Month: May 2019

The Chinese Tortoise & The American Hare

Authored by David Goldman via PJMedia.com,

Here are my remarks at the New York conference of the Committee on the Present Danger in New York City. I spoke on a panel with Steve Bannon, Roger Robinson, Kyle Bass and Gordon Chang, chaired by Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy.

Historian Andrew Roberts reports that Winston Churchill said just after Pearl Harbor that “in the event of war, the Japanese would ‘fold up like the Italians,’ because they were ‘the wops of the Far East.’” The West chronically underestimates Asians, as the Russians found out at Port Arthur, the Americans at Pearl Harbor and the Yalu River, the British at Singapore, and so forth.

A case in point is the present tariff war. The U.S. assumed that tariffs on Chinese imports would force China to make fundamental concessions to American trade demands. On January 6, President Donald Trump said, “China’s not doing very well now. It puts us in a very strong position. We are doing very well.” Since then China’s CSI 300 stock index has gained 37% during 2019 to date, double the gain in U.S. stock markets. China’s economic growth has accelerated while America’s has slowed. The tariff war may have hurt the U.S. economy more than China’s. With an internal market of 1.4 billion people, China can replace lost foreign business by increasing internal demand. Ten years ago exports made up 36% of China’s gross domestic product versus only 18% today. World trade is shrinking, but the impact on China is manageable.

I support President Trump. I applaud him for calling attention to China’s challenge to America’s strategic position. But I have warned from the outset that the tools he has employed won’t get the results he wants.

Early in 2018, the United States banned exports of U.S. components to the Chinese telecommunications equipment maker ZTE, which violated U.S. sanctions on Iran. Huawei, the dominant Chinese telecom equipment maker, undertook a crash program to devise substitutes for the U.S. chips that power Chinese-made handsets, and achieved self-sufficiency as of December 2018. Now a Japanese study reports that Huawei’s handset chips are equal to or better than Apple’s.

America’s campaign to persuade its allies to keep Huawei away from the rollout of 5G (fifth generation) mobile data networks has failed. Britain, Germany, Italy, Malaysia, Thailand, India, South Korea and the whole of Eastern Europe have rejected American demands. This was a sadly foreseeable diplomatic disaster. Huawei is the highest-quality as well as the lowest-cost provider of 5G systems. It spends US$20 billion a year on research and development, double the combined outlay of its two largest competitors, Nokia and Ericsson. Half of Huawei’s workforce is engaged in R&D, including thousands of European engineers.

Cisco used to dominate the market for mobile data systems. It currently has $72 billion of cash in the bank, roughly what Huawei spent on R&D during the past seven years. The question is: Why do Chinese companies invest while American companies hoard?

To paraphrase Leon Trotsky, you may not be interested in industrial policy, but industrial policy is interested in you. The Asian model treats capital-intensive industry as infrastructure. It supports chip foundries with public funds the way we Americans subsidize airports or sports arenas. The Asian model begins with Japan’s Meiji Restoration in 1868. China’s model is a variant of the Asian model, which Deng Xiaoping adopted with the advice of Lee Kuan Yew, in explicit emulation of Singapore.

China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan subsidize capital-intensive industry, with the result that virtually all of the high-tech products invented in America are now manufactured in Asia. Liquid-crystal displays, light-emitting diodes, semiconductor lasers, and solid-state sensors are produced almost exclusively in Asia. America’s share of semiconductor manufacturing fell from 25% in 2011, to less than 10% in 2018. Silicon is to the weapons of the 21st century what steel was to the 19th century. A country that cannot produce its own integrated circuits cannot defend itself.

China is outspending the U.S. in quantum computing, including $11 billion to build a single research facility in Hefei. By contrast, the U.S. allocated $1.2 billion for quantum computing over the next five years. Overall, federal development funding in the U.S. has fallen from 0.78% of GDP in 1988 to 0.39% in 2016.

China remains behind the U.S. in most key areas of technology, but it is catching up fast. In the last several years China has

  • Landed a probe on the dark side of the moon;

  • Developed successful quantum communication via satellite;

  • Built a 2,000-kilometer quantum communication network between Beijing and Shanghai;

  • Built missiles that can blind American satellites;

  • Developed surface-to-ship missiles that can destroy any vessel within hundreds of miles of its coast; and

  • Built some of the world’s fastest supercomputers.

