“Defendant has failed to come forward with any evidence to support the claimed assertion of privilege. And, because the claimed assertion of executive privilege is unproven, Defendant cannot avoid prosecution for contempt,” Mehta wrote in the 39-page ruling.
It’s a significant decision in an area with little precedent: what current and former presidents must do to assert executive privilege. Mehta acknowledged that there’s not much to guide how courts should determine when a proper assertion has been made. But he said limited court rulings on the subject suggest there must be at least some formal evidence it occurred.
Mehta noted that two other Trump aides whom the House sought to hold in contempt — Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino — produced letters from Trump ordering them to assert executive privilege on his behalf. The Justice Department declined to prosecute the men, and Mehta indicated that the absence of a similar letter from Trump to Navarro led to a reasonable conclusion that Trump had not asserted executive privilege over his testimony.
Mehta’s ruling means that Navarro’s trial on two charges of contempt of Congress is likely to commence later this month. He faces a maximum sentence of a year in prison on each charge — one for refusing to testify and the other for refusing to provide documents — if convicted.
The select committee had hoped to interview Navarro about his coordination with former Trump adviser Bannon and efforts to strategize with members of Congress seeking to challenge the 2020 election results on Jan. 6, 2021, during the counting of Electoral College ballots. The committee recommended that Navarro be held in contempt in April 2022, and the full House quickly followed suit. The Justice Department charged him in June.
Mehta’s ruling also gutted a series of defenses Navarro had hoped to raise at his trial, including that he had a “good-faith belief” that he was immune from the committee’s subpoena. Mehta also agreed to prohibit Navarro from arguing that the select committee’s subpoena was invalid because the panel didn’t have a full complement of 13 members or a ranking Republican member appointed by GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy.
Although he declined to say whether the committee was operating improperly, Mehta noted that Supreme Court precedent required Navarro to first raise his rules complaint with Congress itself. Because he didn’t do that, he effectively waived that argument. Navarro had argued that raising his complaints to Congress would have been “futile” because the House would have simply rejected them. But Mehta said the rules were clear.
“Neither the Supreme Court nor the D.C. Circuit has recognized a futility exception. … And, given the rationale of the rule, it is doubtful that higher courts would recognize one,” Mehta wrote.
The ruling essentially puts Navarro on a track similar to his close ally Bannon, who was tried and convicted of contempt of Congress in July. Bannon, like Navarro, had hoped to argue that he believed he was immune from testifying and that longstanding Justice Department precedents precluded Congress from subpoenaing advisers to former presidents. But in that case, U.S. District Court Judge Carl Nichols relied on a decades-old appeals court ruling — United States v. Licavoli — to reject Bannon’s proposed defenses, ruling that prosecutors simply needed to show that Bannon deliberately refused to appear before Congress.
Mehta cited the case, as well, in tossing most of Navarro’s defenses.
“Defendant apparently believes the law applies differently to him,” he wrote of Navarro. “Because he is a former aide to the President of the United States, he contends, a more stringent state-of-mind standard applies, meaning that the government must be held to a higher burden of proof to convict him as opposed to the average person.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
The high court also released a 20-page report of the investigation, announced by Chief Justice John Roberts last May immediately after POLITICO’s publication of the draft opinion and conducted by Supreme Court Marshal Gail Curley.
“No one confessed to publicly disclosing the document and none of the available forensic and other evidence provided a basis for identifying any individual as the source of the document,” Curley’s report said. “All personnel who had access to the draft opinion signed sworn affidavits affirming they did not disclose the draft opinion nor know anything about who did.”
While not pinning blame for the leak on any individual, the review found that several court staffers had been cavalier in their handling of sensitive information, including about the abortion case in question, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
“Some individuals admitted to investigators that they told their spouse or partner about the draft Dobbs opinion and the vote count, in violation of the Court’s confidentiality rules,” the report said. “Several personnel told investigators they had shared confidential details about their work more generally with their spouses and some indicated they thought it permissible to provide such information to their spouses. Some personnel handled the Dobbs draft in ways that deviated from their standard process for handling draft opinions.”
Curley’s investigation found no indication that the early disclosure of the opinion was the result of a hack or electronic intrusion, but added that “investigators cannot rule out the possibility” that the draft emerged because it was left in a public place inside or outside the court.
Curley said investigators ran down various suggestions in public social media posts that particular law clerks were responsible for the leak, but found nothing to suggest that speculation was true.
“Investigators looked closely into any connections between employees and reporters. They especially scrutinized any contacts with anyone associated with Politico. Investigators also assessed the wide array of public speculation, mostly on social media, about any individual who may have disclosed the document. Several law clerks were named in various posts,” the report said. “In their inquiries, the investigators found nothing to substantiate any of the social media allegations regarding the disclosure.”
The final majority opinion the court released in June in Dobbs was largely identical to the draft Justice Samuel Alito wrote and POLITICO reported on more than a month earlier. The 5-4 vote to overturn Roe v. Wade was the same as the internal vote count POLITICO reported on in May.
The court’s statement Thursday emphasized the thoroughness of the probe and said former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff was retained to review Curley’s work. Chertoff, a widely-respected former federal appeals court judge before joining President George W. Bush’s Cabinet, said there was little else the court could do to solve the mystery.
“The court has already taken steps to increase security and tighten controls regarding the handling of sensitive documents,” Chertoff wrote. “More significantly, the Chief Justice has also directed a comprehensive review of the Court’s information and document security protocols to mitigate the risk of future incidents….I cannot identify any additional useful investigative measures.”
Despite the court’s assurances, questions about the rigor of the investigation are likely to linger. Neither the report nor Chertoff’s statement indicates whether the justices themselves were interviewed or whether they disclosed the draft or the vote count to their spouses. A Supreme Court spokesperson did not respond to a query about whether the justices were questioned.
As word spread Thursday of the probe’s inconclusive result, some prominent Republicans sharply criticized the court’s failure to identify the source of the disclosure.
“This is inexcusable,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) wrote on Twitter. “It means brazen attempts like this one to change the Court’s decisions—from within—will become more common. Someone ought to resign for this.”
Hawley, who served as a law clerk to Chief Justice John Roberts, also said the leak had endangered the lives of “pregnancy care center volunteers [and] the justices themselves.”
