Tag: hit&run

A former Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent was convicted Tuesday of lying and falsifying records to hide a long-running scheme to skim money and other property during drug busts. In one scheme, he convinced a confidential informant buy a truck so the agent could seize it through asset forfeiture.

A New Orleans jury found former DEA special agent Chad Scott guilty of seven counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and falsifying government records. The U.S. government’s indictment alleged that from at least 2009 to 2016, Scott and two other members of a New Orleans drug task force conspired to steal money from suspects and from the DEA’s evidence locker, and to falsify records to cover their tracks. 

Part of Scott’s misconduct involved getting a Houston drug dealer to purchase a $43,000 Ford F-150 so that Scott could seize it through asset forfeiture laws and then use it as a work vehicle. Scott falsified seizure records to make it appear that he had taken the truck in Louisiana.

Federal prosecutors also accused Scott of convincing two drug traffickers to lie on the stand about about a third defendant’s involvement in a drug case, in exchange for more lenient sentences. The third defendant’s conviction was later overturned.

Under civil asset forfeiture laws, police can seize property suspected of being connected to criminal activity, even if the owner isn’t charged with a crime. Law enforcement organizations claim that civil forfeiture is a vital tool to disrupt drug trafficking and other organized crime by targeting illicit proceeds. Civil liberties groups say the practice creates a perverse profit incentive for police.

For example, in Illinois, former La Salle County state’s attorney Brian Towne faced criminal charges for misconduct and misappropriating public funds after he allegedly spent asset forfeiture funds on an SUV, WiFi for his home, and local youth sports programs. Town created his own highway interdiction unit and asset forfeiture fund for his office, an unusual move that the Illinois Supreme Court later ruled was illegal. A judge dismissed the charges against Towne after finding his right to a speedy trial was violated.

The New Orleans Advocate reported in 2016 that Scott, who styled himself as “the white devil,” was one of the most successful DEA agents in the region when it came to big drug busts and large cash hauls. The Advocate also reported that in 2004 a woman filed a complaint to the DEA and the Louisiana State Police claiming she saw Scott take drugs from a house following an arrest. Because of Scott’s status as a case-maker, numerous complaints against him and other red flags were ignored

That changed after Scott was indicted in 2017 as part of a wide-ranging FBI probe into the DEA’s troubled New Orleans field division. During Scott’s case, federal prosecutors attempted to enter other past misconduct issues going back to 1999 into evidence.

That year, two employees of Houston’s Rap-a-Lot Records, which was under DEA investigation, said they were pulled over by Scott and several other law enforcement officers. According to a motion filed by prosecutors, Scott’s group “proceeded to remove the occupants from the vehicle, place them in handcuffs, and stand them against a wall. Evidence indicates that [Scott] struck Mr. Simon and took a necklace from him,” which he then kept in his evidence locker for several months before returning.

A subsequent investigation by the DEA’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) found that, while Scott admitted to knowingly violating the DEA’s evidence handling policies, there was insufficient evidence to support the allegations of civil rights abuses. Prosecutors wrote that “evidence indicates that in connection with this incident, [Scott] mishandled evidence” and “made false statements to investigators.”

In sworn testimony before the House Oversight Committee in 2000 regarding the Rap-a-Lot investigation, the then-head of the DEA’s Houston field office, Ernest Howard, said the OPR cleared Scott and his partner, Jack Schumacher of any misconduct. The hearing was spurred by a letter from Rep. Maxine Waters (D–Calif.) to Attorney General Janet Reno asking for an investigation into claims by Rap-A-Lot’s owner that he had been subjected to racial slurs, illegal searches, and frequent traffic stops by DEA agents.

The motion also revealed that in 2004 the DEA reprimanded Scott twice for mishandling confidential informants and violating agency policy.

And in 2005, Scott arrested a man named Julius Cerdes, who claimed that Scott asked him to fabricate a story about another criminal defendant. Specifically, Scott “wanted Mr. Cerdes to say that Mr. Cerdes sold cocaine to the criminal defendant, when in fact this had not occurred,” federal prosecutors wrote. “In exchange, Mr. Cerdes was to receive a more favorable disposition of his criminal case. In a subsequent proffer session, Mr. Cerdes lied as instructed, telling the false story.”

