JustOneMinute

Those Annoying Democratic Governors

Progressives are having trouble getting their own team to fall in line with their agenda.

Down bayou way, the Louisiana Governor, a Dem, signed a fetal heartbeat bill over outraged howls from the pro-choicers. Out in Nevada, the Dem governor declined to sign the National Popular Vote Compact, the progressive fantasy intended to eliminate the Electoral College.

What does this mean for the 2020 Parade of Candidates? Will progressives take a "can't trust these moderates" stance and fight, fight, fight with even greater conviction to make sure a non-delusional Dem such as Biden is not the nominee?

Or will this give them pause to wonder whether the nation might not really be teed up for their latest and bestest ideas?

I'll (continue to) bet they fight, fight fight to make sure their party does not offer the nation a sensible choice.

Collusion Never Dies!

Byron York presents a history of the Trump/Russian collusion charge. Byhis telling it rose during the summer of 2016 from the fog of the Clinton campaign, aided by briefings about the Steele dossier given to Clinton campaign officials.

In the days leading up to the Democratic convention, the Clinton campaign and its allies in the press saw Russia as a potentially valuable weapon for attacking Trump. On July 20, the New York Times' Andrew Rosenthal wrote a column headlined "Is Trump Obsessed With Putin and Russia?" Two days later, Rosenthal's Times colleague Paul Krugman wrote a piece entitled "Donald Trump, the Siberian Candidate" in which he asked, "If elected, would Donald Trump be Vladimir Putin's man in the White House?"

That same day, July 22, Wikileaks released emails from the Democratic National Committee. Two days later, on the 24th, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook went on television to claim that not only was Russia behind the hack — that was later proven true — but also that the Trump campaign was in league with Russia.

"Donald Trump changed the Republican platform to become what some experts would regard as pro-Russian," Mook told ABC News, referring to a just-published Washington Post story that reported, incorrectly, that Trump aides had weakened the portion of the GOP platform regarding Russia and Ukraine.

"He has praised Vladimir Putin," Mook continued. "It's troubling."

What did Mook know and when did he know it? Steele's info was being passed to him or his team:

According to Russian Roulette, the book by reporters Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Steele sent the first installment to Fusion GPS in June 2016. Fusion, in turn, "gave Steele's reports and other research documents to Elias," according to a Washington Post account. And Elias briefed the Clinton campaign.

"We were getting briefings that were put together by the law firm with information," Mook recalled in an interview with CNN in late 2017. "So our internal team was presenting information, our lawyer was presenting information, you know, and we — and we sort of learned things in pieces."

So as Clinton and her aides pushed the collusion narrative, with the help of an enthusiastic press, campaign officials were also being briefed on the newest, freshest allegations from Steele.

The problem, of course, was that the allegations were not true. Steele also gave his reports to the FBI, which tried to verify them "line by line," according to former FBI general counsel James Baker. It did not succeed. Nearly three years later, the Mueller report failed to corroborate any of the dossier's serious allegations. It was wrong at best, a fraud at worst.

Hmm, so Team Clinton was peddling false anti-Trump info they had, through cutouts, bought from Russian government sources. Troubling? Troubling!

And what about Steele's information? John Solomon of The Hill has more bombshells:

Multiple witnesses have told Congress that, a week before Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, Britain’s top national security official sent a private communique to the incoming administration, addressing his country’s participation in the counterintelligence probe into the now-debunked Trump-Russia election collusion.

Most significantly, then-British national security adviser Sir Mark Lyall Grant claimed in the memo, hand-delivered to incoming U.S. national security adviser Mike Flynn’s team, that the British government lacked confidence in the credibility of former MI6 spy Christopher Steele’s Russia collusion evidence, according to congressional investigators who interviewed witnesses familiar with the memo.

We should wait patiently for the Inspector General report on this but it certainly seems that Team Clinton and the DoJ were colluding with Russia (based on their use of the term vis a vis Trump) or were duped by the Russians. Certainly, the Russian scheme to spread chaos and confusion exceeded expectations.

 

 

When Is A Flip-Flop Not A Flip-Flop

I always thought McConnell was quite clear that his refusal to give Garland a hearing was based on a principle of non-cooperation with the other party in an election year. A principle articulated by Joe Biden in 1992.

I need to fact-check my memory.

Into The Breach! The WaPo Editors Defend Charter Schools

The WaPo editors come out swinging in defense of charter schools.

There’s nothing progressive about strangling charter schools

No, but there's a lot that's progressive about unquestioning fealty to public sector unions and to a belief in central government control.

Mayor deBlasio of NYC has a record on public school administration but fortunately he is not now nor will ever be more than an asterix candidate in the Presidential polls.

Among the less ludicrous candidates, Spartacus has some relevant history as former Mayor of Newark. In the Senate he has also voted on (and mostly for) the DC charter school program.

Chalkbeat and Dylan Scott of Vox have lots more. Let me bottom-line you - it's complicated. From Chalkbeat:

There’s no doubt the reforms were unpopular with many residents. Whether they improved outcomes for students has been the subject of debate.

A recent study led by Harvard researchers found that the changes led to an initial decline in student growth on state tests. By 2016, students’ annual gains in English, but not math, were higher than comparable students across New Jersey, the researchers found. Students’ scores have continued to rise, and graduation rates leapt nearly 20 percentage points since the overhaul began. Meanwhile, the city’s large charter-school networks — including North Star Academy, whose board Booker once sat on — rank among the top performing schools in the state.

