XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, talk.politics.misc   
   From: bks@panix.com   
      
   >>>> | Americans Are the Ones Paying for Tariffs, Study Finds   
      
   >>> | U.S. Manufacturing Is in Retreat and Trump's Tariffs Aren't   
   >>> | Helping   
      
    | ...   
    | I'm not a lawyer, but I talk to lawyers, and this isn't a   
    | difficult case on the merits. Trump is clearly wrong on   
    | both the letter and the spirit of the law. And when the   
    | Supreme Court held its hearing, the tenor of the questions,   
    | even from conservative justices, suggested that they   
    | recognized that the administration had no case.   
    |   
    | So why have we had three months of silence? Well, this   
    | isn't a difficult case on the merits, but it puts the six   
    | right-wing members of the Court between a rock and hard   
    | place, not intellectually, but personally.   
    |   
    | For a right-wing justice, ruling in the Trump   
    | administration's favor in such an open-and-shut case would   
    | amount to admitting that you're a pure partisan hack. And   
    | even the right-wing faction on the court is trying to   
    | maintain the fiction that it's still a deliberative body,   
    | not a MAGA rubber stamp.   
    |   
    | But to rule against the administration would be to hand   
    | Trump a humiliating defeat on one of his signature policy   
    | issues. It might also be very expensive. Tariffs aren't the   
    | revenue gusher Trump and his minions like to claim: Even   
    | after the Trump hikes in tariff rates, customs receipts are   
    | small compared with other sources of revenue and have made   
    | only a modest dent in the U.S. budget deficit. But losing   
    | that revenue and, worse, having to give it back would be a   
    | financial embarrassment.   
    | ...   
      
      
       --bks   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)