Trump Scammed Inexperienced Investors Through Endorsement Deals, Lawsuit Claims

In 2014, a financially struggling hospice caregiver in California decided to invest in a video phone marketing company by the name of ACN.

She knew little about business and even less about telecommunications, but a video heavily featuring Donald Trump's endorsement of the company as "one of the best businesses" played at an ACN "training event" she attended allayed her fears.

The woman bought in, paying ACN a $499 "registration fee" to join the company, then forking over thousands more to attend "training events" all over the country over the next two years. 

Trump photos and the Trump video featured heavily in every seminar and twice-monthly meetings ― a fixture seemingly designed to ease questions of legitimacy and coax members to continue forking over cash. (For the thousands she put in, by the time the woman quit ACN, she had got back just $38.)

And according to a lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan on Monday, ACN, along with two other Trump-endorsed "business opportunities," amounted to little more than predatory schemes that deliberately preyed on inexperienced, financially distressed investors. The suit, filed on behalf of four people who lost money in the get-rich-quick schemes, seeks class action status on behalf of thousands of similarly treated individuals. 

The lawsuit claims ACN secretly paid Trump millions of dollars for his endorsement (Trump claimed in his ACN promo that his endorsement was "not for any money") in exchange for his falsely portraying ACN and several other schemes as legitimate business opportunities.

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Sarah Huckabee Sanders Scolds Bomb Threat Victims For Criticizing Trump

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday that President Donald Trump will "continue to fight back" against people who speak out against him, even after a number of his high-profile critics were the intended targets of explosive devices last week. 

At her first press conference since early this month, reporters pressed Sanders to speak about the connection some people have made between the president vilifying the media and his political opponents and a Trump supporter attempting to mail bombs to several of his targets. 

"The president's going to continue to draw contrast," Sanders said when a reporter asked if Trump would cease calling out Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) during his rallies, or stop using nicknames like "crooked Hillary Clinton" and encouraging "lock her up" chants in reference to the former secretary of state. Clinton and Waters were among the intended recipients of last week's bomb attempts. 

"Let's not forget that these same Democrats have repeatedly attacked the president, whether it was Eric Holder saying 'Kick 'em when they're down,' whether it was Hillary Clinton saying, 'You can't be civil until Democrats have control of Congress,' or whether it was Maxine Waters who encouraged her supporters to get up not just in the president's face, but all administration officials' faces," Sanders said.

"Those actions from those Democrats, the president's going to continue to fight back when these individuals not only attack him but attack member of his administration and supporters of his administration," she added. 

Minutes later, a CNN reporter asked Sanders whether she thinks Trump's regular use of the term "enemy of the American people" to describe the media should be reserved for actual enemies of the U.S. in light of CNN ― Trump's favorite media target ― receiving bombs in the mail, too. 

"The president's not referencing all media," she said. "He's talking about the growing amount of fake news that exists in the country, and the president's calling that out."

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How Trump-Fed Conspiracies About Migrant Caravan Intersect With Deadly Hatred

President Trump, who attended a rally in Wisconsin last week before this audience, is trying to draw the attention of Republican voters back to issues like immigration, which have always sparked enthusiasm among the Republican grassroots.CreditCreditTom Brenner for The New York Times

MURPHYSBORO, Ill. — Alicia Hooten thinks the country has plenty of problems. "So many; so many," she said warily, before settling on the one at the top of her mind with the midterm election just a week away. "I feel like we're fighting for our freedom when it comes to our borders."

She spoke while waiting for President Trump's campaign rally on Saturday, hours after the deadly shootings in Pittsburgh. Ms. Hooten, a graphic designer from nearby Sparta, Ill., said she was especially concerned about the caravan of migrants in southern Mexico, calling it "a ploy to destroy America, and to bring us to our knees."

"I'm not going to take it — not going to go down without a fight," she insisted.

For the last two weeks, Mr. Trump and his conservative allies have operated largely in tandem on social media and elsewhere to push alarmist, conspiratorial warnings about the migrant caravan more than 2,000 miles from the border. They have largely succeeded in animating Republican voters like Ms. Hooten around the idea of these foreign nationals posing a dire threat to the country's security, stability and identity.

Mr. Trump described them as "an invasion of our country" on Monday, and his administration announced plans to deploy at least 5,200 active-duty troops to the southern border by the end of this week, its biggest show of force yet in confronting the migrants.

But as the country processes the cumulative trauma of two actual crises that occurred inside its borders — a spate of pipe bombs sent to the president's political opponents, and the massacre of 11 people at a synagogue by a man who spewed anti-Semitic vitriol and called immigrants "invaders" — there is clear overlap between the hatred and delusion that drove this lethal behavior and the paranoia and misinformation surrounding the caravan.

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‘There Is Still So Much Evil’: Growing Anti-Semitism Stuns American Jews

Until recent years, many Jews in America believed that the worst of anti-Semitism was over there, in Europe, a vestige of the old country.

American Jews were welcome in universities, country clubs and corporate boards that once excluded their grandparents. They married non-Jews, moved into mixed neighborhoods and by 2000, the first Jew ran for vice president on a major party ticket.

So the massacre on Saturday of 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue, by a man who told the police when he surrendered that he "wanted all Jews to die," was for many a shocking wake-up call.

"This kind of evil makes me think of the Holocaust and how people can be so cruel, that there is so much evil in the world, still," said Moshe Taube, 91, a retired cantor from Congregation Beth Shalom in Pittsburgh and a survivor of the Holocaust.

But it did not come out of nowhere, said experts in anti-Semitism. At the same time that Jews were feeling unprecedented acceptance in the United States, the climate was growing increasingly hostile, intensifying in the two years since Donald J. Trump was elected president. And it comes at a time when attacks on Jews are on the rise in Europe as well, with frequent anti-Semitic incidents in France and Germany.

The hate in the United States came into full view last year as white supremacists marched in Charlottesville, Va., with lines of men carrying torches and chanting, "Jews will not replace us."

Swastikas and other anti-Semitic graffiti have been cropping up on synagogues and Jewish homes around the country. Jews online are subjected to vicious slurs and threats. Many synagogues and Jewish day schools have been amping up security measures.

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After Pittsburgh massacre: New York Times covers up Trump’s role in instigating fascist violence

The editorial published Sunday by the New York Times on the massacre of 11 Jewish congregants at a synagogue in Pittsburgh is an expression of political bankruptcy and cowardice. The leading US newspaper, the longtime voice of the Democratic Party and the agenda-setter for the bulk of the corporate media, effectively absolves President Trump of any political responsibility for the anti-Semitic atrocity on Saturday and the mail bombs sent to more than a dozen prominent Democrats and other Trump targets last week.

Under the headline "The Hate Poisoning America," the editorial treats anti-Semitism as a psychological disorder, not a specific form of ultra-right-wing politics that has invariably been whipped up by factions within the capitalist ruling elite in preparation for war and dictatorship.

