• Evil Walks Among Us: Child Trafficking Has Become Big Business In America
  Evil Walks Among Us: Child Trafficking Has Become Big Business In America

  Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

  “Children are being targeted and sold for sex in America every day.”

  – John Ryan, National Center for Missing & Exploited Children

  It takes a special kind of evil to prostitute and traffick a child for sex, and yet this evil walks among us every minute of every day.

  

  Consider this: every two minutes, a child is bought and sold for sex.

  Hundreds of young girls and boys—some as young as 9 years old—are being bought and sold for sex, as many as 20 times per day.

  Adults purchase children for sex at least 2.5 million times a year in the United States alone.

  In Georgia alone, it is estimated that 7,200 men (half of them in their 30s) seek to purchase sex with adolescent girls each month, averaging roughly 300 a day.

  On average, a child might be raped by 6,000 men during a five-year period.

  It is estimated that at least 100,000 to 500,000 children—girls and boys—are bought and sold for sex in the U.S. every year, with as many as 300,000 children in danger of being trafficked each year. Some of these children are forcefully abducted, others are runaways, and still others are sold into the system by relatives and acquaintances.

  Child rape has become Big Business in America.

  This is not a problem found only in big cities.

  It’s happening everywhere, right under our noses, in suburbs, cities and towns across the nation.

  As Ernie Allen of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children points out, “The only way not to find this in any American city is simply not to look for it.”

  Like so many of the evils in our midst, sex trafficking (and the sexualization of young people) is a cultural disease that is rooted in the American police state’s heart of darkness. It speaks to a sordid, far-reaching corruption that stretches from the highest seats of power (governmental and corporate) down to the most hidden corners and relies on our silence and our complicity to turn a blind eye to wrongdoing.

  It is estimated that the number of children who are at risk of being trafficked or have already been sold into the sex trade would fill 1300 school buses.

  The internet has become the primary means of sexual predators targeting and selling young children for sex. “One in five kids online are sexually propositioned through gaming platforms and other social media. And those, non-contact oriented forums of sexual exploitation are increasing,” said researcher Brian Ulicny.

  It’s not just young girls who are vulnerable, either.

  According to a USA Today investigative report, “boys make up about 36% of children caught up in the U.S. sex industry (about 60% are female and less than 5% are transgender males and females).”

  Every year, the ages of the girls and boys being bought and sold get younger and younger.

  The average age of those being trafficked is 13. Yet as the head of a group that combats trafficking pointed out, “Let’s think about what average means. That means there are children younger than 13. That means 8-, 9-, 10-year-olds.”

  “They’re minors as young as 13 who are being trafficked,” noted a 25-year-old victim of trafficking.

  “They’re little girls.”

  This is America’s dirty little secret.

  But what or who is driving this evil appetite for young flesh? Who buys a child for sex?

  Otherwise ordinary men from all walks of life. “They could be your co-worker, doctor, pastor or spouse,” writes journalist Tim Swarens, who spent more than a year investigating the sex trade in America.

  According to criminal investigator Marc Chadderdon, these “buyers”—the so-called “ordinary” men who drive the demand for sex with children—represent a cross-section of American society: every age, every race, every socio-economic background, cops, teachers, corrections workers, pastors, etc.

  America’s police forces—riddled with corruption, brutality, sexual misconduct and drug abuse—represent another facet of the problem: police have become both predators and pimps. As the Philadelphia Inquirer reports, “Hundreds of police officers across the country have turned from protectors to predators, using the power of their badge to extort sex.”

  Young girls are particularly vulnerable to these predators in blue.

  Former police officer Phil Stinson estimates that half of the victims of police sex crimes are minors under the age of eighteen. According to The Washington Post, a national study found that 40 percent of reported cases of police sexual misconduct involved teens.

  For example, in California, a police sergeant—a 16-year veteran of the police force—was arrested for raping a 16-year-old girl who was being held captive and sold for sex in a home in an upscale neighborhood.

  A Pennsylvania police chief and his friend were arrested for allegedly raping a young girl hundreds of times—orally, vaginally, and anally several times a week—over the course of seven years, starting when she was 4 years old.

  Two NYPD cops were accused of arresting a teenager, handcuffing her, and driving her in an unmarked van to a nearby parking lot, where they raped her and forced her to perform oral sex on them, then dropped her off on a nearby street corner.

  The New York Times reports that “a sheriff’s deputy in San Antonio was charged with sexually assaulting the 4-year-old daughter of an undocumented Guatemalan woman and threatening to have her deported if she reported the abuse.”

  And then you have national sporting events such as the Super Bowl, where sex traffickers have been caught selling minors, some as young as 9 years old. Whether or not the Super Bowl is a “windfall” for sex traffickers as some claim, it remains a lucrative source of income for the child sex trafficking industry and a draw for those who are willing to pay to rape young children.

  Finally, as I documented in an earlier column, the culture is grooming these young people to be preyed upon by sexual predators.

  Social media makes it all too easy. As one news center reported, “Finding girls is easy for pimps. They look on … social networks. They and their assistants cruise malls, high schools and middle schools. They pick them up at bus stops. On the trolley. Girl-to-girl recruitment sometimes happens.” Foster homes and youth shelters have also become prime targets for traffickers.

  Rarely do these children enter into prostitution voluntarily. Many start out as runaways or throwaways, only to be snatched up by pimps or larger sex rings. Others, persuaded to meet up with a stranger after interacting online through one of the many social networking sites, find themselves quickly initiated into their new lives as sex slaves.

  According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, nearly 800,000 children go missing every year (roughly 2,185 children a day).

  For those trafficked, it’s a nightmare from beginning to end.

  Those being sold for sex have an average life expectancy of seven years, and those years are a living nightmare of endless rape, forced drugging, humiliation, degradation, threats, disease, pregnancies, abortions, miscarriages, torture, pain, and always the constant fear of being killed or, worse, having those you love hurt or killed.

  A common thread woven through most survivors’ experiences is being forced to go without sleep or food until they have met their sex quota of at least 40 men.

  As David McSwane recounts in a chilling piece for the Herald-Tribune: “In Oakland Park, an industrial Fort Lauderdale suburb, federal agents in 2011 encountered a brothel operated by a married couple. Inside ‘The Boom Boom Room,’ as it was known, customers paid a fee and were given a condom and a timer and left alone with one of the brothel’s eight teenagers, children as young as 13. A 16-year-old foster child testified that he acted as security, while a 17-year-old girl told a federal judge she was forced to have sex with as many as 20 men a night.”

  One particular sex trafficking ring catered specifically to migrant workers employed seasonally on farms throughout the southeastern states, especially the Carolinas and Georgia, although it’s a flourishing business in every state in the country. Traffickers transport the women from farm to farm, where migrant workers would line up outside shacks, as many as 30 at a time, to have sex with them before they were transported to yet another farm where the process would begin all over again.

  This growing evil is, for all intents and purposes, out in the open.

  Unfortunately, as I document in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the government’s war on sex trafficking, much like the government’s war on terrorism, drugs and crime, has become a perfect excuse for inflicting more police state tactics (police check points, searches, surveillance, and heightened security) on a vulnerable public while doing little to actually protect our children from sex predators.

  That so many children continue to be victimized, brutalized and treated like human cargo is due to three things: one, a consumer demand that is increasingly lucrative for everyone involved—except the victims; two, a level of corruption so invasive on both a local and international scale that there is little hope of working through established channels for change; and three, an eerie silence from individuals who fail to speak out against such atrocities.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/25/2023 – 23:40

• Yuma Arizona 'On The Brink Of Collapse' Due To 'Unprecedented' Migrant Surge
  Yuma Arizona ‘On The Brink Of Collapse’ Due To ‘Unprecedented’ Migrant Surge

  The border city of Yuma, Arizona is on the ‘brink of collapse’ as a flood of migrants have overloaded hospitals and food banks.

  According to officials, some 5 million migrants have crossed into the US since President Biden took office in January 2021.

  As a result, Yuma County’s Border Patrol has seen a rise in migrant crossings of 171%. According to County Supervisor Jonathan Lines, the county will ‘crumble’ if it can’t support the flow of migrants. Lines says that the situation will only get worse, according to the Fox News.

  

  In a statement to Fox News, Lines said that “Policies need to be changed when you see an unprecedented amount of people coming across the border that even supersedes what we saw under any of the other presidents for the past 30 years,” adding that the surge in crossings is “ridiculous.”

  “They’re coming because they said that Biden told them to come, that we have an open border.”

  

  According to fifth-generation Yuma resident and farmer, Hank Auza, “The problem that we’re foreseeing right now is there’s a couple of big waves coming,” adding “Yuma can’t support that. It will overwhelm the system here.“

  

  El Paso, Texas, another border town, declared a state of emergency as thousands of migrants camped in the streets during below-freezing temperatures in December. Many migrant shelters were over capacity, leading the city to use the local airport for temporary refuge. 

  Lines, Auza and another Yuma farmer, Alex Muller, had shared concerns, starting with the fear around food security, since agricultural production makes up a large part of the town’s economy. 

  “Our fields are monitored and audited and tested for different pathogens,” Muller, said. “You can’t have people walking through the field.” 

  Auza said Yuma’s fields, which produce 93% of the nation’s leafy greens in the winter months, have faced a fair amount of migrant traffic, risking damage to their crops due to foodborne illness concerns. He also said many residents can’t get into the city’s only hospital.  -Fox News

  “People have had a hard time getting into the hospital because the hospital has been so full of” migrants, said Auza.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/25/2023 – 23:20

• How Equifax Became A Private IRS
  How Equifax Became A Private IRS

  Authored by Matt Stoller via BIG (emphasis ours),

  The movie The Big Short is about the housing crisis and its collapse, along with all the fraudulent activity up and down the financial system that abetted it. It is as much a cultural story as it is one about finance, a film about what banking corruption does to human beings and the law itself. In it, there’s a famous scene where fund investors betting on a housing collapse are trying to learn about the Florida housing market, and are interviewing some frat-boy type Florida real estate agents. The agents keep discussing their self-serving and illegal behavior, like falsifying paperwork or selling to people who knowingly can’t pay back loans. At a certain point, the main character asks his colleagues, ‘why are they confessing?’ to which the others respond, “they’re not confessing, they’re bragging.”

  The point of this scene is to show that people in the industry during the housing bubble weren’t just breaking the law, but saw the law itself as irrelevant. Enforcement was so weak that those in finance and real estate would just openly brag about all the crime they were doing.

  It was a true story. And it continues to be a true story in most white collar areas.

  Late last year, the CEO of Equifax Mark Begor presented at a Goldman Sachs conference for investors, and openly told the investors how much market power his firm has in the business of selling income verification services to creditors. “We have meaningful pricing power,” he said, because “only Equifax has that income and employment data.” Equifax aggressively raises prices on the Work Number product line annually, and has, according to Begor, “already got our January 1, 2023 price increases in the market.” Long term, he says, “we have an ability to grow price well in excess of GDP.” This is fairly shocking stuff from a CEO, who should know better than to confess to monopolization. Only, it seems as if Begor wasn’t confessing, he was bragging.

  Here’s the audio.

  Still, why wouldn’t Begor brag to investors? Equifax’s controversial behavior is near-legendary. The firm is an important credit bureau, and credit data is exactly what we wouldn’t want to fall into the hands of hackers, who could then easily use it to engage in identity theft, en masse. But in 2017, Equifax had a massive scandal, one of the biggest data breaches in history, when it accidentally exposed the personal data of 147 million people. The Federal Trade Commission fined the company more than $575 million, and the CEO, CIO, and chief security officer were all forced out.

  Yet the firm didn’t suffer any long-term reputation damage. And in all the hoopla around the scandal, there really wasn’t a lot of discussion about why that is, and how Equifax actually makes money. So looking at Begor’s braggadocio around the firm’s market power is useful. The product Begor told investors about at the Goldman Sachs confab is called The Work Number, which is a business line that bundles data about the incomes of hundreds of millions of people and sells it to interested parties, like lenders, landlords, employers, and government agencies. Payroll and data is by some estimates a $10 billion market, and now brings in a majority of the firm’s domestic revenue.

  Equifax used to be a firm, which, along with Experian and TransUnion, focused on keeps tabs on all of us and whether we pay our debts. But over the last four years, it has transformed itself into a sort of tax information agency, which sells information about our salary and income to third parties. It’s a better business than just credit data, because while three firms have information about whether you pay back your credit card company, only Equifax has complete information about where you work. And a monopoly, as Begor bragged, is better than an oligopoly.

  BIG is a reader-supported newsletter focused on the politics of monopoly and finance. This is journalism and advocacy that challenges power, so please consider a paid subscription. You can always get lies for free. The truth costs a few bucks, but in the long run it’s much cheaper. You can subscribe by clicking here.

  The Work Number

  First let’s start with why this business exists. Sharing information about where you work and what you make is something we all need to do on occasion. If a bank or auto dealer wants to lend someone money to buy a home or car, they need a verification that the person works where he says he works and makes the income he says he makes. Sometimes a potential employer or landlord needs to check work history, or a public agency needs to ensure someone qualifies for government assistance, or they have to update immigration status.

  How do third parties verify this information? Employers don’t like it when their HR departments are getting constant requests from lenders about their employees and what they make. And getting this information from the IRS is illegal (or least has been since progressives in the 1920s temporarily had tax returns made public.) So for decades, employers have been sending data on this to brokers, who sell the records to interested parties. Today, the biggest and in some ways only meaningful broker in this space is Equifax. If you are trying to find out someone’s work history and income, it’s pretty likely Equifax has it, and it’s unlikely anyone else does. (Experian is the second player in the market, but they just started their product line in 2021, and as I’ll explain, they are far behind.) And we’re not just talking about the data the IRS has, we’re talking about data on pay for every payroll cycle, your overtime amount, the start and end date for your job, your title, your health care provider, whether you have dental insurance, and if you’ve ever filed an unemployment claim.

  There are network effects in this business; the more data Equifax gets from employers, the more likely it is to be the place lenders and government agencies seek to do income verification. In addition, having lots of data about workers also allows Equifax to build services for firms, such as managing unemployment compensation. When a firm lays off a worker, that worker is supposed to have rights to unemployment compensation, which the firm has to pay for. But if that employee was fired for cause, or quit, then that worker isn’t entitled to unemployment payments, and the firm is off the hook. There are lots of grey areas here, it’s a quasi-legal setup between the state, the business, and the employee. Managing this process, along with appeals, is also something Equifax does, as it’s a natural extension of its data business.

  Because of this extensive warehouse of data and set of services, firms and agencies then integrate themselves into the Work Number. So one could argue this business has natural barriers to entry. But the story here isn’t just one of scale efficiencies. The Work Number is a legacy business, started decades ago. With the internet, however, there’s no technical reason for a centralized repository of employment and verification data, or at least not the way it’s set up today. It’s quite possible to set up a system allowing any verifier to ask the individual for his or her records. But that would cut against Equifax’s business model, which involves not only taking your data without you knowing about it and selling it, but also, crucially, preventing any other third party from innovating to build a more privacy-safe version of the same service.

  Indeed, the story here is monopolization. Fifteen years ago, Equifax had already run into the Federal Trade commission, not for privacy violations, but for antitrust violations. Only, because its income verification business was a sideshow to its main credit reporting revenue line, people didn’t really notice. Today, however, Equifax is now a monopoly income verifier with a side credit information business.

  The original Work Number product came from a company called TALX Corporation, which was founded in the 1970s and that Equifax bought in 2007. From 2002-2005, TALX had bought up seven rivals, consolidating the verification of income and employment business. Immediately after this acquisition spree, TALX raised prices and forced customers to move from buying annually to signing long-term multi-year contracts. Additionally, TALX had non-competes and non-solicitation agreements with its employees, which further locked up the market.

  In 2008, the Bush administration FTC sued Equifax over acquisitions and unfair methods of competition. It was a creative complaint, with the Chair of the commission – Bill Kovacic – looking skeptically at a series of small acquisitions, instead of one big one. But the FTC didn’t seek to undo any of the mergers. Instead, it signed a consent decree forcing TALX, now Equifax, to let customers out of long-term contracts and employees out of non-compete agreements. These consent decree obligations ended in 2017. Ultimately, this FTC action, because it didn’t require a break-up, didn’t restore competition in the market, allowing Equifax to fortify its monopoly. Equifax’s TALX subsidiary was even caught for violating of the Fair Credit Reporting Act just two years later. And the company is still a merger machine, purchasing small and large firms nearly every year. For instance, just in 2021, it made $3 billion in acquisitions, buying HIREtech and i2Verify.

  After the consent decree ended, the exclusive arrangements came back. ADP, Intuit, Paycor, PrismHR, Rippling, and many other providers of outsourced payroll services have deals with Equifax to turn over or sell records. So do large companies. In 2017, Joel Winston at Fast Company reported that “75% of the Fortune 500 companies, 85% of the federal government workforce, entire state governments and agencies, courts, colleges, and thousands of small businesses nationwide” handed over data. Facebook, Amazon, Oracle, Google, Wal-Mart, Twitter, AT&T, Harvard Law School, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania do too. The number of entities handing over this data has only gone up since then.

  And Equifax pays many of these entities for their employee data, turning human resources into a revenue generator. Of course, the employees don’t know their own data is being sold by their employer, and even small businesses who use payroll services like ADP don’t realize their data is being sold. (Small businesses can opt-out, but they have to tell their payroll provider.)

  The net effect of these arrangements is that smaller players in the market, such as ExperianVerify, Truework, Thomas & Company, and Certree, simply cannot get the data that Equifax has. They are boxed out. If you are doing income verification, and you put someone’s Social Security number into Equifax, you have a 50-70% chance of getting a successful conversion. For other brokers, it’s much lower. There isn’t so much a market for employer/income verification information, there’s a market for information about each specific person. To a lender, it doesn’t matter if a rival to Equifax has information on 30% of the country, it matters if that rival has information on the individual to whom they are considering loaning money. If they don’t, you have to use Equifax.

  On the other side, Equifax has also erected barriers to entry. If you are a frequent buyer of income and employment data, Equifax sometimes offers a loyalty discount if you move all your business to the Work Number. One background check provider, SwiftCheck, explained Equifax offered that “if our organization performs The Work Number Verification on every employment verification, a discount is offered.” This is a classic loyalty discount, what looks like an unlawful mechanism to exclude competitors.

  So that’s how Equifax establishes its market power, by blocking rivals from getting data and by locking in customers of that data. And we can see this market power at work in the pricing, as their CEO noted in December. Equifax has been raising prices substantially for years. How much? Well like an airline or any firm with market power, Equifax doesn’t just have one price. It can engage in price discrimination depending on the willingness to pay. But the price hikes that are public, are extreme. In 2017, the price for a record was $20, in 2020 it was $41.95. Today, it lists its price as $54.95 for a record of where you currently work, and potentially up to $200 for records with more historical information. And it’ll keep going up.

  The Real Cost: Equifax as Private Government

  Consumers pay for this cost in ways they don’t see. When you get a loan or rent an apartment, the lender or landlord has to pay Equifax’s toll, and will include that extra cost in the price of your loan or rent. But more than just higher prices, Equifax’s database is powerful. The Work Number can, according to the government, help determine “an applicant’s social service eligibility” or “inform child support collections and enforcement.”

  There are often errors, and getting your own data from Equifax can be difficult if not maddening. Just read this thread of frustrated consumers trying to do so, and often encountering mistakes in the process. And as we know, Equifax is prone to hacking. People don’t know that their employment data is being sold to Equifax, and they tend to be upset when they find out. Google workers were outraged about it, which is ironic. It’s also prone to abuse; Apple told the Work Number that every worker who left was automatically given the title “associate,” regardless of whether they were a top engineer. According to one former Apple worker, this error “delayed the hiring process at a prospective employer by nearly a week, during which time the company rescinded the offer.” I don’t tend to focus on privacy, but though Equifax claims there are controls on who can buy this information, security researcher Brian Krebs noted in 2017, that it’s easy for pretty much anyone to learn your salary. These flaws are all quality harms, standard for any monopolist who isn’t subject to competition.

  The Work Number is so important that Equifax is engaged in the work that should be reserved to a government. Generally speaking, people would get really upset if the IRS shared our tax information for a fee. Effectively, Equifax is doing that, because for most people, employment and income is our tax information. But since it’s a private monopoly, the anti-government types don’t notice or care. At the height of the Great Recession in 2010, Equifax’s TALX division was processing 30% of the unemployment claims in the country. Though originally intended to automate the process, what Equifax ended up doing was automating the refusal to pay out unemployment claims. It systemically denied applications regardless of merit so its clients – employers – would have to pay less in unemployment taxes. And this goal is on the firm’s investment documents, which uses the anodyne wording of “reduce the cost of unemployment claims through effective claims representation” to describe the service it provides to employers who give it data.

  It’s perhaps no exaggeration to note that Equifax is a quasi-governmental agency, a monopoly provider of evidence that you work, where you work, and what you make. If there’s an error, or if someone lies about you, too bad. If Equifax itself is paid to harm you, too bad. If a government agency gets the wrong data and denies you assistance or screws up your immigration status, that’s on you, well, you have limited to no rights in this situation. In some ways, you might have more to fear from Equifax than the IRS.

  It Need Not Be This Way

  As is always the case, most things created by people can be unmade by people. And so too with Equifax. I learned about the Work Number from a contact on Wall Street who pays attention to monopolies. He told me the Work Number is one of the purest examples of market power he’s seen, which of course, the CEO of Equifax helpfully confirmed in public. I’ve also talked to a number of people in the industry trying to compete in the payroll data space. Two firms – Certree and Argyle – recently sent letters to the Federal Trade Commission asking for an investigation into this market, pointing at the abuse of consumers by Equifax (and to a lesser extent Experian).

  The strategies for each small rival are different, but both give the consumer control over who can access their data, instead of building a giant centralized repository controlled by a monopolist. Certree gives each employee a ‘personal vault’ where his or her data resides. While they verify that the data came from an employer, only the employee can give permission for a third party to look at what’s inside – even Certree can’t see it. Certree is paid when a lender or third party successfully verifies an employment or income record.

  Argyle has a totally different model. It isn’t even a data broker, but a ‘data transfer agent.’ It lets third parties ask consumers about their income and employment information by sending them a link, and then gets consumers to give them their passwords for their employment information. Argyle doesn’t keep any data on hand, but is controversial because it engages in screen-scraping of your employer’s website, which can be a security risk. And yet it is weird to think it’s problematic for employees to take their own data from their employer, but fine for employers to sell that data to Equifax.

  Both Certree and Argyle charge much less than Equifax for their service.

  Regardless, the overall point is that having a centralized data broker that has a quasi-monopoly over income and verification data, and sits largely unregulated, is ridiculous. Breaking up Equifax’s monopoly wouldn’t be that hard, at least conceptually. Many of the practices that it engages in today are things the FTC banned in its old consent decree with the firm. And it’s obvious that Equifax is immune to competitive forces. Despite the price hikes and devastating and routine news stories about hacks, errors and problems, as well as public polling showing increasing concerns over privacy, Equifax marches on, unbothered and unchastened. That’s the classic monopoly position, a recognition that there is no alternative.

  Beyond the monopoly problem, however, why not have a system where individuals control their own data? Prior to the internet this would have been impossible, but today it’s quite doable. Giving individual control over their data would probably require both antitrust law and an aggressive reading of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s authority over Credit Reporting Agencies, or a new Congressional statute for ownership and control of employment data.

  Regardless, I’d like to thank Equifax CEO Mark Begor for bragging last month about his firm’s market power. Without that, I never would have taken the time to learn why Equifax can act as a private IRS, put out a middle finger to each one of us, and collect our money regardless.

  * * *

  Thanks for reading! Your tips make this newsletter what it is, so please send me tips on weird monopolies, stories I’ve missed, or other thoughts. And if you liked this issue of BIG, you can sign up here for more issues, a newsletter on how to restore fair commerce, innovation and democracy. And consider becoming a paying subscriber to support this work, or if you are a paying subscriber, giving a gift subscription to a friend, colleague, or family member.

  cheers,

  Matt Stoller

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/25/2023 – 23:00

• White House Roils Housing Industry Over New Tenant Protections
  White House Roils Housing Industry Over New Tenant Protections

  The housing industry is up in arms over new tenant protections that the Biden administration administration is preparing to roll out as soon as this month, Politico reports.

  

  The protections, which come as rents around the country are falling, could include promoting grace periods for late rents, as well as giving renters who are facing eviction the right to legal counsel, according to advocates.

  According to Jerry Howard, CEO of the National Association of Home Builders, the industry is bracing for “some pretty intense regulation.”

  “They need to be very cautious about what they’re doing,” he added, having attended a November White House meeting on tenant protections. “There’s a real chance of creating a problem that doesn’t exist.”

  With a possible recession looming, the Biden administration will be looking for ways to provide relief to cash-strapped Americans suffering from a higher cost of living. Since the U.S. House is now under Republican control, the kind of sweeping economic legislation enacted during the last two years is off the table.

  Democratic lawmakers including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), are leaning on the administration to go big by curbing rent increases at millions of units in properties with government-backed mortgages – a long-shot move the White House is not seriously weighing, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions. -Politico

  The National Apartment Association and 10 other industry groups are lobbying the White House to resist pressure to enact new federal requirements on top of existing laws – insisting in a December letter that doing so would “further exacerbate affordability challenges.”

  “People can’t afford to live,” said Rep Jamaal Bowman (D-NY). “We want to push the president as far as possible to lighten the burden of rent on everyday people.”

  Democrats are pushing the Biden administration to enact restrictions on rent hikes and punish landlords who they say are price gouging.

  “[N]ot just principles, not just guidelines, but what can the president do through executive action to lighten the burden on people and put more money in their pockets,” Bowman told Politico in an interview.

  The White House, meanwhile, appears to be in agreement – though it has yet to comment on specifics.

  “We are exploring a broad set of administrative actions that further our commitment to ensuring a fair and affordable market for renters across the nation,” according to spokesperson Robyn Patterson. “We look forward to continuing to work with lawmakers to strengthen tenant protections and improve rental affordability.”

  While rent is still driving up overall inflation — thanks in part to a data lag in the official inflation gauge — the national median rent has fallen for four straight months, according to the latest data from Apartment List. New lease demand plummeted in the second half of 2022, when the net demand for apartments fell into negative territory for the first time since 2009, according to an analysis by RealPage Market Analytics. -Politrico

  “Complicating this process isn’t good at any time in the market cycle,” said Greg Brown, senior VP of government affairs at the National Apartment Association. “But we’re in the fourth straight month of rent declines. I think things are adjusting again, so it does raise the question, are they responding to a situation of three to four months ago, not what is currently happening or will be happening in the near future?“

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/25/2023 – 22:40

• What Will Save Rural Healthcare?
  What Will Save Rural Healthcare?

  By Mariah Muhammad and Laura Dyrda of Becker’s Hospital Review

  Rural hospitals and healthcare facilities face amplified financial challenges amid persisting workforce shortages, rising costs and leveling reimbursement. Reserves are dwindling and without urgent action, hundreds of facilities face closure. 

  But it’s not too late. Mobile health, partnerships, new payment methods and government support can make a big difference to rural hospitals across the U.S. Becker’s asked 33 healthcare executives to share their best ideas to save rural healthcare, and here they are. The executives featured in this article are all speaking at the Becker’s Healthcare CEO+CFO Roundtable on Nov. 13-16, 2023 in Chicago.

  Question: What is your best idea to save rural healthcare?

  President and CEO

  Johnese Spisso. President of UCLA Health, CEO of UCLA Hospital System and Associate Vice Chancellor of UCLA Health Sciences: While some progress has been made in improving access to primary care in rural areas, access to specialty care remains a challenge. One of the opportunities to increase access is through the use of telemedicine and video visits with highly trained specialists who are available at academic medical centers and other large health systems. One of the ways we have expanded access at UCLA Health is through telemedicine. Additionally, through operating an interfacility transfer center, we serve as a resource to rural hospitals in our region, which rely on us to accept transfers of complex patients that have needs that exceed the level of care that can be provided in the rural facilities.

  David Lubarsky, MD. CEO and Vice Chancellor of Human Health Sciences at UC Davis Health (Sacramento, Calif.): Around one in five Americans live in rural areas, but only 5 percent of physicians practice in these same areas. UC Davis has made it a priority to help close this gap in rural healthcare by incentivizing medical school graduates to practice in rural communities. We have built a number of clinical and education partnerships to both increase providers in these communities and bring in, via virtual technologies, advanced and specialty practices from regional academic medical centers.

  We need new models of place-based medical provider recruitment, education and training to include far greater numbers of individuals from rural communities, as they are much more likely to ultimately practice in these communities. Our COMPADRE program is an example of a cross-state effort funded by American Medical Association, UC Davis and Oregon Health & Science University to partner with dozens of graduate medical education programs and tribal communities in Southern Oregon and Northern California to address this crisis.

  Bill Gassen. President and CEO of Sanford Health (Sioux Falls, S.D.): Protecting rural health care starts with reimagining how we deliver care for the 1.5 million patients we have the privilege of serving at Sanford Health, two-thirds of whom live in rural communities. Sanford’s landmark $350 million virtual care initiative aims to expand access to convenient, high-quality care regardless of zip code, improve the patient experience, advance innovation through new research and attract and train a new generation of clinicians.   

  The past few years have tested our nation’s health systems as never before. Sanford Health is committed to seeking new ways to provide more affordable, accessible and equitable care, which is why we’re excited about our proposed merger with Fairview Health Services. Together, we will strengthen care for our patients, offer expanded career growth opportunities for our employees and serve as a destination for top clinical talent. By combining our respective strengths and expertise in rural and urban health care, we will expand access to high-quality care for more people across our region, drive innovative care solutions, invest in the well-being and quality of life of our communities and ensure we can continue to deliver world-class care for all those who place their trust in us long into the future

  Donna Lynne. CEO of Denver Health (Colo.): My best ideas for rural healthcare are partnering with urban hospitals, particularly safety nets, and using telehealth with those hospitals that are truly partners. Lastly, another good idea is to use some form of “gainsharing” when patients are transferred.

  Brian Peters. CEO of Michigan Health Hospital Association (Okemos): I am a big believer in technology as a game-changer for the future of healthcare delivery. In particular, it can serve as a force multiplier in the realm of healthcare staffing. When combined with the significant traction gained by telehealth since the start of the pandemic, this means that technology — if thoughtfully deployed — can help to stabilize the rural health infrastructure. One imperative: we need regulatory and reimbursement policies that incentivize and support this concept.

  Jeff Thompson, MD. CEO Emeritus at Gundersen Health System (La Crosse, Wis.): Although more rapidly changing the payment system away from fee-for-service will help, the best hope and most progress is to change the behavior of the large systems and universities to view rural areas not as referral pipelines but as citizens and providers that need real population healthcare partners.

  Not closing, but re-focusing the work of rural providers and rural hospitals that have already been shifting to outpatient work [will help]. Systems can connect the EHR , provide quality and HR systems improvements, focus on cancer screening and mental health services as well as those other needed procedures that can be done well locally like cataracts, mammograms, and colonoscopies. Those systems that are truly partners will most likely improve referrals, but the connection is built on the value of improving health.

  Robert Corona. CEO of SUNY Upstate Medical University (Syracuse, N.Y.): It will be solved by technological and process innovations. We serve one-third of the geography of New York State, so rural healthcare is key for us. We have a rural medicine training program for physicians and they need special tools. Rural healthcare is best served through use of advanced computing and communications technology, autonomous machines like drones and robots for supply logistics and other operations.

  We now have established an autonomous machines division and a mobile medical unit. We have a hospital at home program and an influenza-like illness program that both use body-worn sensors on remotely located patients for vital signs and other parameters. This is all part of the distribution of healthcare services beyond bricks and mortar healthcare facilities.

  Mark McPherson. President and CEO of Trinity Health At Home (Livonia, Mich.): Enact legislation to pay for telehealth in a home health nursing environment. During the pandemic, telehealth was shown to be highly effective as a way to provide care. It’s reimbursable for physicians, but not for nursing care. Reimbursing telehealth in-home care would allow home care agencies to leverage already scarce nursing resources across an unlimited geography, mitigating many of the logistical issues of providing home care in a rural environment.

  Charles A. Powell, MD. CEO of Mount Sinai-National Jewish Health Respiratory Institute; Medical Director of Mount Sinai Hospital Respiratory Care Services (New York City): In the respiratory disease space, a key point of emphasis on providing access to specialty services in remote or rural regions. We are able to address potential gaps in access by leveraging technology to connect rural clinics and to connect with patients at home. For example, multidisciplinary tumor boards and multidisciplinary interstitial lung disease management programs can provide access to clinicians in practice locations that are distant from the tertiary facility hosting the discussion. We have deployed remote patient monitoring solutions to patients and home sleep study patients by direct shipping that allow us to connect with COPD patients across the continuum of care and to diagnose patients with symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea.

  Helen Johnson. CEO of Sparrow Eaton Hospital (Charlotte, Mich.): The expansion of broadband internet services has helped level the playing field for rural communities. While not yet complete, in those areas where access to high-speed internet is available, those communities are leveraging this basic utility for healthcare, education and economic development.

  Donald Lloyd, II. President and CEO of St. Claire Healthcare (Morehead, Ky.): In my view, we cannot perpetuate a stable rural health infrastructure until we address three significant issues critical to achieve rural health sustainability. First, we must develop and attract a rural-centric pipeline of talent to meet our clinical and workforce needs. Second, we must realize that it is not economically possible to sustain a full service acute care hospital in every rural community. Such a realization takes great political courage but also clinical creativity to meet the community’s needs. Third, CMS and state Medicaid agencies must establish payment methodologies that sustain institutions in low volume and safety-net environments

  Mark Gridley. President and CEO of FHN Memorial Hospital (Freeport, Ill.): My thought is a deep focus by federal and state legislators that are truly seeking to understand the barriers to healthcare in rural communities. Many of these barriers are driven by inadequate reimbursement methodologies for noncritical access providers, which creates difficulty in staffing and, ultimately, in providing access to care that is sustainable, consistent and close to small communities. This would include innovative technological program funding in addition to stabilizing declining reimbursement amidst increasing costs.

  Michael Canady, MD. CEO of Holzer Health System (Gallipolis, Ohio): The solution to saving rural healthcare lies in solving the payer mix issue. Rural HCOs have such a high percentage of Medicare/Medicaid/self-pay that it is becoming a challenging revenue issue. Closely related to this is the 20 percent initial denial rate across the board. Fix these two problems and rural healthcare can survive.

  Thomas Siemers. CEO of Wilbarger General Hospital (Vernon, Texas): Collaboration and diversification are the key strategies for future success. We should look for ways we can collaborate with other organizations and providers to expand and diversify our services. Rural hospitals will have to try new strategies, start new services, adapt to the changing needs of patients. The key is to keep our patients local so they don’t have to travel for care. Rural hospitals will have to share revenue and/or pay for the services provided by other organizations/providers. But it’s worth it. We’ve got to grow.

  Jeremiah Hodshire. President and CEO of Hillsdale (Mich.) Hospital Administration: Ultimately, rural healthcare suffers from the reality that we are often paid less than what it costs us to provide patient care. No other business or industry would be expected to survive under those conditions, and rural hospitals shouldn’t have to scramble to find other revenue sources like grants, cash-only services, etc., in order to be financially sustainable. Achieving health equity for rural Americans requires us to sustain rural hospitals so we can continue innovating, investing in technology, pioneering access to care initiatives and more. Payment reform is not just the best way to save rural healthcare long-term — it is the ONLY way.

  Kenneth Rose. President and CEO of Texas Health Hospital Mansfield: The plight of rural healthcare in our country is one that will not be solved by hospitals and healthcare systems alone. Rural communities would be benefited by the collaboration of community services offered by other not-for-profit organizations along with hospitals. The issues in rural communities many times are more than just acute care related and have other social/societal components, which calls for more than the expertise of community hospitals. An issue as large as this brings the old saying to mind: many hands make light work.

  Christopher Bjornberg, CEO of Mayers Memorial Healthcare District (Fall River Mills, Calif.): The best way to save rural healthcare is to treat it as rural healthcare. Urban health is not the same as rural health but it is mostly treated the same way. Currently, Medicare is the only payer that has a program specific for rural health that takes a critical access hospital designation while Medicaid and commercial payers like Blue Cross, UnitedHealthcare and the like generally do not. Coupled with the poor reimbursement rates, are the rising administrative costs for providing healthcare. According to an article from CNN in February 2022, “Administrative costs alone make up more than a quarter of U.S. healthcare spending.” If we want to save rural healthcare we have to change the reimbursement across all payers not just one and then ease the administrative burdens that go along with that. Just like it shouldn’t be difficult for people to obtain good quality healthcare, it should not be difficult to get paid to provide good quality healthcare.

  CFO and Strategic Leaders

  Marty Hutson. CFO of St. Mary’s Health Care System (Bayside, N.Y.): The first step to ‘save’ rural healthcare is to accept that the one-size-fits-none model of Medicare does not work. Rural hospitals face more difficulty in recruiting and retaining staff. Given your location, access to goods and services is also more expensive. CAH based on bed size is not effective when some facilities are too big to be considered critical access but remain just as remote and important as those with that designation.

  Nate Shinagawa. COO of UCI Health (Orange County, Calif.): One of America’s strengths, compared to anywhere in the world, is our recognition that immigrants add value to the culture and success of our country. Nowhere is this more evident than in healthcare, where 25 percent of all physicians are international medical graduates. Many of these physicians came to America through the H1-B visa program, a critical pathway that’s provided talented physicians to underserved areas, including much of rural America.

  For example, in places like North Dakota, H1-B applicants represent almost 5 percent of all physicians. We can turn around the healthcare access problem in rural America with progressive immigration policies. Expand H1-B visas, fast-track the green card process for physicians and nurses, expand the J-1 visa waiver program and make it easier to attain state licensures. In a year, we’d see the impact of these changes to the great benefit of rural America.

  Cristen Page, MD. Executive Dean of the UNC School of Medicine (Chapel Hill, N.C.): We should address this issue with humility. Our neighbors living in rural areas need to be listened to and supported as they know best what is needed in their communities. I have dedicated much of my career to rural workforce development and creating sustainable programs that introduce future providers to the impacts that they can make and the joys that they can find in rural service. We need more providers in rural service – not just physicians, but nurses, APPs, and others. We need to support the expansion of rural residency and other training programs and to continue building strong networks so that success stories and knowledge can be shared. And we need to leverage technology to support our rural providers as well as new models of care to better serve our rural patients.

  Arianne Dowdell, JD. Vice President and Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer of Houston Methodist (Texas): Equitable access to healthcare may not just mean a brick-and-mortar location but also working closely with community partners to support people with chronic health conditions through prevention, education and access. Looking at data to learn more about the communities we serve or those we have the potential to serve and knowing more about incidence rates of certain diseases is helpful when meeting the healthcare needs of patients, particularly those in rural communities.

  At Houston Methodist, we often talk about meeting people where they are and that includes supporting people with varying education levels, limited knowledge about their own healthcare, or those who have little to no access to technology. We learned a lot during the pandemic about how we can support people who may fall into these areas of their healthcare journey, and we’re continuing to use those lessons learned to create quality healthcare experiences for people despite where they live.

  Nick Stefanizzi. CEO of Northwell Direct (New Hyde Park, N.Y.): ‘Saving’ rural healthcare will be predicated on solving for the unique challenges experienced by these populations – primarily, addressing access and social determinants of health, which in the context of rural health, are synergistic strategies.

  To start, given that the National Rural Health Association has described that of the more than 7,200 federally designated health professional shortage areas, 3 out of 5 are in rural regions, access is a clear structural barrier. The fix here can’t just be brick and mortar facilities and providers. Rather, solving for this will require a combination of in-person and virtual treatment modalities to expand the pool of providers available for critical services. It will also require an investment in digital tools and resources that enable individuals to better engage and manage their own health. All must be highly integrated and easy to navigate if we expect widespread adoption and utilization.

  Further, a population health approach to addressing the social determinants of health and the underlying factors that can adversely influence the health of populations living in rural communities will similarly help to address root causes. An individual’s zip code often has more impact on health than any other factor, and in order to raise the health of rural populations, the focus needs to expand beyond traditional medical care. Through innovative and proactive interventions, we can enable health professionals and individuals to better engage and manage chronic and other conditions that exacerbate the challenges associated with the lack of access to local care providers.

  Taken together, addressing access and social determinants will go a long way in solving the rural healthcare crisis.

  Kerry Mackey. Vice President of Hospital Operations, Women and Children’s Services at NYU Langone Health (New York City): Telemedicine/telehealth services can be utilized to expand access to care in rural areas. We learned this from COVID-19 when we had to extend healthcare outside the hospital’s doors/walls. Also, implementing a home hospital service can complement telehealth/telemedicine by bringing that day-to-day nursing care to the applicable patient’s home. In addition, utilizing data and outcomes to negotiate reimbursement rates for Medicare services is how we can overcome the challenge around service or provider restrictions.

  Scott Polenz, CPA, MBA, FACHE. Vice President of Physician and Advanced Practice Clinician Relations of Marshfield Clinic Health System (Wis.): Saving rural healthcare is about as ambitious an undertaking as you can aspire to because of the complex, interwoven challenges that must be addressed. Fixing rural health care requires fixing our national health care system and a societal-level shift with regard to how we view health and health care. On a national level, we have to commit to the systemic changes required to truly move to a value-based system. On a more rural-specific level, we need massive investments to upgrade our overall public health infrastructure. Rural communities lag behind metropolitan counterparts in areas like access to transportation, availability of internet, distance from sites of care, access to healthy food and many other community-based resources. This basic infrastructure is fundamental to accessing quality health care, and it is going to take systemic, sustained investment to equip rural health care with the tools we need.

  Chad Dilley. COO of IU Health Saxony (Fishers, Ind.): IU Health is proud to serve many rural Indiana communities in places like Tipton, Bedford and Frankfort. There are really two inherent challenges: the geography of small populations spread over large areas, and provider recruitment to live and work away from urban centers and the specialty and subspecialty support that affords. We are continuing to lean into virtual care, virtual consults and telehealth to make care more accessible for patients close to home (or at home), and support our teams with the expertise and collaboration they need to provide excellent care in rural settings.

  Kira Carter-Robertson. Senior Vice President of Regional Hospitals at Sparrow Health System (Lansing, Mich.): I would love to say there is a magic bullet to save rural healthcare, but I don’t think the answer is one-size-fits-all. While rural hospitals may face similar pressures, rural communities are not all the same. In the short-term, rural healthcare providers will have to continue blocking, tackling, and juggling service needs with volume, managing staffing and provider challenges, assessing the right operation models, and exploring partnerships and mergers. Finances are the key driver behind closures and financial challenges for rural hospitals, so the long-term answer is a drastic payment overhaul. In the meantime, the secret sauce for rural healthcare is more complex and several levers will need to be pulled both regulatory and operationally to sustain the future of rural healthcare.

  Rashid Syed. Managing Partner of North Houston Surgical Hospitals: In my opinion, the best approach towards improving rural healthcare is to segregate the patient care services from one large hospital system to nimbler healthcare facilities, making it more approachable and personable for both, the patients and the providers, by creating urgent care centers, surgery centers, specialty microhospitals for mild to moderate complexity elective and nonelective treatments and keeping larger hospitals for higher complexity, longer complicated treatments. It’s about taking healthcare to the patients rather than patients in need seeking healthcare.

  Clinical Leaders

  Andy Anderson, MD. Chief Medical and Quality Officer of RWJBarnabas Health (West Orange, N.J.): Rural healthcare is essential to address the health and healthcare needs of patients and families who live in rural communities. My best idea to save rural healthcare is to provide robust virtual access (through telemedicine and remote patient monitoring devices) to triage and address acute care needs, to better manage chronic conditions, and to provide access to the best specialists to diagnose and treat complex medical conditions.

  William Morice, MD, PhD. President of Mayo Clinic Laboratories and Chair of the Department of Laboratory Medicine & Pathology at Mayo Clinic (Rochester, Minn.): From my perspective, to save rural healthcare, one must tackle one of the greatest challenges facing rural hospitals and healthcare providers, which is maintaining sufficient patient volumes in their facilities while also developing next-generation tools and capabilities. These tools and capabilities, such as at-home testing and digital diagnostics, will allow them to reach their patients in their homes spread across large areas. So, my idea is to invest in rural healthcare’s ability to interact with patients remotely while also designing practice and social service models that bring them into facilities for care when needed. Done correctly, this will enable rural healthcare to sustain and grow their services while also increasing their reach and convenience for patients.

  Phil Schaefer. Senior Vice President, Ambulatory Services and Chief Care Network Development Officer of Southern Illinois Healthcare (Carbondale): For rural hospitals to survive, the economics of reimbursement must change along with the hospitals’ approach to their cost structures. With almost all major payers having record profits last year and with declining utilization and reimbursement, the current model of paying hospitals is not sustainable. Given this, it’s imperative for rural hospitals to reevaluate their service portfolio and bend their cost curve downward.

  Steve Lipshultz, MD. Goodyear Professor and Chair, Department of Pediatrics of University at Buffalo Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences (Buffalo, N.Y.); Pediatric Chief-of-Service of Kaleida Health (Buffalo, N.Y.); President of UBMD Pediatrics (Buffalo, N.Y.): Improving rural healthcare finances is one of several key elements to sustaining rural healthcare and coming closer to a single standard of US healthcare. Below I list 14 areas where opportunities exist and are needed. Utilizing technology such as:

  1. Telehealth;

  2. EMRs;

  3. 3. ub-and-spoke health system networking and infrastructures to allow most care in the local community but having the backup;

  4. Ongoing physician and other healthcare provider and staff training;

  5. Recruitment;

  6. Retention, addressing;

  7. Workforce shortages with pipeline programs and others;

  8. QA/QI oversight and feedback as drivers of decisions based on the quality of care in rural places;

  9. Enhanced rural public health;

  10. Focused patient management on unique needs in rural settings;

  11. Other necessary infrastructures to increase both revenues from payments and reimbursements and other efficiencies and outcomes are key;

  12. The transition to value-based care will be very sensitive for rural healthcare with reduced reserves and with unique needs and solutions.;

  13. Having a national agenda to reduce disparities by states for funders of rural healthcare around the U.S. will help level the playing field. The differences in reimbursements and uncompensated care for the same services around the U.S. widely vary based on local rules and regulations and (both state and federal) often cause essential services in rural communities to no longer be sustained.; and

  14. Adequate payments and better payment systems are needed with a level playing field.

  Anuj Vohra, DO. Chairman and Medical Director of the Department of Emergency Medicine of Charlotte Hungerford Hospital (Torrington, Conn.): My best idea to save rural healthcare is advancing access to care by means of telemedicine, home visits and increasing preventative care.

  Charles Emerman, MD. Chair, Emergency Medicine and Medical Director, Service Line of MetroHealth Medical Center (Cleveland, Ohio): Smaller rural hospitals would do well to form more robust clinical programs that leverage the resources of the larger urban hospitals. For example, we have trauma surgeons who take calls at two smaller rural hospitals. The local surgeons are happy not to take overnight ED calls. The trauma surgeons operate locally when appropriate and then transfer the more complex patients. It works out well for the patients, the local medical staff, and both systems.

  Andy Anderson, MD. Chief Medical and Quality Officer of RWJBarnabas Health Medical Group (West Orange, N.J.): Rural healthcare is essential to address the health and healthcare needs of patients and families who live in rural communities. My best idea to save rural healthcare is to provide robust virtual access (through telemedicine and remote patient monitoring devices) to triage and address acute care needs, manage chronic conditions better, and provide access to the best specialists to diagnose and treat complex medical conditions.

  Nisha Mehta, MD. Founder of Physician Side Gigs: Maintaining the quality of care in rural areas will become increasingly challenging as healthcare personnel shortages continue to amplify. Employers will need to place a real focus on retention and recruitment of clinicians, and systemically, threats to compensation by CMS and other payers need to be addressed. Medicare cuts are short sighted and will only exacerbate existing issues with access to care.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/25/2023 – 22:20

• That's Science? Congress Must Probe The Rationale For COVID Mask Mandates
  That’s Science? Congress Must Probe The Rationale For COVID Mask Mandates

  Authored by Robert E. Moffit via RealClear Wire,

  The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives recently authorized formation of a new Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. Peering into the murky Chinese origins of COVID-19, especially any connection to U.S. government funding, will be a top priority. And that’s as it should be.  

  

  Dr. Anthony Fauci will no doubt be a star witness. The former director of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases at the NIH says he would welcome an invitation to testify on his role during the pandemic. Lawmakers should note, however, that in his recent deposition in the continuing case of The State of Missouri, et al. v Joseph Biden et al in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, Fauci responded to questions by saying that he could not recall… 174 times. New congressional inquiries might refresh his memory. 

  However, the subcommittee must concentrate more on “The Science” than on Dr. Fauci. Throughout the pandemic, federal officials who claim to represent “The Science” gave mixed messages. This left citizens eager to follow “The Science” frightened and confused.  

  Take, for instance, the issue of masking and mask mandates. The mixed messages had a tremendous effect on all Americans, especially schoolchildren.   

  On this topic, Dr. Fauci’s recent deposition was revealing. In a February 2020 email, Sylvia Burwell, former Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) asked Fauci whether she should wear a mask at the airport in her travels. He replied:   

  Masks are really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected, rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection. The typical mask you buy in the drugstore is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through material. It might, however, provide some slight benefit in keep [sic] out gross droplets if someone coughs or sneezes on you. I do not recommend that you wear a mask, particularly since you’re going to a low-risk location.  

  So, Fauci expressed privately to a former colleague a strong conviction that cloth masks were ineffective. That view was broadly shared by other senior federal public health officials, including both Dr. Nancy Messonnier, Fauci’s colleague at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and former Surgeon General of the United States Jerome Adams. Indeed, in a March 2020 social media message to the public Dr. Adams warned: “Seriously, people, STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing the general public from catching Coronavirus.”  

  Fauci’s initial response to Burwell’s question was in accord with previous scientific research. Furthermore, in the following months, peer-reviewed literature on masking and viral infection confirmed Fauci’s initial advice. For example, a May 2020 review of the professional literature on the subject for the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, concluded “In pooled analysis, we found no significant reduction in influenza transmission with the use of face masks.” Also in May 2020, researchers writing in The New England Journal of Medicine observed: “We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection.” In March 2022, a British Medical Journal study on the masking of Spanish school-aged children found that cloth face masks “…were not associated with lower SARS-CoV-2 incidence or transmission, suggesting that this intervention was not effective.”   

  Yet, in April 2020, the federal government’s masking advice took a 180-degree turn. The CDC recommended that all Americans wear masks, and CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield went as far as to declare in a congressional hearing that face masks would be even more effective than a (yet unavailable) Covid-19 vaccine.   

  The CDC recommendations were quickly translated into state and local mask mandates (sometimes, as in New York City, with stiff fines) throughout the nation. In January 2021, CDC imposed a mask mandate on persons taking public transportation, which was subsequently struck down in federal court because CDC had no statutory authority to impose such a mandate.    

  Here’s the mystery. Why exactly did CDC masking policy change so dramatically in that brief period between February and April 2020?  Did CDC conduct its own randomized controlled trial to determine the efficacy of either masking or the kinds of masks that would be most efficacious? The agency should have, of course, but it did not.  

  Did federal officials come into possession of some groundbreaking scientific research refuting previous peer-reviewed studies that had cast doubt on the efficacy of masking?  

  That question came during the Nov. 23, 2022, deposition:  

  Attorney: “How many studies were done between February of 2020, when you emailed Ms. Burwell and told her that ‘the typical mask you buy in the drugstore is not really effective in keeping out the virus, which is small enough to pass through the material” between when you said that and April 3^rd of 2020, what studies were done of the efficacy of masks… in preventing the spread of- of- Covid-19?”  

  Dr. Fauci: “I could find those—and get them for you, but I don’t have them in my fingertips right now.”   

  Later during the deposition, Fauci said that he changed his mind about masking because by April of 2020 there was no feared shortage of masks for health care workers, and the public could get them without depriving these workers the much-needed protection that masks would provide.   

  Dr. Fauci also said that it had become clear that the virus spread from persons who did not have symptoms, and that masking would help stop asymptomatic transmission. Finally, he asserted, “Evidence began accumulating that masks actually work in preventing acquisition and transmission.”  

  Under further questioning, Dr. Fauci repeated that his view on masking changed due to “new” scientific evidence., Missouri’s attorney again, therefore, pressed the question about the science behind the masking policy.  

  Attorney: “Were there placebo-based, randomized, double-blind studies of the efficacy of masking that were done between February and April of 2020?”  

  Dr. Fauci: “I don’t recall. I’d have to go back and take a close look at the literature. I don’t recall.”  

  Attorney: “Have you seen any studies that contradict the efficacy of masking?”     

  Dr. Fauci: “There were some studies early on—I don’t know the dates of them—that made the statement that masks were not effective. When those studies were subject to statistical scrutinization, they were felt to be not definitive. Subsequent to that time, there have been studies to indicate that in situations where mask wearing was compared to not mask wearing, that masks clearly have an effect.” 

  While lawmakers may want to trust Dr. Fauci on this point, they must verify it.   

  Maybe Dr. Fauci can produce those studies he did not have “at his fingertips.” Perhaps at some point between February and April of 2020 there were novel studies on the effectiveness of masks, including the advantages of the mandatory masking of schoolchildren. Conceivably, new evidence was “accumulating” that, contrary to previous studies, masking was broadly effective in preventing viral infection and transmission. Perhaps the “statistical scrutinization” of previous studies on masking did indeed reveal flaws.  

  Lawmakers can resolve these questions by securing the more recent scholarship that Dr. Fauci alludes to as refuting previous masking studies. It would also be edifying to know who, in fact, did the “statistical scrutinization” and if—and where—it was published.  

  What matters is the science, not Dr. Fauci’s memory.  

  For lawmakers, Fauci’s role during the pandemic is just one item on the congressional oversight agenda. As outlined in a Heritage Foundation Special Report, a dozen other areas are ripe for congressional inquiry, ranging from the debacle of diagnostic testing and flawed vaccine policies to the impact of lockdowns and school closures. The federal government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic is, unfortunately, a target rich environment. Understandably, many members of Congress, like millions of their constituents, are angry.  

  But a word of caution. A scattershot, highly inflammatory process of congressional investigation will not serve the American people well. Lawmakers should not allow themselves to transform these necessary probes into tiresome “gotcha” political theater—a powerful temptation in our polarized political environment. Rather, House and Senate investigators need to target the specific rationale for each of the major federal policy recommendations over the past three years, with a view toward forging positive legislative changes that would enable the federal government to perform better when the next pandemic hits America’s shores.  

  Robert E. Moffit, PhD, is a Senior Fellow in Health and Welfare Studies at the Heritage Foundation.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/25/2023 – 21:40

• Tesla 'Weaponizes' Price-Cuts To Crush EV Competition
  Tesla ‘Weaponizes’ Price-Cuts To Crush EV Competition

  Tesla, Inc. plans to report fourth-quarter results after the market close on Wednesday. Investors seek updates on the 2023 demand outlook after the EV company slashed prices on its cars worldwide. 

  The automaker realized it’s not only EV game in the ‘carbon-free’ town, as US, Europe, and Japanese car companies are ramping up EV production. Tesla slashed Model 3 and Model Y prices by up 20% in hopes of stoking demand as the entire EV market becomes saturated but also slows.

  WSJ spoke with Stanly Tran, a 32yo California psychotherapist, who was on the waiting list to purchase a Ford Mustang Mach-E electric SUV but quickly canceled his reservation and bought a Model Y after hearing about the price cut. 

  “‘There’s no way,'” Tran said when he heard about the price cut, adding the Model Y offered more range and a competitive price to the Mach-E. 

  Tesla’s move to squeeze competitors by sacrificing some of its strong operating-profit margins is a desperate attempt to increase sales but also roiled the secondary market for used Teslas. 

  Meanwhile, dealers who sell Teslas from their used-car inventory say valuations on some models fell by several thousand dollars following this month’s price cut. In the first 17 days of January, prices of 2020 model year or newer used Teslas were down about 25% from their peak in June of last year, about double the rate of the industrywide drop during that same period, according to Edmunds. –WSJ

  One example of the price cut was the Model Y, now priced at $53,000, down from about $66,000. And if buyers qualify for the federal tax credit, they can loop off another $7,500. 

  

  Bank of America analyst John Murphy said, unlike Tesla, traditional automakers have very thin profit margins or lose money on their EV lineups. He said such a move to reduce prices could spark a price war.  

  “These price cuts are likely to make the business even more difficult, just as they are attempting to ramp production of EV offerings,” Murphy said.

  The lingering question is if the Elon Musk-led carmaker stoked demand. WSJ has some data on that:

  The number of car shoppers researching Tesla surged following the early January price cut, research site Edmunds said. The Model Y was the second-most-researched vehicle on Edmunds’ website for the week ended Jan. 15, up from 70th the week prior. The Model 3 moved up 36 spots.

  Soon after the price cut, applications for financing of Tesla vehicles tripled at Tenet, a New York startup firm that provides financing to EV buyers. The influx of customers has remained elevated, Tenet Chief Executive Alex Liegl said.

  One consequence of the price cut is that it might spark an EV price war with Detroit. Then there’s the issue of angry car dealers and owners who saw their Teslas drop in price overnight. Such a move is a sign of desperation by Tesla. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/25/2023 – 21:20

• CDC Officials Who Spread Misinformation Apologized To Source Of False Data But Not To Public: Emails
  CDC Officials Who Spread Misinformation Apologized To Source Of False Data But Not To Public: Emails

  Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  U.S. health officials who spread inflated COVID-19 child death data in public meetings apologized to the source of the false data but not to the public, newly obtained emails show.

  

  Drs. Katherine Fleming-Dutra and Sara Oliver, with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), offered the false data in 2022 while U.S. officials weighed granting emergency authorization to COVID-19 vaccines for children as young as 6 months.

  The study they cited for the data was published ahead of peer review by a group comprised primarily of British authors. The study was corrected after the public meetings.

  Emails obtained by The Epoch Times showed that Fleming-Dutra and Oliver were alerted that they had spread misinformation. Neither the officials nor the CDC have informed the public of the false information. Newly obtained emails showed the officials apologized to Seth Flaxman, one of the study’s authors, and even offered to see whether the study could be published in the CDC’s quasi-journal.

  “I feel … that we owe you an apology,” Oliver wrote to Flaxman on June 27, about 10 days after she and Fleming-Dutra falsely said there had been at least 1,433 deaths primarily attributed to COVID-19 in America among those 19 and younger. “We draw the attention of a variety of individuals with the ACIP meetings, and apologize that you got caught in it this time.”

  “I am also sorry that you got pulled into the attention around the VRBPAC and ACIP meetings,” Fleming-Dutra added. She had presented the data to the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, which advises the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which advises the CDC.

  Fleming-Dutra, Oliver, and Flaxman did not respond to requests for comment.

  Inflated Death Toll

  Using data from the CDC, Flaxman and his co-authors claimed that there were at least 1,433 deaths primarily attributed to COVID-19 among those aged 0 to 19 in the United States. The actual number was 1,088, the authors acknowledged in the corrected version of the study.

  Fleming-Dutra presented the false data as rankings to VRBPAC on June 14, 2022 and ACIP three days later. It’s not clear why the CDC didn’t examine its own database rather than relying on a preprint study.

  Oliver also cited the study while speaking during the ACIP meeting.

  The data had an impact. It showed “that this is not a minor illness in children,” Dr. Katherine Poehling, one of the ACIP members, said at the time.

  Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s director, later appeared to cite the inflated death toll and ACIP still cites the preprint, though it was later updated with the correct data.

  Flaxman updated the study after receiving an email from Kelley Krohnert, a Georgia resident who has become a fact-checker of suspect COVID-19-related claims.

  Krohnert’s concerns also made their way to Fleming-Dutra and Oliver, but the CDC officials have never publicly acknowledged promoting misinformation.

  ‘We Had an Error’

  Flaxman acknowledged in emails to Krohnert, and in a June 27 message to Fleming-Dutra and Oliver, that he did not fully understand how the CDC’s death database works.

  “Thanks for your work, and your great presentations to VRBPAC and ACIP. You cited our preprint. We’ve just updated it (see attached; it should appear on medrxiv in the next day). While none of the substantive conclusions change, we had an error which you may have seen was picked up very prominently by a blogger,” Flaxman wrote. “I am writing first to say sorry–I really regret that this happened. It was my mistake in misunderstanding the [death certificate] data, and not realizing about CDC Wonder’s provisional database.”

  Flaxman also asked for feedback on the updated study and whether the officials could help with submitting the paper to the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), a quasi-journal the CDC publishes that only includes articles (pdf) vetted and shaped by top CDC officials to align with the agency’s policies.

  “We’ve never tried to publish there, so I don’t know the process or how often they consider manuscripts from non-CDC authors,” Flaxman said. “If you do think this would be a possible route, perhaps one or both of you would want to help us revise the manuscript and join as an author?”

  Oliver wrote back first, saying that she wanted to apologize to Flaxman and that “we will absolutely review and provide feedback,” as well as context.

  “We are more than happy to do that without formally being co-authors. That way you can avoid formal CDC clearance,” Oliver wrote.

  Fleming-Dutra then chimed in with her apology, adding, “I am glad to hear that you and your team are continuing to do this important work.” She recommended Flaxman and his team review studies published in the MMWR to get a sense of the format of the digest. A large portion of her email was redacted under an exemption to the Freedom of Information Act for “inter-agency or intra-agency records.” The Epoch Times has appealed that and other redactions.

  Flaxman then notified the CDC officials that the corrected study had been made public. Fleming-Dutra replied, but the email was redacted.

  “Thanks, very useful feedback. Small update: we’re hoping to submit to JAMA Pediatrics in the next week or so, and [redacted],” Flaxman answered. He indicated that the CDC had provided feedback and questioned on how to cite it in the submission.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/25/2023 – 21:00

• Study Finds US Would Run Out Of Long-Range Munitions In 1 Week In China Hot War
  Study Finds US Would Run Out Of Long-Range Munitions In 1 Week In China Hot War

  A new study released this week by the D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has concluded that America’s defense industry is “not adequately prepared” for “a protracted conventional war” with an enemy with a large military like China.

  The findings were the result of a war games simulation which also relied heavily on observations and statistics being gained from the Ukraine-Russia war, and Washington’s ongoing military support role to Kiev.

  Information from the Ukraine war led CSIS to find that the US would rapidly deplete its munitions, particularly long-range, precision-guided ones – in merely less than a week of a hot war with China in the Taiwan Strait.

  

  “The main problem is that the U.S. defense industrial base — including the munitions industrial base — is not currently equipped to support a protracted conventional war,” the study emphasized.

  “The bottom line is the defense industrial base, in my judgment, is not prepared for the security environment that now exists,” CSIS’s Seth Jones concluded in a statement to The Wall Street Journal.

  As the study’s main author, Jones posed the question: “How do you effectively deter if you don’t have sufficient stockpiles of the kinds of munitions you’re going to need for a China-Taiwan Strait kind of scenario?” According to more from the study:

  “As the war in Ukraine illustrates, a war between major powers is likely to be a protracted, industrial-style conflict that needs a robust defense industry able to produce enough munitions and other weapons systems for a protracted war if deterrence fails…”

  “Given the lead time for industrial production, it would likely be too late for the defense industry to ramp up production if a war were to occur without major changes.”

  The report additionally pointed out that the slow-moving nature of US bureaucracy and oversight is also a fundamental aspect to the problem:

  The study also said that the U.S.’s foreign military sales (FMS) take too long because they need to be initiated by the Department of State and then executed by the Department of Defense and ultimately approved by Congress. Foreign sales have benefits, including supporting the U.S. defense industry, strengthening ally relations and preventing the sale of adversary systems to other countries, the study said.

  “The U.S. FMS system is not optimal for today’s competitive environment — an environment where such countries as China are building significant military capabilities and increasingly looking to sell them overseas,” the study stated.

  It does seem the Pentagon is taking note, and is aware that events in Ukraine have exposed US defense shortcomings, as the Biden administration chooses to get more and more involved. The New York Times reported Tuesday that the US plans to boost production of artillery ammunition by 500% over the next two years.

  Whereas the US Army previously produced 14,400 155mm shells a month, the new plans could see those numbers hit over 90,000 each month.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/25/2023 – 20:40

• Police Injured By 'Friendly Fire' On January 6
  Police Injured By ‘Friendly Fire’ On January 6

  Authored by Julie Kelly via AmGreatness.com,

  A New Jersey man will be sentenced on Friday for his participation in the events of January 6, 2021. Julian Khater, 33, faces up to eight years in prison for allegedly using pepper spray against three police officers, including the late Brian Sicknick, that afternoon.

  

  Khater and his friend, George Tanios, were arrested in March 2021 in connection with the alleged assault. After spending more than 18 months in a fetid D.C. jail under pretrial detention orders – Judge Thomas Hogan repeatedly denied attempts by his family to post bail – Khater pleaded guilty to assaulting police officers with a dangerous weapon.

  (Tanios rejected numerous plea offers on the same charges; prosecutors finally dropped the assault counts, and he pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors.)

  The Justice Department’s case was flimsy from the start, which I explained shortly after the pair’s arrest. Khater and Tanios are nothing more than human props to sustain arguably the biggest falsehood related to January 6—that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick was killed in the line of duty. Even though a coroner concluded Sicknick died of two strokes caused by a blood clot near his brain, his death is still shamefully exploited by everyone from Joe Biden to congressional Democrats and even Sicknick’s own loved ones.

  Capitol police announced Sicknick’s passing on January 7, 2021, with claims he was “injured while physically engaging with protesters.” Donald Trump and his supporters were immediately branded as cop killers.

  The story, however, kept changing. First, the New York Times reported Sicknick had been bludgeoned to death by a fire extinguisher. After the paper retracted that story in February 2021, the media, no doubt prompted by the Justice Department, suggested Sicknick died of an allergic reaction to chemical spray.

  In an attempt to salvage the credibility of its first bogus account, the Times published another lengthy report in March 2021 with cherry-picked clips and screenshots designed to reenact the assault.

  “New videos obtained by The New York Times show publicly for the first time how the U.S. Capitol Police officer who died after facing off with rioters on Jan. 6 was attacked with chemical spray.” 

  But body camera footage from a D.C. Metropolitan police officer on duty that day raises serious doubts about the government’s claims and the Times’ face-saving story about what happened to Sicknick.

  In fact, the video shows how police, not protesters, gassed their fellow officers with chemical spray. Stricken officers, including Sicknick, appear to seek aid and shelter from the toxic gas, causing the collapse of a security line on the west side of the building.

  This six-minute clip from Officer Daniel Thau’s body camera shows the accidental discharge of a 40-millimeter canister of a chemical irritant around 2:25 p.m. on January 6. Thau ordered Officer Richard Khoury to aim a launcher with the canister at protesters assembled on scaffolding erected for Biden’s inauguration.

  “Fire it up in the air,” Thau instructed Khoury. “Just fucking shoot.”

  But Khoury misfired. “What the fuck?” he asked.

  A large cloud of chemical powder fell short of the scaffolding and instead enveloped a crowd of officers standing on the northern end of the west side of the Capitol. Officers coughed and gasped for air; some were bent over in pain. 

  The gas cloud quickly traveled southward to where Sicknick was stationed, propelled by a brisk 18-mile-per-hour wind out of the north in Washington on January 6.

  Prosecutors claim Khater sprayed Sicknick at around 2:23 p.m., but the evidence, just like everything in the January 6 saga, is dubious at best. Darren Beattie at Revolver News carefully disassembled both the Times’ reporting and the government’s evidence.

  “[From] the moment Khater raises a spray canister onward, there is not a single moment in which Khater appears in the same video frame as Officer Sicknick,” Beattie wrote in March 2021. 

  That’s because, according to a separate choppy video released by the government in April 2021, Sicknick left that area and headed north—presumably walking straight into the drifting chemical cloud produced by Khoury’s launcher.

  Sicknick is then photographed bent over near inaugural scaffolding, the same area where officers quickly advanced up a set of stairs to seek fresh air on the upper west terrace after Khoury’s misfire.

  It just happened to be the exact location where Sicknick is also seen on surveillance video recovering from the effects of chemical spray and rinsing his eyes with bottled water about two minutes after Khoury’s misfire.

  The Times’ March 2021 also suggested Khater’s “attack” on law enforcement caused many officers to abandon the secure perimeter.

  “The attack on Officer Sicknick and his colleagues comes at a key moment. Within five minutes, the police line collapses, officers retreat into the Capitol and rioters gain control over the west side of the building.”

  Except that’s not accurate.

  Testimony by a top Capitol Police official this month confirmed it was the misfire by Officer Khoury that led to the collapse of the police line, which at the time was successfully keeping the crowd away from the building:

  Defense Attorney Bradford Geyer: As we play this, if you can try to pay attention to the smoke, whether it’s just smoke or whether it’s [tear] gas, and the reactions of the officers. Okay?

  Mendoza: OK.

  (Video played.)

  Geyer: Does it seem to you there’s some kind of retreat by the officers along the line in this video?

  Report Ad

  Mendoza: Yes.

  Geyer: So could this be a reason why right around this time you had to confront protestors coming into the crypt and coming into that first floor, because there was a strategic retreat, the lines gave way, and the crowd just walked forward with provocateurs.

  Mendoza: I can’t say why that specific crowd was where they were at the time they were there.

  Mendoza also confirmed that police used “a lot of munitions that day.” Thau’s full video shows his arrival at the west side of the Capitol shortly after 1:00 p.m., more than an hour before the building was breached on the other side. Officers are seen coughing and rubbing their eyes after being hit with tear gas deployed by law enforcement.

  At around 1:50 p.m., Thau ordered another officer to “drop one in there” against the nonviolent crowd.

  He then warned his colleagues to protect themselves.

  “Wind, wind!” he shouted, referring to high wind conditions.

  As Thau tended to the injured, one officer screamed at him: “Stop doing the goddamn pepper spray!”

  Even giving the government the benefit of the doubt—that Khater attacked Sicknick a minute or so before Khoury’s misfire—it’s clear the individuals responsible for discharging copious amounts of dangerous chemicals into the air on January 6 were police officers. (Khater is seen on open source video at 2:14 p.m. complaining that “they just sprayed me,” referring to police. And body camera footage from the D.C. Metro police officers who recorded the alleged attack remains under protective seal.)

  The notion that a palm-sized container of pepper spray could disable three officers standing several feet away is simply not believable. Officer Caroline Edwards, one of the three officers Khater is accused of attacking, told the January 6 select committee that the spray she encountered was much stronger than what she endured during training. “I remember it hurting a lot more, which is saying something because the academy’s—our pepper spray is—well, it’s actually Sabre Red. It’s no joke. It literally feels like someone punched—just punched like two holes in your eye sockets. This felt like—it was just pain unimaginable.”

  That wasn’t produced by anything allegedly sprayed by Trump supporters. Potent gas that caused dozens of officers to struggle to breathe, see, or stand—some reportedly vomited—was used needlessly by law enforcement itself against a crowd obeying police commands and respecting barriers at the time.

  How many of the 140 or so officers reportedly injured on January 6 were hurt by the actions of their own colleagues?

  Of course, these facts have surfaced too late to save Julian Khater, who will face the vengeful wrath of federal prosecutors and an octogenarian judge, all of whom consider January 6 an act of domestic terror. The New York Times will again escape accountability for publishing another flawed story about what happened to Brian Sicknick.

  And the false narrative about Sicknick’s death will remain intact and leveraged for political purposes, evidence be damned—a recurring theme when it comes to anything about the events of January 6.

  *  *  *

  Your support helps protect our independence so that American Greatness can keep delivering top-quality, independent journalism that’s free to everyone. Every contribution, however big or small, helps secure our future. If you can, please consider a recurring monthly donation.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/25/2023 – 20:20

• 20 Red States Sue Biden Admin Over Migrant Parole Program
  20 Red States Sue Biden Admin Over Migrant Parole Program

  Two weeks after the state of Texas filed a lawsuit to stop the Biden administration from ignoring a federal immigration law that prevents illegal immigrants from residing in the US if they’re likely to rely on taxpayer-funded programs, a group of 20 Republican-led states, spearheaded once again by Texas AG Ken Paxton – have sued the administration again.

  

  This time, the 20 states and America First Legal, have claimed in the suit that the Department of Homeland Security effectively created a visa program without congressional approval by “announcing that it will permit up to 360,000 aliens annually from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to be ‘paroled’ into the United States for two years or longer and with eligibility for employment authorization.”

  The lawsuit claims that DHS exceeded congressional limits on parole authority – and that the agency can only issue parole on a case-by-case basis. Moreover, the agency did not have the authority to authorize the program, and ignored the mandatory notice-and-comment rulemaking requirement detailed in the Administrative Procedure Act, Just the News reports.

  Since President Joe Biden took office, more than 4 million illegal migrants have entered the United States, with a record 2.4 million doing so in fiscal year 2022 alone. The crisis shows no sign of abating, with roughly 216,000 migrants crossing the border in December 2022, an 11% increase over the November totals.

  That surge was largely driven by an influx of Cuban and Nicaraguan migrants, which the Biden administration took to indicate that its parole program for Venezuelans was succeeding, given the decline of migrants from that country. Migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti would benefit from the expanded parole process. -JTN

  When the program was originally announced, President Biden claimed that the aim was to limit the number of uninvited arrivals on the southern border because migrants would be encouraged to obtain pre-approval for entry while still in their home country.

  

  “We anticipate this action is going to substantially reduce the number of people attempting to cross our southwest border without going through a legal process,” said Biden.

  Read the complaint below:

  GOP state lawsuit on humani… by Adam Shaw

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/25/2023 – 20:00

• New Gun Regulation Handicaps The Disabled
  New Gun Regulation Handicaps The Disabled

  Authored by John R. Lott Jr. via RealClear Wire,

  The Biden administration’s newly released regulations regarding “pistol-stabilizing braces” will instantly turn tens of thousands of law-abiding Americans into felons and create a national rifle registry. But the Biden administration and the media exaggerate the costs and ignore the benefits these braces produce.

  

  Few seem to realize that stabilizing braces for pistols were originally designed to allow wounded and disabled veterans who may have lost the use of part of their hand to hold handguns. They are essentially a strap attached to the gun. Disabled individuals are often viewed as easy targets by criminals, and stabilizers make it easier to defend themselves. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) originally approved pistol braces during the Obama administration. 

  There are plenty of statements from disabled veterans, such as Rick Cicero, who lost his right arm in an explosion in Afghanistan and can still use a gun today because of the pistol-stabilizing brace. But outside of a brief mention in a Fox News story, news articles on the new regulations never mention that these braces help the disabled and make it possible for them to defend themselves. 

  Obama was hardly a friend of gun ownership, but now the Biden administration has changed the Obama administration’s decision. The ATF now concludes that any foreign-made pistols with stabilizing braces violate the law and are retroactively considered rifles and violate the size requirement for rifles. As such, registration or removal of the brace won’t bring it into compliance. The ATF leaves only two options: the destruction of the guns or their surrender to ATF. This includes imported pistols that never had a brace added to them.

  Putting aside that the ATF isn’t Congress and can’t make up new laws to redefine what a rifle is, their logic is baffling. Take two otherwise identical guns, one with a pistol brace and one that never had a pistol brace: Even if the pistol brace is removed from the gun to which it was attached, it is still banned. Meanwhile, the gun that never had the brace attached could have one added, just as easily as the gun that previously had the pistol brace could have it reattached – but only the gun that once had a pistol brace attached to it is banned.

  Of course, how the ATF is supposed to know whether you used to have the pistol brace attached to the gun is a mystery. Nor is it obvious why functionally identical foreign-made pistols should be treated differently than domestically manufactured ones.

  All this started after President Biden cited a crime in 2021 in Colorado – where a shooter used a pistol stabilizing brace when attacking shoppers in a grocery store – to justify calling for classifying such brace-affixed pistols as machine guns. Ahmed Al Alwi murdered 10 people at close range in a Boulder, Colo. grocery store. A previous shooting in 2019 by Connor Betts, in Dayton, Ohio, also involved a pistol brace. These are the only two cases of their kind and, more importantly, neither of them had any difficulty holding their guns and all their shots were fired at a short distance. There is no evidence that the brace made any difference in their ability to carry out the attacks. And there has been no surge in crime by the disabled or others using these braces.

  These new regulations aren’t surprising after Steven Dettelbach, a controversial gun control advocate, was confirmed as director of the ATF. He was narrowly confirmed only with the unanimous support of all voting Democrats, including the support of Democrats who claim to support the Second Amendment, such as Montana’s Jon Tester and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin.

  With no evidence that these two attacks were any more lethal with stabilizing braces – and with no attempt to make that case – gun control advocates haven’t seriously tried to justify the new regulation. The cost will be to the disabled Americans who will now have a harder time being able to defend themselves and their families.

  John R. Lott Jr. is a contributor to RealClearInvestigations, focusing on voting and gun rights. His articles have appeared in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, USA Today, and Chicago Tribune. Lott is an economist who has held research and/or teaching positions at the University of Chicago, Yale University, Stanford, UCLA, Wharton, and Rice.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/25/2023 – 19:40

• Arctic Air Intrusions Coming To Lower 48 Next Week
  Arctic Air Intrusions Coming To Lower 48 Next Week

  Progressive Farmer Meteorologist John Baranick penned a note this week, making a case for the return of winter for a large swath of the Lower 48 — something we’ve pointed out in recent weeks — recall, Siberia Records Minus-80 Degrees As Talk Of Polar Vortex Grows. 

  The year started with above-average temperatures for much of the Lower 48. Now Baranick forecasts a major shift in the weather for the Canadian Prairies, Northern and Central Plains, and Upper Midwest. 

  “These areas will have the longest duration of low temperatures from the upcoming event that is forecast to last about two weeks, or into mid-February,” he said. 

  Other parts of the country will see varying temperatures with the West, Southern Plains, rest of the Midwest, and Northeast more likely to see cold than warm, and the Southeast to see more warm than cold during the same time frame.

  Temperatures in the northwestern Corn Belt and Canadian Prairies will be 10 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit below normal on average during that two-week period while some bursts of arctic air will make those even colder. Warmth in the Southeast will resist the deeper penetration of the arctic air.

  Baranick noted:

  The setup of very low temperatures in the northwest and warm conditions in the Southeast will fuel an active storm period. The initial front itself will be setup by a clipper system moving through southern Canada Jan. 26-28.

  That front will be continually pushed southward by a couple of storm systems forming along that front, with the colder air reaching down to Texas and the Ohio River by Jan. 29. Another push should bring that cold air deeper early to middle of next week, but the far Southeast, near the Gulf and Atlantic Coasts, are likely to be spared the colder temperatures until late next week.

  Baranick’s forecast aligns with the Climate Prediction Center’s latest 8-14 day outlook for Feb. 1-7. 

  

  The latest run of the Global Ensemble Forecast System model shows arctic air should begin pouring into the Midwest this weekend. 

  

  “The incoming cold will send energy demand up, and how often that reaches the more populated areas of the country in the east and south will determine how much demand increases. Natural gas prices have taken a dive recently due to a very warm January. But they are likely to go up,” Baranick explained. 

  However, NatGas futures dropped to a 19-month low on Wednesday despite long-term weather models forecasting colder weather for the Lower 48. 

  

   Baranick asked this question:

  When does the cold recede? Models disagree on timing, but a building ridge of high pressure in the Southeast may be able to push back the cold more to the western portions of the U.S. and Canada to bring some relief around mid-February.

  And he added: “So, buckle up, the reign of winter is back upon us and will have some staying power.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/25/2023 – 19:20

• Biden 'Dietary Expert' Claims Willpower Doesn't Exist And Obesity Is A 'Brain Disease'
  Biden ‘Dietary Expert’ Claims Willpower Doesn’t Exist And Obesity Is A ‘Brain Disease’

  Authored by Ben Bartee via PJMedia.com,

  Dr. Fatima Stanford, who sits on Biden’s 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, appeared on corporate media to share her lived experiences as a fat propagandist.

  Here are the highlights of Stanford’s remarkably detached-from-reality obesity religion masquerading as science:

  • “[Obesity] is a brain disease.”

  • “Throw [willpower] out the window.”

  • “The number one cause of obesity is genetics. That means if you were born to parents that have obesity, you have a 50-85% likelihood of having the disease yourself even with optimal diet, exercise, sleep management, stress management, so when people see families that have obesity, the assumption is, ‘Ugh. What are they feeding those kids? They’re doing something wrong.’”

  • “Doctors do not understand obesity.”

  To summarize the tenets of the faith, fat children (who are getting fatter by the year) of fat parents are fat because of genetics, not because the whole family eats the same GMO-processed slop.

  Doctors have biases against obese people, and they also don’t understand obesity.

  Loving and liberal tolerance is not about tolerance but about enabling destructive behaviors that weaken society and, as a result, any potential resistance to the power structure.

  Fat people are probably too depressed and downtrodden and wheezy to put up a fight.

  Plus, if they can keep you in the “sweet spot” of barely alive, the medical industry can extract all of the fats’ wealth with their products and services while they slowly expire.

  They want you right in the middle pic.twitter.com/RWaZ8NgGz1

  — Luke Rudkowski (@Lukewearechange) January 24, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  You’ll be scandalized and flabbergasted to learn that the good doctor is actually a paid pharmaceutical shill — or, as the New York Times more delicately puts it, “Dr. Stanford has served as an adviser for a number of pharmaceutical companies, a common practice for experts in the field.”

  That’s just the way it is.

  Bein’ real don’t appeal to the brother in you (Yeah)
  You gotta operate the easy way
  “I made a G today,” but you made it in a sleazy way
  Sellin’ crack to the kids (Oh-oh), “I gotta get paid” (Oh)
  Well hey, well that’s the way it is.
  —Tupac, ‘Changes’

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/25/2023 – 19:00

• Arizona Lawmakers Push Bill To Make Bitcoin Legal Tender
  Arizona Lawmakers Push Bill To Make Bitcoin Legal Tender

  A bill introduced by Sen. Wendy Rogers reflects growing interest in bitcoin from U.S. states…

  

  State Sen. Wendy Rogers (R-AZ) has introduced a set of bills aimed at making bitcoin legal tender in Arizona and allowing state agencies to accept bitcoin.

  As Bitcoin Magazine’s ‘BTCCasey’ reports, the proposed legislation aims to recognize bitcoin as a legal form of currency in Arizona, allowing it to be used to pay for debts, taxes and other financial obligations.

  This would mean that all transactions that are currently done in U.S. dollars could potentially be done with bitcoin, and individuals and businesses would have the option to use bitcoin as they see fit.

  Specifically mentioning bitcoin alone, the legal tender bill defines bitcoin as, “the decentralized, peer-to-peer digital currency in which a record of transactions is maintained on the Bitcoin blockchain and new units of currency are generated by the computational solution of mathematical problems and that operates independently of a central bank.”

  The acceptance bill is more broad, saying that, “A state agency may enter into an agreement with a cryptocurrency issuer to provide a method to accept cryptocurrency as a payment method of fines, civil penalties or other penalties, rent, rates, taxes, fees, charges, revenue, financial obligations and special assessments to pay any amount due to that agency or this state.”

  Additionally, as CoinTelegraph reports, in legislation introduced in the first session of the Arizona State Senate in 2023, Senators Rogers, Borrelli, and Wadsack proposed having Arizona residents decide on amending the state’s constitution in regard to crypto and property taxes.

  

  Should the measure pass the legislature, voters could choose in November 2024 to make virtual currency — specifically tokens that are not “a representation of the United States dollar or a foreign currency” –  tax-exempt.

  Under Arizona’s constitution, all federal, state, county and municipal property are tax exempt, as are public debts, many household goods, and certain “stocks of raw or finished materials, unassembled parts, works in process or finished products”.

  Data from the Arizona Secretary of State indicates that there were more than 4 million registered voters in the November 2022 general election, with the state leaning slightly Republican.

  This is the second time that Sen. Rogers has introduced a bill aimed at making bitcoin legal tender in her state. She introduced the same amendment in January 2022, which died by the second reading.

  Although it may appear there are slim chances of the bill passing this time, El Salvador’s adoption of bitcoin as legal tender has proven to be a boon for growth and investment in the country.

  Recent actions in states like Texas, New Hampshire, Missouri and Mississippi all indicate increasing U.S. state interest in bitcoin and its benefits.

  As bitcoin adoption strengthens, the likelihood of such bills passing will only increase. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/25/2023 – 18:40

• "I Believe He Was Murdered": Ghislane Maxwell On Jeffrey Epstein's Death
  “I Believe He Was Murdered”: Ghislane Maxwell On Jeffrey Epstein’s Death

  Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Former socialite and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell told Britain’s Talk TV in a jailhouse interview that she believes her former associate and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein was murdered.

  

  Epstein, who was facing multiple charges of sex trafficking of minors, was found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in New York City in August 2019.

  His death was officially ruled as a suicide by hanging, but there has been widespread speculation about the cause. For instance, a forensic pathologist hired by Epstein’s brother said multiple fractures found in his neck were “very unusual in suicidal hangings” and more consistent with strangulation.

  Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence in a Florida prison for helping Epstein sexually abuse girls, told Talk TV that she believes Epstein’s death was no suicide.

  “I believe that he was murdered,” Maxwell said in the Talk TV interview. “I was shocked. Then I wondered how it had happened because as far as I was concerned, he was going to … I was sure he was going to appeal.”

  Many people have united in skepticism that Epstein could have taken his own life a mere month after being arrested on sex trafficking charges.

  In particular, a number of people have pointed to Epstein’s connections to powerful individuals, some of whom may have been implicated in illicit activities with him and would have wanted to keep him quiet.

  Maxwell said earlier that one of her fellow inmates was offered money to murder her and schemed to “strangle her in her sleep,” according to court papers filed last year by her lawyers ahead of her sentencing.

  “This incident reflects the brutal reality that there are numerous prison inmates who would not hesitate to kill Ms. Maxwell—whether for money, fame, or simple ‘street cred,’” the lawyers wrote in the filing, suggesting someone may have wanted Maxwell dead badly enough to pay for it.

  Maxwell was sentenced on June 28, 2022, to 20 years in prison for conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse minors.

  She is serving time at Florida’s low-security FCI Tallahassee prison.

  

  Questions Unanswered

  Questions have swirled about the circumstances surrounding Epstein’s death since he was found dead on Aug. 10, 2019, in his cell with a bedsheet around his neck.

  Epstein’s death sparked outrage that such a high-profile prisoner could have gone unmonitored at a facility where such infamous inmates like Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and Wall Street swindler Bernie Madoff came and went without incident.

  Epstein had been placed on suicide watch about a month before his death after he was found on his cell floor on July 23 with bruises on his neck. He was later taken off suicide watch and placed in a high-security housing unit where he was less closely monitored but still supposed to be checked on every half hour.

  Two jail guards who were supposed to monitor Epstein were accused by prosecutors of falling asleep and surfing the internet that night rather than checking on him every 30 minutes.

  The pair, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas, would later admit they “willfully and knowingly” falsified records to make it seem they were following the correct check-in protocols with regard to Epstein.

  In January 2022, the criminal case against Noel and Thomas was dropped after they complied with the six-month deferred prosecution agreements they agreed to earlier, which included 100 hours of community service and cooperating with a Justice Department (DOJ) probe into Epstein’s death.

  Medical Examiner: ‘The Cause Is Hanging’

  Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Barbara Sampson ruled Epstein’s death a suicide by hanging. She said she made the determination “after careful review of all investigative information, including complete autopsy findings.”

  Not long after Sampson ruled Epstein’s death a suicide, Epstein’s brother hired forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden, who was in the room for Epstein’s autopsy, to review the evidence.

  Baden, who was New York City’s chief medical examiner in the 1970s, said at the time that the evidence suggested Epstein may have been murdered. He said that Epstein’s injuries were more consistent with those found in homicide victims and that he hadn’t seen the type of neck bone injuries that Epstein had in any suicides that he had investigated. Baden added, however, that his observations were not conclusive.

  Some experts have said that, while uncommon, injuries to the hyoid bone that Epstein had do sometimes occur in suicidal hangings, more so in older people. Epstein was 66 at the time of his death.

  After Baden issued his opinion, Sampson responded by saying that no conclusions should be drawn from a single piece of evidence or unusual injury.

  “I stand firmly behind our determination of the cause and manner of death for Mr. Epstein,” she said in October 2019. “The cause is hanging, the manner is suicide.”

  ‘Serious Irregularities’

  Then-Attorney General William Barr said at the time that there were “serious irregularities” at the Manhattan jail where Epstein died, vowing that the DOJ’s inspector general would “get to the bottom of what happened” and that there “will be accountability.” That investigation continues and no report has been released yet.

  Following Barr’s remarks, then-House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and then-ranking member Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) sent a letter to the Bureau of Prisons asking 23 questions about Epstein’s death. In the letter, they cited deficiencies in inmate protocol and requested information about the Bureau of Prisons’ suicide prevention policies, resources, and staffing.

  A subsequent report (pdf) prepared by the Bureau of Prisons National Suicide Prevention Coordinator, Psychology Services Branch, Central Office, put forward a timeline of events and circumstances leading up to Epstein’s death.

  The report stated that a facilities assistant described Epstein as “distraught, sad, and a little confused” when he arrived at the correctional facility on July 6, 2019.

  The assistant was cited in the report as saying that, even though Epstein said he felt fine, she wasn’t convinced and wrote that he seemed “dazed and withdrawn” and advised in an email that someone from Psychology should talk to him to “just be on the safe side and prevent any suicidal thoughts.”

  Following a court proceeding on July 8, Epstein denied having any suicidal thoughts but due to risk factors was put on psychological observation, a protocol that is less restrictive than suicide watch. The report says he was taken off psychological observation several days later.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/25/2023 – 18:20

• Kremlin Reacts To Doomsday Clock Moving Closer To Midnight
  Kremlin Reacts To Doomsday Clock Moving Closer To Midnight

  The Kremlin has weighed in on The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moving the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight. As we reported earlier, the body of scientists and intellectuals which have maintained the clock since 1947 on Tuesday moved it to 90 seconds till midnight, which is the closest it’s been in history. It seeks to gauge how close the world stands to nuclear war and total annihilation. 

  The Bulletin explained that the clock moving closer is mostly due to escalation among world powers in Ukraine. The Russian government on Wednesday called it “really alarming” – with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirming that de-escalation does not at all seem to be on the horizon, and that the question of ceasefire talks is a thing of the past.

  

  “On the whole, the situation is really alarming,” Peskov said, explaining that at this point nations must be “particularly attentive, vigilant and responsive” – and willing to take appropriate measures to reduce risk of nuclear war.

  The Tuesday change put the clock closer by 10 seconds compared to the year before.  As The Hill reviews: “The previous record of 100 seconds to midnight was set in 2020. In the clock’s history, midnight has been as far as 17 minutes away, which happened in 1991 at the end of the Cold War.”

  “Midnight has typically been close to 10 or more minutes away throughout much of the clock’s history, even during the Cold War, but it has been no more than a few minutes away in modern times.”

  The bipartisan DC consensus in favor of Biden’s war escalation in Ukraine blissfully marches on, as usual, despite graver warnings of escalation. The more escalation there is, the less debate.

  The key question remains: how are the lives of Americans improved from this war?👇 https://t.co/Ll27tIsogh

  — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 25, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  With the US and Germany on Wednesday confirming that they are sending heavy battle tanks in a fresh major escalation which a mere months ago had not been a realistic consideration, journalist Glenn Greenwald has pointed out that we are in a situation of “more escalation” and “less debate”.

  He poses the question of the US public broadly – “The key question remains: how are the lives of Americans improved from this war?”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/25/2023 – 18:00

• House Committee Chair Calls For Probe Into '$60 Billion' In Fake COVID-19 Unemployment Claims
  House Committee Chair Calls For Probe Into ‘$60 Billion’ In Fake COVID-19 Unemployment Claims

  Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) is calling for an investigation into the “historic theft of taxpayer dollars from COVID-era unemployment programs” after a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that as much as $60 billion may have been spent on fraudulent claims for unemployment insurance during the pandemic.

  

  The report, released on Jan. 23, said that the Department of Labor (DOL) stated that about $878 billion in total unemployment benefits were paid from April 2020 through September 2022.

  GAO said that at least $4.3 billion in unemployment insurance (UI) fraud has been formally confirmed by state workforce agencies, while at least $45 billion in payments have been flagged for potential fraud by the DOL’s Office of Inspector General.

  The federal government started an unemployment aid program in March 2020. GAO added that it’s difficult to know for sure the extent of fraud in unemployment insurance programs across the system during the pandemic.

  For example, it noted that the Labor Department, based on states’ reviews of samples of claims, estimates that as much as $8.5 billion was spent on fraudulent UI claims in 2021.

  According to GAO, if that level were to be extrapolated to total spending across all UI programs during the wider pandemic period, it would suggest more than $60 billion in fraudulent payments were made.

  

  ‘Hard-Earned Tax Dollars Lost to Criminal Activity, Fraud’

  The report notes, however, that the figure is an estimate, subject to limitations regarding its validity and accuracy, and should be “interpreted with caution” while the actual amount is unclear.

  In a statement on Monday, Smith said that the GAO report “only scratches the surface of what is publicly known about the unprecedented scope, size, and severity of the fraud.”

  “This report proves what Republicans have already been saying. American families, whose wages have eroded under President [Joe] Biden’s inflation crisis, have watched as hundreds of billions of their hard-earned tax dollars were lost to criminal activity and fraud because Democrats refused to acknowledge the problem and repeatedly rejected Republican efforts to put basic safeguards in place to protect against this activity,” Smith said.

  “Congressional Democrats walked away from their oversight responsibilities of getting to the bottom of how this happened, what they could do to prevent it, and even how much has fully been lost, leaving criminals to profit off the backs of taxpayers. Republicans are committed to investigating fraud and conducting rigorous oversight on behalf of working families,” he added.

  The Missouri lawmaker also pointed to testimony (pdf) by DOL Inspector General Larry D. Turner in March last year stating that at least $163 billion in pandemic UI benefits could have been “paid improperly, with a significant portion attributable to fraud.”

  According to The Washington Post, the government has so far recovered just over $4 billion of that, which amounts to just 2.4 percent of the wrongful payments.

  

  Actual Unemployment Fraud Figure Could Be Much Higher

  Smith also pointed to estimates by experts including Blake Hall, CEO of ID.me, who told Axios in 2021 that as much as $400 billion went on fraudulent unemployment claims. Half of all unemployment spending may have been stolen, Hall told the publication.

  A statement issued in September 2022 by the DOL inspector general said that more than 190,000 investigations relating to UI fraud have been opened since the start of the pandemic, but so far just over 1,000 individuals have been charged.

  While GAO noted in its report that the DOL has taken steps to address fraudulent jobless benefits, such as issuing guidance, providing funding to states, and deploying teams to recommend improvements to state unemployment insurance programs, the watchdog noted that as of December 2022, the department has “not yet developed an antifraud strategy based on leading practices in GAO’s Fraud Risk Framework.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/25/2023 – 17:40

• Facebook Reinstates Trump After Two Years With "New Guardrails In Place"
  Facebook Reinstates Trump After Two Years With “New Guardrails In Place”

  A little more than a week after the Trump campaign urged Facebook parent Meta to lift the ban on the former president, the social media giant has agreed to reinstate him on both Facebook and Instagram after a two-year ban, according to Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs.

  “We’ve always believed that Americans should be able to hear from the people who want to lead the country,” Clegg said.

  “We don’t want to stand in the way of that.”

  

  As Meta wrote in a lengthy blog post:

  “Social media is rooted in the belief that open debate and the free flow of ideas are important values, especially at a time when they are under threat in many places around the world. As a general rule, we don’t want to get in the way of open, public and democratic debate on Meta’s platforms — especially in the context of elections in democratic societies like the United States.

  The public should be able to hear what their politicians are saying — the good, the bad and the ugly — so that they can make informed choices at the ballot box. But that does not mean there are no limits to what people can say on our platform. When there is a clear risk of real world harm — a deliberately high bar for Meta to intervene in public discourse — we act.

  …

  We know that any decision we make on this issue will be fiercely criticized. Reasonable people will disagree over whether it is the right decision. But a decision had to be made, so we have tried to make it as best we can in a way that is consistent with our values and the process we established in response to the Oversight Board’s guidance.”

  Interestingly, Meta’s Oversight Board wrote its own blog post distancing itself from the decision: 

  Today’s decision by Meta is a pivotal moment in the debate over the best way to handle harmful content posted by politicians on social media.

  Today’s decision to reinstate Mr. Trump on Meta’s platforms sat with Meta alone — the Board did not have a role in the decision.

  As Nick Clegg noted, “I am the the ultimate decision maker on these kinds of issues in the company.”

  Cue the outrage mob explaining how this will end democracy as we know it…

  Trump incited an insurrection. And tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power.

  He’s shown no remorse. No contrition.

  Giving him back access to a social media platform to spread his lies and demagoguery is dangerous.@facebook caved, giving him a platform to do more harm.

  — Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) January 25, 2023

  Despite all the fearmongering, Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, says “this is the right call”…

  “…not because the former president has any right to be on the platform but because the public has an interest in hearing directly from candidates for political office. There are narrow circumstances in which social media platforms really have no choice but to take down political leaders’ posts – which is why we endorsed Meta’s decision to suspend Trump’s account when he used it to encourage violence. In most circumstances, though, it’s better if the major social media platforms err on the side of leaving speech up, even if the speech is offensive or false, so that it can be addressed by other users and other institutions.”

  Additionally, Katie Fallow, senior counsel at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, points out that “big tech platforms already exercise a huge amount of power over public discourse online. In general, we don’t want them also deciding which political leaders we hear from and which ones we don’t.”

  Former President Trump has responded in his usual under-stated manner:

  Trump was banned from the platform shortly after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

  The reinstatement of Trump’s accounts will allow him to run ads via his Facebook and Instagram pages, which have 34 million and 23 million followers, respectively.

  • Trump relied heavily on Facebook ads in previous election cycles for fundraising and list-building.

  • Under Elon Musk, Twitter has also reinstated Trump’s account, but he has not posted yet, continuing to rely on his account at Truth Social instead. -Axios

  That said, Clegg warned that “We just do not want — if he is to return to our services — for him to do what he did on January 6, which is to use our services to delegitimize the 2024 election, much as he sought to discredit the 2020 election.”

  Trump’s accounts will not be reinstated immediately, as Meta engineers will need time to build in nanny capabilities to restrict certain posts or ad capabilities in the future, if needed.

  The former president will be subject to new policies governing accounts by public figures during periods of civil unrest – under which Meta can restrict the account for between one month and two years.

  • More serious violations will merit either a six or 12-month restriction from creating content or a full account restriction for two years, if severe.

  • Trump will also be subject to a crisis policy protocol, introduced by Meta in August, that will consider both on and off-platform risks of imminent harm to evaluating whether the actions or speech of any public figures requires sanctioning.

  • “If he now posts further violating content, that content will be removed, of course, and he could be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation,” Clegg said. -Axios

  Interestingly, Trump has an exclusivity deal with his social media company, Truth Social – which requires him to “first channel any and all social media communications” to Truth for at least six hours before cross-posting the content to other platforms, according to SEC filings. That agreement expires in June, according to Rolling Stone, which notes that it would be right around when Republican primary season begins to heat up.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/25/2023 – 17:21

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• "Crimson Contagion"
  “Crimson Contagion”

  Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via DailyReckoning.com,

  The lockdowns of March 2020 shocked the American people and most public health agencies, not to mention infectious disease doctors.

  

  The idea of school shutdowns, business closures, plus mandatory remote work and other restrictions have previously seemed inconceivable. It was especially remarkable to have such an “all-of-government” response to a virus that we already knew posed a threat mainly to the elderly and infirm.

  Issues like public-health precedent, American legal tradition, and medical knowledge about dealing with respiratory viruses, not to mention natural immunity and collateral damage of lockdowns, were all thrown out the window.

  Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s book The Real Anthony Fauci mentions a tabletop exercise called “Crimson Contagion” that ran from January through August, 2019. I had not previously heard of it and I found the mention remarkable, simply because it proves that not everyone was shocked by lockdowns.

  They were not part of official planning documents of either the CDC or WHO but they were clearly in the plans of someone.

  This Is Eerie

  I’ve only followed up on this report in light of growing focus on the person who coordinated Crimson Contagion: Robert Kadlec, who served in the Trump administration as Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services, Preparedness and Response. It was he who also ran the Covid response between HHS and the Department of Homeland Security.

  Kadlec’s lifetime government service (and, yes, he is said to be CIA) extends all the way back to the G.W. Bush administration when in 2007 he took the position of Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Biodefense Policy on the Homeland Security Council from 2007 to 2009.

  The very notion of lockdowns originated in that administration.

  The 2019 tabletop exercise involved a huge number of public-sector agencies across all states plus many private-sector associations. It postulated a disease scenario in which a respiratory virus begins in China and spreads around the world by air travelers.

  It’s first detected in Chicago. The World Health Organization declares a pandemic 47 days later. But then it was too late: 110 million Americans became sick, with 7.7 million hospitalized and 586,000 dead.

  The conclusion of the exercise was that government was not well prepared for a pandemic and urged more planning and fast acting to implement what we now call lockdowns as we await a vaccine. Presumably, the vaccine then fixes everything.

  The public knew nothing of this exercise until March 19, 2020, when the New York Times reported on it for the first time. This was one day following the detailed release of stay-at-home orders by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The next day, National Public Radio also ran a report on Crimson Contagion.

  A Trial Run

  The Times reported:

  The Crimson Contagion planning exercise run last year by the Department of Health and Human Services involved officials from 12 states and at least a dozen federal agencies. They included the Pentagon, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the National Security Council. Groups like the American Red Cross and American Nurses Association were invited to join, as were health insurance companies and major hospitals like the Mayo Clinic.

  The war game-like exercise was overseen by Robert P. Kadlec, a former Air Force physician who has spent decades focused on biodefense issues. After stints on the Bush administration’s Homeland Security Council and the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he was appointed assistant secretary of Health and Human Services for Preparedness and Response.

  Also participating were former Trump administration officials Rex Tillerson (Secretary of State, 2017-2018) and John F. Kelly, who was White House chief of staff from 2017 to 2019. The NYT even ran a picture of the two of them at the event.

  Here are some direct quotes from the October 2019 report of Crimson Contagion:

  The exercise revealed several workforce protection challenges under conditions where medical countermeasures, such as the pandemic vaccine, antiviral medications, and personal protective equipment, are limited. To protect the public prior to vaccine distribution, public health officials issued guidance on the implementation of nonpharmaceutical interventions intended to slow the spread of the virus.

  In keeping with non-pharmaceutical intervention recommendations, employers – including government entities – sought to practice social distancing by having a significant portion of their employees work remotely. Employers encountered cascading impacts associated with making, communicating, and implementing such work-distancing decisions.

  At multiple levels of government, officials wrestled with identifying employees who are essential and those who are nonessential in the context of an incident forecasted to span many months. In addition, officials faced challenges in determining which employees could perform their duties remotely and hierarchical organizations, such as state and federal departments and agencies, were uncertain as to the process for determining and implementing remote-workforce decisions.

  Shut Down the Schools!

  Also:

  During the exercise, CDC recommended that states delay school openings for six weeks, a follow-up to the initial (pre-exercise) recommendation that states delay the opening of schools for two weeks if the disease is present in the area. Many local jurisdictions and school districts have the authority to decide to close schools (or keep schools open). This distributed approach to school closure decisions caused confusion centered on discrepancies between schools that remained open and those that closed.

  In addition, while school delays and dismissals may be necessary over the course of the pandemic response, state participants identified any continued school delays and dismissals as having serious cascading impacts that require a concerted public messaging campaign and government coordination. Multiple states realized that dismissing schools is much more complex than they previously appreciated.

  This exercise took place entirely out of the public eye but had strangely prescient foretelling of events only 5 months later. Kadlec, who had organized the entire tabletop exercise, was also later the author of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health Education, Labor and Pensions report: An Analysis of the Origins of the COVID-19 Pandemic, which came out earlier this year.

  Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., reports: “second only to his longtime crony and comrade in arms Anthony Fauci, Robert Kadlec played a historic leadership role in fomenting the contagious logic that infectious disease posed a national security threat requiring a militarized response.”

  It’s the Law!

  By the time of this letter, US intelligence already knew of the Wuhan virus. Four months later, US lockdowns began, starting with the March 8th cancellation of South-by-Southwest by the Austin, Texas mayor, and extending to the March 12th imposition of travel restrictions, the March 13 takeover by FEMA, and the March 16th press conference by Trump, Fauci, and Deborah Birx, which announced nationwide lockdowns.

  The same day, Politico ran an article about another pandemic exercise from 2017 in which some incoming Trump officials participated, including Kelly and Tillerson. The article claims that such exercises are required by law.

  By the time of Covid lockdowns, they had both been pushed out, only to reemerge as key participants in Crimson Contagion along with most national-security and health-related agencies of the federal government.

  The lockdowns — to which Trump agreed only reluctantly and were extended far past the point in which he believed they would control the virus — were the most ruinous of the administration. Trump’s pollsters for 2020 all agreed that these lockdowns created the conditions that drove him from office.

  What does it all mean? Perhaps it is all just a series of coincidental data points, that what is called the worst pandemic in 100 years came only a few months after an elaborate multi-agency trial run of the same in which former high officials of the Trump administration participated.

  And perhaps the best person to run the Covid response also happened to be the very person who organized and managed the trial run in the previous season.

  Many people will surely say there is nothing to see here. There is so much not to see these days.

  What do you think?

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/25/2023 – 00:05

• Will China 'Revenge Spending' Follow $2.6 Trillion Rise In Savings?
  Will China ‘Revenge Spending’ Follow $2.6 Trillion Rise In Savings?

  After a tough 2022, China’s economy is poised for growth – as households are now sitting atop the biggest pool of new savings in history – having deposited $2.6tn in 2022.

  

  The bull case revolves around the notion of ‘revenge spending’ – an anticipated wave of pent-up demand fueled as consumers open their wallets for the first time in years.

  

  Last week the IMF indicated that it would upgrade its global economic forecasts based on China’s reopening following three years of zero-Covid, while Morgan Stanley points to “sizeable excess household savings” to underpin their bull case.

  Economists at Morgan Stanley recently forecast that China’s economic growth would be more front-loaded this year, “mainly supported by consumption amid excess savings, improving household balance sheets . . . and recovery in the job market and income expectations”.

  They point to “sizeable excess household savings” of Rmb3tn to Rmb4tn built up “from an inability to spend amid Covid restrictions and/or precautionary savings”. -FT

  The bear (or at least less-bullish) case

  Tempering expectations, however, both the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times have their doubts over the level of ‘revenge spending’ in store.

  “There’s overestimation on the splash of Chinese consumers,” said Alicia García-Herrero, chief Asia Pacific economist at French investment bank Natixis in a comment to the Times. “The excess savings won’t be easily spent.“

  The WSJ, meanwhile, suggests that “Several key pillars of China’s labor market—exports, the internet technology sector and the housing market—still face structural or cyclical headwinds. And finally, financial conditions remain relatively tight: Overall credit growth in December was weak, and bond yields and money-market rates have risen in recent weeks.”

  All of this means that while Chinese “revenge spending” will give a jolt to the economy this year, those expecting a U.S. 2021-style consumption bacchanalia might be disappointed. -WSJ

  Also in the bear camp is analyst Lin Qingqi of state-run China International Capital Corp, who says that the “excess” savings in 2022 was more due to cautious households redeploying riskier investments – pulling cash out of underperforming equities and stashing it in the bank.

  Luo Zhiheng, Yuekai Securities chief economist, has a similar prediction – and expects that some savings will be redeployed in “revenge spending,” but that “There’s still lingering uncertainty on the economic outlook, and people have a strong desire to save.”

  

  “China needs a strong force to drag the economy out from the vicious circle of weak demand and low expectation of income growth,” said Zhang Jun, dean of the School of Economics at Fudan University. “If that can’t [come from] exports in 2023, then fiscal stimulus such as strong government spending should step up and be that force.“

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/24/2023 – 23:45

• Los Angeles Extends Rent Protections After COVID-Era Moratoriums Set To Expire
  Los Angeles Extends Rent Protections After COVID-Era Moratoriums Set To Expire

  Authored by Jamie Joseph via The Epoch Times,

  The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously Jan. 20 to make some COVID-era protections for renters permanent, less than two weeks before they were set to expire.

  “Today was a huge victory,” recently-elected Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky posted to Twitter after the vote.

   “The Los Angeles City Council just unanimously adopted several common sense tenant protections that will protect thousands of Angelenos facing eviction, and help make our work around homelessness and reducing poverty that much easier.”

  The council approved moratoriums for renters – including no-fault evictions and nonpayments – beginning at the height of the pandemic and were to expire Feb. 1.

  

  Previously, tenants eligible for such protection were those who had experienced a loss of income due to COVID, including reduced work hours, and who needed financial assistance with childcare and medical expenses.

  The new rules will give protections for renters living in non-rent controlled units—meaning those built after 1978—and include preventing landlords from evicting tenants unless there is unpaid rent or evidence of breaking a lease’s rules. That “just cause” policy provision—which states that a landlord must have a valid reason, such as a violation of a lease, for evicting a tenant—goes into effect after six months or when a lease is expired, whichever comes first.

  But some, including small-scale landlords, are wondering how they can keep covering property, utility costs, and mortgages without rent paid by tenants.

  

  Stickers for rent cancelations are pasted to a light fixture in front of Los Angeles City Hall on Nov. 8, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

  The Coalition of Small Rental Property Owners founding member Diane Robertson told The Epoch Times the council’s vote has “additional handcuffs” on small mom-and-pop landlords.

  “There are so many of us who are strongly considering leaving the housing industry in Los Angeles … and to be frank, if that happens, properties are going to be sold to corporate owners more than likely and in the long run, that is not going to bode well for renters,” she said.

  Property owners in rent-controlled areas, Robertson said, also struggle to keep up with rising inflation costs.

  “Prices for everything needed to maintain our properties have increased,” Robertson said.

  “Plumbers, electricians, gardeners—these things are essential for us to provide housing that tenants want to live in.”

  Most renters in Los Angeles already have “just cause” protections, but the council’s vote expanded the number of households covered.

  The new provision also prevents landlords until February 2024 from evicting tenants who have prohibited pets and additional residents not listed on their lease.

  Despite their support, Councilmembers Traci Park, Monica Rodriguez, and John Lee expressed concern over the new provisions, arguing small landlords will need to have a fair pay-back program for unpaid rent.

  “I’d like to dispel the notion heard so often that this council has done nothing to help tenants throughout this pandemic. In my opinion, that could not be further from the truth,” Lee said during the meeting.

  “… [But] we can also set up a timeline for rental repayment that is fair and manageable,” for landlords and tenants alike.

  In response, the council added an amendment for when landlords must receive rent that went unpaid during the pandemic.

  For such incurred between March 1, 2020, and Sept. 30, 2021, tenants will have until Aug. 1 to pay. For that between Oct. 1, 2021, and Jan. 31, 2023, until Feb. 1, 2024.

  The council additionally voted for the city administrator to provide recommendations within 30 days for a relief-assistance program for small mom-and-pop landlords.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/24/2023 – 23:25

• Meta Welcomes Neo-Nazi Azov Regiment Back On Facebook, Removes "Dangerous Organization" Listing
  Meta Welcomes Neo-Nazi Azov Regiment Back On Facebook, Removes “Dangerous Organization” Listing

  Days ago Facebook, which is now Meta, announced it is welcoming Ukraine’s Azov Regiment to its platform. Azov had up until recently, and throughout the Russian invasion of Ukraine, been on Meta’s of “dangerous organizations” list. 

  It was on this banned list because the militia’s members regularly display Nazi symbols and signs on their uniforms and as part of the their media content. But now, pro-Azov content can be freely posted, and the group can create its own official accounts on Facebook and Instagram for the first time.

  

  The Washington Post recently detailed that the change “will allow members of the Azov Regiment to create accounts on Facebook and Instagram and post content without fear of it being removed unless it breaks the company’s content rules.” Additionally, “The move will also enable other users to explicitly praise and support the group’s work.”

  The company headed by Mark Zuckerberg still sought to emphasize that “Hate speech, hate symbols, calls for violence and any other content which violates our Community Standards are still banned, and we will remove this content if we find it.”

  Ukrainian officials have especially since the summer lobbied hard for Facebook/Meta’s Oversight Board to loosen up its restrictions on Azov, saying it was ‘unfair’ and that it’s keeping Ukrainian media organizations from sharing accurate information about the war in real-time.

  Exclusive: Meta told the Kyiv Independent that the U.S. tech giant, owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, no longer designates Azov Regiment as a “dangerous organization.”

  Meta to allow publishing content about the Azov Regiment and its members. https://t.co/lU5CD9Zo1C

  — The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) January 19, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Facebook’s changing approach started about a year ago, when it began allowing some pro-Azov posts in instances where they were fighting the Russian invasion, as The Intercept reported in Feb. 2022:

  According to internal policy materials reviewed by The Intercept, Facebook will “allow praise of the Azov Battalion when explicitly and exclusively praising their role in defending Ukraine OR their role as part of the Ukraine’s National Guard.” Internally published examples of speech that Facebook now deems acceptable include “Azov movement volunteers are real heroes, they are a much needed support to our national guard”; “We are under attack. Azov has been courageously defending our town for the last 6 hours”; and “I think Azov is playing a patriotic role during this crisis.”

  The materials stipulate that Azov still can’t use Facebook platforms for recruiting purposes or for publishing its own statements and that the regiment’s uniforms and banners will remain as banned hate symbol imagery, even while Azov soldiers may fight wearing and displaying them. In a tacit acknowledgement of the group’s ideology, the memo provides two examples of posts that would not be allowed under the new policy: “Goebbels, the Fuhrer and Azov, all are great models for national sacrifices and heroism” and “Well done Azov for protecting Ukraine and it’s white nationalist heritage.”

  Azov’s formal Facebook ban goes back to 2019, when the US social media giant acknowledged it as a hate group.

  An example of the type of imagery that’s long filled Azov social media channels in general…

  

  Oops… from Bellingcat in 2020:

  

  Now that Azov is fully free to create accounts and post on Facebook, one wonders what changed? After all, there are still endless examples of Azov members sporting neo-Nazi imagery, as well as ongoing public displays of support for historic Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/24/2023 – 23:05

• Why Are Millennials Having So Many Strokes?
  Why Are Millennials Having So Many Strokes?

  Authored by Ross Pomeroy via RealClear Wire,

  Strokes commonly strike the old.

  The average age for the devastating condition – in which blood supply to a part of the brain is blocked or when a blood vessel in the brain bursts – is around 71.4 years in men and 76.9 years in women.

  Millennials, however, are starting to bring those averages down.

  

  Now ranging in age from 27 to 42, Millennials are suffering strokes at higher rates than their forebears did at the same age, reversing a 40-year decline in stroke deaths.

  Between 2003 and 2012, there was a 32% spike in strokes among 18- to 34-year-old women and a 15% increase for men in the same age range, according to CDC researchers.

  When Scientific American further parsed the data, they found that the hike was mostly centered in the West and Midwest, where stroke rates among young people rose 70% and 34%, respectively, with particularly sharp increases in urban areas. Now, about one in ten people who has a stroke in the U.S. is under the age of 45.

  Younger stroke victims

  There are many potential explanations for this disconcerting trend. Rising stress, falling physical activity levels, and fewer doctor visits among Millennials could all play a role. One narrative rises to the forefront, however. As cigarette use in the U.S. declined from an alarming high of around 45% in the 1950s to just 12.5% in 2020, all Americans collectively reaped the benefit of less smoke in public places, which manifested in reduced rates of lung cancer, heart disease, and stroke. But since the 1970s, the public health benefits from reduced smoking are being eroded by rising obesity and its related health complications.

  Childhood obesity is particularly noxious in regard to early stroke, and Millennials were the first generation to truly be affected by this alarming trend. The rate of childhood obesity more than tripled from 5% in 1978 to 18.5% in 2016, leaving many more children burdened by associated conditions such as diabetes and hypertension, which can lead to a stroke.

  There is good news. Thanks to improved medical care, stroke fatality rates have fallen significantly between 1975 and 2019, about 65% for hemorrhagic stroke (caused by a burst blood vessel) and 80% for ischemic stroke (caused by a blood vessel blockage). And with greater brain plasticity, young people are more apt to recover. Still, strokes can leave Millennials with lasting complications, such as occasional seizures, incontinence, cognitive impairment, hindered speech, and diminished muscle control, not to mention a sharply elevated risk of a future stroke.

  Increased stroke isn’t the only health issue that Millennials are contending with. The rates of many cancers, especially those tied to poor diet, are rising for people under age 50.

  Diet and exercise

  The best solution to reverse the rise in early stroke is for Millennials and future generations to eat right and exercise, especially from a young age. Schools and parents have a vital role to play here.

  Obesity’s grasp can be hard to break if it takes hold at a tender age, but if healthy lifestyle practices are instilled early, it’s likely they will remain second nature.

  This article was originally published on Big Think.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/24/2023 – 22:45

• Tennessee Law Barring Adults Under 21 From Carrying Guns Shot Down
  Tennessee Law Barring Adults Under 21 From Carrying Guns Shot Down

  Chalk up yet another legal victory for gun rights advocates: On Monday, the government of Tennessee officially admitted its attempt to outlaw the carry of guns by adults under 21 is unconstitutional, The Reload was first to report. 

  Lawyers for the state signed onto an “agreed order,” which is a written agreement among parties to a lawsuit that becomes an order of the court upon the judge’s approval. In part, Monday’s agreed order reads: 

  “The Challenged Scheme regulating the possession and carrying of handguns that restricts individuals aged 18 years old to 20 years old from carrying handguns or obtaining permits to carry handguns on the basis of age alone violates the Second and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.

  “Defendant and his officers, agents, employees, and all others acting under his direction and control, are permanently enjoined from implementing or enforcing the Challenged Scheme.”

  The state now faces a 90-day deadline to begin processing enhanced carry permit applications submitted by Tennesseans under 21. The state will also have to shell out almost $47,250 to cover legal the plaintiffs’ legal costs.    

  In 2021, Tennessee ended the requirement for most adults to have a permit to carry a handgun. However, it does issue what is not called an “enhanced handgun carry permit.” 

  The victory marks the end of nearly two years of litigation by the Firearms Policy Coalition and two Tennessee plaintiffs, Caleb Bassett, Blake Beeler and Logan Ogle, who were under 21 when the complaint was filed. Last month, Texas surrendered on its own attempt to ban the carrying of guns by adults under 21: A federal judge found it unconstitutional in August and, in December, Texas withdrew its appeal of that ruling.  

  Translation:

  In 2023, FPC’s gonna make the lawsuit printer go hella brrr.

  Help us keep it going at https://t.co/A6Mz0StzCz pic.twitter.com/lhr3zwkenE

  — Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) December 31, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Other types of gun control are being shot down left and right. Just last week, an Illinois judge issued a temporary restraining order barring the state from enforcing the “assault weapon” and “high-capacity” magazine ban that was hastily enacted on Jan 10. That law also faces a challenge in federal court. 

  The Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) has been involved in many high-profile gun-control challenges, from last summer’s pivotal Supreme Court ruling in NYSRPA v Bruen to the ongoing fight against Oregon’s sweeping gun control law and Delaware’s “assault weapon” ban. An activity-tracker on the group’s website shows FPC is currently at work on more than 70 cases all across the country…so the liberty-minded should ready for more good-news headlines in coming weeks and months. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/24/2023 – 22:25

• The Game Is Over And They Have Lost
  The Game Is Over And They Have Lost

  Authored by Robert Blumen via The Brownstone Institute,

  The Guardian on Jan 15, 2023 published the most perfect piece of new normal nostalgia that ever was or could be: Coronavirus: ‘People aren’t taking this seriously’: experts say US Covid surge is big risk by Melody Schreiber. 

  

  This piece may be studied as a Platonic Form.

  Nothing could more perfectly demonstrate the inability of the covid fear porn publishers to let go of the narrative.

  

  If the author didn’t have her own website, I would have attributed the piece to an instance of ChatGPT trained on every Guardian and New York Times article from the past three years.

  The writer employs every single discredited covid trope at least once.

  I will list a few of the best, here. To cover them all I would have to quote the entire article and that would violate the Fair Use Doctrine.

  I have chosen a tabular form with a quote alongside the trope that it is derived from:

  

  My favorite part of the piece is, “Yet because of poor messaging from officials, many people may not even realize the US is experiencing a surge.”

  I am one of those many people who did not know this.

  A surge of what? A normal seasonal flu that makes people feel a bit under the weather for a week? A bad cold-vid?

  We can celebrate our return to the old normal when an outbreak of a seasonal virus is of concern to those who are infected or who care for a family member. All of society need not be thrust into a panic over such things. The more normal the world is, the more resources of those who are impacted will have to deal with their troubles. And the better will those who are not directly affected be able to support them. 

  As a software engineer I note with some amusement that the variant (or as I like to call them “scariant”) names now have two periods. In a software release version a version with double dot is used for a minor bug fix release, (e.g. 3.0.1). “Minor” means that the release is not important enough for users to upgrade immediately. Perhaps the same thinking should be applied to the way we handle the emergence of new viral variants.  

  When Biden said that the pandemic is over, followed by “If you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape,” that may have been his dementia inhibiting the filter that was supposed to kick in before he said something truthful. Biden only said the quiet part out loud: the public has put the panic phase in the rearview. Even Anthony Fauci made the incomprehensible statement that the pandemic isn’t over but we are out of the “pandemic phase.” Every statement like this is more toothpaste for the pandemic dead-enders to put back in the tube. 

  The article bemoans the low acceptance rate of the booster vaccinations. We are told that cases are avoidable if patients had sought additional injections. First thing: do we care about cases? Second thing: it is not true that the covid vaccines prevent infection. That could only be so if the failed claim of sterilizing immunity were valid.  

  Vaccine advocates have walked back the earlier claims that one or any number of shots would prevent the recipient from getting infected. It was let out late in 2022 that the clinical trials did not even test for the ability of the drugs to stop transmission. It’s hard to believe that anyone can still say that after so many multiply-vaccinated-and-boosted public figures have gotten covid. 

  My friend Kevin Duffy, a professional investor, after seeing the Guardian article, sent me this image. The graph shows the market psychology of a financial bubble and subsequent market crash. I have added the red oval highlighting where Kevin thinks we are now: in the denial phase, after the bubble has burst. 

  I am also reminded of the Kubler-Ross stages of grief that a patient or a loved one goes through when receiving a terminal diagnosis. The stage in her sequence is denial. The subsequent stages are anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. 

  The same could be said of all of these tropes: Does anyone believe them anymore? This is not news. It is a last-gasp attempt to squeeze more juice out of a dehydrated lemon. These messages were potent fear generators two years ago. But with each use, the charge becomes weaker. 

  The script has worn itself out. These tropes are now tired and ineffective. The fear-pushers seem unaware that the message has lost its effect, but do not have anything else to offer. The tell is not that they publish articles like this. It is how much these pieces show that they don’t know that the game is over and they have lost. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/24/2023 – 22:05

• Turkey Angrily Cancels Key NATO Talks With Sweden & Finland
  Turkey Angrily Cancels Key NATO Talks With Sweden & Finland

  As expected Turkey on Tuesday announced it has indefinitely postponed any future rounds of talks with Sweden and Finland regarding their NATO membership bids. 

  A major meeting was expected to take place in Brussels in February, but this has been dramatically canceled, Turkish state broadcaster TRT reported based on diplomatic sources. 

  

  NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was supposed to attend the talks, and when it was planned the two countries were widely perceived as very close to their NATO accession being approved.

  President Erdogan himself on Monday lashed out at Sweden in particular, blasting Swedish authorities for allowing a far-right activist to burn a Quran in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm over the weekend. 

  Erdogan stated bluntly that Sweden should no longer expect support from Turkey to join NATO given it allows “terrorists” in its midst. Turkey has also expressed deep dissatisfaction at both Nordic countries’ failure to crack down on Kurdish groups banned by the Turkish state.

  Amid continuing Turkish anger, Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto has said a diplomatic “time-out” is now needed in order to reassess. 

  At the same time, Finland has suggested it could seek NATO membership without Sweden, after the two earlier indicated a joint membership bid process.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/24/2023 – 21:45

• Chip Sales Plunge In China, Buffeting Global Industry
  Chip Sales Plunge In China, Buffeting Global Industry

  Authored by Anne Zhang and Lynn Xu via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Chip sales in China have tumbled at a whopping rate, as productivity in the semiconductor-related sector has contracted dramatically, indicating that the country’s manufacturing industry is shrinking, according to the latest industrial report.

  The Washington-based Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) released data on Jan. 9 indicating that compared to the same period in 2021, China’s chip sales plummeted by 21.1 percent in November of 2022. Meanwhile, in the United States, chip sales rose by 5.2 percent; sales in Europe increased by 4.5 percent year-on-year; and sales in Japan went up by 1.2 percent.

  

  China’s Industrial Recession Buffets Global Data

  According to SIA statistics, in 2021, China alone made up $192.3 billion, or 34.6 percent, of $555.9 billion in global semiconductor industry sales, ranking first in the world.

  As the world’s largest chip market, the Chinese market’s sharp decline has dragged down the yield of the global industry, with November 2022 seeing global semiconductor industry sales slide to $45.5 billion. That is 2.9 percent less than the previous month and 9.2 percent less than the same period of the previous year, respectively.

  “Global semiconductor sales decreased in November [2022], largely due to market cyclicality and macroeconomic headwinds,” said John Neuffer, president and CEO of SIA.

  The SIA represents most U.S. semiconductor companies and nearly two-thirds of non-U.S. semiconductor companies.

  Chip Imports Decline

  China’s chip imports have faced a serious decline since last October when the United States imposed sanctions on Chinese semiconductor companies.

  Chinese customs data showed that China imported 40.5 billion integrated circuits in November 2022, a 25.3 percent drop from 54.22 billion units in November 2021.

  Last October, the United States issued a semiconductor and equipment export control order against the Chinese Communist regime. The new ban restricts exports to China of logic chips below 14/16 nanometres, DRAM memory chips below 18 nanometres, and NAND flash memory chips above 128 layers, as well as related manufacturing equipment.

  The move could be a heavy blow to a wide range of manufacturing areas, including automobiles, mobile communications equipment, and computers.

  Industry Output Declines

  In November 2022, China’s output of microcomputer equipment plunged by 27.9 percent; and mobile communication handheld devices dropped 13 percent, including a 19.8 percent decline in the production of smartphones from the same period last year, according to data released by China’s Statistical Bureau.

  In addition, the manufacturing of railroads, ships, aerospace, and other transportation equipment, computer, communication, and electronic equipment, and general equipment manufacturing declined 0.9–2.9 percent year-over-year.

  Manufacturing Prospects Fall to Record Low

  A Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) reading below 50 indicates a contraction in manufacturing and service sectors, according to industrial statistics methods. This gloomy data was seen for most of last year in China.

  China’s Bureau of Statistics published a report on Dec. 31 saying that China’s PMI remained under 50 for most of last year, with the exception of January, February, June, and September, which were slightly higher than 50. In the fourth quarter of last year, China’s PMI fell sharply for three consecutive months, with its December PMI hitting a record low of 47.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/24/2023 – 21:25

• US Clears First Small Nuke Plant Design To Power Carbon-Free Future
  US Clears First Small Nuke Plant Design To Power Carbon-Free Future

  Nuclear power generation is an integral part of the electrical grid landscape, and it’s a critical pillar in decarbonizing the energy sector to achieve net-zero greenhouse gases. 

  The evolution of nuclear power generation from traditional, giant, light-water reactors to advanced light-water small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) could be a reality by the end of the decade. 

  The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recently certified a design for NuScale Power’s SMR. The certification allows utilities to use the design when applying for licenses to build a nuclear power plant. The rule becomes effective next month. 

  “The rule takes effects February 21, 2023 and equips the nation with a new clean power source to help drive down emissions across the country,” NRC wrote in a statement. 

  This is the first design for an SMR to be certified in the US. The other six designs are for large traditional reactors. 

  “The design is an advanced light-water SMR with each power module capable of generating 50 megawatts of emissions-free electricity,” NRC continued. 

  President Biden has prioritized advancing nuclear technologies to power the grid of tomorrow. His administration has also announced funding to extend the lifespans of nuclear power plants nationwide. 

  Recall we have stated if President Biden wants to obtain a carbon-free future, his ability to do so will be through the expansion of nuclear power generation, not unreliable solar and wind energy that fluctuates with the weather. 

  NuScale’s small design, about a third of the size of a traditional reactor, allows it to be built almost anywhere. 

  

  There’s even a floating version of the reactor built on a barge that can be towed to grids that need to expand power capacity quickly. 

  

  The DOE and NuScale will build a demonstration power plant with SMRs in 2025, with the first power module operating by 2029. 

  What’s become very evident is the US’ thirst for boosting nuclear capacity by adding SMRs to the grid to realize a carbon-free future. To do this, the US will also need to kick its reliance on nuclear fuel from Russia, indicating a need to increase domestic mining supply chains and enrichment facilities.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/24/2023 – 21:05

• Brazil's Central Bank On The Verge Of Raising Its Inflation Target As It Spirals Into The Inflationary Abyss
  Brazil’s Central Bank On The Verge Of Raising Its Inflation Target As It Spirals Into The Inflationary Abyss

  Over the past year, we have repeatedly said that the endgame for this particular episode in central bank stupidity will be when the Fed is dragged, kicking and screaming, into hiking the US inflation target (read this, this and this).

  At some point Fed will concede it has no control over supply. That’s when we will start getting leaks of raising the inflation target

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 21, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  And while it will take at least a few more years before the Fed admits defeat – should it pause and/or pivot it will take far shorter – one place where a central bank inflation target increase is imminent, is Brazil.

  To be sure, Brazil is a bit of a basket case, having had its share of close encounters with terminal socialism, most recently in October when Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) defeated Bolsonaro to became president for a second time (and a first-ever third term) while promising all the irresistible delights of socialism, if not communism. And like every self-respecting socialist, Lula quickly figured out that what he needs first and foremost, is control over the central bank.

  The problem, as everyone knows, is that giving access of a country’s money printer to a true-blue socialist is sovereign suicide, and in Brazil It took decades of cajoling and lobbying by the financial community to finally shield the central bank from political meddling.

  So when President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, just three weeks into office, questioned the need for an autonomous central bank during a national TV interview last week, it didn’t go over well in markets… even if nobody was really surprised. Swap rates surged and the currency tanked following his remarks. Cabinet members entered the field and managed to halt the plunge that day, but the episode left many investors increasingly alarmed about a Lula presidency they are finding to be vastly different than the one that oversaw an economic boom back in the first decade of the new the century.

  As Bloomberg notes, as part of his socialist overhaul, Lula has packed his economic team with “left-wing loyalists, lambasted fiscal rules and now, with his thinly veiled attack on central bank autonomy, taken a posture that raises doubts about the government’s commitment to quelling consumer prices increases in a country with a long history of nasty inflation outbreaks.” Which is ironic since so much of the US establishment was openly rooting for a grand ole socialist time under Lula and was so very happy when Bolsonaro lost by the narrowest of margins.

  And like every socialist (or despotic tyrant for that matter) who promises the sun, moon and stars… if only he had access to an infinite supply of (soon to be devalued cash), Lula quickly grasped that what he needs is to strip the central bank of its independence. As such, his saber-rattling is born in large part out of frustration, investors say, with the growing clash between their fiscal policy – aimed at boosting a sputtering economy – and the central bank’s high interest-rate policy –  designed to bring inflation back down to target.

  But what if one goes for the classical Faustian bargain: let’s make life a little bit easier for everyone if we all agree on just a little more inflation? Well, that’s precisely what Lula is doing.

  Last Wednesday, in a wide-ranging interview with Globo TV, Lula downplayed the importance of an independent central bank, and addressed the country’s soon-to-be-raised inflation target.

  Taking a page right out of Erdogan’s playbook (as a reminder, in Turkey the central bank has lost all of its autonomy in recent years as Turkey’s dictator appointed close friends and allies to run it under fear of immediate termination if they refuse to follow orders), Lula said that “there was a lot of discussion in this country to have an independent central bank, believing that it would be better,” (during Lula’s initial two terms in office, the bank’s chief, Henrique Meirelles, said the president had given him de-facto autonomy to set monetary policy). Lula then said that “it’s silly to think that an independent central bank governor is going to do more than when the president appointed him.”

  Which, of course, is precisely what he would say when considering his bigger goal, which is – drumroll – raising the Brazilian inflation target. As Bloomberg noted, during the interview, Lula defended moves to raise the country’s inflation target and said that he would be forced to tighten economic conditions to reach the target and questioned why not set higher than the current 3% goal established for 2024, mentioning 4.5% as a possibility.

  And since every radical monetary overhaul needs a social crisis, the CIA Brazil conveniently had just that a few days prior. The president said in the interview that he views the storming of the presidential palace, the congress and the Supreme Court building on Jan. 8 to have been “the beginning of a coup” and that the rioters were acting “according to the order and guidance that Bolsonaro gave for a long time.”

  “His decision to keep quiet after losing the election, weeks and weeks of not saying anything; his decision not to hand the sash to me, to leave for Miami as if he were running away in fear of something; and his silence even after what happened here, gave me the impression that he knew everything that was happening, that he had a lot to do with what was happening,” Lula said.

  Ah yes, implementing revolutionary monetary policy overhaul at a time when a group of people (without military support) storms the local center of power, and the former president is constantly used by the media and the deep state as an endless propaganda distraction from what matters… it’s almost as if we’ve seen that particular play before.

  So what happens next? Well, since there is nobody that can prevent Lula from achieving what he wants (see Turkey) it’s only a matter of time before Brazil becomes the first quasi-modern central bank to raise its inflation target during this particular monetary cycle.

  

  The soon-to-be-toothless central bank chief Roberto Campos Neto himself addressed concerns about Lula’s intervention several times, saying such moves could “reduce the power” of monetary policy and reinforcing that policy makers “won’t hesitate” to raise interest rates if needed.

  Meanwhile, as foreign investors watch the Brazilian socialist tragicomedy unwind in real time terrified of what the outcome for the country’s inflation will be, they have been avoiding local assets. Vista Capital had flagged an attack on the central bank’s autonomy as a “relevant risk” being underestimated by markets in a note at the end of last year, but the topic became ubiquitous following the interview, with money managers now expecting the administration to force a change in Brazil’s inflation goals. The government is expected to set 2026’s target in June, and will almost certainly revise the current goal of 3% for 2024 and 2025 to 4.5% as Lula hinted.

  “Lula’s decision to publicly state twice that the inflation target should be higher did not go unnoticed, and may further reinforce increasing inflation expectations over longer periods” in the central bank’s weekly survey, JPMorgan economist Cassiana Fernandez wrote in a note as Bloomberg reported. Sure enough, analysts in the survey have raised estimates for 2023 inflation six weeks in a row, and also see consumer prices rising above target through 2025.

  Campos Neto seemed to mostly shrug off Lula’s remarks, acknowledging interest rates were currently high while also reiterating the bank will continue to act independently — something that’s helped curb volatility in markets, he said late last week, at least until Lula makes it very clear that he is in control of the central bank. As such, locals are watching for what they say is the first true test to the bank’s autonomy: the appointment of a replacement for Bruno Serra, who’s expected to step down as monetary policy director in February.

  Campos Neto plans to suggest a name for the post, with Banco Santander’s Sandro Sobral gaining momentum among the possibilities, according to people with knowledge of the matter, who asked for anonymity discussing private information. But ultimately it’s up to the president to name Serra’s replacement, and it will most likely not be the most qualified candidate but instead some crony of Lula’s.

  What happens next? Look to Argentina for clues. As for all those in the US deep state and assorted hanger-on billionaires who backed Lula over Bolsonaro, they are following events in Brazil most closely, knowing well that once the inevitable economic crash pans out – as it does every time a socialist is in charge – it will be only a matter of time before they can buy up Brazil’s vast riches at pennies on the real.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/24/2023 – 20:45

• China Becomes World's Biggest LNG Buyer With Flurry Of Long-Term Deals
  China Becomes World’s Biggest LNG Buyer With Flurry Of Long-Term Deals

  China is rapidly becoming the world’s most dominant force in liquefied natural gas, with Chinese buyers accounting for 40% of recent long-term LNG contracts among global players, according to Nikkei Asia.

  Take Chinese energy giant Sinopec Group, which reached a 27-year agreement with state-owned QatarEnergy late last year to buy 4 million tonnes of LNG annually. The imports are due to begin around 2026. As a key client, China is also negotiating to invest in a massive Qatari project to expand LNG output.

  At the same time, a private-sector Chinese energy company, ENN Group, signed a contract last year with Texas-based Energy Transfer to buy 2.7 million tonnes of LNG annually for 20 years. ENN increased its purchasing agreement with NextDecade, also headquartered in Texas, to 2 million tonnes a year for 20 years as well. In addition, NextDecade has agreed to supply 1 million tonnes of LNG yearly to China Gas Holdings, whose principal shareholder is an investment vehicle controlled by the city of Beijing. Imports are to start in the latter 2020s.

  Over 2021 and 2022, China closed long-term LNG purchasing contracts worth nearly 50 million tonnes a year, European research firm Rystad Energy reports. In this not so covert attempt to corner the LNG market, China has tripled the scale of purchases through long-term contracts in just two years, up from the annual volume of roughly 16 million tonnes from 2015 through 2020.

  

  In 2020 and 2021, spot transactions accounted for 40%-50% of China’s natural gas imports, well above the estimated 30% for Japan. But China appears to have changed strategy to fit long-term demand. Long-term contracts offer more stability in supplies compared with spot contracts.

  In 2021, China surpassed Japan as the world’s top LNG importer. But last year, imports apparently dropped 18% to around 65 million tonnes on the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic. Yet China’s demand for natural gas in 2030 is projected to be over 50% higher than in 2021.

  Amid global efforts to reduce carbon emissions, many countries have converged on natural gas as a relatively clean bridge fuel. The Institute of Energy Economics, Japan predicts annual worldwide LNG demand will reach 488 million tonnes in 2030, up about 40% from 2020. But global supply is on track to fall short of demand by 7.6 million tonnes a month in 2025.

  The China contingent are addressing the risk of being cut off from the LNG supply chain at a time when U.S. and allies work to create China-free supply chains for semiconductors. Long-term contracts are seen as a hedge against such disruptions.

  Ironically, the US is already China’s biggest LNG supplier based on long-term contracts. The same US that aggressively ramping up alternative semiconductor supply chains that bypass Beijing and which has cracked down on Chinese reverse engineering of US technology. And while Beijing imposed a 25% tariff on American-made LNG in 2019 during the trade war, it then started issuing waivers on the duties in 2020, and since 2021, Chinese and U.S. companies have signed a series of massive LNG deals.

  China now imports about 90 million tonnes of LNG through long-term contracts, with the U.S. responsible for around 25 million. Australia ranks next at roughly 17 million tonnes, while the Middle East supplies 14 million and Russia contributes about 6 million.

  Despite being extensively reliant on US long-term deal, Beijing intends to avoid dependence on American LNG, and China “is ready to expand cooperation with Qatar in natural gas and other traditional energy sectors,” President Xi Jinping said during a December meeting with Qatar’s Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh.

  Additionally, Beijing is carefully diversifying suppliers in the name of energy security. Beyond tanker-borne LNG, China also brings in natural gas via pipelines. China covers just over half of its natural gas demand through domestic output, and the rest comes from Russia and Turkmenistan. The natural gas supplies are supplemented by LNG from the U.S. and other sources.

  “It’s best not to rely on any one country for 30%-40% of our needs,” said an executive at a large Chinese oil company, a lesson which Europe learned the very hard way.

  As China emerges as a dominant LNG buyer, the role of Japanese purchasers has diminished.

  In 2021 and 2022, Japanese companies agreed to less than 10 million tonnes of LNG per annum in long-term contracts. Utilities are wary of large LNG contracts due to uncertainties about future demand amid the decarbonization movement, Japan’s shrinking population and the restart of nuclear plants.

  Japanese LNG importer JERA, a joint venture between utilities Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings and Chubu Electric Power, decided at the end of 2021 not to renew a 25-year contract with Qatar to buy 5 million tonnes of LNG annually. China’s Sinopec was quick to step in and has emerged as Qatar’s replacement buyer.

  Before LNG developers start production at new projects, they sign long-term contracts with importers to secure income and take in financing from lenders. Japanese power and gas companies once took leading roles for projects in Southeast Asia and Australia, but now Chinese players are looking to fill that function.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/24/2023 – 20:25

• New England Farmer Sues Town for 'Home Equity Theft' In Federal Court
  New England Farmer Sues Town for ‘Home Equity Theft’ In Federal Court

  Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  After a town in central Massachusetts seized dramatically more than what a farmer owed in property taxes, the farmer is suing the town in federal court for alleged “home equity theft.”

  

  Alpaca farmer Alan DiPietro, an engineer by training who lives outside of Worcester, filed suit (pdf) earlier this month against the town of Bolton, claiming that the seizure constitutes an unlawful taking of his property in violation of the Massachusetts Constitution and the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

  When Bolton took DiPietro’s home in December 2021, it had a market value of at least $370,000. The town subtracted his debt of about $60,000 and pocketed the remaining approximately $310,000 in equity.

  Massachusetts law permits the government to keep the excess amount. The Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), which is representing DiPietro, calls this home equity theft. Twelve states and the District of Columbia allow local governments and private investors to seize dramatically more than what’s owed from homeowners who fall behind on property tax payments, according to the PLF, which issued a December 2022 report on the practice, The Epoch Times reported.

  The U.S. Supreme Court will soon take up the issue of home equity theft in a PLF case.

  On Jan. 13, the court agreed to hear Tyler v. Hennepin County, Minnesota, the appeal of a 94-year-old homeowner who’s challenging the constitutionality of laws that allow local governments to take the full value of a home as payment for much smaller property tax debts. The county seized Geraldine Tyler’s condo, valued at $93,000, and sold it for just $40,000. Instead of keeping the $15,000 it was owed, the county retained the full $40,000, amounting to a windfall of $25,000, according to the PLF. A date for the hearing has yet to be determined.

  DiPietro had been raising alpacas and marketing their fleece since 2008 in Bolton, a town in the Nashoba Valley region. But by 2014, he needed more land, so he purchased 34 undeveloped acres situated in Bolton and the neighboring town of Stow. He mowed the existing fields and put up fencing and some small structures, unaware that Bolton would claim that the improvements required local permits.

  Land Use Disagreement

  Although both towns claimed the upgrades were made too close to a wetland protected under state law and violated both towns’ bylaws, DiPietro argued that using the land for agricultural purposes was exempt from local conservation rules. The towns sued DiPietro, and he was charged $26,000 to restore the protected area.

  After the legal battle, DiPietro couldn’t afford his home mortgage and also the property taxes on the farm. The home was foreclosed on and he moved into a recreational vehicle on his farmland.

  PLF attorney Joshua Polk said the town “stole over $310,000 worth of property equity from our client” and deliberately frustrated the client’s efforts to settle his debt.

  DiPietro was caught in a situation he couldn’t resolve. He tried to sell off part of the land but was blocked.

  “[He] had a tax that he wanted to pay by selling off one of the lots of property, but he couldn’t get a permit to make the property suitable for a residential sale, because he owed taxes that he was trying to pay by selling the lot,” Polk told The Epoch Times in an interview.

  “It’s a circular situation that he got trapped into. And at every point along the way prior to foreclosure, and even after foreclosure, he was seeking out ways to pay this tax debt, but he was blocked at every turn by the town.”

  Bolton “completely derailed his plans,” according to Polk.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/24/2023 – 20:05

• Record Number Of Border Deaths During Biden’s First 2 Years
  Record Number Of Border Deaths During Biden’s First 2 Years

  Authored by Charlotte Cuthbertson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  As the number of illegal immigrants flooding across the southern border continues to increase, so does the number of illegal immigrants who die while crossing into the United States, or soon after.

  

  Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recorded a total of 880 illegal immigrant deaths in fiscal 2022, which ended on Sept. 30, 2022. It’s the highest number of deaths since data became available in 1998. The second-highest number on record was fiscal year 2021, with 566 deaths.

  The Epoch Times submitted a Freedom of Information request in October 2022 to obtain the data for the past two fiscal years after the Biden administration broke a long-standing policy and stopped publicly releasing the numbers. CBP responded to the Freedom of Information request on Jan. 18.

  Previous, publicly available CBP data show 247 illegal immigrants died near the southern border during fiscal 2020, the lowest on record, while 300 died in fiscal 2019.

  

  The Rio Grande Valley in Texas and the Tucson Sector in Arizona have traditionally been the most deadly border sectors, as the river and the summer heat claim the most lives, and smugglers leave injured and sick migrants to die.

  But, Texas’s Del Rio sector, which includes Eagle Pass, bore the brunt of the deaths last year with 255 recorded. Most of the deaths in this area were due to drowning in the deceptively swift Rio Grande. But the total also includes 53 deaths of illegal aliens being smuggled in a locked tractor-trailer unit near San Antonio last June.

  Deaths in the Del Rio sector over the past two fiscal years were higher than the previous 15 years combined. The sector also became the epicenter of mass illegal crossings.

  

  The CBP data include a footnote indicating that the “data may be subject to change based on new discoveries of remains and possible dates of death as determined by a medical examiner.”

  Not all migrant deaths are counted in the CBP data, as Border Patrol agents aren’t always involved in the discovery. Sheriff’s offices have their own tally of bodies discovered by ranchers, hunters, or others.

  The bodies are often from those who are walking in remote ranchland to circumvent Border Patrol highway checkpoints, sometimes 60 to 100 miles from the border.

  Former CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan said the CBP numbers are the “tip of the iceberg” for migrant deaths.

  “When you increase the number of illegal aliens coming by 500 percent, you’re going to increase all the suffering, tragedies, and inhumane actions associated with that,” Morgan told The Epoch Times on Jan. 19.

  “Everything expands—the numbers of those that are thrown into trafficking expand, the number of those that are sexually assaulted expand, the numbers of those that die expand. It’s a game of numbers.”

  Border Patrol apprehensions of illegal aliens along the southern border increased exponentially after President Joe Biden took office.

  More than 1.6 million illegal aliens were apprehended in fiscal year 2021 and 2.2 million in fiscal 2022, according to CBP data. In comparison, fiscal 2020 saw just over 400,000 apprehensions along the southern border.

  The number of illegal crossings has more than tripled since 2020, as have the number of deaths.

  “Biden’s got blood on his hands. He knows this is happening. And he knows migrants are dying. He knows migrants are being assaulted. He knows migrants are being raped. He knows migrants are being thrown into the life of trafficking,” Morgan said.

  

  Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has maintained the border is secure.

  “I have been to the border nearly 20 times, and I can attest to the steadfast commitment of the DHS workforce to secure our border, enforce our laws, and build safe, orderly, and humane immigration processes under extremely difficult conditions,” Mayorkas said in a Jan. 5 press conference.

  “Let me be clear: Title 42 or not, the border is not open,” Mayorkas said, referring to the public health order that allows Border Patrol agents to quickly expel some illegal aliens back to Mexico.

  CBP declined to provide a comment to The Epoch Times on the increase in deaths.

  Deadly Brooks County

  In south Texas, Brooks County sheriff’s deputy Don White of Remote Wildlands Search and Recovery volunteers his time to search for the injured and dead. Most often, he says, he finds males, aged 19 to 40, from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, or El Salvador.

  During 2022, he found 91 bodies—a decrease over the record-breaking previous year of 119. In comparison, 34 bodies were found in 2020.

  Brooks County Sheriff Benny Martinez estimates that for every body they find, another 5 to 10 are never recovered.

  “I’ve spoken to a lot of mothers over the telephone, or they’ve been here in my office, crying for their loved ones that have been lost for 10, 15 years,” Martinez, a Democrat, said in an earlier interview.

  “Our terrain is real sandy. We’re about 100 foot above sea level. So once that sand starts going over that body, and that body starts getting torn apart by the feral hog, by the coyote … the only time it’s recovered is when they’re moving cattle and they turn the soil over… [and] a skull would pop up, or something. Body parts would pop up. That’s how we’re going to find out that something laid there for a while. I mean, what is compassionate about that?”

  In Kinney County, southwest Texas, the sheriff used to handle one or two deceased illegal immigrants per year.

  In 2021, the county dealt with 17 bodies, and 10 in 2022. In one case, the county judge had to leave a county meeting to officially pronounce dead the body of an illegal alien found on his own ranch.

  “The thing is, it’s 17 bodies in a small county,” Sheriff Brad Coe told The Epoch Times in December. Kinney County sits on the border with Mexico and has a population of about 3,600 people.

  “Brooks County will always lead the state in the number of dead, but for us here, 17 was an astronomical number when we’re used to one or two.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/24/2023 – 19:45

• Tesla To Announce New $3.5 Billion Production Facility For Semis In Nevada
  Tesla To Announce New $3.5 Billion Production Facility For Semis In Nevada

  If there’s a demand problem, Tesla certainly isn’t acting like it.

  Just days after the company slashed prices on its models in both the U.S. and China, it is now being reported that Tesla is seeking to open yet another production facility – this one slated to be in northern Nevada. 

  The planned $3.5 billion plant is going to be for Tesla Semi production, according to Inside EVs. It had previously been assumed that production of the Tesla semi would take place at the company’s Giga Texas plant. Early manufacturing “began in late 2022 at a private site near its Gigafactory Nevada facility,” the report says.

  Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo stated in a State of the State address on January 23 that Tesla is planning to invest $3.5 billion in the state and could be making a formal announcement as early as today, January 24. 

  

  “Whether it’s closing the lithium loop, unlocking innovation and investment in logistics, entertainment, science and technology, or embracing entrepreneurship, the message is, that Nevada is ready to partner,” he said.

  He continued: “Case in point… I am looking forward to joining Elon Musk and the team at Tesla tomorrow when they unveil plans to build a brand new $3.5 Billion-dollar advanced manufacturing facility in northern Nevada for the company’s all-electric semi-trucks.”

  The new facility will add to the company’s presence in the state, where it already has its Gigafactory Nevada, 24 miles east of Reno. 

  BREAKING: Nevada Governor, Joe Lombardo, has announced in his State of the Union address tonight that he will be joining Elon Musk & the team at @Tesla tomorrow to unveil plans to build a new $3.5 billion advanced manufacturing facility in northern Nevada for the @Tesla Semi. pic.twitter.com/lluv86pTHU

  — Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) January 24, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/24/2023 – 19:25

• Biden Says He Won't Let GOP 'Wreck' Economy While McConnell Says McCarthy Needs To Craft Debt Ceiling Deal
  Biden Says He Won’t Let GOP ‘Wreck’ Economy While McConnell Says McCarthy Needs To Craft Debt Ceiling Deal

  During a Tuesday meeting with Congressional Democrats, President Joe Biden said that he has “no intention of letting the Republicans wreck our economy.”

  “Nor does anybody around this table,” he continued, nodding to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY).

  “[We] want to build this economy from the bottom up, the middle out,” said Biden, adding “We also want to talk about the extreme Republican economic plans.”

  The president appeared to sarcastically refer to some of the plans Republicans have to cut costs.

  “Apparently, they’re genuinely serious about cutting Social Security, cutting Medicare,” Biden said. “I love their 30 percent sales tax.”

  Democrats, he said, are looking forward to talking “a lot about that.” –WaPo

  Meanwhile on the other side of the aisle, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said on Tuesday that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) needs to spearhead crafting a solution to the debt ceiling.

  “I can’t imagine any debt ceiling provision passed out of the Senate with 60 votes could actually pass this particular House,” McConnell told reporters on Tuesday. “So I think the final solution to this particular episode lies between Speaker McCarthy and the president.”

  McConnell said it would be ‘reasonable’ for McCarthy to consider spending cuts as part of a plan to extend the debt ceiling before a June 5 deadline that the Treasury Department says needs to be me, lest the country face ‘economic calamity.’

  According to McConnell, it’s “entirely reasonable for the new speaker and his team to put spending reduction on the table. “I wish him well in talking to the president. That’s where a solution lies.”

  McConnell’s remarks raise pressure on McCarthy, who is seeking to navigate demands from House GOP hard-liners to force aggressive spending cuts as part of any debt ceiling extension. While McConnell has negotiated past deals with Biden, including when he was vice president, McCarthy has little experience negotiating complicated deals with Democrats. It’s not clear what, if anything, can get the votes to pass the House, where Republican control a narrow majority. –NBC News

  Biden and the Democrats, however, say they won’t entertain cuts or other negotiations.

  According to Schumer, the ball is indeed in McCarthy’s court.

  “McConnell made the argument for us. He says the House has to go first,” Schumer told reporters. “We’re just taking that one little step further and saying yes, not only that to go first, they have to show us a plan.”

  

  Earlier Tuesday, Schumer said that “default would be a catastrophe for American working families. It’s not an abstract issue. It’s going to affect every American family severely and adversely,” adding “And playing brinksmanship, taking hostages is being risky and not caring about average people. If MAGA GOP stops paying our nation’s bills, Americans pay the price.”

  Translation; prepare for more chaos.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/24/2023 – 19:05

• New York City Snow Drought Might End Tomorrow
  New York City Snow Drought Might End Tomorrow

  New York City’s snow drought, the third longest since records began, might end Wednesday morning. 

  National Weather Service meteorologist Bryan Ramsey said NYC could expect up to 2 inches of snow during the morning commute, but a changeover to a wintry mix and rain could occur at some point when milder air moves into the Northeast. 

  Wednesday’s accumulation could be enough to end the Big Apple’s snowless streak.

  The longest streak of days without 0.1 inches of snow or greater was 332, which ended on Dec. 15, 2020. As of Monday, the city has had 320 days without measurable snowfall, the third longest on record, according to Accuweather. 

  

  If tomorrow’s weather event only produces a trace or less than 0.1 inches, the metro area could be on pace to hit the snowless record in about two weeks. By late January, NYC should average about 11 inches of snow. 

  Meanwhile, the heaviest snowfall will blanket northern New York to interior parts of New England, where upwards of a foot more could be dumped through Thursday. 

  

  A pattern change for the US is underway. Long-term weather models forecast lower-than-average temperatures from now through early February for the Lower 48. 

  

  Cold weather is welcomed after an unseasonably warm January. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/24/2023 – 18:45

• Microsoft Reverses Gains After CFO Slashes Outlook
  Microsoft Reverses Gains After CFO Slashes Outlook

  Update (1820ET): Just as we warned as earnings were released, Microsoft has given up all its after-hours gains after the CFO warns in the conference call that sales in the current quarter will come in at least $1 billion lower than Wall Street expected as December slowdown is projected to continue into new year.

  For the current quarter, Microsoft executives expect revenue of $50.5 billion to $51.5 billion, according to guidance provided by Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood, well below the consensus estimate for fiscal third-quarter revenue of $52.42 billion, according to FactSet.

  Hood said that Microsoft observed a slowdown in customer spending in December, and expects that to continue.

  Azure grew by 38% in constant currency, topping expectations, but Hood said that they exited December in the “mid-30s” after the deceleration, and executives expect that percentage to fall four or five points in the current quarter.

  Analysts were were projecting Azure growth of 27.8% for the quarter, or 33.7% in constant currency, according to FactSet.

  And with that, MSFT shares tumbled all the way back into red for the day…

  

  And that is weighing heavily on Nasdaq futures…

  

  *  *  *

  With all eyes on super-tech bellwether Microsoft, and specifically on how the company’s Azure cloud division would do, not to mention what the company would say about its outlook, this is what the company reported moments ago:

  • Revenue $52.747 billion, missing estimates $52.93 billion; yet in constant currency terms, revenue grew 7%, beating the estimate of +6.59%
  • Adjusted EPS $2.32, beating estimates 2.30

  Here, a mixed picture at best, and some more details

  • Productivity and Business Processes revenue $17.00 billion, beating the estimate $16.81 billion
    • Office Commercial products and cloud services revenue increased 7% (up 14% in constant currency) driven by Office 365 Commercial revenue growth of 11% (up 18% in constant currency)
    • Office Consumer products and cloud services revenue decreased 2% (up 3% in constant currency) and Microsoft 365 Consumer subscribers grew to 63.2 million
    • LinkedIn revenue increased 10% (up 14% in constant currency)
    • Dynamics products and cloud services revenue increased 13% (up 20% in constant currency) driven by Dynamics 365 revenue growth of 21% (up 29% in constant currency)

  • More Personal Computing revenue $14.24 billion, missing estimate $14.74 billion, and down 19% Y/Y (down 16% in constant currency), which is to be expected following the PC buying spree during the covid lockdowns.
    • Windows OEM revenue decreased 39%
    • Windows Commercial products and cloud services revenue decreased 3% (up 3% in constant currency)
    • Xbox content and services revenue decreased 12% (down 8% in constant currency)
    • Search and news advertising revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs increased 10% (up 15% in constant currency)
    • Devices revenue decreased 39% (down 34% in constant currency)
  • Operating income $20.40 billion, missing estimate $21 billion
  • Capital expenditure $6.27 billion, missing estimate $6.63 billion

  

  But while the above were largely in line, what everyone was looking for was what MSFT reported about Cloud and here there was some good news, to wit: Intelligent Cloud revenue came in at $21.51 billion, which increased 18% (up 24% in constant currency), and beat estimates of $21.43 billion. Server products and cloud services revenue increased 20% (up 26% in constant currency) driven by Azure and other cloud services revenue growth of 31%, up 38% in constant currency, and beating estimates of 35% .

  

  A snapshot of growth rates by various operating divisions shows just how extensive the impact of the strong dollar was across the board.

  

  Commenting on the quarter, CEO Satya Nadella, said that “The next major wave of computing is being born, as the Microsoft Cloud turns the world’s most advanced AI models into a new computing platform. We are committed to helping our customers use our platforms and tools to do more with less today and innovate for the future in the new era of AI.”

  “We are focused on operational excellence as we continue to invest to drive growth. Microsoft Cloud revenue was $27.1 billion, up 22% (up 29% in constant currency) year-over-year as our commercial offerings continue to drive value for our customers,” said Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Microsoft.

  And while the growth within Azure was the slowest observed yet in MSFT history…

  

  … it may have been just enough to ease market fears of the bottom falling out.

  In kneejerk reaction, MSFT stock jumped more than 4% after hours…

  

  … kicking off the closely-watched big-tech earnings season on an upbeat note. Peers such as AMZN were also up some 3% after hours.

  That said, keep an eye out for forecasts and more during the firm’s conference call, due at 5:30pm NY time: a word out of place could promptly burst any bullish sentiment from the cloud beat.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/24/2023 – 18:29

• Flood-Damaged Cars From California Likely To Hit Used Market Soon
  Flood-Damaged Cars From California Likely To Hit Used Market Soon

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

  Recent storms that hammered California have dumped years’ worth of rain on the state, causing widespread flooding, and has prompted warnings that flood-damaged vehicles may hit the used car market soon.

  

  In California, 32 trillion gallons of rain and snow fell since Christmas. The water washed out roads, knocked out power, and created mudslides by soaking wildfire-charred hills. It caused damage in 41 of the state’s 58 counties. At least 21 people have died, officials say.

  After recent flooding hit the Los Angeles area this week, Ivan Drury, director of insights for Edmunds, said that cars that have suffered water damage could be quite unsafe even if they don’t appear so on the surface.

  “Number one, your electrical system: you’ve got so much electronics on a car, now more so than ever. Technology systems prevent you from getting into an accident, and now you are in more danger,” he told the Los Angeles Times late last week.

  “And there’s the vehicle physically deteriorating over time.”

  Drury emphasized that smelling the vehicle is critical.

  “You had better get your face close to carpet,” he said.

  “That gross, musty smell,” he added, “that’s a big red flag.”

  Consumers should take caution when purchasing a used car that was registered in a state or city where there has been recent flooding, Drury said.

  Kenneth Potiker, owner of San Bernardino-based Riteway Auto Dismantlers, told the paper that he expects to see recently flooded California vehicles to appear at car auctions in the coming weeks. “I’ll buy a few, I’m sure—but I stay away from a lot,” he said, adding that it’s difficult to tell the extent of the damage.

  But he warned potential buyers that they should avoid such cars. 

  “I would tell them not to buy a car like that—that would be the best advice,” he said.

  “If it floods inside a car, water damage is one of the worst types of damage.”

  Insurance companies say that many flooded vehicles often get totaled, meaning that the cost of the repair work is equal or greater to the value of the car. According to the Insurance Information Institute, some flood-damaged cars are issued a salvage title, which can alert people and companies to possible damage.

  “By definition, a flood vehicle has been completely or partially submerged in water to the extent that its body, engine, transmission or other mechanical component parts have been damaged,” it says.

  “If the vehicle is so damaged that it is no longer operable, the driver’s insurance company settles the claim by buying the vehicle and selling it as a ‘salvage’ at an auto auction.”

  But the Institute warns that “dishonest and unscrupulous car dealers” can then purchase the vehicles, clean them, but it leaves “hidden flood damage.” Those dealers then take the cars to states that weren’t impacted by the storm before selling them as used cars to unsuspecting buyers.

  

  A woman waits for her husband at their front porch to be rescued from their flooded home in Brentwood, Calif., on Monday, Jan. 16, 2023. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group via AP)

  And those “dishonest dealers will not disclose the damage on the vehicle’s title as they are required, which is a crime called ‘title washing,’” says the Institute. “The vehicles are then sold with the hidden damage.”

  “It’s very easy for a professional to clean up a vehicle and make it look new, when, in fact, the electronics and computers are in really bad shape,” Jack Gillis, chairman of the board of directors for the nonprofit Center for Auto Safety, told KOMO News.

  “This can present a safety hazard.”

  After Hurricane Ian hammered Florida last year, vehicle data company Carfax warned consumers about purchasing used vehicles that may have water damage. At the time, it estimated that more than 350,000 vehicles might have been damaged by Ian’s flooding.

  “We are seeing these flooded cars show up all around the country, putting unsuspecting buyers at risk,” Emilie Voss, a Carfax spokeswoman, said in a statement last year about Ian’s aftermath.

  “Cosmetically these cars might look great, but if you don’t know what to look for, it’s nearly impossible to tell they are literally rotting from the inside out.”

  From Dec. 26 to Jan. 17, California was deluged by 11.47 inches of rain and snow on average across the state, according to the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center, with some reports of up to 15 feet of snow in the highest elevations of the Sierra Nevada. Late last week, meanwhile, President Joe Biden toured a California beach town to survey damage that was done by the recent storms.

  California has been hit by nine atmospheric rivers since late December. The storms have relented in recent days. Forecasters say that a dry period will envelop much of the state for the time being.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/24/2023 – 18:25

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• They Won't Leave Us Alone: The Invasion Of Politics
  They Won’t Leave Us Alone: The Invasion Of Politics

  Authored by Joakim Book via The Mises Institute,

  The temptation and crucial flaw of a totalitarian mind are that everyone must play a part in a superstructural battle between good and evil. Standing on the sidelines or taking a neutral position on present topics is not allowed; one may not merely observe or ignore the madness played out among the power hungry.

  

  As a not-so-proud carrier of a Swedish passport, I last year lost track of how many times I was asked about Sweden’s membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the overreaching military alliance among Western nations. Apparently, there was a war going on somewhere. NATO countries were scrambling, and Finland and Sweden (thoroughly Western social democratic countries) were decades-old NATO holdouts. I did not know; I took pride in not knowing.

  The chattering classes and the corporate press were full-on politicking. An insider-diplomacy battle raged between Stockholm, Helsinki, and Washington, DC. At some point even, Ankara, Turkey, was involved. I did not know; I had no opinion. My friends, my colleagues, my neighbor, my barber, my friends’ friends, and various other acquaintances all wanted in on the sordid business of political commentating.

  I did not know. That was exactly it. I had no position to offer, which I quickly realized was a social mistake in this brave new world of symbolic wars for all that is “good.” I did not know anything about military matters, defense capabilities, international relations, or threat assessments regarding the various countries involved. I did not live in any of the places previously mentioned. I had no interest in their nation-state status. I did not know what the implications of NATO membership were or why it concerned me. Politicians politick with or without my input.

  Everyone needs a take; everyone needs to “be informed” on the grand, irrelevant events of our broken times. Everyone needs a flag in their profile picture—a not-so-grand gesture indicating that they support the “latest thing.”

  Paraphrasing Murray Rothbard’s quote on economic ignorance, why should I politick “a loud and vociferous position” on the diplomatic/military questions that so many of my fellow humans keep asking me for?

  On most current affairs, I imagine I am a little bit like most people; we have our own lives and our own interests to pay attention to. Everything else takes a backseat. Rather than play the hot-take-on-everything game, I just want to be a good libertarian and be left alone. Unfortunately, that does not fly in a politicized society flirting with totalitarianism. Society has lost its shared values and its unifying religious frameworks and instead elevated politics (as Friedrich Nietzsche’s old quote goes, “God is dead. . . . And we have killed him”).

  F.A. Hayek taught us in his famous 1945 “The Use of Knowledge in Society” that market prices carry information. I do not need to know anything about faraway affairs. I am perfectly capable of reading gasoline prices, suffering electricity price shocks, or paying elevated prices at the grocery store. That is the beauty of a capitalist division of labor and a market system. We do not need top-down control. We do not need the chattering classes opining about what one owes, deserves, or ought to know. All we need is the reality of what we experience as market actors.

  Like a good libertarian, I instead try to purge politics from my life; no watching the news. I only read slow news in quality magazines by authors I trust, and I routinely skip every topic that does not belong to my core interests. Life is too short. And as I have said in the past, the sum of “humanity’s current (and future) literary, statistic and economic treasure” is more valuable than the unexciting, outdated information that is tumbled, diluted, and filled with omissions, via my propaganda machine (sorry, TV news).

  In what political scientists would consider apex “political ignorance,” I take pride in not being able to name the prime minister of my native Sweden or the rulers of the other lands in which I reside. I do not know, care, or want to elevate their theater into my cognitive space.

  At a recent party, my team lost a trivia competition, partly because we could not name the United Kingdom’s last three prime ministers (They change so often that it is not worth learning their names.). When my father called on an eventful Sunday last fall, and in passing, mentioned that he had met an acquaintance at the voting booths, I learned for the first time that it was Election Day. Epic!

  Twenty-five years ago, James Dale Davidson and William Rees wrote about the public’s relationship to politics and corrupt institutions in their long-lived treatise The Sovereign Individual:

  Moral outrage against corrupt leaders is not an isolated historical phenomenon but a common precursor of change. It happens again and again whenever one era gives way to another. . . . This widespread revulsion comes into evidence well before people develop a new coherent ideology of change. As we write, there is as yet little evidence of an articulate rejection of politics. That will come later. It has not yet occurred to most of your contemporaries that a life without politics is possible. (emphasis added)

  Foreshadowing the rise of internet dominance, remote work, financial revolutions, and Bitcoin, the authors precociously reasoned about big-picture societal shifts of power. When technology allows, new societal constellations become available. Whether or not we grab onto them is up to us.

  And all meaningful changes begin at home: fix that which you can fix, clean your room, etc. A flourishing future without politics requires us to purge from our lives the corrupting features of politics, which only enrage us and separate us from our fellow humans.

  Politics is cancer, and the best you can do is to exit from it in every way you can.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/24/2023 – 00:00

• China's Northernmost City Sees Lowest Temperatures Ever Recorded
  China’s Northernmost City Sees Lowest Temperatures Ever Recorded

  China’s “North Pole” recorded its lowest temperature since records began.

  The Chinese city of Mohe dropped to minus 53 degrees Celsius Sunday, according to China Daily, citing data from the country’s local weather bureau.

  The frigid temperatures broke a previous record of minus 52.3 degrees Celsius. Temperatures have been below minus 50 degrees Celsius for three consequence days. 

  “As a new round of extreme cold hit Heilongjiang, a number of areas in the Greater Khingan Range have recorded their coldest ever temperatures,” China Daily said. 

  Extremely cold air from Siberia is moving south. North China (Mohe region) is reporting temperatures below -50 °C – one of the lowest during the measurement period: https://t.co/yZwIGCN7en 🥶 pic.twitter.com/gmjH25UF2g

  — Ventusky (@Ventuskycom) January 22, 2023

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  Earlier this month, we pointed out a cold air mass swirling in the Arctic was shattering records. The rural northern Siberian town of Zhilinda recorded temperatures of minus 62.1 degrees Celsius. 

  Arcfield Weather’s Paul Dorian explained recently that winter isn’t over and called for a significant change in North American weather. 

  On Monday, the weather blog Severe Weather Europe outlined:

  The Polar Vortex is starting to weaken as a strong Stratospheric Warming event is about to unfold. As the forecast indicates, the Polar Vortex will be heavily deformed but will not fully collapse. These important events can have a significant impact on the rest of winter in the United States, Canada, and Europe.

  Some meteorologists continue to tweet long-term weather models that suggest a polar vortex could result in colder weather for the US and Europe at the end of the month or early February. 

  Not a piece or a sample, but the whole load #PolarVortex https://t.co/ipl1NiXdur pic.twitter.com/Nt9XdytGS8

  — Ryan Maue (@RyanMaue) January 21, 2023

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  Within two weeks the still strong polar vortex (Jan23 left) completely collapses by Feb8. Last year this happened in mid March, which has been followed by a massive surge in #natgas pic.twitter.com/0Yp5E2Ot6v

  — Heinrich Leopold (@LeopoldHeinrich) January 23, 2023

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  Polar vortex winds emerging from the North Pole could mean freezing temperatures in the UK this February ❄ https://t.co/V65UzCcnDg

  — ManchesterWorld (@MancWorldUK) January 22, 2023

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  When I dip, you dip… we dip! 🥶 #polarvortex explained… 👇 #BreakingItDownWithBrittney https://t.co/4a7shjW0TF pic.twitter.com/sD8ygq6u5q

  — Brittney Merlot ⛈ (@MerlotsWeather) January 23, 2023

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  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/23/2023 – 23:40

• Victor Davis Hanson: Mexico Is Not Really An American Friend
  Victor Davis Hanson: Mexico Is Not Really An American Friend

  Authored by Victor Davis Hanson, op-ed via Townhall.com,

  Left-wing Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador recently praised a visiting President Joe Biden:

  “Just imagine: There are 40 million Mexicans in the United States – 40 million who were born here in Mexico, (or) who are the children of people who were born in Mexico!”

  

  Why wouldn’t Obrador be delighted? Since Biden took office in January 2021, America has allowed some 5-6 million illegal entries across its southern border.

  Obrador further congratulated the malleable Biden whom he sees as a kindred but complacent left-wing spirit:

  “You are the first president of the United States in a very long time that has not built even one meter of wall.”

  Translated that means Mexico is delighted the United States now cares little about the security of its border, the disappearance of which is wonderful news for Mexico.

  Note that Mexico itself facilitates illegal transits across its southern border – as long as such Central American and other global migrants keep heading northward into the United States.

  But when or if they pause, try to stay in Mexico, commit crimes, or expect Mexican social services, then almost immediately Mexico City sends thousands of troops to close its border with Guatemala, deports the illegal crossers, and revives talk of building a border wall of its own.

  Biden has demolished America’s southern border. His illegal nullification of U.S. immigration law is music to Obrador’s ears.

  But it is a nightmare to Americans who poll overwhelming disapproval of the subversion of their border security. They are exhausted by the influx of death-dealing drugs. And they are furious over the hundreds of billions of dollars diverted from their strapped social services to attend to the needs of foreign nationals who have broken their laws.

  Even overwhelmed blue sanctuary cities that once boasted of nullifying federal immigration law are now beginning to object to Biden’s complicity in Mexico’s manipulation of the border.

  Obrador is delighted that Biden is the first White House occupant who in matters of the shared southern border grants all of Mexico’s wishes, but almost none of his citizens.

  That reality raises the question that if Mexico were a declared enemy of the United States, how would it behave any differently than it is now?

  Take drugs, for example. American overdoses due to fentanyl and other opioids are nearing 100,000 deaths per year.

  Almost all such lethal opiates are manufactured in factories operated by drug cartels in Mexico that enjoy de facto immunity from prosecution. The Mexican opioid industry was designed solely for lucrative export to the United States – with zero concern over the death and destruction its products cause here.

  Well aside from human trafficking and smuggling, cartel drugs indirectly earn the Mexican economy somewhere between $35-45 billion each year.

  A hostile China profits by selling Mexicans the raw product. Beijing gains satisfaction that at the present death rate, more Americans will perish this decade alone from imported Mexican drugs than all the combat deaths in all the wars since America’s founding.

  In that sense, Mexico is doing more damage to America than all our prior enemies combined.

  Obrador is equally callous in bragging that he exports his own poor. Left unsaid is that a naturally rich Mexico either will not, or cannot, adequately employ, feed, shelter, and protect its impoverished citizens.

  So instead, it cynically sees its people as a lucrative export commodity while holding U.S. laws in veritable contempt.

  Currently, Mexican nationals are sending nearly $60 billion a year in remittances from the United States to Mexico to aid friends and families who do not find enough succor from their government in Mexico City. Untaxed remittances far and away constitute the largest source of Mexico’s foreign exchange income.

  Much of that gifting is made possible by generous American state and federal subsidies to illegal aliens. Frequent subsidized housing, healthcare, legal assistance, education, and food in the United States are often used to free up cash for illegals, who then send it to Mexico.

  Mexico sees this export of its people as a win-win-win-win proposition.

  Illegal immigration to America exempts Mexico from covering the social welfare costs of its poorest.

  In safety-valve fashion, it exports the volatility of social inequality rather than spending large sums to address it.

  Mexico sees its huge and growing expatriate community as a valuable lobbying lever inside America, given the longer Mexican nationals are absent from Mexico, the more they romanticize the country they fled.

  Finally, Mexico is a left-wing nation. The more it sends its poor to the United States, the more it feels Democratic politicians who grant concessions to Mexico will gain valuable new political constituents – ensuring still further concessions.

  One sure sign of historic national decline is the collective inability of a government and its people to defend their borders and national sovereignty.

  Mexico would happily agree.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/23/2023 – 23:20

• China Says Over 80% Of Population Infected With COVID, No Risk Of Virus Rebound
  China Says Over 80% Of Population Infected With COVID, No Risk Of Virus Rebound

  Remember when rational voices asked why, instead of locking down its economy every time there was even a small breakout of the Wu-flu, China (or the US for that matter) didn’t simply do the right thing and allow covid to sweep through the land, creating a buffer of natural immunity and burn out on its own? Well, after bizarrely resisting the inevitable (one day we hope to have an answer why Xi Jinping pushed so hard for the now defunct Covid-zero policy) for so long, that’s precisely what China has now down and on Saturday, a prominent government scientist said that the possibility of a big COVID-19 rebound in China over the next two or three months is remote as 80% of people have now been infected, reaching the herd immunity threshold.

  While the mass movement of people during the ongoing Lunar New Year holiday period may spread the pandemic, boosting infections in some areas, a second COVID wave is unlikely in the near term, Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said on the Weibo social media platform, according to Reuters.

  Hundreds of millions of Chinese are traveling across the country for holiday reunions that had been suspended under recently eased COVID curbs, raising fears of fresh outbreaks in rural areas less equipped to manage large outbreaks.

  To ease widespread if groundless fears which had been mercilessly stoked by Beijing for the past three years, a National Health Commission official also addressed the nation on Thursday saying that China has passed the peak of COVID patients in fever clinics, emergency rooms and with critical conditions.

  According to “government data”, which in China means propaganda, nearly 60,000 people with COVID had died in hospital as of Jan. 12, roughly a month after China abruptly dismantled its zero-COVID policy. But some experts said that figure probably vastly undercounts the full impact, as it excludes those who die at home, and because many doctors have said they are discouraged from citing COVID as a cause of death.

  While over a billion Chinese having survived covid is good news, it’s terrible news for those pharma companies that held the world hostage for the past three years: after all, just how will Pfizer and Moderna be able to afford more yachts if they can’t sell their constantly changing, taxpayer-funded mRNA cocktail to the world’s (now 2nd) largest population. As for the world’s most populous country, India, it knew what was up more than a year ago when in Sept 2021 its government said it would not buy any shots from Pfizer and Moderna, thus depriving its population of countless complications from myocarditis and pericarditis.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/23/2023 – 23:00

• Australians Were Once Prosecuted For Claiming Face Masks Worked Against Viruses
  Australians Were Once Prosecuted For Claiming Face Masks Worked Against Viruses

  Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

  Australians who tried to sell surgical face masks on the back of claims they worked against viruses were once threatened with prosecution and massive fines by the government.

  

  Yes, really.

  An article titled ‘Farce mask: it’s safe for only 20 minutes’ published by the Sydney Morning Herald in 2003 explained how, “Retailers who cash in on community fears about SARS by exaggerating the health benefits of surgical masks could face fines of up to $110,000.”

  The article quotes a public health experts who said that face masks are largely useless at stopping the spread of viruses and could even worsen the situation.

  “Those masks are only effective so long as they are dry,” said Professor Yvonne Cossart of the Department of Infectious Diseases at the University of Sydney.

  “As soon as they become saturated with the moisture in your breath they stop doing their job and pass on the droplets.”

  Twenty years ago Australians were prosecuted for saying masks work against viruses. Now they get arrested for not wearing masks during viral outbreaks.

  As Mencken said, our governments are dishonest, insane and intolerable. @smh https://t.co/wIGcvbW2OH https://t.co/XWVIEoNlpy pic.twitter.com/coaGDxa1SZ

  — Tony Heller (@TonyClimate) January 23, 2023

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  Professor Cossart said that the masks would need to be changed every 15-20 minutes to be in any way effective.

  Her sentiments were echoed by John Bell from the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia, who said that masks only offered “marginal benefit” and were largely psychological in their level of protection.

  The story is noteworthy because during the COVID pandemic, the Australian government imposed one of the strictest lockdowns in the world and used face mask mandates as a brutal tool of population control.

  As we previously highlighted, authorities in Melbourne used high-tech surveillance drones to catch people outside not wearing masks.

  At the height of the hysteria, there were numerous instances of police in Australia physically attacking people for not adhering to mask wearing rules, including one incident when a woman was placed in a chokehold by a male police officer.

  Another video showed an elderly woman being arrested for not wearing a mask while sitting on a park bench.

  Yet another clip showed police pepper spraying pre-teen children for not wearing face masks.

  Another clip showed an elderly man suffering a suspected heart attack after he was arrested by police for not wearing a mask outside while exercising.

  During the early months of the COVID pandemic, health authorities advised against wearing masks, only to subsequently do a 180 once face coverings became a convenient psychological tool of population control.

  *  *  *

  Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

  In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Get early access, exclusive content and behind the scenes stuff by following me on Locals.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/23/2023 – 22:40

• Nikileaks Spooks Markets That Chinese Reopening May Be Inflationary, But Wall Street Disagrees
  Nikileaks Spooks Markets That Chinese Reopening May Be Inflationary, But Wall Street Disagrees

  Monday’s furious rally, which among other things was facilitated by the Sunday report from WSJ Fed mouthpiece Nick Timiraos that a 25bps Feb 1 rate hike by the Fed is a done deal, hit an airpocket just after 2pm when in the latest tweet from Timiraos – whose every utterance now moves markets, especially during the Fed blackout period – and in which the WSJ reporter noted that “Just when signs point to easing inflation worldwide, China’s economic reopening after years of strict pandemic controls is raising questions about whether it could spur costs higher again.”

  Just when signs point to easing inflation worldwide, China’s economic reopening after years of strict pandemic controls is raising questions about whether it could spur costs higher again https://t.co/NA8Wr3l2L3

  — Nick Timiraos (@NickTimiraos) January 23, 2023

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  Needless to say, China’s economic reopening is a very sensitive issue: on one hand, there are those who argue easier access to reopened Chinese markets will mean smoother supply chains and cheaper goods (and transit) contributing to the current disinflation; on the other hand, should China’s reopening turn out to be “hot” and should Beijing end up exporting too much inflation (as it has in the past), it could reverse any “pause” or “pivot” plans the Fed has, and instead force it to double down on tightening later in 2023.

  Yes, and this is similar to what Powell said when asked about reopening effects last month. The two offset each other to some effect, but the exact net effect is very uncertain. https://t.co/yHWtXwz4fV pic.twitter.com/GZdBlVCjna

  — Nick Timiraos (@NickTimiraos) January 23, 2023

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  While we will have much more to say on this topic in the coming days, the initial consensus on Wall Street is that a Chinese reopening will not, in fact, be inflationary. Take last week’s Cross-Asset Dispatches note from Morgan Stanley, in which strategist Andrew Sheets explains why expectations that China’s reopening will be inflationary will disappoint. We excerpt from his note below:

  We don’t think that China’s reopening will be inflationary

  Wage growth is one risk to the Morgan Stanley ‘inflation falls’ thesis. Another is China’s reopening from Covid-zero, which has been increasingly aggressive. Our forecasts imply that this reopening will be successful, with our economists optimistic on China growth, and our strategists optimistic on China equities and FX.

  But if the world’s second-largest economy successfully reopens from Covid, won’t that drive more inflationary pressure in 2023?

  Not necessarily. Our economists see a few considerations:

  • Private consumption sees the largest rebound: Private consumption in China saw the largest drop-off as a result of Covid-zero, and has the most to gain from this ending, especially with high private savings. This demand competes less at the international level than more commodity-heavy public investment.
  • Within this, services rebound most: Our China economists see services consumption rising by 8.5%Y in 2023 versus -1.5%Y in 2022. Demand for goods also increases, but the swing is milder (+7.7%Y in 2023 versus +2.4%Y in 2022). At the risk of simplifying, more people going back to the movies isn’t very inflationary; the theatres have capacity, and this consumption doesn’t compete with demand elsewhere.
  • Supply improves: Reopening should ultimately help to ease pressure on supply chains and improve labour supply in China.

  There will be some inflationary impacts. For example, we think that China’s reopening will boost oil demand, but even here the impact is back-loaded (see The Oil Manual: Heavy Now, Higher Later, January 11, 2023).  Indeed, our economists think that the broader theme across Asia is disinflation. For more, see 2023 Asia Economics Outlook: The Year of Disinflation, November 13, 2022.

  Economists at TS Lombard reached a similar conclusion last week, writing that they expect a “limited demand pull” from China’s reopening and “even oil prices are unlikely to receive the major demand boost that many expect” to wit:

  The composition of growth will determine global demand and inflation spillovers. For the first time, a cyclical recovery in China will be led by household consumption, mainly services. There is clearly a great deal of pent-up demand and savings (about 4% of GDP) following three years of intermittent mobility restrictions. And although we are concerned about the degree of property-related scarring to household (as well as local government and bank) balance sheets, at least in 2023 there is likely to be strong catch-up demand from a very low base. For instance, trips over the first three days of the Spring Festival travel season are up 30% yoy but still only 70% of the 2019 level. Similarly, catering spending last year was just 90% of the 2019 level and tourism spending only 50%. Catch-up growth should be fairly mechanical and lead to increased job hiring (pre-Covid, 25% of all jobs in China were in catering, retail, accommodation and tourism), higher wages and more confidence. Structural problems have not disappeared – far from it – but they will not derail growth in 2023

  Globally mild inflation and limited demand pull. A recovery led by household spending on services will support fuel and catering-related commodities, but global spillovers should not be overestimated. Furthermore, demand for industrial metals is likely to come in weaker than current bullish expectations. Chinese imports are driven by investment and industrial demand. The workshop of the world does not need to buy consumer goods overseas; moreover, increases in demand for intermediate goods to meet rising domestic goods consumption are likely to be offset by falling exports and high inventories. Tourism will certainly benefit – Thailand and other regional peers are well placed. However, time will be needed for flight volumes, ticket prices and international Covid restrictions to normalize to near pre-pandemic levels. Official estimates put outbound travel at 70% of pre-Covid levels this year.

  

  Even oil prices are unlikely to receive the major demand boost that many expect. Transportation accounts for just 54% of China’s oil consumption vs 72% in the US and 68% in the EU. Petrochemicals constitute a much larger share, at 42%, with related China imports generally led by construction and export-oriented manufacturing (lots of plastic). Last year, net oil and refined petroleum imports were 8% lower by volume than the pre-pandemic peak – infrastructure and export-oriented manufacturing partly offset lower mobility and less property construction. Demand drivers should switch this year, with travel rising and property less negative, while infrastructure and manufacturing slow. The certain outcome is an increase in oil demand: we estimate a 5-8% increase in net import volumes, which, however, is unlikely to cause oil prices to surge, especially as China is buying at a discount from Russia. An inflationary impulse is coming from the PRC but will be domestically focused and unlikely to trouble the PBoC, let alone the Fed.

