The Room Where It Happened

There may be dozens of questions people have across the country about the shooting of twenty one innocent people by an eighteen year old male.

How could a person do this?

How did the shooter get the weapons?

How did he get into a school with security resource officers?

Did the shooter's family know of his mental state and intent?

Did the shooter's family unknowingly or knowingly abet his preparation?

What could the school have done to further fortify the campus and prevent such a tragedy?

Weapon technology and mental illness are ubiquitous worldwide so why is this problem unique to America?

What has paralyzed America's ability to eliminate this problem?

Why did it take over ten hours to identify the number of victims and notify family?

Those first few questions seem to wind up having fairly predictable answers. The shooter was mentally unstable / anti-social / psychotic. The guns were obtained legally and red flag rules either didn't apply because the shooter had no prior criminal record or known psychiatric problems were not tracked in state systems. The shooter's family might have been aware of some mental issues but not months of journal entries declaring war on society, etc. Or maybe family members who were aware were equally unbalanced and didn't act upon the behavior. Not all school districts have spent the money to install exit-only locks and two-layer "man trap" doors at their primary entrances. Whatever similarity can be identified in the answers to these questions, they are primarily situational and fail to address the sheer volume of incidents.

It's the last three questions that have stuck in my mind the most. And maybe therein lies a way to solve this problem.

Why is this problem unique to America? What has paralyzed America's ability to correct this problem?

The answers to these two answers are related. The problem is unique to America because of one of the most poorly written sentences ever written in the English language -- the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The idea and language date from 1791. The state of the art in weaponry at that point ranged from muskets (which fired a single shot and took about 18 seconds to reload) to cannon which could fire two to three shots per minute but required a crew of eight to ten people. The politicians of the time had no inkling of weaponry that could accurately fire dozens of rounds per minute with ammunition optimized for maximum damage to internal organs. No inkling of telescopic sights, laser sights, bump stocks. And absolutely no bullet-proof body armor protecting an assailant from counter-attack by legitimate law enforcement.

For the first one hundred and eighty years of the Constitution, there was little debate about the second amendment's intent to ensure the right of people (plural) to possess weaponry as part of formal duties in (well, it says it right there…) a well regulated militia. Only in the last forty to fifty years were the clauses of this horrendous grammatical hodgepodge broken apart into separate, unlinked statements that turned the second amendment into a distinctly INDIVIDUAL right with an ABSOLUTE interpretation of the "shall not be infringed" clause.

America is not the only country to experience mass shooting events. On March 13, 1996, a single gunman killed 17 people and wounded 15 others in Stirling, Scotland at Dunblane Primary School. On April 18 and 19 of 2020, a single gunman killed 22 people over thirteen hours in Nova Scotia, Canada. On March 15, 2019, a lone gunman killed 51 people and wounded another 40 in an attack on two mosques in New Zealand.

However, Britain passed two bills within one year after Dunblane that banned handguns. New Zealand passed laws applying new restrictions to automatic and semi-automatic weapons in less than one month after the Christchurch mass shooting. Canada imposed bans on 1500 types of military grade assault weapons within twelve days of the Nova Scotia attacks. In contrast, the "modern era" of mass shootings in America dates back to Columbine High School in 1999 and nothing has been done at the national level.

So there are examples of three different countries that all suffered the same problem. All democracies. All with a mix of urban and rural populations. Why is America uniquely unable to respond?

The paralysis around this problem is unique to America because America is the only democracy with a legislative body that has institutionalized a profoundly undemocratic super-majority hurdle to its processes -- the Senate filibuster. And for Constitutional purists and disciples of "originalist" interpretations of what the Founding Fathers intended, it is worth stating that nothing in the Constitution, Bill of Rights or the Federalist Papers ever contemplated, much less recommended a process by which a forty percent minority could prevent ANY legislation from being considered by the entire body, thereby impeding the ability of a majority to act upon the business of that body. The process became entrenched in Senate process via rules changes adopted in 1806 and went virtually unused for 150 years before it was used to combat civil rights legislation beginning in 1957.

That single rules change, that single blatantly undemocratic cog in the procedural arcanery of one half of one-third of our federal government, sloppily introduced 216 years ago and discovered anew by racist obstructionists in the 1950s civil rights era has become the lever by which a narrow minority can push back against an overwhelming majority who ARE reacting to the near daily carnage visited upon the country.

So how can this undemocratic, deadly paralysis be broken?

