and time; furthermore, like it or not the progress of CASE NIGHTMARE ORANGE may depend on how the economy does. So, what is actually likely to happen to trade and manufacturing over the next few years?

As it happens, we have what looks like an unusually good model in the Reagan years minus the severe recession and conveniently timed recovery, which somewhat overshadowed the trade story. Leave aside the Volcker recession and recovery, and what you had was a large move toward budget deficits via tax cuts and military buildup, coupled with quite a lot of protectionism its not part of the Reagan legend, but the import quota on Japanese automobiles was one of the biggest protectionist moves of the postwar era.

Im a bit uncertain about the actual fiscal stance of Trumponomics: deficits will surely blow up, but I wont believe in the infrastructure push until I see it, and given savage cuts in aid to the poor its not entirely clear that there will be net stimulus. But suppose there is. Then what?

Well, what happened in the Reagan years was twin deficits: the budget deficit pushed up interest rates, which caused a strong dollar, which caused a bigger trade deficit, mainly in manufactured goods (which are still most of whats tradable.) This led to an accelerated decline in the industrial orientation of the U.S. economy:

And people did notice. Using Google Ngram, we can watch the spread of terms for industrial decline, e.g. here:

And here:

Again, this happened despite substantial protectionism.

So Trumpism will probably follow a similar course; it will actually shrink manufacturing despite the big noise made about saving a few hundred jobs here and there.

On the other hand, by then the BLS may be thoroughly politicized, commanded to report good news whatever happens.

Trumps inaugural speech was, of course, full of lies pretty much the same lies that marked the campaign. Above all, there was the portrayal of a dystopia of social and economic collapse that bears little relationship to American reality. During the campaign Trump got away with this in part because of slovenly, craven media, but also because of persistent misperceptions. The public consistently believes that crime is rising even when it has been falling to historical lows; it believes that the number of uninsured has risen when it has also fallen to historic lows; Republicans believe that unemployment is up and, incredibly, the stock market down under Obama.

The interesting question now is whether fake carnage can be replaced by fake non-carnage. How many people can be convinced that things are getting better under the Trump-Putin administration even as they actually get worse?

Will they actually get worse? Almost surely. Unemployment will probably rise over the next four years, if only because it starts out low historically the unemployment rate has a strong reversion to the mean, and it probably cant go much lower than it is now but can go much higher. The number of uninsured will soar if Republicans repeal Obamacare, whatever alleged replacement they offer.

Crime is less clear, since we really dont know why it fell. But big further declines dont seem highly likely; certainly we wont see an end to the prevalence of urban war zones, because, you know, they dont exist in the first place.

Oh, and this team of cronies is unlikely to help raise real wages.

But can Trump voters be convinced that things are getting better when they arent? The truth is that I dont know. Views on many issues are driven by motivated reasoning, and when people say that things got worse under Obama, what they may really be saying whatever the actual question was is I hate the idea of a black man in the White House.

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Economics and Politics by Paul Krugman - The Conscience of ...