Trump 19: Please Cry for Us Montenegro (and We Are so Sorry!)

[GreyhoundFan]

I found this disturbing, but not surprising: "How a ‘shadow’ universe of charities joined with political warriors to fuel Trump’s rise"

Spoiler

The crowd rose to its feet and roared its approval as Sen. Jeff Sessions bounded onto the stage at the Breakers, an exclusive resort in Palm Beach, Fla. Stephen Miller, an aide to the Alabama Republican, handed him a glass trophy honoring his bravery as a lawmaker.

“Heyyyy!” Sessions yelled out to the crowd.

The ceremony that day, in November 2014, turned out to be a harbinger: It brought together an array of hard-right activists and a little-known charity whose ideas would soon move from the fringes of the conservative movement into the heart of the nation’s government.

The man behind the event was David Horowitz, a former ’60s radical who became an intellectual godfather to the far right through his writings and his work at a charity, the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Since its formation in 1988, the Freedom Center has helped cultivate a generation of political warriors seeking to upend the Washington establishment. These warriors include some of the most powerful and influential figures in the Trump administration: Attorney General Sessions, senior policy adviser Miller and White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon.

Long before Trump promised to build a wall, ban Muslims and abandon the Paris climate accord, Horowitz used his tax-exempt group to rail against illegal immigrants, the spread of Islam and global warming. Center officials described Hillary Clinton as evil, President Barack Obama as a secret communist and the Democratic Party as a front for enemies of the United States.

The Freedom Center has declared itself a “School for Political Warfare,” and it is part of a loose nationwide network of like-minded charities linked together by ideology, personalities, conservative funders and websites, including the for-profit Breitbart News.

Horowitz’s story shows how charities have become essential to modern political campaigns, amid lax enforcement of the federal limits on their involvement in politics, while taking advantage of millions of dollars in what amount to taxpayer subsidies.

In interviews with The Washington Post, Horowitz, 78, acknowledged the Freedom Center’s partisan mission and said its aim is to protect “traditional American values” against adversaries on the left, who operate their own network of charities. “This is a shadow political universe,” he said.

Horowitz makes a good living as the Freedom Center chief executive, earning $583,000 from a charity that received $5.4 million in donations in 2015, according to the latest available records. But he said he has come to believe that his group and others across the political spectrum ought to be reined in to ensure they fulfill the original spirit of the Internal Revenue Service’s charitable rules, even though such overhauls would be “personally devastating for me.”

“They should redefine what a charity is,” he said. “A charity should be something that helps everybody.”

The IRS prohibits charities from directly or indirectly participating in political campaigns, for or against candidates.

In an essay he published online in response to The Post’s questions after refusing further interviews, Horowitz wrote the center “does not engage in political activities in the narrow sense used in the I.R.S. code.”

A lefty moves right

Horowitz looks like a professor, with a salt-and-pepper goatee and small oval glasses. He speaks with a scratchy voice that carries strong hints of his New York roots. He is quick to use fiery rhetoric and no-holds-barred tactics he had learned as a student radical.

Horowitz was a “red diaper baby” of communist parents in New York City. After attending Columbia University in the 1950s, he enrolled as a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, an anchor of leftist thinking.

Over the next two decades, he took on prominent roles in the New Left. He served as an editor of Ramparts, an influential muckraking magazine in San Francisco.

But by the late 1970s, he had decided that the left represented a profound threat to the United States. On March 17, 1985, he and a writing partner came out as conservatives in a surprising Washington Post Magazine article headlined “Lefties for Reagan.”

In August 1988, Horowitz launched the Center for the Study of Popular Culture in Los Angeles, a nonprofit group that would become the Freedom Center.

Charities have been around since the nation’s beginning, as citizens sought to help schools, churches and the poor. Decades ago, Congress created a special section of the IRS code to define and regulate charities, which are known as 501(c)(3) groups under the code. They have a special allure for donors: They can deduct contributions from their taxes.

IRS rules give charities wide latitude, but they may not devote a “substantial part” of their resources or activities to lobbying or “carrying on propaganda.” And they “are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office,” according to the IRS.

In his IRS application for tax-exempt status in August 1988, Horowitz wrote his center would be “entirely non-profit, non-partisan,” according to records obtained through a public records request. “It will not be organized to promote any particular political program.”

Twenty years later, a brochure for one of the charity’s events would sharply contradict that claim: “In 1988, Horowitz created the Center for the Study of Popular Culture to institutionalize his campaigns against the Left and its anti-American agendas.”

From the start, Horowitz was supported by contributions from stalwart conservative groups, including the John M. Olin Foundation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, along with donations from the wealthy Scaife family of Pittsburgh.

In 1989, he co-wrote “Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the Sixties,” a harsh critique of the radical left. He also began hosting events. A gathering called the Wednesday Morning Club catered to conservatives in liberal Los Angeles. In the 1990s, one of the regular guests was Bannon, then a former Wall Street investor seeking to make his mark in Hollywood, according to Lionel Chetwynd, the event’s co-founder.

“Conservatives are nervous around me, and they’re nervous because I’m very outspoken,” Horowitz told The Post. “Steve Bannon was not nervous because he’s like me.”

Bannon did not respond to requests for interviews.

The origin of Stephen Miller

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Horowitz and his center argued that liberals had been too tolerant of radical Islam and illegal immigration.

Open to that message was Stephen Miller, a 16-year-old high school student in Santa Monica, Calif. In the fall of 2001, Miller asked Horowitz for help in disputes with administrators at his school. Miller complained his teachers and classmates were insufficiently patriotic and refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance.

Horowitz’s charity launched a group called Students for Academic Freedom, framing it as a counterweight to the dominance of the left in high schools and on college campuses. Miller formed a chapter and sought permission from school officials to invite Horowitz to the school to speak. When administrators delayed, Miller and Horowitz accused them of stifling free speech.

Horowitz eventually spoke at the school, and in November 2002, Miller wrote about the visit in an essay in Frontpagemag.com, the online news and opinion site run by the center. Miller portrayed himself as the victim of indoctrination and called on the system’s superintendent to ensure “that his schools stress inclusive patriotism, rather than a multiculturalism.”

When Miller went on to Duke University, he formed another chapter of Students for Academic Freedom and again invited Horowitz to speak. At the time, Horowitz had just published “The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America,” a book some condemned as a political blacklist.

After graduation, Miller wanted to work in Washington. Horowitz reached out to conservatives on Capitol Hill who had supported his group. He helped Miller land jobs with four lawmakers, including former representative Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Sessions. “I highly recommended him to Jeff,” Horowitz told The Post.

Miller did not respond to requests for interviews.

By 2006, Horowitz’s charity, now operating as the David Horowitz Freedom Center, was staging events, publishing books and pamphlets, and operating a website devoted to “news on the war at home and abroad” against the left.

That same year, Horowitz wrote “The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party.” He and a co-writer argued that Soros, a hedge fund billionaire, was a “political manipulator” who financed a vast movement on the left, with help from charities and other nonprofit groups.

The Freedom Center stepped up its anti-Islamic rhetoric, sponsoring an “Islamofascism Awareness Week” on college campuses. Horowitz accused U.S. college campuses of fostering “Jew hatred” and supporting Islamist militant terror.

It also formed an alliance with another charity called Jihad Watch, which would become a leading voice in calling for restrictions on Muslim immigrants.

“Our work at Jihad Watch relates to dispelling falsehoods and disinformation spread by The Washington Post and others regarding the motivating ideology, nature and magnitude of the jihad threat worldwide and within the U.S.,” the group’s chief, Robert Spencer, told The Post in a statement last month.

In the 2000s, the Freedom Center continued receiving millions in support from conservative donors, more than $4 million annually. The election of Barack Obama in 2008 provided an extra boost to fundraising.

It also affirmed the center’s belief that “the political left has declared war on America and its constitutional system, and is willing to collaborate with America’s enemies abroad,” according to the center’s website. “For most of those years the Center was a voice crying in the wilderness with few willing to recognize the threat from the enemy within, a fifth column force that was steadily expanding its influence within the Democratic Party.”

This was all too much for some prominent mainstream conservatives such as William Kristol and George Will, who formerly sat on the board of the Bradley Foundation. “Some people seem not to feel fully alive unless they are furious,” Will wrote in an email to The Post. [Will writes a twice-weekly column for The Post] “Perhaps this is because they gain derivative significance from the feeling that they are personally involved in momentous events.”

Minimal IRS regulation

The Freedom Center was among a growing group of allied charities that received funding from large, conservative foundations such as Donors Capital Fund, Donors Trust, the Bradley Foundation and the Scaife family. For decades, those foundations and others had financed nonprofit organizations that promoted free enterprise and small government and opposed the environmental movement and other issues favored by progressives.

In general, charities have been able to operate with little scrutiny by regulators. The number of enforcement officials at the IRS and the audits they conduct have dwindled over the past decade. The IRS became especially reluctant to enforce limitations on political activity, following a furious backlash from conservatives and Republicans in Congress in 2013 over allegations the agency was illegally targeting tea party groups seeking tax-exempt status. An IRS spokesman declined to comment.

Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer, Bradley Foundation board member and recipient of a Freedom Center award, said conservative charities “take great pains to stay within their lanes from a legal perspective.”

Matthew Vadum, senior vice president of the tax-exempt Capital Research Center and a prolific contributor to the Freedom Center’s Frontpagemag.com, said there is no question the conservative charities work in concert. But the IRS rules are open to interpretation and unclear about the limits, he said.

“It’s a network,” Vadum said. “[C]onservative activist groups try to push the envelope. And it’s not always clear how far they should go.”

Ron Robinson, president of Young America’s Foundation and another ally of the Freedom Center, said ideological alliances and shared financial support are commonplace across the political spectrum, not just on the right. “This is a reality of the modern world,” Robinson said. “I don’t view it as pernicious. They make it possible to enrich the world of ideas.”

By 2008, the Freedom Center had assumed a leading role in the hard-right branch of the network, spending $2.7 million on seminars and meetings that routinely attracted the luminaries of the conservative movement.

The most popular of these annual gatherings was “David Horowitz’s Restoration Weekend,” which was often held at the Breakers in Palm Beach, a stunning hotel complex modeled on the Medici palaces of Renaissance Italy.

These were lavish affairs. In November 2009, the center paid $438,000 to produce the event at the Breakers, an IRS filing shows. That covered well-produced videos and cocktail parties and, for major donors, spa and golf privileges.

A marquee event that weekend was the Citizens United Film Festival. It included a documentary written and directed by Bannon about the ravages of the financial meltdown called “Generation Zero.” The Citizens United Foundation, another conservative tax-exempt charity, would soon pay Bannon hundreds of thousands for fundraising and film consulting.

Bannon was becoming an important ally for Horowitz and a pivotal figure in the growing network. Bannon and a partner once suggested including Horowitz in a proposed documentary to be called “Destroying the Great Satan: The Rise of Islamic Fascism in America.” The movie’s draft outline warned of an Islamic takeover of the United States.

In March 2012, Bannon was named the executive chairman of the online Breitbart News site, following the unexpected death of his friend and collaborator, Andrew Breitbart. Bannon immediately began steering the site even deeper into the anti-establishment movement.

The meet-and-greet

On Nov. 12, 2013, Bannon hosted a book party for Horowitz at a Washington, D.C., townhouse that served as Breitbart’s capital office and Bannon’s living quarters. Horowitz had just published a compendium of anti-liberal writings called the “Black Book of the American Left.”

As Horowitz mingled, Bannon introduced himself to Ronald Radosh, a prominent conservative intellectual and historian. Radosh had known Horowitz for a half-century and also worked his way through the ranks of the New Left before becoming a conservative.

“I’m Steve Bannon and this is my house,” Bannon said, according to an account that Radosh wrote about for the Daily Beast in August and discussed with The Post.

“I’m a Leninist,” Bannon said, according to Radosh. “Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal, too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”

A few days later, Horowitz traveled to Palm Beach to host another Restoration Weekend at the Breakers. Bannon was going, too — in part to raise money for a documentary film about Horowitz. Bannon said he needed $1 million and there were few venues better for finding wealthy donors. As it happened, Bannon could not raise the money, according to two attendees who heard his pitch. But he received an unexpected gift.

It came from Patrick Caddell, a veteran Democratic pollster who had once worked for President Jimmy Carter. He was speaking about his recent study of Americans’ sentiments toward Washington, the economy and the nation’s future. He said Americans were feeling glum: Two-thirds blamed self-serving elites in both parties for their troubles. They craved an outsider to shake things up.

His findings thrilled the crowd, Caddell told The Post in a lengthy interview. He earlier gave a similar account to the New Yorker.

Caddell said Bannon arranged for a private briefing the next day, to include Robert and Rebekah Mercer, a hedge fund billionaire and his daughter.

For two years, Bannon had worked with the Mercers, who invested millions in Breitbart News. The family also helped Bannon launch a Florida-based charity called the Government Accountability Institute, which describes itself as a nonpartisan investigative organization.

Bannon and the Mercers huddled with Caddell in a second-floor lounge at the Breakers. The Mercers were entranced by what they were hearing, Caddell told The Post, and Bannon “was ecstatic.”

“Being a basic rabble-rouser, it fit his views,” Caddell said.

Robert Mercer asked Caddell to confirm the poll’s findings, offering to pay the costs. Caddell told The Post the follow-up poll did just that. The charities and their media allies began to coalesce around the discontent that Caddell documented.

“You don’t find a lot of cooperation between conservative groups, but now this network, we have Breitbart, Drudge . . . ” Horowitz told the 2013 Restoration Weekend attendees, according to video of the speech. “It’s going to be very, very powerful over time.”

‘Fighting fire with fire’

By late 2013, the Freedom Center barely resembled the charity the IRS had approved for tax exemption. When it began, he told the IRS that it planned to serve the “broad public community as an educational institution.”

Now it was openly involved in fighting a political war with the left. “You can counter their attacks by turning their guns around,” Horowitz said in a speech at the time. “You can neutralize them by fighting fire with fire.”

Among the center’s targets was climate change, which it attacked repeatedly as a ruse by the left. Frontpagemag.com writers made fun of global warming in stories with headlines such as “New Study Says Global Warming Is Good For Polar Bears” and “Global Warming Ended in 1996.”

The site also ran stories insinuating that Democrats were cooperating with Islamist militants: “Jihad Migrating to Red States — With Obama’s Blessing,” “The Left’s Embrace of Islamic Rape,” and “ ‘Sanctuary Cities’ or ‘Safe Havens’ for Terrorists?”

In March 2014, the center made the first of $175,000 in contributions to the Party for Freedom, a group founded by Geert Wilders, one of Europe’s most ardent anti-Muslim politicians, according to documents released by the Dutch government and originally described by the New York Times and the Intercept. He was campaigning on a platform of preventing the “Islamization of the Netherlands,” proposing a ban on Muslim immigration and the shuttering of mosques.

Later that year, Wilders spoke at Restoration Weekend.

“The truth is that our own Western culture — based on Christianity, based on Judaism and humanism — is far superior, far superior, than the Islamic culture that immigrants have adopted,” Wilders said to applause.

On hand that weekend was Jeff Sessions, a regular at the annual retreat. He was honored with a glass trophy for helping to derail a bipartisan bill aimed at overhauling U.S. immigration law. He acknowledged Horowitz from the stage. “I’ve seen some great people receive this, David. And it’s a special treat and pleasure for me, David, because you know how much I admire you as we battle for right and justice and law,” Sessions said.

Later that night, Sessions and Miller went to a lounge at the resort. Joining them was Ann Coulter, another regular and a contributor to Frontpagemag.com. She was writing a book called “Adios, America: The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole.”

As Sessions sipped on a drink, she and Miller batted around ideas about how to crack down on immigration until long after midnight. “There was obviously a major meeting of the minds,” said one person in the lounge at the time who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of repercussions. “They thought immigration was the single most important issue in the country.”

Coulter did not respond to requests for comment.

As the presidential campaign heated up, Horowitz’s group and the conservative network shifted into high gear.

“Hillary Clinton May Go to Prison,” said a Breitbart headline in August 2015, when Bannon was still its chief.

That same month, Frontpagemag.com ran stories titled “Hillary Under Siege” and “The Last Days of Hillary.”

Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute, Bannon’s charity, published “Clinton Cash,” a searing critique of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s foundation and personal enrichment. Schweizer worked with Bannon as an editor at large at Breitbart, and the two men were preparing to make a documentary based on the book.

For his part, Horowitz fired off contentious remarks about the race at every turn, and not only about Hillary Clinton. He also denounced the Republicans who branded themselves “Never Trump.” In May 2016, when it became clear Trump would be the Republican nominee, he called conservative columnist William Kristol a “Republican spoiler” and “renegade Jew” in Breitbart News because of his opposition to Trump.

“To weaken the only party that stands between the Jews and their annihilation, and between America and the forces intent on destroying her, is a political miscalculation so great and a betrayal so profound as to not be easily forgiven,” Horowitz wrote.

The article created an uproar, with some critics accusing the Jewish Horowitz of making anti-Semitic remarks. In response to questions from The Post, Kristol played down the episode and dismissed Horowitz as a bombastic self-promoter.

“David is an angry man. He thinks he’s been denied the power and recognition he deserves. So he lashes out. I shudder to think of David’s rage when he realizes he’s been taken for a ride by a con man,” Kristol said.

“I look forward to the day when American conservatism regains its moral health and political sanity, and the David Horowitz center is back on the fringe, where I’m afraid it belongs.”

But the Freedom Center and others in the network were rising on the Trump tide. The campaign named Bannon the chief executive, David Bossie of Citizens United the vice president and Miller an adviser.

