Trump’s team skips FBI background checks for some Cabinet picks

“President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is bypassing traditional FBI background checks for at least some of his Cabinet picks while using private companies to conduct vetting of potential candidates for administration jobs, people close to the transition planning say.
Trump and his allies believe the FBI system is slow and plagued with issues that could stymie the president-elect’s plan to quickly begin the work of implementing his agenda, people briefed on the plans said. Critics say the intrusive background checks sometimes turn up embarrassing information used to inflict political damage.

The discussions come as Trump has floated several controversial choices for high-level positions in the US government – including Matt Gaetz for attorney general and Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence.

Ultimately, the president has the final authority on who he nominates and decides to share intelligence with, regardless of the established protocol set in the wake of World War II to make sure those selections don’t have unknown foreign ties or other issues that could raise national security concerns.

But circumventing background checks would be bucking a long-established norm in Washington. It also reflects Trump’s deep mistrust of the national security establishment, which he derides as the Deep State. Sources say he has privately questioned the need for law enforcement background checks.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-team-skips-fbi-background-100048963.html

China’s weak economy and record US production will lead to a surplus of one million barrels of oil a day next year, IEA says

Surely, Trump won’t dishonestly take credit for this.

“The oil market could see a major supply glut in 2025 thanks to booming production from non-OPEC states like the US and sagging demand in China, according to the International Energy Agency.
The IEA said in its November Oil Market Report that the world’s oil market is on track for a one-million barrel-a-day surplus next year.

The excess is largely being driven by a weakening economy in China. Demand for oil in the world’s second-largest economy contracted for six straight months in a row as of September, IEA data shows. This accounted for the “main drag” on demand this year, the report said.

Meanwhile, the agency is predicting strong oil production among non-OPEC producers led by countries like US, Guyana, Argentina, and Brazil.

Altogether, non-OPEC producers are on track to expand oil production by 1.5 million barrels a day, it estimated. That amount is more than the agency’s forecast for world oil consumption to grow by 990,000 barrels a day next year.”

“The US has become the largest oil producer in the world, pumping out more crude than any other country in history for the last six years in a row, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Domestic production hit a record 13.4 million barrels a day in August, according to data from the Energy Information Administration.”

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/chinas-weak-economy-record-us-042533492.html

A Prosecutor Allegedly Told a Witness To Destroy Evidence. He Can’t Be Sued for It.

“The state eventually dropped the charges against Miller. His two years in jail, however, took a toll, according to his criminal defense attorney, who said Miller’s cancer was in remission but recurred after the state locked him up, as he could not access his medication.

Following his release, Miller sued Craycraft. The district court concluded Craycraft was entitled to absolute immunity. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit subsequently noted that Craycraft’s alleged chicanery was “difficult to justify and seemingly unbecoming of an official entrusted with enforcing the criminal law.” But that court went ahead and ratified the grant of absolute immunity anyway—a testament to the malfeasance the doctrine permits.

Core to the decision, and to similar rulings, is Imbler v. Pachtman (1976), the precedent in which the Supreme Court created the doctrine of absolute prosecutorial immunity. The Court ruled that a man who had spent years in prison for murder could not sue a prosecutor who allegedly withheld evidence that eventually exonerated him.

Plaintiffs’ only way around this doctrine is proving that a prosecutor committed misconduct outside the scope of his prosecutorial duties. It’s a difficult task. Louisiana woman Priscilla Lefebure sued local prosecutor Samuel C. D’Aquilla after he sabotaged her rape case against his colleague Barrett Boeker, then an assistant warden at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.”

https://reason.com/2024/09/29/absolute-immunity-protects-the-indefensible/

UN officials plan to charm Stefanik

“Stefanik is a onetime moderate Republican who has transformed herself into a pro-Trump loyalist. She stood up for Trump relentlessly when he faced impeachment.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/11/un-officials-charm-stefanik-trump-00188868

Aftermath of Trump’s win eclipses Chinese solar project in Texas

“Trina Solar was in line to receive nearly $1.8 billion in tax credits under President Joe Biden’s climate law, as one of several Chinese solar businesses setting up factories in the United States to benefit from the incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act. But President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to dismember Biden’s climate agenda, and has called for taking a hard line against economic competition from China.

Trina said Trump’s victory had “nothing to do” with the sale of the factory near Dallas to the Georgia-based battery manufacturer Freyr.

“Rather, it is based on the company’s long-term growth in the country,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

But analysts said the news illustrated the impact of Trump’s victory on energy markets.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/11/chinese-solar-giant-america-biden-windfall-trump-00188598

The Government Monopoly on Donated Kidneys Is Killing Americans

“An estimated 12 people die every day while waiting for a kidney transplant. At least some of those deaths are preventable, and monopoly government contractors shoulder most of the blame.
“Monopolies don’t work and 
government-funded monopolies are even worse,” says Jennifer Erickson, a former Obama White House staffer who now works as a senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists.”

” All told, more than 17,000 kidneys (as well as thousands of other organs) are going to waste each year instead of finding their way to dialysis patients who need a replacement. That’s a tremendous opportunity cost. And because there’s no competition between OPOs, if you’re unlucky enough to need an organ and you live in an area where there’s a poor-performing OPO, you might never get one.”

https://reason.com/2024/09/30/against-government-kidney-monopolies/

Congress Passes Bill Backing ‘Self-Care’ for People Pursuing Prostitution Stings

“On its face, there’s nothing wrong with providing additional psychological support for federal agents who work with trafficking survivors. But HSI—a division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement—has quite a questionable record when it comes to “helping” trafficking victims. At times, HSI has been known to subject suspected victims to potentially traumatizing experiences. And much of the “human trafficking” work the agency does just involves plain old prostitution stings.”

https://reason.com/2024/09/30/congress-passes-bill-backing-self-care-for-people-pursuing-prostitution-stings/

Washington Worsened Hurricane Helene’s Destruction

“People choose to remain in flood-prone areas for many reasons, including proximity to family, work, and school. Uprooting oneself and one’s family can be a painful thing to do, and choosing to take on risk to stay where you’ve established your home is understandable. But choosing to stay in these areas genuinely does involve considerable risk. According to FEMA, the average flood insurance claim in 2018 was $40,000, and that risk should be borne by the risk-taker.
The Biden-Harris administration approved an additional $715 million for FEMA’s Flood Mitigation Assistance Program (FMAP) in advance of Hurricane Helene on September 23. FMAP, which falls under NFIP, makes up 15.5 percent of FEMA’s budget and provides homeowners with subsidized flood insurance.

FEMA itself recognizes the folly of providing homeowners insurance at below-market rates. Established by the National Flood Insurance Act of 1968, the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012 (BW-12) was passed to reduce debt incurred by the NFIP from Hurricanes Rita, Wilma, and Katrina in 2005.

BW-12 removed discounts for some NFIP policyholders so that their insurance rates would “more accurately reflec[t] their expected flood losses,” according to FEMA’s 2018 affordability framework. These reforms were as actuarially sound as they were unpopular and were overturned two years later.

The Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act of 2014 (HFIAA) restored pre-BW-12 rates, repealed certain rate increases, and capped annual premium increases at 18 and 25 percent for primary homes and secondary residences, respectively. Congress instituted these effective price ceilings to encourage participation, but FEMA’s affordability framework recognizes the market price of insurance as “one of the best signals of risk that a consumer receives.”

The 2018 framework candidly admits that flood insurance affordability programs create perverse incentives, including “encouraging lower-income households eligible for assistance to purchase properties in very risky areas.” And that’s just what the NFIP has done: approximately 13 million homeowners live in Special Flood Hazard Areas (SFHAs), where there is at least a 1 percent annual risk of flooding.

NFIP deems 12 percent of these homeowners to have Principal, Insurance, Taxes, Insurance (PITI) to household income ratios in excess of the maximum affordable standard. Even with mandatory enrollment in SFHAs, which reduces insurance rates by forcibly expanding the base of the insurance program, the average policyholder cost for a single-family home is $1,098—more than twice the cost of policies outside the SFHAs.

Without NFIP-subsidized insurance, rates would increase, becoming unaffordable for some homeowners. Unaffordability is a feature of insurance markets, not a bug. High insurance rates discourage risky behavior that is likely to be even more painful than having to pull up roots.”

https://reason.com/2024/09/30/washington-worsened-hurricane-helenes-destruction/

Iran ordered an operative to assassinate Trump before the election, federal prosecutors say

“The Iranian government ordered an operative to assassinate Donald Trump before the 2024 election, Manhattan federal prosecutors said Friday, the latest in a string of assassination plots directed at the former and future president in recent months.
Prosecutors charged Farhad Shakeri with murder-for-hire and providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization. He is believed to be in Iran and remains at large, prosecutors said.”

“According to a criminal complaint unsealed in Manhattan federal court, Shakeri said during an FBI interview that in September he was directed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran to surveil and kill Trump, whom the charging papers identify as “Victim-4.”

When Shakeri told an IRGC official that doing so would prove expensive, the official responded that “money’s not an issue,” which Shakeri “understood to mean that the IRGC previously had spent a significant sum of money on efforts to murder Victim-4 and was willing to continue spending a lot of money in its attempt to procure Victim-4’s assassination,” according to the charging papers.

One month later, on Oct. 7, according to prosecutors, the IRGC ordered Shakeri to put forward a plan to assassinate Trump within one week and, if that proved impossible, to pause the plan until after Election Day, because the IRGC assumed Trump would lose, making him easier to kill. According to the complaint, Shakeri claimed in the FBI interview that he didn’t “intend to propose a plan to murder” Trump within the timeframe dictated by the IRGC official.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/08/donald-trump-iran-assassination-plot-00188498