Month: July 2019

Outraged Politicians and Official Statistics Miss the Benefits of Tech

We’re in the middle of a big backlash against the internet, the kind that often appears when you start taking a technology’s benefits for granted. It doesn’t help that a lot of those benefits don’t show up in our official statistics. 

Goldman Sachs’s economic research team has found that a lot of the innovation Silicon Valley generates isn’t captured by standard measurements of GDP. For example, while email, direct messaging, and Google Maps clearly make all kinds of work easier or more efficient, they’re free, so GDP doesn’t include the value consumers gain from using them. It’s telling that a recent MIT study found that the median person would be willing to pay more than $40 a month for Facebook. Just because users don’t pay for a service doesn’t mean they don’t value it. 

The Goldman Sachs researchers also had issues with how we measure consumer inflation. Sometimes when a good or service increases in price over time, that doesn’t mean you’re paying more for the same standard of living; it means the quality of the good or service has improved. A cell phone in 2000 could do a lot less than a cell phone can today. 

On the whole, the researchers estimate that these blind spots (most of which are tech-related) lead us to underestimate real GDP growth in the United States by 1 percentage point. In 2018, that would mean the economy grew almost 4 percent after adjusting for inflation instead of by almost 3 percent. And the gap has gotten larger over the past two decades: According to their estimates, GDP growth was underestimated by just .35 percentage points in 2005. 

Similarly, Amazon is often criticized for putting brick-and-mortar retailers—mostly big-box stores, but also smaller operations—out of business. But the flipside is that Amazon and other tech companies have created ways for many types of small businesses to expand their reach beyond what they could before. Amazon makes it much easier for small businesses to sell to customers around the world, and so do eBay, Google, and Facebook. Instead of just a storefront facing Main Street, these enterprises can now reach the whole internet, with very low barriers to entry. 

“Thanks to large online platforms, for less than $10, a small business can reach thousands of potential customers and target them more accurately than ever,” Carl Szabo of NetChoice, a trade association of e-commerce businesses, testified to the House Judiciary Committee last week. Szabo highlighted the story of a woodworker in Albany, New York, who can now sell his craft to buyers around the country thanks to Etsy.

According to the Progressive Policy Institute, a center-left think tank, companies can get the same impact for $3 of digital advertising as they could with $5 of print advertising. 

Small businesses aren’t the only beneficiaries here. Greater competition and lower advertising costs translate to lower prices for consumers, too. An analysis by the London-based firm Frontier Economics found that eBay helps consumers save around 24 percent of what they would otherwise spend in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. That translates to 1.1 billion Euros in savings per year.

All this suggests that the idea of “secular stagnation“—the notion that productivity growth has slowed down dramatically and will stay low for the foreseeable future—is overblown. It also helps quantify the real but easily forgotten improvements that free technology has made in peoples’ lives.

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Outraged Politicians and Official Statistics Miss the Benefits of Tech

We’re in the middle of a big backlash against the internet, the kind that often appears when you start taking a technology’s benefits for granted. It doesn’t help that a lot of those benefits don’t show up in our official statistics. 

Goldman Sachs’s economic research team has found that a lot of the innovation Silicon Valley generates isn’t captured by standard measurements of GDP. For example, while email, direct messaging, and Google Maps clearly make all kinds of work easier or more efficient, they’re free, so GDP doesn’t include the value consumers gain from using them. It’s telling that a recent MIT study found that the median person would be willing to pay more than $40 a month for Facebook. Just because users don’t pay for a service doesn’t mean they don’t value it. 

The Goldman Sachs researchers also had issues with how we measure consumer inflation. Sometimes when a good or service increases in price over time, that doesn’t mean you’re paying more for the same standard of living; it means the quality of the good or service has improved. A cell phone in 2000 could do a lot less than a cell phone can today. 

On the whole, the researchers estimate that these blind spots (most of which are tech-related) lead us to underestimate real GDP growth in the United States by 1 percentage point. In 2018, that would mean the economy grew almost 4 percent after adjusting for inflation instead of by almost 3 percent. And the gap has gotten larger over the past two decades: According to their estimates, GDP growth was underestimated by just .35 percentage points in 2005. 

