Tag Archives: political economy

Some Employment Numbers

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…in our energy-related industries.  A letter in last Wednesday’s The Wall Street Journal‘s Letters section laid some out for Louisiana.

…the oil-and-gas industry supports 260,000 jobs in the state, and each industry job generates 3.4 Louisiana jobs in other sectors

That work out to an aggregation of 884,000 jobs in Louisiana alone.

The National Association of State Energy Officials estimates for 4Q2018 that the Traditional Energy sectors (a broader look at our energy industry than just oil-and-gas) employed 2.4 million Americans. Using (albeit naively) Louisiana’s multiplier of 3.4 jobs in other sectors generated by the energy industry, that works out to 8.2 million jobs. That’s 5% of our then-employed Americans.

This is what Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden wants to trash with his “transition” away from hydrocarbons as the source of our nation’s energy—the source of our businesses’ and homes’ production and heating/cooling energy.

Wuhan Virus Recovery Rates

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No one really has a handle on this, especially in the US. Much is made of the lack of a standard definition of “recovery,” and for good reason.

The data are so spotty, public-health authorities say they don’t know what the true count [of recoveries from a Wuhan Virus infection] is. …
The spottiness stems from the absence of both an agreed-upon definition for a coronavirus recovery and a standardized way to track the numbers of patients, the health experts say. What constitutes recovery is so nebulous that some states don’t even track it, and those that do probably undercount the true number.

However, even were there a standard definition, we still wouldn’t have any idea of the true statistic, nor any idea of the accuracy of an estimate for a recovery statistic.

This illustrates the key:

Such measurements [numbers of recovered] might indicate how many people who tested positive for the coronavirus didn’t die, but might miss those who never displayed symptoms and didn’t undergo testing.

The only recoveries, under any definition, being counted are those from confirmed—test-identified—cases. There is no estimate of the number who have been infected, never tested, and recovered.

Those recoveries are not included in guesses of the number of recoveries.

Some Biden-Related Concerns

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…as outlined in Just the News.

There are at least three instances where there is now public evidence that Joe Biden met with foreigners his son was courting for business.
The first occurred in 2011 when Obama White House entry logs show several Chinese businessmen involved with Hunter Biden checked in to meet the vice president.
The second occurred in 2013, when Hunter Biden rode aboard Air Force II with his father and then introduced the vice president in Beijing to a Chinese businessman that was helping him start an investment fund.
The third, alleged in an email purportedly recovered from Hunter Biden’s old laptop, indicates Hunter Biden arranged for an official from Burisma to meet his father in April 2015. …the Biden campaign now acknowledges the encounter may have happened though insists it was fleeting.

These predate the People’s Republic of China National Intelligence Law, enacted in June 2017, that requires all PRC companies to answer PRC intelligence community requests for information. Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden still has not repudiated, or even terminated, these ties. That they may appear to have died on the vine on their own, may be just that: appearance.

Biden needs to positively repudiate these connections.

And this:

At least two pieces of evidence have emerged in the last two weeks that suggest Hunter Biden believed his father was getting a cut of his business. The first, which remains uncorroborated by Just the News, is an email found on the purported Hunter Biden laptop in which the vice president’s son suggests he shared half of his income with his father.
The second piece of evidence, now authenticated by Just the News, is a proposal in May 2017 for a joint venture between a Chinese energy firm and a Hunter Biden-tied company called Sinohawk Holdings that stated that 10% of the venture’s equity was being reserved for the “big guy.” Sinohawk’s CEO Tony Bobulinski has confirmed the reference to the “big guy” is Joe Biden, and that the then-former vice president was supposed to be a silent investor in the venture.

The “purported Hunter Biden laptop” itself has been confirmed to be his; although its provenance once it left the repair shop’s hands remains unclear. The joint venture proposal was made just before the PRC’s intelligence law was enacted. It seems unlikely that the Bidens would not have known the law was imminent, but it seems likely the PRC’s energy firm—CEFC—would have known, especially given the connections between Ye Jianming, CEFC’s Chairman and controlling shareholder (through his Shanghai Energy Fund Investment Ltd company) and the Communist Party of China.

Biden has yet to positively repudiate any of this, also.

There’s more at the link.

Eviction Moratoriums

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Recall that the CDC has issued a ban on evicting tenants during the present Wuhan Virus situation, saying that the ban is needed to curb the spread of the virus. Landlords, of both the apartment and house variety, are suing over that.

Luke Wake, of the Pacific Legal Foundation, claims

It’s unconstitutional[.]

He and his landlord clients will need a stronger argument than that. Good policy, bad, or indifferent, the concept of temporary bars against tenant evictions is a long-established concept. Iowa, for instance, bars tenant evictions during the winter months. Every winter.

Briar Patch

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Throw me in that one, Br’er Xi. He’s upset that the US is selling arms to the Republic of China so that nation would have a better chance to defend itself against a People’s Republic of China physical invasion effort.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Monday that Beijing has decided to impose sanctions on Lockheed Martin Corp, Boeing Co’s defense division, and Raytheon Technologies Corp, as well as other US entities involved in the planned $1.8 billion weapons package.

Zhao added

[The People’s Republic of] China “firmly opposes” and condemns US arms sales to Taiwan, which “severely damage Chinese sovereignty and security interests[.]”

Not so much. There’s no damage to the PRC’s sovereignty from helping a nation to defend itself against attack.

Throw me on into that patch. Our high tech companies—not only our military-oriented or dual-use tech companies—don’t need to be doing business with our chiefest enemy under any circumstances. That trade is only a means of transferring our tech to our enemy.

We need also to work with the RoC to develop offensive and defensive cyber weapons so that both of us can better defend against and counterattack to decisive victory against a PRC cyber invasion.