Labels

Turn Your Wounds into Wisdom -- Oprah





DAILY SPECIALS









ENVIRONMENT

Why your summer city break is as bad as smoking 

Exclusive: Draft details Trump’s plan for reversing Obama climate rule

Congressman Rooney announces federal and state administrators will visit Southwest Florida to address toxic algae crisis

Fracking Chemicals Boost Fat Cells



CANDIDATES

Campaigns and candidates still easy prey for hackers 

Michigan’s Environmental Issues Could Swing Governor’s Race

Trump takes aim at Democratic nominee for Governor in Florida

Ted Cruz and the Texas GOP managed to make Beto O'Rourke look even cooler OPINION



Another round of the ‘People’s Pledge’? No, thanks.
 
One of the dopier ideas to come out of the Massachusetts political realm in recent years was the so-called “People’s Pledge,” first adopted in 2012 by then-US Senator Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard law professor who challenged his bid for reelection. 
 
The agreement signed by the two candidates was meant to dissuade third-party advertisers from playing a role in their battle for the seat that Brown had won in a special election two years earlier. To that end, they promised that if any outside organization spent money targeting either candidate in broadcast or online advertising, the campaign being helped would pay a penalty: It would donate half the value of the ad buy to a charity named by the other campaign. As I explained in a column at the time:
 

Thus if the League of Conservation Voters were to sink another $1.85 million into commercials like the one that accused Brown of having “sided with Big Oil,” the Warren campaign would have to fork over $925,000 to a charity designated by the commonwealth's Republican senator. And if Crossroads GPS chooses to double down on the $1.1 million it spent recently on anti-Warren videos, such as the one linking her to the bonuses bank executives were paid out of federal bailout funds, Brown's team would have to kiss $550,000 goodbye.
 

Brown and Warren reaped loads of praise for their deal. It was hailed as the key to restoring civility to political campaigns by curbing the influence of special interests with narrow, agitating agendas. I thought the whole thing was an arrogant, antidemocratic gimmick — more on that in a minute — but mine was plainly a minority view.
 
The People’s Pledge has made an appearance in a few other campaigns since 2012, and it just resurfaced in the Massachusetts secretary of state race between longtime incumbent Bill Galvin and his Democratic primary challenger, Boston City Councilor Josh Zakim. Galvin is calling on Zakim to sign on to a deal much like the original one, as Lauren Dezenski reported for Politico:

 

As Galvin put it, “Under the agreement, if a third party pays for advertising or a general mailing in support of one of us, the other will give 50 percent of the cost to the charity of their opponent’s choice. This agreement would obviously not restrict labor unions or other organizations from contacting their members directly, but would prevent them from advertising to the general public or doing a broader mailing. We would also agree to close any loopholes to our agreement that might arise, and to ask media outlets to enforce the pledge.”
 
The success of such an agreement depends on the willingness of both campaigns to agree – and enforce – it. Last year, Warren called for the return of a People’s Pledge in her latest Senate race, though her Republican opponents have been disinterested in adhering to the restrictions.
 

The whole thing comes across as a faintly desperate stretch by Galvin, who has never previously showed the least interest in curbing campaign expenditures, but who is running scared this year under the threat of Zakim’s strong challenge. I can’t think of a reason why any outside group would feel the urge to involve itself in a contest for the relatively obscure Massachusetts secretary of state’s office, but Galvin has nothing to lose by calling on Zakim to forswear any such outside spending on his behalf — just in case. 
 
On Friday, however, Zakim’s campaign rejected Galvin’s proposal, calling it an “empty gesture” on Galvin’s part. It was. But that wasn’t the only reason why Zakim, and every candidate, should give the People’s Pledge short shrift.
 
The pledge is not just an empty idea. It's a very bad one. I wrote in 2012:

 

The candidates say their objective is to “provide the citizens of Massachusetts” with a Senate campaign free of messages coming from any source “outside the direct control of either of the candidates.” On Monday, Brown proclaimed it a “great victory” that he and Warren have put “third parties on notice that their interference in this race will not be tolerated.” But what they mean by “third parties” is not just heavily endowed superPACs parachuting in from out of state. They mean anyone not taking orders from them, including individuals, charitable groups, policy advocates, and party committees.

And what they mean by “interference” is political free speech.
 

