Ulster County, NY Vote Stronger for Trump Than for Romney

A comparison of the vote counts for Ulster County, NY (h/t Glenda R. McGee) reveals something interesting: The vote for Clinton was weaker than for Obama while the vote for Trump was stronger than for Romney. 

Ulster County is a mixture of two elements:  rural New Yorkers whose ancestors have lived in the region for generations and are chiefly Republican  and transplanted New York City refugees like me.  The New York City refugees are mostly Democratic. 

Clinton stimulated less interest among the New York City element than Obama had while Trump stimulated more than Romney had. However, the numbers in the region are now overwhelmingly in favor of the Democrats because of the demographic shifts. 

 2012 Ulster County Presidential Votes:

              Obama                              Romney

2012:     47,752                               29,759

               Clinton                              Trump

2016       44,597                               35,239

Source: Glenda R. McGee  

Law Suits against Public Sector Unions Multiply after Janus

Tyler O’Neil of PJ Media (h/t Glenda R. McGee) reports that seven California teachers have filed a class-action suit to recoup past forced fees. The teachers had been forced to subsidize things like pro-abortion advocacy even if they opposed abortion.

In my own case, I was for many years forced to subsidize the CUNY union, the Professional Staff Congress’s, advocacy of socialism.   

O' Neill cites an Education Week  article, which suggests that there will be multiple law suits in many states…

Notes from Quackademia

Retraction Watch reports that several history of economics journals are complaining because Clarivate Analytics dropped them from its journal rankings. The reason was that Clarivate was concerned that the journal editors might have been adding citations from each others' journals, in effect committing fraud. The journals include the European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, the Journal of the History of Economic Thought , and the History of Economic Ideas.

The Retraction Watch article is critical of the use of impact factors and journal rankings more generally, which is a point well taken. 

The technique that Clarivate used to identify the pattern was to identify the sources of the citations of articles in the journals. It turned out that almost all of the citations were in each of the other journals.

It is unfair to jump to conclusions about the editors, but that sort of collusion would, if it has occurred, be consistent with the entire structure of higher education, which I have witnessed over the past 30 years.

Will the Trump Trade War Result in a Spike in Gold?

Gold-stock analyst John Doody holds in a Kitco interview that the Trump tariffs will result in job losses. He says that, in turn, the Fed will cut interest rates. The result of further monetary expansion will be a 2001-2011-like upswing in gold prices. The trouble with his thesis is that interest rates are already so darn low that the Fed doesn't have very far to cut even if it wants to cut. I'm sympathetic to his opinion that a trade war will contribute to a declining economy, resulting in increased Fed intervention. The whole house of cards of the post-Reagan era can fall.