Dumping

China is up to its old tricks but this time on steroids. They have a glut of manufactured items that they are trying to dump on the world market but countries are following the US and placing high tariffs on imports from China. In September 2024 the Biden administration increased tariffs on Chinese EV’s to 100% and this ended any EV’s coming from China. Europe is finally waking up and is now increasing tariffs on Chinese EV’s but they are not high enough yet to make the Chinese cars as expensive as European EV's produced in Europe. The current tariff on Chinese imported EV’s is 50% but that is not high enough to level the playing field because sales of Chinese EV’s account for 42% of all EV’s sold in Europe. China is using the same dumping process on many other products.

Cleanup

It is not always easy to get accurate information and here are a couple of examples. According to the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ), homicides fell 21 percent between 2024 and 2025, approaching the lowest rate in 125 years. Gun assaults dropped 22 percent, and carjackings plummeted 43 percent (CCJ, 2026). Taken together, violent crime is now lower than it was before the pandemic. Here is a recent report from NPR President Trump's deployment of the National Guard in Washington, D.C. has reduced petty property crimes, but has had little to no effect on violent crime, despite the high cost to taxpayers, according to a new analysis from the nonpartisan think tank Niskanen Center. This is a report about the cleanup in Washington DC Washington, D.C. is undergoing a massive cleanup effort. Spearheaded by the "Making the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful" task force and federal agencies, authorities have dismantled over 140 homeless encampments and made thousands of arrests for narcotics, firearms offenses, and other crimes Here is a report from NPR Despite President Trump's federal intervention in D.C. and clearing of homeless encampments, there are people who still live on the streets. Service providers just have a harder time finding them.

China

After Japan was defeated in WW 2, Mao took control of China and an estimated 50 million people died because of self-induced famine, mass political executions, force labor and brutal purges. Between 1949 and 1956 the government nationalized all private enterprises, restricted private ownership and placed all industry and commerce under state control, a full communist government. The country stagnated until Dung Xiaoping took control in 1978. He started the “Reform and Opening-up” policy, shifting away from a planned economy to a socialist market economy. Dung had been to the West and understood free market capitalism but wanted to keep political control in the hands of the federal government. Many In the West believed that once the people got economic freedom, they would demand political freedom but that did not happened. The West gladly did business with China to capture the billion new potential customers and China began to grow slowly at first but accelerating later. China was given special status as a developing country and in 30 years became a major economy on the world stage. The free-market approach allowed people to retain their profits and this led to the rapid expansion where a half billion people were moved out of poverty.

Crime

In the world today there is some confusion about race and skin color. The people in North Africa, the Middle East, North Asia along with Europe are all Caucasians but their skin color is slightly different. Many people from Egypt, Libya and Tunisia have lighter skins than many from Southern Italy and Greece. The same is true for people from Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. All too often people are divided by oppressor and oppressed as determined by skin color with Whites being seen as the oppressor. For those who champion the oppressed this poses a dilemma. It means the Jews are the oppressors and the Palestinians are the oppressed. Here in the US, some judges see non-White skin people as oppressed and feel uneasy about sending them to prison. These judges see these people as victims of some past real or perceived mistreatment which caused them to commit criminal acts. They see the prison inmates who are disproportionately Black and Hispanic as proof of their conclusions and thus are reluctant to add more minorities to the prison population. This explains the many cases of individuals with multiple criminal convictions who are roaming the streets. About 68% of released state prisoners are rearrested within 3 years, jumping to 83% over a 9-year follow-up period. One of the best ways to reduce crime is to put repeat offenders in jail. Often times minor crimes are indicative of major crimes. In New York City, 38 individuals arrested for assault in the transit system in a single year were collectively linked to 1,100 additional crimes across the city. City date shows that 542 people arrested for shoplifting were responsible for committing 7,600 other crimes.

Space

A woman on TV who said she represented the scientist of NASA announced that all of the people in her group feel certain that there is intelligent life in the universe besides earth. Not only do most people agree with that but most also would like to have a visitor. The follow up question was not asked. If you believe there is life out there, using your wildest imagination, how would these visitors get to earth. The answer would be Star Trek’s warp drive which allows travel faster than light. Then ask those same scientists if this is a likely scenario and they will respond no. If such travel were to happen the visitors would lay out in a distant orbit and contact the earth and explain where they are from and their purpose for being here.

Disparate impact

Major tech firms are trying to hire more women techies. Women make up only about 30% of these positions. Using the rules of disparate impact this means there is discrimination involved. Men outnumber women computer science majors four to one. Men earn 80% of all computer science degrees. Using these criteria then that would explain why 80% of elementary teachers are women. Men are being kept out of these jobs because they are men. There may be reasons in the past why men and women chose careers but those reasons no longer exist but the trend continues. It is more likely that the causes of these discrepancies are not discrimination but rather the choice that people make for their careers. This is why the rules of disparate impact which state that any number in a group that does not agree with the statistical number in that group must be discrimination. Because women represent 50% of the population, they must be 50% of the teachers and the same goes for computer engineers. While there remains discrimination based on gender in both education and computer science in regards to salaries, it is not based on hiring practices.

Wealth gap

The Constitution is designed to protect individual rights rather than group rights. The push for group rights emerged in the mid 60’s with affirmative action, shifting away from the colorblind civil rights goals of the 50’s to remedies addressing historical discrimination. Free market capitalism is based on personal economic liberty, self determination and individual effort. Socialism is based on equal outcomes, equity. Democratic socialism operates within the capitalism framework but uses government regulation, progressive taxation and public assistance to lessen inequalities. The country vacillates between free market capitalism and democratic socialism depending on which party is in power. It is necessary that the buildup of wealth precede the redistribution of that wealth.