Short Takes

There are a few items that I thought were interesting and/or needed some follow up.

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Thank You

My recent blog article How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard has received the most views of all my articles.  Thank you so very much.  My grief gets a little less each day, but, in its place, are all the wonderful memories of my time with Celeste.

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Hello, Mr. Gander?  Meet Ms. Goose...

This is Illuminating but (to me at least) not surprising.

Recently drag performer RuPaul announced the creation of a “no censorship” Allstora bookstore.  In the rollout, RuPaul stood before a flag to defy the censors and embrace access to works of different authors and viewpoints.  In some quarters, the anti-free speech movement has grown exponentially.  Now, this iconic figure was taking a bold stand for free speech.

The rollout was promising.  Like many, the founders objected to book bans across the country.  Such bans have been implemented by both the left and the right.

Allstora was founded on the pledge that “we’re a marketplace for all books and all stories, with a focus on elevating marginalized voices.”  Co-founder Eric Cervini and drag performer Adam Powell, welcomed visitors to the website with a pop-up message that warned “you may find books you disagree with.”

The site declared “censorship of any book, perspective, or story is incompatible with the survival of democracy.”  After all, “banning books is never the answer.”

Liberal critics raised the alarm that the bookstore would be selling “homophobic,” “transphobic,” and “anti-woke” works.

Drag performer “Lady Bunny” noted that the store would be selling works by figures like Mike Huckabee, Chaya Raichik, and Matt Walsh.

Lady Bunny asked “why not just stop selling what many on the left consider to be hate speech?”

That is all that it took.

Allstora first implemented a flagging system for offensive books and then just got rid of the no censorship pledge.

While some sites state that Allstora only moved to add disclaimers, it appears that the no censorship pledge is gone and various authors are missing.

“No censorship” only lasted three days.

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Ha Ha, Told Ya So!

Last month in the article The Gaslighting of America? I showed how some funny numbers were showing up in the monthly jobs report.

Last week’s jobs report was a mixed bag.  The number of new jobs increased by 275K but the rate of unemployment increased to a two-year high of 3.9%.

But the big news was that employment for January was revised sharply lower, 229K down 39% from the original 353K.

Now, I’m not saying anything nefarious is going on, but it seems suspicious that 10 of the last 12 jobs numbers have been revised downward, some substantially.  After all, think about what happens.  The jobless number is released to great media fanfare.  “Look how good we’re doing!” the politicians say.  Then, the following month the downward revision is quietly released and, conveniently, not broadcast in the corporate media.  And, of course, the politicians say nothing.

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U3 vs U6

I do want to clarify one thing.  In The Gaslighting of America? I implied that a widening gap between the U6 Household Survey and the U3 Payroll Survey was suspicious.  That gap now exceeds 9 million workers! 

I now understand where the gap comes from.  The U6 employment counts employed workers, the U3 counts the number of jobs filled.  But in the current economy, where our economy has created 870,000 part-time jobs and lost 97,000 full-time jobs, the 9 million gap can be attributed to workers who have more than one job.  Why?  Because there were fewer full-time jobs and workers need to work multiple part-time jobs to make ends meet. The worker employed at several part-time jobs gets counted once in the U6 but multiple times in the U3.