Other indicators are less encouraging: About one in three students in Newark’s traditional schools were chronically absent last school year — about the same share as when the reforms began.

But whatever improvements the changes spurred have largely been overshadowed by the way they were enacted. Detailed in the book “The Prize” by journalist Dale Russakoff, the overhaul came to symbolize top-down reform imposed by ideological outsiders and highly paid consultants.

In recent years, Zuckerberg has reconsidered his approach to reform in Newark, saying he wants to “go in the opposite direction” by working more closely with community members and teachers unions.

Just Don't Call It 'Fake News'

One of the endless army of attention-seeking, brand-building members of the media decided to feed the outrage machine by tweeting out things Trump might have said if he was as crazy and irresponsible as The Resistance knows he is.

Ross Douthat On The Unifying Fantasy Of The Left

Normally Ross Douthat tries to engage his Upper West Side readership with calm and sweet reason. Overcome, perhaps, by the martial memories of Memorial Day, he is now opting for a truth bomb which was nearly titled "Why Losers Lose":

How Liberalism Loses

An inflexible agenda and a global retreat.

In Australia a week ago, the party of the left lost an election it was supposed to win, to a conservative government headed by an evangelical Christian who won working-class votes by opposing liberal climate policies. In India last week, the Hindu-nationalist prime minister, Narendra Modi, won an overwhelming electoral victory. And as of this writing, Europeans are electing a Parliament that promises to have more populist representation than before.

The global fade of liberalism, in other words, appears to be continuing.

Are there lessons to be learned?

The fact that populism is flourishing internationally, far from the Electoral College and Fox News, suggests that Trump’s specific faults might actually be propping up American liberalism. If we had a populist president who didn’t alienate so many persuadable voters, who took full advantage of a strong economy, and who had the political cunning displayed by Modi or Benjamin Netanyahu or Viktor Orban, the liberal belief in a hidden left-of-center mandate might be exposed as a fond delusion.

But are these lessons being learned?

That liberal belief may also misunderstand the real correlation of forces in our politics. We had an example this week on our op-ed podcast, The Argument, where my colleague and co-host David Leonhardt interviewed Pete Buttigieg, the Midwestern mayor running for president with promises to build bridges between the heartland and the coasts. Leonhardt pressed Buttigieg on whether that bridge-building might include compromise on any social issues, and the answer seemed to be “no” — in part because Mayor Pete argued that on abortion and guns and immigration most middle Americans already agree with Democrats, that the liberal position is already the common ground.

The strategic flaw in this reading of the liberal situation is that politics isn’t about casually held opinions on a wide range of topics, but focused prioritization of specifics. As the Democratic data analyst David Shor has noted, you can take a cluster of nine Democratic positions that each poll over 50 percent individually, and find that only 18 percent of Americans agree with all of them. And a single strong, focused disagreement can be enough to turn a voter against liberalism, especially if liberals seem uncompromising on that issue.

A pattern of narrow, issue-by-issue resistance is also what you’d expect in an era where the popular culture is more monolithically left-wing than before. That cultural dominance establishes a broad, shallow left-of-center consensus, which then evaporates when people have some personal reason to reject liberalism, or confront the limits of its case.

None of this needs to spell doom for liberals; it just requires them to prioritize and compromise. If you want to put climate change at the center of liberal politics, for instance, then you’ll keep losing voters in the Rust Belt, just as liberal parties have lost similar voters in Europe and Australia. In which case you would need to reassure some other group, be it suburban evangelicals or libertarians, that you’re willing to compromise on the issues that keep them from voting Democratic.

Alternatively, if you want to make crushing religious conservatives your mission, then you need to woo secular populists on guns or immigration, or peel off more of the tax-sensitive upper middle class by not going full socialist.

Liberals need to compromise and prioritize? You see where this is going - "No enemies to the left" implies no compromise with any faction of the right.

But the liberal impulse at the moment, Buttigiegian as well as Ocasio-Cortezan, is to insist that liberalism is a seamless garment, an indivisible agenda that need not be compromised on any front. And instead of recognizing populism as a motley coalition united primarily by opposition to liberalism’s rule, liberals want to believe they’re facing a unitary enemy — a revanchist patriarchal white supremacy, infecting every branch and tributary of the right.

In this view it’s not enough to see racial resentment as one important form of anti-liberalism (which it surely is); all anti-liberalism must fall under the canopy. Libertarianism is white supremacy, the N.R.A. is white supremacy, immigration skepticism is white supremacy, tax-sensitive suburbia is white supremacy, the pro-life movement is white supremacy, anxiety about terrorism is white supremacy … and you can’t compromise with white supremacists, you can only crush them.

Which liberals may do in 2020, because Trump remains eminently beatable.

Well, beating Trump won't be the same as re-taking the Senate and the many GOP governorships, but yes, for the left it would be a start.

But in the long run, the global trend suggests that a liberalism that remains inflexible in the face of variegated resistance is the ideology more likely to be crushed.

"Stop hating, haters" as a response to any and all critics is unlikely to develop into a winning message.

 

Tread Carefully

As Dan McLaughlin says, if you want to learn who has power, learn who we are not allowed to offend:

Facebook acknowledges Pelosi video is faked but declines to delete it

When an edited video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) began spreading across the Web this week, researchers quickly identified it as a distortion, with sound and playback speed that had been manipulated to make her speech appear stilted and slurred.

But in the hours after the social-media giants were alerted, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube offered widely conflicting responses that potentially allowed the viral misinformation to continue its spread.

YouTube offered a definitive response Thursday afternoon, saying the company had removed the videos because they violated “clear policies that outline what content is not acceptable to post.”

Twitter declined to comment. But sharing the video would likely not conflict with the company’s policies, which permit “inaccurate statements about an elected official” as long as they don’t include efforts of election manipulation or voter suppression. Several tweets sharing the video, often alongside insults that Pelosi was “drunk as [a] skunk,” remained online Friday.

Dial the outrage to 11! Now, I don't believe the late night comic brigade that mocks Trump nightly is rigorously fact-checked for every little detail (Snopes is too busy grappling with the Babylon Bee.). But let's not go after Queen Nancy!

Traditional Happy Holidays Thrill of the Open Road Open Thread

Away we go!

May Over In June

Back with Brexit: Embattled PM May will step down June 7, although she will continue in an acting role until her party picks a replacement.

They Did NOT Dazzle Us With Science!

Americans - we're not as dumb as we look!

Read His Lips - No New Tax Returns!

A draft IRS opinion is at odd with Treasury Secretary Mnuchin's claim that he can sit on Trump's tax returns. [Law is here.]

What I take to be a first draft of Mnuchin's position is in his April 23 2019 letter to Chairman Neal.

Folks who like the idea that what goes around comes around will like Mnuchin's point that there is an extensive public record revealing the actual intent of the Congressional Democrats, which is to make Trump's tax returns public. Shades of the (ultimately upheld) Muslim ban!

As to whether Trump's returns will leak once given to Congress, of course they will. Some Resistance idiot doxed Republican Senators during the Kavanaugh hearings; someone will leak this. The only difference is, they won't be identified. In the event of any awkwardness the heroic staffer will end up with a plum spot at a Resistance think tank.

ESPN - Back To Sports

Some good news:

ESPN President: ‘Our Fans Do Not Want Us to Cover Politics’

 

Traditional "How About That Masters?" Open Thread

A pretty exciting Sunday considering it began with Koepka up by 7. Next - who will sit on the Iron Throne?

Abortion Polling

This polling (1, https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/405391-morning-consult-reporter-there-is-a-split-among-the-gop-on-roe2) on abortion from 2017/18 looks roughly similar to what I remember as the polling over the last three decades: roughly 20% on the "complete ban" and "no restrictions" borders and 60% of us at sea hopinbg to land in a middle ground.

Say what you will but neither Bill Clinton ("Safe, legal and rare") nor George Bush ("Change people's hearts before you change the law") lacked for political instincts (few who get elected President twice do.)

The Hill, 2018, may be more interesting on the partisan splits:

Twenty percent of GOP respondents said the procedure should be illegal under all circumstances, while 51 percent said it should be legal in limited cases, such as rape, incest and when the life of the mother is threatened. 

Another 20 percent of Republicans said it should be legal up until the third trimester, and only 9 percent said it should be legal under all circumstances. 

So that is 71% favoring a near-total ban, 20% legali-ish. 9% would be comfortable in the 'anything-goes' wing of the Democratic Party. Libertarians, perhaps.

But over to the Democrats:

Democrats are also somewhat divided on the issue, with 12 percent saying abortion should be illegal under all circumstances, while 32 percent said it should be legal in limited circumstances, such as rape, incest, and life of the mother. 

Thirty-one percent said it should be legal up until the third trimester, while 25 percent said it should always be legal. 

Huh. 44% would fit with the Vast Republican Majority, 31% would find solidarity with the 20% of Reps in the legal-ish camp, and 25% overlap with 9% if Republicans in "anything goes".

It's ridiculous to think there is no middle ground here. However, calm reason makes for lousy television, so expect lots of screaming and shouting ahead.

DO LET ME ADD: David French on the legal theory of the Alabama law is fascinating. His gist: the US Constitution sets a floor on rights, not a ceiling. Consequently, if a state grants rights beyond the Constitution, it is unusual for the Supreme Court to dial them back (barring a conflict with other rights, presumably). I'll make up an example: state tax breaks for gay married couples is surely not required by the Supreme Court rulings on gay marriage, but those rulings don't bar it either.

Back to Alabama:

Alabama and Georgia Are Throwing Down the Gauntlet against Roe. Good.

By DAVID FRENCH

...

Good. While Alabama governor Kay Ivey ponders whether to sign Alabama’s bill banning all abortion in the state, it’s worth considering why this represents an important moment in the battle for life in the United States, why Alabama’s bill (and Georgia’s new heartbeat law) present the right kind of legal and philosophical challenge to Roe, and why now is exactly the time to make the challenge.

Both Alabama’s abortion ban and Georgia’s heartbeat law contain a key provision — they declare the personhood of the unborn child. This is a vital measure that is aimed directly at a key portion of the Roe v. Wade opinion. Late last week, I had a lengthy phone conversation with state representative Ed Setzler, sponsor of Georgia’s legislation. He said his bill wasn’t “waving its fist at Roe; it’s answering Roe.”

Specifically, he pointed at a provision in Part IX of Justice Blackmun’s opinion, where Blackmun states that if the “personhood” of the baby is established, then the pro-abortion case “collapses.” The late Supreme Court justice was of course discussing the definition of personhood under the federal constitution. Setzler, however, notes that Supreme Court doctrine has long allowed states to expand constitutional liberties. They can establish standards of religious freedom, free speech, or due process, for example, that go beyond the First and Fifth Amendments. They cannot be more restrictive than the federal Constitution.

