We’re disappointed that many usually sound-thinking and free-market-oriented Republicans have embraced an antitrust bill sponsored by Democrat Amy Klobuchar that would vastly expand federal powers and the grip of the Biden regulatory state.
We don’t like big tech’s censorship of conservative voices, but Laffer’s new study proves conclusively that the tech companies like Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft are not engaged in monopolistic behavior.
Just the opposite. Monopolies raise prices. The digital-age tech companies have been for the last 20 years dramatically lowering prices by almost 35% on average. This chart from the Laffer study shows these pro-consumer price reductions compared to the 25% rise in the overall consumer price index.
The bottom line: there is more than $1 trillion in consumer gains from our world-leading tech firms and there is no case for antitrust actions.
Russia appears to have faked the results of clinical trials for its national COVID vaccine, called “Sputnik.”
Researchers in Singapore and Australia tested the work of the Russian scientists who developed the vaccine, which has been sold or given by Russia to over 70 mostly developing countries. It flunked. Dr. Kyle Sheldrick of the University of New South Wales told the Daily Mail: “There are signs, and lots of reasons to think, that someone might have manipulated this data after the study finished.” He says the vaccine may still work in many people, but he personally would not take it.
The Russians claimed their shot produced nearly identical results across five different age groups when they published their work last year.
But researchers ran the simulation model 50,000 times and found the chance of replicating the same efficacy across all five age groups again was just 0.02%. In other words – ZERO chance that the reported results are accurate.
Is anyone surprised at this apparent fraud? As former Russian chess champion, Garry Kasparov told us, “Lying Is What Dictators Do When They Breath.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department warns of a massive campaign of “'propaganda and lies” to discredit the U.S.–made Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
3) Schools May Use Summer School To Make Up For Lost Learning During COVID
We’ve been arguing for two years that the public schools should have been open during the summer months to compensate for the learning losses during the Covid lockdowns in 2020 and 2021.
On average, kids attending kindergarten to fifth grade have missed out on 20 percent of the reading and 33 percent of the math skills they would have learned normally, according to a McKinsey report.
A RAND study shows that 20 days of summer school is equivalent to 20 percent to 25 percent of a year's worth of reading and math coursework. Summer school kids routinely score higher on tests than those who take the summer off. Teachers got effectively months of paid vacation during COVID, so this is simply making up for the days they were not in the classrooms.
Yet the unions, no surprise, are raising a big stink. They claim their members are “burned out” and don’t want to teach during the summer even for enhanced salary payments. (This reminds us of the age-old joke: What are the three best reasons to become a teacher? June, July, and August!).
Once again, we ask if our public school system is being run for the benefit of kids or for the benefit of the teacher's unions.
4) Everyone’s Burning Coal Except America – The Country That Has The Most
Germany, China, and India – three of the largest countries in the world – are using more coal, not less of it.
Axios reports: “Investment in the coal supply chain rose 10% in 2021 and it's climbing the same amount this year.”
We’ve been saying this for years. The rest of the world pays lip service to “climate change” and signs treaties like the Paris Climate Accords and then violates every promise.
Meanwhile, the United States — with the most and the cleanest coal – is unilaterally reducing our output, while the dunce John Kerry flies around the world pretending that we are going to reduce the global temperature of the planet.
