Donald Trump pushes deep cut to Great Lakes funding — again

Detroit Free Press

Donald Trump pushes deep cut to Great Lakes funding — again

Todd Spangler, Detroit Free Press February 12, 2018

(Photo: Mike De Sisti/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump’s budget proposal for next year again calls for drastic cuts in Great Lakes restoration efforts, as well as for slashing rental aid that tens of thousands of Michiganders rely on and toughening work requirements for able-bodied adults receiving nutrition assistance.

It also calls for investing $1.5 billion in programs that support private and charter schools while cutting about $5 billion overall from the U.S. Department of Education.

Like the budget proposal made about this time last year, Trump is looking to nearly eliminate funding for a $300-million program that helps restore Great Lakes water quality by improving fish habitat, cleaning up polluted waterways and protecting wetlands. Trump’s earlier efforts to defund it have so far been rejected, as the program enjoys the support of Republicans as well as Democrats in the Upper Midwest.

Unlike last year, however, Trump’s White House did not make the proposed cut — from $300 million this year to $30 million in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 — clear in its budget message or its list of major reductions and reforms, burying it in a line in a 96-page budget explanation by the Environmental Protection Agency without explanation.

President Donald Trump looks on before signing a proclamation to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in the White House on Jan. 12, 2018 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Olivier Douliery, Abaca Press, TNS)

“If there’s one thing we’ve learned, we can’t take it for granted that others understand how important our water is,” said U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich. “This is outrageous. People across Michigan spoke out and took action last year to stop these cuts and I know they’ll do so again.”

Added U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Flint Township, “Cutting Great Lakes investments by 90% — essentially eliminating the program — threatens the health of our lakes and jeopardizes Michigan’s economy.”

Trump’s budget also again looks to slash other programs considered important to Detroit and other cities in Michigan, including the Community Development Block Grant fund. But it’s unlikely he will be able to push through such draconian reductions — especially given that he was unable to do so in his first year in office with members of his own Republican Party in control of both chambers of Congress..

More on this topic:

Trump plan slashes funding for Detroit, Great Lakes and much more

$300 million for Great Lakes protected in funding bill, thwarting Trump

Trump announced the $1.2-trillion budget for the next fiscal year as expected on Monday, including in it $23 billion for border security, $21 billion for infrastructure and $17 billion to fund efforts to fight the ongoing opioid epidemic, as well as substantially increasing military spending by $80 billion or 13%.

But with Congress having final say over appropriations for programs and agencies, the president’s budget proposal has in recent years become more of a political statement of his own than a plan likely to be embraced by either the House or Senate.

Congress has already rejected, for now at least, many of Trump’s last-year proposals such as the elimination of CDBG funds and the popular Great Lakes restoration efforts as it has cobbled together a series of resolutions to keep government funded from month-to-month in the current fiscal year.

Trump’s proposal on Monday even suggested spending about $57 billion less overall on nondefense programs even though Congress authorized that higher level in a bipartisan deal — one signed off on by Trump — just last week.

“The budget reflects our commitment to the safety, prosperity and security of the American people,” Trump said in his budget message to Congress. “The more room our economy has to grow, and the more American companies are freed from constricting
overregulation, the stronger and safer we become as a nation.”

As a policy document, however, the annual budget release still presumably indicates where the chief executive would cut or spend if he could, and he continues to have his sights set on cutting certain programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which helped feed 1.3 million people in Michigan as of December.

Trump proposed cutting back on a portion of the financial benefits received by families and sending them regular packages of milk, cereal, meat, canned fruit and other goods, saying it would save money, improve nutritional benefits and reduce fraud. His budget message also said his administration would move to expand “previous reforms aimed at strengthening the expectation for work” among SNAP recipients though details on how that would be accomplished weren’t provided.

Able-bodied receipients already have some work requirements in many cases. The Trump administration suggested more than $213 billion over a decade could be saved through the president’s proposed changes.

Trump’s budget also calls again for eliminating the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program — which helped more than 440,000 Michiganders pay home energy bills last year — and the Community Development Block Grant program, administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The program helps pay for home shelters, transportation services, housing rehabilitation and more. In 2017, Michigan communities received more than $111 million in CDBG funds, including $31 million for Detroit.

The budget also suggests reforms to some HUD rental assistance programs —including increasing tenants’ share of rent they must pay from 30% of their income to 35%, which could save the government about $4.3 billion. The Washington-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated last year that about 145,000 low-income households in Michigan used federal rental assistance.

An addendum to the budget suggests adding about $2 billion from the recently agreed upon budget deal in Congress back into rental assistance to keep elderly and disabled renters from getting hit with higher rents.

Meanwhile, the proposal also argues for investing $1.5 billion in school choice programs under U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, with states applying for funding for scholarships that would allow students from low-income families to transfer to private schools and local school boards requesting funding to expand “open enrollment” systems. About $500 million or more would also go to start new charter schools.

Overall the Department of Education would be cut by $5 billion or so with several programs being eliminated, including $2 billion in a grant program to the states to help improve the quality and effectiveness of teachers, principals and other educators.

The grants, the White House said, “are poorly targeted and funds are spread too thinly to have a meaningful impact on student outcomes.”

“The president’s budget request expands education freedom for America’s families while protecting our nation’s most vulnerable students,” said DeVos, a former Michigan school choice advocate and state Republican Party chairwoman. “The budget also reflects our commitment to spending taxpayer dollars wisely and efficiently by consolidating and eliminating duplicative and ineffective federal programs.”

Trump on Monday clearly tried to steer interest toward an infrastructure proposal he argues could help attract about $1.5 trillion in new investments in roads, bridges and other projects by using $200 billion over 10 years to leverage state, local and private funding. What’s unclear, however, is whether Congress would be willing to put up such funding or whether states and local governments have the matching money needed to pay for the remainder of the program.

Gov. Rick Snyder’s office said he is “happy to see President Trump and his team discussing infrastructure across the board” and that he looks forward to “working with the Trump administration and serving as a role model for infrastructure development and solutions.”

But it wasn’t immediately clear what benefit the infrastructure proposal could mean to key Michigan projects, such as a sought-after navigation lock at Sault Ste. Marie. Shippers have been seeking a new super-size lock for decades to protect against any potential shutdown of the one aging lock there now that is large enough to handle the biggest ships carrying iron ore and other freight through the Great Lakes.

“It appears there is very little in the proposal that would benefit the Soo Lock project,” Glen Nekvasil, vice president of the Lake Carriers’ Association, which represents shippers on the Great Lakes, said after reviewing the White House’s infrastructure plan. “Nor does it seem to provide any additional funding for authorized projects such as the second (large) lock.”

Contact Todd Spangler: 703-854-8947 or tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter at @tsspangler. USA TODAY contributed to this report.

Trump’s long-awaited infrastructure plan is a fraud

ThinkProgress

Trump’s long-awaited infrastructure plan is a fraud

This is the way Infrastructure Week begins, not with a bang but a whimper.

Elham Khatami, Adam Peck February 12, 2018

Credit: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post via Getty Images

President Donald Trump unveiled his long-awaited infrastructure plan on Monday, touting the proposal as a $1.5 trillion investment in the nation’s highways, bridges, waterways, and other infrastructure projects. The plan’s topline number sounds great on the surface, but it wildly misconstrues the actual investment being proposed by the federal government — and Trump knows it.

The proposal aims to turn $200 billion in federal funds into a $1.5 trillion investment over the next ten years by placing most of the financial burden on states and cities, which will have to cover at least 80 percent of the cost of any infrastructure project in order to qualify for federal grants, likely through higher taxes, tolls, and other user fees. The $200 billion number is a dramatic reduction in federal cost-sharing from years past.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal in January, Trump conceded that the $200 billion in federal funds is “not a large amount,” going on to criticize the amount of money the United States has spent on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In a tweet Monday morning, Trump reiterated his criticism:

Donald Trump: This will be a big week for Infrastructure. After so stupidly spending $7 trillion in the Middle East, it is now time to start investing in OUR Country!

But Trump’s plan barely makes a dent in what’s needed to fix the country’s ailing infrastructure. Instead, it places the onus on cash-strapped states and municipalities to come up with the revenue to improve their own infrastructure. As CityLab reported last year, this will be especially difficult for “cities that never financially recovered from the recession, like Detroit, Cleveland, Stockton, and Memphis,” which are limited in their spending ability and yet need infrastructure investments the most.

According to the American Society of Civil Engineers’ (ASCE) annual Infrastructure Report Card, the United States needs to invest $4.59 trillion by 2025 in order to improve the country’s infrastructure — a figure three times larger than even the rosiest estimate in Trump’s proposal and more than 20 times larger than the $200 billion actually allocated.

“If the United States continues on this trajectory and fails to invest, the nation will face serious economic consequences, including $3.9 trillion in losses to U.S. GDP and more than 2.5 million American jobs lost in 2025,” the ASCE report said.

The $200 billion in federal spending includes $100 billion in incentive grants, aimed at encouraging increased state, local, and private infrastructure investment; $50 billion in rural formula funds, which seeks to promote investment in rural infrastructure needs; and $20 billion in so-called transformative projects, described as projects “that can significantly improve existing infrastructure conditions and services” but are considered too risky to attract private or local investments.

Even calling it a $200 billion investment by the federal government is a misnomer. Instead of finding new sources of revenue, the funds will be entirely offset by cuts to other existing infrastructure programs, including a 19 percent decrease in funding for the Department of Transportation and a 3 percent decrease for the Department of Energy, as highlighted in Trump’s fiscal 2019 budget, which was also released today.

Pointing out the glaring lack of new sources of funding in the infrastructure proposal, Michael Linden, fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, said on Twitter, “All told, he’s basically proposing a $0 infrastructure plan.”

Michael Linden: No. No. No. This headline is budget-illiterate. Trump’s budget will include $200 billion in infrastructure spending, offset by 20% reductions in base funding for Depts. of Transportation and Energy. All told, he’s basically proposing a $0 infrastructure plan. https://twitter.com/TIME/status/962904104648499200 …

It is unlikely that most lawmakers on either side of the aisle will support Trump’s proposal — with Democrats, and some Republicans, criticizing the plan’s lack of new revenue sources.

But even if the proposal made its way through Congress and money began flowing to projects around the country, it’s unlikely the spending would have any meaningful impact on the worsening condition of the most vital infrastructure programs.

By leaving local governments on the hook for 80 percent of the cost of a project, the Trump administration is encouraging investments in public-private partnerships. A city will partner with a private developer, for instance, to construct a new building as part of neighborhood revitalization. But spending is most needed where public-private partnerships are hard to come by. Private financiers seek to tap into sustainable revenue streams when deciding what projects to invest in, and there are few revenue streams to be had for street repairs or water pipe maintenance. In states that have ceded some authority to private companies for the management and maintenance of highways, regressive tolls have hit the poorest workers the hardest.

The Next Recession Is Really Gonna Suck

HuffPost – Politics

The Next Recession Is Really Gonna Suck

The extra help unemployed people got during the Great Recession has emboldened states to mistreat them.

By Arthur Delaney February 10, 2018

JI SUB JEONG / HUFFPOST

WASHINGTON ― When the next recession comes, many people who lose their jobs will have a harder time getting unemployment insurance, an important lifeline for most Americans. In several states, these people could have to pee in cups just to qualify.

Those who don’t get benefits will have to settle for the sort of fake jobs our economy produces in abundance — a contract job in an Amazon fulfillment center, say, or a gig delivering groceries to people who still have careers.

Talk of a recession is in the air again after the recent wobble in the stock market. It’s highly likely the next recession will occur in the coming three years, while President Donald Trump is still in office. Maybe it’ll happen as a result of his inflation-baiting tax bill. Maybe it’ll have something to do with excessive consumer debt. We don’t know what the cause will be, but we do have some idea of how Americans will experience the next sustained economic slump. Since the Great Recession, during which the GOP repeatedly if grudgingly went along with former President Barack Obama to extend unemployment insurance, Republicans on both the state and federal level have pushed to make benefits less generous and harder to get.

Meanwhile, the holes they’ve created in the safety net will be filled by so-called “alternative work arrangements” — gigs — which offer fewer protections for workers than full-time jobs.

By design, America is ill-prepared for its next recession, and it’s going to suck.

YURI GRIPAS / REUTERS

The president of the United States will deny that the bad jobs numbers are real.

It’s the U.S. government that measures economic growth and the unemployment rate, but it’s actually up to a private nonprofit organization called the National Bureau of Economic Research to tell us when a recession has begun. Since the 1920s, this organization has had a committee of eggheads looking at a variety of indicators, especially personal income levels, unemployment rates and the gross domestic product, to determine when a recession has started.

A recession starts after economic activity has reached its peak. Right when things are better than ever is when they’re about to get worse. The decline in business conditions has to affect the whole economy; it can’t just be a single-sector slump, like the one Amazon has wrought among retailers. But you won’t know the recession has started until later, because the NBER waits until the government has finished its data revisions, which happens over a period of months. It wasn’t until 2008 that the organization announced that the last recession had begun in 2007.

There have been 11 recessions since World War II. The current economic expansion began in mid-2009, making it the third longest in history, and it can’t last forever.

Expansions don’t just die of old age. One thing that can trigger recessions is the Federal Reserve hiking interest rates to quell inflation. The Federal Reserve is currently in the process of raising rates, but inflation is still low and most economists see no cause for concern in the immediate future ― though economists are not exactly great at predicting what will happen.

“When wage and price pressures develop, that’s when the clock starts to tick,” said Mark Zandi, an economist with Moody’s Analytics, a financial analysis provider.

Upward pressure on wages has begun to develop. The official unemployment rate is still falling, and it has been at or below 5 percent for about two years ― a level that has traditionally triggered inflation fears. But economists can point to a range of other measures, such as reduced labor force participation, that suggests the labor market is still out of whack.With interest rates already very low, the Fed has wanted to bring them up partly to ward off phantom inflation and partly just so it can lower them again when the next recession comes around. Because it will.

One possible table-setter for a recession, Zandi said, is a huge tax cut that increases the size of the federal budget deficit — something very much like the contents of the Republican tax bill that Trump signed in December. In such a scenario all the extra money in taxpayer’s hands could cause the economy to overheat, leading the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates faster in an effort to stave off inflation.

“If the tax cuts are deficit financed, that is going to juice the economy and it will overheat, significantly raising the odds of a recession early in the next decade,” Zandi said.

Most economists are less confident the tax cuts will juice the economy quite so much, but they generally do anticipate an aggressive Fed response. “Interest rates are projected to rise in the short term because the legislation would boost aggregate demand and output, leading the Federal Reserve to increase interest rates to avoid a surge in inflation,” the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center said in its December 2017 analysis of the economic effects of the new law.

Outgoing Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen, for her part, kept the Fed’s plans cryptic in the wake of the tax bill. “I think my colleagues and I are in line with the general expectation among most economists that the type of tax changes that are likely to be enacted would tend to provide some modest lift to GDP growth in the coming years,” she said.