It notes that the killer, Robert Bowers, was a gun enthusiast and an active user of social media, drawing the conclusion that laws or regulations should be enacted to crack down on both the "hardware of hate" and its "software"—i.e., guns and social media. The editorial thus seeks to direct popular revulsion over the Pittsburgh massacre in a reactionary, anti-democratic direction, bolstering the campaign for internet censorship launched by the Times and the Democratic Party based on bogus allegations of "Russian meddling" in the 2016 US presidential election.

As for Trump, the moral author of the Pittsburgh massacre, the Times has this to say:

"So it was reassuring to hear President Trump condemn the attack in Pittsburgh, as he did the pipe bombs. And it was disappointing to see him immediately head back out on the campaign trail, as he did on Saturday, to disparage his opponents and critics all over again.

"As a candidate and as president Mr. Trump has failed to consistently, unequivocally reject bigotry, and he has even encouraged violence at some of his rallies. He has adopted a temporizing moral equivalency in the face of anti-Semitic hate, most notoriously after neo-Nazis and white supremacists marched in Charlottesville last year …"

The Times editors present Trump as an inconsistent opponent of bigotry, rather than an avid promoter of it. They claim to find it "reassuring" when he utters, in perfunctory language devoid of any sincerity, the words of condemnation drafted by his White House spin doctors, and "disappointing" when he drops the "presidential" mask and begins his usual ranting, including, only hours after the massacre, the vilification of several prominent Jewish critics.

The editors must take the Times' readers for complete fools.

At the heart of this willful blindness is the refusal to characterize the politics of Trump and his ultra-right followers. The Times focuses on Trump's "smashmouth tactics" and his incitement of supporters "to think of his critics as traitors and enemies." But the editorial does not use the word "fascist," and makes no analysis of the actual connections, established through aides like Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller and publications like Breitbart News, between the Trump administration and the fascist elements who masquerade under the label alt-right.

Similarly, the editors refuse to characterize the political nature of the crime committed in Pittsburgh and the political perspective that evidently animated the actions of Robert Bowers, the gunman who attacked the synagogue. Bowers is an anti-Semite and neo-Nazi, who sympathizes with the Trump administration's actions persecuting immigrants, but regards them as insufficient. He decided to take matters into his own hands, targeting the Tree of Life synagogue because of its affiliation with a Jewish charity that helps resettle immigrants and refugees in the United States.

The Times, which has the closest and most active ties to the US intelligence establishment, does not want to alert the working class to the severity and urgency of the danger it faces to its basic democratic rights.

The Times editorial cites a statement by Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who told the newspaper, "I'm afraid to say that we may be at the beginning of what has happened to Europe, the consistent anti-Semitic attacks." But that is the only reference to Europe, and the Times makes no mention of Germany, where for the first time since the defeat of Nazism and the death of Hitler, an openly fascistic party, Alternative for Germany, has entered parliament and is playing a major role in politics, spearheading racist attacks on Jews, Muslims and immigrants.

Sunday's editorial is not an aberration on that score. The Times has consistently downplayed or directly covered up the growth of fascist and neo-Nazi political movements in Europe, particularly in Germany, but also in Hungary, Austria, Poland, Italy and France. This is itself to be explained politically: the Times is aligned with those bourgeois parties, mainly the Social Democrats and Christian Democrats, whose embrace of austerity policies and attacks on workers' jobs and living standards has opened the way for the ultra-right to make gains by posturing as the defender of the masses against the elites.

The Democratic Party plays the same role in the United States, and it was eight years of the Obama administration, which funneled trillions into bailing out Wall Street while imposing brutal austerity on the working class, which made Trump's victory in 2016 possible.

The Times editors seek to cover up this connection as part of their campaign for the Democratic Party in the November 6 midterm elections. Only three days prior to their groveling before Trump after the Pittsburgh massacre, the same newspaper published an editorial headlined, "How a Democratic House Could Work With Trump."

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Mexican police shoot and kill 26-year-old immigrant as repression intensifies along Mexico-Guatemala border

This continuous exodus is an irrefutable demonstration of the intolerable living conditions for the bulk of the 30 million people that live in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Workers, peasants and youth in the region only see a future of hunger, unemployment, gang and state violence, lack of access to basic services, official neglect and devastation after fierce hurricanes and storms, and largely non-existent democratic rights.

A young Honduran who scrapes by as a bricklayer and works at an NGO against violence in the town of Comayagüela spoke anonymously to the Costa Rican Nación:

"There is an environment in which people want to leave the country because everything going on is a blow against the people. Many are feeling asphyxiated because they spend years without a job, and staple goods are getting more expensive. Many say that since they are already expected to die in Honduras, it's better to just go die somewhere else," he noted.

On Sunday, about three hundred migrants left El Salvador after organizing on Facebook and WhatsApp to travel together to the United States. They entered successfully into Guatemala yesterday morning.

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Vigils for victims of Pittsburgh shooting express anger over Trump’s racist incitements

At a press conference Monday afternoon, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders doubled down on White House claims that the president's whipping up of anti-immigrant and xenophobic sentiments, and his incitements to violence, had nothing to do with the recent killings and mail bombs.

Asked by CNN's Jim Acosta to identify those in the media to whom the president was referring when he claimed that the "fake media" was fueling violence, Sanders replied: "I think it's irresponsible of a news organization, like yours, to blame responsibility of a pipe bomb that was not sent by the president—not just blame the president, but blame members of his administration for those heinous acts. I think that is outrageous and I think it's irresponsible."

Sanders also announced that the president and Melania Trump would be visiting Pittsburgh on Tuesday. There is widespread opposition in Pittsburgh to the Trumps making such a visit to the city.

According to the Washington Post, more than 35,000 people have signed an open letter by Pittsburgh Jewish leaders to President Trump opposing his coming to Pittsburgh until he denounces white nationalism and ends his attacks on minorities and his continuing assault on immigrants and refugees.

"President Trump, you are not welcome in Pittsburgh until you fully denounce white nationalism," reads the letter. It continues: " President Trump, you are not welcome in Pittsburgh until you stop targeting and endangering all minorities… [and] until you cease your assault on immigrants and refugees."

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Chinese president tells military to prepare for war

In another sign of rapidly rising US-China tensions and the danger of conflict, President Xi Jinping has told his country's military to prepare for war. His speech last Thursday to the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) Southern Theatre Command was a response to the Trump administration's aggressive actions not just in intensifying trade war, but overtly readying for military conflict with both China and Russia.

Xi, who is also the Chinese military commander-in-chief, stressed the need for military forces that can "fight and win wars" and told the command to "concentrate [on] preparations for fighting a war." He declared: "We have to step up combat readiness exercises, joint exercises and confrontational exercises to enhance servicemen's capabilities and preparation for war."

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Trump deploys military to confront “immigrant invasion”

On Monday, the Trump administration and the Pentagon announced the deployment of 5,200 soldiers across the US-Mexico border by the end of the week. This will be the largest combat-ready military mobilization on US soil since the urban rebellions of the late 1960s. The military has given the initiative the mission name "Operation Faithful Patriot."