Former President Donald Trump called for the journalists involved in the POLITICO story to be drawn into the investigation.
“Go to the reporter & ask him/her who it was. If not given the answer, put whoever in jail until the answer is given,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, a social media site he co-owns. “Stop playing games, this leaking cannot be allowed to happen. It won’t take long before the name of this slime is revealed!…Arrest the reporter, publisher, editor – you’ll get your answer fast. Stop playing games and wasting time!”
Trump’s remarks drew a pointed retort from President Joe Biden’s White House, which opposed any efforts to question reporters.
“The freedom of the press is part of the bedrock of American democracy,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement shared exclusively with POLITICO. “Calling for egregious abuses of power in order to suppress the Constitutional rights of reporters is an insult to the rule of law and undermines fundamental American values and traditions. Instead, it’s the responsibility of all leaders to protect First Amendment rights. These views are not who we are as a country, and they are what we stand against in the world.”
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) deplored the leak but painted the episode as part of a broader decline in ethics at the high court and urged Americans not to lose sight of the substance of the court’s ruling overturning abortion rights.
“The leak of the majority draft opinion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case was an unacceptable breach of the Supreme Court’s confidentiality and trust,” Durbin said in a statement. “It’s important that we address serious concerns about the Court’s lack of transparency and refusal to adopt a binding code of ethics….As the Marshal of the Supreme Court continues her investigation into the leak, it’s important that we allow her process to continue.”
While Curley’s report asserts that the high court’s confidentiality policies clearly forbade disclosing a draft opinion, she suggests that there might be merit in making it a crime to disclose internal court documents. Some Republican legislators have suggested such a step.
“Bills were introduced in the last Congress which would expressly prohibit the disclosure of the Supreme Court’s non-public case-related information to anyone outside the Court. Consideration should be given to supporting such legislation,” Curley wrote.
Chris Cadelago and Marianne Levine contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Zonal Police Headquarters Jammu has invited applications in the prescribed format from the eligible domiciles of J&K for the post of In-charge Drug De-addiction Centre.
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J&K Police Jobs Recruitment 2023: Details
Organization JK Police (Zonal Police Headquarters Jammu)
Advt No. DIP/J-14305/22
Post Name In-charge Drug De-addiction Centre
No. of Posts 01
Category Government Job
Job Location Drug De-addiction Centre Jammu
Application Mode Online
Official Website https://www.jkpolice.gov.in
J&K Police Jobs Recruitment 2023: Important Dates
Start date for submission of applications 17 January 2023
Last Date of Application 28 January-2023
J&K Police Jobs Recruitment 2023: Vacancy Details
Name of Post In-charge Drug De-addiction Centre Jammu
No. of Post 01
Qualification MD Psychiatry and experience in psychiatry of at least 3 years.
Salary Rs. 50,000/-
J&K Police Jobs Recruitment 2023: How To Apply ?
Application forms completed in all respects should reach the office of the Superintendent of Police (Hqrs) Jammu, at DPL Jammu (Nodal officer Drug De-Addiction Centre Jammu) by or before 28-01-2023.
J&K Police Jobs Recruitment 2023: Documents Required
Date of birth (D.0.B) Certificate (Matriculation).
Academic Qualification/Technical qualification/experience Certificate, if any.
Domicile Certificate.
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J&K Police Jobs Recruitment 2023: Terms & Condition
The engagement is purely for a period of six months or till the project is completed whichever is earlier. However, in case of unsatisfactory performance indiscipline ncluding absence from duty can be disengagement without an intimation/prior notice by the Appointing Authority.
The candidate would have no claim for his/her continuous engagement/ permanent absorption.
The selected candidates may be required to undergo induction trainings/workshops within or outside the UT. Initially, the contract shall be for a period of six months and the further yearly extension will be subjected to the satisfactory performance of the candidate/approval of the Competent Authority.
In case the performance of the selected candidate is rated as unsatisfactory by the controlling officer at any point of time, the Contract is liable to be terminated without any notice.
The selected candidates will have to work under he overal supervision of Appointing Authority. The selected candidates will have to work under the overall supervision of Appointing Authority. Application forms incomplete in any manner or not filled up properly shall be rejected.
Appointing authority reserves the right to terminate any candidate’s engagement at any point of time without any notice or assigning any cause of disengagement.
J&K Police Jobs Recruitment 2023: Hiring Authority:
Superintendent of Police (Hqrs) Jmu For Additional Director General of Police Jammu Zone, Jammu. Telephone :- 01912439919-(0),94695-23888- (M)
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In Richmond, everything from “parasitic” capital investors making below-value cash offers to a lack of adequate care for acquired property has ruined swaths of his city, Democratic Mayor Levar Stoney said during a panel discussion at the conference, particularly in low-income and historically Black areas.
Stoney and other local leaders also blamed short-term rental markets, house flippers and corporate investors as detractors in struggling housing markets. He called for mayors to establish a new working group to convene on pilot programs and initiatives.
“Mayors cannot address this problem alone. We need to work together with all levels of government, private corporations, landlords, tenants and community organizations,” Stoney said. “Housing is a vaccine for poverty, and home ownership is one of the fundamental ways for families to build generational wealth.”
Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller sought to offer a Western perspective, hailing from a city that didn’t face a housing shortage until a few years ago. “All of a sudden, people want to move to Albuquerque,” he said, which created a 30,000-unit-wide gap. Cheap housing from the 1960s and 1970s, as well as dilapidated apartments and hotels, worsened the issue, added Keller, who has led the city since 2017.
The city is considering whether to convert some old buildings, particularly hotels and commercial areas, into condos or apartments to make them renter-friendly. Keller said the next four months will decide the physical future of the city’s housing situation.
“We’ve got to understand the big picture, but also the details. … The problem in our city is our zoning code,” Keller said. “We zoned our entire city for single-family dwellings, and it is destroying Albuquerque. It will hollow us out.”
This year, several state legislatures have proposed widely different solutions to their individual housing problems and needs. In Washington state, a bill in the Senate would increase the amount of single-family detached housing options, while a bill in the state House aims to address the shortage by issuing up to $4 billion in general obligation bonds and give loans to some organizations that develop low-income housing.
