Real inflation is running about 20%, Kamala parties like it’s 1971, the New York Times is shocked, shocked to discover Hunter Biden asking for state favors for foreign cronies, gold hits new highs, laughing at an old SNL skit is now a thoughtcrime, and an update on Intel’s woes.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The New York Times reports that the federal government is accelerating the naturalization of immigrants in America as part of a process of “reshaping the electorate, merely months before a pivotal election,” according to one observer quoted in the piece.
“The federal government is processing citizenship requests at the fastest clip in a decade, moving rapidly through a backlog that built up during the Trump administration and the coronavirus pandemic,” reports the newspaper.
One Honduran woman marveled at the fact that authorities were able to process and approve her application in as little as six months.
The story highlights how many of these new citizens will immediately become eligible to vote in key battleground states, including Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania.
The piece includes a very revealing quote from Xiao Wang, chief executive of Boundless, a data analysis company.
“The surge in naturalization efficiency isn’t just about clearing backlogs; it’s potentially reshaping the electorate, merely months before a pivotal election,” said Wang.
“Every citizenship application could be a vote that decides Senate seats or even the presidency,” he added.
In other words, knowing that immigrants are far likelier to vote Democrat, the Biden administration is importing them at breakneck speed in order to tip the scales for Kamala Harris.
3.3 million immigrants have become citizens during Biden’s time in office, with data showing that more will vote Democrat than Republican.
This has partly driven the Trump campaign’s efforts to appeal more to “Jamal” and “Enrique,” and not so much “Karen,” although the strategy has caused division amongst Trump’s base.
The legacy media has consistently denounced the idea of mass migration being a deliberate ploy to increase the voter base for Democrats as part of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, while simultaneously admitting it’s happening.
Democrats have declared that they have no confidence in the electorate and must create a new one…
The owner of four restaurants made this video when inflation was at 3.5%. Today, we’re told that inflation is at 2.9%. He looked at the prices of some products and concluded that the government’s inflation numbers don’t make sense. Since February, food prices have increased:
— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) August 14, 2024
(Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
After the unoriginal Vice President Kamala Harris stole former President Trump’s proposed ‘no tax on tips’ policy, she’s at it again with yet another recycled idea. This time, she’s echoing President Biden’s actions and rhetoric to crack down on sky-high food prices by proposing the first-ever federal ban on “corporate price-gouging in the food and grocery industries”—a move that reeks of socialism.
“There’s a big difference between fair pricing in competitive markets, and excessive prices unrelated to the costs of doing business,” the Harris campaign wrote in a statement, adding, “Americans can see that difference in their grocery bills.”
The Harris campaign said the vice president will unveil the new federal proposed ban on Friday at a campaign rally in the battleground state of North Carolina as part of a broader economic policy platform. The proposal will ensure food companies can’t exploit consumers to increase profits, according to CBS News, citing Harris-Walz campaign officials.
Harris’ policy speech will also call on the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys to examine corporations violating price-fixing rules. Her remarks are expected to echo Biden’s actions and rhetoric, especially with his war against meat processing companies that he alleges are responsible for higher burger prices at the supermarket.
VP Harris’ campaign argues that lowering Americans’ costs is a function of socialist-style price controls. Yet this is the quickest way to understand that Harris’ economic team has no actual understanding of inflation.
Heritage Foundation’s EJ Antoni explained, “Here’s your “price gouging” narrative: average costs paid by businesses have risen just as much as costs charged to consumers – if businesses are being “greedy,” they’re doing it all wrong…”
Instead of curbing out-of-control government spending, which debt rises $1 trillion every 100 days, and understanding that monetary inflation driven by the Federal Reserve’s money creation is the root cause of inflation, Harris deflects the actual problem: The Fed. She instead goes after big corporations for ‘illegal price gouging.’
Thus unable to understand the disasterous economic policies of the past are doomed to repeat it…
In a post last month (“How The Democrats Los Silicon Valley”), I mentioned that top Silicon Valley venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz had endorsed Trump.
Ben Horowitz, in particular, seemed like an unusual Trump supporter, coming from a liberal Jewish background. Now it looks like Trump has another, thanks to his X space with Elon Musk last night: Zynga founder Mark Pincus. During the first Trump administration, Pincus opposed Trump’s “Muslim ban”, but after the leftist celebrations following October 7th last year, he seemed to have some second thoughts about that.
Despite corporate media’s unabashed u-turn to support Kamala Harris, her campaign has been busted creating made-up headlines next to the names of real news outlets to trick people into thinking they’ve stumbled upon the real thing, Axios reports.
Upon hearing the news, The Guardian lost their shit, telling Axios: “While we understand why an organization might wish to align itself with the Guardian’s trusted brand, we need to ensure it is being used appropriately and with our permission. We’ll be reaching out to Google for more information about this practice.”
The ads include links to real articles from the outlets, however the headlines and supporting text were altered.
While Joe Biden was vice president, his son Hunter attempted to obtain State Department assistance in securing a deal for Ukrainian gas company Burisma, of which Hunter was a highly-compensated board member despite having no experience in its industry, the New York Times reported on Tuesday. The revelation of the 2016 episode underscores allegations that Hunter sought to enrich himself by trading on his father’s influence.
The Times report draws on newly-released government records pertaining to Hunter’s pushing of a Burisma deal in Italy. The Biden White House had resisted releasing the files for years, only to relent soon after Biden was pressured into abandoning his reelection bid.
One wonders how long the New York Times would have waited to report this if Biden were still seeking reelection? My guess is never.
Go figure. It’s amazing what some actual reporting — and a withdrawal from a presidential election — can shake loose, no?
Just four short years ago, we were all assured by the Protection Racket Media that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, and that allegations of influence-peddling by the Bidens were just political dirty tricks, right? Right? Wrong. The New York Times’ Ken Vogel reports that Hunter’s efforts to sell influence within the administration were well known during Joe Biden’s term as Vice President. It’s even about Burisma, the company that we were told paid Hunter a lot of money for his energy-industry expertise.
Oh, and the records of it got “withheld” by the Biden administration for “years,” too:
Hunter Biden sought assistance from the U.S. government for a potentially lucrative energy project in Italy while his father was vice president, according to newly released records and interviews.
The records, which the Biden administration had withheld for years, indicate that Hunter Biden wrote at least one letter to the U.S. ambassador to Italy in 2016 seeking assistance for the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, where he was a board member.
Well, we did have records in October 2020. Hunter Biden kept records of these dealings on his laptop, which he abandoned in a repair shop. When the New York Post reported on the contents of the laptop, including a number of emails that made clear he leveraged his fathers office to sell influence at Burisma and elsewhere, the media ignored it — even though one of Hunter’s partners (Tony Bobulinski) publicly authenticated the messages when asked.
Nearly four years later, the NYT gets around to the truth. And if you’re questioning the timing, you have good company, because Vogel appears to be somewhat curious about it as well:
The department’s release of documents to The New York Times came shortly after President Biden dropped out of the presidential race, and as his son prepares to stand trial next month on charges of evading taxes on millions of dollars in income from Burisma and other foreign businesses.
Go figure again! It’s as if the cover-up extended as long as Joe Biden had electoral interests to protect. Now that Biden has pulled out of the race, there’s no need to keep covering up for Biden Inc.
(Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Only a short week ago, Harris was heckled by pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protesters, like those who has spilled out from college campuses after October 7. Protesters screamed out at her as she stood on stage repeating her stump speech. As they yelled, Harris tried to shame them. “I’m speaking,” she said, hearkening back to her VP debate against Mike Pence in 2020. “I’m speaking” in context means several things, including an attempt to grab control based on her identity factors: black, female. By identitarian logic, the vice president is oppressed, and by the logic of progressive discourse, that means that she gets to speak first, and that what she has to say carries all that much more weight. An event simply in favor of her candidacy was crashed in New York City on Wednesday night where agitators set off smoke bombs and held up signs saying “No Votes for Bombala’s Genocide.” 14 of them were arrested.
The agitators wanted some kind of response, some kind of indication of what Harris’ policy on Israel and Gaza might be if she gets voted into the White House. And they haven’t gotten it. Meanwhile, there are clearly massive anti-Israel events planned for the Democratic National Convention next week. While Kamala is trying to keep the euphoria going, attempting to dance and sing her way into the White House, her base will be out in the street demanding answers. Will she be lenient like Magill? Bend over backwards like Gay? Or call in a bigger force, like Shafik, because she doesn’t know how to handle it on her own?
The far left of Harris’ party hates Israel. They love Palestinians not for their culture or policies–which include anti-LGBTQ and anti-female regulations as in other strict, Muslim countries–but simply because they are “oppressed.” And Harris can’t handle them. Even at her speech, rarefied identity wasn’t enough to keep them in their place. The campus riots will likely start up again. As soon as the college-bound finish their orientations, they’ll be picking up their marching orders and protest signs to join their comrades on the quad.
There is already noise that Harris would like to throw Israel under the bus, to eradicate funding and arms shipments. The same woman that waved the flag of Ukraine in Congress as she promised to send him endless weapons and aid, may think the aid packages and arms sales to Israel go too far. Harris may sympathize with the protesters.
before his honeymoon [in Communist China in 1994], Walz launched a company called Educational Travel Adventures, which specialized in bringing American students to China. An article in the local Chinese media reported that he and his bride brought 50 students from America. The company continued to send students to China until 2003. It is important to note that operating a business in China requires all kinds of permits—both official and unofficial—from Chinese authorities at the local, provincial, and central levels. These permits were typically obtained either by paying bribes or by securing endorsements, whether tacit or open, from government officials.
Think big.. 😅 pic.twitter.com/M1jDbAhMuA
— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) August 14, 2024
(Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Still between jobs, so hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.
Tags: 2024 Presidential Race, 2024 Texas Senate Race, amnesty, anti-semitism, Ben Horowitz, Biden Recession, Border Controls, Bursima, California, censorship, China, Columbia University, Communism, corruption, Crime, Democrats, Disney, Donald Trump, Elections, electric cars, Elon Musk, EU, Facebook, Gavin Newsom, gold, Greenspoint Mall, Harris County, HEB, Holly Hansen, Hollywood, Houston, Hunter Biden, immigration, inflation, Intel, Kamala Harris, Kim Ogg, Korbein Schultz, Kursk Oblast, LinkSwarm, Marc Andreessen, Marie Alvarado-Gil, Mark Pincus, Media Watch, Mike Boudreaux, Military, Minouche Shafik, New York Times, Olympics, Republicans, Richard Dawkins, Russia, Russo-Ukrainian War, Saturday Night Live, spying, Ted Cruz, Texas, Thierry Breton, Tim Walz, transexual, UK, Ukraine, waste, Zynga
From Wikipedia: Catallactics is a theory of the way the free market system reaches exchange ratios and prices. It aims to analyse all actions based on monetary calculation and trace the formation of prices back to the point where an agent makes his or her choices It explains prices as they are, rather than as they “should” be. The laws of catallactics are not value judgments, but aim to be exact, empirical, and of universal validity. It was used extensively by the Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises.
From the mouth of Commie bitch Kamala Harris, whose father promoted Russian revolutionary political economist Nicolas Ivanovich Bukharin: “There’s a big difference between fair pricing in competitive markets, and excessive prices unrelated to the costs of doing business,..”
Commie bitch! There is no catallactic category of “fair” prices. Prices are existential-they just “are”. By contrast, costs are used by entrepreneurs to evaluate their plans concerning future prices. If those costs are in excess of prices, the plan fails and business contracts.
Prices must of necessity be in excess of costs or profits cannot emerge. In a free market, profits are the measure of social satisfaction. Eliminating profits leads to the institutionalization of misery.
Nixon’s economist, Marty Feldman, assured the President that wage and price controls would mitigate the effects of loose monetary policy brought about by renouncing the Breton Woods gold-exchange standard.
Nixon’s successor, Jimmy Carter introduced us to the Misery Index, featuring double digit inflation, double digit unemployment and double digit interest rates.
If institutionalized misery appeals to you, Commie bitch Kamala Harris will surely light your fire.
Re The Waymos honking at each other: I am reminded of the scene in Woody Allen’s “Sleeper” where the two Jewish tailor robots get into an argument.
Providing an inflation rate without specifying the time period that rate is being measured over is useless information.
Is that 3% over the past day, month, or year?
Price controls on food = she wants to starve us to death.
A desirable goal, but…
The terms “exact” and “empirical” would need to have technical definitions that differ greatly from their common use for this to be possible, let alone practical. There’s simply no way to get enough data to empirically compare observed results with theoretical predictions. If you want “exact”, I’m pretty sure your agents will need to be at least as complicated as Turing machines, and that doesn’t lead anywhere helpful.
I’m pretty sure Mises & colleagues knew about the data issue, so that’s probably a problem with how I’m parsing the term. I’d certainly prefer working with people trying to develop this theory than with dirigistes who think they can force prices and have everything work out, at least.
“The terms ‘exact’ and ‘empirical’ would need to have technical definitions.”
Exact: conforming to a strict agreement with fact—e.g., there is repeatable phenomena associated with supply and demand. The association can be demonstrated using an X/Y axis to illustrate the relationship. NO ONE disputes this.
Empirical: verifiable by observation and experience. The predictions of economic theory have been repeatedly vindicated by the comparative outcomes of free markets and command systems. Only a fool would dispute this.
“I’d certainly prefer working with people trying to develop this theory than with dirigistes who think they can force prices and have everything work out, at least.”
No thanks. I can manage quite well without the burden of economically ignorant poseurs.
And these x and y axes measure… what, exactly?
Perhaps “price” and “number of objects sold”? Wonderful! Except that we can control prices by threatening to jail people who sell for too much. Sure, it’s immoral, and most of the people who used to sell will stop, but that’s not the subject of discussion; the subject is determining a relation R such that R(x, y) holds when x and y measure supply and demand in… well, whatever way you mean; you haven’t said precisely.
Hmm? You say that’s a nit-picking distinction of less importance than the obvious ruin brought about by command economies? It certainly is when we’re deciding whether or not price controls are a good idea or a stupid, evil idea. Thing is, you were the one who specifically brought up “Catallactics” and said it was supposed to be “exact” and “empirical”, and that’s what we’re talking about. As such, you’re going to need to be a lot more “exact” about supply and demand than just “The association can be demonstrated using an X/Y axis to illustrate the relationship.” I’m pretty sure you’re right about NO ONE disputing this, but it turns out there’s more than uncountably many relations illustrable by X/Y axes, even if you restrict yourself to relations that are pure functions whose output is nondecreasing with respect to the input. Turns out, there’s a lot of disputes about which relation it is.
I’m not arguing that command systems are better than free systems; I’m arguing that you’re substantially underestimating the rigor of the theory and analysis you’d need in order to achieve your goals. In fact, I think that’s (one of the reasons) why free systems are better than command systems. Our theoretical commander would need enough data to predict prices and give margins of error to arbitrary times in the future in order to justify the scope & depth of their power, and humans simply can’t gather that much information in time to make all those predictions. It’s much better to let people decide which hunches to follow, whose advice to take, or what whimsy to chase.
It’s so cute to imagine that MSM stories about Biden family corruption coming out the week before the DNC are actual outbreaks of journalism or anything else other than shots across Biden’s bow to remind him to play nice this week.
“Our theoretical commander would need enough data to predict prices and give margins of error to arbitrary times in the future in order to justify the scope & depth of their power, and humans simply can’t gather that much information in time to make all those predictions.”
Yet you demand the same level of exactitude and a mountain of empirical data before I am permitted to say that “fair” prices are chimerical.
The epistemological foundation of economic law is based on irrefutable axioms. They are not subject to empirical examination. The empirical data is gathered from demonstrating how self-seeking human action in the market works to equilibrate supply and demand, bringing maximum satisfaction to buyer and seller alike.
Supply and demand can be illustrated using a series of points on a Cartesian graph to identify a “shelf-clearing” price. This is a purely theoretical model of of this phenomenon, nothing more. It is not synonymous with human action in the market because the model is static.
“Fair prices” do not fall within the purview of cattallactics because they are not an economic concept. They are a sociological construct.
If you insist on conflating economics with sociology, you show yourself to be a quibbler. I won’t waste my time on this.
In fact, the sentence you quoted is one of the reasons that “fair” prices are chimerical: simply gathering the data necessary to verify that your theory corresponds to reality, without overlooking important variables or increasing in error as parameters change, requires gathering “a mountain of empirical data”. If I read you correctly, you assert that “fair” prices are chimerical; it wasn’t just a hypothetical statement you used as an example. I quite agree! It’s just that the reasoning you would need to use to reach this conclusion in an “exact” and “empirical” manner — to say nothing of “universal” — requires the data that I demand.
Great! As the sort of person who chooses their screen name based on an algebraic construction, I highly encourage people to think deeply about axioms. Granted, before you can call your axioms “irrefutable”, you have to thoroughly explore their consequences for contradictions. As a simple example, if you want to use a theory involving collections, the question “Does the collection of all collections contain itself” is no longer a technicality; it’s a question your theory must address. More relevantly, if you want to say that these axioms describe some real-world phenomena (i.e. prices) you need to have “a mountain of empirical data” that differs from your predictions by a statistically-insignificant measure.
So, is the data measuring this “maximum satisfaction” expressed with real numbers? Physicists can point to time, lengths, quantities derived from those mathematically, etc. What are you using to measure “supply” and “demand”?
If you want this to be “exact” and “empirical”, you have to say what those ordered tuples of real numbers mean.
Well, yes, theoretical models aren’t synonymous with real-world phenomena, since the hypothetical agents we ponder aren’t physically existing and making those exact exchanges we posit. The important point is, does your theoretical model actually, well, model the phenomena you say it models? More exactly than, say, “Objects start moving when sufficient force is exerted upon them, and stop moving when the force is removed”?
Seriously, matching up laws based on axioms with meaningful empirical data requires thoroughly controlling the variables in your experiments, and there’s simply too many variables in human thoughts, requirements, and actions to meaningfully define spaces where laws hold.
“Does the collection of all collections contain itself?”
Economics does not concern itself with aggregates. Once again you try to introduce sociology into economic calculation. The relevant question becomes, what occurs at the margin between a particular buyer and the seller of that particular economic good?
“[Y]ou want to say that these axioms describe some real-world phenomena (i.e. prices) you need to have “a mountain of empirical data” that differs from your predictions by a statistically-insignificant measure.
I say that these axioms are validated by human action. The action “proves” the axiom. I do not use proof in the mathematical sense because interpersonal values are non commensurate. This disparity is the ontological ground of exchange.
“[T]here’s simply too many variables in human thoughts, requirements, and actions to meaningfully define spaces where laws hold.”
Variability does not create its own law sphere. ALL ECONOMIC PHENOMENA is referential to human action in the market. So we come back around to my initial assertion: “The formation of prices goes back to the point where an agent makes his or her choices”.