Fire Hydrant of Freedom

Another one from SingularityHub that’s interesting on its face, but scary in its implications:

Human Artificial Chromosomes Could Ferry Tons More DNA Cargo Into Cells

Novel method creates stable HACs

•Singularity Hub / by Shelly Fan / Mar 26, 2024 at 4:50 PM

The human genetic blueprint is deceptively simple. Our genes are tightly wound into 46 X-shaped structures called chromosomes. Crafted by evolution, they carry DNA and replicate when cells divide, ensuring the stability of our genome over generations.

In 1997, a study torpedoed evolution’s playbook. For the first time, a team created an artificial human chromosome using genetic engineering. When delivered into a human cell in a petri dish, the artificial chromosome behaved much like its natural counterparts. It replicated as cells divided, leading to human cells with 47 chromosomes.

Rest assured, the goal wasn’t to artificially evolve our species. Rather, artificial chromosomes can be used to carry large chunks of human genetic material or gene editing tools into cells. Compared to current delivery systems—virus carriers or nanoparticles—artificial chromosomes can incorporate far more synthetic DNA.

In theory, they could be designed to ferry therapeutic genes into people with genetic disorders or add protective ones against cancer.

Yet despite over two decades of research, the technology has yet to enter the mainstream. One challenge is that the short DNA segments linking up to form the chromosomes stick together once inside cells, making it difficult to predict how the genes will behave.

This month, a new study from the University of Pennsylvania changed the 25-year-old recipe and built a new generation of artificial chromosomes. Compared to their predecessors, the new chromosomes are easier to engineer and use longer DNA segments that don’t clump once inside cells. They’re also a large carrier, which in theory could shuttle genetic material roughly the size of the largest yeast chromosome into human cells.

“Essentially, we did a complete overhaul of the old approach to HAC [human artificial chromosome] design and delivery,” study author Dr. Ben Black said in a press release.

“The work is likely to reinvigorate efforts to engineer artificial chromosomes in both animals and plants,” wrote the University of Georgia’s Dr. R. Kelly Dawe, who was not involved in the study.

Shape of You

Since 1997, artificial genomes have become an established  biotechnology. They’ve been used to rewrite DNA in bacteria, yeast, and plants, resulting in cells that can synthesize life-saving medications or eat plastic. They could also help scientists better understand the functions of the mysterious DNA sequences littered throughout our genome.

The technology also brought about the first synthetic organisms. In late 2023, scientists revealed yeast cells with half their genes replaced by artificial DNA—the team hopes to eventually customize every single chromosome. Earlier this year, another study reworked parts of a plant’s chromosome, further pushing the boundaries of synthetic organisms.

And by tinkering with the structures of chromosomes—for example, chopping off suspected useless regions—we can better understand how they normally function, potentially leading to treatments for diseases.

The goal of building human artificial chromosomes isn’t to engineer synthetic human cells. Rather, the work is meant to advance gene therapy. Current methods for carrying therapeutic genes or gene editing tools into cells rely on viruses or nanoparticles. But these carriers have limited cargo capacity.

If current delivery vehicles are like sailboats, artificial human chromosomes are like cargo ships, with the capacity to carry a far larger and wider range of genes.

The problem? They’re hard to build. Unlike bacteria or yeast chromosomes, which are circular in shape, our chromosomes are like an “X.” At the center of each is a protein hub called the centromere that allows the chromosome to separate and replicate when a cell divides.

In a way, the centromere is like a button that keeps fraying pieces of fabric—the arms of the chromosome—intact. Earlier efforts to build human artificial chromosomes focused on these structures, extracting DNA letters that could express proteins inside human cells to anchor the chromosomes. However, these DNA sequences rapidly grabbed onto themselves like double-sided tape, ending in balls that made it difficult for cells to access the added genes.

One reason could be that the synthetic DNA sequences were too short, making the mini-chromosome components unreliable. The new study tested the idea by engineering a far larger human chromosome assembly than before.

Eight Is the Lucky Number

Rather than an X-shaped chromosome, the team designed their human artificial chromosome as a circle, which is compatible with replication in yeast. The circle packed a hefty 760,000 DNA letter pairs—roughly 1/200 the size of an entire human chromosome.

Inside the circle were genetic instructions to make a sturdier centromere—the “button” that keeps the chromosome structure intact and can make it replicate. Once expressed inside a yeast cell, the button recruited the yeast’s molecular machinery to build a healthy human artificial chromosome.

In its initial circular form in yeast cells, the synthetic human chromosome could then be directly passed into human cells through a process called cell fusion. Scientists removed the “wrappers” around yeast cells with chemical treatments, allowing the cells’ components—including the artificial chromosome—to merge directly into human cells inside petri dishes.

Like benevolent extraterrestrials, the added synthetic chromosomes happily integrated into their human host cells. Rather than clumping into noxious debris, the circles doubled into a figure-eight shape, with the centromere holding the circles together. The artificial chromosomes happily co-existed with native X-shaped ones, without changing their normal functions.

For gene therapy, it’s essential that any added genes remain inside the body even as cells divide. This perk is especially important for fast-dividing cells like cancer, which can rapidly adapt to therapies. If a synthetic chromosome is packed with known cancer-suppressing genes, it could keep cancers and other diseases in check throughout generations of cells.

The artificial human chromosomes passed the test. They recruited proteins from the human host cells to help them spread as the cells divided, thus conserving the artificial genes over generations.

A Revival

Much has changed since the first human artificial chromosomes.

Gene editing tools, such as CRISPR, have made it easier to rewrite our genetic blueprint. Delivery mechanisms that target specific organs or tissues are on the rise. But synthetic chromosomes may be regaining some of the spotlight.

Unlike viral carriers, the most often used delivery vehicle for gene therapies or gene editors, artificial chromosomes can’t tunnel into our genome and disrupt normal gene expression—making them potentially far safer.

The technology has vulnerabilities though. The engineered chromosomes are still often lost when cells divide. Synthetic genes placed near the centromere—the “button” of the chromosome—may also disrupt the artificial chromosome’s ability to replicate and separate when cells divide.

But to Dawe, the study has larger implications than human cells alone. The principles of re-engineering centromeres shown in this study could be used for yeast and potentially be “applicable across kingdoms” of living organisms.

The method could help scientists better model human diseases or produce drugs and vaccines. More broadly, “It may soon be possible to include artificial chromosomes as a part of an expanding toolkit to address global challenges related to health care, livestock, and the production of food and fiber,” he wrote.

Image Credit: Warren Umoh / Unsplash

https://singularityhub.com/2024/03/26/human-artificial-chromosomes-could-ferry-tons-more-dna-cargo-into-cells/

I wonder if the recipient will prove to be an apt truffle hunter once he recovers?

Man Gets Pig Kidney Transplant
NeuroLogica Blog / by Steven Novella / Mar 25, 2024 at 8:00 AM
On March 16 surgeons transplanted a kidney taken from a pig into a human recipient, Rick Slayman. So far the transplant is a success, but of course the real test will be how well the kidney functions and for how long. This is the first time such a transplant has been done into a living donor – previous experimental pig transplants were done on brain dead patients.

This approach to essentially “growing organs” for transplant into humans, in my opinion, has the most potential. There are currently over 100 thousand people on the US transplant waiting list, and many of them will die while waiting. There are not enough organs to go around. If we could somehow manufacture organs, especially ones that have a low risk of immune rejection, that would be a huge medical breakthrough. Currently there are several options.

One is to essentially construct a new organ. Attempts are already underway to 3D print organs from stem cells, which can be taken from the intended recipient. This requires a “scaffold” which is connective tissue taken from an organ where the cells have been stripped off. So you still need, for example, a donor heart. You then strip that heart of cells, 3D print new heart cells onto what’s left to create a new heart. This is tricky technology, and I am not confident it will even work.

Another option is to grow the organs ex-vivo – grow them in a tank of some kind from stem cells taken from the intended recipient. The advantage here is that the organ can potentially be a perfect new organ, entirely human, and with the genetics of the recipient, so no issues with rejection. The main limitation is that it takes time. Considering, however, that people often spend years on the transplant wait list, this could still be an option for some. The problem here is that we don’t currently have the technology to do this.

Similar to this approach is to grow a human organ inside an animal – essentially using the animal as the “tank” in which to grow the organ. The host animal can then provide nutrition and oxygen, and a suitable environment. This would require that the animal will not reject the organ, which would mean treating with drugs or engineering animals hosts that are humanized or whose immune systems cannot mount a rejection.

The most futuristic and also ethically complex approach would be to clone an entire person in order to use them as an organ donor. This would not have to be like “The Island” movie in which the cloned future donors were living people kept in a controlled environment, unaware of their ultimate fate. Anencephalic humans (without brains) could be cloned and grown, and just kept as meat bags. There are two big disadvantages here. The first is that the clones would likely need to be kept alive for years before the organs would be mature enough to be used. How would that work? Would a recipient need to wait 10 years before they could get their donor organ, or would there be clone banks where clones were kept in case they were needed in the future? These seem like cost-prohibitive options, except for the super wealthy.

One potential solution would be to genetically engineer universal donors, whose organs could potentially be transplanted into any human recipient. Or perhaps there would need to be a finite number of donors, say for each blood type. When someone needs an organ they get the next one off the rack. Still, this seems like an expensive option.

The other main limitation of the clone approach is the ethical considerations. I doubt keeping banks of living donor clones will be morally acceptable to society, at least not anytime soon.

This leaves us with what I think is by far the best option – genetically engineering animals to be human organ donors. Pigs are good candidates because the size and shape of their organs are a good match. We just need to engineer them so their immune systems use human proteins instead of pig proteins. We can remove any of the proteins that are most likely to trigger rejection. This also means giving the pigs a human immune system. The pigs are therefore both humanized and altered so as not to trigger rejection. Slayman will still need to take anti-rejection drugs, but it is easy to imagine that as this technology incrementally improves eventually we will get to a population of pigs optimized for human organ donation. The advantages of this approach over all other approaches are simply massive, which leads me to predict that this approach is the one that will win out for the foreseeable future.

One potential ethical objection is from raising domestic animals for the purpose of being slaughtered, which some animal rights activists object to. But of course, we already do this for food. At least for now, this is ethically acceptable to most people. Slaughtering a pig not just for food but to save the lives of potentially 5-7 people is not a hard sell ethically. This approach could also be a huge money saver for the healthcare system.

I am therefore very happy to see this technology proceed, and I wish the best for Slayman, both for him personally and for the potential of this technology to save many lives.

The post Man Gets Pig Kidney Transplant first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

https://theness.com/neurologicablog/man-gets-pig-kidney-transplant/

This is quite a tale of state overreach and the resulting horror. I’ll be surprised if Oregon doesn’t end up losing a lawsuit over illegal takings:

https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2024/03/24/oregon-shutting-down-gardens-farming-to-save-something/

Curious that I haven’t encountered a US source reporting on this. Imagine if a non-green energy facility was destroyed by something as trifling as hail:

https://joannenova.com.au/2024/03/2500-football-fields-of-new-solar-panels-destroyed-by-hail-in-texas-this-week/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=2500-football-fields-of-new-solar-panels-destroyed-by-hail-in-texas-this-week

I was not aware of this series of related China v. Australia incidents:

Shh! Nobody mention why China launched that trade war on Australia…

China, Lion statue

By Jo Nova

That which must not be spoken
Every news outlet today is saying how good it is that “relations” with China have thawed, like it was just a bad patch of weather, and now the clouds have cleared they’ve allowed us to sell them wine again. But there is a kind of collective amnesia about why relations froze in the first place.

Just to recap, through incompetence or “otherwise” naughty-citizen China leaked a likely lab experiment, lied about it, and destroyed the evidence. They stopped it spreading at home but sent it on planes to infect the rest of the world. Then when Scott Morrison, Australian Prime Minister, dared ask for an investigation in April 2020, within a week China threatened boycotts, and followed up with severe anti-dumping duties on Australian barley. After which the CCP discovered “inconsistencies in labelling” on Australian beef imports, and added bans or tariffs on Australian wine, wheat, wool, sugar, copper, lobsters, timber and grapes. Then they told their importers not to bring in Australian coal, cotton or LNG either. The only industry they didn’t attack was iron ore, probably because they couldn’t get it anywhere else. In toto, the punishment destroyed about $20 billion dollars in trade, and everyone, even CNN, knew this was political retribution and a message to the world.

As Jeffrey Wilson, Foreign Policy, described it in November 2021

“… its massive onslaught against Australia was like nothing before. Whereas China usually sanctions minor products as a warning shot—Norwegian salmon, Taiwanese pineapples—Australia was the first country to be subjected to an economywide assault.”

But perhaps the communist party had nothing to hide?

Not to put a fine point on it, but on January 14th, 2020, China told the world they had “found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission “. A Chinese CDC expert said “If no new patients appear in the next week, it might be over.” They didn’t mention that things were already so bad in Wuhan in December 2019, that even doctors one thousand kilometers away in Taiwan suspected it was spreading human to human. Taiwan demanded answers from the WHO on December 31. The next day, the CCP destroyed all the virus samples, information about them, and related papers.  But perhaps it was just an innocent bat-pangolin thing, yeah?

So after four years of pain in order to stand bravely against the bully, what concessions, exactly, did our current leadership win? There’s no investigation, no answers, no apology, no nothing and no reason to think it won’t happen again.

In fact to smooth the wheels, Australia dropped the WTO cases against China for their bad behaviour with barley and wine. But the negotiation geniuses didn’t insist that China drop its WTO case against us (which was instigated two days after the Australian cases). And so it comes to pass that this week China won the WTO steel case against us.

https://joannenova.com.au/2024/03/shh-nobody-mention-why-china-launched-that-trade-war-on-australia/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=shh-nobody-mention-why-china-launched-that-trade-war-on-australia

Check out this lede from a story on Trump in The Hill:

“Country musician Lee Greenwood is defending the “God Bless the USA” Bibles he's selling in partnership with former President Trump, who is set to go on trial next month over hush money payments made to an adult film star.“

Jeepers, Hill, you figure you might want to mention that the gent making the “hush money” claim is a convicted perjurer? Or explain why a “news” story opts to embrace editorial irony by segueing from bibles to porn? Nah, that would remove the ad hominem power of the lede….

I’ve been viewing various woebegone “loss of trust in institutions” pieces of late. The fact those moaning the loudest seem oblivious to this sort of hatchet job speaks volumes.

A survivor remembers the Cambodian civil war and its grim impacts:

https://pjmedia.com/catherinesalgado/2024/03/28/exclusive-recollections-of-a-survivor-of-genocidal-khmer-rouge-n4927735

Ye gods, what were these people thinking? Dealing with youth protection concerns are part of my day job; I’m unable to grasp this level of negligence allowed at a CHILDREN’S NETWORK:

https://nypost.com/2024/03/28/media/nickelodeon-hired-or-worked-with-child-molesters-pedophiles/

Oddly given their reputation the WSJ editorial board comes out in favor or renewing broad surveillance tools:

WSJ Ed Board Knifes Fourth Amendment, Betrays Journal's Reporters and Readers

Cato @ Liberty / by Patrick G. Eddington / Mar 27, 2024 at 12:19 PM

Patrick G. Eddington

Financial Surveillance
I’ve been in Washington over 30 years, but sometimes even I can be stunned by the short memories and shortsightedness of members of the Fourth Estate. Today’s example is the editorial board of the venerable (and usually pretty sane) Wall Street Journal.

The ostensible topic of their latest pronouncement (paywall) was the recent terrorist attack in Moscow, which appears to have been the work of violent Salafist terrorists. After offering some fairly standard pre‐​Trump era Establishment fare on the need for still more US military action in the Islamic world, the WSJ ed board ended its piece by stating,

The ISIS comeback also argues for the House to overcome its disagreements and reauthorize Section 702 authority to surveil foreign communications even if it accidentally catches some Americans in the sweep. The House Intelligence bill contains enough safeguards without adding bureaucratic and political obstacles to rapid surveillance of real threats. Americans don’t want another attack on U.S. soil like last week’s horror show in Moscow.

Item 1: The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Section 702 telecommunications intercept program does not “accidentally” sweep up the communications of US persons with no connection to criminal activity. The very structure and operational characteristics of both the 702 program and the global telecommunications system guarantee that the emails, text messages, and the like of innocent Americans are inevitably captured and stored in a vast database for years. It is a database that agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have repeatedly been found to have used to conduct warrantless digital fishing expeditions on Americans not wanted for any crime.

That means that the communications of Journal reporters (especially those traveling to or reporting from overseas) are very likely getting swept up via the 702 program. The same thing is almost certainly happening to the digital letters to the editor or op‐​eds submitted to the Journal by Americans overseas or who visit the Journal’s website to read its news coverage, etc. All of that, and literally millions of communications of other Americans are available for perusal by FBI agents with access to the 702 database. To be a cheerleader for a surveillance program that’s likely collecting the communications of its reporters and readers is probably not what those reporters or readers view as a legitimate government function or use of their taxpayer dollars.

