Potpourri Of Links: Politics, Covid, Economy
But It's All Related, Right?
This is one of those days with multiple stories that seem to document significant movement on a number of fronts. So, due to volume, hear are mostly just links to significant stories that you may or may not have heard about.
First, Bannon and Boris Epshteyn. Deeply entertaining—at least IMO—segment. Listen to the end when Epshteyn says this is a great day for James Buchanan. Unfortunately it seems Substack won’t allow embeds of Rumble:
The 10 minute segment is actually more wide ranging than the title suggests. Yes, it works off the latest WSJ poll, but there’s much more. For example, it gets into Mitch McConnell’s latest move in the Senate. Also, I liked the phrase they used, about this regime being “killed in the crib.” There are multiple reports worldwide trying to describe the depths of Dem panic in DC, and this video gets into that.
Next up … I could link to Politico, but instead I’ll quote from Don Surber’s digest of the article: Democrats sour on vax mandates. Of course, it’s not really that they’ve soured on the mandates per se—they still luv that concept. It’s simply that they’re panic struck at what they’ve wrought.
The court of public opinion is turning on vax mandates.
In September, Gallup reported 68% of Americans supported, "Requiring companies with more than 100 employees to provide paid time off for employees to get vaccinated or to recover from vaccine side effects."
3 months later, The Hill reported, "50% of voters back President Biden’s vaccine mandate for large private companies, according to a Wall Street Journal poll released Tuesday.
"The poll also found 47% of voters opposed the measure."
Democrats in DC can read polls. They are unhappy.
Politico reported, "In recent comments, several high-profile Democrats have stated their opposition to vaccine mandates, specifically applied to private businesses. The most recent Democratic lawmaker to voice her concern was Michigan Gov. GRETCHEN WHITMER. Once considered to be Biden’s vice president, Whitmer said she opposes mandates, citing the impact on the state’s workforce — as Michigan grapples with upticks in cases and residents are split on whether or not to get the vaccine."
Yeah, really—Whitler, er, Whitmer. That speaks volumes about where Dems are right now.
Lest you get too happy at these developments, read Karl Denninger today: Inbound Corporate (And Market) Destruction. He has a lot to say about the way the ruling elite has betrayed We The People over the last decades, stressing the way corporate America has abused employees, and it’s all worth reading. If “Heroes to Zeroes” resonated with you, this should, too. However, here’s how he concludes, and it should be sobering:
You can push this crap too far, and corporate America has. The backlash, when it blows, is going to be ridiculous.
The Government, in concert with The Fed, has run this scheme where "let's print up some more credit!" is the answer to everything. Both sides of the political aisle are involved up their necks. Fully one dollar in five goes to the medical monopolists in this country today and so anything that helps them passes and is left alone. Moscow Mitch refused to shut that crap down with the most-recent "debt ceiling" charade and its not surprising why: Forcing an end to the abuse on a "sudden stop" basis would crash the stock market.
Recall, Bannon and Epshteyn, above, also discuss that.
Well, the market is going to crash anyway folks, because the abuse is so rank and outrageous that it will not be maintained -- because it can't be.
I would not be even slightly surprised if the plates stay in the air through Christmas. Seasonally, that's rather likely. But come 2022 all bets are off. The courts are headed in the "wrong" direction to give license to this crap in the private sector and the number of pissed-off employees who will now slow-walk everything, doing just enough to not be fired on a permanent basis, is likely in excess of a quarter of the workforce.
That will hammer productivity and costs and there's no more to offshore, really, when you get down to it as we already did that, just like we already used pushing the second adult (usually the woman) in a household into the workforce in the first place.
Buckle up folks: This ride is going to get a little rough.
Part of the rough ride is that, while the ruling elite knows they’re losing, they’re not going to just surrender. This article is a useful overview, if you need/want that:
The global ‘elites’ lost the COVID war, and we all paid the price
The 'elites' know nothing is working, but they’d rather take everyone down with them than to admit to wholesale failure.
Two Malone tweets that work well here, that I forgot to include:
AAPS News November 2021 – The Heart of American Medicine
<it is important to remember that hospitals are making large amounts of money from treating COVID-19 patients, creating an incentive to block outpatient treatments by attacking community physicians>
hospitals and hospitalists should be sued for anti-competitive business practices when they attack physicians that are providing life-saving outpatient treatments.
To affirm KD's point regarding productivity - it is already happening:
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2021/12/07/u-s-third-quarter-productivity-down-5-point-2-percent-unit-labor-costs-up-9-point-6-percent.html
Not surprising considering the behavior of the corporations and the fact that 4 million more people quit their jobs in October (likely due in large part to the hideous mandates and the hideous way their employers are treating them):
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10288627/More-FOUR-MILLION-Americans-quit-jobs-October.html
I'll bet many of these people who quit were senior employees who take the knowledge and expertise that enabled the corporations' success with them. <sarc> But that's OK because if they can find replacements for them at least those people will be woke. <\sarc>