Tag: news

No Claim Against Facebook Based on President’s Social Media Executive Order

From the Report-Recommendation by Magistrate Judge Therèse Wiley Dancks (N.D.N.Y.) in Gomez v. Zuckenburg [sic]:

According to Plaintiff, Defendants are preventing him from logging into his old Facebook account or opening a new account. He asserts his difficulties with Facebook started after President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 139251 …. Plaintiff alleges that, after the EO 13925 was signed into law, every time he tried to open a new account, he received a message stating his account “has been disabled for going against Facebook guidelines.”  Plaintiff states he never abused Facebook and does not understand what guidelines he violated. He asserts Facebook targeted him with no “legal or policy violating reason.” Based on the above allegations, Plaintiff contends he is “entitled to the complete removal of [Facebook] and/or punitive damages in the amount of $145,000,000.

Plaintiff asserts his claim arises under EO 13925 for purposes of asserting subject matter jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1331. On May 28, 2020, President Donald Trump issued EO 13925 to address internet platforms deleting content and entire accounts of users for improper motives. EO 13925’s primary purpose was to clarify the scope of immunity created by section 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act …. Section 230(c) was designed to address early court decisions holding that, if an online platform restricted access to some content posted by others, it would thereby become a “publisher” of all the content posted on its site for purposes of torts such as defamation.

In particular, Section 230(c) subsection (2) expressly addresses protections from “civil liability” and specifies that an interactive computer service provider may not be made liable “on account of” its decision in “good faith” to restrict access to content that it considers to be “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing or otherwise objectionable.” EO 13295 clarified that “[it] is the policy of the United States to ensure … [Section 230(c)] is not distorted to provide liability protection for online platforms that—far from acting in ‘good faith’ to remove objectionable content—instead engage in deceptive or pretextual actions (often contrary to their stated terms of service) to stifle viewpoints with which they disagree.”

Given EO 13925’s purpose and impact, the Court is unclear how it provides Plaintiff with a cause of action against Defendants. Even assuming Facebook removed his account without a “good faith” reason to do so, EO 13925, at best, would provide a basis for a defamation plaintiff to argue Facebook is not entitled to protection under Section 230(c).

However, EO 13925 was not intended to—and specifically precluded—a private right of action for individuals who assert an online platform targeted their accounts. To that end, EO 13925, Section 8(c) provides “[t]his order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.” Thus, the Court finds EO 13925 does not provide a basis for Plaintiff’s claim even if Defendants arbitrarily removed his account or prevented him from creating a new account. Therefore, the complaint does not suggest any claims “arising under the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States,” and, the Court does not have federal question jurisdiction over the action.

Clearly correct, especially since all the Executive Order can do with regard to the platforms’ liability is to instruct government officials to ask the FCC to interpret § 230 in a particular way, which hasn’t yet happened.

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Caterpillar North America Machine Sales Crash Most Since The Financial Crisis

Caterpillar North America Machine Sales Crash Most Since The Financial Crisis

Tyler Durden

Fri, 07/31/2020 – 13:20

Earlier today, heavy machinery giant Caterpillar which has been hit hard by the collapse in global industrial activity, reported earnings which came in a bit above sharply reduced expectations, thanks to aggressive cost-cutting efforts (read mass layoffs) which helped the company make up for slowing sales: total operating costs were 25% lower, the company said Friday in an earnings statement released before regular trading hours.

The numbers outside of costs were dismal: sales fell across the company’s segments, with dealers slashing inventories by $1.4 billion signaling a market that remains glutted with equipment. And while Caterpillar declined to provide forward guidance, it sees a similar percentage decrease in end-user demand in the third quarter, and expects dealers to cut stockpiles by more than $2 billion for the full year.

“Unfavorable price realization also contributed to the sales decline due to the geographic mix of sales and competitive market conditions in China,” the company said. “Sales were lower across all regions and in the three primary segments.”

And while the earnings were enough to help push the stock higher premarket, it has since slumped into the red after the company unveiled its latest global retail sales data, which showed that despite a modest, 7% increase in Asia-Pac sales, which rose for the first time since April 2019, it was the continued crash in global sales which tumbled by 23% Y/Y for the second month in a row, the biggest decline since 2010.

More striking however was the devastation in North American (read US and Mexico) sales, which plunged by a near record 40%, the biggest monthly drop since the financial crisis.

So for all those seeking a V-shaped recovery in the US, you may want to avoid the heavy machinery sector, which just happens to be critical for pretty much every other segment of the economy. As for that rebound in China, considering the latest, third wave in Chinese covid cases…

… that’s too is about to go into freefall mode any second.

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FCC’s Brendan Carr Slams Twitter’s “Orange Man Bad Policy”

FCC’s Brendan Carr Slams Twitter’s “Orange Man Bad Policy”

Tyler Durden

Fri, 07/31/2020 – 13:05

Authored by Jennie Taer via SaraACarter.com,

During Thursday’s episode of “The Sara Carter Podcast,” Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Brendan Carr slammed Twitter’s “arbitrary” censorship of conservative voices on its platform, telling Carter that content moderators on Twitter are seemingly oddly focused on the President’s tweets.

“They seem to only be narrowly focused on you know, President Trump, and prominent conservative voices and they take action against others as well. I don’t paint with too broad brushstrokes, but it seems by and large like it’s going on against them and in the hypocrisy here, so you know, we have this week as well,” Carr said.

“It seems like what I call an orange man bad policy,” FCC Commission Brendan Carr told Sara Carter.

“It’s the inconsistency, the arbitrary exercise of power that I think is contributing to putting big tech under the spotlight.”

While many conservatives are being censored for spreading alleged disinformation, many prominent figures and organizations who have done the same go unchecked on the platform.

Carr highlighted the double standard, telling Carter there needs to be policy changes that allow the government some leeway to ensure that Section 230, the Communications Decency Act, allows users to have the power to choose the content they consume.

Amending the legislation was a central topic of a hearing this week before a Congressional antitrust panel. The group of lawmakers questioned big tech CEOs, including Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Tim Cook of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Sundar Pichai of Google.

Twitter’s Jack Dorsey was invited to testify during the earlier hearing, but never made it and is reported to have ignored the request. The tech giants did their best to try and convince the lawmakers that their businesses are not anti-competitive monopolies.

“What’s interesting, is right now on Twitter, you can go on there -and still up there is a tweet from Representative Swalwell saying don’t wear masks,” said Carr, who had just noted that Twitter suspended President Trump’s son Don Jr., for a Tweet related to information on the Coronavirus epidemic.

“There’s no, you know, screen over that tweet,” he added. “There’s no ‘Click here for more information.”

He listed a number of Democrats and liberal analysts whose inaccurate Tweets remain up on the platform with no correction from Twitter or suspension. Carr also addressed reports from a recent meeting in Israel between lawmakers and Twitter that questioned the company’s use of the arbitrary policy that allows the Iranian regime to consistently post Tweets calling for the destruction of Israel and genocide of the Jewish people, without any repercussions from the company.

Carr stated that he had wished lawmakers in America would ask similar poignant questions at the hearing to expose the bias.

Carr said “what happens when you put all of this together is it doesn’t look like a, you know, policy neutrally applied about COVID.”

“It seems like what I call an orange man bad policy,” he told Carter.

“And it’s the arbitrariness that I think so many people have trouble with if these were policies applied, even-handed to everybody, regardless of their politics. I think we need people who have far less standing to complain, but it’s the inconsistency, the arbitrary exercise of power that I think is contributing to putting big tech under the spotlight.”

Listen to the full interview here:

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US GDP Seen Rebounding 11.9% In Q3 By Atlanta Fed

US GDP Seen Rebounding 11.9% In Q3 By Atlanta Fed

Tyler Durden

Fri, 07/31/2020 – 12:46

One day after the BEA reported that US GDP crashed an annualized 32.9% in the second quarter, the biggest drop since the great depression…

… moments ago, the Atlanta Fed published its first GDPNow “nowcast” estimate for the third quarter, which is a relatively healthy 11.9%, and follows the regional Fed’s Q2 GDP estimate which was 0.8% above the official BEA print, at -32.1%.

The Atlanta Fed’s Q3 estimate is most pessimistic than the 18% Q3 GDP consensus estimate from 63 economists polled by Bloomberg, and is just above the lowe-end of the range although both of these numbers will be woefully inaccurate if more US states decide to follow through with another round of shutdowns.

It goes without saying that if Congress fails to roll over the expiring unemployment benefits into August- which as noted earlier now are instrumental in the record 25% of personal income that is funded by the US government…

… Q3 GDP will be another unmitigated disaster and far below any official estimates.

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When Joe Biden Tried To Paint Clarence Thomas as a Crazy Libertarian

ddpphotos255044

How long has Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden been in the political game? Long enough to have been at the center of a smear campaign during the Senate confirmation hearings of the longest-serving member of the current U.S. Supreme Court.

