“Weeks In Review” this time instead of “Week In Review”; I’ve had my head down for weeks on business events, and skipped last week entirely. The tenth week in to the new administration, a few worms have turned, but most worms have fortified themselves into various deep state bunkers. The biggest bunker is Obamacare, again our hot button bellwether issue. Clearly, Congressional Republicans can no longer hide the fact that they are bought and paid for by globalists. There simply is no other way to interpret the abject refusal to overturn this national abomination.

Now every leading official in DC, too many to list, claims to be hounded by Russian hackers, who I am guessing have opened giant data centers in Utah and West Virginia for this purpose. It is a damned good thing that no one has the technology to spoof IP addresses. Between that well-timed distraction, buzz about nothing being done about Obamacare, and some trade agreement noise, nothing substantial seems to have occurred in the past few weeks anyway. Many people have been drafting their “Uncle Donald” letters to highlight their pet issues. But, until the deep state management layers are deeply and visibly gutted (the State Department rout was a good start), I am not going to burn a lot of energy in that direction. Maybe I didn’t miss anything while I was out, but seventy days is still a very short time to expect much to happen. The mood out there as I see it remains positive and improving.

In other news, for the past decade or so the Department of Energy has been sneaking up behind Americans to create chaos in the economy. Although this department has traditionally been benign, minding its higher-level business such as nuclear stockpiles and nuclear power plants, under the Bush II administration it began making major moves into consumer regulation. Per Agenda 21 goals to keep the consumer off-balance, and small businesses unable to effectively plan future operations, the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act was progressively gobbling up design flexibility for all things wall-wart.

For the past few years, manufacturers of all kinds, us included, had been tooling up for major changes in efficiency standards. Now, the Power and Security Systems Act (passed recently by the House in response to lobbyist pressure, seemingly independent of the new administration), extends the no-load exemption for security and life-critical devices. This means that devices in this class, which are constantly consuming power and thus never have a no-load condition, will not have to comply with the heavier restrictions, assuming that the exemption is extended.

I am of mixed opinion about this one, meaning that both my manufacturer side and my consumer side think this DoE regulatory framework for consumer items should be abolished entirely. Trump had promised such sweeping changes, as I recall. Advancing technology creates a market demand for more efficient devices, anyway. Plus, the ubiquitous USB charging paradigm means that devices that charge more efficiently are going to have greater market acceptance. Forcing changes by regulation once again favors large businesses, who will barely comply with regulations, and yet enjoy the implicit protection against competition that always results from the expenses of regulatory compliance. High-tech disruptive businesses such as ours can still lap the big guys in features, but at greatly increased cost to the public. In the middle is a huge mass of companies that just can’t afford to innovate. Idiocracy looms ever closer.

Speaking of Idiocracy, I-85 in Atlanta apparently caved in. It was a miracle that no one was injured, but I am imagining cars shooting off into the abyss. This could not have happened at a worse spot in Altanta, which is of course why the DoT decided to store combustibles there. Traffic on the way back from the Atlanta Home Show last Friday was already soul-crushing, as high-rise construction continues to be focused on the narrow strip next to the I-75/I-85 ribbon. Traffic was backed up halfway to Macon heading in to Altanta that evening. I hope that whatever psychological experiment is being conducted with this aorta collapse produces the desired results quickly. Or maybe dragging it out to spark Atlanta hostility is the point.