Let's go back to that final question.

Why did it take over ten hours to identify the number of victims and notify family?

Identifying the victims does not seem to be a difficult problem, logically speaking. X students were in a given room. Y students known to be assigned to that classroom are found outside the classroom…. Do the math, right? Well, it is possible victims and survivors ran away from expected places or fled the school entirely and cannot be immediately located… That requires more analysis of the victims found…

I have never experienced a shooting directly or seen detailed footage of the aftermath of a shooting -- of any size. I cannot bring myself to put down words providing analogies for what such scenes must entail. However, consider this. Parents were kept away from the scene. Matching of parents to victims was accomplished in many cases via DNA swabs. As one first responder put it, some of the victims were completely unrecognizeable.

Perhaps those advocating for absolute, unrestricted rights for any weapon for all circumstances have romanticized the idea of lone citizens brandishing a high-powered weapon acting as a bulwark against a tyrannical government. Perhaps these advocates have an unrealistically quaint image in their mind of what it must be like to be shot. Maybe they imagine it to be like being taken out in a game of paintball instead of being shot using a modern high-velocity weapon with specialty ammunition designed for maxiumum carnage -- MULTIPLE TIMES.

Given the fanaticism of those still stuck on an absolutist interpretation of that "shall not be infringed" clause and their slavish devotion to the history and intent of our founding fathers, perhaps the only way to alter their perspective is to force them to be in the "room where it happened." LITERALLY. Require twenty Representatives and five Senators to be IMMEDIATELY flown to a mass shooting site within four hours. Not to offer "thoughts and prayers" to the families. Not to grandstand in front of the ghoulish national press spouting their talking points. Make them enter the scene and just watch. No cameras, no reporters. No distractions. No interactions with first responders. Not a word. Just observe.

With twenty Representatives and five Senators per planeload and America's current rate of mass shootings, it will take less than a month for EVERY member of Congress to gain first-hand insight into the true impact of the violence made possible by their collective failure to act.

I'm open to other ideas but this is the only one I have left.

WTH

Clarence Thomas v. America

The case of Clarence Thomas v. America is perhaps THE case that all Americans should focus on above all others. The warped logic of Clarence Thomas' jurisprudence has been discussed previously here at

https://watchingtheherd.blogspot.com/2019/12/book-review-enigma-of-clarence-thomas.html

in book review form. However, it takes some doing to keep up with the damage Thomas seems hellbent on inflicting across every segment of American society.

The US Supreme Court issued a ruling on May 23, 2022 regarding rights of criminal defendants in post-conviction phases of proceedings. The case involved an Arizona man convicted of murdering his girlfriend's four year old daughter who was subsequently sentenced to death. In the sentencing phase, new counsel argued that the public defender appointed by the State of Arizona failed to introduce exculpatory evidence in the case and argued to throw out the conviction, a federal appeals court did so, then the State of Arizona appealed the overturned conviction to the Supreme Court.

Enter Clarence Thomas.

The State of Arizona argued before the Supreme Court that "innocence isn't enough" to justify overturning a conviction for someone sentenced to death. The Supreme Court just issued a 6-3 opinion concurring with the State of Arizona, allowing the state to reinstate the conviction and presumably proceed with executing the defendant. Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion available in full here:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1009_19m2.pdf

You only have to read the summary of the case and the single Held introduction of the Supreme Court's final ruling.

Respondents David Martinez Ramirez and Barry Lee Jones were each convicted of capital crimes in Arizona state court and sentenced to death. The Arizona Supreme Court affirmed each case on direct review, and each prisoner was denied state postconviction relief. Each also filed for federal habeas relief under 28 U. S. C. §2254, arguing that trial counsel had been ineffective for failing to conduct adequate investigations. The Federal District Court held in each case that the prisoner’s ineffective-assistance claim was procedurally defaulted because it was not properly presented in state court. To overcome procedural default in such cases, a prisoner must demonstrate “cause” to excuse the procedural defect and “actual prejudice.” Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U. S. 722, 750. To demonstrate cause, Ramirez and Jones relied on Martinez v. Ryan, 566 U. S. 1, which held that ineffective assistance of postconviction counsel may be cited as cause for the procedural default of an ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim. In Ramirez’s case, the District Court permitted him to supplement the record with evidence not presented in state court to support his case to excuse the procedural default. Assessing the new evidence, the court excused the procedural default but rejected Ramirez’s ineffective-assistance claim on the merits. The Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded for more evidentiary development to litigate the merits of Ramirez’s ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim. In Jones’ case, the District Court held a lengthy evidentiary hearing on “cause” and “prejudice,” forgave his procedural default, and held that his state trial counsel had provided ineffective assistance. The State of Arizona petitioned this Court in both cases, arguing that §2254(e)(2) does not permit a federal court to order evidentiary development simply because postconviction counsel is alleged to have negligently failed to develop the state-court record.

