Last Call For Almost Wasn't Mueller Time

The NY Times reporting tonight that Donald Trump actually did order Robert Mueller be fired way back last June, but White House counsel Don McGahn said flat out that he would resign rather than deliver Trump's message.

President Trump ordered the firing last June of Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel overseeing the Russia investigation, according to four people told of the matter, but ultimately backed down after the White House counsel threatened to resign rather than carry out the directive.

The West Wing confrontation marks the first time Mr. Trump is known to have tried to fire the special counsel. Mr. Mueller learned about the episode in recent months as his investigators interviewed current and former senior White House officials in his inquiry into whether the president obstructed justice.

Amid the first wave of news media reports that Mr. Mueller was examining a possible obstruction case, the president began to argue that Mr. Mueller had three conflicts of interest that disqualified him from overseeing the investigation, two of the people said.

First, he claimed that a dispute years ago over fees at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Va., had prompted Mr. Mueller, the F.B.I. director at the time, to resign his membership. The president also said Mr. Mueller could not be impartial because he had most recently worked for the law firm that previously represented the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Finally, the president said, Mr. Mueller had been interviewed to return as the F.B.I. director the day before he was appointed special counsel in May.

After receiving the president’s order to fire Mr. Mueller, the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, refused to ask the Justice Department to dismiss the special counsel, saying he would quit instead, the people said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing a continuing investigation.

Mr. McGahn disagreed with the president’s case. He also told senior White House officials that firing Mr. Mueller would have a catastrophic effect on Mr. Trump’s presidency and would incite more questions about whether the White House was trying to obstruct the Russia investigation. Mr. McGahn also told White House officials that Mr. Trump would not follow through on the dismissal on his own. The president then backed off.

“We decline to comment out of respect for the Office of the Special Counsel and its process,” Ty Cobb, the president’s lawyer who manages the White House’s relationship with Mr. Mueller’s office, said in a statement.

This is pretty much the realm of "holy crap" territory.   Pretty much everything Trump has said about awaiting Mueller's swift conclusion of the investigation since July has been a lie.  Trump's reasoning for firing Mueller were all nonsense, and his lawyer agreed to the point where he would not carry out the President's direct order.

Don McGahn may have at least saved the Mueller investigation.  It would have been over in six weeks otherwise.  But the leak of this story is a major, major problem for Trump.  June was when the investigation turned to Trump's obstruction of justice involving the Comey firing.  In July Trump gave his interview to the NY Times without his lawyers present and said that he would consider firing Mueller.

He had already tried to fire Mueller when he gave that interview, guys. And lets remember, he did fire James Comey, and he wanted to fire FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, too.

There's also a 100% chance that Mueller knew Trump tried to fire him, a knew some time ago.

Trump is guilty as sin, guys.

Because it gets worse.

Another option that Mr. Trump considered in discussions with his advisers was dismissing the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, and elevating the department’s No. 3 official, Rachel Brand, to oversee Mr. Mueller. Mr. Rosenstein has overseen the investigation since March, when Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself.

Mr. Trump has significantly ratcheted back his criticisms of Mr. Mueller since he hired Mr. Cobb in July. A veteran of several high-profile Washington controversies, Mr. Cobb has known Mr. Mueller for decades, dating to their early careers in the Justice Department.

He advised Mr. Trump that he had nothing to gain from combat with Mr. Mueller, a highly respected former prosecutor and F.B.I. director who has subpoena power as special counsel. Since Mr. Cobb’s arrival, the White House has operated on the premise that the quickest way to clear the cloud of suspicion was to cooperate with Mr. Mueller, not to fight him.

Nonetheless, Mr. Trump has wavered for months about whether he wants to fire Mr. Mueller, whose job security is an omnipresent concern among the president’s legal team and close aides. The president’s lawyers, including Mr. Cobb, have tried to keep Mr. Trump calm by assuring him for months, amid new revelations about the inquiry, that it is close to ending.

It's not close to ending.  And he's still thinking about firing Mueller because his legal team keeps having to talk him down, something that the notoriously thin-skinned Trump has to be screaming about in Davos this weekend.

Stay tuned.

Make America Irrelevant Again

Trump and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin are at the Wolrd Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this week pitching "America First", and the rest of the planet apparently could not care less.

President Trump is arriving at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to explain his “America First” approach at a moment when the world is moving ahead with a trade agenda that no longer revolves around the United States. 

The world marked a turning point in global trade on Tuesday, when 11 countries agreed to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership, announcing they had finalized the pact and expected to sign a deal on March 8 in Chile. It was a remarkable moment for a beleaguered agreement that was conceived and constructed by the United States, then abandoned by Washington when Mr. Trump took office last year. 

As the world’s largest economy and architect of many international organizations and treaties, the United States remains an indispensable partner. But as the global economy gains strength, Europe and countries including Japan and China are forging ahead with deals that do not include the United States. 

Thirty-five new bilateral and regional trade pacts are under consideration around the world, according to the World Trade Organization. The United States is party to just one of them, with the European Union, and that negotiation has gone dormant. The United States is also threatening to withdraw from one of its existing multilateral agreements — the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada — if it cannot be renegotiated in the United States’ favor.

“Maybe there was some sort of presumption on the part of the president and his team that if the U.S. said stop, this process would come to a halt,” said Phil Levy, a senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and an economist in the George W. Bush administration. “What this shows is that’s not true. The world just moves on without us.”

In July, Japan signed a wide-ranging new trade deal with the European Union — a step the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, referred to as hoisting “the flag of free trade high amidst protectionist trends.” The European Union pushed ahead with a major update to its agreement with Mexico, while China pursued a pan-Asian agreement, among other deals. 

