Confusion

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Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden said in a 60 Minutes interview over the weekend that he

can send every single qualified person to a four-year college in their state for $150 billion. I can make sure every single person who qualifies for community college can go and we still have a lotta money left over. That’s what I mean by significant institutional changes.

His staff “clarified” that after the interview that the cost could be twice as much as he said.

He also said in a separate interview

We have put together, and you guys did if for our admin—for the Obama administration before this—we have put together I think the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.

And this to a Latina reporter from NPR last August:

By the way, what you all know but most people don’t know, unlike the African American community, with notable exceptions, the Latino community is an incredibly diverse community with incredibly different attitudes about different things[.]

And this about his post-Senate career:

When I left the United States Senate, I became a professor at the University of Pennsylvania….

Never mind that when Biden left the Senate in 2009, he became ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) Vice President. Biden didn’t join the University of Pennsylvania until 2017, when he became the Benjamin Franklin Presidential Practice Professor, a non-teaching, non-research position located off campus.

Frankly, most of those can be written off to Biden simply being momentarily confused. But can we afford this level, this frequency of misspeaks, of confusion, in a President who must deal—personally—with the likes of Vladimir Putin? Xi Jinping? Baby Kim? Even allies like Emmanuel Macron? Yoshihide Suga? Scott Morrison? Heads of state of potential allies or friends like Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyễn Xuân Phúc?

Much less domestic leaders….

I don’t think we can afford to take that risk.

Shutting Down Research

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Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t want serious research into his advertising targeting to be done.

Facebook is demanding that a New York University research project cease collecting data about its political-ad-targeting practices….
The dispute involves the NYU Ad Observatory, a project launched last month by the university’s engineering school that has recruited more than 6,500 volunteers to use a specially designed browser extension to collect data about the political ads Facebook shows them.

In particular,

Scraping tools, no matter how well-intentioned, are not a permissible means of collecting information from us….

Facebook says (Zuckerberg says; it’s his company, and he retains controlling interest) that it already maintains an advertisement database that contains information such as who paid for an ad, when it ran and the geographic location of people who saw it, but the company does not maintain—in that database—data concerning its targeting methods. NYU wants those targeting data, too, including data on what political ads ran in which state and political race, what ads are targeted to what audiences, and how those ads are funded.

Zuckerberg doesn’t want those usages and techniques exposed.

His bottom line: “Don’t you dare scrape the data we scrape from our users and tell the world what the data are that we scrape, how much of it we scrape, how we use it, how we charge others for the sale or use of those data.”

The Biden No-Fracking Plan

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…and his assault on our oil industry and our energy production sector generally.

Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden said, in last Thursday’s debate,

I would transition from the oil industry, yes.

Then he repeated his promise.

I will transition. It is a big statement. Because I would stop.

Here’s how he intends to prosecute his assault.

  • ban on drilling leases and development on federal land
  • “robust federal standards” on methane releases from pipelines as well as storage facilities
  • use the Endangered Species Act and National Monuments Act to limit lands open to development
  • all infrastructure projects that require federal approval or receive federal funds would have to undergo a “climate test” including federal agencies projecting costs from carbon emissions attributable to every new pipeline or liquefied natural gas terminal
  • choke demand by requiring, among other things, expensive carbon sequestration technologies on power plants
  • increase subsidies for wind and solar power in parallel with eliminating existing subsidies and credits for oil and natural gas production, reducing demand for the oil and gas

Fracking ban by a thousand cuts. And slashes.

Some Economic Data

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Our recovery from the Wuhan Virus situation is moving apace, both medically and economically. Here are some of the economic data. The breakdown by Progressive-Democrat- vs Republican-run States also is interesting. The Executive Summary is this:

…the labor market for lower-income workers is reviving, though it has become increasingly bifurcated between states that reopened sooner and those that maintained longer lockdowns.

Now those data:

  • continuing jobless claims for the week of October 10 declined by nearly one million to 8.37 million, and by 3.6 million in the last three weeks
  • in August the layoff rate hit the lowest on record
  • [i]n July and August, layoffs were fewer than during the same months last year
  • more new restaurants opened in September than in 2018, 2017 and 2016

That last obviously is from the artificially low level driven by the government’s forced closures from the lockdowns, but it still represents significant recovery.

  • [t]hird-quarter median weekly earnings increased 8.2% year-over-year and 9.2% for the bottom 25% of workers
  • [m]edian weekly earnings rose…11.8% for Hispanics and 9.3% for blacks

That’s a significant narrowing of the income (and so wealth) gap that the Left worries so much about.

  • September consumer spending was up 5.4% year-over-year

The over-year period is before the virus situation. That puts the spending rate back on its original track.

  • Atlanta Federal Reserve estimates the economy grew 35.3% in the third quarter

That’s ahead of the official GDP estimate due out on 29 Oct, but it’s a solid presage.

Now some between-State data. September unemployment rates in States that locked down more tightly and stayed locked down longer:

  • 6% in Nevada, 11% in California, 10.5% in Rhode Island, 10.2% in Illinois, 9.7% in New York

Rates for States that reopened sooner from looser restrictions:

  • 7% in Arizona, 6.4% in Georgia, 5.4% in Wisconsin, 5% in Utah

Labor force participation data for a couple of tightly restricted States:

  • 363,000 workers dropped out of New York’s labor force
  • 229,000 workers left New Jersey’s labor force

On the other hand,

  • Arizona’s labor force grew by 151,000
  • Wisconsin’s labor force grew by 82,000

Looks like recovery to me, albeit still fragile.

Labor Rights

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Whose rights are they, anyway?

Last Thursday, a California First Appellate District court upheld a State district court’s order that Uber and Lyft must reclassify their gig drivers as actual employees and so must add to their labor costs with benefits, paid leave of various sorts, payroll taxes, and so on. Never mind that this will reduce gig-oriented companies’ ability to recover from the State’s Wuhan Virus-related lockdowns and cost thousands of Californians access to additional income.

The time is fast approaching when it’ll be most useful for Uber, Lyft, and other gig-oriented businesses to leave California altogether.

It gets worse. As Uber noted in part,

…rideshare drivers will be prevented from continuing to work as independent contractors….

Indeed. The California court’s order (and AB5, the State statute that originally levied the classification requirement) go far beyond restricting gig-oriented businesses.

They’re attacks on gig workers themselves by denying them control over their own labor and the price and other parameters under which they’re willing to market their labor. The ruling and the statute convert those who wish to work in California into labor wards of the State’s government.

Almost like they’re State plantation laborers. But it’s all good, though; it’s for the workers’ own good.

The court’s opinion can be read here.