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Political Hucksters Talking About Nothing


HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUN 1, 2023

Tonight the House passed a bill to suspend the debt ceiling for two years, enabling the Treasury to borrow money to prevent a default. More Democrats than Republicans rallied to the measure, with 165 Democrats and 149 Republicans voting in favor, for a final vote of 314 to 117. Seventy-one Republicans and 46 Democrats opposed the bill. Now the measure heads to the Senate.

The votes revealed a bitter divide in the Republican Party, as the far-right House Freedom Caucus fervently opposed the measure; Representative Chip Roy (R-TX) for example, called it a “turd sandwich.” Florida governor Ron DeSantis also came out against it, saying it leaves the country “careening toward bankruptcy.”

The far right insists the measure does not provide the cuts they demand. Last night’s nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office scoring of the bill offered them ammunition when it said that the additional work requirement imposed on able-bodied people aged 18–54 without dependents to receive food benefits is outweighed by the expansion of those benefits to veterans, unhoused people, and children aging out of foster care. The CBO estimates that the measure will add 78,000 people a month to food assistance programs, adding $2.1 billion in spending over the next ten years.

Despite their fury, though, the far right in the House appears to be backing down from challenging Representative Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) speakership. Their angry news conferences seem mostly to be performances for their base, and to answer them, McCarthy today said on the Fox News Channel that he was creating a “commission” to “look at” cutting the budget that the president “walled off” from cuts, including the mandatory spending on Medicare and Social Security.

But, as Josh Marshall pointed out in Talking Points Memo today, the Republican base no longer seems to care much about fiscal issues. Instead, they are pushing the cultural issues at the heart of illiberal democracy: anti-LGBTQ laws, antiabortion laws, anti-immigration laws.

Former president Trump is making those themes central to his reelection campaign. Yesterday he released a video promising that on “Day One” of a new presidential term, he would issue an executive order that would end birthright citizenship. Our current policy that anyone born in the United States is a citizen, he claims, is “based on a historical myth, and a willful misinterpretation of the law by the open borders advocates.” He promises to make “clear to federal agencies that under the correct interpretation of the law, going forward, the future children of illegal aliens will not receive automatic US citizenship.”

Trump is picking up an idea from his presidential term that immigrants are flocking to the U.S. as “birth tourists” so their children will have dual citizenship, but the estimate from the immigration-restrictionist Center for Immigration Studies that birth tourism accounts for 26,000 of the approximately 3.7 million births in the U.S. each year has been shown to be wildly high. Trump’s attack on birthright citizenship is an attack on immigration itself, echoing people like Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, who insists that immigration weakens a nation by diluting its native-born people with outsiders.

Trump’s attack on the idea of birthright citizenship as a “historical myth” is a perversion of our history. It matters. In the nineteenth century, the United States enshrined in its fundamental law the idea that there would not be different levels of citizenship in this country. Although not honored in practice, that idea, and its place in the law, gave those excluded from it the language and the tools to fight for equality. Over time, they have increasingly expanded those included in it.

The Republican Party organized in the 1850s to fight the idea that there should be different classes of Americans based on race—not only Black Americans, but also Irish, Chinese, Mexican, and Indigenous Americans faced discriminatory state laws. Republicans stated explicitly in their 1860 platform that they were “opposed to any change in our naturalization laws or any state legislation by which the rights of citizens hitherto accorded to immigrants from foreign lands shall be abridged or impaired; and in favor of giving a full and efficient protection to the rights of all classes of citizens, whether native or naturalized, both at home and abroad.”

In 1868, after the Civil War had ended the legal system of human enslavement, the American people added to the Constitution the Fourteenth Amendment, whose very first sentence reads: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Congress wrote that sentence to overturn the 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, in which the Supreme Court ruled that people of African descent “are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word ‘citizens’ in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States.”

The Fourteenth Amendment legally made Black men citizens equal to white men.

But did it include the children of immigrants? In 1882, during a period of racist hysteria, the Chinese Exclusion Act declared that Chinese immigrants could not become citizens. But what about their children who were born in the United States?

Wong Kim Ark was born around 1873, the child of Chinese parents who were merchants in San Francisco. In 1889 he traveled with his parents when they repatriated to China, where he married. He then returned to the U.S., leaving his wife behind, and was readmitted. After another trip to China in 1894, though, customs officials denied him reentry to the U.S. in 1895, claiming he was a Chinese subject because his parents were Chinese.