Yet Scott still had plenty of defenders.

“I knew Chad Scott, and still know him, to be a fine, upstanding public servant whose dedication has been an overwhelming asset to this community,” Matt Coman, a former federal prosecutor who worked closely with Scott, told the Advocate in 2016. “His work has gone a long way toward continuing to eradicate the scourge of illegal drugs in this community. He’s a fantastic person, a fantastic agent—a credit to that agency.”

In a Justice Department press release announcing Scott’s conviction, FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Anthony T. Riedlinger said the conviction “reinforces the message that no one is above the law. Scott’s actions were selfish and placed an unnecessary stain on an otherwise stellar agency.” 

Scott faces another federal trial in October on a different set of charges.

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From Magistrate Judge Steven C. Mannion’s decision in Shanus v. R.L. Americana, 2018 WL 9440501 (D.N.J.), decided a year ago but just posted on Westlaw:

Before the Court is Defendants Robert Lifson and Robert Edward Auctions’ (collectively “REA”) motion to seal and redact portions of the trial transcript and exhibits. REA argues that they have a strong interest in redacting and sealing portions of the transcript because they reference confidential business dealings, contracts, and settlements relating to customers who were not parties to this action.

After a five day trial, the jury found that REA, with the assistance of nonparties Peter Nash and his business, Cooperstown Monument Company (“Cooperstown”), fraudulently manipulated the market through a deceptive bidding and purchase scheme. Plaintiff Corey R. Shanus contends that this motion is nothing more than an attempt to conceal evidence of REA’s fraud from the public….

The presentation of materials to the Court creates a presumption that such materials, regardless of a party’s discovery designation, are part of the public record and subject to public access. Because all materials and judicial proceedings are matters of public record, the Court typically should not seal such records. However, the right of public access is not absolute. “Every court has supervisory power over its own records and files, and courts have denied access where files might become a vehicle for improper purpose.” …

Prior to trial, Judge McNulty found that the disputed transcript sections provide the foundational information necessary to understand REA’s scheme. The public has a right to understand why and how a court reached a judgment. If the Court were to seal these documents, it would effectively obscure the reasoning behind the Court’s judgment.

For example, REA wishes to seal sections of the April 30th and May 1st transcripts that describe Mr. Lifson’s relationship with Mr. Nash and outline their scheme. The disputed transcripts explain how Mr. Nash consigned items that he owned for sale in REA auctions. After placing his items in the auctions, Mr. Nash bid on some of those very same items as Cooperstown, an entity that he completely controlled.

Mr. Nash then extended credit to Cooperstown for the cost of the successful bids, therefore preventing any money from actually changing hands between Mr. Nash and Cooperstown. Essentially, Mr. Nash would loan Cooperstown, an entity under his control, money to pay himself for Cooperstown’s purchases of his own memorabilia.

Mr. Lifson, as the auction representative, would normally receive a buyer’s commission and fees from items sold in REA auctions. However, Mr. Nash would not pay the full fees, accruing debt with REA. Instead, Mr. Lifson had an agreement with Mr. Nash that the items Cooperstown purchased would be held as collateral for Mr. Nash’s debt, but it is unclear whether Mr. Lifson ever intended on collecting this debt.

Mr. Lifson would then report these sales on his website, but REA never actually removed these items from their inventory, until offering them for sale at some point in the future. Because successful sales potentially increase the value of items, Mr. Lifson and Mr. Nash’s scheme would artificially inflate the prices of items that they intended to sell in future auctions.

For the above reasons, the materials that REA seeks to seal are directly relevant to the heart of this case, meaning that the basis for the judgment rests upon the disputed transcripts and exhibits. If the Court sealed the disputed materials, it would essentially conceal the very mechanism that REA used to perpetuate the scheme, leaving the public with little more than the judgment itself to establish the existence of the scheme. Consequently, the Court finds that the public interest in disclosure outweighs any private interest to seal….

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A California Border Patrol agent has pleaded guilty and agreed to resign after assaulting a migrant in custody. 

