RENT-SEEKERS GOTTA SEEK RENTS: Occupational Licensing Reform Is Bipartisan. California Didn’t Get the Message.

A party-line vote in a California legislative committee derailed a promising licensing bill proposed by state Assemblyman Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin). The bill would not have made any immediate changes to California’s licensing laws; it merely would have created a petition process to allow individuals to ask a board to review and rescind its own regulations—with an eye towards reducing lawsuits challenging particularly onerous rules.

Additionally, the bill would have prohibited licensing boards from denying a license solely because an applicant had unpaid student loans or a criminal record.

But even those relatively mild reforms were deemed too dangerous by Golden State Democrats, who uniformly opposed the measure.

Those Democrats were backed by the special interests that benefit from keeping barriers to employment high.

But of course.

SMALL WARS JOURNAL: Turkey’s Triangular Quagmire.

This is a dense piece, but worth a read. I’d just add that Erdogan has spent the last decade or more alienating Turkey’s old (and quite powerful) allies, without making any new ones — all the while stoking Arab fears of a neo-Ottoman resurgence.

BLUE CITY BLUES: Seattle created its homelessness crisis; now it’s trying to make it worse.

So now that we know Seattle’s own laws created a shortage of housing in the city while at the same time reducing the amount of take-home pay for lower-income residents, what is the City Council’s solution? More government.

In 2017, King County and Seattle spent over $195 million to combat homelessness, which included city, county, state, federal and charity spending. Surely the massive amount of spending had an impact on the problem? No, homelessness actually increased last year.

But don’t worry, the City Council has a plan. It had the great idea to institute another tax, known as a “head tax.” The city is going to tax its largest business $500 for every employee. This money would then be used to build “affordable housing.” It is hard to see how that could be done with the current zoning laws, which helped start the crisis in the first place, still in place.

After the City Council voted 9-0 for the ordinance, business leaders spoke out, and Amazon paused construction on a project, pitting hard-working construction workers against do-nothing, full-time protesters. After some negotiating between the City Council and Mayor Jenny Durkan, the head tax was reduced to $275 for every employee.

This may seem like a win, but like everything in Seattle, all is not as it seems. Along with the lower rate, so far the allocation of the funds is non-binding. Meaning there is no plan to spend the money. It could easily be spent on non-homeless issues.

What Seattle has done is so poorly planned, even some of the homeless are calling out the city for its excessive spending.

“Get the hell out of my way!” the wise man once said.

OUCH: Law firm of Stormy Daniels’ attorney hit with $10-million judgment.

Judge Catherine Bauer of U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Santa Ana ordered the Eagan Avenatti law firm to pay the $10 million to Jason Frank, a lawyer who used to work at the Newport Beach firm.

“At this point, that’s what’s appropriate,” Bauer said at a brief hearing.
To settle his law firm’s bankruptcy, Avenatti had personally guaranteed that the $2 million would be paid to Frank last week, but both he and his firm failed to turn over the money.

At the hearing, the U.S. Justice Department revealed that Avenatti has also defaulted on just over $440,000 in back taxes, penalties and interest that he had personally promised to pay the Internal Revenue Service under another bankruptcy settlement for his law firm.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Najah Shariff told the judge that the federal government would soon file a motion demanding payment.

To be fair, Avenatti has been too busy helping out CNN to keep track of such trivialities.

CYA: SpaceX’s New Rocket Studied by Air Force, Delaying GPS Upgrades.

The GPS III satellites being built by Lockheed Martin Corp. promise increased accuracy for navigation, a signal compatible with similar European satellites and improved security against cyberattacks. But the satellites meant to upgrade the Global Positioning System, which is widely used for military and civilian applications, are already years behind schedule.

The planned GPS III launch “has slipped due to ongoing SpaceX qualification testing and final engineering reviews by both SpaceX and the Air Force of Falcon 9 design changes,” the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center said in a statement to Bloomberg News. The service is “working closely” with SpaceX to complete the reviews and issue a “Flight Worthiness Certification just prior to launch,” it said.