Wong sued, and his lawsuit was the first to climb all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, thanks to the government’s recognition that with the U.S. in the middle of an immigration boom, the question of birthright citizenship must be addressed. In the 1898 U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark decision, the court held by a vote of 6–2 that Wong was a citizen because he was born in the United States.

That decision has stood ever since, as a majority of Americans have recognized the principle behind the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as the one central to the United States: “that all men are created equal” and that a nation based on that idea draws strength from all of its people. Over time, we have expanded our definition of who is included in that equality.

Now the right wing is trying to contract equality again, excluding many of us from its rights and duties. The Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision makes women a separate and lesser class of citizen; anti-LGBTQ legislation denigrates sexual minorities. Trump’s attack on birthright citizenship makes that attack on equality explicit, calling equality a “myth” and attempting to enshrine inequality as the only real theme of our history.

The concept of equality means we all have equal rights. It also means we all owe an equal allegiance to the country and that we all should be equal before the law, principles the former president has reason to dislike.

Today, Katelyn Polantz, Paula Reid, and Kaitlan Collins of CNN broke the story that federal prosecutors have an audio recording of the former president admitting he kept a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran. The material on the tape, which was recorded at his Bedminster, New Jersey, property and appears to indicate that the document was in his hands, shows that Trump understood he had taken a classified document and that he understood that there were limits to his ability to declassify records.

The recording also appears to suggest that at least one of the documents Trump took when he left office had enormous monetary value. As former Senior Foreign Service member Luis Moreno tweeted: “You can bet that if the TS/SCI dox involved military action against Iran, there would be a couple of countries willing to pay a king’s ransom for it.”

—

Notes:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/31/politics/work-requirements-debt-ceiling-cbo/index.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/05/31/mccarthys-critics-shy-away-threat-oust-him/

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/29/desantis-debt-limit-deal-00099155

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-diehards-fold

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-trump/trump-administration-rolls-out-new-rule-to-limit-birth-tourism-idUSKBN1ZM2G1

https://www.thedailybeast.com/russians-flock-to-trump-properties-to-give-birth-to-us-citizens

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/births.htm

The Birth Tourism Bogeyman

https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/chinese-exclusion-act

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/republican-party-platform-1860

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/31/politics/trump-tape-classified-document-iran-milley/index.html

Sean Hannity Staff, “MAGA PROMISE: Trump Vows to End Birthright Citizenship on Day One [WATCH]” at hannity DOT com, May 30, 2023.

https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/dred-scott-v-sandford

https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/169/649

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About The Debt Ceiling Controversy


May 2, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAY 3, 2023

The end of the semester is always rough and I’ve had too many long nights, so tonight I am going to offer just one explanation about the debt clause in the Fourteenth Amendment: 

The debt ceiling crisis continues to dominate the news, with some speculation now that White House officials are wondering whether the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution might require the government to continue to pay its bills whether Congress actually raises the debt ceiling or not.

The fourth section of the Fourteenth Amendment reads: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”

This statement was a response to a very specific threat. 

During the Civil War, the U.S. Treasury issued more than $2.5 billion in bonds to pay for the war effort. To make those bonds attractive to investors, Congress had made most of them payable in gold, along with their interest. That gold backing made them highly valuable in an economy plagued by inflation. 

In contrast, most working Americans used the nation’s first national currency, the greenbacks, introduced by Congress in 1862 and so called because they were printed with green ink on the back and black ink on the front—as our money still is; check out a dollar bill. Because greenbacks were backed only by the government’s ability to pay, their value tended to fluctuate. As Congress pumped more and more of them into the economy to pay expenses, inflation made their value decrease. 

National taxes funded the bonds, which meant that workers whose salary was paid in the depreciating greenbacks paid taxes to the government, which in turn paid interest to bondholders in rock-solid gold. After the war, workers noted that inflation meant their real wages had fallen during the war, while war contracts had poured money into the pockets of industrialists. 

Workers couldn’t do much about the war years and still faced years of paying off the wartime bonds. They began to call for repaying war bonds not in gold but in depreciated currency, insisting that taxpayers should not be bled dry for rich bondholders. Democrats, furious at wartime policies that had enriched industrialists and favored bankers, promised voters that if voters put them in control of Congress, they would put this policy into law.

