Tag: in-the-news

In recent months, I have not had a chance to write many science fiction and fantasy reviews, like I used to do more often, particularly when it comes to the Game of Thrones/Song of Ice and Fire universe based on the works of George R.R. Martin. I have the excuse that I was busy with other things, such as the tariff case. But in the meantime, we have accumulated two seasons of House of the Dragon and the start of a third, plus the first season of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. When you play the game of reviewing Game of Thrones, you win or your connection with your audience dies! So in this post, I’m going to begin trying to make up for lost time.

Overall, I like both series, and if you like the GOT universe generally, you are likely to enjoy them, too. But House of the Dragon has a number of shortcomings that arise partly from the source material (Martin’s book Fire and Blood), and partly from its own flaws. Both series also raise interesting political issues that extend the treatment of such matters in the GOT universe as a whole.

Before going on, I should note there will be some spoilers for the two series here. Most of the episodes and plotlines covered here have been out for many months, and this material is based on George R.R. Martin’s books Fire and Blood and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, both published six or more years ago. For those who read on but still dare to complain about spoilers, I have but one word: Dracarys!

House of the Dragon

At the start of this series, the Targaryen dynasty is firmly in control of the the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, and dragons are part of the foundation of their power. The Targaryens have a monopoly over their use, and it is believed that only members of the family can successfully tame and ride them.

A succession crisis arises by virtue of the fact that King Viserys (a relatively weak ruler) has no male heirs. He therefore designates his daughter Princess Rhaenyra, as his successor. But many members of the Westerosi elite are unwilling to accept a female ruler. Viserys later marries Alicent Hightower (a member of one of the other powerful noble houses), and has sons by her. But Viserys persists in retaining Rhaenyra as the designated heir. When Viserys suddenly dies. Alicent and others claim that – at the last moment – he changed his mind and designated her son Aegon II as the new heir. Civil war soon breaks out between the Greens (supporters of Aegon) and the Blacks (those who back Rhaenyra). The war becomes known as the “Dance of the Dragons.”

In the show, the conflict begins at the end of the first season. By midway through season 3 (where we are now), the fighting has massively escalated, and both sides have suffered terrible losses, while also committing various atrocities. In addition, both Green and Black leaders make foolish tactical and strategic errors. This happens in the show even more than in books. For example, Princess Rhaenys – one of the few generally competent and admirable leaders of the Black faction – early on misses a chance to wipe out most of the Green leadership, with her dragon. This event does not occur in the book.

When I reviewed the first episode of House of the Dragon, back in 2022, I highlighted a central dilemma of this story: there are virtually no major sympathetic characters in the source material. Aegon and Rhaenyra are both manifestly incompetent rulers who care little for the welfare of the people. Many of the other leaders of the two factions are even worse. Rhaenyra’s uncle/husband – Prince Daemon – is a murderous megalomaniac. Aegon’s brother Aemond One-Eye (who also has ambitions for the throne) is cruel and vicious. And so on.

As I suggested in the earlier review, the TV series tries to deal with this problem by making  relatively sympathetic characters out of Rhaenyra and Alicent. The former is a victim of misogyny, and the series (following the book, in some respects) plays up her grief at the deaths of two of her sons in the fighting. Alicent, for her part, comes off as a relative peace-seeker.

But the sympathy for Rhaenyra is hard to maintain given the many wrongs she herself perpetrates, and her indifference to the harm the war inflicts on the “smallfolk” – the common people of Westeros. In one recent episode, Rhaenyra’s forces manage to take Kings Landing, the capital. It seems like she might be trying to turn over a new leaf. But she and her underlings soon begin a reign of terror, persecuting commoners who protest against her.

Rhaenyra at one point confiscates stores of food wealthy stockpiled by wealth merchants and aristocrats in order to alleviate food shortages in the city. But the shortages were caused by the blockade imposed by her own naval forces. And advisers rightly point out that the confiscation program won’t actually do much to end the shortage (they might have added it could even exacerbate it in the long run, by deterring production and investment). At best Rhaenyra is only modestly less awful than the even worse leaders on the Green side.

Alicent, for her part, has little influence or competence. And, like Rhaenyra, she has little interest in the welfare of the people.

Ultimately, the series drives home the point  that both factions are awful and the real problem plaguing Westeros is a system in which aristocratic elites wield power with little or no concern for the people, and no incentive to take their interests into account. This, of course, builds on the themes of the original Game of Thrones series, which also often highlighted the systemic danger of unconstrained political power.

But, in the original GOT, we also had sympathetic, well-intentioned characters like Arya Stark, her sister Sansa, Tyrion, Jon Snow, and (until late in the series) Daenerys Targaryen. There was hope that one or more of them would “break the wheel” (as Daenerys famously put it) and institute a better regime.

There is no such hope in House of the Dragon. That, combined with the lack of sympathetic protagonists, makes the series somewhat dreary and depressing. Also, I’m not sure we need really so many episodes just to drive home the relatively simple point that the Greens and the Blacks are two sides of the same terrible coin. At times, I find myself hoping that the leading characters all die painful deaths – which may well yet happen, especially if it follows the source material!

