Bernie Sanders understands open borders is what the libertarian Koch brothers want, but he doesn't

Here, where he says open borders are harmful to ordinary Americans' wages.

Why is it the only prominent politician who really truly gets it is the socialist Bernie Sanders? Donald Trump, by contrast, has claimed American wages are too high and does not support increases to the minimum wage.

Maybe Bernie's not really a socialist as he claims. True socialists welcome free trade and open borders because they know that equalizing wages globally will hasten the revolution of the proletariat since it widens the gap between rich and poor to the extreme, driving wages down in a race to the bottom, ending in a violent overthrow of the rich capitalist owners.

Instead Bernie believes in the US nation state. If he's a socialist, he's a national socialist. He just can't say it. Instead he calls himself a democratic socialist.

Recent history shows that recipients of lower top marginal income tax rates haven't invested the money . . . here

The top marginal rate averaged 70% from 1960, 73% shown is from 1956. The investment data starts in 1960.

Individuals and businesses need incentives to invest here in the United States. They won't do it naturally.

Recent tax history shows this to be the case. For decades when top marginal income tax rates were very high before 1986, the most successful in our society plowed money into domestic investment to grow businesses through which they could derive income, which was taxed at lower long term rates than ordinary income which was taxed at very high rates. Not only did they themselves benefit handsomely, but the whole country benefited because people found useful employment and government received tax revenue. It was an arrangement which made America great.

After the 1986 tax reform which lowered top marginal rates, this stopped being true. The record shows a steep fall-off in domestic investment, which is one reason why incomes and jobs have been stagnant and deficits have piled up. 

The other reason, of course, is free-trade, euphemistically called globalization, which made it possible for businesses to invest internationally instead of domestically. This has been a boon to the growth of middle classes in other countries, but not in our own.

It's not very patriotic, is it?

What we need now is government policy which rewards domestic investment, and punishes its export. The best way to do this is to abolish taxation on domestic business completely to attract more of it, and heavily tax foreign business. We should also reinstate the correct mix of high top marginal income tax rates to incentivize business investment, coupled with attractive long term capital gains tax rates as a reward to the true risk-takers.

Needless to say, the Republican shift away from worldwide taxation to territorial taxation in the "reform" is about reducing risk to established business. This is simply going to make matters much worse for the American middle class, as is the obsession with making money the easy way through lower top marginal ordinary income tax rates.

The American character and spirit I once knew appears to be truly dead.

Retiring Sen. Bob Corker demands Republicans raise taxes in order to cut them

We had to destroy the village in order to save it.

Bombing is the only way forward.

We had to have a war between the States in order to save them.

Export subsidies are necessary in order to preserve free trade.

I have abandoned free market principles in order to save the free market system.

The London Interbank Overnight Rate system had to be suppressed in order to save the banking system.

We had to bail out the banks so that we could sue them. 

Marine Le Pen sounds just like Michael Savage, calling on France to choose French borders, language and culture

Quoted here after coming in 2nd in the first round of the French elections yesterday: 

It is a very simple choice for France. Either we carry on towards total deregulation without any borders or protection, and all that entails. With international unfair competition, mass immigration, the free trade, and the free circulation of terrorists. 

Or you choose the France with borders that are going to protect her, employment, and a national identity. 

So you have two choices. ...

I am the candidate of the people. I appeal to all sincere.. patriots to join us and abandon old-fashioned quarrels and particpate in the best interest of our country... and the survival of France. We will unite behind the project of renewal and they will be our brothers.

Trump's Council of Economic Advisors to be headed by Kevin Hassett, a pro-immigration, free-trading globalist

FTAlphaville (registration required) summarizes all his problems here, with links.

The libertarians are thrilled.

Looks like Donald Trump is proving to be the Manchurian Candidate Hassett thought Obama was.

Open-borders free trade fanatic at Hoover wants Trump to resign

Richard Epstein, here, who didn't vote at all.

62,985,106 Americans who did vote for Trump don't.

Betsy DeVos saying she's now against Common Core is like Hillary saying she's now against TPP

No one believes them.

Total flippers!

