Monthly Archives: October 2021

Because Shut Up

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A surgeon in Minnesota—and actual, licensed doctor, one who practices and not a government bureaucrat who happens to have a medical degree—spoke in favor of individual choice and especially of parental choice regarding their children on the matter of Wuhan Virus restrictions.

He did so publicly, too. Worse, he said it to a school board, one of those fonts of Know Better wisdom.

Dr Jeffrey Horak, a surgeon in Minnesota, told the Fergus Falls school board on October 11 that parents should make the decision about whether or not their children wear masks.

And he was fired for being so impudent. After all, the received wisdom from those bureaucrats who got a medical degree some while back held otherwise and that wisdom must be accepted by the unwashed masses, including those ignorant parents.

The Lake Region Healthcare hospital, his ex-employer, insisted he was fired because his views were no longer congruent with the hospital’s.

In other words, because shut up.

The hospital managers expounded on that. From their spokesman:

To be clear, this was a decision that was made by Dr Horak’s peers who serve on the Medical Group Board, not by Lake Region Healthcare[.]

Finger-pointing and blame-shifting regarding who did the canceling.

In this fashion, too, because shut up.

The Biden Slowdown

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Last quarter, our economy grew, sort of: GDP rose 2.0%, compared to 6.7% in the second quarter and 6.3% in the first quarter of this year. That first half of this year’s growth was heavily influenced by the growth that was beginning to boom in the latter half of 2020, as our economy and our nation were coming out from under the Wuhan Virus situation that had so heavily impacted our nation the first half of that year.

This year’s third quarter drastic slowdown, though, is the direct result of the Harris-Biden administration’s failures, of which two are critical to the slowdown.

One failure is Biden-Harris’ insistence on vaccine mandates as a condition of employment and of doing business, whether as a customer or as a business, and related Wuhan virus Delta variant restrictions on our economy. All of these have acted as a heavy drag on our businesses’—especially our mom-and-pop and middle-sized businesses’—ability to reopen and function at all after the prior year’s virus-related dislocations.

The other failure is Biden-Harris’ failure to perform, through their Transportation Secretary, regarding our supply chain. Indeed, the Secretary, who even looks somewhat like A E Neuman, acted on his “What, me worry?” philosophy and took off from work for two+ months—proudly so—on a “paternity leave” departure from duty while the supply disruption got into full swing (and still is growing).

Another factor in this administration’s failure to perform will impact the fourth quarter’s GDP and later quarters’: this added failure is the rampant inflation we’re experiencing now, an inflation driven by growth in consumer and business demand for goods and services and the components needed for producing them far outstripping production growth—that supply disruption.

That demand also is fueled by all the free money Biden-Harris and the Federal Reserve are pumping into the economy. That free money is both unneeded and itself artificially increasing demand.

And this: even if the present inflation is temporary, as I claim, the higher prices created by the present inflation—the prices that real consumers pay for gas, food, and energy and that real businesses pay for the supplies needed to produce and distribute gas, food, and energy—will persist, harming the middle and lower-rung classes severely. This bit may be being presaged by September’s consumer spending. We consumers spent only 0.6% more than in August, a decrease from August’s 1.0% increase over July.

If I’m wrong, the present inflation itself will persist, and prices will rise further, adding heavily to the damage already done.

All Those Rich Fat Cats

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Easy come, easy go. Especially for those ill-sympathized-with rich fat cats. The rest of us….

All that money we saved on our Independence Day celebrations—every one of those 16 cents (and what did we get? Another day older)—is gone, and we’re deeper in debt.

We’re also going to pay a whole lot more for our Thanksgiving Day celebrations.

Nearly every component of the traditional American Thanksgiving dinner, from the disposable aluminum turkey roasting pan to the coffee and pie, will cost more this year, according to agricultural economists, farmers and grocery executives.

Meat and poultry are up over 10% since last year. Raw aluminum is up 80% over the last 16 months; guess how much that roasting pay, made of processed aluminum, is going to cost us.

It’s OK, though. ‘Least all those rich fat cats who made their 16 cents with their superiorly astute purchasing skills for their Independence Day celebrations gonna pay their fair share for the upcoming most expensive Thanksgiving Day celebration inflation can produce.

However, no worries; it’s all good. I have it on good authority that we just need to lower our expectations and quit whining.

Fantasy World

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President Joe Biden and his Progressive-Democratic Party syndicate now want to tax unrealized gains in order to raise money. WSJ‘s Editors are being generous when they call the move a mirage.

Unrealized capital gains are gains in the value of an asset that are thought to have accrued between the time of acquisition and the present time, but that haven’t been “realized,” the asset hasn’t actually been sold and a profit actually collected. That’s just one aspect of the concept of unrealized gain, though.

Another aspect is especially critical: who makes the assessment of value increase? For instance,

A tax court this year ruled that the late entertainer Michael Jackson’s “likeness and image” were worth about $157 million less than the IRS claimed.

That’s Government making the assessment of the present value of an asset before the asset has been sold and not the free market making an empirical assessment based on the actual sale price. This time, Government was caught out and reversed. But under the Progressive-Democrats’ latest tax scheme? Asset owners might not be so lucky.

Progressive-Democrats are living in fantasy land in terms of what average Americans want from our economy and for ourselves.

Now the Progressive-Democrats want the IRS to move into fantasy land with them. Unrealized gains are just that—they don’t exist, they’re purely fantasy.

Separately,

The IRS will have to hire many more auditors [to make such assessments]….

Of course it will. It’s part of the Progressive-Democrats’ Build Government Bigger plan.

Facebook Employees and Virtue-Signaling

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Here are a couple of examples, from a batch of leaked Facebook internal emails.

Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer asked employees to “hang in there” as the company figured out its response. “We have been ‘hanging in there’ for years,” one person replied. “We must demand more action from our leaders. At this point, faith alone is not sufficient.” [Emphasis added]

And

“All due respect, but haven’t we had enough time to figure out how to manage discourse without enabling violence?” another staffer responded. “We’ve been fueling this fire for a long time and we shouldn’t be surprised it’s now out of control.”

And

“I’m tired of platitudes; I want action items,” another staffer wrote.

And

[Y]et another staffer wrote[,] “History will not judge us kindly.”

And yet, none of these Precious Ones, along with so many of their cronies, cared enough about these failures and their claimed inability to do anything about them to resign rather than continue to go along with them.

All of these Precious Ones, along with so many of their cronies, plainly care more about their paychecks than they do about their integrity or their morality.

As the New York Post put it in a related piece summarizing The Atlantic article,

Mark Zuckerberg’s obsession with growth has overridden ethical concerns and allowed hate speech and incitements to violence to spread unchecked….

That’s Facebook, from top to bottom, for all the…whining: management’s demand for growth above ethics and employees’ demand for paychecks above ethics.