THIS IS NO TIME TO GO WOBBLY: Hand sanitizer makers ask Trump for China tariff relief amid shortages.
Author Archive: Stephen Green
April 14, 2020
NO, BUT IT MIGHT BE THE GATEWAY TO IT: Crisis schooling not the same as normal homeschooling.
Previously, I couldn’t get my 14-year-old to even consider homeschooling. Mostly because his middle school is half-populated by available teenage girls, and our house isn’t. But after a couple weeks of e-schooling, he’s starting to see some advantages, such as a shorter school day and not having to get up at oh-dark-thirty to accommodate a ridiculously early start.
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Welcome to Blue Virginia: Dems Apply the ‘Colorado Model’ to the Commonwealth.
This one is just for our VIP members, and I hope you’ll use that VODKAPUNDIT discount code if you’ve been thinking of becoming a supporter.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Bernie’s Endorsement Won’t Send the Progs Flocking to Biden. “While the youth vote is always sought-after, it never quite materializes on election day the way people think it will. Bernie may have been the one nominee who could have changed that. If the Biden people are hoping Sanders’s endorsement is going to suddenly make Joe popular with a voting bloc he struggles with, they’re going to be sorely disappointed.”
Fingers crossed…
HEY, ME NEITHER! Sanders campaign spokeswoman: ‘I don’t endorse Joe Biden.’
THE GIANT AWAKENS: Ford Readies Respirator Production To Begin This Week Using F-150 Seat Fans.
ANDREW A. MICHTA: The Long Hard Road to Decoupling from China.
When bereft of redundancies, networks devolve to hierarchies, which in turn create winners and losers. Hierarchies do not diminish the key importance of state power in international relations. On the contrary, they enable it. As China has grown to become the seemingly irreplaceable core of a globalized economy, the CCP has pursued predatory mercantilism in its commercial relations with the West, in the process tilting the hard power balance in its favor. In an economic system that allows for the flow of technology and capital across national borders, redundancies in the supply chain are essential to the preservation of state sovereignty and government capacity to act in a crisis. The Wuhan Virus pandemic is proving so devastating because the radical centralization of market networks has allowed for failure at a single point in our supply chain to leave the system with no capacity to off-load demand onto redundant networks.
In short, globalization, as preached and practiced over the past four decades, has been shown for what it has always been: profiteering off of a vast pool of centrally controlled labor. While many vast fortunes have been made in the West as a result, and as American consumers binged on low-cost goods, the biggest winner has naturally been the Chinese Communist Party elite. And though even before the 2016 U.S. election there was a growing realization among Western captains of industry that something was not quite right with China’s role in the system, few were willing to ask big enough questions about the system as a whole.
The fundamental question is one of values: Is this kind of globalization compatible with liberty and democratic governance? My simple answer is no. By ignoring the role of nations in the international system—or, if not ignoring, indeed prophesying the nation’s demise—globalization’s boosters have implicitly, if perhaps unwittingly, lessened the accountability of elites and downgraded the voice of voters in these matters.
Unwittingly? Nah, that was by design. Anyway, do read the whole thing.
BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: Former CNN Producer Says Jim Acosta Loves Nothing More Than Jim Acosta.
TO BE FAIR, YOU’VE SEEN WHAT HAPPENS WHEN HE DOESN’T USE ONE: Did Joe Biden Use a Teleprompter During His Livestream Conversation With Bernie Sanders?
April 13, 2020
BEND THE KNEE: Watch as Joe Biden Promises to ‘Transform This Nation’ in Accepting Bernie’s Endorsement.
Some moderate, eh?
OH FER CRYIN’ OUT LOUD: Authorities Investigate Illicit Amish Wedding in Sleepy Ohio Hamlet, Population 3,220.
WHEN MARKETING RULES AN ENGINEERING FIRM: New document reveals significant fall from grace for Boeing’s space program.
The 2014 crew contract analysis, authored by NASA’s then-chief of human spaceflight, William Gerstenmaier, frequently lauds Boeing for its technical and management expertise. “This is a very comprehensive, credible plan,” Gerstenmaier wrote. He described their earlier work in the commercial crew program as “excellent and effective,” while providing “high quality products with sufficient detail.”
In the analysis, which compared Boeing to SpaceX and the third competitor in the crew program, Sierra Nevada, Boeing received the highest marks. “Boeing’s proposal had the highest overall Mission Suitability score and the highest adjectival ratings of Excellent for each of the two most heavily weighted subfactors, Technical and Management,” Gerstenmaier wrote. “I agree with this assessment.” In the final crew development awards, Boeing received $4.2 billion from NASA, and SpaceX $2.6 billion—reflecting Boeing’s much higher costs at the time.
Six years later, the perception of Boeing’s bid for the lunar cargo contract is much changed. Of the four contenders, it had the lowest overall technical and mission suitability scores. In addition, Boeing’s proposal was characterized as “inaccurate” and possessing no “significant strengths.” Boeing also was cited with a “significant weakness” in its proposal for pushing back on providing its software source code.
Due to its high price and ill-suited proposal for the lunar cargo contract, NASA didn’t even consider the proposal among the final bidders. In his assessment late last year, NASA’s acting chief of human spaceflight, Ken Bowersox, wrote, “Since Boeing’s proposal was the highest priced and the lowest rated under the Mission Suitability factor, while additionally providing a conditional fixed price, I have decided to eliminate Boeing from further award consideration.”
Ouch.
LET’S ALL GET BACK TO WORK SOON: Supreme Court Adapts to Coronavirus to Resume Oral Arguments in Key Cases.
MAKE PRIME GREAT AGAIN: Amazon to Allow Sellers of Nonessential Items to Resume Shipping.
Last month, Amazon made a decision to prioritize so-called essential items such as cleaning products, health-care items and shelf-stable food at its warehouses to meet customer demand. Amazon stopped accepting shipments of items from sellers that didn’t correspond to the shopping needs created by the virus. The mandate caused unrest for its army of third-party sellers, which account for 58% of Amazon’s sales.
“Later this week, we will allow more products into our fulfillment centers,” said an Amazon spokeswoman. “Products will be limited by quantity to enable us to continue prioritizing products and protecting employees, while also ensuring most selling partners can ship goods into our facilities.”
The tech giant has been inundated by orders as Americans follow shelter-in-place guidance to stop the spread of the coronavirus. As a result, its network of warehouses has struggled to keep up with demand, and shipping times for orders in its Prime program that previously delivered items in one day or less have slipped to as much as a month in some cities.
That’s a good sign.
JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON: The Coronavirus Is Exposing Little Tyrants All Over The Country. “We’ve now witnessed local and state governments issue decrees about what people can and cannot buy in stores, arrest parents playing with their children in public parks, yank people off public buses at random, remove basketball rims along with private property, ticket churchgoers, and in one case try—and fail—to chase down a lone runner on an empty beach. All of this, we’re told, is for our own good.”
Read the whole thing.
CHANGE: Say Goodbye To The Clown Car And Hello To BidenWatch!
It’s getting harder and harder to watch Biden, and I’ve been sick of his dull-witted smarm and untroubled sense of entitlement since 1988.
WHEN THE RADICAL PRIEST COME TO GET ME RELEASED WE WAS ALL ON THE COVER OF NEWSWEEK: Pope Francis Calls for ‘Structural’ Change Activists to Take Advantage of Coronavirus Crisis in Easter Letter.