Tag: news

School Choice Advocates Take Control in Los Angeles

Nick MelvoinTwo school choice proponents won election to the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Board this week, and the outcome is going to be a big deal moving forward. Their additions to the board mean that supporters of charter schools and school choice now have majority control over the seven-person panel overseeing one of the largest school districts in the country.

The response to the election helps illustrate some of the oversimplifications in analysis of school choice issues. Mother Jones, for example, wants to present it as a simply blue vs. red, Richie Rich-types versus the helpless poor. The headline emphasizes that Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos must be thrilled at the election of Nick Melvoin and Kelly Gonez.

While it’s true that DeVos is a massive fan of school choice and her leadership of the Department of Education will reflect as much, Melvoin and Gonez are hardly cheerleaders of President Donald Trump’s administration. In December, Melvoin wrote a commentary at Medium criticizing Trump and DeVos, arguing that the president is using school choice as an excuse to make massive cuts to federal education funding.

Gonez’s campaign site home page features her in the embrace of a president, but it’s Barack Obama (whose re-election campaign she served), not Trump. She champions an endorsement not by religious conservatives, but the Sierra Club.

The fact is, Melvoin and Gonez are both Democrats. That school choice and charter schools are extremely popular in Los Angeles is not a reflection of some invasion from the right. Los Angeles remains solidly blue (Hillary Clinton claimed 72 percent of the vote for president across Los Angeles County). But that school choice supporters took the seats in an election held in May (where turnouts are significantly lower) shows precisely how much parents value the ability to control the educational destinies of their kids. Reporting may play up how expensive the race was and how much money wealthy charter supporters spent, but that also downplays how such high spending is necessary to compete with the massive amounts of money education unions in the state pay to influence election outcomes.

The political scene in Los Angeles may be heavily dominated by union leadership, but it’s also been an incubator for charter schools and school choice options. The school district boasts the biggest charter program in the country, with 250 schools serving 130,000 students. Despite the constant fights between school choice advocates and unions, the district has had charter choices for decades now.

The tipping point motivating school choice-loving voters may well have come in April, when the LAUSD school board voted to support three state bills backed by teachers unions that could have severely impacted the operations of charter schools. One bill, which has been shelved for now, would have gutted the appeals process for charter schools rejected by districts and would have allowed a school district to reject a charter school if it would cause a financial hardship for the district. Whenever a student leaves a public school for a charter school, the public school loses some funding. Opponents of the bill argued that it would allow school districts to reject every single charter school that comes along.

LAUSD board president Steve Zimmer voted in favor of endorsing the bill. Zimmer’s the man Melvoin defeated in order to join the board. Melvoin tells Reason that he’s hoping his victory and the shift in power on the board to pro-school choice means that the school board won’t have to “re-litigate” the idea of whether the district should support charter schools at every single meeting.

But to be very clear, Melvoin has no interest in shifting all LAUSD students into charters or privately operated schools. What he really wants to do is take the lessons learned by successful charters and try to bring them back to the public schools to make the quality of public schools better.

“What we need to do is learn from these schools that are high-performing and bring that to all schools,” Melvoin says. “I hope that [LAUSD] is a more hospitable environment for innovations.”

Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of United Teachers Los Angeles dismissed the idea that they could all work together in the Los Angeles Times and said the union would be “doubling down” on its efforts to oppose charter expansions. The fight is likely to continue.

For Melvoin, the formulation that the battle lines are public schools vs. charters, left vs. right, and rich vs. poor all represent false choices.

“Wealthy families have always benefited from school choice,” Melvoin observes. “So the minute the benefits of choice get to poor families—that’s something Democrats should embrace. It’s mind-boggling to me. … It’s pitting different constituencies [within the Democratic Party] against each other.”

Now that school choice supporters dominate the leadership of the second largest school district in the country, any mistakes, poor choices, and poor outcomes of the LAUSD moving forward are likely to be magnified by critics of school choice. Lisa Snell, the Reason Foundation’s director of education, believes that the election results mean that charter and other education choice options are likely to increase for parents and students in the district. It’s going to be up to the school board to maintain accountability as choices expand.

“They still have to make sure that whatever schools they stand behind—district or charter—they’re serving the students well,” Snell says. “They have to be guardians of quality. That’s not to say you’re going to overregulate. But if they’re performing badly, you have a contract you can close.”

Melvoin says that it’s valid for the school district to be concerned about losing money when kids go to charter schools. The school district faces a massive budget deficit and pension crisis that they’re going to have to solve. Melvoin believes that the solution is to make the public schools more competitive with charter schools, something LAUSD hasn’t been doing well, reduce overhead costs, and bring successful charter innovations backward into the public schools.

“This has never been about the number of choice but the quality of choices,” Melvoin says. “Let’s free principals of red tape so they can start competing.”

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Total Airplane Laptop Ban Coming Or Not? What Are The Issues?

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Following intelligence reports that ISIS may be planning to attack airlines with laptop computers rigged as bombs, Trump initiated a ban on laptops on some flights from some airports.

Rumors had it that the ban was going to be extended to make things “uniformly fair”.

Fortunately, common sense prevailed, for now.

Laptop Ban on All Flights?

The Cost

CNNMoney reported Laptop ban in Europe could cost airline passengers $1 billion.

Laptop Q&A

USA Today provides a Q&A: How does the laptop ban on flights work?

Millions of additional travelers could be affected by a new plan to ban laptops, tablets and other large electronic devices from the cabins of trans-Atlantic flights, a move U.S. and European security officials have been discussing in recent days.

The proposal would expand an existing ban implemented in March that applies to U.S.-bound flights from 10 airports in eight countries in the Middle East and Africa.

Here is what you need to know:

 

Why is the ban needed?

Homeland Security officials say terrorists are trying to smuggle explosives onto planes in “various consumer items,” and experts say explosives could be concealed within the electronics and battery compartments of consumer devices. The devices are still allowed to be placed in checked baggage.

 

What about the threat of items in the cargo hold?

The British Airline Pilots’ Association says it’s worried this ban could lead to more accidental fires in cargo holds, posing a greater risk than that of terrorism. Spare lithium batteries are already banned from cargo holds over concerns that they can cause intense, fast-growing fires without being seen belowdecks, and accidental fires cased by lithium batteries have been cited in two crashes, the association said.

 

Have bombs been concealed in electronic devices before?

Yes. On June 23, 1985, a bomb concealed inside a radio inside a checked bag exploded onboard an Air India flight from Montreal to London while over Irish airspace, killing all 329 people aboard. And Pam Am Flight 103 was blown up by terrorists on Dec. 21, 1988 over Lockerbie, Scotland shortly after takeoff. A bomb concealed inside a tape recorder inside checked luggage brought the plane down, killing 259 people aboard, along with 11 people on the ground.

 

What airports are affected?

Right now, the ban applies only to U.S.-bound flights from 10 foreign airports. They are:

  • Queen Alia International Airport (AMM), in Amman
  • JordanCairo International Airport (CAI), in Cairo
  • EgyptAtaturk International Airport (IST), in Istabul
  • TurkeyKing Abdul-Aziz International Airport (JED), in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
  • King Khalid International Airport (RUH), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
  • Kuwait International Airport (KWI), Farwaniya, Kuwait
  • Mohammed V Airport (CMN), Casablanca, Morocco
  • Hamad International Airport (DOH), Doha, Qatar
  • Dubai International Airport (DXB), Dubai, United Arab Emirates
  • Abu Dhabi International Airport (AUH), Abu Dhabi
  • United Arab Emirates

The ban applies to specific airports, not individual airlines.

Brussels Logic – Everyone Must Suffer

The Financial Times cited a senior EU diplomat as follows: “When you have a kettle and you are making porridge, you cannot make it thicker in one corner of the kettle. It is the same with flight security. Why should [EU-US] flights be restricted and more secure than the ones to Thailand or Egypt?”

Fortunately, common sense ruled. How long that lasts remains to be seen.

The Real Issue

The real issue is that security forces and scanners have a hard time finding bombs in laptops. On April 21, CNN reported New terrorist laptop bombs may evade airport security, intel sources say.

