MORE ECONOMIC WISDOM FROM RAGGEDY ANN.

This meme circulated earlier this year.

It gets better.  Now a senatorial request for the Congressional Budget Office to perform a sensitivity analysis creates a fake score.  Seriously.

Q Thanks, Jen. Republicans are circulating a modified version of the CBO score for Build Back Better. In their version, it included extensions of programs without being paid for, which we understand is not how the President put forward this legislation. But the reason that they’re saying they did that is because — Lindsey Graham says, “If you believe these programs [are going to] go away [after] one, [or] two…years, you shouldn’t have a driver’s license.” We all know Child Tax Credits are not going to go away after a year. What does the White House say to that?

MS. PSAKI: Well, to quote, of all people, Norm Ornstein at the American Enterprise Institute who put this quite well — quote, “You can’t assume programs will be extended just because Lindsey Graham wants to assure that. An estimate based on what’s not in the bill is bogus and fundamentally dishonest.”

I mean, this is not a CBO score. This is a fake CBO score. It’s not about the existing bill anybody is debating or voting on. This is about proposing the extension of programs that has not been agreed to without the commitment of the President — which he’s made repeatedly, publicly, that he would never support extending these programs if they weren’t paid for, period. That has been his commitment. That is his commitment.

That might work in Washington, where budget gimmicks, sunset provisions that might as well be written on the hot side of Mercury, and all sorts of magic beliefs about the "out years" are just another day at the office. I'm not persuaded, however.

BASTIAT, VINDICATED.

Chris "Intellectual Int-ing" Arnade visits the negative turnpike at Breezewood, Pennsylvania, and discovers that although the strip might be unjustly dumped upon as the paradigm of stroad hell ("A place representing what is wrong with capitalism and small town America: a landscape of ugly franchises feeding fat people obsessed with rampant consumption:" there is, for instance, a popular picture of a Cleveland area interchange that shows the same sort of clutter) there's not a lot of prosperity accompanying the businesses people get to consider stopping at whilst they're stuck in traffic.

But Breezewood isn’t your normal truck stop town. Its an awkward connector between a toll road (I-76) and an interstate (I-70), that only exists because of an old law saying they can’t directly connect. The result is millions of vehicles that don’t want to be there are funneled through a short stretch of a two lane road, with some stopping at stores that sprung up to cater to them, and others trying their best to zoom through as quickly as possible.

There's a little more to that interchange than that. Once upon a time I was enroute from the Washington area to Altoona, which has an interstate connection at the next interchange Pittsburghside of Breezewood, and there's no toll for someone going from Seventy to that Interstate along the turnpike.  More Pennsylvania idiosyncracy, I suppose, as the Edens Expressway (Interstate 94) ties into the Tri-State Tollway directly, the better to clip tourists.

In the Breezewood area, hang out at the bars, listen to the people tell their stories.  Yes, the interchange area is a convenient place for people to get food and fuel and tap a kidney, but there's no gold mine at the end of that road.

That is especially sad because there is a lot of pain and suffering that needs to be seen. Not along the one mile strip in the photo, but just outside Breezewood.

In the bar, after everyone stopped laughing about the picture, I heard stories of addiction, death, and joblessness. I heard stories filled with hopes, prayers, and long tales of wrongs and injustices. Stories like I have heard all over America.

The next morning, after a night sleeping in a bed rumbling from passing semis, I walked to an empty McDonald’s past a hotel that rents by the month, its parking lot filled with busted up cars, and its rooms filled with people who looked like life had been hard on them “for a minute.”

Every direction I went beyond the strip was ruggedly beautiful rural landscape, but one I knew all too well — Hills, creeks, farms, pastures, fields of corn, old arched bridges, small ranch homes, Dollar General stores, and all the signs of crack, heroine, and meth.

At weekdays, when the tourists aren't out, even the abandoned turnpike section is depressing.

On my various trips through the area over the past five years or so, the political signs that stand out are Trump signs.

WHAT'S MISSING FROM THIS ESSAY?

I'll give you three guesses, and the first two don't count.  It begins, "The most outrageous injustice is that the same people who lack access to water and sanitation are usually the ones most vulnerable to the effects of climate change—and the least responsible for causing it in the first place."

Expect the usual language.

In the end, those left furthest behind end up bearing the brunt of increasing water scarcity and poverty. These marginalized populations – women, children, and those living in extreme poverty – face a vicious and unjust cycle, in which a lack of access to water and sanitation is aggravated by extreme weather events, leading to more expensive, and unaffordable, services.

Expect the usual nostrums.

But where the problem starts may also be where the solution begins. We need a radical approach that guarantees the human right to water by tackling inequalities and putting people’s needs front and center – especially the needs of those whose voices continue to be marginalized and disregarded.

This is both a necessary response, and a step toward ending the climate change crisis, as it offers benefits both for mitigation (stopping climate change) and adaptation (adjusting to the new normal).

The good news is that the solutions are well known and readily available. Well-managed water systems can protect access to reliable water supplies during times of drought. Strong sanitation systems can resist floods.

And protecting water and sanitation services from extreme weather is highly cost-effective – for every $1 spent upgrading flood-resistant infrastructure, $62 is saved in flood restoration costs.

Gosh, that sounds like an awful lot of $20 bills on the sidewalk (or perhaps in the ditch?) waiting to be picked up. Will anyone?  Of course not.

And, they must align climate and water policies so that access to water is equitable, climate risks are reduced, and there is more money available for adaptation.

After all, ensuring effective climate action and sustainable access to water and sanitation are matters of human rights. This means that we must years [c.q.].

And if food becomes more dear, and households more sparse, so be it.

As we look to COP26, we need to ensure that climate decision- tackle the root causes of the water crisis globally and ensure prioritization of water for the realization of human rights, over other uses, such as large-scale agriculture and industries, including extractive industries.

To realize these rights, municipalities and villages also must be supported to improve their capacity to manage their water sources sustainably and efficiently.

Without urgent measures to slow climate change and adapt to the damage already done to our planet, there is a real risk that people’s access to water and sanitation will worsen rather than improve. And, without sanitation, we cannot guarantee the right to education; without hygiene, our health is diminished, and without reliable access to water, gender equality can never be achieved.

Good grief.

WE'RE NOT SHUTTING DOWN FOR CHRISTMAS.

Last Festive Season, Chevrolet might have been ahead of the curve, advocating for people to get together for Christmas, pandemic panic porn notwithstanding.

The sentiment seems to be spreading this season.  An AT&T commercial, telling the story of Simon the Snowman, includes a dedication "To the ones we've waited all year to be with."

Then there's Lexus, a company that I have sometimes slagged on, also with the Festive Season visits, and the observation, "We've been waiting all year to come together."

Never mind the doomsayers, enjoy your Festive Season.

STUFF YOUR MANDATE, AMTRAK JOE!

Amtrak crews are among the reluctant.  "Amtrak will likely have to reduce train service, particularly on long-distance routes, in January due to sluggish COVID-19 vaccination rates in smaller crew pools, particularly on long-distance routes."

Let's see how this plays out.

Amtrak President Stephen Gardner told congressional leaders that the railroad would announce next week what routes will be impacted.

Amtrak must comply with a federal mandate effective January 4, 2022, that requires all employees of government contractors to be fully vaccinated. Gardner said that while 94 percent of employees are fully vaccinated and 96 percent have received at least one shot of the COVID-19 vaccine, immunization rates are lower along its long-distance routes. Gardner said the issue was compounded by the fact that many employees retired during the pandemic and Amtrak slowed hiring down. Officials said the railroad will not have enough fully vaccinated employees in some places to support full service.

Gardner said long-distance routes would most likely be impacted by the service reductions. Last year, train service was reduced to tri-weekly on most long-distance routes, including California Zephyr, Empire Builder and Coast Starlight. Daily service resumed earlier this year. Gardner noted that the service reductions would only be “temporary.”

The three trains so named are among the more popular on the long distance routes. Make of that what you will.

A CASE FOR TRADE-TESTED BETTERMENTS?

Planetizen contributor Todd Litman poses The Roadway Expansion Paradox.  "Motorists want expensive roadway expansions provided that somebody else foots the bill, but when required to pay directly through tolls, the need for more capacity often disappears. What should planners do?"  It's a bind a long time coming, and probably the long-established reliance on planners working under the belief that roads are internal improvements too important to be left to crass commercialism.  But if the Bastiat argument about living at the expense of others catches on outside libertarian circles, let us be cheerful!

When people purchase a motor vehicle they expect governments to provide roads for their use, and when those roads are congested motorists want bigger roadways, provided that somebody else foots the bill. However, if required to pay directly for the added capacity, the justification for those projects generally disappears. Motorists are like a rude restaurant guests who order the most expensive menu item but disappear when the check arrives, forcing others to pay.

What's amusing, though, is that Mr Litman ultimately sees the obvious.

After tolls (CA$3.15 for cars and CA$9.45 for trucks) were eliminated on Vancouver-area bridges in 2017, traffic increased about a third on the Port Mann Bridge, from 112,000 to 150,000 average daily trips, and 38% on the Golden Ears Bridge, from about 40,000 to 55,000 average daily trips.

In these and other examples, governments spent billions of dollars to subsidize highways, but the need for those projects generally disappeared if users are required to pay directly, evidence that most motorists are cheapskates who will choose alternative routes, modes or destinations to save a few dollars. This has bankrupted many private, for-profit highways.

A basic economic principle is that, to maximize efficiency and equity, consumers should “get what they pay for and pay for what they get” unless subsidies are specifically justified to achieve strategic goals. Urban highway expansion projects that cannot be financed by user fees are economically inefficient – their costs are greater than their benefits. This means that governments often spend two dollars to provide facilities that users only value at one dollar, and because roadway expansions induce additional vehicle travel, this increases external costs such as downstream congestion, crash risk and pollution emissions. As a result, these contradict other community goals and are bad investments.

Most people assume that traffic congestion can be solved by expanding roadways, but no government can afford to build enough lanes to meet all potential demand, and doing so is inefficient and unfair.

Private, for-profit highways are going to have trouble competing against publicly provided, tax-supported highways, but the taxing authority can never hope to raise enough money to provide the highways, and thus do we get those budget-busting bipartisan infrastructure bills every few years.  Ultimately, though, the Tragic Vision provides clarity.

Economists recognize that congestion reflects underpricing: driving is so cheap that it becomes inevitable. You can have free roads or you can have free-flowing traffic but it is economically infeasible to have both.

Urban highway expansions represent a huge public subsidy to a relatively small number of future users. Anybody who will not drive regularly on these new facilities should protest this inequity.

There are a number of other items in the public budget that also qualify as regressive transfers.  The beginning of wisdom in the infrastructure lobby might be with the understanding that there is no such thing as a freeway.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

The moronic variant of Wuhan coronavirus has a lot of mutations on its spike protein, possibly because it's been sharing hosts with the other coronaviruses that show up each winter as one form or another of the common cold, and, right on schedule, seasonal flu and common colds are showing up again.

It is long past time to stop the charade.

1.  It is time to move on.  "Politicians are enjoying their 'emergency' powers far too much, and the [palace guard] media plays into every fearmongering statement."  They panicked once too many times.  "The saddest part is that the Biden administration, despite its many positive moves to restore respect to scientific rigor, followed fear more than science in its first major action in response to the Omicron variant."

2.  It's beginning to look like oligarchy, everywhere you go.  "It’s beginning to seem like 'democracy' just means 'progressives getting what they want.'" But we're wise to their ways.  "[I]f Democrats are going to make the test of legitimacy whether they get their way on policy questions, then they can expect the same thing from at least some parts of the Right."

3.  Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice.  "If you describe existing laws as a mix of 'full-blown tyranny' and 'petty tyranny,' the masses won’t think you’re crazy."

4.  No secular first or second commandment.  "Secular people have put their faith in science the way the devout put their faith in a God — right down to anointing the most pious among us as institutional figureheads."

5.  Another round goes to reality.  "Calamity Joe has a staggering list of failures, and nary a success in sight."  But wait, there's more!  "He can either lay off the [corona] panicmongering or paint himself a loser."

6.  That bipartisan gerontocracy.  "The issue of leaders staying too long on the political stage has relevance right now."  The true destructive generation owns the current government failures.  "Democrats in power today came of age in the 1960s, when Great Society programs were popular and the radical counterculture reigned supreme. They have learned nothing from those failures, and in their dotage, they have failed to contain the progressive forces."

7.  Murderapolis endures.  "It seems that it will take a lot more violence, a lot more disorder, and a substantial decline in property values to dislodge the city’s left-wing majority from its smug complacency."

8.  Government schools self-immolate.  "Advocates of government-dominated schooling accuse proponents of education choice of wanting to kill government schools, but those public institutions don't seem to need any help as they incrementally terminate their own participation in the teaching business."

9.  Ridiculous parity, indeed.  "One of the most invidious and injurious side effects of wokeism is to validate 'other ways of knowing' as being on par with modern scientific knowledge."  (Long article, worth careful study.)

