- Court Filing Suggests Troubling CIA Links To Two 9/11 Hijackers
Court Filing Suggests Troubling CIA Links To Two 9/11 Hijackers
Authored by Kit Klarenberg via The Grayzone,
A newly-released court filing raises grave questions about the relationship between Alec Station, a CIA unit set up to track Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and his associates, and two 9/11 hijackers leading up to the attacks, which was subject to a coverup at the highest levels of the FBI.
Obtained by SpyTalk, the filing is a 21-page declaration by Don Canestraro, a lead investigator for the Office of Military Commissions, the legal body overseeing the cases of 9/11 defendants. It summarizes classified government discovery disclosures, and private interviews he conducted with anonymous high-ranking CIA and FBI officials. Many agents who spoke to Canestraro headed up Operation Encore, the Bureau’s aborted, long-running probe into Saudi government connections to the 9/11 attack.
Despite conducting multiple lengthy interviews with a range of witnesses, producing hundreds of pages of evidence, formally investigating several Saudi officials, and launching a grand jury to probe a Riyadh-run US-based support network for the hijackers, Encore was abruptly terminated in 2016. This was purportedly due to a byzantine intra-FBI bust-up over investigative methods.
When originally released in 2021 on the Office’s public court docket, every part of the document was redacted except an “unclassified” marking. Given its explosive contents, it is not difficult to see why: as Canestraro’s investigation concluded, at least two 9/11 hijackers had been recruited either knowingly or unknowingly into a joint CIA-Saudi intelligence operation which may have gone awry.
‘A 50/50 chance’ of Saudi involvement
In 1996, Alec Station was created under the watch of the CIA. The initiative was supposed to comprise a joint investigative effort with the FBI. However, FBI operatives assigned to the unit soon found they were prohibited from passing any information to the Bureau’s head office without the CIA’s authorization, and faced harsh penalties for doing so. Efforts to share information with the FBI’s equivalent unit – the I-49 squad based in New York – were repeatedly blocked.
In late 1999, with “the system blinking red” about an imminent large-scale Al Qaeda terror attack inside the US, the CIA and NSA were closely monitoring an “operational cadre” within an Al Qaeda cell that included the Saudi nationals Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar. The pair would purportedly go on to hijack American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11.
Al-Hazmi and al-Midhar had attended an Al Qaeda summit that took place between January 5th and 8th 2000, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The meeting was secretly photographed and videotaped by local authorities at Alec Station’s request although, apparently, no audio was captured. En route, Mihdhar transited through Dubai, where CIA operatives broke into his hotel room and photocopied his passport. It showed that he possessed a multi-entry visa to the US.
A contemporaneous internal CIA cable stated this information was immediately passed to the FBI “for further investigation.” In reality, Alec Station not only failed to inform the Bureau of Mihdhar’s US visa, but also expressly forbade two FBI agents assigned to the unit from doing so.
“[I said] ‘we’ve got to tell the Bureau about this. These guys clearly are bad…we’ve got to tell the FBI.’ And then [the CIA] said to me, ‘no, it’s not the FBI’s case, not the FBI’s jurisdiction’,” Mark Rossini, one of the FBI agents in question, has alleged. “If we had picked up the phone and called the Bureau, I would’ve been violating the law. I…would’ve been removed from the building that day. I would’ve had my clearances suspended, and I would be gone.”
On January 15th, Hazmi and Mihdhar entered the US through Los Angeles International Airport, just weeks after the foiled Millennium plot. Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi government “ghost employee” immediately met them at an airport restaurant. After a brief conversation, Bayoumi helped them find an apartment near his own in San Diego, co-signed their lease, set them up bank accounts, and gifted $1,500 towards their rent. The three would have multiple contacts moving forward.
In interviews with Operation Encore investigators years later, Bayoumi alleged his run-in with the two would-be hijackers was mere happenstance. His extraordinary practical and financial support was, he claimed, simply charitable, motivated by sympathy for the pair, who could barely speak English and were unfamiliar with Western culture.
The Bureau disagreed, concluding Bayoumi was a Saudi spy, who handled a number of Al Qaeda operatives in the US. They also considered there to be a “50/50 chance” he – and by extension Riyadh – had detailed advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks.
That remarkable finding wasn’t known publicly until two decades later, when a tranche of Operation Encore documents were declassified upon the Biden administration’s orders, and it was completely ignored by the mainstream media. Don Canestraro’s declaration now reveals FBI investigators went even further in their assessments.
Quick summary of court filing:
CIA & Saudi intel recruited Islamic radicals to help spy on Osama Bin Laden
At least 2 recruits were given US Visas and were then “lost” in America
When FBI tried to investigate/charge them, CIA held them back for unknown reasons
9/11 happened
— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) April 19, 2023
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A Bureau special agent, dubbed “CS-3” in the document, stated Bayoumi’s contact with the hijackers and support thereafter “was done at the behest of the CIA through the Saudi intelligence service.” Alec Station’s explicit purpose was to “recruit Al-Hazmi and Al-Mihdhar via a liaison relationship”, with the assistance of Riyadh’s General Intelligence Directorate.
A most ‘unusual’ CIA unit
Alec Station’s formal remit was to track bin Laden, “collect intelligence on him, run operations against him, disrupt his finances, and warn policymakers about his activities and intentions.” These activities would naturally entail enlisting informants within Al Qaeda.
Nonetheless, as several high level sources told Canestraro, it was extremely “unusual” for such an entity to be involved in gathering intelligence and recruiting assets. The US-based unit was run by CIA analysts, who do not typically manage human assets. Legally, that work is the exclusive preserve of case officers “trained in covert operations” and based overseas.
“CS-10”, a CIA case officer within Alec Station, concurred with the proposition that Hazmi and Mihdhar enjoyed a relationship with the CIA through Bayoumi, and was baffled that the unit was tasked with attempting to penetrate Al Qaeda in the first place. They felt it “would be nearly impossible…to develop informants inside” the group, given the “virtual” station was based in a Langley basement, “several thousand miles from the countries where Al Qaeda was suspected of operating.”
“CS-10” further testified that they “observed other unusual activities” at Alec Station. Analysts within the unit “would direct operations to case officers in the field by sending the officers cables instructing them to do a specific tasking,” which was “a violation of CIA procedures.” Analysts “normally lacked the authority to direct a case officer to do anything.”
“CS-11”, a CIA operations specialist posted to Alec Station “sometime prior to the 9/11 attacks” said they likewise “observed activity that appeared to be outside normal CIA procedures.” Analysts within the unit “mostly stuck to themselves and did not interact frequently” with others. When communicating with one another through internal cables, they also used operational pseudonyms, which “CS-11” described as peculiar, as they were not working undercover, “and their employment with the CIA was not classified information.”
The unit’s unusual operational culture may explain some of the stranger decisions made during this period vis a vis Al Qaeda informants. In early 1998, while on a CIA mission to penetrate London’s Islamist scene, a joint FBI-CIA informant named Aukai Collins received a stunning offer: bin Laden himself wanted him to go to Afghanistan so they could meet.
Collins relayed the request to his superiors. While the FBI was in favor of infiltrating Al Qaeda’s base, his CIA handler nixed the idea, saying, “there was no way the US would approve an American operative going undercover into Bin Laden’s camps.”
Similarly, in June 2001, CIA and FBI analysts from Alec Station met with senior Bureau officials, including representatives of its own Al Qaeda unit. The CIA shared three photos of individuals who attended the Kuala Lumpur meeting 18 months earlier, including Hazmi and Mihdhar. However, as an FBI counter-terror officer codenamed “CS-15” recalled, the dates of the photos and key details about the figures they depicted were not revealed. Instead, the analysts simply asked if the FBI “knew the identities of the individuals in the photos.”
Another FBI official present, “CS-12”, offers an even more damning account. The Alec Station analysts not only failed to offer biographical information, but falsely implied one of the individuals might be Fahd Al-Quso, a suspect in the bombing of the USS Cole. What’s more, they outright refused to answer any questions related to the photographs. Nonetheless, it was confirmed that no system was in place to alert the FBI if any of the three entered the US – a “standard investigative technique” for terror suspects.
Given Hazmi and Mihdhar appeared to be simultaneously working for Alec Station in some capacity, the June 2001 meeting may well have been a dangle. No intelligence value could be extracted from inquiring whether the Bureau knew who their assets were, apart from ascertaining if the FBI’s counter-terror team was aware of their identities, physical appearances, and presence in the US.
Quite some coverup
Another of Canestraro’s sources, a former FBI agent who went by “CS-23,” testified that after 9/11, FBI headquarters and its San Diego field office quickly learned of “Bayoumi’s affiliation with Saudi intelligence and subsequently the existence of the CIA’s operation to recruit” Hazmi and Mihdhar.
However, “senior FBI officials suppressed investigations” into these matters. “CS-23” alleged, furthermore, that Bureau agents testifying before the Joint Inquiry into 9/11 “were instructed not to reveal the full extent of Saudi involvement with Al-Qaeda.”
The US intelligence community would have had every reason to shield Riyadh from scrutiny and consequences for its role in the 9/11 attacks, as it was then one of its closest allies. But the FBI’s eager complicity in Alec Station’s coverup may have been motivated by self-interest, as one of its own was intimately involved in the unit’s effort to recruit Hazmi and Mihdhar, and conceal their presence in the US from relevant authorities.
“CS-12”, who attended the June 2001 meeting with Alec Station, told Canestraro that they “continued to press FBI Headquarters for further information regarding the subjects in the photographs” over that summer. On August 23rd, they stumbled upon an “electronic communication” from FBI headquarters, which identified Hazmi and Mihdhar, and noted they were in the US.
“CS-12” then contacted the FBI analyst within Alec Station who authored the communication. The conversation quickly became “heated”, with the analyst ordering them to delete the memo “immediately” as they were not authorized to view it. While unnamed in the declaration, the FBI analyst in question was Dina Corsi.
The next day, on a conference call between “CS-12”, Corsi, and the FBI’s bin Laden unit chief, “officials at FBI headquarters” explicitly told “CS-12” to “stand down” and “cease looking” for Mihdhar, as the Bureau intended to open an “intelligence gathering investigation” on him. The next day, “CS-12” emailed Corsi, stating bluntly “someone is going to die” unless Mihdhar was pursued criminally.
