Today’s News 20th February 2024

• The Rise And Fall Of The Second Amendment
  The Rise And Fall Of The Second Amendment

  Authored by Donald Jeffries via I Protest,

  Everyone has undoubtedly heard about the shooting during the Super Bowl victory parade in Kansas City. These victory celebrations always bring the potential for trouble, what with all those young males consuming prodigious amounts of alcohol. And they draw the worst elements; the seemingly perpetually armed gang-bangers.

  

  The shooting has triggered the yawningly predictable response from the “Woke” crowd. Which at this point means nearly our entire government and corporate leadership. One marvels at how many times clueless celebrities can breathlessly tweet out, “We have to do something about this!” or “We are failing the children!” It’s odd how the inanimate object- the gun- is always the Oswald-style patsy in these incidents. Often the names of those wielding the inanimate objects for no good are barely mentioned. Quick; name the Parkland school shooter. The Pulse gay night club shooter. It’s the guns, racist! The tweets in response to this most recent shooting, especially those emanating from the dying embers of Hollywood, are examples of insipid mindlessness. Digital postcards from the Idiocracy.

  The text of the Second Amendment itself reads, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” In my book Crimes and Cover-Ups in American Politics: 1776-1963, I devoted a section to the very clear comments by all the Founders, regarding what the Second Amendment actually meant. It would have been nice if they’d worded it better, so there wouldn’t be an opening for the usual suspects to interpret it to suit their agendas. But each and every one of those who ratified it, even the odious, bankers’ stooge Alexander Hamilton, left no doubt in their public comments, that the Bill of Rights protected the individual’s right to keep and bear arms.

  It’s ironic that the word “militia” is in there, seeing as how that term has come to be demonized, especially since the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, when Bill Clinton exploited it like a poster child for muscular dystrophy. All the state controlled media has to do at this point is claim some poor sap was associated with some “militia,” and its de facto evidence of guilt. Of something. Anything. James Madison, considered the father of the Constitution, noted in The Federalist Papers that “a standing army….would be opposed [by] militia.” He wanted State governments to have the ability to “repel the danger” of a federal army. You know, like the Military Industrial Complex, which he could not have foreseen in his wildest dreams.

  Thomas Jefferson in particular was vehemently opposed to a standing federal army. Like the rest of the Founders, he believed it was the responsibility of a citizens militia of ordinary Americans to defend their state, or in the rarest of circumstances, the entire country from an outside threat. He also made it clear that an armed citizenry was the best defense against government tyranny. As president, Jefferson slashed military spending. He noted, “Standing armies [are] inconsistent with [a people’s] freedom and subversive of their quiet.” In 1789, the author of the Declaration of Independence wrote, “There are instruments so dangerous to the rights of the nation and which place them so totally at the mercy of their governors….Such an instrument is a standing army.” No wonder he’s now a hopeless dead White “racist.”

  By the time of Lincoln, our first imperial president, a national military was an unquestioned reality. No more fears about a standing army. Honest Abe instituted the first unconstitutional military draft, resulting in the bloody riots in New York. The immigrants du jour of the day, the Irish, quite naturally objected to being forced to participate in a senseless slaughter they had no historical or cultural association with. Lincoln’s federal army cut a deadly swath through the south, raping, destroying crops, burning homes, and engaging in the boldest larceny in the history of warfare, as they stole every valuable that wasn’t nailed down. For this, all Americans pay homage today. They were great American heroes.

  The power of the national military grew, and we eviscerated George Washington’s warnings about “no entangling alliances,” and John Quincy Adams’ admonitions that we not “go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” World Wars I and II were something Jefferson and the other Founders would have mortified by. They would have led chapters of the America First Committee. Another modern hero, Franklin Roosevelt, would have had them “cancelled” and perhaps imprisoned. That precedent had been set when Lincoln imprisoned his dissenters without any due process. Once the Pentagon was built, and the unconstitutional intelligence agencies established, we had something more than a standing army. We had an Occupying Force.

  So this clash between individual firearm owners and a national military was inevitable. Individuals were not necessarily going to agree with the policies and actions of this national army, especially when it was given authority to run roughshod over American citizens. Look at what happened to the World War I “Bonus Army,” veterans of that senseless conflict, who naturally objected when their promised “bonus” was denied them. They set up tents on the Capitol, and U.S. forces, led by future superstars Douglas MacArthur and George Patton, defeated them as easily as William Sherman defeated the women and children of the Confederacy. So if you’re in our glorious federal military, don’t complain if they break a promise.

  The distinction between Jefferson’s vision of a well armed citizens’ militia, and the modern Military Industrial Complex couldn’t be more obvious. Conservatives, however, generally adore this federal army, and the intelligence agencies that accompany it. They also worship our militarized police forces, and were ecstatic over the implementation of no-knock SWAT team raids on private homes. Until they raided Mar-a-Lago, that is. But all that’s been forgotten. The FBI was not abolished, and the Right seems cool with the Occupying Force again. Exactly how different is a gun aficionado saying “Thank you for your service” from a masochist saying “Thank you, may I have another?”

  The individual right to bear arms conflicts with armed (and militarized) police officers, and certainly with the armed forces of the United States, the largest military the world has ever seen. When a citizen has an encounter with a law enforcement officer, regardless of the nature of the “law” they’re enforcing, the Second Amendment disappears. You’re not going to find a case where an armed citizen shot a cop in self-defense, without being prosecuted. It doesn’t matter how unjustified the officer was, the officer is by default considered to be in the right. If you don’t like it, take it to court. Where you will unquestionably lose. The courts are always going to be the final arbiter in any battle between armed citizens and the Occupying Force. And you know what side they’ll be on. Every single time.

  It wasn’t until 2008 that the Supreme Court first ruled that the Second Amendment protected an individual’s right to self-defense in his own home. This hasn’t stopped some unfortunate homeowners, like Byron Smith of Minnesota, from being convicted of murder; he shot two home invaders who proved to be unarmed. Others in similar situations have been charged as well, while in some cases reason still prevails and the homeowner is considered to have acted understandably. From what I’ve heard, you are always considered justified in shooting someone if they are setting fire to your home. How this differs from robbery is something only our esteemed judges can fathom. So if you have a home invader, throw him some matches, and urge him to commit arson. Maybe he won’t understand the nuances of the law.

  So here we are today, in America 2.0. The battle lines have been drawn. In this corner, you have the challenger, the Second Amendment. An antiquated notion dreamed up by long dead White “racists.” And in the other corner, you have the Occupying Force, hailing from Washington, D.C., undefeated and untied. Second Amendment activists today concentrate on simply keeping their own weapons. Being able to hunt legally. To go target shooting. There is no emphasis on protection from government tyranny, which was the motivation behind the amendment in the first place. The Occupying Force knows it has nothing to fear from “gun nuts.” They remember the victories at Ruby Ridge. And Waco. And the Bundy ranch, to mention just a few examples.

  If all the gun enthusiasts that Hollywood frets over really had government tyranny in mind, like the Founders did, they would have reacted differently during the unconstitutional COVID lockdown. I must have missed all of the standoffs between armed small business owners and the Occupying Force, which was denying them the right to earn a living. Or between concealed carry owners and authoritarian officers demanding they wear a mask, or stop letting their children play in a park. Presumably, the vast majority of those who came to the January 6 Stop the Steal rally in Washington, D.C. were gun owners. And yet, the authorities couldn’t find a single gun anywhere. That’s not only an odd way to conduct an “insurrection,” it’s indicative of the mindset of most gun activists. Just let me hang my weapons on the wall.

  Now, please don’t think I’m suggesting that gun owners take up arms against the government. The military industrial complex would make such a thing impossible, regardless. But if your primary issue is the Second Amendment, you ought to at least acknowledge that its purpose was not to protect your right to hunt, or to target practice. It was as a safeguard against an encroaching, corrupt government. I think that, if enough small business owners had let the authorities know they were armed and ready to defend their livelihood from an out of control Occupying Force, that perhaps the lockdown wouldn’t have been quite as successful. How about armed pastors, defending their right to conduct religious services? You had one half-assed protest in Michigan, which was demonized over a Confederate flag or something.

  While the Left wants citizens to be subjected to the mercy of kind-hearted, well-armed police and soldiers, some on the Right want to arm teachers, for instance. Now, having looked at enough TikTok videos to see just how many teachers today are fortunate that the mental institutions have mostly closed, these are the last people on earth I want to be possessing firearms. In school. While my kids are compelled to be there. Can you imagine an unstable, purple haired “educator” becoming irate at a MAGA hat or something? Do you really want that person to have a gun handy? Somehow, I don’t see more guns in schools making things safer.

  As always, we didn’t reach this stage overnight. That’s why I focus so much on hidden history. The “loyal” unionists should have realized that by permitting a despot like Lincoln to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, and shut down over two hundred newspapers, they were paving the way for future government tyranny. The people who sat idly by while Eugene Debs and the other WWI protesters were ludicrously portrayed as “yelling fire in a crowded theater,” made possible the Orwellian concept of “Hate Speech” which we know and love today. That same generation accepted the ridiculous, anti-liberty figure of “Uncle Sam,” and allowed it to symbolize the growing unconstitutional federal government. The Occupying Force. Really, how different is our Uncle Sam from Oceana’s Big Brother?

  World War II- the “good” war. The “greatest generation.” Read what I wrote about their true conduct in Crimes and Cover-Ups. The Korean “conflict,” like every nonsensical American interventionist escapade since then conducted without a declaration of war by Congress, as they’re constitutionally required to do. Now, we’re permitting billions to flow into a Zionist dictator in Ukraine, while American citizens are living in tents and shitting in the street. But all this was possible because the government- through its military industrial complex and its localized police forces- has “the meat,” to quote the Arby’s commercial. There is no limitation on their firearms. No one will accuse them of “stockpiling” weapons, or possessing “illegal” weapons. And our brave police officers must be able to protect themselves. It’s an “officer safety” thing, you wouldn’t understand.

  Any discussion of “gun control” from todays Left begins and ends with individual ownership. They don’t talk about “responsible” gun ownership on the part of police forces. Like shooting deaf people in the back when they don’t respond to your orders. Or our increasingly “Woke” military forces. Like killing that wedding party in Yemen was pretty irresponsible, I think. If some lone, deranged individual plowed down a wedding party, do you think he’d ever see the light of day again? But military atrocities are rarely acknowledged, let alone prosecuted. Look what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nothing to the brave soldiers who played soccer with decapitated heads, or killed a family of civilians. Instead, it was then Bradley Manning, who exposed the atrocities through Wikileaks, that was punished. Along with Julian Assange, who will still probably feel the wrath of a justice-free legal system.

  Hollywood doesn’t really have anything against guns. After all, every blockbuster action movie throughout history has featured guns of all varieties front and center. The hero- often played by a hypocritical “liberal” that pontificates about gun control while being protected by armed personal security- can’t beat the armed bad guys without arms of his own. I think that’s kind of what Thomas Jefferson was talking about. If the police and the military are going to have guns, the citizens should be allowed to have them, too. Must be allowed to have them, as all the Founders carefully noted for posterity. That’s one of many reasons the Founders are ignored today, other than to be castigated as worthless, “racist” relics from the stone age.