Business interests in the United States are watching with alarm as other countries strike agreements that exclude American exporters. For example, ranchers in Canada and Australia will be able to sell beef at lower prices in Japan than their American competitors, who will be subject to higher tariffs because the United States is not party to the Trans-Pacific Partnership. 

Kent Bacus, the director of international trade and market access for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, said Tuesday that the United States’ withdrawal was “a missed opportunity for the United States to gain greater access to some of the world’s most vibrant and growing markets.

When the full effect of this kicks in -- particular should Trump withdraw from NAFTA -- it's going to get very ugly, very fast.  The only question is how much worse than the Great Recession of 2008 will it be, and how many millions more jobs will be lost.

And this time, we won't have a stimulus package or, you know, a competent administration, to get us out of the deep hole we're going to be in for the next decade.  The damage will be catastrophic. And the rest of the world?

They'll pick up the pieces without us and just move on.

Trump Will Get Journalists Killed And Soon

When you are the titular leader of the United States and you call the free press "Fake News" and an "Enemy of the People", raging at them as the source of all the problems in the country, don't be surprised when your cult followers take that to heart and plot terrorist attacks against news outlets.

On Jan. 9, an operator in Atlanta manning the public contact number for CNN received a phone call. According to a federal arrest affidavit unsealed Monday, the male caller launched into a threat. 

“Fake news. I’m coming to gun you all down. F‑‑‑ you, f‑‑‑ing n‑‑‑‑‑s.” The caller then clicked off. 

Three minutes later, the same caller, dialing from the same number, again rang the CNN line. “I am on my way right now to gun the f‑‑‑in’ CNN cast down. F‑‑‑ you,” the caller said. The operator asked the caller his name. “F‑‑‑ you,” he responded. “I am coming to kill you.” 

Thirty minutes later, the caller again reached the CNN public switchboard. He whispered his threats. “I’m coming for you CNN. I’m smarter than you. More powerful than you. I have more guns than you. More manpower. Your cast is about to get gunned down in a matter of hours.” 

According to federal law enforcement, the man on the other end was Brandon Griesemer of Novi, Mich. 

In an arrest affidavit released Monday, FBI agent Sean Callaghan wrote that Griesemer “made approximately 22 total calls to CNN” between Jan. 9 and Jan. 10. Four of the calls resulted in threats. In the last message, the caller made disparaging remarks about Jewish individuals, before stating: “You are going down. I have a gun and I am coming to Georgia right now to go to the CNN headquarters to f‑‑‑ing gun every single last one of you. I have a team of people. It’s going to be great, man . . . You gotta get prepared for this one, buddy.” 

Court records indicate Griesemer was arrested on a charge of interstate communications with intent to extort, threaten or injure. He made an initial appearance in court on Jan. 19. 

Griesemer is currently free on a $10,000 unsecured bond. 

On Monday night, a man who identified himself as Griesemer’s father told The Washington Post that “this whole thing has been a mistake. He really didn’t mean any of it.” Griesemer’s father added: “He didn’t know what he was saying, the seriousness of it. We’re not even gun owners or anything like that. We don’t have any, neither does he.” 

The father declined to comment further. “More will come out later. Hopefully, this can be settled.”

The threats were made public less than a week after President Trump unveiled his “Fake News Awards.” The term, trumpeted by the president in his frequent clashes with the press, has become a popular rallying cry among Trump’s base. CNN has been a regular target of the president’s “fake news” attacks; the president has also shared violent images featuring the cable news giant, including pictures of the CNN logo crushed under a shoe and a GIF of the president personally attacking the CNN logo.

The next time, it won't be a angry young guy from Michigan calling in threats because the President condoned this violence.  It'll be a blown-up or shot-up newsroom, or an ambushed news team, or something worse.

And they'll laugh and cheer when it happens.

StupidiNews!

• Donald Trump says he's open to a DACA deal that includes a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers who came to the US as children as an "incentive".
• Former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison for sexually abusing dozens of women over close to two decades.
• Senate Commerce Committee chair John Thune wants hearings on the false missile alert sent out by Hawaii emergency preparedness officials during a drill two weeks ago. 
• Italian officials say three are dead and ten injured after a commuter train derailed near Milan, several cars went off the switch track as the train was headed into Milan's main train station.
• Samsung will debut its newest flagship phone, the Galaxy S9, at the Mobile World Congress tech show on February 25.

Last Call For Immigration Nation

Yesterday I said that if I were in the House GOP, I'd push for a vote on the draconian Securing America's Future Act, aka the end of immigration.

So now, if I'm Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, I use those three weeks I just got to put in the screws and finish the job. My plan would be to put the House GOP's utterly repugnant Securing America's Future Act to a vote and pass it. I put that legislation in the Senate and when the Dems say no, I say "Well, we put a DACA bill on the table and the Dems rejected it. All bets are off." Then I tinker around the edges of the SAF bill and include it in the CR and see how long the Dems last before they pass it. As a reminder of what SAF entails:

Republicans are essentially asking Democrats to trade the legalization of 700,000 unauthorized immigrants for the criminalization of all others, banning 2.6 million legal immigrants over the next decade, the elimination of almost all family sponsorship preference categories and the diversity visa lottery, deporting tens of thousands of asylum seekers, huge increases in border security spending, a massive new regulatory program that applies to every employee and employer in the country (“E-Verify”), and so much else. This bill has no chance of becoming law, but it is a remarkable illustration of how far apart the parties are on this issue.

That's where I see this fight going. I hope I'm wrong and the Dems smell this trap coming from a mile off and demand a clean DREAM Act bill up front...and the restoration of community health center funding.

Sure enough, the hardliners in the House are jumping on their "DACA deal" legislation right out of the gate.

As Senate moderates pushed their leader to make a commitment to have a bipartisan immigration vote, House conservatives on Tuesday were pushing their leadership to tack to the right on the issue. 

The Republican Study Committee, an influential group of more than 150 Republicans, on Tuesday will announce it has voted to support an immigration bill from conservative hardliners and will push for a vote on the legislation, setting up a potential showdown between the House and Senate on the issue. 

The nearly two-dozen-strong steering committee of the RSC voted to make the decision to back the bill, which also would extend the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, from committee and subcommittee chairmen Bob Goodlatte, Mike McCaul, Raul Labrador and Martha McSally, and warned against cutting a deal with Democrats behind conservatives' backs. 

"The Securing America's Future Act is the framework to strengthen border security, increase interior enforcement and resolve the DACA situation," the steering committee said in a statement. "We believe an eventual stand alone floor vote is essential. We oppose any process for a DACA solution that favors a backroom deal with Democrats over regular order in the House."

 The SFA bill is a massive disaster, but here's the biggest part:

The worst enforcement provision is criminalizing simply being in the United States without status or violating any aspect of civil immigration law (p. 170). This would turn millions of unauthorized immigrants into criminals overnight. It would also criminalize legal immigrants who fail to update their addresses, carry their green card with them at all times, or otherwise abide by the million inane regulations that Congress imposes on them. Take, for example, the status provided to Dreamers in this bill. It requires them to maintain an annual income of at least 125 percent of the poverty line (p. 396). If they fall below that level for 90 days—not only are they subject to deportation again—they would be criminals. This bill literally criminalizes poverty among Dreamers. This legislation would immediately undo much of the progress that the Feds have made on criminal justice reform and reducing its prison population.

This legislation is the preamble to mass deportations of millions, period.  This is the GOP plan for a "deal" on Dreamers.  They would get to stay, but by criminalizing millions of other undocumented in the country, it would become the rallying point for massive ICE roundups, detentions, and deportations. Again, I'm hoping the Dems see the trap, because they didn't on CHIP community health center funding.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department is escalating the war on sanctuary cities with a new round of legal action designed to intimidate elected officials with the threat of losing billions in federal dollars.

The Justice Department ramped up pressure Wednesday on so-called sanctuary cities seeking public safety grant money, warning state and local officials they could be legally forced to prove they are cooperating with federal immigration authorities. 

Officials sent letters to roughly two dozen jurisdictions threatening to issue subpoenas if they don’t willingly relinquish documents showing they aren’t withholding information about the immigration status of people in custody. The department has repeatedly threatened to deny millions of dollars in important grant money from communities that refuse to share such information with federal authorities, as part of the Trump administration’s promised crackdown on cities and states that refuse to help enforce U.S. immigration laws. 

Many cities have been openly defiant in the face of the threats, with lawsuits pending in Chicago, Philadelphia and California over whether the administration has overstepped its authority by seeking to withhold grant money. 

The 23 jurisdictions that received letters Wednesday include Chicago, New York, Denver, Los Angeles and the states of Illinois, Oregon and California. Officials said the places have been previously warned that they need to provide information about their policies to be eligible to receive grants that pay for everything from bulletproof vests to officer overtime.

It's an ugly tactic and one designed to divide the country, if not outright provide justification for arresting local lawmakers ahead of ICE roundups.  That groundwork is being laid, and we're getting closer and closer to a national mass police action.

Stay tuned.

Meanwhile In Bevinstan...

Republicans in Kentucky have been wanting to scrap liquor license limits in the state for years now, and it looks like they'll take another shot at it during this year's General Assembly session.

Retired Southern Baptist minister Donald R. Cole of Webster County fears “a bar or liquor store on every other corner and a package store in every drug store” if new alcohol regulations proposed by Kentucky take effect. 

“The more alcohol sales you have, the more social problems you have,” said Cole, executive director of the Louisville-based Kentucky League on Alcohol and Gambling Problems, formerly known as the Temperance League. “We don’t need these new regulations that are one more step toward the deregulation of the alcohol industry in Kentucky.” 

The Kentucky Alcoholic Beverage Control Board last month filed proposed administrative regulations that would repeal rules that limit the number of licenses available for retail package liquor stores and by-the-drink sales of liquor. 

The number of licenses is limited based on the population of a given community — one license per 2,300 people for package stores and one license per 2,500 people for drink sales. 

Perry Colliver, owner of Route 11 Liquors in Mt. Sterling, opposes the changes. 

“I’ve been in this business 40 years, not a millionaire, but have made a decent living,” Colliver said. “Now the state wants to come along and end the quota system, saying they want to expand the market. The pie for this business is so big. If you have more stores, the pie will get smaller for people like me.” 

State Rep. C. Wesley Morgan, a Republican from Richmond who operates four Liquor World stores in Central and Eastern Kentucky, said he thinks the proposed change “will get a ton of opposition.” 

“You either regulate the alcohol industry or not,” Morgan said. “This goes towards deregulation and hurts existing businesses.” 

The board, in an impact and analysis statement, said “eliminating quotas may encourage entrepreneurship, foster creativity for new business models and create jobs.” 

“The board believes that market forces rather than arbitrary quota limits should determine the number of businesses competing in a community,” the analysis stated. 

The board also said elimination of the quota system provides “equitable treatment of all alcoholic beverage licenses.”

