Tag Archives : Build House

GOP under fire for rhetoric over IRS

Republicans are coming under fire for their rhetoric over $80 billion in funding for the IRS included a massive climate, tax and health care bill that Democrats in Congress are sending to the White House.   

The funding, over 10 years, is intended to help the IRS enforce various provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act, which would raise more than $700 billion in new revenue by instituting a 15-percent corporate minimum tax, taxing stock buy backs and extending a cap on deductions for business losses, in addition to helping the IRS enforce existing tax law. Of the $80 billion, more than half would go to increased enforcement, like audits.   

Republicans, who have nursed grievances over the IRS going back to the Obama administration that were inflamed further by fights over former President Trump’s tax returns, have taken aim at the funding, arguing it amounts to creating a new army of IRS agents to go after taxpayers. 

But the IRS, Democrats and outside experts all say the new enforcement money will mostly allow the IRS to focus on audits of the wealthy. 

“Contrary to the misinformation from opponents of this legislation, small business or households earning $400,000 per year or less will not see an increase in the chances that they are audited,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen wrote to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig in a letter dated Aug. 11. 

In an appearance on Fox & Friends this week, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) questioned whether the IRS was ready to send in armed units of agents into small Iowa businesses. 

“Are they going to have a strike force that goes in with AK-15s already loaded, ready to shoot some small business person in Iowa with these, because I think they’re going after middle class and small business people, because they think that anybody that has pass-through income is a crook, and they aren’t paying their fair share, and we’re going to go after them,” he said.   

In using the phrase “pass-through,” Grassley was referring to owners of certain types of companies, like partnerships and sole proprietorships, that allow for income to be reported on the tax returns of their owners. The Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act extends a limitation on the ability of pass-throughs to use losses to write off costs like salaries and interest. The limits were initially set up by the Trump administration’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. 

Democrats said that such views should be considered cockamamie. 

“The incendiary conspiracy theories Republicans are pushing about armed IRS agents are increasingly dangerous and out of control,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said in a statement. 

“High-ranking Republicans, including the former chair of the Finance Committee, are saying shockingly irresponsible things,” he continued, seeming to refer to Grassley’s remarks. “It’s unbelievable that we even need to say this, but there are not going to be 87,000 armed IRS agents going door-to-door with assault weapons. This is funding for answering phone calls and upgrading computer systems. I would hope that House Republicans act responsibly today as the House considers the Inflation Reduction Act.” 

Grassley’s office fired back at the statement from Wyden. A Grassley aide said in a statement to The Hill that “Democrats’ partisan bill includes an additional $80 billion to beef up IRS enforcement, including hiring an additional 87,000 IRS employees, which will undoubtedly result in more audits targeting American small businesses – at their expense. Unfortunately, Democrats’ focus is on IRS enforcement rather than providing badly needed tax services. It’s shockingly disingenuous to argue all of these new agents will only be answering phone calls.” 

Fact-checking websites have also taken aim at some of the rhetoric and online chatter fueling Republican arguments about the increased tax enforcement budget. 

The Poynter Institute, a Florida journalism school and media studies center, called claims that the new funding would militarize the IRS “outlandish.”    

“One outlandish claim suggested those new IRS agents might soon be coming to your door armed to the teeth to collect your taxes, if not for a dramatic early morning intervention by ‘Delta Force’ soldiers,” fact checker Jeff Cercone wrote for the Poynter Institute’s Politifact website about a false news story that came out prior to Grassley’s appearance on Fox and Friends. 

Democrats have long argued the IRS needed a major funding boost as audit rates and hiring levels dipped over the last decade. They say the lack of audits has benefitted rich taxpayers, a finding buttressed by a report on tax compliance released in May from the Government Accountability Office, the government’s internal watchdog. 

The report found that in recent years, “audit rates have dropped for all income levels—with audit rates decreasing the most for taxpayers with incomes of $200,000 or more.”  

Findings like this one have caused Democrats to argue for more enforcement at the IRS and to call out Republicans for getting in the way. 

“For decades, Republicans have starved the IRS of funding, and now American taxpayers are paying the price,” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) said in a statement back in February. “The IRS needs greater support to carry out its most essential functions, like processing tax returns, enforcing the tax code, and closing the tax gap. Without resources from Congress to update its woefully out-of-date technology, the agency simply cannot operate at the level American taxpayers expect.” 

Republican lawmakers have repeatedly argued against providing more money for the IRS.  

“This additional money for the IRS to target all Americans is absolutely wrong. It will target our families, it’s going to target our small businesses, and it’s going to go after them to get them to pay more money,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said back in December 2021 about the Democrats’ unsuccessful Build Back Better legislation, which also proposed an IRS enforcement funding boost. 

Experts say it’s not entirely clear how the IRS will actually use its new funding. 

The bill’s “language was pretty generic,” former Congressional Budget Office tax analyst Janet Holtzblatt said in an interview. “It doesn’t really get into the specifics about how the money aligns to a particular task. It certainly doesn’t say how many employees there will be, how much will be spent on computers, how much will be spent on rent. But all of that will be covered.” 

Republicans have made the argument about 87,000 new tax collectors targeting the middle class by pointing to a Treasury report released in May 2021 that said that $80 billion would allow for 86,852 new full-time employees at the IRS. Experts say they wouldn’t all be auditors. 

“They didn’t give details on how they came up with this very precise number,” Janet Holtzblatt said. “But they didn’t ever say that those were all going to be auditors. The report said that part of the new workforce would be customer service reps to help navigate issues.” 

Republicans have locked on to the 87,000 figure, sensing a political opportunity.  

“I guarantee you citizens in every one of our states, if you ask them, what do they want, they don’t want 87,000 new IRS agents,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said after proposing an amendment to strike the additional funding for the IRS from the Democrats’ bill. 

Republicans have also said the language doesn’t mean the IRS will just go after corporations and the wealthy. 

“They’re being created to audit you,” Cruz said before pointing to an estimate from Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee that estimated 700,000 of the 1.2 million new audits that could be conducted because of the new funding will fall on taxpayers making $75,000 or less. 

The figure of 87,000 new auditors has also been criticized by fact checking websites. The Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler called it “wildly exaggerated” in giving House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) “three pinocchios” for the claim. 

The Treasury Department and the IRS have both made assurances that rich people and corporations, whose audit rates have decreased more sharply in recent years relative to regular Americans, are the intended targets. 

The IRS criminal investigation division (IRS-CI), who are federal law enforcement officials like the FBI and U.S. Marshals, told The Hill that they are not going after any one segment of American taxpayers other than people who cheat on their taxes. 

The division said in a statement to The Hill that its “special agents are sworn law enforcement agents investigating tax crimes and criminal activities that may include gangs, drug dealers, and other dangerous criminals. In order to carry out their daily duties, such as search warrants and arrests, CI special agents carry firearms. They also receive continuous annual training in order to carry firearms.” 

In an interview with The Hill, IRS-CI spokesperson Anny Pachner said that “the IRS Criminal Investigation Division has about 3,000 employees. About 2,100, or roughly 2,000, of those are special agents, federal law enforcement agents. They investigate financial crimes and violations of the U.S. tax code. Our agents go after criminals that are cheating taxpayers and the federal government. That’s their work, to investigate those crimes, make sure they’re stopped, and return the funds back to victims.” 

Source: TEST FEED1

Important takeaways from Kansas’ vote for a constitutional right to abortion

Kansans recently voted overwhelmingly to retain their state constitution’s protection of a right to abortion — a victory for women’s health and equality in the state. The landslide vote took place despite confusing ballot wording, intentionally misleading messaging from abortion opponents and the state’s deep crimson politics. This was the first vote taken on abortion rights since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, and the extent of the victory — an 18 percent spread — surprised abortion opponents and supporters alike. Most observers had projected a close race. 

But Kansas’ vote does not mean that the right to abortion is best left to the ballot — a driving justification offered by the U.S. Supreme Court’s radical right majority and an argument that some have suggested this vote validates. Specifically, in the recent Dobbs decision, the majority wrote that “the authority to regulate abortion must be returned to the people and their elected representatives.” In his concurrence, Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed that “the Court’s decision properly leaves the question of abortion for the people and their elected representatives in the democratic process.” Ironically, Kansas’ vote not only protected abortion rights in the state — it also amounted to a democratic rejection of the position that abortion should be left to politics. 

That Kansans unambiguously rejected the ballot initiative that would have changed the text of their state constitution to permit the outlawing of abortion is a victory to celebrate with a variety of important takeaways. (The right to abortion was recognized by the state’s Supreme Court as being enshrined in the state’s constitution in 2019.)

First and foremost: celebrators of women’s equality needn’t totally despair; voters in red states appear to hold different positions on abortion than the majority of their stridently anti-abortion elected officials. In real terms, people will continue to be able to access legal abortion care in the state of Kansas. 

Additionally, the vote is an important statement on the place of politics in reproductive care. When Kansans voted on whether the right should be taken out of the state’s constitutional ambit — what Dobbs did to the federal constitution — an overwhelming majority, 59 percent, rejected the idea that their state legislature should decide the fate of abortion in the state. The ultimate outcome of Kansas’ election is that abortion remains a constitutional right in the state, and not a political football — as it should be.

Abortion is too fundamental, too personal, too essential to individual liberty to be left to the whims of the public’s or politicians’ discretion. As the Dobbs dissent warned, the right to abortion is “part of the same constitutional fabric” as the rights to same-sex marriage, same-sex intimacy, and contraception — rights that similarly should not be left to facile political discretion. 

This is what the people of Kansas voted in favor of: not only abortion rights, but also constitutional protection of the right to personal autonomy, which the Kansas Supreme Court reasoned “allows a woman to make her own decisions regarding her body, health, family formation, and family life — decisions that can include whether to continue a pregnancy.”

Including Kansas, 10 states have recognized the right to abortion under their own state constitutions. This is immensely important in our new post-Roe reality. Although the Supreme Court has issued its decision reversing a half-century of precedent that recognized that right, in time, the court should again acknowledge that abortion is also embedded in the federal constitution and is a fundamental federal constitutional right.

Elyssa Spitzer is a senior policy analyst for the Women’s Initiative at the Center for American Progress.

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Climate change doubles likelihood of 'megaflood' in California: study

The likelihood of a “megaflood” occurring in California has doubled due to climate change, according to a new study published on Friday.

The study, published in the Science Advances journal, found an increased likelihood of runoff water occurring from harsher storms, creating the threat of debris flows and landslides later, according to a press release from the University of California, Los Angeles.

With every degree that the Earth gets warmer, the more likely for “megaflood” risks, too, the study found.

Researchers looked at two different scenarios using present climate models and high-resolution weather modeling. One scenario involved a long series of storms taking place during what scientists predicted climate conditions would be like between 2081 and 2100.

The other scenario predicted what it would be like if those storms took place in the current climate, according to the release. 

In the Sierra Nevada Mountains, storms that took place toward the end of the century would see between 200 percent and 400 percent more runoff because of higher precipitation.

“There are localized spots that get over 100 liquid-equivalent inches of water in the month,” UCLA climate scientist and co-author of the research David Swain said in a statement regarding the end-of-the-century scenario.

“On 10,000-foot peaks, which are still somewhat below freezing even with warming, you get 20-foot-plus snow accumulations. But once you get down to South Lake Tahoe level and lower in elevation, it’s all rain. There would be much more runoff.”

The researchers also noted that the state risks a $1 trillion disaster. In addition, parts of major cities like Los Angeles and Sacramento would be underwater if the state endured the kind of flooding that took place during the Great Flood of 1862 in the current climate. 

“Modeling extreme weather behavior is crucial to helping all communities understand flood risk even during periods of drought like the one we’re experiencing right now,” Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources, said in a statement.

“The department will use this report to identify the risks, seek resources, support the Central Valley Flood Protection Plan, and help educate all Californians so we can understand the risk of flooding in our communities and be prepared.”

The department contributed some funding toward the study. 

Source: TEST FEED1

The incomplete case against Donald Trump: What we know and don’t know

The FBI’s raid on former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence was received by many with joy bordering on ecstasy. Comedian Stephen Colbert declared the raid to be Christmas come early, as others joked about the possibility of executing Trump as a spy. Yet the celebration may be another triumph of hope over experience, with pundits again declaring an open-and-shut case without seeing the actual evidence.

The problem is that much in this investigation remains unknown and much of the analysis seems more visceral than legal. While details may be forthcoming that will fill in the glaring gaps, any prosecution on the record we know today would face novel – and potentially insurmountable – questions.

At the risk of being a killjoy, here is what we know and don’t know about these charges.

We know at least one set of the documents recovered from Trump’s home was marked as “classified/TS/SCI” or “top secret/sensitive compartmentalized information.” There were four sets of top-secret documents, three sets marked “secret” and three marked “confidential.” Trump has no right to retain classified information after leaving office, particularly information classified at the high TS/SCI level.

The warrant used by the FBI in its search expressly allowed the gathering of “all physical documents and records constituting evidence, contraband, fruits of crime or other items illegally possessed in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 793, 2071, or 1519.” 

