Category: 2020 Election

Portland’s disturbing events show why federal law enforcement must not be allowed to ‘morph into’ a ‘Stasi-like’ secret police

AlterNet logoThe images coming out of Portland, Oregon in recent days have been disturbing: federal law enforcement agents, wearing military fatigues and driving unmarked vehicles, have detained nonviolent George Floyd protesters — and Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon has described the agents as President Donald “Trump’s secret police.” Much of the criticism of the agents has come from liberal and progressive website, but some conservative outlets are troubled as well, including The Bulwark. And in an article published in The Bulwark on July 20, Carrie Cordero — an intel/security specialist and former attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice — explains why having a “purely domestic security service” in the United States is a terrible idea.

“This past week, (Department of Homeland Security) personnel, including officers of the Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), were deployed by the acting secretary of Homeland Security to conduct domestic law enforcement activities in Portland,” Cordero notes. “But policing protest activity, in particular, requires a special sensitivity to and protection of constitutional rights. And the reports out of Portland indicate that DHS has provided an uncontrolled and over-militarized response. Moreover, these assignments of federal officers to control domestic unrest may be part of a broader slide toward a federal domestic security expansion that has neither been announced nor vetted either by the citizenry, the Congress, or the courts.” Continue reading “Portland’s disturbing events show why federal law enforcement must not be allowed to ‘morph into’ a ‘Stasi-like’ secret police”

Trump wants a payroll tax cut in the next stimulus package. It’s a bad idea.

Washington Post logoThe White House is pressing for cuts to the Social Security and Medicare payroll tax — but it won’t help the people who need it most and would be a nightmare to administer

There are things that make great sense in theory but make no sense in the actual world in which we live. President Trump’s idea of eliminating (or modifying or who-knows-what-ing) the Social Security-Medicare payroll tax as part of an economic stimulus package is a classic example of something that makes no sense in the real world.

In theory, eliminating or reducing payroll taxes is the quickest and cleanest way to stimulate the economy for people who have jobs. Suddenly, those people are taking home more money than they were. That’s why payroll taxes have been cut before to stimulate the economy, and it seems to have worked.

But in our current environment, it makes no sense to cut or eliminate the payroll tax — paid equally by employees and employers — to provide emergency assistance to people in need and boost the economy, which needs all the stimulus it can get. Continue reading.

Lincoln Project co-founder reveals how the group will deal with Trump-enabling Republicans after the president is ousted

In an interview with the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, one of the founders of the Never-Trumper Lincoln Project said he is personally seeking “atonement” for some of the Republicans he once helped into office, and that the group is making plans to eliminate all traces of Trumpism once the president is gone.

Lumped in with those “traces” are the GOP lawmakers who have enabled the president.

According to John Weaver — who admitted that he helped get former GOP Senator Jeff sessions elected — the group has no plans to disband should Trump go down to defeat in November. Continue reading.

A Navy vet asked federal officers in Portland to remember their oaths. Then they broke his hand.

Washington Post logoPORTLAND, Ore. — He came to the protest with a question. He left with two broken bones in a confrontation with federal officers that went viral.

Christopher David had watched in horror as videos surfaced of federal officers in camouflage throwing protesters into unmarked vans in Portland. The 53-year-old Portland resident had heard the stories: protesters injured, gassed, sprayed with chemicals that tugged at their nostrils and burned their eyes.

David, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and former member of the Navy’s Civil Engineer Corps, said he wanted to know what the officers involved thought of the oath they had sworn to protect and defend the Constitution. Continue reading.

Trump Says He Will Sign Imaginary Healthcare Plan In 2 Weeks

Trump claimed that he is going to sign a comprehensive healthcare plan in two weeks because the Supreme Court said he could.

WALLACE: But you’ve been in office three and a half years, you don’t have a plan.

TRUMP: Well, we haven’t had. Excuse me. You heard me yesterday. We’re signing a health care plan within two weeks, a full and complete health care plan that the Supreme Court decision on DACA gave me the right to do. So we’re going to solve — we’re going to sign an immigration plan, a health care plan, and various other plans. And nobody will have done what I’m doing in the next four weeks. The Supreme Court gave the President of the United States powers that nobody thought the President had, by approving, by doing what they did — their decision on DACA. And DACA’s going to be taken care of also. But we’re getting rid of it because we’re going to replace it with something much better. What we got rid of already, which was most of Obamacare, the individual mandate. And that I’ve already won on. And we won also on the Supreme Court. But the decision by the Supreme Court on DACA allows me to do things on immigration, on health care, on other things that we’ve never done before. And you’re going to find it to be a very exciting two weeks. Continue reading.

Pushing bogus anti-Biden claim, Trump tripped up by reality

When Trump makes ridiculous claims, is he deliberately trying to deceive the public or does he believe his falsehoods? An answer is coming into focus.

In early 2009, congressional Republicans were eager to condemn the Democratic Recovery Act, which rescued the U.S. economy from the Great Recession. To that end, some on the right came up with a weird claim: the stimulus package included $1 billion to build a magnetic-levitation train from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.

There was no such provision, but Republicans became so invested in the falsehood that they started to believe it. A California-based journalist sat down with then-Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.) in March 2009, and she pointed to the non-existent element of the Democratic plan as proof of its flaws. When the journalist reminded the congresswoman of reality, Bono Mack directed her staff to retrieve the bill. “It’s right there,” the GOP lawmaker said at the time. “Show him.”