Similarly, Amazon is often criticized for putting brick-and-mortar retailers—mostly big-box stores, but also smaller operations—out of business. But the flipside is that Amazon and other tech companies have created ways for many types of small businesses to expand their reach beyond what they could before. Amazon makes it much easier for small businesses to sell to customers around the world, and so do eBay, Google, and Facebook. Instead of just a storefront facing Main Street, these enterprises can now reach the whole internet, with very low barriers to entry. 

“Thanks to large online platforms, for less than $10, a small business can reach thousands of potential customers and target them more accurately than ever,” Carl Szabo of NetChoice, a trade association of e-commerce businesses, testified to the House Judiciary Committee last week. Szabo highlighted the story of a woodworker in Albany, New York, who can now sell his craft to buyers around the country thanks to Etsy.

According to the Progressive Policy Institute, a center-left think tank, companies can get the same impact for $3 of digital advertising as they could with $5 of print advertising. 

Small businesses aren’t the only beneficiaries here. Greater competition and lower advertising costs translate to lower prices for consumers, too. An analysis by the London-based firm Frontier Economics found that eBay helps consumers save around 24 percent of what they would otherwise spend in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. That translates to 1.1 billion Euros in savings per year.

All this suggests that the idea of “secular stagnation“—the notion that productivity growth has slowed down dramatically and will stay low for the foreseeable future—is overblown. It also helps quantify the real but easily forgotten improvements that free technology has made in peoples’ lives.

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Demise Of Phillips Curve Shifts Focus To Asset Cycles And Financial Stability

Submitted by Joseph Carson, Former Director of Global Economic Research, Alliance Bernstein

The Phillips curve has been dormant for over two decades, as the dynamic between tight labor markets and inflation has virtually disappeared. Yet, the demise of the Phillips curve should not be used as a reason for policymakers to think it is safer to run with a more stimulative monetary policy.

The transmission of modern day monetary policy works mainly through the asset markets and shifts the balance of risks towards asset cycles and financial stability. Decision to ease monetary policy today against a backdrop of record asset values would be tantamount to easing policy at the peak of previous high inflation cycles.

In testimony before Congress, the Fed Chair Jerome Powell acknowledged that the linkage between unemployment and inflation has been broken for at least 20 years ago. A number of fundamental and technical factors have come into to play in the past two decades to alter this relationship.

For example, in 1998 the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) determined that it could no longer find an adequate sample of owner-occupied housing to safely ensure an accurate measurement of owners rent so BLS decided to rely exclusively on the survey data from the rental market to measure both owner’s rent and apartment rents, even though the two markets are fundamentally different.

Measurement changes for technical reasons tend to be of minor importance but in this case the risk of altering the behavior of reported inflation as well as its relationship to other series was high for two reasons; first, the owner’s rent is the single largest component, accounting for over 30% of the core consumer price index; and, second, it was being replaced with a rent series that tends to move countercyclical, or the opposite direction of house price inflation.

Here’s a quick glance at how the owners rent series tracked housing prices under the original and new measurement practices.

During the 15-year period (1983 to 1998) when BLS used the original owner’s sample, the owners rent index rose cumulatively 74%, nearly matching the 72% increase in house price inflation as measured by the S&P Core Logic Case-Shiller series. Yet, during the housing boom period of 2002-06 when house price inflation jumped 50%+, the new owners rent index showed a cumulative increase of only 15%.

The near disappearance of housing inflation from reported inflation is mainly technical, but it did contribute (a lot) to the breakdown in the Phillips curve. Meanwhile, the loss of the house price signal should not be interpreted that real asset inflation is any less important to the economy’s performance or to monetary policy. Yet, from an operational standpoint for monetary policy the change moved housing inflation from the inflation-targeting bucket to the financial stability mandate.

Why is this important? Monetary policy feeds asset cycles through the same channels (interest rates and expectations) as it does general inflation. Yet, policymakers treat asset cycles differently believing that supervision and regulation—as a substitute for tighter money— is a better approach to promote financial stability.

