Beginning on June 2nd, Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio) moved to Wednesdays at 11AM on KPFT HD2, Houston’s Community Station. You can also hear the show:
- Live online at KPFT.org
- Podcast on your phone’s Podcast App
- Visiting Archive.KPFT.ORG
Welcome to Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig on 90.1 KPFT- HD2, Where we discuss local, state, national, and international stories.
My co-host and show editor is Andrew Ferguson.
Listen live on the radio, or on the internet from anywhere in the world! Please take a moment to visit Pledge.KPFT.org and choose THINKWING RADIO from the drop-down list when you donate.
For the purposes of this show, I operate on two mottoes:
- An educated electorate is a prerequisite for a democracy.
- You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.
“There’s a reason why you separate military and police. One fights the enemy of the State. The other serves and protects the People. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the State tend t become the People.” ~ Commander Adama, “Battlestar Galactica” (“WATER”, Season 1 episode 2, at the 28 minute mark.)
TOPICS: THINKWING RADIO airs Wednesdays from 11am-12 Noon (CT) on KPFT-HD2 radio; VOTETEXAS.GOV—Voter Information; Yesterday, June 15th, was an Election Day for some of you. As always, be sure you’re registered to vote, and VOTE! (And try not to let these off-off-off elections sneak past you. Constant vigilance is required.); “Missouri City” City Council gives initial approval to rename Confederate Drive; HISD Board of Education names Millard House II as permanent superintendent; Harris County identifies racial disparities in use of force, citations from law enforcement agencies; Texas grid operator urges electricity conservation as many power generators are unexpectedly offline and temperatures rise; Texas attorney general says state board can’t ban social workers from discriminating against people who are LGBTQ or have a disability; Big Tech Antitrust Crusader Lina Khan Joins the FTC; Why Democrats Are Angry At Wall Street; Do millennials really prefer to rent – or have we just been cheated out of a proper home?; Penitentiary vs Punitentiary (PYOO-ni-ten-churry); Prison Heat: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO), The Prison Reform Movement; How Norway turns criminals into good neighbours; MORE.
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- Make sure you are registered to vote! VoteTexas.GOV – Texas Voter InformationTEXAS SoS VOTE-BY-MAIL BALLOT APPLICATION (ALL TEXAS COUNTIES) HarrisVotes.com – Countywide Voting Centers, (Election Information Line (713) 755-6965), Harris County Clerk
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- Harris County “Vote-By-Mail’ Application for 2021
- Fort bend County Elections/Voter Registration Machine takes you to the proper link
- GalvestonVotes.org (Galveston County, TX)
- Liberty County Elections (Liberty County, TX) <– UPDATED LINK
- Montgomery County (TX) Elections
- Brazoria County (TX) Clerk Election Information
- Waller County (TX) Elections
- Chambers County (TX) Elections
- For personalized, nonpartisan voter guides and information, Consider visiting Vote.ORG. Ballotpedia.com and Texas League of Women Voters are also good places to get election info.
- If you are denied your right to vote any place at any time at any polling place for any reason, ask for (or demand) a provisional ballot rather than lose your vote.
- HarrisVotes.com – Countywide Voting CentersHARRIS COUNTY – IDENTIFICATION REQUIRED FOR VOTING: Do not possess and cannot reasonably obtain one of these IDs?
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- Fill out a declaration at the polls describing a reasonable impediment to obtaining it, and show a copy or original of one of the following supporting forms of ID:
- A government document that shows your name and an address, including your voter registration certificate
- Current utility bill
- Bank statement
- Government check
- Paycheck
- A certified domestic (from a U.S. state or territory) birth certificate or (b) a document confirming birth admissible in a court of law which establishes your identity (which may include a foreign birth document)
- You may vote early by-mail if:You are registered to vote and meet one of the following criteria:
- Away from the county of residence on Election Day and during the early voting period;
- Sick or disabled;
- 65 years of age or older on Election Day; or
- Confined in jail, but eligible to vote.
- Make sure you are registered:
- Ann Harris Bennett, Tax Assessor-Collector & Voter Registrar
- CHECK REGISTRATION STATUS HERE
- CLICK How to register to vote in Texas
- Outside Texas, try Vote.org.
