After Deng Xiaoping started modernizing China’s economy in the 1980s, economic relations between Washington and Beijing deepened. After Deng’s 1992 “southern tour,” which reconfirmed China’s commitment to economic liberalization and free-market reform, the economy took off exponentially. It has now become the workshop of the world. In recent years, this has created unease in the US, where the working class suffered as manufacturing moved abroad. Under President Donald Trump, relations soured, leading to the imposition of US tariffs on more than $360 billion worth of Chinese goods, and more than $110 billion of US products by China in retaliation. Now, there is talk of a new Cold War.

The between the US and China presents major risks to the global economy. A study by the UN Conference on Trade and Development that the continuing trade war by the two biggest economies, “has resulted in a sharp decline in bilateral trade, higher prices for consumers and trade diversion effects.” The study revealed that US tariffs have caused a $35-billion loss to Chinese exports in the US market. The International Monetary Fund that the trade war will cause almost a percentage point loss in global growth this year.

The Coming Chinese World Order

READ MORE

There is also the added question about which of the two economic models is likely to prevail. With its cheap gas, immigrants from around the world, top universities, spending on research and entrepreneurial energy, many take the view that the US will come back strongly. Others say that the Chinese have the social cohesion, long-term planning, determination and a work ethic to mount a decent, if not successful, challenge.

In this guest edition of The Interview, Naveed Ahsan talks to David Petraeus — a decorated general, former head of the CIA and the chairman of the — about the US economy, American strategic priorities and US-China relations.

Naveed Ahsan: With “America First,” is the US going back to the protectionist policies of the pre-World War I era? 

David Petraeus: Now let me qualify my answer a bit because there is a debate in the US — and in some other countries as well — about the benefits of international trade agreements, the value of alliances and the importance of the US continuing to lead the so-called rules-based international order. Those who believe in each of these — and I am among them — clearly have to make a more effective case than has been put forward in recent years that the benefits of each outweigh the downsides and costs that inevitably accompany trade agreements, alliance membership and global leadership. 

Additionally, there has to be an acknowledgment that there are losers, as well as winners, from trade and other agreements, and that there need to be policies and resources that take better care of those disadvantaged by new trade agreements than has often been the case in the past.

Ahsan: With low gas costs, cutting-edge research, smart manufacturing, etc., is the US economy poised for another growth spurt? 

Petraeus: That may be the case in some sectors, but is unlikely in aggregate. The US is, of course, in the later stages of the longest economic recovery in our history. But growth in the US has begun to slow; we have seen yield curve inversion; and growth in the eurozone and much of the developed world, as well as that in China, India and many emerging market countries, has slowed as well — in some cases approaching a technical recession. 

In response, central banks around the world, including in the US, are now reducing interest rates and pursuing monetary easing as well, and some governments are also engaged in fiscal stimulus policies. Each of those actions is intended to mitigate the risk of a recession. Continued consumer spending in the US, which accounts for the vast majority of US GDP, is sustaining growth in the US at present, and some fundamentals are encouraging — low inflation despite the lowest unemployment in some 50 years, low energy costs, recent modest increases in real wage rates and still reasonably solid earnings. 

But I would not anticipate a US growth spurt in aggregate, at least not until we weather the inevitable downturn that lies ahead — though no one can predict the timing or severity of the downturn, to be sure.

Certainly, some productivity enhancements being pursued will help the US economy. However, if the US wants to see a real boost to long-term growth, we will need to invest heavily in overdue infrastructure improvements that enhance productivity, achieve comprehensive immigration reform — providing, in particular, a legal pathway for unskilled workers for our agriculture, construction, and hospitality sectors; allowing more highly skilled workers for various tech sector needs; and resolving the status of the “Dreamers” and those immigrants here without adequate legal documentation.

[We need to] improve public education for the bottom 30% or so of our population, increase resources provided for research and development, and establish greater incentives and regulatory frameworks to encourage investment in new technologies, such as 5G infrastructure and communications, renewable energy sources, smart grid, etc. 

Ahsan: With the rebound of American manufacturing, is the Chinese economy headed for a Japan-style showdown? 

Petraeus: There are many challenges looming for manufacturing in China: displacement of some manufacturing to countries with lower labor costs and because of US tariffs; return from China of some manufacturing to the US (where more of the work is done by machines, robots and automation); loss of some manufacturing jobs inside China to robots and machines (no country will be affected more by the “rise of the robots” than will China, as its workforce in manufacturing is undoubtedly the largest in the world); and loss of some tech manufacturing because of growing concerns about supply chain risks associated with — and US restrictions on — some tech items built in China. 

Those challenges — and the inevitable reduction in growth rates in China, even as growth does continue, as well as a variety of other factors — will require very skillful responses by Chinese leaders. But Chinese leadership has guided the country to achieve more in the four decades since Deng Xiaoping welcomed the world to China than any country in history has achieved in 40 years. So, just as Warren Buffett observes from time to time that “It has never paid to bet against America,” perhaps we might offer something of the same about modern China.

Ahsan: What must Washington and Beijing do to avoid the Thucydides’ Trap?  

Petraeus: This is one of the central questions of the day — and likely will continue to be so for the decades ahead. From a US perspective, the US-China relationship has to be far and away the top priority of America’s foreign policy. And we need to develop a truly coherent and comprehensive approach that employs all possible American tools, together with those of our allies and partners around the world, and asks what the effect on the US-China relationship will be of every foreign policy initiative. 

Beyond that, it is very clear that the US and China need to engage in sustained strategic dialogue so that each side understands the national interests of the other and so that differences can be resolved diplomatically before they get out of hand — especially given that, unlike pre-World War II situations, we are now in the nuclear age. The goal obviously should be a mutually beneficial relationship, and the key will be determining which of China’s aspirations are sufficiently legitimate that they should be accommodated, and which are not, and thus warrant firm pushback by the US and its partners.

