A Russian official said Saturday that the US is lowering the “nuclear threshold” by sending an upgraded version of its B61 nuclear bomb to NATO bases in Europe.
The B61 is the US’s primary thermonuclear gravity bomb, and it is being modernized into a newer weapon known as the B61-12. Politicoreported last week that the US told NATO allies at a recent meeting that it is deploying the B-61-12 to Europe to replace older bombs by this December, a faster timeline than the originally planned spring deployment.
“We cannot ignore the plans to modernize nuclear weapons, those free-fall bombs that are in Europe,” said Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko, according to Russia’s RIA news agency.
The US has approximately 100 B61s currently stored at air bases in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, and Turkey. According to the Federation of American Scientists, the B61-12s carry a lower yield and are more accurate than older B61s.
“The United States is modernizing them, increasing their accuracy and reducing the power of the nuclear charge, that is, they turn these weapons into ‘battlefield weapons,’ thereby reducing the nuclear threshold,” Grushko said.
The B61s deployed in Europe are part of the US’s nuclear arsenal that are considered tactical weapons, which have smaller yields than strategic ones. The US has an estimated 200 tactical nuclear weapons, while Russia is said to have about 2,000. US tactical nuclear weapons range from between 0.3 and 170 kilotons (the bomb dropped on Hiroshima had a yield of 15 kilotons).
The plans to deploy the B61-12s to Europe by December have puzzled experts as the accelerated timeline does little but raises tensions with Russia. The Pentagon insists its B61-12 plans have nothing to do with the current situation and denies the characterization of the Politico report.
“Modernization of US B61 nuclear weapons has been underway for years, and plans to safely and responsibly swap out older weapons for the upgraded B61-12 versions are part of a long-planned and scheduled modernization effort,” a Pentagon spokesman said, according to Reuters. “It is in no way linked to current events in Ukraine and was not sped up in any way.”
Another part of the B61-12 upgrade is that it will allow the bomb to be carried by all US and allied bombers and fighter jets. The revelation of the planned deployment came as NATO was holding its nuclear Steadfast Noon exercises, which are due to conclude on Sunday. The drills were hosted by Belgium and involved 14 NATO members and about 60 aircraft that simulated dropping nuclear bombs.
A federal court is allowing a civil rights lawsuit to move forward against three police officers in Alabama accused of pulling cars over to find reasons to fine the drivers and tow the vehicles, all part of a controversial and corrupt plan to raise revenue.
It’s the latest development for the town of Brookside, Alabama, which drew national attention back in January when the Birmingham News exposed that the mayor and the police chief of the 1,500-population town built up the police force and then set them loose to fine drivers whatever amount they could. Over the course of two years, revenue from fines and forfeitures jumped more than 600 percent and accounted for more than half of Brookside’s budget. People targeted by the police began to sue, accusing cops of fabricating charges in order to justify fining people and towing their cars.
The Institute for Justice has filed a class-action lawsuit against the town, some of the police, and the towing company involved to put an end to this practice. It’s currently representing four plaintiffs, one of whom, Brittany Coleman, was pulled over in 2020 and handcuffed for 30 minutes while police searched her car for marijuana. They didn’t find any, and she passed three field sobriety tests, but police charged her with marijuana possession anyway and towed her car.
In response to Coleman’s suit, the three cops—Marcus Sellers, Mareshah Moses, and Anthony Ragsdale—requested a summary judgment from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama Southern Division dismissing the claims against them. The officers were attempting to invoke qualified immunity, the court-created doctrine that often shields cops from civil liability for violating people’s rights unless it can be shown that they knew what they were doing was wrong.
On Friday, District Judge R. David Proctor rejected the officers’ request. According to Proctor’s ruling, body camera footage from the cops shows Sellers telling Coleman that he didn’t believe she was under the influence and, therefore, unable to operate her car safely. But Sellers then huddled with the other cops and told them that he knew that Police Chief Mike Jones (who has since resigned) wanted them to tow the cars in these situations. They then charged Coleman with possession—charges that were later dropped—and towed her car. The cops tried to justify towing Coleman’s car because possession of marijuana is an “incident to arrest,” but they only cited her and did not take her into custody, thus undermining their own argument in favor of seizing the vehicle.
In other, words, the cops at the scene knew that they didn’t have grounds for what they were doing. And so, for now, Coleman can continue to attempt to hold them accountable for targeting her.
