“Vance has said that, had he been vice president in 2020, he would have carried out Trump’s scheme for the vice president to overturn the election results. He has fundraised for January 6 rioters. He once called on the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into a Washington Post columnist who penned a critical piece about Trump.”
…
“This worldview translates into a very aggressive agenda for a second Trump presidency. In a podcast interview, Vance said that Trump should “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat” in the US government and “replace them with our people.” If the courts attempt to stop this, Vance says, Trump should simply ignore the law.
“You stand before the country, like Andrew Jackson did, and say the chief justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it,” he declares.
The President Jackson quote is likely apocryphal, but the history is real. Vance is referring to an 1832 case, Worcester v. Georgia, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the US government needed to respect Native legal rights to land ownership. Jackson ignored the ruling, and continued a policy of allowing whites to take what belonged to Natives. The end result was the ethnic cleansing of about 60,000 Natives — an event we now call the Trail of Tears.
For most Americans, this history is a deep source of shame: an authoritarian president trampling on the rule of law to commit atrocities. For Vance, it is a well of inspiration.
J.D. Vance is a man who believes that the current government is so corrupt that radical, even authoritarian steps, are justified in response. He sees himself as the avatar of America’s virtuous people, whose political enemies are interlopers scarcely worthy of respect. He is a man of the law who believes the president is above it.”
…
“J.D. Vance wasn’t always like this.
He grew up poor in Middletown, Ohio — escaping a difficult childhood to make it to Yale Law and, subsequently, to the lucrative world of venture capital. This narrative served as the backbone of his 2016 book, Hillbilly Elegy, that turned into a mega-bestseller: a book that seemed to explain Trump’s appeal to America’s downtrodden. It put Vance on the national map.
The Vance of Hillbilly Elegy was very different politically. Back then, he took a conventional conservative line on poverty, describing the working class as beset by a cultural pathology encouraged by federal handouts and the welfare state.
2016 Vance was also an ardent Trump foe. He wrote a New York Times op-ed titled “Mr. Trump Is Unfit For Our Nation’s Highest Office,” and wrote a text to his law school roommate warning that Trump might be “America’s Hitler.”
Eight years later, Vance has metamorphosed into something else entirely. Today, he pitches himself as an economic populist and cosponsors legislation with Sen. Elizabeth Warren curtailing pay for failed bankers. In an even more extreme shift, he has morphed into one of Trump’s leading champions in the Senate — backing the former president to the hilt and even, at times, outpacing him in anti-democratic fervor.”
…
““The through line between former J.D. and current J.D. is anger,” McLaurin told me. “The Trump turn can be understood as a lock-in on contempt as the answer to anger” — specifically, contempt directed at Vance’s political enemies.
McLaurin’s comments suggest that Vance’s conversion to Trumpism is genuine. I’m inclined to agree, though the timing of his MAGA conversion surely is convenient: He converted to right-wing populism just in time to run for a vacant seat in Trumpy Ohio.
Ultimately, whether Vance truly believes what he’s saying is secondary to the public persona he’s chosen to adopt. Politicians are not defined by their inner lives, but the decisions that they make in public — the ones that actually affect law and policy. Those choices are deeply shaped by the constituencies they depend on and the allies they court.
And it is clear that Vance is deeply ensconced in the GOP’s growing “national conservative” faction, which pairs an inconsistent economic populism with an authoritarian commitment to crushing liberals in the culture war.
Vance has cited Curtis Yarvin, a Silicon Valley monarchist blogger, as the source of his ideas about firing bureaucrats and defying the Supreme Court. His Senate campaign was funded by Vance’s former employer, Peter Thiel, a billionaire who once wrote that “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”
He’s a big fan of Patrick Deneen, a Notre Dame professor who recently wrote a book calling for “regime change” in America. Vance spoke at an event for Deneen’s book in Washington, describing himself as a member of the “postliberal right” who sees his job in Congress as taking an “explicitly anti-regime” stance.
Vance is also an open admirer of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a right-wing politician who has systematically torn his country’s democracy apart. Vance praised Orbán’s approach to higher education in particular, saying he “made some smart decisions there that we could learn from in the United States.” The policies in question involve using national dollars to impose state controls over universities, turning them into vehicles for disseminating the government line.
In a profile of Vance, Politico reporter Ian Ward quotes multiple leading Republican figures — specifically, the leaders of the faction trying to turn these postliberal ideas into practice — saying that they see Vance as a leading advocate for their cause.
Top Trump advisor (and current federal inmate) Steve Bannon told Ward that Vance is “at the nerve center of this movement.” Kevin Roberts, the president of the right-wing Heritage Foundation and the driving force behind Project 2025, told Ward that “he is absolutely going to be one of the leaders — if not the leader — of our movement.””
…
“There is little doubt that Vance will continue in this role if elected vice president. He would enable all of Trump’s worst instincts, and put a brake on none — deploying his considerable intellectual and intrapersonal gifts toward bending the government to Trump’s will.
In Trump’s first term, he faced considerable opposition from inside his own administration. People like Defense Secretary James Mattis and Vice President Mike Pence served as brakes on Trump’s most radical impulses, challenging or even refusing to implement his (illegal) directives.
Vance’s ascendance represents the death of this “adults in the room” model. Backed by people drawn from the lists of loyal staffers being prepared by places like Heritage, Vance would not only support Trump’s radical impulses but seems likely to spearhead efforts to implement them.
He would be a direct conduit from the shadowy world of far-right influencers, where Curtis Yarvin is a respected voice and Viktor Orbán a role model, straight to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
In 2004, Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean described himself as hailing from “the Democratic wing of the Democratic party.” If the GOP under Trump has indeed evolved into an authoritarian party, then Vance hails from its authoritarian wing.”
https://www.vox.com/politics/360283/jd-vance-trump-vp-vice-president-authoritarian
Jon Stewart on Biden 2024: It Is What It Is? | The Weekly Show With Jon Stewart
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbAdKUho6f8
“the Supreme Court’s decision centered around Joseph Fischer, a former Pennsylvania police officer who was charged with several offenses related to his conduct at the Capitol riot. According to the government, that lawlessness included, among other things, that he “forcibly assaulted a federal officer, entered and remained in a restricted building, and engaged in disorderly and disruptive conduct in the Capitol.”
But prosecutors tacked on another charge using the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which criminalizes “alter[ing], destroy[ing], mutilat[ing], or conceal[ing] a record, document, or other object, or attempt[ing] to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding,” or, per the following provision, “otherwise obstruct[ing], influenc[ing], or imped[ing] any official proceeding.” Those convicted face up to 20 years in prison.
Fischer challenged that charge, arguing that the statute as written requires the alleged obstruction in question be tied to the impairment of records, documents, or objects, which would not apply to him. The federal judge who initially evaluated Fischer’s petition sided with him; a divided U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit reversed that; and the Supreme Court reversed the reversal.”
…
“”Our commitment to equal justice and the rule of law requires the courts to faithfully apply criminal laws as written, even in periods of national crisis,” she writes. “We recognize this intuitive fact—that there is a certain category of conduct the rule is designed to prohibit—because we recognize, albeit implicitly, that the drafters of this rule have included these particular examples for a reason. We understand that, given the preceding list of examples, this rule was adopted with a clear intent concerning its scope.”
To buttress her case, Jackson looks to the history of the statute, which was enacted in response to the revelation that Arthur Andersen LLP, auditor for the disgraced energy corporation Enron, had torched potentially incriminating documents. “There is no indication whatsoever that Congress intended to create a sweeping, all-purpose obstruction statute,” Jackson concludes.
In response, Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement that he is “disappointed by today’s decision, which limits an important federal statute that the Department has sought to use to ensure that those most responsible for that attack face appropriate consequences.” Fortunately for him, he is still free to prosecute people for violating the laws that Congress enacted, which isn’t an unfair limitation.”
https://reason.com/2024/06/28/ketanji-brown-jackson-joins-conservative-justices-in-upending-hundreds-of-january-6-cases/
“”The U.S. spends resources training hundreds of thousands of international students every year, but only provides opportunities for a fraction of them to stay after graduation,” says Connor O’Brien, a research and policy analyst at the Economic Innovation Group (EIG), a bipartisan public policy organization. “This is an incredible gift to China and other competitors, who have their best and brightest educated in America and then forced back home by our backward immigration system.”
An EIG analysis released yesterday found that only four in 10 international graduates of U.S. universities end up staying in the country long-term, according to data from the National Survey of College Graduates. Three-quarters of Ph.D. recipients stay, while half of master’s degree recipients and just 17 percent of bachelor’s degree recipients do. Some may be leaving simply because their best employment prospects are in their home countries or elsewhere. Still, a key factor is that “a growing population of international students is competing for a fixed number of opportunities to stay,” the EIG analysis notes.
“Unless we expand skilled visa programs like the H-1B, or add more employment-based green cards, we will continue losing tens of thousands of talented graduates each year,” O’Brien argues. “There are some real downsides to guaranteeing green cards for new graduates”—it may create bad incentives for universities, for one—”but it is clear we need to get better at retention, and that requires more visas.”
A hostile immigration system means many international students never make it to the U.S. in the first place. An April report from the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonpartisan public policy organization, argued that international students increasingly see Canada as a more favorable destination. Between 2000 and 2021, international student enrollment in Canada increased by 544 percent, compared to a 45 percent increase in the United States.
Discussions about high-skilled immigration are often sidetracked in favor of unproductive arguments about the southern border—look no further than last night’s presidential debate for proof. That’s a shame. Border policy desperately needs reform and has deep humanitarian and economic implications, but attracting and retaining high-skilled foreign talent are pressing issues too.”
https://reason.com/2024/06/28/politicians-need-to-get-serious-about-retaining-foreign-graduates/
“The solution to the national debt lies in reevaluating and cutting back on unnecessary and wasteful programs, reforming entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, and implementing a more efficient tax system that encourages economic growth.
But none of this can even begin to happen until politicians perceive a demand for it from the American people. Rising debt reduces investment and can slow economic growth, while increasing worries about inflation and the strength of the U.S. dollar. It reduces confidence in the social safety net and increases the risk of a fiscal crisis. Perhaps when these problems manifest, the voters will demand that politicians take the issue seriously. But by then, it may well be too late for the economic stability and growth we have taken for granted.”
https://reason.com/2024/07/01/numb-to-the-numbers/
Secret Service Sniper Drops Would-Be Assassin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKHqxPNNxfA
The Folly of Progressivism with Nellie Bowles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDH3HKxA2d4
California fast-food franchise owners, consumers feel brunt of minimum wage hike
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/california-fast-food-franchise-owners-consumers-feel-brunt-of-minimum-wage-hike-174515934.html
Why Can’t All States Call Their Results on Election Night? Featuring Ben Ginsberg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATVsuYMM_i4
“A multiyear experiment in this working-class city on Lake Erie’s banks holds clues to how America could get a handle on its overdose crisis — if politicians embrace the lessons.
Fatal drug overdoses in the U.S., driven by the synthetic opioid fentanyl, increased by more than half during the pandemic and remain near record levels. But in Lucas County, where Toledo is, they plummeted 20 percent between 2020 and 2022.
Researchers credit the county’s effort to bring together health department workers, treatment providers, clergy and law enforcement to look at where overdoses and deaths were happening, so they could target resources to where they were most needed. The community support, in turn, made it easier to overcome bureaucratic obstacles to getting drug users into treatment.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/26/opioid-epidemic-fight-funding-00164640