Jts5665

People will no longer be required under the public health order to wear a mask or show proof of vaccination for entry into a place of business in Denver. But the city’s mask order for schools & child care centers will remain in place. Again with the kids https://t.co/wR5JHfNvsC — Jennifer Sey (@JenniferSey) January 31, […]

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: UCLA won’t explain how it used taxpayer dollars meant for research into anti-Asian discrimination.

Nearly a year after California politicians gave out $1.4 million to study hate crimes and bias incidents against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, UCLA won’t explain what it did with its portion of the money.

The College Fix contacted the public university’s Asian American Studies Center and media team and asked how much money it received from the legislation and how the funds have been used.

Spokesperson Jessica Wolf responded and asked for a deadline on January 10 but has not provided a response and did not respond to a January 31 reminder.

Center director Karen Umemoto and research coordinator Christine Wang both have not responded to two media inquiries sent in the past month.

A news release sent out by the California university said the money would be used for studies on “hate crimes” and public policies to assist with “economic recovery efforts.”

My guess is that when they realized who was committing the “hate crimes” against Asians, they shut everything down.

Previous blog posts here have discussed the various iterations of the work done by a group of researchers led by Prof Martin Neil looking at the ONS Vaccine Surveillance reports.

The original version of this paper** showed that idiosyncrasies in the ONS data on vaccine efficacy and safety could only be explained by systemic reporting errors which, when adjusted for, showed there was no evidence that the vaccines reduce all-cause mortality. Idiosyncracies included (among others) the observation that, in each age group, there was a spike in non-Covid mortality in the unvaccinated at exactly the same time as the vaccine roll-out peaked for that age group. This suggested the possibility that people who happened to die very shortly after vaccination were being misclassified as unvaccinated.

The paper got over 300,000 reads on Researchgate. While some disputed our findings, their objections were all based on the claim that the idiosyncrasies in the ONS data could be explained by the fact that the most unhealthy people were not getting vaccinated, i.e that there was a "healthy vaccinee" effect.

So, we did further analysis and produced the revised version of the paper showing why this healthy vaccinee effect was not supportable. Moreover, even if it were, it would still mean that all of the ONS conclusions about vaccine efficacy and safety were systemically flawed and biased because they failed to adjust for this effect.  

The only other type of criticism of the paper was that it was not peer reviewed – despite its many authors (including senior clinicians who had to remain anonymous to protect their careers) and hundreds of comments and informal reviews from researchers who read the paper on ResearchGate.

Of course, as has been noted many times here, the main journals (and even the pre-print servers medrXiv and arXiv) have been systematically rejecting papers without review if they challenge the 'official' Covid narrative. However, we did submit the latest version to the BMJ two weeks ago. Today they rejected it without review or any explanation why it would not be reviewed.

 

**Latest version:   https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357778435_Official_mortality_data_for_England_suggest_systematic_miscategorisation_of_vaccine_status_and_uncertain_effectiveness_of_Covid-19_vaccination 

"Official mortality data for England suggest systematic miscategorisation of vaccine status and uncertain effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccination",  Martin Neil, Norman Fenton , Joel Smalley, Clare Craig, Josh Guetzkow, Scott McLachlan, Jonathan Engler, Dan Russell and Jessica Ros. Jan 2022. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357778435_Official_mortality_data_for_England_suggest_systematic_miscategorisation_of_vaccine_status_and_uncertain_effectiveness_of_Covid-19_vaccination

 Previous version:  http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.14176.20483

 

Early loss part of a large tech selloff in overseas markets before U.S. markets opened

Thirteen people were reportedly killed including six children and four women, according to the Associated Press.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE: Biden blocked the first Black woman from the Supreme Court. “Today, Biden calls the filibuster a ‘relic of the Jim Crow era.’ But he threatened to use that relic as a tool to keep a Black woman who actually lived under Jim Crow off the highest court in the land. The irony is that now he wants to get rid of the filibuster, and claim credit for putting the first Black woman on the court. There were many conservatives on Bush’s shortlist whose legal philosophy Biden opposed. But Biden only promised to filibuster the one Black woman. Why? Perhaps a clue lies in another confirmation fight that Biden helped wage. In 2001, Democrats blocked the nomination of Miguel Estrada to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. According to internal strategy memos obtained by the Wall Street Journal, they targeted Estrada at the request of liberal interest groups who said Estrada was ‘especially dangerous’ because ‘he is Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment.’ They did not want Republicans to put the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court. So, Biden and his fellow Democrats killed Estrada’s nomination — the first appeals court nominee in history to be successfully filibustered. It paid off when President Barack Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor as the first Hispanic justice. Democrats’ commitment to diversity is a ruse. Biden was willing to destroy the careers of an accomplished Latino lawyer and a respected Black female judge, and stop Republicans from putting either on the Supreme Court. For Democrats, it’s all about identity politics.”