  I would love for there to be a way to destroy every gun in the world, starting with all those controlled by governments. But that isn’t possible. We can even create them on our own now, with those incomprehensible 3-D printers. And how many gun control laws are already on the books? The big cities, where the most gun violence occurs, have the strictest gun laws. As the conservatives accurately point out, the criminals aren’t buying guns legally, and will always find a way to get them illegally. So any restrictions on firearms impacts law abiding citizens exclusively. You know, the ones who are no threat to ever commit a violent crime. And yet, the “Woke” mantra, from Democratic Party politicians to their sycophants in the entertainment world, is that something must be done. For the children! Who they are in favor of aborting or “transitioning.” That’s the only kind of “choice” they support.

  That something, of course, is to ban individual ownership of firearms. These “Woke” activists want only the police and the military to have them. Not you. If that doesn’t reflect the most naive trust in authority imaginable, I don’t know what would. And it contradicts the whole spirit of our own fight for independence. The Minutemen. Give me liberty or give me death. Obviously, we could never have seceded from British rule (and yes, that is the proper term), without the possession of firearms. The Shot Heard Around the World couldn’t have happened without a weapon to fire it. King George could have decided to enslave all the colonists, not just the Black ones. And without guns, what exactly could the colonists- our ancestors- have done about it?

  I’ve never been a violent person. I don’t understand violence, so I certainly can’t comprehend gun violence. I love peace. Give me the Summer of Love again, without the drugs and the government infiltrators. But the gun “debate” isn’t going to go away until either the Second Amendment is officially abolished, or a majority of the citizens make it known that they will accept no more restrictions on their constitutional right to bear arms. If nothing else, having a well-armed citizenry makes the criminal government think twice before launching yet another unconstitutional act. It’s bad enough living under an Occupying Force when millions of Americans do own firearms. Consider what it would be like without them. Again, I am not advocating violence of any kind. But we must speak out while we still can.

  Subscribe to “I Protest” by Donald Jeffries

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/19/2024 – 23:30

• Tucker Carlson Goes Shopping: Russian Economy Well Intact Despite Sanctions
  Tucker Carlson Goes Shopping: Russian Economy Well Intact Despite Sanctions

  Western populations have been hearing for the past two years that NATO sanctions would have a devastating effect on the Russian economy, so much so that Vladimir Putin would be forced to back out of military operations in Ukraine almost immediately.  The removal of Russia from the SWIFT network and the suffocation of its exports was going to cripple the nation’s banking sector and send it into an economic death spiral.  Corporate media economists and Biden Administration representatives alike compared the financial warfare strategy to a kind of “cancel culture” action on a global scale.  The very first modern cancellation of a country.

  Well, needless to say, sanctions did not turn out the way the establishment expected.  Initial reports in US and European media claimed that Russian businesses were struggling to stay afloat and some argued that the Russian populace might even revolt against the Kremlin in anger.  But this was all a farce, much like the majority of reports suggesting Ukrainian victory was imminent. 

  Rather that imploding, Russian exports and imports are thriving.  The nation printed an oil export surge at the end of 2023, as well as increased exports on a number of raw goods from oil seeds to grains in 2023.  Most of the export rise can be attributed to closer trade ties with Asia, a move which western government should have expected.  In fact, the NATO tactic of using Ukraine as a proxy battleground has only driven eastern governments like China and India closer to Russia.  

  Tucker Carlson, one of the few western journalists reporting on the conflict without anti-Russian bias, took the opportunity while visiting the country to go shopping in a local retail mall.  The experiment was meant to examine how much inflation and economic hardship was punishing the Russian public.  What he found, in fact, was relatively low inflation and stable price averages compared to the US. 

  If you thought the warhawks on social media had a meltdown over Carlson’s interview with Putin, the response to the above segment was absolutely rabid.  Critics attacked Carlson, accusing him of “trying to argue that Russia’s economy is better than the US economy.”  They also ridiculed him for not taking Russian wages into account vs American wages in his analysis. 

  But, as usual, the mainstream media has missed the bigger picture. 

  While it is true that average American wages are substantially higher than Russian wages and the dollar has greater international buying power due to it’s world reserve status, the greenback is decidedly weak in its home country and this is a factor that many in the public do not yet realize.  

  The cost of living in dollars for one person in the US is approximately 400% higher across the board compared to one person living in Russia.  Individual items vary – For example, a loaf of bread is 500% more expensive in the US than it is in Russia, while a bottle of coke is only 164% more expensive.  A one bedroom apartment is 500% more expensive in the US, while a beer is only 233% more expensive. 

  Most of Carlson’s critics used the inflated average “household income” numbers in the US and compared them to single income numbers in Russia.  This is an inaccurate methodology.  US household wages average at $76,000 per year, but this involves multi-income families.  The average US single earner makes only $40,000 per year.  The point is, though Tucker Carlson may have overlooked the wage gap between Russians and Americans, the cost of living exercise in US dollars still showcases two things:

  1)  Americans have the world reserve currency at their disposal, yet, it doesn’t do them much good in America.  The value of the dollar isn’t evident to most people in the US until they travel overseas.  This is due to expansive monetary stimulus by the Federal Reserve, which has greatly diminished the dollar’s buying power within the US economy and caused 30%+ higher prices since 2020 alone.

  2) The more important takeaway from Carlson’s experiment is the lack of chaos in Russian markets.  Despite the global sanctions leveraged against them, Russia has proven increasingly resilient.  With their overall inflation rate expected to fall to 4.5% in 2024, it would seem the economic war against the nation has failed. 

  For the people who were expecting the Kremlin to be reduced to smoking ruins after a financial Apocalypse similar to Weimar Germany, this must be a disappointing realization.  What we can learn from this outcome is that trade finds a way, and cancelling an entire country is not as easy as some might think.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/19/2024 – 23:00

• China Supercharges Stimulus With Biggest Cut In Mortgage Reference Rate On Record
  China Supercharges Stimulus With Biggest Cut In Mortgage Reference Rate On Record

  After the relentless jawboning in recent days, many were expecting some further easing today from the PBOC, and Beijing did not disappoint when China cut the 5-year loan prime rate (LPR) – which influences mortgage rate pricing – and is also known as China’s Libor (or rather SOFR since Libor no longer exists) by 25bp to to 3.95% on Tuesday, while holding the 1-year rate at 3.45%. The LPR cut is the largest since China revamped its loan pricing mechanism in 2019. China last trimmed the 5y LPR by 10bp in June 2023.

  

  As UBS notes, market sentiment should get a boost from the larger-than-expected 5y rate cut, with a Reuters poll estimating 5-15bp after the PBoC-backed Financial News reported Sunday that there’s downside room for LPRs, especially for 5y as it will support the real estate market.

  Furthermore as noted earlier, Premier Li Qiang had called for “pragmatic and forceful” action to boost confidence in the economy on Monday.

  Elsewhere, the PBoC kept the medium-term lending facility (MLF) rate on hold Monday. LPRs and MLFs usually move in tandem, but UBS Economist Ning Zhang had noted that a LPR cut should a bit earlier and more than MLF rate cut, thanks to previous cuts of reserve requirement ratio and deposit rates.

  Commenting on the larger than expected cut, Derek Tay, head of investments at Kamet Capital Partners said that Chinese banks’ cut of a key reference lending rate for mortgages is “deeper than expected and shows that authorities are following through on their vows to boost the market and the economy.” It’s “also a relief that the authorities are proceeding as they have been foretelling regarding support for the economy and the market.”

  Others were a bit more skeptical:

  Hao Hong, an economist at Grow Investment:

  • Loan demand is very weak. So even if there is a large cut it won’t stimulate new demand plus the existing loans are still on the old rate
  • Now the problem is not about interest-rate levels. The real estate sector continues to ail. It is the sector that used to generate much of the loan demand. New home sales in January tanked

  Willer Chen, an analyst at Forsyth Barr Asia:

  • It’s a “good gesture from the commercial banks but now the property problem is not about the mortgage rate”
  • The move may “slightly boost the property demand but would not expect much”

  In kneejerk reaction, China rates are largely unchanged so far; 5y yield is down 0.5bp on the LPR cut. USDCNH is a touch lower as optimism builds. Funding remains tight with local paying interest; tom/next is around +1. The curve should continue to flatten given elevated funding which would support the front-end points while the back end should head lower.

  The Shanghai Composite is fluctuating with an upward trend so far this morning, while China properties are trading higher after banks cut the key reference lending rate for mortgages by the most on record.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/19/2024 – 21:54

• Government Schools Are Propaganda Machines
  Government Schools Are Propaganda Machines

  Authored by Karl Streitel via The Mises Institute,

  In Artis Shepherd’s recent article, which I highly recommend, he aptly detailed the numerous benefits of homeschooling and data showing that homeschooled students—far from being socially stunted, academically insular young people—are actually generally high-achieving, socially adroit young adults ready to provide value in the world.

  Thus, in this commentary, I want to address a common argument against homeschooling: namely, that homeschooling is a breeding ground for propaganda—mainly “far right” political and religious ideologies—from parents and religious institutions, which is dangerous for social cohesion and democracy.

  

  The Propaganda Problem

  To begin, there is a dearth of evidence to show widespread inculcation of homeschooled students with so-called radical political or religious ideologies. The media often provide anecdotes that are supposed to represent the larger reality, but, in fact, a National Center for Education Statistics survey from 2019 showed that “a desire to provide religious instruction” was only the fifth most popular reason for homeschooling (chosen by 58.9 percent of parents) whereas the most popular reason to homeschool was “a concern about school environment, such as safety, drugs, or negative peer pressure” (chosen by 80.3 percent of parents, who could choose more than one reason in this survey).

  Does such a reason strike you as ideologically or religiously radical? I would be much more judgmental of parents who were not concerned about their children’s school environments.

  However, I concede it is undeniably true that homeschooled students—like any students or human beings, for that matter—can be propagandized by any type of ideology: right, left, center, or otherwise. I know of no person or teaching materials that are truly unbiased because to be so would entail having no opinions and providing all available information on a subject without any explanations. So, every teacher, parent, textbook, online course, or forum post is, by nature, biased in some way. Of course, this fact also means that government school or private school students are also susceptible to and recipients of propaganda daily.

  Moreover, such propaganda is inculcated far more effectively and efficiently via government schools that continue to churn out obedient and often intellectually incurious citizens who rarely question the morality or composition of the state that rules over them. This assertion should be self-evident through obedience to mask mandates, pledges of allegiance to flags, continued support for America’s overseas “defense” campaigns, and the strong contention among many citizens that democracy and voting are salubrious for all of us.

  Regarding this efficiency and effectiveness, let us think numerically for a moment. The plurality (23.9 percent) of school districts in the United States in 2020–21 enrolled between 1,000 and 2,499 students, with an average per-school enrollment of 555 students. The total public school enrollment was roughly forty-nine million in 2023 versus 3.1 million homeschooled students. (About 5.5 million students attended private schools.) Thus, approximately 85 percent of school-age children attended public schools last year.

  At the same time, the average number of children per family in the United States was 1.94. Therefore, the reach of a homeschool parent’s propaganda is severely limited compared to that of the government. A public school reaches, on average, 555 students while a parent reaches, on average, two. Further, we know that students in government schools are receiving information that is vetted and approved by that very government (via local school boards), so students in such schools are undeniably being propagandized to think in a certain uniform way. No such uniformity exists or should be expected among millions of diverse homeschoolers, whose “school” experiences will vary widely—thus impeding the spread of any single ideology, unlike in government schools.

