CDC is closely monitoring an outbreak of respiratory illness caused
by a novel (new) coronavirus (termed “2019-nCoV”) that was first
detected in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China and which continues to
expand. Chinese health officials have reported more than a thousand
infections with 2019-nCoV in China, including outside of Hubei Province.
Infections with 2019-nCoV also are being reported in a growing number
of international locations, including the United States, where 5 cases in travelers from Wuhan have been confirmed in four states (AZ, CA, IL, WA) as of January 26, 2020.
Source and Spread of the Virus
Chinese health authorities were the first to post the full genome of the 2019-nCoV in GenBankexternal icon, the NIH genetic sequence database, and in the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAIDexternal icon)
portal, an action which has facilitated detection of this virus. On
January 24, 2020, CDC posted in GenBank the full genome of the 2019-nCoV
virus detected in the first U.S. patient from Washington state. The
virus genetic sequence from the patient in Washington is nearly
identical to the sequences posted from China. The available sequences
suggest a likely single, recent emergence from a virus related to bat
coronaviruses and the SARS coronavirus. The available sequence
information does not provide any information about severity of
associated illness or transmissibility of the virus.
Early on, many of the patients in the outbreak in Wuhan, China
reportedly had some link to a large seafood and animal market,
suggesting animal-to-person spread. However, a growing number of
patients reportedly have not had exposure to animal markets, and there
is evidence that person-to-person spread is occurring. At this time,
it’s unclear how easily or sustainably this virus is spreading between
people. Learn what is known about the spread of newly emerged coronaviruses.
Illness Severity
Both MERS and SARS have been known to cause severe illness in people.
The complete clinical picture with regard to 2019-nCoV is still not
fully clear. Reported illnesses have ranged from infected people with
little to no symptoms to people being severely ill and dying. Learn more
about the symptoms associated with 2019-nCoV.
There are ongoing investigations to learn more. This is a rapidly
evolving situation and information will be updated as it becomes
available.
Outbreaks of novel virus infections among people are always of public
health concern. The risk from these outbreaks depends on
characteristics of the virus, including whether and how well it spreads
between people, the severity of resulting illness, and the medical or
other measures available to control the impact of the virus (for
example, vaccine or treatment medications).
Investigations are ongoing to learn more, but person-to-person spread
of 2019-nCoV is occurring. Chinese officials report that sustained
person-to-person spread in the community is occurring in China.
Person-to-person spread in the United States has not yet been detected,
but it’s likely to occur to some extent. It’s important to note that
person-to-person spread can happen on a continuum. Some viruses are
highly contagious (like measles), while other viruses are less so. It’s
important to know this in order to better assess the risk posed by this
virus. While CDC considers this is a very serious public health threat,
based on current information, the immediate health risk from 2019-nCoV
to the general American public is considered low at this time.
Nevertheless, CDC is taking proactive preparedness precautions.
What to Expect
More cases are likely to be identified in the coming days, including
more cases in the United States. Given what has occurred previously with
MERS and SARS, it’s likely that person-to-person spread will continue
to occur. It would not be surprising if person-to-person spread in the
United States were to occur. Cases in healthcare settings, like
hospitals, may also occur.
Quartz | In the past several weeks, a biting joke has been
widely shared on Chinese social media: The new coronavirus is patriotic,
so it goes, because it infected only one of China’s 33 provinces and
municipalities before venturing outside of the mainland.
Then, people this week woke up to official announcements of a shocking surge of confirmed new infections, and of the virus’s spread to more than a dozen provinces and municipalities. As of Thursday, there are more than 550 confirmed cases, 17 people have died and Wuhan, where the outbreak started, is on lockdown.
Beyond mainland China, Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the US and Hong Kong have confirmed cases, and more countries could report cases as China’s biggest travel season gets underway: Chinese Lunar New Year.
People
are panicking. When a new disease is discovered, it’s undeniably hard
to identify and inform the public about it quickly. Yet China is making
the problem harder to solve, even though it should have learned from the
SARS outbreak in 2003, when the government admitted to underreporting cases
in the initial stages. Nearly 800 people died in that epidemic, which
saw desperate people emptying shops for Chinese herbal medicines and
vinegar that would turn out to be ineffective.
That frenzy was driven by the lack of accurate
information and rumors because of a vacuum in top-down communication.
The idea of wei wen, or maintaining stability in China’s
political system made “conceal as many as possible and keep it at the
local level” a natural immediate response to a crisis like this. That
approach to information might work on other kinds of issues, but not
when it comes to a potential epidemic. Trying to control information in
that case becomes a kind of shackle in the face of something that can
progress and change swiftly beyond one’s control.
Of
course, there is one thing that’s different than 17 years ago: WeChat. A
tool connecting more than a billion users in China should be one the
government can use to help keep the public up-to-date, and to debunk
false information. Yet it too has become a hotbed
for both rumors and information suppression amid China’s broader regime
of online censorship honed over the past decade. Already, a focus of
social media discussion about the current virus crisis has been on how
hard it’s been to get correct information, and whether officials were
slow to respond in the early stages, at least in Wuhan. While some
international public health experts have commended China’s information
sharing as superior to 2003 in the face of a quickly evolving situation,
others have expressed doubt that the country is being as transparent as
it should be.
bbc | The death toll from a newly-discovered coronavirus in China has risen to 41 on the day of the Lunar New Year.
Another 15 deaths in Hubei province, where the outbreak began, were announced on Saturday.
Health
officials are struggling to contain the outbreak as millions of people
travel for the Chinese new year, one of the most important events. Many
festivities have been cancelled.
There are now more than 1,200 confirmed cases in China.
The virus has also spread to Europe, with three cases confirmed in France. The UK is investigating a number of suspected cases, with officials trying to trace around 2,000 people who have recently flown to the UK from Hubei province.
Australia has also confirmed several cases in Melbourne and Sydney, joining a handful of countries treating patients.
The coronavirus, previously unknown to science, causes severe acute
respiratory infection with symptoms including a fever and cough. There
is no specific cure or vaccine.
Based on an earlier report of the
fatalities, when just 17 were dead, most of the victims appeared to be
older people, many with pre-existing medical conditions.
But one of the dead in the most recent update was a doctor at a hospital in Hubei, China Global Television Network reported.
nakedcapitalism | precarity is the result of the shift in the last couple of
generations of business revenues away from workers and towards profits,
or capital, if you prefer. And that most people are far too complacent
about that because they have deeply internalized prevailing
market/neoliberal ideology.
Robert Heilbroner identified this tendency in his 1988 book, Behind
the Veil of Economics. A major focus was contrasting the source of
discipline under feudalism versus under capitalism. Heilbroner argues it
was the bailiff and the lash, that lords would incarcerate and beat
serfs who didn’t pull their weight. But the lord had obligations to his
serfs too, so this relationship was not as one-sided as it might seem.
By contrast, Heilbroner argues that the power structure under capitalism
is far less obvious:
This negative form of power contrasts sharply with with
that of the privileged elites in precapitalist social formations. In
these imperial kingdoms or feudal holdings, disciplinary power is
exercised by the direct use or display of coercive power. The social
power of capital is of a different kind….The capitalist may deny others
access to his resources, but he may not force them to work with him.
Clearly, such power requires circumstances that make the withholding of
access of critical consequence. These circumstances can only arise if
the general populace is unable to secure a living unless it can gain
access to privately owned resources or wealth…
The organization of production is generally regarded as a wholly
“economic” activity, ignoring the political function served by the
wage-labor relationships in lieu of bailiffs and senechals. In a like
fashion, the discharge of political authority is regarded as essentially
separable from the operation of the economic realm, ignoring the
provision of the legal, military, and material contributions without
which the private sphere could not function properly or even exist. In
this way, the presence of the two realms, each responsible for part of
the activities necessary for the maintenance of the social formation,
not only gives capitalism a structure entirely different from that of
any precapitalist society, but also establishes the basis for a problem
that uniquely preoccupies capitalism, namely, the appropriate role of
the state vis-a-vis the sphere of production and distribution.
The bygone decade is marked by a radical change in relations between employers and employees. According to recent research by the Bank of England,
the labour share of income in the last thirty to forty years
significantly fell in the USA and in other advanced economies as well.
The decline of influence of labour as well as new technologies adopted
by big corporations have led to new forms of employment: mostly
flexible, low-payed, unstable jobs that are underregulated by labour
legislation.
The state of things in capital-labour relations with constant
redistribution of wealth and power to capital owners is without
exaggeration class warfare (an expression, with a good reason, constantly used by Bernie Sanders). Ideology is ready as a powerful weapon in this class war. Media, internet, books and experts
strive to persuade workers that this state of insecurity is necessary,
normal or even desirable. And the defenders of flexible and unstable
jobs claim that this is objective logic of economy which has nothing to do with political decision-making.
But the Department of Homeland Security has compelled submission by announcing that the Transportation Security Agency will prohibit Americans from flying unless they have either a REAL ID Act-approved driver’s license or a passport. The Supreme Court ruled in 1999 that the “‘constitutional right to travel
from one State to another’ is firmly embedded in our jurisprudence.”
But REAL ID Act policies have routinely scorned both the Bill of Rights
and Supreme Court rulings.
Most Americans do not possess passports, so federally-approved state driver’s licenses are becoming de facto internal passports. Almost a hundred million Americans do not have REAL ID-compliant identification, according to the U.S. Travel Association. In Minnesota, 11 percent of drivers
still have licenses that will be rejected at TSA checkpoints starting
on October 1. States and individuals are chaotically scrambling to meet
the law’s shifting demands. Twitter is echoing with howls of people who spend hours at motor vehicle administration offices only to have their paperwork rejected because of picayune quibbles.