The inclusion of an alleged violation of the Espionage Act (Section 793) lit up the internet. It seemingly doesn’t matter that the Espionage Act has long been denounced by civil libertarians as a vehicle for political abuse by the Justice Department. It also doesn’t matter that a charge under the Act does not mean there is actual espionage or foreign intelligence involved in the case. Rather, it addresses alleged acts of unlawfully “gathering, transmitting or losing … defense information.”

Surprisingly, the warrant did not specify which section of law might be the basis for a criminal charge. One possible provision is subsection (d) covering those who lawfully possess documents but had “reason to believe [the information] could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.” This subsection allows for a charge of willfully retaining or failing to deliver such material “on demand” to an officer or “employee of the United States entitled to receive it.”

Subsection (f) is even more generous to prosecutors. It allows a criminal charge for “gross negligence” leading to protected information being “removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed.”

Section 793 was cited as the basis for the 2016 investigation of Hillary Clinton in her email scandal. Clinton gathered and transmitted classified (including “top secret”) information as secretary of state. She and her staff also were criticized for failing to promptly supply evidence. Nevertheless, then-FBI Director James Comey declared that “although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”

The Justice Department explained in an Aug. 16, 2016, letter to Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) on the Clinton investigation that, although the statute allows for gross-negligence charges, prosecutors have long balked at the “constitutional implications of criminalizing such conduct without requiring the government to prove that the person knew he or she was doing something wrong.” The Justice Department said it also rejected 18 U.S.C. § 2071 with regard to Clinton — the same section referenced in the Trump warrant in willfully and unlawfully concealing, removing or destroying federal records. 

The final provision mentioned in the Trump warrant, 18 U.S.C. 1519, concerns destruction, alteration or falsification of records in federal investigations. This charge could be based not just on government documents in Trump’s possession but on allegedly false inventories or lists given to federal officials during months of discussion about the documents.

These crimes still require intentional acts. With Trump lawyers negotiating the status of the documents and previously turning over some material under subpoena, there is a plausible defense based on Trump’s belief that the material was no longer classified and that his team was cooperating with officials in trying to resolve any disputes. If Trump believed the material was declassified and relied on legal advice to resolve any disagreements, then prosecutors would combine an unprecedented legal case with a heavily contested factual record.

At the heart of such a case would be a very novel legal question. While many legal experts have cited the detailed, demanding process for declassification, some fail to note that presidents have long exempted themselves from declassification procedures. Indeed, Trump claimed the right to declassify material unilaterally and orally at the start of his term. 

Other presidents have asserted exemptions from declassification authority. An order by George W. Bush stated such an exemption for “information originated” by a president. That order was reaffirmed by Barack Obama in Executive Order 13526 in 2009 and expressly exempts presidents, vice presidents, their staffs and “other entities within the Executive Office of the President.”

President Trump also reportedly had a standing order that declassified any material he removed from the White House to take to Mar-a-Lago or other locations. We have not seen that order, and it is not clear if such an order was shown to the FBI. 

If that standing declassification order existed, it ended with his presidency, of course. However, it still existed when these boxes were taken to the resort. There may also be complicating logistics for investigators: If the documents were taken out of the White House on the last day of his presidency, the classification markings on the cover pages and internal headings might not have been crossed out.

There has never been litigation on the scope of this exemption or a president’s declassification authority. Nor is it clear whether any standing order was disclosed to the judge who approved the FBI’s warrant — but it could create a threshold legal challenge to a criminal charge.

The Trump team insists this defense was raised when an earlier subpoena was served at Mar-a-Lago in June. Nevertheless, they reportedly turned over 15 boxes of material, including classified documents, and replaced a lock on the storage area for enhanced security. But it is not clear whether the FBI raised concerns over the remaining material or sought its return before this week’s raid.

In asking the judge to unseal the warrant and the list of documents seized, Attorney General Merrick Garland declared that “the Department of Justice will speak through its court filings.” But he omitted the key filing that would speak to these issues: the underlying FBI affidavit. 

In the meantime, pundits are discussing Trump’s disqualification from future public office based on his expected conviction. Even if convicted, such a disqualification would be flagrantly unconstitutional — but, when it comes to Trump, neither the law nor the evidence ever seems particularly important to the analysis.

However, a judge may have slightly greater expectations before these charges ever see a day in court.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. You can find his updates online @JonathanTurley.

Source: TEST FEED1

White House condemns attack on Rushdie: 'Appalling'

The White House on Friday denounced the attack on author Salman Rushdie, who was stabbed on stage just before he was about to speak at an event in western New York.

“Today, the country and the world witnessed a reprehensible attack against the writer Salman Rushdie,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement. “This act of violence is appalling.”

“All of us in the Biden-Harris Administration are praying for his speedy recovery. We are thankful to good citizens and first responders for helping Mr. Rushdie so quickly after the attack and to law enforcement for its swift and effective work, which is ongoing,” the statement concluded.

Rushdie, 75, was stabbed in the neck and abdomen. Following the attack, he was immediately flown to a hospital on Friday to undergo surgery. The author’s agent, Andrew Wylie, said that Rushdie was put on a ventilator Friday evening and was suffering from a damaged liver and severed nerves in his arm. The agent added that he was likely to lose an eye.

Police identified the suspect of the attack as Hadi Matar, 24, of Fairview, N.J. Matar was awaiting arraignment after he was arrested at the Chautauqua Institution.

Rushdie, who is of Indian descent, became a controversial figure after the publishing of his novel “The Satanic Verses,” which garnered backlash globally and among the Muslim community.

In 1989, Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie, and he has since spent years in hiding and faced threats on his life.

It is unclear at this point the motivation for the attack.

Rushdie’s novel is still banned in a number of countries including Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and India.

Source: TEST FEED1

Browns quarterback Watson says he's 'truly sorry' to the women he 'impacted’

Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson issued an apology to the women he has “impacted” in an interview posted to social media by the NFL team on Friday.

Watson is set to face a six-game suspension after 24 women sued him for sexual misconduct, accusing him of exposing himself, touching them with his penis or kissing them without their consent during massage appointments.

He and his legal team have reached settlements with 23 of the women, but Watson had previously refused to apologize for any wrongdoing. 

“I want to say that I’m truly sorry to all of the women that I have impacted in this situation,” Watson said in a video interview posted on the Browns’ Twitter page. “The decisions that I made in my life that put me in this position I would definitely like to have back, but I want to continue to move forward and grow and learn and show that I am a true person of character, and I am going to keep pushing forward.” 

The NFL’s disciplinary officer, former judge Sue Robinson, said Watson’s lack of remorse played a role in reaching her decision on Watson’s suspension. 

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell announced shortly after the suspension was handed down that the league would appeal, arguing that a suspension of at least one year is necessary. He said at a press conference that Watson’s behavior was “egregious” and “predatory.” 

Watson missed most of the 2021 NFL season as a result of the allegations against him, and he was traded from his former team, the Houston Texans, to Cleveland in March. The incidents are alleged to have occurred while Watson was with the Texans. 

Two separate grand juries declined to indict Watson on sexual misconduct charges. 

The Texans announced last month that the team reached confidential settlements with 30 women who alleged the team enabled Watson’s behavior in the massage appointments.

Source: TEST FEED1

Librarian sues for defamation after conservative activist attacks over LGBTQ books

A librarian in Louisiana filed a lawsuit against two men and a conservative organization, alleging they defamed her when they attacked her for supporting the teaching of books involving the LGBTQ community. 

Amanda Jones, a middle school librarian and the president of the Louisiana Association of School Librarians, alleged in the lawsuit that a “public campaign” against her started after she spoke out against removing certain books from the Livingston Parish Library system at a board meeting. 

The lawsuit states that Citizens for a New Louisiana posted on its Facebook on July 20, the day after the meeting, criticizing “anti-censorship folks” who opposed moving “sexually explicit and erotic materials targeting eight to ten-year-olds” to the adult section of libraries.  

A second post from July 22 specifically refers to Jones, asking why she is “fighting so hard to keep sexually erotic and pornographic materials” in the children’s section. The lawsuit notes that a photo of Jones in the post is surrounded by a red circle with a white border, arguing it appears similar to a target. 

Michael Lunsford, who leads the group, commented on the post that Jones is on the “public payroll” and is “’advocating’ for having erotica in the kids section.” 

The account allegedly made several other posts throughout July and August referring to Jones and tagging her in the posts. 

The lawsuit argues that the posts have damaged Jones’ reputation and incited expressions of violence against her. 

The lawsuit also alleges that Ryan Thames, who runs a Facebook page called “Bayou State of Mind,” posted a meme of Jones on or around July 21, showing her smiling and sitting behind a desk and saying that she advocated teaching anal sex to 11-year-olds. 

