Pun Salad

For decades, New York City enforced uniquely onerous regulations that effectively prohibited licensed pistol and revolver owners from taking their weapons outside their homes, even when they were unloaded and stored in a locked container, unless they were traveling to or from one of seven gun ranges in the five boroughs. When several gun owners challenged those regulations, the city successfully defended their constitutionality for five years, obtaining favorable rulings from a federal judge and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. But after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal of that decision, the city rewrote its rules, backed a state law that eased restrictions on transporting guns, and urged the Court to drop the case, arguing that the regulatory and statutory changes made it moot. During oral arguments today in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. City of New York, several justices seemed skeptical of that claim, which is transparently aimed at avoiding a Supreme Court decision that could clarify the contours of the Second Amendment.

Given the scale of human suffering Golden Rice could address, there may be no better example of a purely philanthropic project in the whole of human history. Yet some misguided environmental activists still oppose Golden Rice to this day.

Prominent among these is Greenpeace, the environmental lobby group which now has annual revenues of nearly $300m and a highly-paid chief executive overseeing a sophisticated fund-raising operation. Greenpeace lobbied to set very strict rules on the use of genetically-engineered crops which had the effect, whether intended or not, of making life difficult for Potrykus and Beyer. In January 2000, the same month that the development of Golden Rice was announced to the world in Science magazine, there was a meeting in Montreal of delegates from 170 countries working to come up with an international protocol on the regulation of biotechnology. This process had been started the year before in Cartagena, Colombia. Greenpeace was there, both protesting in the streets (“Life before profits!”) and working behind the scenes to draft rules for the delegates.

"The health-care burden hurts American business," says Johnson, due to "the onerous contribution most companies are required to make through employer-sponsored insurance." Would the Warren plan end that "onerous contribution"? Of course not. They're counting on it to pay 43% of the cost of the plan. 

Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler explains: "Instead of employers continuing to give that money to insurance companies, Warren proposes that businesses direct 98 percent to the federal government [$8.8 trillion] and keep 2 percent for themselves. . . "

Would the Warren plan prohibit the next government from requiring employers to pay a vastly more "onerous contribution" in the future? Of course not. The Warren plan would also raise taxes on corporations and their investors by some $6.3 trillion, according to Kessler, so any ephemeral promise of reducing companies' insurance premiums by 2% for a year or two is hardly great news for American business.

If Joe Biden falters, the received wisdom runs, nominating Michael Bloomberg to head the Democratic ticket would boost the party’s chances next November by pitting a strong, credible moderate against Donald Trump. It’s possible. But the former mayor of New York could do his party an even bigger favor just by losing.

The reason has to do with the Supreme Court’s 2010 landmark ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Instead of hailing the decision as a welcome victory for the First Amendment—it overturned an FEC ban that had prohibited airing a documentary critical of Hillary Clinton right before the 2008 Democratic primaries—today’s Democratic orthodoxy holds that Citizens United has left American democracy for sale to the highest bidder.

Sen. Bernie Sanders puts it this way: “We do not believe that billionaires have the right to buy elections, and that is why we are going to overturn Citizens United, that is why multibillionaires like Mr. Bloomberg are not going to get very far in this election.”