The Law and the Refugee Crisis

"The supremacy of the national power in the general field of foreign affairs, including power over immigration, naturalization and deportation, is made clear by the Constitution, was pointed out by authors of The Federalist in 1787, and has since been given continuous recognition by this Court.  When the national government by treaty or statute has established rules and [312 U.S. 52, 63]   regulations touching the rights, privileges, obligations or burdens of aliens as such, the treaty or statute is the supreme law of the land. No state can add to or take from the force and effect of such treaty or statute, for Article VI of the Constitution provides that 'This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.' The Federal Government, representing as it does the collective interests of the forty-eight states, is entrusted with full and exclusive responsibility for the conduct of affairs with foreign sovereignties. 'For local interests the several states of the Union exist, but for national purposes, embracing our relations with foreign nations, we are but one people, one nation, one power.'  Our system of government is such that the interest of the cities, counties and states, no less than the interest of the people of the whole nation, imperatively requires that federal power in the field affecting foreign relations be left entirely free from local interference."   HINES v. DAVIDOWITZ, (1941)

Refugee Act of 1980:

The federal power to determine immigration policy is well settled. Immigration policy can affect trade, investment, tourism, and diplomatic relations for the entire Nation, as well as the perceptions and expectations of aliens in this country who seek the full protection of its laws.  Perceived mistreatment of aliens in the United States may lead to harmful reciprocal treatment of American citizens abroad.  It is fundamental that foreign countries concerned about the status, safety, and security of their nationals in the United States must be able to confer and communicate on this subject with one national sovereign, not the 50 separate States. [See The Federalist No. 3, p. 39 (C. Rossiter ed. 2003) (J. Jay) (observing that federal power would be necessary in part because "bordering States . . . under the impulse of sudden irritation, and a quick sense of apparent interest or injury" might take action that would undermine foreign relations.]  ARIZONA, ET AL., PETITIONERS v. UNITED STATES.

The Inadequate Wages of Foxworld

In Foxworld,  Employers fail to pay their workers a living wage because
 Bernie Sanders is giving the workers' money to people who don't work.

Carson At The Bat

Welcome to the big leagues, Ben Carson
While our system of picking a president is imperfect — especially when it comes to the news media's role in it — do realize this: It's maybe the closest simulation to actually being in the Oval Office. For all of the attention Obama received on Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers, those stories paled in comparison to the intense scrutiny of the BP spill, selling the health-care law, dealing with the HealthCare.Gov crash, and reacting to the party's 2010 and 2014 midterm losses. For George W. Bush, his presidency went through the ringer of the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina, Harriet Miers, the Social Security-reform push, and the financial crash. So if you can't deal with the news media picking apart your autobiography and your past speeches, you probably won't be able to deal with the bad news that inevitably comes your way as president.

Ben Carson has weird ideas and makes stuff up. What kind of president would he be?
"I’m a longtime critic of the personality coverage that takes up so much of the campaign, not because we don’t want to know who the “real” person is behind the persona of a presidential candidate, but because we in the media so often ask the wrong questions when we take on this task. The problem is that the moment we set out on this voyage of discovery, we forget the whole point of the exercise, which is to get the best understanding we can of what this person would be like if they were to become president... Honesty does matter, but the way you figure out whether a president will be honest about the things he does as president is to see what he’s saying about the things he’d do as president." -- Paul Waldman

 



Something something loaves and fishes something secular media bias something
.-- from the comments

Reading List For The Last Week Of October

Tax plans, spending, and eyeglasses
"In a hand-waving routine you’ll see more of as these plans come under more scrutiny, expect the candidates to talk about all the spending they’ll cut. But the WaPo’s point about sequestration is well made in this regard. The Congress can’t live within the spending caps they themselves invoked. It is absolutely implausible that they’ll find trillions more in cuts such that these tax plans won’t blow out the deficit." - Jared Bernstein

Who Needs Posner When You Have Mises and Hayek?
"There are two big reasons today's right loves the Austrians. One is that Austrian economists reject empirical analysis, and instead believe that you can reach conclusions about correct economic policies from a priori principles. It's philosophy dressed up as economics; with the Austrians, there is never any risk that real-world events will interfere with your ideology." - Josh Barro

The Mystery of the Vanishing Pay Raise

Ever since the Great Recession battered corporate revenues and profits, many companies have been far tougher in containing fixed costs, including labor expenses. “With the stock market’s wild behavior and what we’ve seen in China, companies continue to hold on to huge amounts of cash and are reluctant to increase their costs in the form of increasing wages,” said Kerry Chou, a senior practice specialist at WorldatWork, a nonprofit human resources association.

