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People hate America’s big disparities in wealth. It’s a reason why, among young people, socialism is as popular as capitalism.

The Democratic Socialists of America want a country based on “freedom, equality and solidarity.” That sure sounds good.

But does socialism bring that?

My new video debunks several myths about socialism.

One reason for socialism’s continued appeal is linguist Noam Chomsky. For generations, his work has taught students that capitalism is “a grotesque catastrophe.”

I assumed the fall of the Soviet Union would put an end to such misinformation. It did—for about a month.

But since then, the lust for socialism has come back strong. Today, Chomsky says that the Soviet Union “was about as remote from socialism as you could imagine.”

“Absurd!” responds economist Ben Powell, author of Socialism Sucks: Two Economists Drink Their Way Through the Unfree World.

When the Soviets made private businesses illegal, says Powell, “that’s about as close as the world ever saw” to pure socialism.

Now that the Soviet Union is gone, MSNBC anchor Ali Velshi says, “there is no true socialist country that exists.”

No? What about Cuba, China, North Korea, Vietnam, and Venezuela?

Velshi didn’t respond when we asked him.

Venezuela was once Latin America’s richest country. Now it’s the poorest. Many in the media claim that its fall has “nothing to do with socialism,” just “poor governance.”

John Oliver says, “Chavez’s programs could have been sustainable if he pursued a sound economic policy.”

“Yeah,” laughs Powell. “Sustainable if he had a sound economic policy called capitalism.”

I push back. “Why does it have to be capitalism?” Why not socialism without bad management?

“That’s the nature of socialism!” Powell replies. “Their economic policies fail to adjust to reality because economic reality evolves every day. It’s millions of decentralized entrepreneurs and consumers making fine-tuning adjustments.”

Powell notes that in our capitalist society, when COVID-19 hit, businesses quickly adjusted. Restaurants switched to takeout and delivery. They built outdoor patios with heat lamps. Supermarkets opened early so the elderly could shop with less risk. Alcohol companies started producing hand sanitizer. Ford used its 3D printers to make face masks.

The media whined about “lack of federal direction,” but no central authority could direct all those individual adjustments in thousands of different places. In fact, federal direction would have prevented it.

“In a socialist economy, you get a one-size-fits-all adjustment,” adds Powell. “You miss out on this learning process where entrepreneurs copy others when they see things successful and stop doing it when it’s not.” By contrast, “In a market economy, everybody’s little adjustments get tested, and we get to see what works.”

In America, Blockbuster video was a great success. But then Netflix offered something better—no driving to a store, no late fees. Because Blockbuster didn’t immediately adjust, it went bankrupt.

“In a socialist economy, every adjustment needs to be commanded,” says Powell. “Communicate it down and get everybody to do the right thing. That’s impossible.”

That’s why under socialism, shortages are routine. In Venezuela, there’s so little food for sale that Venezuelans have lost weight.

Yet, “journalists” at Vox produced a video titled, “The Collapse of Venezuela, Explained,” without mentioning socialism even once. Vox‘s explanation for Venezuela’s fall: “Oil prices plummeted.”

“The oil price is a complete distraction,” says an exasperated Powell. “There’s plenty of countries that depend on oil revenue. When oil prices went down, people there didn’t start losing weight. That just happened in Venezuela.”

Some claim Venezuela and Cuba’s people struggle mainly because of America’s economic sanctions and embargo.

“They certainly don’t help the people,” says Powell, “but it’s an afterthought as a reason for their suffering.”

The U.S. only sanctioned a few Venezuelan officials and their operations—not the country as a whole.

In Cuba, Powell points out: “They drive around 1950s U.S. cars…but there’s no U.S. Navy destroyers preventing Kia, Fiat, and whoever else around the world from sending them cars. The reason for their suffering is they have an economic system that can’t deliver.”

Socialism delivers misery.

Next week, three more myths about socialism.

COPYRIGHT 2020 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

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Just before 45 Republican senators voted against considering Donald Trump’s impeachment on the grounds that the Constitution does not allow the Senate to try a former president, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer dismissed their argument as transparently bogus. “The language is crystal clear, with no ambiguity,” the New York Democrat insisted.