Thousands of troops and billions of dollars' worth of equipment are being mobilized in advance of a major national address by Trump announcing further restrictions on immigration.

The deployment is a direct threat to the lives of thousands of workers fleeing Central American countries ravaged by over a century of US imperialist exploitation, dictatorship and war. With no opposition from any section of the US political establishment, the government is preparing a confrontation with unarmed men, women and children that could rapidly result in US troops shooting, wounding and killing refugees seeking asylum at the US border. Last Thursday, Trump declared the caravan a "national emergency."

The administration is seeking to manufacture a national security state-of-siege crisis on the eve of the November 6 midterm elections. The aim is to whip up a climate of fear and panic and encourage further right-wing violence in order to stampede voters behind a far-right agenda to be carried out in the aftermath of the vote. At the same time, Trump and his fascistic advisers are working to create the basis for an extra-parliamentary extreme-right movement.

Election Day is to be held in the shadow of a war-like military deployment on US soil, establishing a further precedent for the militarization of US politics and every aspect of social life.

At a press conference yesterday afternoon, General Terrence O'Shaughnessy and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) Commissioner Kevin McAleenan outlined what amounts to plans for an offensive military assault that will play out as early voting takes place nationwide. McAleenan said CBP was preparing for "riot control" and added that the agency was calling in thousands of additional officers to man the "front lines" in the fight against immigrants.

General O'Shaughnessy said the Pentagon was deploying three companies of Black Hawk assault helicopters armed with "the latest technology," as well as other "aviational assets," including transport planes and drones. The mobilization will include US Marines as well as military police and "medical assistance"—forces that are deployed only when the military is preparing for potential combat. "The units are deploying with weapons," O'Shaughnessy said, as well as hundreds of miles of razor wire, barricades and building material.

"This is just the start of the operation," he added, noting that troop levels can be increased as needed.

President Trump and leading government officials are speaking the language of Hitler and Goebbels. "Many Gang Members and some very bad people are mixed into the Caravan heading to our Southern Border," Trump tweeted yesterday.

"Please go back, you will not be admitted into the United States unless you go through the legal process. This is an invasion of our Country and our Military is waiting for you!"

In a Sunday television appearance, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen used language normally reserved for threats of war abroad: "[E]very possible action… is on the table" with regard to the caravan, she said, just days after threatening that the military and border patrol "have the ability of force to defend themselves."

In a remarkable press conference Monday afternoon, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders refused to deny that the administration might suspend habeas corpus and posse comitatus, the law barring the deployment of the military to carry out policing functions on US soil, to confront the caravan. As one reporter pointed out during the press conference, Trump's use of the term "invasion" has constitutional significance, since Article One of the Constitution refers twice to Congress' power to abrogate basic democratic rights in the face of an "invasion."

"Invaders" was also the term employed on social media by Robert Bowers, who killed 11 Jewish people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh on Saturday, in the worst anti-Semitic attack in US history. Bowers specifically targeted the synagogue because of its defense of caravan participants, who he said were out to "kill our people."

Trump's fascistic language also inspired right-wing loner Cesar Sayoc to mail pipe bombs to Democratic Party figures last week and Gregory Bush to kill two African-American people at a grocery store in Kentucky.

Trump's authoritarian measures are being met with broad popular opposition, proving that the constituency for such initiatives comes not from the masses of people, but from within the ruling class itself.

This is part of a universal process. Around the world, governments are coming under the control of far-right forces promoted by leading sections of the ruling class and its traditional political parties and cultivated from within the state and military-intelligence apparatus.

In Brazil, ex-military captain Jair Bolsonaro was elected president Sunday after praising the military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1964 to 1985 and pledging to "clean up" what he called "red criminals."

In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced yesterday she would step down as leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) after the ruling CDU-Social Democratic Party (SPD) grand coalition was battered in another state election, this time in Hesse. The results strengthened the neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has been promoted and defended by the grand coalition.

In Italy, Sweden and Eastern Europe, recent elections have strengthened the parties of the extreme-right, which scapegoat immigrants, demand mass deportations and instigate racist and xenophobic violence.

These gains for far-right parties are not the result of mass popular support. Rather, they are the product of mass disillusionment and disgust for traditional ruling parties that have carried out relentless attacks on working class living standards and engineered an immense growth of social inequality.

The election of Trump in the US is the product of the same process. Millions of workers abandoned the Democratic Party because of widespread hatred of Hillary Clinton and hostility to the pro-Wall Street, pro-war policies of the Obama administration.

The Democratic Party has given Trump the green light to conduct unprecedented attacks on immigrants, urging its House and Senate candidates to ignore the immigration issue and pledge their support for "border security."

A particularly criminal role has been played by self-proclaimed "socialists" such as Bernie Sanders, who said earlier this year, "I don't think there's anybody who disagrees that we need strong border security. If the president wants to work with us to make sure we have strong border security, let's do that."

The Socialist Equality Party (US) opposes the deployment of troops to the US-Mexico border. It is a major step in the preparations for war and dictatorship. It is a further warning that without a socialist revolution, the world confronts a repetition of the worst crimes of the 20th century on an even greater scale.

But the same crisis of the capitalist system that generates the drive to fascism and world war also impels the working class into struggle and creates the objective conditions for the alternative—socialist revolution.

The first three quarters of 2018 have seen the highest level of strike activity in years. On an international scale, the working class is looking for a way to fight the corporations and banks and their political representatives. It is this process, drawing the international working class together in a common struggle for democratic rights and social equality, which can bring an end to fascist violence and guarantee the rights of immigrants to travel the world and live where they please.

Eric London

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Kellyanne Conway's Husband George Urges People To 'Pile On' Trump For Media Attacks

George Conway took another swing at President Donald Trump on Twitter, encouraging social media users to "pile on" the president for his attacks on journalists.

The husband to White House counselor Kellyanne Conway quote-tweeted Seth Mandel, executive editor of Washington Examiner magazine, after Mandel wrote that Trump's tweet calling the media the "true Enemy of the People" deserved the "pile-on."

"Stop saying this. Stop it," wrote Mandel.

Conway chimed in to say, "yes, pile away" to his followers.

Yes, pile away. https://t.co/uynNSlWrNP

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) October 29, 2018

On the heels of pipe bombs being sent to several prominent Democrats and CNN, Trump tweeted that "inaccurate" reporting is partially to blame for the "great anger in our country."

"The Fake News Media, the true Enemy of the People, must stop the open & obvious hostility & report the news accurately & fairly," the president wrote. "Fake News Must End!"

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Trump Fan Convicted In Anti-Muslim Terror Plot Asks Judge To Consider Trump's Rhetoric

WASHINGTON ― Attorneys for a President Donald Trump supporter who was convicted in a domestic terrorism plot aimed at slaughtering Muslim refugees asked a federal judge to factor in the "backdrop" of Trump's campaign rhetoric when deciding their client's sentence this week.

Patrick Stein was one of three right-wing militiamen found guilty in April of a conspiracy to kill Muslim refugees living in rural Kansas. Ahead of the 2016 election, Stein and two others plotted with an FBI informant and an undercover agent to bomb an apartment complex that housed Muslims in Garden City. Stein went by the handle "Orkin Man" and referred to Muslims as "cockroaches" he wanted exterminated.

At trial, defense attorneys referred to the defendants as "knuckleheads" who were engaged in "locker room talk," and Stein's attorney argued his client was a victim of a "chaos news" environment that had him thinking a civil war was coming.

A personal normally at a 3 on a scale of political talk might have found themselves at a 7 during the election. A person, like Patrick, who would often be at a 7 during a normal day, might 'go to 11.' See SPINAL TAP. James Pratt and Michael Shultz, attorneys for Patrick Stein

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How Hysteria And Hatred About Migrants Spread From Fox To Trump -- And Pittsburgh

The role of President Donald Trump's ominous warnings about the caravan of migrants headed toward the U.S. border from Central America in inspiring the virulent anti-Semite who killed 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue on Saturday highlights the destructive consequences of Fox News' grip on the president.

While Robert D. Bowers, the man accused of carrying out the mass shooting, had criticized Trump for being insufficiently anti-Semitic, critics pointed out that president had "stoked the fears of the Bowerses among us," deploying incendiary and false rhetoric about the migrant caravan in hopes of bolstering the Republican Party's standing. "The shooter might have found a different reason to act on a different day," Adam Serwer wrote for The Atlantic. "But he chose to act on Saturday, and he apparently chose to act in response to a political fiction that the president himself chose to spread and that his followers chose to amplify."

Trump, in turn, came into contact with that fiction via Fox's fearmongering. The president's first public statements about the caravan came in response to a segment he watched on the Fox News morning show "Fox & Friends," and in the weeks that followed, his rhetoric and that of the conservative network escalated at pace.

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How The NRA Stokes Conspiratorial Anti-Semitism

During a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre issued a dire warning about a "political disease" sweeping the U.S. with the support of billionaires like George Soros, Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer.

LaPierre's address, issued a week after the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, was focused largely on perceived threats to gun rights. But the three Jewish-born individuals he singled out as working to undermine the American way of life have become reliable bogeymen not just for the NRA but for other factions among the far-right.

Over the past week, we've seen what happens when these anti-Semitic overtures boil over into real-world violence. On Friday, a Florida man was arrested for allegedly sending pipe bombs to a number of Democratic lawmakers and activists, including Soros and Steyer. The suspect, Cesar Sayoc, had shared a number of conspiracy theories about Soros, including a meme branding the liberal mega-donor as "Judeo-plutocratic Bolshevik Zionist world conspirator." Another tweet claimed Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg was actually an actor paid by Soros.

Just a day later, a 46-year-old white man with a long history of online anti-Semitism was accused of taking his hatred into a synagogue in Pittsburgh and fatally shooting 11 people. The suspect's activity on the social network Gab shows that he'd posted baseless conspiracy theories about Jewish involvement in the migrant caravan making its way from Central America to the U.S.

Soros, Bloomberg and Steyer are well-known philanthropists whose political donations have made them partisan lightning rods. But their Jewish heritage in particular has helped put them at the center of a series of far-right conspiracy theories about a supposed Jewish-led cadre ― often referred to as "globalists" ― secretly coordinating a foreign invasion of the U.S., or inciting civil unrest and political upheaval, or funding a hostile takeover of the government.

The NRA has regularly trafficked in its own form of conspiratorial anti-Semitism, working to portray Soros, Bloomberg and Steyer as nefarious figures intent on a realignment of American society that will involve stripping people of the right to bear arms.

In a blog post earlier this month, NRA President Oliver North specifically called out Soros, Bloomberg and "shadowy billionaire" and NRA "enemy" Steyer as part of "a small cabal of billionaires and their pet politicians," saying they are "conspiring to permanently transform America into a socialist state."

Their goal, North claimed, is to "crush the National Rifle Association, repeal the Second Amendment and seize power in Washington, D.C. — not with bombs and bullets, but with big bucks buying ballots." North went on to exhort his followers to recruit more NRA members and vote Republican in November in order to "defeat" this plot.

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Fox News' Shep Smith Smacks Down His Network's Lies About the Migrant Caravan: 'There Is No Invasion'

In the late afternoon, before the screaming heads of Fox News primetime appear, there's an hour of peace and decency on the network as host Shep Smith reports the news.

On Monday, Smith cut through the nonsense and demagoguery coming from much of the rest of the network and, most prominently, from President Donald Trump, about the migrant caravan in Central America. Trump and his allies on Fox have been stoking fears about the caravan in a clear and desperate effort to rile up voters in the runup to the 2018 midterm elections, despite the fact that there's little reason to fear the group.

And Smith made that very clear.

"Tomorrow, the migrants, according to Fox News reporting, are more than two months away, if any of them really come here," he explained. "But tomorrow is one week before the midterm election. Which is what all of this is about. There is no invasion. No one is coming to get you. There is nothing at all to worry about."

His calm and reassuring demeanor was a startling contrast to that of opinion show host Laura Ingraham, who just last week literally called the caravan an "invasion" on Fox News.

"When they did this to us, got us all riled up in April, remember?" he continued, referring to a previous caravan Trump had similarly bloviated about. "The result was 14 arrests. We're America, we can handle it. But, like I said, a week to the election."

rest https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/fox-news-shep-smith-smacks-down-his-networks-lies-about-migrant-caravan-there-no?src=newsletter1097481

Trump Says He Will End Right of Citizenship at Birth for American Children of Immigrants

President Donald Trump says he is going to sign an executive order to end birthright citizenship: the right of children born to immigrants in the U.S., legally or not, to be American citizens at birth.

"It was always told to me that you needed a constitutional amendment. Guess what? You don't," Trump told Axios in an interview published Tuesday morning. "You can definitely do it with an Act of Congress. But now they're saying I can do it just with an executive order."

The stripping away of rights granted by the U.S. Constitution would be among President Trump's most virulent attacks on immigrants – and the U.S. Constitution – ever.

Many believe President Trump, who, unlike his predecessor is not a constitutional scholar, or even an attorney, is absolutely wrong and cannot essentially line-item veto the Constitution.

But the mere fact that he is even admitting to be planning to do so is raising eyebrows – as well as anger and fear.

This is the same president who has been separating children of undocumented immigrants at the border from their parents, with no plan to ever reunite them, in an inhumane attempt to thwart others from trying to enter the country. Recently, Trump has repeatedly called himself a "nationalist," which many believe is shorthand for "white nationalist."

rest https://www.alternet.org/trump-says-he-will-end-right-citizenship-birth-american-children-immigrants?src=newsletter1097481

Internet Explodes With Fury at Pence for Hosting 'Christian Rabbi' to Pray for Synagogue Victims

On Tuesday, at a campaign event in Michigan, Vice President Mike Pence brought out Rabbi Loren Jacobs to lead the room in prayer for the victims of the Tree of Life synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh.

The problem: Jacobs' synagogue, Shema Yisrael, is a "Messianic" institution, and Jacobs belongs to a sect of Judaism that effectively proselytizes Christianity. This was evident in the prayer Jacobs used:

Rabbi Loren Jacobs of Messianic synagogue Shema Yisrael offers prayer before VP Pence speaks at Michigan campaign event: "God of Abraham ... God and Father of my Lord and Savior Yeshua, Jesus the Messiah...hate inspired shooting in synagogue in Pittsburgh"https://t.co/tRwFvBTjYE pic.twitter.com/u6JJCfdhgj

— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) October 29, 2018

In choosing Jacobs, Pence managed to seriously offend many people. Soon, Twitter was full of angry reactions.

VP Pence apparently couldn't find an actual rabbi. Instead he got a Christian leader of a group of Christians who call themselves "Messianic Jews". Yeshua = Jesus. Actual Jews paying attention to this are outraged at this decision, btw. https://t.co/oyH6agKteX

— Chris Savage (@Eclectablog) October 29, 2018

rest https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/mike-pence-loren-jacobs-reaction?src=newsletter1097481

New Lawsuit Alleges the Trump Family Conned Thousands of Working People for Years in a Massive 'Racketeering Enterprise'

A new federal lawsuit charges that President Donald Trump, his company, and his three eldest children—Don Jr., Ivanka, and Eric—deliberately defrauded working-class Americans by convincing them to invest hundreds or thousands of dollars in sham business opportunities and training programs.

As the New York Times reports, the 160-page complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on Monday depicts the Trump Organization—the primary holding company for the president's vast network of businesses—"as a racketeering enterprise that defrauded thousands of people for years as the president turned from construction to licensing his name for profit." 

"For more than a decade," the complaint alleges, the president and his children named in the case "have operated a large and complex enterprise with a singular goal: to enrich themselves by systemically defrauding economically marginalized people looking to invest in their educations, start their own businesses, and pursue the American dream."

The suit targets two of the president's multi-level marketing companies—ACN, which provided telecommunications services, and the Trump Network, which sold vitamins—as well as the Trump Institute, described as "a live-seminar program that purported to sell Trump's 'secrets to success' in extravagantly priced seminars."

rest https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/new-lawsuit-alleges-trump-family-conned-thousands-working-people-years-massive?src=newsletter1097481

While No One Was Looking, Trump Unleashed a Boom in the Market for Shady Financial Industry Scammers

While the nation pays attention to some of the most obviously outrageous things President Donald Trump does — his grotesque behavior, the Muslim ban, the policy of family separations, the neglect of Puerto Rico — some of his most pernicious actions pass by without much discussion.

One of those actions was the rolling back of the Department of Labor's fiduciary rule under Secretary of Alex Acosta. The rule had been initiated under President Barack Obama, but the Trump administration put a stop to it.

Essentially, the rule was designed to require anyone providing financial advising services to be a fiduciary, someone who works in their clients' interests. Without this rule in place, advisers have more leeway to upsell clients on certain financial services that might earn the adviser a hefty commission — even if it's not what would be best for the client.

As a new report in the Wall Street Journal revealed, under Trump, the market for these types of sketchy services is roaring back.

rest https://www.alternet.org/while-no-one-was-looking-trump-unleashed-boom-market-shady-financial-industry-scammers?src=newsletter1097481

Pharrell Williams Sends Trump Legal Threat Letter for Playing 'Happy' After Synagogue Shooting

President Donald Trump on Saturday played Pharrell Williams' song "Happy" at a Midwest rally hours after the Tree of Life congregation shooting in Pittsburgh — and now the artist is expressing his anger over the decision through a cease and desist letter sent by his lawyer. 

"On the day of the mass murder of 11 human beings at the hands of a deranged 'nationalist,' you played his song 'Happy' to a crowd at a political event in Indiana," writes attorney Howard King in the letter. "There was nothing 'happy' about the tragedy inflicted upon our country on Saturday and no permission was granted for your use of this song for this purpose."

King continues to say Williams has not and will not grant Trump permission to publicly perform or otherwise disseminate his music, and claims the use of "Happy" without his consent constitutes both copyright and trademark infringement.

rest https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/pharrell-williams-sends-trump-legal-threat-letter-playing-happy-synagogue-shooting-1156155?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=THR%20Breaking%20News_now_2018-10-29%2017:09:51_jkonerman&utm_term=hollywoodreporter_breakingnews

President Trump said he was preparing an executive order to end birthright citizenship. It is unclear whether he can do so unilaterally.

President Trump said he was preparing an executive order to end birthright citizenship in the United States, his latest attention-grabbing maneuver days before midterm congressional elections, during which he has sought to activate his base by vowing to clamp down on immigrants and immigration.

"We're the only country in the world where a person comes in and has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States for 85 years, with all of those benefits," Mr. Trump told Axios during an interview that was released in part on Tuesday. "It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. And it has to end."

In fact, dozens of other countries, including Canada, Mexico and many others in the Western Hemisphere, grant automatic birthright citizenship, according to a study by the Center for Immigration Studies, an organization that supports restricting immigration and whose work Mr. Trump's advisers often cite.

Doing away with birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants was an idea Mr. Trump pitched as a presidential candidate, but there is no clear indication that he would be able to do so unilaterally, and attempting to would be certain to prompt legal challenges.

rest https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/30/us/politics/trump-birthright-citizenship.html?emc=edit_na_20181030&nl=breaking-news&nlid=45647457ing-news&ref=headline

President Refuses to Take a Shred of Responsibility. His Propagandists Are Working Overtime

A week of terror in America culminated Saturday with one of the deadliest anti-Semitic attacks in American history. This followed the double-murder of two African-Americans at a supermarket in Kentucky—a location the white shooter, who reportedly told a white bystander that "whites don't kill whites," settled on after failing to gain entry to a black church—and, of course, the rolling attempted assassinations-by-bomb of prominent Democrats and CNN contributors.

Here is the way the United States president chose to start off this following week:

There is great anger in our Country caused in part by inaccurate, and even fraudulent, reporting of the news. The Fake News Media, the true Enemy of the People, must stop the open & obvious hostility & report the news accurately & fairly. That will do much to put out the flame...

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 29, 2018

The president is not interested in, and is probably incapable of, responding to the demands of the current moment. He is not interested in, and is probably incapable of, attempting to turn down the rhetoric in an explosive environment he has largely created.

rest at https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a24397525/president-trump-pittsburgh-shooting-democrats-bombings-cnn/

Megyn Kelly Who? NBC’s ‘Today Show’ Third Hour Awkwardly Soldiers On

Al Roker returned Monday morning to the third hour of the Today show, for which he'd been a cohost for five years—under the title "Today's Take"—until he was rudely interrupted last year by an interloper from Fox News.