  The effectiveness of this unitary government-school propaganda, furthermore, is undeniable. One primary piece of evidence for the success of government schools in this regard is the fact that most parents still send their children to government schools and never think twice about the coercive way those schools are funded—while simultaneously teaching their children that stealing is wrong. Despite the rapid growth in homeschooling since the covid lockdowns, government schools still enroll the vast majority of students, as I detailed above, and parents still generally approve of their local schools.

  Government Sets the Standard for Propaganda

  Government schools also earn an A+ for keeping people ignorant or misinformed, especially about history, government, and economics. Indeed, only half of Americans surveyed in 2008 could name the three branches of government, and only 18 percent and 23 percent of eighth graders were proficient in US history and civics, respectively, according to the 2014 National Assessment of Educational Progress report.

  How many of those students also believe Pearl Harbor was an unprompted sneak attack, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, that capitalism caused the Great Depression, or that Abraham Lincoln took the country to war because of slavery? Is such misinformation not also propaganda that tens of millions of students imbibe each year? Consider also the mindlessness of pledging allegiance to a flag each morning—a pledge written by a socialist who was concerned about “every alien immigrant of inferior race” eroding American values. Ironically, the “under God” section of the pledge was added to differentiate America from “godless Communism.”

  When the state mentions God, no worries; it’s apparently only those religious people in flyover countries who are the problem.

  Finally, the government school system was established specifically to propagandize students and to encourage obedience (to Protestant ways) and uniform thinking (i.e., not diversity and inclusion). Thus, although government-school leaders may trumpet the diversity of melanin or gender, true diversity—diversity of thought—is not to be abided. This type of diversity is one in which government schools actively do not participate because it is antithetical to their mission and organization and dangerous to their propagation. Homeschoolers, on the other hand, will learn different ideas, perspectives, and information and will display a panoply of thoughts simply because they are not part of a centralized, bureaucratic, one-size-fits-none system.

  You and I may disagree with some of those ideas, but it is simply irrational to say that homeschoolers from disparate families in different areas of the country learning diverse ideas from varied curricula will somehow be uniformly propagandized at any rate even close to that of government-school students. Don’t believe me? If you went to a government school, just compare your experiences and what you learned in school to those of a friend or family member from out of state. How much learning diversity do you find on key issues? As the old saying goes, if everyone is thinking the same thing, then someone isn’t thinking.

  We also should consider that, according to Gallup polls and others, religious conviction in the United States is shrinking, not growing. In fact, according to Gallup data, between 2000 and 2022, the percentage of Americans who said religion was “not very important” to them rose from 12 percent to 28 percent.

  Unfortunately, Gallup does not ask Americans a similar question about government (i.e., if government is important in their lives), but they do ask if people think government has too much power. A majority does think so. However, a majority also thinks that government should have a greater role in seven of its functions (out of eleven provided). Such logically and morally inconsistent responses demonstrate what we might expect after twelve years of government propaganda: people will complain about government, but in the end, they support and often want it to do even more—especially if that “more” benefits their chosen groups.

  Thus, we find ourselves in a time of decreasing religious faith but static or even increasing belief in the government’s role in society, despite complaints to the contrary. We also find ourselves in a time in which over 85 percent of children attend government schools to learn about the important roles of government in society and the morality and necessity of democracy. Whose propaganda should we really fear?

  As an anecdote of the power of the current system’s propaganda, I offer an example from my time as a high school teacher. In response to an article we read in class, a sophomore wrote the following, which I paraphrase: “Nazis killed to kill; Americans kill to protect. Also, our government is completely different in political views and doesn’t lie to us like the Nazis did. Lastly, Hitler was a dictator, which we don’t have or support in America.”

  Are such beliefs any less propagandistic than whatever a homeschooler might learn? Are such beliefs more or less easily transmitted to large groups of people in the government school system versus at home?

  If we are being intellectually honest, we know the answers to those test questions.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/19/2024 – 21:30

• Drug-Use, Robberies, & Public Sex: Cali Public Library Forced To Close Due To Rampant Illegal Activity
  Drug-Use, Robberies, & Public Sex: Cali Public Library Forced To Close Due To Rampant Illegal Activity

  In case you’re wondering whether or not libraries still have use in the age of the internet, they do. And we have Gavin Newsom’s state to thank in helping the nation get reacquainted with their new purpose.

  That use appears to now be a designated place for drug use, robberies and public sex. At least, that was the case at the Contra Costa County Library’s Antioch Branch in California, according to a new NY Post article.

  The city of Antioch is about 45 miles northeast of Oakland and is home to about 115,000 people. 

  That library has been forced to close its doors as a result of the illicit and illegal activity. 

  In a statement, the library commented: “During the closure, the Library will be working to implement further security measures so we can reopen as soon as possible.”

  

  One representative for the Contra Costa County Library System said: “We’ve also had drug activity and drug use both inside the library and on library property.”

  “People having sexual intercourse inside the library or on property in full view of patrons and staff. We found bullet casings on library property,” she continued. 

  One Antioch resident told the Post: “No one in the City of Antioch, including the police chief, was informed of safety concerns by Contra Costa County regarding the library.”

  “We apologize for the short notice and the inconvenience but the safety of our patrons and staff is a top priority,” the branch said in a statement. 

  It was ultimately the county’s decision to close the library, the report concluded. 

  When it reopens, the library will have a 2nd security officer, repaired fencing and upgraded security cameras. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/19/2024 – 21:00

• Chicago Hit By Surging Violence From Criminals Out On Probation And Parole
  Chicago Hit By Surging Violence From Criminals Out On Probation And Parole

  By Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner of Wirepoints

  One thing Chicagoans can’t help but notice when scrolling through news feeds: the number of violent crimes committed by defendants while they were out either on parole, probation or awaiting trial.

  That’s not surprising given the long-term decarceration trend in Cook County that’s left the county’s jail population at the lowest level in 40 years. Cook County Chief Judge Tim Evans started a no bail/low cash bail policy in 2017, resulting in a growing number of pretrial defendants out on bond who are then charged with new crimes, as we reported here. The state’s new SAFE-T Act has taken that policy even further. In September 2023, Illinois became the first state in the country to eliminate cash bail altogether, while the law also reduced the types of crimes for which defendants could be detained before their trial.

  The big question in 2024 is how will the SAFE-T Act impact crime, everything else equal. It’s still far too early to determine whether there are more violent defendants out on the streets awaiting trial and, unfortunately, the government is far behind on releasing the relevant data on that, according to a recent BGA report. 

  Nevertheless, Chicagoans have a right to be concerned considering just how many stories there are of released defendants committing mayhem. Many make the news every day, but it’s hard to know just how prevalent they are among the sea of other crimes committed.

  That’s why we’ve compiled a short sample list of defendants – those on parole, probation or awaiting trial – who’ve been accused of committing violent crimes since the start of the new year. Our source is CWB Chicago, which does a great job of tracking and publishing the city’s daily crimes.

  • January 2 – A 21-year-old man shot another man in the face while on bail for one gun case and on probation for another. According to CWB, he was the “30th person accused of shooting, killing, or trying to shoot or kill someone in Chicago in 2023 while awaiting trial for a felony.”

  • January 7 – A 31-year-old man and former CVS employee robbed a CVS while on probation for robbing and burglarizing a CVS.

  • January 14 – A 19-year-old gang member shot and critically injured another man in Little Village just three months after getting probation for head-butting a Chicago cop. Prosecutors also dropped a felony gun case on the day he pleaded guilty to the battery.

  • January 18 – A 19-year-old man killed his girlfriend while on probation for a gun charge.

  • January 27 – An 18-year-old man with gang ties gunned down an airport employee while on juvenile probation for gun possession.

  • February 4 – A 56-year-old man killed ex-girlfriend while on parole for strangling his previous partner.

  • February 6 – A 32-year-old man and previous 8-time felon burglarized a restaurant while on probation for burglarizing a nail salon.

  • February 6 – A 16-year-old male allegedly stabbed and killed a man while on parole for attempted murder. Earlier, he was found in possession of a stolen motor vehicle while on that same parole. That case was dropped.

  • February 7 – A 20 year-old man was charged with ‘brutal attack’ of a woman at Chicago Union Station after being released on similar charges under cashless bail law.

  • February 12 – A 33-year-old tow truck driver with two counts of attempted murder after he opened fire on two competitors over a job, while on felony pretrial release.

  • February 13 – A 19-year-old man was caught carrying three guns on CTA less than a month after being placed on “first-time weapon offender probation” for another felony gun case.

  • February 14 – An 18-year-old man killed an Uber driver while on juvenile probation for robbery. He also previously served time in the juvenile justice center for carjacking in 2021.

  Commit a crime. Get released, either before or after your trial. Commit more crime “while on” release from previous crime. Repeat.

  **************

  Some are expressing hope in the latest crime numbers for 2024 (through early-February), which show major crimes down 18% and murders down 30%. But with just a little over a month behind us, it’s premature to make any conclusions given the city is coming off of post-covid record-high crime numbers. 

  Major crimes in 2023 were up over by 16% over 2022 and by 55% over 2019, before covid and the George Floyd.

  

  As mentioned above, we’re going to have to wait for new data to reach any conclusions.

  But from the data we do know since the SAFE-T Act was passed – the Cook County jail population is down 15%, electronic monitoring is down 10%, and detention appeals have skyrocketed – proponents of softer crime policies are getting what they want.

  And, it appears, Chicago’s criminal class is getting what they want, too.

  Read more from Wirepoints:

  • Jail populations shrink, electronic monitoring drops and appeals opposing detention orders ‘skyrocket’: Three concerns about impact of Illinois’ no-cash bail law
  • Chicago led nation in homicides for 12th year in a row in 2023, murder rate still 5 times higher than NYC’s
  • Criminals robbing with impunity: Time to care about who replaces Cook County prosecutor Kim Foxx

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/19/2024 – 20:30

• "Confronting The Inevitable Chocolate Crisis" – Charting The Chaos In Cocoa Markets
  “Confronting The Inevitable Chocolate Crisis” – Charting The Chaos In Cocoa Markets

  Bloomberg Opinion columnist Javier Blas, who covers energy and commodities, opined in a piece on Monday about the “coming meltdown” in the global chocolate industry following decades of under-investment across West African nations. 

  “Unlike most other agricultural commodities, cocoa hasn’t developed into a plantation business,” Blas said, adding poor farmers dominate cocoa farmers across West Africa, responsible for 75% of the world’s cocoa production. Meanwhile, he pointed out that investment only flowed into processing beans into chocolate – “not planting, growing and harvesting cocoa trees.” 

  Because of this, he warned: “We are all now confronting the inevitable chocolate crisis.” 

  The first chart Blas provided readers were cocoa futures in New York blasting into orbit. These prices now command $6,000 per ton, recently breaking the 1977 record.

  

  “At the end of 2023, cocoa was one of only a four major commodities that still traded below their price peaks set in the 1970s, the previous commodity boom,” Blas said. 

  The commodities analysts said some forecasts suggest the cost of cocoa in New York could reach as high as $10,000 per ton. 

  What’s imminent is the West African cocoa shortage will be felt across supermarkets worldwide. 