If that were true, legal scholars would not still be debating this issue 233 years after the Constitution was ratified. As the Senate prepares to try Trump on the charge that he incited the January 6 Capitol riot with false claims of a stolen election, one thing is “crystal clear”: There are plausible arguments on both sides of the debate about whether that proceeding is constitutional.

The clearest historical precedent for Trump’s trial is the case of William Belknap, who resigned as secretary of war in 1876 just before he was impeached by the House on corruption charges. While most senators thought Belknap’s resignation did not put a stop to the case against him, the minority who disagreed was large enough to ensure his acquittal—the same outcome we are likely to see in Trump’s case.

The basic reason for this disagreement is that the Constitution, contrary to what Schumer seems to think, neither explicitly allows nor explicitly prohibits the impeachment of former officials. The question therefore hinges on the history and purposes of the impeachment power, which are open to interpretation.

Michigan State law professor Brian Kalt, who published a comprehensive 2001 survey of the subject in the Texas Review of Law and Politics, argues that the weight of the evidence favors the constitutionality of “late impeachment.” But he calls it “a close and unsettled question.”

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley is skeptical of the case for late impeachment, which he says does not easily fit the constitutional text. But like Kalt, he describes the issue as “a close question upon which people of good faith can disagree.”

Preconstitutional practice in England and America included impeachment of former officials. Ten of the 12 state constitutions that were written before the U.S. Constitution was drafted addressed impeachment. In those state constitutions, Kalt notes, “late impeachment was either required, permitted, or not discussed, but was nowhere explicitly forbidden.”

Did the Framers mean to break from historical practice by limiting impeachment to current officials? If so, they never clearly expressed that intent.

The Constitution says “the President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” It gives the House the “sole Power of Impeachment” and the Senate “the sole Power to try all Impeachments,” while limiting the penalties to removal from office and disqualification from future federal office.

This “poor drafting,” as Kalt describes it, leaves unresolved the question of whether the optional penalty of disqualification is enough to justify a Senate trial when the mandatory penalty of removal from office is no longer possible. As Turley sees it, “a private citizen is being called to the Senate to be tried for removal from an office that he does not hold.”

Kalt and many other scholars argue that the aims of accountability and deterrence would be frustrated if a president could avoid impeachment or trial by committing “high crimes and misdemeanors” toward the end of his term (as Trump is accused of doing) or by resigning (as Belknap and Richard Nixon did) after his misconduct comes to light. They also argue that disqualification is an important remedy when a president guilty of serious misconduct might plausibly make a comeback.

The “good faith” to which Turley aspires is hard to perceive in the arguments offered by most of Trump’s critics and defenders. As Stanford law professor Michael McConnell (who thinks Trump’s trial is constitutional) notes, “much of the discussion…consists of motivated reasoning on both sides that no doubt would be the opposite if partisan roles were reversed.”

© Copyright 2021 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

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My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, an ardent supporter of former President Donald Trump who wrongly believes the 2020 presidential election was stolen, appeared on Newsmax Wednesday to discuss his suspension from Twitter.

The topic of the segment was supposed to be Big Tech’s censorious efforts to silence Lindell. But the businessman immediately veered off-topic and into conspiracy theory territory, forcing producers to abruptly cancel the interview—and inadvertently making an important point about Section 230, the federal law that protects social media companies from liability and has undeservedly become an object of conservative ire.

The interview began with the host prompting Lindell to address his company’s suspension from Twitter.

“[My Twitter account] was taking down because we have all the election fraud, with these Dominion machines,” said Lindell. “We have 100 percent proof, then they took it down…”

At that point, anchor Bob Sellers interrupted him and informed viewers that “we at Newsmax have not been able to verify any of those allegations, and there is nothing substantive that we have seen.” The host and Lindell then talked over each other for a while. Watch below:

Wowwwwwww. pic.twitter.com/i9bZPDBAYt

— Raheem Kassam (@RaheemKassam) February 2, 2021

This raises a question that more conservative critics of social media should be asking themselves: If it’s censorship when Twitter yanks Lindell off its platform for making false and potentially defamatory claims, is it not censorship when Newsmax does the same thing? Have conservative news outlets that refused to interview Lindell effectively silenced him in the same way Facebook has?

The answer, obviously, is no—of course Newsmax is under no obligation to permit Lindell to make such statements. Neither is Twitter. Neither is Facebook.

