AUDIO:

POSSIBLE TOPICS:  REGISTER TO VOTE; APPLY FOR MAIL-IN BALLOT; Learn more about ongoing transportation projects in the Katy area; League City City Council approves use of eminent domain proceedings for N. Landing Blvd. extension project; Editorial: Still no Harvey money for Houston? Feds must stop GLO’s discriminatory plan; Arizona judge orders Kari Lake to compensate Katie Hobbs for some fees for election lawsuit, but declines to sanction her; After Peltola win in Alaska, a debate erupts over ranked-choice voting; Whoopi Goldberg faces backlash after repeating false Holocaust comments; State lawsuits defend abortion access with religious freedom; Russian sausage tycoon dies after falling from hotel in India; China to end Covid quarantine for foreign arrivals; China readying $143bn package for chip firms in face of US curbs; More.

Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio) is now on Wednesdays at 11AM (CT) on KPFT FM-HD2, Houston’s Community Station. You can also hear the show:

1. Live online at KPFT.org (from anywhere in the world!)
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Welcome to Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig where we discuss local, state, national, and international stories. My co-host and show editor is Andrew Ferguson.

1. Make sure you are registered to vote! VoteTexas.GOV – Texas Voter Information; TEXAS SoS VOTE-BY-MAIL BALLOT APPLICATION (ALL TEXAS COUNTIES) HarrisVotes.com­ – Countywide Voting Centers, (Election Information Line (713) 755-6965), Harris County Clerk
   1. Harris County “Vote-By-Mail’ Application for 2023
      1. Fort bend County Elections/Voter Registration Machine takes you to the proper link
      2. GalvestonVotes.org (Galveston County, TX)
      3. Liberty County Elections (Liberty County, TX)
      4. Montgomery County (TX) Elections
      5. Brazoria County (TX) Clerk Election Information
      6. Waller County (TX) Elections
      7. Chambers County (TX) Elections
      8. 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.
      9. 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.
      10. HarrisVotes.com – Countywide Voting Centers, HARRIS COUNTY – IDENTIFICATION REQUIRED FOR VOTING: Do not possess and cannot reasonably obtain one of these IDs?
          1. 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:
          2. A government document that shows your name and an address, including your voter registration certificate
          3. Current utility bill
          4. Bank statement
          5. Government check
          6. Paycheck
          7. 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)
          8. You may vote early by-mail if:You are registered to vote and meet one of the following criteria:
             1. Away from the county of residence on Election Day and during the early voting period;
             2. Sick or disabled;
             3. 65 years of age or older on Election Day; or
             4. Confined in jail, but eligible to vote.
             5. Make sure you are registered:
             6. Ann Harris Bennett, Tax Assessor-Collector & Voter Registrar
             7. CHECK REGISTRATION STATUS HERE
             8. CLICK How to register to vote in Texas
             9. Outside Texas, try Vote.org.
2. BE REGISTERED TO VOTE, and if eligible, REMEMBER TO FILL OUT AND MAIL NEW MAIL-IN BALLOT APPLICATIONS FOR 2023 NOW!
   
   1. You can track your Mail Ballot Activity from our website with direct link provided here https://www.harrisvotes.com/Tracking
3. Learn more about ongoing transportation projects in the Katy area; By Asia Armour | COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM | 8:40 AM Dec 22, 2022 CST
   1. I-10 expansion — The Texas Department of Transportation has been reconstructing I-10 from FM 359 to the Brazos River by adding one main lane in each direction. The project’s purpose is to make grade separations and expand the road’s capacity. Timeline: 2017-25
   2. FM 2855 restoration — TxDOT is resurfacing FM 2855 from FM 529 to Hwy. 90. The project covers just over 6 miles of road in the northwest Katy area. Originally set to be completed in May, the road’s asphalt had to be removed and replaced TxDOT officials said. Timeline: 2022-Feb. 2023
   3. MIKE: Included in this article is an interactive map that allows you to see precisely which segments are being worked on and where they are. As usual, a link to the full article with the map is in this show post at ThinkwingRadio.com.
   4. ANDREW: Useful information, with my ever-present critique that if you build it, they will come. More roads means more cars which means more congestion. The only way to relieve traffic is to give alternatives like public transit, because when people have alternatives, they will use them. If you build it, they will come.
4. League City City Council approves use of eminent domain proceedings for N. Landing Blvd. extension project; By Saab Sahi | COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM | 7:36 PM Dec 20, 2022 CST, Updated 7:36 PM Dec 20, 2022 CST
   1. During its regular Dec. 20 meeting, League City City Council approved a resolution authorizing the use of eminent domain proceedings to acquire three parcels of land for the North Landing Boulevard extension project.
   2. The $67 million project aims to reduce congestion by connecting Landing Boulevard where it intersects with FM 518 to I-45 in Webster.
   3. About 1.7 miles of four-lane urban divided roadway with a roundabout and a 2,800-foot long bridge over Clear Creek will be constructed as a part of the project.
   4. The next steps in the project after land acquisition are contract bidding and construction through the Texas Department of Transportation, according to the project information sheet.
   5. MIKE: This is actually a follow-up on a story we discussed back around June about a land swap between League City and Webster.
   6. MIKE: Just an FYI from me: I hate roundabouts! I think they’re just accidents waiting to happen. I’m surprised there aren’t more. Maybe everyone is just more “on their toes” when navigating one, and maybe there’s more courtesy by drivers than usual when negotiating sudden lane changes.
   7. ANDREW: I also hate roundabouts, but I can also recognize that they are near-universally considered better than four-way stops. I found a report from the Federal Highway Administration magazine Public Roads that goes into detailed analysis– they’re safer because there’s no impulse to “beat the light” like you’d get at an intersection, and because all traffic turns right, the risk of a crash that comes with turning across traffic is gone. The article cites figures showing that accidents reliably decrease when looking at the year before an intersection became a roundabout versus the year after. Plus, the fact that there’s no light or stop sign means roundabouts don’t impede traffic flow nearly as much as an intersection does.
   8. ANDREW: But the downside for drivers is that it’s down to their judgment when to enter, which is the same downside to left turns across traffic. I hate getting a flashing yellow arrow, because it means I have to think! And roundabouts would undoubtedly bug me and make me a little nervous for the same reason. But with experience comes familiarity and understanding, and I’m sure me and you and all the other drivers on the road could become comfortable with roundabouts the more we encountered them.
   9. MIKE: I’ve driven through roundabouts many times in my life, and they still make me nervous!
5. Editorial: Still no Harvey money for Houston? Feds must stop GLO’s discriminatory plan. A new Texas land commissioner is resorting to the same old finger-pointing on disaster recovery. The Editorial Board | HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM | Dec. 27, 2022, Updated: Dec. 27, 2022 10:30 a.m.
   1. … George P. Bush. The erstwhile land commissioner – his tenure officially ends on New Year’s Eve – posted on his website a rundown of his accomplishments over the past eight years, from helping veterans, to renewable energy investments, to coastal flood control. [But] Bush’s narrative regarding his disaster recovery legacy strains credulity. 
   2. “By all accounts, the G.LO has repeatedly outperformed other disaster response organizations across the Country,” Bush wrote.
   3. All accounts? Houston and Harris County residents might quibble with that assertion.
   4. Bush has repeatedly mishandled his responsibility of doling out Texas’ share of Hurricane Harvey relief funds, most notably by snubbing Houston and Harris County out of the first tranche of federal dollars for flood mitigation projects. … [A] federal civil rights investigation … led to a damning conclusion: that the state’s General Land Office discriminated against communities of color by denying aid to Houston and Harris County. Meanwhile, five years after Harvey, too many of our neighbors are still dealing with health issues, unsafe living conditions and financial distress.
   5. There was some hope that Dawn Buckingham, the incoming land commissioner, might build a disaster recovery legacy that’s actually worthy of bragging about. Buckingham, a Republican and former state senator, promised during her campaign that Texans would “never have to wait on my agency to begin the process of putting their lives back together after a weather event.”
   6. Alas, Buckingham didn’t even get sworn in before tossing that commitment out the window. The Chronicle’s Jasper Scherer reported Monday that Buckingham has “no plans” to redistribute Harvey recovery funds … . In an initial competition for $1 billion in federal aid … , the land office proposed sending nothing to Houston and Harris County … . Bush eventually succumbed to a bipartisan backlash, and gave Harris County $750 million, which local officials still say is inadequate.
   7. Houston has still not received a dime.
   8. “My understanding is, those numbers are kind of a done deal,” Buckingham told the Chronicle. 
   9. Not if the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has anything to say about it. The federal agency found that the land office discriminated against communities of color when it denied aid to Houston and Harris County using scoring criteria that disfavored populous urban centers, effectively stacking the deck and dooming the city and county’s chances of getting key flood control projects funded. … For instance, Project Brays, the largest flood control project undertaken by Harris County, which would benefit 774,000 people, scored lower than drainage improvements in Grimes County, 100 miles inland from the coast, which would benefit 310 people. …
   10. MIKE: I might be willing to take a bet here. If this goes to court with the Feds, Texas will claim that they weren’t discriminating against communities of color. They’ll claim that they were discriminating against communities of Democrats.
   11. MIKE: Do you think that’s crazy? It’s probably not. The Republican-led government of Texas has used that argument in court before, when the State was accused of gerrymandering districts based on color. The State’s argument was that they gerrymandered based on Democrats, which they claimed was not prohibited. Why couldn’t they apply that logic here?
   12. MIKE: Tom DeLay, US Republican House of Reps. Majority Leader at the time, created the circumstances around the case. I’ve added reference links.
   13. MIKE: From the Wikipedia article, “Texas Monthly editor Paul Burka, writing in the magazine’s May 2006 issue, characterized the measure as “DeLay’s midcensus congressional redistricting plan” and said, “[I]n order to increase his Republican majority in Congress, he [DeLay] resorted to a mid-census redistricting plan.”^[8]
   14. ANDREW: I think you’re absolutely right. There have been a number of cases around the US, some of which we’ve discussed here before, where obvious gerrymandering was successfully legally defended on the grounds that it simply rigged an election along party lines rather than race lines. It would be very disturbing to see that argument spread to non-election-related issues, but I wonder what can be done to stop it. I’m sure there would be ways for conservatives to flip any laws preventing discrimination based on political party in their favor. I’m concerned that this might be another case of capitalist electoralism being inherently exploitable by conservatives.
   15. MIKE: I need you to define “capitalist electoralism”. I found several cases of its usage, but no contextual hints and no definitions.
   16. REFERENCE: 2003 Texas redistricting — From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
   17. REFERENCE: High Court Upholds Texas Redistricting; In rejecting Democrats’ charge of ‘partisan gerrymandering,’ the justices give lawmakers wider power to redraw lines for their parties. By David G. Savage, Times Staff Writer | LOS ANGELES TIMES | June 29, 2006
6. Arizona judge orders Kari Lake to compensate Katie Hobbs for some fees for election lawsuit, but declines to sanction her; By Stephanie Becker | CNN | Updated 9:26 PM EST, Tue December 27, 2022
   1. A Maricopa County judge on Tuesday ordered Arizona Republican Kari Lake to compensate Democratic Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs for some legal fees related to the election lawsuit Lake had brought challenging her loss, but he stopped short of sanctioning Lake for filing the lawsuit.
   2. Judge Peter Thompson had rejected Lake’s lawsuit on Saturday, concluding that there wasn’t clear or convincing evidence of misconduct and affirming Hobbs’ victory. …
   3. Attorneys for Hobbs – the current secretary of state – had charged that Lake and her lawyers knew their challenges to the election could not be substantiated, which would violate legal ethic rules. They wanted sanctions against Lake and her team. Thompson did not agree. “The Court finds that Plaintiff’s claims presented in this litigation were not groundless and brought in bad faith,” he wrote on Tuesday.
   4. But he ordered Lake to pay Hobbs $33,040.50 in compensation for expert witness fees and again reaffirmed the election of Hobbs, who will be sworn in on January 5. …
   5. Thompson had previously dismissed eight counts alleged in Lake’s lawsuit prior to trial, ruling that they did not constitute proper grounds for an election contest under Arizona law, even if true. But he had permitted Lake an attempt to prove at a two-day trial last week two other counts involving printers and the ballot chain of custody in Maricopa County. …
   6. MIKE: I can actually see the logic of this ruling. Emotionally, I would have liked to see Lake and her attorneys sanctioned because I think the original suit was brought in bad faith. But since the judge had already dismissed 8 causes of action and allowed trial of two, it makes sense that he would not have seen the case as sanctionally-frivolous, but wanted to send some kind of signal by assessing defendant’s costs.
   7. ANDREW: I agree entirely. I said last time we talked about this that I believed that any reasonable possibility of irregularity should be investigated so the results of the election could be trusted. I think that’s exactly what we got here, so I’m satisfied.
