For Britain This is Radical, Even For the Conservative Party

9/23/26 Daily Mail:

Kemi Badenoch on Wednesday night launched plans for a tough crackdown on Britain's ballooning benefits bill.

The jobless who have paid little in taxes will see their handouts docked and be banned from spending them on vices such as drinking, smoking or gambling if the Tories return to power.

Under the proposals, targeting those who can work but choose not to, the long-term unemployed who have not contributed enough to the system would see their Universal Credit payments cut by 30 per cent.

And instead of receiving the reduced welfare support in cash, claimants would be given money on a 'Back To Work' card that could not be used to buy alcohol or cigarettes, withdraw cash or gamble. 

More than 300,000 people would be moved on to the lower 'Subsistence Allowance', saving taxpayers half a billion pounds a year by the end of the decade, it is claimed. 

On Wednesday night, Mrs Badenoch said: 'If you can work, you should work. Helping people into work is not punishment.

'The best welfare is a well-paid job. So, we will be tough on those who exploit the system because the current system is unfair to workers, taxpayers and those who truly need support.

'Welfare must be a safety net for those who genuinely need it, not a lifestyle choice for those who can't be bothered.'

Not a Newspaper Headline You Normally See

 Opera singer held in triple murder

Volume 1 of Simak's Short Stories

I did not even need to check publication dates to figure them out. They are the sort of cliched and now scientifically antique stories of the 1930s filled the native inhabitants of Mars and the Moon; Mars as a dying planet with a small remnant population. Communication by radio and sometimes by what today would seem like Zoom. Reflecting that Simak was still a newspaper reporter in the 1930s in Wisconsin, too many involve newspapers right out of The Front Page (1928) with hard-bitten, hard-drinking, stogie smoking editors and reporters and young copy boys pulling first sheets off the presses for the editor. (Hell, maybe The Front Page was not so far off reality.) Even when the newspaper is the New Chicago [Moon] Rocket. Some of this stuff does not age well.

Why We Run Deficits

 9/25/26 Department of Justice:

A federal jury in Fort Worth convicted a Texas licensed professional counselor yesterday for his role in a $26 million health care fraud, kickbacks, and money laundering scheme.

Yeah, I know, it is only $26 million  To paraphrase Sen. Dickson, "$26 million here, $26 million there, after a while it adds up to a $40 trillion national debt." 

9/27/26 Houston Chronicle reports:

The DOJ said Curry laundered some of the $17 million he received from TRICARE, putting it toward hotel stays, "a lavish casino-themed party" and what it's calling "a gold-plated Tesla Cybertruck."

I am skeptical that it was gold plated.

9/23/26 NPR:

WASHINGTON — Vice President JD Vance and other Trump administration officials said Tuesday they plan to remove 760,000 Affordable Care Act enrollees from public healthcare exchanges, alleging that the individuals were fraudulently enrolled in the program, or simply do not exist.

Vance said the discovery and canceled subsidy payments for hundreds of thousands of people from the exchanges, part of an administration-wide crackdown on fraud, would result in $2.2 billion in cost savings.

Of course, this being NPR, they have to cast doubt by the usual suspects but even NPR admits:

 The Government Accountability Office suggests fraud risks in the advance premium tax credit do exist - however it's unclear at what scale. The GAO conducted covert testing using fictitious ACA applicants enrolled in 2024 and 2025. A report released in December showed that the federal marketplace approved subsidized coverage for almost all of the GAO's 24 fake enrollees.

 

Fortunately, South Africa's Gun Laws Are Much Tougher Now

 9/27/26 NPR:

Johannesburg — A spate of mass shootings in three major South African cities killed nearly 40 people this week, with such incidents increasingly common in a country already known for its high crime rates.

On Saturday night, South African police said at least 10 people were killed at a shisanyama — a common kind of local restaurant selling barbecued meat — near Cape Town, while eleven others were injured.

Why the Oil Crisis Is Lessening

 9/24/26 Reuters:

SINGAPORE, Sept 25 (Reuters) - Crude oil flows out of the Strait of Hormuz reached 33.7 ​million barrels so far in the week starting September ‌20, preliminary ship-tracking data from Kpler showed on Friday, putting exports roughly on track with the previous week's levels.

The traffic comprised 19 tankers, of which ​17 are very large crude carriers (VLCCs) that can carry 2 ​million barrels of oil, the data showed. Most of ⁠the tankers are laden with crude from Saudi Arabia, followed ​by Iraq.

And that does not include ships transitting with transponders turned off. Still not at prewar levels but not at 0 either. 

How Did I Miss This?

ANJRPC v. Attorney-General New Jersey (3rd Cir. 2026) struck down New Jersey's ban on large capacity magazines and AR15s.

I worked on this case.

Flying First Class

We flew first class on American to Dallas. The only time thst I flown first class before was in the 1990s when NRA needed me at the last minute to testify at a Michigan legislative hearing. I think there were no mooing class seats available at short notice. My wife was skeptical of spending a few hundred dollars extra but so much leg room and elbow room! Being literally the first row on and off was also very luxurious. While waiting to take off, the flight attendants got us something to drink. 

