Reverie

I have never met anyone who wanted to save the world without my financial support. ~Robert Brault

 In 2000, a U.S. Commission on Civil Rights study found 44.6 percent of black mortgage applicants and 22.3 percent of white applicants were turned down. These and similar statistics led to demands that government do something about lending-industry discrimination.

The loan rejection rates for Asians and native Hawaiians were only 12.4 percent, but those stats didn't see the light of day.

Why?

They didn't fit the racial-discrimination narrative.

The most recent data from the National Center for Education Statistics show that around 25 percent of U.S. K-12 schools are private, while about 10 percent of schooled children attend private schools.

Hyewon Kim—a Cato Center for Educational Freedom Intern—compiled information on school shootings in the United States from 2000 to 2018 using the Tribune-Review database. The database is limited to legitimate school shootings; that is, shootings that occurred on or near a K-12 school campus while classes were in session or when students were present. The list also excluded suicide-only incidents.
Hyewon found 134 school shootings from 2000 to 2018. Only eight of these occurred in private schools while 122 occurred in public schools. The type of school could not be definitively classified for 4 of the shootings.
About 94 percent of the shootings that could be classified occurred in public schools while only about 6 percent occurred in private schools.

A recent medical study evaluated the reasons and results of single fathers seeking children through surrogacy. This is the summary of the study as written by the study's reviewer:

"Anyone who has become a parent can say, “It’s complicated.” It is an extraordinary change that can only be described as awesome and in many ways not fully understandable. There is a natural, undoubtedly biological, drive to reproduce and once one finds himself or herself in the role of parent, great emotions emerge. In the current technological and social age parenthood is possible beyond the past limitations of binary sex parents, and many questions arise, not the least of which is how new parents feel in diverse relationships.
In this study investigators observe single father families by surrogacy and the feelings of the men involved, and frankly I cannot really tell the difference between what would be considered traditional and nontraditional. I challenge any parent to look at these data and honestly say that their experiences are any different than the individuals in this study who honestly answered the questions posed related to parenthood. I take from this study that being a father is an awesome and privileged responsibility no matter what the construct is, single, partnered, straight or gay."
This was a Peer Reviewer.

Kristian Niemietz recently wrote an article on the new outbreak of socialistic romanticism. It seems as if the new pamphleteers think that democracy would make socialism kinder. One segment: "the authors do not seem to realise that there is nothing remotely new about the lofty aspirations they talk about, and the buzzphrases they use. Giving “the people” democratic control over economic life has always been the aspiration, and the promise, of socialism. It is not that this has never occurred to the people who were involved in earlier socialist projects. On the contrary: that was always the idea. There was never a time when socialists started out with the express intention of creating stratified societies led by a technocratic elite. Socialism always turned out that way, but not because it was intended to be that way."

The NYT reported the results of an experiment Gap ran with their employees.

"The study randomly assigned about two-thirds of the stores to a so-called treatment group, in which managers were encouraged to provide workers with more consistent start and stop times from day to day, and more consistent schedules from week to week. Many managers were also authorized to slightly increase the total number of payroll hours that they could allocate to their workers. Scheduling at the remaining one-third of the stores continued largely as usual.

The result: The change in average sales during the experiment was 7 percent higher at the stores subject to the new policies than at the stores in the control group."

So, when managers let people work regular hours, sales rose 7%. Across a sizable company like Gap, that’s millions of dollars a month.

Drivers for the ride-sharing services have to pay their own expenses. According to an MIT study released last month, the median driver profit is $3.37 per hour before taxes. And that’s the median, so half the drivers make even less.
MIT found that 74% of Uber and Lyft drivers earn less than the minimum wage in their state, and 30% actually lose money when you add in vehicle expenses.
This study has since been modified and the numbers are not quite as bad.


Gustavo Grullon, Yelena Larkin, and Roni Michaely have documented how despite a much larger economy, we have seen the number of listed firms fall by half, and many industries now have only a few big players. There is a strong and direct correlation between how few players there are in an industry and how high corporate profits are. This--and the decline of unions--has skewered corporate success against working wages.


Golden oldie:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2015/10/transsexuals.html
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steeleydock: Transsexuals steeleydock.blogspot.com Becoming Nicole is a book about two parents who adopt twin boys only to see, as they grew older, one boy begin to favor feminine things, then insist he was a girl.

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Certainly the best story of the month seems to be that of Ms. Stormy Daniels. One minority that has been overlooked is blackmailing hookers.


An interesting note on Adam Smith and protectionism:

The argument that national security justifies exceptions to free trade has some economic credentials: in his defense of free trade in The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith made a few exceptions "when some particular sort of industry is necessary for the defence of the country."

Generally this is dismissed, often I think for the sake of consistency and the threat of the dreaded slippery slope.

A recent Florida bill contains a provision that prohibits public universities from establishing so-called “free speech zones” and instead designates generally all outdoor campus areas as “traditional public forums,” effectively keeping colleges from restricting protest activity to certain areas.


"...protection only helps one business at the expense of all the others, and at the expense of consumers, and the damage is worse than the gain. What is good for an individual business is not good, scaled up, for the economy as a whole."---Cochrane

Almost 40 years after he was assassinated – shot as he performed mass and was speaking about sacrifice – Archbishop Oscar Romero is to be named a saint, the Vatican has announced.

Boondoggle: pointless project funded as a political favor, exotic trip disguised as a business trip, braided cord

ETYMOLOGY:Coined by scoutmaster Robert H. Link. Earliest documented use: 1929.

The original boondoggle was a braided cord made by Boy Scouts. In 1935, a New York Times article quoted someone criticizing a New Deal program to train jobless to make handicrafts as a boondoggle. Since then this sense of the word has become more common.

Minnesota Representative Drew Christensen was so annoyed by Arie, "The Bachelor,"  that he authored a bill banning the guy from his state.
Who thought Bills of Attainders would come to this.


And speaking of riveting "reality" TV, President Donald Trump has accepted an invitation to meet Kim Jong Un, in what would be the first meeting between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader.


From the time the accused gunman started shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, 11 minutes passed before law-enforcement officers entered the building where the massacre unfolded, according to a timeline by the Broward County Sheriff’s Office.
From the Dept. of "the police as armed secretaries.

British police say they believe a Russian former spy and his daughter were poisoned with a nerve agent. The Russians are as eager as O.J. to help.


Cigna plans to buy Express Scripts in a cash-and-stock deal worth $52 billion that the companies say will expand their health-care offerings and help them control costs.


Amazon has launched its own line of over-the-counter products.


In 1981, a worker at a Japan Atomic Power Company plant in Tsuruga, Japan forgot to shut a critical valve, causing a radioactive sludge tank to overflow. Fifty-six workers were sent in to mop up the radioactive sludge before the leak could escape the disposal building, but the plan was not successful and 16 tons of waste spilled into Wakasa Bay.

Despite the obvious risk to people eating contaminated fish caught in the bay, Japan’s Atomic Power Commission made no public mention of the accident or spill. The public was told nothing of the accident until more than a month later, when a newspaper caught wind of and reported the story.
If you don't trust private companies, at least you can trust the government.

AAAAAnnnnnnddddddd.....a pie chart: