Marco Rubio’s widely mocked justification for acquitting Donald Trump, which conspicuously avoided condemning or approving the president’s conduct, was not exactly a profile in courage. The Florida Republican nevertheless laid out a defensible position that rejected a dangerously broad claim by Trump’s lawyers, and in that respect he set an example his fellow senators should follow if they want to preserve impeachment as a remedy for grave abuses of presidential power.
“Just because actions meet a standard of impeachment does not mean it is in the best interest of the country to remove a President from office,” Rubio said. While many of Trump’s critics portrayed that line as self-evidently absurd, there is a valid distinction between impeachment and removal, and between the constitutionality and the wisdom of using those powers.
For months, Trump’s defenders have been warning us that the promiscuous use of impeachment is a lethal threat to democracy and our constitutional order. Since no Congress has actually removed a president in the 231 years since George Washington started his first term (although Richard Nixon resigned under threat of impeachment), those concerns seem misplaced as a general matter.
If anything, as the Cato Institute’s Gene Healy has argued, the impeachment power has been sorely neglected in the face of many abuses that would have justified its use. Still, it is reasonable to wonder whether a hasty, party-line impeachment, followed by a hasty, party-line acquittal, is the best way to invigorate this check on presidential power.
Impeachment has always been and will always be a largely partisan process. But an impeachment cannot be credible if the public believes it is driven solely by political or personal animus.
As someone who does not feel at home in either of the two major parties, I was persuaded that Trump committed a serious abuse of power by pressuring the Ukrainian government to investigate a political rival, partly by withholding congressionally approved military aid. But the House’s case, which suffered from an arbitrary, self-imposed deadline, was not strong enough to convince a single Republican that impeachment was warranted.
Since Rubio voted with almost all of his fellow Republicans against hearing witnesses or seeking relevant documents, he could not credibly complain that the evidence was inadequate to prove the allegations against the president. Instead he argued that even if all of the charges were true, they would not justify Trump’s removal nine months before he faces re-election, taking into account both “the severity of the wrongdoing alleged” and “the impact removal would have on the nation” given “the bitter divisions and deep polarization our country currently faces.”
Notably, Rubio did not agree that Trump’s actions vis-à-vis Ukraine were “perfectly appropriate,” as the president’s lawyers insisted. And he explicitly rejected “the argument that ‘Abuse of Power’ can never constitute grounds for removal unless a crime or a crime-like action is alleged”—a position at odds with the historical evidence and the scholarly consensus.
Even if you agree with Rubio (and half of your fellow Americans) that Trump’s conduct did not justify his removal, you should hesitate before endorsing the idea that impeachment requires a criminal violation or something closely resembling it. There are many ways in which a president can violate the public trust without violating the law.
If “an impeachable offense requires a violation of established law,” as Trump’s lawyers maintained, Congress would have to tolerate a president who accedes to a foreign invasion, who uses prosecutorial discretion to nullify laws he does not like, who stubbornly stonewalls inquiries into his misconduct, who withholds federal funds to coerce state officials into assisting his re-election, who uses the IRS or the Justice Department to target his enemies, or who pardons himself or his cronies to avoid scandal or criminal liability. Keeping in mind that the White House will not always be occupied by a member of their party, Republicans should think long and hard before they help weave this blanket of presidential impunity.
Marco Rubio’s widely mocked justification for acquitting Donald Trump, which conspicuously avoided condemning or approving the president’s conduct, was not exactly a profile in courage. The Florida Republican nevertheless laid out a defensible position that rejected a dangerously broad claim by Trump’s lawyers, and in that respect he set an example his fellow senators should follow if they want to preserve impeachment as a remedy for grave abuses of presidential power.
“Just because actions meet a standard of impeachment does not mean it is in the best interest of the country to remove a President from office,” Rubio said. While many of Trump’s critics portrayed that line as self-evidently absurd, there is a valid distinction between impeachment and removal, and between the constitutionality and the wisdom of using those powers.
For months, Trump’s defenders have been warning us that the promiscuous use of impeachment is a lethal threat to democracy and our constitutional order. Since no Congress has actually removed a president in the 231 years since George Washington started his first term (although Richard Nixon resigned under threat of impeachment), those concerns seem misplaced as a general matter.
If anything, as the Cato Institute’s Gene Healy has argued, the impeachment power has been sorely neglected in the face of many abuses that would have justified its use. Still, it is reasonable to wonder whether a hasty, party-line impeachment, followed by a hasty, party-line acquittal, is the best way to invigorate this check on presidential power.
Impeachment has always been and will always be a largely partisan process. But an impeachment cannot be credible if the public believes it is driven solely by political or personal animus.
As someone who does not feel at home in either of the two major parties, I was persuaded that Trump committed a serious abuse of power by pressuring the Ukrainian government to investigate a political rival, partly by withholding congressionally approved military aid. But the House’s case, which suffered from an arbitrary, self-imposed deadline, was not strong enough to convince a single Republican that impeachment was warranted.
Since Rubio voted with almost all of his fellow Republicans against hearing witnesses or seeking relevant documents, he could not credibly complain that the evidence was inadequate to prove the allegations against the president. Instead he argued that even if all of the charges were true, they would not justify Trump’s removal nine months before he faces re-election, taking into account both “the severity of the wrongdoing alleged” and “the impact removal would have on the nation” given “the bitter divisions and deep polarization our country currently faces.”
