The situation in the Ukraine continues to boil with the Biden administration predicting that an invasion could come at any time. Senator John Barrasso, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, indicated in his view that this would send a very poor signal to other US adversaries like China and Iran opening the door to invasions of Taiwan and for Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. Those events are very troubling, and should be of significant concern to all of us.
The world is in a period of some chaos as West Africa grapples with a wave of coups, including Bali, Ghana, and Burkina Faso. This has been a process that has gone on since 1946 with over 100 coups in West Africa. The stability of democracy is very fragile in that region, and seems to be kicked off by instability in the rest of the world. Obviously, what is going on in the Ukraine is not helping the overall stability of the world.
It is interesting to note that Russia hit a new Covid-19 record with cases increasing ten times, reaching a level of 189,071 new infections, but Russia claims that daily deaths are holding steady (without providing a number). This could be a reason why Putin is starting to engage in war, and you might look back to the movie “Wag the Dog”.
The Republican concern with Mr. Biden’s announced strategy for picking the next Supreme Court Justice was debunked by a recent statistical analysis that I saw which essentially said that black women represent 6% of the US population, and currently there are no black women on the Supreme Court, therefore, they are an under represented group. The Rubio argument that all others are being excluded is obviously true, but at the same time a black female jurist has been excluded for the entire existence of the United States.
Inflation hit 7.5% in January and CPI jumped .6% with big gains in rent, food, and energy. All of this hits the middle and lower classes hard.
Ms. Stefanik was endorsed by President Trump, so it appears any endorsements I give, will be “trumped.”
The New York Times recently published a story about how the first Americans arrived and whether that was across the North American European land bridge. There appears to be a new theory that has been posited by a geneticist by the name of Jennifer Raft. She recently published a book entitled, “Origin: A Genetic History of Americas” which proposes that the first people did not come across the land bridge, but rather arrived on our coast lines. She utilizes an enormous amount of data and evidence to support this claim, but at the same time recognizes that it may or may not be accurate. Nonetheless, finding out where the original Americans came from is both exciting and important.
I recently listened to a program entitled, “Assessing the Threat of White Nationalism in New York State”. The presenters painted a bleak picture of the level of white nationalism in New York and its potential threat. I certainly share their concerns, but also would hope that the process leads to an understanding, not only of white nationalism as expressed by its proponents, but also answers the question “why”. Certainly, immigration is an issue and historically immigration has conjured up great negative feelings by those immigrants who are currently living here. We can go back to the turn of the 20th century to the prejudice that was evidenced against Italians, Jews, Poles and Irish. This is just more evidence of the same sickness.
The Supreme Court’s recent decision to restore Alabama’s voting rights unfortunately demonstrates the deep cynicism and radical right-wing leanings of several of the justices, including Mr. Gorsuch and Mr. Kavanaugh. The radicalism of Justice Thomas is more subtle because he doesn’t speak often, doesn’t ask many questions and writes few opinions, nonetheless, these three along with Mr. Alito represent a dangerous political influence on the Court. Unfortunately, these men may be brilliant, but they are anti-democratic, anti-immigrant and as well as being Trumper’s. I am not quite sure where this leaves us or takes us, but this is a danger to democracy.
Republicans are losing their minds over President Biden’s position that he has taken since the campaign that he would nominate a black woman for the Supreme Court if an opening occurred. They ignore the fact that Mr. Trump did the same thing with Justice Barrett, but their hypocrisy knows no bounds. Then we have a well-educated Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana who told Politico “No. 1, I want a nominee who knows a law book from a J. Crew catalog, and (2) I want a nominee who is not going to rewrite the Constitution every other Thursday to try and advance a “woke agenda”. The first comment is obviously intended to be a racial slur, and he fails to take into account that the people who Mr. Biden is considering all have education equal to his in terms of level, as well as the quality of the schools they attended. The second is just typical political rhetoric, and again, fails to address the fact that Mr. Trump appointed two very conservative justices who have embarked on rewriting the constitution from the conservative side. Each side is blinded by their own desires and fails to exercise their intellect and the people of Louisiana have a comic book leader.
Then we have Mitch McConnell, the minority leader in the Senate saying that the actions of the RNC relative to Ms. Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger were inappropriate, and is essentially saying that the RNC should butt-out in terms of these issues, that they will be taken care of by the individual caucuses. He also criticized the description by the RNC of January 6th as legitimate political discourse which he continues to describe as a violent insurrection. There is hope.
The Canadian Trucking Alliance estimated that 85% of Canada’s 120,000 truckers were vaccinated. The alliance had not seen much little impact on overall cross border trade until the protest blocked the Detroit-Windsor corridor and is now spreading. The cost as established by the Guardian is $50 million a day with approximately $300 million in losses to date. Black Lives protests caused $1-2 billion in damage but at $50 million a day that will mount quickly. Protests against vaccines versus deaths, are they equitable?
Solar storms destroyed 40 new Space-X satellites which were traveling in a low altitude orbit above the earth, they were launched for the purpose of supporting internet service. These geomagnetic incidents have caused the satellites to drift back into Earth’s orbit where they will burn up. This is an expensive event costing Space-X about $100 million dollars. It appears that these types of events happen periodically and the present solar outburst will not reach it’s peak until around 2025, thus potentially causing substantial harm to other satellites which are launched during that period. Mother nature gives and takes.
The US Treasury’s yield curve has been flattening over the last several months as the Federal Reserve prepares to hike rates and analysists believe that there will be more flattening to come as well as the development of an inverted curve. The flattening of the curve is obvious in that the spread in rates between 10-year notes and 1-month notes is very narrow while an inversion means that the long-term rate will be lower than the short-term rate which is counterintuitive to me, how about to you?
Bill Owens is a former member of Congress representing the New York 21st, a partner in Stafford, Owens, Piller, Murnane, Kelleher and Trombley in Plattsburgh, NY and a Strategic Advisor at Dentons to Washington, DC.
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