NON-SHOCKING HEADLINE OF THE DAY: Balanced Budget Amendment Mirroring 1995 Effort Fails to Get Two-Thirds in House.
Plus: “Our extraordinary fiscal crisis demands an extraordinary solution,” says sponsor Goodlatte as CBO projects deficit spending will increase $11.7 trillion over the next decade.
And that’s without a recession or a major shooting war or some other crisis — which is an awfully long time to go without at least one or two of the three.
I’D DO IT JUST FOR KICKS: Do Democrats have to toss Nancy Pelosi overboard in order to take the majority?
Pelosi is already used as a liberal bogeyman by Republicans, hoping to hurt Democratic candidates between the coasts by tying them to the minority leader. After Lamb’s victory, Politico reported that “a half-dozen Democratic House members and candidates” told the outlet “they had been closely monitoring how Lamb handled the Pelosi attack.”
“A campaign manager for a Democratic candidate in a Republican-held district, granted anonymity to candidly discuss party strategy, said there’s a ‘100 percent chance that we’ll see more rejection of Pelosi from [Democratic] candidates going forward,'” Politico reported, quoting an additional Democratic strategist as saying, “Two things will happen: More Democrats are going to say they don’t support Pelosi, and Republicans will keep airing these Pelosi TV ads.”
Pelosi is a convenient — and real! — boogeyman, and her health appears to be slipping. But she does still control access to Bay Area/Silicon Valley Dem donors, which keeps her formidable no matter what.
ANTISOCIAL MEDIA: Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer pleads guilty to conspiracy, money laundering.
STEPHEN KRUISER: The Definitive 10-Tweet Sampler of Reactions to James Comey’s New Book. “David Hogg for the older crowd…”
WINNING: U.S. Weekly Jobless Claims Hold Below 300,000 for Longest Streak on Record.
The current streak eclipsed the previous longest stretch that ended in April 1970. Taking into account the size of the labor force, claims today compared to the late 1960s and early 1970s are much lower. In March, about 14 initial jobless claims were filed for every 10,000 people in the labor force, Labor Department data show. This compares with 23 claims filed per 10,000 in spring of 1969.
This year, about twice as many people are in the labor force as in 1969.
That’s big. Although I wouldn’t mind seeing the official U-2 unemployment rate actually go up, if it meant that more people were finally re-entering the workforce after years of despair.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Scooter, Comey, Pompeo and Much, Much More.
REPORT: The Internet has serious health problems, Mozilla Foundation report finds.
The Internet Health Report, which evolved from a prototype launched in January of 2017, is not a medical chart for the Internet packed with metrics. Edited by Solana Larsen and written by Mozilla Foundation research fellows, the report is an evaluation of “what’s helping and what’s hurting the Internet,” and it focuses on five broad areas of concern—personal privacy and security, decentralization, openness, “digital inclusion,” and general Web literacy. And Facebook’s part in the health of the Internet is writ large across the report.
Of particular concern were three issues:
• Consolidation of power over the Internet, particularly by Facebook, Google, Tencent, and Amazon.
• The spread of “fake news,” which the report attributes in part to the “broken online advertising economy” that provides financial incentive for fraud, misinformation, and abuse.
• The threat to privacy posed by the poor security of the Internet of Things.The foundation’s report isn’t all bad news—it highlights progress in affordable access and the adoption of cryptography. But the cautionary notes outweigh the optimistic ones, especially on the topic of consolidation of control over Internet content and collection of personal data.
Break out of the social media silos and support your local blogs!
SUSTAINABILITY: US Budget Deficit Hits $600 Billion In 6 Months, As Spending On Interest Explodes.
According to the latest Monthly Treasury Statement, in March, the US collected $210.8BN in receipts – consisting of $88BN in individual income tax, $98BN in social security and payroll tax, $5BN in corporate tax and $20BN in other taxes and duties- a drop of 2.7% from the $216.6BN collected last March and a clear reversal from the recent increasing trend…
… even as Federal spending surged, rising 7% from $392.8BN last March to $420BN last month, the second highest monthly government outlay on record…
… where the money was spent on social security ($85BN), defense ($58BN), Medicare ($75BN), Interest on Debt ($33BN), and Other ($170BN).
I’ve been warning about the interest payment bomb since George W. Bush was president, and that was more than twelve trillion borrowed dollars ago. Sure enough, now that interest rates are climbing, the debt bomb is indeed exploding — and is expected to overtake Defense spending as a slice of the budget pie around mid-decade.
YOU CAN’T POLICE STATE WITH HAMSTRUNG POLICE: Progressive Democrats run California—yet it does more than many states to shield police from scrutiny.
PROCUREMENT: Pentagon stops accepting Lockheed F-35 jets over repair cost dispute.
