EARLIER PRESS SCRUTINY OF ITS RATHER EXTREME CLAIMS MIGHT HAVE HELPED, BUT THE COVERAGE WAS ALL ABOUT THE GLORY OF A WOMAN-FOUNDED FIRM: When Its Employee Blew the Whistle, Theranos Was Out for Blood: Mind-boggling VC funding and influential board members appear to have created a company prepared to do anything but admit defeat.
Archive for 2016
November 18, 2016
THE ONE-CHILD POLICY HAS BEEN A DEBACLE: With Fertility Rate in China Low, Some Press to Legalize Births Outside Marriage.
The Singapore government has deployed financial incentives and even Mentos mints to increase births. In Russia, more money in mothers’ pension accounts and “Conception Day,” with time off from work, have helped. Be it Germany or Japan, state-paid bonuses aim to amplify the patter of little feet in homes amid sagging fertility rates.
Not in China. The government’s powerful family-planning apparatus still fines married couples who have more than two children and women who give birth out of wedlock, despite a looming demographic crisis in the country.
Findings from a 2015 government census show that the average Chinese woman has 1.05 children — a legacy of the one-child policy that changed on Jan. 1 to a two-child policy. It is the lowest fertility rate in the world, according to People’s Daily, the main newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party.
The fines, known as social maintenance fees, can run up to tens of thousands of dollars and close an avenue to increase birthrates, critics say.
“Especially with these falling birthrates, the right thing to do would be to allow single women to have children,” Wu Youshui, a lawyer in Hangzhou who specializes in reproductive issues, said in an interview.
“But in fact, they’re still fining people,” he said. “A lot. People see it and don’t understand why.”
When Philip Longman wrote his Global Baby Bust piece over a decade ago, a lot of people laughed. Not so much, now.
ENTREPRENEURS TO TRUMP: Don’t take away our Obamacare.
The President-elect’s promise to repeal Obamacare next year has left these small business owners fearful that they will have to dismantle everything they’ve worked for and return to the corporate sector just to remain insured.
The Obama administration is also playing up Obamacare’s role in entrepreneurship as it seeks to promote the health reform law’s importance to Americans.
“We’re hearing from consumers who value the protections that [the Affordable Care Act] brings, but also about the economic freedom that the coverage has given them,” said Andy Slavitt, acting administrator at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees Obamacare.
War is peace. Ignorance is strength. Freedom is mandates.
The U.S. business formation rate — i.e., entrepreneurship — has been on the decline for 40 years, and business startups by the 20-34 demographic fell off the cliff the year after ObamaCare was signed into law.
AT AMAZON, STEM Toys for smart kids.
THAT ’70S SHOW: Inflation is Coming… And Here’s Why.
It’s important to note that it’s only a matter of time before the end of the global PPI deflation cycle feeds into US prices and boosts the CPI. While the media has all but ignored this South Korean PPI chart, it’s a rather significant development. Goods deflation in the US is coming to an end.
While the dollar rally will continue creating a drag on US inflation, the dollar wasn’t the main culprit of disinflationary pressures over the past couple of years. Inflation fell sharply around the world – even in countries whose currencies didn’t strengthen. Many point to deflation being “imported” from Asia, particularly China. And now China’s (and South Korea’s) wholesale deflation, which has been in place since 2012, is finally over.
That’s why US inflation expectations continue to move higher.
The Fed has tried unsuccessfully for a decade to induce inflation. Now that the beast is finally escaping, that very same Fed thinks they can keep it tame enough to give us just the “right amount” of inflation.
I HAVE A NEW SHORT PIECE ON THE SECOND AMENDMENT: Permissible Negligence and Campaigns to Suppress Rights. It’s about the effort to suppress gun rights via lawsuits, and the legislative response. Download it early and often!
FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: Navy says it won’t buy any more $800,000 shells for new destroyer. “Defense News, quoting an unnamed Navy official, broke the story that the long-range shells for the newest U.S. Navy destroyer, named after Vietnam-era Chief of Naval Operations Elmo R. Zumwalt, are too expensive at $800,000 each, and no more will be purchased. That makes the stealthy ship, still more than a year from deployment as a weapons system, unable to do some of its primary missions: softening up beachheads for Marine landings and taking out inland terror-training camps.”
These things are the F-35 of the seas. Maybe we need a different approach.
MEDIA THAT CHAMPIONED JON STEWART now suddenly concerned with “Fake News.”
Oh, and by the way, that “Fake News” study is itself . . . Fake News.
SHOT: Pentagon plagiarized Wikipedia in report to Congress.
CHASER: Will Trump really purge Obama’s generals?
We can certainly hope so.
USA TODAY EDITORIALIZES AGAINST STUN-GUN BANS: Not only are the devices protected by the 2nd Amendment, but there is a public safety case.
ISLAMIC STATE CHEMICAL WARFARE IN IRAQ AND SYRIA: This is an AFP report. Here’s the allegation: The “…Islamic State group may have manufactured sulphur mustard gas used in attacks in Syria and Iraq.”
More:
Samples analysed by experts with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons “suggest that this substance may have been produced by ISIS itself,” the body’s director general Ahmet Uzumcu said, adding it was of “poor quality but still harmful” and the development was “extremely worrying”.
Mustard really isn’t a gas– it’s a blister agent. Ugly stuff.
YOU WENT FULL SJW, MAN. NEVER GO FULL SJW. ESPN Admits They Mistreat Conservatives, And It’s Killing Their Ratings.
CHANGE: This Ohio Town Voted For Obama By Huge Margins. Then It Flipped To Trump.
Surely racism is to blame… somehow.
BRUCE THORNTON: The Nationalist Revival.
RADIO FREE EUROPE: Another Balkan intrigue. A coup to prevent Montenegro from joining NATO? That’s what Montenegrin prosecutors allege. Two Russians organized it.
Prosecutors on November 18 identified the two Russians as Eduard Shirokov and Vladimir Popov and accused them of organizing a criminal group with the aim of murdering Djukanovic and inciting a coup in order to prevent the country from joining NATO.
Read the entire article. It’s short. Note Montenegro’s pro-Russian opposition says the charges are fabricated.
MILITARY EXPERTS: Trump Defense Spending Plans Would Break the Budget.
Over 18 months of campaign stops, stump speeches, and debates, President-elect Donald Trump rarely detailed his plans for the U.S. military, other than pledging to use it as a blunt object to hammer the Islamic State and other foreign extremist groups that threaten the United States.
But there is much more to his national security vision, and it involves tens of thousands of new troops, dozens of ships and hundreds of warplanes. Defense experts said the plans would cost almost $100 billion more than the Pentagon has currently budgeted for Trump’s first term, an amount that would require Congress to change laws setting budget caps for the Pentagon.
Still unknown, however, is where that money would come from, given Trump’s other plans to slash taxes while keeping many entitlement programs intact and also embarking on a $1 trillion infrastructure improvement program.
“I see big deficits in our future,” said long-time budget analyst Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Military spending as a share of GDP is at or near post-WWII lows — and shrinking. Washington tax revenues are approaching $3.5 trillion annually, yet 2017 is still expected to see a half a trillion dollar deficit, even without increasing military spending.
Social Security spending now dwarfs military spending, and health care and Medicare combined make up an even larger fraction of the budget. “Income Security” spending has also eclipsed the Pentagon’s budget, minus warfighting expenses for “Overseas Contingency Operations,” in Obama-speak.
Military spending isn’t busting the budget, and wouldn’t under Trump’s plan, either. Entitlement spending is far larger (in nominal dollars and as a percentage of GDP) than it was during the Great Depression — and growing, endlessly. This is despite seven-plus years of “recovery” purchased from future generations for the low, low price of $9 trillion in new debt, and trillions more in Federal Reserve funny money.
The choice used to be between guns and butter. Today the choice is between butter and avoiding national ruin.