10.  All I want for Christmas is proper Hiawatha service.  "Would that a train including a first-class option, meal service provided at tables (to all passengers) and a dome-lounge were available now."

11.  A bust to the Fatal Conceit.  “If you knew what I was going to have, why did you even ask me?”

12.  Own it, Democrats.  "[R]aising the debt limit is more like applying for more credit cards to cover the existing credit card bills you've already rung up."

13.  Bet on emergence.  "Long live classical liberalism, and the permissionless innovation in self-governance that it fosters."

14.  Nailed it in one!  "Democrats Have a Woke Rogue Prosecutor Problem."

15.  Our Political Masters find themselves in the position of the sorcerer's apprentice.  "It turns out to be much easier to dump trillions of dollars into the economy than it is to control what happens after you do."

16.  Revealed preferences.  "Lots of people move from strict states to lax states. Hardly anyone goes the other way."  Complete with unintended consequences!

17.  Self-styled progressives ruin cities.  "We live in the aftermath of the progressives’ triumph over institutionalization, and it looks like San Francisco’s Tenderloin District or L.A.’s Skid Row."  If only somebody had noticed.  It's the supposed beneficiaries of all that progressivism who are hardest hit.  "Sadly, the riots, arson, looting and destruction that has taken place in so many large cities may be turning what were food deserts into food wastelands."

DON'T GIVE THEM ANY IDEAS.

Athena Thorne of Pajamas Media is not sure what to make of the leaky coronavirus vaccines.  "Maybe we should prevent some of it by locking down the vaccinated?"  On Tuesday night's Gutfeld!, author Greg Ellis makes mockery of the vaccine mandates by noting the weakness of the argument for the leaky vaccines.  "I would ask him one question here, why did the protected need to be protected from the unprotected to -- by forcing the unprotected to use the protection that didn't protect the protected in the first place?"  Particularly because the unprotected can choose whether or not to carry around the same viral load as the protected.  Let's go to the Giftzwerg: "[T]he level of virus in the nasal pharynx of that person is relatively equivalent to an unvaccinated person, which means … that that person very well might be able to transmit it, and in fact, we have documented cases where a vaccinated infected person did transmit."

I think Ms Thorne is being outrageous to make a point, but make a point she does.  "Millions of innocent unvaccinated Americans are in danger of being killed by self-protecting vaccinated sociopaths every day they are permitted to walk freely among us. Isn’t it time we took a serious look at keeping the vaccinated out of our restaurants, theaters, schools, and workplaces?"  In Illinois, that still is, effectively, the policy.

THE IVY LEAGUE'S SUDDEN RELEVANCE IN INTERCOLLEGIATE SWIMMING.

Here, I thought the fun was going to come to women's college basketball.  "I have, however, long entertained a wicked thought that someday, somewhere, there is a basketball coach who will end the dominance of Connecticut, or perhaps Stanford or Notre Dame, by recruiting a few male-to-female crossers who can really crash the boards."

Apparently, it's Pennsylvania swimming where the fun has come.

While University of Pennsylvania transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, who spent three years at the Ivy League school swimming as a male, has been busy smashing female pool records, friction has been building within the team, according to a Penn female swimmer who said she feared for her ability to find employment after graduating from college for sharing her honest opinion about a transgender teammate. For that reason, OutKick is granting her anonymity to speak out.

Thomas’ latest round of swimming record destruction came at a three-day meet in Akron, Ohio where numerous pool, meet and program records weren’t just destroyed but lowered to a point where they may never be broken. Friday, the Ivy League 500 freestyle record was broken. Saturday, Thomas set the nation’s best time in the 200 freestyle, which also destroyed pool, meet, and Penn program records.

Records are falling, and the swim coach is in a better position both in the pool and with the wokesters, but are things going well in the locker room?

“Pretty much everyone individually has spoken to our coaches about not liking this. Our coach [Mike Schnur] just really likes winning. He’s like most coaches. I think secretly everyone just knows it’s the wrong thing to do,” the female Penn swimmer said during a phone interview.

“When the whole team is together, we have to be like, ‘Oh my gosh, go Lia, that’s great, you’re amazing.’ It’s very fake,” she added.

Needless to say, 2021 has been a huge change for the Penn women’s swimming team compared to where the program was in 2019 and the early part of 2020 before COVID caused the shutdown of the program for the 2020 season. Members of the team were first alerted to the forthcoming change in 2019 when Thomas, who was second-team All-Ivy League as a male during the 2018-19 season, announced that he would be going through the transition that would allow him to compete as a woman under the NCAA’s transgender policy.

How different is the performance of a swimming crosser from the traditional stars?

Fast forward to the fall of 2021. Penn is five meets and an invitational into the season and the school now has a legitimate contender for NCAA titles in the prestigious freestyle category. Olympic heroes Missy Franklin and Katie Ledecky hold NCAA records that Thomas could own by the end of the 2021-22 season.

“The Ivy League is not a fast league for swimming, so that’s why it’s particularly ridiculous that we could potentially have an NCAA champion. That’s unheard of coming from the Ivy League,” Thomas’ teammate explained.

“On paper, if Lia Thomas gets back down to Will Thomas’ best times, those numbers are female world records. Faster than all the times Katie Ledecky went in college. Faster than any other Olympian you can think of. His times in three events are [female] world records.”

Whether the governing body for college sports has the transition policy right or not is a matter for further research.

“For the Olympic level, the elite level, I’d say probably two years is more realistic than one year,” lead author Dr. Timothy Roberts, from Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, told NBC News. “At one year, the trans women on average still have an advantage over the cis women.”

Roberts gathered the data while studying the athletic performance of men and women in the Air Force who were required to go through physical readiness tests. Researchers reviewed test results and medical records of 29 trans men and 46 trans women.

“We compared pre-and post-hormone fitness test results of the trans women and trans men with the average performance of all women and men under the age of 30 in the Air Force between 2004 and 2014. We also measured the rate of hormone-associated changes in body composition and athletic performance,” the authors stated.

The average age of participants was 26.2 years old.

“Prior to gender affirming hormones, trans women performed 31% more push-ups and 15% more sit-ups in 1 min and ran 1.5 miles 21% faster than their female counterparts. After 2 years of taking feminizing hormones, the push-up and sit-up differences disappeared but trans women were still 12% faster,” the study states.

The court of public opinion has not yet ruled, although the Penn swimmer who gave this interview has a sad perspective.

While the sports policymakers are busy figuring out what those future rules look like to protect the space that biological women have fought for, members of the Penn women’s swim team are left trying to make sense of what is becoming of their sport in 2021 and what the future might look like.

“When I have kids, I kinda hope they’re all boys because if I have any girls that want to play sports in college, good luck. [Their opponents] are all going to be biological men saying that they’re women,” Thomas’ teammate told OutKick. “Right now we have one, but what if we had three on the team? There’d be three less girls competing.”

Perhaps in twenty years, reality will have a few innings. First, I suspect that people will not cross simply to have a better chance at a medal in some high school or college sport.  Psychiatric medicine will have more cases of crossers and be better equipped to evaluate the claims of preadolescent gender dysphoria.  The thinness of the dating market among the alphabet people will also have an effect.

CASES DON'T MAKE GOOD SYMBOLS.

Milwaukee defense attorney Dean Strang is from the old neighborhood, and years ago I had the opportunity to chat with him about the challenges of defending the most notorious, sometimes the most obnoxiously guilty, clients.  It's really simple.  If the worst defendants don't get a proper defense, which means presenting the case in the best way, or working with the prosecutors on a plea bargain, or ensuring that the prosecutors don't cut corners in a way that might be reversed on appeal, what chance does a more run of the street defendant have with a less prominent attorney?  "Whatever your view of this self-defense acquittal, you'd have to be as prepared to have accepted an acquittal of Gaige Grosskreutz had Kyle Rittenhouse's life ended on the pavement that night," Strang said. "Where that takes me is, it's hard for me to see here how any gun made anybody any safer that night."  We can disagree on that, as there were plenty of property owners protecting their businesses in Kenosha that night.

Good defense counsel is still useful.  For instance, it's possible that Jussie Smollett's counsel weren't as vigorous as they could have been in keeping him from testifying.

THAT DETERIORATED QUICKLY.

Early in summer, Denver's Union Station struck me as much improved, with lots of rail and bus transit, and a baseball stadium within easy walking distance.

The transit workers, however, now see the station as a "lawless hellhole."  "Trash, drug use and violence out in the open at Union Station’s RTD train and bus stops have employees demanding something be done about it."  In addition, the hobo jungles that I noticed along the Commuter Rail trackage outside downtown appear to have crept into the Union Station area as well.

THE BEST THING TO DO WITH SOME INFRASTRUCTURE IS WAIT FOR IT TO DECAY.

There are some stroads that are so gorged on rent-seeking that it's pointless to put them on a road diet.  (The specific example under discussion is Ogden Avenue through Naperville.)

There is going to be no impetus to turning this into a road; you'll be fighting all these strip mall tenants and owners who are making a living mining the public investment in roadway capacity for their own gain. And it's not like the configuration here lends itself to it easily becoming a street—that would require an enormous amount of commitment and capital, and for what?

So, why are you obsessing over this particular stroad? It's like we're saying "anyone can improve their health" and you are pointing to the chain-smoking, obese, diabetic, octogenarian and saying you see no hope.

That octogenarian might be a walking example of "look how long I got away with breaking the rules" although the prudent person might not want to generalize from that experience.  The five-lane stroad with lots of budget-built strip mall buildings will run afoul of creative destruction, mostly as destruction, sooner rather than later.  (Yes, even in Naperville.  Taxes, crime, corruption, and corona tyranny will have their way.)

Most American cities have a stroad like this one. Those strip malls aren't designed to last more than a couple of decades. Same with the frontage roads and everything else. I think the most likely outcome for such places is that they rot away and nobody cares. If you want to fix this stroad, work on making your neighborhoods better places to live, naturally shifting people from auto trips to walking and biking, and then put the momentum and energy you create doing that into resisting calls to prop up the development along this corridor with tax subsidies and other public bailouts.

These are bad investments that never should have been made. The best thing that can happen is that they die a natural death and, in doing so, create a minimal amount of harm to the community. That's ultimately how this is fixed.

The more likely outcome, though, is that when the businesses go through the cycle of decline (boutique stores become resale shops, banks become check cashing offices, the warning signs of downscale retail (TATTOO, TAN, NAILS) proliferate, some public official will hope for a tax increment arrangement or get the stroad written into the next infrastructure porkulus, and the chronic wasting of the community goes on and on.

THERE THEY GO AGAIN.

If you're a Democrat, you find it more convenient to abuse the people who are working to provide people with stuff than to work the problem.

The Federal Trade Commission said Monday that it is investigating the causes behind ongoing supply chain disruptions and how they are "causing serious and ongoing hardships for consumers and harming competition in the U.S. economy."

The FTC said it is ordering Walmart, Amazon, Kroger, other large wholesalers and suppliers including Procter & Gamble Co., Tyson Foods and Kraft Heinz Co. “to turn over information to help study causes of empty shelves and sky-high prices.”

Orders also are being sent to C&S Wholesale Grocers, Inc., Associated Wholesale Grocers, Inc. and McLane Co, Inc.

Pay no attention to those jammed ports or to those shortages of truck drivers (which precede the corona tyranny)!  It's clearly capitalists who don't want to waste a crisis.

The FTC said the companies are required to “detail the primary factors disrupting their ability to obtain, transport and distribute their products; the impact these disruptions are having in terms of delayed and canceled orders, increased costs and prices; the products, suppliers and inputs most affected; and the steps the companies are taking to alleviate disruptions; and how they allocate products among their stores when they are in short supply.”

Companies also are required to provide the FTC with "internal documents regarding the supply chain disruptions, including strategies related to supply chains; pricing; marketing and promotions; costs, profit margins and sales volumes; selection of suppliers and brands; and market shares."

Ultimately, the Commission is protecting competitors, not necessarily competition.

The National Grocers Association (NGA), which represents the independent supermarket industry and its wholesalers, said in a statement Tuesday that it was pleased to see the FTC move forward with the study.

“This study is a key first step in promoting competition in the food supply chain,” Chris Jones, NGA senior vice president of government relations and counsel, said in the statement. “It will shine a light on what our members already know: that dominant grocery power buyers are using their size to demand better terms, better prices, and better products from suppliers, leaving their competitors and American consumers to pay the bill.”

Jones said the actions “leave independent grocers short-handed on key products their customers need and force small, independent grocers and their customers to bear a disproportionate burden of surging food price inflation during supply chain crunches.”

Long ago, Robert Bork wrote, "Superior efficiency is not popular with those who must compete against it, and it is never well understood by policy makers." Joe Biden was instrumental in keeping Mr Bork off the high bench.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

A service called Multistate helpfully publishes a list, and a map, keeping track of the mask mandates and other manifestations of corona tyranny.  Here's the map, as of 1 December.

