FORBES EDITOR: EPA Administrator Is Scarier Than Radical Islamic Terrorists.
Um, no.
Author Archive: Stephen Green
November 1, 2017
THE DAM HAS BURST: Six women accuse filmmaker Brett Ratner of sexual harassment or misconduct.
LEGALIZATION, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG: California to tax pot as much as 45%.
“High effective tax rates on California cannabis may complicate the state’s efforts to establish legal markets” said analysts Stephen Walsh and Karen Ribble in a Fitch Ratings report on California’s marijuana taxes.
California marijuana consumers are going to have to pay a combination of state and local taxes that vary by municipality. Growers and sellers have their own taxes, too.
Consumers will pay a sales tax ranging from 22.25% to 24.25%, which includes the state excise tax of 15%, and additional state and local sales taxes ranging from 7.25% to 9.25%.
Local businesses will have to pay a tax ranging from 1% to 20% of gross receipts, or $1 to $50 per square foot of marijuana plants, according to the Fitch report.
In addition, farmers will be taxed $9.25 per ounce for flower, and $2.75 per ounce for leaves.
The Fitch report says this combination of state and local taxes for consumers, retailers and growers could keep portions of California’s cannabis industry off the grid, where it has flourished for some time.
You don’t say.
The maximum effective tax rate eventually reaches zero.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: NYC’s New Normal, Tech Overlords, Vegas Update and Much, Much More.
GREAT RED FLEET: How China Was Inspired by Teddy Roosevelt.
China has come a long way since 1949. Roosevelt’s America was a power on the rise, vying with stronger empires bestriding its neighborhood. China is now a power on the make, contending with a stronger empire—the informal empire administered from Washington—that dominates its neighborhood. Small wonder patriotic statesmen on each shore of the Pacific Ocean alighted on similar strategies for managing their saltwater environs. There are only so many ways for the weak to overcome the strong. Make yourself strong and your antagonists weak, and you may go far.
And to be sure, under Mao’s successors China’s Maoist strategic thought has started merging with the Mahanian vision Roosevelt prescribed. But China can do Roosevelt, Mahan, and other oldtimers one better. The state of military technology has vaulted ahead over the past century. The PLA can employ land-based armaments not only to defend seaports, but also to hoist a protective aegis over the PLA Navy battle fleet while it cruises the briny main far from port.
Tactical aircraft and shore missile emplacements can rain supporting fire on hostile fleets scores if not hundreds of miles offshore—supplementing PLA Navy firepower with that furnished by the PLA Air Force and Strategic Rocket Force, alongside super-empowered coastal-defense craft that would be instantly recognizable to Mao. Latter-day coastal artillery constitutes a difference-maker for an outgunned Chinese fleet—an option not open to Roosevelt’s navy, fettered as it was by rudimentary weapons and fire-control technology.
What Mahan once branded a “radically erroneous” mode of sea combat—keeping a battle fleet under protective shelter from shore fire support—is swiftly coming of age.
If Fortress China’s coastal-defense-on-steroids pans out, it can accomplish the goal Roosevelt envisioned for shore gunnery—shielding China’s coastlines on a grand scale while freeing the fleet for expeditionary endeavors in remote seas. China will have deployed a genuinely free-range fleet without placing homeland security in jeopardy.
We’re in a similar position Britain was in during the 150 years before World War II. The US is the predominant maritime and trading power, with global interests to protect — but the Royal Navy was given a shipbuilding priority ours has been lacking.
“I DON’T KNOW”: DNC Chief Stonewalls Reporters On Payments To Fusion GPS.
Perez refused to disclose any basic information about the DNC’s role with the dossier and Fusion GPS.
When specifically asked, the DNC chairman declined to report how much money the DNC paid Fusion GPS, which DNC official authorized the payment or identify any DNC officials who actively collaborated with the opposition research firm.
One week after the Washington Post revealed that the Clinton presidential campaign and the DNC paid Fusion GPS, he told reporters he still had not examined how much money had been paid to the firm. “I don’t know how much of the opposition research was Fusion opposition research. I have not desegregated that amount.”
Perez also indicated that he had not ordered an internal investigation about the DNC’s role with the firm.
Whether or not he knows, he apparently doesn’t want to be seen knowing.
NOW THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY I WAS HOPING FOR: World’s Largest Laser Could Solve Our Energy Problems.
