What would they be arrested for? State and local government have absolutely no obligation to enforce federal law. It is a misuse of taxpayer resources to do so. They also have no obligation nor is it their business to inquire about anyone’s immigration status. Although most supporters of the Pumpkinfuhrer lust after turning the country into a police state dictatorship the vast majority of Americans are adamantly against it. So even though Trump is president people still need to be suspected of breaking the law to be arrested.

WaPo Columnist Pens FRIGHTENING Defense Of Marxism: 'It's Time To Give Socialism A Try'
ByBen Shapiro
@benshapiro
March 7, 2018

On Tuesday, The Washington Post ran an op-ed from Elizabeth Bruenig touting the possibilities of a new economic system in the United States: socialism. That’s not a complete surprise, given the mainstream media’s sudden interest in Marxism again – The New York Times has run a series of pieces over the last year praising Marxism from the perspective of women’s rights, “inspiring” Americans, the Harlem Renaissance, even from the perspective of having better sex. Bruenig’s piece, however, is a masterpiece of silliness, a veritable cornucopia of evil ideas repackaged in the mildewed bows of revolutionary optimism.

She begins by complaining that capitalism has hollowed out the “liberal” movement — liberals want to praise capitalism for its benefits, but ignore its downside. Instead, Bruenig suggests, “It’s time to give socialism a try.” Why, pray tell, would we try a system of government interventionism that has ended, every time, in heartbreaking poverty and mass death? (No, Sweden and Denmark aren’t socialist countries — they’re capitalist countries with redistributionist tendencies.) Because, says Bruenig, the ills of our society are almost entirely the result of capitalism. She excoriates Andrew Sullivan of New York Magazine for embracing capitalism while lamenting the rise of nationalism. She complains about Joe Biden, whom she says whines uselessly about America being “better than this.” She says that Americans are “isolated, viciously competitive, suspicious of one another and spiritually shallow; and that we are anxiously looking for some kind of attachment to something real and profound in an age of decreasing trust and regard,” and that all of this is “emblematic of capitalism.” Never mind that America’s social bonds remained strong while capitalism was ascendant; never mind that government interventionism has coincided with a breakdown in social cohesion; never mind that government-enforced conformity has a rude way of destroying “attachment to something real and profound.” No, it’s that we shop around for our products at the local grocery store. That’s the problem, obviously.

It gets worse. According to Bruenig, capitalism “encourages and requires fierce individualism, self-interested disregard for the other, and resentment of arrangements into which one deposits more than he or she withdraws. (As a business-savvy friend once remarked: Nobody gets rich off of bilateral t***sactions where everybody knows what they’re doing.)”

This is pure nonsense. Of course capitalism promotes individualism. So does liberalism, the root of human rights. And even the most ardent capitalists, like Ayn Rand, forcibly reject the idea that we should resent voluntary economic arrangements — in fact, believers in free markets see such resentment as the root of socialism, not capitalism. Furthermore, everyone gets rich off of bilateral t***sactions where everybody knows what they’re doing. In fact, that’s the only way to get rich. If you screw someone, you can’t very well have a repeat economic t***saction with them. This zero-sum mentality only applies to socialistic misapprehensions about the nature of free and voluntary exchange.

But Bruenig continues:

Capitalism is an ideology that is far more encompassing than it admits, and one that turns every relationship into a calculable exchange. Bodies, time, energy, creativity, love — all become commodities to be priced and sold. Alienation reigns. There is no room for sustained contemplation and little interest in public morality; everything collapses down to the level of the atomized individual.

Now, this is a critique frequently made by social conservatives, who suggest that virtue is a necessity to preserve freedom, and that Judeo-Christian values and communities that spring from those values must be the underpinning of capitalism. But socialism doesn’t resolve those problems. It merely redistributes them: all relationships are now reduced down to numbers, and if those numbers don’t fit, people are made to fit the numbers. If alienation is the product of capitalism, then subjugation is the product of socialism.

Bruenig quickly skips over the totalitarianism of socialism, instead suggesting a “kind of socialism that would be democratic and aimed primarily at decommodifying labor, reducing the vast ine******y brought about by capitalism, and breaking capital’s stranglehold over politics and culture.”

That’s a lot of buzzwords in a row. There is no way to “democratize” socialism — there is always a boss at the factory, whether it’s a government bureaucrat or an owner who has a stake in the success of the factory. You cannot decommodify labor, because labor is by its nature a commodity — it is a tradeable good to be bought and sold. And capitalism may create ine******y, but it also creates prosperity for everyone, including those on the bottom end of the economic spectrum.

Bruenig continues nonetheless:

I don’t think that every problem can be traced back to capitalism: There were calamities and injustices long before capital, and I’ll venture to say there will be after.

Well, yes. Before capitalism, there was feudalism, monarchic tyranny, mercantilism, and bloody war with complete lack of economic progress. So there’s that. But Bruenig concludes:

But it seems to me that it’s time for those who expected to enjoy the end of history to accept that, though they’re linked in certain respects, capitalism seems to be at odds with the harmonious, peaceful, stable liberalism of midcentury dreams. I don’t think we’ve reached the end of history yet, which means we still have the chance to shape the future we want. I suggest we take it.

Bruenig’s path has already been taken. It leads to the gulag, to the prison camp, to the starvation of children. It leads to centralization of power and it leads to destruction of the individual. The fact that Bruenig can repeat the discredited nostrums of Lenin and Mao without even realizing it shows how our capitalist system has failed to educate its beneficiaries about just why they’re able to write garbage editorials for pay in the freest, most prosperous country in world history.

Got a big benefit from Trump's tax cuts, did ya ? Check out this.

NEWS & POLITICS
Paul Krugman Has a Brutal Message for American Taxpayers
If you think you're benefiting from the Trump tax cuts, think again.
By Jacob Sugarman / AlterNet March 2, 2018, 4:45 AM GMT


Last month, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) came under fire for celebrating the $1.50 weekly raise a public school secretary stands to gain from the recently passed Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Ryan's outrageous statement is even more preposterous if you actually crunch the numbers. As Paul Krugman writes in his Thursday column, "How’s that $75-a-year saving going to look when the [secretary] finds out that, partly because of that tax cut, her mother’s Medicare plan has been converted into an inadequate voucher system and Medicaid won’t pay for her father’s nursing home care?"

While a slim majority of Americans now holds a favorable opinion of the Republican legislation, Krugman is here to warn them that they are being taken for a ride. That's because the federal government has "no business" cutting taxes at all.

"Why? The federal government, as an old line says, is a giant insurance company with an army," he writes. "Most of its costs come from Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—and all three programs are becoming more expensive as ever more baby boomers reach retirement age. This means that unless we cut back sharply on benefits that middle-class Americans count on, we will need to raise more revenue than in the past."

We know how this story ends. Even before the president signed their monstrous bill, Republicans were already discussing the possibility of "entitlement reform"—despite the fact that candidate Trump promised not to lay a finger on programs like Medicare and Medicaid. So who stands to benefit from these huge tax cuts? It most certainly isn't lower- and middle-income earners.

"Most of the tax cut actually consisted of huge tax breaks for corporations, which is in effect a big tax cut for stockholders," Krugman continues. "And while many Americans own a bit of stock via their retirement accounts, even if you include these indirect holdings, more than 80 percent of stocks are owned by the wealthiest 10 percent of the population...The wealthy are giving themselves a big gift, and sending the bill to the middle class."

Krugman is willing to acknowledge there's "probably something" to the theory that lower taxes will eventually benefit workers, but not much. The process could end up taking decades, and there's no guarantee corporations won't simply pocket their savings.

Ultimately, his message to American taxpayers is simple: "If you think you were helped by the tax cut, think again. Donald Trump and his allies pretended to give you a gift, but they gave themselves and their wealthy patrons much bigger gifts—and they’re going to stick you with the bill. You’ve been s**mmed."