Monthly Archives: September 2020

Some Labor Day Questions

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First published in 2015, I’ve updated it for today.  In an ideal world, I’ll be able to update it again next year, with a yet more optimistic tone.

The Wall Street Journal asked some questions on Labor Day 2012, and supplied some answers.  Here are some of those questions and answers, which remain as valid this Labor Day.

  • Q: How are America’s workers doing? Not good. Over the past decade, over the ups and downs of the economy, taking inflation into account, the compensation of the typical worker — wages and benefits—basically haven’t risen at all. … The Labor Department recently said that 6.1 million workers in 2009-2011 have lost jobs that they’d had for at least three years. Of those, 45% hadn’t found work as of January 2012. … Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Friday that unemployment is still two percentage points higher than normal….
  • Q: Things ARE getting better, though. The US economy is creating jobs, right? Back in December 2007 when the recession began, there were about two jobless workers for every job opening.  When the economy touched bottom in mid-2009, there were more than six unemployed for every job.  At last count, the BLS says there were 3.4 jobless for every opening.
  • Q: How much of this elevated unemployment is because the unemployed just don’t have the skills that employers are looking for right now?  …the bulk of the evidence is a lot of the unemployment really is the old-fashioned kind: the kind that would go away if the economy was growing at a stronger pace. Mr. Bernanke said as much at the [2012] Jackson Hole conference….

In 2019, the jobs situation was drastically improved.  The overall unemployment rate was at an historic low, and there were more job openings than there were folks to fill them.  The black unemployment rate was at a record low.  The Hispanic unemployment rate was at a near record low.  The women unemployment rate was at a near record low.  Wages, both real and nominal, were growing.

I add a couple of questions for this year.

  • Q: What about the COVID-19 virus situation? It hit us hard last winter, when we knew nothing about it, and much of the data we did have had been falsified, with other, critical, data withheld from us by foreign entities for critical weeks. However, the initial spike has collapsed, and the latest, end-of-summer surge is waning. The fatality rate, given an infection, is a small fraction of 1% for most age groups and in the 3%-5% range for those in their 60s and older. Vaccines are on the horizon, and mitigating treatment techniques and drugs are in effect that greatly lessen the severity of most infections and shorten significantly hospital stays, and decrease drastically mortality rates for those hospitalized. It also turns out that children are the least harmed by this virus, neither likely to pass infections among each other nor to adults; schools can re-open for critically important face-to-face teaching and learning, and many of them are. Associated resurgences of infection are turning out to be minor.
  • Q: But what about the economy? This was a politically-forced, not an economically-induced, shutdown of our economy, and so it can be re-opened just as politically or by simple business decision to do so. And it is, in broad swaths of our economy. GDP is on a sharp rise, the unemployment rate is around 8.4%, which is well below the Panic of 2008 rate, and the current rate is falling. The employment participation rate is rising again. Businesses are reopening, furloughed employees are being recalled.

In sum, our exceptional American economy is coming back.

Happy Labor Day.

Unsafe at any Quickness

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Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn is being asked by some 20 Senators—Republican; no Progressive-Democrat wanted any part of this—to take the abortifacient Mifeprex or mifepristone off the market.

The senators say that based on FDA reporting the drug has resulted in the death of more than 3.7 million unborn children and two dozen pregnant women.
They also said the drug has caused at least 4,195 negative reactions in pregnant women including hemorrhaging, excruciating abdominal pain and severe, life-threatening infections.

The drug is unsafe for a significant fraction of the mothers who take the drug. It’s 100% unsafe for the 3.7 million unborn babies that have been killed with it.

Ethnic Cleansing

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It isn’t limited to the Uighurs, and it’s much more insidious and consideredly humiliating than merely killing or exterminating through forced sterilization.

The People’s Republic of China is trying to exterminate Mongol culture and force them to live mainland Chinese culture.

Thousands of students in Inner Mongolia have taken to the streets during the past week to rally against the government’s three-year plan to push Mandarin-language education across the northern region and phase out local history, literature and ethnic textbooks in favor of national coursebooks, according to rights group Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center.

And

Under President Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist Party has intensified efforts to promote Mandarin and push the country’s ethnic minorities to adopt a uniform Chinese identity.

And

On Tuesday, the first phase of the new policy in Inner Mongolia launched to coincide with the start of the fall semester. It requires all schools to teach Mandarin using national instead of local course material starting in first grade—one year earlier than under the old system.
That means ethnic Mongolian children won’t be able to master the fundamentals of their own language before starting their Mandarin studies, [clothes seller in Xilinhot] Daguulaa said.

This is part of the threat all of us face from an acquisition-minded People’s Republic of China.

An Objection to a Recall Effort

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There is in progress in Seattle an effort to recall Progressive-Democratic Mayor Jenny “Summer of Love” Durkan. Durkan objects.  A State trial court has said, over Durkan’s objection, that the recall effort can proceed, so Durkan has taken the matter to the State’s Supreme Court.

Remarkably, neither Petitioners nor the trial court identified the particular “policies and safety measures” Mayor Durkan had a duty to implement, but failed to enact.

Here are a couple that were evident to the trial court, are evident to the recall petitioner defendants, and are blindingly obvious to the Seattle residents.

Instead of ordering the city’s police to retreat and abjectly surrender their precinct headquarters and surrounding blocks to a rabble, she could have—should have—reinforced those police with more police, including State police (or at least asked for them; Governor Jay Inslee’s (D) support for police also is an open question) and not surrendered.

When it became obvious that the occupying rabble had no legitimate objective—they engaged in enthusiastic vandalizing, looting, extortion of uninformed visitors, rape, murder—she could have sent in the police to retake the area much sooner instead of wasting weeks, businesses’ lives, people’s lives pleading negotiating with the rabble.

Instead, she declared a Summer of Love while pretending to deal with the…situation.

The residents of Seattle, citizens of Washington and of the United States that they are, deserved, and deserve, better.

A DA Misunderstands

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Contra Costa County District Attorney Diane Becton has decided that looters’ “needs” should matter in a prosecutor’s assessment of whether he should charge them with their crimes.

Becton’s full guidelines for charging an individual with looting are:

  1. Was this theft offense substantially motivated by the state of emergency, or simply a theft offense which occurred contemporaneous to the declared state of emergency?
    1. Factors to consider in making this determination:
      1. Was the target business open or closed to the public during the state of emergency?
      2. What was the manner and means by which the suspect gained entry to the business?
      3. What was the nature/quantity/value of the goods targeted?
      4. Was the theft committed for financial gain or personal need?
      5. Is there an articulable reason why another statute wouldn’t adequately address the particular incident?

A defendant’s “needs” are centered on his motive for committing the crime of which he’s accused. As such, they’re best considered by a jury during the penalty phase of the trial. “Needs” have no place in deciding whether the public, or the specific victims of the crime, should be allowed access to justice after having been, in the present context, looted, their property vandalized, destroyed, or stolen.

Even a California district attorney must understand this.