According to a plea agreement filed in the U.S. District Court of Southern California, Calexico, California, agent Jason Andrew McGilvray encountered his victim, identified in court documents as B.S.S., on February 16 after the migrant attempted to cross the border by jumping a fence in Imperial County. The plea agreement states that McGilvray “willfully struck B.S.S. in the face” after the migrant was apprehended. McGilvray’s actions, the plea agreement continues, were done “with intent to deprive B.S.S. of his constitutional right against unreasonable force during search and seizure.” McGilvray is charged with violating Title 18, United States Code, Section 242, or the willful deprivation of rights under the color of law.

The plea agreement recommends that McGilvray serve one year of probation. The agreement also calls for his resignation and for an understanding that McGilvray would not seek new employment with federal law enforcement.

The Los Angeles Times reports that McGilvray has worked for Border Patrol since 2006.

This is an unusual outcome. As Quartz reported in July, Border Patrol agents have been arrested at “more than 5 times higher than the rate of arrests of state and local police” in the past year alone. But only two Border Patrol agents have been arrested for “mission-related misconduct” in that time, and none have been arrested for civil rights violations.

“The U.S. Border Patrol has fully cooperated with this investigation and we are satisfied to see the criminal justice system move quickly to bring this case to a conclusion,” El Centro Sector Acting Chief Patrol Agent Ryan J. Scudder tells Reason.

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File under “not a good change, but not nearly as bad as we were initially told.” No, the Trump administration won’t start making members of the military jump through special hoops to get citizenship for any of their children born abroad—despite early bungled reports that this was new U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) policy. 

“As of October 29, children born to U.S. service members outside of the U.S. will no longer be automatically considered citizens,” tweeted NBC reporter Ken Dilanian yesterday afternoon. “Parents will have to apply for citizenship” for any kids. 

Such a shift would have been weird, worrying, and outrageous. But it turns out Dilanian (and others) got it wrong. 

“Correction,” he tweeted about an hour after his initial tweet. “Experts who have looked at new USCIS policy say it applies if a service member adopts a child overseas, but children born to service members on deployment would still automatically get citizenship.” 

The change will not apply to children born to any U.S. citizens serving in the military or otherwise working abroad. It will apply only in cases of foreign adoption by U.S. citizen parents, or children born to parents were not U.S. citizens at the time of the child’s birth. A Department of Defense spokesperson said the shift would affect about 100 children annually. 

Acting USCIS Director Ken Cuccinelli clarified that the policy “does NOT impact birthright citizenship.” 

It also does not mean that the children will be denied citizenship, just that parents have to submit an application. The change was made to bring the definition of residence in the immigration law in line with State Department guidance, USCIS told CNN.

The station also reported that distorted news about the change “was injecting serious stress among military spouses.” A Navy officer told CNN: “You should go onto a spouse Facebook page and see the freakouts.” 

But while the policy may not be as bad as initially reported, some are questioning why we are suddenly making any parents take this extra step. 

“The fact that those of us who deal with immigration law all the time can read this memo and immediately point out plausible scenarios leads me to believe it’s going to impact some number of people,” said Martin Lester of the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s Military Assistance Program. “Impacting one person is too many.”

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ELECTION 2020

Kirsten Gillibrand is out. 

Today, I am ending my campaign for president.

I am so proud of this team and all we've accomplished. But I think it’s important to know how you can best serve.

To our supporters: Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. Now, let's go beat Donald Trump and win back the Senate. pic.twitter.com/xM5NGfgFGT

— Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) August 28, 2019

In other campaign-ish news… 

This might be the most interesting crosstab I've ever seen in any poll. pic.twitter.com/UcSmvpVDPI

— Neoliberal ???? (@ne0liberal) August 28, 2019

Results seem about right, no?  

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FREE MINDS

11th Cir. joins all of the other circuits to consider the question and declines to suppress child porn evidence obtained by the FBI when it planted malware on a child porn server it ran.

Holds good faith exception applies to the Playpen warrant. https://t.co/ithGpUX0o8 pic.twitter.com/bv74YPuwdh

— Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) August 28, 2019

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FREE MARKETS

RIP, Forever 21? The store is reportedly filing for bankruptcy, after growing from a small, Los Angeles–based family business to a millennial “fast fashion” empire with 800 outlets around the world. After seemingly single-handedly bringing young millennial women into traditional malls, it’s “now threatening to become the next major trouble spot for already ailing mall operators,” says the Los Angeles Times. 

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QUICK HITS

• More on the Amazon Ring fiasco: 

Post Exclusive: A doorbell-camera company owned by Amazon founder and Post owner Jeff Bezos has secretly cut deals with 400 police departments to feed video from people's front doors to cops who request it, creating "a wholly new surveillance network." https://t.co/Cjiet7uARy

— Marc Fisher (@mffisher) August 28, 2019

• The number of incarcerated women has grown over the past four decades, but “policy and practice at correctional institutions haven’t met the needs of female prisoners when they require specialized treatment, preventative care and emotional support as they age behind bars,” writes Cassie M. Chew at The Crime Report. New research provides some look at the inadequate treatment right now.
• An unarmed Chinese immigrant who was fatally shot by police in California did not speak English and probably didn’t understand instructions to show his hands, say lawyers for Li Xi Wang’s family, who have filed a lawsuit against Chino police.

• “More Britons believe sex workers should not be punished for operating out of brothels or on the street than those who think they should,” according to a new poll from RightsInfo.

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In 2017, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “synthetic opioids other than methadone,” the category that includes fentanyl and its analogs, were involved in nearly 29,000 opioid-related deaths, or 60 percent of the total. The actual numbers are probably higher, because many of the coroners and medical examiners who share death records with the CDC do not test for fentanyl or related substances.

As Bryce Pardo and five other drug policy researchers note in a new report from the RAND Corporation, this situation is historically unprecedented. Back in 1975, the psychonautical chemist Alexander Shulgin predicted that synthetic opioids like fentanyl, which was first formulated in 1960, would be introduced in the black market as substitutes for heroin, which is derived from poppies. “The term ‘when’ rather than ‘if’ heroin substitutes appear is used intentionally, for this transformation seems economically inevitable,” he wrote. Yet while fentanyl has been implicated in several overdose clusters since the 1980s, it did not emerge as a major factor in drug-related deaths until 2014 or so.

Fentanyl is roughly 50 times as potent as heroin, so its proliferation as a heroin additive and replacement has increased the variability of black-market opioids, making fatal outcomes more likely. Since 2013, the annual number of deaths involving synthetic opioids has risen ninefold, while the total number of opioid-related deaths has nearly doubled. The number of people using illicit opioids has not increased commensurately; rather, fentanyl and its analogs (some of which are even more potent) have made “heroin” use deadlier.

“Why now?” Pardo and his co-authors ask. Their answer highlights changes in drug production and distribution that created the conditions for the fentanyl explosion: innovations in synthesis that have made the process less complicated; a sprawling, weakly regulated Chinese chemical industry that supplies most of the fentanyl consumed in the U.S.; cheap, high-volume international shipping that makes fentanyl easy to send and hard to detect; and online outlets that take advantage of privacy-shielding technologies such as TOR and Bitcoin to supply fentanyl directly to U.S. distributors and consumers. But none of these developments would have created the current situation without the economic incentives created by prohibition.

Those incentives, as Shulgin suggested, are powerful. Fentanyl is favored by the same factors that favored distilled spirits over beer and wine during alcohol prohibition and heroin over opium after nonmedical use of opiates was banned. Dose for dose, fentanyl is much less bulky than heroin and therefore much easier to smuggle. And unlike heroin, it does not require poppy crops and extensive processing of a raw agricultural product, so it is much cheaper for producers and distributors.

How much cheaper? RAND researchers found that Chinese firms will ship a kilogram of nearly pure fentanyl for $2,000 to $5,000, compared to around $25,000 for a kilogram of imported heroin. But that comparison does not take into account the higher potency of fentanyl or the greater dilution of heroin. Expressing prices in terms of morphine equivalent doses (MED), Pardo et al. calculate that “a 95-percent pure kg of fentanyl at $5,000 would generally equate to less than $100 per MED kg,” while “a 50-percent pure kg of Mexican heroin that costs $25,000 when exported to the United States would equate to at least $10,000 per MED kg.” In other words, “heroin appears to be at least 100 times more expensive than fentanyl in terms of MED at the import level.”

Pardo et al. emphasize that, by and large, opioid users are not clamoring for fentanyl, which makes their habits more dangerous by making potency harder to predict. Replacing heroin with fentanyl is instead a logical choice for suppliers dealing with government efforts to suppress the drug trade, since it makes drug production and distribution less conspicuous and more profitable.

At the same time, the shift toward fentanyl opens up the market to people who otherwise might never have contemplated a career in drug dealing. “The ability of enterprising drug dealers to obtain fentanyl and other related substances without leaving the comfort of their homes reduces barriers to market entry,” Pardo et al. write. “Importantly, this obviates the need to interact with violent criminal organizations that smuggle drugs across international borders. Access via the internet and mail link[s] manufacturers and buyers even when they are thousands of miles apart, diminishing the risks and costs associated with smuggling the drug.”

For related reasons, the rise of fentanyl may also reduce the violence associated with drug trafficking. “If synthetic opioids drive heroin out of most markets, it could erode the power of the DTOs [drug trafficking organizations] that dominate Mexico’s poppy-growing areas and cut their revenues from cross-border smuggling operations,” Pardo et al. write. “In the short run, this might generate more violence as the DTOs compete for a declining market, but in the long run, it could reduce violence and corruption in Mexico…..Online distribution could reduce opportunities for in-person transactions that might result in violence and obviate the need for armed and potentially violent criminals to smuggle product across borders.” They add that if the cost advantages of fentanyl translate into lower retail prices, the upshot could be less theft committed by heavy users.

Those potential silver linings should not obscure the dark cloud of uncertainty that hangs over drug users because of prohibition, forcing them to deal with mystery powders and tablets of unknown provenance and composition. This fundamental hazard of the black market has only been magnified by the emergence of fentanyl.

Still, the dark web marketplaces that make it hard to disrupt the fentanyl trade can provide a partial solution to that problem. Some drug sites have banned fentanyl sales, giving consumers some assurance that the products they buy will not turn out to be more potent than expected. More generally, because sites and vendors have a stake in maintaining the reputations that bring them repeat business, consumers have more control over quality than they do when buying from random street dealers.

Pardo et al. offer a few suggestions for disrupting online vendors, improving detection of fentanyl in the mail, and pre-emptively suppressing fentanyl sales in parts of the country (states west of the Mississippi, for example) where they are not yet common. But in general, they are appropriately skeptical of standard supply-side responses to fentanyl-related deaths. “There is little reason to believe that tougher sentences, including drug-induced homicide laws for low-level retailers and easily replaced functionaries (e.g., couriers), will make a positive difference,” they say. “There is also little reason to believe that synthetic opioid production, which occurs mostly in China, could be curtailed in the short run.”

The report suggests several harm-reduction policies that have greater promise, including expanded “medication-assisted treatment” (MAT) with methadone and buprenorphine. More boldly, Pardo et al. say it might make sense to relax current restrictions on MAT, expand the opioid replacement options to include pharmaceutical heroin or hydromorphone, and legalize supervised drug consumption sites. They also suggest research aimed at providing consumers with drug-testing kits that can indicate the concentration as well as the presence of fentanyl. Although “we are not endorsing these options,” they say, “it might be time to invent new approaches and be open to trying ideas that seemed too risky or too alien in the past.”

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Researchers in Greece have found a naturally occurring microbe that eats polyethylene and polystyrene, the two types of plastics that make up 70 percent of ocean litter.

A deep-learning algorithm developed by researchers at Google AI was able, in a test, to identify early signs of lung cancer at least as well as trained radiologists. When the algorithm had access to patients’ historical tomography data, it performed “on par” with a group of six radiologists. When it did not have access to historical X-ray data, the algorithm resulted in 11 percent fewer false positives and 5 percent fewer false negatives compared to the doctors.

When Becca Bundy’s daughter began having a seizure and needed medical care in 2016, Bill Cox was the first person to arrive from the Bearville Volunteer Fire Department in northern Minnesota. Two years later, Bundy got a chance to repay the good deed when she ran into Cox at a charity fundraiser and learned he was suffering from end-stage kidney failure. The two realized they shared the same blood type, and Bundy offered one of her kidneys to Cox. Both patients have made full recoveries, and Cox has since returned to his volunteer firefighting duties.

Frank Baez spoke very little English when he applied for a custodial job at New York University’s Langone Tisch Hospital as a teenage immigrant from the Dominican Republic. Eventually, he was promoted to a job transporting patients around the hospital. But what he really wanted was to be a nurse. In May, Baez, now 29, graduated from the school’s nursing program.

