Well, in the literal sense it would be neutral to be transparent, but "political" in the sense that the White House is using means "you're being mean to me."
That IS what Biden was trying to do though with the CHIPS Incentive Act. He was trying to onshore production of semiconductors in a partnership with TSMC. Didn't do him any favors, and Harris lost the state of Arizona anyway. Americans had the choice between a party that was serious about trying to onshore some manufacturing and a party that wasn't, and it made the wrong choice because vibes, basically.
This may be more accurate than you realize. Both Democrat and old Republican party rhetoric and policies were pro-globalization/offshoring, with the occasional exception such as CHIPS (and corn subsidies). It's not surprising nobody believed they were changing direction, if for every "we're bringing semiconductors back", they heard ten "your car is German your phone is Chinese your tacos are Mexican, how dare you interfere with glorious Free Trade!"
Also one can't ignore that the GOP managed to remarked the CHIPS act as a key source of inflation, which they also managed to pin on "Bidenomics". Which was another source of "vibes, basically"
Weren't we hearing for years about how it went to waste because Intel did stock buybacks or whatever using the CHIPS money. Now we are supposed to believe it's critical?
CHIPS incentive funding is way bigger than just Intel, so it’s a bit disingenuous to write off the whole program just because of one (or even several) high profile bad actor. We should have a nuanced discussion and fix the shortcomings of our programs, but at least assess things in a balanced way.
If you check the transcript of the confirmation hearing for the current Commerce secretary, practically every Senator brags about their state’s CHIPS funded R&D hub. Lots of growth in small and medium businesses there. And CHIPS incentive funding played a huge role in bringing the new TSMC fab in Arizona
This entire post is so wrong, it is difficult to know where to start. The first sentence about taxes is wrong. The second statement is an entirely unsupported opinion. The final statement miscategorized "cost centers" as some sort of federal investment? As for "clear path", the road US exceptionalism is paved with the gold derived from sensible investments in R&D and tech advancement. There was no clear path to paying back our investment in the federal highway system, but it did pay back indeed. There was no clear path to paying back our investments in basic physics, chemistry, and biology, but it did pay back indeed.
> R&D is a cost center that can no longer be written off of a company’s taxes.
Can you elaborate on this? It was my understanding a company only pays taxes on profit. So isn't the revenue that goes into R&D effectively taxed at 0%, since at that point it's not yet profit? I.e. only dividend payouts get taxed.
2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act made it less beneficial to use R&D for tax credits because they had to be amortized over five years. Not good when you're an MBA looking to financially engineer your way into a fat bonus.
The crime is writing the op-ed. The group are the editors and other writers. They cannot be arrested - they dont have VISAs because they are US citizens.
> Rubio suggested without evidence she was involved in disruptive student protests
I wasn't trying to imply she was merely there, as Rubio is saying they participated. They never said the op-ed was related... so my question is, if the only reasoning is taking part in the protest, then why arrest nobody else who was there?
Maybe Rubio is not the most trustful source... i mean i said it before. They probably can't really get to US citizens. But they can take away peoples VISA on a whim. The reason is to send a message.
I too have read Never in Anger, the ethnography mentioned in this blog post, and the way I found it was by reading a survey of egalitarian societies called Hierarchy in the Forest, by Christopher Boehm. Many of the personality traits that the author seems to think are special about people who share the East Asian phenotype are actually common amongst fiercely egalitarian societies. It is normal to highly police socio-emotional expression and to regard angry tribe members with suspicion. The !Kung San live in a hot climate and are like this. The Montenegro Serbs live in the Balkans, a rather different climate, and are also like this. I finished Hierarchy in the Forest with the strong impression that no member of any modern society could tolerate the lack of personal expression required to suppress any would-be chiefs.
This person could've spent a lot less time going down a rabbit hole with a couple introductory anthropology classes and by asking themselves if there were any societies with these same traits in a warm climate. It is poor scientific reasoning not to check for examples of this personality type in hot climates. Not exactly PhD material.
> Many of the personality traits that the author seems to think are special about people who share the East Asian phenotype are actually common amongst fiercely egalitarian societies.
This is an obvious mischaracterization of the hypothesis, though.
The author says nothing about whether other cultures and groups share this egalitarian tendency.
Just that East Asians tend to share this tendency and that it must transcend cultural specifics such as Confucianism, by comparing East Asians to Inuits who predate Confucianism by at least 8000 years, and positing that cold environment adaptation was the driver.
Whether the paper’s data and analysis is PhD worthy is a different matter, but it’s an interesting hypothesis.
As a Brit, I thought "are they just describing the 'stiff upper lip' or something?".
Which is doubly odd, because here that is more associated with upper-middle-classes. That cold stoicism that causes people to act 'gentlemanly' regardless of circumstance, or parents to pressure their children to be upwardly mobile, generals to describe an unwinnable position as "a bit of a pickle" etc. etc.
In Britain this is definitely seen as a class characteristic rather than a climatic one (we all live in a similarly temperate environment).