Brown and Warren have a simple message for anyone with something to say about the Massachusetts Senate race: Shut up. To win one of the most powerful positions in American politics, they are prepared to spend tens of millions of dollars making sure that they are heard loud and clear by voters, donors, and opinion leaders. They won't hesitate to trumpet their views — and make potentially momentous promises — on issues ranging from taxes, health care, and the economy to foreign policy, immigration, and defense. They'll warn that America's future is riding on the outcome of their competition. Between now and Nov. 6, they'll be talking without letup about the urgency of this Senate race and the vital importance of electing the right candidate.

But if anyone else talks about it, that's “interference.” Let voters, donors, and opinion leaders hear about Brown and Warren from someone other than the candidates themselves? That “will not be tolerated.”
 
Far from deserving the props and applause they are collecting in some quarters, Brown and Warren deserve bipartisan scorn. There is nothing admirable about candidates for Congress seeking to squelch electoral speech. Brown and Warren wouldn't dream of demanding that news organizations refrain from commenting on the campaign or trying to influence voters. Why should any other organization — liberal or conservative, broad-based or niche, brand-new or long-established, local or out-of-state — be treated with any less deference?
 

 
The People’s Pledge, in other words, amounts to a scheme to repress the form of speech most valued in the American constitutional system: speech about candidates, elections, and issues. Candidates who trumpet such a deal are demanding, in essence, that groups of citizens stifle themselves about a political choice that might affect their families and fortunes for years to come. It’s a call for self-censorship, and deserves no applause.
 
As it turned out, the People’s Pledge was as ineffectual as it was objectionable. When all was said and done, the 2012 Brown/Warren race, far from restoring civility to politics, was among the nastiest in America that year. And the pledge did nothing to keep down spending: According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the Brown/Warren battle was the most expensive Senate race in that political cycle.
 
The People’s Pledge boiled down to two politicians demanding that no one say anything about them without their approval. That wasn't just an effort to thwart deep-pocketed super PACs from out of state. It was an effort to squelch anyone – individuals, charities, businesses, political parties, advocacy groups – from catching the electorate’s attention during a high-profile election campaign. A rotten idea in 2012, and a rotten idea still. [Boston Globe, Arguable with Jeff Jacoby, August 13, 2018]




MICHAEL COHEN

Michael Cohen is a ticking time bomb OPINION

Michael Cohen is resigned to going to prison to protect his family

Top Trump Donor Agreed to Pay Michael Cohen $10 Million for Nuclear Project Push



TRUMPARCANA

Trump's D.C. hotel, a clubhouse for his fans, may also be a 5-star conflict of interest 






SCREEN

CNN to Air Final Season of Anthony Bourdain’s ‘Parts Unknown’ 

Infiltrate Hate: Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman”

Adolf Hitler, Film Fanatic

The True Story of ‘Waco’ Is Still One of Contention





Indexing Capital Gains Could Both Reduce Lock-In and Harm the Economy 

The Republicans will struggle to “win” on tax reform OPINION



INDEXING CAPITAL GAINS, CONT'D: Len Burman of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center considered the question of whether indexing capital gains (or offering other tax relief in that area) would give a jolt to the economy — and the short answer is no . That's for a variety of reasons, Burman writes, but one of the biggest reasons is that indexing capital gains or exempting capital gains from tax provokes the use of tax shelters. "Some very smart people devote their prodigious talents to inventing complex multi-layer schemes to skirt anti-avoidance rules and convert wage and salary income into capital gains. That is a big waste of resources that saps our economy."
Ryan Ellis, the president of the Center for a Free Economy, a group recently formed to advocate for capital gains indexing, told Morning Tax in an email that those sorts of criticisms were over the top. "Hysterical assertions that this will lead to tax shelters or economic catastrophe are overblown," Ellis wrote. "It's about basic fairness for savers. They shouldn't have to pay tax merely because inflation happened." [POLITICO's Morning Tax, August 6, 2018]

Extending Tax Cuts and Spending Hikes Would Raise Debt to Record Level by 2029: CBO