What Republicans want to do is have more big chain stores sell alcohol and put package stores out of business, then turn around and say "Look, we actually reduced the number of retailers that sell liquor in Kentucky, isn't that what you wanted?"

It's a pretty good deal for big retailers who want to break into Kentucky as a market, not so good for existing local stores, but that's always been the case with big retailers.  I don't trust this plan any farther than Bevin can throw me.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

While the shutdown drama was playing out last week, there have been several developments in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's continuing probe into the Trump regime, money laundering, Russian influence, and obstruction of justice this week.  First, current FBI Director Chris Wray threatened to resign last year over intense pressure from both the White House and the Justice Department to fire Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions — at the public urging of President Donald Trump — has been pressuring FBI Director Christopher Wray to fire Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, but Wray threatened to resign if McCabe was removed, according to three sources with direct knowledge. 

Wray's resignation under those circumstances would have created a media firestorm. The White House — understandably gun-shy after the Comey debacle — didn’t want that scene, so McCabe remains. 

Sessions told White House Counsel Don McGahn about how upset Wray was about the pressure on him to fire McCabe, and McGahn told Sessions this issue wasn’t worth losing the FBI Director over, according to a source familiar with the situation. 

Why it matters: Trump started his presidency by pressuring one FBI Director (before canning him), and then began pressuring another (this time wanting his deputy canned). This much meddling with the FBI for this long is not normal.

McCabe is still expected to resign later this year apparently, but that's not a guarantee.  Both Trump and Jeff Sessions (not to mention a bucketful of slavering Republicans in Congress and on TV) wanted McCabe's head because he's "too close to the Clintons".  They contend McCabe is the one standing between them and locking up Hillary Clinton.  They may be right.

But Wray, to his credit, stood up to Sessions and Trump and their attempt to purge the FBI.  It should disturb but not surprise anyone to find out that the White House and Justice Department wanted to fire anyone in the FBI who could have done the Trump regime harm.

Meanwhile, speaking of Attorney General Sessions, it seems his time under Robert Mueller's harsh spotlight has come.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions was questioned for several hours last week by the special counsel’s office as part of the investigation into Russia’s meddling in the election and whether the president obstructed justice since taking office, according to a Justice Department spokeswoman. 

The meeting marked the first time that investigators for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, are known to have interviewed a member of Mr. Trump’s cabinet. 

The spokeswoman, Sarah Isgur Flores, confirmed that the interview occurred in response to questions from The New York Times. 

Mr. Sessions announced in March that he had recused himself from all matters related to the 2016 election, including the Russia inquiry. The disclosure came after it was revealed that Mr. Sessions had not told Congress that he met twice with the Russian ambassador to the United States at the time, Sergey I. Kislyak, during the campaign. Mr. Sessions was an early supporter of Mr. Trump’s presidential run.

2018 has already seen Mueller zero in on Steve Bannon for a few words, now we know he has interviewed Jeff Sessions as well.   Mueller is zeroing in on Trump by hitting Trump's inner circle with gusto.  We know Mueller has talked with Trump's personal assistant Hope Hicks late last year too, and we know he's setting up for an interview with Trump himself soon.  The other big key player in this is Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, and I suspect we'll find out pretty soon about his fate.

Clock's ticking, and Trump knows it.  Because now we know what Mueller was up to at the end of last year: holding several key interviews with intelligence directors and Trump staffers about James Comey's firing, and it all stated with Michael Flynn's big mouth a year ago.

Flynn's FBI interview on Jan. 24, 2017, set in motion an extraordinary sequence of events unparalleled for the first year of a U.S. presidency. A national security adviser was fired after 24 days on the job, an acting attorney general was fired ten days after the president took office, an FBI director was allegedly pressured by the president to let go an investigation into the ousted national security adviser, and then eventually fired. 

An attorney general recused himself from a federal investigation into Russia's meddling in a U.S. election and possible collusion with the sitting president's campaign, and a special counsel was appointed.

The developments ensnared the president in an obstruction of justice inquiry, which resulted in his top intelligence and law enforcement chiefs cooperating in some form with that probe.

By the end of 2017, special counsel Robert Mueller’s team had spoken with Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, Mike Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, former FBI Director James Comey, and numerous members of Trump’s campaign and White House inner circle. Flynn pleaded guilty last month to lying to the FBI during his January 24 interview and is cooperating with the Russia investigation.

NBC News also has learned that former acting attorney general Sally Yates, who informed the White House about Flynn’s interview two days after it took place, has cooperated with the special counsel. CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who was allegedly asked by Trump to lean on Comey to drop his investigation, has also been interviewed, according to people familiar with the inquiry.

One person familiar with the matter described Pompeo, Coats and Rogers as "peripheral witnesses" to the Comey firing. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who played a key role in Comey's departure and was a top adviser on the Trump campaign, was interviewed by Mueller last week as the investigation inches closer to Mueller's team possibly questioning the president himself.

You catch that last part? The walls are closing in and Trump knows it.  Expect him to become considerably more erratic and dangerous in the coming months, especially since Mueller is now expected to interview Trump himself over James Comey's firing...and Michael Flynn's involvement in Russia.

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is seeking to question President Trump in the coming weeks about his decisions to oust national security adviser Michael Flynn and FBI Director James B. Comey, according to two people familiar with his plans. 

Mueller’s interest in the events that led Trump to push out Flynn and Comey indicates that his investigation is intensifying its focus on possible efforts by the president or others to obstruct or blunt the special counsel’s probe. 

Trump’s attorneys have crafted some negotiating terms for the president’s interview with Mueller’s team, one that could be presented to the special counsel as soon as next week, according to the two people.