“The district court’s denial of qualified immunity is an important step in the efforts of ordinary people to hold Brookside and its officers accountable for violating their constitutional rights,” said Institute for Justice Attorney Tori Clark in a statement.
But the amount of deference the courts give police officers means that this part of the fight is not over. Institute for Justice Attorney Jaba Tsitsuashvili tells Reason that the cops will have two additional appeals to convince courts they should have qualified immunity. They can also raise it at the trial as an argument, and even if they lose at the trial, they can appeal yet again on the grounds that they should have qualified immunity.
Part of the insidious nature of qualified immunity is not just how it shields cops from accountability for violating people’s rights, but how many opportunities cops have to try to invoke it and how heavy the burden is for people who have been victimized by bad police behavior to hold them accountable. Coleman has won just one of several rounds in this case.
From Doe v. MIT, decided today by Judge Richard G. Stearns (D. Mass.):
On May 13, 2016, Doe was expelled from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) following a Title IX proceeding involving accusations made against him by his ex-girlfriend, Jane Doe, of nonconsensual contact and forced sexual intercourse, and sexual harassment. On December 16, 2021, Doe sued MIT in this court for breach of contract, promissory estoppel, and denial of basic due process. According to Doe’s Complaint, MIT’s Title IX investigation had been compromised by a “[r]adical feminist anti-male bias on the MIT campus [that] guided the investigation report’s conclusions …. MIT presumed the female complainant’s story to be true (which it wasn’t), and presumed John Doe not to be truthful (which wasn’t the case) in order to avoid being found responsible.”
Doe moved to proceed under a pseudonym on the same day. This court denied his motion, finding that his generalized expression of fear of future harm if self-identified as an alleged perpetrator of sexual assault, was too speculative to outweigh the court’s historical concern for transparency and constitutional presumption favoring public access to judicial records….
[On appeal,] the First Circuit responded with an innovative four-part test to be used to determine those situations in which a party in a federal civil case might permissibly proceed under a pseudonym. The First Circuit vacated this court’s order and remanded Doe’s case for consideration under the new test….
The First Circuit identified four categories of “exceptional cases in which party anonymity ordinarily will be warranted.” The identified general exceptions are: (1) where “a would-be Doe who reasonably fears that coming out of the shadows will cause him unusually severe harm (either physical or psychological)”; (2) where “identifying the would-be Doe would harm ‘innocent non-parties'”; (3) where “anonymity is necessary to forestall a chilling effect on future litigants who may be similarly situated”; and (4) where the suit is “bound up with a prior proceeding made confidential by law.”
Doearguesthatallfourprongsapplytohiscase.The court does not agree, except for the second prong of the First Circuit’s test.
{While the First Circuit directed the district court to “consider any additional arguments by the parties as to whether the confidentiality requirements of FERPA and Title IX have weight with respect to John’s particular situation” under the fourth prong, Doe has not addressed that issue with any particularity.
The court also notes that the third-prong exception threatens to swallow the rule contrary to the First Circuit’s principle that “[l]itigation by pseudonym should occur only in ‘exceptional cases.'” As the First Circuit recognized, the nature of adversarial litigation “frequently invade[s] customary notions of privacy and—in the bargain—threatens parties’ reputations.” Because parties seek anonymity precisely to avoid such harm, the third paradigm as written could apply to virtually any case in which parties wish to use a pseudonym. The harm Doe identifies here—”reputational damages and consequences that flow therein as a result of the false allegations”—would also apply in a host of other areas, such as defamation, medical torts, and employment discrimination, where the record may reveal unflattering, embarrassing, or intimate facets of a party’s past. Cf. Doe v. MIT (1st Cir.) (cautioning against a litigation world in which “Does and Roes would predominate,” and warning that “[a] judicial system replete with Does and Roes invites cynicism and undermines public confidence in the courts’ work.”).}
Doe argues that his identification would harm an innocent non-party by eventually (or potentially) revealing the identity of Roe. Courts have found that nonparties have a “stronger case for anonymity” than a party who brings an action. While litigants “must be prepared to accept the public scrutiny that is an inherent part of public trials” by electing to use the courts, non-parties have not made such a choice….
For the foregoing reasons, Doe’s Motion to Proceed Under Pseudonym will be provisionally granted. Doe will file under seal within ten (10) days of the date of this Order a disclosure of the identity of any other party or entity (other than his family and Jane Roe) who may have a direct interest in the outcome of the litigation. Doe is warned that absent a conclusive showing of ultimate harm it is unlikely that the court will allow the case to proceed to trial before a jury without prospective jurors being informed of Doe’s actual identity.
Like Christmas and Columbus Day, the left refuse to let a holiday go by without whining and this year once again the war on Halloween continues.
Likely at the insistence of some new school administrator fresh out of a graduate program in women’s studies or whatever, The Daily Bell’s Ben Bartbee reports that “Lower Merion School District cancels Halloween parades over safety, inclusivity concerns,” sacrificing a 50-year tradition at the altar of Social Justice.
Halloween stuff in Lower Merion School District is now replaced with some vague, sterilized abomination called “fall-themed activities,” which are sure to suck the souls out of the schoolchildren.
“eBay has banned the sale of costumes inspired by the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in the run-up to Halloween for violating its policy.. Dahmer killed 17 people, predominantly Black men and boys… The company policy states that sellers are banned from listing items that ‘promote or glorify violence’ or are associated with violent individuals, the acts for which they gained notoriety, or crime scenes from the past 100 years.”
In all reality, Jeffrey Dahmer costumes would’ve garnered much less scrutiny if not for two crucial features of his victims: homosexuality and racial diversity. Via Out Magazine:
“Dressing as this real-life killer who tortured and murdered 17 men and boys (many of whom are Black and gay) is… actually a pretty awful idea.”
The whataboutism does get tiresome. But as a matter for the record, we all know that a costume of a serial killer who killed and ate white people would enjoy fairer treatment among the activist community.
But, finally, and perhaps most terrifying for the average American parent, thanks to Washington’s excesses, Halloween is more expensive this year than ever before – thanks to inflation.
Data from the National Retail Federation has found that some $10.6 million will be spent on Halloween in the United States this year, whether that’s in the form of nightmarish costumes, spooky decorations for the house, or candy for trick-or-treaters. Compared to 2021, this is an increase of about half a million U.S. dollars, showing how consumer spending patterns are steadily back on track after a comparatively quiet Halloween in the pandemic year of 2020.
Yet as Statista’s chart shows,while expenditure was up in 2021, when taking inflation into account, it is actually expected to be down in 2022. Where Halloween spending hit 7.9 million U.S. dollars in 2021, once adjusted for inflation, it will likely hit closer to 7.7 million in 2022.
Sure, we’re seeing higher prices everywhere we go, but when you look at the different elements of Halloween, the picture is frightening.
Let’s start with the biggest staple of the Halloween experience: candy.
As PJMedia’s Chris Queen reports, the price of candy has gone through the roof, and not just for Halloween. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the price of candy is up 13.1% over last year as of September. That’s the biggest jump since the Great Recession of 2008 and the highest candy inflation has ever been this century.
Candy prices have been on a steady rise over the past several months. Add to rising prices the fact that many candy manufacturers are packaging candy in smaller quantities, which means you’re getting even less bang for your buck.
It’s almost enough to turn more of us into those boring people who give apples to trick-or-treaters.
While we’re at the grocery store, let’s talk pumpkins. You guessed it; pumpkin prices have gone up too. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service, “At $5.07 per jack-o’-lantern type pumpkin (Howden) in the third week of October 2022, retail pumpkin prices are up 2 percent from the same time last year.” Demand for specialty pumpkins in unusual colors has gone up, no doubt raising those prices as well.
Energy prices are making Halloween more expensive too.
How about those decorations that light up or inflate — you know, the ones that consume electricity? They cost more to run since electricity prices are up an average of 15.9% over last year nationwide, according to the BLS. (Don’t forget: that’ll affect Christmas lights, projections, and inflatables too.)
And what about driving the kids around for trick-or-treating? That’s going to cost you more too. Data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration tells us that, as of last week, gas prices are up 38.6 cents per gallon over this time last year, and diesel is worse at $1.62 per gallon higher than last year. Even though gas prices are going down a bit, the increase over last year is nothing to dismiss lightly. No wonder witches ride brooms.
“While the BLS stats do not focus specifically on Halloween costumes, the overall category of ‘apparel’ is up 5.5 percent in September year-on-year,” write Chloe Mayer and Rob Minto at Newsweek.