Republican legislators who had created the bonds in the first place were horrified at the idea that Democrats were claiming the right to change the terms under which the debt had been sold. This, they said, was “repudiation” and would turn those who had invested in the United States against it. 

Bonds were about far more than just money. When the war broke out, the Treasury had turned to bankers to underwrite the war. But the bankers were notably reluctant to bet against the cotton-rich South and refused to provide the amount of help necessary. To keep the government afloat, Treasury officers had been forced to turn to ordinary Americans, who for four years had shouldered the financial burden of supporting their government. 

“It is your war,” Treasury Secretary William Pitt Fessenden wrote to the public in 1864. “Much effort has been made to shake public faith in our national credit, both at home and abroad…yet we have asked no foreign aid. Calm and self-reliant, our own means thus far have proved adequate to our wants. They are yet ample to meet those of the present and the future.” 

On April 3, 1865, the day the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, fell, bond salesman Jay Cooke hung from his office window a sign that featured the nicknames of the two most popular bond issues, along with an even larger banner that read:

“The Bravery of our Army

The Valor of our Navy

Sustained by our Treasury

Upon the Faith and 

Substance of

A Patriotic People.”

The debt was a symbol of a newly powerful national government that represented ordinary Americans rather than the elite enslavers who had controlled it before the war. “There has never been a national debt so generously distributed among and held by the masses of the people as all the obligations of the United States,” wrote an Indianapolis newspaper in 1865. “This shows at once the strength of popular institutions, and the confidence the people have in their perpetuity.” 

Undermining the value of U.S. bonds was an attack not just on the value of investments, but on the nation itself. When Republican lawmakers wrote the Fourteenth Amendment in 1866, they recognized that a refusal to meet the nation’s financial obligations would dismantle the government, and they defended the sanctity of the commitments the government had made. When voters ratified that amendment in 1868, they added to the Constitution, our fundamental law, the principle that the obligations of the country “shall not be questioned.”

—

Notes:

I warned Republicans about their debt ceiling bill. I was right.


April 23, 2023, 5:00 AM CDT

By Rosa DeLauro, representative for Connecticut’s 3rd congressional district

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s bill holds the economy hostage in exchange for slashing investments important to American families.

On Wednesday, Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy unveiled a bill he claims will fulfill our debt limit obligations. In truth, the bill holds the economy hostage in exchange for slashing investments important to American families.

In exchange for a short-term increase in the debt ceiling, the speaker’s proposal drastically cuts spending for 2024, then compounds those reductions by capping investments for the next 10 years. To be clear, Republicans are threatening a default on our debt unless we gut vital programs.

As the lead Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, which oversees government funding, I have warned for months that cuts of this magnitude will be devastating, no matter how you slice them. Because Republicans have refused to specify the fallout of their indiscriminate cuts, earlier this year I asked federal agencies about the potential impact.

The cuts introduced by Republicans would endanger our public safety and our national security.

But McCarthy and his allies are moving ahead with their reckless plan, even after those agencies have laid out its disastrous consequences. This should outrage all of us.

For months, I have heard my Republican colleagues claim that defense, veterans’ health care and border security would be protected. This bill does not keep that pledge. It either puts this funding on the chopping block or forces further cuts to other critical government programs by more than 22%. As much as Republicans want to pretend otherwise, these caps are cuts. They would ensure that resources for critical programs remain below current levels for the next 10 years — all for less than one year of preventing a default.

Instead of building upon these investments to keep our communities safe, the cuts introduced by Republicans would endanger our public safety and our national security. They would make our borders less safe by allowing hundreds of thousands of pounds of drugs across our borders. They would cut law enforcement by taking thousands of cops off the streets. They put veterans’ health and well-being at risk by delaying access to health care and benefits they have earned. And they weaken our national security by undermining military readiness, damaging efforts to deter the Chinese Communist Party and decreasing our ability to recruit and retain service members.

Not only would Republicans make our communities less safe, but they would also increase costs for hardworking families at a time when families are struggling to get by. They would kick 300,000 children out of child care and Head Start, slash nutrition services for more than 1 million seniors and turn off the heat in 5 million low-income homes. They make health care more expensive and less accessible for 2 million vulnerable people who rely on community health centers. They make college more expensive by reducing the maximum Pell Grant award by nearly $1,000 for the 6.6 million recipients, as well as 80,000 who will no longer receive those grants. They make it more costly to run a small business, and they even make it more difficult and less safe to travel by shutting Federal Aviation Administration operations at 125 air traffic control towers and increasing Transportation Security Administration wait times to more than two hours at large airports.

McCarthy’s dangerous scheme would cause irreparable damage to our communities.

And to top it all off, these cuts undermine American workers by cutting jobs and job training programs, robbing workers of back pay, and making work environments less safe.

McCarthy wrongfully claims that this path would “restore fiscal discipline.” I know, and the American people know, that there is nothing disciplined about threatening the full faith and credit of the United States to force indiscriminate cuts to the yearly spending process — a process under which we funded critical programs with bipartisan support as recently as December. These annual bills lower costs, create jobs and support American communities.

McCarthy’s dangerous scheme would cause irreparable damage to our communities by gutting programs every single American relies on. This bill all but guarantees more chaos and increases the likelihood of going from one debt limit and government shutdown fight to the next. This is not what the American people elected us to do. I will continue to lead House Appropriations Democrats in rejecting these dangerous plans and protect American children and families with the urgency and focus they require. I urge my Republican colleagues to do the same.

Rosa DeLauro

Rep. Rosa DeLauro serves as ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee. She represents Connecticut’s 3rd Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Psst! An urgent message for Jerome Powell


Further interest-rate hikes to fight inflation will worsen inequality. And they’re unnecessary.

Mar 7

Robert Reich

Mr. Powell,

As chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, you’re making your semi-annual policy report today to Congress.

I hope you don’t think me impertinent, but I have an urgent question for you that I hope one of the senators asks: How can you justify further rate hikes in light of America’s staggering inequality?

You and your colleagues on the Fed’s Open Market Committee are considering pushing interest rates much higher in your quest to get inflation down to your target of 2 percent. You believe higher interest rates will reduce consumer spending and slow the economy.

With due respect, sir, this is unnecessary, and it would be unjust.

Over the past year, you’ve raised interest rates at the fastest pace since the 1980s, from near zero to more than 4.5 percent.

But consumer spending isn’t slowing. It fell slightly in November and December but jumped 1.8 percent in January, even faster than inflation.

As a result, you’re now saying you may need to lift rates above 5 percent. A recent paper by a group of academic and Wall Street economists suggests that you will need to raise interest rates as high as 6.5 percent to meet your 2 percent target.

This would worsen America’s already staggering inequalities.

You see, the Americans who are doing most of the spending are not the ones who will be hit hardest by the rate increases. The biggest spenders are in the top fifth of the income ladder. The biggest losers will be in the bottom fifth.

Widening inequality has given the richest fifth a lot of room to keep spending. Even before the pandemic, they were doing far better than most other Americans.

Their current spending spree is a big reason you and your colleagues at the Fed are having so much difficulty slowing the economy by raising interest rates (in addition to the market power of many big corporations to continue raising prices and profit margins).

The higher rates are flowing back into the top fifth’s savings, on which they’re collecting interest.

The top fifth’s savings are still much higher than they were before the pandemic, so they can continue their spending spree almost regardless of how high you yank up rates. Take a look at this chart:

(Sources: J.P. Morgan Private Bank, Haver Analytics. Data as of October 2022.)

But yank up rates and you’ll impose big sacrifices on lower-income Americans. The study I mentioned a moment ago concludes that “there is no post-1950 precedent for a sizable central-bank-induced disinflation that does not entail substantial economic sacrifice or recession.”

There’s also no post-1950 precedent for the degree of income inequality Americans are now experiencing.

The people who will endure the biggest sacrifices as the economy slows will be the first to lose their jobs: mostly, those in the bottom fifth. Relying on further interest-rate hikes to fight inflation will only worsen the consequence of America’s near-record inequality.

There’s no reason for further hikes, anyway. Inflation is already slowing.

I understand your concern, Mr. Powell. What looked like a steady albeit gradual slowdown is now looking even more gradual.

But so what? It’s the direction that counts.

You should abandon your 2 percent target rate of inflation. There’s nothing sacrosanct about 2 percent. Why not 4? Getting inflation down to 2 percent is going to cause too much pain for the most vulnerable.

And you should suggest to Congress that it use other tools to fight inflation, such as barring corporations with more than 30 percent market share from raising their prices higher than the overall inflation rate — as recently proposed by New York’s attorney general.

