More concerning than any of these specific problems, though, is the piece's provenance: It's written by someone named Jerry Kammer, a fellow at a think tank called the Center for Immigration Studies. Kammer has made a career out of covering immigration policy, he writes, for two reasons: "I was fascinated by its human, political and moral complexity. I also wanted to push back against the campaign by activist groups to label restrictionism as inherently racist." He expresses regret that "odious people" with white-power affiliations have given the cause of cutting back on immigration a "bad name."What neither Kammer nor the Times discloses is that the Center for Immigration Studies was in fact founded by these people, most prominent among them a white nationalist named John Tanton who died last year. Tanton, as the Southern Poverty Law Center has documented, believed that the United States needed to maintain a "European-American majority, and a clear one at that"; he founded CIS, he wrote in the 1980s, in order to give his ideas the appearance of independent "credibility." [...]In 1997, the Wall Street Journal wrote about Tanton in a piece called "The Intellectual Roots of Nativism." It was a scathing article which noted that Tanton had once described the immigrant's contribution to society as "defecating and creating garbage and looking for jobs." The piece expressed concern that "otherwise sober-minded conservatives" and "reasonable critics of immigration" were affiliating themselves with his ideas. The author of that WSJ article, a 28-year-old journalist named Tucker Carlson, has since made the career-advancing decision to embrace Tanton-style nativism; he was in the news not too long ago for complaining in his role as a Fox News host that immigrants make the United States physically "dirtier."Whatever space ever existed between mainstream conservatism and white-power nationalism, Carlson demonstrates, has collapsed. And it turns out that the "odious people" that Kammer references in the Times are actually his colleagues and forebears, who created his organization so that policies intended to perpetuate "European-American" and "Anglo-Saxon" superiority could be laundered into the respectable discourse. What else is there to say but: It worked!
Honduran Katherine Cabrera is among thousands of migrants who didn't expect to get bottled up in this southern Mexican city, unable to proceed to the American border as planned, because of President Donald Trump's insistence that Mexico block them with troop deployments and whatever else the Mexicans could come up with.New Mexican travel restriction rules required that Cabrera either go home with her newborn child or stay here in Tapachula to apply for Mexican asylum and await an outcome perhaps months in the future. Rather than return home as some have, though, Cabrera said she reached a carefully reasoned-out decision. She'll stay in Mexico and pursue that asylum claim in a calculated gambit: that Donald Trump will lose the November 2020 election and once the Democrats control the White House, they'll reverse everything Trump did and reopen the U.S. southern border so that she can finally breach it."I want Trump out!" Cabrera said. "I'll wait for that because it would make things easier to get in."In this calculus and in their perhaps surprising savvy about national American politics and timing, Cabrera has plenty of company all over Tapachula, where thousands like her have been forced to pool up for long asylum process waits or returns home.Dozens of politically woke migrants, like Honduran Wilson Valladaras, recently told CIS their decisions to stay in Mexico were predicated on the Trump-defeat gamble. Valladaras said he would wait for his Mexican asylum approval, move to Tijuana "until Trump leaves", and then cross over the U.S. border when the Democrats undo his policies because "right now, the Americans will throw you back" to Mexico.Outside Tapachula's main detention center where they had to check in, CIS asked five migrant women to raise their hands if they had chosen to stay in Mexico to await the hoped-for Trump defeat. All did so without reservation.
President Donald Trump lashed out at HHS Secretary Alex Azar on Thursday after senior aides presented him with polling data showing that voters prefer Democrats on health care, according to six people with knowledge of the conversation. [...]Voters have consistently said they trust Democrats more than Trump to handle health care issues, a gap that widened since Republicans' extensive efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act during his first year in office. Trump has often defended his record on Obamacare in misleading terms, including this week when he tweeted that he "Saved Pre-Existing Conditions in your Healthcare." Trump's claims were roundly rejected by fact checkers, who pointed to the administration's long-running efforts to weaken Obamacare's protections, including its support for a lawsuit that could kill the entire law.
