URLs du Jour

2022-07-21

  • Free money-saving advice to corporations. From xkcd:

    [Chemicals]

    Mouseover: "It's hard to believe, but lots of kids these days ONLY know how to buy prepackaged molecules."


  • You should definitely be outraged. I'm too old for that sort of thing, but the WSJ editorialists might raise your blood pressure to dangerous levels, writing about The Senate’s Semiconductor Spending Trick. [Free link.]

    Are Republican Senators conniving spendthrifts or babes in the Beltway? We lean toward the former after watching a $76 billion semiconductor subsidy bill morph within minutes on Tuesday night into a $250 billion bipartisan spendarama.

    The Senate voted 64-34 to begin debate on its Chips bill, a corporate-welfare vehicle providing $52 billion in grants and $24 billion in tax credits to the profitable semiconductor industry. But it turns out that bill was merely the bad news. The really bad news is that Majority Leader Chuck Schumer quickly filed a 1,054-page bipartisan amendment to pour more than twice that amount of money into federal agencies.

    The $76 billion Chips version is wasteful enough since the pandemic computer-chip shortage is already easing amid slowing demand and new investments in capacity—including new factories in the U.S.

    But politicians always want more, and the $250 billion version will help the U.S. compete against China only if you believe that the key to success is a larger federal bureaucracy and more political allocation of capital.

    "In the interests of equal time," yesterday's WSJ had an op-ed defending the corporate welfare bill: When the Chips Are Down, Congress Should Support the Semiconductor Industry. [Also a free link.] It's co-written by the CEOs of Ford and Intel. (Well, probably by their lobbyists.) They count the CEOs of Medtronic and Lockheed-Martin.

    Their effort is by-the-numbers special pleading. They invoke that tired "playing field" cliché twice: it's "uneven" and Congress must "help level" it.

    Why bother to innovate and run your companies efficiently, making them attractive to investors, when you can get Congress to force American taxpayers to provide you with capital?


  • Funny that. Elizabeth Nolan Brown writes (for print-Reason's "Banned Books" issue) about How the Controversy Around When Harry Became Sally Boosted Its Popularity.

    I was worried I wouldn't be able to stomach When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment, Ryan T. Anderson's 2018 book on gender identity in modern America. Anderson is a Catholic pundit who made a name for himself opposing same-sex marriage at a time when even many of his conservative peers had let that one go. Yet, while there's plenty in the book for socially liberal folks (myself included) to disagree with, it isn't brimming with blatant bigotry. One might argue that he has selectively wielded data and anecdotes, and one might disagree with the conclusions he draws—chief among them that helping people with gender dysphoria accept their birth sex may be a more effective and humane course of action than hormone treatments and surgeries. But this isn't a wildly hateful or inflammatory book.

    That's what makes Amazon's 2021 decision to stop selling When Harry Became Sally so strange. The megaplatform is home to all sorts of socially conservative books, including Anderson's previous publications on marriage. It carries works from radical feminists, whose takes on transgender issues often mirror those of conservatives. It carries a Matt Walsh book calling trans ideology "collective insanity." It sells Michelle Malkin's defense of internment camps.

    ENB notes that you can still buy the book at Barnes & Noble or direct from the publisher. And she notes the publisher's irresistable marketing: it's "the book Amazon doesn’t want you to read."

    I note "Banned Books Week" is coming up in September. Can't help but wonder if When Harry Became Sally will be mentioned.


  • For once, not the University Near Here. But it's a university pretty close by that's being chided by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). Because Southern New Hampshire University forbids students from inviting ‘controversial’ speakers to campus, claims to promote ‘diverse ideas’.

    When new president Kyle Urban of the Southern New Hampshire University College Republicans asked the university how to invite conservative speakers to campus, the response was not what he expected.

    Instead of providing a policy detailing the mechanics for the chapter to invite speakers, SNHU told Urban the university must substantively review and approve all proposed speakers to ensure they “are not so controversial that they would draw unwanted demonstrators” to campus. The university explained it “invite[s] discussion as long as it is friendly.”

    But that’s not what SNHU’s free expression promises say, as FIRE pointed out in a May 18 letter to the university. SNHU unequivocally promises students an environment which sustains the “ideals of freedom of inquiry, freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and freedom of the individual.” Having made those strong promises, the university may not lay them aside when the expression in question could lead to controversy.

    SNHU has previously actually hired faculty that believe Australia is not a country. And (perhaps more important) they have a history of treating conservative speakers unfairly.


  • But he really, really wants to. Shouldn't that count? David Harsanyi provides a brief Constitution 101 tutorial: Biden Has No Right To Declare A 'National Climate Emergency'.

    The Washington Post reported Monday night that President Joe Biden is “considering declaring a national climate emergency” to “salvage his environmental agenda in the wake of stalled talks on Capitol Hill.” A few hours later, the Associated Press reported that the administration would “hold off” on the announcement as he, presumably, lays the political groundwork to move forward.

    There’s no “It’s Summer” clause in the Constitution, empowering the president to ignore the will of Congress and unilaterally govern when it gets hot. The rejection of the president’s “agenda” by the lawmaking branch of government isn’t a justification for executive action, it’s the opposite. The Senate has unambiguously declined to implement Biden’s climate plan.

    Though you have to marvel at the utter shamelessness of Democrats, incessantly warning that “democracy” is on the precipice of extinction, now urging the president to act like a petty dictator. It’s been less than a month since the Supreme Court rejected the Environmental Protection Agency’s claim that bureaucrats could govern without Congress to regulate carbon (which is to say, the entire economy). What makes anyone believe that the president—who, incidentally, just got back from begging Saudi theocrats to pump more oil—is imbued with the power to enact a new regulatory regime or funding by fiat?

    In a sane country, this would be (additional) grounds for impeachment. But that's something that coulda, shoulda been done to the last four presidents.


  • A related question: Do I have anyone to vote for? The great Virginia Postrel wonders: Do Upwardly Mobile Latino Plumbers Have Anyone to Vote For?.

    I spent the morning with a young plumber who owns a growing company known for excellent work. He came with his cool camera-snake—a technology plumbers under 40 take for granted—to see why our condo complex’s pipes are backing up. We talked tree roots and hydrojetting, not politics. But my experience with this competent and upwardly mobile entrepreneur, whose fluent English still has a Latin American lilt, gave some recent political discussions additional resonance.

    Last week Ruy Teixeira, co-author of the famous 2004 book The Emerging Democratic Majority, posted an essay on his Substack with the self-explanatory title “Working Class and Hispanic Voters Are Losing Interest in the Party of Abortion, Gun Control and the January 6th Hearings.” It hit some themes he’s long been trumpeting, including the growing defection of Latino voters from the Democratic party.

    VP says she'd "like to see Democrats wise up." I'd extend that wish to Republicans. And also big-L Libertarians.

    There are no signs of that happening.