Widespread Engine Attachment Fitting Cracks on Boeing 777-9

From aviationweek.com

Here is the link

Good Samaritan stops carjacking

From www.ammoland.com

Falls Mills, VA – A courageous good Samaritan intervened in a dangerous situation on Friday, using his firearm to stop a man attempting to carjack a woman and her child outside Lee’s Kar-Go convenience store.

The incident unfolded around 1 p.m. when Cody Dailey, a 30-year-old man with outstanding warrants, attacked a female driver. According to authorities, Dailey tried to steal the woman’s truck with her child still inside.

During the assault, Dailey reportedly told the child, “I’m going to rape your mommy,” which added to the terror of the situation. Witnesses heard the woman scream, prompting several bystanders to rush to her aid.

Among them was an armed citizen carrying a 9mm handgun.

Major Harold Heatley of the Tazewell County Sheriff’s Office stated that the armed citizen confronted Dailey and gave him verbal commands to stop. Dailey ignored these commands, charged at the armed man, and shoved him to the ground. As Dailey continued to approach, the armed citizen fired a shot, striking Dailey in the chest.

Law enforcement officers were nearby, responding to a separate incident, and heard the gunshot. They quickly arrived on the scene. Dailey was airlifted to a hospital in Roanoke, where he was reported to be in stable condition.

Dailey was already wanted on two outstanding Tazewell County Circuit Court warrants. Authorities have since been made aware of these charges and are pursuing additional charges against Dailey, including abduction, carjacking, assault, and battery.

Sheriff Brian Hieatt expressed his gratitude towards the good Samaritan and other citizens who intervened. “Thank goodness for the good Samaritans that came to the victims’ aid during her time of need. We are grateful for their desire to intercede on her behalf. Had they not acted, this could have been a very different outcome,” Hieatt said.

The identity of the good Samaritan has not been released, but his brave actions have sparked discussions on the importance of self-defense and the right to carry firearms for personal protection. This incident highlights how responsible, armed citizens can make a difference in protecting their communities and preventing violent crimes.

More attacks on free speech (8/23/24)

From Jonathan Turley.

JT is on target.

Too many people who vote fail to appreciate freedom.
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Rowling Reportedly Sued by Olympic Boxer Over Gender Criticism

We have previously discussed the cancel campaigns targeting JK Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series. Rowling was not only the greatest selling author of all time but a wildly popular writer until she publicly opposed certain transgender policies as inimical to the advances in feminism. Now, she is the target of a lawsuit by Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, the gold-medal winning athlete who had previously failed a gender test to confirm that she is a female fighter. We previously discussed that global debate, but Khelif is now accusing Rowling out of many thousands of critics of being a cyberbully. X owner Elon Musk has also been named in the lawsuit.

Rowling has been the target of a global campaign due to her rejection of transgender laws and policies. Many on the left have unleashed book bans and burnings. I have been critical of that campaign. Even third parties who have supported Rowling’s right to free speech have been targeted in cancel campaigns.

She held her ground after Scotland passed a draconian law, the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021. The new crime under the law covers “stirring up hatred” relating to age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity or being intersex. That crime covers insulting comments and anything “that a reasonable person would consider to be threatening or abusive.”

Rowling previously posted various responses to the controversy on her X account on August 7, including: “For the record, bombarding me with pictures of athletic women to ‘teach’ me that women don’t all look like Barbie is like spamming me with pics of differently-shaped potatoes to prove rocks are edible. I can still see the difference and you look frankly bonkers.”

She later also posted: “Commentators pretending critics of the IOC’s reliance on documents rather than sex testing think Khelif is trans are straw-manning. I don’t claim Khelif is trans. My objection, and that of many others, is to male violence against women becoming an Olympic sport.”

She further wrote on X how she was concerned over both boxers challenged over their gender at the Olympics: “What will it take to end this insanity? A female boxer left with life-altering injuries? A female boxer killed?”

France has eviscerated free speech protections over the last few decades with speech criminalization laws. There is some question whether the French laws would apply to tweets made outside of the country.

These laws criminalize speech under vague standards referring to “inciting” or “intimidating” others based on race or religion. For example, fashion designer John Galliano has been found guilty in a French court on charges of making anti-Semitic comments against at least three people in a Paris bar. At his sentencing, Judge Anne Marie Sauteraud read out a list of the bad words used by Galliano to Geraldine Bloch and Philippe Virgitti, including using ‘dirty whore” in criticism.

In another case, the father of French conservative presidential candidate Marine Le Pen was fined because he had called people from the Roma minority “smelly.” A French teenager was charged for criticizing Islam as a “religion of hate.”

The question of the extraterritorial application of such laws is the question. Conversely, the United Kingdom and the European Union are asserting the right to regulate speech in any country, including political speech in American presidential elections.

Rowling has every right to be heard on the Olympic boxing controversy. This debate raises core issues that touch on a wide array of political speech. Khelif has the ability to refute these claims through the exercise of her own free speech. As in the past battles fought by Rowley, her effort to advocate for women’s rights is also a major test over free speech in Europe.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster).

A Historical Comparison of the Collapse of Law Enforcement in US Cities. The Drop in Arrest Rates over the Last Few Years is Unprecedented

From John Lott at the Crime Prevention Research Organization.

JL is on target.

Here is the link

Price Gouging

 From John Cochrane.

JC is on target.

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Praise for Price-Gouging

Kamala Harris’ policy speech on Friday seems to have ignited a debate about “price gouging,” and what the government should do about it.

We should praise price-gouging. Yes, pass a new federal law: override the many state laws against price gouging.

What is price gouging and how could I possibly say that? The classic case of “price gouging” happens in a natural disaster or pandemic. A hurricane is coming, people run down to hardwares stores and clean out the 4’x8’ plywood to board up their windows. Stores raise their prices, people who have them sell at high prices to those that don’t. After the storm, gas trucks can’t get in for a few days. Gas stations raise prices to $10 per gallon. In the pandemic, people got worried about toilet paper and went out to buy, cleaning out shelves. Stores that raised prices were accused of “gouging.”

Price gouging is fundamentally different from monopoly pricing, collusion, or price-fixing. Price gouging happens in perfectly competitive markets. There suddenly isn’t enough to go around, either from a surge in demand or a contraction in supply. Prices rise sharply above what people are used to paying. Those that have inventories, bought when prices were lower, can turn around and make a temporary profit. VP Harris calls for a new law against “gouging,” because price fixing is already illegal, and it’s abundantly clear grocery stores are not doing it.

Price gouging is wonderful for all the reasons that letting supply equals demand is wonderful. When there is a limited supply, then a sharply higher price directs that supply to those who really need it. It’s day 2 after the hurricane. Who really needs gas? An ambulance, police, or fire truck? A handicapped person, needing to get to a doctor across town? Or someone who could bike, take public transit, or walk with just a little effort to go see a friend?

Hoarding goes with price controls, anticipated empty shelves. Why did people buy tons of toilet paper in the pandemic? They were worried about not being able to get it in the future. If the stores had not been worried about price-gouging, they would have raised the prices a lot more, and people with that idea would have gotten the message, don’t bother to stock up now — and if you really need it, there will always be some in the store later.

Laws limiting price gouging also reduce supply. If gas goes to $10 per gallon, there is a huge incentive for anyone to has a gas truck to fire it up, buy some gas out in the sticks, bring it in and sell it to local gas stations. If you can’t sell it for a good price, and the gas station can’t recoup that price, it doesn’t happen.

Inventory is a great source of supply. If you run a Home Depot in Florida, how many 4’x8’ sheets of plywood do you keep around? Well, if you’re allowed to sell them for $100 each when the next hurricane is coming, a lot. If you must charge only the regular price until the shelves empty out, then not so much. Inventory is expensive.

“Windfall” profits belong in the pantheon of saints along with price-gouging. In competitive industries, that’s what encourages people to enter and offer new supply.

Price gouging directs scarce supply to the people who really need it, encourages new supply to come in, encourages holding stockpiles for a rainy day, encourages efficient use of stockpiles we have sitting around, and encourages people to substitute for less scarce goods when they can.

Anti-price gouging efforts also target resellers. Suppose you have 20 4’x8’ plywood sheets in your basement, waiting for that big remodel. In the day before the hurricane, put them on eBay, or just outside the front of the garage, for $100 each. That way someone else gets to save their house. Not if the cops are going to come arrest you for it.

But whatabout people who can’t “afford” $10 gas and just have to get, say, to work? Rule number one of economics is, don’t distort prices in order to transfer income. First, take a breath. In the big scheme of things, even a month of having to pay $10 for gas is not a huge change in the distribution of lifetime resources available to people. If you are genuinely worried, then hand out cash. But everyone faces the same prices. Give everyone $100 to “pay for gas.” But let them keep the $100 or spend it on something else if they look at the $10 price of gas and decide it’s worth inconvenient substitutes like car pooling, public transit, bicycles, nor not going, and using the money on something else instead.

This is, mostly, what our government did during covid. There was a lot of noise about price gouging then too, but by and large the government just handed out checks so everyone could pay higher prices. (With the exception of rental housing.) We got inflation, but we did not get the devastation that would have been caused by price controls and rationing.

Yes, rationing. Nobody likes “price gouging,” but choices are always between alternatives. How else but higher prices are we going to decide who gets the short supply? The alternative to rationing by price is rationing by waiting in line, or by political preference.

Paying higher prices is a reduction in your real income, and nobody likes that. But with less to go around, our collective real income is lower, no matter what the government does about it. The government can only transfer resources, not create them. And all the fixes to price gouging make the shortage worse, by discouraging people to cut back on demand or bring in new supplies.

Yet the cultural and moral disapproval of price gouging is strong. Going back thousands of years, people (and theologians) have felt that charging more than whatever they had gotten accustomed to is immoral, especially if the merchant happened to have an inventory purchased in an earlier time. This “just price” moral feeling surely motivates a lot of the anti price-gouging campaign. Economics has only understood how virtuous price gouging is in the last 250 years.

