Noah Smith on Immigration

1/Immigration is the big issue in 2018. I've been writing about it for a while.

So here's a thread of articles, facts, and graphs that you can use in the immigration debate.

— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) January 23, 2018

1/Immigration is the big issue in 2018. I've been writing about it for a while. 

So here's a thread of articles, facts, and graphs that you can use in the immigration debate.

2/First: Why immigration at all? Why do we need to bring newcomers into our country? Economic reasons: 1. They pay for the retirements of the native-born. 2. They are highly entrepreneurial. 3. They help keep America the center of the world economy.

3/Immigrants also help save declining towns, counties, and states. Immigration is the best hope for the Midwest and Northeast.

4/Finally, Americans just LIKE immigrants. The "nation of immigrants" thing isn't just elite propaganda. It's reflected in all the polls. https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-18/anti-immigration-fervor-is-different-this-time …

5/Now, let's address the arguments AGAINST immigration.

6/The first argument against immigration is economic. "Immigrants take jobs away from the native-born!" "Immigrants lower native-born wages!" Are these true? Probably not.

7/You may have heard that George Borjas of Harvard says immigration hurts native workers. He does. But he's in the distinct minority. And the research methods he uses are often suspect. The vast weight of evidence is against Borjas.

8/The second argument against immigration is legal. "We just want to enforce the law! We like LEGAL immigration, just not ILLEGAL!" Well, guess what: The number of illegal immigrants living in America has actually FALLEN, not risen, over the last decade.

9/Furthermore, Americans favor a path to citizenship over deportation. Enforcing the law is good, but most Americans agree it's not worth turning our society into a police state just to kick out people who live here.

10/The third argument against immigration is fiscal. "Immigrants are a drain on government resources!" As it turns out, all but the least educated immigrants are a net POSITIVE for government budgets. https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-09-22/immigrants-are-a-fiscal-boon-not-a-burden …

11/The fourth argument against immigration is cultural. "Immigrants don't assimilate!" Well, yes they do.

12/Today's immigrants learn English just as fast (or faster than) previous waves. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/01/28/hispanic-immigrants-are-assimilating-just-as-quickly-as-earlier-groups/ … What's more, today's immigrants intermarry at very high rates - a sure sign that they're integrating into America.

13/What's more, immigrants' political attitudes are similar to Americans' attitudes. https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/edb_27.pdf … Immigrants are not importing foreign values that are going to displace traditional American values.

14/The fifth argument against immigration is racist. "Immigrants come from shithole countries, so they'll make America a shithole too!" Guess what: Immigrants from poor countries in Africa and elsewhere do really well in America.

15/There are also some arguments I haven't written about. For example, the idea that immigrants bring crime into the U.S. (False! It's the opposite: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/us/trump-illegal-immigrants-crime.html …)

16/To sum up: There are many good reasons to keep letting immigrants into the U.S., and to let in even more than we currently do. There are few good reasons to tighten restrictions. Happy debating!

Noah Smith on Twitter Nazis & Others

1/So, as someone who writes approvingly of immigration and diversity, I get mobbed by Twitter Nazis occasionally.

I thought I'd share what I've learned.

— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) January 14, 2018

Noah Smith‏
@Noahpinion

1/So, as someone who writes approvingly of immigration and diversity, I get mobbed by Twitter Nazis occasionally.

I thought I'd share what I've learned.

2/A Nazi attack will begin when a reasonably well-followed Nazi account quote-tweets one of your tweets.

In the old days (and still occasionally) this was a screenshot or manual RT.

3/I call this account the "screamer". As near as I can tell, screamer accounts go around all day looking for targets and quote-tweeting them. It's either a passionate hobby for them or a full-time job.

4/In the old days, there were a few very well-followed Nazi screamers, like Genophilia. Now, thanks to banning, there are a bunch of smaller screamers with maybe 3-4k followers.

5/The screamer will usually not have a lot of Nazi memes and keywords in their profile. Thus, scrolling through your mentions, you may mistake it for a normal account quote-tweeting your tweet approvingly.

6/Once the screamer flags your tweet, you will be attacked by a bunch of throwaway accounts with 0 to 200 followers, often with lots of Nazi memes and styling.

I call these the "soldiers".

7/The soldiers will insult you, threaten you, call you a liar, spit various memes at you, etc. The usual Twitter stuff.

I doubt their specific tactics actually matter much.

8/The soldiers' goal is not to scare you or shut you up or rebut you or discredit you.

The soldiers' goal is to *appear numerous* to people reading your tweets.

9/By appearing numerous, the Twitter Nazis create the general impression that their movement and their ideas are mainstream. A big popular grassroots movement, rather than a fringe of a few thousand internet assholes and their pet bots.

10/The screamer/soldier strategy allows Twitter Nazis to create the false impression of a bunch of normal people who just stumbled across your tweet and became outraged.

11/By hopping from person to person and keeping up this shtick all day long, they can make normal people think half of America has gone Nazi. It's a force multiplier.

12/This was an old tactic of the Mongols and other horse nomad armies, who would use clouds of dust or extra campfires to create the illusion of superior numbers.

13/So how do you defend against these tactics? If you're like me and enjoy blocking Nazis, just block all the soldiers and giggle.

But if you want to stop the attack, you must find and block the screamer.

14/This can be difficult, especially if your tweet was very popular, and especially if you don't constantly monitor your mentions.

The soldiers rarely include the screamer in their replies, in order to prevent you finding and blocking them.

15/You can also just block Nazis en masse with apps like Twitter Block Chain, or by using block lists.

16/Sooner or later Twitter will tweak their interface to make this tactic less effective - for example, by letting you see a list of only quote-tweets, making it easy to find and block screamers.

The Nazis will then think of a new tactic.

17/Remember, you're dealing with a small but fanatic fringe with a lot of time and passion. Such a group will always find a way to cause destruction and chaos disproportionate to their numbers.

Bad guys work full time.

18/But the most important thing is to remember: The Nazis are few in number, and despite all their best efforts they are going to lose.

(end)

Oh, random note: Mobs other than the Nazis, like the MAGA people (who are actually quite distinct from the Nazis) or the "dirtbag" leftists, feel much more organic. You can tell they have a lot more people than the Nazis, and their mobs are born from honest outrage.

Noah Smith is a Bloomberg View columnist. 

He was an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University, and he blogs at Noahpinion.

McLaughlin Twitter Thread on Fusion GPS

THREAD ON FUSION GPS. I spent the afternoon reading the transcript that Senator Feinstein released today. Here are the salient points, with citations. I am a lawyer and CEO. I was a securities fraud and human rights litigator in DC/NY for over 15 years. Read on for takeaways.

— ElizabethCMcLaughlin (@ECMcLaughlin) January 10, 2018

Curated here for easier reading.
First draft. Curating Tweets for a blog post is clumsy business, especially for an old guy in retirement. There may be mistakes in my work, but the thrust of her points is clear.

ElizabethCMcLaughlin‏ 

@ECMcLaughlin

THREAD ON FUSION GPS. I spent the afternoon reading the transcript that Senator Feinstein released today. Here are the salient points, with citations. I am a lawyer and CEO. I was a securities fraud and human rights litigator in DC/NY for over 15 years. Read on for takeaways.

1/ First, thanks today for the bravery of @SenFeinstein. You're a heroine of the #Resistance.

