Juan Gabriel Herrera Vargas, 42, was caught carrying fentanyl on the subway
Authorities seized over 40 pounds of fentanyl from him in the Bronx
His drug den is six blocks away from the daycare where a child died from fentanyl
On September 15, one-year-old Nicholas Féliz died of fentanyl exposure at a home daycare in the Bronx.
Three other children, including two siblings ages eight months and 2, were hospitalized.
Four people have been charged in connection to Féliz's death including the daycare owner and her husband.
Data from the New York City Department on Health found that the Bronx had the highest rate of overdose deaths in 2021 at 70.6 deaths per 100,000 residents.
[Daily Wire] It’s an astonishing statistic that took the internet by storm: 94% of jobs created in 2021 went to racial minorities. It’s also completely untrue.
The conclusion from Bloomberg — which credits five reporters and four editors for its report — is that on the heels of the Black Lives Matter protests, corporations followed through on their promise to diversify their ranks. The outlet reported that companies in the S&P 100 added 323,094 new employees in 2021, and that only 20,524 of those new jobs were filled by whites.
If true, such a statistic could launch a legion of victorious racial discrimination lawsuits — blacks, Asians, and Hispanics make up roughly 40% of the population, and there is no way they could obtain 94% of new jobs without some level of discrimination.
But the takeaway from Bloomberg is an example of innumeracy by journalists at an outlet once relied upon by businessmen for savvy financial analysis — or of willfully setting aside common sense in favor of what the publication acknowledged is an ideologically-driven "project to hold companies accountable to [diversity] pledges."
A Daily Wire analysis of the same numbers examined by Bloomberg found that, in reality, the demographics of hiring figures for 2021 were barely different from previous years. The percentage of new jobs that went to whites was likely about 46%, eight points below the 54% white makeup of companies’ existing workforces. That’s to be expected given demographic changes in the United States since the time that the currently-retiring baby boomer generation first entered the workforce.
Though Bloomberg spun the tale as a victory for Black Lives Matter, blacks benefited the least of any racial group from the slight decline in whites, according to the analysis. The percentage of black hires was up from the status quo by 1%, while Asians were up by 2%, and Hispanics were up by 4%. That’s also explained by demographics — decades ago, when baby boomers entered the workforce, the U.S. was mostly white and black; in the decades since, the numbers of Hispanics and Asians in the United States have increased.
Here’s how Bloomberg got the story wrong, and how numbers actually work.
Bloomberg based its analysis on a form companies file to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission listing the racial breakdown of their U.S. employees. The forms are filed annually, but they don’t break out stats for employees hired that year; they just provide the total headcount of all employees by race.
Bloomberg, reaching for a way to isolate recent numbers, focused on the fact that companies increased their cumulative headcount by some 320,000 in 2021. Then they made a flawed leap of logic: They took the increase of minorities across the entire workforce, and divided it by the number of new positions — not the number of actual hires, which overwhelmingly come from replacing people who leave the company. In short, they got the denominator wrong.
"Bloomberg obtained 2020 and 2021 data for 88 S&P 100 companies and calculated overall US job growth at those firms.... Overall, these companies increased their headcount by 323,094 employees in 2021," the outlet wrote. "Bloomberg then analyzed the racial makeup of those additional workers, finding that 94% of them were people of color."
But it’s not possible from the data to say that those additional "people of color" took the 320,000 newly created positions. Most of them were almost certainly hired as part of a much larger group: replacements for existing jobs that were vacated by retirees or people changing jobs.
The 88 companies in Bloomberg’s study together employed 8.9 million workers in 2020. Based on a typical annual turnover rate of 18%, an estimated 1.6 million people would have left and been replaced in 2021. So the increase in minorities shouldn’t be calculated as 300,000 out of 320,000 — it’s 300,000 out of roughly 2 million (1.6 million plus 320,000).
It’s possible that some companies had no employment growth at all, just turnover from retirements. Bloomberg’s methodology could capture minor demographic changes across companies like this, then apply all those changes to a small number of newly-created positions from entirely different companies.
Take this hypothetical: There are two companies, each with 80 white people and 20 black people. One of them replaces 20 retiring white employees with 20 black employees. The other is very profitable, and creates 10 new positions, all given to whites. Bloomberg’s methodology would conclude that the companies, as a group, hired 20 black people into 10 new jobs, and that minorities received 200% of the jobs. This is obviously impossible, and in fact, all of the 10 new jobs went to whites.
In 2020, the S&P companies were just under 54% white. If every retiree was replaced with someone of the same race, and whites also got the same share of the new jobs, you’d expect to see 173,000 whites added. Bloomberg observes that there were only 20,000 whites added.
What this tells us is there was a shortage of approximately 153,000 whites — but that’s not across the 320,000, it’s across 2 million jobs filled. Instead of hiring just over 1 million whites (54%), they hired about 884,000 (45%).
On the "people of color" side, Bloomberg said that Hispanics grew by 131,000 in the 320,000 jobs. But they actually simply got their share of newly-created new jobs (54,000), plus out of the 864,000 whites retiring, 77,000 were replaced by Hispanics.
In all, we can compute that of the 2 million jobs filled in 2021, about 400,000 went to Hispanics — 20%, which is only slightly higher than the 17% in the legacy workforce.
Following the same logic, the number of 2021 hires who were Asian was 12%, slightly higher than the 10% of the legacy workforce, while blacks went up 1%, from 17% to 18%.
Though blacks benefited the least from the decline in whites, that’s expected because blacks, who make up 12% of the population, are actually overrepresented in the workforce studied by Bloomberg.
Robert VerBruggen, an economic policy fellow at the Manhattan Institute, agreed that Bloomberg’s analysis failed to take into account the workers leaving and their demographics.
"The country’s demographics are changing — older generations are much whiter than younger ones," VerBruggen told The Daily Wire. "If whites are disproportionately retiring and non-whites are disproportionately getting jobs, that will skew the numbers, giving the appearance of a serious commitment to equity — or mass violations of civil-rights law, depending on one’s perspective."
Another telltale sign that Bloomberg’s "percentage of the net increase" methodology is flawed, VerBruggen explained, is that, if the departures of whites had been just a little higher, the net change in whites would have been negative instead of the actual small growth of 20,000. Bloomberg’s methodology would then assert that whites took a negative percentage of the new 320,000 jobs, a mathematic impossibility.
The study also received pushback from pollster Patrick Ruffini, who said Bloomberg’s analysis was "statistically illiterate" and pointed out the outlet’s failure to take into account employee turnover.
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/30/2023 11:38 ||
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#1
Math is hard. It's harder when you have an axe to grind.
Posted by: Tom ||
09/30/2023 13:30 Comments ||
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[NYP] Dianne Feinstein was one of the Senate’s richest members throughout her trailblazing career — thanks to her billionaire husband.
While others in Congress struggled to make ends meet, sleeping in their offices to save on rent, Feinstein commuted from San Francisco aboard a Gulfstream G650 jet (pre-owned, the aircraft averages $61,815,000), sported expensive jewelry and flitted from one mansion to the next.
Her last disclosure, in May, put her net worth at $69.4 million.
For much of her wealth, Feinstein — who passed away Thursday in her Washington DC home, aged 90 — could thanked her second husband, Richard Blum.
He was an astute investor and the founder of Blum Capital Partners.
But this year, after his death in February 2022, and as her own health publicly failed, an ugly dispute among the couple’s children cast new light on their fortune and raised the prospect of a court battle over the estate.
"A Chinese wall or ethical wall is an information barrier protocol within an organization designed to prevent exchange of information or communication that could lead to conflicts of interest. For example, a Chinese wall may be established to separate people who make investments from those who are privy to confidential information that could improperly influence the investment decisions. Firms are generally required by law to safeguard insider information and ensure that improper trading does not occur.[1]"
The usual Daily Mail photos and videos of flooding in subway, tunnels, and low-lying areas.
[Daily Mail, where America get its news] New York City's party-loving Mayor Eric Adams was skewered this morning after taking nearly four hours to issue a shelter-in-place or give any guidance on a fast-escalading flash flood disaster.
The rain, a hangover from Tropical Storm Ophelia, is some of the worst seen in New York City since Hurricane Ida in 2021, when 13 people drowned in basement apartments after being caught off-guard.
While NYC emergency Twitter accounts had been warning about the rain on Thursday, it wasn't until after rush hour on Friday morning that emergency alerts were sent to residents' phones. Brooklyn saw a day's worth of rain in just three hours, which is expected one every 100 years.
Adams didn't make an appearance until 11am. He had been partying last night at a secret fundraiser thrown for him by Friends of Eric Adams, to which 'suggested donations' were $2,100-a-pop.
Some 23million people are now under a flood warning across the tri-state area and entire streets in Brooklyn are underwater. Many have shared images of basements flooded, and LaGuardia's Terminal A is under water.
[Blaze] Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) floated on Thursday his theories for why Dr. Anthony Fauci allegedly visited the CIA headquarters to advise the intelligence agency on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
1. Fauci convinced the CIA to dishonestly obscure the lab origin of COVID.
2. The CIA convinced Fauci to obscure the lab origin of COVID.
3. An outside entity or person with unlimited monetary resources convinced Fauci to influence the CIA to obscure the lab origin of COVID.
The CIA is one of the intelligence agencies that has not reached a definitive conclusion about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"The Central Intelligence Agency and another agency remain unable to determine the precise origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, as both hypotheses rely on significant assumptions or face challenges with conflicting reporting," explained a declassified report from the director of national intelligence.
That conclusion, or lack thereof, was purportedly reached despite six of seven CIA investigators allegedly concluding the pandemic originated at the Wuhan bio lab.
[Breitbart] General Mark Milley stepped down Friday as the top US military officer with a parting swipe at his former boss Donald Trump, saying no soldier ever swore an oath to serve a "wannabe dictator."
The stunning rebuke from Milley on his last day as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff illustrated the way the US military has been dragged into the increasingly volatile political arena since the Trump era.
At an elaborate military ceremony for his departure — attended by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and President Joe Biden — Milley did not name Trump, but there was no doubt about the target of his barb.
"We don’t take an oath to a king, or queen, or a tyrant or a dictator," Milley said of American soldiers. "And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator."
Milley will be replaced as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by Air Force General Charles "CQ" Brown — just the second African American to hold the top military job.
#5
Due to a prior period of loose zipper disease, Congress got around to include the ability to recall back to active duty servicemembers who did a 'no-no' during their time in uniform.
The United States will continue to support "civilian-led" armies in Africa, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in Luanda on Wednesday, blaming militaries on the continent for "subverting the will of the people" through coups d'état.
"When generals subvert the will of the people and put their own ambitions above the rule of law, the security situation deteriorates, and democracy dies," said Mr. Austin in a speech on U.S. security partnerships in Africa, delivered in the Angolan capital.
Thank you, General Mills, for destroying whatever credibility the USA had left in such moral high ground statements. You are now free to impress people with your intimate knowledge of Alexander's conquests while slurping oyster rockefeller.
And what the hell is CQ, and why am I thinking it is GQ with the dangle removed?
[Blaze] All electric buses in the town of Jackson, Wyoming, are currently out of commission and not expected to return to service any time soon, forcing commuters to rely on the transit system's more reliable diesel-powered fleet, Jackson Hole News & Guide reported last week.
Southern Teton Area Rapid Transit, a public transportation system provided by Jackson and Teton County, Wyoming, purchased eight electric buses from EV manufacturer Proterra, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month.
... a hint that all is not well.
All of the company's buses are now out of commission and in need of repairs.
According to START director Bruce Abel, only five of the eight vehicles were operational at any given time.
Last month, Abel told Jackson Hole News & Guide that commuting to Teton Village by bus was challenging last year.
[WTOP] The Navy will begin randomly testing its special operations forces for steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs beginning in November, taking a groundbreaking step that military leaders have long resisted.
Rear Adm. Keith Davids, commander of Naval Special Warfare Command, announced the new program Friday in a message to his force, calling it necessary to protect their health and military readiness. The Navy will be the first to begin random testing, but Army Special Operations Command said it will soon follow suit, although no start date has been set.
The Army and Navy have the largest and most well known special operations forces, including the Navy SEALs and Army’s Delta Force, Green Berets and Ranger Regiment. They are often called on to do the military’s most sensitive and dangerous missions. The physical and mental challenges of getting through their selection and training programs and the pressures of the risky missions can lead to some to use performance-enhancing drugs, although officials say the numbers are small.
The use of these drugs has been a somewhat limited but persistent problem across the military, but leaders have balked at increased testing because it is highly specialized, costly and requires contracting with the few labs that do such work. The military services have done occasional tests when they perceive a problem with an individual service member, but they must get special permission from the Pentagon to do routine, random testing.
The Air Force and the Marine Corps special operations commands said they have not yet requested a similar policy change.
