EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Oh my: Retail sales drop 1.9% — in Christmas shopping season. “In other words, we’re tiptoeing closer to a recession than toward significant growth outside of inflation already. That will complicate the Federal Reserve’s response to this massive inflationary wave, which most expect to be a robust increase in interest rates in the next several meetings. That could help tame inflation, but it would almost certainly now push the economy into a significant recession, adding to the Biden administration’s political woes. They can hardly afford to sit on their hands while stagflation begins to loom over the American economy, but it’s clear that all of their choices are going to be bad — and that 2022 will not be a happy year for American households.”

Expansionary monetary policy coupled with business-choking regulation leads to stagflation, just as it did in the 1970s.

MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Team Biden’s plan to ‘ensure scientific integrity’ should start with itself.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Students file ‘price-fixing cartel’ financial aid lawsuit against 16 prestigious universities.

A lawsuit on behalf of “five former students” is taking aim at more than a dozen elite colleges and universities, accusing the institutions of collaborating to violate antitrust laws, as well as unfairly limiting financial aid awards for students.

The Ivy League schools mentioned are Yale University, Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, and University of Pennsylvania.

Other notable schools involved include Georgetown University, Northwestern University, the California Institute of Technology, the University of Chicago, Duke University, Emory University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Notre Dame, Rice University, and Vanderbilt University.

I remember my antitrust professor, Ralph Winter, noting that universities think the laws don’t apply to them because they’re special.

GHISLAINE MAXWELL DEMANDING RETRIAL AFTER JUROR ‘MISTAKENLY’ DOES NOT TELL COURT HE WAS A SEXUAL ASSAULT VICTIM. And boy are these federal prosecutors extra-mega-ethical about the the whole thing, asking the court to investigate a jury biased in their favor. I bet they do that all the time!

I really preferred it when our ruling class tried to be less ostentatious about all the cover-ups and double standards.

YES: It Is Time to Counter China’s Data Strategy.

#RESIST: 100Pcs I Did That Biden Funny Car Stickers Decal/Humor/Funny-That’s All Me I Did That, Funny I Did That Stickers. #CommissionEarned.

MEGAN FOX: ‘Cryin and Lyin’ Adam Kinzinger Gets the Takedown He Deserves. “I attended Adam Kinzinger’s political launch in New Lenox, Ill., at a Tea Party event I was covering many years ago. I remember it like it was yesterday. He stood outside in the cold with hundreds of ticked-off Americans who were organizing to send real conservatives to Washington. He said all the right things and he happily accepted all the checks from those people who were desperate for representation. Then he went to Washington, because of the support of the Tea Party, and promptly never returned their phone calls again.”

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Biden-Backed Solar Company Lied About Effectiveness of Solar Modules, Lawsuit Says.

DEMOCRATS AT WORK: NASA leasing bill transformed into “voting rights” legislation.

OH MY: Soros-backed Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby indicted on 4 felonies. “Federal prosecutors allege that Mosby lied to falsely obtain a withdrawal from her savings account based on a policy related to the coronavirus pandemic. She is also accused of lying on a mortgage application for the home purchase.”

Not just any home, but two Florida vacation homes.

Previously: Recall, Remove & Replace Every Last Soros Prosecutor.

“Try, Convict & Imprison” works, too.

OUT ON A LIMB: Your Bubble is Not the Culture.

n 2020, the year Rowling made her most pointed statements on transgender issues, Harry Potter sales went up for its British publisher, Bloomsbury. In fact, “the paperback edition of ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ was the fifth-bestselling children’s book of 2020 to date, 23 years after it was first published.” This past June, the biggest Harry Potter store in the world opened in New York City to rave reviews. HBO is currently airing several specials celebrating 20 years since the first Harry Potter movie. And despite the pandemic, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child has reopened on Broadway. The persistent popularity of Potter probably explains why outlets whose critics insist that the Potter party is over keep publishing pieces about the franchise. Insider, for example, has run over 80 such items—from “What It’s Like to Visit the Real-Life Diagon Alley” to “28 Major ‘Harry Potter’ Movie Deaths, Ranked From Least to Most Heartbreaking”—in the last year alone…

Rowling herself is doing just fine as well. The latest entry in her successful Cormoran Strike detective series, which she writes under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, was an international best seller and moved more copies upon release than any prior book in the series. In May, it won Best Crime and Thriller Fiction Book of the Year at the British Book Awards. (Insider, on the other hand, called this same book “poorly received.”) Rowling’s October children’s book, The Christmas Pig, another international best seller, sold over 60,000 copies in just its first week. (The entertainment site Giant Freakin Robot: “JK Rowling Facing Brutal Fan Reactions to New Children’s Book.”) Simply put, Rowling sells more books in a day than the critics claiming she’s been shunned will sell in a lifetime.

* * * * * * * *

Much of the current divergence between elite discourse and popular preference can be reduced to a simple heuristic: Most critics are on Twitter; most consumers are not. If you examine the coverage proclaiming the end of Harry Potter or Lin-Manuel Miranda, or castigating any other wildly successful cultural product or personality, you’ll quickly spot a pattern: The only evidence they tend to cite is an assortment of tweets.

But just because something makes waves on Twitter doesn’t mean it actually matters to most people. According to the Pew Research Center, only 23 percent of U.S. adults use Twitter, and of those users, “the most active 25% … produced 97% of all tweets.” In other words, nearly all tweets come from less than 6 percent of American adults. This is not a remotely good representation of public opinion, let alone newsworthiness, and treating it as such will inevitably result in wrong conclusions.

Why, it’s like “Twitter sentiment is a Styrofoam iceberg. You may think 9/10 of it is underwater, but actually, 9/10 of it is visible,” to coin an Insta-phrase. Somebody should write a book about this stuff.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: About time: Call to favor ‘skills’ over sheepskins in federal hiring.

A bipartisan Senate duo is picking up on a novel proposal first pushed by the Trump White House: to favor actual “skills” in addition to college diplomas when evaluating prospective federal hires.

Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema and Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty said Thursday that the time is now to make the bloated federal bureaucracy more efficient and skill-based.

What’s more, the two said their “Reforming and Modernizing the Federal Hiring Process” will open the doors to a wider range of applicants to include those not wealthy enough to afford college but smart enough to get accepted.

“For too long, the federal government’s hiring priorities have focused on college degrees and institutions instead of if the individual is actually qualified,” said Hagerty, a Tennessee Republican. “Federal workers should be hired based on skills, not just if they have a degree. I’m pleased to have Senator Sinema’s partnership as we seek to modernize our federal workforce, which taxpayers depend on.”

Good.

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: London Breed criticizes white San Francisco progressives again.

Breed said that her own “experiences of growing up in poverty and growing up in war zones similar to the Tenderloin” informed her decision-making process and took a shot at critics she perceives to be overly ideological.

“I think a lot of people, like some members of the Board [of Supervisors], like Boudin, did not grow up in poverty in San Francisco,” she said. “They did not grow up in these kinds of conditions. They have a theory as to what they believe based on their ideology. But they’re also white. They are not Black people who’ve had these unfortunately traumatizing experiences in communities where there’s not trust with the police, but also there’s a desire to be safe, right? And I’ve worked many of my years of growing up in this community to really turn that around because of the violence. ”

The unnamed members of the board she’s referring to are likely Dean Preston and Hillary Ronen. The former voted against Breed’s Tenderloin emergency declaration, while the latter threatened to undo the emergency ordinance if the San Francisco Police Department’s budget increases. Later in the interview, Breed specifically mentions District 5, which is Preston’s district.

Related: Bill Maher says that the ‘Achilles heel of the left right now’ is ‘[identifying] issues mostly by what they can feel superior to another person for.’

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: The Mask/Vaccine Nazis Hate Kids Who Have Cancer. “The derision we heap upon the mask/vax Nazis is never enough. They are ruining an entire generation of American children. They’re using kids who have cancer as political pawns.”

Background: Ronald McDonald House Evicting Unvaxxed Kids With Leukemia.

LEFTISTS ARE ALWAYS TELLING US THAT HATE SPEECH YIELDS VIOLENCE: Killings of Cops Spiked in 2021.

NO, TWITTER IS JUST A HOME FOR NEUROTIC LOSER JOURNALISTS: Yair Rosenberg’s reminder that Twitter isn’t reality.

As I mentioned a while back, the best thing to do with Twitter is to ignore it, and certainly not to treat it as anything connected with how most people think or feel. Think of it rather as a window into the ugly souls and scanty intellects of our chattering class.

GOODER AND HARDER, CALIFORNIA: California county bans large gatherings and asks residents to shelter in place to stop the spread of Omicron variant.

STILL POPULAR: iHealth COVID-19 Antigen Rapid Test, 2 Tests per Pack,FDA EUA Authorized OTC at-Home Self Test, Results in 15 Minutes with Non-invasive Nasal Swab, Easy to Use & No Discomfort. #CommissionEarned

TODD ZYWICKI: Cancel Culture Comes to Banking.

DAVID GOLDMAN: Worst US inflation since ’82 is huge underestimate.

Shelter accounts for about a third of American household expenditure, and the cost of buying or renting shelter is up nearly 20% over the past year. Yet the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for shelter reported Jan. 12 by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics showed an increase of just 4.2 over the past year.

Private surveys conducted by the big rental sites, Zillow and Apartmentlist.com, show increases of 13% to 18% during 2021, and the Case-Shiller Index of US home prices jumped 18% in the year through October.

Who are you going to believe, to paraphrase Groucho Marx – the US government or your own eyes?

Part of the discrepancy involves a simple time lag. The US government looks at the present cost of housing while the private rental surveys register the cost of a new rental. It takes a while for leases to expire and new, higher-cost leases to take effect.

Also: Prices rise by record 9.7% over past year in producer index.

Despite what the White House claims, inflation is only getting started.

ICYMI: Why Do People Not “Trust the Science”? Because Like All People, Scientists Are Not Always Trustworthy.

Related: Why did scientists suppress the lab-leak theory? In private, they said it was plausible. In public, they called it a conspiracy theory.

CHANGE: Mexico Removes All COVID-19 Entry Requirements Including Health Form.

THE ABA NEEDS TO BE REMOVED FROM THE ACCREDITATION PROCESS, IT’S HOPELESSLY POLITICIZED: The American Bar Association’s Problematic Proposed “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” Rules for Law Schools.

Unsurprisingly, it looks like it might be aimed at getting rid of Jews.

THAT WON’T BE HARD: FBI Promises To Make Hoaxes Less Obvious This Year.

SHE’S JUST NOT VERY GOOD AT ANY OF THIS: Kamala’s Disastrous Response to a Question About 2024.