Notably, Rubio did not agree that Trump’s actions vis-à-vis Ukraine were “perfectly appropriate,” as the president’s lawyers insisted. And he explicitly rejected “the argument that ‘Abuse of Power’ can never constitute grounds for removal unless a crime or a crime-like action is alleged”—a position at odds with the historical evidence and the scholarly consensus.
Even if you agree with Rubio (and half of your fellow Americans) that Trump’s conduct did not justify his removal, you should hesitate before endorsing the idea that impeachment requires a criminal violation or something closely resembling it. There are many ways in which a president can violate the public trust without violating the law.
If “an impeachable offense requires a violation of established law,” as Trump’s lawyers maintained, Congress would have to tolerate a president who accedes to a foreign invasion, who uses prosecutorial discretion to nullify laws he does not like, who stubbornly stonewalls inquiries into his misconduct, who withholds federal funds to coerce state officials into assisting his re-election, who uses the IRS or the Justice Department to target his enemies, or who pardons himself or his cronies to avoid scandal or criminal liability. Keeping in mind that the White House will not always be occupied by a member of their party, Republicans should think long and hard before they help weave this blanket of presidential impunity.
It was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment within President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday night, but the president appeared to acknowledge that his trade policies haven’t been a winner for American manufacturing.
How else to explain this bit of modesty from the otherwise braggadocious Trump? Here’s what the president said [emphasis mine]:
“After losing 60,000 factories under the previous two administrations, America has now gained 12,000 new factories under my Administration with thousands upon thousands of plants and factories being planned or built. We have created over half a million new manufacturing jobs.“
That sounds pretty impressive. Unless you know that Trump said this during last year’s State of the Union: “We have created 5.3 million new jobs and, importantly, added 600,000 new manufacturing jobs, something which almost everyone said was impossible to do.”
There’s enough ambiguity—probably on purpose—in what Trump said tonight to make it tough to say he’s lowering his boasts. But the fact of that matter is that manufacturing job growth has been in recession, according to the Federal Reserve, for most of the past year. That’s largely thanks to the very trade policies that the Trump administration continues to say will help that sector of the economy.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, America had 12.3 million manufacturing jobs in January 2017 when Trump took office. That was up from a historical low of 11.4 million such jobs in March 2010 at the trough of Great Recession. By last February, there were 12.8 manufacturing jobs—an increase of just over 500,000 during his tenure, but we’ll let the president slide for a slight overestimation there.
Now? There are still 12.8 million manufacturing jobs in America.
Rather than accelerating manufacturing job growth, it seems like Trump has presided over a notable slowdown.
Contra Trump, these are not signals that businesses are making the necessary expenditures to build more factories and increase jobs. And Trump’s tariffs have extracted $46 billion out of American companies since March 2018, which probably helps explain why it has been difficult to expand.
It’s true that the signing of a new North American trade pact and a “Phase One” deal with China—which is mostly just an agreement to avoid further escalations in the trade war—are likely to restore some confidence, and may spur investment this year.
But the fact remains that Trump’s bellicose trade policies have been a self-inflicted wound on an otherwise strong economy. Maybe that’s because Trump is ignorant about the basics of global trade. Maybe it’s because his advisors are giving him bad advice.
Either way, the fact that the White House couldn’t find a better way to spin a manufacturing recession at the State of the Union says a lot about how economic reality is dealing a blow to the Trump administration’s protectionist fantasies.
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2uaKzyk
via IFTTT
Anyone familiar with the Bible is familiar with the Mark of the Beast: Without this mark, no man may buy or sell.
Regardless of one’s religious faith or lack thereof, there is an illustrative case in this biblical story: When one cannot buy or sell, one is metaphorically up the creek. Short of producing everything one needs oneself, buying and selling are necessary parts of virtually every modern person’s life.
In our modern world, we can begin to see a sort of Mark of the Beast: While ideas and even objects aren’t banned, they are increasingly difficult to come by, not due to government fiat, but due to the machinations of corporations hostile to the American values of freedom.
One can be in favor of the free market while recognizing a simple truth: There is no way that America’s Founding Fathers would have sat on their hands while five corporations dominated American discourse and commerce. It is hard to imagine, for example, the Founders suffering a single private bank processing most of the payments in the United States and refusing to do business with gun merchants. Alternately, one can scarcely imagine that the Founders would have sat still for three companies – all of them hostile toward American values and the Constitution – dominating political discourse and deplatforming anyone who opposed them.
This is the situation in which we find ourselves as a nation today: Guns are not illegal, but private companies will make it increasingly difficult to buy, sell or own them – up to and including pulling your bank account. You have all the freedom of speech you like, but prepare to be deplatformed or have your voice buried by large tech corporations with their thumb on the scale of American discourse.
As the American economy has become more corporatist – such that the market is controlled by the interrelation between monolithic mega-corporations, Wall Street and the state – and less capitalistic and dynamic, the American press and economy are now being dominated by forces hostile toward the American public and American values.
No less an authority than James Madison warned Americans that the First Amendment alone was not enough to protect free speech. In Federalist No. 47 and Federalist No. 51, he argued that the separation of powers was necessary to protect free speech by preventing one branch of government from accumulating too much power at the expense of the others and, indeed, the rest of society at large.
This is an important point to remember when considering the First Amendment implications of Big Tech and its war on free speech and gun freedom. The Founding Fathers did not live in a world where a few large corporations had more power than the (incredibly limited and power impoverished) government had, either at the federal or the state level. It’s doubtful that they could have conceived of such a thing.
But they did carefully consider the problem of centralized power as it pertained to the rights enshrined in the Constitution. At the end of the day, the Constitution is just a piece of paper with no ability to enforce itself. What’s more, if the Founders did not address the notion that the private sector could meaningfully and substantially circumvent rights for all Americans, it was simply
Corporate Big Brother: Banks as Gun Control
Who needs to pass gun control laws anymore? The left can simply appeal to payment systems, banks and processors as a method of non-state gun control.
Case in point: Andrew Ross Sorkin’s December 2018 article decrying credit card companies for “financing” mass shootings. As with many arguments from the left, the premise is flawed, but very simple: Because eight out of 13 shootings that killed more than 10 people in the 2010s involved a credit card purchase (though, as always, it is worth asking what counts as a mass shooting and what is being left out of the tally – more on this here), credit card companies have a responsibility to step up and stop allowing their customers to make purchases for firearms using credit cards.
This effectively amounts to a request for banks to begin surveilling the legal economic activity of their customers.
It’s not far-fetched to consider that some mass shootings have been facilitated by credit card purchases. The Orlando nightclub shooter Omar Mateen as well as Aurora theater shooter James Holmes used credit cards to purchase the weapons and ammunition they ultimately used to commit mass murder.
But mass shootings, particularly those not part of urban gang warfare, are incredibly rare, despite the overwhelming amount of media attention paid to them. What’s more, while statistics for such would be difficult to formulate, the vast, overwhelming majority of firearms and ammunition purchases made with credit cards are made by law-abiding citizens for entirely legal purposes. For most Americans, firearms purchases can be a spike in their normal spending for the month. And what of it? The call for credit card companies and other payment processors to monitor the economic activity of law-abiding citizens would cause an outrage if the government were to do it, so why is the American public supposed to sit still for an invasion of their privacy simply because a private company is performing the surveillance?
Anyone who has ever made a firearms purchase knows that the bill can add up quickly. The oft-demonized AR-15 can easily top $4,000 when the price of a scope, rifle case and a decent cache of ammunition are added to the bill. Even a humble handgun purchase can quickly hit over $1,000 when a good holster and ammo are tacked on. This means that millions of Americans purchasing firearms for no reason other than recreation or self defense are going to have their personal finances investigated by a corporate Big Brother, with all the lack of transparency one can expect from a massive bank whose starting premise is “guilty until proven innocent.”
The attempt by the left to get banks to snoop on legal purchases amounts to nothing more than the stigmatization of the exercise of one of the rights enshrined in our Constitution. And while some would argue that the Constitution only limits the government’s actions, it must constantly be asked why we should allow for such an intrusion into our private lives simply because a private company is doing it.
“If you don’t like it, just make your own credit card company.”
Hardly.
Corporate Gun Control and the Mark of the Beast
After the Parkland Shooting, the American media entered into another round of its “something must be done” (read as: your guns must be taken away) propaganda. One result of this was some of the biggest banks in the United States dropping or scaling back their relations with gun manufacturers.
Bank of America stopped short at stigmatizing the retailers who sell such weapons. Citigroup, however, took the step of requiring any of its business partners to restrict firearms sales to those over the age of 21, as well as those who have not passed a background check. They also barred their partners from selling so-called “high capacity magazines” and bump stocks, which were later banned.
Amalgamated Bank went perhaps the furthest of all, refusing to invest any of its assets in companies involved in the manufacture of “firearms, weaponry and ammunition.”
This leads into another aspect of corporate gun control: Not only is the left demanding that big banks snoop around in your legal purchases, the banks are also starting to make it more difficult for gun manufacturers to obtain the financial services banks would never dare to deny to any other law-abiding company simply on the basis of what they sell.
There is, of course, consumer push-back. For example, the somewhat successful boycott of Dick’s Sporting Goods after it ceased selling so-called “assault weapons.” But Dick’s is still in business and still not selling scary black rifles. And while you can do your business with a competitor, it still doesn’t change the fact that the message has been sent: Companies can remove legal items from their shelves in a politicized fashion with virtually no meaningful consequences.
There is also the growing specter of private companies banning customers from carrying in their stores. Huffington Post compiled a list of seven companies who do not want legal firearms being carried in their businesses. Outback Steakhouse was at the center of a story where a law enforcement officer was asked to leave because he was carrying, something that he is required to do when he is in uniform. Salesforce, a popular software platform for online retailers, will no longer do business with companies who sell virtually all forms of semi-automatic weapons.
Microsoft has put language in its Code of Conduct that prevents users from using them “in any way that promotes or facilitates the sale of ammunition and firearms.” This is another sweeping example of corporate attempts to infringe upon America’s Second Amendment rights. There is nothing illegal or immoral about owning, selling or promoting firearms. Indeed, the right to keep and bear arms is enshrined in the Second Amendment.
This is a form of corporate coercion that shows the limitations of simply relying upon the Constitution and the free market to ensure one’s rights are respected. It’s hard to imagine that the Founders would simply have thrown up their hands and accepted that corporations were making it impossible for them to exercise their rights simply because there was nothing “unconstitutional” about it.
Beyond this, however, there are two rather frightening developments.
The first is several liberal state governments skinning the cat from the other end. Rather than making it difficult or impossible to purchase firearms, they are going after the National Rifle Association. While many well-meaning people in the Second Amendment movement consider the NRA to be weak tea (and not without good reason), the fact remains that the NRA is the most public and prominent opponent of gun grabbers. The fall of the NRA at the hands of gun grabbers (as opposed to more principled pro-Second Amendment groups) would spell disaster for gun rights in America, setting a precedent that would be used against other organizations protecting gun freedom.
The State of New York, led by Andrew Cuomo, has started attacking insurance programs offered by the NRA to its members. He has also attempted to threaten every insurer and bank in the state to not do business with the NRA. It is important to remember that the banking industry is largely centered in New York, meaning that the governor of that state has an outsized influence on how banking is done across the nation.
Another chilling example of corporate coercion goes beyond the Second Amendment and into the First: Popular veteran rights and gun blog “No Lawyers, Only Guns and Money” was removed from Blogger, a blogging platform owned by Google, on the grounds that it “promoted or sold regulated items.” The website was later restored with the explanation that it was removed by an automated system.
PayPal, the biggest payment processing system on the Internet, cannot be used for any exercise of your Second Amendment rights, nor to pay for dissident thinkers’ services such as Stefan Molyneux and Alex Jones or even Wikileaks. One is not obligated to support or defend the beliefs of any of these people or groups to see that a dangerous precedent is being set.
However, these are neither the first nor the only times that Big Tech has attempted to censor conservatives, libertarians, pro-gun freedom forces and others with opinions to the right of John McCain. Some have argued, not without solid evidence, that Big Tech is involved in a full-throttle war against conservatives and free speech on the Internet. We’re inclined to agree.
Big Tech’s War on Free Speech
There is a war against free speech and Big Tech is the one waging it. Congress has looked into this, with Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas leading the charge, not allowing Facebook and other Big Tech companies to weasel out of answering hard questions that the public has about censorship on the Internet.
It’s less true to say that Facebook, Google and other Big Tech platforms “lean left” than it is to say that they push a globalist, neoliberal, corporatist line that eschews any sort of values or ethics other than growth. Edward Abbey has said that the philosophy of growth for the sake of growth is also the philosophy of the cancer cell.
The Big Tech war against free speech is nothing new and there have been canaries in the coal mine for years. Everyone remembers MILO being shown the door on Twitter for a dubious accusation that he led a mob against actress Leslie Jones. But the real test case was not him, it was hacker and troll Andrew Auernheimer, commonly known by his handle “weev.”
weev (always lowercase) is difficult to defend because he has unpopular viewpoints. To wit, he has a large swastika tattooed on his chest. However, proponents of the First Amendment and free speech shouldn’t be concerned with what weev thinks or says, because what he thinks or says is irrelevant to whether or not he has the right to think it and say it. But Twitter and other Big Tech platforms were smart in choosing such an ideological pariah to test the waters.
There is a direct line to be drawn from the deplatforming of weev on Twitter to the unpersoning of Alex Jones to the shadow banning and outright deplatforming of conservative voices all across the web. Mainstream, establishment conservatives have done themselves a disservice by attempting to defend themselves against deplatforming on the basis that “I’m not a Nazi” for two reasons.
First, it doesn’t matter if you’re a Nazi or not. All legal speech should be allowed on social media, or else Big Tech is an editorial content curator, which makes it liable for anything that is posted on there. This means that your ex-spouse lying about how you missed Little Timmy’s baseball game on Facebook can be construed as defamation, for which Facebook is liable because they didn’t remove the status update. Facebook’s pretense that it is a content-neutral platform, a claim that is patently false, is what protects it from being sued every time someone lies about someone else on the platform or from being hauled into court every time that ISIS uses WhatsApp to coordinate an attack.
But the other reason is that for many on the left, there is not a tangible difference between weev, MILO, Alex Jones, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Wayne LaPierre, Ted Cruz, Ben Sharpiro or the President of the United States. Anyone to the right of John McCain is seen as either a literal fascist, a fascist apologist, or a gatekeeper who opens the door to fascist ideology.
Big Tech will not stop at deplatforming actual, self-avowed fascists, nor will it stop at conspiracy theorists, edgy conservatives, or even “respectable” centrist types like Dave Rubin. To throw the far right under the bus in the hopes of satisfying Big Tech’s blood lust is a strategic mistake – it legitimizes the entire process of deplatforming, which will eventually swallow up anyone who believes in the Constitution and the rule of law. Big Tech and the left either see no difference between you and a Nazi, or pretend not to because it’s politically expedient.
This is doubly important because of how many Big Tech companies are actively spying on their users. The EFF maintains an annual detailed list of who is telling the government about its users and their data, who informs users that the government is sniffing around about them, and who even bothers to disclose their data retention policies.
What this means is that if and when the federal government begins compiling a list of “potential right-wing terrorists” or “right-wing extremists” (to the extent that they do not already maintain such lists), they will have a ready-made mine of data from Big Tech, who have shown themselves to be more than willing to cooperate with the federal government, with minimal or no arm-twisting on the part of the feds. Take, for example, the Philadelphia synagogue shooter. Self-proclaimed “free speech” platform Gab was more than willing to hand over all the data they had about his account to the feds without even being asked.
Sure, no one wants to be in the position of defending a synagogue shooter. But the point is that these platforms, even the ones who allegedly have your back, have shown themselves willing to roll on their users provided enough of a fever is whipped up in the press.
Conservatives Censored on Social Media
It’s worth showing just how many mainstream, run-of-the-mill conservatives have been censored by Big Tech – it’s not just the MILOs and the weevs of the world who are being shown the door. Indeed, we believe that these types are censored not out of any actual desire to suppress so-called “hate speech,” but instead to act as a test case for setting the precedent for suppressing legal speech. Here are some examples that are worth considering:
Pastor Rich Penkoski: This pastor runs a popular Facebook page, “Warriors for Christ.” He was suspended mid-sermon for criticizing the rainbow flag. He was previously banned for calling an atheist a liar and sharing verses from the Quran that called for the killing of non-Muslims.
