The Breyer Mistake

From Matt Stoller's Big: Stephen Breyer's Legacy of Destruction

“President Clinton has been misled into making a grave mistake in nominating to the Supreme Court Judge Stephen Breyer,” wrote former FTC official Charles Mueller, the then-editor of the Antitrust Law and Economics Review in 1994, on the eve of Breyer’s confirmation. “On the basis of his antitrust record, he is an unjust man. He is also one who is intellectually and politically committed to a set of ‘economic’ theories that are demonstrably false and that will callously reduce the standard of living of the average American family in the decades to come.”

….

"There were a host of unanimous decisions following Trinko that gutted antitrust law. There was Weyerhaeuser Co. v. Ross-Simmons Hardwood Lumber, which privileged big businesses who wanted to drive their competitors out of a market by overpaying for supplies in high fixed capital industries (which is one reason there are shortages today!). There was Pacific Bell Telephone Co. v. linkLine Communications, Inc, in which monopolists were allowed to use a tactic called a ‘price squeeze’ in which they exploited control over a vital resource to destroy competition. It got so bad that Breyer served as the Democratic leader in what the New York Times came to call Supreme Court Inc, for its favoratism to big business. (If you want a full rundown of some of Breyer’s decisions on corporate power, this blog post is good.)

"Even Breyer’s ‘good’ decisions are a mess, because his faith in complex theoretical economics is overwhelming. Law professors joke about Breyer’s arbitrary ‘five part tests’ and weird attempts to clarify the law, which almost always makes things more complicated. In Actavis, for instance, Breyer wrote an opinion on whether pharmaceutical companies are allowed to pay competitors to stay off the market so they can keep their drug prices high, what is known as ‘pay for delay.’ Rather than just writing “No that’s a bribe and it’s a violation of antitrust law,’ Breyer said that every case had to be judged individually using an economic analysis of whether that particular arrangement might have some sort of efficiency benefit. It’s ridiculous, bribing someone to stay off the market should be the definition of an antitrust violation. Instead, Breyer’s sloppiness and unwillingness to state the obvious led to a decade of messy litigation, billions of extra costs in higher drug prices, and bitter unresolved Congressional debates."

 For more: A Brief History of Stephen Breyer Enabling Corporate Power

Bitcoin, Blockchain and NFTs are all scams

 

 

(From Tony Wikrent): This video is over two hours long, but one of the best summaries of the financial and economic derangements resulting from Obama’s catastrophic refusal to allow Great Financial Crash of 2008 to destroy its rich instigators. There is a Chapter 0, which focuses on the GFC. Lambert Strether [of NakedCapitalism.com] added in his introduction, “every interaction I’ve ever had online with crypto and NFT enthusiasts fully matches what is described here; the nature of the web3 'community' is important to understand. Well worth a listen, as scam after scam after scam is unraveled.” So, the best way to understand the cryptocurrency craze is as a financial mental disorder resulting entirely from the policy failure of not addressing the causes of the GFC. [GFC = the Global Financial Crisis, AKA the "Great Recession"]

Update: On the Inevitability of Trusted Third Parties. ("Trusted Third Parties" is exactly what cryptocurrency tries to bypass)

Excerpt: "if: problem + blockchain = problem - blockchain
then: blockchain = 0"....

“Did you know that 87% of all conversations about blockchain technology are nonconsensual?”

Room for defunding?

 

The country with the third highest military budget in the world is the United States police department. pic.twitter.com/t1O3jWQiYY

— Ryan Knight ☭ (@ProudSocialist) April 17, 2021

Good call

 

2017. pic.twitter.com/uR0EuFcOV2

— 💉💉💉 Dr Henry Madison (@RageSheen) January 30, 2022

Ukraine Links

Standard Lame-Stream Media reporting about Ukraine paints Russia as the villian, but is that really so?

 Is the U.S. Provoking War with Russia?

Excerpt: "In 2014 a U.S. backed coup put a far-right clique in power. The people of the Donbass region in the east, largely ethnic Russians, wanted no part of the new anti-Russian government and sought autonomy. The resulting war has killed some 30,000 people.

