(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Trump Steel Trade Critics Offer Recipes for (Continued) Failure

Tags

Barack Obama, China, European Union, globalization, Japan, national security, Russia, steel, tariffs, The Washington Post, Trade, trade law, Trump, World Steel Organization, World Trade Organization, {What's Left of) Our Economy

The case for bold new Trump administration steps to ensure the U.S. steel industry’s continued viability is so clear that even opponents can’t help but (unwittingly) make it.

Thus this morning, The Washington Post editorial board praised – or at least seems to have praised – the Obama administration’s imposition of the tariffs on imports of Chinese steel because the world’s overwhelming source of overcapacity is China. The Post also urged the White House to remember that in order to avoid “international destabilization,” it’s critical to keep relying on “global institutions such as the World Trade Organization.”

Yet as the paper implicitly recognizes, none of these approaches has succeeded. What else can reasonably be concluded from its acknowledgment that the although the world’s “major governments, including President Barack Obama’s administration, have long recognized” the problem of Chinese fueled steel overcapacity,” the glut continues to create “unsustainable downward pressure on producers’ prices….” That’s “unsustainable” as in “can’t be sustained.” As in “if the downward pressure isn’t stopped, steel producers will start going under.”

The Post, however, has left out some crucial information. Specifically, the pressure on global steel producers has been far from uniformly felt. According to the latest (2015) figures from the World Steel Organization, which represents most of the global industry, the United States runs the world’s largest steel trade deficit by far measured in volume (which leaves out the distortions created by falling prices). At 26.5 million tons, it was nearly 80 percent greater than that of the world’s next biggest net steel importer (Vietnam, at 14.9 million tons), and nearly seven times greater than that of the European Union (3.9 million tons).

China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and others are running surpluses, with China lapping the pack at 98.4 million tons and Japan, universally described as a staunch U.S. ally, coming in second at still-impressive 34.9 million tons.

These skewed trade patterns, moreover, are unmistakably affecting national steel output. For example, according to the World Steel Organization, in 2010, as the world’s recovery from the Great Recession was becoming established, the United States accounted for 7.46 percent of global steel output by volume. In 2016, its share had shrunk to 4.95 percent.

China clearly has been the big winner, with its share of world steel production rising from 42.62 percent to 50.16 percent during this period. Japan has boosted market share as well – albeit only from 6.49 percent to 6.60 percent. The European Union and Russia have lost ground – but the losses have been minimal. The former’s global market share has dipped from 11.54 percent to 10.43 percent. The latter’s is down from 4.48 percent to 4.45 percent.

Even weirder: America’s economic growth during this period has outstripped the recoveries of all these countries except China, and its manufacturing sector has recovered (though not completely) thanks largely to a rebound in the steel-intensive automotive industry.

In other words, according to the Post editorial board, due to global overcapacity, the U.S. steel industry is facing unsustainable (and largely artificial) pricing pressure, the worldwide statistics make clear that this pressure is in a class by itself…and the Trump administration is being advised to stick with responses that have been manifestly incapable of preventing this dangerous situation.

It’s perfectly respectable to oppose as a solution the kind of national security-focused tariffs that the Trump administration is considering – even though the advantages they offer (they need no Congressional approval and they can be implemented relatively quickly as well as flexibly) are substantial. But if critics – domestic and foreign – are genuinely interested in solving the longstanding world steel problem in a timely manner, they’ll start proposing alternatives that haven’t already failed.

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Im-Politic: More Illegal Immigration Coddling from the Washington Post

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Associated Press, crime, Darwin Martinez Torres, detainers, Germantown, hate crimes, illegal immigrants, Im-Politic, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Maryland, Montgomery County, Muslims, Nabra Hassanen, Northern Virginia, Rockville, The Washington Post

Hard as it is to believe, The Washington Post news department’s coddling of illegal immigrants looks to have passed a new milestone. On April, I explained how the paper’s news editors and reporters (not the opinion folks) apparently have decided that drunk driving isn’t a serious crime when the guilty are living in the United States illegally.

This past week, the Post has acted conspicuously determined to ignore crucial questions of suspected criminals’ immigration status when they threaten to ruin or even complicate another prized narrative – that Muslim Americans are being victimized by a record surge in hate crimes prompted by irrational fears of Islamic terrorists stoked cynically by politicians like President Trump. Such journalistic selectivity is bound to intensify questions about the legality of any Americans of Hispanic heritage arrested for crimes, both when they’re justified and when they’re not.

There’s an alternative explanation for the paper’s behavior that’s comparably disturbing: In an effort to calm public fears about the public safety risks created by indulgent immigration policies, it’s been trying to sweep such immigration questions under the rug because it did report the status of two Hispanic teenage immigrants just a month before, when they were charged with a rape at a high school in the area. In early May, the charges were dropped, seeming to vindicate allegations that immigration policy critics had been using the case to demagogue their cause.      

The latest crime in question was the abominable killing of an Muslim teenage girl from the Virginia suburbs early last Sunday morning. The story quickly attracted national attention, and the Post‘s early coverage demonstrated the obvious reason: The local police seemed determined to classify the murder as an instance of road rage, while many in the local Islamic community — including the victim’s family — along with others insisted that it amounted to the latest hate crime committed against innocent Muslim Americans.

