Open Thread July 2, 2023 Partisan SCOTUS
The Constitution does not impose complete separation between the judiciary and the political branches. Instead, it establishes a federal judicial branch that is separate from the legislative and executive branches and benefits from certain important protections3 but also grants the political branches, and especially Congress, substantial power to regulate and otherwise influence the federal courts.
Beyond the authority to confirm and impeach individual judges, Congress also has authority to structure the federal judiciary and set judicial procedures.
Open Thread June 28, 2023 SCOTUS closing out the year, Angry Bear, angry bear blog.
Canada Offers Lesson in the Economic Toll of Climate Change
NY Times – July 3
Wildfires are hurting many industries and could strain households across Canada, one of many countries reckoning with the impact of extreme weather.
(Seriously hurting air quality in the US Northeast also.)
Canada’s wildfires have burned 20 million acres, blanketed Canadian and U.S. cities with smoke and raised health concerns on both sides of the border, with no end in sight. The toll on the Canadian economy is only beginning to sink in.
The fires have upended oil and gas operations, reduced available timber harvests, dampened the tourism industry and imposed uncounted costs on the national health system.
Those losses are emblematic of the pressure being felt more widely as countries around the world experience disaster after disaster caused by extreme weather, and they will only increase as the climate warms.
What long seemed a faraway concern has snapped into sharp relief in recent years, as billowing smoke has suffused vast areas of North America, floods have washed away neighborhoods, and heat waves have strained power grids. That incurs billions of dollars in costs, and also has longer-reverberating consequences, such as insurers withdrawing from markets prone to hurricanes and fires. …
Haze Moves Through Midwest, as New York City Avoids the Worst for Now
NY Times – June 29
The impact of the smoke was less severe than earlier this month and was most strongly felt in cities from Pittsburgh and Cleveland to Chicago and Detroit.
Smoke from Canadian wildfires once again blanketed parts of the United States on Thursday, disrupting life for millions of Americans across a broad swath of the Midwest just weeks after it plunged New York into a campfire-and-brimstone haze.
The impact of the smoke was less severe this time, though, and was most strongly felt in cities west of the Appalachian Mountains, from Pittsburgh and Cleveland to Chicago and Detroit. People there donned face masks, outdoor events were delayed or canceled and hospitals received an unusually high number of respiratory complaints. …
Run
the power of the legislature to “check and balance” the Court would be more useful if “they” [the real power] did not already control the legislature.
America Is Living on Borrowed Money
NY Times editorial – July 5
The federal debt is as old as the nation, and adding to it is sometimes prudent. For governments confronting “existential crises” like wars or pandemics, borrowing makes sense as a way to mobilize national resources, as the economist Barry Eichengreen wrote in the 2021 book, “In Defense of Public Debt.” Government borrowing and spending are necessary to stimulate the economy during recessions. And Treasuries, safe and liquid, play a critical role in the global financial system — so much so that in the late 1990s, when a period of economic growth and reduced military spending allowed the government to sharply reduce borrowing, economists and bankers raised alarms about the consequences of too little federal debt.
The United States, however, now borrows heavily during periods of economic growth to meet basic and ongoing obligations. It’s increasingly unsustainable. Over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office projects that annual federal budget deficits will average around $2 trillion per year, adding to the $25.4 trillion in debt the government already owes to investors.
Borrowing is expensive. A mounting share of federal revenue, money that could be used for the benefit of the American people, goes right back out the door in the form of interest payments to investors who purchase government bonds. Rather than collecting taxes from the wealthy, the government is paying the wealthy to borrow their money.
By 2029, the government is on pace to spend more each year on interest than on national defense, according to the Congressional Budget Office. By 2033, interest payments will consume an amount equal to 3.6 percent of the nation’s economic output. …
Before the pandemic, a decade of very low interest rates meant that even as the federal debt swelled, interest payments remained relatively modest. Measured as a share of the national economy, the federal debt was roughly twice as large at the beginning of 2020 as it was at the beginning of 1990, but the burden of interest payments was barely half as large.
The era of low interest rates has ended, however. The cost of living on borrowed money is rising. It is imperative for the nation’s leaders to chart a new course.