It was surely no coincidence that two days later, on August 26th, Alec Station finally informed the FBI that Hazmi and Mihdhar were in the US. By then, the pair had entered the final phase of preparations for the impending attacks. If a criminal probe had been opened, they could have been stopped in their tracks. Instead, as foreshadowed by the officials in contact with “CS-12,” an intelligence investigation was launched which hindered any search efforts.
In the days immediately after the 9/11 attacks, “CS-12” and other New York-based FBI agents participated in another conference call with Bureau headquarters. During the conversation, they learned Hazmi and Mihdhar were named on Flight 77’s manifest. One analyst on the line ran the pair’s names through “commercial databases,” quickly finding them and their home address listed in San Diego’s local phone directory. It turned out they had been living with an FBI informant.
“CS-12” soon contacted Corsi “regarding information on the hijackers.” She responded by providing a photograph from the same surveillance operation that produced the three pictures presented at the June 2001 meeting between Alec Station and FBI agents; they depicted Walid bin Attash, a lead suspect in Al Qaeda’s 1998 East Africa US Embassy bombings and its attack on the USS Cole.
Corsi was unable to explain why the photo was not shown to FBI agents earlier. If it had been, “CS-12” claims they would have “immediately linked” Hazmi and Mihdhar to bin Attash, which “would have shifted from an intelligence based investigation into a criminal investigation.” The FBI’s New York field office could have then devoted its “full resources” to finding the hijackers before the fateful day of September 11, 2001.
Alec Station operatives fail upwards
Alec Station’s tireless efforts to protect its Al Qaeda assets raises the obvious question of whether Hazmi and Mihdhar, and possibly other hijackers, were in effect working for the CIA on the day of 9/11.
The real motives behind the CIA’s stonewalling may never be known. But it appears abundantly clear that Alec Station did not want the FBI to know about or interfere in its secret intelligence operation. If the unit’s recruitment of Hazmi and Mihdhar was purely dedicated to information gathering, rather than operational direction, it is incomprehensible that the FBI had not been apprised of it, and was instead actively misdirected.
Several FBI sources consulted by Canestraro speculated that the CIA’s desperation to penetrate Al Qaeda prompted it to grant Alec Station the power to recruit assets, and pressured it to do so. But if this were truly the case, then why did Langley refuse the opportunity to send Aukai Collins – a proven deep cover asset who had infiltrated several Islamist gangs – to penetrate bin Laden’s network in Afghanistan?
One alternative explanation is that Alec Station, a powerful rogue CIA team answerable and accountable to no one, sought to infiltrate the terror group for its own sinister purposes, without the authorization and oversight usually required by Langley in such circumstances. Given that Collins was a joint asset shared with the FBI, he could not be trusted to participate in such a sensitive black operation.
No member of Alec Station has been punished in any way for the supposed “intelligence failures” that allowed 9/11 to go ahead. In fact, they have been rewarded. Richard Blee, the unit’s chief at the time of the attacks, and his successor Alfreda Frances Bikowsky, both joined the CIA’s operations division, and became highly influential figures in the so-called war on terror. Corsi, for her part, was promoted at the FBI, eventually rising to the rank of Deputy Assistant Director for Intelligence.
In a perverse twist, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA’s torture program found that Bikowsky had been a key player in the agency’s black site machinations, and one of their chief public apologists. It is increasingly clear that the program was specifically concerned with eliciting false testimony from suspects in order to justify and expand the US war on terror.
The public’s understanding of the 9/11 attacks is heavily informed by testimonies delivered by CIA torture victims under the most extreme duress imaginable. And Bikowsky, a veteran of the Alec Station that ran cover for at least two would-be 9/11 hijackers, had been in charge of interrogating the alleged perpetrators of the attacks.
The veteran FBI deep cover agent Aukai Collins concluded his memoir with a chilling reflection which was only reinforced by Don Canestraro’s bombshell declaration:
“I was very mistrustful about the fact that bin Laden’s name was mentioned literally hours after the attack… I became very skeptical about anything anybody said about what happened, or who did it. I thought back to when I was still working for them and we had the opportunity to enter Bin Laden’s camp. Something just hadn’t smelled right…To this day I’m unsure who was behind September 11, nor can I even guess… Someday the truth will reveal itself, and I have a feeling that people won’t like what they hear.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/21/2023 – 23:40 - US Debt: Visualizing The $31.4 Trillion Owed In 2023
US Debt: Visualizing The $31.4 Trillion Owed In 2023
Can you picture what $31.4 trillion looks like?
The enormity of U.S. government debt is hard for the average person to wrap their head around. For instance, compared to the median U.S. mortgage, the current level of federal debt is 230 million times larger.
In this graphic, Visual Capitalist’s Julie Peasley shows how many one-dollar bills it would take to stack up to the total U.S. debt of $31.4 trillion.
How Did U.S. Debt Get So High?
U.S. national debt is how much money the federal government owes to creditors. When the government spends more than it earns, it has a budget deficit and must issue debt in the form of Treasury securities.
The U.S. has run a deficit for the last 20 years, substantially increasing the national debt. In fact, according to the Department of the Treasury, the current debt is $31.4 trillion.
Stacked up in one-dollar bills, the U.S. debt would be equivalent to almost eight of Chicago’s 110-story Willis Tower.
Year Outstanding Debt Year-Over-Year Increase 2023* $31.4T 2% 2022 $30.9T 9% 2021 $28.4T 6% 2020 $26.9T 19% 2019 $22.7T 6% 2018 $21.5T 6% 2017 $20.2T 3% 2016 $19.6T 8% 2015 $18.2T 2% 2014 $17.8T 6% 2013 $16.7T 4% 2012 $16.1T 9% 2011 $14.8T 9% 2010 $13.6T 14% 2009 $11.9T 19% 2008 $10.0T 11% 2007 $9.0T 6% 2006 $8.5T 7% 2005 $7.9T 8% 2004 $7.4T 9% 2003 $6.8T 9% 2002 $6.2T 7% 2001 $5.8T 2% 2000 $5.7T 0% Source: Fiscal Data. Debt for 2023 is as of January, with the year-over-year increase reflecting the growth from October 2022 to January 2023. October is the start of the fiscal year for the U.S. government. Debt includes both debt held by the public and intragovernmental holdings.
The last time the government had a surplus was in 2001, when debt rose only 2% due to interest costs. Since then, the largest jumps in U.S. debt have been during the Global Financial Crisis—which saw three straight years of double-digit growth rates—and in 2020 due to trillions of dollars of COVID-19 stimulus.
U.S. federal debt rises during recessions because government revenue, primarily composed of taxes, decreases. At the same time, the government increases spending to help stimulate an economic recovery.
And in today’s case, the U.S. is facing additional financial issues. As the country’s senior population grows and people live longer, this puts pressure on programs that serve older Americans such as Social Security. Healthcare is becoming more expensive and is the second-fastest growing part of the U.S. budget.
The Pros and Cons of Debt
U.S. debt helps fund critical programs for Americans, including retirement and disability benefits, healthcare, economic security, and national defense.
As one example of the impact of these programs, income security nearly halved the percent of the population living below the poverty line in 2019 from 22.8% to 12.2%.
Of course, U.S. debt also comes with challenges. A chief concern is the ability to pay the interest costs on U.S. debt, especially as interest rates rise.
Before rate hikes began, interest costs amounted to 6% of the U.S. budget in the 2021 fiscal year. Fast forward to December 2022, and interest costs amounted to 15% of total government spending since the start of the fiscal year in October.
Addressing the Problem
In January 2023, the U.S. hit its debt ceiling, also known as its borrowing limit. While some countries tie their debt to GDP, the U.S. sets an exact limit in dollar terms.
The government would run out of money to pay its debts this summer if the ceiling is not raised, though policymakers have historically agreed to debt ceiling increases in the past to avoid a default. In 2011, the U.S. narrowly avoided default due to a last-minute debt ceiling negotiation and the country’s credit rating was downgraded as a result.
Tackling U.S. debt is simple in theory: raise taxes or the debt limit, reduce spending, or a combination of all three. However, it’s much more difficult in practice. Which taxes should be raised? Which programs should be cut? What happens the next time the debt limit is reached?
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/21/2023 – 23:20 - Why Colorado Is Topping The Charts In Violent Crime
Why Colorado Is Topping The Charts In Violent Crime
Authored by Katie Spence via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Rep. Gabe Evans isn’t a career politician. Before being elected to his first term as a Colorado State representative on Nov. 8, 2022, Evans served 12 years in the U.S. Army and Colorado Army National Guard, and 10 years as an Arvada, Colorado, police officer, sergeant, and lieutenant.
As such, Evans has extensive experience in law enforcement and combating crime. When he was asked about a March report from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) that found that among the 22 most populous states, Colorado was number one for violent crime and what’s led to the increase, Evans was quick to answer.
“In 2012, 2013, 2014, what we really started to see was this push to either reduce penalties or to completely decriminalize a whole bunch of different—and I’ll call them addictive substances because, to me, that’s the important part of this—but I’m talking drugs,” Evans told The Epoch Times.
“It’s the addiction power of drugs that I think kind of laid part of the foundation for where we’re at. There’s a lot of [legislation] we’ve [passed] to reduce penalties on meth, on cocaine, on heroin, on fentanyl. We just legalized, via a popular referendum, psilocybin this last election.
“And the unfortunate side effect of all that is there is still a massive international presence dedicated to the drug trade. You know, you’ve got huge cartels in Mexico that the Mexican government has trouble controlling.”
Boxes carrying a total of more than 3,100 pounds of illicit drugs seized at the southwest border in San Diego, California, on Oct. 9, 2020. (US Customs and Border Protection) Evans said the push to reduce drug penalties encouraged cartels to “set up shop” in Colorado, as did the push to make it harder to enforce existing laws. “What happens is, inadvertently or not, [these policies] attract a huge criminal presence from the people who make a living distributing and trafficking this stuff,” Evans said.
That, Evans added, led to an increase in other crimes, like vehicle theft and robberies, to fuel drug habits.