China’s investment in education parallels its investment in the high-tech industry. Today China graduates four times as many STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) bachelor’s degrees as the U.S. and twice as many doctoral degrees, and China continues to gain. A third of Chinese students major in engineering, vs 7% in the U.S. Eighty percent of U.S. doctoral candidates in computer science and electrical engineering are foreign students, of whom Chinese are the largest contingent. Most return to China. The best U.S. universities have trained top-level faculty for Chinese universities. American STEM graduate programs reported a sharp fall in foreign applications starting in 2017, partly because Chinese students no longer have to come to the U.S. for a world-class education.

China’s household consumption has risen 17-fold since 1986 and its GDP in U.S. dollars has risen 35-fold. China has moved 550 million people from countryside to city in only 40 years, the equivalent of Europe’s population from the Urals to the Atlantic. China has built the equivalent of all the cities in Europe to house the new urban dwellers, as well as 80,000 miles (nearly 130,000 kilometers) of superhighway and 18,000 miles (29,000km) of high-speed trains.

China’s debt-to-GDP ratio stands at 253% (47% government, households 50%, corporate 155%). That is about the same as America’s 248% (98% to government, households 77%, corporate 74%). The high corporate debt number is due to the fact that state-owned enterprises fund a great deal of infrastructure, building with debt that is counted as corporate rather than government. China’s debt problem is no worse than ours.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative intends to Sinify the economies of the Global South, from Malaysia and Indonesia to Mexico and Brazil. Huawei often is the spearhead of the BRI, building mobile broadband networks that prepare the ground for Chinese e-commerce and e-finance companies. China wants to integrate the labor of countries with a total population of 2 billion into its economic sphere.

It is fanciful to believe that any kind of American pressure can destabilize, let alone dislodge, the present regime within any calculable time horizon. But we can regain technological leadership and prove the superiority of our way of life, and degrade the credibility of the Chinese Communist Party over time.

Solutions include:

  • Forcing key high-tech industries onshore using defense subsidies/tax breaks

  • Placing export controls on high tech (no more Boeing satellites to help China surveil its citizens)

  • Change Defense Department budget priorities to emphasize war-winning advance technologies rather than legacy systems

  • A new National Defense Education Act

  • Create an alternative to the Belt and Road Initiative with Japan, South Korea, India and others

  • Engineer a brain drain of China’s most talented scientific cadre.

China can innovate, but we can innovate much better. We need to return with a vengeance to the strategies that won the Cold War.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2GQ80PH Tyler Durden

Gillibrand Proposes Giving Every Voter $600 To Donate to Campaigns

In her first major policy proposal of the 2020 presidential election, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D–NY)—a long shot candidate for the Democratic nomination—is suggesting that every voter be given $600 to donate to federal election campaigns. Affectionately named “Democracy Dollars,” she says the taxpayer-funded venture will clean up elections and “attack the corrupting influence of money at its core.”

All eligible voters would qualify for the lump sum, which would then be doled out in $200 payments for each individual’s House, Senate, and presidential candidate of choice.

“If you want to accomplish anything that the American people want us to accomplish — whether it’s healthcare as a right, better public schools, better economy — you have to take on the greed and corruption that determine everything in Washington,” she told NBC News.

Gillibrand says she’ll finance her plan by eliminating a tax loophole for CEOs—which, between the various nominees, is starting to sound like a cure-all for society’s ill. Those making more than $1 million or 25 times the median salary of their employees—whichever is less—would finance Democracy Dollars with $60 billion in additional taxes over 10 years, according to Gillibrand’s plan.

The Democratic senator references Seattle as her inspiration, whose Democracy Voucher program allots $100 to every eligible voter to donate in each municipal election. Yet the results of the program’s pilot attempt in 2017 were that everything stayed pretty much the same: Only 3.3 percent of recipients participated, and the winning slate was dominated by incumbents and those backed by the establishment.

