“Carlson had been communicating with intermediaries to try and arrange for an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. It is therefore extremely likely that at least one or more of the people Carlson communicated with (some of whom Axios reports had direct ties to the Kremlin) were legitimate targets of NSA surveillance. And therefore, the NSA did, in fact, probably get access to whatever emails were part of this discussion.
This means that the insistence by the NSA that it didn’t “target” Carlson is accurate, but it also means that Carlson’s claim that the NSA had read his emails may be accurate, at least to the extent that they were emails to the actual surveillance target.”
“California’s median home prices have just topped $800,000, which is astounding when one considers that this is the statewide median, and includes lower-cost markets such as Bakersfield and Modesto.”
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“In 2015, the Legislative Analyst’s Office reported that California’s housing prices are 2.5 times the national average—and that we need 100,000 more units a year to keep pace. The state’s slow-growth rules and endless mandates for solar energy and open space also drive up prices. That’s why I beat the same old drum: California needs to let builders construct more housing of all types.
If a proposal reduces government regulations and allows more housing construction, I’m for it. If it does the reverse, I’m against it. That’s why I support efforts to allow the construction of multi-family housing in areas that are now zoned only for single-family homes. Despite the misconception, that change doesn’t ban single-family homes, but also allows duplexes and condos.”
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“The goal should be to reduce regulations across the board, so builders can more easily respond to market demand by building whatever consumers want to buy. Defending antiquated zoning laws will not accomplish that objective, for the same reason government control of any product or service only distorts the supply and demand process.
Remember that as you get in a bidding war for that $1-million 800-square-foot condo.”
“Not all of the encouragement is bad. For instance, Biden “encourages the [Federal Trade Commission (FTC)] to ban unnecessary occupational licensing restrictions that impede economic mobility.” This is one area where U.S. antitrust policy does have a lot of room for improvement.
Another bit of positive encouragement: Biden is directing the Department of Health and Human Services “to consider issuing proposed rules within 120 days for allowing hearing aids to be sold over the counter.”
It also touches on “right to repair” rules, encouraging the FTC to limit “equipment manufacturers from restricting people’s ability to use independent repair shops or do DIY repairs—such as when tractor companies block farmers from repairing their own tractors” and to “issue rules against anticompetitive restrictions on using independent repair shops or doing DIY repairs of your own devices and equipment.”
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“the order “encourages the FTC to ban or limit non-compete agreements” and to establish new rules on internet user data. He encourages the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to restore net neutrality rules, to ban landlords from making deals with internet service providers that say tenants must choose a particular internet service, and to create a “nutrition label” for internet service. He orders the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to support farmers markets, and further “directs USDA to consider issuing new rules defining when meat can bear ‘Product of USA’ labels” and to develop new labeling standards “so that consumers can choose to buy products that treat farmers fairly.”
He also announces a general “policy of greater scrutiny of mergers, especially by dominant internet platforms, with particular attention to the acquisition of nascent competitors, serial mergers, the accumulation of data, competition by ‘free’ products, and the effect on user privacy.”
The White House will establish a new Competition Council, led by the director of the National Economic Council, “to monitor progress on finalizing the initiatives.””
“Retirement costs are also the main reason the Government Accountability Office declared, in a May 2020 report relying on data gathered before the pandemic hit, that the Postal Service’s current business model was “not financially sustainable.””
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“All private pension systems must prefund future benefits. Indeed, this is a wise thing for businesses to do if they wish to remain solvent. The unique situation for the USPS is that those requirements also apply to its retiree health care benefit plan. Private sector companies aren’t required to do that because they could, theoretically, eliminate those benefits at any time. The USPS, however, would not be able to do that without an act of Congress—and so prefunding is not only financially sound, but politically prudent.
Despite those obvious long-term drawbacks, the American Postal Workers Union and at least 270 members of Congress support a plan to switch the USPS to a so-called “pay-as-you-go” pension system. If passed, the USPS Fairness Act would allow the USPS to use current workers’ contributions to pay benefits to current retirees, rather than requiring that those dollars go into an investment fund to cover the cost of the current workers’ eventual retirement.”
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“instead of addressing structural issues in the current retirement system”
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“it will certainly create bigger problems later on.”
“In 20 years of conflict, the U.S. has accomplished its initial security goals. The 2001-era Taliban was ousted, and since 9/11, no terrorist attack on U.S. soil has been carried out by an organization rooted in Afghanistan. Security concerns now lie elsewhere. “The Biden administration correctly assessed that the threat of terrorism from Afghanistan today is in fact smaller than from various parts of Africa and the Middle East,” as Vanda Felbab-Brown writes for the Brookings Institution. Al Qaeda’s capacities are limited. To say that Afghanistan hosts the same level of outward threat that it once did is patently false.
Internal threats do exist, largely in the form of a Taliban emboldened by the U.S. departure. Taliban fighters say they’ve gained control of 85 percent of Afghanistan—a claim the Afghan government has dismissed as propaganda. It’s impossible to correctly assess current territory holdings, but Taliban attacks and seizures have increased recently. As a result, U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that the Afghan government could fall just six months after the Americans take their leave. Two former secretaries of state, Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice, both worry about the implications of a full withdrawal; Rice even suggested the U.S. may need to return, according to Axios.”
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“It’s extremely unlikely that a 21st year of conflict would be decisive after the first 20 haven’t been. We know the nature of the conflict and what continued warfare would involve—more dead soldiers, more dead civilians, and an increasingly futile commitment to nation building that will, in all likelihood, result in a less stable country.”
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“Leaving without a clear picture of what Afghanistan’s government will look like in just a few months is an unsatisfying conclusion to America’s longest war. That doesn’t mean the U.S. should put off its withdrawal, or that it should already be gearing up to send troops back. While there may be an effective American role to be had in facilitating future peace talks between Afghanistan’s warring parties, American participation in the conflict must end.
Politicians are wrong to treat the Afghanistan withdrawal as Biden’s fatal blow. It’s a sign of humility—recognizing where the U.S. has failed and where it cannot possibly succeed. It’s quite easy for presidents to start wars. It’s another thing entirely to end them.”
“Based on a preliminary assessment, U.S. officials believe the suicide vest used in the attack, which killed at least 169 Afghans in addition to the 13 Americans, carried about 25 pounds of explosives and was loaded with shrapnel”
““At its core — its ideology, the way it sees Islam, the way that it sees the imposition of religious law on society — [the Taliban] has not fundamentally changed as a movement,” said Vali R. Nasr, the Majid Khadduri professor of Middle East studies and international affairs at Johns Hopkins University.
In many ways, the Taliban remain opaque, and there are likely divides between their leadership and the soldiers on the battlefield. That makes it hard to predict exactly what Afghanistan’s future might look like under Taliban rule.”
“Almost immediately after President Joe Biden took office, his administration started to roll back his predecessor Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which required many asylum seekers who arrive at the United States’ southern border to stay in Mexico while they await a hearing on their asylum claim.”
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” however, a Trump-appointed judge to a federal court in Texas effectively ordered the federal government to reinstate this Trump-era policy — which is officially known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) — permanently. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s opinion in Texas v. Biden makes the implausible argument that a federal immigration law enacted by Congress in 1996 makes the Remain in Mexico policy mandatory, unless the federal government detains every asylum seeker who is not sent back to Mexico.
Trump’s Remain in Mexico policy was not implemented until early 2019. So the upshot of Kacsmaryk’s opinion is that the federal government was in violation of this 1996 statute for half of the Clinton administration, the entire George W. Bush administration, the entire Obama administration, and most of the Trump administration.
In reality, that 1996 federal law is part of a web of statutes and constitutional doctrines giving immigration officials multiple options when an asylum seeker arrives at the US-Mexico border. One provision of federal immigration law provides that most of these asylum seekers “shall be detained” while they await a hearing.”
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“Kacsmaryk’s decision, moreover, is expected to be appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, one of the most conservative courts in the country — and then potentially to a Supreme Court where Republican appointees have a 6-3 supermajority.
So, while Kacsmaryk’s opinion is wrong on the law, there is no guarantee that it will be reversed by a higher court.”
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“Kacsmaryk is one of many Trump appointees to the federal bench who appears to have been chosen largely due to his unusually conservative political views. Prior to becoming a judge, Kacsmaryk was deputy general counsel for the First Liberty Institute, a firm that largely litigates on behalf of causes of the religious right. In his past writings, he labeled being transgender a “mental disorder” and claimed that gay people are “disordered.”
As recently as 2015, Kacsmaryk published an article denouncing a “Sexual Revolution” that “sought public affirmation of the lie that the human person is an autonomous blob of Silly Putty unconstrained by nature or biology, and that marriage, sexuality, gender identity, and even the unborn child must yield to the erotic desires of liberated adults.”
He’s also the third conservative federal judge in Texas to strike down an immigration policy supported by the Biden administration.”
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“The Supreme Court’s decisions are supposed to give federal officials a great deal of discretion to shape immigration policy — and to afford mercy to individual immigrants. As the Court explained in Arizona v. United States (2012) “a principal feature of the removal system is the broad discretion exercised by immigration officials.”
But judges like Kacsmaryk, Tipton, and Hanen appear eager to strip the Biden administration of that discretion. With a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court overseeing the judiciary, these judges may very well get away with it.”
“To understand President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan against the advice of the US military establishment, you need to go back to a debate that played out more than a decade ago, during the early years of Barack Obama’s presidency.
In 2009, the new Obama administration debated whether to “surge” troop levels in Afghanistan after nearly eight years of war had failed to quell the insurgency from the overthrown Taliban forces. Top generals asked early that year for 17,000 more US troops and then, having gotten those, asked for an additional 40,000 to try to weaken the Taliban and strengthen the Afghan government.
Then-Vice President Biden was consistently one of the biggest skeptics of the military’s recommendations. Throughout months of debate, he repeatedly raised the inconvenient point that the generals’ preferred strategy seemed extremely unlikely to lead to actual victory. “We have not thought through our strategic goals!” he shouted during the Obama administration’s first meeting on the war in Afghanistan.”
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“Biden did not actually support withdrawal at the time — he pushed for a more limited mission focused on counterterrorism, accompanied by a smaller troop surge than the military wanted.
But his dark view of the long-term picture was clearly vindicated in the decade since.”
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“Biden wrote a six-page memo to Obama in which he questioned intelligence reports portraying the Taliban as a new al-Qaeda recruiting foreign fighters that posed a transnational terrorist threat. “Biden indicated that, based on the way he read the intelligence reports, the phenomenon was grossly exaggerated,” Woodward writes. “The vice president did not see evidence that the Pashtun Taliban projected a global jihadist ideology, let alone designs on the American homeland.”
At a meeting discussing the US strategy in Afghanistan, Biden asked, “Is there any evidence the Afghan Taliban advocates attacks outside of Afghanistan and on the U.S., or if it took over more of Afghanistan it would have more of an outward focus?” An intelligence official responded that there was no evidence.”
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“Woodward describes a phone conversation between the president and vice president near the end of the review, during which Biden said, “it would not be that bad if the Karzai government fell.” The book does not elaborate on what exactly Biden meant by this, but Obama disagreed, arguing that “the downside was too great.””
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“Biden diagnosed the problems well, and he was likely the high-level official most skeptical of the Afghanistan war in the Obama administration. But though his logic arguably pointed toward a withdrawal of troops in the near future, he didn’t argue for that — it simply seemed too unpalatable. Officials were not ready to stomach the Taliban retaking the country.
Instead, Biden proposed a smaller surge of 20,000 troops rather than 40,000, with a mission of “counterterrorism” as opposed to counterinsurgency. (Think targeting terrorists rather than nation-building.) The military fired back that that would be insufficient. Obama ended up agreeing to send 30,000 troops and satisfy most of the military’s demands, in part because he did not want to “break with” then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Woodward writes.
After a few years with the heavily expanded troop presence that, as Biden predicted, did not result in Afghanistan becoming a functioning government or in security forces capable of defeating the Taliban, Obama began a troop drawdown in his second term. Since then, US policy has essentially been to kick the can down the road.
In 2015, then-Vox staffer Max Fisher wrote, “The war is already lost, and has been for years,” adding that the only remaining mission was “to temporarily stave off Afghanistan’s inevitable collapse, a few months at a time.”
Former President Donald Trump continued that can-kicking until 2020, when he reached a deal with the Taliban to end the war. It then fell on Biden to decide whether to stick with that arrangement. He did so — rejecting advice from his generals — and a Taliban takeover has now occurred. But his decision was no doubt grounded in the fact that he’s had these debates before.”