The Congressional Budget Office, in its long-term outlook released in June, projected that federal debt held by the public would increase sharply over the next 30 years, climbing from 78 percent of GDP this year to 118 percent in 2038 and 152 percent by 2048.
But that estimate was required to assume that current law would generally remain unchanged — meaning that, for example, tax cuts currently set to expire after 2025 would in fact end and that spending caps that Congress agreed to lift for 2018 and 2019 would be restored for future years. In other words, it baked in assumptions that might be considered unrealistic given the professed desire of President Trump and Republican lawmakers to extend the expiring tax cuts, and given Congress’ history of battles over spending limits.
Using different and arguably more realistic assumptions, the debt rises even more dramatically. In a follow-up report issued Wednesday, CBO said that if the current tax and spending policies aren’t allowed to expire, debt held by the public would rise to at least 148 percent of GDP by 2038 and 210 percent — more than twice the size of the economy — by 2048. Under this scenario, debt would reach record levels by 2029, five years faster than under the June projection.
The new CBO report also laid out two other scenarios in which lawmakers adjust tax rules to prevent bracket creep and keep revenue levels steady as a share of GDP, either in 2018 or 2028. Under those scenarios, debt would grow even higher, as this chart from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget shows.



The CBO report also warns about the economic impact of higher debt levels. If lawmakers extend current policies, real gross national product per person would be about 1.2 percent lower in 2038 than if the tax cuts and spending increases are temporary.
The report notes that the debt projections are uncertain and may be too low, especially for later years, since its current models “are based on the nation’s historical experience with federal borrowing” and may not properly reflect the effects of unprecedented debt levels. “Employing its usual models, CBO projects that in any of the scenarios, debt would equal more than 200 percent of GDP by 2048—but those models probably understate the increase in debt,” the report says. [The Fiscal Times, August 9, 2018]



Devin Nunes      






JUDICIAL MATTERS



CAN IT BE DONE? — A federal judge in Georgia is considering a potentially precedent-setting question: Is there enough time left before the midterms for her to require Georgia to stop using its paperless electronic voting machines? Election integrity advocates and Georgia voters on Tuesday asked the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia to bar Georgia from using those voting machines — which cybersecurity experts consider insecure because they lack paper backups — in November's elections. They say the preliminary injunction is urgently necessary while they proceed with a lawsuitagainst Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp over the constitutionality of the machines. "The injunction will not cause [Kemp's office] substantial harm," the Coalition for Good Governance and several Georgia voters said in a brief supporting their request, "but will merely require [it] to do what every federal agency on record has urged the State to do: use paper ballots to record votes." In a separate brief, other plaintiffs in the case argued that "the costs of the steps to secure Georgia's election are far outweighed by the [plaintiffs'] injury absent relief."
But the judge in the case isn't so sure, and she wants Kemp to reply to the plaintiffs' claim that the switch is feasible. "While the Coalition Plaintiffs seek to vindicate the public interest in the integrity and security of the voting system," Judge Amy Totenberg wrote in a Tuesday order , "their brief devotes little attention to the flip side of their request for immediate relief: Would statewide implementation of the requested relief in an expedited, limited time frame actually compromise the reliability and functionality of the voting system and therefore adversely impact the public interest in this 2018 election cycle?" Totenberg asked Kemp to focus his reply, due Aug. 14, on "the practical realities surrounding implementation of the requested relief in the next one to three months."
Georgia is one of two states where voters are asking courts to rule that paperless voting machines are unconstitutional because they deprive people of the right to have their votes accurately counted. The other state is South Carolina, which also relies exclusively on paperless machines. That case began last month, while the Georgia case began last August. [POLITICO's Morning Cybersecurity, August 9, 2018]



ENERGY







ON TAP TODAY: Conservative state lawmakers with the American Legislative Exchange Council vote today on a model resolution supporting the Trump administration's rollback of auto fuel efficiency standards. The energy task force resolution also backs revoking California's authority to set its own rules. The nonbinding resolution charges that new auto standards would increase vehicle costs by thousands of dollars, "pricing millions of Americans — particularly the economically disadvantaged — out of the new car market entirely."
On Friday, a different task force at ALEC's annual meeting in New Orleans will vote on a resolution against policies that would subsidize "any and all vehicles, energy, fuels and fueling infrastructure," which could slow electric vehicle adoption. The proposal opposes states requiring customers or taxpayers to pay for electric vehicle charging infrastructure that it says "will likely be used by a small minority of consumers." [POLITICO's Morning Energy, August 9, 2018]





