Month: January 2022

AccuWeather meteorologists report “a sneaky storm from the southern U.S. will swing northward and strengthen enough to blast part of the mid-Atlantic region with a dose of heavy snow” on Monday. 

“It may be hard to believe that any snow is on the way, given the warmth and lack of wintry weather thus far this season,” AccuWeather Meteorologist Ryan Adamson said. Much of the Mid-Atlantic observed the 50s and 60s Fahrenheit over New Year’s holiday weekend, but that will all change come Monday. 

A cold blast will send Washington, D.C.’s average temperatures plunging 30-40 degrees Fahrenheit on Sunday night into Monday. Temperatures will be below a 30-year mean for the first half of the month.

The dramatic temperature shift will set up conditions for snow and ice in the mid-Atlantic region from Sunday night into Monday. 

“As the storm strengthens and the precipitation moves northward into progressively colder air, rain will change over to snow in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., and snow may begin to fall in Philadelphia,” Ryan said. 

AccuWeather models forecast 6-12 inches from eastern Virginia to the eastern shore of Maryland, much of Delaware, and southern New Jersey.

Philadelphia and New York City are on the storm’s northern edge with little or no accumulation expected. Here are snowfall forecast totals between Sunday night and Monday. 

As for travel, the Capital Beltway around D.C. and the Interstate 95 from Richmond to Washington, D.C., to Baltimore to Philadelphia will probably be a mess tomorrow. As for air travel, staffing shortages and adverse weather conditions have produced massive amounts of cancellations every day since Christmas Eve. 

Authored by Wolf Richter via WolfStreet.com,

The global share of US-dollar-denominated exchange reserves declined to 59.15% in the third quarter, from 59.23% in the second quarter, hobbling along a 26-year low for the past four quarters, according to the IMF’s COFER data released today. Dollar-denominated foreign exchange reserves are Treasury securities, US corporate bonds, US mortgage-backed securities, and other USD-denominated assets that are held by foreign central banks.

In 2001 – the moment just before the euro officially arrived as bank notes and coins – the dollar’s share was 71.5%. Since then, it has dropped by 12.3 percentage points.

In 1977, when inflation was raging in the US, the dollar’s share was 85%. And when it looked like the Fed wasn’t doing anything about inflation that was threatening to spiral out of control, foreign central banks began dumping USD-denominated assets, and the dollar’s share collapsed.

The plunge of the dollar’s share bottomed out in 1991, after the inflation crackdown in the early 1980s caused inflation to abate. As confidence grew that the Fed would keep inflation more or less under control, the dollar’s share then surged by 25 percentage points until 2000 when the euro arrived.

Since then, over those 20 years, other central banks have been gradually diversifying away from US dollar holdings (year-end data, except for 2021 = Q3):

Not included in global foreign exchange reserves are the assets held by a central bank in its own currency, such as the Fed’s holdings of dollar-denominated assets, the ECB’s holdings of euro-denominated assets, or the Bank of Japan’s holdings of yen-denominated assets.

Impact of exchange rates on exchange reserves.

The exchange rates between the US dollar and other currencies impact the dollar-value of non-dollar reserves. So for example, the value of China’s holdings of euro-denominated bonds is expressed in USD to make it compatible with all the other holdings. All holdings that are denominated in non-dollar currencies are expressed in USD, and those USD-entries for non-USD assets move also with the exchange rates.

But the exchange rates of the major currency pairs have been remarkably stable over the past two-decades-plus, despite swings in between, as seen by the Dollar Index (DXY), that is now back where it had been in 1999.

So, exchange rates had little or no impact on the substantial decline of the dollar’s share of foreign exchange reserves.

That decline was mostly due to central banks diversifying away from dollar-denominated holdings in favor of non-dollar holdings – getting perhaps a little nervous about the twin deficits int he US – but they’re doing so very slowly to avoid toppling this whole house of cards.

Euro’s 20th Birthday.

On January 1, 2022, euro bank notes and coins will celebrate their 20th birthday. I still have my “Starter Kit” in its original plastic bag because the introduction of the euro at the time in a handful of countries was a huge event in the history of currencies and took decades to prepare for. Now the Eurozone encompasses 19 countries with a population of 340 million people.

The idea of the euro was sold to the inhabitants of the EU with the stated and often expressed goal of “parity” with the dollar: parity as global reserve currency, as trading currency, and as financing currency.

