February 2023

This was on the front page of my local paper today. It is remarkable how quickly a business can be vaporized these days. Everything Scott Adams said is protected by the First Amendment. But the First Amendment doesn’t protect a business from the owner’s free speech. That would seem to be obvious to most people. […]

First game of spring. 5-3 over the Northeastern Huskies at Jetblue. 7 1/2 months until the playoffs.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/22/wells-fargo-lays-off-mortgage-bankers-days-after-rewarding-some-with-california-retreat.html Some Wells Fargo mortgage bankers were successful enough last year to be flown to a resort in Palm Desert, California, for a company-sponsored conference earlier this month. They were laid off this week. This is a reminder. There is no such thing as job security anymore. Businesses complain that employees are now leaving for

https://www.pilotonline.com/government/local/vp-nw-portsmouth-deputy-city-manager-lawsuit-20230202-a7yoqoft45ddzfepmzjxppcmoy-story.html I worked in Portsmouth, Va., 35 years ago as a journalist. Recently, they came up with the idea of distributing federal pandemic aid directly to citizens in the form of $500 Visa gift cards. $3 million worth of aid. So 6,000 gift cards. So basically like 6,000 $500 bills needed to be handled very

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-02-20/whats-happening-in-the-world-economy-could-the-fed-boost-its-key-rate-to-9?cmpid=BBD022023_NEF&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=230220&utm_campaign=nef&sref=y5OnTMHX It is aggravating being a governor of the Federal Reserve. The only real lever you have to bring inflation down is monetary policy, and for a year, you have been jacking up interest rates, and inflation is still coming down very slowly and the consumer and the economy are running full tilt. Now if

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-17/explainer-china-s-top-tech-banker-is-missing-here-s-what-that-means?sref=y5OnTMHX In American 10-K’s, US companies have to disclose risks, include many that are somewhat farfetched. I have never read an American 10-K risk section that said “Our CEO may do something to irritate the government and be whisked away and not seen for a while.” This is a problem for China. If you are

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/35691143/silver-buy-load-management-being-nba-problem Consiider the following headline on ESPN.com Silver doesn’t ‘buy into’ load management being an NBA problem This is the first paragraph of the story: “SALT LAKE CITY — NBA commissioner Adam Silver pushed back on the notion that load management is a problem in today’s NBA, saying “I don’t buy into” the idea that

“For seven days, we conducted real-world, constructive operations inside the First Island Chain,” Col. Jeremy Winters, who commands MACG-38, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, based at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station in San Diego, told an audience at a panel discussion on multi-domain operations and expeditionary kill webs. – USNI News That is a very interesting

I found a check for $12 from 2006 that I didn’t cash. It was from the clerk of Johnston Co. for jury duty. I didn’t actually get to sit on the jury. When you are called for jury duty, you start off in what’s known as a jury panel, a bunch of people. Then you

Fox News has a couple of problems, one is legal and the other reputational. Dominion, the voting machine company, is suing Fox for promoting conspiracy theories that the company’s machines stole the election from Donald Trump. The first problem Fox has is the classic problem for defendants in a defamation or libel case. People are