“President Joe Biden..signed a bill to curb forced labor in China that U.S. business groups and trade experts warn will inflict unnecessary pain on U.S. firms and punish legitimately employed Uyghur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang region.
The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which was approved after more than a year’s delay, is designed to insulate U.S. companies and consumers from complicity in forced labor practices in Xinjiang. The U.S. government has concluded that the practices are among abusive state policies targeting Uyghurs that constitute genocide.
But industry groups and trade lawyers say the law’s strict compliance standards coupled with problematic Customs and Border Protection enforcement will harm both U.S. business interests and Uyghur Muslims.”
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““If you’re a company who is manufacturing in that area, you’re going to need to prove that slaves didn’t make it. The presumption is on you,” Rubio said after the bill’s Dec. 16 Senate passage.”
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“Assertions of the law’s stringent compliance standards are no exaggeration. It imposes a presumption of guilt in terms of forced labor links to any Xinjiang-sourced imports — predominately agricultural and chemical products — and obligates importers to provide documentation that proves its Xinjiang supply chains are not tied to forced labor.
The experience of solar and apparel companies from previous forced labor enforcement actions by Customs and Border Protection suggest that the new law’s compliance standards will be “practically impossible” to meet, said former CBP trade lawyer Richard Mojica.”
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“Mojica and other trade lawyers say the law’s compliance requirements will most seriously impact small- and medium-sized U.S. firms that lack in-house expertise to reliably map complex overseas supply chains.”
“Complicated local rules, understaffed city departments and slow communication with state regulators have made starting a weed business in California a protracted and risky ordeal. Red tape and paralyzing legal battles are stunting the market’s growth, leaving aspiring entrepreneurs in cities such as Los Angeles, Pasadena and Fresno waiting months or even years for permission to open, often while leasing empty storefronts.”
“we need a gigaton-scale portfolio of permanent carbon removal solutions, and those solutions don’t yet exist. The technology that exists is nascent at best. A growing number of innovative new carbon removal approaches are being tried — from using giant fans to pull CO2 out of the air, to growing kelp in the open ocean and then sinking it, to turning agricultural waste into bio-oil and putting it back underground. But it’s early days, and it’s not yet clear which approaches will be viable, let alone scale quickly.
A key reason permanent carbon removal is behind is that there has been legitimate uncertainty about whether anyone will pay for it. New technologies are typically expensive at first and get cheaper as they scale. Today, carbon removal solutions face a chicken-and-egg problem. As early technologies, they’re more expensive, so they don’t attract a critical mass of customers. But without wider adoption, they can’t scale production to become cheaper.
The uncertainty is particularly large for carbon removal because potential purchasers do not currently have a direct motivation to buy it. Governments and companies might consider carbon removal to fulfill their net-zero emissions pledges, but there are cheaper options that satisfy commitments as they are written today. So even though permanent carbon removal is critical to meeting climate goals, current guidelines do not explicitly reward it.
Carbon removal is thus in urgent need of a bold assist — and an “advance market commitment” could be the solution. This approach, in which money is provided to guarantee a market for a product, is modeled after a program successfully piloted a decade ago that incentivized the development of vaccines for poor countries at a time when pharmaceutical companies weren’t sure that countries could pay for a large volume of vaccines if they were developed.”
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“Here’s how it could work. Companies and governments with net-zero pledges could fund the AMC by formalizing and pooling their financial commitments to buy carbon removal over a specified period of time — essentially turning ambiguous net-zero commitments into net-zero contracts to buy carbon removal. The AMC, run by technical experts acting on behalf of contributors, would buy carbon removal from high potential companies. When tons of CO2 get removed, the AMC would pay suppliers and issue credits back to buyers.
A large AMC for carbon removal would be transformative. Large contracts to purchase frontier carbon removal send a much stronger market signal to entrepreneurs and investors than fragmented companies making net-zero commitments, where innovators face substantial uncertainty about how the commitments will be met and whether the companies will choose to invest any resources in permanent carbon removal as opposed to other strategies.
An AMC has the further advantage that the demand signal can be sent now, without needing to pick a winning technology. A diverse set of technologies can be developed, while incentivizing inventors to meet rigorous standards that ensure they deliver real, permanent carbon removal.”
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“Sustaining a market of this magnitude will undoubtedly require policy to regulate emissions. But policy takes time and tends to respond to emerging technologies rather than kickstart them. An AMC for carbon removal would help the field make progress while critical policy work happens in parallel. Furthermore, this early assist increases the likelihood that large amounts of permanent carbon removal will even be available at a reasonable price.”
“Text messages to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows indicate that Trump allies in Congress such as Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) pushed plans to set aside the election results and subvert the democratic process before Jan. 6. And when the insurrection started, the messages also reveal that members of Congress, Trump’s media allies and his own son pleaded unsuccessfully with Meadows to get the president to call off his supporters.
That evidence — not to mention the earlier revelation of a PowerPoint presentation circulating in the Trump White House about how to block the electoral vote certification — led members of the committee to question whether the president might be in legal jeopardy. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the vice chair of the committee, gained particular attention for a question she posed that went so far as to paraphrase the language of 18 U.S.C. § 1512, which makes it a felony to attempt to “corruptly obstruct, influence, or impede any official proceeding.”
But while the committee may ultimately uncover sufficient evidence to indict Trump, it does not appear that they have done so thus far. Rather than using the exact language of the statute, she inserted four words that reveal the scope of the committee’s investigation but also suggest that the committee knows it might fall short of the bar for criminal prosecution. “Did Donald Trump, through action or inaction [emphasis added], corruptly seek to obstruct or impede Congress’ official proceeding to count electoral votes?” Cheney asked as she urged colleagues to hold Meadows in contempt of Congress for refusing to be deposed.
The key word used by Cheney is “inaction.” Thus far the evidence made public by the committee indicates that in the face of a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol, Trump did nothing. Cheney and others argue that Trump violated his oath of office, in which he swore to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution,” which requires him to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” There can be little dispute that Trump failed to do so. But a president violating his oath of office, in itself, does not constitute a federal crime.
In fact, our criminal laws rarely punish people for not taking action, and with good reason. Our criminal laws were designed to punish people who knowingly engage in wrongdoing, not to punish people who showed mere indifference or inadvertence when others were engaged in wrongdoing.”
“Republicans across America are pressing local jurisdictions and state lawmakers to make typically sleepy school board races into politicized, partisan elections in an attempt to gain more statewide control and swing them to victory in the 2022 midterms.
Tennessee lawmakers in October approved a measure that allows school board candidates to list their party affiliation on the ballot. Arizona and Missouri legislators are weighing similar proposals. And GOP lawmakers in Florida will push a measure in an upcoming legislative session that would pave the way for partisan school board races statewide, potentially creating new primary elections that could further inflame the debate about how to teach kids.
The issue is about to spread to other states: The center-right American Enterprise Institute is urging conservatives to “strongly consider” allowing partisan affiliations to appear on ballots next to school board candidates’ names, as part of broader efforts to boost voter turnout for the contests. A coalition of conservative leaders — including representatives of Heritage Foundation, Manhattan Institute and Kenneth Marcus, the Education Department civil rights chief under former Secretary Betsy DeVos — have separately called for on-cycle school board elections as part of sweeping efforts to “end critical race theory in schools.”
In Florida, school boards are among the last elected officials who blocked policies of Gov. Ron DeSantis. If Republicans succeed in pushing the state to strip school board elections of their nonpartisan status and gain more representation on school boards, they could break the last holdouts who regularly defy the governor.”
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“Making school board races partisan could make an already heated political landscape even more contentious”
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““I do think party labels would produce more informed voters,” West said. “But, at the same time, it would likely accelerate emerging trend of nationalization of local education politics.””
“The Green Bay Packers have won their last six meetings with the Chicago Bears and are looking like possible Super Bowl contenders. The Bears, meanwhile, look likely to miss the playoffs again. But that’s not the biggest difference between the teams. The Bears have been threatening to move to the suburbs unless the Chicago city government pays to upgrade their stadium. The Packers, despite playing in the National Football League’s smallest market, are asking their fans to fund their stadium improvements voluntarily.
NFL rules require most franchises to be owned by an individual or a small group of owners. The Packers have an exemption: The team has been owned by stockholders since 1923, when it sold shares of the organization to keep the team afloat and to keep it in Green Bay. To prevent owners from selling the team to move it to a larger market, these shares could only be sold back to the team at a fraction of the price.
The Packers held similar stock sales in 1935 and 1950 to financially stabilize the team, and in 1997 and 2011 to fund additions and redevelopment to their stadium. Another stock sale is ongoing now. The shares provide minimal benefits: an ownership certificate, an invite to the annual owners meeting, and trivial voting rights on the future of the franchise. Even so, the sales have been enormously popular, with the offerings raising $24 million in 1997, $64 million in 2011, and a projected $90 million this time around.
It’s common for sports teams’ billionaire owners to push cities into bidding wars for new taxpayer-funded stadiums. The Bears’ current threats are hardly the only example. The Raiders recently moved from Oakland to Las Vegas, where Clark County shelled out more than $645 million in bonds to fund a stadium. The project is going so predictably poorly that the county had to pull reserve funding multiple times to meet its bond payments. Another Packers rival, the Minnesota Vikings, secured hundreds of millions of dollars from both the state of Minnsota and the city of Minneapolis to fund ta new stadium. Minneapolis has had trouble holding up its side of the bargain, and it recently asked the state to pick up the tab for them.
The Packers’ fan-funded model is far preferable (even if Brown County voters once approved a sales tax to fund stadium improvements) and should be available to other franchises. The New Orleans Saints are a perfect example of a team that could benefit from this structure. Saints owner Gayle Benson has stipulated that when she passes away, she wants the proceeds of the sale of the team to go to charity and the team to be kept in New Orleans. Rather than find a traditional owner, why not let the fans purchase the team outright? Between the television broadcast rights and the league’s strict salary cap, all NFL teams are essentially ensured to operate at a profit. This model would basically guarantee the team will be kept in New Orleans and would make it easier for the team’s most dedicated fans to fund the team’s expenses voluntarily.
Back in Chicago, Alderman George Cardenas has introduced a plan for the city to buy the Bears and then sell the team to the fans. Needless to say, there are serious problems with the idea of the city government paying for the team, even if it owns it only temporarily. But at least they’re thinking about alternative models of team ownership and funding; maybe they’ll make it all the way to a market-based system. If Bears fans are borrowing ideas from the hated Packers, they must be ready for something new.”
“The coronavirus pandemic has fully exposed the flaws in the US health care system and deepened many of its disparities. Yet there is a serious possibility, now that Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has rendered the current version of the Build Back Better Act dead, that the current Congress will not pass any long-term provisions to cover more people, make health care more affordable, or better prepare the nation for the next pandemic.
Though they have not attracted as much attention as other parts of the legislation, Democrats had written a wide-ranging health care section in Build Back Better. They were planning to patch up holes in the Affordable Care Act, extending assistance to middle-class families as well as people in poverty; to reduce drug costs for millions of Americans; and to make investments in the country’s health care infrastructure, with the goal of better preparing the US for the inevitable next pandemic.”
“The US national security establishment sees China as the most urgent threat of the moment, while the entrenched interests of the arms industry endure.
Put another way, although the US is no longer in Afghanistan, taxpayers continue to pay for the American military’s massive global presence. Absent a fundamental rethinking of how the US sees national security and the role the military plays in foreign policy, big cuts are unlikely.”
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“Congress didn’t think that Biden had committed enough to combatting China in his original defense budget request, so lawmakers added some $25 billion in all.”