The 1991 showdown over Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas is mostly remembered today for the accusations of sexual misconduct leveled by Anita Hill. But the hearings actually kicked off with Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Joe Biden trying to discredit Thomas as a crazy libertarian and reckless judicial activist.

“I assure you I have read all of your speeches, and I have read them in their entirety,” Biden told Thomas shortly after the nominee’s opening statement. “And, in the speech you gave in 1987 to the Pacific Research Institute, you said, and I quote, ‘I find attractive the arguments of scholars such as Stephen Macedo who defend an activist Supreme Court that would’—not could, would—’strike down laws restricting property rights.'”

“It has been quite some time since I have read Prof. Macedo,” Thomas replied. “But I don’t believe that in my writings I have indicated that we should have an activist Supreme Court.”

Biden claimed that he didn’t buy it. “Quite frankly, I find it hard to square your speeches,” he told the nominee, “with what you are telling me today.”

Thomas gave the speech in question at the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco on August 10, 1987. It touched on a number of issues, including the views of Stephen Macedo, then an assistant professor in the government department at Harvard University and the author of The New Right v. the Constitution, a 1987 book published by the libertarian Cato Institute. The book made a case for “principled judicial activism.”

Macedo’s book was basically an extended critique of Robert Bork, the highly influential conservative legal thinker who championed a thoroughgoing doctrine of judicial deference. The “first principle” of the U.S. system, Bork insisted, was majority rule, not individual rights. What Bork’s view meant in practice was that the federal courts should defer to lawmakers in most cases. “In wide areas of life,” Bork argued, “majorities are entitled to rule, if they wish, simply because they are majorities.”

Macedo advanced the opposite view. “When conservatives like Bork treat rights as islands surrounded by a sea of government powers,” he countered, “they precisely reverse the view of the Founders as enshrined in the Constitution, wherein government powers are limited and specified and rendered as islands surrounded by a sea of individual rights.”

Which brings us back to Thomas. Here is his 1987 Macedo quote in full:

I find attractive the arguments of scholars such as Stephen Macedo who defend an activist Supreme Court, which would strike down laws restricting property rights. But the libertarian argument overlooks the place of the Supreme Court in a scheme of separation of powers. One does not strengthen self-government and the rule of law by having the non-democratic branch of the government make policy. Hence, I strongly support the nomination of Bob Bork to the Supreme Court. Judge Bork is no extremist of any kind. If anything, he is an extreme moderate, one who believes in the modesty of the Court’s powers, with respect to the democratically elected branches of government.

So yes, Thomas said he found Macedo’s arguments “attractive.” But then Thomas immediately faulted Macedo and endorsed Bork, the very figure that Macedo was trying to bring down. In other words, Biden ripped Thomas’ words out of context to give them the opposite meaning of what Thomas actually said.

The whole episode reflects poorly on Biden.

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California’s Top Court Rules Against Pension Spiking

brownpensions_1161x653

California’s ticking pension time bombs have not been defused, but a state Supreme Court decision has turned back the clock a bit.

California’s Supreme Court has upheld part of a 2013 law that prohibited county public employees from “pension spiking,” a trick by which government workers find ways to artificially jack up their total pay as they approach retirement. This inflates the size of the pensions they’ll be paid annually for the rest of their lives.

In a unanimous ruling, the state’s top court determined that pension spiking is not protected by the state’s constitution or by what’s known as the “California Rule,” a decades-old legal precedent that has largely prevented governments within the state from scaling back any sort of benefits once they’ve been offered to employees.

Government employees would do things like hang on to unused vacation or sick pay and cash it all in as they approached retirement, or coordinate massive amounts of overtime for their final years of work, all for the purpose of artificially inflating their final wages. That puts state, county, and local governments (and taxpayers) on the hook for pension commitments that were dramatically higher than they should have been. Transparent California has been documenting the escalating amounts government employees have been collecting as they retire, well into six figures. Last year, the biggest pension payment to a retired employee topped $400,000.

As these pensions have grown in size and number, they’ve been devouring more and more of government budgets, leading to a fiscal crisis and, in some cases, city bankruptcies. So in 2013, then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law the Public Employees’ Pension Reform Act, which put some limits on pension growth and was supposed to stop pension spiking.

The state’s public employee unions have been fighting the law since it was passed (and looking for ways to circumvent the rules). In a highly technical ruling Thursday, the state’s Supreme Court made it clear that pension spiking is not protected by the California Rule. It is absolutely permissible, the court says, to require pensions to be calculated from an employee’s base compensation, undistorted by bonuses and one-time boosts.

The law’s purpose, Chief Justice Tani Gorre Cantil-Sakauye writes, “was to bring administrative practice…into closer alignment with the system’s underlying theory by excluding income designed to artificially inflate a pension benefit and limiting the inclusion of other types of compensation that were reasonably viewed as inconsistent with…pensionable compensation.”

In less technical terms, the legislature wasn’t trying to scale back benefits that had been promised to government employees; it was closing loopholes that allowed employees to abuse the system. Therefore, yes, lawmakers could specifically prohibit the use of these spiking games to drive up pension obligations.

Needless to say, the public employee unions don’t see it that way. The Los Angeles Times talked with Ted Toppin, chairman of Californians for Retirement Security, which despite its name seems interested only in retirement security for government employees. “Their employer and retirement system made a promise to them that the court decision now allows them to break,” he told the paper. “That is unfair and unfortunate. If public employers make a pension commitment to their workers, they should keep it.”

Again, this ruling says that employers did not, in fact, promise employees that they could unnaturally jack up their final wages with tricks and accounting games and then use that to determine their pensions.

This decision doesn’t dismantle the “California Rule,” but it does give it better boundaries. It makes it clear that manipulation of the pension system is not protected.

Read the ruling here. And for an analysis of the current investment decisions of the state’s largest public employee retirement fund, written by Ryan Frost and Leonard Gilroy of the Reason Foundation’s Pension Integrity Project, go here.

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When Joe Biden Tried To Paint Clarence Thomas as a Crazy Libertarian

ddpphotos255044

How long has Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden been in the political game? Long enough to have been at the center of a smear campaign during the Senate confirmation hearings of the longest-serving member of the current U.S. Supreme Court.

The 1991 showdown over Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas is mostly remembered today for the accusations of sexual misconduct leveled by Anita Hill. But the hearings actually kicked off with Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Joe Biden trying to discredit Thomas as a crazy libertarian and reckless judicial activist.

“I assure you I have read all of your speeches, and I have read them in their entirety,” Biden told Thomas shortly after the nominee’s opening statement. “And, in the speech you gave in 1987 to the Pacific Research Institute, you said, and I quote, ‘I find attractive the arguments of scholars such as Stephen Macedo who defend an activist Supreme Court that would’—not could, would—’strike down laws restricting property rights.'”

“It has been quite some time since I have read Prof. Macedo,” Thomas replied. “But I don’t believe that in my writings I have indicated that we should have an activist Supreme Court.”

Biden claimed that he didn’t buy it. “Quite frankly, I find it hard to square your speeches,” he told the nominee, “with what you are telling me today.”

Thomas gave the speech in question at the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco on August 10, 1987. It touched on a number of issues, including the views of Stephen Macedo, then an assistant professor in the government department at Harvard University and the author of The New Right v. the Constitution, a 1987 book published by the libertarian Cato Institute. The book made a case for “principled judicial activism.”

Macedo’s book was basically an extended critique of Robert Bork, the highly influential conservative legal thinker who championed a thoroughgoing doctrine of judicial deference. The “first principle” of the U.S. system, Bork insisted, was majority rule, not individual rights. What Bork’s view meant in practice was that the federal courts should defer to lawmakers in most cases. “In wide areas of life,” Bork argued, “majorities are entitled to rule, if they wish, simply because they are majorities.”

Macedo advanced the opposite view. “When conservatives like Bork treat rights as islands surrounded by a sea of government powers,” he countered, “they precisely reverse the view of the Founders as enshrined in the Constitution, wherein government powers are limited and specified and rendered as islands surrounded by a sea of individual rights.”

Which brings us back to Thomas. Here is his 1987 Macedo quote in full:

I find attractive the arguments of scholars such as Stephen Macedo who defend an activist Supreme Court, which would strike down laws restricting property rights. But the libertarian argument overlooks the place of the Supreme Court in a scheme of separation of powers. One does not strengthen self-government and the rule of law by having the non-democratic branch of the government make policy. Hence, I strongly support the nomination of Bob Bork to the Supreme Court. Judge Bork is no extremist of any kind. If anything, he is an extreme moderate, one who believes in the modesty of the Court’s powers, with respect to the democratically elected branches of government.

So yes, Thomas said he found Macedo’s arguments “attractive.” But then Thomas immediately faulted Macedo and endorsed Bork, the very figure that Macedo was trying to bring down. In other words, Biden ripped Thomas’ words out of context to give them the opposite meaning of what Thomas actually said.

The whole episode reflects poorly on Biden.

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California’s Top Court Rules Against Pension Spiking

brownpensions_1161x653

California’s ticking pension time bombs have not been defused, but a state Supreme Court decision has turned back the clock a bit.

California’s Supreme Court has upheld part of a 2013 law that prohibited county public employees from “pension spiking,” a trick by which government workers find ways to artificially jack up their total pay as they approach retirement. This inflates the size of the pensions they’ll be paid annually for the rest of their lives.

In a unanimous ruling, the state’s top court determined that pension spiking is not protected by the state’s constitution or by what’s known as the “California Rule,” a decades-old legal precedent that has largely prevented governments within the state from scaling back any sort of benefits once they’ve been offered to employees.

Government employees would do things like hang on to unused vacation or sick pay and cash it all in as they approached retirement, or coordinate massive amounts of overtime for their final years of work, all for the purpose of artificially inflating their final wages. That puts state, county, and local governments (and taxpayers) on the hook for pension commitments that were dramatically higher than they should have been. Transparent California has been documenting the escalating amounts government employees have been collecting as they retire, well into six figures. Last year, the biggest pension payment to a retired employee topped $400,000.

As these pensions have grown in size and number, they’ve been devouring more and more of government budgets, leading to a fiscal crisis and, in some cases, city bankruptcies. So in 2013, then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law the Public Employees’ Pension Reform Act, which put some limits on pension growth and was supposed to stop pension spiking.

The state’s public employee unions have been fighting the law since it was passed (and looking for ways to circumvent the rules). In a highly technical ruling Thursday, the state’s Supreme Court made it clear that pension spiking is not protected by the California Rule. It is absolutely permissible, the court says, to require pensions to be calculated from an employee’s base compensation, undistorted by bonuses and one-time boosts.

The law’s purpose, Chief Justice Tani Gorre Cantil-Sakauye writes, “was to bring administrative practice…into closer alignment with the system’s underlying theory by excluding income designed to artificially inflate a pension benefit and limiting the inclusion of other types of compensation that were reasonably viewed as inconsistent with…pensionable compensation.”

In less technical terms, the legislature wasn’t trying to scale back benefits that had been promised to government employees; it was closing loopholes that allowed employees to abuse the system. Therefore, yes, lawmakers could specifically prohibit the use of these spiking games to drive up pension obligations.

Needless to say, the public employee unions don’t see it that way. The Los Angeles Times talked with Ted Toppin, chairman of Californians for Retirement Security, which despite its name seems interested only in retirement security for government employees. “Their employer and retirement system made a promise to them that the court decision now allows them to break,” he told the paper. “That is unfair and unfortunate. If public employers make a pension commitment to their workers, they should keep it.”

Again, this ruling says that employers did not, in fact, promise employees that they could unnaturally jack up their final wages with tricks and accounting games and then use that to determine their pensions.

This decision doesn’t dismantle the “California Rule,” but it does give it better boundaries. It makes it clear that manipulation of the pension system is not protected.

Read the ruling here. And for an analysis of the current investment decisions of the state’s largest public employee retirement fund, written by Ryan Frost and Leonard Gilroy of the Reason Foundation’s Pension Integrity Project, go here.

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Ether Rockets 50% In 5-Year Anniversary Month: What’s Behind The Rally?

Ether Rockets 50% In 5-Year Anniversary Month: What’s Behind The Rally?

Tyler Durden

Fri, 07/31/2020 – 12:31

Authored by Joseph Young via CoinTelegraph.com,

As Ethereum turns five years old, Ether is up 50% over the past month with two main catalysts driving the uptrend, namely DeFi and ETH 2.0.

image courtesy of CoinTelegraph

The price of Ethereum’s Ether token has seen strong momentum in July. Since the start of the month, ETH has climbed by 50% from $225.5 to $340 on Coinbase. It coincides with a five-year anniversary for the dominant smart contracts blockchain protocol.

There appear to be two key factors fueling the rally of ETH. First, the anticipation of the market towards ETH 2.0 has been continuously building. Second, the explosive growth of the decentralized finance (DeFi) market has upheld the momentum of Ethereum.

ETH/USD surges from $225.5 to $340 from July 1 to July 31. Source: TradingView.com

DeFi and its impact on the Ethereum blockchain

In mid-June, DeFi platform Compound essentially kickstarted the phenomenon called “yield farming.” Ethereum users would flock to DeFi platforms providing the highest incentives, trying to obtain the highest yield possible.

Since then, several major DeFi platforms have emerged. According to Defipulse.com, Aave, Balancer, and Curve Finance have $482 million, $291 million, and $263 million locked in, respectively.

Consequently, the total value locked in the DeFi space has increased to $3.94 billion. It is up by more than three-fold since the beginning of June.

The upward trajectory of the DeFi market could positively affect Ethereum for various reasons. The most prominent factor is its usage as gas. When users clog the Ethereum blockchain with many transactions, ETH is needed to pay transaction fees or “gas.”

According to Etherscan, the amount of gas used per day has increased to a new all-time high at above 76 million. The data suggests the demand for ETH is increasing in tandem with the user activity of the Ethereum blockchain.

The daily gas used on Ethereum. Source: Etherscan

But some experts are skeptical about the sustainability of the DeFi market. Vitalik Buterin, the co-creator of Ethereum, said on the “Unchained Podcast” on July 29 that yield farming is not sustainable. He said: 

“And those guys are not going to just keep on printing coins for people to, to entice people, to get into their ecosystems forever. It’s a short-term thing. And once the enticements disappear, you can easily see the yield rates drop back down to 0%.”

ETH 2.0

Arguably the biggest catalyst around Ethereum in the first half of 2020 was ETH 2.0. In simple terms, ETH 2.0 incentivizes users that participate in Ethereum as it switches to the “proof-of-stake” consensus algorithm.

The PoS algorithm would eventually eliminate miners from Ethereum, primarily to optimize and fasten the network. The final testnet of ETH 2.0, which is called Medalla, is expected to launch in August.

Afri Schoedon, the fork coordinator of ETH 2.0, said on Github:

“Before such a mainnet can be launched, we need testnets that mimic mainnet conditions as good as possible… The Schlesi testnet was one of many steps in that direction. The Witti testnet was another. The Altona testnet is yet another. The Medalla testnet aims to be the final one prior to mainnet launch.”

ETH futures aggregated open interest. Source: Skew

Meanwhile, ETH futures are also gaining tractions among traders with total open interest climbing to a new record high in July after recovering since the March crash. As ETH 2.0 nears, the demand for Ether could continue to soar, given that it rewards users for staking their coins. The confluence of rapid growth in DeFi and anticipation of Ethereum 2.0 is presenting an optimistic outlook for Ether price.

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White House Has Submitted ‘Four Different Offers’ On Stimulus Which Dems Have Ignored: Meadows

White House Has Submitted ‘Four Different Offers’ On Stimulus Which Dems Have Ignored: Meadows

Tyler Durden

Fri, 07/31/2020 – 12:10

While the White House and Congressional Republicans work towards a temporary extension of lapsing unemployment benefits, Democrats continue to reject the stopgap measures according to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

“At the president’s direction, we have made no less than four different offers” on unemployment insurance as well as a moratorium on evictions, Meadows said at a Friday White House briefing reported by Bloomberg. “They’ve not even been countered with a proposal.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Friday that negotiations with Meadows and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will continue, but that there can be no stopgap measures without significant progress on an overall package.

“The Republicans said they wanted to take a pause. Well, the virus didn’t,” said Pelosi at her own Friday briefing – which she conveniently held at the same time as Meadows was speaking. “Clearly they, and perhaps the White House, do not understand the gravity of the situation.”

The most pressing issue in the talks now is extra federal unemployment benefits of $600 a week that run dry as of Friday, leaving millions of out-of-work Americans without an additional safety net at a time when the jobs market is still staggering.

Republicans want to cut the benefit in the next stimulus package to a portion of lost wages. In an attempt to prevent a lapse in benefits, Republicans including Trump are pressuring Democrats to go along with a stopgap extension of the expanded unemployment benefit as well as a moratorium on evictions while talks continue on a more comprehensive virus relief bill. Meadows said Thursday that the White House was flexible on the amount of the extension. -Bloomberg

Still, Pelosi insisted after Thursday’s negotiations that a stopgap extension of federal benefits would be “worthless” unless an agreement is near on a larger package.

At present, the GOP stimulus plan sits at around $1 trillion, while House Democrats are angling for a $3.5 trillion package that would allocate funds for states and local governments struggling due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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