History Lesson and Proper Consideration of Human Incentives

A second factor slowed rehiring in the United Kingdom: newly powerful unions, and the governments behind them. Determined young labor leaders demanded and got relatively high wages. Employers found they could not sell their products at prices high enough to offset their higher-wage contracts. So employers simply adjusted by rehiring fewer workers. The result of these two ostensibly pro-worker conditions — relatively generous unemployment payments and relatively high wages — was double-digit unemployment for the United Kingdom throughout the 1920s.

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/499367-no-dole-for-america-how-to-recover-from-covid-19

Where's the (Evidence) Beef?

I waited and waited for the so called evidence to show up, but it didn't make sense that the conspirators wouldn't show it if they had it. After all that time, what were those folks pretending to have? Are they embarrassed yet at their advocacy for facts that never were true, never were really close to being true ...

The history of this country's government is riddled with abuses of power, but living through this one is more sobering than reading or remembering what happened 25 or 50 years ago.

It taped calls between incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and Russia’s ambassador. The transcripts showed no wrongdoing — yet high officials used leaks to engineer Flynn’s exit. Newly released documents even suggest that Obama knew of the plot and (at least) didn’t object to the idea of hiding it from the Trump folks.

The farce continued for years under special counsel Robert Mueller. His team blackmailed Flynn into pleading guilty to lying to the FBI with threats to prosecute his son. Insiders leaked juicy tidbits to virulently anti-Trump media to stoke false notions of a Trump-Russia conspiracy — even though the FBI had nothing.

Trump foes like Rep. Adam Schiff and ex-intel honchos James Clapper and John Brennan fueled the hysteria: Even last year, Schiff insisted he’d seen “ample evidence of collusion.” Yet, as Barr noted, there was never any basis to the narrative.

https://nypost.com/2020/05/23/obamagate-isnt-a-distraction-its-about-outrageous-abuses/

Predictions

Predictions are stupid, but ....

With blue collar folks losing their jobs by the millions while white collar rich Dems continue to earn their high salaries working from home, the once people’s Democratic Party is branding itself, consciously or not, as the party of elites. Trump, not Biden, turns out to be the tribune of the working class.

So it’s not surprising the president has an even bigger lead in the only poll thatreally counts since it is still early days, the poll that has the greatest reputation for accuracy—the betting odds.

There Trump is up by a solid 10.2 over Biden, according to the Real Clear Politics average. And if you look at their graph, you see, in the view of people putting their money up (i. e. not pundits), that the president’s lead is expanding.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/why-joe-biden-and-the-democrats-are-going-to-lose-big_3353723.html

When the Shoe Winds Up on the Other Foot

Yes, but the needs justifies the means, right? Or in this case, anything to stop Trump ...

Wonder how many will burn for this, if any.

Barack Obama’s 21st-century intelligence hierarchs and their minions systematically outdid Richard Nixon’s plumbers, spooks, and spies. Obama appointees and loyalists surveilled American citizens, doctored or destroyed evidence, and monitored their communications. They deceived FISA courts to justify such illegal surveillance, set perjury ambushes to snare perceived political opponents, and used informants to spy on political enemies. They leaked classified information to damage opponents, paid foreign nationals during a political campaign to gather dirt on a presidential candidate, and repeatedly either flat out lied under oath to Congress or on hundreds of occasions claimed they “could not remember” when asked factual questions.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/05/17/the-left-is-what-it-once-loathed/

Another Dose of "Knowing What Isn't So"

Too bad no one has to eat crow these days.