May I be perfectly frank with you, sir? It would be terribly unjust to draft into the inflation fight those who are least able.

Thank you.

Robert Reich

Billions in Federal Covid-19 Testing Funds Still Unspent


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The GOP has referenced the 500 billion dollars already allocated has not been spent, so adding more money to the “cares” act is unnecessary. The article below explains why and how these funds are being spent now and how the balance will be spent. Spending these funds effectively is a complicated action. MA

Scott Patterson, Sarah Krouse  4 days ago

Billions of dollars in federal funds earmarked for boosting nationwide Covid-19 testing remain unspent months after Congress made the money available, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

In April, Congress allocated roughly $25 billion for federal agencies and states to expand testing, develop contact-tracing initiatives and broaden disease surveillance.

According to HHS data, only about 10% to 15% of that total has been drawn down, meaning the cash has been spent or committed to various efforts. The funds for various testing initiatives were part of the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act.

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The Trump administration has taken a state-led approach to testing Americans for Covid-19, dispatching funds and helping states procure the swabs and reagents they need to facilitate testing. The strategy, federal officials say, helps states identify and cater to their specific needs.

Of the $25 billion, some $10.25 billion was sent to states and U.S. territories in May to expand testing and develop contact-tracing programs at their discretion, but as of Aug. 14, just $121 million of that pool of funds had been drawn down.

An agency spokesman said HHS won’t know how the funds were used until the fiscal year ends Sept. 30.

HHS is focused on expanding testing and sending the right types of tests to the right types of settings, Adm. Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for health at the agency, said on a call with reporters Wednesday.

“There are plenty of tests and that’s growing substantially,” said Adm. Giroir, who has overseen U.S. testing efforts.

Still, overwhelming demand for diagnostic tests in July as cases spiked in the southern and western regions of the country led to lab backlogs and weekslong delays for results and hindered contact tracing and containment efforts.

There were about 25 million tests done in July and Adm. Giroir estimated the U.S. will have 90 million tests available in September.

“No health department or state can cry poor during this health crisis,” said Will Humble, executive director for the Arizona Public Health Association. “It’s not a matter of more money. It’s a matter of using the money that has already been given to counties and states effectively,” he said.

More than $8 billion of the $25 billion is to be spent at the discretion of HHS. Much of that money hasn’t been distributed yet, HHS spokeswoman Mia Heck said in response to questions from The Wall Street Journal about the funds.

“HHS continues to monitor the situation and support response and recovery activities supported with additional emergency supplemental resources,” she said.

Sens. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Patty Murray (D., Wash.) in June sent a letter to HHS Secretary Alex Azar calling on the Trump administration to disburse the $8 billion immediately, with an emphasis on addressing contact tracing efforts and collecting data on racial and ethnic disparities in coronavirus cases.

Testing for coronavirus is seen as a key part of the nation’s campaign to beat back the disease, allowing officials to track new outbreaks and quarantine people who test positive. While testing capacity has expanded rapidly, some experts say it isn’t enough to capture the full extent of the pandemic.

Federal officials have advocated for testing of those with symptoms and known contact with infected individuals, rather than widespread, regular testing as part of return to work and school plans. Some public health officials argue that broad, regular, widely available testing is critical to safely reopening the economy.

After surging through most of July, U.S. testing rates have slowed somewhat in August.

The seven-day average of new tests run was 709,347 on Thursday, according to the Covid Tracking Project, down from 781,156 a month earlier. There were weekly declines in testing in 21 states as of Thursday, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Some of those declines were the result of testing site closures during a hurricane earlier this month and labs clearing backlogs from July, Adm. Giroir said. Some states have also revised testing criteria to reduce demand, while the federal government changed guidance for returning to work, eliminating a recommendation that individuals receive two negative tests.

Of the $25 billion in PPP funds for testing, another $5.7 billion was to be sent to various government agencies involved in testing, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. As of this week, $1.62 billion of those funds had been obligated or committed to the agencies, according to HHS.

Agencies including the National Institutes of Health were to use those funds to buy diagnostic and serological tests, source lab supplies and develop new testing technologies.

Federal relief packages also included $2 billion to pay for testing uninsured individuals. Of that, $235.5 million has been spent.