Still, lax drug laws aren’t entirely responsible for Colorado’s escalating crime. The other factor, Evans explained, is what’s happening to officers.
“You don’t usually see a lot of attrition in law enforcement in the 5-to-15-year range,” Evan said. “When Senate Bill 20-217 kicked in, most of the attrition occurred in that 5-to-15-year range.
Among other provisions, SB 217 requires all local law enforcement to wear body-worn cameras—except in undercover, and certain situations—updating reporting requirements, and updated penalties for unlawful use of force. It also limits how officers can respond to a protest or demonstration, and allows for civil action suits against officers.
“I mean, look at me. I was 10 years into my career. I was the youngest lieutenant in recent history at Arvada. I was making a solid six figures, and I walked away from that career, in which I was on a trajectory to be a chief or a sheriff in a few more years if I wanted to be competitive.
“And I walked away from it. And there are, from my agency alone—my agency is less than 200 cops—from my agency alone, I can tell you dozens of similar stories of solid cops, solid detectives, solid sergeants with 5-to-15 years of experience that said, ‘I’m out. I cannot work in this toxic environment.’ That goes back to Senate Bill 217.”
Escalating Crime
The DOJ March report analyzed data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) from 2017–2019 and found 45 “violent victimizations per 1,000 persons age 12 or older” in Colorado. Violent victimization includes sexual assault or rape, robbery, and aggravated and simple assault.
The NCVS is considered the nation’s primary source for data on criminal victimization because it includes crimes reported and not reported to the police. The March report is the first time the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has released the NCVS’s victimization data.
Moreover, while the report covers 2017–2019, the most recent data shows Colorado crimes have escalated. The Common Sense Institute reports that in 2022, crimes increased in seven major categories—arson, prostitution/pandering, robbery, motor vehicle theft, buying stolen property, vandalism, and drug possession/sales. In fact, for drug trafficking, the Colorado State Patrol reports that Colorado is in the middle of a 10-year drug trafficking record.
A suitcase full of bags of fentanyl pills seized by DEA Los Angeles. (Courtesy of DEA Los Angeles) In the first five months of 2022, Colorado law enforcement seized more fentanyl than it did for all of 2021—enough to kill 93 million people.
The report states, “Concurrent with Colorado’s rising crime rates, since the start of the pandemic, incarceration in Department of Corrections facilities dropped by 15.5 percent, the number of offenders on parole by 14.1 percent, and the number of offenders on probation by 14.4 percent. A rise in crime should catalyze a corresponding rise in arrests, convictions, and incarceration for the sake of public safety and justice for victims.”
The reason escalating crime hasn’t resulted in a corresponding rise in law enforcement is because of changing laws.
Legislation’s Impact
“The vast majority of our general assembly is pushing bills that lower penalties for crimes and otherwise find ways of turning the criminals into victims in Colorado,” Colorado State Republican Rep. Ryan Armagost told The Epoch Times. Like Evans, Armagost served in the military and was in law enforcement for 10 years.
“The bills that [Republicans] push forward that would raise penalties for auto thefts and things like that are being killed before they even get to the floor,” Armagost said. “And then bills that are otherwise helping to find alternative means for those who offend—other than going through the correctional system—is kind of the means that the Democrats have been pushing. So, we’ve been seeing a lot more of the alternative sentencing and alternative means for detention.”
Armagost noted that people are showing up to support the Democrat’s bills lowering penalties, while also showing up to protest the Republican’s bills looking to stiffen penalties. But he pointed out that there’s a distinct criminal thread.
“The rallying and support for [the Democrats’ bills] have been [from] the people who have offended and the people who are going to have a criminal record. They are coming out and speaking in support of these bills that [Democrats are] pushing. It is the same group that comes out to oppose the bills that the Republican side is pushing to stiffen penalties and stiffen sensors and corrections, correctional facilities, and stuff like that,” he said.
Evans, in agreement with Armagost, added, “You know, when certain narcotics are either legalized or penalties reduced, we see people come in—and when I say people, I’m talking cartels, organized crime, drug traffickers, things like that—they come in with the billions of dollars at their disposal and set up shop. That’s one of the things that drives our No. 1-in-the-nation auto theft rate. That’s one of the things that helps drive our violent crime rate up.
Police investigate the scene after a shooting in Colorado Springs, Colo., on Oct. 31, 2015. (Christian Murdock/The Gazette via AP) “I remember a particular case that we had shortly after a particular drug was legalized, where there was a daytime burglary, and this mid-70s gentleman homeowner was assaulted and thrown down the stairs in his own home by somebody who had just gotten off of probation for drugs and assault in Texas that came to Colorado. He told me after I Mirandized him, he told me to my face, ‘The reason I came to Colorado is because I like your drug laws.’”
Former Colorado State Rep. Dave Williams, who now serves as the Colorado GOP chair, concurred. “Colorado has certainly been at the forefront of legalizing drugs, and this all started back when Colorado legalized marijuana in 2012,” Williams told The Epoch Times.
“We were one of the few states that actually legalized recreational marijuana. And that brought in a huge influx of folks wanting to partake in and get involved in marijuana. And that sort of kick-started it all.
“You had transients or homeless individuals, people with mental health conditions, that just came and started out panhandling. But then they started to engage in other types of crime, like burglary, armed robbery, or things of that nature to obtain resources to get marijuana. It’s only gotten worse from there as time has gone on.”
Williams added, “Democrats are absolutely incentivizing crime. For whatever reason, they care more about criminals that mean us harm or harm to themselves. And they’re more interested in letting criminals run loose on the streets than enforcing the law and making sure that hardworking taxpayers can conduct their affairs safely in a safe environment.”
Still, lax drug laws and laws that incentive crime are only part of the problem.
Demonizing Police
“Law enforcement in Colorado is facing a historic recruiting, retention, and morale crisis,” Evans said. “Nobody wants to be a cop. The cops that were cops are fleeing the profession in droves. And that’s the second prong of this kind of two-pronged issue that’s driving crime up in Colorado.” Specifically, according to Evans, one of the policies that “broke the back” of law enforcement was the passage of SB 217.
Evans explained that after the police custody death of George Floyd on May 31, 2020, Denver experienced massive riots—the third most violent in the nation—and lawmakers, hoping to quell the fury, passed SB 217, the “Enhanced Law Enforcement Integrity” Act. It was signed into law on June 19, 2020, having passed through the general assembly and into law in 16 days.
According to Evans, two parts of SB 217 are particularly demoralizing to law enforcement. The first was the requirement that every encounter be extensively documented, adding significant paperwork to an already demanding job, and the second was a body camera requirement.
“The insidious part of how Senate Bill 217 implemented body cams was that it basically put a guilty-until-proven-innocent mandate in there which said that if something is not captured on law enforcement body camera—and whatever that was that was not captured is challenged in court—the courts are allowed to assume misconduct on the part of the officer, and it’s up to the cop to prove that they didn’t behave in an inappropriate manner,” Evans explained.
Police officers walk through a cloud of tear gas as they try to disperse people protesting against the death of George Floyd in front of the Colorado State Capitol, in Denver, Colo., on May 30, 2020, amid nationwide protests and riots. (Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images) Evans said that when he was an officer, he loved his body cam, but added that there are numerous reasons why it might not capture footage. “If somebody makes an allegation against you, and the body cam didn’t capture it—the battery died, you forgot to turn it on, you know, whatever—there are 101 reasons why the good well-meaning cop who’s doing the right thing, the body cam might not be ready. … [Then] the courts are allowed to impugn and basically assume misconduct on behalf of the officer.
“Now it’s on you to prove that misconduct did not occur. So, every time cops are putting on their body camera, it’s a visible reminder to them that, look, the state of Colorado thinks that you’re actually the bad guy and you’re the one that’s out here terrorizing and causing problems in the community.”
Armagost agreed with Evans, adding that most of the anti-law enforcement legislation originates in California, and is then adopted by the Colorado General Assembly.
“Watching what’s going on nationally, pretty much you’ll notice that whatever is passing legislation in California, becomes a proposed bill the next year in Colorado,” said Armagost.
“The anti-law enforcement sentiment is definitely one of those. They keep finding bills that are working in California and trying them here to further tie the hands of law enforcement and their ability to do their job.”
A police vehicle is seen in front of the Boulder High School after police responded to an unconfirmed report of an active shooter in Boulder, Colo., on Feb. 22, 2023. (Kevin Mohatt/Reuters) Armagost added that in Denver, school resource officers were removed from almost all the schools, which he said “led to an uptick in incidences within our schools. We just had a shooting a couple of weeks ago in a Denver school.”
Armagost said that currently, Republicans have one of the smallest Caucuses they’ve ever had in the General Assembly, and Democrats have used that to attack police officers.
“[Democrats] made the law enforcement career the most toxic career to be in by basically giving everyone the right to be as belligerent and disrespectful to law enforcement as possible, and get away with it.
“You have law enforcement officers leaving early, not even finishing to retirement, at rates that we’ve never seen before. So, I mean, the retention in law enforcement agencies is very, very slim. It’s very disturbing. … Nobody wants to be a cop. Nobody really wants to be subjected to that kind of abuse on a daily basis anymore.”
Reversing Rising Crime
To reverse flagging retention and recruitment rates in law enforcement, and also reverse escalating violent crime in Colorado, Armagost said, “We need to evaluate, I think as a whole, and hopefully convince our democratic counterparts that we need to focus more on taking care of our protectors, not on taking care of criminals.”
Evans concurred, “’I’m always up for criminal justice reform, but not if it’s making cops out to be the bad guys. We have to support law enforcement. And you know, I was a lieutenant. I’m very familiar with vicarious liability, all the bad stuff that happens when we got cops doing bad things, so I’m all for more training. I’m all for more education.
“But we have to make it an environment in which people actually want to join this career and dedicate a significant chunk of their life to it. Because that’s the only option that we got. We have to be able to fix that recruiting and retention problem.”
John Garrod, of Arvada, stands holding a blue line flag at the beginning of a line of about 30 police cars lined up for a procession in honor of the officer who was fatally shot in Arvada, Colo., on June 21, 2021. (Colleen Slevin/AP Photo) Specifically, to reduce rising violent crime, Evans added, “We need to have a nice balance of carrot and stick. If you harm your fellow human beings, you’re gonna be caught, you’re gonna be held accountable for it. That’s the stick.
“But we also have to have the carrot, of look, we need to increase our mental health, behavioral health, substance abuse, we need to increase the focus on those programs to help those individuals that do want to be productive citizens actually have a productive life. … If you want a hand-up, we extend you an open hand of assistance. But if you continue to want to victimize your community, you will be met with a closed fist.”
The Epoch Times’ requests for comment from Democratic lawmakers in Colorado were not returned by the time of publication.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/21/2023 – 23:00 - "Fairly Severe" Corporate Credit Crunch Is "Harbinger Of More Stress To Come"
“Fairly Severe” Corporate Credit Crunch Is “Harbinger Of More Stress To Come”
It has been over a month since signs of banking stress first appeared in regional banks, and we quickly identified the beginning of a credit crunch.
Days after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, we pointed out that the next “credit event” had arrived. Then cited a note from Jan Hatzius, Goldman Sachs chief economist, who pointed out small and medium-sized banks serve a critical function in the US economy:
“Banks with less than $250bn in assets account for roughly 50% of US commercial and industrial lending, 60% of residential real estate lending, 80% of commercial real estate lending, and 45% of consumer lending.”
And throughout March into April, we outlined the macroeconomic impact of the regional bank blowups that would be a major catalyst in a pullback of lending:
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Credit Crunch Arrives: Bank Lending Crashes By Most On Record In Last Two Weeks Of March
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Inside The Credit Crunch: Biggest Drop For Small Business Credit Availability In Over 20 Years
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Mike Wilson Says A “Credit Crunch Has Started” And Margins Are Falling “Gradually, Then Suddenly”
Confirmation of the tightened lending standards and worsening credit crunch that might spark a hard economic landing in the second half was confirmed in the Federal Reserve’s latest Beige Book, which based on information collected before April 10, indicated:
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Conditions in the broad finance sector deteriorated sharply coinciding with recent stress in the banking sector. Small to medium-sized banks in the District reported widespread declines in loan demand across all loan segments. Credit standards tightened noticeably for all loan types, and loan spreads continued to narrow. Deposit rates moved higher. Finally, delinquency rates edged up on residential and commercial mortgages.
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Lending volumes and loan demand generally declined across consumer and business loan types.
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Several Districts noted that banks tightened lending standards amid increased uncertainty and concerns about liquidity.
It is becoming increasingly clear that credit availability in certain sectors of the economy is contracting at a highly alarming pace. And might only worsen through summer.
For more confirmation about the credit crunch is a note from Bloomberg that revealed several findings shedding light on the deteriorating economic outlook.
Small businesses say it hasn’t been this difficult to borrow in a decade; the amount of corporate debt trading at distressed levels has surged about 300% over the past year, effectively locking a growing swath of businesses out of financial markets; bond and loan defaults have ticked up; and the Federal Reserve says banks have tightened lending standards. Corporate bankruptcies are on the rise, too, particularly in the construction and retail industries. –Bloomberg
As a result of the funding crunch, in combination with the Fed’s aggressive interest rate increase, the fastest in decades, Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, warned:
“If credit conditions continue to tighten because banks need time to be in a position where they can give loans and operate, that increases risk of a harder landing —even more so than what we thought before.”
Slok was already discussing “a hard landing before SVB happened” with clients, but now it appears almost inevitable.
Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen had her ‘old lady blinders on’ when she recently said there’s no evidence of lending contraction that would alter her economic outlook.
Recall, Yellen, as Fed Chair in 2017, was quoted saying there would be no new financial crisis in ‘our lifetimes.’
However, small businesses are finding it more challenging to borrow money. About 9% of owners who borrow frequently said March was a difficult time to find financing than it was three months earlier, according to a survey by the National Federation of Independent Business.
As lending conditions tighten, Matthew Mish, head of credit strategy at UBS, noted bankruptcies of public and private companies are rising. He said, “We’re already seeing substantial failure rates.”
“The weakness we are seeing in smaller issuers is likely a harbinger of more stress to come,” Barclays Plc strategist Bradley Rogoff warned.
And with the US default rate noticeably rising, junk bond spreads are set to widen.
“The volume of US corporate debt trading at distressed levels — a risk premium of at least 10 percentage points over the benchmark for bonds, or a price of less than 80 cents on the dollar for loans — has surged some 28% since last month’s banking crisis to around $300 billion,” according to Bloomberg.
In a recent interview on Bloomberg Television, Jim Caron, co-chief investment officer at Morgan Stanley Global Balanced Funds, said, “There is going to be a credit crunch, not a credit crisis.” He pointed out the credit crunch would unfold over time.
PitchBook data shows about a quarter of the $1.4 trillion leveraged loan market carries a B- credit rating, just one notch below CCC grade.
Paul Marshall, of Marshall Wace, one of the world’s biggest hedge-fund firms, warned investors earlier this month that the credit crunch will be “fairly severe” and might spark a recession.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/21/2023 – 22:40 -
- Unvaccinated, Terminally-Ill Alberta Woman Denied Transplant Despite Proof Of COVID Natural Immunity
Unvaccinated, Terminally-Ill Alberta Woman Denied Transplant Despite Proof Of COVID Natural Immunity
Authored by Andrew Chen via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
A vial of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine is pictured at an Alberta Health Services vaccination clinic in Didsbury, Alta., on June 29, 2021. (Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press) A terminally-ill Alberta woman who was removed from an organ transplant list because she was unvaccinated against COVID-19 continued to be denied access to the medical procedure even after obtaining an independent medical report showing that she has natural immunity, said the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF).
Sheila Annette Lewis has been challenging the constitutionality of the vaccine requirement put in place by Alberta Health Services (AHS) for transplant candidates.
On March 28, Lewis provided her doctors in the Alberta transplant program with a privately-funded medical report, which established that she has strong natural immunity to COVID-19 and had overcome previous COVID-19 infections, the JCCF said in a press release issued April 18. The report was provided by the Kinexus Bioinformatics Corporation on March 24.
The Kinexus report said Lewis’s blood sample “clearly supports the presence of SARS-CoV-2 immunoreactivity.” It also noted that she was likely infected with the disease around mid-September 2021 and was reinfected again more recently, and thus has “extremely high levels of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2.”
Lewis asked her physicians to test her blood for COVID-19 antibodies nearly a year ago to see if she was naturally immune, and they refused to do so, according to JCCF.
Response
After Lewis provided her Kinexus report, one of her transplant physicians informed her on April 3 that despite the test results, “nothing had changed in regards to healthcare policies pertaining to COVID-19 vaccination requirements” and that she would still need to receive the vaccines before the hospital would give her an organ transplant, the JCCF said in its press release.
“[The physician] told her that the Kinexus Report concluded that even with natural immunity, she would need a booster dose of the Covid-19 vaccine. However, the report does not say anything about Ms. Lewis needing a booster dose of the Covid-19 vaccine to maintain immunity to Covid-19,” JCCF said.
The Epoch Times reached out to the AHS in regard to Lewis’s case, but didn’t hear back immediately.
Alberta lifted all COVID-19-related mandatory public health restrictions on June 14, 2022.
A guideline from the Alberta government, listing a number of “routine immunizations” that adult organ transplant candidates are required to receive prior to a transplant, says patients should have a “primary series” of three doses of COVID-19 vaccines, while booster shots are needed “at least 6 months after primary series or previous booster dose.” The guideline, published on March 20, is a revision of immunization principles for transplant recipients issued on June 1, 2022.
JCCF said it has sent a demand letter to AHS, the Alberta hospital, and Lewis’s transplant physicians, “requesting that they accept her now established natural immunity to Covid-19 as an alternative to Covid-19 vaccination and reinstate her to the high-priority transplant waitlist by April 21, 2023.”
“The transplant program team, AHS, and the hospital ought to accept Ms. Lewis’s natural immunity to Covid-19 as an alternative to Covid-19 vaccination and reinstate her to the high priority transplant list immediately,” Allison Pejovic, Lewis’s legal counsel, said in the JCCF press release.
“There is no principled medical or scientific reason to continue to deny Ms. Lewis a life-saving organ transplant.”
Lewis previously took AHS, an Alberta hospital where she would receive her transplant, and six transplant program physicians to court, but was unsuccessful at both the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench and the Alberta Court of Appeal in 2022, JCCF said. Both courts found that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Alberta Bill of Rights do not apply to the COVID-19 vaccine policies developed by the AHS and other defendants.
Lewis has filed an application with the Supreme Court of Canada, asking it to hear her appeal. The country’s highest court has not yet decided whether it will do so, JCCF said.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/21/2023 – 22:20 - LVMH Pivots From Hong Kong To Mainland China In Bid To Capture Soaring Lust For Luxury
LVMH Pivots From Hong Kong To Mainland China In Bid To Capture Soaring Lust For Luxury
LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton – the world’s biggest purveyor of luxury goods – has shifted resources out of the luxury shopping mecca Hong Kong for mainland China.
According to Bloomberg sources, LVMH has started the process of moving its regional headquarters from Hong Kong to Shanghai. It has also relocated some top executives to mainland China.
The top global luxury conglomerate will focus on Shanghai, Chengdu, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen markets as Hong Kong’s retail scene slumps.
Hong Kong suffered a series of missteps over the last several years, including anti-government protests in 2019 that kept visitors away, while China’s Covid zero policies limited cross-border activity. This has led to several retailers shuttering retail stores across the metro area.
The pivot by LVMH, which owns brands including Tiffany & Co., Christian Dior, Fendi, and Louis Vuitton, is due to a surge in first-quarter sales as Chinese consumers on the mainland splurged on luxury items as the pace of the world’s second-largest economy gained momentum.
In a post-Covid era, LVMH anticipates that most Chinese luxury spending will be in mainland China rather than Hong Kong. Shopping centers located in duty-free zones like Hainan and the gambling districts of Macau are being swamped by these shoppers, leading to a decline in the importance of Hong Kong as a top luxury shopping hub.
LVMH is following the money.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/21/2023 – 22:00 - AI Will Eventually Be 'As Good A Tutor As Any Human': Bill Gates
AI Will Eventually Be ‘As Good A Tutor As Any Human’: Bill Gates
Authored by Samantha Flom via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Artificial intelligence (AI) may not be advanced enough to replace teachers now, but according to Bill Gates, that time is not far off.
“The AIs will get to that ability to be as good a tutor as any human ever could,” the Microsoft co-founder said at the ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego on April 18.
“We have enough sample sets of those things being done well that the training can be done,” he added. “So, I’d say that is a very worthwhile milestone, is to engage in a dialogue where you’re helping to understand what they’re missing. And we’re not that far.”
Bill Gates speaks onstage at the TIME100 Summit 2022 in New York City on June 7, 2022. (Jemal Countess/Getty Images for TIME) Gates’ comments came within the context of a larger conversation about the future role of technology in education with Jessie Woolley-Wilson, CEO of DreamBox Learning.
“AI has, ever since the focus became machine learning, it’s achieved some unbelievable milestones,” Gates told Woolley-Wilson. “You know, it can listen to speech and recognize speech better than humans. It can recognize images and videos better than humans. The area that it was essentially useless in was in reading and writing. You could not take, say, a biology textbook and read it and pass the AP exam.”
However, Gates noted that, where previous iterations of AI were incapable of replicating human understanding, emerging systems, like Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s GPT-4, had begun to bridge the gap.
“The breakthrough we have now, which is very recent, is more to do with reading and writing—this incredible fluency to say, ‘Write a letter … like Einstein or Shakespeare would have written this thing,’ and to be at least 80 percent of the time very stunned by it.”
Threat to Humanity
In truth, industry experts have not only been stunned but, in many cases, unnerved by recent advancements in the evolution of AI, fearing the ripple effects of such technology on society.
“AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity, as shown by extensive research and acknowledged by top AI labs,” warns a March 22 letter that has more than 27,500 signatures, with dozens of AI experts among them.
Accusing AI creators of engaging in an “out-of-control race” to develop “ever more powerful digital minds that no one—not even their creators—can understand, predict, or reliably control,” the letter’s signatories called for an immediate six-month pause in the training of more advanced AI systems as society grapples with how to ensure their safety.
One of those signatories was Tesla CEO Elon Musk, another tech tycoon who has been outspoken about his concerns regarding the capabilities of AI.
Read more here…
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/21/2023 – 21:40 - A $300,000 Salary Feels Like $100,000 In These U.S. Cities
A $300,000 Salary Feels Like $100,000 In These U.S. Cities
Today in “why, again, do we need inflation?” news, a brand new study by SmartAsset reveals that in several U.S. cities, earning as much as $300,000 per year only feels like $100,000 due to increases in cost of living.
The study “adjusted $100,000 for the local cost of living in 76 of the largest cities in the U.S. using data from the Council for Community and Economic Research” using an index that took into account the price of housing, groceries, utilities, transportation, and other necessary purchases for Q3 2022.
The study found that three major U.S. cities required take home pay of over $300,000 to be able to spend like you earn $100,000 per year. Among them, of course, is San Francisco: “Residents of Honolulu, New York City and San Francisco who earn this amount are taxed roughly 40.5% or higher and have a cost of living more than 82% above the national average.”
The study also found that it is easiest to “make it” in Texas – which could explain the massive defection currently taking place, wherein California residents are hauling their belongings to, and putting up roots in, the lonestar state.
“Salaries in El Paso, Corpus Christi, Lubbock, Houston, San Antonio, Fort Worth and Arlington can be as low as $119,300 while feeling like a true $100,000. Texans at this income level hold onto an average of 5.7 percentage points more of their annual salaries compared to states that charge income taxes, while the cost of living across Texas is generally lower than the national average,” the study reads.
Meanwhile, for the privilege of living in California, you require the highest gross income of any state. SmartAsset writes: “San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, Long Beach and San Diego all require exceptionally high salaries to feel like $100,000. Those in the Bay Area, for example, require at least $147,000 in salary for middle-class comfort. These Golden State cities command particularly high tax rates and cost of living premiums.”
And believe it or not, despite Miami’s high cost of living, the study found that due to its low taxes it is more affordable to live in than places like Chicago and Baltimore:
In general, states with no state income taxes have an edge when it comes to overall purchasing power. States that don’t take a cut of residents’ income taxes include Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming.
Are politicians, including Chicago’s newly elected Mayor, paying attention?
You can read the entire study here.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/21/2023 – 21:20 - Johnstone: Biden DOJ Indicts Four Americans For "Weaponized" Free Speech
Johnstone: Biden DOJ Indicts Four Americans For “Weaponized” Free Speech
Authored by Caitlin Johnstone,
The Biden administration’s Department of Justice has just charged four members of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) for conspiring to act as agents of Russia by using speech and political action in ways the DOJ says “weaponized” the First Amendment rights of Americans.
The Washington Post reports:
Federal authorities charged four Americans on Tuesday with roles in a malign campaign pushing pro-Kremlin propaganda in Florida and Missouri — expanding a previous case that charged a Russian operative with running illegal influence agents within the United States.
The FBI signaled its interest in the alleged activities in a series of raids last summer, at which point authorities charged a Moscow man, Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, with working for years on behalf of Russian government officials to fund and direct fringe political groups in the United States. Among other things, Ionov allegedly advised the political campaigns of two unidentified candidates for public office in Florida.
Ionov’s influence efforts were allegedly directed and supervised by officers of the FSB, a Russian government intelligence service.
Now, authorities have added charges against four Americans who allegedly did Ionov’s bidding through groups including the African People’s Socialist Party and the Uhuru Movement in Florida, Black Hammer in Georgia, and an unidentified political group in California — part of an effort to influence American politics.
AFP reports that the conspiracy charges carry a sentence of up to ten years, with three of the four APSP members additionally charged with acting as unregistered agents of Russia which carries another five years.
“Russia’s foreign intelligence service allegedly weaponized our First Amendment rights – freedoms Russia denies its own citizens – to divide Americans and interfere in elections in the United States,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen in the DOJ’s press release regarding the indictments, adding, “The department will not hesitate to expose and prosecute those who sow discord and corrupt U.S. elections in service of hostile foreign interests, regardless of whether the culprits are U.S. citizens or foreign individuals abroad.”
Looks like the United States has decided to dispense with those freedoms as well.
This fake and racist case flows from the Russiagate hysteria that convinced millions of Americans that Russia was paying dissident groups to destabilize the US political system
The FBI was unable to find anything real, so it went after the African People’s Socialist Party https://t.co/C1fUn2pyuW
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) April 19, 2023
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The superseding indictment containing these charges consists of a lot of verbal gymnastics to obfuscate the fact that the DOJ is prosecuting US citizens for speech and political activities in the United States which happen not to align with the wishes of the US government. The grand jury alleges that the aforementioned Ionov “directed” these Americans to “publish pro-Russian propaganda” and “information designed to cause dissention in the United States,” which is about as vague and amorphous an allegation as you could possibly come up with.
For the record Omali Yeshitela, the founder and chairman of the African People’s Socialist Party and one of the four Americans named in the indictment, has adamantly denied ever having worked for Russia. Earlier this month before charges were brought against him, the Tampa Bay Times quoted him as saying, “I ain’t ever worked for a Russian. Never ever ever ever. They know I have never worked for Russia. Their problem is, I’ve never worked for them.”
But it’s important to note that this should not matter. Under the First Amendment the government is forbidden to abridge anyone’s freedom to speak however they want and associate with whomever they please, which necessarily includes being as vocally pro-Russia as they like and promoting whatever political agendas they see fit, whether that happens to advance the interests of the Russian government or not. The indictment alleges that the four Americans engaged in “agitprop” by “writing articles that contained Russian propaganda and disinformation,” but even if we pretend that’s both (A) a quantifiable claim and (B) a proven fact, propaganda and disinformation are both speech that the government is constitutionally forbidden from repressing.
Here’s the segment I did last night at the top of @TuckerCarlson‘s show about the Biden DOJ’s dangerous indictment of 4 radical black leftists.
Half the segment is Carlson denouncing this and (as Glenn Beck did) defending their free speech rights:https://t.co/SE8JAnm1Pp https://t.co/Ycv2fwgst9
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 21, 2023
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It’s not reasonable for the government to just dismiss the First Amendment on the grounds that it is being “weaponized”. You can’t have your government dictating what speech is valid and what counts as “agitprop” and “disinformation”, because they’ll always define those terms in ways which benefit the government, thus giving more power to the powerful and taking power away from the people. You can’t have your government dictating what political groups are legitimate and which ones are tools of a foreign government, because you can always count on the powerful set such designations in ways which benefit themselves.
The US through the National Endowment for Democracy has created armies of organizations carrying out malign influence operations around the world including here in Thailand.
When the Thai government attempts to stop this activity, the US embassy shouts “free speech.” https://t.co/5MeXFlyzEO
— Brian Berletic (@BrianJBerletic) April 19, 2023
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There’s also the brazen hypocrisy of it all. The US government is constantly engaging in foreign influence operations with outfits like the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up to help foment coups and color revolutions and advance US information interests overtly in ways the CIA used to do covertly.
As commentator Brian Berletic noted on Twitter, “The US through the National Endowment for Democracy has created armies of organizations carrying out malign influence operations around the world including here in Thailand. When the Thai government attempts to stop this activity, the US embassy shouts ‘free speech.’ Thailand’s government and others around the world could easily cite this move by the US Justice Department to target and uproot US-funded organizations doing exactly this and worse.”
So for the US government to now claim it’s legitimate to start throwing US citizens in prison for a decade because they published “propaganda” for another country is absurd, and more than a little scary. The most powerful government in the world needs more political dissent at home, not less, and here they are trying to turn it into a crime.
When they claim the members of the APSP published “propaganda” and promoted “dissention”, what they really mean is that they engaged in speech and political activism that the US government does not like. The spinmeisters will try to spin it, the legal mumbo-jumbo will try to obfuscate it, but that’s what’s happening. Don’t let them conceal this from you. They’re not worried about Russian propaganda, they’re worried you’ll stop listening to US propaganda.
* * *
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Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/21/2023 – 21:00 - "Buy Now, Pay Later" Mania Sends Americans Deeper Into 'Black Hole' Of Debt
“Buy Now, Pay Later” Mania Sends Americans Deeper Into ‘Black Hole’ Of Debt
Americans are drowning in credit card debt as elevated inflation makes the cost of living unbearable. About 70% of consumers are financially stressed, which means ones who’ve maxed out credit cards and drained personal savings amid 24 months of negative real wages are now resorting to “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) apps for basic items like groceries.
Bloomberg spoke with Faith Smith, a 34yo administrative assistant that is financially stressed, who said she couldn’t resist when retailer Target Corp. pinged her email with the ability to BNPL.
Smith said she spends upwards of $500 per month on groceries. She said she already uses BNPL apps to purchase clothing and school supplies for her young daughter, but when the option came up to use it for groceries — she said it was a no-brainer:
“It helps for a week or two, but then you’re stuck with a grocery bill for a couple of months.”
In the last several years, consumers have been addicted to the BNPL apps such as Afterpay, Affirm, Klarna, and PayPal.
Almost half of Americans have used BNPL apps, and of those, about 1 in 5 rely on such apps to buy groceries, according to a recent survey from LendingTree Inc. Some 27% of users use the loans as a bridge to their next paycheck. — Bloomberg
According to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, BNPL surged during the pandemic, with five of the main US lenders originating $24.2 billion in 2021, up from $2 billion in 2019. The payment method is an attractive alternative to credit cards, with elevated interest rates.
Source: Bloomberg The popularity of BNPL will only soar from here as CNBC’s Financial Confidence Survey found most Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Inflation, economic instability, and a lack of savings led to 70% of respondents indicating they were stressed about their personal finances.
However, the convenience of BNPL and spreading monthly payments out for a predetermined time, if it’s just a few months or several years, can lead to a financial disaster if consumers miss payments, as this would mean late fees would pile up and credit scores would drop.
“You are putting yourself into the cycle of debt that would be very difficult to get out of,” says Terri Bradford, a payments specialist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
LendingTree showed nearly half of the consumers are using BNPL for clothing, shoes, and accessories. About 21% are using it for groceries.
Source: Bloomberg We expect an increasing number of financially stressed consumers will be tapping BNPL for groceries and basic items as macroeconomic conditions continue to sour.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/21/2023 – 20:40 - Confidence In Childhood Vaccine Plunges By Up To 44% During COVID-19
Confidence In Childhood Vaccine Plunges By Up To 44% During COVID-19
Authored by Jessie Zhang via Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
A new report on immunisation suggests that confidence in childhood vaccines has fallen up to 44 percent in 52 countries coinciding with the largest sustained backslide in childhood immunization in 30 years, fuelled by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Childhood vaccine confidence drops by over a third during the pandemic. (Narinder Nanu/AFP/Getty Images) The only three countries where vaccine confidence remained steady were China, India, and Mexico. The data from these countries indicates the perception of the importance of vaccines held firm or even improved.
The report attributed this trend to several factors, including uncertainty about the response to the pandemic, growing access to a wider range of information, and political polarization.
Catherine Russell, the executive director of UNICEF, said that this data is a worrying warning signal.
“At the height of the pandemic, scientists rapidly developed vaccines that saved countless lives. But despite this historic achievement, fear and disinformation about all types of vaccines circulated as widely as the virus itself,” Russell said in a press release.
“We cannot allow confidence in routine immunizations to become another victim of the pandemic. Otherwise, the next wave of deaths could be of more children with measles, diphtheria or other preventable diseases.”
72 doses of Vaccines from Birth to Eighteen Years
Recently, vaccine critics have brought to light the large number of shots that are given to American children.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s immunization schedule, children are given up to 72 doses of 16 vaccines.
Despite this, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the founder and chief legal counsel of Children’s Health Defense and author of “The Real Anthony Fauci,” said that not a single vaccine on the schedule has been safety tested prior to being approved.
“None of the 72 doses of vaccines that are currently mandated for children has ever been tested in a pre-licensing safety study against a true placebo,” Kennedy told the Epoch Times.
It is a big problem, he says, because many of the injuries that come from vaccines, like all medicines, are long-term injuries.
“You may say that the vaccine prevented the infection, but then you don’t count the cancers, the neurological disorders, the ADHD, and the autoimmune diseases that pop up five years from now. You need long-term studies,” he said.
Many injuries that come from vaccines are long-term injuries but are often pushed out before these are discovered for expediency. (AP Photo/Sergei Chuzavkov) Kennedy said that DTP (Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis) vaccine is the most popular vaccine in the world because of the efforts of those behind vaccines.
“Incidentally [the US] withdrew the vaccine because it was killing so many children, it was causing brain damage according to a study that was done by UCLA,” Kennedy said.
“We ended it in the United States. We replaced it with a DTaP vaccine, an attenuated version, which is safer but less effective. They did the same thing in Europe.”
Eventually, the Danish government did an extensive study of DTP with 30 years of vaccination records with leading pro-vaccination scientists, including Peter Aaby. They found that the vaccine was causing anemia, dysentery, and pneumonia and were killing more people than diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis did prior to the introduction of the vaccine.
“That’s the danger. You could have a vaccine for 30 or 40 years, and nobody actually notices that the kids who are taking it are worse off from a health perspective because you have never done the placebo-controlled trials,” he said.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/21/2023 – 20:20 - Sons Of El Chapo Fed Enemies To Pet Tigers, DoJ Says
Sons Of El Chapo Fed Enemies To Pet Tigers, DoJ Says
The Justice Department revealed in new court documents that the sons of notorious drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman were absolute savages.
The four sons — Ivan Guzman Salazar, 40, Alfredo Guzman Salazar, 37, Joaquin Guzman Lopez, 36, and Ovidio Guzman Lopez, 33 — known as the Chapitos, or little Chapos — were among 28 Sinaloa cartel members charged by the DoJ last week with fentanyl-trafficking.
DoJ accused the cartel members of running “the largest, most violent and most prolific fentanyl trafficking operation in the world,” it also listed the torture methods and types of executions used by the cartel.
As per the indictment, the Chapitos owned multiple ranches where they would interrogate rival cartel members, public officials, law enforcement officers, and anyone who got in their way.
“Once information was obtained by these captives, typically through torture, these individuals were killed — either by or at the direction of the Chapitos themselves — and the bodies disposed of throughout the area. While many of these victims were shot, others were fed dead or alive to tigers” belonging to Alfredo and Ivan, the indictment read.
Court documents said one of the Sinaloa cartel’s hitmen, known as “Ninis,” ripped out the muscles of a person they were interrogating and fed the flesh to one of the Chapitos’ pet tigers.
El Chapo’s sons also used waterboarding and electrocution against rival cartel members. The DoJ said the Ninis would test the potency of the fentanyl on prisoners.
Among the three Chapitos charged, only Ovidio Guzmán López has been detained by police. El Chapo, their father and Sinaloa cartel’s founder, is in a maximum security prison in Colorado and serving a life sentence for drug trafficking and money laundering.
Full DoJ Indictment
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/21/2023 – 20:00 - IRS Pays $23 Billion Less In Tax Refunds For 2023 Filing Season, Worrying Americans
IRS Pays $23 Billion Less In Tax Refunds For 2023 Filing Season, Worrying Americans
Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is paying $23 billion less in tax refunds for the 2023 filing season—with the average refund amount found to be lower by nearly $300.
The IRS building is seen in Washington on Sept. 28, 2020. (Erin Scott/Reuters) The IRS has issued over 69 million refunds collectively worth $198.868 billion for the week ending April 7, 2023, according to the agency’s filing statistics. Compared to the $222.344 billion in refunds handed out in the 2022 season, the 2023 filing season’s refund is $23.476 billion smaller or about 10.6 percent lower.
The average refund amount between the filing seasons has dropped from $3,175 to $2,878, a decline of 9.3 percent or $297. In fiscal 2022, the IRS collected $2.9 trillion in individual income taxes.
Back in January, the IRS had suggested that refund amounts could be smaller this time around. “Due to tax law changes such as the elimination of the Advance Child Tax Credit and no Recovery Rebate Credit this year to claim pandemic-related stimulus payments, many taxpayers may find their refunds somewhat lower this year,” the IRS had said in a Jan. 23 news release.
The U.S. government handed out three rounds of stimulus checks to Americans during the pandemic period. People could claim the missed first and second rounds of stimulus checks on the 2020 tax return. Any missed third-round stimulus checks were claimed in the 2021 return which was filed in the 2022 season.
The federal government had also expanded the Child Tax Credit (CTC) program during the pandemic, boosting benefits per child from $2,000 to $3,600 for children under the age of 6, and to $3,000 for children between the ages of 6 and 17.
The benefits of stimulus payments and CTC have now ended, thereby contributing to a lower refund amount during the 2023 filing season.
Americans Concerned Over Smaller Tax Refunds
Smaller tax refunds pose a major issue for Americans, according to the results of a Bankrate survey published last month. When asked how important the tax refund is to their overall financial situation, 43 percent said that the refunds are “very important” while 32 percent said it was “somewhat important.”
Read more here…
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/21/2023 – 19:40 - California Meets 100% Of Water Requests For First Time Since 2006
California Meets 100% Of Water Requests For First Time Since 2006
Due to a wet winter and record mountain snowpack, California will provide 100% of the water requested by cities and farms, marking the first time in nearly two decades.
The office of California Governor Gavin Newsom released a statement Thursday that said, “State water contractors to 100% of requested supplies for 29 public water agencies that serve 27 million Californians.”
This is the highest water allocation since 2006, as state water officials rush to replenish groundwater and aquifers after years of drought.
“California is taking action to maximize the capture and storage of water from recent storms and snowpack, increasing water deliveries to 100% for the first time in nearly two decades.
“California is moving and storing as much water as possible to meet the state’s needs, reduce the risk of flooding, and protect our communities, agriculture, and the environment,” said Governor Newsom.
Since December, the deluge of atmospheric rivers dumped 78 trillion gallons of water in California, effectively ending a severe multi-year drought.
Many once-depleted reservoirs are filling up with over 80% full – and groundwater reserves have received a significant boost…
Many regions received record snowpacks.
And the abundance of water has created a rare super bloom in the state’s southern region across hillsides.
However, the Department of Water Resources still urges people to limit water usage because one extremely wet year could be followed by more drought.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/21/2023 – 19:20 - House GOP Offers Border Crisis Solutions – Will Sound Policies Prevail?
House GOP Offers Border Crisis Solutions – Will Sound Policies Prevail?
Authored by Chad Wolf via RealClear Wire,
To seemingly every American except Biden administration officials, there is an ongoing humanitarian and security crisis at the southern border. In just 26 months, the Biden administration has allowed approximately 4 million illegal aliens into American communities – a number larger than the population of the city of Los Angeles. When confronted with these realities, administration officials have continuously downplayed the situation and offered numerous excuses, including blaming the previous administration and falsely claiming they need new laws to solve the problem.
However, the truth is that ample authority already exists to implement robust policies that discourage human traffickers from bringing illegal immigrants across the border and impose meaningful consequences on anybody who disregards the rule of law. This is exactly what we accomplished in the Trump administration. Unfortunately, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas refuses to use his discretionary authority to secure the border, so House Republicans are calling the Biden administration’s bluff by introducing the Border Security and Enforcement Act, legislation designed to secure the border, end human trafficking, and defeat the cartels.
The Biden administration would have the American people believe that border security simply means hiring more personnel to process migrants faster. But I believe border security requires a combination of building the physical border wall system, enforcing current immigration law, and reforming our broken asylum system. If you believe that the heavily exploited asylum system works just fine, then you accept the status quo and will likely oppose this border security package. However, if you think changes are needed, as I do, you should welcome this effort to end asylum fraud and the exploitation of vulnerable migrants.
Here’s what’s in the bill and why I believe it’s a good first step.
This seminal legislation curbs abuse of the asylum system by raising the standard for establishing credible fear. And for those who do pass the standard, it mandates detention or resumption of the highly successful Remain in Mexico policy. Currently, the asylum system is easily exploited by economic migrants and trafficking networks because the initial screening process for illegal aliens apprehended at the border – known as the credible fear interview – is easily passed, even with the most dubious of asylum claims. Under Biden administration policies, those who establish credible fear – around 80% of migrants – are released into American communities even though fewer than 15% will ultimately qualify for asylum. This incentivizes asylum fraud as the easiest ticket into the U.S. while delaying the ability to grant humanitarian relief to those persecuted migrants who are entitled to it under the law. The result of these provisions will be fewer bogus claims clogging up the immigration court system and a higher percentage – but lower total number – of aliens who are granted asylum after passing the credible fear test. It will also reduce the time between when an alien is apprehended at the border and when they receive humanitarian relief.
The House Judiciary Committee is also seeking to end the cruel Biden administration policies that have incentivized the exploitation of the most vulnerable migrants. Various legal loopholes make it difficult to promptly return unaccompanied alien children unless they are Mexican or Canadian. The Biden administration has recklessly implemented policies to quickly hand these migrant kids over to sponsors without vetting them to the degree you saw during the Trump presidency. This has created the horrific yet preventable scenario of exploited children being handed off by the federal government to another trafficker who subjects these minors to a dark life of sex slavery and debt bondage. The border bill also closes this loophole that has traumatized untold hundreds of thousands of migrant children over the years. Another loophole has minimized the enforcement consequences against migrant families apprehended at the border. What results is a nefarious cottage industry where bad actors “recycle” migrant children to create fraudulent families to take advantage of being allowed into American communities. The border legislation ends this heinous practice.
Additionally, the committee’s bill reins in the parole authority that DHS Secretary Mayorkas is exploiting to hide the extent of the border crisis. Parole is supposed to be a narrow authority that allows the DHS secretary to allow a visa-less or inadmissible alien into the U.S., but only on a case-by-case basis for either urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit. Instead, Secretary Mayorkas is abusing this authority by creating unlawful nationality-based parole programs that redirect illegal aliens from the border to ports of entry with the benefit to the administration of no longer showing up in the monthly border apprehension numbers. The Border Security and Enforcement Act will put an end to this illegal use of the parole authority and prevent future administrations from circumventing the eligibility requirements established by Congress for legal immigration visa categories.
The Judiciary Committee is offering workable solutions to solve the crisis created by the Biden administration’s failed border strategy. Will the administration pivot and embrace this legislation or continue to place politics over the sound policies the American people deserve?
Chad Wolf is the former acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and executive director and chair of the Center for Homeland Security and Immigration at the America First Policy Institute.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/21/2023 – 19:00 - Oracle Drops UK-Based Disinfo Nannies After Conservative Blacklisting Cited In Lawsuit
Oracle Drops UK-Based Disinfo Nannies After Conservative Blacklisting Cited In Lawsuit
Gabe Kaminsky of the Washington Examiner is out with another report on the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a UK-based group which targets and blacklists conservative websites in order to drain them of revenue and support by working with “advertisers and the ad tech industry in assessing the reputational and brand risk when advertising with online media outlets and to help them avoid financially supporting disinformation online.”
As Kaminsky reports, software giant Oracle announced on Wednesday that it will no longer collaborate with GDI, which has received just under $666,000 from the US State Department between 2020 and 2021. The news comes one day after GDI was cited in a lawsuit against the Biden administration which claims the government has colluded with big tech to censor free speech.
This same British entity, which has two affiliated United States nonprofit groups that have come under fire for shielding information from their 2021 tax forms, was cited in a Tuesday friend-of-the-court brief filed by Alliance Defending Freedom in State of Louisiana v. Biden — a lawsuit filed in May 2022 that claims the government has colluded with Big Tech to stifle discourse online. -Washington Examiner
“All signs point to a growing government influence over social media,” reads the brief. “The Biden Administration admitted as early as 2021 that it was flagging and reporting posts on Facebook, YouTube, and other platforms as COVID-19-related ‘misinformation.’ A recent report found that the U.S. State Department sent $330 million [sic] to The Global Disinformation Index, a British organization that is attempting to discredit and blacklist many conservative news outlets for peddling ‘disinformation.'”
Kaminsky notes that the brief mistakenly attributes $330 million sent to the National Endowment for Democracy to the GDI, when in reality the NED has granted money to GDI out of the $330 million. Following the Examiner‘s reporting on the grants, the NED announced in late February that they were cutting off funding to GDI.
Louisiana v. Biden was brought forth by Republican attorneys general Jeff Landry of Louisiana and then-Missouri’s Eric Schmitt, now a senator for The Show-Me State. The lawsuit alleges that the Biden administration infringed on the public’s First Amendment Rights through its efforts working with Big Tech employees to engage in content moderation related to election integrity, COVID-19, Hunter Biden’s infamous abandoned laptop, and more.
For instance, Landry released a document in January showing that the White House urged a Facebook employee in April 2021 to restrict posts about Fox News host Tucker Carlson claiming that there have been efficacy issues with “vaccines.” The White House also told Facebook in May 2021 that “slowing down” posts appearing to be “anti-vax” would be “reasonable,” and also urged Twitter to remove a post by anti-vaccine critic Robert Kennedy, Jr., who recently announced his Democratic bid for White House in 2024, documents show. -Washington Examiner
“Government should be freedom’s strongest defender, not its greatest threat,” said senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, Travis Barham, in a Wednesday statement. “Americans don’t look to the White House or Silicon Valley to discover and express the truth. That’s not the role of government, and it certainly isn’t the role of Big Tech.”
Oracle, meanwhile, told the Examiner that it would no longer maintain a relationship with GDI, which they had previously announced a 2021 collaboration with in order to engage in “brand safety.”
“After conducting a review, we agree with others in the advertising industry that the services we provide marketers must be in full support of free speech, which is why we are ending our relationship with GDI,” said Michael Egbert, vice president for corporate communications at Oracle.
Microsoft has similarly launched an internal investigation into its partnership with GDI after ad industry whistleblowers revealed how conservative sites were being blacklisted by the Microsoft-owned Xandr as “false/misleading” , “reprehensible/offensive” , or “hate speech.”
Meanwhile, GDI’s co-founder and CEO Clare Melford was sent a letter on Tuesday by Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), who demanded its two affiliated nonprofit groups in the U.S. release a “complete and unredacted list of donors.” The letter came days after a Washington Examiner investigation revealed that the private AN Foundation, also known as the Disinformation Index Foundation, and its affiliated public charity, Disinformation Index Inc., are shielding items like board members, officers, and donors from tax forms, while claiming to be “harassed” under a little-known federal exemption law. -Washington Examiner
“This is outrageous,” said Paul Kamenar, counsel to the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative watchdog that plans to file an IRS complaint against both GDI groups, in a statement last week.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/21/2023 – 18:40 - Controversial mRNA Technology Now Targeting Livestock
Controversial mRNA Technology Now Targeting Livestock
Authored by Allan Stein via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
At least five states have introduced bills restricting the use of controversial mRNA technology or gene therapies in livestock or demand full disclosure to consumers on product packaging.
The states considering legislation include North Dakota, Tennessee, Arizona, Idaho, and Missouri.
Idaho House Bill 154 would make it a misdemeanor offense for anyone who provides or administers a vaccine using mRNA technology “for use in an individual or any other mammal in this state.”
Arizona House Bill 2762 requires conspicuous labeling of all aquatic, livestock, or poultry products that received mRNA vaccines, and prohibits these products from being labeled as organic.
Tennessee House Bill 0099 amends an existing law to prohibit the manufacture or sale of livestock or meat that contains mRNA “vaccine of vaccines materials” without a conspicuous label that there are such ingredients in the product.
In North Dakota, state lawmakers filed SB2384, which seeks to ban the use of mRNA vaccines in humans and to introduce a penalty for anyone breaking the prohibition.
Missouri State Rep. Holly Jones, a Republican, is the lead sponsor of a bill requiring product labeling of all livestock meat containing “potential gene therapy products.
“We label everything around the world. We label non-GMO. We label GMO. We label grass-fed. We label no antibiotics used. We label manufactured in a plant that has nuts,” Jones said.