Ahsan: What are the top three strategic priorities for the US? 

Petraeus: Reflecting on the 2017 National Security Strategy, drafted under the direction of a long-time military colleague, Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster, the four priorities identified for the US are: protection of the US homeland, including the American people and our way of life; promotion of American prosperity; preservation of peace (through strength); and the advance of American influence around the world.

Ahsan: What are the top three geopolitical threats to the global economy? 

Petraeus: There are numerous threats at present, but it seems to me that the top three are: first, the economic actions that have accompanied the resurgence of great power rivalries — especially, as previously highlighted, those associated with the extraordinary rise of China; second, increased challenges to the trading regimes and elements of the rules-based international order that, despite various shortcomings, has stood the world in reasonably good stead since the end of World War II; and third, populism, security issues, corruption, large-scale criminal activity and other dynamics that are undermining in many countries the elements of governance, rule of law and security that are generally required for substantial investment by foreign sources.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post David Petraeus: It Doesn’t Pay to Bet Against Modern China appeared first on 51�Թ�.

is the founder of . The nonprofit organization trains young, aspiring entrepreneurs to build businesses in emerging cities across the country such as Detroit, Cleveland and Baltimore. Now, he is running for president of the United States. Yang believes that the advent of automation poses a serious risk to American jobs. In the past several years, he’s seen automation wipe out jobs in manufacturing and truck driving. Even workers in retail, accounting and journalism are under threat from technology. For Yang, the solution is a universal basic income.

A 2017 study by the consulting firm predicted that between 400 million and 800 million jobs��may become automated by the year 2030. Yang proposes the so-called Freedom Dividend — a $1,000 monthly income for every American aged 18 to 64. This amount raises every individual roughly to the poverty line.

Pilot programs for universal basic incomes have been launched in the past in Finland, , Canada’s province of Ontario, and cities like Barcelona and Oakland, among others, and with varying degrees of success. , tech moguls like Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen and Mark Zuckerberg have all expressed support for a universal basic income. Former and too, have floated with the idea. A recent found that 48% of Americans are sympathetic to a basic income as well.

In this edition of , 51�Թ� talks to Andrew Yang about his vision for the United States, the social stigmas of a universal basic income and the failings of the Democratic Party.

Naveed Ahsan: Why have you decided to run for president?

Andrew Yang: I spent six and a half years running an organization called Venture for America, and our goal was to create thousands of jobs around the United States, which we did successfully. I came to realize that we were pouring water into a bathtub that has a giant hole in the bottom. Right now, the United States is in the process of automating away hundreds of thousands of jobs in its most common job categories.

The country started with manufacturing, which is what I saw much of when I was working in the Midwest. That led to Donald Trump’s election in 2016 after we automated 4 million manufacturing jobs in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. We’re about to do the same thing in jobs in retail, call centers, fast food and truck driving.

So I did not imagine myself getting into politics. But if you can, put yourself in the shoes of someone who’s trying to create jobs, then realize that those jobs are going to be wiped out in large numbers and then realize that it’s going to be increasingly disastrous for the country. That’s when I decided to run for president.

Ahsan: Why is a universal basic income the solution?

Yang: One of the problems people are having in the US as that they don’t like to look at the true facts of the transformation of our economy and the labor force — particularly because they are afraid to spend money. Most often they’ll say that the solutions are too large in terms of what it would take to meaningfully change our economy. So they shy away from it.

But if you look at the facts, you realize that we need to dramatically evolve in terms of the way we both seek and distribute work and value in the US. Just look at one labor category, like truck drivers. There are 3.5 million truckers, 94% are male, the average age is 49, and their average education [level] is high school. If you foresee that a significant number of those jobs are going to be lost to robot trucks in the coming years, there are very few ways to help that population transition other than something like a universal basic income.

One thing that I am confident of is that worker freedom and bargaining power will go up in a world where people are receiving basic income because the fear of being indigent on the street will have disappeared.

I’d also suggest that the most dramatic thing about universal basic income is the effect it would have on individual family and households. You can see very clearly in previous applications that children’s health and nutrition improves, graduation rates rise, mental health improves, domestic violence goes down, hospital visits go down. So, even though I am starting with a macroeconomic perspective, it’s most compelling what happens at the personal level.

Ahsan: Under your plan, how will the country pay for a universal basic income scheme?

Yang: The single biggest move that the United States has to make is that right now our income-based tax system is really bad at harvesting the revenue from new technologies and artificial intelligence because the beneficiaries will tend to be very big tech companies that are very good at not paying a lot of income tax.

What America has to do is that it has to join the rest of the developed world and have a value-added tax. The American economy is now so vast at over $19 trillion, which is up $4 trillion in the last 10 years alone. We could easily generate almost $1 trillion in revenue with a value-added tax, in combination with existing spending, economic growth due to putting money into people’s hands, and efficiency improvements.

Ahsan: One common objection to implementing a universal basic income is that it will destroy one’s incentive to work. What is your response?

Yang: That very line of thought presupposes that extreme scarcity is why anyone does anything —��that if somehow you were to remove the threat of starvation, none of us would do anything. So the first thing is that the data does not suggest that is the case.

If you look at situations where people have received basic income support, work levels have remained essentially constant. The only populations that are working less are new moms who spend more time with their children and teenagers who graduate at higher levels — which, I guess, most people would be pretty happy to hear.

So the facts do not indicate inter-mass slothfulness if people are receiving a basic income. The second thing is that virtually no one can flourish on a $1,000 a month, which is the level I am proposing in my plan with the Freedom Dividend. The third thing is that it will actually push people to do more forms of work that we need more of and that people find more meaningful.

Ahsan: Many would also argue that, historically speaking, automation will not lead to anything new. People have always adapted to major technological shifts. Why do you think automation is different?

