“in a recent interview with the New York Times, Wee Man noted that American culture has changed since the show first ran:
“Gender stuff and, you know, things like that….When we first started, there was never going to be a girl in it,” he said. “We didn’t think it was funny for girls to get hurt. For us, it was like, ‘That’s not funny’ — hurting a girl.” Now, paradoxically, it would be in poor taste to not hurt a girl on “Jackass” — and so they do.””
“A recent study of the program’s effects from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) finds that the majority of the funds spent by the program went to business owners and shareholders rather than to workers themselves. Ultimately, “only 23 to 34 percent of the program’s funds went directly to workers who would have otherwise lost their jobs.” The jobs it did keep in place were preserved at very high cost—somewhere between $170,000 and $257,000 a year, far more than the typical earnings of affected workers, which are closer to $58,000 per year.
While the PPP was able to save some jobs, albeit, at a very high cost, the overall result of the program was precisely the opposite of what was intended. The purpose of the program was to preserve the jobs of wage workers, not to funnel money to business owners. As David Autor, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist and the lead researcher behind the paper, told The New York Times recently, “it turns out [the money] didn’t primarily go to workers who would have lost jobs. It went to business owners and their shareholders and their creditors.” The program, he added, was “highly regressive.””
“Much was made both during and after the 2020 presidential election about rampant voter fraud. This week, yet another of those claims fell apart under scrutiny.
In September 2020, Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced that more than 1,000 people may have voted more than once in the state’s primary and runoff elections that year. Amid ongoing allegations of widespread vote fraud from President Donald Trump, Raffensperger charged that the voters in question returned absentee ballots, and then also voted in person—a violation of both state and federal law. Raffensperger assembled a task force to investigate, and he warned that convictions under Georgia law would garner up to 10 years in prison and $100,000 in fines.
But now, Raffensperger admits that his initial claims were overblown.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Tuesday that in response to requests for information about the investigation, the secretary of state’s office indicated that only around 300 cases of double-voting were ultimately substantiated, “almost always because of mistakes by confused voters and poll workers.” Of the 1,339 cases which Raffensperger initially claimed, the confirmed total represents barely more than one-fifth (22 percent), though the paper contends that about 100 cases remain “under investigation.””
…
“Georgia voters who fill out an absentee ballot may either mail it in or drop it off. They could also go to their polling place and vote in person instead. In that case, according to page 55 of the State of Georgia Poll Worker Manual, the poll worker’s terminal will prompt that the voter has been issued an absentee ballot. At that time, the voter would either turn in their absentee ballot to be discarded, or if they did not have it with them, the poll worker would call to verify that the ballot had not been counted before having the voter fill out a form requesting their original ballot be canceled.
If, as Raffensperger alleged, more than 1,000 voters cast more than one vote, by mailing back an absentee ballot and then also voting in person, then in every single case that would require a failure on the part of the state of Georgia or its poll workers.
There is evidence that Raffensperger’s office realized this when he first made the claim. According to emails published by American Oversight, a government accountability watchdog group, on the same day that Raffensperger made the announcement about double-voting, Ryan Germany, the general counsel to the secretary of state, was advising members of the task force on the subject: “There are systematic checks to stop double voting from happening, and those checks appear to be largely working as intended. [Some] people likely voted twice inadvertently or because they were not sure if their absentee ballot had been returned on time.””
“The so-called “phase one” trade deal inked in December 2019 by former President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping might have put an end to the spiraling trade war between the two countries, but the agreement did not result in China buying more American goods, as both leaders promised it would. In fact, during the two years covered by the deal, China imported fewer American goods than before the trade war began—meaning that the deal did not even succeed at patching up the damage caused by Trump’s bellicose trade policies.”
…
“We now know that the promised benefits did not materialize. But the costs certainly keep adding up. Auto manufacturers, for example, shifted supply chains to avoid the cost of tariffs and economic uncertainty created by the trade war—by relocating some American manufacturing jobs to China, which has become a large and growing market for auto sales. BMW, for example, shifted much of the production of its X3 sport-utility vehicle from Spartanburg, South Carolina, to China after reporting that tariffs had cut the company’s American profits by about $338 million in 2018. The higher costs imposed by the trade war caused Tesla to announce that it was “accelerating construction” of a new plant in Shanghai.
Overall, Bown estimates, exports to China would have been $26 billion higher in 2020 and $39 billion higher in 2021 if not for the impact of the trade war and subsequent trade deal. That doesn’t account for other losses sustained during the trade war, like the increased farm subsidies paid for by American taxpayers and the run-of-the-mill cost increases created by tariffs.
Aside from some positive developments with regard to China’s treatment of intellectual property and financial services, probably the only good thing about Trump’s “phase one” trade deal is that it has now expired.
“President Trump’s trade war and phase one agreement did little to change China’s economic policymaking,” Bown concludes. “Beijing seems intent on becoming more state-centered and less market oriented.””
“Daryl Morey, general manager of the Houston Rockets, tweeted, “Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.”
Good for him. China crushed freedom in Hong Kong.
But China didn’t like hearing an NBA executive say that. Chinese TV stopped broadcasting Rockets games. The NBA then apparently told its players and front offices to shut up. Morey deleted his tweet and instead tweeted that he “did not intend to cause any offense.”
The NBA itself also apologized to China, saying that they were “disappointed” by Morey’s “inappropriate” tweet. Lebron James called Morey “misinformed.” James Harden said, “We love China.”
“China is able to strong-arm these companies…into actually acquiescing with its ideology,” complains Chen.
That ideology is often grotesque. The U.S. and other countries accuse China of committing genocide against a mostly Muslim minority group, the Uyghurs.
China imprisons them in “reeducation camps.” Leaked satellite footage shows blindfolded men, with their hands tied behind their backs, in what looks like a concentration camp.
“They are forced into slave labor,” says Chen.
A few Uyghurs who escaped say they were tortured.
But although the NBA runs ads that say, “Speak for the people who may not be able to be heard,” it clearly does not want its players, coaches, or executives to say anything about Uyghur genocide.”
…
“Hollywood doesn’t care either. The movie Mulan was filmed in the same region where Uyghurs are tortured. In the credits, Disney gave “special thanks” to government departments in Xinjiang, where the abuse occurs.
Fast and Furious 9 actor John Cena, promoting his movie to people in Taiwan, said, “Taiwan is the first country that can watch F9.”
What was wrong with that?
“He had the audacity to allude to the fact that Taiwan was a country,” says Chen, “rather than a territory owned by China.”
I don’t know what China said to Cena or Universal Pictures, but soon Cena was on Chinese social media, groveling to China, saying “sorry” over and over. “I have made a mistake….I really love and respect the Chinese people….I made a mistake,” he pleaded.
Chen calls that pathetic. “I think the Chinese government actually takes a lot of pleasure knowing that they can actually strong-arm individuals and companies into capitulation to its own political ideology.””
“Facebook is still a behemoth, and it has a long way to fall before that will cease to be true (if it ever is). I’m not suggesting we start writing eulogies yet. But the U.S. (and European Union) antitrust push against Facebook and other big tech companies assumes—and often explicitly argues—that Facebook’s power is permanent and its market share irreversible. Recent developments and ancient history show that’s very obviously not the case.”
“The revised and expanded pain treatment guidelines that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published today mention “patient abandonment” eight times. They also include two occurrences of this admonition, in bold and italics: “Clinicians should not abandon patients.”
That gives you a sense of the disastrous impact that the original version of the CDC’s advice, published in 2016, had on medical care. Something clearly has gone terribly wrong when clinicians have to be reminded that they are not supposed to abandon patients. At the same time, the CDC’s acknowledgment of the problem signals its willingness to address the needless suffering caused by the 2016 guidelines, which resulted in undertreatment, reckless “tapering” of pain medication, denial of care, and procrustean policies that prioritize reductions in opioid prescribing over the interests of patients.
The original guidelines, which were aimed at primary care physicians and focused on “prescribing opioids for chronic pain,” included grave warnings about the dangers of exceeding 90 morphine milligram equivalents (MMEs) a day. Many physicians, pharmacists, insurers, regulators, and legislators read that threshold as a hard cap, meaning that it should never be exceeded and that chronic pain patients who were already above it should be forced to comply with this arbitrary limit.
Although the 2016 guidelines focused on chronic pain, they also touched on acute pain, because “long-term opioid use often begins with treatment of acute pain.” For acute pain, the CDC said, a prescription for “three days or less will often be sufficient,” while “more than seven days will rarely be needed.” As a result, the CDC notes in the new guidelines, “more than half of all states have passed legislation that limits initial opioid prescriptions for acute pain to a seven day supply or less,” while “many insurers, pharmacy benefit managers, and pharmacies also have enacted similar policies.”
Ostensibly, the guidelines were purely advisory. But in practice, many patients found to their dismay, they were mandatory.”
“An organized group of Southern California bandits has brazenly hijacked armored cars and grabbed hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash. The heavily armed thieves reportedly have damaged trucks, hassled their victims, covered up video cameras—and even celebrated their haul. “Wowee!” and “way to go, buddy,” they allegedly cheered, after pulling a recent heist.
You’d be forgiven for assuming that this is the latest example of California’s ongoing crime wave, epitomized by “third world” scenes of pilfered freight trains and brazen smash-and-grab robberies. But it’s nothing of the sort. Actually, it’s more pernicious than the usual crime spree because a sheriff is the mastermind and his deputies are looting the armored cars.
For instance, San Bernardino County deputies stopped the same Empyreal Logistics armored-car driver twice and took a total of nearly $1.1 million in cash owned by legal marijuana dispensaries, per news reports. The government has not charged the armored-car company nor the cannabis firms with any crimes, but the sheriff keeps the cash, anyway. Critics are right to call it highway robbery.
Welcome to the dystopian world of civil-asset forfeiture, a drug-war relic that allows police—often at the behest of district attorneys—to take people’s cash, cars, and properties based on their suspicion that the property was involved in a crime. Officials never have to prove that the property’s owner was involved in a crime.
The agencies have every incentive to employ this strategy routinely given that they keep the proceeds and spend the money on vehicles, guns, and whatever. News reports found police so adept at abusing this process that they sometimes target people who own the kind of fancy SUVs and sports cars that they’d like to have available in their motor pool.
Not only does this process deprive Americans of their Fourth Amendment right to be safe against the government’s searches and seizures, but it undermines the credibility of law enforcement by turning cops into our adversaries. San Bernardino County Sheriff Shannon Dicus claims that “80 percent of marijuana at dispensaries was grown illegally.” If that’s true, then the sheriff simply needs to, you know, go to court and prove it.”