Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[johnu]

I don't buy the Trump-as-a-genius-who-plays-7d-chess.

The Criminal in Chief does play 1 dimensional tic-tac-toe

[johnu]

Mike Pompeo Joined Trump On Call With Ukrainian President: Report

 

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was on the July 25 call between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing a senior State Department official.

 

The revelation could implicate the State Department more closely in the House of Representatives’ ongoing impeachment inquiry into Trump over his request to Zelensky during the call that Ukraine investigate his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.

So the Secretary of State heard the Manchurian President shake down the Ukrainian president and as a minimum, went back to his office and forgot about the whole thing. Giuliani says the Pompeo was aware of his actions in Ukraine. Is there anybody in the Executive branch who isn't corrupt?

There is news coverage of Pompeo being asked about the Whistleblower complaint where he acts dumb and says that the complaints are merely second hand allegations, even though he had firsthand knowledge of the call.

 

But it's not as if Pompeo is doing nothing.

 

Mike Pompeo is investigating Hillary’s emails according to bombshell Washington Post report

 

While claiming that the impeachment inquiry into alleged misconduct by Donald Trump is a “witch hunt,” the administration is focusing attention on investigating former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, according to a bombshell report published by The Washington Post on Saturday.

 

“The Trump administration is investigating the email records of dozens of current and former senior State Department officials who sent messages to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email, reviving a politically toxic matter that overshadowed the 2016 election, current and former officials said,” the paper reported.

That's keeping your eye on the ball :rolleyes:

[Winstonm]

 

But it's not as if Pompeo is doing nothing.

 

Mike Pompeo is investigating Hillary’s emails according to bombshell Washington Post report

 

 

That's keeping your eye on the ball :rolleyes:

 

That's like Theo Epstein trying to figure out why the Cubs missed this year's playoffs by looking into the pitching staff of the '87 Red Sox.

[y66]

From Amanda Carpenter via Matt Yglesias:

 

Relevant now.

 

Kamela Harris to William Barr: "Has the president or anyone at the White House ever asked or suggested that you open an investigation of anyone?"

[Winstonm]

From Amanda Carpenter via Matt Yglesias:

 

I'm struggling with the word "has". B-)

[cherdano]

“Tell Vladimir after election I will have more flexibility” Obama?

Thank you for proving my point.

Btw, do you believe Bill Barr that he only learned about the phone call in mid August?

[hrothgar]

Haven't listened to it yet, but I had a podcast by 538 titled "Impeachment is getting more popular" for this morning's trip to the gym...

[andrei]

How can these numbers be right? 55% in favor of impeachment? Less than a week ago, andrei posted poll results where the numbers were against impeachment by a fair margin. It seems like only a clear cut and easily understood act of corruption or treason would have changed the numbers so quickly. andrei- can you speculate what might have happened?

 

Did I really post poll results here? LOL

 

You are wrong.

As usual.

[andrei]

Btw, do you believe Bill Barr that he only learned about the phone call in mid August?

 

Which phone call?

 

that Trump made clear in a phone call that they'd wish to see investigations into Hunter Biden in exchange for lifting the block.

 

That phone call?

I think Barr never heard of it.

[cherdano]

Bye.

[Winstonm]

Sebastian Gorka is traveling to Europe with Sec. Pompeo. What is Gorka doing representing the State Department?

 

From Wiki:

Various national security scholars in academic and policymaking circles have characterized Gorka as fringe. Some critics have challenged his academic credentials, his views on Islam and radicalization—as well as his motives for identifying with the Order of Vitéz or supporting the EU-banned Hungarian Guard.

 

With a criminal enterprise occupying the White House and highly competent sycophants in the critical positions of Secretary of State and Attorney-General, this period of American history will be seen by history as either a serious challenge to American democracy or as the turning point when it was lost.

[barmar]

But it's not as if Pompeo is doing nothing.

 

Mike Pompeo is investigating Hillary’s emails according to bombshell Washington Post report

 

That's keeping your eye on the ball :rolleyes:

And the GOP keeps accusing the Dems of replaying the 2016 eleection.

