Tag: Free Markets

Senate Passes $280 Billion Industrial Policy Bill Meant to Counter China

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Senate Passes $280 Billion Industrial Policy Bill Meant to Counter China

The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 passed in a vote of 63-33, with 17 Republicans voting in favor. The over 1,000-page legislation includes $52.7 billion for direct funding for the construction and expansion of semiconductor manufacturing and $24 billion for tax incentives and other purposes.

The bill will authorize roughly $200 billion in science and technology research funding that will be spread across several government agencies over the next five years. The largest recipient of the research funds will be the National Science Foundation, which will receive $81 billion.

Related:

CHIPS Won’t Help China

Third, the CHIPS Act actually has provisions designed specifically to restrict investments in China. These so-called “guardrails” require that companies taking federal dollars for American projects must also agree not to invest in state-of-the-art technology in China—not just with the federal dollars, with any dollars. Good-faith critics have raised fair concerns that these guardrails should be broader, tougher, and firmer. But any guardrails at all represent unprecedented restrictions on what U.S. companies can do in the People’s Republic. It’s one thing to say an ideal bill would hurt China even more; it’s quite another to try and claim that less-than-perfect restrictions count as “help.”

Pelosi’s Husband Dumped Up to $5M of Tech Stock Right Before Senate Passed CHIPS

Pelosi’s Husband Dumped Up to $5M of Tech Stock Right Before Senate Passed CHIPS

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Just before the Senate passed a major bill to subsidize computer chip manufacturers on Wednesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-California) husband sold thousands of shares of Nvidia — a tech company that could stand to gain from the passage of the nearly $80 billion bill.

Pelosi’s Husband Dumped Up to $5M of Tech Stock Right Before Senate Passed CHIPS

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Nancy Pelosi And Husband Sell NVIDIA Corp Stock After Public Pressure

“I think this comes in response to public pressure and the conflict of interest her stock position posed,” the founder of Congresstrading.com, who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of his site, told Benzinga.

…

“It is surprising to see the sale. Also, what’s surprising here is that she sold and reported one day later. Usually she takes a couple of weeks. She wanted the public to know she cleared her books of this conflict of interest immediately.”

Congresstrading also noted Pelosi’s filings typically come on Fridays, when the media may potentially bury the story over the weekend.

…

The Nancy Pelosi Tracker on Twitter, which shares transactions by the Speaker of the House, noted the transaction history of NVIDIA Corporation by the Pelosis dates back to May 2021. According to the account, the Pelosis still own 50 options on NVIDIA Corporation with a strike price of $100 and expiration of Sep. 16, 2022 that were purchased back on July 23, 2021.

Pelosi remains one of the most active filers of stock transactions in Congress due to her husband being a venture capitalist.

Democrats Hope To Gotcha The GOP With Doomed New Net Neutrality Bill

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

As we’ve long noted, the Trump era attack on net neutrality was one of the more grotesque examples of regulatory capture and corruption in Internet policy history.

The rules, which imposed some very modest restrictions on giant telecom monopolies to prevent them from abusing market power, were very popular among consumers of all political stripes. And the Trump FCC’s repeal involved using a lot of outright lies and even fake and dead people to reduce the oversight of extremely unpopular telecom monopolies.

Despite the Democrats controlling the FCC for more than a year and a half, they still haven’t done anything about it.

Democrats Hope To Gotcha The GOP With Doomed New Net Neutrality Bill

The Dangers of Praising Mike Pence and Liz Cheney

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Republican enemies of Donald Trump are not your friend. In fact, they may represent an even more dangerous form of far-right politics, because they put a respectable veneer on theocracy, climate denial, and warmongering. Democrats need to stop praising horrible neoconservatives.

The Dangers of Praising Mike Pence and Liz Cheney
My reaction to Robert Reich’s suggestion!

I’d much prefer Rand Paul, if we were to have a right-winger as President! I don’t care for all of his economic policies but, at least, we might have less wars and legalized marijuana!

[1999] CIA’s War Against China

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)1 Comment

by Ralph McGehee, December 1999

The US has again asked the UN to condemn China’s human rights record. Our nervousness over this issue is increased by the scheduled reversion of Hong Kong to Chinese rule next year. The condemnation request has been accompanied by a barrage of media stor ies about China’s treatment of orphans, the Laogai prison system, the lack of political freedom and other issues. Observers of international political developments will recognize such stories as the standard accompaniment of operations by the CIA/NED to alter or overthrow target governments. The US corporate-owned media, in league with government agencies, orchestrate media coverage to demonize states in conflict with corporate plans. (Many of the media stories seem to be generated by the “privately funded” US-based Human Rights Watch/Asia). Once and if the Chinese government is changed and serves well the corporate state, even if any abuses multiply — we will hear no protest.

CIA’s War Against China
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U.S. empire seeks to use Ukraine to destabilize Eurasia, in the model of how it destroyed Yugoslavia

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
CIA gets go-ahead to destabilize Yugoslavia

The U.S. empire has a playbook for balkanizing countries. It inflames ethnic tensions by fabricating atrocity stories, and spreading them around in the areas where it wants conflict to arise. To do this, it singles out an ethnic group (represented by a vilified government) and paints it as a perpetrator of genocide. It backs terrorist groups to fight against the demonized government, or installs leaders that will fulfill Washington’s goals for proxy warfare, or both. It provokes the targeted country into responding, then imposes sanctions on the country. It uses “humanitarian” narratives to give the region’s breakup the illusion of having occurred organically, and of having been done in response to human rights abuses or war crimes supposedly committed by the target.

U.S. empire seeks to use Ukraine to destabilize Eurasia, in the model of how it destroyed Yugoslavia (archived)

NATO Claims ‘Immunity’ to Serbian Lawsuits on Use of Depleted Uranium in 1999 Bombings

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

NATO Claims ‘Immunity’ to Serbian Lawsuits on Use of Depleted Uranium in 1999 Bombings

Related:

The Rational Destruction of Yugoslavia:

We have yet to understand the full effect of NATO’s aggression. Serbia is one of the greatest sources of underground waters in Europe, and the contamination from U.S. depleted uranium and other explosives is being felt in the whole surrounding area all the way to the Black Sea. In Pancevo alone, huge amounts of ammonia were released into the air when NATO bombed the fertilizer factory. In that same city, a petrochemical plant was bombed seven times. After 20,000 tons of crude oil were burnt up in only one bombardment of an oil refinery, a massive cloud of smoke hung in the air for ten days. Some 1,400 tons of ethylene dichloride spilled into the Danube, the source of drinking water for ten million people. Meanwhile, concentrations of vinyl chloride were released into the atmosphere at more than 10,000 times the permitted level. In some areas, people have broken out in red blotches and blisters, and health officials predict sharp increases in cancer rates in the years ahead.

National parks and reservations that make Yugoslavia among thirteen of the world’s richest bio-diversity countries were bombed. The depleted uranium missiles that NATO used through many parts of the country have a half-life of 4.5 billion years. It is the same depleted uranium that now delivers cancer, birth defects, and premature death upon the people of Iraq. In Novi Sad, I was told that crops were dying because of the contamination. And power transformers could not be repaired because U.N. sanctions prohibited the importation of replacement parts. The people I spoke to were facing famine and cold in the winter ahead.

With words that might make us question his humanity, the NATO commander, U.S. General Wesley Clark boasted that the aim of the air war was to “demolish, destroy, devastate, degrade, and ultimately eliminate the essential infrastructure” of Yugoslavia. Even if Serbian atrocities had been committed, and I have no doubt that some were, where is the sense of proportionality? Paramilitary killings in Kosovo (which occurred mostly after the aerial war began) are no justification for bombing fifteen cities in hundreds of around-the-clock raids for over two months, spewing hundreds of thousands of tons of highly toxic and carcinogenic chemicals into the water, air, and soil, killing thousands of Serbs, Albanians, Roma, Turks, and others, and destroying bridges, residential areas, and over two hundred hospitals, clinics, schools, and churches, along with the productive capital of an entire nation.

— Michael Parenti