Aug. 14, 2019
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
Democratic candidates’ hateful labeling of President Trump and his supporters as white supremacists is wrong, dehumanizing and dangerous
Leading
Democrats for the presidential nomination have apparently decided that their
path to victory in the wake of the El Paso and Dayton mass shootings lays with
demonizing President Donald Trump and his supporters as white supremacists and
racists. They’re just saying it aloud now. One hopes this is just a cynical
ploy to boost their poll numbers as the New Hampshire primary and the Iowa
caucuses near, but it is hard not to start to worry that this is the
radicalization of a mob that is thirsty for mob justice. Doesn’t anyone think
this is way over the top? Or worried that this sort of dehumanizing rhetoric
has dangerous implications for the future of this country? Or could be
construed as another incitement to and legitimization of political violence? This
is beyond irresponsible, it is reckless and dangerous.
Video: As budget deficit closes on $1 trillion, we better hope the U.S. can restore robust economic growtha
With the federal
budget deficit approaching $1 trillion this fiscal year, the national debt
skyrocketing and Congress no where to be found, we had better hope the U.S.
economy can grow out of this fiscal abyss before it is too late and we go the
way of Japan and Europe, economic stagnation and no growth.
Trump administration steps in to reform Endangered Species Act regs, but more work remains to be done to fix it
Earlier this
week, the Trump Administration announced some small changes to Endangered
Species Act regulations, which should limit the law’s negative impact on the
economy. In many ways, the ESA, which is nearly five decades old, is a failure.
Over the decades, over 2,400 species have been listed under the ESA.
Embarrassingly, fewer than 50 species have been delisted because their
populations have recovered. In other words, less than two percent of listed
species have recovered sufficiently to be delisted. These regulatory actions
are a good start, but Congress still needs to reform the failing law.
Henry Olsen: If China cracks down on Hong Kong, Trump should extend his tariffs to imports from Hong Kong
“The occupation of
Hong Kong’s international airport by anti-government protesters Monday presents
China with an unwelcome choice: allow Hong Kong to move toward full democracy
or use its own military to forcibly suppress the protesters. President Trump
should not stand idly by if the Chinese government chooses to use force… Hong Kong’s
separate legal status means that its exports are not currently subject to
Trump’s China tariffs. If Beijing intervenes in Hong Kong, Trump should
immediately extend his China-targeted tariffs to goods and services imported
from Hong Kong. That would cause added economic pain in the United States, as
more than 1,300 U.S. firms currently do business with Hong Kong. But it would
also prevent China from using Hong Kong to end-run his tariffs while sending a
clear signal that the United States still stands behind people yearning to be
free.”
Democratic candidates’ hateful labeling of President Trump and his supporters as white supremacists is wrong, dehumanizing and dangerous
By Robert Romano
Leading Democrats for the presidential nomination have apparently decided that their path to victory in the wake of the El Paso and Dayton mass shootings lays with demonizing President Donald Trump and his supporters as white supremacists and racists.
They’re just saying it aloud now.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) told CNN on Aug. 4, “Look, and it gives me no pleasure to say this, but I think all of the evidence out there suggests that we have a president who is a racist, who is a xenophobe, who appeals and is trying to appeal to white nationalism. And, you know, it breaks my heart to have to say that this is the person we have who is president of the United States.”
When asked if he thought Trump was a white nationalist or white supremacist, Sanders declared, “I do.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), when asked the same question by the New York Times on Aug. 7, Warren responded flatly, “Yes.”
In Council Bluffs, Iowa at a campaign stop, Warren declared, “He has given aid and comfort to white supremacists… He’s done the wink and a nod. He has talked about white supremacists as fine people. He’s done everything he can to stir up racial conflict and hatred in this country.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden apparently agrees, too. In Burlington, Iowa, while campaigning, Biden declared on Aug. 7, “This president has fanned the flames of white supremacy in this nation.”
Biden went further, blaming Trump for the shootings at El Paso and at the synagogue in Pittsburgh last year, “How far is it from Trump saying this is an invasion, to the shooter in El Paso declaring, quote 'this attack is the response to Hispanic invasion of Texas.’ How far apart are those comments? How far is it from white supremacists and Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Trump's very fine people chanting, 'you will replace us,' to the shooter at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh saying, 'we're committing genocide, Jews are committing genocide on his people.' I don't think it's that far at all. It’s both clear language and in code.”
Biden doubted Trump’s sincerity in condemning the attacks, suggesting, “His mouthing of the words written for him, condemning white supremacists this week, I don’t believe fooled anyone at home or abroad.”
On Aug. 8, Biden appeared to want to have it both ways, when asked the question, he said, “Whether he is or is not a white supremacist, he encourages, everything he does speaks to them. He's afraid to take them on.” And then, later, when asked again, he said, “Why are you so hooked on that? You just want me to say the words so I sound like everybody else... He is encouraging white supremacists — you can determine what that means.”
When asked whether Trump was a white supremacist on Aug. 8, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) replied, “I think you should ask him that question. I'd be interested to see what his answer is.”
In fact, President Trump explicitly denounced the white supremacist, racist ideology of the El Paso shooter on Aug. 5: “In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry, and white supremacy. These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America. Hatred warps the mind, ravages the heart, and devours the soul.”
How about just saying, “The President is not a white supremacist”? Apparently, Biden and Harris are afraid to say that. He might as well have winked. He didn’t stop short, as some outlets reported, he is absolutely implying it to those who want to think that. Otherwise, he would explicitly reject the idea.
This is worse than when Hillary Clinton called Trump supporters the “basket of deplorables” in 2016: “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”
One hopes this is just a cynical ploy to boost their poll numbers ahead of the New Hampshire primary and the Iowa caucuses, but it is hard not to start to worry that what we are witnessing is the radicalization of a mob that is thirsty for mob justice. As a result of their rhetoric, the candidates even got #TrumpIsAWhiteSupremacist trending on Twitter, with some calling President Trump’s speech on manufacturing and energy in Pennsylvania a white supremacist rally.
Doesn’t anyone think this rhetoric is way over the top? Or worried that this sort of dehumanizing rhetoric has dangerous implications for the future of this country? Or could be construed as another incitement?
This is beyond irresponsible, it is reckless and dangerous — and it could lead to yet more political violence. It legitimizes it.
The Dayton shooter, who police shot dead at the scene, was an Antifa supporter and a self-proclaimed leftist and Satanist on his Twitter page who supported Warren, was pro-gun control and spoke against mass shootings such as Parkland, and who on the anniversary of violence in Charlottlesville, Va. wrote, “Kill every fascist.” Last October, he tweeted, “Nazis deserve death and nothing else.” He had shared posts about “concentration camps” on the border and wrote, “Cut the fences down. Slice ICE tires. Throw bolt cutters over the fences.” He called the he Antifa firebomber who targeted an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Tacoma, Wash. a “martyr.”
The firebomber in Tacoma who attacked federal law enforcement also believed in the “concentration camp” and Holocaust comparison that had been made by U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in June, saying that facilities used to house illegal immigrants apprehended at the southern border, where almost nobody dies, were akin the concentration camps kept by Nazis in World War II, where almost everybody died.
To date, none of the Democratic candidates for president have denounced the violent left-wing revolutionary ideology of the Dayton and Tacoma attackers. They haven’t uttered a word about it. How can that be? When are they planning on discussing it? Let me be clear, I do not think these candidates endorse political violence by Antifa against persons either they or their supporters perceive to be white supremacists. But the fact that they are not explicitly stating that, particularly after Dayton and Tacoma, is shocking.
The thing they accuse Trump of, supposedly being afraid to stand up to right-wing extremists, which isn’t true, he’s done that a lot, is something they are guilty of. They are afraid to stand up to Antifa and the left-wing extremists who attacked Dayton and Tacoma. Otherwise, they would call it out the same way the President denounced the white supremacist ideology of the El Paso shooter. They’ve had more than a week. It’s not that hard.
Instead, we have the opposite, where they are using the same rhetoric as the attackers.
You expect to find that nonsense in a mass shooter’s manifesto, and now it is being repeated by leading candidates for president. Calling your political opponents Nazis and white supremacists and demonizing them in that way is hateful, radicalized rhetoric. It’s about the worst thing you can say to somebody and yet it has become more than normalized in our political parlance to encapsulate all Trump supporters or anyone who wants border enforcement and a legal immigration system.
How are we supposed to have civil discourse under these circumstances when the President and his supporters are accused of endorsing political violence, mass shootings, domestic terrorism and the most hateful, racist ideologies?
This type of language has been used to legitimize attacks on federal law enforcement, and now it is being directed at the President of the United States and his supporters. Nearly 63 million people voted for Trump in 2016, and now leading Democrats are declaring that if they don’t abandon their voting preference for President Trump, they too are white supremacist Nazis.
