Covid

It generally takes 10 to 15 years to develop a vaccine. Prior to Covid the fastest was the mumps vaccine which took four years and was developed in 1960's. Data shows that the Covid vaccine was 95% effective in the first month decreasing to 60% after five months. It is estimated that the vaccine saved 15 million lives world wide. On the Internet there are many articles pointing out that Trump's attitude of not taking the Covid serious, not encouraging mask wearing and spreading misinformation caused many deaths. What is not found is the lives saved by the warp speed development of the vaccine in less than one year. This is once again an example of conjecture vs facts. There is no way to calculate the deaths by Trumps words but there is very good data to prove the lives saved by the vaccine. When opinion is used the bias of those offering the opinions must be taken into account.

News

The appearance of Trump on the political scene in 2015 brought some major challenges to journalism. The first thing they noticed was that Trump was a money maker. No matter what they published as long as it was about Trump they made lots of money. They were not concerned about the country because they figured that there was no way that Trump could be taken seriously by the voters. They had concerns about what this would do to the field of journalism but the TV stations and Newspaper could see the profits and so it was all ahead Trump. In time they discovered that they could get bigger audiences by concentrating on Trump's personality as opposed to his policies. This mean the news could be more subjective not having to worry about policy facts. Prior to the 90's going back to the early days of TV with people like Walter Cronkite the news was mostly center left without the hard core positions. The first change happened in 1988 when Rush Limbaugh saved AM radio by becoming a conservative voice. This was followed by Fox News in 1996 so by the time Trump came along the ground work was set for a move to the left or right. The game is now set with Fox and talk radio on one side and the rest on the other side. The result offering information to your audience that they want and so objective journalism has been replace by subjective journalism. Right now the battle is raging between covering personality or policy. With policy you have to stick with facts but with personality you can discuss opinions about a persons character including the words and phrases they use. From the standpoint of the journalist it is much easier just to speculate about a persons personality than to research their policy position and this is especially true if you can get a bigger audience taking the easy way out.

Covid

A year and a half after the onset of Covid on July 21, 2021 President Joe Biden offered an absolute guarantee Wednesday that people who get their COVID-19 vaccines are completely protected from infection, sickness and death from the coronavirus. December 14, 2021 Biden said on December 14, 2021 People vaccinated for Covid "do not spread the disease to anyone else". The 6 foot social distancing rule caused classrooms to be limited 13 student about have the regular class size and thus students has to rely on distance learning at home Dr Fauci stated recently that the 6 foot rule "sort of just appeared" and "wasn't based on data". In many places people were locked down and forced to stay indoors. Spending time outside means more fresh air circulation, space and sunlight. These factors make it more difficult for the Covid virus to spread from person to person. The government says these statements were made to encourage people to get vaxxed. They may have had good intentions but the people did not appreciate bad information to get a certain result. Many wondered is this a one off or does the government use this approach often.

Reshoring

There have been 1,675,000 jobs returned to the US in the past 13 years because of reshoring. Today, many U.S. manufacturers are reevaluating their production and sourcing locations and are taking a closer look at the benefits of reshoring. Some of the most commonly cited advantages include higher product quality, shorter delivery times, rising offshore wages, lower inventory and the ability to be more responsive to changing customer demands. More than 80% of North American manufacturers are considering reshoring. The five industries experiencing the greatest growth in reshoring are electrical equipment, appliances, computers, chemicals and medical equipment. Reshoring does not mean foreign companies building products in the US it means US companies building products in the US.

Natural gas

One of the best ways to fight climate change is to use more natural gas and less oil and coal. Using this change the US has decreased its CO2 emissions by 3% since 1990 even though the population has increased from 190 million to 340 million. This is a staggering achievement. The US is now exporting natural gas around the world in many cases to replace oil and coal just as happened in the US. There are now eight natural gas export facilities in the country with another 17 expected to be built in the next five years and seven more seeking federal approval. As of January 26, 2024 the Biden administration is delaying consideration of new natural gas export terminals.

Nuclear

Environmental groups opposed to nuclear energy and nuclear weapons got their start in the early 1970's with Greenpeace leading way. They were successful and by 1992 the US stopped testing nuclear bombs at which time they turned their full attention to nuclear power plants. They used the fear of melt downs and the long term storage needed for waste to end the building of nuclear power plants. This led to the next step which was climate change. Their solution was to replace fossil fuels with wind and solar. Their plan was to incorporate social spending inside of green spending. Here in their words is the goal. "Providing all people of the United States with – (i) high-quality health care; (ii) affordable, safe, and adequate housing; (iii) economic security; and (iv) access to clean water, clean air, healthy and affordable food, and nature." It is time for the scientist to come forth and expose this deal and let the public know that even if wind and solar could replace fossil fuels it would just mean replacing clear air with dirty water. Once the weaknesses of the green deal are exposed the move toward nuclear power can take center stage. The next step will be to explain why small thorium reactors are better than the large uranium powered plants. As more and more information is presented the people will come to understand that nuclear is the only solution to climate change.

Loans

After the war when many low cost housing developments were being built the mortgage rules were difficult to qualify for a loan. The Housing Act of 1950 lowered the money down needed and extended the loan times. Even with the 3.5% down and 25 year loan many could not quality because of income ratios. The standard rule was that your principal and interest payment plus taxes and insurance could not exceed 28% of your income. At that time new homes cost $10,000 and the average income was $3,300. This meant that many Black families did not have the needed income to get a loan. A classic case of the unintended consequences of good intentions began in 1968 and ended in the culmination of the 2008 mortgage crises and the aftermath is still with us in the form of high rental cost The 1968 Act put pressure on banks to accept more mortgages from Blacks and they complied. It time many of these Black families were unable to make the payments and they lost their homes. In 1977 the Community Reinvestment Act demanded that banks offer loans to low income people. This once again caused low income borrowers to lose their homes. Finally in the mortgage crisis of 2008 banks offered loans to people of all colors who could not meet the monthly payments and once again people lost their homes. Because so many lost their homes and were forced to rent the cost of renting rose rapidly and today many people cannot afford a place to live. In all three of these cases the Blacks suffered a disproportional loss of homes.