Category Archives: markets

What are Biden and Austin Up To?

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US military retirees living in Turkey are about to lose access to the US base at Incirlik and to all other American bases in the country. The loss will take effect 1 October of this year. Among other things, this will mean our veterans will lose access to

  • base commissaries, which sell American groceries
  • Army and Air Force Exchange Service stores—Base Exchanges—which3 sell American goods
  • US post office services, including PO Boxes through which our veterans
    • receive and send back their absentee ballots for American elections
    • receive American medicines

The commander of the US presence on Incirlik, USAF Colonel Calvin Powell, has said the ban is related to a changing Status of Forces Agreement between the US and Turkey, but this is hard to credit. Similar bans are being contemplated at US presences around the world: Aviano Air Base in Italy and the US presences in the Philippines, for instance.

Hence my question: what are SecDef Lloyd Austin and President Joe Biden (D) up to now?

Not At All

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California’s Proposition 12, which sets animal-welfare standards for meat sold within the state, has been upheld by the Supreme Court. It’s a ruling that should have been expected, and appellants’ claim that the California law violates the Commerce Clause notwithstanding, the ruling is proper. What a State requires of products sold entirely within it is not interstate commerce—which is the province, and the only aspect that is the province, of the clause.

All Prop 12’s law does is place requirements on the meat sold within the State; it imposes no requirements on how other States comport themselves, including how they raise their food animals. Nothing in the law forces other States to incur the costs of complying with it.

It is true enough that

Californians account for about 13% of the country’s pork consumption but raise hardly any pigs. That means that the costs of complying with Proposition 12 fall mostly in states like Iowa, which raises a third of the country’s pigs.

The Prop 12 law often is viewed as an attempt by California to dictate regulate what other States do regarding their own production requirements. The decision to accede to California’s “regulatory” efforts, though, is a purely business one and not at all a legal one. In fact, the ruling also makes it easier, from a legal standpoint, for states like Iowa to not sell their pork products in or into California at all.

And that’s what I recommend. There are a lot of markets other than California, including export markets, that would easily absorb those 13%. It’s long past time producers in the other 49 States, and our several territories, start ignoring California and its foolishnesses.

Cowardice

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And yet another reason to not buy any Anheuser-Busch beer.

Anheuser-Busch…sent a letter to jittery distributors telling them it had cut ties with the firm responsible for the concept that has led to Bud Light sales cratering since Mulvaney last month posted a video on TikTok touting the best-selling beer in the country, multiple sources said.
The Belgian-based conglomerate said the beer can at the center of the firestorm, which features Mulvaney’s face, was not produced by Anheuser-Busch or in any of its facilities, several distributors told The [New York] Post.

To an extent, the Bud Light producer’s managers are right. John Skeffington, family-owned Skeff Distributing CEO:

The single can was produced by a third-party ad agency, not Anheuser-Busch.

However. Anheuser-Busch’s managers have final approval of its ad agencies’ advertisement campaigns, whether or not the campaigns then are produced in house or by third-parties. A-B’s managers already have placed “on leave” Bud Light’s Marketing VP, Alissa Heinerscheid, and A-B’s Group Vice President for Marketing, Daniel Blake, over their failure to exercise their control over advertising done in Bud Light’s name.

Even if the unidentified-by-A-B “third-party ad agency” had produced and released the advertising move without that prior approval, A-B’s managers had after the fact approval/disapproval, and those worthies chose not to speak up at all. If they actually disapproved of the ad, they would have blocked it in the first place, or immediately after the fact spoken against it.

Only in the aftermath of the hooraw that’s threatening company sales, are those managers, from A-B CEO Michel Doukeris on down, speaking at all, and they’re still refusing to acknowledge straightforwardly their mistake, and they’re still refusing to say what they’re going to do to not repeat their mistake in future. They’ve only issued weasel-worded remarks that don’t even pretend to address the matter in any serious way.

Their latest move, now, is to insist “twarn’t us” and blame an anonymous “third-party” agency and throw it under the bus.

They still won’t accept their own responsibility for the fiasco.

Their company’s products still are not worth our purchase money.

And They Accused Trump of Being Soft on Russia

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Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s Janet Yellen-run Treasury department has—once again—extended a waiver to a rule barring import of Russian oil and gas that was instituted ‘way back in March 2022. Even at the time of the rule’s institution, Treasury created a waiver to allow financial institutions to continue processing dollar-currencied payments for Russian energy in other countries.

The waiver was supposed to expire by that June, but Yellen extended it to early December. She said, through a Treasury spokeswoman,

This license [extension] will provide for an orderly transition to help our broad coalition of partners reduce their dependence on Russian energy as we work to restrict the Kremlin’s revenue sources[.]

After that she extended the waiver again, until the middle of this month.

Now Yellen is extending the waiver yet again, to November, and this time she’s not even pretending she has a reason:

Treasury didn’t respond to a request for comment Friday [5 May 23].

Biden and his cronies in Party and his supporters on the Left all zealously decried former President Donald Trump’s playing to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ego with all of Trump’s pretty words about Putin.

Here is Biden and his Treasury person actively propping Putin’s energy economy by not closing off payments for Russian energy. Any orderly transition has long since been effected, or should have been; there no longer is any reason for extending the thing beyond Biden’s concrete softness on Russia.

Anheuser-Busch’s Messaging

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A letter writer to Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal Letters section offered a solution to Anheuser-Busch’s marketing fiasco of recent weeks.

A-B should produce a series of cans and bottles featuring labels highlighting soldiers, athletes, teachers, construction workers, etc. I’d start buying again, and I am sure many others would do the same.

I’m not sure I would. A-B’s managers spoke from their heart the first time and said what their values are. This time around, they would only be putting out those subsequent cans in response to the hue and cry over the former. There’s no possibility of taking the change as sincerely done with the current managers in place.

And no, putting a couple of lead marketers on temporary leave doesn’t cut it. The CEO approved the marketing switch, too, if only by being the one in charge. And his subsequent statement, which was in the main a non sequitur, only demonstrated that he agreed with the prior marketing move.