Here's a scrap for the AdamBot: "The One Thing Trump Gets Right About Tariffs."

"For the past few decades, policymakers have embraced neoliberalism, a broadly open-market political philosophy whose effects have been to redirect more power toward the economically powerful and marginalize the economic majority. Things may be changing."

I don't make it a habit to read Politico, but this one's sensible.

The One Thing Trump Gets Right About Tariffs, by Jennifer M. Harris and Todd Tucker (Politico)

 ... Much as it pains their colleagues—and as hard as it is for Washington to process this—Trump and his backers have a real point. Not about his immigration policies, which are part of a harmful cultural war and stand a real chance of inflicting long-term damage on the American economy. But the administration’s use of tariffs to push its foreign policy goals is not as irrational as Trump’s enemies make it seem. It shouldn’t be this way, but in 2019, if the United States wants to fix some of the big policy arguments it has with its trading partners, it has left little leverage besides the blunt tool of tariffs.

For that, the blame lies with Democratic and Republican administrations alike, including Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama, who collectively have let U.S. economic policy shrink in ambition—a battle fought on a narrower and narrower field, leaving us with so few weapons that tariffs have become the most useful last resort.

A nation as powerful as the United States would traditionally be expected to have a fully developed economic and industrial policy, one that integrates incentives and priorities on the domestic front with carrots and sticks for foreign partners. In that universe, Mexico’s own immigration enforcement might be part of a much wider package of goals negotiated between the two nations, one that creates strong incentives for Mexico to comply, without hurting American consumers and companies the way tariffs would.

This fuller agenda, which some experts call economic statecraft, has been the norm for much of the country’s history. But unlike America's competitors, the United States has largely shelved this kind of economic thinking. President Obama, for instance, pitched the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement as a way to ensure that America, rather than China, would write the rules of the global economy. But under the hood, it was never a very compelling economic argument for the United States: The rules that China negotiates in its own trade deals overlapped considerably with the American proposal, meaning that the TPP was more a matter of diplomatic gamesmanship than a real plan to advance workers here at home

To politicians like Obama, raised in the heyday of global free-market consensus, government industrial policy is a thing of the past, and trade relationships are really just a matter of opening as many markets as possible—regardless of whether the benefits actually outweigh the losses for a given country. The evidence now strongly suggests that consensus has been wrong. To take just one problem, the magnitude of corporate tax evasion made possible by modern trade agreements should make all of us question whether the traditional lifting-all-boats assumptions of trade efficiency still hold up.

With Trump's election, it's now acceptable to at least name the problems the U.S. has confronted on the world stage, ranging from coercive Chinese requirements over our manufacturers to corporations invoking their global supply-chain decisions as a reason we can’t fundamentally rethink U.S. trading rules. But Trump’s solutions to those problems suffer just as much from an absence of creative ambition ...

AMIBA on immigration: "In fact, working people benefit from the jobs and economic opportunities provided by immigrants."

The article is from 2017, and was published at American Independent Business Alliance (AMIBA). I think it underscores the possibility of our independent local business community taking a principled stance on immigration.

Scapegoating of Immigrants Is Dangerous, Inaccurate, by Drew Callaghan

 ... In addition to contributing positively to our national economy, immigrants play a crucial role in stabilizing and revitalizing struggling communities. For decades, rural areas and post-industrial cities have grappled with debilitating out-migration. Many of the communities effectively weathering these upheavals have an influx of immigrants to thank.

Immigrants are pumping new life into communities like Akron, Ohio and Storm Lake, Iowa which, unlike nearby towns, recovered from successive economic shocks by embracing immigrants who fill essential jobs, buy homes, and do the thing elemental to a thriving economy: start businesses and create jobs.

Job creation depends largely on new business formation, and immigrant-founded businesses create new jobs that generate $20 billion annually in local and federal taxes. Embracing and welcoming these individuals isn’t just the humane thing to do. It’s also smart economic development strategy.

Trump and other immigration hawks have proposed a new merit-based system that would invite only the “best and brightest” to America. Humanitarian concerns aside, reducing the number of immigrants with low skills and education may seem like smart economic policy. Again, the data disagree. Immigrants with fewer skills and less education actually create new businesses at a higher rate. Counterintuitive, sure, but some observers suggest the characteristics this population embodies – namely risk-tolerance, perseverance and problem-solving skills – ideally suit them for entrepreneurship.

