Investigators on the Jan. 6 Committee believe that former Energy Secretary Rick Perry authored a Nov. 4 text to Mark Meadows suggesting that three state legislatures overrule their voters and cast electoral votes for Trump, CNN reports.
Continue reading “CNN: Rick Perry Pitched Meadows On Plan To Steal Election Even Before Results Were In”Trump Spews More Anti-Semitism, Says Jews Used To Control Congress
Former President Donald Trump continued his long-running tradition of anti-Semitic statements in a recent interview, saying that Jews have historically controlled Congress.
Continue reading “Trump Spews More Anti-Semitism, Says Jews Used To Control Congress”Fox News Dealt Major Setback In Dominion’s Mega-Defamation Case
Fox News is staring down the barrel of a $1.6 billion defamation claim after it failed to get the case against it by Dominion Voting Systems dismissed.
The decision Thursday by a state judge in Delaware clears the way for Dominion Voting Systems to proceed to discovery in the case and cranks up the pressure on Fox News in the high-stakes battle over its coverage of the 2020 election aftermath.
Continue reading “Fox News Dealt Major Setback In Dominion’s Mega-Defamation Case”McConnell Says Public ‘Needs To Know’ Jan. 6 Committee Findings After Opposing Its Creation
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has apparently had a change of heart about the Jan. 6 committee, saying Thursday that “the public needs to know” its findings on the “horrendous event.”
Continue reading “McConnell Says Public ‘Needs To Know’ Jan. 6 Committee Findings After Opposing Its Creation”The Sausage Making: Senate Democrats Wrap Up 2021 On A Sour Note
Your intermittent briefing on negotiations over the reconciliation bill.
The year is ending for Senate Democrats on a note befitting the last few aggravating months.
Continue reading “The Sausage Making: Senate Democrats Wrap Up 2021 On A Sour Note”Melania Trump Cashes In Bigly On The NFT Craze
The First Lady Of Grift
Melania Trump is getting in on the NFT action.
- The best part:
Trump’s first NFT offering is a watercolor depiction of her “cobalt blue eyes” called “Melania’s Vision.” She said it would provide “the collector with an amulet to inspire.” Each NFT will cost about $187.
- Trump says some of the proceeds from the sales will go toward helping “children aging out of the foster care system,” but her office didn’t respond to questions about how much of the proceeds will go to good causes.
- Petri: “Melania Trump’s new NFT is the perfect holiday g(r)ift“
- But but but …. what would Nancy Reagan say?!?
BBB On Life Support
President Biden in a written statement Thursday evening conceded what had become obvious in recent days: BBB isn’t getting a Senate vote before the holidays.
- Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) remains the biggest roadblock to passing the centerpiece of the Biden agenda.
- It no longer seems safe to assume that Senate Democrats will eventually reach some kind of agreement on BBB.
- Punting BBB into an election year doesn’t inspire confidence that a deal is within reach anytime soon.
More Bad News On BBB Front
Senate parliamentarian rules that latest immigration proposal in BBB violates reconciliation rules.
This Guy!
Retired Army Col. Phil Waldron, the creator of the Big Lie PowerPoint, has been subpoenaed by Jan. 6 committee.
- Note: Earlier this week, Waldron was an invited speaker at an official meeting of the state commission charged with revamping Louisiana’s voting system.
Insurrectionist Still Serving In National Guard
The National Guard has been slow in booting Jan. 6 defendants. Here’s the latest example.
The holy grail of this line of inquiry is whether any National Guard members participated on Jan. 6 then were deployed to defend the Capitol in the following days, but so far I don’t think anyone has turned up such a case.
Crazytown
The RNC has committed to paying up to $1.6 million of President Trump’s legal bills in the New York civil and criminal investigations of his business practices.
Texas Abortion Ban Gets A Boost From Gorsuch
The Texas abortion providers who won a narrow victory at the Supreme Court last week wanted the case sent back to the trial court. But instead Justice Neal Gorsuch referred it back to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, where the case is expected to languish through additional procedural hurdles.
- The upshot: The Texas case may be stalled long enough to be rendered moot by the pending Supreme Court decision on Mississippi’s abortion ban, which is expected to gut Roe.
FDA Approves Abortion Pills By Mail
The lifting of the restrictions that required obtaining the pills in person is a win for reproductive rights in an otherwise bleak legal and political landscape.
Welcome To The College Admissions Revolution!
Harvard will not require standardized tests in admissions for at least another four years.
Get Ready To Resume Your Student Loan Payments
Here’s how it’s going to work.
All In On Voting Rights
Students hold hunger strike at White House to advocate for voting rights legislation.
Omicron For The Holidays
Ed Yong: “America Is Not Ready for Omicron“
CNN: “A Covid-19 ‘viral blizzard’ is about to hit the US, expert says“
NYT: “Scientists Are Racing to Gauge the Threat of Omicron“
CNN: “What can the world learn from countries where Omicron is surging?“
CDC recommends Moderna and Pfizer vaccines over J&J.
Must Read
DMN: How prison gerrymandering in Texas dilutes Democratic power and boosts the GOP
Bizarre
The Muslim civil rights group CAIR has fired the most senior official in its Ohio chapter, alleging that he was secretly recording meetings and passing confidential information to an anti-Muslim group for 13 years.
An additional twist, from the CAIR statement:
In the wake of Iqbal’s termination, the Columbus office of CAIR-Ohio has discovered suspicious purchases from ammunition and gun retailers made in recent weeks using a CAIR-Ohio credit card that Iqbal administered. Yesterday, CAIR-Ohio staff also found a suspicious package mailed to the CAIR-Ohio Columbus office containing parts for an AR-15 rifle. CAIR-Ohio has shared this information with law enforcement, which is currently investigating the matter.
Purdue Pharma Opioid Settlement In Jeopardy
A federal judge in Manhattan ruled that the billion dollar settlement could not legally release members of the Sackler family from civil liability.
In Other News
Police obtain search warrant for Alec Baldwin’s iPhone as part of the “Rust” shooting investigation.
Remember When Trump Saved Christmas?
GOP Approved Footing Up To $1.6 Million Of Trump’s Legal Fees To Fight NY Probes
The GOP reportedly agreed to fund up to $1.6 million of former President Trump’s legal bills to fight probes into his business practices in New York, according to the Washington Post.
Continue reading “GOP Approved Footing Up To $1.6 Million Of Trump’s Legal Fees To Fight NY Probes”Are We in Omicron? (COVID Notes #4)
Until perhaps as recently as yesterday the assumption was that the current run-up of cases, especially in the Northeast, is actually still Delta. Omicron is still to come. That no longer appears to be the case. We don’t know for certain yet because we don’t have the scope and speed of genomic sequencing that would allow us to know definitively. But the assumption now is that we’re already here, in Omicron. Almost two years into this pandemic we have managed to be at least partly caught off guard by another blowup of the disease.
Continue reading “Are We in Omicron? (COVID Notes #4)”Where Things Stand: Jan. 6 Developments Coming Fast And Furious
No overarching Jan. 6 news today but a lot of incremental developments over the last 24 hours to catch up on, in no particular order:
Continue reading “Where Things Stand: Jan. 6 Developments Coming Fast And Furious”Why Spending $2 Trillion On Child Care, Health Care And Fighting Climate Change Won’t Make Inflation Any Worse Than It Already Is
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It first appeared at The Conversation.
One of the main concerns raised by critics of President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan is that it will drive up inflation, which is already running at the fastest pace in four decades.
The Senate is currently considering a roughly US$2 trillion bill passed by the House that would spend money on health care, education, fighting climate change and much else over the next decade. But Republicans and a handful of Democrats like Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia argue the risk that more spending could push inflation even higher is too great.
As an economist, I believe these concerns are likely overblown. Here’s why.
Putting $2 trillion in context
High inflation is clearly a problem at the moment – as the Federal Reserve’s Dec. 15, 2021, decision to accelerate its withdrawal of economic stimulus signals.
The most recent statistics show inflation, as measured by the annual increase in the Consumer Price Index, was 6.8% in November 2021. This is the highest level since 1982 – yet still a long way from the double-digit inflation experienced back then.
The question, then, is: Could an additional large spending increase cause inflation to accelerate further?
To answer this, it’s useful to put the numbers in some context.
The price tag of the Build Back Better plan passed by the House of Representatives is about $2 trillion, to be spent over a 10-year period. If the spending is spread out evenly, that would amount to about $200 billion a year. That’s only about 3% of how much the government planned to spend in 2021.
Another comparison is to the gross domestic product, which is the value of all goods and services produced in a country. U.S. GDP is projected to be $22.3 trillion in 2022. This means that the first year of the bill’s spending would be about 0.8% of the GDP.
While that doesn’t sound like much either, it’s not insignificant. Goldman Sachs estimates U.S. economic growth at 3.8% in 2022. If the increased spending translated into economic activity on a dollar-for-dollar basis, that could lift growth by over one-fifth.
But what really matters here is how much the bill would spend in excess of any taxes raised to pay for the program. The higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations that the House version of the bill calls for would reduce economic activity – by taking money out of the economy – offsetting some of the impact of the spending that would stimulate it.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the bill would increase the deficit by $150.7 billion over a decade, or about $15 billion a year. Again assuming this is spread evenly over the 10 years, it would amount to less than one-tenth of 1% of GDP.
In other words, even if the proposed spending has an unusually large impact on the economy, it would still be barely noticeable on a macro level.
But it won’t reduce inflation either
Some proponents of the bill – including the White House and some economists – have gone further. They have argued that the proposed spending package would actually reduce inflation by increasing the productive capacity of the economy – or its maximum potential output.
This seems implausible to me, at least given the current level of inflation. Historical evidence shows a more productive economy can grow more quickly with relatively little upward pressure on prices. That’s what happened in the U.S. in the 1990s, when the economy grew strongly with little inflation.
In addition, it takes time for investments like those in the bill to translate into gains in productivity and economic growth – meaning many of these impacts will be slow to materialize.
Current inflation is likely an acute problem reflecting supply chain disruptions and pent-up demand, challenges that won’t be resolved by expanding the economy’s productive capacity five or more years down the road. But again, neither would inflation likely get any worse by spending $2 trillion to improve access to affordable child care, fight climate change and increase health care coverage.
Whatever the arguments for or against passage of the bill, I don’t believe its potential impact on inflation should be one of them.
Michael Klein is a professor of International Economic Affairs at The Fletcher School, Tufts University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