Item 2: Multiple bills have been introduced to impose an actual warrant requirement for any federal law enforcement access to that stored data, but the most recent one introduced is a bipartisan Senate bill that, while not going as far as many privacy and civil liberties advocates would like, would be a vast improvement over where we are now with the 702 program. The House Intelligence Committee bill championed by the WSJ ed board would, if enacted, largely be another classic example of the old Capitol Hill game of “Let’s not but say we did” when it comes to surveillance reform. The Journal ed board seems not to recognize that the House and Senate Intelligence Committees have long been “organizationally captured” by the various intelligence and law enforcement entities they were created to oversee in 1978. Both committees are cheerleaders for mass surveillance, not our protectors from it.

Item 3: The Journal ed board is engaged in a form of magical thinking with respect to mass surveillance. No mass surveillance program has ever stopped a terrorist attack on America. That was the case with the 702 program’s progenitor, the infamous STELLAR WIND program. It was also the case with the PATRIOT Act’s Section 215 telephone metadata mass surveillance program. And while the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) continue to make incredible claims about the program’s effectiveness, the actual FBI internal audits of the 702 program have never been released. Cato is trying to remedy that information deficit via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit currently before D.C. Circuit Judge Tanya Chutkan.

The WSJ ed board could’ve enlightened its readers with all of these publicly available, sourced facts. Instead, it chose to fearmonger in favor of a program that is not and never has been Fourth Amendment compliant in the way the Founders intended, a program that almost certainly sweeps up the communications of its own reporters, editors, and readers. How the mighty have fallen.

For those still in the People’s Republic of California, particularly its northern climes, pay heed. It’s worth noting these gents decided not to go armed to avoid being hassled by game wardens and such. One hopes CA’s onerous gun rules and regs weren’t what caused these gents to go into the woods unprepared:

https://www.backpacker.com/news-and-events/news/fatal-mountain-lion-attack-california/

I’m at a loss on where to best post this and am indeed tempted to start a “Stuff BBG Don’t Know Where to Put” thread, but will call this thread as close as I can get:

https://gearjunkie.com/technology/invisibility-shield-2-kickstarter

Back in my misspent youth this puppy would have come in handy when dodging the local constabulary….

Second post:

Imagine going back in time, a decade or so, and telling anti-fascists that one day they’ll be doing the bidding of fascists. Imagine telling anti-racists that they would soon become propagandists for racists. Imagine telling those woke campus feminists, the sort who thought that being propositioned at the student bar was ‘rape culture’, that in the not-too-distant future they’d be making excuses for literal rape. They’d have thought you mad. And yet it’s happened. Many of yesteryear’s self-righteous haters of bigotry have morphed into the Lord Haw-Haws of Hamas – one of the most bigoted movements on Earth.

– Brendan O’Neill

WSJ FTA: Obama, Clinton, & Biden will be appearing at a fundraiser. Guess some coattails need to be clung to:

Democrats Still Stuck With Biden
Voters don’t think much of the president but also remain wary of the obvious replacement.

The bad news for the White House is that according to the RealClearPolitics polling average, Joe Biden remains just as unpopular as he was before giving his State of the Union  address. The worse news for Democrats is that there’s not much they can do about it.

This column will offer the usual caveat that polling is not an exact science if it’s even a science. But assume a wide margin for error and this electorate is still very unhappy with the incumbent. This week the Economist/YouGov poll finds that 58% of registered voters don’t want Mr. Biden to run again this fall, compared to just 31% who do.

Even among Democrats the percentage who want Mr. Biden running again is just 50%—though he has recently locked up the nomination to represent their party this fall.

A full 63% of registered voters regard him as a weak leader, compared to the 37% who view him as a strong one.

In another reading that can’t be good for Mr. Biden, when asked if they “feel that things in this country these days” are “under control” or “out of control,” only 15% of registered voters say “under control” while 70% say they feel that things in this country are “out of control.” Looks like an overwhelming endorsement of the thesis advanced by this column’s most celebrated alumnus: Mr. Biden has failed to fulfill the central premise and promise of his 2020 campaign—a return to normal politics.

Meanwhile there’s more discouraging news for the donkeys in the latest Harvard/Harris survey, which finds that most voters doubt Joe Biden’s mental fitness to serve another term as president and believe he’s showing that he’s too old for the job. But they also aren’t eager to embrace the obvious alternative. Harvard/Harris asked the following question:

If Joe Biden decided to drop out at the Democratic convention in August, do you view Kamala Harris as the default replacement or would you want an open contest at the convention among the delegates?
Only 37% of respondents say the vice president should be the default selection while 63% would want an open contest. Republicans overwhelmingly favor an open contest, so perhaps they’re just rooting for uncontrolled division in the rival party. But 70% of independents also favor an open contest.

As for the Democrats, 60% think Ms. Harris should be next in line while 40% would want the contest thrown open. This is a tough reading for any Democratic insiders trying to conceive of a way to finesse Mr. Biden into retirement this summer. The 60% base of party support shows how difficult it would be to jettison Ms. Harris. But the 40% who want an open competition are numerous enough to spark a vigorous summer debate, especially as Democrats contemplate how little appetite there is for a Harris candidacy outside their party.

So the Democrats remain stuck with a presidential nominee whose own Justice Department’s special counsel decided was too forgetful to prosecute despite voluminous evidence of willful law-breaking. So much for a return to normalcy!

Of course across all parties there’s also the question of how much U.S. voters really want normal politicians. The large majority who would prefer an open competition to choose a Biden successor instead of accepting the sitting vice president suggests that there’s still a significant anti-establishment streak among U.S. voters.

Chris Megerian’s report for the Associated Press underlines how different Mr. Biden’s relationship to his party is compared to Donald Trump’s relationship with his:

When President Joe Biden needs advice, there are two people he can turn to who know what it’s like to sit in his chair. Sometimes he will invite Barack Obama over to the White House for a meal or he will get on the phone with Bill Clinton.

…On Thursday, their partnership will be on display in what has been described as a one-of-a-kind fundraising extravaganza in New York City to help Biden build on his already significant cash advantage…
“There is everything to be gained by Joe Biden standing next to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama,” said Leon Panetta, who worked in the administrations of both former presidents. “That picture is worth a hell of a lot in politics today.”

To some it’s a picture of the ultimate establishment politician, and soon we’ll all find out what it’s worth. The AP report continues:

The display of solidarity is a sharp contrast to Donald Trump’s isolation from other Republican leaders.

Now Imagine How Unpopular Biden Will Be in 2054

Perhaps those of us in the media business spend too much time examining and reporting on polling results, which are merely imperfect and ephemeral expressions of opinion. But rest assured that Joe Biden is not one of those unpopular presidents who will become more admired in the fullness of time.  A rare president who does not even pretend to care about runaway federal spending, Mr. Biden took office facing a mammoth fiscal problem and has worked diligently to ensure that his successors will have to tackle something far worse. The Congressional Budget Office recently updated its long-term budget forecast:

The deficit increases significantly in relation to gross domestic product (GDP) over the next 30 years… Debt held by the public, boosted by the large deficits, reaches its highest level ever in 2029 (measured as a percentage of GDP) and then continues to grow, reaching 166 percent of GDP in 2054 and remaining on track to increase thereafter. That mounting debt would slow economic growth, push up interest payments to foreign holders of U.S. debt, and pose significant risks to the fiscal and economic outlook; it could also cause lawmakers to feel more constrained in their policy choices.
You can say that again. And they won’t look back with fondness at the responsible official who felt so weirdly unconstrained by any notion of fiscal soundness.

James Freeman is the co-author of “The Cost: Trump, China and American Revival” and also the co-author of “Borrowed Time: Two Centuries of Booms, Busts and Bailouts at Citi.”

Follow James Freeman on Twitter.

https://apple.news/AflMsTZ8FSEqxDzNjFuMhjg

Shipwreckedcrew

@shipwreckedcrew

Amazing how the septuagenarians and octogenarians in the Democrat party are willing to break faith on a decades-long commitment to the security of Israel because a bunch of know-nothing college kids and chuckleheaded academics have joined with a small foreign contingent in the party -- many of whom can't even vote -- to mau-mau them into obedience.