2/ As I process the Fusion GPS transcript, I'll post significant points here in individual tweets. For starters: NO, Fusion GPS doesn't do hatchet jobs to try to get government agencies to start investigations against people. (Tr. 25

3/ As well, Fusion GPS knows WTF it's doing. The descriptions of the investigation in the Prevezon case are deep and powerful and detailed and serious, and they do not mess around. (Tr. 38-49)

4/ Other items of note from the Fusion GPS background: Fusion has a deep background in understanding Russian money laundering. The Prevezon case got the into investigations of Russian organized crime, Cypriot banking, and the tax system in Russia. Serious business. (Tr. 38-49)

5/ On the Fusion GPS retention on Trump: "it evolved somewhat quickly into issues of his relationships to organized crime figures . . ." (Tr. 61-62)

6/ Fusion GPS concluded early in their investigation that Trump has serious ties to Russian organized crime, including money in his companies from "Kazakhstan, among other places, and that some of it you just couldn't account for." (Tr. 67-70)

7/ Fusion GPS hired Steele as a part of "drilling down" on specific areas of concern about Trump's business dealings internationally, and Steele was not the only subcontractor hired. (Tr. 76-78)

8/ Asked about Christopher Steele as an investigator, Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS described him as a "quality" investigator in high profile situations and "a boy scout." (Tr. 81-82)

9/ Fusion sent Steele into Russia with a broad assignment to look into Trump's dealings in Russia. And what they found was that "it wasn't a giant secret" that "Donald Trump had a relationship with the Kremlin." “People were talking about it freely.” (Tr. 87-88)

10/ Now would be a good time to ask yourself why it is that @ChuckGrassley and others didn't want this transcript released. But keep going.

11/ Christopher Steele was trained as the lead Russianist in MI6 to spot disinformation from Russian intelligence. So what he found was not bullshit. What he found was real. (Tr. 88-89)

12/ What is clear in the questioning of Simpson from the Republican side of the fence is that they they were trying to set up a claim that Rinat Akhmetshin, who was present at the Trump Tower June 2016 meeting was an agent of Fusion and thereby HRC. (Tr. 109-110)

13/ This is plainly an attempt to try to claim that any Trump/Russia interactions were a democratic set-up—one that Simpson shot down hard. (Tr. 109-110)

14/ Glenn Simpson had dinner with Vesilnitskaya in New York the night before the Trump Tower meeting. Fusion was doing work on the Prevezon case, and it was a client dinner with the lawyers, of whom Vesiltnitskaya was one. This shit just gets weirder and weirder. (Tr.130-131)

15/ Asked by the Republicans whether he believes the Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 was an effort by the Russian government to make contact with the Trump campaign, Simpson responded "I think that's a reasonable interpretation." (Tr. 134-135)

15/ Fusion sent Steele into Russia to learn more about Trump's business dealings. What they found was "very different and obviously more alarming, which had to do with . . . a political conspiracy . . . the government of Russia or someone was doing some hacking. . ."(Tr. 133-134)

16/ "there were rumblings at that time about whether there had been lot of hacking and there was going to be -- political digital espionage was going to be a co

17/ And so they set out to determine if what they were learning was credible. (I mean, Jesus. If he isn't impeached after this, America is toast.)

18/ Fusion evaluated the credibility of the information they received that the Trump campaign may be involved in digital espionage to throw the election. Steele is credible. The methods described are consistent with Russian intelligence. Nothing appears to be false. (Tr. 148-150 More

18/ The very first memo within the dossier discusses that Trump and his inner circle accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin. (Tr. 154-155)

19/ In response to a question about election interference, Simpson stated "If you're getting help from a foreign government and your help is intelligence, then the foreign government's interfering," and that the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting is consistent with that. (Tr. 154-155)

20/ Only two memos in to the memos that make up the dossier, Fusion knew that what they were dealing with was a criminal attempt to influence the election, a conspiracy to violate campaign laws, and potentially the blackmailing of the @GOP candidate for President. (Tr. 158-160)

21/ "it's 26 July. So by this time Debbie Wasserman Schultz has been the subject of a very aggressive hacking campaign, weaponized hack, the likes of which, you know, have never really been seen." (Tr. 158)

22/ "We've seen hacking in politics before, but this kind of, you know, mass theft of e-mail and then to dump it all into, you know, the public sphere was extraordinary and it was criminal." (Tr. 158)

23/ "In [Steele's] mind this is already a criminal matter, there's already a potential national security matter here." (Tr. 159)

24/ "Chris said he was very concerned about whether this represented a national security threat and said he wanted to -- he said he thought we were obligated to tell someone in government, in our government about this information." (Tr. 159)

25/ "He thought from his perspective there was an issue -- a security issue about whether a presidential candidate was being blackmailed.” (Tr. 159)

26/ "From my perspective there was a law enforcement issue about whether there was an illegal conspiracy to violate the campaign laws, and then somewhere in this time the whole issue of hacking has also surfaced." (Tr. 159-160)

27/ So why did they go to the FBI? "[L]et's be clear, this was not considered by me to be part of the work that we were doing. This was -- to me this was like, you know, you're driving to work and you see something happen and you call 911, right.” (Tr. 164)

28/ 25/ It wasn't part of the -- it wasn't like we were trying to figure out who should do it. He said he was professionally obligated to do it. Like if you're a lawyer and, you know, you find out about a crime, in a lot of countries you must report that." (Tr. 164-165; 167-168)

29: "So it was like that. So I just said if that's your obligation, then you should fulfill your obligation." (Tr. 164-165; 167-168)

26/ What we can take from this is that the reporting of the dossier to the FBI was ETHICAL, HONEST, and NOT A HATCHET JOB. (Tr. 164-165; 167-168)

31/ (sorry for the screwy numbering of thread tweets, folks. this is a lot.)

32/ Simpson flagged how serious it got within the Fusion investigation when, post-reporting to the FBI, the hacking of the Democrats continued, the RNC platform as to Ukraine changed, and Trump continued to say bizarrely favorable

33/ And then Steele went to Rome, and met with the FBI, and gave them everything he had so far on Trump. Simpson says Steele's work was "really serious and really credible," and when he asked to go meet with the FBI and give them everything he had, Fusion said yes. (Tr. 171-172)

34/ And there is no question in the minds of Simpson or Steele that what they are dealing with is criminal espionage, a "crime in progress" by the Russians aga

35/ And then Simpson dropped a bomb: Steele went to Rome, gets debriefed by the FBI, and learns in the debriefing that the FBI, in September 2016, has a "voluntary" source inside the Trump campaign. (Tr. 175-176). READ THAT AGAIN.

36/ NOTE: that means this is not Papadopoulos. He was flipped when he lied to the FBI. This was also someone who was NOT also a source for Steele.

37/ @JamesComey sent the letter to the Hill concerning Hillary's emails after Fusion has reported espionage, election interference and the potential compromise of Trump to the FBI. (Tr. 178-179)

38/ Then the @nytimes reported that the FBI looked into Trump/Russia and found nothing. Simpson calls this cluster "a real Halloween special." (Tr. 178-

39/ And as a result, Steele stopped cooperating with the FBI. (Tr. 178-179)

40/ The FBI considered paying Steele to continue his work after the election, but did not. So all of this work by Steele was not on behalf of any US intelligence agency. (Tr. 214)

41/ And again, it's worth noting that this was not a hatchet job. No compensation to Fusion was conditioned on the FBI starting an investigation into Trump/Russia. (Tr. 217)

42/ After the election, Fusion was "obviously . . . as surprised as everyone else and Chris and I were mutually concerned about whether the United States had just elected someone who was compromised by a hostile foreign power . . ." (Tr.

43/ " . . . more in my case whether the election had been tainted by an intervention by the Russian intelligence services, and we were, you know, unsure what to do.” (Tr. 219).

44/ They went to John McCain in the hope that McCain would share it with the highest levels of the FBI. (Tr. 219-221

45/ And then there is this explosive bit: Steele and Simpson weren't sure that @Comey EVEN KNEW ABOUT THE ALLEGATIONS. Which would explain a lot. An awful lot. (Tr. 220-221)

46/ Just so there's no mistake about it, Simpson stated: "I was aware at the time (mid-2016) that the Russian mafia and Russian cyber crime was a subcontractor to the Russian intelligence services." (Tr. 233)

47/ Disinformation was a part of Steele's business training at MI6. He did not believe anything given to him that became a part of the dossier was disinformation. (Tr. 239)

48/ Carter Page lost money with the Russians, was really mad about sanctions, and apparently had been an espionage suspect under investigation by the FBI FOR YEARS preceding the election. Jesus. (Tr. 240-242)

49/ And add to that: Fusion had reason to believe that Page had been offered business deals in exchange for being compromised. (Tr. 240-242)

50/ Simpson was a solid witness generally. Asked about claims by SHS that the dossier was phony and Fusion took money from the Russians, he gave a scathing defense of his work and the work of Steele, concluding with he dossier "is not a fabrication." (Tr. 256-257)

51/ And then the really crazy stuff came out. Simpson was handed Manafort's contemporaneous notes from the June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting with the Russians. (Tr. 261-264)

52/ In those notes is a reference to a Cypriot holding company to engage in inward investment into Russia, the note "active sponsors of the RNC," Dick Cheney's press secretary, and finally, adoptions. (Tr. 261-264)

53/ But Cypriot holding companies, and "active sponsors of the RNC?" WTAF. There is something so deep and so corrupt here in the @GOP I'm nearly speechless. (Tr. 261-264)

54/ Fusion's conclusions were not influenced by the person paying them for their Trump research. (But Simpson did conclude on a personal level that Trump was unqualified for the job.) (Tr. 290-293)

55/ Fusion concluded that Trump had a long history of engagement in illegal activity with organized crime. (Tr. 293-294)

56/ More evidence of how good Simpson is as a witness. Asked about Fusion's investigations into the Trump Org in NYC, he denies direct criminal evidence of DJT the person being involved in crimes. The Trump Org of whom, of course, DJT is the head, is in deep. (Tr. 295-298)

57/ 49/ This is careful, careful testimony by this witness to preserve his credibility while still making his point, though Fox News will leap all over this as proof that DJT is not a criminal. The prior 295 pages of this transcript prove otherwise. (Tr. 295-298)

58/ Trump's golf courses are broke. (Tr. 299-300)

59/ And lastly, just in case you thought this wasn't as serious as it gets, one of Fusion GPS's sources has already been murdered by the Russians. (Tr. 279)

60/ Ok, people, that’s it. It's a bombshell of a day in America. And if Trump isn’t impeached after this, along with complicit members of the @GOP who have known this and tried to discredit Fusion and Steele and this dossier, there is no hope for our democracy. Period.

61/ @ChuckGrassley @TGowdySC @DevinNunes @Jim_Jordan @LindseyGrahamSC there is jail time in your futures, I suspect. #RESIST /end of thread

Described as a “celebrated career coach” and “fearless entrepreneur,” Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin is the CEO of Gaia Project Consulting, LLC, and the Founder of The Gaia Project for Women’s Leadership. Her work has earned the support and recognition of women such as Arianna Huffington, Ali Brown, DailyWorth and WorthFM Founder Amanda Steinberg, and Emerging Women Live Founder Chantal Pierrat, among many others.

Elizabeth has a storied track record of success as a Wall Street lawyer, serial CEO and entrepreneur, and high-powered executive coach. After a fifteen year career as a full-time Wall Street securities litigator and trial lawyer, Elizabeth founded Gaia Project Consulting, LLC, an executive consulting and coaching firm that serves senior executives across tech, finance, banking, law, fashion, healthcare, non-profit and consulting, propelling its clients to new heights of growth and professional alignment.

Five years later, she founded The Gaia Project for Women’s Leadership, offering virtual and live programming to grow New Paradigm Women’s Leadership worldwide.

(More at the link.)