In August, Horowitz took advantage of his ties to the campaign to offer a proposal for spending billions on school vouchers for poor, largely minority children — who Horowitz said had been underserved by Democrats. Miller made sure it became part of Trump’s platform — along with a proposed ban on Muslims, a border wall and other ideas long supported by the Freedom Center and its ideological allies.

On Dec. 14, 2016, during a videotaped event, Horowitz expressed happiness about Trump’s victory and said Republicans had finally woken up to his approach to politics. He pulled from his suit coat a piece of paper listing Freedom Center supporters already in the administration.

“It’s quite an impressive list,” Horowitz said, rattling off the names: Sessions, Bannon, Vice President Pence, Reince Priebus, Kellyanne Conway and at least six others.

“My personal favorite is Steve Miller, because Steve, who was today appointed the senior policy adviser in the White House . . . is a kind of protege of mine,” he said. “So the center has a big stake in this administration.”

The White House and Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment.

Two weeks later, the Freedom Center named Bannon its Man of the Year.

“Over the years people would refer to my Freedom Center as a ‘think tank’ and I would correct them, ‘No, it’s a battle tank,’ because that is what I felt was missing most in the conservative cause — troops ready and willing to fight fire with fire,” Horowitz wrote in Breitbart in February. “The Trump administration may be only a few weeks old, but it is already clear that the new White House is a battle tank.”

I wish I could make over $500K a year working for a "charity".

[GreyhoundFan]

This upsets me so much. So, he wants to put our air safety in the hands of a corporation that will be most concerned with turning a profit. The privatization of prisons hasn't gone well, so let's go ahead and do it with safety. "Trump plans week-long focus on infrastructure, starting with privatizing air traffic control"

Spoiler

President Trump will seek to put a spotlight on his vows to privatize the nation’s air traffic control system and spur $1 trillion in new investment in roads, waterways and other infrastructure with a weeklong series of events starting Monday at the White House.

The events — billed as “infrastructure week” — are part of a stepped-up effort since the president’s return a week ago from his first foreign trip to show that the White House remains focused on its agenda, despite cascading headlines about investigations into his administration’s ties to Russia.

The president has invited executives from major airlines to join him as he kicks off the week with one of his more controversial plans: spinning off the air traffic control functions of the Federal Aviation Administration to a nonprofit corporation.

It’s an idea that’s been tried many times before dating back to the Clinton administration and most recently last year in legislation championed by Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.), chairman of the House Transportation Committee. His bill never made it to the Senate, where several key GOP members resisted the idea of transferring government assets to a corporation.

Advocates of the idea argue that privatization would speed up glacial efforts by the FAA to modernize a system that still relies on land-based radar at a time when other countries have switched to GPS systems that allow more direct routes at lower costs.

The Trump administration is hoping that with a Republican president, the objections of GOP senators will subside. While a formal introduction of most of Trump’s infrastructure plans are likely months away, the White House plans to send its principles for overhauling the air traffic control system to Congress separately this week.

Some Democrats have voiced support for privatization efforts, but others sharply question whether it should be considered a priority given more pressing infrastructure needs.

Trump’s plans next week also include a trip to the Ohio River, where it separates Ohio and Kentucky, to talk about the importance of waterways and to lay out his vision of infrastructure investments more broadly, aides say. And before the weekend, he will also welcome a bipartisan group of mayors and governors to Washington to discuss the topic and venture to the Transportation Department to talk about roads and railways.

“In many of these areas, we’re falling behind, and the falling behind is affecting economic growth in the United States,” said Gary Cohn, Trump’s chief economic adviser, who is helping lead a task force developing Trump’s infrastructure plan. “The president wants to fix the problem.”

The flurry of planned activity comes as two other marquee Trump promises — overhauling the Affordable Care Act and cutting taxes — remain stalled in Congress, largely because of differences among fellow Republicans and the intricacies of the plans.

It’s unclear whether Trump’s promised infrastructure package, for which the administration hopes to attract bipartisan support, will fare any better when formally introduced in coming months.

Democrats sharply questioned Trump’s commitment to the issue following the administration’s release last month of a budget proposal that, by one accounting, included more cuts to existing infrastructure programs over the next decade than it contemplated in new federal spending.

Citing the analysis by his office, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) declared on the Senate floor that “President Trump’s campaign promises on infrastructure are crumbling faster than our roads and bridges.”

Trump has proposed spending $200 billion over the 10-year period with the aim of attracting a total of at least $1 trillion in new investments with the help of the private sector and state and local governments. Democrats prefer a much larger infusion of federal money.

In a briefing for reporters, Trump administration officials acknowledged the timing of their broader infrastructure package remains up in the air but said that Congress could take action more immediately on a separate bill separating air traffic control functions from the FAA.

For months now, Cohn has been making presentations to interested parties, arguing the benefits of moving to a new GPS-based system. Among other things, he says, GPS will help pilots fly more direct routes, cutting down both flight times and fuel usage.

Cohn and other privatization advocates argue that government procurement rules and the uncertainties of the annual congressional budget process have undercut the FAA’s ability to move in that direction as part of its broader $35.8 billion modernization effort known as NextGen.

Aides say Trump’s proposal will be largely based on Shuster’s legislation. The White House previously called his bill “an excellent starting point” for separating more than 30,000 FAA workers from the government — roughly 14,000 air traffic controllers and more than 16,000 who are working on the FAA’s current modernization program.

Although elements of the ­modernization program have come online, ­reports by the Government ­Accountability Office and the Transportation Department’s inspector general have portrayed the effort as bogged down in bureaucracy.

Instead of current taxes on fuel and airline tickets, Shuster’s plan would rely on fees paid by aircraft operators. The FAA would retain its role as an oversight agency, much like the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which issues auto regulations and recalls faulty vehicles.

Although Shuster’s bill emerged from his committee last year, it never got a vote on the House floor. In the Senate, reaction was lukewarm among some key Republicans.

Some opponents cited concerns about the transition period to a new system, as well as legal difficulties of transferring the FAA’s assets to a nonprofit corporation. Others questioned whether privatization would save money and argued that it could drive up airline ticket costs and pose national security risks.

Another large point of contention has been the makeup of a board that would oversee the nonprofit corporation.

The move to a corporation has been tentatively endorsed by the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, which has argued that spinning off controllers into a private entity would protect them from the threat of government shutdowns and uncertain federal funding.

Meanwhile, other trade groups, including the National Business Aviation Association and the General Aviation Manufacturers Association, have said private air-traffic management would give large airlines too much control and threaten private aviation in smaller communities.

In the briefing for reporters, Cohn pledged that in Trump’s plan “there is money to make sure that rural airports get protected.”

A union representing FAA technical workers has also said it “extremely concerned” about spinning off air traffic control functions.

“Privatizing the air traffic control system is a risky and unnecessary step,” Mike Perrone, president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists, said in a statement in March after Trump signaled interest in moving in that direction.

A recent White House budget document points out that dozens of other nations have moved toward separating air traffic control from the government.

The document highlights Canada as an example of a country that successfully privatized its air management responsibilities two decades ago, a move that has resulted in new infrastructure investments and “cutting-edge air traffic technology.”

If a new U.S. corporation were to develop its own technologies, it could potentially sell its services to other countries, the document says.

The White House’s broader vision for infrastructure relies heavily on the private sector. Administration officials, for example, have floated the idea of selling roads and airports to private investors, which would in turn could free up funds for new projects.

Trump’s initiative is also expected to try to foster more public-private partnerships, including toll roads that would allow private investors to recoup their upfront spending.

In the briefing for reporters, Cohn also stressed the White House’s desire to streamline the government permitting process for new highways and other infrastructure, a prospect that has concerned environmental advocates, among others.

For highways, permitting now takes about 10 years, Cohn said, adding that the White House would like to see that reduced to two years or less.

“Time is money,” Cohn said. “The cost of infrastructure goes up dramatically as time goes on in the approval process.”

Cohn said Trump’s speech Wednesday will touch on his desire for some “targeted transformative projects” as well as a desire to partner with state and local governments and help them overcome “the political and bureaucratic obstacles” to infrastructure projects.

“It doesn’t matter who you are, whether you’re a farmer in the Midwest or a mother driving your kids to and from school, or work, or a college kid flying back and forth to school, you’re affected by infrastructure,” Cohn said.

So, he will have the airlines pay fees to cover this. As if that cost won't be passed on to customers. Not happy here.

[47of74]

I see fuck head had to tweet his written diarrhea;

theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/04/trump-berates-london-mayor-sadiq-khan-terror-attacks

Quote

Donald Trump has criticised the mayor of London, hours after seven people were killed and 48 injured in a terror attack in the centre of the city.

“At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack,” the president wrote on his personal Twitter account, “and Mayor of London says there is ‘no reason to be alarmed!’”

In response, a spokesman for Sadiq Khan said the mayor had “more important things to do than respond to Donald Trump’s ill-informed tweet that deliberately takes out of context his remarks”.

