This explains a lot:

There’s a funny thing about [Scott Walker]: The governor has a curious verbal tic—well known among some Walker watchers but largely ignored by everyone else—where, well, he says yes to everything.

Ask him a question at a press conference or in a gaggle, and he’ll bob his head up and down while saying something like “Yeah” or “Yeah, absolutely.” He says that the way other people might say “Um,” or “Listen,” or “Hmm.” It’s a filler word.

But here’s the thing: Not everyone knows that.

I had sort of picked up on it. Which is to say there were two back-to-back cases where everyone looked at what he said and drew a completely different conclusion than I did. The first instance was the Birthright Citizenship question, where the “Yeah” was followed by what looked to me like an evasion of the question and a desire to speak in generalities rather than answer the question asked. But everyone reported it as “Scott Walker wants to repeal the 14th Amendment.” And I couldn’t say otherwise[1], because as much as a lot of people want to pretend otherwise a desire to repeal birthright citizenship is, by any reading of popular opinion, a political mainstream opinion. It’s one I disagree with and more than that it’s a position that would make me less likely to vote for a person who supports it, but it wouldn’t have surprised me that it was Walker’s position. He later said it wasn’t.

But however non-surprising I might have found that position to be, the notion that Walker would even rhetorically support a Canadian Wall was not credible to me and a quick reading of what was said demonstrated it as much. Really, Walker’s argument didn’t even make sense on his critics’ own terms. He hates Mexicans so much he wants to build a wall to keep out Canadians? That’s a weird pander. If he had stuck by it, I would have guessed it would have had more to do with not wanting to seem racist by shrugging and saying “Sure, let’s keep out white people, too, because border and I’m not racist.” But he didn’t stick by the comment and it once again seemed to me there was some midwestern agreeableness going on along with saying “Yeah” at the top. From the Daily Beast article:

“[P]art of this may be due to Walker’s unfortunate verbal tic where he answers questions with what appears to be an affirmative before giving his intended answer,” Sykes wrote on Right Wisconsin. “If a reporter approached him at the Paducah County Fair and asked Walker if he supported a federal plan to beat baby whales to death with the bodies of baby whales, Walker might reply, ‘Yeah…. But what we should focus on is returning power to the states and the …’”

Sykes should know. He’s one of the single most powerful conservative voices in the Badger State, and estimates he’s interviewed Walker hundreds of times since his early days in the State Assembly.

“We joke about it all the time,” he told The Daily Beast. “It’s almost like a parlor game: What did you get him to say yes to, initially? Anything!”

And perhaps this is why I ended up coming a bit to Walker’s defense. It wasn’t because I liked the candidate. If I an open to his getting the nomination it’s basically by figuring he will lose and it would be better for the party for him to lose than Jeb to lose. It wasn’t even because of my belief that contrary to the assumptions of everyone the GOP isn’t all trying to out-Trump Trump[2], because I wouldn’t have been surprised if Walker had made a lunge for Trump supporters. But I actually find myself coming to his defense because… well, I have a similar verbal tic.

I, too, say “Yeah” or “Yes” or even “sure” before saying what I intend to say which can completely contradict what I just said “Yeah” to. It’s less a verbal stall – though it may be that a little – and more an acknowledgement of polite “I gotcha.” I have actually been known to say “Yeah, no I don’t agree with that at all.” Some people want to build a wall to block off Canadians? “Yeah, [let me tell you what I think about that].” Now, in my case, I might say something to the effect of “Yeah, I understand that some people are really considered about border security to the north, but while I don’t even believe a wall blocking off Mexico is an especially good idea I believe it’s a really bad one to try to block off Canada.”

That’s not what Walker did, of course. Walker avoided answering the question, which added undue importance to the verbal tic. Of course, Walker is a politician and he has to be careful in what he says and so it’s understandable that he would fall into a trap I’d be at least modestly more likely to clear. But… he’s a politician, and this is definitely exposing a weakness of his. Journalists may be aching to get him to agree to just about anything to get a good story (rather than accurately assess his views), but at some point Walker himself needs to account for that. He’s not. And while I think he’s getting too much criticism for holding views that it seems apparent he doesn’t affirmatively hold, that itself should give any waffling Republican primary voter pause. Because it’s not going to magically go away if he secures the nomination.

[1] Except to say that “Terminating birthright citizenship” is not the same thing as “Repealing the 14th Amendment.” That this was the accepted framing is, like the notion that ending birthright citizenship is an outrageous position, an indication of a disconnect between popular opinion and people with a license to actually be heard.

[2] If anything, Trump’s audaciousness has had a bit of a calming effect. Because almost everybody realizes that they’re not willing enough to go far enough out there to meet Trump in hard core anti-immigration land. Instead, while Ted Cruz has made the calculated decision to try to reap a post-Trump windfall, most of the rest really haven’t. Instead, relatively casual comments have been assumed to be what they don’t actually seem to be.

It was a given that there were going to be dropouts from the Republican field before we got to the first primary; it was just a matter of waiting to see who it would be.

Rick Perry is kind of a fascinating figure to be the first drop out. He went into the process once before, bombed abysmally in his first spotlight moment–just when GOP primary voters were desperately looking for an anti-Romney to rally around–and carefully prepped through the succeeding four years to avoid that kind of failure, only to not just lose again but to become the very first dropout. He blamed his 2012 flameout on back surgery and painkillers, and for all that I don’t much like the man, I find that believable. 2012 may have just been a matter of bad timing. But that doesn’t explain 2016

He’s not an incompetent politician or campaigner, having never previously lost an election and having served a record 14 years as Texas’ governor. He comes from the second most populous state in the country, a good base, and a state that has given us three presidents previously (four if you count Ike, but he was only born there, growing up in Kansas).

But he never got any momentum, polling at around 1%. Worse, money wasn’t coming in to his campaign, indicating that those who make strong campaigns possible through financing didn’t see him as a good prospect.

Let me make that clear. The big money doesn’t just go to people the big money likes–it goes to people they think have a chance, because whomever wins they want to have an open door with them, and money is the key that fits the lock. Perry’s lack of fundraising success doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t like him, but that they don’t think he had a chance.

But Perry didn’t connect on the national stage, and I’m no sure why. Maybe it’s because he tried to be a Tea Partier who was moderate on immigration. Maybe, unlike George W. Bush, he played his Texan image wrongly. W used the Texas image in a Reaganesque way, working on his ranch to buff a no-nonsense down-to-earth blue collar persona, while Perry seemed to portray a Texas that is arrogant, insular and sneering toward the rest of the country. Both Texases are real, but only one plays well.

Maybe it’s because he really is an intellectual lightweight, and in more local elections that was part of his strength because he didn’t come off as an egghead, but when he put on the smart glasses to gussy himself up he came off as playing a role, losing the desired sense of “authenticity.”

There’ll be lots of speculation, but there’ll be no hard evidence, just stories that are told more or less persuasively. Jumping into the presidential race is a crapshoot. Former VP Dan Quayle did all the right moves in the first years of the Clinton presidency to set himself up for a 1996 presidential run, criss-crossing the country talking to conservative groups and setting up grassroots organizations in the early primary states. And he’d proven in both his House and Senate campaigns in Indiana that he was an effective hard-working campaigner. But in the end he folded up shop before he ever publicly announced he was running; before most people ever became aware that he was running. The story I’ve heard is that the more people listened to him the less impressed they became.

Just as athletes are sometimes standouts in college while failing in the pros, sometimes politicians play well locally but just lack that special something that makes a person successful at higher levels.

That’s not profound. But I think anyone looking for profundity in the rise and decline of presidential aspirants is looking in the wrong place.

Senator Claire McCaskill made public the widely known secret that her campaign did what it could to help Todd Akin become her Republican opponent in 2012:

So how could we maneuver Akin into the GOP driver’s seat?

Using the guidance of my campaign staff and consultants, we came up with the idea for a “dog whistle” ad, a message that was pitched in such a way that it would be heard only by a certain group of people. I told my team we needed to put Akin’s uber-conservative bona fides in an ad—and then, using reverse psychology, tell voters not to vote for him. And we needed to run the hell out of that ad. {…}

If we were going to spend that kind of money on ads for Akin, I wanted to get him nominated and start disqualifying him with independent voters at the same time. By that prescription, our ad would have to include Akin’s statement that Obama was a “menace to civilization” and that Akin had said of himself that he was “too conservative” for Missouri. This presentation made it look as though I was trying to disqualify him, though, as we know, when you call someone “too conservative” in a Republican primary, that’s giving him or her a badge of honor. At the end of the ad, my voice was heard saying, “I’m Claire McCaskill, and I approve this message.”

This is hardly the first time that this has been done. The GOP has been known to pump money in Green Party efforts to split the left-of-center votes. And, of course, there is always at least talk of crossing during the primaries in order to vote for the weaker candidate on the other side’s roster. And while it’s been done before – or tried – it’s also going to be done again.

This may be sketchy, but it is presumably legal. Isn’t it? Rick Hasen, who initially believed it was, had second thoughts:

On reflection, I think the stronger issue is whether McCaskill made an unreported and excessive in kind contribution to the Akin campaign by sharing the results of her polling data. If she gave the campaign something worth more than the limit (which was probably $2600 in that election) she’d be giving an in-kind contribution, and a contribution worth that much would have to be reported.

Well did the Senator give Akin something of value? It looks like it. After all, we know it is valuable to him because the Senator writes “Akin did not have money for polling,” and she provided the information he needed to clinch the primary (at least in the Senator’s telling). Elias’s response to this point is: “There’s no suggestion she shared ‘polling data’. She only ‘gave clearance, allowing [pollster] to speak in broad generalities.” Perhaps that distinction will work, but I still think the issue is a serious one and merits a fuller analysis (and certainly fuller than I can give it now). I’m not suggesting the Senator broke the law, but there is enough here to justify a closer look.

I wanted to buy into this argument, and it may indeed be legally correct. However, if I am being honest with myself, if this is in fact illegal it’s likely against a law that I oppose or would oppose application in this particular case. This strikes me as free speech and free assembly on a pretty fundamental level.

I will also say, in defense of it, that it’s not strictly dishonest. McCaskill opposes Akin and all she did was say so! And it’s hard to get too excited about it, given the inevitability of Use Every Tool At Your Disposal, even if it involves things like improving your odds with reverse psychology.

Be that as it may, this comes across to me as sausage-making stuff and there is something unseemly to me about bragging about it. Harry Reid’s lies about Mitt Romney were constitutional, and a part of the game so to speak, but not exactly something to be proud of. The same goes for Jon Huntsman’s shot across the bow to Mitch Daniels, though in that case being silent about it while everyone blamed Mitt Romney was itself a bit of a problem.

This one at least has the virtue of assisting people, in a way, finding their preferred candidate. A plurality of Missouri voters preferred Todd Akin. And people who voted for Ralph Nader wanted Ralph Nader as their president or at least wanted him to make more rather than less of a dent in the tally. In addition to the other bad things it’s not, it’s not cheating.

It is, however, hard for me to overlook the bad faith. I have the notion that things work better when the elections are between the best possible holders of the position. “Best” is subjective here, but it seems unlikely to me that if McCaskill were to lose, that she would prefer lose to Akin instead of Brunner. That she would actually consider Akin rather than Brunner to be the representative of state. And it’s not inconceivable that Akin could have won, creating a Lester Maddox situation. As it is, of course, the gambles often pay off for the gambler. The voters in Missouri were left with McCaskill and a more undesirable option. Arguably, the responsibility of the party system, and the primary system, and the current state of the Republican Party, more than McCaskill herself… but a situation engineered in good part by McCaskill.

Perhaps it can be said that more light is better. That McCaskill’s fessing up merely makes the phenomenon more known and that maybe voters will avoid being manipulated – if we want to call it that – in the future. I personally see if as taking the dirty part of politics, and reveling in it. Finding something of a glitch in the system and bragging about its exploitation. Haha, we didn’t even like the guy, but we did everything we could to bolster his chances at becoming a US senator because it helped our odds somewhat. Aren’t we clever! A cleverness not only accepted, but celebrated.

I have a friend from Louisiana who argues – and truly believes – that Louisiana politics is no more corrupt than an any other state. It’s just that Louisiana is more open about it. It’s a function of honesty, rather than corruption, that Louisiana has the reputation that it does. No doubt corruption levels outside of the usual suspects (Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, etc) is higher than we sometimes believe, but the land of Edwin Edwards gets a lot of attention in part because it becomes so audacious that even Louisiana cannot ignore it. And even then, the voters accepted it repeatedly. Which is what happens when something becomes a norm and, to a degree, celebrated (“Edwards may be a crook, but he’s our crook!”)

All of that bringing to light Edwards’s last re-election, with the informal slogan “Vote for the crook, it’s important!” The slogan was bandied about because the alternative was David Duke with incumbent Buddy Roemer finishing third. Edwards got lucky because it’s unlikely he would have been able to beat Roemer. Perhaps today the wiser course of action would be to lend money to the Duke campaign, and give Louisiana the choice that favored him. With the added bonus of being able to express in a book how clever you are for lending support and aid to a fascist.

Could 2016 finally be the year of the brokered convention?! Mike Hunt Ray Rice thinks it might be, but Hanley is skeptical:

That scenario assumes the candidate isn’t determined prior to the convention. While the sheer number of candidates increases that probability, let’s remember that 1) it hasn’t happened in the modern primary era, and 2) we’re still a year away from the convention, and 5-6 months away from the first primaries (god willing and the states don’t go crazy). Candidates are going to start disappearing from any real consideration before that first convention, and then money will stop flowing to those who show poorly early on and redirect to the candidate the money likes, most likely producing a winner before the last primaries (unless all the states suddenly compress them so tightly there’s no time for that process to take place).

While recognizing the mathematical possibility of a brokered convention, I’d wager against it.

So would I. But I’d wager against it just a little bit less than usual, if Trump sticks around. Which I would also bet against, but things are not going According To Plan. And Trump has the potential – albeit a very unlikely one – to keep all of the oxygen out of the room until Iowa. He can keep the frontrunner seat warm, with little danger of other candidates being intimidated.

The most important thing is that Trump will not get the air of inevitability a leader would, if he is on top. That will encourage more candidates to try to stick around because the writing won’t be as clearly on the wall. Fundraising will push some candidates out almost immediately, but it’s easy to imagine an unusual number saying “Hold on until Super Tuesday, then I’ll show them!” and nobody will know what to do because of the Trump factor. So even if we wins Iowa and New Hampshire, you’re probably looking at at least three other candidates and maybe more. (There were four enduring candidates in 2012, including Ron Paul.)

The second most important thing is that the natural nominee is somebody that almost nobody has confidence in. There was definitely a dearth of confidence in Mitt Romney, but (a) not this much and (b) there were no other viable candidates. If Bush can’t convince people that he is Their Guy – which I think is possible – there is no other logical successor.

This is especially true given the oddity of the schedule. Won’t everyone coalesce around the most popular not-Trump? That assumes any sort of consistency, and the early schedule has one state that plays to the strengths of other candidates. Scott Walker is in a good position to be the top NTC in Iowa, Jeb or Kasich in New Hampshire, Cruz in South Carolina, and Rubio in Nevada. After that all hell breaks loose on Super Tuesday with a lot of delegates proportionally assigned. This is also where Trump is likely to struggle if his campaign has been going well up to this point.

