Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog

Sorry/not sorry, Democrats

June 28, 2018

US business, US politics, Wisconsin politics
University of Oregon Prof. Time Duy:

Headlines blared the latest recession warning [Friday], this time from David Rosenberg of Gluskin Sheff & Associates. The culprit will be the Fed:

“Cycles die, and you know how they die?” Rosenberg told the Inside ETFs Canada conference in Montreal on Thursday. “Because the Fed puts a bullet in its forehead.”

I get this. I buy the story that the Fed is likely to have a large role in causing the next recession. Either via overtightening or failing to loosen quickly enough in response to a negative shock.

And I truly get the frustration of being a business cycle economist in the midst of what will almost certainly be a record-breaking expansion. Imagine a business cycle economist going year after year without a recession to ride. It’s like Tinkerbell without her wings.

But the timeline here is wrong. And timing is everything when it comes to the recession call. Recessions don’t happen out of thin air. Data starts shifting ahead of a recession. Manufacturing activity sags. Housing starts tumble. Jobless claims start rising. You know the drill, and we are seeing any of it yet.

For a recession to start in the next twelve months, the data has to make a hard turn now. Maybe yesterday. And you would have to believe that turn would be happening in the midst of a substantial fiscal stimulus adding a tailwind to the economy through 2019. I just don’t see it happening.

As far as the Fed is concerned, I don’t think we are seeing evidence that policy is too tight. The flattening yield curve indicates policy is getting tighter, to be sure. But as far as recession calls are concerned, it’s inversion or nothing. And even inversion alone will not definitively do the trick. I think that if the Fed continues to hike rates or sends strong signals of future rate hikes after the yield curve inverts, then you go on recession watch.

With inflation still tame, however, the Fed may very well flatten the yield curve with two more hikes and then take a step back. To be sure, it will be hard to stand down or even reverse course on the yield curve alone. After all, the yield curve is a long leading indicator. It will be the outlying data. But there is a reasonable chance the Fed will not tempt fate in the absence of a very real inflationary threat.

Let’s say for the sake of argument that I am wrong and the Fed inverts the yield curve in December of this year, keeps hiking, and doesn’t try to reverse course until it is obviously too late. Furthermore, assume the inverted yield curve foreshadows a recession like in past cycles. That means at least a year and maybe two before a recession actually hits. So the minimum timeline to recession is 18 months, even if everything goes right (or is it wrong?).

Also, we really shouldn’t discount the possibility that the Fed pauses even before a yield curve inversion. A market disruption from a trade war or external financial crisis that threatens to spill over into Main Street could put the Fed back on the defensive. So the whole story that the Fed will soon kill this expansion is a bit premature.

Bottom Line: The business cycle is not dead. The future holds another recession. But many, many things have to start going wrong in fairly short order to bring about a recession in the next twelve months. It would probably have to be an extraordinary set of events outside of the typical business cycle dynamics. A much better bet is to expect this expansion will be a record breaker.

Given that most voters vote in national and state elections based on their perception of the economy, that is not good news for Democrats looking for an economic downturn to fuel their blue wave in November.
Share this on …
X
Facebook
LinkedIn
Email
Print
Like Loading…
No comments on Sorry/not sorry, Democrats
Presty the DJ for June 28

June 28, 2018

Music
Today in 1975, David Bowie found “Fame”:

Today in 1978, the UN named Kansas ambassadors of goodwill:

Two birthdays today are from the same group: Drummer Bobby Harrison was born two years before bassist Dave Knights of Procol Harum:
Share this on …
X
Facebook
LinkedIn
Email
Print
Like Loading…
No comments on Presty the DJ for June 28
Sterling Hall 2.0?

June 27, 2018

Culture, US politics
Art Moore:

A writer for the popular progressive news website Splinter is warning supporters of President Trump that if they have a problem with the heckling of administration officials in public places, they haven’t seen anything yet.

“Do you think that being asked to leave a restaurant, or having your meal interrupted, or being called by the public is bad? My fascism-enabling friends, this is only the beginning,” writes Splinter senior writer Hamilton Nolan.

Pointing to history, he writes that the U.S. “had thousands of domestic bombings per year in the early 1970s.”

“This is what happens when citizens decide en masse that their political system is corrupt, racist, and unresponsive,” says Nolan.

“The people out of power have only just begun to flex their dissatisfaction. The day will come, sooner that you all think, when Trump administration officials will look back fondly on the time when all they had to worry about was getting hollered at at a Mexican restaurant.”

He reasons that when “you aggressively f— with people’s lives, you should not be surprised when they decide to f— with yours.”

Splinter is a news and opinion website owned by the progressive Gizmodo Media Group, a division of Univision Communications, the Hispanic media giant. Splinter’s direct owner, Fusion Media Group, was purchased from Disney in April 2016. Fusion describes itself as Univision’s multi-platform, English language division “dedicated to serving young, diverse America.”

The Gateway Pundit blog notes Splinter has 586,000 followers on Twitter.

Nolan, who counts an op-ed for the New York Times among his writing credits, contends Trump administration officials should not be allowed “to live their lives in peace and affluence while they inflict serious harms on large portions of the American population.”

“Not being able to go to restaurants and attend parties and be celebrated is just the minimum baseline here. These people, who are pushing America merrily down the road to fascism and white nationalism, are delusional if they do not think that the backlash is going to get much worse,” he says.

