[I]t will serve at least two good ends: First, it will make it clear to diehard racists that they're not welcome over here. Second, it will protect impressionable young conservatives from being wooed by them.What's needed is not mere "outreach" to black, Hispanic, or Jewish voters. Conservatives ought to make elevation of African Americans, immigrants, and religious minorities so central to conservatism that all dedicated racists will be thoroughly repelled. If we can't make them stop calling themselves the "alt-right," because they won't want to be associated with us, we can at least disgust them with such a focus.Why? Mostly because it's the right thing to do.Conservatives don't give it enough attention, but one of the greatest evils in the U.S. today is rank racial inequality. The median income of African Americans is below $31,000, which is less than half the median income of white Americans. More blacks are imprisoned in America than are whites, even though there are nearly five white people here for every black person.There are a thousand points of data like this, all confirming that being an African American means living with the odds stacked against you.Do you remember playing video games that allowed you to set the difficulty level? Imagine if you could set the difficulty level for your life. The data all suggest that being an immigrant or an African American means setting a much higher difficulty level than being a white guy.To accept this reality doesn't require one to declare that whites are all vile racists or oppressors. It doesn't require agreeing that the U.S. is fundamentally a white supremacist nation. It just requires the sincere acceptance of two premises: First, that all humans are created equal (the official teaching of the U.S. founders and all Abrahamic religions), and second, that blacks and Hispanics have far worse outcomes in the U.S.If both of these premises are true -- and they are -- then things in the U.S. still aren't fair and can be improved. And if the game is rigged so badly in the U.S. that thousands of young men are shot on the streets of Chicago, that tens of thousands of black babies are aborted every year, that hundreds of thousands are born out of wedlock, then isn't that a crisis that deserves attention?Conservatives ought to make it a priority to fight for the fundamental dignity and equality of racial minorities who have been denied that dignity and equality. It will require overcoming decades of injustice, and so won't happen quickly. We won't disabuse the Left of their self-satisfied smears and conceits, but that's not the point. Conservatives will be able to take solace in the fact that we're fighting the good fight and pissing off the racists.
Let me call libertarians to do the same.I am far from the first to issue this appeal. The Cato Institute's Jonathan Blanks, himself black and libertarian, has written compellingly on the topic for Libertarianism.org and elsewhere, identifying a "longstanding libertarian habit of downplaying racism as a fact of life for minorities in the United States." Blanks levels much of his critique at libertarians' irresponsibly incomplete narrative of American history, which too often entails "looking backward to better times" of smaller government and freer markets while neglecting what else was happening then. For those "who must look to bills of sale and property lists to find our ancestors," Blanks writes, "the look back is with much less yearning."Libertarian failure (or refusal) to recognize the non-state function of racism in American society today likewise makes our movement unappealing to black and other minority Americans regardless of the value of our ideas, Blanks continues. And some libertarians' willingness to partner with anti-statists of any stripe is also much to blame. This is best exemplified, of course, by the disgraceful "paleolibertarian" strategy of the 1980s and 1990s (in which some libertarians pursued "an open strategy of exploiting racial and class resentment to build a coalition with populist 'paleoconservatives'"), but it is not entirely absent from the present movement. See, for instance, this appalling post from former a Libertarian Party vice-chair, made in defense of his decision to appear on a white nationalist podcast.This sort of thing does not only turn American minorities away from libertarians. It also turns racists toward us. And just as Carney says to conservatives, it is incumbent on libertarians to create an ideological ecosystem that doesn't welcome racism.
[T]he flagrant racism conveyed in Trump's speeches and Jonah Bennett's emails at the Daily Caller is less intractable than a movementwide mobilization behind a racist agenda. That Republicans have built a reliable coalition of racists and purported non-racists by pairing tax cuts and abortion restrictions with the subordination of black civil rights to states' rights suggests that even those who oppose racism are willing to overlook it for their own self-interest. They're fairly unremarkable in this respect -- supporting a political movement often requires making peace with ideological differences.But it also undermines the notion that conservatism's racism problem stems from infiltration by a few bad eggs. On the contrary, it's been apparent since the Nixon administration that the Republican Party would collapse without support from racists. Perhaps such a demise is Douthat and Carney's unstated goal. In any case, the GOP hasn't been able to convince most voters that corporate welfare, reduced protections for marginalized people, and diminished health-care options for all but the most financially secure are good things on their own terms, without using racism to sweeten the deal. This wouldn't matter if conservatism was a fringe ideology. But the writers' portrayal of their movement as one victimized by unfair smears and mischaracterization belies its status as the most powerful political movement in America today, and that conservatives control most of the country's most powerful political institutions.
President Donald Trump has left the impression with foreign officials, members of his administration, and others involved in Iranian negotiations that he is actively considering a French plan to extend a $15 billion credit line to the Iranians if Tehran comes back into compliance with the Obama-era nuclear deal.
Prosecutors with the New York district attorney's office interviewed Donald Trump's former personal attorney Michael Cohen in recent weeks as part of their investigation of the Trump Organization's handling of hush money payments, according to people familiar with the matter.Officials from the district attorney's office, led by Cyrus Vance, interviewed Cohen at the federal prison in Otisville, New York, where he is serving a three-year sentence after pleading guilty to multiple crimes including campaign finance violations tied to payments to two women alleging affairs with Trump a decade ago. Trump has denied having affairs with the women.
A new ABC News-Washington Post poll released Wednesday shows Warren beating Trump by seven points in a hypothetical match-up, 51 percent to 44 percent, among registered voters. This is compared to a poll from ABC News and The Washington Post released in July that showed Warren and Trump tied at 48 percent to 48 percent.Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the new poll also beats Trump by nine points among registered voters after leading him by just one point in July, while Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) beats him by seven points, the same margin as Warren, after previously leading him by two points. Like Warren, South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg also now beats Trump among registered voters after being exactly tied in July, although he has a smaller four-point lead.
[Trump said,] "I don't blame Kim Jong-un. ... He wanted nothing to do with John Bolton."
Civil rights groups have raised alarms about Kupperman's association with the right-wing Center for Security Policy (CSP), a DC-based think tank that has long promoted anti-Muslim conspiracy theories, including that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the US government. Kupperman, 68, served on CSP's board from 2001 to 2010.CSP's founder, Frank Gaffney Jr., has promoted several anti-Muslim conspiracies, including that President Barack Obama was secretly Muslim and that Hillary Clinton's top adviser Huma Abedin worked for the Muslim Brotherhood.The Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) is demanding Kupperman be removed from the administration."Once again this is an example of Trump elevating foxes into the hen house, where Islamophobes are well placed to direct our nation's national security priorities," Robert McCaw, director of government affairs at CAIR, told Al Jazeera.
The White House was directly involved in pressing a federal scientific agency to repudiate the weather forecasters who contradicted President Trump's claim that Hurricane Dorian would probably strike Alabama, according to several people familiar with the events.Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, told Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary, to have the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration publicly disavow the forecasters' position that Alabama was not at risk. NOAA, which is part of the Commerce Department, issued an unsigned statement last Friday in response, saying that the Birmingham, Ala., office was wrong to dispute the president's warning. [...]Mr. Ross called Neil Jacobs, the acting administrator of NOAA, from Greece where the secretary was traveling for meetings, and instructed Dr. Jacobs to fix the agency's perceived contradiction of the president, according to three people informed about the discussions.Dr. Jacobs objected to the demand and was told that the political appointees at NOAA would be fired if the situation was not fixed, according to the three individuals, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the episode.The political staff at an agency typically includes a handful of top officials, such as Dr. Jacobs, and their aides. They are appointed to their jobs by the administration currently in power, as opposed to career government employees, who remain in their jobs as administrations come and go.
New Hampshire's governor signed a ban on oil and gas drilling in the state's coastal waters on Tuesday, a move that several states have taken in response to the Trump administration's proposal to open new areas for exploration. [...]"New Hampshire has a long and proud tradition of environmental stewardship, and today's action to ban oil and gas drilling off of our pristine coastline is another step in the right direction," Sununu said in a statement.Governors and lawmakers from both Republican- and Democratic-led states have fought the administration's plans for expanded offshore drilling. A federal judge ruled in May that President Donald Trump had exceeded his authority when he ordered that the Arctic and parts of the Atlantic be opened to oil and gas development.
Most works on automation either ignore the past or, if they deal with it at all, merely focus on the Luddites, casting a with a superficial glance at the Industrial Revolution and how bad it was in the factories and the slums. However, as the historian T. S. Ashton shown, although people worked in grim conditions, things were rather more complicated than that. For many, factory work was a significant step up from a life of subsistence, squalor and back-breaking agricultural labour.Where some authors give the impression that technological change only began in early 19th century Britain, Frey reaches further back in history for his examples. The book opens with Aristotle ('When looms weave by themselves, man's slavery will end') and then moves to Ancient Rome to explain how they held back on industrialisation due to their suspicions of the private sector and the fact that their economy was reliant on slavery. We also get a fascinating snapshot of the Middle Ages and some of the technological innovations from that period such as improvements in horsepower and windmills.Perhaps more striking is his argument that many of the key innovations of the Industrial Revolution could have been invented earlier. It was the power of guilds that hamstrung human progress. Frey draws parallels with the modern context, and expresses concerns that workers will again attempt to hold back innovation in order to protect jobs.
A line I've wanted to use for 800 years. "As the administration begins to resemble a game of reverse musical chairs -- too many open slots without enough loyalists to fill them -- a list emerged." https://t.co/1d3EQ0f69B @ewong @adamgoldmanNYT @maggieNYT
— Katie Rogers (@katierogers) September 10, 2019