* From Julie Hirschfeld Davis:
President-elect Donald J. Trump’s transition operation plunged into disarray on Tuesday with the abrupt resignation of Mike Rogers, who had handled national security matters, the second shake-up in less than a week on a team that has not yet begun to execute the daunting task of taking over the government…
Mr. Pence took the helm of the transition on Friday after Mr. Trump unceremoniously removed Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who had been preparing with Obama administration officials for months to put the complex transition process into motion. That effort is now frozen, senior White House officials say, because Mr. Pence has yet to sign legally required paperwork to allow his team to begin collaborating with President Obama’s aides on the handover.
* The National Bureau of Economic Research issued a report outlining what would happen in Trump followed through on his original promise to “deport ’em all” when it comes to undocumented people living in this country. Max Ehrenfreund summarized:
Unsurprisingly, the greatest number of undocumented workers — 1.3 million — were employed in leisure and hospitality, followed by the construction sector, which employed 1.1 million. These two sectors were followed by professional and business services, which is not a sector often associated with unauthorized employment but included nearly 1 million undocumented workers, by Edwards and Ortega’s estimate…
If all undocumented workers were immediately removed from the country, Edwards and Ortega forecast a decline of 9 percent in agricultural production and declines of 8 percent in construction and leisure and hospitality over the long term.
These are the industries most dependent on undocumented labor. Relative to the overall economy, however, the most important effect would be a decline in manufacturing output of $74 billion over the long term, followed by somewhat more modest declines in wholesale and retail trade and financial activities.
* Here is an interesting response to Trump’s promises/threats about undocumented people:
Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said Monday that he has no plans to change the LAPD’s stance on immigration enforcement, despite President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to toughen federal immigration laws and deport millions of people upon taking office.
For decades, the LAPD has distanced itself from federal immigration policies. The LAPD prohibits officers from initiating contact with someone solely to determine whether he or she is in the country legally, mandated by a special order signed by then-chief Daryl Gates in 1979. During Beck’s tenure as chief, the department stopped turning over people arrested for low-level crimes to federal agents for deportation and moved away from honoring federal requests to detain inmates who might be deportable past their jail terms.
On Monday, Beck said he planned to maintain the long-standing separation.
* Abi Wilkinson admits that she’s spent quite a bit of time online learning about the foot soldiers of the alt-right. She shared some of what she learned and concludes with this:
When we fret about young people leaving western countries and going to fight with Isis, it’s common to focus on the role of the internet in their political radicalization…
Reading through the posting history of individual aliases, it’s possible to chart their progress from vague dissatisfaction, and desire for social status and sexual success, to full-blown adherence to a cohesive ideology of white supremacy and misogyny. Neofascists treat these websites as recruitment grounds. They find angry, frustrated young men and groom them in their own image…
Much has been written about financial hardship turning afflicted white communities into breeding grounds for white supremacist politics, but what about when dissatisfaction has little to do with economic circumstance? It’s hard to know what can be done to combat this phenomenon, but surely we have to start by taking the link between online hatred and resentment of women and the rise of neofascism seriously.
* At least for the next few months, the good news keeps rolling in.
U.S. wage growth is galloping higher at its fastest pace in nearly eight years https://t.co/eCZKInPvmu pic.twitter.com/dHxozBHVdZ
— Bloomberg Markets (@markets) November 15, 2016
* Finally, there is a reason why music has always played such an essential role in any movement for justice and equality.
