Rational Nation USA, a site devoted to truth and integrity is winding down. After 10 years it is time to accept that Americans, with their love of Twitter, Facebook, and other social media, do not really want to discuss issues honestly and with sincerity. They much prefer to gather in chat rooms (weblogs) with folks that share their same narrow views. This is especially true of rightwing conservative Trumper sites. For this reason the proprietor of the Rational Nation USA weblog is shutting down operations on April 4, 2019. Until April 4, 2019, the site will occasional post issues of interest. On April 4, 2019 the site will post its final closing remarks on Blogger.
Following are todays posts that may or may not be considered of interest. Depending on your partisan pollical leanings. Articles will have a lead in "teaser" but no opinions by the site proprietor will be made. Feel free to leave a comment, although there is no guarantee any comment will be responded to by the blog proprietor. In today's glaring political animosity and incivility it just ain't worth the effort.
Don’t Abolish Billionaires
Billionaires are in notably bad odor with many people on the left. Socialists have long held that large stores of private wealth are tantamount to violence against those in need. But regular nonradical folks not on the left are fed up, too. Howard Schultz’s potential independent White House bid is simply infuriating, and it’s maddening to feel helplessly tangled in the gilded web of global intrigue emanating from the president, his plutocrat dictator pals and America’s retail overlord, the philandering Jeff Bezos.
Thanks at least in part to Bernie Sanders and the sizzling rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, this dry wick has met a spark. Enthusiasm for radical leveling is whistling out of the hard-left fringe and blossoming into a mainstream mood.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s policy adviser, Dan Riffle, contends that “every billionaire is a policy failure” (that’s the tagline on his Twitter handle) because “the acquisition of that much wealth has bad consequences” and “a moral society needs guardrails against it.” He’d like to see the 2020 Democratic primary contenders answer a question: Can it be morally appropriate for anyone to be a billionaire?
It’s a compelling litmus test. I’d also like to watch would-be Democratic nominees take it. However, I hope that they would stick up for the idea that it can be morally kosher to bank a billion and that the existence of virtuous three-comma fortunes is a sign not of failure but of supreme policy success.
The empirical record is quite clear about the general form of national political economy that produces the happiest, healthiest, wealthiest, freest and longest lives. There’s no pithy name for it, so we’ll have to settle for “liberal-democratic welfare-state capitalism.” There’s a “social democratic” version, which is what you get in countries like Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands. And there’s a “neoliberal” (usually English-speaking) version, which is what you get in countries like Canada, New Zealand and the United States.
You may prefer one version over the other, but they’re not all that different. And in comparative terms, they’re all insanely great. The typical citizen of these countries is as well-off as human beings have ever been. These places are the historical pinnacle of policy success.
Trump demanded top-secret security clearance for Jared Kushner last year despite concerns of John Kelly and intelligence officials
President Trump early last year directed his then-chief of staff, John F. Kelly, to give presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner a top-secret security clearance — a move that made Kelly so uncomfortable that he documented the request in writing, according to current and former administration officials.
After Kushner, a senior White House adviser, and his wife, Ivanka Trump, pressured the president to grant Kushner the long-delayed clearance, Trump instructed Kelly to fix the problem, according to a person familiar with Kelly’s account, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.
Kelly told colleagues that the decision to give Kushner top-secret clearance was not supported by career intelligence officials, and he memorialized Trump’s request in an internal memo, according to two people familiar with the memo and the then-chief of staff’s concerns.
It is unclear how Kelly responded to Trump’s directive. But by May, Kushner had been granted a permanent security clearance to view top-secret material — a move that followed months of concern inside the White House about his inability to secure such access.
Kushner’s attorney publicly described the process as one that had gone through normal channels, a description that Kelly did not view as accurate, according to a person familiar with his reaction.
The former chief of staff, who left the administration at the beginning of this year, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump’s push to get Kushner clearance — and the chief of staff’s concerns about it — was first reported by the New York Times, which also reported that then-White House Counsel Donald McGahn had concerns about Kushner’s clearance.
House Judiciary chair: "It's very clear" Trump obstructed justice
House Judiciary Chairman Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), whose committee would be responsible for starting impeachment proceedings, told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Sunday that "it's very clear" President Trump obstructed justice.
Near the end of Michael Cohen's testimony yesterday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asked the former fixer whether President Trump had ever run an insurance fraud. Cohen said yes, naming three Trump Organization executives: Allen Weisselberg, Ron Lieberman and Matthew Calamari.
Why it matters: Cohen offered no proof for this allegation — and given his record of lying, his claims can't be believed without evidence. But by making this allegation — and coughing up the names of the executives — Cohen gave House investigators and federal prosecutors yet another trail to chase.
