the Memorial to the Victims of the German Occupation. From the moment its construction was announced, following an opaque artistic competition lacking public consultation, it had been the subject of heated dispute. Beginning with its very title, which labels the tempted movement of German soldiers onto friendly territory an “occupation” the memorial absolves Hungarians’ complicity in the Holocaust. Depicting the Archangel Gabriel (described in the plans as the man of God, symbol of Hungary) under attack from a sharp-clawed German Imperial Eagle, it portrays the Hungarian nation as a collective victim of Nazi predation. BLOCK This distortion of history obscures both the specifically anti-Jewish nature of the Holocaust and the Hungarian state’s active collaboration in mass murder.
.. By obscuring Jewish victimhood entirely and ascribing total innocence to Hungarians and total evil to Germans, the memorial is actually as exploitative as any Stalinist icon.
… [Prime Minister Viktor] Orban’s defense of the occupation memorial was also notable for studiously dodging the fact that the main victims of the Nazis in Hungary, as everywhere else in Europe, were Jews. “The victims,” he wrote, “whether Orthodox, Christian, or without faith, became the victims of a dictatorship that embodied an anti-Christian school of thought” — essentially claiming that Christians were as much victims of the Nazis as Jews, a word his letter does not use even once.
.. Second to Russia, no European country is manipulating its history for political purposes more egregiously than Hungary. In both places, rewriting the past is done with an eye to the future, as governments inculcate their citizenries with nationalism, irredentism, and intolerance and then marshal these attitudes in service of the state.
.. As Hungary creeps further into authoritarianism, its revisionism has worrisome implications for Europe’s future.
.. I’m sure there are some U.S. conservatives who conclude that because Orban heads up the party of the Right in that country’s politics, he must be the good guy. Eh, don’t be so sure. Back in 2014, he declared, “Hungarians welcomed illiberal democracy… ‘Checks and balances’ is a U.S. invention that for some reason of intellectual mediocrity Europe decided to adopt and use in European politics.”
Bashir Assad and the Syrian Air Force Had a Blast Thursday Night
Trump’s foreign-policy comments could be contradictory, boasting that he opposed the Iraq War from the beginning one moment and insisting “we should take the oil” the next. Sometimes he would argue, “Let Russia take care of ISIS,” and sometimes he would pledge to “bomb the s*** out of them.”
.. There is now a consequence to using chemical weapons. Not an all-out war, not an invasion, not even a full effort at regime change, just… consequences.
Oh, and we ended up getting much closer to a Marco Rubio foreign policy than anyone ever expected.
.. Poor John Kerry was left to bring about [Bashir Assad’s exit] in the last years of the administration with very few carrots and no sticks at his disposal. President Obama did not want to strike the regime
.. We initially offered up carrots—such as increased military and intelligence cooperation with the Russians against Islamist extremists—if they would help us remove Bashar al-Assad from power, but by the end, we were practically begging the Russians to just let humanitarian aid shipments into East Aleppo.
.. The Russian Defense Ministry said Friday that it plans to bolster and increase the effectiveness of the air defense system in Syria following the attack.
.. The Russians and Iranians are furious, and our traditional allies are cheery. It’s a good day for America.
.. It must have been a shock when Mr. McConnell took that bet and waited for the results of the 2016 election to decide the future direction of the Supreme Court. He won. Mr. McConnell deserves great credit both for holding his ground then and for holding his caucus together on breaking the filibuster Thursday in the face of a cynical Democratic narrative about their “stolen” Supreme Court seat.
Border Adjustment & Energy Nominees
Consider a shoe retailer that imports the shoes it sells from a manufacturer in China. It buys a pair of shoes from the manufacturer for $50 and pays $10 in shipping costs. The retailer sells the shoes for $70, earning a $10 profit. Under the current tax system, the retailer would owe 35 percent in taxes on the $10 profit, because it would get to deduct the $60 it paid in business costs acquiring the shoes. The total tax bill would be $3.50.
Under the proposed tax reform plan with a border adjustment tax, the retailer would pay a 20 percent (the proposed corporate rate) tax on the $10 profit, or $2. However, the retailer would also pay a 20 percent BAT on the $50 cost of the imported shoes, bringing the total tax bill to $12 — which is more than the retailer’s profit from the sale
.. Over on the home page, my favorite form of criticizing President Trump: pointing out how his or his team’s inattention to the details of governing — i.e., having a lot of good, qualified candidates ready to nominate for management jobs at the start of his administration — is impeding one of his own popular goals, i.e., creating jobs through energy infrastructure projects.
The Trump administration has been slow to nominate candidates to some of the 600 or so significant positions in the executive branch, including the three empty spots on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which has been short of a quorum since President Obama’s appointed chairman, Norman Bay, resigned on February 3.
Here’s the sort of project that is indefinitely delayed because FERC doesn’t have enough members for a quorum to give final approval:
Enbridge Energy wants to build a new pipeline to transport Appalachian shale gas to high-demand markets in Canada and the Midwest, including Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and Ontario. In addition to 255 miles of pipeline that is three feet in diameter, the project would involve the construction of “four new compressor stations, six new metering and regulating stations, and 17 new mainline valves in Ohio and Michigan.” Once completed, it would be capable of transporting 1.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day. According to a union representative, welders and journeymen on the project would make $53 per hour plus benefits. The whole project would cost $2 billion and was originally slated to be completed this autumn.
Is this Trump’s fault? Trump’s team’s fault? Maybe if everyone in the White House spent a little less time on Game of Thrones–style jockeying for power and more time focusing on how the government actually worked, we would all be better off.
Conservatives Against Border Adjustment Tax
Former Rep. David McIntosh, the club’s president, said the House GOP was wrong to chase after the goal of revenue-neutral tax policy. “Instead of trading one tax for another, the GOP needs to focus on cutting rates, and cutting spending and the size of government to match,”
.. Make no mistake, the BAT will inflict American working families – the very people critical for Donald Trump’s election – a whole lot of hurt … The BAT is absolutely unnecessary to attract businesses and capital to our shores. Cutting the profits tax to 15 percent and minimally taxing – or not taxing at all – overseas earnings would lead to a flood of money pouring into the U.S. Countless foreign companies would be eager to set up shop here
.. Former Reagan Economic Advisor Arthur Laffer:
I think the border tax adjustment is a major mistake to put into legislation. It’s a huge bureaucratic mess to be honest with you. If it’s done ideally, Maria, which would be a tax on imports matched by a subsidy on exports of the equal size, it would have the same effect as devaluing the currency which would lead to domestic inflation. But if you look at it, there will be all sorts of nuances, all sorts of political grab bags going in the process and I just think they should just do tax rate reductions, get rid of this pay-for notion and don’t touch a border tax adjustment. It just makes no sense.
The Overlooked Menace of ‘Gangster Islam’
.. The sections I found most eye-opening were how the jihadist movement is flourishing not among the particularly religious but among the angry young men who are looking for a justification for their preexisting violent and aggressive impulses.
[Former Brussels Mayor Philippe} Moureaux told me, “we never had any evidence that the trouble eminates from the mosques.” Geraldine, mother of Anis, said that her son never attended mosques but was radicalized by people “on the street.” Her opinion was echoed by almost everybody I met in Molenbeek. “The people that do this,” one source told me, “are more familiar with a bar stool than a prayer mat.”
.. The networks responsible, he said, are dominated by a Tunisian mafia.