AARON BERNSTEIN / REUTERS

Republicans on both the state and federal level have pushed to make benefits less generous and harder to get.

While federal and state governments run an array of programs that respond to economic need, nothing is more important when mass layoffs roll around than unemployment insurance, which is not handed out to just anyone. Only people who are laid off through no fault of their own, and who have well-established work histories over the previous year, are eligible. Benefits are designed to replace about 46 percent of the person’s lost wages.

The average unemployment benefit ranged from $330 to $350 per week since 2016, according to The Department of Labor, making it more valuable than other programs responding to economic need. Food stamps, for instance, might provide that much money over the course of a month. The generosity of the benefit serves two purposes: one is to protect layoff victims themselves, and the other is to prevent a broader deflationary spiral caused by desperate people accepting terrible wages at jobs for which they’re not really suited.

After the Great Recession got underway, while hundreds of thousands of people were losing their jobs each month, Congress started increasing the duration of unemployment insurance for people who’d used up the standard 26 weeks of benefits that states provide. Republican foot-dragging over the cost of the benefits led to a huge fight in 2010, with former Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) infamously responding to Democratic pleas by saying “tough shit” on the Senate floor.

Since then, Congress has quietly allowed those benefits to expire while statehouse Republicans ― aghast that Barack Obama gave their constituents up to 99 weeks of combined state and federal unemployment insurance ― have hacked away at their own unemployment programs. Nine states reduced benefit duration from the usual 26 weeks, and many others have apparently gotten more aggressive in checking up on claimants to make sure they’re continuing to look for work, which has always been an eligibility requirement.

As a result, the rate at which unemployed Americans receive layoff compensation overall has fallen from about 36 percent in 2007 to about 28 percent in 2017, according to data from The Department of Labor. Wayne Vroman, an associate with the Urban Institute, said a big reason for the decline is that states are finding ways to kick unemployed people off benefits after they’ve already been deemed eligible. His research shows a big increase in “nonseparation determinations.” These are instances of states investigating whether someone is continuing to meet eligibility requirements by doing things like writing down the names and addresses of businesses where they’ve applied for work on forms to state work agencies.

“When agencies have undertaken nonseparation determinations in recent years, the outcome has become much more likely to be a denial than in 1989 or 1999,” Vroman wrote in a paper that will be published this year. For instance, denial rates for determinations examining a person’s availability for work ― their willingness to take a job ― which is a requirement of benefit receipt, were 64 percent in 1989 and 83 percent in 2016.

Unemployment compensation is a state-federal program financed by payroll taxes on employers. When a lot of people lose their jobs and state unemployment trust funds run dry, states have to borrow money and sometimes increase payroll taxes ― something that makes Republican lawmakers enthusiastic about trimming benefits. (Most extra weeks of federal benefits are fully funded by the federal government and created by Congress on an ad-hoc basis.)

States are still smarting from the Great Recession. At the beginning of last year, only 21 state trust funds had achieved what the Labor Department considers a minimum level of solvency. If they can’t catch up before layoffs hit, there will be political pressure to follow the new path that other states have taken to reduce benefits. Lawmakers in Kentucky, which has a poor solvency rating, are currently considering proposals to make the state’s unemployment system more like Florida’s, currently one of the worst.

It’s an old pattern. After the recession of the early 1980s, changes in state benefits helped reduce the proportion of unemployed workers receiving compensation from 50 percent in 1980 to 37 percent in 1990, according to political scientist Paul Pierson’s 1994 book Dismantling the Welfare State?

Josh Bivens, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, said the country isn’t well prepared for the next recession.

“We have managed to make UI incredibly non-protective,” Bivens said. “If we want the UI system to not be a complete joke in the next recession, it’s going to depend on Congress and the president.”

But Congress and the president might be more interested in urine tests than UI. Since about 2011, Republicans at the state and federal level have been trying to make drug tests a requirement for welfare, food stamps and unemployment insurance. In 2012, Congress passed a law giving states the right to drug test some unemployment claimants, but the measure let the Obama Labor Department decide who would be subjected to the test, resulting in a narrowly written regulation that Republicans said wouldn’t catch anybody.

Republicans scrapped the regulation last year, and the Trump administration has said it will release a new one sometime soon. Wisconsin, Texas and Mississippi have already passed drug test laws and are just waiting for a green light from the Labor Department.

TERO VESALAINEN VIA GETTY IMAGES

Republicans at the state and federal level have been trying to make drug tests a requirement for welfare, food stamps and unemployment insurance.

How will a new recession play out under this new unemployment benefits regime? The recent hurricanes offer a preview. Storms that battered Texas and Florida threw tens of thousands of people out of work. Storm victims are supposed to be eligible for unemployment benefits and can file through the regular process.

In Florida, it’s not an easy process. The state overhauled its unemployment system in 2011, requiring layoff victims to file claims online and even (for a time) take a math and reading test. Since 2007, before the last recession started, the percentage of unemployed Floridians who receive compensation plunged from 32 percent to 9 percent, almost the lowest rate of coverage in the nation.

Anthony Di Biagio is the co-owner of a residential and commercial cleaning service in Cape Coral, Florida. In the aftermath of Hurricane Irma he was unable to work because some of his clients’ homes and businesses were inaccessible. As a business owner, Di Biagio was ineligible for regular unemployment compensation, but perfectly eligible for the special disaster assistance provided through the state unemployment system.

After spending 40 minutes initiating his application online, Di Biagio learned it would take some real vigilance to actually receive the benefits. He’d have to request payments every two weeks and register with an online service called “Employ Florida Marketplace” as though he were looking for a job ― which, as a business owner, he was not.

“Unfortunately, this is counterproductive for me because I know that my unemployment is temporary and I’ll most likely only need benefits for 1-2 months,” he said in a Facebook message. “Even if I found a job with EFM, I couldn’t commit to it because I already own a company which plans to be fully operational as soon as possible.”

The problems stem partly from the state’s apparent desire to discourage people from obtaining benefits and partly from plain old private sector incompetence. Florida hired Deloitte Consulting to overhaul the website and complained loudly about the contractor’s work, which in 2013 and 2014 the state blamed for claimants being unable to receive benefits in timely fashion. Handling claims through an automated system is supposed to save money on staff, but two other states that hired the firm to overhaul electronic benefits delivery have also encountered massive benefits delays and other problems.

(A Deloitte Consulting spokesman said unemployment system in all three states have been fully functional since 2014. “Unemployed workers in all of the states in which we have worked are receiving the unemployment benefits for which they’re eligible, in a timely fashion and in accordance with state and federal laws,” he said.)

“The states that run these really threadbare programs, it’s not the economic stabilizer you would want for a family facing job loss for their main wage earner,” George Wentworth, a senior staff attorney with the National Employment Law Project, said in an interview. “It’s the most important program for the average American who loses their job. That’s why there are standards [in federal law] saying as soon as you’re eligible you should be getting payment within three weeks of filing that claim.”

The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity declined to comment.

One thing that could actually make the next recession less miserable than its predecessor is “work sharing.” Thirty states currently offer work-sharing or “short-time compensation” programs that allow companies to reduce a group of employees’ hours instead of doing layoffs. The state then uses its unemployment insurance trust fund to compensate the workers for the missing hours.

Congress doled out $100 million for states to set up work-sharing programs in 2012, and several states designed new programs as a result. A Labor Department-commissioned study released in 2016 found that of the more than 2,000 businesses that enrolled in a state work-sharing program from 2008 through 2013, most had a favorable experience and more than 80 percent said they would sign up again.

