Stimulus and the Impact of Shortages

President Joe Biden may have led the congress into an inflation that has been brewing for a long time.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said she didn’t think inflation posed a significant risk now that the Biden administration’s covid relief is signed and on its way to implementation. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has made it very clear that unlike some investors, he’s not stressed out about a potential rise in inflation later this year. And there’s good reason for that: he’s busy worrying about jobs.

Low interest rates and easy access to money has resulted in a buying flurry in southern California where I live. This did not start with the stimulus money sent to most families. Long before the COVID-19 pandemic new car sales and home buying was very obvious here.

My middle class neighborhood (median family income is $70,505) is now the home for high priced Lexus, Jaguar and other expensive car brands. This past October my nearby Honda dealer told me that they were not expecting any new shipments until after the new year. That means they have no motivation to sell cars at less than the sticker price. Real Estate brokers have been crying because the supply of new listings was too low for the past two or three years. It wasn’t. Most people do not keep moving from house to house. Homes have seen selling easily with bidding wars that drove the final selling price up by tens of thousands of dollars.

As of March 1, 2021 the Consumer Price Index data for the month of January found that the cost of food eaten at home rose 3.7 percent from a year ago — more than double the 1.4 percent year-over-year increase in the prices of all goods included in the C.P.I.

Even as a non-economist I can see trouble on the horizon.

Eight Republicans Voted to Tighten Background Checks on Guns

Finally after years have gone by since the killing at Sandy Hook Elementary School that occurred on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut we may have a bi-partisan group in the House of Representatives who will pass some meaningful legislation.

The Sandy Hook attack began when 20-year-old Adam Lanza killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, in the home that the two shared in Newtown. She was shot four times with a .22-calibre rifle. She had purchased the rifle, as well as an AR-15—the civilian semiautomatic version of the military M16 assault rifle—and several other firearms that Adam Lanza would use later that day, in the years prior to the shooting. Before leaving the house, Lanza destroyed his computer’s hard drive, an act that would make evidence gathering difficult for law enforcement personnel.

Protecting the public from people who have a total disregard for life should be the objective. It has been reported that most gun owners are in support of reasonable regulations. I guess the question is what is reasonable?

Eight House GOP lawmakers bucked party lines and joined Democrats in supporting legislation aimed at strengthening background checks on firearm sales.

The bill would put new background check requirements in place for gun transfers between private parties. The bill would also ban the sale, manufacture, transfer, and importation of more than 200 “military-style assault weapons” identified by name, although owners would be allowed to keep existing weapons. The bill would also require background checks on any future purchases, trades or gifting of an assault weapon included in the bill. This won’t stop future mass killing but in this gun crazy nation it’s probably the best we can do now.

Here are the Republican members that voted in favor of the bill:
Rep. Vern Buchanan (Fla.)
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.)
Rep. Andrew Garbarino (N.Y.)
Rep. Carlos Gimenez (Fla.)
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.)
Rep. Maria Salazar (Fla.)
Rep. Chris Smith (N.J.)
Rep. Fred Upton (Mich.)

Upton, Smith and Fitzpatrick co-sponsored the legislation, which faces an uphill battle in the upper chamber. The NRA is a very powerful voice that donates lots of money to campaigns.

The Year Old Pandemic

I looked at my posting on the blog last year in March. On March 12, 2020 I posted my comments on a President Donald Trump speech along with a Youtube of the speech. I was not reassured.

Things are far better today than they have been in a year. President Joe Biden gave us an assurance today that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Here is what I wrote on March 12, 2020.

Are you reassured?

I’m not. This was not a speech of reassurance like George W. Bush’s speech after 9-11 nor was this a speech of the kind given by Winston Churchill as England was under attack by the Germans nor FDR after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Nothing up lifting at all. It was a speech read from a teleprompter in which Trump seemed more concerned with the economics of this country than the health of its citizens.

There was not a word about the development of a medicine to cure the disease nor was there any words about the development of a vaccine. The President did not mention, for example, the shortage of testing kits, which means officials cannot even get a strong read on how far the disease has spread across the nation. Instead the government will close travel from Europe for 30 days.

Meghan and Harry Interview

The Harry and Meghan interview was great entertainment. Maybe a better title might be “When Harry met Meghan.”

