The most glaring governmental failure during the COVID-19 experience in the United States has been the botched testing strategy because it allowed government authorities to “justify” devastating lockdowns and massive “relief” spending.

But the lockdowns and spending could have been avoided had better testing been pursued from the start—testing rooted in private property rights, autonomy of the individual, entrepreneurship, and incentives. Unfortunately, this approach was thwarted from the earliest days of the pandemic by four governmental failures regarding COVID-19 testing.

Failure #1. The federal government initially created and distributed faulty COVID-19 test kits and then covered it up.

On February 7, 2020, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began sending diagnostic kits to local public health laboratories, kits that the CDC designed. But many of the test kits did not work properly.

How bad has insider trading become among politicians elected to the U.S. Congress and congressional employees?

It didn’t take long to find out. Just after this article on conflicts of interest for Federal Reserve and Congress members went live here at the Beacon, NPR broke a new story. Inexperienced traders using the TikTok app to check out investing ideas have figured out congressional insiders have the Midas touch.

A full 32 years have passed since the Tiananmen Square massacre and an entire generation may be unfamiliar with Chinese reality. Fortunately, the Communist regime recently revealed its true face.

As the BBC reported this month, China will ban “effeminate” behavior and “vulgar influences.”

President Joe Biden is a lot like President Donald Trump. He likes to use Twitter to gaslight his critics.

How else can you explain President Biden’s September 25, 2021 tweet, in which he claims his Build Back Better Agenda will not cost anything?

On Capitol Hill, President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda is represented by the Build Back Better Act. Among Washington D.C. politicians, it’s also known as the “Reconciliation Bill”. That’s because the bill lacks bipartisan support. To pass it into law, Biden’s party in the Congress needs to use the Senate’s reconciliation rules. Otherwise they won’t have the votes.

Fact-checkers screening for “misinformation,” please note: everything that follows are direct quotes from the FDA Authorization Letter for COMIRNATY, the FDA-approved COMIRNATY package insert, as well as direct quotes of Diana Bianchi, director of the National Institutes of Health Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Perhaps the most refreshing part of the movie Free Guy is the neutral role technology plays in the story. Technology isn’t a dark muse, luring an otherwise innocent into darkness. Perhaps this is why Free Guy seems admirably human despite the fact the entire story is framed within or around a video game.

The central antagonist, Antwan (Taika Watiti, Jo Jo Rabbit, Hunt for the Wilderpeople) is just a flawed human being. He’s a greedy, power hungry human who is clever at getting things he wants. In fact, he doesn’t even appear to understand let alone appreciate technology’s benefits.

The good guys, in contrast, want to harness technology to serve the interests of their customers (or users). They are upset because they made poor decisions and weren’t clever enough to see their competitor for who he was.

The Federal Reserve is trying very hard to get ahead of a potential conflict-of-interest scandal. Several high-ranking Fed officials have investments in securities the U.S. central bank has been buying to stimulate the economy. Consequently, these officials have conflicts of interest in considering policies that might materially affect the value of their investments.

Reuters describes the action the Fed is taking to eliminate the inherent conflicts of interest that Fed officials have:

Two Federal Reserve officials said on Thursday they would sell their individual stock holdings by the end of the month to address the appearance of conflicts of interest.

Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan and Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren issued statements saying they would invest the proceeds of those sales in diversified index funds and cash savings and would not trade in those accounts as long as they are serving in their roles.

The announcements come after the officials faced scrutiny over trades they made last year, according to their financial disclosure forms.

The worst part about the U.S. federal debt is not how big it has become but the fact that its growth has now become so unstoppable that we now assume that piling debt on future generations is the natural thing for the authorities to do. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that by 2051 the federal debt will equal more than 200 percent of gross domestic product, an outcome that will result from cumulative fiscal deficits of $112 trillion over the next thirty years. The debt projection leaves aside debt owed to the government by itself, such as the trillions owed to the social security trust fund.

The Consumer Price Index numbers for inflation showed a lower-than-expected increase in August, but as this article notes, we still have a lot of inflation. I’m drawing my information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the government’s official measure of prices.

The good news is that prices increased by only 0.2% in August, but even that amount of inflation represents an annual rate of 2.4%, which is 20% higher than the Federal Reserve’s target inflation rate of 2%. Even the good news isn’t all that good.

One of the more surprising reactions to Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings might be how “normal” it is. While Shang-Chi is part of the Marvel Superhero universe, the movie refreshingly draws more from fantasy and mysticism inspired Asian myth than science fiction. The movie, and audiences, benefit.

An Epic Chinese Tale

Xu Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) is the son of Xu Wenwu (Tony Leung). Wenwu is a man of legend who uses the power given him by a magical set of ten rings to consolidate personal power. Wenwu’s thousand-year quest for domination and power is unrelenting. In contemporary times, he discovers clues to a power more fierce than the ten rings. But it’s hidden and guarded by the inhabitants of the mysterious village of Ta Lo.