Even immigrants who don’t start businesses have, at worst, a neutral effect on earnings. An analysis by the libertarian Cato Institute found immigration had no significant impact on the wages of American workers. And, although poor immigrants may tap into social services initially, Cato found they use public benefits at a lower rate than poor native-born citizens over the long term.

Furthermore, the idea that immigrants – particularly refugees – lead to more crime is a myth ...

DACA and Congress: "The repeated failure to pass bills has left America with immigration laws that are unenforceable."

Here is a dispassionate and rational editorial stance on DACA and the Dreamers, but will Congress act rationally?

What a wretched place we've become.

Donald Trump is right: Congress should pass DACA (The Economist)

The repeated failure to pass bills has left America with immigration laws that are unenforceable

IF YOU could design people in a laboratory to be an adornment to America they would look like the recipients of DACA. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an executive action issued in 2012 by Barack Obama to protect most of those who were brought to the country as children from deportation, covers about 800,000 people. They are a high-achieving lot. More than 90% of those now aged over 25 are employed; they create businesses at twice the rate of the public as a whole; many have spouses and children who are citizens. They are American in every sense bar the bureaucratic one.

Correcting that ought to be about as hard politically as declaring a new public holiday ...

 ... But the choice on DACA is not between the rule of law and rule by presidential edict. It is between two different types of legal failure—executive actions that are possibly unconstitutional and a set of immigration laws that are definitely impossible to enforce.

The solution ...

 ... is for Congress to write DACA, or something like it, into law. Yet the long-running saga over DACA and its recipients, whose average age is now 25, has been another sign that Congress’s default setting is to inaction. Mr Obama issued his executive action after years of waiting for Congress to write legislation. Congressmen ducked the decision, leading the president to take it unilaterally, on questionable authority.

A sensible conclusion.

Better if the lawmakers who spent years denouncing Mr Obama for grabbing power from Congress now choose to exercise that power themselves. The alternative is an act of economic and moral self-harm, in which Congress would further undermine both itself and the standing of the law.

Sunday scriptural realities: "Apparently, America is only a Christian nation when it’s convenient."

In less than two weeks, Donald Trump has done more to highlight the perennial pervasiveness of Christian hypocrisy in America than any freethinker or atheist of whom I'm aware. It has been like a nationwide litmus test. Those of us who've been making these points for our entire adult lives are feeling something along the lines of shock and awe.

As most readers are aware, my anti-Trumpolini credentials date to the second Reagan Administration, but a proper sense of intellectual (in this instance, anti-intellectual) honesty compels me to give credit where credit's due.

Now, pop open a locally-brewed beer, and let's listen to the outraged rebuttals from the comfy white evangelicals whose votes for Trump were cast from a position they insist resembles fundamental decency.

(crickets chirp)
(pins drop)
(somewhere, a dog forlornly barks)
(the flutter of this passing moth's wings is deafening)

But seriously: I know there are many Christians who don't merit inclusion in this hyperbolic rendering. I know that you, too, are dismayed, and furthermore, many of you will be speaking to these issues from the pews on your side of the aisle. If you'd like to write about it here, in this blog space, let me know. I'm happy and eager to make space available for your thoughts -- after all, the newspaper will ask you to keep it to 200 words, and I won't.

These Prominent Evangelicals Are Pretty Sure Trump’s Refugee Ban Is Perfectly Moral, by Carol Kuruvilla (Huffington Post)

Apparently, America is only a Christian nation when it’s convenient.

Some of President Donald Trump’s top evangelical advisors have reached a troubling, and somewhat baffling, theological consensus about a restrictions he’s placed on refugees entering the country.

Based on The Huffington Post’s interviews with a few leaders who have the president’s ear, the consensus is this: The Biblical command to welcome, clothe and feed the stranger applies only to churches and individuals. The government doesn’t have to abide by that standard.

In essence, for these evangelicals, their traditional Christian values should have an impact on how the president makes decisions about abortion and same-sex marriage. But on the matter of refugees fleeing war, it’s perfectly fine for the president to turn his face away from suffering, because safety comes before being a Good Samaritan to those in need.

