Open Thread July 22, 2023 Can Justices be Influenced?
Senate Democrats are not having fun these days unless they’re attacking a conservative Supreme Court Justice. Thursday’s markup of their judicial “ethics” bill was the event of the season. Leading the charge was Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse claiming the High Court is “captured by special interests.”
Mr. Whitehouse brought up “freebie vacations.” He also criticized the Justices for receiving friend-of-the-court briefs from what he called “flotillas of coordinated front group amici.” Think tanks and other groups having the nerve to speak their minds on pending cases. Whitehouse: “Some amici have been paid by parties. Others have masked special interests out to influence the law.”
The Sheldon Whitehouse Ethics Mirror, msn.com, WSJ Editorial Board.
Investigating a Supreme Court Justice, Angry Bear, angry bear blog
I have yet to see the smoking gun of quid pro quo for the Thomas and Alito emoluments charges. But the optics of a politician or justice accepting expensive freebees from the rich and powerful are just bad, and the SCOTUS knows this. They just don’t care. That’s why they should be made to care by legally constraining what gifts they can receive while in office.
At the Supreme Court, Ethics Questions Over a Spouse’s Business Ties
NY Times – Jan 31
… In a statement, a spokeswoman for the Supreme Court, Patricia McCabe, said that all the justices were “attentive to ethical constraints” and complied with financial disclosure laws. …
(This story came out before Alito & Thomas problems became public, it seems. It was about Chief Justice Roberts’s wife who recruits lawyers.)
… Mrs. Roberts previously said that she handled conflicts on a case-by-case basis, avoiding matters with any connection to her husband’s job and refraining from working with lawyers who had active Supreme Court cases. …
How Do the White House’s A.I. Commitments Stack Up?
NY Times – July 22
Seven leading A.I. companies made eight promises about what they’ll do with their technology. Our columnist sizes up their potential impact.
This week, the White House announced that it had secured “voluntary commitments” from seven leading A.I. companies to manage the risks posed by artificial intelligence.
Getting the companies — Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI — to agree to anything is a step forward. They include bitter rivals with subtle but important differences in the ways they’re approaching A.I. research and development.
Meta, for example, is so eager to get its A.I. models into developers’ hands that it has open-sourced many of them, putting their code out into the open for anyone to use. Other labs, such as Anthropic, have taken a more cautious approach, releasing their technology in more limited ways.
But what do these commitments actually mean? And are they likely to change much about how A.I. companies operate, given that they aren’t backed by the force of law? …
Best Place for A.I. Jobs Won’t Surprise You
NY Times – July 20
The San Francisco Bay Area has ruled the technology industry for decades, from the early days of personal computers to the social media boom.
Now a new study from the Brookings Institution suggests that the rise of generative artificial intelligence, fueled by the popularity of the ChatGPT chatbot, could further solidify the Bay Area’s hold on tech.
The report, which the Washington think tank released on Thursday, said generative A.I. could magnify a “winner take most” geography for jobs. And the winners, so far, are San Francisco and San Jose, Calif.
While that may not be surprising, the Brookings report may help to dispel the notion that smaller tech hubs like Austin, Texas, or Miami will be home to the next generation of big tech companies. If anything, it suggests the Bay Area’s hold on the tech industry could grow stronger. …
… New York ranked third in generative A.I. job postings. …
As a center for many industries other than tech, New York may offer a glimpse into how the technology will spread beyond the early work being done in the Bay Area.
“Every major financial, media, advertising and consulting company is immersed in figuring out how they are going to adapt to and use generative A.I.,” said Julie Samuels, executive director of Tech:NYC, a nonprofit industry group. “And that’s happening every day here.”
But the increasing number of A.I. jobs in New York, many of them high paying, does not address the challenge of democratizing the technology across the country.
A series of other studies in recent months have assessed the likely economic impact of generative artificial intelligence, the technology engine behind chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard that can write business reports, computer code and poetry. That research has focused on the potential of generative A.I. to boost productivity, transform work and automate millions of jobs. …
Commitment 1: The companies commit to internal and external security testing of their A.I. systems before their release. …
Commitment 2: The companies commit to sharing information across the industry and with governments, civil society and academia on managing A.I. risks. …
Commitment 3: The companies commit to investing in cybersecurity and insider-threat safeguards to protect proprietary and unreleased model weights. …
Commitment 4: The companies commit to facilitating third-party discovery and reporting of vulnerabilities in their A.I. systems. …
Commitment 5: The companies commit to developing robust technical mechanisms to ensure that users know when content is A.I. generated, such as a watermarking system. …
Commitment 6: The companies commit to publicly reporting their A.I. systems’ capabilities, limitations, and areas of appropriate and inappropriate use.
Commitment 7: The companies commit to prioritizing research on the societal risks that A.I. systems can pose, including on avoiding harmful bias and discrimination and protecting privacy. …
Commitment 8: The companies commit to develop and deploy advanced A.I. systems to help address society’s greatest challenges.
I don’t think many people would argue that advanced A.I. should not be used to help address society’s greatest challenges. The White House lists “cancer prevention” and “mitigating climate change” as two of the areas where it would like A.I. companies to focus their efforts, and it will get no disagreement from me there. …
… Overall, the White House’s deal with A.I. companies seems more symbolic than substantive. There is no enforcement mechanism to make sure companies follow these commitments, and many of them reflect precautions that A.I. companies are already taking.
Still, it’s a reasonable first step. And agreeing to follow these rules shows that the A.I. companies have learned from the failures of earlier tech companies, which waited to engage with the government until they got into trouble. In Washington, at least where tech regulation is concerned, it pays to show up early.
No commitments to sharing expected huge profits with those who lose jobs and careers when outplaced by A.I. however, it appears.
For Run, typical and important:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/22/business/gilead-hiv-drug-tenofovir.html
July 22, 2023
How a Drug Maker Profited by Slow-Walking a Promising H.I.V. Therapy
Gilead delayed a new version of a drug, allowing it to extend the patent life of a blockbuster line of medications, internal documents show.
By Rebecca Robbins and Sheryl Gay Stolberg
In 2004, Gilead Sciences decided to stop pursuing a new H.I.V. drug. The public explanation was that it wasn’t sufficiently different from an existing treatment to warrant further development.
In private, though, something else was at play. Gilead had devised a plan to delay the new drug’s release to maximize profits, even though executives had reason to believe it might turn out to be safer for patients, according to a trove of internal documents made public in litigation against the company.
Gilead, one of the world’s largest drugmakers, appeared to be embracing a well-worn industry tactic: gaming the U.S. patent system to protect lucrative monopolies on best-selling drugs.
At the time, Gilead already had a pair of blockbuster H.I.V. treatments, both of which were underpinned by a version of a drug called tenofovir. The first of those treatments was set to lose patent protection in 2017, at which point competitors would be free to introduce cheaper alternatives.
The promising drug, then in the early stages of testing, was an updated version of tenofovir. Gilead executives knew it had the potential to be less toxic to patients’ kidneys and bones than the earlier iteration, according to internal memos unearthed by lawyers who are suing Gilead on behalf of patients.
Despite those possible benefits, executives concluded that the new version risked competing with the company’s existing, patent-protected formulation. If they delayed the new product’s release until shortly before the existing patents expired, the company could substantially increase the period of time in which at least one of its H.I.V. treatments remained protected by patents.
The “patent extension strategy,” as the Gilead documents repeatedly called it, would allow the company to keep prices high for its tenofovir-based drugs. Gilead could switch patients to its new drug just before cheap generics hit the market. By putting tenofovir on a path to remain a moneymaking juggernaut for decades, the strategy was potentially worth billions of dollars.
Gilead ended up introducing a version of the new treatment in 2015, nearly a decade after it might have become available if the company had not paused development in 2004. Its patents now extend until at least 2031.
The delayed release of the new treatment is now the subject of state and federal lawsuits in which some 26,000 patients who took Gilead’s older H.I.V. drugs claim that the company unnecessarily exposed them to kidney and bone problems.
In court filings, Gilead’s lawyers said that the allegations were meritless. They denied that the company halted the drug’s development to increase profits. They cited a 2004 internal memo that estimated Gilead could increase its revenue by $1 billion over six years if it released the new version in 2008.
No matter the comparison, the United States is seriously and increasingly faltering:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=159AZ
January 15, 2018
Life Expectancy at Birth for United States, Israel and Switzerland, 1992-2021
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=159B9
January 30, 2018
Infant Mortality Rate for United States, Israel and Switzerland, 1992-2021
An important consequence of the severe debt to GDP ratio for Japan, a 54.5% decline in the real value of the Yen since 2000:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=lzl9
January 15, 2018
Real Broad Effective Exchange Rate for China, United States, India, Japan and Germany, 2000-2018
(Indexed to 2000)
Again, a critically important consequence of the severe long term debt to GDP ratio for Japan has been a 54.5% decline in the real value of the Yen from 2000 through June 2023. By 2000, the debt to GDP ratio for Japan was 136%. By 2022, the Japanese debt ratio was 261%.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=mHTw
January 15, 2018
Real Broad Effective Exchange Rate for China and Japan, 2000-2023
(Indexed to 2000)
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=LHqn
January 15, 2018
Real Broad Effective Exchange Rate for United States, Euro, China and Japan, 2000-2023
(Indexed to 2000)
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2023/April/weo-report?c=924,134,534,158,111,&s=GGXWDG_NGDP,&sy=2001&ey=2022&ssm=0&scsm=1&scc=0&ssd=1&ssc=0&sic=0&sort=country&ds=.&br=1
April 15, 2023
Government gross debt as percent of GDP for China, Germany, India, Japan and United States, 2001-2022
2017
China ( 55)
Germany ( 65)
India ( 70)
Japan ( 231)
United States ( 106)
2022
China ( 77)
Germany ( 67)
India ( 83)
Japan ( 261)
United States ( 122)
hunh? i guess some high jacking is more high than others.
