Russian military moves in the Arctic worry the U.S. and NATO
https://www.yahoo.com/news/russian-military-moves-in-the-arctic-worry-the-us-and-nato-090027224.html
To Promote Public Safety, Michigan Authorizes Cops To Rob Travelers at Airports
“”Traveling with cash is not a crime,” notes Institute for Justice senior attorney Dan Alban. “People regularly fly with large amounts of cash for a wide variety of completely legitimate reasons related to their business or personal finances. Allowing authorities to take air travelers’ cash without a criminal conviction, simply because they have a large sum of money, is a blatant violation of their rights. This will lead to innocent people losing their money and is a massive step in the wrong direction by Michigan lawmakers.”
As Rep. Filler (R–DeWitt) tells it, Michigan’s civil forfeiture reforms, which legislators enacted in 2015, 2017, and 2019 after hearing testimony about greedy cops who indiscriminately stole people’s property, invited drug traffickers to carry their ill-gotten gains into and out of Michigan with impunity. “Drug trafficking will not be tolerated in Michigan,” Filler says. “The men and women who keep our airports secure need to have the proper authority to keep drugs and drug money out of our state—and this reform gives them the tools they need to get the job done.”
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, signed “this reform” into law last week. H.B. 4631, which Filler sponsored, makes an exception to a law requiring a criminal conviction before a forfeiture can be completed. It says that requirement does not apply to airport seizures of cash or other property worth more than $20,000. H.B. 4632, which was sponsored by Rep. Alex Garza (D–Taylor), eliminates a property owner’s right to seek a stay of forfeiture proceedings in such cases pending the outcome of a related criminal case.”
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“Forfeiture affidavits routinely employ vague boilerplate that falls far short of establishing the criminal nexus they allege. This guy was carrying a lot of money, they say, and we suspect it is connected to drug trafficking. He bought a one-way ticket, and he seemed nervous when we grilled him, which reinforced our impression that he must be a drug dealer. Maybe the money came from selling drugs, or maybe it was intended to buy drugs. Either way, we want to keep it.
In Michigan, law enforcement agencies generally get to keep 90 percent of the proceeds from forfeitures they initiate, which is even more generous than the 80 percent they can expect from forfeitures “adopted” by the Justice Department through its “equitable sharing” program. That is a strong motive to claim that large sums of cash are connected to drug trafficking, even when there is little reason to believe that is true. The results of such perverse financial incentives are apparent in one case after another where cops seized an innocent person’s hard-earned money because they assumed he had no legitimate reason to have it.”
Russia’s territory in Europe is the latest source of Ukraine war tensions
“What set off the spat this time was Lithuania’s enforcement of EU sanctions against Russia after a months-long transition period. Because Kaliningrad isn’t directly connected to the rest of Russia, it gets most of its supplies by land routes or by sea. Lithuania’s state rail operator announced last week that it would no longer allow the transit of sanctioned goods — like steel products and construction materials — through Lithuania to Kaliningrad.
Russia accused Lithuania of staging a blockade, with Russia’s foreign ministry warning of “practical” retaliation. “Both Lithuania and the EU have been notified through their diplomatic missions in Moscow that such actions are inadmissible and that the steps taken should be overturned and the situation put back on the legal, legitimate track,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Wednesday, according to state-run media. “If this fails to be done, then, of course, retaliatory moves will be inevitable.”
Lithuania has said this is not a blockade, and they are just doing additional checks and following the sanctions rules that all EU states agreed on. “First, any talk of a blockade of Kaliningrad is a lie. Second, Lithuania is complying with the sanctions imposed by the European Union on Russia for its aggression and war against Ukraine,” said Lithuania Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė. Only sanctioned items are targeted; food and medicine can still move, and passenger travel continues. Plus, Kaliningrad can get goods from Russia by sea.
The European Union, meanwhile, has tried to de-escalate and is working on guidelines to implement checks “in a clever and smart way,” said Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief. “[There are] two objectives: to prevent circumvention of the sanctions; and not to block the traffic. Both things should be possible, and we are working on that,” Borrell said.”
She Let the Kids, Ages 3 and 5, Wait Briefly in the Car. Now She Can’t Be a Teacher.
“In 2018, Nzinga Terrell-Brown was hired as a teacher’s aide: her dream job. But a couple months later, she was fired—and didn’t know why. She got another teacher’s aide job but was abruptly fired again.
What was going on?
As Scott Pham details in a thorough and jaw-dropping expose for Buzzfeed News, Terrell-Brown was listed on a registry. Not the sex offender registry, which is public, but the child abuse and neglect registry, which can be accessed by employers and adoption agencies.
Terrell-Brown had been placed on New Jersey’s registry almost 10 years earlier after she decided not to wake her fiance’s kids, ages three and five, when she popped into the store to pick up a birthday cake for the five-year-old. The errand was short, the weather was mild, and the kids were fine. Nevertheless, someone called the cops, and Terrell-Brown was charged with “inadequate supervision.” For this, she was placed on the registry.