 

IT DIDN’T WORK IN RUSSIA BACK WHEN. CANADA IS NOT CHINA: Ottawa Police Chief Opens Possibility of Using Canadian Military to Remove Freedom Convoy Protest Group.

Heck, it didn’t work in Poland either.

Solidarność!

 

 

WRONGTHINK IS WORSE THAN GENOCIDE: Leftist Mob Boycotts Joe Rogan Over Conversations, But Not CCP Olympics Over China’s Genocide.

Because “wrongthink” threatens leftist power, and genocide does not, and nothing’s more important to leftists than power. Certainly not moralit.

The post Soros Calls for Regime Change in China appeared first on The Bongino Report.

OH: Amazon whistleblower imprisoned, tortured in China for 2 years asks tech giant to apologize.

A Chinese whistleblower who alleges he was imprisoned and tortured for two years after he revealed substandard working conditions in factories producing Amazon products is now asking the Jeff Bezos-owned company for an apology.

Tang Mengfing reportedly spent two years in prison after exposing the working conditions inside Foxconn factories producing the company’s Alexa-enabled devices, including the Amazon Echo and Echo Dot. The factory also manufactures Kindle devices. Tang told The Guardian that he was beaten and tortured by Chinese authorities during his imprisonment.

Tang alleged that school-aged children were put to work in the Foxconn factory, and that many were forced to work beyond the allotted 36 hours of overtime in a month, with some exceeding over 100 hours – essentially functioning as unpaid workers beyond their allotted hours.

“My father always taught me that I should be a good person and, because I followed my heart and believed that justice should be served, I reported the serious violations at Hengyang Foxconn. Yet my imprisonment has caused such great harm to me and my family,” he said.

Mengfing’s story doesn’t come up on a search of the Bezos-owned Washington Post archives.

SHOCKER: Politicians Lied: Washington’s Gun Control Laws Have Made Life in Seattle, King County More Dangerous.

By James D. Agresti February 1, 2022 Allegations that “masks work” and “don’t cause harm” have been enforced by governments and corporations around the world for more than 18 months through arrests, firings, censorship, fines, and denial of access to schools, supermarkets, hospitals, streets, and other public spaces. This has made it virtually impossible for many people to live without complying with mask mandates. In recent weeks, however, more medical scholars and media outlets are coming to grips with facts about masks that Just Facts has been documenting for more than a year and painstakingly compiled in a September 2021 article sourced with more than 50 peer-reviewed science journals. Here’s a sample of people who are speaking up about the facts and their implications: Dr. Vinay Prasad—an associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco—has written an article that examines the scientific evidence for masking children and concludes that:

• “most of the masks worn by most kids for most of the pandemic have likely done nothing to change the velocity or trajectory of the virus.”
• “there are downsides to face coverings for pupils and students, including detrimental impacts on communication in the classroom.”
• “masking is now little more than an appealing delusion.”
• decisions to mask schoolchildren are “ignorant, cruel, fearful, and cowardly.”

Dr. Chad Roy, who specializes in airborne infectious diseases and is a professor of microbiology and immunology at Tulane University School of Medicine, has told the Washington Examiner that:

• “cloth and surgical masks do absolutely nothing for protection from ambient virus.”
• “all this song and dance of wearing cloth masks with some presumption that you’re being protected from ambient virus is completely and positively 100% counter to how masks and respirators work.”

