“Tactical nuclear weapons are often called “battlefield” or “theater” weapons to distinguish them from much more powerful strategic nuclear weapons, but they are far more destructive than conventional weapons. During the Cold War, tactical nuclear weapons had yields ranging from tens or hundreds of tons of TNT to thousands of tons. These weapons came in many forms: gravity bombs, short-range missile warheads, anti-aircraft missiles, air-to-air and air-to ground missiles, anti-ship and anti-submarine torpedoes and even demolition devices or mines. Reportedly, the smallest tactical weapon in the Russian nuclear arsenal has a yield of about one-third the size of Hiroshima or Nagasaki bombs, or equivalent to about 5,000 tons of TNT.
There are a few ways that such a tactical nuclear weapon could be used to fire the kind of “warning shot” envisioned in Russian military doctrine. These options come with increasing degrees of risk for the U.S., Ukraine and its allies, and for Russia.”
“Alito is not just a conservative. He’s not a consistent “originalist” in the vein of Scalia or Justice Clarence Thomas, only a “practical” one. The key to understanding Alito is not judicial philosophy or ardent conservatism: it’s his anger — an anger that resonates with the sentiments of many voters, especially white and male ones, who feel displaced by recent social and cultural changes. If you want to understand what to expect from the post-Roberts Court, paying attention to that anger pays dividends.”
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“Alito’s anger consistently sounds in a register of cultural decline, bemoaning the growing prominence of women and minorities in American life. Writing the majority opinion in Hobby Lobby, which endorsed a company’s right to deny employees contraception coverage, Alito waxed lyrically about the “men and women who wish to run their businesses as for-profit corporations in the manner required by their religious beliefs.” The women denied medical care that facilitates participation in the labor market, in contrast, weren’t a concern. Examining a Washington state regulation of pharmacists, Alito was quick to detect “hostility” to conservative religious beliefs. And in an opinion repudiating New Haven’s effort to promote more Black firefighters, Alito alone trawled the history of the case to complain about the role played by a Black pastor who was an ally of the city’s mayor and had “threatened a race riot.” Black involvement in municipal politics, for Alito, appears as a sinister threat to public order.
In stark contrast, when the charge of discrimination is made on behalf of racial or religious minorities, Alito expresses no such solicitude. He does not search for evidence of bias. Instead, he takes an impossibly narrow view of job-related discrimination that demands women somehow instinctively know they are being paid less than male counterparts. Despite his claim to a “just the facts ma’am” approach, Alito has a distinctively constricted take on what the “facts” are. To read his opinions is to inhabit a world in which it is white Christian men who are the principal targets of invidious discrimination, and where a traditional way of life marked by firm and clear gender rules is under attack.
When it comes to the criminal justice system, Alito is a reliable vote for the most punitive version of the state. In 2016, when the Supreme Court invalidated Florida’s death-penalty scheme on Sixth Amendment grounds, only Alito dissented. When the court, a year earlier, found a federal sentencing rule for armed offenders unconstitutionally vague, only Alito voted for the prosecution. It’s difficult to think of cases where Alito has voted for a criminal defendant, or any other litigant that elicits liberal sympathies.”
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“In November 2020, Alito gave a keynote speech to the conservative legal organization the Federalist Society. Much criticized at the time for its partisan tone “befitting a Trump rally,” in the words of one critic, those remarks are useful because they prefigure where a court on which Alito is a dominant voice might go.
In that speech, Alito criticized pandemic restrictions by bemoaning the rise of “scientific” policymaking. He complained about the “protracted campaign” and “economic boycotts” of Catholic groups and others with “unpopular religious beliefs” (self-identified Christians make up some 63 percent of the American populace). And he (falsely) warned of “morning after pills that destroy an embryo after fertilization.” If that speech is any guide — and there is no reason to think it won’t be — the future of the Supreme Court will be increasingly one of religious censor: keeping women in their lane, standing up for Christian rights, and making sure that uppity “scientists” in the federal government don’t get their wicked way.”
“The uproar over infant formula shortages is prompting lawmakers to confront how a federal nutrition program may be helping a small handful of formula manufacturers dominate the U.S. market.
The federal government’s widely-used nutrition program for women, infants and children, known as WIC, is by far the largest purchaser of formula in the U.S., with more than half of infant formula in the U.S. going through the program. And just two companies serve close to 90 percent of the infants who receive benefits through the program, in part because of the way WIC awards its contracts.”
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“The Abbott recall and resulting shortages were especially disruptive for WIC recipients. About half of all babies born in the U.S. qualify for WIC, which serves low-income families. Many of these households don’t have the time or resources to drive around looking for alternative formula brands or scour the internet for available stocks. Even if parents and caregivers could find alternative formulas, their WIC benefits might not have covered the specific brand they could find when the shortages first hit.
For the past three decades, WIC has used what’s called sole-source contracting, which is designed to save the program money by allowing the states to buy formula far below retail prices. The National WIC Association estimates that state rebates save about $1.7 billion in costs each year. When a state contracts with a company, all WIC participants in the state use that same manufacturer. Just three companies have been awarded contracts during this time: Abbott Nutrition; Mead Johnson, which makes Enfamil; and Nestle, which makes Gerber.”
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““The dirty secret about WIC is these formula companies actually lose money on formula that they sell through WIC,” because the lowest bidder ends up winning the state contracts, explained a former Democratic Senate aide. “But what happens is… if you give birth in a hospital and you request formula, you’re going to get the formula that is whoever has the WIC contract,” allowing the formula makers to reach a massive pool of new customers. Getting a state WIC contract can also mean more favorable shelf space at retailers across the state and more brand loyalty.
Not everyone agrees about the extent to which sole-source contracting has driven consolidation in the formula industry, versus other factors, like overall consolidation across the food sector and high food safety regulatory costs, since infant formula is more highly regulated than most other foods.”
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” But the USDA’s Economic Research Service in 2011 found that switching a state WIC contract gave the new manufacturer about a 74 percent bump up in market share in the state. Most of that is the result of WIC participants switching — since they make up more than half the market — but the rest is the result of more preferential treatment at the retail level.”
“it will be worse still if what happens in Texas doesn’t stay in Texas. Extra-territoriality still lies over the horizon; Connor Semelsberger, an official with the anti-abortion Family Research Council, told me his organization was far more focused on reviving pre-Roe state laws restricting abortion and on preventing the sale of abortion pills than on pursuing action across the border. Yet efforts to limit the sale of abortifacients will almost inevitably involve enforcement beyond state lines, as is the case with the Texas extradition statute. Katie Glenn, government affairs counsel of Americans United for Life, testified in Texas in favor of the new law and says she expects to see “interstate scuffles” as pro-abortion rights states resist the cross-border reach of anti-abortion legislation. Those scuffles could involve either extradition demands or attempts to hold out-of-state figures, whether doctors or Uber drivers, civilly liable for facilitating an abortion. The new Connecticut statute specifically bars local officials from cooperating with extradition requests over the facilitation of abortion. Just so, in 1850, did Vermont pass legislation requiring citizens to help, rather than apprehend, fugitives running from slavery.
The Supreme Court, which seems to think it will have finally washed its hands of the issue, will have no choice but to adjudicate the dispute. The court has been here before as well. In 1846, Dred Scott, an enslaved man from Missouri, sued for his freedom on the grounds that his enslaver had taken him into Northern territories where he had lived for many years. The case finally reached the Supreme Court in 1857. The court ruled that Scott remained mere property, as the Fugitive Slave Act stipulated. Chief Justice Roger Taney then added, in perhaps the single worst decision in the history of the Supreme Court, that because enslaved people had no “rights which the white man was bound to respect,” the federal government could neither confer citizenship on Black people nor bar slavery in federal territories. The Dred Scott decision convinced Northerners that the “slave power” had gained control over all three branches of government. Slavery could not be extirpated save by war.
The questions that will face the court are, of course, very different this time: Whether the state laws in question violate a principle implicit in the Constitution like the “right to travel,” or which of two conflicting state laws take precedence over the other. Mary Ziegler, a law professor at Florida State University and the author of several books on abortion and the law, says there simply are “no settled answers to these questions.” After all, states have not tried to impose their laws on one another for the past 170 years or so. “There’s not a lot to constrain the justices,” says Ziegler, “which adds to the unpredictability.” One can only hope that the court will act in such a way as to dampen conflict rather than advance the anti-abortion cause, though there’s little reason to have much confidence.”
“Republican lawmakers in Oklahoma passed a bill on Thursday that would ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, typically around six weeks into pregnancy and before many even know they are pregnant.
