How To Deal With Equifax

This is not a financial advice website.  However, with the big Equifax data breach, there are all kinds of bad advice out there on what to do.  In my case, I sent them a letter today.  By snail mail, return receipt requested.  I thought that some readers might find the letter useful, so I have copied the text into this post below.

The situation in the U.S. with the so-called "credit bureaus" (Equifax, Experian, TransUnion) is really quite bizarre.  They obtain information that you provide in strict confidence to your bank or credit card company, supposedly for purposes of credit reporting, which is a valuable function.  But the actual credit reporting function is mostly done by barter or something close to it (bank reports customer payment history and in turn gets access to full credit reports), so how to turn yourself into a multi-billion dollar infotech powerhouse?  (Equifax and Experian both have reported market caps in the range of $14 billion; TransUnion is a private company, but clearly it made recent ex-Commerce Secretary and Obama Campaign Finance Chair Penny Pritzker very wealthy.)  It's easy!  Take the personal data obtained from consumers in strict confidence and re-sell it to thousands of customers without the consumers' permission.  And since the credit bureaus have no direct relationship with the consumer, they don't have nearly the incentive of your bank or credit card company to safeguard the information they hold and then sell.  What are you going to do, fire them?  Thus, one big hack after another.  (Experian last had a big breach in 2015.  ChoicePoint -- a major customer of the credit bureaus -- had big breaches in 2004 and 2008.  And so forth.)  How our genius so-called "regulators" have allowed this situation to develop is a story that is too long for this post.  But here we are.    

You are welcome to use all of my letter for yourself, or as much as suits your circumstances.  Clearly, it is not likely that you froze your credit with Equifax as I did back in 2009.  But go ahead and demand the credit freeze for yourself today!  (And while you're at it, do the same with Experian and TransUnion.)    

Here are a few of the principles that inform this letter:

• Give them the absolute minimum amount of information that they will need to identify you as a unique individual.  (In my case my name is very close to unique, so this is not difficult.)  Every piece of information you give them about yourself is very valuable to them, because their main business is to package information about you and others and sell it without your permission.  Just like your contacts list in Outlook, their database is full of inaccuracies and anomalies.  Everything you give them, whether it be a current telephone number, a date of birth, an employer, or whatever, will be added to their database and sold and/or hacked to the world.
• Under no circumstances give them your social security number.  Their data base has literally millions of social security number "anomalies," and they would dearly love you to help them clean it up so they can sell your information for a higher price to their customers without your permission.  And if you should ever give it to them, and then try to object to their use of it for their own profit, their response will be, "he gave it to us without imposing restrictions and knowing that we re-sell it."  Meanwhile, if you try to have any dealings with them by website, you will not be allowed to proceed without inputting your social security number.  That's why you need to send a letter.  I can state that I have obtained both credit reports and credit freezes from all three credit bureaus without ever providing my SSN.  In some cases it took considerable persistence, but right now Equifax is not in a very good position to argue about this, so go for it.
• Their claimed basis for demanding social security number is to "identify" you.  I have never understood how exactly name plus SSN constitutes good "identification" when they sell that information to thousands of customers.  But that's why I offer to show up in person with my passport.  What's their answer to that?  (Fortunately, Equifax has an office in Manhattan.)
• Everybody should demand a license for use of their data for any purpose other than credit reporting with your explicit consent.  The license would include a provision for a fee, a limitation on permitted uses, and a liquidated damages provision in case of use for non-permitted purposes and/or a hack.  Of course they won't agree to this, but really, people should start being aware of what's going on and demanding decent treatment.
• They also won't agree to deleting the bulk of your "credit header."  That's not a reason not to demand it.

With that, here's the text of the letter:

Francis J. Menton

[Address]

www.manhattancontrarian.com

 U.S. mail return receipt requested

September 12, 2017

Equifax Credit Information Services, Inc.

P.O. Box 740241

Atlanta, GA 30374

Dear Sir or Madam:

I am writing you at this time because of the recent data breach experienced by your company.   I am corresponding by letter because your online resources for dealing with this matter all require that I input my social security number or some portion of it.  I have never provided you with my social security number and I will not do so now.  Obviously, you cannot be trusted with it.

