Gleanings & Observations
A combined company valued at over one billion dollars has been formed by a merger of the Shades of Gray, WOW Tech Group and Lovehoney, delicately called “sexual wellness brands”. Global sales of sex toys rose by 26% in 2020, a year in which Covid resulted in lockdowns in many countries. Because births in the U.S. have been declining “almost continuously for more than a decade” according to scholars at the Brookings Institution, the decline preceded and therefore is not clearly related to the rise in the sale of vibrators and other sexual wellness products.
“I’m getting sick and tired of hearing about morality, our moral obligation…. The United States has no obligation to evacuate one, or 100,001, South Vietnamese.” So spake the junior senator from Delaware, Joe Biden, in 1975, speaking first about Cambodia, then about Vietnam. Fast forward to July 2021. “Our message to these [Afghan] men and women is clear: there is a home for you in the United States if you so choose. We will stand with you, just as you stood with us.”
Food prices are rising, as anyone loading a supermarket cart can attest. So the administration is increasing the food stamp program by 27% over pre-pandemic levels. A family of four will receive $835 per month, almost $300 more, reckons the WSJ, than a four-person household spent on food before Covid reared its unlovely head.
It’s hard on the conscience of progressive/radical students headed for a top law school and an eventual job carrying a starting salary in six figures. No need to fret. A guide prepared by the Stanford National Lawyers Guild for students who need to reconcile their opposition to “the patriarchal racial colonial capitalism that crushes people and planet” with impending material advantages tells how. When the time comes, use the “disproportionate access” provided by a top-school law degree to nail jobs that pay only a bit of cash but in which one can undermine capitalism.
Of course, law firms that want to continue to thrive might well decide not to offer such disproportionate access to Stanford grads when filling jobs that pay $100,000 while these raw recruits learn their trade. Or they might find that Stanford is about in line with the dispassionate analytical rigor required of students from most other law schools.
There is something about Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen that is deceiving, unintentionally so, but nevertheless assets she knows how to use. A benign appearance, unassailable academic credentials, a person who somehow climbed the greasy pole to chair the Fed and then sit in President Biden’s cabinet. Beneath those assets beats the heart of a true Democratic pol. Her eye on the mounting debt, Yellen has advised congress that the Treasury will not renew the current supplemental unemployment benefits. Very brave, since her boss would certainly disapprove.
Then comes the fine print. Benefits will continue to flow to workers in states with high unemployment rates, presumably above the national average of 5.4%. The seven states with unemployment rates of more than 7%. are likely to continue receiving aid. All have Democratic administrations. But eight states with unemployment rates of less than 4%, likely will be the victims of Yellen’s parsimony. All eight have Republican administrations. No more cash for them. Coincidence, surely.
August 18: President Biden announces booster shots for all American adults to fight off waning immunity. “It will make you safer, and for longer, and it will help us end the pandemic faster.” Contingent on CDC and FDA approval.
August 18: Joint statement of HHS and Medical Experts. “We [CDC] are prepared to offer booster shots for all Americans beginning the week of September 20 and starting 8 months after an individual’s second dose.” Subject to FDA approval.
August 19: FDA authorizes third dose, but for immunocompromised people only.
August 23: World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who rides shotgun for Xi Jinping, calls for a two-month moratorium on booster shots for Americans to prevent “vaccine injustice and vaccine nationalism.”
August 23: FDA finally gives full approval to the Pfizer vaccine but does not approve the President’s call for booster shots for all Americans, even for the elderly. Perhaps it is waiting for further guidance from the WHO.
These Gleanings&Observations will appear occasionally on this site.