- An economic theory from the ‘70s comes to life once again (Boston Globe) "More than 40 years after those scribblings, President Donald Trump is reviving the so-called Laffer curve... What the first President George Bush once called “voodoo economics” is back, as Trump’s advisers argue that deep cuts in corporate taxes will ultimately pay for themselves with an explosion of new business and job creation. Mnuchin argues that an ambitious tax cut would unleash businesses that now feel constrained by one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. While a corporate tax rate cut of the dimension Trump envisions would reduce tax revenues by more than $2 trillion over the next 10 years, Mnuchin noted that an increase in economic growth of a little more than 1 percentage point would generate close to the same amount. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, an advocacy group focused on reducing deficits, said that Trump’s tax plan was more likely to increase growth by 0.2 percentage points than by the higher estimates Mnuchin forecast."
BUSINESS/ECONOMY:
- Why Is Trump Risking a Trade War With Canada? (Atlantic) "Canada is now pursuing closer trade relationships with China and other Asian markets. Ironically, the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiated under Obama would have opened up the Canadian dairy market to American exports, but Trump withdrew the U.S. from that agreement. Although the lumber and dairy disputes are not new, Trump’s very public excoriation of Ottawa is unusual."
- Why the FCC’s Plans to Gut Net Neutrality Just Might Fail (Wired) "...Pai made clear that he would seek to reverse an FCC decision to classify broadband internet access providers as 'Title II' common carriers, putting them in the same category as traditional telephone companies. The re-classification gave the FCC authority to impose net neutrality requirements on both wireless and home broadband providers, preventing them from, for example, charging specific sites or companies fees for sending traffic over their networks or slowing down competitors’ streaming video offerings. 'Going forward, we cannot stick with regulations from the Great Depression meant to micromanage Ma Bell,' Pai said. Based both on his speech today and previous remarks, it appears that Pai will make the case that Title II reclassification led to a substantial decline in broadband infrastructure investment."
CLIMATE CHANGE:
- Conservatives Need an Energy Vision (National Review) "For conservatives seeking a major victory, a great place to start would be to fix the mess of energy subsidies and regulations that have accumulated over the past eight years. In the years since Barack Obama took office, there were $548 billion in energy and environment regulations finalized, and the projected budget currently estimates at least $250 billion in federal energy subsidies. Attempts to eliminate these regulations and subsidies have been hampered by conservatives’ lack of an overarching vision for energy policy."
- Today’s Energy Jobs Are in Solar, Not Coal (NYT) "More than 373,000 Americans worked part or full time in solar energy, and just over 260,000 of them – or about 70 percent – spent a majority of their time on solar projects. The coal industry, which has shed jobs since 2012, primarily due to competition from cheap natural gas, employed just over 160,000 workers nationwide. About 54,000 coal jobs were in mining."
FUTURE OF TRANSPORTATION:
- Small flying “cars” come a bit closer to reality (Economist) "Uber does not want to build these aircraft or landing pads itself, just as it does not own its own cars. Instead, it plans to collaborate with other companies."
- Why Amazon’s use of self-driving technology would be a game changer (WaPo) "Amazon has become something of a pioneer in home delivery, in part by setting the standard for how quickly purchases arrive on your doorstep. The company has begun using aerial drones in an effort to deliver goods more quickly, completing its first successful flight to a customer in the United Kingdom in December. Like self-driving vehicles, drones will need to overcome regulatory hurdles before they’re widely deployed."
HEALTH:
- Lifting Lighter Weights Can Be Just as Effective as Heavy Ones (NYT) "Instead, the key to getting stronger for these men, Dr. Phillips and his colleagues decided, was to grow tired. The volunteers in both groups had to attain almost total muscular fatigue in order to increase their muscles’ size and strength."
NEWS:
- Obama's $400,000 Wall Street speaking fee will undermine everything he believes in (Vox) "Obama has already raised millions for his library and presidential foundation. He, more than any of his former subordinates, can safely say no, that Harry Truman was right and this is an unseemly thing for a former president to be doing, and that it was a mistake of American society to normalize that form of conduct from his immediate few predecessors."
BUSINESS/ECONOMY:
- Why Is Trump Risking a Trade War With Canada? (Atlantic) "Canada is now pursuing closer trade relationships with China and other Asian markets. Ironically, the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiated under Obama would have opened up the Canadian dairy market to American exports, but Trump withdrew the U.S. from that agreement. Although the lumber and dairy disputes are not new, Trump’s very public excoriation of Ottawa is unusual."
- Why the FCC’s Plans to Gut Net Neutrality Just Might Fail (Wired) "...Pai made clear that he would seek to reverse an FCC decision to classify broadband internet access providers as 'Title II' common carriers, putting them in the same category as traditional telephone companies. The re-classification gave the FCC authority to impose net neutrality requirements on both wireless and home broadband providers, preventing them from, for example, charging specific sites or companies fees for sending traffic over their networks or slowing down competitors’ streaming video offerings. 'Going forward, we cannot stick with regulations from the Great Depression meant to micromanage Ma Bell,' Pai said. Based both on his speech today and previous remarks, it appears that Pai will make the case that Title II reclassification led to a substantial decline in broadband infrastructure investment."
CLIMATE CHANGE:
- Conservatives Need an Energy Vision (National Review) "For conservatives seeking a major victory, a great place to start would be to fix the mess of energy subsidies and regulations that have accumulated over the past eight years. In the years since Barack Obama took office, there were $548 billion in energy and environment regulations finalized, and the projected budget currently estimates at least $250 billion in federal energy subsidies. Attempts to eliminate these regulations and subsidies have been hampered by conservatives’ lack of an overarching vision for energy policy."
- Today’s Energy Jobs Are in Solar, Not Coal (NYT) "More than 373,000 Americans worked part or full time in solar energy, and just over 260,000 of them – or about 70 percent – spent a majority of their time on solar projects. The coal industry, which has shed jobs since 2012, primarily due to competition from cheap natural gas, employed just over 160,000 workers nationwide. About 54,000 coal jobs were in mining."
FUTURE OF TRANSPORTATION:
- Small flying “cars” come a bit closer to reality (Economist) "Uber does not want to build these aircraft or landing pads itself, just as it does not own its own cars. Instead, it plans to collaborate with other companies."
- Why Amazon’s use of self-driving technology would be a game changer (WaPo) "Amazon has become something of a pioneer in home delivery, in part by setting the standard for how quickly purchases arrive on your doorstep. The company has begun using aerial drones in an effort to deliver goods more quickly, completing its first successful flight to a customer in the United Kingdom in December. Like self-driving vehicles, drones will need to overcome regulatory hurdles before they’re widely deployed."
HEALTH:
- Lifting Lighter Weights Can Be Just as Effective as Heavy Ones (NYT) "Instead, the key to getting stronger for these men, Dr. Phillips and his colleagues decided, was to grow tired. The volunteers in both groups had to attain almost total muscular fatigue in order to increase their muscles’ size and strength."
NEWS:
- Obama's $400,000 Wall Street speaking fee will undermine everything he believes in (Vox) "Obama has already raised millions for his library and presidential foundation. He, more than any of his former subordinates, can safely say no, that Harry Truman was right and this is an unseemly thing for a former president to be doing, and that it was a mistake of American society to normalize that form of conduct from his immediate few predecessors."
- Donald Trump’s Unintelligible Presidency (New Yorker) "Trump’s powers are mysterious even to Trump; the Presidency is just a detail."
- Mattis and Trump: The odd couple that works (WaPo) "...Mattis has bonded with Trump’s other key foreign policy advisers: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, national security adviser H.R. McMaster, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and CIA Director Mike Pompeo. This is a strong, self-confident group; there’s little of the infighting that characterizes Trump’s domestic advisers. What Mattis and the other former commanders bring to Trump’s national-security table, perhaps paradoxically, is a wariness of overly hasty military commitments. In the debate about stopping North Korea’s nuclear program, for example, Pentagon planners understand that the thriving metropolis of Seoul could become a gruesome, Stalingrad-like battlespace in an ill-planned conflict."
- We Can Defang the North Korean Threat (National Review) "Trump also understands what has been obvious to many of us for years: The path to Pyongyang goes through Beijing. Trump’s strategy of putting pressure on China’s President Xi Jinping to sever support for Kim is smart, and it seems to be yielding some results. In February, Beijing curtailed coal exports to North Korea. More significant, a Chinese official has told the Nikkei news agency that China will move to cut off oil supplies to North Korea if the North tries another nuclear test."
READ THIS:
- Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations (Thomas L. Friedman) "We all sense it―something big is going on. You feel it in your workplace. You feel it when you talk to your kids. You can’t miss it when you read the newspapers or watch the news. Our lives are being transformed in so many realms all at once―and it is dizzying."
SOCIALIZED MEDECINE:
- Even in Trump’s base, his path forward on health care is awfully unpopular (WaPo) "New polling from The Washington Post and our partners at ABC News as well as a survey from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal makes clear that Trump’s base still wants Obamacare to be tossed out — but that it mostly opposes the most viable path toward doing so."
- Public pans Republicans’ latest approach to replacing Affordable Care Act (WaPo) "The new survey suggests significant political risk to Trump in trying to undermine the law, with a mere 13 percent saying he should try to make it fail as soon as possible. By contrast, nearly 8 in 10 (79 percent) say he should try to make the ACA work as well as possible, including roughly 6 in 10 Republicans and 8 in 10 independents."
- Mattis and Trump: The odd couple that works (WaPo) "...Mattis has bonded with Trump’s other key foreign policy advisers: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, national security adviser H.R. McMaster, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and CIA Director Mike Pompeo. This is a strong, self-confident group; there’s little of the infighting that characterizes Trump’s domestic advisers. What Mattis and the other former commanders bring to Trump’s national-security table, perhaps paradoxically, is a wariness of overly hasty military commitments. In the debate about stopping North Korea’s nuclear program, for example, Pentagon planners understand that the thriving metropolis of Seoul could become a gruesome, Stalingrad-like battlespace in an ill-planned conflict."
- We Can Defang the North Korean Threat (National Review) "Trump also understands what has been obvious to many of us for years: The path to Pyongyang goes through Beijing. Trump’s strategy of putting pressure on China’s President Xi Jinping to sever support for Kim is smart, and it seems to be yielding some results. In February, Beijing curtailed coal exports to North Korea. More significant, a Chinese official has told the Nikkei news agency that China will move to cut off oil supplies to North Korea if the North tries another nuclear test."
READ THIS:
- Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations (Thomas L. Friedman) "We all sense it―something big is going on. You feel it in your workplace. You feel it when you talk to your kids. You can’t miss it when you read the newspapers or watch the news. Our lives are being transformed in so many realms all at once―and it is dizzying."
SOCIALIZED MEDECINE:
- Even in Trump’s base, his path forward on health care is awfully unpopular (WaPo) "New polling from The Washington Post and our partners at ABC News as well as a survey from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal makes clear that Trump’s base still wants Obamacare to be tossed out — but that it mostly opposes the most viable path toward doing so."
SPORTS:
- Doctor at center of USA Gymnastics scandal left warning signs at Michigan State (WaPo) "In lawsuits, victims have alleged making verbal complaints about Nassar to Michigan State officials as far back as the late 1990s. In 2014, both Michigan State police and the university’s Title IX office cleared Nassar of wrongdoing after an assault complaint."
TECHNOLOGY:
- Why Your Next Wi-Fi Setup Should Be a Mesh Network (NYT) "A mesh network could solve most, if not all, of your Wi-Fi problems. It’s basically a system of multiple Wi-Fi stations that work together to blanket every corner of your home with a strong wireless data connection. Unlike stand-alone routers that lose signal the farther you move away from them, mesh stations piggyback on one another to create a continuous wireless link throughout your home, minimizing the possibility of dead zones."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- What ‘personal space’ looks like around the world (WaPo)
- Collateral Damage (LEVV)
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