When the euro was formed, local-currency debt and equity instruments, previously issued in local currency, were converted to euro-denominated assets, and coupon interest and dividends were then paid in euros, etc. The currencies that went into the euro, such as the Deutsche mark, had already been reserve currencies. As these assets were converted to euros, so were central-bank holdings of German government bonds and the like. So as a reserve currency, the euro didn’t start from zero. It picked up where the members’ currencies left off.

Since the Euro Debt Crisis, the euro’s share of global reserve currencies has been stuck at around 20%, and the dream of “dollar parity” has vanished. But it is the undisputed second largest reserve currency.

The rest of the reserve currencies are minor entries at the bottom in the chart, including the Chinese renminbi, the bold red line:

The minor reserve currencies:

To see what they’re doing at the bottom of the chart, I magnified the left-hand scale to the range of 0% to 6%.

The yen, the third largest reserve currency, surged from 2015 and hit a share of 6.0% in Q4 2020. Despite the hoopla around Brexit, the share of the British pound (GBP), the fourth largest reserve currency, has remained roughly stable.

The share of the Chinese renminbi (RMB) has been growing in baby steps and in Q3 reached a share of 2.66%, tiny compared to the global trade prowess of China’s economy. The IMF elevated the renminbi to an official global reserve currency in October 2016 by including it in the basket of currencies that back the Special Drawing Rights (SDRs). But the RMB, while freely convertible for trade purposes, is still not freely convertible under China’s capital account. And central banks remain leery of it.

Over the past four years, the share of the RMB has grown by 1.54 percentage points. At that rate, it would take the RMB over 50 years to reach a share of 25%.

Reserve currencies and trade deficits and surpluses.

The US dollar’s status as the dominant global reserve currency has enabled the huge twin-deficits that are displayed in all their glory by the US government’s ballooning public debt, now close to $30 trillion, and by Corporate America’s relentless offshoring of production leading to the monstrous and ever-growing US trade deficits.

But the Eurozone has had a large trade surplus with the rest of the world in recent years – particularly with the US, including a trade surplus of $183 billion in 2020. The Eurozone’s trade surplus demonstrates in reality that an economic area with a large trade surplus can also have one of the top reserve currencies, debunking old theories that a large reserve currency must be associated with a large trade deficit. But as the US situation makes amply clear: Having the dominant reserve currency enables and encourages the US to run up its twin deficits.

*  *  *

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A decade ago, Washingtonian pundits were buzzing about how New York’s junior Senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, might someday eclipse her onetime mentor, Hillary Clinton, to become the most powerful woman in the Democratic Party. But in the years since, the senator has seen her public profile shrink remarkably after her 2020 presidential campaign fizzled before it even got off the ground. She still holds one of the most powerful elected positions in the country, but whatever she had been trying to prove with this strategy, it has clearly backfired.

Because New York has a new celebrity politician who is younger and (arguably) better-looking than Gillibrand (even if her political chops aren’t up to par). And the message to Gillibrand from her Democratic colleagues is getting increasingly emphatic: either step it up, or step aside and get ready for AOC to launch and win a primary campaign for the Senate seat just like she did when she challenged Joe Courtney for his seat in the House.

And a few of them have been mouthing off to the New York Post:

“There are any number of state lawmakers, local officials and members of the delegation –including AOC — who could mount a very, very credible challenge and quite likely beat her,” the ex-staffer said, adding that his once vigorous former boss now seemed “bored” in the Senate and is missing in action statewide.

“It wouldn’t at all surprise me if there were truth to the rumors that she’s not planning to run, but instead is on the lookout for an administration position or a cushy private sector job,” the insider added.

Another complained about Gilibrand being “invisible”.

“I see [senior NY Sen. Chuck] Schumer all the time. I never see Gillibrand. I don’t know why New York only has one senator,” sniffed one Democratic state senator.

And these aren’t just anonymous whispers. At least one prominent Democratic strategist was willing to let the NYPost attribute his criticisms to him directly.

Longtime city Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf agreed: “AOC can beat Kirsten Gillibrand. AOC will raise the money. She can beat her because Kirsten Gillibrand is the invisible senator. She has done very little to cement that incumbency and the electorate is angry and she has done nothing to address the issues that matter — which are COVID, crime and job loss in New York State.”

It’s not just her colleagues who are criticizing Gillibrand. There is cold hard data to support the assertion that her legislating has been short of effective. According to GovTrack, Gillibrand was among the least effective senators in the previous Congress, ranking 39 out of 45 among Democrats, with not a single “substantive” bill she proposed becoming law. She also missed more than 15% of votes, the ninth-worst record among her Democratic colleagues.

To be sure, it’s not like AOC is a shining beacon of legislative rectitude: we’re talking about a politician who deflects by simply accusing critics of being “sexually frustrated”.

All she has accomplished during her time in office is a lot of talking on social media, but not much actual legislating.

We suppose that would make her an appropriate replacement for Gillibrand.

By Ted Dabrowski of Wirepoints

Illinois keeps losing people it can ill afford to lose.

I recently checked in on a prospective donor who I met in Chicago three years ago. I didn’t know him at all back then, but it was easy to get a sense he cared deeply about Illinois. His passion for fixing Chicago’s problems was obvious from the moment I met him.

He was everything Chicago should want from someone in the business community. An engaged and highly successful investor, tech entrepreneur and C-suite executive. Politically active yet still willing to get his hands dirty on real policy issues. Not scared to take on politicians. Paid lots in taxes, too.

To my disappointment, he told us he’d fled Illinois. He was one of the 114,000 Illinois lost in population this year. Here was his email response to a Wirepoints end-of-year request for financial support:

“Good to hear from you and glad all is going well.

I have bailed on Illinois. I’m now a resident of a great state out West. God knows I tried to be a loyal Illinoisan! They say that in the marketplace people vote with their pocketbooks. In Illinois, people are voting with their feet.”

In our line of work, we hear daily from Illinoisans who recently left the state for greener pastures. Illinois is the nation’s second-biggest net loser of tax filers so that’s not a surprise. Most who’ve left are happy to have shed the high property taxes, worsening crime rate and overall disrespect for residents that’s embedded in everyday Illinois corruption.

But I didn’t expect this guy to leave. He’s a player that donates to both sides of the political aisle. He’s advised lawmakers on how to bring down debts, he’s fought against tax hikes and he’s helped raise funds for political campaigns. I figured he was loving mixing it up with Lori Lightfoot like he did in the past with previous city officials. 

That’s why I called him directly to dig deeper: 

“I love Chicago and I left very reluctantly. I have been intimately involved with trying to resurrect the state, the county and Chicago, but they are all on a path to destruction. Only the open coffers of the federal government is helping them in the short term. And that’s got them spending money on programs that they have no ability to pay for on an ongoing basis.

Illinois is, in blunt terms, no longer going down the sewer. It’s already there. What did they call it in Roman times? Cloaca Maxima. It’s there. When you look at the state’s finances, it’s impossible for Illinois to resurrect itself. It’s just not gonna happen.”

This Chicagoan was one of about 3,000 wealthy taxpayers that Illinois loses, on net, each year. (In 2019, Illinois lost to other states 6,400 tax filers with incomes greater than $200K, while just 3,000 such filers moved into Illinois.)

And when they leave, those people take their families, their incomes, their wealth and their entrepreneurship with them.

Sadly, it’s the same story for every income group in Illinois (see Appendix). This state is being hollowed out.

* * * * * *

This same time last year I told The Illinois Channel’s Terry Martin that the state’s leaders had no plan to fix the state in 2021. That hasn’t changed in 2022.

They have no plan to reverse the destructive surge in crime. Nothing is being done about the state’s broken finances except the recent begging for more federal handouts. There hasn’t been a peep about cutting property taxes ever since Gov. Pritzker’s failed commission did nothing. And the education system is getting worse by the day. 

Illinoisans can increasingly smell those failures. Cloaca Maxima, indeed.

P.S. That’s not to say there’s no plan. Wirepoints has developed a baseline solution to Illinois’ biggest problem: the pension crisis. Our new Pension Solutions page breaks down the crisis, why it happened and what we can do about it. We also have a whole host of other reforms Illinois should pursue to turn this state around.

Israel launched multiple airstrikes by attack helicopters against the Gaza Strip in the late night hours of Saturday after the military said that Hamas fired rockets toward Israel, though they had landed in the Mediterranean Sea off central Israel.

“As fireworks lit up the skies to celebrate New Year 2022 around the world, a different type of fire came from Gaza-terrorist rocket-fire toward Israel,” the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a Sunday message on Twitter. “In response, we just struck Hamas sites in Gaza, including a rocket manufacturing site & military posts used for terrorist activity.”

Initial footage of #Hamas’s Qadisiya site near Khan Younis, #Gaza being targeted by the #IDF in response to the two rockets fired towards #TelAviv this morning. pic.twitter.com/ACMNxebg8C

— Aurora Intel (@AuroraIntel) January 1, 2022

It marks the first significant flare-up in fighting involving major airstrikes since the end of the 11-day war between Israel and Hamas in May. But in this case no casualties were reported throughout the airstrikes, though Hamas alleged that Israel targeted agricultural infrastructure as punishment. 

On the Israeli side, “No sirens were sounded and Israel’s Iron Dome rocket interception system did not deploy, the army said in a statement,” Al Jazeera noted. A Hamas spokesman vowed over the weekend that “our resistance will continue” in order to “liberate our land”. 

This morning, 2 rockets were fired from Gaza toward Israel.

According to protocol, no sirens were sounded and no interception took place as the rockets landed in the sea off the coast of central Israel.

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) January 1, 2022

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett addressed his weekly cabinet meeting over the airstrikes, saying that, “Whoever points missiles at Israel bears responsibility.”

There were days of tension leading up to the weekend fighting, including as the AP reports “On Wednesday, Palestinian militants shot an Israeli contractor working along the border fence and Israel responded with tank fire at militant positions in what was the first exchange of fire in months.”

BREAKING:
More Video from tonight’s 🇬🇧UK-🇺🇲US-🇪🇺EU-armed multimillion dollar aerial bombardment on 🎆New Year’s Day, 2022 of the world’s largest open-air prison camp in the world – Gaza, Palestine.

NATO-nation media silent. Casualties so far unknown.#GazaUnderAttack pic.twitter.com/KTyQfLy9ig

— Afshin Rattansi (@afshinrattansi) January 1, 2022

Additionally Palestinian communities are closely watching the fate of Hisham Abu Hawash, an Islamic Jihad member who has been on a hunger strike for over 130 days while in Israeli detention, who reportedly just slipped into a coma. The militant group has vowed that if Hawash dies, it will launch attacks on Israel. With his health in decline and still in Israeli custody, Gaza is on edge and expecting more fighting to come. 

Egypt in the meantime is attempting to intervene diplomatically, so that the fighting remains limited to the past 12 hours of events. “Neither side wants a full-blown war,” an Egyptian diplomat was cited by AP as saying. “They just want guarantees and steps on the ground.”

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

With the conclusion of the first year of the Biden Administration, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain sought to end on a high, or at least higher, note by retweeting a column saying that 2021 was not “all bad.” It was like bragging that a first date told you that the evening could have been worse.

However, what really stood out in the column by Albert Hunt was the key rationale: the first year was “scandal free.”

Calling 2021 “scandal free” is not merely an example of blinkered commentary, it is an  exercise of willful blindness. This is why magicians often make audience members part of the illusion. Houdini did not actually make his 10,000 pound elephant Jennie disappear. It was there the whole time but the audience did not want to see it. That’s the trick.

At his inauguration, President Biden promised the return of good government and newspapers like the Washington Post heralded the end to Trump’s “­scandal-plagued single term.” Now, at the end of the first year, readers are being asked to “think back four years ago: The Trump administration looked more like ‘The Godfather’ — without the skill.”

There is ample reason for the White House and many in the media to celebrate the lack of scandals in the Biden Administration because it was a collective effort.

Of course, four years ago, the media was all-in on the Russian collusion allegations. The media was doing non-stop coverage of the Steele dossier with little scrutiny or effort to uncover those who funded it. The dossier was later discredited and American intelligence warned that Russian intelligence may have used it to plant disinformation. While the Clinton campaign repeatedly denied funding the dossier, it was revealed (after the election) that not only did the Clinton campaign fund and push the dossier but allegedly lied to Congress, the media, and the FBI. Clinton campaign chair John Podesta allegedly denied such funding to congressional staff. According to reports, sitting next to him was Clinton attorney Marc Elias (who was later found to have funded the dossier through the Clinton campaign’s legal account).

The only thing more impressive than the relentless coverage of Trump scandals in 2017 was the relentless avoidance of Biden scandals in 2020.  The media did give passing coverage to the host of Biden false claims and stories that range from saying that he was “arrested trying to see Nelson Mandela” to his evolving Amtrak claims to reinventing his positions on foreign wars like Afghanistan. There were also federal violations by Biden officials and allegations of improper presidential influence on pending investigations. However, when it came to the truly scandalous, the media was thoroughly uninterested.

Consider just three of the Voldemort scandals of 2020, or those scandals which must not be named by the media:

The Hunter Biden Laptop:

The successful effort to bury the Hunter Biden story is the single greatest political achievement in modern politics, but it took a concerted effort by reporters and columnists in Washington. What was most impressive is that the Biden campaign and family never denied that the laptop was authentic. The laptop details potential criminal acts by Hunter Biden from extensive drug use to hiring prostitutes to alleged financial and tax violations. It also included his admission that prior files were likely in the hands of foreign intelligence to use for blackmailing him and his father. There is also the “red flag” gun controversy involving Hunter Biden. Not only did social media companies blackout references to the laptop, but the media has steadfastly continued to refuse to pursue these potential criminal acts. The laptop was seized by the FBI in an ongoing federal investigation into possible tax and financial wrongdoing.

Biden Family Influence Peddling:

Influence peddling has long been associated with the Biden family but only sparingly reported, even though both President Biden’s brothers Frank and James are accused of openly hawking their ties to him.  Hunter’s laptop added evidence of hundreds of emails on transactions by Hunter Biden, his uncle James Biden, and Joe Biden. The emails magnify earlier allegations that the Biden family engaged in open influence peddling when Joe Biden was Vice President with an assortment of foreign figures and countries. Some of those dealings continued into the Biden presidency. Hunter Biden admits that he was a hopeless drug addict well into his father’s presidential campaign. However, these foreign figures continued to give Hunter millions and Hunter openly assisted in their meetings with his father and linking up with Administration officials. One of the key figures in these dealings has claimed that he met personally with Joe Biden to discuss the deals.

These meetings and dinners directly contradict denials from President Biden, who is referred to extensively in emails concerning payments and meetings as “the Big Guy,” “Celtic,” and other names. President Biden appears to have had bills paid from out of these accounts and his shared card may have been used in some of the most dubious transactions. Some dealings have direct national security implications for the United States. Despite the ongoing federal investigation, there has been no call for a Special Counsel even though President Biden is referenced and potentially implicated in some of these transactions. Nevertheless, Hunter continues to rack in the dough by other means, including art deals that have been denounced as ethically corrupt.

The Ashley Biden Diary:

The latest scandal involves the other first child, Ashley Biden.  Like her brother Hunter, Ashley has struggled with addiction and left her diary with some clothes in a house in Delray, Florida.  The diary was later sent to Project Veritas, a conservative publication which decided not to run the information. The contents of the diary, however, have been reported on other sites, including allegations against her father involving “inappropriate” contacts. As with the Hunter Biden laptop, the Biden family has not denied the authenticity of the diary or the underlying passages. It also did not sue the other conservative sites for defamation in publishing what they alleged to be passages from the diary. Instead, the family lawyers called upon the Justice Department to get involved the case of a missing diary. The Justice Department’s response was so overwhelming you would have thought that they were looking for evidence of Lindbergh’s baby rather than Ashley’s diary.  It conducted raids on journalists and the seizure of confidential material around the country.

The media was not interested in the use of the FBI to launch a national investigation into the missing diary. Indeed, the raiding of the home of a conservative publisher was barely noted even though the New York Times could also have been raided on the same grounds as Project Veritas. The Times acquired confidential and presumably stolen legal material from Project Veritas and, unlike Project Veritas, published the presumably stolen information. However, the Biden Justice Department was only interested in cracking down on the acquisition or coverage of the Ashley Biden diary.

In reviewing these scandals, ask yourself what the media would have done with a diary from Ivanka Trump with these allegations or foreign influence peddling by the Trump children. You do not have to wonder. They covered every possible foreign influence source from hotel rentals to loans in exhaustive details, including Trump children “influence peddling.” I thought that interest and coverage was warranted. However, when hundreds of emails and transactions showed raw influence peddling by the Biden family (including the involvement of President Biden), neither the media nor the members could be bothered. There would be no “­scandal-plagued single term” for President Biden.

For the media (and Ron Klain) to pronounce the Biden Administration “scandal free” is akin to the NFL once denying that traumatic brain injury was rampant in football. If there is no coverage, there is no scandal. That is certainly an accomplishment worth noting, but hardly worth celebrating.

It’s official: Chicago recorded the most murders of any major city in the country in 2021, making it the most violent year on record in the Windy City at any point in the last quarter century.

According to data released by the Chicago Police Department and cited by the Associated Press, the city recorded 797 homicides, the most in Chicago since 1996 and more than any other city in the country. The 2021 total was 25 more than in 2020 and 299 more than in 2019. On top of that, there were 3,561 shootings in 2021.

“We all know this has been a challenging year here in the city of Chicago,” Police Superintendent David Brown said at a news conference this week. “Too many families are reeling from the loss of (loved) ones due to senseless gun violence.”

Brown added that most of the violence stemmed from conflicts between gangs and was concentrated on the city’ notorious south side. As Mayor Lori Lightfoot struggles to quell the violence, some of the most dangerous neighborhoods include Austin, North Lawndale, Auburn-Gresham, West Garfield Park, West Pullman, South Shore, Roseland, Near West Side, South Lawndale, and Washington Heights, as the map below reflects.

To try and combat rising rates of violence, the city plans to hire more officers in the coming year.

“There will be more officers on the street, not just in patrol cars or behind desks, to interact with all Chicagoans,” Brown said.

Both New York and LA have larger populations than Chicago. But both cities recorded at least 300 fewer homicides in 2021 than Chicago.

Surging violence wasn’t limited to Chicago. Since the start of the pandemic, rates of violent crime have been climbing across the country, particularly in cities both small and large.

Just last month, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf requested the help of California Gov. Gavin Newsom in trying to curb violent crime. In her letter to Newsom, the mayor noted 131 homicides had occurred in Oakland since the start of 2021.

And in tiny New Haven, Conn., Mayor Justin Elicker promised to address surging violent crime after the Elm City recorded 25 homicides in 2021, the highest tally in a decade.

Authored by Wesley Smith,  op-ed via The Epoch Times,

The Biden Administration wants to pay doctors to create office “anti-racism plans” that could soon bring full blown critical race theory into your examining room…

What’s that you say? You didn’t hear about Congressional legislation to that effect? That’s because there is no such law. Rather, the idea was pushed quietly into implementation by the blob-like federal bureaucracy that exercises primary control over the details and minutia of federal law.

Despite what you may have been taught in high school government class, federal statutes do not provide the specifics that will apply once a bill becomes law. Instead, legislation merely establishes a skeleton outline, usually directing the Secretary of this or that Department to write the details after the bill has passed through the arcane rule making process. In other words, the contemporary administrative state run by the executive branch has substantial quasi-legislative authority never dreamed of by our Founding Fathers.

There are few limitations to rule making other than that the regulation must be relevant to, and consistent with, the governing statue. But laws are often so vaguely written, that isn’t difficult. Moreover, the promulgated rules are where the devil in the details of federal law is to be found.

How do we know what has been proposed or promulgated by the bureaucrats? All rules—whether preliminary or finalized—are published in a gargantuan volume called the Federal Register.

Oh good. That means we can just look them up, right?

Well, sure: In theory. But good luck trying. Each year more than 70,000 pages of very small print are published in the FR. Imagine digging through that eye-glazing text! Talk about needles and haystacks.

Yes, there is a modicum of societal input in rule making. But it is very indirect. When a new rule is proposed, time is allowed for public comments that—in theory and sometimes in fact—influence the bureaucrats who write and promulgate the rule. Bureaucrats may also attend meetings with “stake holders” about the contents of proposed rules.

But like everything else in Washington, D.C., this administrative process is highly political. Whether commenters have any impact on the final rule usually depends on their political clout and/or whether they are allies of the sitting administration, not policy acumen. Needless to say, individual citizens rarely know what is going on, much less, have a meaningful chance to directly participate in the process.

Alright, enough dismal civics.

Here is what the new rules on Medicare payments to doctors—that begins on page 64996 of the 2021 FR and ends on page 66031—states about the anti-racism plan bonus: In Appendix 2—are your eyes rolling back in your head yet?—doctors are offered a percentage of their Medicare income “to create and implement an anti-racist plan.”

Among other consequences, this means establishing an anti-racist bureaucracy within physicians’ offices (my emphasis): 

“The plan should include a clinic-wide review of existing tools and policies, such as value statements or clinical practice guidelines, to ensure that they include and are aligned with a commitment to anti-racism and an understanding of race as a political and social construct, not a physiological one.”

In other words, the rule states quite specifically that the plan isn’t about medicine. And it isn’t about science. Rather, it furthers naked ideology and insinuating very woke politics into the clinical setting.

That isn’t all:

“The plan should also identify ways in which issues and gaps identified in the review can be addressed and should include target goals and milestones for addressing prioritized issues and gaps …. The … eligible clinician or practice can also consider including in their plan ongoing training on anti-racism and/or other processes to support identifying explicit and implicit biases in patient care and addressing historic health inequities experienced by people of color.”

Think of the money to be made by leftist anti-racist trainers and organizers, which is part of the point.

Moreover, the call for “anti-racism” could be interpreted as calling for discrimination in medical settings against people who are not of color. For example, Ibram X. Kendi, the intellectual leader of the Anti-Racist Movement wrote in his book “How to Be an Anti-Racist,” “The only remedy to racial discrimination is antiracist discrimination.”

This invidious thinking has seeped into the medical establishment. Consider a relevant advocacy column entitled “Advancing President Biden’s Equity Agenda,” published last April in the New England Journal of Medicine. “To promote equity,” psychiatrist Neil K. Aggarwal wrote, “the Biden administration should distribute resources differentially in order to benefit groups that are persistently disadvantaged.”

That would be to pit some of us against others of us in our own doctor’s office. This obsession with differences—ever more thinly sliced—isn’t healthy. And it isn’t right.

All patients should be treated equally. No patient should be considered “favored” or “disfavored.” Everyone should receive optimal care. But such equality isn’t within the value system that “anti-racism” generally—and the new rule, specifically—promotes.

It is no surprise that the Biden administration has gone woke. But the real danger against true equality isn’t in the president’s speeches but in the power of the bureaucracy swamp. Indeed, what other “equity” landmines are being laid quietly within the hundreds of thousands of pages of the Federal Register?

Today, the bureaucrats are offering doctors a bonus to enlist in the “anti-racism” cause. Tomorrow, they may make critical race theory mandatory in the medical office. And we probably won’t know until the deed is done. This much is sure: Pushing “equity” in healthcare is a prescription for tearing this country apart.

Speaking at a Saturday afternoon press conference, Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle provided new details into the investigation of the wind-driven Marshall Fire that ripped through Superior, Louisville, and parts of unincorporated Boulder County (suburban areas of Denver) Thursday, destroying upwards of 1,000 building structures. 

Initially, Boulder officials said blown-down power lines were believed to have ignited the wildfires. But Pelle confirmed a new twist into the investigation that no downed power lines were found near the fire’s origin. 

Pelle said several tips resulted in a search warrant in connection with the investigation into the fire’s origin. He did not rule out arson or “reckless behavior.”

“We have several tips we’re working on,” Pelle said. “We’ve executed a search warrant at one particular location we’re investigating.”

A reporter asked the sheriff whether a burning shed could be the source of the fire. Pelle responded, “It probably is.”

Fox 31 Denver published a video of a small shed engulfed in flames just south of Marshall Road.

Pelle said there’s no conclusive evidence about the cause of the fire. But, he said, “if it turns out to be arson or reckless behavior, we’ll take appropriate actions. It was a red flag day, the day of the fire, so there shouldn’t have been any burning.”

Boulder officials also said three people are missing and are likely feared dead.

The Marshall Fire has been deemed the most destructive wildfire in Colorado state history.

Authored by Dr. Robert W. Malone,

So, it has been a busy week. As I prepare for getting on a plane to head back to Virginia from Austin, Texas, I am taking a moment to try to breath and to write down some thoughts.

Yesterday, I had to take an antibody test in order to get into the studio in Austin.  The good news is that my natural immunity from my last round of COVID is robust – with IgA and even IgM Antibodies present. 

This brings me again to one of my biggest issues with the public policy response.  Natural immunity equals or trumps immunity from the genetic vaccines, because the natural immune response is broad (against the all 29 proteins of the SAVS-CoV-2 virus) and appears to hold up better against Omicron. This sustained and robust natural immunity also applies to children.  We all know it.  Why won’t our government and the main stream media admit it?

Why is it that the CDC website that lists 146 million people having already had COVID-19 in the USA has not been updated since October 2, 2021?  A quick, back of the napkin calculation projects at least another 20-30 million have had COVID since then.  Bringing the number of people who have had COVID to around 170 million.  Well over half the people in the USA.

So, now comes a more transmissible but weaker version of the virus.  We should all be celebrating!  Over half of us have natural immunity.  Over half of us are vaccinated. Unless we are elderly or have significant other co-morbidities, we will be fine.  For many, if not most, will seem like another cold, if we notice it at all. Even the unvaccinated or COVID-19 naive person should be just find, if they don’t have significant co-morbidities. 

Of course, one isn’t actually allowed to suggest these ideas on many social media platforms. One can’t be at all critical of the government pandemic response or the fearporn – such talk will get you banned, censored and branded with a scarlet letter “AV” (the dreaded “Anti-Vaxxer” label). I am not an anti-vaxxer, but I will wear this label with pride – speaking truth to power always has consequences.

So, yes back to my thoughts on Omicron – please keep taking that vitamin D3 and get your levels tested, if you haven’t already.  Use a formulation that combines the D3 with Vitamins A and K. Please keep up with the zinc, vitamin C and magnesium.  Work on weight control, glycemic control and please exercise!  All are important.

But also celebrate!  If you have had COVID– Omicron is going to be a milder version. In fact, you may not even know that you were infected. 

Focus on the Research

Characteristics and Outcomes of Hospitalized Patients in South Africa During the COVID-19 Omicron Wave Compared With Previous Waves. JAMA. Published online December 30, 2021. doi:10.1001/jama.2021.24868

More good news from South Africa!  A new paper just out with data from hospitalized patients. The study compared hospitalized patients from Omicron (“wave 4”) compared to earlier waves.

Remember, this is hospitalized patients- so a group of people probably more like the hospitalized cohorts found in the USA.  Not the general population of South Africans.

Highlights:

• The number of patients treated in the hospitals during the same early period of each wave differed (2351 in wave 4 vs maximum 6342 in wave 3). 

  This implies fewer hospitalizations, as we know that Omicron is highly transmissible.

• 68% to 69% of patients presenting to the emergency department with a positive COVID-19 result were admitted to the hospital in the first 3 waves vs 41.3% in wave 4.

  Showing that Omicron is resulting in fewer hospitalizations.

• Patients hospitalized during wave 4 were younger (median age, 36 years vs maximum 59 years in wave 3; P < .001) with a higher proportion of females.

  This is interesting and will need to be explored in more depth.  Is this due to natural immunity of the elderly or that Omicron is a milder disease  for the elderly than previous variants? Another hypothesis is that Omicron is not infecting deep lung tissue, so the elderly are having more mild disease compared to other waves.  Few elderly might mean fewer overall hospitalizations but with a young median age.

• Significantly fewer patients with co-morbidities were admitted in wave 4, and the proportion presenting with an acute respiratory condition was lower (31.6% in wave 4 vs maximum 91.2% in wave 3, P < .001).

  Again, this is good news all around!

• Of 971 patients admitted in wave 4, 24.2% were vaccinated, 66.4% were unvaccinated, and vaccination status was unknown for 9.4%. 

  How this relates to the population of vaccinated and unvaccinated is a little difficult, because the SA vaccine program has significantly increased the proportion vaccinated this fall.

• The proportion of patients requiring oxygen therapy significantly decreased ( 17.6% in wave 4 vs 74% in wave 3, P < .001), as did the percentage receiving mechanical ventilation.

  Again, very good news!

• Admission to intensive care was 18.5% in wave 4 vs 29.9% in wave 3 (P < .001).

  More mild disease, even in the severe cases!

• The median length of stay (between 7 and 8 days in previous waves) decreased to 3 days in wave 4.  

  Another super indicator of mild disease!

• The death rate was between 19.7% in wave 1 and 29.1% in wave 3 and decreased to 2.7% in wave 4. 

  This also, should make us all very happy!

Again – remember this data is for HOSPITALIZED PATIENTS ONLY!

So, don’t let the fear-porn get to you – Omicron is coming to a town, village, city, restaurant, or grocery store near you.  But for the vast majority of us, we will be fine.  We have tools to fight this more mild variant, and there are life-saving treatments.  Just work to stay or get as healthy as you can, eat your vitamins, eat real food and go get some exercise!

I will end with a quote from F. A. Hayek, (1974 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences )

“’Emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded — and once they are suspended it is not difficult for anyone who has assumed such emergency powers to see to it that the emergency persists.”

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Truth to power.