  Just weeks ago, Michele Buck, chief executive officer of The Hershey Co., warned: 

  “We can’t talk about future pricing … given where cocoa prices are, we will be using every tool in our toolbox, including pricing, as a way to manage the business.” 

  The four main producing countries, accounting for 75% of the world’s cocoa production, are Ivory Coast, Ghana, Cameroon and Nigeria.

  

  West Africa is the king of cocoa. 

  

  Blas presented a chart that illustrates the most significant cocoa bean deficit in modern history is currently underway. He said industry insiders are saying “the market is heading for a deficit of 300,000-to-500,000.” 

  

  And global cocoa inventories are collapsing. 

  

  “I’m unconvinced that climate change has anything to do with the current crisis,” Blas noted. 

  Separate from Blas, Bloomberg recently spoke with Paul Davis, the head of cocoa at major softs merchant Sucres et Denrees SA, who warned global cocoa markets will be “in a very tight balance” balance for another 18 months to three years.

  Davis continued: “There is no cavalry that’s coming to the rescue.”

  Sigh…

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/19/2024 – 20:00

• Understanding The Trump Phenomenon: It's Not What The Elites Think
  Understanding The Trump Phenomenon: It’s Not What The Elites Think

  Authored by Lipton Matthews via The Mises Institute,

  Donald Trump has won the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary and is leading in the polls to become the Republican candidate for the presidency in the upcoming general election. His status as the most likely contender to challenge Joe Biden is upsetting establishment figures who think that Trump’s ascent threatens democracy. Trump is constantly pilloried by the mainstream media as a demagogue who emboldens the racist underbelly of American society. Emotions run rampant, but Trump’s villainy has been grossly exaggerated.

  

  After winning the presidency in 2016, pundits thought that Trump would revert America to an era of racism. These predictions swayed many even though they failed to materialize. Donald Trump did not govern as a racist but rather pandered to racial minorities and women. Trump constantly pitched economic plans to galvanize the support of blacks and Hispanics. Like previous presidents he endorsed policies to promote women in science to the dismay of critics and was a relentless advocate for female empowerment.

  During his tenure, Trump collaborated with nonwhite communities and often boasted that he had done more for them than previous presidents. Racism and sexism were not the hallmark of his presidency. Trump earnestly borrowed from the liberal playbook by passionately selling his message to minorities. Being an astute politician, Trump quickly endeared himself to women and minorities, instead of pandering to the chauvinism of white nationalists. In fact, Trump bolstered his popularity in minority communities but received diminishing support from whites.

  Trump’s presidency was fixated on expanding his base of minority supporters to such a great extent that readers were frequently bombarded with stories explaining his outreach to minority communities. The gains made by blacks and Hispanics under the Trump presidency were covered extensively by the media. Unemployment rates for blacks, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, and disabled individuals plummeted to record lows. Declining poverty rates for blacks and Hispanics were also consistent with the Trump presidency’s trends of progress.

  However, the benefits of the Trump presidency also extended beyond minority groups to encompass the broader American population, with low-income and blue-collar groups registering considerable wage gains. Trump presided over a buoyant economy despite the criticisms of opponents. The unjustified charges of racism and incompetence leveled against Trump reflect the derangement of critics unwilling to appreciate his mass appeal.

  Trump’s rhetoric is incendiary, but beyond his uncouth remarks, he is not vastly different from other presidents. Indeed, there are parallels between Trump and Biden. During his stint, Trump was bullish on China. His contempt for China led to the imposition of tariffs on Chinese imports; however, this proved to be a costly economic policy. Aimed at penalizing China, the policy had the reverse effect of raising prices for American businesses. President Biden has preserved elements of Trump’s antitrade policy and is equally bullish on China.

  In 2022, citing national security reasons, Biden announced a ban on the export of semiconductors to China. Further, the administration has prohibited US firms from conducting investment in some of China’s high-tech industries. Similarly, both men advocate protectionism and Buy-America requirements. Although Trump has a more free-market approach to economics, this is not what makes Trump fundamentally different from Biden.

  The primary difference is that Biden is a globalist and Trump is an antiglobalist. Donald Trump will not cede sovereignty to global institutions nor rabidly conform to the hysteria of the global environmental movement. Canceling the Keystone Pipeline to appease climate alarmists would not have been an option for Trump. This inane policy shuttered eleven thousand jobs without any serious analysis of the decision. With a Trump presidency, the ability of globalists to exert control over America’s affairs will decline, and that’s why Trump is so loathed by elites: he threatens globalism.

  International organizations won’t find it easy to manipulate Trump into doing their bidding. For example, Trump revoked America’s participation in the Paris Agreement that intended to limit warming to 1.5 degrees despite lacking a coherent economic case for doing so. Furthermore, Trump will not enslave America to net-zero targets that run into the trillions. Critics will smear Trump to dissuade Americans from electing him, but even if he is unfit to be President again, his victories in Iowa and New Hampshire indicate that the demand for Trumpism could catapult him to a second presidential victory.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/19/2024 – 19:30

• Wawa Targets "Most Aggressive Growth" In Company's History With Huge Push South
  Wawa Targets “Most Aggressive Growth” In Company’s History With Huge Push South

  Convenience store Wawa is looking to spread its wings and officially fly south for the winter – and the rest of the seasons.

  The popular Philadelphia-area based chain – whose owners are now reportedly worth upwards of $6 billion, according to Bloomberg – has plans to add locations in every state.

  Spokesperson Lori Bruce – best known recently for trying to spin reasons as to why the chain was closing numerous Center City Philadelphia locations amidst incessant crime – commented: “We can’t wait to share our unique Wawa offer and experience with the new communities we’ve announced and look forward to serving them in the future very soon!”

  The company plans on moving to the South and Midwest, with plans to open in Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, and Georgia.

  

  It’ll also open 160 new stores in locations like Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana, the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote last week. 

  Wawa calls itself a “privately held, family-owned company with 200+ years in American business.” Wawa stores are located in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Florida and Washington, D.C., its website says. 

  Company CEO Chris Gheysens detailed the company’s plans to open about 100 new stores every year, with an eye on having 2,000 stores by the year 2030. He is calling it “the most aggressive growth” in the company’s history. 

  The Bloomberg Billionaires Index is tracking the store’s owners for the first time. The Wood family, who owns 53% of the company, is worth about $6 billion, according to Bloomberg. Bloomberg also estimated the chain did about $18.5 billion in sales in 2023. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/19/2024 – 19:00

• America's Fat Kids Now in Ozempic Marketers' Crosshairs
  America’s Fat Kids Now in Ozempic Marketers’ Crosshairs

  Authored by Ben Bartee via Armageddon Prose substack,

  Via Reuters:

  “A small but rapidly growing number of U.S. adolescents began treatment with Novo Nordisk’s weight-loss drug Wegovy last year, a powerful new tool to address record rates of pediatric obesity, according to data shared exclusively with Reuters.

  In the first 10 months of 2023, 1,268 children ages 12 to 17 with an obesity diagnosis* started taking Wegovy, according to U.S. insurance claims data compiled by health technology company Komodo Health.”

  

  This psychological condition via framing the obesity epidemic as a “disease” with an accompanying “diagnosis” is not to be overlooked, as it provides valuable insight into how the pharmaceutical industry successfully parlays every physical, psychological, and social ailment into a medical diagnosis through a process called “medicalization” that I have previously described in great detail, which then opens the door for expensive, patented pharmaceutical interventions where they don’t naturally belong.

  Strategically placing obesity within the “disease” bucket precludes the individual (referred to as “the patient,” an object to be worked upon, like a car with a faulty transmission) from exercising any personal agency over their health. Instead, the patient’s issue becomes a medical one best left to the anointed “experts” to resolve — almost always with expensive drugs or surgeries.

  The actual disease, whether real or invented, obesity or “gender dysphoria,” is rarely resolved, but, given the financial incentives to keep the pill mills churning out product, one has to wonder whether that was ever the point from the industry’s perspective to begin with.

  Continuing:

  In 2022, only 25 children were prescribed the drug, which did not receive U.S. approval for adolescent use until December of that year. A month later, the influential American Academy of Pediatrics recommended weight-loss drugs be offered to children with obesity starting at age 12.”

  In a decent society, the American Academy of Pediatrics would be designated a criminal enterprise, if not a biomedical terrorist organization, and its ringleaders prosecuted with vigor.

  Via Influence Watch:

  “In 2018, AAP reported $121,878,940 in revenue and $62,163,314 in net assets. More than half of its revenue came from its memberships, journals, and publications. The AAP also reported receiving $20.5 million in government grants and over $12.9 million in outside contributions. That same year, AAP reported $118,478,392 in expenses, including nearly $800,000 spent on legislative lobbying.

  AAP gains a significant portion of its revenue through sponsorships at its conferences and frequent member events, though it has received criticism for its seemingly hypocritical sponsorship arrangements. In 2010, AAP hosted a conference which featured SweetSurprise.com, a corn-syrup promotion compony, as a sponsor, despite the fact that the AAP itself advocated against high fructose corn syrup and claimed that soda consumption was associated with higher rates of obesity.”

  Let’s discover together who  — in addition to the likes of Bill Gates and Google — funds the AAP.

  It’s probably deeply ethical physician’s groups and nunneries and whatever, right? The Mother Teresas and similar such do-gooders of the world.

  Surely.

  Why, spank me silly and call me Suzy; it’s none other than Novo Nordisk, manufacturer of Ozempic, itself!

  But let’s not be conspiracy theorists and allege a conflict of interest.

  *  *  *

  Ben Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. Follow his stuff Substack. Also, keep tabs via Twitter.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/19/2024 – 18:30

• Medvedev Warns Of Nukes On Berlin, London & Washington Before Russia Would Return To 1991 Borders
  Medvedev Warns Of Nukes On Berlin, London & Washington Before Russia Would Return To 1991 Borders

  Former Russian president and deputy head of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev has managed to once again shock and anger Western officials (and entire populations for that matter) with his jingoist rhetoric and nuclear threats.

  Just a couple of weeks ago he warned that if Russia is attacked by NATO it would have “no choice” but to unleash nuclear “apocalypse” which would lead to “the end of everything”. Over this weekend he actually managed to top and surpass his own words in terms of nuclear ‘threat level’ and rhetoric. He has expanded on the prior remarks by saying the Kremlin stands ready to use its entire strategic arsenal on London, Washington, Berlin and Kiev.

  His fresh warning focused on Russia’s military hold on the four annexed territories in Ukraine’s east. Moscow now sees this as Russian territory and says it will never give it up.

  

  “Attempts to return Russia to the borders of 1991 will lead to only one thing. Towards a global war with Western countries using the entire strategic arsenal of our state,” Medvedev began in the Sunday statement posted to Telegram. He followed ominously with a ‘target list’…

  ‌”In Kiev, Berlin, London, Washington.”

  He further described that nuclear missiles would strike “all other beautiful historical places that have long been included in the flight targets of our nuclear triad.”

  “Will we have the courage to do this if the disappearance of a thousand-year-old country, our great Motherland, is at stake, and the sacrifices made by the people of Russia over the centuries will be in vain?” Medvedev then said: “The answer is obvious.”

  This is not the first time he’s warned of “nuclear fire” if NATO or Ukraine forces seize Russian territory. Moscow has warned could deploy its nuclear arsenal if it faces at ‘existential threat’ to its survival. 

  However, this appears to be the first time Russia has threatened nukes if its control of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia faces existential threat. Of course, this includes Crimea too.

  

  The Zelensky government has not given up on its goal of liberating all of these territories, however. Also, Kiev has even demanded that Russia give up its claim to Crimea. But this latter aspect to Zelensky’s peace formula is widely seen as a non-starter for any future serious peace negotiations to end the war.

  Certainly Ukraine will also have to give up territory if it ever hopes for peace, unless the tide of battle turns quickly, which is very unlikely at this point.

  In January, there began to be confirmation of the US preparing deployment of B61-12 nuclear warheads to Britain, specifically at RAF Lakenheath, a base in Suffolk, England.

  #Russia would regard any return of #US nuclear weapons to bases in Britain as an “escalation and a destabilizing practice,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova says.https://t.co/odjTJOnSRe

  — Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) September 5, 2023

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

  Moscow has previously accused Western and NATO intelligence services of assisting with the growing space of cross-border missile and drone attacks on Russian territory.. Recently it has accused France of maintaining mercenaries in the northern city of Kharkiv, in order to mount attacks on nearby Belgorod Oblast. There are rising fears that this ‘indirect’ fighting or proxy war could drift into a direct ‘live fire’ war between Russia and NATO countries, but so far this has been narrowly avoided.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/19/2024 – 18:00

• A Market Only A Mother Or AI Could Love
  A Market Only A Mother Or AI Could Love

  By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

  Generally, I like to focus on what will happen, rather than what happened, because people reading this already know what happened. But I found last week so confusing/disturbing/annoying on so many levels, that I think it is worth revisiting what happened. We saw narratives come and go, turn on a dime, and shift almost “willy nilly.” Certainly, price action seemed to influence the narratives as much as the other way around. All of this came on the back of reaching “all-time highs,” which we wrote about last weekend in A Retrospective of All-Time Highs.

  On the week, the S&P 500 was down 0.4% – its first losing week in quite some time, and not without more than its fair share of seemingly obligatory “all-time high” headlines. While the drop is only mildly interesting, how it played out and how volatile it was is what really caught my attention. We will focus on the Nasdaq 100, because that was even more “fun” to watch (if your idea of “fun” is absolute torture).

  

  Let’s say we think a 20% return is a good annual number. Then 0.4% would be an “average” weekly return. We had moves of 0.4% or greater multiple times, on multiple days.

  To me, that is the sort of market “only a mother could love” because it is painful to be right or wrong by significant amounts (plenty of moves greater than 1%) so quickly. I suppose AI could love this market if some AI trading program managed to catch these moves correctly! If you could have timed this market, there was “easily” 10% to 20% to be made in a single week of day-trading. I suspect no human came close to achieving that (in fact I suspect most humans were busy trying not to get themselves all twisted into a knot), but could some AI have captured this? I doubt it, but certainly something is playing in the back of my mind. Is something out there very good at maybe not just capturing these sorts of movements, but also triggering them? That is the AI that I’m talking about in today’s headline.

  AI remains an important driver of the market in its own right. NVDA, almost a proxy for AI growth, has earnings out on the 21st and was up on the week. Apple saw a brief surge in its stock late on Thursday, as headlines hit the tape about how “Apple Readies AI Tool to Rival Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot.” AI adoption will continue to play a big role in the market, and I suspect that it will help investors of all stripes “buy” the dip.

  The Inflation Story

  CPI came in higher than expected. There are “seasonality” concerns, and ongoing concerns that housing inflation is once again being overstated as OER doesn’t seem to tie into other “real-time” data on rents. I’ve given up ranting about “owner’s equivalent rent” and how it is calculated (purposefully with a long lag) so I will just ignore the topic of conversation this time. Maybe everyone will agree that it overstates it, but after months of pulling together charts on actual rents versus OER during the “inflation panic,” I don’t have the energy to go through that drill again. It is probably overstated, but the Fed seems to think it is important.

  PPI, which I normally don’t pay much attention to, has “supposedly” become more important than CPI. I don’t see it that way, but some do, and it also came in hot.

  Bonds reacted “rationally” to both numbers – sold off and reduced the timing and number of rate cuts.

  Stocks on Tuesday fell more than I would have thought, then bounced more than seems to make sense.

  On Friday, after an initial sell-off post PPI (from a strong overnight performance), the markets seemed to shake off the PPI strength. I guess if Tuesday’s CPI surprise didn’t matter, then why should this? I would argue that two wrongs don’t make a right.

  The inflation news that caught my eye was in the University of Michigan report. Expectations crept higher for the first time in a few months. The series is volatile, and I think mostly random noise (hence referring to it as CONsumer CONfidence over and over), but the Fed does watch for shifts in expectations, and this data will not give them confidence about how they are managing expectations.

  I continue to think the COVID Bumps (detailed in An Eclectic Mix) are playing out and will place downward pressure on inflation (the services demand has peaked and data seems to support a slowdown in much of the sector, away from restaurants). Against that is the ESG, geopolitical, and on/near/friend shoring, all of which create a “safer” and more stable environment, but are inflationary as they are being built out.

  Net, net, expect inflation to be stubborn here and possibly rise a touch – confirming that this recent data is not an anomaly, making the Fed’s job more difficult.

  The Consumer

  One outlier has been the strength of the U.S. consumer. That strength got called into question on Thursday as retail sales came in extremely weak. Not only were the numbers weaker across the board, but the headline number for last month was also revised down.

  We’ve had our doubts about the consumer (credit card usage, the fact that so many things were on sale for the holidays, demand pulled forward, etc.), and those doubts seem to have been “rewarded” by this retail sales report. Please see Consumption Glass for more details.

  While jobs will be the key and I remain cautious on that, especially the mix of full and part-time jobs, and the difference between creation/loss of high paying jobs versus lower paying jobs.

  Markets seemed to take this data in stride on Thursday, likely assuming that the Fed would view this slowing as evidence that they were on the right track in terms of monetary policy. While I can understand that argument (it is legitimate), shouldn’t we be worried that there is something more going on here? While it “doesn’t affect us” (supposedly), both Japan and the U.K. are officially in recessions.

  Markets were seeking something to offset the high CPI print and they gravitated to this “weak” data as being “good,” but I think that interpretation will be questioned in the coming days and weeks as more data comes in (which I think will confirm the slowdown).

  Who Isn’t Long?

  Virtually everything I read describes a market that has gone “all-in”, especially in the sectors that have been driving returns for the past year or more.

  I like the RSI (relative strength indicator) as a simple technical tool. It is registering overbought on some of the stocks driving markets and is certainly not showing up as even close to indicating oversold on them.

  I’m told equity put/call ratios are showing complacency and a long risk bias. I watch MOSO on Bloomberg (most active options). I like it on volatile days as it gives some clues (I believe) as to the sentiment out there. I found two things very interesting:

  • There was some longer-dated put buying on Tuesday, not just a big run-up in volumes of zero- days-to-expiration (0DTE) options. Given how severe the decline was on Tuesday, I expected to see a lot of 0DTE options as the most active. It seems to me that there was some real need to hedge real risk, which was interesting.
  • I mostly saw call buying. The volumes that I looked at were skewed to call buying, with several single stocks (as opposed to ETFs) garnering some call buying interest. Are investors being cautious and buying calls or are they so fully invested, that they have to resort to calls rather than outright positions?

  I think these both tend to mean that there could be more downside, especially since we didn’t see a 0DTE “gamma” driven move to the downside, and I think, unfortunately, that the market is ripe for such a day.

  The CNN Fear and Greed Index has moved into “extreme greed” which is a nice little contrarian signal. The AAII Sentiment Survey receded a little but is still showing a strong bullish bias, which again, is often a contrarian signal.

  While there are plenty of reasons why the rally that took us to “all-time highs” can continue, I’m leaning heavily towards the view that too much was bet too quickly on the Fed “pivot” and positioning is too aggressively long risk – making a sharp/rapid decline, that eats away at “dip buyers” with help from 0DTE options, my current base case.

  Bottom Line

  Let’s start with rates and the Fed.

  • 10-year yield to 4.4% to 4.6%. Watch the “structural deficit” and “interest payments as a percentage of all spending” rise to the forefront of things pushing yields higher.
  • 2s versus 10s less inverted, but not heading to positive any time soon (-10 bps to 0).
  • On the Fed, I’m still at 25/50/25 for cuts in the May, June, and July meetings, but if anything, I fear that I am now in the “too many cuts” camp that I have been fighting for much of this year! Have I really “joined” the enemy? When I started at 4 cuts in total at 3 meetings, the market was pricing in way more than me, and now I’m pricing in the same as the market, but much sooner. I think I need to dial back on this call, but don’t have a scenario I like any better, at least not yet.

  Credit. I don’t like credit here. I started that view early last week and am increasingly confident that we will see spreads widen in the coming weeks.

  • Looking for tighter spreads when we were “already at the tight end of the range” seemed contrarian at the start of the year and has worked out well. I’m not sure “long credit” is as crowded as equities, but it is no longer contrarian.
  • It is difficult to be bearish on stocks and expect credit to do well, so that plays into the analysis.
  • Finally, I do pay close attention to how “day old” new issues perform. I look at bonds issued a couple of weeks ago that no longer have as much trading related to the initial allocation and underwriter positioning to gauge how liquid the market is. I watch not just how the bonds are quoted, but also how executable those quotes are, and I believe that we’ve transitioned into a “warning” phase.
  • Overall, I still expect credit to do well and encourage investors to be overweight credit versus Treasuries, but I think there will be better entry points.

  Equities. Maybe after mentioning “Cheech and Chong” last week, I just want to be able to write a report titled “Up in Smoke”, so I have to be aware of my own biases. Having said that, the market has skewed heavily towards being bullish. Within that, it is extremely bullish on a subset of names. Between positioning and price action, I think that the risk of the next 5% move being to the downside is much higher than the probability that we will go another 5% higher from here. Yes, fighting momentum can be dangerous (and momentum is still higher), but I am not the mother of this stock market, I do not love how it behaved last week, and think that it is a precursor to more downside.

  I still like China and commodity related plays (for different reasons), but cannot yet get my hands around re-embracing the “laggards” (anything from equal weight indices, to the Russell 2000, to regional banks and commercial real estate). I want to, but just cannot get there.

  We will all see how this version of “all-time highs” plays out, but for now I’m nervous on stocks and bonds! For different reasons, but that could be a troublesome issue for this market to face if stocks and bonds really start moving down together.

  On that “cheery” note, enjoy the holiday!

  P.S. If any of you happen to have an AI algo that caught most of those moves, can you please share or make it open source and save us all some misery? Thanks!

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/19/2024 – 17:30

• Cummins Fined $1.6 Billion Over Allegations It Outfitted Dodge Rams With Software To Cheat Emissions
  Cummins Fined $1.6 Billion Over Allegations It Outfitted Dodge Rams With Software To Cheat Emissions

  Engine manufacturer Cummins is facing $1.6 billion in fines after allegations that “it outfitted hundreds of thousands of trucks with software to defeat pollution controls,” according to The Cooldown. 

  The DOJ took time off from prosecuting J6ers and President Trump to allege that Cummins’ actions were in violation of the Clean Air Act.

  The agency says that “about 1 million Ram pickups” were rigged to cheat emissions tests so they could look “cleaner than they actually are,” the report says. 

  The DOJ says that “630,000 model year 2013-2019 Ram engines and 330,000 model year 2019-2023 Ram engines” have been “secretly releasing” nitrogen oxide as a result. 

  According to the Environmental Protection Agency, nitrogen oxide can cause irritation to the human respiratory system, leading to asthma attacks and other respiratory issues that may require hospitalization. Additionally, this pollutant contributes to the formation of ozone smog and intense tropical downpours.

  

  Engine manufacturers such as Cummins shirk their responsibility to maintain breathable air by evading emissions tests.

  Even Merrick Garland made a statement about the action: “Violations of our environmental laws have a tangible impact. They inflict real harm on people in communities across the country.”

  Cummins paid a $1.6 billion fine to California to settle the claims.

  The company pledges ongoing cooperation with investigators to address environmental concerns, while its partner Stellantis begins recalling non-compliant Ram models for software adjustments. This significant penalty should prompt the automotive industry to prioritize decisive climate action.

  Amazonian tribesmen supposedly experiencing more “tropical downpours” as a result of Cummins rigging some software were sadly unavailable for comment. But we’re sure the PhD volumes at the Harvard library will soon be replete with “academic studies” about how Cummins is singlehandedly biggest cause of climate change on the planet.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/19/2024 – 17:00

• Quinn: Hard Decisions Used To Lead To An Easy Life
  Quinn: Hard Decisions Used To Lead To An Easy Life

  Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

  I’ve seen the graphic below a few times over the last several weeks. I understand its message and have essentially tried to follow the hard decision path for most of my life, while imparting the same advice to my three sons. I’m sure they got sick of me telling them that no matter what amount you make, if you spend less than that amount, you will get ahead in life financially.

  Of course, this graphic is too simplistic to describe the real world, where medical misfortune, bad luck, bad investments, or bad people running the country can and do prevent many hard working honest families from ever achieving the “easy life”.

  

  We all know life is never easy, but it can potentially be easier if you make enough right decisions along the way. The graphic reminds me of a quote sometimes attributed to John Wayne, “This life’s hard, but it’s harder if you’re stupid.” I think that captures the truth better than hard decisions lead to an easy life. It does seem the level of stupidity across the general populace has risen to astounding levels over the last couple decades.

  I was lucky enough to join the full-time work force in 1986, when the country still had a growing economy and short-term hard decisions would usually lead to an easier life over the long-term. Neither of my parents graduated high school, but a father driving a gasoline truck for 40 years and a stay at home mom, could raise three kids in a 900 square foot row home in the suburbs outside Philadelphia, and they could all graduate college with little or no debt. Those days are long gone. My parents made hard decisions their entire lives, to make their kids lives better than theirs.

  I think another name for “hard decisions” are decisions to delay gratification. For me, decisions about my career, kids, real estate, and not keeping up with the Joneses, constituted my hard decisions. Out of college, I put in two years at an accounting firm, even though I hated every minute, because I needed two years of CPA experience to get my CPA license. I didn’t want a CPA license other than to put it on my resume to get a good job with a corporation. I was 23 years old and wanting to have fun every weekend with my buddies, but I made the hard decision to spend 10 weeks totally dedicated to passing the CPA exam, and I did.

  I knew an MBA was another stepping stone to a better paying job, so when the corporation I had joined made it clear an MBA was not valued there, I left and went somewhere it was valued. I then proceeded to work my full-time job, including many weekends, and get my MBA at night at Villanova. It was hard and it took three and a half years, but it was worth it, as the Treasurer position at IKEA came available, and my CPA and MBA allowed me to get the job.

  Just as I got the MBA and the new job, our first child was born. My wife had a good job at a social services organization, but we made the hard decision for her to stay at home and raise our kids, as two more sons were born over the next six years. Our overall family income was lower after my wife left the workforce, so we delayed buying a single family home, took vacations with our parents, drove used cars until they died, and rarely went out to restaurants. We managed to live beneath our means, contribute to my 401k, put the kids through Catholic school, and spent quite a bit on hockey equipment, because the boys loved hockey.

  Many of my hard decisions when it came to my career most certainly did not lead to an easier life financially. I refused to lie or shade the truth at IKEA, resulting in my termination, because the unqualified female diversity CEO was too stupid to grasp the facts I presented. I realized the willful ignorance to my projections of the CFO at Toll Brothers in 2006 made my position untenable, so I took a substantial pay cut to move to Wharton. After 13 years of dedicated service, the new CFO turned out to be a despicable human being, and I took another pay cut to come to my current, and hopefully last employer.

  So, from my perspective, not all hard decisions lead to an easier life financially. But the hard decisions I’ve made have kept my integrity intact. I’ve never lied, cheated, or done anything I considered unethical in my entire career. I also choose to no longer become friends with co-workers outside of work, because I’ve been stabbed in the back too frequently by people I thought were friends. My blog is my outlet for my anger, depression, and desire to tear off the veil hiding the treasonous, evil, corrupt, and psychotic actions of the government, media, banks, and Deep State.

  I see what my kids and honest hard working people across the land are up against at this point in history, and I know hard decisions today are not likely to lead to an easy life ever again. At least, not until we go through a horrific and catastrophic financial collapse, with a civil and global war thrown in for good measure. Talk about hard decisions. How about life and death decisions on a daily basis for several years? We have no chance at a better future without the collapse of the present day dystopian debt empire.

  My kids are all hard working, have decent jobs, have no debt, and still have absolutely no pathway to owning a home, without being strangled by debt to do so. Even rent for modest apartments, is a huge burden.

  

  Life is now hard for everyone, not only the stupid. We aren’t in Kansas or the 1980’s anymore. The people who did this to America and the American people have names and addresses. Many of the people they have screwed over are the ones with the 300 million guns they want to confiscate. At some point, those guns will need to be used. Then we’ll see whose life gets hard.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/19/2024 – 16:30

• With Charge Offs Soaring, Capital One To Buy Discover, Creating Credit Card Giant
  With Charge Offs Soaring, Capital One To Buy Discover, Creating Credit Card Giant

  With both delinquency and charge off ratios at the two largest credit card companies (targeting everyday consumers, unlike the top 10% focused American Express) in the US surging in the past two years to the highest level since the covid crash, and prompting speculation among traders that the US consumer is set for a painful hit (just a few days ago Goldman trader Rich Privorotsky said that “I think we are going to keep ignoring any consumer concerns for now but some of these numbers from Discovery were pretty glaring” referring to the 242bps surge in NCOs from 2.81% to 5.23%)…

  

  … it’s hardly surprising that the easiest way to cover up the growing delinquency/NCF rot below the surface is simply to throw billions in “synergies” at the problem while also combining two (very ugly) balance sheets in hopes of confusing shorts, and sure enough earlier today the WSJ reported that Capital One plans to buy Discover Financial Services in a deal that would combine two of the largest – and ugliest – credit-card companies in the U.S.

  The WSJ reported that the all-stock deal (may as well take advantage of the ridiculous short squeeze in the stock in recent months) could be announced Tuesday, and would the deal would value Discover – which has a market value of about $28 billion – at a premium.

  Buying Discover would give Capital One, a credit-card lender with a market value of a little over $52 billion, a network that would increase its power in the payments ecosystem.

  Card networks are critical to enabling transactions and setting fees that merchants pay when consumers shop with credit cards. Though much smaller than Visa and Mastercard, Discover is one of the few competitors to those companies in the U.S. and it is one of a small number of card issuers that also has a payments network.

  Capital One, the ninth-largest bank in the country and a major credit-card issuer, uses Visa and Mastercard for most of its cards. The bank plans to switch at least some of its cards to the Discover network – which guarantees that it will lose even more customers – while continuing to use Visa and Mastercard on others. Those larger networks have more merchant acceptance abroad than Discover does.

  Capital One also plans to maintain the Discover brand on the cards and network… assuming regulators sign off and the deal is consummated, which is a big “if” with the Biden FTC which has tried to kill any major merger in recent years.

  Discover, based in Riverwoods, Ill., is an online institution so the takeover wouldn’t come with physical bank branches, except for one location in Delaware.

  As the WSJ notes, the deal follows a tumultuous period for Discover that has included increased regulatory scrutiny and a change in leadership. The company disclosed last year that an internal review found it had misclassified certain credit-card accounts beginning in 2007, incorrectly placing them in the highest merchant-and-acquirer pricing tier. The company established a liability of $365 million to account for estimated compensation owed to merchants and acquirers. Separately, Discover received a consent order from the FDIC. In October, Discover said it would address the FDIC order to improve its consumer-compliance operations.

  In December, Discover said financial-industry executive Michael Rhodes would become its CEO and president. He took over from John Owen, who had been serving in the interim after Roger Hochschild stepped down in August.

  Discover has been approached by large banks and technology companies about an acquisition of all or a part of its business over the past decade or more. Tech companies have been interested in acquiring its network so that they can play a more central role in payments, but prior senior executives at Discover weren’t interested in separating the company’s credit-card lending side from the network.

  For Capital One, the deal would also further expand the number of cardholders it will count as customers for its credit-card lending business.

  Additionally, Discover also has consumer deposits, most of which are in savings accounts, allowing Capital One to continue to grow its already large presence in that area.

  An acquisition of Discover will rank among the biggest deals so far in 2024. After a lull in M&A activity in 2023 as economic and other uncertainty and increased interest rates took a bite out of the appetite for deals, volumes have gotten off to a relatively strong start and are up 90% in the U.S. compared with a year earlier, according to Dealogic. Other big transactions include software maker Synopsys’ roughly $35 billion acquisition of rival Ansys and Diamondback Energy’s $25 billion deal for Endeavor Energy.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/19/2024 – 16:00

• How The US Regime Subsidizes Immigration (Both Legal & Illegal)
  How The US Regime Subsidizes Immigration (Both Legal & Illegal)

  Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

  In recent months, stories from both the legacy media and the independent media have continued to pile up on how undocumented foreign nationals – also known as “migrants” and “illegal aliens” – are able to take advantage of a vast network of taxpayer funded benefits in daycare, medical care, housing, and more. 

  

  For example, both the New York Post and Denver Post report that these foreign nationals have “overwhelmed” the Denver Health hospital system in Denver, and that the situation is “unsustainable.” Meanwhile, public schools report classrooms are filling up quickly with the children of these foreign nationals. Denver is hardly alone. The New York Post notes that both the City of New York and the state government have expanded local welfare programs, including pre-paid credit cards, to further ensure that migrants continue to receive cash and resources from American taxpayers. This is in addition to the approximately 66,000 foreign nationals who are housed in hotels and shelters, care of both New York and federal taxpayers. USAToday reports that colleges “across the country” are receiving millions in taxpayer money to offer housing to migrants at no charge. Chicago’s mayor is bragging he’s giving away $17 million in taxpayer-funded giveaways to “asylum seekers” who are presently living off the sweat of the taxpayers in government shelters. This, of course, is just a downpayment on many more planned giveaways. 

  Just how much in taxpayers’ resources is going to foreign nationals? It’s difficult to estimate for a number of reasons. The spending is done through numerous different government agencies at various levels of government. Moreover, much of the money if filtered through non-profits (i.e., “NGOs”) that are labeled “charities” but are simply adjuncts of the regime. 

  Once we add up $1 billion here and $77 million there, after a while we’re talking about real money, and one thing becomes abundantly clear: the regime and its partners are subsidizing the influx of foreign nationals who are promised a variety of both cash and in-kind benefits. It must also be noted that, contrary to certain myths, the largesse is not reserved for only the so-called “illegal aliens.” Legal immigrants can take advantage of the generous and well-funded American welfare state even more readily than can the undocumented migrants.

  What is the effect of subsidizing a particular product or activity? It is usually the same everywhere we look: you get more of what you subsidize.  This is true of student loans, it’s true of ethanol, and it’s true of migrants. Economic theory tells us that the government cannot possibly know the “correct” number of migrants, nor should the regime be free to centrally plan some arbitrary number. On the other hand, it is extremely unlikely that the number of migrants—even with lax border enforcement—would be as high as it is without the regime’s incessant subsidization of migrants, both legal and illegal. 

  How Many Foreign Nationals Live in the United States? 

  According to the Congressional Research Service, it is estimated there were approximately 45-46 million foreign-born residents of the United States in 2022. Of those, about 53 percent, or 24 million, are naturalized citizens. In addition to this there are 12.9 million legal permanent residents (LPRs) and approximately 11 million more are so-called “illegal” immigrants. All combined, we find that 23 million non-citizen US residents—i.e., “foreign nationals”—are living in the United States. That’s about 51 percent of the overall foreign-born population. As we will see, many of them receive financial support and resources from US taxpayers.

  (This measure does not count the approximately 3.2 million nonimmigrant workers, students, exchange visitors, diplomats, and their relatives who have sought only temporary residence in the United States. These nonimmigrant groups are not eligible for public benefits.)

  Are Foreign Nationals Eligible for Welfare? 

  Among immigrant foreign nationals, most are eligible for some form of taxpayer-funded “public” benefits. 

  For example, undocumented foreign nationals may legally access “treatment under Medicaid for emergency medical conditions,” a variety of in-kind services such a soup kitchens and temporary housing, and “programs for housing or community development assistance or financial assistance administered by the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development…”

  That’s just the direct federally-funded services. State and local government may elect to provide additional services at local taxpayers’ expense. 

  The welfare programs available to legal foreign nationals are far more broad. Legal foreign nationals (LPRs) can access most federal welfare programs after an initial five-year period. This includes non-emergency Medicaid, CHIP, TANF (i.e., cash assistance), food stamps, and SSI. 

  Access to these programs have been further broadened by state governments. As noted by the National Immigration Law Center: 

  Over half of the states have used state funds to provide TANF, Medicaid, and/or CHIP to immigrants who are subject to the five-year bar on federally funded services, or to a broader group of immigrants. A growing number of states and counties provide health coverage to children, young adults, or pregnant persons regardless of their immigration status. Several states offer or will offer health coverage to older adults regardless of their immigration status. And five states (California, Colorado, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington) and the District of Columbia offer or will offer public or private health coverage with state subsidies to all otherwise eligible immigrants regardless of their immigration status.

  It is not necessary to be employed to maintain legal permanent resident status, even if one is of working age. After all, LPRs are not the same at temporary nonimmigrant workers like H1B visa holders: “Green card holders [LPRs] can also collect unemployment compensation the same way citizens do …nor can a legal permanent resident be deported for being unemployed.” 

  Legal immigrants do not jeopardize their legal status by applying for additional taxpayer funded benefits such as food stamps: “SNAP enrollment will NOT affect your ability to remain in the United States, get a green card/permanent resident status, keep your green card/permanent resident status, or become a U.S. citizen.”

  In short, nearly the full gamut of taxpayer-funded welfare programs are open to legal foreign nationals after the initial five-year bar. Moreover, many migrants aren’t even held to that, including “[r]efugees, people granted asylum or withholding of deportation/removal, Cuban/Haitian entrants, certain Amerasian immigrants” and other specific groups are exempted from the waiting period.

  All these foreign nationals, regardless of status, are free to send their children to government childcare centers known as “public schools.” 

  How Much Do Foreign Nationals Use American Social Benefits? 

  A variety of organizations have attempted to quantify the extent to which both naturalized immigrants and current foreign nationals use welfare programs.  This study from the National Academies concludes that the data

  show[s] that the immigrant households use several programs, most notably food assistance and Medicaid, at higher rates than do households led by the native-born. …This higher use of welfare programs by immigrants is attributable to their lower average incomes and larger families. 

  In the NA study, immigrant households with children utilized welfare programs at higher rates in nearly every US state. In California, 61.5 percent of households utilized welfare while 40.7 percent of immigrant households did. In Texas, the same measures are at 66.3 and 44.2 percent, respectively. Similar proportions are found in Florida and New York. 

  This report unfortunately does not differentiate between naturalized immigrants and foreign nationals. However, given that naturalized immigrants tend to earn 50 to 70 percent more than non-citizen immigrants, it is safe to conclude that foreign nationals utilize welfare programs more than naturalized immigrants, and therefore more than the native population. 

  An increasingly important addition to legal immigration in recent decades has been the population of immigrants legally designated as refugees. In total, this all costs the taxpayers nearly two billion dollars per year, or $80,000 per refugee per year in the form of federal and state programs including food stamps, child care, and public housing.

  The Center for Immigration Studies has published studies similar to the NA study. These CIS studies show similar results. 

  • In 2012, 51 percent of households headed by an immigrant (legal or illegal) reported that they used at least one welfare program during the year, compared to 30 percent of native households. Welfare in this study includes Medicaid and cash, food, and housing programs.

  • Immigrant households have much higher use of food programs (40 percent vs. 22 percent for natives) and Medicaid (42 percent vs. 23 percent). 

  Note that these conclusions reflect immigrant households rather than immigrant individuals. This is an important distinction because many immigrant households contain citizen children who became citizens at birth due to being born in the United States. Thus, the household may contain both citizens and foreign nationals—some of whom may be illegal foreign nationals. These households, however, enjoy access to welfare programs by virtue of the underage members’ citizenship. Thus, immigrant households can access taxpayer funded healthcare, food stamps, housing programs (and more) through the native-born children.  Similar trends persist when non-citizen households are measured separately from all immigrant households combined. 

  Some researchers insist that welfare benefits for foreign nationals ought to be measured only on an individual, per capita basis. For example, in this report from the CATO institute, the researchers conclude that for 2020, native-born residents, on average, cost welfare programs $8,335 per capita while immigrants cost welfare programs $6,063. These proportions can vary by program. For example, the per capita Medicaid cost for immigrants is $1,859, while the cost for native-born residents is $2,081. The use of food stamps is similar ($190 per capita for immigrants versus $214 per capita for natives), Immigrants usage of SSI is slightly higher ($188 per capita) than it is for natives ($169 per capita). 

  How much taxpayer funding are we talking about overall? The CATO report estimates that the total cost of welfare going to non-native US residents in 2020 was $290.4 billion, That’s a sum equal to the combined budgets of the Departments of Education and Homeland Security. Yet, only about half of non-natives are non-citizen foreign nationals. To find the sum used by non-citizen immigrants, we can’t just divide the sum in half because foreign nationals tend to use welfare more than naturalized immigrants. So, given the $290.4 billion total for immigrant welfare spending, we can estimate that at least $150 billion of that is consumed by foreign nationals—a sum about equal to the combined budgets of the Departments of Education, State, and Housing and Urban Development. (This spending total excludes state and local spending on government schools for the children of foreign nationals.)

  An older CATO study (from 2013) does break out non-citizens from immigrants overall. Here, the researchers conclude that low-income immigrants use food stamps more than naturalized immigrants, and only slightly less than native-born residents. When it comes to taxpayer funded healthcare: one in five non-citizen immigrants collect this benefit while slightly more than 1 in 4 natives collects this particular form of taxpayer largesse. 

  The Migration Policy Center reports that in 2021, 32 percent of immigrants (both citizen and non-citizen) used government health insurance. That’s comparable to 38 percent of natives. 

  Yet, even by this conservative measure of immigrant welfare usage, the best we can say is that immigrants use welfare at a rate slightly lower than that of natives. One could argue that, at the low end, immigrants receive (per capita) about 70 to 75 cents for every welfare dollar that goes to natives.  That’s not exactly “good news” given that overall federal spending on social benefits amounts to about half of the annual $6.3 trillion budget and is clearly out of control. The fact that natives get most of this is hardly an exoneration of immigrants. It’s more of an indictment of native-born Americans, millions of whom exploit their most productive fellow citizens every month to keep the government benefits flowing. 

  In any case, we find tax money flows freely to foreign nationals, and immigration to the United States is heavily subsidized. We should not be surprised when a lot of immigrants show up to get their share. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/19/2024 – 15:30

• War Expands With Massive Israeli Airstrikes 60km Deep Into Lebanon
  War Expands With Massive Israeli Airstrikes 60km Deep Into Lebanon

  The Israel-Hezbollah war is expanding, which was on display Monday as Israel for the first time struck near a large city which is deep inside Lebanon, far away from the border, in the region of Ghaziyeh.

  Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari has confirmed in a statement that military was behind large airstrikes that rocked a town just south of Sidon earlier in the day. Hagari the strikes targeted Hezbollah weapons depots, and also served as a response to an explosive-laden that struck northern Israel previously on Monday. Video captured the moment of the massive airstrikes:

  Happening now: More footage from Israel’s bombing of Lebanese civilian areas 45 kms from the border. It is clearly visible that these are homes in a residential area. Sidon is under the control of the Lebanese army, which receives financial assistance from the US govt. pic.twitter.com/ebTde3HvWG

  — Sharmine Narwani (@snarwani) February 19, 2024

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

  Sidon is the third largest city in Lebanon, and the region that was attack lies at least 45-60 kilometers from the Israeli border. So far the tit-for-tat strikes which stretch back to early October, following the Hamas terror attack on southern Israel, have been confined to southern Lebanon. Fighting has by and large stayed to within kilometers of the border on either side.

  “Israeli jets attacked near Sidon on Monday, Israeli media reported, citing the Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Akhbar newspaper,” regional media also confirms. “The two strikes occurred in the region of Ghaziyeh some 60 km from Israel’s northern border.”

  Videos of the strikes show a huge fireball erupt high into the air…

  ⚡️First moments of the zionist airstrikes on the Ghaziyeh area in Lebanon pic.twitter.com/WGQWW22rYY

  — War Monitor (@WarMonitors) February 19, 2024

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

  This also marks the first time a Sunni-dominant area has been hit (as opposed to focusing on the Shia south, where Hezbollah has most sway)…

  BREAKING: Massive Israeli military attack against #Lebanon targets civilian areas near major coastal city, Sidon. Is Tel Aviv trying to incite the Sunni of Lebanon? Sidon is where ex-PM Rafik Hariri hails from. It is 5 days since the anniversary of his assassination. pic.twitter.com/vB72KWWUVN

  — Sharmine Narwani (@snarwani) February 19, 2024

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

  Lebanese national media has since described the attack as against an industrial facility, amid the ongoing emergency response…

  خاص NBN

  كاميرا الـ NBN ترصد الاستهداف الاسرائيلي لمستودع الزيوت ومعمل الباطون في الغازية#زمن_فلسطين pic.twitter.com/AXisCoIXWd

  — nbnlebanon (@nbntweets) February 19, 2024

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

  Casualties in Ghaziyeh are as yet unknown, but the location was deep in a civilian area along the coast.

  Meanwhile there are reports of missile alert sirens sounding once again in various towns of northern Israel, which portend the coming Hezbollah response.

  Attack is unprecedented since fighting began following Oct.7, given this is very deep inside Lebanese territory:

  

  Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz recently repeated a warning to the Lebanese government, saying that if Hezbollah isn’t removed from near the border that Lebanon would “pay a heavy price”. However, Lebanon’s Army is widely seen as not having the capability to remove the powerful Shia paramilitary group backed by Iran, which would also most certainly set off another civil war.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/19/2024 – 15:00

• GOP Efforts To Shore Up Election Security In Swing States Face Challenges
  GOP Efforts To Shore Up Election Security In Swing States Face Challenges

  Authored by Steven Kovac via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Massive voter fraud allegations that marred the 2020 election spurred a political and grassroots movement from coast to coast to pursue an array of election reforms designed to increase election integrity.

  

  However, with just months left ahead of the 2024 election, Republicans say little was mended, especially in contested states where they thought fixes were needed most.

  Much concern is centered around five key swing states that became the focus of 2020: Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

  Election reforms tend to follow party lines. Democrats commonly castigate increased election security measures as voter suppression, while Republicans often condemn laws and directives that loosen security as aiding and abetting voter fraud.

  According to a report from the Brennan Center for Justice, a left leaning, non-profit, law and research foundation, 23 states enacted 53 laws relaxing election security restrictions in 2023, while 14 states enacted 17 laws tightening them.

   The statistics suggest that Democrats are still winning the nationwide battle, as they have for the past several years. The report found the states that took the most actions to tighten election security are the places that already had security measures in place.

  Of the 14 states that tightened voting procedures, President Trump won all but one (New Mexico) in both 2016 and 2020. The 14 states listed by the Brennan Center include Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, Nebraska, New Mexico, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming.

  The methods by which Americans cast their ballots have changed markedly over the last four federal election cycles, with many people embracing election procedures such as no-excuse absentee voting, early voting, and same-day voter registration.

  As early as 2005, the bipartisan Carter-Baker Commission raised concerns that mail-in voting was a vehicle for potentially significant election fraud, yet the method has since steadily grown.

  In 2018, a quarter of the electorate voted by mail, according to a study by the Election Assistance Commission (EAC). By 2022, it had become one-third.

  Forty-six states and territories permitted no-excuse absentee voting in 2022. The number was 43 in 2020 and 40 in 2018.

  Twenty-three states and territories had a permanent absentee voter list in 2022—a practice that allows a voter to request to automatically be sent a mail-in ballot in every succeeding election. No new application or update of registration information is required in most of them.

  In the 2022 election, half the states and territories allowed same-day voter registration.

  In the election cycles before the pandemic, the EAC study said that nearly 60 percent of Americans voted in person on election day. In 2022, the figure was 49 percent.

  Before the pandemic, mail-in ballot drop boxes were rare, with most being deployed in or around an election office. By 2022, there were 13,000 drop boxes being used in 39 states, with many boxes placed in settings that lacked security and surveillance measures.

  Fifteen of the 39 states and territories using drop boxes, including Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, New York, and Maine, couldn’t report how many ballots were collected from their receptacles in 2022, the report said.

  

  According to the EAC study, 334,382 voting machines were used in the nation’s polling places in 2022. The utilization of electronic ballot marking devices was up 18.6 percent from 2020, while the use of electronic scanners rose 7.8 percent in the same period.

  Despite the push by some election integrity activists for the hand-counting of ballots as a means to improve accuracy and security, the method was used by only 17.8 percent of jurisdictions in 2022, down from 20.7 percent in 2020.

  And although chain of custody protections for ballots are being tightened in several states, dirty voter registration rolls—resulting in mail-in ballots being sent to ineligible people, undeliverable addresses, or multiple ballots being sent to the same individual—are still a widespread issue.

  Georgia

  The state of Georgia has been the scene of continuous controversy over the conduct of the Nov. 3, 2020, presidential election in which challenger Mr. Biden defeated incumbent President Trump by 11,779 votes (0.23 percent).

  The persistent public outcry over alleged election fraud prompted the Republican-controlled Georgia General Assembly to pass the 95-page Georgia Election Integrity Act of 2021.

  

  The declared purpose of the legislation is to apply “the lessons learned” in 2020 and “make it easy to vote and hard to cheat,” in the future.

  An explanatory notation in the bill acknowledged that there was a “significant lack of confidence” in the state’s election systems stemming from persistent allegations of “rampant voter fraud” and “rampant voter suppression.”

  “The changes made in this legislation in 2021 are designed to address the lack of elector confidence in the election system on all sides of the political spectrum,” the notation said.

  In order to ensure that more votes are not counted than ballots cast, every precinct, by 10 p.m. on election night, must post the number of all ballots cast, including all absentee ballots received by the statutory deadline of 7 p.m.

  The new law mandates that the total number of cast ballots must equal the number of ballots counted.

  No pauses are allowed once the counting begins, as were seen in the early morning hours in Atlanta in 2020.

  To help achieve a timely vote count, the statute allows absentee ballots to be processed days before the election, but the voter’s choices must not be tabulated until the counting begins on election day.

  The act provides that ballots shall be printed with authentication marks in order to eliminate counterfeiting.

  To deter duplicate voting and ballot harvesting, the statute mandates that mail-in ballot applications be sent out only at a registered elector’s request, and nobody but statutorily specified individuals may return a marked absentee ballot filled out by another person. Seeking to obtain more than one absentee ballot can now expose an individual to legal penalties.

  When applying for an absentee ballot, the new law requires a person to provide the numbers from either their driver’s license or state-issued identification card or the last four digits of their social security number.

  To expand opportunities to vote, early voting is now an option for three weeks before the election. The law makes early voting on Sunday available at the choice of each county.

  

  The new legislation codifies the use of drop boxes in 2024, but mandates they be placed in secure, well-lit, locations with continuous human monitoring. To protect the chain of custody, two people are now required to deliver the contents of a drop box to an election clerk.

  The act prohibits local officials from accepting non-government funds, grants, or gifts in connection with election administration.

  In 2023, the Georgia legislature passed SB-222 to bolster the 2021 prohibition to make it a crime.

  In protest to the new 2021 measures, Major League Baseball deemed them “restrictive,” and moved that year’s All-Star Game from Georgia to Colorado.

  Georgia state Sen. Colton Moore, a Republican, said that although improvements have been made since 2020, much meaningful work is still needed.

  “Nothing of substance has changed since 2020. Every mechanism to facilitate a steal is still in place,” he told The Epoch Times. “We must work to eliminate the vulnerabilities still in place today.”

  Mr. Moore also highlighted the “ridiculous” number of absentee ballots still used in Georgia elections and said they ought to be restricted to military personnel and medically disabled citizens. He said he was also worried about the institutionalization of the use of absentee ballot drop boxes, which he believes should be done away with altogether.

  “We need to make it a legislative priority to stop authoritarian figures like [Fulton County District Attorney] Fani Willis from prosecuting people for merely questioning our elections. Her actions have created a chilling effect among my colleagues in the legislature,” he said.

  “Unless we obtain a legislative solution soon, we must resolve to overcome fraud through an overwhelming turnout in November.”

  

  Michigan

  Right after being elected in 2018, Michigan’s Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer used her veto power to shoot down nearly 20 election integrity reform bills sent to her desk by the then-Republican-controlled state legislature.

  In the 2020 presidential election, President Donald Trump lost Michigan to Joe Biden by 154,000 votes or 2.8 percent.

  Afterwards, judges in six different court cases found that Michigan’s Democrat Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson issued inaccurate or legally unauthorized guidance to local officials in the runup to the 2020 general election.

  When Ms. Whitmer was reelected in 2022 and Democrats captured control of the legislature, within a year 12 new Democrat-sponsored election laws were enacted—all of which Republicans say loosen security.

  The new Democrat-authored statutes extend automatic voter registration to other state agencies and offices beyond the Secretary of State’s office, which issues driver’s licenses in Michigan.

  They liberalize online registration and allow a person to apply for an absentee ballot online. They permit 16-year-olds to pre-register to vote.

  During the past several election cycles, Democrat activists, backed by out-of-state, big-money donors, effectively used the ballot initiative process to repeal existing election laws, enact new laws, and amend the state constitution. Two of the largest contributors were the Sixteen Thirty Fund ($11 million) and the George Soros-founded Open Society Foundation ($1.2 million).

  The ballot initiative method was employed to expand and institutionalize the use of mail-in ballot drop boxes, allow no-excuse absentee voting, permit same-day registration and voting, and shorten the length of residency required to register to vote.

  The initiative process was also used to weaken photo ID requirements by mandating that election officials accept an affidavit of identity signed by the prospective voter instead. It also enabled people to request to automatically receive an absentee ballot for every election in perpetuity, and it authorized taxpayer-funded, postage-free mailing for people returning absentee ballot applications or mail-in ballots.

  Left-wing activist groups also utilized the initiative process to obtain the constitutional right to nine consecutive days of early voting; and early voting sites can now be used by people from more than one community within a county.

  The ballot proposals enacting these new laws were approved handily by the Michigan electorate at the polls.

  Read the rest here…

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/19/2024 – 14:35

• "12 Fellas Down. 1 To Go": Nikki Haley Has Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Weekend On Social Media
  “12 Fellas Down. 1 To Go”: Nikki Haley Has Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Weekend On Social Media

  The only thing more hilarious than Nikki Haley continuing to remain in the 2024 presidential race despite zero chance of winning is her completely inept social media team – which suggested she’s more than just a whore for the military-industrial complex.

  

  In Sunday afternoon tweet, ‘Haley’ let the world know: “12 fellas down. 1 to go.”

  12 fellas down. 1 to go.

  — Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) February 18, 2024

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

  While we’re sure whatever 22-year-old feminist wrote that had the best intentions, that’s not how it came off…

  You probably shouldn’t have tweeted this… pic.twitter.com/JHsVXzfIbO

  — Enguerrand VII de Coucy (@ingelramdecoucy) February 18, 2024

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

  That’s a lot of fellas. pic.twitter.com/9K9rgztGhP

  — Emergent Perspective (@_emergent_) February 18, 2024

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

  You ever get the feeling that Haley’s staff hates her?

  — Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) February 19, 2024

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

  Husband out of town again?

  — 🇺🇸 Be Light 🇺🇲 (@BonX41A) February 18, 2024

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

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsAnd if that wasn’t bad enough – they don’t even know how to use X! Later that day, after the ‘I’m a huge whore’ tweet, a staffer using X Pro (formerly Tweetdeck), scheduled Haley’s entire week of pre-canned tweets (so very authentic!) in under an hour.

  DEVELOPING: A Nikki Haley staffer using Tweetdeck (now X Pro) for the first time just scheduled all of Haley’s posts for the week to drop within the hour. We are on 26 tweets in less than 40 minutes. pic.twitter.com/A1Rtdq6D5D

  — Bad Hombre (@joma_gc) February 18, 2024

  Someone is about to get fired 😂

  — R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) February 18, 2024

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

  There’s no remedy for incompetence.

  — Bad Hombre (@joma_gc) February 18, 2024

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

   

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/19/2024 – 14:10

Digest powered by RSS Digest