Posts Tagged ‘economy’

Texas Statistics Roundup

Monday, February 5th, 2024

Longtime readers will remember that I used to do a regular Texas vs. California roundup of the respective directions of the two biggest states in the union, until that just became too big a pain to keep doing. We now have enough data of how Democrats have ruined single party California to just take it for granted that its slide into the toilet will continue unabated.

But the latest data on how Texas continues to grow by leaps and bounds is worth taking a look at.

  • The state population continues to grow.

    New population estimates have been released, and once again Texas gained far more residents than any other state. The US population increased by a little more than 1.6 million people during the 12 months ending in July 2023. That’s a rise of just 0.5%, but it’s better than the 0.4% increase in 2022 or 2021’s 0.2% gain. Migration was up, and there was a drop in deaths (though they remain well above pre-COVID levels).

    About 87% of the increase was concentrated in the South. More than 706,000 people were added to the region due to net domestic migration, with almost 500,000 from net international migration.

    The increase in Texas was 473,453 (about 1,300 people per day), followed by Florida (up 365,205). South Carolina and Florida were the two fastest-growing states in percentage terms, increasing by 1.7% and 1.6%, respectively. The Texas pace was just slightly under 1.6%.

    Eight states saw their population fall in 2023 including California (‑75,423), Hawaii (‑4,261), Illinois (‑32,826), Louisiana (‑14,274), New York (‑101,984), Oregon (‑6,021), Pennsylvania (‑10,408), and West Virginia (‑3,964).

  • Next up: Texas is the second youngest state in the union. At an average age of 36, Texas is only behind Utah at 32 (which I’m presuming is all those marriage and children-minded Mormons).
  • Finally, in an important economic indicator for the state, the Texas oil and gas industry set new production records.

    Texas’ oil and gas industry continued to one-up itself in 2023, setting new records for production, exports, taxes paid, and more, according to a new report.

    The Texas Oil and Gas Association’s (TXOGA) 2023 annual report showed the state’s industry produced 5.5 million barrels per day of crude oil and 31.8 billion cubic feet per day (bcf/d) of natural gas — both the highest in the U.S. If it were its own country, Texas would place fourth on the hierarchy of oil-producing nations behind the U.S., Russia, and Saudi Arabia.

    “American energy leadership starts in Texas and our nation, our economy and our world are better because of the unparalleled stewardship of Texas oil and natural gas companies,” said TXOGA President Todd Staples.

    “2023 was such a blockbuster year that the Texas oil and natural gas industry effectively rewrote its record book, clocking unmatched economic and energy achievements across the board.”

    According to TXOGA, members of the industry paid over $9 billion in oil and gas severance taxes to the state in 2023 — revenues that fund the state’s savings account and highway fund. Overall, $26.3 billion in state and local taxes were paid by oil and gas companies last year, edging out 2022’s previous record high.

    TXOGA listed out property taxes paid by the industry broken down by county and school district.

    The industry continues its strong rebound from the global turmoil wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, during which West Texas intermediate prices plunged to negative levels. In 2022, the industry accounted for 6 percent of the state’s gross domestic product.

    The industry employs over 480,000 people in Texas with an average annual wage of $124,000.

    Just as in previous years, the Texas formula of freedom, low taxes, low regulation, the rule of law and small government continues to pay dividends.

  • LinkSwarm for September 15, 2023

    Friday, September 15th, 2023

    The Biden economy continues to batter ordinary Americans, CIA’s bribing experts to protect China and the deep state, Ukraine makes Russian ships and air defense systems in Crimea go boom, UAW goes on strike, and sanctuary city chickens come home to roost. Plus a personal update at the end. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Joe Biden continues to work his special brand of magic on the economy: “Real household income suffers biggest drop since Great Recession.”

    Nominally, households earned more money in 2022 than they did in 2021. But thanks to inflation caused by Bidenomics, real household income (that is, income adjusted for inflation) not only fell, but fell by an amount not seen since the Great Recession.

    According to Census Bureau numbers released Tuesday, median household income fell from $76,330 in 2021 to $74,580 in 2022, a decline of 2.3%. This is the biggest drop in real household income since 2010, when it fell 2.6%. Even at the height of the pandemic, when millions of people couldn’t work, real income only fell 2.2%.

    The decline in real income was driven entirely by near-record-high inflation. According to the Census Bureau, inflation rose 7.8% between 2021 and 2022, which was the largest inflation increase since 1981.

    Isn’t not being able to feed your family a small price to pay for our elites not having to deal with mean tweets? (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • The deep state at work: “CIA Bribed Analysts To Change Lab-Leak Conclusions.”

    A ‘senior-level’ CIA whistleblower has come forward to allege that the agency bribed analysts to change their opinion that Covid-19 most likely originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, according to the NY Post.

    The whistleblower told House committee leaders that his agency ‘ tried to pay off six analysts who found SARS-CoV-2 likely originated in a Wuhan lab if they changed their position and said the virus jumped from animals to humans,’ according to a Tuesday letter from the chairmen of two House subcommittees investigating the pandemic response and US intelligence, Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) and Mike Turner (R-OH).

    The pair have requested all documents, communications and pay info from the CIA’s Covid-19 Discovery Team by Sept. 26.

    “According to the whistleblower, at the end of its review, six of the seven members of the Team believed the intelligence and science were sufficient to make a low confidence assessment that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China,” reads the letter from the House panel chairmen.

    “The seventh member of the Team, who also happened to be the most senior, was the lone officer to believe COVID-19 originated through zoonosis.

    “The whistleblower further contends that to come to the eventual public determination of uncertainty, the other six members were given a significant monetary incentive to change their position,” the letters continue, adding that the analysts were “experienced officers with significant scientific expertise.”

  • Hunter Biden indicted on federal gun charges. A whole lot of observers think this is just an excuse to avoid indicting him (and his father) on bribery and corruption charges.
  • Ukraine seems to be systemically destroying Russian air defense systems in occupied Crimea and going after all of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.
  • Trump supports Paxton.
  • Abbott’s busses won the border battle.

    Washington refused to fully fund construction of a wall along the Mexican border as Congress obeyed the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — whom Republicans bow to — and the galaxy of gangs, drug cartels, pedos, Chinese spies, terrorists and Methodists who back Democrats. There are some overlaps. My point is, Democrats cannot destroy the nation without help.

    There seemed to be no stopping the onslaught. What to do? What to do? What to do?

    Well, they were messing with Texas and as Texans say, don’t mess with Texas.

    Its governor’s press office said in June, “In April 2022, Governor Abbott directed the Texas Division of Emergency Management to charter buses to transport migrants from Texas to Washington, D.C. The Governor added New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia as additional drop-off locations last year and most recently added Denver as a busing destination last month. Since beginning the migrant busing strategy last spring, more than 21,600 migrants have been transported to these self-declared sanctuary cities while providing much-needed relief to Texas’ overwhelmed border communities.”

    Battles are usually fought with horses, tanks or aeroplanes. Greg Abbott used buses. As of June, he shipped 500 busloads of illegal aliens to sanctuary cities. The shipments continue.

    You want ’em, you got ’em.

    It turns out, sanctuary cities don’t want them.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
    

  • Virginia Democratic statehouse candidate Susanna Gibson is complaining that there are videos of her having sex with her husband online. Gee, how did they get online? “Gibson had an account on Chaturbate, a legal website where viewers can watch live webcam performances that feature nudity and sexual activity…The videos show Gibson and her husband, John David Gibson, having sex and at times looking into the camera and asking viewers for donations in the form of ‘tokens’ or ‘tips’ to watch a private show.” It did not take Columbo to crack this case. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. might bolt the party that’s trying to screw him over.

    The Democrat Party has a latent disaster on its hand vis a vis one RFK Jr.

    On the one hand, they are fully dedicated to sabotaging his campaign. Under no circumstances whatsoever will he be permitted to win the nomination.

    Even if he had 80%+ support from the electorate, the sick truth is that party leadership (influenced by the consultant and donor classes) would rather lose with Brandon than win with RFK Jr. because of what he’s liable to do to the Deep State and D.C. largesse were he ever to assume office. It would be a proverbial bloodbath for the administrative state and all of the grifters who feed on it.

    On the other hand, they need to keep RFK Jr. within the Democrat Party fold because if he were to go rogue and run third party — which he, frankly, should have been doing all along — it would be a veritable death knell for the Brandon entity’s prospects in 2024, which are wafer-thin as it is.

    Whatever perceived threat Cornel West poses to Brandon’s re-election with his Green Party run, magnify that threat by 10x, 100x and you’re in the ballpark of what RFK Jr. would do to the party. It’s not outlandish to speculate that a strong third-party run by RFK Jr. might literally break the Democrat Party for years or possibly forever. That’s how sick of the party’s BS its own members, not to mention independents and non-voters (the largest, unserviced voting bloc in the country), are.

    RFK Jr. has already proven himself nearly bulletproof from relentless Democrat Party and corporate state media attacks — arguably on the same level in this regard as “Teflon” Don.

  • “Hays County district clerk files petition to remove DA, citing new Texas law.”

    There’s a petition to have the Hays County district attorney removed from office.

    The person who filed it? The Hays County district clerk.

    The petition was filed by Hays County District Clerk Avrey Anderson on Tuesday, Sept. 12. I

    It alleged that Hays County DA Kelly Higgins implemented and executed a policy or policies that refused to prosecute a class or type of criminal offense under state law.

    The petition said DA Higgins has made public declarations that he would not prosecute the following:

    • simple drug possession offenses
    • simple cannabis possession offenses
    • procedures committed by a licensed physician in the case that they are treating transgenders
    • procedures committed by a licensed physician in the case they are performing abortions

    According to the court documents filed, there’s been an excessive amount of felony possession of cannabis, methamphetamine and cocaine cases being declined for “random and nonspecific reasons.”

    I know one of the first questions in your mind: Is Higgins a Soros-backed DA? Answer cloudy. She got $2,000 from Chip Shields in Portland, OR. Shields founded Better People, a pro ex-con thing, but I can’t find a direct Soros link to Higgins. (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • Things that make you go Hmmmm: “A representative of the Harris County attorney’s office told a district court judge that the county would use all legal means to prevent the deposition of the deputy director of election technology Jason Bruce.”
  • UAW goes on strike over wages, pensions…and mandating electric cars.
  • Let the child sex mutilation lawsuits begin.
  • Goodbye, Mittens.
  • National Review looks back at Simon and Garfunkel. Don’t agree with everything here, but they did make some great music Back In The Day…
  • 14-year-old son died after attempting the ‘One Chip Challenge.’ You don’t want to jump into that sort of thing without building up your resistance first. Me, I’m pretty sure I could do it, especially if I could find a way to make money off it. Maybe I could get 100,00 people to pledge a buck for every one I eat, and then then see how many I can eat on a live-stream…
  • Ever wanted to hear The Monkees’ Micky Dolenz do an album of REM covers? Yeah, me neither, but here’s “Shiny Happy People.”
  • Ooopsie! (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • “Democrats Complain That Illegal Immigrants Are Destroying Their Sanctuary Cities.”
  • “Experts Believe Aaron Rodgers Ankle Injury A Result Of Being Unvaccinated.”
  • Boing! Boing! Boing!

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • Also, my most recent job just ended. So here’s the tip jar, if you’re so inclined:





    I don’t usual rattle the jar, because I make good money when employed, and I’m hardly destitute, but every bit helps. If you know of any remote Senior Technical Writer positions, let me know.

    LinkSwarm for September 1, 2023

    Friday, September 1st, 2023

    A whole lot more Biden Recession hits the economy—unexpectedly! The poor go hungry, the fired Ukrainian prosecutor confirms Biden corruption, people keep flocking to Texas and Florida, McConell’s brain blows up (again), and a whole lot of Texas laws take effect. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Unemployment rate surges (unexpectedly!) as every single monthly payroll estimate this year has been revised downward. Those who assured us that federal government economic data would never be altered simply to help boost Democrats were lying to us.
    

  • Poor people are buying less food because they can’t afford it. “Among households using the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program’s boosted pandemic benefits, 42% skipped meals in August and 55% ate less because they couldn’t afford food, more than double last year’s share, according to a Wednesday report from Propel Inc., a benefits software developer.”(Hat tip: ZeroHedge.)
  • Prosecutor confirms that it was indeed Biden corruption in Ukraine.

    Victor Shokin, the fired Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Biden family corruption (that Donald Trump was impeached for asking about) has spoken out for the first time since 2019 – and says the Bidens did it.

    To review – Shokin had an active and ongoing investigation into Ukrainian energy company Burisma and its owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, according to a 2020 US Senate Committee report.

    Zlochevsky, who hired Hunter Biden to sit on his board, granted his own company (Burisma) permits to drill for oil and gas in Ukraine while he was Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources. Shokin stated in a 2019 deposition that there were five criminal cases against Zlochevesky, including money laundering, corruption, illegal funds transfers, and profiteering through shell corporations while he was a sitting minister.

    Now, Shokin tells Fox News that be believes the Bidens were taking bribes.

    “I do not want to deal in unproven facts. But my firm personal conviction is that yes, this was the case. They were being bribed,” Shokin told the outlet. “The fact that Joe Biden gave away $1 billion in U.S. money in exchange for my dismissal – my firing – isn’t that alone a case of corruption?” he asks in another clip.