Indeed, companies are very reluctant to price-gouge. Costco let the shelves run out of toilet paper rather than raise pries. Other stores rationed: you can only have 4 rolls — no matter if the cupboard is bare and you have a house of 8 people with diarrhea or you’re just stocking up your summer house just in case. Their reluctance goes way beyond laws. To some extent they are afraid of being housed by politicians, short of actual legal trouble. But price gouging is terrible PR. And to some extent for good reasons. Stores want a reputation for buying cheaply and passing on the low cost to the customer.

As much as the US is the land of free markets — an it is, culturally, compared to other places — we have a ways to go in our cultural acceptance of market behavior. It should be, “you’re free to charge what you want for your property, and I’m free to not buy. Everybody stop whining.” It is not.

Uber surge pricing was an important lesson to me. I loved it. I could always get a car if I really needed one, and I could see how much extra I was paying and decide if I didn’t need it. I was grateful that Uber let me pay other people to postpone their trip for a while, and send a loud signal that more drivers are needed. But drivers reported that everyone else hated it and felt cheated.

This cultural and moral disapproval came home to me strongly about 25 years ago. We were driving from Chicago to Boston in our minivan, with 4 young children, dog, and my mother. We got to upstate NY, and needed to stop for the night. This was before cell phones and the internet, so the common thing to do was just pull of at a big freeway intersection, marked food, phone, gas, lodging, and see what’s available. Nothing. We tried hotel after hotel. We asked them to call around. Nothing. It turns out this was the weekend of Woodstock II. As the evening wore on, the children were turning in to pumpkins. Finally we found a seedy Super-8 motel that had 2 rooms left, for $400. This was back when Super-8 motel rooms were about $50 at most. I said immediately “Thank you, we’ll take them!” My mom was furious. “How dare he charge so much!” I tried hard to explain. “If he charged $50, or $100, those rooms would have been gone long ago and we’d be sleeping in the car tonight. Thank him and be grateful! He’s a struggling immigrant, running a business. We don’t need presents from people who run Super-8s in upstate New York.” But, though an amazing, smart, wise, and well-traveled woman, she wasn’t having it. Nothing I could do would persuade her that the hotel owner wasn’t being terrible in “taking advantage of us.”

It is surely morally worthy to give what you have to your neighbors in time of need, especially the less fortunate. But we should not demand gifts. And appropriation of property by threat of force, turning off the best mechanism we know for alleviating scarcity, does not follow. Moral feelings are a terrible guide for laws

Politicians follow what people demand. If the culture disapproves, politicians are sure to follow. Supply and demand, cause and effect, logic, evidence and experience be damned.

Free speech is in freefall

From Jonathan Turley.

JT is on target.

Only voters can save free speech. Vote for free speech.
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The EU Just Declared War on Free Speech in America. It is Time to Fight Back

Eighty years ago, the U.S. government launched a war bond campaign featuring a painting by artist Norman Rockwell in the struggle against the authoritarian threat from Europe. The picture they chose was Rockwell’s Freedom of Speech depicting a man rising to speak his mind at a local council meeting in Vermont. The image rallied the nation around what Louis Brandeis called our “indispensable right.”

Now, that very right is again under attack from another European government, which is claiming the right to censor what Americans are allowed to say about politics, science and other subjects. Indeed, the threat from the European Union may succeed in curtailing American freedom to an extent that the Axis powers could not have imagined. They may win, and our leaders have not said a thing yet about it.

In my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss the inspiration for Rockwell’s painting: a young selectman in Vermont named James “Buddy” Edgerton. The descendent of a Revolutionary War hero, Edgerton stood up as the lone dissenter to a plan to build a new schoolhouse over the lack of funding for such construction.

For Rockwell, the scene was a riveting example of how one man in this country can stand alone and be heard despite overwhelming opposition to his views. It was, for Rockwell (and for many of us), the quintessential American moment.

In the 1940s, people like Edgerton had to travel to small board meetings or public spaces to speak their mind. Today, the vast majority of political speech occurs over the Internet and specifically social media. That is why the internet is the single greatest advancement for free speech since the printing press.

It is also the reason governments have spent decades seeking to control speech over the internet, to regulate what people can say or read.

One of the greatest threats to free speech today is the European Digital Services Act. The act bars speech that is viewed as “disinformation” or “incitement.” European Commission Executive Vice President celebrated its passage by declaring that it is “not a slogan anymore, that what is illegal offline should also be seen and dealt with as illegal online. Now it is a real thing. Democracy’s back.”

In Europe, free speech is in free fall. Germany, France, the United Kingdom and other countries have eviscerated free speech by criminalizing speech deemed inciteful or degrading to individuals or groups. The result had made little difference to the neo-Nazi movement in countries like Germany, which is reaching record numbers. It has, however, silenced the rest of society.