Over Two Dozen Catholic Pages: In July 2017, Facebook banned several Catholic pages with millions of followers. Most were based in Brazil. Facebook removed the pages without explanation.
Rep. Marsha Blackburn: Not even elected officials are immune from social media deplatforming. Facebook removed an ad for Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn’s campaign that attacked pro-abortion group Planned Parenthood.
Alveda King: Facebook removed paid ads from Martin Luther King’s niece Alveda King for her documentary on Roe v. Wade.
Ryan T. Anderson: Twitter refused to run several ads from Christian radio stations for an upcoming interview with Ryan T. Anderson. Anderson is a critic of transgenderism and radical gender ideology.
Robert Spencer: The head of JihadWatch.org, a website covering radical Islam, was removed from social media and even had his credit cards canceled. He also claims that Google buries him in results for searches about “jihad.”
Brian Fisher: The President of the Human Coalition notes that this anti-abortion group has had prayer apps removed from the Apple store and has had its content repeatedly removed from Twitter despite taking pains to ensure that all of it is within Twitter’s narrow, anti-First Amendment guidelines.
PragerU: PragerU is very much the picture of mainstream, run-of-the-mill, completely non-edgy conservatism on the Internet. Despite this, they repeatedly have their content removed from YouTube. Dennis Prager, head of PragerU, is suing YouTube. He notes that Delta Air Lines couldn’t say “conservatives can’t fly with us,” but YouTube, ostensibly a neutral platform, is effectively allowed to say that conservatives can’t use their services.
David Kyle Foster: David Kyle Foster is a leader in the “ex-gay” movement, a group of Christians who claim that their religion has “cured” their homosexuality. His Vimeo channel, featuring over 700 personal testimonials, was pulled from Vimeo for being “hateful.”
Even the Declaration of Independence has been removed from Facebook as “hate speech” due to their “filtering program.” Yes, really. Nor is it only conservative groups who have been targeted. Moderates and leftists who don’t toe the party line – like Andy Ngo, Tim Pool and Michael Tracey – have likewise been targeted by deplatforming and shadowbanning.
Deplatforming is not limited to social media.Chase Bank has been accused of depriving conservative voices of banking services. This returns us to the Mark of the Beast notion: What good is free speech if banks – banks – can keep you from receiving payments. And how far off are we from seeing conservative voices deprived of their ability to pay?
Imagine showing up at the grocery store and finding out that your money’s no good because you have a concealed carry permit. Sound far-fetched? So would have having your bank account closed for being a conservative activist.
Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes? i.e., Who Watches the Watchers?
Of course, it’s important to ask for a list of left-wing groups who have been banned from social media. But somehow, left-wing groups – even those who violate the terms of service, such as several accounts dedicated to doxing right-wing accounts and inciting violence against conservatives, libertarians and others on the right – are allowed to operate with impunity.
Indeed, it is worth asking who decides what is against the rules at Facebook, Twitter, etc. There is an answer to this question:
For Twitter, it’s a “Trust and Safety Council” comprised of 12 left-wing groups and one conservative group you’ve probably never heard of: The Network of Enlightened Women. The 12 left-wing groups include the Anti-Defamation League and GLAAD, both of whom have labeled mainstream conservative groups as “hate groups.”
For Facebook, they rely upon a “fact-checking” process that leverages Snopes and PolitiFact as impartial “fact checkers.”
YouTube uses the ADL and the Southern Poverty Law Center, both left-wing groups known for their attacks on mainstream conservative organizations. Facebook, for its part, deleted 57 of over 200 “hate groups” demanded by the SPLC in August 2017.
What Is To Be Done?
The question after reading this becomes: What should be done, if anything?
It’s difficult to imagine a situation where government interference in Big Tech is going to have the desired outcome. The result might be more and greater censorship than existed before. However, it is worth noting that Sen. Ted Cruz, not exactly known as a proponent of Big Government, has been at the forefront of attempts to hold Big Tech accountable for its censorship of conservative voices on the Internet.
But it’s quite possible that new laws and regulations are not required. What is instead required is a more rigorous enforcement of the laws and regulations that are already on the books. To wit: Are Facebook, Twitter and YouTube content-neutral platforms or are they editorial platforms? If the former, then it would seem that their case for being able to censor legal speech on their platforms is legally flimsy. If the latter, then they are responsible for everything posted on their platforms by every user. Similarly, if Google is intentionally manipulating its results to yield a politicized result, that is likely in violation of existing telecommunications statutes.
The American shift from capitalism to corporatism has had dire unintended consequences: Power has coalesced in both Washington, D.C. and many tech and media companies, such that the latter can undermine American rights and manipulate American political opinion with impunity, while the former abdicates its oath to defend the U.S. Constitution against all enemies, both foreign and domestic.
Trump Ups Nuclear Ante With ‘Mini-Nukes’ Deployed On Subs To “Deter Russia”
The United States has added a ‘low yield’ nuclear weapon to its submarine arsenal in a controversial first in decades, after the Trump administration called for its deployment as part of the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review in order to “deter Russia”.
“Moscow, the argument goes, might have miscalculated that the United States was unwilling to use its nuclear weapons in response to a Russian low-yield nuclear strike because the existing U.S. weapons were too powerful,” The Hill reports.
Undersecretary of Defense for Policy John Rood acknowledged in a statement that “The U.S. Navy has fielded the W76-2 low-yield submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) warhead.”
Submarine launched ballistic missile, file image.
“This supplemental capability strengthens deterrence and provides the United States a prompt, more survivable low-yield strategic weapon; supports our commitment to extended deterrence; and demonstrates to potential adversaries that there is no advantage to limited nuclear employment because the United States can credibly and decisively respond to any threat scenario,” he added.
Some Congressional Democrats have argued that the warhead, which is less powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, alarmingly lowers the threshold whereby the US would be willing the deploy a nuclear warhead against an enemy. Critics also see that the W76-2 is redundant given the current arsenal of lower-yield air-launched nuclear weapons.
The Pentagon, however, says such a deterrent which is not as powerful as America’s standard nukes but still has major destructive capability nonetheless, is crucial for dissuading enemies like Russia from engaging in limited nuclear conflict. US officials have underscored that such weapons will only be used in “extraordinary circumstances”. Advocates in the administration have also said the W76-2 launched from a submarine can more reliably penetrate air defenses compared to the more usual airplane launch.
Rood explained further in his statement: “In the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, the department identified the requirement to ‘modify a small number of submarine-launched ballistic missile warheads’ to address the conclusion that potential adversaries, like Russia, believe that employment of low-yield nuclear weapons will give them an advantage over the United States and its allies and partners,” according to The Hill.
Ohio-class submarine file image, via the National Review.
Experts generally cited in multiple media reports suggest the ‘low-yield’ nukes’ destructive power may be about 5-kilotons, which is about one-third the power of the bomb dropped in Hiroshima, Japan at the end of WWII.
The Federation of American Scientists first reported last week they believe the W76-2 to currently be on the USS Tennessee Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine, which has been patrolling the Atlantic Ocean since the close of 2019. It’s believed to have been fitted atop Trident ballistic missiles on other among the Navy’s Ohio-class submarines as well.
A years-long push by activists has also sought to prevent broader deployment of low yield nukes in America’s arsenal. They see it as a dramatic step which makes nuclear escalation more likely and rapid.
Co-founder of a nuclear arms reduction group named Global Zero, Bruce Blair, himself a former Air Force nuclear weapons officer, said, “But we must not delude ourselves into thinking lower-yield nukes are more usable in a conflict,” because it remains that “Any use of this sea-based weapon – either first or second – will risk stoking the flames of conflict and escalating to all-out nuclear war.”
“A wiser response to an enemy’s use of one or two low-yield nukes would be to refrain from nuclear escalation while unleashing America’s ferocious and decisive conventional juggernaut,” Blair added.
We are watching the pathetic ending to one of the most pathetic periods in American politics. All the smoking guns have been firing blanks.
Following one of the most childish tantrums of denial ever recorded, Democrats set about destroying the Trump presidency in its crib; a WaPo headline from January 20, 2017 – Inauguration Day itself – exclaimed “The Campaign to Impeach President Trump has Begun.” The opening gambit was going to be Emoluments, including rent paid by the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China for its space in Trump Tower in New York.
After three years, it looks like that attempt finally reached its end game, failure, one gray afternoon. On Friday the Senate brought impeachment proceedings to their effective conclusion, declaring the witnesses already called before the House were to be the last. The formal vote to acquit Trump is scheduled as an anti-climax for Wednesday.
It has been ugly and mean. Using the entire apparatus of the American intelligence community, operating fully outside the law, Democrats declared the President of the United States a Russian spy. They forced gentlemen to explain to their elderly mothers what a pee tape was. We had to hear over dinner about Trump’s sexual peccadilloes and look deeper into Stormy Daniel’s cleavage than our own political souls. They made expedient heroes out of small, dishonest men like Michael Avenatti, John Brennan, and James Comey for perceived political gain.
Shame on you, Democrats.
When Russiagate collapsed they plunged deeper, with a setup “crime” driven by a faux whistleblower, supported by State Department gossips and not much more. Look at the series of plays attempted within this Hail Mary of a Hail Mary. Back in August the manufactured worry was that Trump—by messing with Ukrainian aid—was a threat to national security that would send the Red Army rolling west. Then there was the continued attempt to link up two created memes—Trump’s help from the Russians in 2016 and Trump’s help from the Ukrainians in 2020 as part of some whole to damage democracy. At the end it was to be about how not allowing additional witnesses chosen by leaks to the NYT would distort the 2020 election. One reporter called acquittal “the worst day for America since the Civil War.” We had to listen to another round of democracy dying, existential threats, end of the Republic, as repetitive as summer Top 40.
The House chose not to wait out a special prosecutor, or even subpoena witnesses back in the fall. The cries today about no witnesses in fact ignores how the House called 17 witnesses in their own impeachment, not a single one of which had first-hand knowledge of the events unless we were willing to believe some State Department Obama fan-boy magically overheard both sides of a cell phone conversation. If they had a real case a special prosecutor could have sorted through Parnas and Hunter and Bolton, with subpoenas if necessary, and warrants could have shown us exactly what was said in those calls. But that would have come up weaker than Mueller and the Democrats knew it.
You don’t think voters see they were played — again? As with Brett Kavanaugh, when things seemed darkest, the Democrats produced a witness that appeared to turn everything around. Back then Christine Blasey Ford was the deus ex machina. Same with John Bolton and his “manuscript” (shall we call it a dossier?) and instead of dealing with it months ago in a calm fashion, The New York Times drops the leak right into the middle of the impeachment punch bowl so it could create its own sense of urgency saying we can’t wait for thoughtful deliberation or even a court ruling, we must do something right away.