"Now the Biden team who publicly insulted the Chinese government and withdrew from Afghanistan without even being able to secure a major airport, have moved on to opening the proverbial can of whoopass with the world’s other major nuclear power. They are using Ukraine in an ill-advised effort to instigate what could lead to disaster.

"The 2014 coup against an elected Ukrainian president took place in part because the Russians underestimated the extent of U.S. and NATO determination. They roused themselves quickly however and Crimeans, who are mostly of Russian origin, voted to rejoin the nation they had been a part of until 1954. The U.S./NATO regime change effort came at a steep price for Ukraine. Thanks to Atlanticist meddling it is now the poorest country in Europe that won’t get the NATO and EU membership it was promised. It remains a pawn between two powerful countries." 

The Ukraine Crisis is Just a Chance to Acknowledge Choices Already Made

Excerpt: "Putin isn’t insane, and he doesn’t expect to get everything he wants. But he is old, like me ... and he remembers that George Bush Sr. promised NATO wouldn’t expand past a reunited Germany....

"Given that US elites decided to give China their industrial core in exchange for a few pieces of silver so they could kick the shit out of the poor and the middle class internally, they’ve already made their choice. They got their money and their internal supremacy. The price is going to be their international primacy.

"That was always the price. American international primacy was based on power and benefit sharing at home. When American elites decided that they’d rather be oligarchs, they decided they’d also rather not rule the world.

Putin and Xi are just pointing out the consequences of decisions already made." 

Navigating Russia/Ukraine Warmongering Disinformation

Excerpt: "Russia does not want to occupy Ukraine. It is an economic basket case and would be a huge money sink, even apart from the high cost of holding the terrain. Russia wants Ukraine to be a buffer zone.

"We’ll address three issues: the claim that Russia has escalated in recent months and is on the verge of attacking Ukraine; the backstory of what Russia was and thinks it was promised by the West; and the lack of good next moves for the West."

Russian aggression in Europe is a fraud. The aggressor is the US which has ringed Russia with missiles and bases. That is the inverted reality of the relentless US/UK propaganda 'news'. Read this and know your true enemy.https://t.co/UNFQ5ZxaoG

— John Pilger (@johnpilger) January 27, 2022

 Invite Russia to Join Nato

Excerpt: "NATO was established in 1949 as a bulwark against the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, yet NATO did not disband. Instead, it added 12 member countries in the ensuing 31 years. Russia views NATO's continued existence and expansion as targeted toward itself. And it justifies its foreign policy moves as defensive reactions to NATO's actions."

Update (from nakedcapitalism.com): The Reason Putin Would Risk War Anne Applebaum, Atlantic (Kevin C). The projection, it burns, since at least the time the US (wellie along with the UK) arranged for the installation of the dictator the Shah of Iran. More recently, it was the US that sponsored the successful coup against Yanukovich….a mere six weeks before elections where his poll numbers were so low that he was assured to be defeated and there was no indication he intended to scupper the election. And before you object to the word “coup” the incoming bunch tore up the current Constitution and implemented a different one…with no democratic process. 

Related (same source): Richelieu’s ghost almost solves America’s problems Asia Times.

 “Why do you think the Germans have all but dismantled their military?” continued Richelieu. “Because you Americans turned NATO into a bloated, indefensible swamp. You are as stupid as the Austrian Hapsburgs, who acquired Spain, Flanders, Naples and Sicily with clever dynastic marriages. They had twice the population of France during the Thirty Years War, and all the silver of the Indies, but France bled them dry and erased Spain for all time from the list of great powers.”

 

 

The "Crime Surge" that wasn't

(c) by Mark Dempsey

Sacramento News & Review, one of the last supposedly “lefty” publications in the region just published an article (A winter of worry: Sacramento’s violent crime rate in January puts a chill on the community) decrying a recent “crime surge”--a constant worry among conservatives. Among other things, the article cites “independent researchers who have been tracking crime rates in California for nearly a decade acknowledge that overall violence in the state is on the rise.”

But is crime really surging? Compilations of property and violent crime (from cityrating.com) seem to disagree.

True, the above graphs predate the reported recent "surge," yet clearly, even with the more recent "surging" crime, overall crime has been on the decline for decades and any recent increases would have to approach 100% (they don't) for that decline to be interrupted. 

Unfortunately, the reporting about crime is generally distorted, too. The FBI's published crime stats do not include “white collar” crime like wage theft and violations of the Clean Water Act. Despite recent protests from the Chamber of Commerce about pursuit of corporate criminals, "white-collar crime likely costs the American economy between $300 and $800 billion per year, while street crimes like burglary and theft cost around $16 billion." SN&R's hand-wringing is a very old rhetorical tactic, known as "straining at a gnat while swallowing a camel."

And thanks to reporting like SN&R's, despite the decades' decreases in arrests and crime, the county jail remains full. Why? (Pre-COVID-19) roughly 60% of those in County jail were not convicted of anything, except being unable to afford bail. That's right! Poverty is illegal in Sacramento! Meanwhile, the nationwide average jail population for those incarcerated without conviction is 20%, so Sacramento is three times more cruel than even the extraordinarily vengeful U.S. incarceration system.

How bad is U.S. incarceration? With five percent of the world's population, the U.S. is the world’s "champion" incarcerator, jailing 25% of the world's inmates--more in absolute or per-capita numbers than any other nation. The demographically-identical Canadians cage one-seventh as many people, per capita.

So is Canadian crime greater than in the U.S.? No, it's about the same. Similarly, medical treatment (rehab) has a far better cure rate for addiction, and costs about one seventh as much as incarceration. What we do now with addicts and the self-medicating mentally ill is like incarcerating diabetics because they’re dependent on insulin. It’s not just ineffective and expensive, it’s medieval.

Typically "crime surge" reporting supports more "tough on crime" talk from public officials. California Assemblyman Kevin Kiley gets a lot of mileage about his attempts to repeal Prop 47, which reduced some penalties recently. After all, who can be too safe? 

Yet recent attempts to reduce our prison populations may be just a sideshow in any "surge" of crime. For example, being confined in close quarters because of the pandemic may have some influence on the recent crime rise, and the Fed's report that 40% of U.S. population can't handle a $400 emergency without selling something or borrowing may be more important than how draconian are our punishments. But...the beatings will continue until morale improves.

The American public is supposed to be consoled by the law, which in its magnificent equality, forbids rich and poor alike from begging in the street, sleeping under bridges and stealing bread.

Incidentally, for some perspective about "police defunding" consider this: Between 1981 and 2017 U.S. population increased 42%. During that period, funding for the police increased 187.5%. Could there be room to reduce police budgets? Gosh, I wonder!

Like the workman who has only a hammer, the U.S. apparently sees all problems as nails, and all crime as a good excuse to make punishment even more severe. Perhaps it's time to explore alternatives rather than wringing our hands about crime "surges" or our desire for infinite safety. Otherwise, it's not the land of the brave, and the home of the free, it's the land of the fearful, and the home of the incarcerated.

Update: (from Cory Doctorow) "Despite what you may have heard, cops have a relatively safe job. Cops are injured and killed with less frequency than roofers, truckers, fishermen, and pizza-delivery people"

$2.7 Billion in Credit Default Swaps Blew Up One Day Before the Fed Launched Its Repo Loan Bailouts in 2019

Here. First paragraph:

"On September 16, 2019, exactly one day before the Federal Reserve would embark on its first emergency repo loan operations since the financial crisis of 2008, $2.7 billion in credit default swaps (CDS) on a single name blew up. The dealers in those credit default swaps were the very same trading houses on Wall Street that sought, and received, tens of billions of dollars in repo loans from the Fed in an operation that grew to a cumulative $11.23 trillion before its conclusion on July 2, 2020. (In just the last quarter of 2019, the Fed pumped a cumulative $4.5 trillion in repo loans into Wall Street’s trading houses, according to the transaction data it released on December 30 of last year. That was before even one case of COVID-19 had been reported in the U.S.)"

