| | | | A "Bizarro" Plan for America | | President Trump may have touted the tax plan passed by the Senate in the early hours of Saturday morning as the biggest tax cut in history (the Washington Post breaks down that claim here). But the bill is a "Bizarro version of Reaganomics," argues Rana Foroohar, one that "will create a fiscal mess that America will be digging itself out of for the next 30 years."
"Tax cuts have not created real economic growth in America in 20 years, under either Democratic or Republican administrations. Yes, we saw growth from tax cuts during the Ronald Reagan era, but we also saw a huge increase in the deficit in the second term. And the growth won't be repeated this time around since a variety of big factors, from demographics to productivity levels, are quite different now," she writes in the Financial Times.
"What we will see is an increase in wealth inequality, since it is very clear that any money that large corporations (the main beneficiaries of the Republican plan) get from the cuts will go straight into stock buybacks. This will add another dose of financial glucose to what is already a very saccharine market -- one that is by almost any measure totally divorced from the reality of most people's lives." - What Trump gets about his base. Still, an agenda for the 0.1 percent might not hurt President Trump's popularity with his base, Fareed says in his Take. "Many have argued that Republicans have been able to work this magic trick by dangling social issues in front of working-class voters who fall for the bait and lose sight of the fact that they are voting against their own interests," Fareed says.
"But what if people are not being fooled? What if people are actually motivated far more deeply by issues surrounding religion, race and culture than they are by economics?"
Watch Fareed's full Take from Sunday's show here.
| | Yes, Team Trump Should Worry About the Logan Act | | Only two people have ever been indicted under the Logan Act, enacted in 1799, "and neither of those indictments resulted in a conviction," write Daniel Hemel and Eric Posner in the New York Times. But don't be fooled – last week's revelation that former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn lied to the FBI suggests that the statute could cause real problems for the Trump administration.
"In response to the Flynn plea and questions about the Logan Act, President Trump's lawyer, Ty Cobb, said that the statute doesn't apply to transition team members. But that claim is surely false. A president-elect and his team may certainly introduce themselves to foreign leaders and conduct discussions with them about foreign policy. But there is a wide gap between those activities and trying to persuade a foreign power to thwart the sitting president's foreign operations and initiatives. The former is not prohibited by the Logan Act; the latter is flatly banned," they write.
Why have so few cases been brought under the Logan Act? "Often prosecutors do not bother to bring cases against defendants whose wrongdoing poses little danger. Very few private citizens have any hope of persuading a foreign country to change its United Nations votes. Mr. Flynn, however, was no ordinary private citizen but the incoming national security adviser. He would soon be in a position to reward Russia for cooperating with the Trump transition team."
| | Can Venezuela Really Go Crypto? | | | Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin – which set a new high at the weekend – have caught the eye of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who pledged Sunday to launch a new one "backed by oil and gas reserves, as well as gold and diamonds," Rick Noack writes in the Washington Post. Could it work?
The appeal for the hyperinflation-wracked country is clear. "If every Venezuelan had invested his or her gross 2009 income of $11,500 into bitcoin, the investment would have been worth about $8.4 billion in May this year -- per person," Noack says.
Still, many questions remain over a state-backed currency: "There is…no conclusive research on the impact of such a system on a country's financial stability or the methodology needed to link a central bank with an autonomously operating currency. Many questions remain: Would government-led digital currencies still be anonymous? Would they be as volatile as their commercial counterparts? Who would verify transactions to prevent an abuse of the system for terrorist or criminal purposes?" | | Please, Mr. President. Don't Raise This Now | | With speculation growing that Donald Trump will this week continue to defer opening a U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem but issue a statement recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital, the president risks stoking "the most sensitive and volatile issue" in Arab-Israeli negotiations, writes Aaron David Miller for CNN Opinion. Doing so could be the final nail in the coffin of the peace process.
"Let's be clear, the U.S. Embassy should be in West Jerusalem," Miller writes, noting that Israel is one of the only countries in which the United States doesn't keep its embassy in the host's capital. "But those who argue that the United States needs to correct this problem now, whatever the cost, are thinking too narrowly -- and only about Israeli interests."
"The problem is that Israel has declared the entire city to be its eternal and undivided capital, including the eastern part of the city where many Palestinians reside and where the Palestinian Authority hopes to establish a capital once a Palestinian state is created. If Trump asserts that U.S. policy is that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, it would be tantamount to saying that Washington now recognizes Israel's sovereignty over the entire city. If he simply says that just West Jerusalem is Israel's capital, he risks alienating the Israeli government by suggesting that the eastern part of the city isn't included.
"The peace process appears dead. Why bury it?"
| | The Most "Instagrammed" City in the World Is… | | New York is the most "Instagrammed" city of 2017, according to Condé Nast Traveler, citing data from the app, which "analyzed the total number of geo-tagged cities for the year."
Rounding out the top five cities to get the Instagram treatment were Moscow, London, São Paulo and Paris.
| | Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will attend a NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels starting Tuesday. But Reuters notes that speculation that Tillerson might soon be replaced has left European officials skeptical that the Secretary of State speaks for the Trump administration. "Just as Tillerson comes to Brussels to give a public statement of support that the EU and NATO have wanted all along, it seems he has no mandate, that the guillotine is hanging over his head," one European official told Reuters.
The International Olympic Committee will decide Tuesday whether Russia should be banned from next year's Winter Olympics after an IOC-appointed panel was asked to assess whether the Russian state was behind a doping program used at the 2014 winter games in Sochi. Deidra Dionne writes in an open letter to IOC chief Thomas Bach: "[I]sn't it time we ask some tough questions about the merits of only punishing individual athletes when an entire system around them is cheating? If you don't take a stand against the entire Russian system, you'll be setting the wrong kind of global precedent."
U.S. government funding will run out Friday unless a budget agreement is reached. CNN reports: "In a statement Monday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, said they would travel to the White House Thursday to meet with Trump and GOP Hill leaders to discuss the spate of year-end issues that need to be resolved." | | | | | | |
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