Newsmax is under greater pressure to deplatform Lindell, of course. The network is facing a potential defamation lawsuit from Dominion, the voting machine company wrongly maligned by many Trump surrogates. Bringing Lindell on the airwaves and letting him make defamatory statements puts Newsmax in significant legal jeopardy.

Unlike Newsmax, social media companies cannot be held liable for Lindell’s defamatory comments. Section 230 establishes that internet platforms are not responsible for users’ content, except in a few special cases. Social media companies can take action against concerning content, of course—they just aren’t required to do so.

Many conservatives—most notably, Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.)—have fallen in love with the idea of repealing Big Tech’s liability protection, perhaps in order to really stick it to Facebook and Twitter. But the results of such a move are easy to predict: Without Section 230, Facebook and Twitter would moderate even more content.

Indeed, a social media platform deprived of Section 230’s protection wouldn’t suddenly become a more careful steward of conservative speech, but the opposite. It would be forced to behave exactly the way Newsmax did with Lindell. It would silence anyone whose speech was remotely likely to cause legitimate complaints. It would have no choice.

This is a prospect that delights many Democrats, including President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.), both of whom support 230’s repeal. That pro-Trump Republicans want to aid them in this effort is truly perplexing.

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CNN and other outlets have speculated that the Biden Administration may withdraw the Trump Administration’s brief in California v. Texas, the Obamacare challenge. Elizabeth Prelogar, the Acting Solicitor General, is probably recused from the ACA Case. She filed an amicus brief on behalf of 47 members of Congress. As a result, Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler, the most senior person in OSG, would have to decide whether to withdraw the Trump Administration’s brief.

Will Baude and others have discussed the propriety of withdrawing the brief. There is another strategic consideration at play. If the Biden administration withdraws the brief, it will have to file a new brief in its place. And, presumably, that brief would argue that (1) the Plaintiffs lack standing, (2) the challenged provisions are constitutional, and (3) if the Court decides otherwise, it should use a scalpel to sever the unconstitutional provisions, leaving the rest of the act intact.

But there may be some reason to think OSG would leave the current brief in place: a decision on standing ground is risky. I flagged this concern shortly after oral arguments:

There are two general postures in which a statute can be challenged. The traditional posture is that a plaintiff seeks a declaration that a law is unconstitutional. Here, the Plaintiff must assert that the statute causes an Article III injury. Generally, the government must take some sort of enforcement action to cause that injury. There is a second, less common posture: the government tries to enforce a statute against a person, and she raises as a defense that statute is unconstitutional. For example, in Bond v. United States, the defendant argued that his prosecution was invalid because a chemical weapons treaty violated the principles of federalism. In this case, Article III standing was obvious because the government sought to prosecute Bond with the statute.  I’ll call the first path the offensive posture and the second path the defensive posture.

In California v. Texas, even if the Court holds that the plaintiffs lack standing to challenge the ACA in an offensive posture, a defendant in another case could challenge the ACA in the defensive posture. . . .

If the Court dismisses the case for lack of standing, the controversy would linger. During that time, the fate of the ACA would remain in doubt. Dismissal does not provide an easy way out of this dispute.

OSG would prefer to win on the merits, or win on severability. But a win on standing would be short-lived. In the future, the federal government will take some enforcement action in Texas against a person based on the ACA. And that defendant, relying on circuit precedent, could argue that the entire ACA is unconstitutional. In this case, there would be no doubts about standing. The Biden Administration does not want the validity of the ACA floating in doubt for the next three years. In 2010, DOJ argued that the Tax Anti-Injunction Act did not bar the original ACA challenge. The Obama Administration wanted order to settle the validity of the law before the election.

Ultimately, Kneedler may decide to leave things as they are. Or, the Court could decide the case tomorrow, thus relieving the SG of the need to take any action. A Wednesday decision date in the middle of the February recess is unusual. I checked SCOTUSBlog’s calendar, and could not find any Wednesday decision days in February over the past five years. Stay tuned.

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Responding to Donald Trump’s impeachment in a 14-page brief filed today, his lawyers argue that he cannot be tried by the Senate because he is no longer president and that his promotion of the baseless claim that Joe Biden stole the presidential election, which inspired hundreds of his followers to launch a deadly attack on the Capitol last month, was protected by the First Amendment. And by the way, they say, there is “insufficient evidence” to conclusively determine that Trump’s wild claims of massive election fraud were false.