Held: Under §2254(e)(2), a federal habeas court may not conduct an evidentiary hearing or otherwise consider evidence beyond the state-court record based on the ineffective assistance of state postconviction counsel.

Read that excerpt carefully. The summary explicitly recognizes:

• the purpose of the original appeal was to correct for grossly ineffective counsel
• that ineffective counsel failed to introduce evidence supporting the defendant's case
• after the conviction was overturned at the Federal level, the state court in fact concluded the defendant had ineffective counsel and had procedurally defaulted his case (violating his right to a fair trial)
• yet the State of Arizona appealed that outcome claiming a state cannot be forced by a federal court to introduce new evidence into proceedings simply because of incompetent counsel for a defendant (even though the STATE appointed that counsel)

Not really covered in that summary is the nature of some of the evidence involved in this case. The two defendants in the original case were accused of raping and murdering the four year old girl. The evidence in the case actually showed no sign of rape and the actual cause of death was an internal intestinal issue which medical examiners had reviewed and found was a longer standing condition and could not have resulted from abuse or trauma inflicted in the days prior to her death when she was in the presence of the defendants.

Yet none of that matters. The first sentence of the court's decision -- written by Clarence Thomas -- is all that matters. The Court recognizes government appointed lawyers were incompetent, it recognizes that exculpatory evidence exists that likely proves the defendant is INNOCENT, it recognizes this is a death penalty case and the court DOES NOT CARE. A federal court does not have the right to force a state criminal court to accept new evidence into a proceeding even if the evidence lies at the core of a defendant's appeal on grounds of incompetent counsel. Even if that evidence itself proves the innocence of the defendant.

That should send chills down the spine of EVERY citizen of America.

There have been dozens of stories in the news over the last twenty years about incompetent medical examiners and arson investigators found to have issued cookie cutter opinions in murder cases. There have been dozens of stories about District Attorneys and corrupt police departments railroading innocent defendants in custody rather than reviewing all the evidence pointing to other perpetrators. There are teams of lawyers working pro bono to use DNA evidence available to state and federal courts to overturn wrongly convicted parties and prosecute the real perpetrators. Yet the US Supreme Court is ruling that process -- no matter how flawed -- should trump truth. Even when the state may execute an innocent party.

This is certainly cruel -- but it will no longer be unusual. The Supreme Court just codified it as a feature in the system.

Which brings the analysis back to Clarence Thomas.

As summarized in the book review above, the jurisprudence of Thomas might be boiled down to this:

The world is racist, society will never be fair, the justice system will never be fair so there's no point in trying to regulate anything, there's no point in trying to balance the power of the state and large corporations against the individual, just shut up, keep your head down, climb into the machine and stay away from any of the bigger cogs in the system to avoid getting crushed. If you do get pulled into the gears and pureed, hey, I told you the world isn't fair.

A psychoanalysis of Clarence Thomas might be boiled down to this:

Somebody hurt me. I'm never going to forget it. I'm never going to forgive the people responsible. The world wasn't fair for me so I'm not even going to try to make it fair for anyone else. Just de-regulate everything and do away with the charade of aiming for justice. Let the whole system do what it's going to do. Let God sort 'em out.

That is one sick, nihilistic, twisted worldview for anyone in power to have, much less a Justice on the Supreme Court. Yet that theme is present in nearly EVERY majority or minority opinion written by Thomas. He seems to aspire to nothing more than being a one-man wrecking ball against any aspect of law aimed at correcting the balance of power between the individual and the state / society.

WTH

A Formula for Failure

Parents in many parts of the United States are irate over a shortage of infant formula that was triggered over THREE MONTHS AGO and has yet to be corrected. Relief may be in sight but the entire incident should raise concerns for the public across many sectors of the economy. We live in a country that controls the most effective military on the planet. We live in a country that can build rockets that can return upright to their launching pad for re-use. When that same country suddenly becomes unable to reliably feed the most dependent segment of the population, it should be clear our political and market forces are dangerously mis-prioritized and require immediate review. Any such review will conclude the factors causing this formula shortage are not just randomly present in the economy, they are applied systemically in nearly every sector of the economy, like a formula. A formula for failure in many areas to come.

The current formula shortage stems from a shutdown of a single manufacturing plant in Sturgis, Michigan owned by Abbott Labs which makes the infant formula product Similac which was consumed by four different infants hospitalized for infections from a bacteria called Cronobacter sakazakii. All of the cases were reported to the CDC and two of the four infants died. The CDC worked with the FDA which conducted an onsite inspection of the Abbott facility beginning January 31, 2022 and later led to the issuance of an administrative letter by the FDA to Abbott on March 18, 2022 identifying shortcomings in Abbot equipment and procedures. Abbott responded to the FDA's findings on April 8 and as of May 11, Abbot stated it could resume production within two weeks of FDA approval and it would take approximately 6-8 weeks for output to flow through the supply chain to reach stores. On May 16, 2022 a consent decree was reached between the FDA and Abbott that seemingly makes the re-opening of the plant more certain.

Everything researched, analyzed, root-caused and assigned to an action plan -- case solv-ed, right?

No. Not so fast.

Let's work this backwards from the present.

Do We Really Have Root Cause?

Coverage of the recent actions taken by Abbot and the FDA to address the supply crunch overlook a crucial issue -- Abbott is denying their plant was the source of the bacteria that led to the hospitalizations and death. Their full press release regarding a consent decree reached with the FDA was posted on their web site

https://abbott.mediaroom.com/2022-05-16-Abbott-Enters-into-Consent-Decree-with-U-S-Food-and-Drug-Administration-for-its-Sturgis,-Mich-,-Plant-Agreement-Creates-Pathway-to-Reopen-Facility

and the same bullet points were added to a rolling journal Abbott has been updating on the event since February

https://www.abbott.com/corpnewsroom/nutrition-health-and-wellness/abbott-update-on-powder-formula-recall.html

It is worth reading Abbot's feedback verbatim:

The facts about what was learned about the cases of Cronobacter have not been widely communicated. After a thorough review of all available data, there is no evidence to link our formulas to these infant illnesses.

It's important to know:

• Abbott conducts microbiological testing on products prior to distribution and no Abbott formula distributed to consumers tested positive for Cronobacter sakazakii or Salmonella.
• All finished product testing by Abbott and the FDA during the inspection of the facility came back negative for Cronobacter and/or Salmonella. No Salmonella was found at the Sturgis facility.
• The Cronobacter sakazakii that was found in environmental testing during the investigation was in non-product contact areas of the facility and has not been linked to any known infant illness. Specifically:
  
  • Genetic sequencing on the two available samples from ill infants did not match strains of Cronobacter in our plant. Samples from ill infants did not match each other, meaning there was no connection between the two cases.
  • In all four cases, the state, FDA, and/or CDC tested samples of the Abbott formula that was used by the child. In all four cases, all unopened containers tested negative.
  • Open containers from the homes of the infants were also tested in three of the four cases; two of the three tested negative. The one positive was from an open container from the home of the infant, and it tested positive for two different strains of Cronobacter sakazakii, one of which matched the strain that caused the infant’s infection, and the other matched a strain found on a bottle of distilled water in the home used to mix the formula. Again, neither strain matched strains found in our plant.
  • The infants consumed four different types of our formula made over the course of nearly a year and the illnesses took place over several months in three different states.

Those aren't your typical mealy-mouthed corporate flack points stating "mistakes were made" or "we didn't do it and we'll never do it again." It would be incredibly stupid for a food manufacturer to lie about things related to DNA similarities and differences which, in theory, can be re-tested and re-proven if doubted, right? (Leave a mental bookmark here. We'll come back to this...)