“When you say that we are going to allow public funds to go to candidates, voters are going to give the vouchers to people they are familiar with, they know, that they are comfortable with, and those are going to tend to be incumbents,” Ethan Blevins, an attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation, told Reason following the election. That’s a far cry from Seattle’s mission statement to elevate “more candidates, including women, young people and people of color, to run viable campaigns against big money candidates.”

“By leveling the playing field of who’s powering federal campaigns, my plan amplifies the voices of Americans who haven’t been heard for too long — young people, women, and people of color,” Gillibrand’s plan reads.

Only candidates who refuse to accept individual contributions over $200 would be allowed to cash in on Democracy Dollars. The current limit is $2,800, which candidates could still opt to accept if they forego the publicly funded vouchers. While it seems unlikely that most candidates would relinquish that opportunity, Gillibrand tells NBC that she expects they’ll do that, “because the potential of how much you could raise in this system is exponentially higher.”

That wouldn’t stop those same candidates from seeking big money support, though: Adherents to Democracy Dollars could still solicit help from super PACs, which Gillibrand’s plan does not address. Although super PACs are barred from donating directly to a particular individual or party, they often spend enormous wads of cash to indirectly fund a candidate, often via advertising blitzes. They are under no spending limit when doing so.

But perhaps the more pressing issue here is a First Amendment one, as a small group of taxpayers would be forced to fund candidates, some of whom they would inevitably object to. Yet whether they disagree with them is almost beside the point: Gillibrand’s plan is a form of compelled speech.

from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2vyhpWU
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Taliban Appears To Be Winning Against US-backed Kabul, Finds Pentagon Watchdog

It should come as no surprise to most that the United States’ over 18-year long war in Afghanistan is a continual nightmare wrought with endless difficulties, earning America’s lengthy post 9/11 quagmire the moniker of “the forever war”.

But a new Pentagon inspector general report has confirmed the situation to be even worse than commonly perceived: the war to roll back the Taliban is not merely stalled, but there’s indicators suggesting jihadist insurgents are actually winning. The report finds Afghan national forces backed by the US have seen a 31% surge in casualties in recent months. 

Image source: Reuters

The Pentagon watchdog concluded the following, according to Bloomberg:

Casualties among Afghan National Defense and Security Forces rose 31 percent from December 2018 to February 2019 over the same period a year earlier, while troop levels fell short again of authorized strength for the first quarter of this year.

Further alarming is that after the US-led NATO and western coalition forces have spent nearly two decades attempting to stabilize the country under the government in Kabul, massive swathes of the country are still under Taliban rule, with about 35% of the nation’s population still not under the Afghan national government. 

The assessment by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction found further that from November 2016 through October 2018, “the Afghan government controlled or influenced between 64 percent and 66 percent of the population.”

The dour data points from the assessment come just as the Trump administration is engaged in uneasy negotiations with the Taliban, through special envoy on Afghan reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, hosted in Qatar. Crucially, the report highlights that the US-supported side is not entering talks from a position of strength, but instead Afghan national forces are taking “more casualties as they seek greater leverage at the negotiating table.”

“If negotiators fail to secure a peace agreement, the ANDSF will be hard pressed to increase its control over Afghanistan’s population, districts, and territory,” the inspector general said, referring to the the Afghan National Security Forces.

All of this makes the prospect of Trump’s desired relatively quick US exit from the conflict highly unrealistic, especially in terms of getting his generals on board and the political expediency of the move. 

Map of Taliban vs. national government control in Afghanistan as of Fall 2018. 

Things have been so bad for US strategy there that the Pentagon has simply stopped tracking the amount of territory controlled by the Taliban. Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John F. Sopko put it as follows: “It’s like turning off the scoreboard at a football game and saying scoring a touchdown or field goal isn’t important.”

Secretary of State Michael Pompeo addressed the Afghanistan issue on on Monday, saying, “We are working to achieve a reconciliation so that this conflict, now coming on two decades, can be resolved.” He seemed to indirectly reference an increasingly negative Pentagon outlook concerning the war: “We can take down the violence level, we can get a political outcome,” he said, and added the near-term goal is to stabilize the country enough to prevent “an attack on the homeland from Afghanistan.”