The Atlantic has published an analysis of school masking policies by three medical scholars—including Dr. Margery Smelkinson, a specialist in infectious diseases at the National Institutes of Health—in which they wrote:

• • • “We reviewed a variety of studies—some conducted by the CDC itself, some cited by the CDC as evidence of masking effectiveness in a school setting, and others touted by media to the same end—to try to find evidence that would justify the CDC’s no-end-in-sight mask guidance for the very-low-risk pediatric population, particularly post-vaccination. We came up empty-handed.”
    • The “overall takeaway from these studies—that schools with mask mandates have lower Covid-19 transmission rates than schools without mask mandates—is not justified by the data that have been gathered.”
    • “As with our existing school-mask policies, no real-world data indicate that these [N95] masks decrease transmission in school settings—data that matter greatly, as these masks require a very tight fit to function effectively, and that may not be possible for many kids.”
    • “Over the past 21 months, slowly and with much resistance, the layers of mythology around Covid-19 mitigation in schools have been peeled away, each time without producing the much-ballyhooed increases in Covid-19. Schools did not become hot spots when they reopened, nor when they reduced physical distancing, nor when they eliminated deep-cleaning protocols. These layers were peeled away because the evidence supporting them was weak, and they all had substantial downsides for children’s education and health.”
    • “Covid-19 hospitalizations have “remained extremely low among children, on par with pediatric flu hospitalizations during a typical season.”
    • “Imposing on millions of children an intervention that provides little discernible benefit, on the grounds that we have not yet gathered solid evidence of its negative effects, violates the most basic tenet of medicine: First, do no harm.”

In an article published on Christmas Eve, CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Leana Wen confessed that “cloth masks are little more than facial decorations” and “this is what scientists and public health officials have been saying for months, many months, in fact.” Yet, she fails to tell the entire truth and instructs people to wear N95 masks without conveying their harms or the fact that gold standard studies have only found inconsistent benefits from N95s in healthcare settings, much less community settings. Fox News has published an article about how YouTube suspended Rand Paul for questioning the effectiveness of cloth masks and that the CDC is edging closer to Paul’s view. The article then links to Just Facts’ research on masks to document the fact that “several studies have shown” cloth masks “are not effective in stopping the spread of viruses like the coronavirus.” Still Leading People Astray Some of the most powerful proponents of masking continue to spread destructive fictions and withhold genuine facts from people. For a prime example, Google-owned YouTube recently censored a video from Just Facts about the dangers of N95 masks. Even though every fact in the video is documented with data from peer-reviewed science journals, OSHA and the CDC—YouTube purged it with callous disregard for the health of people, especially children. Likewise, the New York Times recently reported that YouTube suspended conservative talk show host Dan Bongino “after he posted a video saying cloth and surgical masks were useless in stopping the spread of Covid—a false claim that violated the company’s misinformation policy.” In reality, those “misinformation” policies and other pronouncements of tech giants, government officials, media outlets, and fact checkers often flout basic principles of academic integrity, spread deadly falsehoods, and suppress facts that could help people. The cracks that are opening in the dogma that “masks work” are just the tip of that iceberg.

“MODERATE JOE” WAS ALWAYS A LIE: Coalition of States Call on Biden to Rescind Federal Reserve Nominee Over ‘Radical’ Views. “We, the undersigned, oppose Ms. Raskin’s radical banking and economic views and are deeply concerned that she would use the supervisory authority as Vice-Chair for Supervision at the Federal Reserve Bank to disrupt the private banking sector, reliable energy supplies, and the U.S. economy.”

  Klaus Schwab at Harvard Kennedy School of Government in 2017 — “What we are very proud of, is that we penetrate the global cabinets of countries with our WEF Young Global Leaders like Justin Trudeau.”        

GAMING THE SYSTEM: Swiss Man Legally Declares Himself A Woman To Retire With Pension 1 Year Early.

ZUCKERBERG IS TRASH:

Meta decided on Monday, per an internal memo obtained by the @FreeBeacon, that it would continue allowing potential migrants to solicit the services of smugglers and human traffickers on its platforms https://t.co/sO2JAbVqpt

— Joe Gabriel Simonson (@SaysSimonson) February 2, 2022

A RESPONSE TO THE EMBARRASSING IDIOCY AT GEORGETOWN LAW: GMU Scalia Law School Faculty Statement of Commitment to Open Dialogue and Debate: It’s becoming increasingly clear that other law schools are dearly in need of a similar commitment.