Last year, the Pentagon stopped accepting F-35s for 30 days after discovering corrosion where panels were fastened to the airframe, an issue that affected more than 200 of the stealthy jets. Once a fix had been devised, the deliveries resumed, and Lockheed hit its target aircraft delivery numbers for 2017.
But deliveries were paused again over a dispute as to who will pay for what will likely be a complex logistical fix that could require technicians to travel widely to mend aircraft based around the world, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.
When the Pentagon stops taking delivery of F-35s, foreign customers can also be affected. So far at least two foreign governments have stopped accepting F-35s as a result of this issue, two of the sources said.
More tough negotiations with Lockheed, please.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. The 2016 election broke some people in media.
Beckett Adams:
MSNBC’s Joy Reid, for example, spent part of her show this weekend speculating about what might happen should the president refuse to allow himself to be arrested by federal marshals. This is a real thing that was discussed on a real show by real political analysts.
“Let’s say that Donald Trump decides he doesn’t want to give an interview with [special counsel Robert Mueller], but Mueller says ‘Oh, but you will.’ And he’s subpoenaed to [be] interview[ed] [by] Robert Mueller. And Donald Trump simply says, ‘I don’t recognize that subpoena.’ This is a president whose behavior is different as president of the United States. He doesn’t follow convention. Who would force him to comply with the subpoena ordering him to do an interview with Robert Mueller?” Reid pondered.
She asked later, seriously, “What if he refuses to open the White House door? What if he fires any Secret Service agent who would allow the federal marshals in? What if Donald Trump simply decides, ‘I don’t have to follow the law? I refuse to be held under the law. No marshal can get into this White House and any Secret Service agent who defies me is fired.'”
I’m not sure Reid is the best example, given that her connection to reality has always been tenuous. But Adams has others, and the trend is unmistakable.
SWAMP DRAINAGE: Ohio House Speaker Resigns Amid FBI Probe.
MAKE TRADE DEALS GREAT AGAIN: Trump Asks Advisers to Study Rejoining Pacific Trade Pact Talks.
Mr. Trump has deputized Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. trade representative, and Larry Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council, to study the possibility of re-entering the TPP if the terms were favorable, the president told a group of lawmakers on Thursday.
The president’s new openness toward the TPP, which he had said during his campaign was a deal “pushed by special interests who want to rape our country,” comes as he is facing criticism from farmers for his escalating trade battle with China. After Mr. Trump took aim at China with new steel and aluminum tariffs, Beijing responded by announcing it would place penalties on a list of agricultural products that would affect swaths of the president’s political base.
Mr. Trump was meeting with lawmakers from states that rely on agriculture when he made the comments about the TPP. Sen. Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican who was in the meeting, said he believed Mr. Trump was serious about his interest in re-entering the trade pact.
“That’s really good news for America,” Mr. Sasse said.
Well that was unexpected.
NEWS YOU CAN USE? Facebook quitting advice from a professional internet quitter.
Paula Bolyard adds:
Propping up corn producers (and GOP lawmakers from corn-dependant states) makes little sense now that shale oil drilling has pushed U.S. oil production to a 47-year high. There is no oil shortage and certainly no crisis that justifies continuing the mandate. Pandering to corn states like Iowa is the worst kind of special interest policymaking. It distorts the free market and hurts consumers. End it.
Diverting food production to gas tanks was a dumb idea even before the fracking revolution.
LET’S HOPE SO: Is the 3D Movie Trend Finally Dying?
HMM: The way we regulate self-driving cars is broken—here’s how to fix it.
The key issue is this: the current system is built around an assumption that cars will be purchased and owned by customers. But the pioneers of the driverless world—including Waymo, Cruise, and Uber—are not planning to sell cars to the public. Instead, they’re planning to build driverless taxi services that customers will buy one ride at a time.
This has big implications for the way regulators approach their jobs. Federal car regulations focus on ensuring that a car is safe at the moment it rolls off the assembly line. But as last month’s crash makes clear, the safety of a driverless taxi service depends on a lot more than just the physical features of the cars themselves.
For example, dash cam footage from last month’s Uber crash showed the safety driver looking down at her lap for five agonizing seconds before the fatal crash. Should Uber have done more to train and supervise its safety drivers? Should Uber have continued to put two people in each car, rather than switching to a single driver? Not only are there no federal rules on these questions, at the time of the crash the public was completely in the dark about how Uber and its competitors were dealing with the issue.
Driverless cars are interesting from a technological and regulatory perspective, but as someone who really enjoys driving, they seem like a solution in search of a problem.
DIAMOND AND SILK: Zuckerberg Lied, ‘We Have Not Been Contacted.’
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