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- Yesterday, June 15th, was an Election Day for some of you. As always, be sure you’re registered to vote, and VOTE! (And try not to let these off-off-off elections sneak past you. Constant vigilance is required.)
- “Missouri City” City Council gives initial approval to rename Confederate Drive; By Claire Shoop | COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM | 6:50 AM, Jun 10, 2021 CDT
- The city received an application to change the street’s name, which included a petition signed by at least 70% of residents on the street. “Missouri City” City Council voted to lower the threshold of necessary signatures from 90% to 70% in summer 2020.
- Council Member Jeffrey Boney said this application’s success is proof that lowering the signature amount was the right decision.
- “The threshold to consider an item like this was at 90%, and that’s extremely too high,” Boney said. …
- Confederate Drive is located in the Vicksburg subdivision. This neighborhood contains a number of streets that bear names of Confederate generals, including Bedford Forrest Court, which shares a name with Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general and the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
- HISD Board of Education names Millard House II as permanent superintendent
- MIKE: As per an announcement by HISD on Monday, 6/14, HISD has a new Superintendent: Millard House II. His contract is effective starting July 1, 2021, and runs (theoretically at least) thru August 31, 2024.
- I’m on an HISD mailing list, and my email announcement had a 22-page PDF attached of Mr. House’s contract. Strangely, I don’t see that on the HISD website.
- Harris County identifies racial disparities in use of force, citations from law enforcement agencies; By Danica Lloyd | COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM | 4:35 PM, Jun 9, 2021 CDT | Updated 4:35 PM Jun 9, 2021 CDT
- The Harris County Justice Administration Department presented a report to Commissioners Court on June 8 following a unanimously approved motion for the department to “analyze existing racial profiling data produced by law enforcement” approximately one year earlier. …
- Analysis in the report included racial demographics in instances of consent search, contraband discovery, traffic stops that led to arrests, types of citations or warnings, and use of force. …
- “Overall, [the department] did not identify significant disparities in most comparisons,” JAD Research Policy Analyst Matthew Sweeney said. “However, we did identify disparities in citations, incidents involving force resulting in bodily injury and limitations in complaint submission.”
- For instance, Hispanic drivers were more likely to receive citations in most departments, and Black drivers overall were more likely to experience bodily injury as a result of use of force than other racial and ethnic groups. Black and Hispanic drivers were also more likely to be arrested in a traffic stop.
- However, Sweeney said there were many limitations in the data. Law enforcement agencies did not always report incidents by racial demographics, and population demographics cannot be used as a comparison because constable precincts are not within measurable areas.
- Recommendations from the JAD included updating the county’s data-collection process to include more mandatory fields in an attempt to reduce missing data.
- Officials also said agencies should establish an accessible online platform where the public can submit complaints or commendations about law enforcement interactions. Most departments currently do not have online submission forms and/or forms in multiple languages to file racial profiling complaints, Sweeney said.
- Texas grid operator urges electricity conservation as many power generators are unexpectedly offline and temperatures rise; The Electric Reliability Council of Texas says a large number of power plants are offline, but it could not provide details as to what may be causing the “very concerning” number of outages. At the same time, the state is experiencing near-record demand for electricity in June. by Erin Douglas | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | June 14, 2021 Updated: 8 hours ago
- The Electric Reliability Council of Texas said in a statement Monday that a significant number of unexpected power plant outages, combined with expected record use of electricity due to hot weather, has resulted in tight grid conditions. Approximately 12,000 megawatts of generation were offline Monday, or enough to power 2.4 million homes on a hot summer day.
- ERCOT officials said the power plant outages were unexpected — and could not provide details as to what could be causing them. …
- Of the plants offline, about 9,600 megawatts of power, or nearly 80% of the outages, are from thermal power sources, which in Texas are largely natural-gas-fired power plants. That’s several times what ERCOT usually sees offline for thermal generation maintenance during a summer day. Typically, only about 3,600 megawatts of thermal generation are offline this time of year.