The rockets are fine; it’s the paperwork that’s slow.

SHOT: Democrats Shouldn’t Start with ‘Impeachment Trials’ if Party Wins Majority.

-Former Hillary Clinton advisor Jennifer Palmieri.

CHASER: We will impeach Trump if we retake the House.

-Democratic Congressman Al Green.

HANGOVER: GOP Surges to 2018 Generic Ballot Lead in New Reuters Poll.

PAULA BOLYARD: Mark Zuckerberg Faces EU Inquisition, Insists Facebook ‘Not Targeting Any Specific Ideology.’

CHANGE (IT BACK): Congress Is Poised to Pass Dodd-Frank Rollback for Smaller Banks.

The Senate approved the legislation earlier this year, so the House vote could result in the bill going to President Trump for his signature.

The legislation is symbolically important because Republicans have been railing against the Dodd-Frank law as an example of federal overreach.

But the legislation does little to alter the oversight of the country’s biggest banks. Instead, it strips away regulatory requirements that smaller banks have said are burdensome and unnecessary.

The effort has enjoyed rare bipartisan support. When the Senate voted on the bill in March, 16 Democrats voted alongside all 50 Republicans to pass it. Progressive Democrats have sharply criticized it.

Progressives usually find themselves opposed to actual progress — they’re on wrong side of history, you might say.

BESTSELLING AUTHOR ERIC METAXAS: The Media Is ‘In Love With Being Unable to Understand’ Trump. “I can no longer take The New York Times or CNN seriously, because it’s a steady drum-beat. CNN has gone mad, I’ve never seen anything like it. The only time they’re not criticizing Trump is on some of the commericals.”

HUH: Mystery in Mueller probe: Where’s the hacking indictment?

YOU CALL THAT PRIME? Banned From Amazon: The Shoppers Who Make Too Many Returns. “Customers say their accounts were closed without warning; it happens when ‘you’re creating a lot of headaches for Amazon’.”

Amazon has cultivated an image as a customer-friendly company in part by making it easy for shoppers to send back items they don’t want. The site’s lax return policies have conditioned consumers to expect the same treatment from other retailers, adding to pressure on brick-and-mortar chains. But shoppers are finding out there are some customers Amazon has determined aren’t worth keeping.

Nir Nissim received an email in March notifying him that his account had been closed because he violated the company’s conditions of use agreement. “You cannot open a new account or use another account to place orders on our site,” Amazon wrote.

The 20-year-old, who works at an ice cream shop in Israel, said he had a $450 gift card balance that he could no longer use. “I contacted them almost every day for a week or two,” he said.

Eventually a customer service agent told him that his account had been closed due to his return activity. Mr. Nissim said he has returned just one item this year—a computer drive—and four items last year. He sent more messages to protest the ban, including one to Chief Executive Jeff Bezos. An Amazon employee—responding on behalf of Mr. Bezos—notified him he was reinstated.

After that kind of treatment, you have to wonder if Nissim will remain a customer after using up his remaining gift card balance.

HMM: Former Trump Campaign Adviser Michael Caputo Says More than One Informant Approached Him.

GOVERNORS TO CONGRESS: “Pass Right to Try.”

Last summer, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed Right to Try, a Goldwater Institute policy that protects the right of terminally ill patients to try investigational treatments that could save or extend their lives. The U.S. House followed suit earlier this year, passing a different version of the legislation. In a letter sent to congressional leadership over the weekend, the governors call on the two chambers to resolve the differences between the two bills so that it may be sent to the president for his signature.

“Gridlock in Washington remains the only barrier standing between terminally ill patients and the hope they both need and deserve,” the governors wrote. “These patients and their families have no more time to waste.”

The letter was co-signed by Governor Christopher Sununu of New Hampshire, Doug Ducey of Arizona, Edwaard Baza Calvo of Guam, Jeff Colyer of Kansas, Matt Bevin of Kentucky, Phil Bryant of Mississippi, Susana Martinez of New Mexico, and Dennis Daugaard of South Dakota. In calling on Congress to act expeditiously, the governors pointed to the widespread adoption of Right to Try in the states as a model for action.

Faster, please.

HIGH EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: 88% of Pomona Students Think the Campus Climate Silences Them. “‘Very liberal’ students are nearly four times more likely than moderate and conservative students to favor prohibiting some types of speech.”

Conservative, moderate, and liberal students are to varying degrees concerned about this trend. But 41 percent of self-described “very liberal” students thought Pomona’s policies on offensive speech had not gone far enough toward making potentially insensitive remarks unutterable.

That’s according to a fascinating survey of Pomona students and faculty conducted by Gallup. About a third of students and two thirds of faculty participated, which makes it a relatively comprehensive snapshot of the school’s attitudes about speech.

It turns out that Pomona students are more inclined than both faculty and students nationally to say that the college should prohibit certain viewpoints.

In the name of diversity, of course.

Maybe Pomona ought to make Logic 101 mandatory.

DON’T BE EVIL: Google ‘identifies rape victims.’

Searches for attackers and alleged attackers in several prominent sexual assault cases automatically reveal the names of women that they have been convicted or accused of abusing.

Entering the name of a victim or complainant in the site’s search engine can also flag up the identity of their abuser or alleged abuser. The identity of vulnerable defendants granted anonymity can also be revealed.

Google uses automated “related search” and “autocomplete” functions to direct users to content associated with the terms that they enter online. The related search feature makes suggestions at the bottom of the web page based on what other users have been looking for. Autocomplete adds words into the search bar once the user has started typing to predict their query.

Google’s algorithm automatically brings up victims’ names because it has logged popular searches for information about victims in prominent cases, often after they were illegally named on social media.

It seems there’s no malicious intent here — just an unintended consequence of Google’s ever-present “helpfulness.”

PEAK OIL: U.S. World’s Top Fossil Fuels Producer for Sixth Year in a Row.

RAPID DEPLOYMENT: Israel First to Use F-35 Jet in Combat. “We are flying the F-35 all over the Middle East.”

“We are the first to attack using the F-35 in the Middle East and have already attacked twice on different fronts,” Maj.-Gen. Amikam Norkin said during the IAF Senior Air Force Conference in Herzilya.

Norkin made the comments while showing a picture of one Israeli F-35 flying over the Lebanese capital of Beirut during the day. He did not mention when the picture was taken.

Israel declared initial operational capability of the world’s most advanced jet in December after receiving nine F-35s. The Air Force is expected to receive a total of 50 planes to make two full squadrons by 2024.

Israel had previously scored at least one nearly spooky success against Syria’s Russian-made antiaircraft defenses without the use of stealth aircraft. Deploying the F-35 puts even fewer lives at risk.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Show Me the Documents and Much, Much More. “You’ve got to wonder what is in these documents that the DOJ and FBI will not turn them over to Congress. For months, they have resisted turning over documents rightful requested as part of the Congressional oversight.”

It’s been long enough now that the kindest possible take is that the contents of the documents are innocuous, but DOJ is engaging in an illegal power-play against Congress. But it’s also been long enough that the kindest take is probably also the least likely take.

WELL, GOOD: St. Louis Town Agrees to Stop Bankrolling Itself by Fining Its Residents into the Poorhouse.

CONSISTENCY IS THE HOBGOBLIN OF LARGE AMBITIONS: Kamala Harris Touts ‘Fierce Opposition to the Death Penalty’ But In 2014 Defended It In Federal Court.

HMM: With the individual mandate dead, the rest of Obamacare is unconstitutional.

In fact, the only basis for the mandate’s constitutionality, according to Roberts, is that it’s a tax — not a fine, penalty, or anything else. This is a vital point, because when Republicans passed their tax reform legislation in December 2017, they included a provision in the law that lowers the individual mandate penalty to $0 beginning in January 2019, effectively eliminating any hope the individual mandate could still be considered a “tax.”

If the tax-less individual mandate is now found to be unconstitutional, it could very likely result in the entire healthcare law being struck down. In their 2012 dissenting opinion, four Supreme Court judges argued the ACA could not survive absent the individual mandate. Although Roberts never addressed the question in his opinion, there are good reasons to believe he should agree to throw the entire law out.

When determining whether a law should survive despite having at least one provision determined to be illegal, the Supreme Court has enacted a two-part test. In his 2012 dissent, Scalia explained the first part is “whether the now truncated statute will operate in the manner Congress intended. If not, the remaining provisions must be invalidated.”

Because Congress is the one that determined the Obamacare fine should be $0, it would likely be difficult to argue the ACA is operating in a manner it didn’t intend. But the second part of the test poses a much more difficult problem.

“Second, even if the remaining provisions can operate as Congress designed them to operate, the Court must determine if Congress would have enacted them standing alone and without the unconstitutional portion,” Scalia wrote. “If Congress would not, those provisions, too, must be invalidated.”

The reasoning seems solid, but you never know what the Roberts Court might do.

AMERICA’S LONGEST WAR: Taliban Overruns Second District in Ghazni.

The Taliban claim that it took control of Ajristan cannot be independently verified in the Afghan press. However, the Taliban is very credible when it comes to making assertions related to control of districts in Afghanistan.

The Afghan press has reported that the Taliban has been advancing on Ajristan’s district center and it has been on “the verge of collapse.” The district governor and police chief have fled the district center to another area in Ajristan and have been surrounded by the Taliban, TOLONews reported. This means it is very likely that Afghan forces abandoned the governor’s compound and police headquarters.

Ajristan is the second district in Ghazni to fall to the Taliban in the past week. On May 16, the Taliban said it overran the Jaghatu district in Ghazni province “after an intense gunfight of heavy and light arms.”

Security in Ghazni province has deteriorated rapidly over the past year. Of Ghazni’s 19 districts, the Taliban control five and contest nine more, according to information compiled by FDD’s Long War Journal. Only five districts are considered to be controlled by the Afghan government.

Ghazni City, the provincial center, is one of seven provincial capitals under direct Taliban threat, according to Afghanistan’s Ministry of Defense.

On the one hand, this isn’t going very well. On the other, Ghazni is home to one of the world’s largest lithium deposits.

LET THE CHIPS FALL: Did The Obama Administration Spy On Trump Using Flimsy Evidence? Let’s Find Out. “After all, if the DOJ is incorruptible, there’s nothing to worry about.”

David Harsanyi:

I don’t know if there’s a big conspiracy by the deep state. But it’s pretty obvious to me that leaders of our institutions aren’t above engaging in spying. John Brennan spied on the legislative branch and lied about it to the American people. James Clapper spied on the American people through a domestic surveillance program and lied about it to Congress. Although the Obama administration never tweeted nasty attacks on journalists, it did spy on and prosecute them. It’s completely plausible that those in the upper echelon of law enforcement saw Trump as a threat, then used wobbly evidence as the pretext to investigate his campaign. If not, it’ll be good to clear their names.

“FBI used informant to investigate Russia ties to campaign, not to spy, as Trump claims,” read a truly silly New York Times headline last week. You can call it whatever makes you happy, but in the real world the act of furtively gathering information about someone else is called “spying.”

The Washington Post reported, for instance, that the informant was surreptitiously seeking information by “seeking out and meeting three different Trump campaign officials.” The spy, according to the piece, had contacts with the CIA. This is unprecedented. Why shouldn’t we find out if the reasons that girded the investigation were sound?

Indeed.

JOHN HAWKINS: 5 Reasons Kids Become School Shooters.

Broken homes, broken homes, broken homes, broken homes, broken homes.