Month: August 2022

The Biggest Obstacle To Building Offshore Wind Farms Is Government


Biden points to a wind turbine graph on a piece of paper

Shortly after taking office last year, President Joe Biden announced an ambitious plan to vastly expand the amount of energy produced by offshore wind farms.

Along the Atlantic coast and in the Gulf of Mexico, the administration identified huge swaths of wind-swept sea that could be put to energy-producing use. Last year, the Department of Energy (DOE) made $3 billion available to upgrade ports so the equipment needed to install offshore wind turbines could be shipped out to sea, and the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act included measures providing tax credits of up to 30 percent for offshore wind projects that are started before 2026. This overall strategy to expand offshore wind production is “a cornerstone of Biden’s plan to fight global warming and decarbonize the electricity sector by 2035,” Reuters reported last month.

But the biggest impediment to the federal government’s attempted development of offshore wind is, it turns out, the federal government.

According to DOE data published this month, the U.S. currently has offshore wind projects capable of generating 42 megawatts (MW) of electricity. Offshore wind projects currently under construction will eventually provide another 932 MW of electricity when fully operational. (For comparison’s sake, an average-sized nuclear power plant can generate around 1 gigawatt of electricity—equal to 1,000 megawatts.)

But another 18,581 MW of potential offshore wind power are tied up in permitting battles. According to the DOE’s data, that means a developer has signed a lease for the designated area but is still trying to complete environmental impact statements required by the federal government and the appropriate state authorities (for projects based in state-controlled waters). As with housing and other types of infrastructure projects, the permitting process provides an opportunity for various parties to slow or even stop construction. Even though the Biden administration has said it intends to speed up the federal permitting process for offshore wind projects, it’s questionable whether that is happening. In July, for example, the DOE’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management canceled two potential wind energy developments off the coast of Long Island due to concerns that included “visibility from nearby beaches.”

One might wonder about the administration’s priorities when its cornerstone energy effort is disrupted by grumpy beachgoers.

I saw the local side of this debate up close during a recent vacation to Long Beach Island in New Jersey, where seemingly every other house is currently sporting a yard sign opposing a new wind project that would be visible from the beach despite being located 15 miles out at sea. A recent article from the island’s The SandPaper spells out the regulatory complications: 1,400 pages of documentation, a 45-day public comment period (extended 15 extra days to accommodate “public outcry”), and now a lawsuit that seeks to put the project on hold.

Of course, locals object to new power plants of all varieties and deserve to have their say. Still, the fact that so much of the Biden administration’s much-ballyhooed wind projects might be kneecapped long before they become reality ought to generate some skepticism about the usefulness of those big new tax breaks. Regulatory reforms that trim back environmental reviews—and that prevent them from being weaponized by NIMBYs—would be useful not only for getting offshore wind projects built but also for a host of other infrastructure efforts. As Reason‘s Christian Britschgi has reported, environmental impact statements take 4.5 years on average and run over 650 pages.

It’s also worth considering the other tradeoffs involved in these projects. As I wrote last week, a major offshore wind project (one that actually is being built) near Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, will produce only about one-third of the energy that used to be provided by a coal-burning plant that the wind farm is meant to replace—and that’s assuming the wind farm operates at full capacity all the time, which of course it won’t because sometimes the wind doesn’t blow. Even when it does, the electricity produced by offshore wind is more expensive than what is produced by nuclear or gas-powered plants.

Those are the kinds of tradeoffs that would matter even if the Biden administration could snap its fingers and see its stated goal of having America produce 30 gigawatts of electricity from offshore wind by 2030.

But with the regulatory and permitting hurdles facing those wind projects, it’s hard to believe we’ll get anywhere near that total in the near future.

The post The Biggest Obstacle To Building Offshore Wind Farms Is Government appeared first on Reason.com.

from Latest https://ift.tt/a6Mp4um
via IFTTT

Review: Emily the Criminal


Aubrey Plaza in Emily the Criminal

Aubrey Plaza, the queen of weaponized deadpan, plays it all-the-way straight in Emily the Criminal, a tough little first feature by writer-director John Patton Ford. The movie has a topical spin—it’s set in the world of crushing student loan debt—but it’s really about the shapeshifting nature of hopes and dreams, and the ways in which the riptides of life can carry us away in unexpected and sometimes alarming directions.

Plaza’s character, Emily, is a young woman who made the mistake of following her own dreams into art school, which has left her $70,000 in debt and with little hope of getting a decent job in the real world. (She also has a minor rap sheet that’s blocking her future like a boulder in the road.) So she now humps orders for a food delivery service, her life going nowhere.

Then, tipped by a colleague, Emily falls in with an improbably charming Lebanese immigrant named Youcef (Theo Rossi, of Sons of Anarchy), who’s part of a criminal enterprise devoted to credit card fraud—stamping stolen names and numbers onto plastic blanks for a squad of “dummy shoppers” to use in scamming retailers out of pricey merchandise. Youcef offers Emily a chance to make a quick $200 doing one of these runs. “You won’t be in danger,” he tells her, “but you will be breaking the law.” Emily is in—and she turns out to be good at this stuff. Then she’s offered a follow-up assignment—a riskier one, but for a lot more money.

Emily has mixed feelings about this new career path, but they’re easily overcome after a dispiriting interview for a legitimate gig at a slick advertising agency. This would have been a perfect berth for an art-school grad, but her hopes were instantly deflated when the agency’s owner (Gina Gershon) explained that the job was intern-level and the pay, zero. (Great resumé-builder, though.) Emily—whose endless loan payments seem to be entirely consumed by ever-mushrooming interest charges—is deeply steamed. “People just keep taking from you,” she fumes, “until you make the goddamn rules yourself.” She decides to start taking this crime career she’s wandered into a little more seriously.

Plaza is not an assertively expressive actor (it’s part of her effectiveness as a comic presence), but she turns Emily into a completely realized character—a woman who’s found no way to exert control over her life until she gets in touch with her inner badass. “We’re serious people!” she shouts at one cowed civilian. “You should be scared of us!”

The post Review: <em>Emily the Criminal</em> appeared first on Reason.com.

from Latest https://ift.tt/ghqQWYo
via IFTTT

“Saudi Doctoral Student Gets 34 Years in Prison For Tweets”

The AP reports:

A Saudi court has sentenced a doctoral student to 34 years in prison for spreading “[allegedly false] rumors” and retweeting dissidents, according to court documents obtained Thursday, a decision that has drawn growing global condemnation.