At the same time, House of the Dragon still features lots of exciting, dramatic moments, great acting, and impressive special effects. That can often divert viewers’ attention away from the dismal nature of the characters and the overall situation.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

In some ways, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (set about 80-90 years after the Targaryen civil war) is almost the exact opposite of House of the Dragon. The two protagonists are obviously admirable and highly sympathetic. Ser Duncan the Tall (known as “Dunk”) is a commoner who spent years serving “hedge knight” Ser Arlan of Pennytree as his squire (hedge knights are poor compared to other members of their class, and must serve as traveling mercenaries to make a living). Just before dying, Ser Arlan grants knighthood to Dunk, taking advantage of the custom that “any knight can make a knight.” Because there are no witnesses to the ceremony besides a few birds, when Dunk tries to advance his fortune by taking part in a major tournament,  wealthier and more aristocratic knights doubt his credentials.

In the meantime, Dunk meets Aegon (known as “Egg”), a precocious boy who seeks to become his squire. It eventually becomes clear that Egg is actually a member of the Targaryen family, who dislikes life in the royal court, and seeks adventure.

In both the book and the show, it quickly becomes evident that Dunk is a better person – and a better representative of knightly ideals – than the aristocrats who look down on him. He take seriously the knightly vows to be “brave” and “just,” and “defend the young and innocent.” Most notably, he gets in trouble by defending a common woman against Prince Aerion, a Targaryen who tries to sexually assault her.

Unlike in House of the Dragon, not all the aristocrats we see are venal and uncaring towards the common people. Some actually rally to support Dunk, and several join his cause when Aerion challenges him to a Trial of the Seven (a combat where each side must have seven knights).

Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is more tightly plotted than House of the Dragon, and doesn’t rely as much on contrivances and inexplicably stupid decisions by the characters to drive the story. There is, however, one small, but very fundamental problem. If “any knight can make a knight,” one would expect to see knight inflation! Commoners seeking to become knights should pay poorer knights like Ser Arlan to grant them entry into this higher social class. Instead of scrounging for low-paid mercenary work, he could just sell tickets to knighthood! Over time, knight status would end up getting devalued, as more and more people get it. Perhaps this is averted by norms or laws against selling knighthood; but one would still expect a black market to emerge. And no such restrictions are mentioned in the book or the series.

Like House of the Dragon and the original Game of Thrones series, Knight of the Seven Kingdoms highlights the systemic nature of the challenges facing Westeros. Dunk, Egg, and other relatively well-intentioned knights and aristocrats can do some real good at the margin, and viewers naturally root for them.

But the deeper evil is a social and political system in which commoners are largely at the mercy of a small hereditary elite. If a commoner runs afoul of a noble  or is just in the wrong place at the wrong time, he or she can easily end up getting robbed, subjected to forced labor, sexually assaulted, or even murdered.

Viewers familiar with the Game of Thrones series or the books it is based on also know that, even if Egg lessons valuable lessons from his time with Dunk and eventually becomes king, he fails to make any significant change in this system. By the time the GOT plot begins (about a century after the events of Knight of the Seven Kingdoms), Westeros’s political and social system is still just as bad as before.

At the start of GOT, as in the era of House of the Dragon, the royal succession is still sometimes unclear, which in turn leads to civil war when there are rival claimants to the Iron Throne. This, of course, is a systemic weakness of monarchy.

It may seem like we don’t really need these reminders of the systemic nature of political problems. We like to think we have long since left behind aristocratic feudalism and hereditary monarchy of the kind depicted in these series. But it is nonetheless useful to remember the awful nature of these systems, at a time when “postliberals” on the right promote nostalgia for pre-modern society, and some on the far left suggest that medieval peasants were somehow freer and happier than modern workers, and worked less than we do (they didn’t).

Moreover, as I have emphasized in previous writings on GOT, even many modern people who have no desire to return to medieval times tend to forget that we need systemic constraints on government power to address our political and economic problems, and cannot rely on bringing supposedly benevolent leaders to power. The GOT universe is a useful – and highly entertaining! – reminder of that vital truth.

The post Reviews of "House of the Dragon" and "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" appeared first on Reason.com.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/RU5kGYZ
via IFTTT

On Tuesday, New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an executive order instituting a one-year moratorium on new environmental permits for hyperscale data centers that “consume or can consume” 50 or more megawatts of energy.

The order is intended to give lawmakers in the state time to “build a nation-leading regulatory framework” to rein in data center development, which Hochul says “threatens to hike up utility bills, deplete our natural resources, and create uncertainty for New Yorkers.”

It tasks the Department of Public Service with examining the impact of data centers connecting to New York’s electric grid, including “energy demand, water use and quality, air quality, disproportionate impacts on disadvantaged communities, and noise levels.” Until its environmental impact statement is completed, the department is “directed to hold” all applications for the “construction or expansion” of any pending data centers.

Hochul’s order also directs Empire State Development—the state’s economic development agency—to assist local governments with “analyzing and attaining” economic benefits from prospective developers by drafting a Community Investment Framework.

As part of its framework, the agency “shall include” guidance for the “creation and maintenance of a community investment fund” paid for by data center developers or operators, to finance lawmakers’ pet projects related to energy affordability, childcare, school programming, or public infrastructure. The framework will also carve out a “seat at the table” for unions to influence the hiring and wage negotiations of any data center development.

Communities are encouraged to use the framework to “negotiate terms and conditions” for direct benefits with data center developers.

However, those benefits would be separate from the benefits gained through the New York Grid Acceleration Fund, a slush fund that may be created under the Tuesday order and managed by the Department of Public Service. The fund would require developers to make “upfront capital contributions” for “grid improvements,” “participate in demand response programs,” and “support the procurement of new clean energy supply.” It would also force them to contribute to an “insurance pool.”

As part of the acceleration fund, data centers may be required to bankroll new energy generation, but it must be “consistent with the State’s clean energy goals.” That means data center operators or developers would be required to meet New York’s Clean Energy Standard, which requires 70 percent of the state’s electricity to come from renewable energy by 2030. The state has also set an ambitious target of 100 percent zero-emission electricity by 2040, though state officials have admitted it’s unlikely the Empire State will hit those projections. In an acknowledgment of this reality, Hochul signed legislation in May to delay the implementation of the state’s aggressive greenhouse gas reduction goals.

New York is home to 148 data centers, with six more in the planning stages as of February, according to the Pew Research Center. Hochul’s order is the first state-level ban on data centers in the country, though several localities, including Oneonta, New York, have instituted municipal bans on data center construction.

In April, Maine became the first state to pass a data center moratorium, but Democratic Gov. Janet Mills later vetoed the legislation. Nationwide, 15 states are currently considering bans on new data centers, as polls continue to show that data centers are unpopular with the public. In March, a Gallup poll found that 71 percent of Americans opposed constructing data centers in their communities.

Public opinion aside, many of the arguments against data centers build on the same disproven fears about water and energy usage. Hochul may score political points for her ban, but it’s unlikely to do anything more than drive prospective business out of New York and into more welcoming states.

The post New York Becomes the First State To Ban New Data Centers appeared first on Reason.com.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/VUyhnBS
via IFTTT

In this segment of Free Media, Senior Editor Robby Soave and Daily Caller Editor in Chief Amber Duke discuss Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed, who avoids calling himself a democratic socialist but embraces many socialist policy ideas.

The post Abdul El-Sayed Exposed After Rejecting Socialism Label appeared first on Reason.com.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/Yi7pT4M
via IFTTT

As the U.S. begins a “new war“ against Iran, lawmakers want to know: Why did a Tomahawk cruise missile strike an elementary school in Minab, reportedly killing more than 100 Iranian schoolchildren?

Since the February 28 deadly missile attack on the school, calls for transparency surrounding the strike have largely quieted, as national attention remains focused on each new round of strikes and control over the Strait of Hormuz.

In late March, a group of lawmakers requested a bipartisan investigation of the incident, but the government has released little to no information about the strike. On Monday, a group of 25 Senate Democrats signed onto a letter addressed to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Adm. Brad Cooper, head of U.S. Central Command, demanding transparency about the investigation. The letter calls for the Defense Department to finalize the investigation into the strike, provide an unclassified version of the report to Congress, and submit a plan for corrective action no later than July 20.

“When a U.S. strike kills civilians, the Department owes Congress, the American people, and the victims’ families a clear accounting of what happened and a credible plan to prevent future failures,” the letter states. The Senate Armed Services Committee has also threatened to freeze Hegseth’s travel budget if the Pentagon does not release more details about the school bombing.

As Reason has noted, the Pentagon and President Donald Trump have provided few, and even contradictory, answers about the strike. In March, Trump claimed that the strike could have been carried out by Iran or “somebody else.”

On March 9, New York Times reporter Shawn McCreesh asked Trump why he was the only person suggesting that Iran obtained a Tomahawk and bombed its own school.

“Even your defense secretary wouldn’t say that,” McCreesh said. “Why are you the only person saying this?”

The president then said that he didn’t know “enough about it.” 

“I think it’s something that I was told is under investigation, but Tomahawks are used by others, as you know,” he added. “Numerous other nations have Tomahawks. They buy them from us.”

So far, the more substantive updates about the investigation have all come from the press. On March 11, The New York Times reported that U.S. officials familiar with the preliminary inquiry found that the U.S. was responsible for the Tomahawk missile strike.

On March 18, Semafor reported that humans, not AI systems, were likely to blame, noting that “US officials failed to recognize subtle changes in satellite imagery.” According to more recent reporting from CNN, satellite imagery from 2013 showed the school and an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps base as being one compound, but updated images indicated that a fence separated the school from the base, and dozens of people were shown playing in the school courtyard in December 2025. The outlet reported that senior U.S. military commanders ignored warnings about outdated intelligence for the sake of expediency.

When asked about the lawmakers’ letter on Monday, a Pentagon official told Reuters that the investigation is “ongoing” and that the Pentagon does “not have any updates to announce at this time.”

Although Trump once remarked that bombing Iran would be a “little excursion,” the war has lasted 137 days and does not appear to be ending soon. As this unpopular war continues, it would be politically convenient for the Pentagon to suppress information about the strike and to hope the incident fades from national memory. However, lawmakers and the public must learn the truth and the full extent of the Pentagon’s involvement in the attack—not only for moral accountability, but also to prevent such an atrocity from happening again, especially as bombing Iran becomes a routine part of U.S. foreign policy.

The post As U.S. Starts 'New' Iran War, Lawmakers Want Answers About Deadly Elementary School Strike appeared first on Reason.com.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/NHx7KIc
via IFTTT

In this segment of Free Media, Senior Editor Robby Soave and Daily Caller Editor in Chief Amber Duke discuss Rep. Ro Khanna’s (D–Calif.) recent trip to the West Bank, where he reportedly had a run-in with the Israel Defense Forces and says he was briefly detained.