There are millions of moms and dads like her, registered for crimes ranging all the way from sex trafficking to letting their kids frolic outside. Recently, I wrote about an Arizona mom facing registration for letting her seven-year-old play at a popular park while she picked up a Thanksgiving turkey during COVID-19.
That mom’s registration as a child abuser is pending, because she got a lawyer to fight it. But this is rare. As Pham chronicles with damning stories from across the country, getting placed on the registry is quite easy; getting removed from it is obscenely difficult.”
One Year Later, No One Has Been Punished for the IRS Leak of Billionaires’ Tax Data
“So, the use of tax data by ProPublica and its source to make a policy point isn’t exactly groundbreaking. Some of the agents and politicians who weaponized the IRS in the past intended to make the world a better place by their lights, or at least to hurt only people and organizations they were convinced were bad. And leaks from government agencies often do achieve beneficial ends. Where would we be without Daniel Ellsberg’s copies of the Pentagon Papers, Mark Felt’s role as “Deep Throat” in the Watergate scandal, or Edward Snowden’s revelations of government surveillance?
But leaks from the IRS aren’t war plans, misuses of power, or politicians’ schemes; they’re sensitive, private financial information that we’re forced to surrender to government agents. We have no choice but to fill out our tax forms even though we know that the federal employees receiving our information have a track record of abusing that data for their own ends and to our detriment.”
The American Rescue Plan Bailed Out Unprofitable Government-Owned Golf Courses
“An unnecessary federal bailout of state and local governments has given an undeserved mulligan to some money-losing government-owned golf courses.
That’s despite the fact that some of those same courses reported an increase in customers during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to reports submitted to the Treasury Department and reviewed by Reason, Union County, New Jersey, has committed $929,000 of its federal COVID funds to a pair of county-owned golf courses: Galloping Hill and Ash Brook. That spending will help the courses cover “costs associated with increased use” as a result of “an increase in play at county golf courses due to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
That’s the sort of problem that many private businesses would probably love to have. Either as the result of government-imposed lockdowns or changes in consumer behavior during the pandemic, recreational spending on restaurants, bars, concert venues, and theaters plummeted. If that made golfing—an outdoor, socially distanced activity—more popular, why should taxpayers now have to bail out a business that got more successful?”
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“In a report published earlier this year, the Reason Foundation (the nonprofit that publishes this website) found that 155 local governments lost a combined $61 million by running golf courses during their 2020 fiscal years. One of the biggest losers was Thousand Oaks, California, which lost a staggering $800,023 on a single city-owned golf course in 2020.
Naturally, that course got a piece of the federal bailout too. The Treasury Department’s tracker of American Rescue Plan spending shows that Thousand Oaks plans to spend more than $14 million on “revenue replacement” on a variety of items, including “city-owned theatres and golf course.” It’s not clear from the data provided to the Treasury Department how much of that money will be spent on the golf course (nor is it clear why the city owns multiple theaters, but that’s for another day).”
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“”Congress really put taxpayers in the rough,” says Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, a fiscally conservative nonprofit. He says Congress should have placed stricter limits on how the $350 billion state and local government bailout could be used.
Those funds were included in the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, passed by Congress in March 2021, and were ostensibly meant to cover pandemic-related public health costs or to offset lost tax revenue due to the economic consequences of COVID-19. Even before the law was passed, there were questions about whether such a large bailout of state and local tax coffers was necessary or prudent.
It seems to have been neither, as most governments did not experience a significant revenue shortfall due to the pandemic. Now flush with extra cash from Washington and few restrictions on how to use it, some state and local governments are blowing the money on pet projects like government-owned golf courses and bonuses for government workers”
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“Other obviously vital public health costs being covered by the American Rescue Plan’s local government bailout fund include the planting of new trees “including ash, spruce, maple, pine, [and] cherry” and the installation of a new irrigation system at a government-owned golf course in Elmira, New York, according to Treasury Department data. That’ll burn through $1.2 million of federal funds.
In Lexington, Kentucky, a government-owned course that brags about containing “the longest par-5” hole in the state, will be getting a new irrigation system with the help of more than $1.3 million from the federal bailout. The course is already “a local favorite and an attraction to visitors,” the county wrote in its project summary submitted to the Treasury Department, but the desired upgrades haven’t been made due to a lack of funding from the local government.”
GM Slashes Prices for Its Electric Vehicles (To Compete With Tesla)
“How much of this innovation and aggressive price-slashing is due to government intervention in the clean energy market? It’s hard to tell. E.V. sales have long been boosted by government subsidies that offer electric and hybrid vehicle owners federal income tax credits of up to $7,500 for new cars bought in or after 2010. But in a splendid twist of government logic, carmakers also get punished for being too successful, since customers are phased out of subsidies if the automaker has sold more than 200,000 qualifying units—a threshold Tesla has reached, rendering owners ineligible for tax rebates. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has even criticized such tax credits, noting that they’re simply not needed in order to drive demand for E.V.s. Though likely correct, Musk delivered this critique years after the subsidies were put in place and after his company’s customers became ineligible for it. It’s entirely possible that tax credits helped drive the early transition to E.V., but play less of a role now, and will play no role in the future.
