Alternatives

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In an op-ed in Friday’s Wall Street Journal centered on the foolishness of “sustainable” investing, Burton Malkiel had this remark:

The most effective way to reduce an economy’s carbon intensity is to change the economic incentive to pollute.

Not at all. The most effective way to reduce an economy’s carbon intensity—even assuming that’s a useful thing to do—is to provide viable alternatives to carbon intensity. So far, all the Left and their Progressive-Democratic Party is willing to offer is punishment for carbon intensity.

All that does is punish the successful because the less successful don’t or can’t keep up or do better.

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Bait and Switch

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Recall the trillions of American taxpayer dollars already committed to dealing with the Wuhan Virus situation, including $139 billion sent to State and local governments explicitly for that situation.  It turns out

blue states and Democratic mayors are also using the money for their pet causes.
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D) is spending millions on free college for more than 600,000 essential workers.
Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell (D) agreed to spend $629,000 to hire 15 community relations specialists.
Democratic St Paul Mayor Melvin Carter recently announced a guaranteed income program for low-income families using $300,000 in CARES Act money….

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The Lady Misunderstands

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Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D, NY) says it’s total BS that the Progressive-Democrat proposed $1 trillion in Federal Wuhan Virus stimulus monies aimed at State and local governments would benefit public sector unions. Whether public sector unions should or should not benefit is a separate matter.

It’s generous, though, to suggest that such an intelligent woman actually misunderstands.

Adding a trillion dollars—or any other amount of money—to a budget means—work with me, now—that budget has those added dollars to spend. Earmark the trillion for specific purposes, or bar it from being used for public unions. Do that by sending the money as cash and tracking serial numbers. That still lets the recipient government move a different [trillion] of dollars from a different part of its budget to benefit its public unions. That’s the fungibility of money. It can be moved around.

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Censorship

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It’s active, biased, and deliberate in social media. And Facebook, Twitter, and Alphabet intend on stepping it up during the remainder of this election season.

Twitter, for instance, says on its website that it will “require people to remove Tweets” that include “statements which are intended to influence others to violate recommended COVID-19 related guidance from global or local health authorities to decrease someone’s likelihood of exposure to COVID-19.” Among the problematic statements the company lists under that category is “social distancing is not effective.”

But Twitter won’t say how its censors will reconcile the myriad local health authorities who disagree among each other on the proper steps to take.

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Illegitimacy

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One of a President’s duties is to fill vacant seats in his cabinet and in the Federal judiciary—especially the latter. Yet today’s Progressive-Democrats in Congress are actively attempting to block President Donald Trump from fulfilling that duty as it applies to the Supreme Court with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death. Filling that seat is especially important given that those same Progressive-Democrats have committed to challenging the election outcome if it doesn’t give them the proper outcome, and an empty seat on the Court leaves it unable to resolve tie votes on the upcoming election lawsuits.

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Some Prosperity Data

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Courtesy of the Census Bureau, via Just the News and The Wall Street Journal. These data concern the last year.

  • median household income rose to more than $68,700 just over the last year, a 6.8% year-on-year rise
  • black median household income rose to $66,500—up 7.9%
  • Hispanic median household income rose to $56,100—up 7.1%
  • women median income rose to $47,300—up 3%
  • poverty rate fell to 10.5%
  • child poverty rate fell to 14.1%

These are all highs (or lows) over the last several decades, and the sizes of the changes are historically large, also.

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Insufficient

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Recall that Oracle and ByteDance have a proposal on the table for Oracle to take a minority partnership position in ByteDance’s TikTok.  In response to objections to that, some

Trump administration officials are looking to give American investors a majority share of the company that will take over the Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok[.]

Senators Marco Rubio (R, FL), Rick Scott (R, FL), Thom Tillis (R, NC), Roger Wicker (R, MI), Dan Sullivan (R, AK), and John Cornyn (R, TX), object to that, too.

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A TikTok Partnership

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Oracle Corp has become the frontrunner in the race to do a deal with the People’s Republic of China company ByteDance, which owns TikTok, for an acquisition of that app. That status seems solidified by ByteDance having submitted a proposal to the US government that lays out the terms of a deal in which Oracle would become the junior partner in a TikTok-Oracle(-ByteDance?)…alliance.

Recall that President Donald Trump has required that ByteDance divest itself of TikTok as a condition of TikTok’s being allowed to continue operating in the United States. Trump’s objection to TikTok is centered on the app’s scooping up of a vast range of personal and personally identifying data and the subsequent transmittal of those data to back to ByteDance inside the PRC.

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The Evil 1%

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…those so hated by the Left, at least publicly, are heavily funding the Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden’s campaign. And those Evil 1% are paying more into the Biden campaign than they are into the Trump campaign.

Biden has raised slightly more money ($187.3 million) than Trump ($183.9 million) among big donors.

That also compares to the amount small donors, those contributing less than $200 each, have contributed to the Biden campaign: $139 million. In sum, big donors have contributed over 57% of the funds donated for Biden.

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Couple Critical Errors

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…in an otherwise well-intended and worthy effort. California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) wants to make it possible for prison inmates who have been trained in firefighting and have place[d] themselves in danger assisting firefighters to defend the life and property of Californians to join fire departments after they’ve been released from prison.

Long-time readers of my blog know that I am a firm believer in rehabilitation and redemption, and this move would open one path to each of those.

There are a couple of tweaks, though, that are necessary for making this a truly effective move. One is this: Newsom has signed into law

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