Archive for 2022

CBS GOES OUT ON A LIMB: One thing the Inflation Reduction Act may not do: Lower inflation.

The Inflation Reduction Act is aimed at tackling a host of problems, from climate change to catching tax cheats, but there’s one issue it may not solve: reducing inflation.

That’s the conclusion of the Penn Wharton Budget Model, a group of economists and data scientists at University of Pennsylvania who analyze public policies to predict their economic and fiscal impacts. Its analysis, published Friday, comes as inflation remains near a 40-year high, crimping the budgets of consumers and businesses alike.

The Inflation Reduction Act would invest nearly $400 billion in energy security and climate change proposals, aimed at reducing carbon emissions by approximately 40% by 2030. It also would allow Medicare to negotiate with drugmakers on prescription prices, and would limit out-of-pocket drug expenses for seniors to $2,000 annually. The bill also directs $80 billion in funding to the IRS, aimed at helping the underfunded agency hire more auditors and beef up its customer service and technology.

But the impact on inflation “is statistically indistinguishable from zero,” the Penn Wharton Budget Model said on Friday.

As the man promised voters in 2020, “Milton Friedman isn’t running the show anymore.”

Related: About That ‘Inflation Reduction Act…’

Even the House of Stephanopoulos isn’t buying the Biden administration’s spin:

ROGER KIMBALL: David Brooks is very worried the FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago helps Trump.

It’s things like pursuing policies that make America energy-independent, enforcing immigration laws so successfully that illegal immigration is slowed to a trickle. It’s pursuing economic policies—slashing taxes, sharply reducing regulations that are merely burdensome—that lead to the lowest unemployment rates in decades or in history for minority workers, who also saw real wages rise at their quickest rate ever. It’s defanging “corrupt,” “malevolent,” “partisan” diktats like Title IX rules in colleges and “woke” ideology in the military. It’s insisting that our NATO allies act like allies and pay their agreed-upon fees to support the organization. It’s also making symbolic gestures like moving our Israeli embassy to Jerusalem where it belongs, and formulating the Abraham Accords, a world-historical foreign policy achievement in the Middle East.

I could go on. But I don’t want to stand in the way of David Brooks’ main point, which is to lament that Trump’s narrative, such as it is, has suddenly been goosed by the FBI, which, acting on a wide-ranging warrant that Merrick Garland personally approved, raided Mar-a-Lago, rummaged through Melania’s personal wardrobe, and carted off some 11 boxes of documents that have been variously described as classified presidential documents (just think of Hillary Clinton’s 30,000 emails, some of Barack Obama’s papers, etc.) and “nuclear secrets.” (One wag wondered whether there was a video of Trump peeing on nuclear codes with Russian prostitutes, but that probably came from Christopher Steele.)

The entire episode has put David Brooks in a bind. On the one hand, he would love to see Donald Trump taken away in handcuffs and indicted. On the other, the FBI’s actions have galvanized conservative, and even Republican, support for Trump. It has also got people thinking that America’s premier law enforcement agency is, well, “corrupt,” “malevolent,” “partisan,” and “acting in bad faith.”

Overnight, support for Trump, already strong, surged. Brooks quoted a reporter for Politico: The FBI’s action “completely handed him a lifeline,” he said. “It put everybody in the wagon for Trump again. It’s just taken the wind out of everybody’s sails.” Imagine that. Organize a “corrupt,” “malevolent,” “partisan,” and “acting in bad faith” raid by the secret police against a political opponent and people don’t like it! What is the world coming to?

Why, it’s as if: David Brooks Created Donald Trump.

GOODER AND HARDER, SAN FRANCISCO: San Francisco’s $20K trash cans. “This is yet another scene that could have been taken straight out of the movie Idiocracy. The prototypes are being placed out on the streets and they cost up to $20,000 each. But don’t worry. Whichever model is eventually selected will only cost $3,000 each when they go into mass production. The city is looking to replace 3,000 existing trash cans, so it shouldn’t run much more than nine million dollars. For trash cans. The city is also looking at some off-the-shelf models that range in cost from $630 to $2,800.”

ITS ORIGIN AND PURPOSE, STILL A TOTAL MYSTERY: Investigators Hunt for Motivation and Movements of Man Accused in Rushdie Attack.

Entirely unrelated: Iranian media outlets praise Salman Rushdie stabbing.

Iranian news outlets celebrated the stabbing of author Salman Rushdie as the hospitalized writer fights for his life.

Rushdie, who was stabbed in the neck, is unable to speak and on a ventilator. The man accused of attacking Rushdie has been charged with attempted murder in the second degree along with second degree assault, prosecutors said Saturday.

While there has been no official response from the Iranian government, media outlets in the country rejoiced at the attempted assassination.

Mister, we could use a man like Christopher Hitchens again:

 

 

SAN FRANCISCO DJ BIG RICK STUART: Toy Camera Black and White Photography.

Lots of people took up new hobbies during Covid. I decided to expand my photography skills (and gear) to explore both digital and film. It has been fun and I have had to learn a lot of new vocabulary coming from a Point and Shoot Olympus TG-4 to a Sony a6400.

I also got an old Olympus OM-1 film camera out of the garage and bought a small plastic toy 35mm camera – the RETO Project Ultra Wide & Slim. It is just $30, easy to use, and easy to carry around. Buy it in the US at B&H Photo here.

These are some shots from the Black Stallion Winery in Napa. I was on a bicycle ride so I took the Ultra Wide & Slim loaded with Derev Pan 100 B&W film from the Film Photography Project. They describe it as Hand-rolled into 36 exposure cartridges, Film Photography Project’s new and spectacular panchromatic BW film line DEREV is named after the forests of Ukraine, it’s country of origin as a scientific aerial photographic film.

A panchromatic mylar-based BW film with good exposure latitude and extremely sharp fine grain.

The photos look great — but personally, as with the reemergence in record players, having spent many hours in the darkroom, I have no desire to go back to the future.

ROGER KIMBALL: A Token of the Managerial Age Bewails Trump’s Surge: David Brooks is very worried the FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago helps Trump.

The reason, by the way, my friend’s words about Merrick Garland were “delighted” was because of the huge, if inadvertent, boost the attorney general has just given to Donald Trump’s political prospects.

Monday’s FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Palm Beach residence, was probably the single biggest boon to his stature among voters since he left office in January 2021, bigger even than the partisan witch hunt over which future CNN hostess, Liz Cheney, has been presiding with such ostentatious zeal.

This is obviously a concern among the beautiful, well-pressed people with white collars and clean fingernails who hate Trump. Employing a ju-ju they recognize but do not understand, Trump has time and again demonstrated an uncanny ability to goad his would-be attackers into contortions of self-immolation.

Is that happening now? Maybe. My friend thinks so, hence his buoyant mood and affectionate feelings about the attorney general.

A lot of other people think so, too, though for many the apparently rising fortunes of Donald Trump are not something to celebrate but something to abominate. A good example of the latter was just provided by David Brooks, successfully housebroken faux-conservative columnist for our former paper of record, the New York Times.

Related: How David Brooks Created Donald Trump.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Top progressive activist says student debt cancelation isn’t up for debate.

Turner has no obligation to debate me. Maybe she thinks I’m not worth her time. She does have far more followers than I do, to be fair.

But as it turns out, she’s actually unwilling to debate anyone on this subject.

That’s simply unhinged.

Student debt cancelation means spending trillions of the American people’s tax money to pay off the bills of a relatively affluent slice of society. One study even found it would benefit the top 20% six times more than the bottom 20%. It’s a regressive taxpayer bailout.

So, it’s little wonder that this proposal is unpopular with voters. Full student debt cancelation—Turner’s position—is supported by just 37% of the public, NPR polling finds.

That’s right: More than 6 in 10 Americans disagree with Turner’s proposal. But she nonetheless thinks it’s beyond debate, because it’s a question of “human rights” and “people shouldn’t profit from knowledge.”

It’s particularly funny to see Turner claim that there’s no place for profit in education. She is a professor, according to her Twitter bio. I wonder: Does she take a salary or any form of compensation? Or does she just teach as a form of charity?

Anyway, Nina Turner certainly doesn’t have to debate me on this issue. But that one of the most prominent progressive advocates for student debt cancelation is unwilling to debate anyone on the subject suggests that she knows how empty and hypocritical her talking points truly are.

The “it’s not a debate” stance is a standard pose by leftists when they know they’re likely to lose the debate. As Victor Davis Hanson wrote in 2018:  “Twenty years ago, there was honest debate over global warming. Ten years ago, there was still honest debate over the effects of human-induced climate change. Five years ago, there was still honest debate over the cost-benefit analysis of dealing with the problem. Not now. Anyone who doubts that there is an existential man-caused threat to the planet — requiring the radical and costly reconstruction of the global economy and society — is considered a ‘denier,’ deserving of professional ostracism or worse.”

HOWIE CARR KNOWS WHERE THE BODIES ARE BURIED: Howie Carr: FBI Mar-a-Lago raid an example of corruption pace long ago set by Boston division.

Sometimes it seems like the Boston office of the FBI — dumpster fire of breathtaking corruption and incompetence that it is — serves as a field laboratory for the Democrat briefers in D.C. whose mission it is to crush any opposition to the Deep State.

All week long, since the FBI’s Stasi-style raid on Mar-a-Lago, it’s been deja vu all over again for anyone who’s been paying attention to the decades of multiple messes that our local on-the-take G-men have been diving headfirst into.

Everything corrupt, illegal or unethical that the FBI does nationally, they did a dry run here first — just to see just how much they could get away with.

The answer is: Plenty, especially now in Brandon’s Banana Republic.

Remember how this week the D.C. Gestapo told us the raid was a matter of national security? Trump left office in January 2021, almost 19 months ago. Yet the jackbooted wokesters only now figured there’s a “national security” problem?

It’s foot-dragging reminiscent of the feds’ hunt for Whitey Bulger, the serial-killing brother of the most powerful Democrat politician in the state.

Whitey took it on the lam in December 1994, with his gal pal Theresa Stanley. She couldn’t take the fugitive life, so she came back to Boston. The feds didn’t get around to interviewing her about Whitey’s aliases until the summer of 1996.

By then he’d been stopped at least twice by local cops — in Wyoming and Mississippi — for minor traffic infractions. But the cops didn’t know that they were dealing with a mass murdering cocaine-dealing registered Democrat, because the feds couldn’t be bothered debriefing his moll.

It’s in the FBI handbook. Wherever investigating a fellow Democrat, a G-man must leave no stone unturned — except the one that the comrade, in this case Whitey, is hiding under (for 17 years).

The FBI went after Whitey almost as hard as they’ve since gone after Hunter Biden, or Hillary Clinton, or antifa, or BLM, or … Democrats.

Then there was the timing of the Mar-a-Lago warrant. The feds got it on Aug. 5, a Friday, but it was so damn imperative that they get into Melania’s wardrobe that they took the weekend off before commencing the raid at dawn Monday morning, Aug. 8.

Anyone remember Gary Lee Sampson, a bank robber from Abington? Back in 2001, he wanted to turn himself in to the FBI. It was, again, a summer Friday afternoon. He called the Boston office and told them who he was, where he was, and that he wished to surrender. The feds hung up on him — it was Friday, Date Night Number One. Who could be bothered driving to Abington?

Sampson waited around for a couple of hours, but no FBI appeared to make the collar. So he went on a murder spree that weekend.

After he was arrested for the three killings, Sampson told local cops he’d called the FBI office. But everyone in the Boston office denied that Sampson had called — they lied, in other words, just like they did on those FISA warrants on Carter Page in 2016.

Boston’s also long been setting the pace for payoffs. Whitey Bulger’s partner, Stevie Flemmi, said their mob had six local FBI agents on the payroll. Six!

But hey, during one of the rare internal investigations of fed corruption back in 2017, the inspector general reported that in D.C., they’d discovered 50 agents were taking “gratuities” — also known as bribes — from assorted bad actors.

The FBI — Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity. And free lunch. And free booze.

The Boston office was just setting the pace for other corrupt American KGB-types to follow. There was John “Vino” Morris, a very special agent, who was paid off with $7,000 in cash and cases of wine by Whitey and Stevie. They got him so drunk one night they had to drive him home. That evening, in his drunkenness, he left behind one of the feds’ bugging tapes from Mafia headquarters on Prince Street.

Long before corrupt agent Peter Strzok (another Boston alum) was chasing Lisa Page around the Xerox machine on the seventh floor, Vino Morris was doing his secretary. Whitey and Stevie gave him a grand so she could visit Vino at a Georgia “training” session for some closed-door dictation.

Of course, with inflation, it’s gotten much more expensive to buy a G-man. Take Andrew McCabe — the disgraced ex-director who like all the rest lied under oath. When he was running the Hillary Clinton espionage “probe,” Clinton operatives funneled $700,000 to his wife’s state Senate campaign. . . .

Maybe someday we’ll find out just what went down last week at Mar-a-Lago. But I doubt it. “Mr. White” made his call to Vino back in 1995. Earlier this year, the feds coughed up to this newspaper the 302 report that was filed after Bulger called his fed hireling.

It’s part of the historical record. The call has been discussed in federal court, books, documentaries, etc.

So we finally get the official FBI report and it begins with words to the effect of: “What follows is a transcript of the conversation:

And then there’s nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just a blank page.

Because … FBI. Because … Democrats. It’s the Boston way.

FBI – Famous but Incompetent.

Oh, they’re competent at some things. But the Bureau used to care about its reputation. Now I guess it’s decided that it doesn’t have to care, anymore.

AS SCHOOL STARTS, COLLEGES WARN STUDENTS ABOUT MONKEYPOX RISK: “One of the most sensitive issues colleges face is how to communicate about an outbreak that so far in the United States has spread mainly among men who have sex with other men. ‘We don’t want to stigmatize sexual behavior,’ said Lynn R. Goldman, dean of public health at GWU.”

They had the same “everybody is at risk” approach to AIDS, which spread unnecessary fear among a generation of straight people while leaving gays at increased risk.

Also, note the concern with “public health fatigue” post-Covid. Well, when you spread unfounded hysteria, and get most of the big issues wrong, people will listen to you less.

OPEN THREAD: Make this space your own.