“And even those making their own costumes might notice that prices are up, because the category ‘sewing machines, fabric, and supplies’ was up 11 percent in September compared to last year.”
Add to those stats the intangible that costumes seem to get more elaborate every year, and it’s easy to see how inflation is even affecting what your kids wear when they go trick-or-treating.
With nearly everything we buy costing more this year, Halloween is more of a trick than a treat. But we can’t cower in fear; instead, we need to make sure that, just eight days after Halloween, we scare the bejesus out of the Democrats by voting them out of power. It’s the first giant step toward ending this horror story that is the Biden administration’s assault on our wallets.
Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., is under federal criminal investigation … again.
The voters of New Jersey reelected Menendez despite his accepting lavish gifts from a businessman who was later convicted of fraud. Menendez was also charged but the case was dismissed after a jury hung on the verdict.
As I noted at the time of the trial, Menendez was a “juror” in a trial that I handled in the Senate and he maintained a position completely at odds with his own later defense.
In the prior case against the Senator, prosecutors accused Menendez of accepting close to $1 million in contributions and lavish gifts in exchange for political favors.
The trial ended with a hung jury and the charges were dismissed in 2018.
That history did not prevent the Democrats making Menendez the chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
ABC and other outlets have confirmed the new investigation. Reports indicated that the investigation raised similar allegations to the 2018 case.
In 2018, I noted that the most poignant and powerful case against Menendez was made in his own words.
It was 2010, and Menendez was voting against my client federal Judge Thomas Porteous in Porteous’s impeachment trial.
The charges were laid out plainly before U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.):
“… engag[ing] in a corrupt relationship [and] as part of this corrupt relationship … solicit[ation] and accept[ance] of numerous things of value, including meals, trips, home repairs, and car repairs, for his personal use and benefit while at the same time taking official actions that benefitted [his friend].”
Menendez was resolute. He stood up in front of his colleagues and declared that receiving gifts ranging from free meals to wedding gifts was, plain and simple, corruption.
Notably, while many of his colleagues voted “not guilty” on Dec. 8, 2010, to Count Two (which focused on the gifts and travel benefits) against Judge Porteous, Menendez did not. He voted “guilty” on that and all of the other counts.
Menendez ultimately escaped conviction based on the very arguments that he rejected when another man stood accused in the well of the U.S. Senate. In his own trial, he called a couple dozen witnesses, including Cory Booker, New Jersey’s junior Democratic U.S. senator, and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who spoke to his good character.
The one witness who did not appear was Menendez himself.
Foxconn Ordered To Restore Output Despite COVID “Closed Loop” Lockdowns
The health authority in China’s Zhengzhou has reportedly ordered Foxconn’s “iPhone City” to restore its production despite being stuck in a Covid “closed loop” lock down that we wrote about several days ago.
Bloomberg is reporting early Monday morning that the site is being asked to “implement strict Covid-19 prevention measures” upon restarting production and that the company will bear main responsibility” for its production under its closed loop format.
Recall, just days ago we wrote that the lockdowns were so bad that some Foxconn employees were “scuffling” over food rations and that Covid cases at Foxconn’s main factory resulted in the facility going into a “closed loop” lockdown to begin with.
The lockdown means that employees can’t leave the campus and are tested regularly for Covid. After the lockdown, “food has become a source of unrest”, we wrote.
Cafeterias at the manufacturing site were shut down and workers on assembly lines were given “meal boxes”. Some employees who have remained locked down in their dormitories were given items like bread and instant noodles.
The origins of Covid on the compound are unknown, but workers in numbers up to a dozen can share “cramped living quarters”, the report says. Bloomberg said that conflicting reports indicated that isolated workers may have been deprived of proper meals.
Recall, just days ago we wrote about Foxconn implementing health restrictions after a flare up of Covid.
Foxconn’s Zhengzhou campus has about 300,000 workers — all have been banned from eating in public and must take meals back to their dorms for consumption, the South China Morning Post reported days ago, citing a notice on the factory’s official WeChat account.
Additionally, it was reported Monday morning that production of iPhones from the plant could fall by as much as 30% due to the tightening curbs across the country.
Leftwing Senator Gustavo Petro’s electoral victory, which he was inaugurated as Colombia’s 34th president, saw a wave of optimism sweep across the strife-torn country. The term of President Petro’s predecessor Ivan Duque was marred by a spike in violence and crime, nationwide anti-government protests, a surge in the activity of illegal armed groups and soaring cocaine production.
Fallout from the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, which caused Colombia’s GDP to contract by 7% that year and spiraling poverty, contributed to rising lawlessness, crime and violence. Alarmingly, cocaine production, which is a key driver of violence and illicit activity in Colombia, keeps soaring to new highs. This is symptomatic of a weak state that lacks a credible presence in many rural regions causing the internal security environment to deteriorate. Escalating insecurity will potentially roil Colombia’s post-pandemic economic recovery, one of the strongest in Latin America, while impacting the Andean country’s economically vital energy patch. For these reasons, Petro must act decisively to curb violence, lawlessness and illicit activities in a country that is falling once-again into chaos.
A key indicator of Colombia’s deteriorating domestic security is the recent announcement by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) that domestic cocaine output (Spanish) hit yet another record during 2021.That occurred despite decades of U.S. funded counter-narcotics operations, leaving Colombia as the world’s number one cocaine producer. UNDOC estimates that 2021 cocaine production grew 14% year over year to 1,400 metric tons, while the amount of land utilized for coca cropping surged by a whopping 43% to half a million acres. Burgeoning cocaine production, along with the vast profits that narcotics trafficking generates, was responsible for funding the immense escalation of Colombia’s multiparty asymmetric conflict during the 1980s.
Cocaine profits have long funded various armed non-state groups in Colombia with soaring production responsible for a surge in the number of illegal armed groups, combatants and related violence since 2018. The vast earnings generated by cocaine in Colombia are thought to be as high as $12 billion annually, which is equivalent to 4% of the Andean country’s GDP. It is cocaine production and coca cropping, the leaf of the coca plant being a necessary precursor, as well as associated violence which is responsible for the 260,000 plus deaths that have occurred during Colombia’s armed conflict. Most of those casualties were civilians who also suffered forced displacement by various illegal armed groups, with it thought that as many as 8 million people having been forced to leave their homes.
The recent spike in Colombia’s cocaine production, along with the associated escalation in violence linked to illegal armed groups was responsible for a sharp uptick in the number of civilians displaced during 2021. According to the UN, at least 74,000 Colombians were displaced during that year, which is more than double 2020. The volume of direct attacks against civilians during 2021 also trended higher, rising by 37% year over year to total of more than 2,400 occurrences. These worrying events underscore the growing violence gripping Colombia, most of which is associated with coca cultivation and the manufacture of cocaine. Massacres, which are another symptom of growing cocaine production, lawlessness, rising insecurity and an ineffective state, have surged since 2018. Colombian peace think-tank Indepaz recorded 85 massacres, which is the murder of three or more people in a single event, up until 9 October 2022. That is 10 greater than the same period a year earlier and more than double the 36 massacres recorded during 2019 before the pandemic.
It is the marked increase in cocaine production and associated violence from various illegal armed groups engaged in the manufacture of the narcotic that poses the greatest threat to the Colombian state, civil society and the economy. This becomes particularly apparent when the regions where coca is grown and much of the related violence occurs are also those rich in hydrocarbons. The Catatumbo region, located in the northwest near the Venezuelan border, is Colombia’s second major coca cultivating area and the country’s deadliest conflict zone. Aside from being a hotspot for the resurgent civil conflict, Catatumbo is also one of Colombia’s top oil producing areas with it believed to contain anywhere up to 17 million barrels of undiscovered oil reserves. The crucial 210,000 barrel per day Cano Limon Covenas oil pipeline passes through Catatumbo leaving it vulnerable to sabotage and the application of illicit valves used to steal petroleum. The escalation of cocaine related conflict in the region has seen such incidents rise significantly since 2020.
Colombia’s southern Putumayo department is listed by UNDOC as being the fourth largest zone for coca cultivation. The region, which borders northern Ecuador, has long had significant presence of the now demobilized Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC – Spanish initials). Since the 2016 peace agreement between Bogota and the FARC a series of smaller illegal armed groups, mainly dissident FARC elements, and criminal organizations have sprung up in Putumayo. Those groups are primarily focused on coca cropping and cocaine production in a region that, because of its proximity to Ecuador, contains well-established extremely lucrative trafficking routes. As a result, violence is spiraling out of control in Putumayo with frequent clashes between various armed groups sparking massacres. Putumayo is also home to the Caguan-Putumayo Basin, Colombia’s second most prolific hydrocarbon basin with the country’s hydrocarbon regulator the National Hydrocarbon Authority (ANH – Spanish initials) estimating it contains oil reserves in excess of 365 million barrels.
While Petro plans to transition Colombia away from dependence on fossil fuel extraction by ending contracting for hydrocarbon exploration and banning hydraulic fracturing, the oil industry is currently an important economic driver. Petroleum is Colombia’s largest export accounting for 35% of all exports for the first seven months of 2022, valued at $13.8 billion. Hydrocarbon extraction also accounts for around 3% of Colombia’s GDP and generates a fifth of Bogota’s fiscal revenues. Those numbers make eliminating Colombia’s petroleum industry near impossible, particularly with Petro planning to significantly boost spending on social programs and poverty alleviation. In fact, his plans to hike taxes for Colombia’s oil industry will make it a more important source of income, particularly in a global economy besieged by an energy crisis and rampant inflation where guaranteeing energy security is now an imperative. Rising violence and conflict in Colombia fueled by soaring cocaine production will impact the economically crucial petroleum industry and roil the country’s post-pandemic economic recovery, further hurting an already suffering population.
Musk To Charge Twitter Blue Checks $20 Per Month; Will Give 90 Day Grace Period: Report
Elon Musk is about to overturn the entire dynamic on Twitter if a Sunday report from The Verge proves to be true.
According to internal correspondence and people familiar with the matter, Musk is about to start charging $20 per month for ‘blue check’ verification badges.
Under the plan, verified users would have 90 days to subscribe to the service or lose their blue checkmark – and their ‘respected thought leader’ status, in many cases.
On Sunday, employees working on the project were told they would have until November 7th to launch the feature or face getting fired, according to the report.
Musk has been clear in the months leading up to his acquisition that he wanted to revamp how Twitter verifies accounts and handles bots. On Sunday, he tweeted: “The whole verification process is being revamped right now.”
Musk has wasted no time making changes at Twitter despite being “Chief Twit” for less than a week – firing ex-CEO Parag Agrawal and other top execs (including wrongthink czar Vijaya Gadde) – who may not receive their golden parachutes(more on that later). Musk also had engineers change Twitter’s homepage for logged-out users.
And while advertisers have been threatening to bail on Twitter left and right over Musk’s commitment to free speech, it would be interesting to know just how many people are willing to pay $240 per year into the company’s ‘blue check’ program.
For over a century, the American Association of University Professors has urged universities to recognize a robust freedom for professors to speak in public “as citizens” without fear of retaliation from their university employers even when such expression is controversial with either external or internal constituencies. That right is now widely recognized by American universities and incorporated into governing documents and policy statements. So-called “extramural speech” has become a particular area of controversy in recent years, however, as the political opinions of professors become more visible in the age of the Internet and social media.
For the past several decades, the U.S. Supreme Court has also recognized a limited First Amendment right for government employees to speak about matters of public concern. Starting with the case of a high school teacher Marvin Pickering, who wrote a letter to the editor of a local newspaper disagreeing with the school board about the merits of a bond referendum, the Court has held that in some situations government employees have a legitimate First Amendment interest in speaking as a citizen, but even in those circumstances the government’s particular interest in maintaining an efficiently functioning workplace might allow the government as an employer to override an employee’s First Amendment interests. Determining when the government’s interest outweighs the employee’s interest has become known as Pickering balancing, which is highly contextualized depending on the nature of the employee’s job and workplace.
I have a new paper on how courts should understand the government’s interests when conducting a Pickering balancing in the context of state universities and the extramural speech of professors. The Pickering framework is useful not only for understanding free speech rights in state universities but also for applying traditional protections for extramural speech in private universities. But as the courts have applied Pickering, there is a particular risk of a heckler’s veto when it comes to government employee speech. Courts have repeatedly held that speech that generates a hostile reaction from coworkers or members of the public can be a legitimate reason for terminating a government employee. There might be circumstances in which such a concern is justified, but that certainly cannot be the standard when evaluating a university’s interest in suppressing a professor’s speech.
Considering cases such as the University of Florida‘s conflict of interest policy, the Ilya Shapiro controversy at Georgetown University Law Center, the Amy Wax saga at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and the attack on a moral philosopher at SUNY-Fredonia, the paper argues that in the particular context of state university professors there are very few legitimate reasons for university employers to retaliate against an employee for speaking in public about a matter of public concern. Courts, and university employers, should be especially sensitive to the risk of empowering the mob to cancel a professor who offends their sensibilities and should regard extramural speech as relevant to a professor’s employment status in only a narrow set of circumstances. An appropriate assessment of the nature of the university’s function and of a faculty member’s workplace should lead courts to conclude that the university’s side of the Pickering scale is often empty and that sanctions for First Amendment-protected speech cannot be justified. The same calculus should hold true at private universities operating under their own academic freedom policies.
More than a year after Americans were told that inflation would be “transitory,” several prominent economists now warn that persistently rising prices could be here to stay for a while.
“The history of developed countries since 1970 is very discouraging about the prospects of bringing down 8 percent inflation,” tweeted Larry Summers, the Barack Obama advisor who was one of several economists to correctly warn that the American Rescue Plan’s spending surge would trigger inflation. If anything, Summers wrote, the current belief that interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve will curtail rising prices while slowing the economy might be overly optimistic.
Summers outlined his argument in more detail in an op-ed published Monday by The Washington Post. While the Fed has raised interest rates several times in recent months, Summers says it is “simply not plausible” to think that rates have risen high enough to bring inflation back down to the central bank’s target rate of 2 percent.
The argument against more aggressive action is that sharply rising interest rates could trigger a bad recession, but Summers thinks that worry misses the point. Unless inflation is controlled—even at the expense of a bad recession, as was required in the early 1980s to stop the inflationary spiral of the late 1970s—”workers will not see meaningful increases in their purchasing power.”
As usual, the root cause of the inflation crisis is an overly loose monetary policy. When there are more dollars chasing the same number of goods, prices will rise.
And there is a lot of excess money in the system right now, as the Harvard economist (and another former Obama advisor) Jason Furman pointed out on Twitter last week. Furman noted that pandemic-era stimulus efforts resulted in bulging household [right?] savings rates and that much of those savings have yet to be spent.
Households saved about $2.2T during the initial pandemic and pandemic stimulus. Have spent out $0.7T of that maintaining consumption in the face of flat/declining real incomes. Still leaves about $1.5T–which could easily last a year. pic.twitter.com/zbBarTrgd5
Furman believes the economy is headed for a period of “stagflation,” which he describes as an “ongoing hard landing” in which unemployment rises and inflation falls, but not to the Fed’s desired levels.
Inflation ramped up during the spring and summer of 2021, as America exited the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, officials at the Federal Reserve and within the Biden administration claimed the rising prices were a “transitory” phenomenon caused by the pandemic and various supply chain problems. That was “probably the worst inflation call in the history of the Federal Reserve,” according to Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic advisor for Allianz, a German-based firm that is one of the world’s largest insurance companies.
Months later, as prices continued to rise, the Biden administration switched gears to blame Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. While it’s true that the war in Ukraine has helped nudge fuel and food prices higher, the true driver of inflation is monetary policy rather than short-term shocks to supply chains. If the money supply had been kept in check, consumers would have offset higher gas prices, for example, by cutting back on purchases elsewhere and inflation would have been contained.
It wasn’t. And whether it can be contained now remains an open question.
A Deutsche Bank report published last week looked at periods where developed economies saw inflation above 8 percent—as is happening now in the United States and Europe. Historically, it takes around two years for inflation to fall below 6 percent “before settling at about that level for five years after the initial spike,” the Financial Postnotes.
Citing a report from Oxford Economics, a forecasting firm, the Financial Post warns that “painfully tight monetary policy might be required for central banks to bring inflation all the way back to target. Public support for such a policy appears limited.”
That brings us back around to the dilemma highlighted by Summers. The sure way to bring inflation down quickly is to experience a bad recession, which of course comes with its own plentiful downsides.
“The idea that the economy has overheated, and thus monetary policy needs to be restrictive, is at last widely accepted even by acolytes of ‘team transitory,'” Summers wrote Monday in the Post, casting some shade at those who misled Americans about inflation a year ago.
Don’t expect things to look a lot better a year from now.