So really, in the end this game-changer was supposed to be lifelong conservative John Bolton ratting out a Republican administration? That was how you were going to get Trump? Only a week earlier it was going to be Ukrainian grifter Lev Parnas. Before him was it “fixer” Michael Cohen, or Paul “Fredo” Manafort, who was going to flip? Was it taxes or the 25th Amendment which was once upon a time going to be the final blow?
Do you think voters won’t remember it was Adam Schiff who failed in Russiagate, issuing his infamous Schiff Memo defending as legal the FISA court surveillance of Carter Page now shown to be unconstitutional? The same Schiff who worked with the “whistleblower” to shape the impeachment narrative and then buried the whistleblower from scrutiny? History will remember Schiff poorly, and judge those who put their party’s future in his dirty hands, Nancy, equally poorly.
As it will Elizabeth Warren, who submitted a “question” at the impeachment proceedings which asked if the proceedings themselves “contribute to the loss of legitimacy of the chief justice, the Supreme Court, and the Constitution?” Nancy Pelosi picked up the theme saying the president will not be exonerated after the Senate acquits because “You cannot be acquitted if you don’t have a trial. And you don’t have a trial if you don’t have witnesses and documentation,” echoing the insanity of saying a victory in the Electoral College isn’t really being elected president. Do Democrats think the Super Bowl victory went to the team with the most yards rushing, or the one with the most points scored?
Impeachment failed in the Senate, ultimately, because it was phony. Senators are politicians, with their noses always in the wind. They sniffed not a modicum of support for this impeachment, and saw nothing akin to the evidence that would encourage them to return to their constituents and explain their contrary votes as they did confronted, overwhelmingly, with Nixon’s wrongdoings.
It’s really over now. Our democracy, which you regularly declare so in peril, will be forced to hold an election of all things to determine its next president.
Democrats, you led your supporters off a cliff. While you create false excuses for losing in 2016, they watched Republicans confirm judge after judge. As they listened in their sleep to you bark about diversity, they woke up to see mostly a handful of old, white men to lead the party into the election.
You lied to them repeatedly about Russia and Ukraine and what a danger Trump is. You continue to try to convince people a strong economy is an illusion and cheer on a recession. You continue to paint an inaccurate picture of a society with gun nuts, Nazis, and white supremacists on the march. You convinced a generation of young voters they are fundamentally unhappy, awash in racism, homophobia, and misogyny, and when they just can’t see it the way you do, you corrupted movies and TV with dorm room level political piety to insist that is how it is out there.
Now, instead of respecting one another at work and school, they tip-toe around as wanna-be defendants looking for targets to sue or complain to HR about. Describe yourself in one word? Offended.
Would you trust the nation to the people the Democratic party has become? Because that is the question Democrats have thrust into the minds of voters. As they have said many times, this was always more about America than it was about Trump.
It was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment within President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday night, but the president appeared to acknowledge that his trade policies haven’t been a winner for American manufacturing.
How else to explain this bit of modesty from the otherwise braggadocious Trump? Here’s what the president said [emphasis mine]:
“After losing 60,000 factories under the previous two administrations, America has now gained 12,000 new factories under my Administration with thousands upon thousands of plants and factories being planned or built. We have created over half a million new manufacturing jobs.“
That sounds pretty impressive. Unless you know that Trump said this during last year’s State of the Union: “We have created 5.3 million new jobs and, importantly, added 600,000 new manufacturing jobs, something which almost everyone said was impossible to do.”
There’s enough ambiguity—probably on purpose—in what Trump said tonight to make it tough to say he’s lowering his boasts. But the fact of that matter is that manufacturing job growth has been in recession, according to the Federal Reserve, for most of the past year. That’s largely thanks to the very trade policies that the Trump administration continues to say will help that sector of the economy.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, America had 12.3 million manufacturing jobs in January 2017 when Trump took office. That was up from a historical low of 11.4 million such jobs in March 2010 at the trough of Great Recession. By last February, there were 12.8 manufacturing jobs—an increase of just over 500,000 during his tenure, but we’ll let the president slide for a slight overestimation there.
Now? There are still 12.8 million manufacturing jobs in America.
Rather than accelerating manufacturing job growth, it seems like Trump has presided over a notable slowdown.
Contra Trump, these are not signals that businesses are making the necessary expenditures to build more factories and increase jobs. And Trump’s tariffs have extracted $46 billion out of American companies since March 2018, which probably helps explain why it has been difficult to expand.
It’s true that the signing of a new North American trade pact and a “Phase One” deal with China—which is mostly just an agreement to avoid further escalations in the trade war—are likely to restore some confidence, and may spur investment this year.
But the fact remains that Trump’s bellicose trade policies have been a self-inflicted wound on an otherwise strong economy. Maybe that’s because Trump is ignorant about the basics of global trade. Maybe it’s because his advisors are giving him bad advice.
Either way, the fact that the White House couldn’t find a better way to spin a manufacturing recession at the State of the Union says a lot about how economic reality is dealing a blow to the Trump administration’s protectionist fantasies.
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2uaKzyk
via IFTTT
Donald Trump once again touted his embrace of some criminal justice reforms at tonight’s State of the Union speech, suggesting that it may be a theme in the early part of his re-election campaign.
