1
U.S.
Backpage’s Sex Ads Are Gone. Child Trafficking? Hardly.
The website, under pressure, dropped the ads, many of which featured minors. But the unanticipated result is that prostitution can now be even riskier.Prostitution has not changed.
2
World
Trump’s Immigration Orders May Be Affecting Canada, U.S. Official Admits
The American homeland security secretary, John F. Kelly, discussed the issue with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet.Yes. Trump must take knowledgeable advice.
4
U.S.
Trump’s Revised Travel Ban Is Denounced by 134 Foreign Policy Experts
The signatories to a letter sent to President Trump and many cabinet members include the former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and John Kerry.There is no stay on the new order yet.
5
N.Y. / Region
Mosque Is Blocked in New Jersey, but Dispute Is Far From Over
The establishment clause applies.
6
U.S.
If Russia Inquiry Is Not ‘Legitimate,’ Democrats May Abandon It
Some Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee said they would pull out of the investigation into Russian election meddling if it becomes too partisan.Some Democrats are lacking in courage.
The question is not partisan.
It is not did the Russians act unfairly.
It is did the Russians act at all.
7
U.S.
Woman Detained After Speaking About Deportation Fears Is Released
Daniela Vargas had arrived in the United States as a child and was later allowed to stay under an Obama-era program. She was held in Louisiana for more than a week."A 22-year-old undocumented immigrant who was detained by the authorities last week after speaking out about her deportation fears was released on Friday, her lawyers and rights groups said."
She has a skilled lawyer.
The legal argument is not stated here.
8
U.S.
In Reversal, Boston St. Patrick’s Day Parade Welcomes Gay Veterans Group
The parade organizers, the Allied War Veterans Council of South Boston, voted unanimously late Friday to reverse their decision made on Tuesday to exclude the group, OutVets.It should never have been a question.
9
U.S.
Even Child Care Divides Parties. Ivanka Trump Tries Building a Bridge.
Ms. Trump is in an unusual position: working on issues traditionally championed by Democrats by forging alliances with Republican women.The proposals do not do the job.
10
U.S.
The G.O.P.’s High-Risk Strategy for Health Law Repeal
The party’s plan to toss out the Affordable Care Act could cause turmoil in the insurance market next year, and for Republicans themselves in the 2018 midterm elections.This proposal should not pass.
https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2017/03/10/smart-republicans/
Smart Republicans?
I claim no
special expertise in the legislative process. But reading a couple of
pieces about what looks like a health care debacle from the good folks
at Vox, I have some thoughts about what’s going on — namely, don’t
presume that Ryan and company have any idea what they’re doing.
Start with Ezra Klein,
who speculates that Ryan has advanced this ludicrous plan in the hope
and expectation that it won’t pass. His reasoning is that Ryan is too
skilled an operator to get caught off-guard as he seems to have:
Paul Ryan isn’t an amateur. He is, arguably, the most skilled policy entrepreneur of his generation. He is known for winning support from political actors and policy validators who normally reject his brand of conservatism. The backing he’s built for past proposals comes from painstaking work talking to allies, working on plans with them, preparing them for what he’ll release, hearing out their concerns, constructing processes where they feel heard, and so on. He’s good at this kind of thing. But he didn’t put in the work here. And there are consequences to that.
But has Ryan ever put
together major legislation with any real chance of passage? Yes, he made
a name for himself with big budget proposals that received adoring
press coverage. But these were never remotely operational — they were
filled not just with magic asterisks — tax loophole closing to be
determined later, cost savings to be achieved via means to be determined
later — but with elements, like converting Medicare into a voucher
system, that would have drawn immense flack if they got anywhere close
to actually happening.
In other words, he has
never offered real plans for overhauling social insurance, just things
that sound like plans but are basically just advertisements for some
imaginary plan that might eventually be produced. Actually pulling
together a coalition to get stuff done? Has he ever managed that?
What I’d say is that
Ryan is not, in fact, a policy entrepreneur. He’s just a self-promoter,
someone who has successfully sold a credulous media on a character he
plays: Paul Ryan, Serious, Honest Conservative Policy Wonk. This is
really his first test at real policymaking, which is a very different
process. There’s nothing strange about his inability to pull off the
real thing, as opposed to the act.
Meanwhile, Sarah Kliff, in the new VoxCare newsletter, is puzzled by the apparent disagreement among Republicans about what CBO is likely to say:
The only people who have advance access to the CBO numbers are the Republican legislators who actually worked on the bill. They’ve been working with the budget agency for months now to create a score.
But have they really
been working with CBO for months? They may have been talking, but was it
about anything resembling Obamacare 0.5? Everything else about the AHCA
looks slapdash, like something thrown together in a few days by people
who hadn’t thought at all about what a flat tax credit and a widened age
band would mean for, say, people in Alaska with its expensive
insurance, or low-middle-income Trump voters in their 60s. I have no
inside information, but this sure looks as if they were still dithering
about the whole principle of their Obamacare replacement until at most a
few weeks ago, and didn’t work with CBO because they had nothing to
work with.
In other words, maybe
this looks like amateur hour because it is. Ryan isn’t a skilled
politician inexplicably losing his touch, he’s a con artist who started
to believe his own con; Republicans didn’t hammer out a workable plan
because there is no such plan, and anyway they have no idea what that
would involve.
Or to put it another way, this could just be more malevolence tempered by incompetence."
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