Here are my requests/demands:

·      Kindly inform me if I have been a subject/victim of the data breach, and if so what pieces of my information have been disclosed and to whom.

·      I would like to sign up for the free year of credit monitoring that you are offering to all who are subject/victims of the breach.  This service must be made available to me in a manner that does not require me to provide any information about myself other than as contained in my letterhead above.  For any other information about me, you will have to pay a fee and sign a license agreement as to use of the information, which will contain a provision for liquidated damages.  Kindly advise if you would like to pursue this option, and I will provide a fee schedule and license agreement.

·      As you know, I have had a credit freeze in place with Equifax since January 2009.  Kindly advise if my PIN number for this credit freeze has been compromised by the recent data breach.  If you are anything less than 100% confident that the PIN number has not been breached, I will obviously need a new PIN number.  Therefore, either advise that you are absolutely 100% confident that the PIN number has not been breached, or provide me with a new PIN number.

·      Kindly delete from your databases all so-called “credit header” information about me other than the information in the letterhead of this letter.  This includes, but is not limited to, my social security number or taxpayer ID number (if you have such), any and all prior addresses, current or prior telephone numbers, my date of birth, and any employment information.

If you feel that you need to do more in order to verify my identity, I would be glad to meet in person with one of your representatives.  I could bring my passport and/or driver’s license, and/or New York State attorney identification card to such a meeting.  Although I will be glad to show these documents to your representative to verify my identity, I will not permit you to make copies of same, nor to make a record of any information or numbers on such documents, without payment of a license fee and signing of a license agreement with a liquidated damages provision, as indicated above.

The best way to communicate with me is by hard copy mail to the address above.  Alternatively, you may respond by email via my website address above.

Very truly yours,

Francis J. Menton

Does Anyone Actually Believe That "Climate Change" Has A Role In Hurricanes?

In my long-time business of commercial litigation, engaging in obvious exaggeration and hyperbole, not to mention disprovable falsity, was the surest way to discredit yourself in the eyes of the judge and jury.  Even one instance of such, and your credibility would decline noticeably.  Keep it up and it would only get worse and worse.  

Meanwhile, over in the field of "climate communication," the conventional wisdom seems to be completely the opposite:  Our job is to scare the bejeezus out of people, and we will say whatever it takes, no matter how obviously exaggerated or even false.  Well OK guys, if you think this works, go ahead and keep trying it.

I won't bore you with too big a round-up of alarmists trying to blame the destruction from Harvey and Irma on "climate change."  You well know that there are hundreds of examples to choose from.  But here is a small sample:

Los Angeles Times, August 30 editorial, "Harvey should be a warning to Trump that climate change is a global threat":

[W]arming . . . certainly makes such storms [as Harvey] stronger, more unpredictable and  quicker to intensify. Experts . . . say that warmer air temperatures mean more evaporation of moisture from the seas to the skies, and thus more rainfall from storms. Warmer seas — including the Gulf of Mexico — intensify storms, from their size to their wind speeds, and amplify storm surges.

Or try this one from the same LA Times on September 10, "Fires, droughts and hurricanes: What's the link between climate change and natural disasters?":

GET READY FOR RAIN. Climate change can influence hurricanes in a number of ways — for example, in the amount of rainfall they drop. As the planet warms, the atmosphere can hold more moisture. So when it rains, it really pours.

And then from the exact same article:

RAIN-BLOCKING: On top of that, climate change might mean that subtropical high pressure systems are likely to get stronger and larger. Those systems keep moist air from traveling upward in the atmosphere, where it can condense and eventually fall to the earth as rain or snow. By gaining in size and strength, those systems may become even more effective at blocking precipitation.

So "climate change" both causes more rainfall and also blocks rainfall!  Scary!  

From New York Magazine (David Wallace-Wells), August 28, "The Specter of Climate Change Hangs Over Hurricane Harvey":

Was Hurricane Harvey the result of climate change?  . . .  As journalist Robinson Meyer, at The Atlantic, and climate scientist Michael Mann, on Facebook, have explained very clearly and very helpfully, global warming has meant more moisture in the air, which intensifies rainfall and flooding, and significant sea-level rise, which leads to bigger and more invasive storm surges — these elements, along with lesser anthropogenic factors, account for as much as 30 percent of the deluge, according to one scientist Meyer spoke with.

And for today's award winner in the category of Say-Absolutely-Anything-To-Advance-The-Cause, we have Emily Atkin from September 7 in The New Republic, "This Weather Is Not Normal. And It Will Only Get Worse."

How many more lives must be destroyed by historic hurricanes, floods, and wildfires before the government admits that climate change is a problem?

[T]here was no avoiding the mass devastation [from Harvey]. Homes were destroyed. At least 60 people died. The flooding has not even fully receded, and now forecasters are tracking another frightening storm that they don’t quite have the language for. . . .  Irma is threatening carnage worse than Harvey, having alreadywreaked havoc in the Caribbean as it barrels toward the mainland U.S., where both Florida and South Carolina have declared states of emergency. . . .  Climate scientists have been warning us for years about this very scenario. “We have extensive scientific evidence that extreme events are increasing around the world, and will continue to increase as climate change gets worse,” said Noah Diffenbaugh, a professor of earth system science at Stanford University. “We see global-scale temperature increases. Global sea level is rising. The amount of heat and atmosphere and ocean is increasing. The amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is increasing. What we’re seeing as a result of those changes is an increase in not only the mean, but the tails of destructive weather events.”

Are you scared yet?

So then, which of these articles (or of the dozens of others parroting similar talking points that you have undoubtedly read in the last few days) acknowledges or deals with the extraordinary 12 year hiatus of major (cat 3, 4 or 5) hurricanes making landfall in the U.S. immediately prior to Harvey and Irma?  None of them.  Which of them acknowledges or deals with the ongoing long-term decline in the number of landfalling hurricanes in the U.S.?  None of them.  

Or consider this chart from actual hurricane expert Philip Klotzbach of the most powerful hurricane landfalls in the U.S. since the late 1800s:

If Harvey and Irma are supposedly evidence that "climate change" makes for more intense and dangerous storms, how is it that here, deep into the human-produced CO2 era, Irma still ranks only 7th in intensity and Harvey 18th?  How is it that the very most intense storm, both by windspeed and pressure, was back in 1935 -- before any significant amount of human CO2 emissions?  If your hypothesis were right, shouldn't we be smashing these records by large margins every year?

And how is it that 12 of these most powerful storms are found in the 60 pre-human CO2 years of 1898 to 1957, but only 9 in the 60 post-human CO2 years of 1958-2017?

Again, which of these articles actually acknowledges or deals with any of this obvious adverse evidence?  None of them.

Too bad that we never get a chance to cross-examine any of these people.  Meanwhile, does anybody really believe that "climate change" has anything to do with hurricane frequency or intensity?  On what basis?

All The Federal "Privacy" Regulations Are Worse Than Useless

By now you've probably heard of the big data breach at credit reporting agency Equifax.  It apparently occurred back in July, but the details are only now coming out.  Numbers in the range of 143 million have been mentioned for how many consumers have been subjected to compromise of their personal data, including their name, addresses, date of birth, and social security number (aka your "personal information").  The combination of these things in association with each other is what enables the opening of a credit account in your name.

When comparably large data breaches occurred a couple of years ago at Yahoo and Target, you knew you were at risk if you did business with those companies; and if you did, you could rightfully blame yourself.  But, you say, you've never had any dealings of any kind with Equifax.  Therefore, your information cannot possibly be at risk.  Wrong.  Pretty much every bank, credit card company, mortgage lender, car finance company, or credit provider of any type shares your personal information with Equifax.  Without your permission.  Indeed, even over your specific objection.

The New York Times today has no fewer than three big articles on the Equifax breach, one on page A1, and two more on the front page of the Business Section.  The article on page A1 is headlined (in the online version) "Equifax Hack Exposes Regulatory Gaps, Leaving Consumers Vulnerable."  The theme, you will not be surprised to learn, is that the problem was caused by insufficient government regulation:

Despite the wealth of sensitive information in its databases, Equifax, in essence, falls through the regulatory cracks.  The dangers of such lax oversight became apparent on Thursday when Equifax disclosed that hackers had compromised the personal and confidential information, including Social Security numbers, of nearly half of the American population.

"Falls through the regulatory cracks"?  "Lax oversight?"  Funny, but as far as I've been able to observe over the past multiple decades, the credit reporting business has been the subject of one big federal statutory and/or regulatory initiative after another.  First there was the Consumer Credit Protection Act of 1968, followed quickly by the Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1970, which has subsequently been amended several times.  The FCRA gave regulatory jurisdiction to the Federal Trade Commission, which has issued multiple rounds of regulations.  Then there was a big statutory addition made by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, followed by additional rounds of regulations from the FTC.  The Dodd-Frank Act in 2010 added yet more statutory provisions, and brought in another regulator, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, with its own rounds of regulations.  Are you now telling us that all these layers and layers of statutes and regulations have given us nothing but a bunch of "cracks" for our information to slip through right into the hands of the bad guys?

The problem, of course, is that all the rounds of statutes and regulations have been completely incompetent.  The chance that the next round will be any less incompetent is approximately zero.  With so many regulations the details have become mind-numbingly complex, but the bottom line is that you have no ability whatsoever to limit access to your information only to the people and companies of your choice.  Nor can you find out any comprehensive list of who has access to your personal information or what they are doing with it.

The statute most specifically focused on the privacy of your personal information was Gramm-Leach-Bliley (GLBA).  Here is a summary of the GLBA privacy provisions from the Electronic Privacy Information Center.  GLBA is the source of the requirement for all those "privacy notices" that you get regularly from your banks and credit card companies and insurers.  Have you ever read one of them?  I'll bet the answer is no.  And you are right not to.  They all start out saying that "you have options," but then seem to exempt from the opt outs anything of any significance.  Somewhere in every one of them it will say either that we use your information to "manage our business" or "as permitted by law" or some other empty phrase that lets them do whatever they please without giving any specifics.  As an example (and not meaning to pick on them specifically) here is the relevant part of the Citibank privacy statement currently available at their website:

Citi uses the information we collect about and from you to provide services, to manage our business and to offer an enhanced, personalized online experience on our site and third-party websites.

The information we collect allows us to:

• Recognize you when you return to our site so we can personalize your experience
• Process applications and transactions
• Respond to your requests
• Recognize and provide you account related benefits and information on our sites.
• Provide you more relevant product and service offers on our sites and in other advertising

We may also use personal information we have about you such as your email or postal address to deliver advertising to you directly or on third party websites.

Try reading that a few times and see if you can figure out where they tell you that they give your personal information to Equifax (and for that matter Experian and TransUnion).  Or where they tell you that Equifax, Experian and TransUnion in turn sell your personal information to data aggregators and brokers who then sell it to all kinds of other people and entities for all kinds of other unspecified purposes, like:

• Governments at all levels for whatever they feel like doing with it, including snooping on you behind your back without a warrant.
• Private investigators for whatever they do with it.
• Law firms (my old law firm subscribed to one of these services).
• Others?  I've demanded a complete list from my bank, from each of the three credit bureaus, from some of the data aggregators (like ChoicePoint) and others.  None will respond.

Here's another page from EPIC, this time about ChoicePoint.  Haven't heard of them?  Here's an example of what they sell:

ChoicePoint sells a wide array of information to the government, including:  Credit headers, a list of identifying information that appears at the top of a credit report. This information includes name, spouse's name, address, previous address, phone number, Social Security number, and employer.

Wait, where did they get that information to sell?  You guessed it.  If you think that a big piece of the holes in the GLBA are to enable the government to circumvent the pesky Fourth Amendment requirements for court-approved warrants if they want to investigate you, you are now starting to catch on.  Enabling you to protect yourself against fraud is not one of their priorities.

By the way, ChoicePoint had a big data breach in 2004, and then another one in 2008.  

So is there anything you can actually do to protect yourself against misuse of your personal information?  Yes:  put a "freeze" on your credit.  If you haven't done it yet, you should do it promptly, with each of the three credit bureaus.  But don't do it online.  Try to do it online, and they will of course demand your social security number in order to proceed.  Don't give it to them.  They will promptly re-sell it.  Write them a letter.  It's some work, but it can be done. 

The New York Mayoral Election

It's hard to believe that it has been almost four years since hard leftist Bill de Blasio was elected Mayor of New York City; so the next election is rapidly approaching.  (We hold our elections for City offices in these bizarre odd off-years.)  Indeed, there are Democratic and Republican primary elections next week, September 12.  Of course, Mayor de Blasio is running for re-election.

You will be shocked to learn that yesterday the New York Times endorsed de Blasio in the primary.  They used the occasion to take a swipe at those who had predicted disaster from having a socialist ideologue in Gracie Mansion:

When Bill de Blasio took office in 2014 as the most left-wing mayor in New York’s modern history, skeptics forecast disaster. In the post-Giuliani and post-Bloomberg era, they predicted, the city would roll back to the chaotic 1970s, when crime rates soared, garbage piled high in the streets, corporations fled to leafier environs and municipal bankruptcy loomed. 

And then they proceeded to gloat with a round of "I told you so":

None of those dire warnings became reality. New York remains, on the whole, well run. Crime has continued its remarkable decline. Garbage is collected as efficiently as ever. The local economy is humming, and municipal finances are sound, with steady budget surpluses. Most unions representing city workers are content.

Well, I can't speak for all of the "skeptics" they are referring to, but here at the Manhattan Contrarian we certainly did not predict immediate disaster.  That's not how socialist death spirals work.  From my post on November 4, 2013, the day before the last election:

The good news is that even the worst left-wing policies do not lead to immediate economic collapse, but rather to slow gradual decline.  It took decades of Rockefeller/Wagner/Lindsay overtaxing and overspending before New York City lost 10% of its population in the 1970s, and that one proved possible to correct.  Still, you would think we had learned those lessons.

Or, from my post of June 16, 2016:

[I]ncreased government spending and tightening government control of an economy in the "socialist" model reverses the positive incentives of the private ownership/free exchange model (aka "capitalism"), undermines the dynamic of economic growth, and causes a gradual but then accelerating decline of the real economy.

At Pravda, of course, they have never made the effort to observe the real world and see that this is how it works.  Anyway, as mere Mayor of New York City, de Blasio has not been in a position to put in place the true socialist agenda that he would like.  New York Magazine has a remarkable interview with de Blasio on September 4 that reveals a small piece of where de Blasio would like to take us if only he could:

[Q]  In 2013, you ran on reducing income inequality. Where has it been hardest to make progress? Wages, housing, schools?
[A]  What’s been hardest is the way our legal system is structured to favor private property. I think people all over this city, of every background, would like to have the city government be able to determine which building goes where, how high it will be, who gets to live in it, what the rent will be. I think there’s a socialistic impulse, which I hear every day, in every kind of community, that they would like things to be planned in accordance to their needs. And I would, too. Unfortunately, what stands in the way of that is hundreds of years of history that have elevated property rights and wealth to the point that that’s the reality that calls the tune on a lot of development. . . .  Look, if I had my druthers, the city government would determine every single plot of land, how development would proceed. And there would be very stringent requirements around income levels and rents. That’s a world I’d love to see. . . .  It’s not reachable right now. And it leaves this friction, and this anger, which is visceral.

So, lacking the legal ability to impose the Venezuelan model upon us, what have we gotten from de Blasio?  A few of the highlights:

• He has repeatedly proposed increasing city income tax rates on top earners.  But that requires approval from the state legislature, where the Senate is controlled by the Republicans.  So these proposals have gone nowhere.
• Three issues have been repeatedly identified by the Manhattan Contrarian as the most important issues for a New York City mayor to address:  (1) overspending on K-12 education (roughly double the national norm per pupil); (2) overspending on Medicaid (again, close to double the national norm per beneficiary); (3) and wildly overgenerous and under-funded defined benefit pension promises for the workforce.  De Blasio has done nothing whatsoever to address or make progress on any of these issues.
• As you might expect, the City budget and employee headcount have exploded on some kind of auto-pilot during de Blasio's mayoralty.  Nicole Gelinas reports in the New York Post on August 27 that the budget has increased some 14.6% in inflation adjusted dollars (from $76.2 billion to $87.3 billion) since de Blasio took office.  And, from the New York Times, October 16, 2016: "New York City is undergoing a rare explosion in city government: More people now work for the city — 287,002 full-time employees as of July — than at any other point in its modern history, with thousands more scheduled to join them."  Nobody knows what these people do, or can notice any difference in increased or improved services from the hiring binge.
• We got universal pre-K!  Great!  Of course, before de Blasio, the City already provided free pre-K for poor people.  So this was for the non-poor.  Oh, and also for the teachers union -- the largest contributor to de Blasio's campaigns -- which got a few thousand new dues-paying members.  The budget impact was about 1% of the City budget, mostly funded by the State.
• "Income inequality" was de Blasio's signature issue.  Has it gotten worse or better during his tenure?  Worse of course, according to a Manhattan Institute study in December 2016.   ("Income inequality has actually gone up in New York City since Mayor de Blasio took office vowing to tackle the problem, according to a new report by the Manhattan Institute.")  Was there ever a chance that pre-K education -- or any other de Blasio initiative -- would have a noticeable positive effect on income inequality in less than about 25 years (if ever)?
• Spending on the homeless has about doubled (still only about 2% of the budget).  The number of homeless has of course gone up.  Has any government program ever improved (let alone cured) the problem that it supposedly was set up to address?

To de Blasio's credit, he has not significantly restrained policing, and crime has continued to fall.

Look around, and things definitely appear to be doing remarkably well.  If you want my opinion, that comes from a combination of (1) de Blasio not being able to implement the most destructive policies that he would like to implement, such as much higher taxes and abolition of private property, and (2) the destructive effect of higher spending and more wasteful programs being relatively minor and slow moving so far.  Some day, probably when the stock market inevitably takes a big hit, the pension expense will suddenly soar and the extra employees will become unaffordable.  Most likely, that will not occur until long after de Blasio has left office.

Meanwhile, de Blasio has an energetic if long-shot Republican opponent named Nicole Malliotakis.  If you would like to contribute to her campaign, you can go to this site.

Labor Day Thoughts

As a starting proposition, who could be against low-paid workers getting a raise?  Especially when the bosses are rich capitalists making millions?  

On the other hand, it doesn't necessarily follow that labor unions on the Wagner Act model are the answer to those questions.  After the passage of that statute in 1935, the American manufacturing sector rapidly unionized, with union representation of workers in the U.S. reaching a peak of about 35% of the labor force in the mid-1950s.  If you looked around in the 1950s and 60s, it would have been easy to think that unionization had been a big success.  Unionized workers earned substantial premiums over the non-unionized, with additional "benefits" (pensions, healthcare) as well, and even some arguable safety improvements attributable to union efforts.

And then there started the very gradual implosion.  As I observed in this post back in 2015, "Gradually, the unions put their employers out of business."  That post focused on the steel industry, where by 2015 all of the major unionized producers had gone bankrupt with the exception of U.S. Steel, while the non-union producers survived and grew to some extent (against very tough foreign competition).  The story in many other big industries has been similar:  autos and auto parts, tires and rubber, mining, construction.  By 2016, according to the latest data from the BLS, the union percentage of the private sector labor force had fallen to only 6.4%, and was continuing to fall year after year.  Check out this piece from Oren Cass on Friday in the City Journal on the perverse incentives of adversarial Wagner Act style unionization.  It's not that the unions don't continue to organize; and they rarely get thrown out of a company once organized.  It's that the unionized companies are severely disadvantaged in a competitive marketplace, and they gradually downsize and/or go out of business.  Also, there is very little "union premium" in wages left to point to, especially after you net out union dues.

Over in the public sector, there is no discipline of the competitive marketplace.  State and local governments don't (and maybe can't) go out of business.  For many years after the Wagner Act, most state and local governments continued to resist unionization.  After all, in the public sector, there is no "greedy capitalist" to blame for paying substandard wages.  But the restraints on public sector unionization gradually fell off in the 1950s through 70s.  Those latest BLS data show the public sector unionization rate at 34.4%, approximately the all-time record.

But without the discipline of the marketplace, the public sector union movement has fallen into inevitable excess and abuse.  You people around the country undoubtedly have your own examples, but here are a few from the union capital of New York:

• Municipal unions are by far the largest contributors to political campaigns in New York City, and have near complete control over the City Council.  After a couple of decades of Republican mayors, the union-favored candidate (de Blasio) won the last (2013) election for mayor, and is heavily favored this time around.  Shortly after taking office in 2014 he awarded billions of dollars in retroactive raises to the major municipal unions -- raises that had been resisted for years by his predecessor.
• All the municipal unions have massively underfunded defined-benefit pensions, with costs deferred well into the future but poised to explode upon the taxpayers when least expected.
• While Google and Uber and others proceed rapidly toward the enormously complex goal of achieving the driverless car, down in the New York subway running a subway train along a completely pre-determined guideway with nothing else on it takes two people -- one to start and stop the train, and another to open and close the doors.  Discussions of automating these functions never even get started.  Nobody but the insiders knows what comparable overstaffing exists out of sight in the rest of the system.
• Unionized construction of major projects like subway and water tunnels somehow costs five to ten times comparable costs from other international cities like London, Paris and Milan.
• Teachers are almost completely insulated from serious evaluation, and literally can't be fired after a brief probationary period, no matter how incompetent or ill-suited to the job.  Unionized public schools far underperform their non-unionized competition, to the severe detriment of the many low income students trapped in the system.
• Teachers unions, with massive contributions to politicians and clear support of the mayor, fight a largely-successful and never-ending effort to slow the development of the non-union competition, such as charter schools.

And many, many more examples could be cited.

But there is a huge and little-recognized problem with public-sector unionism, which is a First Amendment issue.  In New York as in most other states, workers in unionized public sector workplaces are compelled to support the union.  Under Supreme Court precedent, workers who dissent from the union's political agenda -- almost always, support of Democratic candidates -- can get themselves exempted from having to pay their portion of the union dues that goes to explicitly political activities.  But many people in the unions have a fundamental disagreement with the entire public sector union mission, and with the many excesses and abuses (like most of those cited above) that arise from the collective bargaining efforts rather than only from the explicitly political activities.  Aren't even the collective bargaining efforts also inherently political, and don't they equally implicate First Amendment principles?  

In a case called Abood back in 1977, the Supreme Court answered that question "no," and upheld the right of public sector unions, against a First Amendment challenge, to collect from dissenting members all dues except those relating to explicitly political matters.  But those who think that public sector unions are an entirely bad idea that they shouldn't be compelled to support have continued to press the issue.  Three years ago a case potentially raising the issue called Harris v. Quinn reached the Supreme Court; but the Court ducked the issue.  However, in a concurrence, five justices (you can guess who -- Alito, Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Kennedy) suggested that they would be willing to reconsider Abood.  Then last term a case called Friedrichs reached the Supreme Court, squarely presenting the core issue of Abood.  The court below (Seventh Circuit) had felt bound to follow Abood.  But when the case got to the Supreme Court, Justice Scalia had died.  The result was a one-line per curium affirmance:

The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided Court. 

Well, now we have Justice Gorsuch.  A new case called Janus raises the same issue as Abood and Friedrichs, and the lawyers have filed a petition for certiorari.  How serious is this?  Well, consider this article from today's New York Post titled "UFT may have to dramatically slash $182 million budget":

The United Federation of Teachers is drafting plans to dramatically slash its $182 million budget — anticipating a Supreme Court ruling that would bar mandatory deduction of union dues from government workers’ paychecks to support union activities, The Post has learned.  The ruling could deliver a severe blow to union budgets by reducing membership and revenues by millions of dollars.

That's quite a reaction, considering that the Supreme Court hasn't even yet granted cert.  However, the smart money is clearly betting that the Court will take Janus and that Abood will be reversed.  The results over a period of years could be a shrinkage of the public sector union movement by half or more.  My sympathies clearly lie with the taxpayers -- and even more importantly, with the students -- in this matter.

Two Narratives That Won't Die: Which Is Crazier?

There's the narrative of "the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to hack the election."  And then there's the narrative of "Trump obstructed justice by telling Comey to go easy on Flynn" or maybe "by firing Comey."  How many news stories have you read in the months since the election promoting one or both of these two narratives?  500?  1000?  More?  Do you think that the people promoting these narratives would be feeling a bit embarrassed by now?

But of course it's the opposite.  Even today, long after both narratives have completely fallen apart, their promoters -- and particularly the nutcases at the New York Times -- continue their desperate search for some crumb to report to keep one or the other of these narratives alive.  Which of the two is crazier?  You be the judge!

And thus on the front page of the New York Times for August 29 we learn that their crack team of reporters has finally gotten their hands on a real live email showing that Trump colluded with the Russians.  Or something like that.  The story, headlined "Trump Associate Boasted That Moscow Business Deal ‘Will Get Donald Elected,'" is by Matt Apuzzo and Maggie Haberman.  It seems that the Trump Organization has produced emails to the House Intelligence Committee in connection with the ongoing investigation of Russian "meddling" in the 2016 election, and involvement of the Trump campaign in same, if any.  The Times reporters have managed to get access to some of the emails.  What is the best they can find in this trove of information?

It's a November 3, 2015 email from a guy named Felix Sater to Michael Cohen, one of the in-house counsel at the Trump Organization.  The Times's characterization:

A business associate of President Trump promised in 2015 to engineer a real estate deal with the aid of the president of Russia, Vladimir V. Putin, that he said would help Mr. Trump win the presidency. 

The text of the email?:

Michael I arranged for Ivanka to sit in Putin's private chair at his desk and office in the Kremlin.  I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected. . . .  I know how to play it and we will get this done.  Buddy our boy will become President of the USA and we can engineer it.  I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this . . . .  

Well, did anybody ever follow up on this, and did anything happen with it?  

There is no evidence in the emails that Mr. Sater delivered on his promises, and one email suggests that Mr. Sater overstated his Russian ties. In January 2016, Mr. Cohen wrote to Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, asking for help restarting the Trump Tower project, which had stalled. But Mr. Cohen did not appear to have Mr. Peskov’s direct email, and instead wrote to a general inbox for press inquiries.  The project never got government permits or financing, and died weeks later.

Yes, this article was on the front page.  Dozens of reporters and hundreds of hours of work, and this is all they've come up with.  And still they soldier on!

But is that crazier than the "obstruction of justice" narrative?  On that narrative, we have a big front page story today, "Mueller Has Early Draft of Trump Letter Giving Reasons for Firing Comey," by Michael Schmidt and Maggie Haberman.  Yes, it's the same Maggie Haberman -- she's the official mistress of conspiracy theories at Pravda.  

The overriding story is that special counsel Robert Mueller supposedly continues to investigate the subject of Trump's potential "obstruction of justice" by giving directions to Comey or firing him or something like that.  Today's nugget that supposedly justifies a front-page article is that there was a draft of a letter to Comey, firing him, that was prepared by President Trump and White House counselor Stephen Miller.  That draft was different from the final version of the letter delivered to Comey!  The White House counsel weighed in and modified the letter, including to give different reasons for the firing than appeared in the original Trump/Miller draft!  Of course, the Times reporters have not actually seen the draft, and cannot give us the specifics of what was changed.

So you ask, what if anything does this have to do with obstruction of justice?  You won't find the answer to that question in this article.  Are you shocked to learn that lawyers sometimes review drafts of letters and suggest modifications to the client to keep him out of legal trouble?

Over at National Review, Andrew McCarthy makes the points that we have been making here at Manhattan Contrarian since back in June and July:

As we have repeatedly observed . . . it makes no more sense to talk about an obstruction indictment of the president over his urging the FBI director or the attorney general to shut down an investigation than it does to talk about such an indictment over a presidential pardon. . . .  [T]he president’s subordinates have [no] power to countermand him. The “independence of law enforcement” is an aspiration — and a worthy one in most instances. But it is not even a fact, much less a legal rule. Notwithstanding the grandiloquence of high-ranking law-enforcement officials about their vaunted independence, they do not constitute a separate branch of government.  Not only do they work for the chief executive; they do not even have their own power. Under the Constitution, only one official in the executive branch has power — the president. The first sentence of Article II is crystal clear: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States."

Unfortunately, New York Times, when you put stories like these on the front page, intelligent readers will draw the inference that this is the best you've got to support your narrative.  Nine months of hyperventilation, and this is all you've come up with?  Really???