Following the March 2019 shootings in which 51 worshippers were killed at a pair of mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, Sen. Fraser Anning of the Australian Parliament blamed Muslim immigration for the attack. Two months later he was voted out of office, and a 17-year-old who smashed a raw egg on Anning’s head has been memorialized with a mural.

In March, 12-year-old Vivian Loh became the first female competitor to win Pennsylvania MATHCOUNTS in the competition’s 36-year history.

A young boy who was dying of brain cancer is now back at school and doing well after undergoing an experimental genetic treatment. Roche’s entrectinib, a personalized drug, is still in the testing stage, but the results are promising. Of the 12 children with cancers who participated in a recent trial, all saw improvement.

Taiwan’s high court ruled in 2017 that a ban on same-sex marriage then in place violated the country’s constitution. After two years of negotiations, the Taiwanese parliament voted in May to grant full marriage rights to gay and lesbian couples, making it the first country in Asia to do so.

Coral reefs around the world are dying due to changing acidity and temperature in Earth’s oceans, but researchers have discovered a strain of coral in Hawaii’s Kāne’ohe Bay that appears to thrive in the new ocean ecosystem. These “supercorals,” which can tolerate higher temperatures and increased acidity, were even able to recover from a sewage spill that seemed like it had destroyed the bay three decades ago.

Shailyn Ryan learned how to perform the Heimlich maneuver during a special presentation at Marguerite Peaslee Elementary School in Massachusetts. The next day at lunch, she saw her friend Keira grabbing her throat and beginning to turn blue. Shailyn, age 9, quickly mimicked the procedure she’d learned just one day earlier, squeezed hard, and dislodged a chunk of hot dog.

Lan Junze, a 19-year-old crane operator in Fushun, China, rescued 14 people from a burning apartment building earlier this year. Junze saw the fire from his job site and drove his crane to the building.

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Officials in Malheur County, Oregon, have asked the local sheriff to investigate whether the Malheur Enterprise newspaper broke any laws when its reporters tried to contact county economic development officials after office hours or through their personal emails and phone numbers. Greg Smith, director of Malheur County Economic Development Department, said he asked the newspaper to “limit your requests to office hours” and to a single county email address. Smith uses two emails in his conduct of county business, according to the newspaper. The newspaper also reports that at a government meeting he gave the public what he described as his “personal” cell phone number, saying he was available “24/7” and telling anyone who has questions or concerns to “call me directly.”

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It’s a fact that President Donald Trump has a remarkably large number of supporters among the voters and pundits who label themselves as “free market.” They usually say something like, “Sure, I don’t like his trade and immigration policies, but the rest are good.” I disagree.

With the exception of a few policies, the Trump presidency—aided by a largely GOP Congress—will end up being, by a large margin, a very pro-government intervention administration.

This is not about assessing the president’s personality, behavior, or impact on the “presidency”: It’s about economic policy. Further, it’s mostly about legislation the administration has molded or supported, not its executive orders. As good as some of Trump’s executive orders have been, as we learned with the end of the Obama era, the next administration can reverse these very easily.

Most of all, this assessment is about whether the administration’s policies will increase or decrease the size and scope of government and whether they will hurt or help the economy. Let’s start with the good.

Some aspects of the 2017 tax reform were great. The cut in the corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent and the reform of state and local tax deductions are important pro-market reforms. The results speak for themselves. High-income taxpayers in high-tax states can no longer shift their state tax burden onto the rest of us through a generous deduction. Capital investments have increased, fueling a growing economy and rising wages. The administration also deserves credit for bringing about some reduction in regulations, an area which Trump has spoken about quite eloquently.

Now, the bad. The administration’s self-destructive protectionist trade policies are well documented. These resulted in higher tariffs on both imports and exports from many countries, higher prices shouldered by American consumers, nonstop uncertainty, bailouts for affected farmers, and the first manufacturing output contraction since 2009, all with little tangible progress—in terms of trade deals with our partners—to show for it.

Then, there are the ruthless immigration policies doubled with numerous threats of a reduction in legal immigration and no fundamental reform.

Not all aspects of the tax reform were good policy. The rhetoric and design of an income tax cut for the middle class may have been politically valuable, but it makes no sense economically. Contrary to the administration’s rhetoric, it was not the middle class that needed a tax cut. The average income tax rate for the middle-income quintile was 2.6 percent in 2013. In 2014, the highest-earning, top 10 percent shouldered around 70 percent of the total income tax burden, up from 49 percent in 1980.

In the end, the tax reform kicked more taxpayers off the tax roll, which is not a good way to make them aware of the need to solve our fiscal problems. Worst of all, because it’s not offset with spending cuts, it adds to the budget deficit.

As for spending, this administration and the GOP Congress’ record is a complete abdication of fiscal responsibility. From the first terrible budget deal to a second budget agreement that might qualify as our worst ever, modern Republicans make Democrats look like Calvin Coolidge. Don’t get too comfortable with your tax cut because with this level of spending, it may not last long.

Then there’s the president’s constant bullying of Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell to bring back loose monetary policies and inject the economy with a sugar rush to temper the consequences of bad trade policies. And there’s the swamp-filling move to revive the Export-Import Bank, an antiquated bastion of cronyism that mostly benefits large domestic companies, state-owned foreign companies, and subsidizes some producers in China, all backed by U.S. taxpayers.

Some will say that Democrats running for office would be more interventionist and worse for the economy, and that Trump gives us an alternative. But those of us who genuinely want less government in our lives should not pretend that these policies are acceptable.

Let’s face it: This president is no more interested in fiscal discipline and free markets than his 21st-century predecessors were.

COPYRIGHT 2019 CREATORS.COM

 

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Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D–N.Y.), whose Democratic presidential candidacy struggled to gain traction, announced on Wednesday that she was ending her bid for the nomination.

“I know this isn’t the result we wanted. We wanted to win this race,” Gillibrand said in a video posted to her Twitter account. “But it’s important to know when it’s not your time and to know how you can best serve your community and country. I believe I can best serve by helping to unite us to beat Donald Trump in 2020.”

Gillibrand made women’s rights the cornerstone of her candidacy. According to her campaign website, she says she “has led the crucial national conversation around sexual abuse.” Many of her fellow Democrats, however, say that she aptly demonstrated how not to have conversations around matters of consent and sexual misconduct, citing her public campaign to remove then-friend and colleague Sen. Al Franken (D–Minn.) from the Senate amid sexual misconduct allegations. (The conservative radio host LeAnn Tweeden accused the lawmaker of forcibly kissing her, while Franken says it was a planned part of a comedy sketch he had often done on USO tours.) Franken resigned as Minnesota’s junior Democratic senator in 2017, which Gillibrand heralded as a necessary victory of the #MeToo era.

The New York politician also proposed an economic bill of rights, including “guaranteed access to full employment,” a $15 minimum wage, and Medicare for All.

In an effort to set herself apart from the crowded flock of contenders, Gillibrand also released a high-priority plan for “clean elections,” meant to remove megadonors from the political sphere. She proposed giving every voter $600 to be donated to federal campaigns in maximal increments of $200. Only candidates who promised not to accept outside donations above that $200 threshold would have been eligible to receive the taxpayer-funded checks, which the presidential hopeful nicknamed “Democracy Dollars.”

After a big media splash in 2017—during #MeToo’s first big moment—her profile appeared to be growing at a rapid pace, suggesting that her fight against Franken might elevate her as a major contender. But Gillibrand consistently registered at 1 percent or lower in polls.

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“Amazon burning at record rate” and variations of the same headline have run on  CNN,The Hill, Time,UPI, and the Daily Beast during the last week. Reacting to the dire news reports, French President Emmanuel Macron declared, “The Amazon forest is a subject for the whole planet.” He added, “We cannot allow you to destroy everything.”

At the urging of Macron, the G7 countries meeting in Biarritz, France, offered a $20 million aid package to help fight the fires. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro initially rejected the aid, but now says that his country may accept it if Macron withdraws his “insults.”

Celebrities also rushed to help. Actor Leonardo DiCaprio’s Earth Alliance pledged $5 million to aid various Brazilian nonprofits associated with indigenous peoples in protecting the Amazon rain forest. Good for him. Helping indigenous folks to assert and protect their property rights is certainly a worthy goal.

