Category Archives: Fiscal Freedom

In late June, Mark Zuckerberg announced the new mission of Facebook: To give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.

The rhetoric of the statement is carefully selected, centered on empowering people, and in so doing, ushering in world peace, or at least something like it. Tech giants across Silicon Valley are adopting similarly utopian visions, casting themselves as the purveyors of a more connected, more enlightened, more empowered future. Every year, these companies articulate their visions onstage at internationally streamed pep rallies, Apples WWDC and Googles I/O being the best known.

But companies like Facebook can only give people the power because we first ceded it to them, in the form of our attention. After all, that is how many Silicon Valley companies thrive: Our attention, in the form of eyes and ears, provides a medium for them to advertise to us. And the more time we spend staring at them, the more money Facebook and Twitter make in effect, its intheir interest that we become psychologically dependent on the self-esteem boost from being wired in all the time.

This quest for our eyeballs doesnt mesh well with Silicon Valleys utopian visions of world peace and people power. Earlier this year, many sounded alarm bells when a 60 Minutes expos revealed the creepy cottage industry of brain-hacking, industrial psychology techniques that tech giants use and study to make us spend as much time staring at screens as possible.

Indeed, it is Silicon Valleys continual quest for attention that both motivates their utopian dreams, and that compromises them from the start. As a result, the tech industry often has compromised ethics when it comes to product design.

Case in point: At Januarys Consumer Electronics Convention a sort of Mecca for tech start-ups dreaming of making it big I found myself in a suite with one of the largest kid-tech (childrens toys) developers in the world. A small flock of PR reps, engineers and executives hovered around the entryway as one development head walked my photographer and me through the mock setup. They were showing off the first voice assistant developed solely with kids in mind.

At the end of the tour, I asked if the company had researched or planned to research the effects of voice assistant usage on kids. After all, parents had been using tablets to occupy their kids for years by the time evidence of their less-than-ideal impact on childrens attention, behavior and sleep emerged.

The answer I received was gentle but firm: No, because we respect parents right to make decisions on behalf of their children.

This free-market logic that says the consumer alone arbitrates the value of a product is pervasive in Silicon Valley. What consumer, after all, is going to argue they cant make their own decisions responsibly? But a free market only functions properly when consumers operate with full agency and access to information, and tech companies are working hard to limit both.

During a 60 Minutes story on brain hacking, former product manager at Google Tristan Harris said, Theres always this narrative that technologys neutral. And its up to us to choose how we use it.

The problem, according to Harris, is that this is just not true [Developers] want you to use it in particular ways and for long periods of time. Because thats how they make their money.

Harris was homing in on the fact that, increasingly, it isnt the price tag on the platform itself that earns companies money, but the attention they control on said platform whether its a voice assistant, operating system, app or website. We literally pay attention to ads or sponsored content in order to access websites.

But Harris went on to explain that larger platforms, using systems of rewards similar to slot machines, are working not only to monetize our attention, but also to monopolize it. And with that monopoly comes incredible power.

If Facebook, for instance, can control hours of peoples attention daily, it can not only determine the rate at which it will sell that attention to advertisers, but also decide which advertisers or content creators it will sell to. In other words, in an attention economy Facebook becomes a gatekeeper for content one that mediates not only personalized advertising, but also news and information.

This sort of monopoly brings the expected fiscal payoff, and also the amassing of immeasurable social and cultural power.

So how does Facebooks new mission statement fit into this attention economy?

Think of it in terms of optics. The carotid artery of Facebook, along with the other tech giants of Silicon Valley, is brand. Brand ubiquity means Facebook is the first thing people check when they take their phones out of their pockets, or when they open Chrome or Safari (brought to you by Google and Apple, respectively). It means Prime Day is treated like a real holiday. Just like Kleenex means tissues and Xerox means copy, online search has literally become synonymous with Google.

Yet all these companies are painfully aware of what a brand-gone-bad can do or undo. The current generation of online platforms is built on the foundations of empires that rose and fell while the attention economy was still incipient. Todays companies have maintained their centrality by consistently copying (Instagram Stories, a clone of Snapchat) or outright purchasing (YouTube) their fiercest competitors all to maintain or expand their brand.