That's my screen-grab as of Monday afternoon, 6 December.  Go to the links to get updated versions.

Notice that in the North Central states, Illinois stands alone, proudly muzzled since before Labor Day.

Has it done any good?  You decide.  According to the data bunnies at the Centers for Disease Control, Illinois is currently at about five thousand infections per day, or roughly three hundred infections, with two daily deaths in a hundred thousand people.  Indiana, with a smaller total population, is at a similar five thousand infections per day, which works out at just over four hundred infections, with two daily deaths in a hundred thousand people.

I ask again, because ask I must, have the ukases done Illinois any good?

II. ADVENT.

There's not much waterfront property as people ordinarily understand it in DeKalb, but people who have waterfront views, such as they are, are blinging out the shoreside of their houses for the Festive Season.

I repeat a question from an earlier Festive Season, should we think of technocrats, particularly people who treat The Science as a holy object, as contemporary Pharisees?

FREQUENCY, CONNECTIVITY, AND DEPENDABILITY.

Andrew Selden has long been an analyst of Amtrak's curious finances, and he offers thoughts on the best use of the $66 billion or so in the infrastructure budget that's intended for Passenger Rail, generally, which means it might not all go to Amtrak.  The article raises a number of points, it is to the creation of regional Passenger Rail services that I wish to comment.

Amtrak, blithely assuming that all the money is for its use, has a scheme called “Connect U.S.” that is a warmed-over version of its 1973 “Emerging Corridors” effort to draw more subsidy than it was already getting from states outside the [Northeast Corridor]. Connect U.S. is a scheme to develop dispersed and discontiguous short interurban corridors, featuring frequent, fast trains, and modeled largely upon the NEC.

The NEC and the other regional corridors (funded by states, outside the NEC) are Amtrak’s smallest and weakest business segments by all relevant objective criteria such as intercity ridership, transportation output ([revenue passenger miles]), load factors, market share and return on capital investment. FRA embraced the underpinning of Connect U.S., ignoring its conflict of interest as being both the steward of taxpayers’ capital and the de facto owner of Amtrak.

The Amtrak/FRA scheme will necessarily minimize the return on investment of the new public capital. In addition, its opportunity cost (forfeited opportunities elsewhere) is vast.

The existing state-funded corridor lines radiating from Chicago are less productive than they could be in part because timetables on each route are the consequence of negotiation between the state departments of transportation (mostly Illinois) and the host railroads.  If a Michigan service connects with a train for St. Louis or Carbondale, that's mostly by accident.  It's possible to do better.

In all public transport, it is a tautology that frequencies must be inversely proportional to distance in order to attract sufficient patronage as to warrant the effort. The shorter the distance, the greater the frequencies must be. Once-a-day service might work in 2000-mile transcontinental corridors, but not in urban transit markets or 200-mile intercity markets.

But … greater frequencies in rail service quickly require greater investment in infrastructure. Higher operating speeds exacerbate the infrastructure challenges, and operating frequent, fast passenger trains in a corridor owned and used by freight carriers quickly becomes highly demanding on infrastructure, and extremely expensive to mitigate.

Yes, in an ideal world, the 200 mile markets ought have hourly trains, and the 2000 mile corridors ought to have at least two train pairs, spaced by twelve hours or so, in order that each community with train service has at least one train during business hours, and the possibility of a round trip of a hundred miles or so on the same day.  I write "at least," as an East Coast service to Charleston, Savannah, and Florida has all sorts of possibilities for multiple trains, and at Christmas we can wish for the restoration of Chicago to Florida service.  In addition, the Passenger Rail operators and the freight railroads ought look for mutually beneficial ways to upgrade both the passenger and freight capacity.

Wherever Amtrak looks to develop a new short stand-alone corridor featuring frequent, fast trains sharing mainline railroad space with whatever freight traffic exists, infrastructure investment will be required in fairly substantial amounts, for passing sidings, incremental main tracks, [positive train control] in places, signal and communication systems, stations and station pull-outs, grade crossing abatement, etc.

And in most of these markets, including the NEC as well as the Gulf Coast, the investment doesn’t yield much. In almost every existing market in the U.S., these short corridors suffer from half (or more) empty (short) trains, low output of RPMs, high operating costs, and embarrassingly low market share.

Perhaps the greatest cost of these new corridors is the opportunity cost of much higher-yielding investment opportunities forgone by the misallocation of finite capital.

Are the trains short and empty because they are too infrequent and not dependable?  It does no good to book space on a train to get to a sporting event in a college town or a festival in the big city if the train is hours late and you miss the kickoff?

WHY "PEER REVIEWED" ISN'T THE QUALITY ASSURANCE YOU THINK IT IS.

Higher Education Quarterly just confessed to being pranked.  "The retraction is agreed because data in the article has been identified as fabricated and the authors have not disclosed their true identities."  The authors gave their names as "Sage Owens and Kal Avers-Lynde III." Doesn't anybody think of an acronym here, or was the title, "Donor money and the academy: Perceptions of undue donor pressure in political science, economics, and philosophy," just too appealing to The Narrative to call for more careful review?

The paper, titled Donor Money and the Academy: Perceptions of Undue Donor Pressure in Political Science, Economics, and Philosophy, includes the Olin Foundation and the “Randy Eller Foundation” among the “right-wing donor sources” subject to research. However, the Olin Foundation disbanded in 2005, and the “Randy Eller Foundation” does not appear to exist, a detail noted by Steven Hayward at Powerline.

The paper also lists the Federalist Society among donors to four-year universities and colleges. However, a Federalist Society spokesperson told National Review in an email that the organization “does not donate to undergraduate programs.”

National Review has reached out to Higher Education Quarterly and its editors for comment. The nature of the review process for the article was not immediately clear.

It's malpractice for an editor to send a manuscript on the behavior of eleemosynary institutions to reviewers who are so unfamiliar with the foundations (particularly, if there are economists helping review the paper) as to let that "Randy Eller" (it's easy enough to check the sponsored projects office at a university for that one) slide or to be unaware that Olin have not been calling for proposals for over fifteen years.  The Narrative, notes Pierre Lemieux, was Just.  Too.  Convenient.  "The specter of Koch money appears often in the article along with code words such as 'neoliberalization of higher education' or 'market fundamentalism.' That might have been sufficient to have the article accepted, despite fabricated data and obvious errors."

Academia delenda est.

REALITY COMES FOR THE ABORTION LOBBY.