According to polling, only 18 percent of Germans feel free to express their opinions in public. Fifty-nine percent of Germans do not even feel free expressing themselves in private among friends. Only 17 percent feel free to express themselves on the internet.

They have silenced the wrong people, but there is now a massive censorship bureaucracy in Europe and the desire to silence opposing voices has become insatiable.

Some in this country have the same taste for speech-regulation. After bought Twitter and dismantled most of the company’s censorship program, many on the left went bonkers. That fury only increased when Musk released the “Twitter files,” confirming the long-denied coordination and support by the government in targeting and suppressing speech.

In response, Hillary Clinton and other Democratic figures turned to Europe and called upon them to use their Digital Services Act to force censorship against Americans.

The EU immediately responded by threatening Musk with confiscatory penalties against not just his company but himself. He would have to resume massive censorship or else face ruin.

It was a case of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object. The anti-free speech movement had finally found the one man who could not be bullied, coerced or threatened into submission.

Musk’s defiance has only magnified the unrelenting attacks against him in the media, academia and government. If Musk can be broken, these figures will once again exercise effective control over a large swath of speech globally.

This campaign recently came to a head when Musk had the audacity to interview former president Donald Trump. In anticipation of the interview, one of the most notorious anti-free speech figures in the world went ballistic.

European Commissioner for Internal Markets and Services Thierry Breton issued a threatening message to Musk, “We are monitoring the potential risks in the EU associated with the dissemination of content that may incite violence, hate and racism in conjunction with major political — or societal — events around the world, including debates and interviews in the context of elections.”

While offering a passing nod to the freedom of speech, he warned Musk that “all proportionate and effective mitigation measures are put in place regarding the amplification of harmful content in connection with relevant events.” In other words, be afraid, be very afraid.

Musk responded with “Bonjour!” and then suggested that Breton perform a physically challenging sexual act.

To recap, the EU is now moving to force censorship upon American citizens to meet its own demands of what is false, demeaning or inciting. And that includes censorship even of our leading political candidates for the presidency.

The response from the Biden administration was not a presidential statement warning any foreign government from seeking to limit our rights or even Secretary of State Antony Blinken calling the EU ambassador to his office for an expression of displeasure.

That’s because Biden and Harris are not displeased with but supportive of letting the EU do what they are barred from doing under our Constitution. This administration is arguably the most anti-free speech government since John Adams signed the Sedition Act. They have supported a massive system of censorship, blacklisting and targeting of opposing voices. Democratic members have given full-throated support for censorship, including pushing social media companies to expand in areas ranging from climate control to gender identity.

So, after only 80 years, our leaders are silent as a European government threatens to reduce our political speech to the lowest common denominator, which they will set according to their own values. Not a shot will be fired as Biden and Harris simply yield our rights to a global governing system.

But we do not have to go quietly into this night. Free speech remains a human right that is part of our DNA as Americans. We can fight back and protect millions of Edgertons who want to express their views regardless of the judgment of the majority.

I previously called for legislation to get the U.S. government out of the censorship business domestically. We also need new legislation to keep other countries from regulating the speech of our own citizens and companies. While this country has long threatened retaliation in combatting market barriers in other countries, we need to do the same thing for free speech. We need a federal law that opposes the intrusion of the Digital Services Act into the U.S.

If free speech is truly the “indispensable right” of all Americans, we need to treat this threat as an attack on our very existence. It is not only the rawest form of foreign intervention into an election, but a foreign attack on our very freedoms. This is why we must pass a Digital Freedom Act.

The American Association of University Professors shows its colors

 From Jonathan Turley.

 If you want to understand why so many recent university graduates have such bizarre ideas and beliefs, this is a good place to start.

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“A Fighting Organization”: AAUP Elects New President Who Doubles Down on an Anti-Conservative Agenda

 For years, many of us have been writing about the decline in viewpoint diversity and the rise of an academic orthodoxy in higher education. It is one of the focuses of my new book, The Indispensable Right. Despite the calls for greater tolerance, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) just elected a new president who has been criticized for being overtly hostile to conservative viewpoints and candidates. Todd Wolfson, a Rutgers University anthropologist, is an ally for those who continue to oppose intellectual diversity in favor of ideological orthodoxy in higher education. Wolfson is the author of “Digital Rebellion: The Birth of the Cyber Left. “Given the hostile environment faced by conservatives, Republicans, and libertarians today, one would think that anyone contemplating this position would strive to project neutrality and tolerance. That does not appear to be the style of Professor Wolfson. In an August 8 statement, Wolfson responded to J.D. Vance’s criticism of higher education at the 2021 National Conservatism Conference. Vance objected to the universities being “very hostile institutions”  and said that “we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country.”Wolfson could have objected to the tenor of the rhetoric and defended the efforts to preserve pluralism and diversity of viewpoints.

 Instead, he immediately fulfilled the stereotype laid out by Vance:

 “With Vance, American Far-Right authoritarians have succeeded in elevating a fascist who vows to ‘aggressively attack universities in this country’ to within striking distance of their goal: the annihilation of American higher education as we know it.”