Far from his frequent role as Today's class clown, he wore a grim expression and a somber three-piece suit—appropriate to a moment when Americans are coping with the worst anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history, a maniac's slaughter of 11 congregants at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.

On this third hour—which was otherwise untitled but, until last Friday, was known as Megyn Kelly Today—Roker and his cohosts, Craig Melvin and Jenna Bush Hager, sat together on a sofa for two tearful segments featuring a father and his daughter who performed CPR to save his life from a cardiac arrest, along with the emergency dispatcher who talked her through it over the phone, and the deputy sheriff who rushed to help.

"It literally is a perfect story for a day like today," Al Roker told the guests at the end of the segment. "Thank  you for helping us see the good out there."

It was six days after the career-ending controversy over a blurted defense of Halloween blackface—actually the last straw of a series of unfortunate events involving Kelly's show—and Roker didn't utter the words "Megyn" or "Kelly"; neither did his co-hosts.

Kelly is now a non-person at NBC News: she whose name, like Voldemort's, shall not be spoken.

As her Hollywood attorney was beginning Day 4 of trying to hammer out a severance package with NBC's lawyers on the 1 ½ years that remain of a reported three-year $69 million contract, it was supposedly old-home week at the venerable NBC franchise.

rest https://www.thedailybeast.com/megyn-kelly-who-nbcs-today-show-third-hour-awkwardly-soldiers-on?via=newsletter&source=DDAfternoon

U.S.-Funded Broadcaster To Suspend Employees Behind ‘Multimillionaire Jew’ Soros Report

The taxpayer-funded U.S. Agency for Global Media is auditing content at its Cuba broadcasting office after seemingly anti-Semitic report surfaced.

The federal government's state-funded broadcasting arm is placing a number of employees on administrative leave and opening an investigation into how it ended up airing a story this year attacking liberal financier George Soros as a malignant "multimillionaire Jew."

The story aired in May on Radio Televisión Martí, a Spanish-language broadcaster housed in the Office of Cuba Broadcasting in Miami. OCB is a division of the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM), formerly known as the Broadcasting Board of Governors, an independent federal agency that oversees government-funded news organizations around the world.

The OCB segment accuses Soros, a "multimillionaire Jew of Hungarian origin," of using "his lethal influence to destroy democracies." Citing the conservative legal advocacy group Judicial Watch, OCB's story warned that Soros "has his eye on Latin America."

The segment is of renewed relevance given a recent assassination attempt against Soros, who was one of a number of targets of a failed bombing campaign that also targeted former President Barack Obama, former First Lady Hillary Clinton, and other prominent Democrats.

Mother Jones reported on the segment's existence on Friday. USAGM sources said the agency was caught completely off guard, and was not aware that their Cuba division had gone after Soros in such controversial terms. The agency does not manage the daily operations of each of its subsidiary news organizations, and is in fact statutorily prohibited from directing their news content.

USAGM is now trying to figure out how the Soros piece ended up on its airwaves, and whether OCB has broadcasted any similarly objectionable content.

rest https://www.thedailybeast.com/us-funded-broadcaster-to-suspend-employees-behind-multimillionaire-jew-soros-report?via=newsletter&source=DDAfternoon

Months Before Pittsburgh Shooting, Stripe and PayPal Were Warned About Gab

Two payment processors were told over the summer that neo-Nazis used the site to intimidate critics. The companies kept working with the site until 11 people were murdered.

Months before they cut ties with the extremist-friendly social-media site Gab, tech companies were warned about incitement to violence on the website, according to emails reviewed by The Daily Beast.

The payment processors Stripe and PayPal stopped working with Gab on Saturday after it was revealed that a man who allegedly murdered 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue had been an active Gab user who authored violently anti-Semitic posts and shortly before the killing spree, appeared to announce his intentions to his Gab followers. But over the summer Stripe and PayPal received warnings about the site's role in online hate.

The Twitter user @DeplatformHate has been documenting the far right's partnerships with Silicon Valley for nearly a year and repeatedly tweeted about Stripe's ties to Gab in August. After Stripe's general counsel reached out on August 17, Deplatform Hate sent him and Stripe's CEO a long email on August 24, documenting the issue.

"Gab is a massive hive mind of neo-Nazis that have actively doxed journalists families that work on stories of neonazi violence," Deplatform Hate wrote in an August 24 email shared with The Daily Beast, in which he cited white supremacists who used Gab to publish journalists' personal information, including home addresses.

Deplatform Hate shared the messages on the condition of anonymity, citing harassment by neo-Nazis.

One targeted journalist "had his mother in the Bronx get a bomb threat. You can muddy the story of 'oh but the first amendment'—you're a lawyer. You know that doesn't hold up in the US and that private companies can have moral systems if they're not discriminating against protected classes. Last time I checked, Nazis weren't a protected class."Stripe declined to comment on the email.

"For privacy reasons, we can't comment on individual users, but you can read our terms of service here, which should answer your direct question," a Stripe spokesperson told The Daily Beast.

rest https://www.thedailybeast.com/months-before-pittsburgh-shooting-stripe-and-paypal-were-warned-about-gab?via=newsletter&source=DDAfternoon

New Research Bolsters the Case Against Tariffs - taxfoundation.org

A new study provides modern-day evidence for what economists have long said: tariffs are bad, and international trade should be free. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) paper finds that tariff increases have negative effects on output and productivity that are magnified "when tariffs rise during expansions, for advanced economies, and when tariffs go up." This evidence does not bode well for the protectionist measures the United States is currently pursuing.

The research looks at tariff changes across 151 countries from 1963 to 2014 and the effects on output, productivity, employment, inequality, exchange rates, and trade balances. Here are some of the key takeaways and charts I pulled from the paper:

Output and Productivity

• Tariff increases lead to declines of output and productivity in the medium term
• Why does output fall after a tariff increase? The wasteful effects of protectionism eventually lead to a meaningful reduction in the efficiency with which labor is used, and thus output
• Tariffs encourage the deflection of trade to inefficient producers in order to avoid tariffs, along with encouraging smuggling to evade tariffs; such distortions reduce welfare [by reducing economic output, efficiency, etc.]
• Consumers lose more from a tariff than producers gain, so there is "deadweight loss"
• The longer‐term consequences of tariffs are likely higher than the medium‐term effects

rest at https://taxfoundation.org/new-research-bolsters-case-tariffs

When sports teams like the Atlanta Braves fleece taxpayers

from https://theweek.com/articles/803881/when-sports-teams-fleece-taxpayers

" The Braves' real estate empire
At a 2016 meeting with shareholders in the Atlanta Braves' parent company, Liberty Media, CEO John Malone said, "The Braves now are a fairly major real estate business, as opposed to just a baseball club." That's putting it mildly. The Braves replaced their barely two-decades-old home stadium, Turner Field, in 2017 with SunTrust Park — a $722 million stadium in the Cobb County suburbs built with nearly $400 million in public funds. So great was the public's investment in the corporately owned baseball stadium that the county commissioners were forced to raise taxes to fund a depleted $40 million bond delegated for building and maintaining public parks. The Braves also had their spring-training facility and three minor-league stadiums funded by tens of millions of dollars in subsidies from small cities throughout the Deep South. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, the Braves extracted about a half-billion dollars in public subsidies for their stadiums. "If there's one thing the Braves know how to do," said Drexel University economist Joel Maxcy, "it's how to get money out of taxpayers.""

rest at https://theweek.com/articles/803881/when-sports-teams-fleece-taxpayers

Trump administration confirms it won't restore ad funding for Obamacare for 2019

The Trump administration will devote $10 million to advertising and outreach for the 2019 open enrollment period, the same as for the 2018 open enrollment period and way down from Obama administration funding.

