What the Science on Gender-Affirming Care for Transgender Kids Really Shows Heather Boerner. 2022 5 12. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-the-science-on-gender-affirming-care-for-transgender-kids-really-shows Mastectomy John Hopkins Medicine. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/breast-cancer/mastectomy#:~:text=A%20mastectomy%20is%20surgery%20to,a%20high%20risk%20for%20it. Correction: Access to gender-affirming hormones during adolescence and mental health outcomes among transgender adults Jack L. Turban et
“Corral’s reckless chase was in pursuit of someone suspected of soliciting prostitution. The whole business was kicked off by the suspect offering to pay an undercover female cop posing as an adult sex worker.
Police put in danger the lives of countless people in order to arrest someone for trying to have consensual but non-state-sanctioned sex.”
“What Lutnick is talking about is central planning, plain and simple. It’s also just silly. How much of America’s aluminum supply should come from Canada if not 60 percent? Is 50 percent the right amount? Is it 17.54 percent? Lutnick doesn’t know—because no one does—because that’s a question without an answer.
Clearly, however, the Trump administration wants the figure to be lower. New 25 percent tariffs on aluminum imports might accomplish that, but at significant cost to American consumers and businesses, whose only offense is buying aluminum from sources located within a country that is a close American ally and the signatory of a trade deal that the current president negotiated just five years ago.”
“In September, Lizzie Dearden and Thomas Gibbons-Neff wrote for The New York Times about the worldwide proliferation of designs for the FGC-9, a partially 3D-printed weapon that can “be built entirely from scratch, without commercial gun parts, which are often regulated and tracked by law enforcement agencies internationally.”
As one expert told the reporters: “Now you have something that people can make at home with unregulated components. So from a law enforcement perspective, how do you stop that?””
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“Another mass-deportation program—known by the offensive title of “Operation Wetback,” referencing a slur about Mexicans who got wet illegally crossing the Rio Grande—took place during the Eisenhower administration. That operation, which was backed by Mexican authorities who faced a labor shortage per the same report, didn’t directly use the military. But the Border Patrol used military techniques—and it ensnared many U.S. citizens.
I doubt politicians who have engaged in rhetorical attacks on immigrants will worry about their hardships, but shouldn’t they be concerned about what it will mean for U.S. citizens? During the 1950s operation, “Border agents raided Mexican American neighborhoods, demanded ID from ‘Mexican-looking’ citizens in public, invaded private homes in the middle of the night and harassed Mexican-owned businesses,” according to Axios.
Our Constitution upholds due process. The government cannot simply grab people off the street. It needs to follow a legal process. Every accused person gets their day in court to make their case. As George Washington famously said, “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence—it is force.”
Unleashing such force on a broad scale will not result in precise, humane, and just results. Government agents will conduct raids. Illegal residents often live among legal ones. Wide swaths of the population will get caught up in the dragnets.”
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“As someone who has hired construction workers in towns without large immigrant labor pools, I’m skeptical that large numbers of native-born Americans will jump at these newfound opportunities. The incoming administration embraces the Lump of Labor Fallacy—the idea that jobs are a zero-sum game where one person’s job comes at the expense of another’s job. In reality, more labor spurs economic growth and business development. That’s how market economies work.”
“Situations like the ones we’ve seen in Lewisville, West Ocean City, and countless other places highlight how bankrupt our current approach to “helping human trafficking victims” is. If these women really are in trouble, there has got to be a better way to get them services than making them jack off a cop (sometimes several times) first. And if they’re neither victims nor perpetuating harm against anyone, then leave them alone.”
“”Every set of extractive institutions is extractive in its own way, while all sets of inclusive institutions are inclusive in pretty much the same way. For example, ancient Rome ran on slavery; Russia on serfdom, Imperial China strictly limited domestic and foreign commerce; India depended upon hereditary castes; the Ottoman Empire relied on tax farming; Spanish colonies on indigenous labor levies; sub-Saharan Africa on slavery; the American South on slavery and later a form of racial apartheid not all that unlike South Africa’s; and the Soviet Union on collectivized labor and capital. The details of extraction differ but the institutions are organized to chiefly benefit elites.
So why don’t extractive elites encourage economic growth? After all, growth would mean more wealth for them to loot. Acemoglu and Robinson show that the institutions that produce economic growth are inevitable threats to the power of reigning elites. The “key idea” of their theory: “The fear of creative destruction is the main reason why there was no sustained increase in living standards between the Neolithic and Industrial revolutions. Technological innovation makes human societies prosperous, but also involves the replacement of the old with the new, and the destruction of the economic privileges and political power of certain people.” Thus throughout history reactionary elites naturally resisted innovation because of their accurate fear that it would produce rivals for their power.””
“The transformation is clearest in the GOP, thanks to the elevation of Vance to the GOP presidential ticket. Vance, according to most accounts, was selected in a moment of confidence, as an heir apparent meant to extend and intensify Donald Trump’s core appeal rather than as a counterweight to the former president’s electoral weaknesses.
Vance spent the last half-decade transforming himself into one of the GOP’s most prominent neopopulists. He’s an advocate of tariffs and trade restrictions, a walker of auto-worker picket lines, and a harsh critic of foreign labor. He’s even complimented Lina Khan, the Federal Trade Commission chair who has helped lead the Biden administration’s newly aggressive (if mostly unsuccessful) approach to antitrust enforcement. Vance, who is among those who have a habit of taking swipes at libertarians, combines a rejection of individual liberty with a rejection of economic liberty—and he’s Trump’s newly anointed successor.”
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“What’s striking about this particular political moment is that on both the left and the right, a new elite consensus appears to be forming, one that is skeptical of, and in some cases quite hostile to, free market ideals and principles.
The neopopulist consensus is still rough, but in broad terms, it favors propping up domestic labor, cracking down on immigration, using taxes and spending incentives to carry out industrial policy, and implementing tariffs and trade restrictions for reasons of national security, job creation, or international competitiveness. Notably, the Biden administration left most of Trump’s tariffs in place—and in some cases increased them.
Whatever their other disagreements, the leaders and rising intellectuals in both parties seem to agree that the important thing is to leave out classical liberals, libertarians, and believers in economic liberty.
It’s true that the parties have never fully embraced these values, and at times have distanced themselves from them. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.), a self-described socialist, has long helped pull Democrats to the left on economics. Former President George W. Bush implemented tariffs on imported steel, and his brand of “compassionate conservatism” was partly an attempt to dampen the party’s libertarian tendencies.
Until recently, there was a place for those who prized individual freedom and markets. They were seen as valuable, or at least necessary, partners: As recently as 2012, none other than Democratic stalwart Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) pitched herself to libertarians. That same year, former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R–Wisc.), who was probably most well-known for proposals to reform entitlements, appeared on the GOP ticket. Trump’s first vice president, Mike Pence, was similarly a link to the GOP’s Reaganite past.
There may be some holdouts in the party who still embrace a more orthodox pro-market economics. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson’s Republican National Convention speech paid homage to the “core principles of American conservatism,” which included “fiscal responsibility,” “free markets,” and “limited government.” But with Trump and Vance as the party’s reigning avatars, it seems likely that these values will remain only as limp, legacy platitudes.
That’s a shame. Personal liberty and market freedom are bedrock American political and economic values: That synthesis is explicit in the American founding, and it has long been deeply embedded in American life. In the 1830s, when America was still a young nation, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that “boldness of enterprise is the foremost cause of its rapid progress, its strength, and its greatness.” That boldness has made America wealthy on a scale that is almost taken for granted: Today, the vast majority of American states are richer than most European countries. The neopopulists take this wealth for granted, and then propose policies—tariffs, labor regulations, vast new spending programs—that would make America poorer, that would slow its progress, that would deplete its strength and greatness.”
“State lawmakers in at least six states have recently introduced bills related to sex work. Some of these measures would decriminalize prostitution, while others would stipulate stronger criminal penalties for prostitution.
States considering the former have the right idea. Decriminalizing prostitution has been linked to an array of positive outcomes, from lower rates of sexual violence and sexually transmitted infections overall to less violence against sex workers. It means fewer law enforcement resources wasted on policing consensual activity between adults, freeing up time and money for stopping and solving serious crimes. It’s supported by organizations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women, and the World Health Organization. It’s also in line with what sex workers around the world say they need.”
“So if the Republican Party finally rejects Trump, is that also a rejection of the authoritarian and illiberal impulses his political career has amplified? I’m open to being pleasantly surprised, but so far, the evidence answers with a resounding “no.” Even if Trump loses this primary race, there’s every reason to think his party will retain its present will to power.
At The Bulwark this week, Jonathan V. Last documented a telling contrast between Republicans’ rationales for rejecting Trump now and their original objections to his candidacy in 2015 and 2016. Back then, GOP critiques of Trump were grounded in language about policy and governing principles or personal character, or both. Now the repudiation is openly transactional: Trump loses, and Republicans don’t want to lose.”