The Demand For Murder

 From Steven Landsburg's Price Theory and Applications book.

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Example: The Demand for Murder

Many economists have applied the successful techniques of econometrics to the study of

demand curves for a variety of interesting “goods” that were previously viewed as outside
the realm of economic analysis. Consider, for example, the demand curve for murder.

Murder is an activity that some people choose to engage in for a variety of reasons. We
can view murder as a “good” for these people, and the commission of murder as the act
of consuming that good. The price of consuming the good is paid in many forms. One of
these forms is the risk of capital punishment.

This means that we can draw a demand curve for murder, plotting the probability of
capital punishment on the vertical axis and the quantity of murders committed on the horizontal
axis. We can ask how steep this demand curve is, which is the same thing as asking
whether a small increase in the probability of capital punishment will lead to a small or a
large decrease in the number of murders committed. In other words, measuring the slope of
this demand curve is the same thing as measuring the deterrent effect of capital punishment.

Now, on the one hand, the deterrent effect of capital punishment is something about
which there is much discussion and much interest. On the other hand, the slope of a
demand curve is something that economists know how to measure.

Over the past 25 years, Professor Isaac Ehrlich has repeatedly measured the slope of
the demand curve for murder, using essentially the same techniques that economists use
to measure the slope of the demand curves for shoes, coffee, and other consumer goods.
His results have been striking. The demand curve for murder appears to be remarkably
flat; that is, a small increase in the price of murder leads to a large decrease in the quantity
of murders committed. In fact, Ehrlich estimates that over the period 1935–1969 (a period
in which executions were more common than they are today, making the statistical tests
more reliable), one additional execution in the United States would have prevented, on
average, about eight murders per year.3

This is a remarkable example of an application of economics to a positive question:
“What is the deterrent effect of capital punishment?” It is emphatically not an answer to
the related normative question: “Is capital punishment a good thing?” It is entirely possible
to believe Ehrlich’s results and still oppose capital punishment on ethical grounds;
in fact, Ehrlich himself opposes capital punishment. However, knowing the answer to the
positive question is undoubtedly helpful in thinking about the normative one. The size of
the deterrent effect of the death penalty will certainly affect our assessment of its desirability,
even though our assessment depends on many other things as well.

The sad story of the decline of a once great college by woke and cancel cul-ture faculty and administrators

 Here is Jonathan Turley on some history of Oberlin College vs Gibson's Bakery.

A once great college has been all but destroyed by woke and cancel culture faculty and administrators.

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The long and vengeful campaign of Oberlin College against a small family-owned grocery has come to an end at the cost of a breathtaking $36 million for defamation. The Ohio Supreme Court had rejected what should be Oberlin College’s final appeal of a verdict in favor of Gibson’s Bakery. The bakery has been the target of an unrelenting attack by the school after it had the temerity to fight a false charge of racism in a shoplifting case involving Oberlin students who later pleaded guilty to criminal charges. Oberlin President Carmen Twillie Ambar and the Board burned through millions in litigation costs above the damages rather than admit that the college was wrong in the targeting of this grocery. That money could have been used for scholarships and other worthy purposes. Instead, Amber and the Board will simply ask alumni to foot the bill for a legal effort that seems to become little more than a revenge fetish.

Starting in 2017, I have written a long line of columns on the lawsuit against Oberlin College in this case where the college not only joined the mob but helped lead the mob against Gibson’s Bakery. Even after a massive award by the jury, Ambar continued to refuse to apologize for the shameful and costly conduct of her administration. (Ambar became president in 2017 shortly after the incident).

This controversy began with a shoplifting case. In 2016, an African American student named Jonathan Aladin was caught trying to steal a bottle of wine from Gibson’s Bakery, which was established in 1885 and has been closely tied to the college for over a century. When the grandson of the owner tried to stop Aladin, a fight ensued and police were called. Aladin and two other students, Cecilia Whettstone and Endia Lawrence, were arrested. Students, professors, and administrators held protests, charging that the bakery was racist and profiled the three students.

Oberlin maintained in court filings that the son and grandson of the owners of Gibson’s Bakery “violently and unreasonably attacked” an unarmed student, but that is not how the police viewed it. Aladin was charged with robbery, which is a second degree felony, and Whettstone and Lawrence were charged with first degree misdemeanor assault. Police rejected claims of a racial motive and noted that, over a period of five years, 40 adults were arrested for shoplifting at Gibson’s Bakery, but only six were African American. It also is not how the court viewed it. When prosecutors cut a plea deal to reduce the charge to attempted theft, a local judge refused. He said the plea deal appeared to be the result of a permanent “economic sanction”by the college in which the victim had little choice but to relent. Ultimately, all three students pleaded guilty.

The merits of the case did not seem to bother Oberlin officials or student protesters. Dean of Students Meredith Raimondo reportedly joined the massive protests and even handed out a flier denouncing the bakery as a racist business. When some people contacted Oberlin to object that the students admitted guilt, special assistant to the president for community and government relations Tita Reed wrote that it did not change a “damn thing” for her. Reed also reportedly participated in the campus protests.

Other faculty members encouraged students who denounced the bakery. The chairman of Africana studies posted, “Very proud of our students!” Oberlin barred purchases from the bakery, pending its investigation into whether this was “a pattern and not an isolated incident.” Raimondo also pressured Bon Appetit, a major contractor with the college, to cease business with the bakery. Reed even suggested that “once charges are dropped, orders will resume” and added that she was “baffled by their combined audacity and arrogance to assume the position of victim.”

The jury in June 2019 awarded the Gibsons $44 million in compensatory and punitive damages. A judge later reduced the award to $25 million. That was upheld and the appellate court also upheld an award of $6.2 million payment in attorney fees. Now interest has pushed the reduced award back up to roughly $36 million but you then have to add the attorney fees and the college’s own towering legal costs. That is likely to put the total back to near the original $44 million award.

It takes considerable work to burn over $40 million on such a case. Yet, time and again President Ambar and the college threw more money into a losing hand like a bad gambler at Vegas while refusing to apologize for the college’s reprehensible record in the case.

As the grocery recently warned that it might have to shutdown due to the lack of funds and drain of litigation, the college fought to pay the damages.

The Ohio Supreme Court finally ended this farce by refusing to hear a new appeal on jurisdictional grounds. It voted 4-3 to end further litigation.

In a statement, Oberlin College expressed disappointment but not an apology:

“Oberlin is disappointed that the Ohio Supreme Court has chosen not to hear our appeal of the Gibson’s Bakery judgment against the college. The issues raised by this case have been challenging, not only for the parties involved, but for the entire Oberlin community. We remain committed to strengthening the partnership between the College, the City of Oberlin and its residents, and the downtown business community. We will continue in that important work while remaining focused on our core educational mission.”

While the college could always try a federal appeal, it would just add more litigation costs while little hope for a change in the case or the verdict beyond further accruing interest.

The handling of this matter by Oberlin is nothing short of reprehensible in not only the treatment of this grocery (which was founded in the 1800s) but in the wasting of the assets and reputation of the college. Yet, not a single official appears to have been disciplined for this costly campaign. With tuition at $30,000 a year, the ultimate cost of this litigation would cover free tuition for a year for half of the college. (The total enrollment is only 2,600 students).

Yet, over $40 million somehow became little more than the price of vanity of a college to refuse to admit its original error and to apologize for its conduct. It was a complete failure of leadership by the president, the board, and the college. No one seemed willing to take the responsibility to say “enough” and stop the burning of added costs year after year. So the college continued to gush money as it racked up losses in court.

They have frittered away the assets and reputation of a school with a wonderful history and stellar academic reputation . . . all to pursue a small grocery like Captain Ahab and his whale. Indeed, the final filing should just quote Melville to capture the blind rage needed to sustain this ill-conceived effort: “From hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.”

Climate change perspective – a failure of rationality.

 In the fifth article in their series "

The Sun-Climate Effect: The Winter Gatekeeper Hypothesis (V). A role for the sun in climate change", Javier Vinos and Andy May go beyond the science to discuss the behavior of scientists and how much of it has become unscientific. They also discuss what the dogmatic segment of the field have left out and why it makes their conclusions problematic.

Summing up: the climate alarmists lack the knowledge and data to justify their alarmism.

Here is a link to their fifth article.

Here are some excerpts.

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5.1 Introduction

The 1990s discovery of multidecadal variability (see Part IV) showed that the science of climate change is very immature. The answer to what was causing the observed warming was provided before the proper questions were asked. Once the answer was announced, questions were no longer welcome. Michael Mann said of a skeptical Judith Curry: “I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing, but it’s not helping the cause, or her professional credibility” (Mann 2008). But as Peter Medawar (1979) stated, “the intensity of a conviction that a hypothesis is true has no bearing over whether it is true or not.” Scientists’ opinions do not constitute science, and a scientific consensus is nothing more than a collective opinion based on group-thinking. When doubting a scientific consensus (“just like you’re supposed to doubt,” as Feynman said) becomes unwelcome, the collective opinion becomes dogma, and dogma is clearly not science.

Lennart Bengtsson, former director of the Max Planck Institute of Meteorology, winner of the Descartes Prize and a WMO prize for groundbreaking research put it succinctly after agreeing to participate in a skeptical organization headed by Nigel Lawson, a member of the House of Lords and former Chancellor of the Exchequer:

“I had not [been] expecting such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life. Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc. I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy. I would never have expected anything similar in such an originally peaceful community as meteorology. Apparently, it has been transformed in recent years” (von Storch 2014).

This is the effect that dogmas have on scientists, normal scientific research becomes impossible by introducing a strong group-bias against questioning the dogma.

Once dogmas are established, they tend to evade scientific scrutiny. Stuart Firestein, when reviewing the main mistaken scientific consensuses of the past in his 2012 book, Ignorance: How it Drives Science, wonders if

“… is there any reason, really, to think that our modern science may not suffer from similar blunders? In fact, the more successful the fact, the more worrisome it may be. Really successful facts have a tendency to become impregnable to revision.” Stuart Firestein (2012)

The main dogma of climate change science is stated in the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as:

“It is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in GHG concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together. The best estimate of the human-induced contribution to warming is similar to the observed warming over this period (Figure SPM.3)”(IPCC 2014).

However, there is no evidence confirming this dogma. It is based on computer model results that were programmed with the same assumptions that emerge from them, in a clear case of circular reasoning. An example of such assumptions is that the only accepted effect of solar variability on climate is the change in total solar irradiance (TSI). None of the solar effects described in Part II are included because they are not accepted, and even if they were accepted, we would not know how to program them. We don’t know how they happen or how they affect climate. Such is the hubris of modern climate theory supporters that they believe we understand how climate changes well enough to make reliable projections 75 years into the future.

Fig. 5.1. The main dogma of climate change science is shown in Figure SPM.3 from AR5. The fifth IPCC report, claims that observed 1951-2010 warming was due to anthropogenic causes, without contribution from natural forcings, despite low volcanic activity and high solar activity; and without any contribution from multidecadal oscillations, despite the 1976-2000 period of warming coinciding with an AMO upswing.

In Part III we showed the importance of meridional transport (MT) and the latitudinal temperature gradient (LTG) in both the global and regional climate. They determine the amount of energy directed toward the poles. In Part IV we showed that changes in MT cause climate regime shifts, and that these shifts alter the energy budget of the climate system. This evidence refutes the dogma, revealing that changes in MT constitute a climate forcing not accounted for in Fig. 5.1. In Part II we reviewed the evidence that changes in solar activity affect the polar vortex, ENSO, Earth’s rotation rate, and planetary wave atmospheric propagation properties, resulting in dynamical spatiotemporal changes in atmospheric circulation, temperature, and precipitation that correspond with substantial climate changes of the past as recorded by paleoclimatological evidence. Each and every one of the climatological factors affected by solar activity points to an effect of the variable sun on MT. Through changes in MT, changes in solar activity constitute one of the main causes of climate change, further refuting the climate dogma.

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5.6 The Cycle-length/Climate-effect paradox

One of the main objections to a more substantive role on climate change by the sun is that the 11-year solar cycle does not appear to have a great effect on climate. Modern climate analysis using satellite data since 1979 have covered almost four full solar cycles, and it is clear that the changes observed, although significant, are modest (Lean 2017; see Fig. 2.2). And no change is clear between cycles, much less a trend in any climate variable that would correlate to the trend in solar activity.

But solar activity also displays longer cycles. Solar cycles receive the name of important solar researchers. The 11-yr Schwabe cycle, the 22-yr Hale cycle, the 100-yr Feynman cycle, the 200-yr de Vries cycle, the 1000-yr Eddy cycle, and the 2500-yr Bray cycle have all been described in the scientific literature as having a climatic effect (see Vinós 2022, and references within). The 100-yr Feynman cycle is responsible for two 11-yr cycles with low activity in the early 1800s (cycles 5 & 6, 1798–1823), the early 1900s (cycles 14 & 15, 1902-1923) and the early 2000s (cycles 24 & 25, since 2008 and until c. 2030). The 200-yr de Vries cycle is responsible for the spacing of the Wolf, Spörer, and Maunder grand minima during the LIA. The 1000-yr Eddy cycle is responsible for the main climatic periods for the past 2000 years, the Roman Warm Period, the Dark Ages cold period (also known as the Late Antiquity Little Ice Age), the Medieval Warm Period, the LIA, and the Modern warm period that started c. 1850, with some anthropogenic contribution during the past seven decades.

From paleoclimatic studies the longer the solar cycle, the more profound its climatic effect. The biggest effect comes from the 2500-yr Bray cycle, the longest clearly discernible cycle in solar and climatic studies. This cycle, presented in Part II (Sect. 2.2), and Fig. 2.1, not only established the biological subdivisions of the Holocene (the Boreal, Atlantic, Sub-Boreal, and Sub-Atlantic periods), but also caused great periodic fluctuations in human populations of the past. As Bevan et al. (2017) say:

“We demonstrate multiple instances of human population downturn over the Holocene that coincide with periodic episodes of reduced solar activity and climate reorganization. … This evidence collectively suggests quasi-periodic solar forcing of atmospheric and oceanic circulation with wider climatic consequences.”

Those periodic episodes of human population downturn correspond in great part to the 2500-yr Bray cycle, as can be appreciated in Fig. 2.1 or in their figure 3. One can only imagine the kind of climatic effect of the 2500-yr Bray cycle to cause such downturns in human population.

It appears paradoxical that solar variability has almost no effect on the short term (the 11-year cycle), but a huge effect on the long term (the 2500-yr cycle). The WGK-h also provides an explanation for this cycle-length/climate-effect paradox. As shown in Fig. 5.3, solar activity is not the only modulator of MT. At least the QBO, ENSO, the stadium-wave oscillation, and volcanic eruptions act as modulators of MT, and therefore the effect on a particular year can be the opposite of what solar activity alone could dictate. On top of that during an average activity 11-yr solar cycle close to half of the years act in one direction and close to the other half in the opposite direction. The result is a moderate effect where causality is unclear.

The effect of the QBO and ENSO tends toward an average of nearly zero in a few years, and the multidecadal oscillation in a few decades. The longer the solar cycle the longer the period with low solar activity at its troughs. As we have seen, the biggest climatic effect is produced by continuous periods of decades when most of the years display low solar activity. The small increment in the large amount of energy that the planet loses at each winter pole during low solar years is cumulative, as with the increased energy retained by the rise in CO2. Progressively the planet loses more energy that it gains, and cools down. The longer the cycle, the longer the downturn, and the more profound the cooling. The areas in the MT main paths, particularly the North Atlantic region (including Europe and North America) cool first, longer, and more profoundly, but the energy drain affects the entire planet. And although the Arctic region initially warms due to a larger influx of energy from the enhanced MT, it eventually cools too, as the entire planet gets colder.

Climate is therefore not very sensitive to solar activity until several consecutive 11-yr cycles of consistently low or high solar activity cause the effect to raise above background noise. And then only if the multidecadal stadium-wave oscillation is not acting on MT in the opposite direction. Solar activity and the stadium-wave cooperated during the 1976–1997 climate phase to produce accelerated warming through a strong reduction in MT, that resulted in a long period of global wind stilling (McVicar & Roderik 2010; Zeng et al. 2019) for which no explanation has been provided until now. Since 1998 MT has increased, producing Arctic warming and a pause in global warming. The concatenation of two consecutive low solar activity cycles since 2008 and the approaching shift in the stadium-wave towards an AMO cooling phase, signaled by the recent cooling of the North Atlantic warming hole (46°N–62°N & 46°W–20°W; Latif et al. 2022), spells trouble for the CO2-hypothesis of climate change. The CO2 hypothesis projects accelerating warming for as long as atmospheric CO2 keeps rising. But natural climate change is cyclical, and the modern theory of climate change does not understand that.

In this part of the series, we have seen how changes in solar activity produce changes in climate by modulating the MT of energy towards the poles in a seasonally dependent manner. The result is that the Modern Solar Maximum has significantly contributed to modern global warming, and the current extended solar minimum is at least partially responsible for the ongoing reduced rate of global warming. But the sun’s role as a modulator of poleward energy transport cannot be deduced from first principles. The stratospheric ozone response to UV changes affects MT via the Charney-Drazin criterion, the Holton-Tan effect, and stratospheric-tropospheric coupling. All these atmospheric phenomena derive from observations, not theory. The IPCC considers that solar variability slightly affects climate through small changes in total incoming energy. The top-down mechanism acts through small UV changes that involve even less energy. The change in UV energy, transferred to stratospheric ozone, is partly converted to changes in wind speed. The energy to alter stratospheric circulation dynamics and, through coupling, tropospheric circulation is provided by atmospheric waves generated in the troposphere, not by incoming radiation from the sun. The WGK-h proposes that the energy that alters the climate as a response to solar changes is energy already in the climate system. Under low solar activity this energy is directed to the poles and radiated to space, cooling the planet, and under high activity it remains within the climate system longer, warming the planet. This unexpected energy bypass, that cannot be deduced from theory, is what made the solar-climate question unsolvable for so long. In the last part we will review the evidence that MT is the true climate control knob, and how it can explain the climate changes that have taken place on the planet from the early Eocene hothouse, 52 million years ago, to the present icehouse.

Young knights tame math dragon

 Here is a link to a story at quantamagazine.org that has everything - adventure, romance, and intellectual accomplishment.

Here is the introduction.

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A basic fact of geometry, known for millennia, is that you can draw a line through any two points in the plane. Any more points, and you’re out of luck: It’s not likely that a single line will pass through all of them. But you can pass a circle through any three points, and a conic section (an ellipse, parabola or hyperbola) through any five.

More generally, mathematicians want to know when you can draw a curve through arbitrarily many points in arbitrarily many dimensions. It’s a fundamental question — known as the interpolation problem — about algebraic curves, one of the most central objects in mathematics. “This is really about just understanding what curves are,” said Ravi Vakil, a mathematician at Stanford University.

But curves that live in higher dimensions, despite having been studied with state-of-the-art tools for hundreds of years, are tricky beasts. In two-dimensional space, a curve can be cut out by a single equation: A line might be written as y = 3x − 7, a circle by x2 + y2 = 1. In spaces of three or more dimensions, however, a curve gets much more complicated, and it is often defined by so many equations in so many variables that you cannot possibly hope to fully understand its geometry. As a result, a curve’s most basic properties can be exceedingly difficult to grasp — including the seemingly simple notion of whether it passes through some collection of points in space.

For centuries, mathematicians have been proving cases of the interpolation problem: Can you, for instance, put a curve with certain specified properties through 16 points in three-dimensional space, or a billion points in five-dimensional space? That work has not only allowed them to answer important questions in algebraic geometry, but also helped inspire developments in cryptography, digital storage and other areas well beyond pure mathematics.

Still, Vakil said, it’s not enough to understand interpolation for most curves. Mathematicians want to know it for all of them.

Now, in a proof posted online earlier this year, two young mathematicians at Brown University, Eric Larson and Isabel Vogt, have finally dealt the problem its final blow, solving it completely and systematically. The paper marks the culmination of nearly a decade of work, during which they gradually chipped away at the question, solved important related problems about what curves look like and how they behave — and also got married.

“It’s really a remarkable story,” said Sam Payne, a mathematician at the University of Texas, Austin, “for [people] that young and that early in their mathematical development to latch on to such a deep, hard problem, and then to be so persistent.”

Armed citizens stop mass shootings

 Here is a link to a list of events where armed citizens stopped mass shootings.

How not to win the public trust of the DOJ

Jonathan Turley gets it right on Garland and the DOJ.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University

It's all about Bayes Theorem - and any reasonable application of it will require, going forward, a long open record of trustworthiness.

Here is JT's comment.
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Below is my column in the Hill on the upcoming filing of the Justice Department on proposed redactions to the affidavit that led to the Mar-a-Lago raid. It will be the fifth chance for Attorney General Merrick Garland to take a modest step to assure concerned citizens over the basis or motivation for the raid.

Here is the column:

In a three-minute press conference following the FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, Attorney General Merrick Garland cut a defiant figure, condemning critics of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI: “I will not stand by silently when their integrity is unfairly attacked.” He then left the stage without taking questions or answering that criticism.

It was a signature moment for Garland, who often responds to controversies with belated, rote remarks. His brief comments had all of the substance of a Hallmark card that read, “Trust us, we’re the government.” Yet trust has to be earned, not simply demanded.

This coming week, Garland has another opportunity to show leadership and reassure the public by ordering substantive disclosures in the proposed redacted affidavit justifying the raid. If not, this will be the fifth missed opportunity to demonstrate that the DOJ deserves the public’s trust.

The indignation expressed by Garland in his public remarks seemed to ignore legitimate concerns over the DOJ’s motivations and record in past Trump-related investigations. Both the FBI and DOJ have documented histories of false court statements and bias against Trump, leading to the collapse of the Russia-collusion allegations and the firing of high-ranking officials.

Garland was aware of that history and the troubling context when he ordered the unprecedented raid on the home of a former president and the expected 2024 political opponent of President Biden. He may be justified in ordering it, but he cannot simply dismiss critics as unhinged extremists.

It is equally troubling that, at every earlier opportunity to make a modest step to assure such citizens, Garland has failed:

The Negotiations

It is unclear why Garland opted for a search warrant rather than a second subpoena like one used in June to seize boxes of documents from Mar-a-Lago. Trump’s team claims to have communications from the FBI reflecting that they cooperated with the search, then followed the FBI’s request to reinforce security on a storage room. It is unclear what communications occurred after the June meeting — or, if remaining documents were a concern, why the DOJ did not immediately issue a second subpoena. While the DOJ claimed time was of the essence to retrieve national security material, Garland reportedly waited weeks before signing off on the search warrant application and the FBI waited a weekend to execute the search. There was plenty of time to seek a voluntary surrender or consensual search.

The Warrant

The second opportunity occurred when the DOJ sought the warrant. While knowing that every aspect of the search would be scrutinized, it adopted language so broad that it was virtually the legal version of Captain Jack Sparrow’s “Take what you can … Give nothing back.” It allowed the seizure of any box containing any document with any classification of any kind — and all boxes stored with that box; it allowed the seizure of any writing from Trump’s presidency. If Garland wanted to assure Americans of an apolitical motive, he could have crafted that warrant more narrowly. Instead, the government scooped up everything, from passports to attorney-client material.

The Raid

Garland’s third opportunity came with the raid itself. Rather than descending on Trump’s home with 30 to 40 officers and a dozen vehicles, this is a search that could have been done by a few inconspicuous agents without risk. They didn’t have to arrive by Uber, but they also didn’t need to arrive like this. Instead, as with other Trump targets from Roger Stone to Paul Manafort and Peter Navarro, the DOJ chose the most heavy-handed, overwhelming-force option.

The Review

After the raid, Garland missed his fourth opportunity. It was obvious the raid would ignite a country that is a tinderbox, particularly before a major election. Garland could have issued a statement reassuring the public and immediately secured the documents, asking for an independent special master or federal magistrate to sort out any material beyond the warrant’s scope, including attorney-client material. That would have ended speculation about a pretextual search aimed at finding incriminating evidence of other crimes, including material related to the Jan. 6 riot. Garland not only didn’t take such a precaution but reportedly refused Trump’s request for such an appointment. Garland then compounded the problem by refusing to address basic concerns in his brief presser, including the allegation of a pretextual search.

The Affidavit

Garland now has a fifth opportunity in responding to a magistrate’s order to recommend parts of the affidavit for public release. Garland initially refused to release the affidavit, then implausibly asserted that nothing in it could be released in the interests of national security. Most affidavits have sections that can be released without damaging an investigation or compromising witnesses, including information already known to the target. In this case, Garland could, at a minimum, release the account of the communications with the Trump team. It may be discomforting for DOJ officials accustomed to total control over such information, but it would reassure the public in a growing political crisis.

Obviously, after insisting no disclosures could be made, it is now doubly difficult for Garland to reverse himself. Such a bold move would be out of character for Garland, who often appears more of a passenger than the driver of his own department. But he needs now to be proactive rather than reactive to this controversy — by overruling those in the DOJ who pushed for the raid and demanded a total bar on disclosures of the affidavit.

What is clear is that Garland’s “trust us” mantra has done little to assuage concerns. Indeed, that seems almost comical to many people, given the Crossfire Hurricane debacle and the fact that this investigation is being handled by the same section.

Transparency on the search may push some at the DOJ outside of their comfort zone, but the raid has already pushed many on both sides of the political spectrum to the brink. One MSNBC host declared that the “civil war is here” while, in a shocking Rasmussen poll, 46 percent of Americans now view the FBI unfavorably and 53 percent believe it is being misused by the Biden administration. Even assuming that Rasmussen trends conservative, those numbers likely reflect the view of many of the more than 74 million people who voted for Trump in 2020.

So far, Garland has done little to earn the trust of almost half of the country. In this and other controversies, he has demanded respect but refused to take even modest measures to justify it.

Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe: an example of a lack of credibility in academia

 Here is Jonathan Turley on the latest bizarre pronouncements of Laurence Tribe - a renowned Harvard Law professor.

Anyone familiar with academics (I was one) knows that they have the same foibles as everyone else. By and large, you can't trust them to be any more objective than other people, to refrain from talking with confidence about things they no little about, or even to refrain from allowing their emotions to dominate their intellect leading to mouthing nonsense about things they are paid to know a lot about.

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Tribe: The Criminal Case Against Trump is Another “Slam Dunk”

In past columns, we have discussed the litany of “slam dunk” crimes that Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe has declared as established against former President Donald Trump, none of which have been actually charged. Indeed, Tribe appears intent upon running through the entire criminal code. Just for the purposes of keeping score, Tribe declared evidence supporting criminal charges of witness tampering, obstruction of justice, criminal election violations, Logan Act violations, extortion, espionage, attempted murder, and treason by Trump or his family. This week, Tribe insisted on MSNBC that Trump yet again is facing a “slam dunk” criminal conviction over the raid on Mar-a-Lago. While some of us have suggested that we wait to see the actual evidence before evaluating the risk in the case, Tribe again is confident that the still uncharged case has already been made.

Just last month, Tribe declared Trump clearly guilty of the attempted murder of Vice President Mike Pence on January 6, 2021. Tribe again insisted that the case could be prosecuted “without any doubt, beyond a reasonable doubt, beyond any doubt, and the crimes are obvious.” I guess there is no doubt. There is also no compelling legal basis for the claim. Nevertheless, Tribe promised more if needed: “There are other crimes that have been proven. Those are plenty to start with.”

It is a curious thing that none of these prior “proven” crimes have been charged. After the riot, District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine announced that he was considering arresting Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Rudy Giuliani and U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks and charging them with incitement. So what happened to that prosecution? The failure of Racine to charge Trump was not due to any affection or loyalty to the former president. It was due to the paucity of direct evidence of a crime that would hold up in court.

Now, without an indictment or the public disclosure of actual evidence beyond the inventory list, Tribe sees no reason to wait for proof. The evidence is, again, a “slam dunk” for conviction.

While the three criminal provisions cited in the warrant do not require that the documents be classified, the declassification of the documents could make the case more difficult and could raise difficult issues of a president’s inherent declassification authority. As I have previously discussed, we have not seen what Trump refers to as a “standing order” of declassification. However, to the extent that declassification relates to Trump’s intent in possessing these documents, a court could have to grapple with some novel constitutional questions. While a former president loses such inherent authority, Trump is claiming that he declassified the material when he was still president. Tribe dismisses such claims but, again, we have yet to see the alleged order or the specific claims made in past exchanges between the former president and the Justice Department.

Notably, at the start of the interview, Tribe argues against the release of any of the affidavit. While many of us thought the court would likely defer to the Justice Department, it was also clear (in my opinion) that portions could be released. Anyone familiar with these affidavits knows that there are portions that can be released, including sections with information that are already known to the target. We are interested in not only what was presented to the court but how it was presented given the history of the Department in making false or misleading statements in past Trump-related investigations.

Notably, Tribe also insisted that any release would “violate important rules on grand jury secrecy.” The problem is that we have not heard of any grand jury on the Mar-a-Lago matter. This was a warrant sought from the court based on probable cause of possible criminal offenses. There also has been no suggestion that the warrant incorporated material from other grand juries like the ongoing January 6th grand jury. Ironically, if Tribe has been given such information from sources, it would likely be a Rule 6(e) violation. Moreover, if this warrant is an attempt to acquire evidence for a separate investigation, it would contradict the public statements of the Justice Department that this was prompted to protect national defense information.

Tribe added that ” this man . . . I was going to call him ‘traitor’ but that is not quite right it is not treason.” Actually, Tribe previously suggested that Trump was a traitor and could be charged with treason.

Tribe has, of course, never lacked confidence that his lengthening list of crimes have been proven “without any doubt, beyond a reasonable doubt, beyond any doubt.” He is not alone in such hair-triggered analysis. It has been the signature of much of the legal analysis in the last six years. Yet, it would be useful. . . just once . . . if only for appearances . . . to start with the release of actual evidence before discussing slam dunk convictions.

Is the FBI salvageable?

Victor Davis Hanson assesses the FBI. Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

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The FBI is dissolving before our eyes into a rogue security service akin to those in Eastern Europe during the Cold War.

Take the FBI’s deliberately asymmetrical application of the law. This week the bureau surprise-raided the home of former President Donald Trump — an historical first.

A massive phalanx of FBI agents swooped into the Trump residence while he was not home, to confiscate his personal property, safe, and records. All of this was over an archival dispute of presidential papers common to many former presidents. Agents swarmed the entire house, including the wardrobe closet of the former first lady.

Note we are less than 90 days out from a midterm election, and this was not just a raid, but a political act.

The Democratic Party is anticipated to suffer historical losses. Trump was on the verge of announcing his 2024 presidential candidacy. In many polls, he remains the Republican front-runner for the nomination — and well ahead of incumbent President Joe Biden in a putative 2024 rematch.

In 2016 then FBI Director James Comey announced that candidate Hillary Clinton was guilty of destroying subpoenaed emails — a likely felony pertaining to her tenure as secretary of state. Yet he all but pledged that she would not be prosecuted given her status as a presidential candidate.

As far as targeting presidential candidates, Trump was impeached in 2020 ostensibly for delaying military aid to Ukraine by asking Ukrainian officials to investigate more fully the clearly corrupt Biden family — given Joe Biden at the time was a likely possible presidential opponent in 2020.

The FBI has devolved into a personal retrieval service for the incorrigible Biden family. It suppressed, for political purposes, information surrounding Hunter Biden’s missing laptop on the eve of the 2020 election.

Previously, the FBI never pursued Hunter’s fraudulently registered firearm, his mysterious foreign income, his felonious crack cocaine use, or his regular employment of foreign prostitutes.

Yet in a pre-dawn raid just before the 2020 election, the FBI targeted the home of journalist James O’Keefe on grounds that someone had passed to him the lost and lurid diary of Ashley Biden, Biden’s wayward daughter.

At various times, in Stasi-style the FBI has publicly shackled Trump economic advisor Peter Navarro, swarmed the office of Trump’s legal counsel Rudy Giuliani, and sent a SWAT team to surround the house of Trump ally Roger Stone. Meanwhile, terrorists and cartels walk with impunity across an open border.

FBI Director Christopher Wray last week cut short his evasive testimony before Congress. He claimed he had to leave for a critical appointment — only to use his FBI Gulfstream luxury jet to fly to his favorite vacation spot in the Adirondacks.

Wray took over from disgraced interim FBI Director Andrew McCabe. The latter admitted lying repeatedly to federal investigators and signed off on a fraudulent FBI FISA application. He faced zero legal consequences.

McCabe, remember, was also the point man in the softball Hillary Clinton email investigation — while his wife was a political candidate and recipient of thousands of dollars from a political action committee with close ties to the Clinton family.

McCabe took over from disgraced FBI Director James Comey. On 245 occasions, Comey claimed under oath before the House Intelligence Committee that he had no memory or knowledge of key questions concerning his tenure. With impunity, he leaked confidential FBI memos to the media.

Comey took over from Director Robert Mueller. Implausibly, Mueller swore under oath that he had no knowledge, either of the Steele dossier or of Fusion GPS, the firm that commissioned Christopher Steele to compile the dossier. But those were the very twin catalysts that had prompted his entire special investigation into the Russian collusion hoax.

FBI legal counsel Kevin Clinesmith was convicted of a felony for altering an FBI warrant request to spy on an innocent Carter Page.

The FBI, by Comey’s own public boasts, bragged how it caught National Security Advisor designate General Michael Flynn in its Crossfire Hurricane Russian collusion hoax.

As special counsel, Mueller then fired two of his top investigators — Lisa Page and Peter Strzok — for improper personal and professional behavior. He then staggered their releases to mask their collaborative wrongdoing.

Mueller’s team deleted critical cell phone evidence under subpoena that might well have revealed systemic FBI-related bias.

The FBI interferes with and warps national elections. It hires complete frauds as informants who are far worse than its targets. It humiliates or exempts government and elected officials based on their politics. It violates the civil liberties of individual American citizens.

The FBI’s highest officials now routinely mislead Congress. They have erased or altered court and subpoenaed evidence. They illegally leak confidential material to the media. And they have lied under oath to federal investigators.

The agency has become dangerous to Americans and an existential threat to their democracy and rule of law. The FBI should be dispersing its investigatory responsibilities to other government investigative agencies that have not yet lost the public’s trust.

How the FBI Undercounts Armed Citizen Responders to Mass Killers

 Here is John Lott at Real Clear Investigations.

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The shooting that killed three people and injured another at a Greenwood, Indiana, mall on July 17 drew broad national attention because of how it ended – when 22-year-old Elisjsha Dicken, carrying a licensed handgun, fatally shot the attacker.

While Dicken was praised for his courage and skill – squeezing off his first shot 15 seconds after the attack began, from a distance of 40 yards – much of the news coverage drew from FBI-approved statistics to assert that armed citizens almost never stop such attackers: “Rare in US for an active shooter to be stopped by bystander” (Associated Press); “Rampage in Indiana a rare instance of armed civilian ending mass shooting” (Washington Post); and “After Indiana mall shooting, one hero but no lasting solution to gun violence” (New York Times).

Evidence compiled by the organization I run, the Crime Prevention Research Center, and others suggest that the FBI undercounts by an order of more than three the number of instances in which armed citizens have thwarted such attacks, saving untold numbers of lives. Although those many news stories about the Greenwood shooting also suggested that the defensive use of guns might endanger others, there is no evidence that these acts have harmed innocent victims.

