Author: haroldblackphd

Until I went to the University of Konstaz am Bodensee to finish my dissertation for Ohio State, I did not drink any alcoholic beverages. I had my first beer at my high school senior picnic and spit it out. When I went to the University of Georgia, I was 17 years old and had a beer starting my junior year at a private club in Athens – Clarke County was a “dry” county” in those days. When the first light beers came out it tasted awful. There was a joke that it was sent to a lab and the report came back that “you horse has diabetes”. I didn’t drink wine because I always thought that wine tasted like grapes gone bad. However, living in Germany I discovered the local beer, Ruppana with its deep rich color and flavor. The beer was delivered to your door, like the milk of my youth, and left on your door step. It was wonderful. When I came back to the US, I stopped drinking beer because no commercially brewed mass marketed beer was to my taste. Then came the micro brews. I discovered that I really hated the trendy IPAs. To me it was merely a contest to see who could brew the bitterest beer. But it was the stouts and porters that were more to my tastes. So now I drink at most one stout or porter a day when I have a beer. Here are my favorites – I do not care for Guiness::

1. Split Shot stout – Elysian brewing company. Of course since this is my favorite, our local distributed stopped carrying it
2. Left Hand Nitro stout
3. Portly stout – Turtle Anarchy Brewing Company
4. Thunderstruck Coffee porter – Highland brewing company
5. Old Rasputin – North Coast Brewing Company

I also like some scotch ales namely old Chub from Oskar Blues and Yee Haw’s Eighty. By the way Yee Haw’s Velvet Charmer is to die for.

Isn’t it time to dump the Dow? Currently, the market is in sell off mode and the business channels are breathlessly reporting the fall in the Dow. However, I am less interested in the Dow than in how the overall market is behaving. Concentrating on the Dow is for rookies. Pros look at broader indexes and focus on stocks not on the Dow. So isn’t it time to dump the Dow?

The Dow is the closest watched (by much of the public and the business media) indicator of the stock market. Yet the Dow is made up of only 30 companies. It started out in 1884 comprised of nine railroads and two industrial companies. The value of the Dow is not the actual average of the prices of its component stocks, but rather the sum of the component prices divided by a divisor, which changes whenever one of the component stocks has a stock split or stock dividend, so as to generate a consistent value for the index. 

The components of the Dow change over time as some companies gain prominence and others lose prominence. Yet companies such as Amazon, Alphabet, Tesla and meta are not on the Dow. There are over 15,000 publically traded companies in the US with about 5,000 traded on the exchanges. Now it is understandable why there was such a small number on the Dow initially given the logistical difficulties of calculating a composite average for all publically traded firms. But that is no longer a problem. The Dow is top heavy with the highest priced stocks carrying more impact than the lowest priced stock. Recently, the biggest company in market cap Apple surged with the Dow falling. How could this happen? Its because Apple is not included in the Dow! So the question of the day is why not ditch the Dow and do something akin to the S&P 500 which accounts for market capitalization or the Russell 2000? Better yet, since we have the technology, why not include all stocks traded on all the major exchanges and have a weighted market cap average? Now that would be an accurate representation of what is happening in the market rather than citing an outdated anachronism of the past.

You know you are getting old when 

1. The TV shows you watch only air commercials about ED, debt reduction, class action lawsuits and stool softeners. 
2. On the stations you seldom watch, you haven’t a clue what anyone is talking about. 
3. On those stations, none of the commercials make sense.
4. Your grandchildren are in college. 
5. You haven’t a clue as to what is “body wash.”
6. All your favorite movies and music are by dead people.
7. You don’t understand all the tattoos and body piercing (particularly the nose rings/studs).
8. It finally dawns on you how smart your parents were.
9. Your grown children are having the same troubles with their kids as you had with them.

The FBI says that a Ponzi scheme is “a form of fraud that lures investors and pays profits to earlier investors with funds from more recent investors.”

Hum. Sounds like social security to me. Maybe this is why the Left is for open borders.

The pundits note that Biden’s approval ratings are in the 30s and some have wondered why is it so low. I on the other hand wonder why is it so high? How could anyone who is breathing approve of this president? I don’t know any of those supporters. Do you? 

