The World and Everything in It: January 29, 2024

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like us. I'm Terry Dehart in Schoolcraft, Michigan. I'm a volunteer working with data at SIL International, helping to enable Bible translation worldwide. I'm blessed by my wife of 42 years, our four children and 10 grandchildren. I hope you enjoy today's program.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! The Supreme Court hears the case of a man who’s pushing back on government fees to landowners for developing their own property. 

SHEETZ: If everybody would jump in and start fighting back against the abuse of government it’s gonna get back to the way this country used to be.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also today: the Monday Moneybeat. Economic growth is back to pre-pandemic levels. Maybe we dodged the recession bullet?

And the WORLD History Book. Today, remembering the liberation of Auschwitz:

ANTÓNIO GUTERRES: Every year on this day, we honor the memory of the victims of the Holocaust.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, January 29th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

REICHARD: Time now for the news. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: U.S. troops killed by Iran-backed groups » President Biden is vowing to strike back after a deadly attack in the Middle East that killed at least three American troops and wounded dozens. Iran-backed militants reportedly carried out the drone strike on an outpost in northeast Jordan.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General C.Q. Brown says the Pentagon is providing President Biden with military options.

BROWN: As I provide advice and we think about the approach we take, we want to ensure that we take away capability while we protect our forces — at the same time, not have this broaden into a much wider conflict.

But retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, a former national security adviser to Vice President Mike Pence says the United States has pulled its punches for too long.

KELLOGG: I do not believe that they have got any option but to go into Iran and attack Iranian targets. All of these attacks on American forces in the Middle East, they’re Iranian-backed. 

Biden said the United States “will hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner (of) our choosing.”

Militants have carried out roughly 150 attacks against US forces in the Middle East since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

Texas razor wire / Texas-Biden admin feud latest » In south Texas a standoff between state officials and the Biden administration continues at the border.

Federal authorities have been cutting razor wire that the state placed along the border to deter illegal crossings from Mexico.

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick:

PATRICK: What we’re doing in Texas works. For the Biden administration to come in and cut the wire when we’re having success makes no sense to anyone, even the rank-and-file Border Patrol on the border that we work very well with.

Razor wire is still up in a park in Eagle Pass, Texas, that once served as an entry point for waves of migrants.

State officials have blocked the Border Patrol from the park and refused the Biden administration’s requests for access.

Senate border/Ukraine deal latest » Sen. Chris Murphy, a key negotiator working on a bipartisan bill to tackle the border crisis told CNN on Sunday,

MURPHY: We do have a bipartisan deal. We’re finishing the text right now.

He said a bill could come to the Senate floor in the days ahead.

President Biden says he would be willing to close the border, if Congress would act first.

BIDEN: It would also give me, as president, the emergency authority to shut down the border until it can get back under control. If that bill were the law today, I’d shut down the border right now and fix it quickly.

Republican lawmakers say Biden needs to act now. Senator Rick Scott of Florida told Fox News Sunday:

SCOTT: There’s laws now. Trump secured the border. Biden decided to opened the border under the exact same laws. We don’t need a new bill, we something to enforce, to force Biden to comply with the law.

A compromise Senate bill could face an uphill battle in the GOP-controlled House.

Both parties have agreed to tie border security together with funding for aid to Ukraine. A Senate bill would fund additional aid.

Stoltenberg / Ukraine on Russia crash claims » And the war in Ukraine will be a key focus this week when NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg arrives in Washington. The secretary general will meet with lawmakers and stress the urgency of beating back Russia’s invasion.

STOLTENBERG: It is important that Putin doesn’t get his way in Ukraine, because that will embolden other authoritarian powers. Today it’s Ukraine — tomorrow it may be Taiwan.

He said the war is getting difficult for Russia, and the West cannot let up now.

Trump, Haley campaigning » America’s role in Ukraine and elsewhere will be a big topic of debate on the campaign trail in the months ahead. Donald Trump campaigned in Las Vegas over the weekend.

TRUMP: 2024 is our final battle. With you at my side, we will demolish the deep state. We will expel the warmongers. We will expel them.

He added, “we’re going to drive out the globalists.”

Trump has applied that label to his only remaining GOP rival … his former ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley.

HALEY: I was proud to serve America in his administration. The problem is, chaos follows him.

Campaigning in her home state of South Carolina, Haley said “We can’t be a country in disarray in a world on fire.”

Avian flu impact in California » An outbreak of the bird flu is ravaging poultry farms in California.

Mike Weber is co-owner of Sunrise Farms just north of San Francisco.

WEBER: Unbelievable what’s just happened. The town that we live in, Petaluma, is known as the egg basket of the world. It’s devastating to see that egg basket go up in flames.

When Weber got word last month that his chickens tested positive for avian flu, his farm had to slaughter its entire flock of more than a half-million egg-laying hens. The government requires that to stop the virus from spreading.

Experts say bird flu is spread to chickens by droppings from ducks, geese and other migratory birds.

A growing outbreak could push poultry product prices higher. 

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: the high court hears a case questioning fees landowners must pay the government for developing their own property. That’s ahead on Legal Docket. 

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s The World and Everything in It for this 29th day of January, 2024. We’re so glad you’ve joined us today. Good morning! I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST:  And I’m Mary Reichard. It’s time for Legal Docket.

Today, two oral arguments the Supreme Court heard this month. The first one involves an anti-terror tool known as the “No Fly List.” It grew out of the 9/11 terror attacks … and the list is compiled and maintained by the FBI.

What’s driving the case is the question of whether the list is being misused.

EICHER: The case is FBI versus Fikre.

Fourteen years ago, an American citizen named Yonas Fikre traveled on business from Oregon to Sudan.

While in Sudan’s capital Khartoum FBI agents approached him and asked about his association with a mosque back in Oregon. The agents told him that his name was on the “No Fly List” but they’d take him off if he’d become a government informant.

REICHARD: Fikre declined the deal and that left him stranded overseas. Being on that list meant he couldn’t take commercial flights to or from the U.S., or even fly over it.

So he traveled to the United Arab Emirates. But there he wound up in prison. And he says he was tortured, allegedly at the FBI’s request, and we have to stress, allegedly.

Five years passed before he could return to the U.S. on a private jet. Fikre says that time away ruined his marriage and damaged his reputation.

He eventually sued the FBI in federal court for violating his right to due process.

EICHER: It was at that point the FBI took him off the no-fly list, and because of that, then argued his case was moot.

But Fikre says the case isn’t moot.

And that’s the question for the justices to answer. His lawyer, Gadeir Abbas:

ABBAS: He doesn't know why he was listed. He doesn't know what might cause him to be relisted. He doesn't know if the next time he worships at a mosque or travels abroad he might be relisted, massively disrupting his life once again. Mr. Fikre is peaceful, a law-abiding U.S. citizen. He has a live controversy against the government and seeks only to litigate that case on the merits. That's it.

REICHARD: The FBI says the opposite. Here is Assistant to the Solicitor General Sopan Joshi:

JOSHI: He hasn't been on the list in eight years. And he won't be put back on the list in the future based on the currently available information. That makes it absolutely clear that his return to the list for the same reasons he was put on it initially can't reasonably be expected to recur. …

What Respondent wants is vindication for his past placement.

Justice Neil Gorsuch wasn’t so sure about that.

JUSTICE GORSUCH: An American citizen normally has a right to what’s been called every man’s evidence against him. That’s due process. That’s a pillar of our democracy. And, here, the government says, no, you don’t get that evidence.

EICHER: But government lawyer Joshi argued the FBI issued a sworn statement that it won’t do it again under the same facts. The agency would use a totality of circumstances to assess risk.

That didn’t satisfy Justice Elena Kagan:

JUSTICE KAGAN: Well, I don't think that that helps you very much. Let's say it's a totality of the circumstances. There are five circumstances. Then he stopped doing one of them, and you thought now there are only four circumstances, and it was the fifth one that pushed us over the edge, so we're going to take him off the list. And now he starts doing the fifth again. So now we say, well, the totality of the circumstances, he's back on the list. I don't think it really helps in the end that it's a multi-factor inquiry. At some point, you're making a judgment about conduct that puts you on the list. And the problem here is that you're -- you basically just admitted, conceded, that the same conduct, if he participated in it again, could put him back on the list. So, once that's true, I don't really see where the mootness argument is.

REICHARD: I don’t think the FBI is going to get a pass on this one. If a majority decides in favor of Fikre that his case isn’t moot, he’ll be able to proceed with the merits of his case.

EICHER: Now for the final oral argument today, this one called Sheetz versus County of El Dorado, California.

This case is about a man who set out to build a modest retirement home on his property near Lake Tahoe. The man’s name is George Sheetz. But El Dorado county conditioned a building permit on Sheetz paying for what it called “traffic impact mitigation.” The money was supposed to pay for any road expansion.

There is no dispute in this case that a property owner can be required to offset costs arising from private development.

REICHARD: What is disputed is the amount, $23,000 and whether this fee scheme violates the man’s rights under the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause. The Fifth Amendment provides that “private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation.” And the 14th Amendment says no state shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

EICHER: Sheetz paid the fee under protest, then sued to get his money back.

His lawyer, Paul Beard, argued his client faced an impossible choice: the taking of more than $23,000 or the ability to use his land. As such, the court should apply heightened scrutiny to the county’s actions.

BEARD: Such review is needed to ensure that the government is not committing a taking in the guise of the police power to mitigate for land use impacts. Upholding the lower court's decision would just invite the government to monetize across the country all of their permit exactions and to preset legislative fees in order to escape heightened review.

REICHARD: He clarified that it’s not the permit fee itself that’s the problem.

BEARD: Everyone loves good roads and schools and public infrastructure, so the government certainly has many tools at its disposal, including taxes, to pay for those. What we're saying is that the government can't select a few. The one or two or a few property owners who happen to need a permit at any given time, to select them to bear the burdens of paying for that public infrastructure.

He pointed out Supreme Court precedent in two cases called Nollan and Dolan. Those decisions say the government may not deny benefits to a person because he exercises a constitutional right. So before issuing a conditional permit, the government must prove two things.

First, that there is an “essential nexus” between the permit fee and the building project. That is, a relationship between the private party’s activity and the burden placed on the community as a result of that activity.

EICHER: Second, there must be a “rough proportionality” between the building project and any impact it has on traffic. Meaning, the fee has to be in line with the actual burden placed on the government as a result of the building project.

The lawyer for the property owner says the county failed to show evidence of either nexus or proportionality.

REICHARD: For the other side, county lawyer Aileen McGrath argued this is much ado… about nothing new:

MCGRATH: Like countless local governments across the country, the County of El Dorado charges a fee to developers to address the impacts of new development using a predetermined schedule.

It pays for only those improvements necessary to alleviate increased traffic from new development. Neither precedent nor principle supports, much less compels, applying Nollan/Dolan's individualized test to those programmatic fees. In centuries' worth of precedent, this Court has reiterated that governments can charge fees to property owners, such as special assessments to fund public improvements and user fees to fund government services. This Court has always held that those fees, which are indistinguishable from the fee at issue, are not takings.

Justice Samuel Alito pushed back on that, citing those Nollan and Dolan precedents used by the other side:

JUSTICE ALITO: Counsel, I -- I -- I'm puzzled by your statements about what the court below held. It said over and over again that Nollan/Dolan do not apply to legislation.

No, she argued, that’s not the distinguishing feature. The county’s fee is just like property taxes and user fees. So, she argued, let the current process remain:

MCGRATH: Forcing local governments to justify a programmatic fee on a parcel-by-parcel basis would disrupt, if not destroy, their ability to fund capital-intensive infrastructure necessary to serve new development, bringing such development to a grinding halt. The Takings Clause does not compel that sea change.

EICHER: For perspective, the Wall Street Journal reported that the average impact fee on single-family homes in 2019 was around $14,000. In California? Two and a half times that amount, around $37,000.

For some, this is tantamount to extortion. Some local governments condition permits on ride-share programs or building day-care centers, to use two examples. But California and these other states have decided “nexus” and “proportionality” requirements don’t apply to impact fees.

REICHARD: Yet it wasn’t all smooth sailing for the disgruntled home builder. Listen to this exchange between Chief Justice John Roberts and lawyer Beard:

JUSTICE ROBERTS: It's not a broadly applicable tax or -- or fee? But -- but I don't see how that's a significant distinction because it's like tolls. I mean, the tolls are only assessed on people who drive on that road. And yet, that doesn't suggest that the tolls are a taking.

BEARD: Well, and that's because -- and they may be a taking, so we don't want to concede that point. But it's -- a user fee, again, is reimbursement for a product or service used.

Speaking for himself, Sheetz found his case to be part of a much larger picture.

SHEETZ: And there’s a lot of other things going on that are just out of control. And I think if everybody would jump in and start fighting back against government and the abuse of government it’s gonna get back to the way this country used to be.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket!

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: The Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It's time now to talk business markets and the economy with financial analyst and advisor, David Bahnsen. David is head of the wealth management firm, the Bahnsen Group, and he is here now. David, good morning.

DAVID BAHNSEN, GUEST: Well, good morning, Nick, good to be with you.

EICHER: Well, the final GDP report from 2023 is in, David. It comes in at 3.1% for the year. Is that not the kind of number we've striven for economic growth in the threes instead of the ones or the twos? In fact, were we not under 1% just last year?

BAHNSEN: Well, that's exactly what we want, although what we want is to have it year over year over year - you want a repeated pattern of 3% plus real GDP growth, and to get it in 2023 is wonderful. It's obviously anti-recessionary. And yet, the long-term trend line, unfortunately, is not improved. I think that certain parts of the real economic growth of '23 come out of real economic growth in '24 some of the inventory side, and also the low business investment. And so I do think that we're going to be avoiding a recession. And I do think that nevertheless, we're going to be going below 3% this year. So it's a mixed bag in the sense that the trendline continues to concern me. But the 2023 number is very, very good.

And if I could just very quickly comment, I believe that the 2017 to 2019 economy, that would have then become a 2020 economy apart from what ended up happening with COVID, is what we're seeing right now in ‘23. I think that there was just a really structural improvement that came from the repatriation of a significant amount, about a trillion and a half dollars of foreign profits coming back on shore. I think a lower corporate income rate incentivized a lot of business activity. I think that you did see a great pickup in CapEx [capital expenditures] in 2018. These things fertilize the economic environment to some degree. And it became very difficult for any economist who has any integrity at all, to properly analyze these things because you have one of the most monumental news events of the last 100 years interrupt economic calculation for almost three years. 2020 through '22, became this sort of really significant footnote. And now I think a lot of people were caught off-sides by the fact that the economic growth in ‘23 and heading into ‘24 looks more positive.

And so what's really interesting, paradoxically, especially for those of us who tend to view things through a partisan lens, is the two people that might be upset about what I'm saying, are those that: A. don't like who was president in 2017 through '19, when a lot of these really good things were happening, or [B] people who don't like the President ‘23 and ‘24, when some of this economic growth is taking place. But really, when you divorce yourself from the political biases that everybody kind of has, to some degree, what I just said is extremely objectively true, economically, that there is a good economy right now in these categories that I'm talking about, regardless of who's president, and that a lot of the things that helped create that took place a number of years back, regardless who was president then.

EICHER: All right, well, per The Wall Street Journal: The Biden administration effectively froze the approval process for the export of liquefied natural gas.

This happened Friday. President Biden said the administration will pause export application reviews as it takes stock of the recent development that the US is the largest exporter of liquid natural gas in the world.

Biden’s statement said: “We will take a hard look at the impacts of LNG exports on energy costs, [on] America’s energy security, and [on] our environment. This pause on new LNG approvals sees the climate crisis for what it is: the existential threat of our time.” So what do you say about that, David?

BAHNSEN: Well, the first thing to say is that the biggest danger of it is the rhetoric that we are exporting more liquefied natural gas right now than we ever have. And the administration is well aware of the fact that there is a crisis to get the proper amount of fuel necessary to allies who are trading partners in both Asia and especially Europe, and that this was exacerbated by the Russia sanctions and the Putin invasion of Ukraine. The rhetoric of it, though, is playing footsies with naive extremism that's rooted in ignorance that they are well aware is untrue, that natural gas is resulting in a lower CO2 emission, that those who do not get LNG from us will then have to replace that need with coal and, to a lesser degree, crude oil. But both cases that emit more carbon, especially obviously, on the coal side. Natural gas is a better solution environmentally, economically and geopolitically. This is a hyper-ignorant decision.

The only comfort I take is I don't think they mean it for a second. This idea of we need to run a study - the EPA has run the study showing that the carbon emissions come significantly lower from greater use of natural gas. They already have some terminals built that have massively increased their output. We need more terminals built in Europe to receive liquefied natural gas. But you need to make the investment in new terminals now to feed what the growth need will be in 3, 5, 7, 10 years. So this is a really disappointing decision in the rhetoric.

But by the way, the idea that the oil and gas companies are upset about it, those who already own the export terminals, all their stocks flew higher after this announcement, because once again, all it does is bid up the value of the assets we already have when he threatens to not allow there to be any new assets. Terrible energy policy from the Biden administration.

EICHER: All right, David, before we go, let's define terms for this week. We've talked about this one a few times before, but it bears repeating, I think, because this concept in so many ways drives what we talked about last week monetary policy or the activities of the Federal Reserve, our central bank. So the term to define this week is the Phillips Curve.

BAHNSEN: The Phillips Curve is an economic theory that believes growth in the economy is inflationary, and therefore with economic growth comes more jobs, but therefore more inflation. And when you have less jobs, less inflation. It puts a relationship that is stable, but inverse, okay, between unemployment and inflation, and it is a hyper naive and disproven theory that the Federal Reserve right now---I attended lunch with Jay Powell in October, he said the Phillips Curve just doesn't seem to work anymore, it seems to be antiquated. I don't believe it has worked for 50 years. The 1970s was a period of high inflation and high unemployment where if the Phillips Curve was true, high unemployment should have created lower inflation. But fundamentally, the flaw comes because they don't understand that economic growth is not inflationary. Production of goods and services does not lead to more inflation. And so I believe that the Phillips Curve trying to make a relationship between unemployment and inflation is the best way to understand it. And the only place I'm aware of where this model is still taken seriously, is inside certain Ivy League universities.

EICHER: Ok, David Bahnsen is founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group.

David’s personal website is Bahnsen.com. His Dividend Cafe each week you can find at dividendcafe.com.

Thank you, David!

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, Nick.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, January 29th, Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, the WORLD History Book. Today, we include some difficult themes, so listeners with children nearby may want to hit pause and come back later.

EICHER: This past weekend marked the 79th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp. In a moment we’ll hear from the soviet cameraman first on the scene who filmed it. Also today, a few excerpts from Friday’s United Nations commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Here’s WORLD Radio Executive Producer Paul Butler.

PAUL BUTLER: Today we mark a somber anniversary: the day the Soviets cut through the barbed wire of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp.

VORONSOV: Before I entered the Auschwitz camp area I had already heard some things about it, but what I saw there was the most horrible thing I ever saw or filmed during the great patriotic war…

Alexander Voronsov was the first Soviet cameraman to film the atrocities of Auschwitz immediately following its liberation on January 27th, 1945. He appeared in the 1986 documentary: “The Liberation of Auschwitz.”

The Nazi’s turned the former Polish army barracks into a prisoner of war camp in 1939. Its initial detainees were mostly political dissidents. But between 1942 and 1944, the camp was the site of nearly a million Jewish murders—in addition to many other ethnic minority executions. Those not gassed died of starvation, disease, or during medical experiments.

VORONSOV: Behind the barbed wire fence stood hundreds of people. They looked at our soldiers with fear in their eyes, because they didn't know that these were Soviet soldiers liberators, so they were expecting the worst.

In January 1945, the Nazi’s fearing defeat sent most of the camp's population on a death march to nearby Germany and Austria. When Soviet troops entered the camp to release those left behind, they were unprepared for what awaited them. Again cameraman Alexander Voronsov:

VORONSOV: There in front of our eyes was a horrible sight. A huge number of barracks. Many of them with practically no roof. In many barracks people were lying on bunks. They were practically skeletons covered with skin, their eyes staring blankly. Returning them to life was no easy matter.

The Soviets and Polish Red Cross began treating the 7,500 remaining prisoners. In searching the grounds they discovered more than 800,000 female garments, 370,000 men’s suits, 44,000 pairs of shoes, and 7 tons of human hair.

In 1947, Poland opened the camp as a memorial and museum—displaying many of the items to communicate the scale of human loss.

GUTERRES: Excellencies, dear friends…

For nearly 20 years, the United Nations General Assembly has marked January 27th as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres has come under fire in recent months for his comments regarding Israel’s response to the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7th. But on Friday he took a more conciliatory tone during this year’s holocaust commemoration. Here are a few excerpts of his speech. He began by addressing the holocaust survivors in attendance:

GUTERRES: I thank you for sharing those memories with us and we the world's all of us leaders and citizens if A responsibility to listen and to learn from what you have to say, and to act on it by condemning these terrible crimes against our common humanity by striving to eradicate anti semitism, and all forms of bigotry, hatred, and intolerance…

The anti semitism that fueled the Holocaust did not start with the Nazis, nor did it end with their defeat. The Holocaust was preceded by 1000s of years of discrimination, expulsion, exile and extermination, including by my own country, Portugal. Today, we are witnessing hate spreading at alarming speeds…It has moved from the margins to the mainstream, and Holocaust denial and distortion, are proliferating. It's up to all of us to defend the truth and to defend our common humanity. Working together, we must combat online lies and hate. We must promote Holocaust education as a critical part of our defense against ignorance, indifference and intolerance. And crucially, we must listen to survivors. And we must remember that demonization of the other and disdain for diversity is a danger to everyone. That no society is immune to intolerance and worse, and that bigotry against one group is bigotry against all.

And we must equally condemn all other forms of racism, prejudice and religious bigotry, including anti Muslim hatred and violence against minority Christian communities. Let us never be silent in the face of discrimination and never tolerant of intolerance. Let us speak out for human rights and the dignity of all. Let us never lose sight of each other's humanity and never let down our guards. To all [who] confront prejudice and persecution, I say clearly you are not alone…and to all those past and present who have had the courage to share their stories of the Holocaust so the world can know the truth… I say thank you. [APPLAUSE]

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Paul Butler.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: The U.S. cuts funding for a United Nations’ Palestinian development agency. It comes after learning that staff members were involved in Hamas’s October 7th attacks on Israel. We’ll talk about it with an expert.

And, songs for times of suffering. We’ll review an album by Christian artist, Praise Lubangu. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

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Go now in grace and peace.

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