In the abortion context, this doctrine traditionally has been interpreted to allow states like New York to protect abortion rights beyond the minimal threshold required by Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Georgia (and potentially Alabama) would be asking the Court to permit them to expand the constitutional liberty of the unborn child and to recognize the distinct human identity of the baby in the womb.

In other words, Georgia and Alabama are saying: “We’ve read Roe, and we’re making the very legal statement that Justice Blackmun says would fundamentally undermine the case for abortion. Under our federal system, we can expand the legal definition of life.” While pro-life Americans can and do engage in good-faith debates about tactics, I prefer the most direct approach. Tell the Court what life means. Make the Court break the federal system once again.

Obviously, this expansion of the rights of the unborn conflicts with a woman's rights under Roe. Hence the drama. But it also explains (to me) the logic behind exception for the life of the mother but not for rape or incest. If the unborn child is a person, balancing one life against another may be medically inevitable. But no person in our society is ever executed for being the product of rape or incest, or even for committing those crimes.

That leads to a tough sell emotionally, but the logic behind it is inexorable.

AG Barr In The WSJ

AG Barr talks with the WSJ about his concerns regarding the Obama investigation of the Trump campaign. The article seems to have escaped the paywall.

Bill deBlasio To The Rescue!

NY Mayor deBlasio brings badly needed height to the Dem nominating process.

Term limits don't let him run for Mayor again so this gives him so nowadays he's running to stay relevant. It's an excuse to buff up his eventual book deal and collect some cash for his campaign coffers. Later, friends and family can be hired as staffers to study how to spend it.

All In Good Fun

AG Barr mocks Speaker Pelosi with some contempt humor or (Let lightning strike me down!) some ghastly, kinky innuendo.

Barr asks Pelosi at event: 'Did you bring your handcuffs?'

I'm hoping for 'contempt'.

Send Better Apologists! NY Times Loses Plot On FBI Surveillance-Not-Spying On Trump

The NY Times covers the special assignment by AG Barr of the US Attorney for CT John Durham to explore the origins of Crossfire Hurricane, the controversial FISA wiretap warrants on Carter Page, the use of the Steele dossier, and so much more. [Spoiler: The sought-for correction runs a week later.]

They correctly note that the wiretaps on Carter Page were sought only after he left the Trump campaign. However, they immediately lose the plot (my emphasis):

Law enforcement officials have also drawn intense criticism for using an informant — a typical investigative step — to secretly report on Mr. Page and Mr. Papadopoulos after they left the campaign and for relying on Democrat-funded opposition research compiled into a dossier by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer who was also an F.B.I. informant.

"After they left the campaign"? C'mon. Page and Papadopoulos were appointed to Trump's foreign policy commission in March of 2016. In light of his previous brushes with the Russians Page was of immediate interest to the FBI; their informant, Cambridge don Stefan Halper, took his first pass at Page at a Cambridge symposium in July 11-12 2016, before Crossfire Hurricane was officially opened on July 31. Page left the campaign in September 2016 and the FISA application went in thereafter.

Halper met Papadopoluos in September 2016, while he was still doing whatever he wasn't doing on the fringes of the Trump campaign. He was described by the Times as a "Trump aide" in their 'don't call it spying' story of May 2, 2019.

The Times ought to fix this. Do let me volunteer my assistance in the blame-storming: their April 9 2019 piece describes Page and Papadopoulos, with Page, as another "former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser".

Well, sure - they are former aides now, in 2019. Back in July-September of 2016 when Halper was surveilling-not-spying, they were future former aides.

Wasn't this sort of timeline confusion covered in Endgame?

AG Barr Taps A Not-Quite-Special Counsel To Investigate Trump Investigation

From the NY Times:

Barr Assigns U.S. Attorney in Connecticut to Review Origins of Russia Inquiry

WASHINGTON — Attorney General William P. Barr has assigned the top federal prosecutor in Connecticut to examine the origins of the Russia investigation, according to two people familiar with the matter, a move that President Trump has long called for but that could anger law enforcement officials who insist that scrutiny of the Trump campaign was lawful.

John H. Durham, the United States attorney in Connecticut, has a history of serving as a special prosecutor investigating potential wrongdoing among national security officials, including the F.B.I.’s ties to a crime boss in Boston and accusations of C.I.A. abuses of detainees.

His inquiry is the third known investigation focused on the opening of an F.B.I. counterintelligence investigation during the 2016 presidential campaign into possible ties between Russia’s election interference and Trump associates.

The department’s inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, is separately examining investigators’ use of wiretap applications and informants and whether any political bias against Mr. Trump influenced investigative decisions. And John W. Huber, the United States attorney in Utah, has been reviewing aspects of the Russia investigation. His findings have not been announced.

If I am reading this correctly, Durham is not a special counsel like Mueller:

Yet Mr. Durham’s role — essentially giving him a special assignment but no special powers — also appeared aimed at sidestepping the rare appointment of another special counsel like Robert S. Mueller III, a role that allows greater day-to-day independence.

While we wait for the Inspector General's report, Byron York reviews problems with what we know about the FISA applications vis a vis the Mueller report.

LOSING THE PLOT: Let's see if we can pry a correction out of the Times for this:

Law enforcement officials have also drawn intense criticism for using an informant — a typical investigative step — to secretly report on Mr. Page and Mr. Papadopoulos after they left the campaign...

