July 19, 2022
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
Biden’s looming purge of 27 percent of the Army partially vaccinated against Covid will take years to recover from, threatens national security
By Robert Romano
Currently, more than 260,000 servicemen and women in the U.S. military are only partially vaccinated — that is, they have only received one vaccine shot against Covid instead of two — and are now facing separations and discharges.
In February, Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth laid out the separations policy, declaring, “Army readiness depends on Soldiers who are prepared to train, deploy, fight and win our nation’s wars… Unvaccinated Soldiers present risk to the force and jeopardize readiness. We will begin involuntary separation proceedings for Soldiers who refuse the vaccine order and are not pending a final decision on an exemption.”
Of the more than 268,000 servicemen and women not fully vaccinated, more than 252,000 are in the Army, or about 27.5 percent of the more than 914,000 men and women in the Army, according to the Department of Defense.
Other service branches are almost fully vaccinated. Only 2,983 Marines out of more than 203,000, or 1.4 percent, are only partially vaccinated, 5,300 sailors out of more than 389,000, or 1.35 percent, and 8,285 airmen out of more than 505,000, or 1.6 percent.
So, we’re mostly talking about the Army.
Every year, the U.S. military recruits more than 180,000 Americans for both active and reserve duty. In 2021, the Army recruited 57,600 active duty and 11,700 reserve duty soldiers, or about 69,000.
To offset a sudden loss of 252,000 soldiers — three-and-a-half years’ worth of recruits — then, would take the Army years, a decade or longer to recover from.
The military is already having a recruitment problem as the population of those eligible to serve continues to plummet, with 71 percent of the 34 million between the ages of 17-to-24-year-olds ineligible to serve due to being overweight, not having a high school diploma, medical issues or past convictions, according to the Pentagon.
Obviously, purging the Army will only exacerbate the recruitment problem.
Moreover, Covid is not as deadly as it was in 2020 as Covid fatality rates continue to plummet, according to the latest data from the Institutes for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).
When the pandemic began, estimates cases peaked in March 2020 at 155,000 per day, and then fatalities peaked by April 17 at 2,335 daily, an implied 1.4 percent fatality rate.
The next winter, cases peaked at 505,000 in late Dec. 2020, with 3,466 peak deaths on Jan. 10, 2021, and the implied fatality rate had dropped to 0.69 percent before almost any vaccines had been administered.
This past winter, cases peaked at 3.9 million daily in early Jan. 2022, with 2,616 peak deaths on Jan. 27, an implied fatality rate of 0.067 percent.
And with the recent spring and summer waves, daily cases peaked at 660,000 in early May and again in June at 530,000, with peak deaths of 390 on June 28, an implied fatality rate between 0.059 percent and 0.073 percent.
Do we really need vaccine mandates at this point?
And with a world at war, is this really the right policy? Russia has invaded Ukraine and may be threatening Europe with a wider war. China could invade Taiwan any day now. Either emergency could suddenly require lots of troops to be recruited and deployed overseas.
That makes Biden’s vaccine mandates not merely a problem for those who could lose the ability to serve their country, but a potential threat to national security itself if he follows through with his threatened Army purge. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.
Initial jobless claims continue creeping upward
July 14, 2022, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement on the latest jobless claims:
“Initial jobless claims continue to climb and are beginning to reach alarming levels. The three-month climb takes jobless claims from a very low 166,000 a week in March, to a steadily rising 244,000 a week now. With President Biden desperately clinging to jobs growth as his economic proof point, the White House must be beginning to hit the panic button over the gathering dark clouds over labor markets. The increasing number of layoffs is fortunately still being offset by the number of job openings that are being filled. But with more employers slowing hiring, expect those numbers to come down soon. Nothing lasts forever.”
To view online: https://getliberty.org/2022/07/initial-jobless-claims-continue-creeping-upward/
Charles Kennedy: $100+ oil is back for the long haul
By Charles Kennedy
Oil prices gained over 4.6% on Monday as the market attempted to digest developments in the Middle East, and as the dollar weakened slightly.
Brent oil prices climbed to $105.8 per barrel by 3:42 EST Monday, up 4.65% on the day. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) was trading at just over $102.
Prices rose Monday as traders assessed the Saudi sentiment following U.S. President Joe Biden’s meeting with the Crown Prince on Friday.
On Sunday, Biden’s advisor on international energy affairs, Amos Hochstein, said Washington believed OPEC’s producers in the Middle East–namely Saudi Arabia and the UAE–would take some steps to boost supply to the oil market soon.
However, the overriding sentiment seems to be that the Saudis have no intention of intervening in oil prices at this time. Last week’s sell-off based on notions that Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia might result in an OPEC decision to increase production is now being reversed.
Monday’s higher oil prices are also being driven by a weakening U.S. dollar thanks to investors who have softened their expectations of a more aggressive approach to interest rates by the Fed next week.
The U.S. dollar index fell 0.464% on Monday.
Biden’s meeting with the Saudi Crown Prince had markets hedging oil lower, despite widespread doubts that anything would be accomplished in terms of increasing OPEC output.
On Monday, Iraq’s oil minister told Bloomberg that oil is likely to continue trading above $100 for the remainder of this year.
“I would like OPEC to retain its tools to measure and control output and maintain the existing balance,” Iraqi Oil Minister Ihsan Abdul Jabbar told Bloomberg. “We will discuss that with our partners.”
The next meeting for OPEC+ will be on August 3rd.
To view online: https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/100-Oil-Is-Back-For-The-Long-Haul.html