US intelligence and law enforcement agencies believe that ISIS and other terrorist organizations have developed innovative ways to plant explosives in electronic devices that FBI testing shows can evade some commonly used airport security screening methods, CNN has learned.

 

Heightening the concern is US intelligence suggesting that terrorists have obtained sophisticated airport security equipment to test how to effectively conceal explosives in laptops and other electronic devices. The intelligence, gathered in the last several months, played a significant role in the Trump administration’s decision to prohibit travelers flying out of 10 airports in eight countries in the Middle East and Africa from carrying laptops and other large electronic devices aboard planes.

 

Aviation security expert Robert Liscouski, a former Homeland Security assistant secretary for infrastructure protection, said limiting the ban to eight countries makes sense based on the capability and locations of terrorist groups.

 

When the electronics ban was announced, US officials told CNN they were concerned that terrorists had developed ways to hide explosives in battery compartments. But the new intelligence makes clear that the bomb-makers working for ISIS and other groups have become sophisticated enough to hide the explosives while ensuring a laptop would function long enough to get past screeners. Though advanced in design, FBI testing found that the laptops could be modified using common household tools.

 

Intelligence officials received a wake-up call in February 2016, when an operative from al-Shabaab, an al Qaeda affiliate in Somali, detonated a laptop bomb on a Daallo Airlines flight from Mogadishu to Djibouti. The explosives were hidden in a part of the laptop where bomb-makers had removed a DVD drive, according to investigators. Airport workers helped smuggle the bomb on the plane after it passed through an X-ray machine. In that case, the bomber was blown out of the airplane but the aircraft was able to make an emergency landing. However, experts have said the bomb would have been more devastating had the plane reached cruising altitude.

 

The military and intelligence community has grown increasingly concerned in the last few months about the potential ability of terror groups to get bombs on board airplanes, according to several US officials. The US has been tracking specific intelligence from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), al Qaeda in Syria and ISIS, officials said.

 

The group with the greatest level of bomb-making expertise is al Qaeda in Yemen. Its master bomb-maker, Ibrahim al Asiri, has worked for years on designing explosive devices that can be hidden on bodies or in items such as printer cartridges. Since 2014, US officials have been concerned that Asiri’s expertise had migrated to other groups.

Brussels vs Trump

The Brussels solution would be to ban all laptops. Trump’s solution was a selective ban, far more practical.

What needs to happen is to figure out why we cannot detect bombs in laptops.

Top Secret?

Finally, the recent bruhaha regarding Trump was that he shared “Top Secret” information with Russia.

That alleged “Top Secret” information was in regards to ISIS having plans to use laptop bombs on airplanes. Russia likely knew everything Trump stated.

Media Witch Hunt

As long as Trump did not disclose sources, we should all be thankful Trump shared this information with Russia.

Instead, we see a media witch hunt and increased calls for impeachment. For more on the Trump Witch hunt please see …

  1. “Terrifying, Reckless, and Deeply Disturbing” Reports: High on Stupidity
  2. Impeachment Odds Approximately Zero: What’s the Real Reason for Today’s Decline?
  3. Special Counsel Named to Investigate Trump and Russia: What’s the Real Mission?

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Iranians Vote For Their Next President: Here Is What’s At Stake

Four years after its last election in 2013, today Iran is voting to choose its next president, and like four years ago the biggest issue again is the local economy, although in a new twist this year the outcome of the election will also determine how Iran will react to deteriorating relations and rising tensions with the US under president Trump, who at least during his campaign speeches, vowed to undo Obama’s landmark nuclear deal with Iran. 

Today’s race, which due to a last minute “rush of voters” saw voting extended by two hours, comes down to a contest between two challengers: the incumbent moderate President Hassan Rouhani – who helped negotiate the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and the US, in the process lifting economic sanctions imposed upon Iran years earlier in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program – and his main hard-line challenger, Ebrahim Raisi, a conservative cleric and the custodian of a religious charity worth tens of billions of who however dollars, lacks political experience but is close to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as the WSJ notes.