Something can be special without being unique. That there exist a handful of other cultures with similar traits, does not disprove those traits are not also selected-for by cold climates, or (in at least some cases) genetic in origin.
Evidence? There is no evidence of that. Broad allegations that it is illegal doesn't cut it. Even Schumer is not making that claim. All he is doing is complaining. The executive branch has the power to police themselves it's not that difficult to understand that you can audit your own agency. There's nothing illegal going on.
The actual US constitution which gives Congress and ONLY congress the power to spend tax money. Musk has absolutely no legal authority to unilaterally stop payments approved by congress. What Musk is doing is a very intentional effort to usurp this authority illegally. Musk should really end up in prison or deported for what he is doing right now.
In the federal government of the United States, the power of the purse is vested in the Congress as laid down in the Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 (the Appropriations Clause) and Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 (the Taxing and Spending Clause).
The power of the purse plays a critical role in the relationship of the United States Congress and the President of the United States, and has been the main historic tool by which Congress has limited executive power.
Not confident Trump will prevail: Scholar on his attempts to take Congress' power of the purse
Professor Deborah Pearlstein joins Morning Joe to discuss her column for the NYT outlining some of Trump’s actions implemented in his first few days in office and why she says Trump is hardly the first president to claim broad executive power, but the difference is not just the enormity of his claims, it's that the administration mostly doesn't try to craft legal justifications for its actions.
Which is a direct violation of the constitution. Only congress the authority to control spending and Musk has absolutely zero authority to stop any payments congress has authorized. It is a naked power grab and musk should spend the rest of his life in prison for it.
You changed your wording to fit your argument. "To spend" became "to control spending", implicitly acknowledging that the two phrases have different meanings.
The executive branch does not have the authority to cut off congressionally appropriated spending. Congress specifically passed a law (Impoundment Control Act) to make that as explicit as could be
First, I was showing that the specific claim being made (that Chuck Schumer has not said any illegal activities have taken place) was false. Nothing more.
Second, as I’m sure you know, and are being deliberately obtuse about, the separation of powers doctrine, which has been upheld by SCOTUS; one example [0] is Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer. USAID is codified by law, regardless of its genesis, and as such, only Congress is able to revoke the law.
You must realize attacks made by political opponents are always exaggerated and many times false. First of all doge can’t close USAID. What “they” aka Trump did was pause payments for review.
If you are finding the government is sending money to terrorists as they have indicated and need to stop it there are quite a few emergency powers. Pausing is the first step.
I can’t speak to the second half of your comment, but it’s worth pointing out that 31 corresponds with a software engineer who received a BA/BS in four years after high school, started working and hit senior at 3-5 years (a lot of us). That gives a couple years of wiggle room to lead projects after that too.
many senior scientists are around 30-35 years old (by that time they have completed grad school and postdoc and are starting to get their first grants). And in nuclear physics most of these folks were young but had worked in key labs and their bosses were advisors on the project.
'senior' is only a 6 character prefix that can be attached to any name/position as an accolade. It means nothing out-of-context.
Oppenheimer was smart, no doubt, but did he have the life experience to warrant 'senior'-level decision making? I feel like the history books show it's emphatically indecisive.
> Oppenheimer was smart, no doubt, but did he have the life experience to warrant 'senior'-level decision making?
You're questioning whether the person chosen to be the director of weapons development could be called "senior" or not? What? Or are you hindsight-second-guessing the decision to make him director? It's wild to me that you would choose the director of one of the most important and ambitious (not to mention successful) programs in world history to make the point "senior is just a title".
There's also this implicit conclusion that venting must not work if the levels of aggression don't change, but the article did say that blood pressure dropped. I thought the paragraphs on venting to friends didn't make much sense to me either--honestly, if something terrible happened to a friend, and they didn't vent to me about it, at least a little, I'd be wondering if we were still friends.
As an aside, I'd be curious to see the effects of venting on the subject as well as people that surround them. I'd also be curious to see the effects during a one-time episode and through repeated exposure.
I say that, because one of the worst things about social media is the venting. It's almost like folks are trying to suck you into a weird codependent relationship with them.
My friend's father got pancreatic cancer. His chemotherapy was delayed because the hospital was full of covid patients. Now he's dead. People who get mad about being harangued to take the vaccine are failing to see the whole picture.
ok, so s/Jew/Zionist in the post and it's all ok? The thrust of the essay seems to be condemning violence in the name of an identity, whether that's a religious, racial or national identity, and it seems to me Zionists don't make a distinction between Jew and Israeli.
Uh, yeah. That's the point. That to be Jewish, to be Israeli, and to be in support of the Israeli government in power are three very distinct things.
Next up, let's write an article critical of Hamas and start with "If I were a Muslim, I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing".
> it seems to me Zionists don't make a distinction between Jew and Israeli
This serves their interests, but the framing shouldn't be accepted. There are plenty of non-Zionist or anti-Zionist Jews, or even Zionist Jews who have specific concerns about the treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere; it's a little funny seeing people like Bernie Sanders being deemed antisemitic, for example.