  Ironically, one of the reasons why a major monetary stimulus in China will not lead to surge in inflation abroad is that since 2015, it has become much harder and more expensive to move money offshore.

  The impetus to move funds is now arguably greater than it was in the aftermath of the surprise FX devaluation. The currency move was a one-off shock, “Common Prosperity” is here to stay. Outbound tourism offers one avenue to mask capital flight. Data on capital outflows are sparse. We can observe surface-level changes – for example, increased “golden visa” issuance to Chinese nationals – but the scale is hard to gauge. Balance of payments data are a metric of potential outflows. We think tourism spending alone is likely to reach US$40bn in quarterly outflows by the end of H1/23 based on pre-Covid trends. Net errors and omissions, another proxy for capital flight, could rise to US$50bn if there is a return to the 2017-2019 quarterly average. Given a goods surplus of US$200bn in Q3/22, this will not send the Chinese current account into deficit; but, combined with a narrower trade surplus (domestic imports rising modestly, global demand slumping), it will bring downward pressure to bear on RMB from late Q2/23 onwards.

  Translation: after China plugged the Great Firewall in 2015/2016 and made it next to impossible to use bitcoin to shuffle cash offshore, inflation has been far more localized. Of course, the counterargument also stands: if China loses control of domestic inflation and hopes to export higher prices offshore, it will then quietly open all those locks it implemented in recent years to make money laundering abroad using crypto impossible.

  More in the full reports available to pro subs in the usual place.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/23/2023 – 22:05

• Food Inflation Update: Lull Before China's Storm?
  Food Inflation Update: Lull Before China’s Storm?

  By Russell Clark of the Capital Flows and Asset Markets Substack,

  As I and many of my subscribers have noticed, many of the key commodity drivers of inflation have seeming rolled over.

  

  European gas prices, Chinese pork prices, oil prices, US corn prices among others have weakened to levels seen before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Strangely, weak commodity prices should be disastrous for my key trade, long GLD short TLT, and yet strangely it has breached new cycle highs. Why is this?

  

  The first thing that should be said is that commodity investing is hard. Surprises in short term demand and supply can drive huge moves in spot markets. A good example is pork prices. Pork is particularly big driver of Chinese inflation. Chinese and US pork prices have recently fallen significantly.

  

  I have no idea why pork prices have fallen. The reopening of China would have made me think short term demand for pork would be higher, and hence prices would be rising. That they are falling, suggests maybe supply is robust. Confusing the picture is that Chinese corn price have not weakened, meaning that profitability for pig farmers has collapsed. All a bit confusing to be honest.

  

  However, my core argument is that China has turned into a net food importer, and this should be putting upward pressure on food prices, as long as China does not devalue. The data on China being a net food importer remains compelling. European exports of meat to China remain strong.

  

  Chinese pork prices can be greatly effected by swings in supply. However during the African Swine Flu crisis, beef consumption in China grew significantly.

  China grows very little beef (very little pasture land).

  Robust pricing for beef would point to food inflation in China still having an upward bias in my mind.

  The key argument of China becoming a food importer seems intact.

  

  The other end of inflation argument you could make is that energy price inflation is done. European gas prices have collapsed in recent months. In part driven by a very warm winter.

  

  Even more so than Chinese pork prices, natural gas prices are very susceptible to short term fluctuations in demand and supply. To get around this I look at 5 year forward futures on US natural gas. The long dated futures have yet to show an inflection in pricing to indicate we are going back to a sustained bear market.

  

  What I think is happening is that in early 2022, the US seemed very determined to counter inflation through what ever measure were necessary. We saw the sharpest increase in short term rates in a generation. And we also saw the biggest sell down of the strategic petroleum reserve. This sell down added about 600k barrels a day of supply to oil markets.

  

  As argued previously, food inflation forces wage inflation. And China becoming a food importer is creating food inflation globally.

  This means that central banks have to run aggressive interest rate policy, or inflation will return.

  GLD/TLT reflects that. When TLT is weak, which happens when the market pricing in aggressive interest rate policy, GLD is also weak. But as soon as TLT reflects a slackening of central bank resolve, GLD shoots higher. My best guess we are a short term lull in inflation, making short TLT and other bond trades look attractive here.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/23/2023 – 22:00

• M&M's Ends Woke "Spokescandies" After Pushback, Replacing Them With Actress Maya Rudolph
  M&M’s Ends Woke “Spokescandies” After Pushback, Replacing Them With Actress Maya Rudolph

  Authored by Bryan Jung via The Epoch Times,

  M&M’s says it’s pulling its increasingly woke “spokescandies” mascots after a massive pushback over the politicization of the beloved candy brand.

  

  Mars, the candy maker which produces M&M’s, announced on Jan. 23 that it would replace its decades-old team of M&M’s “spokescandies” mascots with the actress Maya Rudolph, after backlash by longtime fans over its failed makeover to make the brand more inclusive.

  Rudolph said she will take the place of the iconic mascots before the company’s awaited Super Bowl ad that will be aired during the game on Feb. 12.

  “I am a lifelong lover of the candy, and I feel like it’s such an honor to be asked to be part of such a legendary brand’s campaign,” she told NBC’s TODAY.

  The “spokescandies” were a team of little cartoon M&M’s mascots, which have appeared in every commercial and other marketing materials representing the candy covered chocolates since 1960.

  Even Candy Favorites Are Unable to Escape Wokeism

  In January 2022, Mars updated the cartoon mascots and M&M’s marketing with a plan to rebrand each mascot with a new backstory, clothing, and personality to be more inclusive under the slogan: “M&M’S® Creating a World Where Everyone Feels They Belong.”

  M&M’s said that its branding would “reflect an updated tone of voice that is more inclusive, welcoming, and unifying, while remaining rooted in our signature jester wit and humor.”

  The “feminine” green” M&M, for example, was criticized by the left for being marketed as “too sexy,” so was transformed into a feminist character, with the company switching out her knee-high heeled boots for sneakers.

  “Being a hypewoman for my friends, I think we all win when we see more women in leading roles, so I’m happy to take on the part of supportive friend when they succeed,” the Mars advertising has the green M&M saying.

  The “male” orange mascot became a character ridden with anxiety, and the “female” brown mascot became a boss with an assured personality.

  “Male” red, who had been the bully in the past, became kind to his co-characters.

  Mars’s most controversial change was the new purple M&M, a “lesbian” mascot which was designed to represent inclusivity.

  The new purple candy mascot was created to “help more people feel they belong,” the brand announced in September, explaining that the “lesbian” mascot “celebrates all voices, encouraging people around the world to embrace their authentic selves.”

  The purple “lesbian” made her debut with a new song called, “I’m Just Gonna Be Me,” featuring an accompanying music video.

  Mars announced in December that it would make its return to the Super Bowl with a 30-second spot during, and that the commercial would include its seven revamped M&M’s characters.

  “The latest campaign extends our purposeful work over the last year, but is rooted in a new creative territory, and we can’t wait for our fans to see what’s about to unfold,” Gabrielle Wesley, chief marketing office for Mars, wrote in a press release.

  Mars Withdraws Woke M&Ms After Fan and Media Backlash

  The rebrand, however, brought ridicule from conservative commentators and many fans, such as Fox News host Tucker Carlson, with many claiming that the makeovers were another example of a left-wing woke agenda gone too far.

  M&M’s finally conceded to its critics, posting on Jan. 23, on Instagram: 

  “America, let’s talk. In the last year, we’ve made some changes to our beloved spokescandies. We weren’t sure if anyone would even notice. And we definitely didn’t think it would break the internet. But now we get it—even a candy’s shoes can be polarizing. Which was the last thing M&M’s wanted since we’re all about bringing people together.”

  “Therefore, we have decided to take an indefinite pause on the spokescandies,” the statement continued.

  We give the final word to Tucker Carlson who summed up the farce tonight perfectly…

  Our response to the end of the obese and lesbian M&M spokescandies pic.twitter.com/HuSfAryyQi

  — Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) January 24, 2023

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  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/23/2023 – 21:21

• Pentagon Planning GOP House Speaker McCarthy Visit To Taiwan This Spring
  Pentagon Planning GOP House Speaker McCarthy Visit To Taiwan This Spring

  New House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is planning his own Taiwan trip later this year, following former speaker Nancy Pelosi’s early August visit which had set off weeks of PLA military drills which encircled the self-ruled island, including repeat breaches of the Taiwan Strait median line. 

  Fox News reported that the Pentagon is aware and busy making preparations. “The US military is drafting plans to ensure  safety on a trip to Taiwan later this year,” Fox reported.

  

  Punchbowl News was the first to report the trip earlier in the day Monday, and said the US military is in the “early stages” of laying the logistical groundwork.

  “McCarthy expressed support for Pelosi’s trip at the time and said he’d also travel to Taiwan if elected speaker,” Punchbowl wrote. “And just recently, McCarthy touted the House’s vote to establish a select committee on China, which received significant Democratic support.”

  An official involved in the preparations indicated it’s expected to take place at some point in the spring. Pelosi’s visit had been teased for months as a possibility but was only made public when she was already en route and about to touch down in Taipei on August 2nd, accompanied by a delegation of five Democratic Party members. They flew out the next day after meeting with top officials including President Tsai Ing-wen.

  China is already signaling severe opposition to another such ultra-provocative visit by a sitting US house speaker, an office third in line from the presidency after the vice president.

  For example, state-run Global Times addressed earlier stirrings last week when rumors of McCarthy’s trip began to surface:

  “If McCarthy does visit Taiwan in 2023,” a GT article began, “China-U.S. relations will witness another shock comparable to or even worse than that in August 2022 when Pelosi visited Taiwan.”

  McCarthy, long an advocate of getting ‘tougher’ on China, hopes to lead the House-led GOP toward putting greater scrutiny on Beijing and making the US economic and military rival a top foreign policy priority.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/23/2023 – 21:00

• Supreme Court's Failure To Identify Dobbs Leaker Is "Chilling", Jonathan Turley Warns "Danger Will Only Grow"
  Supreme Court’s Failure To Identify Dobbs Leaker Is “Chilling”, Jonathan Turley Warns “Danger Will Only Grow”

  Authored by Samantha Flom via The Epoch Times,

  George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley criticized the Supreme Court on Jan. 19 over its failure to determine who leaked a draft of the court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization opinion.

  

  After a months-long investigation sparked by the May leak, the court released its much-anticipated investigative report (pdf) on the matter Thursday, finding that it was “not possible” to identify the person responsible for the breach or how the document had ended up in the hands of Politico.

  “The Supreme Court’s report indicates that they cannot isolate the culprit among the over 80 possible suspects for the Dobbs leak,” Turley noted in a series of Jan. 19 tweets.

  “It is an admission that is almost as chilling as the leak itself.”

  The Supreme Court’s report indicates that they cannot isolate the culprit among the over 80 possible suspects for the Dobbs leak. It is an admission that is almost as chilling as the leak itself…

  — Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) January 19, 2023

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  Turley also posited that, despite the security recommendations of the court’s marshal, the inconclusive investigation would likely only serve to embolden future leakers.

  “The nature of the Court’s work requires a free flow of drafts and memoranda,” he noted. “That is why we hope to achieve through deterrence what was not achieved through ethics.

  “In this age of rage, this danger will only grow,” he added.

  “Someone felt that they had license to leak. Some others may now feel that they have the impunity to do so.”

  The Leak

  While, in general, Supreme Court leaks are rare, the Dobbs leak was made all the more significant by the implications of the ruling on nearly a half-century of abortion law in the United States.

  Politico, having exclusively obtained an early draft of the opinion, published it May 2 as part of a report titled, “Supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights, draft opinion shows.”

  Although the draft differed slightly from the final opinion the court would issue on June 24, the decision was the same: The court ruled 5–4 that there is no constitutional right to abortion, striking down the precedents set by the 1973 landmark abortion case of Roe v. Wade and the subsequent 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

  The leaked draft sparked national protests, including outside the homes of conservative justices, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh becoming the target of an assassination attempt.

  Calling the leak an “egregious breach” of the court’s trust, Chief Justice John Roberts ordered an investigation into its source.

  “To the extent this betrayal of the confidences of the Court was intended to undermine the integrity of our operations, it will not succeed,” Roberts assured in a May 3 statement.

  “The work of the Court will not be affected in any way.”

  The Investigation

  Prior to Thursday’s report, the court had been tight-lipped on the progress of its investigation, with the only updates coming from anonymous sources.

  Led by Supreme Court Marshal Gail Curley, the court’s investigative team comprised “seasoned attorneys and trained federal investigators with substantial experience conducting criminal, administrative and cyber investigations,” per Curley’s report.

  But after conducting 126 formal interviews of 97 employees, the team was unable to identify the individual responsible for the leak.

  “No one confessed to publicly disclosing the document and none of the available forensic and other evidence provided a basis for identifying any individual as the source of the document,” Curley noted.

  While the possibility of a hack could not be entirely ruled out, the team found that the evidence did not suggest improper outside access.

  Investigators were likewise unable to rule out inadvertent or negligent disclosure, “for example, by being left in a public space either inside or outside the building.”

  Additionally, despite reports that the justices were not interviewed as part of the investigation, Curley clarified in a statement Friday that she did speak with them in addition to their staff.

  “During the course of the investigation, I spoke with each of the Justices, several on multiple occasions,” she said. “The Justices actively cooperated in this iterative process, asking questions and answering mine. I followed up on all credible leads, none of which implicated the Justices or their spouses. On this basis, I did not believe that it was necessary to ask the Justices to sign sworn affidavits.”

  While also noting in her report that investigators were still reviewing and processing some electronic data and that a few inquiries were pending, Curley proposed several security improvements to prevent future breaches, including enhanced training, tracking mechanisms to monitor the printing and copying of documents, and policy updates on the handling of draft opinions and who can access sensitive information.

  In a statement attached to the report, the court offered Curley their “full support” as she and her team continue their investigation.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/23/2023 – 20:40

• Blank Check? Democrats Want To Totally Eliminate Debt Ceiling With New Bill
  Blank Check? Democrats Want To Totally Eliminate Debt Ceiling With New Bill

  A group of 43 Democrats want to completely eliminate the debt ceiling, which they say Republicans have ‘weaponized’ – which would give the government a blank check to borrow without any limit from Congress.

  

  The End the Threat of Default Act, introduced by Rep Bill Foster (D-IL) and co-sponsored by 42 House Democrats, comes after the federal government hit the $31,381 trillion debt ceiling last week. According to Democrats, instead of attempting to responsibly spend taxpayer dollars through negotiation, it’s time to just eliminate all limits on federal borrowing.

  “Weaponizing the debt ceiling and using it as a pawn in partisan budget negotiations is dangerous and repeatedly brings our nation to the brink of default, which would be disastrous to the U.S. economy – something we’ve witnessed as recently as 2011 when Republicans created a debt ceiling crisis that resulted in the first ever downgrade to the U.S. credit rating,” said Foster.

  “The government has an obligation to pay its bills,” he added. “Threatening to default on our debt is the same as ordering an expensive meal at a restaurant, eating it, and skipping out without paying. We can and should have a real conversation about overall spending, but the full faith and credit of the United States must never be compromised.”

  If Democrats are so concerned about hitting the debt ceiling, they should start collecting student debt payments again.

  — Ilya Shapiro (@ishapiro) January 23, 2023

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  Co-sponsors of the bill include Reps. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, Gerry Connolly of Virginia, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Barbara Lee of California, Fox News reports.

  The Biden administration and its Democrat allies in Congress have argued that raising the debt ceiling does not allow “new” spending, and only allows the government to meet its current obligations. But Republicans say congressional approval of new spending programs is what has repeatedly forced the government to keep hitting its borrowing limit, which has then forced Congress to keep raising the debt ceiling.

  Before the housing crisis in 2008, the total national debt was $9 trillion, an amount that more than tripled to more than $31 trillion in less than 15 years thanks to programs related to the housing bailout, 20 years of military presence in Afghanistan, COVID emergency response measures, and routine funding increases for defense and social programs. -Fox News

  Just before the pandemic, the federal government spent $4.4 trillion in fiscal year 2019. In 2020, that ballooned to $6.8 trillion, and then $6.3 trillion in FY2022.

  Of course, Foster did not introduce the bill when Democrats had the majority in both chambers of Congress (and would have been shot down by their own Joe Manchin) – so let’s agree this yet another transparent attempt to signal virtue.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/23/2023 – 20:20

• Ron Paul Hammers Debt-Ceiling Hysteria & Hypocrisy
  Ron Paul Hammers Debt-Ceiling Hysteria & Hypocrisy

  Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

  This week the US government reached its 31.4 trillion dollars borrowing limit, better known as the “debt ceiling.” This led to a showdown among House Republicans, President Biden, and congressional Democrats.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  House Republicans are demanding that President Biden and Senate Democrats agree to include spending cuts with the debt ceiling increase. However, President Biden and the congressional Democrats are refusing to negotiate with Republicans. Rather, they and their allies in the mainstream media are lambasting Republicans for their “irresponsibility” in seeking to include spending cuts with an increase in the debt ceiling.

  

  America’s national debt is approximately 122 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), meaning the government owes more than the population produces. Interest payments on the national debt follow in size behind other federal budget big spending areas of Social Security, Medicare, and “defense.” While interest payments are made, the national debt continues to grow each year.

  Government spending steals resources from the private sector. Thus, there is less capital available for private businesses to grow and create new jobs. Government spending also contributes to price inflation and the declining value of the dollar as the Federal Reserve monetizes the debt. One reason the Fed cannot allow interest rates to rise anywhere near where they would be in a free market is that it would cause the federal government’s interest payments to rise to unsustainable levels. Considering these facts, it should be clear that the irresponsible ones are those who think the government should increase its credit limit without cutting spending.

  This is not to say that establishment Republicans like House Speaker Kevin McCarthy are heroes of fiscal restraint. Rather, McCarthy, like most Republicans, objected neither to increased spending nor to debt ceiling suspensions when Donald Trump was president. Further, any Republican spending plan will likely continue increasing spending on the military-industrial complex while refusing to address the looming cost problems with Social Security and Medicare.

  While some Republicans are willing to discuss reforms to Social Security and Medicare, most are still too afraid of the “senior lobby” to support any changes in the programs – even if such changes will not harm current beneficiaries.

  Consequently, it is unlikely Congress will pass meaningful entitlement reform — at least until it is forced to do so because the Medicare and Social Security Trust Funds run out of money.

  Insolvency is projected for the Medicare Trust Fund in five years and for the Social Security Trust Fund in 12 years. Of course, Congress may be able to avoid making tough choices since the Federal Reserve will likely cut government benefits, along with workers’ wages and the value of savings, via the inflation tax.

  Following early reports that the House Republican leadership was open to supporting cuts in military spending, there arose a predictable cry from Republican hawks that any reduction in spending would leave the US and its allies vulnerable to our enemies. The limited cuts considered, though, would still keep America with a military budget exceeding the combined military budgets of the next nine biggest spending countries. After some pressure from the military-industrial complex’s loyalists and propagandists, most Republicans retreated from supporting defense cuts.

  A problem with many fiscal conservatives is they accept the premise of the welfare-warfare statists. Thus, they are unable to make consistent principled arguments supporting spending cuts and opposing spending increases. The key to restoring a free society is for a critical mass of individuals to reject statism.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/23/2023 – 20:00

• ZH Geopolitical Week Ahead – Germany's Leopard Tank Dilemma & Warnings Of "Global Catastrophe"
  ZH Geopolitical Week Ahead – Germany’s Leopard Tank Dilemma & Warnings Of “Global Catastrophe”

  A weekly round-up of geopolitical flashpoint and energy news we’re keeping our eyes on, and trends impacting global markets, which will later be accessible for Premium members and above…

  

  The start of this week saw no less than four top level Russian officials warn of impending “global catastrophe” if the West keeps ramping up heavier arms to Ukraine, now as the decision of Germany to sign off on sending its Leopard II tanks looms.

  State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the lower house of Russia’s parliament, asserted in fresh remarks that NATO providing more weapons to Ukraine risks “global tragedy that would destroy” Western countries. “Supplies of offensive weapons to the Kyiv regime would lead to a global catastrophe,” Volodin said. “If Washington and NATO supply weapons that would be used for striking peaceful cities and making attempts to seize our territory as they threaten to do, it would trigger a retaliation with more powerful weapons.”

  And one can read further ultra dire warnings from Moscow’s point of view… specifically from Lavrov, Peskov, and Medvedev… all statements issued on Monday. The red line is being laid out quite brightly. 

  As for whether these escalatory scenarios will come to pass, with Russia and the West continuing to slide toward direct military confrontation, the question of whether or not Germany resists the growing pressure from allies for it to lead the way on sending its Leopard 2 main battle tanks looms. Can Berlin resist? Will Kremlin warnings be heeded by Berlin? And for how long? Despite a growing political rift both within the Scholz government among NATO allies more broadly, it’s not looking good. Germany has already bowed to pressure early in the conflict, given it walked away from its historic neutrality. The outcome to the tank question is likely to be decided by month’s end.

  👀 pic.twitter.com/yWcRh00Noe

  — The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) January 22, 2023

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  To gain a sense of the gloomy, apocalyptic outlook from Moscow on a looming war with NATO and the future course of the Ukraine conflict, see the above weekend Russian state TV segment with a panel of officials moderated by editor-in-chief of RT, Margarita Simonyan. Very serious talk indeed.

  * * *

  Below are global developments we are closely following this week…

  Russia-Ukraine

  • Poland ramping up pressure on Berlin to send German tanks to Ukraine: DW

  • Warns Germany of “international isolation”… could send without approval?: DW

  • Broader NATO pressure (and division) mounts over tank issue: AW

  • State Duma official says “global catastrophe” coming due to ramped up Western arms: RTRS

  • German Intelligence: Ukraine losing hundreds of soldiers daily: AW

  • Russia touts gains around Bakhmut, smashes Ukrainian lines with artillery: TASS

  • US media cites anon officials to claim spate of mail bomb attacks at embassies in Europe the work of Russian intelligence: NYT

  • The long expected Russian offensive in Ukraine has begun: MofA

  • Former PM Boris Johnson makes yet another visit to Kiev: RTRS

  • NATO Baltic members Estonia & Lithuania boot Russian ambassadors, downgrade relations: RTRS

  • Very dark Russian state TV segment predicts worst-case spiral: Video

  • Norway holding Wagner deserter, will not deport to Russia: DW

  • Pentagon extends airborne troop deployment in southeast Romania: AW

  China-Asia

  • US National Guard training Taiwan troops in expanded program: Nikkei 

  • GOP House Speaker McCarthy planning Taiwan visit: PN

  • Will China view it differently than Pelosi’s visit, given he’s in ‘opposition’? SCMP

  • Germany eyes ‘China lite’ future that is less dependent: Nikkei

  • China will join Russia and South Africa for February naval drills: SCMP

  • Beijing issues another veiled warning over Taiwan: VOA

  • Yellen in Africa talks China threat: FT

  • China’s biggest oil trading firm goes on a buying spree: OP

  Middle East/World

  • Pressure on US occupation in Syria ramping up with drone attacks: Hill

  • Lebanese pound crashes to new low of 50,000 against the dollar: NA

  • Hardline Israeli govt risks triggering another Gaza flare-up: NA

  • Soaring inflation in Egypt… on the brink of another uprising? MEE

  • Israel-Saudi normalization efforts off to rocky start: JPost

  • 130,000 Israelis protest govt’s anti-democratic reforms: Haaretz

  • Pentagon can’t account for $220BN of gear given to contractors: Reason

  • Abraham Accords not so popular on ‘Arab street’: RS

  • Saudi goods allowed in Syria after 11 years of trade ban: MEE

  • Erdogan tells Sweden not to expect Nato bid support: BBC

  • South Africa likely to use China and Russia as “bargaining chips” in its dealings with US: SCMP

  Energy

  • Massive blackout in Pakistan impacts some 200 million people: BBC

  • UK’s National Grid to pay people to use less power as cold snap bites: RTRS

  • Musk agrees with JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon that it will take 50 years to transition to green energy: FOX

  • Italy to wean itself off Russian gas within two years: OP

  • US energy chief says Biden would veto House Republican bill on oil reserve: RTRS

  • Oil market braces for fresh turmoil as EU prepares to cut off Russian diesel: FT

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/23/2023 – 19:40

• Biden Administration Still Pushing For Forced Masking
  Biden Administration Still Pushing For Forced Masking

  Authored by Ian Miller via The Brownstone Institute,

  The Biden Administration recently reinforced their commitment to retaining authority to impose endless COVID mandates on the American people…

  

  In April 2022, a federal judge in Florida ruled that the CDC had overstepped its authority by requiring airlines to mandate masks on domestic flights.

  Essentially every company almost immediately moved to make masks optional. Many even allowed passengers, in flight, to remove their masks, to mass celebrations.

  Posting again because Twitter deleted (?)

  The end of the #maskmandate has this plane singing

  🎶 Throw away your masks 🎶 pic.twitter.com/BvvCNLE6Ts

  — Guy P. Football (@Guy_P_Football) April 19, 2022

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  It was also a dramatic win for science, as years of data have proven that masks are entirely ineffective at preventing the spread of COVID.

  The unfortunate trend of in-flight arguments and fights also dropped dramatically after the court overturned the mandate.

  In February 2022, the rate of unruly passenger incidents on domestic flights was 6.4 per 10,000 travelers. Following the end of the mandate, that number dropped to 1.7 per 10,000. 

  So, not only do masks not work, they actually likely cause significant, potentially dangerous disagreements.

  Experts warned that it would lead to a surge in flight cancellations within a few weeks. Naturally, cancellation data showed that the exact opposite situation unfolded.

  It’s now been over a month since the mask mandate on planes was lifted and “experts” claimed airlines would be forced to cancel huge numbers of flights

  Yesterday United cancelled 1% of flights, Southwest 0%, Delta 0%, Alaska 0%, Jet Blue 0% & American 0%

  They’re always wrong

  — Ian Miller (@ianmSC) May 20, 2022

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  Additionally, in the nearly nine months since the policy ended, cases in the US have remained low. While the winter of 2021-2022 saw a massive surge of infections with the mandate in place, no such surge materialized through the end of 2022.

  

  But none of that’s stopped the Biden administration from appealing the ruling.

  While this might not necessarily mean the immediate return of mandates on planes, it would allow the CDC to retain that authority.

  Will Mask Mandates Return?

  Oral arguments in the case were scheduled for Tuesday, with no indication yet how the appeal will go. But previous statements by the Justice Department show how committed they are to masking.

  Despite the inarguable reality that masks do not work to prevent the spread of respiratory viruses, the attorney arguing the case said that they should have the authority to reimpose mandates for future pandemics.

  “You can imagine the next pandemic, there was an outbreak of measles or SARS and the CDC would want to and need to take swift action in order to control such a pandemic in the future,” the attorney for the Justice Department said.

  “I think the important thing here is that the potential collateral estoppel effect of the district court’s ruling could tie up future CDC actions.”

  It’s extremely concerning that the Justice Department apparently believes that masks on planes would be able to “control such a pandemic,” especially measles. 

  It’s equally concerning that they believe the CDC is competent enough to “control such a pandemic.”

  They utterly failed to “control” this one with masks on public transit. On top of their recommendations that politicians enact some of the most draconian restrictions on normal life ever enacted in the United States.

  But their lockdowns, masks, vaccine passports and other recommended policies were entirely unable to prevent the spread of a highly infectious respiratory virus.

  Yet Biden and his administration are arguing they be allowed to exercise similar, near unlimited control over the freedoms of American citizens regardless.

  Thankfully, a lawyer defending the end of the mandate pointed out the obvious; this has nothing to do with public health. He explained that the appeal’s timing shows how little connection it bears to Americans’ health.

  “This appeal is not about an urgent matter of public health. If the mask order had been such an urgent matter of public health, you would have expected CDC to have applied for a stay to the district court’s ruling,” said the attorney representing the Health Freedom Defense Fund.

  Of course, he’s entirely right. This appeal is about politics, not science.

  Biden and his team want the ability to enforce mandates at their choosing, even after everyone paying attention has seen how pointless and ineffective they are.

  So while it’s hard to say for certain if they would bring back mandates, it’s certainly fair to say that they might.

  Lawyer Jenin Younes explained in several Twitter threads how the circle of authority leads to endless masking.

  Yesterday, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals heard argument in the federal mask mandate case. If you care about this issue, I urge you to read the following from my older and wiser colleague who almost always predicts accurately. It contains some good and bad news:

  — Jenin Younes (former handle @leftylockdowns1) (@JeninYounesEsq) January 18, 2023

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  The CDC creates terrible, poorly conducted research and studies claiming to show that masks work. Judges defer to their research to avoid deciding scientific questions, leading them to side with the CDC. Despite the CDC’s demonstrable ineffectiveness and incompetence. 

  They refuse to admit they were wrong, and so instead of learning from their overreach and repeated failures, they’re desperately clawing to retain powers they never had.

  Given that their utterly ridiculous recommendations on masking persist into 2023, it wouldn’t be hard to believe they’d bring them back at the first sign of a “surge.”

  To them, it doesn’t matter how often they’re wrong, it matters that they’re able to tell you what to do.

  *  *  *

  Republished from the author’s Substack

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/23/2023 – 19:20

• California City Gives Up On 100% Renewable Plan
  California City Gives Up On 100% Renewable Plan

  By Julianne Geiger of OilPrice.com,

  As California goes, so goes the nation, or so they say. If that rings true, the nation is set for a reversal of some of its strictest renewable energy plans, after the Huntington Beach City Council voted to dump its plan for 100% renewable energy…

  

  Huntington Beach, California, is changing the plan it had in place with the Orange County Power Authority (OCPA) – a nonprofit offering clean energy.

  But its recent history in a rather unfavorable media limelight has given the city council pause.

  And Huntington Beach wasn’t the first municipality to pull out – Orange County bailed on the green power authority, citing transparency concerns and a series of ugly audits, and allegations that the authority failed to inform the public that their electricity bills were increasing. Orange County was set to begin receiving green power from the authority by the end of this year. The cost of having the county pull out is estimated to be around $65 million.

  For Huntington Beach, there were three plans before it when considering a change in plan:

  1. to keep the 100% renewable energy plan as is,

  2. to go with a “Smart Choice” plan offering 69% renewable energy,

  3. or the “Basic Choice” plan that offered 38% renewable energy.

  They opted for the Basic Choice plan in a vote of 4-3.

  The city council’s change of plan drew criticism from some, while the council argued that the money saved from the pull-out could be better used on other projects, such as enforcing laws around homelessness.

  Huntington Beach’s change of plans follows the launch of the Department of Energy’s $50 million project to help communities transition to clean energy systems—the C2C program.

  “With C2C, we’re helping all kinds of communities — from small rural communities to sprawling urban areas — access the tools and scientific and technological expertise they need to bring their energy systems into the 21st Century” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm in a statement earlier this week. “This exciting program will help communities make informed decisions about their own energy needs and ensure reliable and affordable clean energy is available to Americans everywhere.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/23/2023 – 19:00

• FBI's Most Wanted Woman, Known As 'Cryptoqueen' Sends Signal After Five Years Of Hiding
  FBI’s Most Wanted Woman, Known As ‘Cryptoqueen’ Sends Signal After Five Years Of Hiding

  Ruja Ignatova, known as the “cryptoqueen” for her notorious multi-billion dollar OneCoin Ponzi scheme, has been declared missing since 2017 when US authorities issued a warrant for her arrest. Earlier this month, a legal filing could be the first signs of life after she fled Sofia, Bulgaria, to Athens, Greece, five years ago. 

  

  Last week, the British newspaper iNews reported that a lawyer representing Ignatova claimed a $13.6 million penthouse in central London. 

  The property is owned by Abbots House Penthouse Limited, an anonymous Guernsey shell company, meaning that Ignatova’s name does not have to appear on land registry deeds or in public records.

  A change in Companies House rules means that beneficial owners of UK-registered firms must now be named in full. But the fugitive appears to have emerged out of hiding to make a formal claim on the London property. -iNews

  Jamie Bartlett, the host of The Missing Cryptoqueen podcast, who has tried to locate Ignatova, said this news was “one of the most interesting developments in the story.”

  “The world’s most wanted woman is now officially listed as the ultimate beneficial owner of a London penthouse,” he added.

  “It suggests she is still alive, and there are documents out there somewhere which contain vital clues as to her recent whereabouts. If nothing else it should make it easier for the authorities to freeze that asset – and maybe even start getting money back to victims.”

  The FBI believes she might have traveled on a German passport from Athens, possibly to the UAE, Germany, Russia, Eastern Europe, or even back to Bulgaria. She is on the FBI’s top 10 ‘most wanted’ list concerning $4 billion cryptocurrency fraud. It wouldn’t be a surprise if she used some high-quality fake identity documents and altered her appearance to evade authorities. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/23/2023 – 18:40

• Iran Claims Panama Oil Tanker Cancellations Were Politically Motivated
  Iran Claims Panama Oil Tanker Cancellations Were Politically Motivated

  By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com,

  Iran has dismissed the significance of Panama’s de-flagging of more than a hundred tankers allegedly used by Iran to ship oil abroad in violation of U.S. sanctions.

  “We reiterate that such efforts are not only viewed as insignificant and unsubstantiated, but they have been publicized due to political pressure by the imperialist government of the United States,” the Iranian Ports and Maritime Organization said in a statement cited by Press TV.

  

  The statement followed the release by the Panama Maritime Authority of another statement saying it had de-flagged several hundred vessels since 2019 in compliance with the UN’s Convention on the Law of the Sea and in line with Panama’s own efforts to counter illicit financing and illegal fishing, Forbes’ Dominic Dudley reported earlier this month.

  The AMP’s statement came in response to an op-ed by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, in which he claimed Panama had been helping Iran’s regime to survive by helping the government smuggle oil in violation of sanctions. Jeb Bush sits on the advisory board of an organization dubbed United Against Nuclear Iran.

  The Panama Maritime Authority (AMP), the entity in charge of the Panamanian Ship Registry, rejected the assertions made by Jeb Bush, a member of the United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) Advisory Board, in a Washington Post op-ed from January 16, 2023, titled “How the United States can stop Panama from helping Iran avoid oil sanctions,” the AMP said in its statement.

  “The Government of Panama maintains a close collaboration with the Government of the United States of America through the Embassy of the United States in Panama, and through direct communication with the Department of State, regarding the Registry of Ships and other safety issues of shared importance,” the authority also said.

  In its response, the Iranian maritime authority advised Panama to think about the legal and international implications of such statements, Press TV reported.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/23/2023 – 18:20

• "Labor Hoarding": New Theory Emerges To Explain The Lack Of Labor Market Collapse
  “Labor Hoarding”: New Theory Emerges To Explain The Lack Of Labor Market Collapse

  Setting aside how credible any data released by the BLS now is – considering that not just this website but even the Philly Fed has challenged the accuracy of the Payroll reports’ Establishment survey, while Goldman recent found that actual layoffs as indicated by state WARN notices are far higher than those seasonally adjusted by the Department of Labor, there was one data point that prompted quite a few commentators to scratch their heads. Recall that one of the reasons stocks were pleasantly surprised by the jobs report is that not only did payrolls dip again (if printing as usual above average), but average hourly earnings slumped. But there was more: alongside the decline in wages, average hours worked also declined (which had a material impact on the average wages, and had hours been flat, the decline in average wages would have been even more pronounced).

  Why does this matter? Well, as Goldman trader Rich Privorotsky wrote on Friday, the deceleration in wage gains as of late and “the shirking of hours worked is in no way consistent with a wage spiral, and in fact suggests something unusual might be happening as corporates reluctant to shed hard to find labor are shrinking the work-week/hours worked rather than cutting payrolls.” This would make intuitive sense if one assumes that employers are still smarting from the difficulty to find workers in the post-covid months when millions of low and medium-income workers simply exited the workforce. As such, if everyone is convinced that the coming recession will be light, employers are more tempted to shrink (in some cases aggressively) their employees’ hours rather then engage in layoffs, especially if they are concerned they will have difficulty finding workers in a few months (all of this, of course, assumes that the recession will be “shallow” whatever that means).

  As evidence, Privorotsky shows the decline in the average employee workweek as proxied by both the Philadelphia and Empire Fed’s surveys.

  

  Others at Goldman agree, and in a note published by the bank’s economist team looking at the ongoing rebalancing in the labor market (available to pro subs), they found that while Labor demand still remains high it is now falling: “The trend has admittedly become murkier recently as measures of job openings have diverged. But the average of these measures is still declining, and business surveys also suggest that total labor demand is still coming down.”

  Here is the interesting part in the Goldman report, :

  Labor supply has at most a bit more room to recover. The discussion about labor supply during the pandemic has mostly centered on “missing workers,” and for the first couple of years there was indeed room for the labor force participation rate to rebound as fiscal support and Covid fears faded.

  But we noted last summer that the participation rate had already largely recovered, and the small increase in December to 62.3% brought it to our year-end target that embedded some further cyclical recovery to offset an ongoing downward trend driven by demographics. While prime-age participation is still a bit below its pre-pandemic rate, the overall participation rate has now nearly returned to the CBO’s estimate of the trend implied by demographic changes, as shown on the left of Exhibit 4, and a new paper by economists Bart Hobijn and Ayşegül Şahin also suggests that the gap is largely closed.

  The remaining labor supply shortfall relative to pre-pandemic trends actually comes less from reduced participation than from a decline in average work hours. In another paper, Şahin, R. Jason Faberman, and Andreas I. Mueller use data from a supplement to the New York Fed’s consumer survey to show that workers’ desired work hours dropped sharply during the pandemic and remained depressed at least through the end of 2021, when their data end, with much of the decline coming from people classified as outside of the labor force who occasionally enter it, such as retirees. New research by Dain Lee, Jinhyeok Park, and Yongseok Shin shows that average hours have fallen since 2019, especially among college-educated prime-age men and among those who work the longest hours, as shown on the right of Exhibit 4. Because, as the authors note, these workers work far longer hours than is typical for US workers let alone those in other high-income countries, this change might persist to some extent.

  

  Maybe the best discussion on this topic comes from Amberwave co-founder Stephen Miran, who earlier today tweeted some of his observations on why the US is still not in a recession, and concludes that “the principal reason is the missing construction layoffs.  Mortgage rates shot up from 3% to 7%, making buying a home unaffordable for many folks.  Normally, one expects a slowdown in construction activity and layoffs.  But, construction employment is at all time highs!”

  The principal reason is the missing construction layoffs. Mortgage rates shot up from 3% to 7%, making buying a home unaffordable for many folks. Normally, one expects a slowdown in construction activity and layoffs. But, construction employment is at all time highs! pic.twitter.com/AepOyF113r

  — Stephen Miran (@SteveMiran) January 22, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Arguing that in light of the dramatic slowdown in activity in the construction sector, “we’d expect huge layoffs”  with “expected layoffs in the neighborhood of 500k to 800k jobs, and with multipliers, this would be 1 to 3 million total losses. That’s a real recession.”

  But these layoffs still haven’t taken place, prompting Miran to proposed several explanations why not:

  1. They will.  (Maybe, but I don’t see -any- sign of them in the data…yet.). There are some reasons for expecting the layoffs to eventually come.  In particular, the huge divergence between the number of homes being sold and the number of homes currently under construction, which will presumably come down as homes are completed.

  

  2. The extraordinary backlog of homes demand due to pandemic changes in the economy like wfh.  This is a possible explanation, but presumably at some point runs out?

  3. Labor hoarding by builders, i.e. holding onto employees for fear of being able to replace them if necessary in a tight labor market.  Miran says that he is “generally dismissive of labor hoarding for the economy as a whole, but more sympathetic in the building sector.  Why?”

  The principal reason is the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, passed in 2021.  As I pointed out at the time in WSJopinion, the IIJA is going to further fuel inflation.

  Going into CY2023, there’s going to be ~$38 billion of Federal spending on construction and other projects kicking in. In CY24, it’ll be closer to $54 billion.  Assuming some multipliers, these go a long way to offsetting a big chunk of the decline in private structures spending. (Ignore the decline in direct spending here, that’s largely the offsets from reduced spending on phrama or subsidies to GSEs)

  In other words, I suspect builders are holding onto employees because the $$$ being spent by Uncle Sam on construction are going to start kicking in this year.  Given a historically tight labor market where employees seem to have all the power, they’d rather hold onto the workers

  Why lay off your workers now if you expect real difficulty in hiring them back if building starts to pick back up, particularly for nonresidential construction?

  While this may well be the most likely explanation, and one which will be tested most easily by the severity of the coming recession (if indeed there is labor hoarding within construction, an extended deterioration in the sector will only result in an even more acute collapse in construction jobs in the near-term), there is another possible explanation, namely that financial conditions have eased significantly since September: stocks, mortgage rates, the dollar.

  It’s not difficult to imagine a world in which home prices fall by 10% or so, but given strong wages, resilient stocks, and falling mortgage rates, final demand stays robust.  Given the historic run up in home prices, builders are still very profitable at those levels. In other words, maybe builders expect a surge of private demand in the near future and are therefore holding onto their employees.

  Miran’s conclusion is spot on, and boils down to the following: The missing construction layoffs ARE the missing recession.  If they come, we’ll have a recession.  There’s a reason for expecting them to come (homes under construction lagging sales), and reasons for expecting them not to (future demand picking up, private & public)

  Watching this sector will give us a clue as to whether we’ll see a recession or not.  In the meantime, real incomes are accelerating on lower inflation, and as I’ve stressed 100x, financial conditions easing ought to induce a pickup in GDP growth

  There is thus some chance the economy reaccelerates before those layoffs come, and the recession is avoided.  However, in that case, the Fed will be goaded into a new hiking cycle, as inflation will pick back up, and the recession will be delayed and not avoided.

  Afternote: there’s a race between the exhaustion of the backlog & the coming construction layoffs, vs. a reacceleration of the economy on easing financial conditions & IIJA boosting construction demand. Which of these forces wins the race determines whether we have:

  • Recession, or
  • Burst of growth, followed by new hiking cycle, followed by recession

  In other words, we will either get a recession, if construction employment suddenly tumbles, or we will get a transitory growth burst – largely on the back of the market pricing in the coming Fed pause – which will avoid a round of mass layoffs in construction, which will however lead to even more inflation, and an even more aggressive hiking cycle, leading also to recession.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/23/2023 – 18:00

• Social Security Will Be Bankrupt By 2033 On Current Trajectory: CBO Report
  Social Security Will Be Bankrupt By 2033 On Current Trajectory: CBO Report

  Authored by Naveen Anthrapully via The Epoch Times,

  A recent report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that two major Social Security funds in the United States will dry out in the coming decades, with one of them running out within the next 10 years as younger members in the programs are set to lose more than older members.

  “If the gap between the trust funds’ outlays and income occurs as CBO projects, then the balance in the trust funds will decline to zero in 2033 and the Social Security Administration will no longer be able to pay full benefits when they are due,” the CBO stated in its report, published in December (pdf).

  The Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund will be exhausted in 2033 and the Disability Insurance Trust Fund will be exhausted in 2048, the agency said. If the trust funds are combined, the money will be gone by 2033.

  

  The CBO expects spending on Social Security to increase to 7 percent of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) in 2096, up from 5 percent of the GDP in 2022.

  During this period, revenues are only expected to remain at 4.6 percent of GDP, resulting in an ongoing deficit.

  If Social Security outlays were limited to what is payable from annual tax revenues, the benefit payments would be roughly 23 percent smaller than originally scheduled by 2034. By 2096, the benefit payments would be 35 percent smaller, with the gap remaining stable from then on.

  In such a situation, the younger cohort born in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s would see their initial benefits reduced by 24, 27, and 28 percent respectively. Their lifetime benefits would be reduced by 26, 27, and 27 percent, respectively.

  For older beneficiaries born in the 1950s and 60s, initial benefits would not be affected too much. Their lifetime benefits would be reduced by 9 percent and 19 percent, respectively.

  Protecting Social Security of Senior Citizens

  In 2021, Social Security amounted to 17 percent of federal spending, according to the CBO. Lawmakers are currently debating how to address America’s debt ceiling issue, with some proposing cuts to Social Security. The United States officially hit its debt limit on Thursday.

  In a video message, former President Donald Trump called on GOP members to not compromise on Social Security.

  “Under no circumstances should Republicans vote to cut a single penny from Medicare or Social Security to help pay for Joe Biden’s reckless spending spree, which is more reckless than anybody’s ever done or had in the history of our country,” Trump said in the statement posted to Truth Social on Friday.

  “Do not cut the benefits our seniors worked for and paid for their entire lives,” he said. “Save Social Security. Don’t destroy it.”

  The CBO projections come as Social Security benefits are set to increase by 8.7 percent in 2023, which is the biggest boost in four decades. In 2022, benefit payments were increased by 5.9 percent.

  Despite the record increase in benefit payments this year, there are concerns about whether it will be enough to keep up with decades-high inflation.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/23/2023 – 17:40

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• Paul Craig Roberts: How Troublesome Presidents Are Disposed Of
  Paul Craig Roberts: How Troublesome Presidents Are Disposed Of

  Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

  Tucker Carlson provides an excellent 12 minute report about the CIA’s removal of President Kennedy and President Nixon. I recommend that you watch it 2 or 3 times until it sinks in and forward it to all of your friends and relatives. There is nowhere else  you can get so much solid and important information in 12 minutes.

  Carlson believes that Biden, no longer useful to the establishment, is currently undergoing removal.

  I have reported the truth about the removal of Presidents Kennedy and Nixon from office for decades.  It was thrilling to me to see after a half century Tucker Carlson give the same explanations to such a large audience.  If Americans could only wake up and become involved it might be possible to save our country and the liberty of Americans.

  President John F. Kennedy was murdered by the CIA and US Joint Chiefs of Staff once he realized that the government he headed was not the real government.  His predecessor President Eisenhower, a 5-star general, warned about the threat to democratic government posed by the military/industrial complex.  President Kennedy intended to do something about it while the president still had some power, but he was struck down before he could do more than fire CIA Director Allen Dulles and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Lyman Lemnitzer.  President Kennedy wasn’t able to get rid of General Lemnitzer, who transitioned to Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. Both Dulles and Lemnitzer are suspected of directing the plot against Kennedy’s life.

  

  President Nixon was the best informed and best respected abroad president of any in US history.  He kept in touch with foreign leaders and was well informed about historical and current events.  But he also, like Kennedy and Trump, over estimated the power of the president.

  Nixon incurred the wrath, as I once again reported on January 19 of the military/security complex with his arms control agreements with the Soviet Union and his opening to China.  The assassination of  President Kennedy was so obviously an in-house murder, covered up by the CIA’s media whores and the Warren Commission, that the CIA dared not murder a second president.  Instead, the CIA saw that one of its operatives was placed as a journalist at the Washington Post, a long-time CIA asset, never a newspaper, to head the “Watergate” investigation of President Nixon which was used to drive him from office despite Nixon being reelected by the largest margin in US history.

  Donald Trump, being a real estate mogul, knew nothing of Washington or who really rules it.

  By declaring his intention of normalizing relations with Russia, he blindly took on the CIA and the subterranean rulers of the US.  

  And again the media was used to get rid of him:  “Russiagate,” two impeachment attempts, “January 6 Insurrection,” and now “Documents gate.”

  The President isn’t even protected by the Secret Service.  As the tourist video clearly shows, the Secret Service men along the side of President Kennedy’s open limo in Dallas were called away by a Secret Service superior.  The video shows the resistance of one of the Secret Service agents to the order.  Once the Secret Service agents were removed, the video shows that Kennedy was killed from a bullet from in front that blew out the back of his head. The video shows his wife reaching out on the back of the limo to get the back of his blown away head.

  Despite this clear cut undeniable evidence  the Warren Commission ruled that Kennedy was shot from behind by Oswald, the patsy that the CIA had lined up to take the blame. Before Oswald could talk or be questioned he was killed in police custody by Jack Ruby  (Jacob Leon Rubensein), a person whose presence is inexplicable,  who was permitted by the police to be armed next to Oswald.

  The bulk of the insouciant American population fell for this most improbable of all accounts, but many intelligent people did not.  

  So the CIA did not dare murder Nixon physically. They used their Washington Post asset to murder him politically, as they used media to get rid of Donald Trump.

  Americans who think they live in a democracy are out to lunch. Americans, so easily fooled time and again, are the reason we have lost our country and the freedom and the hope that it once represented in the world.

  How many Americans understand that they no longer live in a free country,  that they are the ruled subjects of they know not who? Voting is a cloak, a deception.  No one the people prefer can be elected to the office of president.  If, like Trump, he gets there unexpected, he is removed.

  The founder of American civil liberty, Thomas Jefferson, warned us that freedom cannot exist more than 200 years before it has to be refreshed by bloody revolution. He overestimated the life of freedom.  

  Over the course of my life the meaning of freedom has changed.  It no longer means what the Founding Fathers, today denounced as racists, meant, which was self-rule and freedom from oppressive government. Today freedom is the freedom of blacks to rob stores without prosecution,  the freedom of the government and its media whores to censor and suppress truth, free expression, and free association, the freedom of government to arrest and imprison people who exercise their civil liberties as “insurrectionists,” the freedom of government and its media whores to brand truth-tellers as “threats to democracy” who are guilty of spreading “misinformation,” the freedom to take away the medical licenses of doctors who saved lives by using medicines banned by Big Pharma’s treatment protocols.

  People born in recent decades have no idea how off the wall this is to someone who lived in the real America in the past.  When my  generation passes, there will be no one alive who knows what America once was.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/22/2023 – 23:30

• Egg Crisis Sparks Soaring Interest In Backyard Farms
  Egg Crisis Sparks Soaring Interest In Backyard Farms

  Covid supply chain snarls turned millions of Americans into “preppers” overnight. The run on toilet paper, food, guns, ammunition, and other essential items for survival pushed millions to consider preparedness for a crisis.

  Remember all those old-school preppers? The media used to refer to them as “extreme” and even called them “tin-foil hat conspiracy” folks, but during the shutdowns, those folks were right, and the mainstream media got it wrong. 

  The next shortage underway is eggs. Readers have seen our notes on supermarkets nationwide running out of eggs. The egg shortage is so severe that last week the US Customs and Border Protection reported that egg smuggling from Mexico erupted. 

  And why is that? Well, a dozen Grade A eggs in the US have topped $4.25 at supermarkets. In Mexico, a 30 count of eggs is about $3.40. 

  US egg prices have topped the national average gasoline per gallon price at the pump. 

  

  As a result of the egg crisis, internet search trends on Google show Americans are panic searching where to find egg-laying hens for their backyard. 

  The search trend “where to buy chickens near me” erupted to a near multi-decade high. 

  

  “Buy chickens near me” searches explode across the US. 

  

  Besides the Covid spike, “how to raise chickens” has spiked to levels not seen in a decade. 

  

  Over the last several years, food insecurity has pushed many Americans to create ‘little backyard farms’- something their parents or grandparents did more than half a century ago. Living off the land was standard decades ago, but as metropolises sprung up, people relied more on a corporation (or even the government) to provide food. 

  

  Soaring distrust in government and corporations had transformed many into preppers following the pandemic shutdowns when some supplies were impossible to find. People don’t want to be left empty-handed when the next crisis arises. This has led to a new generation of preppers and the normalization of being prepared. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/22/2023 – 23:00

• China To Accelerate The Construction Of Coal-Fired Power Plants
  China To Accelerate The Construction Of Coal-Fired Power Plants

  Authored by Michael Kern via OilPrice.com,

  China expects to add 70 gigawatts (GW) of coal-fired power generation this year, up from 40 GW of capacity from coal installed in 2022, a report from the power sector’s group, China Electricity Council, showed.

  

  The coal additions, however, will not be the biggest capacity increases in China in 2023, per the report quoted by Bloomberg.

  Solar and wind will see massive growth in capacity additions this year, too, with solar power expected to add a huge 100 GW of capacity and wind—another 65 GW, China Electricity Council said.   

  China’s electricity generation capacity from renewable sources is expected to jump above 50% for the first time this year. According to the power sector’s lobbying group, low-carbon electricity sources will account for over 52% of total power capacity in China by the end of 2023, up from 49.6% at the end of last year.  

  After the end of the ‘zero Covid’ policy, China’s power demand is expected to jump by 6% in 2023, up from the 3.6% growth seen last year, according to the China Electricity Council.

  Although renewable energy installations are set to jump, coal-fired capacity additions in China will also surge this year as Beijing has put more emphasis on energy security since the autumn of 2021 when power shortages crippled its industry.

  In 2022, China said it would continue to maximize the use of coal in the coming years as it caters to its energy security, despite pledges to contribute to global efforts to reduce emissions.

  In recent months, China has significantly boosted its coal production, following government orders. 

  [ZH: how dare you!?]

  

  China produced a record amount of coal last year, although output ended the year with a decline amid the latest surge in Covid infections. Total Chinese coal output for the year reached 4.496 billion tons, which was a 9-percent increase compared to 2021, according to official statistics data.    

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/22/2023 – 22:30

• California Drought Eases As Reservoir Levels Rise And Snowpack Booms
  California Drought Eases As Reservoir Levels Rise And Snowpack Booms

  California has experienced water shortages in recent years due to a combination of factors, including drought and increased demand. A parade of storms has eased a historic water crisis, replenishing reservoirs and increasing snowpack. 

  The latest data from the official website of the State of California shows 97% of major reservoir levels are at normal levels for this time of year. This is great news following last summer when reservoir levels were dangerously low. 

  

  Here’s a map of the major reservoirs. Most are at average levels, except for a few. 

  

  Nearly a month of storms has also boosted the state’s vital snowpack in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. State data shows statewide snowpack levels are 126% above average levels for this time of year. We recently pointed out snowpack levels were at their highest in four decades. 

  

  Only a small portion of California remained in extreme drought. The heavy rains and snow have eased drought conditions. 

  

  The storms were part of a moisture conveyor belt over the Pacific Ocean called atmospheric rivers. This resulted in one of the wettest California winters on record. 

  Much of California’s water comes from reservoirs and snowpacks. The deluge of storms has prevented the price of water trading on the Nasdaq Veles California Water Index from topping new highs. The contract currently trades at $1,020 an acre-foot, about 20% lower from the top of $1,282 recorded in September of last year. 

  

  The rain and snow have been “very exciting,” Andrew Schwartz, lead scientist at the University of California, Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab, told CNN, though he remained “cautiously optimistic” for this summer. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/22/2023 – 22:00

• Inflation Assets Are Leading The Recovery. That's Not Normal
  Inflation Assets Are Leading The Recovery. That’s Not Normal

  By Marcel Kasumovich, Head of Research for One River Asset Management

  It’s normal, sort of. Digital asset markets are following a commodity boom, bust, recovery cycle. Investors are focused on the bust. The decline in inflation, bond yields, and the US dollar makes the downturn shallower. And inflation assets are leading the recovery. That’s not normal. 

  Inflation Assets Leading the Not-Normal

  “If you want two cups of coffee, save money and order both at the same time,” a student at the University of Freiburg famously quipped during Germany’s hyperinflation. That’s the inflation we worry about – pernicious, invisible tax. The recent surge in inflation is an inconvenience by historical standards. Periods of inflation lead people to shed currency for almost any real asset – even pianos were a hedge for Germans in the 1920s. That’s not now. But it’s also not never.

  The pandemic brought a warning shot, a reminder that the saying “too much money chasing too few goods” still applies. Global inflation surged to 9% last year as bottlenecks emerged in all supply chains. Assets believed to hedge inflation performed dismally. Real assets – bitcoin, gold, lumber, land – crashed as inflation rose. Those assets didn’t “fail” in their roles. Real interest rates shot higher. And that’s the real driving force behind inflation assets.  

  The evidence is obvious in investor behavior. There was a dash for cash as inflation rose, not real assets. Last quarter, Global Fund Managers reported the highest cash holding since 2001! The inflation tax was an afterthought. All other assets were rapidly deflating in response to the surge in rates. That is not an inflationary mindset. It’s conviction that policy will kill inflation, leaving real rates higher for a stretch of time. And it’s self-reinforcing.

  Market expectations call for a cratering of inflation this year, to 2.33%. It’s also expected to stay there for a very long time, 2.19% in 2024 and an average of 2.29% in the next ten years. The consensus is centered on the idea that a recession will bring everything back to “normal.” And it is exactly how investors are positioned – long bonds, short equities, and long US dollar (Figure 1). Our own Macro Pulse confirms the consensus – it’s in recessionary territory.

  

  But change is afoot. Downturns don’t last long, even brutal ones. They are usually fast, severe fractures. This one is slow and shallow. Our Macro Pulse has been in recessionary territory three of the past four months; the longest recessionary signal was nine months in the Great Financial Crisis. Market stabilizers are also emerging. Declines in inflation, bond yields and the US dollar are cushioning the downturn with mortgage and business surveys bottoming.  

  Commodity markets provide the simplest connection to the cyclicality of digital assets. Doug Wilson, One River Digital PM, likens the downturn in digital infrastructure to a boom, bust, recovery cycle of energy markets. It’s a terrific benchmark. Bitcoin is a unit of energy. The boom saw Bitcoin trade miles above its marginal cost of production. That boom led to excess investment. The bust that followed is like an over-supplied commodity cycle.  

  What does the recovery look like? Let’s benchmark the boom-bust-recovery cycle through the macro lens of recessions. Figure 2 shows median oil prices in the past 4 economic cycles. The most interesting observation – oil prices aren’t anywhere close to the downturns of the past. This is the “too few goods” side of the inflation equation. A long period of commodity underinvestment means that inflation assets don’t decline to the same degree in recession.  

  

  It also means inflationary assets can lead in the recovery, counter to the consensus of a return to “normal.” But inflation assets are supposed to lag, not lead. It takes an extended period of strong demand to absorb excess capacity built in this expansion. Those are the assets soonest to bump up against capacity constraints and be demonstrated as short in supply. Cyclical forces are pulling down inflation, structural pressures may be less benign.

  Digital asset markets are recoupling to macro forces. Inflation assets are leading this year and digital assets are rising with that tide. The differentiation within the digital ecosystem is telling. Base layers and scaling solutions are leading – Bitcoin and Ethereum are back to pre-FTX levels, Optimism scaling protocol has risen well above pre-FTX highs. DeFi protocols are lagging, most notably MakerDAO, as it wrestles with its strategic future pathway.

  Market leadership is in the boring basics. We should pay attention. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Lightning, Optimism – base layers with scaling solutions for usable applications. We know that digital asset valuations are all about network effects. But investing in railways is pointless with no demand to ride them. Tokenization has been wildly successful in bridging traditional and digital worlds. That’s one trajectory of turning the boring into beautiful.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/22/2023 – 21:30

• "This Is The First Domino": Amazon Letting An Office Lease In Seattle Expire For Only The Second Time Ever
  “This Is The First Domino”: Amazon Letting An Office Lease In Seattle Expire For Only The Second Time Ever

  The major exodus by U.S. corporations out of U.S. cities continues. 

  The latest example is now Amazon, who is – for only the second time in Seattle – allowing one of its major office leases to expire, according to the Seattle Times. The e-commerce giant is set to move workers out of its offices in Port 99 on Eight Avenue, the report says.

  The lease expires in April, according to a company spokesperson. Amazon will move “about 2,000” of its employees to office space across from its Puget Sound headquarters, the report noted.

  Amazon had just announced layoffs that would affect 18,000 employees companywide and, specifically, 2,300 employees near Puget Sound.

  But the company says that the lease expiration decision had little to do with the layoffs and more to do with “the ongoing shift to remote and hybrid work after the COVID-19 pandemic”. As the Seattle Times notes, the number of office workers in downtown Seattle is down 42% from prior to the pandemic. 

  

  This marks only the second time Amazon has taken such action. Back in 2020, the company dropped its lease at 2201 Westlake, where it made up about half of the building’s 318,000 square feet of office space, the report said. They had to relocate 1,000 employees as a result. 

  And it isn’t just Amazon that is rethinking its use of office space in Seattle. Facebook is also planning on subleasing two locations and Microsoft reportedly will not renew its lease at the 26-story City Center Plaza in Bellevue when it expires in Summer of 2024. 

  John Schoettler, vice president of Global Real Estate and Facilities at Amazon, said: “Our offices are long-term investments, and we want to make sure that we design them in a way that meets our employees’ needs in the future.”

  “This is the first domino,” a local Seattle area real estate insider told the Times.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/22/2023 – 21:00

• Hedge Fund CIO: "Median Oil Prices Are $40 At The End Of A Recession: It’s Double That Now With The Global Economy Bottoming"
  Hedge Fund CIO: “Median Oil Prices Are $40 At The End Of A Recession: It’s Double That Now With The Global Economy Bottoming”

  By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

  New Abnormal

  “After recession, everything will return to normal – that’s how investors are positioned,” said Marcel Kasumovich, the two of us discussing this increasingly unique time in market history. “The fastest Fed tightening in four decades is supposed to bring a deep recession and a lot of broken glass in global markets. Things are playing out differently. Global housing markets cracked. But job markets are holding up. Asset deflation was rampant during the rapid Fed tightening. But emerging markets didn’t crack; UK pensions did and were saved. Regions like Turkey and India led USD equity gains. It isn’t normal.”

  “On QT, we’ve communicated really clearly to the markets about what we’re going to do there,” said Powell. “Markets seem to be okay with it. We’re phasing in.” That was the guidance on June 15, 2022. Only, liquidity conditions are beating to a different drum. Excess reserves in the banking system were $3.189trn at the time of the guidance, having tightened more than $1trn in six months. Liquidity metrics have been stable since then despite QT. Market-based factors are dominating liquidity, not QT. This wasn’t the case in the past.

  “It’s not just US policy,” continued Marcel. “December’s surprise tightening from the Bank of Japan led to an unprecedent expansion of its balance sheet to guard against unwanted increases in bond yields. “This is definitely not a step toward an exit,” Kuroda declared to a market that rushed to the exit signs. The yen surged and held its gains (despite record central bank bond buying). The BOJ now holds more than 50% of government coupon bonds. Maturing bonds more than double this year. No Governor can exit this QE labyrinth.”

  

  “Under tremendous international pressure, the US dollar depreciated 53% against the Japanese yen from 1985-1987, leading to low yen rates and an unparalleled property bubble,” said Marcel. “Japan was 11% of world GDP and rising in 1985. It is 4% now and falling. China resisted rapid currency strength having studied these pitfalls. Yet, they mirror Japan in one key area – demographics. China’s population fell by 850K last year, the first since 1960; the working-age population is projected to shrink 216 million through 2050 – unprecedented.”

  “Cyclical gyrations will confound structural megatrends,” said Marcel. “A pragmatist emerged after China’s Party Congress with President Xi ending COVID lockdowns. Global trade will be instantly impacted. Just bringing China oil demand to pre-COVID trends would take 2% of world production at a time when supplies are tight – commercial inventories are at historic lows.” In the past four cycles, the median oil price was $40 at the end of recession. It’s double that now when the global economy is bottoming. “The past isn’t the present.”

  “This comes at a time when markets are convinced US inflation is dead,” said Marcel. “Markets are pricing inflation of 2.3% this year, and close to 2% for the next decade – just like normal. The Fed won. But is it a battle or a war? Oil prices and inflation assets are never leading indicators in market recoveries – they are now. The US dollar has stayed strong-for-long in recession – it’s been trending lower for four months.” The pandemic exposed weak links in the global economy – strained supply chains. Inflation is retreating. “Inflation assets indicate it’s a war.”

  “Generational imbalances are pressing, the root of lasting geopolitical and social conflict,” said Marcel. “Rich countries are accustomed to external conflict, but the economic war is building from within. Since 1990, a period of extraordinary prosperity, US student debt for households under the age of 35 has increased nearly 10-times. The older generation promised an extrapolation of good times; they charged the younger ones a handsome peacetime premium for that privilege. It’s an invisible generational default.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/22/2023 – 20:30

• WSJ Shreds Vaccine Makers, Biden Admin Over "Deceptive" Booster Campaign
  WSJ Shreds Vaccine Makers, Biden Admin Over “Deceptive” Booster Campaign

  Wall Street Journal editorial board member Allysia Finley has taken a flamethrower to vaccine makers over their “deceptive” campaign for bivalent Covid boosters, and slams several federal agencies for taking “the unprecedented step of ordering vaccine makers to produce them and recommending them without data supporting their safety or efficacy.“

  

  You might have heard a radio advertisement warning that if you’ve had Covid, you could get it again and experience even worse symptoms. The message, sponsored by the Health and Human Services Department, claims that updated bivalent vaccines will improve your protection.

  This is deceptive advertising. But the public-health establishment’s praise for the bivalent shots shouldn’t come as a surprise. -WSJ

  The narrative behind the campaign was simple; mRNA Covid shots could simply be ‘tweaked’ to to target new variants – in this case, the jabs were claimed to confer protection against BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron variants, along with the original Wuhan strain.

  To call this wishful thinking would be extremely generous.

  As Finley writes, three scientific problems have arisen.

  1. The virus is mutating much faster than vaccines can be updated.
  2. Vaccines have ‘hard wired’ our immune systems to respond to the original Wuhan strain, “so we churn out fewer antibodies that neutralize variants targeted by updated vaccines.”
  3. Antibody protection wanes after just a few months.

  Finley has brought receipts too…

  Two studies in the New England Journal of Medicine this month showed that bivalent boosters increase neutralizing antibodies against the BA.4 and BA.5 variants, but not significantly more than the original boosters. In one study, antibody levels after the bivalent boosters were 11 times as high against the Wuhan variant as BA.5.

  The authors posit that immune imprinting “may pose a greater challenge than is currently appreciated for inducing robust immunity against SARS-CoV-2 variants.” This isn’t unique to Covid or mRNA vaccines, though boosters may amplify the effect. Our first exposure as children to the flu—whether by infection or vaccination—affects our future response to different strains. -WSJ

  Here’s what happened

  

  For those who took (or were forced to take) the original vaccine, our memory B-cells were trained to produce antibodies against the original Wuhan strain. And as a New England Journal of Medicine article notes, people who have taken said original vaccine were “primed” to respond to the Wuhan strain, and ‘mounted an inferior antibody response to other variants.’

  The studies directly contradict marketing information from Pfizer and Moderna, which asserted that the bivalent boosters produced a response to the new strains (BA.4 and BA.5) that’s 4-6x that of the original boosters – which the WSJ says is “misleading.”

  For starters, neither Pfizer or Moderna conducted a randomized trial.

  They tested the original boosters last winter, long before the BA.5 surge and 4½ to months after trial participants had received their third shots. The bivalents, by contrast, were tested after BA.5 began to surge, 9½ to 11 months after recipients had received their third shots. -WSJ

  Here’s the moneyshot: “The vaccine makers designed their studies to get the results they wanted. Public-health authorities didn’t raise an eyebrow, but why would they? They have a vested interest in promoting the bivalents.”

  In June, the FDA ordered vaccine makers to update the boosters against BA.4 and BA.5, and rushed the companies to push them out before clinical data was available. Meanwhile, Biden’s CDC recommended the bivalents for all adults without evidence that they were effective or necessary.

  Finley further notes that vaccine makers could have performed small, randomized trials last summer and early fall on the bivalents – with results available by the end of September. But the Biden administration didn’t want to wait (and now we know why).

  The CDC published a study in November that estimated the bivalents were only 22% to 43% effective against infection during the BA.5 wave—their peak efficacy. As antibodies waned and new variants took over later in the fall, their protection against infection probably dropped to zero.

  Another CDC study, in December, reported that seniors who received bivalents were 84% less likely to be hospitalized than the unvaccinated, and 73% less likely than those who had received two or more doses of the original vaccine. But neither study controlled for important confounding factors—for one, that the small minority who got bivalents were probably also more likely than those who hadn’t to follow other Covid precautions or seek out treatments such as Paxlovid. -WSJ

  We’re amazed the Journal even put this out there… Kudos to them.

  Fortunately for big pharma and the Biden administration, information overload is the new Soma, and Rachel Maddow et al. have everything under control.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/22/2023 – 20:00

• "Such Demographic Decline Has Never Happened Across Major Global Economies"
  “Such Demographic Decline Has Never Happened Across Major Global Economies”

  By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

  “How long to dispose of a body before it smells,” Brian Walshe asked Google. “What is the rate of decomposition of a body found in a plastic bag compared to on a surface in the woods,” was another query that law enforcement retrieved from some faceless server, a virtual witness to his horrific crime.

  He did not ask, but should have, “Are Google queries retrievable by the FBI.” Instead, he typed 20 questions you definitely should not Google if you want to get away with murder [see here].

  On China’s Baidu, queries for baby strollers fell 17% last year and are -41% since 2018. Searches for baby bottles are down by one-third since 2018. But queries for elderly care homes surged 800% last year, faceless servers bearing witness to China’s profound demographic challenge.

  China’s population surged from 540mm in 1949 to 969mm in 1980 when the One Child policy was introduced. And still, the population climbed inexorably to over 1.41bln in 2021. But in 2022, deaths exceeded births by 850k. UN demographers see China’s population contracting by 100mm by 2050.

  

  You could imagine Xi secretly typing, “What is the rate of decline of a nation that shrinks and ages before becoming wealthy.”

  Japan hit “peak people” in 2011 at 127.4mm. Demographers see it shrinking to 97mm by 2050. Russia is in utter demographic collapse. And you could imagine Putin secretly typing, “How long can a nation remain intact without enough young men to fight.”

  Europe is on the ageing, shrinking path too, but unlike China, Russia and Japan, immigration still tempers its demographic decline. It’s easy to imagine countless European leaders typing, “How to assimilate the waves of refugees needed to sustain the economy while retaining your culture.”

  Such demographic decline has never happened across the major global economies. How this impacts geopolitics, economies, and markets remains uncertain.

  There is no back-test for this. The US continues to be the outlier, growing, albeit slowly. And let’s hope Biden is typing, “How to reverse the opioid/fentanyl/diabetes public health catastrophe that has lowered US life expectancy.”

  And in India, Google searches for baby bottles jumped 22% last year, while queries for cribs surged 500%.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/22/2023 – 19:30

• Turkey Outraged After Sweden Allowed Quran Burning In Front Of Stockholm Embassy
  Turkey Outraged After Sweden Allowed Quran Burning In Front Of Stockholm Embassy

  It increasingly looks like Sweden won’t be admitted to NATO anytime soon, now that relations with Turkey have hit a fresh low point after months of Turkish pressure on Stockholm to crack down on Kurdish groups and anti-Erdogan protests.

  On Saturday anti-Turkey demonstrations in the Swedish capital included an incident where a copy of the Quran was burned in front of the Turkish embassy. The Quran-burning has enraged Turkish officials, especially coming off of another protest less than two weeks ago wherein a Kurdish group hanged an effigy of President Erdogan and tweeted out images.

  

  Turkey has denounced the newest protest as “vile” and went so far as to cancel a scheduled visit by Sweden’s defense minister to Ankara. The meeting was supposed to continue to the dialogue over what Sweden needs to do to overcome Turkey’s objections regarding NATO accession.

  “We condemn in the strongest possible terms the vile attack on our holy book,” a Turkish Foreign Ministry statement said.

  According to a description of the Quran burning incident in Al Jazeera:

  The Quran burning was carried out by Rasmus Paludan, leader of Danish far-right political party Hard Line. In April last year, Paludan’s announcement of a Quran burning “tour” during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan sparked riots across Sweden.

  Surrounded by police, Paludan set fire to the holy book with a lighter following a long diatribe of almost an hour, in which he attacked Islam and immigration in Sweden. About 100 people gathered nearby for a peaceful counterdemonstration.

  “If you don’t think there should be freedom of expression, you have to live somewhere else,” he said.

  Turkey has requested that Swedish authorities take legal action against such demonstrations, particularly involving Kurds, but Sweden has repeatedly cited its robust free speech laws. Further, Swedish officials have said it cannot give Turkey what it wants without changing laws regarding freedom of assembly and protest.

  Sweden grants permission to burn the KORAN outside Turkish embassy https://t.co/QqH9jOe7vm via @MailOnline

  — Akunjee 🖋 (@mohammedakunjee) January 21, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström, did however condemn the Quran-burning as “appalling” but stopped short of announcing any kind of legal action. “Islamophobic provocations are appalling. Sweden has a far-reaching freedom of expression, but it does not imply that the Swedish Government, or myself, support the opinions expressed,” he said.

  Earlier this month Erdogan’s office said, “We urge the Swedish authorities to take necessary steps against terrorist groups without further delay.” Turkey often labels dissenting Kurdish groups as “terrorists”. Over the past several months Turkey has sought to pressure Sweden into extraditing Kurdish activists which Ankara deems as part of outlawed groups.

  This new Quran burning protest incident has reportedly set off large-scale protests against Sweden inside Turkey, as well as denunciations by a handful other Muslim-majority countries.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/22/2023 – 19:00

• The Trillion-Dollar Coin Idea Is Just Another Way To Rip Us Off
  The Trillion-Dollar Coin Idea Is Just Another Way To Rip Us Off

  Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

  Here we go again.

  Every few years in Congress there is a purely political battle over the debt ceiling. We’re supposed to be horrified and worried that the US might default on some of its debt. Some commentators will insist the US has never defaulted, and that default be a disaster.

  (That’s wrong, by the way. The US has defaulted before.) 

  But these debt ceiling debates always end the same way. Congress ends up increasing the debt ceiling and the US’s national debt continues to spiral upward. 

  During all the theatrics over the debt ceiling, however, many strange ideas are put forward as a supposed means to avoiding a shutdown.

  

  One of these is the “trillion-dollar coin” idea. The general premise is that the government can do an end run around the debt ceiling altogether if it can find a way to raise revenue without borrowing. Thus, the scheme goes more or less like this, as explained by Yale law professor Jack Balkin back in 2011: 

  Are there other ways for the president to raise money besides borrowing?

  Sovereign governments such as the United States can print new money. However, there’s a statutory limit to the amount of paper currency that can be in circulation at any one time.

  Ironically, there’s no similar limit on the amount of coinage. A little-known statute gives the secretary of the Treasury the authority to issue platinum coins in any denomination. So some commentators have suggested that the Treasury create two $1 trillion coins, deposit them in its account in the Federal Reserve and write checks on the proceeds….

  The “jumbo coin” [strategy works] because modern central banks don’t have to print bills or float debt to create new money; they just add money to their customers’ checking accounts.

  Put another way, by minting a trillion-dollar coin, Congress could simply deposit the coin at its bank account at the Federal Reserve and then start spending money from the account which now has a trillion-dollar (or even larger) credit. 

  [ZH: Here we take a slight side-bar to hear the thoughts of Curvature Securities’ Scott E.D. Skyrm, one of the world’s most-respected repo market participants and experts on the practical real-world folly of the Trillion Dollar Coin:

  Every time a debt ceiling debate runs through the market there’s always talk about the “Trillion Dollar Coin”. The idea is that to avoid hitting the debt ceiling, the Treasury could issue “currency” instead of “debt” and thus avoid the debt limit.

  How realistic is this? Can it be done?  Let’s take a look:

  Here are the mechanics:

  • The US Treasury mints a coin that says “$1 trillion” and sells it into the market.

  • The Treasury’ receives $1 trillion in cash in the TGA account so they have another $1 trillion to spend to fund the government.

  That leaves us with the first problem: Who is going to buy it?

  Maybe a giant global sovereign wealth fund. Maybe a large bank (JP Morgan?) can gather the funds to buy it.

  Let’s say they do.

  That brings us to the second problem. Who wants to own an illiquid coin that pays no interest when they could buy liquid US Treasury securities that pay interest?

  In fact, any sophisticated investor who could put the funds together would need a return on their cash. The coin would therefore be priced to trade like a discount security.

  Call it a perpetual principal STRIP.

  What’s the price of a 50 year principal STRIP? Probably about 15 cents on the dollar.

  Realistically, someone would only pay about $150 billion for the $1 trillion coin. At best!

  But let’s say the Treasury finds an “investor” to buy the coin.

  Let’s say a few phone calls are made from the Treasury to the Fed and voila, the Fed initiates a new QE program to buy the coin.

  Here’s the next problem.

  The Fed cannot legally buy direct form the Treasury.

  An intermediary like the sovereign wealth fund or a bank is needed to broker the transaction. After all of that let’s say the Fed eventually buys the $1 trillion coin and puts it in the SOMA portfolio. Hopefully they didn’t pay full price!

  Now the Fed needs to explain to Congress why they have a non-performing asset invested in the taxpayers investment portfolio.

  Maybe the idea of the trillion dollar coin is not meant to be serious. Maybe I’m overthinking because clearly, it’s not possible.]

  But here’s the rub: in no version of this scheme is the trillion-dollar coin actually made with a trillion-dollars-worth of platinum. Were that the case, the “coin” would be huge and weigh millions of pounds. Rather, the coin we’re talking about in this scheme would just have a face value of $1 trillion. It would be a commemorative or numismatic coin. The coin would be nothing more than a kind of legal fiction that’s used to credit the Treasury with a trillion dollars without going deeper into debt. 

  So, there’s really no reason for there to be any platinum in the coin at all, except for the legal (and perhaps political) advantages of calling it a platinum coin. From an economic standpoint, the coin might as well be a paperclip, as explained by Robert Murphy: 

  The Federal Reserve has the power to buy whatever assets it wants at whatever price it wants. In principle, [the Treasury Secretary] could sell a paperclip to the Fed for $2 trillion. The Fed would simply write a check made out to the Treasury, drawn on the Fed itself.

  When the Treasury deposited this check with its own bank — which just so happens to be the Fed — then its own “checking account” balance would go up by $2 trillion. This money wouldn’t come from anywhere in the sense that some other account would need to be debited $2 trillion. On the contrary, the system’s total reserves (and what is called the “monetary base”) would have swelled by $2 trillion. The Treasury would be free to start paying bills by writing checks on the $2 trillion in its account.

  The only kink in the plan would be the state of the Fed’s balance sheet. Initially it could value the paperclip at $2 trillion — what the Fed paid for it — and list the paperclip among its other assets such as Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities.

  It seems absurd, but the difference between the paperclip idea and the trillion-dollar coin scheme is one merely of degree. Both are ways of depositing something of relatively small value into a bank account and then withdrawing sums of money far exceeding the value of what was deposited.

  Two Ways of Taxing the Public

  But what is the difference between the usual raise-the-debt-ceiling option and the paperclip/coin idea? Perhaps the most meaningful difference between them is the way in which the taxpayers are exploited to pay for more government spending. Were the government to simply go more deeply into debt, the government would sell bonds and get cash in return. The bonds would be added to the national debt, formally increasing both the future and present obligations of the taxpayers. Taxpayers would be on the hook for paying off the bonds at the maturity date at some point in the future, but would also be on the hook in the near term for paying interest on the new debt. 

  In the case of the trillion-dollar coin, however, the taxpayer is exploited via the inflation tax. The coin scheme essentially forces the Federal Reverse to credit the Treasury with money and resources that doesn’t exist. The scheme ends, as Murphy notes above, by expanding the money supply—i.e., “printing” money. 

  The result of this inflating the money supply is either rising asset prices or rising consumer prices, or both. For example, we’re already living with 40-year highs in price inflation which is the consequence of the massive amounts of monetary inflation that occurred since 2008—and especially since 2020. 

  Admittedly, the trillion-dollar coin idea is good for the government itself. It provides the regime with yet another option for quickly accessing and spending even more money. But for taxpayers, there’s nothing beneficial or special about the coin scheme. It’s just a different way of ripping us off. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/22/2023 – 18:30

• Two Democrats Call For Investigation Into Biden Classified Documents Case
  Two Democrats Call For Investigation Into Biden Classified Documents Case

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

  At least two Democratic senators have called for a full investigation into President Joe Biden’s handling of classified materials after several batches of documents were found at an office and his home in Delaware.

  “The reports about President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents are extremely irresponsible and disturbing,” Manchin (D-W. Va.) told Fox News on Jan. 20.

  “These allegations should be investigated fully.”

  The development “raises serious questions, and the appointment of an unbiased special prosecutor to investigate the matter is the right step,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) told Fox.

  

  Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), who recently confirmed she wouldn’t be running for re-election in 2024, told NBC News last week that the reports of handling classified documents is a bad look for the White House.

  “Well, it’s certainly embarrassing. Right?” Stabenow stated.

  “I mean, it’s embarrassing that you would find a small number of documents, certainly not on purpose. They don’t think it’s the right thing and they’ve been moving to correct it, working with the Department of Justice, working with everyone involved, with the [National] Archives, and so from my perspective, you know, it’s one of those moments that obviously they wish hadn’t happened.”

  Their comments came just hours before Biden’s lawyer confirmed the Department of Justice (DOJ) searched his home, while an FBI spokesperson confirmed the search to Fox News on Saturday. The search of his Delaware residence reportedly lasted hours, the FBI said.

  “DOJ took possession of materials it deemed within the scope of its inquiry, including six items consisting of documents with classification markings and surrounding materials, some of which were from the President’s service in the Senate and some of which were from his tenure as Vice President,” Bob Bauer, his attorney, said.

  “DOJ also took for further review personally handwritten notes from the vice-presidential years.”

  

  Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) speaks to reporters in the Hart Senate Office building in Washington, on Aug. 1, 2022. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

  Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Fitzpatrick confirmed Saturday that the FBI had executed “a planned, consensual search” of the president’s residence in Wilmington. The president and first lady Jill Biden were not at the home when it was searched. They were spending the weekend at their home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

  Speaking to reporters during a trip to California on Thursday, Biden said he was “fully cooperating and looking forward to getting this resolved quickly.”

  “We found a handful of documents were filed in the wrong place,” Biden said.

  “We immediately turned them over to the Archives and the Justice Department.”

  The Biden investigation has also complicated the Justice Department’s probe into Trump’s retention of classified documents and official records after he left office. The Justice Department says former President Donald Trump took hundreds of records marked classified with him upon leaving the White House in early 2021, and that it had to obtain a search warrant to retrieve them.

  After the initial discovery of Biden’s documents, Trump has asserted that the DOJ is treating the president differently.

  “When is the FBI going to raid the many homes of Joe Biden, perhaps even the White House?” Trump asked in a social media post earlier in January.

  Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed former Maryland U.S. Attorney Robert Hur as a special counsel to investigate any potential wrongdoing surrounding the Biden documents. Hur is set to take over from the Trump-appointed Illinois U.S. Attorney John Lausch in overseeing the probe.

  “Since the beginning, the President has been committed to handling this responsibly because he takes this seriously,” White House lawyer Richard Sauber said Saturday. “The President’s lawyers and White House Counsel’s Office will continue to cooperate with DOJ and the Special Counsel to help ensure this process is conducted swiftly and efficiently.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/22/2023 – 17:30

• FAA Won't Divulge Data Behind Pilot Heart Arrhythmia Decision
  FAA Won’t Divulge Data Behind Pilot Heart Arrhythmia Decision

  The Federal Aviation Administration recently widened the acceptable range for heart rhythms for commercial pilots based on “new scientific evidence” which they won’t disclose, according to Just the News, which reached out to the agency for comment.

  

  Specifically, the agency raised the maximum “PR” interval for first-degree atrioventricular block to 300 milliseconds for pilots of all ages. For intervals longer than 300 ms, the FAA will decide on pilot fitness on a case-by-case basis. Previously, the maximum PR interval was 210 milliseconds, though only for pilots under the age of 51.

  If you’re not up to speed watch below:

  Tucker Carlson:

  “The FAA made a major change in the health requirement for pilots with heart damage… The change allows people with injured hearts to fly. The FAA made this change just after the Vaccines were rolled out and made mandatory. Why?”pic.twitter.com/NLDxkH5eqN

  — Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) January 19, 2023

  Did we mention that airlines have been lobbying Congress to let just one pilot fly a commercial aircraft?

  As Just the News reports,

  FAA spokesperson Ian Gregor provided a modified version of the statement the agency released last spring after American Airlines pilot Robert Snow blamed his in-flight cardiac arrest on coerced vaccination.

  Federal Air Surgeon Susan Northrup has deemed all U.S.-authorized COVID vaccines safe for pilots, the FAA said, claiming it had “seen no evidence” of vaccine-related complications that caused “aircraft accidents or pilot incapacitations.” 

  The agency followed “standard processes based on data and science” to determine it could “safely raise the tolerance used to screen for a certain heart condition” and notified AMEs of the change.

  Except, “Gregor didn’t respond to queries for the specific evidence.“

  According to the Associated Press, “the FAA explained that this change was made in response to new scientific evidence about the condition from its cardiology consultants, not adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccines,” yet AP can’t say what prompted the change.

  “When making changes to medical requirements and guidance, the FAA follows standard processes based on data and science,” the agency told AP in an emailed statement. “Our cardiology consultants provided information that anything under 300ms requires no additional testing and is not a risk for sudden or subtle incapacitation.”

  According to Joshua Yoder, who heads US Freedom Flyers – a group which collects and analyzes adverse event reports from pilots, said that he’s been contacted by wealthy businessmen to find unvaccinated pilots.

  My charter company has also received requests specifically for unvaccinated pilots

  — Sheumas McGonnegal (@SheumasM) January 18, 2023

  “I’ve spoken to 30 plus individuals myself and have also heard from an aircraft broker recently who told me he’s receiving similar requests,” Yoder told Just the News.

  According to cardiologist Thomas Levy, the FAA’s rule change is “arguably a shocking one, as many pilots are in the age range when heart attacks occur without any early symptoms but with a normal ECG, the ECG being the only mandatory heart-related test,” adding “A fatal heart attack from very advanced coronary artery disease could occur 10 minutes after the normal ECG was recorded.”

  Read more here…

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/22/2023 – 17:00

• Climate Alarmists Panic That Twitter Under Musk Allows More Dissenting Views On Global Warming
  Climate Alarmists Panic That Twitter Under Musk Allows More Dissenting Views On Global Warming

  Authored by Bryan Jung via The Epoch Times,

  An organization that says it is a coalition of “climate and anti-disinformation organisations” says Twitter under CEO Elon Musk is allowing more dissenting views on climate change.

  

  Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD), released a Jan. 19 study (pdf), accusing Musk of allowing misinformation about the climate crisis to spread on the social media platform.

  The study accused Twitter of boosting the hashtag “#ClimateScam” to users when searching the word “climate,” as its top search result.

  The hashtag has suddenly spiked on Twitter search results since July 2022, with its appearance increasing ever since, according to CAAD.

  The report said that “in 2022, denialist content made a stark comeback on Twitter in particular.”

  Twitter Search

  CAAD alleged that at least 91,000 Twitter users reported the #ClimateScam hashtag more than 362,000 times by December.

  “The source of its virality is entirely unclear, and re-emphasises the need for transparency on how and why platforms surface content to users,” said the study’s authors.

  They said that term appeared to be trending despite “data that shows more activity and engagement on other hashtags such as #ClimateCrisis and #ClimateEmergency.”

  The research team claimed that the rise of the term in search results could not be explained by user personalization, the volume of content, or popularity.

  “A basic search for ‘climate’ on Facebook did not autofill with overtly sceptic or denialist terms; searching explicitly for #ClimateScam only showed 1.5k users mentioning the term, versus 72k for #ClimateEmergency and 160k for #ClimateCrisis.”

  CAAD complained that the source of the #ClimateScam hashtag was unclear and that there was a need for transparency on how the search result came up.

  “Equally, TikTok returned no search results for #ClimateScam, but instead suggested the phrase ‘may be associated with behaviour or content that violates our guidelines.’”

  Interest Groups

  The authors said that not enough of the content was labeled as misinformation by Twitter’s new management and claimed that it could not find a comparable trend or uptick in “#ClimateScam” on other platforms.

  CAAD is partially funded by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a think tank, which is heavily funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

  The ISD said it is working with social media platforms to explore radicalization online, to minimize the impact of extremist recruitment by groups in Europe and North America.

  Since buying Twitter in October, Elon Musk has reduced the social media team’s staff by 50 percent and cut down its content moderation team to protect freedom of expression.

  Musk has been a critic of Twitter’s past relationship with federal authorities and the intelligence services, and has released several batches of the so-called “Twitter Files” since late last year.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/22/2023 – 16:30

• Peru Closes Famed Machu Picchu Ruins, Tourists Trapped, As Anti-Govt Unrest Spreads
  Peru Closes Famed Machu Picchu Ruins, Tourists Trapped, As Anti-Govt Unrest Spreads

  Protests in Peru are growing more violent and engulfing much of the country beyond the region of the south, where they first started and were concentrated last month following the impeachment and imprisonment of then-President Pedro Castillo.

  Castillo, still detained on charges of seeking to lead a rebellion after trying to dissolve Congress, was replaced by now President Boluarte, who had served as vice president until being sworn in under emergency conditions on Dec.7.

  

  Demonstrators are seeking Boluarte’s ouster and for new elections to be held immediately. Things have escalated over the weekend with the closure of tourist sites, most notably the famed ancient ruins of Machu Picchu.

  The Culture Ministry said the closure of the site was necessary in order “to protect the safety of tourists and the population in general” as more and more protesters flood the area from the countryside.

  Government officials said that 417 visitors were stuck at Machu Picchu amid riots, with 300 of them being foreigners. Fox News described that they had to be evacuated after the closest city which serves as a base for visitors touring the site was plunged into an emergency situation amid protester clashes with police:

  The city of Cusco, the former capital of the Incan empire and an about a 70-mile train ride from the town of Machu Picchu has been the site of some of the most intense clashes since the South American nation first became engulfed in unrest after then-President Pedro Castillo, Peru’s first leader with a rural Andean background was impeached and imprisoned for trying to dissolve Congress last month. 

  Train service to and from the town of Machu Picchu, at the base of the hill where the ancient Inca citadel with the same name sits, had been closed since Thursday due to damage to the tracks leading back to Cusco. Hundreds of tourists reportedly lined up to sign a petition to be evacuated in a “humanitarian train.” 

  BREAKING VIDEO: Anti Government protests that have continued for over a month in Peru have just closed Machu Picchu leaving hundreds of tourists stranded. pic.twitter.com/Vu8xlxbPqO

  — Trending 911 🌐 (@911NewsBreaks) January 22, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Six weeks of unrest and massive protest clashes with police have resulted in 60 dead, and some 600 injured.

  Below is the scene from days ago, which has been something seen daily for weeks:

  FORTE RÉPRESSION DANS LE CENTRE DE LIMA 🔴

  Dans le reste du pays, le massacre continue ! On compte 2 morts pic.twitter.com/6kGbSfoyv2

  — Romain Migus (@RomainMigus) January 20, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Intervention by security forces continued Saturday with a police raid on San Marcos University in Lima. It ranks as the oldest university in the Americas.

  The Guardian described the chaotic scene as follows: 

  Scores of police raided a Lima university on Saturday, smashing down the gates with an armored vehicle, firing teargas and detaining more than 200 people who had come to the Peruvian capital to take part in anti-government protests.

  Images showed dozens of people lying face down on the ground at San Marcos University after the surprise police operation. Students said they were pushed, kicked and hit with truncheons as they were forced out of their dormitories.

  Police could be seen ramming the gate to the historic university with a tank…

  Workers across various sectors have initiated nationwide strikes, leading in many places public transport and other services to come to a standstill. 

  Protesters have also charged that United States is seeking to prop up a ‘right-wing coup regime’ as opposed to Peru’s first leader with a rural Andean background, Castillo.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/22/2023 – 16:00

• Election Integrity Watchdog Finds California Lost 10.9 Million Mail-In Ballots in 2022 Midterms
  Election Integrity Watchdog Finds California Lost 10.9 Million Mail-In Ballots in 2022 Midterms

  Authored by Rita Li via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  An election integrity group said 10.9 million out of a total 22.1 million ballots that had been mailed out to registered voters during the 2022 midterm elections went “unaccounted for,” according to a Jan. 18 report.

  “Mail voting practices have an insurmountable information gap,” the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) said on Monday. “The public cannot know how many ballots were disregarded, delivered to wrong mailboxes, or even withheld from the proper recipient by someone at the same address.”

  

  The watchdog released the two-page report (pdf) detailing what it called “the failures” of California’s first mass-mail balloting election following the passage of Assembly Bill 37 (AB 37), which requires that ballots automatically be mailed to all active registered voters statewide. The bill, signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September 2021, makes vote-by-mail ballots, a practice implemented in the 2020 general election in conjunction with the COVID-19 pandemic, permanent for all elections.

  California has more registered voters than any other state. Yet its vote-by-mail policies—among the nation’s most expansive—have resulted in large numbers of ballots “disappearing at poll closing time,” PILF’s data show.

  “After accounting for polling place votes and rejected ballots in November 2022, there were more than 10 million ballots left outstanding, meaning election officials do not know what happened to them,” reads the Wednesday report.

  “It is fair to assume that the bulk of these were ignored or ultimately thrown out by the intended recipients. But, under mass-mail elections, we can only assume what happened,” it continued.

  Besides the almost half unaccounted-for mail ballots, data show that 9.8 million were accepted, over 120,000 were rejected, and 1.4 million were counted from in-person voting centers.

  The Golden State, which has been a Democratic stronghold for over two decades, mailed out more than 22.1 million ballots to its registered voters—nearly 47 percent Democrats and 24 percent Republicans—during the 2022 elections. A GOP victory in California on Nov. 16 granted the party slim control of the U.S. House.

  Mail-In Ballot Rejects

  PILF, after finding that election officials in California had rejected 226,250 mail-in ballots during the 2022 primary and general elections, argued that the switch to mail balloting has taken away voters’ rights.

  According to the report, the state would reject mail ballots primarily for nine reasons, including mismatched or missing signatures, and double voting when a registrant casts a vote both in-person and by-mail, which took place 813 times in the past midterms.

  The most common reason, which researchers said is “endemic to mail voting,” turned out to be late-arriving ballots—taking up 48 percent of all rejects during the 2022 elections, finding show.

  Every registered voter in California should receive a ballot in the mail a month prior to Election Day. All ballots returned by mail must be postmarked by Nov. 8 to be counted, and received within seven days by county election officials, who would then verify the signatures on the return envelopes and process ballots through their vote tallying system.

  “In the November contests, more than 57,000 ballots arrived after November 15, setting them up for rejection,” PILF stated.

  “The official datasets do not differentiate between ballots postmarked too late or delivered too late. The U.S. Postal Service also touts its 2022 performance by claiming that 99 percent of mail ballots were delivered nationally within 3 days to officials for counting once in their custody,” the repost reads, noting that the Post Office sets the success rate at 94 percent for timely delivery of political mail.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/22/2023 – 15:30

• Nancy Pelosi Had Literal Exorcism Performed On House After Husband's Attack
  Nancy Pelosi Had Literal Exorcism Performed On House After Husband’s Attack

  Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called in a priest to perform an exorcism at the San Francisco home where her husband, Paul Pelosi, was attacked by 42-year-old David DePape on November 4th, according to Pelosi’s daughter, Alexandra.

  

  “I think that weighed really heavy on her soul. I think she felt really guilty. I think that really broke her. Over Thanksgiving, she had priests coming, trying to have an exorcism of the house and having prayer services,” she told the NY Times.

  While the official details surrounding the incident have changed several times, the last update came in a now-retracted November report by veteran NBC News correspondent Miguel Almaguer (who’s been benched since said report). According to Almaguer, Paul Pelosi opened the door to their San Francisco home last month when police arrived. However, he did not try to escape or alert police to an emergency, and he instead walked to the police and back toward the alleged attacker, David DePape.

  “After a ‘knock and announce,’ the front door was opened by Mr. Pelosi. The 82-year-old did not immediately declare an emergency or tried to leave his home but instead began walking several feet back into the foyer toward the assailant and away from police,” Almaguer said in the now-deleted Nov. 4 video report. Almaguer cited unnamed sources for the claims.

  NBC Report Contradicts Federal Charging Statement in Paul Pelosi Attack – And Paul Pelosi’s Actions
  NBC reporter Miguel Almaguer reported on the Today Show that accused attacker David DePape and Paul Pelosi were alone in the Pelosi home for thirty minutes, #PaulPelosi pic.twitter.com/X6RURvSMYJ

  — Vlemx4u (@vlemx4u) November 4, 2022

  Nancy Pelosi, meanwhile, told the Times that having her home turn into a “crime scene” was unimaginable, Just the News reports.

  “He’s a strong person, athletic. This has been tough. It’s going to be about three or four more months before he’s really back to normal,” she said of her husband, while telling CNN: “I feel very sad about it because of what happened, but also more sad because the person was searching for me. … My dear husband, who is not even that political actually, paid the price.”

  Was the exorcist for the house, or for Paul?

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/22/2023 – 15:00

• California Mass Shooter Fatally Shoots Himself
  California Mass Shooter Fatally Shoots Himself

  Update (2130ET): As speculated earlier, late on Sunday authorities confirmed that the gunman suspected of killing 10 people late Saturday in Monterey Park, Calif., fatally shot himself Sunday after police officers tried to pull over a vehicle he was driving in the city of Torrance about 30 miles away, authorities said.

  As the WSJ reports, LA County Sheriff Robert Luna identified the suspected gunman as 72-year-old Huu Can Tran. Sheriff Luna said investigators were still working to determine a possible motive for the shooting, which also sent 10 people to area hospitals with injuries.

  “The suspect responsible for this tragedy is no longer a threat,” the sheriff said in a news conference.

  After the mass shooting in Monterey Park, an armed man entered a dance hall in nearby Alhambra, authorities said. Several people wrestled the gun from the man, who then fled in what witnesses said was a white cargo van.

  Sheriff Luna said that Torrance officers pulled over a van matching a description of the vehicle Sunday morning, and the driver proceeded to fire a single gunshot as they approached, taking his own life. Police subsequently found evidence inside the vehicle tying him to both locations, as well as a firearm, Sheriff Luna said.

  Sheriff Luna said police also recovered what he described as a magazine-fed, semiautomatic assault pistol at the Alhambra scene. He said it had an extended, large-capacity magazine attached to it.

  “Although that closes a portion of a very long day for all of us, the investigation is still ongoing,” he said. “Sheriff’s homicide detectives are working around the clock, gathering additional information and working on determining the motive behind this extremely tragic event.”

  * * *

  Update (1454ET): FOX 11 Los Angeles’ Gigi Graciette reports “possible suspect” might have been located. It appears he might have “shot himself” in a van. 

  UPDATE: Van with license plates that do not belong to it (cold-plated) is surrounded by South Bay SWAT. @SEB is en route. Possible suspect in #MontereyPark mass shooting appears to have shot himself and is unresponsive. @foxla

  — Gigi Graciette (@GigiGraciette) January 22, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  *   *   * 

  Update (1432ET):

  Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna tweeted several images of the suspect.

  On Saturday January 21, 2023 at 10:22 PM the suspect male/adult/Asian pictured above was involved in a shooting. Investigators have identified him as a Homicide suspect and he should be considered armed and dangerous.
  Contact LASD Homicide with any information at 323-890-5000. pic.twitter.com/2gPUBBybvv

  — Robert Luna (@LACoSheriff) January 22, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  *   *   * 

  Update (1240ET):

  Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna described the suspect as an Asian male between the ages of 30 and 50. 

  “Our very preliminary description has been described as a male Asian,” Luna said

  “We don’t know if this is specifically a hate crime defined by law, but who walks into a dance hall and guns down 20 people? The description we have now is of a male Asian. Does that matter? I don’t know. I can tell you everything is on the table,” he continued. 

  Luna added that police are “utilizing every resource to apprehend this suspect and what we believe to be one of the county’s most heinous cases.” 

  The Monterey Park shooter is described as an Asian male. There goes the “white supremacy” narrative out the window. pic.twitter.com/Bvl2PDDnKI

  — Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) January 22, 2023

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  The suspect remains at large. 

  *   *   * 

  Ten people were killed and at least ten others injured when a gunman opened fire at a dance club following a Lunar New Year celebration in Monterey Park, California. 

  “Officers from the Monterey Park Police Department responded to a local business in the 100 block of West Garvey Avenue in the city of Monterey Park regarding shots fired call,” Capt. Andrew Meyer of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department told reporters. He said the mass shooting happened at 2222 local time. 

  The address of the incident area Meyer provided shows a small strip mall that includes “Star Dance Studio.” 

  

  “When officers arrived on scene, they observed numerous individuals, patrons of the location pouring out of the location, screaming,” he said. “The officers made entry to the location and located additional victims.”

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  5 1/2 hours after the deadly Monterey Park shooting, we are learning 10 people have died with an additional 10 being treated at local hospitals. The suspect remains at large. Watch as Capt. Andrew Meyer from LA County Sheriff homicide gives an update More: https://t.co/riwvwCKguC pic.twitter.com/BVBsqKaSYg

  — KCAL News (@CBSLA) January 22, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Meyer confirmed ten people died in the shooting. Ten others, he said, “were transported to numerous local hospitals and are listed in various conditions from stable to critical.”

  #Breaking #MontereyPark According to scanner reports 10 people have been fatally shot, 9 others injured during a #MassShooting at a business on Garvey Ave. The suspect is still on the loose according to PD on scene. #News #Developing #Shooting #LunarNewYear pic.twitter.com/YDFQ2gTLci

  — RMG News (@RMGNews) January 22, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Unconfirmed footage from within the dance club surfaced on social media after the attack. 

  Shooting at Star Dance Studio in Monterey Park
  If you zoom in there’s a girl sitting down. So sad, what an awful thing to have to go through pic.twitter.com/18NGspzKR6

  — Lane (@LaneNewsom) January 22, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Monterey Park pic.twitter.com/cZS7kxA8L3

  — Catalan (@SativaHighh) January 22, 2023

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  The suspect’s motive remains unclear. Meyer did not describe the suspect at the news conference. “All I can tell you is that it was a firearm that was used,” he said. A manhunt is underway. 

  The New Yorker’s Michael Lou pointed out Monterey Park has a “majority Asian American population”: 

  “Monterey Park, a city of 61,000 in the San Gabriel Valley, has a majority Asian American population. Located east of Los Angeles, the suburb is 65% Asian American, 27% Latino, and 6% white, according to census data,” he tweeted.

  The shooting happened in the vicinity of Monterey Park’s Lunar New Year celebration and attracted thousands.   

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/22/2023 – 14:32

• The Past Is A Great Darkness, And Filled With Eccles
  The Past Is A Great Darkness, And Filled With Eccles

  By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

  The Past is a Great Darkness, and Filled with Eccles

  In this report, I will try to find a way to highlight the sense that the Fed is not only battling difficult tointerpret economic data, but they are also battling “demons and echoes” of the past.

  • The majority of the people in leadership positions at the Fed (including the Chair) were in those leadership roles when they seemed to miss the fact that inflation wasn’t “transitory”. Not only did they miss it, but they seemed to add fuel to the fire by continuing QE (albeit at a reduced scale) into early 2022. Disciplined traders use stop losses for a reason and the knowledge that getting something wrong tends to lead to poor decisions going forward is an integral part of even the simplest day trader’s strategy. However, it is odd that it would happen at the national central bank policy level.
  • The Fed also seems to be worrying about historical precedent. The mistakes their predecessors made in their battles against inflation are haunting their thought process. Long gone are the days of the “Greenspan Put”. The Fed is fixated on Volcker and Burns and what they did right or wrong in their respective fights against inflation (however, those were very different times compared to today).

  I wasn’t hopeful that I’d find a relevant quote that captured what I was looking to portray, but then I found this gem from Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”:

  “As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes”.

  That statement captures the essence of what the Fed is dealing with and encapsulates the “darkness and echoes” of past mistakes.

  Today’s report is a natural progression of last weekend’s For the Record.

  Where Would we be Without the “Demons” or “Echoes”?

  At this point, that seems obvious – we’d be ending the hiking talk.

  Much of this week’s data was skewed to the negative. The “positive” news included rising inventories. However, this is not actually a positive because inventories are already too large and consumer spending seems to be waning!

  Without these demons or echoes, the Fed would be focused on whether or not they had done too much. They would also be highlighting the dramatic improvements in the fight against inflation and talking about how ridiculous the rent component is relative to reality. The bond market wouldn’t be fighting the Fed’s rhetoric or anticipating rate cuts later this year because the Fed would be much less hawkish.

  There would be a “wait and see” element to every single Fed statement. They would be admonishing those screaming that inflation hasn’t been fully beaten down because they know that monetary policy takes time.

  Governor Brainard recently said something that the T-Report wholeheartedly agrees with! She said that there was little evidence of a 1970s style wage-price spiral. We agree because the “Rise and Fall of Inflation Factors” piece explains inflation’s rise, fall, and the coming deflation much better than “traditional” models do.

  If it wasn’t for those past demons, the people meeting in the Eccles building “might” be able to steer us towards a “softish” or “squishy” landing.

  But the “Demons” are Real

  The Fed can look to the distant past as a guide and can maybe even glean some useful information about the mistakes that were made. However, the recent “mistakes” (I can’t really think of anything else to call it) are more difficult to ignore. Speech after speech, the overall message was that inflation was transitory/under control/easy to deal with and that we still needed accommodation because liquidity concerns remained. How do you ignore all of that when trying to move forward?

  On the bright side, in the grand scheme of things, missing inflation was a minor mistake compared to asserting that the sub-prime crisis was contained (though Bernanke did go on to win a Nobel prize for fixing a mistake that he was part of creating/missing, so maybe it wasn’t really a mistake).

  Traders use stop losses for a reason. It is human nature to compound mistakes. Once a mistake has been made (such as buying a stock at $100 and watching it drop to $90) it tends to cloud your judgement. Hence, even the most rudimentary risk management systems use some form of stop loss. Effectively, this means that “you got it wrong so we are going to close the position and give you time to think about it”. Maybe that is important for the average day trader (let alone hedge fund), but not for those setting monetary policy (arguably) for the free world. Any corporation that missed one of their two targets by miles would have shaken up their decision making process, but again, maybe this isn’t applicable on the monetary policy side. The recent “big changes” seemed more related to personal trading than anything having to do with prior monetary policy decisions, but I guess that it makes sense because there is virtually never any dissent on policy making decisions.

  In any case, given all the demons that this Fed is dealing with, they will likely be fighting the inflation demons long after they’ve been exorcised. While the bond market can (and should) fight it, it will be more difficult on the risk asset side because policy errors will hurt the economy and ultimately corporate earnings and stock prices.

  Have they Already Done Too Much?

  Even if the Fed behaves as they should without the demons, have they already set too much future pain in motion? Did their demons get the better of them in meetings late last year? Should they have dialed back their tough talk and started the “wait and see” process?

  I suspect that the answer to that will be yes, but only time will tell. Hopefully the data in the coming weeks will provide some clarity so we can determine if my pessimism has been justified because I believe that the path to a deeper and longer recession has already been paved.

  A Special Shout-out to Waller

  Governor Waller said something that makes some sense, but may also prove to be bearish for risk assets. He is onboard with a 25 bps rate increase in February and seemed to indicate that he was leaning towards the “wait and see” camp. He also said that not only would he keep QT, he would encourage QT even if we needed to do rate cuts.

  I think that makes sense. What made less sense (to me) is that he tried to equate some amount of QT to some amount of rate hikes.

  I don’t think shifting Fed funds up and down behaves anything like growing or shrinking the balance sheet (Rates vs Balance Sheet). I like salt and pepper, but they don’t serve the same purpose and so far, I haven’t had a doctor tell me to monitor my pepper intake! Both salt and pepper shift the taste of food, but they are not the same at all. I think QE and QT act more directly (and in a much timelier manner) on asset prices than rate changes do.

  One Caveat is that Political Winds are Changing

  One thing to keep in mind is the report that we did a week or so ago on The Shifting “Politics” of Inflation. In that report we identified a shift in political and media talking points and predicted that it could pave the way for a series of Fed speakers to come out and downplay the inflation risk.

  Bottom Line

  The Fed might capitulate to the “wait and see” argument, but they are likely to still err on the side of being too hawkish.

  The Fed should have gone to “wait and see” mode months ago, but they are likely being haunted and already went too far.

  Even after they realize that they’ve gone too far, rate cuts are a long way off and they will continue to run with QT (which will weigh on asset prices).

  Equities.

  • I am mildly bearish because the need to respect the “soft landing” is a narrative that is gaining momentum. Fortunately, as a mild bear, I don’t think that positioning is heavily bearish and I’m in the camp that believes the market is more or less balanced.

  Credit.

  • If you are an issuer, issue bonds now. Treasury yields, especially out on the curve, are reasonably low as are spreads. The all-in combination seems attractive as I see scenarios where all in credit yields struggle regardless of the direction that the economy heads. I believe that spreads will blow out fast as Treasury yields go lower in a “recession” trade and Treasury yields will go higher faster than spreads can tighten in a “soft landing” scenario. Also, investors had “dry powder” for what was expected to be a huge new issue calendar at the start of 2023. That hasn’t materialized, so take advantage of the overall yield environment AND the dry powder.
  • For asset managers, resist the urge to put the dry powder to work!

  Maybe it’s because I’m on a flight, or I’ve been focused on the Fed, or I just hate the subject so much, but I have avoided discussing the Debt Ceiling today (or I did until now).

  Debt Ceiling 2023 is starting to look, feel, and even smell different than prior debt ceiling deadlines. I think that because it is far enough off (as a market moving issue) I don’t need to address it today, but I will have to remedy that soon, as it is pinging all over my radar since the vote for Speaker turned out so “interesting”.

  Good luck preparing for the data, the Fed, and the narratives and my sympathies go out to all of us as the debt ceiling seems destined to become a household conversation!

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/22/2023 – 14:30

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Twitter Files Prove America Headed For "Totalitarian State Territory", Expert Warns
  Twitter Files Prove America Headed For “Totalitarian State Territory”, Expert Warns

  Authored by Katie Spence via The Epoch Times,

  Thanks to the revelations in the Twitter Files, there’s evidence that the FBI and other agencies worked to suppress “lawful speech,” and if this type of action is allowed to continue, the United States is headed for “totalitarian state territory,” Matthew Peterson, the cofounder of New Founding, said in an interview with Epoch Times–NTD collaborative program “Newsmakers.”

  New Founding helps people and organizations position themselves to avoid threats from Big Tech and “woke capital,” and Peterson has two decades of experience in digital media and political consulting.

  When asked what will happen if the country’s current trajectory continues for three to five years, Peterson said, “We’ll be in totalitarian state territory, there’s no question about it.”

  

  FBI Director Christopher Wray (C) on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Nov. 15, 2022. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

  “I mean, remember, this went so far as the government saying, ‘You need to find evidence that there are Russians influencing the election on Twitter.’ And Twitter saying, ‘No, that’s not happening.’

  “And then [Twitter had] to be quiet about it and not even defend themselves when they knew that there wasn’t Russian interference that they could find,” he added.

  Peterson further explained that the U.S. government drove a narrative that it knew wasn’t true and was the “antithesis” of America’s founding principles.

  “[The government’s actions are] the antithesis of America. The American founding is basically contradicted by what’s happening here, over and over again. And if we don’t do something about that, we will not have free speech in this country,” Peterson warned.

  FBI and Fake News

  Peterson pointed out that one of the biggest revelations in the Twitter Files—a collection of internal emails and communications made public by the company’s CEO, Elon Musk—was that the intelligence community’s influence on Twitter was more significant than anyone imagined.

  “What you first have to realize is that a lot of people from the intelligence community were already embedded in Twitter. So much so that they had their own Slack channel chat for people who are from the FBI,” Peterson said.

  “And so, what you see with the censorship is not just a selective, ‘we don’t like this guy, we don’t like this guy.’ It’s promoting large-scale narratives, both pro and con repeatedly, again and again and again and again.”

  And, Peterson said, the U.S. government didn’t limit itself to shadow-banning and censorship.

  In reply to the question about the Twitter Files revelation, the Department of Defense used a back channel with Twitter to create fake accounts to push a specific narrative in the Arab world. Peterson stated such actions show a direct line between the government and social media.

  “So, what we see is, again, direct channels from the U.S. government—both really creating fake news and deleting anything they don’t like. And people have to realize … what you see is a direct line again,” Peterson said.

  Additionally, Peterson said before the Twitter Files, the U.S. government and Twitter were essentially gaslighting Americans.

  

  Billionaire Tesla chief Elon Musk arrives at the San Francisco headquarters of Twitter on Oct. 26, stating, “let that sink in” as he completes his $44 billion acquisition of the social media company. (Twitter account of Elon Musk/AFP via Getty Images)

  “We should make clear that everyone claimed that this wasn’t happening, right? So, the whole world was being gaslit by Twitter and friends saying, ‘Oh, no. We’re not shadow-banning anyone. You know this is all crazy, right-wing talk.’

  “And what the Twitter Files have done is give conclusive, definitive proof of what was actually going on. And what was going on was shocking.

  “I think it was worse than a lot of regular people—and even experts—thought it was. I mean, Big Pharma having a direct line to censor people when it came to their thoughts and opinions about what was going on with the vaccine and COVID? Of course, famously, [there’s] the Hunter Biden laptop controversy in which news organizations were just outright censored, in violation of Twitter’s own rules.

  “And what we see is a direct line between the government and other powerful organizations, and a media outfit, over and over again, censoring people, essentially, at the whim of the powerful.”

  Peterson said such government and complicit media actions aren’t on the decline. Instead, he said, it’s “increasing every day.”

  He said action is necessary to combat that and return America to its guiding principles of free speech and limited government. “What we need to see is increasing resistance with law, and other powerful forces, fighting against this. And that starts with exposing what Elon Musk has already exposed but is now being hidden from the American public in these Twitter files.”

  The Twitter Files

  Since taking over Twitter, Musk has consistently vocalized the need for transparency regarding what happened behind the scenes at the tech company. To that end, he, via a chosen few journalists, has released secret emails and discussions about shadow-banning or removing accounts that didn’t toe the party line.

  In response to the allegations of collusion between the FBI and Twitter, the FBI said in a statement to Fox News, “The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries.

  

  A seal reading “Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Investigation” is displayed on the J. Edgar Hoover FBI building in Washington, on Aug. 9, 2022. (Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

  “As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers.”

  The FBI National Press Office responded similarly to The Epoch Times’ request for comment: “The FBI regularly engages with private sector entities to provide information specific to identified foreign malign influence actors’ subversive, undeclared, covert, or criminal activities.

  “It is not based on the content of any particular message or narrative. Private sector entities independently make decisions about what, if any, action they take on their platforms and for their customers after the FBI has notified them.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/21/2023 – 23:30

• Which Countries Are The Most Polarized?
  Which Countries Are The Most Polarized?

  How do you measure something that’s made headlines for half a decade but is still difficult to quantify? We’re talking about polarization.

  As Visual Capitalist’s Nick Routley explains below, even within the social sciences, polarization covers everything from racial segregation, to labor skill levels, to class divide, to political ideology.

  How Do You Quantify Polarization?

  Edelman’s data on which countries are the most polarized comes from survey results asking respondents two very simple questions:

  • How divided is their country?

  • How entrenched is the divide?

  The questions help bring to light the social issues a particular country is facing and the lack of consensus on those issues.

  Plotted against each other, a chart emerges. A country in the top–right corner of the chart is “severely polarized.” Countries located closer to the lower–left are considered less polarized.

  

  In the report, Edelman identifies four metrics to watch for and measure which help quantify polarization.

  

   

  Following Edelman’s metrics, countries with economic uncertainty and inequality as well as institutional distrust are more likely to be polarized. Below, we look at key highlights from the chart.

  Severely Polarized Countries

  Despite being one of the largest economies in Latin America, Argentina is the most polarized country surveyed by a large margin. Foreign loan defaults, a high fiscal deficit, and now surging inflation have created a perfect storm in the country.

  43% of the Argentinian respondents said they will be better off in five years, down 17 percentage points from last year.

  Along with fiscal upheaval, Argentinians are also dealing with enduring corruption in the public sector and abrupt policy reversals between governments. Only 20% of those surveyed in Argentina said they trusted the government—the least of all surveyed countries.

  Here are all six of the countries considered to be severely polarized:

  •  Argentina

  •  Colombia

  •  United States

  •  South Africa

  •  Spain

  •  Sweden

  In the U.S., heightened political upheaval between Democrats and Republicans over the last few years has led to strengthening ideological stances and to an abundance of headlines about polarization. Only 42% of respondents in the country trust the government.

  And in South Africa, persistent inequality and falling trust in the African National Congress also check off Edelman’s metrics. It’s also second after Argentina with the least trust in government (22%) per the survey.

  Moderately Polarized Countries

  The biggest cluster of 15 countries are in moderately polarized section of the chart, with all continents represented.

  •  Brazil

  •  South Korea

  •  Mexico

  •  France

  •  United Kingdom

  •  Japan

  •  Netherlands

  •  Italy

  •  Germany

  •  Nigeria

  •  Thailand

  •  Kenya

  •  Canada

  •  Australia

  •  Ireland

  Some are on the cusp of being severely polarized, including economic heavyweights like Japan, the UK, France, and Germany. On the other hand, smaller economies like Thailand, Kenya, and Nigeria, are doing comparatively better on the polarization chart.

  Less Polarized Countries

  Countries with fair economic outlook and high trust in institutions including China, Singapore, and India are in the bottom left sector of the chart.

  •  Indonesia

  •  China

  •  United Arab Emirates

  •  Singapore

  •  Saudi Arabia

  •  Malaysia

  •  India

  It’s interesting to note that of the seven countries in that sector, three are not democracies. That said, there are also more developing countries on this list as well, which could also be a factor.

  Looking Ahead

  Edelman notes that polarization is both “cause and consequence of distrust,” creating a self-fulfilling cycle. Aside from the four metrics stated above, concerns about the erosion of civility and weakening social fabric also lead to polarization.

  

  As global events unfold in 2023—including looming worries of a recession—it will be fascinating to see how countries might switch positions in the year to come.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/21/2023 – 23:00

• Record-High 250,000 Migrant Encounters Across US-Mexico Border In December 2022: CBP
  Record-High 250,000 Migrant Encounters Across US-Mexico Border In December 2022: CBP

  Authored by Mimi Nguyen Ly via The Epoch Times,

  The number of migrant encounters across the U.S. southern border for December 2022 reached a record high, with the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) reporting a figure of more than a quarter of a million.

  

  That’s a total of 251,487 border enforcement encounters. The figure via CBP data surpasses the previous monthly record of 241,136, which was set in May 2022.

  It marks a seven percent increase from the November 2022 number of encounters, which was 234,896. The latest figure also far surpasses the number of enforcement encounters of the month of December in the prior two years: 179,253 in December 2021, and 73,994 in December 2020.

  Of the 251,487 border enforcement encounters in December 2022, 14 percent of involved individuals who have been stopped by a U.S. border agent in the previous 12 months.

  There were a total of 216,162 unique encounters in December 2022, which is an 11 percent increase in the number of unique enforcement encounters from November 2022. The CBP says the increase is “driven largely by an increased number of individuals fleeing authoritarian regimes in Cuba and Nicaragua.”

  New Border Enforcement Measures

  Despite the record-breaking figure, CBP Acting Commissioner Troy Miller said that it shows the Biden administration’s efforts at the border have been effective.

  “The December update shows our new border enforcement measures are working. Even as overall encounters rose … we continued to see a sharp decline in the number of Venezuelans unlawfully crossing our southwest border, down 82 percent from September 2022,” Miller said in a statement.

  “Early data suggests the expanded measures for Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans are having a similar impact, and we look forward to sharing the additional data in the next update.”

  Miller’s remarks refer to the Biden administration’s recent border changes, which include a parole program that was launched in October 2022 targeting Venezuelans. The program allows up to 24,000 Venezuelans to enter the United States under parole authority, which grants them entry and work authorization for a year, but is not a legal status. A Venezuelan national must meet certain criteria to be eligible, including having a sponsor in the United States to provide “financial and other support.”

  Under the parole program, Venezuelans who walk or swim across the border after Oct. 12, 2022, will be returned to Mexico under the Trump-era policy Title 42, which allows for blocking asylum claims and swift expulsion of most unauthorized border crossers under the grounds of keeping contagious diseases out of the United States.

  Until Oct. 12, 2022, Venezuelans weren’t subject to expulsion under Title 42 because neither their home country nor another country was willing to take them. Prior to the new measures, migrants from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Mexico were subject to expulsion from the United States under Title 42.

  Biden Expands Parole Authority

  President Joe Biden in early January then expanded the parole program to nationals of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Haiti, which means they can apply for parole, and if they meet eligibility criteria, they can receive a two-year permit to work in the United States. Now, the nationals from these three countries and Venezuela who unlawfully cross the U.S. southern border are now also subject to expulsion under Title 42, with Mexico agreeing to receive up to 30,000 expelled people a month.

  Miller attributed the rising number of overall enforcement encounters in December 2022 to “smugglers spreading misinformation around the court-ordered lifting of the Title 42 public health order.” The Epoch Times cannot independently verify the assertion. Currently, Title 42 remains in effect for the time being due to a U.S. Supreme Court order in late December 2022.

  Republican lawmakers have accused Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of breaking immigration law in the way the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has implemented the parole authority.

  Prior to it being used for Venezuelans, Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans, the parole authority was implemented under Biden on a mass scale to alleviate swamped Border Patrol stations amid soaring illegal crossings, and to allow in tens of thousands of Ukrainians.

  ‘Catastrophic Crisis’

  Mark Morgan, former acting CBP commissioner and Heritage visiting fellow, called the situation at the border a “catastrophic crisis” and said the Biden administration has misrepresented the situation there.

  “What’s been happening at the border the last two years continues to be a catastrophic crisis, and the White House, Secretary Mayorkas, and the open-borders advocates on the left continue to lie about it,” he told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.

  “Under the last Democratic president, 25,000 encounters was a borderline crisis—for the Biden administration, 10 times that number is simply business as usual.”

  Morgan said the Biden administration’s open-border policies have all “abjectly failed, yet [Mayorkas] continues to absurdly claim the opposite.”

  “No sane person could look at the border and claim we’re on the right course. Any other secretary would have long ago resigned in shame and disgrace, but it’s clear Secretary Mayorkas simply has no shame to begin with. So, Congress must immediately move to impeach him, begin meaningful oversight, and pass legislation to end the crisis and reduce illegal immigration.”

  The House Oversight Committee on Jan. 19 launched a probe into the border crisis by issuing a request for multiple documents from Mayorkas and calling on multiple border chiefs to testify at a hearing to be held in the week of Feb. 6.

  Since Biden took office in 2021 and scaled back or terminated key Trump-era policies, illegal immigration has soared to record levels.

  More than 2.3 million apprehensions were recorded at the U.S.–Mexico border in fiscal year 2022, which ended on Sept. 30, 2022—up about 37 percent from the previous year.

  “Joe Biden is the first president in my lifetime to intentionally un-secure the border. By way of more than 90 executive orders, he undid the successful Trump-era policies that brought illegal immigration to a 40-year low and gave us the most secure border of our lifetimes,” Tom Homan, former acting ICE director and Heritage visiting fellow, told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.

  “This president and his team were warned what would happen if they got rid of those policies. They did it anyway, and you’re looking at the consequences.

  “More Americans than ever dying from fentanyl flooding across the southwest border. More women and children abused and sexually assaulted on the dangerous journey through Central America and Mexico. More migrants found dead on U.S. soil than ever. Record profits for the cartels as they traffic and smuggle historic numbers of drugs and people across the border.

  “It’s inhumane. It’s a slap in the face to the men and women of the Border Patrol, who are absolutely overwhelmed, as well as to ICE agents who’ve been told they can’t detain or deport most of those who break our laws.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/21/2023 – 22:30

• These Are The Oldest People In The World
  These Are The Oldest People In The World

  With the passing of France’s Lucile Randon at the age of 118 this week, Statista’s Martin Armstrong reports that the title of ‘oldest living human’ has been bequeathed to the U.S. born Maria Branyas Morera. At the ripe old age of 115, she sits atop the infographic below, showing the age and birthplace of the oldest living people on Earth.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  All women, the countries of birth most represented here are Japan and the United States; accounting for four and three, respectively.

  All entries have been validated by the Gerontology Research Group.

  Do these ‘supercentenarians’ have any advice for living for so long?

  Emma Morano, born in 1899 and who died in 2017 at the age of 117 was thought to have been the last person alive to have lived in three different centuries.

  The Italian apparently put her long life down to leaving her husband in 1938 and the consumption of two raw eggs and some raw minced meat every day.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/21/2023 – 22:00

• School System Failing And Is No Longer There To Educate, Says Teacher
  School System Failing And Is No Longer There To Educate, Says Teacher

  Authored by Jackson Elliott via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  America’s education system has failed, according to a teacher and charter school enthusiast. And now parents search for new schools, surveys show.

  “The goal of the education system today is no longer to educate. It’s to do everything but that,” Dan Fisher told the Epoch Times.

  

  Fisher teaches 10th grade at a high school whose name he declined to publicize. Before that, he taught as a professor. The classrooms he is in today let him see a system in collapse.

  Tenth-graders can’t read, most students don’t want to participate, and teachers care more about woke indoctrination than addressing these issues, Fisher said.

  But kids have plenty of energy to invest in their tech, he added.

  “After school is fascinating,” he said. “They’re not playing. They’re not running. They’re just on their phones,” he said.

  Like several other educational activists, Fisher said COVID-19 pandemic changes revealed the rotting condition of America’s schools.

  “They assumed that schools were the way they were when they went through, and they had no idea how much things have changed, as far as curriculum and other things,” he said.

  High graduation rates are fake, said Fisher. Schools regularly pass students with little regard to whether they meet standards, he added.

  “We’re asked at the 10th-grade level, 11th-grade level, to help teach reading,” he said. “Isn’t that kind of what K-8 is for?”

  In this environment, it’s no wonder that most parents are looking for new schools Fisher said. He’s supported by a new survey by National School Choice Week, a charitable program of the nonprofit National School Choice Awareness Foundation.

  Peeved Parents

  Nearly 54 percent of parents of more than 3,800 surveyed have considered a new school for their children in the past year, the study found.

  The number of dissatisfied parents got higher the younger parents were, researchers found.

  Among parents ages 18–29, about six in 10 considered moving schools in the past year.

  Among parents aged 30 to 44, a little more than half considered moving schools. Among those aged 45 to 60, just under half considered a move. And about four out of 10 parents aged 60 and above considered moving schools.

  The survey noted that African American, Hispanic, and Millennial parents were most likely to consider changing schools. These groups were also most likely to say there weren’t enough choices between schools.

  Caucasian Americans were least likely to consider changing schools and most likely to say school systems provided enough choice, the survey noted.

  Not all parents who considered a new school chose one or remained in the tension of making a choice, the study said. About 16 percent of all parents surveyed chose new schools, 11.3 percent considered doing so but didn’t, and 25.8 percent are considering one.

  Many parents considered multiple options, the survey said. But the most often-cited options were nearby traditional public schools. The second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth-most popular options were public schools outside parents’ districts, public charter schools, faith-based schools, homeschooling, and full-time online schooling.

  The least-popular option was “microschooling” or “pod learning,” methods that teach a group of 10 or fewer kids.

  Nearly 65 percent of parents said they wished they had more information on schooling options, the survey said.

  Never Normal

  For the past few years, parents have churned between schools, Shelby Doyle, vice president of public awareness at the National School Choice Awareness Foundation, told The Epoch Times.

  With COVID-19 lockdowns over, this trend has continued.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/21/2023 – 21:30

• Where The World Celebrates Chinese New Year
  Where The World Celebrates Chinese New Year

  For around 1.4 billion Chinese, the new year begins on January 22 – unlike in the Gregorian calendar, China calculates its traditional new year’s date according to the lunar cycle. While various Asian nations also celebrate their own Lunar New Year festivals, the Chinese New Year is in fact a public holiday in several nations around the world, not just in the People’s Republic.

  As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz shows in the chart below, Southeast Asia is the region in which most countries give their citizens time off for the beginning of the Chinese New Year. These include Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia. In recent years, the Chinese New Year has also been introduced as a special holiday in the Philippines, but according to local media reports as of January 14, there will be no separate days off this year. South Korea and Vietnam also organize celebrations at the beginning of the lunar year, but these differ in part from the customs of the Chinese New Year and are more likely to be shaped by national culture.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  While the majority of the countries and territories that explicitly celebrate the Chinese New Year are in Asia, there are two exceptions.

  In Suriname in South America, the turn of the year in both the Gregorian and the lunar calendar are public holidays. According to the official census, around seven percent of the approximately 618,000 inhabitants are of Chinese descent.

  The island state of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean also celebrates the Chinese New Year, although only about three percent of the approximately 1.3 million inhabitants have Chinese roots. In the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, the island was a popular emigration destination for Chinese from the province of Guangdong, also referred to as Canton at the time.

  Chinese New Year celebrations are spread over the course two weeks and usually triggers an increased volume of travel, one of the largest waves of migration in the world. The festivities also mark the official start of spring, which is why the Lunar New Year is also known as Chūnjié or Spring Festival. According to the official lunar calendar, 2023 is the year of the rabbit, which last happened in 2011.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/21/2023 – 21:00

• IRS Reminds Wage Earners To Adjust 2023 Withholding Now Or Face A Surprise Later
  IRS Reminds Wage Earners To Adjust 2023 Withholding Now Or Face A Surprise Later

  Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has issued an alert to taxpayers, encouraging them to adjust their 2023 withholding so as to either avoid effectively giving the government an interest-free loan of their money or face the prospect of penalties and interest if too little tax is withheld.

  

  In a news release on Jan. 19, the IRS announced that it has made available an online tool that wage-earning taxpayers can use to determine if they have too much or too little tax withheld from their paychecks.

  Called the Tax Withholding Estimator, it lets taxpayers figure out if they will receive a refund or need to make a payment to the IRS in order to avoid owing taxes and potentially incurring penalties the following year.

  Having too much tax withheld and waiting for a refund at tax time is akin to giving the government an interest-free loan.

  But if a taxpayer does not have enough taxes withheld from their paychecks throughout the year, they may owe a balance when they file their taxes. This means they will have to pay the remaining balance of taxes owed to the IRS when they file their tax return.

  Owing a balance at tax time can be a significant financial burden, especially if the balance is large or if the taxpayer is struggling to make ends meet.

  There are also penalties and interest that may apply when the taxpayer owes a balance when filing their taxes. The IRS charges interest on any unpaid taxes starting from the original due date of the return. Penalties may also be assessed if the taxpayer fails to file their return on time or if they owe taxes and fail to pay them by the deadline.

  Owing a balance can also have negative effects on credit score as it is considered a debt that is unpaid. This can also lead to wage garnishments, liens on property, and even imprisonment if the taxpayer fails to pay their taxes.

  Avoid Quarterly Estimated Tax Payments

  The way taxes are paid in the United States is on a pay-as-you-go basis, which means that taxes are paid as income is earned throughout the year. This is typically done through withholding from paychecks, pension payments, Social Security benefits, and certain other government payments.

  However, for people who have multiple sources of income, such as a second job or income from self-employment, unemployment, annuities, the gig economy, or digital assets, they may be required to make quarterly estimated tax payments to the IRS. This is to ensure that they are paying enough taxes throughout the year and to avoid owing a balance when they file their taxes.

  By using the Tax Withholding Estimator tool, the IRS says that taxpayers can tailor the amount of income tax they should have withheld from their paychecks, which can also help avoid the need for quarterly estimated tax payments.

  After determining how much tax should be withheld, taxpayers can make the change by submitting a new Form W-4 to employers.

  Other Updates

  The IRS said on Jan. 19 that individuals and businesses affected by the storm in certain counties in Georgia and Alabama now have until May 15, 2023, to file and pay their federal tax returns.

  This relief applies to any area designated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and currently includes Butts, Henry, Jasper, Meriwether, Newton, Spalding, and Troup counties in Georgia and Autauga and Dallas counties in Alabama.

  Other areas that FEMA adds later to the disaster area will also qualify for the same relief, with the list of eligible localities available on the IRS’s website: Tax Relief in Disaster Situations.

  Reads more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/21/2023 – 20:30

• Six More Classified Documents Discovered At Biden House
  Six More Classified Documents Discovered At Biden House

  The Department of Justice found “six items consisting of documents with classification markings” during a Friday search of President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, according to a Saturday statement by the president’s personal lawyers.

  

  Also found were notes from Biden’s time as a Senator, as well as his tenure as Vice President, according to a statement from Biden attorney Bob Bauer, which strategically leads with ‘we’ve fully cooperated!’

  

  The search lasted from 9:45 a.m. until 10:30 p.m. Friday, during which members of Biden’s personal legal tam were present along with members from the Office of the White House counsel, according to the statement.

  The DOJ also took materials “for further review.”

  The new documents mark the latest development in the scandal involving classified documents found at non-authorized locations used by Biden. The first batch of papers was discovered in early November, the day before midterm elections, at the Penn Biden Center.

  More documents marked classified were found at his Wilmington, Delaware home in December – and then earlier this month, an additional batch of papers was found at the home.

  🚨🚨🚨🚨

  – In a 12+ hours search of Biden’s home, the Feds found classified docs including FROM HIS TIME IN SENATE.

  – Docs were found despite the WH saying that they turned over all docs a week ago.

  – No video/photo of Feds/local PD standing around as done to Trump.

  — Yossi Gestetner (@YossiGestetner) January 22, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  The Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Department officials earlier considered having FBI agents monitor a search by Mr. Biden’s lawyers for classified documents at his homes but decided against it, both to avoid complicating later stages of the investigation and because Mr. Biden’s attorneys had quickly turned over a first batch and were cooperating, the Journal reported this week. 

  Some law enforcement officials had discussed the possibility of asking Mr. Biden’s team for consent to have the FBI search the property themselves. Officials didn’t immediately take that step in part to preserve their freedom to take a tougher line later, including by executing a search warrant, the Journal reported.

  Instead, the two sides agreed that Mr. Biden’s personal attorneys would inspect the homes, notify the Justice Department as soon as they identified any other potentially classified records, and arrange for law-enforcement authorities to take them.  –Wall Street Journal

  So, Biden’s personal attorneys searched the house themselves, said they turned everything over to the DOJ, and yet more were found? When Trump’s lawyers did that he was raided by the FBI.

  It’s time to start focusing on where Biden did NOT drop confidential documents. https://t.co/vmiVWZjPpF

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 22, 2023

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  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/21/2023 – 19:30

• Judge Grants Restraining Order Against Illinois "Assault Weapon" Ban
  Judge Grants Restraining Order Against Illinois “Assault Weapon” Ban

  Just 10 days after Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed into law a ban on so-called “assault weapons” and “high-capacity” magazines, a state judge has issued a temporary restraining order against it — and said legislators and the governor “egregiously violated” procedural requirements under the Illinois Constitution in their rush to enact the measure. 

  

  For now, the restraining order only provides relief to the 866 individual plaintiffs who joined a particular one of multiple lawsuits challenging the ban, but it signals that those plaintiffs are likely to prevail in their suit.

  It’s also yet another powerful shot across the bow of gun-grabbing politicians, who everywhere find themselves reeling in the face of last year’s pivotal Supreme Court decision in New York State Rifle Association, Inc. v Bruen.  

  “Plaintiffs are being immediately and irreparably harmed each day in which their fundamental right to bear arms is being denied,” wrote Judge Joshua Morrison in his 11-page ruling. He rejected the government’s assertion that the law did not impact a fundamental right.

  What’s more, Morrison said “the plaintiffs have shown a likelihood of success” in their suit against the law, known as the Protect Illinois Communities Act. That likelihood springs largely from the plaintiffs’ assertion that the rushed legislative process was unlawful:

  “This Court finds that the Defendants [Pritzker et al] unequivocally and egregiously violated the Three Readings Rule of the Illinois Constitution in order to circumvent the Constitutional requirements and avoid public discourse.”

  Morrison also said the law isn’t likely to survive scrutiny under principles established by last year’s Supreme Court Bruen decision.

  The law has already been severely undercut by Illinois’ county sheriffs — as nearly every one of them has promised not to enforce it, saying it’s a violation of the Second Amendment. Pritzker called it “political grandstanding at its worst.” 

  The Illinois government passed a law banning “assault weapons”.

  In red are the counties whose Sheriffs have publicly stated they’re refusing to enforce it.

  Hopefully, they’ll start refusing to enforce every other unconstitutional gun control law too. pic.twitter.com/BF6uby3gNK

  — Spike Cohen (@RealSpikeCohen) January 19, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  The Illinois law made it illegal to sell a list of some 170 specific semiautomatic rifles, shotguns and pistols, with the latter category largely comprising AR-style pistols. Targeted firearms that were owned prior to the ban are grandfathered, but must eventually be registered with the Illinois State Police.

  The new law also outlaws long gun magazines with a capacity greater than 10, and handgun magazines with a capacity greater than 15. Grandfathered magazines needn’t be registered, but if you dare to have possess one outside of private property in Illinois, you’ll face a $1,000 fine. 

  The judge also said the law’s exemption of certain classes of people wasn’t rational. For example…

  “The Court cannot find it logical that a warden of a prison (included in the exempted persons category) is necessarily better trained or more experienced in the handling of weapons than retired military personnel (no included in the exempted persons category).” 

  This was a state court decision. The law faces another challenge in federal court, where plaintiffs accuse Illinois of outlawing firearms and magazines that are “commonly possessed and used for lawful purposes,” and therefore protected by the Second Amendment. 

  

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/21/2023 – 19:00

• Democrats Propose Constitutional Amendment To Overturn First Amendment Decision
  Democrats Propose Constitutional Amendment To Overturn First Amendment Decision

  Authored by Chase Smith via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Democrats in the House of Representatives have introduced a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s controversial Citizens United v. FEC decision made in 2010.

  

  The court ruled 5–4 that the free speech clause of the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent expenditures for political campaigns by corporations and overruled an earlier decision that banned corporations from making “electioneering communications.”

  Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif). said in a press release he and Democrat colleagues introduced the “Democracy For All Amendment” to “overturn legal precedents that have allowed unrestrained campaign spending and dark money to corrupt American democracy.” He has introduced the constitutional amendment every year since 2013, according to the release.

  “The flow of unrestricted corporate and dark money into our elections has dangerously eroded the American people’s faith in our democracy, and in our government’s ability to deliver for them and their families,” Schiff said in a press release. “Citizens United was one of the most egregious enablers of special interest money, but it was only the latest in a long line of Supreme Court cases that opened the floodgates. To truly rein in dark money, we must amend our Constitution.”

  Schiff said the amendment would close “legal loopholes” that he said allows “wealthy megadonors, corporations, and special interest groups” to exploit the political system.

  Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission

  Schiff said the move comes before the 13th anniversary of the decision on Jan. 21, which the Associated Press said came from a “bitterly divided U.S. Supreme Court.”

  The AP said the decision “vastly increased the power of big business and labor unions to influence government decisions by freeing them to spend their millions directly to sway elections for president and Congress.”

  The Federal Election Campaign Act prohibited corporations and labor unions from using general funds to make election communications or speech that expressly advocated for a candidate in a federal election, including broadcasts, cable or satellite communication that is publicly distributed within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election, according to the FEC.

  

  In January 2008, Citizens United, a non-profit organization, released a film about then-Senator Hillary Clinton, prior to the Democratic Party’s 2008 primary elections.

  The group wanted to pay cable companies to make the film available for free through video-on-demand services. It planned to make the film available within 30 days of the primaries, but feared it would be covered by the Act’s ban, according to the FEC, which could have subjected them to civil and criminal penalties.

  The group sought declaratory and injunctive relief against the FEC arguing the Act was unconstitutional. The District Court denied the preliminary injunction and granted the Commission’s motion for summary judgment.

  The Supreme Court noted jurisdiction and found that they were “required to consider the facial validity” of the Act’s ban in regard to freedom of speech.

  The Court held the Act was a ban on speech and “political speech must prevail against laws that would suppress it, whether by design or inadvertence.”

  It held disclaimer and disclosure requirements are “constitutional as applied to both the broadcast of the film and the ads promoting the film itself, since the ads qualify as electioneering communications.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/21/2023 – 18:30

• These Will Be The World's Next Megacities
  These Will Be The World’s Next Megacities

  By 2050, 70 percent of the world’s population will live in cities, up from 54 percent in 2020, according to a new report by the Institute for Economics & Peace. This increase is being driven by both population growth and a continued shift towards urbanization, particularly to so called ‘megacities’ – metropolises that have a population of 10 million or more.

  As Statista’s Anna Fleck details below, urbanization takes place because of both push and pull factors. The IEA describes how in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s capital of Kinshasa, factors pushing people away from rural areas include issues of violence and a general lack of security, the presence of criminal groups, lack of policing, ecological degradation, and the fact there are too many people for the available agricultural land. Meanwhile, a pull factor could be the attraction of an increase in the standard of living.

  There are currently 33 megacities worldwide. Tokyo (37.3 million), Delhi (32.3 million), Shanghai (28.7 million), Dhaka (22.6 million), São Paulo (22.5 million) and Mexico City (22.1 million) take the lead as the most populous of these. By 2050, 14 more cities are set to join their ranks, with a total increased population of some 213 million people. The new order will then become Delhi (49.6 million), Dhaka (34.6 million), Tokyo (32.6 million), Cairo (32.6 million) and Mumbai (32.4 million).

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  In addition to a rise in the number of people living in these cities, the countries themselves will also likely see economic growth.

  According to AXA, Manila in the Philippines and Bangalore in India are expected to see close to 150 percent GDP growth by the end of the decade.

  Africa is the only world region expected to still see strong population growth by the end of the century, according to the Pew Research Center, while all other regions’ growth rates will start to tail off. This is reflected in our chart, as it’s notably the African megacities that will see the biggest population rate increases. Meanwhile, only three megacities will see decreases in their population size: the Russian capital of Moscow (-3 percent), and Japan’s Osaka (-12 percent) and Tokyo (-12 percent). Despite Tokyo’s shrinkage, brought on by an aging population and declining birth rate, the capital will still rank as the world’s fourth most populated megacity in 2050.

  The 33 cities that have already hit megacity status are the following: Delhi, Dhaka, Cairo, Tokyo, Mumbai, Shanghai, Kinshasa, Lagos, Karachi, Mexico City, São Paulo, Beijing, Kolkata, New York City, Manila, Lahore, Bangalore, Chongqing, Buenos Aires, Osaka, Hyderabad, Tianjin, Guangzhou, Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, Bangkok, Jakarta, Shenzhen, Lima, Paris and Moscow.

  It’s important to note here that different sources cite different statistics, and that especially with forecasts, situations can change. For instance, where the United Nations initially predicted that India would overtake China as the biggest country in 2027, it is now expected to take place in April of this year. In terms of megacity status, according to UN data from 2018, several additional cities, including Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia and Wuhan in China, will make the roundup even by 2035. Read more on the nature of conflicting reports here.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/21/2023 – 18:00

• Newsom Twosome: Siebel Newsom's Films – Shown In Middle Schools – Feature Porn, Radical Gender Ideologies, And Her Husband Gavin
  Newsom Twosome: Siebel Newsom’s Films – Shown In Middle Schools – Feature Porn, Radical Gender Ideologies, And Her Husband Gavin

  By Adam Andrzejewski of Open the Books Substack

  FLOWCHART: How Jennifer Siebel Newsom used taxpayer dollars to trade with herself, her nonprofit organization, and her for-profit business. The organization refused to disclose how much of their screening revenues came from California public schools.

  

  California Governor Gavin Newsom and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, are the dream team. He runs the state and she’s a nonprofit founder, entrepreneur, and filmmaker.

  While her husband attends to state business, Siebel Newsom engages in her passion: advancing “gender justice” through her charitable nonprofit The Representation Project. According to tax documents the organization is “committed to building a thriving and inclusive society through films, education, and social activism.”  

  We previously reported that while the governor engaged in the highly unethical practice of soliciting 1,000 state vendors for $10.6 million in campaign cash, the first partner, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, solicited state vendors and the governor’s campaign donors for large gifts to her charity, The Representation Project.

  However, Newsom’s charity shouldn’t have been soliciting anyone for donations throughout most of 2022.

  Last week, our investigation broke the story that The Representation Project was not in compliance with the California Charitable Solicitation Act. Now, it’s clear that the charity spent last year engaged in big-money fundraising events with corporate executives and philanthropists – while its charitable filings were delinquent with the state.

  Then, the Newsom nonprofit scrambled to submit their proper registration. Working with the California Attorney General, a process that normally takes days or weeks was completed in hours.

  

  So, just what does Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s charity do – with the full support of her husband, the governor, and underwritten by the wealthy California establishment?

  THE FILMS

  Siebel Newsom, through her non-profit The Representation Project, has released four films advocating gender justice. The films are leased for screenings to individuals, corporations, and schools, and come with their own lesson plans. Schools spend between $49-$599 to screen these movies to children.

  Jennifer Siebel Newsom is credited as a writer and director on each of these films. Two of the movies feature Gavin Newsom himself, and many of the lesson plan activities are oriented toward engaging children in social and political activism.

  Because of Gavin Newsom’s role in these films and because licenses are sold to schools which the governor is responsible for funding with tax dollars, auditors at OpenTheBooks.com felt the organization deserved further scrutiny.

  Who’s Watching? 2.6 million students in 5,000 schools

  According to The Representation Project’s Impact Report (2011-2021), the organization’s film curricula are being used in over 5,000 schools in all fifty states. The Representation Project claims over 11,200 copies of the curricula have been distributed, reaching more than 2.6 million students.

  Tax records show that since 2012 the nonprofit has generated $1,483,001 in film screening revenue, although it is unclear how much money came from schools versus other sources. We asked The Representation Project for the number of California schools that purchased a screening license and received no response.  

  Auditors at OpenTheBooks.com watched Newsom’s movies and read the lesson plans. What we found was, at times, shocking: sexually explicit images, political boosterism, and something called “The Genderbread Person.”

  SEXUALLY EXPLICIT IMAGES

  

  Miss Representation’s curriculum links to “age-appropriate” video clips in its K-12 lesson plans and says that the full film is rated PG-14. (Certainly, parents may still object to clips from the “age-appropriate” film like the animated, upside down stripper shown above). 

  The film features strong language and women dressed provocatively:

  • Caroline Heldman, who is now executive director of Newsom’s non-profit, described women’s role in action movies as “the fighting fuck toy.”

  • Actress Daphne Zuniga, famous for Melrose Place and film parody Spaceballs, suggested women should “tell those fuckers to get penis implants,” in response to being told to get plastic surgery. 

  • Middle school children are served images of upside-down strippers with little left to the imagination (see above).

  Then, it gets worse.

  Newsom’s film The Mask You Live In features the website addresses of porn sites including Porn Hub, MassiveCams, BDSM.XXX, and Brazzers.com. The pornographic images displayed in the film are tagged with descriptions such as “domination,” “face fuck,” “kinky couples,” and “…dirty brunettes.”

  Newsom included images of naked or mostly naked women being slapped, handcuffed, and brutalized in pornographic videos. The pictures are graphic even when blurred. Screenshots of those scenes can be found HERE (VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED).

  These jarring pictures are displayed with their corresponding porn website addresses – providing a roadmap for future exploration. The film seems to justify their harmful content by saying that “34% of youth online receive UNWANTED PORNOGRAPHIC EXPOSURE.”

  However, 100% of the youth (or anyone else) receive unwanted or unwarranted pornographic exposure by watching Newsom’s movies.

  In 2019, one parent filed a complaint about a screening of The Mask You Live In for his 12-year-old daughter’s class at Creekside Middle School in California. In an interview with The Sacramento Bee the father said,

  “Some of the images when slowed down were not blurred, and even when they are blurred, it is obvious what is going on. It is absolutely profane and disgusting.” 

  An investigation found a substitute teacher accidentally screened the full version of the film rather than an “age-appropriate” version. However, The Representation Project recommends the full version for ages 15+. 

  Siebel Newsom’s idea is to protect children from highly exploitative and disturbing sexual media content seems to involve showing it to them personally.

  BOOSTING GAVIN NEWSOM – THE COMPASSIONATE POLITICIAN

  

  Gavin Newsom himself provides interview commentary for Miss Representation and The Great American Lie. 

  Newsom speaks three times in Miss Representation and is portrayed as a champion of women’s rights—see this example from the middle school curriculum video (18:37):

  “One of the first things I did when I came to San Francisco (as mayor) is I appointed a female police chief and appointed a female fire chief.” 

  Getting paid by schools to portray your politician husband as a standup guy to captive children in the classroom was such a winning idea, Siebel Newsom deployed it again in The Great American Lie.

  Here, Newsom makes five appearances to deliver political talking points, including: 

  At the end of the day a budget is a set of values, budget reflects your values.” 

  “This notion of interdependence—that we’re all in this together, that we all rise and fall together—is absolutely true.” 

  “We’re not bystanders in this world, we have the ability to step up and solve big problems, we have done that in the past, it’s just a question of prioritization, of political will.” 

  Siebel Newsom’s provided companion curriculum require student discussion of Gavin Newsom’s points and are told to vote, and help others vote, for politicians “who show empathy through their support care [sic] policies.”

  

  Activity from The Great American Lie curriculum for high school and college students. Students are asked to watch and discuss a clip of Gavin Newsom.

  

  Call to action from The Great American Lie curriculum for high school and college students. Students are told to vote and help others vote for candidates “who show empathy through their support care [sic] policies” 

  Overview: Jennifer Siebel Newsom makes a movie portraying Gavin Newsom as a politician that supports certain policies, and then in the movie’s curriculum advises students to vote and campaign for politicians that support those policies.  

  Schools, which receive funding from the state, pay The Representation Project to show this movie, and use taxpayer-funded class time to facilitate these lessons.

  In July 2022 Gavin Newsom signed a budget of $128 billion for state schools and community colleges. 

  THE GENDERBREAD PERSON

  

  Multiple lesson plans from The Representation Project promote radical notions of gender and sexuality.

  One such lesson for middle and high schoolers includes the “genderbread person,” who aims to show children how biological sex, “gender expression,” “sexual attraction,” and “gender identity” exist on a spectrum, which can be mixed and matched. 

  While kindergarteners are spared the genderbread person in their curriculum, they are offered similar lessons on “gender identity,” introducing genders other than “boy” and “girl.”

  

  LEFT-WING POLITICAL ACTIVISM – THE “PRIVILEGE WALK”

  Kids forced to watch The Representation Project films in schools aren’t just subjected to gender ideology, sexually explicit images, and Gavin Newsom’s one-liners. They’re being given a left-wing framework through which to see the world, and then prompted to conduct social and political activism.  

  In The Great American Lie curriculum, students are asked to do a “privilege walk,” divulging personal information in order to compare themselves to peers inside and outside the classroom. “Privileges” include being “a cisgendered man,” “white,” “born in the United States,” “straight,” and speaking English as a first language.

  

  Activity from The Great American Lie curriculum for high school and college students. 

  Speakers in The Great American Lie are clear about what “privilege” means—something you hurt other people with, something you should feel bad about, and something you should work to change.  

  Journalist Charles Blow, who is now a New York Times opinion columnist, said during the film:

  “We need to stop being blind to history, stop being blind to systems, understand that there are privileges and there are oppressions in society, and in fact they act like a see-saw. Your privilege is actually built on my oppression.” 

  Lawyer Bryan Stevenson followed up, encouraging viewers to feel “shame and sorrow:”

  “We actually have to engage in truth telling, we’re going to have to express some shame and sorrow about who we are and what we’ve done, we’re going to have to find the will to reconcile ourselves to a different future.” 

  The way to relieve this shame, according to the film, is through social and political activism, as Professor Niobe Way said:

  “If you don’t address the racism, sexism, homophobia, hatred―the hatred―we have in our culture, then you can’t start having a conversation about love, peace and understanding.” 

  Newsome and her non-profit recommends The Great American Lie for ages 11+.

  STUDY: The Student-to-Activist Assembly Line

  Curricula from the three available films advise diverse ways for students to become activists within their families and communities. Suggested activities include promoting The Representation Project social media campaigns, voting for candidates that “support the care economy,” and asking students to “market and host a screening” of The Representation Project films (while paying a screening fee to the organization). 

  (A)

  

  (B) 

  

  (C) 

  

  Calls to action in the curricula from (A) Miss Representation for middle and high schoolers, (B) The Mask You Live In for middle and high schoolers, (C) The Great American Lie for high school and college students  

  Jennifer Siebel Newsom produced, wrote, and directed all these films, but if her enthusiasm for cultivating young activists was not obvious enough, we need only listen to her conclusions. 

  In 2021 high school participants in The Representation Project’s film course joined a moderated panel with Siebel Newsom to discuss The Great American Lie.  

  One student stated: “There’s no age limit for activism… the younger you are the easier it is for you to see these changes that need to be made.” 

  Siebel Newsom replied: “That’s great, thank you.” 

  SUMMARY – FOLLOW THE MONEY 

  The Representation Project not only solicits donors from big-money political supporters of Gavin Newsom, but also receives public tax dollars through schools to create a new generation of supporters and activists in the state’s—and country’s—schoolchildren.

  The Representation Project transforms public school expenditures into activist training expenses, and in the process exposes children to objectionable sexual content.  

  Various funding sources translate directly to financial gain for Jennifer Siebel Newsom. 

  Since The Representation Project’s founding she has collected $1,501,727 in salary. Her current title is Chief Creative Officer, and she also sits on the nonprofit’s board of directors. She is the top paid executive at her non-profit with a $150,000 annual salary between 2013 and 2021.  

  Siebel Newsom also founded a for-profit company, Girls Club Entertainment Inc., which contracts (with Newsom’s nonprofit) for the production costs associated with the movies and owns the license for Miss Representation.   

  According to tax records, the nonprofit (The Representation Project) has paid Girls Club Entertainment (Newsom’s for-profit company) $1,647,376 since 2012.  

  NOTE: We requested comments from Jennifer Siebel Newsom and her nonprofit, The Representation Project multiple times over the last couple of months. We also requested comment from Gov. Newsom. We never received any response.

  ADDITIONAL READING:

  The Representation Project, IRS Informational 990 Returns 2011-2021, hosted by Propublia

  Newsom Twosome: Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s Charity Is Out Of Compliance But Solicits Donations From State Vendors & Governor’s Campaign Donors | OpenTheBooks.Substack | January 12, 2023

  California Gov. Gavin Newsom Reaped $10.6 Million In Campaign Cash From 979 State Vendors Who Pocketed $6.2 Billion | OpenTheBooks.Substack.com | August 2022

  Historic Announcement– California’s Books Are Open – 201,000 Vendors Received $87 Billion In State Payments | OpenTheBooks.Substack.com | August 2022

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/21/2023 – 17:30

• Ron Klain White House Departure Reported One Day After Scapegoat Found For Slow-Walking Classified Documents
  Ron Klain White House Departure Reported One Day After Scapegoat Found For Slow-Walking Classified Documents

  After working for Joe Biden on and off for more than three decades, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain is expected to step down in coming weeks because he’s ‘ready to move on,’ the NY Times reports.

  

  The news of Klain’s departure comes one day after the White House threw senior adviser Anita Dunn under the bus for the decision to ‘keep the public information flow to a trickle’ regarding President Biden’s classified document scandal.

  Classic Anita Dunn.

  The Biden adviser, who previously advised Harvey Weinstein, wanted to slow roll info about the classified documents. https://t.co/Wyg6cAwCKQ pic.twitter.com/SivIO8MD1z

  — Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) January 21, 2023

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  Is Klain’s departure related to the decision to slow-walk news that classified documents from Biden’s VP days were found in unauthorized locations? We don’t know at this stage, but we assume Klain was apprised of Dunn’s strategy, and perhaps even signed off on it. Now that we’re in the ‘who said what, and when’ phase of a Special Counsel investigation into the matter, nothing is off the table. Maybe he was just tired of performing elder care?

  The departure would also come at a time when the White House faces a widening array of political and legal threats from a newly appointed special counsel investigating the improper handling of classified documents and a flurry of other inquiries by the newly installed Republican majority in the House. The next chief of staff will be charged with managing the defense of Mr. Biden’s White House and any counterattack as the 2024 election approaches. -NY Times

  The Times suggests Klain’s departure could be related to Biden’s anticipated 2024 reelection campaign, and says “advisers predict more moves as some aides shift from the White House to the campaign.”

  So – not rats bailing from a sinking ship.

  The Times notes that Klain has been so influential that Republicans ‘derisively call him a virtual prime minister,’ and Democrats ‘blame him when they are disappointed in a decision.’

  Klain has also presided over ‘a rash of troubles’ that have tanked public support for Biden – including the highest inflation in 40 years, and the creation of a border crisis after shredding much of former President Trump’s border policy.

  On that note, the Times also reports that Biden’s national economic adviser, Brian Dees, is expected to leave later this year.

  As for those classified documents

  

  The Times reported on Friday that White House senior adviser, Anita Dunn – along with her husband, Biden’s personal lawyer Bob Bauer, and White House counsel Stuart F. Delery and Richard Sauber, were part of at “tight circle” involved in discussions on how to deal with the matter.

  NBC News’ Peter Alexander repeatedly presses Karine Jean-Pierre about the White House claiming that Republicans are “faking outrage” over Biden’s classified document scandal.

  “Why shouldn’t Americans be upset about documents found in a garage?” he asks.

  She can’t answer. pic.twitter.com/zTdd3SkkmN

  — Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) January 17, 2023

  More via The Times,

  Details about the documents — where they were found, what they are about, where they came from — remain elusive more than 10 days after their existence was first made public by CBS News.

  The White House has refused to explain why it took nearly six weeks after the initial discovery of documents to search the president’s home in Wilmington, Del., where a second batch was found on Dec. 20. And it has not said why personal lawyers for the president who do not have security clearances were the ones conducting the searches, but people close to the case said that was done with the approval of the Justice Department.

  …

  Once the discovery of the original batch of documents was revealed, Ms. Dunn was adamant that the White House should keep the public information flow to a trickle and focus instead on how different Mr. Biden’s case was from the broader investigation into his predecessor, according to people familiar with the discussions.

  Ms. Dunn also stressed the need to underscore the differences between Mr. Biden’s cooperation with the archives and Justice Department and Mr. Trump’s defiance.

  Impeachment when?

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  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/21/2023 – 17:00

• Biden Vs Trump Document Controversies Indicate Transparency Gap
  Biden Vs Trump Document Controversies Indicate Transparency Gap

  Authored by Petr Svab via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The government has been less than transparent with Americans regarding the classified documents scandal of President Joe Biden, and particularly on the background of the classified documents scandal of former President Donald Trump.

  

  While in Trump’s case, the public was treated to frequent updates through leaks to media and official statements, the Biden case had been kept under wraps for more than two months and then disclosed in stages.

  When staff of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) picked up 15 boxes of presidential records from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Florida residence in mid-January 2022, The Washington Post reported it three weeks later and the NARA confirmed the story that same day, Feb. 7, 2022, adding a 150-word quote from then-Archivist David Ferriero explaining that “the Presidential Records Act is critical to our democracy.”

  About a week later, NARA revealed in response to a congressional inquiry that classified material was found in the boxes and the matter had been communicated to the Department of Justice (DOJ). In April, The Washington Post reported the DOJ was investigating the matter and later that month C-SPAN released an interview with Ferriero during which he confirmed the existence of the investigation.

  In the Biden case, when NARA was alerted on Nov. 2 that classified documents were found in Biden’s office at the Penn Biden Center, where he sparsely lectured and gave speeches from 2017 to 2019, there were no leaks forthcoming. In fact, NARA has yet to issue a single press release on the Biden case.

  The story was first leaked to CBS News and reported on Jan. 9 with an on-record confirmation by Richard Sauber, special counsel to Biden.

  The CBS report came a day after Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) pledged in a Mark Levin interview that his oversight committee will question NARA on its handling of the Trump documents case and threatened to withhold the agency’s funding to force compliance with information requests.

  In a Jan. 10 letter to NARA, Comer said its “inconsistent treatment of recovering classified records held by former President Trump and President Biden raises questions about political bias at the agency.”

  NARA responded a week later, saying it “treats all of its communications with the White House, DOJ, and the representatives of the former Presidents (and Vice Presidents) as presumptively confidential” and “for this reason, NARA did not affirmatively discuss or disclose to our oversight committees or to the public our activities concerning the return to our custody of either the Biden Vice Presidential records or the Trump Presidential records, or our referral of both matters to DOJ because we found classified information.”

  The agency started to respond to congressional inquiries on the matters “only when those topics were subsequently reported publicly in the press.”

  “Our actions and responses with respect to both of these matters have been entirely consistent and without any political bias,” it said (pdf).

  The DOJ was alerted by NARA about the Biden documents on Nov. 4, but the FBI didn’t start to look into the matter until Nov. 9, the day after the midterm elections.

  The White House confirmed the initial story the day it was released, but didn’t disclose for another three days that another batch of classified documents were found in Biden’s garage, even though the DOJ was informed by Biden’s lawyers on Dec. 20.

  The government response indicates that Biden’s pre-election promises of a transparent administration have fallen short, according to investigative journalist John Solomon.

  “Was this an act of defiance on his promise of transparency?” he asked, noting that it appears that “the president says he wants to be transparent, but he doesn’t always deliver on the promise when things are unflattering to him or his presidency.”

  Solomon argued that the DOJ should have been more forthcoming about the Biden documents issue, especially since Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to oversee the Trump documents investigation on Nov. 18, when his department was already probing the Biden documents case.

  “They knew when they made that announcement that the current President has similar issues and they chose to keep it from us,” Solomon told The Epoch Times.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/21/2023 – 16:30

• India Overtakes China As World's Most Populous Nation
  India Overtakes China As World’s Most Populous Nation

  At this point, what we have been speculating about for months looks to be official: India has already passed China as the world’s most populous nation. 

  Citing estimates from the World Population Review, an independent organization focused on census and demographics, India’s population was marked at 1.417 billion as of end 2022. This marks 5 million more than the 1.412 billion people reported by China. according to reporting by Bloomberg and the SCMP. 

  Just hours ago, we noted that the overtaking of China seemed inevitable:

  With China’s population decline official, it is safe to say India is now the most populous country in the world pic.twitter.com/xNxVvsaAjG

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 17, 2023

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  China’s figure marks the first population decline for the country since the 1960s. 

  Half the population is under the age of 30 in India, the report notes, meaning that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will need to keep a sharp focus on job creation in order to harness the country’s labor/production capacity. Modi is due to seek re-election by May 2024, the report notes. 

  Nearly 800 million people “still rely on free food rations from the government”, however. And estimates for where the country’s population is at now range from 1.423 billion to 1.428 billion – a sign that the growth in India is slated to continue. 

  Meanwhile, Bloomberg Economist Eric Zhu has called China’s reduction in population a “growth crushing headwind”. The population in China fell by 850,000 in 2022. 

  Recall, back in October 2022, we noted that India was in the running to overtake China. At the time, using the latest data available from the United Nations, Visual Capitalist’s Nick Routley looked at which countries had the largest share of the planet’s eight billion people.

  

  We wrote then: “Once India becomes the world’s largest country, it will likely remain so for many decades in the future, peaking in the 2060s (unless there are substantial changes in projected growth rates). India’s peak population will stand at around 1.7 billion people.”

  “The world’s population is expected to peak later, around the 2080s. Humanity’s peak population is expected to be about 10.5 billon,” we concluded. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/21/2023 – 16:00

• How Can We Restore Freedom And Sound Money In The US & UK? Some Ideas…
  How Can We Restore Freedom And Sound Money In The US & UK? Some Ideas…

  Authored by Patrick Barron via The Mises Institute,

  The purpose of this essay is not to convince the reader of the necessity for change. It is to present some commonsense policy changes to attempt to mitigate the economic harm that has been done to Western economies, especially to the United States and the United Kingdom, since the end of World War II.

  Please watch Godfrey Bloom and Alasdair Macleod’s recent interview with Sonia Poulton.

  The video describes the current financial and reputational weaknesses of the West. For a more in-depth analysis of the financial threat to the West, please read any of Alasdair Macleod’s weekly essays from the past few months.

  In the Poulton interview, Macleod ably describes the financial implications of the West’s deindustrialization policies and currency debasement. Bloom describes the reputational damage stemming from the West’s “sanctions” against Russia plus the consequences of deindustrialization due to the foolish pursuit of a Green New Deal.

  This essay’s goal is not to convince the reader of the seriousness of the current situation, which Bloom and Macleod do so well, but rather to present policies that must be changed to stop the destruction of the West’s economies and reverse the harm to their reputations. Western nations need to build a reputation for honesty, fair dealing, and adherence to the rule of law in the international arena by embracing free trade and neutrality.

  There is no need to point out that in the US and the UK, none of the policy changes listed below will be enacted by either of the two main political parties in their current state. Either one of the leading parties in each country must change leadership or a third party must emerge. There is precedence in both America and Britain for the emergence of a new party. In the mid-1850s, America’s Whig Party was thrown on the scrap heap of history when it was supplanted by the antislavery Republican Party. In the first half of the twentieth century, the Labour Party supplanted Britain’s Liberal Party. It has happened before, and it can happen again.

  The following “policy imperatives” assume that such internal change has occurred and that the new ruling party must mitigate and eventually reverse the damage done by its predecessors over several years. The task will not be easy, nor will it be painless, but it must be done.

  Policy Imperatives

  1. Drastically cut government spending. The purchasing power of the dollar and the pound is being steadily weakened by the Treasury’s need to borrow more money than taxes and the bond markets will offset. Currently the central banks “buy” the excess debt with money created out of thin air. This leads inevitably to more money chasing fewer goods, which results in higher prices and the boom/bust credit cycle, among other economic damages.

  2. Abolish the so-called Green New Deal, which is based upon the schlock science surrounding “climate change.” The Western economies not only must end the destruction of their industrial economies, but they must revive the entrepreneurial spirit in individuals by eliminating regulations on business activity that does not directly cause real harm to people. For example, the West must stop mandating costly and time-consuming environmental impact studies, which elevate nonhuman life above human life. The US should abolish the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and the UK should abolish the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). Both countries have well-established common-law precedents that protect and compensate workersfor on-the-job injuries.

  3. Reinstitute the gold standard. The dollar and the pound must be seen as proxies for real money; i.e., gold. This means that currency cannot be issued unless the central bank has gold with which to back it. There is a long list of economic benefits to be derived from a stable currency, but perhaps the most important benefit is spending discipline. The government’s myriad spending orgies will face real-time discipline from the taxpayers and the markets.

  4. House the nation’s gold, which is used to back its currency, in a neutral and internationally supervised place—for example, Switzerland—that will redeem the nation’s currency for gold upon demand. The government must not be allowed to suspend currency redemption. Remember, gold is money and all else is credit. If a nation’s credit is in question—i.e., the market fears that there is insufficient gold to redeem all the currency or that the government may suspend redemption—then demand to hold its currency for settlement purposes will drop or even evaporate completely.

  5. Return stolen property to its rightful owners. Theft is a violation of law at every level. The Western powers confiscated Russian property as part of the so-called sanctions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This insult to justice must end. Neither country has declared war on Russia, yet the sanctions are well-known tools of war. Ending sanctions is both a moral and an economic issue. If the world believes that its property can be seized for some act for which a country’s government disapproves, international trade of all varieties will fall drastically for such a country and become difficult to recover. Who in the world can trust such a country again?

  6. Adopt a noninterventionist foreign policy. The world is full of controversies that often lead nations to war. Unless their interests are directly threatened, the US and the UK must not intervene in foreign disputes but remain neutral, even if these disputes lead friendly foreign nations to war. There is no way that the Western powers can honestly adjudicate these never-ending disputes. The West should encourage diplomacy rather than war making. Otherwise, keep out.

  Conclusion

  The Western world has violated international norms of fair dealing to the point that its reputation is nearing long-term destruction. The West’s currencies are poised to fall in value due to unprecedented money printing over several decades. Western governments foolishly believe that there is nothing that the rest of the world can do. They believe that the rest of the world must kowtow to whatever international norms the US and the UK dictate.

  But they are horribly wrong. The rest of the world is moving beyond dollar hegemony and beyond the reach of US and UK sanctions. It is building a new reserve currency for settlement of international trade. The non-Western world is much larger than the West in terms of population and commodities. More importantly, the non-Western world is willing to exploit its commodities for the benefit of its citizens, whereas the West has placed its commodities off limits due to its belief in and commitment to schlock environmental science that posits impending environmental doom.

  The process can be reversed, but such a reversal requires new leadership. Nothing can be done unless new leaders can change policy. The West does not need to “rule the world” in order to be peaceful and prosperous.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/21/2023 – 15:30

• Go Woke, Get Broke: Vox Fires 7% Of Staff; Vice's Valuation Plunges
  Go Woke, Get Broke: Vox Fires 7% Of Staff; Vice’s Valuation Plunges

  It’s a terrible time for America’s liberal media – with companies laying off, implementing hiring freezes, and other cost-cutting measures. Some media companies have even collapsed in valuation. Many are blaming increasing macroeconomic uncertainty that has crushed advertising revenues. 

  A wave of recent layoffs has hit media companies, including CNN, Buzzfeed, Paramount Global (the parent to CBS, MTV, VH1), The Walt Disney Company, Comcast, Roku, Morning Brew, Gannett (parent company to USA Today), and many more in the past year. 

  Add Vox Media, which owns brands like The Verge, SB Nation, and New York magazine, to the growing list of media layoffs. 

  Axios obtained an internal memo from CEO Jim Bankoff to staff about reducing headcount by 7%. About 1,900 people work for the company, which equates to about 133 layoffs. 

  Bankoff noted that the headcount reduction would impact teams across revenue, editorial, operations, and core services. 

  “While we are not expecting further layoffs at this time, we will continue to assess our outlook, keep a tight control on expenses and consider implementing other cost savings measures as needed,” he said, adding layoffs were a last resort.

  The move was to address the coming downturn in the economy.  

  Besides layoffs and other cost measures, media company valuations have plunged. 

  For instance, Vice Media is putting itself up for sale (again) at around a billion-dollar valuation, according to CNBC, citing people familiar with the talks.

  Today’s number is far from the $5.7 billion valuation in 2017. 

  CNBC previously reported Vice hired financial advisors to seek a sale.

  One of Vice’s lenders, Fortress Investment Group, is pushing for a sale. 

  Meanwhile, Buzzfeed’s SPAC is only getting worse — with a current market cap of $129 million — down from more than a billion dollars a year ago. 

  

  America’s largest digital media companies are in dire straits. Maybe some of them are in these precarious situations because they embraced liberal ideology and suffered massive viewership losses. We all know CNN is learning that the hard way. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/21/2023 – 15:00

• Davos 2023: Whistling Past The Great Reset's Graveyard
  Davos 2023: Whistling Past The Great Reset’s Graveyard

  Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

  In November 2021 I wrote a piece entitled “Have We Finally Reached Peak Davos?” This article was scarily spot on. When you’ve written as much as I have over the past five years, however, it’s easy to look back and point at how prescient you were.

  Even if you’ve gotten a whole lotta stuff wrong, which I have.

  That particular article, though, was nearly point-for-point correct in assessing the state of The Davos Crowd’s Great Reset project.

  I wrote a Twitter thread about this the other day to pound the next few nails in Davos’ coffin before the opening of this year’s convocation of clueless globalists.

  5000 Swiss troops to protect oligarchs at #Davos2023.
  This is what you order up when you’re scared of the people.

  Here’s a reminder that I saw Peak Davos in November 2021. It was over the COVID-9/11 Jab Protests… among other things.https://t.co/43up3tM9EF
  1/

  — Tom Luongo (The Bots Have Returned!) (@TFL1728) January 14, 2023

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  In this business the goal isn’t to get everything right but to be right more often than you’re wrong while spurring debate and conversation. This is how we crowdsource something close to the truth and/or steelman our own arguments in an endless quest for process improvement.

  I wrote about that process recently and why it’s important to identify those who are still on that journey, those who are starting it, and those who are stuck in the morass of their own preconceptions.

  Embrace and encourage the first two groups and question the ethics of those in the last.

  Because in 2023 the mission is beginning to shift, from trying to forecast what these Cantillionaire midwits will do next to further assisting people in improving their data parsing abilities.

  The more people that parse the Davos bullshit in real time, the less time they spend abreacting to it and using that saved time more productively to thwart Davos‘ plans.

  

  So here we are as Davos 2023 winds down and it’s pretty obvious, watching the proceedings, that their entire edifice built on a crude admixture of psychopathy and hubris is tumbling down.

  And it’s not only because more of us can see them for what they are, cheap communists in expensive suits, but because there are stark divisions forming within their own ranks.

  The problem, however, for most of the committed Davosians is that they still live in the wine-and-cheese-filled amniotic sack of this Swiss Alps version of Oz. They don’t see the gathering storm barreling down the yellow brick road as anything more threatening than a single mosquito is to a cow.

  As anyone who has lived in central Florida or studied its cattle industry knows, a few million mosquitos can exsanguinate a cow in a matter of days.

  So, watching the proceedings at this year’s Davos was fascinating because, for the first time, the sheen was gone. Too many people were seeing the walls of the echo chamber for what they were; old, shabby, and drafty rather than having the veneer of wisdom that comes with age.

  Davos had come out from behind the curtain willingly to declare themselves the saviors of humanity through their Fuhrer’s nutty ideas about transhumanism, 15-minute cities, eating bugs, and renting your life from a central authority.

  And it was easy to build a counter-narrative to this insanity that permeated into the zeitgeist by just pointing your finger and laughing at them.

  If you want proof of just how far the Davos idea has traveled in the five years since I first called them “The Davos Crowd” the performance of this tweet of mine from January 3rd should do it.

  My average tweet gets around 5000-8000 impressions, maybe 30-40 retweets, and a couple hundred likes.

  I’m really pants at Twitter.

  

  This thing is literally the first tweet of mine in years to ‘go viral,’ and shows no signs of letting up. I’m not patting myself on the back here, but rather pointing out what something like this represents in my little corner of the internet.

  Hatred of Davos has broken containment.

  The anxiety and fear these men have promulgated is now deeply embedded in people because it feels closer to the truth than what they were previously presented. With a relatively free Twitter these days, the opportunity for more containment breaks like this are rising exponentially.

  And that is a very good thing.

  Davos likes to talk in terms of the inevitability of their forecasted future. But that’s just a front. Psychopaths always double down in the face of adversity.

  But I’ve noted a certain sense of panic and/or desperation from a lot of Davos’ lieutenants, like Blackrock’s Larry Fink complaining about how mean we all are opposing ESG or NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg exhorting everyone that more weapons to fund Ukraine’s war is the path to peace.

  🆕📹”Weapons are the way to peace,”#NATO Secretary General @jensstoltenberg stresses the importance of stepping up military support for #Ukraine’s 🇺🇦 self-defence at the World Economic Forum #wef23 @wef
  ℹ️: https://t.co/jseAVMa4fR pic.twitter.com/bb9GmUjYjL

  — Oana Lungescu (@NATOpress) January 18, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Note the use of “the” versus “a” in that sentence. When someone is telling you there is only one path forward, they are issuing an ultimatum… they are also lying through their teeth.

  One of “the” paths to peace in Ukraine is in negotiating honestly with Russia. Ukrainian President and Schwab disciple Zelenskyy is out there saying nuttier things by the day, like now that he thinks Putin is dead while the US floats the idea of Ukraine retaking Crimea.

  The fact that there has been not even a reasonable offer put on the table to the Russians to this point tells you that this war is policy and not an unfortunate happenstance of Russian belligerence.

  But watch the video carefully and note the desperation on display from Stoltenberg. He knows the war isn’t going well for NATO. He knows that if NATO fails here he and all of this corporatist cronies personally lose their seat at the gravy train.

  He also knows he will be sacrificed on the globalists’ altar if he fails to deliver in Ukraine. He’s Admiral Piett, swallowing nervously, to Soros’ Darth Vader.

  Last year at Davos 2022 it was Soros delivering the rebuttal to Henry Kissinger’s call for negotiations. This Octogenarian clash of ideology and realpolitik was a kind of Rubicon crossing for all things Davos.

  {And I definitely got a lot of things wrong in the article I wrote about that, if you’re keeping score.}

  By ignoring Kissinger’s pragmatism and embracing Soros’ belligerence Davos revealed itself as an out-of-touch echo chamber whose edicts are hurtling the world towards a terrible conflict, making their enemies’ job opposing them that much easier.

  You know Soros has won the argument within Davos because they trotted out ol’ Henry to reverse himself on negotiations and embrace war which has all the earmarks of a classic communist struggle session.

  I guess that’s why Soros announced to the world he didn’t need to go to Davos this year but would be at the Munich Security Conference next month to declare WWIII.

  Due to an unavoidable scheduling conflict, regrettably I cannot attend the @WEF Annual Meeting in Davos this year as I have in past years. I plan to deliver a speech in Munich on the eve of the @MunSecConf. Details to come.

  — George Soros (@georgesoros) January 10, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  So, where are we now?

  We’re well past the point of Peak Davos that’s for sure. When the guest list for this year was leaked I found it fascinating that many who’ve skipped it in the past would be there – US bank CEOs like JP Morgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon. There were just as many who have gone previously to plead for sanity – Putin and Xi Jinping — didn’t even phone it in.

  It has been a fascinating week of announcements and headlines that paint a very ugly picture for Davos’ future. When you take them (and their timing) into full context it should be obvious where this is headed.

  Here’s a partial list of the headlines from this week:

  • Saudis Open to Settling Trade Outside US Dollar

  • New Zealand PM Ardern Announces Resignation

  • Iran Joins Eurasian Economic Union

  • Iran’s Oil Exports Return to Pre-Sanction Levels

  • US Interested in Helping Ukraine Take Back Crimea

  • ECB Head Lagarde Says Inflation is Still Too High

  • Dimon Says Interest Rates Must Go Beyond 5%

  • Biden-Gate Gaining Steam (here and here)

  • Powell Nemesis Brainard Backs “Higher for Long Rate Policy”

  • Al Gore Trotted Out to Scare Us with Climageddon!

  • Morgan Stanley CEO, “Davos is an Echo Chamber”

  But the clincher is this headline from The Guardian.

  

  Most of these would be interesting at any time but that they all occurred while Davos 2023 was happening is mind-boggling. And to think that so many of the attendees there are still walking around as if the future was already written in their favor is equally mind-boggling.

  I’m not about to speculate further about what’s really going on there except to say that if feels like something has fundamentally changed, likely for the better. Is Schwab on his way out after ruling the WEF for 52 years?

  Is my theory that the NY Boys and others have finally had enough of the fart-sniffing eggheads correct and they showed up with a new set of rules to lay down?

  Is that why Bill Gates wasn’t there?

  Is that why the sycophantic Western press are running stories now that would never have seen the light of day if Schwab was still calling the shots?

  Look, I’m not naïve, I know that Davos is a front for a bigger, older and deeper group of power brokers. Real bankers don’t have Wikipedia pages.

  If Larry Fink is a lieutenant then Schwab is just a Colonel and it’s possible he’s being thrown under the bus now to protect the Generals.

  But why do the Generals feel the need to cut bait now? As difficult as it is to believe, they may just be losing.

  Sometimes things aren’t more complicated than they seem.

  They took their shot and missed.

  There will be no panopticon or cyber-pandemic. We’ll still drive normal cars, eat red meat, and live in homes with a modicum of privacy. Whether we avoid WWIII is a different story.

  Maybe the depression we all fear is on the horizon has already been here for fifteen years and this is as bad as it gets. No mushroom clouds, no Grand Army of the Republic. Just a bunch of tired old inbred losers finally running out of runway and crashing into the ditch rather than flying off into the sunset.

  They don’t believe their done yet. It is that gulf between their perception of potency and the reality of their impotence that will determine the rest of this horror show. Soros and his neocon crazies will go to Munich and push for more war.

  They just might get it. Then again they may get everything they wished for… good and hard.

  Davos may be ending in 2023, but the after-effects of their insanity will be with us for years.

  *  *  *

  Join My Patreon if you like whistling

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/21/2023 – 14:30

• US Designates Wagner Group "Transnational Criminal Organization" – Cites Ties With North Korea
  US Designates Wagner Group “Transnational Criminal Organization” – Cites Ties With North Korea

  After becoming clear that the private Russian military firm Wager Group – whose founder has direct ties to President Putin – is helping to lead the major offensive in the Soledar and Bakhmut areas in eastern Ukraine, the Biden administration on Friday unveiled new sanctions against the group.

  National Security Council spokesman John Kirby on Friday announced Wagner is now designated a “significant Transnational Criminal Organization” which allows the US to block its access to any US-produced items or technology. It further leaves open the potential for US Commerce to go after its foreign assets as a legally dubbed criminal enterprise. “It will broaden the network of nations and institutions that will be able to stop doing business with Wagner,” Kirby said of the new action at a White House press briefing.

  And in an interesting twist, the White House says it has evidence that Wagner is being directly supplied by North Korea. While the Russia-Pyongyang connection has been raised by the US since the summer, this is the first time the US administration has sought to present anything in the way of evidence. 

  

  Kirby presented to reporters what he said is photographic evidence of rail cars traveling from Russian to North Korea on November 18. He alleged that shipping containers were loaded with weaponry or ammo and were sent back to Russia the next day.

  “We do expect that it will continue to receive North Korean weapon systems,” Kirby asserted. “We obviously condemn North Korea’s actions and we urge North Korea to cease these deliveries to Wagner immediately and we are going further by taking action against Wagner itself.”

  The White House further said it will work with the UN Security Council to enforce violations against Wagner, and further took the information on Pyongyang’s ties to Wagner to the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee. Kirby previewed that more sanctions are coming next week.

  Russia and North Korea share a small sliver of border, a little over 10 miles long:

  

  “There are around 50,000 Wagner Group fighters currently deployed to Ukraine, according to Kirby, including 10,000 contractors and 40,000 convicts,” CNN reported after the briefing.

  Kirby additionally pointed out that “Wagner is becoming a rival power center to the Russian military and other Russian ministries.” He highlighted Russian defense officials’ expressions of reservations about Wagner’s tactics like recruiting from Russian prisons, and in return promising freedom based on months in action in Ukraine.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/21/2023 – 14:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• The Need For COVID Reparations
  The Need For COVID Reparations

  Authored by Adam Coleman via The Epoch Times,

  I’m no different from many Americans who still possess anger at how people were mistreated for questioning narratives, forced into struggling economic positions, and repeatedly lied to about the efficacy of lockdowns and vaccines by the most powerful people and institutions in the world.

  

  I still possess animosity toward the formerly respectable so-called experts who’ve become compromised by their political biases and the fear of losing their high status in society if they were to divorce from the narrative and marry objectivity. How can I trust again a media apparatus that guilted an entire population of people into getting an experimental vaccine while simultaneously being sponsored by Big Pharma?

  We all want a way to move forward, because anger only breeds more anger, not forgiveness. But it’s also not advisable for us to gloss over the damage that was done to appease the conscience of the people who are now remorseful for their participation in perpetuating falsehoods and who cheered on the social demise of dissenters.

  Despite the call for a blanket amnesty discussed in the Atlantic’s op-ed titled “Let’s declare a pandemic amnesty,” I believe we should strive for something that’s more succinct in providing a form of justice that would relieve much of the bitterness that we’ve been carrying for years: COVID reparations.

  Often when we discuss reparations, it’s with the concept of throwing an arbitrary amount of cash at people in hopes that it satisfies enough of them in the process, but what I’m advocating for is a reparation that’s socially restorative, fair, and directly benefits the people who were impacted by the injustice.

  First, there needs to be a satisfactory acknowledgment of guilt and an apology directly aimed at the American public who were unjustly harmed. For example, there needs to be a recognition of the people who are vaccine injured, and while they’re the minority, their situations are disregarded by people, including medical professionals, who continue to cling to the fallacy that COVID-19 vaccines provide no side effects.

  There needs to be a national recognition of the mental damage inflicted upon our children due to seemingly indefinite isolation because of extended lockdowns and school closures, causing youth suicide attempts to soar.

  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2020, the proportion of mental health-related emergency department visits among adolescents aged 12–17 years increased by 31 percent compared with 2019. From Feb. 21 to March 20, 2021, emergency department visits due to suspected suicide attempts were 50.6 percent higher among girls aged 12–17 years than during the same period in 2019.

  You can’t fix what you don’t acknowledge, and we can’t move forward without public acknowledgment of all the negative consequences that stemmed from an overreaching and politically blinded governmental apparatus and how they encouraged the private sector to mimic their approach.

  There should be restitution for the citizens who were forced out of their jobs and other opportunities for refusing to get vaccinated, because this action was motivated by the falsehood of the vaccination stopping the spread, which was overtly stated by many bureaucratic figures, including the CDC Director Rochelle Walensky.

  In cities such as New York City, people, like my wife, were forced into an unfair predicament of taking a vaccine that they weren’t fully comfortable being injected with or losing their income, all based on the falsehood of it being the extinguisher of the spread of this virus.

  As part of the restitution, every employee who was negatively affected by this should be allowed their positions back or given financial severance compensation directly from their employer, and there should be the immediate reenlistment of military members who were forced out due to this refusal.

  Any small business owners who were forced out of business while corporate conglomerates like Amazon, Target, and Walmart were permitted carte blanch operational status should be allowed to file lawsuits against their local government that used edict to choose the economic winners and losers.

  Lastly, there should be guarantees of non-repetition by removing all unelected bureaucratic figureheads who perpetuated vaccine falsehoods on behalf of Big Pharma, advocated for lockdowns without regard for our economic survival or impact on our children’s health, and fostered an environment where questioning medical decisions for yourself made you a dissident instead of normal.

  Laws should be created to prevent the federal government from providing blanket immunity from lawsuits to pharmaceutical companies, because those companies will undoubtedly put more emphasis on the speed of production and profits over ethics and safety for the American public.

  There are countless actions that could be made to show actual repentance for the irreverence shown toward the American public, but there needs to be conscious action alongside the rhetoric of progressing forward.

  We haven’t truly learned the lessons from our recent mistakes if we’re willing to continue to pretend that the wounds that were created by our overzealousness aren’t still infected with unresolved acrimony.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/20/2023 – 23:40

• Watch: Boston Dynamics' Creepy Humanoid Robot Learns More Tricks
  Watch: Boston Dynamics’ Creepy Humanoid Robot Learns More Tricks

  Boston Dynamics’ latest video of its six-foot-tall bipedal humanoid, Atlas, shows it has acquired new skills that enable it to operate in complex terrain.

  Boston Dynamics’ Atlas team, led by Scott Kuindersma, told The Verge that the video is “meant to communicate an expansion of the research we’re doing on Atlas.” 

  The video shows Atlas operating autonomously, working in a makeshift construction site. A worker asks the bipedal robot for his tool bag while high up on a scaffold. The robot retrieves the bag and successfully delivers the bag to the worker. 

  “We’re not just thinking about how to make the robot move dynamically through its environment, like we did in Parkour and Dance.

  “Now, we’re starting to put Atlas to work and think about how the robot should be able to perceive and manipulate objects in its environment,” said Kuindersma. 

  Since Hyundai Motor Group acquired a controlling interest in Boston Dynamics for $1.1 billion in 2021, there’s been a notable change in messaging from the robotics company that appears to push these bipedal robots closer to commercialization for real-world applications. 

  What bothers us is the military-industrial complex’s dream of humanoid warfighters could be realized via Atlas.  

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/20/2023 – 23:20

• Escobar: Gold-Backed Currencies To Replace US Dollar In Global South
  Escobar: Gold-Backed Currencies To Replace US Dollar In Global South

  Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,

  The adoption of commodity-backed currencies by the Global South could upend the US dollar’s dominance and level the playing field in international trade…

  

  Let’s start with three interconnected multipolar-driven facts.

  First: One of the key take-aways from the World Economic Forum annual shindig in Davos, Switzerland is when Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed al-Jadaan, on a panel on “Saudi Arabia’s Transformation,” made it clear that Riyadh “will consider trading in currencies other than the US dollar.”

  So is the petroyuan finally at hand? Possibly, but Al-Jadaan wisely opted for careful hedging:

  “We enjoy a very strategic relationship with China and we enjoy that same strategic relationship with other nations including the US and we want to develop that with Europe and other countries.”

  Second: The Central Banks of Iran and Russia are studying the adoption of a “stable coin” for foreign trade settlements, replacing the US dollar, the ruble and the rial.

  The crypto crowd is already up in arms, mulling the pros and cons of a gold-backed central bank digital currency (CBDC) for trade that will be in fact impervious to the weaponized US dollar.

  A gold-backed digital currency

  The really attractive issue here is that this gold-backed digital currency would be particularly effective in the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) of Astrakhan, in the Caspian Sea.

  Astrakhan is the key Russian port participating in the International North South Transportation Corridor (INTSC), with Russia processing cargo travelling across Iran in merchant ships all the way to West Asia, Africa, the Indian Ocean and South Asia.

  The success of the INSTC – progressively tied to a gold-backed CBDC – will largely hinge on whether scores of Asian, West Asian and African nations refuse to apply US-dictated sanctions on both Russia and Iran.

  As it stands, exports are mostly energy and agricultural products; Iranian companies are the third largest importer of Russian grain. Next will be turbines, polymers, medical equipment, and car parts. Only the Russia-Iran section of the INSTC represents a $25 billion business.

  And then there’s the crucial energy angle of INSTC – whose main players are the Russia-Iran-India triad.

  India’s purchases of Russian crude have increased year-by-year by a whopping factor of 33. India is the world’s third largest importer of oil; in December, it received 1.2 million barrels from Russia, which for several months now is positioned ahead of Iraq and Saudi Arabia as Delhi’s top supplier.

  ‘A fairer payment system’

  Third: South Africa holds this year’s rotating BRICS presidency. And this year will mark the start of BRICS+ expansion, with candidates ranging from Algeria, Iran and Argentina to Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

  South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor has just confirmed that the BRICS do want to find a way to bypass the US dollar and thus create “a fairer payment system not skewed toward wealthier countries.”

  For years now, Yaroslav Lissovolik, head of the analytical department of Russian Sberbank’s corporate and investment business has been a proponent of closer BRICS integration and the adoption of a BRICS reserve currency.

  Lissovolik reminds us that the first proposal “to create a new reserve currency based on a basket of currencies of BRICS countries was formulated by the Valdai Club back in 2018.”

  Are you ready for the R5?

  The original idea revolved around a currency basket similar to the Special Drawing Rights (SDR) model, composed of the national currencies of BRICS members – and then, further on down the road, other currencies of the expanded BRICS+ circle.

  Lissovolik explains that choosing BRICS national currencies made sense because “these were among the most liquid currencies across emerging markets. The name for the new reserve currency — R5 or R5+ — was based on the first letters of the BRICS currencies all of which begin with the letter R (real, ruble, rupee, renminbi, rand).”

  So BRICS already have a platform for their in-depth deliberations in 2023. As Lissovolik notes, “in the longer run, the R5 BRICS currency could start to perform the role of settlements/payments as well as the store of value/reserves for the central banks of emerging market economies.”

  It is virtually certain that the Chinese yuan will be prominent right from the start, taking advantage of its “already advanced reserve status.”

  Potential candidates that could become part of the R5+ currency basket include the Singapore dollar and the UAE’s dirham.

  Quite diplomatically, Lissovolik maintains that, “the R5 project can thus become one of the most important contributions of emerging markets to building a more secure international financial system.”

  The R5, or R5+ project does intersect with what is being designed at the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), led by the Macro-Economics Minister of the Eurasia Economic Commission, Sergey Glazyev.

  A new gold standard

  In Golden Ruble 3.0 , his most recent paper, Glazyev makes a direct reference to two by now notorious reports by Credit Suisse strategist Zoltan Pozsar, formerly of the IMF, US Department of Treasury, and New York Federal Reserve: War and Commodity Encumbrance (December 27) and War and Currency Statecraft (December 29).

  Pozsar is a staunch supporter of a Bretton Woods III – an idea that has been getting enormous traction among the Fed-skeptical crowd.

  What’s quite intriguing is that the American Pozsar now directly quotes Russia’s Glazyev, and vice-versa, implying a fascinating convergence of their ideas.

  Let’s start with Glazyev’s emphasis on the importance of gold. He notes the current accumulation of multibillion-dollar cash balances on the accounts of Russian exporters in “soft” currencies in the banks of Russia’s main foreign economic partners: EAEU nations, China, India, Iran, Turkey, and the UAE.

  He then proceeds to explain how gold can be a unique tool to fight western sanctions if prices of oil and gas, food and fertilizers, metals and solid minerals are recalculated:

  “Fixing the price of oil in gold at the level of 2 barrels per 1g will give a second increase in the price of gold in dollars, calculated Credit Suisse strategist Zoltan Pozsar. This would be an adequate response to the ‘price ceilings’ introduced by the west – a kind of ‘floor,’ a solid foundation. And India and China can take the place of global commodity traders instead of Glencore or Trafigura.”

  So here we see Glazyev and Pozsar converging. Quite a few major players in New York will be amazed.

  Glazyev then lays down the road toward Gold Ruble 3.0. The first gold standard was lobbied by the Rothschilds in the 19th century, which “gave them the opportunity to subordinate continental Europe to the British financial system through gold loans.” Golden Ruble 1.0, writes Glazyev, “provided the process of capitalist accumulation.”

  Golden Ruble 2.0, after Bretton Woods, “ensured a rapid economic recovery after the war.” But then the “reformer Khrushchev canceled the peg of the ruble to gold, carrying out monetary reform in 1961 with the actual devaluation of the ruble by 2.5 times, forming conditions for the subsequent transformation of the country [Russia] into a “raw material appendage of the Western financial system.”

  What Glazyev proposes now is for Russia to boost gold mining to as much as 3 percent of GDP: the basis for fast growth of the entire commodity sector (30 percent of Russian GDP). With the country becoming a world leader in gold production, it gets “a strong ruble, a strong budget and a strong economy.”

  All Global South eggs in one basket

  Meanwhile, at the heart of the EAEU discussions, Glazyev seems to be designing a new currency not only based on gold, but partly based on the oil and natural gas reserves of participating countries.

  Pozsar seems to consider this potentially inflationary: it could be if it results in some excesses, considering the new currency would be linked to such a large base.

  Off the record, New York banking sources admit the US dollar would be “wiped out, since it is a valueless fiat currency, should Sergey Glazyev link the new currency to gold. The reason is that the Bretton Woods system no longer has a gold base and has no intrinsic value, like the FTX crypto currency. Sergey’s plan also linking the currency to oil and natural gas seems to be a winner.”

  So in fact Glazyev may be creating the whole currency structure for what Pozsar called, half in jest, the “G7 of the East”: the current 5 BRICS plus the next 2 which will be the first new members of BRICS+.

  Both Glazyev and Pozsar know better than anyone that when Bretton Woods was created the US possessed most of Central Bank gold and controlled half the world’s GDP. This was the basis for the US to take over the whole global financial system.

  Now vast swathes of the non-western world are paying close attention to Glazyev and the drive towards a new non-US dollar currency, complete with a new gold standard which would in time totally replace the US dollar.

  Pozsar completely understood how Glazyev is pursuing a formula featuring a basket of currencies (as Lissovolik suggested). As much as he understood the groundbreaking drive towards the petroyuan. He describes the industrial ramifications thus:

  “Since as we have just said Russia, Iran, and Venezuela account for about 40 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves, and each of them are currently selling oil to China for renminbi at a steep discount, we find BASF’s decision to permanently downsize its operations at its main plant in Ludwigshafen and instead shift its chemical operations to China was motivated by the fact that China is securing energy at discounts, not markups like Europe.”

  The race to replace the dollar

  One key takeaway is that energy-intensive major industries are going to be moving to China. Beijing has become a big exporter of Russian liquified natural gas (LNG) to Europe, while India has become a big exporter of Russian oil and refined products such as diesel – also to Europe. Both China and India – BRICS members – buy below market price from fellow BRICS member Russia and resell to Europe with a hefty profit. Sanctions? What sanctions?

  Meanwhile, the race to constitute the new currency basket for a new monetary unit is on. This long-distance dialogue between Glazyev and Pozsar will become even more fascinating, as Glazyev will be trying to find a solution to what Pozsar has stated: tapping of natural resources for the creation of the new currency could be inflationary if money supply is increased too quickly.

  All that is happening as Ukraine – a huge chasm at a critical junction of the New Silk Road blocking off Europe from Russia/China – slowly but surely disappears into a black void. The Empire may have gobbled up Europe for now, but what really matters geoeconomically, is how the absolute majority of the Global South is deciding to commit to the Russia/China-led block.

  Economic dominance of BRICS+ may be no more than 7 years away – whatever toxicities may be concocted by that large, dysfunctional nuclear rogue state on the other side of the Atlantic. But first, let’s get that new currency going.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/20/2023 – 23:00

• China Now Grows More Corn Than Rice
  China Now Grows More Corn Than Rice

  Chinese and other Asian cuisines are highly associated with the consumption of rice as a part of many meals. It may therefore come as a surprise that China today is actually producing more corn than rice.

  

  As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, in 2021, the country primary cereal production consisted of 43 percent corn and 34 percent rice, as data from the Food and Agriculture Organization shows. 

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  This doesn’t mean that Chinese people are necessarily eating a lot more corn but rather that their livestock is hungry for the grain as much as some of their vehicles and machines are to consume corn in the form of ethanol fuel.

  Corn does make its way into Chinese processed foodstuffs in the form of high-fructose corn syrup and starch, however, according to an article by University of North Carolina professor Peter A. Coclanis in Aeon.

  According to Coclanis, corn is among the most versatile grains in the world while being relatively easy to grow, supporting its success in China as the country’s ever-growing middle class is upping its meat consumption.

  Additionally, China is importing at times huge quantities of corn from the United States – the world’s biggest producer – in order to supply its massive livestock industry.

  In the U.S., corn is now making up 85 percent of primary cereal production, up from 62 percent in 1981. Another country with a prolific lifestock industry, Brazil, has seen an increase from 66 percent to 79 percent over the same time period.

  2012 was the first year when China grew more corn that rice. In other Asian countries, rice still dominates cereal production. In 2021, it made up more than 90 percent of cereal crops in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Malaysia, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Vietnam and upwards of 85 percent in Japan, Myanmar and Thailand. India and Nepal grow a more diverse bunch of grains (also reflected in their cuisines), with rice only making up half of cereal crops and wheat another 20-30 percent.

  In Asia as a whole, 48 percent of primary cereal production was made up of rice in 2021, down from 57 percent in 2018. Over the same time period, the prevalence of corn doubled from approximately 13 percent to around 26 percent.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/20/2023 – 22:40

• SHOT Show Exhibitors Promote Gun Safety, Suicide Prevention
  SHOT Show Exhibitors Promote Gun Safety, Suicide Prevention

  Authored by Michael Clements via The Epoch Times,

  The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) is as committed to promoting gun safety as it is to gun rights, Bill Brassard, senior director of communications and director of the Child Safe program for the NSSF, told The Epoch Times.

  “It’s about much more than firearms,” Brassard said.

  According to Brassard, the firearms industry is working to do its part to promote gun safety and mental health.

  

  There are at least seven organizations committed to gun safety, suicide prevention, and mental health services among the more than 2,400 exhibitors at the event.

  “Attitudes are definitely changing,” Brassard said.

  “Five years ago, they would not have had a presence here.”

  Brassard spoke from the Project ChildSafe booth at the NSSF’s 45th Annual SHOT Show in Las Vegas, Nevada. SHOT stands for the Shooting, Hunting, and Outdoor Trade show.

  

  (Right) Ken Stacy, (North American representative for Lokaway safes) and (Left) Corkey Whempner (Lokaway sales representative) display one of their company’s gun safes during the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s 45th annual SHOT Show in Las Vegas, Nev., on Jan. 18, 2023. (Michael Clements)

  One of the exhibitors Brassard referenced is Hold My Guns (HMG), a non-profit that arranges temporary gun storage. Whether for a military deployment, a mental health crisis, or the need to prevent unauthorized firearms access, HMG connects clients with federal firearms license (FFL) holders who can legally store their guns so they are ready to be returned.

  Sarah Joy Albrecht is the founder and executive director of HMG. She said that in an era of red flag laws and increased attempts to restrict gun ownership, HMG was started to help gun owners temporarily create distance from their firearms without government involvement.

  “This is a non-legislative approach,” Albrecht told The Epoch Times.

  “This is our community helping our own.”

  According to Albrecht, HMG arranges a transfer of firearms to an FFL. Since it is a legal transfer, the owner must be able to pass a federal background check. The guns are logged into the FFL’s records and kept in their secure storage until they are returned to the owner. She said HMG partners with FFLs, who will store the firearms for a nominal fee. The FFL partners require that the storage is legal, but other than that, no questions are asked.

  Albrecht said one of HMG’s main objectives is suicide prevention. Her family has been directly affected by suicide, and she started HMG to prevent such tragedies. She pointed out that more than half of all gun-related deaths are suicides. But news reports list those with gun crime statistics. This compounds the stigma of suicide, she said.

  

  Dustin Culbreth (vice president for product development of Vaultek) demonstrates the modular features of one of his company’s long gun safes during the National Shooting Sports Foundations 45th annual SHOT Show in Las Vegas, Nev., on Jan. 18, 2023. (Michael Clements)

  “How much more likely is that person to seek help?” Albrecht asked. “(HMG) empowers people to make good decisions during a crisis. This is an option that serves our community.”

  Brassard said HMG and other safe storage options are essential in suicide prevention by creating time and distance between the person and the guns.

  “It gives the person a chance to find help,” Brassard said.

  NSSF has also partnered with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and Walk the Talk America in addition to starting programs like Project ChildSafe and NSSF Have a Brace Conversation. These organizations are working to educate the public and firearms retailers on recognizing warning signs that a person may be dealing with mental health issues and how to help them find assistance.

  Brassard said the programs have been well received.

  Along that line, NSSF and the American Foundation for Suicide prevention develop materials for firearms retailers, ranges, and manufacturers to make it easier for their customers to find the support they need when they need it. All the materials are free.

  NSSF provides educational materials and services through its Have a Brave Conversation program. The program offers a free toolkit containing brochures, posters, counter cards, and window clings for firearms-related businesses and organizations that want to prevent suicide.

  NSSF Suicide Prevention Partners

  Walk the Talk America (WTA) has been operating for nearly five years. It hosts free and anonymous mental health screenings in addition to educating clinicians about gun culture, promoting responsible gun ownership, and protecting Second Amendment rights and psychological well-being. WTA works with manufacturers, retailers, wholesalers, ranges, veterans’ groups, community groups, and government agencies.

  In addition to suicide prevention, NSSF has made protecting children a priority. This is why NSSF began its Project ChildSafe program, Brassard said. NSSF has provided more than 40 million gun locks to gun owners through local police departments. Brassard said the locks are provided free of charge and come with information on safe gun handling and storage.

  NSSF has partnered with 15,000 law enforcement agencies around the United States through the Project ChildSafe program. He said that NSSF safety programs are almost always welcomed by gun owners and those in the firearms industry. He said that as gun ownership has increased in the past several years, so has the desire of gun owners to do what is right.

  “It’s really a matter of responsible gun ownership,” Brassard said.

  Brassard said proper storage is a big part of responsible gun ownership. The quandary is how to prevent unauthorized access while maintaining availability.

  High Tech Storage

  Dustin Culbreth told The Epoch Times that safe manufacturers are bridging the gap between secure storage and easy access. Culbreth is vice president for product development at Orlando, Florida-based Vaultek.

  “We manufacture smart safes with built-in, cutting-edge technology,” Culbreth said.

  In addition to biometric technology, Culbreth said Vaultek safes are programmable. Vaultek’s small pistol safes can be programmed for up to 20 sets of fingerprints, meaning family members, friends, and others who may need access to the firearm will have it. They also come with a smartphone app that will alert the gun owner if someone tries to move or break into the safe.

  The app keeps a log of when and how the safe is accessed so the owner can always know what is going on with his firearms. In addition, he said Vaultek safes have backup methods of opening the safes if the technology fails.

  Tamper Resistant Latch

  Ken Stacy is the North American representative for Lokaway, an Australian safe manufacturer. In addition to incorporating high tech into its safe designs, Stacy said Lokaway has developed a unique pry-resistant latch system.

  “This latch system is much more secure,” Stacy told The Epoch Times.

  Stacy said Lokaway works to keep its products affordable while focusing on security. He said that anyone shopping for a gun safe should remember they are investing in their family’s safety as well as secure gun storage.

  “If you’re going to spend any money on a security device, buy one that works and protects your kids,” Stacey said.

  SHOT show runs through Jan. 20 at The Venetian Expo and Caesar’s Forum in Las Vegas, Nev. It features over 2,400 exhibitors on 800,000 net square feet of floor space. This is the 24th SHOT Show to be held in Las Vegas.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/20/2023 – 22:20

• Davos Plans For The Next Pandemic – Suggests National Digital Infrastructures To Track Vaccination
  Davos Plans For The Next Pandemic – Suggests National Digital Infrastructures To Track Vaccination

  The World Economic Forum’s Davos discussions often require some “reading between the lines” to understand what is really being said by the globalist participants, but not much interpretation is needed these days.  Ever since the pandemic event along with the lockdowns and the attempts to introduce vaccine passports, establishment representatives have been far more open about their agenda and their intentions for the future. 

  After all, it was Klaus Schwab that called covid a “rare but narrow window of opportunity” to implement the “Great Reset” of the current economic and political order.  The past few years have shown that the Davos crowd still clings to the fading pandemic panic as the “good old days” when they could have had anything they wanted, including total centralization.

  

  The globalists continue to refuse to address their many failures, but panels like the following say it all – They realize that the truth has hit the mainstream and far too many people are now questioning the validity of the restrictions, mandates, masks and the mRNA vaccines.  All of these measures have proven to be mostly useless in preventing viral spread, and now the negative side effects of the vaccines are being admitted to, at least to a point.  All in all, the pandemic was not the golden opportunity that Klaus Schwab and the WEF expected.    

  Their hopes and dreams now turn to a future pandemic, perhaps one with a far higher death rate that creates more exploitable public fear.

  Of special note in this panel, which includes former British PM Tony Blair and current head of Pfizer Albert Bourla, are comments made about the lack of unified agreement on political response – They do not go into detail here, but they may be referring to the refusal of some governments to pursue ongoing mandates and vaccine passports.  Public resistance to such actions led directly to apprehension among government officials as to how far they could push their luck.  Clearly, they decided they were playing with fire because many of these leaders backed off.  It was as if someone flipped a switch and the covid doom mongering suddenly slowed to a mere flicker of its former intensity.

  The group concludes that global institutions in the future need to put constant pressure on governments and, ostensibly, constant pressure on national populations in order to get the results they desire.

  By extension, Africa is mentioned a few times during the panel as an example of the need for “equity” in pandemic response.  What they don’t talk about is Africa’s lack of covid deaths despite around 65% of the continent being unvaccinated according to the New York Times world vaccine tracker. The African example as a control group for the unvaccinated has been a thorn in the side of globalists for the past couple years and obviously they want to change that.

  Another very interesting comment is made by Tony Blair, who calls for national digital infrastructure for tracking vaccinations.  Blair suggests that to keep various national governments on board with the agenda, they would have to be convinced pandemic issues are “continuing issues.”

  Albert Bourla addresses the possibility and challenges of producing vaccines in an even faster time frame to respond to new viral events.  His conclusion?  That regulators need to continue to keep doors open for Big Pharma in terms of expediency even when there is not a pandemic in play.  The average vaccine takes at least 10 years of study for safety and long term side effects; the covid vaccines were developed and administered in less than a year under emergency authorization.  This new standard of minimized safety obstacles is what Big Pharma and the WEF want for all vaccines and drugs in the future.      

  Bourla then admits to something, in a offhanded way, that many people have suspected; that the biggest challenge in the enforcement of mandates and widespread vaccination was public skepticism.  Bourla and others refer to this as the “politicizing” of the mandates, but it was really just resistance to authoritarianism, and it is something that frustrated globalist planning at every step.  This can only be a good thing. 

  At no point do the panel participants acknowledge the numerous studies showing the ineffectiveness of masking, the ineffectiveness of the lockdowns, the ineffectiveness of the vaccines, and the risks they entail.  The reasons for public resistance are not important to them, only the ways in which they can gain greater compliance during the next viral event. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/20/2023 – 22:00

• The Schools We Need For The New "Cognitive Economy"
  The Schools We Need For The New “Cognitive Economy”

  Authored by Charles Lipson via RealClear Wire,

  We are in the midst of a post-industrial revolution as profound and disruptive as the tectonic changes that launched the West’s rise to prosperity, providing ordinary people with a cornucopia of goods and services. The latest economic revolution – built on tiny computer chips, enormous data, and ubiquitous connectivity – differs from its predecessors in at least one crucial way. Unlike the first revolution (cotton spinning) and the second (heavy industry, from oil and steel to autos), this one relies on a highly educated work force. The least skilled are being displaced by smart machines, which are built and programmed by a skilled and adaptive workforce.

  

  This rapidly changing environment might be called a “cognitive economy.” It requires workers who are not only literate but numerate. That means effective training in math and science and the skills to continue that learning over a lifetime. In the United States, we simply don’t have the schools to meet those needs.

  Our failing public education system doesn’t prepare enough students for this cognitive economy, whether the jobs involve writing code, analyzing data, developing artificial intelligence, or operating sophisticated machines. In city after city, our public schools are consigning most students – the ones who don’t get into selective, magnet schools – to the scrap heap of this job market. Soon, the only way to support them will be never-ending transfer payments. If students from the least-advantaged households are to grasp the American Dream, if our economy is to lead this global transformation, then these dismal results have to change.

  Bad schools are not solely responsible for students’ shortcomings. Their families and neighborhoods share the blame. Too many children are raised by single parents, who are poorly educated themselves. They live in neighborhoods where violence is pervasive, nutrition is spotty, and educational achievement is mocked. They enter school with serious deficits. All too often, they leave the same way.

  Instead of compensating for these deficits, our public schools often compound them with unruly classrooms, low standards, and lousy instruction. Standardized testing shows just how bad the results are. In Illinois, for instance, only 1 in 5 students performs at grade level in either math or English. In Chicago, the results are even worse, and those for black students are worst of all. Among Chicago’s African American students, only 1 in 10 performs at grade level. These results would have been damaging 50 years ago. In today’s economy, they are devastating.

  What can be done? The easy answer – more funding – is wrong. According to one study, Chicago spends $29,000 per student annually, which is not unusual for a big city. The problem is not how much we spend per student but how little we get for the money.

  The obvious solution would be for our schools to imitate the most successful parts of our economy. Our economy – the richest in human history – has historically been premised on the belief that competition is good, monopolies are bad, and failing organizations should either adapt or pay the price. Where there is genuine competition, consumers will choose the best options, and businesses will strive to provide them – or go under. Public schools don’t face those incentives and don’t pay a price for their failure. The rest of us do, especially the ill-served students, who will pay a terrible price for the rest of their lives.

  The best way to change this mess is to introduce competition and choice. Lots of it. That means letting school funding follow each student and letting families choose where to educate their children. For that to work well, state legislatures and local school districts must provide enough money to fully fund a student’s education. Otherwise, poor families are left out and richer ones will simply use the extra funds to top up their private tuition payments. It means students with special needs should be given extra funding.

  Equally important, full funding is necessary to create a vibrant marketplace, where new schools (both non-profit and for-profit) compete for those dollars. That funding should be flexible enough to permit parents to spend some money for tutoring and online courses, such as language training or advanced math. They should be allowed to roll over their unspent money into next year’s tuition and, eventually, into community college or four-year universities.

  The argument here is not that new schools or older parochial ones are inherently better. They may or may not be. The point is that competition forces all schools, public and private, old and new, to strive to improve so they can compete in the marketplace. It weeds out those that don’t provide what parents demand, just as competition killed off Yugo cars and Detroit’s old clunkers. Consumers turned to better-built Japanese cars and forced GM and Ford to improve – or go bankrupt.

  Competition will do the same for schools. To survive and prosper, they will be forced to provide what parents demand, whether that is advanced math or after-school activities (for parents with 9-to-5 jobs). Some will seek competitive advantage by hiring the best teachers, paying them accordingly, and firing the worst. In short, a competitive market will force schools to innovate, improve, and adapt to what parents want for their children.

  The biggest obstacle to these changes is obvious: the entrenched power of teachers unions and their leverage over politicians who control education policy. Political scientists have long known that concentrated, well-organized groups, like these public-sector unions, typically wield more power than diffuse groups, like parents. They know that highly motivated, single-issue constituencies, like these unions, typically wield more power than groups concerned with many issues, like all families.

  The good news is that the pendulum is finally swinging toward parents, as school failures become painfully obvious and political candidates seize the issue, as Glenn Youngkin did so effectively in Virginia. Some states, like Florida, Wisconsin, and Arizona, have moved aggressively to increase school choice, both to please current voters and to attract young families. If these “laboratories of democracies” succeed, other states will follow. Let’s hope so, both for the students’ sake and the country’s growth.

  Charles Lipson is the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of Chicago, where he founded the Program on International Politics, Economics, and Security. He can be reached at charles.lipson@gmail.com.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/20/2023 – 21:40

• Pentagon Already Sees Ukraine War Going Well Past 2023
  Pentagon Already Sees Ukraine War Going Well Past 2023

  We’ve not so much as reached one full month into 2023, and the United States’ top ranking general is already predicting the war in Ukraine will surely not end this year.

  US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mark Milley issued a broad view assessment on the state of the battlefield while attending a US-hosted meeting in Germany at Ramstein airbase among allied defense ministers, which had as its focus sending more arms to Ukraine. Gen. Milley said: “From a military standpoint I still maintain that for this year it would be very, very difficult to militarily eject the Russian forces from all, every inch of… Russian-occupied Ukraine.”

  

  Milley in his comments said that currently there’s a mostly “static” front line, which the exception of the (Russian) offensive in the area of Soledar and Bakhmut.

  Despite officials at the meeting pledging more weapons to Ukraine, no significant decisions were made on the controversial question of sending Western-made heavy tanks.

  Instead, the Biden administration says it’s sticking by the decision to not send M1 Abrams tanks to Ukrainian forces. At the same time this may translate into Ukrainian forces holding back on any major attempt to push Russian forces back from current frontlines, particularly the now raging Bakhmut fighting.

  “Senior US officials are urging Ukraine to hold off on launching a major offensive against Russian forces until the latest supply of weaponry is in place and training has been provided, a top Biden administration official says,” according to one international report.

  “For this year it would be very very difficult to militarily eject Russian forces from every inch of Russian-occupied Ukraine”

  General Mark Milley says ‘Putin should and could end this war today’https://t.co/X3flQUBL0r

  📺 Sky 501 and YouTube pic.twitter.com/TirCuJTZ3M

  — Sky News (@SkyNews) January 20, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  This was followed by: “Speaking to the Reuters news agency on the condition of anonymity, the official said the US was sticking to its decision not to provide Abrams tanks to Ukraine.”

  Again, 2023 has barely started, and here we are… the Pentagon expects this war to be stalemated and keep grinding on well into 2024.

  Sadly, the casualties on either side will continue to mount. The Western allies will inevitably for the time being continue to embark on a massive expansion of their respective defense budgets…

  ⚡️France’s defense budget will be increased by a third, to 400 billion euro, in the period from 2024 to 2030, French President Emmanuel Macron said pic.twitter.com/Axnacww12A

  — War Monitor (@WarMonitors) January 20, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/20/2023 – 21:20

• Supreme Court Again Refuses To Halt New York Gun Restrictions
  Supreme Court Again Refuses To Halt New York Gun Restrictions

  Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The Supreme Court on Jan. 18 turned away an emergency request from firearms dealers to halt a months-old New York law that imposed new restrictions on gun purchases and dealers that the dealers say adversely affected sales and violated their rights.

  

  The ruling comes as challenges to gun laws across the nation have escalated since the high court struck down previous New York rules on guns in June 2022. In the same opinion, the court also held that there’s a constitutional right to carry a gun outside the home for self-defense, leading states such as New York and Illinois to respond by doubling down on firearms restrictions.

  The new state law in question, New York’s sweeping Concealed Carry Improvement Act, has been hotly litigated in the federal courts since it was approved by lawmakers in Albany. Some state law enforcement officials previously condemned the law, which took effect on Sept. 1, 2022, saying it would be difficult to enforce and may be unconstitutional. The New York State Sheriffs’ Association said the law was a “thoughtless, reactionary action.”

  The Supreme Court rejected the application in Gazzola v. Hochul, court file 22A591, in an unsigned order (pdf) on Jan. 18. No justices dissented from the order.

  The dealers said in court papers (pdf) that the new law treats “state licensed dealers in firearms as if they are ‘a highly selective group inherently suspect of criminal activities.’” The dealers said they were “urgently [seeking] a preliminary injunction to keep their doors open, while fighting to restore their civil rights through this lawsuit.”

  “Petitioners are risking everything to try to stay in business in support of civil rights under the Second, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments, and to keep the doors open and the lights on while they pursue this case, but we can’t seem to find a judge in district or circuit court who will back them up,” they said in the brief.

  One of the dealers’ complaints was that New York was making what they characterized as an unprecedented demand that all federally licensed firearms dealers and New York state-licensed dealers “surrender their federal firearms compliance records” on pain of “incarceration and license revocation.”

  “Until now, no federal, state, or municipal government in this country has attempted to grab the federal firearms compliance records of [a federal firearms dealer],” they said.

  The decision came after the Supreme Court similarly declined to block the New York law in an order on Jan. 11 in Antonyuk v. Nigrelli, which was brought by New York residents. Despite turning down the request to stay a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit reinstating the law, Justice Samuel Alito issued a statement, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, suggesting this wasn’t the high court’s final word on the matter.

  “The New York law at issue in this application presents novel and serious questions under both the First and the Second Amendments,” Alito wrote (pdf).

  The justice encouraged the Second Amendment advocates involved in the lawsuit to continue fighting the law.

  “Applicants should not be deterred by today’s order from again seeking relief if the Second Circuit does not, within a reasonable time, provide an explanation for its stay order or expedite consideration of the appeal,” Alito wrote.

  Before the Supreme Court acted on Jan. 11, the 2nd Circuit stayed an order by Syracuse-based U.S. District Judge Glenn Suddaby, who blocked sections of the law on Nov. 7, 2022, in a case brought by Gun Owners of America. The law imposed “unprecedented constitutional violations,” Suddaby wrote.

  Suddaby enjoined the new requirement that a carry applicant demonstrate “good moral character” and produce the names and contact information of spouses and other adults in the applicant’s home. He blocked the rule forcing applicants to submit social media accounts for review by government officials.

  Suddaby also enjoined the restrictions on carrying in public parks, zoos, places of worship, locations where alcohol is served, theaters, banquet halls, conferences, airports and buses, and lawful protests and assemblies, as well as the blanket ban on carrying on private property without the consent of the owner.

  New York’s Concealed Carry Improvement Act was rushed through the state legislature in the summer of 2022 and signed by Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul after the Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen invalidated the state’s requirement that a carry permit applicant demonstrate a special need for self-defense.

  Hochul denounced the high court ruling at the time, calling it “a reckless decision … senselessly sending us backward and putting the safety of our residents in jeopardy.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/20/2023 – 21:00

• Multiple Suicide Drones Attack Remote US Base In Syria
  Multiple Suicide Drones Attack Remote US Base In Syria

  In the second such incident involving a US base in the region already in 2023, multiple suicide drones struck an American base in Syria on Friday morning, leaving two US-backed Syrian fighters injured.

  “This morning, three one-way attack drones attacked the At Tanf Garrison in Syria,” a CENTCOM statement began. “Two of the drones were shot down by Coalition Forces while one struck the compound, injuring two members of the Syrian Free Army partner force who received medical treatment.”

  

  The statement noted no American troops or personnel were injured. “Attacks of this kind are unacceptable – they place our troops and our partners at risk and jeopardize the fight against ISIS,” a CENTCOM spokesman added.

  The al-Tanf Garrison has since 2016 been the most southerly US-occupied spot in Syria, lying near the border with Iraq and Jordan.

  The Pentagon and prior Trump and now Biden administrations have justified the US presence there as key to the ‘counter-ISIS’ mission, despite the Islamic State terror group having long been driven underground. Some 800 to more than 1,000 US troops still occupy the oil-and-gas rich northeast of the country, denying Damascus and the Syrian population vital resources.

  Citing the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the regional outlet The Cradle described that it was the first attack on that particular Syria-Iraq border facility in five months: 

  SOHR sources stated that the drones carried out several strikes on the base, triggering a state of panic among US occupation forces and injuring members of the CIA-trained Maghawir al-Thawra (MaT) armed group, a US-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) faction formed to ‘fight ISIS.’

  Over the past year there have been sporadic rocket attacks on the US-occupied Conoco gas field in Syria’s eastern city of Deir Ezzor, and other locations.

  

  Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad has meanwhile been engaged in intense talks mediated by Moscow, demanding that Turkish forces withdraw from all Syrian soil. Both the Turkish and Syrian sides ultimately want to see the US occupation squeezed out – something which Russia would like to see through as well. But it would require some level of rapprochement and coordinated strategy between Damascus and Ankara.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/20/2023 – 20:40

• The Global Energy Crisis Is Redrawing Geopolitical Maps
  The Global Energy Crisis Is Redrawing Geopolitical Maps

  Authored by Haley Zaremba via OilPrice.com,

  • The global energy crisis is redrawing geopolitical maps.

  • Some experts are saying that the global south is increasingly gaining influence in geopolitics on the world stage as climate change is rewriting the rules of trade and consumption.

  • While the lesson to be learned from the European energy crisis should be to diversify, diversify, diversify both trade partners and forms of energy,n the global north is instead opting to narrow their trading options even further.

  We are currently living through a “global energy crisis of unprecedented depth and complexity,” according to this year’s annual energy outlook from the International Energy Agency (IEA), which warns that “there is no going back to the way things were” before Covid-19 and Russia’s war in Ukraine rocked the globe. Together, these events have already reconfigured energy trade worldwide, but the shockwaves to the global economy and geopolitics in general are just getting started. 

  

  Everyone seems to agree that we’re living through a large-scale reconfiguration of global geopolitics, but there is less consensus as to what is in store for world trade once the dust has settled. Some experts are saying that the global south is increasingly gaining influence in geopolitics on the world stage as climate change is rewriting the rules of trade and consumption, while others argue that reactionary protectionist practices in the developed world will only further marginalize and alienate less developed nations.  

  A recent opinion piece by Ravi Agrawal, the editor in chief of Foreign Policy, claims that “the most meaningful trend in global politics for 2023” is that “the global south is becoming more visible—and influential—in every arena.” As evidence, Agrawal cites that the most developed countries made major concessions to historically silenced and sidelined poorer countries a few months ago at COP27, including the landmark “loss and damage” fund to help the developing world contend with climate-related crises – a major turnaround from COP26. 

  Agrawal also points to the fact that the balance of power has clearly shifted away from the United States, which was unable to convince many countries in the developing world to mirror U.S. sanctions against Russia. “Leaving aside the thorny issue of ethics in foreign policy,” Agrawal writes of the failed attempt to foster solidarity against the Kremlin, “leaders from New Delhi to Nairobi exhibited a growing confidence in asserting their own strategic interests instead of the West’s.”

  While Agrawal may be right that these “younger and faster-growing” parts of the planet are becoming more assertive on the global stage, it’s less clear if he is correct in his assertion that “policymakers and businesses in the West will need to adapt.” Certainly he is correct to some extent, but the shift may not be as seismic as his op-ed would lead readers to believe. In fact, at the same time that these oft forgotten nations are gaining recognition and influence in some key geopolitical debates, their invisibility and outsider status is also being shored up in other arenas. 

  The unprecedented energy crisis was kicked into overdrive by the West’s misguided reliance on a volatile and despotic regime, and now the United States, Europe, and its key allies are responding to that critical error by circling the wagons. Instead of following the ideals of free trade and the mandates of the World Trade Organization, protectionist policies are taking over which are sure to shut out poorer nations. 

  While the lesson to be learned from the European energy crisis should be to diversify, diversify, diversify both trade partners and forms of energy, nations in the global north are instead opting to narrow their trading options even further. “Staking out spheres of influence and assessing the reliability and trustworthiness of suppliers and countries is the order of the day,” read a recent analysis from Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, the German Institute of International and Security Affairs. 

  Indeed, Western leaders such as US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen are openly calling for a shift of strategy, away from free market trading to the concept of “friend-shoring”, in which countries shift supply chains to “trusted countries” with similar values and political allegiances. The Euro­pean Commission’s Strategic Foresight Report 2022, too, has called for a similar shift in trade networks. 

  This does not bode well for the global south. As the richest nations in the world increasingly trade only with each other, any viable pathway to economic development becomes much, much harder to navigate for the least developed countries. While it’s all well and good that wealthy nations have agreed to create a disaster fund for the nations that will be hit hardest by climate change, that measure is a drop in the bucket compared to what these nations actually need in terms of climate mitigation and adaptation. More to the point, these nations don’t need endless charity – they need their own robust economies and growth trajectories. That’s what really gives a nation any kind of voice or influence on the global stage, not a check cut by emissions guilt. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/20/2023 – 20:20

• Cardano Founder Considers Bailing Out CoinDesk, Says $200 Million Is "Overpriced"
  Cardano Founder Considers Bailing Out CoinDesk, Says $200 Million Is “Overpriced”

  CoinDesk Inc., a cryptocurrency news website whose parent company is financially troubled Digital Currency Group Inc., reached out to investment bankers at Lazard Ltd. for a potential sale. 

  “Over the last few months, we have received numerous inbound indications of interest in CoinDesk,” CoinDesk CEO Kevin Worth told WSJ. 

  One interested party in CoinDesk is Cardano blockchain founder Charles Hoskinson. 

  

  On Thursday, Hoskinson tweeted a video explaining the price of the crypto-focused media outlet is around $200 million, adding it might be overpriced if the valuation is based on “a 2021 number when everything was on the cocaine and hookers era, and everyone was making great money.” He then asked if the valuation had been readjusted for 2022 numbers during the crypto bear market. 

  “At $200 million, I believe it’s a bit overpriced,” he said. “I could afford it if I really wanted to.” 

  Hoskinson said his goal is to revive “journalistic integrity” in the crypto news race. He noted Cardano had a bunch of bad press from various media outlets with agendas — citing how FTX funded The Block. 

  He said it might be cheaper to build a “more decentralized organization” with $5 to $10 million. 

  He pointed out that CoinDesk doesn’t have a good video unit yet and lacks a metaverse component. 

  Here’s Hoskinson talking about CoinDesk:

  Buying Coindesk https://t.co/YNJYjKhIlx

  — Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) January 19, 2023

  And the news of a potential sale comes as Genesis Global Capital filed for Chapter 11 on Thursday night. Genesis and CoinDesk are both parent companies of Digital Currency Group, which Barry Silbert operates. Perhaps Silbert’s crypto empire is in a liquidity crunch. 

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/20/2023 – 20:00

• US Expands Training Of Taiwanese Military By Sending National Guard Units
  US Expands Training Of Taiwanese Military By Sending National Guard Units

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  The US has expanded its training of the Taiwanese military to include a program involving the US National Guard, Nikkei Asia reported on Thursday.

  A source told Nikkei that the training began sometime before spring 2022. In May 2022, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen announced cooperation with the National Guard while hosting Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) in Taipei. “The US Department of Defense is now proactively planning cooperation between the US National Guard and Taiwan’s defense forces,” Tsai said. “We look forward to closer and deeper Taiwan-US cooperation on matters of regional security.”

  

  The report said that the training already began before Tsai made the announcement during Duckworth’s visit. Since the training started, the National Guard has trained Taiwanese troops in both Taiwan and inside the US.

  National Guard training overseas typically involves a unit from a single state, but the report said the training in Taiwan involves units from multiple US states, including Hawaii. The US and Taiwan rarely acknowledge their military cooperation, and a Pentagon spokesman declined to comment on the National Guard Training.

  “We don’t have a comment on specific operations, engagements or training, but I would highlight that our support for, and defense relationship with, Taiwan remains aligned against the current threat posed by the People’s Republic of China,” the Pentagon told Nikkei.

  In October 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported that a US special operations unit and a contingent of Marines were in Taiwan and had been training Taipei’s military for at least a year. Tsai later confirmed the report, marking the first time a Taiwanese leader acknowledged a US military presence in Taiwan since Washington severed diplomatic relations with Taipei in 1979.

  The growing US-Taiwan military ties anger Beijing, which views the policies as an affront to the one-China policy. The 2023 National Defense Authorization Act President Biden recently signed into law includes measures to increase US and Taiwanese military cooperation even more.

  The US is also encouraging Japan’s military buildup and is planning to expand its military facilities in the Philippines as part of its effort to counter China in the region. The top US Marine Corps general in Japan described the effort as “setting the theater” and said the US did something similar in Ukraine starting in 2014, after the US-backed coup that deposed former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

  The US launched a similar National Guard training program for Ukraine in 2014, known as Joint Multinational Training Group-Ukraine, that rotated through units from different states. US military officials said 23,000 Ukrainians were trained under the program. The US withdrew its National Guard troops from Ukraine shortly before Russia’s invasion.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/20/2023 – 19:40

• China's Biggest Oil Trading Firm Goes On A Buying Spree
  China’s Biggest Oil Trading Firm Goes On A Buying Spree

  One of the core pillars behind the bull case for oil in 2023 is that China, having permanently shelved its zero covid policies, will open the floodgates on oil buying as the Chinese economy recovery sharply and powerfully.

  Today, we got the first indication of precisely that: Unipec, the largest oil trader in China and the trading unit of state-held refiner Sinopec, purchased 9 million barrels of Abu Dhabi’s Upper Zakum crude grade for March loadings, traders told Bloomberg, in a clear sign that Chinese oil demand will pick up pace in the second quarter as many expect.

  18 cargoes of Upper Zakum crude is above the typical purchases of Unipec, OilPrice reported citing traders.

  

  Still, traders aren’t sure whether the buying spree for Abu Dhabi’s crude is directly linked with expectations of a surge in demand. It may be because of the price of the crude linked to the Dubai benchmark prices, or part of the cargoes could be resold, according to various traders who spoke to Bloomberg.  

  At any rate, analysts and the market expect Chinese oil demand to rebound after the reopening of the world’s largest crude oil importer after nearly three years of Covid-related lockdowns.

  Saudi oil giant Aramco expects the Chinese reopening and a pick-up in jet fuel demand to lead to a rebound in global oil demand this year, Amin Nasser, the CEO of the world’s biggest oil firm, told Bloomberg in an interview earlier this week.

  The International Energy Agency (IEA) sees China’s reopening driving global oil demand to a record high of 101.7 million barrels per day (bpd) this year, up by 1.9 million bpd from 2022. That’s an upgrade of 200,000 bpd of the IEA’s demand growth estimate for 2023, from 1.7 million bpd growth expected in December. Almost half of the oil demand growth this year will come from China after Beijing lifted its Covid restrictions, the IEA said in its closely-watched Oil Market Report (OMR) for January earlier this week. 

  “China will drive nearly half this global demand growth even as the shape and speed of its reopening remains uncertain,” the IEA said.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/20/2023 – 19:00

• Pantsir Air Defense Systems Erected On Several Moscow Rooftops
  Pantsir Air Defense Systems Erected On Several Moscow Rooftops

  Viral videos and photographs show that Russia has stationed missile defense systems on several Moscow building rooftops.

  Taking note of some of the photos, The Drive writes that the “Russian military appears to have emplaced Pantsir air defense systems on top of at least two different government buildings in Moscow, including the Ministry of Defense’s headquarters.”

  

  One video showed very large cranes lifting the entire surface-to-air battery from ground level to the top corner of a sprawling building. The Pantsir system can defend against everything from aircraft missiles to cruise missiles or drones.

  The Drive continues, “The official reason for the apparent deployments is unclear, but Ukrainian forces have demonstrated their ability to conduct strikes at extended ranges using various types of drones. There could be other explanations, including this just being part of an ostensible exercise of some kind.”

  Recent months have seen Ukraine send deadly drones an impressive 600km deep into Russia to attack the Engels military airfield. This suggests that other cities far from the Ukraine border could be vulnerable to attack.

  Russians put Pantsir-S1 anti-aircraft system to roof of building in Moscow. pic.twitter.com/AsMTdqJGVw

  — ZOKA (@200_zoka) January 19, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  

  The Moscow Times observed that “On Friday, reports emerged that another likely Pantsir-S1 system had been spotted 10 kilometers from President Vladimir Putin’s official residence in Novo-Ogaryovo outside Moscow this month.”

  The report added, “They follow sightings of S-400 anti-aircraft missile systems at a national park and a testing ground in north and northeastern Moscow.”

  The Kremlin has remained mum when asked about the anti-air systems being placed on buildings in Moscow on Friday.

  ⚡️Pantsir-S1 anti-aircraft systems being placed on the roof of building in Moscow.

  Is this the plan? pic.twitter.com/FLA96HXxrP

  — War Monitor (@WarMonitors) January 19, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Like with other countries and their most sensitive government facilities, it’s likely being done out of an abundance of caution, especially given the escalating war in Ukraine and growing showdown with NATO and the US.

  On Friday the Russian military reported more gains in eastern Ukraine, announcing via TASS the capture of Klischiivka town, which lies on the outskirts of Bakhumut, which is the main strategic prize in the region now being fiercely fought for. There are reportedly heavy casualties on both sides amid the grinding fight for Bakhmut and the surrounding area.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/20/2023 – 18:40

• "It's Shocking": California's Early Release Of Convicted Pedophiles Will Lead To More Victims: Former DA
  “It’s Shocking”: California’s Early Release Of Convicted Pedophiles Will Lead To More Victims: Former DA

  Authored by Siyamak Khorrami and Epoch Times Staff,

  A former Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney who worked in its sex crimes unit is warning early releases of pedophiles from California prisons—due to a series of recent progressive laws—will lead to more children being victimized and harmed, in part because such criminals are rarely rehabilitated.

  

  Samuel Dordulian, who now heads the Dordulian Law Group out of Glendale, California, which specializes in such crimes, made the comments on a recent episode of EpochTV’s California Insider.

  “It’s terrifying for me as a parent and it should be terrifying for every parent out there of a child,” said Dordulian, who worked in the DA’s office from 1995 until 2008.

  During the 30-minute interview, Dordulian said he was surprised such criminals are released so quickly these days.

  He said he only discovered such when a reporter from the Daily Mail reached out to him last year showing statistics that such criminals in California are, on average, being released in about 1 ½ years and sometimes within only months.

  “It’s shocking,” he said.

  Published in November of 2022, the story indicated “thousands of child molesters are being let out after just a few months, despite sentencing guidelines.”

  The story reported that more than 7,000 inmates convicted of “lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14 years of age” were released from prison the same year they were incarcerated.

  The Daily Mail’s analysis was conducted using a database—created in 1994 after the federal Megan’s Law was passed—requiring law enforcement to make public information regarding registered sex offenders. The news organization examined data in California through July of 2019.

  “Everyone should be really upset and frightened by this,” Dordulian said.

  According to Dordulian, child molesters are the least likely of criminals to be rehabilitated and are four times more likely to commit the same crime again.

  “Once they’re out,” he said, “they are going to re-offend and there’s going to be another child that is victimized by these people.”

  According to Dordulian, the early releases are the result of a recent series of California laws, most specifically 2016’s Prop. 57, which allows prisoners earlier paroles, reduced time for good behavior, and sentences only for a criminal’s “base” crime, meaning additional charges can be ignored.

  “And that is unthinkable,” he said.

  He additionally said the policies of current Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón are a complete 180 from when he served in the DA’s office.

  “That is not the way I used to prosecute crimes,” he said.

  Today, he said, the focus is on helping the offender, not protecting the victim.

  “[The] attitude has completely changed,” he said. Today, the ethos is “doing everything you can to see how you can help this poor criminal who committed this crime.”

  In his day, he said, prosecutors looked for ways to maximize sentences to keep convicts away for as long as possible, in part because of high recidivism rates for child molesters.

  That included charging them with every lewd touch they made on a child. Each, he said, allowed up to eight years of imprisonment.

  “You would then be able to have [a] significant maximum sentence,” he said. “All that work we would put in to make sure [a molester] was going to get a high sentence is thrown out the window,” now.

  Part of the reasons for the passage of Prop. 57 were overcrowding in prisons, the cost of over $100,000 a year to house an inmate, and a growing belief such funding could be better used for rehabilitation, he said.

  But according to Dordulian, a 2018 state audit revealed money spent on rehabilitation has little impact on recidivism.

  “It has little to absolutely no impact on criminals reoffending,” he said. “Rehabilitation is not working in California.”

  He also said the recent trend since the 2020 death of George Floyd of defunding police and a decline of morale within the ranks, is not helping either.

  “Why is anyone surprised that we’re having an incredible rise in crime?” he said. “No one feels safer today than they did several years ago.”

  Today, he said, the state and elected officials are no longer holding criminals accountable for their crimes. Officials have shifted, instead, he said, to blaming society, the economy and racism.

  “It’s everyone’s fault except for the person who is actually committing the offense,” he said.

  Dordulian said he was once honored to work in the DA’s office and felt proud to help victims.

  Today, he said, some are now choosing to hire him—at no cost—“to be their voice in criminal court,” instead of having their cases prosecuted by the DA.

  “The DA is no longer the voice of the victim,” he said.

  Things can change, he said, if people would tell elected officials “enough is enough.”

  “If we don’t get the pendulum to swing back,” he said, “it’s going to be complete lawlessness out there.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/20/2023 – 18:20

• Didi's App Is Officially Back On Chinese App Stores
  Didi’s App Is Officially Back On Chinese App Stores

  Ride sharing app Didi has officially returned to the main app stores in China, according to a Friday morning note by Bloomberg. It marks a definitive step forward for the company after it was throttled by Beijing years ago during a sweeping crackdown of Chinese technology names. 

  And this go-round, it looks like Didi has Beijing’s tradewinds at its back. Marking a potentially even closer relationship to the government, the report also notes that China will be launching a “government-backed app to integrate a variety of services”, including ride-hailing, that will incorporate Didi. 

  Recall days ago we noted when Beijing gave Didi the nod to start signing up new users again. Didi was made the poster child for a Beijing-led crackdown on China’s internet industry. The decision to allow Didi to continue operating is being hailed as a “clear sign” that Beijing is prioritizing re-starting the country’s economy after locking down for Covid. 

  Didi’s app had been removed from app stores in 2021. Didi has long been compared to Uber in China, but most recently became famous alongside of the halted Ant Group Co.’s IPO as a symbol of China’s crackdown on its internet industry. 

  The crackdown on Didi came after the company “pushed ahead with a $4 billion-plus US initial public offering against Beijing’s wishes”. It is being speculated that now, with the resumption of signing up users, the company may eventually list in Hong Kong.

  

  Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Catherine Lim said in a report last weekend: “The relaunch of Didi apps supports earlier indications from Beijing that required reforms within local technology sector are near-completion. Disruptions to the operations of tech giants such as Alibaba, Tencent should be minimal in 2023.”

  It may also see Didi stock – which had traded on the over the counter markets – once again attempt an uplisting in the United States. 

  Combined with recent concessions made regarding Ant Group, it sends a signal that the government may be easing up on the industry as a whole. Guo Shuqing, party secretary of the People’s Bank of China, has alluded to the regulatory clampdown drawing to a close, Bloomberg wrote. 

  Didi is the latest in a list of signs that show China is prepping to unleash its economy coming out of this round of Covid lockdowns. As Bloomberg noted, this week China also “released the first batch of 88 domestic game approvals in 2023” and said it will “‘moderately’ front-load infrastructure investment” this year.

  Is it time to once again get bullish on China?

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/20/2023 – 18:00

• Trump To Host First 2024 Campaign Event With Graham, McMaster In South Carolina
  Trump To Host First 2024 Campaign Event With Graham, McMaster In South Carolina

  Authored by Lorenz Duchamps via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The campaign of former President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Gov. Henry McMaster will join Trump on Jan. 28 as the Republican will make the first public appearance of his 2024 White House run.

  

  Last week, campaign spokesman Steven Cheung confirmed with the Associated Press (AP) that Trump will host an event in South Carolina later this month, but no specific details were immediately announced at the time.

  Trump, 76, hinted at a 2024 run for more than a year and formally announced his presidential bid in a prime-time speech at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida in November 2022.

  The two well-known South Carolina Republicans will attend the Jan. 28 event at Columbia’s state capitol building, where the former president will unveil his campaign’s state leadership team, according to Tuesday’s announcement.

  A person familiar with the matter speaking to AP on the condition of anonymity said the event will also include members of South Carolina’s congressional delegation, as well as state lawmakers.

  Trump has not hit the campaign trail since he formally announced his presidential run on Nov. 15, 2022. Instead, he made occasional appearances before invited guests at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

  The event comes as two other South Carolina Republicans—former Gov. Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott—are both considered potential challengers for the Republican nomination.

  

  Haley, who will turn 51 on Jan. 20, said about a week after Trump announced his presidential bid in mid-November that she’s considering launching a 2024 presidential bid, reneging on a promise she made in 2021 that she would not run if Trump ran.

  “A lot of people have asked if I’m going to run for president now that the midterms are over, I’ll look at it in a serious way and I’ll have more to say soon,” she said during an appearance at a Republican Jewish Coalition meeting. Haley was the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations while Trump was in office.

  Scott, recently reelected to what he has said will be his final Senate term, has been making visits in other early-voting states and launched a political action committee that could become a presidential campaign vehicle.

  In 2016, when South Carolina was the third state after Iowa and New Hampshire, Trump’s statewide victory helped solidify his status as the GOP front-runner.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/20/2023 – 17:40

• Facebook And Instagram Could Soon Allow Transgender And Non-Binary People To Show Their Breasts
  Facebook And Instagram Could Soon Allow Transgender And Non-Binary People To Show Their Breasts

  Just when we thought that there couldn’t possibly be more useless detritus floating around on Facebook and Instagram comes the news that both social media platforms could soon be “allowing transgender and non-binary users to flash their bare breasts”.

  And in a real slap to the face for equality, women who were born biologically female will have no such option, according to a new report by the NY Post.

  Regardless, Meta’s Oversight Board, which the company refers to as its “Supreme Court” for moderation and censorship policies, ordered both Facebook and Instagram to “lift a ban on images of topless women for anyone who identifies as transgender or non-binary,” the Post wrote. 

  The board’s decision stated: “The same image of female-presenting nipples would be prohibited if posted by a cisgender woman but permitted if posted by an individual self-identifying as non-binary.”

  

  And hey, we’re asking for a friend, but we wonder how much the position of “breast content moderator” is going to pay. After all, the company is reportedly going to be relying on “human reviewers” to moderate such content, the report says. 

  Those reviewers are going to be tasked with “quickly assess[ing] both a user’s sex, as this policy applies to ‘female nipples,’ and their gender identity,” the Post wrote. And this isn’t some hastily thrown together initiative – the board has added the complex nuance that there will be “additional nipple-related exceptions based on contexts of protest, birth giving, after birth, and breastfeeding which it did not examine here, but also must be assessed.”

  “We had reinstated this content prior to the decision, recognizing that it should not have been taken down,” the company told the Post. “We are constantly evaluating our policies to help make our platforms safer for everyone. We know more can be done to support the LGBTQ+ community, and that means working with experts and LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations on a range of issues and product improvements.”

  “We welcome the board’s decision in this case,” the concluded. Yeah, but what about the rest of us?

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/20/2023 – 17:20

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• 360-Degree Surveillance: How Police Use Public-Private Partnerships To Spy On Americans
  360-Degree Surveillance: How Police Use Public-Private Partnerships To Spy On Americans

  Authored by John and Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

  “We live in a surveillance state founded on a partnership between government and the technology industry.”

  – Law Professor Avidan Y. Cover

  In this age of ubiquitous surveillance, there are no private lives: everything is public.

  

  Surveillance cameras mounted on utility poles, traffic lights, businesses, and homes. License plate readers. Ring doorbells. GPS devices. Dash cameras. Drones. Store security cameras. Geofencing and geotracking. FitBits. Alexa. Internet-connected devices.  

  There are roughly one billion surveillance cameras worldwide and that number continues to grow, thanks to their wholehearted adoption by governments (especially law enforcement and military agencies), businesses, and individual consumers.

  With every new surveillance device we welcome into our lives, the government gains yet another toehold into our private worlds.

  Indeed, empowered by advances in surveillance technology and emboldened by rapidly expanding public-private partnerships between law enforcement, the Intelligence Community, and the private sector, police have become particularly adept at sidestepping the Fourth Amendment.

  As law professor Avidan Y. Cover explains:

  A key feature of the surveillance state is the cooperative relationship between the private sector and the government. The private sector’s role is vital to the surveillance both practically and legally. The private sector, of course, provides the infrastructure and tools for the surveillance… The private sector is also critical to the surveillance state’s legality. Under the third-party doctrine, the Fourth Amendment is not implicated when the government acquires information that people provide to corporations, because they voluntarily provide their information to another entity and assume the risk that the entity will disclose the information to the government. Therefore, people do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their calling data, or potentially even their emails. As a result, the government does not normally need a warrant to obtain information transmitted electronically. But the Fourth Amendment is not only a source of protection for individual privacy; it also limits government excess and abuse through challenges by the people. The third-party doctrine removes this vital and populist check on government overreach.

  Critical to this end run around the Fourth Amendment’s prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures by government agents is a pass play that allows police to avoid public transparency requirements (open bids, public meetings, installation protocols) by having private companies and individuals do the upfront heavy lifting, leaving police to harvest the intel on the back end.

  Stingray devices, facial recognition technology, body cameras, automated license plate readers, gunshot detection, predictive policing software, AI-enhanced video analytics, real-time crime centers, fusion centers: all of these technologies and surveillance programs rely on public-private partnerships that together create a sticky spiderweb from which there is no escape.

  As the cost of these technologies becomes more affordable for the average consumer, an effort underwritten by the tech industry and encouraged by law enforcement agencies and local governing boards, which in turn benefit from access to surveillance they don’t need to include in their budgets, big cities, small towns, urban, suburban and rural communities alike are adding themselves to the surveillance state’s interconnected grid.

  What this adds up to for government agencies (that is, FBI, NSA, DHS agents, etc., as well as local police) is a surveillance map that allows them to track someone’s movements over time and space, hopscotching from doorbell camera feeds and business security cameras to public cameras on utility poles, license plate readers, traffic cameras, drones, etc.

  It has all but eliminated the notion of privacy and radically re-drawn the line of demarcation between our public and private selves.

  Over the past 50 years, surveillance has brought about a series of revolutions in how governments govern and populations are policed to the detriment of us all. Cybersecurity expert Adam Scott Wandt has identified three such revolutions.

  The first surveillance revolution came about as a result of government video cameras being installed in public areas. There were a reported 51 million surveillance cameras blanketing the United States in 2022. It’s estimated that Americans are caught on camera an average of 238 times every week (160 times per week while driving; 40 times per week at work; 24 times per week while out running errands and shopping; and 14 times per week through various other channels and activities). That doesn’t even touch on the coverage by surveillance drones, which remain a relatively covert part of police spying operations.

  The second revolution occurred when law enforcement agencies started forging public-private partnerships with commercial establishments like banks and drug stores and parking lots in order to gain access to their live surveillance feeds. The use of automatic license plate readers (manufactured and distributed by the likes of Flock Safety), once deployed exclusively by police and now spreading to home owners associations and gated communities, extends the reach of the surveillance state that much further afield. It’s a win-win for police budgets and local legislatures when they can persuade businesses and residential communities to shoulder the costs of the equipment and share the footage, and they can conscript the citizenry to spy on each other through crowdsourced surveillance.

  The third revolution was ushered in with the growing popularity of doorbell cameras such as Ring, Amazon’s video surveillance doorbell, and Google’s Nest Cam.

  Amazon has been particularly aggressive in its pursuit of a relationship with police, enlisting them in its marketing efforts, and going so far as to hosting parties for police, providing free Ring doorbells and deep discounts, sharing “active camera” maps of Ring owners, allowing access to the Law Enforcement Neighborhood Portal, which enables police to directly contact owners for access to their footage, and coaching police on how to obtain footage without a warrant.

  Ring currently partners with upwards of 2,161 law enforcement agencies and 455 fire departments, and that number grows exponentially every year. As Vice reports, “Ring has also heavily pursued city discount programs and private alliances with neighborhood watch groups. When cities provide free or discounted Ring cameras, they sometimes create camera registries, and police sometimes order people to aim Ring cameras at their neighbors, or only give cameras to people surveilled by neighborhood watches.”

  In November 2022, San Francisco police gained access to the live footage of privately owned internet cameras as opposed to merely being able to access recorded footage. No longer do police even have to request permission of homeowners for such access: increasingly, corporations have given police access to footage as part of their so-called criminal investigations with or without court orders.

  We would suggest a fourth revolutionary shift to be the use of facial recognition software and artificial intelligence-powered programs that can track people by their biometrics, clothing, behavior and car, thereby synthesizing the many strands of surveillance video footage into one cohesive narrative, which privacy advocates refer to as 360 degree surveillance.

  Finally, Wandt sees autonomous cars equipped with cameras that record everything around them as yet another revolutionary expansion of surveillance to be tapped by police.

  Yet in the present moment, it’s those public-private partnerships that signify a watershed moment in the transition from a police state to a surveillance state and sound a death knoll for our privacy rights. This fusion of government power and private power is also at the heart of the surveillance state’s growing stranglehold on the populace.

  As always, these intrusions into our personal lives are justified in the name of national security and fighting crime. Yet while the price to be paid for having the government’s so-called protection is nothing less than our right to privacy, the guarantee of safety remains dubious, at best.

  As a study on camera surveillance by researchers at City University of New York concluded, the presence of cameras were somewhat effective as a deterrent for crimes such as car burglaries and property theft, but they had no significant effect on violent crimes.

  On the other hand, when you combine overcriminalization with wall-to-wall surveillance monitored by police in pursuit of crimes, the resulting suspect society inevitably gives way to a nation of criminals. In such a society, we are all guilty of some crime or other.

  The predatory effect of these surveillance cameras has also yet to be fully addressed, but they are vulnerable to being hacked by third parties and abused by corporate and government employees.

  After all, power corrupts. We’ve seen this abuse of power recur time and time again throughout history. For instance, as an in-depth investigative report by the Associated Press concludes, the very same mass surveillance technologies that were supposedly so necessary to fight the spread of COVID-19 are now being used to stifle dissent, persecute activists, harass marginalized communities, and link people’s health information to other surveillance and law enforcement tools. As the AP reports, federal officials have also been looking into how to add “‘identifiable patient data,’ such as mental health, substance use and behavioral health information from group homes, shelters, jails, detox facilities and schools,” to its surveillance toolkit.

  These cameras—and the public-private eyes peering at us through them—are re-engineering a society structured around the aesthetic of fear and, in the process, empowering “people to not just watch their neighborhood, but to organize as watchers,” creating not just digital neighborhood watches but digital gated communities.

  Finally, there is a repressive, suppressive effect to surveillance that not only acts as a potentially small deterrent on crime but serves to monitor and chill lawful First Amendment activity. As Matthew Feeney warns in the New York Times, “In the past, Communists, civil rights leaders, feminists, Quakers, folk singers, war protesters and others have been on the receiving end of law enforcement surveillance. No one knows who the next target will be.”

  No one knows, but it’s a pretty good bet that the surveillance state will be keeping a close watch on anyone seen as a threat to the government’s chokehold on power.

  It’s George Orwell’s 1984 on a global scale.

  As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, Orwell’s dystopian nightmare has become our looming reality.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/20/2023 – 00:00

• Long Chinese Stocks Seen Among Most-Crowded Trades
  Long Chinese Stocks Seen Among Most-Crowded Trades

  By Ye Xie, Bloomberg markets live reporter and analyst

  What a difference two months can make. In November, selling short Chinese stocks was considered by fund managers in a Bank of America survey as one of the most crowded trades. Now, bullish bets on Chinese equities made the list. It underscores the tremendous volatility Chinese assets have endured in recent months.

  The BofA survey published this week showed that 12% of investors believed going long Chinese equities was one of the most-popular positions in global markets. It trailed only long-dollar and long-ESG positions, which garnered 32% and 17% of the votes, respectively. Two months ago, fund managers considered betting against Chinese stocks to be the second-most crowded trade after long-dollar positions.

  

  The 180-degree shift in sentiment is hardly a surprise. Until late October, investors had been dumping Chinese assets as Covid restrictions sank the economy and President Xi Jinping installed his loyalists to the top leadership at the Party Congress. Over the past two months, China abandoned the Covid Zero policy, propped up the ailing housing market and turned more supportive on tech companies. Since hitting the lowest since 2009 in late October, the Hang Seng Index has jumped 48% in dollar terms as the best performer among the world’s major stock benchmarks.

  A crowded position is generally viewed as a negative. When many investors are positioned the same way, there’s no marginal new buyers to push the market higher. And when the fundamental story changes and everyone heads for the exit, it exacerbates the selloff.

  So should we be worried about investors being too sanguine? Not necessarily.

  On the positioning front, the BofA survey does show fund managers are “unabashedly bullish” on China. A net 91% of fund managers expect a stronger Chinese economy, the highest percentage in 17 years.

  

  In a separate survey of Asian managers, 42% said they are overweight China, up from 14% in October. In addition, 90% of them think Chinese stocks can deliver positive returns this year, even if US equities fall.

  Still, it’s debatable whether the perception of China being crowded is accurate. While Asian investors are more bullish, US investors haven’t been fully on board with the “everything is great” narrative. A recent Morgan Stanley analysis showed that American fund managers have actually kept their underweight positions on China unchanged in recent months.

  

  Secondly, there’s no clear catalyst to threaten the China recovery narrative when people are just returning to their work and when the policy objective is to get the economy going again. Until the recovery is well underway, it’s hard to prove the markets’ expectations on growth are unreasonable.

  But leaving aside the question of whether the China trade is crowded or not, the volatility that the Chinese markets has shown over the past year clearly reduces the attractiveness for long-term investors.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/19/2023 – 23:40

• After Teacher Shot By 6-Year-Old, Staff And Parents Blame Tolerance Of Violent Kids
  After Teacher Shot By 6-Year-Old, Staff And Parents Blame Tolerance Of Violent Kids

  Shock over the shooting of a teacher by a 6-year-old in Newport News, Virginia has turned into anger, as both parents and staff say district officials tolerate violent students to bolster school ratings. 

  On Jan. 6, a first-grader fired a single pistol shot at his 24-year-old teacher, Abby Zwermer. A bullet passed through her hand and into her chest, sending her to a hospital with a life-threatening wound. Last week, school officials say a staff member searched the shooter’s backback earlier that morning — after someone tipped them to the possibility he was armed — but didn’t find the weapon. 

  Tuesday brought the first board meeting of Newport News Public Schools since the incident — and a stream of angry teachers and parents took to the podium to condemn a culture in which the pursuit of favorable district statistics means fostering an increasingly dangerous environment.  

  

  Former school psychologist Amber Thomas left the district after a 10-year career.  “A school counselor and I were often called to intervene with explosive behaviors, and the administrator would see what was going on and turn around and walk the other way,” Thomas told the board. 

  “We see students being assaulted (and) we see teachers being assaulted…daily,” said elementary teacher Djifa Lee. “[Disciplinary] referrals are so closely tied to accreditation, and this puts educators and office staff or administrators in a tough position.”

  A former employee told WAVY that, on multiple occasions, she initiated disciplinary referrals, but administrators failed to schedule follow-up meetings with parents and teachers. She says peers had similar experiences. 

  “Every day in every one of our schools, teachers, students and other staff members are being hurt,” said high school librarian Nicole Cooke. “Every day, they’re hit. They’re bitten. They’re beaten. And [violent children] are allowed to stay so that our numbers look good.”

  In a November board meeting, the district touted a 40% decline in disciplinary incidents and a 19% decrease in students being removed from instruction.  

  “Ask any teacher in this school division why discipline incidents decline, and I have a feeling the response will be the same: Infraction numbers are down because incidents are not always officially reported,” said Cindy Connell, a middle school teacher in the district. 

  Wary of officials’ focus on making the district’s statistics look better, Sarah Marchese, president of a high school Parent Teacher Student Association, asked for an external investigation of the disciplinary policies to be reviewed by an outside, impartial party. 

  “Our administrators are under an intense pressure to make everything appear better than it is in reality,” Connell told AP.

  The incident was the third shooting in the district since September 2021. “Enough is enough. What will it take? I pray it is not a fourth shooting, because that blood will be on your hands,” said parent John Krikorian. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/19/2023 – 23:20

• CDC Knowingly Left Serious Adverse Events Off Post-Vaccination Surveys, Documents Show
  CDC Knowingly Left Serious Adverse Events Off Post-Vaccination Surveys, Documents Show

  Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) didn’t include serious adverse events like heart inflammation on post-vaccination surveys even though the agency knew the issues could be linked to COVID-19 vaccines, documents show.

  

  Even before the surveys were rolled out in December 2020 after the first vaccines were authorized, the CDC knew that myocarditis—a form of heart inflammation since confirmed as being caused by the Pfizer and Moderna shots—and other serious adverse events were of “special interest” when it came to the vaccines, according to a newly disclosed version of the protocol for the survey system.

  The Nov. 19, 2020, protocol (pdf) for V-safe, the survey system, lists myocarditis, stroke, death, and a dozen “prespecified medical conditions.” The protocol was obtained by the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), a nonprofit that seeks transparency around health information. All of the conditions can cause severe symptoms.

  V-safe is a system of surveys that was introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic to monitor vaccine safety. It was developed and is managed by the CDC.

  Updated versions of the protocol list the same 15 adverse events.

  None of the conditions were included in the actual surveys.

  Respondents could check boxes if they experienced certain symptoms, but only 10 lower-level problems such as fever and nausea were listed as options.

  “It’s deeply troubling that the CDC would construct V-safe in a manner that does not permit it to be able to easily assess the rate of harm from adverse events the CDC had already identified as potentially being caused by these products,” Aaron Siri, a lawyer representing ICAN, told The Epoch Times. “This calls into question what the CDC was really trying to accomplish with V-safe. Was it trying to assess the actual safety of these products? Or was it trying to design a system that would be more likely to affirm its previous public pronouncements regarding the safety of these products?”

  The CDC did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

  V-Safe Data Finally Made Public

  The CDC rolled V-safe out in December 2020. Americans were told to use the surveys, which are only available through smartphones, to report how they felt after vaccination.

  “Through V-safe, you can quickly tell CDC if you have any side effects after getting the COVID-19 vaccine,” one poster promoting the tool stated.

  Users were asked how they felt, whether they had a fever, their temperature, and common symptoms. They were also asked whether they were unable to work or go about their daily activities, and whether they needed medical care.

  About 10 million people signed up through July 31, 2022.

  The CDC has described the results of V-safe in multiple studies, but refused to release the raw data until ICAN brought litigation against it. Data released to ICAN in October 2022 showed that more than 3.2 million people sought medical attention or missed school, work, or other normal activities following vaccination.

  The CDC posted some of the v-safe data on Dec. 1, 2022, several months after a self-imposed deadline passed.

  Hiding Free-Text Entries

  V-safe users could report the serious adverse events, but only if they wrote them out in a free-text field.

  The prompt was, “Any other symptoms or health conditions you want to report.”

  The CDC has resisted releasing the results from the field, insisting that it would be too onerous to review the 6.8 million entries for personally identifiable information (PII), according to a joint status report made to the court in November 2022.

  The agency declined a request from ICAN to provide a random sample of a few hundred entries, which plaintiffs say would back their argument that the entries likely hold little or no PII such as names and addresses.

  The entries are important because they would show how many respondents reported experiencing the prespecified adverse events like heart inflammation.

  The CDC instead offered to review all the entries and convert them into medical codes, according to the filing.

  “It was apparently willing to do this because, even though it would have been more time consuming and complex then simply reviewing for PII, this approach would permit the CDC to hide from the public most of what is actually written in the free-text fields,” ICAN said in the document.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/19/2023 – 23:00

• US Finalizing Next Ukraine Military Aid Package At $2.6 Billion
  US Finalizing Next Ukraine Military Aid Package At $2.6 Billion

  The US is in the final stages of preparing a massive new military aid package to Ukraine which will total as much as $2.6 billion, the Associated Press previewed Wednesday night, and its to include nearly 100 Stryker combat vehicles – marking the first time the Stryker will be introduced to the Ukrainian battlefield – and at least 50 Bradley Fighting Vehicles.

  

  It could be announced by the end of the week, and is expected to rank among the biggest single packages unveiled since the start of the war. When pressed for further details, State Department spokesman Ned Price simply said, “Two words: stay tuned.”

  Similar to Bradley vehicles, the Stryker moves infantry across the battlefield, but are lighter and faster than the Bradley. “What we’re trying to look at is the mix of armored and mechanized forces that make sense,” undersecretary of defense for policy Colin Kahl said separately on Wednesday.

  “The Russians are really digging in. They’re digging in. They’re digging trenches, they’re putting in these dragon’s teeth, laying mines. They’re really trying to fortify that that FLOT, that forward line of troops,” Kahl continued.

  “To enable the Ukrainians to break through given Russian defenses, the emphasis has been shifted to enabling them to combine fire and maneuver in a way that will prove to be more effective.”

  But the real question is whether Washington will sign off on going past the ‘light tanks’ or mere troop carriers that it has currently limited itself to providing. The Scholz government of Germany surprised allies this week in saying it’s ready to approve sending German-manufactured Leopard tanks to Ukraine only if Washington leads the way in approving its own heavy tanks.

  “Germany won’t allow allies to ship German-made tanks to Ukraine to help its defense against Russia nor send its own systems unless the U.S. agrees to send American-made battle tanks, senior German officials said on Wednesday,” according to The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.

  But given Berlin knew that the Biden administration has shut the door on approving American M1 Abrams (at least for now), this could have been a ploy to effectively end the debate and take the pressure off the Scholz government.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/19/2023 – 22:40

• Another Power Substation Damaged By Alleged Gunfire: Officials
  Another Power Substation Damaged By Alleged Gunfire: Officials

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Another power substation in North Carolina was damaged due to alleged gunfire—the third such incident in recent weeks—officials have confirmed.

  

  EnergyUnited said officials discovered an “equipment issue” at the Pleasant Hill Substation in Thomasville on Jan. 17. Thomasville is about an hour from Moore County, where two other substations were damaged.

  When crew members were sent to investigate the matter, they “discovered damage to the substation transformer from an apparent gunshot,” the firm said. “The damage was quickly assessed and contained to mitigate the impact to members in the Pleasant Hill area and law enforcement officials were notified.”

  Customers who are served by the Pleasant Hill Substation didn’t experience any power outages due to the damage, EnergyUnited added. The Randolph County Sheriff’s Office said that investigators canvassed the station and later said they believe the shooting occurred at around 3 a.m. local time on Jan. 17.

  The FBI and North Carolina State Bureau of Investigations were notified about the alleged gunfire, the sheriff’s office said. Investigations are ongoing.

  “The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force responded to conduct a parallel investigation,” the statement also said. No suspects have been named, and no arrests were made.

  “EnergyUnited continually strives to deliver safe, reliable energy to its members,” Steve McCachern, vice president of energy delivery for EnergyUnited, said in a statement. “While we are glad that our members did not experience any service interruptions, we take this matter very seriously and are currently investigating the incident.”

  On Dec. 3, 2022, gunshots were fired at two substations in Moore County that left some 45,000 customers without power for several days. In that case, no suspects have been apprehended and no motive has been disclosed.

  Officials said that a person or persons drove to the Duke Energy-operated substations and opened fire, causing significant damage. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said at the time that the Moore County incident “raises a new level of threat” while adding that federal and state officials are working to “harden our infrastructure where that’s necessary and work to prevent future damage.”

  Duke Energy spokesperson Jeff Brooks said in a news conference last month that damage was done to major equipment.

  “Some of this equipment does take a significant amount of work [to be installed]” he said. New substation equipment must be handled carefully and tested before it’s ready to serve the grid.

  

  Around the same time, the Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin warning of a “heightened threat environment” ahead of the Christmas holiday season. Faith-based institutions, government buildings, U.S. infrastructure, schools, and public gatherings could be targeted by groups with “a range of ideological beliefs” and “personal grievances,” the agency said on Nov. 30, 2022.

  Nevada Incident

  Earlier in January, officials in Nevada said a man was facing terrorism-related charges after driving his car to a solar power plant, dousing it with gasoline, and setting it on fire. An employee told local media that the fire caused “major damage” and estimated it would take two years to receive replacement parts.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/19/2023 – 22:20

• Project Veritas Exposes Non-Profit That Hides Critical Race Theory In School Curriculum
  Project Veritas Exposes Non-Profit That Hides Critical Race Theory In School Curriculum

  The conflict over Critical Race Theory in schools boils down to two basic responses from the political left – They claim that there is no such thing as “CRT” in the way that conservatives see it, and that the accusation it is being used to indoctrinate young children is a “right wing conspiracy theory.”  Or, when they get caught they claim CRT is nothing more than an accurate portrayal of American history inclusive to minorities that has been suppressed because of “bigotry.” 

  For years the former argument, that CRT does not exist and is not taught in school curriculum, has been the primary argument. 

  Critical Race Theory is the mostly faulty theory that western society today is built on a foundation of systemic racism.  Its root assertion is that all American accomplishments over the past few centuries are owed to slavery and the exploitation of minorities.  In other words, we have to abandon our past because it is inherently racist and “evil” and start over – Using the political left’s ideals as a framework, of course.

  CRT is a product of the Marxist concept of deconstruction.  The purpose of such products is to dismantle the foundations and historical relationships of a target society, to make people hate their own heritage so that they are easier to manipulate towards a new leftist Utopian standard.

  States like Florida have begun to actively monitor school textbooks and curriculum to identify a possible invasion of CRT and other woke propaganda.  This has led to a flurry of angry attacks from leftists, who say it is paranoia akin to “book burning” and censorship.  The accusation is hypocritical considering the left’s rampant censorship over the past few years, but whenever they react so viciously to a simple thing like a state government checking the contents of textbooks before they buy them with public tax dollars, then you know that state is hovering very close to something leftists don’t want them to discover.

  Florida found CRT and leftist propaganda in at least 41% of the textbooks slated to be purchased by the state for the coming school year, and they gave numerous examples of CRT related content as the media attacked.  With red states starting to vet curriculum, leftists are attempting to hide their ideology more carefully using “non-profit” curriculum creators as middle men that can get around state laws.  

  Project Veritas recently exposed one of these non-profit groups in Georgia, called The Teaching Lab, and how they inject CRT into public schools by “not calling it CRT” and selling textbooks and other products directly to school districts without the state knowing the contents.  

  An important detail to note here is that Teaching Lab employee Quintin Bostic admits that their products are indeed CRT.  Also, he admits that the group is funded by very rich establishment leftists including MacKenzie Scott, now ex-wife of Amazon mogul Jeff Bezos.  

  The intrusion of political activism into the American school system is a fundamental violation of the public trust and of state law in many places.  It is unacceptable for children to be targeted for ideological indoctrination in school when they are supposed to be taught basic academics.  Imparting to young people the ability to function and succeed in adulthood is a key task of the public school system; instead leftists see schools as rich hunting grounds for conversion.  In this way, they destroy the future of the country by replacing useful knowledge and skills with brainwashing and cultism.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/19/2023 – 22:00

• Bovard: Will The Corrupt FBI Come To Biden's Rescue?
  Bovard: Will The Corrupt FBI Come To Biden’s Rescue?

  Authored by Jim Bovard,

  The White House is being whipsawed by the discovery of secret documents from President Joe Biden’s vice presidency recklessly stored around his garage, his Delaware house and his rented Washington office. The appointment of a special counsel to investigate Biden’s classified-document violations could imperil the president’s survival. But Biden may be saved by the charades the FBI concocted to rescue Hillary Clinton.

  But breaking news Tuesday night revealed the investigation may already be turning into a farce. Amazingly, the Justice Department is permitting Biden’s personal lawyers to control the evidence — without the FBI.

  Federal law penalizes the removal or mishandling of classified documents via “gross negligence” by up to 10 years in prison. The number of clearly marked confidential documents discovered on Biden’s turfs is up to 20 — all of which were supposedly “inadvertently misplaced” (for at least six years), per White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

  It looks bad — but the FBI got Hillary out of a worse legal tar pit.

  Clinton’s presidential campaign was roiled by the disclosure she’d used an insecure private email server to handle top-secret documents while she was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. In 2015, the FBI Counterintelligence Division opened a criminal investigation of the “potential unauthorized storage of classified information on an unauthorized system.”

  The FBI treated Clinton and her coterie like royalty worthy of endless deference, according to a 2018 report by the Justice Department inspector general. The FBI agreed to destroy the laptops of top Clinton aides after a limited examination of their contents (including a promise not to examine any post-Jan. 31, 2015, emails or content). When BleachBit software and hammers were used to destroy email evidence under congressional subpoena, the FBI treated it as a harmless error.

  The IG criticized federal investigators for relying on “rapport building” with Team Hillary instead of using subpoenas to compel the discovery of key evidence. The IG recommended possible disciplinary penalties for five FBI employees who sent blatant anti-Trump texts (some of those agents later staffed special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of President Donald Trump).

  FBI investigators shrugged off every brazen deceit they encountered. The IG report quoted an unnamed FBI agent responding to a fellow agent’s question on how an interview went with a witness who worked with the Clintons at their Chappaqua residence: “Awesome. Lied his ass off. Went from never inside the scif [sensitive compartmented information facility for classified documents] at res [residence], to looked in when it was being constructed, to removed the trash twice, to troubleshot the secure fax with HRC a couple times, to everytime there was a secure fax i did it with HRC. Ridic.”

  The agency waited until the end of the investigation in July 2016 to question Clinton and refused to videotape that crucial interview. Bizarrely, the FBI planned to absolve her “absent a confession” by Clinton during the interview, the IG report noted.

  There was no question of whether Clinton violated federal law, since she received numerous classified emails marked with “(C)” on her private server. The IG report notes, “According to the [FBI memo] from Clinton’s interview, Clinton told the FBI that she did not know what the ‘(C)’ meant and ‘speculated it was a reference to paragraphs ranked in alphabetical order.’”

  The report declared, “Witnesses told us, and contemporaneous emails show, that the FBI and Department officials who attended Clinton’s interview found that her claim that she did not understand the significance of the ‘(C)’ marking strained credulity. [FBI] Agent 1 stated, ‘I filed that in the bucket of hard-to-impossible to believe.’”

  Shortly after that interview, FBI chief James Comey publicly announced that “no charges are appropriate” because Hillary didn’t intend to violate a federal law that had no intent requirement.

  Comey told the inspector general, “By her demeanor, she was credible and open and all that kind of stuff” in her interview.

  

  A video recording of the showdown (especially that alphabet line) would have enabled Americans to judge both Clinton and the FBI. But minimizing disclosures maximized the arbitrary power of Comey and other FBI officials in a landmark political case.

  House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) Friday condemned Biden’s “three strikes against transparency” and declared it was “alarming” that “Biden aides were combing through documents knowing there would be a special counsel appointed.” Some Republicans, including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, are clamoring for full FBI raids of Biden properties.

  Unfortunately, there may be no reliable way to conduct a full, honest search when the suspect is the most powerful individual in the land. Why expect the FBI to be more honest with Biden’s secret stashes than with Hunter Biden’s laptop?

  Perhaps the investigation will be “fixed” even before the FBI arrives on the scene. After illegally stored confidential documents in Biden’s DC office turned up, the Justice Department prevented FBI agents from being present for searches at his other locales. Instead, Biden’s personal attorneys were permitted to check out the properties and trusted to report if they found any more evidence incriminating their boss, The Wall Street Journal reported late Tuesday.

  Democrats are boasting that Biden is “cooperating” with the investigation. But why wouldn’t he “cooperate” when the Justice Department is letting Biden’s tools control the evidence?

  The Journal said law-enforcement officials justified keeping the FBI out of the investigation to “preserve the [Justice Dept.] ability to take a tougher line, including executing a future search warrant, if negotiations ever turned hostile.” As with the Hillary Clinton investigation, “rapport building” is trumping finding smoking guns.

  The FBI’s treatment of Hillary Clinton vivifies how far federal law enforcement will twist the law to absolve the nation’s political elite. Will the latest Biden scandal be dead-ended by the old Roman question, “Who guards the guardians”?

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/19/2023 – 21:40

• Traders Book Huge Profits By Mixing, Reselling Cheap Russian Oil
  Traders Book Huge Profits By Mixing, Reselling Cheap Russian Oil

  A ban on Russian crude oil by the European Union and the US went into effect late last year, forcing Russia to find more buyers in the eastern part of the world. Besides China’s and India’s surging appetite for Russian crude imports, a flood of cheap oil is pouring into Singapore. It’s being blended and then re-exported globally as traders reap huge profits. Recall that Russian energy products were sold to China and repackaged for European markets last summer. 

  Before Russia invaded Ukraine, Europe was Moscow’s largest crude and refined petroleum products customer. But those days are over as Western sanctions forced Russia to rejigger its energy supply chains towards the East. 

  Moscow realized besides expanding pipelines to Asia and elsewhere, which could take years to develop infrastructure to increase flows, a fleet of shadow tankers would be its best bet to transport the oil. 

  Now demand is soaring in Singapore for storage tanks as inexpensive Russian crude finds a home, according to Bloomberg. 

  Tank space in the city-state is being snapped up due to a rise in interest and profits from mixing cheap fuel supplies from Russia with shipments from other sources, according to an executive from a tank operator and a consultant who advises traders on the matter. This process can help to obscure the cargoes’ origins, they said.

  Unlike many Western countries, Singapore has yet to ban Russian oil or petroleum products, although banks based in the country are prohibited from financing or dealing directly with Russian countries. 

  In the coming weeks, Europe prepares to enforce new sanctions on Russian petroleum products, which will only increase Russia-to-Asia flows that will be pushed to hubs like ones in Singapore, mixing cheap Russian fuels with other sources for re-distribution globally. 

  “We have observed an increase in the number of inquiries of short/spot-term storage in the period leading up to December,” a spokesman for oil storage company Advario Asia Pacific said via e-mail.

  Six-month leases for Singapore fuel oil or crude oil storage jumped by as much as 20% last year, according to local tank operator firms, including Advario, Jurong Port, Horizon, and Royal Vopak. 

  

  Ship tracking data by Vortexa Ltd. showed oil-receiving terminals more than doubled volumes of Russian naphtha and fuel oil in December versus a year ago. Terminals received 2.6 million barrels of naphtha, nearly 40 times higher than the volume one year ago. 

  

  Russian naphtha sitting in Singapore tank farms is being quickly re-exported to other Asia markets, according to Armaan Ashraf, global head of natural gas liquids at industry consultant FGE. 

  William Tan, senior vice president of fuel consultancy Miyabi Industries, said Singapore tank farm storage is becoming very popular with traders taking in cheap Russian crude, blending it, and exporting it elsewhere for “very good” profit margins. He said traders are reaping 20% profit margins. 

  Russia will need to expand its shadow fleet tankers as energy supply chains are rejiggered because of Western sanctions. Traders are capitalizing on these new trade flows. Still, the West has yet to cripple Russia but only bring forward a world where energy is traded in anything but dollars.  

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/19/2023 – 21:20

• US Considering Helping Ukraine Strike Crimea
  US Considering Helping Ukraine Strike Crimea

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  The New York Times reported Wednesday that the US is warming to the idea of helping Ukraine strike Crimea, something the Biden administration has previously avoided due to the risk of provoking a major response from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

  Citing unnamed US officials, the report said that after months of discussions with Ukrainian officials, the administration is now “starting to concede that Kyiv may need the power to strike the Russian sanctuary, even if such a move increases the risk of escalation.”

  

  President Biden is still holding off sending the longer-range missiles that could hit targets in Crimea that Ukraine is seeking. But the US is discussing with Ukrainian officials how to attack the land bridge to Crimea Russia has secured for itself using US-provided weapons, such as US-provided HIMARS rocket systems and Bradley Fighting Vehicles.

  The US, for the first time, pledged to send 50 Bradleys in a possibly $3 billion weapons package that was announced earlier this month. The Bradleys could potentially help Ukraine go on the offensive, and a US official said the HIMARS could be used to hit Russian supply lines coming out of Crimea from Ukraine’s line in Kherson.

  A senior US official told the Times that US and Ukrainian officials are set to meet in Germany this week to wargame out a potential offensive against Russia in southern Ukraine. But the report said that even with the additional military aid, the Biden administration doesn’t think Ukraine can actually take Crimea from Russia.

  The US thinking is that Crimea needs to be under threat to give Ukraine leverage for any future negotiations. Even though the risk of escalation is extremely high, US officials said there has been a “dampening of fears that targeting Crimea would drive Mr. Putin to use a tactical nuclear weapon.”

  The lessening concern about Putin resorting to nukes appears to be based only on the fact that he hasn’t used any up to this point. This reflects a December report from The Times of London that said the Pentagon was tacitly backing Ukrainian attacks inside Russia because Putin didn’t respond to earlier attacks with a tactical nuclear weapon or by attacking NATO territory.

  The New York Times report quoted Dara Massicot, a researcher from the RAND Corporation, who claimed that “Crimea has already been hit many times without a massive escalation from the Kremlin.” But Massicot’s claim is false as Russia began launching missile strikes on vital Ukrainian infrastructure in response to the October truck bombing of the Crimean Bridge.

  Can’t shake the feeling that we’re slowly creeping into WW3 without any serious consideration of consequences or alternatives.

  A series of small escalations will eventually discover the location of the hidden threshold that, once crossed, plunges the whole world into chaos. https://t.co/zqzy2ZFIAw

  — Edward L Hamilton (@EdwardLHamilton) January 19, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Before the bridge bombing, Russia didn’t launch large-scale attacks on infrastructure in Ukraine, but now such bombardments have become routine, and millions of Ukrainians are struggling to power and heat their homes.

  US officials admit that they don’t know how Putin would respond to the US supporting Ukrainian attacks on Crimea. Putin has previously warned he could use nuclear weapons to protect Russia’s “territorial integrity,” and Russia’s military doctrine allows for the use of nuclear weapons if the country faces an “existential threat.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/19/2023 – 21:00

• Auto Crisis Worsens As Rate Of Severely Delinquent Loans Hits 2009 Levels
  Auto Crisis Worsens As Rate Of Severely Delinquent Loans Hits 2009 Levels

  An alarming number of Americans with auto loans are struggling to make monthly payments. Auto loan performance saw further deterioration in December, and loan delinquencies jumped. Of all loans, severely delinquent ones have reached the highest rate since the financial crisis about 15 years ago. 

  Recall last month. We pointed out the auto sector finds itself at a critical inflection point as a crushing auto loan crisis nears. The note was titled “Perfect Storm Arrives: “Massive Wave” Of Car Repossessions And Loan Defaults To Trigger Auto Market Disaster, Cripple US Economy.” It provides readers with a roadmap and how the dominos might fall in triggering what Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently warned: “Potentially, the biggest financial crisis ever.” 

  New bone-chilling data via Cox Automotive sheds light on the rapidly deteriorating auto loan market. The report said loans delinquent by more than two months increased by 5.3% and jumped 26.7% from a year ago.

  People are not paying their car loans.

  Auto loans delinquent (overdue) by MORE than 60 days are now up *26.7%* from a year ago.

  Not a crisis just yet but watch this trend closely.

  — CarDealershipGuy (@GuyDealership) January 17, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  And here’s where the alarm bells start sounding:

  Of all loans, 1.84% were severely delinquent, which was an increase from 1.74% in November and the highest rate since February 2009.

   In December, 7.11% of subprime loans were severely delinquent, increasing from 6.75% the prior month. The subprime severe delinquency rate was 163 basis points higher than a year ago, and the December rate was the highest in the data series back to 2006.

  Cox Automotive said even though an increasing amount of people are missing loan payments — this has yet to manifest into defaults:

   Loan defaults declined 13.5% from November but were up 16.9% from a year ago. The annualized auto loan default rate in December was 2.56%, which was lower than the 2.98% rate in December 2019. The default rate in 2022 was 2.28%, up from a low of 1.98% last year but still lower than the 2.90% rate in 2019.

  And perhaps the reason why defaults have yet to surge is that lenders don’t consider the borrower to be in default until 90 to 120 days late of insufficient payments. This might suggest that a default wave could be hitting over the next few quarters as consumers are tapped out by 20 months of negative real wave growth, depleted personal savings, and maxed-out credit cards. All those folks who bought cars they didn’t need nor could afford with +$1,000 monthly payments during Covid will be financially ruined when the next recession hits. 

   

   

   

   

   

   

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/19/2023 – 20:40

• The Great Dropout: Why 1.4 Million Children Left Public Schools In 2020 And Where They Went
  The Great Dropout: Why 1.4 Million Children Left Public Schools In 2020 And Where They Went

  Authored by Lawrence Wilson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Over a million children left public schools in 2020, a migration that came on the heels of school lockdowns and masking requirements, and was hastened by increased parental dissatisfaction with K-12 education.

  

  Enrollment in U.S. public schools declined by 1.4 million students between fall 2019 and fall 2020, dipping to 49.4 million, a loss of nearly 3 percent, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

  The decline may be closer to 2 million, according to a report by Education Next showing that traditional public school enrollment as a percentage of all school enrollment declined sharply between 2020 and 2022.

  Enrollment in traditional public schools fell from 81 to 76.5 percent of total enrollment during that period, while enrollment in public charter schools, private schools, and homeschooling grew by a combined 4.5 percent.

  Those numbers indicate that nearly 2 million students left traditional public schools for other educational options over the previous three years.

  In many cases, the disruption in learning due to COVID-19 policies was the catalyst many parents needed to make the jump away from public schools to charter schools, private schools, and homeschooling.

  Based on recent enrollment figures and the comfort many parents express with their decision to opt out of public schools, it appears the missing millions will not return.

  Dissatisfaction With Learning

  Parent satisfaction with K-12 education plunged between 2019 and 2022, according to GALLUP. Prior to the onset of COVID-19, 51 percent of parents said they were either completely or somewhat satisfied with their child’s education. Three years later, that satisfaction level was 42 percent, the lowest in over 20 years.

  

  Nearly a quarter of Americans, 23 percent, said they were completely dissatisfied with their child’s education.

  Parent interviews conducted by The Epoch Times revealed that distance learning during school lockdowns provided a glimpse into the classroom that made parents question their school’s ability to educate their children.

  “For a while, [our kids] were getting homework assigned to them by their teachers … but there was no teaching going on,” Matt Mohler of Tallahassee, Florida, said. He moved his children from a highly public school to a classical charter school in the fall of 2020.

  “Once a week they’d all get together on a classroom call, and that was the extent of what the teachers were doing. We realized that we weren’t getting a lot of effort out of the teachers.”

  “The distance learning was eye-opening,” said Maria Nicholas of Whittier, California, who began homeschooling her son in the fall of 2021. She said she would not have considered homeschooling if not for the lockdown, but seeing how her middle-school son thrived while at home rather than in the classroom was a factor in her decision.

  Shireen Qudosi of Orange County, California, took her autistic son out of public school in October 2020. “There wasn’t even a functioning curriculum in place, which access into the classroom through remote learning confirmed.”

  Mask and Vaccine Requirements

  In January 2022, 65 percent of public schools tracked by data site Burbio had student masking requirements. Parent and student protests against mandatory masking erupted that month in New York, California, and Massachusetts.

  The combination of public school mask policies and state vaccine mandates drove some parents to seek alternatives.

  Longtime home-schooler Christine Hamman saw an influx of parents to her home-school group during the last two years. “COVID added people who are anti-vax and anti-masking,” she said. “Mostly, parents didn’t want their kids masked for six hours a day.”

  “When SB 276 was signed, we realized we’d be homeschooling all of our children,” said Sara Cruz, speaking of a California law expanding vaccine requirements for schoolchildren. Cruz began home-schooling during the current school year.

  “I’m on the other end of this spectrum,” Nicholas said.

  “I’m for it, and I would like more people to have it,” she said, but seeing the number of people unmasked and unvaccinated at her school caused concern for her son’s health. “I thought they weren’t doing enough to keep the kids safe,” she said, which was a factor in her choice to withdraw.

  

  Other reasons for leaving public schools included concern over appropriate teaching on social issues like sex, gender, and drug abuse, as well as student safety.

  Parents don’t want their children exposed to the “radical indoctrination that the public schools are doing,” J. Allen Weston, Executive Director of the American Home School Association, told The Epoch Times.

  “The school had a ‘Say No to Drugs’ campaign, but they were going into detail on what drugs were out there,” Mohler said, speaking of his daughter’s second-grade class.

  “If they’re going to learn about that, they’re going to learn about that from me.”

  Other parents expressed concern over bullying, the stress created by active-shooter drills, and the availability of sexual content on smartphones carried by other students.

  Where They Went

  Most parents who opted out of public schools over the last few years chose other educational options for their kids. Homeschooling was the choice for many, though the number of children enrolled is difficult to estimate.

  “It is impossible to know the exact numbers because more than half of the states do not require parents to register as homeschoolers. Or if they are required, then the state does not keep count,” Weston said. He reported that his organization grew by a factor of 20 over the last three years.

  Heather Martinson, the founder of Celebration Education home-school co-op, told The Epoch Times the Facebook group for homeschoolers in her area tripled to 12,000 members since January 2020.

  Public charter schools, which had more than doubled to 3.4 million in the preceding decade, enrolled another 270,000 students between 2019 and 2021, according to the National Association of Public Charter Schools (NAPCS).

  

  Private school enrollment grew as well, adding over 500,000 in 2020 reach 11.1 million, according to data site Statista. A study by the CATO Institute shows that more private schools gained enrollment than lost it during 2020-21.

  Some students who left public schools in 2020 entered the workforce. About 2 million students dropped out of high school that year, according to NCES.

  In 2017, the NCES found that 47 percent of high school dropouts were employed. If the percentage remained similar in 2020, that would mean over 900,000 students left school for work that year.

  Other Shifts

  Though not reflected in national totals, public school enrollment in large cities has been in decline for up to 20 years in some cases. These losses appear to be driven more by demographic changes than by parents opting out of public schools.

  Enrollment in Denver public schools dropped 3 percent from 2019 to 2021, a change driven in part by low birth rates and a shrinking population, according to education news site Chalkbeat.

  New York City’s public school enrollment decreased by some 38,000 students in 2020, but 9,376 of them simply crossed the river to New Jersey according to the website Gothamist. More than 5,100 students moved from New York to Pennsylvania that year, and another 5,600 to Florida.

  Also, the population of New York state was in decline during that time. The state lost over 350,000 to domestic migration between July 2020 and July 2021.

  Enrollment in Los Angeles public schools has dropped 42 percent since the early 2000s, according to the online publication EdSource. LA Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho told journalists in July that recent losses are attributable partly to people moving to other states because of political ideology or the desire for lower taxes.

  Return Unlikely

  Relatively few students who withdrew from public school in 2020 have returned so far. Public school enrollment rebounded just 0.2 percent in 2021, including first-time enrollees, and remains at its lowest level since 2010.

  Parents who made the choice to withdraw from public school during the last two years are highly satisfied with their choice, according to a report from NAPCS.

  Nearly 90 percent of families who changed school types experienced a positive change as a result of the switch, with 57 percent saying their child was happier, according to NAPCS.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/19/2023 – 20:20

• Egg Seizures Skyrocket At US Border As Arbitrageurs Attempt To Capitalize On Poultry Crisis
  Egg Seizures Skyrocket At US Border As Arbitrageurs Attempt To Capitalize On Poultry Crisis

  America’s egg shortage worsens by the week. Supermarkets nationwide are running out of eggs as prices hyperinflate. Egg arbitrage is rising as people attempt to smuggle egg and poultry products across Mexico–US border for resale in the States where they can reap hefty profits. 

  Eggs in rural Mexico!
  100.00 pesos = USD 5.33 for a flat
  3.80 pesos for six eggs = .20 cents USD
  I think I need to get into the egg smuggling business! pic.twitter.com/6Qk7JEfctS

  — Eric S Neitzel (@EricNeitzel) January 15, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  US Customs and Border Protection reported a 108% increase in egg and poultry seizures at land ports on the border from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31. The uptick in egg smuggling comes as retail prices erupt in the US as the avian flu forced producers to cull tens of millions of birds and egg-laying hens over the last year. 

  “My advice is, don’t bring them over. 

  “If you fail to declare them or try to smuggle them, you face civil penalties,” said CBP Supervisory Agriculture Specialist Charles Payne

  Egg seizures are so rampant that CBP tweeted that smugglers will be slapped with $10,000 fines. 

  The San Diego Field Office has recently noticed an increase in the number of eggs intercepted at our ports of entry. As a reminder, uncooked eggs are prohibited entry from Mexico into the U.S. Failure to declare agriculture items can result in penalties of up to $10,000. pic.twitter.com/ukMUvyKDmL

  — Director of Field Operations Jennifer De La O (@DFOSanDiegoCA) January 18, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  People have realized there are huge profits in buying a 30-count carton of eggs at $3.40 in Juarez, Mexico, and reselling them in the US. 

  

  It’s only a matter of time before cartels figure out about this lucrative trade. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/19/2023 – 20:00

• …And Now, The Facebook Files: Emails Reveal The CDC's Role In Silencing COVID-19 Dissent
  …And Now, The Facebook Files: Emails Reveal The CDC’s Role In Silencing COVID-19 Dissent

  Authored by Robby Soave via Reason.com,

  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) played a direct role in policing permissible speech on social media throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Confidential emails obtained by Reason show that Facebook moderators were in constant contact with the CDC, and routinely asked government health officials to vet claims relating to the virus, mitigation efforts such as masks, and vaccines.

  

  For a broader analysis of the federal government’s pandemic-era efforts to suppress free speech—and whether they violated the First Amendment—see Reason‘s March 2023 cover story on the ramifications of these emails. This article provides screenshots of the emails themselves.

  After Elon Musk took control of Twitter, he permitted several independent journalists to peruse the company’s previous communications with the FBI, the CDC, the White House, and government officials elsewhere. These disclosures, which have become known as the Twitter Files, reveal that government bureaucrats put substantial pressure on Twitter to restrict alleged misinformation relating to elections, Hunter Biden, and COVID-19.

  The Facebook Files, which were obtained by Reason as a result of the state of Missouri’s lawsuit against the Biden administration, reveal that the CDC had substantial influence over what users were allowed to discuss on Meta’s platforms: Facebook and Instagram.

  The messages reveal an environment where the CDC kept tabs on Meta’s moderation practices and regularly told the company what the agency wanted it to do.

  For instance, in May 2021, CDC officials began routinely vetting claims about COVID-19 vaccines that had appeared on Facebook. The platform left it up to the federal government to determine which assertions were accurate.

  

  Facebook’s moderator notes that some of the above claims “would already be violating”—an implicit admission that the CDC’s opinion on the other claims would be a deciding factor in whether the platform would restrict such content. Facebook was clearly a willing participant in this process; moderators repeatedly thanked the CDC for its “help in debunking.”

  Claims vetted by the CDC included whether “COVID-19 is man-made.” The CDC told Facebook that it was “theoretically possible, but extremely unlikely.”

  

  For months, it was Meta policy to prohibit users from asserting that the pandemic may have originated from a lab leak. The platform revised this policy around the same time that the above email exchange took place.

  By July 2021, the CDC wasn’t just evaluating which claims it thought were false, but whether they could “cause harm.”

  

  Then, in November, the Food and Drug Administration granted emergency authorization for children to receive Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. Meta proudly informed the CDC that it would remove false claims—”i.e. the COVID vaccine is not safe for kids”—from Facebook and Instagram. Meta also provided the CDC with a list of new claims about vaccines and asked whether the government thought they could “contribute to vaccine refusals.”

  

  The CDC determined that this label applied to all such claims.

  

  It’s important to consider the ramifications. Meta gave the CDC de facto power to police COVID-19 misinformation on the platforms; the CDC took the position that essentially any erroneous claim could contribute to vaccine hesitancy and cause social harm. This was a recipe for a vast silencing across Facebook and Instagram, at the federal government’s implicit behest.

  Meta frequently gave the CDC lists of pandemic-related topics that had gone viral, seeking guidance on how to handle them. And the CDC informed Meta “to be on the lookout” for misinformation stemming from specific alleged misconceptions.

  

  Meta also kept the CDC apprised of criticism of Anthony Fauci, the White House’s COVID-19 advisor and head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). One email warned the CDC that Facebook users were mocking Fauci for changing his mind about masking and double-masking. The CDC replied that this information was “very helpful.”

  

  If the tone of Meta’s communications seems overly friendly, it’s worth noting that staffers viewed government employees at the CDC as their “colleagues.” In one email, Meta discussed providing said colleagues with access to a “reporting channel” for COVID-19 misinformation. The list of individuals with access included CDC staff, as well as employees at Reingold, a communications firm advising government health agencies.

  

  This is just a snapshot of the messages exchanged between the CDC and Meta. They also had regular conference calls. The CDC was not the only arm of the federal government engaged in this work, of course: White House staffers also castigated Meta for not deplatforming alleged misinformation fast enough. President Joe Biden himself accused Facebook of “killing people” in July 2021.

  One wonders whether these condemnations, from Biden and others in his administration—which included the specific threat of punitive regulation if demands for greater censorship were not met—influenced Meta’s decision to delegate COVID-19 content moderation to the CDC.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/19/2023 – 19:40

• SHOT Show Roundup: Newest Firearms, Vehicles, Drones For Special Operations Forces
  SHOT Show Roundup: Newest Firearms, Vehicles, Drones For Special Operations Forces

  SHOT Show 2023 kicked off earlier this week. Recall that we combed through Venetian Expo and Caesars Forum in Las Vegas, revealing some of the most innovative products the defense industry has. 

  We came across AeroVironment’s Kamikaze Switchblade drone (infamous since the Biden administration is sending thousands to Ukraine), grounded-based robots with mounted guns, UTVs for special operations forces, anti-drone guns, handheld thermite breaching tools, armored vehicles, high-tech weapons, and much more. 

  As the SHOT Show winds down, we found the last remaining exhibitors with high-tech guns, firearms accessories, vehicles, and/or gear — many of these defense firms have extensive military contracts. 

  One light vehicle used currently by special operations forces was featured at the SWORD Defense Systems exhibit. 

  

  The vehicle was outfitted with drones, multiple side mounts for light machine guns, and a turret on top for a heavy machine gun. 

  

  

  Walking the Venetian floor, we found the US Army’s new submachine gun. 

  

  The Army awarded B&T USA the contract for a submachine — this is the first award the service has made for a submachine in half a century. It’s called the APC9K, beating out SIG Sauer, CZ, PTR, and many more to win the contract. 

  

  In another exhibit, we noticed two fixed-wing drones. 

  

  A South Korean company had a massive drone that could shoot projectiles. 

  

  

  More next-generation military gear. Most everything you’ve seen in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has become a reality. 

  

  Here’s the original ArmaLite rifle, known by many as the AR platform.

  

  Tulsi Gabbard?

  

  All of those pistol-braced firearms will soon have to be registered as short-barrel rifles with the ATF. There was a lot of chatter about the new pistol brace rule at the event. ATF was also present at the event. 

  

  Here’s a special ops vehicle with a mini-gun on top. So it’s a Ford truck. What happened to all those Toyota Hilux?

  

  

  And last but not least, Ghost Gunner’s latest iteration of the CNC mill to finish 80% lowers to completion. 

  

  … and that’s a wrap from us at SHOT Show. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/19/2023 – 19:20

• Major Texas University Blocks Students From Using TikTok On Network
  Major Texas University Blocks Students From Using TikTok On Network

  Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The University of Texas at Austin has banned students from using Chinese-owned TikTok on its Wi-Fi network, in line with Gov. Greg Abbott’s December directive that all state agencies eliminate the cybersecurity risks posed by the video-sharing app.

  

  In a message to students on Jan. 17, Jeff Neyland, adviser to the university’s president for technology strategy, said the school is taking steps to comply with Abbott’s order.

  “The federal government recognizes the video-sharing mobile application as a national security threat,” the email read. “Several federal agencies and states have already prohibited its use on their government networks and government-issued devices.”

  “Recently, UT Austin began the process of removing TikTok from all government-issued devices, including university-issued cell phones, laptops, tablets, and desktop computers. Today, the university blocked TikTok access on our networks. You are no longer able to access TikTok on any device if you are connected to the university via its wired or WIFI networks.”

  Neyland added that the school is taking steps such as banning students from using the app—which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, based in Beijing—in an effort to “eliminate risks to information contained in the university’s network and to our critical infrastructure.”

  Officials Say TikTok Poses Growing Threat

  The message then pointed to Abbott’s Dec. 7 directive, which states that there is a growing threat of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) trying to infiltrate the United States across multiple fronts.

  “While the federal government holds the ultimate responsibility for foreign policy issues, the State also has the responsibility and opportunity to protect itself,” the order states.

  Abbott’s directive also ordered all state agencies to ban employees from downloading or using the app on government-issued devices, including cellphones, laptops, desktops, and other devices capable of internet connectivity, although exceptions are made for law enforcement agencies.

  Additionally, the Republican directed the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Department of Information Resources to develop a plan that other state agencies can deploy to address “vulnerabilities presented by the use of TikTok on personal devices.”

  TikTok has more than 85 million users in the United States.

  According to Abbott and a string of other officials, the app harvests vast amounts of data from its users’ devices, including “when, where, and how they conduct internet activity” and could provide a trove of potentially sensitive information to the CCP.

  In December, FBI Director Chris Wray said that the agency has security concerns about TikTok, including that it could be used by the CCP to collect data on users which could potentially be used to conduct espionage operations.

  

  TikTok Disappointed by Texas University Decision

  TikTok claims it stores U.S. user data on servers outside of China.

  In a statement to The Hill, a company spokesperson said TikTok was “disappointed that so many states are jumping on the political bandwagon to enact policies that will do nothing to advance cybersecurity in their states and are based on unfounded falsehoods about TikTok.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/19/2023 – 19:05

• Hunter Biden Lived In Classified Doc House While Raking In Millions Through Chinese Intelligence Ties
  Hunter Biden Lived In Classified Doc House While Raking In Millions Through Chinese Intelligence Ties

  National security concerns over Joe Biden’s classified document scandal just got worse, as two reports have emerged which place Hunter Biden at the Bidens’ Wilmington, Delaware residence while he was raking in millions of dollars from CCP-linked business dealings.

  

  First, Seamus Bruner  (researcher for legendary bombshell-dropper Peter Schweizer), reports via Breitbart News, that “While addicted to drugs, cavorting with prostitutes, and making deals with businessmen tied to the highest levels of Chinese intelligence, Hunter Biden lived in the house where Joe Biden stored classified documents.”

  While filling out a background check, Hunter made a crackhead error and listed his ‘rent’ as $49,910 – when in fact that’s the amount of the security deposit and 6 months of rent for prime office space at the prestigious House of Sweden in Washington DC. What’s most interesting, however, is that the dates Hunter listed as living at the Wilmington, DE residence – as claimed on other documents and financial statements – overlap with the period in which multiple Biden family members were taking money from foreign businessmen with connections at the highest levels of Chinese state intelligence services through energy company CEFC. As Bruner further notes, CNN described CEFC as a state-directed entity in 2018.

  CEFC, and at least four of its executives and associates – Ye Jianming, Patrick Ho, Gongwen Dong and Jiaqi Bao, have been linked to the CCP and its military intelligence apparatus. In one case, Hunter described Patrick Ho as “the fucking spy chief of China.”

  

  More via Breitbart,

  By early 2017, Hunter was directly corresponding with CEFC personnel and flew to Miami in February of that year to meet with CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming. During this trip, Ye Jianming gave Hunter a 3.16 carat diamond valued at approximately $80,000..

  

  When Hunter’s ex-wife discovered that he had obtained something of such immense value, she had her divorce attorney send an “Urgent” email seeking to determine the whereabouts of the diamond and secure the asset before Hunter could “dissipate” it. Hunter’s attorney offered a shady denial:

  “There is no diamond in Hunter’s possession. I don’t know where Kathleen is getting access to this information, but on this score, what your email purports below is inaccurate.”

  Metadata gleaned from photos of the diamond on the abandoned laptop indicate that Hunter lied about not having the diamond and he in fact had the diamond with him in Wilmington. The current location of the 3.16 carat diamond remains unknown

  After the fateful February 2017 meeting with Ye, and around the time Hunter claimed to have moved into the Wilmington house where classified documents were found, the Bidens’ business with CEFC exploded.

  Nine days after Miami meeting, Hunter received two separate wire transfers of $3 million which the Department of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network flagged as suspicious.

  We encourage you to read the rest of the Breitbart report here, as it goes into extensive detail.

  Second, the Washington Free Beacon reports that photos from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop place him at the Wilmington House in July, 2017. Of note, the classified documents were reportedly brought to the house in January of that year.

  

  The photos ‘are the most concrete evidence to date’ that Hunter – who was actively negotiating a deal with a CCP-linked Chinese energy company – had access to areas of his father’s home where classified documents were stored.

  A Washington Free Beacon review of the laptop found four 2017 photographs of Hunter Biden, clad in a white collared shirt and a camouflage baseball cap, behind the wheel of his father’s 1967 Corvette Stingray. GPS metadata embedded in the photos indicate they were taken within a minute of each other at 6:49 p.m. on July 30 of that year, just outside the president’s Wilmington, Del., residence. The photos show Hunter Biden posing in the vehicle beside two young girls. One appears to be his then-12-year-old niece, Natalie Biden. The other could not be identified.

  

  Former Secret Service agent and certified cyber forensics expert, Konstantinos Gus Dimitrelos, analyzed the photos and confirmed their authenticity.

  “If requested, I will testify the photographs are genuine and were taken on July 30, 2017,” he told the Free Beacon.

  And as the Beacon further reports – corroborating Breitbart‘s reporting, “At the time the photos were taken, Hunter Biden was negotiating a lucrative business deal with the now-defunct Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC, which was closely tied to the Chinese government. Biden’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski claimed to have met with Joe Biden in person in early May 2017—less than three months before Hunter Biden was pictured taking the wheel of his father’s prized vehicle—to discuss the Biden family’s Chinese business dealings.”

  In total, CEFC paid Hunter Biden $6 million in legal and consulting fees in 2017 and 2018.

  And of course, the same media which suggested the Trumps were Russian operatives based on a hoax – are virtually silent at actual risks to national security posed by the Biden family.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/19/2023 – 18:55

• BlackRock Caves To DeSantis Over ESG
  BlackRock Caves To DeSantis Over ESG

  BlackRock has come to an agreement with the state of Florida after Governor Ron DeSantis (R) declared that asset managers overseeing some of the state’s $220 billion+ in pension funds cannot employ environmental, social and governance (ESG) investment strategies, according to Bloomberg.

  

  DeSantis and other trustees of the state authority running Florida’s pensions formally changed the plans’ policies on Tuesday to say that decisions surrounding investments “must be based only on pecuniary factors” which do not take into account “social, political, or ideological interests.”

  “To the extent that BlackRock has complied with the governor’s directives to abandon ESG metrics, we appreciate this and celebrate this win for Floridians,” said DeSantis press secretary Bryan Griffin.

  The effort by DeSantis began in August, when he banned state pensions from investing in ESG strategies. In response, Florida’s State Board of Administration began updating contracts with investment managers.

  “The SBA continuously evaluates all managers, and they are all held to the same exacting standards in delivering returns and performance,” reads a statement.

  Besides BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, dozens of other firms manage Florida’s pensions, including Morgan Stanley, Schroders Plc and Artisan Partners, according to filings.

  BlackRock, which managed about $13 billion in Florida pension funds as of December, said it’s “committed to the SBA’s mandate of prioritizing financial performance consistent with their investment objectives,” according to a statement. -Bloomberg

  The agreement between BlackRock and Florida also follows an announced move last year by state CFO Jimmy Patronis, who said he was pulling $2 billion in state funds out of the money manager – which he accused of using Florida’s pensions to fund a “social-engineering project.” He advised the SBA to remove the firm as one of its asset managers as well.

  On Tuesday, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said the ESG issue has turned “ugly.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/19/2023 – 18:45

• High Profile Sound Money Bills Introduced In Mississippi
  High Profile Sound Money Bills Introduced In Mississippi

  Via Money Metals News Service,

  Lawmakers in Jackson have just introduced legislation to exempt gold and silver coins, bars, and rounds from the Mississippi’s state sales tax. Rep. Jill Ford has reintroduced House Bill 508 at the beginning of the 2023 session.

  

  This year’s legislative effort seeks to build on last year’s momentum.  Last year, Rep. Ford’s sales tax exemption bill passed out of the Mississippi House of Representatives overwhelmingly but it missed a deadline in the Senate needed to receive a hearing.

  Two similar Mississippi bills have already been introduced this session (HB 23 & SB 2019).

  Imposing taxes on the exchange of Federal Reserve notes for monetary metals (i.e. gold and silver) has become an unusual and outmoded practice in the United States… only 8 states still engage in it. 

  Most recently, Alabama, Tennessee, and Virginia last year passed legislation to exempt or extend current sales tax exemptions on the precious metals. With 42 states now having eliminated sales taxes on purchases of gold and silver, Mississippi may be the next state to do so.

  Under the status quo in Mississippi, citizens are discouraged from protecting their savings against the devaluation of the dollar because they are penalized with sales taxation for doing so. No state bordering Mississippi has the same policy. 

  Passage of HB 508 would remove disincentives to holding gold and silver — a move that has become especially pertinent at a time when inflation is ripping through the economy and wrecking havoc on family budgets.

  Eliminating sales taxes on gold and silver is good public policy for several reasons:

  • Levying sales taxes on precious metals is inappropriate. Sales taxes are typically levied on final consumer goods. Computers, shirts, and shoes carry sales taxes because the consumer is “consuming” the good. Precious metals are inherently held for resale, not “consumption,” making the application of sales taxes on precious metals inappropriate.

  • Studies have shown that taxing precious metals is an inefficient form of revenue collection. The results of one study involving Michigan show that any sales tax proceeds a state collects on precious metals are likely surpassed by the state revenue lost from conventions, businesses, and economic activity that are driven out of the state.

  The harm is exacerbated when you consider that all of Mississippi’s neighbors (Alabama, Louisiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee) have already stopped taxing gold and silver.  Most recently, Tennessee ended this tax in 2022, and Arkansas eliminated this tax in 2021.

  • Taxing gold and silver harms in-state businesses. It’s a competitive marketplace, so buyers will take their business to neighboring states, such as Alabama or Louisiana (which have eliminated or reduced sales tax on precious metals), thereby undermining Mississippi jobs. Levying sales tax on precious metals harms in-state businesses who will lose business to out-of-state precious metals dealers. Investors can easily avoid paying $136.50 in sales taxes, for example, on a $1,950 purchase of a one-ounce gold bar.

  • Taxing precious metals is unfair to certain savers and investors. Gold and silver are held as forms of savings and investment. Mississippi does not tax the purchase of stocks, bonds, ETFs, currencies, and other financial instruments. 

  • Taxing precious metals is harmful to citizens attempting to protect their assets. Purchasers of precious metals aren’t fat-cat investors. Most who buy precious metals do so in small increments as a way of saving money. Precious metals investors are purchasing precious metals as a way to preserve their wealth against the damages of inflation. Inflation harms the poorest among us, including pensioners, Mississippians on fixed incomes, wage earners, savers, and more. 

  Meanwhile, no states have permanently reversed their existing exemptions. The state of Louisiana and Ohio both experimented briefly with reimposing sales taxes on precious metals purchases. They both quickly reversed course (within two years) and reinstated their sales tax exemptions on precious metals — because businesses, coin conventions, and state tax revenues were leaving the state.

  In 2023, bills to restore sound, constitutional money have already been introduced in Alaska, West Virginia, South Carolina, Missouri, Minnesota, Tennessee, and more.

  Currently Mississippi is tied for 45^th out of 50 in the 2023 Sound Money Index.  Passage of HB 508 would allow the state to increase its ranking dramatically.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/19/2023 – 18:25