Clifford Simak Mastodonia

The Beatles' Taxman was a response to the their encounter with British tax law once they started making real money. 

Mastodonia is a time travel story where an important subplot is that the money they Stef going to make from time travel will be exempt from the IRS because they will set up operations in 150,000 BC North America where the U.S. lacks jurisdiction. Did Simak suddenly start making as the saying goes, "real money"?

It is, even ignoring the cynical question about tax avoidance, an intriguing story of an archeologist who goes looking for a crashed spacecraft and runs into an ancient stranded astronaut who is immortal and can construct "time roads" into Earth's past. Pleistocene, Miocene, Jurassic.

Subplot involve giving poor ghetto dwellers a frontier with no resource limits, safaris to hunt dinosaurs, Hollywood goes to make movies, religious fanatics attempting to get a monopoly on travels to Crucifixion time. Lots of interesting ideas and a love story.

Legal Scholars Conference at GPRC

I had been quite worried about how my speaking would go at this.  I am told it came across well. I do not know if this would work for an hour lecture in a classroom.  I was pretty tired after 15 minutes. 

Legal Immigration to America

A recurring complaint of the left is that legal immigration is so hard and expensive that there is no practical way to legally come here. This has seemed like crap to me, because the Hart-Celler Immigration Act of 1965 gave preference to Western Hemisphere immigrants.  If you are legal immigrant, share your experience. 

An Important Effort by Trump Administration to Expand Recycling

 4/15/26 AP:

The Environmental Protection Agency is reconsidering whether facilities that recycle plastic chemically should be held to the same strict air pollution standards as incinerators.

The possible change is alarming environmental advocates who say it would lead to more dangerous pollution spewing into communities, with fewer or no checks at the federal level. The plastics industry disputes that, saying it would clear up confusion while still controlling emissions.

The world is pumping millions of tons of plastic pollution into the environment every year. While dozens of countries and many environmental groups have urged caps on production, industry and several big oil-producing countries have resisted, arguing instead for improvements in reuse and recycling.

Chemical recycling uses heat or chemicals to break down plastics. The main method, a process known as pyrolysis, has long been regulated as incineration by the Clean Air Act. The EPA limits emissions from incinerators of nine air pollutants, including toxic particulates, heavy metals and dioxins.

The agency says a potential new rule could instead recognize pyrolysis as manufacturing.

The American Chemistry Council, an industry group, has long argued for such a change.

How dare you solve a landfill and ocean pollution problem! 

MSM Does Journalism

 9/15/26 Newsweek:

Images claiming to show President Donald Trump kissing his executive assistant, Natalie Harp, on a golf course have circulated widely on social media, prompting questions about whether they are genuine....

No established news organization, official White House photographer or photo agency has been identified as the source of either image. Searches of White House material and photographs published by AP, Reuters and Getty Images did not locate a corresponding image from the purported encounter.

The two circulating pictures appear to be versions of the same scene rather than independent photographs corroborating one another. One is clearer, while the other is blurred and contains fewer details that can be examined.

The higher-resolution version contains several visual irregularities associated with AI-generated imagery. Harp’s visible hand appears to have six fingers, while parts of the golf equipment and background lack consistent shapes and detail. The lower-resolution image is too degraded for some of those anomalies to be seen clearly, but blurring an image does not establish that the underlying scene is authentic.

Newsweek also submitted both versions to Grok, the AI assistant developed by xAI. Its assessment was consistent with the anomalies outlined above. Grok said no single irregularity proved fabrication but concluded that the combined evidence was characteristic of an AI-generated image that had subsequently been blurred or compressed.

Newsweek further asked ChatGPT to assess the files. It said the irregularities described above were consistent with AI generation or substantial digital manipulation and found no useful camera, date, location or editing metadata embedded in either image. ChatGPT cautioned that metadata is often removed during online sharing and therefore cannot settle the question alone, but assessed fabrication as the more likely explanation.

OpenAI’s verification tool found no SynthID watermark or trusted C2PA record linking the image to OpenAI products, but cautioned that this did not rule out its creation with another AI system....

The images do not authentically show Trump kissing Harp on a golf course. No verified source for the purported photographs has been identified, and the clearer version contains visual anomalies associated with AI generation, including what appears to be a sixth finger on Harp’s hand. The two pictures are versions of the same unverified scene, not separate images confirming that the encounter occurred.

The Headline Sounds Like Big Mother is Going to Knock on the Door

 The actual article seems not bad at all, except for the cost to preventwhat is actually a rare but tragic situation. 9/21/26 Daily Caller:

Massachusetts Responds To Lindsay Clancy Failure By Expanding Home Surveillance Of New Moms..

Democratic Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey recently proposed expanding home visits from nurses for new parents and postpartum mental health screenings across the state.