For years, the women of the fevered brow have treated their stance on abortion as the One True Stance, and they have used their cultural power to excommunicate those women who disagree, and the only proper role for men is to nod and say nothing more than "Yes, dear."

It is, to quote Eric Utter, a "tiresome and patently absurd" stance.  But devotees of that stance exist, and it's not limited to the aging harridans who picketed beauty contests fifty years ago.  Here's a student journalist at Missouri (Melissa Click might have moved on, but like-minded people still infect the place) telling real men to butt out.

For more reasons than legal precedence and constitutionally, it is unethical for cis men to have any power in choosing what women are able to do with their bodies, including getting an abortion. Now, there is nothing saying they are not entitled to their own opinions — pro-life, pro-choice, neither, both, who cares? However, it is one thing to think something, and another to act on behalf of women based on their own opinion of something they will never have to undergo.

An abortion is a woman’s choice and a woman’s experience. Only women should be able to vote on issues that concern only their bodies, not cis men.

In fact, cis men choosing what women can do with their bodies is just a strung out, silent version of male domination and control over women. Really, maybe that’s what it’s all about. Sexism continues to prove itself to be a systemic problem in our country, and this is just one example. Cis men feel the need to control women’s bodies and make decisions for them. Male supremacy is being weeded out, so they’re clinging to what they can. In turn, they are taking women’s rights to their own body away.

Is it invisibling the trans men to exclude them from the category, or is she simply recognizing that the dating pool in the sexual underground is nonexistent?

The columnist focused on the deprivation of civil rights she saw in men and women alike having the right to vote.  She did not raise a popular rallying cry from years ago that ran something like "if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament."  That slogan was a dig at the Catholic Church, with its strict stance on abortion, and its use of sacraments as teaching points.  It was nyekulturny, dear reader, to point out that the scariest thing many a randy guy could hear was his latest fling saying "I'm three weeks late."  Too male chauvinist.  Until last week.  "I’m not hearing enough from dudes who were saved from an unwanted fatherhood because their partner was able to have an abortion."  That drew the obvious response.  "Stop banging chicks you wouldn't want to have a kid with."

Put simply, more bourgeois convention, fewer hookups gone wrong.  But that has long been the dirty little secret of abortion rights.  "They don't care about reproductive rights or women's rights in general. They want easy access to you for sex without consequence."  Yes, that's all people dunking on each other on Twitter, as aggregated by Twitchy, and yet, for each advocate of easier access to abortion on behalf of rape, incest, the life of the mother, Tay-Sachs, Down syndrome, or some other High-Sounding Cause there was somewhere in the neighborhood of one advocate who was into "do your own thing" or "smash monogamy" or any of the other Trendy Causes of the era.

TO REMEMBER.

At the beginning of September, businesses honored the memory of the thirteen troopers killed during the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Two weeks ago, Jackson Sparks was marching with his youth baseball squad in the Waukesha Christmas parade, when reckless driver Darrell Brooks ran them down.  His funeral was Friday, and Brewer Nation broke out their baseball jerseys to render honors.

It is time, though, to start calling attention to the policy failures, nay, the incompetence of the people in charge, in such a way as to turf them out.

WATCH THIS SPACE.

It's model railroad building season, and that work continues.

The extension of the railroad under the garage will begin shortly, once the ceiling is properly painted, and the insulation is in along the walls.

The connecting tracks to the next section of staging will soon go in.  What distinguishes contemporary model railroad design from that of years ago is often the provision of staging tracks under the portion that represents the communities and industries.  To the right, that is going to be yet another removable section above the plank.  Should maintenance people require access to the water heater or water softener, there will be a way in that doesn't require ripping out part of the layout.

Once the first strip of the spline is in place, additional strips get glued and clamped alongside.  Equilateral turnout is there as an additional check that everything is properly placed.

The new section of staging will permit trains arriving from either end of the modelled portion (arriving at Boston to the right, or at notionally Portsmouth to the left) to go into a series of loop tracks to return to the layout properly pointed and positioned for their next trip.  With the volume of passenger trains we will support, that feature will come in handy.  Here's a look to the left.

There will be a way to get at that crawl space without disrupting the layout, and the entrance will be hidden from prying eyes or cameras by backdrops.  That's why those uprights are as tall as they are, the Magnolia section of the Gloucester Branch will be above the connecting track going in here.

Speaking of backdrops, there's one capturing the transition from England to Russia now in place on the upper level.

Yes, there's a lot of work going on now.  At left you see the arrangement of insulation and furring strips that will go under the garage, the blue-painted walls at right.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Our moronic overlords are at it again.

R - E - L - A - X.  "It’s very possible omicron is contagious but not nearly as virulent as some want to believe."

1.  Reality Remains Undefeated.

2.  Ignore the freakout.

3.  Act like adults.  "[C]ontinuing the fiction that we can 'end this' gives Biden and other leftists leverage to impose ever more draconian restrictions and mandates."

4.  L'etat. c'est moi?  "[O]ne is reminded of an overwrought crime drama where the most crooked and vindictive policeman is left at the end of the line, exposed for what he is, impotently shouting, 'I am the law' before his satisfying comeuppance."

5.  Only one?  "We have one of our two major political parties running on nothing but prejudice, malice, insults, fear, disinformation, and bad, sometimes violent behavior. And doing quite well."

6.  A whiny broken record, at that.  "When it comes to assigning blame for any of life's unpleasantries, [Massachusetts senator Elizabeth "Fauxahontas"] Warren is like a broken record."

7.  Reality bats last, and we know reality wins.  "[A]t some point, you wonder: what narrative are they pushing now that is also bullshit?"

8.  We have fair trials for a reason.  "[W]hen we stand up for the likes of Mathboi Fly, we are really standing up for ourselves."

9.  Speaking truth to power.  "[Former New Jersey governor Chris] Christie’s attack on [former president Donald} Trump is not without merit."

10.  Welcome back, Carter.  "The rightful perspective Americans have is that the economy was booming under Donald Trump and is now in a 1970s-like malaise under Joe Biden. This isn’t complicated stuff. Biden wanted to be the president, and now he gets to own everything that comes with that."  Own it, Brandon.  "Voters blame Biden's policies for current economic turmoil."  Plus:  "President Biden is not an adult."

11.  Those irritable mental gestures.  "According to Lenin, 'left-wing communism' was 'an infantile disorder.' [DuPage County Democrat influencer Mary] Lemanski’s excuse suggests that her leftism also fits that description."