Piece explores Israel's unprecedented efforts to minimize civilian casualties:

https://www.newsweek.com/israel-has-created-new-standard-urban-warfare-why-will-no-one-admit-it-opinion-1883286

Local government pensions were a major recipient, w/ those commitments correlating w/ strong government union presence:

Fiscal Federalism Turned Upside-Down

The Beacon / by Peter C. Earle and Thomas Savidge / Mar 26, 2024 at 5:32 PM

A recent study from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) found that many states misused federal aid related to the pandemic. Instead of using funds for projects related to healthcare, education, and infrastructure, state politicians used the lion’s share of federal funding for the general fund and public pensions.

Aside from the blatant misuse of federal dollars, this study highlights another important issue: state and local government dependence on funding from the federal government. The more states are dependent on DC, the more control DC has over state and local fiscal affairs. When DC inevitably cuts funding to the states, fiscal crises are bound to occur.

AEI’s study found that state government revenues and spending “increased by around 70 cents per incremental windfall dollar of committed federal funds by 2022.” States where public employees had the most influence over pension fund boards saw the largest increases in pension contributions with those federal dollars.

While this misuse of funds is no surprise to many of the critics of federal pandemic aid, it should be shocking to the average American. Despite the US Treasury explicitly banning the use of federal funds for pensions and tax cuts, it still occurred. Evidence from the research shows “no observed increases in liquid cash positions and essentially full spending of received aid.”

In this case, states must obligate federal money from the American Rescue Plan (ARPA) by December 31, 2024. They then have until December 31, 2026, to spend it or give it back to the federal government. Incentives matter, and in a case of “use it or lose it,” states will find ways for the money to be spent. The latest data show that the average state gets 38 percent ($21.6 billion) of its revenue from federal funds, the largest single category. Expenditures funded by general fund revenue make up the second largest category of expenditures ($20.9 billion). Other funds include revenue sources that are restricted by law for specific functions or activities (gas taxes for a transportation fund, tuition and fees for higher education, or provider taxes for Medicaid) make up the third largest category ($13.5 billion). Bonds make up the smallest category of expenditures ($1 billion), although bond types included in the calculations vary by state.

State Budget Expenditures (Capital Inclusive) by Source, 2022 (50 State Average)



(Source: Authors’ Calculations, National Association of State Budget Officers State Expenditure Report Historical Data)

Unfortunately, this is not a new development. Since 1991 (the earliest data available), federal funds have steadily increased as a share of total expenditures at the state level. The chart below shows that the largest increases in federal funds to the states occurred immediately following recessions. Out of fear of losing revenue, state officials seek aid from the federal government, which is more than happy to oblige.

It is a manifestation of the Public Choice concept “the ratchet effect,” where federal spending spikes immediately after a recession or emergency, then lowers when the crisis subsides, but never down to pre-crisis levels.

State Budget Expenditures (Capital Inclusive) by Source as a Percentage of Total Expenditures, 1991-2023



(*2023 totals are projected
Note: Shaded areas indicate periods of recession
Source: Authors’ Calculations, National Association of Ste Budget Officers State Expenditure Report 2023 and Historical Data)

The National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO) also projects that 2023 data will show that general fund expenditures will exceed federal fund expenditures for the first time since 2020, yet it is not expected to return to 2019 levels. With federal money from ARPA still left to spend, federal funds will likely still make up at least a third of the average state budget.

Like so much else in government spending, the trend is unsustainable. The most recent Financial Report of the United States Government concludes by saying that “[t]he projections in this Financial Report indicate that if policy remains unchanged, the debt-to-GDP ratio will steadily increase throughout the projection period and beyond, which implies current policy under this report’s assumptions is not sustainable and must ultimately change” (emphasis added).

That untenability, furthermore, has not gone unnoticed. In August 2023 Fitch Ratings downgraded the US credit rating from AAA to AA+, the second following the August 2011 lowering by Standard and Poor. In November 2023, Moody’s Investment Service changed the US credit outlook to negative. Lower credit ratings threaten higher interest costs on an already massive amount of government debt. These rising costs and debt will force lawmakers in Washington to make some difficult cuts to spending. When the time comes to make painful cuts, politicians in DC will cut funding to the states, expect state leaders to deal with the funding issues, and let them take the blame for the inevitable tax hikes and spending cuts.

Most US states ended FY 2021, 2022, and 2023 with budget surpluses. Many states took the opportunity to focus on tax relief, switching from graduated income taxes to flat income taxes. While the flat tax revolution helped many Americans keep more of their hard-earned money, the gains will be for naught if states do not properly control spending.

The best way for states to rein in spending is by enacting constitutional rules at the state level such as the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) in Colorado. TABOR limits the growth of government to the maximum growth of population plus inflation, requires any taxes collected in excess of that limit to be refunded to taxpayers with interest, and requires voter approval before new taxes. This rule also applies to local governments, so the state cannot grow government by way of unfunded mandates on local governments. TABOR, however, does not apply to federal funds given to Colorado.

Another example is provided by Utah, which established the Financial Ready Utah program in the wake of the Great Recession. This package of bills requires state agencies to have emergency plans in place for anywhere between a 5-percent to 25-percent reduction in funding and requires state agencies to seek legislative approval before applying for federal funds.

State-level constitutional limits on taxes and spending provide greater protection from reckless government spending than relying on the “right” candidates to win elections or the “right” bureaucrats to be appointed. When government actors are bound by strong institutional constraints regarding political instincts and incentives toward reckless spending, already-overtaxed citizens needn’t rely on wishful thinking.

This article was originally posted on AIER.org. You can read the original here.

The post Fiscal Federalism Turned Upside-Down appeared first on The Beacon.

https://blog.independent.org/2024/03/25/amendment-california-constitution-housing-affordability-crisis/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=amendment-california-constitution-housing-affordability-crisis

Women and children and poor families are hit the hardest. Who cares, certainly the Democrats.

But then the Dems get to offer subsidies to the downtrodden masses they created and pass themselves off as rescuers for inefficiently addressing the condition they worked overtime to create. Good work if you can get it.

Thank goodness there is a plan B as I’ve little doubt it will prove more efficient and less destructive than the government run effort:

https://babylonbee.com/news/nyc-mayor-assures-migrants-that-if-they-run-out-of-prepaid-debit-cards-they-can-just-rob-americans-directly

Minds me of an Ambrose Bierce quote out of the Devil’s Dictionary:

“Piracy (N): Commerce without its follyswaddles, just as God intended it.”

Think of him as you care to, but Trump does have a habit of turning attacks on their ears and into gold:

The greatest Trumpenfreude of all
They kicked President Trump off Twitter. That's about to make him $3,600,000,000.
MAR 26, 2024

Oh how they danced on the night Trump was banned.

NBC reported, “Twitter permanently suspends President Donald Trump.”

Andrew Marantz at the New Yorker gave the mainstream media take:

Nothing in the Constitution prohibits a private company from enforcing its own policies; if anything, the First Amendment protects a company’s right to do so. Now the harder questions. Does censoring a head of state set a dangerous precedent? Yes, it does, but so does allowing a head of state to use a platform’s enormous power, over the course of several years, to dehumanize women, inflame racist paranoia, flirt with nuclear war, and incite armed sedition, often in flagrant violation of the company’s rules. Is it worrisome that Jack Dorsey, a weirdly laconic billionaire with a castaway beard who has never been elected to any public office, is able to make unilateral, unaccountable decisions that may help determine whether our country survives or self-immolates? Yes, it is. But, given that Dorsey and a handful of other techno-oligarchs have this ability, they might as well be pressured (or shamed, or regulated) into using it wisely.

Of course, we found out in the Twitter files released after Elon Musk bought it that the government bribed Dorsey to censor conservatives.

Start your own Twitter, the media mocked him. He did. They hated it. NBC painted him as a hypocrite, reporting, “Former President Donald Trump pitched his new social media platform, Truth Social, as a haven for free speech and a counterweight to the big tech giants that have in recent years put a greater emphasis on moderating content users post to their sites.

“But as the platform’s terms of service agreement makes clear, not all speech will be permitted. Specifically, users are prohibited from speaking ill of the platform itself or its leadership.”

The media went out of its way to throw shade on his enterprise.

Axios reported, “Former President Trump is blowing the launch of his new social media company, via a series of unforced errors.”

