Category Archives: Current Events

Current Events

Hidden in Plain Sight

5 Comments

Well, it’s Saturday and we wonder what the scum swamp creatures are up to? There’s not telling, nothing surprises me any more. Just read where the VP is not very well liked throughout the nation among both parties. Well, that’s no surprise since she only got 3% of the votes in the Dem primary amongst all those other duds.  

Anyway, I digress and as you know I have chosen to not post any more about Joe and the “other” ones. 

Today’s post is another from my good friend and frequent contributor Greg. Thank you sir.

By: G. Maresca

Jimmy Carter is a retired peanut farmer and among historians is arguably one of the nation’s most maligned chief executives.  Current White House occupant Joe Biden has a trillion-plus-dollar “infrastructure bill” with only peanuts set aside for actual infrastructure that has the potential to change the relationship between government and the economy.

Democrats, beginning with FDR and the New Deal, refer to “infrastructure spending” as if it’s the magic elixir that will solve all of the nation’s fiscal and economic trials.

Back during the Carter years, we had gas lines, but they were not the result of a disabling cyberattack that occurred with the Colonial pipeline that was felt nearly instantaneously.  The circumstances may have been different, but the results were equally as devastating.

Owning a piece of the pipeline attack is the politically charged FBI and CIA and a socially woke corporate America that failed to secure and protect such sensitive infrastructure.

This latest manmade disaster only underscores how America’s enemies understand how vulnerable our infrastructure remains.  It is only a matter of time before another strike comes to fruition, but rather than shutting down a regional pipeline, how about hacking in and disabling the nation’s electric power grid?  Try going without electricity for a week and given the dated nature and vulnerability of our grid, the possibilities are not unthinkable.

One of the key ingredients why infrastructure gets neglected, or in many cases ignored, is that there remains little to no political pay-off to upgrading airports, repairing potholes or replacing bridges.  Juxtapose that to spending the same money building community centers, creating rails to trails and upgrading public swimming pools.  Such ribbon-cutting events provide politicians with plenty of favorable and free publicity. Nobody holds ribbon-cutting ceremonies for upgrading and securing computer software, milling roadways, and replacing sewer lines.

The threat of the power grid crashing like it did in Texas over the winter is quite real, but preventable.  Most, however, have no idea the severity of vulnerability under which we live.

The Task Force on National and Homeland Security is comprised of citizens, engineers, and field experts concerned about the vulnerability of our critical infrastructures.  It is an official Congressional Advisory Board that receives no federal funding and operates exclusively on donations. They have reported to Congress on several occasions that in the event of an Electro Magnetic Pulse attack, 70- 90% of Americans could be dead within a year.

And you thought COVID-19 was bad.

Minor negligence has a way of resulting in major consequences. As our country’s infrastructure continues to age — something America takes for granted — we will see more foundational systematic breakdowns.  Being attentive to our country’s infrastructure by advocating for its continued improvement is critical when it comes to working toward the common good and is everyone’s responsibility.

Why does it take several years to replace a bridge, when the Empire State Building was constructed in two years and during the Great Depression?  It is little wonder that Americans have lost faith in government institutions.

Government-funded projects often fail to live up to their lofty intent.  The problem is not that tax dollars are not being spent, but rather the money is being allocated and managed so poorly.  While it may sound costly, building resilient infrastructure will save plenty of money over the long term as it invests in the future.

Allow state and local governments to raise and spend money for their own projects making the case for what they really need, while freeing them from the tedious strings that always come attached to federal subsidies.

Infrastructure, like anything else in the physical world deteriorates and needs not only to be maintained, but at times, upgraded and improved.  It is important that elected officials understand public works are not just a short-term inducement or a vehicle for politically driven job creation.  The goal should be to create the best and broadest necessary infrastructure for the most responsible price.

Transforming and securing our national infrastructure is the best kind of financial stimulus since it supports all economic avenues.  There is no reason why we cannot build a better and smarter future for our children’s and grandchildren’s generation.

The nation’s subsistence depends on it.