Although one wouldn’t know it from the celebrations in Washington last month, the deal reached to raise the debt ceiling does not amount to a meaningful start. Democrats agreed to modest spending cuts; Republicans refused to consider any measures to increase revenue. The result? Before the deal, the C.B.O. projected the debt would reach roughly $46.7 trillion in 2033. After the deal, it projected the total would be only marginally smaller, at $45.2 trillion. That would equal 115 percent of the nation’s annual economic output, the highest level on record.
Both parties say they understand the need for larger changes.
“We’re going to do even more to reduce the deficit,” President Biden declared in a speech from the Oval Office after Congress voted to raise the debt ceiling.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, acknowledging that the legislation didn’t amount to much, said after the vote that he intended to form a bipartisan commission “so we can find the waste and we can make the real decisions to really take care of this debt.”
The talk, however, is hard to take seriously. Republicans evidently are not concerned about the debt. Every time they have had the opportunity in recent decades, they have passed tax cuts that force the government to borrow more money. They’ve already got a new tax cut package in their sights. Democrats, for their part, have grown wary of calls to curtail spending because predictions of dire consequences have not come to pass, and because they have learned the bitter lesson that agreeing to spending cuts simply creates room for Republicans to justify another round of tax cuts.
The debt ceiling is part of the problem. It was never intended to limit the federal debt. It was actually created to facilitate borrowing. During World War I, Congress got tired of authorizing each new round of bonds, so it gave the Treasury permission to borrow up to a specific limit. Its current use, as a means for Republicans to extort spending cuts from Democrats by threatening to push the nation into default, is even less productive. Larger changes are going to happen only if both political parties are willing participants.
A first step in resetting the conversation is to eliminate the debt ceiling before its next scheduled appearance in 2025. President Biden has brushed aside calls for his administration to pursue a legal ruling that the ceiling is unconstitutional. In doing so, he is repeating the mistake he made last fall, when he failed to press for legislation to repeal the ceiling. A case pending in federal court in Boston, brought by federal workers concerned that a default would come at the expense of their pensions, offers a potential vehicle. Other legal avenues also should be explored. It makes sense to pursue a ruling while there is no imminent danger of hitting the ceiling. If courts reject the legal challenges, that would also be clarifying.
Any substantive deal will eventually require a combination of increased revenue and reduced spending, not least because any politically viable deal will require a combination of those options. Both parties will have to compromise: Republicans must accept the necessity of collecting what the government is owed, and of imposing taxes on the wealthy. Democrats must recognize that changes to Social Security and Medicare, the major drivers of federal spending growth going forward, should be on the table. Anything less will prove fiscally unsustainable.
That will require painful choices. But the failure to make those choices also has a price — and the price tag is increasing rapidly.
… The debt ceiling is part of the problem. It was never intended to limit the federal debt. It was actually created to facilitate borrowing. During World War I, Congress got tired of authorizing each new round of bonds, so it gave the Treasury permission to borrow up to a specific limit. Its current use, as a means for Republicans to extort spending cuts from Democrats by threatening to push the nation into default, is even less productive. Larger changes are going to happen only if both political parties are willing participants.
A first step in resetting the conversation is to eliminate the debt ceiling before its next scheduled appearance in 2025. President Biden has brushed aside calls for his administration to pursue a legal ruling that the ceiling is unconstitutional. In doing so, he is repeating the mistake he made last fall, when he failed to press for legislation to repeal the ceiling. A case pending in federal court in Boston, brought by federal workers concerned that a default would come at the expense of their pensions, offers a potential vehicle. Other legal avenues also should be explored. It makes sense to pursue a ruling while there is no imminent danger of hitting the ceiling. If courts reject the legal challenges, that would also be clarifying.
Any substantive deal will eventually require a combination of increased revenue and reduced spending, not least because any politically viable deal will require a combination of those options. Both parties will have to compromise: Republicans must accept the necessity of collecting what the government is owed, and of imposing taxes on the wealthy. Democrats must recognize that changes to Social Security and Medicare, the major drivers of federal spending growth going forward, should be on the table. Anything less will prove fiscally unsustainable.