 He added:

 Vance’s labeling of professors as “the enemy” and his praise of Hungarian dictator Viktor Orbán’s seizure of state universities as “the closest that conservatives have ever gotten to successfully dealing with leftwing domination of universities” are unambiguous. Should he and the dark-money funders backing him gain power, they aim to take control of American higher education and bend it to their will. Ironically, they would use fear and misinformation to turn colleges and universities into what the Far Right has for years falsely accused them of being: ideological indoctrination centers. …

 While attacks on American higher education are nothing new, the scope of the Project 2025 blueprint for a Trump-Vance presidency offers a frightening glimpse into an authoritarian future that would transform American colleges and universities into thought-control factories by stifling ideas, silencing debate, and destroying autonomy. Project 2025 would roll back decades of progress on access to higher education, eliminate protections for LGBTQ+ students and sexual assault survivors, privatize student loans, end loan forgiveness, and, if we take its authors at their word, abolish the Department of Education entirely. We cannot afford to let this happen.

 So in one statement, Wolfson not only officially opposed the Republican ticket as an existential threat to higher education but made defeating such views an objective of the organization.

 There is not a single line recognizing the lack of diversity of viewpoints at most universities or polling showing that both students and faculty are now engaging in widespread self-censorship under administrators and academics like himself.

 A survey conducted by the Harvard Crimson shows that more than three-quarters of Harvard Arts and Sciences and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences faculty respondents identified as “liberal” or “very liberal.” Only 2.5% identified as “conservative,” and only 0.4% as “very conservative.”

 Likewise, a study by Georgetown University’s Kevin Tobia and MIT’s Eric Martinez found that only nine percent of law school professors identify as conservative at the top 50 law schools. Notably, a 2017 study found 15 percent of faculties were conservative. Another study found that 33 out of 65 departments lacked a single conservative faculty member.

 Some sites like Above the Law have supported the exclusion of conservative faculty.  Senior Editor Joe Patrice defended “predominantly liberal faculties” by arguing that hiring a conservative law professor is akin to allowing a believer in geocentrism to teach at a university. So the views of roughly half of the judiciary and half of the country are treated as legitimately excluded as intellectually invalid.

 Given this hostility, it is hardly surprising that polls show faculty and students are less comfortable discussing their views or values in higher education.

 The study shows that 70 percent of students “believe that speech can be as damaging as physical violence.” It also shows the impact of speech codes and regulations with two out of three students reporting that they “self-censor” during classroom discussions.

 Not surprisingly, Republican students are the most likely to self-censor given the purging of conservative faculty and the viewpoint intolerance shown on most campuses.

 Some 49 percent of Republican students report self-censoring on three or more topics. Independents are the second most likely at 40 percent. Some 38 percent of Democrats admit to self-censuring.

 These surveys and studies on the reduction of conservative or libertarian faculty show that the far left has achieved precisely what Wolfson describes as a successful effort “to take control of American higher education and bend it to their will.”

 This was an opportunity for Wolfson and the AAUP to reassure the many conservative and libertarian students and faculty. In the face of dwindling numbers of conservative and libertarian faculty, they could have voiced a commitment to resist ideological agendas from either the left or the right. It was a chance to push back on the hyperbole while acknowledging that work must be done to regain the lost trust in academia, which is now at record lows.

 Instead, Wolfson has doubled down on political language and orthodox policies. That could hardly come as a surprise for the faculty who elected him. Wolfson  he wants to make AAUP “a fighting organization.”

 Wolfson’s response is reminiscent of how the AAUP has solicited papers on conservative intolerance in higher education while omitting liberal intolerance. It was an almost laughable agenda given the purging or dramatic reduction of conservatives from most faculties over the last couple decades.

 As my book discusses, the AAUP was once the bastion of free speech and academic integrity values. It opposed the invasion of politics into higher education. However, it has become captured by the same forces that have converted our campuses into intolerance spaces for many faculty and students.

 Wolfson has been widely criticized for the move by AAUP to reverse its long-standing opposition to academic boycotts, a move that is viewed as targeting Israeli institutions. It is clearly part of his move to make AAUP even more of a “fighting organization” and he has insisted that “collective action of all sorts does not necessarily come into and undermine academic freedom.”

 Wolfson’s election shows how the objections of so many at the lack of intellectual diversity and tolerance are having little impact on faculty. When elected officials threaten reductions in support, these same academics are outraged by the attacks on higher education. Many offer perfunctory commitments to intellectual diversity while doing little to achieve it. As shown here, they are continuing to maintain and expand the culture that is suffocating our scholastic programs on every level.

 Here is his faculty bio:

 “Todd Wolfson’s research focuses on the intersection of new media and contemporary social movements and he is author of “Digital Rebellion: The Birth of the Cyber Left” and co-editor of the forthcoming volume, “Great Refusal: Herbert Marcuse and Contemporary Social Movements.”  Wolfson believes in the importance of engaged scholarship that leads to tangible action in the world, and to that end, he is a co-founder of the Media Mobilizing Project (MMP) based in Philadelphia, PA. MMP is an award-winning organization that aims is to use new media and communications to build a movement of poor and working people, united across color lines. MMP’s work has been supported by the Knight Foundation, Ford Foundation, Kellogg Foundation, Media and Democracy Coalition, and Media Democracy Fund amongst others.”

An economist’s rejoinder to Kamala Harris

 From John Cochrane.

JC is on target.

KH’s plans will make things worse, not better. KH and her ilk fail to address tradeoffs and ignore basic microeconomics.
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Opportunity and lower costs

Lower costs

 
Remove all antitrust exemptions, including for unions, insurance companies, and other price-fixers. Enforce antitrust against colleges and other routine violators.

 
Remove all coverage requirements for health insurance.

 
Eliminate corporate taxes. Tax people when they spend corporate profits.

 
Prioritize economic immigration. If you want to come to the US, have a clean record, $10,000 in the bank, foreswear social services for a few years, come on in.

 
Eliminate tariffs, buy American requirements, and other import protections

 
Eliminate minimum wages.

 
Eliminate mandates for paid leave, health insurance, time off; eliminate hours, straight time vs. overtime laws, employee vs. contractor laws, minimum wages, comparable worth, and any other restriction on the right of workers and employers to contract. Employers will hire more people if they can more easily fire them too. (This is also an “opportunity” move.)

 
National right to work. You’re free to join a union, but the union may not force all workers at a plant or company to join.

 
Eliminate “prevailing wage,” minority contracting, Davis-Bacon, and other cost-increasers for federal contracts.

 
Eliminate restrictive zoning and building codes. Build what you want on your property. (Subsidies for home buyers without expanded supply just drive prices up more. Government built housing just substitutes for cheaper privately built housing.)

 
Shot clock on all federal regulatory actions. One year from filing, if you haven’t heard your project is approved. Priorities include nuclear power, drug regulation, real estate development and redevelopment, and energy infrastructure.

 
Remove all “energy efficiency” mandates, starting with auto fuel economy standards. Bring back washing machines and dishwashers that wash.

 
End the “whole of government” war on fossil fuels, especially natural gas. We forbid pipelines and US exports, and then tell the Ukrainians not to bomb Russian fossil fuel facilities in order to keep supply up and prices down? If you must, impose a uniform carbon tax and no other energy regulation. If it’s true that renewables are now so cheap, you won’t have to.

 
Voucherize all health care and insurance subsidies, and let the free market rip to provide cheaper and better care.

Opportunity (in addition to the above)

 
Universal school vouchers. No more teachers’ unions. (No more government employee unions, as Franklin Roosevelt understood.)

 
Occupational license reform.

 
Stop subsidizing pointless college majors.

Coming to you soon

From Jonathan Turley.

JT is on target.

Free speech is over.
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London Calling: Police Chief Threatens to Arrest People Around the World For Online Speech

In its hit song London Calling the Clash warns:

“London calling to the faraway towns

Now that war is declared and battle come down

London calling to the underworld

Come out of the cupboard, all you boys and girls”

According to a new report, the British punk rock band may have been prophetic in 1979 in a way never foreseen in its apocalyptic lyrics. This week, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said that the police will not necessarily confine its arrests for speech crimes to London or even the United Kingdom. Rowley suggests that Americans and other citizens could be extradited and brought to London for online postings.

London has been hit with days of violent protests over immigration policies, including attacks and arson directed at immigration centers. This violence has been fueled by false reports spread online about the person responsible for an attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance event that left three girls dead and others wounded. Despite false claims about his being an asylum seeker, the culprit was an 18-year-old British citizen born to Rwandan parents.

News outlets and pundits have condemned the false reports and the violent protests. However, the police are moving to arrest those who are repeating false claims or engaging in inflammatory speech. Rowley is warning that they will not stop at the city limit or even the country’s borders.

He warned “We will throw the full force of the law at people. And whether you’re in this country committing crimes on the streets or committing crimes from further afield online, we will come after you.”

Rowley was asked by a reporter about the criticism by Elon Musk and others over the response of the government. Musk noted a video of someone allegedly arrested for offensive online comments with a question, “Is this Britain or the Soviet Union?”

Pundits and politicians in the United Kingdom have called for an investigation or the arrest of Musk for merely speaking publicly on the controversy.

The reporter said that high profile figures have been “whipping up the hatred,” and that “the likes of Elon Musk” are involved in the online speech. She then asked what the London police are prepared to do “when it comes to dealing with people who are whipping up this kind of behavior from behind the keyboard who may be in a different country?”

Rowley told the reporter:

“Being a keyboard warrior does not make you safe from the law. You can be guilty of offenses of incitement, of stirring up racial hatred, there are numerous terrorist offenses regarding the publishing of material. All of those offenses are in play if people are provoking hatred and violence on the streets, and we will come after those individuals just as we will physically confront on the streets the thugs and the yobs who are taking — who are causing the problems for communities.”

The message is chilling because free speech has been in a free fall in the United Kingdom as well as other Western countries. I discuss this trend in my new book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.

The decline of free speech in the United Kingdom has long been a concern for free speech advocates. A man was convicted for sending a tweet while drunk referring to dead soldiers. Another was arrested for an anti-police t-shirt. Another was arrested for calling the Irish boyfriend of his ex-girlfriend a “leprechaun.” Yet another was arrested for singing “Kung Fu Fighting.” A teenager was arrested for protesting outside of a Scientology center with a sign calling the religion a “cult.”

We also discussed the arrest of a woman who was praying to herself near an abortion clinic. English courts have seen criminalized “toxic ideologies” as part of this crack down on free speech.

The London police are now deputized to stop or arrest those engaged in speech deemed inciteful or inflammatory. Last year, the police stopped a man from walking in the street because there were pro-Palestinian protesters and his presence would be inciteful because he was “quite openly Jewish.”

The United Kingdom has a myriad of laws criminalizing speech with vague terms allowing for arbitrary enforcement. For example, Public Order Act 1986 prohibits any expressions of racial hatred, defined as hatred against a group of persons by reason of the group’s color, race, nationality (including citizenship) or ethnic or national origins.

Section 18 of the Act specifically includes any speech that is “threatening, abusive, or insulting.” An arrest does not have to be based on a showing of intent to “stir up racial hatred,” but can merely be based on a charge that “having regard to all the circumstances racial hatred is likely to be stirred up thereby.”

The country has also targeted social media companies to force them to censor users for speech deemed threatening, abusive or insulting by the government.

These ambiguous laws are written on the same “trust us, we’re the government” rationale. The police insist that they will use their discretion wisely in what speech will result in arrest.

Ordinarily, one would expect the U.S. government to push back on the suggestion that these laws could be used to arrest and extradite its citizens for the use of free speech. However, the Biden-Harris Administration has been a proponent of censorship and blacklisting for years. At the same time, leading Democrats have called for European-type laws to be adopted or enforced against U.S. citizens for their views on social media.

We previously discussed how Democratic leaders like Hillary Clinton called on foreign countries to use or pass censorship laws to prevent Elon Musk from restoring free speech protections on Twitter.

The effort of these politicians would allow free speech to be reduced to the lowest common denominator as countries export their anti-free speech laws. When Clinton called upon Europeans to censor Americans, this is precisely what such actions would look like. These foreign countries could force Americans to curtail their speech under the threat of ruinous financial penalties or even arrest.

As some of us predicted, these laws have expanded as the desire to silence others becomes an insatiable appetite. Advocacy groups have pushed the police to crackdown on their critics. Now, the threat to “throw the full force of the law at people” may be extended to the people of other nations.

We could all soon be dancing to that same tune:

“London calling, see we ain’t got no swing

Except for the ring of that truncheon thing”

New Strain of Mpox Spreading in Africa Has CDC Concerned

 From practiceupdate.com.

 Here is the Link

The Justice Department Makes the Case Against Hunter Biden . . . and Itself in California

 From Jonathan Turley.

 JT is on target.

Special Counsel David Weiss appears to have finally made the long-awaited case exposing years of concealment and political corruption. No, it is not the case against Hunter Biden. The allegations of tax fraud in California are obvious and unavoidable. Weiss just made the case against the Justice Department and himself in protecting Hunter Biden from the most damaging charges of being an unregistered foreign agent. In a new filing, Weiss released evidence on Hunter seeking money to advance the interests of a Romanian on United States policy.

 I have previously testified on the Foreign Agents Registration Act and have previously written about the disturbing disconnect in the treatment of the President’s son as opposed to figures like Paul Manafort.

 The charge was always one of the greatest fears of the White House. If Hunter Biden was a foreign agent, it would magnify the influence peddling scandal and further link his conduct to work of his father as vice president and later president.

 What was previously known about millions received from China, Russia, and other countries made such a charge obvious. In the past, the Justice Department has used the charge early and often in high-profile cases to pressure defendants and force cooperation or plea agreements.

 The reason is the definition:

 A “foreign agent” is defined as “(1) any person who acts as an agent, representative, employee, or servant, or any person who acts in any other capacity at the order, request, or under the direction or control, of a foreign principal or of a person any of whose activities are directly or indirectly supervised, directed, controlled, financed, or subsidized in whole or in major part by a foreign principal, and who directly or through any other person— (i) engages within the United States in political activities for or in the interests of such foreign principal; (ii) acts within the United States as a public relations counsel, publicity agent, information-service employee or political consultant for or in the interests of such foreign principal; (iii) within the United States solicits, collects, disburses, or dispenses contributions, loans, money, or other things of value for or in the interest of such foreign principal; or (iv) within the United States represents the interests of such foreign principal before any agency or official of the Government of the United States; and (2) any person who agrees, consents, assumes or purports to act as, or who is or holds himself out to be, whether or not pursuant to contractual relationship, an agent of a foreign principal as defined in clause (1) of this subsection.”

