Firing of Whistleblowing Emergency Room Doctor Ming Lin By Blackstone-Owned TeamHealth Demonstrates Outsized Role of Private Equity in Hospital Staffing — Yves Smith

However, the furor over the mistreatment of Dr. Lin did largely manage to skip over the question of how TeamHealth [owned by Blackstone] is even legally in the position to effectively provide hospital services when they are not licensed to do so. Several groups protested Dr. Lin’s ouster and one, the American Academy of Emergency Medicine, focused squarely on this issue.

Similar to insurance companies approving and denying care prescribed by physicians. Screwing with provision is one thing but practicing medicine without a license is another.

WTF?

Naked Capitalism
Firing of Whistleblowing Emergency Room Doctor Ming Lin By Blackstone-Owned TeamHealth Demonstrates Outsized Role of Private Equity in Hospital Staffing

Yves Smith

Rohan Grey — Administering Money: Coinage, Debt Crises, and the Future of Fiscal Policy

Abstract

The power to coin money is a fundamental constitutional power and central element of fiscal policymaking, along with spending, taxing, and borrowing. However, it remains neglected in constitutional and administrative law, despite the fact that money creation has been central to the United States’ fiscal capacities and constraints since at least1973, when it abandoned convertibility of the dollar into gold. This neglect is particularly prevalent in the context of debt ceiling crises, which emerge when Congress fails to grant the executive sufficient borrowing authority to finance spending in excess of taxes. In such instances, prominent legal and economic scholars have argued that the President should choose the “least unconstitutional option” of breaching the debt ceiling, rather than impeding on Congress’s even more fundamental powers to tax and spend. However, this view fails to consider a fourth, arguably more constitutional option: minting a high value coin under an obscure provision of the Coinage Act, and using the proceeds to circumvent the debt ceiling entirely. Reintroducing coinage into our fiscal discourse raises novel and interesting questions about the broader nature of, and relationship between “money” and “debt.” It also underscores how legal debates over fiscal policy implicate broader social myths about money. As we enter the era of digital currency, creative legal solutions like high value coinage have the potential to serve as imaginative catalysts that enable us to collectively develop new monetary myths that better fit our modern context and needs.

The platinum coin redux.

Rohan Grey
Administering Money: Coinage, Debt Crises, and the Future of Fiscal Policy

China’s academics tackle the ‘Big Brother’ state — Gordon Watts

I don't have a big problem with this, which may surprise some since I self-identify as a libertarian of the left. How can this be consistent with personal freedom?

The reason I don't have a big problem with it is three-fold. First, new technology will be used. End of discussion. The second reason is related to this. China is up-front about it and the West is not. There is virtually "total information awareness" in the West in the newly emerging surveillance state owing to the proliferation of technology.

This means that Chinese people know what they face, and many Westerners do not realize the level of scrutiny to which they are exposed. We know this from leaks.

When one knows the extent of a problem the problem can be addressed. When one doesn't and those responsible are hidden behind a wall of secrecy there is little that can be done specifically.

I am also aware that there are vast cultural differences among peoples and the Western presumption of a single "human nature" that accords with Western views is philosophically untenable. As a result, peoples that have a long history of social living rather than a short history of a frontier society that no longer exists are likely to have different worldviews, different ways of organizing experience, and different value systems.

A chief objective of left libertarians is to resolve paradoxes arise from the trifecta of liberty, equality, and solidarity in society. Liberty cannot entail license, for example. Where and how to draw the lines based on criteria is a chief issue in political theory and practice.

The third factor is scale. Societies are now so large as to be difficult to manage but some governance is required to prevent anarchy in the sense of chaos. This is now a primary challenge as some countries populations exceed hundreds of millions. 

Why is this particularly important. Because the priorities of government are security, welfare and general well-being in that order. Maintaining security in a large-scale society is a huge challenge in itself and it is complicated by the the need for liberty and privacy. This involves difficult political choices by leaders that know they will be held to account for lapses in security.

So instead of getting all idealistic, a sense of proportion must be established in order to address emerging challenges in contemporary complex adaptive social systems. People should look to their own locale, region, and nation, as well as take the newly emerging global society into account rather than obsess over what others are doing and choices they are making.

This is difficult for Americans owing to American exceptionalism, one aspect of which is the assumption that the whole world should either emulate America or be forced to do so, which is, of course, illiberal in the extreme when violence is involved. At the same time, Americans in general cannot agree on what "American" actually means. 

Instead, let's look at social, political and economic issues systematically. This requires achieving harmony, which the Chinese culture values most highly.

Asia Times
China’s academics tackle the ‘Big Brother’ state

Gordon Watts

Alex Acosta let the cat out of the bag: the Justice Department knew all about the Jeffrey Epstein Florida plea deal — Robert Willman

Jeffrey Epstein was being protected. The process and communications that accomplished it, and who did it, are not yet known.

The media has reported none of this, although the court documents are available and Robert Willman provides references to them.

Another case of a double standard of justice. Now the question is how far will it go, or will it be buried with the rest of the bodies.

Sic Semper Tyrannis
Alex Acosta let the cat out of the bag: the Justice Department knew all about the Jeffrey Epstein Florida plea deal

Robert Willman

Life-Altering Copyright Lawsuits Could Come to Regular Internet Users Under a New Law Moving in the Senate — Ernesto Falcon

Intellectual "property."

Electronic Frontier Foundation
Life-Altering Copyright Lawsuits Could Come to Regular Internet Users Under a New Law Moving in the Senate

Ernesto Falcon | Legislative Counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation with a primary focus on intellectual property and open Internet issues.

John Kiriakou — Brennan and Clapper Should Not Escape Prosecution

Recently declassified documents show that the former CIA director and former director of national intelligence approved illegal spying on Congress and then classified their crime. They need to face punishment, writes John Kiriakou.

Consortium News

Brennan and Clapper Should Not Escape Prosecution

John Kiriakou

Nadeem Badshah — Guernsey resident halts roadworks with ancient plea

Of interest.

The Guardian
Guernsey resident halts roadworks with ancient plea

Nadeem Badshah

Brian Terrell — Two Interrogations, Gina Haspel and Adolf Eichmann

Double standard of justice?

Counterpunch
Two Interrogations, Gina Haspel and Adolf Eichmann

Brian Terrell, co-coordinator for Voices for Creative Nonviolence

Jon Schwartz — Donald Trump Ordered Syria Strike Based on a Secret Legal Justification Even Congress Can’t See

On Friday night, President Trump ordered the U.S. military to conduct a bombing attack against the government of Syria without congressional authorization. How can this be constitutional, given the fact that Article I, Section 8 of America’s founding document declares that “The Congress shall have Power … To declare War”?

The deeply bizarre and alarming answer is that Trump almost certainly does have some purported legal justification provided to him by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel — but no one else, including Congress, can read it.

The Office of Legal Counsel is often called the Supreme Court of the executive branch, providing opinions on how the president and government agencies should interpret the law.

We know that Trump received a top secret OLC opinion justifying the previous U.S. strike on Syria on April 6, 2017. Friday’s bombing undoubtedly relied on the same memo or one with similar reasoning.… 

It is not unprecedented for the OLC’s reasoning to be classified. Over 20 percent of its opinions between 1998 and 2013 have been secret....

Sure looks like dictatorship to me. But, hey, I am not a lawyer.

It's bipartisan anyway.

In 1950 President Truman sent hundreds of thousands of troops to Korea to fight an extraordinarily brutal war without any authorization from Congress. Instead, his administration claimed he had the power to do this because Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution says that the president “shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.” Therefore, “the President’s power to send the Armed Forces outside the country is not dependent on Congressional authority.”...

This perspective on presidential power eventually become dogma for the U.S. hard right. Congress in fact did authorize the Gulf War in 1991, but Dick Cheney, who was then Secretary of Defense, believed that this was totally unnecessary, and indeed later claimed the George H.W. Bush administration had the power to go to war even if Congress had voted the resolution down. “We had the Truman precedent from the Korean crisis of 1950,” Cheney explained. “From a constitutional standpoint we had all the authority we needed.”...

So the general outlines of Trump’s legal basis for Friday’s bombing are fairly clear. There also are truly extreme. As Jack Goldsmith, one of the heads of the OLC during the Bush administration, has said, it’s a perspective that “places no limit at all on the president’s ability to use significant military force unilaterally.”

That would be bad enough, of course, if everything were out in the open. But at least then it could be debated on specifics, rather than supposition. Instead, we have allowed the Constitution to be eviscerated to the point that not only does the president have nearly unlimited war powers, we can’t even say exactly why.

So what do you think — dictatorship, or not?

The Intercept
Donald Trump Ordered Syria Strike Based on a Secret Legal Justification Even Congress Can’t See

Jon Schwartz

Kara Love — If John Bolton Is Right, Pearl Harbor Was Perfectly Legal

"Preemptive war."

Counterpunch
If John Bolton Is Right, Pearl Harbor Was Perfectly Legal

Kara Love, attorney

Intel Today — Chief Judge Colleen McMahon: CIA Disclosures To One Are Disclosures To All

The CIA claims that it can hand over classified information to some — ‘very friendly’ — journalists and still pretend the information has not been made public. Chief Judge Colleen McMahon just made it clear and simple for the Agency: “You cannot have your cake and eat it too.”

Chief Judge McMahon ruled that the CIA can not have it both ways. The agency can not hand classified information to one journalist, and then tell another it can not disclose the same information it already made public, even if in a very limited fashion. No discussion. Full Stop....

Intel Today
Chief Judge Colleen McMahon: CIA Disclosures To One Are Disclosures To All

L

Official identification in China and the US

Different approaches to official ID.

RT
Social network profile to become official ID in China

Travel & Leisure
Driver Licenses From Nine States Won’t Be Valid IDs for Domestic Flights in 2018

Diane Coyle — 'Free' markets

The rhetoric of ‘free markets’ is misleading.

I certainly agree with this last point, as does anybody who (like me) has spent some time as an economic regulator (the UK Competition Commission in my case). Modern economies are highly regulated, and that goes for the Anglo-Saxons as much as anyone else.

The Enlightened Economist

Free’ markets
Diane Coyle | freelance economist and a former advisor to the UK Treasury. She is a member of the UK Competition Commission and is acting Chairman of the BBC Trust, the governing body of the British Broadcasting Corporation

Raúl Carrillo — Hy Minsky, Low Finance: Modern Money, Civil Rights, and Consumer Debt

Lawyer and Monder Money Network director Raúl Carrillo's presentation at the MMT conference. Must-read for all interested in MMT.

(1) First, I’d like to impress upon folks a theme that I’ll be stressing throughout the conference: when it comes to the economy, law is not merely a governing force (as many on the right would have economists believe) nor a reflective force (as many on the left are inclined to think). It is also a constitutive force. What I mean by that is that the law doesn’t just intervene into the economy on the back end, and it doesn’t merely reflect deeper forces in the economy either. Rather, a lot of the economic concepts we talk about not only have a particular meaning in the context of specific legal parameters, but they only exist given the deeper architecture of legal regimes, in the sense of systems design. I’m going to do my best to articulate what that means and what that looks like when it comes to consumer finance.

(2) Second, I’m going to talk about how people actually experience the government’s failure to sufficiently spend money for public purpose. People don’t experience the absence of MMT-insights as policy failures in a grand sense. They experience it as personal pain. Over time, that pain can become chronic, but at first, it’s acute. For some of us, it’s devalued assets, houses, cars, etc., but most people in this country live paycheck-to-paycheck — or no-paycheck-to-no-paycheck — and thus experience the survival constraint pain on the liability side, where their debt is expounded, compounded, and sometimes straight-up fabricated. And within this group…there is what we call “disparate impact” in the legal world. As Sandy Darity, Darrick Hamilton, and other fellow travelers consistently point out, for many folks on the periphery, especially people of color who lack intergenerational wealth, the lack of MMT informed-policy means permanent austerity and perpetual depression.

With that in mind, we must cultivate a way to talk about Modern Money from the bottom-up and from the outside-in. We have to draw maps from people’s suffering to the macro failures. I personally think we can do this best by talking about (1) consumer debt, (2) criminal justice debt (which Prof. Harris is going to cover), and (3) taxes (which Prof. McCluskey will discuss).…

Modern money is a legal institution first and foremost, as chartalism, or the theory of state money, makes clear. There is no "natural money." Money-use, initially as credit, grew out of informal custom and was later was institutionalized formally in law. and The constitution and operation of this now highly formalized legal institution has vast social, political, and economic implications, especially considering that it can be captured by special interests through a political process involving asymmetric power.

New Economic Perspectives
Hy Minsky, Low Finance: Modern Money, Civil Rights, and Consumer Debt
Raúl Carrillo, staff attorney at New Economy Project, an economic justice non-profit in New York City

Awara — Simple Tips That Will Help You Choose the Best Accounting Company in Russia

While doing business in Russia, you might have already learned the easy or the hard way that local accounting principles significantly differ from Western practices due to requirements of Russian law.

Accounting is institutional and its rules are determined by institutional arrangements that are generally part of the legal structure in modern societies.

This can make comparison of data difficult in different jurisdictions.

Awara
Simple Tips That Will Help You Choose the Best Accounting Company in Russia

DAPL Company Levels RICO Charges Against Greenpeace — Dimitri Lascaris interviews Greenpeace USA General Counsel Thomas Wetterer

Upping the ante in the environmental wars.

TRNN
DAPL Company Levels RICO Charges Against GreenpeaceDimitri Lascaris interviews Greenpeace USA General Counsel Thomas Wetterer

Madeleine Sheehan Perkins — A grand jury investigation is underway in the Trump-Russia probe — here's how they work

Backgrounder.

Business Insider
A grand jury investigation is underway in the Trump-Russia probe — here's how they work
Madeleine Sheehan Perkins

Raúl Carrillo — What Modern Monetary Theory Can Teach Us about Criminal Justice

Currency issuers v. currency users.  Good article in many ways relating MMT to the law.

Tropics of Meta

What Modern Monetary Theory Can Teach Us about Criminal Justice

Raúl Carrillo, attorney and board member of the Modern Money Network

A Baseless Justification for War in Syria — Dennis J. Bernstein interviews Francis Boyle

U.S. government officials, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., claim the current U.S. authority to mount military operations in Iraq and Syria is legally based on the Authorization for the Use of Military Force [AUMF] declaration to go after Al Qaeda and related terror groups after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. But how does that cover the recent U.S. attacks on Syrian government forces that have been battling both Al Qaeda and its spinoff, Islamic State?

Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law, asserts that the recent U.S. shoot-down of a Syrian government jet inside Syria on June 18 was not only illegal under international law but amounts to an impeachable act by President Trump.

In an interview with Flashpoints’ Dennis J. Bernstein, Professor Boyle said, “What the U.S. government is getting away with here is incredible.” Boyle also talked to Bernstein about the questionable Russia-gate investigation and the darker history behind Special Prosecutor Robert Swan Mueller III, the former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Dennis Bernstein: Will Syria’s hot war and the recent U.S. bombings there lead us into a hot war with Russia? Well, the generals are saying this shoot-down in Syria is legal. You want to jump into this?

Francis Boyle: You know Dunford doesn’t have a law degree that I’m aware of. But, of course, still the Pentagon is going to try to justify whatever war crimes it can. They always do.

Clearly the U.S. invasion, which we have done, and now repeated military attacks against Syria constitutes a Nuremberg crime against peace, and in violation of the Nuremberg charter, judgment and principles, and, of course, a violation of the United Nations’ charter. [It is] an act of aggression as defined by, oh even the new element of the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court that is not yet in force. But it has a definition based upon the 1974 definition of aggression which the World Court found to be customary international law in the very famous Nicaraguan case when it applied it against Nicaragua....

Quite an interview. Professor Boyle unloads.

Consortium News
A Baseless Justification for War in Syria

Dennis J. Bernstein interviews Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law

Brett Heino — The Great Leveler: Capitalism and Competition in the Court of Law

There are few components of a capitalist society that penetrate as deeply and pro-foundly into the lives of the people as law. Whole swathes of social life, ranging from the labour–capital relationship, the make-up of the family, the regulation of crime and the relationship of citizens to one another and the state (to name a few) are structured and governed by the legal form. Capitalism is, in short, legalized to a degree that is historically unprecedented. Given this reality, it is both surprising and disappointing that sophisticated Marxist analyses of law are uncommon. Many attempts fall apart in the always-difficult exercise of articulating theoretical rigour with empirical sensitivity. Against this backdrop, Brett Christophers’ The Great Leveler: Capitalism and Competition in the Court of Law stands out as a fine example of both the method and the fruits of a successful effort at such an articulation....

As world capitalism continues to change and evolve, we must understand the roles played in this process by the full gamut of economic, political and cultural institutions, including the law. The Great Leveler stands as a beacon for those of us who have been arguing for law to be taken to the heart of political-economic study.

Neoliberalism, which promotes privatization and deregulation, is very much engaged with law and law-making as a political theory based chiefly on economic liberalism and political conservatism. Economic liberalism holes that property relations should be free of government intrusion, and political conservatism holds that ownership of property is evidence of the ability to govern, which President Trump just affirmed in his appointing billionaires to cabinet level positions. Also strong features of this are lobbying and the revolving door.

Progress in Political Economy

The Great Leveler: Capitalism and Competition in the Court of Law

Brett Heino