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Consumer sentiment is very high, but Democrats and Republicans have starkly different views on the economy.

A measure of how optimistic Americans are about the economy, known as consumer sentiment, fell in February just a month after hitting the highest level since 2004. But Democrats and Republicans see the economy in starkly different terms.

The consumer sentiment survey dropped to 95.7 this month from 98.5 in January, based on a preliminary reading by the University Michigan. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had forecast a reading of 98.

Americans were just as optimistic about current economic conditions in February as they were in January, but they set their sights a bit lower for the next six months. A gauge that measures expectations slipped to 85.7 from 90.3.

In February, roughly six in 10 consumers polled made either positive or negative references to some government action by the new Trump administration, an unusually high level. About the half the responses were favorable and half were unfavorable.

Expectations for the next six months among Democrats were near a historic low while expectations among Republicans was near a record high.

These differences are troublesome, said Richard Curtin, chief economist of the Michigan survey.

He said consumer spending is more influenced over time by negative instead of positive expectations, perhaps a sign that it could eventually weigh on the economy.

A similar survey of consumers by the New York Federal Reserve suggests that recent highs in consumer confidence are exaggerated by partisanship. After factoring out how liberals and conservatives view the economy, the New York Fed concluded that overall consumer confidence is probably little changed compared to pre-election levels.

Read more:
Democrat, Republican consumers have starkly different views of US economy - MarketWatch

Just three weeks into Donald Trumpspresidency, Republican lawmakers are getting a taste of how hispolicies are going over with voters at home.

On Thursday night, a town hall outside Salt Lake City by Congressman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, boiled over into a raucous display of grassroots rage, largely in opposition to Trump and Republican leaders attempts to dismantle Barack Obamas legacy.

As many as 1,000angry constituents packed into a high school auditorium to chant Do your job! Do your job! at Chaffetz. This was in reference to Chaffetzs position on the House Oversight Committee and refusal to investigate Trump for his alleged conflicts of interest. Chaffetz struggledto respond to the swelling of rage and strained to make himself heard over the microphone.

Youre not going to like this part, Chaffetz said to loud boos. The president, under the law, is exempt from conflict of interest laws. That did not go over well with the crowd.

At other points throughout the evening, protesters yelled Your last term and Shame! at the congressman.

Come on, come on, youre better than this, Chaffetz tried to say over the din.

No were not! a voice shouted back in return.

The event was remarkable, considering town halls are usually quiet civic events where the local PTA ask their elected representatives polite questions. In this case, people made emotional pleas to Chaffetz not to take away their healthcare orgut Planned Parenthood, and to hold the new administration to account for possible ethics violations.

At one point a young girl asked Chaffetz, Do you believe in science? Because I do.

I dont pretend to have all the answers, he responded. There are good people on both sides of the aisle, he said, nearly drowned out by boos.

The scene was reminiscent of the fledgling tea party movement during the summer of 2009, when angry conservative voters descended onto their representatives town halls. Many credit that tactic with getting the wave of conservative Republicans into office during the 2010 midterm elections.

Chaffetz tried to stay cheerful and nonchalant, even while protests outside the high school auditorium swelled to even greater crowds and the din inside grew so loud he joked it was like the Price Is Right here.

The protesters were largely organized by progressive activist organizations, including Indivisible and Town Hall Project, which is working to mobilize Democrats to fight Trump and Republicans. According to a CNN reporter, many of the people who were at the Utah event had never been to a town hall before.

Many of the questions yelled at Chaffetz were about Kellyanne Conway, a senior Trump adviser, who recently promoted Ivanka Trumps fashion brand during an appearance on Fox News. Chaffetz said yesterday he would refer Conway to his committee for an ethics investigation and that her statement was clearly over the line and unacceptable.

The protest in Utah wasnt the only emotional town hall on Thursday. In Tennessee, around a 100 protesters descended on Republican Rep. Diane Blacks Ask Your Rep event with a similar angry message, including one woman who made an impassioned plea for preserving the core tenets of the Affordable Care Act.

As a Christian, my whole philosophy in life is pull up the unfortunate, one young woman, visibly shaken, said toBlack. The individual mandate, thats what it does: The healthy people pull up the sick.

Follow Olivia Becker on Twitter: @oliviaLbecker

Read the original:
Angry protesters took over a Republican town hall in Utah - VICE News

Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, July 20, 2016. Hensarling is chairman of the Financial Services Committee.Photograph by Tom WilliamsCQ-Roll Call/Getty Images

The Republican chairman of a key House of Representatives committee has laid out his plan to roll back Wall Street rules and consumer protections conceived after the 2008 financial crisis, a step that will largely define the financial deregulation debate in the Trump era.