 For years, I have expressed alarm at the special treatment afforded to Hunter Biden on the charges.  Many of us have also criticized Weiss for allowing the most serious tax charges to expire despite being able to extend the statute of limitations. He has yet to offer a compelling reason why prosecutors would ever allow viable felony charges to expire when they could have extended that period.

 Now, Biden is seeking to avoid conviction under the tax charges in California. He is repeating the claims that failed in his recent gun violation. He is claiming that he was an addict and not responsible for his criminal conduct, even though he was flying around the world collecting millions from foreign sources.

 To rebut that claim, Weiss’ team said they plan to introduce evidence showing his sophisticated scheme to tap foreign sources interested in influencing the government and federal policy.

 In the filing below, Weiss opposes the Biden team effort to exclude the evidence of his working for the Romanians. Senior assistant special counsel Derek Hines writes in the filing that “[t]he evidence of what the defendant agreed to do and did do for [the businessman] demonstrates the defendant’s state of mind and intent during the relevant tax years charged in the indictment. It is also evidence that the defendant’s actions do not reflect someone with a diminished capacity, given that he agreed to attempt to influence U.S. public policy and receive millions of dollars pursuant to an oral agreement.”

 That sounds a lot like seeking the work of a foreign agent. Here is the language from FARA:

 “The first category of evidence the defendant seeks to exclude is any “reference to allegations that Mr. Biden (1) acted on behalf of a foreign principal to influence U.S. policy and public opinion . . .” Motion at 3 (emphasis added). The government does not intend to reference allegations at trial. Rather, the government will introduce the evidence described above, including that the defendant and Business Associate 1 received compensation from a foreign principal who was attempting to influence U.S. policy and public opinion and cause the United States to investigate the Romanian investigation of G.P in Romania.” (emphasis added)

 The other foreign dealings reportedly involved Hunter reaching out to government officials while his father was vice president. That includes the controversy over Joe Biden’s sudden decision to issue an ultimatum to the Ukrainian government.

In a 2018 interview at the Council on Foreign Relations, Biden bragged that he unilaterally withheld a billion dollars in US aid from the Ukrainians to force them to fire prosecutor general Viktor Shokin.

 The Ukrainians balked, but Biden gave them an ultimatum: “I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.”

 However, a State Department memo is shedding disturbing light on that account and shredding aspects of Biden’s justification for the action. It directly contradicts Biden’s insistence that he took this extraordinary stand because there was little hope for the anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine if Shokin remained prosecutor.

 The Oct. 1, 2015, memo summarizes the recommendation of the Interagency Policy Committee that was handling the anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine: “Ukraine has made sufficient progress on its reform agenda to justify a third guarantee.” One senior official even complimented Shokin on his progress in fighting corruption. So Biden was told to deliver on the federal aid but elected to unilaterally demand Shokin be fired.

 In testimony from Devon Archer, a business associate of Hunter Biden, we learned that Burisma executives made the removal of Shokin a top priority and raised it with Hunter. He described how the need to neutralize Shokin was raised with Hunter and how “a call to Washington” was made in response. While Archer also said that “the narrative spun to me was that Shokin was under control,” he and others also heard concerns over Shokin and the risks of the investigation.

 Other transactions directly requested intervention on matters being addressed by the Obama-Biden Administration.

 So, now, the Justice Department is citing some of these dealings to show a conscious and premeditated effort to shake down foreigners to influence U.S. policy.

They have made more than the case against Hunter Biden. They have made a conclusive and overwhelming case against themselves in slow walking and minimizing charges against the President’s son.

The recombinant shingles vaccine is associated with lower risk of dementia

From nature.com

Here is the link. Check the charts.

Here is the abstract.

There is emerging evidence that the live herpes zoster (shingles) vaccine might protect against dementia. However, the existing data are limited and refer only to the live vaccine, which is now discontinued in the United States and many other countries in favor of a recombinant vaccine. Whether the recombinant shingles vaccine protects against dementia remains unknown. Here we used a natural experiment opportunity created by the rapid transition from the use of live to the use of recombinant vaccines to compare the risk of dementia between vaccine types. We show that the recombinant vaccine is associated with a significantly lower risk of dementia in the 6 years post-vaccination. Specifically, receiving the recombinant vaccine is associated with a 17% increase in diagnosis-free time, translating into 164 additional days lived without a diagnosis of dementia in those subsequently affected. The recombinant shingles vaccine was also associated with lower risks of dementia than were two other vaccines commonly used in older people: influenza and tetanus–diphtheria–pertussis vaccines. The effect was robust across multiple secondary analyses, and was present in both men and women but was greater in women. These findings should stimulate studies investigating the mechanisms underpinning the protection and could facilitate the design of a large-scale randomized control trial to confirm the possible additional benefit of the recombinant shingles vaccine.

Unions and job losses – no free lunch

 From the Wall Street Journal

On target.