  • “Young High Income Earners Are Flocking To Florida And Texas, New Study Shows…”To the surprise of likely no one, Florida and Texas are once again No. 1 and No. 2. Florida gained a total of 2,175 high earners aged 26 to 35 after accounting for both inflows and outflows, while Texas gained a net 1,909. Despite the losses, New York (-5,062) and California (-4,495) still have the highest count of young high earners of any state by a wide margin.
  • China tried to seize another island in the South China Sea. It didn’t go well for them. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Mitch McConnell’s brain is broken, as he freezes up the second time in two months.
  • Dispatches from the groomer menace: “Woman Says Her Daughter Was Sex Trafficked After School Hid Gender Transition.”
  • Katy ISD rejects the radical social justice agenda. “The agenda item included policy updates in regard to requiring sex-specific spaces to be ‘safeguarded,’ which include bathrooms and locker rooms. Policies were also updated on pronoun usage as teachers and staff will not be required to use student “preferred pronouns” and content prohibiting ‘gender fluidity’ instruction.”
  • By contrast, Richardson ISD won a grant to support the gay agenda in schools.
  • Texas laws that take effect today, including a ban on child sexual mutilation (AKA “gender affirming care”), banning men from college women’s athletics, and banning DEI from public universities.
  • Also, Texas voters will get a chance to vote on a right to farm constitutional amendment in November.

  • Remember flash mobs of people rampaging through stores looting and beating random people? One just happened again in California.
  • Relations between the coup junta in Niger (which observers want you to know is pronounced kneeJ) and France gets spicier. The junta is trying to expel the French ambassador and he’s not going. The tiff might very well turn kinetic, and I doubt the Wagner Group mercs are up to taking on French regulars.
  • Ecolooneys protest Burning Man by blocking roads, promptly get beatdown from tribal police.
  • Disney Stock Plunges To 9 Year Lows After Multiple Woke Box Office Failures.”
  • Also, investors are suing them over “Alleged Chapek Era “Cost-Shifting Scheme” to Hide Streaming Losses.” Maybe everyone lost the streaming wars. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Colin Furze offers up a bunch of helpful shop tips.
  • “Texas Governor Signs Legislation Making It Legal To Make Climate Protestors Dance By Firing Six-Shooters At Their Feet.”
  • LinkSwarm for February 10, 2023

    Friday, February 10th, 2023

    Here’s a longer-than-usual LinkSwarm, since last week’s edition was wiped out by the ice storm power outage.

  • The leftwing corruption of all government institutions continues apace. “US lost 287,000 jobs while government was reporting +1 million in gains.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • More cheery Biden Economy news: “Warning Signs Indicate a Great Depression May Be Coming.”

    “That’s because economic growth is slowing down,” explains research fellow EJ Antoni. “Even the areas which contributed positively to gross domestic product (GDP) are not necessarily signs of prosperity. For example, business investment grew at only 1.4 percent in the fourth quarter, but that was almost entirely inventory growth. Nonresidential investment, a key driver of future economic growth, was up just 0.7 percent.”

    “Meanwhile, residential investment fell off a cliff,” Antoni continued, “dropping 26.7 percent as consumers were unable to afford the combination of high home prices, high interest rates and falling real incomes. No wonder homeownership affordability has fallen to the lowest level in that metric’s history.”

    There was a gain in net exports, but that was largely a mirage created by a major slowdown in international trade. “Imports are simply falling faster than exports, which shows up as an increase in GDP.”

    But probably most concerning to Antoni is the sharp decline in real disposable income in 2022, which exceeded $1 trillion.

    “This is the second-largest percentage drop in real disposable income ever, behind only 1932, the worst year of the Great Depression,” he observed. “To keep up with inflation, consumers are depleting their savings and burning through the ‘stimulus’ checks they received during 2020 and 2021. Credit card debt continues growing, while savings plummeted $1.6 trillion last year, falling below 2009 levels.”

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Boom. “Texas has punted Citigroup from the syndicate that’s set to manage the Lone Star state’s largest-ever municipal bond offering, saying the bank’s policies for gun retailers discriminate against the firearms industry.”
  • “DeSantis Admin Revokes Liquor License of Orlando Venue That Hosted Sexual Drag Show for Children.” Good.
  • “DeSantis Takes Wrecking Ball To ‘Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion’ Bureaucracy In Florida Public Universities. Even better!
  • Also, the College Board caved and removed Critical Race Theory material from its Advanced Placement African American Studies.
  • DNC to Iowa: Drop Dead.
  • 368 Arrested, 131 Rescued In California Sex Trafficking Operation.”
  • Just what our health care system needs: “25 People Charged In Fake Nursing Diploma Operation,” in Delaware, New York, New Jersey, Texas, and Florida.
  • Hunter Biden admits that that the laptop is his. This is 100 times more important a story than the Chinese spy balloons.
  • “U.S. Deploys 100 New Tank Transporters to Move M1 Tanks Quickly in Europe.”
  • Suicide bomber blows up mosque in Pakistan.
  • Journalists drop the mask. “Objectivity Has Got To Go.”
  • Related: CNN Ratings hit nine year low.
  • Gawker shuts down. Let’s have a moment of silenceOK that’s enough. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Grand Theft Pollo. The food service director of an impoverished Illinois school district was charged with stealing $1.5 million of food — most of which was chicken wings. Vera Liddell, 66, allegedly began stealing from the Harvey School District during the height of COVID-19.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • That old Communist Magic: “Food in Cuba is both scarce and unaffordable as prices double while incomes remain stagnant.” (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • Important safety tip: Try not to poke downed kamikaze loitering munition drones with a stick.
  • It now costs more to fuel an electric car than a gas-powered one.
  • Bill Maher continues to take regular red pills. “The problem with communism and some very recent ideologies here at home, is that they think you can change reality by screaming at it.”
  • We could be heroes, just for one day. Or once a month, as the case may be…
  • Over 400 sandwiches and pre-packaged meals recalled due to listeria.
  • This week in rapper murders: “Tampa rapper arrested for young mother’s murder days after being acquitted of recording studio double-murder.”

    A Tampa jury acquitted Billy Adams of killing two men in a makeshift recording studio in Lutz. He walked free from a Tampa courtroom on January 27.

    Three days later, a young mother who was pregnant with her second child was found shot to death in a residential area of New Tampa. Her toddler was still in her vehicle nearby.

    A week after her death, Tampa police said Billy Adams “did admit to being the one to pull the trigger.”

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • How Louis C.K. uncancelled himself.
  • Related: Louis C.K. discusses how he develops a set on Joe Rogan.
  • The ice storm took out KXAN’s transmitter tower. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • The last 747 rolls out. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Ozzy Osbourne retires from touring at age 74. Honestly, the odds Ozzy would even make it to 74 must have seemed pretty daunting throughout much of his life.
  • Professional eater vs. giant calzone.
  • World’s oldest dog is a Good Boy.
  • Then: Commercial Investors Are Sucking Up All American Housing! Now: They’re Losing Their Shirts!

    Thursday, September 8th, 2022

    If you can remember all the way back to pre-Flu Manchu 2020, housing prices were soaring and there were a raft of articles decrying how commercial investors were snapping up housing as fast as they possibly could, pricing ordinary Americans out of the market.

    Now, some two years later, it’s evident that a lot of those commercial investors kept buying right up through the peak of the market, and are now proceeding to lose their shirts on those deals thanks to the Biden Recession.

    Take, for example, OpenDoor, the company that sends out those endless “We want to buy your home” letters. They promised investors they were going to use the Internet to revolutionize home-buying by flipping homes at scale and cut out the middle man. How well did they succeed?

    Now that they’ve had a while to run their system, the answer is: Not so well.

