“The FTC’s Antitrust Collusion” (Wall Street Journal editorial page, February 24) pieces together 628 pages of redacted emails revealing that the Federal Trade Commission coordinates with foreign antitrust officials to block mergers involving U.S. companies. (The emails were obtained by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in a lawsuit forcing the Commission to comply with the Chamber’s Freedom of Information Act request.)

Right before Christmas, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) issued his Festivus Report for 2022. Unfortunately, because the Senator also tweeted his own reworked version of Clement C. Moore’s A Visit from St. Nicholas at that time, I missed his annual Festivus Airing of Grievances over some of the federal government’s most wasteful spending.

An article written in Yale Medicine notes that medical professionals across the globe are monitoring over 300 different subvariants of the omicron Covid-19 variant. The first known omicron variant infection in the United States was reported in late November 2021. 

The Cato Institute recently released its 2022 Human Freedom Index. The news is not good, revealing a broad decline in freedom worldwide in 2020.

“I think every kid, in every zip code, in every state should have access to every education opportunity possible. I guess, for some, that isn’t the consensus view.” That was Joe Biden, criticizing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, seemingly unaware that he was making a strong case for parental choice in education. 

Many foreign policy analysts across the world seem to be resigned to a long, grinding, and painful war in Ukraine, throwing up their hands to declare that neither Ukraine nor Russia has any obvious incentive to reach a settlement ending the war. 

Mexico´s president, López Obrador, recently bestowed on his Cuban counterpart, Díaz-Canel, the highest honor his country confers on foreigners—the Order of the Aztec Eagle. This was not an ordinary diplomatic gesture, but a full-blown show of ideological, political, and even geopolitical support.

This January, the Food and Drug Administration approved the drug Leqembi to treat Alzheimer’s disease. Leqembi is pathbreaking in two ways. First, while the vast majority of Alzheimer’s drugs can only help slow the progress of the disease, Leqembi can stop and reverse cognitive decline. As an FDA news release states, “This treatment option is the latest therapy to target and affect the underlying disease process of Alzheimer’s, instead of only treating the symptoms of the disease.”

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI data, inflation for 2022 was 6.5%, with the annual rate slowing from 9% at mid-year. Prices increased by 0.8% in January 2023, showing that inflation persists. Three months of price increases at that rate would put inflation above the Fed’s 2% target rate in three months.

2020’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) is an epic case study of government failure. It was intended to help small businesses survive being shut down because of state and local government-mandated pandemic lockdowns. It was instead a feeding frenzy for lobbyists and extremely wasteful. There’s a good reason why it’s known as “the biggest fraud in a generation“.