Currently US military analysts put the total number of Taliban fighters at about 60,000 – which even after successful deconfliction negotiations would have to be reintegrated into Afghan society for the long-term. 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2V8Aiip Tyler Durden

“Surprise Or Total Shock”: How Powell Unleashed The “Tweak Not Tweet”

One week ago, when discussing how the Fed had lost control of rates specifically highlighting the recent spike in the Effective Fed Funds rate above the IOER, i.e., the traditional ceiling in the Fed Funds corridor, which today hit an all time high of 5bps…

… we said that “the Fed might consider an imminent IOER reduction, possibly at the May meeting next week.”

And as we learned today, not only did the Fed consider this, but went so far as to stun markets by pulling the trigger, or rather, the market may have been shocked, but our readers certainly were prepared for this “surprising” development. Confirming this initial “shock”, the market’s reaction suggested that its take on the Fed’s announcement was seen as one of profound dovishness, only to sharply reverse just moments after, when Powell confirmed that the IOER move was entirely related to the clogged piping in funding markets, following his discussed of the “transitory” nature of inflation, sending the dollar and yields surging, and stocks tumbling as the Fed suddenly sounded like its old, mid-2018 hawkish self. 

The reversal was painful enough to give traders whiplash, and as BMO’s Ian Lyngen and Jon Hill wrote after the press conference, “we’ll be the first to acknowledge surprise (though not total shock) at the FOMC’s cut of IOER” although as they also note, the logic holds that the Fed wants to separate the “fine-tuning” being accomplished (i.e. keeping effective fed funds within the target range) from actual policy rate decisions. This point, Lyngen notes, was driven home during the press conference, adding that “the communications risk was always Powell’s biggest challenge for such an action and in this context, 2-year yields temporarily touching 2.20% and 25 bp on 2s/10s seems a small price to pay for the ‘needed’ policy tweak (not tweet).”

Additionally, as the BMO rates team observes, this was all completely reversed for an 11 bp round-trip for 2s, and summarizes that its biggest takeaway is that “Powell offered a material challenge for the cyclical resteepener and a ~5 bp range for 2s/10s.“

Here’s what else the BMO rates team though of today’s violent reversal in the market’s perception of the Fed:

There are two primary explanations for the initial bid; first, simply ‘the math’ of a drop of IOER and what that implies for a lower effective funds rate going forward (or at least a limit on how close to the top of the target range rates will be allowed to drift). The second driver is concern is that IOER has become the defacto policy rate – an assumption that Powell made great efforts to counteract during the press conference. The post-meeting volatility was extremely telling as the initial steepening was challenged as Jerome characterized the no-cut cut as ‘just technical’ in a remarkably matter-of-fact tone. Hats off for the delivery; the market responded quickly by cheapening up the front-end of the curve rather dramatically.

Powell noted the Fed doesn’t see a strong case for either a cut or a hike. This strikes us pretty intuitive; after all if there was a compelling reason, wouldn’t they have acted? More to the point, the Chair is trying to avoid pre-committing to any course of action at this stage. The conversation around inflation was similarly informative and with core-PCE currently at 1.55%, the groundwork for an ease is rapidly developing, we’ll argue at least, though if Q1 does turn out to be transitory the period on hold will be extended.

In the press conference, Powell was also directly asked about the possibility of a repo facility (which could help reduce the demand for reserves in equilibrium), and signaled two things. First, the FOMC is certainly going to be studying the topic at future meetings, as was previously hinted at in the March minutes. Second, however, Powell demurred on his bias as to whether such a facility was warranted, and indicated that he has no obvious leaning either way. This is consistent with our previous assumption that the introduction of this facility is far from imminent, though there are better than 50/50 odds that it will be rolled out by the end of 2020.

Tactical Bias: In classic ‘when the dust finally settles’ fashion we expect the true market impact from Wednesday’s events will not be known until after Friday’s employment report is released and wage data revealed. The focus on inflation isn’t a game-changer by any means; although it does deemphasize the strength in Q1 real GDP. Moreover, it offers another opportunity to re-trade the Fed into the weekend as AHE provides the next incremental piece of pricing pressure data. 10-year yields remain well-anchored to 2.50% — yawn. The bulk of the Treasury volatility has occurred in 2s with an impressive 10 bp range (between 2.20% and 2.30%) speaking to the Fed-dependent nature of the rates market at this juncture.

