Can Trump recover from shutdown fiasco?
He can if he demonstrates he wants to solve the immigration problem and show Pelosi and Schumer to be what they are - politicians of the crudest order who wants to rub Trump's face in the ground more than do what is best for the nation's interests and security. (See 1 and 1a below.)
I believe Trump, in his crude way, cares deeply about America. Yes, he made a fortune because this nation afforded him opportunities but deep down inside I believe he wants to do what is best for our nation. In some ways he believes disassembling is the key. He might be right, he could be wrong but at least he has been willing to touch the third rail, to question the end results of deals that were made eons ago and now seem not to be in our nation's best interest. At least he is willing to stand opposed to those who steal our secrets, threaten our security, wish us ill will and ask of our so-called allies, they pay their share of the freight.
As a politician, Trump has proven to be unconventional and, against those who wish to wreck his presidency, he has achieved mixed results. The latest episode proved to be a real loss from which he must recover.
Trump is right when it comes to the merit of protecting our nation's borders. All president take an oath to protect and defend and Trump has proven he will fight to carry out his commitments. The issue of a wall versus other type structures is a pure political ruse being used by Democrats to thwart his efforts as well as his comment 'Mexico would pay for it' and 'I am willing to own the shut down.' These throw away comments have proven in-temperate and are now being used to defeat his 2020 prospects by those who hate him, cannot accept the fact that he licked Hillary and thus, cost them the power they so ardently seek for their own narrow interests and benefits.
Pelosi and Schumer might eventually overplay their hand and Trump, having lost round one, might still win on points. Time will tell because the nation will be the real loser if Pelosi, Schumer and Mueller are victors.
As for the latter, if Trump is truly guilty of seriously breaking the law that is one thing but if he is guilty of doing what all others have done without even a rebuke then the establishment of a double standard can mark the end of this republic because politics will have been allowed to defeat the rule of law, the rightful election of a president and the ability of his overturn through political contrivance.
If Mueller is allowed to fail in linking his initial charge of seeking Russian Collusion and succeed on some extraneous issue, akin to creating a trumped up offense in order to rid Trump his presidency, then those who will initially applaud will eventually 'rue the day for they know not what they will have wrought.'
These are the same progressive radicals who successfully sought and destroyed education, the family unit, the connection with God and religion, our constitutional dictates, traditional values that made the character of American independence a once great nation. along with an unequaled economic system that brought wealth, betterment and greater freedom to all its citizens.
These are the same radicals who now control the mass media who, for their own radical beliefs, seek the end of America. though discord and spreading chaos., pitting citizen against citizen and disrupting social order through political divisiveness.
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Pocahontas keeps "poking" at the Constitution. (See 2 below.)
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Yesterday, when I returned from Athens, we drove past Hunter Air Force Base and there is a wall that hides about half of the base and then a fence the rest. I do not understand why the military, who are sworn to protect our nation, do so with an immoral structure?
Then I received this from a dear friend and fellow memo reader and now understand better where our nation is heading:
Video proof of why some voters don't want border walls. (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1)President Trump cut his growing political losses on Friday by agreeing to reopen the government for three weeks pending new border-spending negotiations. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi emerges as the winner in this showdown, at least in the short term. We’ll now see if she’s serious about negotiating a deal on immigration or simply wants to humiliate Mr. Trump.
The President agreed to sign the short-term funding bill without money for his border wall. He had little political choice. Most voters blamed him for the shutdown, and the costs to the public had begun to build. Flight delays multiplied as air-traffic controllers called in sick—an abdication of duty—while White House economist Kevin Hassett said the shutdown was hurting the economy. Maybe someone told Mr. Trump that Presidents get the blame when the economy suffers.
All of this was predictable, since shutdowns never work politically for the party seen to trigger them. Mr. Trump’s strategy, to the extent he had one, was to hold his breath until Mrs. Pelosi gave in. She merely had to do nothing to win. Yet the same immigration restrictionists who told Mr. Trump to shut down the government are now calling him a wimp for not watching his approval rating sink even lower. They care more about their own TV ratings and book sales than they do Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump’s problem now is that he is still largely at Mrs. Pelosi’s mercy. He said Friday that without money for his wall he’ll shut down the government again in three weeks or declare an emergency himself and use funds from other accounts to fund the wall.
Democrats win in either outcome. Mr. Trump would be blamed for another shutdown, and an emergency declaration would be enjoined by the courts or set a precedent that the next President could exploit to go around a GOP Congress. An emergency will also divide Republicans more than Democrats.
The only way for Mr. Trump to improve his negotiating position is to reframe the political debate by seeking a larger deal on border security and immigration. Mr. Trump laid out the narrow outlines of this deal last Saturday, offering enhanced legal status for so-called Dreamer immigrants and other expiring visa holders in return for money for border security. That at least offers Democrats something they claim to want.
Mrs. Pelosi still might withhold the money, bowing to her left wing that wants to deny Mr. Trump any accomplishment. Mr. Trump can’t control for such bloody-mindedness. But he can make Mrs. Pelosi pay a price for it by making his offer again and again.
Instead of merely repeating a litany of border woes, he could show his reasonableness on immigration by appearing with Dreamers. He can also broaden his offer to include a path to citizenship for all Dreamers. Mr. Trump has to persuade Dreamers and voters that Mrs. Pelosi is now the obstacle to a reasonable immigration compromise.
He also can’t do that as long as he listens to White House adviser Stephen Miller, the hard-line restrictionist in the White House. He needs to turn the negotiations over to someone who really does want to make an immigration deal. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is the voice to listen to here.
This will also be a test for Mrs. Pelosi, or it should be. Does she want to ease the deportation fears of more than a million residents, or does she want to spite Mr. Trump and flog immigration as a political issue through 2020? The risk for Democrats is that, sooner or later, the voters will figure out that Democrats are using the Dreamers and undocumented immigrants as political pawns. That’s the case Mr. Trump should be making to the voters to recover from this shutdown fiasco.
1a) The State of the Union Is
Missing
Missing
By Peggy Noonan
America loses something worthwhile as Trump and Pelosi cast aside another traditional norm.
Donald Trump’s signature, which he enjoys displaying after signing bills and executive orders, is unusually big, sharp and jagged. It’s like the lines a seismograph makes during an earthquake, or what a polygraph shows when you’re telling a whopper. Lately it has looked bigger and sharper.
He’s in a crisis he summoned. There is now a plan to reopen the government for three weeks. His numbers are down. His foes, delighted at his struggle, refused to help him get out—even as they claimed concern that employees were going without pay and air-traffic controllers are calling in sick, even when the longer the shutdown, the likelier something really bad would happen.
The State of the Union address was to be sacrificed. It is fair that the president would not give the address—and that the House speaker not leave Washington, even to visit troops—during a shutdown in which others, not they, suffered. But it would have been much better if both sides had met and issued a statement: “We acknowledge that a shutdown is always the result of failure, and while it continues the president and the Congress will forgo benefits of office. We will continue to talk and attempt to end the impasse. As soon as we do, this important address will take place.”
They couldn’t say that because they weren’t talking. Which was amazing in itself, and a scandal.
Nancy Pelosi’s original excuse for disinviting Mr. Trump, security concerns, was lame and disingenuous, and being obviously those things it was also aggressive.
And all because she didn’t want to sit behind him and stare at his hair. She didn’t want to sit through an hour of listening to him while looking at the back of his head, which is what speakers do. If the speech had gone ahead as usual, Mr. Trump, being Mr. Trump, likely would have used the moment to put her on the spot—making some plea for agreement, having his Republicans jump to their feet in applause, turning around, pausing, daring her not to nod to his good-faith idea.
That would have been rude. He is rude. And now he has been punished. As I write, the speech hasn’t been scheduled. But I’m not sure we fully appreciate that for a speaker of the House to tell a president of the United States that he is not welcome to make a State of the Union address is a shocking violation of norms. And it will lead to nothing good. A new precedent will have been set: You can disinvite a president if you hate him. And the future won’t be short of hate.
I’m hearing a lot of “good riddance” about the speech, but that’s shortsighted and historically ignorant. Yes, the event has devolved into Kabuki in which stupid applause lines prompt rote cheering. Yes, it’s too often a laundry list. The language has become phony as it attempts to be elevated: “Let us follow those better angels.” My urging to speech-givers has been to hold the let-us. Plain, straight and honest is the way to go, and if you have a little wit that won’t hurt either.
What’s being overlooked is that the speech has a high policy purpose. It’s not a celebration of the imperial presidency. In fact, it puts the president on the spot. The Founders were not stupid and knew what they were doing when, in the Constitution, they instructed the chief executive to report to Congress on the condition the country is in.
The speech is a public acknowledgment that America is both a democracy and a republic. Somehow we’re never reminded. But that’s the chief executive going down the street to Congress’s house, asking to enter, and trying his best to persuade that coequal branch as the judiciary looks on.
The fact of the speech forces a White House to concentrate on what it thinks. Suddenly it must determine and put into words its priorities for the coming year. Suddenly it has a deadline. Suddenly it has to take its own sentiments seriously. The speech forces the president to decide, to focus, and not to take shelter in the day-to-day and whatever crisis just came over the transom.
The president is forced to take stock. He must state with at least some measure of credibility that “the State of the Union is . . .” Is what?
