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February 2018

Posted by Leslie Eastman on February 11, 2018 34 Comments
The last time we visited Stockton, California, the city residents were voting on a sales tax to help city finances after it filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy. The tax passed and the city exited bankruptcy in 2015. It appears few lessons have been learned in the interval. The city's 27-year old mayor is planning to launch its "universal basic income" plan, where its citizens are paid simply for being citizens.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 10, 2018 16 Comments
Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison is a darling of the progressive movement, which pushed hard for him to be Chair of the Democratic National Committee. But Ellison had to settle for Vice Chair. An issue that has dogged Ellison his entire political career was his relationship to Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam for a decade or more ending in the late 1990s.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on February 10, 2018 0 Comments

Highest in three years: "ICE agents made a total of 143,470 arrests in fiscal year 2017, as compared against 110,104 in FY 2016"...

Posted by Leslie Eastman on February 10, 2018 10 Comments
President Donald Trump and Congress are preparing for another round of negotiations over Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), this time without the national budget being held hostage.
The program expires March 5, leaving the nearly 2 million people eligible for DACA vulnerable to deportation, unless Congress acts on immigration reform and secures them legal protection.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on February 10, 2018 52 Comments
Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) is the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, and he appears to be playing a dangerous game with the Democrat rebuttal to Republican memo written by Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA).  Released last week, the Nunes memo alleges that the FBI under Comey and Obama used questionable means to obtain FISA warrants on at least one member of then-candidate Trump's campaign team. The House Intelligence Committee voted to release the Nunes memo, and the White House insisted on redactions after consulting with the FBI and others in the intelligence community.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on February 09, 2018 20 Comments
Perhaps the two aspects of Donald Trump's presidency that I admire the most are is ability to go around supposedly immovable blocks to his proposals and the way he stiffens the spines of his fellow Republicans. After the humiliating Obamacare repeal failure of 2017, many weaker men would have moved on to other matters. However, as Trump continues to take a giant eraser to Obama's legacy, he has obviously moved Congress to take a more piecemeal approach to ending the onerous health insurance regulations promulgated under his predecessor.

Posted by Mary Chastain on February 09, 2018 27 Comments
On Thursday, Ed Henry at Fox News dropped a story about how Sen. Mark Warner (D-NV), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, exchanged texts with a Russian oligarch regarding a meeting with dossier author Christopher Steele. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) dismissed the report because he claimed that Warner made the texts known to the committee. So is this a big deal? Maybe, maybe not. It does raise a few questions like, as Kimberley Strassel points out, why did he want to avoid a paper trail? Why did Steele need to use this oligarch to reach Congress?
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