- “This is unusual for this early in the summer season,” said Woody Rickerson, ERCOT vice president of grid planning and operations, in a statement. He said the grid operator would conduct an analysis to determine why so many units are offline.
- At this time, it “appears unlikely” that the ERCOT grid would need to implement outages, like it did in February, to reduce strain on the grid, Lasher said. …
- Following criticism that the grid operator did not consider severe enough scenarios in its planning, ERCOT outlined the most extreme calculations for this summer that it has ever considered. ERCOT warned in its summer assessment of power resources that a severe heat wave or drought, combined with high demand for power, could put the grid in jeopardy. (Texas is expected to have a hotter and drier summer than normal this year, according to an April climate outlook from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).
- During the recent legislative session, Texas lawmakers passed energy grid legislation that aimed to prevent electricity blackouts in response to the February crisis. …
- The legislation also changes ERCOT’s governing board to replace what lawmakers called “industry insiders” with appointees selected by a committee comprising selections by Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dade Phelan.
- The state likely won’t require companies to make weatherization upgrades until 2022 at the earliest.
- Texas attorney general says state board can’t ban social workers from discriminating against people who are LGBTQ or have a disability; In a nonbinding opinion, Ken Paxton said the Texas Behavioral Health Executive Council doesn’t have the authority to punish social workers who refuse service to clients based on their sexual orientation, gender identity or disability status. by Isabella Zou | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | June 14, 2021, 5 hours ago
- … Paxton’s opinion states that the board was authorized by the Legislature to punish social workers who refused work with clients based on aspects of identity like age, race and religion — but not their disability status, sexual orientation or gender identity. The board lacks the authority to add those three categories, he argues.
- Additionally, he writes that state law does not prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, so there are no higher grounds for the board’s protections.
- The board has yet to announce how it will respond to the opinion. Legal opinions from the attorney general don’t carry the weight of law, but agencies and government officials often consult the opinions when determining what is permitted under state law.
- Paxton also argues in the opinion that discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity may be constitutionally protected under the First Amendment. Since “religious and philosophical objections to categories of sexual orientation are protected views,” he writes, the board’s rule conflicts with the “longstanding constitutional protection” for religious expression. …
- Will Francis, executive director of the Texas chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, said that opinion “…“puts forth a political agenda in lieu of actually looking into the statutory obligations of the board,” he said. He noted that the code of conduct that prevents discrimination “isn’t about First Amendment rights — it’s about access to services.”
- MIKE: “If the law supposes that, the law is a ass …” ~ Charles Dickens (as Mr. Bumble), Oliver Twist.
- Will Francis is mistaken to argue in Paxton’s frame of reference, imho. He should have cited the 14th If there is one principle that must underlie all American law, it is the equal protection clause enshrined in the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, which took effect in 1868, and says in part: “… nor shall any State … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”. ~ Equal Protection Clause – Wikipedia
- Sometimes, one part of law, or the Constitution, supersedes another.
- Paxton’s opinion, on its face, contradicts that part of the Constitution. And if Paxton is correctly interpreting Texas law, then the law violates that principle as well.
- Big Tech Antitrust Crusader Lina Khan Joins the FTC; Khan comes with a list of proposed reforms to target tech overreach. Whitney Kimball | GIZMODO.COM | June 15, 2021, Yesterday 2:48PM
- Today the senate overwhelmingly confirmed tech critic and 32-year-old Columbia professor Lina Khan to join the Federal Trade Commission by a vote of 69-28. They can agree on reforming big tech; given their track record of bitching and moaning and proposing terribly uninformed and/or nefarious proposals to do it themselves, it’s nice to see them band together to do the bare minimum.
- Khan, a Biden appointee, is a promising problem-solver who’s floated specific proposals to update antitrust law in order to give Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook’s competitors a fighting chance. In a well-known paper, she’s proposed broadening traditional antitrust policy and applying carrier rules to regulate Amazon. She’s also proposed reigning in tech companies by revisiting structural separations that would prevent Apple (e.g.) from both controlling the market and competing with businesses that depend on the App Store. As counsel to the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law, Khan contributed to an investigation into the tech oligopolies’ business practices.
