Author: admin

Just Another Book in the Library? Not Quite

I recently used Google Books to get a scanned copy of Justice Joseph Story’s famous 1833 treatise, Commentaries on the U.S. Constitution.  And I noticed this inscription:

If you can’t read it, it says, “To Mr Charles Sumner / from his affectionate Friend / The Author / Cambridge April 1833”.  Wait, I thought, Charles Sumner, like the famous abolitionist Senator from Massachusetts?  And then I backed up a page and saw this:

Yes, that Charles Sumner.  Some googling around tells me that in 1833, when his Commentaries came out, Justice Story was a professor at Harvard Law School in addition to serving on the U.S. Supreme Court.  Charles Sumner had graduated from Harvard College in 1830 and by 1833 was in law school at Harvard. Sumner’s estate donated the book to the Harvard College library after he died in 1874, and the book became part of Harvard’s collection and was scanned by Google Books.

How did Charles Sumner come to be a Supreme Court Justice’s “affectionate friend”? The Discerning History blog explains that Sumner “studied under Joseph Story at Harvard Law School, who was a Supreme Court Justice. Sumner became one of Story’s favorite pupils.”  Another site explains that Sumner “served as a reporter for the United States Circuit Court, from which he published three volumes of Judge Joseph Story’s decisions under the title Sumner’s Reports.”  The Joseph Story papers also include various items about (and perhaps from) Sumner.

Pretty cool! And free. You can download your own scanned electronic version of the inscribed copy of his Commentaries that Joseph Story wrote to Charles Sumner here at Google Books.

 

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Biden’s New Green New Deal Is the Same as the Old Green New Deal

BidenClimate

Although he doesn’t call it that, Joe Biden, the presumptive 2020 presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, rolled out his version of the Green New Deal during a Tuesday speech on how his administration would handle man-made climate change. Biden’s “plan for a clean energy revolution and environmental justice” incorporates most of the environmental and economic policies outlined in previous Green New Deal proposals.

Take the Green New Deal resolution introduced last year by Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.). While somewhat vaguely aspirational, this aims to commit the U.S. to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, to creating millions of unionized jobs, to investing much more in clean infrastructure and industry, to hugely expanding public transit and high-speed rail, and to greatly increasing federal support for research and development in no-carbon energy generation. In June 2019, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez estimated that the Green New Deal would cost $10 trillion.

The left-wing think thank Data for Progress outlined a more concrete Green New Deal vision in 2018. It aims to get the U.S. to 100 percent renewable electricity by 2035, shuttering all natural gas and coal-fired generation plants in the process. All fossil fuel emissions would be ended by 2050; all new passenger automobiles for sale by 2030 would be zero-emissions vehicles; and all vehicles, railways, and aviation would be totally fossil-fuel-free by 2050.

In June 2020, the congressional Democrats released the Solving the Climate Crisis report, which outlines their “action plan for a clean energy economy.” This plan has a goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across the United States by 2050. To that end, it calls for mandating net-zero emissions from the electric power generation sector by 2040. It wants all cars sold after 2035 to be zero-emissions, and it wants a national network of electric car charging stations. The plan would also double federal spending on public transit. All existing buildings would be retrofitted to reduce emissions, and all new residential and commercial buildings would have to be net-zero-emission by 2030. The plan also urges Congress to secure workers’ right to organize a union and negotiate for higher wages, safer working conditions, and better benefits. And it calls for Congress to reestablish the Civilian Conservation Corps and to create a Climate Resilience Service Corps that would engage in such efforts as reforestation and remediating abandoned mines and oil wells.

In his climate speech this week, Biden declared that “we have nine years before the damage is irreversible.” This dire forecast seems to be an update of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’ claim that “we’ve got 12 years to turn it around.” Both politicians are misrepresenting the findings of a 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which concluded that humanity should cut global carbon dioxide emissions by 40 to 50 percent by 2030 to have a good chance of limiting future average warming to below 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2100.

Climate damages do become worse as average temperature rises, but there is no cliff of catastrophe that humanity runs off if the global average temperature increase exceeds 1.5 degrees. “Climate change is a problem of degrees, not thresholds,” tweeted the Breakthrough Institute climate researcher Zeke Hausfather. “The world doesn’t end if we don’t limit temperatures to some arbitrary threshold like 1.5C, but at the same time the longer we delay mitigation the worse the problem gets.”