Yang: Most people that use that line of argument refer to the Industrial Revolution. If you look at the history of the Industrial Revolution, you find that there were mass protests and riots of violence, including strikes that killed dozens of people and caused billions of dollars worth of damage. The US then implemented universal high schools in response and inaugurated Labor Day as a celebration of the laborers who were agitating for more rights. So even if you were to use the Industrial Revolution as your template, you would foresee mass protests and violence.

There’s all this happy talk and optimistic thinking that people are going to miraculously adapt to different circumstances, but there are many, many Americans who are going to struggle to adapt. It’s really the vast majority. If you look at the numbers, 58% of Americans are essentially high school grads, 42% have a two-year degree, and only 32% have a four-year degree. Many Americans who are working in these jobs are middle-aged. So imagining that this population is somehow infinitely re-trainable, and mobile and resilient, is wrong. The fact is, if you look at studies on how effective government-sponsored retraining programs are, you’ll find that they are entirely ineffective. Independent studies have their effectiveness rate at less than 20%, and fewer than 10% of workers qualify. One thing that I think is really irresponsible is imagining that it’s somehow realistic to retrain hundreds of thousands of people without any evidence to that effect.

Ahsan: Why do you believe the Democrats lost in the previous election?

Yang: I think that there are a few failings of the Democratic Party. The reason Donald Trump is our president is because the Democratic Party stopped truly focusing on how to improve the lives of the average working American. The manufacturing sector used to be a core Democratic base, but over the last number of decades, unions have gotten weaker and weaker. Now they’ve lost half their membership, and the Democrats have shifted their focus from trying to better the lives of American working class to other concerns. I do believe that universal basic income is the future of the Democratic Party.

Ahsan: Do you find that the social stigma attached to universal basic income in the United States is changing?

Yang: I think that the recognition is growing all the time that our previous framing of these sorts of solutions is just archaic. We lost 4 million manufacturing jobs in 2016, and the disappearance of other job categories because of automation is indisputable.

People think of capitalism and socialism as diametrically opposed, and capitalism won, but the truth is that we need to evolve our system and integrate the best aspects of both, ideally.

Ahsan: Will employers still feel compelled to pay a proper wage to their workers with a basic income? Do you think it will improve the workers’ bargaining power?

Yang: It will have different effects on different lines of work. There are certain forms of work that people really like to do, like being an artist, that will probably be very popular with basic income. And there are very unpleasant jobs that you will probably have to pay more to do.

One thing that I am confident of is that worker freedom and bargaining power will go up in a world where people are receiving basic income because the fear of being indigent on the street will have disappeared. An employer truly trying to exploit workers would struggle more than they are right now to get people to work for them.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Can a Presidential Candidate Convince America on Universal Basic Income? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Last week, it was reported that the White House warned Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that President Donald Trump will take “imminent action” if he did not step down. When Tillerson refused, the president went ahead and announced his replacement on Twitter: CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

To some, Tillerson was regarded as one of the few “adults in the room.” He was perceived to be the calm, shrewd and measured influence on the intemperate president. That wasn’t the case. Indeed, Tillerson was at times a thorn in Trump’s side, but his legacy as secretary of state will be defined as one of ineffectiveness. During his tenure, Tillerson has had no significant major accomplishment to his name. Paul Krugman of The New York Times that “he was surely the worst Secretary of State since William Jennings Bryan.”

There have been more than a few disagreements between Tillerson and Trump. For example, Tillerson opposed the scrapping of the��. He also attempted to persuade Trump to remain in the .��Last June, Tillerson called on Saudi Arabia to end its blockade of Qatar. Only hours later, Trump labeled Qatar “a funder of terrorism at a very high level.”��Most famously, during a meeting��at the Pentagon last July, Tillerson reportedly called Trump “.”

Recently, Tillerson supported Britain’s conviction that was behind the poisoning of a former spy��in the picturesque English town of Salisbury. During his official visit to Africa, Tillerson told reporters that he had “full confidence” that Russia was responsible for the nerve-agent attack. He was ��the next day and, although rumors of his impeding firing have been circulating, the timing was conspicuous.

In his emotional , Tillerson thanked everyone except the president. “I depart my post with nothing but the best memories of working with my State Department colleagues,” Tillerson said. “Know that I will continue to pray for our country, our leaders, and your efforts to make this world a better place than we found it.”

Now with Pompeo succeeding Tillerson, the expectation is that Trump will finally have a fiercely loyal secretary of state by his side. “As much as anyone in the administration, Pompeo has mastered the art of communicating with this president. He’s one of the first people in the Oval Office each morning when he shows up to deliver Trump the daily intelligence briefing,” writes in��Bloomberg Businessweek. “Not only does Trump get details of the country’s most secretive operations, he gets them in bite-sized, boiled-down charts and graphics designed to maximize the attention of a famously fickle president.”

Trump himself has that he and Pompeo, “have a very similar thought process.” This is true. Like Trump, Pompeo is ardently anti-Iran, in favor of stronger immigration control, refuses to accept climate change and is under the belief that Russia did not affect the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.��Pompeo previously served in the US House��for Kansas’ 4th^��congressional district for six years. After Trump was inaugurated, Pompeo was tapped as CIA director.

One of Pompeo’s biggest challenges as the new secretary of state is to revitalize the State Department. Around 60% ��of left during Tillerson’s tenure, and the number of new applications for the has fallen to its lowest in nearly a decade. Pompeo will also be expected to strengthen morale within the State Department. As the reported, “The rank-and-file were upset��that they couldn’t get access to the secretary when they needed too and that when access was granted, it was too late.”

There is no date set for the meeting between the president and North Korea’s leader Kim Jung-un, but it has been reported that Pompeo and the CIA will be taking on a during negotiations. Before his appointment last week, Pompeo said that the US would not be making “any concessions” to the North Koreans. On , he said that to “continue to allow us to perform our military-necessary exercises on the peninsula, and then he’s got to make sure that he leaves on the table that discussion for denuclearization.”

It seems premature to celebrate at the news of Tillerson’s departure. Though he was ineffective, liberals should be more wary of a man who has much more clout in the White House.��The likelihood that Pompeo will accomplish more than his predecessor is high. He certainly has the track record to assume so. However, with Pompeo now in office, it will only make it easier for Trump to further his mindless agenda. If he deviates from Trump’s line, expect him to suffer the same fate as Tillerson. As ��of��Vox suggested: “Eventually, the buck stops with Trump.”

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit:����/��

The post Will Pompeo Help Push Trump’s Mindless Agenda? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

It can be said without any pretense that Michael��Wolff, the author of��, has conjured a reaction — one of both praise and vituperation — that is quite rare and unusual for a book these days. Writers often labor in the dark for undignified wages for much, if not their entire careers. Wolff surely must be exultant:��The book has already and has been out of stock in many bookstores across the country.

Praise is much deserved if you are bewildered at how a journalist managed to gain such easy admission to the White House and its insider wheelings and dealings. It is safe to suggest that the reason lies with the president’s own incompetence and that of his inner circle. Critics, on the other hand, have been practically unanimous in their discontent. Indeed,��Wolff’s unglamorous portrait of the president and his administration does not read like the solemn political journalism in the tradition of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. There are misattributions, misspellings and deeply erroneous claims throughout the entire book.

In , where Wolff lists high profile names who attended a breakfast at the Four Seasons in Washington D.C., multiple errors were found:�� Political strategist Hilary Rosen’s name was misspelled, the commerce secretary Wilbur Ross was misidentified as the labor secretary nominee and Washington Post��reporter Mark Berman never attended the event, confused with lobbyist Mike Berman. Then there are the numerous quotations throughout the book denied by those whom they have been ascribed to including, former UK Prime Minster Tony Blair, investor Tom Barrack, Trumps’ former deputy chief of staff Kate Walsh and��editor-in-chief of American��Vogue��Anna Wintour.��

Other claims Wolff has made about the president include probings of his mental condition. He writes: “Everybody was painfully aware of the increasing pace of his repetitions. It used to be inside of 30 minutes he’d repeat, word-for-word and expression-for-expression, the same three stories — now it was within 10 minutes.” There are also claims about Trump and his wife sleeping in separate bedrooms, his excessive television habits and his grave fear of being poisoned.

Last Wednesday, the author was asked to address these errors on ABC’s��.��“You know, Michael, your credibility is being questioned,” Meghan McCain, one of the show’s hosts, told him. Wolff abruptly replied, “Let’s remember who my credibility is being questioned by.” In the same interview, when pressed, Wolff admitted that the dinner party he attended with the late Roger Ailes, former head of Fox News, and White House chief adviser Stephen Bannon was off the record. McCain responded with: “This is why people hate journalists, by the way, this is why I don’t believe in the concept of off the record.”

It has been revealed long ago that Wolff maybe a connoisseur of deception. In 2004, there was ��in which she writes that “Much to the annoyance of Wolff’s critics, the scenes in his columns aren’t recreated so much as created — springing from Wolff’s imagination rather than from actual knowledge of events.” She continues: “Even Wolff acknowledges that conventional reporting isn’t his bag. Rather, he absorbs the atmosphere and gossip swirling around him at cocktail parties, on the street, and especially during those long lunches at Michael’s.”

It will be unlikely that the book will convince members of either the anti-Trump or the pro-Trump camps to change their mind about the president and his circle. If anything, it will only harden their conviction that Trump is either a man unqualified in morality and merit to run the country or that the media is an impenetrable force ready to evade journalistic standards in order to damage the president’s reputation by whatever means necessary.��But the disconcerting reality is that both of these opposing sides have withdrawn into themselves. Asserting one’s loyalty to the group has become far more important than developing ideas.��

has diagnosed this danger for The New York Times: “The anti-Trump movement suffers from insularity. Most of the people who detest Trump don’t know anybody who works with him or supports him. And if they do have friends and family members who admire Trump, they’ve learned not to talk about this subject.”��

Paradoxically, it is a book, above all else, that may well cause the deepest pang in the president’s back. It has been retold again by Wolff that Trump is a man who rarely reads. Journalists will continue to judge the accuracy of Wolff’s exposé, but the more significant danger perhaps has been the response by the president himself. Shortly before its release, a was sent to Bannon and Wolff by Trump’s lawyer, a first in presidential history. Bannon has yet to dispute any of Wolff’s account.��

Trump has normalized a political culture that blurs the boundaries of truth, and its effects will be felt for generations. We’ll never know the extent of the mistakes of Wolff’s book, but all are aware of the president’s proclivity to brand his critics as fake news. Today, our debates have been reduced to vast oversimplifications and mediocre reporting on all sides. Wolff’s book is another product of this reality. But books, by their very nature, are independent enterprises. If democracy is to be protected, then it is imperative that books even as dubious as Michael Wolff’s are too.��

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit:

The post Fire and Fury and the Loss of Truth appeared first on 51�Թ�.

A brief sigh of relief was felt earlier this summer when it was announced that John Kelly would replace Reince Priebus as the White House chief of staff. It was expected that the retired Marine Corps general and former secretary of Homeland Security would be able to moderate the immodest president, Donald Trump. But, gradually, not even Kelly could disguise his exasperations, demonstrated by the that captured his exquisite discomfort during the president’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly in September or the suggesting that he has been feeling “miserable” at his job.

The latest ignoble display that unfolded last week, however, was not only of Trump’s doing but of Kelly’s as well. Trump had already been under scrutiny for failing to call the grieving families of on October 4 and his subsequent dubious claims that his predecessors have also failed to offer condolences during their tenures. “If you look at President [Barack] Obama and other presidents, most of them didn’t make calls,” Trump said during an impromptu press conference on October 16. “A lot of them didn’t make calls. I like to call when it’s appropriate.”

The following day, Trump continued the charade, now demanding that the chief of staff be asked whether or not Obama called him when his own son, Robert, was killed in Afghanistan in 2010. It is true that Obama never called Kelly’s family, but as The Washington Post later revealed, since he came into office.

On the same night, Trump called Myeshia Johnson, the wife of La David Johnson who was killed in the ambush in Niger. Democratic congresswoman of Florida and friend Frederica Wilson was beside Johnson during the call, where she overheard the president make his callous condolence: “He knew what he was signing up for, but I guess it hurts anyway.”

Kelly, usually one to avoid press briefings, entered the fray on October 19 to deliver his and his personal disappointment over the politicization of the deaths of his son and the four soldiers in Niger. Kelly began by relating what happens when a soldier is killed in action and how the families are given the news. He then described how Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joe Dunford notified him when his son was killed. “He said, Kel, he was doing exactly what he wanted to do when he was killed. He knew what he was getting into by joining that 1 percent. He knew what the possibilities were because we’re at war,��“ Kelly said.

Kelly acknowledged that the conversation did take place, only that Johnson’s interpretation of the president’s condolences were incorrect. This contradicted Trump’s tweet��later that night in which he claimed that the entire incident never happened at all. “Democrat Congresswoman totally fabricated what I said to the wife of a soldier who died in action (and I have proof). Sad!” he .

Later on, Kelly’s excoriation of Wilson began, first attributing her having listened in on the president’s conversation with a broader and upsetting decline in American values. “It stuns me that a member of Congress would have listened in on that conversation. Absolutely stuns me. And I thought at least that was sacred,��” he said. Wilson has known and mentored Johnson’s family for decades and, according to , was also a former principal of the same school that Johnson’s father once attended. It was Johnson’s decision to put the call on speakerphone, not Wilson’s. When she ended the call, Johnson began to sob as she told Wilson that the president couldn’t even remember her husband’s name. It would be too generous to the president to say that this was simply a matter of misinterpretation.

Lastly, Kelly added that Wilson had engaged in this sort of political opportunism before, as was the case two years ago when she praised herself for having gathered funding for an FBI building dedicated to two slain police officers. As the shows, Wilson never mentioned having obtained funding as it was already secured before she even joined Congress.

In his long diatribe, Kelly had called her “an empty barrel,” which subsequently led to charges of racism. On this, it could be argued that Kelly has been unfairly treated, by both Wilson and the pundits. There is no evidence to suggest that Kelly is racist, and though he has used “empty barrel” before, when describing for instance, the term doesn’t seem to have any racial connections attached to it. There are more precise and palpable examples of insensitivities toward African-Americans by the president; from his arrogant disapprovals of the NFL protests or his open flirtations with white nationalists.

Toward the end of the press briefing, Kelly made some fairly ambiguous remarks. “When I was a kid growing up a lot of things were sacred in our country,” Kelly said. “Women were sacred and looked upon with great honor. That’s obviously not the case anymore as we’ve seen from recent cases. Life, the dignity of life, was sacred. That’s gone. Religion. That seems to be gone as well. Gold Star families, I think that left in the convention over the summer.”

The imputations he made on society’s treatment of women possibly have something to do with the that erupted earlier this month and the Gold Star family he is referring to is likely that of , both of whom appeared at the Democratic National Convention and objected to Trump’s rhetoric against Muslims. Nonetheless, Kelly’s ire should instead be drawn toward the man he serves under; the same man who has who has fomented racial divides and displayed little regard for fallen servicemen and women.

As pointed out in The Atlantic, the civilian-military divide is concerning, as Kelly has also evinced, and its broader implications have not yet been fully explored. But this gulf between our men and women in uniform and the rest of American society has cultivated a complacent and rather overly reverential attitude that neglects any honest examination of the military as we would with any other American institution. Kelly seems to suggest that the military is not esteemed highly enough, and that any hard questions only illustrate the public’s minute understanding of the burden they carry for their sacrifice.

That most Americans are sheltered from the fear and loss shouldered by the military families is not false, but any accountability and criticism of the armed forces in general and the commander in chief in particular should not be dissuaded as it only exacerbates this growing gulf.

At the center of this episode is a young widow and her children who have just lost a father. The distress began with the president’s carelessness and lies, followed by Kelly’s deference to those lies and the lies of his own. His reproach of American society only recuses the real questions that the public has about the president’s negligence and now those same questions will be met upon his chief of staff as well. It is either Kelly’s patriotism or his yearning ambition or both that has compelled him to accept the role of managing the daily impulses and outbursts of a man so debased, yet the corollary that can certainly come with it is an impaired, perhaps even irreparably impaired, reputation.

*[This article was updated on October 30, 2017.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit:����/

The post John Kelly’s Failed Attempt at Damage Control appeared first on 51�Թ�.

It is reassuring to hear that President Donald Trump’s obdurate behavior has stupefied his own cabinet members and not just the American people. On October 4, reported that Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state, had considered resigning over the summer and, at one point, had called Trump a “moron” after a meeting at the Pentagon in late July. Stephanie Ruhle, one of the journalists who broke the news, stood by her story in an interview amidst questions over its validity. “My source didn’t just say��that he called him a moron.��He said an f-ing moron,” Ruhle said.

At a press conference addressing the report, Tillerson refuted the allegation that he had threatened to leave the White House, but he did not deny that he ever called Trump a moron. “Let me tell you what I’ve learned about this president, whom I did not know before taking this office,” . “He loves his country. He puts Americans and America first. He’s smart, he demands results wherever he goes, and he holds those around him accountable for whether they’ve done the job he’s asked them to do.”

Whether the NBC reports are true or not, it is more than probable that tensions between the two men have long been in gestation.��Ever since Tillerson’s tenure began, Trump has contradicted and undermined him. In June, for instance, as Secretary Tillerson attempted to mediate a dispute between Qatar and other Gulf states, President held a press conference lambasting the Qataris and describing them as a “funder of terrorism at a very high level.” And, according to , Jared Kushner may have a hand to play in the tumult as well. “Some in the White House say that the discord in the Qatar dispute is part of a broader struggle over who is in charge of Middle East policy — Mr. Tillerson or Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and a senior adviser — and that the secretary of state has a tin ear about the political realities of the Trump administration,” the report reads.

, Trump sent out another series of feckless tweets, but this time targeting the secretary and his diplomatic foibles with North Korea and its leader, Kim Jong-un, whom the president refers to as “rocket man.” “I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man … Being nice to Rocket Man hasn’t worked in 25 years, why would it work now? Clinton failed, Bush failed, and Obama failed. I won’t fail,” Trump tweeted.

IS TILLERSON ON HIS WAY OUT?

This is certainly not to excuse the indolence of Tillerson, who will presumably go down in history as one of the worst secretaries in American history. As these two reports , Tillerson has been most adroit at contributing to the mass departures of many future diplomatic leaders. Additionally, hundreds of positions in the State Department .

Some have compared Trump’s proclivity to be unpredictable when it comes to foreign policy with Richard Nixon’s “.” But the parallels eventually veer off when understanding that the Nixonian strategy — from his opening with China to the détente with the Soviet Union — was carefully coordinated and meticulously crafted. The Trumpian strategy, however, has been wholly inept and sheer buffoonery, particularly when it comes to the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Paris Climate Accord.

And just as his uncontrollable adversary in Pyongyang, Trump’s threats are all vacuous and bluster. correctly notes: “An equally likely—or even more likely—outcome is that North Korea will conclude that Trump is capable of nothing, based on past results.” It would certainly be helpful if someone could illuminate the public as to where Trump’s continuing humiliation of his White House subordinates or the North Korean leader through social media fits in with his overall policy agenda. Trump’s impulse to impair his relationship with Secretary Tillerson, at a time when the world is rife with challenges needing to be dealt with, is just another example of a derelict in office instead of a foreign policy tactician.

As point out, Tillerson’s urge to defend himself from the claims made by the NBC report��is not unique but awkward nonetheless, as it suggests that even he is willing to endure the same degree of humiliation from the president just like the rest of his sycophants. In fact, his denial of the claims has only made the visible rift even more obvious.

Whether Tillerson is on his way out or not, the same challenge will fester no matter who fills the role of secretary of state — that is to try to temper a perpetually unruly president who routinely undercuts his subordinates. While we watch in mild stupefaction as our credibility on the world stage unravels, the prescient words of the late American writer H.L. Mencken come to mind: “On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit: /

The post The Tale of an Incompetent President and His Secretary appeared first on 51�Թ�.

On September 29, US Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price was forced to resign after a series of stories by revealed his extensive use of taxpayer money to fund his private and work travel. The trips, Price claimed, were all business-related, while also acknowledging how dubious it appeared. “The optics in some of this don’t look good,” he .��“I regret that the recent events have created a distraction from these important objectives,” . “You may rest assured that I will continue to support your critical priorities going ahead because failure is not an option for the American people.”

The trips, out of the 26 discovered since May, included a charter flight from Washington, DC, to Philadelphia and another to St. Simons Island in Georgia, where he and his wife own property. Additionally, the White House approved the with his wife this summer, while other staff members flew commercially. In attempts to soothe the public outrage, Price slyly pledged to reimburse only the costs of his own seat, which was a little over $52,000. This was far beneath the total amount he cost taxpayers, which exceeded $1 million.

On Friday, sent a letter to officials stating the obvious: “Every penny we spend comes from the taxpayer. We thus owe it to the taxpayer to work as hard managing that money wisely as the taxpayer must do it to earn it in the first place,” he wrote. “Put another way, just because something is legal doesn’t make it right.”

Price’s exit is just the latest of a slew of resignations and firings that have plagued the Trump administration in its first year. The administration has already lost or fired its chief strategist, its chief of staff, a��national security adviser, a press secretary, a deputy chief of staff, two communications directors, an FBI director and numerous other advisers.

Price is also not the only senior official who has flown on the public’s dime. is currently being investigated over a flight to Fort Knox, Kentucky, with his wife Louise Linton in August. The trip made headlines after Linton posted an Instagram picture of the couple arriving in style. Mnuchin also made a request, which he later withdrew, for a private jet for his honeymoon.

chartered a flight owned by oil and gas executives to Montana, near his home. , in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency, has frequently flown to his home state of Oklahoma as well as overseas, such as his trip to Italy for an international summit.��Conversely, Betsy DeVos, the wealthy secretary of education, has traveled on her own personal aircraft. And Price’s HHS predecessors under President Barack Obama, Kathleen Sebelius��and Sylvia Mathews Burwell, always flew commercial during their tenures.

Ethical concerns have been raised about Price before. During his confirmation hearing at the beginning of the year, Senate Democrats interrogated him on shares he owned in various medical companies while still a member of Congress. For instance, as reported, Price had previously invested more than $300,000 in stocks of more than 40 health care companies.

The Trump administration has been tied to a litany of malfeasance, the last of which has been mixing pleasure with government duties. And in accordance with all that is lamentable about President Donald Trump, he has showed little desire to do much about it. Strikingly, though, he seems particularly perturbed with Price. Just last week, Trump expressed his frustration, both publicly and privately. He told :��“I will tell you personally, I’m not happy about it.” And, according to , the president told a person close to him that “he reserves the right to fire��” Price if “new revelations come to light.” On stage at an annual in July, Trump also joked that he would have Price fired if he failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

During Price’s brief tenure, he and the president never established a close relationship, as ��notes. Initially, Price drew Trump’s attention as a congressman and member of the Tea Party for his staunch criticism of the ACA. Yet once in office, he was unable to modify the country’s health care system or garner any other concrete accomplishment for that matter. He did manage to and other outreach efforts for ACA enrollment and had plans to during the middle of the open enrollment period this season as well.

