ntroducing #PlatformPitches

#PlatformPitches is the name we’ve given to our new series of articles, offering suggestions to the Republican ticket. Why have we decided to do this? Because it’s fun, mostly.

Here is the first item:

#PlatformPitches: Time For A New COPS Program

The Xylazine Plague Worsens

Millennium Health is a drug testing company that monitors drug use for drug addiction treatment centers. They publish “Signals Reports” on emerging drug use trends based on urine drug test samples across the country.

Last year, they warned about the emergence of xylazine, a veterinary tranquilizer, also known as “tranq,” which drug users and dealers mix with illicit fentanyl to prolong and enhance its euphoric effects. Tranq may diminish responses to naloxone and increase fatal overdose risk. “Repeated use is associated with the development of severe necrotic skin lesions.”

In April 2023, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) declared xylazine an emerging threat. In September of 2023, Millennium Health published a “Signals Report” warning of the emergence of tranq. Now they have published a “Signals Alert” warning that the xylazine scourge is growing in several regions of the US.

According to the Signals Alert, “The greatest gains in xylazine use were largely in the western half of the U.S.; the Pacific, Mountain, and West North Central Census Divisions all increased significantly; New England also increased significantly,” although “xylazine use among those who use fentanyl remains highest in the East. Rates in ALL eastern U.S. Census Divisions are approximately double the national rate of 15.6%.”

The figures are astonishing. Over just six months, xylazine detection is up 101.6% in New England, 93.8% in the Mountain West, and 146.9% in the Pacific region. (Those aren’t typos.)

The combination of American consumer wealth and existential ennui, open borders, lax drug enforcement, and, perhaps, deliberate Chinese revenge for the Opium Wars, making available sophisticated pharmaceutical manufacturing capabilities to drug traffickers, is leading to this indescribably awful situation where every year brings some new, newly-horrific demon drug. This is, without a doubt, the most underrated policy problem in America today.

Policy News

#TheEconomyStupid – Jan Hatzius, Chief Economist and Head of Global Investment Research at Goldman Sachs, may well be the king of economic forecasters. He just wrote in a note to clients that he has cut down his estimate of a risk of a future recession to 20% and anticipates a future rate cut by the Federal Reserve at its September meeting.

#TheEconomyStupid – Speaking of, the NFIB’s Small Business Optimism Index, which we find a very useful measure of economic health, rose 2.2 points in July to 93.7. That is the highest reading since Feb. 2022, but the 31st straight month below the 50-year average of 98. (Via)

#Budget – From the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget: “Vice President Kamala Harris released a document today – the Agenda to Lower Costs for American Families – that outlines a number of proposals she would aim to enact if elected President. Taken together, we estimate the policies in this plan would increase deficits by $1.7 trillion over a decade. That figure would grow to $2.0 trillion if temporary housing policies were made permanent.”

#FamilyPolicy – The family policy debates, and through them the debate about family models, continue. Ross Douthat adds his contribution, with a welcome corrective to liberal fantasies about conservative masculinity: “I would have thought that by now liberals would be hesitant about proclaiming the special personal virtues of the male feminist, the enlightened pro-choice dude. After Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer and Harvey Weinstein, after MeToo case studies too numerous to count, surely we can say that sleaze percolates on the left and right alike, that predators can exploit liberated mores as easily as traditional ones,” he writes. Ouch. More to the point, he writes that “in the sociological data and my own personal experience,” the “neo-trad culture” the “attempted ‘reversal’of the feminist revolution” actually “looks much more like an adaptation to feminism.”

#Labor – Very good points from the Independent Women’s Forum on an overlooked issue: despite freelancers being an important part of the economy, Congress and federal regulations, such as the Department of Labor’s new Independent Contractor rule, fail to understand or support the flexibility and freedom these workers need. The author, IWF Visiting Fellow Jennifer Oliver O’Connell, herself an independent professional, points out that such regulations threaten livelihoods and ignore the diverse circumstances of freelancers, including military spouses and parents.

#Immigration – The National Immigration Center for Enforcement notes that the Biden-Harris Administration’s “parole-in-place” policy comes into effect today. Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants will not only get paroled, but they will receive a work permit, a Social Security number, and a driver’s license.

#Immigration – Mass migration is overwhelming public schools in sanctuary cities.

#PriceControls – If you’re anything like us, when you read about Kamala Harris and price controls, the first thing you thought was “Diocletian.” Nerd. Yes, the emperor who ended the Crisis of the Third Century and saved the Roman Empire from collapse tried to fight a bout of hyperinflation brought about by his predecessors’ debasement of the currency through price controls. And yes, the results were disastrous. Hoover Senior Fellow John Cochrane, who writes “the Grumy Economist,” has the scoop on this breaking news. (Ok, fine, it’s not news, but it’s still interesting!)

Chart of the Day

Meme of the Day