Eric Boehm @ Reason looks at political favoritism in the Trump administration
American businesses bore the brunt of the tariffs hiked by former President Donald Trump, but having the right friends allowed some to dodge those higher costs.
Politically connected firms—specifically, those that donated to Republican candidates, including Trump—were more likely to succeed when asking the government for an exemption on imports that would normally be subject to tariffs, a new report concludes. It’s a finding that seems particularly relevant at the moment, as Trump is campaigning on a promise to hike more tariffs if he returns to the White House, while some conservatives see a potential second Trump term as a chance to reward friends and punish enemies.
In the study, four researchers reviewed 7,015 applications for exemptions that companies filed with the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Of those, only 1,022 were approved—but requests from companies that reported spending more on lobbying were more likely to gain approval. Companies with political action committees that made campaign contributions to Republicans were even more likely to score an exception, while those that donated to Democrats were more likely to have exemptions denied.
Proposition 3 asks if the California Constitution should be amended to recognize the fundamental right to marry, regardless of sex or race. It would remove language in the California Constitution stating that marriage is only between a man and a woman.
Proposition 4 asks if the state should borrow $10 billion in general obligation bonds for water, wildfire prevention, and protection of communities and lands.
Proposition 5 would lower the threshold to pass local bond measures for affordable housing and other infrastructure projects to 55% of voter approval, down from two-thirds in most cases.
Proposition 6 would amend the California Constitution to remove the current provision that allows jails and prisons to impose involuntary servitude to punish crime.
Proposition 32 would raise minimum wage as follows: For employers with 26 or more employees, to $17 immediately, $18 on January 1, 2025. For employers with 25 or fewer employees, to $17 on January 1, 2025, $18 on January 1, 2026. After that, it would go up each year based on how fast prices are going up.
Proposition 33 would repeal the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act of 1995, which currently prohibits local ordinances from enacting rent control on housing built after 1995.
Proposition 34 would require certain providers to spend 98% of revenues from a federal discount prescription drug program on direct patient care. It would also authorize statewide negotiation of Medi-Cal drug prices.
Proposition 35 would make permanent the existing tax on managed health care insurance plans, which, if approved by the federal government, provides revenues to pay for Medi-Cal health care services.
Proposition 36 would allow felony charges for possessing certain drugs and for thefts under $950, if the defendant has two prior drug or theft convictions.
Proposition 2: Public Education Facilities Bond Measure
LPCA Endorsed Position : NO
Reason: The Libertarian Party opposes using taxpayer dollars to fund large-scale government projects like school construction. There are concerns that the state may misallocate funds, leading to inefficiencies and a lack of accountability.
Proposition 3: Fundamental Right to Marry
LPCA Endorsed Position : YES
Reason: Individuals should have the freedom to marry any consenting adult, regardless of gender. It is not the state’s role to dictate the terms of marriage.
Proposition 4: Climate Bond Measure
LPCA Endorsed Position : NO
Reason: The Libertarian Party believes that the state should not be entrusted with more taxpayer funds, as it often mismanages resources and fails to deliver effective solutions.
Proposition 5: Housing and Public Infrastructure Bond Measure
LPCA Endorsed Position : NO
Reason: This measure is intrusive and undermines the real estate industry by placing additional burdens on taxpayers. Local governments should not have easier access to borrowing at the expense of fiscal responsibility.
Proposition 6: Ban Involuntary Prison Servitude
LPCA Endorsed Position : Pending Deliberation
Reason: Pending Deliberation
Proposition 32: $18 Minimum Wage Increase
LPCA Endorsed Position : NO
Reason: The Libertarian Party believes that the government should not interfere in the employer-employee relationship by mandating wages. Such regulations can lead to higher prices for consumers, force businesses to close, & harm the economy by reducing job availability.
Proposition 33: Rent Control Expansion
LPCA Endorsed Position : NO
Reason: The Libertarian Party maintains that the government should not regulate rental prices. Imposing rent controls can create economic strain on landlords and disrupt the housing market, ultimately harming both property owners and tenants by reducing available housing options.
Proposition 34: Effort to Require Healthcare Group Patient Spending
LPCA Endorsed Position : NO OPINION
Reason: A YES vote will show opposition to use of taxpayer funds from MediCal to use for 3rd party real estate projects A NO vote allows no change in this allowed profit use. It appears that this prop as written will most likely be overturned in court
Proposition 35: Permanent Funding for Medi-Cal
LPCA Endorsed Position : NO
Reason: The Libertarian Party argues that the government should not dictate how tax revenue is allocated. Governor Newsom’s assurances do not address the broader economic implications for all Californians and may lead to inefficiencies in resource distribution.