A few minutes later, an aide emerged with a copy of the bill and quietly conceded, “It’s not in the bill.” Continue reading.

Netflix Exposes Trump’s Shady Mob Ties in ‘Fear City: New York vs. The Mafia’

Premiering July 22, this three-part docuseries examines how lawmen took down the New York City mob—and features an eye-opening cameo from one Donald J. Trump.

n the 1970s and 1980s, New York City was controlled by five major mob outfits—the Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese and Lucchese families—that not only ran the region’s various illegal rackets, but also effectively operated the billion-dollar construction industry that was transforming the metropolitan landscape. Fear City: New York vs. The Mafia is the true story of the law enforcement and prosecutorial efforts to take down those kingpins, which played out in a manner eerily reminiscent of The Wire. And unsurprisingly, at least for those who lived in or around the five boroughs during that era, it’s a tale of crime and vice that invariably involves Donald Trump.

The current commander-in-chief factors into the final episode of director Sam Hobkinson’s three-part Netflix miniseries (debuting July 22), since his Fifth Avenue Trump Tower was one of countless projects the mafia had a hand in completing. “So I told him that there’s jobs in here that did count, like Trump. Nineteen million,” says a gangster on a federal wiretap recording, thereby directly linking the future president to the shady mobsters who governed New York’s concrete and cement unions (and businesses). These crooks regulated which of eight chosen firms would get contracts and, in the process, kickback points from the gigs to their criminal superiors. As Fear Citymakes clear in just a few short minutes, anyone like Trump, who was knee-deep in the real estate scene, was invariably a bedfellow (either directly or indirectly) with the mafia.

Considering Trump’s apparent underworld ties, the biggest question that arises during Hobkinson’s series (from the producers of Don’t F**K With Cats) is why Rudy Giuliani chose, in 2018, to become his lawyer. Fear City lays out how Giuliani initially made his national name by bringing down NYC’s godfathers while working as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. On camera, Giuliani confesses that, as an Italian-American, he loathed the mob. Along with his press-friendly ambitions for higher office, which he’d subsequently attain when he became the city’s mayor, it was this hatred for organized crime that drove him to pursue his legendary case. The hypocritical disconnect between Giuliani’s still-palpable disgust for the mafia, and his more recent closeness with the mob-connected Trump, is so readily apparent in the last episode that one wishes director Hobkinson had taken at least a slight narrative detour to more fully investigate (or least have Giuliani directly address) it. Continue reading.

Democrats keep having to clean up Republican messes. When is our turn to advance America?

A President Biden would face extraordinary damage and repair jobs at home and abroad. Democrats must hammer this home to voters and stop the cycle.

Should former Vice President Joe Biden defeat President Donald Trump in the November election, his victory will cement a pattern that influential Democratic messengers would be wise to exploit savagely in order to change.

Many Americans have not yet grasped that every time they have given Republicans the keys to the White House over the past half-century, they turn to Democrats to extinguish the fire. This arrangement hampers party priorities each time Democrats come to power because their first orders of business are to clean up the ashes. Once the country is sturdy enough, the electorate returns to Republicans to get a little extra walking around cash in the form of marginal tax cuts, and Democratic policy goes back underground.

This pattern began when Richard Nixon and his successor, Gerald Ford, presided over a three-year recession that darkened the outlook for Ford before the 1976 campaign launched in earnest. Democrat Jimmy Carter glided into office on a message of reform, after the country felt betrayed by Watergate and Nixon’s corrupt inner circle, and of recovery from poor GOP stewardship of the economy. Continue reading.

Fox News’s Chris Wallace just exposed Trump as very few have

Washington Post logoOne of the greatest frustrations President Trump’s foes have is how infrequently he’s called out — in person — on his bizarre theories and his 20,000 falsehoods and misleading claims. While journalists fact-check Trump relentlessly, there are relatively few instances in which he has received pushback to his face, in part because it takes a certain deftness and, arguably in even larger part, because he submits to so few interviews outside the Fox News and conservative media bubble. (There have been a handful of examples, including NBC’s Peter Alexander on multiple occasions.)

On Sunday, though, Trump was exposed in a way he simply hasn’t been — and by a Fox News host to boot.

Trump’s interview with Fox’s Chris Wallace was a painful affair from start to finish. Wallace is always a good and tough interviewer, unlike the Fox opinion hosts Trump frequents, and he is always prepared, but this was on another level. The interview wasn’t overly adversarial; Wallace was perfectly willing to talk about the things Trump was interested in and to play ball when Trump responded in relatively good faith. It wasn’t slanted; instead it merely raised the very factual counterpoints dealt with frequently in coverage of Trump. And it wasn’t rushed, which meant that Wallace could dig into the points Trump was making without fear of neglecting other topics he wanted to touch on. Continue reading.

Trump to resume COVID-19 briefings

The Hill logoPresident Trump on Monday said he will resume giving regular coronavirus briefings this week, reviving a practice that is controversial among some aides as infections surge across the United States.

Trump told reporters in the Oval Office he would deliver a briefing at 5 p.m. on Tuesday. It would mark his first time participating in a coronavirus briefing since late April.

Trump signaled the briefings would be heavily focused on the development of a vaccine and drugs to treat the virus, which has advanced significantly since he last held regular media sessions on the pandemic. He told reporters he may invite the heads of the companies involved in vaccine development to speak to the press. Continue reading.