Biden’s clean energy plan is basically a rehash of the earlier Green New Deal proposals. For example, Biden’s plan promises that all American electricity generation would be carbon-free by 2035 and the entire economy would achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions no later than 2050. While Biden does not set a firm date for phasing out the sale of fossil-fueled vehicles, he vows to replace the three million vehicles in the federal fleet with zero-emissions automobiles and trucks, build 500,000 electric charging stations around the country, and offer cars-for-clunkers-type incentives for people to trade in their gas- and diesel-powered cars for electric automobiles.

Biden also plans to incentivize and subsidize the retrofit of energy efficiency features in 4 million buildings and weatherize 2 million homes over 4 years. This will supposedly create a million jobs. All new commercial buildings would have to meet a net-zero-emissions standard by 2030. Biden would also subsidize the construction of 1.5 million energy-efficient homes and public housing units, and he wants to give every American city with 100,000 or more residents high-quality, zero-emissions public transportation options by 2030. He would also “spark the second great railroad revolution” by making sure that America has “the cleanest, safest, and fastest rail system in the world.” Biden promises to mobilize conservation and resilience workers through a Civilian Climate Corps that would, among other things, help to plug abandoned oil and gas wells and to restore and reclaim abandoned coal and hard rock mines.

A constant refrain in Biden’s plan is that all the jobs it will create will be “good union jobs.” The Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act is integral to his climate plan. The PRO Act, Biden asserts, will make it easier for workers to organize a union and collectively bargain with their employers by implementing card check, union, and bargaining rights for public service workers. It would also classify gig economy workers as company employees, and it would ban all right-to-work laws in the 27 states that currently have them.

Biden says that his plan would cost $2 trillion over the next four years. This is a substantial increase over his original climate and clean energy plan, which was estimated to cost $1.7 trillion over 10 years. If that rate of expenditure is sustained through 2030, Biden’s Green New Deal would cost $5 trillion, instead of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’ estimate of $10 trillion. Why the faster timeline and the jump in costs? Because, Biden declared, “We’re going to lock in progress that no future president can roll back or under cut to take us backward again.”

Scanning through the plans proposed by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, the Solving the Climate Crisis report, and now Biden, it’s uncanny how fixing the problems associated with man-made climate change just happen to coincide with the exact same economic policies long advocated by political progressives.

Unabated man-made climate change will likely to become a significant problem for humanity as the century advances. But instead of the Green New Deal’s top-down, centralized, command-and-control approach, the best policies to deal with climate change are those that encourage rapid economic growth, thus endowing future generations with the wealth and superior technologies that would enable them to handle whatever comes at them.

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Goya Boycott: Everything Is Political Now

Goya

In Spanish, there is an idiom that refers to finding things “even in one’s soup,” when they are overbearingly ubiquitous. As U.S. politicians and activists enter day seven of a battle over canned beans and adobo seasoning, cancel culture and political point-scoring are undeniably hasta en la sopa.

Speaking as a guest in the White House on July 9, Goya Foods CEO Bob Unanue praised President Donald Trump for being a “builder” and said Americans were “truly blessed” to have him as a leader.

Faster than you can say “cancel culture,” famous progressive Latinos took to Twitter, invoked the spirit of Roman Emperor Caracalla, and executed Unanue’s and thereby Goya’s damnatio memoriae.

“Oh look, it’s the sound of me Googling ‘how to make your own Adobo,'” tweeted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.) about a popular Goya product. Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote that “we learned to bake bread in this pandemic, we can learn to make our own adobo con pimienta. Bye.” Former Housing and Urban Development Sec. Julian Castro added that “Americans should think twice before buying their products,” as he used the hashtag #Goyaway.

As the boycott against Goya gained steam on social media, Unanue took to Fox News to claim his right to free speech was being constrained. This misses the point, since calling for an economic boycott also constitutes free expression. More troubling is when members of Congress like Ocasio-Cortez and former high-ranking bureaucrats such as Castro use their power and influence to punish a private business in order to score partisan points. 

