Tag Archives: Hot Topics

I guess I am going to lose some of my writer reputation now as I look at the aspect of how certain “legal” migrants in San Antonio, Texas were treated by the governor in Florida. These people did not sneak into the US. They were granted asylum after presenting themselves to border guards, registered in the system, and released to a shelter. In turn they were scammed by a representative sent by Florida’s Governor DeSantis to go to Massachusetts where...

September real retail sales lay another egg  – by New Deal democrat One of my favorite indicators, retail sales, was reported for September this morning, and it came in unchanged. Which means that after factoring in +0.4% inflation in September, real retail sales were down -0.4%. Which is not good, because real retail sales have gone nowhere in 18 months, and have been down every single month since April with the exception of August, and are...

“September consumer inflation: primarily a function of the fictitious “owners’ equivalent rent” plus new cars”  – by New Deal democrat Since last November I’ve been hammering the fact that the official CPI measure of housing inflation, “owners’ equivalent rent,” seriously lagged, as in by a year or more, actual house prices as measured by the most popular housing indexes. At the time I wrote that OER was only up 3.1% YoY and core inflation...

The desire to manage escalation risk – especially the risk of a nuclear attack – has clearly led the United States to withhold weapons from Ukraine.  We may also be slow-walking delivery of weapons or limiting quantities to reduce escalation risk, although perceived delays could be due to training and logistics issues or our own readiness concerns; even experts disagree about this. The Ukrainian attack on the Kerch bridge and the Russian...

The title is not from Letters from an American. It is just my perception of what I envision having happened to the Republican party. Republicans are acting strangely to say the least. Could it be they slept next to some pods pre-January 6th? I had thought and according to the movie related facts, they would be short lived. Yet here we are two years later with strange thinks occurring. A lack of moral compass, etc. Read on. It is a good recital by...

Nobel Peace Prizes were awarded most recently. “The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded 103 times to 140 Nobel Prize laureates between 1901 and 2022, 110 individuals and 30 organizations. Since the International Committee of the Red Cross has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize three times (in 1917, 1944 and 1963), and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize two times (in 1954 and 1981),...

By adolescence, Bill Barr, Sam Alito, Stephen Miller, …, …, and lord knows how many other young boys, knew that they saw things somewhat differently than most. More, they felt that they alone knew how these things should be. Many of this grouping went on to graduate from some of our very best universities. Neither education nor anything else that happened in their lives seems to have altered their way of seeing these things somewhat differently than...

Degenerate Autocrats, Econospeak by Barkley Rosser  Yesterday, I had Konstantin Sonin present a seminar at JMU, “The Degenerate Autocrat: Origins and Consequences of the Russia-Ukraine War.” Sonin is a former Vice-Rector of the Higher Economic School in Moscow who left suddenly in March due to his critical remarks about the regime. He has since been fired from the faculty there. Sonin is a Dewey Distinguished Service Professor at the Harris...

As we hear how poorly the economy has been doing, I thought I might review Biden’s first year in office using six graphs from CEPR. I only wish the economy was this poor in 2008 when I forced to seek jobs out of state and work out of state for four years. I was good on making the swoop home to my wife the same as I did coming home from overseas duty. “Assessing the First Year of Biden, in Graphs” is what CEPR is calling its collection of articles...

The US military has ideas about how Taiwan can protect itself from a possible Chinese invasion (and therefore deter that invasion) I think they are very good ideas. I think that the proposed program would markedly reduce the threat of a PRC invasion of Taiwan, which is the most alarming threat currently faced by the US and its allies (including the allied country Taiwan, which the US does not recognize). I ask why is this program which is well...