C'mon. Stefan Halper met with at a July 11-12 Cambridge symposium, before Crossfire Hurricane was even opened. Page was on the FBI radar because he (and Papadopoulos) had been appointed to Trump's foreign policy advisory council in March.

The Times knows this, but seems to have forgotten. Or conflated Halper with the FISA warrant on Page, which was obtained after he left the Trump campaign. Or (crazy guess) they brain-locked on their earlier reporting, which included this (my emphasis):

The inspector general is also scrutinizing another early source of information for the Russia investigation, the people said: Mr. Horowitz’s investigators have been asking questions about the role of Stefan A. Halper, another F.B.I. informant, and his prior work for the bureau.

Agents involved in the Russia investigation asked Mr. Halper, an American academic who teaches in Britain, to gather information on Mr. Page and George Papadopoulos, another former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser.

Well, yes - George P. is a former advisor now, in 2019. He was a future former aide in September 2016 when Halper swung by with a hot aide to not-spy on him.

Happy Mother's Day

Traditional pre-Game of Thrones open thread.

No Durant, No Problem

The Rockets can bite me. Maybe they'll make a roster move and add Beto.

Non-Crazy Idea With A Foundation Of BS

America's Sweetheart and America's favorite cranky old coot paired up to talk up the idea of turning the Post Office into a banking system for the under-served. To cur to the spoiler: After roughly an hour with Google and my Sixers, I am confident that the advocates, including Sen. Kristen Gillibrand and the US Post Office team, have failed to understand the numbers and the revenue opportunity they are tossing about and are talking about $89 billion when $30 billion is nearer the mark. $30 billion is not a trifle, but its not $89 billion either. And that sort of easily discovered error does not do much for my confidence in the quality of the research effort by the advocates. 

And what is it with these progressives anyway? They want the government to have all our medical information and now they expect people (many of whom have, well, documentation challenges opening a conventional bank account) to trust the government with their financial information and savings? Do they know who is President or did Bernie forget?

Today's buzz was Tweeted by "Take On Wall Street". Let's toss them the mic:

A Public Option For Banking

It’s time to stop relying on the big banks and predatory lenders, and expand access to fair consumer banking services through “a public option” like postal banking and public banks.

Postal Banking

Regulating abusive and aggressively marketed products is important, but more can be done to broaden access to high-quality, low-cost financial services. As many as 8 million American households don’t have access to basic banking, like a checking account, and 1 in 5 Americans don’t have access to affordable accounts, debit cards, and credit. The big banks no longer offer free checking, and fees for basic banking have skyrocketed.

Worse still, nearly 28% of U.S. households rely on fringe and often predatory financial institutions for banking and credit. Fees to payday lenders and check-cashers cost these households an astonishing $89 billion a year. That’s more than $2,400 per household, or 10% of their average income. These predatory services are concentrated in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color, stripping additional wealth from those who can least afford it.

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is well placed to provide such basic banking services. In past decades, the USPS offered savings accounts on a significant scale, and postal systems in countries around the world currently provide financial services to more than a billion consumers.

Keep on eye on that $89 billion figure and we will segue to Sen. Gillibrand, unveiling her 2018 legislative proposal:

Kirsten Gillibrand Unveils A Public Option For Banking

The idea would provide a low-cost alternative to payday loans — and it might just save the Postal Service, too.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) is introducing legislation Wednesday that would require every U.S. post office to provide basic banking services, an ambitious step aimed at improving the lives of Americans with limited financial resources.

The bill brings to Congress for the first time a policy idea that has already won the support of liberal economists and anti-poverty activists: Turning the nation’s sprawling network of U.S. Postal Service facilities into places where working-class and low-income Americans who lack adequate access to commercial banking can obtain low-cost, short-term loans. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have both spoken out in favor of postal banking, but Gillibrand is the first to introduce legislation mandating it.

The central goal of the bill is to replace risky financial products like payday loans, which can trap borrowers in prolonged cycles of debt, with regulated alternatives.

Do note "short term loans", such as payday loans. And let's say hello to an old friend as we learn how this will save the Postal System:

A postal banking system could be a major boon to the financially strained Postal Service. If even 10 percent of the money Americans currently spend on interest and fees for risky financial products went toward postal banking loans that cost 90 percent less, the Postal Service would gain almost $9 billion in annual revenue, according to a 2014 study conducted by the Postal Service Inspector General.

Here's their White Paper and yes, the "almost $9 billion" in new revenue comes from 10% market share of an $89 billion market as of 2012. Now, one might want to ask why the Sen. Gillibrand and the US Post Office hope to take in ten percent of an outrageous, exploitative, predatory market. Shouldn't their revenue be much less?!? Don't ask.

The Post Office White Paper describes their proposed product offerings in detail but this description from Slate captures the spirit:

If Democrats do try to bring back postal banking, there are two main ways to do it. First, would be the basic approach: The post office could simply offer low-dollar checking accounts and debit cards, to make sure every American has affordable access to the absolute essentials of financial services. That would be a relief to the millions of households with no bank account today, and might not even be that much of a political lift—after all, the Postal Service would be catering to customers that Bank of America and Wells Fargo seem mostly uninterested in these days. This approach wouldn’t dramatically change the face of American finance; it would assist the unbanked, but less so the much larger group of underbanked.