And perhaps as important, tech giants have made it near impossible to imagine a future without them, simply by being the most prominent public entities doing such imagining.

Facebooks mission affixes the company in our shared future, and also injects it with a moral or at least charitable sensibility even if its only in the form of bring[ing] the world closer together-type vagaries.

So how should we as average consumers respond?

In his award-winning essay Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Persuasion in the Attention Economy, James Williams argues, We must move urgently to assert and defend our freedom of attention.

To assert our freedom is to sufficiently recognize and evaluate the demands to attention all these devices and digital services represent. To defend our freedom entails two forms of action: first, by individual action not unplugging completely, as the self-styled prophets of Facebook and Twitter encourage (before logging back on after a few months of asceticism) but rather unplugging partially, habitually and ruthlessly.

Attention is the currency upon which tech giants are built. And the power of agency and free information is the power we cede when we turn over our attention wholly to platforms like Facebook.

But individual consumers can only do so much. The second way we must defend our freedom is through our demand for ethical practices from Silicon Valley.

Some critics believe government regulation is the only way to rein in Silicon Valley developers. The problem is, federal agencies that closely monitor the effects of product usage on consumers dont have a good category for monitoring the effects of online platforms yet. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tracks medical technology. The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) focuses on physical risk to consumers. The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) focuses on content not platform. In other words, we dont have a precedent for monitoring social media or other online platforms and their methods for retaining users.

Currently, there is no corollary agency that leads dedicated research into the effects of platforms like Facebook on users. There is no Surgeon Generals warning. There is no real protection for consumers from unethical practices by tech giants as long as those practices fall in the cracks between existing ethics standards.

While it might seem idealistic to hold out for the creation of a new government agency that monitors Facebook (especially given the current political regime), the first step toward curbing Silicon Valleys power is simple: We must acknowledge freedom of attention as an inalienable right one inextricable from our freedom to pursue happiness. So long as the companies producing the hardware surrounding us and the platforms orienting social life online face no strictures, they will actively work to control how users think, slowly eroding our societys collective free will.

With so much at stake, and with so little governmental infrastructure in place, checking tech giants ethics might seem like a daunting task. The U.S. government, after all, has demonstrated a consistent aversion to challenging Silicon Valleys business and consumer-facing practices before.

But while we fight for better policy and stronger ethics-enforcing bodies, we can take one more practical step: pay attention to ethics in Silicon Valley. Read about Ubers legal battles and the most recent research on social medias effects on the brain. Demand more ethical practices from the companies we patronize. Why? The best moderators of technology ethics thus far have been tech giants themselves when such moderation benefits the companies brands.

In Silicon Valley, money talks, but attention talks louder. Its time to reclaim our voice.

Read the rest here:

Free your brain: How Silicon Valley denies us the freedom to pay attention - Salon

By John Hood

I know many Democrats and progressives who continue to be frustrated by the conservative Republicans who have controlled the North Carolina General Assembly since 2010.

The Left has spent years stating and restating its standard narrative about our state: that North Carolina has historically grown faster and been more successful than other Southern states because it was more willing to spend tax dollars on higher education, infrastructure and other government programs.

The Lefts narrative is a kind of quasi-religious orthodoxy. It is neither good history nor good social science. Since the end of World War II, North Carolinas economy has usually outgrown the nations, to be sure. But thats a regional phenomenon, not a Tar Heel phenomenon. In fact, the average annual growth rate since 1948 of per-person, after-tax income has been exactly the same for North Carolina, South Carolina and the Southeast as a whole.

This is a long stretch of time. During some periods, sometimes lasting a decade or more, North Carolina has underperformed its regional competitors. During other periods, its grown faster. But even detailed analysis of the data reveals no statistically significant relationship between, say, state spending on higher education and subsequent economic growth.

Im not arguing that government programs have no value. Im not arguing that modern economies can prosper without some public services and assets. But to assert that North Carolina had the right amount of government expenditures and taxes before the Republicans took over in 2010, and now it has not enough government, is to make an ideological claim, not an empirical one.

Several years ago, I began keeping a list of all the scholarly studies I could find on the subject of state economic growth. My database now contains many hundreds of papers.The available research doesnt just examine public-policy variables such as government spending, taxes, and regulations. It also considers other potential explanations for differences in economic growth, including energy prices, private investment, geography and educational attainment.

Overall, this emerging body of empirical evidence suggests that most governments are too large and do more than they should taxes and regulations are negatively associated with economic growth but that non-policy factors are usually more significant in explaining differences among states and localities.

In the new edition of the Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Southern Methodist Universitys Dean Stansel and Meg Patrick Tuszynski reported the results of their own review of the literature. They looked specifically at the 155 studies that have used the Fraser Institutes annual Economic Freedom of North America index in their empirical models. The index includes state-by-state measures of government size, taxes and labor-market regulations.

In two-thirds of the studies, Stansel and Tuszynski found, economic freedom was associated with better economic performance among states. Of the three sub-indexes, the regulatory burden was the most important.

The predominant findings of social science comport with what North Carolinas legislative leaders have concluded: that states can make themselves more competitive, and their residents more prosperous over time, by finding ways to deliver core public services at the lowest possible cost in taxes and regulations.

If you are a Democrat or a progressive and view this conclusion with disdain, you are of course free to disbelieve it. But just understand that repeating your catechism a few more times isnt going to change anything. Fiscal conservatives have good reasons to believe what we believe. What are yours?

John Hood is chairman of the John Locke Foundation and appears on the talk show NC SPIN.

See more here:

Column: Freedom is key to prosperity - Burlington Times News

Mr. Orwell told us about these people, these academics preaching diversity from the least diverse profession, these bureaucrats preaching fairness in education while denying poor kids school choice, these journalist scriptwriters that goad those easily led souls into reacting to whatever fiction is placed before them by the New York Times and Washington Post and CNN and all the rest, the end pieces in a domino chain of actual fascist thuggery and murder of police and vilification of our president.

These people do not get their hands dirty or bloody, but they do thump the domino chain that ends in dirt and blood and dead police.

These are not the people we have been waiting for, but the people that history is continually thrusting upon us. We are truly citizens in the hands of these people, these angry Democrats.

These people, controlled and led by the billionaires that own the New York Times and Washington Post, the two most fervent Trump-hating corporations, and billionaire George Soros, who seems to hate humanity in general, have changed the narrative from the mature policies the voters wanted choice in education, lower taxes, fiscal discipline, EPA overreach, honesty in health care, and many more to an adolescent soap opera with scripts and villains and heroes and drama compatible with the lowest common collective cognitive abilities of their party.

Freedom of speech to these people, freedom of the press to these people, freedom of thought to these people, is only that which is compatible with their own debauched nature; only that which conforms to their own political narrative, and happiness, independent of effort, is but a finite resource to be parceled out according to the needs of Democrats.

And because of that, these people have declared war on our president, so different from previous presidents by his great success in the private sector and his open disdain for these people.

President Trump shows a turning of governing requirements, that of demonstrated managerial competence, fiscal discipline, and financial success on the hardest stage.

Henceforth, from this election forward, we should demand such experience and success in all our government leaders. But in spite of the election results, the government bureaucracy is still comprised of these people, these Democrats who did not, could not, function in the private sector. And the truth has not been within them.

That trinity of Democrats media, academia and bureaucrats their narrative goes on and on. Food shortages are the biggest danger facing wait, no, its running out of oil no, the hole in the ozone layer no, police brutality global warming Russia no, its President Trump. And your premiums will go down and you can keep your doctor. Yeah, thats the ticket. Goodness, these people.

Mike Fulford

Evans

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Goodness, these people - The Augusta Chronicle

I know many Democrats and progressives who continue to be frustrated by the conservative Republicans who have controlled the North Carolina General Assembly since 2010.

The Left has spent years stating and restating its standard narrative about our state: that North Carolina has historically grown faster and been more successful than other Southern states because it was more willing to spend tax dollars on higher education, infrastructure and other government programs.

Having repeated this catechism faithfully and endlessly, and yet seen no significant change in the policy direction of the state, progressives either resort to conspiracy theories about dark-money interests dictating terms to their political lackeys or they resort to personal attacks on the intelligence of GOP lawmakers.

I chose my terms carefully. The Lefts narrative is a kind of quasi-religious orthodoxy. It is neither good history nor good social science. Since the end of World War II, North Carolinas economy has usually outgrown the nations, to be sure. But thats a regional phenomenon, not a Tar Heel phenomenon. In fact, the average annual growth rate since 1948 of per-person, after-tax income has been exactly the same for North Carolina, South Carolina, and the Southeast as a whole.

This is a long stretch of time. During some periods, sometimes lasting a decade or more, North Carolina has underperformed its regional competitors. During other periods, its grown faster. But even detailed analysis of the data reveals no statistically significant relationship between, say, state spending on higher education and subsequent economic growth.

Im not arguing that government programs have no value. Im not arguing that modern economies can prosper without some public services and assets. But to assert that North Carolina had the right amount of government expenditures and taxes before the Republicans took over in 2010, and now it has not enough government, is to make an ideological claim, not an empirical one.

Several years ago, I began keeping a list of all the scholarly studies I could find on the subject of state economic growth. My database now contains many hundreds of papers, all published either in peer-reviewed academic journals or as chapters of peer-reviewed academic books.

The available research doesnt just examine public-policy variables such as government spending, taxes and regulations. It also considers other potential explanations for differences in economic growth, including energy prices, private investment, geography and educational attainment.

Overall, this emerging body of empirical evidence suggests that most governments are too large and do more than they should taxes and regulations are negatively associated with economic growth but that non-policy factors are usually more significant in explaining differences among states and localities.

In the new edition of the Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Southern Methodist Universitys Dean Stansel and Meg Patrick Tuszynski reported the results of their own review of the literature. They looked specifically at the 155 studies that have used the Fraser Institutes annual Economic Freedom of North America index in their empirical models. The index includes state-by-state measures of government size, taxes, and labor-market regulations.

In two-thirds of the studies, Stansel and Tuszynski found, economic freedom was associated with better economic performance among states. Of the three sub-indexes, the regulatory burden was the most important.

Economies are among the most complex systems that scholars have ever tried to model. It is possible that at some point in the future, more sophisticated research will produce different conclusions. At the moment, however, the predominant findings of social science comport with what North Carolinas legislative leaders have concluded: that states can make themselves more competitive, and their residents more prosperous over time, by finding ways to deliver core public services at the lowest possible cost in taxes and regulations.

If you are a Democrat or a progressive and view this conclusion with disdain, you are of course free to disbelieve it. But just understand that repeating your catechism a few more times isnt going to change anything. Fiscal conservatives have good reasons to believe what we believe. What are yours?

John Hood is chairman of the John Locke Foundation and appears on the talk show NC SPIN. You can follow him @JohnHoodNC.

See original here:

JOHN HOOD COLUMN: Evidence shows freedom works | News ... - Statesville Record & Landmark

Congressman Mo Brooks will stump on the Cullman County Courthouse steps this morning ahead of the U.S. Senate Republican primary election Aug. 15.

At 9:30 a.m., Brooks, who currently serves in the U.S. House of Representatives for Alabamas 5th District, will bring his Drain the Swamp campaign bus tour to Cullman.

Hes running against a crowded field of 10 GOP candidates, including incumbent Luther Strange who was appointed to the Senate in February and is backed by a super political action committee tied to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

This week, Brooks went on the attack against Strange over his support of President Trump and Stranges negative ads against fellow challenger Roy Moore, former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice.

Theres only one Never Trumper in this race: Luther Strange. I supported President Trump in 2016 and wrote a $2,500 check to help him win, Brooks said. Luther never endorsed Trump, never donated and is now helping Mitch McConnell block the America First Agenda in the Senate.

My record is clear: Ive voted with President Trump 95 percent of the time in Congress. I have a proven conservative record and the endorsements of Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and Ann Coulter. Luther Strange has Mitch McConnell.