“Our roaring economy has, for the first time ever, given many former prisoners the ability to get a great job and a fresh start,” Trump said. “This second chance at life is made possible because we passed landmark criminal justice reform into law. Everybody said that criminal justice reform could not be done, but I got it done, and the people in this room got it done.”
Trump was referring to the FIRST STEP Act, a modest but still significant criminal justice bill passed by Congress in late 2018, after months of political wrangling and lobbying by advocates to get the president on board.
The statements come after Trump’s presidential campaign ran an ad during Sunday’s Super Bowl featuring Alice Johnson, a grandmother who was formerly serving life in federal prison for drug conspiracy charges. In 2018, Trump commuted her sentence after reality TV megastar Kim Kardashian West traveled to the White House to lobby on Johnson’s behalf.
The ad and Trump’s statements are a notable turnabout for the president, who campaigned in 2016 on a tough-on-crime platform and then appointed Jeff Sessions, a notorious opponent of criminal justice reform, as attorney general.
The New York Timesreported today that the ad was also an attempt by Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner to make inroads with black voters as the 2020 election approaches.
But as TheWashington Post reported this week, while Trump has soaked up the positive press he received for signing the FIRST STEP Act and commuting Johnson’s sentence—he, in fact, argues he doesn’t get enough credit for it—he has doled out precious few pardons, almost all of them in cases where someone managed to launch a personal appeal to him.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney, which handles official clemency petitions and advises the White House on them, “has become a bureaucratic way station,” the Post reports. The office currently has a backlog of nearly 13,000 petitions.
As I noted when Kardashian West visited the White House, “it’s a not great state of affairs when you need a massive celebrity to get the attention of the president and fix gross injustices.”
Reason‘s Jacob Sullum wrote this week that “Trump’s concern about ‘very unfair’ drug sentences seems sincere, if intermittent and inconsistent”:
So far Trump has commuted just six sentences, including Johnson’s and one other drug offender’s. But that is actually six times as many commutations as Obama approved during his first term. Trump could still do much more good with his clemency powers if he is re-elected and puts his mind to it. Whether he is inclined to do that is another question.
Trump also touted the passage of the FIRST STEP Act, as well as Alice Johnson’s pardon, in 2019’s State of the Union speech. If he wants to be able to brag that he actually reformed the criminal justice system, he’ll have to do more than just play the hits once a year.
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2H7yWep
via IFTTT
President Donald Trump’s schizophrenic approach to foreign policy was on full display during his State of the Union address tonight. He expressed a desire to bring American troops home while also touting aggressive actions he’d taken against Iran, as well as his administration’s continued commitment to the war in Afghanistan.
That includes his drone striking slaying of Qassem Soleimani, a high-ranking Iranian general, in Iraq.
“Soleimani was the Iranian Regime’s most ruthless butcher, a monster who murdered or wounded thousands of American service members in Iraq,” said Trump tonight before Congress. “At my direction, the United States military executed a flawless precision strike that killed Soleimani and terminated his evil reign of terror forever.”
When Trump came into office, he inherited a relationship with Iran on the mend. He subsequently tore up the nuclear agreement negotiated by the Obama administration, reapplied sanctions to the country, and sent more troops to the region to counter the country’s influence.
His killing of Soleimani saw Iran respond with missile attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and piqued fears that a wider conflict would break out.
And yet, said Trump, “as we defend American lives, we are working to end America’s wars in the Middle East.”
That includes the war in Afghanistan, where the president noted peace talks were underway.
“I am not looking to kill hundreds of thousands of people in Afghanistan, many of them innocent. It is also not our function to serve other nations as a law enforcement agency,” said Trump. “We are working to finally end America’s longest war and bring our troops back home!”
However hard he might be working to end that war, Trump has also increased the U.S. presence there.
Some 4,000 U.S. military personnel were stationed in Afghanistan at the beginning of Trump’s first term. Today there are some 12,500 in the country fighting a war that U.S. defense officials have considered unwinnable for over a decade.
One of the invited guests at tonight’s speech was Amy Williams, whose husband was currently stationed in Afghanistan.
“Amy’s kids have not seen their father’s face in many months. Amy, your family’s sacrifice makes it possible for all of our families to live in safety and peace,” said Trump. He then surprised her by bringing out her husband, who had come home from Afghanistan.
It was a heartwarming moment. And yet, while Trump was willing to acknowledge her family’s sacrifice and bring this particular soldier home, he has so far proven resistant to taking the steps necessary to actually end U.S. interventions abroad.
That makes the anti-war lines he dropped tonight ring as hollow as so many other State of the Union promises.
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2SeiRIQ
via IFTTT
In his State of the Union remarks Tuesday night, President Donald Trump expressed his desire to expand school choice options for all American children.
“No parent should be forced to send their child to a failing government school,” he said.
Trump singled out a fourth grader, Janiyah Davis, who was trapped in a low-performing school in Philadelphia. Davis and her mother were among the audience in the House chamber and were thrilled when Trump announced that she would receive a scholarship to attend a school of her choice. (Further details were not immediately available, noted Philly Voice.)
This change in Davis’ educational situation comes in spite of efforts by Democratic Governor Tom Wolf to kill school choice in his state. The governor recently vetoed legislation that would have expanded the state’s voucher program.
The Trump administration has recently made an increased effort to support nationwide school choice reforms. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, for example, wants to make billions of dollars in tax credits available to people who give money to education opportunity funds.
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2RYCbLd
via IFTTT
