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EconomicPolicyJournal.com: Lefty Confusion About Price “Gouging”; Face Masks and Purell

Posted by M. C. on March 8, 2020

One example of why central (government) planning does not work.

The Soviet Union, Venezuela and North Korea are others.

https://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2020/03/lefty-confusion-about-price-gouging.html

Joe Weisenthal is an interesting writer and thinker. He is co-host of the Odd Lots podcast and ‘What’d You Miss?’ on Bloomberg TV and editor at Bloomberg.

I have been following him for years at @TheStalwart.

I am not sure he would identify as a Lefty but he sent out a snarky tweet yesterday that sure fits into the Lefty model of not thinking deeply about economic issues.

Here is the tweet I am referring to:

Joe is missing a lot here.

First off, without price signals, manufacturers don’t know how intense the demand for N95 masks and Purell are.

Would people be willing to pay an extra $10 per item or $25?

This is important to know.

The higher the price, the more resources a manufacturer would be willing to devote to providing more supply.

To illustrate my point, let us, just for argument’s sake, say that people were willing to pay $1,000 for an N95 mask. Well that is a lot more than only being willing to pay $5.00 extra. Thus it tells the manufacturer that if a key component of the mask is in another part of the country or the world that it might make sense to have the part flown over by plane rather via usual ocean shipping modes.

In other words, the size of the price “gouging” signals to a manufacturer how aggressive he should get in making more masks.

But that is not all.

Mask price “gouging” also signals to consumers how in demand masks are. If someone wants to buy a mask to travel by subway to go to a movie and the mask is $200, the consumer might think twice and not buy the mask, Thus leaving it for someone else. At the same time, a heart surgeon may want to buy a mask to travel the same subway to perform heart surgeries. He might be very willing to pay $200 for a mask.

Thus price signals provide much more complex signals then what Joe implied in his tweet that manufacturers only get the idea there is a lot of demand for masks. A lot of complex signaling goes on at different price levels to signal manufacturers, retailers and consumers.

–RW

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Disease Burden of Influenza | CDC

Posted by M. C. on March 7, 2020

Remember these numbers.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html

Figure 1: Estimated Range of Annual Burden of Flu in the U.S. since 2010

influenza burden chart hi-res graphic

The burden of influenza disease in the United States can vary widely and is determined by a number of factors including the characteristics of circulating viruses, the timing of the season, how well the vaccine is working to protect against illness, and how many people got vaccinated. While the impact of flu varies, it places a substantial burden on the health of people in the United States each year.

CDC estimates that influenza has resulted in between 9 million – 45 million illnesses, between 140,000 – 810,000 hospitalizations and between 12,000 – 61,000 deaths annually since 2010.

Table 1: Estimated Influenza Disease Burden, by Season — United States, 2010-11 through 2018-19 Influenza Seasons
Symptomatic Illnesses Medical Visits Hospitalizations Deaths
Season Estimate 95% U I Estimate 95% U I Estimate 95% U I Estimate 95% U I
2010-2011 21,000,000 (20,000,000 – 25,000,000) 10,000,000 (9,300,000 – 12,000,000) 290,000 (270,000 – 350,000) 37,000 (32,000 – 51,000)
2011-2012 9,300,000 (8,700,000 – 12,000,000) 4,300,000 (4,000,000 – 5,600,000) 140,000 (130,000 – 190,000) 12,000 (11,000 – 23,000)
2012-2013 34,000,000 (32,000,000 – 38,000,000) 16,000,000 (15,000,000 – 18,000,000) 570,000 (530,000 – 680,000) 43,000 (37,000 – 57,000)
2013-2014 30,000,000 (28,000,000 – 33,000,000) 13,000,000 (12,000,000 – 15,000,000) 350,000 (320,000 – 390,000) 38,000 (33,000 – 50,000)
2014-2015 30,000,000 (29,000,000 – 33,000,000) 14,000,000 (13,000,000 – 16,000,000) 590,000 (540,000 – 680,000) 51,000 (44,000 – 64,000)
2015-2016 24,000,000 (20,000,000 – 33,000,000) 11,000,000 (9,000,000 – 15,000,000) 280,000 (220,000 – 480,000) 23,000 (17,000 – 35,000)
2016-2017 29,000,000 (25,000,000 – 45,000,000) 14,000,000 (11,000,000 – 23,000,000) 500,000 (380,000 – 860,000) 38,000 (29,000 – 61,000)
Preliminary estimates* Estimate 95% UI Estimate 95% UI Estimate 95% UI Estimate 95% UI
2017-2018* 45,000,000 (39,000,000 – 58,000,000) 21,000,000 (18,000,000 – 27,000,000) 810,000 (620,000 – 1,400,000) 61,000 (46,000 – 95,000)
2018-2019* 35,520,883 (31,323,881 – 44,995,691) 16,520,350 (14,322,767 – 21,203,231) 490,561 (387,283 – 766,472) 34,157 (26,339 – 52,664)

* Estimates from the 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 seasons are preliminary and may change as data are finalized.

Figure 2: Estimated U.S. Influenza Burden, By Season

Influenza Chart Infographic Influenza Burden Chart

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Hemingway: If Bloomberg Couldn’t Buy 2020, How Did Russia Buy 2016?

Posted by M. C. on March 7, 2020

Initially I thought there are a few less sheeple than I first imagined. But then I realized they voted for the guy proud of his attractive leg hair.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/05/hemingway-if-bloomberg-couldnt-buy-2020-how-could-russia-buy-2016/

By

Senior Editor Mollie Hemingway joined Fox News’ “Special Report” to discuss New York billionaire Mike Bloomberg’s historic level of campaign spending, and what it reveals about the power of media and establishment consensus.

Hemingway pointed out how Bloomberg’s failed campaign, despite unlimited resources, pokes holes in the popular narrative that Russia helped Donald Trump “steal” the 2016 election.

“We had years where people were saying a couple hundred thousand dollars in barely literate Facebook ads from Russians caused Donald Trump to win. Here you had a guy spend nearly $1 billion and he went nowhere. It’s a humiliating defeat for Michael Bloomberg,” she said.

Host Bret Baier drilled the point home: “So Russians influenced the election with $200,000, or $300,000 in Facebook ads? And Mike Bloomberg couldn’t get more than 50 delegates with $600 million dollars?”

“And this hurts Bernie Sanders’s message, too, because he likes to say the billionaires control everything,” Hemingway said. “Clearly Bloomberg having all this money didn’t do as much for him as Biden having the media and the establishment behind him. I would pick media and establishment over millions all day.”

 

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Watch “Talking About Stoicism Part 61 Acts of Kindness Out of Kindness” on YouTube

Posted by M. C. on March 7, 2020

Stoic Acts Of Kindness

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Why Deflation Can Be a Good Thing | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on March 7, 2020

The supply of money determines the price level in the long run. Whether prices will rise or fall depends on the relative variation of the money in circulation…

What sense does it make to expand the money supply and then try to control it by raising the interest rate? The result of such a policy is market turmoil and confusion.

Yet if central banks had left the system alone, such a deflation would be very gradual and not only be not harmful but beneficial for the economy.

https://mises.org/wire/why-deflation-can-be-good-thing?utm_source=Mises+Institute+Subscriptions&utm_campaign=ed8fcb5bf8-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_9_21_2018_9_59_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8b52b2e1c0-ed8fcb5bf8-228343965

[André de Godoy, a Brazilian journalist from the Mackenzie University of São Paulo, interviews economics professor and Mises scholar Antony Mueller about the causes and consequences of credit expansion and the relations between credit, money, and price inflation.]

André de Godoy: Please explain the relationship between the money supply, the price level, and economic activity.

Antony Mueller: The supply of money determines the price level in the long run. Whether prices will rise or fall depends on the relative variation of the money in circulation compared to the relative variation of the supply of goods. However, one must take into account that the process from the creation of money by the central bank, the so-called monetary base, and the impact on the economy in terms of demand is long and contains a series of variables. These transmitters of the monetary impulse can work in tandem and strengthen the original impulse or, say, may counteract each other. Let me give you an example: over the past fifteen years, the main central banks have practiced the policy of “quantitative easing,” which has expanded their balance sheet by a factor of over five. In the United States, the monetary base rose from $830 billion in January 2008 to over $4 trillion in September 2014 and stands as of now, in January 2020, at $3.4 trillion. Yet this drastic increase has not led to a price inflation and has stimulated economic activity only moderately. The reason for this is that the commercial banking sector did only transform a part of this base money into money in circulation and that the economic agents reduced the transaction velocity. For the monetary aggregate M1, the velocity halved from 10.6 in early 2008 to 5.5 in the fourth quarter of 2019.

Godoy: Authors like Ludwig von Mises and Milton Friedman hold that inflation is a monetary phenomenon. However, I have heard that it is possible to expand the amount of money in circulation without causing negative effects for the economy because inflationary effects could be controlled by the adjustment of the interest rate. Is this true or just a remedy?

Mueller: This is a very confused view. What sense does it make to expand the money supply and then try to control it by raising the interest rate? The result of such a policy is market turmoil and confusion. It is interventionism of the worst kind. Why should the money supply increase anyway? If the supply remains fixed, and productivity rises, prices will fall. That is beneficial deflation. Why should one complain when the goods become cheaper for the consumers? The point is whether price deflation happens slowly according to productivity increases in the economy or abruptly as a hefty liquidity contraction due to a financial market crisis.

Godoy: Why do central banks try to manipulate the money supply?

Mueller: Central bankers have a deep-seated fear of deflation. They presume that a price deflation will lead to an economic contraction. Yet if central banks had left the system alone, such a deflation would be very gradual and not only be not harmful but beneficial for the economy. If the central banks intervene and expand the money supply and implement, as it is the case today, a “zero interest rate policy“ (ZIRP), or even a “negative interest rate policy” (NIRP), a tension builds up between the natural tendency of the prices to fall because of productivity increases and the inflationary money supply. A deep discrepancy builds up between the human time preference and the monetary rate of interest which would converge in a free market without central bank interventions.

Godoy: Would a stable money supply not be too rigid for the economy?

Mueller: One must remember that a falling or rising price level is the result of the difference between the rate of variation of the supply of goods and the rate of variation of the money stock and the velocity of economic transactions. The monetary system has a natural elasticity. Even when the money supply is linked to a fixed supply of central bank money, expansions and contractions of nominal spending will take place. Money has loose joints, but when the monetary base is stable, the system has a definite anchor. There is elasticity of money under a gold standard even when the stock of gold is constant. Different from what we observe today, no long-term and extreme divergences were possible. We must change our present monetary system which is highly dysfunctional.

Godoy: Some prominent Brazilian economists mention the post-Keynesian theory as a counterpoint to the classical quantity theory of money and claim that the so-called modern monetary theory would provide a better model for the present.

Mueller: As I explained above, even when the money supply stays fixed the use of money is volatile, and thus even a gold standard has monetary elasticity. It is wrong to claim that only fiduciary money would provide financial flexibility. The point, rather, is that with an anchored monetary system, the degree of deviation is limited, while under the current fiat money regime there is no constraint. That is the problem with the modern monetary theory. Its adherents praise an anchorless system, because it would allow unlimited funding of government expenditure. Even these theorists, however, recognize the problem of price inflation when the money supply is excessive. In this case, they believe, the government could control price inflation through taxation and then siphon off the excess money. Yet while the adherents of this “new” monetary theory praise anchorless money as a boon because they live under the illusion that the economy is in permanent need of macroeconomic management, the truth is that it is not the free market that produces booms and busts but the intervention of the governments and their central bankers.

Godoy: Could you cite a few examples of how inflation comes about in our day because of the monetary policies that governments have recently pursued?

Mueller: Venezuela is currently a sad example along with the very tragic case of Zimbabwe. Let’s concentrate on Brazil’s neighbor country. Massive government spending, foolish interventionism, and the expansion of the money supply are behind the gigantic price inflation in Venezuela. These policies form part of the grander plan of implementing a “Socialism of the Twenty-First Century.” But what they got was not prosperity and equality but even sharper social divisions, a brutal hyperinflation, and mass misery. Venezuela is the empirical verification of what we have discussed: the process begins with the false promises of social justice and comprehensive welfare. Private property is no longer secure, government intervention is on the rise, and business investment falls. Yet instead of the deteriorating economy inducing the political leadership to change course, government expenditures, based on credit expansion, increase even more and with them rises the money supply. While more regulation and interventionism suffocate the supply side, inflationary demand is on the rise. The country enters a deadly spiral of economic, political, and social crises that reinforce each other. At the very beginning of this process, some illusionary benefits appear, yet after a short while the poorest people are those who suffer most until it also brings down the whole rest of the society in a cataclysmic collapse.

Godoy: From what I’ve gathered, monetary inflation itself is not the problem that causes a raise in the price levels. The problems are people’s expectations and the speed with which transactions happen, is that correct?

Mueller: Well, let us put it this way: the reason for obesity is not the food but how much one eats. The expansion of the money supply is the food. Whether the economic actors take the offer is another question. In this decision expectations play a major role. Here, however, we must consider that expectations do not come from nowhere. They have a point of reference in the economic reality and in the public discourse, including the media. The laissez-faire approach to money does not mean the absence of control. It is rather the present monetary system, with constant central bank intervention and the craving of governments for deficit spending, that is out of control. In contrast to a fiat money system, a gold standard or a similar system with a strong anchor would combine short-term flexibility with long-term stability.

Godoy: The mechanism that uses interest rates to control inflation is actually a way to try and contain price raises in a fiat money system, right?

Mueller: For the policymakers, interest rates are an instrument of intervention while for Austrian economics they should reflect time preference and as such would be the natural rate. Policymakers can only manipulate the monetary rate of interest. What matters is the money supply and the expectations. A higher interest rate makes borrowing more expensive and thus may stop the expansion of the circulation of money in the economy. Furthermore, higher interest rates may change expectations about future price inflation and thus reduce the velocity of circulation. The main point, however, about raising the interest rate is that the central bank has to reduce the monetary base in order to obtain higher interest rates. Central banks cannot just raise the interest rate and leave the monetary base as it was. When central banks target a certain level as their policy rate of interest, they must manage the monetary base accordingly.

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Michael Bloomberg’s Failed Ad Blitz Reminds Us Advertisers Don’t Force People to Do Anything | Mises Institute

Posted by M. C. on March 7, 2020

Voting errors are unforced!

https://mises.org/power-market/michael-bloombergs-failed-ad-blitz-reminds-us-advertisers-dont-force-people-do-anything?utm_source=Mises+Institute+Subscriptions&utm_campaign=ed8fcb5bf8-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_9_21_2018_9_59_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8b52b2e1c0-ed8fcb5bf8-228343965

Ryan McMaken

Michael Bloomberg dropped out of the Democratic Party’s primary this week, but not before he spent more than $500 on political advertisements. According to Bloomberg (the news service, not the man),

Through Friday [Feb 21], he’s spent $505.8 million on broadcast, cable, radio and digital ads, according to Advertising Analytics. That’s an average of $5.5 million a day since he officially became a candidate.

It’s also $190 million more than all of his active Democratic rivals combined, including billionaire hedge-fund founder Tom Steyer, have spent on political ads.

This all netted Michael Bloomberg a whopping twenty-seven delegates. That’s more than $18 million per delegate. This means Bloomberg didn’t even succeed in becoming a spoiler or a kingmaker at the Democratic convention this summer.

In short, the failed Bloomberg ad blitz serves as a helpful reminder that advertising doesn’t actually make people do anything. Ads on YouTube and TV—even when they are released in a veritable torrent as Bloomberg’s ads were—are not enough in themselves to convince people to vote for someone.

We saw a similar issue during the 2016 election, when Hillary Clinton outspent Trump 2 to 1. Indeed, among so-called outside groups (such as super PACs), “Pro-Clinton ads outnumbered pro-Trump ads 3 to 1—a mind-numbing 383,512 ads for Clinton compared to 125,617 supporting Trump.”

This isn’t to say that having $500 million lying around for advertising makes no difference. It may be that if Elizabeth Warren had had that sort of advertising budget, she might have been able to compete better with Bernie.

But the fact remains that if an advertisement asks a person to take some sort of action—whether it’s buying Acme zit cream or voting for Michael Bloomberg, that action has to be something that the person targeted by the ad is open to doing. That is, the person being asked to buy or vote must have been already “conditioned”/”brainwashed”/”socialized”/”educated” in such a way that the advertisement’s request for action seems like a good thing.

[RELATED: “Advertisers Aren’t as Powerful as We Think,” by Ryan McMaken]

Often, ads simply stand no chance of succeeding because they’re not addressing what the target audience is inclined to desire.

Ludwig von Mises realized this long ago and noted,

It is a widespread fallacy that skillful advertising can talk the consumers into buying everything that the advertiser wants them to buy. The consumer is, according to this legend, simply defenseless against “high-pressure” advertising. If this were true, success or failure in business would depend on the mode of advertising only. However, nobody believes that any kind of advertising would have succeeded in making the candle makers hold the field against the electric bulb, the horse drivers against the motorcars, the goose quill against the steel pen and later against the fountain pen.

Examples of this phenomenon abound. In recent years, for example, we’ve seen articles on how so-called Millennials are uninterested in buying what the funeral industry is selling. That is, expensive coffins and funerals are highly profitable for funeral homes, but fewer people under fifty are interested in buying. They want less-profitable cremations. So, the funeral industry has had to change the way it does business. But this raises a question: why should the funeral industry change anything? Why not just run a bunch of advertisements telling people to buy $20,000 coffins? Then surely everyone will buy them, right?

But that’s obviously not how it works.

And then there’s the story of the American waterbed industry. Many people over forty may still remember the time in the 1980s when all the cool kids had waterbeds. But then they fell out of favor and waterbed stores collapsed in a heap of irrelevance during the 1990s. But why did the waterbed merchants allow that to happen? Why didn’t they just run a bunch of advertisements telling people to buy waterbeds?

People do what advertisers tell them to do, right?

After all,  we’re told that “Russian hackers” with some targeted online ads — many of which were little more than low-budget unsophisticated memes — “swayed” the 2016 election and somehow turned Hillary voters into Trump voters.

The next time a modern-day McCarthyite insists that the 2016 election was stolen by Russian memes, let’s keep in mind that with $500 million, Bloomberg couldn’t manage to convince more than a few voters to vote for him instead of for Joe Biden, who apparently thinks he’s running for the US Senate.

So, let’s just chalk up the failed Bloomberg campaign to yet another case of how all the ads in the world won’t convince people to buy a product—or vote for a candidate—they don’t like, don’t want, and generally regard as useless.

 

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How to Fake a Pandemic for a World Wide Police State — Rangitikei Environmental Health Watch

Posted by M. C. on March 7, 2020

Pam Vernon

thecrowhouse 209K subscribers http://thecrowhouse.com https://steemit.com/@maxigan https://www.bitchute.com/channel/TheC… Twitter @maxigan LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/max-igan Support The Crowhouse: https://www.patreon.com/maxigan Crypto-currencies: Bitcoin: 1F6bEEsJHZZhHeT4fmN9iQCwF1Yqu5UZSD Litecoin: LcTY57kkuWaSF8YqC9EbLpxBj5kcQzMLhQ Ethereum: 0x924C0F9A9889f703a9220eCf322342B9d6BDb32D Dash: XfGA55jscnDdHyQKhKTAEHQMP6GhqC5AGm Coronavirus Cases in the UK Rise to 51 https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/corona… Government Admits UK Outbreak ‘Increasingly Serious’ as Number of Cases Rises and Plan for Extra Mortuary Space Revealed: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews… Coronavirus Categorised as ‘Highest […]

via How to Fake a Pandemic for a World Wide Police State — Rangitikei Environmental Health Watch

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Joint Chiefs Chair Retires, Immediately Becomes Paid F-35 Cheerleader | The American Conservative

Posted by M. C. on March 7, 2020

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/joint-chiefs-chair-retires-immediately-becomes-paid-f-35-cheerleader/

Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Joseph Dunford. Credit: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff/Flickr

Jason Paladino

In 2015, things weren’t looking great for the Marine Corps’ F-35B fighter jet. Reports from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and Department of Defense inspector general had found dozens of problems with the aircraft. Engine failures, software bugs, supply chain issues, and fundamental design flaws were making headlines. The program was becoming synonymous in the press with “boondoggle.”

Lockheed Martin, the program’s lead contractor, desperately needed a win.

Luckily for Lockheed, it had a powerful ally in the commandant of the Marine Corps, General Joseph Dunford. Five years later, Dunford would be out of the service and ready to collect his first Lockheed Martin paycheck as a member of its board of directors.

Back in 2015, the F-35 program, already years behind schedule, faced a key program milestone. The goal was to have the F-35B ready for a planned July initial operational capability (IOC) declaration, a major step for the program, greenlighting the plane to be used in combat. The declaration is a sign that the aircraft is nearly ready for full deployment, that things are going well, that the contract, awarded in 2006, was finally producing a usable product. The ultimate decision was in Dunford’s hands.

About a week before the declaration, some in the Pentagon expressed serious doubts about the aircraft. The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) obtained a memo from the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation that called foul on the test that was meant to demonstrate the ability of the F-35B to operate in realistic conditions.

Dunford, however, said he had “full confidence” in the aircraft’s ability to support Marines in combat, despite the testing office’s report stating that if the aircraft encountered enemies, it would need to “avoid threat engagement”—in other words, to flee at the first sign of an enemy.

Ignoring the issues raised internally, Dunford signed off on the initial operational capability. Lockheed Martin was thrilled. “Fifty years from now, historians will look back on the success of the F-35 Program and point to Marine Corps IOC as the milestone that ushered in a new era in military aviation,” the company said in a statement.

Lockheed’s CEO was apparently elated, declaring it “send a strong message to everyone that this program is on track.”

But problems continued to plague the “combat ready” aircraft in the months afterwards. And Dunford downplayed cost overruns and sang the aircraft’s praises at a press event in 2017. When the moderator asked routine questions submitted by the audience (Will the aircraft continue as a program? Is it too expensive to maintain?), Dunford responded by calling the questions loaded and accusing the audience member of having an “agenda.”

Retirement and a Reward

On September 30, 2019, Dunford, the military’s highest ranked official, stepped down from his position as chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He had served in the Marine Corps since 1977, working his way up to the highest tier of the armed services over 42 years.

Just four months and 11 days later, he joined the Pentagon’s top contractor, Lockheed Martin, as a director on the board.

In announcing Dunford’s hire, a January press release from Lockheed Martin quotes CEO Marillyn Hewson: “General Dunford’s service to the nation at the highest levels of military leadership will bring valuable insight to our board.”

Dunford’s consistent cheerleading of the F-35 and his subsequent hiring at its manufacturer create the perception of a conflict of interest and raised the eyebrows of at least one former senior military official.

“Here he is having been an advocate for it, having pressed it, having pushed for it …  and now he’s going to work for the company that makes the aircraft, that just, to me, stinks to high heavens,” retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as special assistant to Colin Powell when he led the Joint Chiefs, told POGO.

Dunford’s Rolodex of Pentagon decision-makers is valuable to defense contractors, and with just over four months to “cool off,” many of those relationships will likely be intact.

Lockheed Martin was the top recipient of Department of Defense dollars in fiscal year 2019, taking in over$48 billion, according to government data. The company spent over $13 million lobbying the federal government in 2019, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

The Revolving Door Spins On

“I think anybody that gives out these big contracts should never ever, during their lifetime, be allowed to work for a defense company, for a company that makes that product,” then-President-elect Donald Trump said in a December 2016 rally in Louisiana. “I don’t know, it makes sense to me.”

Fast forward more than three years and the revolving door is spinning right along, defense stocks aresurging, and Lockheed Martin has arecord backlogof unfulfilled contracts. While Trump did issue an ethics executive order for his appointees, it did not include a lifetime ban on lobbying for contractors.

A POGO analysis of the post-government employment of retired chairs of the Joint Chiefs found that only four of the 19 people who previously held the position went immediately to work for a major defense contractor within two years after leaving the government. In addition to Dunford, Admiral William J. Crowe joined General Dynamics, General John Shalikashvili joined the boards of Boeing and L-3, and General Richard Myers joined the boards of Northrop Grumman and United Technologies Corp.

Former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs have many lucrative career opportunities that don’t create conflicts, actual or implied. Retired General Martin Dempsey, who held the position before Dunford, went on to teach at Duke University and was elected chairman of USA Basketball. Admiral Michael Mullen, who preceded Dempsey, joined the board of General Motors and later telecom giant Sprint.

According to Wilkerson, then-Chairman Powell was conscious of the appearance of conflicts of interest and instilled in his employees a sensitivity.

Wilkerson recalled a conversation he had with Powell right after his retirement. “What’s next, boss?” Wilkerson asked Powell. “Well, it’ll not be some defense contractor or some beltway bandit. That practice is pernicious,” he responded. Powell spoke to various members of Congress about their responsibility to rein in the practice, and tried to raise awareness of how widespread it was becoming, according to Wilkerson.

Current ethics laws include cooling off periods that limit a former government employee’s job options. But a POGO study of the revolving door in 2018 found that current ethics regulations are insufficient, rely on self-reporting, and are full of loopholes. These cooling off periods range from a few years to a lifetime, depending on how much an individual was personally involved in the decisions to award contracts. This means top officials actually have fewer restrictions than contracting officers that were directly involved in the awards, even though they have more influence and likely more valuable connections. And the restrictions mostly prevent former officials from taking positions that involve representing or lobbying for a contractor, which is why there was no restriction on Dunford joining Lockheed’s board.

The Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told POGO that Dunford “has certain post-government employment restrictions,” but wouldn’t go into more detail. Dunford “at all times complied with his ethics obligations related to post-government employment,” according to the emailed statement. POGO has filed Freedom of Information Act Requests to learn more about Dunford’s ethical restrictions.

Additionally, enforcement of the regulations is rare, with only four former Pentagon employees prosecuted for violations in the past 16 years. It is impossible to know if the low frequency of prosecutions in the current system is due to inadequate enforcement or high compliance with lax laws.

Loading Boards with Political Influence

Since 2008, POGO found 42 senior defense officials “revolved” into Lockheed within two years of leaving the government.

The boards of the top five defense contractors all have at least two sitting former high-ranking military officials. General Dynamics and Raytheon had four each, Lockheed, Boeing and Northrop Grumman had two each.

The full number of revolvers is difficult to determine. POGO’s database currently contains 408 individuals who either went to work directly with defense contractors that were awarded over $10 million that year or went to work with lobbying firms that list defense industry clients. The POGO database relies on open source information. Another studyfound that between 2009 and 2011, 70% of three and four-star generals and admirals who retired took gigs with defense contractors or consultancies.

A GAOstudy found that in 2006, about 86,000 military and civilian personnel who had left service since 2001 were employed by 52 major defense contractors. The study also found that 1,581 former senior officials were employed by just seven contractors. The office estimated that 422 former officials could have worked on contracts related to their former agencies.

From 25 Hearings in One Year, to None in 60 Years

This issue is far from new. In a 1959 alone, there were 25 hearings before the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee for Special Investigations on the topic of the revolving door and its malign influences. President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his famous farewell address warning of the military-industrial complex just two years later.

An analysis by POGO did not find a congressional hearing explicitly on the issue of the Pentagon revolving door in over 60 years.

There is some hope that the law will soon start to catch up. In May of last year, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Representative Jackie Speier (D-CA) introduced legislation that would impose a four-year ban on contactors hiring senior officials who managed that company’s contracts, and extend existing bans. It would also require contractors to submit annual reports on the employment of former senior officials and would ban senior officials from owning stock in major defense contractors. Another bill, passed by the House in March 2019, would broaden ethics rules and expands prohibitions on former officials receiving compensation from contractors. It is sitting on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s desk.

The American public should be able to be confident that our top military officials are making decisions in the interest of national security, not to secure a cushy board position.

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Should we stop the ‘revolving door’? | Chicago Booth Review

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Dr Brownstein | Coronavirus Part V: The Epic Failure at The Centers For Disease Control and Prevention

Posted by M. C. on March 7, 2020

“The CDC insisted that only its test–and not the one developed by the WHO, for example–could be used on suspected cases, and even CDC tests would [only} be administered under limited circumstances.” (1)

Folks, this is an unmitigated disaster! How do we know how many people are infected with coronavirus if we can’t test them? It feels almost idiotic to ask that question.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are a perfect example of a FAILED Federal agency. On the CDC homepage it is stated that the CDC “Is working 24/7 to protect America from health and safety threats both foreign and domestic.” (2)

https://www.drbrownstein.com/coronavirus-part-v:-the-epic-failure-at-the-centers-for-disease-control-and-prevention/

Coronavirus Part V: The Epic Failure at The Centers For Disease Control and Prevention

 

I just finished a busy week seeing patients. During this time, I saw at least six patients who had flu-like illnesses. Did they have COVID-19? I don’t know. Why don’t I know? I can’t tell my patients if the are sick with coronavirus because there are no test kits available to me.  However, test kits are widely available in many other countries including Iran, Japan, South Korea, Germany, or China. In fact, hundreds of thousands of coronavirus tests have been run in other countries.

But, NOT in the US.

As of Monday, March 2, 2020, the US has tested a few hundred people for coronavirus. According to the CDC, 337 more kits were released on Tuesday and Wednesday this week.

Why are other countries able to test for coronavirus and we aren’t?!?!

When the coronavirus epidemic started late last year in China, the World Health Organization (WHO), with help from German researchers, quickly developed a test for coronavirus. This is the test used by every other country except…the US. “The CDC insisted that only its test–and not the one developed by the WHO, for example–could be used on suspected cases, and even CDC tests would [only} be administered under limited circumstances.” (1)

Folks, this is an unmitigated disaster! How do we know how many people are infected with coronavirus if we can’t test them? It feels almost idiotic to ask that question.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are a perfect example of a FAILED Federal agency. On the CDC homepage it is stated that the CDC “Is working 24/7 to protect America from health and safety threats both foreign and domestic.” (2)

The coronavirus pandemic illustrates the failure of the CDC to properly do its job. And, because of that, we suffer.

In the US, we spend almost 18% of our GNP on healthcare. This is markedly higher than any other Western country. Yet, we are last or nearly last in every health indicator. We are last in neonatal mortality and we live shorter lives when compared to every other major Western country.

We are clearly getting cheated when it comes to healthcare.  And, the CDC is very good at cheating us. They cheated us by stealing $1 billion dollars for the Zika non-epidemic. Now, they will get paid handsomely for their missteps with coronavirus.

You see, the CDC is supposed to protect us from viral pandemics and epidemics. Yet, in the case of COVID-19, because of a lack of testing kits, we have no idea how many are infected with coronavirus. Furthermore, COVID-19 could have been a perfect example of our public health system working: a new virus is identified and contained through proper quarantining and treatment. Well, those days are long gone. This virus is clearly spreading out of control due to the ineptitude of the CDC. No longer can it be maintained.

But, I have good news for the CDC. Our Federal legislatures, in true fashion, have approved over $8 billion for US Governmental agencies dealing with virus. The inept CDC gets $2.2 billion.

Wow. They made out better than they did with Zika. What a DEAL!

I am sure this money will be well spent.

Why would we give more money to the agency that failed epically? Will anyone at the CDC lose their job over this failure?  I doubt it. At my lecture on Saturday, I will talk more about this.

Final Thoughts:

1.  I predict the mortality rate for coronavirus will be much lower than the 2-3% currently reported.  Once we are able to test everyone, there will be many more asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic coronavirus patients that will lower the mortality rate.  The mortality rate will be somewhere near the influenza mortality rate. Keep in mind that coronavirus has been around for nearly 100 years. It causes a flu-like or an upper respiratory illness (a cold).  We have all been getting and recovering from coronavirus infections for nearly a century or more.

2.  My experience in treating patients for viral infections has shown that vitamins A, C, D as well as iodine & nutritional IVs are very effective. Not only do these protocols help to prevent infections, but they also help to recover from them. I suggest working with a holistic doctor who is skilled with nutritional IVs. They can provide you with antiviral therapies that work. At the Center for Holistic Medicine we have been doing nutritional IV therapies for well over 25 years. We have been ready to treat viral infections, like coronavirus, for over 25 years.

To All Our Health,

~DrB

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Things Get Interesting – Kunstler

Posted by M. C. on March 7, 2020

Pay close attention to democratic vice president nominee.

https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/things-get-interesting/

James Howard Kunstler

They’re kidding, right? Joe Biden? The former vice-president and US champeen influence grifter came back from the dead this Super Tuesday to save the Democratic Party from Bernie Sanders Venezuelizing what’s left of America (after you subtract our awesome debt loads). Things that come back from the dead, of course, are generally not high-functioning, for instance: zombies. Isn’t that exactly what the party has got now in the person of front-runner Zombie Joe?

They are kidding, for sure — kidding themselves — for which they’ve practiced tirelessly the past three-plus years with RussiaGate, MuellerGate, ImpeachmentGate, and sundry extra delusional hustles, including sanctuary cities, cancel culture, the Green New Deal, free everything, and the transsexual reading hour. So, now they’re pretending that Joe Biden is capable when his every utterance suggests that he is gone in the head. That will work for about a week, I reckon. You know something hilariously idiotic will come out every time he mounts a podium unless his handlers duct-tape his pie-hole. And now that the spotlight is off that distracting crowd of also-rans, the cameras and iPhone recorders will catch his every gaucherie — as, for instance, when he declared in New Hampshire recently to a rally audience of ordinary (non-millionaire) voters, “Guess what, if you elect me, your taxes are gonna be raised, not cut.” It’s on video. Smooth move, there, Joe.

And then, there is that giant anvil hanging over Joe B’s head in the form of an investigation into, and possible prosecution for, his shenanigans with son, Hunter, in Ukraine, including a money-laundering trail featuring millions of dollars from Ukraine routed through obscure banks in Estonia and Cyprus to Hunter’s own bank accounts. The Ukies have opened an inquiry, and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee under Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) is ready to subpoena Biden father-and-son. That is, if Sen. Mitt Romney doesn’t stand in the way of a vote for that, as he threatens to do — and he has an interesting motive to do that since his former foreign policy advisor, ex-CIA agent Joseph Cofer Black, was on the board of the same Ukrainian gas company, Burisma Holdings, that employed Hunter Biden at $83,000-a-month for years.

Of course, if Zombie Joe is so obviously non compos mentis before he’s even been nominated, what are the chances that he’ll be able to serve in office a year from now? Somewhere between zilch and nada, I’d say. So, the latest scheme launched this week in chatter from Progressive Hopesterdom has Zombie Joe picking either Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama as his running mate, and then resigning soon after inauguration day, giving this Republic-of-Firsts its first woman president at long, long last.

This is what it’s come to in our new politics of hustles and scams. Though every person over seven-years-old would see through this dodge, what else have they got? Well, a brokered convention, anyway, if Zombie Joe flops spectacularly in the weeks ahead just by showing up and running his mouth, leaving Bernie the Last Man Standing — and the party appears dead set on thwarting Bernie by any means necessary. It’s not impossible that the Dems could rustle up some dark horse candidate in a back room of the Milwaukee Convention Center. I can’t think of anyone just now from, say, the governors’ mansions across the land. And just imagine if they tapped someone from Congress, such as that lying caitiff Adam Schiff (D-CA), what opportunity for sport he would present. More likely, they’d draft some Hollywood celebrity: George Clooney… Oprah… Morgan Freeman (hasn’t he already been president, or did he just play one on TV?).

There’s not a small chance, at this juncture in the Corona Virus story, that the convention may not even be held. And then what? Gawd knows…. But a disruption so severe implies that a lot of damage would be done to the Potemkin economy that is the centerpiece of President Trump’s reelection quest. That damage is being done in real time as I write, with the S & P futures index down another three percent at the open today, Friday. The trend is not Mr. Trump’s friend. And an awful lot of other things are breaking up in the financialized fiasco that enfronts what’s left of the US economy. The bond market is cracking up, especially at the junk-grade margins. And one can only guess at the havoc being wreaked in derivatives by repeated 1000-point swings in the Dow Jones and other symptoms of extreme disequilibrium in indexed things, from securitized car loans to currency swaps.

All of which leaves the Golden Golem of Greatness, Mr. Trump, in not such a bulletproof position for a second term, after all. There’s a possibility that Corona Virus might interfere with the election itself. Viral contagions are known to work in waves. If this is the first wave now, then a second wave would arrive just about in time for election day, November 3. Second wave viral diseases can be more virulent than the first wave, which was the case with the so-called Spanish flu of 1918. And what if a substantial portion of voters don’t dare venture into public places full of their possibly infectious fellow citizens? Would Mr. Trump be forced to postpone the election, fulfilling his enemies’ fantasy that he seeks to become the American Caesar? It’s not a pretty picture from here as things get interesting.

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