The Intercept has the podcast White Fear: As the GOP Veers Toward Fascism, Establishment Democrats Face a Grassroots Insurgency.

ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection have become authoritarian shock forces, operating with impunity, ripping children from their parents’ arms, and enforcing the anti-immigrant edicts of Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions. But the horrors did not start with Trump. This week on Intercepted: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old former waitress, is challenging one of the most powerful Democrats in the country for his congressional seat. She is running on a platform of social and economic justice and she has called for ICE to be abolished. Ocasio-Cortez explains why she wants to unseat the “King of Queens,” Rep. Joseph Crowley, who portrays himself as Nancy Pelosi’s rightful successor. Princeton professor Eddie Glaude Jr. joins Intercepted to talk about white supremacy and law enforcement, the “rot” in the establishment Democratic Party, and Trump’s obsession with black athletes.

This podcast provides some of the context of our immigration policies that we may have forgotten. Some of the blame does fall on the politicians that came before Donald Trump, and some of the blame is squarely on his shoulders. For all of us who are concerned about these issues, it is best to know the truth about how we got to where we are.

Here are two stories I just read that are begging to be posted together.

Bloomberg has the story Soros Sees New Global Financial Crisis Brewing, EU Under Threat.

A surging dollar and a capital flight from emerging markets may lead to another “major” financial crisis, investor George Soros said, warning the European Union that it’s facing an imminent existential threat.

I don’t swear to George Soros’ accuracy, but I do pay attention to what he says. Having known that the stock market has been in a bubble for years, I hope I am already positioned to handle this.

New Economics Perspectives has the second article The New York Times Praises the Italian Establishment’s Economic Illiteracy and Assault on Democracy.

The euro is a terrible creation that has caused immense harm. The eurozone violates even the neoclassical economic requirements for an “optimal currency zone.” Every honest economist recognizes that fact. Stephanie Kelton was one of a material number of economists who predicted the euro’s inherent problems over 15 years ago. The NYT presents opposition to Italy’s membership in the euro as bizarre and obviously bad economics. In reality, it is even good neoclassical economics. German neoclassical economists, for example, typically think that the EU should never have allowed Italy to adopt the euro. If you have freed yourself from neoclassical nostrums, your opposition to the eurozone will be even more profound. The NYT authors’ first lie is the wacko claim that Conte was “planning to sneak out the back door of the eurozone.” It would take too many paragraphs to explain each aspect of nasty, dishonest rhetoric contained in that single clause, so I will shorten my response: BS.

When William K. Black posts a warning too, and I look at the European stock markets this morning, I start to wonder if this is going to be an “interesting” day on Wall Street.

TruthDig has the article Glenn Greenwald: Trump Is a ‘Continuation of American Political Culture’ (Video).

“There [are] a lot of people who want to pretend that what [President Trump is] doing is some kind of radical break from the American tradition, because they’re embarrassed,” The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald said at a recent event of the nonprofit acTVism Munich in Germany.

Greenwald explained that while Donald Trump’s personality, rhetoric and style are “something unlike what we’ve seen before in the Oval Office,” the president’s policies are in line with mainstream American politics.

The YouTube video embedded in the article is titled Glenn Greenwald on Donald Trump, NSA Surveillance, Facebook, Russiagate, Syria, Israel, Gaza & Yemen.

The Intercept has the story The FBI Informant Who Monitored the Trump Campaign, Stefan Halper, Oversaw a CIA Spying Operation in the 1980 Presidential Election.

An extremely strange episode that has engulfed official Washington over the last two weeks came to a truly bizarre conclusion on Friday night. And it revolves around a long-time, highly sketchy CIA operative, Stefan Halper.

Is Stefan Halper the spy (informant) that Adam Schiff says that there is no evidence that he exists? See the following video at about 4:30 into the interview.

Washington, DC – Today, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the Ranking Member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, appeared on ABC’s This Week with Martha Raddatz to discuss the President’s unfounded claim that a spy infiltrated the Trump Campaign, …

Mint Press News has the Gareth Porter article Netanyahu’s Evidence Wasn’t Just Old, Some of It Was Fabricated.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s stage performance about Iran seeking a nuclear weapon not only was based on old material, but evidence shows it was fabricated too.

This is a photograph of one of the fabricated pieces of evidence as explained in the article.

YouTube has the interview Syria’s First Lady Asma al-Assad’s interview with Russia’s Channel 24.

Interview date: 17 Oct 2016 Syria’s First Lady Asma al-Assad’s interview with Russia’s Channel 24 Source: Presidency of the Syrian Arab Republic

Whatever criticism you may eventually hear about this interview or about Asma al-Assad, I think you should start by hearing the interview. Of course you should always have a certain amount of skepticism about anything you hear if you are to make critical decisions. Just be wary of ulterior motives on all sides, including the USA corporate media. What are the chances that the corporate media has the humanity of the people involved as their most important consideration?

21st Century Wire has the story WHITE HELMETS: ‘Humanitarians’ and the ‘Moderate’ Bomb Factory in Saqba, Eastern Ghouta by Vanessa Beeley.

Here is just a small excerpt of the text and one of the videos from the article.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch consider the White Helmets to be their “most routinely reliable source“. Mull that one over for a minute. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch were created as revolving door instruments of power that would be used to crack target nations open with false humanitarian pretexts designed to “manufacture consent” for one regime change war after another. Remember Libya and Iraq. Remember Benghazi, womens rights in Afghanistan, WMDs in Iraq. Remember any of these blatant false flags that took us to war and Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch will be right there dancing in the shadows with their professional poster campaigns and No Fly Zone ‘crusades’.

USA Today has the story Supreme Court backs employers over workers in first of two major labor cases.

Gorsuch said. “But as a matter of law the answer is clear. In the Federal Arbitration Act, Congress has instructed federal courts to enforce arbitration agreements according to their terms.”

Do you suppose that the Supreme Court is able to read the constitution? Maybe they just can’t read amendments.

Seventh Amendment – U.S. Constitution

In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Does this mean that forcing people to use arbitration instead of having a jury trial is a way of preserving the right to trial by jury? We have certain rights that we cannot agree to forego. I don’t think we are all speaking the same language even if this purports to be English. If this country were silly enough to declare that English is the official language of the USA, what meaning would that have? It all depends on what the word English means. Would there be an official dictionary?

One of the problems states have in collecting enough taxes to do what needs to be done is the need to compete for job creating businesses to locate in their state by giving tax and other concessions to those businesses. A company like Amazon that wants to create a new headquarters has various localities competing to get that headquarters to be located in their jurisdiction. If states don’t play the game, then businesses go elsewhere. How can the government at several levels cooperate to help free states and localities from this corporate blackmail?

One way to halt or lessen the race to the bottom is to impose a federal tax on the corporations for the imputed income that the concessions represent.

WikiPedia has several things to say about the concept of imputed income.

Imputed income is the accession to wealth that can be attributed, or imputed, to a person when they avoid paying for services by providing the services to themselves, or when the person avoids paying rent for durable goods by owning the durable goods, as in the case of imputed rent.

As for taxing imputed income, WikiPedia further explains:

Many countries, such as the United States, tax imputed income only in certain limited situations. Imputed income is sometimes difficult to measure, and tax policies regarding imputed income can have political consequences. For taxpayers, not taxing imputed income creates a tax incentive in favor of owning over renting, and in favor of self-service over hiring. For the economy, not taxing imputed income directs economic activity away from activities associated with extreme and severe division of labor.

If the federal government decided to collect taxes on the imputed income from tax breaks that localities give to coporations, then this could significantly lessen the value of these tax breaks to corporations. They would have less incentive to play one locality against another for free benefits. One could go beyond the tax breaks to include the building of infrastructure specifically for one corporation (or group of corporations).

Of course, if the federal government went too far in this direction, it would create incentives for corporations to relocate their facilities in other countries. That is why there needs to be cooperation among national governments on some tax policies. There were negotiations going on among countries to come to just such agreements before George W. Bush came to office. He put a stop to the participation of the USA in such talks.

Imagine if trade negotiations included agreements on tax policies as well as on policies to protect the profits of corporations.

Here is a Google search on international tax negotiations so you can do further research on this idea.

I also found the paper Piercing the Veil of Secrecy: Securing Effective Exchange of Information to Remedy the Harmful Effects of Tax Havens. The first page of the paper is numbered 293. Starting on page numbered 313, I found the following quote:

Although many different organizations have introduced projects to combat the destructive effects of tax havens, there is still no single comprehensive regulation aimed at controlling tax havens or the capital flows that go through them. Among the various international initiatives, there is a clear lack of accord on the degree of harm created by tax havens and on the best method to deal with the adverse economic effects they cause. Arguably, the most successful multinational initiative today has been the work of the OECD, and its work to develop a model tax agreement.

One of the references that was in the above quote on WikiPedia seemd to come from the video Tax Havens: The Hidden Hand in the Financial Crisis.

The financial crisis seems as if it emerged from nowhere and struck as hard and fast as lightning. How did so many financial institutions crumble with so little warning? There are many reasons, but one that has not been given much attention is how tax havens helped enable the mess — and how several of the big companies that have received billions of bailout dollars were also the most active in the shady world of offshore finance.

I couldn’t find a reference to George W. Bush’s stopping international tax negotiations, but I did find a paper, When International Tax Agreements Fail at Home: A U.S. Example, with the footnote below that confirms that international tax treaties were established practice.

The two levels may typically be sequential as a formal matter, with states negotiating their agreement, which then would be ratified through internal domestic processes. Given established treaty practice (including the U.S. Model Tax treaty and the OECD Model Tax treaty), little risk generally would be anticipated at the second (i.e., domestic) level. It should be noted, though, that in 1995 Senators Bob Dole and Jesse Helms blocked ratification of tax treaties until President Clinton compromised on another unrelated bill. This situation, which differed from the current U.S. treaty blockage in that there was no underlying objection to the tax treaties themselves ,emerged after the Senate failed to vote on the State Department Reorganization and Authorization Act. As retaliation, Senate Majority Leader Dole coordinated with Senator Helms, the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to block all tax treaties until the White House acquiesced. A month later, Senator Helms released seven tax treaties as a show of “good faith,” though he continued to delay meetings of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, effectively holding up all foreign policy legislation requiring Senate approval.

Don’t forget the Commerce Clause in the U.S. Constitution.

Commerce Clause

The Commerce Clause refers to Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution, which gives Congress the power “to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.”