It always difficult to prove causation but its hard to deny the recurring pattern of boom/bust asset cycles ever since this two-prong policy has been used in the past two decades. Moreover, the tipping point for the last two recessions came from destabilizing excesses in the asset markets and not from imbalances tied to general inflation. Today’s readings on asset values – relative to nominal income and GDP – exceed those of the dot.com and the housing bubble.

Each generation of policymakers has had to deal with fundamentals changes in the economy, and with the changing transmission and channels of monetary policy. During the high inflation cycles of the 1970s, policymakers misread inflation dynamics leading policymakers to believe that by accommodating the inflation cycle it would extend the economic cycle. That did not end well. Are policymakers nowadays falling into the same trap, misreading the dynamics of asset cycles believing that by promising more easy money it will help extend the economic cycle, while overlooking the risks to financial stability?

The Phillips curve might be dead, but its “ghost” lives on in the “Asset” curve (or the new dynamic between monetary policy and asset cycles). Policymakers should proceed with caution.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/30McJdq Tyler Durden

New Chick-fil-A Law Reveals Texas Politicians’ Hypocrisy on Corporate Speech

The San Antonio city council voted in March to block the addition of a Chick-fil-A at the San Antonio International Airport, citing the restaurant’s “legacy of anti-LGBT behavior.” The chicken chain has long been under fire for donating to groups that oppose LGBT-friendly laws, as well as for CEO Dan Cathy’s remark that America is “inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say we know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage.”

The state recently responded with a “Save Chick-fil-A” bill, or Senate Bill 1978, which prevents future government from taking “adverse actions” against a company or individual for exercising religious freedom. After signing the bill, Abbott tweeted: “No business should be discriminated against simply because its owners donate to a church, the Salvation Army, or other religious organization. Texas protects religious liberty.”

Abbott felt rather differently about Texas’ 2017 law aimed at the Boycott, Divestments, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. That bill barred state agencies from contracting with companies that boycott Israel. At the time, Abbott said, “Anti-Israel policies are anti-Texas policies, and we will not tolerate such actions against an important ally.”

There is, to be clear, an important distinction between the two laws. Texas would not be constitutionally allowed to refuse to contract with a business that simply donated to BDS groups or was led by an owner who criticized Israel. But Texas’ anti-BDS law targets actions directly carried out by the company itself, not donations or private speech. The legislation’s defenders say it is more analogous to a law barring contracts with companies that refuse service to gays and lesbians.

That said, the two bills may not be so far off in principle. While the state of Texas is right to recognize speech and donations as forms of free expression, direct actions can be expressive too. And I wonder how many people’s positions on these laws would change if the underlying political causes were different. Suppose a state decided that because representation in the workplace is an important value, it will not extend contracts to companies that did not have a certain number of women sitting on their boards. How many people who hate the anti-BDS law would accept that one? How many who love the anti-BDS law would cry foul?

This is the sort of thing that happens when governments wander into these waters. It’s not long before taxpayers find their dollars are supporting a cause with which they fundamentally disagree.

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The Article II Executive Power and the Rule of Law (Part I)

The editors have graciously invited me to write a series of guest posts about executive power.  The more elaborate version of what I have to say is in a working draft that’s been posted to SSRN, titled Executive Power.

Officials who administer the government and carry out the law do so in an environment of legal rules that empower and constrain them.  My central claim is that the Article II executive power consists exclusively of the capacity to perform the roles constituted by those rules, none of which comes from the executive power itself.

Executive power brings with it no authority to use government resources or to invade otherwise-protected private interests.  It brings with it no inviolable discretion in the administration of the government in its foreign or domestic or military operations.  All the rules that empower executive officials and give them discretion have sources other than the executive power itself.  The only inherent executive power is the capacity to play the role constituted by those other rules.  The President’s role as Commander in Chief of the armed forces concerns the military hierarchy, not the substance of the law that applies to the armed forces.

This first post sets out that limited conception of the executive power.  It then begins the argument that the Article II executive power refers to that conception by identifying that understanding—the Whig executive—as a leading candidate for the meaning of “executive power” at the time of the framing.  The next post will pick up the argument concerning the Constitution’s text and structure.  The third will discuss the available records of the Federal Convention, arguing that the Whig conception was known to the delegates and that their drafting choices indicate that they meant to employ it.

