President Trump- The Implications

[swake]

It really needs to be called out that Trump is threatening to shut down our government to pay for a wall that he promised Mexico would pay for.

[TeeDub]

Do you mean Glass-Steagall? 

Absolutely.   No more posting while kids are pulling me the other way.

[patric]

It really needs to be called out that Trump is threatening to shut down our government to pay for a wall that he promised Mexico would pay for.

He says he HAS to build it because he promised he would, but just cant quite remember the other half of that promise.

[Townsend]

http://www.npr.org/2017/08/25/546007440/bay-area-braces-for-protests-charlottesville-has-raised-the-stakes

Bay Area Braces For Protests: 'Charlottesville Has Raised The Stakes'

Just two weeks after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., left one woman dead and ignited a national debate about racism, symbols of white supremacy and free speech, several alt-right groups are rallying this weekend in the San Francisco Bay Area, unnerving residents, police and politicians.

"Charlottesville has raised the stakes," says Jesse Arreguin, mayor of Berkeley, Calif. "So we are very concerned about any violence that could happen in our city."

It's no coincidence far-right groups are targeting liberal cities long known for their embrace of leftist politics, free-speech and diversity. Many on the alt-right see the West Coast's urban areas as centers of effete, out-of-touch, intolerant elitist "snowflakes."

"Talk about kicking the hornets' nest! This is sure to be a barn burner," Kyle Chapman a.k.a. "Based Stickman" and the "Alt-Knight" wrote on Facebook urging supporters to head to the Bay this weekend, according to the Los Angeles Times. Chapman, who is popular among alt-right groups, fought protesters in Berkeley in March 4, and has been charged with felony possession of a weapon and other charges.

"I've repeatedly put my life and freedom on the line," Chapman wrote, adding the hashtags #ResistMarxism #CrushCommunisim. "It's time to return the favor. I need all warriors to suit up and boot up this weekend."

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee expressed disappointment with the National Park Service, which granted a permit for Saturday's "Patriot Prayer" rally on the Golden Gate National Recreation Area's Crissy Field.

"God pray nobody gets hurt because these people with hate-filled messages are coming into our city to wreak havoc," Lee says.

"The shameful, anti-American trend of hate-filled extremist rallies will unfortunately be allowed to continue this weekend in our city," Lee says.

Violence is not free speech

Berkeley, historically a center of free-speech activism, continues to prepare for Sunday even though a permit application was denied for what's been dubbed an "anti-Marxist" rally. "They will be moving forward with an unsanctioned event," Mayor Arreguin says, adding "we will not tolerate any violence committed by anyone. If things get violent we will make arrests."

This will be the fourth major street protest in Berkeley in just over a year. In February masked protesters smashed windows, lit fires, shot fireworks and tossed metal barricades during a planned speech at the University of California, Berkeley by far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos. The speech was canceled.

And in April, running street battles broke out in downtown Berkeley between pro- and anti-Trump groups.



But the recent death of a young woman in Virginia during a Unite the Right rally has exacerbated concerns.

"We take our historic role and responsibility to protect freedom of speech very seriously," Arreguin tells NPR. But addressing extremists on both sides, the mayor says violence is not free speech. "When you come to an event dressed as a soldier for battle you're not interested in free speech, you're interested in a brawl."

Across the bay San Francisco Police Chief William Scott assured residents this week "you will see a very, very large presence of officers at Crissy Field, as well as other parts of the city...just be assured you will see large amounts of officers."

Area police have cancelled all vacation and time-off requests. Berkeley has asked for mutual aid police assistance from neighboring communities.

In San Francisco, police and the Park Service have banned people from carrying a long list of items to the event, including helmets, tiki torches, selfie sticks, drones, bicycles and any weapons or firearms including by those people with concealed carry permits.

'Shut them down'

The main organizer of Saturday's San Francisco rally, Joey Gibson founder of Patriot Prayer, insists his event is searching for common ground and not open to the far-right.

"No extremists will be allowed in," his group posted on Facebook. "No Nazis, Communist, KKK, Antifa, white supremacist, I.E., or white nationalists."

The pro-Trump supporter has denounced the violence in Charlottesville. And Gibson insisted to a local TV station in Portland, Ore., he isn't a racist and doesn't want racists at his rallies.

"I'm brown so I'm definitely not a white supremacist, definitely not a white nationalist, definitely not a Nazi because I want limited government," he says. "Hitler was all about big government."


But Gibson's rallies have featured white nationalist speakers and his group's events often attract a wide range of racist white nationalists, conspiracy theorists, and anti-government extremists and militia types, says Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State, San Bernardino.

"The anti-fascist movement does think [Gibson] is an extremist and an antagonist and wants to quote, 'shut them down.' So that's why this stuff can go south pretty quick."

"[Gibson] either has people that he invites or tolerates people who are dyed in the wool extremists," Levin adds. "There is a diversity of people who show up. But whether or not you put the fly in the soup or just allow flies to go into your soup. You still don't want to drink the soup."

Members of the anti-fascist or ANTIFA groups in the Bay Area, some who embrace violent tactics, have vowed to disrupt both alt-right rallies.

Members of the anti-government militia groups called Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters say they're sending supporters to the Bay Area.

The alt-lite

The Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism says the organizers of both rallies this weekend appear to be what they're calling the "alt lite" variety: far- right supporters who reject overt displays of white supremacy, but who often embrace xenophobic, misogynist, anti-Muslim, anti-immigration and anti-Semitic ideas.

But the ADL's Joanna Mendelson notes that both movements' hateful ideologies are changeable.

"The fluidity to these groups is in the fact that some adherents can't be neatly and squarely characterized in one category over another. Both groups echo xenophobic and often misogynistic tropes, but the line in the sand, in where they stand, is defined by their views on white supremacy and anti-Semitism," she says.

"These rallies always have the potential of attracting dyed-in-the-wool white supremacists who seek to insert their racist agenda into possible firestorm events," Mendelson adds.


California has seen more than two dozen political street brawls in the last two years including a bloody neo-Nazi rally in Sacramento, which saw at least seven people stabbed. And a KKK rally in Anaheim last year also turned violent.

Brian Levin at Cal State reports that hate crimes were up 14 percent in California's largest cities in 2016 and have risen as well in major "blue state" cities.

'A better alternative'

Meantime, San Francisco Mayor Lee is urging residents not to show up but instead attend one of the many planned peaceful counter-protests, many of which are in keeping with San Francisco's free spirit culture.

They include a "Stop Hate Human Banner" event on Ocean Beach as well as a mobile dance party called LovedUp. "The goal was to respond with a better alternative — one that's bigger, brighter, and more inclusive," Daveed Walzer Panadero tells member station KQED. "And hopefully draws more people who might not normally come to a political protest or march."

And the group Calling All Clowns says its members will use wit and absurdity to "mercilessly ridicule any Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, or alt right trolls who dare show their face in San Francisco."

Musician Michael Franti & Spearhead and other Bay Area artists and comedians are among those scheduled to perform Saturday at a concert dubbed San Francisco Peacefully Unites Against White Nationalists downtown at the city's Civic Center.

"Let us show this nation that San Francisco is a city of peace and unity," Mayor Lee says.

[Townsend]

Government Can Search Inauguration Protest Website Records, With Safeguards

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/24/545843131/judge-says-government-can-search-protest-site-records-with-safeguards

A judge in Washington, D.C., has approved a government request to access data from a website used to organize protests against President Trump's inauguration — with the caveat that the Department of Justice must establish "additional protections" to safeguard users' privacy and right to free speech.

The DOJ already had a warrant approved by a judge to search records related to the site DisruptJ20.org, which organized protests on Jan. 20. More than 200 protesters were charged with rioting, and the Justice Department is looking for evidence in some of those cases. But the Web hosting company DreamHost, which holds the records, challenged the government's request, calling it overly broad and saying it threatens privacy and free speech.

D.C. Superior Court Chief Judge Robert Morin told lawyers for the Justice Department that they could proceed with a narrower version of their warrant. But the government needs to develop a plan to "minimize" the exposure of "innocent users," as he put it.

The U.S. government had already scaled back the scope of its request before Thursday's hearing.

The original request would have compelled DreamHost to disclose 1.3 million IP addresses, which could reveal information about visitors to the protest-organizing site, the Web hosting company says.

DreamHost took the Department of Justice to court to challenge the scope of that request. Earlier this week, the government agreed to drop the request for visitor data en masse and also exclude data from after Jan. 20 and unpublished drafts of the website.

DreamHost welcomed that as a victory but still expressed concerns over the revised warrant.

In the hearing on Thursday, lawyers for the Web hosting company highlighted the fact that the warrant still asks for content from all email accounts on the DisruptJ20.org domain. Raymond Aghaian, representing DreamHost, compared that request with searching every apartment in a building with a single search warrant.

DreamHost also objected to the "two-step" process for executing the warrant. That is one way that law enforcement searches for evidence in digital files.

Step one is to acquire a large pool of data, which will include items that have no connection to a criminal case; step two is to filter out the innocuous content and only "seize" the relevant evidence. In the DreamHost matter, for instance, emails about hosting visitors to D.C. might be set aside, but an email arranging to bring crowbars to a protest might be kept. Everything not seized as evidence is then sealed.

"The fact that an FBI agent will be sitting there and actually reviewing the emails and knowing who this person is ... is an issue in and of itself," Aghaian told NPR. Even if a person's data is ultimately never seized, the fact that it was provided to the government in the first place could still have a "chilling effect," he said. For instance, someone who wants to email an advocacy group might decide not to, knowing their email might later be accessible by the government under a search warrant.

The judge said he had to balance two legitimate interests — free speech and law enforcement needs — and ultimately ruled for a two-step warrant process with additional safeguards.

He said the Department of Justice will need to specify in advance which people would have access to the data, describe how they would be filtering or searching through it and present the courts with a detailed list of what they had seized and why.

The Department of Justice would also be barred from sharing the data with anyone else, including other government agencies, and would need to design and present a system to "minimize" the impact on users not charged with crimes. It's not clear what such a system would look like.

In the meantime, DreamHost is supposed to pull all the data together and deliver it to the government; the Department of Justice will agree to not search through the data until they have the go-ahead from the courts.

Lawyers for DreamHost say they are evaluating their options, including the possibility of appeal. The Department of Justice declined to comment on a pending case.

[Townsend]

With Trump White House, Are Ethics Issues Becoming Just Part Of The Scenery?

http://www.npr.org/2017/08/25/545907553/with-trump-white-house-are-ethics-issues-becoming-just-part-of-the-scenery

When President Trump commented last week on the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., a reporter asked him if he planned to visit the city.

Trump's reply veered far off the volatile topic of race relations: "I mean, I know a lot about Charlottesville. Charlottesville is a great place that's been very badly hurt over the last couple of days." There was crosstalk as Trump continued: "I own, I own actually one of the largest wineries in the United States. It's in Charlottesville."

Trump Winery isn't actually that large, although Trump's most recent financial disclosure report places its value between $11 million and $52 million.

Amid the fallout from Charlottesville, Trump's move to ban transgender people from the military and other controversies, this presidential product placement drew little notice — far less than it might have during the first months of the administration.

In February, for example, presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway set the cable news agenda for days when she appeared on Fox News and plugged Ivanka Trump's fashion merchandise: "I'm gonna give a free commercial here. Go buy it today, everybody, you can find it online."

It appears that public concern about ethics in the Trump administration is waning. One reason may be the sheer volume of controversy generated by the White House.

Kathleen Clark, a professor of law and ethics, suggests a second reason.

"We have become desensitized," she told NPR. "We're so used to Trump conflicts of interest and abuse of office, that when he promotes his vineyard and lies about it, it's just a blip."

There are many blips.

Walter Shaub, former director of the Office of Government Ethics, points to Trump's refusal to fully separate himself from his many businesses, including hotels and resorts.

"Remember, every president since the enactment of the Ethics in Government Act in the '70s has divested conflicting assets," Shaub said in an interview.

Instead, Trump has moved his businesses to a revocable trust, of which he is the sole beneficiary, and his properties haven't disappeared from the picture. At his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and Bedminster golf club in New Jersey, Trump likes to pose for snapshots with members and guests. As the Washington Post reported this month, his hotel in Washington, D.C., a few blocks from the White House, has become a de facto — and premium-priced — gathering spot for the administration, its allies and backers.

On another ethics front, billionaire investor Carl Icahn last week resigned from the unofficial, unpaid position Trump created for him last December: special adviser to the president on regulatory reform.

Icahn had sought to change an Environmental Protection Agency rule in a way that would have benefited a refinery he owns.

In his resignation letter to Trump, Icahn wrote, "I never sought any special benefit for any company with which I have been involved." The resignation was announced days before the New Yorker published an investigative report on his efforts at the EPA.

Public Citizen President Robert Weissman, leading one of the watchdog groups that had tracked Icahn's activities, said, "Each time we're able to succeed in making things a little bit less bad, it's an incremental win."

Kathleen Clark, the ethics-law professor, said all administrations come to grips with ethics, but normally they see a pro-ethics stance as politically smart. She said the Trump White House appears to have a different perspective.

"The question isn't, 'How can we use this to strengthen our hand politically?' " she said. "It's instead, 'How can we avoid application of any restriction, anything that would get in the way of our financially benefiting and exploiting government office?' And that is unprecedented."

The White House didn't respond to NPR's request for comment on this story.

[patric]

Border Patrol officials have decided to keep roadside checkpoints open in Texas during Hurricane Harvey — sparking outrage from the ACLU, which says illegal immigrants have the right to flee just like everybody else.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/opinion-during-hurricane-harvey-border-patrol-should-prioritize-public-safety-n796171

[patric]

WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump on Friday pardoned a notorious former Arizona sheriff who willfully violated a federal judge's order by unlawfully detaining individuals his officers claimed might be in the country illegally.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-pardon-joe-arpaio_us_599da366e4b0a296083b9758

[Hoss]

There is this, though...