Meanwhile, Republican former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee tweeted that leftists need no beans since “their speeches and whining already produce all the gas the planet can take.” Ivanka Trump posted a photo in which she “endorses” Goya products (“if it’s Goya, it has to be good”), only to be immediately accused of violating government ethics rules. Even the president tried to score partisan points on the food fight, staging a photo-op with Goya products in the Oval Office, an endorsement that arguably skews free-market competition since Goya’s competitors have not been boosted in public by the commander in chief as a thanks for praise.

Among the sins that justify the uproar against Unanue in progressives’ eyes are his past donations to Republican politicians such as former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, even though Unanue has also donated to Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez (N.J.). Unanue even mentioned his previous appearance at the White House under President Obama in 2011, when he said he was “honored and humbled” to be in the former president’s presence. In 2012, Goya also took part in Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” initiative, designed to provide parents “with the information they need to make healthy choices.” None of which led to calls for Goya’s cancellation.

The #GoyAway movement seeks to categorize all Hispanics into a single, monolithic ethnic group, whose members are capable of thinking only within the strict boundaries that their betters in politics and the media assign to them. Forget that, according to the Pew Research Center, a significant minority of Hispanics tend to vote Republican; perhaps they’re not worthy of decent peppered adobo.

Many of those boycotting Goya are doing so because they disagree with the president’s stance on immigration and racial issues that impact Latinos. But the boycott will end up disproportionately hurting immigrants and Latinos. Goya employs 4,000 people, and as Unanue said in May, well before the current Twitter storm, “All the employees are family working together for the same purpose. Many of us are immigrants and we extend a hand to our brothers.” Unanue also announced at the White House that Goya was donating 2 million cans of its products to food banks in order to ease the plight of the worst-off during the pandemic.

This raises the question of who brings more lasting value to U.S. Latinos and the nation at large: the country’s largest Hispanic-owned business, which exemplifies the American dream of immigrant wealth and job creation through hard work, or the cadre of politicians and celebrities who are eager to play politics with photos of canned coconut milk.

Goya will likely be fine, but politicians and activists warring over supermarket products should leave a bad taste in everybody’s mouth. An omnipresent politics is especially dangerous because, as Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges commented, the best government is an invisible one.

“We arrived in Switzerland in 1914,” Borges said about his family’s stay in the Alpine country, “and like good South Americans, we asked the president’s name. They could only stare at us, because nobody knew the answer.”

The detached approach to politics of the Swiss was striking compared to Latin Americans’ obsession with caudillos such as Juan Domingo Perón in Borges’ Argentina and, more recently, Cuba’s Fidel Castro or Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. All were domineering figures whose unwelcome presence in daily life was sadly unavoidable for any civilian.

Whether you prefer Goya’s seasoned stews or chicken noodles, when politics begins to pop up in your soup you can be sure that everyone has taken a step in the wrong direction.

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Biden’s New Green New Deal Is the Same as the Old Green New Deal

BidenClimate

Although he doesn’t call it that, Joe Biden, the presumptive 2020 presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, rolled out his version of the Green New Deal during a Tuesday speech on how his administration would handle man-made climate change. Biden’s “plan for a clean energy revolution and environmental justice” incorporates most of the environmental and economic policies outlined in previous Green New Deal proposals.

Take the Green New Deal resolution introduced last year by Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.). While somewhat vaguely aspirational, this aims to commit the U.S. to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, to creating millions of unionized jobs, to investing much more in clean infrastructure and industry, to hugely expanding public transit and high-speed rail, and to greatly increasing federal support for research and development in no-carbon energy generation. In June 2019, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez estimated that the Green New Deal would cost $10 trillion.

The left-wing think thank Data for Progress outlined a more concrete Green New Deal vision in 2018. It aims to get the U.S. to 100 percent renewable electricity by 2035, shuttering all natural gas and coal-fired generation plants in the process. All fossil fuel emissions would be ended by 2050; all new passenger automobiles for sale by 2030 would be zero-emissions vehicles; and all vehicles, railways, and aviation would be totally fossil-fuel-free by 2050.

In June 2020, the congressional Democrats released the Solving the Climate Crisis report, which outlines their “action plan for a clean energy economy.” This plan has a goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across the United States by 2050. To that end, it calls for mandating net-zero emissions from the electric power generation sector by 2040. It wants all cars sold after 2035 to be zero-emissions, and it wants a national network of electric car charging stations. The plan would also double federal spending on public transit. All existing buildings would be retrofitted to reduce emissions, and all new residential and commercial buildings would have to be net-zero-emission by 2030. The plan also urges Congress to secure workers’ right to organize a union and negotiate for higher wages, safer working conditions, and better benefits. And it calls for Congress to reestablish the Civilian Conservation Corps and to create a Climate Resilience Service Corps that would engage in such efforts as reforestation and remediating abandoned mines and oil wells.

In his climate speech this week, Biden declared that “we have nine years before the damage is irreversible.” This dire forecast seems to be an update of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’ claim that “we’ve got 12 years to turn it around.” Both politicians are misrepresenting the findings of a 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which concluded that humanity should cut global carbon dioxide emissions by 40 to 50 percent by 2030 to have a good chance of limiting future average warming to below 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2100.

Climate damages do become worse as average temperature rises, but there is no cliff of catastrophe that humanity runs off if the global average temperature increase exceeds 1.5 degrees. “Climate change is a problem of degrees, not thresholds,” tweeted the Breakthrough Institute climate researcher Zeke Hausfather. “The world doesn’t end if we don’t limit temperatures to some arbitrary threshold like 1.5C, but at the same time the longer we delay mitigation the worse the problem gets.”

Biden’s clean energy plan is basically a rehash of the earlier Green New Deal proposals. For example, Biden’s plan promises that all American electricity generation would be carbon-free by 2035 and the entire economy would achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions no later than 2050. While Biden does not set a firm date for phasing out the sale of fossil-fueled vehicles, he vows to replace the three million vehicles in the federal fleet with zero-emissions automobiles and trucks, build 500,000 electric charging stations around the country, and offer cars-for-clunkers-type incentives for people to trade in their gas- and diesel-powered cars for electric automobiles.

Biden also plans to incentivize and subsidize the retrofit of energy efficiency features in 4 million buildings and weatherize 2 million homes over 4 years. This will supposedly create a million jobs. All new commercial buildings would have to meet a net-zero-emissions standard by 2030. Biden would also subsidize the construction of 1.5 million energy-efficient homes and public housing units, and he wants to give every American city with 100,000 or more residents high-quality, zero-emissions public transportation options by 2030. He would also “spark the second great railroad revolution” by making sure that America has “the cleanest, safest, and fastest rail system in the world.” Biden promises to mobilize conservation and resilience workers through a Civilian Climate Corps that would, among other things, help to plug abandoned oil and gas wells and to restore and reclaim abandoned coal and hard rock mines.

A constant refrain in Biden’s plan is that all the jobs it will create will be “good union jobs.” The Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act is integral to his climate plan. The PRO Act, Biden asserts, will make it easier for workers to organize a union and collectively bargain with their employers by implementing card check, union, and bargaining rights for public service workers. It would also classify gig economy workers as company employees, and it would ban all right-to-work laws in the 27 states that currently have them.

Biden says that his plan would cost $2 trillion over the next four years. This is a substantial increase over his original climate and clean energy plan, which was estimated to cost $1.7 trillion over 10 years. If that rate of expenditure is sustained through 2030, Biden’s Green New Deal would cost $5 trillion, instead of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’ estimate of $10 trillion. Why the faster timeline and the jump in costs? Because, Biden declared, “We’re going to lock in progress that no future president can roll back or under cut to take us backward again.”

Scanning through the plans proposed by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, the Solving the Climate Crisis report, and now Biden, it’s uncanny how fixing the problems associated with man-made climate change just happen to coincide with the exact same economic policies long advocated by political progressives.

Unabated man-made climate change will likely to become a significant problem for humanity as the century advances. But instead of the Green New Deal’s top-down, centralized, command-and-control approach, the best policies to deal with climate change are those that encourage rapid economic growth, thus endowing future generations with the wealth and superior technologies that would enable them to handle whatever comes at them.

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Goya Boycott: Everything Is Political Now

Goya

In Spanish, there is an idiom that refers to finding things “even in one’s soup,” when they are overbearingly ubiquitous. As U.S. politicians and activists enter day seven of a battle over canned beans and adobo seasoning, cancel culture and political point-scoring are undeniably hasta en la sopa.

Speaking as a guest in the White House on July 9, Goya Foods CEO Bob Unanue praised President Donald Trump for being a “builder” and said Americans were “truly blessed” to have him as a leader.

Faster than you can say “cancel culture,” famous progressive Latinos took to Twitter, invoked the spirit of Roman Emperor Caracalla, and executed Unanue’s and thereby Goya’s damnatio memoriae.

“Oh look, it’s the sound of me Googling ‘how to make your own Adobo,'” tweeted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.) about a popular Goya product. Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote that “we learned to bake bread in this pandemic, we can learn to make our own adobo con pimienta. Bye.” Former Housing and Urban Development Sec. Julian Castro added that “Americans should think twice before buying their products,” as he used the hashtag #Goyaway.

As the boycott against Goya gained steam on social media, Unanue took to Fox News to claim his right to free speech was being constrained. This misses the point, since calling for an economic boycott also constitutes free expression. More troubling is when members of Congress like Ocasio-Cortez and former high-ranking bureaucrats such as Castro use their power and influence to punish a private business in order to score partisan points. 

Meanwhile, Republican former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee tweeted that leftists need no beans since “their speeches and whining already produce all the gas the planet can take.” Ivanka Trump posted a photo in which she “endorses” Goya products (“if it’s Goya, it has to be good”), only to be immediately accused of violating government ethics rules. Even the president tried to score partisan points on the food fight, staging a photo-op with Goya products in the Oval Office, an endorsement that arguably skews free-market competition since Goya’s competitors have not been boosted in public by the commander in chief as a thanks for praise.

Among the sins that justify the uproar against Unanue in progressives’ eyes are his past donations to Republican politicians such as former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, even though Unanue has also donated to Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez (N.J.). Unanue even mentioned his previous appearance at the White House under President Obama in 2011, when he said he was “honored and humbled” to be in the former president’s presence. In 2012, Goya also took part in Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” initiative, designed to provide parents “with the information they need to make healthy choices.” None of which led to calls for Goya’s cancellation.

The #GoyAway movement seeks to categorize all Hispanics into a single, monolithic ethnic group, whose members are capable of thinking only within the strict boundaries that their betters in politics and the media assign to them. Forget that, according to the Pew Research Center, a significant minority of Hispanics tend to vote Republican; perhaps they’re not worthy of decent peppered adobo.

Many of those boycotting Goya are doing so because they disagree with the president’s stance on immigration and racial issues that impact Latinos. But the boycott will end up disproportionately hurting immigrants and Latinos. Goya employs 4,000 people, and as Unanue said in May, well before the current Twitter storm, “All the employees are family working together for the same purpose. Many of us are immigrants and we extend a hand to our brothers.” Unanue also announced at the White House that Goya was donating 2 million cans of its products to food banks in order to ease the plight of the worst-off during the pandemic.

This raises the question of who brings more lasting value to U.S. Latinos and the nation at large: the country’s largest Hispanic-owned business, which exemplifies the American dream of immigrant wealth and job creation through hard work, or the cadre of politicians and celebrities who are eager to play politics with photos of canned coconut milk.

Goya will likely be fine, but politicians and activists warring over supermarket products should leave a bad taste in everybody’s mouth. An omnipresent politics is especially dangerous because, as Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges commented, the best government is an invisible one.

“We arrived in Switzerland in 1914,” Borges said about his family’s stay in the Alpine country, “and like good South Americans, we asked the president’s name. They could only stare at us, because nobody knew the answer.”

The detached approach to politics of the Swiss was striking compared to Latin Americans’ obsession with caudillos such as Juan Domingo Perón in Borges’ Argentina and, more recently, Cuba’s Fidel Castro or Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. All were domineering figures whose unwelcome presence in daily life was sadly unavoidable for any civilian.

Whether you prefer Goya’s seasoned stews or chicken noodles, when politics begins to pop up in your soup you can be sure that everyone has taken a step in the wrong direction.

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Tennessee Reformed Its Harsh Drug-Free School Zone Laws. What About the Hundreds Still in Prison?

drug free school zone

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed a bill Wednesday reforming the state’s harsh drug-free school zone laws. But criminal justice advocates say the law still leaves hundreds sitting in prison serving unjust sentences.

Previously, Tennessee’s drug-free school zones stretched 1,000 feet from any school, park, library, or day care center. The new law shrinks them to 500 feet, and it gives judges more discretion in whether to apply the stiff sentences that accompany drug offenses in school zones.

As a 2017 Reason investigation showed, Tennessee’s drug-free school zones covered wide swaths of urban areas—27 percent of Nashville, for instance—and applied day or night, indoors or outdoors, whether or not school is in session. The laws were rarely, if ever, used in actual cases of peddling drugs to minors. Instead they gave petty drug criminals prison sentences rivaling those for murder and rape.

While lawmakers acknowledged the problems these supersized zones created, they did not grant any retroactive relief to inmates currently doing time for school zone offenses. There are 489 people serving prison sentences in Tennessee for drug-free school zone violations, according to data from the state Department of Corrections. (That number doesn’t include cases where prosecutors dropped school-zone charges as part of a plea deal.)

The criminal justice advocacy group FAMM and other local advocates say Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee should use his clemency powers to commute the sentences of inmates serving excessive drug-free school zone sentences.

“A lot of them don’t need to be doing that much time and maybe don’t need to be there at all anymore,” Molly Gill, vice president of policy for FAMM, told Reason last month.

One prisoner they’re highlighting is Wayne Potee, currently serving a 15-year mandatory minimum prison sentence—the same as if he’d been convicted of second-degree murder or rape—for selling a small amount of meth to an undercover cop in a drug-free school zone. Potee had become addicted to opioids after a shoulder surgery, and was cycling through relapse and recovery. He started selling meth so he could afford Suboxone, an opioid addiction medication.

“Mr. Potee accepted full responsibility for his addiction-related crimes; he has been a model inmate since his convictions; and he has overcome the  addiction that played a central role in his incarceration,” Nashville attorney Daniel Horwitz wrote in a clemency application on behalf of Potee. “Put simply: Wayne Potee has been rehabilitated to an extraordinary degree relative to the low level nature of the offenses committed, and he will be a law-abiding citizen and positive contributor to society upon release.” 

Horwitz also represented Calvin Bryant, a Nashville resident who was sentenced to 17 years in prison for selling pills to a police informant out of his apartment, which happened to be 1,000 feet from a school. After serving 10 and a half years in prison, Bryant was released in 2018 after prosecutors struck a deal to release him on time served. Bryant now mentors inner-city youth.

Testifying at a committee hearing on the bill earlier this year, Bryant told state lawmakers that he hopes future bills will give relief to those still incarcerated. “It’s kind of rough when you’re sitting in prison and your injustice is being used for other people’s justice that haven’t really committed crimes yet,” he said.

Potee is four years into his prison sentence. His clemency application has been pending since January, Horwitz says.

The Tennessee governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story. A spokesperson for the governor told the local news outlet WKMS that the governor will review sentences on a case-by-case basis.

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Peter Schiff Warns Joe Rogan: Americans’ Biggest Problem Is “Thinking That Everything Is Free…”

Peter Schiff Warns Joe Rogan: Americans’ Biggest Problem Is “Thinking That Everything Is Free…”

Tyler Durden

Thu, 07/16/2020 – 15:25

Via SchiffGold.com,

Peter Schiff appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience this week. The wide-ranging, three-hour interview covered a number of topics, including a critique of socialism, the 2020 presidential election, the recent social unrest and how to fix troubled communities, how the minimum wage hurts workers, and the economic impacts of the coronavirus.

As far as the economics of COVID-19, Peter said the first thing to remember is that the government doesn’t have any money.

The government only has money it takes from the people — one way or another.”

He quoted President Grover Cleveland who quipped that while the people must support the government, the government should never support the people. If the economy had to be shut down to mitigate the pandemic, people and businesses should have had enough savings to weather that storm. This is how Americans coped with World War II.

Average Americans had lots of money in the bank. They weren’t loaded up with debt. The didn’t have credit card debt. They didn’t have student loans. They didn’t have car loans. They were solvent. Even after the Great Depression, they were solvent. We lived in a bubble economy. Everybody was paycheck to paycheck. Nobody had anything. Businesses couldn’t survive if their revenues stopped. Workers couldn’t pay their rent if they didn’t get their salary. That’s not right. That’s part of the bubble.”

Rogan pointed out that we’ve been in lockdown mode to some degree for four months. Few people have the resources to weather a four-month rainy day. But Peter said people will suffer even more due to the government response and the massive inflation that the government and the Federal Reserve have unleased to finance the bailouts and stimulus.

We can’t just use the Federal Reserve as a piggy-bank. The Federal Reserve cure is going to do more damage than the coronavirus disease. I think, if the states knew that they would have to bear the economic consequences of their own decision-making, they would do a better cost-benefit analysis on what they shut down and how they do it. Right now, every state is like, ‘Oh, let’s shut everything down and the federal government is going to bail everybody out. … Thinking that everything is free, that is the problem.”

Peter emphasized that the money-printing, the stimulus and the bailouts are going to ultimately lead to a massive economic collapse.

We are compounding the mistakes of the past with much bigger mistakes.”

Peter emphasized that we’ve suffered a wound that the government inflicted upon us.

The free market would have never screwed us up this much. It was government interference in the free market.”

Peter went back to the WWII analogy and emphasized that despite running up a massive debt to fight the war, Americans had the capacity to pay it back. That’s no longer true.

The debt’s never going to go down. The debt’s going to keep on rising and rising and rising until the dollar implodes. See, that is the real crisis that we’re heading for. It’s going to be a collapse in the value of the dollar. Because right now, we’re printing money and the government is sending it out and the people are able to buy stuff with it. But that’s going to come to an end because the world is no longer going to accept US dollars as the reserve currency.”

Ultimately, it’s not going to matter if the government sends you a stimulus check if you can’t buy anything with it.

The government can’t create purchasing power. They can print all the money they want, but none of that printed money adds any purchasing power. They don’t grow any food. They don’t produce any products, nothing. They just print money.”

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2DJnI0Y Tyler Durden

The IRS Is Paying Out 3% To 5% Compounded Daily Interest On Almost All Refunds Issued After April 15 This Year

The IRS Is Paying Out 3% To 5% Compounded Daily Interest On Almost All Refunds Issued After April 15 This Year

Tyler Durden

Thu, 07/16/2020 – 15:10

In a world where interest doesn’t really exist anymore, the IRS will surprisingly be paying quite a bit of it on most refunds issued after April 15 this year.

Even though the tax deadline was extended to July 15 this year, the IRS will be paying interest on any refunds issued after April 15, according to a decision made by the agency last week. It’s the result of a “quirk in the tax code” combined with the unusual step taken this year of extending the filing deadline, according to the WSJ. 

In other words, if you chose to wait on filing this year, you’re likely to be paid a penalty, instead of owing one. 

The agency hasn’t estimated how many people will receive interest but it has processed about 11 million refunds between mid-April and mid-June already. Just as the agency would charge for you holding onto your payments too long, it technically owes interest for holding on to people’s refunds too long.

And the interest is sizeable: 5% compounded daily for Q2 and 3% compounded daily starting on July 1. 

Those who elected to take the extension granted by the agency as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and file at the last minute are the ones who will likely get the biggest interest payments. 

Every year there is usually a rule that gives the IRS a 45 day grace period after April 15 before they have to start paying interest. This year, due to the extension, that clock starts right at April 15th instead. 

Keith Fogg, who directs the Harvard Law School program that offers tax assistance to low-income households, told WSJ: “The IRS seems to have chosen a method that is very taxpayer friendly and will not subject it to criticism. Hard to fault it for that.”

The interest payments could arrive separately from tax refunds, the agency said. Of course, the interest will be taxable 2020 income. Can’t win them all…

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Woe8XJ Tyler Durden

Democrat Governor Of Michigan Uses Emergency Alert System To Dictate Mask Wearing

Democrat Governor Of Michigan Uses Emergency Alert System To Dictate Mask Wearing

Tyler Durden

Thu, 07/16/2020 – 14:55

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

Democratic Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has come under fire for using the State’s emergency alert system to order residents to wear face masks.

The IPAWSCAP, or Integrated Public Alert Warning System, sent out thousands of messages to cell phones Monday afternoon ‘alerting’ people that it is compulsory that they were face masks in public.

The message read:

From the Governor’s Office: Fight COVID by wearing a mask. Michiganders are REQUIRED by executive order to wear face coverings in public indoor and crowded outdoor spaces. Business must refuse entry or service to those who do not wear a face covering (with limited exceptions). More info: Michigan.gov/MaskUp.

Whitmer previously issued an executive order requiring residents to wear face coverings while in public.

The use of the system to mandate has wearing has been criticised, and GOP lawmakers are set to introduce legislation to limit what the alert system can be used for, according to reports.

“This is an overt abuse of a service designed to alert people of legitimate emergencies — the governor has gone beyond the scope and intent of the law and is now somewhere over the rainbow and approaching Oz,” said Sen. Peter Lucido in a statement.

Whitmer previously used the alert system in March, taking over television stations to issue a “Michigan coronavirus emergency alert broadcast” lockdown order:

Whitmer was also criticised recently for joining Black Lives Matter protesters in the streets after lecturing small businesses for weeks to stay shut down.

Whitmer also called small business owners “racist” and “neo Nazis” for protesting her lockdown orders.

In response to criticizing Whitmer’s hypocritical excessive lockdown orders, conservative firebrand Candace Owens was recently suspended from Twitter.

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

These Are The Top Volatility Events Of The Second Half

These Are The Top Volatility Events Of The Second Half

Tyler Durden

Thu, 07/16/2020 – 14:40

Last week, BofA’s Chief Investment Strategist reminded readers of his famous Flow Show report that the disconnect between macro and markets has never been greater – i.e., markets have never been more broken – but that is to be expected for the following three reasons:

  1. Markets rationally being “irrational”: government and corporate bonds have been fixed (“nationalized”) by central banks, so why would anyone expect markets to connect with macro, why should credit & stocks price rationally.

  2. Markets leading macro: policy makers (see China this week) know higher asset prices necessary condition for macro recovery (Wall St assets are 5.6x size of US GDP)…

    …V-shape recovery on Wall St leading V-shape recovery on Main St (see PMI’s & housing activity); gasoline demand good US mobility signal, up sharply to 9mn barrel/day from spring lows, watch to see if virus again negatively impacts economy.

  3. Markets rationally pricing-in Max Liquidity, Minimal Growth backdrop, as they have done for 10 years; of 3042 stocks in MSCI ACWI currently 2141 >20% below their all-time highs, i.e. in a bear market.

Also consider this: if the S&P500 (3230 on Jan 1st) was just “tech, health care, Amazon, Google” it would now be 4173 , and if the S&P were “everything else” it would be 2924. No secret here, but US tech outperformance over US banks past 6 months biggest since 1999 tech bubble & 2008 GFC.

So with everyone well aware that the “market” no longer exists in a conventional sense but is merely a policy tool (to avoid, for example, a mass uprising should retirement fund values plunge and some 100 million Americans realize their retirement funds have vaporized) of fiscal and monetary authorities, does that mean that stocks will never go down again?

The answer depends on one’s time horizon. If one is focused on the next 2-3 months, then Hartnett says he is still bullish risk assets, targeting 2% on the 30Y Tsy, IG CDX sliding below 60 bps, and the S&P rising back over 3,250, while anticipating “choppy/higher summer price action.”

However, as we near the end of the 3rd quarter, the BofA strategist warns that in September the “range breaks” and cautions that “the time period from August 27th (this year’s Jackson Hole symposium has been physically canceled but it will still take place by zoom one imagines) to Sept 29th (1st Presidential Debate) packed with “volatility opportunities.” Among the key events as the summer ends are: 

  • Fed decision on Yield Curve Control (they do it…means “peak stimulus”, or they don’t…which still means “peak stimulus”);

  • US-China tension to ratchet higher with HK elections, G7 meeting, US election;

  • US election gets priced-in just as society gears up for clash between virus-lockdown and back-to-office, back-to-school momentum.

In summary, here are 18 key volatility events in the second half.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Wtddp5 Tyler Durden