n-Syria-556034
Israel strikes dozens of Iranian targets in Syria
https://www.jpost.com/Middle-
War is not inevitable but Netanyahu has warned Iran he will not tolerate attacks on Israel from Syria or any other territory.
I suspect Iran will try and widen the attacks and start launching from Lebanon.
Iran's Ayatollah's need to stir up trouble to take focus off their floundering economy and internal strife and the new sanctions Trump is restoring.
And:
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As noted in previous memos, our grandson,Elliot Darvick, is in charge of LYFT's operations in Detroit and other large cities in Ohio and Michigan. I am proud to post this recognition of his talents. Elliot is in his late thirties, married and their daughter, Olivia,is our first great grandchild. Elliot is running an enterprise that is well over $100 Million. (See 1 below.)
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In the off-year campaign Democrats will have to explain why "crumbs" should not matter to many voters. They will have to explain why they voted against the tax cuts. They will have to contend with an economy that has produced jobs and why working Americans is bad. Finally, Democrats will have to explain why open borders is good for our nation and law breaking is something that should be supported.. If Republicans know how to orchestrate a simple,believable message Democrats will have to explain why N Korea willingly released hostages and Obama paid billions and denied he engaged in ransoms.
How do Democrats defend against the corrupting of our various agencies depriving conservatives of their constitutional rights?(See 2 below.)
Finally, how do Democrats explain their unrelenting opposition to Trump's imminently qualified nominees ?
Polls now reveal Republicans have moved within just a few points and were down double digits earlier in the year. Obviously Trump's policies have begun to sink in and Democrat intransigence is also beginning to be viewed in a negative manner.
Still too early to draw final conclusions but trends are beginning to reflect reality and not the mass media's false analysis.
Democrats have focused on Trump's peccadilloes because they have no coherent policies. John McEnroe was a foul mouthed tennis player. However, if his opponents focused on his language they would have been destroyed by his fabulous tennis ability. Though, I cannot ignore Trump's tweets and boorish behaviour, I focus on his accomplishments.
Obviously the mass media continues to bleat about Trump's negatives yet, when it comes to the respect Americans have for them, they rate below Congress and, based on past experience, they live in, what I call ,east/west coast bubbles . The mass media do not understand us "deplorables." That said, mid-term elections statistically/historically favor the opposition.
The key for Republicans is to turn out the vote and, to accomplish that, they need good candidates who have clear, rational messaging that is believable. Finally, they should highlight Trump's accomplishments and contrast them with Obama's failures and remind voters Pelosi and Schumer are not the answer nor have answers to our nation's problems.
Democrats have plenty of albatrosses. (See 2a below.)
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Dick
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1)
Announcing the 2018 Mackinac Future Leaders, Powered by Bank of America
The Detroit Regional Chamber is pleased to announce the 2018 Mackinac Future Leaders, powered by Bank of America. The program provides a select group of forward-thinking individuals representing a diverse set of business and community organizations across Southeast Michigan an opportunity to attend the 2018 Mackinac Policy Conference. Attendees are able to participate in all Conference programming while also enjoying a fully immersive experience tailored specifically toward cultivating their professional growth.
Mackinac Future Leaders are entrepreneurs and rising professionals who are making a significant contribution or working to solve problems in their business, industry or community. Participants are nominated by their peers, community leaders and members of the Chamber’s Board of Directors.
For more information on the Mackinac Future Leaders program, contact Devon O’Reilly, manager of entrepreneurship and Detroit engagement for the Detroit Regional Chamber, at doreilly@detroitchamber.com.