Evidence that the Left is braindead is that Elizabeth Warren says that Democrats need to pass stalled agenda items in the next few months, otherwise they are “headed toward big losses in the midterms.” Huh? The reason that they are headed toward big losses is because of their agenda.

I guess the Democrats don’t believe all the polls about the coming election. Instead, they could easily avoid the impending disaster. All Biden has to do is lift the moratoriums on fossil fuels. Say “drill baby drill”, open up Federal leases, lower (instead of raising) royalties on leases, approve all the pipelines, repeal all the Covid mandates, keep quiet on CRT and gender identity, embrace charter schools, reinstitute “stay in Mexico”, keep Title 42 and announce funding for the wall. Sure the Left will go ballistic but they are not going to vote for any Republican. I bet that the poll numbers will flip and the Democrats might maintain control of the Senate if not the House.

One of the most laughable bumper stickers out there is the one that says “If you can read this, thank a teacher”. Are teachers really responsible for kids learning to read? If so then teachers are also responsible for kids not being able to read. My parents were teachers. Mom taught second grade. Dad taught biology and later became a high school principal. He also worked full time at night at the Post Office. So it might not be a surprise that both my brother and I could read before we stepped inside a school. The same is true for my kids and my brother’s kids. However, even a teacher would be able to teach our children to read. Why? It’s because my brother and I were “A” students with my brother being one of the smartest people that I have known and our children all have advanced degrees.

The inability of teachers to teach kids to read is blamed on the kids. Consider that the head of the Chicago teachers union once said that the increased accountability demanded by the city administration over the dismal performance of the school system was “unfair” because “poor kids can’t learn”! Of course this is nonsense. Consider that virtually all these students can recite every word to the most complicated rap after only three listenings. Indeed, some inner city teachers are using rap as a teaching tool in the classroom. If I were a parent in Chicago I would be on the warpath. My limited experience with local second graders convinced me that all children are able to read at grade level unless they have a learning disability. But most can’t.

A problem is that in the public school education system the students are the only ones without an advocate who holds the schools accountable for its failure. I know, you say “What about the board of education?” Or “what about the PTA?” If these were advocates for the students, then they would not tolerate the miserable reading and math scores in our schools. Lack of achievement is always laid at the feet of the students when the real culprit is the method of instruction utilized. The teachers are taught methods that have demonstrated failure. Sure, there are high achievers but studies show that these students excel regardless of the method employed. The Educational Industrial Complex – textbook authors, textbook publishers, colleges of education, accreditation boards and unions – has an invested interest in traditional methods of instruction and will defend them regardless of outcomes. Yet nontraditional methods such as Direct Instruction have been shown to produce proficiency rates in at-risk students that are equal to and often higher than those for students in high income districts. It’s time that we quit excusing the teachers and blaming the kids for failure for achieve. Although there is considerable merit in changing how we pay teachers whose salaries can be read off a chart that shows years and education, the main culprit is method of instruction. If we want kids to achieve, then we must blow up our current system used by our government schools. Although charter schools and private schools are an improvement, they still may be hampered by inflexible accreditation standards that have little to do with learning. Indeed, Direct instruction was rejected locally on the grounds that it would be rejected by the accreditation board because it required “too much reading”! 

If our schools were a corporation, the stockholders would shake up the board of directors and fire the CEO. Given the poor performance of our schools, especially those in lower income areas, I would reward the superintendent based on performance and terminate him if it did not improve. Surely, that would provide an incentive to do better. I only wish we could unleash American ingenuity and innovation on the school system. I would put out for bid contracts, collect the taxes and turn the school system over to private enterprise. The contracts would be reviewed periodically and if certain metrics were not met, then the contractor would be fired and a new one hired.

Americans are a polite and considerate people. Most of us do not riot when we want to protest an injustice. We usually keep go along with policies even when we do not like them. How else to explain that we will send our kids to schools wearing masks even though all the research tells us that kids are less affected by Covid than by the flu, that they are unlikely to transmit the disease and that wearing masks hampers their learning. If this were a policy to which that left were opposed, all hell would be raised. Its hard to imagine the 180 degree turn taken by the country in only one year. Here are some of the harmful – for most of us – policies of the current administration that bear the imprimatur of the left.

1. Climate change: no new pipelines, restrictions on drilling, encouraging financial institutions not to lend to gas and oil producers, cited climate change as an essential element of national security and foreign policy
2. Expansion of the welfare state: proposed dramatic increased in spending on Pell Grants, low income K-12 schools, low income housing assistance, equity plans for all federal agencies, changing funding formula to Obama Care.
3. Open borders: ended funding for the border wall, rescind the “Stay in Mexico” policy
4. $1.9 trillion Covid “relief” bill: Only 9% allocated to public health issues
5. $2.2 trillion “infrastructure” bill
6. Support for teaching of Critical Race Theory
7. Opposition of Florida bill limiting teaching of gender identity to K-3 students
8. Raising the corporate income tax, a millionaires tax, a wealth tax, an excise tax on pharmaceuticals, increasing the excise tax.
9. Mask mandates on federal property
10. Ending ban on transgenders in military
11. Raised minimum wage for federal contractors to $15 an hour
12. Established a White House gender policy council
13. Stops withdrawal from World Health Organization
14. Restart Iran nuclear agreement
15. Pauses student loan repayments
16. Extends foreclosure moratorium
17. Rejoins Paris climate accord
18. Rescinds Trump’s 1776 Commission that was established as a counter to the New York Times 1619 Project
19. Required noncitizens to be included in the Census
20. “Build Back Better” progressive wish list
21. Soft on crime
22. Attempts at rescinding the Second Amendment
23. Federal takeover of elections
24. Commission to study the packing of the Supreme Court
25. Universal pre-K, free community college, expansion of child tax credit
26. Increased regulatory burdens at a cost of $100 billion annually

Did I miss anything? But if you think that all this is not enough, the progressive democrat caucus has given Biden a list of 55 items that they want imposed by executive action. Note that Biden has issued more executive orders than any previous president by a large margin. The progressives want him to issue even more.

Many pundits are telling us that the Republicans taking control of the House and the Senate in the midterm elections will derail the progressive agenda. Well it won’t. Virtually all of the items above came via executive orders. Republicans can derail legislative initiatives and can control fiscal expenditures. But any effort to derail executive orders will fail because there will not be 60 senators that will vote to override the president’s orders.

Apparently you can’t get Covid or transmit it if you are eating or drinking. Why else are you forced to wear a mask on an airplane or in a terminal unless  you are eating or drinking?

Kamala Harris must be pretending to be a buffoon. Remember she was attorney general and then a senator from California so its hard to believe that she is as stupid as she appears.

I was wrong. I thought when Biden said in the debates with Trump that he would end fossil fuels, he would lose all the high energy producing states and lose the election. Yet he won Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Colorado. Go figure.

Seventy percent of black students in college are women. What does this portend? Typically, women do not marry men with less education. This means that when college educated black women look to marry men with equal or greater education, for many, this means white men. Two prominent examples are Kamala Harris and Judge (soon to be Justice) Kentanji Jackson Brown.

Antony Fauci’s ever changing advice reminds me of the story about Albert Einstein who was asked by one of his assistants if he realized that he had just given the same exam to his class that he had given one year ago. Einstein said yes he knew it was the same exam, but the answers had changed.

It seems to me that the support by the leaders of the democratic party of the few transgender individuals and gender identity has signaled an end to their support of the women’s movement. Indeed, it seems that they have even abandoned the use of the word “women”. Birthing people? Give me a break.

The iphone has a male pregnant emoji.

Why don’t conservative stockholders raise hell at the annual meetings of woke corporations?

I just read where several women at a prison in New Jersey have become pregnant after having sex with inmates who are biological males identifying as females. It seems to me that transpeople should have the genitalia of the gender that they identify with before being given the status of the other sex.

The trans swimmer who was mediocre as a male and a champion as a female is 6’3”, powerfully built and still has male genitalia and has sex with women. Is she (he) considered a lesbian? I would wage that since she (he) has used up her (his) eligibility at she (he) may likely transition back to being a male.

The newly anointed Supreme Court justice in waiting would not define a woman. I guess that she could not even say as did Justice Potter Stewart on obscenity “I know it when I see it.”

Why is it that female impersonators are in the main more attractive than transfemales?

There are an increasing number of cites on the internet of school children identifying not just as a different sex but as animals (mainly dogs and cats). See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYxEfIFpugg. While there have been assertions that some school districts are accommodating such students – called “furries” most of those assertions have been shown to be false.

“Fair” and “fare” have to be the most confusing words in the English language. How are they even pronounced the same is beyond me. “Fare” can be a noun or a verb and as each have wildly different meanings. “I paid the fare for the bus.” “The provincial fare of southern Italy is delicious.” “How did you fare on the exam?” Or even “I fared forth toward town.” As to “fair”: “I got a fair shake.” “Just to be fair, I gave them my bonus.” “The ball landed in fair territory.” “She is fair-skinned.” “She tutored a fair amount.” “It is a fair day.” “Today there is a fair wind.” “Let’s go to the fair.” Oh and lest we forget the word “fairing” which has nothing to do with any of the above. 

How can meatless products be advertised as plant based meats?

I guess it must be awards season. On TV, the Country Music Awards were hyped. Then we had the Oscars where the motion picture industry gives itself awards and where Will Smith slapped Chris Rock. And now we have the Grammys. I immediately realized that I was completely out of touch. I had not seen a single movie that was nominated. By the way, I never realized how many categories of “excellence” existed in the movies. I had not heard any of the country music songs or heard of the singers. That is not surprising since I don’t listen to country music. But I had not heard of any of the nominees for best song on the Grammys nor heard of any “artist” except for Kanye West – who I hadn’t realized was a musician. I listen to R&B, blues and jazz. I did recognize virtually all of the jazz nominees but interesting enough, I had never heard any of the R&B songs or their artists. I guess every R&B singer I like is dead. Since I don’t listen to rap, all the “artists” and “songs” were new to me. I asked my grandchildren to recommend some of their music just to see if I would change my mind about their peculiar tastes. But listening to their stuff made me remember that part of the torture of detainees at Gitmo was to pipe in Eminem into their cells. Also recently, New Zealand dispersed Covid-19 protestors by playing Barry Manilow.

Music is a passion of mine as is reading novels – mostly science fiction, military history, mystery and historical fiction. But I don’t go to movies anymore. Today’s movies are too violent for my tastes. They seem to be awash with characters I don’t like and themes I don’t care for. Even the cartoons seem to be obligated to promote LGBTQ. But I am fond of film noire (The Grifters, Jackie Brown, Pulp Fiction, The Moderns, Choose Me), assorted Humphrey Bogart and older film. 

I like old stuff. But I do like some new stuff too. Its just that the new stuff is in the tradition of the old stuff like the Marsalis brothers, Kenny Garrett, Joshua Redman and Eric Reed. No hip hop. No rap. But no country either. Just music I understand and love. Does this mean I am old? Yes it does. When I was a teenager I listened to Monk, Miles, Mingus and Coltrane. My father thought it was just noise. He loved big band jazz and used to say that modern jazz was useless because you couldn’t dance to it. When he said that I laughed until I cried, imagining trying to dance to Monk. Yet one of my fondest memories is that the year before my Dad died, he picked me up at the Atlanta airport and had Atlanta’s only classical jazz station on the radio. They were playing Coltrane’s Ballads. When we pulled into the garage, we just sat in the car listening until it finished. I said “you are listening to jazz?” He looked at me and said “Well some of this stuff isn’t so bad”. 

Harold A Black

Knoxville Focus

March 28, 2022    

         How poor are the American poor? The 2020 Census says that 34 million Americans live in poverty.  The official povery line for a family of four is $27,750 or $6,937 per person. Add $4,720 for each additional person and subtract $4,720 for each fewer person. However, last year we spent $714 billion on anti-poverty programs. That’s $21,000 per poor person or $84,000 a year for a family of four.  We could have just mailed every poor person a check for $10,000 and saved $374 billion. That $374 billion explains why we have no plans to eliminate poverty in the United States. The poor are a commodity and support the poverty industry. Mailing the poor a check would unemploy the thousands of administrators who depend on the poor for their livelihood.

         We are spending enough each year to make the poor middle class.  That is why long ago when I started paying enough in taxes to support a family of four above the poverty level, I suggested that the government just assign me a family. I would send them the money, give the kids birthday presents and visit them at Christmas.

         The standard of living of America’s poor is higher than that of the average European.  Poverty in America does not mean the devastating poverty seen in the rest of the world. Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation points out that very few of America’s poor live in the type of poverty that suffer significant hardships. Rector notes that 40 percent of the poor own their homes of which 84 percent are air conditioned, two thirds have cable or satellite TV, three-fourths own a car, 98 percent own a color TV with two-thirds owning two or more color TVs.  Sixty percent own computers. The typical poor American has more living space that the average European. Poor boys at 18 are an inch taller and 10 pounds heavier than the GIs who stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. 

         This is not to say that we should not address the issues faced by the poor. The problem is that we have programs that do not encourage incentives that lead to a reduction in poverty. We have programs that do just the opposite. Those programs when first implemented saw the black nuclear family little different from that of whites. Now disincentives translate to 70 percent of black babies being born to single mothers. I would subsidize the poor nuclear family especially those whose kids are not in trouble, who go to school and work hard. Surely we are smart enough to structure anti-poverty programs that encourage people not to be poor. 

         The poor are ill served by the politicans that represent them.  I have yet to hear positive solutions coming from Maxine Waters, Cori Bush or Ayanna Pressley. Indeed, suggestions made by socialist politicians like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would make the poor even poorer and more dependent on the government. Yet the so-called poverty experts who get most of the press time tend to be socialists rather than capitalists.  This is likely due to the politics of the media. No positive solutions ever come from these people on the left. 

         Those with positive solutions typically come from thinkers and practitioners who are pro-market and are capitalists. They receive less press than those on the left. Perhaps the most famous thinker is Thomas Sowell and perhaps the most prominent practitioner is Bob Woodson. But there are many others that are pro market and pro free enterprise. Typically, the media ignores them and runs to Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ibram X. Kendi or even Al Sharpton rather than Shelby Steele, Glenn Loury or John Sibley Butler. 

           The media trumpets the agenda of the left and choose those who are like minded to speak for poor minorities.  We are therefore left with apologists who blame every ill on racism. One of the best examples of media bias is the 1619 project of the New York Times. Despite its well documented poor scholarship, flaws and mischaracterizations, it has received favorable coverage and considerably more media attention than the Woodson Center’s 1776 Unites (1776Unites.com) which is positive and touts individual responsibility. 

         Blacks have a higher percentage of their population in poverty than do whites but white poverty is typically ignored by the media. The result is the impression that most blacks are poor when this is not the case. The black poverty rate is around 18 percent while that of whites is 8 percent. Yet I would wager if you took a poll, most would put the black rate much higher and the white rate lower. The media has painted a caricature of blacks that is far from reality. A caricature that is a lie and does a disservice to the blacks in this country.

Why Support Term Limits?

knoxfocus.com

March 7, 2022

In my mailbox were flyers from a group “U.S. Term Limits” urging my local state representatives to support congressional term limits. Their website says that resolutions have been introduced in 17 states. I presume that they want a constitutional amendment. Unfortunately, their website does not succinctly explain why they favor term limits. They mention that the re-election rate in congress is 90 percent. However, that points to the number of “safe” seats created in part by gerrymandering from the state legislatures. The implication is that guaranteed reelection constitutes bad government. 

They cite that 82 percent of voters favor term limits. But I seriously doubt that even a small percentage of voters have thought through the issue. Asking a voter if they support term limits is like asking if they like Mom’s apple pie. It sounds good. I’m reminded of my Dad saying “it sounds good if you are interested in sounds.”

They state “with tenure reaching an all-time high, seats open up less frequently than ever before. A quarter of Congress has been in office for more than 16 years. Nearly half of Congress has been in office for more than eight. Nine members have been in office for more than 40 years. Term limits would reverse this trend by ensuring that open-seat races are held on a regular basis.” It should be noted that the longest serving senator was Robert (KKK) Byrd of West Virginia who was in office for 51 years. The longest in the House was Michigan’s John Dingell (59 years) who was succeeded by his wife who currently serves.

I don’t find this convincing. I am surprised to find that tenure is less than I had assumed. If my representative is doing a “good” job, I will vote for reelection. If not, I will vote to change. If the electorate disagrees with me, then I will work to change that representative’s positions on items I consider important.

The website never documents whether term limits lead to better government. It points out that 36 governors and 15 state legislatures have term limits. It should be simple enough to create a template to show whether the term limited governors and state legislatures have “better government” than those without the term limits.  Of course, the definition of “better government” is in the eye of the beholder. The poster child against term limits is the state of California where state representatives are limited to 3 terms (6 years) and state senators limited to 2 terms (8 years). Prima facia, one should oppose term limits simply because California has them.

I defer to the Founding Fathers on most issues of governance. It is important to note that they did not impose term limits on the nascent government. Connecticut’s Roger Sherman, the only Founding Father to help draft and sign the Declaration and Resolves (1774), the Articles of Association (1774), the Declaration of American Independence (1776), the Articles of Confederation (1777, 1778), and the U.S. Constitution (1787) wrote “Nothing renders government more unstable than a frequent change of the persons that administer it.” 

My position is that we already have term limits: elections. Term limits would remove experienced lawmakers and make current ones even more susceptible to lobbyists and to staff. Bills are so enormous that few of our elected officials have time to read them. Remember “we will find out what’s in the bill after we pass it”? All too often with the mass of paperwork, staffers read the proposed legislation and make recommendations. This gets more exacerbated if term limits are imposed. New legislators take time to learn the lay of the land and are generally not very effective during their first terms. If the House were limited to 4 terms, then 115 new members would appear every two years. If limited to 5 terms, then it would be 87 new members. In the senate, if limited to 2 terms (12 years) then every four years 25 new senators would be elected. I doubt that this turnover would lead to better governance.

I lean toward Sherman’s position. Again, I am not dogmatic. Show me the evidence that term limited governors, govern best. Show me the evidence that term limited state houses govern best. If that evidence exists, then I will support term limits. Otherwise, I think the effort is a waste of time and resources with little benefit to the public.

Did you hear Joe Biden’s speech in New York on guns? Referring to the Second Amendment he stated that “no amendment was absolute” and that preventing the sale of certain firearms “doesn’t violate anybody’s Second Amendment rights.” He also said that “You couldn’t buy a cannon when this amendment was passed, and so nobody with the money should be able to buy certain assault weapons.” My reaction was “who writes this stuff for him?” I went on the internet and found that I could purchase a cannon. An article in the National Review (https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/americans-can-still-buy-cannon/) tells me that if the cannon were manufactured prior to 1898 I can buy one without regulation. I can buy a later model but subject to certain regulations. So Biden was wrong and his speech writer should get fired. I also found that I can buy a tank (https://militarymachine.com/military-tanks-for-sale/) or even land mines (https://www.buymilsurp.com/ordnance-grenades-munitions-landmines-c-3075_3181_3184.html). 

Thus, it is obvious even to the most casual observer who factchecks that Biden is misinformed on this issue and is spreading misinformation. Given his penchant for fabrication, perhaps he should be deplatformed from social media or at least there should be a qualifying statement to all that he utters. However, when I looked at the news coverage of the speech, the media mostly gave him a pass and did not question its accuracy. Some literally gushed saying it was “emotional” and “forceful”. Unfortunately it was also wrong. Part of the problem is that Biden is attacking guns and not criminals. The speech was devoid of criticism of “progressive” DAs who have weakened penalties, bail and sentencing. The basic question that is never addressed is why has crime and gun violence surged? New York has seen a surge in gun violence directly related to its dismantling of its anti-crime unit. Given its progressive DA, I wonder if this unit will be reinstated after the election of an ex-cop as mayor. Recall that New York has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation. 

It is also illuminating that some of the most vocal advocates for stricter gun control laws live in gated communities and often employ security guards. One of the “squad” Cori Bush (D-MO) is a staunch advocate of gun control yet is reported to pay $200,000 for gun-toting private security guards.

Gun control is one of two national perplexing issues. The other is drug control. Although there are strict laws regarding drug control, there is evidence that such laws have failed to decrease drug use and crime associated with drugs. This is being displayed prominently with the fentanyl crisis. The drug has become the number one cause of death among those aged 18-45. Between 2020 and 2021, over 79,000 deaths were attributed to fentanyl. In contrast there were 45,000 gun related deaths of which 19,000 were murders and 24,000 were suicides. This is not to lessen the importance of dealing with gun crime but it does give one pause about our thinking about crime and its prevention.