Clinton to Brazilian bank in 2013: "My dream is a hemispheric common market with open trade and open borders"

Hacked comment revealed here (private position), which is consistent with her pro-TPP stance while Secretary of State, but inconsistent with her opposition to it now that she is the Democrat nominee for president (public position):

The speech transcripts, a major subject of contention during the Democratic primary, include quotes from Clinton about her distance from middle-class life (“I’m kind of far removed”); her vision of strategic governing (“you need both a public and a private position”); and her views on trade, health care, and Wall Street (“even if it may not be 100 percent true, if the perception is that somehow the game is rigged.”) ... "My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders,” Clinton is quoted as telling a Brazilian bank in 2013. “We have to resist, protectionism, other kinds of barriers to market access and to trade.”

Libertarian spoiler Gary Johnson is helping Hillary defeat Trump in eight states and win the presidency, suggesting Trump needs to talk more free market economics

Current polling in "Toss-Up" states shows Libertarian Gary Johnson spoiling it for Trump in FL, ME, MI, MN, NH, PA, VA and WI, handing Hillary 104 Electoral College votes to her base number of 188 for a total of 292, 22 more than she needs to become president. 

Clinton's average win in these eight states right now is by 4.1, with Johnson siphoning off an average of 8.5 from Trump. Clinton is winning in these states despite an average siphon from her totals of 2.4 by Stein.

In FL, it's Clinton winning +1.2 (Johnson 5.8/Stein 1.3).

In ME, it's Clinton +3.8 (Johnson 11.0/Stein 3.8).

In MI, it's Clinton +5.0 (Johnson 8.8/Stein 2.3).

In MN, it's Clinton +4.3 (Johnson 5.3/Stein 2.0).

In NH, it's Clinton +5.7 (Johnson 13.0/Stein 3.0).

In PA, it's Clinton +1.8 (Johnson 5.8/Stein 2.6).

In VA, it's Clinton +6.0 (Johnson 8.7/Stein 1.5).

In WI, it's Clinton +5.0 (Johnson 9.7/Stein 2.3).

In the other "Toss-Ups" Trump is ahead right now, but not by much, by just 2.2 on average. He is vulnerable to shifts toward the other candidates in these seven states. Johnson's average siphon from Trump in these states is already 8.2, while Stein might be contributing to Trump on average only 2.2 taken from Hillary in four, namely AZ, CO, IA and OH. 

In AZ, it's Trump winning +2.2 (Johnson 9.2/Stein 2.2).

In CO, it's Trump +0.5 (Johnson 9.0/Stein 3.3).

In GA, it's Trump +4.5 (Johnson 7.7).

In IA, it's Trump  +5.0 (Johnson 8.8/Stein 1.5).

In NV, it's Trump +0.6 (Johnson 8.4).

In NC, it's Trump +0.8 (Johnson 7.3).

In OH, it's Trump +2.0 (Johnson 6.8/Stein 1.8).

Trump is up against a free-trade, open borders ideology not just in Hillary Clinton, but within his own Republican Party, on which Gary Johnson is capitalizing under the rubric of "freedom". Trump ought to be pointing out to his patriotic followers that the libertarians are not on their side but on the side of the elites running the establishment, which means they are on Hillary's side, and keep emphasizing that he has the back of those who are Americans and love Americans.

Commerce Secretary in April 2016 can't understand Hillary's flipflop on TPP

Here:

PENNY PRITZKER: I don't understand that conclusion. Because frankly, having looked at this agreement, studied this agreement, it is the Gold Standard. It is the toughest trade agreement out there in the world.

Black cop shoots black perp, blacks burn down six Milwaukee businesses anyway, Governor Walker ready to send in the Guard

Walker would have made a good Chief Executive, except for the free-trade and illegal immigration stuff.  Like the Bush Clan, Walker lacks "the vision thing".

From the AP-Obama report, here:

Six businesses were burned and 17 people arrested in violence a few hours after a black police officer shot a black man. Police said the victim was fleeing a traffic stop and was holding a gun when he was shot. ... Walker says he took the step after receiving a request from Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke and talking with Mayor Tom Barrett and the Guard's leader. His announcement says the Guard will be in position to help "upon request."

Under winner-take-all, this would be over: Trump would have 1,261 delegates after 5-state primary yesterday

Trump has now won 26 states and 10.1 million votes, with ten contests remaining through June 7.