The launch itself was buzzy, with Truth Social shooting to the top of Apple's App Store (there isn't yet an Android or web version).
But the vast majority of people downloading the app, me included, were given a waitlist number. Nine days later, most of us remain on that waitlist, with our number unchanged and without a word of communication from the company. A waitlist refresh icon doesn't work.
As of this writing, Truth Social has fallen to No. 57 in the App Store, just behind Tinder and Planet Fitness Workouts.”
So what? CNN’s ratings are below rerun channels. I would think starting off at No. 57 is great for a new social media outlet.

It looks like start-you-own-Twitter-ha-ha-ha was sound advice. Last week, Truth Social announced it was merging with one of Trump’s companies, which will sell shares in the merged company. Trump just doubled his pleasure, doubled his fun and doubled his wealth.

Bloomberg reported last night, “Trump’s Net Worth Hits $6.5 Billion, Making Him One of World’s 500 Richest People.”

So much for bankrupting the man.

Rolling Stone spun it, “The merger will be a lifeline to Truth Social, which incurred tens of millions in losses in 2023, and provide a massive windfall to its owner, former President Donald Trump. Given the current stock market value of Digital World Acquisition Corp., the combination of the two companies could net Trump a staggering $3.6 billion in shareholder value.

“As he’s currently drowning in a sea of legal bills, the merger may become a critical source of cash-on-hand for the former president, with one major caveat: He would only be able to cash out on his shares six months after the union officially goes public.”

Only in the insane world of journalism would cashing in for $3,600,000,000 be spun as a bad thing.

I didn’t invent the term Trumpenfreude. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman did. I just changed the definition — like Google later did to the words insurrection and bloodbath.

Krugman sneered in December 2015 at the Republican establishment as the odds of a Trump nomination grew.

A year later, Trump got the last laugh on the AOC-hole.

Trumpenfreude thus went from Krugman’s feeling of joy about Republicans being stuck with Trump but that feeling of joy Trump supporters enjoy when another Trump hater goes down like Joe Frazier. At my old blog, I even made a list and checked it twice. It was fun to do. Someone even saved the list.

Let’s see, I wrote: “This is the official Trumpenfreude List of people who made the mistake of starting a feud with President Donald John Trump. Each wound up worse for the ordeal. Check back from time to time. The list continues to grow, which proves many human beings are idiots.”

The good old days.

The last few years have not been as fun as that first term but Democrat overkill — the constant political prosecutions and loony lawsuits in kangaroo courts — have turned the man into the leader in the presidential polls, something he never was in the previous two presidential elections.

The political windfall is matched only by the financial windfall he is in for. During his presidency, he accepted no pay as he gave his salary back to the government. His personal wealth fell by a billion bucks and the opportunity cost — meaning the money he would have made had he stayed on his job instead of working as president — easily matched the billion he lost on value of his real estate holdings.

Democrats tried playing lawfare with him, a name for tying a man in court to bleed him through legal fees. Trump is immune to this stuff.

Trump’s legal fees and the confiscation of his property by the state of New York amount to maybe $600 million — leaving the poor man only $3 billion richer. Only Elon Musk has the right to consider that amount of money as petty cash.

The state of New York allows violent criminals to walk free without posting bond but requires Donald Trump — and Donald Trump alone — to post 100% of the two judgments against him before it will consider an appeal. This is a clear violation of our rights under the Eighth Amendment.

Oh wait. Yesterday a judge said he only had to put up a ridiculous and punitive $175 million instead of $454 million to exercise his right to appeal the one of the two unconstitutional fines levied by a maniacal judge.

But the people rise against the tyranny of injustice in the Empire State. We know that if they can do this to President Trump, we are next.

And the wheels of commerce grind in his favor and as Bloomberg reported, he’s once again bounced back twice as high than he was when they pushed him down.

Scott Adams hit the nail with the old hammer in a Tweet entitled, “Trump's Third Act has begun. It's a beauty.” Adams ran a long post, but I liked this best:

The Democrats planned to cripple Trump financially so he couldn’t spend as much on the campaign. Trump turned Leticia James into his best fundraiser.

Lots of interesting developments lately on the topic of the 2020 election. The Simulation wants at least one of those fresh allegations to be a Kraken.

Trump's legal maneuvering is likely to keep him eligible for the election.

You can fantasize about a heroic Democrat such as Newsom swooping in and replacing Biden, but it's looking less likely every day. If it had always been the plan, it would have happened by now. Looks like Biden has to stay on the job to keep the Biden Crime Family out of jail.

The predictable Democrat Summer Hoax will add some excitement, but it will be forgotten and debunked by November.

Adams overlooked that Democrats want to put Trump’s head and his fortune on a pike as a warning to other billionaires to stay in the safe political pasture Democrats created.

I get that Adams is goofing on Democrats when he said Trump should consider the fines and legal fees to be a tip for the windfall he enjoys, but why should Trump give the Soviet Socialist Republic of New York a dime? The only fraud in the state’s case was committed by the fat lady prosecutor and the leering pervy judge. Did you see him grinning for the camera when the trial went on TV?

Trump saved The City once but New York’s majority wants Gotham to be Gomorrah. It’s time to sing arrivederci Gomorrah.

Tip them? Absolutely not. He will fight tooth and tong to keep what is his and not the state’s. He built this, not the government. Trump must fight the Squatters. He must not let the cheaters win because if he won’t fight for himself, then how can we expect him to fight for us.

But as I said, Adams was mocking the loser Democrats. We need a laugh now and again. Like most of us, he understands what is happening to America is destruction from within. History is erased by the Biden Banana Republic. Trump is the refrigerator light to the cockroaches who run DC. He has them scurrying for cover.

The tweet by Adams said, “The gears of the machine have become visible. We can all see the FBI is rotten and the DOJ is weaponized. We know the border is open intentionally. We know the cartels are working with our government.

“We know our elections are DESIGNED to not be auditable and there's only one reason for it. We can see Biden is not in charge. We know the Ukraine war was always about its energy resources and who gets to own them.

“We know our rising debt is ruinous. We know our experts are liars. We know our pharma and food industries are poisoning us. We know our government is racist. We know the corporate media is essentially owned by Democrats who are controlled by intelligence entities and they are actively brainwashing the population.

“We know the 1st and 2nd amendments, and X, are under sustained government attack because they are the public's last defense against the government.

“But we are not quitters.

“And the odds do not apply to us.”

We shall see if that last line comes true.

Readers occasionally ask me what we should do and my honest answer is pray, vote and keep the faith. You cannot cheat an honest man, which is why the repeated attempts to cheat Trump out of his wealth fail.

And this week, they will fail spectacularly as his wealth on paper rises thanks to the years of persecution he has suffered at the hands of Obama and the deep state. They kicked him off Twitter and made him billions of bucks.

We are not out of the woods by any means. But we do see the clearing ahead.

And we are laughing ourselves into a coughing spell as we relish the greatest Trumpenfreude of them all.

https://donsurber.substack.com/p/the-greatest-trumpenfreude-of-all?r=1qo1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true

Another issue Dems will have to cheat their way around:

Law and Order Is a Killer Problem for Democrats
COMMENTARY
By Charles Lipson - RCP ContributorMarch 26, 2024

Polling data shows Democrats are in deep trouble on the issues of domestic safety and unbiased justice. Voters say they want law and order and aren’t getting it. They want enforcement of criminal statutes duly passed by their representatives. They abhor favoritism for some and targeting for others. They want personal safety and basic fairness. They deserve them. And they are angry.

They resent the wide-open border, street shootings, street-corner gangs dealing drugs, carjackings, and unchecked shoplifting. They are stunned that squatters can simply take over houses from their rightful owners. They are troubled by the aggressive prosecution of Donald Trump, while Joe Biden skips away from his family’s extensive grifting operation and a garage full of classified documents.

Although these issues are usually considered separately, they are also important together. The concerns overlap and reinforce each other, harming Biden and his political party. Democrats are seen as weak on crime and feckless on border security, but relentless in prosecuting their principal election opponent and trying to bankrupt him.

Any consideration of law and order as a political issue should begin with the basic obligation of governments at all levels. In liberal democracies, the state should provide that safety with due respect for each citizen’s constitutional rights, without undue force, and without favoritism or political bias. The goal is to let citizens pursue their own private goals in peace, feeling secure in their lives, property, and home life. In democracies like ours, that order must be secured by enforcing statutes and rulings by courts. When disputes arise, as they often do, they should be settled by neutral third parties, either courts or arbiters, using well-established laws and procedures. When state prosecutors are involved, their responsibility is to act without bias, partisanship, or favoritism. Remember, they are part of the executive branch. They are not legislative monarchs. They don’t get to make laws themselves or disregard those that have been passed.