The president’s legal team hopes to provide Trump’s testimony in a hybrid form — answering some questions in a face-to-face interview and others in a written statement.

There may not have been any new indictments for a while, but I'm betting that changes very quickly.   Those previous indictments are now producing bountiful fruit.

Former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates has quietly added a prominent white-collar attorney, Tom Green, to his defense team, signaling that Gates' approach to his not-guilty plea could be changing behind the scenes. 

Green, a well-known Washington defense lawyer, was seen at special counsel Robert Mueller's office twice last week. CNN is told by a source familiar with the matter that Green has joined Gates' team. 

Green isn't listed in the court record as a lawyer in the case and works for a large law firm separate from Gates' primary lawyers. 

Green's involvement suggests that there is an ongoing negotiation between the defendant's team and the prosecutors. At this stage, with Gates' charges filed and bail set, talks could concern the charges and Gates' plea. The defense and prosecution are currently working together on discovery of evidence.

No wonder Republicans are literally inventing conspiracy theories to attack Mueller and the FBI.

StupidiNews!

• Legendary sci-fi and fantasy author Ursula K. Le Guin has died at the age of 88, she was best known for the award-winning novel The Left Hand of Darkness and her Earthsea series.
• Donald Trump will leave tonight for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, Trump is expected to pitch his "America First" policy to a global crowd.
• Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer says the offer to fund Donald Trump's border wall is off the table, Schumer blames Trump's lack of follow-through.
• Toys R Us will close 180 US toy stores and Babies R Us stores as part of bankruptcy reorganization next month in order to emerge from Chapter 11.
• Colorado researchers have found that most American neighborhoods don't have the power infrastructure necessary to support a high concentration of electric vehicles.

Last Call For It's Under Contract

New figures out from NPR and Marist University show one in five Americans are contract workers, only 60% of them have any sort of benefits.  The scary part is in the gig economy a decade from now, the majority of workers will be contractors.

John Vensel is a contract attorney at Orrick who grew up a few miles from Wheeling, on the other side of the Pennsylvania state line. In his 20s, he was a freelance paralegal by day and a gig musician by night. 

"I actually wanted to be a rock star," he says. But these days there are no edgy vestiges of a former rocker, only a 47-year-old family man cooing over cellphone photos of his children, Grace and Gabe. 

In the two decades in between, Vensel worked full-time corporate jobs. But he was laid off in 2010, on the eve of his graduation from his night-school law program. He graduated with huge piles of debt, into one of the worst job markets. 

"It was terrible; it was like a nuclear bomb went off," he says. "My son had just been born. ... We've been kind of recovering ever since." 

For a time, Vensel commuted three hours round-trip to a full-time job in Pittsburgh. But more recently, he quit and took up contracting to stay near home in Wheeling. 

"So, like my father, he's in the hospital right now which is like five minutes away, and I'm getting updates on my phone," he explains, glancing at the device. "And if I need to be there, I can be there in five minutes." 

He says contract work is today's economic reality. Contracting allows employers to test workers out, he says, but he ultimately is hoping to land a full-time position, with benefits. A new NPR/Marist poll shows that 34 percent of part-time workers are looking for full-time work. 

That may be increasingly difficult. Currently, 1 in 5 workers is a contract worker, the poll shows. According to economists Alan Krueger and Lawrence Katz, the percentage of people engaged in "alternative work arrangements" (freelancers, contractors, on-call workers and temp agency workers) grew from 10.1 percent in 2005 to 15.8 percent in 2015. Their report found that almost all — or 94 percent — of net jobs created from 2005 to 2015 were these sorts of impermanent jobs. 

Within a decade, many labor economists believe freelancers will outnumber full timers.
Vensel draws a contrast with his father, who retired after working 35 years at the Postal Service. 

"He has a pension; we don't have pensions anymore," Vensel says. "It's a totally different world." 

Sixty-five percent of part-time workers and a little more than half of contract workers work without benefits, according to the NPR/Marist poll. 

Arun Sundararajan, a management professor at New York University and author of The Sharing Economy, says "this is the work arrangement for the future." The new normal will be freelance work. "Twenty years from now, I don't think a typical college graduate is going to expect that full-time employment is their path to building a career," Sundararajan says. 

He says that will ultimately lead to many other changes, from education to social structures and public services.

That's going to cause major changes as high-paying jobs turn into contract gigs: lawyers, network engineers, doctors, professors, upper managment and more.   That's where we're heading, and the national conversation about automation, benefits, and contract work is one we need to have now, not later.

Deportation Nation, Con't

Just a reminder that the Trump regime is now actively targeting, arresting, and deporting immigration activists who speak out against Trump.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has detained or deported several prominent immigrant activists across the country, prompting accusations from advocates that the Trump administration is improperly targeting political opponents. 

Detention Watch Network, a nonprofit that tracks immigration enforcement, said this week that several activists have been targeted recently, including Maru Mora Villalpando in Washington state, Eliseo Jurado in Colorado, and New York immigrant leaders Jean Montrevil and Ravi Ragbir. 

“They’re trying to intimidate people,” said Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), the ranking Democrat of the House Judiciary Committee. “These are well-known activists who’ve been here for decades, and they’re saying to them: Don’t raise your head.” 

A top ICE official denied that the agency is targeting immigrants for deportation because of their activism. The agency says its priorities are immigrants who pose a threat to national and border security and public safety. Most, but not all, of the targeted immigrants have criminal records. 

“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement does not target unlawfully present aliens for arrest based on advocacy positions they hold or in retaliation for critical comments they make,” said Matthew Albence, ICE’S executive associate director for Enforcement and Removal Operations, which detains and deports immigrants. “Any suggestion to the contrary is irresponsible, speculative and inaccurate.”

The accusations come as a congressional clash on immigration policy, and after months of rising tensions between immigrant-rights activists and the Trump administration. In California, New York and Washington, governing Democrats have discouraged businesses from cooperating with ICE — part of a clash over “sanctuary status” that has been tied up in courts.

Montrevil, who was deported to Haiti on Jan. 16, came to the U.S. legally in 1986 and was ordered deported in 1994. He has multiple felony convictions related to drug possession, according to ICE. But in an interview with the radio show Democracy Now, he questioned the timing of his deportation. 

“I have been under supervision for 15 years, and I’ve never violated,” Montrevil said. “I have always made my appointment. And I stay out of trouble. I have volunteered, and I work and take care of my kids. I pay taxes every year. I did everything right. Everything they asked me to do, I have done it. So why target me now?” 

Ragbir, a citizen of Trinidad, was convicted in 2000 of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and later sentenced to 30 months in prison and ordered to pay $350,000 restitution. ICE said he will be detained until he can be deported. 

Montrevil is a co-founder of the New Sanctuary Coalition, which advocates for immigrants, and Ragbir is the coalition’s current executive director. Ragbir has lived in the United States for more than 20 years. 

“We see the last few weeks as an escalating series of actions against New Sanctuary and our leaders aimed at silencing those who speak for immigrants’ rights,” said Kirk Cheyfitz, a spokesman for the New York-based group. “All this comes as racist rhetoric from the White House leaves no doubt about the racial basis of the Trump administration’s immigration policies.”

Of course ICE is targeting activists, and this is only the beginning of the Trump regime's dark path into authoritarianism.  Pretty soon the arrests will be of US citizens, not like that isn't already happening in black and Hispanic neighborhoods with cops planting evidence after the fact.  Why would anyone be surprised at this?

This was always the plan, now it's being executed.

It Depends On What Your Definition Of "Cave" Is

The Democrats' promise to demand DACA legislation or block a continuing resolution to keep the government open lasted less than 72 hours, with no actual DACA legislation, but a promise of one in the next three weeks. A promise from...Mitch McConnell, the guy who happily stole Merrick Garland's Supreme Court seat and got away with it.  There are two schools of thought on this: one, OBAMA SCHUMER FAILED US, two, we took what we can get.

There are an awful lot of people in school one right now.

“It’s morally reprehensible and political malpractice. It’s [Senate Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer’s job to keep his caucus together and stand up for progressive values and he failed on both fronts,” Ezra Levin, a leader of the Indivisible Project, told TPM shortly after the vote. “We’re going to be holding the Democrats accountable who caved.”

Levin’s group was among those on a conference call late Monday morning encouraging Democrats to stand strong on the vote. When TPM informed them during the call that Senate leaders had decided against doing so, the news was met with a stunned silence. After a few seconds Frank Sharry, the head of the pro-immigrant America’s Voice, weighed to say he had “a lot of concern” about its details.

“They grew a pair on Friday night and they couldn’t find them today,” Sharry told TPM in a follow-up conversation after the vote. “Friday night, Democrats stood together and said ‘we’re going to take on this racist bully.’ … By Monday morning they were climbing down for very little in return. Come on, Democrats.”

Sharry said he and other advocates wanted Democrats to stare down President Trump and the GOP for the next few days to let the pressure build and try to force them to the negotiating table once again. Instead, Trump refused to negotiate — and Democrats were the ones to crumble.

“What were Democrats thinking?” he said. “We’re pissed.”

He’s not the only one.

“Enough is enough. We cannot rely on empty promises from those who have already proven to play politics with the lives of Dreamers. Today, Republicans — and too many Democrats — in Congress betrayed our American values and allowed bigotry and fear to prevail,” the American Civil Liberties Union’s Lorella Praeli said in a statement. “We will be watching, and will make sure voters this November know if their representatives stood for Dreamers or for their deportation.”

“The Democrats need to stand strong,” said Center for American Progress head Neera Tanden.

Outside groups weren’t the only ones who were furious. A number of Senate Democratic offices felt that their leadership had led them into a situation where they had no good options, hurting moderates by forcing a shutdown and then hurting the entire party with its base by capitulating so fast.

More than a dozen Senate Democrats broke with party leaders to vote against the bill, including a number of potential presidential candidates, a sign they know exactly where the base is. While most of them declined to take shots at their leaders, they clearly weren’t happy with the sudden about-face, warning not to trust McConnell’s promises.

“I don’t believe he made any commitment whatsoever and I believe it would be foolhardy to believe he made a commitment,” Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) told reporters after the vote.

 Erik Loomis talks us down and gives us the case for school two.

1) CHIP is a huge policy win for Democrats. You might say that Republicans had to deal with this anyway. No they didn’t. It’s a party of nihilists who don’t care if children die. Taking CHIP off the table for 6 years is a positive win.

2) Taking CHIP off the table undermines Republican leverage for the next battle. They have no policy position that Democrats must vote for going forward.

3) The deal is only for a few weeks. On February 8, if the Republicans have not dealt with Dreamers, then Democrats can shut the government down again, this time with the very clear narrative that Mitch McConnell is a liar and that they gave Republicans a chance to fix the problem and they are all lying liars who lie.

4) Despite the incredibly inhuman injustice of our immigration policy, no Dreamers will be deported before February 8.

Now, if February 8 comes and Democratic senators back off of a confrontation to protect Dreamers, that’s really bad. But this gives another few weeks to ratchet up the pressure on them and on Republicans to get this done.

And I hate to have to correct Erik here.  The CHIP funding wasn't a huge win, and it's still on the table because while the CR bill did fund the CHIP program, Jonathan Capehart discovered that the CR eliminated funding for the community health centers that provide CHIP services.

"In their effort to continue dismantling Obamacare, the Republican continuing resolution does not include funding for community clinics and private hospitals that care for large numbers of low-income patients,” Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.) told me. The impact of this budgetary slight was made plain by one of her constituents in an email she shared with me.

Wanted to touch base about CR that doesn’t include health Center funding. St. John’s will lose 10% of our budget ($8.4 million a year). We’ll have to close 6 of our 15 clinics in your district. 

It’s also self defeating to fund CHIP but not health centers since most kids with CHIP receive their care at community health centers. So they may have CHIP but they won’t be able to access services because their Health Center is closed.

That message came from Jim Mangia, president and CEO of St. John’s Well Child and Family Center in Los Angeles. When I got him on the phone, he told me that his community health center serves 100,000 “unduplicated” patients, 48,000 of whom are children. “About half of them would lose access to health care services,” Mangia said. “Where are those kids going to go for health care? They have CHIP, but their doctor has been laid off. It’s so cynical, their argument. And disingenuous.”

So what do I think?  I think the Democrats got screwed badly, and there's not much they can do about it.  The notion that Dems got a win on CHIP is pretty much garbage here, but they took the deal anyway.  So no, I don't trust the Republicans, and I don't trust the competence of Dems.  They should have seen this poison pill coming and they didn't.

So now, if I'm Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, I use those three weeks I just got to put in the screws and finish the job. My plan would be to put the House GOP's utterly repugnant Securing America's Future Act to a vote and pass it. I put that legislation in the Senate and when the Dems say no, I say "Well, we put a DACA bill on the table and the Dems rejected it.  All bets are off."  Then I tinker around the edges of the SAF bill and include it in the CR and see how long the Dems last before they pass it.  As a reminder of what SAF entails:

Republicans are essentially asking Democrats to trade the legalization of 700,000 unauthorized immigrants for the criminalization of all others, banning 2.6 million legal immigrants over the next decade, the elimination of almost all family sponsorship preference categories and the diversity visa lottery, deporting tens of thousands of asylum seekers, huge increases in border security spending, a massive new regulatory program that applies to every employee and employer in the country (“E-Verify”), and so much else. This bill has no chance of becoming law, but it is a remarkable illustration of how far apart the parties are on this issue.

That's where I see this fight going.  I hope I'm wrong and the Dems smell this trap coming from a mile off and demand a clean DREAM Act bill up front...and the restoration of community health center funding.

But they've already folded once on that demand.  It's difficult to see them standing too long on it again.  The best outcome may be another series of punts heading toward the end of March, but who knows what the GOP will sneak into the CR bills in the interim, and that deadline squeezes Democrats too.  I don't know, it's possible that the House GOP could go rogue and trash the whole deal themselves and save the Democrats here, forcing a clean CR plus DACA protections with Pelosi's help (oh, and health center funding back too.)  That's the win for Democrats.

It depends on which two of the scenarios we get to first, the SAF bill or the DACA bill, and both of those actually depend on the House, not the Senate.

We'll see.  Again, I said the Dems were in a bad position for a reason, and they have little leverage when the GOP has already shown they're more than happy to take health care away from millions and deport millions more. The best solution is to take the House and Senate back of course.  But between now and January 2019 when a new Congress would be sworn in, a lot of damage can still be done.

It probably will be.  Whether or not America will still make the choice to vote the GOP out, I don't know.  We certainly didn't in 2016.

StupidiNews!

• A magnitude 8.2 earthquake has struck off the southern Alaskan coast, triggering tsunami warnings from the Aleutians to California.
• As the sentencing hearing of former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar continues, top board members of the board have resigned over failure to stop Nassar from abusing dozens of athletes.
• The Trump regime has imposed steep tariffs on imported solar panels and washing machines, manufacturers are pleased but retailers and installers say they will lose tens of thousands of jobs.
• A new annual survey finds Americans under Trump have seen the largest decline in trust in their country's institutions to dead last among informed citizens of the world.
• Montana is requiring internet providers to follow net neutrality guidelines in order to receive state contracts despite FCC regulations, Gov. Steve Bullock issued the order for July 1.

Last Call For The Beckies Come Around

I've taken white women voters to task before as being the group that made the difference in 2016 in giving Trump and the GOP power.  But if a new Washington Post poll is correct, white women now prefer the Democrats going into the 2018 midterms, and if it holds up, the GOP is looking at a bloodbath in November.

Strong support from women and independents is fueling Democrats’ large early advantage ahead of this year’s congressional elections, a sign that two groups that have recoiled from Donald Trump’s presidency will play a decisive role in November, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The ongoing government shutdown and rising economic optimism are just two factors that could shuffle preferences over the nine months before Election Day, with Republicans hoping to take more credit for economic growth and cast Democrats as anti-Trump obstructionists.

By 51 percent to 39 percent, more registered voters say they would support the Democratic candidate in their congressional district over the Republican. Democrats’ 12 percentage-point advantage on this “generic ballot” question is the largest in Post-ABC polling since 2006, although it is slightly larger than other polls this month.

That 12 point lead is certainly heartening, but it's the crosstabs that tell the real story: the GOP has lost women completely, even white women.

The Post-ABC poll finds Democrats holding a 57 percent to 31 percent advantage among female voters, double the size of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s margin in the 2016 election. Nonwhite women favor Democrats by a 53-point margin, somewhat smaller than Clinton’s 63-point advantage over Trump in 2016. But white women have moved sharply in Democrats’ direction, favoring them over Republicans by 12 points after supporting Trump by nine points in 2016 and Republican candidates by 14 points in the 2014 midterm election, according to network exit polls. 

Partisan loyalty is strong, with Republican and Democratic candidates garnering support from at least 9 in 10 of their fellow partisans, but self-identified political independents favor Democrats by a 16-point margin, 50 percent to 34 percent. The swing group has been decisive in three consecutive midterm election waves, backing Republicans by 19 points in 2010 and 12 points in 2014, but supporting Democrats by 18 points in 2006 as they retook control of the House. 

Independents strongly favor the Dems right now as well.  And as far as blame for the shutdown?  Americans blame Trump and the GOP 48-28% over the Democrats, with 18% saying both sides.  That means that even accounting for the both sides folks, less than half put some or all of blame on the Dems, while two-thirds blame the GOP in part or in whole for the Trump Shutdown.

The Republicans are in trouble and they know it.  Follow-up: FiveThityEight's Harry Enten finds that among all races and all political persuasions, Trump has a serous gender gap issue with women:

I expect this gap will only get larger in 2018.

Black Lives Matter, Con't

Prospect, Kentucky is a suburb of Louisville just north of the 265 loop near the river, about an hour from where I live.  It's a nice little town of 5,000 or so with broad streets and trees and good schools and oh yeah, a screamingly racist police chief who tells his new recruits that it's okay to shoot black kids for smoking pot.

A former assistant police chief for a Kentucky police department allegedly instructed a police recruit to shoot black minors if he were to catch them smoking marijuana, according to court documents.

In an Aug. 31 letter to Prospect, Kentucky Mayor John Evans, Jefferson County Attorney Mike O'Connell wrote that he has "serious concerns" about the then-assistant police chief Todd Shaw, who at the time was acting chief for the city of Prospect, a suburban city in the Louisville metropolitan area.

When senior Jefferson County prosecutors met with members of the Louisville Metro Police Department, they reviewed "highly disturbing racist and threatening Facebook private messages" Shaw exchanged with a former LMPD police recruit, the letter states. The prosecutors were at the department to conduct an investigation to determine whether to file criminal charges against Shaw, O'Connell said.

The prosecutors found the messages while investigating a case in which Shaw allegedly tried to assist another officer by improperly accessing the National Crime Information Center database, his attorney in the criminal case, Nick Mudd, told ABC News. Prosecutors have dropped efforts file criminal charges against Shaw in that case, Mudd said, adding that he "did nothing wrong."

The Facebook messages of concern, which accompanied the letter O'Connell sent to Evans, occurred from September to October 2016, O'Connell said.

In the Facebook messages, Shaw and the recruit discussed a scenario for the recruit's training in which he had to write a paper on the "right thing to do" if he were to come across three juveniles who were smoking marijuana, O'Connell wrote. The recruit appears to have come to Shaw for advice, telling him, "I'm so confused about this paper," in the message, dated Oct. 5, 2016.

"F--- the right thing," Shaw allegedly wrote. "If black shoot them."

Shaw allegedly made other "racially threatening statements," which included instructions on "how to handle the juveniles' parents," according to the letter.

"...if mom is hot then f--- her," Shaw allegedly wrote. "...if dad is hot then handcuff him and make him s--- my d---."

Shaw allegedly continued, "Unless daddy is black...Then shoot him..."

Lovely man, Mr Shaw.  He resigned back on November 20 but the story just made national news this weekend, probably because Shaw had been suspended back in September for interfering with the sex abuse probe looking into Louisville MPD abusing kids that were in its Explorer community relations program.

Oh, and don't go congratulating Prospect Mayor John Evans for firing Shaw, he's kind of a NIMBY asshole too especially when it comes to affordable housing.

So yeah, racist cops, still a massive problem in Kentucky.

Zee Germans Stay In It

The Merkel government barely avoided collapse on Sunday as the largest partner in Germany's government voted narrowly to stay in the current coalition and avoided snap elections...for now.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives start preparing for formal coalition talks with the Social Democrats (SPD) on Monday, wasting no time after the center-left party narrowly voted to go ahead following months of political deadlock.

At a nail-biter of a party congress, 56 percent of SPD delegates voted to pursue coalition talks with Merkel’s conservative bloc on the basis of a blueprint agreed earlier this month. 

That was a narrower margin than many analysts had predicted and could embolden the SPD’s leaders to negotiate harder in talks. 

Eyeing a fourth term as chancellor, Merkel wants the SPD to agree to a re-run of the ‘grand coalition’ that has ruled Europe’s economic powerhouse since 2013. 

She said she looked forward to intensive talks on forming a stable government and her priorities were preserving Germany’s economic strength and ensuring social justice and security. 

The SPD vote will be a relief to investors who worry that policymaking, both at home and in Europe, has ground to a halt. 

Merkel, SPD leader Martin Schulz and the leader of Merkel’s Bavarian allies, Horst Seehofer, may meet on Monday and the full talks may start as early as Tuesday or Wednesday. 

Seehofer has said he expects a new government to be in place in the first half of March.

Of course, Merkel still has to actually get the SPD to agree to these talks, and they're going to come at quite a cost.  But a vote failure Sunday would have meant new elections without a government even being formed, and Merkel would have been done as a result.

Merkel gets one more chance this way, and we'll see if she can take advantage of it.