    Takeaways:

  • One thing I was unaware of: Commercial investors in residential real estate fund their purchases through variable interest rate debt.
  • OpenDoor’s outstanding debt balance “has ballooned from $271 million to $6.1 billion.”
  • Every point rise in interest rates costs OpenDoor $40 million more in interest rate payments.
  • “OpenDoor is truly a modern day house of cards. The company’s revenue grew from $1.8 billion in 2018 to over $8 billion in 2021. To grow they scaled, going from 18 markets to 44 markets in the U.S. In those four years, the company went from flipping 7,000 homes a year back in 2018 to now flipping 21, 000 homes most recently in 2021.”
  • “Despite OpenDoor’s top-line growth, the company has incurred loss after loss after loss, each bigger than the last, even in a strong rebound year in 2021. Where the company sold a record number of homes, OpenDoor incurred a record loss of over $600 million.”
  • Some math snipped. “OpenDoor would need to sell roughly sixty thousand homes a year just to break even with how much it costs the company to exist in its current burn rate. Every time the interest rate goes up a single point, OpenDoor needs to sell an additional 2,000 homes in order to offset that additional $40 million.”
  • The end of the video touches on how Zillow lost $881 million by trusting an algorithm that had them paying above-marker prices. We covered that briefly here some nine months ago. Here’s a video with more details:

    But it’s not just OpenDoor and Zillow. Here’s a video that explains why all the large-scale commercial buyers of residential real estate (including those buying to rent it out rather than flip) are screwed by rising interest rates:

    Takeaways:

  • The Fed “is now committing to not only continue increasing interest rates, they’re committing to keeping interest rates elevated for the foreseeable future.”
  • “These real estate investors are going to be losing money in the housing market on their investments, and that they are going to have to fire sale their portfolio as a result.”
  • “Over the last year, the investor profit or the cap rate in America is about 4.5%, which was pretty good in 2021, when interest rates were zero, but now that interest rates are projected to go to 3.8%, we can see that investors who buy real estate in America are basically getting very little premium over buying a short-term government bond.”
  • “As this investor demand continues to go down, home prices are also going to continue to go down in America, because in many markets investors were quarter of the demand, a third of the demand for homes over the last of couple years, and in some neighborhoods investors were 50—60% of the demand.”
  • “A lot of people think [commercial buyers pay] cash, but folks, it’s never cash, it’s always a bank in the background giving these hedge funds and private equity funds money to buy single-family homes.”
  • “They’ll give these hedge funds maybe 70—75% percent of the money to go do it, like a normal loan. The thing is, the loans that these Wall Street investors use to buy homes are often adjustable rate loans, where every time the fed hikes interest rates, the Wall Street investor has to pay more in debt service and interest on their existing portfolio.”
  • “We’re gonna get to a point soon over the next six months where these Wall Street investors are having to pay more to their bank and their warehouse lender than they’re going to receive in income and rent from their tenant. Like, literally, these Wall Street investors not only are going to see the value of their property going to go down, they’re going to begin losing money in terms of cash flow.”
  • So not only will investors have to sell, but frequently they won’t have any choice.

    Because their lender, their bank, is going to do something called a margin call. At a certain point, they’re gonna say “Hey Wall Street buyer who I’m giving money to, the value of the homes has gone down and now you can barely afford to pay interest. You’re gonna have to now just pay us off, or pay us down,” and when the bank does that margin call, these investors are then going to be forced to sell off their portfolio, because they’re going to need the cash, causing a massive, widespread dump of inventory onto the U.S. housing market.

  • He doesn’t mention Austin by name in this video, but he does in another pegging it as the #5 market most likely to see price drops. “This is a market in absolute freefall.” “In the span of just five months, the number of homes for sale in Austin has increased from 1460 and February to nearly 8 000 in July.” He thinks home prices could down by 40%. Naturally, as an Austin-area home-owner, I think that’s way too much, but I do expect significant retreats from the highs reached early this year.
  • He also thinks inflation is going to get worse (which is probably a good bet).
  • (In another video covering some of the same ground, he mentions BlackRock, one of the biggest boogeymen in public perceptions of buying residential real estate. Guess what? “BlackRock is not a big player in terms of owning, managing and buying real estate in the U.S.”)

    Like the fear of Japan buying everything in the late 1980s, fear that institutional investors will make owning a home impossible for ordinary Americans turned out to suffer from the same recency bias, assuming that what is going on right this minute will continue for the foreseeable future.

    Like assuming that the giant ants are unstoppable, or that Hispanics will always vote for Democrats, assuming that housing prices will always go up and that credit will always be cheap are categorical mistakes that the market will eventually punish you for making, and the companies that made it are now bleeding red ink.

    People who sold during the bubble made out like bandits, and people who bought during it got screwed, but what can’t go up forever won’t. Bubbles pop. Absent government distortions of the market*, supply and demand have a way of adjusting.

    Anyway, if you need to buy a house, nine months from now is probably going to be a great buyer’s market…

    *And yes, lots of cities and states try their damnedest to prevent new housing from being built. I’m looking at you, California.

    New Trend For Young Chinese: Give Up And “Let it Rot”

    Thursday, June 9th, 2022

    It’s tough to be a pimp young worker in today’s China. In addition to being repressed by the communist government, they’re unable to afford cars or houses, and many can’t even find jobs. As a result, some have turned to the philosophy of bai lan, or “Let it rot.” They’re just giving up on working or caring anymore and openly embracing loserdom.

    Naturally, the CCP is not pleased. Commies have never been tolerant of “parasitism” getting in the way of their political goals.

    A few takeaways:

  • The unemployment rate for those 16-24 is 18.2%. “The highest rate since official figures began.”
  • Even graduates of prestigious Peking University were competing for entry level bureaucratic jobs.
  • The repeat Flu Manchu lockdowns were the last straw for many. “What is the point of working hard when you can lose your basic rights as a human being, when your home can be broken into and when your private items can be thrown away at will? Chinese people once thought that if they worked hard and followed the rules they could have a good future but that seems to be an illusion.” Yeah, totalitarian Communist states are funny that way…
  • Unspoken is just how these young working-age Chinese who have given up manage to afford food and shelter, but I’m just assuming they’re following the time-honored tradition of sponging of their parents. What are they going to do, kick out their only heir?

    The problem with reports like this is that it’s hard for those of us outside China to determine just how widespread this phenomena is. Is it “Hey, all the young kids are listening to Mel Torme” or “Hey, all the young kids are listening to Nirvana”? It sucks to be young with dim prospects during a recession, and it sucks a lot worse to be under the heel of a communist dictatorship. Combining those isn’t a recipe for happiness.

    Hey Chinese bai lan sufferers: Have you considered launching a revolution against the communist government instead? That would give you lots of excitement and fill your life with purpose! It may shorten it as well, but I suspect it beats lying around waiting to die…

    LinkSwarm for May 27, 2022

    Friday, May 27th, 2022

    The economy is contracting (thanks Biden), attacks and counterattacks in eastern Ukraine, regulation madness, and something from the 1875 crime blotter in 2022. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

    Note: Today’s LinkSwarm will be a bit shorter than usual because: A.) I’m off Twitter for the time being, so I’m not grabbing links there, and B.) I took the day off from work and I’m just feeling lazy.

