May 1, 2017

Donald Trump Has a New Favorite Dictator: Rodrigo Duterte

PRAISE FOR A THUG

Donald Trump Has a New Favorite Dictator: Rodrigo Duterte

First there was Putin. Then there were Erdogan and El-Sisi. Now President Trump has invited the Philippines’ murderous president over for a visit.

SCOTT BIXBY 05.01.17 1:05 AM ET

As President Donald Trump basked in the adulation of his most fervent supporters at a campaign-style rally on Saturday, reiterating the populist rhetoric that fueled both his political rise and anxieties that he yearned to flout democratic norms, his administration released yet another piece of evidence that suggests he feels a kinship with leaders who do exactly that.

In a readout of a phone call conducted earlier on Saturday, the White House press office announced that Trump had invited President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines to visit the White House. The invitation, made at the end of what the press office called a “very friendly conversation,” is an embrace of a figure who has been condemned by other world leaders and by human rights organizations as a violent thug.

Duterte was swept into power after vowing that he would eliminate crime in the Philippines within six months—a promise that has come to fruition in the form of an organized campaign of extrajudicial murder of suspected drug dealers, carried out in large part by police officers who receive cash payouts in exchange for executing suspects on the streets of the nation’s cities and towns.

More than 7,000 people were killed in Duterte’s “war on drugs” in the first six months after he took office, according to interior police statistics, many of them innocent bystanders or children earning money as low-level drug runners. Public “drug watch lists,” prepared by local officials on the basis of hearsay, rumors, and even personal grudges, are shared with municipal police, who report being paid an average of $200 per “job” in a country where the average annual income is less than $5,400.

Critics of Duterte’s policies have been accused of being in the pocket of drug lords; politicians who speak out against the war have been arrested on drug charges or had the budgets for their security details slashed, exposing them to the same contract-style killings that have claimed thousands of Philippine lives.

more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/05/01/donald-trump-has-a-new-favorite-dictator-rodrigo-duterte

May 1, 2017

Trump's populism has nothing to do with helping the people who voted for him - By E.J. Dionne Jr.

By E.J. Dionne Jr. Opinion writer April 30 at 8:10 PM

If words could bring legal actions, “populism” would sue for aggravated abuse. And President Trump would be a co-defendant.

In a season of dispiriting tidings, few habits have been more infuriating than the ease with which political commentators of all stripes have applied the P-word to Trump. Trump has courted this with old-fashioned union-hall rhetoric about his devotion to “hard-working men and women.” Trump claimed during his campaign that he would curb tax breaks for the wealthy, and his chief of staff gamely insisted on Sunday that the carried-interest loophole for hedge-fund managers was still “on the table.” We’ll see. Trump also said he’d rip up trade treaties and be vigilant against the flight of jobs to China — pronouncing its name in a menacing way.

But as is the case with everything involving Trump, his words had no connection to thought. They were all about the effect they would have. Trump had warned us about this in bestsellers where he admitted that he uses words primarily to get the deal he wants.

This hasn’t stopped the cruel mistreatment of the concept of populism, invoked again and again to turn Trump into a latter-day William Jennings Bryan (a deeply religious and, on most things, very progressive figure who would likely be appalled by Trump) or Pitchfork Ben Tillman. That Trump spends almost all of his time with very wealthy people and only appears truly happy when he’s at one of his resorts never seems to lower his populist score. The defense is to ask: Why can’t a rich guy speak for the people?

Well, yes, Franklin D. Roosevelt was called a traitor to his class. But Trump is nothing of the sort. Just take a look at the net worth of those staffing his administration. We now know that what he said during the campaign to win blue-collar votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin was disconnected from any intentions he had — or, alternatively, that he never pondered the meaning of his words until he got elected.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-populism-has-nothing-to-do-with-helping-the-people-who-voted-for-him/2017/04/30/cb637bac-2c57-11e7-be51-b3fc6ff7faee_story.html?utm_term=.8b6a6d1c91ca&wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1

May 1, 2017

Taxes will go up. Heres why. - By Robert J. Samuelson

By Robert J. Samuelson April 30 at 8:05 PM

Let’s be clear: America is an undertaxed society. Our wants and needs from government — the two blur — exceed our willingness to be taxed. This has been true for decades, but it’s especially relevant now because the number of older Americans, who are the largest beneficiaries of federal spending, is rising rapidly. Unless we’re prepared to make sizable spending cuts (and there’s no evidence we are), we need higher taxes.

To the extent that President Trump’s proposed “tax reform” obscures or worsens this inconvenient reality, it is a dangerous distraction. We cannot afford large tax cuts, which are pleasing to propose (“something for nothing”) but involve long-term risks that are not understood by the president or, to be fair, by economists. Piling up massive peacetime deficits is something we haven’t done before. We cannot know the full consequences.

Of course, Trump proposes some good ideas. Tax rates would drop for businesses and individuals. Many deductions would end. Some tax relief would go to low- and middle-income households with children — a deserving group. There are also familiar complaints. Too many benefits, it’s said, go to the wealthy. (A similar plan by candidate Trump channeled nearly half the cuts to the richest 1 percent, said the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.)

But the plan’s fatal defect is its effect on the publicly held federal debt. In 2016, this was $14 trillion, or 77 percent of the economy (gross domestic product). “During only one other period of U.S. history — from 1944 through 1950, because of the surge in federal spending during World War II — has that debt exceeded 70?percent of GDP,” the Congressional Budget Office says. Under present policies and reflecting the older population, the CBO projects the debt to reach $25 trillion and 89 percent of GDP by 2027.

Just how much Trump’s tax plan would add to this is unclear. We don’t yet have sufficient detail to judge. But the amount could be considerable. Lower rates aren’t matched by revenue-raising provisions. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget puts the likely 10-year cost at $5.5 trillion with a range from $3 trillion to $7 trillion.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/taxes-will-go-up-heres-why/2017/04/30/830294d6-2c45-11e7-b605-33413c691853_story.html?utm_term=.ad1e90d79f10&wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1

May 1, 2017

Trump's Tax Cuts May Be More Damaging Than Reagan's

Steven Rattner MAY 1, 2017

As a young New York Times reporter nearly four decades ago, I helped chronicle the rollout of what proved to be among our country’s greatest economic follies — the alchemistic belief that huge tax cuts can pay for themselves by unleashing faster economic growth.

Buoyed by this idea, Congress passed the largest tax reductions in history just seven months after Ronald Reagan’s inauguration. I was deeply skeptical of the illogical notion that tax cuts could somehow pay for themselves, so much so that I was attacked by name on the Wall Street Journal op-ed page. That, in turn, caused consternation among my editors in an era when reporting was meant to be less analytical.

Nonetheless, I felt no joy as the plan immediately made a bad economy worse.

Now comes Donald Trump, essentially trying to revive that same supply-side credo (famously branded “voodoo economics” by George H. W. Bush) with his proposal for $5.5 trillion of tax giveaways, mostly for business. Even some of the outsize personalities that I encountered in 1981 are back, most notoriously the concept’s godfather, Arthur Laffer, who advised the Trump presidential campaign.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/01/opinion/trumps-tax-cuts-may-be-more-damaging-than-reagans.html?emc=edit_th_20170501&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=57435284&_r=0

May 1, 2017

On the Power of Being Awful - By Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman MAY 1, 2017

The 100-day reviews are in, and they’re terrible. The health care faceplants just keep coming; the administration’s tax “plan” offers less detail than most supermarket receipts; Trump has wimped out on his promises to get aggressive on foreign trade. The gap between big boasts and tiny achievements has never been wider.

Yet there have, by my count, been seven thousand news articles — O.K., it’s a rough estimate — about how Trump supporters are standing by their man, are angry at those meanies in the news media, and would gladly vote for him all over again. What’s going on?

The answer, I’d suggest, lies buried in the details of the latest report on gross domestic product. No, really.

For the past few months, economists who track short-term developments have been noting a peculiar divergence between “soft” and “hard” data. Soft data are things like surveys of consumer and business confidence; hard data are things like actual retail sales. Normally these data tell similar stories (which is why the soft data are useful as a sort of early warning system for the coming hard data). Since the 2016 election, however, the two kinds of data have diverged, with reported confidence surging — and, yes, a bump in stocks — but no real sign of a pickup in economic activity.

The funny thing about that confidence surge, however, was that it was very much along partisan lines — a sharp decline among Democrats, but a huge rise among Republicans. This raises the obvious question: Were those reporting a huge increase in optimism really feeling that much better about their economic prospects, or were they simply using the survey as an opportunity to affirm the rightness of their vote?

Well, if consumers really are feeling super-confident, they’re not acting on those feelings. The first-quarter G.D.P. report, showing growth slowing to a crawl, wasn’t as bad as it looks: Technical issues involving inventories and seasonal adjustment (you don’t want to know) mean that underlying growth was probably O.K., though not great. But consumer spending was definitely sluggish.

more
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/01/opinion/donald-trump-on-the-power-of-being-awful.html?emc=edit_th_20170501&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=57435284

May 1, 2017

Trump's invitation to Duterte is a sign of the times

By Ishaan Tharoor May 1 at 1:00 AM

Over the weekend, the White House announced that President Trump had invited President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines for a visit to Washington, following what was deemed a “very friendly conversation” over the phone between Trump and his counterpart in Manila.

Despite the close ties between the United States and the Philippines, the move surprised Trump's critics and allies. In his 10 months in power, Duterte has become one of Asia's most controversial leaders. He has presided over a vicious drug war that has seen thousands killed by extrajudicial hit squads — encouraged, say critics, by Duterte's explicit orders. Last week, a Filipino lawyer filed a complaint at the International Criminal Court, accusing Duterte and 11 other Filipino officials of mass murder and crimes against humanity. (Duterte has shrugged off the filing and said it will not deter his campaign.)

The complaint takes into account the killings of 9,400 people stretching back to 1988, when Duterte became the mayor of the southern city of Davao and began making his reputation as a tough guy willing to do anything to crack down on crime. “The situation in the Philippines reveals a terrifying, gruesome and disastrous continuing commission of extrajudicial executions or mass murder,” read the complaint. An estimated 8,000 people have been killed since Duterte became president last summer.

None of this seemed to faze the White House. In the readout of the phone call, the only mention of Duterte's astonishing record of violence seemed to be a positive one. It said that the two leaders “discussed the fact that the Philippines is fighting very hard to rid its country of drugs, a scourge that affects many countries around the world.”

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/05/01/trumps-invitation-to-duterte-is-a-sign-of-the-times/?utm_term=.f1b625dc9fc7

April 30, 2017

Trump did not clear Duterte invitation with State Department: report

BY BRANDON CARTER - 04/30/17 04:58 PM EDT

President Trump invited controversial President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines to the White House without consulting the State Department, according to a new report from The New York Times.

The Times reported Sunday that both the National Security Council and the State Department were caught off guard by the announcement, which set off criticism from human rights groups.

“By essentially endorsing Duterte’s murderous war on drugs, Trump is now morally complicit in future killings,” John Sifton of Human Rights Watch told the Times.

Trump and Duterte spoke by phone Saturday, when Trump invited the leader to the White House "to discuss the importance of the United States-Philippines alliance,” according to a readout of the call provided by the White House.

more
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/331319-trump-invited-duterte-to-white-house-without-telling-state-department

April 30, 2017

'Donald Donates' Let's You Donate to Causes Trump Hates Every Time He Tweets

‘Donald is tweeting again… Sad!’

HAYLEY JONES04.29.17 9:35 PM ET

One hundred days in and still unsatisfied with Donald Trump’s presidency? You’re not alone. Three genius millennials found a way to cope with the Trump administration by using Trump’s kryptonite: Twitter.

Donald Donates is a website set up for anti-Trumpers to donate to various causes Donald Trump is against, or potential 2020 election candidates.

https://twitter.com/DonaldDonates/status/855229574812246018

The site’s opening statement reads: “Let’s show Donald Trump that his divisive rhetoric and destructive policies come at a cost. Join Donald Donates today to automatically answer tweets from @realdonaldtrump with contributions to progressive candidates and causes. Donald Donates recipients range from the 2020 Democratic president nominee to organizations defending our civil liberties and core American values.”

Donald Donates co-founders––Adam Gibbs, David Hyatt and Justin Munn––told Newsweek they hope the site pressures Trump’s impeachment or resignation before the next election, while donating to causes Trump is vehemently against. If President Trump survives his first term, however, and STILL wants to run (it is kind of a tough gig after all) Gibbs, Hyatt, and Munn hope they raise a large amount money to support his 2020 opponent.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/04/29/donald-donates-let-s-you-donate-to-causes-trump-hates-every-time-he-tweets

April 30, 2017

Donald Trump doesn't know anything about the health care bill he's pushing

In an interview about his first 100 days, Trump is confused about what the health care bill includes.

Casey QuinlanFollow
Policy reporter at ThinkProgress.
Apr 30

In an interview with Face The Nation’s John Dickerson that aired Sunday, it appeared that President Donald Trump did not fully understand what was in the latest version of the Republican health care bill.

When Dickerson pushed Trump to acknowledge why there are critics of the bill, noting higher premiums for older people, Trump interrupted him to say that issue was fixed. Throughout the interview, Trump insisted that the latest version of the bill addressed all of the problems Dickerson mentioned, even though the bill has only become worse for low-income people, older people and people with pre-existing conditions.

When Dickerson asked Trump explain to how higher premiums were “fixed” under the new health care bill, he didn’t have an answer.

Finally, after being pressed several times, Trump responded, “This bill has evolved…But we have now pre-existing conditions in the bill. We have — we’ve set up a pool for the pre-existing conditions so that the premiums can be allowed to fall. We’re talking across all of the borders or the lines so that insurance companies can compete.”

When Dickerson pointed out there wasn’t any mention of purchasing insurance across state lines in the current legislation, Trump said, “Of course, it’s in.”

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https://thinkprogress.org/donald-trump-health-care-bill-f73453056199

April 30, 2017

Trump Evades Tax Return Question: 'I'll Make a Decision' After 'Routine Audit' Is Complete

by Justin Baragona | 12:12 pm, April 30th, 2017

Last week, while unveiling the outline of the White House’s tax reform plan, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin was pressed on President Donald Trump’s resistance to releasing his tax returns. In response, Mnuchin stated that Trump had no intention of releasing them as he’s given plenty of financial information already.

During an interview that was broadcast this morning on CBS’s Face the Nation, Trump said that Mnuchin never asked him personally about his taxes. At the same time, the president relied on his long-standing answer when pushed on if/when he’ll release his returns — he’s under audit.

“I’m under audit,” the president exclaimed. “Right now, I’m under audit.” He proceeded to explain that it appears to be a “routine audit” but that his returns are very large. POTUS added that he thinks it is unfair that he’s been under audit for at least 12 years in a row, claiming that he thinks it is happening because he’s very famous.

Host John Dickerson brought up that Trump has been relying on this claim for at least 14 months and wanted to know when he thinks the audit will be over.

more
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/trump-evades-tax-return-question-ill-make-a-decision-after-routine-audit-is-complete/