Tag Archives: politics

Add some Teeth to It

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Congressman Andy Biggs (R, AZ) is proposing legislation that would modify the DC Home Rule Act. The piece of interest to me is his Make DC Safe Again Act. Biggs’ proposal would lengthen from 30 days to 180 days the emergency period in which the president can take control of DC police.

I’d like some teeth added to that. Specifically, require DC to pay the costs of the Feds assuming control of the local police unless the DC governing body requests Federal intervention. I’d also like to see legislation that would apply that principle nationwide. Portland of 2020 (especially, but also extending into today) and Los Angeles of the current summer stand as firm examples of that necessity.

Vast Rightwing Conspiracy?

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Nah. Just a vast force out there. That’s the view of some venture capitalists who are launching PACs to support political candidates who favor as little AI regulation as possible and to oppose candidates who want strong regulation of AI and of AI development regimes. Josh Vlasto and Zac Moffatt, for instance:

There is a vast force out there that’s looking to slow down AI deployment, prevent the American worker from benefiting from the US leading in global innovation and job creation and erect a patchwork of regulation[.]

The polemics from the other side are just as extreme: AI will be the death of society, even the death of us all.

It’s certainly true that AI—like all sharply new technologies—carries risks for the current order of things in our economy, as well as benefits for us all on the other side of the disruption, but the extremes from either side and both sides’ ignoring those benefits do none of us any good.

There does need to be serious discussion and debate regarding the appropriate level of regulation of AI and of AI development, and serious discussion and debate regarding how that regulatory setup should itself evolve as AI and AI development evolve.

Notice that word “serious,” though. That takes the discussion and debate, or should, out of the realm of politics and into the realm of tech experts and, critically, us citizens who must live with the outcomes of regulatory decisions. Especially, us citizens must have the final decision regarding these (and all other, come to that) regulations.

A Justice…Misunderstands

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Justice Ketanji Br own Jackson dissented strenuously with a Supreme Court ruling that, in part, upheld the Trump Administration’s request for an emergency stay of a lower court’s blocking of NIH from canceling $783 million worth of grants.

The money part of the woman’s (dare I use that term on a person who doesn’t know what a woman is?) dissent:

the high court’s way of preserving the “mirage of judicial review while eliminating its purpose: to remedy harms.”

No. Not at all. The purpose of judicial review is critically—and solely—to ensure that the action before it, along with the statute(s) involved, follow the text of our Constitution and the text of those statutes. Nothing more and nothing less.

But the woman wasn’t done with shredding (to use the in-vogue term) “judicial review” [emphasis added]:

It would have been much simpler for the Court to just announce that, regardless of the plain text of the APA or what Congress intended to authorize, we no longer accept that the Government’s grant-termination decisions are subject to arbitrary-and-capricious review or that vacatur of an arbitrary grant-termination decision is an available remedy.

The greatest harm that is in play here is ruling on the basis of a particular judge’s or Justice’s personal definition of “harm.” Yet, this is exactly what Jackson presumes to attempt with her setting aside the petty text of a statute from which her august self demurs.

The Supreme Court’s ruling, including Jackson’s dissent can be read here.

An Alternative

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Or two. The Trump administration is kicking around the idea of taking a stake in companies that receive Federal funds pursuant to the 2022 Chips Act (formally the Chips and Science Act), 10% in Intel being one of the ideas in play. I have an alternative, although it likely would require a legislative modification to the Chips Act: structure the funding as a loan, the [10%] stake as collateral, and dissolve the stake when the loan is repaid.

Another alternative, also likely necessitating modification to the Chips Act, would be to structure the funding as a grant, with the stake dissolved after a [five] year period on satisfactory performance under the grant—suitably boosted domestic research and manufacturing.

Either of these alternatives would mitigate the risk of government-run “capitalism” by getting government back out of these enterprises once performance has been confirmed durably established. They’re similar, too, to the government bailout program of the Panic of 2008, with the critical addendum of a hard withdrawal of government on clearly measurable achievement of tightly defined milestone.

I Have a Suggestion

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Alexander Ward, Alex Leary, and Matthew Luxmoore are rightly skeptical about any agreements Russian President Vladimir Putin might make vis-à-vis Ukraine that would be short of his outright conquering Ukraine or include NATO troops on Ukrainian soil as guarantor of an agreement, even were those troops nationally provided rather than as a NATO contingent.

One of the lesser questions requiring an answer is the location of any meeting among Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Putin, the principals, and President Donald Trump (R), currently the primary broker of any deal. On this, I have a suggestion, stipulating that the negotiations would proceed in two phases.

The first phase negotiations should be held in the Ukrainian city of Bucha (not the village Bucha, which is a bit south of the city.) The second phase should take place in the Ukrainian city of Makariv, about 20 miles west of Bucha.

These locations, even three years after the fact, would let both Putin and Trump see the results of the desolation and butchery Putin’s barbarian hordes inflicted on Ukrainian civilians in those early days of the barbarian invasion.