The Oklahoma Heartbeat Act will take immediate effect as soon as Gov. Kevin Stitt signs the bill, which is expected as early as Friday. Stitt has committed to signing any anti-abortion legislation that comes across his desk and has previously described himself as America’s “most pro-life governor.”
Earlier this month, Oklahoma enacted a different bill that nearly totally bans abortion except in cases where the pregnant person’s life is endangered. Under that bill, anyone who performs an abortion would face up to 10 years in prison and up to $100,000 in fines. It will take effect in August unless barred by the courts.
The new bill, which was passed without debate or any questions allowed, is modeled after a Texas law that went into effect last year. It has exceptions for cases where the pregnant person’s life is endangered, but not for cases of rape, incest, or fetal conditions that make life unsustainable after birth. It also imposes additional reporting requirements on physicians and allows private individuals to seek civil penalties, including at least $10,000 in damages, against anyone who aids in or performs an abortion after the six-week term. That’s designed to circumvent current legal limitations on the government’s ability to go after abortion providers.
“It’s identical to the bill that was enacted by the Texas Legislature last year, and that bill has passed muster with the United States Supreme Court,” Tony Lauinger, the chairman of Oklahomans for Life, told the AP. (The Supreme Court, however, never held a full hearing on the bill and merely dismissed a case challenging the bill in a brief order without explaining its reasoning.)”
“After a month of intense civilian-led protests over Sri Lanka’s deteriorating economy, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa agreed to appoint a new council on Friday to lead the formation of an interim government. The resolution would create a coalition made up of all parties in Parliament and would remove the grip of the Rajapaksa family dynasty currently ruling the country. At issue is the country’s economic future, which is in shambles after defaulting on payments on its mountain of foreign loans — estimated to be worth $50 billion — for the first time since the country gained independence from the British in 1948.
Signs of Sri Lanka’s impending economic crisis became increasingly apparent over the last two years of the Covid-19 pandemic as food prices soared and power blackouts increased in frequency. Sri Lanka currently has about $7 billion in total debt due this year.
Many attribute Sri Lanka’s economic crisis to the mishandling of its finances by successive governments through mounting foreign debt and continued infrastructure investments. The Rajapaksa administration also implemented sweeping tax cuts in 2019, slashing the value-added tax (VAT) rate — the tax applied to imports and domestic supplies — from 15 percent to 8 percent, which contributed to a decrease in the country’s revenue.”
“The implication of Philippon’s paper is as simple as it is disturbing: We should expect economic growth to slow down in the long run, and the big leaps forward of the last couple centuries may be an aberration.
This conclusion is far from certain, and it goes against decades of assumptions on how to model economic growth. But Philippon brings a lot of data to bear on his thesis, which makes some intuitive sense, and even the possibility of it being true should alarm us.”
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“What Philippon does is attempt to assess whether TFP actually does, in practice, grow exponentially. He first looks at two datasets covering TFP in the US and finds, instead, linear growth since World War II: TFP does not increase by a set percentage each year, but a set amount (0.0245 points, if you’re curious) each year. It doesn’t compound; it just gradually, steadily grows. You’re getting $2 a year, not 2 percent of an ever-increasing pile.
Extending the data back to 1890, he finds linear growth, but with a break: slower growth from 1890 to 1933, and faster after 1933, but steady and non-exponential in each period. He then extends the analysis to 23 relatively wealthy countries, from Japan to Germany to Spain. A linear model fits better here, too.”
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“The US and other rich countries have experienced a well-documented decline in productivity growth, especially TFP growth, since 2004 or so. Philippon’s findings could help explain why that is. The slowdown is only there if you assume TFP should be growing exponentially. If you assume mere linear growth, it’s not that things have gotten worse in recent decades. It’s just that they were never that good.
That’s an alarming conclusion, mostly because from the standpoint of human history, the past few centuries have been very good. Before the 17th to 18th century or so, human economies grew extremely slowly. Agriculture showed little productivity growth, meaning there was a fixed population that farming societies could support. Living standards varied mostly based on how many people were around; when the population suddenly shrank (as in the Black Death in Europe) people grew richer on a per capita basis, and when the population swelled the opposite occurred. This is known as the “Malthusian trap.”
“Until about 1800, the vast bulk of people on this planet were poor,” Joel Mokyr, an economic historian at Northwestern, once noted. “And when I say poor, I mean they were on the brink of physical starvation for most of their lives.”
That pattern started to break down in the 17th through 19th centuries, a process sometimes shorthanded as the “Industrial Revolution,” but including a wide variety of cultural, scientific, technological, and economic changes. Long story short: productivity sustainably grew for the first time in human history. And it grew, by historical standards, quite rapidly, such that a far lower share of people alive in 2022 are on the brink of starvation than were in 1800, even though the population needing food has never been greater.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/endless-shelling-dead-soldiers-vicious-100025111.html
“Making chips is an intricate process, but building a factory that can do this type of manufacturing is even more complicated. For one thing, fabs can’t go just anywhere. They need to be close to a reliable source of electricity, since they can use as much energy as 50,000 homes in a single year (they release a lot of carbon emissions, too). These factories also need to be near a large body of water, which they use to clean and cool down their equipment, which, in turn, produces wastewater that needs to be treated. And it’s better if they’re not particularly close to any airports or geological fault lines; seismic activity can disrupt the incredibly precise machinery they use.
Then there’s the matter of the supply chain. Beyond the fab, making a chip can involve 70 different border crossings and more than 1,000 steps, and a single disruption in one country or during a particular step can throw the entire process off course. That’s because there are usually very few, if any, other options for supplies when something goes wrong. For example, just one company in the Netherlands, ASML, makes the specialized, $200 million lithography tools that many advanced chip fabs rely on. And just two firms, both based in Ukraine, supply about half of the specialized neon gas that fabs throughout the world use to control these lasers. Of course, securing all this equipment has gotten even more difficult during the pandemic.”
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“concern is based, in part, on fears that China may invade Taiwan at some point and attempt to take control of its chip-manufacturing capacity. But there are other reasons to be worried about the state of US semiconductors. The US doesn’t currently make very many of the most basic, or legacy, chips, which are typically produced where they can be made for less. These are the chips that became unavailable during the pandemic, and that made lots of technology hard to find and drove up car prices. The US will also need to manufacture more chips to maintain its hold on the auto industry, since EVs will likely need at least twice as many chips as their gas-powered counterparts do.”
“The argument here is not about whether nurses should be held accountable for their errors; everyone I spoke with about Vaught’s case agrees she bears responsibility for her actions and should face consequences. The real issue is that criminalizing a nurse’s error lets hospitals off the hook for the systemic changes that would improve patient safety.
“Almost no mistakes happen in a hospital by just one person,” said Gatter. Systems exist to prevent medical errors, he said. If those systems don’t work or exist only on paper, errors will happen.
In this case, the system failures were clear: During an unannounced visit to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in late 2018, federal investigators found multiple deficiencies, some of which placed patients at “serious and immediate threat,” according to the 105-page memo documenting the details. For example, hospital policies didn’t require that a second nurse sign off on the use of a highly dangerous medication like vecuronium, nor did it require that patients receiving sedatives be hooked up to a heart and lung monitor. Focusing the blame on one nurse’s error shifts the attention away from those deficiencies.
“I’m quite concerned that this nurse is getting thrown under the bus, and in the hubbub of giving her a jail sentence, that the system itself will escape close examination,” said Gatter.
Even if a nurse were solely responsible for a medical error resulting in patient harm, the way to prevent that nurse from causing further harm is to revoke their license, said Gatter. It’s much harder to explain how punishing a nurse with jail time further prevents them from endangering others.
However, it’s easy to see how that type of punishment can itself create and compound safety risks, he said.
That’s because severely punishing individuals for systemic problems has a chilling effect on others’ willingness to report mistakes.”
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“Less transparency in error reporting also means hospitals have fewer opportunities to correct big problems. That means faulty systems stay in place, which translates into more vulnerability and stress for health care providers and less safety for patients.”
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“The consequences for professional malpractice should ideally deter wrongdoing without discouraging people from entering the profession altogether — but finding that balance is challenging.”
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“American nursing was under enormous strain well before the pandemic. But with the US population aging, surging retirements among bedside nurses and nurse educators, and nurse staffing levels reduced ever lower to contain costs, the pandemic has tipped parts of the country into a full-on nursing shortage.
The last thing the profession needs is another reason for nurses to leave jobs providing direct patient care, but that’s exactly the effect the Vaught ruling is having”