Nolan says some of the “Trump outrages,” such as “ripping families apart at the border, show their costs immediately; others, like eschewing the fight against climate change and neutering the EPA and mainstreaming white nationalist ideas, will be manifesting their costs for many decades to come.”

In the years 1971 and 1972 alone, according to the FBI, more than 2,000 bombs were planted throughout the United States by domestic terrorist groups. Among the chief culprits was the Weather Underground, led by Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who hosted a fundraiser at their home to launch Barack Obama’s political career. Among the Weather Underground’s targets were the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol.

The warning of violence from the left comes amid a call by Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., for more harassment of Trump administration officials.

WND reported Waters, declaring “God is on our side,” urged supporters at a rally in Los Angeles Saturday to step up resistance to Trump, claiming the president is “sacrificing our children.”

Vowing to “win this battle,” she said: “If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. Tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere!”

Her call for harassment came a day after a Virginia restaurant owner kicked out White House press secretary Sanders and her family while they were dining. The owner, however, didn’t stop her political activism after Sanders and her family left. She followed family members across the street to another restaurant and organized a protest there.

DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, White House adviser Stephen Miller and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi were among other Republican government officials confronted by hostile protesters last week.

WND reported Tuesday that amid the recent controversy over separation of families at the border, interview guests and analysts on CNN and MSNBC have frequently branded supporters of President Trump as racists and Nazis.

On MSNBC, Donny Deutsch, the former host of a CNBC talk show, said anyone who votes for Trump is a “bad guy,” and he likened Trump voters to Nazi concentration camp guards.

“If we are working towards November, we can no longer say Trump’s the bad guy. If you vote for Trump, you’re the bad guy. If you vote for Trump, you are ripping children from parents’ arms,” Deutsch said on the “Morning Joe” show.

“If you vote for Trump, then you, the voter, you, not Donald Trump, are standing at the border, like Nazis going, ‘You here, you here.’ I think we now have to flip it and it’s a given, the evilness of Donald Trump,” he said. “But if you vote, you can no longer separate yourself. You can’t say, ‘Well, he’s okay, but. …’ And I think that gymnastics and that jiu-jitsu has to happen.”

Grabien News reported filmmaker and frequent MSNBC guest Michael Moore likened Trump voters to accomplices to rape.

“If you hold down the woman while the rapist is raping her, and you didn’t rape her — are you a rapist?”

Moore added: “Anybody who enables, anybody who votes for and supports a racist is a racist. You are culpable, white America, I’m sorry.”

Those of us who grew up in Madison know where this logically ends:
Share this on …
X
Facebook
LinkedIn
Email
Print
Like Loading…
No comments on Sterling Hall 2.0?
The view from the Great White North

June 27, 2018

International relations
Canadian J.J. McCullough:

There’s an overused anecdote in Canada about how an American newspaper guy, several decades ago, declared the headline “Worthwhile Canadian Initiative” the most boring one he’d ever seen. These days, however, I’d say the headline comes off less boring than implausible. When’s the last time Canada proposed any sort of initiative, worthwhile or otherwise?

The administration of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was caught off guard by the election of President Trump, and has not handled well the ensuing disruption of U.S.-Canadian relations. It’s a flat-footedness that has highlighted the degree to which the Canadian establishment has become complacent and unimaginative in managing this supposedly most sacred of relationships.

It’s been almost 30 years since then-Prime Minister Brian Mulroney proposed, negotiated and implemented free trade with the United States (prompting the aforementioned headline). Yet in the decades since, the Canadian interest in the U.S. relationship has consisted mostly of “playing within the boundaries of that big change,” as Gabe Batstone of the Canadian American Business Council told me.

Part of this is no doubt because of the unwillingness of successive Ottawa administrations to risk the political consequences of inflaming Canadian anti-Americanism. Canadians may happily inhabit a broadly Americanized culture and economy, but it’s not difficult to provoke patriotic resentment of this status quo.

Notions that having deep economic integration with the United States represents some sort of national character flaw remain mainstream. Pundits and public alike wax on with fantastical ideas that Canada could lessen this dependence on the United States if only the will was there. This resentful conventional wisdom warps the national understanding of the degree to which Canada’s wealth, safety and general pleasantness is a byproduct of its American integration, as opposed to being organic national virtues.

Trump’s aluminum and steel tariffs have given Canada a fresh excuse to indulge in the worst excess of such delusions. There’s nothing to call the recent bevy of absurd editorials that have filled major Canadian news outlets — from an Ottawa Citizen column on “why Canada should get nuclear weapons” to Maclean’s “case for invading America,” to any number of broader media provocations for a boycott of American goods and vacations —- beyond manifestations of a Canadian Napoleon complex.

Even supposedly serious voices propose strategies to circumvent Trump that pander to patriotic fantasies. Retaliatory tariffs have been endorsed by all parties. Conservative politicians have argued that their partisan agenda of tax cuts and energy deregulation will offset Washington’s damage. The case for building new pipelines, or signing trade deals with Asia or Europe, or lowering barriers of commerce among Canada’s provinces, or making enormous new investments in the Canadian military have all supposedly become “more obvious than ever.”

No Canadian dares make the case for the one thing that would objectively provide long-term relief: surrendering in Trump’s trade war before it begins.

As he stood beside the Canadian prime minister at the Group of Seven summit in Quebec, Trump joked to reporters that “Justin has agreed to cut all tariffs, and all trade barriers between Canada and the United States, so I’m very happy about that.” It was supposed to be funny, because that’s not Trudeau’s position.

But what if it was?

Ottawa could dramatically call the president’s bluff and announce its intention to embrace unqualified free trade with the United States, abolishing all existing tariffs, duties, subsidies, quotas and regulations employed to discriminate against U.S. goods in favor of Canadian ones. Canada could eliminate its astronomical dairy tariffs, adopt the U.S. understanding that yes, its softwood lumber is subsidized, and dismantle all protectionist measures aimed at keeping various American no-no industries —- telecommunications and banking chief among them — out of Canada on spurious pretexts of national security, or cultural sovereignty, or whatever. The ball would then be in Trump’s court to make good on one of his other G-7 musings: “No tariffs, no barriers, that’s the way it should be.”

Though it might injure Canadian pride in the short term — just as Mulroney’s deal originally did — complete free trade with the United States would impart scant hardship on Canadians themselves. All available evidence suggests one of the main things Canadians crave in life is easier, cheaper access to American goods and services. Yet such wants tend to go ignored in the politics of trade talks, which are biased toward guarding the privileges of protected industries at the expense of consumers — i.e., milk farmers over milk drinkers.

Compensation could be offered to those most disrupted, but the United States is not Mexico. Canada is not some shaky steel town. Many of Canada’s most jealously guarded firms in high finance, transportation and media employ only a privileged few, and are synonymous with wealth and unsavory government connections. The ultimate goal should be a Canadian economy properly positioned to maximize its competitive advantage in a binational, continental context, as opposed to one that invests large amounts of public money propping up redundant, noncompetitive Canadian industries for their own sake.

Honest free trade with America — not closer ties with China or Europe, nor any tweaking of domestic trade or taxes — is the only realistic plan for a long-term, prosperous Canada, immune to “every twitch and grunt” of the U.S. elephant, as the prime minister’s father so famously put it many decades ago.

To a certain class of Canadian raised on a diet of anti-American preening, nothing will seem more counterintuitive than walking toward Trump. But doing what’s right for the broader national interest sometimes means ignoring the counsel of those who possess the narrowest notions of patriotism.
Share this on …
X
Facebook
LinkedIn
Email
Print
Like Loading…
No comments on The view from the Great White North
A conservative and/or libertarian

June 27, 2018

US politics
George Will:

“This,” exclaimed Margaret Thatcher, thumping Friedrich Hayek’s 500-page tome The Constitution of Liberty on a table in front of some Conservative Party colleagues, “is what we believe.” It also is what Bill Weld believes, which is why he aspires to be the Libertarian party’s 2020 presidential candidate.

The former twice-elected Republican governor of Massachusetts has been visiting Libertarian party state conventions and will be in New Orleans at the national convention from June 30 to July 3. There he will try to convince the party, which sometimes is too interested in merely sending a message (liberty is good), to send into the autumn of 2020 a candidate representing what a broad swath of Americans say they favor — limited government, fiscal responsibility, free trade, the rule of law, entitlement realism, and other artifacts from the Republican wreckage.

Once when a Democrat noted that Weld’s ancestors had arrived on the Mayflower, Weld replied, “Actually, they weren’t on the Mayflower. They sent the servants over first to get the cottage ready.” He was the 19th Weld — the first was in the Class of 1650 — to graduate from Harvard. Since then, the 20th and 21st have attended — two of the five children he had with his first wife, Theodore Roosevelt’s great-granddaughter. Two Harvard buildings are named for Welds. One of which John Kennedy lived in as a freshman.

Bill Weld, who majored in classics, took philosophy classes from Robert Nozick, whose Anarchy, State and Utopia, a canonical text of libertarianism, argues that “the minimal state is inspiring as well as right.” Weld served in Ronald Reagan’s administration for seven years, five years as U.S. attorney for Massachusetts. He was recommended for this position by then-associate U.S. attorney general Rudy Giuliani, which was not Weld’s fault. Next, Weld was head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. There he brought from San Francisco, as his replacement in Massachusetts, a man “who might be the straightest guy I’ve ever met,” Robert Mueller.

Weld’s sandy-reddish hair is still abundant and, at 72, he is eager to build on his 2016 experience as the Libertarians’ vice-presidential nominee. During that campaign, “I carried around with me every day” the 10th Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” Noting that the Articles of Confederation excellently referred to powers not “expressly” delegated, Weld says, “I might have been an anti-Federalist.” Imagine having a president who knows that there were anti-Federalists.

The top of the Libertarians’ 2016 ticket was another ex-governor, New Mexico’s Gary Johnson, who was too interested in marijuana and not interested enough in Syria to recognize the name Aleppo. Weld, however, is ready for prime time.

During a recent breakfast at the Hay-Adams hotel across Lafayette Square from the White House (the Adamses reached these shores shortly after the Welds), Weld recalled how as governor he taught agencies to not expect “last year’s appropriation plus 5 percent.” He cut taxes 21 times and raised none. A believer in freedom for what Nozick called “capitalist acts between consenting adults,” Weld says his most satisfying achievement was cutting the 6 percent tax on long-term capital gains by 1 point for each year the asset is held.

If the florid face of today’s snarling GOP wants to be re-nominated, he will be. Five-hundred days into his presidency he had 87 percent approval among Republicans, 10 points above Ronald Reagan’s rating at 500 days. And in the autumn of 2019, upward of 20 Democratic presidential aspirants might clog the stages at “debates” that could become contests to see who can most arrestingly pander to activists — a disproportionate slice of the nominating electorate — who are enamored of “Medicare for all,” government-guaranteed jobs, and generally gobs of free stuff (college tuition, etc.).

If in autumn 2020 voters face a second consecutive repulsive choice, there will be running room between the two deplorables. Because of its 2016 efforts, the Libertarian party will automatically be on 39 states’ ballots this fall and has a sufficient infantry of volunteers to secure ballot access in another nine. So, if the Libertarian party is willing, 2020’s politics could have an ingredient recently missing from presidential politics: fun. And maybe a serious disruption of the party duopoly that increasing millions find annoying. Stranger things have happened, as a glance across Lafayette Square confirms.

There is one problem Will doesn’t bring up, but the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action did in 2016:

As governor of Massachusetts, William Weld supported various gun control schemes, including a ban on semi-automatic firearms. Unfortunately, and despite being the Libertarian candidate for vice president, Weld continues his anti-gun ways.

In July 2016, while NRA and other groups concerned with civil liberties were hard at work fighting legislation that would have stripped Americans of their Second Amendment rights without due process based merely on their placement on a secret government watch list, Weld expressed support for such measures.

In an interview with the Washington Post Editorial Board, Weld said of watch list gun control legislation:

I think the Susan Collins stuff looks good. I mean, it’s hard for me, uh, having proposed this super-duper task force getting bits of information from all over to say, it wouldn’t lie with good grace in my mouth to say ‘no, don’t use the terrorist watch list as a source of such information.’ So I would go with that.

In an August interview with Revolt.tv, Weld reiterated this position. When asked about what can be done “to control this flow of guns,” Weld responded, “you shouldn’t have anybody who’s on a terrorist watch list be able to buy any gun at all.”

At another point in the interview Weld characterized commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms and standard-capacity magazines as potential weapons of mass destruction. Displaying a level of ignorance usually attendant to politicians carrying the endorsement of the Brady Campaign, Weld told the interviewer:

The five-shot rifle, that’s a standard military rifle. The problem is if you attach a clip to it so it can fire more shells and if you remove the pin so that it becomes an automatic weapon. And those are independent criminal offenses. That’s when they become essentially a weapon of mass destruction.

Weld went on to suggest to the interviewer that both handguns and AR-15s are a “problem,” stating, “The problem with handguns is probably even worse than the problem of the AR-15.”

This latest episode reveals that when pressed on firearms issues, despite any assurances he has given to voters, Weld’s political instincts are to abandon gun owners and embrace gun control.

So how did Weld deal with that? Back in 2016, Reason.com reported:

… Weld addresses the controversy over his previous gun control positions:

I am a lifelong hunter and gun owner. In 1993, however, as Governor of Massachusetts, I went along with some modest restrictions on certain types of firearms. I was deeply concerned about gun violence, and frankly, the people I represented were demanding action. Sometimes, governing involves tough choices, and I had to make more than a few.

Today, almost 25 years later, I would make some different choices. Restricting Americans’ gun rights doesn’t make us safer, and threatens our constitutional freedoms. I was pleased by and support the Supreme Court’s decision in the District of Columbia vs. Heller — a decision that embraced the notion that our Second Amendment rights are individual rights, not to be abridged by the government.

He also knows some Libertarians were peeved that he endorsed John Kasich in the Republican presidential race, who is not only not very libertarian but a particular enemy of the L.P. in ballot access fights in Ohio:

When Governor Kasich was in Congress, serving as Chairman of the House Budget Committee, I worked with him to stop deficit spending and balance the federal budget. He succeeded, as no one has done since. I was asked to help because I had done the same in Massachusetts, a heavily Democratic state.

Based on that work with Governor Kasich, I believed him to be the best choice among the many candidates for the Republican nomination.

At the same time, I am now aware that Gov. Kasich has taken actions to make ballot access in Ohio much more difficult and costly for Libertarians. At no point did I have any knowledge about efforts to restrict ballot access. Of course, we all need to fight for ballot access in every state, including helping to raise the funds necessary for that effort. You have my word that I will help ensure ballot access — and I’m a pretty good fighter.

Libertarians are also, some of them, peeved that in 2006 Weld jilted them at the altar after promising to run a “fusion” ticket for governor of New York along with the Republicans:

New York has a unique system in which candidates often assemble “fusion” tickets in order to achieve a winning coalition. As part of such an effort, I was honored in 2006 to earn the Libertarian nomination for Governor. Unfortunately, the larger effort failed, and we were not successful in making the Libertarian ballot “line” part of a coalition that could win. I am grateful to the Libertarian Party for the work we did, and disappointed that the strategy simply couldn’t be executed.

Weld wants Libertarians to know that “since law school, my bibles have always been The Constitution of Liberty, and The Road to Serfdom, by Friedrich Hayek” and that if the L.P. sees fit to choose Johnson/Weld, that:

of the three tickets who will be on the ballot in all 50 states in November, the Libertarian Party has the potential to have candidates whose experience and proven leadership exceeds that of the two other parties combined. That credibility and leadership, matched by a firm commitment to the principles of Liberty, will be a powerful combination.

Tom Woods is not impressed:

I do not understand the cohort of left-libertarians (yes, that’s a thing) who are so pro-Weld. And now they’ve got Mr. Stuffed Shirt himself on their side.

Here I am supposedly the right-wing fuddy-duddy, yet I consistently endorse the most radical candidates around. They, on the other hand, are supposed to be chic and radical, and — without fail — they support the stuffed shirt.