Harry Truman in 1949 was plain, unadorned: The state of the union is “good.” Gerald Ford in 1975 was blunt to the point of downcast: “The State of the Union is not good”—too many people out of work, inflation too high. Ronald Reagan in 1985 congratulated the American people for producing “a nation renewed, stronger, freer, and more secure than before.” George H.W. Bush in 1992 didn’t characterize the historical era but an event: “I am not sure we’ve absorbed the full impact, the full import of what happened. But communism died this year. . . . By the grace of God, America won the Cold War.” Woodrow Wilson in December 1913: “The country, I am thankful to say, is at peace with all the world.” For Franklin D. Roosevelt in January 1945, the subject was the war: “Everything we are and have is at stake. Everything we are, and have, will be given.”
It matters what they say! Not only to the moment but to history.
As to its other purposes, the speech is a moment of enacted majesty. Not real majesty—real majesty would be Jackie Kennedy walking behind the caisson and behind her a street full of kings. But it’s a night when our democracy struts its stuff. The president, Congress, the Supreme Court, the cabinet, the diplomatic corps, the military, the press in the gallery, all arrayed. The heroes in the balcony, reminding us not of our politics but of our humanity, of the fact that almost against the odds America keeps producing spectacular individuals. All are there acting out comity, dignity, stature. I don’t really care if they feel these things. No one cares. We just want them to show it because children are watching, or at least taking a look as they pass a screen, and learning how adults in public act.
My friend Jeremy Shane, who worked in the George H.W. Bush administration, speaks of the thrill of the door’s opening. “It was hard not to get goosebumps when the sergeant-at-arms bangs on the floor and announces, ‘Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States!’ ” And modest Landon Parvin, one of the great speechwriters of our era, remembers watching the speech as a child. “When I was growing up, State of the Unions were special occasions, like the queen opening Parliament and giving her speech. They were, in effect, occasions of state.”
All this has value. A fracturing nation cannot afford to so blithely cast aside another of its traditions.
Everyone involved should have shown forbearance and courtesy, a greater seriousness about a worthy tradition as it was delayed but not canceled, knowing you maintain form because you know democracies are in some part held together by it.
The speaker should have been in talks every day. As for the president, we live through the chaos that is, always, his signature move.
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2)
Elizabeth Warren’s Unconstitutional Wealth Tax
If you thought the Native American story was a whopper, check out her new plan to expand government.
By James Freeman
As she seeks the 2020 presidential nomination of the Democratic party, Sen. Elizabeth Warren is giving voters fair warning that she does not accept the Constitution’s limits on federal power. On Thursday the former Harvard law professor unveiled a plan to extract wealth from the country’s wealthiest citizens. According to a press release from her Senate office:
United States Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) today unveiled the Ultra-Millionaire Tax, a bold proposal to tax the wealth of the richest 0.1% of Americans. The legislation, which applies only to households with a net worth of $50 million or more, is estimated by leading economists to raise $2.75 trillion in tax revenue over a ten-year period.
For decades, a small group of families has raked in a massive amount of the wealth American workers have produced, while America’s middle class has been hollowed out. The result is an extreme concentration of wealth not seen in any other leading economy.
The “leading economists” cited by Team Warren are Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman from the University of California-Berkeley. Readers may recognize Mr. Saez as the sometime research partner of Thomas Piketty. Economists on both the right and the left have lately been poking holes in the Saez/Piketty research which purported to show a dramatic increase in levels of income inequality.
No doubt many economists will also explain in the days to come why the Warren tax would not raise as much as Messrs. Saez and Zucman expect and how it would distort investment and encourage capital flight from the United States. Ms. Warren implicitly acknowledges this last problem. Her plan includes “a significant increase in the IRS enforcement budget” and “a 40% ‘exit tax’ on the net worth above $50 million of any U.S. citizen who renounces their citizenship.”
For now, Ms. Warren is saying she will only confiscate a small percentage of wealth from the very richest Americans:
2% annual tax on household net worth between $50 million and $1 billion
2% annual tax on household net worth between $50 million and $1 billion
1% annual Billionaire Surtax (3% tax overall) on household net worth above $1 billion
There are excellent economic arguments against this new tax plan. But today this column would like to focus on the illegality of the Warren scheme. Ms. Warren seems to understand this problem as well. Typically lawmakers announcing new legislation don’t feel the need to simultaneously try to rebut anticipated claims that the bill is unconstitutional. But the Warren press release links to two letters on the subject, each signed by various law professors at famous universities.
No matter how many academics she persuades to sign on to this ideological project, the plain fact is that the founders specifically prohibited such a tax. A well-informed reader notes:
The 16th Amendment authorizes Congress to tax “incomes, from whatever source derived.” It does not give Congress the power to tax balance sheets as well.
At the Constitutional Convention, Gouverneur Morris explained in plain English what every delegate understood “direct taxation” to be: it is when the federal government attempts to “stretch its hand directly into the pockets of the people,” rather than acting through the intermediary of a state. Direct taxes, the delegates decided, would be authorized only if each state paid the same per capita amount – i.e., only if the taxes were apportioned to population. Warren’s proposal to stretch her hand directly into the pockets of the people would not be apportioned and so it would violate both the 16th Amendment (failing as an income tax) and Article I, Section 9, Clause 4 (failing because it is an unapportioned direct tax).
In NFIB v. Sebelius, Chief Justice Roberts got this point wrong and held that the Obamacare tax is not a direct tax... Notwithstanding Roberts’s obviously hasty and slipshod analysis (it’s all of a page), the facts of that case are unique (he claimed the tax was not on people or property but rather “it is triggered by specific circumstances.”) Warren’s tax is quite obviously a tax on property, which the courts have repeatedly held constitutes a direct tax.
Warren might want to characterize her wealth tax as an “excise tax,” since such taxes were held constitutional before the adoption of the 16th Amendment. But an excise tax is levied on a specific transaction or a specific activity (e.g., gambling; using a truck on a highway). Will she claim the excise tax is for the privilege of living in America as a rich person?
The 16th Amendment authorizes Congress to tax “incomes, from whatever source derived.” It does not give Congress the power to tax balance sheets as well.
At the Constitutional Convention, Gouverneur Morris explained in plain English what every delegate understood “direct taxation” to be: it is when the federal government attempts to “stretch its hand directly into the pockets of the people,” rather than acting through the intermediary of a state. Direct taxes, the delegates decided, would be authorized only if each state paid the same per capita amount – i.e., only if the taxes were apportioned to population. Warren’s proposal to stretch her hand directly into the pockets of the people would not be apportioned and so it would violate both the 16th Amendment (failing as an income tax) and Article I, Section 9, Clause 4 (failing because it is an unapportioned direct tax).
In NFIB v. Sebelius, Chief Justice Roberts got this point wrong and held that the Obamacare tax is not a direct tax... Notwithstanding Roberts’s obviously hasty and slipshod analysis (it’s all of a page), the facts of that case are unique (he claimed the tax was not on people or property but rather “it is triggered by specific circumstances.”) Warren’s tax is quite obviously a tax on property, which the courts have repeatedly held constitutes a direct tax.
Warren might want to characterize her wealth tax as an “excise tax,” since such taxes were held constitutional before the adoption of the 16th Amendment. But an excise tax is levied on a specific transaction or a specific activity (e.g., gambling; using a truck on a highway). Will she claim the excise tax is for the privilege of living in America as a rich person?
Perhaps the plan is for President Warren to take to twitter and cyberbully John Roberts into signing off on another unconstitutional tax claim. If so, she’s not even giving him a pretext to pretend this is legal. As for the pro-Warren law professors, one letter offers nothing but an appeal to the authority of their own interpretation and belief. It reads in part:
Constitutional text and history demonstrate that “direct” tax is best interpreted as a narrow category that would not include a net worth tax. Because your proposal falls squarely within Congress’ broad taxing power and does not require apportionment, we believe it is constitutional.
Constitutional text and history demonstrate that “direct” tax is best interpreted as a narrow category that would not include a net worth tax. Because your proposal falls squarely within Congress’ broad taxing power and does not require apportionment, we believe it is constitutional.
The other group of famous law profs appeals to the authority of a 1900 precedent, Knowlton v. Moore. The Warrenistas write:
The lefty profs can cheer about “progressive” tax policies, but the Knowlton decisionrecognized that death taxes, generally known as “death duties” back then, were taxes on a specific event or transaction, and therefore not the same as a direct tax on a person’s wealth:
That death duties, generally, have been from the beginning in all countries considered as different from taxes levied on property, real or personal, directly on account of the ownership and possession thereof, is demonstrated by the review which we have previously made. It has also been established by what we have heretofore said, that such taxes, almost from the beginning of our national life, have been treated as duties, and not as direct taxes.
That death duties, generally, have been from the beginning in all countries considered as different from taxes levied on property, real or personal, directly on account of the ownership and possession thereof, is demonstrated by the review which we have previously made. It has also been established by what we have heretofore said, that such taxes, almost from the beginning of our national life, have been treated as duties, and not as direct taxes.
Voters can choose to believe that Ms. Warren’s wealth tax would only hit those with enormous wealth. But given the damage she intends to wreak on constitutional limited government, why should they?
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3) Subject: Hidden Camera in Minnesota Voting Registration Commission:
3) Subject: Hidden Camera in Minnesota Voting Registration Commission:
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