RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/13/producer-price-index-march-2022-.html#Echobox=1649853296

The prices that goods and services producers receive rose in March at the fastest pace since records have been kept, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday.

The producer price index, which measures the prices paid by wholesalers, increased 11.2% from a year ago, the most in a data series going back to November 2010. On a monthly basis, the gauge climbed 1.4%, above the 1.1% Dow Jones estimate and also a record.

Stripping out food, energy and trade services, so-called core PPI rose 0.9% on a monthly basis, nearly double the 0.5% estimate and the biggest monthly gain since January 2021. Core PPI increased 7% on a year-over-year basis.

PPI is considered a forward-looking inflation measure as it tracks prices in the pipeline for goods and services that eventually reach consumers.

Wednesday’s release comes the day after the BLS reported that the consumer price index for March surged 8.5% over the past year, above expectations and the highest reading since December 1981.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/xinjiang-prison-camp-survivor-and-family-tailed-by-super-suspicious-individuals-in-d-c/

A former Xinjiang prison-camp prisoner, his family, and others accompanying them appeared to have been followed and discreetly photographed by two women on the National Mall yesterday afternoon, sources familiar with the incident told National Review. This raised suspicions about the possibility that the family was being surveilled, though there is no way to confirm this.

The camp survivor, Ovalbek Turdakun, arrived in the U.S. on Friday with his wife and their eleven-year-old son. Turdakun is expected to present significant, high-value evidence to Congress and the International Criminal Court, revealing previously undisclosed aspects of China’s genocidal campaign in Xinjiang based on his ten-month detention in a camp in 2018. In an interview with NR late Tuesday, Turdakun described at length the medical practices to which the Chinese authorities subjected him in the camp. The family’s arrival is also noteworthy because they all arrived together and are ethnically Kyrgyz. They might be the first Christian Xinjiang emigrés to reach the U.S.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2022/04/12/maher_five_years_ago_no_one_was_talking_about_abolishing_the_police_pregnant_men_or_legalizing_looting.html

HBO host Bill Maher says he hasn’t changed, it is the left that has changed in an interview on Joe Rogan’s podcast.

MAHER: When people say to me, ‘don’t you think you’ve gotten more conservative?’ No, I haven’t. The left has gotten goofier.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

MAHER: So I seem more conservative, maybe, but it’s not me who changed. I feel that I’m the same guy but five years ago, we hadn’t spent $6 trillion to stay home. I understand we had to do something with the pandemic, I’m not sure that was — I remember when a trillion dollars was too much to spend on anything. We didn’t spend a trillion to bail out the economy in 2008. So, we didn’t do that.

Five years ago no one was talking about abolishing the police, you know. There was no talk about pregnant men. I mean, looting was still illegal.

Have I changed? No. If someone had said 20 years ago, ‘I’m not sure looting is a bad thing,’ I would have opposed it then. So I haven’t changed.

https://www.newsweek.com/biden-helping-china-plunder-american-tech-companies-opinion-1697054

The Biden administration has proposed a technical—but critical—change to U.S. patent policy that could have been drafted in Beijing. In fact, a Chinese front organization has formally endorsed the proposal, which will gut protection for an especially important type of American patents.

Last December, the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, along with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, issued the Draft Policy Statement on Licensing Negotiations and Remedies for Standards-Essential Patents Subject to Voluntary F/RAND Commitments.

The Draft Policy, according to the Justice Department, would lead to “widespread and efficient licensing” by holders of standards-essential patents (SEPs) and thereby “promote technology innovation, further consumer choice and enable industry competitiveness.”

As the Center for Strategic and International Studies notes in its public comment on the Draft Policy, the Justice Department promotes the change “as an effort to encourage good-faith licensing negotiations.”

Standards are the technical specifications that “shape” products, services and processes. SEPs, which protect the technology included in standards, safeguard American economic leadership. SEPs defining 5G communications are held by American companies, for instance. Standards are a hotly contested tech battleground between the U.S. and China.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/04/12/while-everyone-else-is-kicking-themselves-for-voting-for-biden-college-educated-women-are-doubling-down/

Why are lots of men willing to admit that they were wrong in 2020, while college-educated women are doubling down?

NBC News recently compared several polls to find huge shifts from Democrats to Republicans in 2022 midterm voter preferences. The big exception to these shifts across many demographics was college-educated women, who in NBC’s aggregation showed even stronger support for Democrats now than ahead of the last midterm election.

Here’s the key graphic, which zoomed around social media Sunday, and below that the NBC segment.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2022/04/nyc-setting-new-record-antisemitic-crimes-daniel-greenfield/

Crime is up in general. With Democrats eliminating bail and diverting criminals to all sorts of non-penal programs, thugs have nothing to fear and they can get arrested, be out again, and then arrested again. This has obvious consequences for a range of crimes, including antisemitic attacks which, in New York City, tend to be the work of a criminal or aspirational criminal population of the kind that Democrats have labored to shield from the penal system.

The NYPD says there were 86 anti-Jewish hate crimes in the city in the first three months of this year. At this rate, annual totals would far exceed the 242 reported in 2019 – itself a record before the number dropped during the COVID lockdown.

I don’t doubt that the numbers will keep on rising, beyond the general increase in crime, our society is only becoming more broken. 

In an incident that took place on a Saturday evening earlier this month, which is the end of the Jewish Sabbath, teens armed with a sword threatened and made anti-Semitic remarks to six yarmulke-wearing boys on the Upper West Side, according to the NYPD 

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/poll-68-percent-of-americans-less-likely-to-do-business-with-disney-over-sexualized-content/

More than 68 percent of general-election voters say they are less likely to do business with Disney after reports that it plans to include sexual ideology in new content for children, a new poll found.

The Trafalgar Group’s new National Issues Survey on Disney, which was sponsored by the Convention of States Action, found that more than 69 percent of respondents said they were likely to support “family-friendly alternatives” to Disney. 

The survey comes after an executive producer admitted to advancing a “not-at-all-secret gay agenda” to insert queerness into children’s animation during a Disney staff meeting on Florida’s Parental Rights in Education legislation last month.

“Our leadership over there has been so welcoming to my, like, not-at-all-secret gay agenda,” said Latoya Raveneau, an executive producer for Disney Television in a video obtained by journalist Christopher Rufo. “I was just, wherever I could, just basically adding queerness. . . . No one would stop me and no one was trying to stop me.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/04/13/google-just-declared-war-on-the-most-accurate-pollster-in-america-and-on-most-americans/

In March, we reported on the results of our monthly I&I/TIPP Poll, which found that nearly two-thirds of registered voters thought decisions about COVID restrictions were driven by politics, not science. Majorities in just about every demographic, political, and ideological group felt this way.

Nevertheless, Google’s AdSense network stripped its ads from this article because it contains what Google claims is “dangerous or derogatory content” and that we must “fix it” for Google to restore those ads.

Here’s Google’s definition of “dangerous and derogatory content,” copied directly from its AdSense policy page:

We requested that Google review its decision, and on April 10 it informed us that “our review request was rejected.”

Take a look at the story and judge for yourself whether any reasonable human being would say this article meets that definition.

https://nypost.com/2022/04/12/frank-r-james-idd-as-person-of-interest-in-brooklyn-subway-shooting/

A troubled man who railed against Mayor Adams and made bizarre threatening rants on YouTube has been identified as a person of interest in the savage Brooklyn subway attack that injured at least 23 people Tuesday morning, officials said.

Frank James — who warned last month that he was “entering the danger zone” — rented a U-Haul van tied to the N train attack in Sunset Park and is being sought for questioning, police said at an evening briefing.

“Mr. Mayor, I’m a victim of your mental health program,” James said in one lengthy video.

“I’m 63 now full of hate, full of anger, and full of bitterness.”

He also criticized the mayor for not doing more to combat homelessness.

“Eric Adams, Eric Adams: What are you doing brother? What’s happening with this homeless situation,” he said while referring to the subway. “Every car I went to was loaded with homeless people. It was so bad I couldn’t even stand. I had to keep moving from car to car.”

The NYPD said they were increasing security for Mayor Adams after police discovered the videos.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/democrats-bidenflation-disaster

You’ve seen the news — the government says inflation rose 8.5% in March compared to last year. That is up from the annual inflation rate last month, which was 7.9%. Both are the worst since 1981.

There are a lot of stories behind the big number. Inflation is up in every area of the economy. But the worst news concerns some very fundamental human activities: eating, finding warmth and shelter, and moving around. Look deep into the website at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and you’ll see how bad inflation is in those basic areas.

Start with the price of food. You’ve been to the grocery store. You know it is bad. Now, BLS says the price of meat, poultry, fish, and eggs rose 13.7% annually. The price of cereal and bakery products rose 9.4%. Fruits and vegetables, 8.5%. Nonalcoholic beverages, 8%. Dairy, 7%. And other foods that don’t fit into those categories, 10.3%. All of that adds up to the category of “Food at Home,” which BLS says went up 10% in March over last year.

Want to go out to eat? BLS says prices of full-service meals went up 8% in March, while limited-service meals went up 7.2%. There is simply no way to eat, at home or out, without paying more.

Move on to the subject of staying warm. It is hard to believe, but BLS reports the price of fuel oil is up 70.1% in March over last year. 70.1%! Then there is the price of what BLS refers to as “shelter,” which increased 5%. (What does the BLS mean by “shelter”? Here is its definition: “The cost of shelter for renter-occupied housing is rent. For an owner-occupied unit, the cost of shelter is the implicit rent that owner-occupant would have to pay if they were renting their homes.”)