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  • Originally posted by astralis View Post
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...dfc_story.html

    Trump administration moves to return Russian compounds in Maryland and New York
    Hmm, quid pro quo playing out?

    Those Russians patriots must be tough negotiators.

    On a side note it seems like Jeff "Max" Sessions is busy at work making America safe for somebody.

    Comment


    • https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/12/u...f-appeals.html

      Trump Loses Travel Ban Ruling in Appeals Court

      By ADAM LIPTAK
      JUNE 12, 2017

      WASHINGTON — A second federal appeals court has ruled against President Trump’s revised travel ban, delivering on Monday the latest in a string of defeats for the administration’s efforts to limit travel from several predominantly Muslim countries.

      The administration has already sought a Supreme Court review of a similar decision issued last month by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va. Monday’s decision came from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco.

      The two courts employed different reasoning to arrive at the same basic conclusion. The Fourth Circuit said the revised executive order violated the First Amendment’s prohibition of government establishment of religion.

      The Ninth Circuit, by contrast, rested its conclusions on statutory grounds. It said Mr. Trump had exceeded the authority Congress granted him in making national security judgments in the realm of immigration without adequate justification.

      “The order does not offer a sufficient justification to suspend the entry of more than 180 million people on the basis of nationality,” the Ninth Circuit’s opinion said. “National security is not a ‘talismanic incantation’ that, once invoked, can support any and all exercise of executive power.”

      The decision, from a three-judge panel, was unanimous. It was issued jointly by Judges Michael Daly Hawkins, Ronald M. Gould and Richard A. Paez. All three were appointed by President Bill Clinton.

      The ruling affirmed most of a March decision from Judge Derrick K. Watson, of the Federal District Court in Hawaii. But the appeals court narrowed the injunction issued by Judge Watson in a significant way.

      The appeals court said Judge Watson had erred in barring the administration from conducting internal reviews of its vetting procedures while the case moved forward.

      That may turn out to be important as the Supreme Court considers how to address the two cases.

      The key part of the executive order suspended travel from six predominantly Muslim countries for 90 days to give the administration time to conduct a review of its vetting procedures. If that review can soon be completed, the justices may decide that the case will soon be moot.

      In briefs filed Monday in the Supreme Court, lawyers challenging the revised executive order urged the court not to hear the Trump administration’s appeal of the Fourth Circuit’s decision or to stay the injunctions entered in the two cases.

      They said the cases might be moot as soon as Wednesday, as the 90-day suspension of entry contemplated by the revised executive order was, counting from its effective date, set to expire then.

      The administration has argued that Judge Watson’s ruling stopped the 90-day clock. It asked the justices to agree to hear an appeal of the Fourth Circuit decision before they leave for their summer break and to schedule arguments in the fall.

      By lifting the part of Judge Watson’s injunction that barred review of internal vetting procedures in the meantime, the Ninth Circuit may have ensured that the case will be moot by the time it is argued, no matter how the 90 days are calculated.

      “It would be unnecessary and wasteful for the court to grant review of an issue that is essentially moot,” lawyers for the State of Hawaii wrote.

      Like the Fourth Circuit, Judge Watson blocked major parts of the revised order on the ground that they violated the Constitution’s ban on a government establishment of religion. Judge Watson wrote that the statements of Mr. Trump and his advisers made clear that his executive order amounted to an attempt to disfavor Muslims.

      Judge Watson should not have reached the constitutional issue and should have ruled on statutory grounds, the Ninth Circuit said.

      “We need not, and do not, reach the Establishment Clause claim to resolve this appeal,” the appeals court’s opinion said.

      The fight over President Trump’s travel ban on people from six Muslim-majority countries has reached the Supreme Court. But some experts say Trump’s tweets may undermine his chances of winning the case. By NEETI UPADHYE on Publish Date June 7, 2017. Photo by Al
      Judge Watson’s injunction was broader than the one affirmed by the Fourth Circuit. In addition to halting the limits on travel from the six countries, Judge Watson blocked a 120-day suspension of the nation’s refugee program and a 50,000-person cap on refugee admissions in 2017, down from 110,000. The Ninth Circuit affirmed those parts of Judge Watson’s decision.

      The Ninth Circuit said it had a role to play in testing Mr. Trump’s actions.

