Big Tech, Big Brother

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This time, it’s Tim Cook’s Apple.

In a report released [last] Wednesday, the company argues that allowing users to download apps directly onto their iPhones without having to use Apple’s App Store would harm customers by threatening privacy protections, complicating parental controls and potentially exposing users’ data to ransomware attacks.

Say that’s true. It remains the user’s personal choice to run that risk. It remains the user’s personal responsibility to deal with that risk.

Is Cook denying the personal agency average Americans have in their decisions and in their property?

Or is Cook denying the cell phone user’s own property in the cell phone he bought—often for a thousand dollars—and uses? Is Cook claiming Apple retains primary ownership in that cell phone he “sold” to the user?

In any event, I decline to acknowledge Apple, Inc, or any of its managers as Big Brother.

Bipartisan Negotiations Progressive-Democratic Party Style

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There is a bipartisan group of Senators who are close to agreement on a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill. Set aside, for the moment, whether the bill is good or bad. Consider, first, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D, NY) and his Socialist colleague Bernie Sanders’ (I, VT) position and planned move regarding that bill.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Budget Chairman Bernie Sanders have started the process of adding elements of Biden’s agenda to a large-scale budget reconciliation bill, regardless of the outcome of ongoing bipartisan negotiations on infrastructure.
Schumer has said the reconciliation bill will include the parts of Biden’s $2.25 trillion American Jobs Plan and $1.8 trillion American Families Plan that are not included in a potential bipartisan agreement on infrastructure spending.

The bipartisan negotiation is a sham, a decoy, an attempt at a shiny object. The Progressive-Democrats in that group are fully aware of this, and they’re enthusiastic participants in the distraction.

This is what Republicans and Conservatives have to deal with.

The Manchin Alternative

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Senator Joe Manchin (D, WV) claims he never liked HR1, even though he voted for cloture on the Senate Progressive-Democrats’ effort bring that Federal election deform law to the Senate floor for party-line passage.

The Wall Street Journal‘s editors rightly called out his sham of a compromise, to be substituted for that HR1…nonsense.

I’ve picked out just a couple of the items in Manchin’s offering to illustrate the sham. The first is a repeat example of Manchin’s personal fundamental dishonesty.

The [compromise’s] preamble insists that any voting bill “must be the result of both Democrats and Republicans coming together.”

We’ve already seen how worthless Manchin’s word is. On that “coming together” bit, in particular, Manchin late last fall piously intoned, often, that he would support no bill that didn’t have input from “his friends across the aisle.” Then he voted, twice, for a unilaterally done reconciliation bill that spent nearly $2 trillion of our taxpayer money.

“ban partisan gerrymandering and use computer models.”

Here is an example of Party’s intrinsic dishonesty, and that of the DC politicians in general, for generations and across parties.

The only legitimate way to get rid of gerrymandering, and computers would be helpful here, but they’re far from critical, is to subdivide each State into rectangular districts of substantially equal numbers of citizens, and with no regard to geography other than State borders.

After all, in the eyes of our Constitution, there are no black voters or brown voters or Asian voters or white voters. There are no male voters or female voters. There are only American voters.

An Expanded Child Tax Credit?

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The current law providing for a child tax credit requires those children to have Social Security Numbers in order for their parents to be able to claim the credit.

Saira Soto, a Deputy Executive Director for Children’s Defense Fund California, wants immigrant children who lack Social Security numbers also to qualify their parents for the credit.

In order to ensure a fair and just system that helps grow and boost our economy, and one that supports our children, immigrant families must be included.

Of course, immigrant families already are included in the present form of the child tax credit. It’s illegal alien families and non-citizen families in our nation legally who are not.

Soto knows this full well; her demand is an illustration of the dishonesty of the Left’s Free Stuff for Everyone movement.

Inflation Excitement

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Current inflation is running at 5% year-on-year, which is quite high by relatively recent standards, and so is much worried about. But what does that rate mean, really? After all, economic activity came to a near standstill during—and especially at the outset of—the Wuhan Virus situation, which led to a sharp fall-off of both demand and production, which thoroughly contaminated what otherwise would have been useful price information. The on-year part of that comparison is a large aberration.

This graph summarizes the inflation situation; it compares the year-on-year inflation rate with the inflation rate when the on-year year is 2019, the year immediately preceding the virus’ onset.

That’s not so bad.

But it doesn’t mean that we should stop worrying about inflation. The past is all we have for predicting the future, but predicting still, as an American philosopher has noted, is hard, especially when it’s about the future.

There are a plethora of things that go into inflation, and three of them are the amount of demand, the amount of stuff with which to supply that demand, and the time-to-time relationship between the two.

Currently, as our economy reopens—or as Americans reopen our economy despite the diktats of Liberal Elites—all that demand, pent up through most of 2020, is sharply returning, and it’s adding to the ordinary levels of demand we Americans have for stuff. The producers are having a hard time ramping back up to satisfy that demand, particularly the pent-up-caused overshoot, and especially producers of hard goods with long chains of supply are having trouble catching up.

Also slowing that supply recovery is the recovery of our labor force. Millions of Americans were thrown out of work during the virus situation, and millions of them are returning to work as we reopen the various aspects of our economy. But millions more—a minority, but a significant enough one to have measurable impact on production recovery—are staying at home, honoring Progressive-Democrats’ wish that they do so by collecting the moneys those Progressive-Democrats are paying them to stay home rather than return to work.

How long will this present burst of apparent inflation last? Will it become inflation worth worrying about as the rate stays high while 2020 recedes into the past?

At bottom, that will depend on the availability of stuff relative to our demand for it, and that will depend on how long Progressive-Democrats will succeed in paying Americans to not work.

And you have to ask yourself why Progressive-Democrats want to keep Americans on their welfare payroll.