That will require painful choices. But the failure to make those choices also has a price — and the price tag is increasing rapidly.
How Tom Brady’s Crypto Ambitions Collided With Reality
NY Times – July 6
As the FTX cryptocurrency exchange imploded last fall, Tom Brady, the seven-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback, made an urgent phone call.
He dialed Sina Nader, FTX’s head of partnerships. The exchange’s staff was in the middle of a crisis meeting with its beleaguered founder, Sam Bankman-Fried. Mr. Nader couldn’t answer. “I never would’ve expected to decline a call from Tom Brady,” he said.
Mr. Brady had reasons to be concerned. As an “ambassador” for FTX, he had appeared at the company’s conference in the Bahamas and in TV commercials that promoted the exchange as “the most trusted” institution in the loosely regulated world of crypto.
His money was also at stake. As part of an endorsement agreement Mr. Brady signed in 2021, FTX had paid him $30 million, a deal that consisted almost entirely of FTX stock, three people with knowledge of the contract said. Mr. Brady’s wife at the time, the supermodel Gisele Bündchen, was paid $18 million in FTX stock, one of the people said.
Now FTX is bankrupt, and Mr. Bankman-Fried is facing criminal fraud charges. Mr. Brady, 45, and Ms. Bündchen, 42, have been sued by a group of FTX customers seeking compensation from the celebrities who endorsed the exchange. On top of it all, the terms of the deal would have required the former couple, who divorced last year, to pay taxes on at least some of their now worthless FTX stock, two people familiar with the endorsement deal said. …
How Tom Brady’s Crypto Ambitions Collided With Reality
NY Times – July 6
As the FTX cryptocurrency exchange imploded last fall, Tom Brady, the seven-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback, made an urgent phone call. …
Mr. Brady had reasons to be concerned. As an “ambassador” for FTX, he had appeared at the company’s conference in the Bahamas and in TV commercials that promoted the exchange as “the most trusted” institution in the loosely regulated world of crypto.
His money was also at stake. As part of an endorsement agreement Mr. Brady signed in 2021, FTX had paid him $30 million, a deal that consisted almost entirely of FTX stock, three people with knowledge of the contract said. Mr. Brady’s wife at the time, the supermodel Gisele Bündchen, was paid $18 million in FTX stock, one of the people said.
… Mr. Brady, 45, and Ms. Bündchen, 42, have been sued by a group of FTX customers seeking compensation from the celebrities who endorsed the exchange. On top of it all, the terms of the deal would have required the former couple, who divorced last year, to pay taxes on at least some of their now worthless FTX stock, two people familiar with the endorsement deal said. …
Ukrainians Ready to Fight Again, on Artificial Legs
NY Times – July 8
LVIV, Ukraine — The Superhumans Center is full of war amputees learning to walk on artificial limbs or smoking cigarettes clutched in prosthetic fingers.
Yet this philanthropically supported hospital for wounded Ukrainians is not antiseptically depressing, as hospitals often are. Perhaps that’s because of the admiration that Ukrainians feel for these veterans, leading them to carry their stumps with pride — and to plan a return to the front with artificial arms and legs.
“I do not see disabled people,” Oleksandra Kabanova said as she sat waiting for her husband, Oleh Spodin, to complete a physical therapy session. “I see superheroes.” …
… That’s where I think Vladimir Putin miscalculated when he invaded Ukraine last year: He underappreciated Ukrainian grit and resilience. I suspect some Americans make the same mistake. Month after month, Ukrainians have lost buildings, heat, electricity, lives — yet they are ready to keep sacrificing, and there is a society-wide reverence for those who have given so much.
A recent poll found that 78 percent of Ukrainians had close relatives or friends killed or injured in the fighting. That’s a staggering toll, yet if anything, it has strengthened Ukrainian determination rather than weakened it. On each of my visits to wartime Ukraine, what has struck me the most is not the immense suffering but the even more overwhelming resolve to win.
While the pain and difficulty faced by those struggling to learn to walk again are enormous, the public adulation is a salve. …