Bare minimum for a libertarian candidate or party: anti-Fed, antiwar.

Weld has said that he supports both the employment and the inflation mandates of the Fed. He thinks we need a central planning agency to maximize employment.

I can get that from the Democrats or the Republicans.

Some people say, “Woods, we have to ease people into libertarianism!” Is that really what you think Weld is doing? He’s secretly anti-Fed but keeping his views to himself for strategic reasons? Ha, sure.

As for easing people into it, what political campaign provides a successful example of this? Ron Paul (whom these pro-Weld libertarians by and large think themselves superior to) shocked people into libertarianism when he told them the empire was bleeding us dry and spreading destruction around the world. (Truer words have never been said.)

Weld supported the war in Iraq. He later said it was a “mistake.” Nice try, creep. Walter Jones has legitimately done penance for his support for that war, and will never be snookered by the military-industrial complex again. Is that the vibe anyone gets from the status quo Weld?

Pro-Weld left-libertarians are fond of smearing their opponents as fascists and hypernationalists. But consider:

Suppose Weld had supported bombing Los Angeles instead of Baghdad, and later said this was a “mistake.” Would these libertarians be saying, “Hey, man, nobody’s perfect! He said it was a mistake”?

I’ll give them enough credit to assume they’d still be horrified, and say this was a disqualifier, period.

So why is it a disqualifier when it’s Americans being killed, but not when it’s Iraqis?

I thought left-libertarians were supposed to be the great protectors of the world’s brown people. But evidently when you kill a whole lot of them in an obviously avoidable conflict, why, this is a mere policy difference!

George Will says the Libertarian Party may be “ready for prime time,” which of course means boring, and 20 percent different from the other parties.

What the world needs now ain’t some policy-wonk party.

To many voters, being “anti-war” means opposing national defense. Some people are also able to see the difference between this country and countries or movements whose leaders want to see the U.S. destroyed, such as radical Islamists and Iran’s “Death to America” mullahs.

Between that and the party’s obsession with marijuana (which, even if a majority of Americans don’t favor pot’s illegality, the issue is not a high priority to most voters), no wonder people don’t take the Libertarian Party seriously, even if the LP is right about an issue.
Share this on …
X
Facebook
LinkedIn
Email
Print
Like Loading…
No comments on A conservative and/or libertarian
Presty the DJ for June 27

June 27, 2018

Music
For some reason, the Beatles’ “Sie Liebt Dich” got only to number 97 on the German charts:

The English translation did much better, yeah, yeah, yeah:

Today in 1968, Elvis Presley started taping his comeback special:

Today in 1989, The Who performed its rock opera “Tommy” at Radio City Music Hall in New York, their first complete performance of “Tommy” since 1972:

This would have never happened in the People’s Republic of Madison, but … in Milwaukee today in 1993, Don Henley dedicated “It’s Not Easy Being Green” to President Bill Clinton … and got booed.

(more…)
Share this on …
X
Facebook
LinkedIn
Email
Print
Like Loading…
No comments on Presty the DJ for June 27
Imagine reorganizing government

June 26, 2018

US politics
The Washington Post:

The White House on Thursday proposed the most comprehensive plan to reorganize the federal government in 100 years, including a merger of the departments of Education and Labor, and a proposal to add work requirements for welfare programs.

“Businesses change all the time,” said White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney. “Government doesn’t, and one of the things you get when you hire a businessman to become president is you bring this attitude from the private sector.”

The sweeping reorganization plan stems from an order signed by Mr. Trump in March 2017 calling for a review of the federal government to streamline agencies and reduce waste. The combined education and labor department would be called the Department of Education and the Workforce, or DEW, and would oversee programs for students and workers.

In a presentation to the Cabinet, Mr. Mulvaney cited examples of bringing all food-safety regulations under the Agriculture Department, instead of sharing those responsibilities with the Food and Drug Administration.

“If it’s cheese pizza, it’s FDA, but you put pepperoni on it and it becomes a USDA product. I mean, come on?” he said. “An open-faced roast beef sandwich is USDA, a closed-faced roast beef sandwich is FDA. Not making this up. You can’t make this kind of stuff up. This would only happen in the government.”

The plan would also move the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, from the USDA to Health and Human Services, which would be renamed the Department of Health and Public Welfare and oversee public assistance programs.

“We’re still dealing with a government that is from the early 20th century,” Mr. Mulvaney said. “It simply doesn’t make sense.”

In merging the Departments of Education and Labor, Mr. Mulvaney said, the government’s 47-odd job-training programs could be reduced to 16.

The plan also would privatize the U.S. Postal Service.

The reorganization plan faces an uncertain fate in Congress, with some Democrats and unions representing the federal workforce saying it has no chance of being approved.

“Democrats and Republicans in Congress have rejected President Trump’s proposals to drastically gut investments in education, health care, and workers — and he should expect the same result for this latest attempt to make government work worse for the people it serves,” said Sen. Patty Murray, Washington Democrat.

But Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said the plan deserves serious consideration in Congress.

“The vast majority of people I ask believe the federal government is badly broken,” Mr. Johnson said. “That is why I am so pleased to see this administration thinking big and ‘outside the box’ to bring effective reform and reorganization to a government structure developed for the previous century. I pledge to do everything I can to support this effort to make the government more efficient and effective for the 21st century.”