As the Post pointedly reminded readers in its report on Monday:

“Police said Monday they aren’t investigating the death as a hate crime, but the issue was on the minds of many Muslims on Sunday.

“Last month, two men on a Portland train were stabbed and killed after they intervened to protect two girls who were being harassed with anti-Muslim threats, according to authorities.

“Sunday night, a van struck a crowd of pedestrians, including worshipers leaving a pair of mosques in London. Witnesses said the pedestrians were struck as they departed late-night prayers.

“The ADAMS Center [victim Nabra Hassanen’s mosque] has a paid armed security guard at the Sterling site, according to [Arsalan Iftkhar, an “international human rights lawyer and commentator” who attended services at the mosque]. He said many mosques have increased security since six Muslim worshipers were killed at a mosque in Quebec earlier this year.

“Sunday night, a van struck a crowd of pedestrians, including worshipers leaving a pair of mosques in London. Witnesses said the pedestrians were struck as they departed late-night prayers.

“The ADAMS Center has a paid armed security guard at the Sterling site, according to Iftikhar. He said many mosques have increased security since six Muslim worshipers were killed at a mosque in Quebec earlier this year.”

And this focus on the hate crimes charge continued through the Post‘s last comprehensive coverage of the murder, on Wednesday.

But from the start, one crucial aspect of the murder appeared to be undermining claims that animus against Muslims was the suspect’s motivation – an aspect oddly neglected by the Post. As the paper specified from the outset, he was a young Hispanic-surnamed male – Darwin Martinez Torres. But nothing else about him was reported.

That may not sound suspicious to someone unfamiliar with that part of northern Virginia – or even worth writing about at all. But Sterling and environs have long hosted a large population of illegal immigrants. The offense in question was unmistakably felonious and abhorrent, not some trifle. So there are valid public safety issues involved, with large numbers of Americans understandably wanting to what kinds of individuals their leaders have – knowingly – welcomed into their country and their neighborhoods.

Moreover, a Post update later that day offered evidence suggesting Torres’ illegal status: U.S. immigration authorities had requested that local officials put a “detainer” on him – meaning that they were looking into deportation. Now on the one hand, the federal government can place detainers on and deport legal immigrants as well as illegal. But on the other hand, that decision should have raised a red flag with the Post right away, and the question could have been answered with little effort. But no one on the team of reporters assigned the story by the paper seems to have pursued the matter. The hate crimes issue and related concerns voiced nationally about American Muslims’ safety clearly were their top priorities.

As early as Monday, however, it was clear that Martinez’ immigration status was indeed in doubt with the authorities. The Associated Press reported that day that they determined he is “a citizen of El Salvador and there’s probable cause to believe he lacks permission to be in the U.S.”

But even though this AP report appears on the Post‘s website, it prompted no investigation of Torres’ status by the paper itself, either.

Moreover, on Tuesday, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokesperson announced that Torres is in the United States illegally. Readers of the The New York Times, FoxNews.com, The Daily Caller, and CNN received this information. But nearly a week later, the Post staff itself still has not mentioned it. Neither, weirdly, has the Associated Press – but it’s not the Washington, D.C. area’s leading news organization.

Sadly, this journalistic inevitably raises the question of whether the Post has decided to cover up the legal status of other Hispanic Americans arrested for crimes. For example, also earlier this month, two Germantown, Maryland high school students were murdered on the eve of their graduation. The trio arrested? Jose Canales-Yanez, Edgar Garcia-Gaona, and his brother Roger Garcia. Any mention of their immigration status in the Post coverage? Nope.

But like Sterling, the Germantown area is home to many illegal immigrants, as well as a center of violence from criminal gangs whose crimes are becoming ever more brutal and that are often extensions of similar organizations in Central America. The police force of surrounding Montgomery County has not ruled out a gang angle, and according to Help Save Maryland, an organization favoring stricter immigration controls and enforcement, a photo of one of the suspects reveals a form of tattoo often sported by Central American gang members.  

It’s true that Montgomery police chief Thomas Manger has stated that “to my knowledge, there were no ICE detainers filed in those cases” resulting from some of the suspects’ previous arrests.” But it’s also true that Montgomery County has declared itself to be a safe haven for immigrants – if not an out-and-out sanctuary city – and that Manger has dutifully declared that it’s not his job to determine anyone’s immigration status.

Curiously, moreover, Post reporters and editors were decidedly more aggressive in March, when two Hispanic teenagers, including a minor, were accused of raping a younger schoolmate at Rockville High School in Rockville, Maryland — also in Montgomery County.  The paper’s first article on the incident prominently mentioned that Henry E. Sanchez “a native of Guatemala who arrived in the United States about seven months ago, has a pending ‘alien removal’ case against him, court officials said Friday. ‘He is a substantial flight risk,’ Montgomery County Assistant States Attorney Rebecca MacVittie said in court Friday.

“[Jose O.] Montano has been in the United States for about eight months, MacVittie said. Details about Sanchez’s removal case, or Montano’s immigration status, couldn’t immediately be learned Friday.”

Moreover, the Post‘s own reporting several days later contend that both suspects “were among tens of thousands of young people who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally in 2016.” Prosecutors dropped the rape charges against the pair in early May. Was the paper’s much more restrained coverage of immigration issues in the two, more recent, murder cases an attempt to keep anti-immigration sentiment in the public under control?    

It’s vitally important to be clear here. As suggested immediately above, I believe that many municipalities and states are ignoring their responsibilities to help the federal government enforce immigration law. But insisting that the Post inquire about the immigration status of criminal suspects is completely different from insisting that state and local governments, whose immigration law enforcement responsibilities are limited and reactive, proactively publicize the immigration status of criminal suspects.

It’s also completely different from insisting that the federal government, whose immigration law responsibilities are extensive and often proactive, seek out and publicize this information whenever an arrest is made by any level of government, even for serious infractions (although I’m leaning strongly in this direction, given the nation’s enormous and possibly still growing population of illegals).

Instead, insisting that the Post and the rest of the media at least seek this information simply entails insisting that they play their proper role as watchdogs of democracy – pressing for accountability for wielders of public and private power, and letting the chips fall where they may.

Viewed from a different perspective, the government at all levels enjoys certain established authority to keep information from the public for various, highly specific reasons – e.g., to protect national security or safeguard Constitutionally guaranteed privacy rights. In order to help ensure that this authority is not abused, the media’s job is to release whatever information it can procure, with certain exceptions that it generally has complied with voluntarily (e.g., protecting information whose exposure would immediately threaten national security and/or the lives of military and intelligence personnel whose lives literally are on the line, or the privacy of minors). When disputes arise over where these respective lines should be drawn, the judiciary steps in to try to provide the answer.

At least since the era of Watergate and the Pentagon Papers, the Post has epitomized a national media that understands these distinctions and acts accordingly. Does it now believe that, for reasons it has yet to explain, that its coverage of illegal immigration is an exception?

 

Im-Politic: Initial Thoughts on the Trump Wars

Tags

2016 election, Andrew McCabe, Director of National Intelligence, FBI, hacking, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, impeachment, intelligence community, James Clapper, James Comey, John McCain, Justice Department, Lindsey Graham, Loretta Lynch, Michael T. Flynn, Richard M. Nixon, Russia, Russiagate, Sally Yates, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Trump, Wategate

Since I’m not a Trump or intelligence community insider, I’ve refrained from posting any items on the last crisis that began surrounding the administration starting with the president’s firing of James Comey as FBI Director. (I have commented on some aspects briefly on Twitter.) But since I’m a strong supporter of many positions championed by Mr. Trump both during the campaign and – to a lesser extent – in the White House, I thought that RealityChek readers would be interested in some observations about aspects of the uproar that deserve more consideration.

First and most important: Both current and former officials in the federal bureaucracy and even the intelligence community clearly hope to end the Trump presidency, and have decided to leak to the equally anti-Trump Mainstream Media even the most highly classified material if it’s judged to be potentially harmful to the president. Yet no leaks have revealed any evidence supporting the central allegation against the president: the charge that he or close aides colluded in any way with Russian efforts to fix the presidential election in his favor.

Given that the president’s foes long viewed the prospect of his victory with alarm, and given that they have sought to de-legitimize this victory since it unfolded the evening of last November 8, the absence of such a smoking gun after so many months is absolutely startling. If this evidence exists, what are President Trump’s adversaries waiting for?

P.S. – this argument pertains to retired General Michael T. Flynn, who advised candidate Trump and briefly became his White House national security adviser. Flynn has certainly acted in several instances like he’s had something (or things) to hide. But he’s been tracked for months by intelligence officials who – again – have been anything but reluctant to make troubling findings public. And nothing has emerged pointing to working with Russia to undermine the campaign of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

One possible explanation? Many anti-Trump-ers are waiting for the 2018 mid-term elections to get closer and closer, in order to boost the chances of a Democratic landslide before the administration had a chance to rebut the charges conclusively – and before Congressional Republicans have a chance to dissociate themselves from Mr. Trump. And maybe they’re being joined by some establishment Republicans, who hope to recapture their party from the Trump-ist forces. And maybe both factions are motivated mainly by the belief that Mr. Trump is such an unprecedented danger to the republic that any means are warranted to remove him from the Oval Office.

If so, however, some big legal issues pop up.  For instance:  Are individuals privy to information about crimes – and in fact major crimes – withholding them from law enforcement authorities? 

Second: Not only has no evidence of collusion been leaked. The former head of the entire intelligence community has just made clear that, during his own prolonged probe of Russia’s efforts to interfere with the election (a related but clearly separate issue, for which strong evidence exists), he saw none.

In March, James Clapper, who resigned as Director of National Intelligence soon after the election, had tantalizingly hinted at the existence of such material by telling a reporter that the intelligence community “did not include any evidence” in its January report on the Russian campaign “that had anything, that had any reflection of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians. There was no evidence of that included in our report.”

But when pressed by “Meet the Press” anchor Chuck Todd to confirm whether such evidence existed, Clapper responded, “Not to my knowledge.” And when asked under oath in Senate testimony on three months later whether that statement was still accurate, Clapper stated, “It is.” In other words, Clapper’s probe, which reflected the work of 16 intelligence agencies including his own Director’s office uncovered no collusion evidence.

The issue was briefly muddied during that same hearing by former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. Like Clapper, an Obama administration appointee to her latest position, Yates initially answered the question about collusion by demurring. She explained that her “answer to that question would require me to reveal classified information. And so, I — I can’t answer that.”