In some ways, Iran’s president is a figurehead, as most critical decisions in the Shi’ite nation are made behind the scenes and Iran’s Supreme leader Khamenei has final say in most matters of state. Still, for purposes of international diplomacy, Khamenei rarely telegraphs what he’s going to do (his always entertaining Twitter account notwithstanding) which makes the rise and fall of candidates and the impact of elections tough to predict.

Yet while Khamenei lays out Iran’s strategy, it is the president’s jobs to implement it tactically by putting Iran’s policies into place, while shaping the country’s image for global consumption. Ironically, recent Iranian presidents have pursued radically different agendas. Former hard-line President Ahmadinejad busted the government budget and drove up inflation with handouts to the poor, while his successor, Rouhani tamed inflation while seeking better relations with the West. He succeeded by finding a willing partner in the face of Barack Obama, who was eager to leave a lasting diplomatic legacy in the middle east with the nation that Israel considers its arch nemesis.

With vastly different agendas at stake, is there potential for unrest? History does not provide a clear answer: when Ahmadinejad won reelection in 2009, his reformist opponents set off a wave of protests that was quashed by authorities, arresting thousands. Khamenei, as well as many ordinary Iranians, don’t want to see a repeat of that episode, which was the nation’s most significant upheaval since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The supreme leader has repeatedly warned that election-related unrest won’t be tolerated.

* * *

With that in mind, here is a detailed breakdown of the key economic and political issues at stake in today’s election courtesy of WorldView.

Iran’s impending presidential election is shaping up much like the last one. As it was in 2013, the economy will again be the primary issue for voters as they head to the polls May 19. Iran’s foreign policy has also figured prominently in the campaign, mostly as it pertains to the country’s economy. And each candidate, as usual, has striven to portray himself as the embodiment of the revolutionary ideals and moral tenets the Iranian president is charged with upholding under Article 115 of the Iranian Constitution.

But the similarities notwithstanding, much has changed in the four years since the last presidential vote. The country’s economic straits, for example, have improved since President Hassan Rouhani implemented the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the deal Iran struck with the United States and five other countries in 2015 over its nuclear program. Tensions between the president and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are relaxed today, compared with former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s time in office. Iranian politics, meanwhile, has become more starkly divided between hyper-conservatives and more moderate conservatives. In addition, the Syrian war — in which Iran is actively involved — has become more complex, drawing in more foreign participants. The fight against the Islamic State has accelerated, and U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has taken a firm stance on Tehran’s activities throughout the Middle East. Taken together, these factors pose a serious challenge for Iran’s security and stability, even if the government’s finances are more assured now that it faces fewer economic sanctions (as Rouhani’s campaign has emphasized). Concerns about the country’s security, along with its lingering economic problems, will weigh heavily on voters as they cast their ballots for the next president. 

The Incumbent

Going into the polls, Rouhani has a few advantages over his competitors. The Iranian political system and electorate tend to favor incumbent candidates in an effort to ensure policy continuity and stability. Even Ahmadinejad won a second term in 2009, despite having strained relations with the supreme leader. Similarly, though the current president’s relationship with Khamenei has weathered its share of storms, Rouhani still has his support and that of some powerful politicians in the moderate conservative camp, such as parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani. Rouhani also still has the official backing of Iran’s reformists. Former President Mohammed Khatami, a cleric and prominent figure in the reformist camp, defied the media blackout that has restricted his communication for the past two years to endorse Rouhani on May 2. Another influential reformist leader, Mehdi Karroubi — who has been under house arrest since 2011 — has also expressed his support for the president. In fact, some of Rouhani’s challengers in the race, including his former vice president, Eshaq Jahangiri (who dropped out of the running May 16) and reformist Mostafa Hashemitaba, have even thrown their weight behind Rouhani’s moderate and comparatively progressive policies.

The
president’s popularity among reformist voters may be a different story,
however. After all, many of the social reforms Rouhani promised in his
2013 campaign — including measures to minimize censorship in the film
industry and address women’s rights issues — have gone unfulfilled. His
failure to follow through on these policies could cost him support among
the electorate’s reformists, though Rouhani will still almost certainly
collect the most reformist votes of any candidate in the running. To
improve his standing, the president campaigned on liberal financial
policies, such as taxing charitable trusts, while highlighting the
background of opponent Ebrahim Raisi, a conservative cleric, as a
prosecutor involved in executions, a galvanizing issue for reformists
and moderates alike.

