IN THE MAIL: From Sean Flynn, The Cure That Works: How to Have the World’s Best Health Care — at a Quarter of the Price.
Archive for 2020
June 23, 2020
IT’S A HIGHLY VALUABLE BRAND BUILT ON SLAVERY: #CancelYale trended nationwide after conservatives pointed out that Yale’s founder was a slave trader.
Related: Roger Kimball: Canceling Yale: By all means, rename the Ivy League university founded on the riches of a slave-trader. But replace it with a more honorable name. “I think an example should be made of corrupt institutions like Yale and craven leaders like Peter Salovey, the university’s president.”
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Biden Agrees to Leave the Basement for 3 Debates With Trump and I Might Die From #Popcorn. “On his best days right now, Joe Biden is barely there. Many people don’t want to touch on this because they believe it’s all about a rapid cognitive decline. I truly believe that Biden has always been like this and people didn’t notice it because he wasn’t about to waltz into the Oval Office.”
Biden was never good, but he’s gotten so much worse.
ARE ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY THAT DIFFERENT? Well, yes, according to philosopher Kenneth Samples, the world’s two major religions share some superficial similarities, but peer a tiny bit below the surfaces and they are like night and day, on two different planets, in separate universes, occupying opposite dimensions. Did I mention they aren’t alike?
CHANGE: Apple announces switch from Intel to its own silicon chip in future Macs.
Intel won’t miss the Mac very much since Apple only sells about 16-20 million desktop and laptop computers a year. And Intel’s big moneymakers are server-class Xeon CPUs, which represent a small fraction of total Macs sold.
But it is telling that Apple has grown frustrated enough with Intel’s roadmap delays and fabrication issues that they’re putting the Mac through yet another platform change.
MAYBE THAT’S WHY DEMOCRATS LOVE IT: Michael Barone: Violent crime is a confiscatory wealth tax.
As for residential real estate, despite open housing laws and the dispersion of many blacks into non-black-majority neighborhoods, most American blacks still live in majority-black neighborhoods with higher rates of violent crime than other neighborhoods. Violent crime depresses housing values.
How much? Not just marginally. The gap that Mead cites, $117,000 median wealth for whites and just $11,700 for blacks, is not dissimilar to the gap in housing values for similar structures between many black neighborhoods in Detroit (to take one example) and one of its modest-income largely white suburbs. Compare Zillow values for Roseville in Macomb County ($119,331) to, just a couple of miles away, Detroit ZIP code 48234 ($27,541).
“Violence and crime are a confiscatory tax on what people would otherwise earn and accumulate over a lifetime,” I wrote in a Washington Examiner column earlier this month. It is a fact, tragic and regrettable, that blacks are much more likely than non-blacks to commit violent crimes, and violent crime rates in heavily black neighborhoods tend to be much higher than average. It’s also a very costly problem because homebuyers are simply not willing to spend as much money (and to invest as much in what may be their greatest opportunity for wealth accumulation) on houses in neighborhoods with violent crime rates 10 times or 15 times higher than the alternatives.
To be sure, the sharp reduction in violent crime rates since 1990 has increased the housing values in heavily black neighborhoods, thus increasing wealth accumulation by black Americans over that period. Further reductions in violent crime rates could go some distance toward enabling black Americans to accumulate wealth and perhaps narrow the wealth gap that Mead describes.
Increasing violent crime rates, one possible result of the Black Lives Matter protests, violent rioting, and consequent police reticence, could have the opposite effect, as it did after the violent rioting of half a century ago.
Black livelihoods matter.
AT AMAZON, Deal of the Day, Invicta Men’s 8926OB Pro Diver Stainless Steel Automatic Watch with Link Bracelet.
COMING SOON FROM KURT SCHLICHTER: The 21 Biggest Lies about Donald Trump (and you!).
J.K. ROWLING’S LITERARY AGENCY LETS CLIENTS LEAVE RATHER THAT MEET THEIR DEMAND TO ‘RE-EDUCATE’ THEIR STAFF: “Now this is what adulting looks like…saying no to entitled bullies who threaten you comply with their demands.”
IF YOU WEAR RACIST LENSES, EVERYTHING LOOKS LIKE RACISM TO YOU: There’s a reason far-left advocate Shaun King’s declaration about destroying all those stained-glass windows of “white Jesus” should come as no surprise. Sooner or later, Christianity always becomes a target.
HE KNEW THIS WAS COMING OUT, THAT’S WHY HE JUST TOOK TWO MONTHS “VACATION.” Jimmy Kimmel used ‘N-word’ in imitation Snoop song in 1996, impersonated comic George Wallace in 2013.
THESE VISAS HAVE BEEN WIDELY ABUSED: Donald Trump Bars H1B, L-1 Visas Till 2020 End, Tech CEOs Slam Move. And given that the Tech CEOs have basically declared open war on Trump and his supporters, I can’t imagine their complaints will have much effect.
UPDATE: From the comments: “Hey tech nerds – The Donald is doing more for you than your bosses ever will.”
THEY HAVE TO PASS THE BILL TO SEE WHAT’S IN IT: Full draft of Hong Kong national security law will only be made public after it is passed by China’s top legislative body.
ISSUES AND INSIGHTS: Coronavirus Cases Are Climbing Again. So What?
For one thing the Centers for Disease Control has long predicted that coronavirus cases would increase as the country reopened, for the simple reason that the lockdowns were never intended to stop the spread of the disease, only to slow it down. Remember? Flatten the curve?
The point of the lockdown was to give the country the time to ramp up testing, look for treatments, and increase medical supplies. By curbing the spread, health officials could more readily identify hotspots and conduct contact tracing, and the health care system could cope with any increase in demand. Which, as Kudlow points out, is exactly what’s happening now.
What’s more, the increase in coronavirus cases matters only if they are going up faster than expected, and whether this is resulting in a second wave of deaths.
Neither of those appears to be true.
Well, good.
UPDATE: Alarmed by spiking coronavirus numbers? Here’s why officials insist they aren’t worried.
ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE: The Oldest Hatred Rears Its Head: This week in media anti-Semitism.
I’M TIRED OF BEING PLAYED FOR A SUCKER: Tech Company Tied to China Cashes in on Small Business Relief. “Ideanomics, a U.S.-based tech company founded by Chinese billionaire Bruno Wu, was valued at more than $50 million based in part on its collaboration with Chinese provincial governments and state-owned enterprises dating back to its 2017 founding. The company, which specializes in financial technology and electric cars, collected $400,000 in forgivable loans from the taxpayer-funded Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) designed to aid small businesses hurt by the coronavirus, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.”
Presumably, Joe Biden is fine with these kinds of mistakes.