A big win for medical privacy and the principles of freedom.  Ford, General Motors and Stellantis have agreed the United Auto Workers union members will not be forced to take the mandatory vaccine as a condition of employment.  [UAW Announcement] Additionally, the vaccine status of the workers will remain private with a policy of private and voluntary disclosure.

UAW – At a meeting Monday evening, the COVID-19 Joint Task Force, comprised of the UAW, Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, has aligned on a policy of voluntary and confidential disclosure of vaccination status for UAW members. Each company will provide additional communication to employees on how, where and when to report their vaccination status.

In addition to encouraging members to disclose their vaccination status, the Task Force continues to urge all members, coworkers, and their families to get vaccinated and get booster vaccinations against COVID-19, while understanding that there are personal reasons that may prevent some members from being vaccinated, such as health issues or religious beliefs.

After reviewing the status of CDC and OSHA guidelines, the Task Force also decided it is in the best interest of worker safety to continue masks in all worksites at this time. (read more)

This helps swing the pendulum back toward the American worker.

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Eh, this is awkward… and simultaneously so typical of the current administration.   The White House trotted Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm to the microphones today to tell the DC stenographers how brilliant, beneficial and strategically necessary it is to release 50 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in an effort to lower gasoline prices.  The enthusiastic Energy Secretary read the script, gave her talking points and then took questions.

However, after spending 15 minutes talking about the strategic brilliance of the 50 million barrel release, one of the stenographers accidentally asked: “that said, how many barrels of oil do U.S. consumers use every day?”…   Granholm paused, looked down and said: “I don’t have that number in front of me, I’m sorry“…  WATCH:

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♦ The amount we are giving you is so incredible and brilliant it will make everyone’s lives better.  The best ever.

♦ How much do we need?

♦ I don’t know. We didn’t get that information.  But the amount we are giving is awesome.

Yup, that’s the Biden administration encapsulated.

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Apparently the people behind Joe Biden realize the ridiculous prices at the gas pump are going to be a major political issue for them in the next election. As a result, they have decided to release 50 million barrels of oil from the strategic petroleum reserve (SPR), enough for approximately 3 days of demand. [Announcement Here]

The strategic reserve is intended as an emergency supply in the event of war or national crisis that demands we have some insurance measures to protect ourselves. The SPR is the world’s largest supply of emergency crude oil, and the oil stocks are stored in underground salt caverns at four storage sites in Texas and Louisiana.

The oil in the strategic oil reserve was previously paid for by taxpayers. What Biden is doing right now is giving reserve oil to energy companies who then turn around and refine it into gasoline for taxpayers to purchase. We get to buy it twice, and Biden wants to be thanked for doing it.

The Biden administration is going to lower gas prices for taxpayers by allowing taxpayers to purchase their own oil.  Brilliant!

In related news, the Biden administration also held a call today [LINK] to announce their plan to ease inflation by printing more money.

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NBC ran an interesting segment on how to cope with the massive inflation and additional costs caused by Joe Biden.  Given the collapsing state of the U.S. economy, and crushing price increases for products created by White House policy, the administration previously suggested we should lower our expectations.

NBC takes the ‘lower expectations‘ theme to entirely new levels.  I’m not sure they thought through the meaning of Thanksgiving prior to the suggestions; however, Biden’s NBC stenographers have a few interesting recommendations.

The first suggestion is don’t buy the Thanksgiving day turkey, it’s too expensive.  The second odd suggestion to save money is do not invite friends of family to dinner.  WATCH:

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The Senate Banking, Housing, & Urban Affairs Committee held a confirmation today for Joe Biden’s communist nominee Saule Omarova to be Comptroller of the Currency.  It really is quite remarkable that Biden would nominate a person who has advocated for government control over all allocation of capital and credit in the U.S. economy.

Ms. Omarova has advocated for government intervention in the allocation of all resources used within the finance and banking system, completely reversing the free market allocation of capital in the economy.   Omarova’s position of federal control is unchanged throughout her life, yet she has attempted to add nuance and denial to a life-long history of working on this process.

Ms. Omarova is the tip of the spear in using finance and banking to implement the regulatory controls needed to support the Green New Deal, where government would intervene and deny capital to private interests who would not be in alignment with leftist energy policy and total economic change via Build Back Better.  Today she was confronted by several senators within the banking committee.  WATCH:

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A very interesting interview with Chris Spear, president and CEO of the American Trucking Association.

During a House Transportation Committee hearing on supply chain issues, CEO Chris Spear shares an internal survey showing that 37% of truck drivers “not only said no, but said hell no” to the Biden vaccine mandates.

To give some perspective of the downstream consequence, the ATA President noted that “if just 3.7 percent, not 37 percent, just 3.7 percent” of the drivers left the industry, there would be over a quarter million vacancies resulting in a “catastrophic” collapse of the U.S. supply chain.  Mr. Spear also shared his opinion the OSHA rule is completely unworkable and unlawful.

The consequences are grave if just 3.7% did not work.  However, if ten times that many, 37 percent of truck drivers, stopped hauling products because of the Biden vaccine requirement, American civic society would collapse within days as panicked citizens took to the streets.  Desperate Americans would be clamoring for scarce products, and the impact on society could not be measured.  WATCH:

As we have continued to point out, a federal vaccine mandate might sound like a good idea on a think tank, academic or white paper policy level of consideration; but on a practical level, wiping out a large percentage of your most productive workforce over a vaccine mandate is unworkable, and might even end the operation of the entire business.

It is important to note the recent NBC poll on this issue amid the outlook of the vaccine mandates.  A majority of the country do not support the vaccine mandates, and worse still, the number of unvaccinated workers is essentially unwavering in the past six weeks {poll data}.  Remember, the number of Americans who willingly quit their jobs increased to 4.3 million in August {link}, and then increased again to 4.4 million in September {link}. People are not f**king around now.

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The Biden Department of Labor cannot win in court over their use of OSHA to force mandated vaccines.  The effort to use an OSHA Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) did not and will not survive judicial scrutiny.

The exemptions alone nullify the claims the ETS is built upon, and the courts are recognizing the brutally obvious political nature of the vaccine mandate effort.

As a result of the Fifth Circuit (New Orleans, LA) order to stay the vaccine requirement {See Here}, OSHA has now announced {SEE HERE} they will not attempt to enforce the rule:

Dept of Labor – “On November 12, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit granted a motion to stay OSHA’s COVID-19 Vaccination and Testing Emergency Temporary Standard, published on November 5, 2021 (86 Fed. Reg. 61402) (“ETS”). The court ordered that OSHA “take no steps to implement or enforce” the ETS “until further court order.” While OSHA remains confident in its authority to protect workers in emergencies, OSHA has suspended activities related to the implementation and enforcement of the ETS pending future developments in the litigation.” (link)

While the 5th circuit case from Louisiana was the first, there are 11 total circuit court cases holding the same challenges.  As a result, the cases were consolidated and assigned to one circuit court chosen randomly via lottery.

The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Ohio, won the lottery to hear the legal challenges. “The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Cincinnati, Ohio, is known to lean conservative, with most of its judges appointed by Republican presidents.”  The 6th Circuit will have to decide whether or not to lift or maintain the stay instituted by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in New Orleans.

Somewhere in the upper northeast there must be an economic school or think-tank where leftist graduate students are taught how to verbalize cognitive dissonance using the same 300 words and emojis in a sequential pattern.   Two of the most visible alma maters’ of this school are Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and a fellow named Brian Deese, who is now the White House National Economic Council director.

In his latest exhibition of post-graduate cognitive dissonance, Deese nuts, the primary architect of the JoeBama economic program, appears on NBC to proclaim that massive U.S. inflation is somehow connected to the fact that 5 to 11-year-old children are not yet vaccinated. [Video at 01:30]  Once the children are vaccinated, some unknown and difficult to explain metamorphosis will take place amid the American workforce allowing the U.S. economy to stop inflation.

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JoeBama’s National Economic Council Director Brian Deese, the twenty-something central planner in charge of all White House economic policy, tells a curiously skeptical Jake Tapper that things are working swimmingly, exactly according to plan.

According to the Biden-Deese theory on sustainable economic policy, massive spending creates massive inflation; which creates an increased demand for government subsidy to afford basic products; which creates a growing dependency on the government; which creates a need for massive spending.  Wash-Rinse-Repeat.

This is exactly the expanding economic dependency model sold by socialists around the world for generations, which Barack Obama and his Biden administration promise they have now perfected in order to remove the pesky inequities always associated with unbridled capitalism.  Smile everyone, government cheese aplenty….

https://youtu.be/xxtO0xIhw74

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In a rather ironic note, the parseltongue White House explanation is so disconnected from common sense, that furrowed brow’s brain is having an out of body issue, seemingly he is watching himself participate.   The producers shift the camera angles quickly to compensate.

It would appear that somewhere in the recesses of Tapper’s frontal cortex, there remains a glowing ember of the common sense particle.  Unfortunately for the CNN host, the synapse for the common sense particle is pinched between the ‘Smarter than thou tumor‘ and the expanding grey brain matter of moral relativity needed to sit silently and listen to bulls**t.

Within this cognitive conflict, you can visibly see Tapper’s guilt hypothalamus trying to make him uncomfortable… he sighs heavily as the infrequently exercised guilt glands attempt to trigger him to react.  Alas, the party groupthink microchip in his ear warns him to stay quiet.

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Neel Kashkari is head of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve. If you know the financial lingo, you can see the dire forecast behind the opaque language.  In plain-speak, Kashari is saying when it comes to prices and inflation, “we’re screwed“…

In this interview with CBS talking head Margaret Brennan, Kashkari admits inflation is still going up, and it will get worse. Keep in mind, the lingo of the inflation conversation is discussing “percentages of change.” Kashkari claims the percentages of change will start to slow in a few years, but the prices will never return to their former level.

The percentage of inflationary change (this year vs last year) will continue going up, as prices continue to skyrocket over almost every sector. CTH points out this issue, because as the Fed continues printing current money, the value of future money drops and the price of goods continues to climb. The fast-turn goods rise in price quickest (now recorded at 6.2%), and the inflation on slow-turn durable goods lags but hits even harder.

Current real inflation inside the ‘total’ economy, the cumulative snowball that is coming down the mountain, is over 20% and still growing. This situation puts the forecast prices of 2022 goods at an alarming level. WATCH:

The fed has no tools to slow the rate of current inflation, as interest rates are disconnected {Revisit The New Dimension in Modern Economics} from the cost of goods produced. The only thing the Fed can do is to stop purchasing debt (Quantitative Easing), stop purchasing our own bonds, at a slower rate.

Despite being a progressive himself, even Neel Kashkari is telling congress to stop spending money.

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