Regardless of his struggles with social
reform, Rouhani has made significant headway in developing Iran’s
economy over the past four years, thanks in large part to the JCPOA.
 Iran’s exports, including oil, have increased substantially since the
deal’s implementation. Its per capita gross domestic product has
climbed, and inflation has plummeted. But though Rouhani has made these
accomplishments the focus of his campaign, they may not be enough to
overcome the rampant inequality, high unemployment, scanty foreign
investment and widespread corruption that
still plague Iran. The problems are especially pronounced in Iran’s
poor rural regions, a factor that could hurt Rouhani’s performance. A
group of angry coal miners lambasted the president about their low
salaries when he visited them May 7 in the wake of a deadly mine
explosion. Likewise, local leaders gave Rouhani a chilly reception on a
recent trip to the Kurdish areas of northwest Iran, which overwhelmingly
supported him in 2013. Economic discontent among the country’s rural
voters could discourage them from even showing up to the polls, in spite
of the supreme leader’s calls for the highest possible turnout. (Voter
turnout was 76.2 percent in 2013, just 3 percent shy of the record set
in 1999. Any less than 63 percent turnout, the all-time low reached in
2005, would be embarrassing for the government.)

The Challengers

Rouhani’s opponents in the race have seized on the disappointments of the president’s first term, including Iran’s lingering economic troubles, to try to bolster their own campaigns. The leading contenders for the presidency have even used the JCPOA, a deal they unanimously support, to argue that the incumbent candidate is more interested in Western investment than in the economic concerns of ordinary Iranians. Still, even the most conservative candidates still in the running — Raisi and former Culture Minister Mostafa Mir-Salim — have largely refrained from attacking Rouhani’s stance toward the West. Raisi, in fact, said that he espouses open policies toward all nations except Israel, though he wants to make sure his country gets the most out of its international relations. Iran’s conservatives are mostly concerned with ensuring that the country’s ties with the West take a back seat to domestic issues.

Throughout the campaign season, Raisi and Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf seemed to be in a dead heat for Iran’s conservative voter base, each attempting to discredit Rouhani’s economic policies and calling for a tougher stance on security. The two candidates built their campaigns on populist policies, such as increasing the cash handouts that Ahmadinejad instituted during his tenure. (Rouhani’s administration has come under fire from populist leaders in Iran for trying to cut handouts, which currently stand at $12 per family per month.) Then Ghalibaf — who enjoyed support not only among members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, but also, as Tehran’s mayor, among urban voters in the capital — left the race May 15 and urged his followers to back Raisi. Although he lacks Ghalibaf’s military connections and popular appeal, Raisi is well-liked among Iran’s clerical establishment. The influential Society of Seminary Teachers of Qom, for example, has endorsed him.

As the playing field becomes less crowded, a showdown between Raisi and Rouhani is looking more and more likely. The current president is favored to win, but surprises are bound to occur, as they have in every Iranian presidential race to date. Given the enthusiasm among hard-liners for a more defensive stance toward adversaries such as the United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel, Raisi may have a shot at victory. He has made a point of trying to draw in poor and populist Iranian voters during his campaign, and his efforts may pay off. 

On the eve of the election, many people in and beyond Iran are already looking ahead to the following presidential vote in 2021. That election promises to bring greater change to the Islamic republic because its victor will likely oversee the aging supreme leader’s succession.

When he eventually dies, Khamenei — who became supreme leader in 1989 (after serving two terms as president) — will end the era of Iran’s old guard of revolutionary leaders. Members of the younger generation, that of Rouhani and Raisi, will be vying for position as the process to find his replacement picks up speed in the coming years. And as the number of Iranians born after the 1979 Islamic Revolution continues to grow, the government will have to consider whether to keep pursuing its cautious rapprochement with the United States or revert to a hostile position.

