Jim-written Morning Jolts will go on hiatus from July 17 (this Friday) until July 24 as many of my colleagues and I journey on the National Review cruise to Alaska. Who Saw Uber as One of the Big, Defining Issues of 2016? Coming from Hillary today: In a speech Monday at the famously progressive New School in lower Manhattan, Clinton will lay out her economic theory of the case, and her main theory is that the incomes of "everyday Americans" have remained too low for too long. Clinton's aide said she will discuss some of the structural forces conspiring against sustainable wage growth, such as globalization, automation, and even consumer-friendly "sharing economy" firms like Uber and Airbnb that are creating new relationships between management and labor (and which now employ many Obama administration alumni). But she will argue that policy choices have contributed to the problem, and that she can fix it. Meanwhile, Mike Allen of Politico reports, "Jeb will hail an Uber on Thursday during a visit to San Francisco, where he'll talk about the importance of innovation and fostering disruptive technology to create high-paying jobs. Bush will argue that this is America's competitive advantage -- we shouldn't be stifling it to appease entrenched interests. He'll call that Hillary's path. Bush will also tour Thumback, a hot startup that helps users find professionals from painters to tutors to party planners." Elsewhere, Scott Walker officially jumps into the race today. Check out what he did two months ago: Late Friday night, Gov. Scott Walker announced that he signed a bill into law that creates statewide standards for rideshare companies like Uber and Lyft. The new law prohibits any local ordinances governing rideshare or ride-hailing companies. Instead, the companies will be required to purchase a $5,000 state license, conduct driver background checks and also maintain liability insurance. And the law says drivers cannot discriminate against passengers based on their race, religion, sex or disability. Under the new law, ridesharing or "transportation network companies" (TNCs) must be licensed by the state Department of Safety and Professional Services. The measure says such companies are required to conduct local and national background checks, and it prohibits the employment of sex offenders, habitual traffic offenders, and people with drunken driving convictions. The companies will also be required to electronically transmit drivers' photos and license plate numbers to passengers. Local governments would be unable to regulate rideshare companies at all, but would be permitted to keep all their same regulations in place on firms such as taxi companies, which would have to compete with much more substantial regulations on them. Our Reihan Salam pointed out a little while back that Uber is a pretty fascinating Rorschach test on views of the economy: According to Benner, "people are attracted to on-demand gigs because more solid full-time work is still hard to come by in a U.S. economy that has rebounded for everyone but average workers." This is certainly one reason people are attracted to on-demand gigs. Yet there are other reasons as well. For example, a rising share of young adults are enrolled in higher education, and working part-time as an Uber driver or as an Instacart shopper or as a TaskRabbit errand-runner can be a convenient way to make a modest income while keeping unconventional hours. Similarly, one might want to devote most of one's time to raising children or caring for an aging parent while still earning some spending money. Even if the labor market continues to tighten, there will be many workers who will prize this kind of flexibility. Almost all of the on-demand employees Benner surveys are people with tragic stories. Almost all of those I've encountered have more optimistic ones. This could reflect our respective biases, or the regions in which we live. But it is foolish to deny that workers have a range of experiences with these services, not all of them negative. Hillary's speech will also call for "an infrastructure bank that could generate construction jobs while improving the competitiveness of the economy, and clean energy projects that reduce carbon emissions while putting people to work." Gee, no chance of cronyism in those giant spending projects, huh? Does a Giant Crop of Candidates Make It Harder for the GOP to Win in November? Remember when Jeb Bush's gigantic early fundraising was going to scare off other competitors? Boy, that didn't work, did it? Instead of a smaller field, we've got 17 competitors -- a swarm of options. Jeb, are you sure the giant fundraising total isn't working backwards? Attracting them, somehow? Doug Sosnik, a former advisor to Bill Clinton, argues that we're going to see most of these 17 well into next year: Lastly, in the post-Citizens United world of unlimited amounts of unregulated money flowing into our political system, there is very little motivation for candidates to get out of the race as long as at least one of their wealthy backers continues to fund their campaigns. In a nomination fight where the system makes it very difficult to secure the necessary delegates for victory, ideologically based candidates have every incentive to stay in the race for as long as possible to promote their views. And he makes the somewhat-less-convincing argument that this will cost the GOP the 2016 election: Working off of this thin [Electoral College] margin, how and when the Republican nomination fight is settled is likely to determine their chances of winning the presidency next year. The longer it takes Republicans to unite behind a common agenda and a nominee, the more likely that Democrats will be able—for the first time since 1940—to hold the White House for 12 consecutive years. It's hard to shake the feeling that a chunk of this field has intensely selfish motivations for jumping in and eating up additional resources, debate time, etc: Tony Fratto, a Washington consultant who worked for President George W. Bush, says there's far more than delusions motivating candidates. Beyond the generally easier mechanics of running for office, he says, there are all sorts of incentives to run that have nothing to do with actually being president. "You have the opportunity to become a personality in a relatively short period of time," says Fratto. "You get on the national stage, your name ID is elevated and that can translate into writing books, giving speeches and getting an opportunity to go on TV." Not to mention a potential job as vice president or in the Cabinet. Want to hear something depressing? Even in this giant field, none of the contenders has won a statewide race in a Democrat-leaning or swing state in a presidential election year: Even for those purple and blue state winners, presidential year electorates are fundamentally different than mid-term electorates. Presidential electorates are less white, younger, and more Democratic than mid-term electorates. And only one of the eight candidates who have previously won in blue or purple states has ever run statewide in a presidential election year. Jim Gilmore ran for Senate in Virginia in 2008 and lost by more than 30 percentage points. In fact, according to my calculations, of the 40 elections that the 17 announced or soon to announce GOP candidates have collectively run in at the state level (not all of them wins), only five of those contests were in presidential election years—Cruz was elected in Texas in 2012, Gilmore lost in Virginia in 2008, Graham won re-election in South Carolina in 2008, Santorum was re-elected in Pennsylvania in 2000, and Huckabee lost the Arkansas Senate race in 1992. None of the other 12 candidates has ever faced statewide voters in a presidential election year. Let's Have That Real Discussion about Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants We have real divisions in this country. But there sure as heck are folks who enjoy pouring gasoline on the fire. Megyn Kelly pointed out that some acts of violence get enormous attention from this White House, while others don't: Kate [Steinle]'s murder has since exploded into a national debate on illegal immigrants, sanctuary cities, and crime. With the White House ducking the issue of its own acquiescence in these cities' decision to flout the federal immigration laws which were duly enacted. When asked repeatedly this week to speak to this case, White House spokesman Josh Earnest declined to weigh in other than to refer folks to the Department of Homeland Security. A stark contrast to what we saw after Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson. A man we know was attacking a police officer at the time of his death. His funeral saw three Obama officials in attendance, his death drew comments from President Obama personally and his administration also sent in the DOJ and 40 FBI agents dispatched to Missouri after Michael Brown was killed. Where is the swarm of agents in San Francisco? Then there was Freddie Gray in Baltimore, a repeat drug offender who was killed in police custody. Here again his funeral was attended by three Obama administration officials and again the President spoke personally to Freddie Gray's death. And again sent the DOJ in to investigate. When Trayvon Martin was killed in Florida, the president spoke to his death which was later ruled to be in self-defense. But Katie Steinle, nothing. No comments, no swarm of FBI agents, no DOJ investigation, nothing. Why? How many people would riot if no one ever called for riots? How many people would riot if no one sought to justify and excuse them? The message from the White House was pretty clear after the Trayvon Martin shooting, Ferguson, and Baltimore: This is a legitimate reason for outrage, and we're as outraged as you are. The silence from the White House indicates Katie Steinle's murder is not a cause for outrage. And while Donald Trump made his comments about crimes committed by illegal immigrants from Mexico before Steinle's murder, the gang-tackling denunciation indicates that quite a few media voices believe that just bringing up the issue of crimes committed by illegal immigrants is somehow illegitimate or morally wrong. On a related note, the FBI collects statistics on every crime committed in the country, but for some reason, it's astoundingly hard to find data on how many were committed by illegal immigrants. Here's a report from the General Accounting Office in 2011: The number of criminal aliens in federal prisons in fiscal year 2010 was about 55,000, and the number of SCAAP criminal alien incarcerations in state prison systems and local jails was about 296,000 in fiscal year 2009 (the most recent data available), and the majority were from Mexico. 
State prison data indicated that 66 percent of their illegal-immigrant prisoners were from Mexico, and 70 percent of illegal immigrant prisoners in local jails. Wait, there's more: From fiscal years 2003 through 2009, the number of SCAAP criminal alien incarcerations in state prison systems and local jails increased from about 220,000 in fiscal year 2003 to about 296,000 in fiscal year 2009. Specifically, the number of SCAAP criminal alien incarcerations in state prison systems increased by about 25 percent and the number of SCAAP criminal alien incarcerations in local jails increased by about 40 percent. Here's the good news in that report: "Of the nearly 3 million arrest offenses in our study population, we estimate that about 50 percent were related to immigration, drugs, or traffic violations." The bad news is that other 50 percent. Out of the 2.8 million arrests in the dataset, the report estimates 213,047 arrests for assaults, 125,322 thefts, 120,810 cases of fraud, forgery, and counterfeiting; 115,045 burglaries, 69,929 sex offenses, 25,064 homicides, 14,788 kidnappings, and 2,005 arsons. ADDENDA: Caught the Minions movie with the boys this weekend. Watching the slapstick movie as a grownup: Not so fun. Watching my boys howl in glee at it: Delightful. Meanwhile, they indulged their dad as he reveled in the National Geographic museum's exhibit, "Indiana Jones and the Adventure of Archeology" – a mix of props from the films and artifacts from real-life archeological digs reminiscent of the film. 
"It belongs in a museum… and now it is!" | 
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