Muda69

Bernie Already Won. So Why Run Again?: http://reason.com/archives/2019/02/21/bernie-already-won-so-why-run-again

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Is there another outsider who yanked an unwilling political party further in his or her ideological direction in a shorter period of time than Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)? I mean, other than Donald Trump.

Back when he was polling in single digits at the outset of the 2016 presidential primary, Sanders and his position of being against every single international trade agreement since World War II on the inaccurate grounds that they facilitate a "race to the bottom" were still considered outliers within the Democratic Party. By October 2015 his unlikely polling surge helped persuade consensus front-runner Hillary Clinton to downgrade her opinion on the Trans-Pacific Partnership from "gold standard" to junk.

Where are the Democrats now? "It's a pretty safe bet that no candidate is going to campaign as a free trader in the 2020 Democratic primary, setting up the potential for a large-scale realignment on a major policy issue for the party," Voxconcluded this week.

 

Advantage Bernie, if not necessarily the country.

What about Sanders' radical campaign agenda item of providing free college tuition? Two years later, Inside Higher Edreported, "Free college goes mainstream." His $15 federal minimum wage — originally opposed then later adopted by Clinton, despite being warned against doing so by the same liberal economist whose research is most often cited by proponents — was introduced in a House bill just last month.

Back when the 2016 primary was at its testiest, Clinton's favorite critique of the senator's proposals, particularly his "Medicare for all" plan, was that "the numbers just don't add up." This year? Good luck finding a Democratic candidate who doesn't back Medicare for all, at least as a feel-good slogan.

Maybe it took the election of an honest-to-God fabulist as president, but Democrats not named Amy Klobuchar seem to be divorcing themselves from any sense of real-world constraints on their apparently boundless aspirations. "Now it is time to complete that revolution," Sanders told his supporters Tuesday as he announced another shot at the presidency. The word choice wasn't accidental.

In addition to single-payer healthcare, free tuition and the $15 minimum wage, Sanders "will also tout proposals to mandate breaking up the biggest Wall Street banks; lower drug prices through aggressive government intervention; new labor laws to encourage union formation; curbed corporate spending on elections; paid family and medical leave; gender pay equity; and expanded Social Security benefits," the Washington Post reported. And don't forget the Green New Deal!

The real story here is not that Sanders is cranking his Spotify playlist of progressive greatest hits (including stuff I actually like, such as legalizing marijuana, reducing cash bail and adopting a more restrained foreign policy). It's that the rest of the 2020 Democratic field is already with him on most of the economic and budgetary issues that drive his fans wild with happiness and me to drink.

Which suggests the question: Why run, at age 77, when you've already won?

Maybe Sanders wants to prove to himself that the revolution he helped start is real enough to be enacted into society-altering legislative change. Here, despite the persuasive successes listed above, I suspect Bernie and his supporters may again end up tasting bitter disappointment.

Despite the breakout success of such oxygen-gobbling, Sanders-influenced stars as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), it is moderate Democrats, not progressives, who have repainted the House of Representatives blue. The national political media may love telegenic coastal lefties, but the policymaking future of the party probably lies closer to the unorthodox centrism of purple-state nonconformists such as Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.).

And the track record of big progressive policy ideas colliding with reality is just not great — even in the late stages of a long economic expansion.

Bernie's home state of Vermont passed single-payer healthcare, only to scrap it when the price tag became clearer. Maryland enacted a "millionaires tax" more than a decade ago only to discover that rich people can afford to move. And Californians can testify about the gaps between progressive dreams and on-the-ground costs when it comes to the Sanders/Ocasio-Cortez vision of high-speed rail.

It's possible that these are just growing pains for the revolutionary wing of the Democrats. Maybe there are solid national majorities that will back the kind of economic policies popular in Los Angeles, Seattle and New York. But there's an alternative theory worth considering.

Bernie Sanders, who has been Bernie Sanders almost forever, only became a national phenomenon after emerging as the last real candidate standing against Hillary Clinton, a comparatively inauthentic machine politician who tried valiantly to make her nomination look preordained. Americans don't take kindly to coronations, and many of the Democrats I know who flocked to Sanders did so not because they agreed with him on everything he said, but because he meant it at least.

In a campaign with just two choices, ideology can be overrated, even overlooked. But Democrats are now hurtling toward 2020 with a dozen declared candidates, half of whom agree with Sanders on economics. It's going to take more than a bag full of trillion-dollar promises to make Sanders the "at least I mean it" candidate this time.

Trump’s Tariffs May Classify Imported Cars as National Security Risks: http://reason.com/archives/2019/02/21/trumps-tariffs-may-classify-imported-car

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If you drive an imported car, as I do, your vehicle may soon be declared a national security risk by the Department of Commerce. If you drive an American-assembled car, your car may also pose a threat to U.S. national security because it inevitably contains some foreign parts—which Commerce could include in its list of threats to national security. If President Donald Trump acts on this finding, it'll be bad news for automakers and even worse news for consumers.

Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 gives the president unilateral authority to impose tariffs or quotas on imports that "threaten to impair" U.S. national security. In a still-undisclosed-to-the-public report sent to the administration on Sunday, many suspect that Commerce contends imported foreign cars and parts represent just such a threat. If that's the case, it would give the president power to impose restrictions on them, such as a 25 percent tariff. He has up to 90 days to announce his decision and another 180 days to negotiate remedies with trade partners.

If Trump imposes these trade restrictions, it will make producing and purchasing every single new automobile in America more expensive. Yes, I mean all automobiles, not just imports. That's because, while car brands can be national (e.g., Toyota is Japanese, Mini is German, Ford is American), in reality they are global automakers using global sources for their parts.

 

Many "foreign" automakers produce and assemble cars in the United States and then export them to the rest of the world. The same is true for "American" automakers who have both domestic and international locations from which they produce for export and domestic consumption. No automobile is made with 100 percent of its parts from one county. For instance, Tesla—which is unique in that it produces all of its vehicles in the United States—imports half of the parts it uses.