Since his election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010, Brooks has pushed for a sustainable, balanced federal budget, ending illegal immigration, maintaining a strong national defense, and an economic environment that benefits working American families.

He currently serves on the Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, and Science, Space and Technology committees and co-chairs the Space Subcommittee and is past Chairman of the Research and Science Education Subcommittee. He was a founding member of the Freedom Caucus, a group of fiscal and social conservative members.

After graduating from Grissom High School in Huntsville, he attended Duke University, where he graduated in just three years with a double major in political science and economics, with highest honors in economics.

He went on to get his law degree from the University of Alabama Law School and worked as a prosecutor in the Tuscaloosa District Attorneys office, where he built a solid tough-on-crime reputation. He obtained guilty verdicts in all of the 20-plus jury trials he prosecuted. He then returned to Huntsville to clerk for presiding Circuit Court Judge John David Snodgrass.

He served eight years in Alabama House of Representatives beginning in 1982 where he wasjust one of eleven Republican legislators out of 140 and the only elected Republican legislator north of Birmingham.

Brooks was appointed Madison County District Attorney in 1991, Special Assistant Attorney General for then Attorney General Jeff Sessions from 1995-1996 and Special Assistant Attorney General for then Attorney General Bill Pryor from 1996-2002.

In 1996, Brooks unseated an eight-year incumbent Republican for the Madison County Commission and went on to win the general election. He served four terms on the commission before campaigning for his current congressional seat.

Brooks also touts his former job as a fill-in radio talk show host for WVNN in 1990 until the new host arrived a skinny kid named Sean Hannity.

He and his wife Martha have four children and eight grandchildren.

For more information about Brooks campaign, go online to mobrooksforsenate.com.

Tiffeny Owens can be reached at 256-734-2131, ext. 135.

See the article here:

Brooks brings 'Drain the Swamp' campaign to courthouse today - Cullman Times Online

Arvind Panagariya resigned recently from the post of vice chairman, NITI Aayog, after serving for roughly two-and-a-half years in that position. Panagariyas main contributions in this cabinet-rank position include the completion of the three-year Action Agenda (available on NITI Aayogs website). Based on Panagariyas interviews to the media, it seems the work on a Seven-Year Strategy and a Fifteen-Year Vision has also been almost completed.

With deeper fiscal federalism now in place, NITI Aayog was charged with the task of providing the states with technical assistance and policy advice. Unlike in the case of its predecessor, the Planning Commision, it was not charged with the distribution of resources to the states.

And, Panagariya himself was actively involved in advising the states. The NITI Aayog, under Panagariyas leadership, has also made contributions in crafting the Modi governments policies in the areas of agriculture, health, education and digital economy.

Also Read: Panagariya Resigns as NITI Aayog Chairman, Will Teach in US

View original post here:

NITI Aayog to Freedom of Academics: Why Arvind Panagariya Resigned - The Quint

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Updated: Thursday, August 3, 2017, 9:41 AM

The mayor's poll numbers may be down, but salaries for his staff are going up, up, up.

Mayor de Blasio doled out $2.8 million in raises in fiscal year 2017, which ended June 30, a Daily News analysis found.

The News analyzed the salaries of 538 staffers who worked in the mayors office in both fiscal years 2016 and 2017 and found that 426 of them got raises. Of those, 40 staffers got pay hikes of 20% or more and 15 saw their pay increase by 30% or better.

The payroll data for fiscal 2016 and 2017 were obtained through a Freedom of Information Law request.

City urged to verify if mayor's legal bills are job-related costs

The biggest raise, measured as a percentage of the salary, went to Alexander Merchant whose salary shot up 81% from $67,000 in 2016 to $121,000 this year.

Merchants pay hike came in two parts a raise to $82,555 in December 2016 for a promotion within the mayors Office of Operations.

Next, he received a jump to $121,000 in May for a new position as an adviser with the first deputy mayors office, according to City Hall.

Mkada Beach, chief of staff at the Mayors Office of Special Projects and Events, saw her salary boosted by 38%, to $85,000 before being suspended without pay in June.

Mayor, governor rally against Republican health care bill

Beach was charged in connection with an auto insurance fraud ring busted by Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. She has since been let go, city officials said.

Avi Fink who has been linked to several questionable campaign donors saw his salary climb by 42% this year.

Fink, 31, was promoted to be the mayors deputy chief of staff in October. His salary jumped then and once again on March 1, landing at $175,000.

While not reflected in their titles as listed in the payroll documents, many of those earning raises of 30% or more Merchant, Beach and Fink included wound up in entirely new jobs, moving from one office to another, with new responsibilities, said de Blasio spokeswoman Freddi Goldstein.

De Blasio to taxpayers: Pay my $2.3M legal bill from ethics probe

I know its fun to beat on public servants, but these are people who received promotions or more senior jobs. When you get a new job, you get a new salary, whether you work in city government or a grocery store, Goldstein said.

The most common raise was for considerably less 3%, which was what 302 staffers gained. That is in line with the raises that went to city employees who are represented by District Council 37, Goldstein said.

While de Blasio clearly approves of his staffers, just 50% of city voters gave Hizzoner favorable marks in the latest survey of his approval rating, released by Quinnipiac University this week.

Continue reading here:

City Hall staffers see $2.8M in raises through fiscal year 2017 - NY ... - New York Daily News

I know many Democrats and progressives who continue to be frustrated by the conservative Republicans who have controlled the North Carolina General Assembly since 2010.

The Left has spent years stating and restating its standard narrative about our state: that North Carolina has historically grown faster and been more successful than other Southern states because it was more willing to spend tax dollars on higher education, infrastructure, and other government programs.

Having repeated this catechism faithfully and endlessly, and yet seen no significant change in the policy direction of the state, progressives either resort to conspiracy theories about dark-money interests dictating terms to their political lackeys or they resort to personal attacks on the intelligence of GOP lawmakers.

I chose my terms carefully. The Lefts narrative is a kind of quasi-religious orthodoxy. It is neither good history nor good social science. Since the end of World War II, North Carolinas economy has usually outgrown the nations, to be sure. But thats a regional phenomenon, not a Tar Heel phenomenon. In fact, the average annual growth rate since 1948 of per-person, after-tax income has been exactly the same for North Carolina, South Carolina, and the Southeast as a whole.

Im not arguing that government programs have no value. But to assert that North Carolina had the right amount of government expenditures and taxes before the Republicans took over in 2010, and now it has not enough government, is to make an ideological claim, not an empirical one.

Several years ago, I began keeping a list of all the studies I could find on the subject of state economic growth. My database contains many hundreds of papers, all published either in peer-reviewed academic journals or as chapters of peer-reviewed academic books.

The available research doesnt just examine public-policy variables such as government spending, taxes, and regulations. It also considers other potential explanations for differences in economic growth, including energy prices, private investment, geography, and educational attainment.

Overall, this emerging body of empirical evidence suggests that most governments are too large and do more than they should taxes and regulations are negatively associated with economic growth but that non-policy factors are usually more significant in explaining differences among states and localities.

In the new edition of the Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Southern Methodist Universitys Dean Stansel and Meg Patrick Tuszynski reported the results of their own review of the literature. They looked specifically at the 155 studies that have used the Fraser Institutes annual Economic Freedom of North America index in their empirical models. The index includes state-by-state measures of government size, taxes, and labor-market regulations.

In two-thirds of the studies, Stansel and Tuszynski found, economic freedom was associated with better economic performance among states. Of the three sub-indexes, the regulatory burden was the most important.

If you view this conclusion with suspicion, you are of course free to disbelieve it. But just understand that repeating your catechism a few more times isnt going to change anything. Fiscal conservatives have good reasons to believe what we believe. What are yours?

John Hood is chairman of the John Locke Foundation and appears on the talk show NC SPIN. You can follow him @JohnHoodNC.

http://www.yourdailyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/web1_John-Hood-mug.jpg

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Evidence shows: Freedom works - Richmond County Daily Journal

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownbacks nomination as U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom has observers wondering about President Donald Trumps priorities. When 27 senior State Department positions remain vacant and no ambassadors have been appointed to nations such as South Korea, Germany, France, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, what makes filling a position promoting religious freedom such an urgent, core objective of U.S. foreign policy?

The main function of the State Department office that Brownback would head is to monitor religious persecution and discrimination worldwide, to recommend and implement policies and to issue an annual report. If this is a top concern of the Trump administration, theres been precious little mention of it.

Six months into Trumps presidency, five of the six deputy positions under Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have yet to be filled permanently, along with 22 of 24 assistant secretary positions. Meanwhile, an estimated 85 percent of key executive branch positions remain vacant in the administration.

Trump has tried to blame Democrats for stalling confirmations, which is true in a small number of cases. But a New York Times recent analysis of the vacancies shows that on average, Trumps nominees are taking only nine days longer to be confirmed than former President Barack Obamas.

Conservative religious leaders are pleased with Brownbacks nomination, which Trump announced the same day he surprised Pentagon leaders with his tweet banning transgender people from military service. Others arent so enthusiastic.

Brownback, 60, is a devout Catholic and staunch opponent of abortion and gay rights. While governor he signed a law allowing faith-based campus religious groups to restrict membership to like-minded citizens. The state of California restricted state-funded travel to Kansas afterward, citing that as a reason.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations is also concerned, citing a bill Brownback signed in 2012 to block use of Islamic law in Kansas courts and government agencies. He also has tried to block the federal government from resettling refugees from Syria or other countries in Kansas.

If he wins Senate approval, Brownback will be the nations fifth such ambassador-at-large, succeeding Rabbi David Saperstein, the first non-Christian to hold the post. Obama had left the position vacant for nearly half his time in office before nominating Saperstein in 2015.

U.S. advocacy for global religious freedom can help promote political and social stability and counter religious extremism. The nonprofit Religious Freedom Institute notes that expanding religious freedom can advance human rights and contribute to national security.

Those are worthy goals. Brownbacks conservative views do not disqualify him from championing such causes, but his track record doesnt bode well.

Perhaps the biggest beneficiaries would be the 2.9 million citizens of Kansas, where his controversial conservative fiscal policies wound up turning fellow Republicans against him. Brownback would step down as governor if approved.

See the rest here:

Editorial: Kansas governor is a curious choice as America's torchbearer for religious freedom - STLtoday.com

In theprevious part of this series on Overcoming Economic Downturns and Fiscal Distress, MuniNet Guides James Spiotto took us through the Gathering Storm of financial and economic challenges in state and local governments. Particular attention was paid to the casesof the State of Illinois and its municipalitiesfrom 2000 through today. In this next part in the series, focus is kept on the State of Illinois and its municipal governments,and the policies and institutions available to provide relief and solutions.Local Government Protection Authorities are explored in detail.

by James Spiotto

States that Provide Oversight and Assistance. At least twenty-eight states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have implemented some form of municipal debt supervision or restructuring mechanism to aid municipalities.These range from Debt Advisory Commissions (e.g. California) and Technical Assistance Programs (Florida) which provide guidance for and keep records of issuance of municipal debt to the layered approach of Rhode Island and Michigan of oversight commission and fiscal manager or receiver.Examples of state oversight, supervision and assistance for fiscal emergencies of local government.

Evolution of Past Mechanisms that Worked. Under consideration by some states is the use of a local government protection authority utilizing some of the best aspects from the mediation process of the neutral evaluator and the oversight and supervision of financial control boards, emergency managers, and receivers.

State-Created Quasi Judicial Function. Under this municipal debt resolution mechanism, the state would establish an entity that would have a quasi-judicial function and power similar to a commission or special master appointed by a state supreme court or other objective nonpolitical process. The members of the authority would be independent, experienced experts in governmental operation or finance as well as in mediation and debt resolution techniques, including bankruptcy.

Initiation of Proceedings. The authority would start with those municipalities that petition for help or those municipalities that have triggered certain established criteria where the jurisdiction of the authority may be mandated by state law.

First Phase Mediation and Consensual Agreement. The first phase is mediation and consensual agreement by the municipality and the affected creditor constituencies similar to the neutral evaluator process.

However, participation by the authority may be voluntary by petition of the municipality or other affected constituencies asserting that a financial emergency exists or, under the most direct circumstance could be required, and negotiation and discussion of positions are strictly confidential.The state law establishing the authority may have an exception to its open meetings law and its freedom of information law to allow for open discussion of any sensitive and confidential topics.If additional tax revenues or loans or grants from the state are needed, recommendations to the state by the authority may be made. The authority may be empowered to likewise call for a referendum on a local basis for increased taxes or other actions.Specified time periods for resolution will be set forth and, if the voluntary process is not successful, the second phase may be requested or may be mandatory if the authority so requires.

Second Phase Determination of a Recovery Plan. In the second phase, the authority and its designated members turn into a quasi-judicial panel, and the municipality is required to set forth the actions proposed to be taken to address its specific financial problem (recovery plan) for authority approval.

Creditors, workers, and taxpayers will have the ability to comment and to attempt, through negotiation, to modify the recovery plan within a set period of time.Then, the recovery plan is presented to the panel members of the authority for determination of the plans feasibility and whether it is reasonably fair to creditors interests in relation to the requirement that, under all circumstances, essential governmental services, at least at an established necessary level, must be funded and maintained for the reasonable future.One of the triggers for the authoritys jurisdiction is the petition by the municipality, its workers, or taxpayers that a governmental function emergency exists. The municipality or petition must state that essential services as to the health, safety, and welfare of its residents are being threatened and that the forced reduction in services, given the municipalitys financial condition and its limited revenues, impairs the health, safety, and general welfare of its residents.

Power of the LGPA. The authority, after hearing all sides (municipality, workers, taxpayers, affected creditors), will determine:

Determination Process of the Authority.

To the degree state has effective and applicable mechanism to help prevent default or provide funds or assistance to prevent default or methods of solving financial problems of municipal issuers this is information important to the investor and should be considered to be disclosed to the investor. Such information may improve the perception of the issuers credibility in the market.

For a summary of what the various states have provided to assist their municipalities in financial distress, see the following chart summarizing a 50-state survey which indicates whether the municipality (i) can file Chapter 9, (ii) has debt limits and allows refunding bonds, (iii) has access to municipal restructuring mechanisms, (iv) allows for receivers, examiners, financial control boards, coordinators, etc. (v) has default resolution remedies, permits creditors to obtain through court proceeding an accounting, foreclosure, injunction, a writ of mandamus to levy taxes or other remedies, (vi) permits special revenues bonds, and (vii) authorized statutory liens. The chart provides an overview of the 50 state survey from the book Municipalities in Distress?:How States and Investors Deal with Local Government Financial Emergencies (2nd edition, 2016). For more information, including information on Municipalities in Distress, please visitChapman & Cutlers website.

* The language of the statute appears to strongly support a determination that it is a statutory lien

** While the language of the statute may appear to create a statutory lien further clarification would be helpful to reaffirm the intent to create a statutory lien

*** While the language of the statute may appear to create a statutory lien it is insufficient and additional language is required to clarify the intent and to create a statutory lien. The language could be read as just providing for perfection of a pledge or lien without the intent and effect to create a statutory lien

**** These numbers include both the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico where applicable and totals may differ from other materials that only review 50 states.

James E. Spiotto, Co-Publisher James E. Spiotto. All rights reserved. The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and do not reflect the position, opinion or views of Chapman and Cutler LLP or Chapman Strategic Advisors LLC.

Up nextSolving Financial Distress with Economic Development and Stimulus from Needed Infrastructure Improvements, Reinvestment in States and Municipalities, and the need to Address Legacy Costs of Unfunded PublicPensions and Deferral of Updates to Infrastructure.

Click here to read the introduction to this series,How State and Local Governments Can Overcome Economic Downturns and Fiscal Distress

Click here to read Part I:The Gathering Storm

Read more:

Overcoming Economic Downturns and Fiscal Distress Part II: Alternatives Available to the State of Illinois and its ... - MuniNet Guide