  • America’s Gross Domestic Product declined 1.5% in Q1. It’s that Biden magic! (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Sure, the Biden Administration sucks on basic competence when it comes to the American economy, but to balance that, they also suck on regulation.
    • The Biden Administration capped off its first full year in office with more than $201 billion in regulatory costs and 131 million hours in new annual paperwork, putting it far ahead of the two immediately preceding administrations’ respective first years by a wide margin.
    • Actions related to vehicle emissions and COVID-19 safety measures provided the vast majority of these administrative burdens.
    • Additionally, in terms of executive orders issued during the first year of an administration, the 77 put forth by President Biden represent the highest number since the Ford Administration.
  • Speaking of bad regulations and bad economic ideas, the Biden Administration has evidently learned nothing from the 2008 subprime meltdown, and the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) getting ready to loosen mortgage standards for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
  • Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues, and Russian forces seem to be making a slow, grinding advance on the strategic city of Severodonetsk in eastern Ukraine. “Moscow has poured thousands of troops into its assault on Severodonetsk and its sister city of Lysychansk. The twin cities, straddling the Siverskyi Donets river, have been in Russian sights for months. They currently comprise the lone Ukrainian redoubt in the Luhansk oblast.” Taking Lysychansk will require Russians to cross the Donets, previous attempts at which have been disasterous for them.

  • Russia has succeeded in taking Lyman, but Ukraine has launched counterattacks against the Russian forces encircling Severodonetsk.
  • More good news for Democrats: “Obamacare ‘Time Bomb’ To Hit Right Before Midterms.”
  • Texas Association of School Boards finally votes to leave National School Board Association.

    The Texas Association of School Boards is set to leave Its parent organization, the National School Board Association, according to records obtained by Texas Scorecard.

    The National School Boards Association made headlines last year following their letter to President Joe Biden and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland requesting federal intervention in local school board meetings and referring to concerned parents as “domestic terrorists.”

    It has since been revealed that the NSBA leadership urged the Biden Administration to deploy military forces in an effort to prevent parents from attending school board meetings.

    Since then, parents have been calling on the state organization—the Texas Association of School Boards—to leave the organization, as more than 20 states already have.

    Texas, however, had been a holdout until now.

    (Hat tip: Push Junction.)
    

  • “NBA owners silent on relationship to China, invested more than $10 billion in Chinese interests.”
  • Iran Seizes 2 Greek Tankers In Gulf As Retaliation For US Taking Oil.”
  • “Professor Fired Over Tweets Questioning BLM Movement Gets Reinstated, Awarded Back Pay After Arbitrator Finds In His Favor.” “An arbitrator has ruled that a University of Central Florida professor, Charles Negy, has to be reinstated.”
  • Speaking of intolerant Social Justice Warriors censoring people: Libs Of TikTok Suspended From Instagram. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Dwight is attending the NRA convention in Houston.
  • Who’s been funding the attacks on Elon Musk following his Twitter bid? Would you believe Bill Gates? Of course you would. “Would you believe what perfidy Ernst Stavro Blofeld is up to this week?” Why yes, I would. The biggest difference is that Blofeld has better fashion sense and never tried to inflict Microsoft Bob on the world…
  • “TSMC And Intel Are In A Mad Dash To Hire Semiconductor Technicians For Their New Plants In Arizona.” And that’s not all: “Simply finding enough workers to build the facilities has already proved a challenge.”
  • Old Navy takes massive loss because women buying clothes aren’t enthused about fat models. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • I’ll take headlines from 1875 for $400: “Loving County judge arrested for cattle theft….Loving County Judge Skeet Jones is accused of livestock theft and organized criminal activity.”
  • Who wants some nightmare fuel?
  • After that, enjoy a palate cleanser:

  • LinkSwarm for May 6, 2022

    Friday, May 6th, 2022

    Inflation is soaring, Democrats are lying, and more MSM pedophiles are exposed. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
    

  • Slow Joe Biden is hoping voters will ignore all that inflation on his watch. Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.

    Apparently, the Biden administration’s approach is to just insist that the economy is doing great and hope people believe it, despite their mounting frustration every time they buy groceries, out to eat, or fill up their tank. On the day President Biden took office, retail prices for gasoline averaged $2.38 per gallon. This morning, they are $4.19 — not all that different from the $4.20 they were a month ago….

    By and large, Democrats just don’t want to discuss or acknowledge inflation — at least not in their campaign ads:

    And as of Friday, [Ohio Democratic Senate candidate Tim] Ryan was one of seven Democratic candidates who have run ads this year that mentioned inflation, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact. By contrast, dozens of Republican candidates and allied groups have done the same. In polls, Americans have cited inflation as a top issue.

    “Burying your head in the sand,” Mr. Ryan said, “is not the way to approach it.” Asked about the biggest challenges facing his party, he replied, “A response to the inflation piece is a big hurdle.”

    To Democrats, inflation is like Bruno: We just don’t talk about it.

    Snip.

    With poll after poll showing that inflation is foremost in voters’ minds, you would think that the president would be holding regular events focused on the problem and showcasing what his administration is doing to solve it.

    Not seeing much of that, are you?

  • Inflation is hurting Biden and Democrats so badly that even CNN has noticed. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Speaking of inflation, truckers are not buying that “Putin Price Hike” blather as diesel hits an all-time high.

    “I get video almost every day now from people who we featured on ‘Dirty Jobs” and ‘How America Works.’

    “They’re just sending me videos of them at the gas pump and some of them are filling up 18-wheelers. And, I’m not kidding you, $1,100, $1,200.

    “Most people, all we can think about is the price for us at a relative terms know it’s awful.

    “When you put $1,200 in your gas tank and just six months ago it was costing you $600 or 700, the exponential reality of it is starting to sink in. You just can’t walk that back. It touches every single thing that matters in this country. From food production to transportation … all of it,” Rowe explained.

  • Hmmmm:

  • How a George Soros group is writing Biden Administration policy.

    A secretive group backed by millions of dollars from liberal billionaire George Soros is working behind the scenes with President Biden’s administration to shape policy, documents reviewed by Fox News show.

    Governing for Impact (GFI), the veiled group, boasts in internal memos of implementing more than 20 of its regulatory agenda items as it works to reverse Trump-era deregulations by zeroing in on education, environmental, health care, housing and labor issues.

    “Open Society is proud to support Governing for Impact’s efforts to protect American workers, consumers, patients, students and the environment through policy reform,” Tom Perriello, executive director of Soros’ Open Society Foundations, told Fox News Digital.

    Snip.

    GFI, however, works to remain secretive. It is invisible to internet search engines like Google (an unrelated “Govern for Impact” is the only group that appears in a search). No news reports or press releases appear on its existence outside of a mention of its related action fund in a previous Fox News article on the $1.6 billion Arabella Advisors-managed dark money network, to which it is attached.

    But as the group attempted to conceal its operations, it sought talent on Harvard Law School’s website, which was discoverable. The posting, which no longer appears on the site, was for legal policy internships.