2018 Mackinac Future Leaders
Sarah Anthony
Deputy Director for Partnerships and Advocacy
Michigan College Access Network
Deputy Director for Partnerships and Advocacy
Michigan College Access Network
Katie BaleskySenior Manager
PwC
PwC
Adam Burgess
Vice President
Plante Moran
Vice President
Plante Moran
Elliot DarvickGeneral Manager
Lyft
Lyft
Katrina DesmondPrincipal
Miller Canfield
Miller Canfield
Mike FerlitoCo-founder and President
Ferlito Group
Ferlito Group
Paula GonzalezProgram Officer, NEIdeas
NEI
NEI
Mohamad HammoudVice President, Small Business Banking Manager
Bank of America
Bank of America
Omar HasanProject Manager, Workforce Development
City of Detroit
City of Detroit
Herman JenkinsChairman
Detroit Entertainment Commission
Detroit Entertainment Commission
Tarun KajeepetaFounder
Condor Detroit
Condor Detroit
Paul KaserFounder and Chairman
Detroit Training Center
Detroit Training Center
Amanda LewanFounder
Bamboo Detroit
Bamboo Detroit
Michael LoVascoExecutive Vice President
LoVasco Consulting
LoVasco Consulting
Dexter MasonRegional Director, Events and Programming
Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality (RISE)
Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality (RISE)
Kumar RajProgram Officer
The Skillman Foundation
The Skillman Foundation
Don RencherDeputy Director, Housing and Revitalization
City of Detroit
City of Detroit
Angela RogensuesExecutive Director
Playworks Michigan
Playworks Michigan
Alison TodakManaging Director
Cahoots
Cahoots
Jordan TwardyDirector, Community and Economic Development
City of Ferndale
City of Ferndale
Terrence WestAccount Executive
Van Dyke Horn Public Relations
Van Dyke Horn Public Relations
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2)
The Unresolved IRS Scandal
Congress should take tax collectors out of the business of regulating political activity.
By Bradley A. Smith
Imagine if liberal groups discovered that President Trump’s Internal Revenue Service was targeting them for heightened scrutiny or harassment. The media and Democrats would decry this assault on the First Amendment and declare the U.S. on the brink of autocracy. The scandal would dominate the midterms, and the legitimacy of the election would be called into question.
Strangely enough, the IRS did target organs of the opposition party during the last administration, but the episode has largely faded from public memory without resolution. May 10 marks the fifth anniversary of the revelation that President Obama’s IRS targeted conservative groups for more than two years prior to the 2012 presidential election.
While some of the faces at the IRS have changed, the law that enabled their misuse of power has not. Congress’s failure to address the problem leaves the U.S. democratic process vulnerable to further abuses.
Lois Lerner, the career official at the center of the IRS scandal, retired on full pension after invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination before Congress. John Koskinen, appointed IRS commissioner by Mr. Obama to lead the agency “in difficult times,” served his full term, spending the better part of four years stonewalling congressional requests for information. On his watch, the IRS destroyed evidence subject to subpoena.
The response from the political system showed early promise but quickly fizzled. After initially expressing shock, Mr. Obama abandoned any pretext of interest, suggesting it was a “phony scandal.” And why not? A 2012 American Enterprise Institute study found that tea-party organizations substantially increased conservative turnout in the 2010 midterms. The agency’s suppression of those groups in the following years might have given Mr. Obama’s re-election a boost.
Democratic officials deserve much of the blame for the IRS’s improper and likely illegal harassment. The president warned against tea-party groups in ominous terms, describing them as threats to American democracy. Democratic senators repeatedly wrote to IRS leadership to urge them to investigate conservative nonprofits.
The IRS responded to this hectoring from the political branches. Its initial reaction to the scandal was to propose new regulations institutionalizing the discriminatory practices, as if the problem was merely that conservative organizations didn’t know in advance that the IRS would single them out. A public outcry stopped those regulations in their tracks, and in budgets since 2015 Congress has prohibited the IRS from spending money on that rule-making project.
With that congressional tweak and the retirement of Ms. Lerner, many conservatives seem to think Washington has turned the page on IRS abuse. Meanwhile, too many Democrats seem to think that this could never happen to them. Both are wrong. The IRS scandal was not the result of a few rogue IRS employees; the problem is that the IRS is involved in regulating political activity.
A group that engages in politics is not necessarily considered a “political committee” by the IRS. Such well-known political actors as the Sierra Club, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Planned Parenthood engage through their affiliates in substantial activity related to politics—including get-out-the-vote drives, legislative advocacy and even candidate ads. But because the IRS designates the affiliate groups as “social welfare” organizations, they are subject to less-stringent disclosure requirements.
The tea-party groups that sprang up in 2009 sought to engage in these types of activities, but some Democrats didn’t like it. If the IRS denied these groups status as social-welfare organizations, they would be forced to either reorganize as for-profit organizations or as political committees subject to greater regulatory burdens. That’s how the IRS was able to hassle conservative groups.
The easy fix here would be for Congress simply to scrap restrictions on political activity by social-welfare organizations, thereby stripping the IRS of authority to decide which groups are “political committees” and which aren’t. In a democracy, political activity is part of social welfare. Such a change would not affect federal revenue, as contributions to social-welfare organizations are not tax-deductible. There would be no “subsidizing political activity.”