Have the leading Democratic candidates for president lost their minds? They have adopted the language of Antifa, proponents of which views their political opponents as Nazis and white supremacists who should be brutalized or even killed.
In the meantime, Trump’s crime in these people’s eyes is enforcing federal immigration law. More than 86,000 people are being apprehended on the southern border on average every month of this fiscal year, according to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, amid the current wave of migrants fleeing drought conditions in Central America and abusing the nation’s asylum laws. President Trump has reached an agreement with Mexico to curb the flow. Trump pushed for and received $4.6 billion of humanitarian aid to improve conditions in the overcrowded, overwhelmed facilities.
There may be a ray of sunshine. On Fox News Radio, on Aug. 9, former Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Donna Brazile said, “This conversation about race and racism, domestic terrorism, white supremacy, white nationalism, it is that I am profoundly saddened as an American. The reason why is to point fingers and to play this so-called blame game. President Trump had nothing to do with the maniac, and I’m being gracious here, the maniac who shot up a Wal-Mart store. He had nothing to do with the person who shot up, you know, the bar in Dayton. This is unbecoming of the country. The President of United States, you know, should not be blamed for you know these individual killers.”
Brazile is right and we must hope the American people reject this demonization of half the country. This is the modern-day rhetoric of dehumanization. Because the Democratic candidates have refused to explicitly confront the violent, hateful, revolutionary ideology of Antifa after Dayton and Tacoma, and are now openly adopting their rhetoric, they appear to be inciting the next wave political violence.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.
Video: As budget deficit closes on $1 trillion, we better hope the U.S. can restore robust economic growth
To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg8VJQ_uvYw
Trump administration steps in to reform Endangered Species Act regs, but more work remains to be done to fix it
By Richard McCarty
Earlier this week, the Trump Administration announced some small changes to Endangered Species Act (ESA) regulations, which should limit the law’s negative impact on the economy. For example, the Administration is raising the standard for designating areas as critical habitat that are not currently inhabited by protected species. Additionally, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is rescinding a rule that generally treated threatened species as endangered species. The FWS is one of two agencies responsible for administering the ESA; the other agency, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), did not have such a rule so the FWS decision will bring the policies of the two agencies back into alignment. These regulatory actions are a good start, but Congress still needs to reform the failing law.
The Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA) was supposed to help keep species from going extinct and to help them recover; but left-wing environmental groups have used the law to sue the government demanding that species be listed as endangered or threatened so as to halt economic development. In the last Congress, Representative Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) introduced the Endangered Species Transparency and Reasonableness Act to reform the ESA. Among other things, the bill sought to improve the quality of data used by the government in its ESA decisions, to increase the government’s transparency, and to reduce the amount of tax dollars wasted on attorney’s fees. This commonsense bill should be reintroduced and passed.
To help the government make better decisions about whether to add or remove species from the List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife, McClintock’s bill required the federal government to use data provided by state, local, and tribal governments. The ESA does not currently require this. Frequently, state, local, and tribal governments have access to data that the federal government does not.
There were two key transparency requirements in the reform bill. First of all, the FWS and the NMFS would have been required to publicly disclose the data they used to decide to list a species under the ESA or to delist it and remove ESA protections. While one might assume that the government would reveal this data, that did not always occur. Sometimes the government’s decision relied, at least in part, upon data from an unpublished manuscript that was not publicly available. Shockingly, on more than one occasion, the government refused to release the data until ordered to do so by a court; there is no excuse for this. Secondly, the bill required the government to disclose the amount of taxpayer funds it expended responding to ESA litigation, the number of full-time federal workers dealing with ESA lawsuits, and the amount of taxpayer funds spent paying the attorney’s fees of those who prevail in their ESA lawsuits or settle with the government.
Furthermore, McClintock’s bill would have saved taxpayer funds by capping the hourly rate of prevailing attorneys in ESA lawsuits. Currently, there is no cap which encourages left-wing groups to file ESA lawsuits against the government. This incentive should be reduced significantly.
On the issue of ESA lawsuits, Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning had the following to say, “For too long, left-wing environmental groups have sued the government to try to get species listed under the Endangered Species Act to try to lock up vast areas of the country preventing any development. By so doing, they have killed countless jobs, destroyed property values, ruined whole towns, and shattered many dreams; but these left-wing groups could not care less.”
Manning went on to say, “Of course, these groups also file their lawsuits to get paid. If they win their cases or reach a favorable settlement with the government, they can claim attorney’s fees with which to fund their organizations – and more lawsuits against the government. It’s time to crack down on this outrageous abuse of taxpayer funds and stop enriching the leftists who are working so hard to wreck our good economy.”
In many ways, the ESA, which is nearly five decades old, is a failure. Over the decades, over 2,400 species have been listed under the ESA. Embarrassingly, fewer than 50 species have been delisted because their populations have recovered. In other words, less than two percent of listed species have recovered sufficiently to be delisted. The ESA was last updated by Congress three decades ago – before the internet was opened to the public –and needs major reform; the Endangered Species Transparency and Reasonableness Act would be a step in the right direction.
Richard McCarty is the Director of Research at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured column from the Washington Post, Henry Olsen makes the case for President Donald Trump extending his tariffs on China to imports from Hong Kong if China continues with its Hong Kong crackdown:
If China cracks down on Hong Kong, Trump should extend his tariffs to imports from Hong Kong
By Henry Olsen
The occupation of Hong Kong’s international airport by anti-government protesters Monday presents China with an unwelcome choice: allow Hong Kong to move toward full democracy or use its own military to forcibly suppress the protesters. President Trump should not stand idly by if the Chinese government chooses to use force.
Hong Kong was handed over to China by the British in 1997 under an arrangement called “one country, two systems.” The idea allowed Hong Kong to keep its own political and economic system for at least 50 years while handing ultimate sovereignty in matters of military and foreign affairs over to Beijing.
The policy has not caused Hong Kong residents to become friendlier toward the Chinese way of life as its original architects had probably hoped. Instead, young Hong Kong residents who have grown up under “one country, two systems” have become ever more attached to the special administrative region’s distinctiveness. They know they are freer and richer than mainland Chinese, and they want to become more, not less, like a successful Western country.
The protests over the past few months are merely the latest and most intense of a growing tendency toward mass, pro-democracy street protests in Hong Kong. Younger residents know that unless they can make Hong Kong a full democracy, Beijing’s political demands will slowly erode their freedom. They see that they ultimately will become like the mainland Chinese, materially well off but politically and socially unfree, unless they act now.
China, of course, knows it can never permit this. If Hong Kong were to become a fully democratic, wealthy part of China, then other parts of China could demand similar treatment. The ultimate logic of giving Hong Kong more political freedom would be to allow China itself to transition into a Western-style democracy — unthinkable for the Chinese Communist Party.
The “one country, two systems” idea was always based on a flawed premise unless it was only ever intended to serve as a fig leaf for Chinese communist imperialism. There can only be “one country” if there is a shared sense of national identity underlying that country. Where there is not for ethnic reasons, as in Tibet and Xinjiang provinces, Beijing has not hesitated to rule despotically. The regime presumably had hoped that shared Chinese ethnicity would prove to be a unifying factor with Hong Kong residents, but that hasn’t happened.
Instead, Hong Kong’s distinct political and economic liberties have created a new national identity, that of the Hong Kong Chinese. The Hong Kong Chinese are fully Chinese in their culture and history but largely Western in their politics and economics. They are more like the westernized residents of Singapore, Japan or Taiwan than they are like mainland Chinese. For Hong Kong Chinese, China is an “other,” not the mother country.
It is this difference that presents China with its fateful choice. As is becoming clearer by the day, Hong Kong’s residents can no longer be relied on to submit peacefully to Beijing’s rule. If President Xi Jinping intends to have “one country,” he will have to treat Hong Kong’s dissidents the way China treats those in Tibet and Xinjiang — as enemies of the state, who have no rights and no recourse.
Removing the velvet glove to reveal the iron fist could have huge consequences for China. Hong Kong is rich because it cuts its own trade deals and has its own World Trade Organization membership. These advantages, which have encouraged foreign firms to invest billions of dollars in the Hong Kong economy, will have no further basis if China reveals itself to be the land’s true ruler by forcibly suppressing the protesters.
Hong Kong’s separate legal status means that its exports are not currently subject to Trump’s China tariffs. If Beijing intervenes in Hong Kong, Trump should immediately extend his China-targeted tariffs to goods and services imported from Hong Kong. That would cause added economic pain in the United States, as more than 1,300 U.S. firms currently do business with Hong Kong. But it would also prevent China from using Hong Kong to end-run his tariffs while sending a clear signal that the United States still stands behind people yearning to be free.
Abraham Lincoln once said that a house divided cannot stand — that a nation must become all one thing or all another. “One country, two systems” was an attempt to refute that thesis, but Beijing is rapidly learning that Lincoln was correct. That’s why China cannot let Hong Kong become free — and why the United States must act when the moment comes.