Three Questions


Just to clarify: Many current serving Congressional members have served through previous tax reforms that benefitted the wealthy (and themselves) while espousing working for their constituents. It is unfortunate that many of will not or do not read anything that doesn’t have pictures. MA

Three Questions: Prof. Jacob Hacker on Tax Rates for the Rich 

A recently published book by economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman argues that the richest Americans now pay lower tax rates than any other income group. The dramatic claim has prompted discussion of how best to measure tax rates, whether to offset certain tax credits, and what the optimal tax rate is for capital versus labor. But the trend lines are clear: wealthy Americans are paying less in taxes while economic inequality grows. We asked Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker, author of American Amnesia and Winner-Take-All Politics, to explain how this situation developed and why it’s proved politically difficult to raise taxes on the rich.

Jacob S. Hacker

  •  

    Stanley B. Resor Professor of Political Science and Director of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Yale University

What’s behind the dramatic fall in tax rates on the very rich over the last 50 years?

Tax rates have fallen on the very rich (even as the incomes of the rich have exploded) for three main reasons. First, taxation of capital (whether in the form of capital gains taxes, estate and gift taxes, or corporate taxes) has fallen dramatically. Second, top marginal income tax rates have come way down. As late as the 1960s, there were twenty-four tax brackets and a top marginal tax rate of over 90 percent—which insured that the superrich paid a higher rate than the run-of-the-mill affluent. Third, the superrich and corporations have become better at avoiding taxation. As the political scientist Jeffrey Winters puts it, an enormous “wealth defense industry” has grown up to help the wealthiest Americans and most profitable U.S. businesses use offshore accounts and other strategies to minimize taxation.

How much does this change in tax rates contribute to overall economic inequality?

Falling tax rates have contributed a lot to rising inequality. Most analysts distinguish between what people earn through their labor and investments (pre-tax income) and what they take home after taxes and public benefits (post-tax income). If you make that distinction, what you find is that much of the rise in inequality has involved pre-tax incomes. It’s notable, however, that rising inequality has not been accompanied by rising tax progressivity, even though most Americans support more progressive taxes. What’s more, 

If it were up to you, how would you address this dynamic?

The obvious answer is to raise taxes on the rich, which is in fact a very popular position right now. Politically, however, raising taxes has proved difficult, because the affluent are well represented in Washington and because there has been a persistent belief among political elites (not very well supported by the evidence) that higher taxes on the rich will destroy entrepreneurialism. Senator Elizabeth Warren (who’s been advised by Saez and Zucman) wants to test the idea that major new taxes on the affluent are a political non-starter. We’ll see if she gets the chance! 

Big Issues: The Roots of America’s Exceptional Inequality

In Yale SOM’s Global Leadership: Big Issues course, Yale experts lead discussions of some of the most significant challenges facing the planet. Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker joined the class to discuss the tax, policy, and political forces that have disproportionately benefited the richest Americans —and caused many to feel left behind.

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Donald Trump said 11 false things in just 5 tweets Sunday morning


Apparently Trump U’s primary training was to learn the art of laminating lies upon more lies.MA

By Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large 14 hrs ago

On Sunday morning, President Donald Trump tweeted. And tweeted. And tweeted.
Between 9:04 am and 9:37 am, Trump sent 5 tweets — all around the same basic theme: He is being unfairly persecuted by special counsel Robert Mueller even as Mueller and the broader FBI overlook crimes by Democrats.
The tweets are riddled with misinformation and, in some cases, outright falsehoods. Taken together, Trump said 11 things that aren’t true. Here’s the breakdown — tweet by tweet.
1. “Things are really getting ridiculous. The Failing and Crooked (but not as Crooked as Hillary Clinton) @nytimes has done a long & boring story indicating that the World’s most expensive Witch Hunt has found nothing on Russia & me so now they are looking at the rest of the World!” (9:04 am)

