Tag Archives: pur

The Feds Just Handed the Private Prison Industry a Big Score

by AmeeCoventry444 Posted on December 1, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Three months after the Department of Justice announced that it would phase out its use of private prisons, the Department of Homeland Security has gone in the opposite direction. In a report finalized on Thursday, a subcommittee of the DHS’s advisory council recommended that Immigration and Customs Enforcement continue to use facilities run by private prison companies to detain undocumented immigrants.

The council, which was tasked with reviewing ICE’s use of for-profit facilities, noted concerns about the agency’s ability to oversee private detention centers as well as reports of substandard medical care in some private facilities. But it concluded that the already widespread use of privately run detention centers, combined with their lower cost made it unrealistic to seriously consider eliminating their use. ICE reports that it costs $144 per day to keep a detainee in a private detention center while it costs $184 per detainee per day in ICE facilities.

“Much could be said for a fully government-owned and government-operated detention model, if one were starting a new detention system from scratch,” the committee wrote. “But of course we are not starting anew.” ICE will review the report and implement any appropriate changes, according to a department spokeswoman.

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson ordered the advisory council to undertake the two-month review in August, after the Justice Department declared that it would reduce or end its contracts with private prison companies. The DOJ announcement came on the heels of a Mother Jones investigation into a troubled Louisiana prison operated by the Corrections Corporation of America, the major private prison company that recently rebranded as CoreCivic. Private-prison stocks plunged following the announcement.

But the for-profit prison industry’s slump now appears temporary. The election of Donald Trump caused private prison stocks to soar, and CoreCivic has continued to sign lucrative contracts with both ICE and the Department of Justice. If Trump follows through on his promise to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, it would require ICE to significantly expand its detention capacity, likely by turning to private prison companies.

According to the DHS committee’s new report, for-profit detention allows ICE to “respond to surges in migration flows” by expanding its detention capacity. “Capacity to handle such surges, when policymakers determine that detention will be part of the response, cannot reasonably be maintained solely through the use of facilities staffed and operated by federal officers,” the report stated. Last month, Johnson announced he had authorized ICE to acquire new detention space following a roughly 25 percent increase in undocumented immigrant arrests between August and October.

But the deals this fall were moving so quickly that some ICE officials worried there would be no time to ensure that the new detention spaces conformed to certain quality requirements or regulations adopted as a result of the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, the Wall Street Journal reported. ICE is now pursuing a deal with CoreCivic to reopen the company’s 1,129-bed Cibola County Correctional Center in New Mexico as an immigration detention center, even though the Bureau of Prisons shut down the prison this year following a series of inmate deaths and repeated citations for deficient medical care.

The DHS committee’s report comes less than week after the death of a 36-year-old Guatemalan woman at the Eloy Detention Center, a CoreCivic immigrant detention facility in Arizona. Raquel Calderon de Hildago was arrested near Tucson by Border Patrol officers the day before Thanksgiving. She died on Sunday after having a series of seizures. Calderon was third person to die in ICE custody in the last two months and the 15th person since 2003 to die after being held at Eloy.

Marshall Fitz, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and member of the DHS advisory council, disputed the council’s main conclusion that ICE’s continued use of private prison is inevitable. “The review undertaken by the subcommittee points directly toward the inferiority of the private prison model from the perspective of governance and conditions,” he wrote in a footnote in the report. “Any shift away from such reliance would take years, carry significant costs, and require congressional partnership…but I disagree that these obstacles require our deference to the status quo.”

Read original article – 

The Feds Just Handed the Private Prison Industry a Big Score

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Feds Just Handed the Private Prison Industry a Big Score

OPEC agrees to cut 1.2 million barrels a day, pleasing U.S. oil companies.

by MylesVincent Posted on December 1, 2016

For the first time in eight years, OPEC — you know, that cartel of 14 oil-rich countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Venezuela — made a deal to curb production starting in January.

It’s partially a response to the worldwide glut of oil that has battered crude prices over recent years. OPEC’s profits from oil exports have plunged from a record $920 billion in 2012 to $341 billion this year. This puts countries that depend on oil exports (looking at you, Venezuela) between a shale rock and a hard place.

To push prices back up, OPEC members agreed to slash production, leading to an 8 percent spike in crude prices on Wednesday. Investors raced to buy shares of U.S. shale oil companies. Continental Resources  — founded by Harold Hamm, Trump’s energy advisor — jumped 25 percent after the announcement. Whiting Petroleum soared 32 percent, its biggest one-day jump in 13 years.

This celebration is sure to lead to a hangover. For one, OPEC countries have a hard time sticking to their agreements. And experts predict a long century of decline for oil as demand peaks in the next decade. Of course, those estimates assume countries will keep their pledges to combat climate change.

Jump to original: 

OPEC agrees to cut 1.2 million barrels a day, pleasing U.S. oil companies.

Posted in alo, Anchor, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Oster, PUR, Radius, Ringer, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on OPEC agrees to cut 1.2 million barrels a day, pleasing U.S. oil companies.

The Investment Firm Started by Trump’s Commerce Secretary Pick Was Accused in Fraud Case

by MayraFRAfyadwmn Posted on December 1, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly cast himself as an anti-Wall Street populist and blasted an international cabal of bankers for supposedly screwing American workers. Yet, since being elected, he has turned to Big Finance titans to run his administration, and one of them—Wilbur Ross, Trump’s pick for secretary of commerce—founded a giant private equity firm that was accused of committing fraud and deceit in a case the firm settled by paying a multimillion-dollar fine.

In 2000, Ross founded WL Ross & Co., a private equity firm that specialized in taking over troubled companies. In August this year, the firm settled a case with the Securities and Exchange Commission regarding the firm not accurately disclosing fees it was charging investors, resulting in them paying excessive fees for nearly a decade. Ross had sold the firm in 2006, but the failure to properly disclose fees began in 2001 and continued until 2011. The settlement was part of a much larger crackdown by the SEC on how private equity firms charged fees to their investors.

According to SEC documents in the case, WL Ross & Co. advised investment funds in exchange for management fees, but those fees were supposed to be offset by special “transaction fees” paid by some of the companies that were being invested in. But millions in those transaction fees were allocated to other funds, and investors ended up overpaying their management fees to WL Ross & Co. The SEC determined the firm had violated the law prohibiting firms from engaging “in any transaction, practice, or course of business which operates as a fraud or deceit upon any client or prospective client.” In August, the firm agreed to pay back $11.9 million in fees and a $2.3 million civil penalty, although it did not admit any wrongdoing.

Under Wilbur Ross’ management, the firm helped engineer the purchase and combining of a number of American steel companies, including the iconic Bethlehem Steel, which Ross united as the International Steel Group. Ross sold the collection of American steel companies to Indian billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, who folded the companies into the international steel conglomerate ArcelorMittal.

Ross, who made his name and billions of dollars as a specialist in buyouts and restructuring troubled and bankrupt companies, has a long history of working with Trump. In the early 1990s when Trump’s Atlantic City casinos were floundering, Trump managed to stave off lenders and keep the businesses afloat with the help of Ross, who at the time ran the Rothschild Inc. investment firm’s bankruptcy practice.

Excerpt from – 

The Investment Firm Started by Trump’s Commerce Secretary Pick Was Accused in Fraud Case

Posted in Anker, FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Investment Firm Started by Trump’s Commerce Secretary Pick Was Accused in Fraud Case

Is Ivanka Trump a secret climate hawk? Probably not, but ¯_(ツ)_/¯.

by BevGoodwin Posted on December 1, 2016

For the first time in eight years, OPEC — you know, that cartel of 14 oil-rich countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Venezuela — made a deal to curb production starting in January.

It’s partially a response to the worldwide glut of oil that has battered crude prices over recent years. OPEC’s profits from oil exports have plunged from a record $920 billion in 2012 to $341 billion this year. This puts countries that depend on oil exports (looking at you, Venezuela) between a shale rock and a hard place.

To push prices back up, OPEC members agreed to slash production, leading to an 8 percent spike in crude prices on Wednesday. Investors raced to buy shares of U.S. shale oil companies. Continental Resources  — founded by Harold Hamm, Trump’s energy advisor — jumped 25 percent after the announcement. Whiting Petroleum soared 32 percent, its biggest one-day jump in 13 years.

This celebration is sure to lead to a hangover. For one, OPEC countries have a hard time sticking to their agreements. And experts predict a long century of decline for oil as demand peaks in the next decade. Of course, those estimates assume countries will keep their pledges to combat climate change.

Source article: 

Is Ivanka Trump a secret climate hawk? Probably not, but ¯_(ツ)_/¯.