12.  A choice, not an echo.  "The exemplar of the Democratic Party is Pajama Boy, and Democrat voters seem to consist in large part of people who can’t figure out which sex they belong to. In what world is that a winning formula?"

13.  We are Chicken Littled out.  "You are not denying science by pointing out how wrong, and how often, Fauci has been. That malignant dwarf is so high on his on supply that he’s now offering his insights on politics to eager legacy media hacks."  Note the Colonel deploying the literal translation of Giftzwerg.

14.  Lockdown wasn't worth it.

15.  More coot wisdom.  "Biden’s analogy is as absurd and as insultingly tone-deaf as most of what comes out of his mouth."

16.  You'd think this would be Conventional Wisdom by now.  "[T]he next time a politician promises on the campaign trail that they’ll easily and quickly solve massive societal problems if just given power, don’t believe them."

17.  Bye, bye, Miss American Pie.  "The song lasts 16 hours and 47 minutes, and that’s the AM-radio cut. The album version actually pauses in the middle to play “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” twice and is the only LP issued in the ’70s that takes an entire diurnal cycle to play."

18.  Treat the roads and bridges like productive assets.  "If state DOTs really cared about congestion, they’d be implementing congestion pricing."

THE WEEK IN FIGURES.

Mark "Carpe Diem" Perry compiles an instructive set of charts.  It includes several detailing the macroeconomic failures of the current government, as well as one of his classic Venn diagrams.

Our Intellectual Betters gave up on intellectual consistency long ago.  Sometimes all one can do is undermine them with mockery.

ACADEMIC FREEDOM IS NOT ACADEMIC LICENSE.

Truckee Meadows Community College mathematics professor Lars Jensen, who got himself into trouble with college administrators for calling out the folly of admitting unprepared students and calling it access, will keep his job.

In November, a hearing officer at the Nevada school found that Jensen had violated several of the college’s codes when he protested a new curriculum structure that essentially allows remedial math classes to count for college credit.

In response to the hearing officer’s report, a five-member faculty termination board recommended on November 23 that Jensen be allowed to remain in his job.

The next day, college President Karin Hilgersom accepted the recommendation of the faculty committee and announced Jensen would not be fired.

I'm encouraged that the termination board has faculty members on it. Perhaps there ought be the same faculty interest in the curriculum committees that have to sign off on the administrative follies.

In October, multiple faculty organizations wrote to the hearing officer urging her to reverse her decision against Jensen.

“His termination would be a violation of his academic freedom and his rights as an academic faculty member and would constitute a travesty of justice,” wrote the Nevada Faculty Alliance, the local affiliate of the American Association of University Professors, on October 23. “In addition, it would very likely lead to successful litigation against TMCC.”

The Academic Freedom Alliance similarly supported Jensen, writing that the unsatisfactory performance reviews that provide the legal basis for his possible termination “were explicitly grounded in part on Professor Jensen’s constitutionally protected speech.”

“As a consequence, the disciplinary hearings raise grave concerns that Professor Jensen is being retaliated against for his constitutionally protected criticism of the college’s administration and efforts to communicate his concerns about the academic functioning of the college to his colleague and to other interested parties.”

Professor Jensen continues to contemplate legal action.

THE DESPAIR CONTINUES UNTO THE THIRD GENERATION.

Earlier this week, an Oakland County, Michigan high school student stands accused of shooting and killing several of his classmates.  Now the investigation includes his parents.

The parents of a 15-year-old Michigan school shooting suspect were charged with involuntary manslaughter by a Michigan prosecutor on Friday.

Oakland County prosecutor Karen McDonald announced on Friday that 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley’s parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, were facing four counts each of involuntary manslaughter. It was not immediately clear if either had an attorney.

“I have tremendous compassion and empathy for parents who have children who are struggling and at risk for whatever reason, and I am by no means saying that an active shooter situation should always result in a criminal prosecution against parents,” McDonald said during a press conference.

McDonald said that the evidence that led to the decision to charge the parents included the fact that Ethan Crumbley had been present at the time that his father purchased the weapon. The Michigan prosecutor also cited a Facebook post from his mother that his parents had bought the weapon for the teen as a Christmas present.

The prosecutor further discussed drawings made by the 15-year-old and found by a teacher on the morning of the shooting that depicted a gun pointing at words reading “the thoughts won’t stop, help me” and someone being shot twice.

The drawings, which were subsequently altered, were shown to the parents at a meeting prior to the incident, during which they were told to get their son to counseling within the next two days.

That's more system failure than I consider myself qualified, but, yes, there was a conference involving the parents, the student, and school staff the morning of the day the shooting took place. There are news sources available suggesting the youngster was "bullied," which these days involves everything from taunting to being shoved into a locker.

It's what came after that suggests that continuing despair.

Multiple school districts in the Detroit area will be closed on Thursday "out of an abundance of caution" due to threats of more violence after the Oxford High School shooting, the officials announced on Wednesday.

“Out of an abundance of caution, all BHS schools will be closed on Thursday,” Bloomfield Hills School District Superintendent Pat Watson said in a statement, adding that the district is in close touch with Bloomfield Township Police over the alleged information.

"BHS and other communities across the region have received numerous reports of threats of violence circulating on social media," Watson said, adding that after-school activities were also canceled.

Another nearby school district, Holly Area Schools, also issued a notice of closure for Thursday and Friday.

Bloomfield Hills used to be an upscale suburb, the auto executives who could buy property in Troy would move to Birmingham or Bloomfield Hills upon achieving sufficiently high rank.  Holly might best be known for "Carrie Nation Days," honoring the actions of a temperance advocate who busted up a tavern, although model rails know of the Detroit Model Railroad Club located there.

Student discontent, or perhaps it's pranking, seems to be all over Oakland and part of Macomb County.

According to NBC News, other school districts in and around Detroit that will remain shut are Troy Schools, Rochester Community Schools, Brandon School District, Walled Lake Consolidated Schools, Lake Orion Community Schools, Clawson Public Schools, Warren Consolidated Schools, Hazel Park Schools, Avondale School District, West Bloomfield School District and Lamphere Schools.

That list includes exurbs as well as a number of the inner suburbs of Detroit that used to house workers at the single-level automobile factories that built up alongside the expressways.  I lose track of how many of those might have since closed.  The hard times began with the 1970s oil embargoes and the first Chrysler bailout, in the declining years of the Carter presidency, and now the children of people who might not yet have been born then might be signalling their unhappiness.

COMING TO TERMS WITH HETEROGENEOUS SUSCEPTIBILITY.

That's something economists noticed as an omitted variable in the early pandemic modelling.

