“these trends will undermine the most important way businesses really do contribute to the common good. By pursuing shareholder value and maximizing profit, publicly traded companies facilitate choice in goods and services for consumers, provide wages and benefits to their employees, repay their loans to banks, and pay their taxes. They increase the total material wealth in society, allowing people who have never owned a share in their lives to realize goods ranging from health care to education.
Just as protectionism and industrial policy significantly compromise the workings of market exchange by using state power to privilege connected groups of businesses and political leaders, so too would a capacious, government-enforced vision of stakeholder capitalism. By blending politics and business, it would further shift the economy’s focus away from meeting the needs and wants of 330 million American consumers and toward promoting the interests of politically connected businesses.”
“Salazar certified that the migrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard were the victims of a crime. “Based upon the claims of migrants being transported from Bexar County under false pretenses, we are investigating this case as possible Unlawful Restraint,” Salazar said in a statement to GBH News. Under the Texas penal code, unlawful restraint, or restricting someone’s movement without consent, includes actions that involve “force, intimidation, or deception.” Salazar noted that his office had “submitted documentation through the federal system to ensure the migrants’ availability as witnesses during the investigation.”
The sheriff’s certification move is notable because it clears the way for the migrants to apply for a U visa, which is devoted to victims or witnesses of crimes, through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). “Once certified, the crime victim can apply to USCIS for a U visa, which, if approved, allows them to remain in the US in nonimmigrant status and eventually can lead to Lawful Permanent Residence,” said immigration attorney Rachel Self, who has been assisting the migrants legally.
But backlogs spell a lengthy process for migrants who hope to obtain U visas. There were over 285,000 U visa petitions pending as of FY 2021, per USCIS data. According to a March report by the Niskanen Center, it would take more than 17 years for the government to process all U visa applications at its current pace. What’s more, Congress caps the number of visas at 10,000 annually. But as Politico notes:
“Once the Venezuelans submit their applications, they will likely be allowed to work and protected from deportation. Last year, the federal appellate court that covers Massachusetts ruled that a Honduran man could not be removed from the country while his U visa application was pending.””
…
“This development in DeSantis’ Martha’s Vineyard stunt speaks to how counterproductive showy immigration enforcement schemes can be. Often done in the name of fiscal responsibility, moves in Texas and Florida have racked up massive bills at taxpayers’ expense. The Martha’s Vineyard flights have also landed DeSantis in the Treasury Department inspector general’s crosshairs: The governor is now under investigation for potential misuse of federal COVID-19 funds to cover the flights.”
“Two new political science studies investigate how all of this time spent on social media affects our politics. The first asks what, if anything, digital denizens learn about politics, while the second develops a model to explain how social media interactions spark culture wars by sorting people into antagonistic political tribes.
Published in the Journal of Communication, the first study finds that whatever else millions of social media devotees learn from their online activity—catching up with friends and finding new ones, checking out product reviews, and watching cat videos—one thing they do not do is learn about is politics.
There are “no observable political knowledge gains from using Facebook, Twitter,
or SNS [social network sites] in general; when measuring policy-specific, campaign-related, or general political knowledge; in election and routine periods; and when individuals use social media specifically for news or for more general purposes,” find Israeli communications researchers Eran Amsalem and Alon Zoizner. They reached this conclusion after parsing data involving more than 440,000 subjects in a pre-registered meta-analysis of 76 different studies on the effect of social media on political knowledge.
One minor exception to this sweeping conclusion is that research using experimental setups finds small but statistically significant knowledge gains from using social media. However, in such experiments, Amsalem and Zoizner note that subjects are given no choice over what political information they see, so they may be artificially induced to pay greater attention to it than they ordinarily would scrolling out in the wild. The experiments also fail to account for information decay, since they test their subjects’ political knowledge gains immediately after exposure to it. “Considering these caveats, our conclusion remains that social media contribute little, if at all, to political knowledge,” write the authors.”
…
“Törnberg observes that accumulating data indicate that political polarization in the U.S. and other countries is not growing because people are increasingly isolating themselves with like-minded folks in social media echo chambers that confirm the righteousness of their views. Instead, Törnberg notes that the “empirical literature suggests that digitalization does not appear to lead to a reduction of interaction across political divide, but quite the opposite: it confronts us with diverse individuals, perspectives, and viewpoints, often in contentious ways.” So how might social media contribute to the apparent increase in partisan rancor? Törnberg develops a model showing how political disputes, controversies, and debates on nonlocal social media can drive people to adopt increasingly extreme positions.
Back in the good old days, political and other differences of opinion were largely local and neighbors had many cross-cutting issues and commonalities that moderated their views of those who disagreed with them. “Social conflict is sustainable as long as there are multiple and non-overlapping lines of disagreement: we may differ on our views on one issue but agree on another; we may vote differently, but if we support the same football team or go to the same church, there remains space for interpersonal respect,” writes Törnberg. “The recent rise in polarization is thus expressive of a gradual breakdown of this cohesive glue, driven by a gradual alignment of social, economic, geographic, and ideological differences and conflicts.””
…
“Based on the results of his model, Törnberg argues that we need to rethink “digital media as not merely arenas for rational deliberation and political debate but as spaces for social identity formation and for symbolic displays of solidarity with allies and difference from outgroups. Digital media do not isolate us from opposing ideas; au contraire, they throw us into a national political war, in which we are forced to take sides.””
“Mandatory reporting laws say that certain classes of professionals are legally obligated to report suspected child abuse and neglect to authorities. Federal law requires states to have such laws in place.
While mandatory reporting might seem at first rather uncontroversial—one hopes that any adult, mandated or not, would report suspected child abuse—the nature of these laws leads to a lot of unfounded reporting. Mandatory reporters who fail to do so face penalties ranging from criminal charges to professional sanctions and loss of occupational licenses, so it behooves them to report liberally. (“Mandatory reporters are required to report the facts and circumstances that led them to suspect that a child has been abused or neglected” but “do not have the burden of providing proof that abuse or neglect has occurred,” notes a report from the U.S. Children’s Bureau.) This can lead to a lot of false reports of abuse that cause major headaches and heartaches for the families involved.
The problem is exacerbated by states perpetually expanding the list of people considered mandatory reporters.”
…
“Being investigated by child protective services can be a disturbing experience for parents and children alike, and even lead to children being temporarily removed from their parents’ homes. It can also lead to a range of other invasive measures.”
…
“”Nationally, the families of more than half of Black children will be investigated by child protective services before those kids turn 18; in much of the country, more than one in 10 Black kids will be removed from their home,” she writes. “In New York City, Black families are six times more likely than white families to be investigated and 11 times more likely to experience a separation. If social workers are by and large earnest, gentle, well-intentioned individuals, they are also unavoidably narcs, bound by laws demanding that they rat on the very communities they’re supposed to help.””
“When California legalized recreational marijuana in 2016, the state had more than 3,000 weed shops. They ostensibly served the medical market, but the rules were so loose that pretty much anyone who wanted pot could buy it legally. Six years later, California had less than half as many licensed marijuana merchants, accounting for between a quarter and a third of total sales.
Something clearly has gone wrong “when you try to legalize weed and accidentally end up illegalizing it instead,” note University of California, Davis, economists Robin Goldstein and Daniel Sumner. In their book Can Legal Weed Win?, they explain how burdensome licensing requirements, regulations, and taxes have frustrated plans to displace the black market.”
“According to a recent report examining national ACT scores, American high school students’ ACT scores have dropped dramatically in the past year. The released data highlights the staggering fact that few high school students, even before the pandemic, are academically prepared to attend college. While the most recent decline shows the impact of COVID-era school closures on students’ learning, consistently low scores draw attention to the fundamental flaws at the core of many of America’s government-run schools.”
“Critics, including some economists associated with the Democratic Party, warned that Biden’s determination to go big could set off an inflationary spiral. Among the most prominent of those critics was Harvard economist Lawrence Summers, a former adviser to President Barack Obama, who in February 2021 wrote in The Washington Post that “while there are enormous uncertainties, there is a chance that macroeconomic stimulus on a scale closer to World War II levels than normal recession levels will set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation, with consequences for the value of the dollar and financial stability.”
Biden ignored Summers’ call for a substantially smaller bill. The president flatly rejected a Republican counteroffer that would have cut the bill’s cost to about $600 billion in more narrowly targeted pandemic relief. He offered no substantial criticism of the idea; he simply objected that it was too small.
There was no risk in overreach. The only danger was in doing too little.”
…
” Is America of 2022 simply repeating the mistakes of the 1960s and 1970s? It isn’t a note-for-note remake, but it does feel rather like a remix, a collage of historically familiar elements rearranged and repackaged in an updated aesthetic. If there is a lesson to be learned from the inflationary drama of the recent past, it is that inflation is to some degree a policy choice, made for political reasons. And thus, as with Reagan in the 1980s, it has both policy and political consequences.”
“In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper..President Joe Biden conceded that his son Hunter lied on a government form when he purchased a handgun in October 2018—a federal felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. The younger Biden was a crack cocaine user at the time, as recounted in his 2021 memoir Beautiful Things. Yet he answered no to this question on ATF Form 4473: “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?”
..
” The Washington Post reported that federal agents believe they have enough evidence to charge Hunter Biden with making that false statement. Although the Post did not mention it, receiving and possessing the gun he bought was also a felony, which at the time likewise was punishable by up to 10 years in prison. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which President Biden signed into law in June, raised the maximum penalty for that offense to 15 years.
Biden presumably does not think his son should go to prison for lying about his personal habits or for violating a federal law that prohibited him from owning a gun. Neither do I. But if that result would be unjust, why does Biden enthusiastically support the laws that allow it?
Under those laws, someone in Hunter Biden’s position, if convicted, can be sent to federal prison for years or decades. Furthermore, such a conviction would forever bar him from possessing firearms, whether or not he continued using illegal drugs. If he were caught with a gun after being convicted of a felony, he could be prosecuted again, in which case he would now face up to 15 years in prison. And he would carry all the other lifelong burdens of a felony record.”
…
“The federal prohibition of gun possession by unlawful users of controlled substances also applies to cannabis consumers, even if they live in states that allow medical or recreational use of marijuana.”
“Starvation. Poverty. People struggling to buy medicine and fuel.
Disaster happened after one government fell under the influence of the world’s environmental extremists.
Many “experts” say pure nature is best. United Nations officials now tell politicians that the climate “crisis” demands countries make all sorts of sacrifices, like cutting nitrogen waste.
Much of that waste comes from synthetic fertilizer, so activists applauded when Sri Lanka’s government decided to become the first country to really take their advice. Sri Lanka banned all synthetic fertilizers.”
…
“Suddenly, the same farms produced much less food. Food prices rose 80 percent.
One result: riots. As my new video shows, thousands swarmed the president’s mansion. Some had a cookout on his lawn.
The president resigned and fled the country.
It turns out that we need chemical fertilizers.”