The Federal Election Commission—a bipartisan agency staffed by experts and created to oversee election-related activities—is the proper authority to determine whether an organization should be subject to regulation under campaign-finance laws. The IRS—an agency under control of the president, with no bipartisan checks, subject to congressional pressure, and tasked with collecting revenue—is not.
There is a long history of presidents from both parties using the IRS to harass political opponents. Democrats and Republicans alike should recognize that, fix the law, and get the IRS out of politics.
Mr. Smith, a law professor at Capital University and chairman of the Institute for Free Speech, was chairman of the Federal Election Commission in 2004.
2a) Truman May Have Been the Proto-Trump
When President Harry S. Truman left office in January 1953, most Americans were glad to see him go. Since the introduction of presidential approval ratings, Truman’s 32 percent rating was the lowest for any departing president except for that of Richard Nixon, who 21 years later resigned amid the Watergate scandal.
Americans were tired of five consecutive Democratic presidential terms. The Depression and World War II were both over, and people wanted a different sort of leadership that could jump-start the economy.
The outsider Truman had been an accidental president to begin with. When an ailing President Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for an unprecedented fourth term in 1944, worried Democrat insiders panicked. They feared that far-left-wing Vice President Henry Wallace might end up president if Roosevelt died in office.
Party pros replaced Wallace with the obscure Truman, a Missouri senator. They assumed that if worse came to worse, the non-entity Truman would be a token caretaker president.
Earlier, Truman had been immersed in scandal, owing to his ties to corrupt Kansas City political boss Tom Pendergast.
When Truman took office after Roosevelt’s death in April 1945, he knew relatively nothing about the grand strategy of World War II. No one had told him anything about the ongoing atomic bomb project.
But for the next seven-plus years, Truman shocked the country.
Over the objections of many in his Cabinet, he ordered the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan.
Over the objections of most of the State Department, he recognized the new state of Israel.
Over the objections of the Roosevelt holdovers, he broke with wartime ally the Soviet Union and crafted the foundations of Cold War communist containment.
Over the objections of many in the Pentagon, he integrated the armed forces.
Over the objections of some of his advisers, he sent troops to the Korean peninsula to save South Korea from North Korean invasion.
Over the objections of civil libertarians, he created the CIA.
Over the objections of most Americans, he relieved controversial five-star general and American hero Douglas MacArthur of his duties.
Naturally, there were widespread calls in the press for Truman to resign and spare the country any more humiliation.
Truman swore. He had nightly drinks and played poker with cronies. And he shocked aides and the public with his vulgarity and crass attacks on political enemies. Truman mocked the widely respected Sen. William Fulbright as “half-bright.”
In the pre-Twitter age, Truman could not keep his mouth shut. When a reviewer for The Washington Post trashed Truman’s daughter’s concert performance, Truman physically threatened him.
“It seems to me that you are a frustrated old man who wishes he could have been successful,” Truman wrote in a letter to critic Paul Hume. “Someday I hope to meet you. When that happens, you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!”
Truman liked to trash national icons — including the military that had just won World War II. He reportedly said of MacArthur’s firing: “I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb son of a b—h although he was, but that’s not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.”
Truman was supposed to be slaughtered in the 1948 election. Roosevelt’s holdover New Dealers made fun of his Midwestern parochialism. Democrats had blown up the party during the 1948 nominating convention. Left-wingers, who could not stomach Truman, broke off and supported the progressive Henry Wallace as a third-party candidate. Democratic segregationists, who hated Truman’s military integration order, ran Sen. Strom Thurmond as a fourth-party Dixiecrat alternative. Thurmond promised to keep the South racially segregated.
In the general election, polls predicted an easy win for Republican challenger Thomas Dewey. Instead, Truman won by a comfortable margin.
With Truman’s second term due to expire, Democrats forgot his “the buck stops here” pragmatism. Instead, they returned to elite progressivism and nominated Adlai Stevenson, a liberal’s liberal.
Stevenson lost both the 1952 and 1956 elections to Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, a national icon. For all his criticism of Truman, Ike governed more or less as Truman did.
It took a half-century for historians to concede that the feisty Truman had solid accomplishments, especially in foreign affairs. Even his vulgarity was eventually appreciated as integral to the image of “Give ‘Em Hell” Harry. But if he’d had access to Twitter, or had a Robert Mueller to hound him, the loose-cannon Truman likely would have self-destructed in a flurry of ad hominem tweets.
An obsessed special prosecutor would have followed Truman’s checkered pre-presidential career all the way back to Kansas City to uncover likely unethical behavior.
Yet in the end, Truman proved successful because of what he did — and in spite of what he said.
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