Now, most likely Super Tuesday will declare the top NTC. In 2012, it sort of set up Santorum as the primary anti-Romney, but Gingrich still hung in there. Things could drag on. Especially if it’s one of those things where Jeb kinda does well enough to hang around but not well enough to inspire confidence, leaving hope for Kasich, Walker, or Rubio boosters. And since Trump does have the air of invincibility, he can be leading and have it still be considered a wide open race. (If somebody else is leading, it’s over.) If there’s much more dithering after that, and Trump does not have a majority…

All of this is very unlikely, of course. But short of the death of a frontrunner, this is the closest to a plausible scenario I have ever been able to really imagine. The combination of Trump and Jeb with potentially low ceilings make everything more complicated. So, too, may the proliferation of candidates, but I don’t expect that to last.

And even more glorious than anything? We could go into a brokered convention having no idea at all knowing who is going to win.

My money would be on Mitt Romney.

Some of you may recall a couple of years ago when some big city politicians announced that they would block Chik-Fil-E from opening up a store in their cities:

The uproar continues, and quite properly so (earlier here and here), over the threats of Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and Chicago alderman Proco (“Joe”) Moreno to exclude the Chick-Fil-A fast-food chain because they disagree (as do I) with some of the views of its owner. Among the latest commentary, the impeccably liberal Boston Globe has sided with the company in an editorial (“which part of the First Amendment does Menino not understand?…A city in which business owners must pass a political litmus test is the antithesis of what the Freedom Trail represents”), as has my libertarian colleague Tom Palmer at Cato (“Mayor Menino is no friend of human rights.”)

The spectacle of a national business being threatened with denial of local licenses because of its views on a national controversy is bad enough. But “don’t offend well-organized groups” is only Rule #2 for a business that regularly needs licenses, approvals and permissions. Rule #1 is “don’t criticize the officials in charge of granting the permissions.” Can you imagine if Mr. Dan Cathy had been quoted in an interview as saying “Boston has a mediocre if not incompetent Mayor, and the Chicago Board of Aldermen is an ethics scandal in continuous session.” How long do you think it would take for his construction permits to get approved then?

Given the amount of pushback they got, I had somewhat naively thought that we might not be going there again. As it turns out, though, that is not to be. The newest target is one Donald J Trump. In New York City:

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday that his city may not be able to break its business contracts with Donald Trump but will avoid future deals with the 2016 GOP contender.

“My impression is that unless there has been some breaking of a contract or something that gives us a legal opportunity to act, I’m not sure we have a specific course of action,” the Democratic mayor told reporters Monday, according to CNN and Capital New York.

“But we’re certainly not looking to do any business with him going forward,” de Blasio added.

And Washington DC:

A pair of Democratic lawmakers are petitioning the Obama administration to block GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump from showcasing his name on the businessman’s new hotel in Washington, D.C.

In a letter to the Department of Interior and General Services Administration (GSA), Reps. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and Tony Cárdenas (D-Calif.) requested that Trump be prevented from having his name “prominently displayed” on the newly refurbished Old Post Office building on Pennsylvania Avenue, blocks from the White House.

“Trump’s recent and repeated remarks disparaging women, Mexican-Americans, and other Latinos are hateful, divisive and completely inaccurate,” the pair wrote to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and recently confirmed GSA Administrator Denise Turner Roth in a letter dated Aug. 13.

And, once again, in Boston:

Donald Trump, a reality TV star currently yelling crazy shit on his way through a Republican presidential primary while sporting a sad trombone haircut, is not welcome in Boston.

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh told the Boston Herald Monday that Trump would have to apologize to immigrants for his inflammatory comments.

“I think his comments are inappropriate. And if he wanted to build a hotel here, he’d have to make some apologies to people in this country,” said Walsh, the son of immigrants from Galway.

Each of these cases differ slightly from the others. But as much as I am not a fan of Donald Trump*, city contracts and business arrangements really should not depend on such things. I mean, really shouldn’t. We should at least be able to agree on that.

Given the givens, I have little issue with NBC using its pocketbook to cancel The Apprentice, or Macy’s to sever there relationship. But it does get different once we’re starting to talk about governments – even local ones – using their purse strings and regulatory levers to favor some people over others in such a fashion. Are there some circumstances in which I could imagine being okay with it? I don’t know… maybe? But not really. If their views are repugnant enough, there ought to be something behavioral that you can hang your hat upon.

Which doesn’t really work for Trump, of course, because as much as he hates illegal immigrants, one thing he doesn’t do is refuse to hire them.

This is pretty unlikely to be much of a slippery slope. First, because it’s unclear that they can even do what they’re talking about doing. It mostly looks like chest-thumping. But slope or so, this is the sort of thing that should be discouraged and opposed right out of the gate. Even if the “victim” is Donald Trump.

* – Hey Mike Rice, still waiting to hear an answer to the question of whether or not you are on Team Trump with Lion and Dave Hackensack.

Would you feel safer flying with the hiring and training of additional TSA officers/agents’/whatever they have to call themselves to feel important’, or would you rather they hire & train more air traffic controllers?

PS I object to the TSA as a whole as security theater, but for the most part, all of my interactions with TSA personnel has been professional, even if the rules they enforce are stupid, and even if they occasionally drink their own kool-aid (I don’t argue with them, I have a plane to catch).

PPS I suspect the reason ATC is hurting for people such that it has to use grinding schedules is because the training is tough, the work stressful, and the pay is high enough (median $122K/year) that management is not keen to staff centers fully if they can avoid it.  Add in that politically, TSA is something of a jobs program for the unskilled.  Still, for every 2-3 Blue shirts, we could have another ATC on the job.  Imaginary terrorist plots rank much lower to me than very real collisions.

I suspect that in any discussion about whether unions are good or about whether such and such a policy designed to promote or weaken the appeal of unions is good, most parties to the discussion will profess to support unions.

In my view, the question is less whether we support unions and more under what circumstances we do and what policies we’d support or at least tolerate. As Oscar pointed out in a recent thread, he supports unions, but not the sort of “regulatory capture” exemplified by the proposed union exemptions to L.A.’s minimum wage law (a perfectly reasonable position, in my opinion).

Here are some considerations (pulled mostly from the American context):

1. Do you support union-shop or “fair share” arrangements, where all employees must contribute union dues? Or do you support “right to work” laws?
2. Do you support closed shop arrangements, where a prospective employee must be a member in good standing of a union before being eligible to be hired?
3. Do you support “secondary strikes” or “secondary boycotts” where a union or its members refuse to cross other union’s picket lines or refuse to work for employers that do business with a struck firm?
4. Should public employees be allowed to unionize? Some public employees but not others? What powers to negotiate should these unions have (wages only, wages + working conditions)?
5. Should the law require employers to negotiate “in good faith” with a union that can demonstrate a minimum threshold of support? If so, what should the requirements of good faith be?
6. Should the state require “first contract” arbitration, where a union negotiation automatically goes into arbitration after a certain time period has elapsed, so as to ensure that the union obtains a “first contract”?
7. What should an employer be able to do, or not be able to do, to oppose unions? What should a union be able to do, or not be able to do, to promote unions?
8. What, if any, preferential policies would you accept that would help promote unions? (I’m thinking of things like the minimum wage exemption Oscar wrote about, but also of things like antitrust exemptions, exemptions from injunctions, and probably other things I’m not thinking of.)
9. Under what circumstances would you cross a picket line to shop at a struck firm?
10. Under what circumstances would you cross a picket line to work at a struck firm?

On a lot of these issues, I myself am undecided or have changed my mind. You can no doubt think of other questions, and if so, feel free to offer them.

A long time ago in a sub-thread at one of my guest posts Over There, Brandon Berg raised in the comments an interesting question about unions (in particular about conscience exemptions for union dues and the free-rider problem that union shop provisions are meant to resolve):

I’m not sure I understand the free rider problem. Why can’t unions negotiate for their members, and only for their members? Is there some regulation that requires the unions to negotiate for all employees regardless of membership, or is the idea that simply having the union negotiate wages for its members somehow makes it easier for non-members to negotiate higher wages?

Personally, of course, I don’t see the free-rider problem as a problem at all—the government shouldn’t be in the business of making it easier to form cartels

And James K. chimed in

What you describe is how it works in New Zealand. Union membership is voluntary but the union only negotiates on behalf of its membership, and will only represent its members in other forms of labour dispute. There are a couple of other differences as well, like only union members can strike.