The World's Greatest "Democracy"

 

World's greatest democracy pic.twitter.com/Hmnmhptxiv

— Mary Tracy (@MaryTracy) January 9, 2022

Honestly it really is sad that people experience our convoluted, expensive healthcare system, soaring rent, lack of childcare etc, and think “this is normal” but gas prices go up or bread is sold out and they’re like “the president did this to me and must immediately take action”

— James Medlock (@jdcmedlock) January 18, 2022

Crime vs. "Crime"

Before reading about recent protests from the Chamber of Commerce about pursuit of corporate criminals, I remembered reading that while the FBI reports crime statistics, it excludes things like wage theft and violations of the clean water act. I'm guessing that the comparison of reportable crime ("white-collar crime likely costs the American economy between $300 and $800 billion per year, while street crimes like burglary and theft cost around $16 billion") would be similarly astonishing.

Matthew 23 has Jesus condemning the Pharisees for "straining at a gnat while swallowing a camel." At least we know this tactic isn't new.

 

Meanwhile, today's Yogi Berra reminder: prediction is hard, especially about the future.

The worldly turn: After generations of ‘blackboard economics’, Berkeley and MIT are leading a return to economics that studies the real world

This essay in the Aeon website has some fairly significant things to say about economics and the "law" of supply and demand. Raising the price of carbon is the point of taxing it...and "everyone" knows that raising prices diminishes demand...everyone except the real world, apparently.

Here are some excerpts:

"In February 2021, the Chicago University IGM Forum asked a panel of distinguished economists if President Biden’s proposal of a federal minimum wage of $15 per hour – a level whose ratio to the average wage is in line with the levels in other countries – would lower employment for low-wage workers: 45 per cent either agreed or strongly agreed it would; only 14 per cent disagreed. This, despite a preponderance of research that has shown no meaningful disemployment effects of raising minimum wages.
...
"If even the simple supply-and-demand curve, a staple of the orthodox neoclassical framework, fails on something so fundamental as wages and employment, why do economists cling to it? And why do policymakers keep listening to them?

"Perhaps the answer to the first question lies in the second. In 2009, the then US president Barack Obama appointed Cass Sunstein as his regulation tsar, with a remit to help cut automotive emissions. Sunstein argued a carbon tax on fuel was the most efficient way to influence people’s behavior because that’s what the neoclassical dogma says. The fact that the tripling of fuel prices in the previous decade had not fundamentally changed Americans’ car purchasing patterns apparently did not merit consideration.* Neither did the fact that other regulatory measures imposed in Europe had led to a far larger increase in fuel economy with only a modest price signal via higher fuel prices.

"In 2020, the UK government appointed Mark Carney – a former governor at the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England – as climate change adviser. Carney was quick to declare the problem to be essentially a mispricing of the cost of emitting carbon. Neither Sunstein nor Carney are experts in climate economics, let alone climate change. But being economists, both men believed they knew how the world worked and therefore had the toolkit to provide solutions to the world’s gravest and most complex problems. Political leaders believed them. In effect, their self-confidence made them more employable."

...

*Local note: Californians still build our cities as sprawl--a design pattern that eliminates walking. Every trip of any significance must be in an auto, and every driving-age adult must own a car--perhaps the most regressive "tax" known to man. Even the walk to a transit stop is often uncomfortable, even unsafe, and not enough potential customers live within a walk of the stops to make transit economically viable, never mind the buses come only every three hours.

The Sacramento region has 20 years worth of unbuilt infill, yet local governments continue to approve outlying, commute-lengthening development. This is because land speculators can purchase agricultural land for a few thousand dollars an acre, then, when they get the development entitlements, sell that same land to builders for 50 - 100 times what they paid for it. A 5,000% - 10,000% gross return on investment is a powerful motivator.

The market-favored solution to commute-lengthening sprawl, validated by Berkeley planner Robert Cervero, is mixed use (offices and neighborhood commerce among the residences), mixed-income (multi-family among the single family), pedestrian-friendly development. People actually pay premiums to live in such neighborhoods, even if the homes are not new... See the McKinley Park neighborhood for one. (Cervero advises a slight increase in density from McKinley Park's to make the thing work best.)

In better news, the state of California now mandates pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly "Complete Streets" for all new development, and focuses on minimizing vehicle miles traveled rather than congestion reduction. For a look at how "planning" actually works locally, see this (from 1993 Business Journal), or take a look at Steve Keen's Debunking Economics: The Naked Emperor Dethroned. (Sorry, not an easy read.)

Personally, I'd compare our current (neoclassical, neoliberal) economics to someone who wants to guide their automobile by turning the rear view mirror. It's not just futile, it's dangerous.

--Mark Dempsey

More Economics Links

 

The Japanese denial story – Part 1 – Bill Mitchell – Modern Monetary Theory

The Japanese denial story – Part 2 – Bill Mitchell – Modern Monetary Theory

Bottom up reform in the EMU requires the abandonment of the Treaties – Bill Mitchell – Modern Monetary Theory

Michael Hudson: On Debt Parasites | naked capitalism

Michael Hudson: What is Causing So Much Inflation? | naked capitalism

Economics/Public Policy Reading Links

What Richard Vague Says that Matt Taibbi, Our Acrophobic Champion for the Duration of the COVD-19 Crisis, Needs to Learn about Stratospheric Levels of Public Debt | naked capitalism

A Quick Note In Response to Naked Capitalism - Reporting by Matt Taibbi

A Universal Basic Income Is Essential and Will Work - LA Progressive

*Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin 2014 Q1

[Essay] The Pessimistic Style in American Politics, by Thomas Frank | Harper's Magazine

Retail Bankruptcies, Bailouts Put Spotlight on Private Equity | naked capitalism

If history was more like science, would it predict the future? | Aeon Essays

The macroeconomics of degrowth: can planned economic contraction be stable? | Prof Steve Keen on Patreon

Corporate Power, Protests and the Breakdown of a Social Contract - BIG by Matt Stoller

*How public housing was destined to fail – Greater Greater Washington

Thermodynamics 2.0 keynote: Macroeconomics, Minsky, & fraud in Neoclassical climate change economics - YouTube

*The Tremendous but "Secret" Success of Socialist Vietnam | Dissident Voice

Banking as a Public Utility – with Ellen Brown | Michael Hudson

Krystal Ball: Alex Morse And How Personal Victimhood Will Doom The Left - YouTube

Why Isn’t Modern Monetary Theory Common Knowledge? – Economics from the Top Down

Institute for New Economic Thinking

Rethinking Economic Growth Theory From a Biophysical Perspective - The Bichler and Nitzan Archives

It’s Time for a Debt “Jubilee” | naked capitalism

Why Americans Need Debt Jubilees, Helicopter Money, and 21st-Century Greenbacks: A 45-minute Conversation with Richard Vague | naked capitalism

Burning Injustice: Why the California Wildfires Are a Class Crisis | naked capitalism

Early American Money - Making Money American: The Monetary Regimes of the New United States - YouTube

Austerity is a sado-masochistic ritual for a powerful elite

How to Move Beyond Utopian Socialism and Libertarianism | naked capitalism

The Dead End of the Left? | Commonweal Magazine

The phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and embodiment in the world | Aeon Essays

Macroeconomics, Money (MMT Style) and Post-Brexit Recovery, All in One Twitter thread | naked capitalism

Become a Congressional Ratwatcher – Rats Reform Congress

Explaining Fiscal Multipliers, a Stealthy but Important Budget Battleground (Part 1) | naked capitalism

The Legacy of President Donald Trump - TK News by Matt Taibbi

Bitcoin is not a literal Ponzi scheme - Trolly McTrollface's Blog

Apps

Letter from a Region in My Mind, by James Baldwin | The New Yorker

Russia: Origin and consequences of the debt repudiation of February 10, 1918

The Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal – Bob Pollin – theAnalysis.news

Institute for New Economic Thinking

Colonization, Conquest and Our Unconscious Civilization | Ian Welsh

Opinion | Biden Can Go Bigger and Not ‘Pay for It’ the Old Way - The New York Times

Why humans find it so hard to let go of false beliefs | Aeon Essays

Austerity Raises Covid Deaths | naked capitalism

Webinar with Michael Hudson: A 4000-Year Perspective on Economy, Money and Debt | naked capitalism

Peacebuilding is an artform crafted by divided peoples | Aeon Essays

Bank lending - The Center of the Universe

How Much Damage Do Heavy Trucks Do to Our Roads? | Inside Science

‘A Kleptocrat’s dream’: US real estate a safe haven for billions in dirty money, report says - Wildernmill

Philosophers of Capitalism: How Hume Civilized Money - CounterPunch.org

5 years since the 2016 Coup: an Interview with Dilma Rousseff | Brasil Wire

Opinion | John Yarmuth Is in Favor of Deficit Spending - The New York Times

A Company Family: The Untold History of Obama and the CIA - CovertAction Magazine

*Pavlina Tcherneva - The Federal Job Guarantee - YouTube

*Why the Conventional Wisdom on Rent Control Isn’t All That Wise

Why Does Congress Fight Over Childcare But Not F-35s? - LA Progressive

How Finland’s criminal justice system compares to the U.S. | WBEZ Chicago

The Truth About Inflation – Economics from the Top Down

COLLECTED WORKS OF WARREN MOSLER

Seven Replies to the Critiques of Modern Money Theory | Levy Economics Institute

How to fulfil the need for transcendence after the death of God | Aeon Essays

Neochartalists On Turkey, Part 2 — The Case For Concerted Action

Rendezvous in Mallorca: a conversation with Warren Mosler - The Gower Initiative for Modern Money Studies

What if Everything You Know About Murder Rates and Policing Is Wrong? – Mother Jones

The Interest/Price Spiral | New Wayland

Ellen Brown: The Real Antidote to Inflation – scheerpost.com

*The Japanese denial story – Part 1 – Bill Mitchell – Modern Monetary Theory

 

*All of these are recommended reading/viewing (some are videos), but the asterisks are highly recommended (I've cited them elsewhere)

The Latest from Typhoid Mary...er, I mean Sacramento Supervisor Sue Frost

(c) by Mark Dempsey

Supervisor Frost jumped the shark with her latest newsletter. In it she pleads with health experts and governments to eliminate mask requirements from schools. No, she's not an epidemiologist, nor does she play one on TV...and no, she does not cite any sources for her sentiments.

Nevertheless, our Superviser helpfully reminds us that teachers were among the first to receive vaccines, and children...well, their lives don't matter that much, do they? 

She dismisses the possibility that the children will get sick, saying "science tells us that the vast majority of children who get COVID have mild symptoms, or no symptoms"--true but deceptive (technical term: bullshit). She completely dismisses the notion that kids could infect grandma nd grandpa even if asymptomatic. And my child isn't a "majority," but what the heck! Let your freak flag fly!

As for her concerns that masks will cause something worse than COVID, they're also overblown. One example: Two studies on children used N95 masks, which are more sophisticated than the masks most schoolchildren will use, but even these found no significant effect on breathing. 

Meanwhile, here's a statement from the CDC about pediatric COVID vulnerability: "The true incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in children is not known due to lack of widespread testing and the prioritization of testing for adults and those with severe illness. Hospitalization rates in children are significantly lower than hospitalization rates in adults with COVID-19, suggesting that children may have less severe illness from COVID-19 compared to adults." [emphasis added] 

And fom Medical News Today: "Researchers investigated what proportion of confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections are asymptomatic....They found that across different contexts, 40.5% of people who contract the virus have no symptoms. ...The researchers say that the high percentage of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 cases highlights a potential transmission risk within communities."[emphasis added]

If you are interested in how vulnerable children actually are, rather than a dismissive hand wave--hey, it's all fake news, isn't it?--here's from the Mayo Clinic: "COVID-19 in children has been on the rise in the U.S., with children recently making up 24% of just over 100,000 weekly reported cases of COVID-19 [Note: children are 22% of the population]. While all children are capable of getting the virus that causes COVID-19, they don't become sick as often as adults. Most children have mild symptoms or no symptoms." ...Which would seem to agree with at least some of Ms. Frost's assertions. Reading further in that link, though, reminds us that "some" is not the same as "all": 

"...some children become severely ill with COVID-19. They might need to be hospitalized, treated in the intensive care unit or placed on a ventilator to help them breathe, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

"In addition, children with other health conditions, such as obesity, diabetes and asthma, might be at higher risk of serious illness with COVID-19. Children who have congenital heart disease, genetic conditions or conditions affecting the nervous system or metabolism also might be at higher risk of serious illness with COVID-19.

"Research also suggests disproportionately higher rates of COVID-19 in Hispanic and non-Hispanic Black children than in non-Hispanic white children.

"Some children continue to experience symptoms of COVID-19 after their initial recovery. Rarely, some children might also develop a serious condition that appears to be linked to COVID-19."

And what are the long-term effects of even asymptomatic infection? We don't know, and neither does our part-time epidemiologist, Ms. Frost. And we all know Black and Hispanic children don't really matter right? And if they infect and kill Grandma, or their Head Start Teacher no biggie!

Meanwhile, here is a graph of those most recent COVID infections:

The results are from Johns Hopkins University (here). Notice the spike at the right (most recent) end of the graph--a time frame that coincides with the publication of Ms. Frost's newsletter.

So...Ms. Frost has decided to double down on shark-jumping, which aligns with Ms. Frost's other public policy positions. 

One example concerns criminal justice in the county. The U.S. has 5% of the world's population, but 25% of its prisoners--five times the world average, seven times more, per capita, than the demographically identical Canadians. So is Canadian crime worse than U.S. crime? No; about the same. Incarceration doesn't prevent crime--and all the "surges" cited in an attempt to decarcerate, are, once again, bullshit. For example “Robbery, burglary and theft are down in Los Angeles compared to 2019, according to the latest crime data from the police department,” even though the LAPD publicly blamed a recent increase in crime on some of California's de-criminalizing initiatives.

Crime locally is down over the last decade or so, and so are arrests and convictions (source: Decarcerate Sacramento). So the County Jail population would decline to reflect that, right? Nope. The beatings will continue until morale improves (I suggest this is Ms. Frost's motto.)

So the Jail is full, and County even lost a lawsuit for its mistreatment of the County Jail's prisoners--50% - 70% of whom are not convicted of anything except being unable to afford bail. The committee formed to address the lawsuit recommended many changes, but none of them included expanding the Jail.

Within the context of our incarceration binge, what does Supervisor Frost want to do? Answer: expand the Jail. I cannot make this up.

Another example: Alone among the supervisors, Ms. Frost has refused to wear a mask when in a meeting. She also votes in favor of parasitic land speculators, expanding Elk Grove despite large areas of unbuilt infill, and she votes against an emergency eviction moratorium when about 40 evicted tenants appealed to the board of Supervisors. She said it "broke her heart" to evict the tenants. I say one has to have a heart before it can break.

In any case, politics in the U.S. has always been messy, perhaps like the interior of our Supervisor's mind. So it's not a tremendous surprise that she is pleading for fewer anti-COVID measures as the pandemic peaks. Heck, it wouldn't surprise me if she promoted driving on the left side of the road..which leads me to wonder why DMV issues her a driver's license, much less why she got elected as a County Supervisor.

 

Update: Omicron sending children to hospitals in record numbers.

Excerpt: "More than 1,000 children have died from COVID-19 since the pandemic began. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of children have been hospitalized in the last few months alone.

"From Aug. 1 to Dec. 28, more than 76,000 children have been hospitalized with COVID-19. The omicron variant was first detected in the U.S. in early December but accounted for 59 percent of all cases last week.

"The American Pediatric Association estimates that in the past two weeks, there was a 5 percent increase in children testing positive for COVID-19, with 368,515 cases added from Dec. 9 to Dec. 23.

"While children are less likely to develop severe symptoms of COVID-19 than adults, the CDC warns they can still suffer from major health issues like multisystem inflammatory syndrome, a rare disease associated with COVID-19 that results in inflamed body parts."

Update #2: Headline from 1/8/2022 Bee: "More California kids are hospitalized with COVID than ever before, officials say The previous record was 41 California kids hospitalized in a day. Now, it’s 90. "