If Abbott's statements are true, it is possible this entire exercise was a high-tech wild goose chase that wound up imposing far more harm for infants and their parents than it averted. The bacteria involved in this case -- cronobacter -- is a germ found naturally in the environment. It says so right on the CDC's new web page devoted to this issue:

https://www.cdc.gov/cronobacter/infection-and-infants.html

If samples were analyzed by the CDC prior to February 17 and found

• a single variant of the bacteria
• all of the infants came from a single geographic area
• all of the infants used the exact same Abbott product
• all of the infants consumed product from the same plant and the same manufacturing lot
• tests of unopened product from the same lot showed contamination with the bacteria

then closing that plant immediately to clean and correct processes would be a sound action. If you believe Abbott's analysis, the EXACT OPPOSITE happened:

• no closed containers from the homes of any case tested positive for ANY bacteria
• only one case found an open container with bacteria matching the bacteria infecting the infant and that variant matched water in the home used to prepare the formula
• from Abbott's statement, it isn't clear if all of the cases involved the same manufacturing lot or even the same production plant

The point here is that the analysis performed by both the FDA and CDC along with Abbott in hindsight doesn't appear to have identified the actual source of these contaminations. It DOES point out that the ping-pong of communications between the FDA and Abbott didn't seem prioritized to reflect the fact that the shutdown halted production of niche varieties of formula amounting to 50% of supply with most existing supplies on shelves in stores needing to be destroyed as well. In hindsight, the communications involving this event read like the cockpit transcript of a doomed flight as the pilot and co-pilot calmly roger each other as they follow procedures and suspect instruments and fly a plane into the side of a mountain. As of May 21, the FDA has not actually given Abbott final approval to re-open the plant.

What Happened With Communication?

The Abbott plant was closed on February 17, 2022. Letters bounced back and forth on March 18 and April 8 between the FDA and Abbott. Abbott issued its press release on May 11 stating it could resume operations in two weeks after approval. It's now May 21 and FDA Director Robert Califf has still not officially provided approval for the Sturgis plant to re-open. In light of the analysis above, the first immediate question is why not? If you believe Abbott's analysis, the plant was shut down because an infant died who consumed their product and while there is no link between THAT product and other issues the FDA found by inspecting the plant, the FDA is using unrelated deaths to force Abbott to correct other issues. The equivalent of investigating four car wrecks in Honda Accord vehicles then shutting down Honda's Marysville, Ohio plant for minor violations found in the plant around the time of the four wrecks that had nothing to do with the wrecks.

Or is it?

Here is a link to a PDF copy of the 483 administrative letter sent by the FDA to Abbott on March 18 that summarizes the FDA's findings.

https://www.fda.gov/media/157708/download

I have attempted to translate them from administrative-ese to English for review here:

• Observation 1 -- lack of processes to prevent contamination of the product by microorganisms. Samples found to contain cronobacter sakazakii were collected on February 1-2, 2022 from hoppers in "high care" areas which are used to place scoops inside the final product. Three other samples were collected which tested positive were collected from floor and door areas near dryer equipment in "medium care" areas.
• Observation 2 -- failure to ensure all surfaces which may contact infant formula are maintained to prevent contamination from any source. Internal Abbott records show patterns of cracking and pitting in dryer equipment dating back to 2018 which have not been corrected.
• Observation 3 -- failure to provide final root cause for four FDA consumer complaints regarding cronobacter sakazakii and failure to retain samples used in the investigation for secondary review. These are the four cases that led to the shutdown.
• Observation 4 -- failures by employees to wear proper "protective apparel" and failure to utilize cleaning processes upon entering clean rooms. Abbott's response stated the observations involved outside contractors who had been brought in to work on dryer equipment. The FDA's point is that procedures call for ALL workers to take off street shoes ("non-captive shoes" in the vernacular) and don "safety shoes" when entering clean areas and Abbott didn't enforce that.. Some workers were seen wearing clean shoes off the factory floor, indicating they were likely walking between clean / non-clean areas and possibly tracking contaminants into clean areas.

The most obvious point to make from reviewing the 483 letter is that if Abbott failed to preserve its samples used to refute culpability when according to Abbott they PROVED Abbott's case, Abbott is either a) scientifically / operationally incompetent or b) lying about the results. Neither answer is a good look for a firm making nutrition products.

If in reality Abbott concluded the DNA of any contaminations found in its plant failed to match the DNA of the bacteria in any of the children, then closing the FDA cases without root cause would be correct -- the root causes lie outside Abbott's responsibility. However, that argument is weakened or destroyed entirely if Abbott failed to save the test results per its own existing operating practices.

What's My Motivation?

The FDA letter indicates that some of their findings data back as far as 2018. Specifically, dryer equipment used in production seems to be prone to wear and tear that itself makes the equipment more susceptible to contamination or harder to clean to avoid contamination. The findings also seem to indicate that Abbott hasn't done much to correct those problems.

To understand why, the "Get Shorty" question has to be asked... What's my motivation?

If you are Abbott, the answer is pretty much "nothing." The formula market has been HEAVILY concentrated for thirty years with roughly 90% of the market controlled by a few players. In 2022, Abbott controls roughly fifty percent of the market, Meade Johnson controls thirty one percent and Nestle supplies another eight percent with the final eleven percent spread across also-rans.

So when Abbott's plant was closed, why didn't the rest of the players jump in to steal sales? Greed is good, right? When your competitor is down, what better time to steal share, right?

Nope.

When you see a market failure this large, the market mechanisms clearly aren't working and cannot correct for a failure overnight. In the formula market, suppliers have little motivation to compete on an ongoing basis or maintain spare capacity to take advantage of a mistake by a competitor.

Lower birth rates mean the baby population is flat or declining so formula production is not a growth play for manufacturers. The product itself is highly regulated and treated with nearly the same quality control rules as pharmaceutical products which means manufacturing is not attractive for firms not already in food or pharma production sectors. Most importantly, nearly fifty percent of the formula market involves product purchased through the federal government's WIC program which requires states to operate the plan in each state, bid out ALL purchases within a state and select a SINGLE vendor to supply that state for the contract period.

This lock-in completely eliminates normal market incentives that could react to this shock and attempt to correct it. States already locked in to purchases from Abbott cannot get new contracts in place overnight to switch to another manufacturer. Even if contracts could be generated overnight, the other competitors don't have idle capacity waiting to fire up to fill the void. Even with a public failure that closes a key plant for three months, no outside firm is interested in entering the industry because of the regulatory load and compliance learning curve that must be scaled.

How Is One Plant So Critical to Supply?

The world is now twenty seven months into the COVID era and it really shouldn't be a mystery why one event at one plant can trigger such massive shocks throughout an entire industry. The formula / packaged food industry is no different than any other industry subjected to worldwide competition, intense cost pressures and substantial fixed costs. The formula for profiting in this environment is to

• minimize investment in low-growth / no-growth sectors
• protect your existing investment by minimizing competition where possible
• squeeze margins on existing capacity by minimizing inventories
• squeeze margins up and down the supply chain by outsourcing scut work or portions of the chain posing material environmental / financial / regulatory risk

The formula works perfectly for shareholders... As long as everything in the economy works EXACTLY as expected. No wars. No political shocks. No natural disasters.

When those conditions don't apply, it's a formula for failures which CANNOT be corrected in days / weeks / months by industry or government at any cost. In fact, when these conditions do not apply, the system starts CREATING black swan events like what we see now with infant formula, semiconductor chips for cars, etc. This systemic risk has been researched and diagnosed in academic circles for nearly two decades. A book published in 2005 by Barry Lynn entitled End of the Line - The Rise and Coming Fall of the Global Corporation describes the supply chain vulnerabilities posed by management practices across multiple industries and the underlying market forces that create them.

https://watchingtheherd.blogspot.com/2006/05/good-read-end-of-line.html

More of these events should be expected. They are baked into the equation.

WTH

George W. Bush's Tell-Tale Heart

Oops.

This is fascinating on so many levels. While attempting to speechify and communificate his concernifications about the events of one bungled attempt to topple a foreign government via force, former President George W. Bush had something else lurking in his mind...

https://www.npr.org/2022/05/19/1100016029/george-w-bush-condemns-putins-invasion-of-iraq-instead-of-ukraine

His epistle to the collection of goobers gathered at his presidential library still interested in his thoughts on anything involving geopolitics included this mixup...

"The result is an absence of checks and balances in Russia, and the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq — I mean of Ukraine."

For the beneift of future mankind, it would be fascinating to let loose some sort of microsopic, pyschologicial automaton probe inside the brain of GWB to collect data on what must be a perpetual struggle between neurons of awareness and repression regarding the avoidable multi-trillion dollar mistakes and hundreds of thousands of dead who lie at his feet. If the chemical energy expended by those two opposing forces balancing themselves into obliviousness could somehow be harnessed, the world's energy woes would be over.

WTH

Peak Oil (Investment) / Inflation

An insightful video was posted on YouTube by Wendover Productions that reviewed events in the past 15-20 years of history in the oil industry and ties them together with one key conclusion. The market shock encountered early in the pandemic where some oil prices briefly went NEGATIVE acted as a final wake-up call to the oil industry and put us in a situation where we aren't technically at "peak oil" but we ARE at a point where we are at (past?) "peak oil investment."

Here's the link to the video ----> https://youtu.be/AQbmpecxS2w

The slightly longer summary of the video boils down to this sequence of events.

Fracking technologies altered the cost structure of oil production significantly. Prior to fracking, typical means of production had very high fixed up-front costs but yielded lower average costs. With fracking, lower up-front costs of fracking on land allowed small players to enter production markets and cheap interest rates acted as a subsidy (for a while) but average costs of fracking are significantly higher than traditional means.

In relatively stable times, the boom in production volumes made possible with fracking firms (temporarily) destroyed the market leverage of OPEC. That new equilibrium could be sustained as long as market prices were above typical fracking incremental costs (which were/are HIGHER than traditional production).

When the COVID lockdowns began and demand for crude PLUMMETED, the inertia of daily production and inability to literally STOP production overnight briefly created NEGATIVE prices for crude in some markets. Producers literally had to pay refineries / tanker farms to absorb their production until demand returned or producers could shut down facilities.

Over the last twenty years, growth in the value of energy stocks is about par with inflation, meaning investors in fossil fuel firms haven't made serious returns compared to other high flying sectors. Energy companies have looked at all of these factors and have flattened or cut back investment. For those firms that really cut back during the negative pricing blip of 2020, many have not returned that capacity to production. However, market demand HAS returned since that Spring 2020 nadir. That has led to a sustained gap between supply and demand. The only possible result when demand outstrips supply is a spike in prices. Yet because oil companies see electric vehicles growing in popularity and they have already delivered weak results to their shareholders, none want to "re-invest" by resuming suspended petro-capacity and are timid about getting into alternatives where their expertise and competitive advantages are not evident. In short, this spike over the last 18 months * has little to do with fears over Russian actions in Ukraine * has little to do with fears about other actions Russia may take * has little do do with any domestic regulatory restrictions or opportunities * has little to do with politics on any side

Most importantly, prices will likely go higher as investments in traditional production sources stay flat or decline.

Which brings up larger questions about causes for inflation and what -- if any -- actions can be taken to return it to prior abnormally low levels.

The key statistic I consider each time I hear news broadcasts airing stories about people selling kidneys to fill up their SUV or paying $20,000 for daycare or paying sticker for cars that take eight months to deliver is this...

ONE MILLION AMERICANS HAVE DIED OF COVID SINCE FEBRUARY 2020.

Stop and think about that. Thankfully, there are very few children in that toll. Per the CDC's website at https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/mortality-overview.htm one finds

• 743,015 deaths were people 65 or older
• 213,436 deaths were people 45-65
• 42,247 deaths were people under 45

If you look at COVID CASES as summarized at this site ----> https://www.statista.com/statistics/1254271/us-total-number-of-covid-cases-by-age-group/ the number of cases in the US of people age 18 to 65 is roughly 50.9 million people.

Think about these statistics from a labor market standpoint. Assuming the cases not ending in death only involved a 2 week absence from work, the case quantity means we lost 101 million weeks of labor over two years. For the fatal cases, we LOST 255,683 workers entirely.

Think about the impact of long-haul COVID on these numbers. Estimates range that between 14 and 30 percent of people contracting COVID experience long-haul symptoms that range from merely unpleasant to chronic brain fog / fatique / pain. If only 10 percent of the long-haulers are experiencing those extreme symptoms, that could be another .10 x .30 x 50,900,000 or 1,527,000 people not fully present in the labor force.

Think about the secondary impacts of those deaths and cases. It would seem safe to assume for most of the working-age deaths, many involved hospitalization which resulted in a partner losing work time visiting the patient or doubling up on parenting duties. Think of the labor sectors where the experience of dealing with irate parents and the public led people to walk away from a medical, teaching, retail or restaurant position. Most people making those decisions -- especially higher up the skill ladder -- are NOT likely to return to those positions soon, if ever. That is producing upward wage pressure as firms become more desperate to retain the employees remaining, especially as demand (routine doctor visits, in-class learning, eating out, etc.) returns to normal levels with FEWER workers.

There's no mystery to the inflation being seen now. And no instant cure for it exists in the economic or political realm. Economies around the world are going to have to sort out priorities and hope an equilibrium is re-established without nefarious actors with highly leveraged bets behind the scenes further disrupting the process while trying to protect their narrow interests.

WTH