January 26, 2020

Sheldon Silver Is A Criminal, So How About Joe Biden?

January 26, 2020/ Francis Menton

It was back in July 2017 that we last visited the subject of the federal criminal prosecution for corruption against former New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. The occasion was the reversal at that time by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals of Silver’s conviction on all seven of the counts on which he had been found guilty.
Did that mean that Shelly was off the hook? Not so fast. The prosecutors elected to re-try Silver on all seven counts, subject to more restrictive jury instructions. In May 2018 Silver was again convicted on all seven counts. His appeal of the new conviction reached decision in the Second Circuit last Tuesday, January 21. This time, the court again vacated the conviction as to three of the counts, but affirmed on the other four. Here is a link to the Second Circuit’s January 21 Opinion.
This Opinion represents another step in the ongoing struggle of the courts to define criminal public corruption in a way that makes it possible to distinguish the criminal from the non-criminal politicians. That task turns out to be harder than you might expect.
This Opinion gives us the occasion to reflect once again, not only on the inherent corruption of the entire political sphere, but also on the question of where the conduct of Joe and Hunter Biden might come out under the most recently announced legal test. . . .

January 22, 2020

How A Bumbling Fool Marches From Triumph To Triumph

January 22, 2020/ Francis Menton

I’m old enough to remember the press coverage of Ronald Reagan as President. It was not as uniformly and aggressively hostile as the current coverage of President Trump, but close. The gist was that this guy was a bumbling fool who didn’t understand anything about either foreign or domestic policy.
The Soviet Union collapsed, and the economy soared.
I thought that Reagan was quite intelligent; but another possibility is that you don’t need to be all that intelligent to do a good job as President. All you need to do is to replace the progressive program of utopian fantasies and wishful thinking with a small dose of reality and common sense.
The alternative view is that the success of any action by Trump that deviates from the consensus of the smart people can only be due to dumb luck. For an exposition of that view, check out this piece by Tom McTague in the Atlantic on January 17 . . . .

January 18, 2020

January 18, 2020/ Francis Menton

Among the many important initiatives of this website has been holding the competition for the Award for “Stupidest Litigation in the Country.”
To many readers, the very first nominee for the Stupidest Litigation Award has always been the clear leading contender to win it. That nomination, made in December 2017, went to the litigation titled Kelsey Cascadia Rose Juliana v. United States. This is the case where a group of adolescents in the Pacific Northwest have sought an injunction to require the federal government to decree an end to all use of fossil fuels, in order to “save the planet.” Really, it’s hard to top that one for Stupid.
But just because a particular litigation is the leading contender for the Stupidest Litigation Award does not mean that no judge will grant victory to the plaintiffs. After all, the whole idea behind each of these Stupid Litigations is to offer some judge a thinly-veiled rationale to become a hero in the progressive movement by taking self-government away from the people and turning control over to the bureaucrats and experts.
Which is why it is significant that yesterday, a three-judge panel of the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the Juliana case dismissed.

January 14, 2020

January 14, 2020/ Francis Menton

Your impressions of the successes or failures of the Trump administration very likely correlate closely with the things that have been the focus of the news cycle: Russia!, immigration, the border, the Wall, the economy, unemployment, Supreme Court justices, etc.; and lately, Ukraine and Iran.
But among the notable successes of the last few years, there are some that have been much less the focus of the news. One of those is food stamps. Of course, depending on your political views, you may not consider this a success.
The number of people enrolled in the food stamp program has undergone a significant and accelerating decline since Trump took office. Perhaps you think that that is and should be the norm for times of a growing economy. Maybe so, but such was definitely not the case under President Obama. . . .

January 12, 2020

January 12, 2020/ Francis Menton

A new (January 10) Des Moines Register poll shows Bernie Sanders starting to pull away from the field at 20%, with Elizabeth Warren second (17%), and Pete Buttagieg suddenly down 9 points to 16%. Is the Democratic nomination battle really going to come down to just crazy versus crazier?
But, you say, there’s Joe Biden. He’s stuck at 15% in the Register poll, although perhaps will do better in subsequent states like South Carolina. But is he really a moderate? Among other things, Biden has endorsed the total socialist restructuring of the U.S. economy known as the Green New Deal; the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of blue collar jobs for the green dream; and the jailing of fossil fuel executives. Not a lot of moderation there.
So today, let’s take a look at Mike Bloomberg. . . .

January 08, 2020

January 08, 2020/ Francis Menton

Each day you listen to unceasing climate change advocacy, always claiming the mantle of “science.” But you can’t help noticing the steady drumbeat of the standard narratives used by religious cults.
The end of days is nigh. You have grievously sinned. Your sin is taking you down the road to damnation. Yet salvation is at hand. But only if you and all humanity immediately repent and follow the gospel of your new climate change priests. If not, the apocalypse of judgment day shall soon be upon you.
Of course these narratives pervade the rhetoric of the fanatics seeking to be messianic leaders of the climate movement, from the Greta Thunbergs to the Al Gores. But over in the more sober organs of elite thought leadership, surely the climate advocacy must be based on actual science. Right?
If you are struggling with that question, perhaps you should take a look at some of the recent coverage of the wildfires in Australia that has appeared in our elite media, the gist of which is that Australia’s wildfires are the punishment for its grievous sins of failure to follow the true climate change gospel. . . .