Trump is referring here to an article in the Times published Saturday detailing a 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a liaison for two Arab princes in which the emissary made clear that his clients wanted to assist Trump’s campaign.
He is also making a tangential reference to a detailed piece published in the Times earlier this week that detailed the origins of the FBI investigation into Russia interference in the 2016 election and possible collusion between his campaign and the Russians.
Trump is hanging his conclusion on this one sentence: “A year and a half later, no public evidence has surfaced connecting Mr. Trump’s advisers to the hacking or linking Mr. Trump himself to the Russian government’s disruptive efforts.”
What that sentences makes clear is a) no public evidence yet exists and b) the investigation is ongoing.
Untruth/Exaggeration Count: 1
2. “….At what point does this soon to be $20,000,000 Witch Hunt, composed of 13 Angry and Heavily Conflicted Democrats and two people who have worked for Obama for 8 years, STOP! They have found no Collussion with Russia, No Obstruction, but they aren’t looking at the corruption…”
There’s zero factual basis — at least that I can find — for Trump putting a $20 million price tag on the Mueller probe. The closest we have come to a fact-based cost for the Mueller probe is back in December, when the investigation’s total cost was $6.7 million.
Trump’s claim that there are 13 Democrats on Mueller’s team is also false. According to The Washington Post’s Fact Checker, five of the 16 known members of Mueller’s team donated to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. The New York Times says that nine of the 17 known lawyers on Mueller’s team have donated to Democratic campaigns in the past. Then there’s this from the Post’s Philip Bump: “Of the 18 attorneys we identified on Mueller’s team, half gave no money to anyone, according to our analysis. Another five gave $1,000 or less. The one who gave the most also gave to two Republicans.”
RELATED: Meet the Mueller team
It’s not entirely clear who Trump is referring to with the line “two people who have worked for Obama for 8 years” but, presumably, one of them is Mueller himself. The problem with that is that Mueller was appointed FBI director by President George W. Bush, a Republican. President Obama simply kept Mueller on for the length of his 10-year term.
Trump says that Mueller’s team has found no collusion (he misspelled that word in the original tweet), but that too is not accurate. The investigation is ongoing and all of Mueller’s findings have yet to go public.
Untruth/Exaggeration Count: 4
3. “…In the Hillary Clinton Campaign where she deleted 33,000 Emails, got $145,000,000 while Secretary of State, paid McCabes wife $700,000 (and got off the FBI hook along with Terry M) and so much more. Republicans and real Americans should start getting tough on this Scam.”
First, a truth: Clinton did delete 33,000 emails after she and her attorneys determined they were entirely private and personal communications with no ties to her work as Secretary of State.
Now, to the untruths.
The $145 million figure Trump is referring to is the total donations to the Clinton Foundation by nine individuals who also at one time or another had investments in a Russian company that Clinton’s State Department allowed to buy a majority stake in Uranium One, a Canada-based company with US mining interests. The problems with Trump’s claim, as detailed here by PolitiFact, are considerable and include the fact that the donations to the Clinton Foundation were made prior to the idea of Clinton serving as secretary of State and that State was one of nine agencies who okayed the deal.
Trump’s insistence that someone in the Clinton campaign paid then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s wife $700,000 as a payoff to drop any investigations into them is a jumble of falsehoods. McCabe’s wife ran for the state Senate in Virginia in 2015. A super PAC affiliated with Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime Clinton ally, donated $500,000 to her campaign. She lost. There is zero evidence that Hillary Clinton was involved in the donation in any way, shape or form, or that McAuliffe made the donation to dissuade Andrew McCabe from looking into alleged wrongdoing by the Clintons.
Untruth/Exaggeration Count: 2
4. “Now that the Witch Hunt has given up on Russia and is looking at the rest of the World, they should easily be able to take it into the Mid-Term Elections where they can put some hurt on the Republican Party. Don’t worry about Dems FISA Abuse, missing Emails or Fraudulent Dossier!”
The Mueller probe has not “given up” on Russia. It’s worth noting that five people in the Trump campaign orbit have already pleaded guilty to crimes unearthed by Mueller and several — including former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates — are cooperating with the Mueller probe.
It’s less clear what Trump is referring to with the phrase “Dems FISA abuse” although he has repeatedly suggested that Obama ordered a wiretap on him at Trump Tower during the campaign (not true) and that the FBI placed an informant in his campaign as spy (knowledgeable sources deny that claim).
As for the missing emails, it is not clear what crime Trump is alleging, although there is little doubt Clinton would have been better served to have a neutral third party go through her emails to determine which were personal and could be deleted and which were not.
Trump’s claim that the so-called “Steele dossier” is “fraudulent” is also not accurate. The more salacious elements of the dossier, gathered by former British spy Christopher Steele, are unconfirmed by the FBI. But the intelligence community has made clear that portions of the dossier are borne out by their own investigation.
Untruth/Exaggeration Count: 3 (at least)
5. “What ever happened to the Server, at the center of so much Corruption, that the Democratic National Committee REFUSED to hand over to the hard charging (except in the case of Democrats) FBI? They broke into homes & offices early in the morning, but were afraid to take the Server?”
This one is, mostly, accurate! The FBI confirmed that the DNC repeatedly rejected their requests to turn over the email server that had been penetrated by someone allegedly affiliated with the Russians.
Trump’s reference to the raids conducted by the FBI on the homes and offices of people like former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen misses the mark, however. Federal law enforcement did not break into these homes. They conducted raids based on search warrants — and entirely legal process based on, among other things, probable cause.
Untruth/Exaggeration Count: 1

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Failure


“What we got here is a failure to communicate”. This one of the most remembered lines from “Cool Hand Luke”, we currently have a massive miscommunication or under communication issue across the country. The widely accessible media information is now divided into so called “fake News” and real news. It seem that the majority of  “fake news” comes from on air personalities who are not journalists but more provocateurs who comment on current events under the guise of relaying true events. It is unfortunate that our TOTUS et al have used these outlets as purveyors of facts rather than the generators of biased and single sided information based on alternate facts. These semi news organizations have and probably will continue to garner support from folks who want to believe salacious and biased information rather that what is true. The failure is not so much in the communication but more the skewing of the information to present a particular sense of the real information that is available elsewhere. It is unfortunate that our CIC has not grown into the job and probably will not given the past two years of this administration. There is a fine line between Governing and ruling, since this is not a Monarchy, there should be no line to navigate just a willingness to have factual and realistic  conversations about administering a culturally diverse country. There is no one size fits all in this and apparently TOTUS does not understand that.

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Let’s Just Blame Someone Else


The current hearings on Russian interference, omissions and misdirected Governance have grabbed the headlines for too long. In the background of all of this are the real issues where our majority party is trying to strip any rational programs that benefit the oft quoted (without permission) “American People”. The ACA which only required the correct actions of tweaking it (as Legislators should have done) is in danger of being replaced or ruined by the less than candid people we elected to serve(?). The way it should be or at inception was supposed to be, legislators were (are) supposed to represent the people who elected them not themselves. The personal agenda of a representative is not why they are elected (or is it?). What has happened over the years is the manipulation of information that inflames the public to win an election and blame other people for any adversities. We now have a sitting President whose incompetence in the office is being used to stretch the American people over a barrel and hoping we will like it. These are tactics that have been used before and too many of us accepted it because we thought (or were told) that we could do nothing about it. If you are a registered voter you need to vote based on facts, not opinion. If you are not a registered voter, you need to register no matter what your political persuasion maybe. In this age of information it is difficult to determine what is correct and what is not however if you look at several  sources of information you will find the truth among them and become an informed voter. Keep in mind that modern politics is like a popularity contest with the biggest LIE being the contestants. Get informed and the lies do not look the same. Lets not do what our politicians do, that is “blame someone else”

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House Passes Bill To Replace Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Law


If the banks and insurance companies were more trustworthy there would be no need for Dodd Frank or Volcker. Our Dupublicans do not have the interests of the oft quoted American people in mind when the legislate.MA

WASHINGTON, June 8 (Reuters) – The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday voted largely along party lines to replace the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law, a move that is expected to die in the Senate but open the door to revamping or eliminating regulations that came out of the 2007-09 financial crisis.
The bill, called the CHOICE act, was approved by a vote of 233-to-186. Authored by House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, a Republican, it gives banks a choice between complying with Dodd-Frank or holding onto more capital.
It also restructures the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, created under Dodd-Frank to guard individuals against fraud in lending. Democrats are fiercely opposed to restructuring the CFPB.
The U.S. Senate is not expected to take up the bill in its entirety, even though it has the backing of President Donald Trump, a Republican, largely because of the threat that Democrats will use a filibuster to stall it.
The Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan evaluator of legislation, estimates the bill would save the federal government $24 billion over a decade, mostly due to the lifting of the government’s authority to step in and unwind failing institutions.
The legislation also rescinds the Volcker rule that limits the type of trading banks can do with their own money and the ability of government regulators to designate non-bank institutions, mainly insurance companies, as “systemically important,” which triggers increased oversight and requirements to hold more capital.
(Reporting by Lisa Lambert and Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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