May 23, 2022

A Chink In The Armor Of The Progressive Administrative State

May 23, 2022/ Francis Menton

The great mission of the early twentieth century Progressives was to transform our constitutional order without ever amending the Constitution itself. The intellectual leader of the movement was Woodrow Wilson. The fundamental idea was to replace the messy and contentious system of separated powers and slow bi-cameral lawmaking with a cadre of supposedly apolitical administrative “experts” who could run the country smoothly and efficiently.
The idea sounded rather benign to most people at the time, and probably still sounds benign to most people today. Who could be against having “experts” to run significant government agencies?
But a hundred-plus years into this project, we have seen cancerous growth of vast administrative bureaucracies, outside the constitutional structure, and exercising great powers, but accountable to no one but themselves — the very antithesis of the constitutional structure that our founders attempted to bequeath to us.
Last week the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans knocked a significant chink in the structure under which many of these agencies operate.

May 20, 2022

What Do You Believe About The Sussman/Baker Conversation?

May 20, 2022/ Francis Menton

The first week of the Michael Sussman criminal trial has now ended.
Sussman stands accused by Special Counsel John Durham of “lying to the FBI.” Lying to the FBI is a crime. (It’s covered by 18 USC Section 1001.). The alleged lie happened at a meeting that occurred on September 19, 2016. That was about a month and a half before the 2016 presidential election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, and thus at the very height of the campaign.
At the time, Sussman was a partner at the Perkins Coie law firm, and Perkins Coie was counsel both to the Democratic Party and to the Clinton Presidential campaign.
On the September 19 date, Sussman met at his request at FBI headquarters with Bureau General Counsel James Baker. In the meeting, Sussman asserted he had learned of something the Bureau should investigate, namely a supposed secret “back channel” between Russia’s Alfa Bank and the Trump campaign. Special Counsel Durham alleges that both before and at the meeting Sussman represented that he was acting as a private citizen, and not on behalf of any client, in bringing this information to the attention of the Bureau.
Just curious: What do you believe was really going on here?

May 16, 2022

May 16, 2022/ Francis Menton

In the contest to be the most virtuous of all the states on the “carbon-free” electricity metric, the race is on between California and New York.
In 2018 California enacted a bill going by the name “SB100,” which set a mandatory target of 60% of electricity from “renewables” by 2030 (and 100% by 2045). Not to be outdone, New York responded by enacting its “Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act” in 2019, setting its own statutory targets of 70% of electricity from renewables by 2030 (and 100% by 2040).
So is any of this real? Or is it just so much posturing to show conformity with current fashions, all of which will be forgotten by the time the now-seemingly-distant deadlines approach? As to New York, I have had multiple posts (for example here and here) explaining how the supposedly mandatory goals are completely unrealistic as to both feasibility and cost, and how the people charged with achieving the goals have no idea what they are doing.
Is California any less clueless? The short answer is “no.”

May 14, 2022

May 14, 2022/ Francis Menton

It has been obvious for quite a while that pandemic-induced school closings and extended remote learning were going to have substantial negative effects on development among K-12 students.
Equally obvious has been that Democrat-controlled jurisdictions — which include essentially all of the major cities with high concentrations of poor and minority students in the education system — have indulged in the longest school closures and the most remote learning.
Clearly, this would lead to major negative results for the poor and minority students in these jurisdictions, particularly as compared to the students in places where schools mostly remained open for in-person learning.
A big new Report out from the Center for Educational and Policy Research at Harvard (and other institutes with similarly long names) now confirms the facts that we all knew were coming. The Report is titled “The Consequences of Remote and Hybrid Instruction During the Pandemic,” and has a date of May 2022. The lead author is Dan Goldhaber. This is a very large and well-funded study. It relies on data collected from some 2.1 million students in 10,000 schools in 49 states.

May 10, 2022

May 10, 2022/ Francis Menton

If you’re a reader of this blog, you likely are interested in current events. And therefore, it is also likely that you already know that on April 27 our Department of Homeland Security revealed (at a Congressional budget hearing) that it had set up something called its Disinformation Grievance Board.
Secretary Mayorkas, who was testifying, stated that the DGB would not have operational authority, but would rather act as an advisory body to study best practices and provide guidance to the government on how to counter disinformation threats.
The head of the new Board, who had already been named, is a woman named Nina Jankowicz.
Put aside for a moment any problems you may have with the idea of the federal government trying to decide what is and is not “disinformation.” For this post let’s just look at Ms. Jankowicz and her qualifications for the job.

May 07, 2022

May 07, 2022/ Francis Menton

The news of the past few weeks has been all aflutter over Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter.
The main issue for discussion has been, what does this mean for the future of free speech in the American public square? That’s an important issue, to which I don’t have the answer. I think that there are reasons for both optimism and pessimism. More on this issue later.
A second issue is what Musk’s Twitter venture signals as to progressive fantasies about net zero utopia. This second issue has been little discussed, let alone recognized at all, in the recent press coverage. So let me open the door.
The most logical way to look at what Musk is up to is that he is getting money out of Tesla in advance of an almost certain huge decline in its value, while placing his next bet on something else with a much better chance for major future growth. I think that he has recognized that the net zero utopia necessary for Tesla to have continuing exponential growth is impossible and not going to happen.