Other chambers in states like Virginia, Washington and Connecticut have introduced measures that would strengthen protections for tenants against landlords on issues like rent increases and document translation in attempts to prevent unfair evictions. Many have also adopted stronger regulations on short-term rentals, cracking down on out-of-state property managers and adding new regulations like license requirements.
Biden administration officials sought to highlight what kinds of relief mayors could tap to quell their housing struggles.
Marion McFadden, principal deputy assistant secretary of community planning and development at HUD, touted a federal loan guarantee program that provides grants for low-cost and flexible housing. She also listed new funding sources, including $75 million in permanent supportive housing construction and $225 million in new money for manufactured housing communities.
But some mayors in the audience expressed irritation with funneling grant money through the state coffers instead of going directly to local leaders themselves.
“A lot of us are frustrated. We need more funds to go directly to local government,” Frank Cownie, the Democratic mayor of Des Moines, Iowa, said to a flurry of applause, citing concerns with how the state had doled out federal funding in the past. Other mayors in the room concurred, with one adding that small cities seem to receive even less attention and financial support.
HUD panelists responded by reiterating current federal funding, including the 2021 HOME American Rescue Plan program, a one-time infusion of affordable housing and preservation money.
“This is still low on every policymaker’s radar,” Keller, the Albuquerque mayor, said. “We are trying to push it at the state level, we are trying to let our federal delegation know about this, and we’re trying to let everyday citizens know we have to do something about housing or we’re going to lose our city to the suburbs.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
The frustration among all members of the House about a broken process — where huge omnibus spending bills are negotiated behind closed doors and then voted on in the middle of the night — is totally understandable. It has also been a complaint from just about every backbencher in congressional history.
The process, of course, has gone seriously off the rails in the last couple of decades in Congress, culminating in the Nancy Pelosi years. The former speaker had little interest in a fair process and was more than willing to trample on the rights of the House minority.
When I was a senior aide to then-Speaker Denny Hastert, the so-called Accidental Speaker who picked up the reins of power in 1999 after Newt Gingrich’s stormy leadership came to an abrupt end, we promised to deliver regular order.
What regular order meant back then was a devotion to a predictable, repeatable, democratic and orderly process. It relied on the authorizing committees to do their authorizing, the budget committee to do its budgeting, the taxing committee (Ways and Means) to do its taxing and the spending committee (Appropriations) to do the spending.
We promised to give members back their power to make decisions and we outlined a clear agenda that promised to secure America’s future. Hastert had deep personal failings, but he was effective as a leader on Capitol Hill because he promised to be a listener more than a speaker, and he was rewarded by his colleagues by becoming the longest Republican speaker of the House in history.
In Congress, it was a great approach. But then conservatives learned that regular order didn’t necessarily reflect what they wanted, which was a lot less government. The regular order wheels started to fall off the bus when Hastert insisted on passing legislation to modernize Medicare with a prescription drug benefit. Conservatives revolted and the speaker had to keep a vote open for three and a half hours, which was decidedly against the regular order. But as Hastert explained at the time, for senior citizens who were waiting for 30 years for their drug benefit, three hours was not too long to wait.
Bill Thomas (McCarthy’s former boss) was the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and one of the principal architects of the Medicare Modernization Act, and he wasn’t all that concerned about regular order. He just wanted to get the bill passed, as did President George W. Bush, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and other members of the Republican establishment. Conservatives were furious, but senior citizens were mostly pleased to get the new drug benefit.
Regular order is great until the point that you need to pass legislation that pleases your caucus and the American people simultaneously. And that is the challenge for McCarthy and House Republicans as they move forward. Regular order is fine in theory. But at the end of the day, the American people don’t care about process. They care about results.
I appreciate the sentiments of the small band of rebels who demanded that McCarthy give them a bigger say in the legislative process, and I appreciate that they were using all their leverage to extract concessions before they gave him their vote as speaker. But they need to understand that regular order doesn’t necessarily mean that conservatives will get the results they want. And they need to ask themselves a question: What is it that they want? Do they want an open process where they can win debate points but perhaps lose amendment votes? Or do they want to tilt the process in their favor, stifle debate and hopefully get enough moderates to come their way in a House that has historically tight margins?
These questions become even more salient as Congress considers what to do about the debt limit.
It is the rare member of Congress who loses his or her seat when it comes to extending the debt limit. Voters simply don’t care about the esoteric parliamentary debates that revolve around our absurd fiscal irresponsibility.
But that doesn’t mean that political campaigns don’t try to make hay out of the debt limit and especially for Republicans, it is a hard vote to swallow. GOP lawmakers don’t like out-of-control spending, and they get frustrated when they seemingly can’t do anything about it.
A regular order approach to dealing with the debt limit would entail committee hearings at the Ways and Means and Budget committees, a markup at the committee level, a Rules Committee hearing, where the panel would decide which amendments would be considered, and then a robust floor debate, where those amendments would be considered.
If that regular order process were actually employed, the House would likely vote down most conservative-backed amendments to sharply curtail spending on entitlement programs, and then it would pass a relatively clean debt ceiling lift and send it over to the Senate. Then the Democratic-led Senate, with help from some Republicans, would pass that bill in the name of economic stability, and President Joe Biden would eagerly sign it.
It would be a fair and open debate, but it wouldn’t deliver a particularly conservative result.
The truth is that while the House GOP skews conservative on many issues, in certain areas — like spending money on the military, keeping the government open and avoiding a debt default and potential financial crisis — there is a bipartisan majority to do the opposite of what the hard right wants.
Regular order rarely yields unambiguously happy results for the conservative movement. And that is the reality for the Freedom Caucus and for Kevin McCarthy. They can proclaim the need for regular order all they want, but at the end of the day, the speaker has to find a way to keep his majority happy and also prove that he can govern for the rest of the American people. I wish the new speaker luck.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
It was a charge that captured the wounded feelings and political frustrations of America’s allies in Europe after the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, H.R. 5376 (117), which included a mammoth program of clean-energy subsidies and made-in-America manufacturing rules that has thrown the transatlantic economic relationship into turmoil. Manchin, as the crucial fiftieth vote for the legislation and whose office wrote the controversial provisions, did more to shape the final version of the law than any legislator.