Looking at the percentage of each vehicle's parts and manufacturing that comes from either the United States or Canada as tracked by U.S. regulators, CNN Money reported that "the two most 'American' cars are both Hondas—the Odyssey minivan and Ridgeline pickup. Three-quarters of each vehicle's components are made in the United States or Canada."

In other words, no automakers—not even G.M. or Ford—will be safe from these tariffs. All manufacturers will suffer rising costs, much of which will be shifted onto consumers via higher prices.

A new study from the Center for Automotive Research estimates that import restrictions would increase new-car prices by $455 to $6,875, depending on the approach the administration takes. These higher prices would reduce annual consumer demand by 493,600 to 2 million vehicles. But that's before other countries retaliate with their own tariffs and quotas.

These new U.S. trade barriers will impact more than sticker prices. If the American market is too small for a foreign automaker to justify building a U.S. factory for a given model, all the models of that car sold here will be imported. Those tariffs could make the cost of importing that particular model so uncompetitive that the company simply stops selling it here, meaning fewer choices for American consumers.

U.S. exports could also fall. Foreign and domestic companies produce cars for U.S. consumption, but they also export a massive amount. Motor vehicles and auto parts are respectively the third- and fourth-highest U.S. exports. If new tariffs are implemented, the high cost of importing will make the domestic production of auto exports for foreign markets more expensive and uncompetitive. Manufacturers will then have a big incentive to shift production abroad, and that will only intensify when foreign retaliation kicks in.

We saw this play out last year after the administration used Section 232 to impose a 25 percent tariff on steel imports. Many countries retaliated with their own tariffs and quotas, and a few months later, Harley Davison announced that it would move some of its production to Thailand. BMW also announced that it would move some of its U.S. SUV production abroad.

We all better hope Trump doesn't go ahead with these tariffs.

Possible bad news here in Indiana, where Japanese-owned automakers like Honda, Subaru, and Toyota are major employers with large manufacturing facilities.  And also count in the myriad of smaller parts suppliers that have cropped up around these facilities.

https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/columnists/gregg-doyel/2019/02/20/time-talk-pacers-colts-downtown-and-pro-sports-public-subsidies/2914062002/

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They could just leave, right? These millionaires, these billionaires and their toys. These owners of professional sports franchises. All that money, and they want the public’s help?

First the Pacers and the new lease they seek to keep them in town for at least 25 more years, and now the Indy Eleven and a possible new $150 million stadium? On top of the Colts and their $720 million stadium funded mostly by public money? Outrageous, some of you are saying.

So here’s what we ought to do, some of you are saying: Tell them they can’t have any more public funding. Tell them no. What are they going to do? Leave?

Well …

That’s the gamble.

The thing about any wager is this: If you’re willing to make it, you better be OK with losing. Which is the pivot point of this whole thing.

The issue here is not: Should public money be used to help the richest of the rich get richer? That’s an irritating question to ask, I’ll give you that. It doesn’t sit right with me, either, the prospect of Jim Irsay and Herb Simon receiving tax money that could go elsewhere – we could just fill potholes with those $20 bills – to subsidize their sports homes.

Here’s a harder question, and the ultimate issue: Would you rather the city hang onto every penny of the public funds in question … or would you rather the city hang onto the Pacers? Feel free to substitute “Colts” or “Eleven,” though the Eleven are in the same sentence with those other two, in this story at all, simply for the timing of last week’s bombshells.

....

Herb Simon doesn’t want that legacy. He wants to pass the Pacers someday to his son, Steve. What he also wants, now: millions of dollars of public money set aside for use by the Capital Improvement Board – which manages Bankers Life Fieldhouse, Indiana Convention Center, Lucas Oil Stadium and Victory Field – largely to operate and improve the fieldhouse.

That doesn’t sit right with a lot of people around here, and again, I get it. But not every answer is an easy “yes” or “no.” Sometimes you want to scream: No! But this is what you do instead: You close your eyes, pinch the bridge of your nose to ward off the headache, and you whisper: yes.

...

That’s how it works, and you don’t have to like it any more than I do. But this is the deal: In markets our size, NBA and NFL owners expect public help, and if they don’t get it, they make noise about leaving. Usually they don’t, no. But usually, public funds have to be diverted – away from roads, schools, libraries, etc. – to keep them. It’s the dance, and we either turn up the music or risk the devastating sound of silence downtown.

Sorry Mr. Doyel, that irritating question you posit is the most important one. 

And yet the question Mr. Doyel dodges is why do these owners expect, no demand, public dollars, use their franchises as a bargaining chip?

15 hours ago, Wabash82 said:

If characterizing a kid's (self-described) smile as a "smirk" is defamation, then I need to get Bobref immediately to file my defamation case against Muda, who has falsely imputed all sorts of mean and negative intentions to my gentle commentaries on this forum.  

Gentle?  I often find them cutting but insightful, and written in a prose that a mental midget like myself can only dream about.  It may be that elite Wabash education vs. my lowly Indiana State education................

Good enough for government work I guess.

Nick Sandmann Sues Washington Post for $250 Million: http://reason.com/volokh/2019/02/20/nick-sandmann-sues-washington-post-for-2

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As multiple sources report, Nick Sandmann--the Kentucky student known as the "MAGA hat teen" whose recent confrontation with Native American activist Nathan Phillips on the National Mall made headlines--is suing the Washington Post for its coverage of the event, to the tune of $250 million. Sandmann's attorneys reproduce their complaint here. While the complaint is quite the mix of non-legal accusations and legal claims, the main legal basis at this time is alleged defamation. Some of the claims are as follows:

The Post published its False and Defamatory Accusations negligently and with actual knowledge of falsity or a reckless disregard for the truth.

As one of the world's leading news outlets, the Post knew but ignored the importance of verifying damaging, and in this case, incendiary accusations against a minor child prior to publication.

The negligence and actual malice of the Post is demonstrated by its utter and knowing disregard for the truth available in the complete video of the January 18 incident which was available contemporaneously with the edited clip the Post chose because it appeared to support its biased narrative.

Instead of investigation and publishing the true story, the Post recklessly rushed to publish its False and Defamatory Accusations in order to advance its own political agenda against President Trump.

In doing so, the Post lifted the incident from social media and placed it in the mainstream media, giving its False and Defamatory Accusations credibility and permanence.

Other claims involve failure to investigate and use of biased sources, among others. Some expert practitioners are skeptical of the lawsuit's merits. They emphasize, for example, that who got in whose face between Sandmann and Phillips is a matter of opinion rather than a verifiable fact.

What happened during the encounter is a story that developed over several days, with more video footage and testimony surfacing along the way, and I would be surprised if the court held the Washington Post to the standard of knowledge and investigation that Sandmann's lawyers seem to expect. It is also not too clear who the "unbiased" witnesses (is there such a thing?) are that the Post should have interrogated before printing any story. To this day, the Internet debates what exactly happened on that day. It is doubtful that a newspaper will be held liable for essentially failing to take the plaintiff's side in the controversy.

Yeah, this will be a tough one for Mr. Sandmann to win.

Detroit City Council Bans Autorama Bandit Jump Over Seemingly Nonexistent Confederate Flag: https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2019/02/detroit-city-council-bans-autorama-bandit-jump-over-seemingly-nonexistent-confederate-flag/#more-1662610

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Until Tuesday, organizers of the 2019 Detroit Autorama were planning on opening the show on March 1st with a car jump by a replica Smokey and the Bandit Trans Am Firebird. A couple of years ago, the Autorama featured a jump of a Dukes of Hazzard “General Lee” Charger replica, to considerable press coverage, including here at TTAC.

This year, the same group of car enthusiasts that put on the General Lee jump, Northeast Ohio Dukes, was going to be back on Atwater Street behind Cobo Hall, only with a black and gold Pontiac, not an orange Dodge. When it comes to famous fictional car jumps, the Bandit’s Mulberry Bridge leap is right up there with the General Lee’s vault in the Dukes’ opening credits, and the Autorama jump was going to be part of a more general tribute at the custom car show to the late Burt Reynolds, a Michigan native, who starred in SATB.

Detroit’s City Council, though, has put a kibosh on the jump, apparently over a nonexistent Confederate battle flag, voting 7-1 to reject the jump. In the 1977 film, the black and gold Trans Am wears a period-correct Georgia license plate on the front of the car. The plate’s Confederate war banner offends current woke sensibilities. The license plate does not appear on any photos or videos available of the Ohio group’s Bandit replica. A commemorative t-shirt they’re selling for the as-of-now cancelled jump does have a caricature of a scene from the movie featuring the Bandit with the Stars & Bars along with Sheriff Buford T. Justice’s four-door Pontiac Grand LeMans police cruiser. After news of the Council’s actions broke, Northeast Ohio Dukes insisted on their Facebook page that they had no intention of having the plate on the car at the Detroit appearance.

The fact that the stunt car wasn’t going to have the flag, and the fact that Autorama has been bringing tens of thousands of fans and their money to downtown Detroit for over 50 years might have persuaded normal people not to make a fuss, but Detroit City Council is populated by politicians, not normal people.

During the council’s Tuesday debate on a permit for the jump, Councilman Scott Benson said “Autorama, which has a history in the city of Detroit, also has a history of supporting imagery and symbols of racism, oppression and white supremacy as well as American, home-bred terrorism right here in the United States.”

That “history of supporting imagery….” was apparently a reference to the 2017 General Lee replica jump, and hopefully not an allegation that folks in pointy white hoods clog up the aisles at Cobo every year in early March. There are plenty of hoods at Autorama, but they’re all on cars, and more likely to be tangerine orange flake, baby, than white.

While it’s true that symbols of the Confederacy have become touchstones for controversy in recent years, I have to say that Councilman Benson’s hyberbolic rhetoric impugning Autorama organizers as racist white supremacists seems foolish to me, at least based on what I have seen at the event. Putting aside the fact that there were plenty of African-American folks watching the 2017 General Lee jump (I was there), flag or not, the closely related custom, hot rod, and drag racing communities (Autorama’s official sponsor is the Michigan Hot Rod Association) are the most ethnically diverse subcultures of the automotive world.

While the Detroit area’s Concours of America and Eyes On Design car shows are far from “lilly white,” as a more working class show there are simply a lot more black, Asian, and Latin folks, percentage-wise, attending Autorama than those other two shows. I go to many, many car shows and the Detroit Autorama has the most ethnic and racial diversity of any I’ve visited.  Not just attending, either. Black car owners and builders have been Ridler Award finalists in recent years. Similarly, show organizers have placed low riders from California-based Latino car clubs in prominent positions at the front of Cobo’s main hall. It’s a high honor in the customs world to have your work in the front of Cobo, where the Ridler finalists are displayed.  In conjunction with Low Rider magazine, this year’s show will also feature 17 cars in the Low Rider Magazine Invitational.

Contrary to photos and videos of the Northeast Ohio Duke’s Bandit replica, and the group’s assertions, Benson said after the vote that the Trans Am, “still proudly flies a Confederate flag, which is a symbol of oppression, slavery, as well as home-bred American terrorism. So this body said we are not going to support that type of symbolism nor the audacity to support that type of activity in the city of Detroit.”

Benson accused the Northeast Ohio Duke’s of misleading the city concerning the 2017 jump. “The Confederate flag which has been a symbol of all of those items was proudly displayed within the last two years during an Autorama car jump when they came and expressly said they would not display that symbol during the jump,” Benson said. “Come to find out they actually displayed that symbol, and that can be seen in YouTube video jumps they did on Atwater Street.”

At the time, Northeast Ohio Dukes told the city and show organizers that as the flag was on their General Lee’s roof, and since they were doing a jump, the flag would not be visible to the street level crowd. How credible or not that claim was, the city apparently accepted it at the time.

The Autorama’s media liaison said, following the vote, that organizers had no comment other than the fact that they were trying to resolve the issue with the city.

9 minutes ago, Impartial_Observer said:

Hence my sarcastic comment about him speaking for all conservatives. Because every time some id1ot  makes a stupid comment like this, we all get stuck with it.  

Conversely Crazy Uncle Joe says "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man." and everyone laughs it off, ohhhh, that's just Crazy Uncle Joe.

Was he talking about this gentlemen?:

Thank you for the update Bob.  This is indeed good news.

Supreme Court Delivers Unanimous Victory for Asset Forfeiture Challenge: http://reason.com/blog/2019/02/20/supreme-court-delivers-unanimous-victory

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States are bound by the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against excessive fines and fees when they seek to seize property or other assets from individuals charged or convicted of a crime, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Wednesday.

It's a decision that hands a major victory to critics of civil asset forfeiture, and it opens another avenue to legal challenges against that widely used (and often abused) practice by which states and local governments can seize cars, cash, homes, and pretty much anything else that is suspected of being used to commit a crime.

The case before the Supreme Court, Timbs v. Indiana, involved the seizure of a $42,000 Land Rover SUV from Tyson Timbs, who was arrested in 2015 for selling heroin to undercover police officers. He pleaded guilty to his crimes and was sentenced to one year of house arrest and five years of probation. On top of that, the state of Indiana seized his 2012 Land Rover—which he had purchased with money received from his late father's life insurance payout, not with the proceeds of drug sales—on the ground that it had been used to commit a crime.

 

Timbs challenged that seizure, arguing that taking his vehicle amounted to an additional fine on top of the sentence he had already received. The Indiana Supreme Court rejected that argument, solely because the U.S. Supreme Court had never explicitly stated that the Eighth Amendment applied to the states.

On Wednesday, the high court did exactly that.

"For good reason, the protection against excessive fines has been a constant shield throughout Anglo-American history," wrote Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the opinion. "Excessive fines can be used, for example, to retaliate against or chill the speech of political enemies," she wrote, or can become sources of revenue disconnected from the criminal justice system.

Indeed, some local governments do use fines and fees as a means to raise revenue, and that has created a perverse incentive to target residents. After the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, a federal investigation into the city government found that 20 percent of its general fund came from criminal fines. And Ferguson is not alone in relying heavily on revenue from fines. Making clear that the Eighth Amendment applies to the states will make it far easier to challenge unreasonable fines and fees—including not just asset forfeiture cases, but also situations where local governments hit homeowners with massive civil penalties for offenses such as unapproved paint jobs or Halloween decorations.

Some of those cases are already getting teed up. As C.J. Ciaramella wrote in this month's issue of Reason, a federal class action civil rights lawsuit challenging the aggressive asset forfeiture program in Wayne County, Michigan, that was filed in December argues that the county's seizure of a 2015 Kia Soul after the owner was caught with $10 of marijuana should be deemed an excessive fine.

More broadly, Timbs is a good reminder of how ridiculous the argument in favor of civil asset forfeiture really is. During oral arguments in November, Indiana's solicitor general got boxed into a corner by Justice Stephen Breyer, who managed to twist the government's lawyer into arguing that Indiana should be allowed to seize vehicles for as small an offense as driving 5 mph over the speed limit, which literally elicited laughter in the courtroom.

After Wednesday's ruling, there's a better chance that more civil asset forfeiture cases will be laughed right out of court for being what they obviously are: unconstitutional, excessive punishments that don't fit the crime.

2 minutes ago, Bobref said:

Buy guns. You can use those to get anything else you need. 🤪

Good point.  However I am a believer in the ZAP (zero aggression principle).  I do own a firearm for self defense however.

Why must Mr. Sutton speak for anybody other than himself?

4 minutes ago, BARRYOSAMA said:

It's a print only newspaper with no web site.  If you find an email for Goodloe Sutton I will ask him and CC you.

Still scratching my head as to why he might have been so brazen in 2019 to make these comments that seem to embarrass much of his own state.

Contact information, including a mailing address and telephone number can be found here:  http://drp.stparchive.com/Archive/DRP/DRP12132018p02.php

Congress Is Complicit in Trump’s Power Grab: https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/trump-national-emergency-declaration-congress-diminishing-role/

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Some 20 years ago, Paul Begala, then an adviser to President Bill Clinton, expressed his marvel at the ability of the president to act unilaterally. “Stroke of the pen. Law of the land. Kinda cool.”

And, of course, we all remember President Obama’s assertion that he could bypass Congress as long as he had “a pen and a phone.” Obama used that pen and phone not only to implement DACA but to rewrite parts of the Affordable Care Act, to circumvent the constitutional requirement that Congress approve treaties, and to target US citizens with drone strikes. In fact, DACA may turn out to be the most defensible of Obama’s presidential power grabs.

In between, President George W. Bush declared unilateral presidential authority to “nullify statutes and court judgments” by refusing to enforce them, acting on the basis of his independent legal judgment. Perhaps most notoriously, when Congress passed an amendment to an emergency defense-appropriations bill prohibiting torture during the interrogation of suspected terrorists, President Bush issued a signed statement asserting that he was not bound by it. And while the War on Terror was the biggest impetus for Bush’s accretion of presidential power, he also asserted the unilateral power to act on issues ranging from Medicare to whistleblower protections to affirmative action.

Now, we have President Trump claiming the authority to reallocate funds that Congress had (a) specifically appropriated for other purposes, and (b) specifically refused to appropriate for the uses the president wants.

The legal arguments around Trump’s declaration are unclear. The president’s actions certainly appear to contravene Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution, which says, “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law . . .” On the other hand, the National Emergencies Act does give the president a great deal of unilateral discretion. Other presidents have used it at least 59 times to trample on congressional power (though most often for imposing sanctions on foreign companies or individuals, or wartime military projects).

Trump’s use of the statute might be more egregious than most, but it’s neither completely unprecedented nor without foundation. Congress may actually have voluntarily surrendered its authority. And therein lies the bigger problem. For decades, Congress has been abdicating its role in our constitutional structure, ceding more and more power to a monarchical presidency. The Founding Fathers, justifiably wary of a king, intended the legislative branch to be preeminent. As Article I says, “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.”

The job of the presidency is to see that the laws that Congress has passed “are faithfully executed.” And as Chief Justice Jackson wrote in the 1952 case of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company v. Sawyer, “In the framework of our Constitution, the President’s power to see that laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a lawmaker . . . The Constitution is neither silent nor equivocal about who shall make laws which the president is to execute.”

But increasingly, that’s been flipped on its head, with the complicity of presidents of both parties and of Congress itself.

It’s easy to understand why presidents would want to try to seize more power. But it’s less clear why Congress would so cravenly surrender its prerogatives — if not cowardice. After all, if Congress has no responsibility for anything, congressmen can’t be held responsible for anything that voters might not like.

Congress might grumble when a president unilaterally imposes tariffs, for example. But grumble is all that it will do. When Congress does actually pass legislation, it still leaves the real authority to the president and executive agencies. All too often, Congress simply expresses its desire for vague (and popular) goals like “clean air,” then leaves the actual hard choices to others.

Even on matters as basic as war and peace, Congress is AWOL. Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution gives Congress the exclusive power to declare war. Yet, US troops are currently fighting in more than a dozen countries without no such declaration from Congress. This Congress refuses to even debate updating an Authorization for the Use of Force that was intended for Afghanistan 18 years ago and is now used to justify interventions from Somalia to the Philippines.

We’ve reached the point where presidents can go to war, appropriate funds, impose revenue measures, and far more, all without Congressional approval. As James Madison warned in Federalist No. 48, “An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among the several bodies of magistracy as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by others.”

Congress could restore those checks and restraints by reclaiming its authority. That should start by disapproving Trump’s power grab. It’s telling, though, that no one really believes that they will do this.

That’s not so cool after all.

Agreed.  As Mr. Madison warned we now have had a series of "elected despots".

https://www.cato.org/blog/cfpb-payday-lending-regulations

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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) recently proposed the eliminationof new payday lending rules created under the Obama Administration and imposed in 2017. Payday lenders are frequently vilified—a recent New York Times editorialdeclared that the CFPB “betrayed financially vulnerable Americans last week by proposing to gut rules…that shield borrowers from predatory loans”—but recent evidence indicates that the predatory costs of payday loans may be nonexistent and the benefits are real and measurable. Thus, the original regulatory restrictions were unnecessary.

Most Americans take access to credit for granted, but many lower-income Americans have difficulty meeting the requirements to get a credit card or take out collateralized loans. With minimal approval requirements that are easier to meet—often just a bank account statement, a pay stub, and a photo ID—payday lenders offer short-term, uncollateralized loans. These loans are advances against a future paycheck, typically about $100-$500 per loan, and customers usually owe a fee of around $15 per $100 borrowed for two weeks.

Consumer advocates oppose these terms for two reasons. First, they argue the terms are onerous. They convert the loan terms into an annual percentage rate (APR) that would be disclosed by a conventional credit-card issuer, and the result is 391 percent. This number shocks the sensibilities of the average person and easily leads to the conclusion that the payday lender is ripping off the consumer.

The APR is misleading because the fixed costs of lending as well as the default costs must be defrayed over much smaller sums than conventional loans. According to research reviewed by Victor Stango in the fall 2012 issue of Regulation, the fixed and marginal costs of the average $300 loan are $25. Thus, with no risk of default, the break-even per-loan charge is $25. But 5 percent of customers default increasing the break-even per-loan charge to $40, or $13.33 per $100 borrowed.   

In addition, the revenues of payday lenders do not seem to lead to excess profits. Payday lending appears to be very competitive. There are more physical payday lenders (24,000) than there are banks and credit unions (16,000). And according to research cited in Stango’s article, payday lenders do not earn “excess returns” in the stock market.   

The second objection consumer advocates have against payday lenders is the inability of some consumers to pay back their loans after the initial two weeks. If borrowers rollover their loans, the fees grow larger quickly.

Two papers, which I reviewed in the spring 2017 issue of Regulation, utilize data from the military to investigate the effects of payday loans and challenge this objection. In the mid-2000s active duty military members were three times more likely than civilians to take out a payday loan, and as many as 20 percent of active duty military members had used a payday loan in the past year. The belief that payday loans were predatory and that they adversely affected young soldiers’ performance led Congress to cap the APR on loans for military servicemembers and their families at 36 percent in the Military Lending Act of 2007 (MLA), effectively banning payday lending to the military nationwide. 

The authors of both studies exploit the fact that military members are randomly assigned to bases across the nation (in states that ban payday loans and in states that do not). Thus, using the military’s rich administrative data, the studies are able to analyze differences between individuals in states with and without payday lending bans, before and after the MLA.

In the first paper, Susan Payne Carter and William Skimmyhorn of the United States Military Academy examine labor market and credit outcomes for military members. Specifically, Carter and Skimmyhorn analyze involuntary separation from the military (which may reflect financial mismanagement or stress that affects service members’ job performance) and the denial or revocation of security clearances (which, because the military considers high levels of debt as a threat to individuals with clearances, provides another indicator of negative payday loan effects). The authors find that access to payday loans did not increase involuntary separation or denial of clearances because of bad credit.  

In the second paper, Mary Zaki investigates how access to payday loans allowed service members to smooth consumption over their pay cycle by using data on sales at on-base stores to analyze consumption behavior. Exploiting the same differences between state laws and before and after enactment of the MLA, she finds that after the ban sales on paydays were 21.74 percent higher than sales on non-paydays, but sales on bases before the ban and near payday lenders were only 20.14 percent higher—a 1.6 percent smaller gap between payday and non-payday spending. The variance in spending across the pay cycle was lower (i.e., consumption was smoother) when soldiers had access to payday lending services.  

