Economy Archives - Page 14 of 123

Grand Inquisitor Says Oops [A Covid Story]

December 31, 2023/in Economy, Education, Featured, Healthcare, Liberty, Politics, ThePricklyPear.org /by ThePricklyPear.org

By Jeffrey Tucker

Francis Collins was head of the National Institutes of Health – Anthony Fauci’s parent bureaucracy – during the wreckage caused by the Covid response. Ultimately, Dr. Collins bears a huge measure of the responsibility for the disaster, even if he played the role of the stooge.

It was he who wrote Fauci with the demand for a “quick and devastating takedown” of the Great Barrington Declaration, a statement that merely reasserted traditional public health wisdom in the midst of an insane science experiment being conducted on the whole population.

Five months ago, an organization that seeks political consensus hosted him for some frank talk about what happened. Here is what he had to say:

There is a sense in which he didn’t need to say this at all. We all knew it. They were thinking only about New York City. The rest of the country never had anything approaching a crisis. The government under Collins emptied hospitals out from coast to coast to reserve them for Covid patients who only arrived much later and never came close to overwhelming healthcare services.

Meanwhile, the entire country was plunged into a grave crisis at every level – a man-made crisis of the worst sort.

Nor did they think about anything other than this one pathogen. It was a wild fanaticism that seized the whole of the ruling class for the better part of two years. None of it made sense but those who objected could hardly get a hearing. Instead, they were smeared, censored, and often fired for non-compliance.

Even as late as December 2021, Collins was still fear-mongering. He told NPR concerning Christmas celebrations: “We were planning to invite some of the trainees at NIH who are far from home to come for a brunch on Christmas Day at our house if they’re all fully vaccinated and boosted. Still planning to go forward, very carefully, with a small group, and everybody will be wearing masks except when they’re eating.”

Note that Collins doesn’t apologize. He takes no responsibility. He just continues his masquerade as a tennis-shoe wearing, guitar-strumming, Jesus-loving grandpa who is open and broad-minded, never mind that he wielded absolute power over all our lives only a few years ago.

Later in the interview, he is singing hosannas to the glorious vaccines and how perfectly they worked. We are nowhere near approaching the point where people like this tell the truth. It’s almost like they cannot bear it.

Even in this interview, Collins’s nonchalant delivery is infuriating. You want to scream back: you wrecked the lives of hundreds of millions of people! And no one ever gave you the authority to do so!

Meanwhile, it was incredibly obvious to many at the time that disaster would be the only result of lockdowns. The bit about masking was never serious; no one in the know seriously believed these things would protect anyone from a tiny pathogen with an animal reservoir. The only solution was the traditional one from public health wisdom: preserve normalcy, treat the sick with known therapeutics, and alert the vulnerable to stay away from large crowds until the virus becomes endemic.

Collins directly attacked this solution and demanded that the government attack it and ultimately censor it!

As we approach the end of the year, we are surrounded by a cultural and economic darkness this generation has never seen before. Most incredibly, public health itself is wrecked.

Let’s just count the ways. Each consequence dates from the beginning of the lockdowns. That was the turning point, the end of innocence, the great reset, the moment when the choice between freedom and despotism weighed heavily in the most inhumane direction.

Consider:

Homeless people are everywhere at record highs (650K), stemming from rampant mental disorder, substance abuse, and incredibly tight leasing standards stemming from the eviction moratorium.

The middle class can no longer afford to buy a home thanks to high rates from the Fed, deployed in an attempt to mitigate against inflation which is still running hot.

Every merchant has hidden fees in everything, struggling to find some way to hide the hot potato of inflation that has eaten 20-plus percent of the dollar’s purchasing power since 2019.

Shoplifting is a major national problem to the point that thousands of stores have closed.

Shrinkflation affects everything. The groceries have shrunk and the bills have soared – a direct consequence of some $8 trillion in stimulus and money printing.

Office real estate in large cities is approaching an accounting crisis because people are not returning to work, their routines totally shattered by lockdowns.

Travel is uncertain with endless delays and cancellations due to pilot shortages stemming from stay-at-home orders, vaccine mandates, and rampant illness.

The “great reset” is all around us, as we are constantly nudged to drive EVs, live without comforts, buy less meat, and even eat bugs.

A wide-open Southern border has created an immigration crisis as government neglected its core duties in favor of insane methods of virus control.

Restaurants are unaffordable for most people.

Dependency on government handouts is 28 percent higher than in 2019.

All stores close an hour or two earlier because they cannot get workers to stay later.

The learning losses among the kids are unfathomable, two years and rising, and perhaps an entire generation is lost.

There is a population-wide mental-health crisis in addition to rampant substance abuse.

The federal budget has been blown to smithereens.

Political divisions are festering as never before, with neither party willing to discuss the Covid elephant in the room.

Our conception of what it means to live in freedom with a government that knows limits to its power has slipped away.

Arts venues are struggling for dear life to survive.

World trade is shattered, with new trading blocs replacing the old ones.

The rise of maniacal gender dysphoria of the young is probably connected with this: endless hours online, loss of confidence in the world as it is, plus loneliness.

One could argue that even the war in Israel and Gaza is a result: security concerns were neglected in favor of microbial activism and shot mandates, and the loss of a moral center to policy then unleashed successive rounds of violence.

Finally, there is the loss of trust in everything: government, public health, pharmaceuticals, academia, science, media, and each other. Society cannot function without trust. Not even churches are immune from broad incredulity since most went along with the Covid response in every detail.

This only begins to scratch the surface of what we’ve lost and what has replaced it. Ultimately all such tragedies come down to individual lives. These days you hear them only among friends and families. And they are terrible stories of sadness and personal despair. The pain is only intensified by the silence on the part of all corporate media, government, and other commanding heights. Because of the news block on the whole topic, there is mass and festering anger beneath the surface.

And yet here is this granddad – the man ostensibly in charge over the whole operation – telling us old war stories of mistakes that were made. Does he [Francis Collins] have any idea of the carnage he caused? Does he even care?

In Dostoevsky’s version of the Grand Inquisitor, the nemesis predicts: “In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us.”

*****

This article was published by The Brownstone Institute and is reproduced with permission.

Image Credit: YouTube Screenshot PBS

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Can New Chef Melei Change Argentina’s Recipe?

December 31, 2023/in Economy, Featured, Liberty, Politics, ThePricklyPear.org /by ThePricklyPear.org

By G. Patrick Lynch

I have had the great privilege of knowing folks who worked in the Reagan White House. Their recollections of that speech-making process help to illustrate the completely revolutionary approach to public communication that President Javier Milei is using in Argentina. Milei is facing far worse economic problems than Reagan did as he enters office. The crisis that Milei inherited is deeply rooted and ingrained in the collectivist mentality of Argentina. Milei must constantly be teaching economics while pushing through profound changes to save his nation. Reagan wanted to make it morning again in America and did; Milei needs to save Argentina from continuing, collectivist catastrophe.

Reagan was an active participant in his speech writing. “Mr. Gorbachov, tear down that wall,” came from Reagan himself at the Brandenburg Gate, and in fact ran contrary to the wishes of his staff. Milei clearly does a lot of his own speech writing, and even though there are echoes of Reagan in his rhetoric, he goes well beyond the Gipper in terms of his ability to distill and communicate complex ideas clearly and precisely.

In his most recent speech presenting historic and unprecedented cuts in government regulations and spending to the bloated and sclerotic Argentinian bureaucracy, Milei was part educator, part persuader, and part leader.

He always spends a lot of time explaining how monetary policy has contributed to Argentina’s century-long economic collapse, and here again, he reminded his listeners reasonably and calmly, without the chain saw that had been his trademark, that excess government spending causes inflation and serves as a hidden tax that is particularly exploitative of the poor and working classes, who see their savings eroded and salaries diminished. That same monetary tax leads to other effects including a lack of investment in business. When the government is forced to apply capital controls and high tariffs to defend the monetary debasement, other economic distortions emerge. It’s an endless cycle, and once again Milei elegantly described it to the nation.

But he also explained why aggressive cuts in the Argentine bureaucracy were necessary. He began his speech by saying that Argentina’s problems are not the result of “the chef” in the economic kitchen, but rather the recipe. The long-followed collectivist recipe includes not only excessive fiscal spending and money printing but something equally problematic that the great F.A. Hayek identified in perhaps his most famous journal article.

“The Use of Knowledge in Society” was published by Hayek in the American Economic Review in 1945, and it contains an essential truth that is not easily understood even by brilliant people, let alone folks on the street. When I discussed the article once with Nobel laureate Vernon Smith he admitted that it took him several readings of the piece to understand what Hayek was driving in it. Hayek argued that knowledge is so localized and specific that public sector officials cannot replicate it. The knowledge is dispersed throughout the public and no one person can possess it, process it, and produce better results than a voluntary market when that knowledge is used individually by the participants. Julia Child couldn’t make this recipe work.

He noted that historically the state has been seen as more important than the citizens. He argued that individuals are merely treated as ends of state planning who must show obedience to their government officials. He said that politicians govern the destinies of the citizens, which has merely led to the politicians becoming richer and the nation worse off leaving them with an impoverished nation. No one in Argentina can do anything productive, work, invest, buy, be educated, without getting government approval and permission.

This was not merely a speech; This was a carefully crafted lesson in economic theory and political history that has direct relevance to his audience. The staggering ineptitude of previous governments has resulted in devastating inflation, which every Argentine since birth has suffered through. But it has also made it impossible for Argentines to live as free individuals. The speech resonates because it directly addresses the reality of destroyed hopes and dreams that his supporters live with, and his solution is clear, consistent, and economically sound. The fact that it ends the privileges of what Milei likes to call “the political caste” is merely icing on the cake. He clearly and directly explains, why he’s doing what he’s doing, why it will work, and why the alternatives have failed.

The same cannot be said for his opponents. The opposition and mainstream Western press are now harping on about protests and “anti-democratic” measures that include limiting protests to not blocking traffic and impeding daily life. There are literally no discussions of alternative economic approaches from either opposition leaders or the press because none exist. Everyone recognizes the reckoning necessary from years of profligate government spending, currency debasement, and outright theft. There are no left-wing alternatives because as Milei clearly outlines in his speeches all of them have been tried and failed miserably. Argentina, like Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea are the world’s most extreme examples of state-run economies. All are disasters. All the money printing and government spending in the world can’t help them; those activities caused the disaster, and Milei in every speech explains that elegantly and convincingly.

Milei is standing before a nation asking for sacrifice and patience because he understands how difficult this process will be. The intellectual depth that Milei exhibits is remarkable both for his knowledge of the vast literature of liberty, but also for his profound, very Reaganesque faith in his people.

Milei is the first Argentine president who believes in his fellow citizens. He believes in the possibilities and provides a blueprint of hope. He may not be Reagan when it comes to hopeful soaring prose and cities on hills. But the changes he’s trying to implement and the mission he’s undertaken are monumental and will empower the people to be free and productive. Reagan would have appreciated that. Whether he can achieve his political goals remains to be seen, but he’s obviously equipped to defend his policies. Now it’s up to Argentina to decide the next step.

*****

This article was published by AIER, American Institute for Economic Research, and is reproduced with permission.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

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Pima County Should Listen to Elvis Presley

December 30, 2023/in Economy, Featured, Politics, ThePricklyPear.org /by ThePricklyPear.org

By Craig J. Cantoni

“Don’t be cruel” was good advice that should have been heeded long ago.

Elvis Presley released “Don’t Be Cruel” in 1956. Within a couple of decades, Pima County and the City of Tucson began adopting cruel political systems, economic policies, industrial policies, and social policies that set the Tucson metropolis on a course to be a laggard in prosperity and a leader in poverty, as well as the human misery and blight that come with poverty.

The city and county also began despoiling the natural beauty of the area by allowing some of the tackiest development imaginable while also allowing downtown Tucson and much of center city to go to seed.

The first step in solving a problem is admitting that you have one. The good news is that Pima County has admitted that it has one.

It has published a 13-point Prosperity Initiative to increase prosperity and reduce poverty. The initiative even references a 2015 New York Times article, which concluded that Pima County is “among the worst counties in the U.S. in helping poor children up the income ladder.”

Considering that there are 2,478 counties, it takes a special effort to be among the worst.

As I’ve documented in many papers, metro Tucson also ranks near the bottom in other socioeconomic measures.

The bad news is that the Prosperity Initiative is full of platitudes, bromides, and banalities.

It also has an odor of redistribution. Speaking euphemistically, the initiative mentions the shifting of resources to poorer areas. What resources? Despite high sales tax rates and high property tax rates, both the city and the county have a low tax base, due to a dearth of high-paying industries and an influx of fixed-income retirees, low-income service workers from other states, snowbirds who have no tie to the community, students who attend the University of Arizona and then move to greener pastures after graduation, and transients looking for warm weather who skedaddle after experiencing their first summer in the desert.

There is also an influx of poorly skilled and poorly educated migrants from south of the border, a migration that is encouraged by the city and county. That’s a fact, not a xenophobic sentiment.

It’s also a fact that my immigrant grandparents, as well as my wife’s immigrant grandparents, were poorly skilled and educated. But it was easier back then to get by on blue-collar work and for two-parent families to survive with only one parent working, in spite of a government social safety net being virtually nonexistent.

As is evident in Tucson, population growth becomes a negative when the economy and housing grow slower than the population.

In any event, when the county speaks of shifting resources, where are they going to be shifted from? Even relatively wealthy areas of the metropolis—wealthy for Tucson but not wealthy compared to other cities—have crumbling roads, lousy landscaping, spotty code enforcement, mediocre schools, inadequate transportation networks, and inferior public amenities and services. Any further deferred maintenance and cutbacks in these areas will only make the metropolis less desirable to the movers and shakers who decide where to locate not only high-wage operations but also their own families—and who bring capital and a higher tax base to a city.

Dislike the so-called elites if you will, but that’s the reality.

Local government has already shifted considerable resources to the redevelopment of downtown, which is becoming a center for government offices, businesses that feed off the government, condo-dwelling professionals, and low-wage bars and restaurants. Approximately $200 million was squandered when the redevelopment began years ago. At a median household income in the city of roughly $50,000 (but higher for the metro area), that’s equal to a year’s income for 4,000 families. Yet the county wants us to believe that it knows how to reduce poverty.

Instead of taking a lesson from American cities that are more successful than Tucson, the Prosperity Initiative takes a lesson from a nation-state. Using a formula produced by Canada on the economic cost of poverty, the initiative claims that Pima County suffers an economic loss of $2.8 billion a year due to poverty. The implication is that if the county were to spend that much on reducing poverty, it would be a cost-free investment because the costs would be quickly recouped.

Of course, Canada is significantly different from Tucson, especially in demographics. Canada doesn’t track race and ethnicity the way that the U.S. does, but it is estimated that Blacks and Latinos make up only 3.8% and 2.5% of the Canadian population, respectively. For Tucson, the numbers are 4.8% and 44.8%.

Asians account for 19.3% of Canada’s population, versus 3.2% for Tucson, largely the result of Canada’s immigration system, which puts a high value on skills. The percentage of Asians is even higher in Vancouver, where Chinese, South Asians, and Filipinos make up 39.3% of the population. So many wealthy Asians have bought property in Vancouver that many native-born Canadians say that they can no longer afford to live in the city.

These are important statistics, because, generally speaking, the higher the combined percentage of people of Asian and Northern European ancestry in a city, the higher the income and wealth. This holds for both Canada and the U.S.

I’ve traveled on business and pleasure to the Canadian cities of Winnipeg, Calgary, Ottawa, and Quebec. There was a noticeable lack of diversity in those cities, in terms of Blacks and Latinos. (French Canadians don’t count as minorities, although they think of themselves that way.) On the other hand, Canada is rich in natural resources.

It is said that demographics are destiny. It sure seems that’s true when comparing Tucson to Canada. But there are several American cities of Tucson’s size and similar demographics that have escaped the poverty trap. Pima County and the City of Tucson should look to them for ideas instead of Canada. And it wouldn’t hurt to listen to Elvis.

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Authoritarian? Conservatives Want to Restore the Constitution. The Left Can’t Handle It.

December 29, 2023/in Economy, Education, Environment, Featured, Healthcare, Liberty, Politics, ThePricklyPear.org /by ThePricklyPear.org

By Tyler O’Neil

The Constitution created three branches in the federal government: the legislature to make the laws, the executive branch to enforce the laws, and the judiciary to settle disputes about the laws. Yet the federal government we know and very much do not love doesn’t operate the way the Constitution says it should.

Instead, unelected bureaucrats write more rules than Congress does, the president cannot fire bureaucrats who oppose his efforts to keep his promises to the people, and the Supreme Court has unilaterally rewritten the Constitution on issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, and gender ideology.

Conservatives have launched many efforts to restore the federal government to the way the Constitution says it should work, but the Left has increasingly demonized those efforts as backward, racist, or—more recently—a form of authoritarianism.

In The New York Times, Maggie Haberman wrote: “Why a Second Trump Presidency May Be More Radical Than His First.” Among other things, Haberman warned that former President Donald Trump, were he to win the presidential election next year, “would seek to expand presidential power in myriad ways—concentrating greater authority over the executive branch in the White House, ending the independence of agencies Congress set up to operate outside of presidential control and reducing civil service protections to make it easier to fire and replace tens of thousands of government workers.”

Haberman seems not to remember how Trump’s administration fought against him in unjustified ways, operating as a “deep state” to prevent him from fulfilling his campaign promises. Preventing the executive branch from operating in this way is not a form of authoritarianism but an effort to bring bureaucrats back under the control of the voters’ elected representatives.

Trump’s Agenda 47 and Project 2025, a conservative movement project led by The Heritage Foundation, aim to empower a conservative president to fire executive branch workers who would oppose the president’s goals. (The Daily Signal is The Heritage Foundation’s news outlet.)

Another key conservative reform, the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act, or REINS Act, would require Congress to pass regulations that would significantly impact the U.S. economy.

President Joe Biden’s White House pledged to veto the REINS Act if Congress were to pass it. The Office of Management and Budget said the act “would undermine agencies’ efforts by inserting into the regulatory process an unwieldy, unnecessary, and time-consuming hurdle that would prevent implementation of critical safeguards that protect public safety, grow our economy, and advance the public interest.”

While the Left frames these conservative reforms as “authoritarian,” Biden tried to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt for certain borrowers, with the stroke of his pen. The Education Department estimated that this would cost $305 billion in the next 10 years. Had the Supreme Court not ruled the plan unconstitutional, the student loan bailout would have inflated college costs, hindered economic growth, rewarded increasingly woke universities, and benefitted upper-income earners at the expense of those who didn’t go to college or who paid off their loans.

Biden has made similarly unilateral moves to push his transgender orthodoxy and his climate alarmist agenda. Ironically, the president faces his own kind of “deep state,” bureaucrats who are opposing his pro-Israel rhetoric.

Meanwhile, the Left has orchestrated a campaign to delegitimize the Supreme Court, with outfits like ProPublica targeting justices such as Clarence Thomas.

The Left has attacked Thomas in part because the court’s majority now supports originalism, the view that the Supreme Court should uphold the original public meaning of the Constitution, as opposed to reinterpreting the text to achieve the Left’s goals.

Originalism grew as a reaction to the court’s decisions in cases such as Roe v. Wade (1973) and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), which twisted passages in the Constitution out of recognition to create new rights that the Founders and those who later amended the Constitution at the time of the 14th Amendment would have opposed.

Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., unwittingly revealed why the Left opposes originalism. He tweeted in 2020, “Originalism is racist. Originalism is sexist. Originalism is homophobic. Originalism is just a fancy word for discrimination.”

Markey’s problem isn’t Originalism—it’s that he isn’t willing to get his efforts opposing “racism,” “sexism,” “homophobia,” and “discrimination” through Congress, the body that makes law, according to the Constitution. He’d rather have the Supreme Court dictate his preferred agenda, and he opposes the good-government reforms that make it harder for nine unelected judges to create new laws.

The Left’s attacks on the Supreme Court represent an obnoxious tantrum after the nation’s highest court has—at least for now—rejected its old modus operandi of writing the Left’s agenda into the Constitution. Now, the court increasingly calls balls and strikes, in ways that frustrate both sides of the aisle but more closely represent the Founders’ vision.

Efforts to rein in the deep state and encourage Congress to make laws, rather than passing off that duty to bureaucrats, echo the originalist movement in the judiciary. These reforms aren’t aimed at authoritarianism or gumming up the works—they’re aimed at making the federal government more accountable to the people once again.

*****

This article was published by Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

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The Most Splendid Housing Bubbles in America, December 2023 Update

December 29, 2023/in Economy, Featured, Healthcare, ThePricklyPear.org /by ThePricklyPear.org

By Wolf Richter

Down from 2022 highs: San Francisco -12%, Seattle -11%, Portland -6%; Denver, Phoenix, Las Vegas -5%; Dallas -4%, San Diego -2%, Los Angeles -1%. But new highs in 8 metros.