[Winstonm]

Big doings. It appears that Pompeo tried to order punishment for any State Department employee who testified before the House, and the State IG has the receipts and has asked for an urgent meeting tomorrow with the House committee to discuss documents.

 

Memo to Trump's cadre: when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging, no matter what the boss orders.

[Winstonm]

And the hits just keep on coming.

 

Lawyers for the House of Representatives revealed on Monday that they have reason to believe that the grand-jury redactions in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report show that President Donald Trump lied about his knowledge of his campaign’s contacts with WikiLeaks.

 

The attorneys made the stunning suggestion in a court filing as part of the House Judiciary Committee’s bid for Mueller’s grand-jury materials, which have remained secret by law.

[johnu]

More sh*t to hit the fan Wednesday

 

State Dept inspector general requests 'urgent' Ukraine briefing on Capitol Hill

 

The State Department’s inspector general is expected to give an "urgent" briefing to staffers from several House and Senate committees on Wednesday afternoon about documents obtained from the department’s Office of the Legal Adviser related to the State Department and Ukraine, sources familiar with the planned briefing told ABC News.

 

Details of the briefing, requested by Steve Linick, the inspector general at State, remain unknown. Linick is expected to meet with congressional staff in a secure location on Capitol Hill.

Congress is officially on recess although some committee members may be in DC to attend the briefing. This meeting was so urgent that the State Dept Inspector General could not wait until Congress reconvenes. The Inspector General is able to meet independently of the Manchurian President's government paid private attorney Barr.

 

So far, nobody has any idea what the IG has to present to the committees. The House committees are the ones charged with conducting the impeachment inquiry so you can make your own conclusions.

 

Expect information about the reason for the meeting to start trickling (or flooding) out almost immediately.

[y66]

From David Leonhardt at NYT:

 

Does this sound like a healthy economy to you?

 

1. In nine of the last 10 years, the economy has grown more slowly than professional forecasters had predicted.
   
2. Annual G.D.P. growth has not reached 3 percent in almost 15 years.
   
3. Median net worth for American households has declined, after adjusting for inflation, since the late 1990s.
   

Those are all big warning signs. They show that the United States is suffering through an era of slow growth — and that the gains from that growth are flowing disproportionately to a small slice of mostly affluent households, making the gains for everyone else even smaller than the disappointing G.D.P. statistics would indicate.

 

All of which leaves me perplexed by some of the commentary about the wealth taxes proposed by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. From a story in The Times: “The idea of redistributing wealth by targeting billionaires is stirring fierce debates at the highest ranks of academia and business, with opponents arguing it would cripple economic growth, sap the motivation of entrepreneurs who aspire to be multimillionaires and set off a search for loopholes.”

 

There are two problems with the arguments from these opponents. First, they’re based on a premise that the American economy is doing just fine and we shouldn’t mess with success. But as the statistics above make clear, the economy is not doing fine. The country should be looking for new approaches.

 

Second, while it’s plausible that a wealth tax might further depress economic growth, it’s also plausible that a wealth tax would accelerate economic growth. Somehow, the opponents leave out that part.

 

How would it accelerate growth? Right now, the American economy is suffering from extreme inequality. A large portion of society’s resources are held by a tiny slice of people, who aren’t using the resources very efficiently. As my colleague Paul Krugman wrote this week, referring to Warren’s plans, “The only people who would be directly affected by her tax proposals are those who more or less literally have more money than they know what to do with.”

 

Sure, it’s theoretically possible that some entrepreneurs and investors might work less hard because of a 2 percent annual tax on their holdings above $50 million (the tax threshold under the Warren plan), thus sapping economic growth. But it’s more likely that any such effect would be small — and more than outweighed by the return that the economy would get on the programs that a wealth tax would finance, like education, scientific research, infrastructure and more. Those basic investments all have a long record of lifting economic growth. The very wealthy, however, don’t tend to spend much of their money building roads, starting community colleges or financing clean energy.

 

So don’t be fooled by the scaremongering. A wealth tax would have a significant effect on the economy’s distribution but probably only a modest effect on the growth rate. And if anything, the tax is likely to be pro-growth.

