Tag Archives: ethics

There’s a Hint

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Approval of Pfizer vaccinations against the Wuhan Virus for kids under 5 years old has been delayed as Pfizer has opted to test more before looking for approval. The vaccines don’t seem to work as well as hoped against the Omicron variant. But this part of the reasoning in the linked article jumped out at me.

So few study subjects [those kids], whether vaccinated or unvaccinated, developed Covid-19 during testing thus far that the small number of Omicron cases made the vaccine appear less effective in an early statistical analysis, the people said.

There’s a hint there both about the kids’ baseline susceptibility and about the virus situation at large.

An Appellate Court Gets One Right

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The Tenth Circuit has issued a temporary injunction against President Joe Biden’s (D) rule requiring outdoor recreational groups under contract to the Federal government or doing their business on Federal property to pay their employees $15/hr, whether the value of those employees’ work output is that valuable or not.

The “plaintiffs have demonstrated an entitlement to relief from the minimum wage order in their particular circumstances,” the court ruled, and enjoined the government from enforcing the $15-an-hour minimum wage mandate, which recreational companies said would force some of them out of business.
The court also granted the request because it found the plaintiffs were “likely to succeed on the merits” and “suffer irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary relief.”

The Pacific Legal Foundation had brought the case last fall, arguing that

the requirement amounts to “an executive power grab to force a social agenda through federal contractors.”

That power grab, as the PLF argued, is barred by our Constitution:

Only Congress can make law setting minimum wages. The president can’t establish a minimum wage through administrative fiat. The Constitution says that only Congress can make laws that bind the public.

Indeed. This is what Art I, Sect 1, makes that explicitly clear:

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

Biden-Harris knows this full well, as do his Cabinet Secretaries in on or otherwise supporting the grab.

This is the Progressive-Democratic Party pushing its social engineering agenda with no regard for statute or Constitution—those are just speed bumps on their road to control.

That and maybe Something Else

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Fracking-based energy production is not expanding at anything like a useful rate, even as oil approaches $100/barrel, which only benefits Russia while harming us American consumers.

America’s largest frackers are reporting huge profits but plan to keep oil production in low gear this year, adhering to an agreement with Wall Street, even as prices approach the $100-a-barrel mark for the first time since 2014.

That “agreement” consists of

commitments they made to limit production and return more cash to shareholders, an effort to win back investors who fled the industry after years of poor returns.

That’s certainly a factor. However, even as President Joe Biden (D) claims he wants these producers to produce more in the face of those rising costs, he’s also spending far more energy begging OPEC—and Russia!—to produce more.

There’s another factor that may be strongly informing these producers’ decisions, though.

Maybe these producers just don’t trust Biden, given his openly declared war on our hydrocarbon energy industry—on the frackers—and Biden’s refusal to undo all—any—of his anti-carbon regulations and his other bars aimed explicitly at limiting oil, natural gas, and coal production.

Maybe they think Biden would only resume his war against them once the present energy and resulting inflation crises pass.

They wouldn’t be far wrong.

Wuhan Virus Boosters

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The CDC now says

studies showed effectiveness against COVID emergency-department and urgent-care incidents was “87% and 91%, respectively, during the two months after a third dose” of the [mRNA vaccine] booster,” but that it decreased to 66% and 78% by the fourth month after a third dose.

That’s for both the Delta and Omicron variants of the Wuhan Virus.

Leave aside, for the moment, the lack of credibility of anything coming from the Biden-Harris’ CDC; instead, accept, arguendo the narrow claims of the CDC paper Just the News cites.

Unmentioned in the CDC’s paper is the extremely low baseline rate of “emergency-department and urgent-care incidents.” The seemingly sharp reduction via the boosters is real in a purely narrow, statistical sense, but starting out so close to zero, it remains an open question of whether the booster really provides much value—even were its effects to last much longer.

Monarchism Returns to Canada

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Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has invoked his nation’s Emergencies Act because Canada’s national security is at risk from the truckers’ peaceful protests against his government’s…over-exercise of Federal power.

The blockades are harming our economy and endangering public safety. We cannot and will not allow illegal and dangerous activities to continue.

As is typical of modern-day liberals, who resemble 18th century monarchists more than they do actual liberalism, Trudeau is shifting blame for the crisis in Canada, while also mischaracterizing the actual crisis.

What’s actually harming Canada’s economy are the vaccinate-or-be-fired mandates that prevent, for instance, Canada’s shipping industry from shipping.

The actual crisis is Trudeau’s monarchical invocation/misuse of the Emergencies Act to directly assault Canadians’ individual liberties, demanding, in the present instance, vaccinations in complete disregard of those personal liberties. Trudeau’s invocation is aimed at Canadians’ right to protest their government’s misbehaviors and is nothing more than a personal power grab in response to his ego being bruised by those peasants not listening to him.

Maybe the truckers need to go truly nationwide and without any sort of blockade, even by Trudeau’s fevered standard, simply refuse to ship anything at all, at least to Federal government facilities.