Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
Sorted by date Results 26 - 33 of 33
In a recent column on the mating dance between Big Government and Big Tech, I noted that "Big Tech wants to be regulated by Big Governments because regulation makes it more difficult and expensive for new competitors to enter the market." Two days after I hit "publish" on that column, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called for government regulation of social media in a Washington Post op-ed. Zuckerberg offers expansive arguments for regulating four areas of social media content, but those arguments are specious. My own claim as to his real...
I'm not ashamed to admit it: I'm a peacenik. I think war is a bad thing. I've seen it up close and personal as an infantryman, and I'd like to see less of it, preferably none at all, either up close or from a distance. In part, this desire also makes me a "non-interventionist." That is, in a world with 195 "sovereign nations," it makes sense that the political officials in each one should mind his or her own state's business and not try to decide who gets to run the other 194, or how they should do so. And this, in turn, leads to scolding...
On Oct. 17, president Donald Trump announced plans to withdraw the United States from the Universal Postal Union, a 144-year-old international agreement which coordinates postal policies between 192 member nations. Trump left open the possibility of remaining in the UPU if those policies can be successfully renegotiated. Unlike many of Trump's initiatives relating to international trade, this one makes real sense. The UPU's outdated rate-setting model treats the world's second largest economy, that of China, as if it was still the primitive...
Nitasha Tiku of Wired reports on three lawsuits against JUUL Labs, makers of the JUUL e-cigarette device. The unifying complaint, in brief, is that nicotine is addictive, that the users are addicted, and that their addictions are the company’s fault. There are quite a few problems with these lawsuits. First, we’ve known for decades, if not centuries that nicotine is addictive. The U.S. government made it official in 1988 with the Surgeon General’s report “The Health Consequences of Smoking: Nicotine Addiction,” but my parents were certainly tel...
Well, here we go again. On June 27, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement, effective July 31. Cue crisis, as defined by President John F. Kennedy's inaccurate characterization of the Chinese analog: "Two characters, one representing danger and the other, opportunity." Democrats and Republicans have, for 30 years, alternated between anticipation and fear, depending on which party was in position to choose Kennedy's successor. As a "swing vote" -- reliably tied to neither party's policy agenda -- since the...
Which is worse: The specter of nuclear war, or giving U.S. president Donald Trump credit for a significant diplomatic accomplishment? In her official statement on Trump’s Singapore summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi makes it clear that a few million incinerated human beings are a small price to pay to keep the 68-year-old Korean War going. Maybe not forever, but at least until there’s a Democrat in the White House. “[T]he President handed Kim Jong-un concessions in exchange for vague promises that do...
In early June, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (“the gay wedding cake case”) soaked up most of the Supreme Court decision media limelight, even though (or perhaps because) the court’s ruling doesn’t really dispose of the major issues in the case. Another case, also not decided on its merits, got much less attention. But that case reveals conflicting priorities in, and signals from, the Trump administration. In Hargan v. Garza, a pregnant teen immigrant (“Jane Doe”) in federal detention was forbidden by Trump admin...
“Net Neutrality” is back in the news. On May 16, the U.S. Senate voted 52-47 to undo the Federal Communication Commission’s undoing of the previous FCC’s doing of ... yes, it’s complicated. There are really only three important things to know: First, Net Neutrality as implemented by the FCC in 2015 was a bad solution to a non-existent problem -- a corporate welfare program for Big Data at one end and an Internet censorship enabling act at the other, pitched to the public as the fix for an Internet that wasn’t broken. Secondly, when Net Neutral...