- Biden might be building a cross-departmental academic A-team of big tech critics. In March, he appointed Columbia professor Tim Wu, author of “The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age,” as a presidential advisor on technology and competition.
- Why Democrats Are Angry At Wall Street; By David Gura | NPR.ORG | May 30, 20215:00 AM ET
- Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, hasn’t forgotten the Great Recession.
- In the first half of 2007, … there were more foreclosures in his hometown than anywhere else in the country. It was a period that led to the Global Financial Crisis: Millions of Americans lost their homes, while banks and other corporate sectors were rescued by billions of dollars in bailouts.
- More than a decade later, Democrats control the White House, the U.S. Senate, and the U.S. House of Representatives, and Brown and fellow populists like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., are in powerful perches to oversee the big banks.
- And Brown, like many of these top Democrats, believes that too many Americans are still getting the short end of the stick.
- “They never get bailed out,” Brown says in an interview with NPR. “They never get a second chance. They’re just not in a position in an economy like this, where Wall Street writes the rules, where they can get ahead.”
- That anger has been magnified at a time when banks have seen their profits soar during the pandemic, in part, thanks to strong actions by the Federal Reserve to support markets.
- And top Democrats believe they are justified in pushing for change at big banks.
- They want to push the country’s largest financial institutions to be agents of social change. And they have specific goals, like expanding access to loans and impose fewer fees for average Americans, or more outreach to unbanked and underserved communities. …
- Why Democrats Are Angry At Wall Street; By David Gura | NPR.ORG | May 30, 20215:00 AM ET
- Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, hasn’t forgotten the Great Recession.
- In the first half of 2007, … there were more foreclosures in his hometown than anywhere else in the country. It was a period that led to the Global Financial Crisis: Millions of Americans lost their homes, while banks and other corporate sectors were rescued by billions of dollars in bailouts.
- More than a decade later, Democrats control the White House, the U.S. Senate, and the U.S. House of Representatives, and Brown and fellow populists like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., are in powerful perches to oversee the big banks.
- And Brown, like many of these top Democrats, believes that too many Americans are still getting the short end of the stick.
- “They never get bailed out,” Brown says in an interview with NPR. “They never get a second chance. They’re just not in a position in an economy like this, where Wall Street writes the rules, where they can get ahead.”
- That anger has been magnified at a time when banks have seen their profits soar during the pandemic, in part, thanks to strong actions by the Federal Reserve to support markets.
- And top Democrats believe they are justified in pushing for change at big banks.
- They want to push the country’s largest financial institutions to be agents of social change. And they have specific goals, like expanding access to loans and impose fewer fees for average Americans, or more outreach to unbanked and underserved communities. …
- Do millennials really prefer to rent – or have we just been cheated out of a proper home? Capitalism is reshaping the property market, locking younger generations out of buying somewhere to live and expecting us to be happy about it. By Arwa Mahdawi, OPINION–PROPERTY | THEGUARDIAN.COM | Tue 15 Jun 2021 09.56 EDT, Last modified on Tue 15 Jun 2021 21.05 EDT
- [There are] a number of interconnected trends – the first of which is the proliferation of the corporate landlord. Ever since the last financial crisis, institutional investors such as private equity companies have been scooping up homes lost to foreclosure and reconfiguring the US housing market. A New York Times piece on the “$60bn housing grab by Wall Street” published last March noted that, before 2010, “institutional landlords didn’t exist in the single-family-rental market; now there are 25 to 30 of them”. The pandemic seems to have accelerated this corporate land grab. “If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund,” the Wall Street Journal reported a couple of months ago. “Yield-chasing investors are snapping up single-family homes, competing with ordinary Americans and driving up prices.” The piece quoted a real-estate consultant who estimated that “roughly one in every five houses sold is bought by someone who never moves in”.
- That Wall Street Journal article … didn’t get much traction when it first came out. However, it gained widespread attention last week after being mentioned in a viral Twitter thread accusing Blackrock and other investment firms of driving up house prices, which would mean that young families would not be able to build wealth. … Globally, house prices are rising at their fastest rate since 2006, according to the Knight Frank global house price index. …
- There are numerous reasons behind the massive rise in house prices – and everyone is looking for a convenient scapegoat. Blaming it entirely on Blackrock et al. snapping up family homes, while tempting, is somewhat misguided. Rather, it is untrammelled capitalism that is to blame. But whoever’s fault it is, the consequence is the same: an increasing number of people, mostly young people, will be forever locked out of homeownership.