It’s such a good idea that of course nobody has heard of it.

Economists who are familiar with work sharing say it’s ridiculous how unfamiliar the concept is to most people considering its bipartisan backing. One flaw of the policy is that it’s entirely up to employers to sign up for the state-sponsored programs, even though its workers whose livelihoods are at stake.

“It would be neat if employees could initiate this as well,” economist Lonnie Golden of Penn State Abington said. “The information is just not out there.”

CHARLES PLATIAU / REUTERS

Alternative work arrangements are more commonly along the lines of those Amazon warehouse jobs than they are for online platforms.

Another distinguishing feature of the next recession will be the prevalence of fake jobs with no benefits. Since 2005, the percentage of the workforce toiling in “alternative work arrangements,” such as freelance or subcontractor gigs, has risen from 10 to almost 16 percent, according to 2016 research by Lawrence Katz and Alan Krueger, economists at Harvard and Princeton, respectively. Less than 1 percent of jobs are for online platforms like Uber or TaskRabbit; alternative work arrangements are more commonly along the lines of those Amazon warehouse jobs where you don’t actually work for Amazon.

This kind of work accounted for all of the net employment growth from 2010 to 2015 and has spread throughout occupations. The advantage is that these jobs are easier to get. The disadvantages are that they’re less likely to come with benefits; they’re less secure; and the schedules are more erratic.

And people working in such jobs may be ineligible for unemployment, since if they’re not actual employees of the firm they work for their state won’t have W2 forms on file reflecting their earnings. For people who don’t have benefits, the “flexibility” of contract work may be their only lifeline.

Katz and Krueger found in a follow-up paper that people who’d suffered unemployment were significantly more likely to find themselves in an alternative work arrangement after the Great Recession ― something that will happen even more next time the economy tanks.

“We would certainly expect a jump in people, as they lose out on possibilities of more traditional jobs, moving into alternative work,” Katz said.

Then there’s the Trump factor. When the mass layoffs return and the unemployment rate rises the newly jobless will discover that not only have they lost their livelihoods, but they have also become fake news.

The president of the United States will deny that the bad jobs numbers are real. Just as candidate Trump insisted the official unemployment rate was 10 times higher than the Obama administration said, President Trump won’t hesitate to cast doubt on his own government’s rate when it starts rising.

Who cares? Well, the tens of millions of Americans who will churn through the unemployment system are going to care. One of the worst things about being unemployed, aside from the fact that you have no money, is that you lose a routine that essentially connects you to society through daily interactions with other people. And since American culture closely links your value as a human to your career, it can be difficult to maintain self respect ― which helps explain the link between joblessness and suicide. Massive numbers of alienated and vulnerable people already living a surreal existence will be explicitly told they’re not even real.

Ask anyone who suffered more than a brief spell of joblessness in the wake of the Great Recession, which officially lasted from December 2007 to June 2009, how it felt to keep hearing that the economy was improving. Ask Donald Witkowski.

“I haven’t believed a word they told me in years,” Witkowski told HuffPost. And that’s how he felt even though the president at the time took pains to say that, despite economic progress, many people had been left behind ― a kind of nuance Trump doesn’t do.

Witkowski, 59, lost his job in 2011 when the paper mill in Whiting, Wisconsin, closed down. He’d worked there for decades. Now, still unemployed and receiving disability benefits, he’s alienated from his government even after having gotten nearly a year of unemployment insurance thanks to a series of federal extensions. Whatever goes wrong with the next recession, he said, will be worse than whatever the statistics say. He has a prediction for the next downturn, and it’s based less on economics than on his experience of the last one.

“It won’t be a recession,” he said. “I think it will be a total collapse.”

Correction: This article initially stated the Great Recession lasted from December 2007 to January 2009. It lasted from December 2007 to June 2009.

Do you have information you want to share with HuffPost? Here’s how. Arthur Delaney, Senior Reporter, HuffPost

First-class travel distinguishes Scott Pruitt’s EPA tenure as administrator

Chicago Tribune

First-class travel distinguishes Scott Pruitt’s EPA tenure as administrator

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt at the Vatican in June. Pruitt’s tenure has been marked by first-class travel. (Courtesy of the Environmental Protection Agency)

Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post February 11, 2018

Just days after helping orchestrate the United States’ exit from a global climate accord last June, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt embarked on a whirlwind tour aimed at championing President Donald Trump‘s agenda at home and abroad.

On Monday, June 5, accompanied by his personal security detail, Pruitt settled into his $1,641.43 first-class seat for a short flight from the District to New York City. His ticket cost more than six times that of the two media aides who came along and sat in coach, according to agency travel vouchers; the records do not show whether his security detail accompanied him at the front of the plane.

In Manhattan, Pruitt made two brief television appearances praising the White House‘s decision to withdraw from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, stayed with staff at an upscale hotel near Times Square and returned to Washington the next day.

That Wednesday, after traveling with Trump on Air Force One for an infrastructure event in Cincinnati, Pruitt and several staffers raced to New York on a military jet, at a cost of $36,068.50, to catch a plane to Rome.

The transatlantic flight was part of a round-trip ticket for the administrator that cost $7,003.52, according to EPA records -several times what was paid for other officials who went. The documents do not explain the discrepancy. In Rome, Pruitt and a coterie of aides and security personnel got private tours of the Vatican and met with papal officials, business executives and legal experts before heading briefly to a meeting of environmental ministers in Bologna. Pruitt departed the Group of Seven summit a day early, before negotiations had concluded, to attend a Cabinet meeting at which Trump’s deputies lauded the president’s job performance.

In total, the taxpayer-funded travel for Pruitt and his top aides during that stretch in early June cost at least $90,000, according to months ofreceipts obtained by the Environmental Integrity Project under the Freedom of Information Act. That figure does not account for the costs of Pruitt’s round-the-clock security detail, which have not been disclosed.

In an interview Sunday, EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman said all of Pruitt’s travel expenses have been approved by federal ethics officials.

“He’s trying to further positive environmental outcomes and achieve tangible environmental results” through his travel, she said, adding that in the case of the New York trip, “He’s communicating the message about his agenda and the president’s agenda.”

On other domestic trips, Bowman added: “He’s hearing directly from people affected by EPA’s regulatory overreach.”

As he enters his second year in charge of the EPA, Pruitt is distinguishing himself from his predecessors in ways that go beyond policy differences. His travel practices — which tend to be secretive, costly and frequent — are integral to how he approaches his role.

Pruitt tends to bring a larger entourage of political advisers on his trips than past administrators. But while the aides usually fly coach, according to travel vouchers through August obtained by The Washington Post separately from the Environmental Integrity Project, he often sits in first or business class, which previous administrators typically eschewed.

Last year, Pruitt promoted U.S. natural-gas exports in Morocco, sat on a panel about the rule of law in Rome and met with his counterparts from major industrialized countries. This year, he plans to travel to Israel, Australia, Japan, Mexico and possibly Canada, according to officials familiar with his schedule. None of those visits have been officially announced.

Pruitt plans to meet with his foreign counterparts and U.S. and foreign business officials abroad, as well as tour energy facilities.

These overseas trips are largely un-tethered to the kind of multilateral environmental summits that dominated his predecessors’ schedules, and Pruitt rarely discloses where he plans to be.

In an interview Friday, Bowman said the agency doesn’t release Pruitt’s schedule in advance “due to security concerns” and because it could be a “distraction” from the trips. But she added that he has received government invitations for all his foreign trips.

“There’s just a lot of international cooperation that the head of any Cabinet-level agency wants to establish with his or her counterparts,” she said.