The post was eventually taken down, which Jones believes was a result of Facebook intervening, but the post circulated on social media, according to the lawsuit. 

The lawsuit states that the post caused Jones to suffer anxiety and emotional distress, and Thames continued to publicly mock Jones. 

Citizens for a New Louisiana, Lunsford and Thames did not immediately return requests from The Hill for comment.

Source: TEST FEED1

How to cut short the long slog in Ukraine

James Stavridis, the former NATO supreme allied commander for Europe, recently predicted that the Russia-Ukraine conflict would end this year. Some experts, like him, expect a stalemate and frozen conflict. Others hope for negotiations to begin. After all, this is what usually happens. War is brutally expensive and exhausting, and so most conflicts are brief. Over the last century, the average war was just 100 days long.  

Unfortunately, some wars last, because sustaining the fight is strategic — it is each side’s best option, despite the horrendous cost. Historically, two strategic logics drive long wars. Unfortunately, both appear in the current crisis, making a frozen conflict or negotiations more difficult to achieve. 

The first logic is deterrence through reputation. NATO’s resolve is in doubt. This gives them an incentive to signal resoluteness to improve their bargaining position in future disputes.  

Start with the concern that any Ukrainian concession would reward Russia’s illegal military aggression. This could embolden Vladimir Putin in the future, sending a message to other nations that old borders are now up for grabs. 

But NATO support for concessions sends a more dangerous signal still. The West’s reluctance to directly confront Russia comes partly from Russia’s atomic arsenal. That’s sensible, but it also sends a clear message to other states: If you want to act with impunity, acquire nuclear weapons. In this view, it is in NATO’s long-term interest to back Ukraine and to encourage them to demand complete Russian withdrawal. 

The core problem is uncertainty — Russia (and other adversaries) doubt NATO’s strength and resolve. If true, Western leaders have incentives to signal determination through financial and military support for Ukraine. Whether you agree or disagree with the wisdom of this path, it is essential to understand the tactical pull. 

The second strategic logic arises when neither side believes the other has an incentive to abide by an agreement, and so it unravels before it begins. This is known as a commitment problem — what some political scientists call the commonest cause of long wars. 

The recent Italian plan outlined a possible settlement: a ceasefire, Ukrainian neutrality, Western security guarantees, autonomy for the Donbas within Ukraine, withdrawal of Russian forces and relaxation of sanctions. These terms are close to ones both sides supported at some point in the past months. But — and this is the crucial part — each side has good reasons to think the other would renege. 

There’s a commitment problem if you believe that Russian hardliners are willing to pay a steep price to expand Russian territory and its local sphere of influence. This is believable because the ruling elite bear only some costs of war yet reap many of the gains. Also, Russia has a track record of using temporary settlements to regroup and attack again. Finally, it’s hard to buy Russian commitment if you believe that any settlement will leave Ukraine weakened. This gives Russia an incentive to carve off pieces of the country, slice by slice, like a salami slowly consumed.  

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s leaders struggle with credibility too. The Italian plan is not so different from the last, failed peace agreement — the Minsk accords. After they were signed, Ukrainians rejected them. Half-hearted efforts to ratify and implement the accords were met by protest. President Zelensky could commit to something like the Italian plan, but any peace would need widespread democratic support (especially if it requires removing the commitment to NATO membership from the constitution). This is hard for Zelensky to promise in the current climate. 

Both these commitment problems arise in part from ideology. Russian credibility is undermined to the extent that its rulers (or populace) will pay any price for national glory and reach. Ukrainian credibility is undermined if its people would rather fight than surrender territory or sovereignty. 

But ideological positions don’t appear out of nowhere. They too can be strategic — fostered and constructed by wily leaders. The advantage of whipping your followers into a frenzy is that you tie your hands and shut off a whole range of unfavorable settlements. The disadvantage is that, if both sides do this too well, they eliminate every possible compromise.  

I see three possible paths ahead. One is prolonged and brutal warfare. Probably the fighting is limited to Donbas, but every day carries a tiny risk of escalation into a full-blown NATO-Russian war. The second path is a tense stalemate. Here, Donbas becomes the new Kashmir. Except, like many “frozen conflicts,” low-scale violence persists. The third and best path ends in a negotiated settlement, ideally one that sees Russia retreat from the Donbas. 

For allies of Ukraine, what can be done to help bring about peace and a favorable negotiated settlement? 

For those who think about reputation and deterrence, it means a commitment to strengthen Ukraine on the battlefield enough to put it in a position to demand Russian withdrawal — even if it risks continued fighting through the end of this year, and possible escalation.  

It also means recognizing that extreme rhetoric carries grave risks — fanning outrage in the West is a powerful bargaining tool but could make a reasonable settlement impossible, dooming Ukraine to a long battle regardless of its wishes. 

If the problem is uncertainty, then clear, credible signals that communicate true resolve should also speed negotiation. Western congresses and parliaments could legislate binding long-term financial and military commitments. And they could engage in more direct dialogue with Russia. 

Most difficult of all, the world must help Ukraine and Russia make credible commitments. Most of the discussion centers on security guarantees for Ukraine, or snapback sanctions, to keep a settlement from becoming a temporary respite for Russia to regroup. But Ukrainians must also consider how they empower their leaders to make a binding commitment, and the West should support this. 

The alternatives — a years-long war, or decades of frozen conflict — are in no one’s interest.

Chris Blattman is an economist and political scientist at the University of Chicago, and the author of “Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Path to Peace.”   

Source: TEST FEED1

Religion and the wrong defense of abortion rights

It is commonly claimed that restrictions on abortion illegitimately impose some people’s religious beliefs on the rest of us. This is the wrong way to defend abortion rights. It implies that religious motives have no legitimate place in lawmaking. In fact, we all have normative commitments that we have trouble articulating – you could call them matters of faith – and we sometimes support legislation because of those commitments. (The point is particularly relevant today, because for the foreseeable future we are going to be talking about abortion a lot.)

With respect to many issues, including some involving abortion, Americans who differ on moral fundamentals should be able to work together. We will inevitably disagree about whether personhood begins at the moment of conception. But defenses of abortion should focus not on the allegedly improper ideals of those who would restrict it but on the liberty and equality of women.

Not all arguments against (or opponents of) abortion are religious. But the disagreement is like religious disagreement in that it is intractable and frustrating.

I’ve studied the secular philosophical literature on abortion in some detail. The arguments on both sides tend to be circular. We can’t even agree about the significance of what we do agree about, such as our sense that late-term abortions are more morally troubling than early ones. 

Someone’s view that a fetus is a person, or that it is not, is not an inference from some more basic premise. We just can’t help believing what we believe. Religious people are often portrayed as peculiarly dogmatic and irrational. With respect to the question of who has rights and why, however, we are all in the same boat. The boundaries of moral concern are mysterious. Many people who are not conventionally religious have their own sense of what is sacred, reflected, for example, in their concern for (and support for laws protecting) endangered species.

Beginning in the 1980s, when the religious right first became a potent force in American politics, many Americans became increasingly hostile to the involvement of religious leaders in politics. Political theorists piled onto this bandwagon, crafting increasingly sophisticated arguments to show that it was immoral and disrespectful to make religious arguments about political matters. Religious thinkers responded bitterly that such a limitation on public discourse would deprive politics of important moral resources and deny them the right to state what they believe. Arguments that purported to be grounded in universal respect left a lot of actual citizens feeling profoundly insulted. It would have been better to focus criticism on the retrograde politics of the religious right rather than on its religiosity.

Government is not permitted to establish an official theology. That is why, for example, school prayers are prohibited — or, at least, were until last June. But the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment limits outputs, not inputs, of policymaking. Any law is permissible, no matter who supported it or why, so long as it has a plausible secular purpose — and there are secular arguments against abortion. As it happens, I’m not persuaded by those arguments. But that’s true of a lot of nonreligious arguments.

None of this casts any doubt on abortion rights. Forced pregnancy is totalitarian. It involves the kind of bodily control that America imposed on slaves before the Civil War.  Criminal restrictions don’t do much to lower the abortion rate, but endanger all pregnant women by limiting doctors’ ability to treat them. The state would need mighty compelling reasons to justify that, and the uncertainty of the early fetus’s status means that it can’t meet that burden of proof. That is why Roe v. Wade was decided correctly, and why the Supreme Court was wrong to overrule it.

But I just said all that without so much as mentioning my opponents’ motives or treating religious support for a law as a kind of contaminant that makes otherwise legitimate laws invalid.

Religious people are citizens, and they get to vote. The political left should regard this as good news. The most important effect of politically mobilized religion in American public life was contributing to the abolition of slavery. The Social Gospel movement of the late 19th century fought alcoholism, sweatshops, decaying tenements, business monopolies and foreign wars. Organized Catholics helped push the New Deal to the left. In the 1960s, religious groups opposed the Vietnam War. The civil rights movement of the 1960s began in churches, led by the Rev. Martin Luther King. Religion, in short, has been good for American democracy. If history shows anything, it is that in this country the secular left can accomplish little without religious allies. 

There is a deeper issue here. Too many narratives of American politics, on left and right alike, are Manichean caricatures of good guys and bad guys — depicting melodrama where in fact there is tragedy. The melodramatic narratives are both politically destructive and intellectually indefensible. One of the basic premises of a free society is the sad truth that disagreement about enormously important matters is inevitable. 

Abortion is one of those matters. We have no choice but to have political struggles about the things we can’t agree on. But it’s not ok to tell the other side that it is a bunch of religious fanatics whose values don’t count. One of the most pressing challenges of modern politics is to tell a story of who Americans are in which each faction can recognize itself and see a home for itself. We should keep that in mind when we make political claims.

Andrew Koppelman, John Paul Stevens Professor of Law at Northwestern University, is the author of “Burning Down the House: How Libertarian Philosophy Was Corrupted by Delusion and Greed” (St. Martin’s Press, forthcoming). Follow him on Twitter @AndrewKoppelman.

Source: TEST FEED1

There’s no union boom — there’s just a union bust

Unions are back. At least, that’s the consensus in the mainstream media. The New York Times talks about a “comeback.” CNBC says there is a “boom” in organizing. TIME reports unions are “having a moment.” Yahoo notes their numbers are “on the rise.”  

These reports primarily rely on the fact that more workforces are attempting to unionize. It’s true that organized labor has made recent unionization attempts, including at Starbucks, Amazon, Google, Apple, Tesla and a host of media companies. But filing to try to start a union is not the same thing as succeeding. And the number of actual employees getting unionized in the splashy campaigns is more than swamped out by the thousands and thousands who are rejecting organized labor. 

Here is the truth: Unions aren’t back. They’re going backwards. In fact, on net, unions lost 240,000 members last year alone. 

The ongoing collapse is even more stark when you look at specific unions. I recently crunched the numbers from the forms that unions file annually with the federal government and found that some of the biggest unions in the country are losing active members in droves.

Consider the National Education Association (NEA), American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). In the last three years alone, AFSCME has lost 10 percent, while the AFT and the NEA are down 8.9 percent and 6.2 percent, respectively. In total, these three unions alone have gone from 5.3 million active members to fewer than 4.9 million — a drop of more than 400,000 people who used to pay them dues or fees. 

What explains these tremendous drops? The simple answer is worker freedom. Before 2018, most teachers and public sector workers were required by law to join these unions, whether they wanted to or not. In the half-decade before 2018, the AFT gained nearly 15 percent of its members from forced unionization.

Then came the Janus decision at the Supreme Court. The justices ruled that no public sector worker in the country can be forced to pay dues or fees to a union. Survey data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show that ruling helped contribute to the losses these unions have experienced ever since. Today, fewer than 7 million government workers belong to any union. That’s the first time their ranks have dropped below that number in more than 20 years.

Private sector unions are hardly faring better. While the United States has added more than 100 million people since 1973, private sector unions have fewer than half the members they did then — just over 7 million. 

Once again, worker freedom is the culprit. Since 2010, a spate of states — including Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, West Virginia and Kentucky — have enacted right-to-work laws. In these states and many others, both public and private sector workers have the right to choose whether they want to belong or contribute to unions. 

The Janus decision and state right-to-work laws may be years old, but workers are still taking advantage of the freedom they offer. In fact, there’s reason to believe the worker rush toward the union exit door will stay steady — or even accelerate — in the years ahead. 

In the private sector, many unionized companies have collective bargaining agreements that will expire soon; when they do, workers will find it easier to opt out of a new contract, if one even happens. And in the public sector, states are still taking steps to fully implement the Janus decision. More and more workers will learn about their rights — and crucially, avail themselves of their right to be free of union control.

The claim that unions are in a “resurgence” has been said for decades. But the decline in membership has been unabated and shows no signs of stopping. Remember that the next time you hear that unions are “back.” It’s nothing more than wishful thinking that has nothing to do with workers’ actual wishes.

Jarrett Skorup is senior director of marketing and communications at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a free-market research and educational institute in Midland, Mich. Follow him on Twitter @JarrettSkorup.

Source: TEST FEED1