Everyone in the media was horrified last month when Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp announced he would begin reopening the state’s economy. An April 21 headline in The Week denounced Kemp’s reckless “experiment,” and on April 22, MSNBCbemoaned the Republican governor’s “dangerous gamble.” Dana Milbank of the Washington Post declared, “Public health experts fear coronavirus will burn through Georgia like nothing has since William Tecumseh Sherman.” TheAtlantic’s Amanda Mull went so far as to call Kemp’s move an “experiment in human sacrifice.” Yet perhaps the most memorable media condemnation of Kemp was from Ron Fournier, former Washington bureau chief for the Associated Press, who proclaimed on Twitter, “Mark this day. Because two and three weeks from now, the Georgia death toll is blood on his hands. And as Georgians move around the country, they’ll spread more death and economic destruction.”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/why-joe-biden-and-the-democrats-are-going-to-lose-big_3353723.html

Where Testing Would Help

Daily testing of all residents of long term care facilities would be a good use of testing.


https://www.statnews.com/2020/05/08/nursing-homes-veterans-homes-national-epicenters-covid-19/

Yes, I'm Gettin' Angry

...at the fools that are treating the entire country like it is or could be NY City.

Time to get this country back to work. Folks that don't want to can stay home as long as they like.

Kids don't seem to carry or suffer much from this thing.

So many of the deaths are either NY/NJ or nursing homes.

Stop the crazy, government can sit back and let us choose, we know better than they the risks we can and should bear.

We are not all in this together. We have different risks, differing incentives, and different circumstances. 

We'll Get Him Somehow ...

"The story that source told me that day — initially I feared it may have been too spectacular to be true — was that FBI line agents had actually cleared former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn of any wrongdoing with Russia only to have the bureau's leadership hijack the process to build a case that he lied during a subsequent interview."

https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/dirty-dozen-12-revelations-sunk-muellers-case-against

Did the Models Kill Us?

Make some assumptions, run a few math problems, and poof, you have a model. The value of the model is determined later, by how well it comports with reality. The models were used instead to build worst case scenarios. It will never be known if those worst case simulations were possible.

Mark to model indeed. Much of the over bearing govt could be excused by the ignorance, but there's no justification for it now. We know enough to choose for ourselves, to use self-governance.

Time to put government back into its place, if we can.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/05/07/covid_marking_to_the_models_is_killing_the_economy_143139.html

The Flynn Thing, Nasty, Ugly and Brutish

Too ugly for words. A weaponized FBI - for those as naive as I am, it would have been unthinkable. 

https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/29/explosive-new-flynn-documents-show-fbi-goal-was-to-get-him-fired/

More on Flynn

The over bearing force of the legal system, out of control. We should all be afraid.

For more than three years, Michael Flynn waged a strange battle to clear his name after pleading guilty to lying to FBI agents and then declining a judge’s invitation to withdraw the plea. But there has always been something very wrong about the case, and we’ve learned more about it in recent weeks.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/michael-flynn-case-is-a-travesty/

More than a year ago I wrote a series of columns that made the point that former national security adviser Michael Flynn had been set up by the FBI and may have committed no crime. I repeated my legal arguments in several interviews. This led the professional Trump-bashers — who care more about “getting” Trump than about protecting civil liberties — to attack me for “inventing” legal principles that help the Trump team.

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/495718-michael-flynn-case-places-both-fbi-integrity-and-civil-liberty-on-the-line

Costs of Lockdown

Hopefully, my postponed medical appointments and tests won’t hurt me, but I hate not being able to address medical problems promptly because I know all too well how important early detection of illnesses is to good health outcomes. In January 2017, I experienced unexplained inflammation in my right foot. I saw a doctor but unfortunately he didn’t promptly refer me to a specialist and by the time I was diagnosed nearly four months later, the inflammation had spread around my body. As it turned out, I have a rare skin disease called pan-sclerotic morphea. I will be living with the consequences of the late diagnosis my whole life. 

Thousands or perhaps even millions of Americans have untreated and undiagnosed medical conditions right now that aren’t being addressed because of our singular focus on mitigating COVID-19. 

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/04/30/rigid_lockdowns_imperil_public_health_im_in_a_position_to_know_143071.html

Defense, Cost, Benefit, Wilderness, Environment ...

How we 'gone strike the balance?

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2020/04/29/bring_american_security_home_by_ending_chinas_rare_earth_monopoly_115233.html