“So much of our public understanding of this issue is malformed by this single agency,” notes Theo Wold, former acting assistant attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice. “When the Bureau gets it so systematically – and persistently – wrong, the cascading effect is incredibly deleterious. The FBI exerts considerable influence over state and local law enforcement and policymakers at all levels of government.”

Related: The ‘Good Guys With Guns’ the FBI Stats Omit

As many on the left seek more limits on gun ownership and use in response to mass shootings and the uptick in violent crime, and many on the right seek greater access to firearms for protection, the media’s reliance on incomplete statistics in covering incidents such as the one at the Greenwood Park Mall takes on new significance.

The FBI defines active shooter incidents as those in which an individual actively engages in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated, public area. But it does not include those it deems related to other criminal activity, such as a robbery or fighting over drug turf.

The Bureau reports that only 11 of the 252 active shooter incidents it identified for the period 2014-2021 were stopped by an armed citizen. An analysis by my organization identified a total of 281 active shooter incidents during that same period and found that 41 of them were stopped by an armed citizen.

That is, the FBI reported that 4.4% of active shooter incidents were thwarted by armed citizens, while the CPRC found 14.6%.

Two factors explain this discrepancy – one, misclassified shootings; and two, overlooked incidents. Regarding the former, the CPRC determined that the FBI reports had misclassified five shootings: In two incidents the Bureau notes in its detailed write-up that citizens possessing valid firearms permits confronted the shooters and caused them to flee the scene. However, these cases were not listed as being stopped by armed citizens because the attackers were later apprehended by police. In two other incidents the FBI misidentified armed civilians as armed security personnel. In one incident, the FBI simply failed to mention the citizen engagement at all.

For example, the Bureau’s report about the Dec. 29, 2019 attack on the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas, that left two men dead does not list this as an incident of “civic engagement” because the perpetrator was fatally shot by a parishioner who had volunteered to provide security during worship. That man, Jack Wilson, told RealClearInvestigations he was not a security professional. He said that 19 to 20 members of the congregation were armed that day, and they didn’t even keep track of who was carrying a concealed weapon.

As for the second factor — overlooked cases — the FBI, more significantly, missed an additional 25 incidents identified by CPRC in which the active shooters were thwarted by armed civilians(see full list here). These include:

— An August 31, 2021, incident in Syracuse, New York, in which a property manager pulled out a legally possessed 9mm handgun and fatally wounded a man who opened fire on a crowd outside a building. The district attorney credited the property manager with saving the lives of several individuals.

— An August 11, 2021 incident in San Antonio, Texas, in which a woman who crashed into a parked car in San Antonio’s West Side neighborhood climbed out of her vehicle and began shooting indiscriminately at people who came out of their homes to rush to her aid. An armed resident fired back and shot the driver to death.

— A February 13, 2019 incident in Colonial Heights, Tennessee, in which a man, after killing his wife, turned his gun on others in dental office where she worked. A patient who had a concealed handgun permit holder shot the murderer as he was aiming at another person.

These omissions and discrepancies are not surprising given the limits of data collection and the judgment calls involved in categorizing such incidents. Law enforcement agencies around the country do not provide comprehensive reports of active shooter incidents, so local news coverage is a crucial source of information. The FBI contracts out this work to the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University and then reviews and refines its findings.

The CPRC discovered cases the Center missed, but even the CPRC’s approach almost certainly misses incidents. “[T]here’s no reason to think that the [CPRC’s] list is complete, since there may well have been such incidents that weren’t covered in the news in a way that would come up on the Center’s searches,” UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh wrote in June.

Asked about these discrepancies, the FBI declined to address them. A representative from the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center, M. Hunter Martindale, suggested that its numbers were not definitive:

“We do appreciate you sending potential active shooter cases for the FBI team to review for inclusion in the active shooter dataset. As promised, I sent the email chain to the FBI team yesterday. As I’m sure you know, the FBI Active Shooter reports are released on an annual basis. My assumption is that any amendment retroactively adding cases would likely be included in a release with the annual report.“

Although collecting such data is fraught with challenges, some see a pattern of distortion in the FBI numbers because the errors almost exclusively go one way, minimizing the life-saving actions of armed citizens.

“Whether deliberately through bias or just incompetence, the FBI database of active shooters cannot be trusted,” said Gary Mauser, an emeritus professor at Simon Fraser University in Canada who has extensively studied gun control and defensive gun uses. Mauser’s concern dovetails with those voiced by Rep. Jim Jordan in a July 27 letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray. Jordan alleged that whistleblowers have come forward claiming political biases in the FBI’s domestic terrorism data.

Despite these problems, the FBI’s numbers are routinely cited as authoritative by the news media. In its coverage of the Greenwood mall attack, the Washington Post linked to a Bureau report while informing readers, “In recent studies of more than 430 ‘active shooter incidents’ dating back to 2000, the FBI found that civilians killed gunmen in just 10 cases.”

In its Greenwood article, the Associated Press reported, “From 2000 to 2021, fewer than 3% of 433 active attacks in the U.S. ended with a civilian firing back, according to the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University.”

When my organization emailed Ed White, the AP reporter who wrote that article, about omissions in the Texas State numbers, he responded: “Our reporting, citing the specific research by Texas State U. over a 20-year period, was accurate. No correction was necessary.”

News outlets often raise concerns that allowing concealed handgun carry will result in innocent bystanders being shot or in police accidentally shooting permit holders. White’s AP dispatch on the Greenwood shooting quoted Adam Lankford, identified as “a criminal justice expert at the University of Alabama,” who stated: “While it’s certainly a good thing in this mall shooting that someone was able to stop it before it went any further, let’s not think we can substitute that outcome in all past and future incidents. If everyone’s carrying a firearm, the risk that something bad happens just gets much larger.”

Carl Moody, a professor at William & Mary who studies mass public shootings, told RCI that such warnings are misleading:

“The media and gun control advocates always seem concerned with the worst possible outcomes when firearms are involved. We know that armed citizens do, in fact, stop active shooters. And while there’s a possibility of a bystander getting hurt, the data show that an armed citizen has yet to accidentally shoot an innocent bystanders. We also know that the police have accidentally shot the hero citizen just once. That was in Colorado on June 21, 2021. That’s not something that would normally happen, because the police usually arrive long after the incident is resolved.“

Experts interviewed by the Washington Post and New York Times argue that stopping these attacks should be left to the police. “I think you might get more individuals carrying, sort of primed for something to happen, which is particularly dangerous … in reality that’s the job of the police,” Indiana University Bloomington law professor Jody Madeira told the Washington Post.

But many in law enforcement disagree. In March 2013, PoliceOne surveyed its 380,000 active-duty and 70,000 retired law enforcement officer members. Eighty-six percent of members believed that casualties from mass public school shootings could be reduced or “avoided altogether” if citizens had carried permitted concealed handguns in those places. Seventy-seven percent supported “arming teachers and/or school administrators who volunteer to carry at their school.” No other policy to protect children and school staff had such widespread support.