Khan commented on the attacks in a statement overnight and in a television interview earlier on Sunday. In the interview, he said there was “no reason to be

;

 

[JMarie]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

This upsets me so much. So, he wants to put our air safety in the hands of a corporation that will be most concerned with turning a profit. The privatization of prisons hasn't gone well, so let's go ahead and do it with safety. "Trump plans week-long focus on infrastructure, starting with privatizing air traffic control"

  Hide contents

President Trump will seek to put a spotlight on his vows to privatize the nation’s air traffic control system and spur $1 trillion in new investment in roads, waterways and other infrastructure with a weeklong series of events starting Monday at the White House.

The events — billed as “infrastructure week” — are part of a stepped-up effort since the president’s return a week ago from his first foreign trip to show that the White House remains focused on its agenda, despite cascading headlines about investigations into his administration’s ties to Russia.

The president has invited executives from major airlines to join him as he kicks off the week with one of his more controversial plans: spinning off the air traffic control functions of the Federal Aviation Administration to a nonprofit corporation.

It’s an idea that’s been tried many times before dating back to the Clinton administration and most recently last year in legislation championed by Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.), chairman of the House Transportation Committee. His bill never made it to the Senate, where several key GOP members resisted the idea of transferring government assets to a corporation.

Advocates of the idea argue that privatization would speed up glacial efforts by the FAA to modernize a system that still relies on land-based radar at a time when other countries have switched to GPS systems that allow more direct routes at lower costs.

The Trump administration is hoping that with a Republican president, the objections of GOP senators will subside. While a formal introduction of most of Trump’s infrastructure plans are likely months away, the White House plans to send its principles for overhauling the air traffic control system to Congress separately this week.

Some Democrats have voiced support for privatization efforts, but others sharply question whether it should be considered a priority given more pressing infrastructure needs.

Trump’s plans next week also include a trip to the Ohio River, where it separates Ohio and Kentucky, to talk about the importance of waterways and to lay out his vision of infrastructure investments more broadly, aides say. And before the weekend, he will also welcome a bipartisan group of mayors and governors to Washington to discuss the topic and venture to the Transportation Department to talk about roads and railways.

“In many of these areas, we’re falling behind, and the falling behind is affecting economic growth in the United States,” said Gary Cohn, Trump’s chief economic adviser, who is helping lead a task force developing Trump’s infrastructure plan. “The president wants to fix the problem.”

The flurry of planned activity comes as two other marquee Trump promises — overhauling the Affordable Care Act and cutting taxes — remain stalled in Congress, largely because of differences among fellow Republicans and the intricacies of the plans.

It’s unclear whether Trump’s promised infrastructure package, for which the administration hopes to attract bipartisan support, will fare any better when formally introduced in coming months.

Democrats sharply questioned Trump’s commitment to the issue following the administration’s release last month of a budget proposal that, by one accounting, included more cuts to existing infrastructure programs over the next decade than it contemplated in new federal spending.

Citing the analysis by his office, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) declared on the Senate floor that “President Trump’s campaign promises on infrastructure are crumbling faster than our roads and bridges.”

Trump has proposed spending $200 billion over the 10-year period with the aim of attracting a total of at least $1 trillion in new investments with the help of the private sector and state and local governments. Democrats prefer a much larger infusion of federal money.

In a briefing for reporters, Trump administration officials acknowledged the timing of their broader infrastructure package remains up in the air but said that Congress could take action more immediately on a separate bill separating air traffic control functions from the FAA.

For months now, Cohn has been making presentations to interested parties, arguing the benefits of moving to a new GPS-based system. Among other things, he says, GPS will help pilots fly more direct routes, cutting down both flight times and fuel usage.

Cohn and other privatization advocates argue that government procurement rules and the uncertainties of the annual congressional budget process have undercut the FAA’s ability to move in that direction as part of its broader $35.8 billion modernization effort known as NextGen.

Aides say Trump’s proposal will be largely based on Shuster’s legislation. The White House previously called his bill “an excellent starting point” for separating more than 30,000 FAA workers from the government — roughly 14,000 air traffic controllers and more than 16,000 who are working on the FAA’s current modernization program.

Although elements of the ­modernization program have come online, ­reports by the Government ­Accountability Office and the Transportation Department’s inspector general have portrayed the effort as bogged down in bureaucracy.

Instead of current taxes on fuel and airline tickets, Shuster’s plan would rely on fees paid by aircraft operators. The FAA would retain its role as an oversight agency, much like the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which issues auto regulations and recalls faulty vehicles.

Although Shuster’s bill emerged from his committee last year, it never got a vote on the House floor. In the Senate, reaction was lukewarm among some key Republicans.

Some opponents cited concerns about the transition period to a new system, as well as legal difficulties of transferring the FAA’s assets to a nonprofit corporation. Others questioned whether privatization would save money and argued that it could drive up airline ticket costs and pose national security risks.

Another large point of contention has been the makeup of a board that would oversee the nonprofit corporation.

The move to a corporation has been tentatively endorsed by the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, which has argued that spinning off controllers into a private entity would protect them from the threat of government shutdowns and uncertain federal funding.

Meanwhile, other trade groups, including the National Business Aviation Association and the General Aviation Manufacturers Association, have said private air-traffic management would give large airlines too much control and threaten private aviation in smaller communities.

In the briefing for reporters, Cohn pledged that in Trump’s plan “there is money to make sure that rural airports get protected.”

A union representing FAA technical workers has also said it “extremely concerned” about spinning off air traffic control functions.

“Privatizing the air traffic control system is a risky and unnecessary step,” Mike Perrone, president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists, said in a statement in March after Trump signaled interest in moving in that direction.

A recent White House budget document points out that dozens of other nations have moved toward separating air traffic control from the government.

The document highlights Canada as an example of a country that successfully privatized its air management responsibilities two decades ago, a move that has resulted in new infrastructure investments and “cutting-edge air traffic technology.”

If a new U.S. corporation were to develop its own technologies, it could potentially sell its services to other countries, the document says.

The White House’s broader vision for infrastructure relies heavily on the private sector. Administration officials, for example, have floated the idea of selling roads and airports to private investors, which would in turn could free up funds for new projects.

Trump’s initiative is also expected to try to foster more public-private partnerships, including toll roads that would allow private investors to recoup their upfront spending.

In the briefing for reporters, Cohn also stressed the White House’s desire to streamline the government permitting process for new highways and other infrastructure, a prospect that has concerned environmental advocates, among others.

For highways, permitting now takes about 10 years, Cohn said, adding that the White House would like to see that reduced to two years or less.

“Time is money,” Cohn said. “The cost of infrastructure goes up dramatically as time goes on in the approval process.”

Cohn said Trump’s speech Wednesday will touch on his desire for some “targeted transformative projects” as well as a desire to partner with state and local governments and help them overcome “the political and bureaucratic obstacles” to infrastructure projects.

“It doesn’t matter who you are, whether you’re a farmer in the Midwest or a mother driving your kids to and from school, or work, or a college kid flying back and forth to school, you’re affected by infrastructure,” Cohn said.

So, he will have the airlines pay fees to cover this. As if that cost won't be passed on to customers. Not happy here.

Why doesn't he just privatize everything?  That way, he can shrink the government like he promised.

[Destiny]

Fuck you and your twitter account Cheeto. Fuck you.

I can't even with the don't be alarmed tweet.

[apple1]

44 minutes ago, Destiny said:

Fuck you and your twitter account Cheeto. Fuck you.

I can't even with the don't be alarmed tweet.

I am so embarrassed to have to say that he is the president of this country.

[JMarie]

Long but interesting article about Trump and religion

http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2017/politics/state/donald-trump-religion/

[GrumpyGran]

No mystery here. He's a narcissist. He only worships himself. I'm sure he has never attended a church service that he didn't see as an opportunity to get ahead. It's probably hard for him to keep his hand out of the collection plate.

[JMarie]

2 hours ago, GrumpyGran said:

No mystery here. He's a narcissist. He only worships himself. I'm sure he has never attended a church service that he didn't see as an opportunity to get ahead. It's probably hard for him to keep his hand out of the collection plate.

Why would Trump actually attend services?  The congregation would surely expect him to tithe (and would be jumping for joy).  Like Trump would tithe.

[onekidanddone]

57 minutes ago, JMarie said:

Why would Trump actually attend services?  The congregation would surely expect him to tithe (and would be jumping for joy).  Like Trump would tithe.

When asked on the campaign trail if he had ever asked God for forgiveness, he said "No, I've never done anything wrong".   

[nvmbr02]

I was happy to see Sadiq Khan's response. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

7 hours ago, JMarie said:

Why doesn't he just privatize everything?  That way, he can shrink the government like he promised.

With a bonus of making his CEO buddies wealthier at the expense of the American public.

 

"Trump is finding it easier to tear down old policies than to build his own"

Spoiler

Builder-turned-president Donald Trump has in many ways made good on his promise to be a political wrecking ball.