The Meghan Markle and Prince Harry interview online on CBS, CBS.com and Paramount+ was a brilliant acting performance that would at least gain Meghan a nomination if not an award for best dramatic performance in a made for television program. The choreographics were perfect. The stage setting was perfect.

Meghan convinced the world that she was shunned by the United Kingdom royalty. The evidence? There was none. It was her words and the way she delivered them that convinced everyone that every word she said was the truth.

Remember she was a successful actress. She played Rachel Zane on Suits for seven seasons, finally calling it quits in 2018. But that wasn’t her only role.

She had many others including Hallmark’s expansion of their iconic Christmas programming with “When Sparks Fly,” a made-for-television film centered around the Fourth of July. Markle starred in the movie as Amy Peterson, a journalist who was assigned a story about her hometown. When Amy heads home for the holiday, she (naturally) “discovers the life and love she left behind are exactly what she’s been missing.”

It’s reported that Meghan and Harry were not paid for the Oprah interview. I don’t believe it. Oprah’s film company, called Harpo Productions, set up the interview and then hawked it to the networks. The made a reported $8 million for the rights selling to CBS. Meghan and Harry have been cut off from their royal allowance. They need the money to live on their fabulous estate.

The public in all the English speaking nations (the Commonwealth) ate this up.

Meghan will undoubtedly go on to more acting performances. Harry will likely sit on his princely ass and do whatever princes do.

Republicans are Fighting Against Democracy

This situation is the result of a president who tried to overturn the November 2020 election. Even before the election Donald Trump repeatedly said that the election process was fraudulent. He tried to take his claims to courts including the Supreme Court.

Just today the justices declined to take up an appeal from Mr. Trump that challenged absentee ballots cast in the presidential election in Wisconsin. The former president urged the Supreme Court to declare the election there unconstitutional and allow the state legislature to appoint its own slate of electors. Mr. Trump lost the state of Wisconsin to President Biden, and Mr. Biden was sworn into office January 20.

Sadly GOP controlled states are now passing new laws to limit future elections by limiting voting and making it harder for voters to return absentee ballots. Arizona, Iowa, Georgia, and North Dakota are the states passing regulations that require identification of voters, limiting voting to in person only voting. All these law are probably legal. Each stae has the power to set its own election rules. They are clearly designed to deny the right to vote to poor people who likely Democratic Party voters.

Georgia is just one of the 43 states collectively contemplating 253 bills this year with provisions restricting voting access, according to a tally by the Brennan Center for Justice.

As Dana Milbank of the Washington Post reported: the Supreme Court’s majority signaled it would be open to more such voting restrictions. In oral arguments, the conservative justices indicated they would uphold two Arizona laws that would have the effect of disproportionately disqualifying the votes of non-White citizens. One law throws out ballots cast in the wrong precinct, a problem that affects minority voters twice as much as White voters because polling places move more frequently in minority neighborhoods. The other law bans the practice of ballot collection — derided by Republicans as ballot “harvesting” — which is disproportionately used by minority voters, in particular Arizona’s Native Americans on reservations.”

Why are Republicans doing this? They believe that large turnouts result in Democratic Party candidates winning.

The United States is at War

The fear of domestic terrorists who want to bring down the United States government is real. The House of Representatives has canceled their Thursday March 4 session because there is credible evidence that there will be an attack on the Capitol building.

U.S. Capitol Police officials said Wednesday they have “obtained intelligence that shows a possible plot to breach the Capitol by an identified militia group on Thursday, March 4” — the date that far-right conspiracy theorists believe former President Donald Trump will return to power.

There are discredited internet conspiracy theories that allege the world is run by a secret cabal of Satan-worshipping cannibalistic pedophiles. Followers of the fringe movement believe that the 2020 U.S. presidential election was stolen from Trump, who has pushed baseless claims of voter fraud along with his allies.

QAnon followers also believed that Trump would not actually leave office on Inauguration Day but rather would declare martial law, announce mass arrests of Democrats and stop Joe Biden from becoming president. When that didn’t happen, the date was moved from Jan. 20 to March 4.

There are many among the conspiracy groups who believe Ulysses S. Grant was the last legal president of the United States because he was the last president inaugurated on March 4. That is the focus on March 4 as the day that Donald Trump will be inaugurated for a second term as the 19th president. I do not know how the conspiracy people explain the four years that Trump was president. There is no reasonable explanation. The conspiracy theorists have yet to square the facts that is probably because they don’t want to look at reality.