Jeb Hensarling, chairman of the Financial Services Committee, outlined his legislation to clear away many rules bankers say have hobbled investment and economic growth in a staff memo seen by Reuters on Thursday.

The plan comes after President Donald Trump on Friday signed a largely symbolic executive order that outlined an intention to ease banking rules, which he and other critics of the Dodd-Frank reform law passed after the financial crisis say hinder lending.

Under Hensarling's plan, the largest U.S. banks would face less oversightthough not as little as they had been hoping forwhile startups would have easier access to investors.

The plan would significantly dilute the powers of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was created to help guard individuals from fraud in mortgages, student loans and other financial products but has drawn the wrath of Republicans. Hensarling has called it a "rogue" agency.

Hensarling's legislation, called the Financial Choice Act, is likely to clear his own committee within a few weeks and ultimately be passed by the full House. But it would require 60 votes in the Senate, where Republicans hold 52 seats and Democrats defend the CFPB and many of the provisions House Republicans would weaken.

On Thursday, the senior Democrat on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, Sherrod Brown, said he would fight the Hensarling plan, saying it betrays "candidate Trump's campaign promises to hold Wall Street accountable and help working Americans."

Banking industry officials generally reacted positively, though they conceded it was still early days in the process.

"It's very aggressive and a very good starting point to rolling back a lot of the rules and regulations," said Paul Merski of the Independent Community Bankers of America.

"If this were a football game we'd be in the first quarter," James Ballentine of the American Bankers Association told Reuters.

Not the Whole Big Bank Wish List

Hensarling's primary approach is unchanged from the bill he introduced last year. It would allow large banks to avoid some oversight if they boost their capital reserves, or "leverage ratio," to 10% or better, which is seen as helping them weather financial shocks.

Large banks have said the 10% level is too costly and they would likely opt for existing rules.

Still, the Hensarling bill gives large banks some things they would like. The stress tests banks undergo to prove to regulators that they can withstand economic difficulties, now performed annually, would only occur every other year.

The bill would also allow the president to remove the CFPB director at will. Currently, the CFPB director is independent of the president and is appointed to a fixed term.

Congressional Republicans including Hensarling have indicated they would separately try to use the federal budget process to starve the CFPB of funds, a strategy that would only need 51 votes in the Senate.

Hensarling's original bill would have erased the Volcker rule, which limits bank's ability to make some speculative investments. The recent memo leaves that language unchanged.

Hensarling's Choice Act envisions more hurdles for the Securities and Exchange Commission and its enforcement work.

The bill would also ease rules that govern public companies, including some accounting and investment controls. Credit rating agencies would also get some regulatory relief.

Initial public offerings might be easier under Hensarling's bill. More companies, including the largest privately held ones, could avoid tough disclosure requirements and be able to "test the waters" with potential investors in advance of an offering.

Continued here:
Here's the Republican Masterplan for Wall Street Deregulation - Fortune

BBC (my emphasis added):

The Hamburg court said that it stands by its order, issued last May, which prohibited republication of parts of a poem by German comic Jan Boehmermann. The satirist, who is barred for repeating the majority of the verses, says he will appeal the verdict. The poem, first broadcast in 2016, led to a free speech debate in Germany, and diplomatic tension with Turkey.

Mr Boehmermanns lawyer, Christian Schertz, said Fridays verdict does not take into account freedom of artistic expression.

But in a statement, the court said: Satire that is secured under artistic freedom could be forbidden when it touches on the core area of personal freedom. However, the court also said that a head of state must expect heavier criticism than a regular citizen. The poem played on President Erdogans reputation for cracking down on free speech at home, and included vulgar sexual references. The Turkish president filed a criminal complaint against the satirist after it was broadcast on German television last March.

The criminal charges were later dropped, but the poem remains banned in Germany.

The case hinges on a rarely used 19th-century section of Germans criminal code that prohibits defamation of foreign heads of state

The court objected to 18 of the poems 24 lines, deeming them abusive and defamatory.

Well, they were certainly abusive (text here: trigger warnings, good taste warnings, naughty word warnings, rubber mask warnings, etc.), but they were also clearly satirical. To suggest that they were defamatory would be to suggest, I reckon, that they could be taken seriously. Andwho could possibly think that? I mean, goats.

The attempt by Turkeys thuggish leader (and, yes, Im old enough to remember when The Economist used to describe him as mildly Islamist) to arrange for Boehmermann to be prosecuted ought to have been seen off by any German chancellor worthy of that role. Unfortunately, Angela Merkel is not that person.

Heres Stefan Kuzmany, writing in Spiegel Online earlier thisyear:

Merkel apparently sought to take the wind out of Erdogans sails by hastily having her spokesperson announce that the Bhmermann poem was consciously injurious. She could have thrown her support unmistakably behind Bhmermann, as one might expect from a chancellor charged with defending the German constitution. His poem was very clearly meant as satire; none of the uncomely imputations therein should be taken nor were they meant seriously. The chancellor, of course, knows as much. Yet by adopting Erdogans viewpoint, she has essentially allowed him to determine what should be viewed as satire in Germany and what not. Now, the chancellor must decide if German prosecutors should be allowed to open a case over the insulting of a foreign head of state but because she already described the poem as injurious via her spokesman, she has very little room for maneuver.

She panicked, in other words, notthe first timeshe has done so as chancellor.

And yes, she gave the prosecutors the go-ahead.

Back to the BBC:

After the case became a national talking point, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the authorities would move to repeal article 103 concerning insults against foreign heads of state by 2018.

2018! Merkel is notoriously no friend of free speech, but she might at least pretend

Read this article:
Bhmermann, Erdogan and Merkel's Illiberal Democracy - National Review

Martin Luther King Jr. famously stated, Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

Nearly 50 years after Dr. Kings assassination, his words continue to ring true. A quintessential example is the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal, which is comprised of approximately 7,000 warheads, each weapon many more times powerful than the bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The existence of a bloated nuclear arsenal is problematic. But even more worrisome is the current policy in place for authorizing a nuclear strike.

Legally, the president of the United States has the sole authority to launch nuclear weapons, even if another country has not fired them at us first. This means that President Trump, or any of his successors, could simply wake up tomorrow and order a nuclear attack. Congress couldnt stop him.

The Supreme Court wouldnt be able to block the order either. In theory, the military officers in charge of implementing the order could reject it, but such a refusal is highly unlikely and would amount to mutiny.

As Americans, we pride ourselves on democratic institutions. We fought a war of independence against a king to ultimately establish a system resting on checks and balances. Our Constitution meticulously separates power to avoid any one person or entity having complete control.

But when it comes to launching the most powerful tools of destruction in the history of mankind, the United States is an absolute monarchy.

Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution specifically grants the United States Congress the power to declare war. By any measure, initiating a nuclear strike, with the ability of just one weapon to annihilate an entire population center, amounts to an act of warfare.

It is time for Congress to formally retain its war-making prerogative. Senator Ed MarkeyEd MarkeyWarren, Dems accuse Trump of ethics violations Bring Democracy to America's nuclear weapons Overnight Tech: Dems vow to fight for net neutrality | FCC chief defends changes to internet program | Uber sues Seattle MORE (D-Mass.) and Representative Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) recently introduced a bill that would bring democracy to nuclear weapons policy.

If passed, Congress would have to issue a declaration of war before the president can initiate a nuclear first-strike. This sensible bill respects the delegated powers of Congress and vastly reduces the risk of serious nuclear miscalculation or accident. It deserves broad support and should become law as soon as possible.

Importantly, the concern is not partisan. The bill was first introduced in September 2016, at a time when a Democrat controlled the Oval Office and the Democratic candidate was widely considered to be the clear frontrunner for the presidency.

Still, critics may argue that granting Congress nuclear authority creates serious uncertainty. If the United States is under nuclear attack, what if Congress is not in session? Even so, could the legislative body vote quickly enough before Washington is lost? T

hese are valid points and the Markey-Lieu bill answers them in full. If the legislation passes, the President will still have the power to unilaterally order an attack, but only if an enemy has certifiably launched a nuclear strike against the United States. In all other scenarios, Congress must voice its approval.

Numerous national security leaders from former Vice President Joe BidenJoe BidenBring Democracy to America's nuclear weapons Conway's ethics foul would get you fired in an Obama White House DNC chair hopeful runs in face of faction fight MORE to former Secretary of Defense William Perry to former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff James Cartwright have noted that there are few, if any, conceivable scenarios where the United States would be forced to launch a nuclear weapon first.

But even if such a decision was necessary, it should be done with the support of our democratic institutions. One person, no matter who it is, should never have the singular authority to end civilization on a whim.

Former Congressman John Tierney represented Massachusetts sixth congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives for 18 years. He currently serves as Executive Director of Council for a Livable World, a Washington, D.C. based non-profit organization that promotes policies to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons and to minimize the risk of war.

The views of contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.

Read more here:
Bring Democracy to America's nuclear weapons | TheHill - The Hill (blog)