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Jim Bullard Does It Again – Stocks Spike On Hint Of Future QE

It's deja vu all over again. Having saved the world (stocks) in October 2014, The Fed's Jim Bullard – clearly worried by the 2% drop in stocks – has stepped back in today…

Hinting at the never-ending market put, Bullard noted in a Q&A session after his speech that…

  • *BULLARD: FED SHOULD RETAIN OPTION TO DO QE IN FUTURE IF NEEDED

And that was all the machines needed…

Efficient markets much?

Of course, the only problem Bullard has is that The Fed needs to "shrink" its balance sheet before it can re-QE. So this is simply front-running the carnage that a lumpy Fed balance sheet unwind (due to maturing debt) is likely to cause by pacifying worried investors that "we got this" if everything turns to shit.

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The Death Of The Virtuous Cycle

Authored by Michael Lebowitz via 720Global.com,

Understanding value, pricing and risk/reward tradeoff within the context of the business and credit cycles provides a durable platform from which results-oriented, sound investment can happen. As Ben Graham said, “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”

During periods of extreme bullish sentiment, investors tend to get overly enamored by price trends and investing fads while neglecting fundamental analysis and the primary driver of asset prices, the macroeconomic landscape. Accordingly, to level the playing field, many of the articles we have published have been devoted to exposing fallacious economic thinking. We believe our discussion on the matter is imperative as most Ph.D. economists, including those at the Federal Reserve, have convinced investors, policy-makers and U.S. citizens that durable economic growth stems from debt-fueled consumer spending. This is not only a patently false claim, but it has immense implications for investors as we have explained and depicted on many occasions. In particular, we wrote, The Death of the Virtuous Cycle, to provide readers with a clear understanding of why the United States and many other developed economies have seen productivity, wages, and economic growth stagnate.

We make every effort to craft articles in a clear format using common sense analysis and straight-forward logic. Financial jargon, complex formulas, and abstract theories are tools for those who prefer to sound smart or simply wish to advance an agenda by confusing readers and obstructing basic truths. That said, despite our efforts to be laconic and make the complex simple, we struggle at times. To combat this, we have often written sequels or follow-up articles to present a topic in a different light or to add emphasis and enhance the reader’s understanding.

Due to the significance of the message contained in The Death of the Virtuous Cycle and our desire to effectively reach as many people as possible, we take a new approach and present the concepts using an animated short video…

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Taxi Companies Asked Georgia for a Bailout and Got Laughed Out of Court

Taxi companies that sued the state of Georgia over a 2015 law allowing ride-sharing services to operate in the state got laughed out of the Georgia Supreme Court this week.

Their case, such as it was, went like this. Back in 2015, the Georgia state legislature enacted changes to the state’s laws governing taxi companies, allowing ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft to operate for the first time. Prior to that, taxis had enjoyed a pretty sweet monopoly in Atlanta, where the number of taxi medallions had been capped at 1,600 for more than two decades. That artificial limit on the number of taxis, naturally, had caused the value of those medallions to skyrocket, making them valuable investments. One medallion was sold for $80,000 (and that’s actually cheap compared to the value of taxi medallions in bigger cities like New York, where they can be worth more than $1 million).

Then, Uber and Lyft came along. Since the new ride-sharing services effectively removed the artificial cap on taxis in Atlanta, the value of those taxi medallions—technically known as “Certificates of Public Necessity and Convenience” or CPNCs—fell.

In court, the taxi companies claimed that by legalizing the new competitors, the state legislature had deprived them of their “exclusive right to provide rides origination in the city limits,” and that the 2015 law had damaged the value of their medallions. As such, they argued that the state government must compensate them for the lost value—this is known as a “takings claim,” along the lines of what happens when governments seize property through eminent domain.

Lower courts disagreed with the taxi companies, but they pushed the case all the way to the Georgia Supreme Court, where Justice Carol Hunstein issued a scathing, and unanimous, nine-page decision that tears through every part of the taxi companies’ claim.

“Though it may be true that an occupational or business license – once secured – can become a protected property right,” Hunstein writes, “there is no argument here that the [new law] deprives appellants of their CPNCs or of their right to engage in the taxicab business; indeed, a CPNC is still necessary to operate a taxicab in the City of Atlanta.”

So the government didn’t take anything away from the taxi companies. That seems pretty clear, but what about the claim that the taxis had lost their “exclusive right” to operate in Atlanta, and that it was that exclusivity which created value? Nonsense, says Hunstein. “Appellants have pointed to no law that would have prevented the city of Atlanta or the legislature from increasing the CPNC limit (and thus, the number of drivers).”

In short, the new law “does not take business property for a public use, it merely requires an already regulated business to adjust its property to the new law,” Hunstein concludes.

This is all exactly right. It’s unfortunate that taxi companies have seen the value of their medallions fall because of new competition, but some investments succeed and others fail. Atlanta’s taxi medallions had an inflated value because of government-imposed caps on the taxi market, but those caps, as Hunstein points out, could have been increased or removed at any time. The medallions’ value was based on little more than the expectation that the government would continue to protect a privileged monopoly.

Atlanta is hardly the only place where this is happening. As Nick Sibilla points out in Forbes, federal courts have rejected similar arguments from taxi companies looking for bailouts in Boston, Chicago, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and New York City. Courts elsewhere should do the same.

If taxi medallion owners made a bad investments because they wrongly believed they could use the government to restrict competition and inflate the value of those investments, well, they were wrong. And there’s no good reason why the taxpayers of Georgia should have to bail them out for making a bad investment.

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Weiner Gets Roasted: Set To Plead Guilty To Sexting With A Minor

After years of sexting scandals that cost him his marriage with Huma Abedin and potentially even cost Hillary the White House, disgraced former Democratic congressman and New York Mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner is set to appear in a federal courtroom in Manhattan today to enter a guilty plea for sexting with a minor.

According to the New York Times, Weiner will plead guilty to a single charge of transferring obscene material to a minor, pursuant to a plea agreement he struck with the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan. Weiner reportedly surrendered to the F.B.I. early Friday morning.

As a result of the guilty plea, Weiner will likely end up as a registered sex offender, although a final determination on that issue has yet to be made.  The charge carries a potential sentence of between 0 – 10 years in prison, meaning Weiner could avoid prison time though the ultimate sentence will be determined by a judge.

As you’ll recall, the FBI only discovered those last minute Hillary emails due to their ongoing criminal investigation of Anthony Weiner.  The “tens of thousands of emails”, many including exchanges between Huma Abedin and Hillary Clinton, discovered on Weiner’s computer ultimately prompted James Comey to make his now infamous October 29th announcement that the Hillary email investigation had been re-opened.  Hillary has since attributed her loss to Comey’s decision.

Of course, as you may recall, Weiner’s latest sexting scandal came to light back in September 2016, a very critical time for the Hillary campaign, when it was exposed by the Daily Mail.  Unfortunately, this time the scandal involved a girl that Weiner knew to be a 15-year old Sophomore in high school.  But, that didn’t seem to stop him from telling the teenager that he would like to “bust that tight pussy so hard.” 


Anthony Weiner’s latest alleged scandal involves a 15-year-old high school student

The girl first reached out to Weiner in January 2016.  In that initial discussion, the girl openly admitted that she was a high school student. 

Weiner

 

But, that didn’t seem to stop Weiner from later telling the girl over a sexting app that he “would bust that tight pu**y so hard and so often that you would be limp for a week.”

Weiner

In an interview with the Daily Mail, the high school student said that Weiner pushed her to “dress up in school-girl outfits” and engage in “rape fantasies” over skype.  He also felt the need to inform the young girl that he and his wife, Clinton aide Huma Abedin, hadn’t had sex in a year.

“When we would Skype, he would tell me that he was very lonely and that it had been a year since he and his wife [Huma] had sex, and that she really didn’t pay him any attention.  We would talk, just chatting for about 30 minutes and it would lead to more sexual things…asking me to undress…he’d comment on my body. He asked me about masturbation, and that kind of thing.”

 

“He would pretend like he was a teacher and I was a student. And he’d talk about me sitting in the front of his class, and him taking me after school.”

 

“He had some rape fantasies. It would just be him showing up at my house when my dad was out of town.  And just start undressing me, being forceful, asking me if I want to be dominated, strange questions.”

 

She said when she told him she was uncomfortable with this, he quickly agreed to change the subject.

 

The girl said she started feeling guilty about hiding the relationship, and told her father and a teacher about it in late April.

After ruining her shot at the White House, you had to know that Hillary wouldn’t let Weiner escape this one.

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Fed’s Bullard Slams Recovery Narrative, Confirms Fed Top-Ticked Economy; Hints At Fed Policy Error

Back in 2014, just as the market was plunging, St Louis Fed’s Bullard stopped the bleeding when in a Bloomberg interview said that a “logical response” to the tumbling market, would be to “delay the end of QE” and strongly suggested ed that “QE4” would be considered to prevent further market losses. The S&P exploded.

Well, this morning the Fed’s nonvoting converted permadove (Bullard used to be the most hawkish Fed member until his unexpected conversion in 2014), is back and in prepared remarks for a speech in St. Louis is once again suggesting that all the talk of an “overheating” economy was just that saying that “financial market readings since the March decision have moved in the opposite direction” of what would normally occur after a rate hike, adding: “this may suggest that the FOMC’s contemplated policy rate path is overly aggressive relative to actual incoming data on U.S. macroeconomic performance.”

Speaking in St. Louis, Bullard admitted that U.S. macroeconomic data have been relatively weak, on balance, since the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) met in March and raised the fed funds rate. He said that economic growth is unlikely “to move meaningfully” this year from the current trend of about 2 percent.

He also said that inflation and inflation expectations “have surprised to the downside” and noted that financial market readings since the March decision have been opposite of expectations.

Additionally, “even if the U.S. unemployment rate declines substantially further, the effects on inflation are likely to be small” and notes that “labor market improvement has been slowing, perhaps close to a trend pace, given the current labor productivity growth regime.”

Bullard also commented on the slowing GDP growth rate, saying that “tracking estimates for second- quarter real GDP growth suggest some improvement from the first quarter, but not enough to move the U.S. economy away from a regime characterized by 2 percent trend growth.”

“This may suggest that the FOMC’s contemplated policy rate path is overly aggressive relative to actual incoming data,” Bullard said. He also discussed the relationship between unemployment and inflation and said that, even if U.S. unemployment declines substantially further, the effects on inflation are likely to be small.

Translated: Bullard confirms that the Fed once again top-ticked the economy, something only the S&P appears to have missed.

As for the Fed’s expectations of 2 rate hikes for 2017… let’s just say the economy disagrees.

The result: both USDJPY and S&P futures are not happy with today’s admission by at least one non-voting Fed president that the Fed may have one again made a “policy error.”

via http://ift.tt/2q3PhW9 Tyler Durden

Putting Country Above Party Works Both Ways: New at Reason

TrumpThroughout Donald Trump’s short but eventful presidency, Democrats have been imploring Republicans to show loyalty for country over party.

If you believe our bumbling president’s hiring of the likes of Paul Manafort or Mike Flynn—who was apparently under investigation when he joined the administration—reflects abysmal judgment, I’m with you. If you believe those decisions could turn out to be scandals, it’s difficult for me to disagree. If you believe Trump’s admiration for authoritarians in Russia undermines our standing in the world, I’m there as well.

Then again, recklessly throwing around words like “impeachable” and “treason” before the evidence exists to level those consequential charges also puts country above party. Hysteria also erodes trust in our institutions for nothing more than political gain, writes David Harsanyi.

View this article.

from Hit & Run http://reason.com/blog/2017/05/19/putting-country-above-party-works-both
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Sweden Drops Assange Rape Charge, Basquiat Painting Sells for $110M, Ex-Secret Service Agent Gets 20 Years for Sexting: A.M. Links

  • Sweden is dropping rape charges against Wikileaks mastermind Julian Assange, the country’s director of public prosecutions announced today.
  • A 1982 Basquiat painting sold for $110.5 million at Sothebys on Thursday, making it the sixth most expensive work of art sold at auction.

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