Ocasio-Cortez Formulates “Green New Deal” To Fix Climate And “Repair Historic Oppression”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is rolling out a legislative package which calls for a “national, social, industrial and economic mobilization at a scale not seen since World War II,” according to a letter the sent to colleagues. 

The specifics of the plan, dubbed the “Green New Deal,” will be released next week – however Ocasio-Cortez lays out several goals in the letter, including reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions “through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers,” while creating millions of “good, high-wage jobs,” according to Bloomberg. The plan also aims to ensure prosperity and security while investing in US infrastructure and industry. 

The “Green New Deal” will also fight racism apparently: 

The resolution will also call for clean air and water, climate resiliency, healthy food, access to nature and “a sustainable environment for all for generations to come,” according to the letter. Lastly, the Green New Deal will “promote justice and equity by preventing current and repairing historic oppression to frontline and vulnerable communities.”

She said the goals will be accomplished through a 10-year plan of industrial and infrastructure projects. –Bloomberg

The cost? $7 trillion. 

So far over 40 progressive lawmakers, including Democratic 2020 presidential candidates, have gotten behind the Green New Deal – however it has yet to win over Democratic moderates such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. 

And while Bloomberg notes that “the Green New Deal would certainly never pass muster with coal-state Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and President Donald Trump,” Democrats behind the plan think it’s “important to show it has the blessing of the House Democrats in advance of the 2020 presidential elections.”

In other words, some Democrats are looking to run on this in 2020. 

Conservatives pushed back on the idea. 

“Americans deserve better than to foot the bill for the Green New Deal’s reckless, expensive, and unattainable goals,” said Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK). “The Green New Deal, just like proposals for free college or Medicaid for All, is nothing but an empty promise that leaves American taxpayers on the hook.”

The resolution has nine co-sponsors, while Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) will roll out companion legislation in the Senate, according to the letter sent by Ocasio-Cortez. 

Markey will invite Varshini Prakash, co-founder of Green New Deal supporting group, Sunrise, as his guest to the State of the Union on Tuesday. 

December 10, 2018 – Washington, DC, United States – Protesters seen holding placards during the Sunrise Movement protest inside the office of US Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to advocate that Democrats support the Green New Deal. (Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images via ZUMA Wire)

On Monday, Ocasio-Cortez retweeted a claim from one of her advisers, law professor Robert Hockett, that “the problems the Green New Deal addresses require solutions where bigger is better, imperative, and paraodixcally, more affordable.” 

 Meanwhile, analysts have shot down the idea – suggesting that Ocasio-Cortez is in over her head. 

“It’s a daunting task, and I’m not sure that the authors of the Green New Deal fully comprehend how much they’ll need,” physicist Christopher Clack told The Hill. 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2UJdfGc Tyler Durden

Trump’s State of the Union Will Probably Be About a Border Wall That 60% of Americans Say They Don’t Want

If the last month is any guide, President Trump will devote much of his State of the Union Address tonight to demanding that congressional Democrats acquiesce to his request for $5.7 billion in federal funding to build hundreds of mile of wall along the southern border.

In the process, he will probably harm the political fortunes of himself, his cause, and his party. The State of the Union will become a spectacle of self-defeat.

Over and over, Trump has linked his calls for the wall to crime, drugs, and human trafficking, repeating bizarre and baseless stories about women dragged into the U.S. while bound with duct tape. Although exaggerated fears of immigrant criminality have been a key feature of Trump’s politics since the beginning of his presidential campaign, in the aftermath of last year’s midterm election, the president has become obsessed with the need for a wall, tweeting and talking about it extensively, and, of course, shutting down the government in a failed effort to force congressional leaders to provide funding.

For Trump and his inner circle, the wall has become the dominant policy concern, to the exclusion of nearly all else: As an administration official told The New York Times last month, it has become a one-issue White House.

That obsession has already cost the president politically, pushing down his approval numbers while leaving his primary political antagonist, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, more popular. There is every reason to believe that continuing to dwell on wall demands tonight would have a similar effect. If he builds his State of the Union around the wall, he will be building it around an issue with little constituency outside the most pro-Trump factions of the Republican party.

According to a Gallup poll released yesterday, Americans are broadly opposed to the wall, with 60 percent against it and 40 percent in favor. Those numbers are slightly worse for Trump’s cause than when Gallup polled the same question last June and found 57 percent opposed and 41 percent in support. The percentage of respondents who say they are “strongly” opposed has risen from 34 percent to 39 percent. If anything, the president’s emphasis on the wall has made the public less enthusiastic about it; his use of the bully pulpit to advance a signature issue has been counterproductive

Trump’s failure to convince congressional Democrats to fund the wall has led him to threaten a more drastic step—circumventing Congress entirely by declaring a state of emergency at the border.

There is, of course, no actual border security emergency, nothing that justifies a questionable executive branch power grab. The emergency declaration is designed for instances in which Congress does not have time to act; by threatening to declare an emergency at some eventual point only if Congress does not act, Trump is thus making clear that an emergency declaration would be inappropriate. The only emergency that exists is the political emergency of a stubborn president who is not getting his way. It is an emergency that exists entirely inside Trump’s mind.

Declaring a state of emergency at the border might resolve Trump’s personal frustrations, but it would put his allies in Congress in a difficult position. Congressional Republicans largely escaped political blowback for the shutdown, and so far they have generally supported Trump’s wall demands, while letting the president lead on the issue. But the emergency declaration might be a step too far, in part because it would force congressional Republicans to go on record with either support or rebuke for the idea, via a vote that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would not be able to block. That is probably why McConnell has reportedly warned Trump that the move would divide and harm his own party.

An emergency declaration would also be wildly unpopular—even more so than the wall itself. Although 73 percent of Republicans favor using an emergency declaration to get around Congress, according to a CBS News poll, 66 percent of Americans oppose a declaration of emergency to obtain wall funding. It is an idea that appeals almost exclusively to Trump’s dwindling support base.

The unpopularity of the wall and of strong-arm tactics to secure its funding has never been any secret. Yet Trump has pursued it with increasing fervor anyway, despite the obvious consequences. Even more amazingly, he has done so as immigration restrictionists have signaled that the wall is a largely symbolic measure rather than a substantive achievement. Trump has devoted his presidency to an own goal. The wall is both a massive loser in the court of public opinion and a pointless policy objective, and Trump is the only one who doesn’t seem to know it.

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Fed’s Dudley Explains “How I Learned To Stop Worrying & Love The Fed’s Balance Sheet”

“Stocks have reached a permanently high plateau”, “subprime is contained”, “there’s no icebergs this far south” and now “The Fed’s balance sheet is not the threat that people seem to think it is.”

Man’s ability to willfully ignore ‘downside possibilities’ and remain cognitively dissonant far longer than logic (or their pocketbook) should allow seems to know no bound and none other than The Federal Reserve’s Bill Dudley just unleashed what could be the piece de resistance of “nothing to see here, move along” agitprop.

Via Bloomberg,

Stop Worrying About the Fed’s Balance Sheet

It’s not the threat that people seem to think it is.

Financial types have long had a preoccupation: What will the Federal Reserve do with all the fixed income securities it purchased to help the U.S. economy recover from the last recession? The Fed’s efforts to shrink its holdings have been blamed for various ills, including December’s stock-market swoon. And any new nuance of policy — such as last week’s statement on “balance sheet normalization” — is seen as a really big deal.

I’m amazed and baffled by this. It gets much more attention than it deserves.

Let’s start with the stock market. Yes, it’s true that stock prices declined at a time when the Fed was allowing its holdings of Treasury and mortgage-backed securities to run off at a rate of up to $50 billion a month. But the balance sheet contraction had been underway for more than a year, without any modifications or mid-course corrections. Thus, this should have been fully discounted. 

Moreover, if anything, the run-off of the Fed’s balance sheet had a smaller-than-expected impact on the yields of those securities. Longer-term Treasury yields remained low, and the spread between them and the yields on agency mortgage-backed securities didn’t change much. It’s hard to see how the normalization of the Fed’s balance sheet tightened financial conditions in a way that would have weighed significantly on stock prices.

Better explanations for this fall’s weakness in the equity market abound. For one, economic growth and corporate profits looked set to falter in 2019, as the effects of corporate tax cuts waned and the labor market tightened. Demand for scarce labor should increase its share of income, crimping profits. And if the economy didn’t slow enough on its own, the Fed was likely to raise interest rates to make sure that happened. These developments weren’t good for an equity market that had been accustomed to strong earnings growth and an accommodative central bank.

Why then, one might ask, did the Fed announce changes to its plans to pare down its holdings of Treasury and mortgage-backed securities? Actually, there wasn’t much of a change at all. Here’s what Chairman Jay Powell said at his news conference last week:

  1. The Fed will maintain a balance sheet big enough to satisfy banks’ demand for reserves, with a buffer above that so the Fed will not have to intervene in the money markets on a day-to-day basis;

  2. The Fed now expects banks to demand more reserves than previously thought, so its balance sheet will likely be larger — this means more securities in its portfolio;

  3. The Fed could use its balance sheet more actively as a monetary policy tool but only if interest-rate adjustments — its primary tool — were to prove inadequate.

None of this should be a surprise. It always was likely that the Fed would maintain the current “floor” system, in which its choice of the interest rate it pays on reserves drives monetary policy. It also has been clear that banks would have a greater demand for reserves than in prior expansions. That’s because the central bank now pays interest on those reserves, and post-crisis regulations require banks to keep a lot more cash and other liquid assets on hand. 

The new news here is simply that Fed sees greater demand for reserves than it expected a year ago. But even this should not be a big surprise. After all, the federal funds rate — the interest rate that banks pay to borrow reserves from one another — had crept up to equal the rate that the Fed itself pays on reserves. So the central bank’s conclusion is just consistent with what we have already seen happening in money markets.

The concept of using the balance sheet as a monetary-policy tool isn’t new, either. It has always been part of the Fed’s toolkit. The shift is merely in emphasis. When the Fed was clearly on a tightening path, the attention was on interest rates. The Fed has made it clear that this is the primary tool of monetary policy and that hasn’t changed a whit. However, now that the balance sheet is getting more attention and the direction of short-term interest rates is less certain, the Fed is simply reminding people that the balance sheet is still available in circumstances where its primary tool might be insufficient. 

We are nowhere close to that situation today. The balance sheet tool becomes relevant only if the economy falters badly and the Fed needs more ammunition. 

It’s worth pointing out that the composition of the balance sheet is also important. Not only does it matter how much the Fed holds in Treasury and mortgage-backed securities, but also — for Treasury securities — whether they are predominately short-term bills, medium-term notes or long-term bonds. 

On this score, the Fed faces several important decisions. First, once the balance sheet gets to the desired size, what will it do with its still-large holdings of mortgage-backed securities? Will it just let them run off passively, or more actively sell them off? Under a passive approach, it would take several decades for the holdings to disappear.

Second, on the Treasury side, what should the composition be? Before the crisis, the Fed held Treasury securities across the maturity spectrum. Now, with a much bigger balance sheet, there is more reason to shift to Treasury bills. Holding mostly bills would reduce exposure to interest rate risk and increase the firepower available to fight future economic downturns. Should quantitative easing be needed, the Fed would have greater scope to extend the maturities of its holdings, not just increase the size of its balance sheet. 

The bottom line: The Fed’s balance sheet isn’t the threat that market participants sometimes make it out to be, and last week’s announcements do not have significant implications for the interest rate outlook. Market participants would be better off focusing on the economic outlook. This is what will drive monetary policy and the Fed’s decisions about the appropriate trajectory for short-term interest rates over the next year. If the outlook changes, so will the Fed’s thinking.

*  *  *

So, feel any better? Still worried about the $4 trillion balance sheet’s affect on global markets? We have two quick questions for Mr.Dudley that should help clear things up:

1) When the balance sheet is expanding, your privy council proclaimed it all-powerful in its omnipotent role of wealth-creation through asset-value-levitation – So, why do you consider the unwind of this massive monetary experiment a ‘nothingburger’?

2) If the unwind of this experiment is ‘nothing’, why did the market shit-the-bed when Powell said ‘auto-pilot… lot smaller’ and why did The Fed just perform the greatest U-turn in policy in its history?

Probably nothing, right, Mr. Dudley?

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2DffjPc Tyler Durden

Our friend is starting “a business every year” in this frontier market… demand is booming

Levi Strauss never actually wore a pair of his famous blue jeans.

Although his iconic name has been plastered on the back pockets of millions of people, Strauss himself was a businessman. And in the 1870s, jeans were strictly for laborers.

Those jeans, of course, made him famous… and very, very wealthy.

Sure, Levi’s product was good. But the real secret to his success was his willingness to chase opportunity.

At 18, he left his native Germany for America. He learned the merchant trade in New York City.

Soon after, he moved to Kentucky to peddle wares to pioneer settlers.

Then Strauss followed the crowd to San Francisco for the California Gold Rush.

But he wasn’t looking for the yellow metal like everyone else. He just wanted to sell them the products they needed to work and survive (everything from bedding to mining tools).

Then one of Strauss’ customers, a tailor, approached him in 1872 about a pair of pants he had created with rivets at the stress points. One year later, blue jeans were born.

The willingness to go where the crowds don’t go, and to seize unusual opportunities, is one way to gain success in business.

And it’s particularly important if you’re doing business in frontier markets, like Levi Strauss…

Like Strauss, my friend Andreas grew up in what he calls the “backwoods” of Germany.

From a young age, Andreas wanted to get out and expand his opportunities.

He started by working as a banker in Hamburg. But that didn’t scratch the itch.

Now Andreas lives and works in the Southeast Asian nation, Myanmar — formerly known as Burma.

Sandwiched between India and Thailand, Myanmar spent decades nearly as cut off from the world as North Korea… its economy was suffering under decades of socialist, military rule.

Then, about ten years ago, Myanmar looked around and realized that while its neighbors China and India were on an economic upturn, it was missing out on the party.

So it decided to overhaul its government and open up to foreign investors.

Andreas took a job there in 2011. And since then, he has had a much bigger and more varied career in the Wild, Wild East than he ever could have had as a banker in Germany.

Why? Because Myanmar — just like Kentucky and San Francisco in the 1850s — is a true frontier market.

Coca-Cola didn’t exist there until a few years ago. Neither did a decent, Western-style hotel. Or Western-style coffee shops.

But today, the business and investment opportunities are taking off. Andreas jokes that he starts a new business in Myanmar every year, simply because there’s so much demand to meet as the market expands and opportunities arise.

For example, there’s a rapidly expanding digital/fintech market.

Nearly 36 million people in Myanmar live in houses with smartphones. At the same time, most of them don’t make enough money to open a traditional bank account.

The solution? Skip the banks and dive straight into fintech.

That’s exactly what a Norwegian telecom operation called Telenor did. They came in and teamed up with Yoma, a Burmese private lender.

Their joint venture, Wave Money, got its license in August 2016 and became the first non-bank to provide mobile financial services in the country.

Now, Wave Money is THE way that people in Myanmar send money back and forth. The company went from zero customers in 2016 to some 1.5 million in 2018.

And this is just one example of foreigners making money by solving problems in a frontier market.

There are too many opportunities in Myanmar to list in this one piece. (We recently wrote about them more extensively in Sovereign Man: Confidential.) In short, the country needs basically everything from a business and services perspective.

And it’s still difficult for foreigners to invest in the country. If you want to open a business there, you need a local partner (Andreas agreed to speak with our premium subscribers that were interested).

The country’s tiny stock market (with only five listed companies) is still closed to foreigners – though that may change in March.

Don’t get me wrong– I’m not suggesting anyone get up and move to Myanmar… or that the country is without any problems. Myanmar has a laundry list of them, just like every other country in the world.

You also don’t have to start multiple businesses to take advantage of key growth opportunities abroad; there are plenty of other ways.

Buying real estate is a great example; there are certain markets where property prices are shockingly cheap, rental demand is strong, and future growth prospects are white hot.

That’s how I ended up starting an agriculture business in Chile back in 2014: land prices (at least, back then) were literally 90% cheaper than what it costs in the US.

Five years in, the company has become a regional powerhouse. And the value of the farmland has soared, with everyone from major endowment funds to investment banks trying to buy up huuuuge tracts of land.

Even outside of real estate, sometimes it’s possible to benefit from a foreign country’s growth dynamics merely by opening a bank account.

Some places are growing so rapidly that the demand for capital is incredibly high.

This means that local banks will often pay MUCH higher interest rates on deposits than you’re accustomed to.

(And you might also find that a foreign bank is far better capitalized than the Bank of Smoke and Mirrors where your money is currently held back home.)

The key lesson here is that there are a lot of different approaches. But it all starts with expanding your thinking internationally. Doing so can bring you big rewards, both personally and financially.

Source

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Trump Nominates Former Bear Stearns Chief Economist To Lead World Bank

In a report that elicited chuckles from some corners of Wall Street, the Washington Post reported late Monday that President Trump planned to nominate Treasury Undersecretary for International Affairs David Malpass – who, in addition to serving as the chief economist at Bear Stearns as the investment bank spiraled into bankruptcy, also worked in the Reagan and Bush the elder administrations – to be the next president of the World Bank.

Due to a decades-old agreement with European nations, Washington picks the head of the World Bank while Europe chooses the head of the IMF. Since 1944, the World Bank’s 12-member board has never refused to confirm Washington’s pick, meaning that Malpass’s confirmation is virtually assured – barring a unforeseen and unprecedented break with unprecedented.

One “person close to Malpass” told WaPo that he would seek to be a “constructive” World Bank president, though he declined to comment on Malpass’s agenda beyond saying he would seek to protect US interests and raise incomes in developing nations.

Malpass

Of course, given his reputation as a skeptic of global institutions like the World Bank, speculation about Malpass’s plans for the bank will almost certainly be the subject of widespread speculation. Since joining the Trump Administration, Malpass has offered some scathing criticism of the institution, once describing the bank as part of a “giant sprawl” of international organizations that create “mountains of debt without solving problems.” He has also accused the World Bank of “mission creep” and of prioritizing its own growth over that of the recipients of its funds. Echoing Trump’s push to cut costs at the UN, the Economist described Malpass as a “cost cutting crusader”. Indeed, Malpass is a skeptic of the very organization that he is being tasked to lead. A noted China hawk, Malpass has been heavily involved with the US-China trade talks, and has also been critical of the World Bank’s loans to Beijing.

At least one former Wall Street economist pointed out the irony in appointing Malpass to run a global organization tasked with fostering economic growth and stability, particularly in the emerging world, after the Treasury official failed to foresee the impending demise of his former employer.

The current World Bank president, Jim Yong Kim, stepped down on Feb. 1 after more than six years in the post to take a job at a firm focused on infrastructure development in foreign countries. The official announcement of Malpass’s candidacy is expected on Wednesday.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2D9fag7 Tyler Durden

A History of America’s Inhumane Border Enforcement: New at Reason

President Donald Trump will without a doubt demand more funding for more border enforcement during his State of the Union tonight. He has Flaglately started saying that this is necessary not just to deal with the security crisis at the border—but also a humanitarian crisis.

Reason Foundation Senior Analyst Shikha Dalmia, however, notes that to the extent that there is such a crisis, it is one of Trump’s making. Hardly a day goes by when some shocking story doesn’t break about this administration’s treatment of immigrants—or suspected immigrants.

However, the fact of the matter is that Trump’s harsh enforcement is not unique. Such tactics have been part and parcel of U.S. border policy since 1924 when the country first passed laws that banned the free flow of movement across the southern border and criminalized entry from anywhere except for official ports. However, the shocking lengths to which this administration has gone might finally pave the way for reform.

View this article.

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US Services Stumble To 13-Month Lows As New Orders Plunge

After US Manufacturing’s PMI bucked the global slowdown trend, rebounding in January, US Services data was also expected to likewise stabilize against weakness worldwide, but it didn’t.

Markit’s US Services PMI printed 54.2, down from 54.4 – the lowest since September – weighed down by the joint-weakest rise in new business since Oct 2017, the rate of new order growth matches December’s recent lows, and activity expansion is the softest in four months.

ISM’s Non-Manufacturing Index disappointed, dropping to 56.7 (57.1 exp) from an upwardly revised 58.0 as new orders dropped sharply in January. ISM Services has not been lower since Dec 2017

So manufacturing upticked in January and services slumped according to both surveys.

The downshift in services expansion is in sync with forecasts for economic growth to moderate this year as the tax-cut boost fades and the trade war weighs on business plans.

The index of non-manufacturing business activity declined to 59.7from 61.2 the prior month, and the gauge of new orders fell to 57.7from 62.7, the steepest drop since August 2016.

And New Export Orders crashed by the 3rd biggest amount since Lehman…

Commenting on the PMI data, Chris Williamson, Chief Business Economist at IHS Markit said:

“The robust economic growth signalled by the US PMI surveys at the start of the year sits in stark contrast to the near-stalling of growth seen in Europe, China and Japan. At current levels, the surveys are consistent with annualised GDP growth of around 2.5% at the start of the year.

“Jobs growth remained buoyant as business optimism perked up to its highest since October. Backlogs of work are meanwhile building up, in part because firms struggled to meet demand, which has in turn allowed sellers to continue to push prices higher.

“However, although still robust, the rates of economic growth, job creation and inflation signalled by the PMI surveys have cooled since peaks seen last year. This possibly reflects some impact from the government shutdown, though scant evidence of such was seen in the anecdotal evidence from the surveys, but also reflects an easing of demand growth, notably from abroad. Foreign sales of goods and services barely rose in January, contrasting with signs of faster growth of domestic orders. “

Just remember, it’s never a decoupling, it’s always just a lag.

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Here Are 8 Things To Watch During Trump’s State Of The Union

C-o-m-i-t-y.

That, according to senior White House advisor Kellyanne Conway, will be the overarching theme of President Trump’s State of the Union, which is expected to begin at 9 pm ET  on Tuesday. Last year’s speech was distinguished by Trump’s calls for cooperation between the two parties during an 80-minute marathon that was the longest speech since the Clinton administration. Of course, Trump’s heartfelt speech did little to change the atmosphere of bitter partisan acrimony that has only intensified in Washington over the past year.

Trump

But after a divisive year that featured partisan battles over the confirmation of SCOTUS Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s zero-tolerance border policies and – most recently – the government shutdown, according to Conway, Trump is once again planning to strike a conciliatory tone to try and silence critics who joke that his speech would be more aptly referred to as “the State of Disunion”.

“This president is going to call for an end to the politics of resistance, retribution and call for more comity,” Conway said, spelling out the last word.

Many of President Trump’s recent decisions have been controversial among both Republicans (the trade war, his decision to pull troops from Syria and Afghanistan) and Democrats (immigration, the wall, the shutdown). And as the president seeks to rally support as the 2020 campaign season gets underway, previews of the speech published by the Hill, the New York Times and NBC News suggest that Trump will spend the bulk of his time touting his victories and selling his policies to the public, while calling for Democrats and Republicans to find common ground on issues like passing a sweeping infrastructure bill. The “optimistic” tone will go a long way toward setting out Trump’s goals for the coming year.

With that in mind, here’s a roundup of what to expect from Tuesday’s speech:

Making the case for an immigration ‘crisis’ (the New York Times):

Immigration policy dominated the president’s agenda during his second year in office, and most likely will again during the third. Mr. Trump has consistently tried to make the case that there is a “crisis” – of crime, drugs and human trafficking – at the border with Mexico, an emergency that can be dealt with only by building a border wall.

The president is also likely to call for a legislative solution to address the so-called Dreamers, younger immigrants who were brought to the United States illegally as children and have no criminal record. This is one area of possible cooperation with Democrats, but there are significant disagreements about details.

Mr. Trump is not expected to veer from his demands for billions of dollars in funding for border security, including some kind of barrier. Congressional negotiators from both parties are trying to hammer out a deal on border security, but Democrats have been adamant that they will not agree to money for Mr. Trump’s wall, and the president has been pessimistic about the chances of Capitol Hill coming up with an agreement that meets his approval.

Still, he is not expected to use the address on Tuesday to declare a national emergency, which potentially would enable him to construct additional barriers along the border using presidential authority.

Will Trump declare a national emergency to build the wall? (courtesy of the Hill):

Trump is coming to Congress during crunch time for budget talks, with a Feb. 15 deadline to avert another shutdown.

In the lead-up to the address, Trump has slammed bipartisan negotiations as a “waste of time” and chastised Democrats for opposing his demand for $5.7 billion in border wall funding.

The president and his aides have instead hinted he may use Tuesday’s speech to lay the groundwork for declaring a national emergency that would allow him to sidestep Congress and build new portions of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Trump told reporters last week when asked about the declaration to “listen closely” to the upcoming speech. But a senior administration official who previewed Trump’s remarks on Friday would only say that immigration will be “the top priority” of the address.

A declaration would likely spark a political backlash by riling Democrats and even some Republicans. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has reportedly warned Trump privately that such a move could divide his own party. There’s also the near certainty of legal challenges to declaring an emergency.

The senior administration official said Trump, “in a spirit of trying to reach across the aisle to advance the interest of all Americans, is going to try to provide a bipartisan way forward” on the immigration stalemate.

Bringing homes the troops (courtesy of NBC News):

Trump has been fighting the Washington foreign policy establishment over his plans to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and Syria.

Most Republicans and many Democrats in the Senate have voted against a “precipitous withdrawal” from either country, but the Democratic presidential candidates found themselves siding with Trump – even if they disapproved of his methods and perceived motives – on the basic premise of winding down the U.S. presence on both fronts.

Tuesday’s speech is an opportunity for him to make his case to Congress directly and to the viewing public at home.

“We’ve been there for 19 years, almost, we are fighting very well,” he said of the Afghanistan war in an interview with CBS that aired over the weekend. “We’re fighting harder than ever before. And I think that they will – I think they’re tired and, I think everybody’s tired. We got to get out of these endless wars and bring our folks back home.”

An end to AIDS? (courtesy of Politico):

President Donald Trump plans to use Tuesday night’s State of the Union address to promise an end to the HIV epidemic in America, four individuals with knowledge of the planned remarks told POLITICO. Under Trump’s 10-year strategy, health officials would target the U.S. communities with the most HIV infections and work to reduce transmissions by 2030. The strategy has been championed by top health officials, including HHS Secretary Alex Azar and CDC Director Robert Redfield.

Drug pricing (courtesy of Fortune):

Trump is likely to tout his administration’s long-awaited proposal to end a complex system of drug rebates that’s been blamed for helping keep prices high. The measure, announced on Thursday, could hand the president a potential win on drug pricing if passed.

Besides directly targeting middlemen like pharmacy benefit managers, the policy is a “clear negative” for makers of expensive drugs that use rebates to fend off competition from cheaper alternatives, said Veda Partners analyst Spencer Perlman. Sell-side analysts at Wall Street firms had mixed reactions as health-care supply chain stocks fell on Friday.

Abortion appeal (courtesy of New York Times):

White House officials said the president is also likely to talk about abortion and the “fundamental importance and respect for human life.” Mr. Trump’s evangelical supporters, who fervently oppose abortion, have been the bulwark of his political base.

He might also talk about China’s program of forced abortion and sterilization, and perhaps even efforts in the United States to ease some abortion restrictions, such as a contentious amendment regarding late-term abortions being considered by the legislature in Virginia.

Infrastructure (courtesy of NYT):

The president, as he did last year, will almost certainly make an appeal for an infrastructure program, and is likely to emphasize its effect in rural America, the home of his political base.

Programs to repair roads and bridges have strong bipartisan appeal, but so far, Republicans and Democrats have not found a middle ground.

North Korea (courtesy of the Hill):

Another major announcement Trump has teased is a second nuclear summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Trump told CBS News on Sunday that the meeting “is set” and that he would reveal the details “probably” during the speech “or shortly before.”

“There’s also a very good chance that we will make a deal,” Trump said of the planned summit with Kim, which is expected to take place this month.

The president could use part of his address to try to win over skeptical lawmakers, who heard from Trump’s own intelligence chiefs last week that North Korea is unlikely to give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

One highlight of every SOTU is the guest list, as president’s typically incorporate the stories of every day Americans into their elucidation of their policy goals. This year, Trump’s guests will include an 11-year-old boy named Joshua Trump, who has reportedly been bullied because of his last name, Grace Eline, a child who was diagnosed with a brain tumor when she was 9; Judah Samet, a survivor of the Holocaust who lived through the shooting at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh; Ashley Evans, a recovering opioid addict; Elvin Hernandez, a special agent at the Department of Homeland Security who focuses on human trafficking; and Debra Bissell, Heather Armstrong and Madison Armstrong, family members of a Nevada couple who authorities say were killed by an undocumented immigrant, the Washington Post reported.

Given that this will be Trump’s first SOTU with Nancy Pelosi standing behind him while Trump speaks from the House rostrum – and with a handful of lawmakers hoping to unseat Trump in 2020 sitting in the crowd – particular attention will be paid to the Democratic response. The official rebuttal will be delivered by Stacey Abrams while Bernie Sanders will once again deliver a rebuttal of his own.

Readers can stream the speech live below:

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2MQWWUT Tyler Durden

Bad Laws Worsen the Homeless Crisis: New at Reason

San Francisco is one of America’s richest cities, yet it has a major problem with homelessness and crime. An average of 85 cars are broken into daily, yet fewer than 2 percent lead to arrests.

The homeless themselves are often harassed. “They run around and they shout at themselves,” one man who usually sleeps on the streets told our crew. “They make it bad for people like us that hang out with a sign.”

Since store owners can’t rely on city cops for help, some have hired private police to patrol their stores. There used to be hundreds of these private cops citiwide—and then the city’s police union complained. There are fewer than 10 left.

San Francisco’s politicians have promised to help the homeless going back decades. In 1982, Mayor Dianne Feinstein bragged about creating “a thousands units right here in the Tenderloin.” In 2002, Mayor Willie Brown said “you gotta do something about it.” In 2008, Mayor Gavin Newsom boasted about moving “6,860 human beings off the street.” In 2018, San Francisco passed a new local tax to help pay for homeless services.

Why have the results been so lackluster? One reason: San Francisco has the nation’s highest rents

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The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.

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Rapper 21 Savage Disputes ICE Story About His Arrest: Reason Roundup

Lawyers for rapper 21 Savage are disputing federal agents’ claims about the 26-year-old, who was arrested Sunday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. ICE said the rapper—whose real name is Shayaa Bin Abraham-Joseph—had been decieving everyone about having Atlanta roots, was actually from the U.K., and had overstayed his immigration visa for years.

That’s all false, his lawyers say. While his Wikipedia page did indeed claim he was from Atlanta, the artist didn’t write the entry himself.

It’s understandable why whoever did may have been confused, since 21 Savage did attend junior high and high school in Atlanta and has been here since 2005.

An ICE spokesperson told WSBTV that the arrest was related to 21 Savage’s status as “a convicted felon.” But the one criminal charge in the rapper’s history—a 2014 arrest on drug possession charges—was expunged last September, his lawyer Charles H. Kuck said. So if that’s the reason for 21 Savage’s arrest, it’s “based on incorrect information about prior criminal charges.”

ICE is right that the artist did overstay his visa—it expired way back in 2006. But it’s not exactly his fault: At the time of his coming to the U.S. and his staying past the permitted time, 21 Savage was a minor. His parents brought him here when he was 12, and then overstayed their own work visas the following year.

“Like almost two million other children, [21 Savage] was left without legal status through no fault of his own,” said Kuck. He continued:

This is a civil law violation, and the continued detention of Mr. Abraham-Joseph serves no other purpose than to unnecessarily punish him and try to intimidate him into giving up his right to fight to remain in the United States.

As an adult, 21 Savage has since been trying to get his immigration status right. In 2017, he applied for a U-Visa, admitting then to his undocumented plight. The Department of Homeland Security “has known his address and his history” since then, explained Kuck.

It’s unclear why ICE waited until now to make a move. But what is clear is that some initial reporting and speculation surrounding the rapper’s arrest were unwarranted. This isn’t a case of a criminal brazenly trying to avoid detection, but a young man paying for his parents’ actions and being used as a pawn in immigration politics.

21 Savage’s arrest came just a few days after he performed on The Tonight Show.

ICE is currently holding him in federal custody without eligibility for bond. “We and he will fight for his release,” said Kuck, “and his right to remain in our country.”

FREE MINDS

Oh, Libertarian Bill Weld, we hardly knew ye… The former governor of Massachusetts and 2016 Libertarian Party vice presidential nominee has returned to the Republican party.

The move squelches rumors that Weld was planning to run for president on the Libertarian ticket in 2020.

FREE MARKETS

The moral case for capitalism—we need to get better at making it, argues John Allison at the Cato Institute.

QUICK HITS

• How sex censorship is killing the internet.

• The State of the Union address is tonight.

• The Senate Judiciary Committee today will consider the nomination of Neomi Rao to replace Brett Kavanaugh on the D.C. Circuit Court. A former classmate sings her praises and pleads with Democrats to leave partisan politics out of it.

• Conspiracy theorists are promising “vigilante justice” if Trump doesn’t start arresting more Satanic Democrat pedophiles soon.

• Actor Liam Neeson is facing blowback after telling an interviewer he once stalked around the city hoping to kill a random black man. Here’s your periodic reminder that Neeson’s biggest films—the sex-trafficking action/panic franchise Taken—are “based on a true story” that was totally fabricated.

• Take that, Jean Twenge:

• A new study published in the Lancet finds “that the risk of pancreatic, colorectal, endometrial, and gallbladder cancers in millennials is significantly higher than the risk Baby Boomers were facing when they were the same age.”

• Only the best for our president:

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