Today’s S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Index for “October” is a three-month moving average of home prices whose sales were entered into public records in August, September, and October. That’s the time frame here. It uses the “sales-pairs method,” comparing the sales price of the same house over time, thereby eliminating the issues associated with median prices and average prices (see “Methodology” toward the end of the article). But it lags.

The story here is about the individual metros of the 20 metros covered by the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Index where home prices soared to ridiculous levels, multiplying by factors of three and four since 2000.

The “most splendid Housing bubbles,” we started calling them since about 2017 to track their astounding surge – and what their fate is now.

Nine of the 20 metros in the Case-Shiller Index were below their peaks in mid-2022. Nine metros had month-to-month declines (Seattle, Denver, Tampa, Washington DC, Portland, San Francisco, San Diego, Dallas, and Minneapolis). And 8 of the 20 metros set new highs.

Prices below their 2022 peaks in 9 of the 20 metros in the Case-Shiller index (% from their respective peak, Case-Shiller month of peak):

San Francisco Bay Area: -11.7% (May 2022)
Seattle: -10.9% (May 2022)
Portland: -5.8% (May 2022)
Las Vegas: -5.3% (July 2022)
Denver: -5.2% (May 2022)
Phoenix: -5.1% (June 2022)
Dallas: -4.4% (June 2022)
San Diego: -2.1% (May 2022)
Los Angeles: -0.8% (May 2022)

Prices set new highs in 8 of the 20 metros in the index (% year-over-year):

New York metro: +7.1%
Detroit: +8.1%
Chicago: +6.9%
Boston: +6.6%
Miami: +6.7%
Cleveland: +6.4%
Charlotte: +6.0%
Atlanta: +5.3%…..

*****

Continue reading this article at Wolf Street.

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Investors Are Turning On A Key Pillar Of Biden’s Climate Agenda

December 28, 2023/in DrRichSwier.com, Economy, Energy, Environment, Politics, Regulation /by DrRichSwier.com

By The Daily Caller

Investors are backing off of electric vehicle (EV) charging companies, a key player in the Biden administration’s wider climate agenda, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

Major companies in the industry— including ChargePoint, EVgo and Blink Charging— have seen their stock prices tumble over the past year as investors worry about their profitability, a sign of potential trouble for an industry that the White House is counting on to reach its aggressive longer-term EV targets, according to the WSJ. The administration has set aside billions of dollars to boost the industry, which it will need to thrive in order to develop a nationwide network of charging stations.

ChargePoint’s stock price is down 74% in 2023, while EVgo and Blink Charging have seen their shares lose 21% and 67% of their value, respectively, according to the WSJ.

Buttigieg says you don’t have to worry about gas prices if you buy an electric vehicle…someone should remind him how out of touch he sounds pic.twitter.com/tiJVkl7wB3

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) March 7, 2022

ChargePoint, which the administration has touted in the recent past, is also currently subject to a class action lawsuit that alleges company executives engaged in securities fraud by making misleading statements that unduly inflated the firm’s share price.

“I think the investor class has grown weary of the industry’s lack of profitability,” Blink Charging’s CEO Brendan Jones told the WSJ. EV charging companies once received lofty valuations from investors, Jones told the WSJ.

The Biden administration spent $7.5 billion in the bipartisan infrastructure law to help build out a nationwide network of 500,000 charging stations in order to help reach its goal of having 50% of all new car sales be EVs by 2030. McKinsey, a leading consulting firm, has estimated that there will need to be about 1.5 million public chargers installed by 2030 if that target is to be achieved, according to the WSJ. At present, there are nearly 160,000 public chargers available at approximately 60,000 locations nationwide.

EV charging companies are generally struggling to turn a profit right now, but they expect to attain profitability within the next year or two, according to the WSJ. However, the wider EV industry is lagging despite the Biden administration’s efforts to support it, and charging companies find themselves in a difficult bind: more consumers need to switch to EVs to help these companies improve their performance, but consumers may be hesitant to do so if the reliability of the nation’s charging infrastructure remains inconsistent.

Currently, the vast majority of charging infrastructure is concentrated in more densely populated coastal areas as opposed to more rural areas of the country, according to the Department of Energy (DOE).

ChargePoint, EVgo, Blink Charging and the White House did not respond immediately to requests for comment.

AUTHOR

NICK POPE

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Communist California Facing the Consequences of Free Market Interference

December 27, 2023/in Budget and Finance, DrRichSwier.com, Economy, Elections, Politics /by DrRichSwier.com

By Geoff Ross

The Communist government of California has interfered beyond its constitutional authority, commencing its destruction of the free market supply and demand of wages verses workers.

The California government legislative branch has created an intrusive role in determining minimum wages in this once free market and this interference is now going to destroy jobs.

Remember, that wages and hiring are determined by the combined interaction of businesses as buyers and workers as suppliers. Not the government !

Let’s take the two large Pizza Hut operators in California as an example.

In response to the “forced” new state law increasing the minimum wage to $20 an hour, Pizza Hut is terminating the employment of all their delivery drivers.

The total job losses will exceed 1,200 in-house delivery drivers in 5 California counties including Los Angeles. Plus 800 plus in other locations.

Looks like the Hollywood movie set workers will now have to leave the studios for their pizza fix if they can afford the gas at $9 a gallon. Approximately $6 of this is state and federal taxes. What we call “government theft” here in Florida.

The delivery driver employees will be terminated starting in February 2024. The new minimum wage law takes effect in April 2024.

Also the Communist government of California requires that capitalist job creating entrepreneurs to notify employees 60 calendar days before mass layoffs, even though the California legislative branch of government interfered in the free markets causing this impending mass lay off.

Reference California’s “The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act” (WARN) This sounds like a directive order written by a Communist sitting in a cubicle in Beijing.

Seriously, what retraining is required for a delivery driver job that is actually a perfect evening or weekend route for college kids and high school students ? It’s very not a job to raise a family.

California Assembly Bill 1228 forced the minimum wage increase to $20 an hour from $16 an hour and the free market response from capitalists was a massive lay off of employees.

Remember, the significant rising cost of living in California is directly proportional to the massive government intrusion on free market conditions.

Fast food restaurants will either close down operations in California or significantly increase the price of their products to pay the new minimum wage increase.

Then, the citizens will choose whether or not to pay $30 – $40 for a double cheeseburger and a bag of soggy fries.

California is ran by a Communist dictatorship and it is setting the example on how NOT to govern a state in a free market capitalist constitutional republic.

Ways and Means’ Subcommittee Considers Changes in Law on Tax-Exemption, Foreign Funding, and Politics

December 27, 2023/in Economy, Featured, Liberty, ThePricklyPear.org /by ThePricklyPear.org

By Michael E. Hartmann

Subcommittee on Oversight members and hearing witnesses mull some potential reforms.

During the U.S. House of Representatives’ Ways and Means Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight held a hearing earlier today about the “Growth of the Tax-Exempt Sector and the Impact on the American Political Landscape,” members and witnesses considered some potential reforms of the law governing tax-exempt nonprofit organizations, foreign funding of them, and their participation in the political process.

“Today we’d like to hear from our panel of expert witnesses about the growth and changes the tax-exempt sector has undergone as well as discuss some recent political activities of these organizations,” Oversight Subcommittee chair Rep. David Schweikert, Republican of Arizona, said in his opening statement.

I have been alarmed to read of several public accounts of large sums of money, to the tune of millions of dollars, flowing from foreign nationals into U.S.-based 501(c)(3)s and 501(c)(4)s, which then have directed these funds into influencing American politics. While U.S. law makes it illegal for foreign nationals to donate directly to U.S. candidates for office, it seems that these actors have found a loophole. This should raise eyebrows for all Americans. At the same time, I would like to emphasize that Americans have a First Amendment right to privacy when they donate to nonprofits.

In his opening statement, Ways and Means Committee chair Jason Smith said, “Foreign nationals are prohibited from directly donating to campaigns or outside political groups. However, there is evidence that some individuals are acting like a wolf in sheep’s clothing and setting up tax-exempt organizations for the purposes of affecting our political process.”

Smith also then noted, “Other billionaires have tried to influence elections through a supposedly charitable backdoor. During the 2020 election, Mark Zuckerberg donated $328 million to 501(c)3 organizations that funded state and local election offices in ways that may have helped one political party over another.”

The hearing’s witnesses were: Justin Chung, legislative attorney at the Congressional Research Service; Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center (where I’m a senior fellow); Stewart Whitson, legal director at the Foundation for Government Accountability; and Philip Hackney, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.

During the almost two-hour proceeding, members of the subcommittee and the witnesses, in either their written or oral testimony, floated or endorsed several potential reforms. Among them:

banning foreign contributions to tax-exempt nonprofits;

banning § 501(c)(4) social-welfare nonprofits that accept foreign contributions from giving to outright political super PACs for a specific number of years;

banning nonprofit § 501(c)(3) private foundations from funding and public charities from engaging in voter-registration projects;

banning private contributions to state- and local-government election administration;

banning foreign contributions to nonprofits engaged in activities surrounding state ballot initiatives;

treating donations of stocks to political §§ 527 and 501(c)(4) groups the same for capital-gains tax purposes;

increasing appropriations for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to be able to enforce existing laws and regulations;

allowing and encouraging the IRS to formulate (c)(4) regulations of relevance to these issues; and, …

redesigning IRS Forms 990, including to provide more information about fiscally sponsored projects, and 990-PF.

The subcommittee’s ranking member, Rep. Bill Pascrell, Democrat of New Jersey, said he thought there was much “common ground” on tax-exemption oversight. He later said, “I think we can come to some general agreement here.”

*****

This article was published by Capital Research and is reproduced with permission.

Image Credit: Youtube screenshot

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Chinese Communist Party Linked To Funding Climate Activists In The U.S. and U.K.

December 26, 2023/in Economy, Environment, Featured, Liberty, National Security, Politics, ThePricklyPear.org /by ThePricklyPear.org

By Thomas Catenacci, Joe Schoffstall

Editors’ Note: Most of us are aware that the CCP has been actively bribing US politicians and gifting money to Confucius centers at universities, but may not be aware of how they operate with NGOs and fund the “environmental movement.” Their activity in environmental matters makes little sense because if they were concerned about emissions, they would simply change their policies at home. No, their activities in this regard are to weaken the US and make us more dependent on them for critical minerals and energy infrastructure like solar panels, windmills, and other technologies they dominate.

The Chinese Communist Party just wants to save the Earth, right?

Even though China is the largest single user of fossil fuels on Earth, for some reason, The Energy Foundation China — an NGO dedicated to worrying about carbon emissions — spent nearly $4 million working on reducing US emissions instead of Sino ones. They also spent some undisclosed amount helping the Grantham Research Institute in London last year. So we have donors in a developing country giving generously to the US and UK because the rich first world is too poor to fund their own environmental philanthropy groups, right?

The Energy Foundation China (EFC) generously wants to help the US phase out coal and electrify their cars. But that’s just the nice political power that the CCP is (the kind that also builds fortified islands in shipping lanes):

CCP-Tied Group is Quietly Fueling US-Based Climate Initiatives: Tax Filings

A climate-focused nonprofit with significant operations in Beijing has wired millions of dollars to fund climate initiatives and environmental groups in the U.S., according to tax filings first obtained by Fox News Digital.

While the Energy Foundation’s financial filings indicate that the group is technically headquartered in San Francisco, a Fox News Digital review determined that the majority of its operations are conducted in China with a staff that boasts extensive ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Its recently filed tax form shows the group, which refers to itself as “Energy Foundation China,” contributed $3.8 million to initiatives in the U.S. like phasing out coal and electrifying the transportation sector.

The Fox authors list several examples of how the EFC spends its money on climate policy activism. For example, the Chinese group gave $375,000 to the Natural Resources Defence Council (NRDC) — a non-profit in the US that files legal challenges to stop oil pipelines, drilling, coal plants, and other mining activities. The head of the NRDC says they get no money from China and protests that the Energy Foundation is based in San Francisco, but the Fox authors explain that not only does the group lease office facilities in Beijing, but their CEO and President used to be the deputy director general of China’s National Centre for Climate Change Strategy. The program director of the EFC’s “industry program” spent eight years at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The US Energy Foundation gave birth to the Energy Foundation China.

The Fox News article could have explained the relationship between the Energy Foundation and the Energy Foundation China. They are separate now, but for twenty years, they were one and the same.

According to InfluenceWatch, the large, original Energy Foundation was set up in the US in 1991. Later, in 1999, the Packard Foundation helped to set up Energy Foundation China. In 2019, the Chinese branch officially split from the larger US group, except it based its headquarters in San Francisco, too (which seems odd if they are trying to influence China).

The parent US “Energy Foundation” is so huge it gave an amazing 52 million dollars (US) to groups around the world last year. Ponder that somehow, the Energy Foundation China was fully enmeshed as a part of that giant machine from 1999 to 2019.

‘A quintessential “pass-through” for donors…’

InfluenceWatch notes that way back in 2014, a US Senate committee already felt the Energy Foundation was a conduit for donors to funnel money to left-wing activism without being easily traced:

A July 2014 report by the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works’ Republicans called the Energy Foundation “a quintessential example of a pass-through” for donors who want to fund left-wing environmentalist activism while avoiding accountability for traceable connections to activist groups. The report also stated that the foundation, which cannot support political campaigns directly, transfers money to other groups that can, thanks to loopholes in the tax code.

More profits and power for China

China controls the rare metals market, builds wind turbines, solar panels, and now also the EVs. Obviously, on a purely self-serving business level, the CCP would be crazy if they weren’t amplifying Green fantasia in the West in order to sabotage the competition. And the idea of undermining energy security and the general industrial power base of the West might also appeal to CCP leaders. And hypothetically, if it did, what would stop it from happening — investigative reporting from The ABC or the BBC? Not likely.

*****

This article was published by CFACT, Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, and is reproduced with permission.

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Executives From Sanofi Caught on Leaked Zoom Call Discussing Discriminatory Hiring Practices

December 22, 2023/in Courts & Law, DrRichSwier.com, Economy, Labor & Unions, Politics /by DrRichSwier.com

By O’Keefe Media Group

I hope this message finds you well. As a community deeply committed to integrity and transparency, we believe it’s crucial to keep you informed about the pressing issues we uncover. Today, I want to share a disturbing revelation that has come to light through our relentless investigative efforts.

UNCOVERING DISCRIMINATORY HIRING PRACTICES AT SANOFI

Our recent investigation has unveiled troubling practices within Sanofi, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies. A brave whistleblower has come forward with evidence that raises serious ethical and legal questions about the company’s hiring policies.

In a leaked video, Carole Huntsman, the former Senior Vice President at Sanofi, is heard explicitly stating the company’s racial hiring quotas. She says, “Every hiring manager knows… 1 in 5 hires needs to be a black employee… 1 in 10 has to be a Latinx employee for us to meet our goals.” This candid admission is not just a statement; it’s a reflection of a deeply ingrained policy.

WATCH ON YOUTUBE / ON X

FURTHER EVIDENCE AND BROADER IMPLICATIONS

But the story doesn’t end with the video. We’ve obtained internal documents that corroborate these statements, showing a deliberate strategy to manipulate the company’s demographic makeup. These documents outline ambitious targets and track progress towards these racial quotas.

This isn’t just about Sanofi. Our investigation has revealed that the company is part of the CEO Action for Racial Equity, a coalition of companies with similar commitments. Shockingly, we’ve discovered that other members, like Best Buy, have also been implicated in practices that raise significant concerns, with our breaking story of Whistleblower Ennis Sujak on both racial and religious discrimination within Best Buy and Geek Squad.

WHY THIS MATTERS

The implications of these findings are far-reaching. They challenge the ethical boundaries of corporate diversity initiatives and raise legal questions under the Civil Rights Act. This story is a stark reminder of the complex issues at the intersection of corporate policy, ethics, and the law.

OUR ROLE AND YOUR INVOLVEMENT

At OMG we are dedicated to uncovering the truth and fostering a dialogue on these critical issues. We believe that awareness is the first step towards change. By staying informed and engaged, you are part of a community that values integrity and transparency.

We encourage you to share this story, discuss it within your networks, and stay tuned for further updates. Your awareness and involvement are vital as we continue to shed light on these crucial issues.

Thank you for your continued support, your encouragement, and your belief in our important mission. Together, we are shaping the future of journalism.

In Truth.

BIDENOMICS: Homelessness UP 12% from just last year, Homeless FAMILIES WITH KIDS up 16%

December 22, 2023/in Budget and Finance, DrRichSwier.com, Economy, Elections, Politics /by DrRichSwier.com

By The Geller Report

But the invaders storming our border are getting everything they need.

U.S. homelessness up 12% to highest reported level as rents soar

By Kevin Freking, AP December 21, 2023:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States experienced a dramatic 12% increase in homelessness to its highest reported level as soaring rents and a decline in coronavirus pandemic assistance combined to put housing out of reach for more Americans, federal officials said Friday.

About 653,000 people were homeless, the most since the country began using the yearly point-in-time survey in 2007. The total in the January count represents an increase of about 70,650 from a year earlier.

The latest estimate indicates that people becoming homeless for the first time were behind much of the increase.

Keep reading.

JUST IN: Homelessness in The United States hits record high, UP 12% from just last year.

Homelessness for FAMILIES WITH KIDS up 16%..

THE ONLY PEOPLE GETTING WHAT THEY NEED ARE ILLEGAL MIGRANTS..pic.twitter.com/Ktm8AvP72G

— Chuck Callesto (@ChuckCallesto) December 20, 2023

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

POSTS ON X:

FACT CHECK: “Bidenomics” is devastating the middle class. According to Bloomberg, around $2 trillion in real wealth held by the middle class has been eliminated since March 2022. pic.twitter.com/RKyoTGZInE

— GOP (@GOP) December 21, 2023

“What is your message to Americans who think what you’ve done on the economy is not enough?”

KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: “It’s going to take some time for them to feel the accomplishments!” pic.twitter.com/ZTuMsZeXIb

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) December 21, 2023

Let’s Block Oil Shipments From Colombia to California

December 22, 2023/in DrRichSwier.com, Economy, Elections, Energy, Environment /by DrRichSwier.com

By Geoff Ross

According to the California Energy Commissioner the majority of California’s crude oil is imported from Colombia, Ecuador, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

Additionally.

The installed Marxist President currently squatting in the White House, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., the poster child for adult diapers has also resumed oil purchases from Communist Venezuela to keep Maduro’s Narco dictatorship operating flush with U.S. dollars.

So I did my civic duty while I am here in Bogotá Colombia and I stopped by EcoPetrol, Colombia’s largest oil production company.

I asked the company manager to stop importing oil to California to show solidarity with the states unconstitutional ban on new gasoline powered vehicle sales starting in 2035.

Cutting off the Colombian oil supply to Gavin Newsom’s dictatorship of California and instead shipping the oil to Texas would help drive up the price of gasoline to $15 – $25 a gallon in California as per our estimations and reduce gas prices in Texas.

Perhaps this would help Californians decide to vote in a new free market based legislature and Governor and remove the current Commie Marxist Stalinist dirt-bag infestation in Sacramento.

Stay tuned.

Reporting from outside the head office of EcoPetrol in Bogotá Colombia

The Multifront Attack on Elon Musk

December 22, 2023/in Economy, Featured, Liberty, Politics, ThePricklyPear.org /by ThePricklyPear.org

By Jeffrey Tucker

Elon Musk is the world’s richest man but also the number one target of the world’s richest governments and their associated industrialists. The reason traces entirely to his independence of mind and the actions that follow from that.

In times of censorship, he bought and now protects a free-speech platform, the only one remaining with any real reach into the public mind. Countless millions of people are deeply grateful, even if the platform is a long way from profitability.

Further, he is innovating in a time of stagnation with Tesla, Starlink, and SpaceX. He is outspoken against the many forms of despotism of our time. He was an original dissident against Covid controls, and probably the most prominent, keeping his factories running in defiance of the governor and then even leaving California for Texas to find more freedom.

This is the whole reason he is fending off attacks from every angle.

In the latest assault, the European Union’s Digital commissioner Thierry Breton has posted on X (formerly Twitter) that he believes Elon has infringed on the EU’s rules. He set out the alleged infringements in a post on the social media platform.

Suspected breach of obligations to counter #IllegalContent and #Disinformation
Suspected breach of #Transparency obligations
Suspected #DeceptiveDesign of user interface

Elon has been very clear that he works to respect the laws of every country, even those with which he strongly disagrees. This pertains to the EU’s aggressive censorship, which was deployed through the Covid era at the expense of scientific freedom and in defense of governments that locked down their citizenry, forced medical treatments on citizens that they did not want or need, and then covered up behind-the-scenes machinations.

It’s rich to have Breton go after Elon for a lack of transparency when the whole point of the EU’s regime is to force a lack of transparency. Adding to the irony, Breton knew that Musk would not censor the note on the world’s largest platform for free speech. He is thereby deploying the use of freedom in opposition to its existence.

And before we sniff at the censorial Europeans and their intolerance toward free speech, consider that the same thing – or some version of it – is happening to Elon in the US. After March 2020, there was a concerted effort led by deep-state actors to gain full control of social media to squelch any dissent. It affected every platform, including Twitter. Amazon and all app stores even banned Parler because it was becoming too popular.

As things died down, Musk bought the Twitter platform and purged 4 out of 5 employees, including the many government agents who had been hired to turn Twitter into a government propaganda machine. Since then he has upheld the First Amendment and innovated a series of tools that allow for internal and crowd-sourced fact-checking to make his renamed platform the most reliable source of news and opinion in the world.

Since he took over, he has faced a barrage of state-generated attacks. The list is courtesy of End Wokeness.

The SEC has sued Musk over the purchase of the platform. According to the New York Times, “his takeover has been the subject of several lawsuits and investigations by the federal authorities. The Federal Trade Commission has probed whether X had the resources to protect users’ privacy after he laid off much of its staff and several senior executives responsible for privacy and security resigned. The agency has also sought to depose Mr. Musk. Former Twitter shareholders have also sued Mr. Musk for fraud in a case related to his belated disclosure of his stake in the company.”

The FTC has demanded internal X documents. Says The Hill: “the FTC has sent more than a dozen letters to Twitter since Musk completed his acquisition in October. It states that the agency has demanded Twitter provide internal communications “relating to Elon Musk” from any Twitter employee, information about the platform’s Twitter Blue verification subscription service and the names of journalists who were granted access to Twitter records.”

The Biden Department of Justice has sued SpaceX…get this…for not hiring refugees for secret rocket technology. CNN says: “The suit claims that ‘from at least September 2018 to May 2022, SpaceX routinely discouraged asylees and refugees from applying and refused to hire or consider them, because of their citizenship status, in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA),’ according to an August 24 DOJ news release.”

The Biden Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commision have sued Tesla over improper perks. Forbes says: “The widened investigation comes after federal prosecutors and the SEC began probing a secret Tesla project known as Project 42 that employees described as a glass house for Musk in the Austin, Texas, area near Tesla’s factory, the Journal reported in August.”

The Biden Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation against Tesla over self-driving cars. Reuters reports: “The U.S. Department of Justice launched the previously undisclosed probe last year following more than a dozen crashes, some of them fatal, involving Tesla’s driver assistance system Autopilot, which was activated during the accidents, the people said.” The presumption here is preposterous: that Elon doesn’t care if his product is flawed and doesn’t desire improvement.

There is a federal investigation of Neuralink. Reuters again: “Elon Musk’s Neuralink, a medical device company, is under federal investigation for potential animal-welfare violations amid internal staff complaints that its animal testing is being rushed, causing needless suffering and deaths, according to documents reviewed by Reuters and sources familiar with the investigation and company operations.”

Then there is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigation over harassment at Tesla. The EEOC says: “Since at least 2015 to the present, Black employees at Tesla’s Fremont, California manufacturing facilities have routinely endured racial abuse, pervasive stereotyping, and hostility as well as epithets… Slurs were used casually and openly in high-traffic areas and at worker hubs. Black employees regularly encountered graffiti, including variations of the N-word, swastikas, threats, and nooses, on desks and other equipment, in bathroom stalls, within elevators, and even on new vehicles rolling off the production line.”

Finally, we have the aggressive advertising boycott on the part of major corporations, including Disney, CNBC, Comcast, Warner Bros, IBM, and the Financial Times, among many others. Musk has refused to be intimidated by these people. He has said that he refuses to be blackmailed by money and instead told the companies to “Go f*** yourself.” This is rather remarkable and really does speak to a major problem in social media today, which is the extent to which so many platforms are willing to do the bidding of the corporatist system in order to serve the bottom line.

That is nine direct lines of attack, but probably the company and Elon could list another several dozen such cases like this once you consider all levels of government everywhere Musk’s companies are operating. And yes, it all sounds like something straight out of a novel by Ayn Rand. The successful and innovative entrepreneur is attacked on all sides by institutions and people who live off the system rather than innovate around and beyond it.

We truly do live in a new age of envy, powered by states and their industrial allies more wedded to their own profitability lines and plans rather than what the people want and what great entrepreneurs can create. This is very clearly a crony attack. What’s striking is that everyone knows that and yet it is tolerated in any case. It’s a great recipe for killing off the wealth-generating machine for a generation or two.

*****

The article was published by The Brownstone Institute and is reproduced with permission.

Image Credit: Pixabay Free Image

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America’s Border Crisis Will Continue To Fester While Taxpayers Foot The Bill For Social Safety Net

December 22, 2023/in Economy, Education, Featured, Liberty, National Security, Politics, ThePricklyPear.org /by ThePricklyPear.org

By Betsy McCaughey

When Emma Lazarus wrote her famous line in 1883, “Give me your tired, your poor,/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” there was no Medicaid, food stamps, housing vouchers, and government-run shelters. Those who came knew they were on their own. Now they arrive with their hands out.

A country can have open borders or a generous social safety net, but not both. President Joe Biden is the poster boy for that mistake, and cities across the U.S. are paying the price.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has warned that the cost of sheltering, feeding, and providing health care and other services to the deluge of migrants will “destroy” the city. Yet Adams returned empty-handed from a visit with Biden’s staff on Dec. 8 to seek federal help. For the second time, New Yorkers are being told by a U.S. president, in so many words, to “drop dead.”

Biden is also turning his back on Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, and other cities beleaguered by the busloads of destitute migrants from the southern border. Chicago Alderman Raymond Lopez says in the black community there is “no longer feeling the love from Uncle Joe,” as Biden leaves the city to struggle alone with the cost of feeding and sheltering migrants.

Windy City Democrats, outraged by the burden thrust on them, are vowing to disrupt the Democratic National Convention next summer and make their voices heard.

Americans everywhere feel the same. Charity is supposed to begin at home. Chicagoans want to take care of their own first, including the 68,000 locals who are homeless.

Immigration is spiking to all-time highs, exceeding even the wave of newcomers from Europe in the late 19th century, when Lazarus wrote her poem.

About half the spike is due to Biden’s open-border policies. A record 12,000 broke through the southern border last Tuesday, the biggest one-day surge ever.

Immigration per se is not the problem. The U.S. economy needs more workers. With the birthrate declining and baby boomers retiring, the U.S. has a people-shortage problem that can only be solved by immigration.

But Biden is welcoming destitute migrants, instead of newcomers who are educated, have job skills to succeed in today’s economy, speak English and arrive ready to provide for their families.

Biden’s open border means anyone who wades across the Rio Grande gets in. Biden’s legal immigration policy — introduced into the Senate in 2021 — also prioritizes everything but economic self-sufficiency.

Biden’s predecessor, former President Donald Trump, ramped up enforcement of the longstanding “public charge” rule that bars anyone from getting a green card and permanent residence who is likely to depend on Medicaid, food stamps, or housing vouchers. Biden reversed this policy.

Countries with smart immigration policies — Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom — have point systems giving preference to educated immigrants with language and job skills.

In contrast, two-thirds of legal immigrants to the U.S. get a green card based solely on having a family member here, whether they can support themselves or not.

It’s no wonder that a staggering 55% of households headed by an immigrant who has not yet attained citizenship use at least one welfare program, according to Census Bureau data.

Biden’s proposed immigration “reform” actually loosens the standards for family-based migration even more, never mind the impact on taxpayers and city social services.

And here’s the wackiest legal immigration program: the diversity lottery. Fifty thousand immigrants from “underrepresented nations” are literally admitted randomly every year. Biden wants to expand that. Canada is recruiting Ph.Ds. Biden is prioritizing diversity.

Sens. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) and John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) introduced a bill on Nov. 24 to establish a point system or “skills-based approach” here. Americans tired of supporting the strangers coming to their shores when their own neighbors need help, should support this bill. That includes New York Democrats such as Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — a New Yorker — charges that Republican reform plans, including deterring illegal migration, are “anchored in xenophobia.” Wrong. They’re anchored in survival.

Unless the U.S. acts to shut down illegal migration and reform legal immigration to favor self-sufficiency, New York and other cities face even tougher days ahead.

*****

This article was published by The Daily Caller News Foundation and is reproduced with permission.

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People Are Flocking to Lake Havasu City-Kingman, AZ

December 22, 2023/in Economy, Featured, ThePricklyPear.org /by ThePricklyPear.org

By Samual Stebbins

Editors’ Note: Although the most impressive growth on the chart below has occurred in Florida, the Prescott Valley-Prescott, AZ area is right behind the Lake Havasu City-Kingman area of Arizona. Despite the tainted purplish color of Arizona politics and elections due to factors covered in The Prickly Pear in 2020 and 2022, Arizona remains a sterling model of America and individual liberty, especially for economic opportunity and Second Amendment rights.

At least 27 million Americans have relocated each year since government record-keeping began in 1948. The reasons any one person or family may decide to move are often personal. These include being closer to relatives, starting a new relationship, or needing a larger home.

However, many parts of the country offer advantages with more universal appeal, and some of these places have seen a population boom in the past year.

According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Population Estimates Program, people are flocking to the Lake Havasu City-Kingman metro area in Arizona. Between July 1, 2021 and June 30, 2022, the number of people who moved to the area outnumbered those who moved out by about 6,140.

The 2.8% annual population growth due to net migration alone – not including births and deaths – ranks as the 19th largest increase of all 387 metropolitan areas in the United States.

All data used in this story was aggregated from the county level to the metropolitan level using metropolitan statistical area definitions for July 2023 from the Census Bureau.

Rank	Metro area	Pop. increase from net migration, July 2021 to June 2022 (%)	Pop. increase from net migration, July 2021 to June 2022
1	Wildwood-The Villages, FL	8.7%	11,680
2	Myrtle Beach-Conway-North Myrtle Beach, SC	4.9%	18,100
3	Punta Gorda, FL	4.9%	9,520
4	Lakeland-Winter Haven, FL	4.2%	31,960
5	Homosassa Springs, FL	4.1%	6,550
6	Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL	4.1%	32,420
7	North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota, FL	3.9%	33,900
8	Wilmington, NC	3.7%	16,240
9	Ocala, FL	3.6%	14,030
10	Port St. Lucie, FL	3.5%	17,780
11	Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach, FL	3.4%	23,200
12	Sebring, FL	3.4%	3,460
13	Panama City-Panama City Beach, FL	3.2%	6,450
14	Daphne-Fairhope-Foley, AL	3.0%	7,300
15	Naples-Marco Island, FL	3.0%	11,540
16	St. George, UT	2.9%	5,640
17	Sebastian-Vero Beach-West Vero Corridor, FL	2.9%	4,780
18	Spartanburg, SC	2.9%	10,470
19	Lake Havasu City-Kingman, AZ	2.8%	6,140
20	Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, FL	2.7%	16,460
21	Lansing-East Lansing, MI	2.6%	12,030
22	Hilton Head Island-Bluffton-Port Royal, SC	2.6%	5,790
23	Sherman-Denison, TX	2.6%	3,620
24	Pinehurst-Southern Pines, NC	2.6%	2,650
25	Prescott Valley-Prescott, AZ	2.5%	5,990

*****

This article was published by Center Square and is reproduced with permission.

Image Credit: Wikipedia

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Before Arizona Gov. Hobbs Deployed National Guard, She Neutered Border Security Measures

December 21, 2023/in Economy, Featured, Liberty, National Security, Politics, ThePricklyPear.org /by ThePricklyPear.org

By Ben Whedon

Having it both ways? As more and more local politicians call for aid to help with the increasing cost of illegal immigrant influx, Hobb’s new hawkish rhetoric conflicts with her own immigration record and past statements on the matter, contradicting a more permissive campaign theme that aligned with the “open borders” approach.

Arizona Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs on Friday deployed the National Guard to the southern border amid the unprecedented surge in illegal immigrant arrivals under the Biden administration.

She further pleaded with Washington to send further aid, admonishing the Biden administration for not responding to her request for $512 million to reimburse the state for border security expenses it had already incurred.

“Yet again, the federal government is refusing to do its job to secure our border and keep our communities safe,” she said. “With this Executive Order, I am taking action where the federal government won’t… “Despite continued requests for assistance, the Biden administration has refused to deliver desperately needed resources to Arizona’s border.”

Despite the hawkish rhetoric, however, Hobbs’s own immigration record and past statements on the matter reflect a more permissive attitude that aligns somewhat with the administration.

Hobbs called a temporary border wall a “political stunt” and sold off the shipping containers

While running for governor, Hobbs slammed then-GOP Gov. Doug Ducey’s move to use shipping containers as a temporary border wall to plug gaps in the Yuma sector of the frontier.

“It’s a political stunt. It’s a visual barrier that is not actually providing an effective barrier to entry, and I think a waste of taxpayer dollars,” she said, according to KJZZ. This echoed the White House’s position, who has as recently as January of this year said the practice was a “shameful” political maneuver. Arizona set aside $15 million in its budget this year to pay for transporting migrants, and the busing program was estimated to cost $1 million per month, according to The Arizona Republic.

Ducey later reached an agreement with the Biden administration to remove the barrier so that the federal government could erect a permanent one. Hobbs, for her part, announced plans this year to auction off the containers.

She praised Biden’s immigration policy earlier this year

In January, upon taking office, Hobbs celebrated the Biden’s administration’s approach to border security, saying “I am encouraged by the White House’s recent actions to finally visit the border and to start proposing real steps to begin addressing the problems of the current system.”

“And while optimistic, I will also continue to push Congress to do its job and pass comprehensive immigration reform,” she continued, according to the Associated Press.

Her speech came amid President Joe Biden’s visit to the southern border, a trip that conservatives criticized as a public relations stunt amid reports that border officials had swept away migrant camps near El Paso, Texas, to present a more organized backdrop to his official visit…..

…..

Continue reading this article at Just the News.

Image Credit: Wikipedia

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Planned Parenthood’s Trans Hormone Business Is Booming, Creating Thousands Of New Patients ‘For Life’

December 20, 2023/in DrRichSwier.com, Economy, Healthcare, Science /by DrRichSwier.com

By The Daily Caller

The number of transgender services performed at Planned Parenthood clinics exploded over the past few years as the transgender medical industry became increasingly lucrative, according to data published by the organization’s regional branches.

Planned Parenthood first began providing hormone treatments for transgender patients in 2005, and since then 41 out of 49 regional branches have provided transgender services as of 2022. However, in just the last three years, Planned Parenthood has become dramatically more involved in the gender hormone industry.

Between 2020 and 2022, the number of transgender services performed and/or visits related to transgender treatments at Planned Parenthood clinics increased by roughly 125%, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation review of available data. Regional branches that made their data available collectively saw 17,036 visits in 2020 compared to 38,337 in 2022, a staggering increase in such a short period of time.

Michael Artigues, president of the American College of Pediatricians, told the DCNF that the increase seen over the last few years is likely due to a number of factors such as transgenderism becoming a growing “social phenomenon,” as well as potential financial incentives.

“You have to be concerned about the fact that there’s always money involved, for sure,” Artigues said. “And you’ve got to question whether or not they’re discerning if someone, in particular minors, have a legitimate condition that requires treatment like gender-affirming therapies, as opposed to a social phenomena and or simply mental health problems.”

While the national Planned Parenthood organization does not publicize data on visits related to transgender medical services, such as gender hormone therapy, 12 of the 41 regional Planned Parenthood branches have released relevant data over the past three years. The remaining branches did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

The regional offices varied in how they tracked gender services, with some tracking gender hormone therapy appointments and others tracking visits to their “gender-affirming care” programs; however, many of the regional Planned Parenthood organizations who published their data saw a substantial increase in visits and/or services performed for transgender individuals. Many clinics currently offer “Transgender Hormone Therapy” including estrogen, testosterone and puberty blockers.

Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, which has clinics located in California and parts of Nevada, had 1,041 “gender-affirming care visits” in 2020 before jumping to 4,378 visits in 2022 and eventually hitting 9,288 in 2023, according to its annual reports. The clinic offers hormone therapy for patients who are 18 years and older, or for patients 16 to 17 years old who obtain parental consent, according to its website.

Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette, located in Oregon, recorded 344 transgender medical visits in 2018-2019 and 533 in 2019-2020. That number of visits went up to 1,066 in 2020-2021, and the following year it was nearly four times higher at 4,129 visits.

Nationwide, Planned Parenthood saw over 35,000 patients for hormone replacement services appointments in 2021, NPR reported. The organization did not disclose the exact number of gender-related visits in its 2022 annual report but instead listed them under “other procedures,” which totaled 256,550 appointments and included services like “pediatric care … other adult preventive care, and high complexity visits, including infertility services.”

Click here to view the Planned Parenthood Transgender Healthcare Services annual totals for Gender Hormone Therapy Infographic.

NOTE: The graphic includes Planned Parenthood’s annual totals for “Gender Hormone Therapy,” “gender-affirming” or transgender visits and services at 12 affiliates with reports from 2020 to 2022. (Megan Brock/Kate Anderson)

Several branches said that their transgender services were some of the fastest-growing areas for their clinics. Planned Parenthood Illinois said in its 2022 report that its transgender hormone therapy is “growing faster than any other service.” The report also noted that “gender-affirming care requires a lifelong continuum of social, psychological, behavioral and medical care.”

Stella O’Malley, psychotherapist and executive director of Genspect, an international group that advocates for a “healthy approach to sex and gender,” told the DCNF that she believes Planned Parenthood has gone from the “medical model, where doctors are bound by the principle to ‘first, do no harm,’ to a more business-like approach that lets the buyer beware.”

“The problem with this is that very vulnerable people who are at their lowest often need guidance and support, not a business-like exchange,” O’Malley said. “Doctors aren’t shopkeepers. They are paid very well because they’re in positions of responsibility, and so they need to meet these responsibilities by being sensitive to the needs of the patient. A one-size-fits-all approach that fast-tracks most patients onto a medicalized pathway is profoundly inappropriate.”

Overall, the cross-sex surgery market is projected to be worth $5 billion in 2023, according to Grand View Research, thanks in large part to more and more Americans identifying as transgender. The cost of routine medical visits for a patient on gender hormones would also be significant.

Only a few of the affiliates reviewed by the DCNF list prices for their gender services; Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri lists a “self-pay fee for a visit” at $250, with additional costs added for any lab work, according to its website. All follow-up visits are $200, plus costs to cover lab work as needed.

Planned Parenthood Pasadena & San Gabriel Valley estimates costs of up to $262 for the first visit, as well as $35 for hormone injection training and up to $48 for lab work, according to its website. Any follow-up visits can cost up to $202.

As of 2022, Planned Parenthood Metropolitan New Jersey said that its new patient consultation for transgender hormones ranged anywhere from $92 to $206, while follow-ups were slightly lower, going from $65 to $173, according to a welcome packet.

Scott Newgent, a detransitioner and founder of TReVoices, an organization that works to stop the medical transitioning of children, told the DCNF that the nature of gender hormone treatments, which must be taken continuously for the remainder of a patient’s life, creates potential repeat customers for organizations like Planned Parenthood.

“It doesn’t matter if they decide to transition or stay trans or whatever,” Newgent said. “They’re going to need those synthetic hormones for life. That’s a huge business model.”

Doctors have also raised concerns over the ease with which one can get a prescription for hormone treatments at Planned Parenthood; the Columbia Willamette affiliate, for instance, says on its website that it provides hormone treatments for patients 18 years and older and does not require a letter from a counselor or doctor recommending hormones for gender dysphoria. Patients can get a prescription after the initial hour-and-a-half appointment.

Erica Anderson, who is transgender and the former president of the U.S. Professional Association for Transgender Health, said that patients have circumvented more traditional methods of getting hormones because it takes too long, opting to go to Planned Parenthood instead, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

Click here to view Planned Parenthood Trangender Healthcare Services Infographic.

NOTE: The graphic includes Planned Parenthood’s totals for “Gender Hormone Therapy,” “gender-affirming” or transgender visits and services at 20 affiliates from 2020 to 2022. (Megan Brock/Kate Anderson)

The DCNF also reviewed an additional eight branches that released only partial data in their annual reports between 2020 and 2022. Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest recorded only 22 “gender-affirming” hormone therapy telehealth visits in 2020 but did not include any data regarding in-person health care center visits for hormone therapy in its annual report.

In 2021, the branch saw 829 telehealth and health care center visits for gender hormones, and in 2022 had 2,426, according to its annual reports.

Planned Parenthood’s St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri saw 238 visits between July 2020 and June 2021 as it rolled out its “transgender care program,” according to its annual report. Between July 2021 and June 2022, visits for hormone therapy jumped to 1,657.

Click here to view the Planned Parenthood Transgender Healthcare Services 2020 – 2022 Infographic

Planned Parenthood California Central Coast reported 299 “gender-affirming care” initial and follow-up visits for the fiscal year 2019-2020 but logged 746 only two years later in its annual report for 2021-2022. Planned Parenthood Wisconsin in 2020-2021 had 488 hormone therapy visits, but that number jumped to 730 in 2021-2022.

Planned Parenthood Great Northwest reported only 659 “gender-affirming hormone care” visits in 2018 within the first six months of opening its gender program. However, in 2022, the number increased to a staggering 12,814 visits among 5,926 patients. While the Great Northwest branch absorbed the Indiana and Kentucky regions in 2021, those organizations did not list the number of transgender services they provided in their previous annual reports.

There are serious health risks from transgender hormone treatments; minors can become infertile if they receive puberty blockers, while those who transition later could suffer from other conditions such as bone deterioration after trying to come off testosterone.

“Women that get on testosterone for a long period, and then get off of it, their bones deteriorate,” Newgent said. “So I have to get back on testosterone to have my bones safe, but then I have to deal with the other sides of it. So there’s all these medical complications that come with it.”

Planned Parenthood published a series of videos in July acknowledging that patients who take estrogen hormones are at a higher risk of blood clots in the lungs, brain and legs.

Risks for testosterone therapy include blood clots, low blood sugar, high cholesterol and liver issues, according to the videos. Planned Parenthood also suggests that patients receiving hormone therapy should look into “family planning” options, noting that infertility is a potential side effect.

Planned Parenthood should “prioritize evidence-based medicine” and encourage patients, specifically children, to get “intensive psychiatric assessment and care” instead of offering puberty blockers, Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, chairman of Do No Harm, a group of medical professionals that oppose “radical” ideology in health care, said in a statement to the DCNF.

Planned Parenthood did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

AUTHORS

MEGAN BROCK AND KATE ANDERSON

Contributors.

AARP Spent Millions Advocating For New Laws That Likely Benefit A Major Corporate Backer

December 20, 2023/in DrRichSwier.com, Economy, Politics /by DrRichSwier.com

By The Daily Caller

AARP, an organization that represents the interests of retired Americans, spent tens of millions of dollars promoting provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that likely benefit the bottom line of one of the group’s major corporate backers.

AARP spent more than $60 million between 2019 and summer 2022 advocating for a provision that eventually made it into the IRA allowing Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies over the prices of certain drugs, according to an article posted on the group’s website. The provisions would require the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to negotiate the prices of certain drugs with drug manufacturers starting in 2026.

“We agreed that state directors would drop everything and get on this. Calls started going in to the White House and congressional leaders by 10 a.m. We had never responded to something so quickly,” Nancy LeaMond, AARP executive vice president and chief advocacy and engagement officer, said in the article. “Over the next few days more than 400,000 communications from AARP members and activists made it clear to leaders in Washington that taking Medicare prescription drug reform out of the budget package was unacceptable. Members emailed, called, tweeted and posted on Facebook and other social media channels.”

However, experts say that AARP’s article leaves out how the Medicare negotiation requirements would benefit private insurers such as healthcare conglomerate UnitedHealth Group, a major source of AARP’s funding. Additionally, the IRA expands subsidies under the Affordable Care Act to private insurance providers, offering another boon to insurers like UnitedHealth.

“Under the IRA insurers like UnitedHealth are in line for a financial windfall with super-sized subsidies for Obamacare policies and government price controls dictating pricing of many medicines,” wrote Phil Kerpen, the president of the free-market policy advocacy group American Commitment, a 501(c)(4) non-profit organization.

AARP receives a significant portion of its funding through royalty agreements with insurance companies, who use AARP’s brand to market their products. These agreements have historically provided a greater share of AARP’s revenue than dues paid by retirees, a DCNF review of the organization’s financial documents found.

UnitedHealth pays AARP royalties to use the group’s brand to market insurance plans. AARP also collects a 4.95% share of monthly payments made to UnitedHealth for insurance on co-branded AARP-UnitedHealth Medigap plans, KFF Health News reported.

AARP received $909 million in corporate royalties in 2017, with 69% of that revenue, or about $627.2 million, coming from UnitedHealth alone. However, that was the last year AARP reported the proportion of its royalties that came from UnitedHealth, making these the most recently available official numbers.

American Commitment estimates that UnitedHealth funded AARP by $732 million in 2022.

AARP did not respond to the DCNF’s inquiry about why it stopped publicly reporting UnitedHealth’s royalty payments.

“The royalty revenue generated is used by AARP in support of our mission to protect Social Security and Medicare, lower prescription drug costs, enable people to save for retirement and support family caregivers,” AARP Senior External Relations Director Colby Nelson said in a statement to the DCNF.

Kerpen told the DCNF that the IRA would directly improve UnitedHealth’s finances by reducing the amount they need to pay to acquire drugs and by extending the subsidies paid to UnitedHealth under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The ACA, which has been commonly referred to as “Obamacare,” was signed into law by former President Obama in 2010.

UnitedHealth is the largest health insurance provider in the United States when measured by market share. The firm has increasingly been moving into the businesses of providing healthcare, spending billions acquiring medical practices and pharmacy benefit managers.

Under the IRA, HHS is obligated to negotiate the prices of certain drugs covered under Medicare Part D with drug manufacturers. Medicare Part D is a program individuals on Medicare can opt into through private insurers that covers most outpatient prescription drugs.

Brand name drugs covered under Medicare Part D are eligible for negotiation under the IRA if they lack generic equivalents or readily available alternative treatments. Pharmaceutical companies that refuse to accept government-imposed drug price ceilings face a steep excise tax.

Chris Jacobs, founder of the health policy research firm Juniper Research Group, told the DCNF that the drug price negotiation provisions in the IRA “would reduce prescription drug costs for United” in a way “that ultimately will benefit the insurance company’s bottom line.”

Jacobs also pointed out that the Obamacare subsidies extended by the IRA “are payable directly to insurance companies” like UnitedHealth.

By subsidizing insurance plans, Jacob argues, the government increased insurance enrollment and incentivized people to purchase more expensive plans, thus generating more revenue for insurance providers.

Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, told the DCNF that “the insurance companies figure the amount they might be paying for these drugs [under the IRA] would go down.” If insurance companies pay less for drugs, they could expand their profit margins.

Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, a non-profit, Section 501(c)(3) healthcare policy research organization , told the DCNF that insurance companies are “just looking at their own bottom line, and they’re saying ‘Oh good, if Medicare can pay company ‘X’ a dollar for their pill, we’ll be able to do that too.’”

“Medicare is often the payment standard upon which the private health insurance industry bases their own payments,” Turner explained.

AARP championed the IRA, which experts told the DCNF would benefit its corporate health insurance backers.

The organization expressed gratitude to President Biden for signing the IRA into law in a press release. Jo Ann Jenkins, president and CEO of AARP, called the IRA, which passed without any Republican support in Congress, “a monumental victory.”

In addition to the $60 million it spent between 2019 and 2022 on ads pushing for government drug price negotiations, AARP lobbied Congress to influence the IRA, according to lobbying disclosures.

AARP also “generated 3.6 million emails to lawmakers and flooded congressional offices with hundreds of thousands of phone calls” to push for drug price negotiations, according to its website.

“It is plain common sense that Medicare should negotiate for lower prices,” AARP Senior Vice President of Government Affairs Bill Sweeney told the DCNF.

“For too long, big drug companies got a sweetheart deal that, unbelievably, forced Americans to pay the highest prices in the world,” Sweeny said. “AARP fought hard to end that horrible deal, saving our country and taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.”

AARP did not address the DCNF’s questions about the possible conflict of interest posed by their insurance royalties.

‘Betrayed Seniors’

Some healthcare experts disagree with AARP’s characterization of the IRA, arguing that the drug negotiation provisions could end up harming seniors by discouraging pharmaceutical innovation and production of new drugs.

“AARP betrayed seniors by supporting a regime of price-fixing that will result in fewer new drugs, and therefore reduce the chance of a major breakthrough in Alzheimer’s, cancer, and other leading causes of death,” Kerpen told the DCNF.

Government-imposed price ceilings would make it more difficult for manufacturers to recoup research investments since they would have to sell drugs at lower prices, experts told the DCNF.

“It’s not a negotiation, it is the government dictating to companies that they must charge a price that the government deems itself to be reasonable,” George Mason University law professor Adam Mossoff told the DCNF. “If you are negotiating a price over a house or something of that sort, the other side doesn’t get to impose massive crippling penalties on you … if you decide not to proceed with the negotiations.”

The IRA’s price negotiation system could also have consequences for the supply of existing drugs used by seniors, Mossoff said.

Mossoff argued that the reduced pharmaceutical manufacturer revenue brought on by the IRA’s price negotiation system could impact the supply of existing drugs used by seniors.

“Manufacturers, when they’re not making enough money to even recoup their own expenditures, as a matter of economic necessity make less,” he continued. “Not because they want to, but because they’re being compelled by law to do so.”

A University of Chicago policy brief estimated that the IRA would result in a 12.3% reduction in pharmaceutical research and development. Likewise, the Congressional Budget Office estimated eight fewer new drugs over the next thirty years as a result of the IRA, and University of Chicago scholars estimated 79 fewer new drugs over the next 20 years.

A report produced by the health consultancy firm Vital Transformation, which was cited by the House Budget Committee, estimated there would be up to 139 fewer new therapies over the next ten years as a result of the legislation.

“One of the reasons why senior citizens are living longer in retirement is the fact that the United States is the leader in biomedical research and breakthroughs in new therapies,” Moffitt said. “When we are going to have fewer approvals for new medicines for patients battling neurological diseases or cancer or certain types of infectious disease, that is going to affect people on Medicare.”

The Congressional Budget Office estimated eight fewer new drugs over the next thirty years as a result of the IRA, while a policy brief produced by scholars at the University of Chicago estimated 79 fewer new drugs over the next 20 years. A report produced by the health consultancy firm Vital Transformation and cited by the House Budget Committee estimated there would be up to 139 fewer new therapies over the next ten years as a result of the legislation.

A 2022 survey from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a drug manufacturer trade association, found that 78% of its members were expecting to cancel some of their drug development projects. The survey also found 95% of PhRMA members expected to develop fewer new uses for medicines following the passage of the IRA.

“One of the reasons why senior citizens are living longer in retirement is the fact that the United States is the leader in biomedical research and breakthroughs in new therapies,” the Heritage Foundation’s Bob Moffit told the DCNF. “When we are going to have fewer approvals for new medicines for patients battling neurological diseases or cancer or certain types of infectious disease, that is going to affect people on Medicare.”

The Cato Institute’s Michael Cannon argued the IRA represented an improvement over the status quo and would likely lead to lower drug prices for seniors. He pointed out that, prior to the IRA, Congress would determine what Medicare paid for drugs, arguing the new negotiation system, with its enforcement mechanisms, would likely yield lower prices for seniors.

Cannon was still critical of the IRA, however, saying that “the best thing we can do is to get the government out of the business of buying drugs.”

While drugs covered under Medicare Part D would become cheaper, Cannon said treatments not covered under the program may become more expensive as a consequence of the IRA and that research and development funding for new drugs could dry up.

UnitedHealth did not respond to the DNCF’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

ROBERT SCHMAD

Contributor.

Middle East Violence Throws Global Energy Market Into Turmoil

December 20, 2023/in DrRichSwier.com, Economy, Politics, Religion /by DrRichSwier.com

By The Daily Caller

The escalating violence in the Middle East caused a disturbance in the global energy market Monday morning after a major oil company announced it is pausing shipments through a crucial shipping lane.

British Petroleum (BP) said that it is halting oil shipments through the Red Sea because of the uptick in attacks launched by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis, a militant Islamist group that the Biden administration removed from the “Foreign Terrorist Organization” list in 2021. BP is the latest major company to pause its operations amid the escalating violence in and around the Red Sea, and the announcement prompted a spike in oil prices worldwide, according to CNN.

“In light of the deteriorating security situation for shipping in the Red Sea, BP has decided to temporarily pause all transits through the Red Sea,” a spokesperson for the company told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “We will keep this precautionary pause under ongoing review, subject to circumstances as they evolve in the region.”

This is an escalation. Saturday morning, a U.S. warship downed a wave of 14 suicide drones launched at once from Houthi-controlled Yemen. @DailyCaller https://t.co/3nAekAGEVm

— Micaela Burrow (@micaela_burrow) December 16, 2023

Along with a key Egyptian pipeline, two major straits that bookend the Red Sea handled about 12% of globally traded seaborne oil and 8% of global liquefied natural gas shipments through the first six months of this year, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The news sent oil prices up across the world on Monday, with Brent crude jumping by 2.7% to nearly $79 per barrel and American oil rising by 2.7% up to $73.44 per barrel, according to CNN. In European markets, natural gas contract futures spiked by about 8%.

Before BP decided to halt its Red Sea shipping operations, A.P. Moller-Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd— two major freight shipping firms— announced that they are temporarily preventing their ships from utilizing the southern entrance to the Red Sea, according to the WSJ.

The Houthis have significantly ramped up attacks against commercial interests and U.S. forces in the wake of Hamas’ attack against Israel on Oct. 7. Houthi forces have repeatedly launched missiles and drones at commercial vessels, and the Biden administration has done little in the way of retaliatory or preemptive action against the group.

The Biden administration opted to release 180 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, when high energy costs were causing political problems for President Joe Biden and fellow Democrats. The vast majority of those releases have not yet been offset, and the SPR, intended to serve as an emergency supply of oil for the U.S. in the event of war or an emergency situation, is at its lowest levels in decades.

Following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, energy experts told the DCNF that the administration’s SPR releases leave the U.S. in a more vulnerable geopolitical and economic position, particularly if the conflict spills over into other parts of the Middle East.

“This is exactly why we have an SPR. But now, we only have half an SPR since Biden sold off half to buy some votes,” Dan Kish, a distinguished senior fellow for the Institute for Energy Research (IER), told the DCNF regarding BP’s announcement.

The White House did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

AUTHOR

NICK POPE

Contributor.

Ladies and Gentleman: It Is Time For Caution

December 20, 2023/in Economy, Featured, ThePricklyPear.org /by ThePricklyPear.org

By Neland Nobel

Last time we wrote on the markets we continued to advocate a cautiously bullish market stance. We have felt that the technical turn that the market had taken since October (a turn upward in the moving averages, breadth thrusts, and liquidity flows) coupled with the seasonal strength one typically sees this time of year, justified a bullish position. Overall, the broad market is up 26% year to date.

While this market turn did not start from a position of undervaluation (in fact it remained historically expensive by most time-tested metrics), it did start the current leg of this rally from a position of being “oversold”, both in momentum and sentiment.

So far, this attitude, cautious optimism as it was, has been profitable. Quoting ourselves, we said we have had a good year in the last month. The gains have indeed been impressive. We thank the market for delivering such bounty.

However, we have expressed doubts that it will be sustainable. We mentioned that both momentum and sentiment were rising rapidly, in fact, too rapidly. We expressed concern by using the metaphor of a long-distance runner who starts too quickly, loses his pace, and winds up getting prematurely exhausted.

We expect this market strength will likely continue through the immediate period through the end of the year and into early January, “the Santa Claus rally”, but we have increasing concerns about how far it will continue into the new year.

As to when the market will peak and turn indicators down, we don’t know. Unfortunately, no one else knows either. The best that can be done is to be “situationally aware” and make a judgment about how much risk you are willing to take. That judgment thus must be left up to the reader and in some cases, the financial advisor the reader may be consulting with.

When you read any kind of advisory material, remember the author has no information about your personal financial situation. About all a general writer on markets can do, is describe conditions in the market. You are ultimately responsible for what you do with the information and whom you hire for advice.

And remember, if any writer really had the key to making a fortune on Wall Street, he would keep it to himself.

Besides, attempting to call market tops, is a good way to prove how fallible we humans can be. Usually, one does not find out the market has peaked until after it already has done so and you can see the actual turn downward in the indicators of price, momentum, and sentiment.

So, to use another metaphor: the current situation is like driving in an ice storm and attempting to predict when an accident will happen. You can’t know, but you can describe the conditions in which one is driving and intuit that the situation is getting hazardous. Maybe it is better to find a place to sit the storm out rather than continue to drive. Do you have to be on the road at this time or are you required to drive further, despite the weather forecast? Are you running the risk of a fender bender or the risk of something worse?

With these caveats in mind, let’s review sentiment. Remember, sentiment attempts to register both through surveys and in market action, what people are thinking. It works best at extreme readings. The underlying idea is that when opinion, bullish or bearish, well reasoned or hysterical, reaches extremes; the presumption is people have likely acted on their beliefs by committing money to their idea. In short, the market opinion is already reflected in the price structure of the market. Investors see much better times ahead, but ironically it may be already priced into the market as we write.

Right now, excitement is running high that the FED has indeed pulled off a soft landing, that recession has been avoided, inflation has been tamed, and that the FED will soon be lowering rates and opening up the money taps again. Along with this confidence that easy money is coming back, the market remains euphoric about the possibilities of AI. Many of the companies involved in this technology are among the “magnificent seven”, just seven high-tech stocks that now make up a whopping 35% of the capitalization of the S&P 500 companies.

This is a concentration of influence on the index we have never seen before.

That the market is so dominated by such a few companies has raised concern among many but the market does not seem to care and just keeps plowing forward, despite valuations that are truly at nosebleed levels. The average price-to-earnings multiple for these select market leaders is around 44 while the rest of the market is a robust 24. Rarely has the spread ever been this wide. For the sake of proportion, the average PE for the market is around 16.

There are many sentiment indicators we could talk about, but too many indicators can be confusing to follow. Because the CNN Fear and Greed gauge is available to any reader of The Prickly Pear for free (you can find it on the internet), and because it is comprised of six indicators, it is a handy tool to use. Since we mentioned it before, we mention it again.

The last time we looked it was hovering in the mid-60s. That is an elevated number to be sure, but not extreme. We said to wait for more extreme readings. Well, now they are extreme and have entered the danger zone.

Just back on October 5th, the index sat at 20, reflecting extreme fear. That was a decent time to enter the market and we said so at the time. The market bottomed shortly thereafter and the S&P has rallied 16% in just three months. However, now the reading is 80! In terms of recent history, it hit 82 on July 3rd, the stock market ran hot for about another two weeks, then stalled out and fell 11% to the October low.

So what is the bottom line here? We have now entered the extreme greed zone, and abundant enthusiasm is likely getting worked into the price structure. And, if recent history holds, the market could be facing some real difficulties in just a few weeks.

Now admittedly, there are many other indicators, but this one is pretty good and available to all readers. Make of it what you will.

In terms of momentum, we have a similar story to the one with sentiment. We are at high levels.

Like sentiment indicators, when momentum indicators have been high for weeks, the market will tend to at least take a pause. Unlike sentiment, momentum indicators are solely based on price action. Right now, they seem to be saying, “We are going too far, too fast.”

Finally, markets tend to stretch like a rubber band around an underlying moving average.

Here is a chart of the NASDAQ 100 (QQQ), which has been the real powerhouse of the market. You can see over the past ten years, that stretching around 20% above the 50-day moving average is pretty rare. It seems that when the rubber band stretches that far away from the moving average, the rubber band snaps and you get at least a contra-trend move of some significance. Statisticians call this regressing to the mean. We are now approaching another one of these conditions where a snapback would be normal. Of course, we could go up a few more percentage points, but it is unlikely to be huge from here.

We could show you more indicators, some of which contradict what we are saying. That is what makes market predictions more of an art than a science. However, the preponderance of both sentiment and momentum indicators are now flashing an amber warning light.

We will share one other interesting fact as we close. On December 19th, The Wall Street Journal reported that 58% of American households now own stocks, the highest ever recorded. While it is wonderful so many people are participating, it is likely current prices reflect their participation. It is a trite phrase, but the axiom “buy straw hats in January and snow shovels in July” comes to mind.

Thus, we have reached such extremes we would not be surprised to see the market get into trouble within the next few weeks. You can take that as a change from cautious optimism to outright concern. At this point, we don’t know if we will just see a correction from current excesses or whether we will see something more extensive like a bear market. Either way, that may mean that given your circumstances, some profits should be taken. In doing so, you may create a tax bill.

Over the years, we have found that it is not wise to let the tax tail wag the portfolio dog. Do what is best for the portfolio and pay whatever taxes are due. Market losses can easily be larger than your tax obligations.

Markets are now seriously overheated and investors are advised to preserve their hard-fought gains and not get greedy. The market readings presently are plenty greedy for all of us.

We don’t know any person or system that consistently calls tops and bottoms. If such a system were found, everyone would adopt it and it would quickly lose its utility. All we can say is buckle up, hazardous road conditions are likely just weeks ahead.

*****

Charts are courtesy of stockcharts.com and are drawn by the author.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

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