According to the Navy command, four units will be randomly selected each month, and 15% of each will be tested. That will amount to as many as 200 sailors monthly, and those testing positive face discipline or removal.
A driving factor in the announcement, which has been in the works for months, was the death of a Navy SEAL candidate early last year.
Kyle Mullen, 24, collapsed and died of acute pneumonia just hours after completing the SEALs’ grueling Hell Week test. A report concluded that Mullen, from Manalapan, New Jersey, died “in the line of duty, not due to his own misconduct.” Although tests found no evidence of performance-enhancing drugs in his system, a report by the Naval Education and Training Command said he was not screened for some steroids because the needed blood and urine samples were not available, and that multiple vials of drugs and syringes were later found in his car.
The NETC’s broader investigation into SEAL training flagged the use of performance-enhancing drugs as a significant problem among those seeking to become elite commandos and recommended far more robust testing.
Investigations in 2011, 2013 and 2018 into suspected steroid use by SEAL candidates led to discipline and requests for enhanced testing. The use of hair follicle testing was denied at least twice by Navy leaders over that time, and random testing for steroids wasn’t authorized by the Defense Department.
Davids requested the policy change to allow the screening, and in January, the Pentagon undersecretary for personnel approved an exemption authorizing random testing within the Naval Special Warfare force. The testing only affects the roughly 9,000 active-duty military personnel and reservists on active-duty orders in the command. Civilians are not included.
#1
If you are an elite trooper you want every possible advantage over your foe. There is no tapping out - each day can bring a life or death challenge at no notice. You train to push your body and mind to the max so you know what your surge potential actually is. If you can increase your mental acuity, dexterity, endurance or other parameters by 3% it makes a difference. This testing (of troops increasing their “value” to the government on their own dime) is like penalizing them for studying a foreign language, doing marksmanship training or martial arts on their off hours.
Met a guy who liked to drop ecstasy and get into fights because, "It makes everything seem like The Matrix movies." Needless to say, if he was in the party hop I found something else to do.
#8
This is actually good. The more incompetent the US military grows, the less good they will be in a fight. And the last thing we need right now is another fight.
Send the military to guard the southern border.
Posted by: Jairong Scourge of the Gepids2435 ||
09/30/2023 14:36 Comments ||
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[RT] SpaceX has signed its first contract with the Pentagon to provide satellite services as part of its new ’Starshield’ program. CEO Elon Musk described the effort as a military alternative to the "civilian" Starlink system, although it will apparently rely on the existing constellation of satellites.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday, Musk weighed in on reports that SpaceX had reached a deal with the US Space Force, confirming that the Starshield project would be "owned by the US government and controlled by [the Department of Defense]."
"Starlink needs to be a civilian network, not a participant to combat," he said, referring to the use of the satellites in Ukraine throughout the conflict with Russia, adding "This is the right order of things."
However, despite Musk’s stated reluctance to be involved in the fighting, the new Space Force contract will see SpaceX effectively lease out part of its Starlink network to the Pentagon, providing service over the same satellites, according to Bloomberg.
With a $70 million price ceiling, the deal "provides for Starshield end-to-end service via the Starlink constellation, user terminals, ancillary equipment, network management and other related services," Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek told Bloomberg News.
The outlet noted that Musk’s aerospace firm is now competing for nearly $1 billion in Pentagon contracts extending into 2028, as the Space Force seeks to repurpose existing communications satellites for military use as part of its "Proliferated Low Earth Orbit" program.
#2
Some of the newer ones. Of course, older ones already up there will be as optically visible as ever until they de-orbit. Seems astronomers are underwhelmed by the effort so far.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
09/30/2023 9:03 Comments ||
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#3
Once the trains get distributed, the satellites re-orient themselves to be less reflective.
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/30/2023 11:32 Comments ||
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#5
Daily Mail, where the people working there think there can only be a maximum of 5 Stars.
Already had my sunsets ruined from windmills, so if we are going to shit the stars, can we at least get Super Mario figures, make it look like a Rainbow Road course race?
#6
Call it semantics, but the number of stars visible to the naked eye from Earth is not that large a number compared to "the number of stars" in the observable Universe, which can only be very roughly estimated.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
09/30/2023 11:45 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Daily Wire] It’s an astonishing statistic that took the internet by storm: 94% of jobs created in 2021 went to racial minorities. It’s also completely untrue.