Together, these results undermine consumer advocates’ claims of the negative impacts of payday loans and demonstrate the consumption smoothing benefits. Carter and Skimmyhorn found no negative effects (as measured by involuntary separation from the military or revocation of security clearances) for members of the military even though they utilize payday lending more than civilians. And Zaki illustrates that payday loans, like all loans, allow consumers to smooth consumption.

Though often portrayed as predatory, payday lenders provide many Americans, who often don’t have access to traditional bank services, with the opportunity to smooth consumption or get cash quickly when emergencies arise. The apparently “high” fees are a natural outcome of lending small amounts to riskier borrowers. Any restrictions that limit these fees or impose increased costs on lenders may eliminate access to any loans, leaving former borrowers with less-desirable, higher-cost options.

Agreed.  Nobody is forcing individuals to use payday lenders.  They are adults, free to make their own financial choices.

https://mises.org/wire/lending-standards-fall-worries-new-bust-rise

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With more than a decade having passed since the financial crisis of 2007/8, the mainstream economics profession still seems to be almost as far from agreeing on the ultimate causes of that crisis as they were from being able to foresee its arrival back in the mid-2000’s. If asked about the causes of that crash, the average non-Austrian economist is unlikely to dwell on the prickly question of what ultimately caused the housing bubble and bust, and will more likely pivot to the easier, more widely agreed upon issue of how collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) created channels for the housing crisis to spread into a full-blown financial crisis. In the run-up to the crisis, US financial institutions heavily invested in particular types of CDOs called mortgage-backed securities, which essentially packaged together mortgages from a wide array of different locations. It was thought unlikely that house prices could decline across the whole of the US simultaneously, and the housing market was booming, so packaging together mortgages from different locations into CDOs seemed like a profitable and risk-free investment. By the time house prices began to decline, however, key banks had invested so heavily in these mortgage-backed CDOs that the housing crash brought down the whole financial system with it. Such, in very broad and simple terms, is the account of the causes of the 2007/8 crash with which many mainstream economists would agree.

In light of this, it can easily be understood why the financial press assumed such a worried tone when reporting on recent research by the Bank of England, which revealed the extent to which financial institutions around the world have again begun heavily investing in CDOs. The report revealed that international financial institutions have so far amassed a $405 billion exposure to ‘junk debt’ packaged within CDOs, while the broader market for this low-rated debt has swelled to $1.4 trillion.

Discussing the research during a Treasury committee hearing last month, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said that the Bank was “concerned” by the “rapid” growth of this market, which he said had “all the hallmarks” of the sub-prime mortgage bubble which preceded the 2007/8 crash. One MP present at the hearing warned Mr Carney “you can hear the ghosts of sub-prime mortgages clanking their chains”, and the report apparently also sparked fears amongst policymakers at the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank.

The key difference between this new wave of CDOs, compared with those that precipitated the 2008 crash, is that the new CDOs are packages of low-rated ‘junk’ business debt, rather than packages of ‘sub-prime’ mortgages. This rapidly growing market for high-risk, high-return debt is currently populated by hundreds of US companies with ‘below investment grade’ credit ratings, including such household names as American Airlines, Uber, and Burger King. It has also been argued that these sorts of leveraged loans played a role in the recent bankruptcies of such companies as Toys R Us and Sears.

...

Evidence of these declining lending standards is given by the fact that, at present, around 80% of the leveraged loan market consists of “covenant-lite” loans, as compared with around 25% before the 2007/8 crisis. ‘Covenant-lite’ loans are loans which have partly or wholly discarded the ‘covenants’ which traditionally protected investors by requiring borrowers to meet various financial health standards before the loan is granted.

Furthermore, the stimulus to risk-taking encouraged by artificially low interest rates is illustrated by the fact that $150 billion worth of the ‘junk’ debt CDOs are currently being held by insurers and pension funds, institutions typically characterized by their desire to hold safe assets.

As central banks continue to slowly normalize interest rates, the foundations of the overinflated junk debt market have already begun to crumble away. This past December saw the leveraged loan market suffer itsbiggest monthly decline since mid-2011, wiping out nearly the entirety of 2018’s gains in the S&P/LSTA leveraged loans index. This sharp and sudden decline bumped 2018’s overall performance in that index down to the third worst in the past 20 years.

Predictably enough, the guardians of conventional opinion have already begun preparing their usual shallow, politically-motivated arguments about what caused this phenomenon and what needs to be done. The Telegraph’s article, for example, warned that a potential junk debt crash, if it arrives, would have been caused by the “eagerness in the US to liberate Wall Street from Obama-era restrictions”, citing a US appeals court ruling from last year which found that CDO managers no longer had to hold onto a portion of the risk they sold to others. The application of these politically convenient cure-alls can do nothing, however, to shield the true responsible parties from scrutiny, provided that priority is given to spreading public understanding of Mises’ Austrian Business Cycle Theory, which alone is capable of shedding light on the real causes of the coming crash.

The bust/crash is coming.    I suggest buying gold, and seeds.

How the Next President Could Declare a National Emergency Over Climate Change: https://earther.gizmodo.com/how-the-next-president-could-declare-a-national-emergen-1832636899

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On Friday, President Trump tossed precedent out the window and declared a national emergency to pay for an unneeded border wall he previously promised Mexico would pay for.

His declaration isn’t just setting up a massive court battle. It also opens the door to imagining how a Democratic president could wield emergency powers to tackle climate change, something Republicans are already worrying aboutand Democrats are already embracing as a path forward given the years of Republican filibustering, inaction, and denial.

As it turns out, the president has a few potential avenues to quickly address both fossil fuel production and renewable energy, but the powers aren’t nearly as sweeping as Republicans fear and advocates hope. A climate crisis national emergency declaration isn’t going to lead to the complete decarbonization of the U.S., but it could start to unwind a system that keeps churning carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at a dangerous rate.