 

Of course, the people who would lose money from a wealth tax understand that defending today’s severe levels of inequality isn’t a very persuasive argument. Instead, they have opted to make flimsy predictions about how a wealth tax would somehow end up hurting the nonwealthy.

 

For more …

 

Gene Sperling, the former economic adviser to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, has made a detailed case for a wealth tax, and Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute has made the case against it.

Polls have repeatedly shown that most Americans support such a tax.

 

The Sanders wealth tax is significantly more aggressive than the Warren version, as an analysis by the economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, both of the University of California, Berkeley, shows. I prefer the Warren version.

[Zelandakh]

From David Leonhardt at NYT:

y66, I would think the main issue with a wealth tax is that the super-wealthy would just shift a portion of their assets overseas, essentially bypassing the tax with only a minimal level of inconvenience to themselves. Thus the tax is highly likely to generate significantly less revenue than predicted. Finding efficient ways to tax wealthy individuals in an era of easy international asset transfer is one of the challenges facing most countries and so far has not really been solved to any satisfactory standard.

[y66]

y66, I would think the main issue with a wealth tax is that the super-wealthy would just shift a portion of their assets overseas, essentially bypassing the tax with only a minimal level of inconvenience to themselves. Thus the tax is highly likely to generate significantly less revenue than predicted. Finding efficient ways to tax wealthy individuals in an era of easy international asset transfer is one of the challenges facing most countries and so far has not really been solved to any satisfactory standard.

Or the super wealthy would just move. Warren is not saying it is easy to enact a wealth tax. According to Martin Sandbu at FT, Switzerland has had some success with their wealth tax:

 

But can today’s ultra-rich make peace with a wealth tax? In Switzerland — not known for being a place the super-wealthy avoid — they have. That, at least, is the message from Heinz Tännler, finance director of the Swiss canton of Zug. It is a “perfectly adequate” tax, a “good system”, he says. As if to underline the point, the cantonal government office he occupies was once used by the late Marc Rich, the commodities trader and fugitive from US justice who made Zug his home.

 

There are differences. Switzerland’s wealth tax is much lower than that proposed by Warren, varying by canton between about 0.3 and 1 per cent a year of taxpayers’ total net worth. Foreign residents with no economic activity in the country are only taxed on the portion of their fortune deemed related to their living expenses in Switzerland.

 

On the other hand, Swiss wealth taxes kick in from very low levels of net assets — the low six digits in most cantons, far below Warren’s lowest threshold of $50m. In Spain and Norway, too, the net wealth tax starts to apply from moderate asset holdings. One has to be really very wealthy, in other words, to feel threatened by Warren. According to Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez, the academic economists who have advised her on the policy, only the richest 75,000 of families come in above the threshold (less than 0.1 per cent) and only 900 would pay the billionaire’s surcharge.

[y66]

Speaking of Elizabeth Warren:

 

On Tuesday, months after Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts first unveiled her proposal to break up Facebook and other tech giants, The Verge published highlights from two hours of leaked audio in which Mark Zuckerberg railed against Facebook critics, competitors and Ms. Warren.

 

Our political correspondent Matt Stevens covered Ms. Warren’s response to the remarks:

 

Remember that giant billboard near the Caltrain station in San Francisco? The one with Senator Elizabeth Warren’s face on it? The one that said in all capital letters: “BREAK UP BIG TECH”?

 

With Ms. Warren seeking the Democratic nomination for president, her campaign put up that billboard over the summer after she rolled out her plans to regulate the tech industry. One needs only to look to the billboard for evidence that she wanted to make very sure tech workers got her message.

 

On Tuesday we learned that, yes, in fact, they did get the memo — and that at least one of Silicon Valley’s power players is not a fan.

 

“If she gets elected president, then I would bet that we will have a legal challenge, and I would bet that we will win the legal challenge,” Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, said of Ms. Warren and her plan, according to leaked recordings of comments he made to Facebook employees.

 

“Does that still suck for us? Yeah. I mean, I don’t want to have a major lawsuit against our own government. That’s not like the position you want to be in. We care about our country and want to work with our government to do good things,” he added. “But look, at the end of the day, if someone’s going to try to threaten something that existential, you go to the mat and you fight.”

 

Ms. Warren has built her campaign around a call for “big, structural change” and has garnered significant support by releasing a series of detailed policy proposals like the one on how she would break up giant tech companies.

 

Shortly after The Verge published Mr. Zuckerberg’s remarks, Ms. Warren responded on Twitter. And she did not mince words.

 

“What would really ‘suck,’” she said, mimicking Mr. Zuckerberg’s language, “is if we don’t fix a corrupt system that lets giant companies like Facebook engage in illegal anticompetitive practices, stomp on consumer privacy rights, and repeatedly fumble their responsibility to protect our democracy.”

 

The exchanges didn’t end there. Mr. Zuckerberg commented on the situation later on Tuesday in a Facebook post, and Ms. Warren again took to Twitter, firing off a five-tweet thread that began: “Let’s talk a bit about my plan to #BreakUpBigTech and why it’s got Mark Zuckerberg so worked up.”

 

The episode had the effect of publicly pitting one of the leading Democratic presidential candidates against the chief executive of the world’s largest social network. That’s something you don’t see every day.

From Inyoung Kang at NYT.

[Zelandakh]

Compare the videos:-

 

 

Reducing corruption sounds like an excellent objective to me.

[awm]

y66, I would think the main issue with a wealth tax is that the super-wealthy would just shift a portion of their assets overseas, essentially bypassing the tax with only a minimal level of inconvenience to themselves. Thus the tax is highly likely to generate significantly less revenue than predicted. Finding efficient ways to tax wealthy individuals in an era of easy international asset transfer is one of the challenges facing most countries and so far has not really been solved to any satisfactory standard.

 

Unlike almost all other countries, the US taxes its citizens regardless of where they (or their assets) are located. So moving themselves (or their money) won’t avoid this tax. Renouncing citizenship requires payment of unrealized capital gains tax (often quite a lot for the super wealthy) so that’s no way out either. Dodging the tax illegally is possible, although a lot of countries (including Switzerland) have agreed to report assets held by US citizens... but it’s potentially harder to dodge a wealth tax than an income tax. Anyway the idea that “we shouldn’t tax the rich because they’ll just break the law and refuse to pay” doesn’t really seem like a good rationale to me.

[barmar]

Planet Money did a podcast a few months ago about the feasibility of a wealth tax.

[y66]

From Democrats Should Be as Fearless as FDR by Noah Smith at Bloomberg:

 

The 2020 Democratic primary election, more than any in recent memory, has been defined by big plans. Elizabeth Warren has led the field in terms of the sheer number of detailed policy proposals. Bernie Sanders has become famous for his bold health-care plan, Medicare for All, and has recently issued sweeping proposals on climate change, housing and other issues. Most of the other candidates have health-care plans, environmental plans, anti-poverty plans and so on.

 

These proposals are important for several reasons. They help voters to differentiate the candidates and their approaches. They generate ideas that will be useful when it comes time to actually pass legislation. And they remind the electorate of the pressing need to address issues like climate change and health care.

 

But as German Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke famously said, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. In this case, there are three forces standing in opposition, -- assuming a Democrat wins the White House. The Senate is likely to be more conservative than any Democratic president, even if the filibuster is abolished. The courts also may rule that some initiatives don't pass legal muster.

 

And most importantly, economic reality may not accommodate many of these ideas. A single-payer health-care system might not control costs as much as advocates hope. Steep wealth taxes could cause deep declines in asset prices, throwing the economy into recession. Stringent rent-control initiatives might stymie housing construction. Fundamentally, no one knows how the economy will handle big changes, or how competent and effective the government will be at implementing them.

 

Thus, candidates need more than plans. They need an attitude of pragmatism and flexibility that will allow them to change direction in response to political obstacles and economic missteps. Fortunately, they have an excellent historical example to look to – President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal.

 

The New Deal is generally remembered positively, as the force that saved the U.S. from the worst of the Great Depression. The enduring institutions it created -- Social Security, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Tennessee Valley Authority -- remain extremely popular. And some elements of the New Deal that were repealed in recent decades -- for example, limits on banking activities and strong support for private-sector unions -- are now rightfully missed.

