Producer Price Increases still a problem

PPIFIS - Producer Price Index by Commodity: Final Demand was released today by FRED (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis).

An increase of 0.3% from previous month.

Inflation is still a problem.deral Reserve Bank of St. Louis

No Wonder Border’s Broken

 https://moxlosllc.blogspot.com/2022/11/broken-border.html?m=1

My read: Moore v Harper December 7, 2020

Liberal SCOTUS judges don’t want legislators, at least Republican ones, to determine the manner (districting) of choosing electors. 

The alternative being political, appointed and/or elected, state courts deciding election maps?

The US Constitution says legislatures.  

State constitutions may be able to define their state legislatures, but they are not given the right to determine the manner of elections.

Article I  Legislative Branch

Section 4 Congress

• Clause 1 Elections Clause

• The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.

Where are you?

There is an interesting test you can take to see where you fall on the spectrum of left or right, and libertarian or authoritarian. 

https://www.politicalcompass.org/test

Question-Boosters for 18-29?

Boosters for adults aged 18-29 - expected harms are not outweighed by public health benefits given the modest and transient effectiveness of vaccines against transmission

Kevin Bardosh

University of Washington; University of Edinburgh - Edinburgh Medical School

Allison Krug

Artemis Biomedical Communications LLC

Euzebiusz Jamrozik

University of Oxford

Trudo Lemmens

University of Toronto - Faculty of Law

Salmaan Keshavjee

Harvard University - Harvard Medical School

Vinay Prasad

University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)

Martin A. Makary

Johns Hopkins University - Department of Surgery

Stefan Baral

John Hopkins University

Tracy Beth Høeg

Florida Department of Health; Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital

papers.ssrn.com

 

Gas Prices Still Up

 

People Still Not Working

Broken Border

Biden’s border policies are a mess, put many innocents at risk AND allow Mexican cartels to get rich.

I support immigration. A lot of immigration. But legal immigration, with a mix of merit based  (engineers, scientists, entrepreneurs, doctors, mathematicians, etc.) and opportunity-based (people who want to work hard, adopt American values, and get ahead). 

(Note-The numbers are the apprehensions. We do not know how many people get through without being apprehended)

Why don’t these black lives matter?

Where’s the outrage? Where’s BLM? Where’s Lebron?

Another week and more lives lost. Until the Democrats stop propagating the false narrative nothing will I change.

Black lives matter - I support the words but cannot support the organization because it propagates the false narrative that systemic racism is the primary cause of the disparities(murders, incarceration, teen mothers, fatherless households, income, wealth, etc.) between blacks and whites.

Racism exists (though not widespread), it’s bad, and we should continue to work to reduce it. Excess police force exists (though rare), it's  bad and we should continue to work to reduce it.

BLM organization’s positions and policies do not address the problems (murders, fatherless households, teen pregnancy, lack of agency) and do not address the key root causes (it’s not excessive police force or systemic racism.) 

 

Biden helps dictator. Ukraine-not so much

Biden still limits aid to Ukraine and now happy to help a dictator. 

The U.S. Treasury on Saturday granted Chevron a license for a limited expansion of energy operations in Venezuela https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/26/world/americas/venezuela-chevron-oil-us.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

While the US has provided more military assistance to Ukraine than any other country, Biden continues to dither by worrying more about provoking Putin and ignoring the 10's of thousands of deaths, the rubbling of Ukraine and the consequences of letting Russia invade and stay in Ukraine.

From the beginning of Russia's threats to continue their 2014 invasion of Ukraine Biden has dithered.  He actually stopped providing Javelins to prevent provoking Russia until the weeks before the actual invasion.  He took military option off the table. He encouraged Zelensky to leave Ukraine.  Rather ineffective sanctions were imposed. It was only after the heroically brave fighting and sacrifice of the Ukraine army and people and the discovery of the inept capabilities of the Russian army that Biden began increasing military aid.  But he has done it in a slow incremental way and still continues to limit the capabilities and range of weapons assistance.

Biden needs to LEAD the world to stop Putin. 

Disparity not equal to racism

Roland G. Fryer  (Harvard)  one of the most prominent economists  has a great article discussing disparities versus racism.  

Some excerpts below:

“Taken together, an honest review of the evidence suggests that current racial inequities are more a result of differences in skill than differences in treatment of those with the same skill.”

“The solution isn’t to look away from discrimination. It does exist. But we also can’t point at every gap in outcomes and instantly conclude it’s racism.”

“Disparity doesn’t necessarily imply racism.”

“A black kid who believes he will face daunting societal obstacles is likely to underinvest in trying to climb society’s rungs. Every black student in the country needs to know that his return on investment in education is, if anything, higher than for white students.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/disparity-doesnt-necessarily-imply-racism-skills-wages-black-white-afqt-research-discrimination-jim-crow-grandmother-11669383926?st=oxh7248pm1pfve3&reflink=article_copyURL_share

What would really help? (Not 2 deg climate target)

For everyone focused on fixing the existential threat of climate change note the importance of the current 2 degree target relative to other ideas. 

https://twitter.com/bjornlomborg/status/1593222467153281025?s=46&t=12xSOC2hn44dx4VYofPfzg

University free speech?

A great talk from Jonathan Haidt regarding why Universities have changed from free speech and truth to social justice. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oiu8_kNw3tqe3WYdcuBDaSwQRK6x8k4t/view?usp=drivesdk

This was one talk from the Academic Freedom Conference recently hosted at the Stanford Business School addressing the growing concern, that truth and free speech, is being replaced by social justice at our major Universities. 

“ Academic freedom, open inquiry, and freedom of speech are under threat as they have not been for decades. Visibly, academics are “canceled,” fired, or subject to lengthy disciplinary proceedings in response to academic writing or public engagement. Less visibly, funding agencies, university bureaucracies, hiring procedures, promotion committees, professional organizations, and journals censor some kinds of research or demand adherence to political causes. Many parts of universities have become politicized or have turned into ideological monocultures, excluding people, ideas, or kinds of work that challenge their orthodoxy. Younger researchers are afraid to speak and write and don’t investigate promising ideas that they fear will endanger their careers. 

The two-day Academic Freedom Conference, arranged by the organizing committee, aims to identify ways to restore academic freedom, open inquiry, and freedom of speech and expression on campus and in the larger culture and restore the open debate required for new knowledge to flourish. The conference will focus on the organizational structures leading to censorship and stifling debate and how to repair them.”

For anyone interested in learning more about what may be happening to free speech as relates to universities, all of the talks are available at: https://cli.stanford.edu/events/conference-symposium/academic-freedom-conference

Joe and Jobs - not so much

 Why are so many people still not working?

Does anybody else feel poorer?

 

Why My Vote Doesn't Count

It's funny (not really) how Democrat's concern over fair voting really works.  Below is the politically gerrymandered voting district that I get to vote in. 

Hyperbole

 hy·per·bo·le /hīˈpərbəlē/ noun / def: if you elect Republicans, it will be the end of democracy; if you elect Republicans, they may kill your children; if you elect Republicans, it will be the end of the world.

Deaths of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act

Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which overall will not reduce inflation, may reduce the cost of some drugs, but it will also reduce the number of new cures and treatments developed. 

De­moc­rats claim their In­fla­tion Re­duc­tion Act will Control prices by giving Medicare the power to “ne­go­ti­ate”, i.e. control, drug prices, through com­plex and ill-con­ceived price-set­ting scheme. 

As predicted these Democratic price controls are already causing harm by reducing the incentive to develop new drugs. 

Al­ny­lam an­nounced it is sus­pend­ing de­vel­op­ment of a treat­ment for Star­gardt dis­ease, a rare eye dis­or­der, be­cause of the com­pa­ny’s need “to eval­u­ate im­pact of the In­fla­tion Re­duc­tion Act.” Al­ny­lam’s de­ci­sion turns on a pro­vi­sion in the De­moc­rats’ bill that ex­empts from price-set­ting ne­go­ti­a­tions drugs that treat only one rare dis­ease.

On Tues­day, Eli Lilly an­nounced it is can­cel­ing work on a drug that had been un­der­go­ing stud­ies for cer­tain blood can­cers. “In light of the In­fla­tion Re­duc­tion Act,” the com­pany wrote to End­points News, “this pro­gram no longer met our thresh­old for con­tin­ued in­vest­ment.”

Many more new treatments and cures will be stymied and/or delayed. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-inflation-reduction-act-killing-potential-cures-pharmaceutical-companies-treatment-patients-drugs-prescriptions-ira-manufacturers-11667508291

A Real Threat to Democracy

She has now thrown her weight behind defeating the West’s “oppressive” capitalist system. Calling for a “system-wide transformation” she claimed that the world’s current “normal” - dictated by the people in power - has caused the climate breakdown  “We are never going back to normal again because ‘normal’ was already a crisis. What we refer to as normal is an extreme system built on the exploitation of people and the planet. It is a system defined by colonialism, imperialism, oppression and genocide by the so-called global North to accumulate wealth that still shapes our current world order.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/11/02/greta-thunberg-time-overthrow-wests-oppressive-racist-capitalist/

Hmmm. And the NBA?

We should be a country of equal opportunity, not equal outcome.

Sotomayor, not so much: “I thought part of what it meant to be an American is that our institutions are reflective of who we are as a people….These are the pipelines to leadership on our society. military, business, law. If universities aren't racially diverse, then all of those institutions won't be  diverse either.”