The House managers charged with prosecuting Trump in the Senate preemptively rebut those arguments in an 80-page trial memorandum that was also filed today. Their case is much more thorough and, on the whole, persuasive.

Trump’s argument that the Senate is not authorized to try him focuses on the constitutional text, which says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” The Constitution gives the House the “sole Power of Impeachment” and the Senate “the sole Power to try all Impeachments,” while limiting the penalties to “removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States.”

Those provisions do not apply to Trump, “since he is no longer ‘President,'” his lawyers say. “The constitutional provision requires that a person actually hold office to be impeached. Since the 45th President is no longer ‘President,’ the clause ‘shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for…’ is impossible for the Senate to accomplish, and thus the current proceeding before the Senate is void ab initio as a legal nullity that runs patently contrary to the plain language of the Constitution.” They also argue that “removal from office by the Senate of the President is a condition precedent which must occur before, and jointly with, ‘disqualification’ to hold future office,” meaning that a Senate trial cannot be justified by the possibility of disqualifying Trump from future federal office.

There are compelling arguments against this interpretation, based on the historical background, purposes, and prior use of the impeachment power. The House managers summarize those arguments in a 27-page section of their memorandum, noting that many legal scholars of various political persuasions think Trump is wrong on this point.

Michigan State law professor Brian Kalt gets into greater detail in his comprehensive 2001 treatment of the subject. While the record is mixed and often ambiguous, Kalt argues, the weight of the evidence supports impeachment and trial of former federal officials. Still, he calls it “a close and unsettled question.” George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, who is more inclined to credit Trump’s argument, likewise says the constitutionality of impeaching or trying a former president is “a close question upon which people of good faith can disagree.”

Trump’s argument that his unrelenting campaign to overturn Biden’s victory was consistent with his duties as president is much harder to take seriously. While Trump indisputably had a right to challenge the election results in court, the House managers note, the scores of lawsuits he and his allies filed were almost uniformly unsuccessful and never came close to changing the outcome. Instead of accepting the result, Trump continued to insist for months that he had actually won by a landslide, a fact he said would be apparent but for an elaborate criminal conspiracy that involved tricky election software and massive paper-ballot fraud.

“No President had ever refused to accept an election result or defied the lawful processes for resolving electoral disputes,” the House managers say. “Until President Trump.”

Some of the steps Trump took in the service of his election fantasy were by themselves clear abuses of power. The trial memorandum notes, for example, that he “tried to induce Michigan’s top Republican legislative officials to violate Michigan law by rejecting the popular vote and selecting a Trump slate of electors.” In a January 2 telephone conversation, Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” the votes necessary to overturn Biden’s victory in that state, warning that failing to do so would be “a criminal offense” and “a big risk for you.” Trump publicly and privately urged Vice President Mike Pence to block congressional affirmation of Biden’s victory. Since that is a power the vice president does not actually have, Trump was soliciting Pence to do something illegal.

Meanwhile, Trump continued to press his doomed cause with highly inflammatory rhetoric, castigating Republicans who questioned his claims and warning that democracy would be destroyed if Biden were allowed to take office. He continued doing that even after it became clear that some of his followers were responding with death threats and violence. His campaign to overturn the election results culminated in his fiery January 6 speech to thousands of supporters who had gathered in Washington, D.C., to “stop the steal” at his behest.

“All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats, which is what they’re doing, and stolen by the fake news media,” Trump told them. “We will never give up. We will never concede….You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength.”

Trump made the stakes clear. “We’re going to have somebody in there that should not be in there,” he said, “and our country will be destroyed. And we’re not going to stand for that.”

The House managers suggest that Trump’s speech, during which he also warned that “if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore,” legally qualified as incitement to riot and exceeded the bounds of free speech as described by the Supreme Court in the 1969 case Brandenburg v. Ohio. They also imply that the Trump’s remarks disqualified him from office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which applies to federal officials who “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion.”

All three propositions are dubious. But you need not believe them to conclude that Trump acted recklessly, without regard to the probable impact of his words, when he fired up the protesters with his apocalyptic warnings and demands for action while directing them at the Capitol, where a joint session of Congress was about to confirm the election results. Notwithstanding his suggestion that the protesters make their voices heard “peacefully,” it was entirely predictable that at least some of them would go further than that.

After the protest turned violent, Trump compounded his irresponsibility by only belatedly urging his supporters to be “peaceful,” even while reinforcing the imaginary grievance on which the rioters were acting. “At 1:49 PM, after insurrectionists had overcome the Capitol perimeter—and after reports of pipe bombs had been confirmed—President Trump retweeted a video of his speech at the rally,” the trial memorandum notes. “Just over thirty minutes later, at 2:24 PM, while rioters were still attacking police and after Vice President Pence had been evacuated from the Senate floor, President Trump again tweeted to excoriate the Vice President for refusing to obstruct the Joint Session: ‘Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.'”

The House managers add that Trump “did not take any action at all in response to the attack until 2:38 PM, when he issued his first tweet, and 3:13 PM, when he issued a second.” The first tweet said protesters should “remain peaceful,” while the second said there should be “no violence.”

During this time, the House managers say, “not only did President Trump fail to issue unequivocal statements ordering the insurrectionists to leave the Capitol; he also failed in his duties as Commander in Chief by not immediately taking action to protect Congress and the Capitol. This failure occurred despite multiple members of Congress, from both parties, including on national television, vehemently urging President Trump to take immediate action.”

Finally, more than three hours after the riot started, Trump released a video in which he urged “peace” and told his supporters to “go home.” At the same time, he reiterated that the election was “stolen from us” after he won in “a landslide” and closed with this mixed message: “We love you, you’re very special.…I know how you feel. But go home and go home in peace.” That evening Trump tweeted: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”

Trump later told reporters his pre-riot speech was “totally appropriate.” According to his lawyers’ brief, he simply “expressed his opinion that the election results were suspect.” To the extent that the impeachment “alleges his opinion is factually in error,” they say, Trump “denies this allegation.” More generally, the brief says, Trump after the election “exercised his First Amendment right” to “express his belief that the election results were suspect, since with very few exceptions, under the convenient guise of Covid-19 pandemic ‘safeguards,’ states’ election laws and procedures were changed by local politicians or judges without the necessary approvals from state legislatures.”

That argument, which state and federal judges rejected in every case but one (involving election observers in Pennsylvania), is just a small part of the story Trump has been telling since the election. He has insisted, again and again, that Biden won only because of massive cheating on a scale never before seen in U.S. history. Neither his lawyers nor any of his allies were able to muster credible evidence to back up that tall tale. Yet his lawyers’ take is that “insufficient evidence exists upon which a reasonable jurist could conclude that the 45th President’s statements were accurate or not, and he therefore denies they were false.”

Trump also avers that his statements, true or not, cannot amount to an impeachable offense because they were protected by the First Amendment. But freedom of speech “does not protect government officials from accountability for their own abuses in office,” the House managers say. “The Supreme Court has made clear that the First Amendment does not shield public officials who occupy sensitive policymaking positions from adverse actions when their speech undermines important government interests. Thus, just as a President may legitimately demand the resignation
of a Cabinet Secretary who publicly disagrees with him on a matter of policy (which President Trump did repeatedly), the public’s elected representatives may disqualify the President from federal office when they recognize that his public statements constitute a violation of his oath of office and a high crime against the constitutional order.”

George Mason law professor Ilya Somin likewise notes that “high government officials don’t have a First Amendment right to be protected from firing based on their political views.” That principle, he says, “applies to presidents facing impeachment no less than other officials.”

The House managers also address the argument that Trump’s trial will only exacerbate the bitter political divisions between his supporters and his opponents. “Many have suggested that we should turn the page on the tragic events of January 6, 2021,” they say. “But to heal the wounds he inflicted on the Nation, we must hold President Trump accountable for his conduct and, in so doing, reaffirm our core principles. Failure to convict would embolden future leaders to attempt to retain power by any and all means—and would suggest that there is no line a President cannot cross. The Senate should make clear to the American people that it stands ready to protect them against a President who provokes violence to subvert our democracy.”

Since Trump’s acquittal seems to be a foregone conclusion, I’m not sure how clear a message the trial will send on that score. But there is value in laying out the details of this shameful and horrifying episode. Even if only a handful of Republicans favor conviction, a bipartisan vote will signal that Trump did much more, and much worse, than express an opinion.

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