Last week, he withdrew the United States from the Paris climate accord. He has worked to roll back dozens of health, environment, labor and financial rules put in place by former president Barack Obama, and he scrapped a far-reaching trade deal with Asia as one of his first acts in office.

But he and his fellow Republicans have made little progress in building an affirmative agenda of their own, a dynamic that will be on display when Congress returns this week with few major policies ready to advance.

Voters are still waiting for progress on the $1 trillion package of infrastructure projects Trump promised, the wall along the Southern border he insisted could be quickly constructed and the massive tax cuts he touted during the campaign. Even debate over health-care reform is largely focused on eliminating key parts of the Affordable Care Act and allowing states to craft policies in their place.

After being the “party of no” during the Obama years, Republicans are trying to figure out what they want to achieve in this unexpected Trump era — beyond just rolling back what Obama did.

“We are in an ugly era of people who do not understand what the legislative branch is even for,” said Andy Karsner, who served as assistant secretary of energy for efficiency and renewable energy in the George W. Bush administration and is now based in California, working with entrepreneurs as managing partner of the Emerson Collective.

The Trump administration and Republican leadership in Congress, Karsner said, “have no skill set, they have no craftsmanship. They have no connection to the time when people passed legislation.”

Trump’s aides fervently push back at the idea that the president is not already in building mode. Marc Short, Trump’s director of legislative affairs, rattled off a list of things the president has built so far: A better job environment with fewer regulations, relationships with fellow foreign leaders and U.S. lawmakers, a budget and a plan for overhauling health care, along with nominating Neil M. Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court. The administration plans to rollout a number of infrastructure projects this week and tackle tax reform this fall, along with getting started on building the Southern border wall, he said.

“The American people elected him president, in part, to undo much of the damage that President Obama did to our economy,” Short said.

But even some Republicans have raised questions about what the party now stands for, as opposed to what it is against.

Asked during a recent interview for a Politico podcast what the Republican Party stands for now, Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) responded: “I don’t know.”

Sasse said that both parties are “intellectually exhausted” and too focused on winning the next election, prompting them to get caught up in day-to-day fights instead of looking to the future. Later, Sasse was asked to give one word to describe the Republican Party, and he said: “Question mark.”

Short said the Republican Party stands for keeping the country secure and freeing businesses so the economy can boom and taxpayers can keep more of their money. He added that the president has been slowed by congressional Democrats who dragged their feet in approving the cabinet and continue to obstruct Trump’s agenda.

Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), said the appearance that Trump and Republicans are only focused on reversing Obama-era executive actions stems from the fact that “there’s a lot to do there.”

“The one thing that I think is underappreciated is the extent to which the entire Obama agenda in the last term was executed through executive order. Much of what President Trump was elected to do was roll that back,” Holmes said. “To the extent that a lot of this is focused on that, that’s the way you handle it. Most administrations, there are legacies left by signature legislative accomplishments — and [Obama] had health care and Dodd-Frank, but he basically spent six and a half years doing nothing from a legislative perspective.”

Holmes, like many other Republicans, stressed that it’s early in Trump’s term, and he was encouraged to see the president focus on American taxpayers and improving the economy in announcing his decision to leave the Paris agreement on Thursday. That sort of focus will help rally support for tax reform, he said.

“I would be concerned if the trajectory didn’t improve. In the next couple of months, you don’t need signature accomplishments, but you need progress towards it,” Holmes said. “I think tax reform is critically important for this administration — critically important. They’ve got to get it right.”

For many Democrats, all they see in Trump and his fellow Republicans is a bulldozer. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement that the past six months have shown that “the hard right, which has enveloped the Trump administration, is seasoned at being negative but can’t do anything positive.”

Republicans have used the Congressional Review Act to nullify 14 rules enacted by the Obama administration. Before this year, it had only been used successfully once in 20 years. If Trump and Republicans had not reversed these rules, then companies applying for federal contracts would have had to disclose their labor violations; coal mines would have had to reduce the amount of debris dumped into streams; telecommunications companies would have had to take “reasonable measures” to protect their customers’ personal information; individuals receiving Social Security payments for disabling mental illnesses would have been added to a list of those not allowed to buy guns; states would have been limited in the drug-testing they could perform on those receiving unemployment insurance benefits; certain hunting practices would not have been allowed on national wildlife refuges in Alaska; and states could have set up retirement savings plans for those who don’t have the option at work.

Short said the fact that Trump was able to use the Congressional Review Act more than a dozen times when it had only been used once before is “a pretty significant accomplishment” and one that he says will benefit the economy by billions of dollars each year.

“We look at that as one of the biggest accomplishments,” he said.

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) recently touted this rollback of Obama-era regulations while visiting a nuclear power plant in Tonopah, Ariz., bragging that Republicans were able to “reach back into the old administration and pull some of the regulations and start fresh.”

Within agencies, the Trump administration has also worked to scrap regulations that it says hindered businesses.

At the Environmental Protection Agency, the administration has revoked several Obama-era policies aimed at reducing pollution and confronting climate change. Trump has signed an executive order to open up oil and gas drilling in the Atlantic and Arctic oceans, while Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has signed a secretarial order to revisit drilling plans in two reserves in Alaska.

Trump has directed the Labor Department to reverse Obama-era rules imposing restrictions on major banks and investment advisers, and the department’s Office of Health and Safety Administration has also rolled back multiple regulations aimed at fostering worker protections. These include the delay of a rule requiring employers report worker injury and illness records electronically so they can be posted online, and the cancelation of a directive allowing a union official to accompany an OSHA inspector as an employee representative into a nonunion shop.

Multiple agencies have jettisoned or played down policies aimed at fostering LGBT rights. The Department of Housing and Urban Development revoked guidance for a rule requiring that transgender people stay at the sex-segregated shelter of their choice, while the Health and Human Services department has removed questions about sexual orientation from two of the surveys it conducts. The Justice and Education departments, moreover, withdrew guidance issued last year that instructed school districts to provide transgender students with access to facilities that accord with their chosen gender identity.

And while Republicans continue to try to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the Trump administration has begun to unwind aspects of the legislation through executive action, including no longer enforcing a fine for those who do not have health insurance, broadening exemptions for the contraception mandate and encouraging states to file waivers with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Trump has also proposed significant budget cuts, including reducing the State Department budget by 33 percent, the Environmental Protection Agency by 31 percent, the departments of Agriculture and Labor by 21 percent each, the Department of Health and Human Services by 18 percent, the Commerce Department by 16 percent and the Education Department by 14 percent.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said that career employees at the EPA and departments of Labor and State have told him that Trump’s “destroy not build” approach is causing harm that could last for decades.

“They see their life’s work crumbling, because they see a president taking a sledgehammer to really complex aspects of policy,” he said. “They realize there’s pros and cons and conflicting interests, and they’ve tried to reach compromises that he just impulsively destroys because it was a good campaign slogan.”

He's a destroyer, not a builder.

[laPapessaGiovanna]

SCROTUS would never have dared criticise the mayor of London in that way if Khan weren't a brown skinned Muslim. SCROTUS is stupid, embarrassing and dangerous.

[47of74]

8 hours ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

SCROTUS would never have dared criticise the mayor of London in that way if Khan weren't a brown skinned Muslim. SCROTUS is stupid, embarrassing and dangerous.

By the time the orange fornicate is done we will have no friends or allies left at all.  Hell even Russia will probably turn on us the second they figure the orange fornicate's usefulness is at an end. 

[formergothardite]

Yep, in four years we will be all alone. I hope the world can eventually forgive us for inflicting an idiotic orange monster on them. 

[GreyhoundFan]

Good freaking grief: "In Twitter barrage, Trump ramps up push for ‘TRAVEL BAN!’ even as opposition hardens"

Spoiler

President Trump unleashed a fresh barrage of criticism Monday against courts blocking the administration’s travel ban, calling for a fast-track Supreme Court hearing and urging the Justice Department to seek even tougher measures on who enters the United States.

In a series of tweets, Trump circled back on his push for the travel ban in the wake of Saturday’s terrorist attack in London — even as new opposition emerged from Republican and Democratic lawmakers.

Trump also appeared again to disregard the potential legal problems linked to the term “travel ban.” Trump’s use of the phrase was cited by several U.S. district court judges in decisions to stop plans to virtually halt U.S. entry for citizens of six Muslim-majority nations.

The Trump administration’s lawyers — as well as White House spokesman Sean Spicer and other top Trump aides — have argued that Trump’s previous appeals for a “Muslim ban” have no connection to the travel restrictions. The White House claims the rules are needed because of security gaps in the six countries cited.

But Trump’s latest comments possibly undercut that stance by calling the revised order a “politically correct version” — leaving open suggestions that religion was an element of the original order.

“The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C.,” Trump wrote, using initials to refer to the Supreme Court.

Minutes earlier, he posted: “People, the lawyers and the courts can call it whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN!”

Trump also called on the Justice Department to seek an “expedited hearing of the watered down Travel Ban before the Supreme Court ,” and study options for a “much tougher version” in the meantime.

“The Justice Dept. should ask for an expedited hearing of the watered down Travel Ban before the Supreme Court — & seek much tougher version!” Trump tweeted.

But it was Trump who put forward the revised travel ban provisions — dropping Iraq from the list and making other changes — after the original executive order was blocked by court challenges.

On Sunday, several lawmakers suggested in TV interviews that Trump’s proposed ban is no longer necessary since the administration has had the time it claimed it needed to develop beefed-up vetting procedures to screen people coming to the United States.

“It’s been four months since I said they needed four months to put that in place,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), a member of the Intelligence Committee, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “I think you can do that without a travel ban and hopefully we are.”

Sen. Mark R. Warner (Va.), the top Democrat on the panel, said Trump’s administration has had plenty of time at this point to examine how immigrants are let into the United States and make any improvements that are needed. “If the president wanted 90 days to re-examine how individuals from certain countries would enter the United States, he’s had more than 90 days,” Warner said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Trump argued repeatedly on the campaign trail and after his victory that a better system for screening immigrants is imperative to national security. He signed an executive order in mid-March to temporarily suspend the U.S. refugee program and block visas for citizens of Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. He promised to develop more-comprehensive screening that would render the temporary ban unnecessary once in place.

Trump renewed his call for the ban Sunday in response to the Saturday attacks near London Bridge, which left seven dead and dozens injured. The president tweeted: “We need to be smart, vigilant and tough. We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety!”

The travel ban was to last only 90 days, purportedly to buy agencies time to explore new procedures. Federal judges in Maryland and Hawaii have since suspended the ban, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit agreed with the Maryland judge that the order was discriminatory.

The Justice Department interpreted the Hawaii court’s decision to mean federal agencies couldn’t work on new vetting procedures.

“We have put our pens down,” acting U.S. Solicitor General Jeffrey B. Wall told the told the 4th Circuit last month, when questioned about work on new procedures during a separate hearing about the travel ban. Wall said the administration has “done nothing to review the vetting procedures for these countries.”

To get the travel ban reinstated, the Justice Department filed two emergency applications with the Supreme Court last week. If the court allows the development of new vetting procedures to go forward, that could start the clock on another 90 days for the administration to review vetting procedures. But that could also render a Supreme Court decision on the travel ban moot, since the court is not likely to hear that case before October.

That time frame has left some legal experts puzzled about the Trump administration’s intent.

“The enhanced procedures would be in place by the beginning of October,” said Mark Tushnet, a law professor at Harvard University. “By that time, the travel ban would not be in effect.”

As more time goes by with no appearance of effort toward stronger vetting, it could undermine the administration’s legal justification for a temporary travel ban.

“I think the travel ban is too broad, and that is why it’s been rejected by the courts,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said Sunday on “Face the Nation.” “The president is right, however, that we need to do a better job of vetting individuals who are coming from war-torn countries into our nation … but I do believe that the very broad ban that he has proposed is not the right way to go.”

 

What a freaking toddler.

[GrumpyGran]

Ugh, maybe he got shut down by Melania yesterday and it put him in a particularly vile mood. Not going to be a "I'm great!" week for him. Big game of Duck And Hide at the WH this week.

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Good freaking grief: "In Twitter barrage, Trump ramps up push for ‘TRAVEL BAN!’ even as opposition hardens"

  Hide contents

President Trump unleashed a fresh barrage of criticism Monday against courts blocking the administration’s travel ban, calling for a fast-track Supreme Court hearing and urging the Justice Department to seek even tougher measures on who enters the United States.

In a series of tweets, Trump circled back on his push for the travel ban in the wake of Saturday’s terrorist attack in London — even as new opposition emerged from Republican and Democratic lawmakers.

Trump also appeared again to disregard the potential legal problems linked to the term “travel ban.” Trump’s use of the phrase was cited by several U.S. district court judges in decisions to stop plans to virtually halt U.S. entry for citizens of six Muslim-majority nations.

The Trump administration’s lawyers — as well as White House spokesman Sean Spicer and other top Trump aides — have argued that Trump’s previous appeals for a “Muslim ban” have no connection to the travel restrictions. The White House claims the rules are needed because of security gaps in the six countries cited.

But Trump’s latest comments possibly undercut that stance by calling the revised order a “politically correct version” — leaving open suggestions that religion was an element of the original order.

“The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C.,” Trump wrote, using initials to refer to the Supreme Court.

Minutes earlier, he posted: “People, the lawyers and the courts can call it whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN!”

Trump also called on the Justice Department to seek an “expedited hearing of the watered down Travel Ban before the Supreme Court ,” and study options for a “much tougher version” in the meantime.

“The Justice Dept. should ask for an expedited hearing of the watered down Travel Ban before the Supreme Court — & seek much tougher version!” Trump tweeted.

But it was Trump who put forward the revised travel ban provisions — dropping Iraq from the list and making other changes — after the original executive order was blocked by court challenges.

On Sunday, several lawmakers suggested in TV interviews that Trump’s proposed ban is no longer necessary since the administration has had the time it claimed it needed to develop beefed-up vetting procedures to screen people coming to the United States.

“It’s been four months since I said they needed four months to put that in place,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), a member of the Intelligence Committee, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “I think you can do that without a travel ban and hopefully we are.”

Sen. Mark R. Warner (Va.), the top Democrat on the panel, said Trump’s administration has had plenty of time at this point to examine how immigrants are let into the United States and make any improvements that are needed. “If the president wanted 90 days to re-examine how individuals from certain countries would enter the United States, he’s had more than 90 days,” Warner said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Trump argued repeatedly on the campaign trail and after his victory that a better system for screening immigrants is imperative to national security. He signed an executive order in mid-March to temporarily suspend the U.S. refugee program and block visas for citizens of Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. He promised to develop more-comprehensive screening that would render the temporary ban unnecessary once in place.

Trump renewed his call for the ban Sunday in response to the Saturday attacks near London Bridge, which left seven dead and dozens injured. The president tweeted: “We need to be smart, vigilant and tough. We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety!”

The travel ban was to last only 90 days, purportedly to buy agencies time to explore new procedures. Federal judges in Maryland and Hawaii have since suspended the ban, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit agreed with the Maryland judge that the order was discriminatory.

The Justice Department interpreted the Hawaii court’s decision to mean federal agencies couldn’t work on new vetting procedures.

“We have put our pens down,” acting U.S. Solicitor General Jeffrey B. Wall told the told the 4th Circuit last month, when questioned about work on new procedures during a separate hearing about the travel ban. Wall said the administration has “done nothing to review the vetting procedures for these countries.”

To get the travel ban reinstated, the Justice Department filed two emergency applications with the Supreme Court last week. If the court allows the development of new vetting procedures to go forward, that could start the clock on another 90 days for the administration to review vetting procedures. But that could also render a Supreme Court decision on the travel ban moot, since the court is not likely to hear that case before October.

That time frame has left some legal experts puzzled about the Trump administration’s intent.

“The enhanced procedures would be in place by the beginning of October,” said Mark Tushnet, a law professor at Harvard University. “By that time, the travel ban would not be in effect.”

As more time goes by with no appearance of effort toward stronger vetting, it could undermine the administration’s legal justification for a temporary travel ban.

“I think the travel ban is too broad, and that is why it’s been rejected by the courts,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said Sunday on “Face the Nation.” “The president is right, however, that we need to do a better job of vetting individuals who are coming from war-torn countries into our nation … but I do believe that the very broad ban that he has proposed is not the right way to go.”

 

What a freaking toddler.

I'm so glad he's addicted to his twitter bucket and spade.

'Cuz don't you just love the way he keeps digging his own grave with those tantrum tweets of his? 

[GreyhoundFan]

"It’s time to bust the myth: Most Trump voters were not working class."

Spoiler

Media coverage of the 2016 election often emphasized Donald Trump’s appeal to the working class. The Atlantic said that “the billionaire developer is building a blue-collar foundation.” The Associated Press wondered what “Trump’s success in attracting white, working-class voters” would mean for his general election strategy. On Nov. 9, the New York Times front-page article about Trump’s victory characterized it as “a decisive demonstration of power by a largely overlooked coalition of mostly blue-collar white and working-class voters.”

There’s just one problem: this account is wrong. Trump voters were not mostly working-class people.

During the primaries, Trump supporters were mostly affluent people.

The misrepresentation of Trump’s working-class support began in the primaries. In a widely read March 2016 piece, the writer Thomas Frank, for instance, argued at length that “working-class white people … make up the bulk of Trump’s fan base.” Many journalists found colorful examples of working-class Trump supporters at early campaign rallies. But were those anecdotes an accurate representation of the emerging Trump coalition?

There were good reasons to be skeptical. For one, most 2016 polls didn’t include information about how the people surveyed earned a living, that is, their occupations — the preferred measure of social class among scholars. When journalists wrote that Trump was appealing to working-class voters, they didn’t really know whether Trump voters were construction workers or CEOs.

Moreover, according to what is arguably the next-best measure of class, household income, Trump supporters didn’t look overwhelmingly “working class” during the primaries. To the contrary, many polls showed that Trump supporters were mostly affluent Republicans. For example, a March 2016 NBC survey that we analyzed showed that only a third of Trump supporters had household incomes at or below the national median of about $50,000. Another third made $50,000 to $100,000, and another third made $100,000 or more and that was true even when we limited the analysis to only non-Hispanic whites. If being working class means being in the bottom half of the income distribution, the vast majority of Trump supporters during the primaries were not working class.

But what about education? Many pundits noticed early on that Trump’s supporters were mostly people without college degrees. There were two problems with this line of reasoning, however. First, not having a college degree isn’t a guarantee that someone belongs in the working class (think Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg). And, second, although more than 70 percent of Trump supporters didn’t have college degrees, when we looked at the NBC polling data, we noticed something the pundits left out: during the primaries, about 70 percent of all Republicans didn’t have college degrees, close to the national average (71 percent according to the 2013 Census). Far from being a magnet for the less educated, Trump seemed to have about as many people without college degrees in his camp as we would expect any successful Republican candidate to have.

Trump voters weren’t majority working class in the general election, either.

What about the general election? A few weeks ago, the American National Election Study — the longest-running election survey in the United States — released its 2016 survey data. And it showed that in November 2016, the Trump coalition looked a lot like it did during the primaries.

Among people who said they voted for Trump in the general election, 35 percent had household incomes under $50,000 per year (the figure was also 35 percent among non-Hispanic whites), almost exactly the percentage in NBC’s March 2016 survey. Trump’s voters weren’t overwhelmingly poor. In the general election, like the primary, about two thirds of Trump supporters came from the better-off half of the economy.

But, again, what about education? Many analysts have argued that the partisan divide between more and less educated people is bigger than ever. During the general election, 69 percent of Trump voters in the election study didn’t have college degrees. Isn’t that evidence that the working class made up most of Trump’s base?

The truth is more complicated: many of the voters without college educations who supported Trump were relatively affluent. The graph below breaks down white non-Hispanic voters by income and education. Among people making under the median household income of $50,000, there was a 15 to 20 percentage-point difference in Trump support between those with a college degree and those without. But the same gap was present — and actually larger — among Americans making more than $50,000 and $100,000 annually.

...

Observers have often used the education gap to conjure images of poor people flocking to Trump, but the truth is, many of the people without college degrees who voted for Trump were from middle- and high-income households. That’s the basic problem with using education to measure the working class.

In short, the narrative that attributes Trump’s victory to a “coalition of mostly blue-collar white and working-class voters” just doesn’t square with the 2016 election data. According to the election study, white non-Hispanic voters without college degrees making below the median household income made up only 25 percent of Trump voters. That’s a far cry from the working-class-fueled victory many journalists have imagined.

Forget the narrative

A recent National Review article about Trump’s alleged support among the working class bordered on a call to arms against the less fortunate, saying that, “The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin” and that “the truth about these dysfunctional downscale communities is that they deserve to die.”

This kind of stereotyping and scapegoating is a dismaying consequence of the narrative that working-class Americans swept Trump into the White House. It’s time to let go of that narrative.

What deserves to die isn’t America’s working-class communities. It’s the myth that they’re the reason Trump was elected.

Yet, the media seems to only hunt out under-educated rural people to interview about their love for Agent Orange.

[Destiny]

SCROTUS would never have dared criticise the mayor of London in that way if Khan weren't a brown skinned Muslim. SCROTUS is stupid, embarrassing and dangerous.

I just woke up and saw today's damage report. I'm so embarrassed. This is not how a world leader acts.

[JMarie]

23 hours ago, JMarie said:

Why doesn't he just privatize everything?  That way, he can shrink the government like he promised.

And it's starting.  Nice diversion, Trump.

Quote

President Trump announced Monday a plan to privatize the nation's air traffic control system — a move that would remove the job of tracking and guiding airplanes from the purview of the Federal Aviation Administration.

"Today we're proposing to take American air travel into the future, finally," Trump said.

The nation's air traffic control system was designed when far fewer people flew, Trump said, calling it "stuck, painfully, in the past." He also called the system "ancient, broken, antiquated" and "horrible" and said his reforms would make it safer and more reliable.

The FAA has worked to upgrade its system, but Trump and other critics say it was taking far too long. "Honestly, they didn't know what the hell they were doing," Trump said. "A total waste of money."

Privatization of air traffic control is an idea long supported by most of the commercial airlines. Executives from those companies joined the president at the White House to announce the plan.

Guided by legislation that has been proposed in the past by House Transportation Committee chairman Bill Shuster, a private, non-profit corporation would be created to operate, manage and control ATC nationwide, similar to what Canada does. The FAA would still have some oversight capacity, but a board made up mostly of representatives of the major airlines would govern this corporation.

The air traffic controllers' union is generally supportive of the proposal, as they see the current FAA air traffic control system as somewhat inefficient. The Shuster plan would still allow for the controllers to be part of the union.

The FAA says it has modernized in recent years by updating its computers and other systems. Administrator Michael Huerta told an industry conference in March that the agency has made "tremendous progress," per the Associated Press.

But some groups have been critical of efforts to privatize air traffic control operations, saying it gives the airlines too much control over they system for their own benefit.

The group Flyers' Rights calls it the "creation of an airline controlled corporate monopoly." It also says privatizing air traffic control amounts to "handing the airlines (for free) control over a core public asset, and providing them nearly unbridled power to extract new fees and increased taxes from passengers."

Trump has been critical in the past of the FAA and air traffic control, saying his personal pilot has complained about how out of date and inefficient the agency is.

Trump's plan to privatize air traffic control operations will likely be included in legislation re-authorizing the FAA. The Senate Transportation Committee will discuss the proposal on Wednesday, with Trump's Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao testifying. Chao will again address the issue before the House Transportation Committee on Thursday.

This plan is part of Trump's broader infrastructure vision. He may also talk Monday more broadly about what he has called "third world airports" in particular, as he launches what the White House is calling the President's "infrastructure week."

Trump will be in Cincinnati on Wednesday to continue talking about infrastructure, focusing on inland waterways on the Ohio river including aging dams.

Well, if his personal pilot doesn't like it, it must not be good.

[GreyhoundFan]

This is an interesting perspective: "Trying to impeach Trump too soon would be the best way to keep him in office"

Spoiler

For a growing number of President Trump’s critics, there’s already ample cause to start impeachment proceedings against him.

Last month, Trump fired FBI director James B. Comey and admitted on national television that Comey’s dismissal was connected to the bureau’s investigation into whether Trump’s associates colluded with the Russians in last year’s campaign, a fiasco that resulted in the appointment of a special counsel to handle the investigation. During a closed-door meeting with Russian officials the next day, Trump reportedly told them he got rid of Comey because he was a “nut job,” and then shared highly classified information from a U.S. ally later revealed to be Israel, endangering a major intelligence-sharing relationship.

Meanwhile, revelations concerning those in Trump’s inner circle continue to raise questions about what Trump knew and when: Trump’s transition team was reportedly aware before the inauguration that former national security adviser Michael Flynn was under federal investigation, and it recently came to light that Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and White House adviser, discussed with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak about possibly using Russian facilities to set up a back channel for secret communications between the Kremlin and the Trump transition team.

Against this backdrop, it’s not surprising that the call for impeachment has officially hit the floor of the House. But for members of Congress who believe Trump must go, it would be a serious mistake to join that call prematurely. Pushing too early to impeach Trump might be the surest way to keep him in office.

A few key practical considerations weigh heavily in favor of caution. Perhaps most notably, if a concerted attempt to impeach or convict Trump fails, it will be extraordinarily difficult to assemble the political will to try a second time, even if an entirely new factual basis emerges. Call it the double-jeopardy problem, special presidential edition.

Our history of impeachments, while thin, makes clear that both phases of the removal process require an enormous expenditure of time and energy — the kind that is unlikely to be readily attempted twice. It took the House Judiciary Committee almost six months to approve and refer to the full House formal articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon after being granted the authority to investigate whether impeachment was warranted. After Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were successfully impeached, the Senate took two months just to acquit each of the charges.

The problems that a first failed removal attempt will create for a second attempt are worth consideration because of the nature of the alleged misconduct and conflicts that have plagued the Trump presidency. Trump’s administration has not been derailed by a one-off scandal of dubious public dimension, like an affair with a White House intern, or even multiple abuses stemming from a discrete event, such as a break-in at a rival political party’s headquarters. Trump’s short tenure has instead been marked by an unprecedented pattern of incompetence, ethical improprieties and financial conflicts, as well as pointed disregard for national security protocol and for fact-based national security assessments. And that’s before we even get to the Russia probes. All of these factors suggest impeachment might be appropriate tomorrow even if it isn’t appropriate or sufficiently popular to garner the consensus necessary for Trump’s ouster today.

Commentators like to point out that during the Constitution’s drafting, James Madison emphasized that an impeachment clause was “indispensable” to safeguard the community against “the incapacity, negligence or perfidy of the chief Magistrate.” In other words, the availability of the option is important to the well-being and security of our country. That means taking a protective rather than promiscuous approach to impeachment, with an understanding that it is a defensive weapon whose use can, as a political matter, probably be attempted only once.

Patience is all the more crucial given the tremendous uncertainty created by the ongoing Justice Department and congressional investigations into possible collusion between the Trump team and Russia. Last month, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat of the House Intelligence Committee, rightly cautioned against rushing to action “without understanding the full evidence of what the president may or may not have done.” This is true in a general sense; an incomplete picture is always a problematic basis for a measure as drastic as impeachment, whether the public official is a federal judge or the president of the United States.

But Schiff’s warning is also a helpful reminder that the various open Russia investigations serve as a kind of wild card in the public imagination. Because questions about the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia remain unresolved, impeachment for any related alleged misconduct will be widely seen as premature. That perception, in turn, will undermine the consensus required for successful removal. The House needs only a simple majority to impeach the president for “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” But two-thirds of the Senate must vote to convict. This is not just an extremely high bar — it’s a bar that has never been cleared in our history.

Some have argued that we are in impeachment territory irrespective of the findings of those investigations, based on what we already know of Trump’s statements and actions. Most prominently, constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe argues that, by Trump’s own admission, his firing of Comey was motivated by the FBI’s Russia probe and therefore constitutes clear obstruction of justice. But the political reality is that the perceived legitimacy of impeaching Trump for obstruction of the FBI’s Russia investigation will turn in great part on how that investigation itself shakes out. If you doubt this, imagine for a moment that Trump is impeached and convicted of obstruction of justice for firing Comey or similar conduct, and that he and his team are subsequently cleared of any criminal wrongdoing regarding Russia’s interference in the election. No result could better support Trump’s claim that the Russia investigation was, all along, a baseless “witch hunt” designed to bring him down.

Under any administration, impeachment must be broached with great reluctance. As the late Yale Law professor Charles Black explained in his famous little handbook on impeachment, first published during the Watergate crisis, “[t]he presidency is a prime symbol of our national unity.” Given “the deep wounding such a step must inflict on the country,” Black argued that we must resort to dismantling the presidency “only when the rightness of diagnosis and treatment is sure.”

But in these abnormal times, Black’s plea for nonpartisan sure-footedness is all the more compelling. Where its rightness is unsure, an impeachment effort risks our national unity. Where its results are uncertain, such an effort could take a viable tool off the table for future crises and risk our national security as well.

I want him out as much as anyone, but the article is correct, we will only get one shot, so it needs to count.

[onekidanddone]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

This is an interesting perspective: "Trying to impeach Trump too soon would be the best way to keep him in office"

I want him out as much as anyone, but the article is correct, we will only get one shot, so it needs to count.

The night of the first Muslim so called travel ban, I was jumping up and down getting all stabby wanting him gone. My husband reminded me once again (and many times before and since) on the issue of double jeopardy. Does this article mean I'm going to have to admit he is right?

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump’s diplomacy of narcissism only makes him look weak"

Spoiler

The problem with “America First” is that it describes an attitude, not a purpose. It substitutes selfishness for realism.

It implies that nations can go it alone, that we stand for nothing beyond our immediate self-interest, and that we should give little thought to how the rest of humanity thinks or lives. It suggests that if we are strong enough, we can prosper no matter how much chaos, disorder or injustice surrounds us.

America First leads to the diplomacy of narcissism, to use what has become a loaded word in the Trump era. And narcissism is as unhealthy for nations as it is for people.

Perhaps the best approach to the problem as it affects us both individually and collectively was offered by Rabbi Hillel, who lived in the century before the birth of Christ. Hillel’s lesson to us began with two questions: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I?”

Precisely. All of us should be prepared to stand up for ourselves. We are patriots because we love our own land in a way we can love no other. But we live in a world of more than 7 billion people and nearly 200 countries. Does our nation not stand for something more than its own existence? Can we possibly survive and prosper if we are only for ourselves?

A constricted view of identity encourages destructive ways of thinking and, paradoxically, actions that reduce the United States’ long-term influence. Almost as disturbing as the irresponsibility of President Trump’s decision to abdicate U.S. global leadership on the environment by pulling out of the Paris climate accord was the language he used to justify it. He cast the United States — our beloved republic — as stupid and easily duped, not the shaper of its own fate but the victim of invidious foreign leaders whom he cast as far shrewder than we are.

“The rest of the world applauded when we signed the Paris agreement — they went wild; they were so happy — for the simple reason that it put our country, the United States of America, which we all love, at a very, very big economic disadvantage,” Trump declared. “A cynic would say the obvious reason for economic competitors and their wish to see us remain in the agreement is so that we continue to suffer this self-inflicted major economic wound.”

Really? Our very best friends in the world, starting with Canada, were just trying to scam us? The climate pact was not even a little bit about staving off a catastrophe for the planet we all share? Should we take no pride in helping nudge the environment in a better direction?

And does Trump truly believe that President Barack Obama and the leaders of General Electric, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Google, IBM, BP, Disney and Shell are naive idiots? One more question: How could what even Trump had to concede is a “nonbinding” agreement bring about all the horrors he described?

A diplomacy of narcissism is of a piece, to borrow from the historian Richard Hofstadter, with the paranoid style of this president. In his statement, Trump spoke of “foreign lobbyists” who “wish to keep our magnificent country tied up and bound down by this agreement.” He painted our nation as a pitiful heap of insecurity. “At what point does America get demeaned?” he asked. “At what point do they start laughing at us as a country?”

If anyone is laughing after Trump’s decision, it is our actual enemies and adversaries. They welcome a U.S. leader who wants to rip up or weaken alliances and other forms of collective security that our own practical visionaries, since the days of Harry Truman, Dean Acheson and George Marshall, put in place to advance our purposes.

Tragically, this choice was partly driven by selfish political motives. This only reinforces how narrow a definition of self-interest is in play here. Trump seems to realize how much trouble he is in from the metastasizing Russia story. So he sought to appeal to his political base, shrunken though it is, by re-embracing his “nationalist” side. He said he’d pull out of the Paris agreement and, by God, he did it! Doesn’t that make him look strong?

Quite the opposite. The genuinely strong regularly ponder Hillel’s second inquiry, “If I am only for myself, what am I?” I don’t expect Trump to be troubled by this question, but as a nation, we cannot give up asking it.

Unfortunately, the TT can't understand anything complex like thinking about others.

[fraurosena]

Heh.

 

Oh, and continuing on from @GreyhoundFan's post above, Der Spiegel just published the minutes from the narcissistic Tangerine Toddler’s contentious meeting with the G7 leaders.

Quote

German magazine Der Spiegel has been given access to minutes from a contentiousmeeting of G7 leaders in Taormina, Sicily, at the end of May, in which they applied last-ditch pressure on President Donald Trump to stay in the Paris climate agreement.

The meeting came toward the end of Trump's first trip abroad as president—and became an opportunity for world leaders to intensely lobby the American president before Trump's final decision on whether the United States would leave the historic climate accord.

The leaders told Trump in no uncertain terms that if the United States abandoned the agreement, China would be the direct beneficiary.

"Climate change is real and it affects the poorest countries," said Emmanuel Macron, the newly elected French president, at the outset of the private conversation.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau then told Trump that the success of repairing the ozone layer proved that industry could be persuaded to act on harmful emissions, according to the account.

Then, German Chancellor Angela Merkel brought up China: "If the world's largest economic power were to pull out, the field would be left to the Chinese," she said. According to Der Spiegel, Merkel added that Chinese President Xi Jinping was preparing to take advantage of the vacuum left by America's exit. Even Saudi Arabia, she added, was preparing for a world without oil.

Trump was unmoved. "For me," the president reportedly said, "it's easier to stay in than step out," adding that green regulations were killing American jobs.

As it became clear Trump would not budge, Macron admitted defeat, according to this account.

"Now China leads," he said.

The account adds fresh details to the president's fraught European trip. Following the meeting, the G7 broke with tradition to release a statement where six nations reaffirmed the Paris climate agreement, without the United States. The president also caused a diplomatic scuffle in Italy after accusing Germany of being "very bad" on trade and appeared to literally shove aside a leader of a NATO ally.

In a Rose Garden ceremony last Thursday, Trump announced that the United States would leave the historic Paris climate agreement—promising to "begin negotiations to reenter either the Paris accord or an entirely new transaction on terms that are fair to the United States."

In response to the president's announcement, President Macron of France released a video statement, saying, "If we do nothing, our children will know a world of migrations, of wars, of shortage. A dangerous world."