    Snip.

    According to its website, Rachael Klarman, a Harvard Law School grad, steers the group. Her father, Michael Klarman, is a professor at Harvard Law and also has ties to progressive advocacy groups. He is an advisory board member of the left-wing dark money judicial group Take Back the Court. Last year, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-RI, invited him to testify before Congress on dark money’s “assault” on the judiciary system.

    “Governing for Impact is the perfect example of the Left’s fake outrage over ‘dark money’ in politics,” said the Capital Research Center’s Parker Thayer, who discovered the group and alerted Fox News.

    “As a ‘fiscally sponsored’ dark money project that writes and pushes regulations from the shadows, hidden from the public and funded by one billionaire foundation, GFI embodies everything the Left pretends to abhor.”

  • The Ministry of Truth is worse than you think.

    The most egregious and blatant official U.S. disinformation campaign in years took place three weeks before the 2020 presidential election. That was when dozens of former intelligence officials purported, in an open letter, to believe that authentic emails regarding Joe Biden’s activities in China and Ukraine, reported by The New York Post, were “Russian disinformation.” That quasi-official proclamation enabled liberal corporate media outlets to uncritically mock and then ignore those emails as Kremlin-created fakes, and it pressured Big Tech platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to censor the reporting at exactly the time Americans were preparing to decide who would be the next U.S. president.

    The letter from these former intelligence officials was orchestrated by trained career liars — disinformation agents — such as former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Yet that letter was nonetheless crucial to discredit and ultimately suppress the New York Post’s incriminating reporting on Biden. It provided a quasi-official imprimatur — something that could be depicted as an authoritative decree — that these authentic emails were, in fact, fraudulent.

    After all, if all of these noble and heroic intelligence operatives who spent their lives studying Russian disinformation were insisting that the Biden emails had all of the “hallmarks” of Kremlin treachery, who possessed the credibility to dispute their expert assessment?

    Snip.

    This same strategic motive — to vest accusations of “disinformation” with the veneer of expertise — is what has fostered a new, very well-financed industry heralding itself as composed of “anti-disinformation” scholars. Knowing that Americans are inculcated from childhood to believe that censorship is nefarious — that it is the hallmark of tyranny — those who wish to censor need to find some ennobling rationale to justify it and disguise what it is.

    They have thus created a litany of neutral-sounding groups with benign names — The Atlantic Council, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, various “fact-checking” outfits controlled by corporate media outlets — that claim to employ “anti-disinformation experts” to identify and combat fake news. Just as media corporations re-branded their partisan pundits as “fact-checkers” — to masquerade their opinions as elevated, apolitical authoritative, decrees of expertise — the term “disinformation expert” is designed to disguise ideological views on behalf of state and corporate power centers as Official Truth.

    Yet when one subjects these groups to even minimal investigative scrutiny, one finds that they are anything but apolitical and neutral. They are often funded by the same small handful of liberal billionaires (such as George Soros and Pierre Omidyar), actual security state agencies of the U.S., the UK or the EU, and/or Big Tech monopolies such as Google and Facebook.

    Indeed, the concept of “anti-disinformation expert” is itself completely fraudulent. This is not a real expertise but rather a concocted title bestowed on propagandists to make them appear more scholarly and apolitical than they are. But the function of this well-funded industry is the same as the one served by the pre-election letter from “dozens of former intelligence officials”: to discredit dissent and justify its censorship by infusing its condemnation with the pretense of institutional authority. The targeted views are not merely wrong; they have been adjudged by official, credentialed experts to constitute “disinformation.”

    This scam is the critical context for understanding why the Biden Administration casually announced last week the creation of what it is calling a “Disinformation Board” inside the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). There is no conceivable circumstance in which a domestic law enforcement agency like DHS should be claiming the power to decree truth and falsity. Operatives in the U.S. Security State are not devoted to combatting disinformation. The opposite is true: they are trained, career liars tasked with concocting and spreading disinformation.

  • Corporations are finally starting to wake up to how how wokeness is destroying their bottom line.

    Business leaders are waking up to the destructive “woke” policies being foisted on businesses by boardrooms more concerned with virtue signaling than their primary responsibility of ensuring corporate profitability and enhancing shareholder values.

    In short, the “woke” buck stops here, more corporate executives are saying. Mixing the politics of culture wars with business is a losing strategy.

    Former McDonald’s CEO Ed Rensi is leading the charge. He ran McDonalds from 1991-1997, bringing the chain’s McNugget to market and also served on the boards of Famous Dave’s Bar-B-Que, Great Wolf Resorts and Snap-on Inc. These days, he’s launching The Boardroom Initiative, comprised of three conservative advocacy groups — The Job Creators Network, which was founded by Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus, The Free Enterprise Group and Second Vote. The goal: get business back to business and out of politics.

    “Corporations have no business being on the right or the left because they represent everybody there and their sole job is to build equity for their investors,” Rensi told FOX Business.

    Rensi knows how to grow a business. While leading McDonalds, he saw U.S. sales double to more than $16 billion, the number of U.S. restaurants grow from nearly 6,600 to more than 12,000 and the number of U.S. franchisees grow from 1,600 to more than 2,700.

    “It is not the province of board members or executives to take shareholder money profit and spend it on social matters,” Rensi explained. “Corporations should not get involved in social engineering.”

  • Confirmation of things you already knew: “Emails Surface More Evidence Hillary Clinton Paid For Anti-Trump Disinformation Operation.”
  • Trump goes 55-0. Everyone he endorsed won their primary or made the runoff. All those are from Indiana, Ohio, and Texas. I didn’t realize that so few states have had their primaries already. Hopefully that record will be shattered and Dr. Oz (a bad pick by Trump) will lose when Pennsylvania votes May 17th.
  • Trying to make your children into the Youth Stasi: “DC elementary school gives 4-year-olds books to report racist family members.”
  • The only surprise here is that he didn’t work for CNN. “MSNBC Anchor Busted ‘Driving 3 Hours’ To Meet Little Boy For Sex.” “A New York group specializing in exposing child-sex predators seemed to all but confirm this after they posted a video online Friday busting a potential pedophile who appeared to be NBC anchor Zach Wheeler. Wheeler had driven an approximate total of 3 hours in order to meet up with a 15-year-old boy for sex, the group claims.”
  • How some of the lunatics connected to GamerGate (namely Brianna Wu) are still grifting the left.
  • Schools Sent Employees to Critical Race Theory Conference With Tax Dollars. Four major school districts spent more than $26,000 on the SXSW EDU conference.” That’s Austin ISD, Fort Worth ISD, San Antonio ISD, and Round Rock ISD.
  • Speaking of school districts wasting money and lying to you:

  • Tomorrow voters in Leander get an opportunity to pull out of Capital Metro.

  • Actor Frank Langella fired from Netflix miniseries production of The Fall of the House of Usher for…touching an actress’ leg during a love scene. Bonus: An “intimacy coordinator.” (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • Heh:

  • Moloch Warns Of Looming Child Sacrifice Supply Chain Issues.”
  • Fun

  • Heroic dog rescue:

  • LinkSwarm for April 29, 2022

    Friday, April 29th, 2022

    Stagflation is back, scammers continue to loot taxpayer money from the federal government, Team Global Warming continues it’s perfect losing streak, and dispatches from a deadly accordion war. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • The U.S. economy shrunk by 1.4% in Q1. “Unexpectedly!” So now we’ve got stagnation to go with that soaring inflation, a key ingredient in the Biden Administration’s Welcome Back Carter cosplay. One more quarter of decline and the recession is officially at hand…
  • “How international scam artists pulled off an epic theft of Covid benefits.”

    In June, the FBI got a warrant to hunt through the Google accounts of Abedemi Rufai, a Nigerian state government official.

    Hello, I am Prince Abedemi Rufai. You are probably surprised by this email…

    What they found, they said in a sworn affidavit, was all the ingredients for a “massive” cyberfraud on U.S. government benefits: stolen bank, credit card and tax information of Americans. Money transfers. And emails showing dozens of false unemployment claims in seven states that paid out $350,000.

    Rufai was arrested in May at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York as he prepared to fly first class back to Nigeria, according to court records. He is being held without bail in Washington state, where he has pleaded not guilty to five counts of wire fraud.

    Rufai’s case offers a small window into what law enforcement officials and private experts say is the biggest fraud ever perpetrated against the U.S., a significant part of it carried out by foreigners.

    Russian mobsters, Chinese hackers and Nigerian scammers have used stolen identities to plunder tens of billions of dollars in Covid benefits, spiriting the money overseas in a massive transfer of wealth from U.S. taxpayers, officials and experts say. And they say it is still happening.

    Among the ripest targets for the cybertheft have been jobless programs. The federal government cannot say for sure how much of the more than $900 billion in pandemic-related unemployment relief has been stolen, but credible estimates range from $87 billion to $400 billion — at least half of which went to foreign criminals, law enforcement officials say.

    Those staggering sums dwarf, even on the low end, what the federal government spends every year on intelligence collection, food stamps or K-12 education.

    Keep in mind, this is just one government program.

  • More on the same subject.

    They bought Lamborghinis, Ferraris and Bentleys.

    And Teslas, of course. Lots of Teslas.

    Many who participated in what prosecutors are calling the largest fraud in U.S. history — the theft of hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money intended to help those harmed by the coronavirus pandemic — couldn’t resist purchasing luxury automobiles. Also mansions, private jet flights and swanky vacations.

  • Biden Administration creates unconstitutional Ministry of Truth to fight “disinformation,” i.e. truth and opinion that hurts Democrats. This is the lunatic running it:

  • Speaking of Democratic Media Complex lunatics:

  • Libs of TikTok experiences the Streisand Effect. (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
  • This may be a big reason why the Twitter board were willing to sell to Elon Musk: “Twitter Misses Revenues, Admits ‘Over-Stating’ Millions Of Users.”
  • Speaking of revenue, here are some charts showing how tech giants earn their revenue in different segments. I had no idea that Microsoft was now making more money from Azure than Office. And speaking of Microsoft…
  • Not news: People hate Microsoft product. News: The users are soldiers and our government spent $22 billion on it. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Climate Experts” are now 0-53 with their predictions.
  • “‘Defund the Police’ advocate Cori Bush spent more than $300,000 on private security.” It’s always one rule for you and another for them…
  • This is disturbing.

    For 20 Years, This Prosecutor Had a Secret Job Working For the Judges Who’d Decide His Cases.”

    One of Ralph Petty’s victims is trying to hold him accountable, but she will have to overcome prosecutorial immunity.

    Ralph Petty worked as an assistant district attorney in Midland County, Texas, for 20 years. Like any prosecutor, he fervidly advocated for the government. But he wasn’t just any advocate, because he wasn’t just a prosecutor. Each night, Petty took off his proverbial DA hat and re-entered the courthouse as a law clerk for the same judges he was trying to convince to side with him by day.

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • Miller Middle School in San Marcos, Texas is hosting a “Queer Week” where students as young as sixth grade are urged to dress in “pride” colors, wear nametags with preferred names and pronouns, and “protest” LGBT discrimination.”
  • “A married English teacher at Langham Creek High School was arrested after allegedly sleeping with a 15-year-old student.” Spoiler for those thinking of clicking through for the pic: She’s no prize.
  • Smoking is bad for you. Especially when it causes you to crash the plane you’re flying. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Stop me if you’ve heard this story before: Bold new architecture project becomes ugly and nonfunctional.

    In Kurokawa’s original plan, the Nakagin capsules were meant to be replaced every twenty-five years with updated iterations. That didn’t happen, in part because of the funding that would have required. Each capsule would have cost, according to some estimates, almost nine million yen, or about seventy thousand dollars, to repair. A single capsule couldn’t be removed without removing all those above it, so all units would have to be vacated and updated at once. Over time, the building fell into disrepair. Concerns about asbestos made the towers’ ventilation system unusable, and residents complained about mold and incessant leaks during rainstorms. The owners’ association first voted to sell the building to a developer, in 2007, but the firm soon filed for bankruptcy, throwing the building’s fate into uncertainty. Kurokawa, who had pushed for renovations, died that same year. By 2010, the towers’ hot water had been shut off. The building had become more a work of art than the dynamic architecture that Kurokawa envisioned.

  • “New York Democrats Aim To Tax Ammo To Fund Anti-Gun Research….New York Senate Bill S8415, which would add an arbitrary 5-cent tax per round of ammunition larger than .22 Caliber. Rounds smaller than .22 Caliber would be subject to a 2-cent tax per round. According to the bill, the tax revenue would go to the state’s Gun Violence Research Fund.” That would be unconstitutional with a capital “un.”
  • Headlines you never expect to read: “The deadly accordion wars of Lesotho.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Lake Mead hit by megadrought. “After nearly half a century, the first intake is out of service and can no longer draw water. Water levels at the lake hit record lows this week, falling to 1,056 feet. Luckily, SNWA has two other intakes at much lower levels that are still operational.”
  • Have a 2017 Chevy Spark? Too bad, Chevy isn’t going to replace the battery anymore. (Update: Maybe not?)
  • Heh:

  • Heh II:

  • Let’s get frensical, frensical…

  • LinkSwarm for May 7, 2021

    Friday, May 7th, 2021

    Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! The Biden economy kicks in, China behaves badly (again), and rock stars are fed up with woke. Let’s lead off with this weird photo people have been taking about all week:

    Puppet people aside, what better image for the week in which Biden seems to be bringing stagflation back?

  • If you were wondering when the Trump boom would end and the Biden bust begin, it just did:

    U.S. job growth for the month of April fell far below what experts had predicted, as data reported Friday showed an increase of 266,000 jobs, versus an estimate of 1 million — the largest miss relative to expectations since at least 1998.

    Economists had suggested a positive outlook for the report, with the White House hoping for a gain of at least 700,000 jobs — making Joe Biden the first president ever to hit 2 million new jobs in his first 100 days. But expectations came crashing back to reality with data showing an overestimation of nearly 800,000 — the worst miss in decades.

    The U.S. unemployment rate rose slightly from 6.0 percent to 6.1. March’s payroll gains were also revised downward by nearly 150,000 jobs, from an initial print of 916,000 to 770,000. Labor force participation rate rose slightly, to 61.7 percent.

    Huh, irresponsible tax-and-spend policies, rampant inflation and paying people not to work evidently aren’t a recipe for economic success. Who knew?

  • Speaking of inflation, it looks like it’s back, baby! Rising metal, oil, and ag commodity prices all point to inflation. “Wood prices are at an all-time high at over $1,370 per 1,000 board feet.”
  • China pollutes more than the U.S. and all developing countries combined.
  • Speaking of China: Did Bill Gates dip his wang into Chinese spy Wang’s ‘tang??
  • Biden Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm owns stock in “Proterra, an electric vehicle company that is being actively promoted by the Biden administration. Further, Granholm being the Secretary of Energy means she gets to make regulations that can directly enrich herself.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Joe Biden lied about gun shows. Again.

    Joe Biden said today, “Most people don’t know: you walk into a store and you buy a gun, but you go to a gun show you can buy whatever you want and no background check.”

    This isn’t even close to being true. In fact, gun shows are subject to the same rules as apply everywhere else, which are that:

    1. commercial transfers require federal background checks, but that
    2. private transfers only require federal background checks if they are conducted within one of the thirteen states that superintend non-commercial firearms transactions

    There are no special rules for gun shows. The same set of laws applies to them as applies to, say, your kitchen table: If you are in the business of selling guns, you are federally obliged to run a check. If you are not, you are not — unless your state requires you to. That’s it. There’s no “loophole” here, and nothing about gun shows that separates them from the broader debate about private sales.

  • Lockdowns, riots and pushes to defund the police all lead up to cratering support for gun control among young people:

    A new poll from ABC and the Washington Post published on Wednesday found a significant drop in support for new gun-control laws, especially among young people.

    The number of Americans supporting enacting new gun laws over protecting gun rights fell from 57 percent to 50 percent, a seven-point drop from when the poll was last conducted in 2018. The number of Americans favoring gun rights jumped from 34 to 43 percent, a nine-point jump. The difference between the two positions narrowed by 16 points overall.

    The sharpest decline in support for new gun-control measures came among 18 to 29-year-olds and Hispanics. Both groups saw a 20 percent drop. Rural Americans and strong conservatives saw a 17-point drop.

  • Worker shortage is so acute that a Tampa MacDonald’s is paying people $50 just to interview for a job. “Some 17 million Americans remain on jobless benefits. Perhaps many of these people want jobs but are getting paid more to sit on the couch.”
  • Supply chains implode because there’s not enough shipping capacity to meet demand.
  • How Michael Dell used several financial maneuvers to turn $3.6 billion into more than $50 billion.
  • The Who’s frontman Roger Daltry says that the woke are ruining the world. “It’s terrifying, the miserable world they’re going to create for themselves. I mean, anyone who’s lived a life and you see what they’re doing, you just know that it’s a route to nowhere.”
  • And Daltry wasn’t the only rock star calling BS on the woke. Also taking aim: punk rock icon John Lydon:

    Johnny Rotten blames ‘wokeness’ for US ‘collapse’

    Sex Pistols’ frontman Johnny Lydon had some rotten things to say about “wokeness.”

    In a recent profile with the Times UK, the aging punk rocker decried “cancel culture” and the activists who campaigned to tear down national monuments which they say promote historical racism. The statues include that of Winston Churchill, one of the UK’s most revered prime ministers.

    He also blamed academia as well as the media for giving “the space” to “tempestuous spoilt children.”…

    Addressing calls to tear down Churchill’s statue in London, Lydon dismissed criticism that the wartime prime minister was racist. However, critics point out that the leader once referred to Indians as “the beastliest people in the world next to Germans,” and thought that black people are “[not] as capable or as efficient as white people.”

    “This man saved Britain,” Lydon asserted. “Whatever he got up to in South Africa or India beforehand is utterly irrelevant to the major issue in hand.”

    If there are any bigger haters in history than today’s cancel culture, Lydon conceded, it’s the Nazis — and Churchill took care of that.

  • Florida “whistleblower” Rebekah Jones is a big fat liar. “NPR describes Jones as a ‘top scientist’ leading Florida’s pandemic response. In fact, Jones has held three jobs in her field; all three have ended in her being terminated and criminally charged.”
  • “Texas House Approves Election Integrity Bill After 17 Hours of Deliberation.” Good.
  • University of Tennessee offensive line coach fired for daring to make fun of Stacey Abrams. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Company Basecamp bans “wokeness” in the workplace. One third of employees quit. Sounds like a win-win to me. Get woke, go broke…
  • Charles C. W. Cooke channels Swift on teenage knife fighting:

    Just when I thought that America couldn’t possibly get any softer, people start suggesting that there’s a role for the police in preventing knife murders. The snowflake generation strikes once again.

    Is there any tradition that the radicals won’t ruin? As the brilliant Bree Newsome pointed out on Twitter, “Teenagers have been having fights including fights involving knives for eons.” And now people are calling the cops on them? I ask: Is this a self-governing country or not? When Newsome says, “We do not need police to address these situations by showing up to the scene & using a weapon,” she may be expressing a view that is unfashionable these days. But she’s right.

    Disappointingly, my colleague Phil Klein has felt compelled to join the critics. In a post published yesterday, Phil asked in a sarcastic tone whether the police should “somehow treat teenage knife fights as they would harmless roughhousing and simply ignore it.” My answer to this is: Yes, that’s exactly what they should do — yes, even if they are explicitly called to the scene. I don’t know where Phil grew up, but where I spent my childhood, Fridays were idyllic: We’d play some football, try a little Super Mario Bros, have a quick knife fight, and then fire up some frozen pizza before bed. And now law enforcement is getting involved? This is political correctness gone mad.

    It’s hypocrisy, too. Who among us hasn’t come within a second or two of murdering someone else with a steak knife? My best friend in school, Bobby “The Blade” Simpson, used to throw shivs at the smaller kids in the music room. Did we need the authorities to step in when that happened? No, we did not. As MSNBC’s Joy Reid argued smartly on her show last night, pranks such as these were dealt with by our teachers — just as we all expected they would be. And if something went wrong? Well, that’s why we had substitutes.

    In all honesty, I worry that this sort of helicopter policing is making us weak. Back in my day, the people who survived a good stabbing came out stronger for it. I learned a lot of lessons from my time in the ring: self-reliance, how to overcome fear, the importance of agility, the basics of military field dressing. And, given the turnover, I also learned how to make new friends.

  • Sad news (and possibly foul play). “University of Texas linebacker Jake Ehlinger, the younger brother of former Longhorns quarterback Sam Ehlinger, was found dead Thursday.”
  • Season 13 of Mystery Science Theater 3000 is now fully funded.
  • Scott of Kentucky Ballistics continues to heal.
  • “There’s a lot of value to being the idiot.”
  • Heh: