Monthly Archives: September 2021

Foolishness

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It interlaces with other foolishness, especially when it comes to government. For instance, in August 2021’s 7500 pages of regulatory bidness:

The Fish and Wildlife Service issued a plan to protect the majestic White Bluffs bladderpod, a subspecies of scruffy plant that grows on a row of hills in one county of Washington state. Another subspecies is more common. The most distinctive difference, a state fact sheet says, is that one bladderpod has “stalked hairs,” while the other has “sessile, appressed hairs.”
The Federal Highway Administration, with happier news for Washington state, approved a plan to expand Interstate 405…between milepost 21.79 and milepost 27.06. Why does it take more than a year to approve 5.27 miles of road construction? The 2,269-page environmental review was published last July, and it conclusively showed that the new roadway will not pave over bladderpods.

This is one of the bottomless pits into which our governments—at any jurisdiction and of any party—toss our tax money.

This Pretty Much Says It All

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At a Pennsylvania State House Consumer Affairs Committee hearing, solar industry representatives decried the level of State interest in solar energy production relative to more traditional sources of energy production.

[T]he potential for the industry to flourish still exists, said the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), if only the state revamped some of its policies to incentivize more investment.

And this from SEIA’s Mid-Atlantic Senior Manager of State Affairs, Scott Elias:

Some states have more aggressive goals. Even 2.5% by 2030 would increase the demand in Pennsylvania.

If only the state revamped some of its policies to incentivize. That attitude clearly illustrates solar energy’s dependence on Government for its growth.

When solar energy becomes an actually viable source of energy, the industry won’t need government “incentives;” the free market will drive interest and facilitate industry growth.

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.

These two questions remain relevant 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 Delta Variant? What about it, indeed. The existing vaccines—they’ve been in use for months—work nearly as well against this version as they do against the original versions. On top of that, empirical data suggest that this variant is less lethal, if more infectious, than the original versions. Children get infected from this version more than they did the original versions, but more than almost not at all remains right next door to not at all. And it’s still not lethal for children beyond a few sad anecdotes. It’s only government bureaucrats and pressmen that are hyping the thing.
  • 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. At this point, it’s only government welfare payments and reburgeoning regulation that’s holding our economy back.

In sum, our exceptional American economy is coming back. Still.

Happy Labor Day.

How Far

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…has Australia fallen. The once proudly free nation is stooping to this.

The government of South Australia has implemented a new policy requiring Australians to use an app with facial recognition software and geolocation to prove that they are abiding by a 14-day quarantine for travel within the country.

It’s just one state in the nation, but Australia’s central government, with its silence on this move, seems not far behind. Neither will this Big Government Overwatch be limited to quarantine from the Wuhan Virus.

This is a government surveillance regime that would make the Communist Party of China blush.

“A Retreat on Racial Preferences”

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That’s the headline on a Tuesday editorial in The Wall Street Journal. The Editors opened with

The Biden Administration has been losing in court on its racially biased policies, and last week something remarkable happened. It gave up. Without explanation, the Justice Department declined to appeal a federal court injunction against a discriminatory loan-forgiveness program for farmers.

The decision not to defend appears to be widespread.

More than a dozen lawsuits have been filed challenging the USDA’s racial preferences, and three so far have resulted in preliminary injunctions by district courts in Florida, Wisconsin and Texas. Justice failed to appeal the Florida injunction before its 60-day deadline last week and hasn’t contested the others.

But maybe not. This collection of decisions only concerns the Ag Department, not other parts of the Biden-Harris (it’s Biden’s demand, after all, that the administration be termed Biden-Harris) Executive Branch.

Without explanation—without public explanation, perhaps. Another explanation might be that, sotto voce, President Joe Biden (D) and his co-President (co-Vice President?), Kamala Harris (D), fear that their Executive Branch’s racism is getting to be too obvious to too many average Americans.

It’s no retreat, actually, nor even a retrograde, but only a misdirection. This administration continues to push racist policies in Defense, with its critical race “theory” spew; in Justice, with its push for “diversity” for diversity’s sake; in Education, with its push to have critical race “theory” and its parallel and misnomered “anti-racism” taught in K-12.