It should not come as a surprise that yet another staff position in the Trump administration is now vacant. Less than a year in, it is clear that the president has failed to set any ethical standards for his administration because he himself has showed a complete disregard for following any as well.

*[This article was updated on October 4, 2017.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit:����/

The post Another One Bites the Dust in Washington appeared first on 51�Թ�.

On September 6, Donald Trump announced his endorsement for Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi’s proposal to provide more federal aid to Hurricane Harvey victims, fund the government for another three months and raise the debt ceiling only an hour after House Speaker Paul Ryan, who has been lobbying to raise the ceiling past the midterm elections to 18 months, described such a proposal as “.” Fellow Republicans, too, were rightly infuriated.��A senior GOP official told ��that the president “handed a loaded gun to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.” Another, according to , put it more bluntly: “He fucked us.”

There are reasons to suggest that his deal with the Democrats is more political masochism and not simple triangulation. After all, the president has never been above exacting vendettas on his congressional colleagues, nor has he fooled many of them into believing he possesses basic competence. The same day he signed off on the proposal, for instance, Trump traveled with Democratic Senator to North Dakota, invited her onstage and pledged his support as she prepares for reelection. While this was his attempt to coax her into supporting his tax reform efforts, conservatives are still disgruntled and confused as to where his loyalties lie after his thorough contempt for Arizona Senator Jeff Flake the previous month.

The past week had been especially vindicating for pundits and reporters who have argued that Trump was never a conservative to begin with. “President Trump spent his first day as a Democratic president on Wednesday,” writes Ben Shapiro in��. “Trump is many things, but he is not, nor has he ever been, a committed Republican. He seized control of the party in a hostile takeover,”��Eugene Robinson, of ,��agreed.

This isn’t the first time Trump has jostled with Republicans and nor will it be the last time that he will either fecklessly or calculatedly bargains with the other side. It remains to be seen whether he will choose to negotiate on matters such as trade or infrastructure down the road. It also remains to be seen as to what further kinds of chaos Trump has opened within his own party. Since his presidency began, the rift within the GOP between the working-class nationalists and Reaganite conservatives has grown wider, while the Democrats have become ideologically more consolidated.

What is also noteworthy is the ire that has been drawn upon the House speaker. Ryan has always had his share of enemies amongst populist circles, but recent reports have been spreading that a group of ultraconservative leaders are already planning for his replacement. And one of the linchpins to this coup is none other than Steve Bannon. Since returning to Breitbart News as executive chairman, Trump’s former chief strategist has been “” with members of the House Freedom Caucus, an invitation-only group that instigated the resignation of former House Speaker John Boehner.

But this time, the members of the caucus are giving the president a free pass to singularly blame Ryan for failing to tie the debt ceiling raise with spending offsets. Chairman , who has already warned Ryan a mutiny will be underway if the leadership fails again, said: “You’ve got to give options for the president to consider. If there’s no conservative option there, ultimately the president making a decision based on what’s best for the country has to weigh all those factors. It’s incumbent on us to put out conservative options. I don’t know of a conservative debt limit strategy that was being offered — do any of you?”

For Ryan, reforming the country’s messy tax code will prove to be his greatest challenge thus far, now that he can add being side-stepped on the debt ceiling bill and blundering��health care to his list of disappointments. But managing that with a possible insurrection in front of him will be exceedingly challenging with an erratic and clueless commander-in-chief to worry about as well.

Trump voters are hopeful that in the long run he will reward them for their loyalty and so are willing to overlook the olive branch he extended to Pelosi and Schumer. Perhaps they are still blinded by their own dogmatism, but Trump has further exemplified his complete indifference to enact actual conservative policies or negotiate with his party’s congressional leadership. It wouldn’t be too presumptuous to think that Trump’s only priority is to win his own way, avoid party in-fighting and possibly have Ryan kicked out of office. But acquiescing to the opposition who cares for nothing more than his humiliation is not prudent for the president in the long run either.

The country is still discombobulated after electing a reality-TV star to the highest office of the land. Ryan is certainly not the leader it needs, but if nothing so far seems to have completely discredited Trump’s acolytes, then one can only wonder as to what will.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit:����/

The post Trump’s Deal with the Democrats is Jeopardizing Paul Ryan’s Job appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Earlier this month, Google temporarily banned a clinical psychologist and University of Toronto professor, Jordan Peterson, from accessing his . His channel hosts lengthy lectures on Jung, Nietzsche, the Bible and, most controversially, his opposition against , passed by the Senate in June. The new legislation adds federal protections for transgender people to the Human Rights Code and the hate crime category of the Criminal Code. Peterson has generated quite a following for his opposition to the bill, which he finds to be an infringement on free speech.

As per the Ontario Human Rights Code (OHRC), it is now punishable if individuals refuse to use non-gender pronouns such as “ze” or “zir” to refer to transgender��people. The website explicitly states: “Refusing to refer to a trans person by their chosen name and a personal pronoun that matches their gender identity … will likely be discrimination when it takes place in a social area covered by the Code, including employment, housing and services like education.”

According to Peterson, no explanation was given for the ban, yet it was unlikely a coincidence that it happened on the day YouTube released its own . In October 2016, his university sent him , one of which warned him that refusing to use personal pronouns is tantamount to discrimination. In April this year, Peterson was also denied a federal research grant by the ��for the first time in his academic career. His objections to subscribe to the bill’s mandates have been deluged with accusations of bigotry from students and colleagues, as evidenced in the numerous videos being circulating on the web. In one,��Peterson is harangued on the of the University of Toronto, with students shouting “Shame!” as he attempts to speak over them. In another video, a mob yells “Shut him down!” in a packed lecture room at .��

Bill C-16 sets a new precedent. Whereas the country’s hate speech laws have restricted speech in the past, the new law compels speech, which, as Peterson argues, is invented, politically connotative and anti-scientific. Conservative Senator Grant Mitchell, another dissenter of the bill, stated that “transgender identity is too subjective a concept to be enshrined in law because it is defined as an individual’s deeply felt internal experience of gender.”

Pronouns like “ze,” “zir,” “hir” or “xem” only reveal the surface of just how far astray the English language is being taken. In 2014, to choose from, allowing users to customize from the following year. Among them are neutrois, two-spirit, pangender, gender fluid, gender questioning and intersex. In , the government recognizes 31. As of yet, there is no criterion as to what constitutes an acceptable pronoun, so constructing any legal precedent entirely based upon the subjective measurement by an individual is virtually untenable.

Adherents of the bill also tout that there is no connection between gender identity and biological sex, thus arguing that orthodox pronouns like “he” or “she” are antiquated ideological constructions that should be removed from our lexicon. A 2016 study in co-authored by the former head of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Dr. Paul McHugh, and scholar-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University, Lawrence Mayer, complicated this narrative and was summarily rejected by progressives. The study reviewed the scientific research on gender and sexual identity and surmised that the hypothesis that “gender identity is an innate, fixed property of human beings and is independent of biological sex” is scientifically inconclusive. The majority of children with a persistent desire to identify with the other sex also grow out of it by adulthood, contrary to the foisted by many public schools today.

History shows that well-intended policies do not always lead to positive results. The new legislation sets a dangerous precedent to be compelled to use language that one finds fundamentally false. Peterson’s critics call him a scaremonger, but his warnings should not be taken lightly. The university campus, however, is mired in identity politics and has rebuffed any possibility for a plurality of voices to be heard. The media has trumpeted transgenderism as another minority group to be emancipated to boost ratings. Silicon Valley , too, has showed time and again that it is not immune to removing people it deems controversial.

The imperatives of free speech are to allow expression that you find objectionable, but it is also the process by which ordinary people can settle disputes organically. It is the bedrock of any free society and should be defended at all costs.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit: ��/

The post The Silencing of Jordan Peterson appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Just two months after the United Nations elected Saudi Arabia into the newly established Commission on Women’s Rights, the long awaited memoir, was finally released. Al-Sharif details the extent to which women are subordinated by men on every level of Saudi society. Intertwined with it is a story of transformation — from a young devout Salafist to a champion of the women’s right to drive campaign and, finally, to a dissident in exile.

in May 2011 from a YouTube video of her driving through a thoroughfare of her occluded country. The video was uploaded later that night and by the next afternoon was met with a mixture of support from moderates and reprisal from votaries. There are no legal statutes forbidding women to drive, nor is it prohibited by sharia law. Rather, the ban is based on a issued by the late Grand Mufti Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah bin Baz in 1990. Few attempts have been made at defying the driving ban, but all have been subdued. Refusal to abide by Saudi orf, or tradition, results in arbitrary abuse and imprisonment, as was the case with Manal al-Sharif.

Her memoir starts with the night she was taken from her residence into an all-female prison days after the video became public. The author then begins the story of a young girl raised in a strictly religious family. If her younger self was told that before the age of 40 she would already have written a political coming-of-age memoir, she may have responded with incredulity. In her own words, the 38-year-old wrote: “I had never set out to be an activist.”

She may never have set out to be an activist, but throughout her memoir al-Sharif offers the reader many intimations that the woman she later evolved to be was not a product of mere coincidence. She was born in 1979, the same year of the Grand Mosque siege in Mecca. After Juhayman al-Otaybi’s two-week occupation of Islam’s holiest shrine came to an end, the ruling family’s relationship with Wahhabism began. Women stopped appearing on television. Imams began delivering their sermons on the radio. The young al-Sharif subsumed the radical teachings that she was given.

As the author enters adulthood, her faith begins to lose its fervency. She tells of the unsettling sense of how the words the imams sermonized conflicted with her actual experience. She enjoyed listening to music and reading news from the outside world on the internet. It all became untenable after the attacks of 9/11. While many were galvanized to have learned that the Western infidels were punished by the hands of their own compatriots, al-Sharif’s reaction was instead one of stunned horror. Here she writes:

“We had grown used to watching bloodshed, massacres, and destruction in Muslim countries like Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, and Iraq: now, for the first time, we were seeing the same thing in America. As I watched thick plumes of smoke rise into the sky and saw the Twin Towers burn, my feelings were a mixture of shock and deep sorrow. The scene that etched itself in my memory more firmly than any other was seeing victims jumping from the upper floors of the World Trade Center. ‘This is madness,’ I said to myself, in tears.”

Readers will come to learn more of al-Sharif’s heroism, determination and moral conviction through the succeeding chapters. She entered an abusive marriage, gave birth to a son and went through a divorce. After being hired as one of the few female employees at Aramco, she took a company-paid trip to New England where finally she was able to see the United States without the slant of Saudi propaganda.

Her story ends with vindication, but also personal loss. Her imprisonment lasted only nine days, but the routine attacks from colleagues and strangers after al-Sharif’s release prompted her to leave the country with her second husband. She lost her personal hero, her mother, to breast cancer. After divorce, Saudi laws deny women full custody of their children. When she left, her first son stayed behind with her ex-husband.

Today, she has found safety in Sydney and has given birth to a second son. While it is still illegal for women to drive in her country, Manal al-Sharif’s bravery has not been in vain. Women continue to defy traditions so that freedoms for both sexes can eventually prosper in Saudi Arabia. If there is any hope, then it lies with rebels such as al-Sharif and her supporters. And if there is any small part that we can contribute, then it is to laud and support their efforts to enjoin freedoms that we so easily take for granted.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit: ��/

The post Daring Saudi Women to Drive appeared first on 51�Թ�.