Another Supreme Court Knockout

All nine Justices reject an attempt to expand secondary liability

WSJ editorial. Excerpts:

"provider Cox could be held liable for “contributory” copyright infringement merely because it had knowledge that some of its users were pirating music files."

"“Ordinarily, when Congress intends to impose secondary liability, it does so expressly,” Justice Clarence Thomas writes for the Court. But Congress didn’t do so in this instance, and the Fourth Circuit’s holding “conflicted with this Court’s repeated admonition that contributory liability cannot rest only on a provider’s knowledge of infringement and insufficient action to prevent it.”"

"The provider of a service is contributorily liable for the user’s infringement only if it intended that the provided service be used for infringement"

Or "the party induced the infringement or the provided service is tailored to that infringement"

"Cox didn’t do either." 

Autism-Therapy Firm That Was Paid $340,000 per Patient Is Barred From Medicaid

Indiana officials move to terminate Piece by Piece Autism Centers, cite federal pressure for crackdown after a Journal investigation

By Christopher Weaver of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"Indiana is barring one of the nation’s most expensive autism-therapy providers from billing the state’s Medicaid program two weeks after the company’s practices were detailed in a Wall Street Journal article, state officials said.

The autism-therapy provider, Piece by Piece Autism Centers, received the highest per-patient payments in the country in 2023—about $340,000 on average—according to a Journal analysis of Medicaid billing records.

Piece by Piece did so in part by raising its list prices to levels that allowed it to collect as much as $640 an hour from the state for services that could be performed by a high-school graduate. From 2019 to 2023, Indiana directly paid Piece by Piece $58 million for autism-therapy services, the billing records show."

"In letters sent to Piece by Piece this week, the state [Indiana] said it was revoking the company’s provider agreements for all seven of its centers."

The state "would bar the centers from billing Medicaid"

One official said "“There were no guardrails under the prior administration, and they weren’t doing the job of oversight they should have been doing." 

Related post:

The Boom in Autism Therapy Is Medicaid’s Fastest-Growing Jackpot: Some companies have found lucrative opportunities to capitalize on a growing need, billing long hours and extracting payments as high as $800 an hour (2026) 

‘Renewable’ Energy Gives Us a Crisis

The West handed Iran leverage by deluding itself into believing it could wean itself from fossil fuel

By Brenda Shaffer. She is a faculty member at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School’s Energy Academic Group and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center. Excerpts:

"Western countries’ abandonment of fossil fuels left the world’s energy supply vulnerable to disruptions and price increases"

"Despite trillions of dollars in renewable technology investments, fossil fuels accounted for 87% of global energy consumption in 2024, almost unchanged from the 1970s. Global oil, natural-gas and coal demand reached record levels in 2025."

"In 2019 the World Bank halted funding for upstream oil and natural-gas projects. The International Energy Agency’s “Net Zero by 2050” report in 2021 called for no new investments in fossil fuels."

"Had investments continued, Africa could have become a critical energy supplier, and the increased supply outside the Middle East could have softened the effect of current energy disruptions."

"Europe chose to rely on volatile liquefied natural gas supplies from distant regions rather than making long-term commitments to more secure sources such as pipeline gas from Azerbaijan."

"As countries increasingly rely on China for solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles and critical minerals, they risk dependence on a single strategic competitor. Electrification also raises the risk of cyberattacks, which threaten the stability of energy infrastructure."

"renewable energy is still dependent on a baseload of fossil fuels" 

Chicago’s Minimum-Wage Retreat

The City Council votes to repeal a law championed by Mayor Brandon Johnson

By Michael Saltsman. Excerpts:

"Servers and bartenders already earn more than minimum wage, especially in Chicago, where a typical restaurant worker reportedly earns nearly $30 an hour between the lower base wage and tips."

"The tipped minimum wage was created nearly a century after the abolition of slavery."

"Between 2015 and 2023, the tipped minimum wage rose by nearly 75%, from $5.45 to $9.48." 

"Once-robust restaurant employment growth in the Chicago metro area, which rose as high as 5.6% in 2015, turned negative in the last years of the decade."