“A deputy in uniform has an extremely difficult job in stopping these attacks,” Sarasota County, Florida, Sheriff Kurt Hoffman told RCI. “These terrorists have huge strategic advantages in determining the time and place of attacks. They can wait for a deputy to leave the area, or pick an undefended location. Even when police or deputies are in the right place at the right time, those in uniform who can be readily identified as guards may as well be holding up neon signs saying, ‘Shoot me first.’ My deputies know that we cannot be everywhere.”

Similarly, Massad Ayoob, a self-defense advocate who has taught police techniques to law enforcement since 1974, noted: “When a life-threatening crisis strikes and seconds count, the real first responders are the citizens present.”

The FBI’s active shooting reports do not mention whether the attacks occur in gun-free zones. “The issue is that when places are posted as gun-free zones, law-abiding citizens obey those rules and would be unable to stop the attacks in those areas,” notes Professor Moody.

Surveys show that criminologists and economists had the same top four preferred policies for stopping mass public shootings. On a 1 to 10 scale where 1 was the least effective policy and 10 the most, American criminologists rated the following policies most highly: Allow K-12 teachers to carry concealed handguns (6.0), allow military personnel to carry on military bases (5.6), encourage the elimination of gun-free zones (5.3) and relax federal regulations that pressure companies to create gun-free zones (5.0). The top four policies for economists were the same, but in a different order: encourage the elimination of gun-free zones (7.9), relax federal regulations that pressure companies to create gun-free zones (7.8), allow K-12 teachers to carry concealed handguns (7.7), and allow military personnel to carry on military bases (7.7).

Between 2014 and 2021, citizens stopped 41 out of 109 potential or actual mass shootings where we could identify that guns were allowed in the area.

So 38% of attacks were stopped by people legally carrying concealed handguns. That’s an ever higher rate than for all attacks, where 14.6% were stopped.

The numbers indicate If we didn’t have gun-free zones, we would have more people stopping these attacks.

The general public seems to agree. An early July survey by the Trafalgar Group showed that a plurality of American general election voters believe that armed citizens are the most effective element in protecting you and your family in the case of a mass shooting. First on the list was “armed citizens” at 42%, followed by “local police” (25%) and “federal agents” (10%). [“None of the above” was the answer chosen by 23% of respondents.] A survey by YouGov in May – before the Uvalde, Texas, attack – found that by a margin of 51% to 37% American adults supported letting schoolteachers and administrations carry concealed handguns.

The once great CUNY validates its decline to un-greatness

 Jonathan Turley gets it right again.

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For many who watched the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial, some of the most outstanding moments involved his defense counsel Yarelyn Mena. It was an extraordinary opportunity for the 29-year old graduated from CUNY (2015) and she was praised for her tough examination of Heard. It was considered the turning point of one of the most famous trials in modern history. It is something that should be a matter of great pride for the CUNY community and, not surprisingly, the website did an article on their graduate. However, it has now been deleted with an apology after people objected that they were upset or traumatized by the recognition due to Heard’s allegations of abuse.

The now deleted article told the intriguing story of how a young associate out of CUNY became a global sensation as a key member of the defense team. Yarelyn explain “I am a third year associate and am fortunate to have worked a trial so early in my career. Most cases don’t go to trial.” It is an extraordinary story for a woman who came with her family from the Dominican Republic. She proceeded to graduate from CUNY and then received her law degree from Fordham University. That is a quintessential American story of achievement that any institution should relish and highlight. She noted in the interview that “(Law) was the first career that I knew of before I even really understood what it was.”

Apparently, CUNY graduates and students were outraged and unwilling to separate the act of representation from the rivaling abuse allegations in the case. It turned out that neither could the school.

The school acknowledged the objections raised to “our newsletter featuring a recent CUNY graduate who worked on Johnny Depp’s legal team.” It then apologized:

“We understand the strong negative emotions this article elicited and apologize for publishing the item. We have removed it from our CUNYverse blog. The article was not meant to convey support for Mr. Depp, implicitly or otherwise, or to call into question any allegations that were made by Amber Heard. Domestic violence is a serious issue in our society and we regret any pain this article may have caused.”

The “pain” caused by the article was an account of a graduate doing her job as an advocate. We have gotten to the point that people are incapable of recognizing that everyone is entitled to a rigorous legal defense and that the lawyers are fulfilling essential roles in protecting the rule of law. The only thing that matters is that the lawyer represented someone accused of abuse (even though the jury clearly found that Heard lied with malice in the trial). Even lawyers defending a client must now be cancelled to protect others from the pain of dealing with a trial on spousal abuse.

The role of the school in such a cancellation effort is shocking. CUNY trains lawyers, including criminal defense lawyers. The message being sent to those students and graduates is that the school will shun you and disassociate itself if you represent a client in an unpopular cause.

This is disturbingly similar to the firing of House Dean Ronald S. Sullivan Jr, a Harvard Law professor, after he decided to represent accused sexual abuser Harvey Weinstein. As with Yarelyn Mena, the students and school could not separate Sullivan’s role as counsel from the alleged acts of his client.

The deletion was noted by Brooklyn College History Professor KC Johnson, who said with considerable understatement that the move is “not a good look for CUNY, to put it mildly.”
CUNY has previously been the center of controversies discussed on this site. That includes Law Dean Mary Lu Bilek cancelling herself for a single remark in a faculty meeting, a law school administration that believes that cancelling speakers is an exercise of free speech, a professor who views math and meritocracy to be products of white privilege, and the effort to block an honorary degree over a poet’s political views.

Whom Does AARP Serve?

 Kimberley Strassel at the Wall Street Journal.

Company managements have conflicting interests with respect to those of their shareholders and the former impinges on the latter when it comes to management's decisions. This kind of conflict is widespread, including, as KS shows, at AARP.

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It’s been a decade since that infamous liberal ad showing then vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan pushing granny off a cliff. Don’t expect a similar accusation today against the conflict-of-interest known as the AARP, no matter that the seniors’ group deserves it.

The AARP, which claims to advocate policies that serve the interests of tens of millions of retirees, has gone all in for the giant tax-and-spend deal announced last week by Sen. Joe Manchin and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. The group’s particular focus is the provision that would allow the federal government to “negotiate” Medicare drug prices and cap annual increases to inflation—though it is more than happy to also swallow the legislation’s tax hikes and climate spending.

The lobby has fanned out across Washington to pressure Congress for passage and called on its members to blitz their representatives and senators. It’s been running expensive ads that defend Mr. Manchin and demagogue the drug industry, which just worked miracles in the pandemic. “Congress has a historic opportunity to deliver relief” from “inflation” and “Big Pharma,” one spot says. By negotiating prices it will “put money back in the pockets of seniors.”

Left unsaid is that it may also put money in the pocket of AARP. Ask yourself why a group that claims to represent older Americans is plumping for a provision that will take the greatest toll on seniors. The bill would empower the secretary of health and human services to single out 10 to 20 of Medicare’s priciest drugs each year and to penalize any pharmaceutical company that doesn’t accept the government’s proposed price. That’s not a “negotiation”; it’s a gun to the head. The proper term is “price controls.”

A University of Chicago study late last year analyzed a House price-control plan and found it would reduce research dollars by $663 billion over the next 17 years, resulting in 135 fewer drugs. It estimates a loss of 331 million years of life—31 times the hit from Covid at the time of the study. A newer study from consultancy Vital Transformation finds that if this scheme had been in effect over the past decade, only six of 110 currently approved therapies would have made it to market.

Most devastated would be the people AARP claims to represent. Nearly 90% of adults 65 and older take at least one prescription medication. More than half report taking four or more. The AARP’s price controls would mean horrific hits to research in cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, you name it. This isn’t the Inflation Reduction Act. It’s the Lowering Life Expectancy Act.

The AARP and Democrats are bragging that “negotiations” will result in $288 billion in “savings”—another brazen bit of deceptive language. The money won’t be “saved” but rather siphoned from drug research and used to cover other spending in the bill. That includes climate dollars, but also $64 billion to extend ObamaCare insurance-premium subsidies.

That’s a huge boost for insurers, including UnitedHealth Group, for which AARP is now essentially a marketing arm. The seniors group for years has been selling AARP-branded Medicare Advantage and Medigap plans, for which they get royalty payouts. According to public filings, AARP took in more than $1 billion from royalty payments in 2020, and past disclosures suggest at least 65% of that comes from its United Health relationship. These royalty amounts now significantly dwarf what AARP receives from membership dues.

To the extent inflation price caps on drugs pad insurers’ profits, that’s a win for UnitedHealthcare. To the extent ObamaCare subsidies keep those insurance plans rolling, that’s a win for UnitedHealthcare. To the extent the drug companies are taking a hit, thereby sparing for some further time funding decreases to Medicare Advantage, that’s a win for UnitedHealthcare. Anything that’s a win for UnitedHealthcare is good for its partner, AARP.

AARP will insist it is working purely for its members’ interests, but this conflict makes it impossible to know its true motives. That conflict is front and center every single time the lobby engages in a Washington healthcare fight. Yet the media uniformly closes its eyes to the problem, and treats the AARP’s endorsement of legislation as a gold seal of approval.

Add in that it’s increasingly unclear how motivated the group is by partisan politics. AARP was caught a decade ago operating as an extension of the Obama White House, toiling to help pass ObamaCare over the opposition of most members. Now it’s laboring to land the country with another inflationary spending blowout, paid for by research dollars tapped from future medicines for those same senior citizens. Is this for the benefit of older Americans? Or for the benefit of Democrats?

AARP may be too attached to its royalty dollars to give up its financial conflict. But its refusal to do so strips it of any authority on the question of what is best for seniors. Keep that in mind next time one of those pricey AARP ads pops up on the television.

The Art of Scandal Implosion: The Political and Media Elite Prepare To Drop Hunter Biden in a “Controlled Demolition”

 Jonathan Turley gets it right on the Bidens. Fraud everywhere.

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Below is my column in Fox News on the status of the Hunter Biden investigation and how it presents a challenge for many in Washington. Due to the continued work of a small number of media outlets like the New York Post, it is no longer possible to bury the story or continue the false claim that it is “Russian disinformation.” The hope now appears to be a “controlled demolition” where Hunter is indicted on limited grounds without causing collateral damage to the political and media establishment. Scandal implosion is as much an art as it is a science and could be the most brilliant achievement in this ongoing scandal.

Here is the column:

For news junkies, there has been a remarkable and sudden shift in the media in the coverage of the Hunter Biden scandal. The shift is the very fact that there is suddenly coverage of the Hunter Biden scandal. From CNN to NPR, reporters are now acknowledging that the infamous laptop is not “Russian disinformation” as was widely claimed before the 2020 election. After years of burying the story, the media is now attempting an even more precarious exercise.

It is called controlled demolition: the implosion of a scandal to limit any blast effect on nearby structures or individuals. Like those buildings dropped between other structures, it takes precision and, most importantly, cooperation to pull off. Specifically, this controlled demolition will require the perfect timing of the media, Democratic politicians, and most importantly, the Justice Department.

That was the same alliance that successfully killed the story before the election despite evidence of a multimillion dollar influence peddling scheme by the Biden family. The media eagerly spread the false claim of 51 intelligence experts who declared that the laptop was likely “Russian disinformation.” Twitter and social media companies imposed a news blackout before the election. Recently, GOP senators also accused the Justice Department of effectively spiking the investigation — displaying the same bias documented in the Russian collusion investigation.

For his part, Attorney General Merrick Garland has refused to appoint a special counsel despite the overwhelming need for such an appointment. Even former Attorney General Bill Barr recently said that new evidence makes such an appointment essential ( a reversal of his initial position in giving the case to United States Attorney David Weiss in Delaware).

I previously wrote a column on the one year anniversary of the Hunter Biden laptop story that marveled at the success of the Biden family in making the scandal vanish before that 2020 election. It was analogized to Houdini making his 10,000-pound elephant Jennie disappear in his act. With the help of the media, the Biden trick occurred live before an audience of millions.

The problem is the public can now see the elephant.

That is why the media is now recalibrating. That was most evident in the recent statement of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman that “I know The New York Times felt it didn’t pursue it originally as much as it wanted to; then it followed up, as I recall.” Friedman does not explain what overrode that journalistic interest in the story or why the “follow up” came a year after the election of Joe Biden.

It appears that President Biden is no longer seen as a political asset with most Democrats refusing to publicly support him in his promised reelection bid. Biden now could endanger Democratic control of Congress. The question is how to drop Hunter (and even his father) without causing damage to the media, the Democrats, or others in Washington. It requires a controlled demolition.

The most important thing is to control the blast. By refusing to appoint a special counsel, Merrick Garland has effectively blocked the risk of a report on the extensive influence peddling, including the repeated references to President Biden. the “Big Guy” is discussed in emails as the potential recipient of a 10 percent cut on a deal with a Chinese energy firm as well as other benefits. Emails also refer to Hunter Biden paying portions of his father’s expenses and taxes. Recently, there was additional support showing that “the Big Guy” was indeed Joe Biden.

The problem is that embarrassing evidence is mounting by the day. That includes the recent disclosure new open influence peddling by Hunter, referencing access to his father. Some emails show Hunter using trips with his Dad to arrange meetings with business associates like Magnani. Indeed, in one exchange with Magnani, Hunter complains that he is not getting responses on his business dealings, objecting

“I have brought every single person you have ever asked me to bring to the F’ing White House and the Vice President’s house and the inauguration and then you go completely silent,. I don’t know what it is that I did but I’d like to know why I’ve delivered on every single thing you’ve ever asked – and you make me feel like I’ve done something to offend you.”

The cringeworthy email only adds to the embarrassment not of Hunter Biden but the media struggling to control the damage from the scandal.

Yet, none of that would be the focus of coverage if the case can be ended on narrow criminal charges.

In other words, the case can then be collapsed by triggering a smaller explosion. Rather than pursue wider conspiracies connected to the influence peddling, Hunter could be indicted on a few tax or lobbying counts. That would allow for a plea bargain that would allow the media to focus narrowly on those counts and not the broader influence peddling by the Biden family.

Of course, controlled demolition can at times take an unexpected turn. The greatest danger is that either house of Congress could flip to GOP control. That would open up the entire matter to congressional investigation. Yet, if a plea has already closed the case, the legal blowback could be confined.

The key to political controlled demolitions “to ‘implode’ the building, that is, make it collapse down into its footprint.” The footprint is now Hunter Biden, confining the implosion to him while leaving the media and establishment untouched.

The Armed Citizen