   8. REFERENCE: Katie Hobbs seeks sanctions against Kari Lake after Arizona judge dismisses election challenge lawsuit; “Enough really is enough,” Maricopa County said in its motion, which Hobbs signed on to, after an Arizona judge denied Lake’s bid to reverse her defeat in the governor’s race. By Summer Concepcion | NBCNEWS.COM | Dec. 26, 2022, 3:42 PM CST
7. After Peltola win in Alaska, a debate erupts over ranked-choice voting; The procedure has drawn fierce criticism from some conservatives, while defenders have praised it for promoting less polarizing candidates. By Nathaniel Herz | WASHINGTONPOST.COM | September 1, 2022 at 9:30 p.m. EDT
   1. [MIKE: This story was originally published on September 1, but is still relevant. My edits attempt to make it more timely.]
   2. [Democrat Mary Peltola] became the first to win an election under Alaska’s new ranked-choice voting system — a novel process in which voters rank candidates in order of preference. The procedure has drawn fierce criticism from some conservatives in the wake of Peltola’s special election victory over former Republican governor Sarah Palin, while defenders have praised it for rewarding less polarizing candidates and more positive campaigning. …
   3. Experts cautioned against drawing sweeping conclusions from Peltola’s win, saying the effects of Alaska’s new system will only become clear once more races are run and decided. That will happen in November, when Alaskans are set to rank candidates in dozens of state legislative campaigns, Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s race for reelection and the repeat congressional contest with Palin, Peltola, … [MIKE: Note that Peltola and Murkowski won those general elections under Ranked Choice.]
   4. “Everybody’s rushing to draw conclusions about who benefits from this thing, when it’s totally unpredictable,” said Jack Santucci, a politics professor at Drexel University who’s studied ranked-choice voting. “People really tend to see in these results what they want to see.”
   5. Alaska’s new system of electing candidates starts with a nonpartisan primary in which the top four finishers advance to the general election and voters only make one pick. But in the general election, voters rank their choices on the ballot. If no candidate wins a majority of first-choice votes, the lowest-performing candidate is eliminated and their backup votes are reallocated among the remaining contenders. The process continues until there is a winner. …
   6. Palin has consistently criticized the system throughout her campaign, calling ranked-choice voting untrustworthy, “cockamamie” and “leftist” in various statements and social media posts.
   7. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) sounded similar notes on Twitter, saying Wednesday that the system is a “scam to rig elections.”
   8. “60% of Alaska voters voted for a Republican, but thanks to a convoluted process and ballot exhaustion — which disenfranchises voters — a Democrat ‘won,’ ” he wrote.
   9. But other observers argued that the result says less about the ranked-choice voting system and more about the contenders.
   10. “The problem for the Republican Party in Alaska wasn’t ranked-choice voting; it was their candidates. Requiring a candidate to get more than 50% to be elected isn’t a scam; it’s sensible. Let’s get ranked-choice voting everywhere,” wrote former Michigan congressman Justin Amash, a onetime Republican, on Twitter. …
   11. Ranked-choice boosters said they’re looking forward to Alaska’s November election, when voters and candidates will have their second chance at using the new system — and some lessons from what happened in the special congressional race.
   12. “They may make some different choices,” said Rob Richie, president of FairVote, a ranked-choice advocacy group. Republicans, he added, “are going to have to decide how much they want this seat.”
   13. Alaska voters approved the state’s new election system in a 2020 ballot initiative, when it passed by just 1 percent — fewer than 4,000 votes. …
   14. MIKE: In principle, I far prefer ranked choice voting to simple plurality wins. I also far prefer it to simple so-called “Jungle Primaries” wherein a bunch of candidates run and the top 2, 3, or 4 go to the final runoff.
   15. MIKE: With so many bad outcomes for plurality wins, it can be hard to choose, but my poster boy for worst was Paul LePage, twice governor of Maine. He won with about 38% of the vote each time because two more-progressive candidates split the rest. LePage is a horrible, mean-spirited person, so you can imagine the kind of governor he was.
   16. MIKE: At least with Ranked Choice Voting, there’s some semblance of a winner getting a majority of votes, which should create a semblance of an honest mandate to lead.
   17. MIKE: I’m sure that smarter and shrewder minds than mine are already working on ways to “game” ranked choice voting outcomes, but so far, I think it’s how all elections should be run. IMHO, it provides for better governance outcomes, less voter fatigue, and fewer odd-time elections with tiny turnouts determining a winner.
   18. ANDREW: I think the only advantages inherent in ranked-choice voting are to minor parties, solely because the different voting system removes any chance, whether real or imagined or unimportant, of a “spoiler effect” on other parties close to a minor party on the political spectrum.
   19. ANDREW: Any balance in favor of any particular major party, I think, is going to be in the politics of the particular jurisdiction where the election happened. If there’s more Democratic voters, the election will be biased towards Democrats, no matter what the voting system is. If the Republicans have passed disenfranchising voting laws, the election will be biased towards Republicans. Ranked-choice voting just makes those already existing biases more clear, because it gives voters the option to cast a more detailed ballot. Alaska Republicans should be looking outside of the voting system for bias, or perhaps they should admit they’re just trying to litigate their way to a win.
   20. REFERENCE: Ranked voting — From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
   21. REFERENCE: Don’t Vote for Just One: Ranked Choice Voting Is Gaining Ground
   22. Stateline; By: Matt Vasilogambros, Staff Writer — Stateline | PEWTRUSTS.ORG | Article December 2, 2022
   23. REFERENCE: Ranked Choice Voting; ORG
8. Whoopi Goldberg faces backlash after repeating false Holocaust comments; After Goldberg said the Holocaust “wasn’t originally” about race in an interview published Saturday, Jewish leaders condemned the remarks as historically inaccurate and offensive. By Julianne McShane | NBCNEWS.COM | Dec. 27, 2022, 10:45 AM CST / Updated Dec. 27, 2022, 5:11 PM CST
   1. Whoopi Goldberg faces a fresh round of backlash after her latest historically inaccurate statement about the Holocaust, which she claimed “wasn’t originally” about race in an interview with the U.K. newspaper The Sunday Times.
   2. The controversy marks the second time this year that Goldberg, 67, has come under fire for what Jewish leaders and Holocaust experts say are inaccurate and offensive comments about the Nazi-sponsored mass murder of 6 million European Jews from 1933 to 1945.
   3. Goldberg made the latest remarks in an interview published Saturday after the reporter said, “Nazis saw Jews as a race,” referring to Goldberg’s comments in January, when she claimed the Holocaust was “not about race.”
   4. “Yes, but that’s the killer, isn’t it?” Goldberg told The Sunday Times reporter. “The oppressor is telling you what you are. Why are you believing them? They’re Nazis. Why believe what they’re saying? …
   5. MIKE: The story goes on quite a but from there, and the attached video is also helpful in understanding the story.
   6. MIKE: Speaking from my limited perspective as a Jew, I actually understand where she’s coming from on this. But I think her position is based on — and I apologize if this isn’t quite the right word — her position is based on sloppy thinking.
   7. MIKE: In my life here in Houston, where I have met and even worked with self-admitted antisemites; people have said that I look Jewish only right after they learn that I’m Jewish. Actually, I’ve been asked if I’m Hispanic. My father was often mistaken for being Italian. I actually think that with age, I’m looking more like my Eastern European roots. This goes to Whoopie’s point that Jews aren’t readily identifiable on the street unless there some other indicator of Jewishness like religious garb or other symbols.
   8. MIKE: But Whoopie is not addressing, for example, Black Americans who are outwardly able to “pass” for White. Are they still a “race”, or does their ability to “blend in” exclude them from Whoopie’s definition? (By the way, I’m using lots of air quotes here which you can’t “see” on the radio.)
   9. MIKE: Well into the 20^th century, there were still written and verbal references to “the Hebrew race”. You just have to look at old census records to see how ingrained that term was.
   10. MIKE Whoopie is quoted in the story as saying, “The oppressor is telling you what you are. Why are you believing them?” But here’s Whoopie, deciding — declaring — who and what is a “race” and isn’t a “race”.
   11. MIKE: Like I said… I bear her no ill will, but I think that her reasoning here is just sloppy.
   12. ANDREW: I think you’re right, Mike. We were actually discussing a story back at the end of November where this issue of “is antisemitism racism” may have been relevant, and so I decided to Google it and see what dictionaries or experts had to say. I found an interesting piece from The Conversation arguing that yes, antisemitism IS a form of racism because it’s the same kind of unconscious bias as other forms of racism, like anti-Black racism. There are more similarities too, because there are physical traits common within (though not exclusive to) Jewishness as an ethnicity, like Mike pointed out, and because like all social constructs, Jewishness has been treated and discriminated against as a race, and so it is a race.
   13. ANDREW: I also found another piece which I thought was illuminating, despite its source seeming unrelated at first glance. There’s a statement from the British Medical Association against all forms of racism, which describes the idea that antisemitism, color-based racism like antiblackness, Islamophobia, and cultural discrimination are all racism, but different forms of it, which makes a lot of sense to me in terms of how one kind of discrimination being racism impacts other kinds of discrimination being racism. There doesn’t need to be a weighing of which one is more important, or which ones are more or less like racism. All forms of racism are important and intertwined, and fighting one helps to fight all of them.
9. State lawsuits defend abortion access with religious freedom; By ARLEIGH RODGERS | APNEWS.COM | Dec. 27, 2022, yesterday
   1. … Indiana’s Republican legislators took less than two weeks to debate and pass an abortion ban that the governor signed quickly into law.
   2. [A] women’s health nurse practitioner from Indianapolis was struck by just how frequently faith was cited in the arguments as reason to ban the medical practice. But [Cara] Berg Raunick, who is Jewish, said those views go against her beliefs.
   3. To her, a pregnant woman’s health and life is paramount, and she disagreed with legislators’ assertions that life begins at conception, calling that a “Christian definition.”
   4. “That is a religious and values-based comment,” said Berg Raunick. “A fetus is potential life, and that is worthy of great respect and is not to be taken lightly, but it does not supersede the life and health of the mother, period.”
   5. Arguments like this were central to an Indiana lawsuit filed in September against the state’s abortion ban, which is on hold amid multiple legal challenges. On Dec. 2, a judge ruled the ban violates the state’s religious freedom law, signed by then-Republican Gov. Mike Pence in 2015.
   6. Critics of religious freedoms laws often argue they are used to discriminate against LGBTQ people and only protect a conservative Christian worldview. But following the S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in June, religious abortion-rights supporters are using these laws to protect access to abortion and defend their beliefs. …
   7. There is a “huge diversity of the kinds of claims being made” in these cases, said Elizabeth Reiner Platt, who studies religion and abortion rights as director of Columbia University’s Law, Rights and Religion Project. The religious freedom complaints are among 34 post-Roe lawsuits filed against 19 states’ abortion bans, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. …
   8. In the Indiana case, lawyers for five anonymous women — who are Jewish, Muslim and spiritual — and advocacy group Hoosier Jews for Choice have argued the state’s ban infringes on their beliefs. Their lawsuit specifically highlights the Jewish teaching that a fetus becomes a living person at birth and that Jewish law prioritizes the mother’s life and health.
   9. The Indiana attorney general’s office this month appealed a ruling siding with the women and asked the state Supreme Court to consider the case. In January, the Indiana justices are already scheduled to hear another abortion ban challenge on the grounds it violates the state constitution’s individual rights protections.
   10. Meanwhile, in Kentucky, three Jewish women are arguing the state’s ban violates their religious rights under the state’s constitution and religious freedom law. They say in a lawsuit, which has been removed to federal court, that Kentucky’s Republican-dominated legislature “imposed sectarian theology” by prohibiting nearly all abortions. The ban remains in effect while the Kentucky Supreme Court considers a separate case challenging the law.
   11. For those wanting to end abortion bans, lawsuits arguing state governments are establishing a religion via the bans could be more effective than ones arguing for the free exercise of religion, said Elizabeth Sepper, a University of Texas at Austin law professor. The former would apply to more people, she said.
   12. “If an abortion ban violates either a state establishment clause or the federal establishment clause, then the entirety of the statute comes down,” Sepper said. …
   13. MIKE: This article goes on for a couple more pages, and has some interesting information and quotes. Aside from the topic at hand here, I’m fascinated by how often legislation pushed through by one ideological side to further their goals can be turned around by the other side to argue against those precise goals. I guess that not enough lawmakers have taken debate classes. I didn’t, but my stepdaughter did, and it’s taught me a few things.
   14. ANDREW: I wish them luck. I encourage other religious groups wanting to take the same tactic to submit amicus briefs to any courts where a Jewish organization is already making this argument rather than starting their own parallel cases, which I think could inadvertently harm the effort.
10. Russian sausage tycoon dies after falling from hotel in India; By Claire Parker and Francesca Ebel | WASHINGTONPOST.COM | December 27, 2022 at 12:19 p.m. EST
    1. Pavel Antov, a Russian lawmaker and businessman who made his fortune in the sausage industry, died after falling from the third floor of his hotel room while on vacation in India — the latest Russian businessman to die under mysterious circumstances this year.
    2. Antov was found dead outside a hotel in the Rayagada district of India’s eastern Odisha region over the weekend, police told local media, two days after one of his travel companions, Vladimir Bidenov, was found dead at the same hotel. Bidenov was found unconscious in his hotel room, surrounded by empty wine bottles, according to local media reports. He was brought to the district hospital, where doctors declared him dead.
    3. The Odisha police department ordered its crime branch to take over the investigation into the “unnatural death of two Russian nationals” in Rayagada, the department tweeted Tuesday.
    4. Police Superintendent Vivekananda Sharma said Bidenov had suffered a stroke, while Antov “was depressed after [Bidenov’s] death and he too died,” the BBC reported. Police told Indian media that Antov’s death appeared to be a suicide. …
    5. In June, Antov appeared to criticize a Russian missile attack on a residential block of Kyiv, Ukraine, that killed a man and injured his 7-year-old daughter and her mother, according to the BBC. …The message was later deleted and Antov posted on social media that he supported Putin and his invasion. …
    6. [Antov’s] death is the latest incident this year involving Russian tycoons and high-profile oil and gas executives. It follows a string of murky and unexplained deaths since the beginning of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
    7. In September, the chairman of Russian oil company Lukoil … died after reportedly falling from a window of a Moscow hospital …
    8. In April, the body of Sergey Protosenya, a former top manager of gas giant Novatek, was found at a Spanish villa alongside those of his wife and their 18-year-old daughter. Spanish news outlet Telecinco reported that police found the mother and the daughter in separate rooms with stab wounds. Protosenya was found in the yard, where he had reportedly hanged himself.
    9. The same month, Vladislav Avayev, a former vice president of Gazprombank, was similarly found dead in his Moscow apartment alongside his wife and daughter.
    10. MIKE: Under Putin, roofs and windows seem to be particularly hazardous to some Russians. Maybe building codes should do away with them.
    11. MIKE: But on a serious note, this is what Stalinist and Fascist dictatorships look like when you cross them. Or just seem to cross them. Or look like you might cross them.
    12. MIKE: In the US, this kind of authoritarian-sponsored murder might have begun with the hanging of Mike Pence in 2021.
11. China to end Covid quarantine for foreign arrivals; By Robert Plummer | BBC NEWS |Published DEC. 26, 2022, 6 hours ago
    1. China has announced that its requirement for travellers arriving in the country to go into quarantine will end on 8 January.
    2. The measure is the latest in a series of restrictions to be lifted as China abandons its zero-Covid policy.
    3. China is seeing an explosion in Covid-related infections and medical workers have said they are struggling to cope.
    4. In his first comments on the changes, President Xi Jinping urged officials to do what was “feasible” to save lives. …
    5. China has stopped publishing Covid statistics, but it is thought thousands of people may be dying every day. …
    6. China’s about-turn on how it manages the pandemic has left Mr Xi in an uncomfortable position, analysts say.
    7. He was the driving force behind the zero-Covid policy, which was blamed for restricting people’s lives excessively and harming the economy.
    8. But having abandoned it, he now has to take responsibility for the huge wave of infections and hospital admissions, mainly among older people.
    9. Public anger over the president’s handling of the pandemic is one of the areas in which he is most vulnerable. …
    10. MIKE: This is an amazing Covid policy turnaround. It’s like going turning from California to Florida overnight. The implications of this policy about-face for Xi and the Chinese Communist Party (or CCP), and the fact that public pressure brought it about, cannot be overstated.
    11. MIKE: The CCP’s claim to governance in China is based on its success and correctness. That’s how it justifies its monopoly on power. To leave the sense — correctly, I think — that public pressure forced the party to retreat from a firm policy position and completely reverse itself literally overnight may have future domestic and geopolitical ramifications that cannot be predicted.
    12. ANDREW: The claim to governance by any ruling party in any nation is based upon its success and correctness. I agree that the Communist Party of China (or CPC, as it’s officially known) isn’t as welcoming of dissent as it should be to build a free society in my opinion, but I don’t think it’s significantly worse than the US ruling class on that front. It just manifests in different ways in each country– loud challenge through limited public elections in the US versus quiet challenge in policy discussions and party leadership elections in China. Both systems have limitations, so neither system is ideal.
    13. ANDREW: As for the Zero-COVID policy, I think it worked for a long time, admittedly at the cost of significant disruption. But it would never work in a vacuum. Like the League of Nations after World War I, successful COVID mitigation and elimination required good faith participation by all the world’s nations, but when that didn’t materialize, the few nations that did try their best eventually couldn’t keep it up and had to abandon it. It’s sad.
    14. ANDREW: I think if we had all been willing to accept a short economic disruption and locked down properly (think Boston after the Boston Marathon bombing where police were literally delivering food to people because the delivery folks were staying home) at the start of the COVID pandemic, we would have been able to avoid the much longer-term disruption that we’ve seen since and will continue to see for God knows how long.
12. China readying $143bn package for chip firms in face of US curbs; Beijing to roll out subsidies and tax credits to bolster semiconductor production and research, sources say. REUTERS via ALJAZEERA.COM Published On 14 Dec 2022
    1. China is working on a more than 1 trillion yuan ($144bn) support package for its semiconductor industry, according to three sources, in a significant step towards self-sufficiency in chips aimed at countering the United States’ moves to slow its technological advances.
    2. Beijing plans to roll out what will be one of its biggest fiscal incentive packages, allocated over five years, mainly as subsidies and tax credits to bolster semiconductor production and research activities at home, the sources said.
    3. It signals, as analysts have expected, a more direct approach by China in shaping the future of an industry that has become a geopolitical hot button due to soaring demand for chips, and which Beijing regards as a cornerstone of its technological might.
    4. It will also likely further raise concerns in the US and its allied countries about China’s competition in the semiconductor industry, analysts said. Some US lawmakers are already worried about China’s chip production capacity build-up. …
    5. The fiscal support plan comes after the US Commerce Department in October passed a sweeping set of regulations, which could bar research labs and commercial data centres’ access to advanced AI chips, among other curbs.
    6. The US has also been lobbying some of its partners, including Japan and the Netherlands, to tighten exports to China of equipment used to make semiconductors.
    7. US President Joe Biden in August signed a landmark bill to provide $52.7bn in grants for US semiconductor production and research as well as tax credits for chip plants estimated to be worth $24bn. …
    8. Achieving self-reliance in technology featured prominently in President Xi Jinping’s full work report at China’s Communist Party Congress in October. The term “technology” was referred to 40 times, up from 17 times in the report from the 2017 congress.
    9. Xi’s call for China to “win the battle” in core technologies could signal an overhaul in Beijing’s approach to advancing its tech industry, with more state-led spending and intervention to counter US pressures, analysts have said.
    10. The US sanctions published in October have caused big overseas-based chip manufacturing equipment companies to cease supplying key Chinese chipmakers, … and makers of advanced artificial intelligence chips to cease supplying companies and laboratories.
    11. The world’s second-largest economy has launched a trade dispute at the World Trade Organization against the US over its chip export control measures, China’s commerce ministry said on Monday. …
    12. ANDREW: While I think bringing industrial production back to the US is good (so long as those jobs have stability and the right to unionize), I think the Trump-era sanctions on China’s technology sector were unnecessary then and these sanctions, which I see as an evolution from Trump’s policy, are unnecessary now. Preventing trade with another country raises prices for materials, which manufacturers pass on to retailers by raising inventory prices, which retailers pass onto consumers by raising market prices. It also reduces cooperation between the relevant nations’ governments, raising tensions and making conflict more likely. I don’t think these downsides are worth any possible economic “wins” the US might get from these sanctions.
    13. MIKE: Andrew! You’re an advocate of global free trade! You have unplumbed philosophical depths!
    14. MIKE: I, on the other hand, am a bit of a protectionist. I’ve watched much of America’s industrial sectors hollowed out during my lifetime by shifting production overseas. And while Republican free-traders had a lot to do with that, it also created the “Rust Belt”, and the impulse of blue collar workers to vote for so-called pro-business, so-called pro-job-creating Republicans. Which is pretty ironic.

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