Last year I brought you the first installment of my Super States. The fundamental characteristic of a Super State is one that treats its citizens with respect, as though they were the state’s best customers. Businesses and citizens in Super States are encouraged and aided by state policies, not encumbered and held back by restrictions […]
FACEBOOK FACADE: Zuckerberg’s AI Ethics Team a Ruse to Avoid Regulation?
In a recent piece in the MIT Technology Review, Karen Hao explains her conversations with Joaquin Quiñonero Candela, a director of AI at Facebook. During her investigation of the company’s motivations, she found that its artificial intelligence (AI) ethics team is a ruse to do “just enough” to avoid any proposed regulation that could hamper […]
Silicon Valley, Today’s “King Cotton”
Originally posted November 23, 2021. In what he explains is the growing red state/blue state divide, Victor Davis Hanson discusses in American Greatness how our economic, cultural, social, and political totality represents (1) the more hysterically neo-Confederate model and (2) the calmer, more Union-like one. The former appears more unsustainable and intolerant, the latter is […]
The Real Minimum Wage Is Zero
In an example of noxious Unintended Consequences, the City Council of Long Beach, CA adopted an ordinance in January requiring large grocery-store chains to pay employees an extra $4 an hour, calling it “Hero Pay.” The city council’s intent was to reward workers for risks taken by doing their jobs amid the Covid-19 pandemic, explains […]
Twitter and the other Tech Giants Are a Cancer on Our Body Politick
In The Federalist, John Daniel Davidson supports removing the protections that have allowed Twitter and Facebook to become unaccountable mega-corporations. He writes (abridged): Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act was passed in 1996, back when Congress was grappling with new technology and trying to make the internet as open as possible. Harsanyi (David at […]
Do You Know About California’s New AB5 Law?
California’s bid to rein in gig-workers has created turmoil in the state’s economy. Erica Sandberg notes at City Journal that “Musicians can’t join bands for a one-night gig, chefs can’t join forces with caterers, nurses can’t work at various hospitals, and writers must cap their submissions per media outlet to 35 per year.” This sort […]
SECURE Act Passed by Congress on the Way Out the Door
You’ve read about the SECURE Act and the hidden taxes targeting your family that it contains. Now, while everyone is busy Christmas shopping, and just as Congress is about to leave town, the bill was smuggled into a spending bill, and pushed through the legislature. According to Barron’s the bill “means a spate of changes […]
Relocate 10 Cabinet Departments Out of D.C.
There are nearly 3,500 trades or firms with dedicated lobbying operations in Washington, D.C., reports Roger Kimball in American Greatness. And that number does not include union headquarters in D.C. (T)hey’re all there, hands out, telephones working overtime to get a little bigger slice of the government pie, made with 100 percent locally sourced materials, namely […]
California’s Government Makes Living Hard
“It makes life hard.” Those are the words of a California delivery driver discussing the high cost of living in the state. He continued, telling The Wall Street Journal’s Amrith Ramkumar “You can’t go out and do the things you want to do.” Gasoline prices, for instance, are nearly always highest, or near the highest, […]
Department of Justice and FTC to Go After Tech Giants
At The American Conservative, Peter Van Buren decries the censorship by the big media companies. Van Buren explains “deplatforming” and how such corporate censorship may be illegal under monopoly conditions. He writes (abridged): Donald Trump is preparing to unleash the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission as antitrust warriors against the tech giants. And good on him. […]