"In the first year after the mayor’s minimum wage hike, new restaurant and tavern licenses—a key indicator of industry health—dropped by more than 8%."

"nearly 500 restaurants closed in the first half of 2025, and 70% of the restaurants that responded to the association’s poll reported cutting staff or reducing employee hours"

"Alderwoman Samantha Nugent, . . . said her constituents were suffering from the mayor’s good intentions" 

AI Titans Work Hard to Discourage Working

New studies demonstrate what should be obvious: Universal basic income programs kill initiative.

By Jason L. Riley. Excerpts:

"Weavers and bank tellers feared for their livelihoods at the time, but the Industrial Revolution led to significantly more hiring in the textile sector, and banks increased employment after ATMs were introduced."

"In recent years more than 150 basic-income pilot programs in 35 states have been initiated. One of the pilots, backed by Mr. Altman, began in 2020 and provided low-income participants in Texas and Illinois with $1,000 a month, while a control group received $50 a month. After three years of payments, researchers found that both groups worked slightly more—which may have resulted from the pilot’s starting during the pandemic and ending as the economy bounced back. But they also found that people who received $1,000 put in fewer hours on the job than people who received $50, suggesting that the higher payments provided a disincentive to work.

Last month, economist Kevin Corinth and Hannah Mayhew of the American Enterprise Institute released a survey of 122 basic-income pilots that took place between 2017 and 2025 in 33 states and the District of Columbia. They reported mixed results. Employment increased in some programs and decreased in others, and the role of the pandemic was difficult to assess.

The pilot programs varied “in their designs, data collection and study quality,” and only 30 of them provided employment outcomes. Hence, the authors counsel against sweeping policy conclusions based on the results. Most experiments were small, and the evaluations “rely exclusively on survey data and are thus subject to reporting bias and non-response bias.” Yet Mr. Corinth and Ms. Mayhew did find that the larger and more credible studies—such as the one Mr. Altman backed—showed that unearned income has a negative impact on a person’s willingness to work."

"President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty in 1964 launched the modern social safety net"

"The welfare system attempted to replace family breadwinners, but it turned out that those breadwinners were providing more than money. The result of these government interventions was more broken homes, antisocial behavior and blighted neighborhoods." 

Andy Beshear’s Hillbilly Education Elegy

The Kentucky Governor with his eye on the White House dissembles about a veto and about us

WSJ editorial. Excerpt:

"Bluegrass State children could use the help. Kentucky fourth- and eighth-grade scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress were lower in 2024 than in 2013—by 10 points in eighth-grade math and 12 points in eighth-grade reading. In Jefferson County (Louisville) public schools, only 30% of eighth-graders are proficient in reading and 28% in math on state tests.

Mr. Beshear says the Legislature is “quick to blame our public schools for test scores while refusing to give teachers a well-deserved raise,” citing a statistic that average teacher pay in Kentucky is 42nd in the nation. Average state teacher pay was around $58,500 in 2024, compared to median household income of $64,526.

But including benefits, total teacher compensation was an average $94,194, about 10.5% higher adjusted for inflation than in 2006, according to a Bluegrass Institute analysis last year. Meanwhile, total per-pupil funding increased by an inflation-adjusted 40.5% from 2006 to 2023, the institute found."

Hochul Wants a Climate Reprieve

As utility costs soar in New York, she seeks a delay in cap-and-tax

WSJ editorial. Excerpts:

"the Democratic Governor is seeking to walk back her state’s climate mandates"

She wants to "postpone implementation of the state’s cap-and-tax program and CO2 emissions cuts"

which "could increase upstate utility bills by about $4,000 a year and gasoline prices by $2.23 a gallon."

"Manufacturers would have to adopt costly, immature technologies like carbon capture. Gas power plants would be required to shut down prematurely in favor of higher-cost offshore wind and batteries."

"The average winter gas bill for New York City’s National Grid utility customers jumped 25% this year"

"Pipeline constraints have limited supply."

"gas and nuclear plants have been forced to close."