Imagine that around 11 p.m. on November 3, 2020, CNN calls Florida for Kamala Harris, making it clear Trump will be a one-term president. Democrats also hold the House, but the battle for the Senate comes down to Texas. Beto O’Rourke’s run at John Cornyn’s seat ends like his race against Ted Cruz, with the hope of turning Texas purple dying out in the state’s deep red rural counties. As a result, Republicans hang onto the Senate and with that, any hope of meaningful climate action making it through the legislative branch goes out the window for at least two more years.

Harris said opioids and gun violence are both national emergencies early in the campaign, leaving the door open to her issuing a declaration. But recognizing the urgent message in the UN’s special 2018 report on climate change, imaginePresident-elect Harris instead announces on her first day in office that she’ll sign a declaration for a national emergency to address the climate crisis.

In declaring an emergency, Harris will have to outline what emergency powers she’d use. The Brennan Center for Justice has identified nearly 140 statutesthat any president can draw on when declaring a national emergency that give them power to regulate, move money around, and even use industry to do the government’s bidding. 

All these powers are tied to the idea of a national security emergency, with recent declarations springing up in wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks and Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine. But as we’ve seen with the Trump wall declaration, presidents have a pretty wide latitude for interpreting what constitutes a threat to national security. A future president may argue there’s ample reason to declare a climate change national emergency, given the myriad ways in which it undermines U.S. security at home and abroad.

“There are very few restrictions on president’s ability to declare a national emergency,” Andrew Boyle, a counsel at the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, told Earther. “Certainly around climate change and all the possible ramifications, billions of dollars in devastation climate change can cause, migration issues, food scarcity, all these are things that come with climate change that could inform the basis for president declaring of national emergency.”

...

If a president does go this route, it will almost certainly be challenged in court, much like the Trump administration’s declaration to fund a border wall. Both Hill and Boyle noted that the courts have tended to be deferential to the executive branch on areas of national security, and the border wall challenges will set precedent for any cases around a climate crisis declaration.

9 hours ago, Miner_Pride said:

Has anyone been following this series of events going down between the new school board and essentially the entire school?

students and parents flood the gym to ask about how coach wray was let go, as well as the AD and baseball coach? Players wearing "No Wray No Play".  Seems a pretty volatile scene with parents talking if moving their kids elsewhere.  Plenty of this has been front page news at Greene County World.com.  The EG football program has made great strides from all those years if loosing and loosing.  I hope this doesn't send it in a downward spiral.

Didn't the parents elect the school board?  

Report: The AAF Needed A $250 Million Bailout After Just Two Weeks Of Games: https://deadspin.com/report-the-aaf-needed-a-250-million-bailout-after-jus-1832723865

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Anyone with a stake in the AAF was eager to let the world know what a wild success the league’s first week of games was, citing the fact that the opening contest got better ratings than an NBA game on ABC. But according to a report from The Athletic, the league’s solid ratings didn’t prevent it from nearly missing payroll in just its second week of operation.

The Athletic reports that the AAF was on the cusp of not being able to pay its players on Friday, but was bailed out when Carolina Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon agreed to make a $250 million investment in the league, making him the league’s new chairman:

“Without a new, nine-figure investor, nobody is sure what would have happened,” one source said. “You can always tell people their checks are going to be a little late, but how many are going to show up on the weekend for games when they don’t see anything hit their bank accounts on Friday?”

On Tuesday, multiple sources told The Athletic, the AAF will announce that Carolina Hurricanes majority owner Tom Dundon, a self-made billionaire from Dallas, has become that nine-figure investor. Dundon will be introduced as the league’s new chairman after last week’s commitment of $250 million enabled the AAF to meet its obligations.

Meanwhile, attendance at the league’s Week 2 games was pretty grim. Hopefully Dundon isn’t hoping for a big return on his investment.

Doesn't sound good.  

U.S. states sue Trump administration in showdown over border wall funds: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-challenge/u-s-states-sue-trump-administration-in-showdown-over-border-wall-funds-idUSKCN1Q8022

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A coalition of 16 U.S. states led by California sued President Donald Trump and top members of his administration on Monday to block his decision to declare a national emergency to obtain funds for building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California came after Trump invoked emergency powers on Friday to help build the wall that was his signature 2016 campaign promise.

Trump’s order would allow him to spend on the wall money that Congress appropriated for other purposes. Congress declined to fulfill his request for $5.7 billion to help build the wall this year..

“Today, on Presidents Day, we take President Trump to court to block his misuse of presidential power,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement.

“We’re suing President Trump to stop him from unilaterally robbing taxpayer funds lawfully set aside by Congress for the people of our states. For most of us, the office of the presidency is not a place for theater,” added Becerra, a Democrat.

The White House declined to comment on the filing.

...

Three Texas landowners and an environmental group filed the first lawsuit against Trump’s move on Friday, saying it violated the Constitution and would infringe on their property rights.

The legal challenges could slow Trump’s efforts to build the wall, which he says is needed to curb illegal immigration and drug trafficking. The lawsuits could end up at the conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court.

Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Virginia, and Michigan joined California in the lawsuit.

....

Isn't this pretty much what Mr. Trump predicated would happen when he issued his bogus emergency declaration?

http://reason.com/archives/2019/02/19/a-guide-to-surviving-your-15-minutes-of

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I am a pro-choice, aqua-haired, middle-aged liberal living in Portland, Oregon. I probably disagree with Nicholas Sandmann on every major issue. But we have something in common. In the last month we have both endured what is fast becoming an American ritual: our 15 minutes of hate.

Sandmann's crime was a smirk while wearing a MAGA hat. Mine was a YouTube series I launched in December with another journalist in which we discussed the excesses of the #MeToo movement. This and the show's name, #MeNeither, inspired an ex-employee of my husband's coffee company to send an email to staff, characterizing the series as "vile, dangerous and extremely misguided" and adding that it "throws into question the safety of Ristretto Roasters as a workplace."