As noted by questioner Senator Lindsey Graham – no admirer of President Trump – the FBI that Yates helped supervise as the second-in-command at the Justice Department was part of Clapper’s Russia investigation. After Yates indicated that the FBI was conducting its own separate counter-intelligence inquiry into Russia’s activities, Graham asked Clapper if the evidence found by the Bureau at that time “was not mature enough” to justify including in the broader intelligence community report.

Responded Clapper: “[T]he evidence, if there was any, didn’t reach the evidentiary bar in terms of the level of confidence that we were striving for in that intelligence community assessment.”

So again, a protracted look into Russia’s Election 2016 hacking produced no evidence of collusion that the intelligence community as a whole believed was solid enough to justify even hinting at in its publicly stated conclusions.

Third: One highly damaging allegation that’s been made over the last week was the Washington Post‘s claim that Comey requested more resources from the Justice Department for his investigation just before he was fired. The clear implication: The president became convinced that Comey was ramping up his investigation – which began in July – and decided to fire him in order to deny him the funds needed to do the job adequately. Such an action, of course, would at least strongly resemble obstruction of justice.

This article, however, too, looks fishy. Post reporter Ashley Parker did include an on-the-record flat Justice Department denial, but needless to say, government spokespersons lie or dissemble all the time. Much more difficult to dismiss: Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe – who had been Comey’s former top deputy – stated in his own sworn testimony to Congress that he was unaware of any such request.

Yes, it’s true that Comey might have made the request without telling McCabe. But how much sense does that make? Nor can anyone accuse McCabe of being a Trump toady. His wife, Jill, had run for office in 2015 as a Democrat and had accepted $500,000 in campaign contributions from the political organization of a long-time Clinton family ally, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe.

Finally (for now!), comes the subject, as reported in The New York Times, of Comey’s alleged memo claiming that President Trump asked him to drop his Russia investigation in a February meeting. The former FBI Director will surely have the chance to confirm, deny, or otherwise elaborate on this story and the conversation in his own testimony under oath to Congress.

As suggested by prominent Trump critic Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, if this request was made, we’re talking about a genuinely Nixonian case of obstruction of justice. (The “smoking gun” tape that played such a decisive role in Richard Nixon’s impeachment and removal in 1974 centered precisely on a decision by the former President to order the FBI to stop its Watergate investigation.)

As Mr. Trump’s critics like to say, however, the Times article “raises questions” – indeed, big ones. First, it’s crucial to note that, as Nixon himself admitted, his actions were intended to cover up criminal activity. As noted above, there’s no evidence yet of a Russia-related crime committed by the Trump administration.

More immediately, Comey has not exactly been shy about loudly expressing, acting on, and widely sharing his concerns about obstacles to official inquests and other behavior he considered improper. In 2004, he threatened to resign as Deputy Attorney General over post-September 11 domestic surveillance programs he viewed as illegal. Last July, he famously held a press conference in which he took the extraordinary step of moving beyond his position’s investigative role to explain extensively his decision to recommend against indicting Hillary Clinton for using a personal email system as Secretary of State. And earlier this month, Comey said – again, under oath – that he took this step because he unilaterally decided that his superior, Attorney General Loretta Lynch had lost credibility as a Clinton investigator because of her meeting with the candidate’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, in June.

It’s certainly possible that Comey has decided to keep firsthand evidence of clear Trump criminality under wraps for going on three months now. But it sure looks out of character.

All of the above notwithstanding, there’s no question that the President’s undisciplined and often contradictory statements understandably have created major suspicions – which are by no means confined to his enemies’ ranks. The consequently confused efforts by his surrogates to clean up these messes have only compounded the problem. And even if the administration had its communications act together, one indisputable lesson of Washington and other scandals is that shoes keep dropping. Moreover, numerous continuing global business ties and burgeoning official responsibilities of the President’s children, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and his family keep failing valid smell tests.

At the same time, the clearly organized Dump Trump effort by numerous persons with detailed knowledge of seemingly the full range of the federal government’s most sensitive activities suggests that “RussiaGate,” at least, could be different. Not in the sense that damaging claims won’t continue to be made, but in the sense that the anti-Trump-ers might have already leaked their worst.

The only certainty at this point appears to be that the various Trump Wars will rage on for months at a minimum – which means that the valid policy grievances of the president’s supporters and so many other Americans will continue to be neglected by their government.

Making News: Back on National Radio Tonight & in The Weekly Standard

Tags

China, Ethan Epstein, Gordon G. Chang, illegal immigration, Making News, North Korea, The John Batchelor Show, The Washington Post, The Weekly Standard, Trade, Trump

I’m pleased to announce that I’m scheduled to return to John Batchelor’s nationally syndicated radio show tonight to talk about the latest twists and turns in President Trump’s approach to China.  The segment is slated to start at 9 PM EST and will focus on Mr. Trump’s stated belief that he’s likelier to get China’s cooperation in quelling North Korea’s nuclear threat if he refrains from cracking down on Beijing’s predatory trade practices.

You can listen live on-line here to what’s sure to be a provocative discussion among John, co-host Gordon G. Chang, and me.  And if you can’t tune in, as usual, I’ll post a link to the podcast as soon as one’s available.

In addition, it was great to see my recent report on The Washington Post‘s latest example of shameful hypocrisy on immigration issues written up in The Weekly Standard. As you’ll see, author Ethan Epstein deserves special credit for adding to the evidence that the paper will go to almost any length to justify lenient treatment for illegals.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

Following Up: The Establishment’s Pro-Mass Immigration Bias Goes On and On and…

Tags

crime, deportations, drunk driving, Ed O'Keefe, Following Up, ICE, illegal immigration, Immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Maria Sacchetti, The Washington Post

Last Thursday, I wrote about how a combination of Trump Derangement Syndrome and a determination to uphold America’s current mass immigration policies had apparently driven no less than the U.S. Supreme Court to equate committing war crimes with speeding tickets. Two days ago, the Washington Post made appallingly clear that its hard news staff, including its editors, also ranks mass immigration – in this case, illegal immigration – uber alles. Specifically, in an article purporting to show how unreasonable the Trump administration’s deportation policies have been, the paper decided that drunk driving should not be considered a serious crime.

The article’s tone was set by the headline: “ICE data shows half of immigrants arrested in raids had traffic convictions or no record.” And in case you doubt that the piece’s aim was to demonstrate that President Trump’s policies are squandering precious immigration enforcement funds on residents of the country who are clearly no danger to their communities, here’s the lead written by reporters Maria Sacchetti and Ed O’Keefe:

“About half of the 675 immigrants picked up in roundups across the United States in the days after President Trump took office either had no criminal convictions or had committed traffic offenses, mostly drunken driving, as their most serious crimes, according to data obtained by The Washington Post.”

Obviously disgraceful, right? Except the Post account could only get even close to this conclusion by belittling the importance of drunk driving. Here’s how. The article analyzes the backgrounds of immigrants rounded up in early February by agents from regional offices in Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, San Antonio and New York, and contends that the records reveal 139 to have been convicted of assault or involvement with “dangerous drugs.” That’s over 20 percent of the total. Only about 26 percent of those rounded up (177 individuals) had no criminal convictions on their record, though 66 of them (more than 37 percent) had charges pending (“largely immigration or traffic offenses).

Sacchetti and O’Keefe went on to write that “The largest single group — 163 [were] immigrants convicted of traffic offenses….” Kind of trifling, right? We all speed or something to that effect now and then. But it turns out that more than 90 percent of these traffic convictions were for drunk driving – which outside the Mainstream Media is surely and rightly viewed as anything but trifling.

In fact, just to remind, during the last full year for which data is available (2015), 10,265 Americans died in “alcohol-impaired crashes” – 300 more than in 2014. And from what we already know, 2016 will see an even higher toll.

So of the 675 immigrant pickups analyzed by the Post, it looks like 139 were convicted for crimes that even the Post evidently considers serious, and at least 147 (90 percent of 163) were drunk drivers. So more than 42 percent had been convicted of crimes that any thinking person would consider serious. And then there were 66 more currently being charged with “traffic offenses” (mainly drunk driving?) or immigration offenses (which could well include such unmistakably serious matters as reentering the United States after being deported or lying on an immigration form).

If only half of the 66 belong in the serious crime category (which seems to be low-balling the issue, based on the other data we have), then more than 47 percent of the pickups looked at by the Post were, by any reasonable standard, menaces to public safety.

But the article’s original claim indicates that this number is actually much higher. After all, Sacchetti and O’Keefe contend that “About half of the 675 immigrants picked up in roundups across the United States in the days after President Trump took office either had no criminal convictions or had committed traffic offenses, mostly drunken driving, as their most serious crimes….”

In other words, a substantial share of the immigrants picked up could have been convicted of crimes perhaps less serious than drunk driving, homicide, assault, or dangerous drug involvement, but still legitimately seen as major offenses. Unfortunately, the piece itself was so poorly written (and edited) that it’s simply not possible to tell. But in a tweet on the article, the Post itself cleared up the mystery, stating that the share of the 675 pickups with no criminal convictions at all was only about 25 percent.

So it’s plain as day that this article’s real message is that the great majority of the individuals being picked up by the Trump administration have taken or endangered American lives, and would remain in positions to do so without federal intervention. The rest, even if they’re simply “undocumented,” have violated the nation’s laws. And that’s a record to condemn?

Im-Politic: Mainstream Media’s Pro-Open Borders Bias Remains Widespread

Tags

assimilation, civil religion, CNN, Donie O'Sullivan, illegal immigrants, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, Irish-Americans, Mainstream Media, national identity, National Public Radio, Open Borders, Samuel P. Huningtom, Seymour Martin Lipset, The Washington Post, Tom Gjelten

The pro-Open Borders slant of the Mainstream Media has become so pervasive that the last few days alone have served up no less than two major instances by leading news organizations. One should be painfully obvious – at least to anyone familiar with the history of immigration in the United States and the nation’s (until unquestionably successful) approach towards assimilating newcomers. The other is more difficult to detect. Both also entail telling failures of professional judgment by writers and editors alike. You decide which (if either) is the most worrisome.

The obvious example of bias came from a Washington Post piece Sunday by National Public Radio correspondent Tom Gjelten. If you ignore the lessons Gjelten claims flow from that American immigration history, you can learn a lot from his article about (or be usefully reminded of) the various efforts made from the early 19^th to the mid-20^th century to address the various social and cultural issues large inflows from regions outside Britain (though still mainly from Europe) in particular posed. Of course, far too many were products of simple bigotry.

But Gjelten then ventures deeply into a dangerous fantasyland when he discusses those lessons and what they mean today. He all but explicitly states that, given the more recent waves of immigrants, now dominated by non-Europeans, Americans should not only reject race and ethnicity or religion the bases of their national identity. They should also reject using what’s long been called a “civil” or “political” religion – a group of political beliefs and values that can surely be argued over around the edges, but that surely closely approximates a formula developed by political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset. As Gjelten summarizes it: “liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, populism and a laissez-faire approach to governance and daily life.”

Since I’d add separation of church and state, another common definition of Americanism – advanced by another political scientist, Samuel P. Huntington – is more problematic. “Anglo-Protestant culture and political values.” But if you think about it, it’s not that much more problematic, especially since the overlap between Lipset and Huntington is so substantial.

Moreover, look at the matter from the opposite perspective. How many other peoples and contemporary regions have created political values in particular (“cultural values” is a concept that’s much too sweeping and much too prone to intolerant abuse for me) that most Americans today would want to live under? Latin America? East Asia? The Middle East? Please. So if you employ a little common sense, and substitute something like “European Enlightenment” for “Anglo-Protestant,” you arrive at a basis for American identity that not only should offend no one, but that, more important, has underlain much of the nation’s extraordinary success.

But Gjelten seems not to agree. In response to Huntington’s (poorly formulated) contention that successful assimilation has entailed “people who were not white Anglo-Saxon Protestants [becoming] Americans by adopting America’s Anglo-Protestant culture and political values,” he maintains:

“Whether that had really happened or was even possible was debatable. ‘A nation of more than 130 cultural groups cannot hope to have all of them Anglo-Saxonized,’ argued Molefi Kete Asante in his book ‘The Painful Demise of Eurocentrism.’ Trying to do so, he argued, would only alienate minorities and deepen disunity.”

Yet having apparently dismissed civil religion as well as (rightly) race and ethnicity as the source of America’s national identity, does Gjelten come up with any viable alternatives? None that I can see. In fact, at this point, his article dissolves into an endorsement of concepts like “nondiscrimination,” “diversity,” and “multiculturalism” that are not only gauzy but lacking in any particular content.

The author maintains that what he terms “nondiscriminatory immigration” based on these empty principles has succeeded in America by making it “more resilient.” But his evidence can’t possibly impress: that “In comparison with Western European countries that have also received large numbers of immigrants, America has proved to be more capable of absorbing and successfully integrating a diverse population.” Of course, this observation practically defines “low bar.”

It’s Gjelten’s right to believe in a definition of national identity evidently distinguished only by what it isn’t – though he sure didn’t provide any examples of countries that have been held together adequately simply by ideals such as multiculturalism and diversity. It’s also his right to believe – as actually seems to be the case – that the idea of a national identity is either pointless or undesirable. But he should have the intellectual honesty to say so. Further, his editors should have had the competence to challenge his case more than they obviously did.

The other troubling instance of journalistic failure by a reporter and editors alike – this CNN post noting that a significant chunk of America’s illegal immigrant population is Irish. That’s unquestionably useful information. But neither author Donie O’Sullivan nor his editors had anything direct to say about the real significance of the article: It powerfully undercuts claims that President Trump’s immigration policies, and even his focus on illegal immigration, stem largely from racism.

Starting with its headline, the article does point out that the illegal Irish have a major advantage over much of the rest of the nation’s illegals – their ability to pass more easily for native-born since they’re white. So obviously, enforcement of immigration law nowadays will inevitably be affected to some extent by race and ethnicity. (At the same time, the article helpfully observes that there are many fewer Irish illegals than Mexican illegals in particular.)

O’Sullivan makes abundantly clear how much fear the administration’s policies have struck among the illegal Irish, and even presents some evidence that these fears have some basis in reality, their physical appearance edge notwithstanding. He quotes an official at an organization providing support services for all Irish newcomers as stating that “it seems that the ICE [immigration law enforcement] agents are using their discretion in a much greater capacity now than ever before.”

But it’s absolutely astonishing (or is it?) that the author says absolutely nothing about the screamingly obvious implication of this claim: It’s a sign that immigration law is being enforced in a race- and ethnicity-blind way. And even though the racism charge has deeply colored the national immigration debate especially since President Trump’s harsh description of some Mexican immigrants when he declared his candidacy for the White House, it’s equally astonishing (or is it?) that none of O’Sullivan’s editors at CNN apparently noted this fact’s omission or importance, either.

Bias-free journalism admittedly is difficult to produce, and the challenge is made all the more formidable by the numerous forms bias can take, and how difficult many can be to spot. All the same, these Washington Post and CNN offerings stand as vivid reminders of how far the Mainstream Media that still dominate news dissemination in our democracy remain from meeting it.

Making News: CNBC Interview This Afternoon – & a Big Boo for a Washington Post Blog

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CNBC, Economist's View, G20, Making News, Monkey Cage, The Washington Post, TheWeek.com, Trade, Trump

I’m pleased to announce that I am scheduled to return to CNBC this afternoon to talk about the Trump administration’s global trade policies. The segment is slated to begin at 3 PM EST, and its theme is the surprising, precedent-breaking performance of President Trump’s Treasury Secretary at a recent conference of the world’s leading economies.

I’m also pleased to announce that my recent op-ed article for The New York Times about the administration’s trade policy has been cited by the influential Economist’s View blog, and by the webzine TheWeek.com

Less pleasing:  The Washington Post‘s Monkey Cage blog published a piece critiquing my article (which is of course fine).  But the powers that be on the blog refused to consider publishing a response by me (which isn’t so fine).  Monkey Cage says it was founded to enable “political scientists draw on their own expertise and the discipline’s research to illuminate the news, inform civic discussion, and make some sense of the circus that is politics.”

But editor John Sides informed me that “At this point…we’re not going to begin a more extended back-and-forth on this issue.”

That tells me that Monkey Cage actually isn’t so big on fostering civic discussion – and therefore can’t be much of a blog. That should be the message you take away, too.

Glad I Didn’t Say That! Confusion in Mainstream Media-Land

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Ben White, Catherine Rampell, economy, Glad I Didn't Say That!, Mainstream Media, Politico, recovery, The Washington Post, Trump

“Trump’s ‘make America great’ plans face a slowing economy”

– Ben White, Politico, January 6, 2017

 

“Trump is being handed a great economy”

– Catherine Rampell, The Washington Post, December 26, 2016

(Sources: “Trump’s ‘make America great’ plans face a slowing economy,” by Ben White, Politico, January 6, 2017, http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/us-economy-2017-outlook-trump-233293 and “Trump is being handed a great economy. What happens when it goes south?” by Catherine Rampell, The Washington Post, December 26, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-being-handed-a-great-economy-what-happens-when-it-goes-south/2016/12/26/524ff948-cba9-11e6-b8a2-8c2a61b0436f_story.html?utm_term=.403834fd0f3d)

Im-Politic: Race, Conspiracies, and Double Standards

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2016 election, Courtland Milloy, David J. Rothkopf, Donald Trump, establishment, Im-Politic, Mainstream Media, middle class, Obama, Occupy Wall Street, One Percent, racism, The Washington Post, working class

It’s more than a little strange to praise an establishment newspaper column that all but calls Donald Trump a racist. And yet the bar for simple sanity has sunk abysmally low for opinion journalists (who aren’t supposed to be objective – like their increasingly unprofessional counterparts in hard news). So it’s more than appropriate to tout the virtues of Washington Post pundit Courtland Milloy’s October 11 piece on charges that if the Republican presidential nominee loses the presidency, African-Americans and other minorities could face an “apocalypse.”

Milloy’s article contains the by-now standard accusation that Trump’s rhetoric has been “racist” (as well as “misogynist”). But he departs insightfully from the emerging conventional wisdom that many of Trump’s backers are such vicious bigots that they will respond to defeat at the polls by going on a violent rampage that targets non-whites of all kinds. In addition to disputing the claims that all or most or lots or too many of Trump’s supporters are racists, Milloy points to a lesson he argues African-Americans have learned about even seemingly hostile whites over the…centuries:

“[F]or those who are racists, their views may not lead to threatening actions. When blacks and whites work on jobs where cooperation is a matter of life and death — such as in the military or on a construction site — people, no matter their beliefs, tend to find a way to get along.”

Along the way, he lampoons contentions that Trump’s campaign is responsible for a significant rise in racism throughout American society.

Even more important, Milloy writes that even many Trump critics are missing “the villain that lurks in the shadows” for both minorities and whites in the middle and working classes, and in the ranks of the poor: “the extremely rich who own the politicians, manipulate Wall Street and exploit cheap labor worldwide at the expense of America’s working class.”

If that last phrase sounds familiar, it should. It revealingly mirrors Trump’s own latest line:

“For those who control the levers of power in Washington, and for the global special interests, they partner with these people that don’t have your good in mind. Our campaign represents a true existential threat like they haven’t seen before,” Trump said.

“It’s a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities.”

As Milloy observes (approvingly), it also sounds a lot like what we’ve heard from the left wing of American liberalism since the “Occupy Wall Street” movement began (and of course before). In addition, this phenomenon has been the subject of extensive recent study – e.g., in a 2009 book titled Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They are Making. And the author in this case is David J. Rothkopf, a quintessential establishmentarian who currently edits FOREIGN POLICY magazine.

Curiously, though, when these words come from Trump’s mouth, they’re simply ridiculed (as in this speech from President Obama last week), or they’re ascribed to historic anti-Semitism (as in this October 13 post).

Milloy offers vastly superior advice: urging black and white working-class people [to] come together and stop falling for these political con games….” Clearly, such cooperation is impossible to envision in the near-term future. Is it too much to hope that, by the 2020 campaign cycle, someone who deserves the adjective “presidential” might take on the challenge?

Im-Politic: The Mainstream Media Covers Up Clinton’s Birther Link

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2008 election, 2012 election, birtherism, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, Jim Asher, Mark Penn, McClatchy, Newsweek, Obama, Politico, Sidney Blumenthal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME

We now have a foolproof test of whether the Mainstream Media deserves even a smidgeon of trust from readers and viewers for coverage of the 2016 presidential campaign: See how a news organization has reported – and whether it starts to report – that one of Hillary Clinton’s closest confidants is now credibly accused of spreading in 2008 the rumor that President Obama was born overseas (and therefore was never eligible according to the U.S. Constitution to serve in the Oval Office).

Before fans of the Democratic presidential nominee and/or haters of her Republican rival Donald Trump become apoplectic at reading this, please keep in mind that posing the above challenge does not mean that I endorse Trump for president, that I think he’s a good person, or that I don’t recognize his own prominent role in pushing the so-called “birther” story. Nor does this position of mine mean that I view as fact the claim about Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal. (For the record, he has called it “false. Period.”)

What it does mean is that I’m arguing that the country’s leading sources of information about the world’s most important political event – a U.S. presidential election – have now been presented with a claim from an entirely respectable source (one of their own!) that one of the earliest proponents of the birther story (which of course has been denied by the president himself and indignantly by former Secretary Clinton) was a long-time associate of the Democratic nominee. And so far, the verdict is clear: Much of the Mainstream Media has flunked badly.

Let’s leave out opinion columns and unsigned editorials, since they’re not supposed to be objective accounts of events. Let’s even leave out so-called “news analyses” – which although they tend to appear in the news sections of publications and websites, are at least labeled as something other than supposedly straight reporting. And let’s quickly review what we know for sure.

Yesterday on Twitter, a former head of the McClatchy newspaper chain’s Washington, D.C. Bureau stated that Blumenthal had told him “in person” during the 2008 Democratic primaries that Mr. Obama was born in Kenya. Then-Senator Clinton was the future president’s opponent for that year’s Democratic nomination in the White House race. McClatchy is a national newspaper chain that publishes major dailies in cities including Miami, Florida; Charlotte, North Carolina; Dallas, Texas; and Kansas City, Missouri.

As for Blumenthal, this lengthy account, among others, should make clear that his intimate association with both Clintons stretches back several decades. Indeed, Hillary Clinton intended to name him as one of her senior aides at the State Department. And even though the new Obama administration quickly scotched the idea, the new Secretary and Blumenthal stayed in continual touch during her tenure – as so many hundred of her released emails show. His access, in fact, was so good that 24 of them contained information that was classified at the time as confidential or secret – and still is. (See the previous linked item.)

So the contention by former McClatchy newsman Jim Asher was undeniably important. In a subsequent email to his former colleagues, he elaborated:

“Mr. Blumenthal and I met together in my office and he strongly urged me to investigate the exact place of President Obama’s birth, which he suggested was in Kenya. We assigned a reporter to go to Kenya, and that reporter determined that the allegation was false.

“At the time of Mr. Blumenthal’s conversation with me, there had been a few news articles published in various outlets reporting on rumors about Obama’s birthplace. While Mr. Blumenthal offered no concrete proof of Obama’s Kenyan birth, I felt that, as journalists, we had a responsibility to determine whether or not those rumors were true. They were not.”

So how did The New York Times, which has long fancied itself the world’s “newspaper of record,” deal with this development? It didn’t. The paper’s main article about the latest birther-related developments contained no mention of the Blumenthal. And the only reference to the 2008 Clinton campaign was this brief paragraph:

“During the 2008 Democratic contest, a senior strategist for Mrs. Clinton at one point pondered, in an internal memo that was later leaked, the ways in which Mr. Obama’s personal background differed from those of many Americans.”

(Just FYI, the senior strategist in question – pollster Mark Penn – was really senior, and also a leading Clinton adviser for many years.)

The Washington Post‘s main news story also ignored Blumenthal’s reported actions, though it did mention the Penn memo – which it said was written in 2007 (i.e., incredibly early in the 2008 campaign). In addition, the Post quoted by name a then-top Clinton campaign official’s for-attribution claim that a volunteer in Iowa was let go for a similar suggestion.

The newspaper Politico doesn’t have the national reach of The Times or the Post, but it is considered must-reading by the intertwined political-media-and policy establishments in Washington. Sometimes it’s hard to tell with this publication where hard news ends and that murky news analysis category begins. But three of its posts on the alleged Clinton campaign role in fostering birtherism omitted any mention of the Blumenthal-related charges, too. They’re found here, here, and here.

And in case you’re wondering – because the newsmagazines have clearly lost influence in recent decades – both TIME and Newsweek whiffed on this story, too.

Moreover, here’s what could be more disturbing: the apparent failure of any Mainstream Media types to investigate Asher’s charger further, rather than simply include Blumenthal’s denial in the accounts that do mention him, and leave the impression that we’re left with an intriguing but ultimately unresolvable “He said, he said” situation.

For Blumenthal is well known throughout the national political press corps, and it’s very difficult to believe that McClatchy was the only news organization to which he attempted to sell his own birther insinuation. Indeed, it’s almost as difficult as believing that Blumenthal acted in 2008 without Clinton’s knowledge.

As a result, the major news organizations still have a chance to redeem themselves. First, their reporters could directly ask Clinton about Blumenthal’s actions. Second, they could ask each other whether or not they were contacted by Blumenthal. I’ll certainly be watching to see if the press is interested in improving its so-far failing grade. If you’re really interested in the health of our democracy, whatever your political leanings, you should be, too.