Do some due diligence and you will be utterly shocked at how little money in that bill is actually going to fix our infrastructure. I did. WOW! How do you spell immigrants?

Originally posted 2021-05-22 12:54:31.

Current Events

Political Passports

2 Comments

Another great one from my friend and contributor Greg, and a good one it is. As promised I have given up posting President Joe Sanders’, no that’s not a typo, nation destroying actions. So what, besides Joe’s garbage, is going on in the swamp. even though it is Saturday. They never take a day off, not even Sundays, but I do. The Lord is going to get them for that. at least I sure hope so! 

 

 

 

 

By: G. Maresca

“Your Paper’s Please.”

It is a phrase with historical Cold War overtones from the East side of the Iron Curtin. Such an introduction may find itself being exercised from sea to shining sea if the armies of government bureaucratic COVID-19 zealots get their way regarding digital vaccine passports.

Communist China that tracks its citizens and uses medical tyranny to enforce compliance was onboard as soon as a vaccine was available.

I have yet to hear a cogent and convincing argument as to why COVID-19 is different from every other virus and every other pandemic. Why was it necessary to violate Constitutional rights and close down an economy, while censoring and ridiculing anyone who questions why?

The average age of COVID death is 78, while the average life expectancy is the same. Why should any healthy person be forced to take a vaccine where the recovery rate is 99.6%? Asking children to get vaccinated when effectively 0% of those under 18 with COVID die and the vast majority are asymptomatic is totally unnecessary.

There are far deadlier diseases than COVID that require nothing by way of vaccination. How about a bar code on the forehead, or is that too much Mark-of-the-Beast?

In a dichotomy of the times, many that are against voter ID covet vaccine passports. Showing an ID to vote supposedly suppresses. A digital vaccine passport would require downloading an app to your pricy phone to prove you received a vaccine for a virus that is no deadlier than influenza where you must be tested to know you contracted it.

While certain vaccines are required for overseas (ask any member of the Armed Forces) where some deadly diseases are more common, Americans have to understand such passports are being touted as a requirement for living within the land of the free.

The Patriot Act and other post-9/11 surveillance legislation by Washington that is arguably unconstitutional have been abused beyond their initial Orwellian reach. Recall how your Social Security number would be forbidden to be used outside of Social Security. Now picture a central vaccination database administered by Uncle Sam – what could possibly go wrong?

Since the length of vaccination efficacy is still unknown, when does your digital approval expire and who decides? What about those who possess natural immunities having recovered already?

This not only violates our Constitution, HIPPA laws, and liberty regarding decisions about one’s health. You must prove you are not the leper that everyone suspects. It is the equivalent of “guilty until proven innocent.” We should respect everyone’s wishes whether they want to get vaccinated or not. America was built on individual liberty and personal responsibility.

Vaccine passports is an anathema to our democratic principles and Constitutional rights. It is an insidious overreach allowing for bureaucrats to leverage fear and control the debate and push unconstitutional policies. This would serve to maintain the culture of shutdowns and restrictions, while violating one’s privacy, and act as a gateway for nefarious players for boundless abuse.

Requiring passports would endorse more political malfeasance in a society already drowning in it. The vaccine passport is not about easing restrictions but a coercive to vaccinate. It has nothing to do with health or the science, but everything to do with power and control.

It would place access in the hands of a bureaucrat akin to a Twitter or Facebook content reviewer. Passports will create another breed of identity politics that is destroying society by pitting brother against brother, friend against friend, neighbor against neighbor.

Noncompliance would give unelected bureaucrats power to discriminate and fashion another political identity class. For those who take the shot a somewhat pre-COVID life, but for those who refuse, repression of goods and services.

Americans are an autonomous people and would recoil at the thought of any restriction on our freedoms. Today, we just shrug and continue to scroll away on our phone masked up like a preteen on Halloween.

We all know what the road to Hell is paved with.

With every vaccine is informed consent. Passports would be coercion, not informed consent.

Texas, Tennessee, Florida and Mississippi have nixed vaccine passports.