She also sent an email to the media.

Within days, a quarter of the Ristretto staff quit and the company lost major accounts. I was repeatedly called a c*nt and was challenged to at least one fist fight. My husband was told to leave his wife or lose his business.

As someone who covers this stuff, I thought I knew how rough it might be to get dragged in public. It's different when it's tearing up your life.

If you do not think this can happen to you, you have not been paying attention. Here's a guide for how to survive it:

STAY CALM: You will not expect the first strike, and thus will not know why every electronic device you own starts blowing up at once. You will be confused to read something that makes no sense or is presented in a way to make you look like a danger to society. Remain calm. Do not shoot off any responses, and for God's sake don't post anything on social media.

Notice that what at first seemed manageable is now starting to rage.

Inform the people who need to know what is going on. Assure them they are safe. Hope that this is true. Hope the messages left on your cell phone, about how you are a rape apologist and a piece of human garbage, will not spread to anyone else. Now is a good time to let calls go to voicemail and to set your Instagram to private.

Remember you are only human and might get a little panicky. If your spouse says "I just drank five pint glasses of water" and tells you his hands are sweating, like, a lot, assure him that it's anxiety and everything is going to be OK, though it does not feel that way today, and it does not feel that way because it is not.

CALL YOUR LAWYER: Gauge from his reaction how dire your situation is. Apparently not very: He is half-laughing when he says, "So Portland's social justice warriors are at it again?" Appreciate that legal action is futile, that the message is out there, carried with every tweet and text. You can't sue the internet.

ACCEPT THAT REASON HAS LEFT THE ROOM: Do not try to have rational conversations with the masses. They did not know you before this started and have no reason to trust you now. Wonder if you have been this quick to condemn things you knew nothing about. Wonder if you, too, might have hated the monster they are fighting.

This monster is not you. It is a collection of fears and buzzwords and tropes and memes.

Do not read the Facebook posts, the Reddit threads. It will be tempting because you are looking for allies, and you may find a few. Mostly you will encounter anonymous voices shouting about what a despicable person you and everything you stand for are. Really, stay away from the comments.

BUILD A WAR ROOM: If the attack is following script, by Day 2.5 things are frenetic, news outlets calling and emailing and trying to contact you on social media. Decide who will do interviews, who will answer emails, who will stay on top of Google alerts. This last helps when the first major story states that you "could not immediately be reached for comment." Within a minute of it posting, you can call the reporter and say she did not try to contact you, and while she makes the correction, you now know what's it's like to deal with reporters who have different standards of truth-telling than you do, which on top of everything else should not be crushing, but is.

REVENGE FANTASIES: After what feels like being kicked in the throat for a week, do what you swore you would not do: Go online and fight, giving your version of the situation and also, maybe, trying to hurt those you see as hurting you. This will definitely and 100 percent blow up in your face.

Once you have further destroyed the people closest to you, the people you are trying to save, remind yourself that inquiry and civil discourse are the best inoculation against fanatical disagreement. Be willing to both administer and receive it.

PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH: Spend time with friends. They will quickly show you who they are, bringing over pizza and bourbon and staying not a requisite "Are you cheered up yet?" amount of time but five hours. Binge-watch Russian Doll, where the lead character is having a much worse time than you and which makes your spouse laugh, a super-sweet sound you have not heard in a while.

PRACTICE GRATITUDE: Be grateful no one has (yet) shown up on your doorstep. Be grateful your kids are as loving and bratty as always. Cry a little at the message from your daughter's friend, saying, "While I don't agree with everything you state, and as someone who was sexually assaulted, I am thankful you are creating a dialogue, [which] has helped give me a platform to talk about this in a multitude of diverse conversations."

Tell your spouse you are sorry he has a mouthy wife, and that you are sorry that he is on precipice of losing the business he's built for 15 years because of the anger provoked by two women having conversations about sensitive issues. Marvel that not once has he asked you to not keep doing the work you do, not once.

MAKE CONTINGENCY PLANS: Accept your business/reputation might not survive. Understand it's not the initial assault but the markers of radioactivity left behind, so to speak, that do the most damage. Take stock; take a breath. Do your best to believe that while people get swept up in these fights, they're not really committed. More than anything, the campaigns are exhausting and disruptive and don't fix anything. Would it not be better to discuss our differences over a cup of coffee?

Sounds like mostly sensible steps to me.

9 minutes ago, TrojanDad said:

Those Lone Star ticks are nasty.  Their bite can cause you to become allergic to meat.   What a tragedy that would be.

Bernie Sanders makes is official: https://www.npr.org/2019/02/19/676923000/bernie-sanders-enters-2020-presidential-campaign-no-longer-an-underdog

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Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is giving it another go, launching a second campaign for the White House four years after surprising Democrats with a strong bid for the party's 2016 nomination.

"We began the political revolution in the 2016 campaign, and now it's time to move that revolution forward," the independent senator told Vermont Public Radio in an interview airing Tuesday morning.

But this 2020 bid will undoubtedly be a very different presidential campaign than his quest for the Democratic nomination as an underdog in 2016. Sanders enters the race as a top contender who, along with former Vice President Joe Biden, tops most early polls, far outpacing other Democratic candidates in support and name identification.

It's a sharp contrast from when Sanders seemingly came out of nowhere to surprise the political class — and at times himself — by winning several key primaries against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Buoyed by a big early win in New Hampshire, Sanders fought Clinton for the Democratic nomination through the final June contests, drawing tens of thousands of supporters to rallies in the process.

In the years since his loss to Clinton, Sanders has remained a national leader of the Democratic Party, though he still refuses to join.

"I think we have had real success in moving the ideology of the Democratic Party to be a pro-worker party, to stand up to the billionaire class," Sanders told NPR during the 2018 midterms. "We've got a long way to go."

.....

Mr. Sanders is now probably considered the Democratic front runner, until HRC throws her name in the ring again.