Skeet of the Day

Lord Vader is right:

"The Emperor is a fan of Flock, and we must continue utilizing Flock technologies so that we can follow and surveil the rebel scum as they move from playground to playground... They are following children in parks and gymnasiums, and we need this. I need this so I can stalk my ex-girlfriend."

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— Matt Novak (@paleofuture.bsky.social) August 20, 2026 at 1:21 PM

When You Are Too Corrupt for JP Morgan………

JPMorgan has terminated their relationship with the online gambling site Polymarket.

JPMorgan Chase terminated its banking relationship with Polymarket last year over regulatory concerns, underscoring escalating worries in the industry over fast-growing prediction platforms.

JPMorgan notified Polymarket that it needed to find a new bank in October, according to people familiar with the matter. Polymarket is now working with a new lender, the identity of which could not be confirmed. 

At the time, Polymarket was banned from allowing US customers to use its platform following a 2022 enforcement action by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for operating an unregistered derivatives trading platform. 

The CFTC under the Trump administration allowed New York-based Polymarket to re-enter the US last year, though the agency has an ongoing investigation into the company, the FT reported in June.

Gambling is a great way to launder money, and has been shown with both Polymarket and Kalshi, it is an even better way to engage in insider trading. 

Whatever JPMorgan saw, it's worse than what is publicly known.

That ain't good. 

The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) in a Nutshell

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has proposed a law preventing companies like Amazon from using of sub-contractors to evade liability for mistreating delivery drivers.

Given that Amazon dictates the schedules of the drivers, the routes that they take, and watches them through cameras in the truck, this law is an unalloyed good.

Leading the charge against the law is one Jessica Schumer.

If that last name sounds familiar, it is probably because her dad is New York US Senator Chuck Schumer.

Amazon’s chief lobbyist fighting a delivery worker protection bill in New York City recently endorsed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani is Jessica Schumer, the daughter of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), according to public lobbying records and three sources with knowledge of the situation.

The bill, the Delivery Protection Act, would establish safety, training, and labor standards for delivery drivers in New York. All delivery facilities and service providers would need to be licensed with the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, and companies that operate warehouses could not contract out deliveries to third parties.

That means Amazon, which subcontracts last-mile package distribution to a network of delivery service providers (DSPs), would instead have to directly employ those workers in New York City, forcing the company to take responsibility for traffic accidents, mandatory quotas that deny workers rest or bathroom breaks, and any other violations of the new standards.

………

Mayor Mamdani endorsed the Delivery Protection Act, known as NYC Council Introduction 518 and sponsored by Councilmember Tiffany Cabán, on Monday with a splashy video. But the bill was first introduced in 2023, and reintroduced in subsequent council sessions. The 2026 version has 35 co-sponsors among the 51 members of the council, though council Speaker Julie Menin is not among them. (The 2025 version was up to 41 co-sponsors, and included Menin, who was an original co-sponsor.)

………

Schumer, a former policy director for Tim Kaine when he served as Hillary Clinton’s running mate in 2016, has worked at Amazon since 2020, initially as a senior policy director. In January, she became the head of New York policy and community engagement, a euphemism for an in-house lobbyist.

In New York state lobbying disclosures (which also covers municipal lobbying), Schumer is listed as one of four lobbyists working for Amazon at the city council. The Delivery Protection Act is named as one of the bills that Schumer and her fellow lobbyists are working on.

………

For nearly a decade, Amazon has deployed its DSP model around the country. Delivery workers must wear Amazon uniforms, drive vans with Amazon logos, use Amazon equipment, are assigned routes and package deliveries by Amazon, and work out of Amazon facilities—but they are not classified as Amazon employees. This deprives DSP workers of Amazon’s benefits and wage structures, and makes it harder to seek union rights. The National Labor Relations Board this year determined that Amazon was not a joint employer with DSPs, and could not be held accountable for any safety violations or union avoidance at those contractors.

 The unholy mix of nepotism, hypocrisy, and corruption seems to be a defining trait of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment).

A Fortunate Failure

The Trump administration has done its best to hamstring wind power.  Its primary tool for this is stopping required reviews of new wind farms by the Pentagon.

The courts are having none of it.

On Thursday, a US District Court in Oregon ordered the US government to restart the process of approving wind projects. All new wind development in the US has been on hold since August 2025, when the Department of Defense (DoD) stopped participating in a process that allows it to compel developers to alter projects in order to limit their interference with radar equipment. The court ruled, however, that the DoD’s national security claims did not allow it to opt out of a process that is legally mandated.

