“To pretend that Social Security and Medicare shouldn’t be touched is nothing short of political malpractice. Over the next 30 years, the two programs will run a $116 trillion shortfall. This number accounts for the significant amount of interest payments on the debt the government will ring up in the process. While we might be able to stumble along indefinitely, all that borrowing will slow—perhaps even halt—our economic growth, making funding the programs that much more difficult.”
“The Biden administration has framed its new, tighter “Buy American” regulations as a way to bolster domestic manufacturing and benefit parts of the country that have been left behind by technological innovation.
To many of those same communities, the White House has promised better connectivity and higher internet speeds. The bipartisan infrastructure plan signed by President Joe Biden in 2021 dedicated $42 billion to expanding broadband access, with much of the funding aimed at laying fiber optic lines in parts of the country where they don’t exist.
There’s one small problem with all this: Finding enough fiber optic cables that comply with the Buy American rules.”
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“Under Biden’s Buy American rules, 55 percent of the component parts of any product used in a federal construction project must be sourced in the United States. That disqualifies any imports of finished cable, but it also wipes out most of the available American-made supply since many of the component parts are sourced overseas.”
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“Another problem, according to a Bloomberg report earlier this week, is that building a fiber optic network requires more than just fiber optic cable. You also need switches, terminals, routers, and other pieces of tech that are mostly imported or manufactured with imported components. In both cases, the Buy American requirements mean broadband companies can’t use those parts for projects funded with federal funding from the infrastructure bill.
That means less infrastructure gets built, and lots of perfectly good American-made fiber optic cable doesn’t get purchased, simply because less than 55 percent of its components happened to come from somewhere else.”
“Oklahoma’s attorney general has filed a motion to overturn the capital murder conviction of Richard Glossip, who has spent almost 26 years on death row. The move comes after the release of a new report detailing considerable issues in the state’s case against Glossip, concluding that he was “deprived of a fair trial.””
“”A bloc of at least eight corn belt Republicans are a hard ‘no’ on” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R–Calif.) bill to raise the debt ceiling unless proposed cuts to ethanol tax credits are removed from the package, Axios reported Tuesday. That group reportedly includes all four members of Congress who represent Iowa and at least four other Republican lawmakers from other “corn belt” states.
Because Republicans have a slim 222–213 majority in the House, any group of five lawmakers can hold considerable leverage by threatening to vote against a bill.”
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“this is yet another warning about the dangers of creating government subsidies in the first place.
Even though they cost taxpayers billions of dollars every year, federal ethanol subsidies and tax credits are a tiny chunk of the overall federal budget. Yet they are incredibly valuable to the farming communities that reap those benefits—and that vote to elect lawmakers who promise to keep the federal cash flowing. For the members of Congress from Iowa and other Midwestern states, voting to cut those subsidies could be a career-ending move. On the other side, there’s no significant voting block demanding the removal of ethanol subsidies—even though biofuels are expensive, ineffective, and bad for the environment—so the lawmakers more intensely committed to their special interests usually get what they want.”
““Prime Minister Abiy used existing cracks within the EOTC and the influence of new evangelical movements to consolidate his power.
After he received praise for supposedly unifying a divided Church in 2018, the EOTC is now more divided than ever, most notably in Tigray and Oromia.
The role of the EOTC, with its radical Mahibere Kidusan group—along with the rise of Pentecostals and the Prosperity Party—has been both a causative factor and fueling contributor to the Tigray war, and has produced a split within the Church in Tigray.
Beyond the role of Ethiopia’s institutions in fomenting divisions, the Tigray war has also seen priests systematically targeted and religious artefacts destroyed. According to a leaked official church letter, at least 78 priests were massacred in one zone in Tigray.
In addition, the Waldeba Monastery, the oldest in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the al-Nejashi Mosque, one of the first mosques in Africa, were attacked, with the former destroyed and its monastic community brutally massacred.
Thus, while conflict in Ethiopia is typically framed according to its political and ethnic dimensions, religion and religious institutions have also played a central role.””
“Warren and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin say the promotions are critical to military readiness, and Tuberville is blocking pay raises and preventing key leaders from taking their posts.
“One senator is jeopardizing America’s national security,” Warren said on the Senate floor.
The promotion of Shoshana Chatfield to vice admiral and as the U.S. representative to the NATO military committee is especially urgent, Warren said.
“At this critical juncture of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, we need her leadership in NATO now more than ever,” she said.
Blocking military promotions leaves America more vulnerable, Austin said last month during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
“There are a number of things happening globally that indicate that we could be in a contest on any one given day,” he said. “Not approving the recommendations for promotions actually creates a ripple effect through the force that makes us far less ready than we need to be.””
“DeSantis talks a lot about freedom, and even more about the supposed threats to it. For the governor, those seem to lurk everywhere, from drag shows to Disney and from undocumented immigrants to corporate “diversity, equity, and inclusion” efforts. In his new book, titled The Courage To Be Free, and in speeches like the one he gave on April 1 to a crowd of local elected officials and conservative activists in central Pennsylvania, DeSantis portrays Florida as a place that’s been able to withstand the myriad assaults on freedom because he’s been willing (and eager) to deploy the power of the state.
But he rarely offers much in the way of a definition of freedom, preferring instead, one assumes, to let everyone in the audience define the thing for themselves. When he does get into specifics, it’s usually to draw some telling distinctions.
“For years, the default conservative posture has been to limit government,” he writes in the new book. That idea must be discarded, he adds: “Elected officials who do nothing more than get out of the way are essentially green-lighting these institutions to continue their unimpeded march through society.”
This is no small thing. For ages, conservatives have often echoed the libertarian idea that government is the greatest threat to Americans’ freedom. DeSantis postulates a different idea: What if it isn’t?”
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“DeSantis got a warm reception and earned several extended ovations—the longest and loudest, by far, coming after he promised to support legislation in Florida to revoke medical licenses from doctors who perform gender-affirming surgeries on minors.
At the risk of stating the obvious, that’s a limitation on Floridians’ freedoms. Imposing such limits has been a recurring element of DeSantis’ term. He is now pushing for even more, including felony charges for anyone who shelters or employs undocumented immigrants and a new ban on abortion after just six weeks of pregnancy. It’s a tricky thing to sell this impulse to regulate individuals’ choices as a campaign to protect freedom. But that’s what DeSantis is trying to do at events like the Pennsylvania conference.”
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“You can have the freedom to send your kid to any school you’d like in Florida—as long as it’s a school that teaches a curriculum the governor approves.”