The agency records show that wherever Pruitt’s schedule takes him, he often flies first or business class, citing unspecified security concerns. EPA’s assistant inspector general for investigations told The Post in September that Pruitt has gotten a higher number of threats than his recent predecessors.

Federal regulations state that government travelers are required to “exercise the same care in incurring expenses that a prudent person would exercise if traveling on personal business … and therefore, should consider the least expensive class of travel that meets their needs.” Agencies are allowed to authorize first-class travel in rare instances, such as a flight of 14 hours or more, a medical disability or when “exceptional security circumstances” mean “use of coach class accommodations would endanger your life or government property.”

Pruitt has used the security exception often during the past year.

In a two-day period last July, he spent $4,443 for separate round-trips to Birmingham and Atlanta for visits that included a power plant and farm tour. On at least four occasions, he has spent between $2,000 and $2,600 on first-class airfare to official meetings or tours near Tulsa, where he lives. Frequently, he stayed in Tulsa for the weekend, records show, before returning to Washington.

Pruitt’s other first-class trips include a $4,627 itinerary to Salt Lake City, Minneapolis and Little Rock to promote the unraveling of a controversial Obama administration water regulation. Another multi-city ticket, which included stops in Colorado, Iowa, North Dakota and Texas, cost $10,830, according to the vouchers, not including lodging and incidentals.

A separate batch of travel vouchers obtained by the Environmental Working Group shows that Pruitt flew coach multiple times from March to May 2017, but he also logged several more expensive trips during that period. On May 11, the administrator delivered the keynote address to the Heritage Foundation’s Resource Bank Meeting in Colorado Springs; the conservative group covered his lodging, but the ticket cost $2,903.56. A week later, he flew to Tulsa to tour the Brainerd Chemical Co. and stayed the weekend, for a flight cost of $1,980.34.

While on the road, Pruitt often stays at high-end hotels, according to travel records: the Kimpton in Salt Lake City, Le Meridien in Minneapolis, the Capital in Little Rock and the Michelangelo in New York.

In addition, he frequently opts to fly Delta Airlines, even though the government has contracts with specific airlines on certain routes. Asked whether there is an additional expense associated with flying Delta when there is a comparable government contract flight, Bowman said, “EPA staff seek cost-efficient travel options at all times.”

Such travel decisions, coupled with a tendency to not publicize out-of-town trips, have prompted criticism from Democratic lawmakers and environmental groups, who have questioned how much some of Pruitt’s trips have to do with the EPA’s mission.

“What did American taxpayers get for Pruitt visiting the Vatican and getting photographed with European agency heads?” said Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, of last year’s Italy trip. “This was all for show.”

The group obtained Pruitt’s travel vouchers through litigation and is suing for other travel-related documents, including speeches he has made in closed-door meetings with industry officials.

“It is acutely paranoid,” Schaeffer said of the EPA’s refusal to disclose Pruitt’s whereabouts on any given day. “He’s a public official. His schedule should be publicly known.”

At the request of congressional Democrats, EPA’s Office of Inspector General is conducting probes of Pruitt’s travel last year and the expansion of his security detail.

The decision to bring seven political aides and his security detail to Rome for two days before the G7 summit significantly increased the cost of the Italy trip, which included just two career EPA officials. The Rome stop included a routine U.S. embassy briefing, a meet-and-greet with business executives and a roundtable on the judiciary. But much of the two-day stop was devoted to papal visits, including a meeting with Archbishop Paul Gallagher and private tours of the Vatican and St. Peter’s Basilica.

Bowman declined to comment specifically on the topics discussed at the Vatican, but said in an email, “While in Italy, Administrator Pruitt discussed how the U.S. is leading the world in environmental achievements to remediate toxic land, reduce air pollution, improve water infrastructure, and ensure access to clean drinking water.”

She added: “These discussions were broad, and very well-received.”

In December, Pruitt journeyed to Morocco, where he touted America’s natural-gas exports and discussed a series of policy collaborations between the two countries.

Pruitt’s two immediate predecessors, Lisa Jackson and Gina McCarthy, also traveled repeatedly to foreign summits and other events. Jackson traveled abroad four times a year while on the job, including to the G8 Environment Ministers meeting in Siracusa, Italy; the U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen; the inauguration of Indonesia’s president; and the Netherlands as part of a trip focused on sea-level rise. The entire delegation flew coach to the Netherlands, and invited the media to come along.

McCarthy traveled overseas between four and seven times a year, including to multilateral meetings; a G.E. oil and gas conference in Florence, Italy; the Costa Rican president’s inauguration; and to the closing ceremony of the Rio Olympics.

Unlike with Pruitt, the EPA typically announced McCarthy’s general itinerary and the purpose of her trips in advance.

“McCarthy will arrive in China beginning on Monday, December 9, to discuss US-China cooperation on air quality, climate pollution and environmental issues. She will travel to Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong during her four-day visit,” read a 2013 agency news release posted days before her visit.

By contrast, Pruitt’s EPA routinely gives the public no such notice, either domestically or internationally.

Last week, for instance, Pruitt surfaced in Florida, to the surprise of reporters who cover the EPA and even media outlets in the state. An official said the agency notified some local and national outlets.

The EPA has also declined at times to confirm in advance Pruitt’s speaking engagements to various industry and political groups.

Several foreign officials, when contacted by The Post, deferred questions about Pruitt’s upcoming visits either to the U.S. embassy or EPA.

In the coming weeks, Pruitt will embark on a series of trips, some of which had been postponed due to external circumstances. A brief government shutdown in January forced the administrator to cancel a trip to Japan and Israel, for example, and he will travel this month instead.

Japanese embassy spokeswoman Rieko Suzuki said in an email that Pruitt had raised the idea of visiting with Japanese Environment Minister Masaharu Nakagawa, and her country was working on finalizing the details. “Since EPA Administrator Pruitt expressed his intention of visiting Japan and meeting Minister Nakagawa,” she wrote, “the Ministry of Environment of Japan has been trying to arrange a bilateral meeting.”

A spokesman for a low-emissions coal thermal plant located in the suburbs of Tokyo, run by the electric utility firm J-Power, confirmed Pruitt was scheduled to visit the facility. J Power spokesman Shingen Tsuneoka said that the plant emits “almost no” nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide, two major air pollutants released by burning coal.

Bowman said Pruitt is headed to Japan “to strengthen existing areas of environmental cooperation, learn how Japan is responding to emerging energy challenges, and share successful approaches to innovative environmental technologies.” The administrator also will participate in a business roundtable with the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan, and visit the Yokohama Hydrogen Supply Chain Demonstration, she added.

In Israel, Bowman said, Pruitt will “visit a water recycling plant, hear from Israeli water technology companies about their successes in wastewater recycling for irrigation, visit a waste processing facility, tour a toxic land remediation site” and take part in a clean energy roundtable.

Next month, Pruitt is tentatively planning a one-day trip to Mexico to meet with Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Rafael Pacchiano Alamán, she said. That trip also had been postponed, according to travel vouchers.

Pruitt had intended to journey to Australia last year, according to EPA officials, where he was set to meet with officials from Peabody, the world’s largest private-sector coal company, as well as Melbourne-based energy giant BHP. The visit was to include a boat trip, according to an official, but was canceled because Pruitt had to work on the federal response to Hurricane Harvey.

This week, Pruitt is expected to travel to New Hampshire on a trip that will include a meeting with the governor, a visit to a local paper company and a tour of a Superfund site. The EPA has not publicized the trip.

Pain defines my life, but medical marijuana could change that

Chicago Sun Times – Opinion

Pain defines my life, but medical marijuana could change that

Ann Mednick February 8, 2018

AP file photo

Pain defines my life. It starts in my hip and flows from there like from a leaking faucet. The pain dominates my thoughts and my time, as I think about how to lessen it. It forces me to sit on and sleep with ice packs. It keeps me from doing things I love.

But if pain is the thief that stole my quality of life, the state of Illinois is its accomplice. A remedy exists that would significantly lessen my pain — and do so without damaging side effects. It works but the state won’t let me have it.

I’m talking about medical cannabis. Currently, Illinois allows doctors to certify medical cannabis for 41 medical conditions. But sacroiliac joint dysfunction and osteoarthritis — the conditions from which I suffer — are not among them. More importantly, neither is intractable pain — the medico-legal term for the chronic suffering that governs my life. I have lived with this pain for more than 20 years.

In 2015, I asked the state to put intractable pain on the treatment access list. My doctor supported my petition. The Illinois Medical Cannabis Advisory Board did too, voting 10-0 to add intractable pain to the approved list of conditions. Then, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health Dr. Nirav Shah said, “No.”

Illinois made medical cannabis legal in 2014, following 19 other states. At that time, the General Assembly wrote, “Cannabis as a medicine goes back nearly 5,000 years. Modern medical research has confirmed the beneficial uses of cannabis in treating or alleviating the pain, nausea and other symptoms associated with a variety of medical conditions.”

Since my pain became acute, I have seen numerous doctors and received countless prescriptions and shots. Doctors have given me fentanyl patches without hesitation. Fentanyl, of course, is an opioid — a class of drugs that is killing people in record numbers. In 2016, some 64,000 Americans died from drug overdoses, the overwhelming majority from opioids.

Opioids have wreaked havoc on my life and I want nothing to do with them. On fentanyl, I became a prisoner — even more of one than I am now. I could not leave my house for fear of being more than a few steps from a bathroom. I lost 80 pounds. The drug made me horribly sick and worse, it clouded my mind. There were days where I didn’t know if I could get out of bed.

Cannabis can ease pain without any of those side effects; it is not addictive. Two respected medical journals reviewing 45 clinical studies establish that it is an effective treatment of chronic pain.

Earlier this month, Cook County Judge Raymond Mitchell ruled that Shah’s decision was “clearly erroneous.” He ordered the state to allow medical cannabis use for intractable pain. This is the third time that the state of Illinois has appealed this case. They are wasting millions of taxpayer dollars.

“The record shows that individuals with intractable pain would benefit from the medical use of cannabis,” Mitchell wrote. Yet the Illinois Department of Public Health said it plans to appeal.

Yet Dr. Shah seems to think that if I want to reduce my pain, I should use opioids. I don’t know what else to conclude. I feel the state of Illinois is forcing me toward opioid use when a better alternative exists. For my sake, and for the sake of chronic pain sufferers across Illinois, I hope Dr. Shah will reconsider.

Ann Mednick, 58, lives with her husband in Rolling Meadows.

‘Serial stowaways’ like Marilyn Hartman are all around us

Chicago Sun Times – Opinion

Editorial: ‘Serial stowaways’ like Marilyn Hartman are all around us

Sun-Times Editorial Board February 8, 2018

Marilyn Hartman was arrested at O’Hare Airport, most recently, last Sunday. | Chicago Police Department via AP

There is nobody like Marilyn Hartman. Her constant attempts to sneak aboard airplanes have drawn media attention around the world.

We are fascinated by her persistence, her grandmotherly appearance and her obvious mental health problems. We’re not sure what’s to be done about her, as she sits in jail again, but she certainly doesn’t fit our idea of a dangerous criminal. What’s a little old lady doing behind bars?

In truth, of course, we are surrounded by people like Marilyn Hartman, even when we fail to notice. There’s the loud man who makes a little scene every morning at the corner Starbucks. There’s the woman who harasses riders on the L because “people” are chasing her. There’s the young guy who steals candy bars because, he says, God told him to.

They are no less harmless than Hartman, if less benign in their appearance — in our stereotypical and even racist perception. As Hartman herself has said, “I’m an old white lady. Nobody stops me.”

If we don’t know what to do about Hartman, that’s because we don’t know what to do about any of these people. Or we do know but don’t do it. Instead of seriously treating their mental illness, in the words of the Cook County Sheriff’s Office, we put Hartman and the others on “the conveyor belt” of our criminal justice system.

It should surprise nobody, though it should offend us all, that one in every four detainees in Cook County Jail — 1,500 men and women — has been diagnosed with a mental illness.

Last week, Hartman again was arrested at O’Hare Airport, just days after she was released from custody for allegedly sneaking aboard a British Airways flight to London. On Wednesday, a judge declined a request to move her from Cook County Jail to a community-based counseling center, making the perfectly valid point that Hartman might slip out and head right back to O’Hare.

Now Hartman will undergo an exam to determine whether she is fit to stand trial, as she has undergone before, and she likely will pass the test, as she has before. She is said to be intelligent and not unaware, and her ability to comprehend what’s going on in a criminal proceeding would seem to be fine.

What Hartman really needs, though, is to get off that conveyor belt of arrests, courtrooms and jails altogether, says the sheriff’s office. She should, instead, be provided with a highly individualized mental health treatment plan that finally gets to the source of her compulsion to stow away on planes.

The aim, says Cara Smith, chief policy officer for the sheriff’s office, should be to “connect Marilyn with someone who really cares about her” and can help her work her way to better mental health. In return for Hartman’s willing participation, the criminal charges against her could be held in abeyance.

Would this work? We don’t share Smith’s “cautious optimism” — Hartman has walked out of treatment facilities before — but the sheriff’s plan is a far sight more humane than the criminalizing of mental illness. And given the high expense of locking people up, it’s arguably cheaper.

There is nobody like Marilyn Hartman, true enough. But there are some 2 million people a lot like her. That’s roughly the number of people with mental illness in the United States who are jailed each year, according to the National Alliance on Mental Health.

The vast majority of these people, like Hartman, are not violent; but once incarcerated, their mental health generally grows worse.

Then, once released from jail or prison, they typically have little access to the health care they need, and their criminal records make it hard to find a job or housing. They wind up homeless. They fill our emergency rooms. They are arrested again. They put a strain on law enforcement — and law enforcement budgets — and, for all of that, none of us is any more or less safe.

“We need to hit the pause button,” Smith said. Hartman and other “super users” of our criminal justice system, she said, should be treated “as individuals with individualized issues, instead of items on an assembly line.”

And those “individual issues” should include not only mental illness, but also such scourges as drug addiction and poverty.

Any sensible person can see that Marilyn Hartman needs help, not punishment.

If only we, as a society, would extend that compassion to all the others among us who are broken by mental illness or drug addiction or poverty or worse, even when they don’t look like Beaver Cleaver’s grandmother.

Send letters to: letters@suntimes.com.

Corporations announcing small pay increases for workers under the GOP tax plan is “a hype” and an “attempt to fool people.”

Democracy Now!

February 9, 2018

Watch: Economist Richard D. Wolff explains why corporations announcing small pay increases for workers under the GOP tax plan is “a hype” and an “attempt to fool people.” http://ow.ly/j9jP30ijf5y

Richard Wolff on Democracy Now!