Now, Manchin has marched into the den of the European elite, mingling at the World Economic Forum in Davos with an audience of continental technocrats, true-believing free traders and oligarchs more at ease in Monte Carlo than Morgantown, West Virginia, where Manchin played college football.
The gulf in political and cultural sensibilities could scarcely have been starker.
In the Swiss Alps, Manchin was determined to change the minds of men and women who see him as the face of a new American rival, the cause of a great rupture in transatlantic economic relations. Now, having made the trip across the Atlantic, he’s trying to put the pieces back together. He has been in one mode and one mode only here: sell, baby, sell.
Manchin is unabashedly proud of his role in shaping the IRA, handing out one-pagers and telling stories about the people — some of them at Davos — who are already benefiting from it. But American allies like France and Germany see the $369 billion investment in energy security, including subsidies for climate and tech companies and incentives for consumers, as a frontal assault on European industry, a blunt-force instrument aimed at coercing companies to shift investments out of Europe and perhaps enter into energy and manufacturing deals in North America that they would not otherwise pursue.
A new man about town
In Washington, Manchin is among the most famous members of Congress. But now, the once-unknown, gum-chewing, no-nonsense West Virginian is infamous in Europe. European leaders, typically used to dealing with fellow heads of state, are now seeking facetime with the newfound Davos Man himself. They are getting plenty of it.
Strolling into Anthony Scaramucci’s wine-tasting party in the Piano Bar of Hotel Europe on Tuesday night, Manchin had earlier that day come out of another grilling from a group of Europeans. He seemed more bemused than upset by the experience. He said he explained that the IRA is good for the U.S. and for the European allies.
Did he convince anyone?
Not really, he said, but he made his case.
As snow fell on Davos Wednesday afternoon, Manchin joined the congressional delegation here for a quiet meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the leader of Europe’s largest economy. Manchin related to POLITICO that Scholz expressed frustration that the American law would directly harm German’s vital car market. The incentives would prove damaging to Germany and Europe and eventually spark a trade war, Scholz added.
Manchin pushed back, saying there’s nothing stopping Germany from producing more cars in the United States — a point that wasn’t exactly a response to Scholz’s frustration.
“I think it rubs him wrong when I say that,” the senator told POLITICO.
Manchin said that Scholz countered that the U.S. places too many penalties on European cars entering the American market. So the West Virginian pulled out his cellphone and Googled “tariff cost on autos in Germany.” In bold, the search engine’s front page excerpted the relevant part of a 2019 Deutsche Welle article: “US levies a 2.5 percent tariff on European auto imports, while the European Union imposes a 10 percent duty.”
A German government spokesman called Scholz’s conversation with Manchin and the other 11 lawmakers on the IRA a “direct exchange” that was “an expression of our close and good relationship with the USA.”
Still, Manchin says his main message to Scholz — and Europe more broadly — is that “this piece of legislation was not intended to harm anybody. It was intended to keep America strong so we could help our friends. That’s it.”
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), the leader of the American congressional delegation in Davos, said the conversation with Scholz on the IRA was cordial and professional. But Coons, an experienced diplomat who sits on the Senate’s foreign relations committee, acknowledged there were clear differences.
“We are optimistic we can find a way forward through this,” he said. “We have work to do to hear each other.”
Nobody likes being the last to know
Manchin is proud that he was able to have frank conversations with allies about a disagreement, having them learn from him and him learn from them. But he was surprised by the rancor and confusion he encountered from European officials who felt blindsided by America’s robust industrial policy.
Manchin never heard from lobbies or governments about the controversial part of the law because his team drafted it in secret. No one, save for senior Democrats in the Senate, knew they were drafting the measure. Once it came to light, and proved the saving grace for President Joe Biden’s climate agenda, the legislative process moved so quickly that no one had time to react.
“They just didn’t know,” Manchin said — but they know now.
The initial confusion about the law in Europe gave way to rage and, soon after that, an aggressive policy response from EU and national leaders who are crafting their own program of large-scale support for clean-energy industry.
The night the IRA passed last year, Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission’s president, issued a late-night tweet to congratulate Biden on the IRA’s passage in Congress. A few weeks later, her team was openly panicking about the IRA’s measures, particularly regarding subsidies on electric vehicles which it regarded as discriminatory.
By the winter, when Macron clashed with Manchin in Washington, European leaders grasped that the American energy law could have sweeping unintended consequences for their own countries. Manchin said that when Macron approached him, the French leader decried the investments that were leaving other parts of the world — including Europe — and flooding into the United States.
According to Manchin’s recollection, he countered by telling Macron that the U.S. took the approach to incentivize its way to energy security while France and Europeans chose to tax their way to it. The American approach “attracts people from all over the world” to work on hydrogen, small nuclear reactors and battery storage, Manchin recalled saying.
He said he told Macron: “I will sit down and work with you in any way, shape or form to relieve your concerns and fears that we’re trying to basically do any harm to you or your society.”
A French official with direct knowledge of the exchange confirmed it, noting the president “explained very calmly our serious concerns.”
Sticking to his guns
Worries have continued mounting in Europe, and Manchin has not always worked hard to ease them.
At a dinner Manchin and his congressional colleagues had with Xavier Bettel, Luxembourg’s prime minister, at Davos this week, the leader raised Europe’s concerns about the IRA, particularly in light of the spiking cost of energy due to Russia’s war in Ukraine, a person familiar with the conversation said. Manchin argued that Luxembourg would see those prices fall if the country entered into long-term contracts with U.S.-based producers.
Those kinds of comments are likely to alienate the EU even further, confirming the view in Brussels that American natural gas producers are poised to benefit from EU’s energy woes as the bloc tries to wean off Russian energy.
Asked about the dinner with lawmakers, Bettel said “Luxembourg remains committed to keep up the dialogue with our U.S. friends around European concerns including IRA and energy security,” adding his country informed the European Commission about the dialogue he had with Manchin and others.
Manchin was not the only American struck by the intensity of European leaders’ resentment over the legislation, which some suggested was misplaced.
“Over the last couple of decades our friends in Europe have encouraged the United States to address climate change, and now we’re doing it in a major way and some are criticizing the way we’re doing it,” said Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), chair of the EU Caucus on Capitol Hill who is part of the U.S. delegation in Davos.
“This bill took a year and a half,” said Boyle. “I’m chair of the congressional EU caucus; pretty much every week I am meeting with fellow parliamentarians and EU countries. Not once — ever — was it expressed to me by any European official of any country that they had problems or concerns with any specific aspect of the Inflation Reduction Act that were being discussed publicly.”
But European officials say they were annoyed to have learned about it first in the media. After all, the U.S. and the EU had just barely over a year before set up a new body — called the Trade and Technology Council – for the express purpose of coordinating on such policies.
Crisis mode
EU officials are now scrambling to find some way out of the conundrum inflicted on them by the IRA, particularly the bill’s provisions on electric vehicles, which gave favorable treatment to Mexico and Canada, but not the EU. A leader of an EU country, who didn’t want to be named, said this week that, “We are confident that by raising it we can make sure the U.S. does the right thing.”
The European Commission established a “task-force” in October led by Von der Leyen’s chief of staff Bjoern Seibert and deputy national security adviser Mike Pyle to explore options. In particular, they are trying to ensure that the local provisions part of the law which allows manufacturers from Mexico and Canada to benefit from tax breaks, could also apply to Europe.
But there isn’t great hope in Europe at this point that the United States will fundamentally change the offending provisions of the IRA. U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said following a meeting with Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis in Brussels this week that the EU needed to be “realistic” about resolving concerns.
Manchin said he is open to addressing any suggestions the Europeans may have, working with them closely to ensure there isn’t a brutal fight to win the technological race toward a new energy economy.
It’s unclear how much power he’ll have now that Democrats have a 51-member majority in the Senate, rather than the 50-50 split that regularly gave Manchin the swing vote. And with Republicans in control of the House of Representatives, the prospects look dim for major legislation on complex subjects.
For now, Manchin is looking forward to resting on his flight home and shifting out of sales mode — at least for now.
“I didn’t know it would be this intense, to be honest with you,” he said.
Burgess Everett, Matt Kaminski, Jakob Hanke Vela, Hans von der Burchard and Ryan Heath contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
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Cluster University Of Srinagar has released Notification for Reschedule of papers for U.G Semester-1st Backlog Candidates Batch 2017-2021
Notification: It is notified for information of the Backlog students of UG Semester 1st Batch 2017 to 2021 that the examination of the below mentioned papers has been rescheduled and shall be held as per the following schedule:
This has been a long time coming. Antitrust policymakers failed to halt the rapid consolidation of hospital markets in part because many judges and health policy leaders used to believe, falsely, that hospital consolidation led to efficiencies and better care delivery, and it took years of painstaking academic research to arrive at this updated understanding of the market. Although hospital systems continue to consolidate, policymakers are now armed with better analytical techniques and a wealth of evidence that can be used to stop the most egregiously anticompetitive mergers.
But if we’ve started succeeding in preventing further consolidation in hospital markets, we have invested far less thought into developing meaningfully competitive and innovative markets. It is folly to think that antitrust policy should solely consist of stopping bad things like additional hospital mergers. We also need to use the antitrust laws to usher in the benefits of genuine competition.
As the U.S. emerges from the pandemic, the timing for a renewed push to increase competition is ideal. The 20th century model of health care delivery, in which patients get in-person care at designated brick-and-mortar facilities from licensed professionals, is reaching a turning point. Telemedicine, at-home care, and other delivery innovations — many of which achieved prominence when the pandemic struck — are offering new alternatives to hospitals, and data analytics are informing insurers how to better manage patients with chronic illness. Together, these innovations might forge a transformation away from a hospital-centric delivery system and towards an age of digital medicine.
But hospital monopolies, like all monopolies, harm markets not only by charging prices. They also impede innovation, and today’s hospital monopolies are working hard to endanger the arrival of this new age of medicine.
They are doing this through a variety of well-tested techniques. One is using their dominance to impose “all-or-nothing” contracts, which require insurers to pay for all of a hospital system’s services or drop out of the market altogether. This strategy prevents insurers from contracting with select providers — creating so-called “narrow networks” — that can direct patients to higher-value providers and stimulate competition between rival facilities. Hospital monopolists bundle their services together, which forces patients to pay for a system’s costly services if they want to rely on their critical services; for example, in order to have access to the only trauma center in town, patients must also commit to the hospital system’s oncologists and cardiologists, practices that would be vulnerable to competition from other providers and telemedicine companies. And hospital monopolists work to squeeze out small, nimble providers that might offer lower-cost alternatives to the multi-specialty giants; and if they fail to drive them out, they purchase them.
None of this is casual. Dominant hospitals are well aware of the threats that innovations pose to their business model. They know the health care market of the future puts less primacy on inpatient care and more on virtual care. They know that health care services are provided at higher quality and lower costs at facilities that do not suffer from the overhead and governance burdens of costly multispecialty centers. And they know that telemedicine and hospitals-at-home companies pose existential threats to their dominance.
Innovation in the health sector, though sorely needed, is unlikely to emerge without effective antitrust enforcement. But thus far, antitrust approaches in the health sector have remained stale, in part because competition law in the health sector has only expressed opposition to consolidation. It hasn’t yet said what it is for.
Better antitrust policy to combat hospital dominance means understanding the dysfunction of the current market and the benefits of certain innovations. It is not a blanket hostility to size or mergers but instead a targeted attention to where specific structural changes would bring transformational benefits.
If these insights into innovation were to guide our competition policy in the health sector, we would focus on activities that have not yet attracted the attention they deserve. Here are three of them.
Protect Independent Physicians
Policymakers should pay renewed attention to physicians as a competitive threat to hospital dominance.
Hospitals have been acquiring physician practices at a rapid rate, a trend that accelerated since the Covid pandemic, and nearly three-quarters of America’s physicians are now employed by hospitals or corporate entities. Current antitrust policy considers hospital acquisitions of physician practices as “vertical” mergers that are largely innocuous because they do not increase the concentration in either hospital or physician markets. But mounting evidence has shown that these acquisitions lead to higher costs, probably because many of these transactions are better described as mergers of substitutes rather than compliments.
