NEW YORK SUN: The Wages of Inflation.

Today’s high inflation means salaries aren’t keeping pace with the growth in prices. “Real wages” — salaries minus price increases — are actually in negative territory, Federal Reserve data show. For November, real wages, far from rising, were down 2.3 percent from last year. No wonder the Deere workforce held out for big raises. They need them just to break even as household expenses keep rising. It calls to mind the old adage: Inflation is the silent thief.

“A vicious cycle of expectations,” is how economist Judy Shelton recently put it. As she explains it, employees are demanding raises to be able to afford products on store shelves. Companies in turn have to raise prices to pay the higher salaries. Yet the wage increases are being offered by companies without any boost in productivity in return from the workforce. That’s a recipe for the so-called stagflation that plagued the American economy in the 1970s.

Beating stagflation required political heroics by President Reagan and the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker. It was “a triumph of economic policy,” Robert Samuelson recently wrote. “Volcker imposed a ferocious credit squeeze, and Reagan supported this wildly unpopular policy.” Interest rates soared to 21 percent. Unemployment spiked at more than 10 percent. Bankruptcies ensued. “The triumph over inflation was bought at a huge personal and social cost,” Mr. Samuelson writes.

It’s hard to imagine any politician today able to take the heat for such an economic course.

Plus, Paul Volcker’s warning: “Don’t let inflation get ingrained … there’s too much agony in stopping the momentum.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: I’m sure that there is.

PARTS OF AMERICA STILL WORK: SpaceX launches Falcon 9 rocket on record 11th flight carrying 52 Starlink satellites. “With its record 11th flight in the books, the Falcon 9 booster is SpaceX’s most-flown rocket yet.”

BLUE FLU: Seattle police ‘Unavailable’ list grows, city an emergency event away from catastrophe.

Earlier: Nearly 20 Percent Of Seattle Police Force Quits Following Defunding And Black Lives Matter Riots.

THE UALR LAW ADMINISTRATION IS HAVING A BAD YEAR, AND DESERVES IT: ADL supports professor.

I’ll bet good folks at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and its Bowen School of Law continue yanking out handfuls of hair after months of contention over a law school professorship named for former governor and President Bill Clinton until faculty questions canceled those plans.

More recently, the failure to support the religious needs of Jewish law professor Rob Steinbuch has also made headlines.

And last week, a leading official with the Anti-Defamation League wrote Bowen Law School Dean Theresa Beiner, along with the leadership of the University of Arkansas and UALR, a strongly worded letter over the dean’s handling of Steinbuch’s religious rights in his classrooms.

Beiner, who also clashed with Steinbuch over the professorship quietly named after Clinton, objected to Steinbuch’s using a guest speaker to address his classes while he was participating in Jewish holidays, which he had done without conflict in previous years.

Contention over the matter made news and was addressed in my column, which apparently wound up directing the ADL’s attention to Steinbuch’s situation. “They read about it in a link to your column and responded from that,” Steinbuch said.

I had no idea my written words from here in Harrison had that kind of range.

In his letter, Aaron Ahlquist, the Director of Policy for the ADL’s Southern Division, said he was writing about Beiner’s role in accommodating Steinbuch’s request to observe Jewish High Holidays.

Ahlquist began by explaining how the ADL was founded in 1913 in response to an escalating climate of antisemitism and bigotry.

Well, nowadays antisemitism and bigotry are mostly to be found in institutions of higher learning. But wait, there’s more:

State Sen. Jason Rapert, a candidate for lieutenant governor who chairs the Senate’s State Agencies Committee, also sent me strong words about the treatment Steinbuch received.

“People who work and serve in the public sector expect that they will be treated as fairly as anyone could ever hope to be treated in our state and nation,” said Rapert.

“The ongoing targeted harassment of Dr. Steinbuch due to his conservative beliefs and willingness to be outspoken on issues of concern is bad enough. But to read that he has suffered insults and punitive actions related to his desire to observe the Jewish high holy days is over the line and must not be tolerated.

“The Arkansas Senate State Agencies committee has already heard testimony about the hostile work environment Dr. Steinbuch has had to endure. I call upon the leadership of UALR and the U of A system president to get to the bottom of all this at once. They should be able to address this and restore fairness for all concerned.

“It’s an embarrassment and mark on the reputation of UALR that Dr. Steinbuch has endured what amounts to actions that one could argue are antisemitic. Dr. Steinbuch and the people of Arkansas deserve much better,” added Rapert, who also is the founder and president of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers.

The Dean’s politics of petty revenge seem to be backfiring, and that’s good.

BUILD BACK BUNGLE: Major fail: Just 38% back BBB, only 62% Democrats. “As Democrats scramble to save President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion Build Back Better spend-and-tax plan, more voters are sending a signal that it’s time to cut bait and move on. In the latest gauge of the slumping support for the controversial leg of Biden’s social welfare agenda, Rasmussen Reports said Friday morning that just 38% of likely voters support BBB. Another 45% are opposed. What’s more, Democrats are bailing on the program. The pollster found that just 62% of Democrats ‘support’ the plan that spreads money across several social welfare issues.”

CIVIL ASSET FORFEITURE: Police Oversight Board Demands Answers After Dallas Cops Seized Traveler’s Cash. “Now a member of the city’s oversight board is demanding answers. ‘What I want to know are: What are the rules? And did this woman break them?’ Brandon Friedman, a member of Dallas’s Community Police Oversight Board, said to a local CBS affiliate. He added: ‘It’s not my business why someone’s carrying $100,000 at the airport unless it’s illegal, and from everything we’ve seen it doesn’t seem to be.’”

GREAT GIFT: Atomic Bear Paracord Bracelet (2 Pack) – Adjustable – Fire Starter – Loud Whistle – Perfect for Hiking, Camping, Fishing and Hunting – Black & Black+Orange. #CommissionEarned

CHANGE: Growing Number of Companies and Organizations Are Walking Back Vaccination Requirements. “A range of businesses and institutions have begun scaling back vaccination requirements as the Biden administration’s mandates get tied up in court, retrenching out of fear of losing members and employees who refuse to comply.”

Irish democracy works.

Related: It’s time to abolish ‘emergency’ COVID-19 powers.

PORTLAND MORPHED INTO DETROIT SO SLOWLY, I HARDLY EVEN NOTICED:

Shot: The Tragedy of Portland: ‘It’s a Ghost Town, Except for Zombies.’

For seven months, Dylan Carrico Rogers slept in his bike shop with a shotgun. TriTech Bikes, located in the Montavilla neighborhood of northeast Portland, Ore., where Rogers grew up, had been battered by three break-ins, two nearby shootings, and countless instances of vandalism. Portland’s serially understaffed police force was nowhere to be found. And in the face of $25,000 of stolen bike parts, TriTech’s insurance company was ready to jump ship. “They said, ‘if you claim another one, we’re just gonna drop you,’” Rogers told National Review. “So I’m paying $1,200 every three months to be told that I have to replace [everything] on my own dime. And then at the same time, the cops don’t show up. So we’re just in a free-for-all.”

The lifelong Portland resident finally packed up and left in August. By that point, he said, the building landlord “told me that it wasn’t worth it anymore.” The graffiti, property damage, constant break-ins, and unattended-to police reports were just no longer worth the investment. “He tore up a three-year lease. The building’s vacant now,” Rogers said. The gloomy metropolis of 660,000, perched at the northwestern tip of Oregon, is not quite the anarchic dystopia that it is occasionally made out to be in some corners of conservative media. But in the wake of spasms of political violence, a slashed law-enforcement budget, a wave of early police retirements, and punitive lockdown measures that have devastated small businesses such as TriTech, it’s inching ever closer to genuine lawlessness.

This is the Portland way of life. “You have people that are just blatantly taking advantage of the fact that there are no police officers,” Rogers said. “I mean, this has spread everywhere now. It’s not just the Portland bike shops. Grocery-store workers are getting attacked, because we have drug addicts that are literally walking in and doing these blitz raids.”

—National Review, yesterday.

Chaser:

In their years at the Tailwind, the Aboud brothers have never been held up—a record that Aboud attributes to the family’s honest business practices and its militance. “When we caught shoplifters we never used to call the cops,” said Aboud, preferring the past tense. “We took care of things in our own way. If somebody killed my brother, I’d get even, that’s the type of family we are. People who think we’re crazy are right—we are crazy. But we don’t look for trouble. We’ve got a friendly store. Come over any night and you’ll see.”

The following Friday I took him up on his offer. After all the horror stories I had heard, I was surprised by the relaxed atmosphere in the Tailwind. Customers, mostly black, bantered with Aboud and his brother Mike, exchanging neighborhood gossip. John Aboud flirted amiably with several of the young women and they flirted back. Over the cash register there were snapshots of kids from the block.

After each customer left, Aboud provided me with a thumbnail biography. Some were solid working people, but many were drug addicts or dealers, teenage mothers and ex-cons. Each story was told in a flat, nonjudgmental way. Aboud is a merchant, not a missionary, and he accepts the foibles and weaknesses of human nature philosophically.

Aboud’s tolerance has not impaired his vigilance, however, and the Tailwind’s security system could be fairly characterized as forbidding. The front door has a permanent squeak, to let the brothers know when someone comes in. They work behind a thick shield of bullet-resistant glass (Aboud told me that when they come out from behind it, they wear bulletproof vests) and on the shelf behind the counter there was a small arsenal: a .44 Magnum, a 9-millimeter pistol, and a couple of AR 15 semiautomatic assault rifles—tools of the shopkeeper’s trade in Detroit.

—Devil’s Night: And Other True Tales of Detroit, Zev Chafets, 1990.

THIS DOESN’T FIT THE NARRATIVE: South Africa Hospitalization Rate Plunges in Omicron Wave.

BEN SHAPIRO: The Death of California.

It is strange, however, to see the language of sanctuary adopted to protect precisely the sort of activity abhorred by anyone of religious bent: abortion. The secular sacrament of abortion has become so sacred, however, that the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, recently announced his intent to make his state the first abortion sanctuary in the nation. “We’ll be a sanctuary,” Newsom announced. “We are looking at ways to support that inevitability and looking at ways to expand our protections.”

The state of California, according to Newsom’s Democratic legislative allies, could provide travel expenses including gas, lodging, transportation and child care for those seeking to kill their unborn children. Already, some 15% of America’s abortions occur in California, according to the Guttmacher Institute. That number would skyrocket if the state began subsidizing abortions across the land.

None of this is particularly surprising. It is telling, however, that as California sinks into the mire, it embraces ever more radical social policy. This is a state that currently houses — no pun intended — some 162,000 homeless people, a number that increased approximately 24% from 2018 to 2020. About a quarter of all homeless people in the United States currently reside in California.

Meanwhile, crime in California has become endemic, with smash-and-grabs roiling major cities and even wealthy residents murdered in their homes. This week, the head of the Los Angeles police union, Jamie McBride, warned people to stay out of the city, explaining, “We can’t guarantee your safety. It is really, really out of control.” Even former LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa laments, “Rome is burning.”

How bad has California gotten under Newsom? This bad: Jerry Brown tells the L.A. Fox affiliate, “You’ve heard about the redistribution of wealth. We need a redistribution of incarceration! You go steal a car or something…you got to spend some time!”

RAND SIMBERG: How Starship Changes Everything: Cheapness isn’t just about rockets — it will change the design of everything we send up.

THE KOWTOW CROWD: Joel Kotkin: Western greed fuels China’s domination: Our oligarchs prostrate themselves for profit.

THEY DON’T LOOK LIKE MAGA TYPES TO ME:

Story here:

The suspects allegedly targeted Asian women exclusively, according to the Santa Clara DA, and had a pattern of attacking women walking alone to their cars.

In the wave of attacks on Asian Americans since the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, the attacks on Asian seniors stand out as particularly offensive. But a prosecutor needs an ironclad case with proof to win a hate crime conviction, and must settle the question — did the attacker really choose the victim because of their Asian heritage? Or is it just that older people are easier marks, and easier to overpower?

On Wednesday, the Santa Clara District Attorney’s Office announced hate crime charges against six suspects in 70 crimes after a sprawling year-long investigation, according to the Bay Area News Group. And it definitely appears that yes, some of the most prolific attackers do specifically target Asian women, often seniors. They know this because according to the DA’s evidence, “ethnic slurs were allegedly used against some of the women,” and “the men allegedly targeted Asian women because they believed [Asians] ‘don’t use banks’ and would be carrying cash.”

They should have been carrying, period. But remember how the claim was that Trump’s blaming the Chinese government was going to lead racist white people to go after Asians in America? Yeah, this is what’s really happening.

OPEN THREAD: Make no mistake about it, but things ain’t what they seem.

IN UNRELATED NEWS, NICHOLAS SANDMANN JUST BOUGHT AN ISLAND:

UPDATE: Heh:

SPACE: NASA’s Perseverance rover finds organic chemicals on Mars.

IT’S ALSO WHERE THEY STRIKE: It’s Not Actually Size That Determines How Deadly a Meteor Is. “Using this new method for assessing the mineral content of the meteorite ejecta blankets, we show that every time a meteorite, big or small, hits rocks rich in potassium feldspar it correlates with a mass extinction event.”

Plus: “Feldspars are aluminum-silicate rocks, crystallized from magma, making up around 60 percent of Earth’s crust. Potassium feldspar is common in many soils, and unlike other substances smashed into our atmosphere during these meteor impacts – like acid rain causing hydrocarbons – it is a safe and un-reactive chemical. However, potassium feldspar is a powerful ice-nucleating aerosol – meaning it can massively alter cloud composition.”

WILL COURTS SHUTTER PELOSI’S J6 SELECT COMMITTEE? Suits by Meadows, Eastman and four White House rally staffers all point to multiple ways House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol is violating its legislative authorization.

THIS IS WHY THOSE ENCOURAGING THE CROSSINGS SHOULD BE HELD RESPONSIBLE: Study: Migrants crossing US-Mexico border subject to dehydration, death.

I mean, you don’t really need a study to find that crossing a desert can lead to dehydration and death, but. . .

ANTI-COP HATE EVEN REACHES PUPPIES: Kansas police officer’s puppy beheaded in ‘targeted’ attack.

WHAT DID SOCIALISTS USE BEFORE CANDLES? ELECTRICITY! WHAT DID SOCIALISTS USE BEFORE SAILS? DIESEL ENGINES!

OH, THAT WAR ON CHRISTMAS: Frat house cannot hang its own Christmas wreath, university insists.

XFINITY BLOCKING CUSTOMER ACCESS TO EPOCH TIMES WEB SITE: The Epoch Times techies are telling the newsroom that Xfinity is blocking customers from opening the news web site, as well as the backend editing functions. Any Instapundit readers encountering this problem? If you are, please call Xfinity and RAISE HOLY HELL!

Update (from Steve): For what it’s worth, I’m on Xfinity and can’t get Epoch Times to load. But it loads just fine on cellular when I turn my phone’s wifi off.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): It’s working fine for me, on both Xfinity and Starlink.

UPDATE: Works for me if I go through Verizon via Hotspot.

UPDATE: Turns out it really does appear to be a Stackpath connectivity problem. Thanks to Instapundit reader Ron. I shared that info with Xfinity customer service and they then confirmed it. Stackpath doesn’t at this moment know the root cause.

UPDATE: Xfinity is again accessing the Epoch Times web site. Still no official word on what happened to block access for much of the afternoon and into the late evening.