Watch: Economist Richard D. Wolff explains why corporations announcing small pay increases for workers under the GOP tax plan is "a hype" and an "attempt to fool people." http://ow.ly/j9jP30ijf5y

Posted by Democracy Now! on Saturday, February 10, 2018

Republican Rule, Week 55: There Is No Bottom to This Bottom

The Daily Beast – Worse and Worse

Republican Rule, Week 55: There Is No Bottom to This Bottom

Joy-Ann Reid February 9, 2018

Photo Illustration by Sarah Rogers/The Daily Beast

Democracy? That’s for losers. For the Republicans, the name of the game is winning—and rigging the system the better to ensure perpetual winning.

One year and a month into the Donald Trump presidency, it’s increasingly clear that the Republican Party, drunk on the power of unified government under a man it once despised, has given up on the idea of democracy and decided instead to stand firmly at his side, and to maintain control by any means necessary. They have decided to not to govern, but to rule.

Democracy works only if all of the parties to it agree to its ground rules. We now have entered an era when only one party does so, often to its detriment, while the other continually blows through the guard rails of democratic normalcy in pursuit of perpetual power and monetary gain. The result: the most ostentatiously corrupt administration since Richard Nixon’s is completely off its tether, while his political party’s soul vanishes a little more each day.

The tax cut rammed through the Senate on a party-line basis, which promises to suck $1.5 trillion out of the treasury and which could yet set up draconian cuts to social services for the poor, children and the elderly was but one example of the rot. Holding hostage a Supreme Court seat, which Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell made clear he would allow to be filled only by a Republican president, was another. There are the serial attacks on voting rights in state after state under GOP control that, combined with likely continued Russian meddling, threaten the very democratic character of our elections. And the current determination of House Republicans to burn it all—including the intelligence community and the FBI—to protect Trump, and by extension the Kremlin, is the most outrageous of all.

Trump’s elevation to the White House, thanks to the anachronistic Electoral College, combined with the gerrymandered control of state and federal legislatures made possible by the Obama backlash and the short-sightedness of Democratic voters in 2010, gave Republicans a rare gift. The party has controlled all three branches of the federal government only three times since its founding as the anti-slavery party in 1854.

Since rebranding itself as the party of big business during the Gilded Age and losing Teddy Roosevelt in the process, the Grand Old Party controlled the presidency and Congress four times: during the presidencies of Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover from 1925 to 1933, to disastrous results for the global economy; then again under Dwight Eisenhower, due to the deaths of nine Democratic senators and the resignation of another; and finally during parts of George W. Bush’s tenure. (It’s worth noting that Eisenhower, who presided over a period of rare economic stability under a Republican, was so non-ideological, he was offered the Democratic nomination by party bosses in 1948. With Bush, the GOP returned to deficit-busting, tax-cutting, recession-inducing form.)

Even without the White House, Republican control of the federal legislature has been disastrous for anyone but the super rich.

After the “Republican revolution” of 1994, Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senate Majority Leaders Bob Dole and Trent Lott used their power to force through a wholesale rewrite of welfare and criminal justice law; changes that resulted in the mass incarceration of millions of people, disproportionately black or Latino. During the Obama years, Republican control of Congress resulted in a veritable halt to legislative activity, as Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, followed by Paul Ryan, effected a virtual congressional work stoppage to thwart the Democratic president.

Now, with unified control of government again in their hands, including a Republican majority on the Supreme Court, plus control of 67 state legislative chambers to Democrats’ 32 (with Virginia up in the air), and 34 governor’s mansions to Democrats’ 15 (plus total control in 26 states), Republicans are galloping through their agenda of returning America to the 1920s.

Anywhere Republicans wield control, a familiar pattern emerges: aggressive deregulation and tax cuts for big business, attacks on unionized work, Medicaid, and public education, and the savaging of voting rights for people of color and any other group suspected of potential alignment with Democrats. On a federal level, throw in a wholesale handover of pristine lands, from Alaska to Bears Ears in Utah to the extractive industries, coupled with relaxed rules on how much those oil, gas, and coal companies can pollute the air and water with impunity.

Donald Trump supports this agenda, but he isn’t implementing it on his own. He has an entire party apparatus behind him, which is why Mitch McConnell declared 2017 to be, in his view, the greatest single year in the history of the Republican Party.

Apparently the feeling is so good to Republicans both in Washington and in the states, they have decided that they will never relinquish this unprecedented power.

In Wisconsin, the Republican governor, Scott Walker, has for nearly a full year refused to call special elections, leaving legislative seats vacant rather than risk their being filled by Democrats. This after his administration pulled off the most widespread voter disenfranchisement in the country in 2016 and dismantled his state’s Government Accountability Board, which was supposed to insure fair and ethical elections. That’s banana republic dictator behavior.

In Pennsylvania, having lost appeals going all the way up to the Republican majority Supreme Court, Republicans are now threatening to impeach state Supreme Court justices who ruled against them in a gerrymandering case that could finally break their stranglehold over state and federal legislative seats.

And of course there is the autocrat in training in Washington, who this week declared that not standing and applauding his speeches is tantamount to treason, and who with his party having emptied the coffers on their billionaire tax cuts, has ordered the Pentagon to throw him a grand military parade to “showcase America’s might,” in the style of Kim Jong Un. One shudders at the thought of tanks and troops filing down Pennsylvania Avenue, while the man who ducked out of Vietnam and has denigrated the service of braver men and Gold Star families does his best Mussolini pucker as he and his kleptocratic clan preen in the reviewing stand.

And rather than use the power the Constitution grants the Congress to rein in the would-be American Louis XVI, the speaker of the House, the Senate majority leader, and a cadre of lickspittle Republican marionettes have put the United States Congress wholly in the president’s service. Ryan is too busy urging the peasants to dance in the streets for the dollar-fifty he and his fellow top hatters flung from the Bastille in Washington while handing Exxon Mobil billions, the Koch brothers millions to care. McConnell can only rouse himself to threaten Democrats and take children’s health care and military payrolls hostage while allowing community health center funding benefitting 26 million Americans to languish for months while dawdling on immigration reform (which Ryan insists will only proceed in the House on the Dear Leader’s terms). In short, we now have zero checks on the executive branch in Washington, and an almost frenzied money grab by the wealthiest Americans under the benighted gaze of the once revered Grand Old Party. Abe Lincoln must be spinning in his grave.

Ryan and McConnell are destined to go down in history as twin handmaidens of America’s surprisingly swift descent toward authoritarianism, along with present-day Joe McCarthy Devin Nunes. Their morally decrepit political party has turned its back on every principle of democracy in favor of the naked pursuit of profit and power. Trump will be remembered as a wanna-be autocrat surrounded by beaters, cheaters, grifters, miscreants, and incompetents, and depending on what Mueller finds, maybe a criminal, too.

And he can be assured no one will ever throw him a memorial parade.

Wisconsin Supreme Court primary will leave just 2

Miami Herald – National Politics

Wisconsin Supreme Court primary will leave just 2

By Scott Bauer, Associated Press February 11, 2018

FILE – This 2016 file photo shows Sauk County Circuit Court Judge Michael Screnock, a candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Screnock is one of three candidates in the race for the court. One of the three will be eliminated in the Feb. 20, 2018, primary. Baraboo News Republic via AP, File Tim Damos

Madison, Wis. The latest battle over the ideological balance of the Wisconsin Supreme Court plays out in the Feb. 20 primary, where one of three candidates will be eliminated ahead of a spring election.

Partisan politics have weighed heavy over weeks of campaigning. Madison attorney Tim Burns has most embraced his liberal beliefs, while Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Rebecca Dallet sought to appear as a moderate. Sauk County Circuit Judge Michael Screnock, an appointee of Republican Gov. Scott Walker, has the backing of conservatives.

The primary is the first statewide race this year, and while officially nonpartisan, it could be a bellwether for how Republicans and Democrats stand heading into the fall. Turnout is expected to be low, likely less than 10 percent.

The top two vote-getters advance to the April 3 general election, with the winner replacing outgoing conservative Justice Michael Gableman. He decided against seeking another 10-year term.

The court is currently controlled 5-2 by conservatives, so no matter who wins the ideological control will not change.

Burns is the most vocal about his Democratic beliefs and political leanings, saying that the nonpartisan race is a charade and candidates should be honest about who they are. He introduces himself as an “unshakable champion for progressive values” and has called President Donald Trump an “unhinged billionaire.”

Burns, who represents clients nationwide in lawsuits against insurance companies, is the only non-judge in the race. He also has little experience litigating in Wisconsin courtrooms, having argued only one case in state court and six in federal court in Wisconsin.

Burns argues his experience outside of Wisconsin is a strength that will help him fix what he views as a broken system. And, he argues a victory for him will energize liberals across the state headed into the fall.

Dallet argues that Burns has gotten too political. But she’s walking a fine line trying to win over many of the same liberal voters Burns is appealing to. She ran a commercial attacking Trump and has criticized the current Supreme Court for voting in 2015 to end an investigation into Walker and conservatives.

“We have a Supreme Court that has lost the confidence our state needs, our public needs, in its ability to do justice for all of us,” she said at a forum earlier this month.

Although not as strident as Burns, she advocates for clean air and water, empowering women, and fighting opioid abuse. She describes the current Supreme Court as “broken.”

Dallet spent 11 years as an assistant district attorney in Milwaukee County before being elected a judge in 2008.

Screnock, who was appointed as a judge by Walker in 2015, is the choice of conservatives. He argues that all he cares about is the rule of law, but he’s also embraced his past, saying it was a “privilege” as an attorney to defend Walker’s Act 10 law taking away collective bargaining rights from public unions. Screnock has also said he has no regrets about being twice arrested as a college student in 1989 for taking part in anti-abortion protests.

“Both of my opponents are actively campaigning on the political issues they hold dear,” Screnock told the Wisconsin Counties Association earlier this month. He called that “deeply troubling” and said he won’t let his personal beliefs affect his rulings.

Burns’ unusual approach has won him the endorsement of Our Revolution, the political arm of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Burns is also endorsed by liberal U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, who represents the Madison area in Congress, as well as former U.S. Reps. David Obey and Steve Kagen.

Dallet has endorsements from more than 200 judges and 150 other elected officials from across the state.

Screnock has been endorsed by anti-abortion groups Wisconsin Family Action and Wisconsin Right to Life and uses the hashtag #wiright on his Twitter posts. The state chamber of commerce, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, has run nearly half a million dollars in ads supporting Screnock.

FILE – In this May 1, 2017, file photo, Madison attorney Tim Burns announces his run for Wisconsin Supreme Court in Madison, Wis. Burns is one of three candidates in the race for the court. One of the three will be eliminated in the Feb. 20, 2018, primary. Scott Bauer, File AP Photo

FILE – In this June. 1, 2017 file photo, Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Rebecca Dallet announces she is running for the Wisconsin Supreme Court in Madison, Wis. Dallet is one of three candidates in the race for the court. One of the three will be eliminated in the Feb. 20, 2018, primary. Scott Bauer File AP Photo

Follow Scott Bauer on Twitter at https://twitter.com/sbauerAP

Supreme Court on the verge of reversing some of its old decisions

USA Today

Supreme Court on the verge of reversing some of its old decisions

Richard Wolf, USA Today February 9, 2018

(Photo: Michael Owens, USAT)

WASHINGTON — Supreme Court precedents that have stood the test of time for generations are in danger of falling like dominoes in the next few months.

First on the chopping block is a 1977 ruling that allowed public employee unions to collect fees from non-members for collective bargaining. The court’s conservative justices have been itching to overrule that unanimous decision for decades.

Next up is a 1992 case in which the court refused to require that mail-order retailers collect sales taxes from buyers in other states. For a quarter century, that has given online retailers a competitive advantage over brick-and-mortar stores.

The court also will consider second-guessing one of its least popular chestnuts — a 20-year-old ruling, based on one from 1945, that gives federal agencies broad discretion to interpret their own regulations.

Since Chief Justice John Roberts took the center seat on the court in 2005, the justices have been reticent to second-guess the decisions of their predecessors. They have done so at a pace just above once a year, considerably less often than in the past.

“That’s not an accident,” says Jonathan Adler, director of the Center for Business Law & Regulation at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. “The chief justice, in particular, doesn’t like the court to be a disruptive force. He prefers to maintain stability and predictability where possible.”

It’s not always possible. Roberts could not prevent the court’s conservatives from overturning two of their precedents in 2010’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling, which eliminated limits on independent political spending by corporations.

And five years later, the court’s decision in favor of same-sex marriage overruled a 1972 decision that found no federal basis to block states from prohibiting the practice.

The court usually adheres to the principle of stare decisis, or adhering to its earlier decisions. But occasionally those earlier rulings cry out for change, and the court waits too long to correct them. Perhaps the top example is Plessy v. Ferguson, which upheld separate public facilities on the basis of race and stood for 60 years before being overruled by Brown v. Board of Education.

The court in recent years has had scores of opportunities to overrule earlier decisions and has taken a pass, according to the Supreme Court Database, a research facility housed at Washington University School of Law. The Roberts Court has done so less than any of its predecessors dating to the 1950s.

Few rulings have been up for grabs as often as Auer v. Robbins, the 1997 decision that upheld federal agencies’ right to interpret their own regulations without court interference.

When the court last refused to hear a case that would have toppled Auer, dissenting Justice Clarence Thomas warned that “the doctrine is on its last gasp.” Now the justices have another chance to extinguish it in a case they will consider at next week’s private conference.

“You wrote it.”

Thomas is fond of recounting a conversation on the bench with the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who complained that “Auer is one of the worst opinions in the history of this country.”

“Nino,” Thomas responded, “you wrote it.”

The court later this month will hear a challenge to the fees paid by non-members to public employee labor unions that would overrule Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, a 1977 decision. The justices stopped short of that extreme step in 2012, 2014 and 2016.

Many of the court’s conservative justices believe Abood was wrongly decided to begin with, since it forces workers to contribute to a group they may disagree with. Opponents argue that as a constitutional case based on First Amendment rights, it is less sacred than rulings based on statutes that Congress can amend.

“Although this court reconsiders its precedents with caution, stare decisis does not warrant preserving Abood’s error,” Solicitor General Noel Francisco argues in the government’s court papers.

But Abood has its defenders, including Michael Kimberly, co-director of the Yale Law School Supreme Court Clinic.

If it’s scuttled, Kimberly warns, “Contracts entered into based on unions’ ability to provide specified services, funded through agency fees, would have to be renegotiated. And government employees’ existing reliance on unions’ abilities to negotiate effectively and to provide contractually required services would be eliminated.”

Precedents don’t last forever

The high court’s consideration in April of a case that would level the playing field between online and brick-and-mortar retailers when it comes to collecting sales taxes presents a clear case of technological change influencing legal rulings.

The justices ruled 8-1 in Quill v. North Dakota (1992) that companies selling wares by catalog across state lines were exempt from collecting sales taxes. Now that North Dakota case is being challenged by one from South Dakota.

“As this court has long recognized, stare decisis is not an inexorable command,” former Solicitor General Donald Verrilli wrote in a brief for the Retail Litigation Center. “When the world changes, it is appropriate to consider whether the law should change as well.”