In May, the Biden administration signaled that it would incentivize further E.V. adoption—pursuing ill-advised and market-distorting economic nationalism despite the fact that consumers were already gravitating in that direction (as strong Tesla sales, even post-subsidy-expiration, have suggested, and Musk has confirmed). The administration last month started to put in place a $3.1 billion plan to ramp up domestic production of E.V. batteries. Though packaged as a way “to insulate consumers from the fluctuation of global oil markets,” as The New York Times reports, gesturing at Russia’s war in Ukraine, the shift to mass domestic production of E.V. batteries will take quite a while to implement, and the effects even longer to be felt. It also ignores that much of the lithium, cobalt, and nickel mining needed for these batteries is done in China and will be difficult to scale up to sufficiently meet demand.
Mass electric vehicle adoption need not be spurred by socially conscious word-fluff or well-meaning (but flawed) subsidies; it’s looking like customers want electric vehicles because they’re high-quality, convenient products made increasingly attractive by their lower price and easier maintenance. May the best man win in the coming price wars.”
Ukraine thanks U.S. for ‘game changing’ weapons system: But what is the HIMARS?
“Built by military contractor Lockheed Martin, the HIMARS, or high-mobility artillery rocket system, can fire the same type of long-range ordnance as a conventional multiple launch rocket system (MLRS), such as the M270, at targets up to 300 kilometers away. It too can put Ukrainian forces out of range of artillery, while placing the Russian batteries at risk.
A crew consisting of driver, gunner, and launcher section chief operate the system, which carries a payload of six precision-guided missiles. A spent munitions pod can be reloaded in mere minutes by trained soldiers.
Yet it has one key difference—the M142 is not a heavy tracked vehicle, like a tank for example, but instead uses a three-axle wheeled chassis one might find in a commercial semitruck.
“This design offers a unique shoot and scoot capability that enables soldiers, Marines and our allies to position, engage and rapidly relocate after firing,” wrote Michael Williamson, vice president and general manager of missiles and fire control at Lockheed Martin, last year in a LinkedIn post.
Thanks to its light weight, the HIMARS is also easily transportable so it can be utilized in locations otherwise hard to reach. It’s even deployable from a C-130 Hercules turboprop transport plane.”
Do We Really Need 100 Different Federal Programs To Fund Broadband?
“President Joe Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill apportioned $1.2 trillion for such projects as roads, bridges, and airports. But it also designated $65 billion “to help ensure that every American has access to reliable high-speed internet” by funding broadband expansion. This included a $45 billion “Internet for All” program, under which Biden pledged to expand broadband access to all Americans by 2030.
But this was not the first tranche of federal funds dedicated to expanding internet access: The 2009 stimulus bill allocated more than $7 billion toward broadband grants for rural areas, and expenditures have grown since. A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) shows that the return on that investment has been underwhelming.
The report, titled “Broadband: National Strategy Needed to Guide Federal Efforts to Reduce Digital Divide,” was released…Based on Biden’s pledge of getting to universal broadband access by the end of the decade, the GAO studied the government’s current broadband programs and expenditures, looking for shortcomings or areas of improvement.
What it found was a jumbled mess.
“Federal broadband efforts are fragmented and overlapping,” with “at least 133” programs “administered by 15 agencies,” the report found. These agencies varied widely, with the three largest being the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which is part of the Department of Commerce. Between FY 2015 and FY 2020, these programs collectively dispensed at least $44 billion in broadband assistance.
In practice, so many programs from so many agencies all pursuing the same goal leads inevitably to waste. In one case the report cites, “multiple providers received funding from different programs to deploy broadband to the same county in Minnesota.” If the goal of the federal broadband effort is to expand into areas that lack access, then there is no reason to fund multiple providers in the same area.”
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“Overall, the report determined, “The U.S. broadband efforts are not guided by a national strategy with clear roles, goals, objectives, and performance measures.””
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“A previous GAO report noted that while the federal government invested over $47 billion in rural broadband infrastructure between 2009 and 2017, the broadband industry invested $795 billion over the same period. To the extent that federal funding would ever be necessary, it would be to fill in any gaps the private sector was unable to cover.
“The problem is the Biden administration is prioritizing the government being the provider,” rather than the private sector, says Swarztrauber. “The rhetoric is all about how we should prioritize the local government being the owner and operator of the network.”
In the past, such plans consistently lead to higher costs, corrupt bidding processes, and technology inferior to what’s offered by the private sector. But the Biden administration is moving full steam ahead, with NTIA Administrator Alan Davidson saying last month that his agency would “press” states to allow more municipal broadband programs.”
You’re Wrong About Disinformation
“People believe and say things that aren’t true all of the time, of course. When false beliefs influence the outcomes of major elections or, say, decision making during a pandemic, it’s reasonable to consider ways to minimize the ill effects those false beliefs can create. But efforts by public officials to combat them—and tremendous confusion over how to identify them—may well make things worse, not better.”