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POSSIBLE TOPICS: VOTETEXAS.GOV—Voter Information; REGISTER TO VOTE; APPLY FOR MAIL-IN BALLOT; Everything you need to know before voting for Houston’s new mayor in November election; West U City Council debates city entrance signage on Buffalo Speedway; Houston to launch first-ever firearm dashboard with goal of reducing injuries; Ken Paxton took a “corrupt” interest in lawsuit on Nate Paul’s behalf, whistleblower testifies; This is the true scale of the Airbnb apocalypse in New York; Online prices plunge by the most in three years; America is in a factory boom again. Even a recession may not bring it down this time; The IRS Is Using AI to Target the Ultra-Wealthy for Tax Violations; US likely to send long-range ATACMS missiles to Ukraine for the first time: Officials; G20 adds the African Union as a member, issues call rejecting use of force in reference to Ukraine; Why It’s So Hard for China to Fix Its Real Estate Crisis; Extreme Heat Pushes US Airlines to Shed Fuel, Limit Passengers; More.

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Except for timely election info, the extensive list of voting resources will now be at the end.

1. VOTING IN THE NOVEMBER 7^TH GENERAL ELECTION:
   1. Make sure to register to vote, or update your address by the October 10thdeadline. Click here for more information on voter registration. 
   2. Deadline to apply for a mail ballot is Friday, October 27. Click here for the application.Fill it out, print it, and then mail it to our office before the deadline.
   3. There may or not be an election in your particular election precinct, so you may have to go to your local elections clerk website or go to http://www.VOTETEXAS.GOV
   4. Just be registered and apply for your mail-in ballot if you may qualify.
   5. Obtain a Voter Registration Application (HarrisVotes.com). You must register to vote in the county in which you reside.
   6. You can track your Mail Ballot Activity from our website with direct link provided here https://www.harrisvotes.com/Tracking
   7. In HARRIS COUNTY, go to COM. For any place in Texas, you can go to VOTETEXAS.GOV
2. Everything you need to know before voting for Houston’s new mayor in November election; COM | Tuesday, August 22, 2023/ 1:29PM
   1. MIKE: This is a really comprehensive article about Houston elections: Who’s running for what (including mayor, city controller), and all city council positions.
   2. “Has my district changed? What district am I in? Your district for voting for your city councilmember may have changed since the last election. The city council approved new district boundaries on Oct. 12, 2022 as part of the redistricting process after the 2020 federal census. Houstonians can visit the city’s redistricting website to view maps and determine which council district they reside in. …”
3. West U City Council debates city entrance signage on Buffalo Speedway; By Leah Foreman | COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM | 2:58 PM Sep 12, 2023 CDT, Updated 4:20 PM Sep 12, 2023 CDT
   1. Members of the West University Place City Council discussed several options for new city entrance signage on Buffalo Speedway during a Sept. 11 meeting.
   2. Elizabeth Gilbert, a managing principal from Houston-based landscape architecture firm Clark Condon, presented three potential designs for the thin strip of median at the intersection of West Holcombe Boulevard and Buffalo Speedway to the council members. …
   3. In each of the designs, there is an intended spot that marks the entrance of the city, either displayed on a monument or at the front of raised plant beds.
   4. Council members unanimously agreed that the second design—one featuring raised plant beds—was the preferred design. Several members noted the raised plant beds will protect the flowers from pedestrians, while the brick-paved front will serve as a landing place for pedestrians crossing the intersection and provide continuity for the other parts of West University Place, which feature brick.
   5. Next, Clark Candon will work on the design in detail. …
   6. MIKE: I noted that missing from this story was the anticipated costs of making and maintaining any of these changes. Ands forgive me for saying so, but the West U City Council spent this time on what is very much a First World problem.
   7. MIKE: Most cities limit themselves to some sort of signage — often very simple signage — that you are now entering a town’s city limits. But the type of announcement being considered by West U seems unnecessarily grandiose. Remember, West U residents, these are your tax dollars at work. Because of the landscaping envisioned in these concepts, they will represent an ongoing expense. (To paraphrase an old saying, when you hire a landscaper, everything looks like a plant.) My suggestion would be to replace the current landscaping with some sort of attractive paving with a concrete underlayment and maybe a short red granite stone announcing the boundary. Then you’re done for maybe 20 years. If you have other ideas, consider contacting your West U representative.
4. Houston to launch first-ever firearm dashboard with goal of reducing injuries; By Leah Foreman | COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM | 12:21 PM Sep 8, 2023 CDT, Updated 12:21 PM Sep 8, 2023 CDT
   1. The city of Houston will develop a firearm dashboard in an effort to make the city safer, according to a Sept. 6 announcement from Council Member Abbie Kamin, who has led the charge and helped secure funding for the project.
   2. The dashboard, a first of its kind in the nation, will inform gun violence intervention and prevention efforts, Kamin said. …
   3. To see this project through, the city is partnering with Bindi J. Naik-Mathuria—who will lead coordination efforts with area trauma centers—as well as UT Health Science Center, Baylor College of Medicine, The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, Harris Health Ben Taub Hospital, Memorial Hermann at Texas Medical Center and HCA Houston Healthcare Northwest Houston Hospital.
   4. The idea, Kamin said, is to help get a better understanding of the “who,” “what,” “where,” “when” and “why” of firearm violence.
   5. “We’re home to the largest medical center in the world. It may be a surprise to some that we do not already have something like this. That’s because this should be common sense,” Kamin said. “Now, the city of Houston and our public health partners will finally have a centralized location to collect relevant information, analyze it, and turn it into health-based actions to reduce injuries and save lives.”