So why are there so many fires burning now in the Amazon region? Chiefly, because local farmers and ranchers have set them to control pests and weeds and to encourage new growth, according to University of Maryland geographer Matthew Hansen. The increase in fires every August to October coincides with the season when farmers begin planting soybean and corn.

“The first thing is that they’re not wildfires. Almost all of the fires have been set, so they’re anthropogenic in origin. A minority are actually in the rainforest,” explains Hansen, head of a NASA satellite project that tracks changes in earth’s vegetation and forests in an interview in Maryland Today.”The vast majority look like maintenance fires set on already cleared land, which farmers might be burning to reduce vegetation cover in expanding land use, pastures in most cases.”

Hansen adds, “Overall, fires inside standing rainforest are similar to recent years, the difference being that most have occurred in the last few weeks, leading to a concentrated spike in emissions.”

Interestingly, the Global Fire Emissions Database citing a satellite record that begins in 2012 “confirm[s] that the 2019 fire season has the highest fire count since 2012 across the Legal Amazon.” The Legal Amazon consists of the nine states that essentially encompass Brazil’s rain forests. According to records beginning in 1998, from Brazil’s National Space Research Institute, the number of active fires (33,405) detected by satellites for the month of August are indeed more than double what they were in the previous year (15,001). On the other hand, the number of current fires is way down from earlier years. Since 1998, fires exceeded the current number in eight prior years, with 73,683 fires in the peak year of 2005.

The bottom line is that the current fires are not a significant threat to the Amazon rain forest, but state-sanctioned deforestation is.

Although some fires set by farmers do get out of hand and burn down nearby rain forests, the much bigger problem has been deforestation. The most recent peak year of 2004 saw the loss of 27,772 square kilometers(10,722 square miles) of rain forest. That’s an area about the size of Maryland. As always, environmental commons like the Amazon rain forest are vulnerable to shifts in the fickle winds of politics.

For example, under the left-leaning administration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2003, the deforestation trends began to decline, reaching a record low in 2012 of 4,571 square kilometers (1,765 square miles). That’s about the size of Delaware. During that period, the Brazilian government expanded protected areas and, importantly, stepped up enforcement against illegal deforestation.

However, Brazil revised its Forest Code in 2012 such that it included an amnesty program for illegal deforestation on “small properties” that occurred before 2008. It also reduced forest restoration requirements. Some landowners near the rain forest evidently interpreted the amnesty as a green light for further land clearing. Consequently, under the administrations of Dilma Rousseff and Michel Temer, deforestation rates began trending somewhat upward, rising to 7,000 square kilometers last year (3,050 square miles).

As I noted earlier, a 2012 study on forest transitions found, after parsing data from 52 developing countries between 1972 and 2003, that deforestation increases until average income levels reach about $3,100 per capita. Similarly, a 2016 study by French researchers focusing on Amazonian deforestation calculated that “the point when deforestation starts to decrease, corresponds to an income around 4,600 in [2005 U.S. dollars].” That’s about $6,000 currently.

As it happens, Brazilian per capita incomes reached $3,600 per capita in 2004, and more than $7,000 per capita in 2007, coinciding with the beginning of downward trending deforestation rates.

However, a 2019 article by Colorado State University economist Edward Barbier specifically analyzed how institutions such as the rule of law and greater voice affect deforestation and reforestation trends in tropical countries. Not too surprisingly, the strengthening of the rule of law accelerates the speed with which an economy transitions from deforestation to forest recovery.

Somewhat paradoxically, Barbier finds that better voice and accountability diminishes rather than increases the likelihood of a forest transition in tropical countries. He observes that large state-funded settlement projects have been replaced by decentralized decision-making by farmers, land speculators, agri-business enterprises, and ranchers. These local private enterprises join together into an effective lobby.

“Evidence for some developing countries has shown that such lobbying efforts may enhance private agents’ legal claims to forested land, encouraging land-use policies more favorable to their interests, and thus the profitability of their land clearing activities,” suggests Barbier. “The result may well be further postponement of the transition to forest recovery in many tropical developing countries.” According to media reports, this dynamic is happening in the Bolsonaro administration.

Sadly, crony capitalism can delay the forest transition, but in the long run, rising incomes and urbanization will strengthen the rule of law and deforestation of the Amazon rain forest will likely reverse, as it has already in most of the rest of the world.

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