This from a new friend and fellow memo reader remarking about my previous memo regarding religion's relevance. Whether he knows it or not he is talking about what made Rome decline:
"All I know is this...Religion used to be the opiate of the masses and now it's Sports... J----"
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It's no secret The Democratic Party has a tendency to cozy up to socialists, but how far left have they really become? To find out, Ami Horowitz took to the streets of New York to debut America's most exciting (and disturbing) game show: Communist Manifesto or Democratic Party Platform!
And:
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There is not much a president can say after a tragic event other than console and no matter what you may think about Trump his address to the nation, on Wednesday, set the right tone.
Carter concluded that since we now had behaviour modification drugs there was no need to keep people committed with emotional issues in institutions. Naturally, Jimmy assumed people would take their medicine which most did not and secondly, the man he appointed as his health czar, Peter Bourne, resigned in disgrace.
Today our streets and communities are overburdened with homeless and we do not have a clue what to do about this epidemic so let's blame Trump for this problem as well.
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It takes a lot for Liberal Jews to get upset when one of their own does not act according to their expectations.
Rep. Ellison has played them like a violin ever since getting elected with their money and votes.(See 1 below.)
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Tillerson spreads the word in a soothing tone. (See 2 below.)
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The IRS, our 51st state. (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1)JEWISH GROUPS URGE RESIGNATION OF
REP. KEITH ELLISON OVER TIES TO LOUIS FARRAKHAN
By Rafael Medoff / JNS
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Major Jewish groups, including the leading organization representing Jewish Democrats, are strongly criticizing Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) over his previously undisclosed contacts with Rev. Louis Farrakhan, head of the anti-Semitic political and religious movement Nation of Islam. Some Jewish leaders are urging Ellison to step down as deputy chairman of the Democratic Party.
When Ellison first ran for Congress in 2006, he insisted he had severed all ties with Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, which Ellison had belonged to in the 1990s. Similarly, when Ellison ran for chairman of the Democratic Party in 2016, he reiterated that he had long ago distanced himself from Farrakhan.
But a series of reports in The Wall Street Journal and The Daily Caller in recent days revealed that Ellison has participated in at least three meetings with Farrakhan since entering Congress.
The Journal reported Feb. 8 that Ellison and Farrakhan both took part in a private dinner meeting in September 2013 between Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and several dozen prominent American Muslims. Four days later, Ellison responded that he participated in the meeting to seek the release of a U.S. citizen being held in Iran. Ellison did not mention Farrakhan, but appeared to allude to him when he stated, “I didn’t know in advance who else would be there, and my decision to attend was not an endorsement of the political views of other attendees.”
The controversy took a new turn Feb. 13, when The Daily Caller reported that Ellison has taken part in at least two other meetings with Farrakhan since becoming a member of Congress, one of which took place “in Farrakhan’s hotel room.” Ellison has not yet responded to the evidence—including a videotape—of the additional meetings.
Ron Halber, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, said that Ellison “demonstrated exceedingly poor judgment by participating in a meeting with one of American’s most notorious anti-Semites and the leader of a regime that has called for Israel’s annihilation,” and therefore “should resign as deputy chairman of the Democratic Party.”
Speaking before The Daily Caller revealed Ellison’s two additional meetings with Farrakhan, Halber told JNS, “If evidence of more meetings with Farrakhan should surface, there will be a tremendous groundswell of people in the Jewish community and in the Democratic Party, telling Ellison to step down—and it would be irresponsible of the party’s leaders not to demand his resignation.”
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said Halber’s call for Ellison to resign is “commendable.” Cooper urged the Democratic Party leadership to “take a long, hard look at Ron Halber’s appeal, which comes from an important organization and reflects the anger of many American Jews.” According to Cooper, the episode suggests “that Ellison was not properly vetted before being appointed deputy chairman of the party.”
Ellison’s ouster is also being urged by the National Council of Young Israel (NCYI), whose membership includes more than 100 Orthodox synagogues, and the Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV), which represents several hundred Orthodox rabbis.
“Congressman Ellison has a serious credibility problem,” said NCYI President Farley Weiss, pointing to the contradiction between Ellison’s previous denials and the new revelations about his meetings with Farrakhan.
CJV President Rabbi Pesach Lerner said, “All those who condemned President [Donald] Trump for not forcefully denouncing the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville must now demonstrate that this was not merely partisan politics—they must denounce Ellison’s dishonesty and continued contact with one of America’s leading anti-Semitic hatemongers, and call upon [Ellison] to resign both his seat in congress and as deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee.”
A number of other Jewish organizations—including one group representing Jewish Democrats—have strongly criticized Ellison, although they stopped short of calling for his resignation.
Notably, the Jewish Democratic Council of America (JDCA) said that while it accepts Ellison’s statement that he did not know in advance Farrakhan would be attending the meeting with the Iranian president, “when he realized Farrakhan was there, Ellison should not have tolerated Farrakhan’s presence.”
JDCA’s chair, Ron Klein, formerly a Democratic member of Congress from Florida, told JNS, “Even though Ellison was there to discuss the release of a former U.S. marine held captive in Iran, personally, if I were invited, I would not have attended…Louis Farrakhan has a long history of anti-Semitism, racism and anti-LGBT rhetoric and should not be at all welcome in mainstream political or policy conversations.”
In a tweet, Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt asserted that Ellison’s participation in the Rouhani meeting along with Farrakhan was “extremely disturbing” and that “the presence of Louis Farrakhan should have been a red flag” for Ellison. David Bernstein, president of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, wrote on Twitter that Ellison’s actions were “very disturbing…Dining with hatemongers is not ok.”
The Ellison controversy comes on the heels of the release of a previously undisclosed photograph of then-Senator Barack Obama with Farrakhan in 2009. The Daily Caller subsequently revealed that 21 members of the Congressional Black Caucus secretly met with Farrakhan in 2005.
Whether these episodes will affect Jewish support for the Democrats remains to be seen. NCYI’s Weiss predicted, “If the Democratic Party does not remove Ellison from his position, it will likely lead to less support within the Jewish community for the Democratic Party.”
But longtime Democratic Party consultant Dr. Hank Sheinkopf told JNS, “It would likely take the collision of Earth and Mars to stop the majority of American Jews from blindly voting Democrat. The Orthodox largely left the Democrats awhile back; the rest think there is an eleventh commandment—‘Thou shalt vote Democrat.’”
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2)Tillerson to Hariri: Iran's Influence 'Unhelpful to Lebanon's Long-term Future'
By Hana Levy Julian
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told Lebanese Prime Minister Sa’ad Hariri in talks at the Grand Serail in Beirut on Thursday that Washington supports “a free, democratic Lebanon, free of the influence of others… We know that Lebanese Hezbollah is influenced by Iran. This is influence that we think is unhelpful in Lebanon’s long-term future,” he said.
But Hariri didn’t seem to get the message.
The Lebanese prime minister who insists his Future party is so intent on his nation maintaining independence from Hezbollah, instead blamed Israel for difficulties along the country’s southern border. Hariri claimed during a joint presser with Tillerson after their talks, “Lebanon is committed to Security Council Resolution 1701 and 2373. We want to move to a state of permanent ceasefire, but Israel’s daily violation of our sovereignty hinders that process, as does Israel’s escalating rhetoric. “This needs to stop,” he said, adding, “Lebanon’s southern border is the calmest border in the Middle East, and I asked Secretary Tillerson to help keep it that way.”
The day before his arrival in Beirut, Tillerson noted in talks with Jordan’s King Abdullah II that the United States knows “Hezbollah is part of the ‘political process’ in Lebanon.”
Responding to questions from reporters in Beirut, Tillerson commented, “Lebanon has been under enormous pressure. We are engaging with the governments of both Lebanon and Israel to ensure Lebanon’s southern border remains calm.
“It is unacceptable for a militia like Hezbollah to operate outside the authority of the Lebanese government. The only legitimate defender of the Lebanese state is the Lebanese Armed Forces.”
Tillerson said Hezbollah is “not just a concern for the United States; the people of Lebanon should also be concerned about how Hezbollah’s actions and its growing arsenal bring unwanted and unhelpful scrutiny on Lebanon.” Hezbollah’s entanglement in regional conflicts “threatens the security of Lebanon and has destabilizing effects in the region,” he added.
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3)Tax Reform and IRS Resistance
Getting it through Congress was the easy part. Now come the regulations.
By Kimberley A. Strassel
With all the good news about the new Republican tax law, you may be surprised to learn that the fight isn’t over. Behind the scenes, reformers face a new challenge: Navigating the IRS swamp.
It’s a little-known fact that for 35 years the Internal Revenue Service has exempted itself from the most basic regulatory oversight. When the Labor Department or the Small Business Administration create “major” or “significant” rules or guidance, they are required to submit them for centralized review. That ensures regulations are consistent with the law and with White House priorities and that they’ve been analyzed for costs, benefits and flexibility.
But in 1983, the Treasury Department signed a memorandum with the Office of Management and Budget that largely exempted the IRS from submitting its rules to White House review via OIRA, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The memo still stands today. In the face of congressional attempts at oversight, the IRS issued a 1996 opinion claiming that tax statutes are in and of themselves responsible for any costs or inflexibility—that the IRS’s rules are, by definition, pure distillation of law.
Tax regulations (like all regulations) have exploded in recent decades, and of course IRS bureaucrats impose their own policy judgments. The IRS has in recent years unilaterally decided when and how to enforce ObamaCare tax provisions, often dependent on political winds. In 2016 it proposed a rule to force more business owners to pay estate and gift taxes via a complicated new reading of the law.
And the IRS is already playing games with the GOP tax reform. Just a week after passage, the IRS rushed out guidance declaring that most taxpayers couldn’t deduct prepaid 2018 property taxes on their 2017 returns to claim that benefit before the new law kicks in. The IRS decided this with no input from the White House or other agencies. IRS bureaucrats—many of them implacably opposed to his White House and bitter over recent congressional oversight—will have plenty of opportunity to cause trouble with its interpretations of a complicated tax reform.
Even as the IRS has become more emboldened, it’s ignored growing oversight demands. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch in 2016 sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew to object to punitive new IRS debt-equity regulations and to insist the IRS start complying with the Administrative Procedures Act, the Congressional Review Act, the Regulatory Flexibility Act and the like. Nothing changed.
But the tax reform has provided new urgency. President Trump in April issued an executive order noting that too many tax regulations in recent years had “increased tax burdens, impeded economic growth, and saddled American businesses with onerous fines, complicated forms and frustration.” He ordered OMB and OIRA to start looking at IRS rules. And Sens. Ron Johnson and James Lankford —both of the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs—have recently written both to the IRS, demanding it explain its continuing impudence, and to OIRA Administrator Neomi Rao, recommending she tear up that 1983 memo and subject the IRS to regulatory review.
What’s standing in the way? Remarkable pushback from Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s Treasury. The department is inexplicably backing IRS lawlessness with a string of excuses that range from claiming that reviews will take up too much time, to the position that none of the department’s hundreds of economists are up to performing cost-benefit analysis, to the argument that centralized White House review amounts to political pressure.
This last argument is as baseless as it is underhanded, because it seems designed to prod the anti-Trump media into making Nixon comparisons. OIRA and Congress aren’t asking to review audits or enforcement actions against people or businesses (which would violate privacy laws). They are simply demanding that Treasury and IRS submit broadly applicable regulations to the same scrutiny as is applied to other agencies—to ensure that rules are truly necessary, consistent with the relevant statutes, and no broader or costlier than necessary. That kind of review would help ensure a robust tax law that stands a greater test of time. And it is basic to the Trump promises of good governance.
The swamp is rarely drained, for the simple reason that it takes rare and extraordinary governance. It requires leaders who are willing to offend institutions and top advisers, expose internal abuse, and willingly surrender unjustifiable powers. Today’s Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation are examples of what happens when those leaders follow the far more common route of succumbing to the natives.
Mr. Mnuchin’s Treasury can make the successful rollout and implementation of the Trump tax reform a priority, or it can roll to an IRS bureaucracy. That ought to be an easy call.
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