- Untrammelled capitalism isn’t just reshaping the housing market; more insidiously, it’s trying to rethink how we think about housing. …
- … [S]ubscription-based housing … is a genuine business model a number of companies are working on – a natural evolution of the broader “sharing economy”. Perhaps the most pernicious thing about late-stage capitalism is the way in which it tries to convince us that not owning anything, not having any long-term security, is somehow liberating. Gig economy startups have helped erode labour laws while trying to persuade us that being a contractor with zero benefits, rather than an employee, is awesome. It means having flexibility! It means being your own boss! You might end up poor, but you’ll be following your passion!
- Penitentiary vs Punitentiary (PYOO-ni-ten-churry)
- Prison Heat: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO), June 13, 2021 [VIDEO, 0:13:25]
- “In [Texas, Louisiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Alabama], more than half the prisons lack air conditioning in their housing areas. .. In Texas, that’s the case in nearly 75% of their prisons.” …
- “In Summer, the heat index inside of them can hit 150oF
- The former head of one Correctional Officer’s Union: “… These are Third World conditions. We’re supposed to run prisons, not concentration camps. These are institutions for incarceration. The incarcerations is their punishment. Not cooking them to death.”
- In part of a video interview with Texas State Senator John Whitmire (D-15th Senate District), Whitmire says, in part, “We’re not gonna air condition them. One, we don’t want to. And number two, we couldn’t afford it if we wanted to.”
- MIKE: As it happens, John Whitmire, a Democrat, is my State Senator, and it’s extremely disappointing to hear him say this in this way.
- All of this sums up to David Fowler’s remark many years ago: “Do we send people to prison AS punishment, or do we send them to prison FOR punishment.
- The Prison Reform Movement — COM
- … From the time of the earliest prisons in the United States, reformers have struggled with the problem of how to punish criminals while also preserving their humanity; how to protect the public while also allowing prisoners to re-enter society after their sentences end; and how to satisfy crime victims’ desire for justice and revenge while also giving convicts a second chance to live freely and abide by the law. …
- In American society, imprisonment is seen as serving multiple purposes. Primarily, incarceration is regarded as a punishment for criminal offenders, taking away their liberty and their ability to control their own lives. Such punishment gives crime victims, their families, and society a sense of retribution, or justice. …That … comes in the form of a loss of personal freedom. Locking up criminals also serves to protect the public. … Many experts believe that imprisonment, or rather the threat of it, keeps would-be criminals from committing crimes because the fear of punishment is so great. Finally, throughout history many criminal justice experts have viewed incarceration as an opportunity to provide counseling and training to offenders so that they can be reformed, or changed for the better, and rehabilitated, or prepared for a return to normal life.
- MIKE: The fact is, almost everyone who goes to prison or jail is eventually going to get out.
- From GOOGLE (but you have to scroll pretty far down the page to find it): “What is the legal definition of a penitentiary?”: Legal Definition of penitentiary : a state or federal prison for the punishment and reformation of convicted felons — compare house of correction, house of detention, jail, lockup.
- MIKE: I think it’s the American, and largely human, concept of punishment that is at play here when looking at the history of incarceration. Prison/jail AS punishment, or prison/jail FOR punishment? And is the ultimate objective of incarceration simply to punish, or also to help as many ex-prisoners as possible find actual lives after incarceration? Which is the ultimate best outcome for all parties involved?
- From THINKWING RADIO SHOW (2019-7-8) How Norway turns criminals into good neighbours; COM | 7 July 2019
- What is the point of sending someone to prison – retribution or rehabilitation? Twenty years ago, Norway moved away from a punitive “lock-up” approach and sharply cut reoffending rates. …
- When Are Hoidal first began his career in the Norwegian Correctional service in the early 1980s, the prison experience here was altogether different.
