Brief # 118 – Environmental Policy
By Jacob Morton
The state of Maine has passed a law forbidding any state pension fund or other public savings funds from making new investments in stocks or securities of fossil fuel companies. As other states and organizations follow suit, divestment could spell trouble for the fossil fuel industry.
Brief # 53 – Technology Policy
By Henry Lenard
U.S. and British government agencies released details on July 1 of an ongoing cybersecurity threat linked to Russia’s military intelligence agency GRU against hundreds of government agencies, energy companies and other organizations worldwide.
Brief # 52 – Technology
By Henry Lenard
Two antitrust cases filed against Facebook Inc. by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and a coalition of nearly all state attorneys general led New York’s Letitia James were dismissed by Judge James E. Boasberg of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia on June 28, 2021.
Brief #2—Agriculture
By Katherine Cart
Before the industrial revolution reworked the entirety of agricultural processes in America, poultry, eggs and meat were not cheap. The average dozen, in 1913, cost today’s equivalent of $9.25. Chicken meat was served on Sundays, or for holidays, and could not be bought boneless, ground, breaded, molded into consumer-pleasing shapes. Small farms produced small quantities of meat and poultry product and lack of mass shipping transit kept businesses local. Now, however, only three mega-corporations control roughly 90% of the poultry market and four control 85% of the beef market. Legal red tape impedes the fair competition of smaller farms. Conversations concerning antitrust reforms are, once again, gaining momentum and new voices. The DIRECT (Direct Interstate Exemption for Certain Transactions) Act, seeks to amend selling restrictions and could be a boon for small meat and poultry producers. Currently, meat and poultry grown by many small processors are inspected and approved for sale within only the state of inspection. The act would lift bans on interstate sales by processors, butchers and other retailers of locally-produced meat and poultry, allowing for the direct-to-consumer sale of normal retail quantities across state lines. Congressman Cuellar says, “the bipartisan legislation will allow meat inspected by the State to be sold online and across state lines, opening up new markets for meat producers and processors.”
Brief #92—Foreign Policy
By Will Solomon
While not as omnipresent as it often has been, the issue of conflict with Iran should loom large in the context of the 2020 election. Indeed, it’s important to consider just how much more serious this issue has grown in the last four years. A central premise of Trump’s 2016 campaign was exiting the 2015 JCPOA— perhaps the single biggest foreign policy achievement of the Obama administration.
Brief #116—Civil Rightsbr>
By Rod Maggay
On Monday, April 2, the Justice Department announced that it will be instating quotas for immigration judges to fill in order to process cases faster. Immigration judges will be expected to clear a minimum of 700 cases per year in order to keep their jobs.