Recently, it has become far too common for colleges and universities to impose sanctions on faculty members whose research or public statements do not conform to the reigning climate of approved opinion. As pressures for conformity increase throughout our society, it is even becoming dangerous to show insufficient enthusiasm for certain causes and beliefs.

This faculty has always rejected the imposition of any political or ideological orthodoxy by us or on us. We recognize no hierarchy of authority in the world of ideas. Professors and students each have exactly the same right to express their opinions, to challenge views with which they disagree, and to participate as they see fit in the public life of the nation. They also have the same moral obligation to foster an atmosphere of civility and tolerance. The faculty strongly opposes efforts—whether from within our community or from outside—to pressure us or the school’s administration to engage in the repression of unpopular opinions, whether we as individuals agree or disagree with those opinions.

In the classroom, of course, there is necessarily an inequality between the instructor and the students. We think it is self-evident that professors should not use their authority in the service of political or ideological indoctrination. We also think it is self-evident that professors should not belittle or intimidate students who express views with which the instructor disagrees, or encourage students to belittle or intimidate their classmates.

Conversely, students should recognize that professors exercise a special authority in the classroom because they have special responsibilities and obligations. The faculty as a whole establishes the curriculum. Individual professors decide what will be studied in their courses, what topics will be discussed in class, and what questions will be dealt with in the limited time that is available. Students are welcome to express their own opinions about these matters, but the professors are responsible for the decisions, and they have an obligation to exercise their own judgment in making those decisions.

Or, like Georgetown Dean Bill Treanor, you can reimburse the Doordash bills for the students who occupy your office, because hypogonadism.

WAS IT A COVER-UP OR JUST A NARRATIVE IN SYNCH? JustTheNews.com has an exclusive this morning that shows that the State Department knew all along that Hunter Biden was up to his neck in corrupt practices in Ukraine. John Solomon reports that:

[T]he email’s stark message directly conflicts with the narrative the mainstream media, State Department witnesses and Democratic congressmen gave the public two years ago, when they insisted Hunter Biden’s lucrative job with the allegedly corrupt Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings — while creating the appearance of a conflict of interest — had no impact on U.S. efforts to fight corruption in that country.

“The real issue to my mind was that someone in Washington needed to engage VP Biden quietly and say that his son Hunter’s presence on the Burisma board undercut the anti-corruption message the VP and we were advancing in Ukraine,” Kent wrote multiple high-ranking officials in the State Department in Washington.

Read the part where the State Dep’t and White House ran interference to keep Biden from being personally confronted with this information. It’s what Nixon and others called “plausible deniability.”

In either event, the public is owed some explanations, and that’s what FOIA is for.

“Due to high volume, the system is temporarily unavailable,” read a note at the Department of Public Instruction’s website.

“There’s a certain irony that students are now being issued trigger warnings before reading Nineteen Eighty-Four”

The post University of Northampton in England Puts Trigger Warning on Orwell’s 1984 first appeared on Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion.

"Outsiders were frustrated and suspicious the administration was having plenty of meetings but was stuck in bureaucratic inertia and lacked urgency until the last minute."

The post Report: Documents Show Biden Admin was Completely Unprepared for Afghanistan Withdrawal first appeared on Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion.

BRENDAN O’NEILL: Whoopi Goldberg’s Holocaust revisionism.

But perhaps the most revealing and unsettling thing said by Goldberg was this: ‘But these [were] two white groups of people.’ She means the Nazis and the Jews. Both white folk. So how can it have been about race? Isn’t race all about white privilege and black victimhood? Isn’t it all about the ‘white supremacy’ and ‘white fragility’ that contemporary white Americans and Europeans display towards black people in their every interaction? This captures how impoverished and shrivelled the woke set’s understanding of racism is. They seem to view everything, even history, even the Holocaust, from their own self-flattering, highly Americanised, Silicon Valley-approved, 2020s understanding of racism as consisting of white arrogance and black pain and unwitting slights and ‘microaggressions’ committed by the racially unaware masses. Goldberg was projecting this alarmingly naive and hyper-nouveau view of racism back into history, so that even the Holocaust starts to look confusing because wasn’t it white folks on both sides?

Read the whole thing. Last week, the Blaze reported: Anti-Defamation League sparks backlash after changing definition of ‘racism’ on website: ‘Racial hierarchy that privileges white people’

According to the ADL, racism is the “oppression of people of color” through systems that privilege white people.

“The marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people,” the ADL’s definition of “racism” reads.

The website states the page was last updated in July 2020. Prior to the update, the ADL’s definition of “racism” did not narrowly pit one racial group against another, but spoke broadly about beliefs of superiority and inferiority.

“Racism is the belief that a particular race is superior or inferior to another, that a person’s social and moral traits are predetermined by his or her inborn biological characteristics. Racial separatism is the belief, most of the time based on racism, that different races should remain segregated and apart from one another,” the definition previously read.

* * * * * * * * *

In addition to being accused of promoting CRT, Jews observed how problematic the definition change is considering that the Holocaust, for example, was entirely about race, but does not fit the ADL’s updated definition of racism.

“THIS is entirely unacceptable,” the Jewish Policy Center said.

“The Anti-Definition League,” mocked Noam Blum, who works for Tablet Magazine, a Jewish publication.

“Amazing to see the actual moment when an institution is captured,” Andrew Sullivan tweeted in response to the ADL’s new definition of racism. And as Bari Weiss added yesterday, “To understand the implications of the@ADL‘s redefinition of racism, just watch today’s episode of The View.”

But it’s not an entirely new development:

Exit quote: “Whoopi described the Holocaust as ‘white people doing it to white people. So, this is y’all go fight amongst yourselves,’ Ace notes. “Whoopi’s racial calculus is odious but it’s all but accepted as Scientific Fact by the Media-Government Complex: There is no such thing as racism against white people, and as conservative Jews realized long ago, and as progressive Jews are only learning now to their alarm, ‘white people’ is defined as including them for these purposes.”

UPDATE: ABC Suspends Whoopi Goldberg For Two Weeks Over Holocaust Remarks.

More: “Whoopi definitely wasn’t ‘suspended.’ She sat down with producers and they agreed that Rubber Rooming her for a couple of weeks will take the heat off and also give the impression that they took it seriously and ‘did something.’ This isn’t cancel culture. You’re being played,” Noam Blum of the Tablet tweets.

Meanwhile, as our sister site Twitchy notes, “‘Liberal privilege is real:’ People are asking why Disney fired Gina Carano but only suspended Whoopi Goldberg.”

Related: Eve Barlow breaks down the worldview that is ‘erasing’ the Jewish history with Kennedy on Fox Business (video):

(Updated and bumped.)

HAHA:

Towing companies reportedly support the truckers and will not help the Mayor of Ottawa pic.twitter.com/EVwCHpefHs

— The Juggernaut (@TheJuggernaut88) February 1, 2022

I love the Covid excuse.

We have repeatedly discussed the virtual news blackout on the influence peddling by the Biden family, particularly Hunter Biden. Despite overwhelming evidence of millions given by foreign companies and officials, the media has preferred to cover literal scoops over a story of breathtaking levels of self-dealing and corruption by the Bidens. Now, however, the New York Times has sued to force the Biden Administration to turn over information on Hunter Biden’s Romanian dealings. The lawsuit comes after another report that, in 2019, the FBI subpoenaed JP Morgan for records on Hunter Biden’s Chinese dealings.

In a new lawsuit on Monday, the Times sued the State Department to obtain emails from Romanian embassy officials sent between 2015 and 2019 mentioning a number of international business figures, including the president’s son and his former business associate Tony Bobulinski.

While the request was sent in December 2021, the Biden Administration told the Times that the soonest that it could possibly turn over the information is April 15, 2023. That is after the mid-term elections.

This story could be a bit awkward for the White House staff. When the New York Times’ Ken Vogel wrote about Hunter Biden’s dealings as a potential “significant liability,” Biden officials viciously attacked him while others suggested that he was a pawn of Russian or Trump disinformation. Of course, the allegations proved to be true and the infamous laptop is now considered authentic.

One of the most outspoken aides denying the entire story was Kate Bedingfield, who is now the director of White House Communications. She denounced the story as an “egregious act of journalistic malpractice.”

Andrew Bates, who is now deputy director, tweeted  “SCOOP from Philadelphia: KEN VOGEL (@kenvogel ) is a COWARD.”

They will now handle questions on this story as White House officials. That includes why President Biden repeatedly said that no one had accused Hunter or his family of “doing anything wrong” when he was presumably aware of the FBI subpoena and the seizure of the laptop. Given these investigations, there is also the question of why a special counsel has not been appointed given President Biden’s past comments that have been contradicted by witnesses (as well as references to his own financial accounts in these emails).

The media and FBI investigations now cover transactions ranging from China, Ukraine, Russia, Romania, and other countries. Millions flowed to the Biden family while Joe Biden was Vice President and later as he prepared for a presidential run. Biden is still running out for ice cream and the media is dutifully covering it. The question however remains whether this will remain just desserts . . .  or whether Hunter and others will receive their just deserts for influencing peddling.

With inflation higher than it has been at any time in the last thirty-five years, many are wondering what can be done to bring it back down. On Sunday, the Washington Post ran twelve short essays from policy experts suggesting what the White House should do to combat inflation.

Some of the experts propose policies primarily intended to reduce nominal spending. Brian Riedl recommends paring back spending in the American Rescue Plan. Arnab Datta, Skanda Amarnath and Alex Williams call for “targeted reductions on government spending to health-care providers.” William Spriggs advocates raising taxes on “wealthy Americans who are currently responsible for very high demand.” Michael Strain says the White House should staff the Federal Reserve with inflation fighters, while Adam Posen makes the case for forward guidance at the Fed.

Others propose policies primarily aimed at increasing production. Claudia Sahm says we must control the pandemic to reduce “labor shortages and supply chain disruptions” and bring down inflation. Lauren Melodia recommends investing in childcare, which has been decimated by the pandemic, so that parents might “get and keep a job.” Matt Darling calls for improving America’s supply chains, while Robert Hockett wants massive government investment aimed at “restoring U.S. productive prowess.” Lindsay Owens supports using anti-trust to promote competition and bolster thinned-out supply chains.

Darrick Hamilton and Demond Drummer claim inflation fears are overblown. Inflation is high, they say, but “it is nowhere near unprecedented.” And, if higher prices result from dispersing much-needed assistance during a pandemic or making “public investments to our environment and our economic security,” so be it.

The merits of these eleven suggestions are certainly up for debate. Some are more widely supported by economists than others. Indeed, some look like thinly-veiled attempts to promote one’s preferred policy in the context of inflation, even though it is preferred for some other reason. But all at least acknowledge the fundamental issues at play. Supply constraints and a surge of nominal spending have pushed prices up.

The last essay in the Washington Post series has a different flavor altogether. Todd Tucker, who is director of governance studies at the Roosevelt Institute, suggests the White House should consider using price controls. “To ensure that the wealthy do not bid up prices for essential items,” Tucker says, “the time is now to begin destigmatizing greater democratic control over price levels.”

Price controls?! PRICE CONTROLS?! You’ve got to be kidding me.

Price controls are a terrible tool for dealing with inflation. They make no effort to reduce nominal spending. And they exacerbate supply constraints. To the extent that they reduce inflation, they do so by swapping painful price increases for even more painful quantity reductions. It is a cure far worse than the disease.

Consumers do not like it when essential goods and services become more expensive. But, when a good or service becomes more scarce, the resulting price increase sends a valuable signal. A higher price tells consumers to economize on use, freeing up the available supply for where it is needed most. It tells producers that more of the good or service is wanted than is available, encouraging them to increase supply when possible. Without the price increase, people have an incentive to hoard the scarce resource, which results in shortages.

Economists almost universally agree that price controls are bad. The Initiative on Global Markets (IGM) recently polled economists on price controls. Respondents were asked the extent to which they agree with the statement that “Price controls as deployed in the 1970s could successfully reduce US inflation over the next 12 months.” Only 23 percent agreed with the statement, while 12 percent said they were uncertain.

More telling are the comments the economists agreeing with the statement made in order to clarify their response. “Effective price controls, by definition, would reduce price increases,” Daron Acemoglu wrote, “but they would most probably create other huge distortions.”

David Autor expressed a similar view: “Price controls can of course control prices — but they’re a terrible idea!”

“They could reduce inflation,” Oliver Hart commented, “but the consequence (sic) would be shortages and rationing.”

Indeed, of all the respondents who agreed with the statement, all but one felt the need to clarify his or her position.

Price controls are a bad idea. But support for them appears to be growing. In December, UMass Amherst economist Isabella Weber made a case for price controls. And, following the publication of Tucker’s essay, his wife tweeted out praise. 

Spousal support is usually unremarkable. But Tucker’s wife is Heather Boushey, a member of President Biden’s Council of Economic Advisors (CEA).

Current CEA members would do well to follow the advice of Austan Goolsbee, who served as CEA Chair under President Obama. In the IGM poll, Goolsbee strongly disagreed with the statement regarding effective price controls. “Just stop. Seriously,” he wrote.

REMINDER:

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as “bad luck.”

Indeed it is.

HORRIFIC:  Today’s blacklisted American killed himself because of the slander campaign against him at NC State.

FLASHBACK: Trump and the Crisis of the Meritocracy.

Donald Trump has been president for a month now, and it’s been months more since he was elected. But the division over him, and his presidency, hasn’t settled down. If anything, it’s gotten worse. But why?

I don’t think it’s Trump’s policies, which seem to be morepopular than he is. And though many of his pronouncements are portrayed as extreme, his statements on, say, immigration seem eerily like what former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton were saying not all that long ago. So why all the anger over Trump?

As I’ve pondered this, I’ve gone back to Tyler Cowen’s statement: “Occasionally the real force behind a political ideology is the subconsciously held desire that a certain group of people should not be allowed to rise in relative status.”

I think that a lot of the elite hatred for Trump, and for his supporters, stems from just such a sentiment. For decades now, the educated meritocrats who ran America — the “Best and the Brightest,” in David Halberstam’s not-actually-complimentary term — have enjoyed tremendous status, regardless of election results.. . . .

In the United States, the result has been Trump. In Britain, the result was Brexit. In both cases, the allegedly elite — who are supposed to be cool, considered, and above the vulgar passions of the masses — went more or less crazy. From conspiracy theories (it was the Russians!) to bizarre escape fantasies (A Brexit vote redo! A military coup to oust Trump!) the cognitive elite suddenly didn’t seem especially elite, or for that matter particularly cognitive.

In fact, while America was losing wars abroad and jobs at home, elites seemed focused on things that were, well, faintly ridiculous. As Richard Fernandez tweeted: “The elites lost their mojo by becoming absurd. It happened on the road between cultural appropriation and transgender bathrooms.” It was fatal: “People believe from instinct. The Roman gods became ridiculous when the Roman emperors did. PC is the equivalent of Caligula’s horse.”

The rage of our privileged class is thus about loss of status. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t dangerous. Nations have blown up over less.

Still true, only worse and crazier.

Plus: “Strong nations can fail when their leadership class, or a part of it, succumbs to pettiness, and places its narrow factional interests above those of the nation. Americans have often assumed that we are immune to such things. Perhaps earlier Americas, with a more disciplined, more patriotic ruling class, were. But today’s America is not. Beware.”

Also: “Part of the Great Revealing is the revealing of many, many people who are far more motivated by class than anything else, certainly moreso than political philosophy.”

COLORADO: Democrats set to kill GOP effort to make Colorado’s hospital provider charge transparent. “While Colorado Democrats and Governor Jared Polis continue to tout new state and federal regulations that went into effect Jan. 1 requiring all emergency medical costs to be disclosed before a patient is treated, an opaque charge collected on hospital stays, passed under previous Democrat legislation isn’t getting the same reception.”

CHINA IS ASSHOLE: Mandatory Olympics iOS and Android apps are spying on athletes for China.

A researcher has found that the mandatory Beijing 2022 Olympics app for iOS and Android is collecting and sending audio to Chinese servers.

On Thursday, researcher Jonathan Scott had posted his findings after reverse-engineering the mandatory MY2022 Olympics app. As it turns out, the app is capable of spying on Olympians and attendees and sending the audio to Chinese servers to be analyzed.

MY2022 is a non-optional app that must be used by both athletes and attendees of the 2022 Winter Olympics. The app is designed to help reduce the spread of COVID-19 and act as a central hub for information on events, weather, travel, and points of interest.

What are we doing, sending our young athletes to a country like mainland Communist China?