The fourth post will turn to the government function for which the argument to a more substantive executive power is often thought strongest: foreign relations.  The executive power of Article II, I will argue, gives the capacity to conduct foreign affairs but not any policy autonomy regarding them.  Any such autonomy arises as a residuum of the enumerated powers of Congress and the statutes that have been adopted pursuant to them.  Executive discretion as a residuum of legislation and legislative power can be found elsewhere, but executive power confers no discretion that legislation may not override.  The last post will discuss two important claims of executive power—executive privilege and the unitary executive—and then conclude by discussing two leading appearances of the Whig conception in American constitutional history.

Executive officials administer the government and carry out the law.  They act in an environment of legal rules that empower and constrain them.  Empowerment comes in the form of authorization to use the distinctive legal advantages of the government to pursue the goals specified by the law.  Some of those advantages are material, like National Park Service vehicles and Air Force fighter jets.  Some are juridical, like the ability of the United States to make contracts and to transfer funds to private people, for example in paying Social Security benefits.  One important kind of juridical advantage are privileges to engage in conduct that invade private interests.  When DEA agents break down a door to execute a search warrant, and when Air Force pilots fire on enemy positions, they rely on privileges like that.

Constraints come in two forms.  Some apply specifically to officials.  They include both affirmative and negative duties.  Fundamental to officials’ roles are affirmative obligations to perform the tasks for which their offices were created.  The Social Security Administration is legally required to pay benefits as set out in the applicable statutes.  Other constraints that apply specifically to those who carry out the law are negative.  Many Treasury employees are forbidden to engage in transactions in federal debt that are perfectly lawful for private people.

The other form of constraint is the residue of privilege to invade private interests.  A DEA agent who breaks down a door without a warrant may well commit a tort by doing so, as a private person would.

All this is thoroughly familiar, but sometimes important insights are hiding in plain sight.  The rules that empower and constrain come from the relevant body of law, like the Social Security Act.  They are far too detailed, and rest on far too many policy choices, to come from anywhere else.  When Congress creates federal programs, it decides what resources to devote to them.  That includes the resource of invading private interests.  Whether EPA inspectors can inspect regulated premises without the owner’s consent is up to Congress.  Constraints concerning bribes are found in the law of bribery.

The armed forces fit into this legal structure, as they too use the resources of the government to carry out the operations of the government.  Fighter jets and the ability to contract to buy them, and combatant privilege, and the permission to use bases owned or leased by the United States, are all assets, material and juridical, of the government.  Members of the forces use those assets to perform their functions and are subject to affirmative and negative constraints.  They must obey lawful orders and may not commit war crimes even if ordered to do so.  Appropriations for F-22s are found in appropriations statutes; the permissions given by combatant privilege come from the law of armed conflict.

Executive officials use the assets of the government to achieve the goals set by the law, subject to affirmative and negative constraints arising from the applicable legal rules.  All those rules have a source, mainly in statutes.  What the roles created by those rules have in common is the capacity to occupy them.  That capacity must itself arise from some legal rule or body of legal rules.

That more elaborate account of the legal world in which implementing officials operate feeds into two interpretive claims about the meaning of “executive power” in Article II.  The first claim I think is uncontroversial: the capacity to fill the positions creating by the applicable law is part of the executive power.  Indeed, that is its core.  Whatever else the executive power does, it enables those who hold it to administer the government—that is, to carry out the law.

The next and more controversial claim is that the executive power consists of nothing else.  The first step in seeing that that conceptualization best matches the text and structure of the Constitution concerns its intellectual background.  The limited understanding of executive power was familiar at the time of the framing.  It was especially common among thinkers on both sides of the Atlantic who were highly suspicious of royal power and called themselves Whigs.

That is the thinking that, for example, underlay Thomas Jefferson’s 1783 proposal for a revised Constitution of Virginia.  Jefferson would have given the Governor “those powers only, which are necessary to execute the laws (and administer the government) and which are not in their nature either legislative or judiciary.”

The next post will explain why the limited, Whig, conception of executive power best fits the Constitution’s text and structure.

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New Chick-fil-A Law Reveals Texas Politicians’ Hypocrisy on Corporate Speech

The San Antonio city council voted in March to block the addition of a Chick-fil-A at the San Antonio International Airport, citing the restaurant’s “legacy of anti-LGBT behavior.” The chicken chain has long been under fire for donating to groups that oppose LGBT-friendly laws, as well as for CEO Dan Cathy’s remark that America is “inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say we know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage.”

The state recently responded with a “Save Chick-fil-A” bill, or Senate Bill 1978, which prevents future government from taking “adverse actions” against a company or individual for exercising religious freedom. After signing the bill, Abbott tweeted: “No business should be discriminated against simply because its owners donate to a church, the Salvation Army, or other religious organization. Texas protects religious liberty.”

Abbott felt rather differently about Texas’ 2017 law aimed at the Boycott, Divestments, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. That bill barred state agencies from contracting with companies that boycott Israel. At the time, Abbott said, “Anti-Israel policies are anti-Texas policies, and we will not tolerate such actions against an important ally.”

There is, to be clear, an important distinction between the two laws. Texas would not be constitutionally allowed to refuse to contract with a business that simply donated to BDS groups or was led by an owner who criticized Israel. But Texas’ anti-BDS law targets actions directly carried out by the company itself, not donations or private speech. The legislation’s defenders say it is more analogous to a law barring contracts with companies that refuse service to gays and lesbians.

That said, the two bills may not be so far off in principle. While the state of Texas is right to recognize speech and donations as forms of free expression, direct actions can be expressive too. And I wonder how many people’s positions on these laws would change if the underlying political causes were different. Suppose a state decided that because representation in the workplace is an important value, it will not extend contracts to companies that did not have a certain number of women sitting on their boards. How many people who hate the anti-BDS law would accept that one? How many who love the anti-BDS law would cry foul?

This is the sort of thing that happens when governments wander into these waters. It’s not long before taxpayers find their dollars are supporting a cause with which they fundamentally disagree.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2Okz8xk
via IFTTT

The Article II Executive Power and the Rule of Law (Part I)

The editors have graciously invited me to write a series of guest posts about executive power.  The more elaborate version of what I have to say is in a working draft that’s been posted to SSRN, titled Executive Power.

Officials who administer the government and carry out the law do so in an environment of legal rules that empower and constrain them.  My central claim is that the Article II executive power consists exclusively of the capacity to perform the roles constituted by those rules, none of which comes from the executive power itself.

Executive power brings with it no authority to use government resources or to invade otherwise-protected private interests.  It brings with it no inviolable discretion in the administration of the government in its foreign or domestic or military operations.  All the rules that empower executive officials and give them discretion have sources other than the executive power itself.  The only inherent executive power is the capacity to play the role constituted by those other rules.  The President’s role as Commander in Chief of the armed forces concerns the military hierarchy, not the substance of the law that applies to the armed forces.

This first post sets out that limited conception of the executive power.  It then begins the argument that the Article II executive power refers to that conception by identifying that understanding—the Whig executive—as a leading candidate for the meaning of “executive power” at the time of the framing.  The next post will pick up the argument concerning the Constitution’s text and structure.  The third will discuss the available records of the Federal Convention, arguing that the Whig conception was known to the delegates and that their drafting choices indicate that they meant to employ it.

The fourth post will turn to the government function for which the argument to a more substantive executive power is often thought strongest: foreign relations.  The executive power of Article II, I will argue, gives the capacity to conduct foreign affairs but not any policy autonomy regarding them.  Any such autonomy arises as a residuum of the enumerated powers of Congress and the statutes that have been adopted pursuant to them.  Executive discretion as a residuum of legislation and legislative power can be found elsewhere, but executive power confers no discretion that legislation may not override.  The last post will discuss two important claims of executive power—executive privilege and the unitary executive—and then conclude by discussing two leading appearances of the Whig conception in American constitutional history.

Executive officials administer the government and carry out the law.  They act in an environment of legal rules that empower and constrain them.  Empowerment comes in the form of authorization to use the distinctive legal advantages of the government to pursue the goals specified by the law.  Some of those advantages are material, like National Park Service vehicles and Air Force fighter jets.  Some are juridical, like the ability of the United States to make contracts and to transfer funds to private people, for example in paying Social Security benefits.  One important kind of juridical advantage are privileges to engage in conduct that invade private interests.  When DEA agents break down a door to execute a search warrant, and when Air Force pilots fire on enemy positions, they rely on privileges like that.

Constraints come in two forms.  Some apply specifically to officials.  They include both affirmative and negative duties.  Fundamental to officials’ roles are affirmative obligations to perform the tasks for which their offices were created.  The Social Security Administration is legally required to pay benefits as set out in the applicable statutes.  Other constraints that apply specifically to those who carry out the law are negative.  Many Treasury employees are forbidden to engage in transactions in federal debt that are perfectly lawful for private people.

The other form of constraint is the residue of privilege to invade private interests.  A DEA agent who breaks down a door without a warrant may well commit a tort by doing so, as a private person would.

All this is thoroughly familiar, but sometimes important insights are hiding in plain sight.  The rules that empower and constrain come from the relevant body of law, like the Social Security Act.  They are far too detailed, and rest on far too many policy choices, to come from anywhere else.  When Congress creates federal programs, it decides what resources to devote to them.  That includes the resource of invading private interests.  Whether EPA inspectors can inspect regulated premises without the owner’s consent is up to Congress.  Constraints concerning bribes are found in the law of bribery.

The armed forces fit into this legal structure, as they too use the resources of the government to carry out the operations of the government.  Fighter jets and the ability to contract to buy them, and combatant privilege, and the permission to use bases owned or leased by the United States, are all assets, material and juridical, of the government.  Members of the forces use those assets to perform their functions and are subject to affirmative and negative constraints.  They must obey lawful orders and may not commit war crimes even if ordered to do so.  Appropriations for F-22s are found in appropriations statutes; the permissions given by combatant privilege come from the law of armed conflict.

Executive officials use the assets of the government to achieve the goals set by the law, subject to affirmative and negative constraints arising from the applicable legal rules.  All those rules have a source, mainly in statutes.  What the roles created by those rules have in common is the capacity to occupy them.  That capacity must itself arise from some legal rule or body of legal rules.

That more elaborate account of the legal world in which implementing officials operate feeds into two interpretive claims about the meaning of “executive power” in Article II.  The first claim I think is uncontroversial: the capacity to fill the positions creating by the applicable law is part of the executive power.  Indeed, that is its core.  Whatever else the executive power does, it enables those who hold it to administer the government—that is, to carry out the law.

The next and more controversial claim is that the executive power consists of nothing else.  The first step in seeing that that conceptualization best matches the text and structure of the Constitution concerns its intellectual background.  The limited understanding of executive power was familiar at the time of the framing.  It was especially common among thinkers on both sides of the Atlantic who were highly suspicious of royal power and called themselves Whigs.

That is the thinking that, for example, underlay Thomas Jefferson’s 1783 proposal for a revised Constitution of Virginia.  Jefferson would have given the Governor “those powers only, which are necessary to execute the laws (and administer the government) and which are not in their nature either legislative or judiciary.”

The next post will explain why the limited, Whig, conception of executive power best fits the Constitution’s text and structure.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/30NFjel
via IFTTT

UK Minister Resigns, Tries To Topple Johnson Government Before It’s Even Official

In a race that has been marked by mostly harmless scandal (the altercation between Boris Johnson and girlfriend Carrie Symonds being an exception), some exciting developments are threatening to topple Johnson’s administration before it even begins.

Duncan

Alan Duncan

Ministers’ discomfort with serving under Boris Johnson have manifested in a series of resignations in recent days.

And on Monday, one of Johnson’s longtime enemies within the Conservative Party became the latest to resign and try to be a thorn in Johnson’s side, and possibly even scuttle hiswell-laid path to No. 10.

In a letter to Prime Minister Theresa May, Sir Alan Duncan resigned his post as foreign office minister, saying it was “customary” for ministers to step aside upon the changing of a PM, and added that it would free to “express my views” ahead of May leaving office.

May accepted Duncan’s offer and thanked him for his “distinguished” service.

Though many still refuse to believe that Brexit, or a no-deal Brexit, is even possible…

UK

…Duncan immediately tried calling for a vote that, through a series of technicalities, would have amounted to a de facto confidence vote in Johnson.

But Duncan was stymied by Speaker John Bercow, who blocked his bid.

But even if enough support for the next leader was registered in the vote, it might have exposed how shaky a Johnson government would be.

In an interview with the BBC, Duncan said he wanted the Commons to hold an effective confidence vote in Johnson on Tuesday, after Johnson is declared the new Tory leader, but one day before he is sworn in as PM. Some saw the maneuver as a long-time critic trying to undercut Johnson, but Duncan insisted he wanted Johnson’s government to succeed.

But, Duncan argued, this would be the first time in living memory where a minority government changes PM mid-term. To avoid a “constitutional crisis,” Duncan said he thought it was important to establish that Johnson had the confidence of the Commons.

Recent polls show Johnson is expected to defeat his rival, Jeremy Hunt, by a landslide.

Infographic: Leadership election: Johnson heading for landslide victory | Statista You will find more infographics at Statista

But with Duncan now the fourth minister to resign from May’s government in recent days, the vote just underscores how tenuous Johnson’s government’s grip on power will be.

Duncan, who once served under Johnson when Johnson was Foreign Secretary, said he was “totally” loyal to Johnson when he was his deputy, but that he nonetheless had serious concerns about Johnson’s ability to lead. He suggested that he believes Jeremy Hunt, Johnson’s opponent and Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, would be the more competent leader, despite widely held expectations that Johnson will win a ballot of Tory members.

“When I was his deputy I was totally loyal. We never had an argument. I never bad mouthed him. So I’ve served both foreign secretaries. And I’ve no doubt which of the two is the more capable and more competent. So I have very grave concerns that he flies by the seat of his pants, and it’s all a bit haphazard and ramshackle. But there’s no personal animosity of any sort. I just think he’s going to go smack into a crisis of government.”

Rumors have been spreading that Europe is preparing to offer Johnson a new deal to try and avert a “no deal” Brexit, something that Johnson seems increasingly intent on delivering.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2MbYZV8 Tyler Durden

Trump Trashes ‘Squad’ As “Racist Group Of Troublemakers”

President Trump’s ongoing effort to force ‘moderate’ liberals to support the most extreme leftists – somewhat tarring the entire Democratic party with the same open-borders, anti-Israel, “America’s the worst” strategy – was turned up to ’11’ on the rhetoric scale today.

For more than a week, the president has been at the center of racism accusations after telling the group, made up of Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) and Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), to “go back” to their home countries.

And this morning he continued the attacks, calling the group of minority women a “racist group of troublemakers.”

“The ‘Squad’ is a very Racist group of troublemakers who are young, inexperienced, and not very smart.”

Reading through the ‘squad’s statements, one can’t help but see Trump’s perspective, as Kurt Schlichter recent noted, the Democrats’ 2020 theme is that you are terrible and the party’s slogan will be “Americans suck, vote for us.”

LibertyNation’s James Capua concludes,

“Thus enlightened, such people are single-minded in doing what is necessary to keep that job, which in their, and their perpetually-outraged sisters’ cases, is feeding the leftist audience what it craves. They live at the whim of the mob; for them, achievement consists of running fast enough to keep near the front of the crowd, news cycle to news cycle, appearing to be directing it. Since the howls and “likes” of the audience pay their bills, it is thus understandable that the news of every imagined American outrage, every shortcoming, and every awkward verbal stumble by a MAGA-hat wearing prole or cabinet secretary, is delivered by an Omar or a Tlaib with a haughty superiority and unalloyed joyfulness that is fingernails on a blackboard for the rest of us.”

We wonder just how many middle-Americans actually know (let alone care) about ‘the squad’?

