Billy Binion praises the great Jimmy Lai.
Short-term rental sites such as Airbnb—which hosted 38,500 units in the city in 2023—could have provided tourists with an affordable substitute for these asylum seeker–occupied hotel rooms. However, in September 2023, the city passed Local Law 18, which forbids “renting [out] units for less than 30 days.” While the law failed to make housing more affordable, it succeeded in reducing rooms available to tourists: As of September, there were only “about 3,000 short-term rentals operating legally,” per The Wall Street Journal.
New @GitaGopinath @BrentNeiman paper:
1) The actual US tariff rate is ~1/2 the announced rate bc of exceptions/delays
2) US companies/consumers are so far bearing ~94% of tariffs’ costs (w/ foreigners paying the rest)
3) Bc of 2, US tariffs are a ~1% tax on US manufacturing
And here’s the abstract of the paper, by Gita Gopinath and Brent Neiman, that inspired Scott’s tweet:
In 2025, statutory tariff rates on U.S. imports rose to levels not seen in over one hundred years. What are the implications for prices? On the one hand, shipping lags, exemptions, and enforcement gaps have kept the actual implemented rates at only half of the statutory rates, moderating the tariffs’ impact. On the other hand, tariff pass-through to U.S. import prices is almost 100 percent, so the United States is bearing a large share of the costs. We study the incidence of the 2018-2019 and 2025 U.S. tariffs and discuss implications for U.S. sourcing, domestic manufacturing costs, and the dollar.
David Henderson argues persuasively that “nothing fails like prohibition.”
Law school is a three-year grind. But 40 years later, while I couldn’t tell you a thing about, say, the “rule against perpetuities,” I did internalize the most valuable lesson, which came in the first three hours. It wasn’t a precedent or a statute, just a bit of folk wisdom you mightn’t think would need teaching. But it does, now more than ever.
It’s this: If you hang a sign that says “horse” on a cow, that doesn’t make it a horse.
Get it? If you do, then you’ll quickly grasp that a Latin American dope dealer is not an alien enemy combatant. The Defense Department, a creature of statute, does not become “the Department of War” by a presidential decree that sends Pete Hegseth to the front of the Pentagon with a plaque and a screwdriver. A foreign terrorist organization does not, by the abracadabra of “designation,” become an authorization for the use of military force — even if we generously assume that a drug gang is the same thing as a terrorist organization. Lindsey Halligan is not the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Riots are neither patriotic nor mostly peaceful. The congressionally established John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is not, by dint of wand-waving by a crony committee, the Trump . . . anything.
And fentanyl is not a weapon of mass destruction, even if the “horse” sign in this instance happens to be an executive order.
