#aei

[blasteffect]

The LISA

The Lisa (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) mission, led by ESA (European Space Agency) with NASA contributions, will detect gravitational waves in space using three spacecraft, separated by more than a million miles, flying in a triangular formation.

Lasers fired between the satellites, shown in this artist's concept, will measure how gravitational waves alter their relative distances.

AEI/MM/Exozet

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Don Moynihan at Can We Still Govern?

The Tocquevillian view that civil society, including it’s associations, are essential bulwarks to protect democracy is such well-worn truism as to be incontestable.

Or so you would have thought. But we live in an age where serious people, serious advocates of free speech mind you, are very anxious to shut down such speech they disagree with. They are not just happy to lobby government to use its power to shut down such speech, but are entirely indifferent to grotesque hypocrisies as they use their own speech rights to silence others. Trump and his supporters are already threatening civil society with investigations, lawsuits and intimidation. In the aftermath of student protests, leaders of higher education are increasingly retreating to a position of “institutional neutrality.” Studied indifference to the issues of the day makes a great deal of sense for those seeking to manage organizational reputation and avoid blame, but it is a less than inspiring vision as higher education as a set of institutions willing to speak truth to power.

The right wing wants to go further, and is now targeting professional academic associations from making public statements. The American Enterprise Institute is leading the charge. A recent report presents it as a scandalous that many academic associations have made some sort of statements about race, affirmative action, climate change, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Israel-Hamas, or immigration. To be more precise, AEI views such actions as problematic because “these statements almost uniformly reflect progressive orthodoxy” and it calls on government to not allow public funds to allow people to join professional associations.

This idea might seem outlandish, but it was featured in some of the standard right wing locations, such as The College Fix, The Washington Examiner, and The Wall Street Journal. And we are in a moment when Republican officials are looking for ideas to undermine academic freedom. So, if you are an academic, or just a citizen uncomfortable with the idea of silencing some very specific associations because of the content of their speech, you should be worried about this.

I want to address this attack on professional associations on three levels. First, the basic logic that AEI is proposing is simply false. Second, it is not based on any true defensible principle beyond “free speech for me, but not for thee.” It is a call for government to target speech by associations that AEI disagrees with. And third, it is massively hypocritical. AEI, and other organizations trying to silence professional associations are doing precisely what they say should be forbidden: taking taxpayer dollars to engage in issue advocacy.

[...] First, academic associations have professional expertise on certain topics. And because those associations are centered on scholarly values, that expertise is usually anchored in legitimate scientific values. You can find exceptions, of course, but when the American Political Science Association talks about democracy, or when environmental associations weigh in on climate change issues, you should probably listen to them. On their domains of expertise, they are more likely to be credible relative to AEI or other associations that present themselves as engaging in research, but whose activities are heavily tilted by an ideological lens. [...]

Second, academic associations are representative organizations. They are typically run by elected officers who seek to represent the views and interests of their membership. The structures of our institutions is inherently more democratic than, say, the structure of the AEI or other think tanks, which are necessarily more responsive to donors and partisans. We hear from individual members who express concerns on certain issues. It is incredibly rare for an association to engage in a public statement without prior pressure from their membership, or at least without the knowledge that the vast majority of their members share the expressed views. Again, this is perfectly Tocquevillian.

In some cases, the concerns members raise are not about abstract political values but about how public policies directly affect them. For example, members of an association might raise a concern about hosting events in states they can be prosecuted for going to the bathroom, or where they cannot count on reliable health care if their pregnancy runs into trouble. Academic associations are increasingly global, and US immigration policies can directly affect their ability to participate in their profession. For example, AEI singled out the American Statistical Association for raising concerns about President Trump’s travel bans from majority Muslim countries. Is this unreasonable? Not really if you consider that “one out of nine ASA members resides outside the U.S.” This is a straightforward case where associations are drawing attention to how a policy decision directly and negatively affects its membership. After all, what is the point of being a member of a professional association that refuses to represent you?

Don Moynihan with a banger of a piece on academic freedom.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Kevin (KAL) Kallaugher

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

June 23, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUN 24, 2024

On Thursday, Moody’s Analytics, which evaluates risk, performance, and financial modeling, compared the economic promises of President Joe Biden and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump. Authors Mark Zandi, Brendan LaCerda, and Justin Begley concluded that while a second Biden presidency would see cooling inflation and continued economic growth of 2.1%, a Trump presidency would be an economic disaster.

Trump has promised to slash taxes on the wealthy, increase tariffs across the board, and deport at least 11 million immigrant workers. According to the analysts, these policies would trigger a recession by mid-2025. The economy would slow to an average growth of 1.3%. At the same time, tariffs and fewer immigrant workers would increase the costs of consumer goods. That inflation—reaching 3.6%—would result in 3.2 million fewer jobs and a higher unemployment rate. 

Trump’s proposed tariffs would not fully offset his tax cuts, adding trillions to the national debt. 

Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, said that Trump’s tariff policy “would be bad for workers and bad for consumers.” Chief Economist of Moody’s Analytics Mark Zandi said: “Biden’s policies are better for the economy.”   

In the New York Times today, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, the president of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute at the Yale School of Management, debunked the notion that corporate leaders support Trump. Sonnenfeld notes that he works with about 1,000 chief executives a year and speaks with business leaders almost every day. Although 60 to 70 percent of them are registered Republicans, he wrote, Trump “continues to suffer from the lowest level of corporate support in the history of the Republican Party.”

Among Fortune 100 chief executives, who lead the top 100 public and private U.S. companies ranked by revenue, Sonnenfeld notes, not one has donated to Trump this year. 

While they might not be enthusiastic Biden supporters, unhappy with his push to enforce antitrust laws and rein in corporate greed, the president has produced results they like: investment in infrastructure, repair of supply chains, investment in domestic manufacturing, achievement of record corporate profits, and transformation of the U.S. into the largest producer of oil and natural gas in the world. 

In contrast, they fear Trump. The populist plans that thrill supporters—like hiking tariffs and taking financial policy away from the independent Federal Reserve Board and putting it in his own hands—are red flags to business leaders. Such positions have more in common with the far left than with traditional Republican economic policies, Sonnenfeld says. Those policies reflect that Trump has surrounded himself with what Sonnenfeld calls “MAGA extremists and junior varsity opportunists,” while the more senior voices of his first term have been sidelined. 

On Saturday, Trump spoke in Philadelphia with a message that The Guardian’s David Smith described as “light on facts, heavy on fear.” He appears to be trying to overwrite his own criminal conviction with the idea that Biden’s immigration policy has brought violent undocumented migrants to the United States, creating a surge of crime. He told rally attendees that murders in their city have reached their highest level in six decades, while in fact, violent crime in the city is the lowest it’s been in a decade. 

In February, Trump pushed Republican lawmakers to reject a strong bipartisan border bill so he could use immigration as his primary issue in the election. That focus on immigration was key to the rise of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán to power, and it is notable that Trump’s picture of the United States echoes the rhetoric of the authoritarians hoping to overturn democracy around the world.  

On Friday, during a podcast hosted by venture capitalists, Trump blamed Biden for starting Russia’s war against Ukraine by calling for Ukraine’s admission to NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that resists Russian aggression. This statement utterly rewrites the history of Trump’s support for Russia’s annexation of the same Ukrainian regions it has now occupied: as Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort testified, the Kremlin helped Trump’s 2016 campaign in exchange for the U.S. permitting Russian incursions there.

More significant in this moment, though, is that Trump, who is running to become the leader of the United States, is siding against the United States and parroting Russian propaganda. Mark Hertling, a retired lieutenant general of the United States Army who served for 37 years and commanded U.S. Army operations in Europe and Africa, wrote: “This statement is—to put it mildly—stunningly misinformed and dangerous.”

Trump told host Sean Spicer that the U.S. is a “failing nation,” claiming that airplane flights are being delayed for four days and people are “pitching tents” because their flight is never going to happen. In reality, as Bill Kristol pointed out, with 16.3 million U.S. flights, 2023 was the busiest year in U.S. history for air travel, and the cancellation rate was below 1.2%. This was the lowest rate in a decade. 

Trump is insisting at his rallies that crime is skyrocketing under Biden. In reality, crime rose rapidly at the end of Trump’s term but is now dropping. From 2022 to 2023, according to the FBI, the only crime that went up was motor vehicle theft. Murders dropped by 13.2%, rape by 12.5%, robbery by 4.7%, burglary by 9.8%. The first quarter of 2024 showed even greater drops. Compared to the same quarter in 2023, violent crime is down 15.2%, murder down 26.4%, rape down 25.7%, robbery down 17.8%, burglary down 16.7%. Even vehicle theft is down 17.3%. 

Trump’s negative picture might play well to his die-hard supporters, but portraying the U.S. as a hellscape has rarely been a recipe for winning a presidential election.

President Biden and Trump are scheduled to debate on Thursday, June 27, and Trump’s team is trying to lower expectations for his performance. He became so incoherent in Philadelphia that the Fox News Channel actually cut away while he was talking. The Biden-Harris team has taken simply to posting Trump’s comments, prompting Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo to note: “It’s pretty bad when one candidates rapid response account just posts the other guys quote verbatim with no explanation at all.”

After months of insisting that Biden is mentally unfit, now Trump and his surrogates are saying Biden will perform well in the debate because he will be on drugs. There is no evidence that Biden has ever used performance-enhancing drugs, but curiously, Trump’s former White House physician Ronny Jackson (whom Trump repeatedly misidentified as Ronny Johnson last week) gave Fox News Channel host Maria Bartiromo a very detailed list of drugs that could sharpen attention and clarity. One of the ones he mentioned, Provigil, was on the list of those widely and improperly distributed by the White House Medical Unit in the Trump White House. 

Jackson said that he was “demanding” that Biden take drug tests before and after the debate. A White House spokesperson responded: “[A]fter losing every public and private negotiation with President Biden—and after seeing him succeed where they failed across the board, ranging from actually rebuilding America’s infrastructure to actually reducing violent crime to actually outcompeting China—it tracks that those same Republican officials mistake confidence for a drug.”

With the evaluation that Biden is better for the economy and Trump’s apocalyptic vision of the U.S. is not based in reality, it jumps out that on Thursday, a filing with the Federal Election Commission showed that the day after a jury convicted former president Donald Trump on 34 criminal counts, billionaire Tim Mellon made a $50 million donation to one of Trump’s superpacs. Since 2018, Mellon has contributed more than $200 million to Republicans, giving $110 million to Republican candidates and funding committees in the 2024 election alone. He has also given $25 million to independent candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. 

In a 2015 autobiography, Mellon embraced the old trope that “Black Studies, Women’s Studies, LGBT Studies, they have all cluttered Higher Education with a mishmash of meaningless tripe designed to brainwash gullible young adults into going along with the Dependency Syndrome,” saying that food assistance, affordable health care “and on, and on, and on” had made Americans on government assistance “slaves of a new Master, Uncle Sam.” “The largess is funded by the hardworking folks, fewer and fewer in number, who are too honest or too proud to allow themselves to sink into this morass,” he wrote. 

It is this trope that the Biden administration has smashed, returning to the idea that the government should answer to the needs of all its people. The last three years have proved the superiority of this vision by creating a roaring economy; rebuilding the country’s infrastructure, supply chains, and manufacturing; cutting crime rates, and reinforcing international alliances. 

As Dan Eberhart, a Republican donor and chief executive officer of the energy company Canary, told Wall Street Journal reporter Tarini Parti about Mellon: “He’s clearly terrified of Biden remaining the president.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[rad-is-more]

cute not so secretly tattooed guy

[hakunakii]

however, SECOND DRAMATIC REVEAL:

in retrospect, a great many of those asks were not me, actually

i was just the one talking about your OC, the ones that made no sense were someone else

I KNEW IT

[philwriter-blog]

Harlow manufacturing history

Harlow was a village to the north of the industrial areas of east London and on the London to Cambridge railway. It was chosen as one of the new towns designed to relieve the pressure on greater London. As with other new towns, it sought a spread of industry to avoid the concentration that caused problems in Corby. Although it was not thought suitable for heavy industry, two of its early…

[thenewdemocratus]

President Richard Nixon: The War On Poverty

Source:The New Democrat “The arguments that framed President Richard Nixon’s Family Assistance Plan have wielded tremendous influence over US antipoverty and family policy debates, setting the stage for five decades of policy development that have led us back to a “guaranteed income” through the temporary expansion of the child tax credit in 2021. Today, the US faces a safety-net design that…

[sucka99]

[c0rinarii]

Union yaoi warmup sketches!

[cassandrablah]

So I'm about halfway through book three of the wheel of time right now, and I'm just thinking about the parents back at Emond's Field. Because (spoilers) Mat and Rand's fathers BOTH took a very long and harsh journey all the way to Tar Valon to see if their sons were alive or if any of the other kids were okay, only to be told that they had no idea where they were. I mean think about it.

These people woke up one morning to FIVE of their kids missing after a terrifying raid in the middle of the night, and the only way they were told that they left on their own free will was because at least one of them (I think it was Egwene) left a note. They go through the spring, summer, fall and then the winter and hear nothing. All they know is that their children has been taken by an Aei Sedai and there's a good chance that they won't be coming back. But they still have hope.

So now I imagine all the townspeople having a meeting thinking about what they should do, if they should do anything. Eventually they either decided to send Master Cauthon and Tam out, or they decided to do it themselves. They're farmers. They have no money and Tar Valon is very far. There are Trollocs and dark friends everywhere. They know this because they saw them with their own eyes. But they go anyway because they need to know if their children are okay. We have no idea (at this point) if they ever got into any trouble, or how they were doing on money and food. What we do know is that they got to Tar Valon, saw the Amrilyn Seat, and were told that they had no idea where their sons or the children of their friends were. Can you imagine having to walk away after that?

I know that if I had gone to those lengths, risked everything out of fear for my child, and spent at least a year and a half wondering if they were dead somewhere or brainwashed by these witches, I would have lost my mind. My heart would have broke and I don't think I would have been able to put it back together. Because not only does no one know where they are, but one of the strongest influences in the continent don't know.

I feel so bad for the Emond Fielder's. They just want things to go back to the way they were.

[rad-is-more]

when will they stop doing this to him at finales i swear to god

for the fourth time. Aoi playing the first notes of fitb during Final Melt on his acoustic and realizing his only escape would really be just breaking the damn thing

[sollucets]

@userdramas event 12: loss

Like birds with restless, eager wings That quiver for their flight, The songs I have not sung to you Will wake me in the night.

[bunnakit]

Khaotung Thanawat as Gaipa

{Moonlight Chicken 2023}

[purinkiss]

　　　　　⤷　　　⌅　　　✪ ﹒　🥄ᵎ　　˚ .

[j-the-latter-gay-saint]

just heard brandon sanderson say the name Adolin out loud with his mouth i need someone to hold and comfort me

[0ctazooka]

JANUARY: ASK JEVIL, B.L. RALEIS AND...?

Aeis made and written by @localentertaineraeis (who also wrote for Jevil)