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/25/politics/gorka/index.html

[heironymouspasparagus]

How did Bush drive the economy into the dirt? I grant you he didn't do much to prevent it, but neither did Bill and there is a great argument that Reagan started the policies that led to the bubble(s).

Bush didn't do what EVERY President after Roosevelt did when applying Federal fiscal policy to recession management - Proven EVERY single recession until Bush's.  The first thing he did when installed in office by the Powers that Be, was to give all the richest a huge tax cut.  Well, a tax cut - more modest than his - is the successful approach, followed by an expiration of that tax cut after some period of time - typically 12 to 24 months - to alleviate the bad deficit issues that come with those cuts.  Cut the taxes.  Raise the taxes.  Exactly as all previous Presidents, including Reagan did.   Bush didn't, so instead of just tremendous deficits brought to us by Reagan and Bush I, we had horrific, torrential, catastrophic deficits during Baby Bush' regime, culminating in an increase of our debt by $1.9 trillion in his last fiscal year.   Obama's biggest failing was that he did not allow the Bush tax cuts to expire when they should have - we would have had an even better recovery than the really good one we have had.

That's what he did to plunge us into the worst event since Herbert Hoover.

And guess what happened as part of Obama's first year in office, where he was dealing with catastrophy?   EVERYONE else got a huge tax cut for about 18 month.  Accompanied by a comparatively modest stimulus package - all of it totally less that $900 billion.  Which ended the recession in less than 6 months...the one that Bush had caused to limp along for over 18 months.  And  then those tax cuts went away, but still allowed his term to preside over massive reductions in the deficit - hundreds of billions a year less every year of his term.  AND kept our economy growing for the longest recovery we have ever seen.  And close to Clinton's for job creation.

As compared to things like Bush's $700 billion per year rich people welfare payouts to his buddies for his entire term.  Plus $4 trillion squandered in the wrong war - along with more than 4,000 of our kids lives for no good reason.  In fact for the worst reason in the world - HIS personal hubris!!  And 50,000 or so wounded.

All this has been known since it happened, but the 50% - the intellectually bankrupt who voted for Trump continue to follow the Fake Fox News Clown Show bread crumb trail.

[patric]

As compared to things like Bush's $700 billion per year rich people welfare payouts to his buddies for his entire term.  Plus $4 trillion squandered in the wrong war

But no war is the wrong war as long as you see them as "job creators".

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is preparing to restore the flow of surplus military equipment to local law enforcement agencies under a program that had been sharply curtailed amid an outcry over police use of armored vehicles and other war-fighting gear to confront protesters.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-prepares-to-lift-limits-on-military-gear-for-police/2017/08/27/3dee004c-8b86-11e7-9c53-6a169beb0953_story.html

Gotta have military-grade munitions to protect 'Merica from Al Jazeera

[Townsend]

She's going to stomp on some throats with those stilettos.

[hello]

I've seen more online outrage about her stilettos than Felix Sater selling the Presidency to Russia. Priorities.

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/videos/a57254/trump-felix-sater-bbc-interview/

[swake]

How to be presidential:

Not only giving out money, but Obama will be seen today standing in water and rain like he is a real President --- don't fall for it.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 30, 2012

Obama is now standing in a puddle acting like a President--give me a break.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2012

Thank you everybody. What a crowd! What a turnout!

And we won't say congratulations. We don't want to do that. We don't want to congratulate. We'll congratulate each other when it's all finished.

Nice kicky "Flotus" hate and stilettos.  Man of the people!

[cannon_fodder]

Obviously Trump is a hypocrite.  That's been shown over and over and over again. 

Broader question - what's the point of Trump or Obama going to a hurricane zone? 

Obviously the nation is already focused on the area, this isn't a hidden tragedy.  The President isn't needed to "unite" the country, I don't think there is a large contingent in favor of the hurricane.  There is little need to physically see the damage beyond what satellites, other flyovers, video from helicopters, maps and advisers can tell him. It is a great expense and adds logistical pressure to an area whose police area already working never ending shifts (you work until you can't, then you sleep, then you work until you can't).

I get that its custom and expected.  But wouldn't it actually be better to just ask the emergency officials and then announce they have asked that they be allowed to focus on their tasks?  Then, when the crisis has passed, the news cameras go home, and our tiny attention spans have moved on... have a presidential visit to draw focus on the aftermath and the needs.  This doesn't end when the water goes back out to sea.