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Comparing drug patent linkage in China and the US – Lexology

Posted on December 14, 2021 by Danzig

Drug patent linkage originated as an innovation from the 1984 Hatch-Waxman Act in the US. It refers to (1) procedurally linking the approval of the sale of a generic drug and its patent validity review; and (2) functionally linking the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The system effectively provided legal solutions to potential patent infringements before the generic drug launches into the market.

Jumping ahead to 1 October 2017, Chinas general offices of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council called for exploring drug patent linkage and lowering the patent infringement risks of generic drugs with their Opinions on Deepening the Reform of the Evaluation and Approval Systems and Encouraging Innovation on Drugs and Medical Devices, aiming to incentivise generic drug development.

In October 2020, the linkage system was formally introduced into the fourth amendment to Patent Law, an upper-tier law in Chinas legislative hierarchy. On such basis, the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) and China National Intellectual Property Administration issued the Measures for Implementation of the Mechanism for Early Settlement of Drug Patent Disputes (interim) on 4 July 2021. The following day, the Provisions on Several Issues concerning the Application of Law in the Trial of Civil Cases involving Patent Disputes Related to Drugs of which Applications for Registration are Filed and the Administrative Adjudication of the Mechanism for Early Settlement of Drug Patent Disputes were released by the Supreme Peoples Court and CNIPA, respectively. Thus, drug patent linkage was implemented throughout administration, lawsuit and administrative adjudication.

By comparing the drug patent linkage systems in China and the US, this article will hopefully prove insightful to our colleagues in the industry.

Patent classifications

Registered drug patents in the US can be classified into drug substance (active ingredient) patents, drug product (formulation and composition) patents, and method-of-use patents.

In China, a drug can be patented as a chemical drug, traditional Chinese medicine or a biological product. Chemical drugs may be further registered as pharmaceutical active ingredient compound patents, pharmaceutical composition patents containing active ingredients, or patents for medical use. As the matter of stay period and exclusivity period below does not apply to traditional Chinese medicine or biological products, this article will focus on drug linkage differences between China and the US in terms of chemical drugs.

Patent declaration

Paragraph II certification in the US means that a patent has expired in spite of its inclusion in the Orange Book, FDA's Approved Drug Products with Therapeutic Equivalence Evaluations.

Class two declaration, Chinas equivalent of the above, means that the patent relating to the drug which is imitated included in the registration platform has been terminated or declared invalid, or that the generic drug applier has obtained the relevant implementation license from the patentee.

Duty of notification and limitation of action

Paragraph IV certification in the US requires that the generic drug applier must notify the patentee and the marketing authorisation holder within 20 days from the acceptance of application. The patentee and holder may file a lawsuit at the court within 45 days of receiving the notification.

Under class four declaration, Chinas equivalent of the above, the NMPA should make a public announcement within 10 working days after accepting a generic drug application, and the applier should submit the declaration and its basis to the marketing authorisation holder, who is entitled to file a lawsuit at a court or apply for administrative adjudication by the CNIPA within 45 days from the announcement date.

Dispute resolution

Generic drug patent infringement is determined via judicial proceedings in the US, while application for patent invalidation may be submitted to a court or the USPTO.

In China, generic drug patent infringement can be determined by court via judicial proceedings or by the CNIPA via administrative adjudication. Patent invalidation, on the other hand, must be submitted to the CNIPA.

Stay period

In the US, a stay period of 30 months will be imposed by the FDA if the patentee or the marketing authorisation holder files a lawsuit within the limitation of action. Stay period can only be ordered once and may be shortened or prolonged by the court.

In China, after receiving a notification of case initiation from the court or a copy of CNIPAs notice of acceptance, the NMPA will impose a nine-month stay period.

Exclusivity period

In the US, the first generic drug that successfully challenges the patent and launches into the market is entitled to a 180-day exclusivity period, which will be invalidated if the first applicant:

Exclusivity period in China is 12 months, but cannot exceed the patent term of the challenged drug. The conditions for losing exclusivity remains a vacant spot in Chinas regulations pending future complementation.

Our thoughts

Chinas drug patent linkage system mirrors the US framework, but also deviates from it where the national situation calls for such a change. For instance, given that China is currently short in new drugs, first generic drugs are given preferential treatment, such as shorter stay period and longer exclusivity, to encourage their earlier launch.

It should be mentioned that Chinas drug patent linkage system is still in a nascent stage, with more refined and detailed provisions on the way. We look forward to seeing the new system evolve in future practices.

Comparing drug patent linkage in China and the US - Lexology

Rockford Black Lives Matter case over bond hearings is now in hands of US Court of Appeals – Rockford Register Star

Posted on December 14, 2021 by Danzig

CHICAGO Oral arguments were heard Tuesday in the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals regarding eight Black Lives Matter protestersarrested and jailed beyond 48 hours aftera 2020 demonstration in Rockford.

The plaintiffs were arrested on a Friday evening and held for three days without bond hearings, a common practice in Winnebago County because there is no weekend bond count.

The defendants' attorneys said the Fourth Amendment does not guarantee an individual the right to a bond hearing within 48 hours.

The plaintiffs' attorney, Adele Nicholas, a Chicago-based civil rights advocate, argued that the lack of weekend and holiday bond hearings in Winnebago County results in unreviewed, extended detentions and violates the Fourth Amendment.Reached after the hearing Tuesday, she called Winnebago County an "outlier."

Nicholas noted Cook County has court 365 days a year.

"If you get arrested on Christmas Eve, you get a hearing to determine whether you should be released on bail the next day," she said. "It's not really controversial that that's the appropriate process in almost all jurisdictions."

She added, "Winnebago County's procedures put people at very serious risk of losing their jobs, their income and not being able to take care of their families for no reason other thanWinnebago has deemed it more convenient to only have court on regular business days."

The plaintiffs are:Dylan Mitchell,26;Dayna Schultz, 23;Ivan Holland,25; AndrewEhrhardt,23; and Jaylen Butler, 20, all of Rockford; Ross Wagner,35, of Madison, Wisconsin;Larissa Walston,23, of Loves Park; and Michael Riggs,20, of South Beloit.

Previously: Protesters have spent 100 days outside Rockford City Hall, and they have no plans to leave

Many of the protesters, if not all, participated in one of several civil rights protests held in Rockford and around the country after the May 25, 2020, death of George Floyd, a manwho died after a Minneapolis, Minnesota, police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

Once the plaintiffs appeared appeared the following Monday before a judge, they were released on their own recognizance.

The plaintiffs' initial filing was dismissed by the district court, which noteda judge signs a probable cause statement within 48 hours.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs arguethe judge does so without the accusedor their attorneys present makingtheprobable cause hearings"constitutionally inadequate" because they deny people who could be released on bail the opportunity to request release within 48 hours.

Photos:Images from four months of protests in Rockford

The defendants are 17th Judicial Circuit Court Chief Judge Eugene Doherty,Sheriff Gary Caruana and Winnebago County.

Doherty is being represented by the Illinois Attorney General's Office. The county is being represented by the law firm of Hinshaw &Culbertson.

Michael Iasparro, a Hinshaw & Culbertson attorney, notedthe district court judgedetermined there is no constitutional right under the Fourth Amendment to abail hearingwithin 48 hours. He is hopeful the U.S. Court of Appeals will rule likewise.

"There'sa presumption of constitutionality if there is a finding of probable causefor somebody arrested without a warrant made by a judge within 48 hours," he said, "but that's never been extended to the right to a bail hearing under the Fourth Amendment."

There is no date by which the court must rule on the case.

Chris Green: cgreen@rrstar.com; @chrisfgreen

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Rockford Black Lives Matter case over bond hearings is now in hands of US Court of Appeals - Rockford Register Star

Man convicted of raping two lifeguards appeals to Va. Supreme Court over DNA collected from drinking straws – WTOP

Posted on December 14, 2021 by Danzig

The man charged with raping two lifeguards at deserted pools in Northern Virginia is challenging the method by which police identified him as a suspect, in an appeal to Virginia's Supreme Court.

A Virginia man whos serving 65 years in prison for brutally raping two lifeguards in Alexandria and Fairfax County will ask Virginias Supreme Court to overturn his convictions, based on the way he was caught.

On Tuesday, attorneys for Jesse Bjerke will ask the commonwealths highest court to throw out his 2020 conviction and sentence for attacking lifeguards at deserted pools in Fairfax in 2014 and Alexandria in 2016.

The focus of the appeal, filed by Bjerkes attorney Christopher Leibig, challenges the constitutionality of the way detectives used familial DNA analysis to confirm Bjerke was the man who raped the lifeguard in the Alexandria attack. The same analysis was later used to link Bjerke to the earlier Fairfax County rape.

In 2019, genealogy researchers used public databases to link DNA recovered from the victim in the 2016 attack to a member of Bjerkes family.

While tailing Bjerke to an Old Town restaurant, detectives picked up two drinking straws Bjerke had used, after he tossed them in the garbage.

The straws were submitted to Virginias Department of Forensic Science, which developed a DNA profile from the straw. The findings enabled police to get an arrest warrant for Bjerke, who was unaware police considered him a suspect.

After his arrest, a buccal swab of Bjerkes DNA was analyzed, and matched the DNA found on the victim, according to prosecutors.

While not challenging the DNA findings, Bjerkes attorney has said police should have gotten a search warrant before submitting the straws for DNA analysis.

During trial and in his appeal, Leibig disagreed with rulings that said detectives could analyze DNA recovered from a discarded straw in the same way they can search for clues and evidence in garbage left outside a persons home.

In his petition to Virginias Supreme Court, Leibig said while courts have upheld the constitutionality of investigators harvesting evidence, including fingerprints from discarded garbage, Bjerkes case is different.

We leave traces of our genetic identity everywhere we go. These genetic traces, all of them capable of conveying extensive private information about us, are not abandoned in any traditional sense. These invisible troves of information are necessarily and unintentionally left behind. They can be easily collected, Leibig said.

Leibig argues a search warrant should be required before investigators can analyze DNA in the same way a search warrant is required before police can analyze the contents of a legally seized cellphone.

While cutting-edge technology is often used in law enforcement, Leibig says courts are often asked to set limits on whether usage violates a persons constitutional rights against unreasonable search and seizure.

It necessarily take a while for issues like this to work their way through courts, Leibig said.

Although police can lawfully follow people on a public street, Leibig said over time courts re-evaluate the reasonable expectation of privacy standard.

It was clear that people in society found the idea of GPS monitoring of the totality of their movements by the government substantially intrusive, and far different from being followed down the street in person, wrote Leibig.

In his conclusion, Leibig asks Virginias Supreme Court to address the issue, and overturn his clients conviction: At the present time there is no binding Virginia precedent about the Fourth Amendment implications of warrantless DNA testing of genetic material unintentionally shed in public.

Man convicted of raping two lifeguards appeals to Va. Supreme Court over DNA collected from drinking straws - WTOP

We Hear You: Parents Must Fight to Save Public Schools – Daily Signal

Posted on December 14, 2021 by Danzig

Editors note: The Daily Signals audience sounds like its had enough with parents being marginalized or criminalized as the left seeks to transform public schools. Heres a sampling from the mailbag at [emailprotected]Ken McIntyre

Dear Daily Signal: It was appropriate for conservative congressmen such as Rep. Jim Jordan to grill Attorney General Merrick Garland during a House hearing, as reported by Mary Margaret Olohan (3 Takeaways From AG Garlands House Panel Testimony on Virginia School Rape Case, Conflict of Interest).

But now that conservatives have shown the attorney general to be so irresponsible as to encourage his agencies of law enforcement to go after parents over school board disputes, based solely on a partisan National School Boards Association letter, among other serious issues (such as his willful ignorance about the school rape case in Loudon County, Virginia), wheres the follow-up?

The GOP caucus should be filing forand loudly and unceasingly demandingGarlands impeachment. Of course, the effort would likely fail. But what better tool to focus national attention on the Justice Departments weaponizing of legitimate protest?Joel Brind, Ph.D., Wappingers Falls, N.Y.

Dear Daily Signal: Where to start with Fred Lucas report on the attorney generals testimony to a Senate committee (6 Takeaways From Merrick Garlands Senate Testimony on Activist Parents and Other Issues)?

First, why is a threat, if any, against a local school board member a federal offense that requires involvement of Attorney General Merrick Garlands Justice Department and FBI? That seems to me to be a matter that can and should be investigated by state or local law enforcement.

I would argue that Garland is badly abusing his authority by getting involved in this issue. There is a disturbing trend, to elevate every dispute at local levels to a federal issue. Its not the responsibility of the federal government.

Riots, looting, and other violence in various areas of the country were ignored by the feds last year, and federal involvement was condemned for those serious crimes. Yet this is a federal issue? I think not.

Second, I understand from Lucas report that Garland and his Justice Department approved a settlement with former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe because it was less expensive. The attorney general excuses rewarding a lawbreaker at taxpayer expense for expedience?

I would think the Justice Department attorneys involved in such a case are on the government payroll whether litigating against McCabe or working on some other issue. So the taxpayer expense for those lawyers is exactly the same regardless of the case at hand.

McCabe successfully got away with the serious crime of repeatedly lying under oath. That seems to me to be a precedent that future criminals might employ; it is a dereliction of duty on Garlands watch and perhaps by Garland himself.

I could go on, but Garland is a disgrace to our nation as a partisan attorney general. I echo Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark.: that Thank God that Garland is not on the Supreme Court.Wayne Peterkin, Evangeline, La.

***

The Justice Department can move at glacial speed on most things, but interestingly, as your Problematic Women podcast points out, the agency hopped on this issue like a scalded jackrabbit (National School Boards Association Issues Weak Apology for Letter Likening Parents Actions to Domestic Terrorism).

The damage done by this hasty overreaction was immediate. The National School Boards Association never will recover the trust of parents in the institution of education. They dug their own grave.

Unfortunately, its future generations of young people who will suffer the most in this.Emily Smith, Mississippi

Dear Daily Signal: Thank you for Mary Clare Amselems well-written commentary article (Virginia Parents Standing Up to Loudoun County School Board Should Inspire Parents Everywhere). She touched on many of the key points that concerned parents are standing up to discuss regarding their childrens education.

Amselem does an excellent job of reminding us that the concern is not limited to critical race theory or woke ideology in schools, but also the push to accept any and all forms of transgender opinions, pornographic materials, and so on.

She correctly uses examples in a noninflammatory manner to remind us all that our children, their education, upbringing, and welfare belong to us and not the state.In a frightening but true observation, she writes that the left has come to embrace the troubling perspective that children are partially owned by the state.

It is important for parents (and school boards) to remember the key point in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, the Supreme Court case she cites from 1925: The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize him and prepare him for additional obligations.Chuck Williams, Littleton, Colo.

***

Name one company in which the executive who authorizes employees paychecks is not allowed to tell employees what he/she expects from them. Yet school boards are telling parents they have no right to say what they want from their childrens education.

School boards do not pay teachers salaries. That money comes from citizen taxpayers.

Im one of those taxpayers. Im retired, but Ive taught in public schools. I have a masters degree in education. In the first parents night visit, I always outlined my teaching goals and I invited parents to be involved in what they wanted their children to learn.

At the time, I was a member of the National Education Association. That was back when the NEA was concerned about improving the quality of education, a goal that no longer exists for that teachers union.

I grieve over what has become of our nation, especially the government. I applaud parents who insist on being involved in their childrens schools and education.D. Michael Douglas, Mesa, Ariz.

Dear Daily Signal: I have never responded to one of your articles, but read them diligently.I am appalled by Mary Margaret Olohans report on the behavior of the school board in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and its inclusion director, Charmie Curry (Lawsuit Targets Massachusetts Public School System for Racial Segregation, Censoring Students).

Honestly, that officials title seems to apply only to certain groups.I was also surprised that the language associated with being white was so demeaning. If I were to use this type of language to describe another group, I would be characterized as bigoted, racist, and insensitive. I would agree with that assessment.

However, it seems that these educators and inclusion personnel are not held to the same standard.I do not feel particularly angry, fearful, or guilty.So far today, I have managed to not cry once.

What I am, however, is distrusting.If an individual such as Curry behaves in such an egregious manner, I find that I avoid them. In all aspects of my life.

It is disappointing that during the last decade, the racial divide in our country has continued to expand.I am unsure of the solution, as it is a complicated issue. However, negative labeling and insulting terms are not going to provide any opportunity for compromise and healing.Mac Irwin, Bedford, Texas

Dear Daily Signal: About Mary Margaret Olohans report on the rape in a girls restroom at a high school in Loudoun County, Virginia: I was very naive to believe that the #MeToo movement truly cared about victims of sexual abuse and assault (#MeToo Groups Silent Over Boy Allegedly Raping Girl in Loudoun School Girls Bathroom).

If these organizers truly cared, they would be outraged that transgender individuals or those who claimed to be transgender to gain access to vulnerable women and girls were attacking girls and women.Nancy Mclellan

***

The #MeToo movement has done much damage to many men, who have lost jobs with even a hint of some infraction.

Then to hear of the lack of outrage when two young girls are sexually assaulted by a gender-fluid male is unbelievable. Add insult to injury that the Virginia father of one of the girls is arrested and charged when the Loudoun County Board of Educationwould not listen to him.

What father would not be distraught that his daughter had been raped?

Biological males have no place in female bathrooms, locker rooms, or prisons. Furthermore, they do not belong in womens sports. When is common sense and real science going to reassert itself?Victor Watson

Dear Daily Signal: Amy Swearers article on the Supreme Courts New York state gun case was excellent (Supreme Court Arguments in New York Gun Case Signal Uphill Battle to Defend Overly Restrictive Laws).

One thing I always wondered about is why, in analyses,the Second Amendment isnt also tied to and further strengthened bythe Fourth Amendment (on being secure in ones person), the Ninth (on rightsretained by the people), and the 10th (on rights retained by the people).

Isnt self-defense, with or without a militia, a fundamental right retained by each person? Why, even animals have it.

The Second Amendment also is supported by documents such as the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1777), also incorporated in the Virginia Constitution, including: That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

In Samuel Johnsons Dictionary, first published in 1755, his first definition for man includes both men and women. Its as if at that time they knew the truth even though society practiced male-led government.

Keep up the good work. Hopefully, the Supreme Courtincluding some or all liberal justiceswill join on this to defeat New Yorks taking of constitutional rights.Mark Doehnert, Falls Church, Va.

***

When the Second Amendment is challenged, the defense always advances the argument that the police are all that is necessary to protect the population.

Why is it so hard to get people to understand that the mission of the police is not to keep crimes from happening, but to bring criminals to justice after the crime has been committed? Only potential victims have the ability to stop a crime from being committed.Ronald Everett, Erlanger, Ky.

Dear Daily Signal: Melanie Israels commentary article on the abortion case before the Supreme Court pointed out that the most important aspect is that the Constitution provides for the people to deal with issues such as abortion through their elected representatives (A Major Abortion Case Goes Before the Supreme Court. Heres What You Need to Know.)

Americans do so in their own state legislatures, and it isnt constitutional for the Supreme Court to usurp their authority under states rights to do so.

I think the American public needs to be reminded of that often. Then the public could keep reminding the Supreme Court justices, and perhaps others in government, who either are ignorant of that fact or intent on ignoring it.Barry Click, California

Douglas Blair contributed to this edition of We Hear You. The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.

We Hear You: Parents Must Fight to Save Public Schools - Daily Signal

The Latest Breakthroughs In The Battery War – OilPrice.com

Posted on December 14, 2021 by Danzig

With the global electrification drive in full swing, electric cars have constantly been improving in terms of mileage, performance, charging time - and costs. And, Wright's law has so far proven to be right. According to Wright's Law, aka the learning curve effect, lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery cell costs fall by 28% for every cumulative doubling of units produced. The battery pack is the most expensive part of an electric vehicle, and the sticker prices of EVs have been falling along with declining battery costs. By 2023, the cost of Li-ion batteries is expected to fall to around $100/kWh - low enough for EVs to achieve price parity with their gas-powered brethren.

Still, Li-ion batteries come with a suite of clear disadvantages. Capacity and ability to deliver peak charge deteriorates over time; they bleed a lot of heat and require weighty cooling systems to be integrated into their design, and the batteries can explode or catch fire if damaged in an accident thanks to the flammable liquid they contain.

Over the years, scientists have been returning to the drawing board and have redesigned the original li-ion battery to overcome some of these shortcomings.

From graphene-based energy storage and lithium-ion batteries with water to cheaper sodium-based batteries and solid-state batteries, here are the latest advances in battery technology.

#1. Non-Flammable Graphene-Based Battery Packs

Ultrathin, incredibly strong, superconductive, cheap - and impossible to use. Those are some of the traits of graphene, the gee-whiz nanomaterial that was supposed to forever change the face of materials science as we know it. Yet, save for a few novel applications, the graphene promise has mostly remained mere hype 16 years after two Manchester University professors first figured out a way to extract it from graphite.

But that has not stopped starry-eyed scientists from touting a graphene superbattery that can charge faster, holda lot more power, and cost a fraction of conventional lithium batteries.

And, finally, one little-known company has turned this dream into reality.

Los Angeles battery startup Nanotech Energy has announced that it will start taking pre-orders for its high-performance, graphene-based, non-flammable, lithium-Ion battery packs that promise to provide safer and more powerful energy storage than traditional lithium-ion battery packs.

Nanotech's new batteries are powered by the company's graphene-based electrodes and proprietary non-flammable electrolyte Organolyte and can be fully customized to fit any form factor or container, thus eliminating the need for OEMs to redesign existing products or compromise new ones. These non-flammable battery packs can be used to power electric vehicles, bikes, consumer electronics, military equipment, and other electrified devices.

"Battery storage has yet to reach its potential--until now. Unlike traditional battery packs that pose serious fire risks, Nanotech Energy's non-flammable lithium-ion batteries are intrinsically safe and environmentally-friendly, which we believe will inspire more industries to switch from gas to electric. Ultimately, our batteries will enable faster adoption by significantly decreasing the amount of time and accumulative costs OEMs currently incur related to testing and integrating new battery technology," Dr. Jack Kavanaugh, Chairman, CEO and co-founder of Nanotech Energy, has said in a press release.

Nanotech Energy was recently honored with a CES 2022 Innovation Award for its non-flammable, Graphene-Organolyte batteries

#2. Lithium-ion battery with water

The risk of fires or explosions due to manufacturing defects, damage, or thermal runaway is an Achilles heel for li-ion batteries. In recent years, several automakers, including General Motors, Audi, and Hyundai, have recalled electric vehicles over fire risks and have warned of the associated dangers.

Thankfully, researchers have now developed a prototype lithium-ion battery that uses water as an electrolytic solution, replacing a flammable organic solvent.

In an abstract published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, a team of scientists has developed a prototype that achieves "higher ionic conductivity, environmental benignancy, and high safety."

The battery's major drawback: a lower performance level and can only be used in lower-voltage conditions.

The Asahi Shimbun has shared more details about the new aqueous battery:

[Scientists] discovered that using a molybdenum oxide for the negative electrode can achieve performance levels required for practical use. Even after the battery was recharged 2,000 times, its capacity dropped by less than 30%.

As water is broken down when high voltage is applied, the prototype battery can be used only in lower voltage conditions in comparison with batteries based on the organic solvent.

Its weight energy density an indicator of battery performance is about half the level of a conventional product, which means a larger body size is essential to produce a battery with the same capacity.

The water battery's lower weight energy density means it might not be readily applicable for long-range EVs but can still be useful in short-range EVs as well as solar and wind energy storage.

#3. Cheaper sodium batteries

In yet another battery breakthrough, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have developed a new sodium-based battery material that is highly stable and capable of recharging as quickly as a traditional lithium-ion battery.

For about a decade, scientists and engineers have tried to develop sodium batteries that replace both lithium and cobalt used in current lithium-ion batteries with cheaper, more environmentally friendly sodium. Unfortunately, earlier versions of sodium batteries have been plagued by needle-like filaments called dendrites that grow on the anode and cause the battery to electrically short and even catch fire or explode.

However, the latest sodium battery by the University of Texas at Austin solves the dendrite problem and recharges as quickly as a lithium-ion battery.

"We're essentially solving two problems at once. Typically, the faster you charge, the more of these dendrites you grow. So if you suppress dendrite growth, you can charge and discharge faster, because all of a sudden it's safe," David Mitlin, a professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering's Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Research Laboratory, has said.

#4. GM Edges Closer to Solid-State Battery After POSCO Deal

Over the past decade, EV makers have been touting solid-state batteries as the next breakthrough in EV technology, often quoting insane performance and range. Solid-state batteries use a solid electrolyte that can take the form of ceramics, glass, sulphites, or solid polymers as opposed to the liquid or polymer gel one found in conventional lithium-ion batteries.

Solid-state batteries promise some 2-10 times the energy density of lithium-ion batteries of the same size, thanks mainly to the solid electrolyte having a smaller footprint. That means more powerful batteries without extra space, or more compact battery packs without compromising on power, longer-range electric cars, and lighter EVs. They are also expected to charge faster.

Back in September, the world's largest automaker, Toyota Corp. raised the stakes after announcing its intention to invest over $13.5 billion by 2030 to develop next-generation batteries, including solid-state batteries.

The Japanese automaker says it aims to reduce the cost of its batteries by 30% or more by working on the materials used in manufacturing batteries and also by improving power consumption.

And now another ICE giant is betting the farm on solid-state technology.

Last week provided the clearest sign that General Motors has a solid-state EV battery up its sleeve after it hooked up with the Korean firm POSCO Chemical to build a new battery factory in the United States. The new factory will produce material for GM's much-heralded Ultium energy storage platform. Although Ultium energy is not a solid-state battery, the new partnership indicates that GM is edging closer to a solid-state battery.

Last spring, GM announced a joint agreement with lithium-metal firm SES (formerly Solid Energy Systems), marking a series of lithium-metal partnerships it has struck up in recent years

GM holds nearly 100 patents (49 granted and 45 pending) of its own in lithium-metal technology, and it was an early investor in SES.

By Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com

The PopuList

Posted on December 14, 2021 by Danzig

Home

The PopuListoffers academics and journalists an overview of populist, far right, far left and Eurosceptic parties in Europe since 1989.The PopuList is supported by the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, the Amsterdam Centre for European Studies, The Guardian, and the ECPR Standing Group on Extremism and Democracy.

The PopuList dataset has been used in numerous publications in academic journals and public media.

Vote shares of populist, far-right and far-left parties (+ combinations weighted by population size)

You can inspect the data through:

The full dataset (including borderline coding and links to ParlGov, Manifesto Project and Partyfacts) can be accessed via the following files:

The old version of The Populist (version 1.0, January 2019) can be accessed here.

If you make use of The PopuList, please refer to:

Rooduijn, M., Van Kessel, S., Froio, C., Pirro, A., De Lange, S., Halikiopoulou, D., Lewis, P., Mudde, C. & Taggart, P. (2019). The PopuList: An Overview of Populist, Far Right, Far Left and Eurosceptic Parties in Europe. http://www.popu-list.org.

Matthijs Rooduijn, University of Amsterdam (contact m.rooduijn@uva.nl for questions, comments and suggestions); Stijn van Kessel, Queen Mary University of London; Caterina Froio, Sciences Po; Andrea Pirro, Scuola Normale Superiore; Sarah de Lange, University of Amsterdam; Daphne Halikiopoulou, University of Reading; Paul Lewis, The Guardian; Cas Mudde, University of Georgia; Paul Taggart, University of Sussex.

This website is maintained by Philipp Mendoza

See more here:

The PopuList

Farmers and the defeat of populism – The Indian Express

Posted on December 14, 2021 by Danzig

(Written by Javed Iqbal Wani)

In the past year, farmers have demonstrated the force of popular determination against an arrogant and defiant government. The farmers movement has proved that the revolutionary spirit of the peasant had not diminished with the arrival of new networks of capital. It has established that peasant consciousness in the country remains intellectually sharp, socially sensitive and politically militant. As opposed to the image of the peasant as a marginal figure in history, the recent farmer protests have proved that they remain very much central to the discourse of democracy in India.

The tone of the Prime Ministers address on November 20, 2021, while announcing the decision to repeal the three farm laws highlighted his uneasiness with farmers victory and laid bare his refusal to admit that their perseverance has crumbled his pride. The Prime Minister has time and again resorted to imagery of the ascetic (faqir) to make his political posturing acceptable to a wider public. He aspires to gain a superior moral authority to conceal the shortcomings of his myopic politics. His reference to his own politics as tapasya (devotion/penance) requires some probing. When a government with all the power and authority at its disposal fails to crush a democratic and popular movement, it speaks volumes of the discipline and dedication of the movement. In the spirit of democracy and justice, it was the farmers whose protest deserves to be called a tapasya, because it brought back many foregone frameworks of inclusive and democratic politics in the face of various hardships. As opposed to riots becoming an increasingly dominant expression of collective action in India, the farmers movement made rights and inclusion in democratic decision-making the source of energy for itself. Against endless negative propaganda, police brutality, and shaming in the name of a religion, the farmers stood firm and responded with clarity, sincerity and steadfastness.

It is pertinent to note that the revolutionary spirit of the farmers was registered by the ruling dispensation as reactionary and anti-national only a little while ago. It is an improvement that the Prime Minister has recently declared them vacuous. His recent address declaring the repeal of the three farm laws put the onus of misunderstanding on farmers. If one pays attention to the layers of the Prime Ministers political message, his delayed apology does not appear to be aimed at addressing the suffering of the farmers but to make palatable the inability of his political power to achieve its goal. However, in the end, the determination of the democratic and popular outran the arrogance of those in power.

The farmers have instilled our confidence in some of the forgotten lessons in popular politics. The authority of the people never gets exhausted by the government. Governments tend to see popular protests as politically unsavoury and unjustified. However, popular politics unravels collective responsibility because it demands a response from the people, civil society, and the state. It provides agency to democracy because it makes the democratic and popular active rather than just being there, dependent on an institutional outside that is increasingly controlled and partial to the ruling dispensation.

As opposed to an increasing trend of populist politics which is inward-looking and exclusionary in nature, democratic politics is outward-looking and not threatened by inclusion. In fact, inclusion is the ethic of democratic politics. Mere dependence on jingoist nationalism where defining, classifying, humiliating, and exterminating imagined threats is the primary agenda leads to the obfuscation of real challenges that the polity faces. Popular democratic uprisings, in contrast, challenge ethnic visions of a nation, confront the narrow view that only unidirectional movement of institutional decision-making deserves legitimacy. Democratic politics steer the discourse back to the people by way of questioning legitimacy and authority and celebrating diversity and difference. On November 27, 2021, with the passing of the Farm Laws Repeal Bill, 2021, and the various subsequent written assurances from the government on the critical issue of MSP and protection from punitive measures against protestors, the farmers victory was etched in the annals of history. By ensuring the repeal of the three farm bills, the farmers have done a great service (seva) to the nation not only by saving the peasantry but democracy itself. The protesting farmers at Delhis borders and elsewhere have returned to their homes, leaving behind an assurance in the end, democracy has defeated despotism.

(The writer is currently an assistant professor at Ambedkar University, Delhi)

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Farmers and the defeat of populism - The Indian Express

French Populist Eric Zemmour Vows ‘We Will Not Let Them …

Posted on December 14, 2021 by Danzig

French populist and media pundit Eric Zemmour announced his presidential campaign and did so with fiery rhetoric taking aim directly at the ongoing war against Western Civilization.

I have decided to take our destiny in my hands. I have decided to run in the presidential election, Zemmour said in a video officially announcing his candidacy.

It is no longer the time to reform France, but to save it, he added, bemoaning the fact that native Frenchmen no longer recognize [their] country.

Zemmour has risen in popularity due to his bold and brash brand of politics and is now seen as the biggest threat to replace globalist French President Emmanuel Macron in next years election.

We must give back the power to the people, take it back from minorities that oppress the majority, he said.

Zemmour also said words harkening to the Great Replacement, which was for years dismissed as a racist conspiracy theory but is now rapidly coming to fruition throughout Europe.

We will be worthy of our ancestors. We will not let them dominate us, subdue us, conquer us, colonize us. We will not let them replace us, he said.

His full announcement, which is rapidly going viral despite suppression by YouTube, can be seen here:

Big League Politics has reported on the growing awareness among the French of the Great Replacement that is clearly underway:

A new pollhas shownthat more than six in 10 Frenchmen realize that the great replacement is underway to destroy their nation through demographics.

The survey demonstrated that 61 percent of French people believe that European, white and Christian populations [are] threatened with extinction following Muslim immigration, from the Maghreb and black Africa. Additionally, 67 percent of the French are worried about this occurring.

This is bad news for the globalists and good news for populist upstarts in the country. They are using these results to show the demand for new political leadership in France that will stand up to the third-world migrant invasion.

National Rally member of parliament Jean-Lin Lacapelle said: The Great Replacement is a fantasy for a large part of the political class, but a reality and a concern for a large majority of French people. [] Act or disappear!

An additional member of parliament from the National Rally, Nicolas Bay, wrote on Twitter that the Great Replacement is a reality experienced and suffered by many French people, and a legitimate concern for the majority of them.

Zemmours candidacy may pose a major threat to the globalist establishment as the public sours on their project to remake the countries of the world through migration.

Support Big League Politics bymaking a donation today.You can also donatevia PayPal,Venmoordonate crypto.Your support helps us take on the powerful and report the truth that the mainstream media wants to silence.

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French Populist Eric Zemmour Vows 'We Will Not Let Them ...

Presidential Election of 1896 – 270toWin.com

Posted on December 14, 2021 by Danzig

The United States presidential election of November 3, 1896, saw Republican William McKinley defeat Democrat William Jennings Bryan in a campaign considered by historians to be one of the most dramatic and complex in American history.

The 1896 campaign is often considered by political scientists to be a realigning election that ended the old Third Party System and began the Fourth Party System.[1] McKinley forged a coalition in which businessmen, professionals, skilled factory workers and prosperous farmers were heavily represented; he was strongest in the Northeast, Upper Midwest, and Pacific Coast. Bryan was the nominee of the Democrats, the Populist Party, and the Silver Republicans. He was strongest in the South, rural Midwest, and Rocky Mountain states.

Economic issues including bimetallism, the gold standard, free silver, and the tariff, were crucial. Republican campaign manager Mark Hanna pioneered many modern campaign techniques, facilitated by a $3.5 million budget. He outspent Bryan by a factor of five. The Democratic Party's repudiation of the Bourbon Democrats (their pro-business wing, represented by incumbent President Grover Cleveland), set the stage for 16 years of Republican control of the White House, ended only by a Republican split in 1912 that resulted in the election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson. Although Bryan lost the election, his coalition of "outsiders" would dominate the Democratic Party well into the twentieth century, and would play a crucial role in the liberal economic programs of Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson. McKinley did win, and his policies of promoting pluralism, industrial growth, and the gold standard determined national policies for two decades.

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Presidential Election of 1896 - 270toWin.com

Geographies of Populism and the End of the Afghanistan War – Telos Press

Posted on December 14, 2021 by Danzig

The stunning end to the twenty-year war in Afghanistan with an unambiguous defeat has had little consequences in American domestic politics. To be sure, the final rout may have contributed to President Bidens decline in public opinion polls, but there are plenty of other reasons for that. The end of the Afghanistan War, surely a matter of historical import, just disappeared into the news cycle. After the lives lost, the resources wasted, and the ideals betrayed, one might expect the political class to pay attention and to demand accountability. Yet no one seems to notice.

Such an accounting could take the form, for example, of congressional hearingsbut instead Congress prefers to rehash the sad political circus of the January6 riot. It has no time for the two decades in Afghanistan, telling evidence of our legislators priorities. Instead of congressional hearings, a special commission might be convened, serious and bipartisan, such as the one that followed on 9/11. No one is taking this road either. Enormous expenditure of resources and a defeat clearer even than the exit from Vietnam, and Washington doesnt care. The impassioned call by Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller has not been heeded; on the contrary, he was punished for making the suggestion. It is as if the war were already well on the way to being forgotten by an amnesiac political culture at large. At least the veterans, their families, and the families of soldiers who lost their lives will remember.

The congressional avoidance is the most salient piece of evidence of a general cultural repression that deserves closer scrutiny. It involves more than the standard marginality of foreign policy for the domestic public. Member of Parliament Tom Tugendhat has addressed the problem in terms of a lack of patience, a mindset that helps us understand the eagerness to end the so-called endless war. But there is another, perhaps deeper connection between the Afghanistan defeat and contemporary American politics. The impatience with the duration of the commitment in Afghanistan and the perplexed relationship to the distinct features of its culture are indicators of aspects of contradictions in American society and in Western modernity more broadly. Two commentaries by French geographical thinkers, Fabrice Balanche and Christophe Guilluy, have been translated and juxtaposed on this site. Taken together, their focus on space and culture sheds important light on these matters.

Balanche proceeds from the material priority of the geographical terrain in Afghanistan, a country defined by its steep mountains and valleys that have produced a society of compartmentalized ethnicities and tribes, while also posing genuine physical challenges to any invading force. It is this physical and existential reality of Afghanistan that, he argues, was largely ignored by American and Western military planners, as well as by the Soviet occupation effort before them. The aspiration for any homogenizing polity of equal rights, the core ideal of modernity, turned out to be a bad fit for the conservatism and regionalism of the Afghan condition. One might wish that it would be otherwise; one might wish that that the effort to establish a regime of democracy and liberty had succeeded. That emancipation project is what the mission in Afghanistan grew into, after it expanded by mission creep beyond the initial goal to defeat al-Qaeda. The ideals of that modernization and democratization are hard to dismiss. They evidently were not achieved.

Balanche attributes this defeat to a structural ignorance on the part of the planners, who remained separated from the material and cultural reality of the place. They had little appreciation for the facts of life on the ground, for the difficulties of the terrain and the recalcitrance of the culture. Instead they engaged in an abstract projection of Western ideals onto a very foreign arena, both physically and culturally. Given their training and mindset, the planners operateso Balanche argueswith the assumption of a global uniformity of space, devoid of particularity, and they therefore do not take into account the radically heterogeneous conditions of the distinct situation in which they hope to operate. For Balanche this is not only a problem with regard to the Wests inability to understand Afghanistan, but one that is symptomatic of the Western approach to a much wider swath of the Middle East and Central Asia, where the lifeworlds of the population are rooted in diversities that the universalism of modernity discounts. Instead that modernizing perspective treats local culture exclusively as an obstacle to be excised in order to establish a universal regime of liberalism, regardless of the local will.

Guilluy in contrast takes us to one of the paradigmatic sites of contemporary modernity, analyzing socio-economic transformations in France and their geographic expression. His approach overlaps with Balanches account in bringing a spatial-geographic perspective to bear. He describes the metropolitan centers, foremost among them Paris of course, but the other major cities as well, as real estate from which the middle and working classes have largely been expelled, a long-term process of systematic gentrification. After the exile of the popular classes, the inhabitants who remain are the well-salaried bourgeoisie, some slightly to the left, some to the right, in either case well off. These are, for Guilluy, the core base of the political support for Emmanuel Macron. Nearby but safely separated from them live the large populations of immigrants who find their livelihoods in service positions for the wealthy. The traditional French middle and working classes have had to migrate to the peripheries of the country, outside of the French metropoles but also away from those regions that the wealthy have selected for their second homes, especially along the coast. An extensive deracination has taken place. This displacement fed into the populist revolt of the Yellow Vest movement and continues to motivate the far-right electorate. It is often the traditional working class or its children that has migrated from the left to the right, as globalization pushed employment opportunities overseas. They voted for LePen in 2017, and Guilluy predicts that they will vote similarly in 2022, as we still await the selection of candidates.

Against this background, Guilluy details the geographical tension between metropolitan center and the French periphery. To be precise, for Guilluy it is not only genuine location that counts, i.e., measurable distance from a metropolitan center, but rather the distance from integration into the neoliberal model of economic globalization, which has its winners and its losers. And the winners in globalization cannot help but rub salt in the wounds of the losers, declaring them deplorable.

Balanche and Guilluy approach two very different contexts, and there are important differences in their methodologies, but they agree in their central account of a binary structure of spacethe showcase city of Kabul versus the deep Afghanistan valleys, the opulence of the center of Paris in contrast to the degraded periphery with its decaying regions. This is not only a matter of parallel bifurcations; these are genealogically the same bifurcation, to the extent that the abstract universalism that the West attempted to impose on Afghanistan is cut from the same cloth as the liberal globalism of the metropolitan economic model that Guilluy associates with Macronism. (To be sure, the features of cultural conservatism associated with the French periphery are hardly identical to the conservatism of the Afghan countryside, although both stand in important proximity to the category of tradition: the spatial divide maps onto the difference between abstraction and particularity, or between progress and tradition.)

The similarity of these parallel analyses points us back to our initial question: the connection between the disinterest in the Afghanistan defeat and the politics of contemporary American society. The familiar opposition of the American coasts and flyover country is effectively identical to Guilluys contrast of cities and periphery in France. Metropolitan universalism is based on an abstract liberalism that is impervious to the lived experience of a countrys population, held in disdain because it clings to traditions, or at least is treated as if it does. Power, wealth, and what is valued as intelligence are concentrated in enclaves, and what lies beyond is left to decay. The same abstraction that, according to Balanche, could not grasp the geographical particularity of Afghanistan recurs in the metropolitan disdain of the domestic hinterland. This is where the connection to the American situation becomes clear. The political choice to forget Afghanistan is the same as the disregard for the expanses between the coasts. The politics that holds deplorables in contempt is the same politics that does not want to examine its own culpability in the war. This refusal to face up to the war and its lessons will further embitter the domestic conflict between liberalism of the metropoles and the populism of the periphery.

Despite the polls, a centrist could win Colombia’s election in May – The Economist

Posted on December 14, 2021 by Danzig

Dec 11th 2021

SEVERAL RECENT elections in Latin America have seen the collapse, or at least the defeat, of the moderate centre. It was true of Chiles presidential election last month, of Perus earlier this year and of those in Brazil and Colombia in 2018. Will it be true of the next big election in the region, in Colombia in May? There are reasons to think that, in this case, a victory for the centre would not just be especially beneficial, but also that it might come about.

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That is not the conventional forecast. Many analysts believe that next years contest will be a repeat, in reverse, of the previous one. In a run-off in 2018 Ivn Duque, a protg of lvaro Uribe, a former president of the populist right, defeated Gustavo Petro, a populist of the left, by 56% to 44%. In a poll of voting intentions by Invamer, published this week, Mr Petro is way out in front with 42%, ahead of Sergio Fajardo of the centre-left (with 19%) and a host of also-rans. Mr Petro would easily defeat any opponent in a run-off, the pollster thinks.

Mr Duque won in 2018 because of fear of Mr Petro, a former guerrilla who was a fan of Hugo Chvez in Venezuela. But he also benefited from Mr Uribes campaign against a peace agreement in 2016 that ended half a century of war between the state and the FARC guerrillas. The centre was identified with the accord, which many Colombians thought too lenient. It was hurt, too, by a failure to unite behind a single candidate. That allowed Mr Petro to pip Mr Fajardo, an academic and innovative former mayor of Medelln, by just 250,000 votes (out of more than 19m) to reach the run-off.

This time Mr Petro looks stronger than in 2018. Mr Uribe is not the force he once was. Mr Duques government has been mediocre and is unpopular, and was shaken by weeks of strikes and sometimes violent protests earlier this year. With no serious rivals on the hard left, Mr Petro has spent the past four years campaigning. A former senator and an undistinguished mayor of Bogot, he has very simplistic ideas but he works politically very, very hard, says Malcolm Deas, a British historian of Colombia. Several opportunistic political hustlers of the right have declared their support for his candidacy because they think he will win.

But it is early days. According to the Invamer polls fine print, 43% of respondents have yet to declare a preference. Mr Petro still scares many middle-class voters. The centre looks more organised than in 2018. Mr Fajardo and five other candidates of the centre-left have formed a Coalition of Hope and agreed to face each other in a primary in conjunction with the legislative election in March. On the centre-right the Coalition of Experience unites five presidential hopefuls, including several former mayors, in a similar primary. Mr Uribes nominee, scar Ivn Zuluaga, who lost the 2014 election, may or may not join them. But he is a weaker candidate than Mr Duque was. Miguel Silva, a political consultant, reckons around 14m Colombians will choose to vote in one of the simultaneous primaries and expects these to be divided roughly equally between hard-left, centre-right and centre-left. That could change the momentum of the race.

The run-off is thus likely to pit Mr Petro against a candidate either of the centre-right or centre-left. This time the peace agreement is unlikely to be a big issue. Colombians hate the FARC but they like peace, says Mr Deas. They want a new political agenda. That could involve security against criminal gangs, better public education and a return to economic growth (something Mr Petros protectionism and his opposition to mining and oil are unlikely to achieve).

So the centre has an opportunity. To seize it requires not just a clear programme but a break with the unpopular status quo and connecting emotionally with Colombians. Mr Uribe mobilised fear of the guerrillas; Mr Petro channels the kind of rage against the establishment that was expressed in the protests.

In a recent book Mauricio Garca Villegas, a Colombian political philosopher, argues that his countrys long history of armed conflict has been driven by a political culture which exalted tribal emotions, of nation, party, class and religion, which turned adversaries into enemies and in which we tend to disqualify too easily those who think differently. In Colombia, he concludes, the real contrast is not between the radicals of each extremebut between these and the moderates. To prevail, the centre will have to tap into more peaceful emotionsof unity, solidarity and hope for a better future.

Read more from Bello, our columnist on Latin America:

Politicians are sparring over colonial history in Latin America (Dec 4th)Latin America waits for tourists to return (Nov 27th 2021)Will electoral defeat favour moderation in Argentina? (Nov 20th 2021)

This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline "Between hope and experience"

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Despite the polls, a centrist could win Colombia's election in May - The Economist

Economics, Finance, Populism, and the Fed: An Interview With David Bahnsen – Foundation for Economic Education

Posted on December 14, 2021 by Danzig

The idea that there ain't no such thing as a free lunch is old and familiar, but like so many popular sayings, its unclear where the phrase originated.

While economist Milton Friedman is often credited as the man who popularized the ideathe notion that free lunches dont actually exist because someone always paysthe adage appeared in Robert Heinleins 1966 science-fiction novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress nearly a decade before Friedmans 1975 book featured it in its title. (The phrase is actually the title of Book 3 in Heinleins work, for which he received the Hugo Award in 1967.)

Historians, meanwhile, say the phrase had been around for decades prior to Heinleins book. Whatever its origins, the idea that theres no free lunchthat everything has an opportunity costis one author David Bahnsen says humans have not learned very well.

For this reason, Bahnsenchief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group, a National Review contributor, and FEE supporterfeatured the concept in the title of his own economics book: There's No Free Lunch: 250 Economic Truths, released on November 9.

I recently sat down with Bahnsen to discuss his book and a range of economic subjects, including financial markets, cryptocurrencies, and the key to addressing poverty.*

Q: In the introduction of your book, you say many of the problems permeating economic teaching today stem from a flawed definition of what economics is. So lets start there. What is economics?

I define economics as the study of human action around the allocation of scarce resources. I think you get two components that are both individually well regarded as part of economics. Theres obviously a strong relationship between human action out of the Austrian tradition. And the idea of the allocation of resources being fundamental to what we mean as far as household management has a tradition going to Plato and Aristotle.

I like to blend those two ideas together. It captures the humanity of economics and the incentives in economics. In this definition you wont find anything that can be reduced to a formula or a mere econometric analysis. The focus is much more on the human person, and much less on mathematics.

Q: You mention Plato and Aristotle. In your book you collected some of the most timeless economic insights in human history250 quotes, to be precise. How relevant are these ideas today?

I personally believe that they are more important now than they ever have been. There is a certain timelessness to a lot of the wisdom that some of the great classical economists shared. Obviously you can go back to scholastics and the ancients from Aquinas to Augustine to Aristotle and Plato. There are certain nuggets of wisdom and truth there, but I mostly focused my attention on the classical economists.

Theres a lot on Adam Smith, a little from David Ricardo and Jean-Baptiste Say and some highly regarded 19th-century economists. But even as you come into the 20th century, whether its Milton Friedman or the supply side contemporaries like Art Laffer and Bob Mundell who recently passed awayeven guys like Mises and Hayek havent been gone that longthere was a time when these guys were all winning Nobel Prizes in economics.

Now the Nobel methodology has changed completely away from praxeology and the logic of human action to model-driven economics. I think its bad for the profession of economics, its bad for the academic discipline, but its even worse for the laymen and their understanding of how economics affects the real world because it strips out the wisdom of the masters.

And thats why I wrote the book and centered it around some of their foundational truths.

Q: You're considered one of the best financial advisors in America by Barrons, Forbes, etc. What do you make of financial markets right now?

I definitely believe that were living in a timewe have been for a while and likely will for some timethat were going to have to deal with the good and the bad of the Federal Reserve playing such a prominent role in the economy.

This was always one of the dangers of the monetarist school. Fundamentally, the monetarist always invited a higher role for the Fed into the economy, and we kind of have gotten it. More than just their administration of the money supply by their control of the interest rate, the Fed now has become a sort of mitigator of business cycle risks. When I look at financial markets now, I think thats mostly what were dealing with.

Why are equity market multiples at 22x or 23x earnings? Why is the 10-year bond rate at 1.5 percent, and why are investors totally okay with that? Why are real-estate investors willing to buy very significant real-estate investments for a 3 percent cap rate?

These things all seem quite expensive. But they are all done with a repricing of risk, and that repricing of risk is a byproduct of a Federal Reserve put [a put, referring to a put option, is a financial contract that allows the owner to mitigate risk]. We used to talk about a Greenspan put in the stock market, but I dont think thats adequate anymore. I think its become much more comprehensive. There is an expectation the Fed will be there to smooth out any disruptions that take place in the business cycle.

I think thats something investors have to understand. Theyre not getting the price discovery F.A. Hayek wrote about. Theyre not getting the clean allocation of capital Id like to see as an investor.

Now, I also dont want to bet against the Fed. I dont say this to take a blindly pessimistic position. We have to invest for what is, not what we want it to be. But we also have to recognize this is inviting a high degree of malinvestment and misallocation of resources. This requires us to be more prudent and more diligent in the projects we choose to invest in on behalf of our clients.

Q: You say there are major trends in economics today that should be resisted. One is the trend of collectivism as a means of alleviating poverty and inequality. Can you elaborate?

The left-wing risk is relatively well known. A greater invitation into socialism or quasi-socialism. A higher role of the central planner in the economy. But right now a lot of the right-wing populism were seeing is inviting a certain amount of authoritarianism. I think its doing it out of frustration. Theres a culture war issue, as well as cronyism and the way things are playing out in the economy.

Rather than attack subsidies and the regulatory apparatus, many have said if you cant beat em join em. That we need Big Government to work for us instead of them. Im concerned about that approach. When you have a good aim in mind and go about it with bad means, it usually doesnt work out very well.

My fear right now is that the populist economic ethos is going to embolden and empower the central planner. Its going to embolden and empower the collectivist.

My hope is that some of the principles Im inviting people to rediscover in the book can be persuasive. What we need to do is dig in our heels more around the principles of a free society we believe in, and not concede by just trying to switch the uniform of authoritarianism.

Q: I live in the Twin Cities. Minneapolis and St. Paul, like many other cities, recently raised the minimum wage. They also both passed rent control measures. Minimum wage laws. Rent control. Are these effective ways to fight poverty?

No, they are horrible ways to fight poverty. And the reason is explained through the principles that I believe need to be at the foundation of our economics. The knowledge problem leads to a significant distortion in the economy because we ask someone who doesnt have full knowledge of time and place circumstances to set prices.

When we set prices in a transaction, we take what could take place on a voluntary basis under a precondition of freedom, and we make it happen on an involuntary basis. That takes away clarity. It takes away price discovery. It takes away freedom. It takes away incentives for further developers. It could give false signals to produce.

If one believes that prices, including the price of rent, are packets of information, then rent controls take away information. And because I believe the greatest wealth-building activities in history come about by us adding information and knowledge and ideas to raw materialsthats where I believe wealth creation comes fromby distorting knowledge I think we effectively suppress the creation of wealth.

I believe that the intent of a lot of the policymakers is good, but I believe that free exchange in the economy will lead to the right calibration of supply and demand to set prices in a way that meets the needs of humanity. The government intervention is not just unnecessary, but counterproductive.

Q: Once upon a time this was basically Economics 101, wasnt it? So why are these policies coming back? Is it ignorance of economics or is it related more to the populism you mentioned?

The danger of populism is that it lacks a limiting principle. When youre content to work off a playbook of real principles in the way you develop an economic worldview and structure the scaffolding of what you believe as far as social organization, then I think youre less exposed to the arbitrariness of populism, less exposed to the potential abuses.

You say there was a time when this was considered Economics 101. I think its still Economics 101. Its just that some people have decided they dont need Econ 101. Theyll overlook the economic principle on behalf of a desired political aim and what feels right in the moment. Thats by definition what populism is.

Q: You write that class warfare is at an all-time high in the US. Why do you think that is?

If Im giving a gracious and empathetic answer, I think some of it comes down to the cultural ethos in the post-financial crisis. So many did an atrocious job of identifying the players in the financial crisis and providing proper and comprehensive cultural, political, and economic commentary as to what took place in what was the defining economic event of our lifetime.

Because we let others define that moment, were stuck with a narrative of the oppressor and the oppressed out of the crisis. The only difference is many on the right will claim the oppressor was the Fed or Fannie Mae or the government. Many on the left will claim the oppressor was Wall Street or the big banks.

The fact of the matter is we have this environment now where people believe these narratives. If youre 30 years old, your entire adult life has been bookended by the financial crisis and COVID. People see a system that has not worked for a lot of people but does seem to work for others. It exacerbates class aggravations.

Rather than digging our heels in against cronyism, against a relationship between Fannie Mae and K Street, against bailouts, against a monetary policy that serves to boost asset prices, against the subsidization of student loans that gives college administrators a blank check on how they move tuition prices, we saw more of the same.

A lot of frustrations young people have are frustrations I have. But their emotional intuition is to default to something that makes those problems worse, not better.

We have solutions that address what theyre frustrated about. We need to show that human flourishing is enhanced by free enterprise, but that message is not getting through. I blame those of us on the right who do defend free markets; were not defending them well enough.

Q: You bring up young people. They are facing a very different environment than you and I were. Any financial advice for them or tips for living?

I do believe ideologically that young people have been deprived of the ability to learn basic economics, basic finance. I want young people to have a strong self-determination, to believe in self government and the character traits and virtues that are necessary to have a fulfilling and rewarding life.

But when you get to practical finance and engagement with these circumstances, tenacity is the non-commoditized virtue. Young people cant be replaced by a robot who works harder than them. You can always have a work ethic that will make you desirable in the marketplace.

If I can talk to people before they go to college, Id say half of the people spending a quarter-million dollars on an overrated bachelor's degree from an overrated college could rethink that decision. Or at least have a little more specific strategy behind it.

For people who are already graduated or are already in the workforce, I say wealth creation comes from creating more than you consume. That is a tautology that is never going away. That will always be the story of economics, and thats the best way they can apply it to their own lives.

Q: The sustained inflation weve seen in 2021, combined with issues with the supply chain and labor markets, has resulted in a great deal of economic uncertainty. How precarious is the situation right now?

I am of the opinion that a lot of the inflation were seeing right now is heavily supply chain oriented. I think the velocity of the money in supply right now is so low and going lower that we do face a lot of Japan-like deflationary risk.

Its hard to feel that way when prices are doing what you see now, I know. But I think QE and low interests and other distortive measurements of the Fed have a diminishing return for their policy goals. And the excessive government spending has served to take away future growth, so it ends up putting downward pressure on velocity. But then you have an increase in demand for goods and services coming out of COVID, combined with a woeful capacity for productionfrom port disruptions, labor shortages, to the semiconductor problem, which is quite underrated as a problem.

So Im a little less concerned about Milton Friedman-like monetary inflation than I am of voluntary supply-driven inflation because we as a society are not producing the goods and services we need.

Im hopeful some of those things will start to correct. But Im not hopeful that the economic stagnation that theyve created through excessive doses of fiscal and monetary policy is treatable.

Were blessed to have somewhat better demographics, and somewhat better economic organic growth, than Japan. But if were going to continue at halfhalf!of our real GDP growth rate average for another 15 years, like we have the last 15 years, I think its totally unacceptableboth economically and morally. Yet that seems to be in store for us.

Im hopeful we can somehow get back on track, but right now were not even trying to get back on track. Were just debating how much worse we want to make it.

Q: Do you have any thoughts on cryptocurrencies? Are they a hedge against inflation? A revolutionary new form of money? A pyramid scheme built on speculation fed by the Feds money pumping?

I fear that Ill inevitably lose some part of the audience here, because its not a very popular viewpoint right now. But obviously I cant defend it as an inflation hedge when it has no intrinsic value. The argument many of us have made about money and currency for some time has been it has to be a stable medium of exchange. Anything that goes from $60,000 to $30,000 because of a tweet from Elon Musk is probably not a stable medium of exchange.

I think something whose primary utility is for ransomware criminals is probably not a stable medium of exchange. It will grow in its utility, I dont deny that, but fundamentally it doesnt have an intrinsic value. Therefore the question becomes how long regulators will allow it to function the way it does. I dont think that will be very long.

From an investment standpoint, whether or not one believes in the utility of the medium of exchange, why would the value of a coin inevitably go higher? The only answer for that is speculation.

That does make it more pyramid-like in my mind. Never in my investing life have I seen something end well when the majority of people doing it dont know why theyre doing it.

Q: Your book includes quotes from some of the greatest economic thinkers of all time. Mises. Hayek. Friedman. Sowell. Bastiat. Hazlitt. Do you have a personal favorite?

Ive actually been asked this question in other interviews and I have to say the same thing: I just cant pick one. Hayek at some periods of my life was so instrumental in my development. At other periods of my life Milton Friedman was.

In terms of my own sort of anthropology of economics, the way in which I view the human person and how central my belief about humanity is to economics, Im grateful to people like Father Robert Sirico at the Acton Institute. There are contemporaries like that in the book who are at the top of my list.

As far as the subject matter in the book that is nearest and dearest to my heart, it is about human flourishing and establishing our aim in economics. The material and spiritual flourishing which includes abundance, but also peace and balance and joy that the human person can have.

What is the economic structure that can most facilitate that? Thats an entirely different question than saying how can we get everyone to make the most similar amount of money to each other, this obsession with equity and wealth and income inequality. In trying to do economics as social justice, were trying to do something that is neither economic, nor social, nor just.

Q: That leads right into my next question. You write that a materialistic view of poverty alleviation dominates todays culture, one that does nothing to alleviate poverty. Whats a better way?

I believe that the number one thing we need to do when we look to alleviate poverty is, first, we need to define poverty and wealth. If poverty is the opposite of wealth, how do you create wealth?

As I said earlier, you create wealth by creating more than you consume. So do we solve poverty by having no supply-side solution, but only think about wealth redistribution?

My view is we need to focus on wealth creation. In a free society of free exchange where there is true respect for the dignity of the human person, wed never tolerate an approach that treats half of society like they're incapable of being productive, incapable of being creative, incapable of being innovativeand have them live off the largesse of the other half. I think its insulting and dehumanizing.

We want a system that creates more and more wealth creators. That is the solution to poverty. I want more people who produce more than they can consume.

*This interview was condensed and edited for clarity

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Economics, Finance, Populism, and the Fed: An Interview With David Bahnsen - Foundation for Economic Education

Time to get canvassing for the wide world is out there waiting for us – The National

Posted on December 14, 2021 by Danzig

A MAJOR flaw or indeed a huge problem if you prefer, with not having a written constitution to safeguard our liberties is that when a populist administration quite legally gets elected then they can attempt a shut out.

History is littered with such events and quite recent history in particular with the storming of the Capitol Building in Washington by supporters of the American populist president shows just how precious and precarious democracy is and that was a democracy with a written constitution.

So back to the UK and its constitutional monarchy that practises some democratic principles, that does not have the safeguards written in stone, instead we are governed by convention and precedent.

READ MORE:Michael Gove's words on Boris Johnson come back to haunt him

The way I see it is that Boris Johnson is just foolish enough to believe as PM he can do anything, his attempt to illegally shutdown parliament is testimony to that. He is also just the correct kind of egotistical maniac to quickly forget about that and go for the ignoring of law to further his own ideas. Again history is littered with idiots of that type they have all ether ended their time in burnt out capitals or having faced international law and lost faced then the final walk.

So yes Johnson will huff and puff but will his party follow him, will the majority in that Westminster Parliament actually vote for dictatorship?

My gut feeling is they will not, my instinct is that already there will be lines drawn by the backbenchers because there is now I think clear water between the Johnson administration and reality and many of those within the Tory party will not want to be remembered by history for supporting Generalissimo Johnson.

Sure he could disregard the courts placing him and his administration above the law but he would then need the police and the military on his side for that to work and he can barely keep the press on side these days. No, I definitely feel that we are witnessing the last attempts of a very spoiled brat of man child attempting to impose his will on everyone and he is about to get the biggest rebuff since history first started recording rebuffs.

So what of us north of the Rio Tweed? Well for us that are already committed to that second referendum life will not change other than bloggers getting more paragraphs from the Johnson administration sordid actions (it is so easy).

What we will see happen is that those wavering, those as yet undecided, they will start switching to decision mode and in doing so join the ranks of the Yes movement. Again I state they are to be embraced and made to feel welcome as a lot of soul searching will have been done by them, so let us offer that hand of friendship an unconditional hand proffered, it is after all most definitely more than OK to change ones mind.

We have all sorts of polls being published showing voting intentions at the next Westminster elections ranging from 56 to 59 seats being won by the SNP which again should not be happening considering just how long the Scottish National Party have been in power here in Scotland.

If nothing else it does show the divergence in the political roads a divergence that starts at the Rio Tweed even if Westminster manage to reign in, control, or replace Johnson, he or she that follows will still be a Tory and we here in Scotland have had quite enough of them.

For you see in Scotland we have most definitely marked our own cards as being so very different from that rancid organisation beside the Thames and the world is noticing and do you know something else, the world approves.

The world likes this country called Scotland, likes our brand of democracy, likes our brand of government and likes our government. When we come out of winter and into spring and the date of the next referendum is announced then we will see those countries very much in a supportive role because many are thoroughly hacked off with Westminster and have grievances going back decades, centuries and some even count in multiples of centuries.

So in a few months as the sky begins to clear and daylight returns so will the Yes movement returning to our streets with marches, rallies and door to door canvassing.

For myself by that time, I will most definitely be as proactive as possible alongside all the other happy champions, aye champions for that is what each and everyone of us is, we are all champions, all supporters of the Scottish right to self determination.

Our future is bright, Independence is right.Cliff PurvisVeterans for Scottish Independence 2.0

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Time to get canvassing for the wide world is out there waiting for us - The National

Blow up the outside world – newframe.com

Posted on December 14, 2021 by Danzig

Anti-vaccine movements, fuelled by Covid-19 conspiracy beliefs, are a notable political force in 2021. In Europe, the United States and Australia, lockdowns and vaccine mandates have been met with protests often accompanied by violence.

In South Africa, conspiracy beliefs, inflamed by social media disinformation, have substantially contributed to the slow pace of the governments vaccination campaign. Anti-vaccine beliefs have a broad appeal, on a spectrum that includes New Age wellness advocates and conservative Christian ideas about immunisation policies being an attack on both bodily and spiritual integrity.

As noted in medical journal The Lancet, there is a key difference between vaccine hesitancy and outright opposition to vaccinations in general. With the former, people may often be hesitant because of poor experiences with medical systems in the past, but they can be persuaded with education and incentives. In contrast, true believers are fanatical and refuse compromise or discussion.

Different elements of the political right have aggressively capitalised on the proliferation of medical conspiracies. In Europe, far-right political parties such as the Alternative for Germany have courted voters by shifting their attacks from migrants to vaccines and mask mandates. Conspiracy theories have also proved a conduit to even more ideologically extreme far-right groups. Neo-fascists see the crisis as an opportunity to accelerate social tensions and broaden support for their hardline positions.

This is not to say that anti-vaccine beliefs are exclusively the province of the right wing, as there are liberals and leftists who have made badly informed and paranoid statements about them too. But practices like monetising disinformation online and organising street protests have most generally been used by the Right.

Anti-vaccine street protests may often involve only small numbers of demonstrators, but they have been characterised by angry tactics such as direct confrontation with police, brandishing nooses and burning effigies of politicians and medical establishment figures whom the protesters see as conspiring to steal their freedom.

Conspiracy beliefs are constantly in flux, but they have followed a general pattern since the introduction of global quarantines in early 2020. Their supporters believe that Covid-19 is either manufactured or not a serious disease. According to this logic, it was introduced by sinister elites trying to increase their power through fear. In turn, vaccines are considered harmful and claimed to cause other illnesses, while also being used as a cover for expanding state surveillance. Its a heady mix of colliding, contradictory and connected beliefs.

Anti-vaccine beliefs often have anti-authoritarian and anti-systemic elements. Politicians and public health experts are depicted as out-of-touch elitists, and the actions of pharmaceutical companies are questioned because they are believed to be deliberately spreading dangerous and untested vaccines for profit.

Of course, there is nothing intrinsically right-wing about a healthy suspicion of the powerful. Drug companies do indeed act in ways that prioritise profit over human health, with some using their political influence to ensure monopolies on vaccines. Additionally, some politicians have used Covid-19 for self-enrichment, as evidenced by the personal protective equipment tender corruption in South Africa.

But the right wing is not interested in cogent, evidence-based critiques. Instead, anti-vaccine sentiments are defined by a mythic sense of belief, the adherents of which are an elite of individuals who have become aware of the existence of a somehow invisible and yet also ubiquitous new world order.

This supposed new world order is using vaccine mandates to impose a totalitarian, global dictatorship. It is simultaneously capitalist and communist. For example, Bill Gates is seen as both a profit-seeking oligarch and a radical who is trying to abolish private property.

In stark contrast, anti-mask demagogues such as Donald Trump and Jair Bolsanaro are imagined as populist democrats who are resisting sinister elite plots.

Anti-vaccine believers argue that by refusing to be inoculated, they are asserting their own individual freedom and refusing consent to illegitimate authority. But this clearly omits how Covid-19 is a public health crisis and that mass vaccinations are vital to restoring any semblance of pre-2020 normality. By refusing to vaccinate, they are aggressively denying freedom to others and condemning the world to more miserable years of masks and lockdowns.

Adherents of the anti-vaccine movement are themselves helping to sustain a crisis that they claim does not exist. Unsurprisingly, these beliefs often overlap with climate change denial, which itself is perceived as another elite plot.

Anti-vaccine beliefs have a widespread appeal across right-wing politics. In South Africa, it has been embraced by conservative Black Christians and figures in the conspiracist wing of the radical economic transformation kleptocrat faction of the ANC. But, they have also been adopted by outright white supremacists like Steve Hofmeyer and alt-right cartoonist Jerm.

Despite their substantial differences, what unites them is how they belong to what political theorist Roger Griffin calls the populist radical right. Their politics is highly reactionary and driven by a deep sense of mistrust of political and economic elites. They are the authentic people, the legitimate expression of popular democracy. But their definition of the people is highly constrained and based on a bigoted fear of outsiders and difference.

Again, given daily revelations of political and economic corruption and misrule, this mistrust is understandable. But the populist right has no interest in reforming or solving social problems, let alone radically changing the material miseries caused by capitalism and authoritarian state power. Instead, they have focused on scapegoating and denial.

The media conversation on vaccine conspiracy beliefs has been dominated by the question of public education and how to get people to suspend vaccine hesitancy for the social good. In a pandemic, this social outreach is vitally important. But it can occlude how hardline anti-vaccine groups are not really interested in facts or debate their beliefs are primarily emotional, giving expression to deep-seated desires, fear and dangerous levels of anger.

Rather, they are attached to an image of themselves as freedom fighters, engaged in an operatic struggle with nefarious forces of control. They are awake, we sleep. Throughout history, times of plague and crisis have sparked political and religious movements fuelled by similar beliefs.

This sense of looming disaster existed well before the shock of Covid-19. The continuing crises of capitalism, extreme inequality and social hardship and environmental disaster fuel a very tangible sense of pre-apocalyptic fear.

The last period of such sustained global economic hardship and political turmoil was in the 1930s. In that crisis, political organisations like the Nazis based their propoganda on elaborate conspiracy theories about the hidden hand behind both Germany and capitalisms failings. Notably, the Nazis were a relatively fringe organisation until the Great Depression shifted the political landscape in their favour.

Despite substantial evidence that neo-fascists have gained a foothold in the anti-vaccine world, they often frame medical doctors as the real Nazis. And while they share the 20th-century far rights penchant for embracing pseudoscience and fabricating bizarre political fantasies, they are far more individualistic.

Far-right movements of the last century were rooted in extreme nationalism, and much of their appeal was based on a politics of mass collectivity. Faced with the alienation and dislocation of capitalist modernity, fascists offered what philosopher Erich Fromm called an escape from freedom by promising a new world of blood and honour, freed from the burden of personal choice.

In direct contrast, anti-vaccine groups are almost pathologically obsessed with individual freedom. They see no distinction between public health measures and extreme state terror and violence. But they have no interest in protesting against actual civil liberty abuses that have taken place during lockdowns, such as the murder of unarmed civilians by soldiers and the police during the first hard lockdown in South Africa in 2020.

Instead, their vision of freedom is completely solipsistic and disconnected from any kind of social good. Anti-vaccine groups are not protesting because they believe they can overthrow the medical elite they say is ruining the world. Instead, they use demonstrations as a chance to vent personal frustrations and demand that they can get back to shopping without masks.

They believe that all the social and economic crises of today are just hype and demand to be returned to a state of blissful, atomised consumerism. Such extreme narcissism reflects the neoliberal culture that has globally dominated the last half-century.

It has inculcated a harsh world-view that sees society as a battlefield on which there can be no middle ground between the social good and individual freedom. It is the world seen through the darkened windows of a fuel-guzzling SUV and everyone else is either an enemy or a mark to be exploited.

Like a religious cult albeit without a central, domineering leader the anti-vaccine movement combines an often contradictory mix of apocalyptic paranoia and irrationalist denial of scientific reality. Its adherents rage against some aspects of the social system, such as the pharmaceutical companies, but politically support authoritarian capitalism and ultra-nationalism.

Anti-vaccine ideology is dangerous because it connects feral consumerist narcissism with deeply reactionary political organising. It is imperative to understand how these movements think and operate because, if the last century is any guide, we should expect mass right-wing politics to flourish in the declining economic and social conditions of the 2020s.

Chaos, fear, social divisions and a general sense of collapse are historically the radical rights greatest allies, making the late capitalist derangement of the anti-vaccine movement a harbinger of potentially even more extreme political cults in the near future.

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Blow up the outside world - newframe.com

Bob Dole: Veteran, Senator, and Friend to the Second Amendment – NRA ILA

Posted on December 14, 2021 by Danzig

Former Senate majority leader and 1996 Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole passed away December 5 at the age of 98. A World War II veteran who was the recipient of two Purple Hearts and two Bronze stars, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and a five-term Senator from Kansas, Dole served his country with distinction throughout his life.

A quarter century has passed since Dole was in the U.S. Senate, but the freedom he helped secure for law-abiding gun owners lives on. A staunch supporter of the Second Amendment, Dole was instrumental in enacting several pieces of legislation that had a profound effect on gun rights.

Dole was first elected to the Senate in 1968, the same year President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Gun Control Act. In the years that followed, Dole would become one of the GCAs staunchest critics.

Describing his position on the GCA in those years at a 1988 candidates forum, Dole explained,

Simply stated, the legislation placed undue burdens on law-abiding gun owners, thereby diverting law enforcement resources away from real criminals. That, coupled with overzealous enforcement by government bureaucrats, eventually made the need for remedial legislation painfully obvious.

Putting this understanding into action, in 1979 Dole co-sponsored the first version of the McClure-Volkmer bill (the Firearms Owners' Protection Act, or FOPA).

In 1982 Dole secured the first legislative rollback of the GCA. At the time, the GCA required federal licensing for all ammunition dealers and required that a record be kept on all handgun ammunition sales by retailers. The senator sponsored a successful amendment to a trade bill that removed .22 caliber rimfire ammunition from the GCAs dealer ammunition sale recordkeeping requirement. Two years later, Dole offered a successful amendment removing the GCAs restrictions on military surplus imports.

Upon becoming Senate majority leader for the first time in 1985, Dole put FOPA at the top of the legislative agenda, securing passage on July 9 of that year. Writing Dole to thank him for his hard work several days after FOPA passed the Senate, NRA-ILA Executive Director J. Warren Cassidy noted,

all of us here in the Institute will never forget that it was your strong, determined leadership that brought about the passage.

If you had not made it known that you intended to bring that bill to a vote, certain parties both pro and anti gun would have once again blocked any positive action.

The House passed FOPA on April 10, 1986. On April 26 of that year Dole served as the keynote speaker at the 115th NRA Members Banquet at the NRA Annual Meetings. During his speech, Dole made clear his intent to shepherd the vital gun rights bill through final Senate approval. FOPA was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan on May 19. Pursuant to NRA tradition, NRA presented Dole with a well-deserved flintlock long rifle crafted by master gunmaker Cecil Brooks.

[For more information on the important changes to federal law in FOPA, readers are encouraged to study David T. Hardys excellent work on the subject, here and here.]

Doles obvious work on behalf of gun owners did not stop some of the more outspoken within the gun rights community from, at times, finding perceived fault with the senator. Speaking in 1988 Dole explained,

Ive done more than talk about my commitment. Ive done more than give lip service to gun owners rights. Ive made a difference.

All gun owners should be grateful for the tremendous difference Dole made.

Bob Dole: Veteran, Senator, and Friend to the Second Amendment - NRA ILA

Opinion: The real meaning of the Second Amendment remains open for discussion – The San Diego Union-Tribune

Posted on December 14, 2021 by Danzig

Firearms are protected by Second Amendment

Re 9th Circuit upholds large-capacity gun magazine ban (Nov. 30): This decision essentially turns hundreds of thousands of people in California into felons for owning normal gun parts. A magazine is an essential part of a firearm and firearms are protected by the Second Amendment. The ability to defend yourself should not be limited by an arbitrary restriction put in place for political reasons.

Michael SchwartzExecutive Director,San Diego County Gun Owners PAC

The Second Amendment includes the phrases well regulated militia and right to bear arms. According to historians, the phrase to bear arms applies only to the military. Arming oneself can refer to individuals.

If courts believe the Second Amendment applies to individuals, then taken literally it means individuals have the right to any weapon considered arms by militaries, e.g., hand grenades, 50-caliber armor-piercing machine-guns, flame throwers, etc.

If courts rule one can only own guns for self-defense, then an assault-style rifle by its very name is not for self-defense.

Americans own more guns than any other advanced democracy and have a high murder rate, and almost every day there is another random attack in schools. Historically, several Supreme Court justices have stated, The Constitution is not a suicide pact. But the individual interpretation of the Second Amendment seems to contradict them.

Joel A. HarrisonNorth Park

Opinion resources

The U-T welcomes and encourages community dialogue on important public matters.

Opinion: The real meaning of the Second Amendment remains open for discussion - The San Diego Union-Tribune

Second Amendment victory | News, Sports, Jobs – Williamsport Sun-Gazette – Williamsport Sun-Gazette

Posted on December 14, 2021 by Danzig

The verdict came in and Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty on all charges as he should I might add.

This is truly a victory not only for Kyle Rittenhouse but also for our Second Amendment.

That young man shouldve never been arrested, charged and tried to begin with after viewing all the video that was available.

The D.A. was withholding evidence and I believe produced a pair of brothers to go on the stand and lie to help prosecute an innocent man. The mainstream media was really pushing all of the false narratives in order to discredit the Second Amendment and all of those who value it.

Now, after all that I find it really sick that there are a lot of protesters claiming they want justice. They wanted a innocent white man to be punished for refusing to be a victim. (Unbelievable)

There were threats made on the jury members and the judge. They were even following the jurys transport van at one point. I saw on MSNBC a news commentator state that there would be rioting in the streets and should be since it is the protesters right to do so.

The last time I checked it is our Constitutional right to peacefully protest but it is still unlawful to riot and create unrest and harm to anyone or their property. When was the law on the changed?

The mainstream media has been portraying this whole incident as racist and even calling Kyle Rittenhouse a White Supremacist. I really doubt they know what a white supremacist is but a good hard look at the Democrats elected officials should clear things up for them.

All of these anti-Americans that are protesting everything at the drop of the hat should get themselves a productive life and stop trying to destroy the very country that gave them the right to protest to begin with.

GEORGE LOCKETT

Morris

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Second Amendment victory | News, Sports, Jobs - Williamsport Sun-Gazette - Williamsport Sun-Gazette

Progressives have gun rights in their sights in 2022 session – Albuquerque Journal

Posted on December 14, 2021 by Danzig

The coordinated attack on law-abiding New Mexicans Second Amendment rights by the media, gun control advocates and Democrats in the Roundhouse is already in full swing in advance of the 2022 session.

Gun control is here. The progressive leadership recently fast-tracked and bypassed public input including the full legislative body to pass a firearm ban in the Roundhouse. The debate was convoluted and secretive, as the progressive lawmakers opted to discuss much of the matter behind closed doors. Before the progressives stripped away the Second Amendment rights of the people, it was revealed that legislative staff had already been working behind the scenes to implement the firearm ban before any other lawmaker was made aware of the restrictive plan.

The progressive anti-Second Amendment cohort decided they would strip away the rights of even those that have a New Mexico concealed carry license. The ramifications of these feel-good policies put the safety of the public who attend hearings, our staff, and my fellow lawmakers in jeopardy. Much was discussed about safety; however, despite staff working on implementing this secretive plan, very few answers were provided even behind closed doors.

Santa Fe Sen. and Majority Leader Peter Wirth bumbled his way through defending his actions in attacking the Second Amendment by accusing unnamed individuals of brandishing firearms at him in the Capitol building at different points throughout his esteemed near two decades in the Roundhouse. Wirth eventually walked his statements back when he was made aware that brandishing a firearm is an arrestable offense and there is no record of that crime within the Roundhouse. Unfortunately, this type of rhetoric is par for the course from progressives salivating at the opportunity to take away our Second Amendment freedom.

Activists hired by New York billionaire Michael Bloomberg testified before another interim committee that they demand passage of their gold standard for firearms storage legislation mandating all gun owners keep their firearms unloaded and locked up at all times. Such a proposal is not only unenforceable, but also defies logic as it renders firearms unusable for self-defense in the middle of a crime epidemic. Our nations capitol had a similar firearm storage law that was struck down in the D.C. v. Heller Supreme Court case. The Heller decision found restricting immediate access to legally owned firearms was unconstitutional.

Now, paid activists are calling for data-driven solutions to stem gun violence and have proposed to add bureaucracy with an Office of Gun Violence at the cost of $20 million. We dont need to waste $20 million of public money to conclude their gun control measures are nothing more than charades that havent made the public any safer. Out-of-touch activists and radical progressives have pushed for restrictions on the Second Amendment and the result has been skyrocketing crime in New Mexico. Such bills as the universal background check law have yielded zero arrests or prosecutions in over two years, and the red flag statute has reportedly been used only four times during the first year it was in effect. Why is this data dismissed? These same activists are calling for expansions of gun laws that produce no results or data, yet so many are dying in our communities due to the failed policies of the progressive bloc of lawmakers.

New Mexicos 30-day legislative session starts Jan. 18. Ostensibly its scheduled to be a budget session, but Bloombergs gun control posse will push to erase your Second Amendment rights, even if it requires a suspension of logic, liberty and results-oriented legislation.

Do you have a question you want someone to try to answer for you? Do you have a bright spot you want to share?We want to hear from you. Please email yourstory@abqjournal.com

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Progressives have gun rights in their sights in 2022 session - Albuquerque Journal

Guns aren’t the problem. People like Rep. Lauren Boebert and the NRA are. – USA TODAY

Posted on December 14, 2021 by Danzig

Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., and I have a few things in common.

We are both white women. We are both mothers. We have both lived in Florida and Colorado (she is from the former; I am from the latter). But that is where the similarities end.

When I saw one of my state's representatives in Congress post a Christmas card from hell with a picture of her and the kids around the tree and clutching theirmilitary-style weaponsafter adeadly school shooting in MichiganI had to say something.

To be clear: Boebert's brand of outrage is nothing new;she's a wannabee Donald Trump in a dress. Her heartlessness isn't even really worth writing an opinion column aboutexcept to point out thatpeople likeBoebert and Rep. ThomasMassie, R-Ky., who don't give a damn about the gun violence andtrauma we are constantly cycling through as a nation,are the problem.

Mass shootingsare a ubiquitous part of American life. But we don't have toaccept that as the status quo. Similarly, we must not accept that ourrepresentatives in government threaten other members of Congressand taunt traumatized families with their armed tyranny.

These displays of wanton disregard for peace andsecuritymust have consequences.

Now, I'm not about to tell you that the Second Amendment doesn't say you can't have guns, because it clearlydoes, and the U.S. Supreme Court agrees. That question has been asked and answered.

But in our failure to adequately teach American history and civics, we forget thatthe Second Amendment has an important context that should accompany its interpretation.Specifically, the Founding Fathers were absolutelyterrified of standing armies and gun ownershipwas common for a variety of practical reasons that didn't always have to do with self-defense.

Where did America go wrong? The problem isn't the guns. The problem is us. Our taste forgun violence is a uniquely American crisis. And I say that as someone who has lived in Switzerland, a country armed to the teethbut with zero school shootings, annually.

It is the sense of exceptionalism our nation is known for, and the recklessinterpretationof those27 words in the Second Amendment by gun lobbyists, the NRA and their supporters that have, since the late 1990s, hada devastating effect on American life. I mention the '90s because it was in1999, at Columbine High School in Colorado, when two students went on a gun rampage, killing 13 other people.

Every timea Republican posts a picture of themselves and their families snuggled up to the muzzle of a semiautomatic rifle immediately after a mass shooting,I wonder what the Founding Fathers would think if they knew that this was what was to become oftheSecond Amendment.

Surely they would find it infinitely sad, infinitely pathetic that we have not made necessary changes.

We are thesource of our own tyranny. We are also the solution.We must look to our God-given common senseto solve this uniquely American crisis.

And common sense begs us to do better in electing our representatives and getting rid of them when they cross the line.

Carli Pierson is an attorney and an opinion writer at USA TODAY. Follow her on Twitter:@CarliPiersonEsq

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Guns aren't the problem. People like Rep. Lauren Boebert and the NRA are. - USA TODAY

Gun and Ammo Taxes on Shaky Constitutional Footing (Podcast) – Bloomberg Tax

Posted on December 14, 2021 by Danzig

Cities and counties have been using so-called sin taxes to disincentivize socially harmful behavior for many years. But can this principle be applied to gun violence?

A few localities think it can and have passed their own excise taxes on guns and ammunition, even though the legal basis for these taxes may be unclear. One of them, Cook County, Ill., recently had its gun tax struck down by the Illinois Supreme Court as a violation of the constitutions uniformity clause. The high court never reached a decision on whether Cook Countys tax constituted a direct violation of the right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment an issue the plaintiff Guns Save Life still wants the court to answer.

On todays episode of our weekly podcast, Talking Tax, we hear two perspectives on this: one from the gun rights attorney who sued Cook County, and another from an economist and gun control advocate. Bloomberg Taxs Michael Bologna spoke to Pete Patterson with the firm Cooper & Kirk about the status of the litigation, and also to Rosanna Smart, a RAND Corporation economist, who supports local gun control measures but questions the value of excise taxes as a strategy for addressing gun violence.

Listen here.

Have feedback on this episode of Talking Tax? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

Everytown for Gun Safety advocates for universal background checks and other gun control measures. Bloomberg Law is operated by entities controlled by Michael Bloomberg, who serves as a member of Everytown for Gun Safetys advisory board.

Gun and Ammo Taxes on Shaky Constitutional Footing (Podcast) - Bloomberg Tax

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