When does government fail to meet those obligations? It fails when the executive branch:

Exceeds its discretionary authority to ignore the enforcement of some laws against some people but vigorously enforces them against others; and
Flouts the basic obligation to enforce laws fairly, without partisanship and within constitutional limits.
This failure is particularly noxious when the state targets political enemies or disfavored people, such as African Americans in the segregationist South – or conservative populists and their leaders today.

What Americans feel today is a mounting sense that these violations are piling up and that they harm safety, property, and civil rights of citizens in a democracy.

First, they see an erosion of social order. That’s not a problem caused entirely by government. Local communities are also responsible. Violent crime is concentrated among the poor, particularly in black communities because of a breakdown in family life, the disintegration of social norms, and the lack of decent schooling and job opportunities. They don’t trust the police because of hard experience: decades of brutal mistreatment.

These problems have been amplified because of atrocious public policies that go uncorrected after years of failure. Public schools are dreadful in almost every major U.S. city. They are really employment programs for teachers protected by powerful unions. They don’t prepare students for the modern workforce or instill the knowledge and values needed for citizenship. (That failure is why Republican-controlled states are now moving rapidly to give parents school choice, including the funds to educate their children in private schools.)

Progressive cities and states have been unwilling to enforce laws protecting people and property on the specious grounds that doing so would jail too many minorities and thus undermine “social justice.” But don’t people in impoverished communities have as much right to live in peace and safety as people in middle-class neighborhoods? Shouldn’t they have a chance to shop in local stores, rather than see them closed because of rampant organized shoplifting and strong-armed robberies which go unprosecuted and, hence, undeterred? Shouldn’t they be able to stop at the gas station and fill up their cars without fear of carjacking? Shouldn’t they be able to walk the streets or sit on their front porch, rather than huddle inside, afraid of street-corner drug gangs and random shootings? It’s a perversion of language to call these dysfunctional public policies “progressive.”

The breakdown of civic order was obvious in the rioting and arson that followed the death of George Floyd in 2020. Almost no one was punished. The Democratic National Convention, held that summer, spent far more time genuflecting to the rioters’ grievances than condemning the riots themselves. Many speakers focused their outrage on police forces across the country.

The most “progressive” politicians advocated the outright abolition of local police forces. The effects on public safety were utterly predictable. Surprisingly, it wasn’t butterflies, rainbows, and unicorns. If there was a pot of gold, it was looted.

Second, voters see a president and a party utterly unwilling to enforce border laws. Controlling entry into the country is a basic feature of every country’s sovereignty. Citizens know it. They also know Joe Biden inherited a border that was largely (but not completely) secure. In his first week as president, Biden systematically dismantled the policies that ensured border control.

We are living with the consequences of this president’s catastrophic decisions. Since he took office, between 7 and 10 million people have crossed the border illegally. With them have come vast quantities of illegal drugs, manufactured in Mexico from precursor chemicals sent from China. Those drugs kill some 100,000 Americans each year. No one has any idea how many spies and terrorists have also infiltrated. When the state of Texas, fed up with an open border, erected its own barbed wire barrier (it worked), the Biden administration’s Department of Justice sued to have it removed without offering any substitute.

The massive influx of illegal immigrants is crushing city and state budgets. Those jurisdictions simply don’t have the money to provide housing, schooling, food, or medical care for this huge population of indigents. They can’t cope with the violent criminal gangs that have immigrated (some from as far away as Chile), have enriched themselves with drug sales and human trafficking, and have become entrenched across the U.S.

Some financial effects of this influx are currently hidden but will be felt soon. I was privately informed that a major research hospital, far from the southern border, is now losing over $1 billion per year in uncompensated medical care for illegal aliens. Numbers like that will soon break the hospital and others like it across America. If Washington picks up the tab, it will be another massive hit to the deficit.

Democrats have become so entrapped by these problems that they can no longer speak straight. They cannot say the plain words, “illegal immigration.” They faint at the words “illegal alien,” a term used in statutes for decades. Today’s Democrats condemn that language and try to mask the harsh reality with gooey phrases like “asylum seekers” (very few qualify), “irregular immigration,” and even “newcomers.”

Evasive phrases like these may be popular in toney Greenwich, Connecticut, but not in Gary, Indiana. The growing anger in poor, minority communities about crime and illegal immigration is a serious problem for Democrats, who can’t win without overwhelming support and turnout from African Americans. They are none too happy about competing with illegal immigrants for lower-skilled jobs and public resources.

Democrats didn’t expect that problem with their core constituency. Nor did they expect it from Hispanics, who voted overwhelming for Biden in 2020 but are now slipping away. Whether that shift among Hispanics is temporary or permanent will affect elections for years to come. In either case, it will affect the outcome in 2024.

Third, while the federal government and blue states are steadfastly refusing to enforce basic laws on immigration, theft, squatting, and so on, they are simultaneously mounting zealous legal attacks on Biden’s general election opponent. Several states tried to keep him off the 2024 ballot until the Supreme Court stopped them. Prosecutors in New York and Georgia, plus Biden’s Department of Justice, are now trying to imprison Donald Trump, tie him down in court during the campaign season for alleged misdeeds that happened years ago, while also hoping to break him financially, a process led by local prosecutors who campaigned on the promise to “get Trump.” As Letitia James once told a supporter, “We’re definitely gonna sue him, we’re gonna be a real pain in the a--."

In fulfilling that promise, James and fellow partisan prosecutors (and, alas, judges) have trampled on his basic constitutional protections and their own duties as officers of the court. Honest legal systems do not operate under the principle of “Show me the man, and I’ll find you the crime” a dictum popularized behind the Iron Curtain during the reign of terror by Stalin’s secret police. It should be anathema in a democracy, not the best explanation for actions by Letitia James, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Atlanta prosecutor Fani Willis, or local New York judge Arthur Engoron. Nor should their actions be cheered by rabid partisans, much as they hate Trump. Yet that is exactly what they are saying on social media. They want vengeance.

Independent voters want something else. They want fairness. Many are not in love with Trump’s candidacy, but they still think he is being manhandled by prosecutors and judges. And they think that is fundamentally wrong. It will drive some of them to vote for him, or at least against his opponent.

Our Constitution is supposed to protect citizens against biased, politicized law enforcement. There are explicit constitutional protections against excessive fines, for instance. Those shouldn’t just be meaningless words on paper. Yet Judge Engoron, who oversaw the bench trial concerning Trump’s bank loans, ordered the former president to post a half-billion dollar bond simply to appeal the questionable legal decision. (On the final day to post it, a state appeals court cut the bond in half and eased a few restrictions the trial judge imposed on the Trump Organization’s business.)

Trump has said he will abide by the appellate decision. He has little choice. If he doesn’t post the bond, he loses even the right to appeal. Meanwhile, James blasts out another a taunting tweet each day, gleefully observing that Trump owes another $100,000 in interest. She loves it and says so brazenly.

James and Judge Engoron are attempting to break the former president financially before he can appeal a court decision. Whether Trump wins or loses on appeal, he should have the right to raise his legal arguments without overwhelming financial impediments. The judge could have easily accommodated that appeal, but he refused. He could have easily accepted a lower bond, such as the $100 million proffered by Trump, but he refused. Meanwhile, James was gleefully preparing to seize Trump’s properties and force a fire sale until the state appellate court lowered Trump’s bond and gave him 10 more days to comply.

These were shameful exercises of partisan power, done under the color of law. They may end up helping Trump politically, but that’s not the point here. The crucial point is that they undermine the unbiased, non-partisan rule of law, a foundational principle in any true democracy.

Voters can see the fundamental unfairness. So can investors, who are worried by what looks like the arbitrary loss of Trump’s property rights. When that happens in Manhattan, the capital of world finance, there will be consequences.

Each of these issues – massive illegal immigration, biased law enforcement, the erosion of property rights, and “Get Trump” lawfare – is important in its own right. Together, they are even more important. Taken together, they reinforce Americans’ sense of unease, social division, and betrayal by a justice system tilted against political enemies. They are frustrated by governments at all levels that seem arbitrary, inept, and unwilling to meet their most basic obligations.

If the polls are right, voters will make their frustration felt in November.

Charles Lipson is the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of Chicago, where he founded the Program on International Politics, Economics, and Security. He can be reached at charles.lipson@gmail.com.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2024/03/26/law_and_order_is_a_killer_problem_for_democrats_150702.html

"Green" projects and other "climate" efforts are salted through every government budget at every level:

The most egregious theft of collective wealth and well-being -- and it is flat-out theft -- is the churn on “alternative” forms of energy production. Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama said last week in an interview with Steve Bannon that the U.S. has spent some $7 trillion over budget in the last three years, and 25 percent of that went to "climate change" projects. They are all like Solyndra, massively subsidized and within a decade, massive failures. "The investors take a tax loss," said Tuberville, "then move onto the next effort where they again loot the public." This is salted through all the investment banks, retirement accounts. It represents all putative growth.

In June of 2023, the Department of Energy admitted that it had allocated $1.3 trillion for "clean energy" investment support since 2020, and that spending rose 25 percent from 2021-23. This is a fraction of what was really spent. Further, this money is not only based in debt, thus raising inflation, but it is also raising energy prices. It is the principal reason that almost 25 percent of us, according to economist Peter St. Onge, have been forced to choose between heat and food this winter.

What a choice.

Seventy-five percent of $7 trillion is $1,750,000,000, in an annual gift to the rich. The World Economic Forum projects that climate spending in the U.S. will triple over the next ten years. Biden's "climate" budget is $5.7 trillion. Triple that to $20 trillion. No wonder the market is booming. The U.S. has pledged another half a trillion in “low carbon electricity” under this year’s Paris Climate Accord. And further:

Among all measures tracked since 2020, direct incentives for manufacturers aimed at bolstering domestic manufacturing of "clean" energy now total to around $90 billion.
Since the start of the global energy crisis, governments have also allocated $900 billion to short-term consumer affordability measures, additional to pre-existing support programs and subsidies. Around 30 percent of this "affordability" spending has been announced in the past six months, and despite calls to better target households and industries most in need, only 25 percent of affordability measures are targeted towards low-income households and most-impacted industries.

Much of this last $900 billion is direct subsidy to the wealthy in annual subsidies for clean energy. This is again, annual subsidy, so look at the last twenty years. President Obama started this program, therefore, we are looking at a $10 - $ 20 trillion gift to the rich since the Lightbringer took office. What is not counted in these budgets are the losses that accrue from the failure of "green energy" projects, which is the taxpayer's loss.

Last year, investors in Spain's green energy collapse took the government to court to claw back subsidies from a dead industry in a country with a debt 400 percent larger than GDP. No wonder millions on the street want to outlaw socialism. As is clear from Spain,  when the government runs out of money the first thing to go is the subsidy to green energy, after which the enterprise fails immediately.

In my neck of the Canadian woods, you can install a solar system for $20,000, and get a 25 percent subsidy, as does the installer whose business the government created via “free” “investment.” I live in a rain forest. Which means solar is not available during winter rains and not needed during the summers. Recently everyone with a few extra bucks has taken up the government offer to install heat pumps, also subsidized by between 50 percent and 75 percent. Rain forests mean hydro power, which is essentially, greenhouse-gas-free, and the most inexpensive "fuel," but an almost-free heat pump? Again win/win for the upper-middle-class because no one in Canada’s increasingly massive working class can afford it.

Solyndra? Never heard of it!

This model was invented by politicians in power. The first person to notice it was Peter Schweizer; in Throw Them All Out, he details the billionaire investors who funded Obama and who were cashed out via various solar and wind projects. Hundreds of billions of dollars went missing on Obama’s various "clean energy" projects.

This year, every government department is “investing” in clean energy, vis, a quick Google search, will show. Pages and pages of boastful press releases follow. Every agency is in on the boondoggle. NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the U.S. Patent and Trade Mark Office have signed a collaborative agreement to advance climate technology. Putting aside the fact that "climate change" is neither imminent nor dangerous, the government should not be creating patents. Innovation should be carried out by the private market, where there are controls.

As we discovered during Covid, government patents on both the virus and the vaccine were not subjected to court challenge, double blind testing, or feasibility. There is no number attached to NOAA's "initiative," but this is representative of ten thousand such projects salted through every government bureau. All that money is wasted. Wind and solar and the various battery projects have not managed to support the electrical grid in any substantial way, hovering, on average, around 4 percent. Despite this mind-boggling waste of money, in September last year former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg pledged another $500 billion to shutter the equivalent of 40 percent total electricity use of nine states, including California, Florida, New York, Illinois and Texas.

What has been the result of trillions of public money shunted into “clean” “green” “energy” on the actual energy grid? Robert Bryce, an acknowledged expert, shows that it is failing. A speech he gave at the winter meeting of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners showed astonishing, across-the-board failure in every metric you can imagine.

"Climate Policy" is considered the most significant risk. As Bryce describes, "green energy" has meant Europe is deindustrializing, Ford lost $64,731 for every EV it sold, and the IEA states that global coal use will hit another new record of 8.5 billion tons. Coal use increased 35 percent in last summer’s heat wave. Wind dropped by 21 percent.

Climate policy breaks everything. It breaks communities, it encourages widespread theft of public money, it starves productive work and manufacturing, it has punched down on the less advantaged, and it is destroying the fabric of our lives. And for what?

Elizabeth Nickson was trained as a reporter at the London bureau of Time Magazine. She became European Bureau Chief of LIFE magazine in its last years of monthly publication, and during that time, acquired the rights to Nelson Mandela’s memoir before he was released from Robben Island. She went on to write for Harper’s Magazine, the Guardian, the Observer, the Independent, the Sunday Telegraph, the Sunday Times Magazine, the Telegraph, the Globe and Mail and the National Post. Her first book The Monkey Puzzle Tree was an investigation of the CIA MKULTRA mind control program and was published by Bloomsbury and Knopf Canada. Her next book, Eco-Fascists, How Radical Environmentalists Are Destroying Our Natural Heritage, was a look at how environmentalism, badly practiced, is destroying the rural economy and rural culture in the U.S. and all over the world. It was published by Adam Bellow at Harper Collins US. You can subscribe to her Substack at elizabethnickson.substack.com/

https://the-pipeline.org/how-green-projects-are-looting-the-treasury/

… impacts Earth’s orbit, driving it closer to the sun while stirring up deep ocean currents. Posted as this is yet another potential confounding variable where “climate change” is concerned:

https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/rivers-oceans/every-24-million-years-mars-tugs-on-earth-so-hard-it-changes-the-ocean-floor

They cite inflation and the CA regulatory climate. Unaware of the irony, CA insurance commission says they plan to investigate:

https://legalinsurrection.com/2024/03/state-farm-cuts-72000-california-home-and-apartment-insurance-policies/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=state-farm-cuts-72000-california-home-and-apartment-insurance-policies

Folks seeking to immigrate legally via F1 (student) visas denied at record rate. So Hapless Joe in encouraging the low skilled destitute to hop the southern border illegally, while his admin denies students that, on average, pay $30,000/year to study here, often learning highly sought after skills that would benefit the US if these skills were used here are denied entry. Talk about government getting it 180 degrees backwards….

A Record Quarter of a Million International Students Denied Visas, 36 Percent of Applicants
Cato @ Liberty / by David J. Bier / Mar 19, 2024 at 2:25 PM
David J. Bier

This updates an earlier post.

Student visas are the primary jumping‐​off point for most high‐​skilled immigrants to the United States. Immigrants study at America’s elite universities and then find jobs here when they graduate—largely through the post‐​graduate employment authorization program called Optional Practical Training. Despite the importance of these visas, the State Department rejected an unprecedented 36 percent of student visa applicants in 2023, surpassing 2022’s record.

Student visas are known as F‑1 visas. Figure 1 shows the F‑1 student visa denial rate compared to the visa denial rate for all other nonimmigrant (i.e. temporary) visa applicants. As it shows, student visas usually had a similar rejection rate to other nonimmigrant visa applicants. But from 2021 and 2023, student visas were denied at nearly twice the rate of all other applicants. The student visa denial rate increased from a low of 15 percent in 2014 to 36 percent in 2023.

In 2023, consular officers denied a record 253,355 student visas. As Figure 2 shows, more visas were denied in 2023 than were issued in 2002 and 2005. The staggering number of denials occurred even as the number of issuances remained far below the peak year of 2015. Even 2015, with far more applicants, had far fewer denials than in 2023. It now appears that the higher denial rates, which shot up in 2016, may have dissuaded some applicants from applying, and the absolute number of total student visa applicants has declined, and student visa issuances have declined 31 percent from 2015 to 2023.