 

But the history of the New Deal is replete with reversals, obstructions, half-measures and outright failures. Unlike today’s Democrats, Roosevelt came into office without much of a plan. Instead, what he had was a goal -- to lift the U.S. out of the worst economic crisis in its history, and to correct the inequality that had built up during the preceding decades. The free-market approach had failed decisively, but FDR was no socialist, so he had no pre-packaged ideology to tell him what measures to take. Instead, he decided to try a bunch of things and see what worked, declaring:

 

The country demands bold persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all try something.

And many of Roosevelt’s ideas failed. The Agricultural Adjustment Administration attempted to raise farmers' incomes by paying them to destroy surplus crops and livestock. But it did little to help poor farmers, and it led to higher food prices for the poor and unemployed. In 1937, thinking that the worst of the Depression was over, FDR cut government spending, which led to a second downturn. The National Recovery Administration created private cartels to regulate prices and wages, but these ended up doing little to help. Many New Deal programs were struck down by the Supreme Court, including the NRA and the AAA; only when Roosevelt threatened to pack the court with extra justices did it relent.

 

But despite these and other setbacks, Roosevelt and his administration pressed on, often replacing failed or blocked policies with new approaches. When industrial cartels failed to boost employment, Roosevelt provided jobs directly via the Works Progress Administration and other agencies. The austerity of 1937 was reversed. Roosevelt kept up his “bold persistent experimentation,” introducing new policies like higher income taxes, Social Security, freer trade and stronger collective bargaining.

 

The U.S. economy didn’t fully recover from the Great Depression until the mobilization of World War II. But the New Deal blunted the worst of the crisis, and it created enduring institutions that reduced inequality, built key infrastructure, restrained the finance industry and established the social-insurance system. It successfully changed the way the U.S. economy worked, and paved the way for several decades of rapid, balanced growth.

 

Today’s Democrats can learn as much from the New Deal’s failures as from its successes. When plans don’t work -- or when they don’t go far enough -- rapid changes of course are necessary. A pragmatic attitude is the key, because sticking to a rigid ideology is a recipe for doubling down on mistakes. Political flexibility is crucial. A president isn't a dictator, and she or he will need creative workarounds and alternatives when opponents inevitably block parts of the agenda. The goal – a stronger, more equal economy – must take precedence over any plan.

[Winstonm]

Ken Burns and his country music documentary made me think: Tammy Wynette

 

So, in honor of Tammy's #1 hit: DIVORCE

 

The whistleblower has caught on to us

it's too late for us to scram

When we talk we'll have to do it in code

so he won't understand

When he's close we'll have to spell it out

hide our mouths with our hands

And when we want to talk about him

we'll use this word with our friends

 

My C-O-V-F-E-F-E is tearing us apart

Better C-L-A-M U-P now

before impeachment starts

Need to find a way to R-I-D

ourselves of H-I-M

That C-O-V-F-E-F-E is gonna

get the Pres-i-dent.

[Winstonm]

NYT

By Michael D. Shear and Julie Hirschfeld Davis

Oct. 1, 2019

 

WASHINGTON — The Oval Office meeting this past March began, as so many had, with President Trump fuming about migrants. But this time he had a solution. As White House advisers listened astonished, he ordered them to shut down the entire 2,000-mile border with Mexico — by noon the next day.

 

The advisers feared the president’s edict would trap American tourists in Mexico, strand children at schools on both sides of the border and create an economic meltdown in two countries. Yet they also knew how much the president’s zeal to stop immigration had sent him lurching for solutions, one more extreme than the next.

 

Privately, the president had often talked about fortifying a border wall with a water-filled trench, stocked with snakes or alligators, prompting aides to seek a cost estimate. He wanted the wall electrified, with spikes on top that could pierce human flesh. After publicly suggesting that soldiers shoot migrants if they threw rocks, the president backed off when his staff told him that was illegal. But later in a meeting, aides recalled, he suggested that they shoot migrants in the legs to slow them down. That’s not allowed either, they told him.

 

“The president was frustrated and I think he took that moment to hit the reset button,” said Thomas D. Homan, who had served as Mr. Trump’s acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, recalling that week in March. “The president wanted it to be fixed quickly.”

 

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