I’ve always resisted comparisons between Adolph Hitler and Donald Trump and between Trump’s election and the onset of fascism. Trump is not plotting genocide. The geopolitics are entirely different. But as I was recently reading Volker Ullrich’s terrific biography of Hitler (Hitler: The Ascent, 1889-1939), I was reminded of a certain similarity between the men, and it’s relevant to the current battle over the border wall. Read More
Trump administration officials and President Trump especially lie all the time. But this is one of their most pernicious and recent lies. This segment on MSNBC from a few moments ago does a good job breaking down the lie.
A good breakdown of one of the President's and DHS Secretary's most recent and pernicious lies: suspected terrorists coming over the southern border. pic.twitter.com/dyVf9oNJWe
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) January 7, 2019
Late last night I saw this Twitter video clip of Gov. Jerry Brown (D-CA) leaving the governor’s office (presumably?) for the last time as Governor of California. It made me consider his remarkable and uncanny public career and my own memories of it, which now stretch over the course of a lifetime.
? @JerryBrownGov departs the Governor’s Office (with some help from Cali and @ColusaBrown) pic.twitter.com/Euoa7A17fM
— Gov. Brown Press Office (@GovPressOffice) January 7, 2019
Edmund Gerald “Jerry” Brown, Jr. was sworn in as Governor of California in January 1975, about six months before my family moved to California in the summer of that year. He managed this feat at the remarkably young age of 36, taking over from Ronald Reagan and doing so, in no small part because his father, Edmund G. “Pat” Brown had been Governor from 1959 to 1967. Brown then had the audacity to turn around and immediately run for President in 1976 and then again in 1980. Read More
It is telling and entirely predictable that the first time President Trump is seriously checked by another branch of government he threatens to declare a national emergency and essentially rule by decree. As history teachers us, while authoritarianism usually sells itself on efficiency and power, it is far more often paired with failure and incompetence. Read More
It seems conceivable, though highly unlikely, that there’s an innocent explanation for the National Parks Service decision to keep a small site tied to President Trump’s hotel open while everything else is closed or unstaffed. Assuming it is what it looks like, another example of the federal government being harnessed to the personal finances of the President, it will be just a more minor example of what we’ll learn far more about in the years to come. There is so little transparency in this administration, so much corruption that has become commonplace, that I don’t think we can really even imagine just how deep it all runs.
Of course, budgeting a few parks rangers to main this clock tower is more a symbol of the problem than the end of the world in itself. But there’s every reason to believe that the whole country’s foreign policy is being harnessed to the President’s personal financial interests as well.
As you’ve likely seen, the now-ubiquitous Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is now floating a 60% to 70% marginal income tax rate on income over $10 million a year. I think this is a great proposal whether or not it ever goes anywhere or whether this particular price point makes sense simply because it opens up the tax policy conversation in ways it’s been closed for a few decades. It is simply crazy that the progressivity of the tax code currently tops out at $500,000 a year incomes. Read More
A very unpretty picture here in the Post of the President’s efforts to negotiate an end to the three-week government shutdown. The White House is making a big play of Vice President Pence working through the weekend in what they claim are negotiations. But the President hasn’t actually given Pence the authority to discuss specific numbers of even specific proposals. And this is compounded by the fact that no one would put much stock in such offers even if Pence were nominally empowered to make them because the President routinely overrules them in tweets. Read More
Shortly after his top communications staffer said Nancy Pelosi was just obsessed with a wall as opposed to a “physical barrier”, President Trump released a letter insisting on a wall.
Absolutely critical to border security and national security is a wall or a physical barrier that prevents entry in the first place. Members of both parties—including then Senators Obama and Clinton, current Senator Schumer, and many other members of the House and Senate—all voted for a hard, physical barrier. Walls work. That’s why rich, powerful, and successful people build them around their homes. All Americans deserve the same protection. In Israel, it is 99 percent effective.
There are issues that divide Republicans and Democrats that sometimes benefit the GOP and at another time the Democrats. Universal healthcare and abortion are issues like this. And so might be the issue of the border wall. If so, the Democrats should be very careful. What follows is a comment on politics, not policy.