Before they could debate the Iran deal, Trump erupted to revive another frequent complaint: the war in Afghanistan, which was now America's longest war. He demanded an explanation for why the United States hadn't won in Afghanistan yet, now 16 years after the nation began fighting there in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Trump unleashed his disdain, calling Afghanistan a "loser war." That phrase hung in the air and disgusted not only the military leaders at the table but also the men and women in uniform sitting along the back wall behind their principals. They all were sworn to obey their commander in chief's commands, and here he was calling the war they had been fighting a loser war."You're all losers," Trump said. "You don't know how to win anymore."Trump questioned why the United States couldn't get some oil as payment for the troops stationed in the Persian Gulf. "We spent $7 trillion; they're ripping us off," Trump boomed. "Where is the f---ing oil?"Trump seemed to be speaking up for the voters who elected him, and several attendees thought they heard Bannon in Trump's words. Bannon had been trying to persuade Trump to withdraw forces by telling him, "The American people are saying we can't spend a trillion dollars a year on this. We just can't. It's going to bankrupt us.""And not just that, the deplorables don't want their kids in the South China Sea at the 38th parallel or in Syria, in Afghanistan, in perpetuity," Bannon would add, invoking Hillary Clinton's infamous "basket of deplorables" reference to Trump supporters.Trump mused about removing General John Nicholson, the U.S. commander in charge of troops in Afghanistan. "I don't think he knows how to win," the president said, impugning Nicholson, who was not present at the meeting.Dunford tried to come to Nicholson's defense, but the mild-mannered general struggled to convey his points to the irascible president."Mr. President, that's just not . . .," Dunford started. "We've been under different orders."Dunford sought to explain that he hadn't been charged with annihilating the enemy in Afghanistan but was instead following a strategy started by the Obama administration to gradually reduce the military presence in the country in hopes of training locals to maintain a stable government so that eventually the United States could pull out. Trump shot back in more plain language."I want to win," he said. "We don't win any wars anymore . . . We spend $7 trillion, everybody else got the oil and we're not winning anymore."Trump by now was in one of his rages. He was so angry that he wasn't taking many breaths. All morning, he had been coarse and cavalier, but the next several things he bellowed went beyond that description. They stunned nearly everyone in the room, and some vowed that they would never repeat them. Indeed, they have not been reported until now."I wouldn't go to war with you people," Trump told the assembled brass.Addressing the room, the commander in chief barked, "You're a bunch of dopes and babies."For a president known for verbiage he euphemistically called "locker room talk," this was the gravest insult he could have delivered to these people, in this sacred space. The flag officers in the room were shocked. Some staff began looking down at their papers, rearranging folders, almost wishing themselves out of the room. A few considered walking out. They tried not to reveal their revulsion on their faces, but questions raced through their minds. "How does the commander in chief say that?" one thought. "What would our worst adversaries think if they knew he said this?"This was a president who had been labeled a "draft dodger" for avoiding service in the Vietnam War under questionable circumstances. Trump was a young man born of privilege and in seemingly perfect health: six feet two inches with a muscular build and a flawless medical record. He played several sports, including football. Then, in 1968 at age 22, he obtained a diagnosis of bone spurs in his heels that exempted him from military service just as the United States was drafting men his age to fulfill massive troop deployments to Vietnam.Tillerson in particular was stunned by Trump's diatribe and began visibly seething. For too many minutes, others in the room noticed, he had been staring straight, dumbfounded, at Mattis, who was speechless, his head bowed down toward the table. Tillerson thought to himself, "Gosh darn it, Jim, say something. Why aren't you saying something?"But, as he would later tell close aides, Tillerson realized in that moment that Mattis was genetically a Marine, unable to talk back to his commander in chief, no matter what nonsense came out of his mouth.The more perplexing silence was from Pence, a leader who should have been able to stand up to Trump. Instead, one attendee thought, "He's sitting there frozen like a statue. Why doesn't he stop the president?" Another recalled the vice president was "a wax museum guy." From the start of the meeting, Pence looked as if he wanted to escape and put an end to the president's torrent. Surely, he disagreed with Trump's characterization of military leaders as "dopes and babies," considering his son, Michael, was a Marine first lieutenant then training for his naval aviator wings. But some surmised Pence feared getting crosswise with Trump. "A total deer in the headlights," recalled a third attendee.Others at the table noticed Trump's stream of venom had taken an emotional toll. So many people in that room had gone to war and risked their lives for their country, and now they were being dressed down by a president who had not. They felt sick to their stomachs. Tillerson told others he thought he saw a woman in the room silently crying. He was furious and decided he couldn't stand it another minute. His voice broke into Trump's tirade, this one about trying to make money off U.S. troops."No, that's just wrong," the secretary of state said. "Mr. President, you're totally wrong. None of that is true."Tillerson's father and uncle had both been combat veterans, and he was deeply proud of their service."The men and women who put on a uniform don't do it to become soldiers of fortune," Tillerson said. "That's not why they put on a uniform and go out and die . . . They do it to protect our freedom."There was silence in the Tank. Several military officers in the room were grateful to the secretary of state for defending them when no one else would. The meeting soon ended and Trump walked out, saying goodbye to a group of servicemen lining the corridor as he made his way to his motorcade waiting outside. Mattis, Tillerson, and Cohn were deflated. Standing in the hall with a small cluster of people he trusted, Tillerson finally let down his guard."He's a f---ing moron," the secretary of state said of the president.
The Los Angeles County office rental market has been on the upswing since 2013 and finished last year in positive territory for landlords as rents rose and the vacancy rate held steady in spite of new office construction.Although technology and media giants such as Google and Netflix made dramatic moves earlier in the year by committing to big blocks of space, office leasing in the fourth quarter was dominated by small firms moving and expanding, a sign of health for the local business community."People are building new businesses," real estate broker Jeff Pion of CBRE said.
A viral video titled "Truth From an Iranian," which has amassed more than 10 million views across Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, was created by a registered lobbyist who previously worked for a militia group fighting in a bitter civil war in Libya.At no point during the five-minute video, in which she praised the US drone strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, did Saghar Erica Kasraie mention that she had worked in 2019 for Linden Government Solutions, a Texas-based lobbying firm hired to represent the Libyan National Army, a militia in the north African country led by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, a former officer in Muammar al-Qaddafi's government who spent much of the last two decades living in Virginia, during which time he worked with the CIA.In the first six days following the death of Soleimani, the head of the country's Quds Force, Kasraie's video was the single most popular piece of content about Iran on Facebook, aside from posts from President Donald Trump's own page.In the video, Kasraie, who describes herself as an Iranian activist, says Iranians were celebrating Soleimani's death, thanking Trump, and giving out cakes on the street as a symbol of their joy. "I feel like we're living in the Twilight Zone, guys. I'm completely outraged at this notion that the propaganda machine that is the media is glorifying Qassem Soleimani," she says in the video.
Pence writes that Johnson "shared Lincoln's desire to bring the Southern states back into the fold as soon as possible" and wished to "continue Lincoln's policies." Is that true?No. Johnson was not continuing Lincoln's policy. First of all, no one knew exactly what Lincoln's policy would be in the first place--he hadn't formulated one, but he was open-minded, which Johnson never was. Second, Lincoln had suggested that he was very open to giving the vote to black men, particularly those who had served in the Union army.Johnson's position, by contrast, was very clear; he said: "This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government for white men."Johnson not only opposed votes for blacks--he opposed political and civil rights for blacks, too. He vetoed civil rights legislation. He campaigned against the 14th Amendment. And instead of calling a special session of Congress after Lincoln's assassination, he began to reconstruct the Southern government along his own lines. That included pardoning nearly 100 former Confederates a day, allowing them to rejoin the legislature, and letting those legislatures pass "Black Codes," which were ordinances that reinstituted slavery by another name because they denied all civil rights to blacks, including the right to marry, to serve on a jury, even to move freely. [...]One obvious goal of Pence's op-ed is to favorably compare Trump to Johnson by framing Johnson as a principled president unfairly vilified and undermined by a partisan Congress. Where does Pence's rosy view of Johnson come from?Until the rise of the KKK in the early 20th century, Johnson was a toxic figure. The Democrats, his own party, wouldn't even nominate him for president in 1868. He was inept, vulgar, and an abuser of power. He was unfit for office, and across the board, it was understood that he was in over his head. His reputation was in the cellar until Birth of a Nation, the 1915 movie that popularized the "lost cause" point of view. It depicted Radical Republicans as power-hungry fanatics. After Birth of a Nation, the KKK began popularizing Johnson again.
Dershowitz, meanwhile, has been embroiled in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. A woman who went public with claims she was a teenage victim of Epstein's sex trafficking ring has said Epstein trafficked her to several prominent men, including Dershowitz.She says she had sex with Dershowitz on several occasions-- allegations Dershowitz has vehemently denied.
Dershowitz, a prominent defense lawyer and emeritus Harvard University law professor, himself faces accusations of sexual abuse from two of Epstein's alleged victims -- Virginia Roberts Giuffre and Sarah Ransome. He vehemently denies the accusations against him.
Among the lurid details of the lawsuit, Jane Doe alleged Trump tied her to a bed, "forcibly raped" her and threatened her and her family with physical harm, if not death, if she told anyone about the assault. "I understood that Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein knew that I was 13 years old," Jane Doe wrote in an affidavit.Farrow alleges that after the suit was filed in September 2016, Enquirer editor Howard and Trump lawyer Cohen were in contact frequently. (Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison last December on charges including campaign finance violations for his part in hush payments to McDougal and adult film star Stormy Daniels.)"There was no opportunity to buy this story," Farrow writes, claiming that AMI chief Pecker--a longtime friend of Trump's--only found out about the lawsuit after it was filed.Still, Farrow says, Howard, now chief content officer at AMI, tried to use his influence to convince Lisa Bloom, a power attorney who agreed to represent Jane Doe, to drop her client.In November 2016, just days before the presidential election, Bloom suddenly announced a press conference with Jane Doe had been canceled, saying Doe had become frightened after receiving death threats. Two days later, Doe's lead attorney, Thomas Meager, filed to dismiss the case. Jane Doe has not been heard from since.Speaking to Newsweek Tuesday, Bloom said that while the Enquirer editor "did tell me he thought Jane Doe lacked credibility ... that wasn't the reason she asked her other attorney to drop her case.""After we received numerous death threats and my law firm's website and emails were hacked, she did not want to go forward," Bloom added.
President Donald Trump on Friday accused Democrats of trying to sabotage Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential bid, echoing allegations from Sanders supporters during the 2016 primary."They are rigging the election again against Bernie Sanders, just like last time, only even more obviously," Trump said in a pair of tweets, claiming that Democrats were using his impeachment trial beginning next week to keep Sanders off the campaign trail in the critical final weeks before the Iowa caucuses.
Nothing better demonstrates the contempt in which Trumpbots hold others than their insistence that open hatred will be rewarded with votes.More than 8 in 10 black Americans say they believe Trump is a racist and that he has made racism a bigger problem in the country. Nine in 10 disapprove of his job performance overall.The pessimism goes well beyond assessments of the president. A 65 percent majority of African Americans say it is a "bad time" to be a black person in America. That view is widely shared by clear majorities of black adults across income, generational and political lines. By contrast, 77 percent of black Americans say it is a "good time" to be a white person, with a wide majority saying white people don't understand the discrimination faced by black Americans.
People are going to watch the hearings. They're going to see miserable senators presented with ample evidence that the president used his office to pressure the Ukrainians to sully a political opponent. If the only times Republican senators make a fuss are when they maneuver to avoid hearing even more damning evidence, or demand that the Senate participate in the president's strategy of making Joe Biden the issue, they won't merely be violating their oaths to deliver impartial justice; they will risk going down in history -- and appearing to voters -- as participants in a cover-up.Some senators will be fine with that, because that's what a majority of their voters want. For those who either come from states that don't have enough Trump-base voters to get reelected or are burdened with a politically inconvenient concern about their reputations, it will be a real problem. The one thing none of them will be able to claim, however, is that they don't know the facts because they weren't paying attention.
This is clearly far from an optimal situation. In building a tax system you should aim to bake in as few distortions as possible. It should be as broad and low as possible - ensuring that you don't encourage or discourage one activity relative to another. Of course, when there are externalities, such as with the environmental impact of carbon dioxide emissions, then you may want the tax system to change behaviour, by encouraging more environmentally friendly travel, for example.In order to eliminate the numerous distortions in the UK tax system, while also allowing us to incentivise the market to solve environmental issues, we need tax on carbon emissions. Ideally this would cover the entire economy, and be levied as far upstream as possible on every activity that involved the emission of greenhouse gases, creating a strong incentive to develop less carbon intensive products and processes.
Despite a warning from Lev Parnas, President Trump claimed not to know him again Thursday. "I don't know Parnas, other than I guess I had pictures taken, which I do with thousands of people," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. "I don't know him at all, don't know what he's about, don't know where he comes from, know nothing about him. ... I don't believe I've ever spoken to him."Jospeh Bondy, Parnas' lawyer, brought the receipts, posting a video taken at Mar-a-Lago in December 2016, where Trump is clearly talking with Parnas, who is standing next to him and also Roman Nasirov, a former Ukrainian official charged with embezzlement.