We would also note an important nuanced counterfactual. Imagine that the FOMC hadn’t acknowledged the descent in core PCE in the statement – the immediate takeaway would have been that the Fed has blinders on and isn’t being flexible to lower inflation. Risk assets would have underperformed as calls of a policy error bounced around the echo chamber. Rather, the acknowledgment of disappointing inflation data helped provide a semblance of comfort to the market; Powell is clearly cautious to avoid a repeat of December.

In keeping with the message that the downward adjustment to IOER is more of a funding-market plumbing consideration than a true reflection of the stance of monetary policy, the reaction in the fed funds futures market to Wednesday’s decision was telling. The December ’19 contract was trading with an implied yield of 2.20% in the lead up to the technical adjustment, or pricing 25 bp of easing when taken against 2.45% EFFR. The reaction after the release of the statement was a 5 bp drop, and while dovish read on that move may be tempting, in fact the takeaway should be a net unchanged direction for policy. The adjustment to 2.15% on the Dec ’19 contract still reflects 25 bp of easing if the assumption is that EFFR will move back to 2.40% now that IOER has been adjusted to 2.35%.

And now the question is how quickly will EFF rebound back to 2.45% even with the IOER freshly trimmed down to 2.35%, confirming that with every passing day the Fed is increasingly losing control of overnight funding rates…

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

AG Barr Refuses To Appear Before House Panel Tomorrow, Nadler Threatens Subpoena

Update: That did not take long – Jerrold Nadler says he hopes Barr reconsiders, may issue a subpoena to force Barr to testify with the next step being a citation if no accommodation is reached.

*  *  *

Following an extremely contentious hearing today in front of the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee, resulting in multiple Democrats calling for his resignation, Attorney General William Barr is reportedly not expected to show up for a scheduled hearing about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation before the Democrat-controlled House Judiciary Committee tomorrow.

PBS reports that: “Per a congressional source, the House Judiciary Committee has been notified by the DOJ that Attorney General Barr is NOT coming to testify tomorrow. DOJ has told the committee to expect a letter officially stating that shortly, according to my source.”

Additionally, The Hill reports that Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said he does not believe Attorney General William Barr will show up to for Thursday’s scheduled hearing — and does not believe he should.

“No, I do not [think Barr will attend the hearing] — and I don’t encourage him to,” Collins told The Hill.

“If you saw the abuse of power from the chairman [Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.)] this morning in the committee hearing, I think that is something that is very disturbing and should be disturbing to all members.”

Bloomberg reports that Barr’s apparent decision not to attend the hearing dramatically escalates tensions with the Justice Department objecting to the format of the hearing, which would let the committee’s Democratic and Republican counsels grill Barr for as long as 30 minutes at a stretch after an initial five-minute exchanges with lawmakers.

Barr was certainly facing down quite a crowd…

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2J8oq8P Tyler Durden

Gillibrand Proposes Giving Every Voter $600 To Donate to Campaigns

In her first major policy proposal of the 2020 presidential election, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D–NY)—a long shot candidate for the Democratic nomination—is suggesting that every voter be given $600 to donate to federal election campaigns. Affectionately named “Democracy Dollars,” she says the taxpayer-funded venture will clean up elections and “attack the corrupting influence of money at its core.”

All eligible voters would qualify for the lump sum, which would then be doled out in $200 payments for each individual’s House, Senate, and presidential candidate of choice.

“If you want to accomplish anything that the American people want us to accomplish — whether it’s healthcare as a right, better public schools, better economy — you have to take on the greed and corruption that determine everything in Washington,” she told NBC News.

Gillibrand says she’ll finance her plan by eliminating a tax loophole for CEOs—which, between the various nominees, is starting to sound like a cure-all for society’s ill. Those making more than $1 million or 25 times the median salary of their employees—whichever is less—would finance Democracy Dollars with $60 billion in additional taxes over 10 years, according to Gillibrand’s plan.

The Democratic senator references Seattle as her inspiration, whose Democracy Voucher program allots $100 to every eligible voter to donate in each municipal election. Yet the results of the program’s pilot attempt in 2017 were that everything stayed pretty much the same: Only 3.3 percent of recipients participated, and the winning slate was dominated by incumbents and those backed by the establishment.

“When you say that we are going to allow public funds to go to candidates, voters are going to give the vouchers to people they are familiar with, they know, that they are comfortable with, and those are going to tend to be incumbents,” Ethan Blevins, an attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation, told Reason following the election. That’s a far cry from Seattle’s mission statement to elevate “more candidates, including women, young people and people of color, to run viable campaigns against big money candidates.”

“By leveling the playing field of who’s powering federal campaigns, my plan amplifies the voices of Americans who haven’t been heard for too long — young people, women, and people of color,” Gillibrand’s plan reads.

Only candidates who refuse to accept individual contributions over $200 would be allowed to cash in on Democracy Dollars. The current limit is $2,800, which candidates could still opt to accept if they forego the publicly funded vouchers. While it seems unlikely that most candidates would relinquish that opportunity, Gillibrand tells NBC that she expects they’ll do that, “because the potential of how much you could raise in this system is exponentially higher.”

That wouldn’t stop those same candidates from seeking big money support, though: Adherents to Democracy Dollars could still solicit help from super PACs, which Gillibrand’s plan does not address. Although super PACs are barred from donating directly to a particular individual or party, they often spend enormous wads of cash to indirectly fund a candidate, often via advertising blitzes. They are under no spending limit when doing so.

But perhaps the more pressing issue here is a First Amendment one, as a small group of taxpayers would be forced to fund candidates, some of whom they would inevitably object to. Yet whether they disagree with them is almost beside the point: Gillibrand’s plan is a form of compelled speech.

from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2vyhpWU
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Lindsey Graham Continues To Demonstrate Everything That’s Wrong With Republicans in the Age of Trump

Almost three years to the day from when he issued a now all-too-prescient warning on Twitter—”If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed….and we will deserve it”—Sen. Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.) gave a performance that reminds us of just how deeply Trumpism has corrupted the Republican Party.

Graham, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was nominally the man in charge of the committee’s hearing on Monday—a hearing in which Attorney General William Barr offered his testimony and answered questions about his handling of the release of the report written by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller.

Right from the start, Graham made clear that he did not see the hearing as an opportunity to clear up the remaining confusion about key differences between Barr’s initial statements on the Mueller report and the details in the Mueller report itself. Instead of seeking answers, Graham picked up where Barr had left off in doing damage control for the president.

“After all this time and all this money, Mr. Mueller and his team concluded there was no collusion,” said Graham, borrowing from Trump’s favorite characterization of the Mueller report’s outcome.

“As to obstruction of justice, Mr. Mueller left it to Mr. Barr to decide,” Graham continued. “After two years and all this time, he said to Mr. Barr ‘you decide’ and Mr. Barr did.”

Incredibly, that’s an interpretation—some might say spin—that’s even more generous to Trump than Barr’s original framing of the Mueller report, which Mueller has criticized for not fully capturing the “context, nature, and substance” of his investigation.

Graham’s claim that Mueller found “no collusion” is an oversimplification, at best, of the first half of the report, which details numerous attempts by both the Trump campaign and the Russian government to find common ground during 2016. Whether you agree with the senator’s assessment likely depends on your existing opinions about what, exactly, constitutes “collusion.”

But Graham is objectively wrong to claim that Mueller left the obstruction question for Barr “to decide.” In fact, Mueller explicitly tossed that specific ball into Congress‘ court.

“The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the President’s corrupt exercise of the powers of office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law,” the Mueller report states.

That’s probably the right thing to do since longstanding Department of Justice precedent says a sitting president cannot be indicted. Mueller’s report outlines 10 times that Trump attempted to interfere with the investigation—going as far as telling then-White House counsel Don McGahn “Mueller has to go. Call me back when you do it.” Mueller was allowed to continue his investigation only because McGahn flat-out refused to follow a direct order from the President of the United States.

That same pattern emerges again and again in the Mueller report’s damning second volume. “The President’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests,” the Mueller report says.

How did Graham describe Trump’s actions?

