Quick Jots: August 2021

China ramps up regulation, investment crashes
#china
China has started to ramp up its regulation of private businesses and investment unsurprisingly crashes. This Bloomberg article starts off disastrously, talking up the regulation as a "win" for the middle class and poor, completely ignoring the fact that the economic free zones were what lifted them out of abject poverty in the first place and that removing investment in the economy would create negative and potentially catastrophic events for them. If you can survive that part of the article without having an aneurysm, there is some good detail about the regulations and resulting investment decline. Intense regulation in the gaming industry such as new license requirements for games and a national login to limit the amount of game time minors have (three hours a week!) for games has led to a crash in certain Chinese stocks. Tencent Holdings (TCEHY), for example, tanked 6% after the announcement following an 11% drop already that day. Alibaba (BABA) is down almost 50% in the past year as the insecure Chinese Communist Party cracked down on them when its founder Jack Ma criticized the CCP, causing Ma to vanish from public view for a few months. Why anyone would want to invest in a company under the thumb of the capricious sociopaths that occupy the CCP is beyond me.

China goes full indoctrination
#china
It's been reported that several English tutoring businesses that largely employ English speakers from abroad have been wiped out by regulations forbidding "foreign influence" and a reorganization of for-profit tutoring into nonprofits, wiping out over a billion dollars of publicly traded investment in the stroke of a pen. In parallel with these regulations, as bad as they are, is a far more sinister set of rules, to "teach Xi Jinping thought", forcing schools to indoctrinate schoolchildren on how good the Party and a strongman leader (talking about himself, coincidentally, I'm sure) is for the country. Collaboration with foreign universities as well as instruction from abroad has declined significantly as study abroad enrollments have also declined.

Andrew Cuomo resigns
#democrats
Following a sexual allegation charge, Andrew Cuomo, one a fervent supporter of the #MeToo movement, was forced to resign from his position as governor. I wish they had included in all his misdeeds concerning COVID, but of course, they weren't going to do that as it would undermine their power grab. Cuomo could actually face misdemeanor charges. I'm not sure how groping a woman could be a misdemeanor while selling a bit of pot to a roommate would be a felony. One has a victim, the other is a voluntary transaction. But that's the law for 'ya. Good riddance. Hopefully, California is able to jettison its governor as well.

At the same time, is it weird that the Attorney General, Letitia James, who detailed the report against Cuomo, has aspirations for the New York governor position? How is this not a conflict of interest? While it's great Cuomo will be out, I'm under no illusions that the corruption will abate under someone else.

Cuomo undercounted COVID deaths
#democrats #covid-19
No, this is not a duplicate or months-old post. There was a clamor a few months ago that Florida was undercounting deaths to make their policies geared toward freedom seem to have fewer casualties. This clamor that the corporate media rushed to back, turned out to be a complete fabrication. Now we find out that it's actually the police state of New York that has severely undercounted their COVID deaths, by around 25%. The Emmys have also revoked Cuomo's award due to his sexual misconduct, but given that he was able to lie so convincingly to the public, isn't that a testament to his acting abilities?

Bay Area reimposes mask mandate
#covid-19
Many of the counties in the Bay Area reimposes the mask mandate, despite the overwhelming evidence that mask mandates do nothing and that masks, particularly cloth masks, themselves are far less effective than people give them credit for. In my personal observation, fewer than half of restaurants will require people to put on masks indoors.

Oregon imposes outdoor mask mandate
#democrats #covid-19
I guess I could do worse than living in the Bay Area. I could be living in Oregon, where the governor, Kate Brown, imposed outdoor mask mandates. If indoor mask mandates are already dumb, mask mandates outdoors, an area with an infinite dissipation sink, are completely brain-dead.

NYC discriminates against black communities with vaccine passports
#democrats #covid-19
DeBlasio imposed vaccine passports, which Dave Smith called NYC's new apartheid state. It could also be described as the New Jim Crow (Jim Eagle?). They created two different classes of people and one of them gets "the key" to the city while the other group is discriminated against and not allowed to participate in society. Meanwhile, the New York Times reported that only 27% of young black New Yorkers are vaccinated. This means this new vaccine passport would disproportionately affect black people negatively. Can this be called systemic racism, or does it not count when Democrats and socialists screw over black people? Additionally, people who are pregnant or lactating, or people who are allergic or immunocompromised, among a host of other reasons, shouldn't get the vaccine. So now we're just going to completely violate the rights of the people who cannot or should not get the vaccine? Oh, well. Maybe they can just get a counterfeit vaccine card to avoid living on the wrong end of a fascist state.

Mass protests in Australia
#covid-19
Australia returns to its roots of being the home of convicts and locks down swaths of the country. After months of being locked in their own homes, it's no surprise that mass protests have broken out. And it's been met with strong police resistance, firing tear gas into crowds and making arrests. It's embarrassing for their government, if they're capable of such an emotion, that they've been criticizing China's handling of Hong Kong, then goes around and does exactly the same thing the Chinese Communist Party has been doing to Hong Kong, to its own people. Those that think lockdowns have no negative consequences must also answer to the four babies that died after being denied heart surgery due to their inability to travel to the necessary hospital due to lockdowns, among all the other negative consequences that have occurred.

Drone strike kills citizens Kabul
#war
In another departing middle finger to the Afghani people, a US drone strike killed nine family members, including six children. At least we're leaving so this won't happen anymore. Ha. Just kidding. Our tax dollars will be paying for the murder of many more Afghani children for decades to come.

CDC eviction moratorium finally struck down
#covid-19
SCOTUS ruled 6-3 that the CDC's eviction moratorium was not permissible. Finally. It should have ruled that way back in February. The eviction moratorium has been disastrous for many middle-class families that rely on rent to keep their investment properties. Watch, when cases don't go up with no correlation (let alone causation) to this ruling, those that have been on the wrong side will just ignore and pretend this was ever a thing, just like they did for all the "superspreader" events that never materialized.