An Election, A Lie, A Few Bribes, & A Life-Sustaining Moon

September 25, 2024

Hello, readers – happy Wednesday! Today, we’ll be talking about the U.S. election, Blinken’s big fib, Singapore’s bribery scandal, China’s economic plan, Trump’s election interference case, Visa’s lawsuit, & Jupiter’s moon.

Here’s some good news: the U.S. is replanting national forests after wildfires faster and more efficiently thanks to the REPLANT Act, which was part of the bipartisan infrastructure bill. Also, AI company Voiceitt, which launched as a simple vocal translator to convert non-standard speech to audio, is now being used to help people with speech impairments communicate.

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” – T. S. Eliot

Rocking The Boat Before The Vote

(Kamala Harris by Scott Olson via Getty Images)

Presidential election status update: nothing has changed. Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are still neck-and-neck in the polls as we close in on November, though we’re sure some groundbreaking news will shake things up as we reach the finish line. Right now, though, there are already some rumblings of change on the state level.

In many states, recently altered election laws are changing the way people will vote in November. In Georgia and Arizona, workers will now have to hand-count ballots. Up until this week, Nebraska was considering making its elections a winner-takes-all competition for the state’s electoral votes, and in Wisconsin, ballot drop boxes will be allowed again – but only in certain districts. All of these changes could even flip the results of the whole race, given the fact that Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin are key swing states.

“Last-minute changes to election rules — whether from a state legislature, an election authority or a court — can lead to confusion for voters and election officials,” said an executive at one election-monitoring organization. “Election season is underway. Lawmakers, administrative bodies and courts must recognize that.”

Tony Tells A Tall Tale

According to an investigation by ProPublica, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been fibbing. In April, the U.S. government’s top two humanitarian aid agencies – the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration – gave Blinken their independent assessments regarding Israel’s blockage of aid into Gaza.

Both groups found that Israel was deliberately blocking large amounts of aid from entering the Palestinian enclave, assessments which, legally, should have stopped the U.S. from sending military aid to Israel. Blinken, (allegedly) knowing this, told Congress, “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.”

According to a 17-page memo by USAID summarizing the agency’s findings, Israel had restricted aid in multiple ways, including killing aid workers, bombing agricultural infrastructure, firing missiles at ambulances and hospitals, restricting access to aid supply depots, and making a policy of turning back trucks carrying food and medicine into Gaza. Now? Well, famine is still spreading through parts of Gaza, and Israel still gets handed billions of dollars in U.S. military aid.

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Cleaning Up The City (And The State)

(Iswaran by Roslan Rahman via Getty Images)

On Tuesday, a former Singaporean cabinet minister pleaded guilty to one count of obstructing justice and four counts of accepting illegal gifts. Subramaniam Iswaran, the former transportation minister of the Southeast Asian city-state, apparently accepted 74,000 Singapore dollars ($57,000) in gifts from various business tycoons, including tickets to the Singapore Grand Prix, various bottles of alcohol, and a luxury bicycle.
Singapore is one of the biggest financial hubs in Asia, competing with Hong Kong for the top spot. The ruling People’s Action Party prides itself on its lack of bribery, and the last government minister found guilty of corruption was prosecuted in 1975. Despite that dedication to stamping out corruption, prosecutors mysteriously dropped the number of charges against Iswaran from 35 down to just five. Now, they’re asking for those 30 charges to be taken into consideration when the former minister’s sentence is handed down. Prosecutors want him behind bars for about 6-7 months, while his lawyers are asking for a jail sentence of just eight weeks.

They’re China Fix This Mess

China’s economy is struggling to keep its head above water, but Beijing is attempting to buy itself a life preserver with a new round of economic stimulus policies. The biggest change announced this week was a 0.5% rate cut on existing mortgages. Also announced were a reduction in the deposits needed to buy a new home and looser restrictions on borrowing to invest in Chinese stock exchanges – a pair of changes also aimed at increasing spending.
The loosened restrictions are being rolled out as officials fear they won’t be able to meet Beijing’s self-established goal of 5% economic growth this year, a relatively low bar compared to past years. Big banks like Goldman Sachs and Bank of America recently forecasted that China wouldn’t reach its 5% growth goal this year, but we’ll have to wait and see if the looser restrictions will encourage spending like Beijing hopes.

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Go On, What’s Another 180 Pages?

The federal judge overseeing former President Trump’s federal election interference case granted special counsel Jack Smith’s request to file a 180-page brief on presidential immunity, including potential new evidence in the case. Smith has until Thursday to file.
In July, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump is entitled to immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts that he took while in office. This threw the case into a salad spinner, essentially, and the federal judge now has to figure out which charges can apply.

The Leaning Tower Of Visa

The U.S. Justice Department has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Visa, accusing the financial institution of stifling competition in the debit card market. The complaint says Visa penalizes merchants and banks who don’t use Visa’s payment processing technology to process debit transactions.
Visa is accused of enforcing volume commitments on merchants and their banks, as well as on financial institutions that issue debit cards, making it difficult for merchants to use an alternative payment processor. The DOJ says 60% of debit transactions in America run on Visa’s debit network, and the company charges over $7 billion in fees each year for processing those transactions.

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Boys Go To Jupiter To…Find A New Place To Live?

Our moon might be a barren, lifeless hunk of rock floating around in space, but other planets’ moons are more interesting. NASA has set its sights on Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, as a possible host for extraterrestrial life. On October 10, NASA’s Europa Clipper is scheduled to take off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The 1.8-billion-mile trip from Earth to Jupiter will take the probe about five and a half years to complete, meaning it’s expected to reach the planet’s orbit by 2030.
Researchers believe that Europa has a salty ocean under its outer crust, which might contain the ingredients needed to sustain life. “As an ocean world, Europa is very intriguing,” Gina DiBraccio, the director of NASA’s planetary science division, “This mission is going to help us to understand a complex piece of our solar system.”
Once the probe is in Jupiter’s orbit, it will conduct 44 close flybys of Europa, with the closest coming within 16 miles of the surface. Its main goals are to confirm that there actually is an ocean under the lunar surface and to determine if the three components needed for life (liquid water, chemistry, and energy) are present on the moon. NASA says the mission will conclude in June 2034. We’ll keep you updated!

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