How To Reduce Gun Violence Without Violating The Second Amendment

How to reduce America's horrible gun violence problem without violating the Second Amendment?  Here is a partial list if ways to keep such dangerous weapons out of the wrong hands while respecting the rights of responsible gun owners all the same:

• Do a massive, voluntary gun buyback program.  And yes, when done at a large enough scale and paying enough for it to be worth one's while, these things actually do work.
• Follow something like the Massachusetts model on the federal level (things like gun licensing, universal background checks, red flag laws, and a reinstated assault weapons ban and high-capacity magazine ban).
• Apply the RICO law to street gangs.
• Additional penalties for gun carry during a felony.
• Put a tax on bullets, like comedian Chris Rock advocated.  Expensive bullets = no innocent bystanders.

None of these things actually violate the letter or spirit of the Second Amendment in any way, by the way.  Remember, the best part of the Second Amendment is where it says, "well-regulated".

Stephen Hawking Warned Us About It. We Need To Listen Yesterday!

Years ago when he was still alive, the late genius theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking made a terrifying prediction, namely that the prospect of uncontrolled superhuman artificial intelligence (AI) is at least as much of an existential threat to humanity as climate change.  And that really says something!

Alas, we still don't seem to be listening, let alone heeding his wise advice.  There is no way to sugar coat this hard-to-swallow pill.  If AI grows any more powerful than it currently is (that is, more powerful than GPT-4) before we learn how to fully control it, and it becomes uncontrollable, it would truly be an existential threat to humanity, civilization, and planet Earth (and possibly even beyond).  Not just in the distant future, but also sooner than one may think, at the rate things are currently going.  Even as a best case scenario, uncontrolled AI would make literally every single current problem in the world far worse before it would make it better.  I repeat, that's the best we could hope for, and it goes downhill from there.  I mean, once the genie is out of the bottle, it's not like anyone would be able to, you know, outsmart it any longer if it ultimately becomes orders of magnitude smarter than even Stephen Hawking himself.

The TSAP thus supports recent calls to put a minimum six month global moratorium on any further AI development beyond GPT-4, period, no exceptions.  And ideally, this moratorium would be indefinite, but six months would still buy us time.  THIS is what things like the precautionary principle and Pascal's Wager were literally designed for.  That is, we would be in a far less precarious position (by orders of magnitude) if we "overreact" and shut it down yesterday, than we would if we were to foolishly let AI get out of control and it becomes too late to control it.  There is literally no comparison between the two.

We ignore such risks at our peril.  Don't say we didn't warn you!

Just Say NO To The WHO Pandemic Treaty!

The TSAP has previously noted that the WHO Pandemic Treaty (currently pending ratification) is problematic at best, both in what it contains, as well as what it lacks.  Now we are learning even more about why the USA should NEVER sign onto it, especially the amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) in conjunction with it.  In classic textbook Orwellian doublespeak fashion, the text contains a very disturbing section that purports to preserve and honor national sovereignty, but actually ends up doing the exact opposite, as can be seen in the extremely elastic wording below:

4.3 of the Treaty
"3. Sovereignty – States have, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law, the sovereign right to determine and manage their approach to public health, notably pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery of health systems, pursuant to their own policies and legislation, provided that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to their peoples and other countries. Sovereignty also covers the rights of States over their biological resources."

Wow.  Read between the lines once again.  The part in bold is the absolute worst kind of Orwellian sophistry, in that all someone would have to do is argue in a tortured fashion that it is like having a "designated peeing section in a swimming pool" (apologies to the late George Carlin) for nations to refuse to implement WHO diktats including, but not limited to, travel restrictions, lockdowns, closures, mask mandates, or jab mandates/passports.  The Constitution be damned, of course, as this treaty doesn't even allow for the usual "subject to constitutional limitations" qualifiers found in typical international treaties.  And also the collateral damage to people from such measures would predictably be ignored by the powers that be.

To put it bluntly, if the USA does sign the treaty, then we as a nation would effectively be signing away our national sovereignty to the WHO.  And we must never do that.  Once we do, there is NO turning back!

At a minimum, the USA must add a reservation to the treaty striking the bold text entirely and adding "subject to constitutional limitations", as a condition for signing and ratification.  Better yet, the USA should denounce the treaty entirely and refuse to sign it.  

Worse still, as a News Uncut Substack article notes, "the proposed amendments remove an existing IHR paragraph which protects “respect for dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of people.” Translated, that means you could lose liberty and bodily autonomy; anyone who refused a mandatory vaccine could be banned from travel, work or even shopping. No digital health passport, no life."

Very telling indeed.  All the more reason to reject this utterly terrible treaty wholesale, period.

"Too Big To Fail" = Too Big To EXIST

Once again, the issue of "too big to fail" is in the foreground, as we have obviously learned NOTHING from the last financial crisis.  If there is ANY lesson that we must NEVER forget, it is this: "too big to fail (or jail)" is really too big to EXIST, period.  And here is what we absolutely MUST do going forward:  give all banks and corporations large enough to have "systemic risk" (that is, where them failing would literally bring the whole economy down) a choice between the following menu of options:

1. Pay a prohibitive 90% marginal tax rate on all profits beyond the first billion, or,
2. Break up into smaller, unaffiliated banks or companies, similar to what anti-trust laws require for monopolies, or,
3. Full nationalization by the federal government, and (if already failed or failing) replacing the entire board of directors.

That's it.  That's the ONLY real solution. 

Of course, we also need to bring back the Glass-Steagall Act and pass a financial transactions tax and repeal the safe harbor provision of bankruptcy law and regulate derivatives better and stuff like that.

So what are we waiting for?

What Was The Cruelest April Fool's Joke In All Of Recorded History?

What was the absolute cruelest April Fool's joke in all of recorded history?  "Two weeks to flatten the curve".  After all, had it actually been true, it would have literally ended on April 1, 2020.

And as The Who (not to be confused with the WHO, the World Health Organization!) famously sang:

"We won't get fooled again!"