ELECTION WEIRDNESS IN MI-13 — Rashida Tlaib won the Democratic nod in Michigan's 13th (a deep blue district), making her functionally a congresswoman-in-waiting. But in a bizarre twist, it looks like she did not win the Democratic nomination for a special election that will take place concurrently with the general election to fill the remainder of former Rep. John Conyers' term, after he resigned amid sexual harassment allegations. Instead, Brenda Jones won that race, which saw fewer candidates than the general election primary. What exactly happens next remains up in the air, because it is unclear if Jones would want to give up her seat on the Detroit city council for a short, lame-duck term in Congress. The Detroit Free Pressreported that Jones' camp issued a statement saying "we're reviewing the results of last night's election and a statement will be forthcoming."
SOME LATE CALLS — Some Tuesday election results that have been called since the early edition of Score on Wednesday:
— KS-03: Sharice Davids won the Democratic nomination for the right to take on GOP Rep. Kevin Yoder.
— MI-09: Andy Levin won the Democratic primary to succeed his father, Democratic Rep. Sandy Levin.
— MI-11: Lena Epstein won the Republican nomination while Haley Stevens won the Democratic nod. [POLITICO's Morning Score, August 9, 2018}


"'Nothing bodes well': Lackluster election results spark debate over Trump's midterm role": "A new round of lackluster showings by Republican candidates reignited a debate Wednesday within the GOP over whether President Trump will be a drag on the party's chances in November and should stay out of some of the country's most hotly contested races. Inside the White House, Trump aides are mapping out plans for the fall that would offer a variety of options to Republican candidates, including visits by the president's daughter Ivanka Trump to blue states and presidential tweets to bolster red-state allies.
"But mounting apprehension about Trump's political capital lingered in Washington and on the campaign trail. In a flurry of elections on Tuesday — from the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio, to the technology corridor in Washington state — Democrats turned out in droves and significantly overperformed expectations by posing serious challenges to Republicans in staunchly GOP districts." WaPo [POLITICO Playbook, August 9, 2018]



ELECTIONS






FROM SEA TO SHINING SEA — Russian operatives have "penetrated" some of Florida's election systems ahead of the 2018 midterms, Sen. Bill Nelson told the Tampa Bay Times. "They have already penetrated certain counties in the state and they now have free rein to move about," according to Nelson, who is up for re-election and is the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Cybersecurity subpanel. He declined to elaborate on the breach, saying details are "classified." Local Florida officials were like, "what ?" DHS spokeswoman Sara Sendek said, "While we are aware of Senator Nelson's recent statements, we have not seen any new compromises by Russian actors of election infrastructure. That said, we don't need to wait for a specific threat to be ready."
Nelson's comments aside, some election officials in his state, Wisconsin and Ohio believe they're on good footing ahead. Elsewhere, Missouri mapped out how it will use its portion of the $380 million Congress approved for election systems upgrades, but Texas is struggling to find cash to update its voting infrastructure, though some parts of the Lone Star State seem to have a handle on it. A key election security bill in Congress (S. 2593) designed to aid states, however, faced a delay.
Meanwhile, the Elections Industry Special Interest Group, or EI-SIG, created a new group to help election vendors fend off hackers. The group will help "scale up the sharing that's happening through our companies within the private sector," Kay Stimson, an executive at the voting giant Dominion who chairs the EI-SCC, said in a statement. "This proactive move will help industry understand broader threats to election IT systems and engage in peer-to-peer learning across sectors." [POLITICO's Morning Cybersecurity, August 9, 2018]














CVS could have new troubles with its proposed $69 billion takeover of health insurer Aetna, as the American Medical Association yesterday asked the Department of Justice to intervene.
  • AMA argued the deal could raise prescription drug prices.
  • CVS, meanwhile, chimed in on the drug price debate during its Q2 earnings. Specifically, it tried rebutting claims that rebates (which are only vaguely defined) are correlated to higher drug prices, and broke out rebate-related earnings that were much lower than what some analysts had believed. [Axios Pro Rata, August 9, 2018]


GREAT BRITAIN




SOCIAL MEDIA — POLICING: Udo Bullmann, leader of the Socialist MEPs, asked Twitter and Facebook if they were “willing to help protect the vote on EP elections in 2019?” He wrote “when democracy is at stake, we can’t buy disclaimers, we need explanations and action.” [POLITICO Brussels Influence, August 10, 2018]



RUSSIA








NOTE: I have no official connection to any organization from which information is shared.. Occasionally, I post informational material and/or an opportunity to donate or join as  a "community service" announcement.  These again are shared for their varying perspectives.


Any commercial or business interest information shared is purely informational, not an endorsement.  I have no connection with any such commercial or business interest.

Any books listed are random or topic-related to something else in the post.  Think of these as a "library bookshelf" to browse.  They are shared for informational or entertainment value only, not as being recommended.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment