Today’s News 11th December 2022

• Why The Left Must Destroy Free Speech… Or Be Destroyed
  Why The Left Must Destroy Free Speech… Or Be Destroyed

  Authored by Thomas DiLorenzo via LewRockwell.com,

  In Hayek’s famous 1944 book, The Road to Serfdom, he warned that the intellectual and political classes of the democracies of that time were embracing some of the same ideas that inspired Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, and Stalin’s Russia:  comprehensive government planning, hyper regulation of industry,  nationalization, welfare statism, and collectivism in general.  He did not predict that these societies would end up “in serfdom,” however, as some have mistakenly claimed.  Quite the contrary.  In his first chapter he clearly stated that he hoped the ideas in the book would help these countries to avoid that disastrous fate.  He hoped the ideas of the book would be a roadblock on the road to serfdom.

  

  The eleventh chapter of The Road to Serfdom is entitled “The End of Truth,” about the historical imperative in all totalitarian states throughout history to destroy freedom of speech so that the only true belief is “the social plan” imposed by the state, whatever that may be.  This is achieved by relentless institutionalized lying and propaganda, coupled with harsh censorship of all contrary ideas or even questions about the propriety of forcefully imposing one single “social plan.” This is American society today, in other words, in case you haven’t noticed.  (Socialism, Hayek said, has always been about substituting the plans of politicians for the plans that all of the citizens make for themselves.  It’s not a matter of planning versus no planning, but who is to do the planning).

  The significance of propaganda in totalitarian countries, Hayek wrote, is that “If all the sources of current information are effectively under one single control, it is no longer a question of merely persuading people of this or that.  The skillful propagandist then has power to mold . . . minds in any direction he chooses . . .”  Jeff Deist, among others, has commented that America today has become a “post-persuasion society” and he is right, almost eighty years after Hayek issued this warning.  The Left is no longer willing to seriously debate anything – at least for the time being while they control the universities, all three branches of government, the media, (laughingly-named) “entertainment” industries, and more.  Even dopey Prince Harry publicly denounced the First Amendment in a pathetic attempt to ingratiate himself with Hollywood Leftists like his wife shortly after divorcing himself from his family and moving to Hollywood.  If you disagree with their latest version of socialist totalitarianism (“woke-ism” coupled with green hysteria and calls for worldwide central planning), then you can be canceled, smeared as a racist, a white supremacist, or even fired from your job and prevented from getting a new one.

  The moral consequences of totalitarian propaganda are even more profound.  It is “destructive of all morals” because it “undermines one of the foundations of all morals:  the sense and respect for the truth.”  An avalanche of Official Lies has always been the tool of “various theoreticians of the totalitarian system,” wrote Hayek, citing Plato’s “noble lies” and “social myths” championed by the French philosopher Georges Sorel.  The ends justify the lying means to totalitarians everywhere.  When was the last time a “White House spokesperson” did not lie in public?  (See my 1992 book, Official Lies: How Washington Misleads Us, with James T. Bennett).

  Of course minority opinions “must also be silenced” and “every act of the government must become sacrosanct and exempt from criticism.”  This was never more on display than in government responses to the “pandemic” of 2020, followed by the Biden campaign and its collusion with “Big Tech” to censor even the president of the United States along with massive evidence of the colossal criminality and corruption of the Biden family crime syndicate.  This was arguably the biggest governmental assault on the First Amendment, apparently organized by the FBI and CIA, since it was essentially done away with by the John Adams administration’s “Sedition Act.”

  Academe must also be thoroughly corrupted, said Hayek, for “the disinterested search for truth cannot be allowed in a totalitarian system.”  American universities have gone almost all the way down to the end of the road to serfdom in this regard.  Many have fallen off the cliff completely.  This is especially true, said Hayek, of the disciplines of history, law, and economics.  They must be compromised in a way that supports the state rather than criticizes it, however mildly.  The American history profession is almost completely dominated by Marxists, for example, and economics has been plagued by Keynesian central planners and “market failure theorists” for decades.  As Doug Casey once remarked, most economists today “are political apologists masquerading as economists.”  They “prescribe the way they would like the world to work and tailor theories to help politicians demonstrate the virtue and necessity of their quest for more power.”  The field of economics, said Casey, “has been turned into the handmaiden of government in order to give a scientific justification for things the government . . . wants to do.”

  In totalitarian societies, wrote Hayek, truth is not something that is discovered by learning, education, self-study, research, and debate and discussion.  Instead, it is “something to be laid down by authority . . .”  In today’s world, for example, global warming hysteria is “settled science,” the most un-scientific phrase ever uttered.  A true scientist always questions the status quo, not necessarily rejecting it but keeping an open mind that new research can alter his thinking.  Nothing is ever “settled.”  How a slippery politician like Al Gore is considered to be an expert on the philosophy of science – and atmospheric science to boot — is one of the wonders of the world.   (Don’t forget that the notion that the earth was flat was once declared to be “settled science” by the Al Gores of that day).

  Medical science is not science, we have been told; Anthony Fauci is medical science. 

  Or rather, the “authority” of Anthony Fauci, a grotesquely overpaid government bureaucrat is science.  Again, nothing is more un-scientific than these ridiculous, arrogant, and tyrannical pronouncements by Anthony Fauci and his political sidekicks.

  “[I]ntolerance, too, is openly extolled,” in totalitarian societies said Hayek, anticipating by decades the 1960s-era “New Left” hero, the totalitarian intellectual Herbert Marcuse, who authored a widely-celebrated paper on “repressive tolerance,” the idea that only “the oppressed classes” deserve free speech.  In the world of the 60s “New Left,” whose students and political descendants now control almost all of academe, television, the media in general, much of government, “woke” corporations, and other institutions, the “oppressor class” is comprised essentially of all white heterosexual males, especially ones of European descent.  Everyone else is oppressed by them, the theory goes.  The poorest, lowliest, white redneck is said to “oppress” black millionaires and billionaires.  Question this theory in our post-persuasion society and you will be labeled a racist, a white supremacist, and probably even a Nazi.

  Hayek based these ideas on his years of study of world history and of the totalitarian regimes of the early twentieth century.  “Wokeness” did not just suddenly appear and proceed to take over almost the entire Western world.  It is just the latest manifestation of totalitarianism that has been marching through the institutions for several generations.  There are always totalitarians in our midst, the title of Chapter 13 of The Road to Serfdom, and today’s totalitarians consider themselves to be standing on the shoulders of all those who preceded them, however unsavory they might have been.  That is why many on the Left celebrated after the worldwide collapse of socialism in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  “We no longer have to be associated with monsters like Stalin, Mao, Nicolae Ceaucescu, and other mass-murdering communists of the twentieth century,” they said.  And like all other totalitarians who came before them, they fully understand that freedom of speech is to them what sunlight or a Christian cross is to Dracula.  That is why they are all now hellbent on destroying Elon Musk, a man who is attempting to add a tiny smidgen of free speech to the stifling, statist political correctness of American society.  Their treatment of Musk will eventually make their treatment of Donald Trump seem like a love fest in comparison.

  Their hatred for Trump, by the way, is derived from the same source as their hatred for Elon Musk:  Like Musk, Trump called out and publicized many of the official lies and official liars of the Washington establishment, especially those in the “fake news” business.  The Left considers the fight over free speech to be a political death struggle, and they are right about that.  If anything deserves to be strangled in its crib it is the Left’s current assault on the First Amendment.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/10/2022 – 23:30

• Visualizing The Military Imbalance In The Taiwan Strait
  Visualizing The Military Imbalance In The Taiwan Strait

  Taiwan has reported a sharp increase in the number of Chinese military aircraft entering its Air Defense Identification Zone of late with a record 56 warplanes detected on October 4, 2021, followed by numerous spikes since.

  

  China has never ruled out the possibility of invading Taiwan and it has continued acquiring the military capability to do so. In recent years, it has modernized its military, introducing the J-20, an indigenous 5th generation stealth fighter. It has also commissioned two aircraft carriers along with several modern amphibious transport dock/landing vessels. Even though the likelihood of China taking Taiwan by force remains unclear, the military balance in the Taiwan Strait is firmly in China’s favor. The following infographic, via Statista’s Martin Armstrong, provides an overview of that imbalance and is based on an annual U.S. government report.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  One aspect which appears to be in Taiwan’s favor however, is Joe Biden as United States president. Despite the White House scrambling to clarify his comments, Biden said twice in the space of three months in 2021 that the U.S. would defend Taiwan in the event of an attack by China.

  The president has continued to reiterate this position since, with a 60 Minutes interview broadcast in October one recent such example.

  While the United States is required by law to “support Taiwan’s self-defence”, as described by a White House spokesperson after the 2021 Biden statements, the country has traditionally employed a policy of “strategic ambiguity” when it comes to adherence to the Taiwan Relations Act. Biden’s explicit statements in favor of taking defensive action in the region are a clear step away from this position.

  Speaking in October last year, Biden said: “I don’t want a cold war with China. I just want China to understand that we’re not going to step back, that we’re not going to change any of our views.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/10/2022 – 23:00

• Institutions Matter…But So Does Culture
  Institutions Matter…But So Does Culture

  Authored by David C. Rose via RealClear Wire,

  In 1993 Douglass North won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work in economic history. He stressed the importance of institutions—regularized patterns of behavior—for improving our understanding of how societies evolve and function. His main point was that high transaction costs choke off the economic activity that makes societies rich. Institutions are therefore vitally important because they help keep transaction costs low.

  

  North’s insight helped revive institutional economics. Unfortunately many New Institutionalist economists viewed institutional theory as leaving little role for culture. Moreover, any role culture might play was subsumed in their paradigm as informal institutions. It is true that many cultural practices are informal institutions. But what if cultural beliefs can achieve outcomes that institutions can’t?

  Suppose an individual from a poor country moves to a rich one and quickly starts to prosper. Most economists would argue that this happens because the rich country has better institutions.

  But what if sudden uplift is just what happens when honest hardworking people from poor countries are dropped into high trust societies? In this case it’s trust, not institutions, that makes the difference.

  This doesn’t mean that institutions are not important. Quite the opposite. Trust is so important because institutions are important, and many of them are highly trust-dependent. It’s not in every country that you would use an expensive coat to lay claim to a seat in a public place when you go to the rest room, for example.

  David Landes, Deirdre McCloskey and Joel Mokyr have revived interest in the connection between culture and economic development. They argued that the beliefs and values of pre-industrial Europe set the stage for the rise of modern free market economies. In my latest book I explained why they would not have worked so well if they weren’t also culturally transmitted.

  We don’t ponder whether to blink when dust blows into our eyes. We also don’t ponder whether to express sympathy to a friend upon hearing his mother died. Both involve behavior that is rather automatic, almost like it was encoded as an “if-then” statement in a computer program.

  The first is baked in our genetic cake and is therefore a product of hardwired neural architecture, while the second is learned early in life and is therefore better described as a product of constructed neural architecture. At its core, culture is a mechanism for constructing a consistent neural architecture across individuals in a society to solve problems that are not well solved either by genetic encoding or consciously rational decision making.

  If all behavior is consciously rational in the sense of Daniel Kahneman’s System 2 mode of thinking, then all individuals would always behave in a manner that was best for them and not the group. Game theorists would say they would “play defect” against rules created to support large group cooperation. This is a problem, because while we trust and therefore cooperate well in small groups, small group trust doesn’t scale up to work in the kind of large group contexts Adam Smith showed are necessary for the good life.

  Smith didn’t think most behavior was consciously rational in the way modern economists think about behavior. He argued that our sensitivity to approval and disapproval provided a mechanism for forming consistent responses to circumstances. Smith’s perspective comports well with Kahneman’s conception of System 1 thinking, which is fast and intuitive, like holding a door for a stranger or leaving a coat to hold a seat. It’s pre-rational automaticity effectively circumvents rational analysis.

  On the other end of the spectrum is genetic encoding. But if high trust societies were solely products of our genes, like honeycombs are for bees, then all human societies would be high trust societies. They aren’t because nearly all of our evolution took place in very small groups so there has been too little time to reinforce genes that support large group trust. Large group trust cannot be based on genetically encoded behavior. I submit that it can, however, be based culturally encoded behavior.

  Some cultures convey moral beliefs that culturally encode the automatic rejection of untrustworthy actions. The earlier such beliefs are taught, the stronger they are reinforced, and the more they take precedence over other beliefs, the more likely behaving in an untrustworthy way isn’t even considered in adulthood.

  When a critical mass of individuals abides by such beliefs, it becomes rational to presume most others can be trusted in most circumstances, producing a high trust society. Just as North would have predicted, by reducing transaction costs this makes cooperation through economic activity possible on a grand scale, unleashing human flourishing as never before. 

  David C. Rose is a Professor Economics at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and a Senior Fellow at Common Sense Society. He is author of The Moral Foundation of Economic Behavior and Why Culture Matters Most, both from Oxford University Press.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/10/2022 – 22:30

• Study Finds Prejudice Against COVID-19 Unvaccinated Around The World
  Study Finds Prejudice Against COVID-19 Unvaccinated Around The World

  Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  People who have received COVID-19 vaccines express discriminatory attitudes toward unvaccinated people, a new study of over 15,000 citizens of 21 countries across the world suggests.

  “Individuals who comply with the advice of health authorities morally condemn the unvaccinated for violating a social contract in the midst of a crisis,” two Denmark-based scientists wrote in their paper, published Thursday in Nature.

  “Those who refuse vaccines report that they feel discriminated and pressured against their will.”

  

  To measure COVID-19 vaccination status-based prejudice, researchers asked some 15,233 people how they feel if a close relatives of theirs are going to marry a vaccinated or unvaccinated person—a question that has long been used in surveys on discrimination along racial, ethnic, or partisan lines.

  Specifically, participants were presented with brief descriptions of a series of fictitious individuals and asked to imagine that these are people whom one of their close relatives intends to marry. They were shown two profiles at a time, side by side, and asked to rate each profile by saying whether they agree or disagree with statements such as, “I would be unhappy if this person married one of my close relatives,” and “I think this person is untrustworthy.”

  One of the six attributes describing these targeted individuals has been their COVID-19 vaccination status, randomly varying between “fully vaccinated” and “unvaccinated.” The other attributes were age, occupation, hobbies, personality, and “family background,” which distinguished between people “born and raised in [the respondent’s country]” and people who “immigrated from the Middle East.”

  The Findings

  Across six countries—Germany, India, Indonesia, Morocco, South Africa, and the United Kingdom—selected to represent both affluent Western and developing non-Western nations, the unvaccinated were found to be disliked among vaccinated people (14 percentage points) as much as people with drug addiction (15 percentage points), and significantly more so than people who had been in prison (10 percentage points), atheists (7 percentage points), or people with mental illness (6 percentage points).

  In addition, the overall dislike of the unvaccinated among vaccinated people (13 percentage points) was found to be two and a half times greater than that of Middle Eastern immigrants (5 percentage points). In fact, according to the paper, unvaccinated people face significantly more hostility than immigrants even in 10 countries that are deemed unfriendly to immigrants. Interestingly, discriminatory attitudes against unvaccinated Middle Eastern immigrants were found to be just as strong as those toward unvaccinated natives.

  By contrast, researchers found that the unvaccinated respondents on average showed almost no discriminatory attitudes toward the vaccinated.

  “The results demonstrate that prejudice is mostly one-sided,” the authors wrote. “Only in [the] United States and Germany do we find that the unvaccinated feel some antipathy towards the vaccinated. But even here we do not find statistical evidence in favor of negative stereotyping or exclusionary attitudes.”

  “The observation that vaccinated individuals discriminate against those who are unvaccinated, but that there is no evidence for the reverse, is consistent with work on the psychology of cooperation,” said leading author Alexander Bor, a political psychologist at the George Soros-funded Central European University (CEU).

  A Psychological Explanation

  Such prejudice can be explained by a psychological mechanism against “free-riding,” according to the study. In other words, a highly polarized and moralized sentiment surrounding COVID-19 vaccination activated this mechanism in vaccinated people, causing them to see those who refuse to get the jabs as morally-failed “free riders” of a collective effort.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/10/2022 – 22:00

• Supreme Court Hears Case That Could Empower State Legislatures, Not Judges, To Regulate Elections
  Supreme Court Hears Case That Could Empower State Legislatures, Not Judges, To Regulate Elections

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

  North Carolina Republicans told the Supreme Court on Dec. 7 that the U.S. Constitution gives state legislatures preeminent authority to make the rules for presidential and congressional elections without interference from the courts.

  

  The case is important because, if the high court finds for North Carolina, the rules governing how states regulate federal elections could change dramatically. The hearing comes at a time when tensions between Republicans and Democrats over voting procedures are growing in light of former President Donald Trump’s continuing claims that the 2020 presidential election was marred by massive electoral fraud.

  At issue is the once-obscure independent state legislature doctrine, under which Republicans argue that the Constitution has always directly authorized state legislatures alone to make rules for the conduct of federal elections in their respective states.

  Democrats say this doctrine is a fringe conservative legal theory that could endanger voting rights, enable extreme partisan gerrymandering in the redistricting process, and cause upheaval in election administration.

  Liberal law professor Richard Hasen has called the doctrine the “800-pound gorilla” of election law because of its potentially disruptive effect on election administration norms.

  Conservatives, on the other hand, say the doctrine is derived from the plain text of the Constitution and would restore reasonable rules on the electoral playing field and allow elected state officials, instead of judges, to make election rules.

  The Supreme Court hasn’t ruled on the doctrine directly, but some justices have said that it could have been argued in the Bush v. Gore case, which resolved the disputed 2000 presidential election.

  The doctrine, if endorsed by the high court, could in theory allow state legislatures to select presidential electors in disputed elections, something critics decry as a threat to democracy.

  When he launched the appeal in March, Tim Moore, a Republican who’s the speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives, said the Constitution is “crystal clear: State legislatures are responsible for drawing congressional maps, not state court judges and certainly not with the aid of partisan political operatives.”

  Moore is appealing the Supreme Court of North Carolina’s order redrawing the state’s electoral map against the wishes of the state’s Republican-majority legislature.

  Two key clauses in the U.S. Constitution lay out the rules governing federal elections in the states.

  The elections clause in Article 1 states, “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.”

  The presidential electors clause in Article 2 gives each state the power to appoint presidential electors “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.”

  The case is Moore v. Harper, court file 21-1271.

  During nearly three hours of oral arguments on Dec. 7, liberal justices pushed back against the doctrine, while conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch seemed receptive to it to varying degrees.

  Moore’s attorney, David H. Thompson, told the justices that the two constitutional provisions have been misinterpreted for years.

  “The elections clause requires state legislatures specifically to perform the federal function of prescribing regulations for federal elections,” Thompson said.

  “States lack the authority to restrict the legislatures’ substantive discretion when performing this federal function … and it is federal law alone that places substantive restrictions on states legislatures’ performing the task assigned them by the federal Constitution.

  “For the first 140 years of the republic, there was not a single state court that invalidated on substantive grounds any congressional redistricting plan.”

  Precedent holds that “the Founders tasked state legislatures with federal functions that transcend any substantive limitation sought to be imposed by the people of the state.”

  Thomas wondered aloud if the court had the authority to consider this case.

  Thomas asked Thompson what “the basis of our jurisdiction” was, given that “we don’t normally review state supreme courts’ interpretation of state constitutions.”

  Thompson said the Supreme Court of North Carolina’s decision reflects the state’s law but is still “a violation of the elections clause and that’s why we’re here.”

  Justice Sonia Sotomayor told Thompson that his argument wasn’t resonating with her.

  “If judicial review is in the nature of ensuring that someone’s acting within their constitutional limits, I don’t see anything in the words of the Constitution that takes that power away from the state.”

  Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked Thompson if it was his argument “that the state constitution has no role to play—period—in terms of imposing substantive limits on the exercise of that federal function.”

  Thompson confirmed that was his position, saying that a state constitution may require that an election measure be presented to a governor for approval or veto.

  Justice Elena Kagan seemed alarmed at the ramifications of Thompson’s argument.

  The doctrine under discussion, she said, “gets rid of the normal checks and balances on the way big governmental decisions are made in this country, and then you might think that it gets rid of all those checks and balances at exactly the time when they are needed most.”

  “Think about consequences because this is a theory with big consequences,” she said.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/10/2022 – 21:30

• Oregon's New Gun Law Temporary Blocked As Firearm Background Checks Erupt
  Oregon’s New Gun Law Temporary Blocked As Firearm Background Checks Erupt

  Gun Owners of America (GOA) and Gun Owners Foundation (GOF) secured a temporary restraining order (TRO) in Oregon state court earlier this week, preventing a new law that requires a permit to purchase firearms and bans high-capacity magazines from being enforced. In recent weeks, the threat of more gun control has led to a state-wide scramble for gun enthusiasts to panic buy firearms and magazines. 

  BREAKING: A Circuit Court Judge in Oregon GRANTS GOA’s and @GunFoundation‘s request for a Temporary Restraining Order against measure 114!

  — Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) December 6, 2022

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  Ballot Measure 114, which Oregon voters passed on Nov. 8, was scheduled to take effect on Thursday. It would: 

  • Ban magazines over ten rounds
  • Require a permit to purchase any firearm
  • Require a training course, application fee, fingerprinting, and a duplicative background check to obtain the permit-to-purchase

  The TRO was a win for GOA and GOF, which filed the suit against Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, Gov. Kate Brown, and Police Superintendent Terri. 

  “Oregon’s measure 114 is a joke. Since when do criminals wait in line to get permits or to register their guns? They don’t. This unconstitutional law will only keep decent Oregonians from exercising their Second Amendment rights. And for this reason, we’re very glad that Judge Robert Raschio responded to our arguments by imposing a temporary restraining order that prevents the law from being enforced,” Erich Pratt, senior vice president of GOA, told us. 

  This draconian and unconstitutional measure will NOT stand. This is the first step to victory for GOA, @GunFoundation, and every law-abiding gun owner in Oregon. https://t.co/U7sFIJ4Gsd

  — Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) December 6, 2022

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  So the fear of not owning a gun because of the possibility of more gun control measures led to a surge in background checks in recent weeks, Karl Durkheimer, owner of Oregon’s Northwest Armory gun store, told Fox News. He said more than 36,000 Oregon residents are backlogged in the background check system. 

  “Two things are happening. There’s fear they won’t be able to get a gun, but there’s the actual logistics that they won’t be able to do the background check,” Durkheimer said. “It’s going to take a year before an Oregonian has a permit.”

  GOA and GOF have a hearing next Tuesday to see if the TRO can be permanent. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/10/2022 – 21:00

• Americans Might Be In For A Tax 'Refund Shock' Next Year: Analyst
  Americans Might Be In For A Tax ‘Refund Shock’ Next Year: Analyst

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Millions of Americans could face a “refund shock” when they file their taxes next year because a number of pandemic-related programs are set to expire or have expired, said an analyst.

  

  Data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) shows that the average refund taxpayers got back for their 2021 taxes was about $3,200, or some around 14 percent higher than the previous year. The next refunds will average about $2,700, said Mark Steber, chief tax information officer at Jackson Hewitt.

  The 2021 tax year “was quite a remarkable year with the insertion of all those new tax breaks,” Steber told CBS News this week. “But jump ahead to this year, and a lot of the increases expired, hence the term ‘refund shock’ or ‘refund surprise.’”

  Due to the expiration of some programs, “You’re probably going to have not as pleasant an experience as you had last year,” he noted. “There were larger, enhanced tax credits available last year that aren’t available this year,” Steber also remarked.

  For example, the child tax credit is one benefit that will shrink when parents file their 2022 taxes. Normally, parents get about $2,000 for each of their children, but in 2021, the benefit increased to $3,600 for every child under 6 and $3,000 for minor children aged 6 and older.

  Also, the Child and Dependent Care Credit that parents can use to pay for child care was boosted under the Biden administration-backed American Rescue Plan. That raised the credit up to $8,000 per family in 2021, or more than in previous years.

  The IRS has already issued notices about potentially smaller tax refunds, noting in November that “taxpayers will not receive an additional stimulus payment with a 2023 tax refund because there were no economic impact payments for 2022.”

  Additionally, the agency said, it will be more difficult to claim a deduction for charitable on a 2022 tax return.

  “The IRS cautions taxpayers not to rely on receiving a 2022 federal tax refund by a certain date, especially when making major purchases or paying bills,” the agency said last month. “Some returns may require additional review and may take longer.”

  Online Services

  The agency this week again wrote that Americans who made more than $600 online selling goods and services will have that income reported to the IRS

  People who made money via eBay, Etsy, Poshmark, Uber, and other digital services will face the new scrutiny and rules. It applies to anyone who made more than $600 via those platforms or via Venmo, Cash App, Zelle, PayPal, or similar platforms in return for goods and services.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/10/2022 – 20:30

• SBF Tried To Destabilize Crypto Market To Save FTX: Report
  SBF Tried To Destabilize Crypto Market To Save FTX: Report

  Authored by Ana Paula Pereira via CoinTelegraph.com,

  Trades made by Alameda Research were reportedly focusing on depeg Tether’s stablecoin…

  

  Tether executives and Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao worried that Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), former FTX CEO, was attempting to destabilize the crypto market aiming to save the now-bankrupt exchange, according to reports on Dec. 9.

  Messages seen by The Wall Street Journal of a Signal group chat named “Exchange coordination” reveals an argument between CZ and SBF on Nov. 10 about Tether’s stablecoin USDT. Members in the Signal group include Kraken co-founder Jesse Powell, Paolo Ardoino, chief technology officer of Tether, among others.