But
the REAL ID law poses perils far beyond the airport entrance. Maryland
began issuing REAL ID driver’s licenses in 2009. In 2017, the Department
of Homeland Security notified the state that its REAL ID licenses were invalid unless Maryland snared more documents for each driver. More than half a million drivers remain at risk for losing their licenses.
TheWashington Post reported in August that 8,000 Maryland licenses have been suspended. Three months earlier, MVA announced that 66,300 people were
at risk of having their driver’s license or identification cards
revoked for failure to comply with MVA demands. As Maryland ramps up
enforcement, the number of suspended licenses is probably far higher now
but MVA spokespersons failed to respond to repeated press inquiries
seeking the latest number. Maryland police are seizing the license
of any driver who they stop whose only offense was failure to hustle to
show Maryland bureaucrats their birth certificate, passport, utility
bills, Social Security card, or other proof of their identity.
Since the 2005 enactment of the REAL ID Act, the federal government has helped bankroll the license plate scanner networks
that permit tracking any driver on the roads in many parts of the
nation. If Maryland decides to target people who received cancellation
notices, there are almost 500 license plate scanners deployed
in police cars and elsewhere in the state that compile almost half a
billion scans of driver’s per year. If the order is given to use the
scanners, a thousand people a day could be stripped of their licenses
and potentially arrested. MVA spokespersons failed to respond to
inquiries about whether license plate scanners may be used for enforcing
REAL ID compliance demands.
yasha.substack | When I launched Immigrants as a Weapon
back in September, I argued that America had done more to promote the
far-right around the world than any other country on earth. I wasn’t
exaggerating. America really is the biggest and most active player in
the field — the biggest by far.
Even a cursory look at modern
American history shows that promoting nationalism and backing far-right
emigre groups has been a major plank of American foreign policy going
back to the very end of World War II. This mixture of covert and overt
programs and initiatives was first deployed to fight the Soviet Union
and left-wing political movements but has over the years touched down
all over the globe — wherever America has some sort of geopolitical
interest, including modern capitalist states like Russia and China. One
of these nationalism weaponization initiatives — which targeted the USSR
for destabilization in the 70s and 80s — was how a Soviet kid like me ended up in San Francisco as a political refugee.
This
history is important. Without it, it’s impossible to understand the
mechanics of our reactionary foreign policy today — whether in China or
with our “strategic partner” Ukraine, a country that’s at the center of today’s impeachment show.
There are all sorts of possible entry points into this story. I guess I could go all the way back to America’s support for the White Russians against the Bolsheviks
in the Russian Civil War. But for now I’d like to start at the very end
of World War II — when this approach was just beginning to crystalize
as a distinct strategy inside America’s foreign policy apparatus.
williammarble | A surprising fact about the 2016 election is that Trump received fewer votes from whites with the highest levels of racial resentment than Romney did in 2012. This fact is surprising given studies that emphasize “activation” of racial conservatism in 2016—the increased relationship between vote choice and racial attitudes among voters. But this relationship provides almost no information about how many votes candidates receive from individuals with particular attitudes. To understand how many votes a voting bloc contributes to a candidate’s total, we must also consider a bloc’s size and its turnout rate. Taking these into account, we find that Trump’s most significant gains came from whites with moderate attitudes about race and immigration. Trump’s vote totals improved the most among swing voters: low-socioeconomic status whites who are political moderates. Our analysis demonstrates that focusing only on vote choice is insufficient to explain sources of candidate support in the electorate.
A surprising fact about the 2016 election is that Donald Trump received fewer votes from whites with high levels of racial resentment than Mitt Romney did in 2012. We estimate that, nationwide, Romney received 18.3 million votes from whites in the highest quintile of racial resentment (defined using the 2012 distribution of racial resentment), 8.2 percent of the2012 voting eligible population, while Trump received 12.4 million votes from individuals in the highest quintile, 5.4 percent of the 2016 voting eligible population.1This translated into fewer net votes for Trump: his advantage over Clinton among individuals with the highest levels of racial resentment was smaller than Romney’s advantage over Obama by 3.4 million votes.
Trump saw this decrease in support even though whites who turned out to vote and had high levels of racial resentment voted for Trump at higher rates than they chose Romney. But there was also a shift in attitudes: fewer whites had high levels of racial resentment in 2016than in 2012 (Engelhardt, 2019; Hopkins and Washington, 2019; DeSante and Smith, 2019)and there was an overall decline in turnout. As a result, there were fewer racial-conservative whites to cast their vote for Trump in the voting booth. So, even though these voters selected Trump at a higher rate once they turned out to vote, the higher rate of support for Trump was not enough to overcome the change in the distribution of attitudes and the change in turnout rates across elections.
This fact might seem particularly surprising in light of a social science literature that has focused on vote choice, conclusively showing that attitudes about race and ethnicity were the most “activated” in 2016 relative to 2012 (Sides, Tesler and Vavreck, 2019; Mutz, 2018;Reny, Collingwood and Valenzuela, 2019).2
nature | A laboratory in Wuhan is on the cusp of being cleared to work with the
world’s most dangerous pathogens. The move is part of a plan to build
between five and seven biosafety level-4 (BSL-4) labs across the Chinese
mainland by 2025, and has generated much excitement, as well as some
concerns.
Some scientists outside China worry about pathogens escaping, and the
addition of a biological dimension to geopolitical tensions between
China and other nations. But Chinese microbiologists are celebrating
their entrance to the elite cadre empowered to wrestle with the world’s
greatest biological threats.
“It will offer
more opportunities for Chinese researchers, and our contribution on the
BSL‑4-level pathogens will benefit the world,” says George Gao, director
of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Key Laboratory of Pathogenic
Microbiology and Immunology in Beijing. There are already two BSL-4 labs
in Taiwan, but the National Bio-safety Laboratory, Wuhan, would be the
first on the Chinese mainland.
The lab was
certified as meeting the standards and criteria of BSL-4 by the China
National Accreditation Service for Conformity Assessment (CNAS) in
January. The CNAS examined the lab’s infrastructure, equipment and
management, says a CNAS representative, paving the way for the Ministry
of Health to give its approval. A representative from the ministry says
it will move slowly and cautiously; if the assessment goes smoothly, it
could approve the laboratory by the end of June.
BSL-4
is the highest level of biocontainment: its criteria include filtering
air and treating water and waste before they leave the laboratory, and
stipulating that researchers change clothes and shower before and after
using lab facilities. Such labs are often controversial. The first BSL-4
lab in Japan was built in 1981, but operated with lower-risk pathogens
until 2015, when safety concerns were finally overcome.
The expansion of BSL-4-lab networks in the United States and Europe
over the past 15 years — with more than a dozen now in operation or
under construction in each region — also met with resistance, including
questions about the need for so many facilities.
The Wuhan lab cost 300 million yuan (US$44 million), and to allay safety
concerns it was built far above the flood plain and with the capacity
to withstand a magnitude-7 earthquake, although the area has no history
of strong earthquakes. It will focus on the control of emerging
diseases, store purified viruses and act as a World Health Organization
‘reference laboratory’ linked to similar labs around the world. “It will
be a key node in the global biosafety-lab network,” says lab director
Yuan Zhiming.
commentarymagazine | Obama’s
FBI and former intelligence-community leaders kept open an
investigation into Trump after that investigation yielded exculpatory
evidence. Following Trump’s election, Comey, Brennan, and a host of
Obama national-security officials weaponized the allegations against
Trump by becoming pundits themselves on cable news channels and
suggesting by their very presence that they had inside information about
the Trump-Russia conspiracy—information they did not have. With few
exceptions, members of Congress and the press who should have
scrutinized their false assertions acted as an echo chamber to amplify
them.
Is it any wonder that no Republican voted to impeach Trump
in the House on the Ukraine matter? This cannot just be explained away
as political and moral cowardice. It’s a response to the failure of the
party leading the impeachment to acknowledge the falsehood of its
initial conspiracy theory about Russia.
But it also must be said
that this debacle is not evidence of a deep-state coup, as so many on
the right have alleged. There are two important reasons for this. First,
there is no singular “deep state.”
Horowitz also showed in his report
that there were FBI agents at the New York field office who were rooting
for Trump. Certainly the key deep-state figure here would be James
Comey—and if he were, why would he have mortally damaged the campaign of
Trump’s rival 10 days before the election by briefly reopening the
investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private server? In any case, the
“deep-state” theory suggests there is a governmental hive mind, an
unelected bureaucracy that runs things while officials like Comey sit on
top, clueless and imagining themselves powerful.
You can see how
the “deep-state” theory might let the actual saboteurs off the hook.
Comey, McCabe, Brennan, and others had a mix of motivations for making
the decisions that they did. To say they were acting on behalf of an
unelected bureaucracy is to absolve them.
The deep-state theory
also leads those who espouse it to overreact. If the institutional rot
is this profound, then why not eliminate the FBI and CIA altogether? But
that’s a bit like calling for the abolition of a police department
after a brutality scandal. The country needs spies and lawmen to protect
us against real foreign threats. The problem with the Trump-Russia
investigation is that at the moment the investigators were receiving
exculpatory evidence, the false collusion theory became the hottest
story in the world. And that happened because the most important
evidence the FBI leadership believed was true was also briefed to media.
This
should never happen again. And, in normal times, it would not have
happened. Journalists would have maintained their initial skepticism
about the dossier. FBI lawyers would have been more vigilant about
including exculpatory information in the Page surveillance warrant.
Congressional leaders would have been more restrained in publicly
questioning the loyalty of Americans who worked for a rival political
campaign. Former intelligence officials would not have deployed innuendo
to imply that the legitimately elected president of the United States
was a traitor.
But Trump was perceived to be such a threat to the
republic that resistance was required. That resistance became a
permission structure to break longstanding rules and norms. Just
consider Clinesmith, the FBI attorney who altered an email from the CIA
to make it appear that Carter Page was not assisting the agency when he
really was. In a footnote, Horowitz quotes an instant message from
Clinesmith to a colleague the day after Trump won the election in 2016.
“I am so stressed about what I could have done differently,” he wrote.
Two weeks later he tapped out a message that ended with “Viva le [sic] resistance.”
It’s
rare that law-enforcement scandals involve officials who acknowledge
bad motives to themselves. They are almost always the result of cops and
lawyers who justify their infractions and misconduct as a necessary
means to a more noble end. From Comey to Clinesmith, the investigators
responsible for the Russia investigation really believed that Trump was a
unique threat to the republic and that they were justified in taking
the steps that they did. The problem is that their theory about Trump
and Russia was wrong, and the shortcuts they took to prove the theory
true blinded them from seeing their folly sooner.
That folly has
deformed our politics. Now, in 2020, voters are faced with a choice
between two parties led by conspiracy theorists and gaslighters. Instead
of saving America from Trump, the Resistance may have reelected him.
commondreams | After the FBI took to Twitter Monday with a message that allegedly
aimed to honor "the life and work" of Martin Luther King Jr., a chorus
of critics promptly urged the bureau to "sit this one out," pointing to its history of spying on King and trying to convince the civil rights leader to kill himself.
Each year on the national holiday dedicated to King, progressives criticize and work to counter
the whitewashed public narrative of a man who, particularly in the
years leading up to his April 1968 assassination, passionately condemned
the "evils" of capitalism, militarism, and racism.
The FBI, during both the Obama and Trump administrations, has
provoked a wave of criticism for posting shoutouts to King on social
media, given the bureau's past treatment of him. Monday was no
different.
Some critics expressed anger and disbelief. Rewire.News senior legal analyst Imani Gandy wrote in response to the FBI, "You've got to be fucking kidding me."
Journalist David Corn posed "a sincere question," asking:
"Has the FBI ever apologized to King's family for wiretapping King,
blackmailing him, and trying to get him to commit suicide?"
Crawford also noted that "the FBI's surveillance of black Americans
isn't just history. [In 2018], we learned the FBI has been spying on
black activists, labeling them 'Black Identity Extremists.' The feds also use powers obtained through national security laws like the Patriot Act to target people in the racially biased drug war."
"More disturbing: The FBI that spied on King and today classifies
Black civil rights activists as 'extremists,'" Crockford continued, "is
now partnering with Big Tech to amass unprecedented surveillance powers
that history has taught us will be used to target communities of color,
religious minorities, dissidents, and immigrants."
FBI director Christopher Wray testified
before Congress in July 2019 that the bureau has stopped using the term
"black identity extremism." However, some groups and individuals on
Monday shared critiques of the FBI's current practices alongside
denunciations of the bureau's past behavior.
The London-based advocacy group CAGE, which works to empower communities impacted by the War on Terror, tweeted
Monday that the FBI still tries "to suppress dissent" and uses "dirty
tactics that would make Edgar Hoover proud. But [is] happy now to co-opt
MLK to try to cover up the above."
Summit |Drag queen Kitty Demure posted a viral video in which he
expressed his amazement at why ‘woke’ parents are allowing their kids to
be around drag queens, asking, “Would you want a stripper or a porn
star to influence your child?”
Demure questioned why drag queens had attracted so much “respect”
from the left given that they’ve done little more than “put on make-up,
jump on the floor and writhe around and do sexual things on stage.”
“I have absolutely no idea why you would want that to influence your
child, would you want a stripper or a porn star to influence your
child?” he asked.
Demure went on to point out that drag queens perform in clubs for
adults and that backstage “there’s a lot of sex, nudity and drugs, so I
don’t think this is an avenue you would want your child to explore.”
“To get them involved in drag is extremely irresponsible on your
part,” Demure told parents, adding that many went along with it to
appear “cool” or “woke” to their leftist friends.
“You can raise your child to be just a normal regular everyday child without including them in gay, sexual things,” said Demure.
charleshughsmith |In last week's explanation of why the Federal Reserve is evil, I invoked the principle of calling things by their real names, a concept that drew an insightful commentary from longtime correspondent Chad D.:
Thank you, Charles, for calling out the Fed for their evil ways. We
have to properly name things before we can properly address them. I
would add that the Fed's endless creation of "money" to hand out to
connected bankers (not all bankers) is just one facet of the evil. The
evil also manifests itself as extraordinary political-economical power
in a system that allows legalized bribery disguised as free speech.
One
does not need money to speak/write to convey one's thoughts, but what
money does allow is the drowning out of speech of those without money by
those with a lot of money. In essence, the ultra-rich (i.e. the top
.01%) get a huge megaphone to blare their thoughts, many of which are
deliberately used to disorient and confuse the common man through the
major media and so-called higher institutions of learning. Hence, we get
common folk actively fighting for policies and laws that are against
their own personal interests, such as promoting "free trade" agreements
that are really managed trade agreements, whereby domestic workers are
forced to complete with workers in other countries who make a pittance
and are not protected by labor or environmental laws.
These
agreements are part of a legal, yet unjust, framework that gives
unfair, competitive advantages to large, multinational businesses at the
expense of their smaller domestic and international competitors, which
includes the abridgment of basic rights to settle disputes in a real
court of law, not some kangaroo arbitration process with biased
"judges".
And
we must not forget the bailouts, lack of prosecution for economic
crimes, such as fraud and monopolistic and deceptive trade practices,
and tax loopholes, all of which are bought in one way or another from
the compromised "representatives" and "public servants" within the
system.
mattstoller.substack | If the goal of economics were to ascertain truthful views about the
world, if economics were as its proponents offer, a ‘science,’ then one
would remark on the lack of self-policing within the profession. Of
course, given that there is limited self-policing at best and the top
practitioners in the field are routinely wrong about fundamental
questions, we can conclude that uncovering truth may be an incidental
outcome of the practice of economics, but it is certainly not the goal
of the discipline.
Methodological Biases in Economics
There are three main problems with economics as a ‘science’ that can guide public policy choices. The first is that it is a post-mortem discipline.
Economists often assert we need data before drawing conclusions.
Economist Thomas Phillipon noted this in his book on the institutional
basis of markets that an economist was like that of Sherlock Holmes,
asserting ‘data data data, I cannot make bricks without clay.” And yet,
there was no data in 2000 when the U.S. changes its policies vis-a-vis
China, because the consequences were in the future. There’s nothing
wrong with being a study of the past that has a specific quantitative
framework, as long as there is a genuine acknowledgment that there’s no
science here and projections have no scientific validity whatsoever.
The
second is that using economics to make judgments about the world can be
extraordinarily costly and exclusionary. This may or may not be a big
deal when considering macro-economic forecasting, but when economics
becomes a key part of institutional legal arguments it shades who can
use the law to protect their rights. For example, showing that someone
robbed me by breaking into my house requires evidence and common sense.
But bringing an antitrust lawsuit showing someone robbed me by excluding
me from a market often requires millions in economics consulting
services. If you don’t have that money, the law becomes meaningless.
The
third is that an obsession with quantifying leads to political control
by those who have access to data. A well-known example is famous
economist Alan Krueger, who was paid by Uber and then wrote widely circulated
scholarship based on internal Uber data about the corporation’s wage
setting terms. But it’s broader than just one company, most of the big
tech platforms work with economists, giving these powerful corporate
entities a measure of political control over lines of research. Beyond
tech, it’s actually quite hard to get information on a whole host of
practices in the economy. For example, the Trump administration had to
battle hospitals just to get them to disclose their official price list
for different procedures (which isn’t even real considering the extent
of secret discounts and rebates throughout the industry).
kansascity | A Kansas City area radio station can broadcast Russian state-owned media programming, the type that U.S. intelligence called a “propaganda machine,” for six hours a day through a lease agreement struck by a local radio operator.
RM Broadcasting LLC, a Florida-based company that has agreements to broadcast the Russian state media program Radio Sputnik, reached a deal on Jan. 1 to lease air time through Alpine Broadcasting Corp. in Liberty. Alpine Broadcasting Corp. broadcasts on three frequencies in the Kansas City area: KCXL 1140 AM, 102.9 FM and 104.7 FM.
The lease agreement lets RM Broadcasting air its
programming from 6 to 9 a.m. and 6 to 9 p.m. seven days a week. KCXL’s
website, which says that it’s the radio station that will “tell you the
things that the liberal media wont (sic) tell you,” lists Radio Sputnik
in its morning programming.
A 2017 report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence
that evaluated Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election described
Sputnik as “another government-funded outlet producing pro-Kremlin
radio and online content in a variety of languages for international
audiences.”
Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article239359868.html#storylink=cpy
Sputnik, along with Russian television outlet RT — formerly Russia Today
— “contributed to the influence campaign by serving as a platform for
Kremlin messaging to Russian and international audiences,” the DNI
intelligence assessment said.
Those descriptions were part of a larger set of
findings by the Director of National Intelligence that said Russian
President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign during the 2016
elections that sought to undermine public faith in the U.S. election
process, denigrate Hillary Clinton and promote Donald Trump.
RM Broadcasting is run in Florida by a man named Arnold Ferolito. He disputed the government’s assessment of Radio Sputnik.
“Ninety percent of the programming is generated right here in the United States,” Ferolito told The Star in an interview.
Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article239359868.html#storylink=cpy
Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article239359868.html#storylink=cpy
BaltimoreSun | Thousands
of mostly white men — many decked out in camouflage and armed with
assault-style rifles — packed Richmond’s streets Monday, circling the
gun-free Capitol Square, where thousands more waved signs and listened
to speeches, all wanting to make one point: They weren’t going anywhere,
and their gun rights shouldn’t either.
“I
think there’s an assault on the Second Amendment,” said 60-year-old
Richmond resident Danny Tumer, who was standing in line to get into the
grounds at 6:30 a.m.
Tensions
have been building across the state since Democrats gained a majority
in the legislature and vowed to enact tighter gun control laws following
the May mass shooting in Virginia Beach. As lawmakers filed bills to
limit handgun purchases and require universal background checks, gun
owners packed local government chambers, demanding localities not
enforce any legislation they considered an infringement on their Second
Amendment rights.
Gov.
Ralph Northam, a Democrat, had placed Richmond under a state of
emergency prior to the event, saying the annual Virginia Citizens
Defense League lobby day and rally Monday — which was also Martin Luther
King Jr. Day — had drawn the attention of militia and out-of-state
groups who have come to “intimidate” and “cause harm."
He
banned weapons from statehouse grounds, and anyone who wanted to be on
Capitol Square had to pass through metal detectors and have their bags
searched, causing lengthy lines. Many protesters wore orange stickers
with the words “Guns SAVE Lives.”
Throughout
the morning, the overwhelmingly pro-gun crowd, many from out of state,
remained peaceful. There were only small groups of counter-protesters.
Officials estimated 6,000 people were inside Capitol square, with
another 16,000 outside the gates.
Only
one person, a 21-year-old woman, was arrested, according to officials
who ran the Twitter page VACapitol2020. She was charged with wearing a
mask in public after police asked her multiple times to adjust the
bandanna around her face.
Many of the participants left on charter buses by 2 p.m.
libertyblitzkrieg | Contrary to popular opinion, I think a loss of faith in Washington
D.C. and its institutions is entirely rational and healthy. Maintaining
faith in something due to tradition or the fumes of hope won’t lead to
anything productive, rather, it’s preferable to honestly assess the
reality of whatever situation you’re in and reorient your worldview and
priorities accordingly.
Whether the issue relates to above the law criminal bankers, a
Federal Reserve which systematically funnels free money to the already
wealthy and powerful, the societal dominance of free speech and
privacy-despising tech giant monopolies, or the national security
state’s undeclared forever wars for empire, there’s no good reason to
maintain any faith in the federal government and the oligarchs/special
interests who control it.
Philosophically speaking, I’ve come to conclude the only way to truly
have self-government where community life reflects the desires and
needs of the people who live there is by concentrating decision making
at the local level. I’ve become increasingly interested in the general
idea of localism not just because I agree with it in theory, but because
it seems more and more people will begin to gravitate toward this
perspective and life strategy out of necessity and frustration.
Rather than groveling to Washington D.C., grassroots movements should
focus more on the local level where community can be built and things
can get done to reflect the desires of the people living there. The
entire notion of a one-size fits all approach to virtually all aspects
of life dictated via laws passed by corrupt egomaniacs in the swamp is
certifiably deranged.
NYPost | Political figures have long used their families to route power and benefits for their own self-enrichment. In my new book, “Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite,”
one particular politician — Joe Biden — emerges as the king of the
sweetheart deal, with no less than five family members benefiting from
his largesse, favorable access and powerful position for commercial
gain. In Biden’s case, these deals include foreign partners and, in some
cases, even U.S. taxpayer dollars.
The Biden family’s apparent self-enrichment involves no less than
five family members: Joe’s son Hunter, son-in-law Howard, brothers James
and Frank, and sister Valerie.
When this subject came up in 2019, Biden declared, “I never talked
with my son or my brother or anyone else — even distant family — about
their business interests. Period.”
As we will see, this is far from the case…
oe Biden’s younger brother, James, has been an integral part of the
family political machine from the earliest days when he served as
finance chair of Joe’s 1972 Senate campaign, and the two have remained
quite close. After Joe joined the U.S. Senate, he would bring his
brother James along on congressional delegation trips to places like
Ireland, Rome and Africa.
When Joe became vice president, James was a welcomed guest at the
White House, securing invitations to such important functions as a state
dinner in 2011 and the visit of Pope Francis in 2015. Sometimes, James’
White House visits dovetailed with his overseas business dealings, and
his commercial opportunities flourished during his brother’s tenure as
vice president.
alt-market | In my article 'Trump Impeachment And The Civil War Scenario',
I warned that conservatives and leftists are being pushed to the brink
of a shooting war using various methods of social manipulation and 4th
Gen warfare, and that this conflict, if dictated by gatekeepers of the
false Left/Right paradigm, would only benefit establishment elites in
the long run. Internal division among the public is designed to keep us
at each other's throats while losing focus on the real enemies.
Hard line democrats and the social justice cult are merely a symptom
of the disease, they are not the source of the disease. However, I also
acknowledge that the rift between conservatives and the political left
has become so extreme that reconciliation is almost impossible. War
might be unavoidable, and the globalists love it. If they can pretend
like they had nothing to do with creating tensions, and if conservatives
are so blinded by anger against Democrats that they refuse to admit
that some of their own political leaders (including Trump) have been
co-opted, the elites win.
The danger in any civil war is that BOTH sides end up being
manipulated and controlled, and that the situation is maneuvered towards
an outcome that only serves the interests of a select few.
Virginia may be a test bed, a trial run for a nationwide
conflagration, and if it does hit a point where state officials compel a
violent response from the citizenry, then it is important that liberty
advocates remain vigilant and steer clear of incompetent or controlled
leaders. It is also important that they remember there is a much larger
agenda at play here; the Democrats may be useful idiots fueling that
agenda, but most of them are oblivious to their role. Our fight is not
with the Democrats, our fight is with the globalists that influence
them; the same globalists that are trying to influence us.
First and foremost we have to address the propaganda, because all
wars begin first in the public consciousness. The current situation in
Virginia remains a battle of political rhetoric and “fluid”
interpretations of the law. Here are the arguments I've seen from the
political left so far on the issue of 2nd Amendment Sanctuaries:
dcist | A planned gun rally in Richmond, Va. on Monday has prompted Governor Ralph Northam to declare a state of emergency
in the commonwealth’s capital, citing “credible intelligence” that many
of the demonstrators “may be armed, and have as their purpose not
peaceful assembly but violence, rioting, and insurrection.” Northam
instituted a temporary ban on firearms on State Capitol grounds in anticipation of the demonstration.
But he’s not the only Virginia politician fearful that the protests
slated for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in Richmond could result in a
dangerous clash like the fatal Charlottesville Unite the Right rally in 2017.
Facing a series of death threats, Manassas Delegate Lee Carter says
he will spend Monday at a safe house instead of the state house, as
first reported by Gen.
The threats against Carter—a Democratic Socialist
first elected in 2017—also show how an echo chamber of conspiracy
theories that begin as social media posts get laundered into mainstream
outlets like the Wall Street Journal, and can ultimately lead to real-world peril.
Monday’s rally is a tradition for the Virginia Citizens Defense
League, a pro-gun group that lobbies each year in Richmond on Martin
Luther King Jr. Day while bearing arms. But this year, a large number of
armed militia groups have pledged to join the rally. Northam tweeted
that “intelligence suggests militia groups and hate groups, some from
out of state, plan to come to the Capitol to disrupt our democratic
process with acts of violence.”
At least some of the people who say they’re coming have described it
as a “boogaloo,” a word used by the far-right to describe a violent
civil war, according to the Daily Beast.
This morning, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested three
suspected members of a neo-Nazi hate group who were considering going to
Virginia’s capital for the rally and had more than 1,500 rounds of
rifle ammunition, per prosecutors, the New York Times reported.
As these protesters get ready to descend on Richmond, Carter is
planning to be at an undisclosed location amid concerns over his safety.
“People were threatening to murder me and murder my family
over something I’m not even doing,” Carter tells DCist from Richmond on
Wednesday evening. “These threats are more hateful and more numerous
than anything I’ve seen before. I mean, I’m the only socialist elected
to a legislature in the south, so I do occasionally get waves of death
threats—about every two three months it’ll happen—but this one is far
larger and far more serious than anything I’ve seen before by orders of
magnitude.” Carter has reported the threats to the Virginia Capitol
Police.
Claude's constitution and other matters AI
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Ross Douthat, Is Claude Coding Us Into Irrelevance? *NYTimes*, 2.12.26.
Are the lords of artificial intelligence on the side of the human race?
That’s t...
Celebrating 113 years of Mama Rosa McCauley Parks
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*February 4, 1913 -- February 4, 2026*
*Some notes: The life of the courageous activist Mama Rosa McCauley Parks*
Mama Rosa's grandfather Sylvester Ed...
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Comet 3I/Atlas is on its way out on a hyberbolic course to, I don't know
where. I do know that 1I/Oumuamua is heading for the constellation Pegasus,
and ...
Remembering the Spanish Civil War
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This year marks the 90th anniversary of the launch of the Spanish Civil
War, an epoch-defining event for the international working class, whose
close study...
Return of the Magi
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Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
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(Damn, has it been THAT long? I don't even know which prompts to use to
post this)
SeeNew
Can't get on your site because you've gone 'invite only'?
Man, ...
First Member of Chumph Cartel Goes to Jail
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With the profligate racism of the Chumph Cartel, I don’t imagine any of
them convicted and jailed is going to do too much better than your run of
the mill ...