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma previously told the Washington Examiner that the agency was likely to devote only $10 million for the 2019 period, which runs Nov. 1 to Dec. 15 for coverage starting Jan. 1. The agency said it aims to have the same amount of call center staff for 2019 as the 2018 open enrollment.

CMS hailed the 2018 open enrollment period as the "agency's most cost effective and successful experience for HealthCare.gov consumers to date." Residents in 38 states use the website to buy Obamacare coverage.

The $10 million for ad funding for 2019 is a 90 percent cut compared to the $100 million that the Obama administration devoted for the 2017 coverage year.

CMS said that for 2019 it would use a series of strategies to stretch the funding.

"CMS will continue to use similar marketing tactics from last year and focus funding and attention on the most strategic and efficient ways to reach consumers," the agency said. "This year's outreach and education campaign will target people who are uninsured as well as those planning to reenroll in health plans, with a special focus on young and healthy consumers."

The agency said that consumers could now start to window shop for plans and browse healthcare.gov to select a plan before open enrollment starts.

CMS also touted new features for healthcare.gov that include allowing consumers to search for agents and brokers by the years they have participated in Obamacare's exchanges.

The agency also now includes information on if a "particular plan covers abortion services outside of exceptions for rape, incest or if the pregnancy is determined to endanger the woman's life."

rest https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/healthcare/trump-administration-confirms-it-wont-restore-ad-funding-for-obamacare-for-2019

Trump Shut Programs to Counter Violent Extremism

The administration has hobbled the infrastructure designed to prevent atrocities like Pittsburgh.

Set aside the question of whether President Donald Trump's rhetorical flirtations with white nationalism enabled Saturday's mass shooting in Pittsburgh. What's undeniable is that his administration has hobbled the infrastructure designed to prevent such murders.

In the waning days of Barack Obama's administration, the Department of Homeland Security awarded a set of grants to organizations working to counter violent extremism, including among white supremacists. One of the grantees was Life After Hate, which The Hill has called "one of the only programs in the U.S. devoted to helping people leave neo-Nazi and other white supremacy groups." Another grant went to researchers at the University of North Carolina who were helping young people develop media campaigns aimed at preventing their peers from embracing white supremacy and other violent ideologies. But soon after Trump took office, his administration canceled both of these grants. In its first budget, it requested no funding for any grants in this field.

It's part of a pattern of neglect. The grants were administered by the Office of Community Partnerships, which works intimately with local governments and community organizations to prevent jihadist and white-nationalist radicalization. In Obama's last year, according to the former director, George Selim, the office boasted 16 full-time employees, roughly 25 contractors, and a budget of more than $21 million. The Trump administration has renamed it the Office of Terrorism Prevention Partnerships, and cut its staff to eight full-time employees and its budget to less than $3 million.

rest https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/trump-shut-countering-violent-extremism-program/574237/

Republicans Look to Safety Net Programs as Deficit Balloons

WASHINGTON — With the federal deficit growing and President Trump suddenly talking about another tax cut, the conversation in Washington has turned to the inevitable question of how — or whether — Congress will engage in any type of fiscal discipline.

Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader and Kentucky Republican, got people in Washington talking — and generated some new campaign ads from Democrats — when he suggested this month that changes to Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid were needed to tame the deficit.

So what does that presage should Republicans maintain control of Congress?

More tax cuts, less safety net spending

This month, the Treasury Department recorded a $779 billion deficit for the 2018 fiscal year, stemming in large part from a sharp decline in corporate tax revenues after a $1.5 trillion tax cut last year. Since Republicans have historically made deficits a big talking point, Mr. McConnell was naturally asked what the heck he was going to do about it.

"It's disappointing, but it's not a Republican problem," Mr. McConnell told Bloomberg News in an interview. "It's a bipartisan problem: unwillingness to address the real drivers of the debt by doing anything to adjust those programs to the demographics of America in the future."

rest https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/26/us/politics/medicare-medicaid-social-security-republicans-elections.html

How much the U.S. Debt grew under each President

Chart of the Day MarketWatch and cost-estimating website HowMuch.net provide this history of how the U.S. debt has grown to more than $21 billion.

US Debt Issuance Headed for a Record

Bond traders expect the U.S. Treasury to announce record-setting debt sales at the end of the month, Bloomberg's Liz McCormick reports: "Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is set to snatch from Timothy Geithner the mantle of selling a record amount of notes and bonds as he seeks to finance America's growing budget deficit."

The previous record for these so-called "refunding sales" was set in 2009-2010, when the Treasury sold $81 billion worth of such debt in successive quarters as the economy reeled under the effects of the recession.

The conditions this time around are quite different, McCormick notes, with tax cuts and spending hikes creating enormous deficits in a strong economy. "Deficits aren't going anywhere and Treasury will need to continue to ramp up issuance," Jon Hill of BMO Capital Markets told Bloomberg.

rest at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-29/mnuchin-set-to-top-geithner-s-record-as-treasury-auctions-grow

A Trump Tax Cut Promise Is Falling Flat

Friday's GDP report showed that the economy grew at a healthy 3.5 percent annual rate from July through September, extending one of the strongest stretches in recent years — and yet it also reinforced expectations that a slowdown is coming.

Many analysts expect growth to drop below 3 percent in the fourth quarter and cool even further in 2019. "We think U.S. growth may have just peaked," Michael Gapen, chief U.S. economist for Barclays Capital, told The Wall Street Journal.

Those forecasts of a slowdown ahead — meaning more tepid growth, not a recession — are premised on a few factors:

• Consumers may have ramped up their spending in the wake of last year's GOP tax cuts, but the rise is likely to fade over time.
  
  
• Similarly, the stimulus from this year's congressional deal to increase outlays by $300 billion over two years is also likely to fade after fiscal 2019 ends next September — unless lawmakers set aside concerns about the rising deficit and once again bust through spending caps.
  
  
• After posting strong growth in the first quarter of 2018, business investment slowed to just 0.8 percent growth last quarter (or 1.7 percent excluding oil and gas), undermining the argument by proponents of the tax cuts that they would unleash a sustained increase in corporate spending. "Since businesses hate few things more than uncertainty, the prospect of an escalating trade war could also be weighing on investment, as executives hold off on commitments to major new outlays," The Washington Posts' Tory Newmyer notes. 