Activists and lawyers consider the sentence against Salma al-Shehab, a mother of two and a researcher at Leeds University in Britain, shocking even by Saudi standards of justice….

Al-Shehab was detained during a family vacation in January 2021 just days before she planned to return to the United Kingdom ….

Judges accused al-Shehab of “disturbing public order” and “destabilizing the social fabric” — claims stemming solely from her social media activity, according to an official charge sheet….

The post "Saudi Doctoral Student Gets 34 Years in Prison For Tweets" appeared first on Reason.com.

from Latest https://ift.tt/6c3YyGI
via IFTTT

Futures Plunge, Yields Roar Higher As Bear-Market Rally Slams Brick Wall On $2.1 Trillion Op-Ex

Futures Plunge, Yields Roar Higher As Bear-Market Rally Slams Brick Wall On $2.1 Trillion Op-Ex

The combination of plunging bitcoin prices, the (latest) bursting of the meme bubble courtesy of Ryan Cohen’s historic pump and dump, rising Fed warnings that another 75bps rate hike is coming amid fears next week’s Jackson Hole meeting will be a hawkano, rising oil prices and TSY yields at the highest level in a month, and mix it all in on a day when there is absolutely no liquidity (one day after the lowest volume of the year) as $2.1 trillion in options expire…

… and you get a perfect storm that has sent futures tumbling 40 points or 0.93%, but another confirmation that BofA’s Michael Hartnett is the best strategist on Wall Street (while his peers are nothing more than broken records).

Nasdaq 100 futures slumped 1.2% by 7.30 a.m. in New York as the yield on the 10-year Treasury climbed about 5 basis points to 2.95%, the highest level in one month amid divergent signals from Fed officials over the size of the next interest-rate hike.

The tech-heavy index is set to end the week lower after four weeks of gains; the Nasdaq 100 underperformed this week in the face of rising bond yields as higher rates weigh on the present value of future profits, hurting growth stocks with the highest valuations. The dollar headed for the biggest weekly rally since June 2021 and bitcoin plunged by $2,000 overnight, crashing below $21,500.

In premarket trading, Bed Bath & Beyond shares crashed 45%, after plunging more than 20% during the regular session, after top investor Ryan Cohen pulled the biggest pump and dump in history. Cryptocurrency-exposed stocks like Coinbase and Riot Blockchain also slid amid a broad selloff across digital tokens.  Coinbase (COIN US) fell 7%, Marathon Digital (MARA US) -11%, Riot Blockchain (RIOT US) -9%. Here are other notable premarket movers:

  • Applied Materials (AMAT US) rose as much as 1.4%, with analysts positive on the chip equipment maker’s results, saying it saw a strong performance amid a tough macroeconomic backdrop, though some brokers nudged down their price targets.
  • Morgan Stanley analysts cut their price target on Meta Platforms (META US), saying the social media giant’s shift toward Reels and declining user-engagement rates pose a risk to its revenue growth. The stock was down 1.7%.
  • Bill.com (BILL US) surged 21% after fiscal 4Q results from the infrastructure software firm that analysts said were “perfect” alongside guidance that “blew away” expectations.
  • StoneCo (STNE US) dropped 9% after the Brazilian payments firm reported adjusted net for the second quarter that missed the average analyst estimate.

Traders have also turned cautious toward risk assets ahead of the Fed’s annual symposium next week in Jackson Hole. Beyond that, inflation and employment figures will also be closely monitored before the central bank’s highly anticipated interest-rate decision in September. Additionally, on Thursday two Fed voting members – St. Louis’s James Bullard and Kansas City’s Esther George – emphasized that the US central bank will continue to raise interest rates until inflation eased back to its 2% target although their views diverged on how big the Fed’s September move should be.

This is notable since traders had continued piling into stocks and bonds, completely ignoring the Fed’s repeated jawboning and dismissing the risk of a more aggressive Fed as they expect it to ease the pace of rate hikes while inflation pulls back from its peak, according to Bank of America strategists. US stocks saw $9.2 billion of inflows in the week through Aug. 17 BofA’s Michael Hartnett wrote in a note.

“The Fed would, in order to get inflation down to the 2% target, have to crush the economy,” said Ann-Katrin Petersen, a senior investment strategist at BlackRock Investment Institute. In order to bolster growth, the Fed will at some point “accept to live with inflation. This dovish pivot is not likely in the very near term, in contrast to what markets seem to be expecting right now, but this dovish pivot may come in 2023,” she told Bloomberg Television.

In Europe, the Stoxx 50 fell 0.8%. FTSE 100 outperforms, dropping 0.2%, Travel, real estate and autos are the worst-performing sectors. Italy’s FTSE MIB lags, dropping 1.4%.  after a right-wing coalition led by Brothers of Italy party was seen reaching 49.8% level in voting intentions for Italy’s lower house of parliament for September election, according to a Tecne poll on August 18. Center-left bloc at 30%; Five Star Movement at 10.2%; Centrist coalition at 4.8%; Other parties at 5.2%. Here are some of the biggest European movers today:

  • Just Eat Takeaway shares soar as much as 38% in Amsterdam trading, the most ever, after the food delivery firm agreed to sell its 33% stake in iFood for as much as EU1.8b
  • Holmen rises as much as 5.3% on 2Q earnings that beat consensus on adjusted operating profit, net sales and operating profit. The report was strong, but expected, Jefferies writes
  • Kingspan gains as much as 8.6% after 1H results from the Irish insulation supplier that Goodbody says were ahead of expectations
  • U-blox surges as much as 16% after the Swiss semiconductor company lifted FY revenue and Ebit outlooks that it previously raised in May, citing a record- high order book
  • Mobilezone rises as much as 5.3%, the most intraday since March, as analysts note the Swiss firm’s robust 1H earnings and confirmation of guidance in the face of powerful FX headwinds
  • Joules plunges as much as 41% after the UK apparel retailer forecast an FY adjusted pretax loss significantly bigger than market views. Liberum cut its rating on the stock to hold from buy
  • Bachem drops as much as 3.9% after Baader published a note saying the company’s first-half results due on Aug. 25 may be a trigger for a downward revision to consensus
  • Oponeo.pl falls as much as 12% after the Polish distributor of tires, tools and bikes reported a 70% y/y drop in 2Q net income due to higher costs and lower sales of tires
  • Hypoport declines as much as 12% after Metzler downgrades to sell on a slowdown in growth for its Europace unit and as the company’s insurance application “fails to convince” at this stage

Earlier in the session, Asian stocks headed for their first weekly drop in five, as renewed concerns about growth in China — the region’s biggest economy — damped investor sentiment.   The MSCI Asia Pacific Index retreated as much as 0.7%, set for a decline of more than 1% this week. Meanwhile, a gauge of China stocks listed in Hong Kong posted its worst week in August, losing 2%. Shares in South Korea and India were among the region’s worst performers Friday. Concerns about China’s growth resurfaced as the country planned more fiscal stimulus over a gloomy outlook and as banks were expected to lower borrowing costs next week. Goldman Sachs, Nomura and Citi further cut their growth estimates for China’s gross domestic product earlier this week as a power supply crunch adds more uncertainty to the outlook.

“Regulatory issues and sluggish economic recovery are behind the weak performance of stocks in Hong Kong as many of the stocks listed there are related to the real estate sector and regulations,” said Kim Kyung Hwan, a China equity strategist at Hana Financial Investment in Seoul. “There are lingering concerns that China’s economic fundamentals may take an L-shaped recovery and the government’s intervention in the property crisis may be delayed,” he added. 

Improved appetite for haven assets was also reflected in the dollar, which rose to the highest in nearly a month following a Bloomberg News report that China’s President Xi Jinping and Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin will attend the G-20 summit in Indonesia later this year.  All but two sectoral indexes declined in Asia’s key benchmark, with health care and financials the biggest losers. Samsung Electronics and NetEase were among the biggest drags on the measure, with the latter tumbling on profit-taking following earnings results.  Caution also prevailed with next week expected to be the busiest period for quarterly earnings announcements from MSCI Asia Pacific Index members. Chinese tech giants Meituan and JD.com Inc. are among the more than 300 companies set to release results

In FX, the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index advanced for a third day and the greenback strengthened against all of its Group-of-10 peers. The pound fell to a one-month low while the euro was steady against the dollar. UK retail sales volumes unexpectedly rose 0.3% last month, but the cost of those sales increased more rapidly by 1.3%. UK consumer confidence fell to a record low as concerns about a recession increased and soaring inflation tightened a squeeze on household finances. GfK said its gauge of confidence declined 3 points to minus 44 in August. The New Zealand dollar was weighed by comments from RBNZ Governor Adrian Orr that the central bank would “retain optionality” over the pace of future rate increases. The yen is headed for its biggest weekly decline in two months as hawkish comments from Fed officials spurred bets for another outsized rate hike. Options traders are finally betting on a rise in the dollar-yen currency pair after staying bearish for two months, as they await cues from the next week’s Jackson Hole symposium by the Federal Reserve.

In rates, Treasuries held losses into early US session, leaving yields cheaper by up to 6bp across front-end of the curve, following wider gilt-led selloff after stronger-than-forecast UK retail sales figures in July. US yields cheaper by 6bp to 3.5bp across the curve with front- end led losses flattening 2s10s, 5s30s by around 1bp each; 10- year yields around 2.95%, trading 8.5bp and 7bp richer in the sector vs. gilts and bunds. Bunds and Italian bonds declined for a fourth day, the longest streak since June and July respectively, as 125bps of ECB hikes were briefly priced by year-end, or two half-point increases.  Money markets ramped up ECB tightening wagers following hawkish Fed talk and stronger-than-forecast UK retail sales figures in July.  Peripheral spreads widen to Germany with 10y BTP/Bund adding 2.3bps to 224.3bps.

WTI trades within Thursday’s range, falling 1.4% to trade around $89. Spot gold falls roughly $4 to trade around $1,754/oz. Spot silver loses 1.4% around $19. Most base metals trade in the red; LME tin falls 1.2%, underperforming peers. LME nickel outperforms, adding 0.8%.

Luckily, there is nothing on today’s calendar. Central bank speakers include Richmond Fed President Barkin, and earnings releases include Deere & Company.

Market Snapshot

  • S&P 500 futures down 0.9% to 4,250.00
  • STOXX Europe 600 down 0.6% to 437.98
  • MXAP down 0.6% to 161.10
  • MXAPJ down 0.5% to 524.13
  • Nikkei little changed at 28,930.33
  • Topix up 0.2% to 1,994.52
  • Hang Seng Index little changed at 19,773.03
  • Shanghai Composite down 0.6% to 3,258.08
  • Sensex down 1.3% to 59,517.87
  • Australia S&P/ASX 200 little changed at 7,114.46
  • Kospi down 0.6% to 2,492.69
  • German 10Y yield little changed at 1.18%
  • Euro little changed at $1.0084
  • Gold spot down 0.3% to $1,752.91
  • U.S. Dollar Index up 0.19% to 107.69

Top Overnight News from Bloomberg

  • China’s efforts to stomp out a lucrative carry trade by banks in the nation’s bond market and divert cash to the real economy is meeting with limited success. The spread between the 10-year yield and the overnight borrowing rate remained around 140 basis points, even though the latter rose for four straight days amid the central bank’s cash withdrawals. That means banks can still make a profit by funding from each other in the interbank market and purchasing government bonds
  • A larger-than-forecast £4.9 billion ($5.8 billion) UK budget deficit in July took the total for 2022-23 so far to £55 billion pounds — £3 billion more than officials forecast in March
  • Investors continued piling into stocks and bonds, dismissing the risk of a more aggressive Federal Reserve as they expect it to ease the pace of rate hikes while inflation pulls back from its peak, according to Bank of America Corp. strategists. Global equity funds attracted $7.9 billion in the week through Aug. 17, strategists led by Michael Hartnett wrote in a note, citing EPFR Global data
  • The right-wing coalition led by Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party neared a landmark level of support, registering 49.8% of voter approval for Italy’s Sept. 25 election, in a survey by the Tecne research institute

A more detailed look at global markets courtesy of Newsquawk

APAC stocks lacked firm direction despite the mild tailwinds from the US where sentiment was somewhat underpinned by mostly encouraging data. ASX 200 just about kept afloat amid outperformance in energy on recent oil price gains although the upside was limited by weakness in financials and amid another influx of earnings results. Nikkei 225 returned to flat territory beneath the 29k level after early momentum petered out. Hang Seng and Shanghai Comp were indecisive amid a lack of macro drivers and with newsflow dominated by earnings, while markets await a cut to the benchmark lending rates early next week.

Top Asian News

  • Indonesia May Impose Nickel Export Tax in 2022, Jokowi Says
  • H.K. Home Prices Could Fall 10% After HSBC, StanChart Hike Rates
  • Hong Kong Monetary Authority Deputy CEO Edmond Lau Resigns
  • Moody’s Reviews Huarong AMC’s Ratings for Downgrade
  • Some Country Garden, CIFI USD Notes Set for Record Weekly Gains
  • Modi to Be Challenged by Local Leaders in 2024 India Elections

European bourses are under modest pressure, Euro Stoxx 50 -0.6%, in a session of limited newsflow with focus on continuing hawkish price action. Stateside, given the hawkish action, NQ -1.0% is the incremental underperformer ahead of commentary from 2024 voter Barkin. China’s CPCA forecast shows August passenger car sales lifting MM to 1.88mln (prev. 1.77mln), latest COVID outbreak is expected to have a relatively limited impact on the auto market. Deere & Co (DE) Q2 2022 (USD): EPS 6.16 (exp. 6.69), Revenue 14.1bln (exp. 12.78bln); FY view Net 7.0-7.2bln (prev. 7.0-7.4bln, exp. 7.1bln).

Top European News

  • Gas Heading for Another Weekly Rise Intensifies Europe’s Pain
  • Germany’s Drive to Replace Russian Gas Can’t Rely on Canada
  • Germany Risks a Factory Exodus as Energy Prices Bite Hard
  • Food Banks for Pets Show UK Inflation Reaching Cats and Dogs
  • Londoners Wake to Transit Headaches as Strike Hobbles City

FX

  • Dollar continues to reign as risk sentiment sours again and yields ratchet higher, DXY up to 107.930 and close to mid-July high just shy of 108.000
  • Euro remains relatively resistant amidst further EGB retracement and strong Eurozone inflation data, EUR/USD sub-1.0100, but above 1.0050.
  • No retail therapy for Sterling as wider UK economic worries weigh on the Pound, Cable under 1.1900 and EUR/GBP eyeing 0.8500.
  • NZ trade data fails to give Kiwi a lift as deficit remains wide, NZD/USD hovering above 0.6200.
  • Yen shrugs off Japanese CPI as UST-JGB spreads widen further, USD/JPY touches 136.76 before waning.
  • Loonie and Nokkie undermined by softer oil prices as former awaits Canadian retail sales for independent impetus, USD/CAD 1.2950+, EUR/NOK around 9.8500
  • Yuan retreats as Moody’s joins list of those downgrading forecasts for Chinese growth this year, USD/CNY over 6.8100 and USD/CNH almost 6.8300 overnight.

Fixed Income

  • Only dead cat bounces in debt as hawkish Central Bank and hot inflation vibes persist.
  • Bunds through trendline support to 152.61 and 10 year yield above 1.15% Fib resistance.
  • Gilts probing 113.00 vs 113.45 at best and T-note towards base of 118-11/118-29+ range .

Commodities

  • Under broad pressure given USD strength with crude curtailed as it awaits another JCPOA response; benchmarks lower by circa. USD 1.50/bbl, vs USD 7/bbl ranges for the week.
  • Spot gold clipped by the USD, though only by just over USD 5/oz compared to weekly parameters of over USD 50/oz; broader metals in-fitting in limited newsflow.
  • China’s daily coal output +19.4% YY, between August 1st and 17th, via the Energy Administration.

US Event Calendar

  • Nothing major scheduled

DB’s Tim Wessel concludes the overnight wrap

Filling in again from Stateside much like the rumored involvement of yank Elon Musk in the English product Manchester United. The metaphor does not have much life beyond that, however. Despite what you may have heard, I am not a billionaire nor do I have any designs on going to space, while on the product side, the EMR has a chance of success this year.

Taking the developments by time zones. In Europe, yields crept slightly higher on the now familiar formula of tighter expected ECB policy and concerns about energy pricing. On the former, in a Reuters interview, the ECB’s Schnabel said that “The concerns we had in July have not been alleviated… I do not think this outlook has changed fundamentally.” She also said that “I would not exclude that, in the short run, inflation is going to increase further”. The ECB’s Kazaks also echoed this, saying that “we will continue to increase interest rates” so as to prevent inflation becoming entrenched. Markets continue to fully price in another 50bp move at the next meeting in September, with 52bps currently priced in, so some probability of an even larger hike. On the energy front, price pressures continue to get worse, where natural gas futures closed at a record high of €241 per megawatt-hour, with year-ahead German power registering a fresh record of their own, closing at €540 per megawatt-hour. In line with what we’ve covered, Germany is offering fiscal support to alleviate price pressures, as German Chancellor Scholz announced a temporary VAT cut on natural gas from 19% to 7%, which will apply for 18 months from October 1. It’s worth plugging our team’s latest gas supply monitor again, link here to stay on top of the latest.

All told, the yield move was rather modest, with 10yr bunds +1.9bps higher, outpacing increases in OATs (+1.7bps) and BTPs (+0.4bps), which helped support risk assets on the day. For their part, equities also posted a modest gain, as the STOXX 600 climbed +0.39%, the DAX gained +0.52%, and the CAC increased +0.45%.

In the US, it was another day of mixed, but supportive data on balance. Initial jobless claims fell to 250k (vs. 264k expected). Continuing claims, which our US econ team has identified as one of the best leading indicators for recessionary risk, also came in below expectations at 1437k (vs. 1455k). Reminder, our team has found that when the rolling 4-week average of continuing claims increases around 11% above the last year’s nadir, near-term recession risk increases. That warning level would be around 1456k, still some ways above the 4-week average of 1413k. Indeed, one need go back to the first week of April to find any individual print, let alone moving average, that has breached 1456k, and that was as claims were still falling, only to hit their lows in late May. Elsewhere in data, the Philadelphia Fed Business Outlook surprised to the upside at 6.2, versus expectations of -5.0 and a prior print of -12.3. On the downside, housing activity continued to be strangled by Fed tightening, with existing home sales falling to a 4.81m pace (vs. 4.86m expectations), their lowest since the summer of 2020’s stilted homebuying season.

There was a suite of Fed officials on the tape yesterday. Across speakers, they still sounded a resolute tone around current inflationary ills, but offered different prescriptions for the path of policy going forward. On one end, San Francisco Fed President Daly expressed support for a 50bp hike to the fed funds target range at the September FOMC, with policy rates getting “a little” above 3% by then end of this year, reserving the right to go higher if the data call for that. St. Louis Fed President Bullard played the customary foil, preferring to hike rates 75bps in September, getting policy closer to 4% by year-end. Bullard noted that the Fed “shouldn’t drag out process of raising rates”. Splitting the difference, Kansas City President George noted it was too early to declare victory over inflation, so the case for continued hikes remained strong, even if the Committee had to be mindful of what the lagged impact of tightening may look like, echoing the July meeting minutes. Finally, Minneapolis President Kashkari was ambivalent about the prospects of a soft landing, saying he didn’t know if the Fed could bring inflation back to target without a recession given he couldn’t count on supply side expansion, particularly in the labor market. Like other speakers, he re-emphasized breaking inflation’s back was urgent.

In short, nothing explicitly new from Fed speakers, so it holds that Chair Powell’s Jackson Hole remarks next Friday, August 26, (confirmed by the Fed yesterday), along with the inflation and employment data before the September FOMC are the key events for policy over the near-term.

Yields on 2yr Treasuries fell -8.8bps, while increased +2.7bps, while 10yr yields were -1.5bps lower, driving the 2s10s yield curve to its steepest level in more than two weeks at -32bps. Like their European counterparts, US equities were similarly subdued, with the S&P 500 gaining +0.23%. Energy shares climbed +2.53%, following a +3.14% increase in Brent crude oil, but otherwise sector dispersion was rather narrow between Tech gaining +0.49% and Real Estate lagging at -0.75%.

On the war in Ukraine, talks with President Zelenskiy, UN Secretary General Guterres, and Turkish President Erdogan were staged in Lviv. Following the meeting, Turkey is set to evaluate the talks with President Putin, cementing Turkeys status as the key interlocutor between Ukraine and Russia. Reports from the meeting suggested diplomatic progress seemed possible, and our team took it as a positive that both sides appeared to be open to indirect communication, though much work remains.

Asian stock markets are mixed this morning following a quiet US session. The Nikkei (+0.10%) and the Hang Seng (+0.46%) are trading in positive territory while the Shanghai Composite (-0.28%), the CSI (-0.27%) and the Kospi (-0.10%) are trading lower. US equity futures are likewise sleepy, with the S&P 500 (-0.08%) and NASDAQ (-0.08%) flitting around zero.

Japan’s headline inflation rose +2.6% y/y in July, in line with market expectations and against a +2.4% rise in June, edging past the Bank of Japan’s 2% inflation goal for a fourth straight month. The increase in core CPI (+2.4% y/y from +2.2% in June) was the sharpest in about seven and half years.

To the day ahead now, and data releases include UK retail sales and German PPI for July. Central bank speakers include Richmond Fed President Barkin, and earnings releases include Deere & Company.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 08/19/2022 – 08:02

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/ab85M40 Tyler Durden

The Increasingly Dangerous Variants of the “Most-Favored-Nation” Theory of Religious Liberty, Part V: The Abuse of Strict Scrutiny

I will conclude this series of posts by considering the variants of MFN that affect the way strict scrutiny is applied. MFN-6, ubiquitous in the Covid cases, makes strict scrutiny impossible to satisfy, by treating as equivalents regulated actions that are radically different in their effects on the pertinent state interests. MFN-7, proposed by Alito in Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania and possibly embraced by the Court in Fulton v. Philadelphia, sweeps away the state interest more summarily, by declaring that however urgent it may be, it cannot possibly be compelling if the state has allowed exceptions to it.

Tandon says that “whether two activities are comparable for purposes of the Free Exercise Clause must be judged against the asserted government interest that justifies the regulation at issue.” This judgment is distorted if the Court systematically misperceives the comparative burden on government interests, minimizing the damage to the pertinent interest when a religious exemption is sought. This of course distorts what Tandon contemplates, by deeming similar two activities that are not similar in their effect on the asserted government interest—as Justice Kagan put it, requiring “that the State equally treat apples and watermelons.”

This move, which we will call MFN-6, has been ubiquitous in the Covid cases. In response to church capacity limits during Covid lockdowns, it became the position of a majority of the Court as soon as Barrett replaced Ginsburg. With respect to vaccines, where religious exemptions could create a public health disaster, it only commands three votes so far.

MFN-6 is a mutated version of MFN-2, and is often a consequence of its application. One may understand it as a complication of a preexisting pathology. MFN-2 misconstrues the coverage of a statute, in order to find exceptions where there are none. MFN-6 similarly misconstrues the statutory scheme, here failing to perceive the sought exemption’s damage to the government interest. They have in common a failure to understand what government is doing and why it is doing it.

There are too many Covid cases to discuss them all here, though I go into considerably more detail in my forthcoming paper. Tandon v. Newsom is an example. It enjoined California’s Covid-19 order limiting more than three households from gathering in homes. The Court declared the order could not be applied to religious groups that want to hold services in a home. It explained that “government regulations are not neutral and generally applicable, and therefore trigger strict scrutiny under the Free Exercise Clause, whenever they treat any comparable secular activity more favorably than religious exercise.” This rule, announced without full briefing or argument, was then used to enjoin a rule that did not mention religion at all and whose authors almost certainly were not even thinking about religion. The Court held that the rule discriminated against religion, because “California treats some comparable secular activities more favorably than at-home religious exercise, permitting hair salons, retail stores, personal care services, movie theaters, private suites at sporting events and concerts, and indoor restaurants to bring together more than three households at a time.”

Justice Kagan, dissenting, pointed out that those activities “pose lesser risks” because they can enforce mask wearing, the interactions are briefer, and ventilation is better. That points to another innovation: persistent imprecision in deciding what counts as comparable activity.

The most dangerous manifestation of MFN-6 is Justice Gorsuch’s dissents in Does v. Mills and Dr. A. v. Hochul, two cases in which a divided Court declined to block state requirements that health care workers be vaccinated against the coronavirus notwithstanding their religious objections. (I already discussed these cases when considering MFN-2, which triggered strict scrutiny. MFN-6 affects how that scrutiny is applied.) Three justices thought that, because the state exempted those whose health would be endangered by them, it must also allow religious exemptions.

An apparently permanent feature of the human condition is the existence of deadly, contagious diseases—smallpox, polio, measles, rubella, tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis, rotavirus, and others. Except for smallpox, which has been eradicated, these diseases still kill many people outside the United States. One of the great innovations of modern science is the creation of vaccines that can prevent them.

Much of Gorsuch’s argument involves the abuse of MFN-2, the variant he developed in Masterpiece Cakeshop: misconstruing the law’s purposes in order to conjure up unfairness. Maine “allows those invoking medical reasons to avoid the vaccine mandate on the apparent premise that these individuals can take alter­native measures (such as the use of protective gear and reg­ular testing) to safeguard their patients and co-workers. But the State refuses to allow those invoking religious rea­sons to do the very same thing.”

Why would a state allow medical but not religious exemptions? The medical part is easy. The state’s real aim is, not maximizing vaccinations, but preventing disease and death. That would not be served by forcing vaccines on those who would be endangered by them. The state interest is compelling and its rule is narrowly tailored.

When Does was decided, it was clear that religious exemptions would prolong the pandemic. Only 57% of the adult population was fully vaccinated. Vaccine resistance had become a marker of Republican political identity. Because it is hard to contradict someone’s assertion that her objection is sincere, religious objections were easily abused.  A quarter of the workforce of the Los Angeles Police Department had claimed them, and 40 percent of the city’s police were still not vaccinated.

Religious exemptions, but not medical exemptions, have been linked to significant outbreaks of disease. Those with medical exemptions do not cluster geographically. Religious claimants do. Vaccine resistance tends to concentrate in communities of like-minded people. A worker with a religious exemption is far more dangerous to patients than one with a medical exemption.

Gorsuch’s logic has nothing specifically to do with Covid. It necessarily implies that there is already no compelling interest in refusing religious (while allowing medical) exemptions for any other vaccine: measles, rubella, tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis, and all the other nasty diseases that you got jabs for when you were a child. Most Americans don’t remember (but may soon learn) the fear that your child will die of measles or diphtheria, or be paralyzed by polio.

An even more radical variant holds that a pattern of exceptions signifies that the interest at issue cannot be compelling. The religious claimant would inevitably win, whatever the consequences. Call this MFN-7.

Justice Alito most fully develops this variant—and offers it as a manifestation of judicial modesty!—in his concurrence in Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania:

If we were required to exercise our own judgment on the question whether the Government has an obligation to provide free contraceptives to all women, we would have to take sides in the great national debate about whether the Government should provide free and comprehensive medical care for all. Entering that policy debate would be inconsistent with our proper role, and RFRA does not call on us to express a view on that issue. We can answer the compelling interest question simply by asking whether Congress has treated the provision of free contraceptives to all women as a compelling interest.

“‘[A] law cannot be regarded as protecting an interest “of the highest order” . . . when it leaves appreciable damage to that supposedly vital interest unprohibited.'” Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. Hialeah, 508 U. S. 520, 547 (1993). . . . here, there are exceptions aplenty. The ACA—which fails to ensure that millions of women have access to free contraceptives—unmistakably shows that Congress, at least to date, has not regarded this interest as compelling.

The inference is not simply that, if there are exceptions, there must be strict scrutiny, and the government must show a compelling interest. Rather—this what makes this variant more virulent than the others – the presence of exceptions is taken to show that the interest is not compelling at all. If that is right, then it does not matter how urgent the interest is or how necessary the law is to that interest. Women’s health, their need to control their fertility, the likelihood that unintended pregnancies will produce low birth weight babies, even the likely increase in the number of abortions, all disappear from view. The Court will take that question to be foreclosed by exceptions. But a compelling interest is indispensable to a state’s case for denying religious exemptions. The state then automatically loses. The exemption will automatically be granted. If government allows any “appreciable damage” to the interest that a law promotes, if it allows an exemption for any secular reason, then there must be a religious exemption.

Whether or not Alito’s approach was adopted by the Court in Fulton, neither he nor any other member of the Court will pursue MFN-7 to the limits of its logic. They are not anarchists. Instead, I confidently predict that they will cheat, allowing the state to pursue interests that they, in their entirely unconstrained discretion, deem worthy.

The devices of MFN-1, MFN-2, MFN-3, MFN-4, and MFN-5, taken together, make it possible to find discrimination in any law at all. When combined with MFN-7 they could produce the most extreme variant of all, which we will call MFN-8: religion always wins. Religious motivation can excuse anyone from any law. No member of the Court has embraced this, and none ever will, because it really would entail anarchy. Instead, the judges will use MFN inconsistently, relying on their unstructured intuitions.

I’ve made some pretty bold claims here, summarily and without documentation. You can read the fully developed version here.

Thanks again to Eugene for giving me this forum.

The post The Increasingly Dangerous Variants of the "Most-Favored-Nation" Theory of Religious Liberty, Part V: The Abuse of Strict Scrutiny appeared first on Reason.com.

from Latest https://ift.tt/ud3LaBr
via IFTTT

The Biggest Obstacle To Building Offshore Wind Farms Is Government


Biden points to a wind turbine graph on a piece of paper

Shortly after taking office last year, President Joe Biden announced an ambitious plan to vastly expand the amount of energy produced by offshore wind farms.

Along the Atlantic coast and in the Gulf of Mexico, the administration identified huge swaths of wind-swept sea that could be put to energy-producing use. Last year, the Department of Energy (DOE) made $3 billion available to upgrade ports so the equipment needed to install offshore wind turbines could be shipped out to sea, and the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act included measures providing tax credits of up to 30 percent for offshore wind projects that are started before 2026. This overall strategy to expand offshore wind production is “a cornerstone of Biden’s plan to fight global warming and decarbonize the electricity sector by 2035,” Reuters reported last month.

But the biggest impediment to the federal government’s attempted development of offshore wind is, it turns out, the federal government.

According to DOE data published this month, the U.S. currently has offshore wind projects capable of generating 42 megawatts (MW) of electricity. Offshore wind projects currently under construction will eventually provide another 932 MW of electricity when fully operational. (For comparison’s sake, an average-sized nuclear power plant can generate around 1 gigawatt of electricity—equal to 1,000 megawatts.)

But another 18,581 MW of potential offshore wind power are tied up in permitting battles. According to the DOE’s data, that means a developer has signed a lease for the designated area but is still trying to complete environmental impact statements required by the federal government and the appropriate state authorities (for projects based in state-controlled waters). As with housing and other types of infrastructure projects, the permitting process provides an opportunity for various parties to slow or even stop construction. Even though the Biden administration has said it intends to speed up the federal permitting process for offshore wind projects, it’s questionable whether that is happening. In July, for example, the DOE’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management canceled two potential wind energy developments off the coast of Long Island due to concerns that included “visibility from nearby beaches.”

One might wonder about the administration’s priorities when its cornerstone energy effort is disrupted by grumpy beachgoers.

I saw the local side of this debate up close during a recent vacation to Long Beach Island in New Jersey, where seemingly every other house is currently sporting a yard sign opposing a new wind project that would be visible from the beach despite being located 15 miles out at sea. A recent article from the island’s The SandPaper spells out the regulatory complications: 1,400 pages of documentation, a 45-day public comment period (extended 15 extra days to accommodate “public outcry”), and now a lawsuit that seeks to put the project on hold.

Of course, locals object to new power plants of all varieties and deserve to have their say. Still, the fact that so much of the Biden administration’s much-ballyhooed wind projects might be kneecapped long before they become reality ought to generate some skepticism about the usefulness of those big new tax breaks. Regulatory reforms that trim back environmental reviews—and that prevent them from being weaponized by NIMBYs—would be useful not only for getting offshore wind projects built but also for a host of other infrastructure efforts. As Reason‘s Christian Britschgi has reported, environmental impact statements take 4.5 years on average and run over 650 pages.

It’s also worth considering the other tradeoffs involved in these projects. As I wrote last week, a major offshore wind project (one that actually is being built) near Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, will produce only about one-third of the energy that used to be provided by a coal-burning plant that the wind farm is meant to replace—and that’s assuming the wind farm operates at full capacity all the time, which of course it won’t because sometimes the wind doesn’t blow. Even when it does, the electricity produced by offshore wind is more expensive than what is produced by nuclear or gas-powered plants.

Those are the kinds of tradeoffs that would matter even if the Biden administration could snap its fingers and see its stated goal of having America produce 30 gigawatts of electricity from offshore wind by 2030.

But with the regulatory and permitting hurdles facing those wind projects, it’s hard to believe we’ll get anywhere near that total in the near future.

The post The Biggest Obstacle To Building Offshore Wind Farms Is Government appeared first on Reason.com.

from Latest https://ift.tt/a6Mp4um
via IFTTT

Review: Emily the Criminal


Aubrey Plaza in Emily the Criminal

Aubrey Plaza, the queen of weaponized deadpan, plays it all-the-way straight in Emily the Criminal, a tough little first feature by writer-director John Patton Ford. The movie has a topical spin—it’s set in the world of crushing student loan debt—but it’s really about the shapeshifting nature of hopes and dreams, and the ways in which the riptides of life can carry us away in unexpected and sometimes alarming directions.

Plaza’s character, Emily, is a young woman who made the mistake of following her own dreams into art school, which has left her $70,000 in debt and with little hope of getting a decent job in the real world. (She also has a minor rap sheet that’s blocking her future like a boulder in the road.) So she now humps orders for a food delivery service, her life going nowhere.

Then, tipped by a colleague, Emily falls in with an improbably charming Lebanese immigrant named Youcef (Theo Rossi, of Sons of Anarchy), who’s part of a criminal enterprise devoted to credit card fraud—stamping stolen names and numbers onto plastic blanks for a squad of “dummy shoppers” to use in scamming retailers out of pricey merchandise. Youcef offers Emily a chance to make a quick $200 doing one of these runs. “You won’t be in danger,” he tells her, “but you will be breaking the law.” Emily is in—and she turns out to be good at this stuff. Then she’s offered a follow-up assignment—a riskier one, but for a lot more money.

Emily has mixed feelings about this new career path, but they’re easily overcome after a dispiriting interview for a legitimate gig at a slick advertising agency. This would have been a perfect berth for an art-school grad, but her hopes were instantly deflated when the agency’s owner (Gina Gershon) explained that the job was intern-level and the pay, zero. (Great resumé-builder, though.) Emily—whose endless loan payments seem to be entirely consumed by ever-mushrooming interest charges—is deeply steamed. “People just keep taking from you,” she fumes, “until you make the goddamn rules yourself.” She decides to start taking this crime career she’s wandered into a little more seriously.

Plaza is not an assertively expressive actor (it’s part of her effectiveness as a comic presence), but she turns Emily into a completely realized character—a woman who’s found no way to exert control over her life until she gets in touch with her inner badass. “We’re serious people!” she shouts at one cowed civilian. “You should be scared of us!”

The post Review: <em>Emily the Criminal</em> appeared first on Reason.com.

from Latest https://ift.tt/ghqQWYo
via IFTTT

South Carolina Targets Free Speech in Its Attempt to Limit Abortion Access


Billboard against an orange background that reads, "Speech about abortion is free speech. -The First Amendment"

One challenge prohibitionists face is that not everybody supports their prohibitions. Many people under their nominal authority want access to what’s forbidden, no matter what the law says.

Aware that the procedure remains available elsewhere, South Carolina lawmakers seeking a near-complete ban on abortion propose to forbid speech about terminating pregnancies to prevent residents of the Palmetto State from learning of such services. The recently rebooted Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) is reminding `them that speech that politicians don’t like is not only the best speech but is also protected by the First Amendment.

“Speech about abortion is free speech–The First Amendment,” reads the advertisements placed across South Carolina in “a six-figure billboard campaign” by FIRE, which recently adopted a new name and expanded its scope beyond academia to embrace broad civil liberties advocacy.

The billboards are going up in Charleston, Columbia, Greenville, and Myrtle Beach as South Carolina lawmakers debate not just new restrictions on abortion in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, but also restrictions on informing women about how to terminate pregnancies beyond the law’s reach. Ambitious and almost certainly unconstitutional proposed legislation would prohibit “providing information to a pregnant woman, or someone seeking information on behalf of a pregnant woman, by telephone, internet, or any other mode of communication regarding self-administered abortions or the means to obtain an abortion, knowing that the information will be used, or is reasonably likely to be used, for an abortion.” Violation of the law would be a felony, punishable by up to 25 years in prison depending on the specific offense.

The proposed censorship of abortion information comes as state legislators consider tighter restrictions in the wake of Dobbs. Language now being debated would ban all abortions, except for those necessary to preserve the life and health of the mother. Even some anti-abortion lawmakers find that too restrictive and are holding out for the inclusion of exceptions for abortions in the case of rape or incest.

Whatever the final form, though, tighter restrictions on abortion are likely to send some women looking for abortion-inducing drugs, or for information on traveling out of state to end pregnancies. Preventing such end runs is the goal of the companion bill banning information “regarding self-administered abortions or the means to obtain an abortion.” The language was clearly inspired by model legislation crafted by the National Right to Life Committee as “a robust enforcement mechanism” to ensure that state-level abortion bans are effective. That model has already been dismissed by legal experts as almost certainly unconstitutional.

“In Bigelow v. Virginia (1975), the Supreme Court struck down a state law that prohibited encouraging or prompting an abortion by the sale or circulation of any publication,” First Amendment lawyer Robert Corn-Revere noted last month for Reason. “The Court held the First Amendment protects such speech. It observed that, just as Virginia lacked constitutional authority to prevent its residents from traveling to New York to obtain abortions, it could not, ‘under the guise of exercising internal police powers, bar a citizen of another State from disseminating information about an activity that is legal in that State.'”

Even as they consider a ban on speech that might help women end their pregnancies, many South Carolina lawmakers seem to understand that the project is a non-starter, destined to perish in the courts after the inevitable challenge.

“[Sen. Richard] Cash’s bill has received a lot of attention since he introduced it June 28, shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned nearly 50 years of precedent on abortion rights and left the legality for state lawmakers to decide,” reports the Post and Courier, which notes significant opposition even among pro-life lawmakers. “But it’s not expected to get any traction.”

So, if the censorship bill is not expected to pass, why is FIRE making a fuss? Well, legislators have a history of surprising people by enacting legislation that observers consider ridiculous, but which become law despite all predictions and common sense. Right now, youth shooting teams and publications are awaiting the outcome of lawsuits against the state of California over a broadly written law that bans “marketing” guns to minors but encompasses speech about policy and shooting sports.

“A gun magazine publisher, for instance—or a gun advocacy group that publishes a magazine—would likely be covered as a ‘firearm industry member,’ because it was formed to advocate for use or ownership of guns, might endorse specific products in product reviews, and might carry advertising for guns,” UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh cautioned in testimony before the legislation passed.

Holding the line now is a good policy so that somebody doesn’t have to risk a felony conviction in the future in order to wage an after-the-fact legal battle. Complacency is just a bad idea when liberty is at stake.

Plus, the debate over the censorship measure is an opportunity to remind Palmetto State residents that there are alternatives to obeying restrictive laws. Discussions of free speech about abortion can quickly turn into conversations about the content of that speech, pointing women towards out-of-state clinics and resources like Plan C, maintained by the National Women’s Health Network, which offers advice for getting mail-order abortion pills. That is, an attempt to muzzle speech becomes a means of amplifying the targeted speech to reach a wider audience.

Fundamentally, though, whatever your opinion of abortion or other controversial issues, frustrating control freaks’ efforts to muzzle the sharing of information should be something we can all get behind.

“These proposals are a chilling attempt to stifle free speech in South Carolina,” points out FIRE Legal Director Will Creeley. “Whether you agree with abortion or not is irrelevant. You have the right to talk about it.”

Interestingly, South Carolina lawmakers’ efforts to tighten abortion restrictions may falter based on the state’s own constitutional protections. On August 17, the South Carolina Supreme Court temporarily blocked enforcement of a 2021 law limiting abortions that went into effect with the Dobbs decision.

“At this preliminary stage, we are unable to determine with finality the constitutionality of the Act under our state’s constitutional prohibition against unreasonable invasions of privacy,” the court unanimously ruled.

Abortion may or may not stay legal in South Carolina, but the state’s residents are destined to a vigorous and very informative conversation about the issue, and about speech itself.

The post South Carolina Targets Free Speech in Its Attempt to Limit Abortion Access appeared first on Reason.com.

from Latest https://ift.tt/gEtVBqL
via IFTTT

Zach Weissmueller: Why Bitcoin Privacy Software Restrictions Violate Free Speech Rights


Hand uses eraser to get rid of tornado cash

To bitcoin enthusiasts, the advantages of cryptocurrency are obvious: It’s a global, decentralized financial network that no government or centralized entity can control. 

But bitcoin is also incredibly transparent. That’s by design. The system relies on a public ledger—an accounting of every single transaction that is visible and trackable to all, including government authorities who want to monitor and control the use of cryptocurrency. 

Currently, U.S. law requires cryptocurrency exchanges—essentially marketplaces for buying, selling, and trading various forms of cryptocurrency—to collect personal information about the traders who use their networks. 

Those exchanges are also vulnerable to pressure from governments who might want to freeze transactions or shut down accounts. 

Not surprisingly, this has inspired workarounds to help bitcoin users maintain financial privacy. Software programs known as “mixers” scramble the ledger, blending unrelated transactions in order to help make cryptocurrency use more difficult to track. 

One of those mixers is a program known as Tornado Cash. 

Earlier this month, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that it was adding Tornado Cash to the U.S. sanctions list, thus prohibiting all transactions using the software. The Treasury Department claims Tornado Cash is the equivalent of a high-tech weapon that could be used by terrorists or foreign rivals. But others say it’s just code, a software tool no different than any other.

That’s the topic of this week’s episode of The Reason Rundown With Peter Suderman, featuring Reason Senior Producer Zach Weissmueller.

Mentioned in this podcast:

“The Canadian Government Couldn’t Stop Bitcoin,” by Zach Weissmueller

“Bitcoin Can Become Untraceable.,” by Zach Weissmueller and Danielle Thompson

Audio production and editing by Ian Keyser; produced by Hunt Beaty.

The post Zach Weissmueller: Why Bitcoin Privacy Software Restrictions Violate Free Speech Rights appeared first on Reason.com.

from Latest https://ift.tt/rIwCg4N
via IFTTT