Instead of getting all the delegates from these wins, he has to share 311 of them with a bunch of losers under the "rules", people who would otherwise be forgotten by now but for Republican elites' failure to tell them to go away as they would have in the past.

This is why voters hate the Republicans. They don't want to win, and they don't want anybody else to win, either, and have designed their system accordingly.

Republicans govern the same way. It's more important to them to follow a bunch of self-imposed rules (read "principles") than to do what the American people need. Free-trade and open borders uber alles, no matter how many people are hurt.

Trump has already surpassed the total vote received by both McCain in 2008 (9.9 million) and Romney in 2012 (9.8 million), but we'll still hear the Mark Levins and Rush Limbaughs of the world today failing to get behind the obvious new leader of the Republican Party while the remaining contenders for the nomination seal their ignominious reputations by refusing to concede.

Wisconsin's and Ohio's middle classes have shrunk the most since 2000, don't expect establishment types who support free trade and open borders like Cruz and Kasich to fix it

Wisconsin heads the list of states where the middle class has shrunk the most since 2000:

Wisconsin (Gov. Scott Walker 2011-), down 10.4%

Ohio (Gov. John Kasich 2011-), down 10.2%

New Mexico, down 10%

Georgia, down 9.8%

North Dakota (despite the oil!), down 9.7%

Vermont (Democratic Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders), down 9.5%

Maine, down 9.1%

Nevada, down 9%

Since the 1990s 144,000 manufacturing and related jobs lost in Wisconsin due to free-trade agreements

Reported here:

Wisconsin has lost more than more than 68,000 manufacturing jobs since the mid-1990s and the first of several controversial trade pacts with Mexico, China and others took hold.

Additionally, the U.S. Department of Labor has certified about 76,000 Wisconsin workers in various fields as having lost their jobs due to either imports or the work they do being shipped overseas. ... 

Caterpillar has laid off about 600 of its 800-plus workers over the past two years because of a business slowdown. ...

Wisconsin’s heavy manufacturing sector, once one of the country’s strongest, has been taking a lot of punches in recent years. General Motors, General Electric, Chrysler, Joy Global Surface Mining and Manitowoc Cranes have all cut jobs or closed operations in recent years for a variety of reasons.

Hometown companies such as Kohler, the plumbing supply manufacturer; and Trek Bicycles have offshored jobs to India, China and Taiwan.

Meanwhile, Madison, the state capital, will lose 1,000 jobs over the next two years as the 100-year-old iconic Oscar Mayer meat processing plant shuts down. And just east on I-94 in Jefferson, Tyson Foods will cease operations at its pepperoni processing plant, cutting 400 jobs.

Brad DeLong pretends that taxing the crap out of people isn't an ideology, and blames the voters for disagreeing

Here, where you observe a liberal economist admitting that there is a price to be paid for free-trade:

It is not difficult to see where the blame lies [for what ails America]. As Mark Kleiman of NYU’s Marron Institute points out, the Republican Party’s rigid and die-hard ideological opposition to “taxing the rich [has] destroyed, on a practical level, the theoretical basis for believing that free trade benefits everyone.” ... The responsibility lies instead with politicians peddling ideology over practicality – and thus with the citizens who elect them, as well as those who don’t bother to vote at all.

Now if we could just get the libertarians to admit it.

Matt Cover thinks Donald Trump is talk radio's Frankenstein

Here, saying Trump is the by-product of an ignorant expectations farce deliberately played on the public by the scheming, self-serving jibber-jabberers Limbaugh, Hannity and Levin:

However, by organizing the GOP base around this fictional system of legislative combat, Movement leaders would lay the groundwork for the ignorant populism of Donald Trump.

Voters, having been told that Congress just lacked strong leaders willing to fight for principle, would flock to a figure who embodied exactly the kind of fiery machismo they had been told was needed.

That's almost amusing, but blindly discounts the "non-ideological" character of the Trump phenomenon's success with the illegal immigration and trade issues. These are conservative issues with a long and storied history but, unfortunately, are not granted legitimacy by today's current crop of so-called conservatives, for whom "principles" and ideology are paramount because they are at heart libertarians, not conservatives.

Trump's immigration and trade crusade may eventually come a cropper, but it won't be because he and the people don't believe in it. It'll be because it has no support from the establishment which runs a "system" organized around antithetical ideas, but also because it has no support from the "anti-establishment" either.

Represented by Limbaugh, Hannity and Levin on the radio, the preferred element of the contemporary demagogue, the anti-establishment has been just as much for open-borders and free-trade as the establishment has been. None of them can even imagine a limited, small American federal government starving from its very beginning on the measly tariffs, excises and land sales with which the founders stuck it. And none in the establishment even wants to.

Laura Ingraham has been waging the lonely battle against illegal immigration almost single-handedly for years on her little radio program in the mornings, with great success, while Michael Savage has had to beat the dead horse for almost twenty-five years as a misunderstood New York Jew.

But the cool thing about 2016 is that New York values are finally getting some respect in the rest of the country for a change, thanks to one Donald John Trump.

"Anti-establishment" talk radio has yet to catch up.

Ted Cruz is a doctrinaire free-trader who won't punish trade malefactors

He has no solution for the mercantilist war on America waged by China et alia. Meanwhile America will continue to bleed jobs.

Carly Fiorina endorses Cruz in incoherent rant against Trump, ineffectively equating him with Hillary Clinton

Here:

"The truth is that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are two sides of the same coin," Fiorina said Wednesday, ripping the GOP front-runner.  "They aren't going to reform the system. They are the system."

Fiorina noted that many in the Republican Party are "horrified by Donald Trump. I'm one of them," she added, describing Cruz as "the only guy who can beat Donald Trump."

"Ted Cruz has always been a constitutional conservative," Fiorina said, adding that he "didn’t care if he got invited to the cocktail parties in D.C. ... It is time now to unite behind the one man who can beat Donald Trump, who can beat Hillary Clinton, who can beat the D.C. cartel. It is time to unite behind Ted Cruz," Fiorina said to roaring cheers.

I thought everybody in "the system" hated Trump, indeed is "horrified by" him to the extent of the #NeverTrump movement among Republicans, unlike Clinton who is the darling of her political party, the host of the cocktail parties, and the queen of Wall Street cash.

Carly should check out the concept of synonyms: The system = the cartel = The Establishment.

It's hard to imagine two things more deadly to "the system" than enforcing immigration laws and rewriting "free-trade" agreements to benefit American workers instead of American corporations.

You know. Like Hewlett-Packard. 

New study says trade with China caused severe permanent harm to American workers

From Noah Smith in "Free Trade With China Wasn't Such a Great Idea for the U.S." for BloombergView, who says the public has been exactly right about the consequences of trade with China:

The study shows that increased trade with China caused severe and permanent harm to many American workers:

Adjustment in local labor markets is remarkably slow, with wages and labor-force participation rates remaining depressed and unemployment rates remaining elevated for at least a full decade after the China trade shock commences. Exposed workers experience greater job churning and reduced lifetime income. At the national level, employment has fallen in U.S. industries more exposed to import competition...but offsetting employment gains in other industries have yet to materialize.

... [T]he public might have been wrong about free trade in the 1980s and 1990s, but things have changed. Popular opinion seems to be exactly right about the effect of trade with China -- it has killed jobs and damaged the lives of many, many Americans. Economists may blithely declare that free trade is wonderful, but our best researchers have now shown that public misgivings about these smooth assurances have been completely justified.

New York Times and CNBC twist Donald Trump 3rd party statement into threat

Trump said, quoted here:

"If I'm treated fairly by the Republicans, and I don't win, I'm not going to go into doing the third party," Mr. Trump said in an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press."

The CNBC headline twists this to

"Trump: Treat me 'fairly' or I'll run 3rd party"

based on The New York Times twisting Trump's statement in the lede:

'A defiant Donald J. Trump suggested on Sunday that he had been singled out for attacks by the hosts of Thursday's Republican presidential debate and again threatened a third-party White House bid if he was not treated "reasonably fairly" by party leaders.'

Trump said if he's treated fairly and loses he WON'T run third party.

The real story here is that Megyn Kelly and Bret Baier had their marching orders from Rupert Murdoch to destroy the anti-free-trader and anti-amnesty Trump in order to make sure a pliant candidate wins the Republican nomination who will do the bidding of the libertarians who have overseen the export of American jobs and the dilution of middle class earning power by importing cheap foreign labor.