"If you put all this together," writes Matt O'Brien in The Washington Post, "you get a picture of an economy that's growing at around 3 percent right now because of all the short-term stimulus it's getting, but will soon go back to the 2 to 2.5 percent it was at before because that stimulus isn't changing companies' long-term behavior like the Trump administration thought it would."

Against that third quarter backdrop, the National Association for Business Economics on Monday delivered some more disappointing news for supporters of the tax cuts: In a survey, 81 percent of the groups' members said that the 2017 tax law has not caused their firms to change hiring or investment plans, up from previous surveys, according to Politico's Morning Tax. NABE surveyed 127 members from September 26 to October 11. (Politico adds, though, that 15 percent of NABE members in goods-producing industries reported accelerated hiring at their firms, 38 percent reported accelerated investment and 38 percent reported redirecting hiring and investment toward the U.S.)

"The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has not broadly impacted hiring and investment plans at panelists' firms, although panelists from the goods-producing sector do report some incidence of increased investments, and a shift toward hiring and investments from abroad to the U.S.," NABE Business Conditions Survey Chair Sara Rutledge said in a statement.

It's still far too soon to say definitively that the tax cuts aren't working, or won't in the future. The effect of the tax cuts will take years to fully play out, economists say. For now, though, it sure looks like the U.S. economy is experiencing the temporary sugar rush so many economists predicted rather than the structural changes tax-cutters promised.

rest https://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2018/10/29/Trump-Tax-Cut-Promise-Falling-Flat

LeVar Burton Has a Message for Nonreaders Like Donald Trump

Star Trek needs to keep representing that hopeful vision of the future now more than ever. It's one of the reasons why I've always been attracted to Star Trek before my involvement and after. It was both the athezis and the antidote to the dystopian view of a future world. I'm an Aquarius by design, and that compels me to bet on the human race. As far as the movies themselves in the JJ Abrams timeline, I've noticed that it adheres less to that same value system, the same system I personally value. To me, Star Trek is at its best when it exudes the idea of exploration as expressed in the way Gene Roddenberry had always envisioned it. Which was of course the idea that there's this infinite scope of diversity among the infinite combinations of life within a universe that by definition, is diverse and forever infinite. Watching Star Trek was always a powerful reminder that the only moment we're getting off this planet to explore the outer reaches of space is when we get our shit together in the here and now.

rest https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/negxed/levar-burton-has-a-message-for-nonreaders-like-donald-trump?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=VICE%20NEWSLETTER%201029&utm_content=VICE%20NEWSLETTER%201029+CID_0c50c8836433c80fd0c235f16344826c&utm_source=Campaign%20Monitor&utm_term=LeVar%20Burton%20has%20a%20message

Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight Projects a Record Number of Women Will Be Elected This Year

A new analysis by the election forecaster FiveThirtyEight found that a record number of women are projected to be elected to Congress in the midterm election cycle appropriately dubbed "The Year of the Woman."

Poll whisperer Nate Silver's model gives Democrats an 84 percent change of flipping the House this year, with many of those gains coming thanks to women candidates. According to the models, a record 124 women may win their elections this cycle, compared to the 107 women elected to Congress this session. As many as 100 women lead their House races, along with 24 female Senate candidates, out of 238 women running for federal office. There are currently 84 women in the House and 23 in the Senate.

FiveThirtyEight's Nathaniel Rakich warns that these candidates hold solid leads and have strong chances to win, but the gains are far from guaranteed. At the same time, it's also true women's gains could be even greater.

"For example, say we limit our forecast data to women with 3 in 4 chances of winning or better; there would be only 115 women in the next Congress," he wrote. "On the other hand," he added, "let's assume that every woman with at least a 1 in 4 chance ends up prevailing. In this more optimistic scenario for women, there could be 120 congresswomen and 26 female senators on Jan. 3, 2019. That total of 146 women would be a 36 percent increase over the current number."

rest https://www.alternet.org/nate-silvers-fivethirtyeight-projects-record-number-women-will-be-elected-year?src=newsletter1097458

Leaked White House Schedules Prove Trump Watches Cable News Three Times More than Doing Official Work

An investigation by Politico has found that President Donald Trump's "executive time" — which is used by the White House as a euphemism for the time he spends watching cable news — absolutely dwarfs the time allotted to doing official work.

Specifically, Politico reports that last Tuesday, "the president was slated for more than nine hours of 'Executive Time,' a euphemism for the unstructured time Trump spends tweeting, phoning friends and watching television." The publication then notes that "official meetings, policy briefings and public appearances — traditionally the daily work of being president — consumed just over three hours of his day."

Some of the president's supporters insisted to Politico that he often used his "executive time" to make important phone calls to congressional and world leaders, despite the fact that past reporting has indicated that most of the time he merely calls friends to complain about negative coverage he's receiving.

The report also notes that Trump typically doesn't start working until 11 a.m. on most days, as he's scheduled a solid block early in the morning to watch "Fox & Friends," one of his favorite cable news shows.

rest at https://www.alternet.org/leaked-white-house-schedules-prove-trump-watches-cable-news-three-times-more-doing-official-work?src=newsletter1097458

Sarah Sanders Flails After CNN's Jim Acosta Demands She Have the 'Guts' to Explain Trump's Dangerous Rhetoric

In a press briefing on Monday — an event which has become exceedingly rare at the White House — Press Secretary Sarah Sanders struggled to defend President Donald Trump's dangerous rhetoric about the press in light of the recent terrorizing attacks on his critics, including CNN.

Sanders tried to deflect the backlash the president has received for his incendiary style and open celebration of violence, saying that no one can be blamed for the recent spate of attacks, including mail bombs sent by an alleged supporter of the president, except the attackers themselves. When reporters pointed out that Trump himself has tried repeatedly to blame the media for these attacks, she ignored this fact. Instead, she lied and said that the "very first thing" the media did in response to the mail bombings was blame the president. In truth, the media did what it always does — report the facts of the case.

CNN's Jim Acosta continued to press Sanders, and demanded that Sander "have the guts" to name who, specifically, Trump is referring to when he calls the media "the enemy of the people."

"The president is not referencing all media," she said. "He's talking about the growing amount of fake news that exists in the country."

Acosta asked whether this meant CNN, which had been the target of the recent mail bombs ("CNN sucks" is a common chant at Trump's rallies, and a sticker with this slogan appeared on the van of mail bombing suspect). She again deflected, but then criticized CNN for blaming the attacks on media as an example of fake news.

Of course, commentators on CNN saying that Trump deserves a share of the blame because of his inciting rhetori is an expression of opinion — not "fake news."

The administration's inability to distinguish between opinions it disagrees with and actually false news stories is emblematic of its deceptive attacks on the press and its utter disregard for the spirit of the First Amendment.

rest at https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/sarah-sanders-flails-after-cnns-jim-acosta-demands-she-have-guts-explain-trumps?src=newsletter1097458