Those of you who think this is all nonsense should look at what happened on January 6 at the Capitol. This is the start of a war. January 6 was the first attack. There will be more attacks if the perpetrators are unsuccessful on March 4.

America’s Defense Posture is out of Touch with the 21st Century

The United States is unlikely to be invaded by the military of another nation.

In his final speech from the White House, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned that an arms race would take resources from other areas — such as building schools and hospitals.

Despite that conclusion under President Donald Trump there was a build up of America’s military might. It’s true that under President Obama military spending did decline.

Microtrends itemized American military spending during the past four years

U.S. military spending/defense budget for 2019 was $731.75B, a 7.22% increase from 2018.
U.S. military spending/defense budget for 2018 was $682.49B, a 5.53% increase from 2017.
U.S. military spending/defense budget for 2017 was $646.75B, a 1.08% increase from 2016.
U.S. military spending/defense budget for 2016 was $639.86B, a 0.95% increase from 2015.

It’s nice to know we are well protected. But from who?

USA Today asks the question is this really necessary? America outspends every other nation in the world. Almost three times the money spent by the second largest military in 2019. The USA spent $731.8 Billion. China spent $261.1 Billion. The sum of military spending for the next ten largest military spenders is less than the US military budget.

In Germany, about 45,000 Americans go to work each day around the Kaiserslautern Military Community, a network of U.S. Army and Air Force bases that accommodates schools, housing complexes, dental clinics, hospitals, community centers, sports clubs, food courts, military police and retail stores. About 60,000 American military and civilian personnel are stationed in Japan; another 30,000 in South Korea. More than 6,000 U.S. military personnel are spread across Africa, according to the Department of Defense.

About 220,000 U.S. military and civilian personnel serve in more than 150 countries, the Defense Department says. But in today’s world it is not military invasion that is the issue. It’s the cyber invasion that is in process now.

David Sanger of the New York Times reported on December 13, 2020, “The Trump administration acknowledged on Sunday that hackers acting on behalf of a foreign government — almost certainly a Russian intelligence agency, according to federal and private experts — broke into a range of key government networks, including in the Treasury and Commerce Departments, and had free access to their email systems.”

Remember the cyber attack on Sony Pictures in 2014. The FBI blamed a North Korea scheme to retaliate for the comedy ‘The Interview.’

More recently Business Insider reported on February 25, 2021 SolarWinds, a major US information technology firm, was the subject of a cyberattack that spread to its clients and went undetected for months. US agencies — including parts of the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, the Department of Energy, the National Nuclear Security Administration, and the Treasury — were attacked. So were private companies, like Microsoft, Cisco, Intel, and Deloitte, and other organizations like the California Department of State Hospitals, and Kent State University, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The military Industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned about is still a reality. Jobs manufacturing military hardware are consequential in almost every state. Is President Joe Biden prepared to face the 21st century world? He must or the United States will be overwhelmed by its enemies.

Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 Vaccine

Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine is 66% effective in global trial, but 85% effective against severe disease, company says.

Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, said that under normal circumstances, there might not be much of a market for a vaccine that is significantly less effective than two others already on the market. But he added that these are not normal times, with a pandemic raging and shortage of vaccines.

How effective is the flu vaccine?
CDC conducts studies each year to determine how well the influenza (flu) vaccine protects against flu illness. While vaccine effectiveness (VE) can vary, recent studies show that flu vaccination reduces the risk of flu illness by between 40% and 60% among the overall population during seasons when most circulating flu viruses are well-matched to the flu vaccine.

So why is there a discomfort in taking this vaccine? The single-shot vaccine was 66% effective overall at preventing moderate to severe illness and that report makes some people leery of accepting it over the Pfizer or Moderna. That it will keep you out of the hospital or dying may be enough to over come concerns.

How effective is the seasonal flu vaccine?
CDC conducts studies each year to determine how well the influenza (flu) vaccine protects against flu illness. While vaccine effectiveness (VE) can vary, recent studies show that flu vaccination reduces the risk of flu illness by between 40% and 60% among the overall population during seasons when most circulating flu viruses are well-matched to the flu vaccine.