The rest of the union needs to follow suit.

I have an idea. Something I learned from my cattle mentors in MT. Ear tags. We should place a certain color ear tag in everyone upon receiving their final vaccine shot. That way, we can see at a distance who is safe and who is not.  Those with the right colored ear tag need not wear a mask. So, if you meet up with someone who does not have the right ear tag and is not wearing a mask, you can shoot him/her. Right? I mean if we are going to force controls on our citizenship n preparation for us becoming a communist nation, no amount of force and coercion is unacceptable., and we need to get on with it. What do you think Joe?

 

Originally posted 2021-05-15 12:36:55.

Current Events

Biden’s Vaccine IP Debacle

4 Comments

Okay Mr. Joe Sanders-Pelosi-Harris-Warren-Ocasio-Cortez , you have done it now. How dare you do this to companies who have spent billions on research and development providing the world with safe, effective vaccines. You sir are a blooming idiot. If I were the CEO’s of Pfizer and BioNTech. I would tell you to go pound sand and refuse to give up the ingredients and processes for my vaccines. What would that fool do, close my business? Yeah, right. How would that settle with the American public? This is a travesty that we as Americans should not put up with. Note my opening sentence, Biden’s name isn’t there since I feel certain he was not able to come up with this communist scheme, they did! WHO IS IN CHARGE IN AT THAT PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE BUILDING? It sure isn’t him. 

Date: May 9, 2021 at 8:29:31 AM PDT

 “In one fell swoop he has destroyed tens of billions of dollars in U.S. intellectual property, set a destructive precedent that will reduce pharmaceutical investment, and surrendered America’s advantage in biotech, a key growth industry of the future.”

His patent heist is a blow to the Covid fight and U.S. biotech.

By The Editorial Board

May 6, 2021

We’ve already criticized President Biden’s bewildering decision Wednesday to endorse a patent waiver for Covid vaccines and therapies. But upon more reflection this may be the single worst presidential economic decision since Nixon’s wage-and-price controls.

In one fell swoop he has destroyed tens of billions of dollars in U.S. intellectual property, set a destructive precedent that will reduce pharmaceutical investment, and surrendered America’s advantage in biotech, a key growth industry of the future. Handed an American triumph of innovation and a great soft-power opportunity, Mr. Biden throws it all away.

***

India and South Africa have been pushing to suspend patents at the World Trade Organization for months. They claim that waiving IP protections for Covid vaccines and therapies is necessary to expand global access, but their motivation is patently self-interested.

Both are large producers of generic drugs, though they have less expertise and capacity to make complex biologics like mRNA vaccines. They want to force Western pharmaceutical companies to hand over IP free of charge so they can produce and export vaccines and therapies for profit. Their strategy has been to shame Western leaders into surrendering with the help of Democrats in the U.S.

But suspending IP isn’t necessary to expand supply and will impede safe vaccine production. The global vaccine supply is already increasing rapidly thanks to licensing agreements the vaccine makers have made with manufacturers around the world.

Pfizer and BioNTech this week said they aimed to deliver three billion doses this year, up from last summer’s 1.2 billion estimate. Moderna increased its supply forecast for this year to between 800 million and a billion from 600 million. AstraZeneca says it has built a supply network with 25 manufacturing organizations in 15 countries to produce three billion doses this year.

AstraZeneca and Novavax have leaned heavily on manufacturers in India to produce billions of doses reserved for lower-income countries. But India has restricted vaccine exports to supply its own population. IP simply isn’t restraining vaccine production.

Busting patents also won’t speed up production, since it would take months for these countries to set up new facilities. Competition will increase for scarce ingredients, and less efficient manufacturers with little expertise would make it harder for licensed partners to produce vaccines.

There’s also the problem of safety. Johnson & Johnson has experienced quality problems at an Emergent plant making its vaccines, and that’s in Baltimore. Imagine the potential problems with unlicensed producers in, say, Malaysia or Brazil. If vaccines made there have complications, confidence in licensed vaccines could plummet too. And who would Pfizer and Moderna sue to get their reputations back?

The economic self-damage is also hard to fathom. The U.S. currently has a competitive advantage in biotech and biologics manufacturing, which could be a growing export industry. Waiving IP protections for Covid vaccines and medicines will give away America’s crown pharmaceutical jewels and make the U.S. and world more reliant on India and China for pharmaceuticals.

Moderna has been working on mRNA vaccines for a decade. Covid represents its first success. Ditto for Novavax, which has been at it for three decades. Small biotech companies in the U.S. have been studying how to create vaccines using nasal sprays, pills and patches.

Thanks to Mr. Biden, all this could become the property of foreign governments. Licensing agreements allow developers to share their IP while maintaining quality control. Breaking patents and forcing tech transfers will enable China and low-income countries to manufacture U.S. biotech products on their own.

China’s current crop of vaccines are far less effective than those in the West, but soon Beijing might be able to purvey Pfizer knock-offs. The U.S. has spent years deploring China’s theft of American IP, and now the Biden Administration may voluntarily let China could reap profits from decades of American innovation.

***

Instead of handing over American IP to the world, Mr. Biden could negotiate bilateral vaccine agreements and export excess U.S. supply. If Mr. Biden wants to increase global supply safely, the U.S. could spend more to help the companies produce more for export. Then the jobs would go to Americans. We thought this was the point of the production deal Mr. Biden negotiated between J&J and Merck.

Alas, this President seems to be paying more attention these days to Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Nancy Pelosi. They think vaccines and new drugs can be conjured by government as a public good with no incentive for risk-taking or profit. This really is destructive socialism.

Mr. Biden ought to listen to Angela Merkel. Pfizer’s partner BioNTech is a German firm, and the German Chancellor said Thursday that she opposes the WTO heist: “The protection of intellectual property is a source of innovation and it must remain so in the future.”

At least IP is safe in Germany. Mr. Biden has sent a signal around the world that nobody’s intellectual property is safe in America.

There is nothing I can add to this pitiful, destructive, and downright idiotic  decision by that fellow who is supposed to be our president.

 

Originally posted 2021-05-10 12:37:20.

Current Events

Officer Tatum

3 Comments

Okay swamp watchers, let’s see what others think of the systemic racism the swamp keeps telling us we have in the U.S.

This video needs no introduction or comments from me. It speaks very well for itself.

 

If you do not know who Officer Tatum is, please right click on Home below and open in new window; it is safe. Quite a guy!!

Home

Originally posted 2021-04-23 11:58:21.

Current Events

All Dollars and Little Sense

3 Comments

Good day fellow patriots and conservatives. Haven’t posted in a few days as I have been overwhelmed with tales from the swamp creatures and their devious ways. The trial is over, and as we expected he was was found guilty, albeit with Joe and the b**ch from california ( I refuse to capitalize the name of that foreign land) spouting off at the mouth there is lots of ammo for an appeal. Let’s keep praying for it to happen..

And of course the House voted to make DC a state. Oh isn’t that great two more leftist senators and one congressman for the swamp. I don’t hold out much hope from the senate to strike it down; too many leftist republicans in there. So, how will we arrange the stars in the flag?  That will be fun to watch.

From my tone you may wonder what is going on. Well at my ripe age, I refuse to get excited about what happens. Oh, don’t get me wrong. When the war comes, I shall man the lines as I have done before, and if anyone offers me a billet such as a battalion commander, I shall rise to the occasion, as I am sure you will as well.

Had lunch today with two old fellow retired colonels with whom I have served several times, but not seen them in a while — I really don’t know why since we are all retired.  Joining us was another local retired colonel and a retired captain. Of course the items of discussion was a few war stories and lots about the swamp. It’s always a good time when Marine brothers can get together — I miss that.

Okay, what’s the post? Well , as many of you know, I am an Economist by education and full time hobby. I enjoy playing in the market. Today’s post came from my old friend and contributor , Eric Maresca. As a market player I found the article interesting and a dire warning to those who do as I do. Read and learn

By Eric Maresca

The stock market bull rally that got underway after a giant fall last February and ushered in the COVID era has been relentless. Who would believe record highs were even possible after such a swift drop during a pandemic, followed by political turmoil and civil chaos.

After the Federal Reserve cut interest rates again and went on a printing spree pumping trillions into the economy through three stimulus packages, the benchmark S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average were catapulted to virgin territory. Likewise, we are in the midst of a cryptocurrency revolution where their hourly values run like an amusement park roller coaster.

With the M1 Money supply – the amount of liquidity available for spending – also at an all-time high at $18.4 trillion, the potential for one of the biggest economic booms in U.S. history is primed.

This optimism has predicted a strong 2021 second half.

The larger concern is 2022 and beyond.

Historically, long periods of low interest rates combined with a growing federal debt is no yellow brick road to Oz. You cannot ignore the laws of physics, gravity, or economics, as the government is spending itself into oblivion. From 2010 to 2019, the aggregate GDP growth was nearly the same Uncle Sam spent in COVID stimulus.

With so much stimulus finding their way to Wall Street, stock prices have been inflated. To underscore how pricey stocks are all you have to do is to juxtapose the price-to-earnings multiple at 31.5 and the price-to-sales at 2.9. At the peak of the dot-com bubble in March 2000, the price-to-earnings ratio was 29 and the price-to-sales ratio at 2.3. In addition, the stock market capitalization-to-GDP ratio that measures markets relative to the economy that peaked in 2000 at 140%, stands today at 190%.

Can you whisper bubble? Such a pop would result in a fiscal 9/11 and catch many nascent investors napping. Many were too young to recall the dot-com bubble burst over a generation ago and will pay dearly.

As the stock market rolls along, so does the national deficit. In fact, it seems to be about the only thing that is mushrooming faster. This should concern plenty, but along the D.C. Beltway such matters are dismissed.

 Stock trading has drawn plenty of new players armed with their “stimmy.” Rather, than paying bills, buying necessities, or paying down their debts, these emerging investors have turned day trading into gamification. With success they gain confidence and buy more shares, but the market’s present trajectory won’t last. When it drops many will see it as a fire-sale opportunity.

The stock app at center stage is aptly named Robinhood having taken its namesake from the English Democrat who robbed from the rich and redistributed their wealth. In this stimulus era of Robinhood fever and GameStop, why waste time researching good companies at reasonable prices, and then waiting years for returns to compound?

Apps like Robinhood, SoFi, Webull, and Public.com can be fun, but addictive, and a bookkeeping nightmare.

Such internet trading platforms make basic tax-abating strategies difficult to implement. Buying and selling stocks by the lot can lower your tax bill by choosing which shares to sell. However, selling specific lots are difficult or impossible to do online as sales are based on a first-in-first-out (FIFO) basis, where the oldest shares are sold first.

These time-honored tactics may be the least of their concerns when the market turns because it will. Once the public buys in, time is short and the potential for disaster gains momentum. When the melt down commences, nearly everyone will lose more on the way down than they made on the way up. Melt Downs do not end quickly, but over time. If the market is one thing – it is unforgiving.

Market peaks are clear in retrospection, but not in the moment, but the warning signs are there.

Do not confuse a bull market for brains.

As the timeworn adage rings: “Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” That applies for booms, too.

Mot people do not have an exit plan like trailing stops that protects your gains and prevents you from losing more money. A diversified portfolio and fixed selling points is always your friend.

In my ECON 101 class the professor told a story that I have found over the years to an absolute. “Put five Economists in a room and ask them a simple question and you will always get at least six answers.” I have been trimming my portfolios for the last two months. I have more cash than I have ever had, upwards of 30% cash, and I keep building it. I have good stocks e.g., DOW down over 300 points today and my portfolio was up 1.9%. But I keep taking some profits and paring down. I believe it is coming folks; somone has to pay the bills the swamp is piling up.  Greg is talking common sense.

Originally posted 2021-04-22 17:16:31.