Healey has proposed a $2 million investment to provide universal access to the Department of Public Health’s (DPH) Welcome Family program across the state and also $250,000 to broaden the Department of Mental Health’s Massachusetts Child Psychiatry Access Program for Moms, according to a Sept. 15 news release. The move comes as the Lindsay Clancy trial in Massachusetts has fueled an intense public debate about postpartum mental health conditions. (RELATED: Patrick Clancy Says Lindsay Never Asked Forgiveness For Killing Their Kids)

Welcome Family is a voluntary and free home visiting program “that supports parents and caregivers in the weeks after a baby is born,” per the announcement. The program presently serves 3,000 births annually, according to Healey’s office.

Critters in the Pool

No, not bears.

The rodent was doing a decent dog paddle. I removed him with a skimmer net. I put him next to the fence where he was shivering up a storm. My wife's last experience saving a rodent from bigger threats went so poorly that she did not immediately look for a little blanket for it. A few hours later, he was gone.

Yesterday's 9th Circus En Banc Decision

 YUKUTAKE V. LOPEZ (9th Cir. 2026) (en banc) involves provisions of Hawaii's law:

1. That requires those who meet their standards for firearms purchase to then buy the gun within 30 days or start all over again, and,

2. Bring the gun to a police station within five days after acquisition for inspection.

The en banc decision upheld both provisions, claiming that footnote 9 of Bruen makes any shall-issue law presumptively constitutional:

As detailed infra, Bruen instructs courts to engage in a two-step inquiry: First, does the Second Amendment’s plain text cover the plaintiff’s conduct?  And second, if so, is the legislation at issue consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation?  Id. at 24.  Yet in a footnote, the Bruen Court included an apparent carve-out to this test: objective, non-abusive “shall-issue” licensing regimes are presumptively constitutional.  Id. at 38 n.9.  

As Judge Nelson's dissent observes:

But the majority incorrectly holds that footnote 9 of New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), creates a “carve-out” or “safe harbor” from Second Amendment scrutiny, and is thus analytically distinct from Bruen’s framework.  Maj. Op. 13, 18.  Footnote 9 does not say that all objective regulations placed within a “shall issue” licensing regime are “presumptively constitutional.” Id. at 13.  It only addresses “public carry” regulations not at issue here.  Bruen, 597 U.S. at 38 n.9.  And it does not shift to the citizen the burden to prove that a law governing protected conduct has been “put toward abusive ends.”  Maj. Op. 17 (cleaned up).  That interpretation violates Bruen’s clear command that it is the government’s burden to show that restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms are “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition.”  597 U.S. at 24.   

Instead, footnote 9 described non-abusive regulations to ensure that only “law-abiding, responsible citizens” were carrying handguns outside the home, preserved challenges when a permitting system denies citizens their right to carry, and concerned only longstanding licensing regimes.  Id. at 38 n.9 (citation omitted). 

Hawaii’s challenged provisions are something else.  Hawaii requires purchasers of handguns to obtain a handgun-acquisition permit that is void unless the permittee completes the purchase within 30 days, and it requires persons acquiring certain firearms to bring them to a police station for physical inspection within five days of acquisition.  Haw. Rev. Stat. §§ 134-2(e), 134-3(c).  Neither regulation has anything to do with determining whether applicants are “‘law-abiding, responsible citizens’” eligible for licenses to “exercis[e] their Second Amendment right to public carry.”  Bruen, 597 U.S. at 38 n.9 (quoting District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 635 (2008)).  Indeed, the challenged laws operate after the applicant has completed a background check, firearms training course, and myriad other requirements—i.e., after he has proven himself a “lawabiding, responsible citizen”—and has been issued a permit to purchase (not carry) a handgun.  And neither regulation was “longstanding” in 2022 when Bruen issued. 

Nelson goes on to point out these laws did not develop based on public concerns about safety but as part of a not very subtle attempt to ignore Bruen: 

This case is all the worse since the challenged laws appear to be part of Hawaii’s consistent and not-so-subtle attempts to end run around the Second Amendment, which suggests that these laws are abusive under footnote 9.  See, e.g., Young v. Hawaii, 45 F.4th 1087, 1090–94 (9th Cir. 2022) (en banc) (O’Scannlain, J., dissenting); Teter v. Lopez, 76 F.4th 938, 942–43, 947–49 (9th Cir. 2023), reh’g en banc granted, opinion vacated, 93 F.4th 1150 (9th Cir. 2024), vacated as moot on reh’g en banc, 125 F.4th 1301 (9th Cir. 2025); State v. Wilson, 543 P.3d 440, 442 (Haw. 2024), abrogated by Wolford v. Lopez, 146 S. Ct. 2032, 2050 (2026).  Hawaii has only grown more intransigent in its “blatant defiance” of the Supreme Court’s clear commands on the Second Amendment.  Wilson v. Hawaii, 145 S. Ct. 18, 21 (2024) (Statement of Thomas, J., respecting the denial of certiorari) (citation omitted); cf. Granillo v. State, 593 P.3d 1, 28 (Haw. 2026) (accusing the U.S. Supreme Court of “[m]aking the country more dangerous with a Second Amendment unmoored from text or history and unrecognizable to the framers who wrote it”); id. (Bruen was “deadly jurisprudence,” and Wolford “show[ed] disdain for Hawai‘i’s constitutional traditions.”).  But Hawaii’s “[m]erely local attitudes can neither shrink nor inflate the meaning of fundamental Bill of Rights guarantees that apply to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment.”  Wolford, 146 S. Ct. at 2050. 

A correct application of Bruen to Hawaii’s regulations makes this case straightforward.  First, the Second Amendment’s plain text covers the acquisition of arms.  A person ordinarily cannot “keep” an arm without first acquiring it, and the law has long recognized that authorization of an act includes authorization of necessary predicate acts.  Luis v. United States, 578 U.S. 5, 26 (2016) (Thomas, J., concurring in the judgment).  Hawaii’s statewide restrictions govern the process by which ordinary citizens take possession of handguns; possession is the core conduct protected by the “right of the people to keep . . . Arms.”  U.S. Const. amend. II (emphasis added).  Second, Hawaii has not identified “a well-established and representative historical analogue” for either its short permit-use period or its acquisition-linked inspection mandate.  Bruen, 597 U.S. at 30.  Because Hawaii has not carried the burden Bruen places on the government, we should have affirmed the district court’s judgment.  I respectfully dissent.

Oh and Judge Van Dyke's dissent is also powerful:

But in spite of the Court’s obvious efforts to instruct lower courts to enforce the Second Amendment, the Ninth Circuit has done precisely the opposite.  That’s not a rhetorical statement: in this circuit, the Second Amendment safeguards less liberty now than it did in the wake of Heller.2 For Exhibit A on how things have changed in the wrong direction, look no further than the majority’s opening paragraph.  The majority recalls that the district court “blocked the implementation of [Hawaii’s] firearm licensing regime on Second Amendment grounds” the year before Bruen was decided.  Maj. Op. at 10.  The legal basis for reversing that injunction, according to the majority, is the “guidance” that Bruen provided on “how courts should analyze ‘shall-issue’ regimes like Hawaii’s.”  Id.  I agree that Bruen changed the law.  But if our court’s takeaway from Bruen is that Bruen changed the law to make it harder to mount a successful Second Amendment challenge, then somebody has seriously lost the plot.  

Fun Things You Find Digging Through Old Newspapers

 

With what I am researching, any laughs at all are nice.

Another Recent Novel

David Brin The Uplift War 3 is apparently volume 3 in a series set in a universe where species with salient potential are uplifted by a patron alien species. Humans are a weird exception having civilized enough to develop space travel without being uplifted, although some of the older and more arrogant species think we could have evolved sapience but whoever are true patron species did not take credit for it. Anyway, humans have interfered with chimpanzee and dolphin genetics to create creatures that can talk earn doctorate and generally operate as only socially inferior parts of the community. The plot involves an angry avian species (no, not Angry Birds) intent on taking away patron status from human patron as part of a multigalactic Cold War just beginning to grow hot. I will not spoil it by telling you more.

Brin is a scientist with a doctorate and the quality of the thought and writing is astonishing.  My only complaint is that while I think of myself as being a very literate person, I often needed to look up words, especially adjectives. I found myself often reminded of William F. Buckley using five dollar words when a fifty cent word would do the job fine.

Churchill's Second World War and T.E. Lawrence's Five Pillars of Wisdom also both stretched my vocabulary in places but not as severely as this. There comes a point where I decide that as entertaining of a yarn as Brin has spun, this may be more work than I want to expend for fun reading. Simak's books very occasionally make me look up a word but then again, he was writing for a better educated readership than is common today.

Clifford Simak The Visitors

Published in 1980. It has strong very intentional parallels to what happened when a technologically more sophisticated civilization (Europeans) arrived in North America at least how an exchange economy largely destroyed the Indian economic order as superior technology such as iron and firearms supplanted native cooking utensils and the bow. This in surprisingly short order made the Indians dependent on the Europeans. The bow had largely fallen out of use by Northeast woodland Indians by 1690 -- and gave Europeans a powerful tool of control over them.

Here, the visitors are incomprehensible to 20th century Americans. They can communicate in a very limited way as they consume natural resources while exchanging them for things that we clearly want, destroying our industrial capacity along the way. Not with any malevolent intent but unable to see how destructive this would become. (At least one colonial governor in the 18th century did recognize how firearms made the Indians dependent and bragged to London about his success.)

Imaginative and entertaining as all Simak novels are.

Italy Looking Out for Italians

9/20/26 Reuters:

MILAN, Sept 20 (Reuters) - Italy is preparing to ban face coverings in schools and to cap the number of foreign students per class, Prime Minister Giorgia ​Meloni said on Sunday as she played up her right-wing ‌credentials at a youth event organised by her party...

"If there is ‌only ⁠one child in a class who doesn't understand Italian, that child will likely be able to learn the language and integrate quickly with the help of classmates and teachers. However, if the number of children who don't understand ​the language becomes ​large - or even ⁠the majority - that is no longer integration; it is neglect," she added.

When Public Safety Agencies Reduced Physical Requirements for Employees Doing Jobs Requiring Strength...

Would you have expected it to go this far?

I am sure there are valuable jobs this short and clearly weak woman could have done for EMS, but this was not one of them.

Another Citation

Memorandum Opinion by U.S. Attorney-General:

Application of 18 U.S.C. § 922(b)(1) and (c)(1) to Young Adults Section 922(b)(1) and (c)(1) of title 18, U.S. Code, is unconstitutional as applied to young adults between eighteen and twenty who seek to purchase handguns. The provision prevents young adults, who are members of “the people” to whom the Second Amendment applies, from owning “arms” in common use for self-defense. This places the burden on the government to show that the restrictions are consistent with the  Nation’s tradition of firearm regulation, which it cannot do. 

They cite me at pp. 43-44:

Pistols, though less common than other firearms, existed at the Founding and were a familiar article of early American commerce. See Clayton E. Cramer & Joseph Edward Olson, Pistols, Crime, and Public: Safety in Early America, 44 Willamette L. Rev. 699, 706–11 (2008) (outlining the prevalence of pistols at the time of the Founding).  

How important are such opinions? Apparently, pretty important. To quote from an Obama-era memo "MEMORANDUM FOR ATTORNEYS OF THE OFFICE Re: Best Practices for OLC Legal Advice and Written Opinions "

As noted above, OLC's central function is to provide, pursuant to the Attorney General's delegation, controlling legal advice to Executive Branch officials in furtherance of the President's constitutional duties to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, and to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." 

More Progress on Gun Rights

 Elite Precision Customs v. BATF (5th Cir. 2026):

Plaintiffs unsuccessfully sought a permanent injunction against several provisions of 18 U.S.C. § 922 that collectively prohibit the buying and selling of handguns across state lines.  The only issue is whether those provisions are constitutional under the Second Amendment.  They are not:  Under Bruen, they implicate the Second Amendment’s plain text, making them presumptively unconstitutional, and the government has failed to meet its burden to justify the provisions as consistent with the nation’s tradition of firearms regulation.  We reverse and render judgment for plaintiffs. 

The GCA68 provision that prohibited sale of handguns to persons not a resident of state of sale had a certain logic: in 1968, there was no national database (what's a database?) that allowed for a nationwide check to see if you were a prohibited person in some state. Some states had provisions for this, or at least pretended that they did. Even quite recently, some states considered mental hospital records as so private that they could not check for involuntary commitments. 

We now have the NICS database that allows dealers to check if a buyer is disqualified from purchase. This may well expand sales at gun shows of handguns.

Parody of Woke? Or Evidence of How Insane 2025 Still Was?

 

If You Told Me This Was Parody of Woke

Why Did I Not Notice This?

9/4/26 Bureau of Labor Statistics reports 4.1% unemployment rate in August. The only lower rate in recent years was when Trump was inaugurated.

Great Video of Berkeley Law School Dean Admitting That He Will Perjure Himself About DEI

He is lecturing to a class and explains how they discriminate in hiring because unlike student admissions where N is large enough that statistical evidence of racial discrimination is impossible to prevent.  

This is clearly not too smart of a guy, making a direct admission that he tells other faculty to not admit that they are making racially discriminatory hiring decisions but do it silently. Then admits that he will deny what he just said if deposed. When deposed, you are under oath. He is loudly telling his students that he is going to perjury himself. 

Also, making such a statement in a restaurant with several like-minded bigots would be pretty safe but doing so in a classroom where students could be taping you is evidence of being too stupid to have a job.

A Surprising Story From CNN

9/17/26 CNN:

The bond market gave the Federal Reserve an ultimatum: Raise rates, or we will.

 So the Fed did the only thing it could do. Backed into a corner by rising Treasury yields and inflation, the central bank boosted its target interest rate Wednesday for the first time since 2023.

Americans have suffered from a persistent inflation problem for five years, and an interest rate hike is a powerful weapon that could help squash it. But it’s a blunt tool that comes with a nasty side effect: It can unintentionally turn the job market into collateral damage.

Still, for Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh & Co., this isn’t any ordinary inflation problem. It’s mainly a result of high energy prices caused by the war with Iran, and as my colleague Matt Egan noted in July: Warsh can’t reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

So the bond market got its wish Wednesday, and the reasonably strong job market and robust consumer spending probably gave the Fed enough room for error.

But the Fed is playing with fire. Raising interest rates risks slowing down the American economy without anything to show for it.
‘Weak case’

Before the Fed decision, some prominent economists were already on its case.

Goldman Sachs economists suggested in a note to clients this week that the case for a rate hike was “weak,” based on the state of the US economy. They argued the economy wasn’t overheating, demand wasn’t excessive, and the supply shocks fueling inflation – namely high oil and fuel prices – would correct themselves once the war ended.

It’s not that the Iran war and Ukraine’s attacks on Russian diesel refineries are part of the problem; they are the problem – all of it, Goldman’s economists said....

The Fed typically “looks through” supply shocks because they’re temporary and rate hikes are ineffective at combatting them. And once they fix themselves, the Fed may find that interest rates now are too high, artificially raising borrowing costs for businesses and consumers without actually tackling inflation.

“The Fed cannot control energy prices,” said Michael Pearce, chief US economist at Oxford Economics. “The economy is solid and can withstand a few rate hikes, but the risk is higher interest rates begin to weaken the labor market.”

Other discussions of the hike are also interesting. 9/17/26 CBS News:

Warsh, who was named by President Trump to succeed longtime Fed Chair Jerome Powell earlier this year, has previously vowed to tackle inflation. But economists had been unsure of his commitment to that goal, given that he had also echoed some of Mr. Trump's views that the economy could benefit from lower interest rates.

What changed? Between the time Warsh was nominated in January and this week's Fed meeting, inflation has sharply accelerated, driven largely by the Iran war's impact on global oil prices.

In January, consumer prices were rising at an annual rate of 2.4%, within touching distance of the Fed's 2% target. But soaring crude prices have reversed that progress, sending the Consumer Price Index to a three-year high of 4.2% in May. While inflation has eased slightly since then, dipping to 3.4% in August, it's still far higher than Fed officials like.

"The plain fact is that inflation is too high, and has been for too long," Warsh said in a press conference after the Fed announced the rate hike on Wednesday, stressing that the Fed wants to take a "timelier" approach to curb price increases.

Those comments were interpreted as pointing to "higher rates for longer," Jaison Davis, economic research analyst at GlobalData, said in a report. "The bar for easing [rates] is now much higher, and it rests on clear evidence that inflation is heading back to target."
The Iran war is complicating life for the Fed

Warsh pointed to the impact of the war in Iran as one reason Fed officials were unanimous on the need to hike interest rates. The conflict, which has no end in sight, has severely reduced the flow of oil out of the Persian Gulf, while an escalation in fighting between Saudi Arabia and the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen threatens another vital waterway.

Crude oil prices have jumped above $100 a barrel in recent weeks. The price increase has pushed fuel costs higher for Americans, who paid a record-high $6.40 per gallon for diesel on Thursday, a 73% jump from a year ago. Gasoline reached $4.44 a gallon, 38% higher than a year earlier, according to AAA data.

  9/17/26 Barron's:

The Federal Reserve has spent more than five years promising the American public that policymakers will bring inflation sustainably back to the central bank’s 2% annual target. On Sept. 16 the Fed raised interest rates in pursuit of that goal.

John Cochrane, a prominent economist and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, thinks that higher rates are a short-term solution, at best. His research suggests that inflation will resume climbing unless fiscal policy also changes and the U.S. brings its borrowing and spending under control. Without more restrictive fiscal policy, he says, the Fed can only rearrange inflation in the face of a mountain of federal debt that recently surpassed $40 trillion. That’s because higher rates push up the government’s interest costs, leading to higher inflation in the long run.

Cochrane, previously a professor of finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, has laid out these and other ideas in his popular blog, The Grumpy Economist He spoke with Barron’s on Sept. 11 about his economic research, the U.S. Treasury’s buyback of longer-dated debt, and the changes that Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh is implementing. An edited version of the conversation follows.

All of this makes sense. The Fed is legally obligated to keep inflation and unemployment balanced. This is at best a "threading the eye of the needle" problem at best; the insane deficits make this nearly impossible. The big gorilla in the room on interest rates is federal borrowing. If the U.S. government cannot control its borrowing, it will push out other borrowers, raising interest rates. Somehow, Congress will need to address this problem. At some point, pursuing Medicare/Medicaid/COVID fraud will make a difference but not quickly. 

A Little Reminder That Insanity Often Only Delays Trial

 Paterson, N.J. (1973)

03/18/1973: Police charged a man, 33, with beating to death his wife and their three small children with a hammer. He was later transferred to a state mental hospital for evaluation. Psychiatrists determined he was “insane at the time and unable to stand trial.” In 1975, he was “declared to be sane enough to stand trial.” He had attempted suicide by a pill overdose. He was later “declared sane enough to stand trial.”

Category: family

Suicide: no

Cause: mental illness

Weapon: hammer[1]

---

[1] "Four Slain With Hammer," [Hackensack, N.J.] Record, Mar. 19, 1973, 6; “Mass Murder Suspect Sent to Hospital,” [Paterson, N.J.]. News, Mar. 21, 1973, 53; “Gallone Judged Sane,” [Paterson, N.J.]. News, Feb. 09, 1975, 2.]

More Bad Economic News

9/16/26 St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank reports inflation-adjusted median household income as of March again at record level. Now median and average are not same thing even though careless and ignorant people (usually politicians and journalists) often misuse them that way. Still unless there are an enormously large number of households will negligible incomes, this is still good news.

Why the Midterms May Not Be a Blue Wave

 9/15/26 Reuters:

WASHINGTON, Sept 15 (Reuters) - The U.S. ​poverty rate edged down to the lowest on record ‌in 2025, while median household income hit a record high, the Census Bureau said on Tuesday. There were 34.5 million people in poverty ​in 2025, the agency said.

The decline marked the second ​consecutive annual drop in the poverty rate and brought ⁠it to its lowest level since the bureau began tracking ​the measure. It came as policymakers debate the impact of ​federal spending cuts on safety-net programs.

9/15/26 Washington Post explains why this is not a basis for joy.

Why Deinstitutionalization of the Mentally Ill Matters

 Mill Valley, Cal. (1973)

Before 03/17/1973: “Police hunted today for a man in his early 20s seen leaving a burning home after a businessman, his wife and son were shot to death outside the hillside dwelling.” A neighbor saw the man leaving with a shotgun who rejected the neighbor’s poorly thought offer to help. “Go away,” was the response. Police found at least 22 shotgun shells.

At a subsequent trial of a man, 22, his defense attorney asserted that the murderer was paranoid schizophrenic and committed the murders because his friend, one of those murdered, “possessed supernatural powers which were bent of destroying [the murderer.” Also, “the Mafia was involved in his life and that Dan Shallock was involved and could not be killed, even by an H-Bomb.” “At one point he believed Dan Shallock was the devil, and to this day [the murderer] fear in his heart that Dan may come back.” The murderer had spent a month at Marin Community Mental Health Center, and in the days immediately prior to the slayings, his mother had been trying to persuade the youth to commit himself.”

It appears that the jury did not accept “not guilty by reason of insanity”; they convicted him of murder.

Category: family non-resident

Suicide: no

Cause: mental illness

Weapon: shotgun[1]

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[1] "Seek Suspect In Triple Murder Of Calif. Family," [Lowell, Mass] Sun, Mar. 17, 1973, 4; “Attorney Says Bedayan Killed Mill Valley Family,” San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 01, 1973, 5; “2 Honored by Peace Officers,” [San Rafael, Cal.] Daily Independent Journal, Jan. 27, 1975, 12.

How Quintessentially 1970s Hippie Can You Get?

 Santa Cruz, Cal. (1973)

02/06/1973: Same killer and reasons as 01/25/1973: in this case, the victims were four “long-haired youths” who had built “a 10-by-12 foot, pyramid-shaped shelter constructed of pine saplings, branches, cardboard and plastic sheeting.”

Category: public

Suicide: no

Cause: mental illness

Weapon: firearm[1]

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[1] “Santa Cruz Deputies Find Four Bodies in Lean-To,” Sacramento Bee, Feb. 18, 1973, 16; Donald T. Lunde, Murder and Madness (San Francisco: San Francisco Book Co., 1976), 63-81. Lunde evaluated the murder's sanity for the courts; Michael Newton, The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers , 2^nd ed. (New York City: Facts on File, 2006), 187.

Remember When We Were Warned That Global Warming Would Increase Hurricanes?

 9/15/26 Ars Technica:

Last week, the Atlantic hurricane season blew through its traditional peak—which comes around September 10—with nary a tropical wave in sight, let alone a storm or hurricane.

This is remarkable. Usually this is the time of year when sea surface temperatures reach their warmest in the tropics, and with a favorable atmosphere it should be smooth skating for tropical systems. But this year, the main region where most tropical systems develop is choked with Saharan dust and wind shear.

No one is complaining. Landfalling hurricanes are incredibly destructive for coastal areas and have the potential for considerable inland rainfall. Even storms at sea, in the Gulf of Mexico, can send energy prices skyrocketing—the last thing needed this year.
This has never happened

Nevertheless, the quietude is historic.

Beginning in 1944, the United States began monitoring the Atlantic basin, which includes the Gulf, Caribbean Sea, and northern Atlantic Ocean, with aircraft to detect hurricanes. Dating back to 1944, a hurricane had formed every year by September 11. The latest “first” Atlantic hurricanes came in 2002, with Gustav, and in 2013, with Humberto on this date.

Atlantic hurricane records officially go back to 1851, although older records are less reliable because observations of storms developing at sea were reliant on reports from shipping vessels. So some storms were missed. If we extend the hurricane record all the way back to 1851, every year still records at least one Atlantic hurricane. But in 1941, the first hurricane did not form until September 17. This is the date of the latest first Atlantic hurricane on record.

I’m here to tell you that the Atlantic will not produce a hurricane by the end of Thursday. The National Hurricane Center is presently monitoring a single disturbance in the Atlantic, but it gives this system a “near zero” percent chance of becoming a tropical depression or storm during the next two days. The likelihood of it ever becoming a hurricane is low.