There has been enough time now for some pretty good researchers to tackle the omission.  "Acemoglu, Daron, Victor Chernozhukov, Iván Werning and Michael D. Whinston. 2021. 'Optimal Targeted Lockdowns in a Multigroup SIR Model.' American Economic Review: Insights, 3(4):487-502."

The full article is available to Association members or on a pay-per-view basis, but the authors get no royalties, and your local university library might have an institutional subscription for a closer look.

The abstract is promising.

We study targeted lockdowns in a multigroup SIR model where infection, hospitalization, and fatality rates vary between groups—in particular between the "young," the "middle-aged," and the "old." Our model enables a tractable quantitative analysis of optimal policy. For baseline parameter values for the COVID-19 pandemic applied to the US, we find that optimal policies differentially targeting risk/age groups significantly outperform optimal uniform policies and most of the gains can be realized by having stricter protective measures such as lockdowns on the more vulnerable, old group. Intuitively, a strict and long lockdown for the old both reduces infections and enables less strict lockdowns for the lower-risk groups.

The shame is that the findings are consistent with "protect the vulnerable, let the young live free," which has become more of a political litmus test than a point of discussion for policy.  Watch for the article to receive much more media attention on some platforms than others.

WELCOME TO THE FRESH START STATES.

There have been a number of efforts by freedom-minded people to establish what I call the libertarian welcome wagon for refugees from the ruin Democrats have made of their states.  It appears as though these efforts now have at least a fundraising portal through the Foundation for Economic Education.

The pandemic accelerated what was already a growing trend in the country: migration from states like California, New York, and Illinois to southern states like Florida, Texas, Tennessee, and Georgia. Notably, these latter states offer all of the amenities of large cities, services, entertainment, and growing job markets, but at a lower cost of living than the major cities in the aforementioned places.

While recipient states are thrilled for the economic growth in-state migration brings, many have begun to worry about the political changes such mass movement could bring about—changes that threaten to undo the very economic prosperity these new residents are seeking.

At FEE, we know the principles and their resulting policies that create prosperity for all. But we also know not everyone has had the opportunity to gain an education in these elements. With the Fresh Start States Project, we plan to provide that information to new residents in key areas through educational mailings, an interactive website, and world-class seminars. But we need your help to make this vision a reality.

The challenge, as always, dear reader, is to achieve the proper mix of hospitality and information. "As the point of the welcome wagon isn't necessarily voter mobilization, but rather, making the new residents feel at home with their neighbors and some of the things the neighbors do differently, including politics, and those are things that shouldn't end with a swag-bag." That is, people who are fleeing the crime bring a different mind-set to their new neighborhood than the people who might be seeking to colonize it.

LAMENTING OVER GOVERNMENT FAILURE.

A Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel writer called Lori Nickel notices what happens when government fails.  She starts with a passage that suggests her readers are too comfortable.

Who gives a damn about sports right now in the wake of the Waukesha Christmas parade tragedy?

I don’t care about Wisconsin’s big win and Green Bay’s close loss and I'd like to know who out there still thinks the Milwaukee Bucks unified our bitterly divided city and surrounding suburbs with their championship.

When a person is mowing down our children and grandmothers at a Christmas parade, I want the whole world to stop and take stock of what is happening.

What is happening is that people have to think about things they ordinarily wouldn't have to think about.

Wisconsin, what are we doing? The rest of the world thinks Wisconsin is a dumpster fire, and after everyone has weighed in on Aaron Rodgers’ admission to refusing the COVID vaccine, and the Rittenhouse acquittal Friday, it is traumatic just to endure another gut-wrenching news cycle. Worse still, the toxic, ignorant inhumanity in the debates says a lot about us as a society.

It was, as she notes, a long time in coming.  In a division of labor society, we trust others to do their part, and it's when they stop doing their part that we notice.

So no, I don’t care about sports today. And probably won’t care ever again. Some things should just demand more of our time, energy and attention. We are not taking care of each other. We are not looking out. We are not doing the work that it takes to make this world better. We are not helping by watching games.

I am deeply ashamed that I know more about special-teams snafus and proper tackling and blocking than I know the names of the elected people who govern our towns and decide our laws. That changes. Today. And so will a lot more. I'm done with the sports-obsessed culture. I do hope this is not virtue signaling; it's the smallest attempt to reprioritize and live by renewed values. I was not paying close enough attention to the things that matter.

Until she turns her attention to the policy failures, she's going to have to go to more blood drives and write more checks. "But deconstruction is human action, and human action can deconstruct the deconstruction."  That, dear reader, is the impasse where she finds herself.

DOE, A DEER, AN ANTLERED DEER.

Let's hope the game wardens didn't snare the hunter for misgendering a sixteen-pointer.

A Missouri hunter shot what he thought was a 16-point buck, but when he came out of cover and inspected his prize more closely, he saw something was amiss.

Samuel Perotti had seen this well-antlered deer in photos captured by his game camera, the state Department of Conservation said, and recognized it even as he lined up his shot and pulled the trigger.

Then came the surprise: Despite the impressive crown of bone protruding from the deer’s skull, this was no buck, but a doe. A rare one.

I'm only being partially facetious: in some states, a deer tag can be for bucks only, or does only.  Whether there is additional material for the cultural studies types, particularly the alphabet contingent, is left to the reader as an exercise.

A number of things can cause female deer to grow antlers, according to the National Deer Association.

Most often, it’s a result of elevated testosterone, the NDA said, and in such cases the deer can typically still reproduce. However, other anatomical abnormalities can result in antlered females, or antlered males that otherwise appear female.

Here, it's simply another hunting story.

DOESN'T ANYBODY PAY ATTENTION TO THE EVIDENCE?

The latest surge of corona panic comes from Germany. Merkel’s government slams packed Cologne stadium.

Images of the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd at Saturday’s first division football match between Cologne and Monchengladbach sparked nationwide headlines, with many commentators despairing at the lack of masks and social distancing.

“At a time when hard-hit regions are cancelling Christmas markets and tough measures are being introduced” the full stadium “is very difficult to understand”, outgoing Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters.

Local officials in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia said Cologne’s full stadium was justified because supporters had to show they were fully vaccinated or recovered before entering (Germany’s so-called 2G rules).

There might be an even simpler justification. Where were the early fall superspreader events associated with college football, particularly in southern states where Our Intellectual Betters were all over people congregating inside air-conditioned spaces?  Let's see if Germans call attention to coronavirus infections among footie fans.

I repeat, because repeat I must, "[W]hen evidence is contrary to priors, shouldn't people be revising their priors?"