The Trump administration has made many attempts to block wind development, both offshore and land based. Its attempts to stop offshore wind included the same approach at issue in this case: Claim that drone developments mean that radar interference by wind turbines creates a national security risk. The courts were not sympathetic to this claim, including in cases where judges examined a classified report that the DoD was using to justify blocking offshore wind construction. As a result, the administration has turned to paying companies not to pursue wind development.

In parallel, the government was pursuing a similar approach for onshore wind. Here, a law lays out a process for the DoD to evaluate any problems posed by wind turbines and negotiate changes to planned wind farms with the developers. As laid out in the new decision, the government simply stopped participating in this process in August 2025, first by refusing to sign off on previously negotiated agreements, and later by refusing to draft agreements entirely. Eventually, it simply refused to participate in negotiations at all. This has brought a halt to all wind development in the US.

………

Nothing in that framework allows the DoD to simply stop participating in the process. “If DoD wishes to alter the statutory scheme, it can ask Congress to do so,” Immergut wrote. In the absence of congressional action, the DoD can’t simply ignore the law.

The ruling orders the DoD to resume the process of approving wind projects using the congressionally mandated schedule and to report back every 30 days on its progress.

 

I've Been Saying This for Years

For some time, I have argued that one of the ways to limit the damage that hedge funds and private equity can do is to reform bankruptcy laws to leave them on the hook for the consequences of their looting. (See here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, and this is only for the 2020s)

Nice to see that economist Dean Baker has reached the same conclusion.

The American Prospect had an excellent piece yesterday describing how taxpayers could end up being on the hook for bailing out bad loans to the AI industry even with no new actions by Congress or state legislatures. The mechanism is that life insurance companies have issued hundreds of billions of dollars of private loans to AI-related companies. (We can only speculate on the amount since many of the loans are issued by privately held companies, which don’t have to make detailed disclosures of holdings.) If these companies are unable to repay the loans, then one or more insurers could go bankrupt.

………

There is a simple way to reduce the likelihood of this sort of bailout on insurers’ bad AI investments. The bankruptcy laws can be changed to make private equity (PE) companies liable for the debts incurred by the companies they own and control. Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Mark Pocan proposed this change as part of their Stop Wall Street Looting Act in the last session of Congress.

This matters in the current context because many insurers have been bought by PE companies in recent years. While the insurers may be unable to repay their debts, the PE companies that own them may still have billions of dollars of assets.

Changing the law in this way not only prevents PE companies from walking away from the wreckage caused by the companies they drive into bankruptcy; it would also force the insurers they own to be more cautious with their lending. If the PE companies were themselves on the hook, they would discourage insurers from making too many high-risk loans.

Indubitably. 

A Good Start

In response to concerns about stability of the power grid, the Public Utility Commission of Texas has halted power connections for data centers,

Given the rather precarious state of Texas' power grid, this is good policy ……… In Texas ……… Will wonders ever cease?

Nowhere is the US data center boom bigger than in Texas. But less than a year after declaring Texas the “epicenter of AI development,” Governor Greg Abbott has declared a moratorium on all new power grid connections for data centers—at least until developers provide more information about their projects’ potential impacts on the grid and communities.

The Republican governor directed regulators in an August 3 announcement at the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the grid operators at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to perform a “comprehensive verification and audit of all data centers advancing through ERCOT’s interconnection process.” As an independent system operator, ERCOT oversees a power grid that operates separately from the rest of the United States and provides services to most of Texas.

………

Abbott also directed state regulators and grid operators to discover the extent to which data centers’ cooling systems and water usage may draw upon local water supplies needed by local communities. However, the governor’s directive does not mention the fact that data centers often use much more water through their power generation sources than directly through their cooling systems—a fact highlighted by researchers like Shaolei Ren at the University of California, Riverside.

First Tom Delay, and now this.  

Would someone find out what it is that they have been smoking in Texas recently, and have 20 grams sent to me. 

F%$#! I F%$#ing Agree With Tom F%$#ing Delay!

The longtime holder of the most unpleasant man in Congress title, at least until Ted Cruz was elected to the Senate, has mad a publicly stated that the FCC has no authority to roll back the regulations limiting local TV station ownership.

Well, I guess that it's a stopped clock thing.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Tom DeLay, the Texas Republican who was House majority leader from 2003 to 2005, said the Federal Communications Commission has no legal authority to repeal the National Television Ownership Rule. Despite DeLay’s warning, the Trump FCC appears ready to eliminate the rule at its meeting this week.

DeLay wrote an op-ed describing how he helped write the law that prohibited any single broadcast station owner from reaching more than 39 percent of all TV households in the US. DeLay said that only Congress, not the Trump FCC, can change the cap because the 39 percent limit is specified in US law and wasn’t chosen by the commission.

DeLay gave his view in an op-ed for The Daily Wire yesterday, less than three weeks after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr announced a plan to eliminate the cap. The FCC is scheduled to vote on Carr’s proposal on Thursday.

 

 

Common Sense in the UK

Given the large number of applications for power connections for data centers that are either never built or delayed, the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem) is proposing a substantial fee for grid connection requests from data centers.

Given that these requests result in significant costs which are largely borne by the rate-payers, this makes a lot of sense.

Ofgem is seeking feedback on proposals to levy a fee on datacenter development projects at the time they apply for a grid connection.

The move aims to discourage companies from seeking approval for speculative applications that clog up the pipeline and cause connection delays, without ever resulting in finished datacenters.

The UK regulator for electricity and gas says connection applications for electrical supply have surged from 41 gigawatts (GW) to 125 GW in under a year, with datacenters accounting for at least 80 GW of the new demand.

………

Ofgem is proposing a Datacenter Commitment Fee paid by the developers of large server farm projects when accepting a grid connection offer. The fee would be refunded once the facility is drawing power, or forfeited if the project exits the queue early instead.

That refund bit I do not approve of.  Data center power provisioning levies large external costs on the grid, and the AI grifters should be made to pay for that.

Well, It's a Start

Capital One has announced that it has closed Trump Organization accounts due to patterns showing money laundering.

What?  You mean that a mobbed up real estate developer from New York City might be laundering money?

Pshaw! 

Capital One Financial hit back on Friday against a lawsuit over its ⁠decision to close the Trump ⁠Organization’s bank accounts ​years ago, stating that it did so after a review by anti-money-laundering experts.

The disclosure marks the first time a bank has formally tied money-laundering concerns to Donald Trump’s family business. Capital One is seeking to dismiss the case by casting doubt on claims of illegally debanking – or denying services on religious or political grounds – the Trump Organization.

………

Capital One has never accused the Trump Organization of money laundering. ​But Friday’s filing argues that “documents and Plaintiffs’ own ‌allegations make clear that Capital One closed ‌Plaintiffs’ accounts for anti-money laundering (‘AML’) reasons.

“The closures were the result of months of analysis and a careful review by ‌Capital One’s AML team in accordance with bank policies and regulatory guidance.”

Capital One gave notice of its plans to close more than 300 Trump-affiliated bank accounts in March 2021.

300 accounts?!?!!?  

Nope, no money laundering there.

………

“The transaction patterns identified by Capital One are among the types of activity flagged by federal banking guidance,” the filing said.

Gee, ya think?

Fed Stands Pat

The Federal Reserve held its benchmark interest steady today, but in a sign of growing concerns about inflation three members of the Board of Governors voted to hike rates, which is the most public split on the board in about a decade.

Also, the bond vigilantes were unimpressed:

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday kept interest rates unchanged despite growing divisions among policymakers to more directly tackle inflation after five years of overshooting the central bank’s 2 percent target.

The Fed voted 9-3 to maintain rates at 3.5 to 3.75 percent, a level that has been in place since January. Beth M. Hammack of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Neel Kashkari of the Minneapolis Fed and Lorie K. Logan of the Dallas Fed dissented, voting instead for a quarter-point increase.

The divisions underscore the tough spot the Fed and its chairman, Kevin M. Warsh find themselves in as they grapple with new sources of price pressures that are threatening to compound an already complicated and longstanding inflation problem.

………

As Mr. Warsh spoke, longer dated Treasury yields rose sharply, with the 30-year bond closing in on its May peak of 5.2 percent. That was the highest level since 2007. The rise in the 30-year Treasury yield suggests some worry about Mr. Warsh’s ability to tackle inflation in the long run.

We're #1!!!

As The Register notes in an an article titles, "Google breaks Alibaba’s record for Europe’s largest DMA fine." Google has beaten the Chinese at something.

Alibaba’s reign as the worst offender under the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) lasted just four days, after the European Commission yesterday fined Google €890 million for breaches of the law –€340 million more than the Chinese e-commerce company will pay.

Europe even fined Google twice – once for treating its own services more favorably in search rankings and the second time for failing to properly inform users of its “Play” app store.

The search infractions attracted a fine of €460 million ($523.5m/£393m) and the Play offenses will cost the Chocolate Factory €430 million ($490m/£367.5m).

In US dollars, the fines total $1.013 billion – or one quarter of one percent of the $402 billion in revenue that Google’s parent company Alphabet won in its last full financial year. The Big G’s net income was $132 billion in the same year, making these fines less than one percent of its profits.

It's literally just a cost of doing business to them, so I expect them to repeat this. 

This is F%$#ed Up and Sh%$

It’s worth noting that Taco Bell identified the source before the FDA did, and promptly pulled it from their stores. The FDA didn’t even name the source until Taylor Farms outed themselves, and hasn’t issued a recall. Basically, Taco Bell is now a more reliable authority than the FDA.

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— Emily (@emilyrose.bsky.social) July 17, 2026 at 4:54 PM

Roll Tape!

The source of the ongoing Cyclospora outbreak now appears to have been located.

It appears that both the supplier, Taylor Farms de Mexico, and Taco Bell identified the source of the parasitic infection before the FDA did.

That is terrifying.

Topline

Taylor Farms said it would remove iceberg lettuce sourced from central Mexico out of the U.S. market, the company announced Friday, as federal investigators marked the produce company as the possible source of a cyclosporiasis outbreak that has possibly sickened nearly 7,000 people.

Key Facts

• Taylor Farms de Mexico is voluntarily pulling the iceberg lettuce, citing information from the Food and Drug Administration as the agency’s investigation has indicated a “specific independent farm” may be responsible for the outbreak.Taylor Farms noted that none of its popular salad kits contain iceberg lettuce.
• Taylor Farms supplies produce to major fast food and grocery chains such as Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut, Walmart and Trader Joe’s.
• Taco Bell said earlier this week it was removing ingredients like lettuce, cilantro, onion, pico de gallo and guacamole from its menus in the Detroit area

The level of ineptitued of the US public health establishment after just 18 months under Trump and RFK, Jr. is a complete mind f%$#.

 

Meanwhile, in the Empire State

New York Governor Kathy Hochul has issued an order pausing data center projects.

I do not think that this will be permanent, Hochul is a corporate Dem, and she wants those campaign donations, but she is a pretty reliable political weather vane, which makes this a sort of, "Flaming Datum" of the current political climate.

Everyone hates data centers with a passion.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul on Tuesday paused incomplete state environmental permit applications for large datacenters while officials work out new rules, a process expected to take up to a year.

The order makes New York the first state to enact such a moratorium amid growing concerns over AI datacenters' impact on utility rates and public health.

“New York has always been at the forefront of innovation and change but we’ve also always guaranteed that New Yorkers benefit. As data center development threatens to hike up utility bills, deplete our natural resources, and create uncertainty for New Yorkers, it’s my responsibility to take action and lead,” Hochul said in a canned statement.

The order specifically targets large hyperscale datacenters capable of consuming at least 50 MW, subject to exemptions for manufacturing, research, education, and medical facilities. Prior to the AI boom, 50 megawatts would have been considered a large cloud campus.

Bummer of a Birthmark, Donnie

A Federal Reserve Governor has publicly stated that they are seriously looking at a rate hike.

I kind of think that the collapse of the cease fire with Iran, and the oil price spikes that have resulted, make this even more likely.

Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said policymakers may need to raise rates in the near term if underlying inflation continues to signal broad price pressures.

“If we get another hot reading on core inflation this week, then the FOMC will need to consider tightening monetary policy in the near term,” Waller said Monday, referring to the central bank’s rate-setting committee, in remarks prepared for an event in New York.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is due to release fresh data on consumer prices on Tuesday.

Waller emphasized the economy was in good shape, with the labor market appearing stable and consumer demand resilient. Still, he said, monetary policy was at a “crossroads” because of inflationary pressures driven by tariffs, energy prices and the build-out of artificial intelligence infrastructure.

“No matter how you cut it, or what measure you want to use, inflation is up this year,” Waller said. “At this point, I am concerned about the elevated pace of core inflation.”

I'm a dove on inflation, not that counts for anything, but the fact that this probably has Donald Trump's head exploding amuses me.

Cover Them Up With Trash Bags

After years of misuse by the police, a 30%+ error rate, and rising public protests, the Los Angeles Police Department has elected not to renew their contract with Flock cameras.

Good.  Now address the remaining problem, that Flock will not remove the cameras and will continue to spy on innocent citizens while they lobby for a new contract. 

The Los Angeles Police Department on Saturday stopped working with a surveillance technology company over concerns about the data’s use, according to an LAPD official.

Flock Safety operates 138 pole-mounted cameras in Los Angeles, allowing authorities to track vehicles that have been reported stolen or are registered to known fugitives. It is one of a handful of vendors used by the city for automated license plate readers.

Flock has been criticized for sharing its data with state and federal officials. Advocacy groups worry that information could help President Trump’s immigration crackdown.

………

Dean Gialamas, LAPD’s chief information officer, told several news outlets that the LAPD is seeking more protections around the information collected by the agency.

“The sticking point is around having very clear terms about who owns the data, what happens with the data once they collect it,” said Gialamas.

He said the LAPD would stop using Flock “until we can get those data, privacy, security and sharing concerns ironed out through a contractual relationship.”

The LAPD signed a three-year agreement with Flock in July 2023 that was already set to expire Saturday.

………

Reports that Flock has shared license plate data with federal authorities, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has led smaller cities across the country to end their relationships with the company.


In Northern California, the city of Mountain View turned off its 30 Flock cameras in February after officials announced that federal and state law enforcement agencies had accessed city data in violation of the city’s policies.

………

Inspector General Matthew Barragan recommended in the audit that the department suspend the deployment of any new automatic license plate readers, known as ALPRs, and the execution of new contracts.

Any new contracts should go through the Board of Police Commissioners, regardless of whether the agreement includes an exchange of funds, according to the report.


“Contracts or agreements shall establish enforceable requirements governing data security, privacy, access controls, retention and auditing to protect Department ALPR data and ensure accountability for its collection, use and disclosure,” the report said.

Even if one supports the indiscriminate use of ALPRs in US cities (I do not) Flock is a toxic bad actor whose business model is secrecy and back loaded bribery to public officials.

It's Bank Failure Friday!!!

Today was kind of busy, with the 3rd commercial bank failure of the year, Kentland Federal Savings and Loan Association of Kentland, IN, and the 6th credit union failure of the year, WeDevelopment Federal Credit Union of Kansas City, Missouri.

I'm not sure if this is the start of something, or just a blip.

Here is the  Full FDIC list, and here is the Full NCUA list, and the direct link for this year.

At Least These Goniffs Have Been Stopped for a Decade

I am referring, of course, to John Deere, who have been forced into a settlement that requires them to allow farmers to fix their own tractors.

The Right to Repair movement is generally associated with electronics, but its latest battle has been fought—and won—on an entirely different front: the ranches of America’s heartland. The issue at hand was a dispute between the Federal Trade Commission and tractor/farm equipment manufacturing company John Deere, and, specifically, a suit filed jointly by the FTC and five states against the company back in 2025. That suit was settled this week, and the settlement represents a resounding victory for the plaintiffs.

The FTC’s statement about the case accused the company of “illegally restrict[ing] the ability of farmers and independent technicians to repair Deere equipment, including tractors and combine [harvesters].” That statement was issued by then-FTC chair Lina Khan, who has since been removed from the position by the Trump administration and replaced by the more “deal-friendly,” in the words of the New York Times, Andrew Ferguson. (She has since served as part of NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s transition team.)

………

Nevertheless, John Deere’s eagerness to reap the amber waves of gain that could be had by redefining the concept of ownership has meant that they’ve spent the last decade doing their very best to make it difficult for anyone but authorized dealers to repair their machinery. In particular, as per the FTC’s statement on this week’s settlement, the company “makes the only software repair tools capable of performing all electronic repairs on Deere equipment…[but] has previously made such tools available only to its authorized dealers, forcing farmers to rely on authorized dealers for many necessary repairs.” And as Wien explained in 2025, those software tools are copyrighted, so “not only [were] [John Deere] being anti-competitive, it [was] literally illegal to compete with them.”

That’s all set to change with the settlement reached between the company and the FTC this week. The FTC’s statement on the matter explains that the terms of the settlement require John Deere to “provide farmers and independent repair providers with the same equipment repair resources, including applicable software capabilities, that it currently provides to authorized Deere dealers”—and to do so “for the next 10 years and under the supervision of the FTC and plaintiff states.” 

This is good.  What would have been better would have been to send some Deere senior executives to jail. 

That's Gonna Leave a Mark

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams just issued a ruling stating that Donald Trump, the Department of Justice, and the IRS committed a fraud on the court with their lawsuit, and subsequent "Settlement" creating a 1.7 billion slush fund.

A federal judge just nixed the settlement underlying Donald Trump’s nearly $1.8 billion slush fund.

The fund was the result of an unprecedented deal that Trump made with himself after he dropped his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service for the unlawful leak of his tax returns in 2019. The honey pot payments were pitched as reparations, paid for by U.S. taxpayers through the Department of Justice, to virtually any right-winger that felt targeted by the previous presidential administration.

“The nature of the suit itself and the conduct of the Parties and counsel from its filing make plain that this was an attempt to use the Court to provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people and entities affiliated with the President and to earmark billions of dollars from American taxpayers to redress grievances not defined in the law,” wrote U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams in a 56-page order Monday.

Williams ruled that any entities affiliated with the slush fund settlement—including the president, the Treasury Department, and the IRS—were “prohibited” from using the details of the arrangement in any official capacity. She also referred Trump’s attorney, Alejandro Brito, to the Florida bar for possible professional discipline. 

………

“These officials then negotiated on behalf of the United States, with his current lawyers, including his former White House Counsel, to reach a ‘settlement,’” Williams assessed. “It is risible to suggest that there was ever adverseness between the Parties.”

………

But as Williams observed, the jaw-dropping components of the case—such as the billions of dollars in taxpayer funds proposed for undefined grievances, or the blanket immunities offered to Trump—were not put before the court. Instead, the question underlying the legality of the president’s slush fund centered around whether the entities engaged in the settlement arrangement, from government representatives to Trump’s personal attorneys, ever represented different parties while they pretended to engage in a legitimate court proceeding.

“The answer is a resounding ‘no’: the Lead Plaintiff and the Government are one, a fully realized unitary interest,” Williams wrote. 

I find it rather unlikely that the Florida Bar will take any action against Brito, they have been loath to involve themselves in closely related matters, and I believe that there is a good possibility that at least 4 Supreme Court members would be supportive of what is a naked fraud upon the court.

I am not entirely sure where it goes from here. 

Not a Surprise

This is my Shocked Face

The news that used fraudulent data to get approval for its self-driving systems.

Gee, who saw that coming?

As if things couldn’t get any worse for Tesla in Europe, traffic safety researchers now say they’ve caught the company cooking numbers they gave to regulators in order to get its “Full Self-Driving” system approved.

The discrepancy was spotted by Reuters, which claims that data Tesla gave to authorities in Sweden and the Netherlands grossly exaggerated the safety record of FSD in the United States.

Reuters reports that in a presentation meant for Swedish regulators, Tesla’s policy manager Ivan Komusanac claimed that Tesla’s FSD can travel over seven times farther between crashes than human drivers in the US. Using that claim as a jumping-off point, the presentation continued by claiming that Tesla’s FSD could have saved 32,000 lives and prevented 1.9 million injuries over an indeterminate period of time, the publication reports.

In the old days, Elon Musk would be in jail for fraud.

Good News on the Renewables Front

Arizona's extra fees to solar power users has been struck down in state court.

After years in the courts, the Arizona Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Vote Solar, striking down the Arizona Corporation Commission’s (ACC) approval of discriminatory charges for customers of Arizona Public Service (APS) who have rooftop solar. In its decision, the Arizona Court of Appeals vacated the solar fees, ruling that they were imposed in an unfair manner that violated due process requirements.

APS, a regulated utility powering 1.4 million households and businesses in Arizona, first created the solar fees in its 2022 rate case, and they currently amount to roughly $2 to $3 in additional monthly charges for households with rooftop solar. Vote Solar filed an appeal in 2025 against the “grid access charge.”

APS has proposed to increase the fees to roughly $6 per month in its current rate case, which is under consideration at the ACC. Vote Solar, the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest (ACLPI) and Earthjustice are opposing the fee in that case as well.

This ruling is about not notifying the public, and not following their own rules, and not about the underlying merits of this fee.

I don't think that the fee will be reinstated, because the ruling requires proper procedure and advance public notice, and if they cannot sneak it in, public outrage would likely force the utility and the regulators to back down.