Inflation is Coming Down—So What?

So what, indeed.

Shelter cost inflation slowed, to 0.4% in February from the previous month compared with a 0.6% pace in January. This reinforced suspicions that January’s high reading in that category was an anomaly. But apparel prices, a category that had been in deflation, jumped 0.6%.

There’s concern that inflation isn’t “slowing” enough to encourage the Federal Reserve to start cutting its benchmark interest rates, and that’s a two-edged sword.

Time to Fire Flag Officers and Dismiss them from the Army

The management of the US Military Academy—West Point—has decided the Academy’s mission no longer includes inculcating concepts patriotism, sacrifice, obligation, and honor in our future Army officers.

The US Military Academy at West Point removed the “Duty, Honor, Country” motto from its mission statement.

It’s bad enough that the managers at the top of the Department of Defense think proper pronouns, and equal outcomes regardless of merit, and skin color—wokeness—are more important than training our military men and women how to defend our nation, how to kill our enemies if they attack us. Now the managers of what used to be a premier military academy don’t even think officers satisfying their obligations, displaying and acting on precepts of honor, and putting our nation’s needs ahead of their personal convenience (or pronoun preference) needs to be trained at all.

Home Defense and Property Rights Get a New Tool

In Florida, at least.

The Florida Legislature unanimously passed a bill that would allow police to immediately remove squatters—a departure from the lengthy court cases required in most states.

The legislation, which passed both chambers earlier this month, would allow police to remove squatters without a lease authorized by the property owner and adds criminal penalties. Landlords, under the current law, typically have to wade through a long and expensive legal process to remove squatters.

The bill now goes to Governor Ron DiSantis (R) for signature and final enactment.

This Time I Disagree with Bjorn Lomborg

But only a little bit. Lomborg (among other things, Copenhagen Consensus President), in his Tuesday Wall Street Journal op-ed, writes absolutely correctly about the need for climatistas (my term, as is “doomsayers” below) to consider much more than their simple claim of climate change and the imminent destruction from their claimed change. Lomborg, though, concentrated on the economic destruction the doomsayers’ policies would inflict even as those worthies ignore technological advances that would mitigate their claims’ outcome, even were their claims in any way accurate.

Where I disagree is in the lack of discussion of the larger, and more important, context within which today’s alleged climate disaster is supposedly developing.

Lies of Progressive-Democratic Party Politicians…

…and their supporters. Here’s the latest batch, via Just the News.

  • FBI agents took allegations from Hillary Clinton’s campaign in the midst of the 2016 presidential election and provably misled a court [the FISA Court] by omitting key information, in one case even doctoring evidence.

The FBI as a supporter of one political party? Yes, the agency has chosen a side and abandoned the requirement for it to be a coldly objective investigator of criminal behavior regardless of the behaver.

Soviet Canada

Now the Justin Trudeau government that’s reigning over Canada wants to lock Canadian citizens away for the crime of speculating—thinking—in ways Prime Minister Justin Trudeau finds personally objectionable.

On February 26 Mr Trudeau’s Liberal government introduced Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act, which targets so-called hate speech on the internet. One of its provisions would enable anyone, with the consent of the federal attorney general, to “lay an information before a provincial court judge if the person fears on reasonable grounds that another person will commit” an offense. The judge could then issue a “peace bond” imposing conditions, including house arrest and electronic monitoring, on the defendant merely because it’s feared he could commit a hate crime.

Trump Wasn’t the First

Since NATO’s creation, the European nations have, in the main, been shirking their obligations to the alliance and with that betraying their fellow alliance members. Then-President Jack Kennedy (D) was among the first American government officials to grow tired of that shirking and to object to it out loud.

John F Kennedy in 1963 told his National Security Council that “we cannot continue to pay for the military protection of Europe while the NATO states are not paying their fair share.”

Then it was then-Deputy Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci in 1981 in front of the Munich Security Conference:

US Is Even More Vulnerable

The mostly unfettered inflow of “refugees” from—pick a source, but mostly the Middle East—into Europe is beginning to awaken Europe’s western and central nations to the terrorist risk they face from that flow (eastern Europe’s nations have long been well aware). That relatively uninhibited flow, with its sample that have been caught, should be clanging alarm bells for us, too.

Authorities in Europe say they have foiled several terror plots, some involving suspects posing as refugees, raising alarm about a growing array of threats from extremists.

The Forgotten Man

A recent Wall Street Journal editorial correctly pointed out the costs to us ordinary Americans of a variety of Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden administration plans. The editors were particularly concerned with the administration’s plans for bank and credit card fees that these institutions charge individuals who overdraw their account or make late payments on their credit cards and that these institutions charge businesses for using the various ATM and credit card payment networks.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency proximately responsible for the latest round of regulations capping those fees at markedly lower levels,

Boeing Production Problems and Unions

Yes, the two are related. This is from a Wall Street Journal article on Boeing’s production sloppiness (my term) in its airline assembly operations. “Traveled work” is work done on the production line at a later station on the line than it should have been done, and generally by the personnel at that later step rather than by those who should have done it moving to the next station to complete it. For instance,