  According to the report, CZ and others in the group worried that trades made by Alameda Research were focusing on depeg the stablecoin, which would have a ripple effect in crypto prices. Binance CEO reportedly confronted SBF:

  “Stop trying to depeg stablecoins. And stop doing anything. Stop now, don’t cause more damage.”

  SBF denied the claims in a statement to the WSJ.

  The alleged argument on the Signal group happened a day after Binance announced that it wouldn’t bail out its troubled competitor FTX, citing “reports regarding mishandled customer funds and alleged US agency investigations.” On Nov. 10, Tether’s Ardoino also said the company have no “plans to invest or lend money to FTX/Alameda.”

  As reported by Cointelegraph, new details about the failed agreement between Binance and FTX were revealed on Dec. 9. In a twitter thread, CZ referred to Bankman-Fried as a “fraudster,” saying Binance exited its position in FTX in July 2021 after becoming “increasingly uncomfortable with Alameda/SBF.” SBF was “unhinged” at the exchange pulling out, according to Binance’s CEO.

  In response, SBF claimed that Binance “threatened to walk at the last minute”, accusing CZ of lying about his role in the deal.

  On Nov 11, FTX Group and nearly 130 companies – including FTX Trading, FTX US, under West Realm Shires Services, and Alameda Research – filed for bankruptcy in the United States citing a “liquidity crunch”.

  Since FTX’s bankruptcy, SBF has been named in seven class action lawsuits and numerous probes and investigations, including a market manipulation probe by federal prosecutors.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/10/2022 – 20:00

• THE TWITTER FILES: The Removal Of Donald Trump, Part 2
  THE TWITTER FILES: The Removal Of Donald Trump, Part 2

  The third installment of Elon Musk’s release of internal Twitter communications is devoted to the days surrounding the social media company’s decision to permanently ban President Trump.

  

  Yesterday, we detailed part 1 – via veteran journalist Matt Taibbi, which focused on the period leading up to January 6th, including details about Twitter executives regular meetings with the FBI and DHS.

  Today, in part 2, Michael Shellenberger reveals the chaos that ran wild inside Twitter on January 7th, as the same executives took decisions into their own hands to reassure ‘a few engineers’ that “someone is doing something about this.”

  The Removal of Donald Trump: January 7

  As the pressure builds, Twitter executives build the case for a permanent ban.

  On Jan 7, senior Twitter execs:

  • create justifications to ban Trump

  • seek a change of policy for Trump alone, distinct from other political leaders

  • express no concern for the free speech or democracy implications of a ban

  This #TwitterFiles is reported with @lwoodhouse 

  For years, Twitter had resisted calls to ban Trump.

  “Blocking a world leader from Twitter,” it wrote in 2018, “would hide important info… [and] hamper necessary discussion around their words and actions.”https://t.co/qaqklHOHjc

  — Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 10, 2022

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  But after the events of Jan 6, the internal and external pressure on Twitter CEO @jack grows.

  Former First Lady @michelleobama…

  

  … tech journalist @karaswisher…

  

  …@ADL…

  

  …high-tech VC @ChrisSacca, and many others, publicly call on Twitter to permanently ban Trump.

  

  Dorsey was on vacation in French Polynesia the week of January 4-8, 2021. He phoned into meetings but also delegated much of the handling of the situation to senior execs @yoyoel , Twitter’s Global Head of Trust and Safety, and @vijaya Head of Legal, Policy, & Trust.

  As context, it’s important to understand that Twitter’s staff & senior execs were overwhelmingly progressive.

  In 2018, 2020, and 2022, 96%, 98%, & 99% of Twitter staff’s political donations went to Democrats.

  11. This system wasn’t balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right. https://t.co/sa1uVRNhuH pic.twitter.com/K1xmqQ0TrD

  — Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 3, 2022

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

  In 2017, Roth tweeted that there were “ACTUAL NAZIS IN THE WHITE HOUSE.”

  

  In April 2022, Roth told a colleague that his goal “is to drive change in the world,” which is why he decided not to become an academic.

  

  On January 7, @jack emails employees saying Twitter needs to remain consistent in its policies, including the right of users to return to Twitter after a temporary suspension

  After, Roth reassures an employee that “people who care about this… aren’t happy with where we are”

  

  Around 11:30 am PT, Roth DMs his colleagues with news that he is excited to share.

  “GUESS WHAT,” he writes.

  “Jack just approved repeat offender for civic integrity.”

  The new approach would create a system where five violations (“strikes”) would result in permanent suspension.

  

  “Progress!” exclaims a member of Roth’s Trust and Safety Team.

  The exchange between Roth and his colleagues makes clear that they had been pushing @jack for greater restrictions on the speech Twitter allows around elections.

  he colleague wants to know if the decision means Trump can finally be banned. The person asks, “does the incitement to violence aspect change that calculus?”

  Roth says it doesn’t. “Trump continues to just have his one strike” (remaining).

  

  Roth’s colleague’s query about “incitement to violence” heavily foreshadows what will happen the following day.

  On January 8, Twitter announces a permanent ban on Trump due to the “risk of further incitement of violence.”

  

  On J8, Twitter says its ban is based on “specifically how [Trump’s tweets] are being received & interpreted.”

  

  But in 2019, Twitter said it did “not attempt to determine all potential interpretations of the content or its intent.”

  

  The *only* serious concern we found expressed within Twitter over the implications for free speech and democracy of banning Trump came from a junior person in the organization.

  It was tucked away in a lower-level Slack channel known as “site-integrity-auto.”

  “This might be an unpopular opinion but one off ad hoc decisions like this that don’t appear rooted in policy are imho a slippery slope… This now appears to be a fiat by an online platform CEO with a global presence that can gatekeep speech for the entire world…”

  

  Twitter employees use the term “one off” frequently in their Slack discussions. Its frequent use reveals significant employee discretion over when and whether to apply warning labels on tweets and “strikes” on users.

  Here are typical examples.

  

  

  Recall from #TwitterFiles2 by @bariweiss that, according to Twitter staff, “We control visibility quite a bit. And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit. And normal people do not know how much we do.”

  11. “We control visibility quite a bit. And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit. And normal people do not know how much we do,” one Twitter engineer told us. Two additional Twitter employees confirmed.

  — Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022

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

  Twitter employees recognize the difference between their own politics & Twitter’s Terms of Service (TOS), but they also engage in complex interpretations of content in order to stamp out prohibited tweets, as a series of exchanges over the “#stopthesteal” hashtag reveal.

  

  

  Roth immediately DMs a colleague to ask that they add “stopthesteal” & [QAnon conspiracy term] “kraken” to a blacklist of terms to be deamplified.

  Roth’s colleague objects that blacklisting “stopthesteal” risks “deamplifying counterspeech” that validates the election.

  

  Indeed, notes Roth’s colleague, “a quick search of top stop the steal tweets and they’re counterspeech”

  But they quickly come up with a solution: “deamplify accounts with stopthesteal in the name/profile” since “those are not affiliated with counterspeech”

  

  But it turns out that even blacklisting “kraken” is less straightforward than they thought. That’s because kraken, in addition to being a QAnon conspiracy theory based on the mythical Norwegian sea monster, is also the name of a cryptocurrency exchange, and was thus “allowlisted”

  

  Employees struggle with whether to punish users who share screenshots of Trump’s deleted J6 tweets

  “we should bounce these tweets with a strike given the screen shot violates the policy”

  “they are criticising Trump, so I am bit hesitant with applying strike to this user”

  

  What if a user dislikes Trump *and* objects to Twitter’s censorship? The tweet still gets deleted. But since the *intention* is not to deny the election result, no punishing strike is applied.

  “if there are instances where the intent is unclear please feel free to raise”

  

  Around noon, a confused senior executive in advertising sales sends a DM to Roth.

  Sales exec: “jack says: ‘we will permanently suspend [Trump] if our policies are violated after a 12 hour account lock’… what policies is jack talking about?”

  Roth: “*ANY* policy violation”

  

  What happens next is essential to understanding how Twitter justified banning Trump…

  Sales exec: “are we dropping the public interest [policy] now…”

  Roth, six hours later: “In this specific case, we’re changing our public interest approach for his account…”

  

  The ad exec is referring to Twitter’s policy of “Public-interest exceptions,” which allows the content of elected officials, even if it violates Twitter rules, “if it directly contributes to understanding or discussion of a matter of public concern”

  

  Roth pushes for a permanent suspension of Rep. Matt Gaetz even though it “doesn’t quite fit anywhere (duh)”

  It’s a kind of test case for the rationale for banning Trump.

  “I’m trying to talk [Twitter’s] safety [team] into… removal as a conspiracy that incites violence.”

