Blame $1 Trillion Federal Deficit on Trump Tax Cuts and Spending

In a growing economy, both tax revenue and spending tend to rise over time in real terms. In good times, tax revenue usually goes up faster than spending; during recessions, revenue falls and spending jumps.

…In the two years since the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 took effect on Jan. 1, 2018, the annual U.S. federal deficit has grown from $681 billion to a bit over $1 trillion.

…There’s not much evidence yet that the incentive effects of the tax cuts will contribute significantly to future growth.

…Put the two calendar years since the tax cut together and compare them with the “normal” of the previous 35 years, and it’s clear that recent revenue growth and spending growth have both been out of the ordinary.

…The rise in the deficit since 2017 has so far been accompanied by solid if unspectacular economic growth 

…Real outlays grew 1.7 percentage points a year faster than the historical average since the end of 2017; real receipts grew 1.8 percentage points slower. Both thus seem about equally to blame for the rise in the deficit.

…Net interest on the debt accounted for the biggest part of the spending rise from fiscal year 2017 to FY 2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office. …The rise in net interest payments has thus far been kept somewhat in check by extremely low interest rates, which may or may not continue in the future.

Blame $1 Trillion Federal Deficit on Trump Tax Cuts and Spending – Bloomberg

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The Problem With ‘Electability’

Discussions of electability are often really about identity — and they tend to come down negatively on nonwhite and non-male candidates.

…How comfortable should we be, as a society, with discouraging members of traditionally marginalized groups from pursuing political office because other Americans might have a negative view of those potential candidates’ gender, race, religion, sexual orientation or other personal characteristics (or some combination of these characteristics)? After all, a candidate can change her ideology if her platform isn’t appealing to voters — but many of these traits are immutable.

This is not a theoretical issue. 

…Discussions of electability matter in a system where a huge part of who wins is who runs in the first place, and a major factor in who runs is who other people encourage to run. If people are telling women and members of minority groups that they can’t win, that could be a factor in the underrepresentation of minorities and women in politics. 

…Because the U.S. is majority white, and because a significant number of Americans have some negative views about nonwhite people and women, a heavy emphasis on electability can be tantamount to encouraging any candidates who aren’t Christian white men either not to run in the first place — or to run only if they are willing to either ignore or downplay issues that involve their personal identities.

The Problem With ‘Electability’ | FiveThirtyEight

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Women Also Set Sail on Viking Voyages, Study Shows

According to study co-author Maja Krzewinska, the results shine a light on the path that ancient Norse women traveled as they assisted in colonizing new lands during the Viking Age. “We can also show that our Norwegian Vikings brought Norwegian women when they colonized Iceland and went to other areas,” she said in a Stockholm University press release. “It fits well with what we know from written sources and gives us an exciting picture of how migration was done in groups with high mobility like the Vikings.”

…Previous researchers have theorized that Vikings traveled in male-only groups, fathering children with local women as they raped and pillaged their way across Europe and the North Atlantic. A study from 2001, for example, argued the Vikings brought Gaelic women with them when they left to settle Iceland.

Women Also Set Sail on Viking Voyages, Study Shows – HISTORY

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Bill Clinton Presses On in Campaign for Barack Obama

In addition to headlining 37 rallies for Mr. Obama over the last seven weeks of the campaign [alone], …Mr. Clinton is serving as a back-channel strategist for the re-election enterprise.

Bill Clinton Presses On in Campaign for Barack Obama – The New York Times

Not even but her husband headlined nearly as many events in six weeks for Obama as Bernie did for Hillary over the course over the entire campaign.

…Makes recents claims about Bernie supporting the nominee in 2016 ring weak and hollow.

Throwback: What It Looks Like When a Losing Candidate Does Not Support the Nominee After A Bruising Primary

Senator Bernie Sanders said on Sunday that he would “take our campaign for transforming the Democratic Party into the convention,” refusing to concede the presidential nomination to Hillary Clinton though not explicitly saying he would challenge her for it.

Mrs. Clinton earned enough delegates to clinch the nomination last week, but Mr. Sanders has declined to end his campaign. He has contended that he could persuade enough superdelegates, the party leaders who have overwhelmingly backed Mrs. Clinton, to switch their support to him by arguing that he would be the stronger candidate against Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

Bernie Sanders Refuses to Concede Nomination to Hillary Clinton – The New York Times

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Trump unveils ‘realistic two-state solution’ for Middle East peace

  • Establish Jerusalem as Israel’s “undivided” capital, with a potential Palestinian capital to the east and north of the city.
  • Recognise the vast majority of Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian territory as part of the country.
  • Recognise the Jordan valley, which makes up about a third of the occupied West Bank, as part of Israel.
  • Offer a path to some form of Palestinian statehood but with no army, and overarching Israeli security control in some areas, including over the sea.
  • Refuse Palestinian refugees the “right of return” to homes lost to Israel in previous conflicts.

Trump unveils ‘realistic two-state solution’ for Middle East peace | World news | The Guardian

More like a plan for permanent occupation
…racist asshats.

The Public Charge Immigration Rule, the Refusal to Admit Immigrants Fleeing Nazi Germany, and Trump’s War on Lady Liberty

[in the 1930’s] Congress …established annual immigration quotas that discriminated against certain national origins, but White House officials considered even these quotas to be too generous. They brandished an obscure provision of immigration law that excluded visa applicants “likely to become public charges.” A …stricter interpretation of the public charge provision …[was proposed to] effectively reduce the quotas by as much as 90%.

…In 1933, in the first term of Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency, his Administration considered changing the public charge clause to allow for the entry of more refugees from Germany. (At the time the United States did not distinguish between immigrants and refugees, nor was there any such thing as political asylum.) …There were State Department officials who thought American Jewish protests against Nazi persecution were exaggerated and artificial, part of a Jewish scheme to ease American barriers to increased immigration.

…A November 1938 poll, taken immediately after Kristallnacht, showed that 71% of Americans opposed the entrance into their country of a larger number of German exiles, while only 21% supported it. A few months later, 66% of a sample opposed bringing 10,000 refugee children to the U.S. beyond what was permitted by the quota; only 26% supported it.

…After the rapid German conquest of France, pervasive concerns about American security fostered a fearful and resentful climate of opinion; Roper Poll in June 1940 found that only 2.7% of Americans thought the government was doing enough to counteract a Nazi “Fifth Column” operating in the U.S. German Jews were not immune from these suspicions. Some Americans thought Jews could be coerced into spying for Germany based on threats to their relatives in Germany; others, including a former undersecretary of state, thought that inherent “Jewish greed” might lead refugees and immigrants to work for the Nazi cause. By mid-1941 the State Department instructed consuls to deny visas to applicants who had relatives living in the totalitarian countries of Germany, the Soviet Union, and Italy.

… Only in January 1944 did the Roosevelt administration, responding to some criticism and internal pressures, change course again, establishing a War Refugee Board to try to save the lives of civilian victims of Nazi persecution. The Board helped tens of thousands of Jews survive in Europe in the last 16 months of the war.

…The same vague language in the public charge clause that allowed Hoover to cut quotas by some 90%, and that allowed some State Department officials in Roosevelt’s first term to maintain that the German quota was unfilled because of the lack of “qualified” applicants, was set to be put to new use earlier this month.

The Public Charge Rule and Immigrants Fleeing Nazi Germany | Time

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Hillary Clinton Gets Candid About Feminism, Beyonce and ‘Little Women’

Q: There’s a scene in the documentary where protesters are burning an effigy of you over your decision to pursue universal health care in 1993.

A: Really, the arc of women’s lives and the women’s movement and both the advances we’ve made in politics, but also the pushback that we see so clearly today. 

Q: After “Hillary” premiered at Sundance, you spoke at the Q&A about the misogyny that women candidates face online, particularly women running for president. Why do you think there’s so much hatred for women who are seeking leadership positions?

A: It’s a great question. I don’t think it’s in any way limited to women trying to run for president. But because of the high visibility of women who try, misogyny that is directed not only to women themselves but to their supporters is so shocking. And I remember in 2016 — look, I have tough skin. I put myself out there. I was the one running. But what was said and done to my supporters, men and women — but predominantly women — who spoke for me or proclaimed their support for me, it was just so vile. And some of the groups, like Pantsuit Nation, they had 4 million members. And people were targeting individual members all over the country, insulting them and threatening them. So I’m seeing the same right now. Some of the organized efforts to undercut, demean, belittle the women who had been running and still are running in this election.

Q: Did you ever go on the internet or Twitter to see what people were saying?

A; No, I never did. A lot of it was manufactured. We now know that a lot of it was amplified by Russian bots. That’s still going on. And I knew that it was not really about me, it was about the threat that a woman running for president posed to certain set beliefs and structures.

Q: There was a lot of online attention about the line in the documentary where you said “nobody likes” Bernie Sanders. But I feel like the context got lost, because you were talking about his time in Washington D.C. and how the press treated you versus him in 2016. Could you clarify that?

A: I think we did that interview about a year and a half ago. I wasn’t thinking about the election by any means. I’ve said I’m going to support the nominee. But I do think it’s important to look at somebody’s record and look at what they’ve gotten done and see whether you agree with that or not.

Hillary Clinton Gets Candid About Feminism, Beyonce and ‘Little Women’ (EXCLUSIVE)

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Sanders Apologizes to Biden After Surrogate Writes Op-Ed Claiming He Has a ‘Big Corruption Problem’

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) apologized to former Vice President Joe Biden after one of his campaign surrogates wrote an op-ed alleging that Biden has a “big corruption problem.”

…The op-ed came after Biden accused the Sanders campaign of releasing a “doctored” video that shows him in support of cutting Social Security this weekend, though there was no evidence to support that claim.

Sanders Apologizes to Biden After Surrogate Writes Op-Ed Claiming He Has a ‘Big Corruption Problem’

…The day after the “apology,” Sanders resumed the same attacks he, “apologized” for.

Hillary Clinton in Full: A Fiery New Documentary, Trump Regrets and Harsh Words for Bernie

Q: If he gets the nomination, will you endorse and campaign for him?

A: I’m not going to go there yet. We’re still in a very vigorous primary season. I will say, however, that it’s not only him, it’s the culture around him. It’s his leadership team. It’s his prominent supporters. It’s his online Bernie Bros and their relentless attacks on lots of his competitors, particularly the women. And I really hope people are paying attention to that because it should be worrisome that he has permitted this culture — not only permitted, [he] seems to really be very much supporting it.

…Q: He allegedly told Sen. Elizabeth Warren in 2018 that he didn’t think a woman could win, a statement he vigorously denies. How did you digest that?

The Bernie campaign ha[s] gone after Elizabeth with a very personal attack on her. Then this argument about whether or not or when he did or didn’t say that a woman couldn’t be elected, it’s part of a pattern. If it were a one-off, you might say, “OK, fine.” But he said I was unqualified. I had a lot more experience than he did, and got a lot more done than he had, but that was his attack on me. I just think people need to pay attention because we want, hopefully, to elect a president who’s going to try to bring us together, and not either turn a blind eye, or actually reward the kind of insulting, attacking, demeaning, degrading behavior that we’ve seen from this current administration.

…I always say [to the female candidates], “Look, you can run the best campaign, but you’re going to have to be even better than your best campaign to overcome some of the unfairness that will be directed at you as a woman.” Whoever gets the nomination, you’ve got to deal with the structural challenges that the Republicans and their allies have put in your way. So, that means you’ve got to deal with voter suppression, because they’ll steal votes or they’ll prevent votes from happening. They’re now trying to purge voters so that they can try to limit the electorate. You’ve got to deal with the theft of your personal information, particularly your emails. I say to them, “If your emails haven’t been stolen yet, they will be.” Look what the Russians just did, hacking into that Ukrainian oil company to try to dig up something or make something up [about Joe Biden’s son, Hunter]. Then you’ve got to worry about the propaganda, the fake news, the made-up stories. Now you have the additional worry of the deepfakes, and people putting words in your mouth. I’ve tried to tell all the candidates the same thing, but with the women, I say, “You’re probably not going to be treated fairly, don’t let it knock you off stride.”

Q: How can the left combat Fox News?

It’s really a shame that all the people who support progressive politics and policies haven’t understood that that’s exactly the right question to ask. We do have some well-off people who support Democratic candidates, there’s no doubt about that, but they’ve never bought a TV station. They’ve never gobbled up radio stations. They’ve never created newspapers in local communities to put out propaganda. That’s all been done not just by Murdoch and Fox, but by Sinclair and by the Koch brothers and by so many others who have played a long game about how we really influence the thinking of Americans.

Q: I was struck by a comment from your campaign media consultant Mandy Grunwald in the doc: “Women who judged Hillary for staying with Bill Clinton would have voted for Bill Clinton all over again if they had the chance. And kept saying so … And yet they took it out on Hillary.”

That’s exactly right.

Hillary Clinton in Full: A Fiery New Documentary, Trump Regrets and Harsh Words for Bernie | Hollywood Reporter

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Bernie Sanders isn’t facing enough scrutiny

He’s been lucky to avoid such an inquiry, because, for whatever reason, the media has discounted his ability to win the nomination. Press scrutiny moves on a sliding scale — the closer you get to the nomination, the more intense the spotlight becomes. And opponents of Sanders have been reluctant to take him on given the intensity of support from his voters and their knowledge of how important those voters will be in the fall.

The result is that one of the leading candidates for the nomination has largely escaped the kind of scrutiny his opponents have been put through and that should worry every Democrat. His vulnerabilities, like the rest of the candidates, should be tested before Democrats gather in Milwaukee later this summer.

…n 1980 and 1984, Sanders campaigned for the Socialist Workers Party. The report said that Sanders “proudly endorsed and supported” the Marxist group’s presidential candidate, Andrew Pulley, in 1980. According to the report, in a press release, Sanders said, “I fully support the SWP’s continued defense of the Cuban revolution.”

…”Everybody was totally convinced that Castro was the worst guy in the world…They forgot that he educated …kids, gave them health care, totally transformed the society.” Although Sanders agreed that Cuba was undemocratic and authoritarian, he seemed to refuse to take back his comments. The 1984 video and his refusal to disavow his comments could be a vulnerability for Sanders in 2020.

In the 1970’s, Sanders called for the abolition of the CIA, reducing the military, and returning to local militias, and the Coast Guard, to defend the homeland. 

…He now says he supports gun safety, but in Congress, he initially voted against the Brady Bill, which requires prospective handgun buyers to wait up to five business days while a background check is conducted before completing a purchase, and later supported legislation immunizing the gun industry from several types of lawsuits.

Few are aware that before he got to Congress, he was even more radical. In 1972, he backed a political platform’s call for the abolition of all laws that interfere with the constitutional right of citizens to bear arms.

Opinion: Bernie Sanders isn’t facing enough scrutiny – CNN

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Throwback: Pre-Primary News Coverage of the 2016 Presidential Race: Trump’s Rise, Sanders’ Emergence, Clinton’s Struggle

During the year 2015, major news outlets covered Donald Trump in a way that was unusual given his low initial polling numbers—a high volume of media coverage preceded Trump’s rise in the polls. Trump’s coverage was positive in tone—he received far more “good press” than “bad press.” The volume and tone of the coverage helped propel Trump to the top of Republican polls.

…Bernie Sanders’ campaign was largely ignored in the early months but, as it began to get coverage, it was overwhelmingly positive in tone. Sanders’ coverage in 2015 was the most favorable of any of the top candidates, Republican or Democratic. For her part, Hillary Clinton had by far the most negative coverage of any candidate. In 11 of the 12 months, her “bad news” outpaced her “good news,” usually by a wide margin, contributing to the increase in her unfavorable poll ratings in 2015.

Pre-Primary News Coverage of the 2016 Presidential Race: Trump’s Rise, Sanders’ Emergence, Clinton’s Struggle | Shorenstein Center

Sanders was treated badly by the mainstream press, my ass!

Throwback: Harvard Study Confirms The Media Tore Down Clinton, Built Up Trump And Sanders

Hillary Clinton [w]as been bludgeoned by negative media coverage. The email server; the Wall Street speaking fees; the attacks from both Trump and Sanders.

…Clinton has received far more negative coverage than any other candidate in the race.

…The study was based on an analysis of news statements from CBS, Fox, the Los Angeles Times, NBC, the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post.

…Though 28 percent of Clinton’s coverage was about issues, 84 percent of those stories were negative in tone. To compare, Trump only notched 12 percent on issues, with 43 percent negative in tone. That’s much heavier accountability for the Democratic nominee in a race that received less than half the coverage of the Republican contest.

Harvard Study Confirms The Media Tore Down Clinton, Built Up Trump And Sanders – GOOD

Liberal media, my ass.
Bernie was ignored by the mainstream media, my ass!

Hillary Clinton says abuse of female politicians on social media is ‘viral’

Her comments came after a number of female members of parliament in Britain announced they would not stand for re-election at a Dec. 12 general election, citing abuse on social media including rape and death threats.

…Female politicians are facing a backlash over women’s rights which has been fueled by social media that rewards abusive posts and conspiracy theories.

Hillary Clinton says abuse of female politicians on social media is ‘viral’ – Reuters

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Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

More than two years ago, Apple told the FBI that it planned to offer users end-to-end encryption when storing their phone data on iCloud, according to one current and three former FBI officials and one current and one former Apple employee.

Under that plan, primarily designed to thwart hackers, Apple would no longer have a key to unlock the encrypted data, meaning it would not be able to turn material over to authorities in a readable form even under court order.

…Apple dropped plans to let iPhone users fully encrypt backups of their devices in the company’s iCloud service after the FBI complained that the move would harm investigations, six sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

…It shows how much Apple has been willing to help U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies, despite taking a harder line in high-profile legal disputes with the government and casting itself as a defender of its customers’ information.

Exclusive: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained – sources – Reuters

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