In other news …
Whistleblower tells Congress the US is concealing ‘multi-decade’ program that captures UFOs
AP – July 26
The U.S. is concealing a longstanding program that retrieves and reverse engineers unidentified flying objects, a former Air Force intelligence officer testified Wednesday to Congress. The Pentagon has denied his claims.
Retired Maj. David Grusch’s highly anticipated testimony before a House Oversight subcommittee was Congress’ latest foray into the world of UAPs — or “unidentified aerial phenomena,” which is the official term the U.S. government uses instead of UFOs. While the study of mysterious aircraft or objects often evokes talk of aliens and “little green men,” Democrats and Republicans in recent years have pushed for more research as a national security matter due to concerns that sightings observed by pilots may be tied to U.S. adversaries.
Grusch said he was asked in 2019 by the head of a government task force on UAPs to identify all highly classified programs relating to the task force’s mission. At the time, Grusch was detailed to the National Reconnaissance Office, the agency that operates U.S. spy satellites.
“I was informed in the course of my official duties of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program to which I was denied access,” he said.
Asked whether the U.S. government had information about extraterrestrial life, Grusch said the U.S. likely has been aware of “non-human” activity since the 1930s. …
… Rep. Glenn Grothman, R-Wis., chaired the panel’s hearing and joked to a packed audience, “Welcome to the most exciting subcommittee in Congress this week.” But members of both parties asked Grusch about his study of UFOs and the consequences he faced.
“I take it that you’re arguing what we need is real transparency and reporting systems so we can get some clarity on what’s going on out there,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md.
Some lawmakers criticized the Pentagon for not providing more details in a classified briefing or releasing images that could be shown to the public. In previous hearings, Pentagon officials showed a video taken from an F-18 military plane that showed an image of one balloon-like shape.
Pentagon officials in December said they had received “several hundreds” of new reports since launching a renewed effort to investigate reports of UFOs.
At that point, “we have not seen anything, and we’re still very early on, that would lead us to believe that any of the objects that we have seen are of alien origin,” said Ronald Moultrie, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security. “Any unauthorized system in our airspace we deem as a threat to safety.”
New England politics is like the US in microcosm, at least as far as MA & NH are concerned.
Kelly Ayotte is running against … us
Boston Globe – July 26
For the woman who would be New Hampshire’s next governor, running against Massachusetts is easier than running against her opponents in the Republican primary.
… “I’m running for governor because New Hampshire is one election away from becoming Massachusetts,” former US senator Kelly Ayotte has said repeatedly since she announced her candidacy for governor in the Granite State on Monday.
Apparently, our state is a freedom-hating, high-tax hell scape, teeming with drug dealers from Lawrence and Lowell who prey on the decent citizens to the north.
But what about our stellar education system? What about our Afflecks and our Damons and our biotech companies and what have you? Why, with the whole country to choose from, noted state-evaluating authority WalletHub recently ranked ours the best state to live in. Ayotte’s came in sixth.
“Unlike Massachusetts, New Hampshire is a beacon of economic and personal freedom. We have the best business environment in the country with no sales, income or estate taxes,” read a statement issued by Ayotte’s campaign when I requested more specifics. “Our state is the best place to raise a family and to start and grow a business.”
Who will defend us against these insults? Governor Maura Healey, who grew up in New Hampshire, refused to be drawn by Ayotte’s provocation.
“The Republican primary doesn’t interest me. I’m focused on what’s happening here in Massachusetts,” she said …
If Ayotte doesn’t like us, we must be pretty awful. Then again, maybe the Republican candidate doesn’t dislike us. Maybe it’s just easier for her to run against Massachusetts than it is to run against her likely opponents for the party nomination.
In New Hampshire, as in the rest of the country, the GOP has become the bar scene from “Star Wars,” dominated by extremists, conspiracy theorists, culture war obsessives, and cultish devotees of former president Donald Trump. They’re the people Republicans have to win over in primaries these days. …
Ayotte is also leaning hard into the culture wars, cozying up to Moms for Liberty and others convinced their white children are being indoctrinated in school by teachers pushing socialism, Marxism, hurtful history lessons, gender ideology, and trans rights in the classroom.
“Kelly will not be afraid to hold educators and administrators accountable when they inappropriately bring politics or gender ideology into the classroom,” her campaign site proclaims. …
Although NH still sees itself a rock-ribbed GOP stronghold, it has 2 Dem US senators and 2 Dem congressman.: no GOP members. The NH guv’nah is from the GOP (which often happens here in MA too) but the legislature is firmly under GOP control.
The NH GOP seems to think their survival up theah is uncertain, however.
Ballotpedia: The (NH) Republican Party controls the offices of governor, secretary of state, attorney general, and both chambers of the state legislature.