“The president never did anything to stop Mueller from doing his job,” Graham said Wednesday.

Members of Congress are free to draw their own conclusions from the Mueller report, of course, and that is exactly what Mueller appears to have intended by tossing the obstruction question into their court.

And to be fair, the Mueller investigation and report have driven nearly everyone in Washington to the brink of insanity. When Trump’s critics inflate details of the report to create wild conspiracy theories completely unsupported by the facts, they are doing an equally significant disservice to the dialogue surrounding the president and what he may have done or not done with regard to Russia and the subsequent investigation.

Still, Graham’s mischaracterization of both the report’s findings and the legal process used to arrive at them is a telling indication that GOP leadership remains loyal to Trump’s cult of personality.

Graham’s “evolution” during the Trump years has been more dramatic than most, but his performance on Wednesday was on par with how many other Republicans have handled the explosive details in the Mueller report. Instead of using his immense power as the chairman of a powerful Senate committee to determine whether Trump’s presidency should continue, or at least to get straight answers about why Barr apparently misled Americans about the content of Mueller’s report, Graham is now making a show of rolling over for a president that he once said was a “kook” and “unfit for office.”

from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2GXiy0F
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Lindsey Graham Continues To Demonstrate Everything That’s Wrong With Republicans in the Age of Trump

Almost three years to the day from when he issued a now all-too-prescient warning on Twitter—”If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed….and we will deserve it”—Sen. Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.) gave a performance that reminds us of just how deeply Trumpism has corrupted the Republican Party.

Graham, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was nominally the man in charge of the committee’s hearing on Monday—a hearing in which Attorney General William Barr offered his testimony and answered questions about his handling of the release of the report written by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller.

Right from the start, Graham made clear that he did not see the hearing as an opportunity to clear up the remaining confusion about key differences between Barr’s initial statements on the Mueller report and the details in the Mueller report itself. Instead of seeking answers, Graham picked up where Barr had left off in doing damage control for the president.

“After all this time and all this money, Mr. Mueller and his team concluded there was no collusion,” said Graham, borrowing from Trump’s favorite characterization of the Mueller report’s outcome.

“As to obstruction of justice, Mr. Mueller left it to Mr. Barr to decide,” Graham continued. “After two years and all this time, he said to Mr. Barr ‘you decide’ and Mr. Barr did.”

Incredibly, that’s an interpretation—some might say spin—that’s even more generous to Trump than Barr’s original framing of the Mueller report, which Mueller has criticized for not fully capturing the “context, nature, and substance” of his investigation.

Graham’s claim that Mueller found “no collusion” is an oversimplification, at best, of the first half of the report, which details numerous attempts by both the Trump campaign and the Russian government to find common ground during 2016. Whether you agree with the senator’s assessment likely depends on your existing opinions about what, exactly, constitutes “collusion.”

But Graham is objectively wrong to claim that Mueller left the obstruction question for Barr “to decide.” In fact, Mueller explicitly tossed that specific ball into Congress‘ court.

“The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the President’s corrupt exercise of the powers of office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law,” the Mueller report states.

That’s probably the right thing to do since longstanding Department of Justice precedent says a sitting president cannot be indicted. Mueller’s report outlines 10 times that Trump attempted to interfere with the investigation—going as far as telling then-White House counsel Don McGahn “Mueller has to go. Call me back when you do it.” Mueller was allowed to continue his investigation only because McGahn flat-out refused to follow a direct order from the President of the United States.

That same pattern emerges again and again in the Mueller report’s damning second volume. “The President’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests,” the Mueller report says.

How did Graham describe Trump’s actions?

“The president never did anything to stop Mueller from doing his job,” Graham said Wednesday.

Members of Congress are free to draw their own conclusions from the Mueller report, of course, and that is exactly what Mueller appears to have intended by tossing the obstruction question into their court.

And to be fair, the Mueller investigation and report have driven nearly everyone in Washington to the brink of insanity. When Trump’s critics inflate details of the report to create wild conspiracy theories completely unsupported by the facts, they are doing an equally significant disservice to the dialogue surrounding the president and what he may have done or not done with regard to Russia and the subsequent investigation.

Still, Graham’s mischaracterization of both the report’s findings and the legal process used to arrive at them is a telling indication that GOP leadership remains loyal to Trump’s cult of personality.

Graham’s “evolution” during the Trump years has been more dramatic than most, but his performance on Wednesday was on par with how many other Republicans have handled the explosive details in the Mueller report. Instead of using his immense power as the chairman of a powerful Senate committee to determine whether Trump’s presidency should continue, or at least to get straight answers about why Barr apparently misled Americans about the content of Mueller’s report, Graham is now making a show of rolling over for a president that he once said was a “kook” and “unfit for office.”

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CNN Ratings Plummet 26% In Prime Time As Fox News Dominates

CNN’s already-dismal prime time ratings dropped 26% in April compared to the same month last year, according to Forbes. The network’s total prime time audience was well under a million viewers at 767,000, while competitors MSNBC and Fox News more than doubled that figure at 1.66 million and 2.395 million viewers respectively. 

April ranks as CNN’s lowest-rated month among total viewers in nearly four years, since October 2015. CNN’s Cuomo Primetime, which has been the network’s highest-rated hour, drew a total audience of 917,000 viewers in April, the show’s worst-ever performance.

Among viewers 25-54, the demographic most coveted by national advertisers, the falloff for CNN was even more stark: down 41 percent. CNN drew 198,000 viewers in the demo, behind MSNBC (255,000) and Fox News (389,000). All three networks saw year-over-year declines in April, with MSNBC down 36% and FNC down 19%. –Forbes

Of the prime time cable news shows, Hannity on Fox News came in first with a total audience of 3.086 million. Tucker Carlson Tonight came in second at 2.834 million, while MSNBC‘s The Rachel Maddow Show came in third at 2.63 million. 

CNN didn’t have a single show that finished among the top five, while their top-rated hour, Cuomo Primetime, finished in 26th place according to the report. 

According to Nielsen, Fox is now the most-watched cable news network in prime time for 208 consecutive months. 

Broken down by hour between Fox News, CNN and MSNBC, Adweek reported the following on Tuesday: 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Lgx7R9 Tyler Durden

Florida Legislature Passes Moratorium on Straw Bans

After a long string of policy defeats, supporters of the single-use plastic straw finally scored a win yesterday when the Florida legislature passed a bill prohibiting local governments from banning plastic suckers.

In a mostly party-line vote, the Florida Senate passed HB 771, which bars cities and counties from adopting or enforcing any regulation of plastic straws for the next five years.

The bill would also require the state legislature’s in-house research organization to issue a report in December on the “data and conclusions” used by local governments when passing their straw laws. That’s a welcome provision given how often bogus straw stats are cited by legislators and city officials, or even incorporated into the text of straw bans.

Florida cities were some of the first adopters of plastic straw regulations. Miami Beach enacted a ban on beachside businesses handing out straws all the way back in 2012.

Currently, 10 Florida cities have either straw bans or more modest straw-on-request laws (which prohibit food service businesses from handing out straws unless a customer specifically requests one).

By forbidding the enforcement of straw regulations, HB 771 effectively nullifies these laws for the next five years. Barring any future legislative changes, cities can start enforcing their straw laws again come 2024.

That makes the bill’s passage a partial victory, but a welcome one nonetheless, given the unmitigated string of defeats opponents of straw bans have suffered over the past year or so.

HB 771 also offers one possible way to combat the spread of straw bans in the future by taking decisions about straws away from ban-happy city councils and turning them over to (occasionally) more sensible state legislatures.

State-level preemption laws have already helped turn back local bans on plastic bags (yesterday’s favorite target of environmentalists) in places like Minneapolis and Austin.

In addition to Florida, straw ban preemption bills have been introduced in the Colorado and Utah legislatures, although neither has passed.

Some libertarians might bristle at the idea of taking decisions away from localities.  However, for those who have a low tolerance for municipal stupidity, Florida’s straw ban is good news.

Straws make up a tiny portion of America’s plastic litter, which in turn makes up a tiny portion (about 1 percent) of global plastic pollution. Banning them will have approximately zero impact on the world’s oceans.

Having passed the state House of Representatives earlier this week, HB 771 goes to Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) for signing.

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