“We should label anything that has not been proven safe and effective. As we’ve seen with the COVID vaccines, they’re neither safe nor effective. Even the CDC has come out with that.”
While HB1169 does not mention mRNA by name, the proposed ban would include all “potential gene therapy products.”
The House Emerging Issues subcommittee will review an amended bill on April 19. Jones is a member of that committee.
The bill would require labeling of any product created to act as a potential gene therapy, or that could “otherwise possibly impact, alter, or introduce genetic material or a genetic change into the user of the product.”
Cattle in Lismore, New South Wales state, in Australia on March 1, 2022. (SAEED KHAN/AFP via Getty Images) It would include anyone exposed to the product or people “exposed to others who have used the product.”
With the passage of HB1169, the law would require livestock farmers and producers in Missouri to fully display on product packaging mRNA technology used in cows, pigs, and other livestock under the rule of informed consent.
Already In Development
“They would have to tell us if they begin using those things. As it is currently, almost all states do not,” Jones said.
Jones said she confirmed through multiple agricultural sources that mRNA programs for U.S. livestock are “in the works.”
“It is in the pipeline. Australia is already doing that.”
According to a statement from the Queensland government in Australia, scientists are working to develop an mRNA-related vaccine to combat the threat of Lumpy Skin Disease (LSD) in beef cattle with $1.5 million invested.
“A new mRNA vaccine would be a game changer as the live virus vaccines currently available overseas cannot be used in Australia,” said Mark Furner—the Minister for Agricultural Industry Development and Fisheries and Minister for Rural Communities—in the statement.
“Using existing vaccines here would result in us losing our disease-free status,” Furner added.
A screenshot of the Queensland government announcing the creation of an mRNA vaccine for cattle, on April 19, 2023. (Screenshot by The Epoch Times) With mRNA technology, as in COVID-19 vaccines, the injections introduce a virus fragment into cells, teaching them how to produce a specific antibody against the disease.
The Veterinary Microbiology and Preventive Medicine Department at Iowa State University is developing an mRNA-based cattle vaccine for the bovine respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).
Untreated, RSV can lead to pneumonia in cows.
The federal grant program aims to develop a “novel mRNA system” that provides immune protection against RSV.
“We hypothesize that a [mRNA injection] delivered continuously by vaccine implant will lead to prolonged and robust cellular and antibody immunity,” according to a program summary in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Research, Education, and Economics Information System (REEIS).
“Here, we will optimize our vaccine further and then test for potential correlates of protection to examine for in eventually challenged cows.”
No Labeling of Foreign Meat
In 2016, the U.S. Congress removed a labeling law requiring the country of origin on meat products.
Read more here…
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/21/2023 – 18:20 - Lyft Will Lay Off At Least 1,200 Employees To Slash Costs
Lyft Will Lay Off At Least 1,200 Employees To Slash Costs
With a new CEO at the helm, rideshare platform Lyft will cut at least 1,200 jobs as the firm strives to compete with larger rival Uber, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.
That’s a huge cut for a company with close to 4,000 employees, and comes on top of a 700-person layoff in November. A source familiar with Lyft’s workforce plans said the cuts could hit more than 30% of the staff — and help Lyft achieve a 50% cut in ongoing costs.
Lyft stock, which traded at $80 after its 2019 IPO, closed Friday at just $10.44. While that was a 6% gain from Thursday, the shares are down about 10% on the year, while Uber is up 21%.
Lyft stock is down about 88% since its IPO In March, Lyft announced that board member David Risher would take over, with co-founders John Zimmer and Logan Green backing away from their daily management roles. This is Risher’s first week in charge.
After the Journal broke the story of the major pending layoff, Risher sent a note to employees, saying “we need to bring our costs down to deliver affordable rides, compelling earnings for drivers, and profitable growth.”
“Departing employees will receive at least 10 weeks of pay, with additional weeks for team members with 4+ years with Lyft,” wrote Risher, along with “accelerated equity vesting for the May 20 vesting date.” Health coverage will extend to Halloween.
He didn’t outline the scope of the layoffs, but said more information would come next week. Ominously, all Lyft offices will be closed on Thursday April 27. The company will notify fired employees that day via emails sent at 8:30am Pacific time. “I own this decision, and understand that it comes at an enormous cost,” said Risher.
Uber’s diversification into food and beverage deliver paid off big when the Covid-19 pandemic hit. As rideshare volumes fell precipitously, Uber cashed in on delivering to homebound victims of the lockdown regime.
That’s enabled Uber to squeeze Lyft on price. “On a per-mile basis, Lyft fares are about 31% higher compared with 2019 while Uber’s are 20% higher,” reports Bloomberg, citing YipitData. Lyft has a 25% US market share, compared to 75% for Uber.
“I think being a strong number two is a good place to be,” said Risher after his move to the CEO slot was announced. “I like where we are, but we’ve got real work to do to fight it out a little bit.”
Also in March, Risher declared Lyft is not for sale — promptly sinking the stock by 7%.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/21/2023 – 18:00 - WV’s Morrisey Takes On The Woke And The Swamp
WV’s Morrisey Takes On The Woke And The Swamp
Authored by Benjamin Weingarten via RealClear Wire,
As attorney general of West Virginia, Patrick Morrisey has been a scourge of the administrative state, combatting what he perceives to be federal government overreach into the life and commerce of the Mountaineer State.
On April 4, Morrisey announced that he is joining a crowded field seeking the Republican nomination in West Virginia’s 2024 gubernatorial race.
During that speech, Morrisey emphasized his aims, should he be elected governor: to increase economic opportunity, expand school choice, and fight the “swamps” from Washington D.C. to Charleston.
The attorney general also touched on his opposition to the COVID-19 vaccine mandates, his pro-life, and pro-Second Amendment stances, and his devotion to fighting the fentanyl epidemic that has ravaged the state. In a sign of the times, Morrisey elicited perhaps one of his biggest cheers from supporters when he asserted that “Men are biologically different from women. And I’m not afraid to say that.”
This Q&A, conducted by Ben Weingarten, is a follow-up to an interview conducted with the attorney general last December. Morrisey was asked about his motivations for seeking out the governorship, national implications to his race, his view of the indictment of President Donald Trump – which occurred on the day of the interview – and more.
What follows is a lightly edited transcript of the interview, conducted by phone:
Ben Weingarten: What is your motivation for pursuing the governorship?
AG Patrick Morrisey: I think there’s an opportunity to really help West Virginia reach full potential. And looking at this opportunity, I’m the only proven conservative in the race, with a deep record of fighting and winning against the elites, defending our values, accomplishing big things. If people like the work that I do as attorney general, they’re really gonna love me as governor because we’re gonna bring the whole force of the executive branch of West Virginia to bear on the most difficult challenges faced in West Virginia and our country …We [would] have the additional tools of governor that we’re gonna utilize to defend our values and to help improve the standard of living in our state, supercharge economic workforce growth, to grow our population, and to really be the foil against the woke left and the elites who’re coming against us.
BW: What do you see as the key pillars of your agenda?
PM: Well, right now, West Virginians are being ravaged by inflation, and we need to protect our jobs. We need to fight to put more money in people’s pockets. I mean, the value of money has declined because of this terrible inflation, and so it has to be a focus that West Virginians have a state government that’s looking out for them. And I think that means lowering taxes even more, reducing regulatory burdens. But then we [also] really have to focus on advancing education excellence.
So, I want to dramatically expand our school choice programs, because I think that that provides a huge opportunity for kids. Our kids are our future. And so education is to be a big part of it.
And then we have to get to work on workforce growth and growing our population. West Virginia right now is the lowest workforce participation rate in the nation. That has to change, and it has to change fast. One of the things that I’m eager to do is to convert a lot of the 65,000 job openings that are in place right now and get people employed in those jobs quickly. That’ll supercharge our economy, and then we could use those additional revenues to put more money back in people’s pockets, the folks that are struggling paycheck to paycheck.
BW: What do you see as the national implications, if any, to this gubernatorial race?
PM: I think running for governor, folks across the country and in West Virginia are going to know that there’s gonna be no one stronger to build these critical state coalitions that are gonna take on federal overreach and the woke ideas. West Virginia will have someone who can honestly say and demonstrate that woke ideas stop at the border. So I’m going to provide an example for the rest of the country about how to run the railroad, how to make sure that you can succeed and flourish in a state that values freedom and lower taxes and is very welcoming. This is what West Virginia is all about. And we need to message that. We also are going to make it clear that we’re not going to be listening to the political elites, we’re going to put the people first, and that means speaking out on issues. So West Virginia is going to have a very loud voice, we won’t shy away from the tough issues, we won’t go quietly into the night.
BW: We’re talking the day of the first of maybe several indictments to come against former President Trump, and there’s widely seen by millions of Americans to be a two-tier justice system in this country where if you hold the wrong views, you pay to the nth degree, and if you hold the right views, you’re protected. What ought red states do to confront it?
PM: Look… what’s going on right now in New York is a major travesty of the judicial system. It makes New York look like a banana republic. That’s utterly unacceptable, it’s a political prosecution. We know that the other side worries about winning debates, and they may not be able to win at the polling booth, so they’re going to resort to the political prosecutions of a lot of people on our side who are running for office. We have to make clear that that’s completely unacceptable, and that should be a position that unifies not only all Republicans, but Independents, and many Democrats as well. This is an abuse of power, and we need to say so, but I think the American public will be behind us.
BW: There’s been something of a censorship industrial complex that’s been imposed via federal authorities working hand-in-hand with Big Tech companies, academics, researchers, and the like. There also seems to be a similar burgeoning movement at the state level. Would you let any sort efforts like those stand in West Virginia, or will you combat them?
PM: Look, I think that we need to be very clear that this is an us-against-them scenario – that you have some people who are advancing woke ideas and they’ll stop at nothing to indoctrinate our children and to force their values upon us. We have to stand up and fight back against that, and when I see Big Tech, when I see people trying to tilt the playing field in favor of these woke ideas, people are gonna know that the West Virginia governor is standing up against that, and saying “No.” And so, I would be looking for any way to make sure that free speech is going to operate in West Virginia, but when people try to abuse the system, they’re gonna be called out for it.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/21/2023 – 17:40
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