Jared Bernstein, a former chief economist for Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., put it another way: “There’s this pervasive norm” among employers “that labor costs must be held down at all costs because maximizing profits is the be-all and end-all.” - Steven Greenhouse

 

The GOP and the Rise of Anti-Knowledge

"Thanks to these overlapping and mutually reinforcing segments of the right-wing media-entertainment-“educational” complex, it is now possible for the true believer to sail on an ocean of political, historical, and scientific disinformation without ever sighting the dry land of empirical fact." - Mike Lofgren

 

Springtime for Grifters

"There was a time when Mr. Rubio’s insistence that $6 trillion in tax cuts would somehow pay for themselves would have marked him as deeply unserious, especially given the way his party has been harping on the evils of budget deficits. Even George W. Bush, during the 2000 campaign, at least pretended to be engaged in conventional budgeting, handing back part of a projected budget surplus.

But the Republican base doesn’t care what the mainstream media says. Indeed, after Wednesday’s debate the Internet was full of claims that John Harwood, one of the moderators, lied about Mr. Rubio’s tax plan. (He didn’t.) And in any case, Mr. Rubio sounds sensible compared to the likes of Mr. Carson and Mr. Trump. So there’s no penalty for his fiscal fantasies."  Paul Krugman

 

10 TIPS for Moderators to Improve Political Debates

3.  When the candidate ignores the question and talks about something totally different as John Kasich did with his first question, cut him off.  His time to answer is done.  When candidates know they can't talk when refusing to answer a question, behavior will hopefully change.  This is an easy rule for candidates to understand.   If the candidate doesn't immediately address the question asked, the candidate's mic will be cut.    Currently, candidates know they can ignore the question and make any political speech they choose.   It's not surprising that's what they do.  The loser is the voting public. - Karl Idsvoog

 

The Republicans are right. We in the media do suck.

"...by Wednesday, the candidates had all learned to dodge difficult questions by accusing the moderators of bias. Usually, the charge was that they were too liberal. (Yes, CNBC, the channel that launched the tea party and employs the United States’ most famous supply-sider, is apparently a commie paradise.) Or they accused the media of not asking substantive questions, right in the middle of ducking substantive questions." - Catherine Rampell

The GOP Circus: Truth-Defying Feats
"It takes a lot of energy to sustain a lie. When enough people do it together, over a sustained period of time, it wears on them. It also produces a certain kind of culture: one cut loose from the norms of fair conduct and trust that any organization requires in order to survive as something more than a daily, no-holds-barred war of all against all. A battle royale. A circus, if you prefer.
"And the act in the center ring? The Amazing Death Spiral. One performer does something so outrageous that anyone else who wishes to further hold the audience’s attention has to match or top it––even if they know it’s insane." - Rick Perlstein

Reich On The Politics of the Economy

Here are 3 reasons why everything you hear from Republicans about economics is baloney:
1. They say tax cuts on the wealthy and on corporations spur economic growth. Wrong. The U.S. economy grew faster each year between 1945 and 1980, on average, when the top marginal income tax rate was never lower than 70 percent and when corporate taxes were far higher, than the economy has grown since 1980.
2. They say economic growth trickles down in the form of better jobs. Wrong again.... Almost all the gains from growth since 1980 have gone to the to the top 1 percent and into corporate income. And the share of corporate income going to workers has plummeted to its lowest level since 1951. Just since 2000, that drop has cost workers $535 billion annually, or $3,770 per worker, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

3. They say Republican presidents do better for the economy than Democratic presidents. Baloney. As the accompanying article from Forbes (of all places) shows,
-- Personal disposable income has grown nearly 6 times more under Democratic presidents.
-- Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has grown 7 times more under Democratic presidents.
-- Corporate profits have grown over 16% more per year under Democratic presidents (they actually declined under Republicans by an average of 4.53%/year).
-- Average annual compound return on the stock market has been 18 times greater under Democratic presidents (If you invested $100k for 40 years of Republican administrations you had $126k at the end, if you invested $100k for 40 years of Democrat administrations you had $3.9M at the end)
-- Republican presidents added 2.5 times more to the national debt than Democratic presidents. The two times the economy steered into the ditch (Great Depression and Great Recession) were during Republican, laissez faire administrations.
Given all this, why would anyone who cares about jobs, wages, and the economy vote Republican?
Robert Reich

Dueling Trick-or-Treaters