Wanderlust

Category: ECONOMY

  • China vows speedy reaction to US price lists

    Containers at the Yangshan Deep Water Port in Shanghai Image copyright Reuters

    China will reply briefly to give protection to itself if the u.s. hurts its pursuits with contemporary trade price lists, a international ministry spokesman has mentioned.

    The warning from Beijing comes as the us prepares to levy new tariffs on $50bn price of Chinese imports.

    On Thursday, US officers met at the White Area to trim the unique list of one,300 classes to about 800.

    Duties on foreign metal and aluminium, introduced in March, have already gone into effect.

    Those tariffs have already induced Europe, Mexico, Canada and China to introduce or announce plans for counter-measures in retaliation.

    The transfer threw the G7 meeting final weekend into disarray, with US President Donald Trump retracting his endorsement of the joint statement and lashing out at host Canada.

    G7 summit leads to disarray over tariffs US tariffs a dangerous sport, says EUROPEAN Is the united states-China business warfare again on?

    the us says its tariffs on Chinese Language items come in response to what it categorises as theft of intellectual belongings.

    the u.s. wants China to prevent practices that allegedly inspire switch of highbrow property – layout and product concepts – to Chinese Language companies, comparable to necessities that overseas companies proportion possession with native companions to get entry to the Chinese Language market.

    In Beijing on Friday, Chinese Language overseas ministry spokesman Geng Shuang repeated earlier warnings that every one trade talks between China and the u.s. can be void if Washington imposed trade sanctions.

    “Our place is still the same,” he stated.

    “If the united states takes unilateral and protectionist measures that hurt Chinese interests, we can reply in an instant by taking the mandatory selections to shield our respectable rights and pursuits.”

    ‘Serious’ affect

    On Thursday, World Monetary Fund (IMF) director Christine Lagarde warned that the Trump administration’s industry insurance policies had been likely to hurt the united states economic system and undermine the world’s trade device.

    She said a industry warfare may lead to “losers on all sides” and will have a “serious” have an effect on.

    Even As the IMF expects the trade dispute to have somewhat minor economic results – slowing GDP via a fraction of a percentage element – Ms Lagarde stated she was all for how the combat could impact sentiment.

    “what’s extra important and more difficult to think about at the moment… is the real affect on trust,” she said at a news convention in Washington.

    The IMF said the White Space, which has also threatened to withdraw from the North American Loose Trade Agreement (Nafta), used to be responding to emerging issues in regards to the side-effects of unfastened business.

    “These measures, though, are prone to transfer the globe additional clear of an open, honest and rules-based totally business gadget, with antagonistic effects for each the united states economic system and for buying and selling companions,” the IMF said.

  • Judge faces punishment for sex acts in courthouse

    Massachusetts’ highest court will meet to consider the punishment for a judge who admitted to having a relationship with a courthouse employee that included sexual encounters in his chambers.

    BOSTON (AP) – Massachusetts’ highest court will meet to consider the punishment for a judge who admitted to having a relationship with a courthouse employee that included sexual encounters in his chambers.

    The Supreme Judicial Court will hold a hearing Tuesday to explore sanctions for Judge Thomas Estes for his affair with social worker Tammy Cagle.

    The Commission on Judicial Conduct wants Estes to be suspended indefinitely to give lawmakers time to decide whether to remove him from the bench. The last time Massachusetts lawmakers ousted a judge was in 1973.

    Cagle has accused Estes of pressuring her into performing oral sex on him in his chambers and her home. Estes says the relationship was consensual and that the humiliation he has experienced calls for a more lenient punishment of a four-month suspension.

  • Top GOP gubernatorial candidates focus on vision in debate

    Idaho’s top Republican candidates for governor gave voters three distinct options to choose from Monday during their second televised debate, which included plenty of jabs at each other’s campaign tac

    BOISE, Idaho (AP) – Idaho’s top Republican candidates for governor gave voters three distinct options to choose from Monday during their second televised debate, which included plenty of jabs at each other’s campaign tactics.

    U.S. Rep. Raul Labrador, a four-term congressman, pushed his aggressive economic plan to cut nearly a $1 billion of the state’s taxes, or roughly 30 percent of the state’s annual general fund budget.

    “We have $3 billion in tax loopholes, some of those benefit the state, most of those do not benefit the state,” Labrador said. “You can actually do a tax shift. That’s what tax reform is.”

    Labrador added that he was opposed to the state picking “winners and losers,” and said he was against the state’s current structure to help incentivize business to move to or expand in Idaho because it harmed the current businesses in the state.

    Meanwhile, Boise developer and first-time political candidate Tommy Ahlquist said he would apply a business model in order to find and eliminate wasteful government spending, as well as bring fresh ideas to a state that has long been run by the political establishment.

    Unlike Labrador, who said he would require all agency directors to reapply for the positions, Ahlquist said if elected he anticipated keeping both new and old director heads to oversee the state’s agencies.

    “You can have all the plans you want in life, you can have all the task forces, but if you don’t have action, if you don’t follow through, you won’t get anywhere,” Ahlquist said, who has previously promised that unlike Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter, he would not create any task forces if elected.

    “We need to change the status quo,” Ahlquist added.

    Lt. Gov. Brad Little maintained that Idaho was on the right path to continue growing and attracting new businesses, but his experience working with Otter and the Idaho Legislature was needed to ensure the state’s future success.

    Little proposed tax cut plan would cost Idaho around $116 million in its first year, which includes reducing the general fund by $27.9 million to lower the top personal and corporate income tax rates by a tenth of a percent and $9 million for the business equipment property tax break.

    “We’ve had revenue over these past two years that went up $400 million, I don’t think it’s a stretch at all to give the taxpayers during these good times half of their money back,” Little said, returning to his previous campaign promise that he would cut $350 million in income taxes over the next several years but not at the expense of cutting education.

    All three candidates once came out again in support of eliminating the sales tax on groceries. On education, all three shied away from endorsing a path to a government-funded preschool – which Idaho currently does not fund.

    Labrador was the only candidate to come out against changing Idaho’s laws that allow families to cite religious reasons for medical decisions without fear of being charged with neglect or abuse. Little and Ahlquist said they would have to consider the legislation before weighing in on the issue.

    Ahlquist refused to answer directly if he would sign legislation allowing women to be prosecuted if they had an abortion, saying he didn’t want to participate in a “theoretical” situation. Little and Labrador both agreed that while they opposed abortion, they thought charging women with first-degree murder – which would allow for the death penalty – went too far.

    In between talking about policy positions, the candidates took time to critique each other’s attack ads.

    “Probably one of the most disturbing ones was I was driving my 15-year-old daughter a couple of weeks ago and she pulled up an ad that was being run by one of my opponents with me dressed in a Ku Klux Klan outfit saying that I was a dirty, filthy racist,” said Ahlquist.

    Labrador quickly responded that while the claim came from one his supporters, he did not support the ad and neither was his campaign involved in the ad.

    “My campaign had nothing to do with that blog and I actually asked him to take down that picture because I found it to be offensive,” said Labrador, who then accused Ahlquist of lying about Labrador’s support of President Donald Trump and his immigration involvement.

    Little said the biggest lie that’s been spread about him so far during the campaign was by Ahlquist’s campaign that he was not a conservative and that he would raise taxes.

    “I’ve governed, whether I was serving the Senate or as lieutenant governor, with the lightest possible hand of government,” he said.

  • Former Christie allies to argue for bridge case reversals

    The traffic scandal that dragged down former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s presidential aspirations will write another chapter on Tuesday as two former associates facing prison for their roles seek

    PHILADELPHIA (AP) – The traffic scandal that dragged down former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s presidential aspirations will write another chapter on Tuesday as two former associates facing prison for their roles seek to convince a federal appeals court their convictions should be overturned.

    Attorneys for Bill Baroni and Bridget Kelly are expected to argue in the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that prosecutors misapplied federal law to unfairly criminalize the duo’s actions in the fall of 2013, when they realigned traffic lanes at the busy George Washington Bridge and caused massive traffic jams in the town of Fort Lee, New Jersey.

    Baroni was a top executive with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the bridge’s operator, and Kelly was Christie’s deputy chief of staff. He received a 24-month sentence last year; Kelly was sentenced to 18 months.

    Baroni’s Port Authority colleague, David Wildstein, pleaded guilty and testified he conjured up the plot – and Baroni and Kelly gleefully went along – to punish Fort Lee’s mayor, a Democrat who didn’t endorse the Republican Christie’s re-election.

    Christie wasn’t charged and denied knowing about the plot until months later, but the negative publicity from the scandal torpedoed his presidential aspirations in the 2016 GOP primary. His account of when he knew about the scheme was contradicted during the fall 2016 trial by Kelly, Baroni, Wildstein and others.

    Wildstein, a former political operative and high school acquaintance of Christie‘s, received probation and now publishes a news website focusing on New Jersey politics from his home in Florida.

    Christie, now a political analyst for ABC, said last year he was “incensed” by their conduct and characterized as “ridiculous” the idea that he would have endorsed it.

    In court filings, Baroni and Kelly have argued their convictions for misapplying the property of an organization receiving federal funds – the Port Authority, in this case – should be tossed because the law targets “diverting public property to private, personal, non-governmental uses,” something they say didn’t occur.

    They also allege the trial judge erred when she instructed jurors that they could find the pair guilty even if they didn’t believe the government proved that the plot had a political motive.

  • Power-sucking Bitcoin ‘mines’ spark backlash

    Bitcoin “miners” who use rows of computers whirring at the same time to produce virtual currencies began taking root along New York’s northern border a couple of years ago to tap into some of the nati

    Bitcoin “miners” who use rows of computers whirring at the same time to produce virtual currencies began taking root along New York’s northern border a couple of years ago to tap into some of the nation’s cheapest hydroelectric power, offering an air of Silicon Valley sophistication to this often-snowy region.

    But as the once-high-flying bitcoin market has waned, so too has the enthusiasm for bitcoin miners. Mining operations with stacks of servers suck up so much electricity that they are in some cases causing power rates to spike for ordinary customers. And some officials question whether it’s all worth it for the relatively few jobs created.

    “We don’t want someone coming in, taking our resources, not creating the jobs they professed to create and then disappear,” said Tim Currier, mayor of Massena, a village just south of the Canadian border, where bitcoin operator Coinmint recently announced plans to use the old aluminum plant site for a mining operation that would require 400 megawatts – roughly enough to power 300,000 homes at once.

    In Plattsburgh, where two cryptocurrency operations have been blamed for spiking electricity rates, the prospect of more cryptocurrency miners plugging in spooked officials enough in March to enact an 18-month moratorium on new operations. The small border village of Rouses Point also is holding off on approving new server farms and Lake Placid is considering a moratorium.

    For local officials, the power struggle has been a crash course in the esoteric bitcoin mining business in which miners earn bitcoins by making complex calculations that verify transactions on the digital currency’s public ledger.

    Since it often uses hundreds of computers that throw off tremendous heat and burn a lot of power, it has tended to gravitate towards cooler places with cheap electricity, such as geothermal-rich Iceland or along the Columbia River region of Washington state.

    The stretch of New York near the Canadian border similarly fits the bill. Cheap hydropower from a dam spanning the St. Lawrence River is doled out by a state authority to local businesses that promise to create jobs. Additionally, some municipalities such as Massena and Plattsburgh receive cheap electricity from a separate hydropower project near Niagara Falls.

    In Plattsburgh, electricity is so cheap most residents use it instead of oil or wood to heat their homes. The couple of commercial cryptocurrency mines here can get an industrial rate of about 3 cents per kilowatt hour – less than half the national average.

    But Plattsburgh Mayor Colin Read said its largest operator, Coinmint, which has two plants employing 20 or fewer people, can consume about 10 percent of Plattsburgh’s 104 megawatt cheap electricity quota. When the city exceeded its allocation like it did this winter, customers ended up paying $10 to $30 more a month for the extra electricity. For a major employer like Mold-Rite Plastics plant, it cost them at least $15,000 in February.

    State regulators have since given municipal utilities the ability to charge higher rates to cryptocurrency miners. At least one bitcoin miner in Plattsburgh says he’s working with the city on solutions to the power worries.

    Ryan Brienza, founder and CEO of the hosting company Zafra, said those could include mining on behalf of the city for an hour a day or harnessing the heat from mining computers to warm up large spaces.

    While the direct number of jobs associated with mines can be small, Brienza said they can bring revenue, investments and talent to the city while employing local contractors.

    “It can start snowballing,” Brienza said.

    Coinmint’s plans for a new plant in Massena, for example, come with a promise of 150 jobs. That’s welcome in an area that in the past decade has suffered though the loss of aluminum-making jobs and the closure of a General Motors powertrain plant.

    “J-O-Bs. Yup. What we need up here,” said Steve O’Shaughnessy, Massena town supervisor.

    Coinmint had asked for a cheap power allocation from the New York Power Authority for Massena for part of its energy needs, but that request was deferred.

    The power authority has separately enacted its own moratorium on allocating hydropower to cryptocurrency operations – mirroring municipalities that have effectively pushed the “pause” button on a rush of miners coming in.

    Coinmint representatives said this month they hope to begin the Massena operation in the second part of this year. The company stressed that mines can be a good fit for this job-hungry area.

    “They’re also going to get substantially more efficient over time,” said Coinmint spokesman Kyle Carlton. “So to the extent that Plattsburgh or Massena or anybody else can get in on that and establish themselves on the ground floor, I think that’s going to help those cities to be successful.”

  • Aimed at China, Trump’s tariffs are hitting closer to home

    President Donald Trump’s escalating dispute with China over trade and technology is threatening jobs and profits in working-class communities where his “America First” agenda hit home.

    WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump’s escalating dispute with China over trade and technology is threatening jobs and profits in working-class communities where his “America First” agenda hit home.

    The Commerce Department has received more than 2,400 applications from companies seeking waivers from the administration’s tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, which may result in duty payments of millions of dollars for larger businesses. The department has begun posting the requests online for public comment; several of the applications released so far suggest deep misgivings with Trump’s protectionist strategy, especially in areas where he won strong support during the 2016 election.

    The tariffs are aimed primarily at China for flooding the global market with cheap steel and aluminum. But they’ve also led to confusion and uncertainty, according to Associated Press interviews and a review of records. In Oklahoma, Texas and Wisconsin, for example, businesses operating in the furniture, energy and food sectors have outlined the financial difficulties they’d face if they’re not excused from the steel tariff.

    In Okmulgee, Oklahoma, dozens of jobs hang in the balance as office furniture giant Steelcase waits to hear back from the Commerce Department.

    A Steelcase subsidiary, PolyVision, operates a plant in Okmulgee that uses a special type of steel from Japan to manufacture a durable glass-like surface for whiteboards and architectural purposes. PolyVision “cannot and will not be able to procure” from U.S. companies the cold-rolled steel it requires “in a sufficient and reasonably available amount or of a satisfactory quality,” Steelcase said.

    Trump won most of the votes cast for president in Okmulgee County. Without a waiver, Steelcase warned, the “economic viability of PolyVision (and) the small town of Okmulgee” would be jeopardized.

    The waiver request also indicates that a $15 million plant expansion may be at risk. Steelcase and PolyVision are on the verge of making the investment, which would create new construction and manufacturing jobs, according to the request.

    Roger Ballenger, Okmulgee’s city manager, said he and other local officials are “very concerned about the situation with PolyVision.”

    The tariffs – 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on imported aluminum – are designed to protect and rebuild the U.S. companies that manufacture the metals. The U.S. temporarily exempted several major trading partners, including the European Union, Mexico and Canada.

    China, which was left on the target list, retaliated by imposing tariffs on $3 billion in U.S. products, including apples, pork and ginseng.

    Trump responded by adding more protectionist measures as punishment for Chinese theft of U.S. intellectual property. And Beijing punched back by proposing tariffs on $50 billion in U.S. products including small aircraft and soybeans – a direct threat to rural areas that were key to Trump’s victory.

    John Hritz, CEO of JSW Steel USA in Baytown, Texas, said his company is in lockstep with Trump’s approach. “We’re in favor of growing the steel industry in this country,” Hritz said. JSW Steel, owned by Indian conglomerate JSW Group, is embarking on a $500 million overhaul of the plant that it says will create hundreds of jobs.

    The growth would be welcomed in Baytown, where unemployment is 9.8 percent, more than double the national rate. Baytown is located partly in Harris County, which Democrat Hillary Clinton won, and partly in Chambers County, which Trump handily won.

    The future is much murkier for another Baytown steel business, Borusan Mannesmann Pipe. Without a waiver, Borusan may face tariffs of $25 million to $30 million annually if it imports steel tubing and casing from its parent company in Turkey, according to information the company provided to the AP.

    Borusan said the Baytown production line would no longer be competitive and “jobs would be threatened” if it cannot import 135,000 metric tons of steel annually over the next two years. The pipes Borusan produces are used primarily as casing for oil and natural gas wells.

    But if Commerce says yes, Borusan will be able to unlock a $25 million investment in the Baytown facility as it seeks to become a “100 percent domestic supplier,” according to the waiver request. An additional $50 million expansion in pipe fabrication capacity would follow, the company said, leading to as many as 170 new jobs.

    Seneca Foods Corporation, the nation’s largest vegetable canner, said in its waiver application that it’s unclear, at best, if U.S. suppliers have the ability or willingness to expand their production in the long term to meet the company’s annual demand for tinplated steel.

    But “clearly they cannot meet demand in the short term,” Seneca told Commerce officials. That means Seneca has to buy a portion of what it needs from overseas.

    A person with knowledge of Seneca’s situation said the company would face a $2.25 million duty if the Commerce Department doesn’t approve its waiver request for 11,000 metric tons of tinplate it already agreed to purchase from China. The material is to be delivered this year and next, according to the waiver request. The person was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

    Seneca said it employs more than 400 people at can-making facilities in Wisconsin and Idaho and near its headquarters in New York’s Wayne County, where Trump bested Clinton. The company doesn’t warn layoffs are imminent if the waiver isn’t approved. Instead, the tariffs would likely come out of Seneca’s bottom line, the person said.

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    Contact Richard Lardner on Twitter at http://twitter.com/rplardner

  • Opioid treatment gap in Medicare: methadone clinics

    One in three older Americans with Medicare drug coverage is prescribed opioid painkillers, but for those who develop a dangerous addiction there is one treatment Medicare won’t cover: methadone.

    One in three older Americans with Medicare drug coverage is prescribed opioid painkillers, but for those who develop a dangerous addiction there is one treatment Medicare won’t cover: methadone.

    Methadone is the oldest, and experts say, the most effective of the three approved medications used to treat opioid addiction. It eases cravings without an intense high, allowing patients to work with counselors to rebuild their lives.

    Federal money is flowing to states to open new methadone clinics through the 21st Century Cures Act, but despite the nation’s deepening opioid crisis, the Medicare drug program for the elderly covers methadone only when prescribed for pain.

    Joseph Purvis, a former heroin and prescription painkiller user, said he went into a depressive tailspin because he initially feared he might have to stop methadone treatment when he went on Medicare at 65.

    “I was terrified that I might have to leave the program. There’s no way I wanted to go back to addiction on the streets,” said Purvis, 66, of Gaithersburg, Maryland.

    Methadone doesn’t meet the requirement of Medicare’s Part D drug program because it can’t be dispensed in a retail pharmacy.

    Instead, in the highly regulated methadone system, patients first are assessed by a doctor, then show up daily at federally certified methadone clinics to take their doses of the pink liquid. Or, like Purvis in Maryland, they prove through repeated urine screens that they have earned the right to weekly take-home doses.

    In Congress, a Senate panel looking for ways to counter the opioid epidemic is considering allowing Medicare to cover methadone treatment. Legislation has been introduced in the House, and a White House commission on the opioid epidemic also recommended the change.

    The epidemic is “affecting all populations, including our seniors,” said Rep. George Holding, R-North Carolina, a sponsor of the House bill. “Medicare beneficiaries have among the highest and fastest growing rate of opioid use disorder, but they don’t currently have coverage for the most effective treatment.”

    An estimated 300,000 Medicare patients have been diagnosed with opioid addiction, and health officials estimate nearly 90,000 are at high risk for opioid misuse or overdose.

    Buprenorphine, a more expensive and slightly less regulated treatment drug, is covered by Medicare but few doctors who accept new Medicare patients have obtained federal waivers to prescribe it. A recent study of Medicare claims found prescriptions for buprenorphine for only 81,000 patients.

    More evidence that the crisis affects seniors: Opioid overdoses killed 1,354 Americans ages 65 and older in 2016, about 3 percent of the 42,000 opioid overdoses that year.

    Medicare’s policy means clinics often scramble to keep older patients in treatment if they’ve had commercial insurance that covered their care before turning 65, said counselor Angela Caldwell of Montgomery Recovery Services in Rockville, Maryland.

    A national organization for methadone clinics says the clinics now have 25,000 Medicare beneficiaries who are either paying out of pocket (about $80 per week) or getting care through state-run Medicaid or block grant programs.

    Mark Parrino, president of the American Association for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence, thinks more people would seek methadone treatment if Medicare covered it.

    Many older patients rely on surprisingly high doses of opioids for pain relief, which can turn into addiction, said Dr. Anna Lembke, an addiction specialist at Stanford University School of Medicine.

    One of her addiction patients, a woman in her mid-70s, was referred to her because her daily dose of opioids had climbed over the years to many times more potent than that of a typical heroin user, Lembke said.

    “She’s had a gradual development of tolerance over many decades and now is on an astronomical dose,” Lembke said. “If you took any random person and gave them (that much) they would die.”

    Lembke said she normally wouldn’t consider methadone for this patient because of the stigma associated with the clinics. But Medicare coverage might make them more acceptable, Lembke said, and her patient “might actually do better with methadone.”

    In Maryland, Purvis remained on methadone treatment because his income is low enough that he qualifies for the state-federal Medicaid insurance coverage for the poor and disabled. Medicaid covers methadone treatment in Maryland and about 35 other states.

    Purvis, who used heroin for more than a decade in his youth, later took opioids prescribed by specialists for back pain. After his pain doctor’s office was shut down for overprescribing, he started methadone treatment.

    “Some people think of methadone as a crutch for addiction but it’s not,” Purvis said. “It’s a tool that allows people to live a somewhat normal life.”

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    AP writer Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar in Washington contributed to this report.

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    Follow AP Medical Writer Carla K. Johnson on Twitter: @CarlaKJohnson

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    The Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

  • Facebook hate speech, censorship policies upset both sides

    Under more scrutiny than ever, Facebook finds itself caught in a no-man’s land between activists who say it needs to adopt much stricter definitions governing hate speech and critics on the right who

    Under more scrutiny than ever, Facebook finds itself caught in a no-man’s land between activists who say it needs to adopt much stricter definitions governing hate speech and critics on the right who feel the social media giant is censoring conservative voices.

    The company’s policy now largely depends on humans reviewing content flagged by others as offensive — a system Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Congress he hopes to change within 10 years by integrating artificial intelligence that can identify questionable content immediately.

    By some accounts, the current policy has been a failure, and Mr. Zuckerberg’s claim that the site doesn’t house hateful posts is simply wrong. They also contend that Facebook needs to become much more aggressive, perhaps tying its definition of hate speech to the one used by the controversial Southern Poverty Law Center.

    “We’re shocked by Zuckerberg’s claim that Facebook does not allow any hate groups on their platform. For years, civil rights groups have been urging Facebook to address the discrimination and bigotry on its platform, and, for years, the company has done little to meaningfully address our concerns,” said Madihha Ahussain, special counsel for anti-Muslim bigotry at Muslim Advocates.

    “Today, to our knowledge, at least 23 of them are still organizing on Facebook,” she said. “That list only accounts for Southern Poverty Law Center’s compilation of anti-Muslim groups and doesn’t include the thousands of others organized to hate against other communities.”

    But conservatives say adopting the Southern Poverty Law Center’s definition of a hate group would lead to even bigger problems and more bias. The organization, for example, classifies the Family Research Council as a hate group because of its stand on same-sex marriage and other LGBT issues.

    Using that definition would deepen the fear and anger among conservatives toward the Silicon Valley behemoth. Facebook already has faced intense criticism from the political right for suspected censoring of posts from the popular pro-Trump duo Diamond and Silk, among a host of other content that Republicans say is filtered on solely political grounds.

    Diamond and Silk, whose posts in the past have been considered “unsafe” by Facebook, will appear Thursday before the House Judiciary Committee.

    Facebook’s handling of the duo has become a rallying point for conservative critics, and it was the latest in a string of controversial steps. The company two years ago came under fire for appearing to suppress conservative news sources in its trending topics feed, and its actions since then have done little to calm those who say Facebook’s liberal bias is out of control.

    “I think this is going to be a controversial topic perpetually, for several reasons. First and foremost, they can’t get out of their own bubble, and until they do they won’t even realize they have a problem,” said Christie-Lee McNally, founder of the conservative group Free Our Internet and a former Trump campaign official who believes Facebook’s human review system is inherently flawed because of the company’s progressive leanings.

    On Capitol Hill, the issue of whether Facebook suppresses conservative content has raised the ire of Republican lawmakers, some of whom argue that Facebook has become so big and powerful that its handling of speech — such as what to censor and what to allow — creates ripples across the American cultural and political landscape.

    “If they’re behaving like Big Brother and censoring political speech, I think that raises very serious legal questions that I expect to see a whole lot more scrutiny devoted to,” Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican, said last week.

    Facebook says it defines hate speech as “content that attacks people based on their actual or perceived race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender or gender identity, sexual orientation, disability or disease.”

    It specifies that it does allow satire, comedy, music and other types of performance art that some people may find offensive.

    Issues arise, of course, because what some consider to be offensive, racially tinged attacks are seen by others as political statements. Rhetoric surrounding illegal immigration, for example, often falls into that category.

    “At the end of the day, it will be tough to keep 2 billion people happy all of the time,” said Emma Llanso, director of the Freedom of Expression Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology.

    Ms. Llanso said she believes that Facebook and other massive social media firms that have become ubiquitous parts of pop culture may end up adopting more stringent standards on speech, while other companies could cast themselves as more open and, in some cases, willfully controversial.

    “I’d rather see a situation with multiple different competing platforms that each have their own tailor-made content policies,” she said. “I feel like that creates less of a risk that an entire group of speakers or topic won’t find anywhere on the internet that will host their speech.”

    Mr. Zuckerberg told lawmakers that the human element of flagging offensive content will be removed within the next decade, though that doesn’t mean Facebook’s automated system won’t also ruffle feathers.

    “Hate speech — I’m optimistic that over a five, 10-year period we will have AI tools that get into some of the nuances, the linguistic nuances, of different types of content to be more accurate in flagging things for our systems,” he said this month. “But today we’re just not there on that, so a lot of this is still reactive. People flag it to us, we have people look at it, we have policies to try and make it as not subjective as possible, but until we get it more automated there’s a higher error rate than I’m happy with.”

  • Jennifer Miller’s gun rights lawsuit sets off wide debate

    An Illinois woman who runs a child care service out of her home is suing the state, saying its restrictions on day care facilities make it illegal for her to keep a gun in her house for self-defense.

    An Illinois woman who runs a child care service out of her home is suing the state, saying its restrictions on day care facilities make it illegal for her to keep a gun in her house for self-defense.

    Jennifer Miller’s lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for central Illinois after the state emerged as a battleground in the post-Parkland gun debate, with citizens and various localities trying to stake claims on either side of the issue.

    Mrs. Miller and her husband, Darin, both hold concealed-weapons permits. But Illinois’ rules prohibit handguns from being kept in day care homes, with exceptions only for law enforcement or others who have to carry guns for their jobs.

    Any firearms in other day care facilities have to be unloaded, kept under lock and stored separately from ammunition.

    The Millers say the rules mean they have to make a choice: give up their guns or have Mrs. Miller give up her day care.

    The state last month gave them a warning, the lawsuit says.

    Mrs. Miller has been a day care home licensee since last year and a day care home provider since 2016. Her husband is a special equipment operator for a paper producer in central Illinois — a job that would not require him to keep a gun in the house.

    Gun rights groups have taken up their cause.

    “We’re in court to make sure that the state cannot discriminate against day care operators who merely wish to exercise the rights we’ve restored in Illinois,” said Second Amendment Foundation founder Alan Gottlieb, whose group brought the lawsuit with the Illinois State Rifle Association and Illinois Carry.

    The lawsuit names Lisa Madigan, the state’s attorney general, and Beverly Walker, director of the state’s Department of Children and Family Services, as defendants.

    Ms. Madigan’s office declined to comment on the merits of the case.

    A spokeswoman for the Department of Children and Family Services said the agency couldn’t comment on pending litigation.

    It’s not clear how many people are affected by the day care rules, but pro-gun advocates say local cases such as this can turn into precedent-setting expansions of gun rights.

    Mr. Gottlieb pointed out that his group’s challenge to Chicago’s ban on handguns ultimately led to a 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision affirming that states must respect an individual’s Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

    A separate legal challenge from the group also forced Illinois to allow the concealed carry of weapons in 2013, after courts found the state’s restrictions on the practice unconstitutional.

    Indeed, Illinois appears to be a hotbed of legal challenges over gun rights.

    The Second Amendment Foundation, the National Rifle Association and other gun rights advocates are suing to block the village of Deerfield, in suburban Chicago, from enforcing a ban on semi-automatic firearms.

    Meanwhile, Effingham County, located about 75 miles southeast of Springfield, recently moved in the other direction by pushing to become a “sanctuary” for gun owners if state lawmakers approve stricter gun controls.

    A resolution the county board passed last week reads in part: “If the Government of the State of Illinois shall infringe upon the inalienable rights granted by the Second Amendment, Effingham County shall become a ‘sanctuary county’ for all firearms unconstitutionally prohibited by the government of the State of Illinois.”

    Effingham County State’s Attorney Bryan Kibler acknowledged that the resolution was largely symbolic but said the county wanted to take a stand against a number of gun control bills that the state legislature is considering.

    “It’s symbolic … but it really proves that people in southern Illinois are getting tired of being pushed around,” Mr. Kibler said recently on Fox News.

  • Underfunded pensions force governments to make hard decisions

    Politicians have been quick to grant generous pension benefits but failed to set aside enough money to pay for them. And little or nothing — aside from rare self-imposed funding rules — requires gov

    ANALYSIS/OPINION:

    Generous pensions have always been a prime perk of government jobs. Now those pensions are causing government layoffs, reduced services and tax increases.

    Take Harvey, Illinois. The city has laid off half of its fire department and 13 police officers so it can meet its obligations to its retired police officers and firefighters — the result of decades of overpromising benefits and underfunding pension plans.

    The laid-off first responders are just the first casualties of Harvey’s pension crisis. Residents and other government employees will feel the pain as Harvey cuts services, reduces salaries or increases the workloads of its remaining employees. Harvey’s residents already face a property tax increase. Last year, a court ordered the city to impose a property tax levy specifically for its firefighters pension fund.

    Unfortunately, Harvey’s pension woes aren’t unique. Disaster looms for state and local pension plans across the U.S.

    A report from the American Legislative Exchange Council estimates that state and local pension funds have promised $6 trillion more in benefits than they have set aside to pay. That is $18,676 for every man, woman and child in America, or nearly $50,000 per household.

    How did this happen?

    Basically, politicians have been quick to grant generous pension benefits but failed to set aside enough money to pay for them. And little or nothing — aside from rare self-imposed funding rules — requires governments to properly fund their promises.

    But ultimately, even pension bills fall due. And now that pension plans are running low on money, many state and local governments are grappling with soaring pension costs. Over the past three decades, Illinois’ pension liabilities increased 755 percent while its population edged up only 13 percent.

    That has caused taxpayers to take a hit and government services — like Illinois’ education system — to suffer. Recently, 89 cents of every new dollar of education spending has gone not to the classrooms but toward teachers’ retirement costs. By 2025, the state will spend more on retired teachers than it does on those who are actively teaching, as well as all other classroom costs.

    Skyrocketing pension costs in Philadelphia already consume 16 percent of the city’s general fund. Some point to those costs as the precipitating factor behind what they say are high taxes, dirty sidewalks, pothole-filled streets and struggling schools.

    And there is no doubt that unfunded pensions contributed significantly to bankruptcies in Detroit and other municipalities.

    If taxpayers are to avoid paying thousands of dollars more in taxes while receiving fewer government services, and if government employees are to keep their jobs, then state and local lawmakers will need to reform their pension systems.

    The first and most essential reform needed is to shift all new workers to defined contribution retirement plans that require state and local governments to fund 100 percent of benefits in the year they are earned.

    Second is dealing with existing defined-benefit systems.

    While protecting benefits workers have already earned, state and local officials should enact common-sense pension reforms such as increasing the retirement age (which currently can be even younger than 50), requiring employees to pay a higher portion of their pension contributions, reducing future accrual rates and basing pensions on average earnings instead of employees’ highest three years.

    While these reforms will not reduce past unfunded promises, they will improve pension funding going forward, which will help minimize job losses, tax increases and service cuts.

    Of course, if the federal government gives serious consideration to bailing out state and local pension plans — as it is doing for private-sector, union-run pension plans — state and local politicians will have no incentive to enact meaningful pension reforms. The State and Local Pensions Accountability and Security Act would nip that sort of nonsense in the bud by barring the federal government from issuing any form of bailout for state and local pensions.

    ⦁ Rachel Greszler is a research fellow specializing in economic, budget and entitlement issues in The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis.