WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME
GOVERNING BY SCAPEGOAT
Creating a scapegoat enemy domestically has also gotten complicated. Thugs and punks — predatory (minority) teenagers — shoulder much of the responsibility for keeping the country distracted, but in this era of political correctness, politicians have to be careful. Thus the Trump administration has turned to the immigrants. Not all of them, of course — only the ones from Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. In particular, it has turned to . . . the illegals! Why is America so violent?
“It’s pure evil,” runs the newly released Trump campaign ad. “President Trump is right: Build the wall, deport criminals, stop illegal immigration now. Democrats who stand in our way will be complicit in every murder committed by illegal immigrants. President Trump will fix our border and keep our families safe.” Governing by scapegoat is more than just a stupid appeal to the base. Its cruel consequences are manifold. In essence, doing so both wrecks lives and ignores the real causes of the country’s problems. Often enough, it contributes to the social collapse at the root of the problems it purports to address. More
WHY ISN’T THERE MONEY FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING?
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Trump plans to ask for $716 billion for national defense in 2019 — a major increase
The $716 billion figure for 2019 would cover the Pentagon’s annual budget as well as spending on ongoing wars and the maintenance of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. It would increase Pentagon spending by more than 7 percent over the 2018 budget, which still has not passed through Congress. The proposed budget would be a 13 percent increase over 2017, when the United States spent about $634 billion on defense. In the absence of a budget, spending continues at 2017 levels… Trump touted his 2018 defense budget as one of the largest in U.S. history, but the proposal was seen as something of a disappointment inside the Pentagon and among defense hawks in Congress. Many lawmakers have pushed for the military budget to increase far beyond what Trump proposed last year. Trump sought $668 billion in spending for national defense in 2018, but Congress passed a bipartisan defense authorization bill late last year that would direct roughly $700 billion to military spending. That bill authorizes military spending but does not actually appropriate it, which would have to be done through a different act of Congress. More
New Work Requirements And Rent Increases For Subsidized Housing?
Draft legislation obtained by The Intercept suggests the Department of Housing and Urban Development is eyeing a proposal to overhaul the federal government’s administration of subsidized housing, through measures such as rent hikes and conditioning aid on employment. This change would significantly impact those who rely on public housing and housing choice vouchers, often referred to as Section 8 in reference to Section 8 of the Housing Act. The news comes just weeks after the Trump administration announced that states could start imposing work requirements as a condition of Medicaid eligibility. More
HOUSING AND THE COLOR OF LAW
What’s most important at the moment, he argues, is arousing in Americans “an understanding of how we created a system of unconstitutional, state-sponsored segregation.” Without a “sense of outrage about that, neither remedies nor reparations will be on the public agenda,” he predicts. Not long ago, Rothstein and his colleagues at EPI had high hopes for what a Hillary Clinton administration was going to accomplish in the area of housing. Those expectations crashed and burned on November 8, 2016. And, now one year into the Trump era, even existing federal tax incentives and subsidies for low- and moderate-income housing, built by private developers, have been sharply curtailed. The result, proclaims the New York Times on its front page Jan. 19 is that “affordable rents may take a hit…” Republican-crafted tax code changes “will reduce the growth of subsidized affordable housing by 235,000 units over the next decade, compounding an existing shortage.” Amid this looming “undersupply” of affordable housing, developers are building, instead, for buyers of condos in “the pricey glass and steel buildings that have sprouted in downtowns across the country.” More
Democrats Paid a Huge Price for Letting Unions Die
The GOP understands how important labor unions are to the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party, historically, has not. If you want a two-sentence explanation for why the Midwest is turning red (and thus, why Donald Trump is president), you could do worse than that. With its financial contributions and grassroots organizing, the labor movement helped give Democrats full control of the federal government three times in the last four decades. And all three of those times — under Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama — Democrats failed to pass labor law reforms that would to bolster the union cause. In hindsight, it’s clear that the Democratic Party didn’t merely betray organized labor with these failures, but also, itself. More
THE CORPORATE TAX CUT BONANZA
There have been numerous news stories in the past few weeks about corporations doing the right thing with their big tax cuts. These stories tell us how they are giving higher pay to workers and have ambitious plans for new investment. The Trump administration has been crowing over these announcements as proving the success of their tax cut. There is much less here than meets the eye… Before anyone starts celebrating, we should be clear what bringing back this cash means. Previously, this $252 billion had been credited to Apple's foreign subsidiaries. These subsidiaries had immediate legal claim to the money, which could in fact be anywhere in the world, including the United States. What Apple did in repatriating this money was transfer the ownership claim from its subsidiaries to the parent company. It is entirely possible that this meant simply shifting money in an account at Citigroup owned by Apple's Irish subsidiary to an account at Citigroup owned by the parent company. This means essentially nothing to the US economy. There is the one-time tax payment of $38 billion, but this is a savings of $43 billion against More
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