The post Debate: What Actually Happened to Rep. Ro Khanna in the West Bank? appeared first on Reason.com.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/FyNujVn
via IFTTT

President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 14300 on May 23, 2025, aiming to reform the red tape–wrapped Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which has long stood in the way of the development and deployment of nuclear power. That order noted:

The NRC utilizes safety models that posit there is no safe threshold of radiation exposure and that harm is directly proportional to the amount of exposure. Those models lack sound scientific basis and produce irrational results, such as requiring that nuclear plants protect against radiation below naturally occurring levels. A myopic policy of minimizing even trivial risks ignores the reality that substitute forms of energy production also carry risk, such as pollution with potentially deleterious health effects.

In place of this “myopic policy,” the agency was ordered to “adopt science-based radiation limits.” In particular, the order noted, “the NRC shall reconsider reliance on the linear no-threshold (LNT) model for radiation exposure and the ‘as low as reasonably achievable’ standard, which is predicated on LNT.” The agency was told that it “shall specifically consider adopting determinate radiation limits.”

LNT assumes that there is no level of exposure to nuclear radiation that does not increase the risk of cancer. Regulators use “ALARA” as shorthand for “as low as reasonably achievable.” In practice, instead of reasonably achievable, ALARA has amounted to requiring power plants to reduce radiation exposures to workers and the public to as low as possible.

On July 1, the NRC basically ignored the requirements of the executive order when it finally got around to proposing its new radiation exposure safety rules. While purporting to get rid of ALARA, the NRC’s proposed regulations do nothing of the sort. The NRC’s new proposals recognize that “there are limitations to the accuracy of the LNT model at very low doses, however, the NRC has also not identified a suitable alternative model.” So the agency merely proposes to excise the pesky term ALARA from its regulations while still endorsing the continued use of LNT to justify its radiation dose limits.

Recall that the executive order required the NRC to consider determinate radiation limits instead of LNT. The NRC’s analysis outright rejected this instruction. The agency asserted that “establishing a determinate regulatory dose limit” is “not currently supported by scientific evidence.”

Is that so? Just a year earlier, a team of nuclear radiation researchers at the Idaho National Laboratory issued a comprehensive report that came to the opposite conclusion. Overall, they concluded that “studies have generally not demonstrated statistically significant adverse health effects at doses below 10,000 millirems delivered at low dose rates, despite decades of research.” The Health Physics Society agrees that “below levels of about 100 mSv [10,000 millirems] above background from all sources combined, the observed radiation effects in people are not statistically different from zero.” For comparison, a chest X-ray is about 2 millirems, and an abdomen and pelvis C.T. scan is about 770 millirems.

The Idaho researchers recommend scrapping the current approach in favor of annual determinate exposure limits of 5,000 millirems for occupational workers and 500 millirems for the public. Easing overly strict limits, they argue, “could dramatically improve the cost-competitiveness of nuclear energy, expand access to nuclear-medicine procedures, enhance industrial applications of nuclear technologies, benefit environmental remediation of former nuclear sites, and improve management and disposal of commercial nuclear wastes.”

In contrast, the NRC calculates that its timid revisions would save the nuclear power industry a piddling $9.53 million annually.

The post Nuclear Regulatory Commission Ignores Trump's Order To Revise Radiation Exposure Limits appeared first on Reason.com.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/RYpf9oa
via IFTTT

Two prominent Democrats visited the Holy Land over the past few days. Rahm Emanuel, chief of staff to former President Barack Obama and the son of an Israeli independence fighter, gave a speech to Tel Aviv University about how the U.S. can “stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel on the long journey toward peace.” Meanwhile, Rep. Ro Khanna (D–Calif.) was visiting a Palestinian village in the West Bank when his car was held up by an Israeli settler militia. The Israeli army says it dispersed the militia to let Khanna through; Khanna says that the army is “lying” and that the soldiers took the settlers’ side.

Both Emanuel and Khanna embraced the idea of U.S. sanctions on Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories. Khanna told socialist talk show host Hasan Piker that a categorical “arms embargo” on Israel would be “probably too far,” and presented sanctions on companies and officials dealing with settlements as a more moderate option. But Emanuel made it clear to The Jerusalem Post that sanctions on settlements were intended to be an all-out attack on the Israeli economy. “You want to pursue a greater Israel?” he said, referring to a term for the Israeli maximalist vision. “You pay full price for it. Everything. That’s a choice you make.”

Sanctions are one of the most powerful but misunderstood tools of U.S. power. And in their rush to realign the U.S.-Israeli relationship, Democrats (and some Republicans) risk getting ahead of their skis. The ambiguity over the word embargo is one example. An arms embargo means that the U.S. government would decline to provide the Israeli government with any weapons. A trade embargo, on the other hand, would involve the U.S. government using its enforcement powers to target private, civilian business in Israel as a form of indirect pressure on the government. These sanctions have a spotty track record in other countries, and even in theory, they only work by causing huge collateral damage.

The main Israeli-Palestinian lightning rod in U.S. politics used to be aid; Israel was the largest foreign recipient of American taxpayer money since World War II. That debate is more or less over, as the Israeli government itself is asking to end direct U.S. subsidies. The pro-Palestinian movement has moved toward demanding a full arms embargo—stopping the U.S. government from sending weapons, whether they are paid for by American or Israeli taxpayers. Indeed, polling shows that most Americans oppose sending weapons in general to Israel.

A New Policy, a pro-Palestinian lobby group founded by two officials who resigned from the Biden administration, argues that the U.S. should use arms sales as “leverage” to change Israeli policy. The Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project, another pro-Palestinian lobby group, claims that any weapon sale to Israel would violate U.S. arms control law, which forbids arming militaries involved in large-scale torture or wars of aggression.

These critics are right that the U.S. government has a lot of leverage in this regard. The international arms trade is not really a free market. U.S. weapons sales are either done by the Pentagon itself or are carried out under the direct control of the State Department. They often come with long-term U.S. commitments. Saudi Arabia, the largest customer for American weapons, gets U.S. training and support (including American maintenance technicians on the ground) with its purchases. To replace direct U.S. aid, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pushing to fully integrate U.S. and Israeli supply chains, and a bill to that effect is about to pass Congress, despite attempts by Khanna and Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) to stop it.

Some Democratic proponents of continued U.S. arms sales to Israel, such as Slow Boring editor Matt Yglesias, argue that cutting those sales would hurt American manufacturing jobs. That’s not an entirely honest argument. There is, in fact, an excess of demand for American weapons around the world. In many ways, Israel has been allowed to push ahead of the line. The U.S. government guarantees that the Israeli military can receive preferential access to American ammunition (the War Reserves Stockpile Allies-Israel) and better weapons than its neighbors (the qualitative military edge mandate) while other countries are stuck in a backlog. If Israel doesn’t buy those weapons, someone else will.

There is more to the argument that U.S. leverage is overrated. Comparing Saudi Arabia to other cases, former Pentagon officials Elizabeth Dent and Grant Rumley wrote in 2024 that cutting off arms sales has proven to be “a fickle tool” of coercion. Although Israel could not wage its foreign wars without various types of U.S. support, the Israeli-Palestinian issue is a much older and lower-tech form of ethnic conflict. The people who stopped Khanna’s car, after all, were a ragtag militia. Still, perhaps that’s an argument for getting the U.S. out of the mix, if only to wash Americans’ hands of an intractable problem.

Economic sanctions are a different creature altogether. Some sanctions involve seizing the assets of specific foreign officials. Other sanctions are comprehensive bureaucratic attacks on a country’s economy. Over the past few decades, the U.S. Treasury has developed increasingly sophisticated ways to impede other nations’ ability to trade. There is an active, extensive effort to stop oil from flowing into Russia, natural gas from flowing into North Korea, dollars from passing through Iran, or tourists from visiting Cuba.

For all the efficiency of sanctions enforcement, the theory behind comprehensive sanctions is quite crude: Throw a country into economic chaos and its government will be forced to give in to your demands, or better yet, it will be overthrown. In other words, the plan is to use ordinary people’s suffering as leverage. It’s dubious whether that suffering even “works.” Instead of achieving U.S. goals without war, sanctions campaigns have often been the prelude to war. The Trump administration escalated from sanctions on Venezuela to a blockade and then a direct regime change operation. Then it did the same in Iran, much less successfully.

Emanuel and Khanna’s proposal for settlement sanctions is supposed to be a smarter, more precise form of economic pressure. The two Democrats have named a specific target set (officials, construction companies, and banks) and a specific behavior (dealing with settlers in the West Bank) that the targets can cease in order to escape punishment. In theory, the plan is well-tailored to its goals, especially since the settlement movement relies so much on American money, and the issue with settlements is a property dispute at heart.

But the campaign could easily escalate into sanctions on the entire Israeli financial sector because of how many banks deal with settlement real estate. Emanuel at least admitted that this risk existed, perhaps as a way to rattle his right-wing interviewer. Khanna, on the other hand, portrayed economic sanctions as a less extreme measure than an arms embargo. He either did not fully understand the implications of his proposal, or wasn’t completely honest about them, neither of which is a good sign for how it would be implemented.

Democratic critics are right that U.S. involvement, especially military aid and arms dealing, has enabled violence and tyranny across the Middle East. Even if ending that meddling isn’t sufficient to solve all the region’s problems, it is a necessary step toward lowering the temperature. They’re also right to notice that the exceptional U.S. support for Israel has unleashed an exceptional domestic backlash among Americans. But that backlash has grown so quickly that it seems politicians don’t quite know how to translate it into policy changes.

The U.S. government can passively withhold support from its Israeli counterpart before moving on to active coercive measures. Weapon sales are one major example. Another is the direct defensive support from U.S. troops stationed in Israel, or the U.S. intelligence sharing that enables Israeli operations. U.S. diplomats have also put in a lot of effort into rewarding Israel’s friends and punishing its opponents. And there are scores of smaller pro-Israeli exemptions in U.S. law and policy. Ending these measures would make the environment less favorable to the kinds of Israeli actions that progressives oppose, while also reducing the overall U.S. involvement in the Middle East.

In summer 2023, before the current series of wars, I wrote that financial aid “should not be the beginning and end of the conversation” about Israel, because “America is tied and obligated to Jerusalem in ways that go far beyond just $3.8 billion a year.” (That number nearly tripled over the next couple of years.) Indeed, the current U.S.-Israeli entanglement was created through a lot of thoughtlessly passed or seemingly inconsequential laws. That’s why politicians trying to disentangle the relationship have to think carefully and understand exactly what they’re doing.

The post The Push for an Embargo on Israel Is Vague and Confused appeared first on Reason.com.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/mCbwL98
via IFTTT

Today law professor Richard Epstein published an intriguing blog post, entitled “FIFA’s Flawed Rulebook.” Epstein urges that we should reexamine some of the “rot” in soccer’s current rules, which leads to unfair outcomes. He makes three recommendations for  improving the great game: (1) revising yellow-card accumulation and automatic suspensions following red cards; (2) awarding two points for a run-of-play goal and only one point for a penalty-kick goal; and (3) changing overtime by gradually reducing the number of players on the field. As an avid soccer fan, I endorse Epstein’s call for reviewing the rules and improving them where possible. But on the merits of his particular proposals, I like only the first but not the last two.

Revising the yellow card and red card next-game-consequences rules

Epstein proposes reconsidering how yellow cards and red cards currently operate. They both carry consequences over from one game to the next. A yellow card carries little immediate consequence in the first game where it is given. Indeed, because there is no real penalty, players often resort to “tactical fouls” to stop breakaways and other scoring opportunities. It is only when a player receives a second yellow card—even in the next game—that a serious consequence results: expulsion. Red cards also typically carry over to the next game: almost invariably, the player is suspended.

The problem with these next-game repercussions, as Epstein nicely explains, is that “they violate a fundamental principle of justice … by refusing to keep the pluses and minuses of each game self-contained, which could matter any time a red or yellow card is given.” Thus, they carry “the sins of one game over to the next.”

Epstein proposes that, instead of the current yellow card accumulation rule, a better approach is to track hockey by making the offending player sit out for a few minutes—an approach that can be further tweaked by extending the time a player is required to sit for a “major” foul. Similarly, for a red card in one game, the issue of a next-game suspension could be carefully reviewed during the several days leading up to the next game, with a focus on the intent of the offending player. For example, Balogun’s red card suspension (which I discussed at length here and here) could have been reviewed under a predetermined set of principles and overturned.

Epstein’s main point—generally keeping consequences of fouls contained to a single game—makes considerable sense. And, putting in place a more articulated set of principles for reviewing red card suspensions also makes sense, particularly in the wake of the way Balogun’s suspension was reviewed under (seemingly) vague principles. Epstein’s ideas should be given a test run in organized play to see how they work.

Awarding two points for a run-of-play goal and one point for a penalty kick goal.

Epstein’s next proposal is much more controversial. Epstein argues that “it is imperative that scoring rules change so that a penalty shot is worth only one point and a goal from the field is worth two.”

Epstein draws inspiration from fouls in basketball, where a foul shot is worth only one point while field goals are worth two (or three, if taken from long range). Epstein argues that the penalty calls by officials inside the box “are very hard to make.” Given that a penalty kick (PK) has a roughly 70% chance of their success, the “likelihood that any foul in the field disrupts a 70% chance of scoring is highly unlikely.” Accordingly, Epstein concludes, the penalty-kick goal should count for less, just as in basketball.

Epstein’s proposal contains a fundamental flaw: it would encourage defenders to commit penalty-kick fouls in close games. Consider, for example, a situation where Team A has scored in the run of play—earning (under Epstein’s plan) two points. Then, with time running down to the last minute, Team B desperately throws players forward, launching a long ball into the penalty box. Miraculously, the ball finds Team B’s striker, who lines up the potentially tying shot from close range. But …

Just before Team B’s striker can shoot, a defender throws both hands around him and pulls him down—a “tackle” in the American football style. The defender can be confident that this is the right tactical move, because the striker will then be awarded a penalty kick that, under Epstein’s scheme, cannot tie the game. The striker will, at most, gain one point from the PK. And, of course, during the time it takes to do the penalty kick, return the ball to the middle of the field, and then finish the game, time will have expired—meaning that Team A has protected its two-point lead by deliberately surrendering only a one-point PK opportunity.

Thus, Epstein’s rule change creates incentives for the ultimate “tactical foul”—defenders deliberately giving up one-point penalty kicks rather than the possibility of a two-point, run-of-play goal. I see no way around this basic problem, which is presumably why Epstein’s idea (long advanced) has not gained any traction.

Deciding tied games

Epstein also takes a crack at changing soccer’s overtime rules. Right now, a tied game is resolved by a thirty-minute overtime period (with no “golden goal”). If the game remains tied after those thirty minutes, then the game is decided through PKs, five per side, continuing if necessary until one team is ahead.

Epstein’s proposal is to change how the thirty-minute overtime period operates. He would allow additional substitute players and require that, every ten minutes of the overtime period, a team would remove one player from the field. According to Epstein, this drop-off plan would “translate into more goals and an increase in the number of tactical choices.”

I understand Epstein’s intuition that fewer players on the field should mean more goals. But that assumes a static model of defensive tactics. Perhaps teams would adapt to the “drop-off” situation by organizing into tighter, more defensively oriented schemes, holding players in more defensive positions.

A more defensive posture was the result of the “golden goal” rule that FIFA followed for a short time. The rule was “widely perceived as [a] failed experiment[].” The rule did not bring about more active and attacking play as originally intended, but instead led to more cautious play. I suspect that Epstein’s drop-off proposal might similarly lead to more defensive responses.

But even if Epstein were correct that the drop-off rule is an improvement over the current thirty-minute overtime period, there remains the question of whether a thirty-minute overtime period is good for soccer. The overtime period is clearly bad for television schedules, since it extends the length of the game in an unpredictable way. And, in turn, this is bad for TV viewers, who likewise can’t count on knowing when a game will end.

A way to mitigate this problem is to bring a game that is tied at the end of ninety minutes to a rapid conclusion. If the game is tied at the end of regulation time, a PK shootout could be immediately held. But, in my view, a better approach would be to eliminate static PKs entirely and move to something like the old NASL/early MLS 35-yard shootout rule. This involved an attacker starting 35 yards out and having five seconds to score on the goalkeeper.

This general format has been tweaked by Tim Farrell into a more sophisticated proposal, known as ADG (attacker-defender-goalkeeper). The idea is that a single attacker would take on both a defender and a goalkeeper from 32 yards out, with  fifteen seconds to score. Computer simulations suggest this creates about a 30% chance of scoring. And to help improve player safety, a short rest period (ten minutes is the suggestion) is given to players before the shootout. Farrell has urged that his proposal be given a trial in organized play. And it seems like a good idea to me, either immediately at the end of 90 minutes or at the end of an overtime period.

More broadly, it is great that Epstein, Farrell, and others are thinking about tweaks to the beautiful game. If experience reveals ways to improve the game, they ought to be adopted.

HT: Thanks to Josh Blackman for calling Epstein’s Civitas article to my attention.

The post Some Thoughts on Law Professor Richard Epstein's Ideas for Fixing FIFA's Flawed Rulebook appeared first on Reason.com.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/opjvxNP
via IFTTT

If you’re an entrepreneur, you might want to consider relocating to the Rust Belt. 

CNBC recently released its 20th annual America’s Top States for Business rankings, which rated Ohio as the most business-friendly state in the country. North Carolina, Virginia, Texas, and Minnesota rounded out the top five. 

CNBC scores states on seven categories—infrastructure, economy, workforce, cost of doing business, tech and innovation, quality of life, and business friendliness—that businesses prioritize when deciding where to plant their flag. The scores are then weighted by how frequently states use those categories as selling points. With a nationwide focus on energy, water access, and the return of onshore manufacturing, CNBC chose infrastructure as its top-weighted category, factoring in grid reliability, energy capacity, and ease of permitting for the first time in its rankings.

It should come as no surprise that Ohio and other states that eschew red tape are near or at the top of the rankings. Since 2012, lawmakers in the Buckeye State have made it a priority to attract new business by easing regulations. Last year, Ohio passed House Bill 15 to reform its permitting process for new infrastructure projects. The bill set a 150-day deadline for the Ohio Power Siting Board to review complete applications, reduced the property tax rate on new energy generation and conversion equipment to 7 percent (from 25 percent), and set the tax rate on new transmission, distribution, and pipeline infrastructure to 25 percent (instead of the 85 percent–88 percent charged for existing assets). 

Under this law, utilities and transmission operators must publish public-facing transmission capacity heat maps that show where developers can plug in and where the grid is maxed out. It also lets data centers, factories, and other large electric-load customers plug directly into their own power plants rather than tapping the existing grid, meaning projects can get up and running faster without raising rates for other consumers. 

It’s a similar story in North Carolina. After finishing first in the CNBC rankings in 2025—its third top-place finish in four years—the Tar Heel State came in second this year. Since 2015, North Carolina has transformed itself, much like Ohio, by prioritizing permitting and land-use reforms that have made the state a haven for entrepreneurs. 

In 2015, the state passed House Bill 795, which reduced the number of projects subject to its State Environmental Policy Act by raising the monetary threshold for review and expanding the list of exempt projects. The state’s Permit Toolbox guides prospective applicants through its regulatory process and includes an Express Permitting Program that provides projects with an expedited review, albeit at a higher cost. In 2023, the state passed Senate Bill 677, which set strict time limits for municipal governments to review infrastructure projects and allowed developers to use third-party reviewers instead of local permitting offices. 

North Carolina also has the lowest corporate tax rate in the nation—a flat 2 percent rate—which will be fully phased out by 2030. 

Recognizing that businesses need abundant energy to thrive, Virginia, Texas, and Minnesota have all undergone substantial changes to their permitting process for energy projects. 

In 2024, Minnesota simplified its environmental review process, which was expected at the time to cut permitting times for energy projects by “nine months to a year” and reduce the timeline for project approval by at least 50 percent, according to Utility Dive. However, a year later, there’s no data on the policy’s effects. Virginia’s success is more apparent. Reforms signed into law in 2022 by former Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin have led to a 66 percent reduction in permit processing times in the commonwealth. Texas, meanwhile, allows power generators to connect to the grid with fewer permits than are needed in other states.

Of course, there’s still room for improvement. The top five states have also made a habit of pairing permitting reform with grants, subsidies, and tax credits that unnecessarily prop up one industry over another, casting lawmakers as the arbiters of who wins and loses in business. 

Ohio, for instance, uses revenue from its liquor monopoly to fund JobsOhio. This private nonprofit helps companies navigate the permit process and find incentives and tax breaks to set up shop in Ohio. North Carolina offers several grants and tax incentives to attract high-value companies, such as sales and use tax exemptions for data centers, software publishers, manufacturers, fulfillment facilities, warehouses, and research and development activities.

Luckily, this favoritism is beginning to receive pushback from the general public. In Ohio, the backlash against tax breaks offered to data centers and other priority businesses prompted Republican Gov. Mike DeWine to pause the state’s tax exemptions, a sentiment Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott echoed in a letter to state regulators. Virginia, which has the most data centers in the country, recently passed a first-of-its-kind electricity consumption tax on data centers instead of eliminating its tax incentives.

Permitting reform and deregulation aren’t sexy policy ideas, but they are effective in driving job creation and making people better off. As these states take the lead, hopefully other states and the federal government will soon follow suit.

The post Ohio Cut Red Tape. Now Its Business Sector Is Thriving. appeared first on Reason.com.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/yRj0Esi
via IFTTT

In 2020, major cities across the country suffered dramatic spikes in homicides and shootings. One hypothesis for explaining these spikes is de-policing: the idea that anti-police protests in the wake of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis led police across the nation to pull back from some forms of proactive policing. The basic idea is that anti-police protests in the wake of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis led police across the nation to pull back from some forms of proactive policing. The possible consequence, according to this hypothesis, was an increase in homicides and gun violence. This thesis, which I have called the “Minneapolis Effect,” continues to warrant research and investigation. It remains a strong candidate for explaining a significant part of the nation’s homicide and shooting spikes in major cities in 2020.

My chapter in a forthcoming book on violent crime argues that more research should be conducted to specifically examine the relationship between de-policing and firearms offenses. As I explain in the chapter, it is well known that, in 2020, many major cities across the country suffered from dramatic spikes in homicides and shootings. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the homicide rate in the U.S. increased from 6.0 homicides in 2019 to 7.8 per 100,000 in 2020. This was the largest one-year increase in homicide rates ever recorded. Similarly, a major analysis of a sample of 34 cities by Professor Richard Rosenfeld et al. for the Council on Criminal Justice reported that homicides in 2020 were 30% higher than in 2019. The study also found that a structural break occurred in the homicide trends in June of that year, indicating large, statistically significant increases in homicide rates after adjusting for seasonality and long-term trends. Nationally, nearly 5,000 more Americans died that year due to the increase in homicides. And much of the increase in homicides was concentrated in the nation’s major cities, apparently in impoverished areas.

While explaining trends in homicide rates in general is a long-debated topic, explaining why thousands of additional victims were killed in a recent year remains a discrete issue that would seem to be within the ken of modern social science.

Early in 2021, I presented my “Minneapolis Effect” thesis in an article published in Federal Sentencing Reporter. My analysis launched from the structural break identified by the Rosenfeld report, which identified June 2020 as the beginning point (the break point)  in the homicide trendline. I described this phenomenon as the “Minneapolis Effect,” drawing a parallel to the earlier “Ferguson Effect” that was offered to explain certain increases in homicides following the shooting of Michael Brown in 2014.

My analysis relied on what appeared to be almost simultaneous increases in homicides and declines in proactive policing—that is, declines in self-initiated policing tactics designed to reduce crime through preventive strategies, such as street stops or anti-gun patrols. Looking at Rosenfeld’s national data, as well as data from five specific cities—Minneapolis, Chicago, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and New York—I noted that homicides appeared to have spiked above normal trendlines around the beginning of June 2020. I then observed that, just as homicides were spiking, various forms of policing were declining. In particular, some data indicated that after the anti-police protests surrounding George Floyd’s death, some forms of proactive policing declined. For example, police were redeployed to manage the protests, diverting them from directed anti-gun patrols, vehicle and pedestrian stops, frisks for firearms, and other activities that deter the  carrying of illegal firearms. And even after protests began to wane, police pulled back (for various reasons) from aggressive efforts to combat gun crimes. My thesis was that the consequence of reducing law enforcement activity directed against gun violence was, perhaps unsurprisingly, an increase in gun violence. (In America, the vast majority of homicides are committed with firearms.) I found support for this thesis in the data from the cities mentioned above.

My Minneapolis Effect thesis fits within a larger body of research, which tends to support the idea that proactive policing may be particularly effective in reducing gun crimes. I collected the then-existing research in my 2020 article. In the aftermath of George Floyd’s death and subsequent calls for police reform, scholars have discussed de-policing, where officers reduce proactive law enforcement activity in response to heightened scrutiny, police reforms, or negative public sentiment. Now, the empirical literature on de-policing is growing, with several recent studies investigating whether and how police disengagement contributes to broader changes in crime rates, particularly following high-profile police killings.

You can read the details in my chapter. It reviews recent literature on de-policing that has been published since May 2020. In general, this literature provides evidence that some de-policing has occurred in some cities, particularly reductions in discretionary police activities, such as vehicle and pedestrian stops. These studies then analyze whether those reductions have produced increases in certain crime categories. In particular, this chapter summarizes nine new contributions to the de-policing debate, highlighting areas of emerging consensus as well as areas where further research is needed.

My chapter concludes that the emerging empirical evidence, while not conclusive on causation, generally supports the hypothesis that de-policing increases firearms-related crime. Given the magnitude of the crime spikes that may be attributable to de-policing, further research on this firearms-specific hypothesis should be a high priority.

 

The post Did a "Minneapolis Effect" and Later De-Policing Cause Firearms Crimes to Spike in 2020? appeared first on Reason.com.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/JTecSI6
via IFTTT