Scorched Earth Policies
Wars against crime, homelessness, other wars... and now, the earth's temperature!
(Source: Getty Images)
Bill Bonner, reckoning today from Baltimore, Maryland...
If we wanted to ruin a kid’s life, we’d tell him
that whatever happened, it wouldn’t be his fault.
~ Bill Bonner
“94 again today.”
Yes, it’s hot here in Charm City.
In more ways than one. Every weekend brings a heat wave and a crime wave. And the waves keep coming:
“Three shot in street corner fight.”
“Man rushed to hospital after shots exchanged on JFX.”
“189 fatalities so far in 2022.”
The local news is just one shooting report after another. The mayor is on the defensive… He looks overwhelmed… out of his depth… like he just got cut from a high-school basketball team. The chief of police, though, could have come right out of central casting… a heavy man with a decent manner, he sounds like he is doing his best.
It is a city on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Many of the shops, bars, and offices are empty. There are few people out on the streets. And those who are should probably be arrested… or put into some sort of long-term care.
They shuffle… waddle… lean… and stumble along like zombies.
Blameless and Aimless
Many are ‘unhoused.’ That is, they are ‘suffering homelessness.’ These statements – brought to us by the press, the government, and activists – reveal the problem. It’s not their fault!
Being ‘unhoused’ suggests no cause and effect between the housed and the houses. It is just something that happens. Like the weather. If someone is unhoused, it must be because the economy failed… the gods failed… or the government… or housing industry. Someone… somewhere… failed. But not the obvious person – the guy sleeping on the steps.
This morning, we walked up the hill to the office. There, in the doorway of the Methodist Church on the corner, someone was asleep. Laid out on the stone steps. A broken beer bottle next to him. Otherwise, nothing.
The church steps seem to attract people who suffer homelessness. Practically every day, one or two are there suffering it… but mostly passed out. They get up eventually and make their way to one of the many shelters or ‘caring’ centers in the neighborhood. Some have been kicked out of their houses. Some have just never gotten themselves together. Others have drug, alcohol or mental issues. Often, it is some combination.
It is a remarkable time we are living through. A person is not expected to be able to put a roof over his head. And a city can’t keep its people from killing one another. But Americans think they should tell the Ukrainians what to do with the Donetsk Peoples’ Republic. And many humans believe they can control the weather for the whole planet.
Too hot? It’s just another problem to be solved – by the same people who solved the terrorist threat… and the Covid 19 threat. They rescued the world economy in 2009. They saved millions of lives in 2020-2021. And they’re solving the Russian aggression crisis….and homelessness, too.
“Code Red”
With so much on their plate already, do they really have the ability for the most ambitious crusade in the history of the world? They must think they have no choice.
“Code red for humanity,” says President Biden.
Here’s the latest on the weather from The Washington Post:
Extreme heat prompts alerts in 28 states as Texas, Oklahoma hit 115
Records are crashing as temperatures spike amid a high-end heat wave baking the Great Plains. Temperatures have spiked to 115 degrees in Texas and Oklahoma, with more than 60 million Americans anticipated to see triple-digit heat over the next week.
Heat advisories and excessive heat warnings affect more than 105 million people in 28 states both across the central United States and the Northeast, where the combination of hot weather and high humidity will lead to conditions ripe for heat-related illness or heatstroke.
Meanwhile, from Europe… the scorched earth policy seems to be working already. But it’s not the Russians who are doing the scorching. It’s the weather. CNBC:
A deadly heat wave in Western Europe has triggered intense wildfires, disrupted transportation and displaced thousands of people as the continent grapples with the impact of climate change.
The record-breaking heat is forecast to grow more severe this week and has prompted concerns over infrastructure problems such as melting roads, widespread power outages and warped train tracks.
Several areas in France have experienced record-breaking temperatures that approached or surpassed 100 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the national weather forecaster. In Britain, where few homes have air conditioning, the highest temperature has also reached nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit, falling just below the national record.
Our neighbors in Poitou, France, report temperatures in the ‘90s… swimming pools so hot they don’t want to get in… and the countryside is almost shut down during the day. “Only mad dogs and Englishmen,” venture out into the noonday sun, they say.
The government has to ‘do something’ about it. Everybody says so.
But what can it do?
Declare an emergency! Announce more policies… more controls… more spending!
Sure… whatever.
Regards
Bill Bonner
Joel’s Note: More of the same… expecting different results. Hmm… sounds an awful lot like that old definition of insanity. Meanwhile, Argentina is once again leading the charge toward complete currency destruction.
As we’ve mentioned in this space before, our sometimes home country offers a lot in the way of lessons in how not to manage an economy. When we left Buenos Aires, a couple of months ago, the already beleaguered peso was trading for around 220 per US$1 on the black market. (Almost double the official rate.)
“It’s since collapsed to just over 300 pesos per dollar,” we exclaimed to resident macro analyst, Dan Denning, while on a call with him yesterday. By the time we’d finished our weekly powwow, it had crashed to 318. This morning… 338.
We’ll be back home in the Paris of the South in a couple of weeks and will give you a full rundown from the “fin del mundo” then. In the meantime, look out below!
In the "houselessness" issue one could in fact blame someone other than the individual to a degree. Government. Every year government increases the cost of taxes, housing taxes, gas taxes, food taxes, bracket creep, compounded taxes and a million more taxes. They even have the balls and unmitigated evil to tax wages.
They create inflation that suffocates everyone in the lower strata as well as the middle classes. This inflation combine with regulation creates loss of jobs, drops in purchasing power of wages and savings destroys opportunities for everyone.
At some point, some of the people at the bottom get sick of the treadmill to nowhere and simply give up.
Government is MORE to blame than they are for this, though they are the only ones who can do something about the problem.
But it is a pernicious system created by stupid voters. Voters who vote 2 party and ensure nothing works. All the ruling class has to do, is insert a barely perceptible level of complication into the process and voters choose to hand a hammer to the same people who hit them with a hammer every year of their miserable short lives.
Mr. Smith goes to the insane asylum!
A lot of our homeless and shooters could be helped with mental assistance. Been going on for 70 years as the government has cut mental health programs. To our detriment. We used to have sanitariums to help but they are mostly gone. Just sayin'.
Don Harrell