White evangelical Christians’ overwhelming support for Trump helped put him in the White House. As a whole, members of this spiritual tradition have a high regard for the Bible as the source of ultimate moral authority. But beliefs about how to apply Biblical principles to politics can vary greatly ― and the debate about Trump’s “extreme vetting” plan is bringing up some of that tension.

Trump signed an executive order on Friday that establishes new vetting measures to keep “radical Islamic terrorists” out of the country. The order blocks refugees from Syria indefinitely and temporarily bans people from a few unnamed countries from entering the U.S.

The National Association of Evangelicals, which has helped refugees for decades through the resettlement agency World Relief, called Trump’s plans “alarming.” Other Christian aid groups have also criticized the temporary ban.

But some prominent evangelicals, including a few who were part of Trump’s evangelical advisory committee, find no problem with it.

Have your credit cards ready, because Jeff Gahan is offering "limited edition" sanctuary city status to immigrants who meet Comprehensive Re-election Plan criteria.

On Saturday night, as President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration directives went into effect, causing mass upheavals and inducing charmingly dead silence from all the Trump voters who've insisted they're “fundamentally decent" human beings, Mayor Jeff Gahan signaled that he's ready and willing to address the immigration issue right here in New Albany.

At an unannounced press conference held adjacent to the corner booth at the Roadhouse, Gahan grasped a pre-wetted handkerchief as he spoke to members of the wait staff, who paused from clearing Bud Light Lime bottles from the table and checked their iPhones.

“I’m happy to be here at the kickoff of the Bicentennial Park winter meditation series,” read Gahan. “We’re not finish … ed … er, what was that, Mike?”

Hall, who serves Gahan as indispensable Anchor Certified City Hall Body Double, whispered to the mayor, who briefly contemplated a trademark 3:00 a.m. phone call before resuming his speech.

“Give ... me … your ... tired … huddled …”

Hall sighed and grabbed the Holiday Inn Express stationary from Gahan’s hand.

“Hi! I’m here for the mayor tonight," beamed Hall. "He wants you to know that he's happy to offer our luxurious city to all voting immigrants, especially the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, and maybe even the wretched refuse of your teeming shores, though only if there's enough public housing units left over after we ship the residents to Galena, but of course the refugees are on their own once we're finished ... "

"We're not finished," croaked the mayor. "Did we fire Lorch yet?"

" ... tearing them all down, because after all, the new comprehensive plan we wrote for ourselves says affordable housing is far less luxurious for the quality of our lives."

Gahan's eyes remained fixed on the voluptuous cheeseburger going out to Table 5.

"We'll be releasing the New Albany Immigration Grid Resettlement Improvement Retention Project on the web site just as soon as our amazing web contractor puts it there," continued Hall, "but in the meantime, all the immigrants need do is come on over to Silver Street Park during business hours, with a check or money order for $1,000 each, payable to Gahan for State Senate 2018, and we'll take care of the rest."

After lone rally attendee Adam Dickey finished applauding, a Mexican immigrant who works in the kitchen approached Gahan and ceremoniously emptied the insipid contents of a Miller Lite can over his head.

The mayor giggled.

"That tickles, but boy do I love water sports. I'm too legit to quit. Say, did we get any money yet?"

WITHIN CITY LIMITS: Episode IV, The Saga Continues: My Trump Soap Box.

WITHIN CITY LIMITS: Episode IV, The Saga Continues: My Trump Soap Box.

By Nick Vaughn, Guest Columnist

With the recent news of Donald Trump missing the next debate (which will have happened by the time you read this) I felt that now was the time to dust off my anti­-Trump rhetoric and bless you all with an article filled with my anger, because this is a blog after all.

Initially when I had first become aware of the Trump phenom, I had thought that his support would fizzle out, that it was just name ID helping him in the polling. Then he started saying things, very rude things, things that are not feasible, things that pander to the very same base that started the Obama birther rumors and the idea that he was a Muslim (why would that even matter?) As his support grew and poll numbers increased, I began to think that his supporters are just straight up delusional, but that’s when I came to the realization that these people actually believe what he is saying.

Now, I tend to agree that these people are well intentioned and absolutely love America, but their anger is misplaced and over the top, which blinds them from the real issues at hand. Spewing pure hatred for Muslims and Hispanics because of the actions of a few is so wrong on so many levels. Do we have an illegal immigration problem? Yes. Does that mean we shut out those who are in dire need of the opportunities America can provide them? Absolutely not.

The dehumanization of Hispanics and Muslims must come to an end. That’s now how we “Make America Great Again.” We don’t shut people out. Since our inception we have been the beacon of hope and freedom in the world. A place where immigrants could come and get a good paying job and raise a family. The large majority of immigrants have good intentions when coming to America. We know this from the high number of them who are employed and raising a family.

So how can Donald Trump and his supporters so rabidly preach and promote hatred and bigotry towards these groups of people? This is a classic example of misplaced conservatism. When I think of conservatism, I think of an ideology that is wary of government intervention, advocates for fair taxes, promotes free market ideals, and limits government spending.

What we currently have is a conservative movement of hatred, and I would like to mention the following, for all you conservatives out there who are head over heels for Trump because of his conservatism:

1. He supported a single ­payer healthcare system.
2. His immigration plans will expand government spending by over 600 billion.
3. His idea to create a database of all Muslims to track them goes against the 1st and 4th amendments to the Constitution.
4. (And this one is important for you conservatives) he has donated to both Hillary and Bill Clinton and has supported them in the past.

I know some of you out there say that as a businessman Trump had to donate to the Clintons and other politicians because he is so smart and is just playing the game. Well, what if I told you he was a liar? What if I told you about how many times his businesses have gone bankrupt? What if I told you that Mr. Self Made Trump used his daddy’s money to begin his terrible run in private sector business? What if I told you Donald Trump is such a good politician, that you think he is the anti politician who will end the corruption in Washington but will instead run America into the ground because that’s what his track record would suggest?

Would you care? Or will you just keep going along?

Donald Trump may be the Republican nominee, but he will not be President of the United States. Donald Trump’s nomination only ensures a Democrat in the White House, something you conservatives really don’t want, remember?

So, when you all decide to wake up, let me know. I’ll be here holding onto what we have left of our country.

Paris: We cannot defend values by abandoning them.

Photo credit: The Nation

I'm a cosseted white male American who has traveled a bit, just enough to understand that he doesn't know much at all about the wider world, and as such, intends to think about matters a while longer before spouting glib, ignorant gibberish on social media.

I'm a human with a brain, not Pavlov's mutt. Salivate at the ring of ISIS's bell, and it wins. Yes, I favor crushing terrorism, but not through emulating the methods of terrorists.

These three essays encapsulate my point of view, as stated far better than I'm capable at the moment. Take a moment, read and think.

The Guardian view on the Paris attacks: amid the grief, we must defend the values that define us (The Guardian)

To Defeat ISIS, We Must Call Both Western and Muslim Leaders to Account, by Laila Lalami (The Nation)

Paris: You Don’t Want to Read This, by Peter Van Buren (Common Dreams)

Demographics 'n' stuff, part 2: From Goslar to River Ridge.

As noted previously, One Southern Indiana concurs with state economic development officials in supporting measures like the Regional Cities Initiative as a means of resolving Indiana's demographic problem.

Perhaps the easiest way for 1Si to move forward would be to let the accredited denizens of River Ridge decide which immigrants are fitting and proper, and which -- well, you know.

Meanwhile in Germany, a conservative mayor (this is not a misprint) in Goslar actively seeks immigrants. Ironically, just yesterday I read an article about Bamberg, where the now entirely vacated US military base has the potential to free up housing for thousands of students, assuming the government doesn't place Balkan immigrants there, first.

It depends on local circumstances, doesn't it?

Get rid of the immigrants? No, we can’t get enough of them, says German mayor, by Kate Connolly (The Guardian)

Goslar is a gem of a town in central Germany, nestled in the slopes of the Harz mountains. It is popular with tourists, some of whom come to enjoy its cobbled streets and half-timbered architecture, others to ski or mountain bike, or to trace the footsteps of William Wordsworth who penned the beginnings of the Prelude here while homesick during a visit in the freezing winter of 1798.

Now it is becoming famous for another reason. Behind the rich culture is a town with huge problems. It is in one of the weakest economic areas of western Germany, and – like much of the country, which for years has had one of the lowest birthrates in the world – it is facing a demographic crisis. Goslar, a town of 50,000, has shrunk by 4,000 in the last decade and is currently losing as many as 1,500 to 2,000 people a year. In some parts of the town, which once thrived on silver mining and smelting as well as a spa, whole housing blocks stand empty while others have been torn down.

Its problems were only exacerbated by the end of the cold war, when it lost its status as a major garrison town close to the border with East Germany.

Oliver Junk is determined to reverse the trend. The mayor of Goslar has sparked a debate that has spread across Germany by saying he wants more immigrants to settle in the town. While other parts of Europe are shunning refugees, sometimes with great brutality, Junk is delivering an alternative message: bring on the immigrants. There cannot be enough of them, he says.

Chinese restaurants: “Do you know why Americans don’t like eating meat with bones in it? They’re too lazy!”

A long time ago – 2005, to be exact – when downtown New Albany was as yet moribund and revitalization meant anywhere else except here (on second thought, it still does), we returned from a trip to Chicago and it immediately struck us that metro Louisville needed an Asian community like the Windy City’s thriving Chinatown. We looked at the empty buildings downtown and thought, hmm, this looks like a fine place for it; if we Americans can’t muster the chutzpah, I bet the Chinese could. China has the investment capital and the work ethic. Just let ‘em have the buildings, and get out of the way.

Chicago’s Chinatown is touristy to an expected degree, but filled to the brim with, well, people from China (and some from Vietnam, Malaysia and other Asian locales). Sometimes none of the voices to be heard are speaking English. It’s easy to catch yourself thinking that you’re somewhere else, not Illinois.

Stand at the right spot, and the aromas of cooking fill the street, emanating from ubiquitous restaurants with dining rooms often tucked away on upper floors, eateries relieving tourists like us of our cash while pulling extra duty as community centers.

Early Sunday morning we entered a bakery and were shooed into the almost hidden rear section, where the satellite television was entirely in Chinese. The staff spoke English, but the customers in the crowded room paid little heed to it. I checked off breakfast choices, including dim sum and doughy pastries, on a card and handed it to the waitress, who returned with tea and hot sauce.

What were the men talking about? I’ll never know what the men smoking by the no smoking sign were talking about, but their conversation was animated and filled with laughter.

Nine years later, it still sounds like a plan.

Probably the best Chinese food I've ever eaten was in London's Soho district. Given that alcoholic beverages were involved, perfect recall eludes me, but there were four communal dishes of the sort I'd never seen in Louisville-area Chinese restaurants, one of which include w hole pigeon, including the head.

I hate pigeons, and so I enjoyed that dish very much.

The Kitchen Network: America’s underground Chinese restaurant workers, by Lauren Hilgers (The New Yorker)

... There are more than forty thousand Chinese restaurants across the country—nearly three times the number of McDonald’s outlets. There is one in Pinedale, Wyoming (population 2,043), and one in Old Forge, New York (population 756); Belle Vernon, Pennsylvania (population 1,085), has three. Most are family operations, staffed by immigrants who pass through for a few months at a time, living in houses and apartments that have been converted into makeshift dormitories. The restaurants, connected by Chinese-run bus companies to New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, make up an underground network—supported by employment agencies, immigrant hostels, and expensive asylum lawyers—that reaches back to villages and cities in China, which are being abandoned for an ideal of American life that is not quite real.

Unless he or she or it is a Native American, this is even denser than usual.

On the heels of selecting a deceased man as one's of last year's prime community movers, Erika lowers the hilarity bar even further with a Valentine's Day attack on political correctness, the anonymous hooded non-professor courageously telling immigrants just to go on home ... and yet, as we know, nearly one hundred percent of her/his/its readers ooze from a lineage of -- that's right -- immigration.

Here's the link. Don't forget your HazMat apparatus.

Denhart's opposition to diversity and advocacy of intolerance.

Today, twice failed council candidate Vicki Denhart turns to overt racism at her veiled "Freedom to Screech" blogsite, again prompting the question: Is there any aspect of this woman's intolerant political beliefs that come anywhere close to those embraced by genuine Democrats?

ILLEGALS & IMMIGRATION...

The invasion of America from south of the border is not immigration. It is a massive, intra-continental population shift of nation destroying magnitude. If it is not stopped cold and reversed, thew America that we know today will cease to exist and we will be left with a divided, semi-third world mish-mash of a country.