In other words, many outpatient clinics offer similar services as those offered in hospitals, so when hospitals acquire physician practices, they eliminate competition. Worse, outpatient care is less costly than similar services offered inside hospitals, and medical advances continually expand what can be done in outpatient settings. The loss of the independent physician practice means the loss of the often better and almost always less expensive alternative.
The dynamic consequences of these acquisitions — the harm to innovation — are probably even more costly. Controlling physicians means controlling referrals, and hospitals rely on referrals for their most lucrative services. Reciprocally, the biggest threat to hospital dominance is if physicians direct their patients elsewhere, and the current market now offers real alternatives to traditional hospital care: specialty providers, regional providers with telemedicine follow-ups, hospital-at-home care and even physician practices that expand into secondary care. Moreover, many of these new practice models are built atop digital analytics, virtual technologies and innovative financing that have the potential to produce new care models that might upend hospital monopolies altogether.
Perhaps what is most frightening to hospitals is that many of these innovations are designed to promote population health such that people are kept out of the hospital, i.e., they are intended to drastically reduce our need for hospitals altogether. So, when hospitals acquire the source of these potential innovations, they don’t merely enshrine their monopoly position, they also engineer a future in which we continue our dependence on them.
Encourage New Business Models
Antitrust policy should help new business models for both hospitals and insurers. Too frequently, dominant hospitals and insurers work to foreclose the market to newcomers.
Conventional wisdom suggests that dominant insurers and dominant hospital systems would be at loggerheads over the price of medical services. In fact, these large entities often collude with each other to keep out other competitors. By promising each other that they won’t give smaller entities more favorable terms — these arrangements are commonly called most-favored-nation, or “MFN” contracts — giant payers and giant providers secure each other’s dominance. (This collusion-among-giants was discovered and challenged in Massachusetts and Michigan, but quiet cooperation between dominant payers and providers is widespread.)
Many large insurers pursue similar strategies with insurance brokers, demanding that they market their products either exclusively or on favorable terms. (An important case involving this conduct recently took place in Florida.) These efforts prevent new insurers and upstart providers, those most likely to introduce news business strategies and care models, from gaining traction in the marketplace. Victims of this market “foreclosure” usually are innovators: insurers with new price transparency features, physician-led ambulatory surgical centers that offer specialty care, and behavioral health providers that use new virtual technologies. Low-cost and high-value “centers of excellence,” which encourage patients to travel to destinations with specialized experts, also are harmed.
Antitrust laws can challenge this conduct as well. Although merger policy has been the primary antitrust instrument in the health sector, antitrust laws also prohibit monopolistic conduct that forecloses competition. The antitrust laws do not outlaw monopolies per se — and many rural regions cannot sustain more than one provider — but they do constrain a monopolist from leveraging its power to impede entry. Antitrust policy needs to recognize the potential of new business models, especially those that direct resources away from traditional hospital care, and preempt efforts to foreclose the market to them.
Protect Digital Startups
Finally, and related to both strategies above, antitrust enforcers must prevent the industry giants from consuming the world of digital startups. Perhaps today’s top competition policy concern is that Google, Facebook, and other dominant platforms have hijacked the entirety of Silicon Valley’s startups, such that few products reach the market without being purchased by one of the internet goliaths. The same is taking place in the health sector, as health care startups developing new diagnostics, therapies and delivery models are being purchased by market leaders.
It is hard to overstate the long-term harm this causes. When dominant hospitals purchase innovative in-home care companies, they remove their greatest threat. When insurance giants purchase start-ups with innovative digital analytics, care management platforms, or virtual capabilities, they extend the viability of their 20th century business model. These purchases are executed under the theory that the giants are adopting new technologies and are engineering change. The truth is that the opposite is happening: Change is halted, and the prevailing delivery model persists. They are the health sector’s version of catch-and-kill.
Current antitrust laws can help this smothering of innovation, but it won’t be easy. These acquisitions are products of voluntary agreements, and many start-up companies — including a recent rash of primary care practices — focus their efforts and garner investments precisely so they can be acquired by either a large insurer or health system. Industry leaders in pharmaceuticals and electronic health records are also frequent purchasers of start-ups.
The difficulty for antitrust law is to distinguish between socially beneficial acquisitions, such as those in which the start-up’s technologies are used fruitfully by the purchasing giants, from those that erase potential competition and sustain market power. This difficulty is not unique to the health sector, nor is it an easy one to navigate, but typical responses are either to allow or disallow all such acquisitions. The better approach is to scrutinize the underlying technologies and the potential they offer. Perhaps, in these particular questions, the complexity of health care should be addressed head-on.
The potential that antitrust policy can play in the health sector is illustrated by what might be the field’s crowning achievement in the modern era: the case against Microsoft in the 1990s. Contrary to the popular narrative, that case was not about stopping Microsoft from carving out a monopoly for Internet Explorer, its web browser. Instead, DOJ recognized that Microsoft was trying to prolong the centrality of its monopoly in desktop computing, and that its illegal maneuvers were aimed at preventing the emergence of new alternatives to Microsoft’s operating system. Those alternatives, once they were permitted to enter the marketplace, unleashed the world of internet-based platforms, mobile devices and a new generation of digital services.
The case was a victory for antitrust law because policymakers understood that Microsoft was inflicting harm far beyond the monopoly prices it charged. The real danger came from Microsoft’s efforts to impede transformational innovations. The suit wasn’t merely designed to beat back Microsoft’s economic power; it was to prevent Microsoft from asserting its control over a particular platform and to allow market innovators to usher in a new era of computing. In other words, the best way to stem the market power of Microsoft was to encourage the emergence of Google.
Like Microsoft, today’s hospital monopolies are the platforms that provide access to assorted medical services, and they are acting to prevent the growth and onset of physician practices, telemedicine companies, and other nimble and innovative providers that offer the path to new delivery paradigms. Antitrust policy needs to recognize not just the harm from hospital monopolies but the potential from new delivery innovations. Like policymakers demanding changes from Microsoft, today’s leaders must pursue an antitrust agenda that can facilitate a more affordable, more effective delivery system.
Today’s exuberance for antitrust enforcement is to be applauded, but antitrust is at its best when it is for something, not just against something, when it is visionary and not merely reactionary. Health care antitrust policy should be driven not by a generic aversion to concentration but by a careful understanding of how health care markets can work in this new digital era. The more policymakers know about where the market can go, the more effective and transformative antitrust policy will be.
Health care antitrust must be about more than combatting traditional mergers and instead should commit itself to nurturing a dynamic market, one that encourages entry, creativity, and innovation. The lessons of the Microsoft case tell us that if we can stop the monopolists from halting innovation, we will soon be able to usher in a new market paradigm, one that promises to increase competition and — finally — slow our spiraling health care costs.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez was a stunning winner in the 2022 midterms. The millennial auto shop owner flipped a Washington district that both the state and national Democratic parties considered unwinnable.But then incumbent Jamie Herrera Beutler, who had voted to impeach Donald Trump, came in third in the state’s open primary. Suddenly, Gluesenkamp Perez, 34, was facing off against a Donald Trump-backed Republican in the solidly red district. Despite the long odds that national pundits and pollsters gave her throughout the campaign, she beat Joe Kent, an election-denier and regular guest on Tucker Carlson, by less than one point.Her district stretches more than 230 miles across (about the distance from D.C. to New York) — from remote beach communities on the Pacific Coast to timber towns in the Cascade mountains, and south past dairy and berry farms to the rapidly growing city of Vancouver. It’s a middle-class district where about a quarter of residents are college graduates, and the median income is just under the national median household income of $70,784.
I met up with Gluesenkamp Perez for lunch at Charlie Palmer Steakhouse in D.C. — its white tablecloths and suit-clad patrons casting a stark contrast with the antler-forward decor and outdoor gear of the other Washington’s eateries. I wanted to learn more about how she plans to represent her largely middle-class district (where I had grown up) and what Democrats could learn from her unexpected win. Over a steak salad — rare — Gluesenkamp Perez gave a bracing critique of her party’s deeply out-of-touch approach to the middle class, why the party’s leaders seem to be making that problem worse, not better, and how closing the widening gap between the party’s brain trust and its blue-collar roots can be accomplished by reconnecting Americans with our lost ability to “fix your own shit.”
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Natalie Fertig: You’re part of a 200-plus person Democratic caucus. How do you see yourself creating an understanding of the middle class in that caucus and getting middle-class laws passed?
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez: It feels like the Democratic Party, especially wealthy leadership in the Democratic Party, has taken it upon themselves to be champions of the poorest of the poor. And I think that’s great, but I think that it has left a lot of people in the middle class feeling like people don’t understand the issues we’re facing. I think it’s left unaddressed a lot of really critical things that are not glamorous, lionized issues, but that beat the hell out of people’s will to persist. The indignity of supply chain problems. Catalytic converter theft. Bad infrastructure. Shit roads.
Fertig: I’m laughing at the catalytic converter theft, because I feel like that’s like all my dad was talking about when I was home over the summer.
Gluesenkamp Perez: Oh, yeah. I replaced hundreds of catalytic converters last year. It’s like $40 worth of platinum, and it’s a $1,300 repair. That just eviscerated so many people’s emergency funds all across the district.
Fertig: Crime was something that so many people [in District 3] talked about, and is something that you talked about. Why do you think that was an important issue in this election?
Gluesenkamp Perez: It’s relevant to our lives. I had my [shop] windows broken four times last year. So yeah, I’m pissed off. I’m going to talk about it, you know? It’s a grind, and it gets expensive and demoralizing. I think that for a lot of people that sort of live in these silos, they are not as cognizant of it. And I think maybe that’s why it was not more of a campaign issue for more people.
Fertig: What do you mean by people living in silos?
Gluesenkamp Perez: A lot of candidates are self-funded people with trust funds.
Fertig: I see that, too. Like, what is it like to pay student loans? Even amongst my colleagues here in D.C. — not everyone has the same experiences.
Gluesenkamp Perez: Yeah. Like, “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl_Qyk9DSUw&ab_channel=heyitsadriann" target="_blank" link-data="{"linkText":"It‘s a banana, Michael","link":{"target":"NEW","attributes":[],"url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl_Qyk9DSUw&ab_channel=heyitsadriann","_id":"00000185-d1ed-d674-abbd-d9ff40d20000","_type":"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_id":"00000185-d1ed-d674-abbd-d9ff40d20001","_type":"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>It’s a banana, Michael, what could it cost? $20?”
Fertig: So, we talk a lot about the great relocation of Democrats to cities and Republicans to rural areas, but you just flipped a district that is majority rural. Carolyn Long tried this twice [in 2018 and 2020] and failed. What was different this time around?
Gluesenkamp Perez: I think I look more like the district. I live like the district. [And] obviously not running against Jamie [Herrera Beutler] was a huge part of it, you know?
I don’t think that your traditional pedigreed Democrats are the solution to Trump extremism. I think that a lot of these traditional Democrats, the m.o. is to go into a community and start explaining shit. Nobody likes that. I’ve heard that so often: I’ll go to an urban community, and people will be like, “Oh, like this candidate was amazing. They are so smart.” And then I’ll go to a rural community and talk to them about the same candidate. And they’ll say: “Yeah, they’re pedantic and they don’t understand. They didn’t listen to us.”
Fertig: Do you feel like the things that made success in your district are very specific to you and your district, or do you think there’s a model there that Democrats could use in other rural districts?
Gluesenkamp Perez: We need more and more normal people to run for Congress. We need more people that work in the trades.
When I was thinking about running, I interviewed some jackass, fancy consultant. I told him about myself, and he was like, “Well, I’ve worked with worse.” When I said I had a son, he chortled, and was like, “Hope you don’t want to see your kid again.”
He told me to talk to the governor and see if I could get appointed to some committee on aging and disability, or something like that, and build up a resume that would allow me to run successfully later on.
I’m just like, “How many other women has that happened to, you know these jackass men telling them not to run?” And I’m like, “Well, I guess you’re the expert, you’re wearing the suit.”
Fertig: I know that the DCCC didn’t give you any money. I know that the state party basically didn’t notice [you] until after the primary. What are they missing — besides normal candidates — what are they missing about those voters who are in those districts?
Gluesenkamp Perez: Frankly, I think there’s a lot of lip service to wanting people in the trades, rural Democrats. They say it because it sounds good, but I’m not sure that there is an actual commitment to it.
Fertig: What would that look like? Would that be going out and recruiting candidates like that?
Gluesenkamp Perez: Recruitment is certainly part of it, but the things that would get you on the radar are not the same things that make you relevant to voters.
Fertig: What do you think are the things that get someone on the radar?
Gluesenkamp Perez: Being a good fundraiser. Being from the right family. Living in the right city. I think self-recruitment is important.
Fertig: Why did you decide to run?
Gluesenkamp Perez: I saw Jamie not making it through. When I thought I was gonna have to run against Jamie for a few days after the primary, I was moping around the house. I got in this race to stop a fascist. And because I believe in public service. It’s not that I think I’m God’s gift to politics. I just think I had the community resources to run. I think I have a compelling narrative, a good perspective.
I just want more tradespeople in Congress. I run into people here, I’m like, “Oh, your bio says you’re a small business owner. What’s your business?” They’re like “Oh, we have a family real estate brokerage firm.” Oh, okay. Sure. Yeah, technically, you have less than 500 employees. So you are a small business.
Fertig: You mentioned that you really were not excited about the premise of running against [Herrera Beutler]. Why?
Gluesenkamp Perez: Because I was not going to win that race, and it would be a huge investment of time and energy pointed at someone that I don’t think was the problem.
Fertig: Obviously, you and [Herrera Beutler] have different perspectives on things like abortion. Even despite that, why do you not think she was the problem?
Gluesenkamp Perez: Well, because Jamie and I share a basic reality of facts. Which increasingly is hard to find.
Fertig: Which facts?
Gluesenkamp Perez: Who our elected president is. What it means to be a traitor.
Fertig: What are those issues that you see being the key ones that people are responding to that Congress can do?
Gluesenkamp Perez: We have to start rebuilding the American workforce. We’re all part of the generation where the best trade schools got turned into computer programming schools. Now we’re all on waitlists to see an electrician, plumber or carpenter. Those are the jobs that can’t get offshored — that’s the long-term economic health of our country. So, support for career and technical education programs is key. Ensuring that you can use Pell Grants not just for two- and four-year colleges, but also for apprenticeship programs.
That is one of the key elements of “right to repair” [laws]. You have to have stuff to fix. I think this is actually one of the most critical things you can do right now. Because you nip this in the bud, and you can prevent decades of work [erosion].
Fertig: Tell me a little bit more about “right to repair” laws and how they affect District 3 specifically.
Gluesenkamp Perez: Auto manufacturers have started installing, almost like governor chips on their tractors. So if you don’t have the digital key to unlock it, and you mess with the engine, they can lock you out. And there was a specific model of tractor that all had this, and it was a relatively new technology at the time, and all these tractors broke down at the same time. And the problem, specifically in agriculture, is that you only have a couple of days to cut hay when it’s maximally nutritive. Then the seed head starts falling off of it and the hay is worthless at that point. So these tractors all break down, there are not enough dealerships to service these tractors, and millions of dollars in hay are lost. And understandably, these farmers come out with pitchforks.
Fertig: Literally and metaphorically.
Gluesenkamp Perez: Correct. And so that’s kind of the genesis of “right to repair.” But it’s not just ag equipment. It’s also like your iPhone. You should be able to replace the battery in your phone without breaking the whole thing. I think it’s a much broader cultural issue of like, “Are Americans gonna be disempowered from understanding the technology they rely on?” We’re more and more surrounded by these black boxes that we have no influence over.
I think it’s the American ethos that we know how to fix shit. DIY is part of our DNA.
[We’re] becoming increasingly disenfranchised from the technology we rely on, being pointed more and more towards a permanent class of renters and not ownership. And it’s really terrible for the middle class. I’ve never bought a new car in my life. I rely on people having maintained their cars. And the new BMWs, for instance, don’t even have a dipstick. It’s like “Don’t worry about it, just buy a new one,” and it’s terrible for the planet. It’s terrible for the middle class. And I think it’s bad for our identity.
Fertig: Energy is obviously a big issue [with the] Columbia River, hydro-power and climate change. But how does that boil down for the district and middle-class people?
Gluesenkamp Perez: We’ve turned environmentalism into another brand of consumerism. Go buy a Tesla, you’re an environmentalist. I think being an environmentalist is being able to fix your own shit, like stopping an oil leak from going in the river, getting 500,000 miles out of your Honda Civic. The middle class has kind of been made to feel like [environmentalism is] a luxury good. That if you’re wealthy, you can have good air quality, and you can afford to breastfeed your baby instead of using formula.
One of the things that I’m really concerned about, that I think is relevant to my district, is microplastics. They’re everywhere. Literally, they’re finding them in placentas. And I believe that the solution to microplastics in many cases is cardboard and paper. We have to start replacing plastic products with cardboard, paper, wood — especially with packaging. We happen to make a lot of paper and cardboard in southwest Washington. The woods are a hot mess, we need to thin out the woods. That is not lumber, that is what you make paper out of.
Fertig: Right. My parents were in the evacuation zone [for the Nakia Creek fire] for a hot second in October, and that was really freaky.
Gluesenkamp Perez: I was over in Pacific County, which is as far as I can get from my house and still be in the district. I gave a speech, and I get an emergency alert on my phone: “It’s time to leave.” So I was like, “Oh, fuck!” and everyone just looks at me.
Fertig: Did you end up evacuating?
Gluesenkamp Perez: We packed up, but we didn’t end up leaving. You could see the glow. My husband — who’s very chill — was like, “It’s a ridge away, we don’t need to evacuate.” I’m like, “I don’t want to evacuate the baby at two o’clock in the morning.”
Fertig: I enjoyed your campaign ads when you were putting firewood [in the stove]. That was very relatable.
Gluesenkamp Perez: For our district. But for so many people — it’s like, you feel like a spectacle all the time. “Look at this rural woman with her baby, chopping.”
Fertig: I know you are surprised that people are focusing on your district. Do you think there’s a big takeaway for the Democratic Party?
Gluesenkamp Perez: Support normal people. People are hungry for a Congress that looks like America. It’s not rocket science. It’s about listening to your district. It’s a rebuke of facile allegiance to statistics. Numbers on their own represent nothing without an understanding of the landscape.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