This seems to be an entirely adequate solution to nay free-rider issues.

At the time, I filed it under “interesting things I don’t know much about.” I still don’t know much about it, but I recently ran across a book that addresses Brandon’s and James K.’s points in the American context. It’s The Blue Eagle at Work: Reclaiming Democratic Rights in the American Workplace, by Charles J. Morris (2005). His argument seems to be that our current labor law, initiated by the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (Wagner Act) and amended subsequently, permits the situation Brandon and James K. describe, at least in some instances. His claims that few since the 1930s have recognized that fact, but he hopes that union supporters will endorse partial representation contracts (my term, I forget which he uses) as a step toward full-shop unionization.

I’ve read only the introduction, so there’s a lot I presume is missing from my synopsis of his argument. And I can’t speak to whether he’s right or not. But I thought I’d bring it up, especially in light of our recent discussion of minimum wage exemptions for union contracts.

John Oliver recently did a bit on food waste, which alone is worth watching.  In the clip, he talks about how US tax code has a provision for large corporations to be able to take a tax deduction for charitable (food) contributions, but for small business, although a similar provision exists, it isn’t permanent & has to be renewed each year.  This means that the small business owner won’t know until after the annual vote if there is any financial/tax incentive to donate food to food banks.

That alone is a bit of a WTF, but the real meat of the piece is what happened when the House tried to fix it.  Seems that the House passed a bill that would (among other things), make the tax deduction for small business permanent.  When that bill (House 644) got to the Senate, it was renamed, gutted, and essentially replaced with Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015, which, as far as I can tell, has nothing to do with amending the tax code to incentivize small businesses to make charitable food contributions.

So, my question is what is the reasoning behind this kind of action & why is it permitted or tolerated (e.g. why does the House not pitch a fit/why doesn’t someone in the Senate just have an ally in the House submit the bill they want/etc)?

I’m cautiously optimistic about the Iran deal. The high points are that Iran reduces its uranium stockpile by 98%, cuts its number of centrifuges for enrichment by 70% (and gets rid of its newer, more advanced ones), agrees to enrich only to a level that can be used for power production but not for weapons production, and most important sets up a robust inspection regime.

All that is is good, but there are some points that make some people unhappy.

It does allow Iran to keep its nuclear program. Sorry my imperialist friends, but even Iran has the right to develop nuclear energy. They want to sell their oil for cash, particularly as (or if) oil prices increase, rather than burn it all themselves. Nuclear energy is a staightforward business proposition for them.

It only lasts for 10-15 years. This is how negotiations work; you take what you can get, and then you keep talking after you get it. Sometimes all you can do is buy time, and a 10-15 year window is better than the 1 year window we have right right now. That gives us another decade to keep trying to talk them out of developing nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, their leadership is aging and their large under-30 population is increasingly disaffected with their government. Time is on our side, not Rouhani’s or Khameni’s.

Will Iran actually allow inspections? That is the key. But while there’s reason to be skeptical of Iran, we can’t actually know how that works out until we get there. The agreement at least contains meaningful inspection protocols, so it’s too early to call it a failure. On paper, it appears to contain what critics demanded.

But don’t buy the Obama administration’s talk about sanctions “snapping back” if Iran doesn’t comply. The return of sanctions would not be automatic but would require a vote of the UN Security Council, where its chances of passage are slim. The reality is that almost nobody but the US wants sanctions on Iran even now. Not most of Europe, which wants to sell to Iran and purchase their oil; not Russia, which is Iran’s only reliable ally; and not China which is investing heavily in Iran and building a railroad to provide a quick route to Europe for Chinese goods. And for those keeping score, Russia and China have Security Council vetoes.

But deal or no deal, the effectiveness of the sanctions was dying out anyway. It’s time to accept that and move on.

Could we have gotten a better deal? It’s doubtful. Our real alternatives to this deal are the status quo or an invasion. Neither of those is as good as this deal.