   6. I found a reference to why Houston probably doesn’t have a gun violence dashboard and why detailed stats on gun violence have been hard to come by. It was probably due to Republicans and the gun lobby: After 25 Years In The Dark, The CDC Wants To Study The True Toll Of Guns In America, Heard on All Things Considered, By Eric Westervelt | NPR.ORG | September 29, 2021 – 5:00 AM ET
   7. … [H]ow often is someone injured by a firearm in America? Why, how and what kinds of weapons are used? What are the underlying causes? What’s the relationship between shooter and victim? What evidence-based, scalable programs work best to help prevent criminal shootings, accidents and suicides? On these and other questions, people in public health, criminal justice, policing and academia admit they lack full and adequate answers.
   8. They’re partly in the dark because for more than two decades, the gun lobby and Republican allies in Congress effectively blocked federal funding for firearms research, arguing that such study would undermine the constitutional rights of lawful gun owners.
   9. As a result of that and other factors, experts say, in-depth gun-data collection and sharing in the U.S. is a tangled mess that undermines objective research on programs and policies intended to prevent firearm injury, suicide and criminal violence.
   10. The CDC under Dr. Rochelle Walensky says that will now, finally, start to change.
   11. MIKE: So the Houston Dashboard program is really part of something that we should have been doing nationally for at least 20 years if Republicans and their kinship to the gun lobby had not prevented it. And since most local stats often start by drawing on national stats (such as the decadal census), this Republican Congressional obstruction to treating gun violence as a national health crisis, which could be studied by organizations like the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has delayed the kinds of research that could have been helpful in forming safe and effective US gun ownership policy.
5. Ken Paxton took a “corrupt” interest in lawsuit on Nate Paul’s behalf, whistleblower testifies; Darren McCarty said the attorney general, his former boss, approached the Mitte Foundation lawsuit with “urgency and anxiety” — and a focus on helping his friend and political donor. by Patrick Svitek | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | Sept. 12, 2023 – 4 hours ago
   1. A Ken Paxton whistleblower testified Tuesday that the attorney general took an unusually intense interest in a charity’s lawsuit against Nate Paul in 2020, leading to the belief that Paxton had “turned over” his office to Paul.
   2. The whistleblower, Darren McCarty, said he ultimately found the agency’s involvement in the Mitte Foundation’s lawsuit to be “unethical, against our statutes and, I highly suspected, corrupt.”
   3. McCarty, deputy attorney general for civil litigation at the time, was among the former top deputies who reported Paxton to the FBI in 2020, claiming he was abusing his office to help Paul, an Austin real estate investor and Paxton campaign donor.
   4. McCarty’s testimony, which came on the sixth day of the trial before the Texas Senate, shed light on the first article of impeachment. The article, one of 16 the Senate is currently trying, alleged that Paxton disregarded his official duties by causing “employees of his office to intervene” in the Mitte Foundation lawsuit in an effort to aid Paul.
   5. On cross-examination, Paxton lawyer Tony Buzbee challenged a number of McCarty’s assertions, including the suggestion that Paxton had wanted McCarty to “pick Nate Paul’s side” in the litigation. McCarty said Paxton never used those words, but the witness maintained that the intervention was still in service to Paul. …
   6. MIKE: There’s more detail to this story in the Tribune article, but I stopped at what I think is an important point.
   7. MIKE: “McCarty said Paxton never used those words, but the witness maintained that the intervention was still in service to Paul.” I’m not going to make an assertion here, but I will make an observation. Criminal bosses rarely give orders directly, so that a 3^rd party hearing or overhearing those orders can’t say the orders were baldly given. Sometimes, what is called a “thieves cant” is used. This is when codewords mean different things to an uninitiated listener and meanings are ambiguous. Innocent phrases such as, “take care of this for me”, or “will you look into this?” can mean very specific things in an overall context.
   8. MIKE: When whistleblower Darren McCarty testifies that his boss, AG Paxton, didn’t use certain precise words but that the AG made his meaning very clear, this sort of wink-wink, nod-nod language is what RICO-type statutes were designed for.
   9. MIKE: I’m not meaning to imply anything, but how this ends up being interpreted for the purposes of the Paxton’s impeachment trial remains to be seen. Time will tell.
6. This is the true scale of the Airbnb apocalypse in New York; By Sarah Johnson | LOCALSTORIES.NEWS | Sept. 8, 2023 — 15 mins ago
   1. The number of Airbnbs available for short-term rentals in New York City has fallen by 70 percent after the city began enforcing a new law requiring short-term rental companies to register their listings. However, despite the new requirements, there are still thousands of entries that may not register.
   2. The drop, recorded between August 4 and September 5, the day New York City began enforcing the new law, represents the disappearance of approximately 15,000 short-term Airbnb listings. The numbers are based on data by Inside Airbnb, a housing advocacy group that tracks listings on the platform.
   3. In August, there were around 22,000 short-term Airbnb listings in New York City. On September 5, there were 6,841. However, it seems that some short-term offers have been switched to long-term offers, which are only bookable for 30 days or more. The number of long-term rentals rose by around 11,000 from August 4 to September 5 to a total of 32,612. These offers do not have to be registered under the new law.
   4. Additionally, Inside Airbnb estimates that’s about the case [that] 4,000 rentals in total have disappeared from Airbnb since the enactment of the law.
   5. This spike in long-term rentals could show the law is working by pushing hosts to offer apartments to those staying in New York City for 30 days or more. The new registration requirement aims to enforce older rules for short-term rentals in the city and comes at a time when New Yorkers are facing high rents and housing insecurity. Vacation rentals are also notorious for being noisy, littering, and hazardous to neighborhoods and buildings.
   6. At first glance, you cannot tell whether an Airbnb listing is registered with the city. Inside Airbnb just found that 28 short-term rentals in New York said they had a city registration number on their listing, but it’s not immediately clear if those numbers are legitimate, and the number of short-term rentals found on Airbnb far exceeds the number the city has on file .
   7. Ultimately, hosts must provide registration numbers in their listings. As of Monday, New York City has received 3,829 registration applications, reviewed 896 applications and approved 290, according to Christian Klossner, executive director of the mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement, which oversees the registration process. The Office rejected 90 and returned another 516 for correction or further information.
   8. Airbnb says it began blocking new short-term reservations for unregistered rentals as early as August 14, but will not automatically cancel stays in unregistered apartments before December 1 to avoid disrupting guests’ travel plans. Expedia Group, Vrbo’s parent company, is working with “the city and our partners to meet regulatory requirements and minimize disruption to travelers and the city’s tourism economy,” says Richard de Dam Lazaro, [Senior] Director of Governmental and Corporate Affairs for the company. Booking.com did not respond to a request for comment.
   9. But amidst the chaotic introduction of the new law, some entries appear to be slipping through the cracks. A search on Airbnb for apartments in New York for more than two guests returns several results that may violate the new law. Whole houses can still be booked, some with space for 12 or 14 guests. One, a Harlem townhouse, has a backyard with a fireplace, a living room with a pool table, and five bedrooms, some with twin beds, that are furnished in a hotel style. The price is around US$1,400 per night.
   10. New York’s Airbnb law: What new rules mean for short-term rentals — By Sarah Johnson | LOCALSTORIES.NEWS | Sept. 1,2023 — 7 days ago
       1. … Local Law 18, which comes into effect on September 5, contains several rules that travelers might find problematic: No more than two paying guests can stay in a short-term rental at a time, regardless of the size of the apartment or the number of bedrooms; Hosts must be physically present during the rental of their space; Hosts and visitors must leave doors unlocked within the apartment to allow residents access to the entire accommodation.
       2. “In my opinion, what they’re doing in New York is basically shutting down Airbnb,” said Lisa Grossman, a travel agent who has used short-term rental platforms to offer an apartment in her Manhattan home for years. “People who want to live in apartments don’t want to live with anyone, so there really isn’t an option. You are either roommates or live in a hotel room. ” …
   11. MIKE: I think this law sounds like a good thing, and may represent a model for other cities and municipalities to regulate Air B&B-style rentals, and to hopefully return many of these units to the residential rental model, thus helping to alleviate housing shortages and moderating rents.
   12. MIKE: I’ve said for a while that that the rental definitions need to be changed. In normal residential leases, a rental is 12-24 months. A short-term rental should be anything from 6-11 months. Anything under 6 months should be termed a “very-short-term rental”, and anything 30 days or less should be termed an “ultra-short-term rental”.
   13. MIKE: So what’s the difference in a name in this instance? Differences in regulation and licensing, for two things. Any property soliciting or accepting rentals for less than 6 months should be subject to licensing and inspections, just like Bed and Breakfasts, hotels, and motels. Any property renting for 30 days or less should be subject to licensing and inspection that is even more stringent than that of hotels, motels and B&Bs on the premise that such singular units are not capable of the same sorts of safety, sanitation, and maintenance as a place with employees designated to these tasks in a multiunit building dedicated to the purpose.
   14. MIKE: Then, there is the impact on neighborhoods. With luck, regulations such as are in place in NYC might get these ultra-short-term rentals out of residential neighborhoods, where they are often sources of disturbance to long-term residents.
   15. MIKE: To sum up, I think that Air B&B-style rentals and even timeshares are bad for the residential housing market, building or locking out lots of often-empty living spaces that are then overpriced for short-term renters, while denying affordable living spaces to city residents.
   16. MIKE: The referenced story at the end of this item goes into more detail about the law and the law’s intent.
   17. REFERENCE: New York’s Airbnb law: What new rules mean for short-term rentals — By Sarah Johnson | LOCALSTORIES.NEWS | Sept. 1,2023 — 7 days ago
7. Online prices plunge by the most in three years; By Matt Egan | CNN | Updated 9:38 AM EDT, Tue September 12, 2023
   1. Online shoppers were greeted by rapidly falling prices in August, marking another positive sign in the fight against inflation.
   2. E-commerce prices tumbled by 3.2% year over year in August, Adobe Analytics said on Tuesday. That’s the biggest annual drop in 40 months, or just over three years.
   3. The data provides further evidence that inflation is cooling across the US economy, moving back towards normal levels following aggressive interest rate hikes from the central bank. …
   4. [S]hortly after the pandemic began, scrambling supply chains [set] off the worst burst of inflation in four decades. Even online prices started to rise rapidly.
   5. But now, Adobe says annual online prices have been dropping for a full year. …
   6. Online prices fell in most categories on an annual basis, including sharp drops for sporting goods (-7%), appliances (-7.3%), electronics (-11.6%) and computers (-14.2%), according to the report.
   7. Groceries prices continue to rise on an annual rate, increasing by 5% in August, but Adobe said that marks the 11th straight month of cooling price gains for that area. Prices dipped 0.2% between July and August, marking the first monthly drop in 27 months. …
   8. [G]asoline prices have increased significantly over the past two months. The national average for regular gas hit $3.84 a gallon on Tuesday, up by 12 cents from this point last year, according to [the American Automobile Association, or AAA].
   9. The jump in gas prices means overall inflation likely moved in the wrong direction in August, with economists projecting that headline inflation accelerated last month.
   10. Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, is estimated to have cooled in August.
   11. MIKE: The older you get, the more expensive everything seems, since prices in my head inevitably compare to, say, 1980. But we may be slowly working our way out of the higher pandemic-era inflation.
   12. MIKE: When evaluating these numbers, it pays to remember that almost everything we consume is part of a global market, so global availability and demand influence our prices and are largely out of US control. The strength and dominance of the US dollar in world trade is a benefit to US consumers, which is one reason that US inflation — though still painful — is among the lowest in the world at this time.
   13. MIKE: With luck, most of you have had earnings increases over the past few years, and while rationalization doesn’t pay the bills, it’s worth noting that fuel prices have been in the $2.90-to-$4.00 range for years now (and mostly in the low-$3). While this still feels painful, overall inflation is making this a relatively smaller part of your monthly expenses.
   14. MIKE: A point that the story dwells on about price drops in online shopping is important. It should remind us that where you shop is still important. If you have the time and luxury to shop around online and in brick-and-mortar stores, you can often save some money. And if you want to support local vendors, remember that many will price match if you can prove the online price.
8. America is in a factory boom Even a recession may not bring it down this time; Fed raises rates to highest level in 22 years. By Bryan Mena, CNN Business | CNN.COM | Updated 2:33 PM EDT, Sat September 9, 2023
   1. … In the growth of blue-collar work, Biden has much to celebrate. In July, construction spending from manufacturers rose about 71% from a year earlier, according to Commerce Department data, and manufacturers had 106,000 more employees in August compared to a year earlier, despite business surveys showing softening consumer demand.
   2. But the good times for the US economy may not last. A few days before Biden’s speech in Maine, the Fed approved raising interest rates to their highest level in more than 22 years, continuing an aggressive inflation-busting campaign.
   3. Now, as the US central bank looks to enter the final phases of its historic inflation battle, it’s unclear how much the rate hikes will weigh on the economy. But economists argue the fiscal largesse of recent years is providing an unshakable economic boost to manufacturing.
   4. Some manufacturing bosses … are confident their companies could handle a recession.
   5. Since taking office in 2021, Biden has signed into law a number of major spending packages to funnel billions of dollars toward manufacturing, including a bipartisan infrastructure bill and the CHIPS and Science Act. That has allowed manufacturers to start planning new factories to ramp up production, according to government data.
   6. The injection of federal funds and the country’s ongoing shift toward renewable energy have helped spark the beginning of a so-called “manufacturing boom” in the United States, according to some economists — notably Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman. Goldman Sachs analysts recently estimated the US manufacturing industry could add 250,000 jobs over two years.
   7. But the steady rise in construction spending from manufacturers hasn’t yet translated into significantly higher levels of manufacturing employment or a sharp uptick in output.
   8. Although economic optimism has grown among US consumers and fears of a severe downturn from economists have greatly diminished in recent weeks, the economy isn’t out of the woods just yet.
   9. There are reasons for concern. Business surveys from S&P Global and the Institute for Supply Management show that the US manufacturing sector has been contracting for several months. The surveys reflect weakening consumer demand coupled with shrinking backlogs and a persistent difficulty in hiring. ISM’s latest survey showed economic activity among manufacturers contracted for the 10th straight month in August.
   10. “[Business] Customer orders have softened. This is likely due to customers’ increased confidence in the supply chain, (which) has them reducing their inventories. Customers are also being pinched with higher interest rates,” a food, beverage and tobacco products manufacturer told the ISM in its August survey. “Additionally, consumers are feeling their purchasing power eroded by stubbornly high inflation, so they are purchasing less.”
   11. The outlook isn’t too rosy — at least in the short term.
   12. “It’s not a big surprise that the combination of higher interest rates and a moderation of the pandemic surge in consumer purchases has led to weaker readings in the PMIs, which are short-term data,” said Scott Paul, the president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing. A PMI, or purchasing managers’ index, is a business survey used to gauge levels of economic activity — the same ones released by S&P Global and ISM.
   13. Historically, manufacturing has been hit hard in economic downturns. During the Great Recession, which lasted from December 2007 to June 2009, manufacturing job losses totaled more than 2 million employees, or 15% of its workforce, according to a 2011 paper from the Labor Department.
   14. If the economy does enter a recession, Paul argues mass layoffs could be avoided because of “public policies that spurred infrastructure investments, manufacturing demand, and clean energy incentives,” referring to the federal spending packages and their provisions.
   15. Economists say manufacturers’ increased spending on building factories reflects their confidence in the long term, even if data show demand is expected to slow in the short term. It takes time to build a factory. The construction spending figures imply investments toward building factories. …
   16. Companies typically take out corporate loans when expanding their operations, so higher borrowing costs could stymie some manufacturers’ growth plans.
   17. The developers of River Pointe Commerce Park, a proposed industrial park in eastern Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, say demand for leases from manufacturers has been strong. However, Lou Pektor, one of the developers, said “the Fed factors into everybody’s thinking” — especially when it comes to growth plans.
   18. “We’ve seen some plans go on hold or on a slower burn until those companies see what happens with interest rates and the economy,” he said. It is the typical dynamic during times of economic uncertainty — waiting for some clarity before making a major business investment.
   19. Jennifer Harris, former special assistant to Biden and senior director of international economics at the National Economic Council and the National Security Council, said she thinks a soft landing — a scenario in which inflation slows to the Fed’s 2% goal without a sharp uptick in unemployment or a recession — is within reach and would bode well for manufacturers.
   20. Recession or not, the bull case for US manufacturing has the industry — and Biden — in a good mood.
   21. MIKE: FYI, the last rate hike of 25 basis points (0.25%) was on July 26. There is hope that that hike will be the last for a good while. We’ll know for sure after the Fed’s September meeting.
   22. MIKE: I’m no economist, so take my musing with a grain of salt, but if inflation is a matter of too many dollars chasing too few goods and services, why does the Fed have to slow the whole economy? Why don’t we have a mechanism to encourage an increase in the supply of those goods and services that are in short supply and thus are causing most inflation? This might be an instance where some sort of “supply-side economics” might be useful, but not just putting more money in the hands of the rich and hoping they’ll invest it where it’s needed. Rather, putting specific incentives in place to invest in expanding the supply of specific, targeted goods and services.
   23. MIKE: This might take the form of targeted lower interest rates, tax credits, accelerated depreciation, or some other sort of scheme. The goal would be to control price increases by increasing supply rather than by slowing job growth. Maybe real economists need to think outside the box about some new solutions to controlling inflation.
   24. REFERENCE: What To Look For From The Fed’s Final Meetings Of 2023 – Forbes Aug, 15, 2023 (“After two relatively tame Consumer Price Index inflation reports and some evidence that the employment situation may be softening, the Federal Reserve is not expected to raise rates at its September meeting. However, there is still a chance that the Fed raises rates again in 2023.”)
9. The IRS Is Using AI to Target the Ultra-Wealthy for Tax Violations; The agency is adding AI tools to identify taxpayers who make $1 million and up, and have more than $250,000 in tax evasion. By Nikki Main | GIZMODO.COM | Published Friday Sept 8, 2023 @ 4:40PM
   1. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is adding artificial intelligence tools to crack down on potential tax violations, the agency announced on Friday. The IRS claims it will be focusing on wealthy taxpayers who have used “sophisticated schemes to avoid taxes,” instead of burdening average people with “no-change” audits.
   2. Artificial intelligence will reportedly change the way the IRS issues audits, prioritizing high-income taxpayers who have a total income of $1 million and will identify which individuals have more than $250,000 in recognized tax debt. By implementing AI, the IRS said in a press release it “will help IRS compliance teams better detect tax cheating, identify emerging compliance threats and improve case selection tools.” the IRS said in a press release.
   3. For those earning less than $400,000 per year, the IRS says it will ensure the audit rates do not go up, saying the Earned Income Tax Credit was put in place to help workers who earn modest incomes, according to the release. The agency clarified that AI will be used to initiate investigations into 75 of the largest U.S. partnerships that document assets that exceed $10 billion on average.
   4. It will reportedly be used to target hedge funds, real estate investment partnerships, and law firms who may have skirted the rules, amounting to roughly 1,600 taxpayers in total who “owe hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes.” …
   5. Last month, the IRS hired nearly 90,000 additional full-time staff members, the largest increase in more than a decade, to improve its taxpayer services and support its efforts to incorporate AI to target tax evasions. The move comes after the IRS received $80 billion in funding last year toward the Inflation Reduction Act but it caused contention with Republicans who claimed the IRS will target small businesses and middle-income taxpayers using the funds. As a result, Republicans were successful in pulling back $20 billion in funds from the IRS earlier this year as a compromise for increasing the borrowing limit and avert a default.
   6. [IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel] said in the IRS press release that the agency is committed to targeting the wealthy and claims the newly added AI tools will hold those individuals accountable for what they owe. At least, for now. 
   7. “I am committed to reversing this trend, making sure that new funding will mean more effective compliance efforts on the wealthy, while middle- and low-income filers will continue to see no change in historically low pre-IRA audit rates for years to come,” he said.
   8. MIKE: One of the real values of artificial intelligence (AI) is that it “thinks” in ways that humans do not, and it does that very, very fast. AI is very good at recognition of obscure patterns that humans might ignore or just never notice and calling humans’ attention to them.
   9. MIKE: That might make AI singularly useful at finding tax cheats using obscure, multilayered schemes to avoid taxes that should be paid. I’ll be looking forward to updates on this tactic.
   10. REFERENCE: IRS cracking down on 1,600 millionaires over back taxes; by Nick Robertson | THEHILL.COM | 09/08/23, 11:01 AM ET [Tags: Back Taxes Danny Werfel  Inflation Reduction Act  IRS  Steny Hoyer  Tax Return]
10. US likely to send long-range ATACMS missiles to Ukraine for the first time: Officials; “They are coming,” one U.S. official told ABC News. By Matt Seyler | ABCNEWS.GO.COM | September 9, 2023, 10:36 AM
    1. The Biden administration is likely to send Ukraine long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, to help in its fight to repel the Russian invasion of its territory, according to U.S. officials.
    2. “They are coming,” said one official who had access to security assistance plans. The official noted that, as always, such plans are subject to change until officially announced.
    3. A second official said the missiles are “on the table” and likely to be included in an upcoming security assistance package, adding that a final decision has not been made. It could be months before Ukraine receives the missiles, according to the official. …
    4. With a range of up to 190 miles, depending on the version, deploying ATACMS could allow Ukraine to reach targets nearly four times further away than with the currently-provided rockets for its U.S.-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems [HiMARS] and M270 multiple-launch rocket systems.
    5. The administration has until now rejected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s requests for the weapons, even after the United Kingdom and France have sent comparable Storm Shadow missiles, due to concerns both over escalation with Russia and of maintaining America’s own stockpiles. …
    6. The Biden administration has taken an incremental approach with the types of weapons it has sent to Ukraine since the invasion, ramping up from handheld launchers, to sophisticated air-defense platforms, to armored vehicles, and reversing earlier decisions not to send Abrams tanks or to train Ukrainians on advanced F-16 fighters.
    7. With Ukrainian forces struggling [more than expected] to break through heavily-defended Russian lines in its ongoing counteroffensive, political pressure in Washington over sending military aid has increased — along with a desire to see more progress on the battlefield.
    8. A surprising discovery could also ease the administration’s choice to send the weapons: The U.S. has found it has more ATACMS in its inventory than originally assessed, the two officials told ABC News.
    9. The serviceability of the rediscovered stockpile is not yet clear, nor which specific type of missiles it contains. ATACMS come in several forms, from missiles with large high-explosive warheads, to anti-personnel cluster-munition versions that drop hundreds of bomblets on targets.
    10. In addition to giving Ukrainian crews much greater standoff distance when striking Russian positions — making it more difficult for the Russians to fire back — ATACMS could also help Ukraine more easily reach targets in Crimea.
    11. “I think specific targets in Crimea would be command and control, logistics hubs — especially ammunition facilities — and air bases,” said Mick Mulroy, an ABC News contributor who served as a CIA officer and deputy assistant secretary of defense. …
    12. MIKE: Last week I made an analogy comparing NATO’s support for Ukraine in the Russo-Ukraine war to the US experience in the Vietnam war. It’s too lengthy to repeat here, but it boils down to a balance between avoiding a wider Great Power war while providing the weaponry necessary for Ukraine to eventually win. Also bleeding Russia is a side benefit.
11. G20 adds the African Union as a member, issues call rejecting use of force in reference to Ukraine; The inclusion of the African Union adds momentum to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s drive to give a greater voice to the Global South. By The Associated Press | Sept. 9, 2023, 8:02 AM CDT
    1. The Group of 20 top world economies welcomed the [55-member African Union] as a member at their annual summit Saturday, but their wording on the contentious issue of Russia’s war in Ukraine was limited to a call to avoid forcefully seizing territory or using nuclear weapons.
    2. There had been doubt that an agreement could be adopted because of disagreements among members, most centrally on differences about the war.
    3. The G20 final statement, released a day before the summit formally closes, was less sharply worded over the war than one issued during last year’s meeting in Bali and didn’t mention Russia’s invasion directly.
    4. It said members reiterated their national positions and resolutions adopted at the United Nations, and called on all states [to] act in line with principles laid out in the U.N. Charter. …
    5. … Despite months of objections from Russia and China over language referring to the war in Ukraine, the leaders were able to agree unanimously, according to Indian officials, to several paragraphs referring to the conflict. …
    6. There was widespread support for adding the [African Union (AU)] to the G20, making it the second regional bloc to become a permanent member after the European Union and adding momentum to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s drive to give a greater voice to the Global South.
    7. The [African] continent was thrust into the spotlight as well by the earthquake in Morocco, which happened while most of the delegates gathered in New Delhi were asleep. …
    8. Modi addressed the delegates from behind a nameplate that listed his country not as India but as “Bharat,” an ancient Sanskrit name championed by his Hindu nationalist supporters. … [MIKE: There’s now a heated political debate in India whether to change its official name from “India” to “Bharat”.]
    9. With so many other issues on the table, Human Rights Watch urged the G20 leaders not to let international disunity distract them at the summit.
    10. Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy director of the organization’s Asia division, added that members should not “shy away from openly discussing challenges like gender discrimination, racism and other entrenched barriers to equality, including with host India, where civil and political rights have sharply deteriorated under the Modi administration.”
    11. Hundreds of Tibetan exiles held a protest far from the summit venue to condemn Chinese participation in the event and urge leaders to discuss Sino-Tibetan relations. …
    12. Leaders of the U.S., India, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were working to finalize a joint infrastructure deal involving ship and rail transit between India and the Middle East to Turkey and beyond, in hopes it could be announced in New Delhi during the summit. [MIKE: This is an obvious response by the US to China’s “Belt and Road Initiative”. This might not draw other countries more tightly into the US orbit, but could prevent them from being further attached financially to China.]
    13. Campbell called the emerging deal a potentially “earth-shattering” project and said that “the strongest supporter of this initiative is India.” In the past, Campbell said, India’s leaders have had “almost a knee jerk reaction” to resist such massive multilateral projects. …
    14. MIKE: There’s a lot more detail on the G20 meeting and its results or lack thereof, but I thought that the two most interesting were the admission of the AU to the group, and the US efforts to counter the Chinese Belt and Road initiative.
    15. MIKE: The AU is a disparate group of 55 countries with varying degrees of democracy, unity, economic development, etc. I suppose that some might make that comparison to the European Union, but I think the difference among the AU members is much greater. So what makes the group’s admission to the G20 especially interesting is that no single member would come close to qualifying.
    16. MIKE: China’s Belt and Road initiative has managed to gather countries as diverse as Pakistan and Italy into its orbit, but there have been allegations of especially predatory lending for the Initiative’s infrastructure, which is seen as a backdoor to eventual Chinese control. Add to that that the US is still the pre-eminent military and economic power, and that it leads an alliance of many of the world’s most economically and militarily powerful nations, and the potential appeal of the US’s infrastructure deal becomes very powerful.
    17. REFERENCE: African Union (AU) — NTI.ORG
12. Speaking of China, economics, and international influence, China is having its own infrastructure problems: Why It’s So Hard for China to Fix Its Real Estate Crisis; Beijing has often addressed economic troubles by boosting spending on infrastructure and real estate, but now heavy debt loads make that a hard playbook to follow. By Keith Bradsher, Reporting from Beijing | NYTIMES.COM | 22, 2023
    1. … It was February 2016, and Zhou Xiaochuan, the central bank’s longtime governor at the time, announced what proved to be the start of an extraordinary blitz of lending by China’s immense banking system.
    2. Minimum down payments for buying apartments were reduced, triggering a surge in construction. Vast sums were also lent to local governments, allowing them to splurge on new roads and rail lines. For China, it was a familiar response to economic trouble. Within months, growth started to pick up and financial markets stabilized.
    3. Today, as China faces another period of deep economic uncertainty, policymakers are drawing on elements of its crisis playbook, but with little sign of the same results. It has become considerably harder for China to borrow and invest its way back to economic strength.
    4. On Friday, China’s top financial regulators summoned the leaders of the country’s leading banks and securities firms and urged them to provide more loans and other financial support for the economy — the latest in a series of similar admonitions.
    5. But demand for more borrowing has wilted in recent months, blunting the effectiveness of looser lending policies by the banks.
    6. The construction and sale of new homes has stalled. More than 50 real estate developers have run out of money and defaulted or stopped payment on bonds. The companies have left behind hundreds of thousands of unfinished apartments that many predominantly middle-class families had already purchased, taking out mortgages to do so.
    7. At the same time, companies are wary of borrowing money for expansion as their sales tumble and the economy faces deflation. Local governments across much of China are deeply indebted and struggling even to pay their civil servants. Years of heavy infrastructure investments, followed by huge amounts of spending for mass testing and quarantines during the pandemic, have left China less willing to employ fiscal firepower to jolt demand.
    8. “The traditional way of stimulating the economy, through a credit boom and leveraging, has reached an end,” said Zhu Ning, a deputy dean of the Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance.
    9. Western economists have long contended that the answer to China’s economic troubles lies in reducing the country’s high rate of savings and investment and encouraging more consumer spending. …
    10. But China has done little to strengthen its social safety net since then, so that households would not feel a need to save so much money. Government payments to seniors are tiny. Education is increasingly costly. Health care insurance is mostly a municipal government responsibility in China, and high costs for the strict “Covid zero” measures the country employed have nearly bankrupted many local government plans.
    11. … China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, has a well-known aversion to any social spending, which he has derided as “welfarism” that he believes might erode the work ethic of the Chinese people. …
    12. At the core of China’s current economic trouble is real estate, which represents a quarter of the country’s economic output and at least three-fifths of household savings. …
    13. Apartments were bought as investments to rent out, including by many Chinese families that saw an opportunity to accumulate wealth. But as more and more apartments were built, their value as rentals declined. Investors were left with apartments whose rent wouldn’t pay for their mortgages. In many cities, annual rent has been 1.5 percent or less of an apartment’s purchase price, while mortgage interest costs have been 5 or 6 percent.
    14. Apartments in China are commonly delivered by builders without amenities like sinks and washing machines, or even basics like closets or flooring. Because rents are so low, many investors have not bothered to finish apartments over the past decade, holding newly built but hollow shells in the expectation of flipping them for ever-higher prices. By some estimates, Chinese cities now have 65 million to 80 million empty apartments.
    15. Demand for new apartments has now plummeted … Prices for existing homes have fallen 14 percent in the past 24 months. Prices of new homes have not fallen as much, but only because local governments have told developers not to cut prices drastically. Sales of new homes have plunged as a result.
    16. Many economists in China now suggest that the country needs to go beyond reductions in down payments and cut interest rates sharply …
    17. Deep cuts in interest rates would make it much cheaper to borrow money for a new home or car or other big purchases. It could also spur more exports, long a driver of the Chinese economy.
    18. A risk of cutting interest rates is that Chinese companies and families would be able to earn much higher interest rates on bank deposits in other countries, and would try to transfer large sums of money out of China. That would cause China’s currency, the renminbi, to sink against the dollar, which would also make Chinese exports more competitive in foreign markets.
    19. China cannot export its way out of economic trouble without incurring considerable hostility from governments in Europe, the United States and developing countries, which have become increasingly reluctant to accept job losses associated with a dependence on imports. But that may be a risk that China is willing to take as pressure increases for further interest rate cuts.
    20. “Cutting interest rates is necessary,” said Xu Sitao, the chief economist in the Beijing office of Deloitte. “It is about stabilizing the property sector and offering calibrated relief to companies and local governments that are experiencing financing woes.”
    21. MIKE: Having relatives in China, I can vouch for the real estate information in this story. Buying an apartment that’s bare to the walls, with limited plumbing and electrical hookups, leaves you with build-out expenses that approach the cost of the apartment itself. Planning out the spaces is tricky and finding good trade people is challenging. Workmanship is often shoddy.
    22. MIKE: Add to this the percentage of the Chinese economy built around real estate and the massive built-in decline in the Chinese population by the end of the 21^st century, and you get an idea of the long-term problems facing the Chinese economy.
    23. MIKE: There is a lack of adequate social safety nets. Pensions are rarely if ever indexed to inflation. Insurance is an almost alien concept in China, whether for health or liability, so substantial savings are essential. This hampers development of an internal consumer economy, which is essential to growth in the absence of an export-driven economy.
    24. ANDREW: We discussed a story on the real estate situation in China on an earlier show, and I saw one point on social media later that I kicked myself for not having thought of during the show. Yes, falling apartment and home prices will mean losses for Chinese families who have invested in real estate, and that’s not a good thing. But it will also mean that housing is more affordable, especially for first time buyers, many of whom will be of working age. If working-age people have a secure home, they will have more time and energy to look for a good job, and if they have both a secure home and a good job, they’re more likely to start a family, which would help make the upcoming demographic cliff not quite so steep.
    25. ANDREW: I think cutting interest rates will synergize with falling housing prices to provide a potential path to stabilization for the Chinese real estate sector. But I doubt that the sector will recover to the point it was at in 2016, the article’s point of comparison. Other sectors are going to have to come in and fill that space, and cutting interest rates could make that happen. If loans are less expensive and so many apartments and new houses are as unfinished as you say, there could be more money left over in homebuyers’ wallets for those build-out costs, creating more demand for construction trades, helping the construction industry weather this storm. Lower interest rates could also mean more business loans are taken out and more businesses could be founded, creating more jobs and expanding other economic sectors. It might not be to the same proportions as we would see from the same policy in the US, considering state-run enterprise is such a significant portion of the Chinese economy. But there are private businesses in China, and even new state enterprises would create more jobs.
    26. ANDREW: More spending on social safety nets would also undoubtedly help avoid this same situation in the future, though Xi’s narratives on welfare, if accurately represented by the article, are disconcertingly similar to what some US conservatives are saying (one might say China and the US aren’t so different after all). I therefore wouldn’t expect the social services budget to increase very much in the near future. Though I believe there is at least one viable path to normalizing China’s real estate sector and avoiding major economic collapse, without increasing spending on social services, I believe that path will be unnecessarily harder on the average Chinese citizen. I hope there can be enough popular will to change Xi’s mind on this.
13. In an entirely different vein:
14. Extreme Heat Pushes US Airlines to Shed Fuel, Limit Passengers; By Mary Schlangenstein | BLOOMBERG.COM | July 22, 2023 at 9:00 AM EDT
    1. High temperatures pounding parts of the US are forcing airlines to adjust operations in the hardest-hit cities, reducing fuel or baggage — and in some cases shedding passengers — to help aircraft operate.
    2. Allegiant Airlines, a unit of Allegiant Travel Co., said it will delay flights if there’s a threat to passenger safety or comfort as temperatures in the US Southwest continue to hit records. In Las Vegas, where Allegiant is based, excessive heat advisories have been extended through Sunday, and temperatures have been above 100F (38C) since June 30, according to National Weather Service data.
    3. High temperatures make air less dense, reducing engine performance and the amount of lift produced at a given speed. That generally means lower takeoff weights and longer takeoff distances are needed to produce sufficient lift. As a result, carriers are having to reduce pounds on the planes.
    4. On July 17, several Delta Air Lines Inc. passengers voluntarily got off a flight from Las Vegas to Atlanta after aircraft weight issues in the heat caused delays. …
    5. Planes are hooked up to external cooling units when they’re at gates, but extreme heat can overcome their ability to work well. Once they leave the gate, in most cases air sucked into the engines is cooled and then circulated in the cabin, a system that’s not ideal when a plane is idled on a tarmac.
    6. American Airlines Group Inc. said it is taking extra steps to make sure it has cooled air on jet bridges hooked to planes. American also performed early maintenance on auxiliary power units that run onboard systems when engines are off, Chief Executive Officer Robert Isom said on a Thursday conference call. …
    7. Delta, American and United Airlines Holdings Inc. said that airport ramp workers, baggage handlers and others laboring outside are getting more frequent breaks, additional water supply, access to shaded areas or air conditioning and cooling towels.
    8. The heat has persisted for weeks and is expected to continue through the weekend for much of the US Southwest. In addition to Las Vegas, where the high soared to 116F (47C) on July 16, Phoenix hit 119 on July 19 and 20, and has seen temperatures above 100 since June 14. …
    9. MIKE: We are now seeing global warming having tangible impacts on our daily ways of life, over and above rising sea levels. Rising see levels seem less immediately threatening to most people, but persistent temperatures over 100^o or 110^oF …? That’s something people notice.
    10. MIKE: My wife’s return flights from Europe were all delayed, probably from the heat’s effects on air travel physics.
    11. MIKE: With temperatures over 100 degrees here in Houston, I did some errands and tasks that required nothing more than 3-1/2 to 5 hours, mostly in air-conditioned stores and my car. When I was finally done and got back inside my house, I was soaking wet, and my face was flushed red.
    12. MIKE: I hadn’t experienced anything like that since my days as a window covering installer, when I would spend hours driving, working in mostly air-conditioned homes, and shlepping stuff in and out in the heat for 8-10 hours in a day.
    13. MIKE: Granted, I’m 40 years older now and not in the physical condition I was then, but it was quite a reminder.
    14. MIKE: Climate change is caused by global warming. What we are experiencing now is the global warming part, in spades. Maybe that will light a metaphorical fire under enough voters and government officials to help take actions to mitigate global warming before parts of the Earth become literally uninhabitable.
    15. ANDREW: One would hope, but I fear that US electoral politics won’t be moved much by a little thing like reality. I think the public is plenty ready for major climate action, considering that an April 2023 Pew Research report found that 54% of all US adults view climate change (Pew’s words, not mine) as a major threat. I say the problem is that the Democratic and Republican parties are too focused on their own finances to fight global warming like the public wants. 
    16. ANDREW: Slowing down oil and gas production would buy us all a little more time, but would mean those companies have less profit to spend on (mostly Republican) party donations. Reducing energy consumption across the entire economy would stave off apocalypse even longer, but the financial sector doesn’t like when the Line Goes Down, and both parties would lose a much larger gravy train (thanks, OpenSecrets).
    17. ANDREW: I think there are currents in both parties to reject large-dollar donations, which if successful, would undoubtedly help move the needle in favor of the change we need to save our skins. But I think the duopoly turning their backs on their corporate masters is about as likely to happen as an outsider party that has already agreed never to take corporate money suddenly winning a majority in Congress. But if we don’t laugh, we’ll cry, and if we don’t hope, we’ll despair, so I’ll keep sending my small-dollar donation to one of those outsider parties and crossing my fingers.

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