- “It was completely hard,” he remembers. “It was a masculine, macho culture with a focus on guarding and security. And the recidivism rate was around 60-70%, like in the US.”
- [Are Hoidal, now governor of Halden Prison,] says “… in the early 1990s, the ethos of the Norwegian Correctional Service underwent a rigorous series of reforms to focus less on what Hoidal terms “revenge” and much more on rehabilitation. Prisoners, who had previously spent most of their day locked up, were offered daily training and educational programmes and the role of the prison guards was completely overhauled. … since our big reforms, recidivism in Norway has fallen to only 20% after two years and about 25% after five years. So this works!”
- In the UK, the recidivism rate is almost 50% after just one year.
- The architecture of Halden Prison has been designed to minimise residents’ sense of incarceration, to ease psychological stress and to put them in harmony with the surrounding nature …
- … “We start planning their release on the first day they arrive,” explains Hoidal, as we walk through to the carpentry workshop where several inmates are making wooden summer houses and benches to furnish a new prison being built in the south of Norway.
- “In Norway, all will be released – there are no life sentences,” he reminds me.
- Normalising life behind bars (not that there are any bars on the windows at Halden) is the key philosophy that underpins the Norwegian Correctional service. At Halden, this means not only providing daily routines but ensuring family contact is maintained too. Once every three months, inmates with children can apply to a “Daddy In Prison” scheme which, if they pass the necessary safeguarding tests, means they can spend a couple of nights with their partner, sons and daughters in a cosy chalet within the prison grounds. …
- … It takes 12 weeks in the UK to train a prison officer. In Norway it takes two to three years. Eight kilometres north-east of Oslo in Lillestrom, an impressive white and glass building houses the University College of the Norwegian Correctional Service, where each year, 175 trainees, selected from over 1,200 applicants, start their studies to become a prison officer.
- Hans-Jorgen Brucker walks me around the training prison on campus, which is kitted out with reproduction cells and prison-style furniture. I note a bulging pile of helmets and stab vests in one storage room. Brucker acknowledges that prison officers will undergo security and riot training, but he’s fairly dismissive of this part of the course.
- “We want to stop reoffending which means officers need to be well educated,” he says. He shows me a paper outlining the rigorous selection process, which involves written exams in Norwegian and English (about a third of the prison population is non-native, so officers are expected to be fluent in English) and physical fitness tests.
- “My students will study law, ethics, criminology, English, reintegration and social work. Then they will have a year training in a prison and then they will come back to take their final exams.” …
- Senate Overwhelmingly Passes Bill to Bolster Competitiveness With China; The wide margin of support reflected a sense of urgency among lawmakers in both parties about shoring up the technological and industrial capacity of the United States to counter Beijing. By Catie Edmondson | nytimes.com | June 8, 2021, Updated 7:16 p.m. ET
- The Senate overwhelmingly passed legislation [last week] that would pour nearly a quarter-trillion dollars over the next five years into scientific research and development to bolster competitiveness against China.
- Republicans and Democrats — overcoming their traditional partisan differences over economic policy — banded together to endorse what would be the most significant government intervention in industrial policy in decades. It includes federal investments in a slew of emerging technologies as well as the semiconductor industry.
- The 68-32 vote reflected the sense of urgency about the need to counter Beijing and other authoritarian governments that have poured substantial resources into bolstering their industrial and technological strength.
- The lopsided margin of support for the 2,400-page bill was the result of a series of political shifts by lawmakers jolted to action by the pandemic. Virus-related shutdowns led to shortages of crucial goods that highlighted the country’s dependence on China, its biggest geopolitical adversary. Nineteen Republicans, including Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, voted in favor of the legislation. …
- The legislation is likely to face stiffer headwinds in the House, where top lawmakers have expressed skepticism about its focus on bolstering emerging technologies. That debate played out in the Senate, which ultimately watered down the original ambition of the bill to accommodate those objections.
- The measure … would prop up semiconductor makers by providing $52 billion in emergency subsidies with few restrictions. That subsidy program will send a lifeline to the industry during a global chip shortage that shut auto plants and rippled through the global supply chain.
- The bill would sink hundreds of billions more into scientific research and development “pipelines” in the United States, create grants and foster agreements between private companies and research universities to encourage breakthroughs in new technology. …
- Members of the House science committee have signaled a desire to continue in the same vein, introducing their own bill that eschews the focus on technology development in favor of financing fundamental research in a series of less prescriptive fields, including climate change and cybersecurity.
- “Rather than having faith that unfettered research will somehow lead to those innovations needed to solve problems, history teaches that problem-solving can itself drive the innovation that in turn spawns new industries and achieves competitive advantage,” Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Democrat of Texas and the chairwoman of the House Science Committee, wrote. …
- [T]he overwhelming vote on Tuesday reflected how commercial and military competition with Beijing has become one of the few issues that can unite both political parties — and how deeply lawmakers are determined to override legislative paralysis to meet the moment.
- The Arctic Threat That Must Not be Named; By Sharon E. Burke | WARONTHEROCKS.COM | January 28, 2021
- … Climate change is melting the ice in the Arctic. Climate change is opening up a new polar transit route. Climate change is unlocking access to oil, gas, and critical minerals under the ice. In fact, Pompeo not only wouldn’t say the words, he reportedly refused to sign the communique the Arctic Council partners had worked out because it explicitly mentioned climate change. This is more than just eliding a term he found distasteful: Climate change is the variable that will drive all other calculations in the region, whether it’s the icebreaker gap or China’s pursuit of cryospheric real estate. Not taking climate fully into account risks higher opportunity costs at best, and poor preparation for a challenging future at worst. And there is no time to waste, with troubling signs that changes in the high north may actually be much worse than previously thought.
- [T]he Defense Department’s civilian leadership needs to take charge of the resourcing decisions and profusion of service-specific strategic visions. Otherwise, the Biden Pentagon may find it has backed into spending money on the wrong things at a bad time.
- [T]here are legitimate U.S. geostrategic and national interests that require attention in the Arctic. The new or expanding missions include search and rescue for increased tourist and commercial traffic in newly thawed seas; environmental cleanup; border safety, deterrence, and defense; protection of important infrastructure, such as undersea communications cables; and freedom of navigation through an increasingly open ocean.
- Moreover, Russia has taken an aggressive and occasionally provocative posture in the region, and China has declared itself a “near Arctic nation,” with its third heavy icebreaker under construction and land acquisition across the area. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has become increasingly ill-equipped to defend U.S. interests in this area, but rectifying that mistake has to happen in the context of climate change. …
- The Arctic is unusual in that climate change is agitating underlying frictions that are geopolitical in scope and involve some of the most advanced and well-armed societies in the world. While World War III is unlikely to start at the North Pole, there is a risk of miscalculation, which could lead to escalation. Moreover, the friction in the north between the United States, Russia, and China is part of a larger pattern. What happens in the Arctic reflects what is happening in the South China Sea and Ukraine, and vice versa. Climate change has the potential to light a fuse in a formerly frozen place, with impacts across the geopolitical landscape — or this formerly frozen place may be where a fuse lit elsewhere explodes. Admittedly, the latter is unlikely for now, given the truly challenging operating conditions. When it comes to Russia, though, the Trump administration did a lousy job of allocating resources to the risk. A good polar strategy should reflect the overall approach to the U.S. relationship with Russia. Deterrence in the north was never going to be especially productive when it was paired with [Russian] impunity everywhere else. …
- … NATO should be one of the most important U.S. investments in the region. Four of the five Arctic coastal states are NATO members, Russia being the fifth. Iceland, just a squidge off the littoral, is a permanent member of the Arctic Council, and also a NATO founding member. The United States has close bilateral and multilateral relationships with these nations, and with the other Arctic Council member states, Sweden and Finland, as well. These alliances and partnerships are an asset as tangible as any platform, and far more powerful. All of these Arctic nations, including the United States, have pragmatic cooperative relationships with Russia and China, as well, but the behavior of both countries in recent years has given most Arctic nations pause and a reason for increased cooperation with each other. The Trump administration more or less squandered that opportunity, with its negative messaging from the top, but the Biden administration gets the benefit of a fresh start. …
Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig 