- Glasgow Was A Defeat For British Ambitions
Glasgow Was A Defeat For British Ambitions
Authored by Rupert Darwall via RealClearEnergy.com,
The Glasgow climate conference represents a strategic defeat for the West, and for Britain in particular. Boris Johnson unleashed everything he could muster. The royal family hosted receptions for multibillionaires. The Foreign Office sent climate envoys around the world.
Glasgow would show the world that Britain could outdo France’s performance six years ago at the Paris climate conference.
Wrong. Whereas the French knew what they were doing in Paris, the British were at sea in Glasgow. The result was a display of the rank amateurishness of the British state.
If Boris Johnson and his ministers had done their homework, they would have known they were on a road to nowhere. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol failed because it exempted the developing world from cutting its emissions. The West attempted to remedy this at the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009 with a climate treaty that would bring the major emerging economies under a multilateral regime of emission targets and timetables. The attempt was sunk by China, India, South Africa, and Brazil acting in concert.
The West accounts for a declining share of global emissions.
“This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal,” Barack Obama had boasted in 2008.
Obama and the West were desperate for a climate agreement to justify increasingly punitive domestic climate policies. The Paris agreement is the climate equivalent of Mikhail Gorbachev’s Sinatra Doctrine, under which the captive nations of eastern Europe could do it their way. It signalled that the Soviet Union had lost the Cold War. In similar fashion, the Paris agreement signalled that the West had accepted its defeat and had given up its attempt to create a multilateral regime of emission cuts. Instead, the Paris agreement is based on nationally determined contributions. Each party to the agreement would do it its way.
After Copenhagen, small island states lobbied intensely to tighten the temperature target from 2 degrees above industrial levels to 1.5 degrees. Their islands, they claimed, were in danger of sinking beneath the waves. The West swallowed the sinking island sob story, which is how 1.5 degrees came to be included in the Paris agreement as a subsidiary ambition to the 2-degree target. It was fake science, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) later confirmed. “Observations, models and other evidence indicate that unconstrained Pacific atolls have kept pace with [sea level rise], with little reduction in size or net gain in land,” the IPCC said in its net zero report.
Because Paris included 1.5 in its text, the IPCC brought forward the indicative timetable for net zero from the second half of the current century to 2050. In the waning days of her premiership in 2019, Theresa May decided to make net zero her legacy. It was incorporated as a binding target under the 2008 Climate Change Act after a ninety-minute debate in the House of Commons, even though MPs had no idea how much it would cost or whether it was remotely feasible. But one thing is clear: whatever net zero costs Britain, it is pointless for Britain to decarbonize if the rest of the world doesn’t follow suit. The regulatory-impact assessment accompanying the Climate Change Act signed by Ed Miliband as climate and energy secretary could not have been clearer:
“The UK continuing to act while the rest of the world does not, would result in a large net cost for the UK.”
The benefits of UK climate action would be distributed around the world, but the UK would bear all the costs.
The Climate Change Act was passed in the runup to the Copenhagen climate conference, which was supposed to produce a binding climate treaty. “Showing leadership through the Climate Change Act, the UK will help to drive a global deal,” Miliband asserted, showing that climate hubris is embraced by all Britain’s political parties.
Now, for a second time, a UN climate conference has produced a dud. The fantasy that Britain would lead and the rest of the world would follow has been exposed. The question mark over net zero has been answered. After Glasgow, we now know that net zero is all pain for no gain. With Britain’s political class committed to the disastrous, dead-end path of net zero, bring on the referendum.
* * *
Rupert Darwall is the author of Green Tyranny.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 11/16/2021 – 02:00 - Bitcoin Offers Freedom In A World Of Slavery By Design
Bitcoin Offers Freedom In A World Of Slavery By Design
Authored by Anderson Benprado via BictoinMagazine.com,
The freedom forged by Bitcoin is entirely unique to a decentralized network owned by no one…
It is in decentralization that nature dwells. In centralization, we have seen only masks; we have seen only rogues who deceive fools; charlatans who come to governments to get some money, who send men to war while they go in to plunder their refrigerators with impunity, who plunge them into poverty through taxes, credits and debts, and who force them to pay their bills in exchange for allowing them to continue walking the Earth. That is, after all, centralization: A lot of smoke and lies mixed in the same stove, whose flame is kept burning by the politician who thinks that men are not worthy to govern themselves. In his opinion, that happiness is reserved for small tribes that hide among jungles and mountains, like animals that hide from civilized societies, but that in the long run are discovered, colonized and exterminated by them.
If it is unusual for a politician to exercise power without corruption, it is even more unusual to exercise power without centralization, especially if there is a type of decentralization such as Bitcoin, which bases its transparent and immutable government on mathematics and which, as such, is already mature and strong enough to be ashamed of depending on a government that is not interested in the progress of mankind. Let us remember, of course, that good inventions were never made with the prior authorization of any government, starting with the alphabet, which had to be the first tacit agreement — or the first social contract — between peoples, just before merchants invented money to represent the value of food, housing or sex. The great inventions were always decentralized, and in order to function they never needed the permission of any human committee, as did the most nefarious ones, such as religion, politics and armed armies, which were born precisely to satisfy the desire for domination of centralized powers. It is hard to understand, for this very reason, how it is that the people today believe they have any kind of voice, when it is clear that they have long since fallen into the hands of the tyranny of centralization, and allow a government from which they are completely excluded to do whatever it wants with their work and their money, to watch over them as it wants, where it wants and as it prefers, and to tell them without any shame whatsoever:
“He who is a skillful guardian of a thing is also skillful in stealing it.” — Plato, “Republic I,” 334b
The only Heracles against the economic and governmental monsters of this world is Bitcoin, with all its “decentralized” weapons, which do not benefit any bee without first benefiting the swarm, and which value human privacy to such an extent that anyone can put on the helmet of Hades. The blockchain, as a science related to privacy, does not have, naturally, total transparency; if so, not only its security would be threatened but also its immutability, because it would allow exactly the same thing that gave rise to its birth: excessive government surveillance, an abusive interference in individual freedoms justified in the defense of collective freedoms, more inequality, much more corruption, and everything that is in direct contradiction with the philosophy of Bitcoin.
Secrecy, at least in the Bitcoin blockchain, is not a manifest duty, but one of its main rights, since in it the word “privacy” means the same as “freedom,” and the collective benefit is not achieved at the expense of sacrificing any individual inclination. The primary purpose of Bitcoin, like that of any innovation, is to leave beings in the world freer than we were in it, so that whoever wants to reach a certain goal also has the means to obtain it, depending as little as possible on others, spending his days devoted to the art of which he believes himself capable and, above all, without being forced to surrender his freedom in exchange for a simple illusion of legality.
“Truly, nature leaves us free and liberated, but we ourselves bind ourselves, we constrict ourselves, we enclose ourselves within walls, we reduce ourselves in the small and petty.” — Plutarch, “Moralia,” 601c
Freedom, unfortunately, is hated in excessively centralized epochs to such an extent that its entire psychology seems oriented to belittle and slander it, causing man to be so bad as free today, that even free he feels and acts in the world as a slave. Free, in all cases, means not moved or forced, without any feeling of constraint: the mere fact of being able to make one’s own life an experiment, without any authorization from any man, institution or government. Perhaps all men would be free and equal if they had no needs, but as long as misery subordinates some human beings to others, as long as they act out of strict necessity rather than by virtue of their freedom, as long as few of them belong to themselves, and others must be counted among their belongings, so long, we say, will dependence and inequality exist, and slavery will be a very real misfortune.
And yes, it is true, we know that, in comparison with other ages, the man of today enjoys much more freedom, and that the slave who at night kissed the same hand that in the daytime whipped his back is now a thing of the past; but still we are far from believing, as those addicted to the idea of progress believe, that the man of these times is entirely free by birth, an impartial child of the universe, who goes out to sea without a single wave pushing him back to the harbor. A man who centers his financial freedom in having more and more debts — and does not realize that the worst state of affairs is that of one who has nothing that really belongs to him — cannot be free at all, for he contemplates the ideal of freedom in its simplest and most caricatured form. Such a man judges freedom not by what he is able to do, but by what he is able to endure, even in the midst of the worst need, and believes that the fact that he has no master is enough to affirm that he does not live as a slave. Such a man makes it his destiny to serve all his life, provided he is allowed to say that he loves his freedom with idolatry: For he can say that because he is free he would serve God, if the devil himself commanded him to do so; but, though he dislikes the yoke, and though he says he hates it, he knows very well that he must bear it.
“However much your name may weigh you down, you are a slave, and not to one man; rather, to many you will be inexorably enslaved, and, bowing your head like a labourer, you will toil from sunrise to sunset for insulting wages.” — Lucian, “On Salaried Posts in Great Houses” (“The Dependent Scholar”), 23
It is surprising, on the other hand, the prodigious number of emphatic speeches that have been made in all ages against slavery among the ancient Greeks and Romans, but it is still more surprising to find that those peoples did not have even one-third of the slaves that Europeans and North Americans still have today. The present lords of the Earth are quite content to think that, had it not been for the Babel adventure, the whole world would speak English today. They are our great democrats, but they cannot tolerate the idea that there is anything beyond the control of their regulatory policies, much less that people invent and use things that make the earthly existence of their bureaucrats unnecessary. Freedom is only freedom when they want it to be, not when others want it to be, and what they have achieved with much effort and sacrifice, with much less effort and at great difficulty they always have to prohibit it. Everything that they have not done to authorize is a moral evil, a criminal action product of the freedom that man has allowed himself to abuse, and, therefore, it must be harmful to the rest of society, which must thank them by obeying and thinking as it has been taught to obey and think.
“Freedom recruits apostles; / But I follow none of them; the coarse game / I know all too well; all want / Freedom for their own gain. / Do you really want to free your neighbour? / Start by serving him… that is the way.” — Goethe, “Epigrams,” 50.
Be that as it may, the truth is that those of us who trust in the Bitcoin idea have heard a lot about the freedom of others, but we do not believe that there is anyone on the face of this Earth who has forged one like ours. We know that whatever price is paid for freedom is a good price, that the freest man is the one who has the greatest relative independence of his forces, that he is the one who lives best and desires best and feeds best, the one who is most detached from himself and renews himself. It is because we have learned in time to desire what we must that today we live as we wish, discovering every day that we have barely two seconds in life, and that it is not worth spending them crawling under the feet of any government. If we are to be condemned, we think, let it be for having sought freedom without rest; for having sought from life only what is just and beautiful, pursuing it to the best of our knowledge. What future life could we have achieved for ourselves, had we continued to live the present one for others? Is there a more dishonorable slavery than voluntary slavery? Can anything be attained without first untying the spirit and freeing it; without doing all that is necessary to unleash it?
“The spirit is free by nature, not a slave: it does well only what it does for itself and at pleasure.” — Schopenhauer, “The World as Will and Representation,” Supplements, I, 7.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/15/2021 – 23:40 - China Fights Big Delta Outbreak
China Fights Big Delta Outbreak
China is fighting the biggest Delta variant outbreak so far.
But drastic measures to prevent further outbreaks are sparking complaints…
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/15/2021 – 23:20 - Syria's My Lai? US Massacred 70 Civilians And Covered It Up
Syria’s My Lai? US Massacred 70 Civilians And Covered It Up
Authored by Aaron Maté via Substack,
The New York Times has exposed one of the US military’s worst massacres and cover-up scandals since My Lai in Vietnam.
On March 18, 2019, amid a battle with Islamic State fighters, the US Air Force bombed a crowd of civilians taking shelter near the town of Baghuz, Syria, killing a reported 70 people. The attacks occurred within a 5-minute span: an initial strike, and then another with heavier bombs as survivors fled. The Times’ Dave Philipps and Eric Schmitt report:
Without warning, an American F-15E attack jet… dropped a 500-pound bomb on the crowd, swallowing it in a shuddering blast. As the smoke cleared, a few people stumbled away in search of cover. Then a jet tracking them dropped one 2,000-pound bomb, then another, killing most of the survivors.
Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC) at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar. US military officials watched the Baghuz massacre here via drone footage in real time. (US Air Force) US military personnel in Qatar watched the attack in real time via a surveillance drone at the scene. The high-definition footage showed that only two or three armed men were near the crowd, and were not engaging in any kind of combat activity that would have justified a defensive military strike.
“Who dropped that?” a confused analyst typed on a secure chat system being used by those monitoring the drone, two people who reviewed the chat log recalled. Another responded, “We just dropped on 50 women and children.” An initial battle damage assessment quickly found that the number of dead was actually about 70.
Instead of accountability, “at nearly every step, the military made moves that concealed the catastrophic strike,” Philipps and Schmitt write. The site of the bombing was bulldozed; the unit that conducted the strike vindicated itself; key evidence was buried; military logs were altered; and investigations were stalled and subverted. Although the Pentagon’s independent inspector general managed to launch a probe, “the report containing its findings was stalled and stripped of any mention of the strike.”
The bombing was called in by a classified special operations unit, Task Force 9, which led US ground operations in Syria. Two months after the March 2019 massacre, the task force completed a civilian casualty report on the strike that claimed that only four civilians were killed. It also determined that the strike was lawfully conducted in self-defense.
The Baghuz killings likely only came to light because of whistleblowers who challenged the cover-up from within. Lt. Col. Dean W. Korsak, an Air Force lawyer present at the Qatar air base when the massacre was observed, immediately ordered officials to preserve evidence, including video, and urged superiors to open a war crimes investigation. When they refused, Korsak alerted the Pentagon’s independent inspector general.
Earlier this year, after two years of inaction, Korsak shared details about the cover-up with the Senate Armed Services Committee. “I’m putting myself at great risk of military retaliation for sending this,” he wrote. “Senior ranking U.S. military officials intentionally and systematically circumvented the deliberate strike process.”
…[Korsak] wrote that a unit had intentionally entered false strike log entries, “clearly seeking to cover up the incidents.” Calling the classified death toll “shockingly high,” he said the military did not follow its own requirements to report and investigate the strike. There was a good chance, he wrote, that “the highest levels of government remained unaware of what was happening on the ground.”
When Korsak alerted the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations, an Air Force major replied that the office would likely only probe the massacre if there was a “potential for high media attention, concern with outcry from local community/government, concern sensitive images may get out.”
The Senate Armed Committee reached out to Korsack after being approached by another whistleblower, Gene Tate, an investigator at the Pentagon’s Inspector General office. Tate told the Times that he witnessed similar stonewalling and censorship. “Leadership just seemed so set on burying this. No one wanted anything to do with it,” Tate said. “It makes you lose faith in the system when people are trying to do what’s right but no one in positions of leadership wants to hear it.”
After raising concerns at multiple levels, Tate says that in October 2020 “he was forced out of his position and escorted from the building by security.” In response to the New York Times, Central Command acknowledged the Baghuz massacre for the first time. But it continues to deny the civilian toll, insisting that just four civilians were killed. According to the Times, a US military statement claimed that 60 of the dead may have not have been civilians, “in part because women and children in the Islamic State sometimes took up arms.”
The Times uncovered additional evidence that the cover-up is part of a broader pattern of US forces ignoring safeguards against attacking civilians in Syria, and hiding the death toll. According to the Times, some officials believed that Task Force 9, the unit behind the strike, “was systematically circumventing the safeguards created to limit civilian deaths… by late 2018, about 80 percent of all airstrikes it was calling in claimed self-defense.”
Previous mass casualty causing military operations in Syria have also evaded scrutiny. As a New Yorker report observed in 2020, US bombings in Syria have “reduced parts of the country to wasteland.” In Raqqa, US adopted “a strategy of physical annihilation applied against a city that still harbored a significant civilian population”, causing an “utter decimation” that “might be unique in this century.”
According to the Times’ exposé on Baghuz, US officials assessing civilian deaths in places like Raqqa “did not investigate on the ground and often based their findings on how many dead civilians they could definitively identify from aerial footage of the rubble.”
Baghuz Cliff, Syria. (J. Steffen @ WikiMapia) Parallels to My Lai massacre in Vietnam
News of the Baghuz massacre comes just days after the US military exonerated itself for the killing of 10 civilians, including seven children, in its August drone strike in Kabul.
The US military’s cover-up of the Baghuz massacre also parallels the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. A reported 504 Vietnamese civilians, including 182 women and 173 children, were slaughtered by US forces in My Lai and neighboring My Khe 4 on March 16, 1968. Just like in Baghuz, the US military unit involved in the My Lai massacre – the 11th Infantry Brigade — carried out an investigation and exonerated itself.
The atrocity was revealed in November 1969 by journalist Seymour Hersh, who interviewed two of the key perpetrators. Hersh’s report, published by the small anti-war outlet the Dispatch News Service, helped turn US public opinion against the Vietnam war.
The Baghuz massacre was kept hidden from the public for a year longer than My Lai was. Hersh’s story came out 18 months after the My Lai massacre; the Baghuz slaughter occurred on March 18, 2019, and was revealed by the New York Times on November 13, 2021 — more than two years later. Coincidentally, the Times’ story was published one day after the 52nd anniversary of Hersh’s report on My Lai: November 12, 1969.
US massacre in Baghuz follows decade-long dirty war in Syria with little oversight
The lack of accountability for US bombings that kill civilians is only one element of a years-long US warfare campaign in Syria given a blank check by Congress and kept largely from public view.
Against the will of the Syrian government — and with no authorization from the United Nations Security Council or the US Congress — the US military continues to occupy a large swath of northeast Syria with hundreds of troops. As I reported in September, the Biden administration has deceived the public about both the nature of the US mission in Syria and its motives.
Although the US claims that its “sole purpose” in Syria is fighting ISIS, the US military has in fact barely done any fighting over the last two years. In 2019, now-senior Biden official Dana Stroul admitted that the US military occupation in Syria in “not only about completing the anti-ISIS fight.” In reality, Stroul explained, occupying the “resource-rich”, “economic powerhouse” region in Syria’s northeast — which contains the country’s “hydrocarbons” and is its “agricultural powerhouse” — gives the U.S. government “broader leverage” to influence “a political outcome in Syria” in line with US dictates.
At a US gov-funded think tank, this official who oversaw Congress’ Syria Study Group outlines the continued regime-change strategy.
She says the US military “owned” 1/3rd of Syrian territory, including its oil/wheat-rich region. And the US is trying to block reconstruction funds pic.twitter.com/NIEJ9elxhs
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) November 5, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Underscoring the bipartisan mission, Stroul’s rationale was expressed more crudely by President Trump in January 2020, when he told Fox News that he had backed off a withdrawal from Syria in order to “to take the oil. I took the oil.”
The US Congress is so committed to deploying US troops to steal Syrian resources that it refuses to even debate it. In September, a proposed amendment from Rep. Jamal Bowman (D-NY) that would require Congressional authorization for the U.S. military force in Syria was defeated 141-286.
Although the U.S. military launched operations in Syria in 2014, this vote marked the first time that either chamber of Congress has taken a recorded floor vote on whether to authorize the deployment of hundreds of troops there.
The Congressional endorsement of continued military occupation in Syria pleased the Biden administration, which “doesn’t want a cap on military operations in Syria,” Politico reported. “The United States is in Syria for the sole purpose of enabling the campaign against ISIS, which is not yet over,” a National Security Council spokesperson claimed, omitting the hegemonic motives previously admitted by Stroul and Trump.
The Congressional abrogation of its oversight and war authority powers in Syria follows its decade-long rubber stamp on arguably the most catastrophic and deadly US operation of them all: Timber Sycamore, the multi-billion dollar CIA program that armed and trained insurgents seeking to overthrow Syria’s government. Just like the cover-up over the Baghuz massacre, US officials concealed the costs and consequences of the massive covert CIA operation.
Timber Sycamore proved to be “one of the costliest covert action programs in the history of the C.I.A”, the New York Times reported in 2017, after Trump ordered its cancellation. With “a budget approaching $1 billion a year,” or “about $1 of every $15 in the CIA’s overall budget,” the CIA armed and trained nearly 10,000 insurgents, spending “roughly $100,000 per year for every anti-Assad rebel who has gone through the program,” the Washington Post revealed in 2015. Citing a “knowledgeable US official,” the Post’s David Ignatius reported in 2017, the “many dozens of militia groups” given “many hundreds of millions of dollars” by the CIA “may have killed or wounded 100,000 Syrian soldiers and their allies over the past four years.”
As David McCloskey, a former CIA analyst who worked on Syria during the program’s early years, told me in a recent interview for The Grayzone, the US continued this program despite the internal understanding that “al-Qaeda affiliated groups and Salafi jihadist groups were the primary engine of the insurgency.” The US government’s tacit alliance with Al Qaeda, McCloskey said, was “a tremendously problematic aspect of the conflict.”
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/15/2021 – 23:00 - Deadly 'Fat-Tailed Scorpions' Swarm Egyptian Town After Flooding – At Least 500 Hospitalized
Deadly ‘Fat-Tailed Scorpions’ Swarm Egyptian Town After Flooding – At Least 500 Hospitalized
A rare storm in the south of Egypt has caused floods that in turn unleashed many thousands of scorpions taking shelter in people homes and swarming inhabited areas.
International reports have counted at least 500 hospitalized, including at least three deaths reported, following days of heavy rain in Aswan, Egypt along the Nile. The huge number of injuries are from scorpions and snakes which were stirred out of their hiding places and entered the nearby town, quickly resulted in unprecedented numbers of stings and bites.
Androctonus crassicauda, via WikiCommons The three deaths appear to have been from the flooding, according to local health officials, who have also reported that hospitals are currently overwhelmed by scorpion bites from Egypt’s “Arabian Fat-Tailed scorpions”, considered one of the deadliest the world.
However, Egypt’s Ministry of Health and local officials say they have plenty of anti-venom on hand to handle the unprecedented numbers of stings. Symptoms being widely reported include fever, vomiting, muscle tremors, body twitching, diarrhea and extreme pain at the sting site.
The three to four inch long fat-tail scorpion that inhabits the region is described in Al Jazeera as follows:
The Aswan mountains are home to the Arabian fat-tailed scorpion, or Androctonus crassicauda, which translates from Greek to “man-killer”. They are considered among the most dangerous scorpions in the world, with a highly toxic venom that could kill an adult within an hour of being stung. Their sting is known to cause several human deaths a year.
Videos posted to social media have featured rapidly rising flood waters in the city, with people on rafts trying to escape. Another widely-circulated video from the past days of storms shows a pair of large scorpions just outside the door of a home…
ليلة عصيبة مليئة بالرعب مرَّت علىٰ أهالي محافظة #أسوان 3 قتلىٰ ومئات المصابين بعد عاصفة رعدية وهيجان العقارب والثعابين من جحورهن – #مصر pic.twitter.com/j5QFRevcGq
— Jarah Aldhafeeri جراح الظفيري (@Q8J72) November 14, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Scorpions, snakes, and other creatures will tend to seek higher ground once flood waters are strong enough to wash them away.
דרום מצרים, אסוואן, מכת עקרבים בעקבות גשמים עזים שהבריחו אותם לבתים. התוצאה – שלושה מתים ו-450 נפגעים מעקיצות עקרבים pic.twitter.com/XtqoP6uYxQ
— roi kais • روعي كايس • רועי קייס (@kaisos1987) November 13, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
The Egyptian fat-tailed scorpion is a common species found throughout North Africa and typically isn’t a big problem given they hide from humans. But with the severe flooding, people are being asked to stay in their homes while being on alert for the venomous creatures entering their areas.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/15/2021 – 22:40 - Mandatory Vaccination & The Failure Of Modern Constitutional Law
Mandatory Vaccination & The Failure Of Modern Constitutional Law
Authored by Bob Fielder via The Libertarian Institute,
Stare Decisis is an old Latin phrase meaning “Let wrong decisions of the Court stand.” The term is more commonly spoken of today as the common-law doctrine of precedent.
During the COVID-19 crisis, Jacobson v. Massachusetts became the fountainhead for pandemic jurisprudence. Courts relied on this 1905 precedent to resolve disputes about religious freedom, abortion, gun rights, voting rights, the right to travel, and many other contexts. But Justice John Marshall Harlan’s decision was meant to be very narrow. It upheld the state’s power to impose a nominal fine on an unvaccinated person. No more, no less. Yet, judges now follow a variant of Jacobson that is far removed from the Lochner-era decision. And the Supreme Court is largely to blame for these errors.
Recent research on the part of constitutional law scholar Josh Blackman, his article “The Irrepressible Myth of Jacobson v. Massachusetts” demonstrated that over the course of a century, four prominent justices established a mythical narrative surrounding Jacobson v. Massachusetts that has obscured any historical view of this case as either a matter of law or fact. This myth has four levels:
- The first level was layered in Buck v. Bell (1927). Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes Jr. recast Jacobson’s limited holding to support forcible intrusions onto bodily autonomy. The Cambridge law did not involve forcible vaccination, but Holmes still used the case to uphold a compulsory sterilization regime.
- The second level was layered in 1963. In Sherbert v. Verner, Justice William J. Brennan transformed Jacobson, a substantive due process case, into a free exercise case. And he suggested that the usual First Amendment jurisprudence would not apply during public health crises.
- The third level was layered in 1973. In Roe v. Wade, Justice Harry Blackmun incorporated Jacobson into the Court’s modern substantive due process framework. Roe also inadvertently extended Jacobson yet further: during a health crisis, the state has additional powers to restrict abortions.
- The fourth layer is of recent vintage. In South Bay Pentecostal Church v. Newsom, Chief Justice John Roberts’ “superprecedent” suggested that Jacobson-level deference was warranted for all pandemic-related constitutional challenges.
This final layer of the myth, however, would be buried six months later in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo. The per curiam decision followed traditional First Amendment doctrine, and did not rely on Jacobson. But Jacobson stands ready to open up an escape hatch from the Constitution during the next crisis. The Supreme Court should restore Jacobson to its original meaning, and permanently seal off that possibility.
Instead, Chief Justice Roberts wrote an influential concurring opinion. He favorably cited Jacobson, and wrote that, “Our Constitution principally entrusts ‘[t]he safety and the health of the people’ to the politically accountable officials of the States ‘to guard and protect.’” In short order, this concurrence became a “superprecedent.” Over the following six months, 140 cases cited the solo opinion, and more than 90 of which also cited Jacobson. It isn’t clear that the chief justice intended to adopt Jacobson’s constitutional analysis as a general rule to review pandemic measures
Jacobson v. Massachusetts was decided in February 1905, two months before the Supreme Court handed down Lochner v. New York. This period was known politically as the Progressive Era, and legally as the Lochner Era. Constitutional law was very different at the turn of the twentieth century. When reviewing decisions from this epoch, it is important to view them in the timeframe in which they were decided. It is anachronistic to view these cases through the lens of modernity. And it is problematic to graft these early cases onto the modern framework of constitutional law. Yet, courts and scholars routinely make these errors. Part I will provide a brief history of constitutional law from the Lochner era to the present. First, we will revisit the Fourteenth Amendment, as it was understood in 1905. At the time, there were no tiers of scrutiny, the Supreme Court did not distinguish between fundamental and non-fundamental rights, and the Bill of Rights had not yet been incorporated. So-called rational basis review was actually somewhat rigorous. Moreover, the Court treated economic property rights in the same fashion as personal liberty.
In 1905, the Supreme Court’s Fourteenth Amendment case law was primordial. The Privileges & Immunities Clause was an empty vessel. States were not bound by the Bill of Rights. And separate was equal. This jurisprudence was far removed from modern doctrine. The Supreme Court had not yet carved the tiers of scrutiny. There was no divide between rational basis scrutiny and strict scrutiny. Nor was there a sharp dichotomy between fundamental and non-fundamental rights. Yet, cases from the Progressive Era invoked concepts and terms that seem familiar to present-day students of constitutional law, but had very different meanings.
The Evolution to Modern Constitutional Law
Modern constitutional doctrine would begin, in earnest, three decades after Jacobson. The Supreme Court’s Progressive Era approach to the Fourteenth Amendment largely subsided during the New Deal. The Supreme Court’s present-day approach to the Due Process Clause springs from Footnote Four of United States v. Carolene Products. Justice Harlan F. Stone wrote the majority opinion. The first paragraph of Footnote Four stated that courts should not review with the presumption of constitutionality legislation that “appears on its face” to violate “a specific prohibition of the Constitution.” Specifically, that presumption of constitutionality is not warranted when a law runs afoul of rights protected by “the first ten Amendments.” For example, the Court should not use the presumption of constitutionality to review a law that violates the freedom of speech. Instead, the Court should invert the presumption of constitutionality to what may be called a presumption of liberty. With this approach, the government has the burden to justify why it is violating that enumerated right. The Court would later refer to this model as “strict scrutiny.” There was an unstated implication in the first paragraph of Footnote Four: nonfundamental rights that did not to violate “a specific prohibition of the Constitution” would be reviewed with the presumption of constitutionality. That is, most laws that burdened unenumerated rights would be reviewed with a deferential standard of review.
Jacobson and Lochner in 1905
Around the turn of the twentieth century, states began to require people to be vaccinated against smallpox. And courts upheld these measures as constitutional exercises of the police power. In 1902, Massachusetts enacted such a law. Later that year, the city of Cambridge prosecuted Henning Jacobson for refusing to get vaccinated. Jacobson, a Lutheran Evangelical Minister, argued that the law violated the state and federal constitution. After a trial, Jacobson was convicted, and ordered to pay the maximum permissible fine: $5. The Massachusetts law did not allow the Commonwealth to forcibly vaccinate Jacobson. An unvaccinated person who paid the fine was free to spread smallpox, and still be fully compliant with the law.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld Jacobson’s conviction. It found that individual liberty could be restricted to promote the common welfare. On appeal, the United States Supreme Court agreed. Justice John Marshal Harlan wrote the majority opinion. So long as there was reasonable fit between the measure adopted, and the government’s interest was to promote public health, the law is valid. Still, Jacobson identified several limitation on its holding that are often disregarded in modern discourse.
We must juxtapose Jacobson with the infamous case of Lochner v. New York. The two cases, which were decided two months apart, are cut from the same constitutional cloth. Both of these cases should be viewed as byproducts of the early twentieth century jurisprudence. To understand Jacobson, we must understand Lochner.
A number of states put in place steep fines and penalties for non-compliance to vaccine requirements. Still, despite all of these draconian measures, the states did not purport to have the power to forcibly vaccinate people. By 1905, “not one of the states undertakes forcible vaccinations of its inhabitants, while the states of Utah and West Virginia expressly provide that no such compulsion shall be used.” Jacobson’s counsel, J.W. Pickering “contended that the rights of man under the constitution were such that the enforcement of the vaccination law took them away.”
Pfizer headquarters in New York City 🇺🇸 Protesters gather against mandatory vaccination for health workers pic.twitter.com/kmz4zRlRhx
— D1ll3yD1ll3y (@DilleyDilley8) November 14, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Pickering added that vaccination “was a great menace to individual rights.” Moreover, “certain members of the medical fraternity did not believe in vaccination.” However, Judge McDaniel ruled that he could not pass on the constitutionality of the law in that court. Judge McDaniel ordered Jacobson to pay a fine of $5.
First, the Court placed the Massachusetts law in the broader context of public health laws. “Sometimes it is necessary,” Massachusetts Supreme Court Chief Justice Marcus Perrin Knowlton wrote, “that persons be held in quarantine.” Moreover, “Conscription may be authorized if the life of the nation is in peril.” Other state courts had upheld the power to require vaccinations “as a prerequisite to attendance at school.” From these precedents, the Court reasoned that the state has the power to mandate vaccinations for the entire populace. Here, the Court favorably cited decisions from “the highest courts of Georgia and North Carolina” which upheld “statutes substantially the same as the one now before us.” The Court rejected Jacobson’s claims based on the Due Process Clause. He stated that “[t]he rights of individuals must yield, if necessary, when the welfare of the whole community is at stake.” Chief Justice Knowlton cited several prominent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, including Powell v. Pennsylvania, Yick Wo v. Hopkins, and Mugler v. Kansas. These cases recognized that “if a statute purports to be enacted to promote the general welfare of the people, and is not at variance with any provision of the Constitution, the question whether it will be for the good of the community is a legislative, and not a judicial, question.” Third, the Court identified a limitation on its holding: the penalty was modest, and the state did not actually force people to get vaccinated. But the Court recognized the analysis would be different if the law did in fact force people to get vaccinated.
More than a century later, Justice Neil Gorsuch described the narrow scope of the Cambridge law: “individuals could accept the vaccine, pay the fine, or identify a basis for exemption.” He added that “the imposition on Mr. Jacobson’s claimed right to bodily integrity, thus, was avoidable and relatively modest.”
On appeal, Jacobson narrowed his arguments to five grounds. He limited his assignments of error to federal questions, and excluded all claims under the Massachusetts Constitution. First, Jacobson claimed that the law “was in derogation of the rights secured…by the preamble to the Constitution…and tends to subvert and defeat the purposes of said Constitution as there declared.” Second, he asserted that the law violated the Self Incrimination Clause, the Due Process Clause, and the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Third, Jacobson argued that the law violated Section One of the Fourteenth Amendment. Fourth, he claimed the law “was repugnant to the spirit of the Constitution of the United States.” Fifth, Jacobson alleged that the trial court erred by excluding his offers of proof about the vaccine’s harmfulness, which “tended to prove” that the law was “unconstitutional and void.”
The Supreme Court affirmed Jacobson’s conviction. Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote the majority opinion. Justices David Josiah Brewer and Rufus W. Peckham dissented without a written opinion. The Court rejected Jacobson’s first argument based on the preamble to the United States Constitution. Justice Harlan wrote that the preamble “has never been regarded as the source of any substantive power conferred on the government of the United States, or on any of its departments.”
To this day, courts cite Justice Harlan as the canonical statement for the relevance of the preamble. The Court did not address Jacobson’s second argument based on the Fifth Amendment. Justice Harlan quickly dispatched “without discussion” Jacobson’s fourth argument based on the “spirit” of the Constitution. He found there was “no need in this case to go beyond the plain, obvious meaning of the words in those provisions of the Constitution which, it is contended, must control our decision.” With respect to the fifth claim, the Court stated that the “mere rejection of defendant’s offers of proof does not strictly present a Federal question.”
The bulk of the opinion focused on the third assignment of error: Section One of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court rejected Jacobson’s argument that the Massachusetts law violated the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court also rejected Jacobson’s argument based on the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The remainder of Jacobson considered the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court posed the central question: “Is the statute, so construed, therefore, inconsistent with the liberty which the Constitution of the United States secures to every person against deprivation by the state?” The Court answered no. Justice Harlan’s analysis of the Due Process Clause had four primary parts.
First, the Court explained the relationship between individual liberty and the state’s police power. Justice Harlan wrote that the Constitution “does not import an absolute right in each person to be, at all times and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint.” All people can be subjected to “manifold restraints” to promote “the common good.”
Finally, the Court offered a two-part test to determine whether the Massachusetts law was valid. First, the Court asked “if a statute purporting to have been enacted to protect the public health, the public morals, or the public safety, has [a] real or substantial relation to those objects.” Second, the Court asks if the law “is, beyond all question, a plain, palpable invasion of rights secured by the fundamental law.” In either case, the Court has “the duty…to so adjudge, and thereby give effect to the Constitution.” The test resembles the sort of means-ends scrutiny that would become a staple of constitutional adjudication.
Justice Harlan’s opinion was broad. But the Court identified four limits, and implied a fifth constraint. First, structural constraints limit the state’s police powers. Second, the Court recognized that the statute cannot be enforced against a person for whom the vaccine would be particularly dangerous (“In perfect health and a fit subject of vaccination”). Third, Justice Harlan recognized that a vaccine mandate could not be enacted based on pretextual motivations: “if a statute purporting to have been enacted to protect the public health, the public morals, or the public safety, has no real or substantial relation to those objects,” then “it is the duty of the courts to so adjudge, and thereby give effect to the Constitution” which was enacted to “promote the common welfare.”
Fourth, the Court acknowledged that the government could not violate certain individual rights. Justice Harlan wrote, “There is, of course, a sphere within which the individual may assert the supremacy of his own will.” And if that sphere is encroached, people may “rightfully dispute the authority of…any free government existing under a written constitution, to interfere with the exercise of that will.” But that principle only went so far. Individual liberty “may at times, under the pressure of great dangers, be subjected to such restraint, to be enforced by reasonable regulations, as the safety of the general public may demand.” Justice Harlan drew the line at arbitrariness. The police power cannot be “exercised in particular circumstances and in reference to particular persons in such an arbitrary, unreasonable manner.”
Such an irrational requirement, Jacobson’s fifth constraint is implied, but is significant: the Court only upheld a small fine for going unvaccinated. The law did not actually require people to get vaccinated. Jacobson argued only that “his liberty is invaded when the state subjects him to fine or imprisonment for neglecting or refusing to submit to vaccination.” Having to pay the fine, Jacobson contended, was itself a violation of liberty, even if he was not forced to receive the vaccination. The case did not, and indeed could not, resolve the question of whether the state could force a person to undergo a medical procedure. Moreover, the fine was modest. Five dollars is roughly $150 in present-day value. (Justice Gorsuch rounded down to “about $140.”)
The narrow scope of Jacobson is linked to the narrow regime from Cambridge as applied to Jacobson’s specific dispute. The holding was expressly limited to this instance. Jacobson’s final sentence is worth repeating: “We now decide only that the statute covers the present case…” Over the next century, many judges would ignore this statement, and extend Jacobson to circumstances Justice Harlan could not have even fathomed.
Jacobson in the Roberts Court
On October 6, 2020, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo imposed new restrictions on public gatherings in houses of worship. These policies were challenged by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, Agudath Israel of America, and other parties. The district court declined to enjoin Cuomo’s policy. It expressly recognized that Chief Justice Roberts “relied on Jacobson.” The court wrote, “in light of Jacobson and the Supreme Court’s recent decision in South Bay, it cannot be said that the Plaintiff has established a likelihood of success on the merits.” On November 9, the Second Circuit affirmed based on the South Bay concurrence. In dissent, Judge Park assailed Jacobson. He wrote, “Jacobson does not call for indefinite deference to the political branches exercising extraordinary emergency powers, nor does it counsel courts to abdicate their responsibility to review claims of constitutional violations.” That circuit court decision would be the last hurrah for the South Bay concurrence, and the fourth level of Jacobson’s myth.
The composition of the Supreme Court had changed since South Bay. Justice Ginsburg passed away, and was replaced by Justice Amy Coney Barrett. She took the judicial oath on October 27, 2020. And on November 12, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn sought an injunction from the new Roberts Court. Later that evening, Justice Alito delivered the keynote address at the Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention. He spoke at some length about COVID-19, religious liberty, and Jacobson:
So what are the courts doing in this crisis, when the constitutionality of COVID restrictions has been challenged in Court? The leading authority cited in their defense is a 1905 Supreme Court decision called Jacobson v. Massachusetts. The case concerned an outbreak of smallpox in Cambridge. And the Court upheld the constitutionality of an ordinance that required vaccinations to prevent the disease from spreading. Now I’m all in favor of preventing dangerous things from issuing out of Cambridge and infecting the rest of the country and the world. It would be good if what originates in Cambridge stayed in Cambridge. But to return to the serious point, it’s important to keep Jacobson in perspective. Its primary holding rejected a substantive due process challenge to a local measure that targeted a problem of limited scope. It did not involve sweeping restrictions imposed across the country for an extended period. And it does not mean that whenever there is an emergency, executive officials have unlimited unreviewable discretion.
On November 25, shortly before midnight, the Supreme Court decided Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo. The majority halted New York’s regulations. The per curiam opinion was unsigned. But, by process of elimination, we can infer that Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett were in the majority. Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan were in dissent. With Justice Barrett’s replacement of Ginsburg, the conservative court formed a new 5-4 majority.
The unsigned per curiam opinion was very short at less than 2,000 words. It did not cite Jacobson, or the Chief Justice’s South Bay concurrence. The mythical precedent of 1905 and the superprecedent of 2020 played no part in the Court’s decision. In Roman Catholic Diocese, the Court effectively repudiated the South Bay concurrence, and in the process, cast some doubt about the continued vitality of Jacobson—at least with respect to Free Exercise Clause cases. For our purposes, the most important aspects of the case were Justice Gorsuch’s concurrence and Chief Justice Roberts’ dissent. The two writings sparred over Jacobson.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/15/2021 – 22:20 - Wyoming Republican Party Officially Disowns Liz Cheney
Wyoming Republican Party Officially Disowns Liz Cheney
The Wyoming Republican Party has voted to no longer recognize Rep. Liz Cheney as a member of the GOP over her criticism of former President Donald Trump.
In a 31-29 vote on Saturday held in Buffalo, WY, the state party’s central committee slapped Cheney with her second formal rebuke over her behavior. The vote came after local GOP officials in around 1/3 of the state’s 23 counties previously voted to boot Cheney from the party.
As the Associated Press notes, Cheney was also censured in February by the Wyoming GOP central committee for voting to impeach Trump over the Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol – which she described as an act of conscience in defense of the Constitution
In response to the move, Cheney spokesman Jeremy Adler told AP via text that it was “laughable” for anyone to suggest Cheney isn’t a “conservative Republican,” adding “She is bound by her oath to the Constitution. Sadly a portion of the Wyoming GOP leadership has abandoned that fundamental principle and instead allowed themselves to be held hostage to the lies of a dangerous and irrational man.”
Cheney is now facing at least four Republican opponents in the 2022 primary including Cheyenne attorney Harriet Hageman, whom Trump has endorsed. Hageman in a statement called the latest state GOP central committee vote “fitting,” the Casper Star-Tribune reported.
“Liz Cheney stopped recognizing what Wyomingites care about a long time ago. When she launched her war against President Trump, she completely broke with where we are as a state,” Hageman said. -AP
Cheney’s ‘treason’ against Trump resulted in her removal from a top congressional GOP leadership position after she wouldn’t stop talking shit about the former president’s claims that voter fraud cost him the 2020 election.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/15/2021 – 22:00 - Taxation, Like Gun-Control Laws, Will Not Stop Gun Violence
Taxation, Like Gun-Control Laws, Will Not Stop Gun Violence
Submitted by The Machine Gun Nest (TMGN).
ABC News, your bias is showing.
If it wasn’t already clear to everyone with common sense, the Corporate Media is extremely biased towards the “anti-gun” side of the Firearms debate. They’ve really started to show their bias in their new piece titled “After a year of record gun sales, advocates mull over how a new tax could save lives.”
This misleading piece is part of a series titled “rethinking gun-violence.”
In the piece, ABC news suggests that the tax could “claw back revenue from industry profits.” Unfortunately, the idea that raising taxes on firearms could have any effect at all on gun violence is silly at best, and at worst, downright ignorant.
Let me first start by saying that Gun owners are not “pro-gun violence.” If anything, Gun owners are realists, and they’re people that know the patchwork system of gun laws does very little to stop ill intent. Some reasonable methods suggested to lower gun violence are: allow people to acquire a concealed carry permit for self-defense and stand-your-ground laws. It’s common sense that criminals look for easy targets. If criminals know that the likelihood of their target having a firearm is low, they’re more likely to act.
But let’s break down why a tax on firearms stopping gun violence is a corporate media fantasy.
First off, the people most likely to need a firearm for self-defense typically fall into the category of the middle class, or working poor. People who are in the middle class and work for a living often do not have access to things like bodyguards or private security. Their own defense is their responsibility. They often use public transportation, bike, or walk to and from places. They may not live in the nicest neighborhoods and may have to deal with gang activity or crime. These same people work hard for their money, and the last thing they need is a tax on the lifesaving defense tool that they may need one day walking home from work.
Just look at the current Supreme Court case NYSRPA v. Bruen.
In NYSRPA v. BRUEN, an Amicus Brief was filed by a coalition of public defenders to invalidate New York’s current ban on concealed carry. Why? Because people in rough neighborhoods carry firearms for self-defense and are denied their 2nd amendment right. The idea that making people pay more money to exercise a right will also somehow affect the level of violence in these same communities is not based in reality.
It’s also important to note that New York City has one of the largest wealth gaps in the country. Could it be that the idea of armed citizens scares the wealthy political elite? New York has certainly argued in court that it would rather people rely on the police to solve life-threatening situations instead of citizens having the right or means to defend themselves.
The thing that the corporate media refuses to acknowledge is that taxes in general often hurt the poorest, while the richest simply avoid or move. This is why the left wingers in the US continue to push expensive social programs while proclaiming that the tax that pays for social programs will only be paid by the richest people in the country. Meanwhile, the middle class and the working poor usually get handed the bill when reality hits. This is the same with gun control and taxes on firearms. As much as the gun-control lobby refuses to admit it, they want the taxes as a prohibitory workaround for not passing legislation. Sort of like saying, “fine, you can have your guns, but we’re going to make them artificially expensive through unconstitutional taxation.”
This taxation only hurts the poorest, and those same people happen to be most in need of a firearm for self-defense.
Criminals will always find a way to a firearm, whether that’s getting their friend to buy one and report it stolen as a straw purchase, making a firearm themselves from an 80% kit, or even 3D printing. The idea that gun violence can be legislated or taxed away is a fantasy. The idea that currently, New York and other anti-gun states expect people living in rough areas not to have the means to defend themselves is just as crazy. We should be empowering law-abiding citizens to protect themselves, not punishing them!
This is why it’s important for gun owners to get out there and change minds. It’s only through the process of debate, conversation, and experience will we win over people to our side and repeal these ridiculous laws and taxes. If going by the laws of anti-gun states is any indication, The State is perfectly fine with leaving you to die at the hands of criminals rather than giving you the freedom to defend yourself.
This proposed idea of taxes on firearms ultimately is nothing new. As gun control continues to be an unpopular issue with most of the population, the anti-gun lobby will find new ways to separate Americans from their 2nd Amendment right. Whether it’s ATF regulation, Taxes, or declaring gun violence a “public health crisis,” gun owners should be confident that the law and common sense are on their side.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/15/2021 – 21:40 - JPMorgan Sues Tesla For $162 Million, Accusing Elon Musk Of "Flagrantly" Defaulting On Warrant Payments
JPMorgan Sues Tesla For $162 Million, Accusing Elon Musk Of “Flagrantly” Defaulting On Warrant Payments
Late on Monday, JPMorgan sued Tesla for $162.2 million, accusing Elon Musk’s electric car company of “flagrantly” breaching a contract related to stock warrants after its share price soared. According to the complaint filed in Manhattan federal court and first reported by Reuters, Tesla in 2014 sold warrants to JPMorgan that would pay off if their “strike price” were below Tesla’s share price upon the warrants’ expiration in June and July 2021.
JPMorgan, which said it had authority to adjust the strike price, said it substantially reduced the strike price after Musk’s Aug. 7, 2018 tweet that he might take Tesla private at $420 per share and had “funding secured,” and reversed some of the reduction when Musk abandoned the idea 17 days later.
In either case, Tesla’s share price rose approximately 10-fold by the time the warrants expired, and JPMorgan said this required Tesla under its contract to deliver shares of its stock or cash. The bank said Tesla’s failure to do that amounted to a default.
“Though JPMorgan’s adjustments were appropriate and contractually required,” the complaint said, “Tesla has flagrantly ignored its clear contractual obligation to pay JPMorgan in full.”
According to the complaint, Tesla sold the warrants to reduce potential stock dilution from a separate convertible bond sale and to lower its federal income taxes (we are confident Bernie Sanders will have something to say about this). JPMorgan said it had been contractually entitled to adjust the warrants’ terms following “significant corporate transactions involving Tesla.”
The automaker in February 2019 complained that the bank’s adjustments were “an opportunistic attempt to take advantage of changes in volatility in Tesla’s stock,” but did not challenge the underlying calculations, JPMorgan said. Musk’s August 2018 tweets led to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission civil charges and $20 million fines against both him and Tesla.
Meanwhile, TSLA stock continued to slide on Monday, briefly entering a bear market before shooting higher as a result of what we said was a perfectly unmanipulated move in response to Musk selling billions more in TSLA stock.
And there it is
*TESLA’S MUSK EXERCISES 2.1M OPTIONS, SELLS SHARES FOR TAXES https://t.co/ajzgBils7S
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) November 16, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
A few hours later it turned out we were right again, when Musk filed a 13G revealing he sold 934,091 shares on Monday and a total of 7.2741 mln shares since Nov 8, accounting for 42.6% of the amount he promised to sell.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/15/2021 – 21:20 - The Resistance Liar
The Resistance Liar
Authored by Eli Lake via Commentary.org,
A Review of ‘Midnight in Washington’ by Adam Schiff
Adam Schiff was one of the star attractions at Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial. In his role as one of the House impeachment managers, Schiff pressed his case on the Senate floor by summoning an earnest indignation. He would at times get hoarse and weary. He would jab the air and lower his voice. He was a showman playing the role of a statesman.
The bulk of Schiff’s new memoir, Midnight in Washington, focuses on the scandal that erupted when President Trump sought to pressure Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden’s son Hunter. The whole affair was a gift from heaven for the Democratic congressman who represents Burbank, California. Schiff claimed to be in possession of evidence proving that Trump’s 2016 campaign conspired with Russia. When special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation yielded no evidence of such a conspiracy, Schiff looked ridiculous—the supposedly dogged prosecutor had suddenly become the boy who cried collusion.
Then the House Intelligence Committee, of which Schiff became chairman in 2019, received a whistleblower’s complaint that alleged a sordid scheme to strong-arm the new Ukrainian president into cooperating with Trump crony Rudy Giuliani’s “investigation” of Hunter Biden. Schiff’s career was revived. And this time, he had the goods.
We never learn the identity of the whistleblower Schiff once promised would testify. Nor does Schiff acknowledge that Hunter Biden did indeed entangle himself in seedy foreign dealings. But he does share details of the sheepish conversation he had with reporter Sam Stein, during which he had to walk back his earlier comment that the whistleblower had not had contact with the House Intelligence Committee he chairs.
“I had been thinking about securing the whistleblower’s testimony before the committee, not any prior contact with my staff,” he recalls telling Stein.
“But I screwed up and wanted him to know it.”
As Schiff hung up the phone, he felt sick to his stomach, he says.
This passage gives the reader the false impression that Schiff is reflective and honest about his mistakes.
But it’s best to read this admission as calculated contrition. For most of his memoir, Schiff writes as though he actually did reveal a Trump-Russia collusion scandal—and he ignores the ample public evidence of its debunking.
Schiff makes no mention of Michael Horowitz, the FBI inspector general who uncovered abuses so grave in his agency’s surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page that the secret court which had granted the bureau’s four surveillance warrants withdrew three of them.
Schiff and his committee’s Democrats waged an 18-month campaign to defend the surveillance of Page, claiming without evidence that it was his Republican counterpart, Devin Nunes, who had misrepresented the classified record.
Then there is the matter of the Trump-Russia conspiracy itself. Schiff now maintains that his committee and other investigations did find collusion, but that Mueller failed to find enough evidence to prosecute the Trump campaign (or any U.S. citizen, for that matter) for conspiring with the Kremlin’s election interference.
“The president’s campaign could, and did, try to collude with the Russians to get help in the election,” he says in explaining why he declined to apologize for his earlier accusations in an interview with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos.
“Whether Mueller believed he could satisfy a jury that all of the elements of the crime of conspiracy had been met was another matter, and that would be up to him.”
Schiff’s argument rests primarily on a meeting that took place in New York’s Trump Tower in 2016. Donald Trump Jr., Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and campaign manager Paul Manafort all met with a delegation led by a Russian lawyer named Natalia Veselnitskaya. Emails between Don Jr. and a British promoter revealed that Veselnitskaya had promised dirt on Hillary Clinton and that Don Jr. had been receptive to hearing her out.
Schiff describes Veselnitskaya as someone with “ties to senior Kremlin officials but no official role.” He says she made her approach as a way for Moscow to determine whether Trump’s campaign would be open to cooperation down the road.
Schiff neglects to mention that Veselnitskaya had been lobbying the U.S. government for years to roll back human-rights sanctions on officials tied to the imprisonment and death of the Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
The dirt she provided to the Trump campaign, as I wrote in Commentary’s January 2021 issue, was provided not by Russian spies but by American opposition researchers working for the firm Fusion GPS.
In the end, the meeting had nothing to do with enlisting the Trump campaign in Russia’s hacking or social-media campaign; it was about gaining Trump’s support for lifting the Magnitsky sanctions.
Fusion GPS was the same firm that contracted the retired British spy Christopher Steele to develop the infamous dossier that alleged the Trump campaign had struck a foul bargain with Russia. Fusion did so on behalf of the Democrats. In 2017, Schiff ran wild with the Steele dossier. During the hearing when then–FBI director James Comey confirmed the existence of an FBI investigation into Trump’s campaign, Schiff asked Comey about several claims Steele had made. Schiff specifically zeroed in on Page and the now-discredited allegation that Page had been offered a hefty brokerage fee for selling off a 19-percent stake in the Russian energy concern Rosneft during a visit to Moscow in July 2016.
“Here are some of the matters, drawn from public sources alone, since that is all we can discuss in this setting, that concern us and should concern all Americans,” is how Schiff qualified his remarks at the time.
In this way, Schiff gave the impression that he knew more than he could say in public because the evidence in question was classified.
He continued to play this game for the next two years, claiming in media interviews that he had “more than circumstantial evidence” of collusion.
But in fact, Schiff didn’t know anything more.
In 2020, the Trump administration declassified the transcripts of depositions given to the House Intelligence Committee.
Every witness had been asked whether or not he or she had seen evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. None of them—not James Clapper, not Sally Yates, not Susan Rice—said they did.
Schiff never accounts for the gulf between what witnesses told his committee behind closed doors and what he claimed to know before the cameras.
This is a shame. A more honest author would have pondered how his prevarications on the matter of Russian collusion ended up damaging his case with Republicans when it came to Trump’s impeachment for pressuring Ukraine. A more honest author might have taken a few pages to apologize to Carter Page and others he falsely accused. Doing so would have given some credibility to the parts of his narrative about Trump’s very real threats to our republic.
But Schiff is a resistance leader, not a truth-teller, and he knows the likely audience for his book will overlook a few fibs and elisions for the greater cause of defeating the orange menace.
What Schiff and his admirers do not understand is that in their resistance, they are simply mirror images of Trump’s supporters. In 2016, Michael Anton said the choice between Trump and Hillary Clinton constituted the “Flight 93 election”—meaning that true conservatives had no choice but to support a deeply flawed candidate because the republic was on the verge of extinction. That formulation gave Trump’s supporters permission to explain away his lies and cruelty because the alternative would be so much worse.
The difference between Anton’s nonsense and Schiff’s is that Schiff doesn’t acknowledge the bargain he has struck. He ends his book lamenting the perils of a political culture in which different parties cannot agree on basic facts:
“In the absence of that shared understanding—if indeed each party is entitled to its own alternative facts—then what basis is left for judging the merits of any particular agenda or platform? If everything could be true, then nothing is true.”
In the end, then, Schiff is describing a problem he helped create.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/15/2021 – 21:00 - GM Defense To Build Military Version Of Hummer EV
GM Defense To Build Military Version Of Hummer EV
GM Defense, the military division of General Motors, is producing an army version of the GMC Hummer EV in 2022, CNBC reports.
The eLRV, or electric Light Reconnaissance Vehicle, is based on a modified Hummer EV frame, motors, and Ultium batteries.
“The Army’s very excited about the fact that we’re investing in this,” GM Defense President Steve duMont told CNBC in an interview at the automaker’s research center in Warren, Michigan.
“The eLRV, that’s the first purpose-built from the ground up, you saw it today, it’s our Hummer EV. Our Hummer EV is what we’re going to base that vehicle on,” duMont said.
Going green sounds wonderful for the military but there’s a significant issue. Warzones don’t have charging stations so it would be impossible to refuel one of these vehicles, unless, batteries could be quickly swapped out. DuMont added GM could mount a combustion-powered charging system to increase range (not so green after all).
DuMont’s interview followed a visit from Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks on Monday. The defense secretary discussed GM Defense’s research and development of EVs for military applications with the corporate exec.
Hicks admitted to CNBC on Monday that EV combat vehicles will be “challenging,” mainly because there is no charging infrastructure in warzones. She noted, “electrifying the non-tactical fleet, that’s a no-brainer.”
Both Nikola and Lordstown Motors have built prototype military-grade vehicles for the service. Now it appears GM’s eLRV will be next. The Army is the largest institutional polluter globally and is trying to go green under a Biden administration.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/15/2021 – 20:40 - Biden Signs $1.2 Trillion Infrastructure Bill In Bipartisan Ceremony
Biden Signs $1.2 Trillion Infrastructure Bill In Bipartisan Ceremony
By Joseph Lord, of The Epoch Times
President Joe Biden signed the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure and Jobs Act on Nov. 15, marking an important victory for the president following months of quarrels among House and Senate Democrats.
Biden signed the bill in front of the White House, while flanked by members of both parties, in an effort to portray the bill to the American people as a bipartisan effort.
“For too long, we’ve talked about having the best economy in the world,” Biden said during the signing ceremony. “We’ve talked about asserting American leadership in the world with the best and safest roads, railways, ports, and airports.”
“Here in Washington, we’ve heard countless speeches, promises, and white papers from the experts. But today, we are finally getting it done. And my message to the American people is: America is moving again. And your life is going to change for the better.”
“Too often in Washington—the reason we don’t get things done is because we insist on getting everything we want. With this law, we focused on getting things done,” Biden said in a remark aimed at moderates who have stalled Biden’s larger social spending package.
“I am signing a law that is truly consequential, because we made our democracy deliver for the people,” Biden said.
After delivering his prepared remarks, Biden walked back to podium because he forgot his mask: “Oh, my mask.” At that point, Biden couldn’t find the mask and then walked back to the signing table.
Biden, fully vaccinated and outside before signing the infrastructure bill, walks back to podium because he forgot his mask: “Oh, my mask.”
Biden can’t find the mask and then walks back to the signing table. pic.twitter.com/uG0YPkphYF
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) November 15, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Swing-voting Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who keep close ties with Republicans, played a crucial role in crafting the bill and stood behind Biden as he signed the legislation.
Speaking on the bill at the White House, Sinema applauded the legislation.
“Our legislation represents the substantive policy changes that some have said are no longer possible in today’s Senate,” Sinema said. “The senators who negotiated this legislation show how to get things done.”
Sinema and Manchin were joined by Democratic leaders including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.).
On the other side of the aisle, Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), and Rob Portman (R-Ohio), as well as Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), flanked the president during the signing ceremony.
The bill itself provides around $550 billion to build and maintain roads, bridges, railroads, ports, and other traditional infrastructure across the country. The bill also contains funding for less traditional forms of infrastructure, including tens of billions of dollars to expand broadband access to poorer and rural families.
Before signing the bill, Biden announced that Mitch Landrieu, the former mayor of New Orleans, would be responsible for the implementation of the massive bill.
The White House stated that Landrieu “will oversee the most significant and comprehensive investments in American infrastructure in generations—work that independent experts verify will create millions of high-paying union jobs while boosting our economic competitiveness in the world, strengthening our supply chains, and acting against inflation for the long term.”
The $1.2 trillion measure originally passed the Senate in August with the support of all 50 Democrats and 19 Republicans, including Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Mitt Romney (R-Utah).
In the House, however, the bill was held up for months due to progressives’ fear that moderates wouldn’t support the larger budget package if the moderate-preferred infrastructure bill was passed first. Moderates, for their part, threatened to vote against the budget bill if the infrastructure bill wasn’t considered in a separate vote.
After months of stagnation, Manchin warned progressives that their “political games” to hold the infrastructure bill “won’t work,” and the West Virginia Democrat pleaded for swift consideration of the infrastructure bill.
In a closed-door meeting on Nov. 5, Biden and Pelosi convinced progressives to vote for the bill on its own.
Despite failing to win moderate support for the budget at that meeting, the House considered the infrastructure bill and approved it the same day by a 228–206 vote.
The bill is a much-needed win for the president ahead of the 2022 midterms, coming on the back of a significant defeat in Virginia’s gubernatorial race, an unexpectedly poor showing in the blue stronghold of New Jersey, and declining poll numbers for both the president and congressional Democrats.
Democrats’ larger $1.75 trillion package—which, according to the Congressional Budget Office, will actually cost $2.4 trillion—remains in limbo, as neither Manchin nor Sinema have committed to voting for the bill in the upper chamber.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/15/2021 – 20:28 - Want Some Freedom With That Cup O' Joe? 5 Pro-American Coffee Companies
Want Some Freedom With That Cup O’ Joe? 5 Pro-American Coffee Companies
Authored by Aden Tate via The Organic Prepper blog,
If, like me, you enjoy your daily coffee habit but tire of the ever-increasing number of globalist coffee companies out there that seem to hate everything that America stands for (while profiting from us), you’re liable to be interested in pro-American coffee companies owned by Americans who actually love America.
After a bit of digging on what are the most patriotic coffee companies in America, here is a list of some of my favorites.
So brew up a cup and enjoy.
Disaster Coffee
Another of the pro-American coffee companies you can’t go wrong with is Disaster Coffee. Owned by James Walton of the Prepper Broadcasting Network. (I have a podcast called The Last American on the Preppers’ Broadcasting Network. You should check it out.) Disaster Coffee has a wide variety of choices all at very affordable prices.
Civil Unrest Medium Roast, Pandemic Dark Roast, and all other coffees hover right around the $15 range per bag, making this one of the most accessible coffee sellers on this list. One of the things which sets them apart from other coffee companies as well is that they also sell green coffee beans.
They call them their Bunker Beans. If you’ve been doing any research on storing coffee long-term you know that green coffee beans are one of the best ways of doing so. You have to roast them yourself before you use them (here’s how). This helps to ensure that your coffee is fresh for as long as possible.
You can easily pick up 5 pounds of Bunker Beans for $40 here at this company that’s pro-freedom, a supporter of the Second Amendment (redundant with pro-freedom, I know), and that supports disaster relief organizations throughout the US after Murphy’s Law strikes.
I’ve only tried their Category 6 and Pandemic, but the Pandemic is our favorite roast around here.
Freedom 1 Coffee
Aside from being veteran-owned and operated (by active-duty Army officer, Lawton Wilson), Freedom 1 Coffee also gives you 10% off your first order. If you go ahead and stock up on your first purchase (you know, because of future worsening supply chain shortages), that could result in quite a substantial savings.
Their coffee comes in right around the $15 range, with some of their more noteworthy blends including Blackbird Top Secret, Patriot Brazilian Coffee, and Charge Ethiopian Coffee.
Freedom 1 does a lot to support American troops as well, donating part of their proceeds to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, Tunnel to Towers, Wreaths Across America, and Operation Restored Warrior.
And just in case you were wondering, no, they don’t carry tea. As Lawton spells out on the site, the only tea he enjoys is in the harbor.
Minuteman Coffee
Familiar with the work of Glen Tate (299 Days) or Shelby Gallagher (The Divide)? If so, you’ll be happy to know that this is the coffee that works with them on their podcast Prepping 2.0. The majority of Minuteman Coffee products cost, ahem, $17.76, but the increased price is due to your purchasing 16 oz. bags when you buy their coffee rather than the 12 oz. bags that most other coffee companies out there sell.
Some of their noteworthy brews are their Betsy Ross (Colombian Light Roast), Don’t Tread on Me (Signature Dark Roast), Come and Take It (Colombian Dark Roast), and their decaf brew – Liberal Tears.
Beard Vet Excellence Coffee
If you’re somebody who doesn’t want just black coffee then you’ll like the options Beard Vet brings to the table. You will find coffees such as Guerilla Nilla (French vanilla), Combat Crunch (caramel roasted vanilla nut), Dress Blues (blueberry and pecan medium roast) at Beard Vet. All for the very reasonable price of around $13 a bag.
They offer free shipping on purchases over $35 as well, so if you stock up now and grab a couple of bags for Christmas presents as well, you can save yourself a pretty penny.
They do a number of sales throughout the course of the year that can only be described as fantastic (coffee for $10/bag, anyone?), and have done a lot of work in the past helping disabled vets and Gold Star families.
This is definitely one of the pro-American coffee companies you’re going to want to keep your eyes on.
Revere Coffee Company
While they don’t’ have as many options as many of the other guys out there, it’s hard to argue with $13 a bag. Here you can find your standard light, medium, and dark roasts in their Freedom, Liberty, and The Patriot coffees.
And if you’re going to purchase coffee from a company that donates some of the proceeds to charity, it may as well go towards anti-brainwashing agencies such as PragerU and Turning Point USA.
Check out local options as well.
You may be surprised what you can find locally, too. And we’re all about shortening the supply chain here at The Organic Prepper.
One of the things I will say is to definitely see what’s in your area. More and more people are turning to the local coffee roastery scene. You’re bound to find options sourced near you. And, you may even get the chance to talk to the owner personally.
Grab your dough and buy some Joe from these pro-American coffee companies.
From everything I’ve seen, these are all great companies you can trust to not use their profits to further the destruction of the American way of life. That’s becoming harder and harder to find out there, but these guys all seem to know what they’re doing.
If you’re looking at everything going on, wondering when the coffee beans will stop coming in, stock up while you can with these pro-American coffee companies.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/15/2021 – 20:20 - Coinbase Co-Founder Raises Largest VC Crypto Fund Ever To Bet On Ethereum, Token Economy
Coinbase Co-Founder Raises Largest VC Crypto Fund Ever To Bet On Ethereum, Token Economy
Over the last few years, cryptocurrencies have moved from extreme niche to more widespread adoption, shrugging off skeptics and ‘bankers’ along the way, as the vast majority of U.S. adults have heard at least a little about cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ether, and 16% say they personally have invested in, traded or otherwise used one, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.
And that increasing interest has sparked a cavalcade of funds designed to help investors comprehend the increasingly complex crypto investing space, as opposed to the Layer 1 tokens that are best known, and just this week, The FT reports that Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam and former Sequoia Capital partner Matt Huang have finished raising $2.5bn this month for Paradigm One, believed to be the largest new crypto venture capital fund in history.
The FT notes that earlier this year, VC firm Andreessen Horowitz also raised twice as much as it had hoped for a new cryptocurrency fund, bringing in $2.2bn, which at the time it said was the “largest crypto fund ever raised”.
Both firms have staked their fortunes on an expanding ecosystem of applications based on ethereum, a digital ledger that allows programmers to write contracts automatically executing functions such as money transfers.
The programs run on what are known as tokens, digital assets that are granted to users over time, often giving them a say in governance.
Ehrsam told the FT, “it is probably small relative to where we’re going in 10 years,” noting that the world of token-based apps, sometimes referred to as web3, was only just getting started.
“The biggest companies in the world are large internet tech companies powered by network effects,” Ehrsam said.
“We think decades into the future it’s very clear the largest entities in the world will be powered by tokens.”
Paradigm’s founders said they viewed their token investments as long-term holdings that could take at least 10 years to pay off.
The DeFi boom (demand for ‘smart’ Ethereum-based contracts vs Bitcoin) is evident in the outperformance of ETH relative to BTC in recent years…
In fact, as DeFiPulse.com notes, there is currently over $110 billion in funds locked-up in Decentralized Finance, dominated by over 6.5 million ETH.
Finally, Huang said he had few doubts about Paradigm’s strategy:
“If Fred and I ever found ourselves working in some kind of low growth, low return situation, I think we would prefer death.”
And if Goldman Sachs is right about the inflationary impact on Ethereum…
We suspect Fred and Matt won’t be ‘bored’ anytime soon.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/15/2021 – 20:00 - Florida School District Abandons Mask Mandate After 8-Year-Old Girl Told Them They Should Be In Prison
Florida School District Abandons Mask Mandate After 8-Year-Old Girl Told Them They Should Be In Prison
Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,
Palm Beach County school district has ended a mask mandate just days after a second grade girl told school board officials they should all rot in jail for forcing children to wear face coverings against their will.
As we reported last week, eight-year-old Fiona Lashells of Tampa Bay was suspended almost 40 times for refusing to comply with the mandate, which the school kept in place despite the state ending mask mandates in July.
In a viral video, Fiona told the board that “your rules suck,” adding “I hope you all go to jail for doing this to me.”
“Just because I get suspended for not wearing a mask isn’t going to change my mind. You can keep suspending me, I still have the right not to wear a mask,” the girl urged.
School board speech by Florida 2nd grader who was suspended 36 times for not wearing a mask:
Legend 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/SjEAhuQuP8— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) November 10, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
After embarking “on a mission to take back, not only her rights but every American child’s constitutional rights from the tyrant school board,” according to her mother, Fiona has scored a victory as the district told parents that “a face covering opt-out will be reinstated effective Monday.”
“Based on a new development at the State level, the School District will be moving to an opt-out status for facial coverings for students in all grade levels,” the district announced.
In comments to the Palm Beach Post, Fiona said she is glad to be back at school, where according to the district 10% of its students have already opted out of wearing masks.
“She’s been just so adamant that she wants to make sure everyone can go back to school and have a choice,” her mother told the Post.
And now they do.
* * *
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. We need you to sign up for our free newsletter here. Support our sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, we urgently need your financial support here.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/15/2021 – 19:40 - Will Tomorrow's Retail Sales Beat Or Miss: Here's What The Latest Card Spending Data Shows
Will Tomorrow’s Retail Sales Beat Or Miss: Here’s What The Latest Card Spending Data Shows
Until last month, BofA’s track record of correctly predicting whether the month’s retail sales print would beat or miss expectations, was flawless thanks largely to the bank’s access to the data from tens of millions of debit and credit card issued directly by it and which give it a first-hand view of how much America spends at any given moment. However, like every streak, this one also eventually ended, and in this case it did so by forecasting a small miss in the September retail sales data…
… even though the final nominal print as reported by the government was a big beat, rising 0.7% sequentially (above the -0.2% consensus exp) with August data also revised higher, while core retail sales came especially hot at 0.8% (although some have speculated that the recent surge in inflation has forced outsized consumer spending as Americans rush to buy thing now instead of waiting for a few months or weeks to pay a higher price).
In any case, ahead of Tuesday’s retail sales data, we were curious if the September retail sales surge would be a one-time outlier, or if the year-end spending splurge would continue.
Well, according to the latest data from BofA, spending as measured by Bank of America aggregated credit and debit cards surged 27% over a 2-year period for the 7-days ending Nov 6. This was mostly pushed up by the timing of the pay period at the start of the month but smoothing through, BofA’s economists are continuing to see solid spending trends.
Some more details: Retail sales ex-autos, based on aggregated BAC card data, increased 0.9% mom SA, in line with consensus.
At the same time, total retail sales rose 1.3%, higher than Bloomberg consensus, even though ax-autos and gas, BofA sees a small miss compared to consensus, at 0.7% vs 1.1%.
The bank observed strength across-the-board with a 1% mom SA gain in restaurant spending, 1.3% mom SA in department stores and 1.4% mom SA in general merchandise stores. Outside of the retail sales aggregate, spending was even stronger with a 16% mom SA pop in spending on airfare and 4.6% mom SA in lodging.
Meanwhile, following up on a recent curious spending divergence, when as we noted in October “Poor Americans’ Credit Card Usage Spikes As Their Savings Run Out“, BofA dug deeper into debit vs credit card spending trends for the lowest vs. highest tier of income ( $125K, respectively). Using the monthly SA data, the bank found that debit card spending is up 34% over a 2-year period for the lowest income cohort as of October. In contrast, debit card spending for the highest income cohort is up 16% over a 2-year period.
For the lower income cohort, debit card has been running above credit card spending growth since the pandemic but – as noted last month – recently credit card has been catching up.
The highest income group has seen a comparable growth rate in debit and credit card spending since the pandemic. According to BofA, this shows the influence of the accumulated savings from fiscal transfer payments to the lower income cohort which facilitated greater debit card spending, although as we also noted recently, the fact that it has now plateaued indicates that lower-income household will soon spend most if not all of their “excess savings.”
One final observation from BofA relates to the rapid normalization in spending on daycare, which increased sharply and is now only 10% below 2019 levels vs. in the summer when it was about 20% below.
This is important data to monitor in regards to the reentry of working parents to the workforce.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/15/2021 – 19:20 - Biden's Baffling Oil Policy Faces Backlash From All Sides
Biden’s Baffling Oil Policy Faces Backlash From All Sides
Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,
-
President Biden is in a tight spot when it comes to energy
-
The White House continues to face critique from both environmentalists and the oil and gas industry
-
If energy demand continues to grow at the current pace, switching from pragmatism to an all-out renewables agenda will be a huge challenge
President Joe Biden and his administration hardly planned for everything that happened this year. In fairness, no administration could have planned for it: soaring oil and gas demand, tight supply, rising prices fueling inflation that has quickly gone from nothing to worry about to the biggest worry for many.
Yet that’s not the worst of it for the Biden administration. The president came into office with the pledge to set the United States on a course towards a lower-carbon energy future. This would have been a challenging task even under the best of circumstances, the U.S. being one of the biggest polluters in the world. With the energy crunch, the task becomes almost impossible.
It is no wonder, then, that when Biden started calling on OPEC to boost crude oil production, nervous about rising gas prices at American filling stations, he instantly attracted accusations of hypocrisy. After all, he was pushing an energy transition agenda, he was clearly not in favor of boosting domestic oil production, and one of the first executive orders he signed was the one that killed the Keystone XL pipeline.
The White House’s climate envoy, John Kerry, got asked about Biden’s energy policy at the COP26 summit in Glasgow last week. How could the president urge OPEC to pump more oil while campaigning for the phase-out of fossil fuels, the media asked Kerry.
“He’s asking them to boost production in the immediate moment,” Kerry said in response, as quoted by the Wall Street Journal.
“And as the transition cuts in, there won’t be that need as you deploy the solar panels, as you deploy the transmission lines, as you build out the grid.”
Kerry’s statement is in line with Biden’s own defense of his latest moves in the energy area.
“On the surface, it seems like an irony,” Biden said earlier this month, referring to his call on OPEC+ to add more oil production while heading for COP26 to discuss the reduction of global emissions.
“But the truth of the matter is … everyone knows that idea that we’re going to be able to move to renewable energy overnight … it’s just not rational.”
Recognizing that the renewable energy transition will not—cannot—happen overnight is a commendable demonstration of pragmatism. It is also a recognition of the fact that people need energy right now, and they must get it from any available source. That the sources at this moment are mostly fossil fuels is an unfortunate fact of life that we simply have to accept and continue working to reduce the demand for these fossil fuels.
This seems to be the line the Biden administration is following, and even its critics would likely agree that it is a pragmatic one. The thing is, however, that pragmatism and hypocrisy are not mutually exclusive. Biden’s energy policy has already sparked protests from climate activists, calling for an end to U.S. fossil fuel exports and a ban on fracking. Interestingly enough, a group of congressmen also recently called on the White House to ban oil exports but for a different reason: the legislators argued a ban on exports would ensure a more adequate supply for the domestic market.
President Biden is in a tight spot when it comes to energy. When he took office, the plan was to steer the U.S. towards a lower-carbon future using the Democrats’ majority in Congress. In reality, the majority is so flimsy that passing any climate-related legislation has been a challenge that has involved a lot of compromises. And then came the energy crunch, which nobody expected. Suddenly, the U.S. needed more of all fossil fuels.
It is an ironic twist that the first year of Biden’s presidency is also the first year in which coal consumption in the country is set for a rise since 2014. And it will be a substantial rise: the Energy Information Administration has forecast the U.S. will consume 20 percent more coal than last year.
Yet using coal to generate electricity more affordably is a pragmatic move even if it leads to a rise in U.S. emissions. The rise, the administration would probably argue, will be a temporary problem, and once the crunch is over, we’ll go back to our low-carbon agenda.
Yet this is where the bigger problem flashes a fin. The current energy crunch is not only a result of supply shortages. It is also a result of rising energy demand. U.S. producers appear to be unwilling to ramp up production of crude oil to levels that would lower prices at the pump. Gas producers are having a field day exporting a record amount of their product to Asia, where buyers are looking for a bargain—and U.S. gas is a bargain.
If demand continues to grow at the current pace, switching from pragmatism to energy transition will continue to be a challenge. Over the short term, the challenge will be especially tough: inflation is driving up the prices of renewables, too, and threatening a lot of planned capacity addition projects with cancellation because of surging material and component costs.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/15/2021 – 19:00 -
- NYC Taxis Finally Win One: Drivers Secure Help In Slashing Medallion Loan Balances
NYC Taxis Finally Win One: Drivers Secure Help In Slashing Medallion Loan Balances
We have been following how ridesharing companies have decimated the taxi industry for years now. In addition to rendering taxi medallions near-worthless compared to the price that many drivers spent their lives (and careers) working to purchase them at, ridesharing companies have also contributed to a rash of depression and suicides among drivers who have seen their livelihoods plummet suddenly and unexpectedly.
But now, it’s looking like taxi’s could be on their way back, according to FT. And it could be due to an unlikely hero: law firm Kirkland & Ellis.
Kirkland & Ellis is best known for getting in the trenches on messy corporate transactions. But they also represented New York City cab drivers in a pro bono assignment after drivers resorted to a “round the clock hunger strike” to draw attention to help they needed resolving loans to buy taxi medallions, the report says.
And the efforts paid off: drivers got relief early this month when a deal between the city’s municipal government, a private equity firm that had become the single largest taxi medallion creditor, and an advocacy group that spoke for thousands of taxi drivers resulted in slashing loan balances for drivers, FT wrote.
Some loans were as high as $500,000 and are now just $170,000, which allows drivers to make reasonable and far more manageable payments every month.
Medallions cost about $300,000 in the early 2000s, the report notes. By 2010, they had increased in price to almost $1,000,000. But when ridesharing firms entered the market, they crashed to under $100,000, leaving many drivers in financial ruin.
“This wasn’t a campaign to cancel debt completely but a collective effort to make it fairer,” one driver told the FT.
Recall, in January of this year, we wrote that medallion lenders had started to demand payments after suspending collections for several months during the worst of the pandemic. Recalling that the collapse in medallion prices began before the outbreak – in January, NYC launched a city task force which proposed a $500 million bailout for drivers’ loans. This was followed by a February threat by NY State Attorney General Letitia A. James, to sue the city for $810 million to compensate drivers.
After the pandemic hit, efforts to help NYC cab drivers – over 90% of whom are immigrants, evaporated.
In 2013, yellow cabs made nearly half a million trips a day. In 2020, that number dropped to 50 – 60 thousand. But the yellow cab industry was already hemorrhaging trips pre-pandemic.
As unregulated vehicles for hire flooded the streets, investment-backed platforms such as Uber and Lyft undercut fares, able to absorb the loss. As riders flocked to these cheaper and more accessible taxis, yellow cabdrivers were left in the dust. –CNN
While our euphoric and completely nonsensical public markets continue to subsidize cash burning ridesharing companies, we have to admit that it’s nice to see NYC’s taxi drivers finally win one...it’s been a long road.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/15/2021 – 18:40 - In Some Parts Of America, Looting Has Become A Way Of Life
In Some Parts Of America, Looting Has Become A Way Of Life
Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,
The level of lawlessness that we are now witnessing in the United States of America is absolutely breathtaking.
On average, thieves are stealing more than 100 million dollars worth of merchandise from our retailers every single day. Just think about that. I have written extensively about the shoplifting epidemic that is plaguing this country, but even I didn’t know that things had gotten that bad. Sadly, much of the thievery is being committed by highly organized gangs of looters. Last week, I posted absolutely stunning video of one of those gangs stealing vast quantities of laundry detergent from a retail store in Connecticut…
Thieves in Connecticut load up their cars with stolen merchandise.
You can hear an employee warning another not to intervene because he will get fired pic.twitter.com/BisacmWLVc— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) November 10, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
I shared that video with someone that I trust, and that individual wondered why they hadn’t taken something more expensive like big screen televisions.
Well, now we have video of that exact same group of looters wheeling big screen televisions right out the front door of another store in Connecticut…
These professional looters seem to have no fear of being confronted.
And that is probably because they know that even if they are caught they will never be charged with a felony. Many states have changed their laws to be more lenient on shoplifters in recent years, and this appears to be helping to fuel an enormous boom in organized retail theft…
Gangs of professional boosters have been snatching racks of clothing and other items for years, but the National Retail Federation reports in its most recent survey of retailers that more lenient penalties and prosecution policies are fueling a rise in such crimes.
“Many states have increased the threshold of what constitutes a felony, which has had the unintended consequence of allowing criminals to steal more without being afraid of stronger penalties related to felony charges,” the trade association reported. “Nearly two-thirds of retailers report that they’ve seen an increase in the average ORC case value in these states.”
My guess is that the thieves in the two videos are selling what they steal online.
Of course they are far from alone. This sort of thing is happening all over the nation, and it is being reported that theft is now costing our retailers 45 billion dollars a year…
Retail theft is now said to be responsible for $45 billion in annual losses in the U.S., according to one trade association, a figure whose recent growth reflects the disruptions of the pandemic era and the rise of online retail, which has made it easier to resell stolen items.
That is an incredibly high number.
When you divide that figure by 365 days, you get an average of more than 123 million dollars per day.
We are talking about thievery on an industrial scale, and we are being told that some of our biggest cities are where the most extensive looting is happening…
The top five cities for organized retail crime, in order, were Los Angeles, San Francisco/ Oakland, Chicago, New York and Miami, the trade association reported. Video of blatant thefts from California stores, in particular, have been widely circulated.
In addition to retail theft, there has been an alarming rise in the number of “follow-home robberies” in the Los Angeles area.
Apparently criminals are specifically targeting highly vulnerable people. Once a sufficient target has been identified, the crooks follow the target all the way home before robbing the individual…
Due to an increase in violent street robberies, Robbery-Homicide Division has become aware of an ongoing crime trend of follow-home robberies. Suspects have been locating victims in Los Angeles, following them, and then committing the robberies as the victim arrives home or at their business. … These crimes have occurred throughout the City of Los Angles as well as neighboring cities. Different suspects have been identified and arrested for these types of crimes.
It is important to understand that the environment in our country has dramatically changed.
If you notice a suspicious vehicle following you toward your home, take several unexpected turns in order to confirm that you are indeed being followed.
Once you have confirmed that it is happening, do not proceed to your house. Instead, I would drive directly to the nearest police station.
Sometimes professional criminals are not just satisfied with robbing you. In Las Vegas, an 82-year-old woman was buried in her backyard, and then the criminals took over her home and her finances…
A dead woman in Las Vegas was dismembered and buried in her backyard by a group of squatters before they moved into her home and took over her finances, according to police.
In April of this year, police discovered the body of 82-year-old Lucille Payne buried in the backyard of her home located on Shore Breeze Drive, according to local news station KLAS-TV’s Investigative Team (I-Team).
This is the end result of decades of moral collapse in this nation.
We just let evil continue to grow and grow, and now it is everywhere.
In Seattle, the downtown area has become so dangerous that city employees are now being escorted by security guards once they leave work…
Seattle has become so dangerous that the city can no longer protect its own employees, with security guards now escorting them after they finish work.
King County’s new ‘walking bus’ will debut on November 15, and see council workers based in Downtown Seattle and nearby Pioneer Square escorted to a nearby train station and ferry terminal each evening before being left to continue their commute home.
This is what our country has become, and it is only going to get worse.
Meanwhile, as our nation descends into total lawlessness, our military is focusing on becoming more “woke”…
The Marine Corps, the smallest U.S. military force, has plans for a big overhaul designed to address its lack of diversity and problem with retaining troops.
The goal that’s driving what amounts to a cultural shift within the service, is for the Marines “to reflect America, to reflect the society we come from,” Gen. David Berger, commandant of the Marine Corps, said in an interview with NPR’s Morning Edition.
I came across that story today after reading many other stories about the explosion of crime and lawlessness that we are experiencing.
The contrast really struck me.
It is almost as if our national leaders are living in a completely different reality from most of the rest of us.
The very fabric of our society is coming apart at the seams all around us, but meanwhile they are seemingly obsessed with playing politically correct games.
We are deeply, deeply sick as a society, and it appears to be getting worse with each passing year.
* * *
It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/15/2021 – 18:20
Digest powered by RSS Digest
Saving...