  

  The evening of January 7, the same junior employee who expressed an “unpopular opinion” about “ad hoc decisions… that don’t appear rooted in policy,” speaks up one last time before the end of the day.

  “This might be an unpopular opinion but one off ad hoc decisions like this that don’t appear rooted in policy are imho a slippery slope… This now appears to be a fiat by an online platform CEO with a global presence that can gatekeep speech for the entire world…” pic.twitter.com/4pedmgY8pa

  — Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 11, 2022

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

  Earlier that day, the employee wrote, “My concern is specifically surrounding the unarticulated logic of the decision by FB. That space fills with the idea (conspiracy theory?) that all… internet moguls… sit around like kings casually deciding what people can and cannot see.”

  

  The employee notes, later in the day, “And Will Oremus noticed the inconsistency too…,” linking to an article for OneZero at Medium called, “Facebook Chucked Its Own Rulebook to Ban Trump.”

  “The underlying problem,” writes @WillOremus , is that “the dominant platforms have always been loath to own up to their subjectivity, because it highlights the extraordinary, unfettered power they wield over the global public square…

  “… and places the responsibility for that power on their own shoulders… So they hide behind an ever-changing rulebook, alternately pointing to it when it’s convenient and shoving it under the nearest rug when it isn’t.”

  “Facebook’s suspension of Trump now puts Twitter in an awkward position. If Trump does indeed return to Twitter, the pressure on Twitter will ramp up to find a pretext on which to ban him as well.”

  Indeed. And as @bariweiss will show tomorrow, that’s exactly what happened.

  credittrader
  Sat, 12/10/2022 – 19:33

• NASA's Orion Spacecraft Will Return To Earth At 25,000 MPH, Splashing Down Off Baja California
  NASA’s Orion Spacecraft Will Return To Earth At 25,000 MPH, Splashing Down Off Baja California

  NASA’s historic uncrewed Artemis 1 mission to the moon and back will conclude on Sunday with the Orion spacecraft returning to Earth. 

  On Sunday afternoon, the Orion spacecraft will slam through Earth’s atmosphere at 25,000 mph, or about 32 times the speed of sound. It will heat up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit before splashing into the Pacific Ocean off the western coast of Baja California at 12:40 pm EST. 

  

  Orion’s descent operations begin around 12 pm EST. Forty minutes later, the spacecraft should be in the ocean if everything runs on schedule. Here’s the splashdown schedule for tomorrow (courtesy of Space.com): 

  

  “At present, we are on track to have a fully successful mission with some bonus objectives that we’ve achieved along the way,” Mike Sarafin, Artemis I mission manager, told reporters Thursday evening.

  One of the most crucial parts of the mission will be testing the heat shield as Orion enters Earth’s atmosphere. If all goes well, this could indicate NASA is ready to fly astronauts around the moon in 2024 and then put them on the lunar surface by 2025. 

  A live broadcast of the re-entry process will begin around 11 am EST. Watch Live here:

  Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s SpaceX just announced a privately-funded moon mission with DJ Steve Aoki and a Japanese billionaire that could occur soon. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/10/2022 – 19:00

• Perfect Storm Fuels Massive Natural Gas Price Spikes On West Coast
  Perfect Storm Fuels Massive Natural Gas Price Spikes On West Coast

  Authored by Leticia Gonzales via NaturalGasIntel.com,

  Against a backdrop of mostly mild weather across the Lower 48, winter unleashed its fury on the West Coast a bit early this season. The frigid temperatures and unusually heavy precipitation have fueled natural gas demand at a time when storage inventories are low, a drought has reduced hydro-electric power supplies and regional utilities are having trouble receiving coal deliveries.

  The result: historically high natural gas prices that have surged to levels not seen since the summer of 2018. The surge in prices has spread across the Pacific Northwest, farther south throughout California and inland across the Rockies.

  

  On Thursday, Northern California’s PG&E Citygate recorded spot natural gas prices as high as $36.00/MMBtu. SoCal Citygate cash reached a $33.00 high, while Malin hit $32.00. And that only proved to be batting practice.

  On Friday, the highest price on the West Coast hit $55.00, with offers up to $60.00.

  “I’ve seen prices spike before, but over a short period of time,” said Michael Wiliamson. His consulting firm Williamson Energy purchases wholesale natural gas for end-use customers in California.

  “This sustained period of high prices has never happened before. There’s a lot of different things going on, and they’re all falling at the same time.”

  Is It Really That Cold In California?

  Bitter winter weather has slammed the West Coast this month, driving up heating consumption in a region that normally sees its highest energy needs in the summer.

  The National Weather Service (NWS) said widespread heavy precipitation would begin to blanket the Pacific Northwest and Northern California on Friday and further over the weekend into the Northern Rockies, Great Basin and the rest of California. Anomalously high moisture associated with an atmospheric river was expected to usher in heavy mountain snow, as well as strong rains for lower elevations along the West Coast.

  Snow totals should generally range between six inches and a foot for the higher elevations, according to NWS forecasters. Lighter accumulations of up to three inches were forecast for the interior valleys.

  In the Sierra Nevada mountain range of California, several feet of snow were expected, while excessive rainfall was possible along the coast of southern Oregon and Northern California. Rainfall totals could reach up to four inches, NWS said.

  Even still, with temperatures forecast to climb into the 60s in Los Angeles and into the mid-50s in San Francisco, “it’s not really that cold,” said Fuel and Purchased Power’s Marlon Santa Cruz, manager for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP). The executive said a key issue facing the region was that storage inventories are lagging behind.

  Supplies Reclassified, Not Refilled

  Pacific Gas & Electric Corp. (PG&E) in the summer of 2021 reclassified 51 Bcf of storage inventories to cushion gas, rather than working gas. It marked the largest reclassification in any one region, with some market observers calling the scale of the change “preposterous.”

  Williamson said the problem wasn’t with the reclassification. It was that PG&E hasn’t rebuilt working gas inventories.

  As of Dec. 2, Pacific stocks stood at only 217 Bcf, which is more than 18% below year-earlier levels and nearly 24% below the five-year average, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

  The Pacific is the only region that continues to fall significantly short of historical levels. After a string of above-average injections in the late fall, Mountain stocks sit about 6% below the five-year average. East inventories sit around 2% below that level. The South Central region, meanwhile, is now at a modest surplus.

  “That’s the head of the nail,” Williamson said.

  “If we had plenty of gas in storage, this wouldn’t be happening. Now, everyone is a hostage.”

  With a client base that include commercial greenhouses and other small customers, the exorbitant prices are concerning, according to Williamson. He worries that if prices were to remain elevated – or climb even higher as the winter progresses – customers may be unable to pay their bills.

  What’s more, the higher prices are not limited to California. In the Desert Southwest, spot gas prices at El Paso S. Mainline/N. Baja surged to $35.75 on Thursday, while the KRGT Del Pool rose to $32.85. By Friday, cash prices in the region also had rocketed to $55.00.

  “At what point in time does a number get so high that people go bankrupt and stop paying their bills? I think we’re getting close to that point,” Williamson said.

  He likened the situation to the fallout of Winter Storm Uri, where utilities filed for bankruptcy and spawned lawsuits and investigations into market manipulation. “People are going to grab lawyers instead of their pocketbooks.”

  Other Issues

  LADWP’s Santa Cruz agreed the storage situation in the West is a concern.

  However, while stockpiles in Northern California remain short of what the market sees as comfortable through the winter, Aliso Canyon storage in Southern California has been “a savior” for the region as it copes with the heightened demand, he said. The storage facility, operating at a reduced capacity following a major leak in 2015, has often had to serve as a buffer during periods of strong demand.

  In November 2021, the California Public Utilities Commission voted unanimously to increase the amount of gas stored at Aliso Canyon ito boost winter supplies for gas and electric customers. The decision was seen as an effort to ensure reliability for the region.

  California may not be the friendliest state to the natural gas industry. Several municipalities have banned the use of new natural gas hook ups, including Los Angeles. Santa Cruz, though, said the municipal utility is relying on natural gas more because coal deliveries also are falling short.

  President Biden earlier this month averted a strike among railroad workers that could have put a stop to coal deliveries. Still, the strike was only one issue plaguing the railroad industry.

  Santa Cruz said following the Covid-19 pandemic, Union Pacific and other railroad companies were forced to lay off workers. Many of the laid off employees never returned as the economy recovered. Now there aren’t enough engineers to drive the trains, he said.

  “There is an endemic supply chain issue impacting the coal industry,” Santa Cruz said.

  “Despite the mines producing, it’s the railroad that can’t deliver the contractual volumes. We find ourselves unable to ramp those coal-fired units up as we normally would. So we make up that generation with natural gas.”

  Meanwhile, West Coast customers find themselves battling for limited supplies.

  Wood Mackenzie notified clients of maintenance on Gas Transmission Northwest’s system between Dec. 6 and 8 that had the potential to impact up to around 300,000 MMBtu/d of volumes flowing through Kingsgate.

  In the Permian Basin, pipeline work on El Paso Natural Gas and the Permian Highway Pipeline also cut into gas deliveries. Ironically, these curtailments have sent prices in that region plunging below zero.

  “All these constraints, and the market is fighting for stagnant supply,” Santa Cruz said. “This is unprecedented.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/10/2022 – 18:30

• Pentagon Chief Warns Putin Is "Modernizing & Expanding" Nuclear Arsenal
  Pentagon Chief Warns Putin Is “Modernizing & Expanding” Nuclear Arsenal

  Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in Friday comments weighed in on the state of Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal, saying that President Vladimir Putin is in the midst of undertaking the modernization and expansion of his nuclear capabilities. 

  He further repeated the charge which has been coming from Western officials of late that Putin is making nuclear threats, despite the Kremlin’s insistence that critics are misinterpreting the Russian leader’s remarks, including the latest which came days ago.

  

  Austin said at an event inaugurating the new head of US Strategic Command (STRATCOM), Anthony Cotton, that even as it struggles in enact its military objectives in Ukraine, Russia is “modernizing and expanding its nuclear arsenal.”

  “And as the Kremlin continues its cruel and unprovoked war of choice against Ukraine, the whole world has seen Putin engage in deeply irresponsible nuclear saber-rattling,” he said. 

  “So make no mistake. Nuclear powers have a profound responsibility to avoid provocative behavior, and to lower the risk of proliferation, and to prevent escalation and nuclear war,” he stressed.

  The Pentagon chief hailed STRATCOM (US Strategic Command) as providing the “ultimate backstop” against attacks against the US and its allies, given its chief mission is strategic nuclear deterrence and overseeing global strikes.

  Below: Number of nuclear warheads stockpiled by NATO and Russia as of 2022, by type

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Austin appeared to be responding to the latest remarks by Putin to the press days ago, wherein he once again addressed the threat of nuclear war, a risk which he said is “rising” in relation to the Ukraine situation.

  Putin further took the opportunity to restate Russia’s ‘defensive’ nuclear doctrine, stressing that nuclear weapons would be considered as a response to an attack on Russian territory, while also stating that he stands ready to defend Russian territory “using all available means”. 

  According to a translation of Putin’s remarks in Sky News:

  “We didn’t speak about usage of nuclear weapons.” Then, he said: “Russia has not gone mad.”

  “We have the most advanced weapons, but we do not want to wave it around.”

  “‘We have not gone mad,’ [Putin] said, adding that Moscow would only deploy its nuclear arsenal, the largest in the world, in the event of a nuclear attack on Russia.”https://t.co/Lz7jiNKdDr

  — Michael Weiss 🌻🇺🇸🇮🇪 (@michaeldweiss) December 7, 2022

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

  Despite the thrust of Putin’s comments actually going in the direction of firmly asserting that Russia does not want to use nuclear weapons, he was widely accused in Western press and among officials of making nuclear “threats” – and it wasn’t the first time his words were misconstrued, and likely won’t be the last.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/10/2022 – 18:00

• Gaetz: McCarthy Is Not The Right Leader For The Moment
  Gaetz: McCarthy Is Not The Right Leader For The Moment

  Authored by Rep. Matt Gaetz via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  

  The administration is aiding and abetting an invasion of the Southern border. Our rights are being stripped away. We are at war and the enemy is within.

  In response to this existential threat, we’re told that we need to entrust a congressman previously recognized as the “tech industry’s best friend” as our leader.

  That’s boneheaded. Kevin McCarthy is not the right leader for the moment. Fortunately, enough Republicans recognize that to stop him from being the next Speaker of the House. Five House Republicans, including myself, have announced that we will not vote for McCarthy during the January 3^rd speaker election. Many have privately also informed McCarthy of their plans to vote for someone else.

  McCarthy’s allies are fretting and are pushing out a false narrative that opposition to the Paul Ryan endorsed McCarthy will embolden Democrats to elect a squish Republican as Speaker. It turns out that spin is right, just not the way the McCarthy camp sold it.

  Semafor is reporting that “Leader-designate Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y. waved off the suggestion Democrats would help elect an alternative for speaker, while Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C. all but volunteered Democrats’ support to help get McCarthy over the threshold of votes needed for speaker.”

  This is the uniparty in action and should let you know that McCarthy is not a threat to the system destroying America. How could he be? His closest adviser has represented Pfizer, Amazon, and a firm dedicated to giving out a path to American citizenship to wealthy Chinese. His roommate counts Google among his clients.

  This is the moment for a fight and McCarthy’s instinct is flight. In the days after January 6, McCarthy asked in a call with Liz Cheney whether Twitter can take away Conservative Congressman Barry Moore’s Twitter account because Rep. Moore pointed out that the shooting of Ashli Babbit doesn’t fit the left’s narrative of January 6.

  McCarthy, likewise, said I was endangering the safety of Rep. Cheney by criticizing her.

  The defense of McCarthy is that he isn’t an ideologue. He just wants to get along, they say, and moves with the times.

  Rep. Matt Rosendale, one of the five Republicans standing athwart McCarthy, put it well when he said, “We don’t need a weatherman, we need a leader.” A leader would stand up to the Biden administration’s demands to send tens of billions of dollars to protect Ukraine’s border instead of ours.

  A leader wouldn’t wait until thousands of military service members have been kicked out due to a mandate to end it. That’s the problem with living with Frank Luntz and making all of your decisions based on polling data. You will always be late.

  But enough about Rep. McCarthy, now is the time for conservatives to come to terms with the fact that the Speakership is up for grabs. Five Republicans are enough to stop Kevin McCarthy from becoming Speaker.

  In order to avoid chaos on January 3^rd, Republicans need to embrace reality.

  Rep. Andy Biggs has thrown his hat into the ring. He is a true conservative and would be a much better choice than McCarthy. I recognize, though, that five House Republicans might step up and say that they won’t vote for Biggs under any circumstances.

  There are likely dozens or even hundreds of House Republicans that I would love to support as Speaker. It’s time for them to prove their case. McCarthy has lost his.

  Congressman Matt Gaetz (R) represents the 1st Congressional District of Florida. He is a member of the 117th Congress currently serving his third term in the U.S. House of Representatives. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/10/2022 – 17:30

• Snap And Other Tech Firms Want Employees Back In The Office
  Snap And Other Tech Firms Want Employees Back In The Office

  Silicon Valley employees who have turned ‘work from home’ into ‘drink wine and watch Netflix with your cat in between emails – from home’ have been put on notice.

  

  Management at several tech companies have told employees they’ll be required to come into the office at least three days a week if they want to keep their jobs, MarketWatch reports.

  The latest salvo came from Snap Inc. SNAP last month, which expects employees to spend at least 80% of their time in the office, according to an internal memo obtained by Bloomberg. Snap Chief Executive Evan Spiegel says the policy, which starts in February, will help the company achieve “full potential” and allow workers to reach “our collective success.”

  According to market research firm IDC, large companies that “deploy reactive and tactical hybrid work models” will suffer an estimated 20% revenue loss in 2024 due to job attrition and underperforming teams.

  

  Perhaps the most notable case is Twitter, whose employees Elon Musk put on notice in early November that the company’s ‘work-from-anywhere’ arrangement wasn’t going to cut it, and employees would be required to spend at least 40 hours per week in the office.

  Company C3.ai wasn’t having the ‘work from home’ at all – and now has employees filling three floors of a Redwood City, California office building.

  “Everyone is here. Have been for a year,” said CEO Tom Siebel. “Look at that packed parking lot. People need to interact in person to effectively collaborate.“

  Box Inc. CEO Aaron Levie told MarketWatch “It is super important to have people work side by side and in person,” adding “You will see more momentum.“

  And Adds Paul Friesen, chief marketing officer of Rapid – which has advocated for workers to spend at least three days per week in the office, said: “We value having employees come together, collaborate and drive productive outcomes in person while also understanding the new world work environment and the need to balance in-office with work from home and remote experiences.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/10/2022 – 17:00

• Cross-Dressing Book For Pre-K Students Crossed The Line
  Cross-Dressing Book For Pre-K Students Crossed The Line

  Authored by Michael Ryan via RealClear Wire,

  A school district that gave preschoolers a book on cross-dressing has changed its procedures for giving out books after news of the incident surfaced last week.

  

  As first reported exclusively by The Lion and The Heartlander news sites, a 4-year-old preschooler in the Turner School District in Kansas City, Kansas, took home the book Jacob’s New Dress. It’s a picture book in which a little boy wears girls’ clothes and even competes with his friend Emily to be a princess.

  “I don’t think this should be, obviously, any kind of a subject for a school to be speaking about,” Jim Clay, the 4-year-old’s grandfather, told The Lion. “The sexualization of our children in society today is just disgusting. The grooming that’s taking place is disgusting.”

  At the end of the week, Clay reported the Turner district had explained what happened and what changes will be made to prevent such a sexually provocative book being tendered to young children there again.

  The district’s statement to Clay, and apparently others, says its early-childhood program began accepting once-weekly donated books last year from local nonprofit LiteracyKC. Such partnerships, the district said, help it expand resources and community outreach.

  “Please be assured that these books were not a part of district curriculum, were not required reading, and were sent home to be read at the discretion of parents,” the district wrote without naming the book in question or explaining how it escaped the district’s notice.

  “Moving forward, our district staff will be pre-approving all books and activities provided by Literacy KC to ensure they are age-appropriate and align with our district curriculum and educational mission,” the statement concluded – notably, without apology to offended parents and guardians.

  Case closed? Maybe, maybe not.

  “This past spring we learned State Farm was distributing transgender books in Florida,” says Mary Miller, an Oregon-based parents’ rights advocate who spoke about the cultural divide between parents and schools in Kansas City at a community forum in June.

  “Now Literacy KC is doing the same thing in Kansas City preschool classrooms, after having received a multimillion-dollar grant from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. There is a coordinated effort by trans rights activist groups such as GLSEN (formerly the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network) and the Human Rights Campaign to push transgender ideology on schoolchildren nationwide.

  “Literacy KC will need to clean up its act to regain the trust of parents and grandparents in the Kansas City community.”

  Moreover, as Turner has just done, other school districts may need to reconsider the wisdom of outsourcing the approval of classroom materials to even well-intentioned outside organizations.

  The incident also raises questions about Literacy KC’s vetting process, and how many other school districts in the Kansas City region have handed out books such as Jacob’s New Dress to the youngest of students – and whether parents have been made aware of it.

  The Lion on Monday sent questions to both the Turner district and Literacy KC. Among other things, we asked Literacy KC if this book is being given out to other districts in the area, and if so, which ones; if Literacy KC continues to consider a cross-dressing book to be appropriate for such young children – or, if not, whether it will suspend the book’s distribution; and whether it is fair for such sexually and gender-identity suggestive books to be given to such young children without pre-approval by parents?

  The Lion also has requested copies of any correspondence between the Turner district and Literacy KC about the incident.

  The Turner district is not the only one that has been roiled by controversy over this and other gender-fluidity books in early grades. The book was noted as objectionable to parents in a news report last month about outrage over transgender policies in Lawrence Township Public Schools in New Jersey.

  “Can we just get back to teaching?” one New Jersey parent was quoted.

  Jacob’s New Dress also was pulled from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools system in North Carolina in 2017.

  The media portray such actions as right-wing book banning rather than a matter of discretion, and Jacob’s New Dress as “part of a first-grade lesson on what to do when someone is bullied.” Critics counter that anti-bullying messages can be transmitted outside of a cross-dressing context.

  Moreover, in making the issue one of “book banning,” the media overlook the role and rights of parents in bringing up children. The media don’t, for instance, call it “banning” when the Motion Picture Association warns parents about age-inappropriate materials in films, with its PG, PG-13, R, and NC-17 (adults only) ratings.

  Yet, with books, it’s anything goes?

  Not for Clay, nor many other parents and grandparents like him.

  “My kids used to dress up like Power Rangers when they were kids, and we’d pretend that they were a Power Ranger with them,” Clay said. “I’m not interested in pretending that guys are girls and girls are guys. 

  “All three of my kids grew up in the Turner district. If there was any questionable material, they always allowed us to opt-out or keep our kid home that day, and they would keep us informed. But apparently not with this.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/10/2022 – 16:30

• "Insidious": Madonna, Jimmy Fallon, Gwyneth Paltrow And Other Celebs Sued Over NFT Endorsements
  “Insidious”: Madonna, Jimmy Fallon, Gwyneth Paltrow And Other Celebs Sued Over NFT Endorsements

  Celebrities who thought doing crypto promotions would be a quick way to make some easy money have another thing coming.

  Weeks ago, Tom Brady, Giselle Bündchen, Larry David & Steph Curry were sued over a now-infamous Super Bowl ad promoting failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX.

  Now, a class action lawsuit filed in federal court is targeting clebrities who were secretly compensated for shipping ‘Bored Ape Yacht Club’ NFTs, Deadline reports. The lawsuit includes Kevin Hart, Madonna, Jimmy Fallon, Justin Bieber, Paris Hilton, Serena Williams, DJ Khaled, Gwyneth Paltrow and a host of other celebrities.

  

  Universal TV is also named as a defendant, while high-profile music manager Guy Oseary has been fingered as the ‘brains’ behind the operation.

  “Defendants’ promotional campaign was wildly successful, generating billions of dollars in sales and re-sales,” reads the lawsuit, filed by Adonis Real and Adam Titcher filed on December 8 in U.S. District Court in California. “The manufactured celebrity endorsements and misleading promotions regarding the launch of an entire BAYC ecosystem (the so-called Otherside metaverse) were able to artificially increase the interest in and price of the BAYC NFTs during the Relevant Period, causing investors to purchase these losing investments at drastically inflated prices,” the filing continues.

  

  As Deadline notes;

  Essentially, on their various platforms, through public statements and in Fallon’s case on The Tonight Show in late November 2021, the celebs praised the Yuga Labs backed BAYC NFTs to the public by claiming to be customers themselves. Now, the allure of non-fungible tokens may have dimmed considerably ( a.k.a. nosedived) in recent months, but to BAYC buyers jumping on board last year, they quickly proved “losing investments at drastically inflated prices.”

  With the Oseary-backed crypto company Moonpay working with Yuga to covertly slip payments to the promoting A-listed talent, the whole scheme saw Hart, Fallon, Paltrow give BAYC NFTs the seal of approval without the celebs revealing the often hefty compensation they were receiving.

  “The truth is that the Company’s entire business model relies on using insidious marketing and promotional activities from A-list celebrities that are highly compensated (without disclosing such), to increase demand of the Yuga securities by convincing potential retail investors that the price of these digital assets would appreciate,” reads the 95-page fraud complaint, which contains 10 claims.

  “During the Class Period, Defendants engaged in a plan, scheme, conspiracy, and course of conduct pursuant to which they knowingly or recklessly engaged in acts, transactions, practices, and courses of business that operated as a fraud and deceit upon Plaintiffs and the other members of the Class,” the filing continues. “In truth, the Executive Defendants and Oseary used their connections to MoonPay and its service as a covert way to compensate the Promoter Defendants for their promotions of the BAYC NFTs without disclosing it to unsuspecting investors.“

  A spokesperson for Yuga Labs said in a statement that “We strongly believe that they are without merit, and look forward to proving as much.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/10/2022 – 16:00

• A Half-Serious Prediction Of What The Next Two Years Will Look Like
  A Half-Serious Prediction Of What The Next Two Years Will Look Like

  Authored by Eric Utter via AmericanThinker.com,

  *December 9: Last mail-in ballots counted for 2022 midterm elections, more than a month after “Election Day.”

  *December 14: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) visits Wayne Corporation manufacturing site, sings “The Wheels on the Bus” song to executives.

  *December 25: President Joe Biden wishes Americans a “very merry…um, you know, the thing” and adds, “Don’t let your kids eat all the chocolate bunnies at once!”

  *January 3, 2023: Republicans accidentally install Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski as speaker of the House.

  *February 2: New York mayor Eric Adams drops “Staten Island Chuck” during Groundhog Day ceremony, killing him instantly.  Adams blames” systemic racism” for the incident.  Al Gore says climate change to blame.  Other Democrats claim it was Trump’s fault.

  *February 6–10: Democrats in the Senate debate a new proposal to counteract global warming and “save our planet” while record-breaking cold temperatures paralyze much of the nation, causing hundreds of deaths.

  *March 17: President Biden urges all Americans to celebrate “Cinco de Mayo” responsibly.

  *May 9: Project Veritas video released proving “alphabet agencies” headed by Satan-worshipers.

  *May 23: Conservative media release correspondence and video proving that Joe Biden paid for Hunter’s hookers and drugs with money “The Big Guy” obtained from Chinese communists.

  *May 24: The New York Times, Washington Post, and MSNBC denounce the reports, calling them “Russian disinformation.”

  *July 4: President Biden encourages “all, um, uh, immigrants” to enjoy “the, uh, Armistice Day.”

  *October 18: The Federal Reserve announces that the adjusted annual rate of Inflation for September was 20.2%.

  *November 16: Reports indicate that murders were up 49% over last year, burglaries up 742% for same time period.

  *December 1: Democratic Senate passes bill that, if enacted, will ban all forms of Christian worship as “apostasy.”

  *January 1, 2024: President Biden wishes “everyone in the world, except, you know, the Russkies, a Happy Labor Day.”

  *February 22: President Biden, after conferring with the CDC and assorted medical “experts,” announces that a new coronavirus has emerged from a “wet market out east” and orders a two-month lockdown to “fatten…I mean flatten…the curve.”  No one will be allowed to travel, and all non-essential businesses will be shut down.  Some wags have started calling the illness the “Boston Flu.”  Authorities threaten to shoot them.

  *October 10: President Biden issues executive order making it a felony to be caught outside without a full, properly worn hazmat suit as the Boston Flu latest iteration of the coronavirus rages on.

  *October 11: President Biden issues an executive order making ice cream the “official food” of the United States.

  *October 12: President Biden issues executive order permanently banning on-site voting “everywhere and for all time.”  Henceforth, only mail-in balloting will be allowed.

  *November 5: Mainstream media outlets excitedly announce that Democrats are winning in a landslide, and that a “Big Blue Wave” is sweeping the nation on this “Election Day” 2024.  All project John Fetterman (D-Pa.) to be the next president of the United States.

  *November 11: Final totals are announced for the 2024 election, giving Democrats a 61-39 hold on the Senate and a 292-143 edge in the House.  The Big Blue Wave has done its job.

  *January 29, 2025: Democratic Congress ratifies bill to “eliminate” all political opposition.  President Fetterman signs the legislation into law.  After achieving one-party rule, top Democrats boast, “We have — finally — saved our democracy!”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/10/2022 – 15:30

• NYC Health Officials Urge Residents To Mask Up Amid 'Tridemic'
  NYC Health Officials Urge Residents To Mask Up Amid ‘Tridemic’

  A ‘tridemic‘ of flu, RSV, and Covid-19 cases have led New York City health officials to ‘strongly’ recommend that people wear “a high-quality mask, such as a KN95 or KF94, or an N95 respirator” indoors and in crowded outdoor settings.

  

  On Friday, the city’s health commissioner, Dr. Ashwin Vasan, recommended that New Yorkers get vaccinated and boosted, and wear a mask whenever ‘inside stores, lobbies, hallways, elevators, public transportation, schools, child care facilities and other shared spaces.”

  While respiratory viruses are spreading at high levels in NYC, there are common-sense ways to protect yourself and your loved ones this holiday season: vaccination, boosters, wearing a mask indoors or among crowds and staying home if you don’t feel well: https://t.co/sQgAPLhjMo https://t.co/nmYf7bJiVq

  — Commissioner Ashwin Vasan, MD, PhD (@NYCHealthCommr) December 9, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsMasks will remain voluntary except in health care facilities such as nursing homes, where mask mandates are still enforced.

  Of course, there’s plenty of evidence masks provide minimal, if zero benefit.

  • Why Did Masks Stop Working In Japan And South Korea?
  • World’s Top Epidemiologists – Masks Don’t Work!
  • Not Even N95 Masks Work To Stop Covid
  • Do Masks Work? A Review Of The Evidence

  According to the NY Times, hospitalization rates have increased around 20% over the past two weeks, with the city’s seven-day average going from 2,425 to 3,761 over that period. The number of Covid cases has increased around 55% over the period, while flu cases rose 64% during the week ending Dec. 3, and RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus has also been on the rise.

  Have people’s immune systems been weakened by two years of avoiding largely non-lethal diseases and other factors?

   

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/10/2022 – 15:00

• Digital Currency: The Fed Moves Toward Monetary Totalitarianism
  Digital Currency: The Fed Moves Toward Monetary Totalitarianism

  Authored by André Marques via The Mises Institute,

  The Federal Reserve is sowing the seeds for its central bank digital currency (CBDC). It may seem that the purpose of a CBDC is to facilitate transactions and enhance economic activity, but CBDCs are mainly about more government control over individuals. If a CBDC were implemented, the central bank would have access to all transactions in addition to being capable of freezing accounts.

  It may seem dystopian—something that only totalitarian governments would do—but there have been recent cases of asset freezing in Canada and Brazil. Moreover, a CBDC would give the government the power to determine how much a person can spend, establish expiration dates for deposits, and even penalize people who saved money.

  

  The war on cash is also a reason why governments want to implement CBDCs. The end of cash would mean less privacy for individuals and would allow central banks to maintain a monetary policy of negative interest rates with greater ease (since individuals would be unable to withdraw money commercial banks to avoid losses).

  Once the CBDC arrives, instead of a deposit being a commercial bank’s liability, a deposit would be the central bank’s liability.

  In 2020, China launched a digital yuan pilot program. As mentioned by Seeking Alpha, China wants to implement a CBDC because “this would give [the government] a remarkable amount of information about what consumers are spending their money on.”

  The government could easily track digital payments with a CBDC. Bloomberg noted in an article published when the digital yuan pilot program was launched that the digital currency “offers China’s authorities a degree of control never possible with cash.” A CBDC could allow the Chinese government to monitor mobile app purchases (which accounted for about 16 percent of the country’s gross domestic product in 2020) more closely. Bloomberg describes how much control a CBDC could give Chinese authorities:

  The PBOC [People’s Bank of China] has also indicated that it could put limits on the sizes of some transactions, or even require an appointment to make large ones. Some observers wonder whether payments could be linked to the emerging social-credit system, wherein citizens with exemplary behavior are “whitelisted” for privileges, while those with criminal and other infractions find themselves left out.

  (Details on China’s social credit system can be found here.)

  The Chinese government is waging war on cash. And they are not alone. In 2017, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) published a document offering suggestions to governments—even in the face of strong public opposition—on how to move toward a cashless society. Governments and central bankers claim that the shift to a cashless society will help prevent crime and increase convenience for ordinary people. But the real motivation behind the war on cash is more government control over the individual.

  And the US is getting ready to establish its own CBDC (or something similar). The first step was taken in August, when the Fed announced FedNow. FedNow will be an instant payment system and is scheduled to be launched between May and July 2023.

  FedNow is practically identical to Brazil’s PIX. PIX was implemented by the Central Bank of Brazil (BCB) in November 2020. It is a convenient instant payment system (using mobile devices) without user fees, and a reputation as being safe to use.

  A year after its launch, PIX already had 112 million people registered, or just over half of the Brazilian population. Of course, frauds and scams do occur over PIX, but most are social engineering scams (see here, here, and here) and are not system flaws; that is, they are scams that exploit the public’s lack of knowledge of PIX technology.

  Bear in mind that PIX is not the Brazilian CBDC. It is just a payment system. However, the BCB has access to transactions made through PIX; therefore, PIX can be considered the seed of the Brazilian CBDC. It is already an invasion of the privacy of Brazilians. And FedNow is set to follow suit.

  Additionally, the New York Fed has recently launched a twelve-week pilot program with several commercial banks to test the feasibility of a CBDC in the US. The program will use digital tokens to represent bank deposits. Institutions involved in the program will make simulated transactions to test the system. According to Reuters, “the pilot [program] will test how banks using digital dollar tokens in a common database can help speed up payments.”

  Banks involved in the pilot program include BNY Mellon, Citi, HSBC, Mastercard, PNC Bank, TD Bank, Truist, US Bank, and Wells Fargo. The global financial messaging service provider SWIFT is also participating to “support interoperability across the international financial ecosystem.” (This video details the pilot program and how the US CBDC would work.)

  The IMF is also thinking of a way to connect different CBDCs under a single system. In other words, the IMF plans to create a PIX/FedNow for CBDCs around the globe:

  Things could change as money becomes tokenized; that is, accessible to anyone with the right private key and transferable to anyone with access to the same network. Examples of tokenized money include so-called stablecoins, such as USD Coin, and central bank digital currency.

  The reception of Brazil’s PIX shows that FedNow will likely be widely adopted due to its convenience; however, this positive economic and technological element should not overshadow the increased control instant payment systems will give to central banks. The BCB has access to all transactions made by Brazilians through PIX, and this would only get worse should a CBDC be implemented.

  With a CBDC, it would be easier for the government to carry out expansionary monetary policies (which cause misallocations of resources and business cycles) and exert greater control over citizens’ finances.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/10/2022 – 14:30

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