"The Racial Discrimination Will Continue Until We Get Caught"

 9/10/26 The Hill:

Officials from the Justice Department and Education Department alleged Wednesday that the University of California’s Berkeley School of Law favors Black applicants over white and Asian applicants, in violation of federal law.

In a letter to attorney Tania Faransso, who is representing the law school, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said the institution “deliberately discriminated” against Asian and white applicants based on race.

By doing so, Berkeley Law violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars the use of federal funds to further racial discrimination, Dhillon alleged. The Justice Department is seeking to enter into a resolution agreement with the college to ensure it complies with federal law.

“This discrimination is apparent from the significant disparity in objective academic metrics between racially preferred applicants, and applicants from non-preferred races,” Dhillon wrote, accusing the law school of discriminating by using racial proxies and certain essay prompts in admissions.

This is a sensitive subject for me because when I graduated high school, I was coming from a home below the poverty line. Another student from an East Indian family who lived in the nice neighborhoods north of Montana Blvd., back when East Indians were still considered oppressed minorities, received a full ride scholarship. 

When I started working, racial discrimination in hiring was explicit: "Because this position is currently held by an EEO double pointer, it must be filled with same."

Rabies Not Just From Animal Bites

9/1/26 Science Alert:

In February of last year, authorities confirmed the details of a grave medical accident.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) diagnosed a fatal rabies infection in a patient from Michigan.

The circumstances of transmission were unusual. The deceased man, an organ recipient, had received a donated kidney infected with rabies.

The source of the kidney was a man in Idaho who had died only weeks earlier, donating his organs for others in need. At the time of his death, nobody realized his body was infected with the deadly virus.

Subsequent investigations revealed the Idaho man had recently been scratched by a skunk on his rural property – an infectious encounter that ultimately claimed his own life, and that of the man to whom he gave his kidney.

Records show it was only the fourth time in US history that an organ transplant procedure had transmitted the rabies virus (Lyssavirus rabies) from an initially undiagnosed donor.

But what if these kinds of records are wrong?

A new analysis published in Communications Health suggests that official figures may dramatically underestimate how many human cases of rabies are actually circulating in the US each year.

According to researchers from the Pandemic Sciences Institute at the University of Oxford, the extremely low count of confirmed human rabies cases in the US each year – just 2.4 cases annually on average from 2000 to 2024 – seems much lower than it should be.

The reason why it seems low is that a relatively high number of rabies cases are subsequently confirmed after infected organ transplants, like the sad case of the kidney recipient from Michigan. 

And why would you check a donated organ for a rare disease that had nothing apparently to do with donor's death? 

Neighbors....

Tell me a bear got into their trash a couple nights ago. I hope they cannot scale a 6 foot fence for a swim. The bear I mean.

Decolonizing Canadian Law

8/14/26 National Post:


An Ontario judge has ruled that “colonialism” was primarily to blame in a deadly driving crash that saw a First Nations man kill a 12-year-old girl.


According to police reports, Darris Wilson’s Dodge Ram pickup truck was strewn with empty and partially consumed cans of beer when, in 2022, it slammed head-on into a vehicle carrying a mother and daughter en route to a sleepover.

Sierra Beverly, 12, was killed at the scene. Her mother, Naomi, suffered debilitating brain injuries for which she still requires 24-hour care.

But in a sentencing decision released last week, Ontario Justice Gethin Edward predominantly focused on how Canada’s “colonial past” had turned Wilson into a dangerous driver.

Wilson, he ruled, was suffering from cultural “disconnection” as a result of colonization, which “crystallized into the tragic events of Feb. 11, 2022.”

Poverty in the Bay Area

Warning Signs Ignored

 

Torrance, Cal. (1973)

02/11/1973: Police investigated a missing person report and four theater employees. They were at first unsure if the victims were shot or stabbed to death It turned out that he used a gun to get compliance but used a knife to slit their throats. They could not be identified at first because of the amount of blood on their bodies. The safe was open.

Subsequent investigation into a similar business robbery that only resulted in one murder and the suspect’s suicide in jail led police to surmise that a long-time criminal, 30, with an extensive psychiatric history, which included repeated warnings that he was a murder-in-training. Police arrested him for misdemeanor traffic warrants; he committed suicide in jail. He committed the murders after a detailed casing of the theater. He told his roommate that “if he didn’t come back there was no reason to feel guilty. If everything went right, he would have $2,000 owed to him and his roommate would read about in the newspapers.”

Category: public

Suicide: no

Cause: robbery

Weapon: knife[1]

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[1] "4 Found Murdered At Theater Office; Vault Cleaned Out," Los Angeles Times, Feb. 12, 1973, 1; “Society Ignored Danger Signals in Maheu’s Life,” [San Pedro, Cal.] News-Pilot, Sep. 25, 1973, 5; “Maheu’s Death Sealed The Fully Story of Mass Killing,” [San Pedro, Cal.] News-Pilot, Sep. 25, 1973, 5.