BECAUSE HE’S THE HERO WASHINGTON DESERVES, BUT NOT THE ONE IT NEEDS RIGHT NOW: Eight-foot-tall statue of Marion Berry will be unveiled March 2018 outside the John A. Wilson Building.
October 31, 2017
IS THIS RELATED TO THE INCIDENT IN MANHATTAN? ISIS Calls for Attacks on Halloween Celebrations: ‘Get Out Before It’s Too Late.’
Sunkara adds, “Original author can still view it, but can’t share it because it’s ‘inappropriate’.”
Hat tip to Reason’s CJ Ciaramella, who also found Rachel Bale having Google lock her out of her draft of her story on wildlife crimes.
SwiftOnSecurity claims that “according to this thread some Google spam system has gone rogue and is randomly blocking some Google Docs.” So this doesn’t appear to be corporate censorship, but rather an important lesson about the dangers of giving your full trust to somebody else’s cloud.
Face ID could tell the twins apart, but was also able to correctly unlock the phone when one of the twins tried on a hat, a scarf, and sunglasses at the same time.
That’s a pretty neat bit of technology — until it falls into the wrong hands.
IT AIN’T OVER EVEN WHEN IT’S OVER: The Left’s Long Post-Election Tantrum.
THE DAM HAS BURST: Women activists stage topless protest at Roman Polanski event as new rape allegations reported.
Around 80 protesters outside the Cinémathèque Française, which is showcasing Polanski’s films next month, banged on windows and carried placards with slogans such as, ‘If rape is an art, give Polanski all the (French movie award) Cesars’.
A few members of the Femen group exposed their breasts and shouted ‘no honours for rapists’ in the presence of Polanski before security pushed them outside.
Polanski, who had entered the building through a back entrance, was set to present his new movie ‘Based on a True Story’ at the event.
Earlier this month, Swiss prosecutors said former German actress and model Renate Langer had told authorities that Polanski raped her at his mountain chalet in 1972 when she was 15 years old.
Langer is one of four women who have publicly accused Polanski, 84, of sexually assaulting them when they were teenagers.
Is this the year Hollywood finally stops making excuses for Polanski?
THAT’S NOT ENTERTAINMENT: Hollywood actors speak of ‘rampant’ problem of male abusers targeting men.
THIS COULD BE FUN: Tony Podesta Threatens to Sue Fox News Over Tucker Carlson Report.
AMERICA’S LONGEST WAR: First Lady of Afghanistan Pushing for Increased Access to Education for Girls.. “Two-thirds of girls still kept home from school 16 years after fall of Taliban.”
EXCUSES, EXCUSES: Hollywood’s man problem may be a matter of simple math.
Men overwhelmingly dominate nearly every portion of Hollywood, from movie sets to the corporate suites. Of the 100 top-grossing movies released last year, only five were directed by women, according to a USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism study. Men received nearly 87% of the screenwriting credits, the study found, and 79% of the producers were men.
And it’s not just movies. Men created three-quarters of the television shows that ran during the 2014-2015 TV season, USC found. And of the 1,550 executive positions in major entertainment companies, men filled more than 60% of them, and 80% of the highest-powered jobs.
A slew of studies, negative headlines and diversity programs has done little to budge the lopsided statistics.
“Hollywood is a big boys’ club — a big, white boys’ club,” said Jennifer Warren, chairwoman of the Alliance of Women Directors and a former actor and director. “Why would they want to change that? It’s not to their advantage.”
There are plenty of industries dominated by men where sexual manipulation, assault, and rape are not the norm.
The entertainment industry seems to be special.
NEWS I HOPE YOU DON’T NEED TO USE: Do You Live in One of the Most Sexually Diseased States?
BRUCE BAWER: Calling the Cops in Europe? Don’t Bother.
VENEZUELA: Leading opposition parties will boycott December vote.
Leaders from the Justice First, Popular Will and Democratic Action parties say the electoral system is biased.
Julio Borges, the leader of the Justice First party and president of the National Assembly, said the government of Nicolás Maduro had rigged elections in 2013 and earlier this month.
President Maduro insists the Venezuelan system is entirely trustworthy.
The nationwide gubernatorial elections of two weeks ago may have been tainted with fraud and intimidation. And last week in the country’s western Zulia state where the opposition managed to score a win, the Maduro-friendly legislature removed the opposition governor. Governor Juan Pablo Guanipa’s crime? “He refused to swear loyalty to an all-powerful national legislative superbody aligned with President Nicolas Maduro’s ruling socialists.”