It is important to understand that before a student can even apply for an F‑1 visa they must already be accepted into a government‐​approved university. This means that the US Department of State turned down 253,355 students who would have likely paid roughly $30,000 per year or $7.6 billion per year in tuition and living expenses. Over four years that number rises to $30.4 billion in lost economic benefits to the United States.

The State Department does not separately delineate the reasons for student visa denials but nearly all nonimmigrant visa denials are for failing to prove “nonimmigrant intent” (that is, the desire not to move to the United States permanently). Applicants need to show sufficient ties to their home country that would impel them to return to their home country when their reasons for visiting have ended.

The nonimmigrant intent subjective standard can be enforced in a variety of ways. Consular officers are supposed to only consider someone’s “present intent” not considering how their intention might change if opportunities arise in the United States to stay legally. In practice, there is very little consistency in application.

The unprecedented denials occurred even though the State Department officials in Washington, DC attempted to return to a lower standard of evidence for students that existed before Trump. The Foreign Affairs Manual now states that students “should be looked at differently” because “typically, students lack the strong economic and social ties of more established visa applicants, and they plan longer stays in the United States.” It concludes that “the natural circumstances of being a student do not disqualify the applicant.” This change occurred in September 2021 before the start of fiscal year 2022.

The State Department hasn’t disclosed the denial rate by nationality in 2022 or 2023, but the rise and fall of Chinese students is the most important trend in student visa policy in recent years (Figure 3). Another ground for denial—which is far less frequent but affects mainly students from China—is Presidential Proclamation 10043, a Trump proclamation that bars visas for people who studied at any university that now works with the Chinese military in any capacity.

This order—which is retroactively applied to students who studied at such universities before the order was issued—was the basis for about 2,000 visa denials in 2021 and probably about 1,600 in 2022, though the exact figure is not published. The number for 2023 is not available yet, but while that is a lot of denials in absolute terms, and it certainly deters many more applicants, it would only explain 1 percent of total student visa denials in 2023.

What may explain the sudden increase in denials is the sudden increase in issuances for Indian students. After major delays during the pandemic, Indian consulates issued an unprecedented 130,839 student visas, by far the highest total for India ever. But according to data obtained by researchers via Freedom of Information Act requests, before the pandemic, US consulates in India were far more likely to deny students than US consulates in China. Indians accounted for a record 29 percent of all visa issuances in 2023, so their higher rate of denial could have affected the worldwide average more.

This theory is plausible, but the only country‐​by‐​country visa denial data that the State Department is releasing are for B visas for tourist and business travelers. For tourist visas, the two countries switched places with Chinese applicants now much more likely to be denied than Indian applicants (Figure 5). Whether this also happened with student visas isn’t known, and the fact that student refusal visa rates stopped closely tracking other nonimmigrant refusal rates complicates the issue. But it could imply that the problem isn’t specific to India and perhaps the increase in denials is coming more from China or elsewhere.

The bigger issue here is how Consular Affairs handles visa interviews. The head of the Consular Affairs division in India is Don Heflin. Heflin explained how student visa interviews work in April 2022:

Bring [bank statements] just in case the vice consul asks, but we are looking at this less than we used to. We know Indian families usually find a way [to pay].… Mostly it’s about explaining why this school and this curriculum makes sense to you. It’s what in American English we call the Elevator Pitch. You’ll have a minute and a half to tell us why this [school] makes sense to you. Don’t walk up and recite something from memory about the campus, the student body, and how old the school is.… Listen, I have a lot of Indian friends. I know that your father may have told you where you were going to go to school and what you were going to study. That’s fine. Tell us what he told you. Show us that it makes sense for you.

None of this information has anything to do with the legal requirements for a student visa. This absurd method of adjudicating student visas explains why India has a much higher than average student visa refusal rate even though Indian students are extremely successful in the United States. The United States should not pass on tens of billions of dollars in economic activity from these students just because they memorized their “elevator pitch” on why they want to study computer science in Kansas. It’s totally irrelevant. The administration needs to increase transparency about student visa denials and adopt a fair and uniform policy for reviews.

https://www.cato.org/blog/record-quarter-million-international-students-denied-visas-36-applicants

Need, ah, some slow cash? Apply to walk this new 1,600 mile trail from Carson City NV to Canada, with two awardees provide $5K if they complete the hike:

Nevada’s Capital Will Pay You $5,000 to Hike the Pacific Crest Trail
Backpacker Magazine - backpacker.com / by Adam Roy / Mar 19, 2024 at 6:29 PM
Nevada’s Capital Will Pay You $5,000 to Hike the Pacific Crest Trail
When Jeff Potter arrived in Carson City, Nevada near the end of the ’90s, he noted an absence: His new home was ringed by low-slung mountains at the eastern edge of the towering Sierra Nevada and its sweeping Lake Tahoe, but there was no real way to get to them without a car.

A California native drawn toward Tahoe for its labyrinth of mountain-bike trails, Potter and his pals grew tired of mounting their rides to roof and hitch racks just to go somewhere else. So Potter, who would eventually earn the name “The Trail Steward of Carson City,” started scheming with Muscle Powered, an organization that had long been promoting non-vehicular infrastructure there: How might he build trails that connected this place where he loved to live to the mighty mountains and endless routes he loved to ride?

A quarter-century and 9.8 miles of single-track later, Potter’s dream is now a navigable trail. Finished last fall just before snow swept into the region, the Capital to Tahoe Trail makes it possible to hike, pedal, or horseback ride nearly from Nevada’s sandstone capitol building to the Tahoe Rim Trail (TRT) and its country-spanning connector, the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT). In fact, Carson City is looking to pay two hikers $5,000 each to do exactly that come the Summer of 2025: walk from the capitol to Canada and tell the tale. (The application window closes May 31, 2024.) At just over 1,600 miles, that’s a little more than $3 per mile.

“Our downtown sits in the middle of all of our trails,” says Lydia Beck, the Visit Carson City marketing manager who hatched the plan to sponsor thru-hikes late in 2022. “And people have no idea that Carson City has a beautiful stretch of the east side of Lake Tahoe. We’re trying to bring awareness to our proximity.”

Carson City will likely never become a “trail town” for long-distance hikes of the PCT or TRT, since the resources and revelry of South Lake Tahoe are much closer to those trails. (And the PCT, for its part, trends westward from Lake Tahoe.) But the small city’s geography and position along the base of the beautiful Carson Range, with other peaks to every side, make it a prime hub for exploration in all directions. Peter Doenges—the 77-year-old retired computer graphics pathfinder who stepped into Potter’s former role at Muscle Powered as Trails Coordinator in 2019—sees “Cap to Tahoe,” as he calls it, as a crucial part of that plan.

“We’re constantly stirring the pot based on prior public processes that approved all these trail routes—and then going about building them,” says Doenges. “There are so many people in this town who believed in this trail, of getting us integrated into this larger system.”

Indeed, the Capital to Tahoe Trail is simply the latest phase of a larger plan that Potter helped to initiate when he first partnered with Muscle Powered. They built Ash to Kings Trail, linking two roads that cut through canyons, from 2012 until 2015, even earning an award from American Trails. Back then, Potter was already fantasizing about how the next trail would reach Lake Tahoe. “That’s another 10 miles of trail we hope to build,” he told Adventure Sports Journal in 2016. “This isn’t just about recreation. It’s about providing connectivity to our community.”

That community responded in kind. Construction began in 2020, and Muscle Powered recruited a professional, mechanized trail builder at one point, as the path rose nearly 2,000 feet and cut through thick brush. Doenges remains verklempt by dozens of volunteers who arrived to work on hand crews as well as the surgeon who gifted the trail a permanent easement so that nearly a mile of it would not be so dastardly steep. Potter, who no longer lives in Carson City, even did the “final flagging”—a last survey to make sure the trail is properly aligned. The very day after the final two remote miles were finished, Doenges saw tire tracks and boot prints cutting across the path.

But as far as anyone knows, no one has yet to take the Capital to Tahoe Trail west, hit the PCT, and head north to Canada. That is where the contest comes in. Rather than hold a lottery of submissions, Visit Carson City intends to vet each application and choose two people they think can go the distance—and, of course, share the story along the way. As of mid-March, they’ve only received a dozen applications.

If it goes well this time, however, they may even continue the program for hikers in years to come. “We’re not ruling that out,” says Beck. “We’re very excited.”

The post Nevada’s Capital Will Pay You $5,000 to Hike the Pacific Crest Trail appeared first on Backpacker.

https://www.backpacker.com/news-and-events/news/carson-city-nevada-pay-hikers-5000-pacific-crest-trail/