Posted in alo, Anchor, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Oster, PUR, Radius, Ringer, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Is Ivanka Trump a secret climate hawk? Probably not, but ¯_(ツ)_/¯.

Trump’s Commerce Secretary Pick Led a Secret Wall Street Fraternity

by IlanaOtt24 Posted on December 1, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

On Wednesday, Donald Trump announced that he’d tapped billionaire investor Wilbur Ross to be his commerce secretary. Ross is known as the “king of bankruptcy,” a moniker he earned thanks to his longtime business of buying troubled companies for cheap, often in manufacturing industries like steel or coal, and then restructuring them to turn a profit. “Wilbur Ross is a champion of American manufacturing and knows how to help companies succeed,” Trump said in a statement announcing his nomination of Ross.

But Trump neglected to mention one of Ross’ other credentials: He’s connected to some of the world’s most powerful investors and businessman via a secret Wall Street fraternity called Kappa Beta Phi.

In January 2012, New York Times reporter Kevin Roose snuck into the society’s annual black-tie induction ceremony, which was led by Ross, who at the time was the fraternity’s “Grand Swipe.” The fraternity, Roose wrote in his 2014 book, Young Money, was founded at the beginning of the Great Depression, and since then the induction ceremony had been subject to the utmost secrecy. The group’s mantra, according to Roose, is “What happens at the St. Regis stays at the St. Regis.”

It’s not hard to see why. At the 2012 event, Roose witnessed outlandish behavior by Ross and other financial tycoons that demonstrated vulgarity, greed, and a Wall Street callousness toward the nonwealthy masses. Some attendees made homophobic, racist, and sexist jabs about the likes of Hillary Clinton and former Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts. Others joked about the financial crisis. One even wore a Confederate flag hat. And when Roose was outed as a reporter partway through the night, Ross himself took Roose into the St. Regis hotel’s lobby and tried to convince him not to print the story by offering himself up as an “anytime” source for Roose’s future reporting.

While leading the event, Ross wore purple velvet moccasins embroidered with the fraternity’s Greek letters. The group’s name is an inversion of the college honor society Phi Beta Kappa, whose ruffled-sleeve logo, Ross said on the ballroom stage, is a “tacit confession of homosexuality.” The main event of the night was the induction of 21 “neophytes” into the fraternity. Roose described what happened when the inductees, who were required to dress in drag costumes that included leotards and sequined skirts, took the stage:

Paul Queally, a private-equity executive with Welsh, Carson, Anderson, & Stowe, told off-color jokes to Ted Virtue, another private-equity bigwig with MidOcean Partners. The jokes ranged from unfunny and sexist (Q: “What’s the biggest difference between Hillary Clinton and a catfish?” A: “One has whiskers and stinks, and the other is a fish”) to unfunny and homophobic (Q: “What’s the biggest difference between Barney Frank and a Fenway Frank?” A: “Barney Frank comes in different-size buns”)…

Warren Stevens, an investment banking CEO, took the stage in a Confederate flag hat and sang a song about the financial crisis, set to the tune of “Dixie.” (“In Wall Street land we’ll take our stand, said Morgan and Goldman. But first we better get some loans, so quick, get to the Fed, man.”)

The performances continued, including a parody of ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” called “Bailout King” and a comedic skit depicting a debate between the 99 percent and the 1 percent. When Roose pulled out his phone to record part of the inductees’ performance, he caught the eye of one of his billionaire table-mates, Michael Novogratz. He angrily asked Roose who he was, which left Roose with no choice but to disclose that he was a reporter. Novogratz grabbed Roose and tried to pull away his cellphone. That’s when Ross stepped in to attempt damage control:

Once we made it to the lobby, Ross and Lebenthal reassured me that what I’d just seen wasn’t really a group of wealthy and powerful financiers making homophobic jokes, making light of the financial crisis, and bragging about their business conquests at Main Street’s expense. No, it was just a group of friends who came together to roast each other in a benign and self-deprecating manner. Nothing to see here.

But the extent of their worry wasn’t made clear until Ross offered himself up as a source for future stories in exchange for my cooperation.

“I’ll pick up the phone anytime, get you any help you need,” he said.

Source article – 

Trump’s Commerce Secretary Pick Led a Secret Wall Street Fraternity

Posted in Bragg, FF, GE, LG, Mop, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Trump’s Commerce Secretary Pick Led a Secret Wall Street Fraternity

Banning Lobbyists Might Sound Like a Good Idea. But Here’s What Trump Is Missing.

by WilfordLockhart Posted on November 18, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

On Wednesday, Donald Trump’s transition team announced one phase of the president-elect’s plan to “drain the swamp” of corruption—a prohibition on registered lobbyists serving in his administration and a five-year lobbying ban for Trump officials who return to the private sector. Trump’s plan effectively doubles down on a policy that the Obama administration already has in place—one that many good government groups and lobbyists alike believe may have created a new problem: un-lobbyists—that is, influence-peddlers who avoid registering as lobbyists to skirt the administration’s rules.

Obama, like Trump, campaigned on a platform of aggressively rooting out the influence of lobbyists. After taking office, he put in place several major good-government initiatives, including a ban on lobbyists serving in his administration and a two-year cooling-off period before ex-administration officials could register to lobby. Once Obama’s lobbying rules took effect, there was a sharp decline in the number of registered lobbyists. Industry insiders and watchdog groups that track the influence game noted that the decrease was not due to lobbyists hanging up their spurs as hired guns for corporations and special interests. Rather it appeared that lobbyists were finding creative ways to avoid officially registering as such. There was no less influence-peddling going on, but now there was less disclosure of the lobbying that was taking place.

The problem lies with the definition of who is a lobbyist. The federal government requires anyone who spends more than 20 percent of their time on behalf of a client while making “lobbying contacts”—an elaborate and specifically defined type of contact with certain types of federal officials—to register as a lobbyist and file quarterly paperwork disclosing their clients and the bills or agencies he or she sought to sway. But by avoiding too many official “lobbying contacts” and limiting how much income that kind of work accounts for, lobbyists can shed the scarlet L, describing themselves as government affairs consultants or experts in advocacy and public policy. In 2014, the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics examined the trend of the “un-lobbyist” and found that 45 percent of the lobbyists who had shed their designation in the previous year still worked for the same employer. In many cases, the lobbyists didn’t leave their jobs, CRP found, they just changed their titles.

The Trump plan, which just tacks three years on to the Obama administration’s existing ban, does stop short of the Obama rules in one area. Under Obama’s policy, people who had been registered lobbyists could not work for agencies they had previously lobbied, though he did offer “waivers” to certain officials. According to Trump aides, registered lobbyists will be eligible for administration jobs if they de-register as lobbyists. The Washington Post reports that Josh Pitcock, a close aide to Vice President-elect Mike Pence, took the step on Monday, sending the Senate Clerk’s office notice that he is no longer a lobbyist for the State of Indiana.

In the end, said Richard Painter, the chief ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, the Trump plan may only perpetuate the problem of un-lobbyists.

“People are going to react to the Trump thing in the same way,” Painter notes, “by saying, ‘I’ll figure out a way to not be a lobbyist.'”

Visit site – 

Banning Lobbyists Might Sound Like a Good Idea. But Here’s What Trump Is Missing.

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Oster, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Banning Lobbyists Might Sound Like a Good Idea. But Here’s What Trump Is Missing.

A woman who fought predatory oil and gas leasing on Native lands got the Presidential Medal of Honor.

by TrentSeeley753 Posted on November 17, 2016

Many have agreed that President-elect Donald Trump has some questionable ideas when it comes to climate policy. Today, we get to add anthropomorphized gym sock O’Reilly and known cup goblin Starbucks to that list!

On Wednesday’s episode of The O’Reilly Factor, he advised Trump on a number of items to consider as he prepares to take office. On this list:

“Finally, President-Elect Trump should accept the Paris treaty on climate to buy some goodwill overseas. It doesn’t really amount to much anyway, let it go.”

Well, the thing is, it does actually amount to a lot.

Here’s a confusing screenshot, because this action item appears under the heading “What President Obama Failed to Do,” when President Obama did, in fact, succeed in accepting the Paris Agreement.

On Thursday morning, a coalition of 365 major companies and investors submitted a plea to Trump to please, come on, just support the goddamn Paris Agreement, because to do otherwise would be a disastrous blow to the United States’ economic competitiveness. The list includes Starbucks (the nerve!!!!), eBay, Kellogg, and Virgin.

Anyway, Trump’s whole “refusing to acknowledge climate change” thing seems like a bad look.

Link:

A woman who fought predatory oil and gas leasing on Native lands got the Presidential Medal of Honor.

Posted in alo, Anchor, Badger, FF, G & F, GE, Landmark, LG, ONA, PUR, Ultima, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A woman who fought predatory oil and gas leasing on Native lands got the Presidential Medal of Honor.

The White House Just Made a Huge New Climate Commitment That President Trump Will Definitely Ignore

by ThanhFryeu Posted on November 17, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

This story was originally published by the Huffington Post and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The United States on Wednesday announced an ambitious new goal to rapidly reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century, despite the incoming presidency of Donald Trump, a man who has called the phenomenon a “hoax” invented by the Chinese.

Secretary of State John Kerry said at a news conference in Marrakech, Morocco, that he couldn’t “speculate about what policies our president-elect will pursue.” But he noted that “some issues look a little bit different when you’re actually in office compared to when you’re on the campaign trail,” adding that climate change should cease being a partisan issue.

“It’s abundantly clear we have the ability to prevent the worst impacts of climate change,” Kerry said during the United Nation’s annual climate summit. “But again we’re forced to ask: Do we have the collective will? Because our success is not going to happen by accident.”

Under the newly released strategy, which aims to rapidly “decarbonize” America, emissions would be slashed about 80 percent by 2050, compared with levels set in 2005. The United States has already promised a 26 percent to 28 percent cut in emissions by 2025 and would build on those pledges through a transition to renewable energy production, carbon removal technology, and efforts to curb emissions from agriculture and other sources.

But many of these commitments will be in doubt once President Barack Obama leaves office. President-elect Trump has threatened to withdraw from last year’s landmark Paris agreement, end all funding on the issue and significantly increase domestic production of fossil fuels. While some have hoped the businessman would do an about-face once in office, his current short list to lead the country’s environmental agencies doesn’t bode well.

Nearly 200 nations are signed on to the Paris climate agreement, which aims to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, the level scientists say the planet must stay beneath to avoid the worst effects of climate change. World leaders have been assuaging the public since the election, vowing to continue plans to curb emissions with or without the United States.

Kerry used his speech to urge those in power to “do your own due diligence before making irrevocable choices.”

“No one has a right to make decisions that affect billions of people based solely on ideology or without proper input,” he said. “Anyone who has these conversations, who takes the time to learn from these experts, who gets the full picture of what we’re facingâ&#128;&#149;I believe they can only come to one legitimate decision, and that is to act boldly on climate change and encourage others to do the same.”

The US goal for 2050 drew praise from leading environmental groups, as well as promises of condemnation should Trump scale back America’s role in the climate change fight. The United States is the second-largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world, behind China and ahead of the European Union.

“No matter who is in the White House, any leader that wants to create jobs, protect our communities and be taken seriously in the international community must build on the climate legacy of President Obama and Secretary Kerry,” Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, said in a statement. “Anyone who fails to realize that not only poses a very real danger to our economy, our families, and our planet but simply cannot call themselves a global leader.”

Others, including the Union for Concerned Scientists, said the 2050 plan was a “good start” but stressed that the world will need to reach “net zero emissions by midcentury” to avoid the rising seas, melting glaciers and extreme weather of a warmer world.

A recent report from the United Nations Environment Programme found that, even with the world’s ambitious climate pledges, leaders would need to slash emissions 25 percent more, on top of existing plans, to avoid the 2-degree threshold.

“It’s still not good enough if we are to stand a chance of avoiding serious climate change,” Erik Solheim, the head of the UNEP, said earlier this month.

Continued:  

The White House Just Made a Huge New Climate Commitment That President Trump Will Definitely Ignore

Posted in FF, GE, Landmark, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Ringer, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The White House Just Made a Huge New Climate Commitment That President Trump Will Definitely Ignore

Trump Talked Big About NAFTA, But Can He Deliver?

by Junior18Pssltk Posted on November 16, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Killing the TPP was easy—though I suspect it will make a comeback after Donald Trump renegotiates a few bits and pieces and then loudly announces that he’s made it into the greatest trade deal in the history of the republic. But what about NAFTA? What exactly does Trump want to do? Zeeshan Aleem writes that a transition team memo makes it clear that NAFTA is at the top of Trump’s to-do list:

Suppose Trump wants to keep the US in the pact but put his self-professed negotiating skills to work in crafting what he insists would be a better version of the deal….There are a number of ways to pursue that end goal, but Trump’s rhetoric suggests he wants to do it by raising tariffs on imports from Mexico. That’s something he’d have difficulty getting Mexico to agree to, so he’d have more latitude to do it if he were to actually withdraw from NAFTA. But withdrawal is a tricky business, given how deeply the countries’ economies rely on each other.

….It would require loads of American businesses bringing existing components of their supply chains and outsourced services back onshore to avoid tariffs or other penalties — a process that takes time and money. It would also potentially increase costs for those businesses going forward.

If that’s not enough, the move could set off a trade war by prompting Mexico to raise tariffs on American goods in response. That could cause a downturn in the US economy and a spike in the unemployment employment rate that would undermine the very reason Trump is considering withdrawing from NAFTA.

….The upshot? Trump’s departure from the decades-long bipartisan consensus was politically brilliant….But following through on his promise is going to be difficult. The murky future of NAFTA may be one of the first places where Trump disappoints his followers; it won’t be the last.

Well, we’ll see. Trump almost has to do something, considering how central NAFTA was to his campaign. But in the real world, there’s not much upside. The OECD estimates that NAFTA had essentially no effect on employment, and the International Trade Commission estimates that it had essentially no effect on wages. So withdrawing wouldn’t do any good for all those working-class folks Trump appealed to, but it would cause plenty of upheaval for businesses that are tightly integrated with their Mexican supply chains.1

Of course, NAFTA’s impact hasn’t been the same everywhere. There are a few industries where employment has been negatively affected. So Trump could focus on those and boast about how he’s bringing jobs back to America. Prices of Mexican imports would go up too, but that’s a pretty diffuse effect and most people probably wouldn’t notice it.

So…who knows? As with many other things, I suspect that Trump will get agreement on a few smallish things and then take to his Twitter account to declare that he’s just done more for the American worker than any president ever. At least, I’m kind of hoping that’s what he does. The alternative is almost certainly worse.

1Needless to say, there are lots of estimates of the impact of NAFTA, and some of them suggest large employment effects—like this one from EPI. The general consensus, however, seems to be that it’s had a pretty small impact.

Credit – 

Trump Talked Big About NAFTA, But Can He Deliver?

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Trump Talked Big About NAFTA, But Can He Deliver?

Should Donald Trump Get a Mulligan on His Lawsuits?

by Francis3561 Posted on November 15, 2016

Mother Jones

Federalist Society stalwart Saikrishna Prakash thinks we need to cut Donald Trump some slack:

Unlike his predecessors, Trump faces or is pursuing a slew of civil lawsuits, perhaps as many as 75….The news is awash with reports that Trump’s lawyers have asked for a delay of proceedings until inauguration, saying the president-elect is now too busy to participate. But it is hard to see how Trump would have more time for this suit after he moves into the White House. Being president is not a part-time job.

….The new president appears doomed to be distracted by his private concerns. Fortunately, a solution is within our grasp. Congress can pass a law that would put these kinds of civil actions on hold while President Trump remains in office. The law would have to provide that any lawsuit against a sitting president or president-elect, filed before or after he or she assumed office, would not proceed until the president left office. Such a law wouldn’t protect the president from impeachment or criminal prosecution, but it would ensure that Trump would not be distracted by civil litigation arising out of his personal life or business interests.

Ha ha ha. That’s a good one, professor. But, um, no. There’s a reason that IOKIYAR—It’s OK If You’re A Republican—has become such a widely-used acronym. It’s because Republicans seem to think that anything goes when a Democrat is in office but Republicans should all be treated with kid gloves. Every Republican in the country thought it was a great idea to allow the Paula Jones lawsuit to go forward because, hey, Bill Clinton was in the White House. If it wrecks his agenda, that’s great. If it provides an excuse to impeach him, that’s great too. And anyway, spending a few hours in depositions is no big deal.

If that was true then, it’s true now. Everyone who voted for Trump knew about Trump’s penchant for lawsuits. It was all part of the package. The folks involved deserve their day in court.

For more on this, see Stephanie Mencimer’s piece about the Paula Jones case. Someone might want to ask Kellyanne Conway’s husband what he thinks of allowing sitting presidents to be sued in civil court.

See original article: 

Should Donald Trump Get a Mulligan on His Lawsuits?

Posted in Everyone, FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Should Donald Trump Get a Mulligan on His Lawsuits?