The more ambitious approach, which Gillibrand and other Democrats have embraced, would be far more seismic. Gillibrand’s bill would allow the postal service to also make small loans at low interest rates and would almost certainly compete payday lenders out of business. The bill states that postal banks could make loans of up to $500 at a time at interest rates in line with the yield on month Treasury bills, which today is sitting at a low 1.65 percent. That rate of interest is probably too low given how many of these loans will likely default. The Postal Service’s Inspector General report pictured interest rates closer to 25 percent, which would still save customers hundreds of dollars compared to payday loans that commonly come with APRs around 400 percent. 

And now the reveal: Here is the study describing the $89 billion opportunity by CFSI:

Serving the underserved market : Market Size Study

They have a beautiful depiction of the market, below.

The possibly-not-obvious problem? The biggest market segment - $49.6 Billion - is automobile and other installment loans that go beyond the scope of the Post Office White Paper and the Gillibrand proposal. Oops.

Payday loans are included in the green column on the far left (as well they might be!). However, the $21.4 Billion total there includes Pawn shop loans of about $5 B, payday loans (internet and storefront) and overdraft protection on checking. The Post Office won't be running a pawn shop, so let's subtract that and say that $16B is left.

The orange "Payments" column of $8.9B looks good, as does the $4.7 B for checking and savings services. Tax preparation services and debt settlements for $4.2B? I don't think so. Take it out.

So totaling up the services the Post Office actually hopes to offer gets us to $16B (payday) + $9B Payments +$5B Checking/Savings, or roughly $30 Billion of market opportunity. 10% market share is $3 billion. Nothing to sneeze at, but not the number advertised.

So how great an idea is this, anyway? In an attempt to approach reality from a different direction, a UPenn professor, Lisa Servon, actually worked in a check cashing store and talked to customers about their background and motivation (Crazy, amirite?). Her thoughts are summarized here; a snippet:

It didn’t even seem clear to people studying the banking industry as to why people would ever use a check-cashing service. Surprisingly, it turned out that there were reasons:

Servon was surprised by what people told her. Over and over, Servon heard and observed that check cashers often met customers’ needs better than banks did.

She discovered there were three main reasons people used these services instead of banks: cost, transparency, and service.

She got a book out of it as well.

From yet another perspective, the Japanese had a more extensive Postal Bank with huge private savings. A 2005 Parliamentary campaign was oriented towards privatizing it. Apparently this institution had become cozy with crony capitalists and politicos. Who could have seen that coming?

Based on the proposal and target market I don't foresee the US Post deposits becoming huge so that predictable problem shouldn't arise. Or, limit their investments to Treasury bills. Time may tell!

STILL IRKED: The Take On Wall Street article includes this howler:

 

Worse still, nearly 28% of U.S. households rely on fringe and often predatory financial institutions for banking and credit. Fees to payday lenders and check-cashers cost these households an astonishing $89 billion a year. 

 

Well, no. As noted, payday lenders are much less than that.

 

A different advocacy group, the Campaign For Postal Banking, has this formulation:

 

The $100 billion a year Alternative Financial Services (AFS) industry has flooded the communities where the underserved live with products, services and practices that are expensive and often predatory. Each year, the average underserved household spends $2,412 – nearly 10 percent of gross income – in fees and interest for alternative financial services...

 

The $100 billion is for a different year. However, they have looked at a similar report!

The AFS industry includes:

• Check cashing services
• Payday lenders
• Auto title loans
• Pawn shops
• Rent-to-own stores
• Tax refund anticipation loans

OK, they noted auto loans and installment sales of bigger-ticker items. And they claim the public spends $7 billion a year on payday loans, which looks a lot like the numbers in the green column from the 2012 study. This group might be worth reading.

 

As to Sen. Gillibrand, I'm not sure. Her website includes this:

 

The Postal Bank would effectively wipe out predatory payday lending industry practices because low-income workers would be able to take out low-interest, small-dollar loans from the Postal Bank instead of being forced to rely on predatory payday lenders. High-cost, predatory financial products like payday loans cost the average underserved household 10 percent, or $2,412, of their gross income in fees and interest. This adds up to about $100 billion of lost savings for low-income families across the country, and results in diminished funding for rent, food, and childcare, as well as an inability to build credit. Under Gillibrand’s bill, any American could o pen an account at the Postal Bank.

 

Payday loans are the tip of the iceberg. I don't know whether she is hiding the ball or is sincere and ignorant.

 

UNANSWERED QUESTIONS: Why isn't there a WalMart Credit Services dominating this market? Or is there? Well, yes - among many other services they will cash checks up to $1,000 for a $4 flat fee, which does not outrage me. That would be 2% on a $200 check. Unfair?

 

Further dabbling suggests I can send money to Italy for an $8 fee. Same to Mexico. Presumably varies by country but I'm done for now.

 

BOYCOTT NUMBERS: The Babylon Bee battles AOC. Stop the fight!

Trump's Taxes

The NY Times gets Trump's taxes from the late 80's and early 90's. He lost a lot of money, as we already knew from earlier reporting and one of his own books.

But the House Ways and Means request for Trump's recent returns is heating up! Here is a Times story and editorial.

The story is not as dreadful as the editorial and makes a half-hearted effort to present both sides of the dispute:

Mr. Mnuchin, who is one of Mr. Trump’s most trusted aides, has signaled his concern about the request, arguing that it appeared to be political in nature and that honoring the demand would be a violation of taxpayer privacy. He has warned that if the I.R.S. releases Mr. Trump’s returns, then lawmakers from both parties could be vulnerable to such prying. In an April 23 letter to Mr. Neal, Mr. Mnuchin said that the demand amounted to “exposure for the sake of exposure.”

The Treasury secretary said that the Justice Department would memorialize its advice on the matter in a published legal opinion.

House Democrats have argued that the law is clear that congressional tax writing committees have broad authority to request the returns of any taxpayer. Mr. Neal said that the request was made so that Congress can assess the effectiveness of the automatic audits that all sitting presidents face.

In his letter, Mr. Mnuchin said that the Treasury Department was willing to provide more information to the committee about how the I.R.S. conducts its mandatory examinations of presidential tax returns.

I say "half-hearted" because despite a link to the May 6 letter from Sec. Mnuchin to Chairman Neal, there is no link to the April 23 letter mentioned above. Too bad, and a disservice to any readers seeking information rather than affirmation, since it is a 52 page opus surely representing the first draft of the legal opinion promised by the DoJ.

 

Also omitted is an interesting parallel to a case with which The Resistance is undoubtedly familiar, Trump's "Muslim ban". There, it was argued (with early but not final success!) that the public record of Trump's comments should count against his textual statutory powers.

 

Turnabout being fair play, Sec. Mnuchin and the DoJ argue (Apr 23) that there is a voluminous public record making clear that the Democratic goal is the release of Trump's tax returns (probably protected by privacy laws), not, as Chairman Neal claimed, an attempt to assess the rigor and vigor of Presidential tax audits.

 

Also missing from the Times account (but not the Mnuchin letter) is the tidbit that Neal, prior to his chairmanship, acknowledged that a request for the President's returns would be a first, and the goal would be public exposure. Sadly, it is behind the WSJ paywall (I really need to put in a budget request) but here is a taste from The Week (my emphasis of phrase quoted by Mnuchin):

 

The Democrats in line to lead the Senate and House finance committees say that if their party takes control of either house of Congress in the midterms, they will use their authority to obtain a copy of President Trump's tax returns. "We will do that," Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), in line to chair the House Ways and Means Committee, told The Wall Street Journal. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a longer shot to become chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said he would request Trump's tax returns, too.

 

"Under the tax code, the Ways and Means chairman can demand and receive any taxpayer's records from the IRS for confidential review," explains the Journal's Richard Rubin. "Neal wouldn't need approval from the full House, the Senate, or the administration." Neal said if he gets Trump's returns, he'll consult with his staff, House lawyers, and Democratic leaders; they could decide to release some or parts of the returns, which would require a committee vote, keep them confidential, or have them analyzed by nonpartisan analysts. "This has never happened before, so you want to be very meticulous," Neal told the Journal.

 

The Resistance HQ editorial sidesteps all this by imagining the April 23 letter out of existence. Despite links to other other letters amongst IRS Commissioner Rettig, Chairman Neal and Sec. Mnuchin, there is no link to the April 23 letter. Instead, we are assured that

 

"The Treasury secretary cited no authority for this stonewalling..."

 

The courts will sort this out. The editorial does link to the underlying law as well as the Supreme Court decision on Watkins, which limited the reach of Congressional oversight, thereby enhancing the illusion that this is a thorough recap of the topic.

 

IMHO, further weaponizing the IRS is a dreadful idea in a country which relies so heavily on voluntary compliance with tax law. Personally, I wonder whether the Obama Administration went easy on tax audits of advisers such as Valerie Jarrett or big donors such as billionaire Episcopalian Tom Steyer. Or has Nancy Pelosi (who provides disclosure forms but not returns) been getting a pass from IRS auditors? Senate Republicans could get curious about this tomorrow, and it would be a disastrous abuse of government power if they did.

 

MORE: Unless they work up the nerve to commence impeachment, the law is against the House Democrats, argues this tax law prof. Bonus insight I read somewhere: House Judiciary can demand the returns in an impeachment context but has no legal avenue to release them. As if leaks never happen and wouldn't here...

Very Interesting

Andrew C.McCarthy is very interesting on just what may have been said to and by George Papadapoulos as a trigger to open Crossfire Hurricane.

This June 1, 2018 piece by John Solomon also has some intriguing background. We all knew that FBI informant Stefan Halper had "run into" Trump aide Carter Page at a Cambridge symposium in mid-July, prior to the initiation of Crossfire Hurricane on July 31. Was it just a coincidence that Page had just returned from his infamous trip to Moscow? Maybe! Per emails linked by Solomon, we see that Page was invited to the symposium in early June.

Let's add that the FBI had interviewed Page in March 2016 so he was back on their radar before the Steele dossier began to come together. So what does it mean? It means I want to see that Inspector General's report. 

Next Up: What Color Is Your Parachute

OK, these sneakers are pink and I think a huge Twitter faction is just saying "grey-green" to spoof the rest of us.

This inspires a 2015 flashback to the controversial dress.

Saturday Morning

Away we go again!

It's The Economy, Stupid

With the recent 3.2% GDP report and now this jobs number (AND rising productivity!) Trump has the economy as a powerful tailwind.

MSNBC and CNN are scrambling for Resistance econometricians whose model predicts a Trump defeat in 2020. Obviously Trump is a bit different from conventional politicians, but historically peace and prosperity incumbents have been tough to beat.

There is also a momentum issue vexing the Resistance: voters are driven by the perception of the economy, which can lag the reality. Going back to 1992, Bill Clinton lambasted Bush 41 for the "worst economy in 50 years", describing a mild recession that officially ended in March 1991. although unemployment rose until July 1992. Hey, he won.

But if the economy is this strong (and picking up steam?) in 2019 it is running out of time to visibly slow by November 2020. Still possible, and obviously bolts from the blue - a complete collapse of trade talks, a ghastly terror attack, a real scandal - might change the outlook yet again. That said, Trump has created the trade drama and will have a lot of control over ending it, so the Resistance should not pin their hopes there.

Well. With the Supreme Court out of play I would have been OK with a calm, responsible Democratic President in 2021, IF we could get there with Cocaine Mitch and his Republicans keeping the Senate. That Democrat may not have been on offer in any case but I wonder - as winning looks more difficult for the Democrats, will they in their socialist collective wisdom be more of less likely to indulge their activist base and go for Crazy Time? I could imagine a centrist Wall Street Democrat shrugging his (or her!) shoulders, accepting that defeat is likely, and deciding to fight another day. The activist side will never be in close enough contact with reality to do that. Hang on!

Just Don't Call It "Spying"

The NY Times learns more about Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI effort to totally not spy on the Trump campaign:

F.B.I. Sent Investigator Posing as Assistant to Meet With Trump Aide in 2016

WASHINGTON — The conversation at a London bar in September 2016 took a strange turn when the woman sitting across from George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign adviser, asked a direct question: Was the Trump campaign working with Russia?

The woman had set up the meeting to discuss foreign policy issues. But she was actually a government investigator posing as a research assistant, according to people familiar with the operation. The F.B.I. sent her to London as part of the counterintelligence inquiry opened that summer to better understand the Trump campaign’s links to Russia.

The American government’s affiliation with the woman, who said her name was Azra Turk, is one previously unreported detail of an operation that has become a political flash point in the face of accusations by President Trump and his allies that American law enforcement and intelligence officials spied on his campaign to undermine his electoral chances. Last year, he called it “Spygate.”

She was working with Stefan Halper and may have gone along so that, in the event of a trial, she could be the FBI witness and somewhat preserve Halper's anonymity.

A nod to the obvious here, my emphasis:

The decision to use Ms. Turk in the operation aimed at a presidential campaign official shows the level of alarm inside the F.B.I. during a frantic period when the bureau was trying to determine the scope of Russia’s attempts to disrupt the 2016 election, but could also give ammunition to Mr. Trump and his allies for their spying claims.

AG Barr knew, or made a lucky guess recently:

Mr. Barr reignited the controversy last month when he told Congress, “I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal.” He backed off the charged declaration later in the same hearing, saying: “I think spying did occur. The question is whether it was adequately predicated. And I’m not suggesting that it wasn’t adequately predicated. But I need to explore that.”

Mr. Barr again defended his use of the term “spying” at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, saying he wanted to know more about the F.B.I.’s investigative efforts during 2016 and explained that the early inquiry likely went beyond the use of an informant and a court-authorized wiretap of a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page, who had interacted with a Russian intelligence officer.

“Many people seem to assume that the only intelligence collection that occurred was a single confidential informant” and the warrant to surveil Mr. Page, Mr. Barr said. “I would like to find out whether that is in fact true. It strikes me as a fairly anemic effort if that was the counterintelligence effort designed to stop the threat as it’s being represented.”

Apparently the effort was less anemic than we have been told so far.

Life Is Unfair; Let's Make It Worse

The Olympic rulemakers rival their NCAA counterparts for cranial/anal impaction:

Caster Semenya ruling redefines what it means to be female in sport

(CNN)A landmark ruling concerning one of the most contested issues in sport -- gender identity -- has sent shockwaves through track and field in setting out new parameters for female athletes.

On Wednesday, double Olympic champion Caster Semenya lost her appeal against the introduction of new rules regulating the testosterone levels for athletes with a difference in sex development (DSD).

 

The 28-year-old South African, who is hyperandrogenous -- meaning she has elevated levels of testosterone -- will now need to take medication to reduce her testosterone if she wants to compete internationally at events between 400 meters and one mile. Semenya is the dominant force in women's middle distance running.

 

However, the judges themselves are not sure what they have wrought:

 

In its ruling the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) announced that its three-person panel had rejected Semenya's challenge against athletics' governing body -- the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) -- "by majority" but did add that it had "serious concerns as to the future practical application" of the new rules.

 

Under the IAAF's policy, which will now come into effect on May 8, all DSD athletes, who are usually born with testes, would have to reduce their blood testosterone levels to below five nmol/L for a continuous period of at least six months, and maintain those levels continuously for the rest of their athletic career, if they want to compete internationally at middle-distance events.

 

Let's note that roughly 5% to 10% of women are DSD. There's lots of background from earlier at CBS, which includes an obvious question: if DSD confers an advantage at 400M to 1 mile, why doesn't it help in other sports where extra muscle is obviously helpful? Track and field fans will immediately think of the "weight" events such as the hammer, shot put and discus. Before spring football took over, offensive lineman would routinely join the track team to put ye olde shot while the defensive backs, running backs and wide receivers would stretch, sprint and work on their tans.

 

And a last thought: this rule looks like BS but IF it gains widespread adoption and IF it is applied to other sports and more broadly within track, transgenders competing as women will be in a new place. For example, two teens won state championships in the 100m and 200min Connecticut recently. Something similar occurred in Alaska. This podium photo from the women's world bike racing championships did not meet universal acclaim.

 

OTOH, very few of us take women's sports seriously anyway and these are high school results from two small states (but big in spirit! Also big in unfunded pension liabilities. Whatev.). Maybe we all just move one.