Proposition 36: Penalty Increase for Theft and Drug Trafficking
Kamala Harris’ grand reveal of her economic plan turned into an epic campaign flop. She faces the unenviable task of trying to distance herself from Joe Biden’s deeply unpopular presidency and its catastrophic economic legacy, without admitting that the administration, in which she has played a key role, failed in its economic stewardship. This is a nearly impossible task, and she has now clearly flunked it.
In her speech in North Carolina fresh off the Democratic National Convention, Harris tried to show sympathy for the daily economic struggles of American families. She admitted that prices are “too high” and that basic expenses — food, rent, gas, school supplies, and medication — are leaving many with “not much … at the end of the month.”
Harris is not just endorsing Biden’s economic framework but accelerating it.
In what might seem a startling acknowledgement for a sitting vice president given its implications, she noted, “A loaf of bread costs 50% more today than it did before the pandemic. Ground beef is up almost 50%.”
What she didn’t acknowledge was the role that Biden-Harris administration policies played in getting us here. Her call to “chart a new way forward” offers anything but, and instead represents a full-throated embrace of “Bidenomics” — the very agenda that has contributed to soaring consumer costs and the struggles of middle-class families.
At its core, Bidenomics shifts blame for economic distress onto others, deliberately ignoring the role that massive government spending and burdensome regulations have played in causing economic stagnation, inflation, and high interest rates.
On February 24, 2022, the Russian government, led by Vladimir Putin, launched an aggressive war against Ukraine. In the eyes of the world, this war crime has been committed by the whole country; by all Russians.
As a result, against our will we, citizens of the Russian Federation, have been held responsible for this violation of international law; a military invasion and massive loss of life. The enormity of the crime committed leaves no room for silence or passive dissent.
The Russian Anti-War Committee was created in order to oppose this bloody war — to develop a common position, to help people coordinate their efforts, and to resolve the enormous number of problems that have arisen because of Putin’s aggression.
We are convinced of the absolute value of human life, and that individual rights and freedoms are inviolable. Putin’s regime is a threat to these values. We see our task as uniting all forces to resist this.
It was not the Russians who started this war, but a mad dictator. But it is our civic duty to do everything we can to stop it.
Note: The Russian Antiwar Committee has no connection with Antiwar.com, based in San Francisco, California. Antiwar.com has been a vocal supporter of Russian aggression and the Putin Regime since before Russian tanks and troops entered Ukraine.
A U.S. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon approaches a U.S. Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker to conduct an aerial refueling operation above the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, April 23, 2020. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Daniel Snider)
It’s been a good week for the weapons industry. President Joe Biden signed off on order after order allowing American weapons to flow to Middle Eastern regimes. On Tuesday, TheWall Street Journalreported that the Biden administration will sell shipments of bombs worth $750 million to Saudi Arabia, breaking its ban on selling “offensive weapons” to the kingdom.
On the same day, the State Department announced over $20 billion in new arms sales to Israel, including fighter jets, armored vehicles, and ammunition. And the Friday before, the administration removed several major barriers to arming the Israeli military. It released $3.5 billion in U.S. taxpayer money for the Israeli military, unfroze a $262 million munition shipment that had been held up since May, and decided not to restrict U.S. aid to an Israeli army unit accused of beating an American to death.
Biden came into office promising to end “forever wars” in the Middle East. He pulled U.S. forces out of Afghanistan and oversaw a truce in the Yemeni civil war. Over the past year, however, Biden has reopened the war in Yemen and overseen the deadliest explosion of Israeli-Palestinian violence in history. His legacy may be ensuring that American weapons continue to fuel these conflicts after he leaves office.
The Saudi government has not stopped pushing for U.S. military support. This week, they got their wish, with Biden approving a sale of 3,000 Small Diameter Bombs and 7,500 Paveway IV bombs over the next few months. Biden administration officials have said that shipments would not affect the Saudi-Houthi truce and hinted that they were meant to signal tighter U.S.-Saudi military cooperation in the future, The Wall Street Journalreported.
Biden has been a much more consistent supporter of the Israeli military campaign in Gaza following the October 7 attacks on Israel. Although he has verbally called for a ceasefire and held up a single shipment of bombs to the Israeli military, Biden has also worked to remove legal roadblocks and conceal the full amount of U.S. military support to Israel, including sending dozens of small shipments just below the threshold that would require congressional approval.
Earlier this year, Congress passed a $14 billion aid package for Israel. It included funds to replenish weapons that had been sent to Israel from U.S. military warehouses and direct financial grants to the Israeli government. On Friday, the Biden administration released $3.5 billion in those grants.
Most of the Israeli military spending bonanza announced over the past few days is not intended for use in Gaza. The largest portion of this expenditure is an $18.82 billion deal for F-15 fighter jets and related accessories, with deliveries scheduled for 2029.
The $262 million munition shipment, however, is immediately useful for the Israeli military. It includes 6,500 joint direct attack munition (JDAM) kits and a GPS guidance system for aerial bombs. Biden had held up the JDAM sale after the Israeli army invaded Rafah, displacing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
On Saturday, the Israeli military bombed a school and mosque with at least one American-made guided bomb, killing 93 people at dawn prayers. Israel claims that the attack killed 31 militants; the nonprofit Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor and Al Jazeera report that several of the “militants” on Israel’s list were either people who had died several days before or had no Hamas ties
In February 2021, Biden announced that he was “ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arm sales,” although he would continue to provide “defensive” support. In April 2022, the United Nations successfully brokered a ceasefire between the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthis that has held up so far.
But after a series of Houthi attacks on Israeli and foreign shipping in the Red Sea, the Biden administration launched the first direct U.S. strikes on Houthi forces—and the first airstrikes by anyone on Yemen in more than a year—in January this year.
Last month, Israeli forces dropped eight 2,000-pound bombs with JDAM kits on a tent city, killing Hamas commander Mohammad Deif along with 90 bystanders.
In addition to freeing up more money and munitions, the Biden administration moved to lift restrictions on how Israel can use this aid. A rule known as the Leahy Law forbids U.S. military aid from going to human rights abusers. In April 2024, the U.S. State Department announced a Leahy investigation into Israel’s Netzah Yehuda Battalion.
Netzah Yehuda had been accused of abusing Palestinian civilians in the West Bank, including Palestinian-American retiree Omar Assad, who died in their custody in January 2022. No soldiers were charged in connection with Assad’s death. In October 2021, Israeli police arrested four Netzah Yehuda troops for sexually assaulting a Palestinian detainee; one soldier pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four months in prison.
The Israeli government opposed any kind of “sanctions” on soldiers who are “fighting terrorist monsters.” So did Republicans in Congress. Sen. Marco Rubio (R–Fla.) called the investigation “an effort by President Biden to appease Israel’s enemies, including the antisemitic mobs terrorizing college campuses across America.”
On Friday, the State Department said that Israel had “effectively remediated” the problems with Netzah Yehuda by giving the troops a “two-week educational seminar.” The unit is now free to continue receiving weapons paid for by the American taxpayer.
While endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign for the presidency this month, Newsom declared, “With our democracy at stake and our future on the line, no one is better to prosecute the case against Donald Trump’s dark vision…”
Trump is “lighting democracy on fire,” Newsom told ABC News.
Fears that a second Trump presidency could be an authoritarian nightmare are well justified, given his many declarations of what he would do if elected. However, if one needs an example of how unchecked political power undermines democracy, Newsom’s California is available.
Newsom himself has displayed a penchant for governing by decree, especially evident during the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, with his Democratic Party holding total control of state government, its officeholders feel entitled to act as they please, ignoring those who might disagree.
The ruling party’s autocratic streak was demonstrated last month, when Newsom and the Legislature passed a state budget and dozens of “trailer bills” to implement its provisions. Both the budget and the trailer bills could be enacted with simple majority votes, thanks to a 2010 ballot measure, Proposition 25, that reduced the voting margin from two-thirds.
Prop. 25 was aimed at removing any Republican role in the budget, and it succeeded. However, it also created a way for governors and legislators to make changes in laws having little or nothing to do with the budget through trailer bills that could not be challenged by the referendum process.The video player is currently playing an ad. You can skip the ad in 5 sec with a mouse or keyboard
This year’s batch of trailer bills contain two pithy examples of the syndrome.
Assembly Bill 174 contains a slew of items mostly having to do with governmental operations, but one passage exempts the Legislature’s Capitol annex project from the California Environmental Quality Act. It aims to shut down efforts by two groups critical of the massive construction project to require changes.
The self-serving CEQA exemption not only was inserted into the bill in semi-secrecy, but it continues the rather shameful practice of granting such exemptions on a case-by-case basis rather than undertaking a comprehensive reform of the often misused law.
The second example, Senate Bill 167, is even more outrageous. It sets a very dangerous precedent of rewriting state tax laws retroactively.
The state Franchise Tax Board recently lost an appeal of a corporate tax caseinvolving Microsoft and a years-long dispute over the tax treatment of foreign earnings. The state Office of Tax Appeals ruled for Microsoft, thus requiring the state to refund $1.3 billion immediately, with hundreds of millions in other refunds in the future.
Rather than swallow its loss, the Franchise Tax Board persuaded Newsom’s Department of Finance to include language in SB 167 that voids the appellate ruling and potentially allows tax collectors to go back years and impose more taxes on corporations.
The implications are scary. Californians could fully pay their taxes and then years later be hit with new tax bills because the Legislature has changed tax law retroactively and perhaps even secretly.
The California Taxpayers Association is raising alarms about the law’s potential effects, and its president, Robert Gutierrez, says a legal challenge is being considered.
“This legislation shreds well-reasoned, unanimous decisions of California’s Office of Tax Appeals and serves as a not-so-hidden tax increase,” Gutierrez said. “This is a cash grab that undermines the tax system and threatens the integrity of the tax appeals process in California, and it must be stopped.”
What could be more authoritarian than arbitrary and retroactive increases in taxes?
Liberal International strongly condemns the Venezuelan regime’s brazenly fraudulent election results, which falsely declare Nicolás Maduro as the winner, allegedly, with 51.20% of the vote. These results, announced by the regime-controlled National Electoral Council (CNE), starkly contradict the voting records from the tables by the unified democratic opposition. The opposition, led by the unjustly disqualified candidate Edmundo Gonzalez and Maria Corina Machado – leader of LI member party Vente Venezuela – reported a decisive victory with 70% of the vote.
LI further calls upon the National Electoral Council (CNE) to release the full results down to the polling division level and to conduct a hand count of all the printed vote slips. This hand count should be done and to do so in a transparent way, complete with independent and international observers.
LI stands firmly with the Venezuelan democratic opposition under the MUD, whose meticulous monitoring of all voting centers aligns with analyses from expert polling firms.
Dr. Hakima el Haite, President of Liberal International, emphasised, “We support the courageous efforts of Maria Corina Machado and Vente Venezuela. The people of Venezuela have spoken clearly in favor of democracy, peace, and against dictatorship. The regime must count all the votes fairly and transparently and respect the will of the people.”
Politico has a news post based on reports by volunteer medical personal at the Gaza European Hospital. They tell of the civilian carnage that has resulted from the conflict in Gaza. It includes photos to illustrate the horror. Too terrible to summarize, please read @ https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/07/19/gaza-hospitals-surgeons-00167697
From the headlines, you would think that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance were committed to overthrowing the national security establishment.
“Trump Picking Vance Widens Rift With Foreign Policy Old Guard,” reported Bloomberg.
“Trump’s VP pick spells ‘disaster’ for Europe and Ukraine,” fumed Politico.
For all of Trump’s rhetoric about “endless wars” and Vance’s attacks on “neoconservatives,” however, the two politicians are all-in on some of the establishment’s most destructive military adventures. And in some ways, Trump and Vance are even more hawkish than the baseline.
“A lot of people recognize that we need to do something with Iran—but not these weak little bombing runs,” Vance said in a Fox News interview at the Republican National Convention on Monday. “If you’re going to punch the Iranians, you punch them hard, and that’s what [Trump] did when he took out [Iranian Gen. Qassem] Soleimani.”
Vance praised Trump for trying to “enable the Israelis and the Sunni Arab states” to fight back against Iran. In a speech to the Quincy Institute in May, Vance tried to sell a U.S.-Israeli-Arab alliance as a way for the United States to “spend less time and less resources in the Middle East.”
But that’s exactly the strategy that got us here in the first place, and the proof is in the pudding. Trump’s shows of force against Iran did not decisively end U.S.-Iranian conflict, nor did the Abraham Accords get Israel and the Arab states to pick up the military slack.
Vance even wants to add another counterinsurgency to America’s “forever war” roster. In July 2023, he told NBC News that he would “empower the president of the United States, whether that’s a Democrat or Republican, to use the power of the U.S. military to go after these drug cartels” in Latin America.
Trump and Vance also share the establishment view that the United States needs to get ready for a conflict with China over Taiwan. At the convention, Vance told Fox News that China is the “biggest threat” to America, and he has voiced support for building up the Taiwanese military with American weapons in the past.
California Libertarian Report 