What Are Our Options? Step 2 in the “It’s Fatally Flawed” Series
San Francisco Fines Businesses for Getting Vandalized
“Getting your business vandalized sounds like punishment enough. For some San Francisco business owners, it’s just the beginning of their troubles.
A steady stream of restaurateurs and retailers have been complaining about the city’s practice of issuing them fines for not being quick enough to remove chronic graffiti being applied to their shopfronts and street cafes.”
End of the Helicopter? (no) – MANPADS and helicopter losses in Ukraine
Chile’s Proposed Left-Wing Constitution Could Spell Chaos
“Chile’s draft constitution is even longer than Venezuela’s, which was redrafted by Hugo Chávez’ administration during his first year in office and set the stage for the country’s socialist revolution, descent into dictatorship, and ensuing economic collapse.
Venezuela has had 26 constitutions in a little over two centuries. In general, the practice of scrapping and rewriting constitutions helps to explain Latin America’s relentless political turmoil.
A constitution provides legal stability and predictability—like a computer operating system. Tampering with any foundational code creates security holes that are easily exploited by political opportunists looking to amplify their own power and overturn the established order.
Even if Chileans reject the new constitution—and, thankfully, polls indicate that they probably will—Boric can choose to start the process again with the election of yet another constitutional assembly to draft yet another version.
That could bring years of chaos, economic stagnation, and legal uncertainty. Now that Latin America’s free market experiment and “economic miracle” may be coming to an end, hopefully, the rest of the world can learn from the experience of Chile once again: Beware leftist pipe dreams.”
Study: Huanan Market In Wuhan Was the ‘Epicenter’ of COVID-19 Outbreak
“Did the coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic originate from live animals for sale in the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China, or as a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute for Virology? In search of answer to this question, a new article in Science parses the early outbreak data along with environmental samples taken in Huanan Market supplied by Chinese researchers. It finds that the market was the “epicenter” for the contagion. A second article concludes that the outbreak began after two genetically distinct coronaviruses infected people beginning in November and December of 2019.
Do these findings rule out the possibility that the COVID-19 coronavirus originated from the institute? No. The first article acknowledges that “events upstream of the market, as well as exact circumstances at the market, remain obscure, highlighting the need for further studies to understand and lower the risk of future pandemics.” Those “events upstream” could include a scenario in which someone associated with the Virology Institute was unknowingly infected with the virus and carried it to the market while shopping.
“Have we disproven the lab leak theory? No, we have not,” one of the study’s authors told The Washington Post. “Will we ever be able to? No. But there are ‘possible’ scenarios and there are ‘plausible’ scenarios….’Possible’ does not mean equally likely.”
Skeptics of the natural origin of the virus will point to its novel furin cleavage site (FCS), which enhances its ability to latch onto and infect human cells. Broad Institute researcher Yujia Alina Chan and her colleagues noted in a January 2022 article for Molecular Biology and Evolution that the Wuhan Institute had earlier proposed to research FCS in coronaviruses found in bats. They further observed that the FCS has not been found so far in plausible evolutionary forebears of the COVID-19 coronavirus.
On the other hand, a May 2022 analysis of the genetics of bat coronaviruses in Communications Biology identifies “several possible ways for natural acquisition of the FCS” in bat coronaviruses. This, they argue, supports “a natural evolutionary origin from bats with or without the involvement of [other animal] intermediary hosts.”
In June, the World Health Organization urged the Chinese government and researchers to allay speculations about lab leaks by being more forthcoming about the work on coronavirus viruses undertaken at the Wuhan Institute for Virology. The world is still waiting to hear from them.”
The CHIPS Act Is Corporate Welfare Disguised as Industrial Policy
“Industrial policy is making a comeback. For those of you under the age of 50, this is just another term for corporate welfare—a lovely name for the unlovely practice of a government granting subsidies, protective tariffs, and other privileges to politically influential industries or companies. It’s often done in the name of some lofty goal such as strengthening national security or ensuring that America is a leader in the “industries of the future.” But the outcome is always the same: wasteful, unfair, unsuccessful, and unjustified. Oh, and it invariably grows the budget deficit.
