At G-20 and in Vietnam, Biden to sell American partnerships — all at China’s expense
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/07/g-20-to-be-bidens-newest-front-in-his-battle-with-china-for-economic-power-00114360
Biden admin to China: Hands off our tech but we’ll take your tourists
“Chinese “visitors” — a broad term that encompasses both tourists and longer-term students — were at the forefront of a boom in international travel to the United States in the decade before the coronavirus pandemic hit. They spent a record $34 billion in the United States in 2018 and another $33 billion the following year.
That fell sharply as both governments clamped down on travel during the pandemic. Chinese spending in the United States plummeted to about $11.4 billion by 2021, nearly all by Chinese students at American colleges and universities. It rebounded slightly to around $14 billion last year, with education still accounting for most of the expenditures.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/06/united-states-chinese-tourism-00113789
America’s Trumpiest court just put itself in charge of nuclear safety
“Judge James Ho is not a nuclear scientist, an expert in energy policy, an atomic engineer, or anyone else with any specialized knowledge whatsoever on how to store and dispose of nuclear waste.
Nevertheless, Ho and two of his far-right colleagues on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit just put themselves in charge of much of America’s nuclear safety regime — invalidating the power of actual nuclear policy regulators to decide how to deal with nuclear waste in the process.”
https://www.vox.com/2023/8/29/23849054/supreme-court-nuclear-safety-fifth-circuit-james-ho-radioactive-texas-commission
China’s economy is slowing down. What gives?
“China’s economy is out of balance and has been for some time. Investments dominate the country’s economy, far more than consumption — that is, what households are spending. It didn’t matter so much when investment juiced China’s GDP in good times, and indeed, kept China’s economy afloat during the Covid-19 pandemic.
But that investment playbook has been losing its potency. A chunk of investments are unproductive — for example, a shiny new airport is great, but if it sits empty and no one travels through it, that’s not a great return on investment. But whether the airport is busy or a ghost town, it required bonds and loans to build. That produced growth, but it also increased China’s debt, so much so that right now, it’s triple — yep, around 300 percent — the amount of China’s economic output. “That doesn’t really matter until the debt has to be settled. More stimulus simply increases debt and delays the reckoning,” Morgan said.
What that reckoning might look like is hard to answer because the Chinese government and its leader, President Xi Jinping, are not exactly known for transparency. As Morgan sees it, China is dealing with a “slow fizzle.” But how Xi and his government manage that fizzle is far from an easy question for anyone to answer.”
https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/8/29/23845841/chinas-economy-xi-expert
How Louisiana — one of the nation’s wettest states — caught on fire
“Much like other places, Louisiana is experiencing record-breaking heat and dryness, which have made it easier for wildfires to proliferate.”
https://www.vox.com/climate/2023/8/30/23852363/louisiana-wildfires
The myths we tell ourselves about American farming
“If you were to guess America’s biggest source of water pollution, chemical factories or oil refineries might come to mind. But it’s actually farms — especially those raising cows, pigs, and chickens.
The billions of animals farmed each year in the US for food generate nearly 2.5 billion pounds of waste every day — around twice as much as people do — yet none of it is treated like human waste. It’s either stored in giant pits, piled high as enormous mounds on farms, or spread onto crop fields as fertilizer. And a lot of it washes away into rivers and streams, as does synthetic fertilizer from the farms growing corn and soy to feed all those animals.
“These factory farms operate like sewerless cities,” said Tarah Heinzen, legal director of environmental nonprofit Food and Water Watch. Animal waste is “running off into waterways, it’s leaching into people’s drinking water, it’s harming wildlife, and threatening public health.”
Yet in practice, the Environmental Protection Agency appears to be largely fine with all that.”
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“While the entire food sector benefits from agricultural exceptionalism, animal agriculture is especially privileged. Meat and dairy producers get far more subsidies than farmers growing more sustainable foods, like beans, vegetables, fruits, and whole grains.”
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“Big Ag often argues its exceptional status is justified because farming is indeed exceptional, given the essential nature of its product: food. But Secchi argues this is the wrong way of thinking about it. Since the early days of American agriculture, farming has been a business like any other, focused on high output, which has led to excess supply and profitable exports around the world.
And we don’t apply exceptionalist logic to any other industry. Energy production, for example, is highly polluting but essential to human flourishing, just like food, so we push to make our laws and economy limit the industry’s externalities and scale renewable forms of energy.”
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“Jefferson’s vision never came to pass. Small farms have been squeezed out by big farms, due in part to American farm policy advocated for by the same elected officials who evoke the Jeffersonian ideal.
What’s left is a highly consolidated agricultural sector, with many farmers precariously employed as contractors for corporations, and a radically uneven distribution of farm wealth”
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/8/31/23852325/farming-myths-agricultural-exceptionalism-pollution-labor-animal-welfare-laws
Lessons learned from armored assaults in Ukraine
Some Drug Warriors Just Won’t Concede Defeat
“”If policymakers double down on the same prohibitionist policies they have employed for over 50 years, deaths from illicit drug overdoses will continue to rise. Doing the same thing repeatedly, with even more vigor this time, will not yield a different result,” Singer told lawmakers. “Prohibition makes the black market dangerous because people who buy drugs on the black market can never be sure of the drug’s purity, dosage, or even if it is the drug they think they are buying.”
Singer recommends ending drug prohibition to allow for a legal market that deals in products of known dosage and purity. A legal market won’t stop people from getting high, but it will end the escalation between punitive law enforcement on the one hand and drug innovation and potency on the other.
Short of legalization, the Arizona surgeon suggests lawmakers focus on eliminating laws that stand in the way of harm reduction, such as those that criminalize drug paraphernalia (driving users to share needles and diseases) and bar the distribution of drug test strips (rendering it difficult to identify drugs). Making naloxone available over-the-counter was a good step towards reducing deaths since it reverses the effects of opioid overdoses. That’s an approach that gets law enforcement out of the way rather than doubling down on failure.”
https://reason.com/2023/08/25/some-drug-warriors-just-wont-concede-defeat/
Government Continues To Deny Its Role in Adderall Shortage
“The DEA is empowered by federal law to set annual production quotas for all Schedule II narcotics, including amphetamines. Once it sets the quotas, companies apply for a piece of the total and are forbidden from manufacturing more than their allotment. Despite seeing a sharp increase in prescriptions for ADHD treatment, and in spite of an FDA-reported shortage, the DEA kept the same 2022 levels for its 2023 amphetamine quotas.
Earlier this month, the FDA and DEA put out a joint statement to address the continuing shortage. The statement noted that “for amphetamine medications, in 2022, manufacturers did not produce the full amount” allowed under the quotas. While the agencies “cannot require a pharmaceutical company to make a drug, make more of a drug, or change the distribution of a drug,” they nonetheless “called on manufacturers to confirm they are working to increase production to meet their allotted quota amount.”
But there’s more to the story than manufacturer supply. State and local governments sued the three largest pharmaceutical distributors and Johnson & Johnson over claims that the companies had contributed to opioid abuse and deaths. In February 2022, the companies settled for $26 billion and cracked down on potentially suspicious orders of controlled substances from independent pharmacies. As a result, many pharmacies were limited in the drugs they were able to order; some were banned altogether.”
https://reason.com/2023/08/25/government-continues-to-deny-its-role-in-adderall-shortage/
How the guy behind the 1st ever ticket bot made $2.3 million from a U2 tour
““I really didn’t remember giving the fans a second thought. I was a selfish drug addict, alcoholic. I only cared about myself,” Lowson said. “So no, that didn’t go through my head when I was like that. It was only afterward.”
Eventually, the FBI raided the Wiseguy Tickets office in February of 2009, which indirectly led to the BOTS Acts of 2016 getting passed through Congress. Although that ultimately just encouraged software developers to come up with more savvy alternative ways to get around the system.”
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/how-guy-behind-ticket-bot-made-23-million-from-u2-tour-073100850.html