American Federation of Government Employees National President J. David Cox Sr. called the overhaul proposal “an unprecedented power grab” that has nothing to do with improving the efficiency or effectiveness of government.

“We are particularly alarmed over proposals to privatize both the U.S. Postal Service and our federal air traffic control system,” Mr. Cox said. He asserted most of the proposals target “domestic programs that have long been unpopular with anti-government ideologues: merging the Education and Labor departments, removing the food stamp and school meal programs from USDA, and breaking up the personnel agency that administers federal employee background investigations, retirement claims and benefits, and employment policies.”

“These proposals are out of touch and demonstrative of a president who not only does not respect the hard work of federal employees, but does not understand their expertise, service, or value,” he said.

If you’re getting paid, you’re not performing “service”; you are either an employee or a contractor. “Service” is something you do for no pay.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez, a former Labor secretary under President Obama, said Mr. Trump’s proposal to move the federal food stamp program to a new agency “opens the door for him to fulfill a longtime Republican goal of gutting social safety programs Americans rely on, including SNAP and Medicaid benefits.”

“Trump is attempting to play political games with our education and our workforce in order to please his base,” Mr. Perez said.

“Please his base”? My paws and whiskers! Trump must be the first politician in the history of our supposed democracy to advocate something to please his base. The temerity! (End sarcasm.)

The merits of any particular part of this aside (and I think the Education and Labor departments should not be combined; they should be ended),
Share this on …
X
Facebook
LinkedIn
Email
Print
Like Loading…
No comments on Imagine reorganizing government
The ACLU vs. free speech

June 26, 2018

US politics
Former American Civil Liberries Union board member Wendy Kaminer:

The American Civil Liberties Union has explicitly endorsed the view that free speech can harm “marginalized” groups by undermining their civil rights. “Speech that denigrates such groups can inflict serious harms and is intended to and often will impede progress toward equality,” the ACLU declares in new guidelines governing case selection and “Conflicts Between Competing Values or Priorities.”

This is presented as an explanation rather than a change of policy, and free-speech advocates know the ACLU has already lost its zeal for vigorously defending the speech it hates. ACLU leaders previously avoided acknowledging that retreat, however, in the apparent hope of preserving its reputation as the nation’s premier champion of the First Amendment.

But traditional free-speech values do not appeal to the ACLU’s increasingly partisan progressive constituency—especially after the 2017 white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville. The Virginia ACLU affiliate rightly represented the rally’s organizers when the city attempted to deny them a permit to assemble. Responding to intense post-Charlottesville criticism, last year the ACLU reconsidered its obligation to represent white-supremacist protesters.

The 2018 guidelines claim that “the ACLU is committed to defending speech rights without regard to whether the views expressed are consistent with or opposed to the ACLU’s core values, priorities and goals.” But directly contradicting that assertion, they also cite as a reason to decline taking a free-speech case “the extent to which the speech may assist in advancing the goals of white supremacists or others whose views are contrary to our values.”

In selecting speech cases to defend, the ACLU will now balance the “impact of the proposed speech and the impact of its suppression.” Factors like the potential effect of the speech on “marginalized communities” and even on “the ACLU’s credibility” could militate against taking a case. Fundraising and communications officials helped formulate the new guidelines.

One half of this balancing test is familiar. The “impact of suppressing speech”—the precedents that suppression might establish, the constitutional principles at stake—is a traditional factor in case selection. But, traditionally, the ACLU has not formally weighed the content of speech and its consistency with ACLU values in deciding whether to defend it.

Tension between competing values isn’t new to the ACLU. Given its decades-old commitment to defending civil rights and liberties, the organization has long navigated conflicts between equality rights and freedoms of religion, speech and association. The guidelines assert that “no civil liberties or civil rights value should automatically be privileged over any other.” But it’s clear that free speech has become second among equals. Where is the comparable set of guidelines explaining when the ACLU should decline to defend gay-rights claims that infringe on religious liberty or women’s-rights cases that infringe on due process?

The speech-case guidelines reflect a demotion of free speech in the ACLU’s hierarchy of values. Their vague references to the “serious harm” to “marginalized” people occasioned by speech can easily include the presumed psychological effects of racist or otherwise hateful speech, which is constitutionally protected but contrary to ACLU values. Faced with perceived conflicts between freedom of speech and “progress toward equality,” the ACLU is likely to choose equality. If the Supreme Court adopted the ACLU’s balancing test, it would greatly expand government power to restrict speech.

In Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), for example, the ACLU defended the First Amendment rights of a Ku Klux Klan leader prosecuted for addressing a small rally and calling for “revengence” against blacks and Jews. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed Clarence Brandenburg’s conviction, narrowly defining incitement to violence as speech both intended and likely to cause imminent illegal action. Brandenburgmade an essential distinction between advocacy and action, which progressives who equate hate speech with actual discrimination or violence seek to erase.

The ACLU would be hard pressed to take Brandenburg’s case today, given its new guidelines. The organization hasn’t yet endorsed a ban on hate speech, or a broader definition of incitement. The guidelines affirm that “speakers have a right to advocate violence.” But even if Brandenburg managed to pass the new balancing test for speech cases, some participants at his rally were armed, and, according to the guidelines, “the ACLU generally will not represent protesters who seek to march while armed.”

All this is the ACLU’s prerogative. Organizations are entitled to revise their values and missions. But they ought to do so openly. The ACLU leadership had apparently hoped to keep its new guidelines secret, even from ACLU members. They’re contained in an internal documentdeceptively marked, in all caps, “confidential attorney client work product.” I’m told it was distributed to select ACLU officials and board members, who were instructed not to share it. According to my source, the leadership is now investigating the “leak” of its new case-selection guidelines. President Trump might sympathize.
Share this on …
X
Facebook
LinkedIn
Email
Print
Like Loading…
No comments on The ACLU vs. free speech
Presty the DJ for June 26

June 26, 2018

Music
My German side should appreciate this: Today in 1870, Richard Wagner premiered “Die Valkyrie”:

Today in 1964, the Beatles released their album “A Hard Day’s Night”:

Today in 1975, Sonny and Cher decided they didn’t got you (that is, them) babe anymore — they divorced, which meant it was no longer true that …

(Interestingly, at least to me: Sonny and Cher revived their CBS-TV show after their divorce. Also, Cher did a touching eulogy at Sonny Bono’s funeral.)

Today in 1990, eight Kansas and Oklahoma radio stations decided to boycott singer KD Lang because she didn’t have a constant craving for meat, to the point she did an anti-meat ad:

Birthdays start with Billy Davis Jr. of the Fifth Dimension:

Jean Knight, who was dismissive of Mr. Big Stuff:

Rindy Ross, the B-minor-favoring singer of Quarterflash:
Share this on …
X
Facebook
LinkedIn
Email
Print
Like Loading…
No comments on Presty the DJ for June 26
The logical next bloody step

June 25, 2018

Culture, US politics, Wisconsin politics
The Washington Times asks:

The refusal of a Virginia restaurant owner to serve White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is the latest incident in the escalating public hostility directed at President Trump and his aides, raising concerns among some conservatives about the potential for partisan-inspired violence.

Leading Democrats largely failed to condemn the actions of the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, where owner Stephanie Wilkinson asked Mrs. Sanders to leave Friday night because her liberal staff detests the administration and didn’t want to serve her party.

Mrs. Sanders agreed to leave, saying of the restaurant owner later on Twitter, “Her actions say far more about her than about me.”

The incident has sparked outrage among Trump supporters as another example of intolerance on the left and increasingly aggressive partisan confrontation, especially in the wake of the president’s rescinded policy on separating illegal immigrant children from their parents.

Possible 2020 Democratic presidential contenders Joseph R. Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts have done little to discourage the hostile rhetoric. Ms. Warren has accused the president of “taking America to a dark and ugly place,” and at least one of her colleagues went further, calling for total social ostracism and perpetual public confrontations.

In recent days, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has been heckled and booed at a Mexican restaurant by activists and faced demonstrators outside her home. White House senior adviser Stephen Miller was called a “real-life fascist” by another patron at a Mexican restaurant in Washington.

A congressional intern screamed at Mr. Trump, “Mr. President, f– you!” as the president arrived at the Capitol last week for a meeting with House Republicans on immigration policy.

An openly gay Democratic Pennsylvania legislator greeted Vice President Mike Pence’s visit to Philadelphia on Thursday by posting an Instagram photo of himself giving the middle finger to Mr. Pence. “Get bent, then get out!” wrote state Rep. Brian Sims of Philadelphia.

Hollywood is encouraging the public nastiness. Actor Robert De Niro got a standing ovation at the Tony Awards this month for saying onstage at Radio City Music Hall: “F– Trump.” Actor Peter Fonda called for the president’s 12-year-old son, Barron, to be “thrown into a cage with pedophiles.” He later apologized.

Comedian Seth Rogen bragged on TV about refusing to pose for a photo with Republican House Speaker Paul D. Ryan in front of the lawmaker’s sons. Actor Tom Arnold vowed to protest at the school attended by the children of presidential daughter and adviser Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner.

Trump allies say liberals are increasingly targeting administration officials with open hostility because minority-party Democrats can’t stop the administration’s policies in Congress.

“The increasing personal nastiness toward people who work for President Trump reflects the left’s understanding that they are losing,” tweeted former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. “Nastiness reflects desperation, not strength. They can’t win the argument, so they use nastiness. Sad and dangerous.”

Rush Limbaugh worried aloud on his syndicated show that the increasingly hostile rhetoric and confrontations are heading toward violence. He blamed the media for what he called incendiary coverage of the family separation issue at the border.

“If the media keeps this up — if they keep up generating this hysteria — somebody’s going to get killed,” Mr. Limbaugh said on his show. “I think we’re pretty close to somebody getting killed already, and I’m not being hyperbolic, and I’m not trying to call attention to myself. I’m genuinely worried about the out-of-control aspect of this. The news media’s fanning the flames.”

The episode that may have crystalized the extent of the partisan animosity came not at the gates of the White House but in bucolic Lexington, Virginia, a historic town of about 7,000 that is a three-hour drive outside the Beltway in the Shenandoah Valley.

Mrs. Sanders sat down to dinner there around 8 p.m. Friday with her husband, Brian, and several others at the Red Hen, a cozy, 26-seat restaurant known for its farm-to-table menu.

Shortly after Mrs. Sanders and her group arrived, a restaurant employee called the owner at her home nearby to complain about the White House staffer’s presence. Ms. Wilkinson drove to the restaurant, huddled with her staff, pulled Mrs. Sanders aside and asked her to leave.

“I was babbling a little, but I got my point across in a polite and direct fashion,” Ms. Wilkinson told The Washington Post. “I explained that the restaurant has certain standards that I feel it has to uphold, such as honesty and compassion and cooperation. I said, ‘I’d like to ask you to leave,’” and Ms. Sanders didn’t hesitate, replying, ‘That’s fine. I’ll go.’”

The restaurant owner said she would do the same thing all over again.

“We just felt there are moments in time when people need to live their convictions. This appeared to be one,” she said.

She said several of her employees are gay, and she cited the press secretary’s work for the “inhumane and unethical” Trump administration.

“I’m not a huge fan of confrontation,” Ms. Wilkinson said. “I have a business, and I want the business to thrive. This feels like the moment in our democracy when people have to make uncomfortable actions and decisions to uphold their morals.”

After a flurry of news reports based on a waiter’s account on Facebook, Mrs. Sanders confirmed Saturday that she agreed to leave after being confronted by the owner.

“I was told by the owner of Red Hen in Lexington, VA to leave because I work for @POTUS and I politely left,” she tweeted. “Her actions say far more about her than about me. I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so.”

The Red Hen, which is not affiliated with the Red Hen restaurant in the District of Columbia, was promptly “Yelp-bombed” as thousands of commentators went online to post politically motivated one- and five-star reviews based on the Sanders incident.

The Red Hen’s Facebook page and Twitter account were also deluged with comments including “Thank you for standing up to the fascists” to “Nobody wants to eat at a place that bases service on politics.”

Lexington voted for Hillary Clinton by a 2-1 margin in the 2016 presidential election, while surrounding Rockbridge County voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Trump. It is home to the Virginia Military Institute and Washington and Lee University.

Mrs. Sanders‘ father, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, tweeted of the incident, “Bigotry. On the menu at Red Hen Restaurant in Lexington VA. Or you can ask for the ‘Hate Plate.’ And appetizers are ‘small plates for small minds.’”

Mr. Huckabee received heavy criticism on the left over the weekend for tweeting a photo of MS-13 gang members with the comment, “Nancy Pelosi introduces her campaign committee for the take back of the House.”

Some said the confrontation at the Red Hen was evidence that political discourse in the U.S. has crossed an extreme line.

Ari Fleischer, who served as press secretary for President George W. Bush, tweeted Saturday: “I guess we’re heading into an America with Democrat-only restaurants, which will lead to Republican-only restaurants. Do the fools who threw Sarah out, and the people who cheer them on, really want us to be that kind of country?”

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, a frequent critic of the Trump administration, was one of the few Democrats to speak out against the restaurant owner’s actions.

“I think the restaurant owner should have served her. I really do,” Mr. Cummings said on CBS-TV’s “Face the Nation.”

At the same time, he blamed the increasingly vicious political climate in large part on Mr. Trump.

“This tone is horrible,” Mr. Cummings said. “I think President Trump has created this. Since he’s become president and even before, he’s basically given people license to state things that are ugly, and those things then turn into actions, as we can now see.”

However, Rep. Maxine Waters, California Democrat, took a different tack and called for more public confrontations. She told a cheering crowd that Trump administration officials should not be allowed anywhere in public.

“Let’s stay the course, let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up,” she said at a speech, the video of which was posted Sunday on social media. “If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”

Rep. Barbara Lee, California Democrat, said Mrs. Sanders should be reported to the Office of Government Ethics for tweeting about a private business on her government Twitter account.

“If you use a government account to attack a private business on personal time, I mean, that’s not right,” she said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Democrats routinely blame Mr. Trump for lowering the public discourse through his name-calling of political adversaries, including Ms. Warren (“Pocahontas”) and former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter (“a crude dope”).

Former CIA Director Michael V. Hayden even compared the family separation issue to death camps in Nazi Germany. That brought a rebuke from others, including University of Pennsylvania history professor Jonathan Zimmerman, writing at SFChronicle.com.

“If I engage in the same violent and irresponsible rhetoric as Donald Trump, I’m not ‘resisting’ him,” Mr. Zimmerman wrote. “To the contrary, I’m going into the muck with him. That’s not resistance; it’s capitulation.”

Public anger directed at Mr. Trump and top administration officials is increasing as the White House proposes to assign protection duties for Cabinet-level officials to the already stretched-thin U.S. Marshals Service. The Office of Management and Budget announced the plan Thursday as part of a proposed major overhaul of the federal government, including the merger of some Cabinet agencies.

Marshals around the country were alerted in a memo on Wednesday that the service was preparing for the move.

“Consolidate protective details at certain civilian Executive Branch agencies under the US Marshals Service in order to more effectively and efficiently monitor and respond to potential threats,” stated the White House’s recommendation. “Threat assessments would be conducted with support from the U.S. Secret Service.”

Rep. Bob Goodlatte, Virginia Republican, invited Mrs. Sanders back to Lexington, saying the rude reception she received at the Red Hen restaurant didn’t reflect the “kind and caring people” of his 6th Congressional District.

“What @PressSec experienced in Lexington [Friday] night is very unfortunate and doesn’t reflect accurately upon the kind and caring people of Lexington that I know,” tweeted Mr. Goodlatte. “There are many great innovative businesses in #VA06 that I hope you’ll come to back to visit.”

The next step is logical. Someone is going to get killed because of politics, either because of that person’s own views, or in reaction to someone else’s views. That might even happen in this state.
Share this on …
X
Facebook
LinkedIn
Email
Print
Like Loading…
No comments on The logical next bloody step