Important headlines for January 4th:

Important headlines for January 4th:     

Bottom Line: These are stories you don't want to miss and my hot takes on them...   

Excerpt: Miami-Dade jails turned over an average of one immigration detainee per day to federal authorities during 2017, a pace set by the county's controversial decision to comply with President Donald Trump's administration.  

Hot Take: I realize I run the risk of sounding as though I'm the actual person from a parallel universe (rather than the characterization being used to describe police complying with the law and our legal system of governance). The only reason this type of activity is even newsworthy, let alone deemed by some to be controversial, is due to the defiance of local governments - mostly at the local but occasionally the state level deciding that they get to make up the laws and rules as they go. You know rather than actually complying with the law and that pesky constitution which contains a supremacy clause that clearly states that state and local laws can't contradiction or usurp the authority of the federal law.   

To be fair, the reason why we're slowly slipping into banana republic status, where state and local governments decide which laws they like and which ones they don't and pick and choose how they want to enforce them, is due to a lack of enforcement at the federal level. If you suddenly saw local officials being indicted for obstruction of justice - I have a feeling a lot of the nonsense would quickly come to an end. Somewhere along the way we've got to decide that we're either a country of laws that mean something or we're not. If we're not the union comes to an end and we see what happens at that point. As long as we're at least pretending to be a country that's not a lawless free-for all in the making there needs to be accountability under the law. Whether it's Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, whether it's marijuana or illegal immigration.  

It's controversial, and illegal, to not comply with the law. It's by definition not controversial to comply with the law. That's how bastardized this tangled web has become by abuses at the local level. In this case, Miami-Dade is doing what Miami-Dade has a legal obligation to do. That amounts to about 365 detainees being released to the feds a year. Got it. Back to you. 

Hot Take: This is about the most intelligent piece I've read to date on the midterm elections. Nothing in it is a revaluation, just some common sense. Folks that have become accustomed to my election analysis (which has proven to be correct in predicting the President and composition of Congress accurately every cycle since 2000) have asked me what's going to happen this fall. My response. No clue. It's way too early and there's not a single statistic or data point today that'll hold up definitively by November - save one (or technically two). 

History suggests: 38 midterm elections since the two-party system in 1862 and only three times has the President's party gained net Congressional seats. 1934 during FDR's administration, 1998 during Bill Clinton's administration and 2002 during George W. Bush's first term. So statistically there's only an 8% historical chance that Republicans would add to their numbers in the house and senate this year. So to put it another way there's a 92% historical chance of Democrats gaining ground this year. Otherwise every cycle is different. The candidates are different and the races that are up in the Senate are different. The Senate map is challenging for the Democrats (as an example). So there you have it and everything else you hear between now and at least the next seven months is mostly a bunch of noise.  

  • Here Come the Animal Spirits William Murchison, The American Spectator 

Excerpt: According to a New Year's Day New York Times story, business has become energized and optimistic: to the point of backing its hopes and ambitions with investment capital. 

Hot Take: On the surface the term "animal spirits" probably sounds pretty funny unless you have the historical, economic context for the saying. It's a real thing though. The thing that happens when people, companies are willing to expand, take additional risks and deploy capitol into the economy for those ventures and it's happening. Frankly it's been happening for at least a year. It's the reason for the lowest unemployment rate in seventeen years, best wage growth in over ten years and best overall economic growth in 12. Businesses feeling emboldened stepped up to the plate last year and helped drive the economy buoyed by lower regulation and the knowledge that the administration was an ally to business generally. With the tax cuts set to kick in here comes the next wave. There's lots of room and reason for optimism.  

Until tomorrow...


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