Just Some Bias Before I Go

Yes, we were thinking of this in the title. We are heading off on vacation with the Lady deGloves and will be without Internet so this short post will be our last for about a week. We were reading a BBC post and came across this about our president, The Frontrunner:

As Republicans blame [The Frontrunner’s] environmental agenda for the high energy costs and his approval ratings sink, he has signed deals to boost US natural gas exports, released oil from national reserves and approved hundreds of permits for drilling on government land.

It is a self-refuting paragraph. First, Republicans blame and then The Frontrunner’s approval ratings sink. Spoiler altert: The GOP never approved of The Frontrunner. You should be able to figure out the arithmetic. It is a sensible first clause if you leave out “Republicans blame” and replace “for the” with cause. The rest of the stuff is overstatement. Sometimes he was legally compelled to do those things. Of course, he hasn’t done anything about pipelines. And this is the next paragraph:

“We see the Biden administration really wavering on its earlier climate commitments,” says Robert Rozansky research analyst at Global Energy Monitor, which tracks energy projects around the world.

We can understand why people find the media less than trustworthy.

Smart People Versus Smart Systems

An economic system with free markets uses prices as a signal. Buyers and sellers both change their behavior when prices change. Observers, like the folks in government, also see the signal and hear about it from the buyers and sellers. William A. Galston at the WSJ (behind paywall) takes our current president, The Frontrunner, to the woodshed for the inability of his administration to have insight in the infant formula shortage. As William is a Brookings guy, criticism of The Frontrunner by him is big news but we think this criticism is consistent with the Progressive mind. That is, progressives believe if there are really smart experts in government, people like William, they will figure out all of the right policies including infant formula. So when William says:

Three months ago, most Americans were unaware of these facts about the infant formula industry, but it stretches credulity to believe that the White House wasn’t. When the Abbott plant shut down, alarm bells should have gone off at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and planning should have begun to avert the inevitable shortages. Judging by the scramble of the past 10 days, whatever plans there were didn’t get very far.

He is right that the administration failed on infant formula but he is missing the bigger point. It is hard to be smart about the right thing. We want smart people but smart systems like free markets are more important. People everywhere tend to work in their own self-interest. It is especially true in government that self-interest for most folks has not rocking the boat high on the list. So somebody in the FDA saying, “Hey, we need to put everyone to work on temporarily reducing restrictions on importing infant formula,” is not a suggested career move. It is a better career move for FDA employees to shut down the infant formula plant until they are absolutely sure that there is nothing that can be blamed on them. And, of course, that is what happened

Earlier in his post William notes the tariffs and other regulatory barriers to bring infant formula in to the US. William doesn’t mention The Donald’s responsibility on trade so we will. The blame needs to be bipartisan. He also notes there are some “unnecessary rigidities” in the WIC program to provide infant formula to the needy. At the link you will see that the USDA claims WIC serves about half of the infants born in the US. Half! Expanding programs is in the self-interest of those working for the program.

Right on Progressive cue, Wisconsin’s governor, The Suit, has issued an executive order against price “gouging” on infant formula. We thought the scare quotes were necessary. Here is the start of the story:

Vendors cannot sell baby formula at “unreasonably excessive prices” for the next 90 days under an executive order [The Suit] signed Thursday to address shortages affecting Wisconsinites and people across the nation.

Remember, the needy and nearly needy are already taken care of by WIC. So what is The Suit doing other than sending a signal? We hope that nobody in Wisconsin state or local government will actually be trying to find and prosecute “unreasonably excessive prices” for infant formula. If they do we would like to be on the legal defense team as the state tries to define “unreasonably excessive prices.”

FDA policies, tariffs, trade barriers, and unnecessary rigidities lead to shortages. Shortages lead to price controls. Who could have seen it coming? Well, lots of people saw it but not William, The Frontrunner or The Donald.

We need people like fictional Jack Bauer and real Winston Churchill in government but we call much of government bureaucracy (check out the second and third definition) and most government employees bureaucrats for a reason. The variation of prices in a free market creates a very effective alarm bell. They alert everybody without the need for special insight.

We agree with William that The Frontrunner has failed on infant formula and The Donald is part of the problem. The easy and small part of the solution is a new administration that excludes The Frontrunner and The Donald. Surely cognitive limitations mean that the new administration will be blind to and blindsided by some new crisis. The big and difficult part of the solution is free markets. The reason creating free markets is difficult is that the buyers come to the government for succor when the prices go up and the sellers come when the prices go down. The administration and the bureaucrats always hear those alarms.

Chelsea FC Sale

The Chelsea soccer team was sold for the highest price ever for a sports franchise. It is variously reported as $3.1 billion or over $5 billion. As the difference in numbers demonstrates, media reporting on business and economics is always suspect. So when we rely on media reports below we understand that we might need to be educated about the facts.

Chelsea is part of the English Premier League (EPL) and power in European soccer including winning the Champions League in 2021. Roman Abramovich, the former owner, was encouraged or forced to sell by the EPL and the UK government due to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Roman is a Russian connected with Vladimir Putin although he has a Portuguese passport, is a citizen of Israel, and needed Portuguese approval for the sale.

We are OK with Roman being forced out as an EPL owner. It is their club and they can decide who joins and who can stay. CNN tells us what the new owner Todd Boehly was subjected to:

The Premier League statement noted [Todd] had passed the board’s “Premier League’s Owners’ and Directors’ Test (OADT).”

We’d really like to see the OADT instrument but that is just curiosity. What troubles us is this:

The club said that of the total investment being made, 2.5 billion pounds ($3.08 billion) will be used to buy the shares in the club and this money would be deposited into a frozen UK bank account “with the intention to donate 100% to charitable causes as confirmed by Roman Abramovich.” [Emphasis added]

So that says Roman gets nothing and that word is bold adds to our attention. We have a problem with Roman getting nothing. As we have made clear we don’t know exactly what the sanctions were and how they are enforced. Here is another quote:

[Roman] was sanctioned by British and European authorities because of his links to Russian President Vladimir Putin following the invasion of Ukraine. British and Portuguese authorities had to ensure the oligarch would not profit from the enforced sale of the club. [Emphasis added]

Profit and proceeds are very different. Even having the government claim the profits on the sale is troubling since Roman had owned the club for almost two decades.

We don’t understand the theory that appears to allow the British and European governments to claim all the assets within their jurisdiction of certain individuals. We see no evidence of due process to ensure that these actions cannot be expanded to other individuals. As we said, we are happy to be educated about how this came about but it seems troubling for property rights and liberty.

Harry Or Jimmy And Climate

Robert B. Zoellick has a post at the WSJ about our current president, The Frontrunner, entitled [The Frontrunner’s] Choice: Harry Truman Or Jimmy Carter. The subtitle is two sentences: His presidency is going off the rails [we agree]. He needs to engineer a turnaround [we agree] to get America out of its funk [we are not sure about our funk]. Robert picks Harry but we disagree. We think Harry was a better president but his accomplishments were international. We think the times demand The Frontrunner becomes Jimmy. We need a Democrat to set the stage for return to sensible economic policies like Jimmy did with his emphasis on deregulation. We think the possibility of The Frontrunner moving in that direction approaches zero but, as we learned from another Democrat, Bill Clinton, that a midterm drubbing can lead to more sensible economic policies.

We want, however, to review this sentence from Robert:

Americans may struggle to understand climate models, but everyone has seen the severe storms and flooding along with the need for adaptation.

Let’s break it down into three parts starting with: Americans struggle to understand climate models. Extraordinarily few Americans struggle with climate models. They are amazingly complex. Here is a brief primer from Steven Hayward at PowerLine. Steve’s post is not nearly enough to understand climate model. What we what to understand are the implications of such models.

Robert’s next phase is: but everyone has seen the severe storms and flooding. Well actually no. There is little evidence of bigger and badder hurricanes. See, for example, here:

Hurricane Ida also has brought new claims about the dangers of climate change, but those assertions are inconsistent with the satellite record on tropical cyclones, which shows no trend since the early 1970s.

and here. What we couldn’t find is a great chart we saw on hurricanes so you will have to trust us (or not – we understand human memory is not reliable) on the contents. There are lots of ways to measure hurricanes: number of storms, number of intense storms, days of intense storms, number of storms hitting land and this chart had several of those over time. Our take was that the results were mixed. Some had increased and some had decreased. We’re convinced there isn’t much of a trend.

Sidebar: One bad way to measure hurricanes and storms is the dollars of damage. There are three problems. Number one is inflation. That can be solved by using real dollars. Number two is we have more and better stuff because of prosperity. That is really difficult to solve. To see the problem walk around neighborhoods with houses built in different eras. Newer houses are bigger and, dare we say, better. Number three we are better at accounting for losses because of prosperity. It is hard to make dollars a meaningful measure of hurricanes so stick with a variety of storm measures. End Sidebar.

Robert’s last phrase is: the need to adaptation. The next sentence is about government boosting scientific research and we are a bit confused if that is the adaptation Robert refers to. The government and particularly, president should support basic scientific research financially. More importantly, the president should support science rather than scaremongering as Bjorn Lomborg tells us:

The rhetoric on climate change has become ever more extreme and less moored to the actual science. Over the past 20 years, climate scientists have painstakingly increased knowledge about climate change, and we have more — and more-reliable — data than ever before. But at the same time, the rhetoric that comes from commentators and the media has become increasingly irrational.

You should read the whole post at NRO and really read the whole book. Bjorn is a true believer in Climate Change who also understands economics. He is really worth your time.

And, of course, we need to mention our position on climate change which is market based. We need to eliminate the the gas tax and replace it will a carbon tax. Do you want a carbon tariff too? At the same time you eliminate or phase out all the energy specific subsidies like electric cars and solar power. There are two reasons why. First because the rationale for subsidies is that carbon based applications are not fully priced. Secondly, we need to let markets decide on the best solutions. That is not a job for the president or anyone in the government is equipped to decide.

So we are hoping The Frontrunner becomes Jimmy and goes sensible on Climate Change. The prospects for those outcomes don’t look good at this time.

Military Aid To Ukraine

Philip Klein at NRO asks a really good question about aid to the Ukraine. We will give him his whole first paragraph to set it up:

On the main page, we have an editorial making the case for the $40 billion Ukraine aid package. But putting my spending hawk hat on, I am left with trepidation about authorizing another large expense at a time of historically high debt. The question I keep chewing over is: What is the limiting principle on Ukraine aid?

You should read the whole thing along with the editorial. We can’t enumerate all the possibilities so we are left we some general notions that apply. We agree with Senator Tom Cotton (also on NRO) that the US should lead the free world but we need to be realistic in our foreign policy.

Sidebar: Tom’s argument is subtle. Our quick summary is: trust elected officials to make decisions within the framework. Voting comes after decisions. Government leaders should generally support leadership in the free world but we can’t fix everything. Therefore, leadership will need to make hard decisions about tradeoffs. We think it makes more sense than the alternative. We elect government officials to make decisions on our behalf. We don’t want them blindly following formulas. End Sidebar.

It is close to certain that there will be more requests for Ukrainian aid. In evaluating each request we want to remember sunk costs. The $40 billion we are currently spending will be gone. The only thing that matters for additional requests is their impact on the future. We sympathize with Philip and his concerns about spending. There are, however three reasons we would tend to support additional requests for Ukraine military funding.

First, it is great military spending because it degrades the Russian military, one of our primary Geo-political foes. We should compare this to Reagan’s military build up in the 1980s. The Soviets couldn’t keep up. Now the Russians can’t keep up with the US weapons production. It is unsure that there will be the wonderful conclusion of ending the Soviet empire that Reagan and HW Bush created but all the scenarios look pretty good.

Second, It puts us on the right side of defending borders, trade, and freedom. We should be, as Tom said, the leaders of the free world.

Third, it gives us a great way to show the awesome power of US weapon systems. It should lead other countries to be more restrained in their interest in attacking their foes.

As additional requests come in we would need to look at the circumstances. If the Ukrainians were at the gates of Moscow then our answer would change. Philip is right on the deficit. There might be domestic circumstances that would constrain the US. But for now it looks like a cheap way to keep Putin and Russia from acting on its imperial designs. The cost of not supporting the Ukrainians would be much greater later.

Media Bias And The GOP

In the last few posts we have been looking at media bias and the Democrats. The Democrats largely, but not entirely, have media superiority. It is generally a great thing for Democrats as they can expect friendly faces and friendly treatment from the media. The problem they have, as we have seen with the White House response to the Jeff Bezos tweet, is that they can get completely flummoxed by even standard questions.

The GOP has a very different problem. They are used to a hostile media that favors the Democrats over the GOP. The phrase “Republicans Pounce” has even made the Urban Dictionary. Check it out if you are not familiar with the phrase. There are right-wing outlets but they are fewer in number, reaching smaller numbers, and less influential. And those few outlets are divided into those emphasizing political support for the GOP but not those evil RINOs and less political and more policy oriented outlets.

Sidebar: We agree it is not a perfect dichotomy of media on the right. PowerLine, an example of what we call right-wing media, tends towards the former and National Review, an example of what we call conservative media, tends towards the latter. We enjoy both sites and the Venn diagrams do overlap but the tendencies are different. That post comparing conservative and right-wing media should appear soon. End Sidebar.

We get letters like this all the time but our recent example is a two page missive from a GOP Congressional candidate. The candidate in question is a sitting Congressman but in redrawn district. The first page is entirely filled with attacks on our president (The Frontrunner), Nancy Pelosi, and Wisconsin’s governor, The Suit. It is not that they don’t deserve it but it is a media problem caused mostly by the Democrat media but partially by the right-wing media. GOP candidates need to emphasize communicating problems because the Democrat media is going to play down the problems like inflation (we are doing this from memory so we might not have the figures exactly right) is down from 8.3 percent to 8.1 percent. The Frontrunner is doing great! Obviously, both inflation results are not acceptable to voters and a disaster for the Democrats.

What is largely missing from the letter is any mention of specific policies that need to be implemented. Near the top of the second page is a nice example of the influence of the right-wing media. He is proud to be a conservative Republican and number one on his list is:

We need to change course and restore our way of life.

???? We have no idea what that means. For all the failures of the last three presidents we don’t see that they have been collectively able to change our way of life. The Frontrunner has had a negative impact but he certainly hasn’t changed our way of life in the last 16 months.

One of the actions that could eventually change our way of life is government spending. The candidate does say he has led the charge against out-of-control spending but there are no examples. The likely reason is his charge has been blocked by, among others, the last three presidents.

It is the media as we have it. It means that GOP standard bearers are always going to be asked about abortion in the case of incest but Democrats will rarely if ever be asked about third trimester abortions. For those GOP folks they have to thread the needle between the the Democrat media that looms large in the general election and the right-wing media that influences the primaries. As we see it, both parties have acclimated to the extant system but neither party is thriving in the current circumstances. The voters have the same unfortunate result.

Mind Reader Appears At The White House

We promise we will get to the GOP and media soon but the ongoing spat between Jeff Bezos and the White House is too interesting to stop now. It started with a WH tweet that said:

You want to bring down inflation?

Let’s make sure the wealthiest corporations pay their fair share.

We got this and other tweets from The Best Of The Web Today by James Freeman at the WSJ so we could cut and paste. If you can get past the paywall you should check out James. Jeff responded with a tweet that the two sentences are unrelated:

The newly created Disinformation Board should review this tweet, or maybe they need to form a new Non Sequitur Board instead. Raising corp taxes is fine to discuss. Taming inflation is critical to discuss. Mushing them together is just misdirection. [Emphasis added]

James quotes CNBC showing that the WH finally prepared a response to Jeff. As we said in a recent post, it was astounding that the new press secretary was not prepared for such an obvious question. The WH response shows that they couldn’t come up with much better (from James quoting CNBC):

White House spokesperson Andrew Bates responded in a statement that “it doesn’t require a huge leap to figure out why” Bezos, the world’s second-wealthiest man, would oppose Biden’s proposal to hike taxes on the ultra-wealthy and corporations. [paragraph cut] It’s also unsurprising that this tweet comes after the President met with labor organizers, including Amazon employees,” Bates said in a statement. [Emphasis added]

Where was the mind reading Andrew when the administration needed him? He knows, without any evidence, Jeff’s thinking on corporate tax rates, individual tax rates, and labor unions. Here is where we see media bias trying to favor the Democrats. What Andrew says is more coherent than the press secretary remarks but it is hardly on point. Jeff didn’t oppose raising taxes on corporations (it is fine to discuss). Jeff makes no mention of other taxes on the wealthy. Andrew makes no attempt to rebut Jeff’s point that the two are unrelated. Media bias means CNBC ignores how unrelated Andrew’s comments are to the underlying controversy.

James, however, has a tweet from Larry Summers (economic advisor to the two most recent previous Democrat presidents) that comes closer to addressing the controversy:

I think @JeffBezos is mostly wrong in his recent attack on the @JoeBiden Admin. It is perfectly reasonable to believe, as I do and @POTUS asserts, that we should raise taxes to reduce demand to contain inflation and that the increases should be as progressive as possible. [Emphasis added]

A small point is from the first part of what we have bolded. We don’t see that The Frontrunner has asserted the process of how higher taxes will reduce inflation. We love Larry’s almost honesty. He might not be addressing the controversy because he isn’t explicit on corporate taxes. We have concluded he is including corporate taxes but it just didn’t fit in the tweet. Your milage may vary.

Larry is saying two important things. First, increasing taxes progressively including corporate taxes reduces aggregate demand. That implies that lowering corporate taxes, as the GOP and The Donald did, raises aggregate demand or creates economic growth. Second, reducing aggregate demand, a recession, is the Frontrunner’s only policy for dealing with inflation. Read the tweets from the White House and Larry again to see exactly what their only plan is: a recession. See Kevin D. Williamson at the NY Post for some of the opportunities for increasing supply like pipelines and other economic tools available to The Frontrunner.

The problem the Democrats have with media bias is that they don’t get good feedback. Democrats, like everybody else (and especially on twitter), say foolish things. Many readers, those that can be convinced, will recognize the challenge of mind reading and react accordingly.

Mind Readers Needed At White House

We are really going to get to press bias and the GOP but events keep getting in the way. Karine Jean-Pierre is the new White House press secretary. As Arjun Singh at NRO reports, Karine is the new in her position but has been working as second in command:

The 44-year-old political operative was named the new White House press secretary this afternoon. President Joe Biden announced in a statement that she would succeed Jen Psaki, who has held the role since the beginning of the administration, on May 13. Jean-Pierre has previously been the principal deputy press secretary in the office, serving as Psaki’s top deputy, and has conducted briefings from the White House podium.

So Karine should be up to speed with White House communications. The White House had tweeted (we are using the White House transcript provided by Scott Johnson at PowerLine. We use it because we can cut and paste. Do check out all of Scott’s comments.):

You want to bring down inflation? Let’s make sure the wealthiest corporations pay their fair share.

You don’t need to be a mind reader to see that this will pique folks interest as there is no obvious reason that higher taxes will cause inflation to abate. Then Jeff Bezos, a person of some note, came out with a tweet that basically asked WTF and included this gem:

The newly created disinformation board should review [the White House] tweet.

Scott’s post has the entire word salad that Karine creates in response to a couple of question from Peter Doocy. Do read the whole thing. Our question is: how is it possible that the mind readers in the White House were not prepared for these questions? Karine is new to her position but not new to the White House communications. If the communications shop at the White House hadn’t figured out on its own how foolish the tweet was then surely they would be alerted to the controversy after Jeff’s tweet. Going to the podium and hoping that the press doesn’t ask serious questions isn’t a great strategy.

This is the problem of press bias for Democrats. They get used to puff questions so anything more challenging cause them to sweat. What should have happened is the first question is: “Jeff called a recent White House tweet disinformation? What is your response?” And Karine gives the communications shop’s best prepared response. And most of the media would buy it.

Two Astonishing White House Tweets

Don’t worry we will get to the GOP soon but the White House Tweets follow up on our last post about the media bias and the Democrats. All the commentary is that the Democrats are in big trouble for the midterms in 2022 and the presidential election in 2024. So the Democrats are trying to get traction from somewhere to at least reduce the carnage. Here is the first sentence of the first of two White House tweets about our president, The Frontrunner:

When [The Frontrunner] took office, millions were unemployed and there was no vaccine available.

Obviously, the COVID vaccine was available before The Frontrunner became president as there are pictures of The Frontrunner getting it. This is dated 12/21/20 and has video too. Given the resources available to the White House you would have to classify the tweet as a lie. MWG has no editor and his skills are limited so he had to transcribe the tweets. We were lucky to catch an error on the date. Thus, there are no links. Our errors they tend to honest ones. Here is the second White House tweet on COVID vaccinations:

We previously misstated that vaccinations were unavailable in January 2021 [and December 2020]. We should have said they were not widely available. Vaccines became available shortly before the President came into office. Since then he is responsible for fully vaccinating over 200 million people.

The first sentence has the unbelievable claim that the White House misstated the vaccination lie and tries to suggest it was only available in January 2021. We can argue about shortly since they are not specific. The third sentence is the biggest whopper of all. The Frontrunner has no responsibility for what the private companies developed before his election and little or no responsibility for the jabs the private companies and NGOs delivered after his election or even after he became president. If anything, The Frontrunner slowed down the vaccination process with his doubts about The Donald’s vaccine. Speaking of Democrat domination of media bias, here is PolitiFact trying to cover for The Frontrunner and Triple A on that subject. See if you are convinced.

It looks like 2022 is going to be a memorable year for media bias.

Inflation Kudos For Catherine Rampell

This is the first of two posts on media bias. Here we are going to look at the impact on the Democrats. Our take on media bias is that a substantial majority is left and strongly supports the Democrats. The problem Democrats have in elections is that they don’t get much feedback because it is easy to avoid GOP and conservative media. A much smaller portion of the media supports the GOP equally strongly. An even small portion of the media is conservative and doesn’t necessarily support the GOP.

In this post we are going to look at Catherine Rampell’s column, An Inflation Conspiracy Theory Is Infecting The Democratic Party. Catherine shows her leftist bona fides by starting out with a suggestion for the Democrat party and immediately switching to a GOP insult:

A conspiracy theory has been infecting the Democratic Party, its progressive base, even the White House. It’s not quite as self-sabotaging as the horse-dewormer-cures-covid false theory that swept up many Republicans last year, but it’s pretty damaging nonetheless.

But after that she seriously takes on the Democrats. Although she is not a Democrat office holder, we are giving her our second Profile In Democrat Courage. You should read the whole thing. It is not that we entirely agree with everything in Catherine post. We’re not the Full Milton but we think monetary policy is a big part of the inflation story. We would have been harder on price controls and their sorry history. But she asks good questions about proposed Democrat policies to allegedly restrain prices:

Why are companies, which have always been “greedy” (or, one might say, “profit-maximizing”), able to raise prices now? What changed between early 2020, when corporate profits and inflation were plummeting, and today, when both metrics are “unconscionably” up?

She has a general solution with some Democrat and The Donald shattering specifics:

The solution to the broader increase in prices, then, is ramping up supply (e.g., getting more workers in the labor force, removing trade barriers, encouraging oil-drilling); and/or, tamping down demand (e.g., raising interest rates). [Emphasis added.

Well, we are convinced it is also restraining the growth in money. Both the Democrats and The Donald are trade barrier fans. They are always bad for consumers and have been a disaster during the infant formula shortage.

Then she has the intestinal fortitude to take on specific Democrat proposals:

Worst of all, [the inflation conspiracy theory] is encouraging Democrats to pursue policies that could be actively harmful. These include a proposed tax on “windfall” oil profits, which would likely reduce oil production exactly when we want output to increase. Or a mass student debt jubilee, which could drive consumer demand even higher. [Emphasis added]

We would say that The Donald’s trade barriers and Democrat policies to restrict drilling and transporting oil are already actively harmful to the economy. Catherine’s use of “we” piqued our curiosity. We are not convinced that Democrats, or at least the Democrat leadership would agree we want oil and gas output to increase. Here is an interesting international example. You already know about Keystone XL.

We hope that Catherine’s courage will cause others in the media and in the Democrat Party to question their dogma. We have been disappointed before but to keep your hope up we will leave you with this tweet from Jeff Bezos replying to a tweet from our president, The Frontrunner, suggesting that higher corporate taxes will help Whip Inflation Now (yes we are connecting The Frontrunner with Gerry Ford):

The newly created Disinformation Board should review this tweet, or maybe they need to form a new Non Sequitur Board instead. Raising corp taxes is fine to discuss. Taming inflation is critical to discuss. Mushing them together is just misdirection.

It is far from certain but there is hope that our government might do something serious about inflation. Perhaps Catherine will be part of the solution.