      “Whatever deference we accord to the president’s immigration and national security policy judgments does not preclude us from reviewing the policy at all,” the appeals court’s opinion said. “We do not abdicate the judicial role, and we affirm our obligation ‘to say what the law is’ in this case,” it added, quoting Marbury v. Madison, the foundational 1803 Supreme Court decision.

      A federal law gives the president the power to exclude foreigners if he finds that letting them enter the country “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

      The appeals court said Mr. Trump had exceeded that authority, in large part because he had failed to offer adequate justifications for his order.

      “In suspending the entry of more than 180 million nationals from six countries, suspending the entry of all refugees, and reducing the cap on the admission of refugees from 110,000 to 50,000 for the 2017 fiscal year,” the court said, “the president did not meet the essential precondition to exercising his delegated authority: The president must make a sufficient finding that the entry of these classes of people would be ‘detrimental to the interests of the United States.’”

      The court said Mr. Trump’s justifications for the executive order were inadequate.

      “The order does not tie these nationals in any way to terrorist organizations within the six designated countries,” the opinion said. “It does not identify these nationals as contributors to active conflict or as those responsible for insecure country conditions. It does not provide any link between an individual’s nationality and their propensity to commit terrorism or their inherent dangerousness.”

      “In short,” the opinion concluded, “the order does not provide a rationale explaining why permitting entry of nationals from the six designated countries under current protocols would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

      The appeals court also ruled that the administration had run afoul of another provision of the immigration laws, one that forbids discrimination “because of the person’s race, sex, nationality, place of birth or place of residence,” but only “in the issuance of an immigrant visa.” The Trump administration argued that the power to bar entry, the subject of a different provision, was broader than the limits on issuing visas.

      The appeals court said the two provisions must be read together.

      “We cannot blind ourselves to the fact that, for nationals of the six designated countries,” the opinion said, the revised order “is effectively a ban on the issuance of immigrant visas.”
      There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

      Comment


      • I just watched some footage of that Cabinet meeting. WOW! A room full of political sycophants pledging fealty to the Dear Leader. All that was missing was the Mao suits & chests full of medals.

        Remember when all those online conservative warriors used to drone on and on and on about what a 'narcissist' Obama was? Gee, haven't they had a change of heart. Trump would rather tweet abuse, give endless speeches to everyone in the world about how wonderful he is and film his cabinet prostrating themselves before his munificence than actually do all that messy governing. If Narcissus was still around The Donald would have drowned him in the pond for blocking the view.

        Hating narcissism is so 2008-2016.
        sigpic

        Win nervously lose tragically - Reds C C

        Comment


        • Someone snuck a camera into the practice session for the Trump cabinet meeting.

          sigpic

          Win nervously lose tragically - Reds C C

          Comment


          • http://www.pennlive.com/nation-world...ington_dc.html
            Gunman opens fire at GOP baseball practice, injuring top congressman

            Police are on the scene of a shooting in the Del Ray neighborhood of Alexandria, Va. on Wednesday at a baseball field where members of Congress practice.
            Several people were taken away from the scene in ambulances.
            NBC Washington and Alexandria police report that the suspect is in custody.

            Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks texted Huffington Post reporter Matt Fuller that several people were hit, including GOP Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA). Fox News and the Washington Post confirm that Scalise was shot.

            Brooks provided a first-person account to CNN via phone shortly after the shooting. He said he heard a loud noise and spotted a rifle behind the third base dugout.

            "I realize there's still an active shooter," Brooks said. "At the same time, I hear Steve Scalise over near second base scream. He was shot." A congressional aide told the Associated Press that Scalise was in stable condition at George Washington University Hospital.
            Trust me?
            I'm an economist!

            Comment


            • Fuck!!!!
              “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
              Mark Twain

              Comment


              • A hell of a move...

                http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/16/opinio...ion/index.html

                (CNN)According to a report in the New York Daily News, Donald Trump has appointed the spectacularly unqualified Lynne Patton to run the Region II office of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which covers New York and New Jersey -- thus confirming the Trump administration's haphazard treatment of the problems facing American cities.

                Patton, who has been an event planner and personal aide to members of the Trump family (she planned Eric Trump's wedding), has no experience in housing or urban development. She will now be tasked with coordinating the flow of billions of federal dollars into New York City, Newark, Trenton and other troubled urban centers.

                Her portfolio will include the nation's largest public housing authority, home to more than half a million people, and the country's largest Section 8 program, which provides subsidies to tens of thousands of low-income renters.

                It remains unclear, to say the least, how well those responsibilities will be shouldered by a woman whose main credential appears to be her years of service to the Trump family. Patton's online LinkedIn biography describes her job as working for Eric Trump, Donald Trump, Jr. and Ivanka Trump, and "handling all calendar appointments, scheduling, media appearances, travel, expenses, purchases, event coordination, contact/engagements, as well as home & business responsibilities."

                It did not help matters that, on a recent surprise visit to the New York City Housing Authority, Patton disappointed local officials by declining to actually enter a housing authority apartment. That echoes a similar decision by her boss, HUD Secretary Ben Carson, to avoid visiting city projects that rely on HUD funds.

                None of this bodes well for public housing in New York, which could lose as much as $216 million in badly-needed federal housing money if Congress approves cuts proposed in the Trump administration's 2018 budget.

                A more pressing concern for Patton will be the multiple conflict-of-interest questions raised by her appointment. A recent Forbes investigation revealed that more than $1 million in funds from the Eric Trump Foundation -- overseen by Patton -- actually ended up in the coffers of the for-profit Trump Organization, which collected inflated fees from the foundation for hosting charitable events at Trump golf courses.

                A spokesman for Eric Trump called the report "disgusting," adding "Contrary to recent reports, at no time did the Trump Organization profit in any way from the foundation or any of its activities." NY State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is examining the question, meaning Patton will enter office under a cloud.

                There's also an unrelated conflict issue in how Patton will handle her duty to regulate Spring Creek Towers, a vast, privately-owned complex in Brooklyn with nearly 6,000 apartments that was built with federal help: in exchange for government financing, the owners of developments like Spring Creek agree to keep rents at a designated level that middle-class tenants can afford.

                Over the years, Donald Trump shed this type of government-subsidized housing, but the Trump Organization still owns 4% of Spring Creek Towers, worth an estimated $25 million -- and the complex's ongoing subsidies are regulated by none other than HUD. One wonders what kind of oversight Patton can fairly exercise over the Trump Organization that has employed her for so long.

                Join us on Twitter and Facebook
                Donald Trump's successful campaign for President was based on the idea that inspired amateurs from outside Washington can run the government better than government insiders. Patton will put that proposition to a high-profile test, with the housing needs of hundreds of thousands hanging in the balance.

                Comment


                • Jeez on the face of it it doesnt look good , good luck .

                  Comment


                  • Originally posted by zraver View Post
                    I doubt you have ever read an economics book. If you had you would understand that free at point of service increases demand and thus increases costs.
                    "Increase" in cost from what level? If we define the base level of total national health care cost to be that determined by the perfect market, then I agree.

                    But you do realise that the perfect market does not exist, right?

                    You can try to obtain an optimal societal outcome by:

                    1. Approximating the perfect market in form with a heavily deregulated market; or
                    2. Approximating the perfect market in outcome with a sensibly regulated market.

                    There is no evidence to support the conservative notion that method 1 works better than 2. If anything, foreign examples have shown that method 2 works better in for health care. The best part about method 2 is that it is not ideologically opposed to certain solutions when they prove to be more effective.

                    I would argue that your national health care cost would actually decrease with a properly regulated health insurance market.

                    Besides, I do not imagine that the demand for health care is that elastic.

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by hboGYT View Post
                      "Increase" in cost from what level? If we define the base level of total national health care cost to be that determined by the perfect market, then I agree.

                      But you do realise that the perfect market does not exist, right?

                      You can try to obtain an optimal societal outcome by:

                      1. Approximating the perfect market in form with a heavily deregulated market; or
                      2. Approximating the perfect market in outcome with a sensibly regulated market.

                      There is no evidence to support the conservative notion that method 1 works better than 2. If anything, foreign examples have shown that method 2 works better in for health care. The best part about method 2 is that it is not ideologically opposed to certain solutions when they prove to be more effective.

                      I would argue that your national health care cost would actually decrease with a properly regulated health insurance market.

                      Besides, I do not imagine that the demand for health care is that elastic.
                      Free at point of use encourages overuse of the resource. The only way to counter this and retain free at point of use is via rationing. Which is why single payer systems do not innovate, design new drugs, and have such long wait times. Canadian system , US VA system, British NHS... really good at setting broken bones and simple care for chronic conditions, sucky at complex acute care like cancer. Well i take that back, the British ER system is breaking down and wait times to even get an ambulance are getting longer. Most ER patients in England have to wait more than 4 hours to even be seen let alone treated. In the US its seen in 30 and treated in 90.

                      Comment


                      • Originally posted by zraver View Post
                        Free at point of use encourages overuse of the resource. The only way to counter this and retain free at point of use is via rationing. Which is why single payer systems do not innovate, design new drugs, and have such long wait times. Canadian system , US VA system, British NHS... really good at setting broken bones and simple care for chronic conditions, sucky at complex acute care like cancer. Well i take that back, the British ER system is breaking down and wait times to even get an ambulance are getting longer. Most ER patients in England have to wait more than 4 hours to even be seen let alone treated. In the US its seen in 30 and treated in 90.
                        You're confusing healthcare provision financing with pharmaceutical R&D and surgical technique development. They are not even remotely connected.

                        One's economic and political policy; the others are research and development.
                        Trust me?
                        I'm an economist!

                        Comment


                        • If this is not disturbing...

                          https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...isis-medicaid-

                          My family lives in central Appalachia, in places too tiny to be called towns. These rural “hollers” are the heart of this beautiful but hardscrabble mountain region. Roads are so difficult to navigate here that medicine is delivered by drones. So when the Republican party throws up its barriers to Medicaid, it will be rendered useless to many rural people in the region. Work requirements, co-payments, cancellation of transportation services and lockouts to coverage will cause people that I love to lose their health insurance.
                          "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?" ~ Epicurus

                          Comment


                          • Originally posted by hboGYT View Post
                            "Increase" in cost from what level? If we define the base level of total national health care cost to be that determined by the perfect market, then I agree.

                            But you do realise that the perfect market does not exist, right?

                            You can try to obtain an optimal societal outcome by:

                            1. Approximating the perfect market in form with a heavily deregulated market; or
                            2. Approximating the perfect market in outcome with a sensibly regulated market.

                            There is no evidence to support the conservative notion that method 1 works better than 2. If anything, foreign examples have shown that method 2 works better in for health care. The best part about method 2 is that it is not ideologically opposed to certain solutions when they prove to be more effective.

                            I would argue that your national health care cost would actually decrease with a properly regulated health insurance market.

                            Besides, I do not imagine that the demand for health care is that elastic.
                            The perfect market does not exist for any market. "Sensible" regulation in the United States, in living memory, used to mean controlling every single price through government fiat via industry boards. "Sensible" inflation combating once meant freezing every price in the country. "Sensible" corporate policy used to mean imposing 100% "windfall profit" taxes on any market price above whatever arbitrary threshold the government set.

                            "Sensible regulation" is just a buzzword that means practically anything, and the criteria "not a perfect market" applies to everything.
                            "The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood"-Otto Von Bismarck

                            Comment


                            • https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.d83ac04ca83b

                              The Post's Supreme Court guru Robert Barnes explains the significance here:

                              The justices regularly are called to invalidate state electoral maps that have been illegally drawn to reduce the influence of racial minorities by depressing the impact of their votes.

                              But the Supreme Court has never found a plan unconstitutional because of partisan gerrymandering. If it does, it would have a revolutionary impact on the reapportionment that comes after the 2020 election and could come at the expense of Republicans, who control the process in the majority of states.

                              The court accepted a case from Wisconsin, where a divided panel of three federal judges last year ruled last year that the state’s Republican leadership in 2011 pushed through a plan so partisan that it violated the Constitution’s First Amendment and equal rights protections.
                              Trust me?
                              I'm an economist!

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by DOR View Post
                                You're confusing healthcare provision financing with pharmaceutical R&D and surgical technique development. They are not even remotely connected.

                                One's economic and political policy; the others are research and development.
                                They are intimately connected. If a government won't spring for the cost to introduce a new drug or procedure then they don't get adopted. This is one reason cancer patients in the UK are now 5x less likely than patients in many other Eurozone countries. Socialized medicine = rationing. Nothing is free, everything has to be paid for. For years the world has relied on the US for profit system to develop the new drugs and procedures. Turn the US into another non-profit rationed care basket case and medical innovation will tank.

                                Comment

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