 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Z1aDG6 Tyler Durden

Mueller, ‘Meddling’, & The Routing Of The RussiaGate Narrative

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

What Goes Around

Just how dead is the RussiaGate story – and how brain-dead are the House Democratic Committee chairmen, Nadler (Judiciary Committee) and Schiff (Intelligence Committee) to haul RussiaGate’s front-man, Robert Mueller back into the spotlight where the next thing to roll over and die will be Mr. Mueller’s evanescent reputation? The entrapment operation that was the Special Counsel’s covert mission has turned out to be Mr. Mueller own personal booby-trap, prompting the question: is it possible that he’s just not very bright?

Though Mr. Mueller’s final report asserted that the Russian government interfered in “a sweeping and systemic fashion” to influence the 2016 election, the 450-page great tome contains zero evidence to support that claim, and the discrepancy was actually noticed by federal judge Dabney Friedrich who is presiding over the case against the alleged Russian Facebook trolls that was one of the two tent-poles in the RussiaGate fantasy. The case is now blowing up in Robert Mueller’s face.

In early 2018, Mr. Mueller sold a DC grand jury on producing indictments against a Russian outfit called the Internet Research Agency and its parent company Concord Management, owned by Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin for the so-called election meddling. The indictment was celebrated as a huge coup at the time by the likes of CNN and The New York Times, styled as a silver bullet in the heart of the Trump presidency. But the indicted parties were all in Russia, and could not be extradited, and there was zero expectation that any actual trial would ever take place — leaving Mueller & Co. off-the-hook for proving their allegations.

To the great surprise of Mr. Mueller and his “team,” Mr. Prigozhin hired some American lawyers to defend his company in court. Smooth move. It automatically triggered the discovery process, by which the accused is entitled to see the evidence that prosecutors hold. It turned out that Mr. Mueller’s team had no evidence that the Russian government was involved with the Facebook pranks. This annoyed Judge Friedrich, who ordered Mr. Mueller and his lawyers to desist making public statements about Concord and IRA’s alleged “sweeping and systemic” collusion with Russia, and threatened legal sanctions if they did.

Judge Friedrich’s rulings were unsealed in early July, after Messers Nadler and Schiff had already scheduled Mr. Mueller’s testimony before their committees. And now they’re stuck with him. The only purpose of his appearance was to repeat and reinforce the narrative that the Russian government interfered in the election, which he is now forbidden to do, at least in connection to the Concord and IRA’s activities. But the other tentpole of the two-year-plus inquisition has also collapsed: the allegation that Russian intel hacked the DNC servers. It’s now a matter of public record that the DNC servers were never examined by federal officials. They were purportedly scrutinized by a DNC contractor called CrowdStrike, co-founded by Russian Dimitri Alperovitch, an adversary of Vladimir Putin, active in US-based anti-Putin lobbying and PR. CrowdStrike’s “draft” report on their review of the server was laughably incomplete, and the Mueller team’s lawyers took no steps to validate it.

It would be interesting to hear Robert Mueller’s explanation for how come US computer forensic experts were never dispatched to take possession of the DNC servers. Surely a ranking member on either House committee would have to ask him that, along with many other embarrassing questions about the stupendously sloppy and disingenuous work of the Special Counsel’s team. It was only one glaring omission among many.

The whole affair now takes on tragic contours of Shakespearean dimensions. The Attorney General, Mr. Barr, is said to be an “old friend” of Mr. Mueller. They clashed pretty publicly after the release of Mr. Mueller’s long-awaited final report. Mr. Barr must at least be dismayed by the bad faith and deliberate deceit in his old friend’s final report,  and he really has to do something about it. The entire Mueller episode smacks of prosecutorial misconduct. In retrospect, it can only be explained as a desperate act undertaken by foolishly overconfident political activists.

If Mr. Mueller thought he was being enlisted to play an historically heroic role to help get rid of an elected president detested by the Establishment, then he made the blunder of a lifetime. It was not the first blunder of his long career, but it was the final and fatal one. It is not out of the question that Mr. Mueller himself may eventually be the one indicted and convicted of real crimes against the people of the United States.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2MamLBf Tyler Durden