The latest form of industrial policy is Congress’s CHIPS Act of 2022, a bill meant to subsidize the semiconductor industry by channeling taxpayer money to build up domestic production capacity and combat feared Chinese computer-chip supremacy.
This chapter began with the disruption caused by lockdowns to global supply chains. Unsurprisingly, that led to a series of semiconductor shortages aggravated by a surge in demand for automobiles. Automakers wrongly assumed that the original drop in demand would persist, canceled orders for semiconductors, and then could not keep up with the buying public.
Now, Congress is responding to this temporary chip shortage with $52 billion in subsidies and $24 billion in tax credits mostly directed at semiconductor industry beggars.
Never mind that chip firms have already expanded production without subsidies. In fact, two years into negotiating this bill, it’s obvious that it has little to do with any alleged structural deficiencies in the semiconductor market. For instance, the initial chip subsidy proposal had a $16 billion price tag. Since then, the industry has announced its own investments totaling over $800 billion, with $80 billion committed for near-term investment in U.S.-based fabrication facilities. Yet somehow, the bill more than tripled in price to target a problem that’s already being solved.
What about the argument that China is subsidizing its chip producers and thus threatening our technological leadership? Yes, China subsidizes its chip industry, but this doesn’t guarantee their subsidies will work. If U.S. politicians could for a moment stop treating every Chinese action as a threat, they would see that the Chinese semiconductor industry is both quantitatively and qualitatively weak. In fact, many of the companies subsidized would go under without the government’s help. That’s hardly the sign of a vibrant industry. These subsidies are more like life support than super-vitamins.”
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“” Any resulting new operations would still face deep-rooted issues hindering American manufacturing. Large-scale environmental assessments will be required, but over the years, the costs and delays have become excessive. Recent trends promoting or requiring unionized workers for federal contracts, combined with the current labor shortage, will hinder chipmakers’ ability to find talent and could exacerbate the cost of domestic production. ”
In other words, if you believe that moving most of our chip production onshore is important for national security reasons, you should labor for regulatory reforms rather than subsidies.”
The U.S. is sending ‘VAMPIRE’ kits to Ukraine. Here’s how they work.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/the-us-is-sending-vampire-kits-to-ukraine-heres-how-they-work-090010937.html
Impact of Supreme Court’s climate ruling spreads
“Fallout from the Supreme Court’s attack on federal climate regulations is spreading throughout the executive branch, creating legal uncertainty for rules on topics as far afield as abortion, immigration and even amateur auto racing.
Opponents of federal actions on pipelines, asbestos, nuclear waste, corporate disclosures and highway planning are also seizing on the logic of the court’s June 30 decision, which imposed sharp limits on the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases.”
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“In their decision, the high court’s six conservative justices invoked what they called the “major questions” doctrine to declare that agencies such as EPA need explicit congressional approval before “asserting highly consequential power” over almost any policy area. But they did not offer a precise definition of what would cause a regulation to qualify as major — a question that agencies and lower courts may now need to spend years wrestling with.”
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““If anything’s ambiguous at all, you get people challenging on major questions grounds, and you have to go find out if Congress gave you an extra clear statement,” said Nathan Richardson, a law professor at the University of South Carolina. He called it a reversal of the long-standing tradition of courts deferring to agencies’ policy expertise. “It’s not deference, it’s anti-deference.””
Opinion | The Supreme Court Reform that Could Actually Win Bipartisan Support
“There is one idea, though, that has longstanding bipartisan support, a proven record of success, and practical wisdom behind it: term limits. Imposing term limits on Supreme Court justices would be good for the country and the court. It would help ease the bitterness of the confirmation process and make the court more representative of the public’s views. And while conservatives might currently balk in light of their 6-3 majority, it’s a change that would not necessarily advantage either side over the long run.
The most common version of this reform contemplates justices serving nonrenewable 18-year terms, staggered so that one term ends every two years. This would mean that presidents would get to nominate new justices in the first and third years of their own administrations. Retirements and nominations would occur like clockwork. The result would be a court whose membership, at any given time, would reflect the selections of the past 4 1/2 presidential administrations.
Because Article 3 of the Constitution confers life tenure upon all federal judges, term limits would likely require a constitutional amendment.”