- Governments Start Calling For Price Controls, Rationing & CBDCs Come Next
Governments Start Calling For Price Controls, Rationing & CBDCs Come Next
Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,
Last month in the middle of the surreal “Bidenomics” hype I published an article titled ‘Nothing Is Over: Inflation Is About To Come Back With A Vengeance.’ I outlined the misconceptions surrounding CPI and how it is not an accurate model for the effects of inflation. I also noted that the index had been manipulated downwards by Joe Biden as he flooded the market with oil from the strategic reserves. Because so many elements of the CPI are connected to energy, Biden had created an artificial drop in CPI using this strategy.
I argued that as the strategic reserves ran out and Biden lost his leverage, CPI would rise again and prices on a number of necessities would climb. This is happening now, with the biggest jump in CPI in 14 months and gas prices clawing back towards all-time highs.
Inflation is not going away anytime soon, but the bigger issue at hand is who benefits most from inflation and rising prices? The answer might be obvious to some but many people are oblivious to the root cause of inflationary dysfunction and often see it as a consequence of random economic chaos rather than a product of clever engineering. The truth is, banking oligarchs and political authorities revel in the inflationary tidal wave because it is a perfect opportunity to institute far reaching socialist controls over resources.
In most cases central bankers are the primary culprits behind the creation of an inflationary event, and the word “creation” best applies because it is nearly impossible for overt inflation to occur without them. While money supply is not the only factor when dealing with inflation (sorry purists, but there are indeed other causes), it is the most important. More money chasing less resources triggers supply-side instability and prices go up. Central banks have a number of excuses as to why they “need” to conjure up more dollars or pesos or pounds or marks, but there is no doubt that they know what the ultimate end result will be.
It’s happened too many times for them not to know…
These inflation events trigger a predictable set of dominoes in society as well as in economy and finance. Price spikes, diminished savings, rising poverty, rising crime, and rising interest rates – This is then followed in most cases by failed rate hikes, more inflation, then more hikes, diminishing foreign investment in debt, foreign currency dumps (causing more inflation), plunging consumer spending and job losses.
This same pattern has been witnessed from 1920s Weimar Germany to 1970s America to 1990s Yugoslavia to 2000s Argentina and Venezuela and beyond. But what happens next? In each case the trend leads first to price controls on producers and distributors, which ultimately fail. Then comes government rationing and the complete takeover of necessities including the food supply.
Think it can’t happen in the US? It already has. In 1971 Richard Nixon issued Executive Order 11615, (under the Economic Stabilization Act which was established in 1970); the order demanded a 90 day freeze on wages and prices in order to counter inflation. It was an exceedingly rare action outside of a world war and conveniently took place during the election cycle. Keep in mind, the real inflationary crisis had not happened yet, but the price controls gave markets a short term boost and gave Nixon an election win.
In 1973, controls returned during the Arab Oil Embargo. They failed and resulted in long term gas price inflation. Gerald Ford then called for American businesses to institute price controls under his “Whip Inflation Now” campaign; it was the subject of ridicule and was even made fun of by a young Joe Biden (who now falsely claims to have solved his own inflation problem with his useless Inflation Reduction Act).
Finally, Jimmy Carter introduced price and wage “guidelines” (controls) which rewarded businesses that raised prices below a set percentage. Any businesses that raised prices above the percentage and made a pre-tax profit above the previous two years would be penalized. In no case could a firm increase its dollar profit by more than 6.5 percent unless the excess was attributable to increased unit sales volume. This plan, of course, also failed to stop inflation.
Ultimately, the Fed had to jack rates up to around 20% in 1980-1981 to stop exponential inflation, which led to considerable business losses and high unemployment.
The problem is simple, price controls lead to lost profit incentive which leads to less production. Less production leads to less supply and less supply leads to rising prices. This is on top of the root cancer that is fiat money creation. Politicians will rarely if ever address the actual cause of an inflationary crisis: The government and the central banks. Instead, they try to blame free markets, “greedy” businesses and profit taking in times of distress.
Sadly, the pattern is repeating again today as it is now becoming clear to the public that central bank interest rate hikes are not having a significant effect and the public is still paying between 25%-50% more on the majority of goods they purchase compared to three years ago. As inflation grinds forward, multiple leftist governments are now openly discussing price controls.
Recently, Canada’s Justin Trudeau ordered top grocery chains in the country to cut prices while admonishing them for making higher profits, insinuating that they are the cause of inflation. In Canada, profit margins among grocers are actually flat due to rising costs. If one looks only at raw profits without taking into account inflation in producer costs as well as transportation, distribution and wages, then it might look like these companies are pulling in the cash. There is zero evidence to support this claim.
What Trudeau is doing is pretending to be stupid while engaging in a very clever strategy of scapegoating. It’s the government and the central bankers that are the foundational cause of inflation, but by blaming individual business sectors he sets the stage for government enforced price controls. When these fail and create a crisis in supply he will then introduce rationing, and once the government has conditioned the public to accept rationing the elites then control the entire population’s access to food and necessities.
Some people may say “Well that’s Canada, what about the US?” The same agenda is in progress in America, but is being pursued at a city and state level. For example, the socialist Mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, just announced a plan for the city (using state and federal tax funds) to build government run grocery stores in “food deserts.” These are places where a combination of inflation and shoplifting has forced grocers to leave certain areas of the city.
The Chicago program would include price control measures and there’s ample opportunity for these institutions to use rationing in the future. Similar projects are also being considered in other cities across the country. In other words, leftist cities are scaring away businesses while planning to replace “essential services” with government run operations.
I wrote about the inevitability of government rationing after price controls last year in my article ‘The Stagflation Trap Will Lead To Universal Basic Income And Food Rationing.’ Rationing generally comes when price controls fail. It’s been a long time since the US has faced these kinds of conditions but we are likely to in the near future. This time around, I believe that if the establishment is given rationing power they will never let go again.
Rationing could also be used to lure the public into accepting Universal Basic Income (UBI) and Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). Government run food centers can easily restrict purchases of goods to a limited list of items, and also demand payment using specific methods (like digital currencies). In a short period of time, cash would be removed because retailers, pressured by government, will refuse to accept it.
It’s hard to say what the future will bring in terms of politics, given that the next presidential campaign is looking like a complete circus. Historically speaking, though, both Democrat and Republican presidents have tried price controls in the past. Public pressure must be applied (at the state level at minimum) to stop this from happening. As convenient as it might seem to blame producers and distributors, the real threat is coming from governments and banks. We cannot let the people who caused the crisis also benefit from it by giving them even more power.
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Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/22/2023 – 23:40 - F-35 Stealth Fighter Only Mission Capable About Half The Time, Government Report Finds
F-35 Stealth Fighter Only Mission Capable About Half The Time, Government Report Finds
Authored by Ryan Morgan via The Epoch Times,
A new government report has found that U.S. F-35 fighter jets are only ready for a mission about half of the time, with the remaining time spent awaiting maintenance.
On Thursday, the the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report (pdf) which concluded that the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, was only mission capable about 50 percent of the time for the A and B variants and 57 percent for the C variant of the fighter. These mission capability rates, the GAO report states, are “far below program goals” of 90 percent for the F-35A variant and 85 for the B and C variants.
The F-35—which is operated by the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps, as well as a host of U.S. allies—is one of the most advanced systems in Western arsenals. The 5th Generation fighter jet is made with an array of special radar-absorbent materials and other “stealth” features. The multirole fighter jet boasts capabilities for a range of different mission types, and the F-35B variant operated by the Marine Corps has unique short take-off and vertical landing capabilities.
The F-35 is also one of the most expensive systems in Western arsenals. The U.S. Department of Defense has estimated the F-35 program will cost the department about $1.7 trillion over its life cycle. A majority of this estimated lifetime cost, $1.3 trillion, is expected to go toward maintenance. The GAO said it conducted this latest sustainment study of the F-35 in part because of this high program cost.
Contributing to this low mission capability rate, the GAO report concluded the F-35 program is heavily reliant on contractors for maintenance work and the DOD has been slow to take over the program’s responsibilities.
The GAO report said the DOD is still working to determine the right balance of government and outside contractor roles to sustain the F-35 program going forward. The DOD also lacks both the technical data and training to support its desired program sustainment model.
While the GAO report identifies challenges with the F-35 program, it also describes an opportunity to overhaul the program to both bring down costs and improve the maintenance process that drags on it.
“The military services must take over management of F35 sustainment by October 2027 and have an opportunity to make adjustments—specifically to the contractor-managed elements,” the report states. “Reassessing its approach could help DOD address its maintenance challenges and reduce costs.”
Repairs Department on Secretive Spare Parts List
The new GAO report derived its conclusions about the F-35 program over the course of visits to two military F-35 depots and three military installations that host F-35 squadrons. A recurring problem for military aircraft maintainers at these depots and installations have limited information about the spare parts needed to keep their aircraft running.
The list of parts for the F-35 program is maintained in a database that is proprietary to the program’s prime contractor, Lockheed Martin Corporation. With all this proprietary information, the military has to outsource much of its maintenance to Lockheed Martin and its subcontractors.
Not having ready access to part numbers hinders the repair of the aircraft because it delays the ordering and receipt of needed parts,” the GAO report states. “Maintainers at one installation we visited told us that they would not need contractors on the flight line if they simply had access to part numbers. However, since access to part numbers is an issue that can affect readiness of the aircraft, units and squadrons need contractors on a daily basis.”
As of March 2023, the F-35 program had a backlog of over 10,000 F-35 parts in need of repair.
In a press statement to NTD News, Lockheed Martin spokesperson Jacqueline Lorenzetti said the corporation provides “all data required under its F-35 government contracts and is committed to providing data required for the Department of Defense to sustain the aircraft under applicable sustainment contracts.”
Ms. Lorenzetti said the U.S. government has unlimited access to all Operation, Maintenance, Installation, and Training (OMIT) data for the aircraft. She also said 90 percent of parts in the F-35 program are performing better than expected and the average time that parts remain on F-35 aircraft before failure is more than twice that of a typical 4th Generation fighter jet.
The GAO report provided a list of recommendations, advising the military to assess whether they or private contractors will take primary responsibility for various components of the F-35 program, as well as what resources and proprietary information the Department of the Air Force and Department of the Navy will require for these revised responsibilities.
Ms. Lorenzetti said Lockheed Martin is partnering with the government to increase repair capacity for the F-35 fleet.
“We stand ready to partner with the government as plans are created for the future of F-35 sustainment ensuring mission readiness and enabling deterrence,” Ms. Lorenzetti said.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/22/2023 – 23:20 - Xi, Assad Launch China-Syria Strategic Partnership Based On Belt & Road Initiative
Xi, Assad Launch China-Syria Strategic Partnership Based On Belt & Road Initiative
Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad on Friday announced the launch of the China-Syria strategic partnership during a meeting in the eastern city of Hangzhou.
“Today, we will jointly announce the establishment of the China-Syria strategic partnership, which will become an important milestone in the history of bilateral relations,” Xi told Assad.
Via Reuters “Faced with an international situation full of instability and uncertainty, China is willing to continue to work together with Syria, firmly support each other, promote friendly cooperation, and jointly defend international fairness and justice,” he added.
For his part, Assad expressed his “happiness” at being invited to China, a country he says “stands with the just causes of the peoples … which form the basis of Chinese policy in international forums and which are based on the independence of countries, respect for the will of the people, and rejection of terrorism.”
It seems China is willing to send a message to the West, given the enthusiastic red carpet reception of Assad to the airport on Thursday, complete with military parade and welcome ceremonies…
مشاهد الاستقبال الرسمي لوصول الرئيس #بشار_الأسد والسيدة الأولى #أسماء_الأسد إلى مطار خانجو الدولي. pic.twitter.com/4hPQ9MKdtF
— Syrian Presidency (@Presidency_Sy) September 21, 2023
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“This visit is important in its timing and circumstances, as a multipolar world is being formed that will restore balance and stability to the world,” Assad continued.
“It is the duty of all of us to seize this moment for the sake of a bright and promising future, and I hope that our meeting today will establish broad and long-term strategic cooperation in various fields,” the Syrian leader, who is under US sanctions said.
The two presidents also oversaw the signing of three cooperation agreements in the fields of economic cooperation and development, as well as a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) “on the common context of a cooperation plan within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).”
President Assad in China today. pic.twitter.com/v6x2IxY806
— SAM 🇸🇾 (@SAMSyria0) September 22, 2023
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Assad arrived in China on Thursday, leading a high-level political and diplomatic delegation in his first official visit to the Asian giant in nearly 20 years. Following his arrival, the Chinese foreign ministry said his visit would take China-Syria ties to a “new level.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/22/2023 – 23:00 - Minnesota Murder Suspect Accidentally Freed From Jail 2 Days After Arrest
Minnesota Murder Suspect Accidentally Freed From Jail 2 Days After Arrest
Today in “your tax dollars at work” news, a suspect charged with murder in Minnesota has been released from jail due to a “clerical error”, just two days after he was arrested.
28 year old Kevin Mason was recently arrested in Indiana on a murder warrant after a two year manhunt. Then, he was promptly mistakenly released from jail, NBC News wrote this week.
Now, authorities are on the hunt for him in Indiana again. They have kept his accidental release quiet for six days, supposedly to gain a “tactical advantage” over him, the article says.
Colonel James Martin with the Marion County Sheriff’s Office described his arrest warrants: “One being for homicide, one being for a parole violation, and the other being for a firearms possession.”
Mason was charged with second degree murder “in connection with a shooting in June 2021 in the parking lot of the Shiloh Temple in Minneapolis that killed Dontevius Ahmad Catchings,” the report says.
Martin said this week: “On Sept. 12 one of our inmate records clerks thought she was correcting different bookings for Mr. Mason. She removed two of the holds leaving one additional hold for Mr. Mason. The next day on Sept. 13, Ramsey County, out of Minnesota, lifted the last and final hold that we had booked on for Mr. Mason.”
“Our clerk that was reviewing it sees three Minnesota holds, didn’t realize what she was doing obviously. It’s a critical error, critical mistake. They’re identified very specifically by the originating agency that did it. They have a specific ID number, they’re all different and the case numbers are all different,” Martin added.
Ramsey County lifted their hold on Mason as a result of the error, freeing him.
Martin said: “This was an error. This should have not happened. Mason should not have been release from out custody. This was discovered shortly after he was released.”
Since then, authorities have been engaged in an “around the clock” manhunt. They suspect he is in Indianapolis and that people are actively helping him evade arrest.
“I also want to assure the public we will not rest until he’s captured,” Martin concluded.
Well, that makes us feel better…
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/22/2023 – 22:40 - Cancers Appearing In Ways Never Before Seen After COVID Vaccinations: Dr. Harvey Risch
Cancers Appearing In Ways Never Before Seen After COVID Vaccinations: Dr. Harvey Risch
Authored by Efthymis Oraiopoulos and Jan Jekielek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
There is evidence that cancers are occurring in excess after people receive COVID-19 vaccinations, according to Dr. Harvey Risch.
Dr. Harvey Risch, professor emeritus of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, in New York on July 7, 2022. (Bao Qiu/The Epoch Times) Dr. Risch is professor emeritus of epidemiology in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the Yale School of Public Health and Yale School of Medicine. His research has focused extensively on the causes of cancer as well as prevention and early diagnosis.
In an interview for EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders,” Dr. Risch said patients must now wait months, not weeks, to get an appointment at an oncology clinic in New York.
here is difficulty in observing whether a vaccine can cause cancer, because cancer usually takes time to develop, Dr. Risch said. It can take anywhere from two years to 30 years, depending on the different types of cancer, from leukemia to colon cancer.
“What clinicians have been seeing,” said Dr. Risch, “is very strange things: For example, 25-year-olds with colon cancer, who don’t have family histories of the disease—that’s basically impossible along the known paradigm for how colon cancer works—and other long-latency cancers that they’re seeing in very young people.”
He said this is not how cancer normally develops.
“There has to be some initiating stimulus to why this happens,” he said.
Fighting Cancer
Dr. Risch said that in his opinion, cancer is something a healthy human body can fight and disable, as the non-normal cancerous cells are gobbled up when detected in a body with a functional immune system. If the immune system is compromised, however, it cannot cope with the task of neutralizing cancerous cells, and cancerous cells are left to multiply and grow, leading to symptoms of cancer.
“That’s the mechanism I think is most likely here,” Dr. Risch said. “We know that the COVID vaccines have done various degrees of damage to the immune system in a fraction of people who have taken them.”
That damage could translate to getting COVID more often, getting other infectious diseases, or getting cancer.
Another example Dr. Risch gave was breast cancer, which normally, if there is a remanifestation after surgical removal, the remanifestation occurs after two decades. However, vaccinated women are now seen to remanifest breast cancers in much shorter periods of time.
“Those are the initial signals that we’ve been seeing, and because these cancers have been occurring to people who were too young to get them, basically, compared to the normal way it works, they’ve been designated as turbo cancers,” Dr. Risch said.
“Some of these cancers are so aggressive that between the time that they’re first seen and when they come back for treatment after a few weeks, they’ve grown dramatically compared to what oncologists would have expected for the way cancer normally progresses,” he added.
“Be attuned to your body,” Dr. Risch recommended, for noticing any new signals the body might give.
Adverse Events After Vaccination
Dr. Risch also talked about the aspect of official medical agencies not recognizing someone as being vaccinated inside the first two weeks of vaccination. This happens, he said, because the medical agencies say that the effects of the vaccine need two weeks to start manifesting. Adverse effects occurring a few days after vaccinations were officially counted as health conditions manifesting in unvaccinated people, he said.
However, serious adverse events after receiving the vaccine have occurred within the first four days, Dr. Risch said. He said three-quarters of adverse effects are being recorded as happening to unvaccinated people.
The decision makers who were in charge during the pandemic “threw out the principles of public health six days into the pandemic and did the opposite of everything that we knew should be done for respiratory viruses,” he said.
One example was the denial of effective early treatment and unnecessary vaccinations, which show a “colossal failure of public health through this period,” he said.
Dr. Risch said that a lot of people are now less likely to be “propagandized” regarding COVID, and that news reports about a new variant that is going to take over the world in the next month are “propaganda to sell the next batch of vaccines coming out in a few weeks.”
“People are fed up with this and it’s going to be a lot more pushback,” he said.
Risks to Society
Dr. Risch said that while the individual risk of an adverse reaction to the vaccine is relatively low, once that risk manifests itself at a greater scale, when millions of people have received the vaccine, the result is that hundreds of thousands of people are left with injuries and serious adverse events that are often worse than the virus itself.
Dr. Risch’s opinion is that nobody should get vaccinated with an mRNA vaccine, as the new variants are mild and not life threatening. He has heard of a few hospitalizations that lasted for some days, but as most people had COVID in the past, they have some immunity to these new variants as well.
“There is no reason for people to be vaccinated now, to any degree,” he said.
He said COVID has become an illness similar to the flu in its degree of severity, and that propaganda to scare people is being pushed by the government on behalf of pharmaceutical companies to sell more vaccines.
“We live in social contact with each other and therefore spread low-level infections. This is part of human life that we take for granted and we try to treat it the best we can,” he said. “That’s how we should be managing this.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/22/2023 – 22:20 - Can You Spot The Difference?
Can You Spot The Difference?
McDonald’s advertising efforts portray its promotion of family values in Japan, whereas, in the West, it subverts society with ‘woke’ propaganda.
X account End Wokeness first pointed out McDonald’s advertisements in a post titled “McDonald’s Japan vs McDonald’s USA. Try and spot the difference” on Thursday. The cholesterol-laden fast-food chain appears to embrace sanity in Japan while promoting woke insanity in the US.
McDonald’s Japan vs McDonald’s USA. Try and spot the difference. pic.twitter.com/yUD1pTIa5K
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) September 22, 2023
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Let’s begin with the Japanese ad. McDonald’s understands Japan doesn’t tolerate mental illness and instead embraces family traditions. After all, Japan is in the middle of a demographic winter.
特別じゃない、しあわせな時間。 pic.twitter.com/P7Og6hbMsx
— マクドナルド (@McDonaldsJapan) September 20, 2023
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In the West, McDonald’s has seized the opportunity to boost its Diversity and Inclusive Index score to the moon by out-woking all other burger joints with this ridiculous ad, “Black trans women have a very simple message: stop killing us.” This is DEI at work and a small minority imposing their ideals and beliefs on the vast majority. Very few in the majority want to hear about what this morbidly obese black trans woman says while chowing down on a cholesterol-laden burger.
“Black trans women have a very simple message: stop killing us” – @imarajoneshttps://t.co/KLsZbLzH7i pic.twitter.com/F7IGLPlAK4
— McDonald’s (@McDonalds) June 29, 2020
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Hundreds of X users reacted to End Wokeness’ post, with many expressing disbelief at the stark contrast in advertising between countries.
My take:https://t.co/DuO1VEXwCj
— Jonathan Wong (@WGthink) September 22, 2023
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I won’t be eating McDonald’s anymore.
— Freddy (@FreddyDEFI) September 22, 2023
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Good to see some places in the world aren’t taken over by this ideology
— Rob Coates 🇺🇸 (@LuckyHippie926) September 22, 2023
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— Stephen Lloyd (@apparentlysteve) September 22, 2023
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We must point out the black trans ad debuted in 2020, and since then, McDonald’s has scrubbed its website of the now-controversial acronym ESG, which represents environmental, social, and corporate governance principles.
If consumers don’t like McDonald’s woke propaganda, maybe it’s time to ditch the pink slime for healthier options, such as buying food from local farms and small businesses.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/22/2023 – 22:00 - Who Could Have Seen This Coming? All Over America, Blue Cities Are Facing A Severe Shortage Of Police Officers
Who Could Have Seen This Coming? All Over America, Blue Cities Are Facing A Severe Shortage Of Police Officers
Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,
It turns out that we really do need the police after all. Do you remember a few years ago when blue cities all over the nation wanted to defund the police? Needless to say, that didn’t work out too well. Wherever police budgets were slashed, crime rates shot up. Today, we are in the midst of a massive crime wave that is sweeping the country. In fact, it has gotten so bad that even many our most liberal politicians are desperate to restore law and order. But that won’t be so easy, because after everything that has transpired blue cities are discovering that they are having a really difficult time finding enough warm bodies to serve in their crime-ridden communities.
Just look at what is happening in Minneapolis. Since the death of George Floyd, the number of officers serving in the MPD has fallen by about 35 percent…
The Minneapolis Police Department is experiencing historically low staffing shortages, with ranks down approximately 35% since the death of George Floyd in 2020.
According to a June report from the Department of Justice, the MPD had 892 sworn officers in 2018, but that number has since dropped to just 585. An officer told the DOJ that the police department’s morale “is at an all-time low.”
Once upon a time, Minneapolis was one of the most beautiful cities in the country.
But now it is a crime-infested hellhole, and at this point the city “has one of the lowest ratios of police officers to population” in the entire nation…
Some days, the department has only four officers working a given precinct, the outlet reported. The MPD is often so understaffed that it does not have anyone available to work the station’s front desk.
Minneapolis has one of the lowest ratios of police officers to population, with 1.4 officers per 1,000 residents, while the national average is 2.4.
Similar things could be said about San Francisco.
The “City by the Bay” is one of the epicenters of our rapidly growing national drug crisis, and they are having such a hard time finding police officers that they have decided to start recruiting in Texas…
San Francisco is trying to recruit cops from Texas as it faces a shortage of officers, after businessman Marc Benioff slammed the city’s homeless and drug problems.
The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) is visiting four Texas university campuses throughout the month as part of a new recruitment drive.
Candidates from outside of the state of California will take a written test, a physical ability test and an interview to see if they make they cut.
Yes, things have really gotten this bad.
Blue cities are having such difficulty hiring police officers that they must try to recruit them from red states.
This month, the SFPD will be making recruiting trips to four different Texas universities…
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Texas Southern University in Houston;
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Sam Houston State University in Huntsville;
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Prairie View A&M University; and
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Texas A&M University Corpus Christi.
If you always dreamed of serving as a police officer in a lawless city with hordes of drug addicts, this is your chance.
In Prince George’s County just outside of Washington D.C., authorities have decided to search for hundreds of new recruits in Puerto Rico because the shortage of police officers has become so severe…
Officer shortages are so dire in the Washington, D.C., area that one county police department is planning to send officials to Puerto Rico in an attempt to bring back hundreds of new recruits, the department announced Monday.
Law enforcement officials in Maryland’s Prince George’s County, which borders D.C., told the city’s Fox affiliate that they plan to travel to the Caribbean island “soon” in an attempt to hire the roughly 350 officers they need to achieve a full staff. In addition to the tropical recruitment trip, the county’s police department is targeting Hispanic communities at parades and other events across the country and running ads in Spanish.
At least they are still trying.
Other communities seem to have given up completely.
In Seattle, citizens are being instructed to “give up their car keys” and to give criminals “whatever they’re looking for” when they inevitably encounter violent thugs…
The best thing to do if you are ever confronted by criminals while in Seattle is to simply give them “whatever they’re looking for,” according to King County Sheriff David Robinson.
Instead of trying to fight criminals when they attempt to, say, steal your car, Robinson suggests that residents and visitors of Seattle “give up their car keys” and avoid provoking these robbers and thieves.
“Give the criminals what they want,” Robinson told Seattleites about how to live in their city, which is currently facing the highest violent crime rate in 15 years.
I have been to downtown Seattle, and I don’t plan on going back any time soon.
Of course these days you can literally be robbed anywhere.
On Sunday, a wealthy man in Connecticut was actually carjacked inside his own garage…
A Connecticut man pulled his Aston Martin convertible into his garage Sunday and encountered two masked men who attacked him and stole the vehicle in a brazen broad daylight carjacking captured on home security video.
“Get out, get out,” a masked man can be heard telling the victim as he sits in his own Bayberry Lane garage in an exchange captured by a Ring camera in the corner of the room.
A second man opens the passenger door and then rifles around inside another luxury car parked to the side.
Driving an expensive vehicle can be fun.
But in our current social environment, it makes you a target.
It appears that those two criminals followed that man home.
Sadly, this sort of crime is rapidly rising all over the nation.
So from this point forward, make sure that nobody is following you when you are headed back to where you live.
If you do suspect that you are being followed, pull into a gas station, but don’t get out.
Circle around and watch to see if the vehicle that was potentially tailing you follows suit. If you are still being followed at that point, call the police and head toward the nearest police station. Only really stupid criminals will follow you there.
I wish that we did not have to constantly be on guard like this, but it is imperative to understand that our society has been fundamentally transformed.
Lawlessness reigns in major cities all over the United States, and I fully expect violent crime to get even worse during the years ahead of us.
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Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/22/2023 – 21:40 -
- Where Gas Is Cheapest & Most Expensive In The US
Where Gas Is Cheapest & Most Expensive In The US
The price of gasoline in the United States is climbing once more as production hit a summer low while major producers Saudi Arabia and Russia cut their output.
As of September 21, the AAA gas pices overview put the price of a gallon of regular at $3.87 in the U.S. on average – the highest ever for this time of year.
That price is still way below the new all-time high recorded on June 14, 2022 ($5.02), however.
However, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, gas prices also vary widely across the United States.
You will find more infographics at Statista
State-specific costs for transportation and distribution can drive up prices, like in the case of Alaska and Hawaii. State taxes also vary greatly, for example explaining the high price of gasoline in California.
But states that usually offer cheap gas are also feeling the price crunch right now. According to AAA, the gallon now costs upwards of $3.50 in all but nine states.
Only in parts of the Southern United States and Texas, the gallon is still priced below that. Among those shelling out most for gas at the moment are residents of Washington, Nevada and California.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/22/2023 – 21:20 - Pennsylvania Rolls Out Automatic Voter Registration
Pennsylvania Rolls Out Automatic Voter Registration
Authored by Beth Brelje via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
When getting a driver’s license or official state identification card in Pennsylvania, anyone eligible to vote will now be automatically registered.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro speaks at an event hosted by the state Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs to kick off National Recovery Month in Harrisburg, Pa., on Sept. 6, 2023. (Commonwealth Media Services) Gov. Josh Shapiro announced on Sept. 19 that Pennsylvania has implemented automatic voter registration (AVR) at Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) driver and photo license centers, starting on the day of the announcement.
With this move, Pennsylvania joins 23 states with AVR. They are Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia, plus the District of Columbia.
Pennsylvania residents seeking new or renewed driver’s licenses and ID cards will be automatically taken through the voter registration application process, if they are eligible to vote, unless they opt out of doing so.
It is a change from voters opting into the voter registration process. Previously, employees at license centers asked people if they would like to register to vote.
The change also adds voter registration instructions in five more languages, for a total of 31 languages, a statement from Mr. Shapiro’s office said.
“Pennsylvania is the birthplace of our democracy, and as Governor, I’m committed to ensuring free and fair elections that allow every eligible voter to make their voice heard,” Mr. Shapiro said in a statement.
“Automatic voter registration is a commonsense step to ensure election security and save Pennsylvanians time and tax dollars. Residents of our Commonwealth already provide proof of identity, residency, age, and citizenship at the DMV—all the information required to register to vote—so it makes good sense to streamline that process with voter registration.”
Longtime Voter Registration Site
Since the 1993 passage of the National Voter Registration Act, which includes the motor voter law, Pennsylvanians have been able to apply to register to vote during these visits at PennDOT centers.
“Registering eligible Commonwealth residents to vote during their visits to driver and photo license centers is a commonsense action,” Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt said in the statement. “The voter is already in a state government facility with their identification documentation in hand, and they will have their picture taken and sign their name electronically. Having all of that happen at the same time means the verification process is extremely secure and makes the registration process more efficient.”
According to the statement from the governor’s office, “Multiple studies—including a 2019 Brennan Center for Justice study and a 2021 study by the Public Policy Institute of California—have also found that automatic voter registration in other states has produced marked increases in the number of eligible voters added to the voter rolls and has produced appreciable increases in voter turnout.”
As of December 2022, roughly 8.7 million Pennsylvanians were registered to vote. According to U.S. Census estimates, more than 10.3 million Commonwealth residents are eligible to register, the statement said.
To be eligible to register to vote, applicants must 1) be a U.S. citizen for at least 30 days before the next election; 2) be a resident of Pennsylvania and their election district for at least 30 days before the next election; and 3) be at least 18 years old on the date of the next election.
The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) lists some pros and cons to AVR on its website.
One positive is that automatic registration can help with voter registration list maintenance because the process updates existing registrations with current addresses. Precise voter rolls facilitate election accuracy and reduce the use of provisional ballots, which are used when there is a discrepancy in a voter’s registration status.
“Some supporters also say automatic voter registration leads to higher voter turnout, although evidence supporting this claim is mixed,” the NCSL website says, then goes on to mention disadvantages of AVR.
“Opponents of automatic voter registration may say that the government should not tell citizens they must register to vote, particularly in states that provide the ‘opt-out’ choice by mail, after the fact. Furthermore, they question whether opt-out forms that are sent and received through the mail are sufficient to ensure an individual can decline to register.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/22/2023 – 21:00 - NY Man Arrested With $1.6 Million In Fentanyl Fails To Show For Court After Being Granted Non-Cash Bail
NY Man Arrested With $1.6 Million In Fentanyl Fails To Show For Court After Being Granted Non-Cash Bail
If we told you that a man accused of carrying $1.6 million in fentanyl in Pittsburgh didn’t show up for his court date after being released on non-cash bail earlier this month, would you be surprised?
Us neither.
But that was precisely the case in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, where 27 year old Carlos Pichardo Cepeda failed the appear for court. The New Yorker “is accused of carrying hundreds of thousands of fentanyl doses at a Pittsburgh bus station,” according to Triblive.com.
Pichardo Cepeda was previously handed a nonmonetary bond by a district judge and released after his arrest. This past Tuesday was his second court date that he missed, the report says. Republicans are blaming the cashless bail while Democrats are placing blame on the DA’s office dragging its feet in prosecuting the case.
Pichardo Cepeda was arrested August 31 at the Greyhound Terminal in Downtown Pittsburgh. He had 9 kilograms, or about 450,000 doses, of fentanyl on him with a street value of $1.6 billion.
His criminal history included seven prior arrests, two misdemeanor convictions and pending cases in New York for grand larceny and sexual assault.
Two district judges involved in his case, Xander Orenstein and Gene Ricciardi, stand on opposite ends of the political aisle, the report says. Orenstein granted him a nonmonetary bond but imposed electronic monitoring.
But such monitors can only be ordered by a Common Pleas Court judge. The arrested are usually held in jail until such cases can be transferred. That’s where Judge Ricciardi came in, according to the report:
In the Pichardo Cepeda case, Orenstein believed the suspect would be held in jail until a decision about electronic monitoring was made, Asturi said.
Orenstein set the nonmonetary bail on Sept. 1. The next day, Allegheny County Jail staff approached District Judge Gene Ricciardi, who was presiding that day, for clarification of the bail condition, according to Asturi.
Asturi said Ricciardi then contacted Orenstein and received permission to review the electronic monitoring condition. Ricciardi then removed the electronic monitoring condition because district judges can’t impose it, and Pichardo Cepeda was released.
Ricciardi did not read the criminal complaint and did not know the facts of the case at the time of release, Asturi said.
Joe Asturi, a spokesman for the court system, offered the following perfunctory take: “Court administration is reviewing procedures to provide safeguards to prevent another such occurrence.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/22/2023 – 20:40 - FBI Informant Created One Of Largest Nazi Groups In American History
FBI Informant Created One Of Largest Nazi Groups In American History
Authored by Ken Silva via Headline USA,
An FBI informant cofounded one of the largest and oldest neo-Nazi organizations in U.S. history: the National Socialist Movement, a group connected to numerous crimes and violent events, including the deadly 2017 Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally, according to previously unpublicized records reviewed by Headline USA.
The documents—a trove of FBI memos, affidavits and court records that this publication has dubbed the “Fed Files”—further indicate that the NSM allegedly had informants in prominent positions throughout much of its nearly 50-year history.
Once known as the “Hollywood Nazis” for its flamboyant demonstrations and crude propaganda, the NSM has also been accused of being co-opted by the FBI in a lawsuit filed by a former member who is now in prison.
Multiple current and former NSM members denied any affiliation with the FBI or law enforcement.
Jeff Schoep / IMAGE: CNN via YouTube The FBI declined to comment for this story.
NSM’s Founding
The NSM was founded in 1974 by Cliff Herrington and Robert Brannen, both of whom were chief lieutenants of prominent American fascist George Lincoln Rockwell—the founder of the original American Nazi Party in 1959.
By 1976, there was growing suspicion in the Nazi movement that Brannen was working with the FBI.
In fact, the NSM’s own publication, the National Socialist, released an article in April 1976, denying accusations from a rival group—the National Socialist White Peoples Party, or NSWPP—that Brannen was an informant. The National Socialist article called the accusations a “reckless and irresponsible smear attack on Comrade Brennan.”
But the NSWPP was right about Brannen.
An FBI memo warning that undercover informant Robert Brannnen’s cover had been compromised Commenting on that National Socialist article several months later, a May 1976 FBI memo warned that Brannen’s cover might have been blown.
The redacted memo doesn’t show the informant’s name, but it clearly identifies Brannen by referencing the National Socialist article and the accusations floating around him at the time.
“Informant’s photograph and description appeared in the February 1976, NSWPP publication and he was named an FBI informant,” the FBI memo said.
“Informant’s group, the NSM, has publicized a rebuttal, and the Cincinnati Office is taking special precaution to ensure this informant can be operated successfully without jeopardizing his personal safety,” the memo said.
Despite the accusations against Brannen, he continued to lead the NSM undaunted for almost another decade until he suffered several strokes in 1983.
The other cofounder of NSM, Cliff Herrington, denied that his former colleague was ever a federal informant.
“I knew Robert F. Brannen personally. He wasn’t on the take,” Herrington said in an email to this publication.
As an aside, Herrington also confirmed reports that his wife, Andrea Herrington aka Maxine Dietrich, founded a Satanic cult called the Joy of Satan Ministries. The discovery of Herrington’s Satanic leanings is a reason cited by White for why he left the NSM in the mid-2000s.
“Yes! I am married to HP Andrea Herrington nee Dietrich!! Many ivy league critiques have said she was worthy of Master Degrees! Oh, ps SHE & Her Lieutenants are completely right!” Herrington said in a typo-ridden email, which he signed, “Herrington Heil Hitler!”
Herrington led the NSM from the time of Brannen’s major stroke in 1983 until 1994, when he appointed Jeff Schoep to succeed him.
The Jeff Schoep Era
Schoep, who led the NSM from 1994 until shortly after the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally, has also been accused of being an FBI informant.
Unlike Brannen, the allegation against Schoep isn’t clearly corroborated by FBI memos. And the accusation comes from a controversial source: former NSM member Bill White, who is now serving time in prison for multiple felony convictions.
White accused Schoep of being an informant in an 2017 FOIA lawsuit he filed against the FBI from prison, as well as a 2020 court declaration in which he unsuccessfully sought compassionate release. White attached the FBI memo about Brannen to this same court declaration.
In his FOIA lawsuit, White sought records about the NSM, Schoep and a slew of other players he alleged were part of an FBI right-wing entrapment operation.
According to White, the FBI took control of the NSM as early as 2004, and likely much earlier. White said in his FOIA lawsuit that the FBI and ATF “would use the National Socialist Movement to hold phony ‘white supremacist’ rallies.”
“The FBI-JTTF [Joint Terrorism Task Force] would also arrange for violent counterdemonstrations against these rallies through informants in groups such as Anti-Racist Action … The ATF was also using the NSM in a similar fashion,” White said in his FOIA lawsuit.
“Neither party was disclosing that the rallies were fraudulent,” White added. “Instead, the federal government was using the rallies to make it appear as if there was a ‘domestic terrorist threat’ when no such threat existed.”
As for Schoep, White said he believes the former NSM leader was an FBI informant because, among other reasons, Schoep would “frequently lie” when they worked directly together in 2005 to 2006.
“Schoep frequently asked me to go various places to perform tasks that only advantaged the FBI-JTTF operation, either by adding legitimacy to their front groups or to get me away from situations,” White said.
“It is virtually impossible for Schoep not to know that he is acting primarily in the interests of the FBI-JTTF operation, and not in his own interests, if he were a sincere advocate for National Socialism,” White added in his lawsuit, which was ultimately dismissed by a judge for procedural reasons.
In an October 2020 sworn declaration to the court in a separate matter, White provided more details on why he thinks Schoep worked with the feds.
The convicted Nazi cited a heavily redacted FBI memo he obtained via FOIA. The memo said that the FBI interviewed an NSM associate who was in Chicago when law enforcement arrested Matthew Hale—a white nationalist in prison for allegedly soliciting an undercover FBI informant to murder U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow.
“[Schoep’s] presence in Chicago with Matt Hale at Hale’s arrest make it clear that [the FBI memo is referring to] Schoep,” White said in his sworn declaration, also claiming: “I know from prior releases that Minneapolis Field Division Squad 4 handled Jeff Schoep.”
When presented with White’s records, Schoep admitted to being detained briefly and talking to law enforcement upon Hale’s arrest, but he denied talking to the FBI about Hale or any other topic. He said he spoke to U.S. Marshals when Hale was arrested and he was detained, offering no info.
“I was detained for a couple hours at the most and was being questioned. If the FBI was there, I don’t recall them identifying themselves, I just remember being told it was US Marshals,” he told Headline USA.
“They asked why I was in Chicago with Matt, I said he was a friend, and I was there to support him … It was like 20 years ago I don’t remember every stupid question they asked, but I know I didn’t offer them anything more than who I was and why I was there,” he added.
“All my dealing with law enforcement pressure over the years ended in the same manner: very little or nothing to say.”
Schoep, who was reportedly given probation for a felony burglary charge in 1998, also said his home was raided by law enforcement twice—once by federal law enforcement—which he said is further evidence that he was never an informant.
Additionally, Schoep noted that White was an avowed communist before he joined the NSM.
“I took a lot of sh*t from longtime members of the NSM for even allowing Bill to join the group,” he said of White.
“I believed everyone deserved a chance and even with his past history as a communist; I believed he changed his views,” he added. “… Big mistake on my part.”
To Schoep’s point, White hasn’t offered clear-cut proof that Schoep was an FBI informant.
White’s accusations were contested by the Justice Department, and a district court ultimately dismissed his application for compassionate release (his accusations against Schoep were one small part of a 97-page court declaration he submitted in support of his release). White’s FOIA lawsuit implicating Schoep was also unsuccessful.
Headline USA has published a separate story about White’s background, explaining why this publication thinks his allegations are worth reporting.
In any event, Schoep now openly collaborates with the FBI and other law enforcers since disavowing his Nazi lifestyle in the wake of Charlottesville—an apparent change of heart that has drawn much scrutiny in liberal media.
“Honored to speak twice at Midwest Police Expo for Illinois #PoliceChiefs Association and FBI,” Schoep tweeted on Aug. 21.
“Thx #FBI for the commemorative coin. Its [sic] ironic, how life has changed. In the past I avoided LE like the plague, today we are on the same side in service to #humanity.”
Honored to speak twice at Midwest Police Expo for Illinois #PoliceChiefs Association and FBI. Thx #FBI for the commemorative coin. Its ironic, how life has changed. In the past I avoided LE like the plague, today we are on the same side in service to #humanity. #CVE #Police #DVE pic.twitter.com/rNopQD8kAG
— Jeff Schoep (@SchoepJeff) August 21, 2023
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Schoep has also openly consorted with former FBI informant Jesse Morton, who was an al-Qaeda recruiter in the post-9/11 era until he was arrested in 2011.
Schoep and Morton both participated in a panel about countering violent extremism sponsored by the DHS-funded nonprofit organization Parallel Networks in November 2021, about a month before Morton was found dead in a Florida hotel room.
Despite openly working with law enforcement now, Schoep still bristles at the suggestion that he was an informant in the Nazi movement.
“Outright accusing me of being an informant: Wow,” he said in an email to this publication. “If I was still in the movement, you might have gotten a visit for that accusation—and not a visit from law enforcement.”
Other Feds in the NSM
Assuming that Schoep wasn’t, in fact, an FBI informant, the NSM was nevertheless infiltrated by feds during his leadership tenure.
For example, court proceedings revealed in 2007 that the leader of NSM’s Florida chapter, David Gletty, was an informant.
Gletty had organized a NSM Nazi rally in Orlando in 2006. So when he was outed as an informant over a year later, it sparked an uproar in the local black community.
“That revelation came Wednesday in an unrelated federal court hearing and has prompted outrage from black leaders, some of whom demanded an investigation into whether the February 2006 march was, itself, an event staged by law-enforcement agencies,” the Orlando Sentinel reported at the time.
Gletty later published a memoir titled Undercover Nazi, in which he disclosed that three ATF agents also attended the Orlando rally.
Prison inmate White, who was also attended the Orlando rally, said in his 2020 declaration that he now believes the majority of Nazi demonstrators were informants.
“I estimate that about three of the twenty to twenty-five persons who participated were not federal agents: myself, Laura Sennett, aka Isis, and an undercover reporter for a local paper,” White said.
In 2012, another prominent member of the NSM revealed himself as a federal informant. The informant, Brian Holland, had been the NSM’s candidate for U.S. President in 2008.
Holland told his story on the popular radio show Coast to Coast AM, telling host George Knapp about how he infiltrated the white-supremacy movement in 1999.
Holland explained that his job entailed going to neo-Nazi gatherings and reporting on their activities to the FBI. According to Holland, at times he was making up to $8,000 a month.
According to Holland, he was terminated by the FBI without warning and told by the bureau, “Now you don’t exist.”
“With the shake of a bureaucratic hand, the third highest-ranking neo-Nazi in the country was put to pasture after 11 years of risking my life,” he said.
NSM is currently commanded by Burt Colucci, who told Headline USA that he, too, was asked to be an informant.
Colucci said he turned down the FBI’s offer.
“The FBI likes to play games no matter what side of this you’re on. They actually came to me and told me they could ‘supplement my income,’ offering me—they didn’t specify what exactly they meant or or how much, but they said they’d supplement my income,” he said.
“I told them I don’t want anything to do with them and to talk to my lawyers, so they did—they talked to my Arizona lawyer at the time,” he said, adding, “I would have personally told them to f*ck off and keep their money, but my lawyer’s like, ‘Let me tell them. I’ll say it a little bit nicer for you.’”
But Colluci, who deleted Schoep’s NSM email accounts after taking control of the group, said he isn’t concerned whether his former leader was an informant.
“All of these people are long gone, whether informants at the time or not,” he said.
Meanwhile, a jury ruled in November 2021 that the NSM owes $1 million for its actions at Charlottesville in 2017, while Schoep owes $500,000.
Schoep has an appeal pending in that case.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/22/2023 – 20:20 - The Great Debt Fiasco: How Washington's 'Reckless And Opportunistic' Pandemic Splurge Jeopardized America's Future
The Great Debt Fiasco: How Washington’s ‘Reckless And Opportunistic’ Pandemic Splurge Jeopardized America’s Future
As the US blows past $33 trillion in national debt for the first time – and adds roughly $1 billion in new debt every hour, a comprehensive new report from the Heritage Foundation reveals that the US government has tacked on $7.5 trillion in new debt over past two years alone, drawing a stark image of America’s economic prospects.
The report sheds light on a series of colossal spending packages rolled out between March 2020 and December 2022, amounting to an astronomical $7.464 trillion in debt, or a staggering $57,400 per household.
The Heritage Foundation splits the ordeal into three components: the nature of federal spending, the Federal Reserve’s role in this fiasco, and the impending ramifications of this debt accumulation. The conclusions drawn are far from comforting. Much of the pandemic-era expenditure was not only unwarranted but actively detrimental, leaving the country grappling with an inflation surge, labor shortages, and broken supply chains, Fox News reports.
“The COVID-19 pandemic unleashed unprecedented federal fiscal and monetary actions that wasted trillions of dollars,” said the Heritage experts.
Indeed, most of this drunken spending was done in the name of a virus that kills less than 1% of those it infects (mostly the elderly and the obese), and employed extreme lockdown measures which were no more effective than countries that refused to do the same.
The authors say that the US Congress failed to couple any justifiable pandemic spending with measure to reduce future deficits.
“A looming fiscal crisis has shifted from a long-term concern to a current event. Congress must return to responsible governance for America to avoid further economic calamity,” the report concludes.
“When there’s a supply shock, when the economy tumbles off a cliff, all the government can do is make the recovery longer and slower by trying to give you a sugar pill on the front end,” said Co-author Richard Stern, Director of the Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget at The Heritage Foundation. “That’s what happened here. We are now suffering worse four years later because the government did things in the moment to make it look a little better.”
Breaking it down, $2.22 trillion was spent by the Trump administration’s March 2020 COVID response and a December 2020 stimulus package. The rest was spent by the Biden administration via the American Rescue Plan, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and other various packages.
According to Heritage President Kevin Roberts, the report’s findings “explain how we got here and provide recommendations for extinguishing the fire so that we can change course and reduce the severe economic pain facing everyday Americans across the country.”
“Inflation doesn’t just happen; it is a direct result of overbearing, clumsy, dysfunctional government policies,” said Roberts. “While everyday Americans suffer under the hidden tax of Biden’s crippling inflation – at the gas pump and checkout counters, in utility bills, rents, and car payments – Congress and the President have an unending appetite for more spending, regulation, and subsidies.”
Yikes
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 21, 2023
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The report also notes that the so-called Inflation Reduction Act is “a complete misnomer” that has only done the exact opposite.
“This reckless and politically opportunistic spending spree has left the U.S. with a weakened economy, an inflation crisis, and a looming debt crisis. The volume and nature of the spending spree helped to create skyrocketing inflation and interest rates and created a labor shortage, reducing real household incomes and leaving store shelves bare and supply chains broken.”
What does this mean for the future?
According to the authors, “The amount of damage caused by the federal spending spree is immense, and the size and scope of the long-term fiscal problem can be overwhelming,” reads the report’s final paragraph. “Policymakers must address this reality in a sober fashion, neither pretending that easy fixes exist nor ignoring the problem altogether. This will require controlling spending, returning to meaningful budgeting, and fixing problems at the Federal Reserve.“
“There is a genuine opportunity for leadership if elected officials have the courage and foresight to do the right thing, both for America’s near-term battle against inflation and its long term economic prospects.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/22/2023 – 20:00 - Can Trump Thread The Needle On Abortion?
Can Trump Thread The Needle On Abortion?
Authored by Jack Bevan via RealClearPolitics.com,
In the first of five newly scheduled visits to the Hawkeye State, Donald Trump arrived in northeast Iowa with a warning.
“In order to win in 2024, Republicans must learn how to properly talk about abortion,” he told an audience of some 2,000 potential voters, packed into a ballroom here.
“This issue cost us unnecessarily but dearly in the midterms. It cost us dearly, really, and unnecessarily.”
Amid his customary MAGA slogans and jokes at the expense of Ron DeSantis, the moment stood in stark relief as a rare attempt at clear-eyed, political sobriety on Trump’s part. It’s also the latest in a week-long saga in which Trump, the self-described “most pro-life president in history,” has sought to loudly position himself as the GOP’s resident moderate on abortion. It began with a bang on Sunday, when the former president denounced the idea of a six-week “fetal heartbeat” ban on abortion as a “terrible mistake,” and pledged to negotiate a compromise with Democrats on the issue.
Ever since the 2022 Dobbs decision that vacated Roe v. Wade, abortion has emerged as a highly salient issue that cuts in Democrats’ favor. This summer, it emerged as a flashpoint dividing the Republicans’ crowded presidential primary field – and nowhere is this more true than in Iowa. Participants in the state’s first-in-the-nation GOP caucus are more likely to identify as pro-life than anything else, and victory in the state is nigh impossible without the support of evangelical Christians, a majority of whom enthusiastically support Iowa’s six-week abortion ban.
Trump’s campaign knows all this, but his concern appears to be with electability in swing states during the general election – which is the kind of luxury available only to a candidate leading the primary field by 40 points in the polls.
On stage, Trump recalled the GOP’s recent losses in Michigan and Pennsylvania: “Good candidates” who ultimately “got clobbered” because they failed to read the room on abortion.
Trump may see something in the tea leaves for 2024, as well. At the GOP debate in Milwaukee last month, eight of Trump’s most prominent challengers all took the opportunity to identify as some shade of “pro-life.” But in the weeks since, the only challenger to have moved the needle against him has been Nikki Haley – the lone woman on stage, who drew a sharp contrast with the pack when she offered a nuanced take on the issue, and rebuked the idea that a Republican president could pass any kind of federal abortion ban.
“No Republican president can ban abortions any more than a Democrat president could ban all those state laws,” she said in Milwaukee.
“Don’t make women feel like they have to decide on this issue, when you know we don’t have 60 Senate votes.”
Notably, a September 7 poll by Fox found Haley to have a better hypothetical matchup against Joe Biden than any other GOP candidate, Trump included. But others in the race insist the path forward is to the right of Trump’s current post. At a Saturday town hall with Iowa evangelicals in Des Moines, his former sidekick called for a nationwide 15-week ban, in a direct response to Haley.
“It’s an idea whose time has come,” Pence said.
“Why would we leave unborn babies in California and Illinois and New York to the devices of liberal state legislatures and liberal governors? We need to stand for the unborn, all across America.”
And for Ron DeSantis, who signed a six-week ban identical to Iowa’s in Florida last March, it might be just what his struggling campaign needed. The campaign took to Iowa’s radio waves the morning after Trump’s “horrible mistake” clip went viral, ready to position himself as the more authentic pro-life candidate.
“I don’t know how you can even make the claim that you’re somehow pro-life if you’re criticizing states for enacting protections for babies that have heartbeats,” DeSantis said in an interview with Radio Iowa on Monday.
“I think if [Trump’s] going into this saying he’s going to make the Democrats happy with respect to right to life, I think all pro-lifers should know that he’s preparing to sell you out.”
On its surface, it would seem like an easy inroad for the Florida governor. But it may not be so simple. When RealClearPolitics spoke to Emerson College’s Spencer Kimball, he pointed to a counterintuitive finding in their post-debate Iowa poll. Trump was found to have roughly equivalent support among Republicans both against and in favor of a complete federal abortion ban (51% and 52%, respectively).
“There’s this idea that the abortion issue is really driving, or that it’ll curtail Trump somehow, but I don’t see that. He’s getting it from both directions,” Kimball said.
“The issues just don’t line up perfectly, where if you go with one thing, everyone will fall in line.”
Kimball also felt that Trump’s anxieties about another pro-choice “clobbering” may be justified, based on recent electoral losses for the GOP, like the Michigan governorship. Democrat Gretchen Whitmer managed to overperform last November, in part thanks to messaging that leaned heavily into anxiety around “reproductive rights.”
“You had, in my opinion, a clear example of somebody ‘staunch pro-life’ and somebody ‘staunch pro-choice’,” Kimball said of the race.
“We thought it would be somewhat competitive. It was not, and it really speaks to how motivating abortion can be as an issue.”
Is the pro-life right forever doomed to moderation, then? Not necessarily. In a statement to RCP, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the advocacy group SBA Pro-Life America, provided an alternate telling of 2022’s Red Wave That Wasn’t.
Republican governors who exceeded expectations that year – Georgia’s Brian Kemp, Texas’ Greg Abbott, and, yes, Florida’s Ron DeSantis – were all unabashedly pro-life in their campaigns.
“Life is a winning issue for those that speak clearly and confidently,” Dannenfelser explained.
“Republicans need to stand firm in serving mothers and protecting the most innocent among us. And when they do, they see great success. Governors who boldly spoke on pro-life won by double-digit margins in the midterms against pro-abortion candidates.”
Ashley McGuire, a senior fellow at the Catholic Association, amplified this point, saying that successful candidates in 2022 were not only pro-life, but were able to “clearly define their opponent’s unpopular no-limits extremism” as well.
“Pro-choice extremists are playing dangerous rhetorical games with voters and using deceptive language in their ballot initiative efforts, and so it’s more important than ever that pro-life politicians clarify their positions and clearly define those of their opponents,” McGuire said.
It’s here that both sides of the GOP’s schism of the week seem to agree. In Dubuque on Wednesday, Trump stressed to the audience that a lasting pro-life victory would come through regaining leverage and reframing the issue around the extremes of the left.
“Pro-Lifers aren’t the radicals. They’re the radicals!” Trump said Wednesday. Should horror stories of practices like “post-birth” abortion become more widely known, Trump argued, it would become clear that “nobody wants that, not even Democrats.”
And in the short term? Trump is hoping Iowans remember that he’s still the guy who overturned Roe v. Wade. Challengers looking to attack him on this issue must tip-toe around the fact that his Supreme Court appointments are the only reason this debate is possible in the first place.
“The same people attacking us now are those who have been failing you for decades,” Trump said in Dubuque, referring to the hardline pro-lifers within the party.
“Unlike them, I don’t just talk, I get the job done. I got this job done.”
Trump’s rivals, of course, are hoping he’ll never have the chance to be proven right in the general election. At least one group seems to believe Trump’s gambit will pay off, though: Democrats reportedly scrambled the metaphorical jets following Trump’s interview on Sunday, anxious that they won’t be able to draw an effective contrast with Trump on what was previously seen as a “sensitive issue.”
Republicans like DeSantis, though, may finally have the contrast they were looking for. Although Trump isn’t expected to attend next week’s GOP debate in Simi Valley, Calif., we can expect the contrast will be on full display when he and DeSantis attend California’s GOP convention, two days later.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/22/2023 – 19:40 - Happy Little Money Tree? Bob Ross 'Rookie Card' Painting Goes On Sale For Nearly $10 Million
Happy Little Money Tree? Bob Ross ‘Rookie Card’ Painting Goes On Sale For Nearly $10 Million
The very first painting from famed painter and television host Bob Ross’s The Joy of Painting program has gone on sale for nearly $10 million.
That’s the price a Minneapolis gallery is asking for “A Walk in the Woods,” the first of more than 400 paintings created by Ross during his show’s 11-year run.
“It is season one, episode one of what you would call the rookie card for Bob Ross,” said gallery owner Ryan Nelson of Modern Artifact.
On that first episode, Ross stressed that painting doesn’t need to be pretentious.
“We have avoided painting for so long because I think all of our lives we’ve been told that you have to go to school half your life, maybe even have to be blessed by Michelangelo at birth, to ever be able to paint a picture,” said Ross in 1983. “And here, we want to show you that that’s not true. That you can paint a picture.”
A screenshot from the premiere of The Joy of Painting shows the painter Bob Ross with the work, A Walk in the Woods, which is up for sale. (via npr.org) Ross, who served in the Air Force for 20 years before hosting his show, died in 1995 due to complications from lymphoma.
“What this piece represents is the people’s artist,” said Nelson. “This isn’t an institution that’s telling you that Bob Ross is great. It’s not some high-brow gallery telling you that Bob Ross is great. This is the masses, the population in the world that are saying that Bob Ross is great.”
The first season of “The Joy of Painting” was filmed in Falls Creek, Virginia, and the painting from Ross’ first show was sold months later to raise funds for the local PBS station. A volunteer at the station bought the painting for an undisclosed price and hung it in her home for 39 years until getting in touch with Nelson, who has bought and sold more than 100 of Ross’ works.
Nelson bought the painting last year and then gave it a “not for sale” price of $9.85 million, said publicist Megan Hoffman. -Fox5
Watch Ross paint “A Walk in the Woods”:
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/22/2023 – 19:20 - The Rise Of Hux-Well
The Rise Of Hux-Well
Authored by Jeff Einstein via ‘The Quality Of Life Resistance Movement’ Substack,
Noam Chomsky stopped just one rung shy of perfection with his illuminating book, Manufacturing Consent, about how commercial media work as extensions of government and corporate power to manufacture the consent of the masses. Likewise, Matt Taibbi’s title, Hate, Inc. is a near-perfect indictment of cable and digital news profit models that manufacture and prioritize enmity to the exclusion of the truth and the common good.
Both works fall just one rung shy of perfection, however, not because they aren’t impressive examples of applied critical thought and insight, but because neither consent nor hate are the primary products of commercial media. Rather, they are toxic byproducts of a commercial mass media whose primary product is addiction…
“The effect of mass media is not to elicit belief but to maintain the apparatus of addiction.” — Christopher Lasch
In the early 21st century, we turned the corner from a society in which addiction was the exception to the rule to a society in which addiction became the rule. By 2004, still some years before social media, the smartphone, and streaming media secured their reputations as history’s most perfect narcotics, the average American — according to the Ball State University Middletown Media Studies report (the first large-scale observational study of American media consumption habits) — was already consuming more than eleven hours of media each and every day.
Concurrently, TV Everywhere, the commercial imperative behind the trillion-dollar campaigns for high-speed bandwidth and streaming HDTV, was ordained as the latest media industry mantra — part of an all-hands-on-deck digital blitzkrieg to normalize late-stage addiction.
Since then, hundreds of studies, articles, books, and documentaries have confirmed what anyone with a smartphone, social media account or a teenager already knows or suspects: we are a nation of media addicts — by design. We are, per Stanford addiction researcher Dr. Anna Lembke, a Dopamine Nation. The scientific, theological, and lay juries are in: smartphones, streaming HDTV, and social media are now — by far — the primary narcotics of choice in what I call the Great Age of Addiction.
“Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.” — Carl Jung
What Carl Jung failed to mention at the time was the practical reason why all addictions are bad: because all addictions — regardless of the narcotics — are manifestations of behavioral excess. As such, they all steal our time and money and freedom — none more ruthlessly or efficiently than our default meta-addiction to all things media and all things digital.
Needless to say, we didn’t just suddenly wake up one morning to discover that we had become a society of media addicts overnight. We became a society of media addicts the same way we became a society of institutions too big to fail. What happened to us (and what we allowed to happen), happened gradually over decades. Like too big to fail, it happened not as an unintended consequence of a failure to plan, or the unfortunate fallout from a lousy plan. Like too big to fail, state-sponsored default addiction is the plan.
“The model of ownership, in a society built round mass consumption, is addiction.”
— Christopher LaschIn the Great Age of Addiction, the meta-message we hear most is always the same binge-worthy call to action: “Eat all you want,” our digital overlords tell us over and over again. “We’ll make more.” Everything else, like the manufacture of consent and hate, follows…
Of course, commercial mass media’s essential job in a culture of mass consumption is to promote and protect the narrow interests of the ruling elite, who now control virtually all of institutional America, including the corporate media, the technomedia cartel (with the current exception of Twitter), finance, the entertainment industry, academia and public education, all major surveillance and law enforcement agencies, all other major government agencies, and all major NGOs. Institutional dissenters are few and far between in the Great Age of Addiction.
The manufacture of default addiction in the 21st century is a compliance mechanism borrowed straight from the pages of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World — the story of a dystopian society controlled by state-sponsored addiction to soma, sex, and endless entertainment…
“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it.” — Aldous Huxley
Our own descent into the grips of state-sponsored default addiction was much accelerated in the early 21st century by the algorithmic tools of digital scale — behavioral targeting, Big Data, and AI — deployed en masse against foreign and domestic populations for the past generation by massive institutions in a classically fascist union of private and government interests.
“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” — Benito Mussolini
Predictably, addiction is now a cradle-to-grave relationship for the children of the 21st century, an endless parade of state-sanctioned psychotropics, sexualization, and numerous other substance and behavioral addictions — not least our meta-addiction to all things media and all things digital. Our lives as addicts begin these days in early childhood, usually well before we can read — by design. Understandable, therefore, that the most compelling and intimate relationships in our lives as mass consumers of mass commercial media and just about everything else are the relationships we cultivate with our own narcotics — the same relationships designed to breed compliance, complacency, and consent.
In recent years we have witnessed the addition of yet another dystopian vision to the American cultural stew. Unlike the Huxleyan model, this one is concerned far less with the bemused manufacture of addicted consent, already fait accompli in the Great Age of Addiction, and far more with the iron-fist mechanics of totalitarian enforcement.
After all, even societies like ours, societies whose citizens have been duly converted into passive addicts in order to manufacture compliance and consent on behalf of a ruling elite — must deal with outliers and the occasional rise of populist movements. What is the ruling elite to do with those who refuse or fail to comply?
What, American elites have asked us in recent years, are we to do with the tens of millions of Donald Trump voters, the populist MAGA movement, January 6th rioters, and angry parents who suddenly show up uninvited to school board meetings? What, ask blue-state governors, blue-city mayors, and the W.H.O. are we to do with anti-vax monsters who refuse to comply with covid lockdown, vaccine, and mask mandates? What, the Canadian oligarchs ask, are we to do with all these Nazi rogue truckers? What, ask the movers and shakers of civil society as they step off their private jets in Davos, are we to do with those who deny the science of climate change? What, ask the academicians and public school policy makers are we to do with those who deny gender-affirming care? What, ask the politicians, are we to do with those who deny election results? What, ask the global elite, are we to do with the anti-war Putin sympathizers who threaten the Liberal World Order, refuse to support the battle for democracy and freedom, and casually imperil so many Ukrainian lives?
What happens when the Huxleyan model of manufactured consent and compliance via state-sanctioned addiction fails to keep them all in check? To properly manage these and future populist miscreants, the ruling elite have borrowed from the 20th century’s other great literary dystopia: George Orwell’s 1984. In it, Orwell describes a society ruled and controlled not by state-sponsored default addiction, but by 24/7 surveillance, linguistic thought control, the wholesale manufacture of abject hatred, and jackboot-enforced fear — all state-sponsored and manufactured.
In Orwell’s classic dystopian vision, state-sanctioned violence is converted from something we fear into something we cheer. Each and every morning members of the Outer Party of Oceania are required by the elite Inner Party to participate in the daily Two Minutes Hate — 120 seconds of publicly expressed mob contempt and disgust for fabricated public enemy and terrorist, Emmanuel Goldstein…
In retrospect, the fictional execration of the Two Minutes Hate seems almost quaint when compared to the real thing today, an endless torrent of 1984-inspired venom and vitriol spewed on cable news and social media. More ominously, however, in the past few years the primary focus of our institutionally inspired animus has been turned inward, from foreign to domestic enemies of the state.
Nowadays, the new-and-improved Two Minutes Hate runs 24/7 nonstop, and the fabled Emmanuel Goldstein has been replaced by Donald Trump, his legions of deplorables, and the white-supremacist, transphobic, anti-vax MAGA insurrectionists of January 6th — the day that almost lived in infamy.
To keep today’s unwashed and under-educated working class in line, the ruling elite call upon the mostly white, mostly college educated, and mostly affluent institutional shock troops and street thugs of Wokeism, last deployed en masse in the summer of 2020 to burn down poor black neighborhoods in the name of anti-racism…
State-sponsored corporate shock troops promote arson and looting in poor black neighborhoods in the name of woke anti-racism.
Everything about Wokeism is derivative of 1984, beginning with the perversely dangerous assertion that speech is violence: the epitome of 21st-century DoubleSpeak…
War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Truth, Speech is Violence: the Orwellian mantras of Wokeism…
Further homage to Orwell is everywhere manifest in official Woke vernacular, informed and enhanced at any given moment by an ever-expanding style guide of pandering pronouns and euphemisms designed to confer quasi-scientific status and legitimacy on toxic social contagions like climate change, anti-racism, and critical gender theory — bastard stepchildren of a thoroughly corrupt and kleptocratic academia that sits like a tin crown atop an equally corrupt and kleptocratic public school system. In the end, it seems, social justice or climate justice or racial justice or trans justice or any other form of justice that requires a modifier is nothing more than good old-fashioned mob justice at digital scale.
With almost total control of institutional America — including academia and public education, the technomedia and corporate media giants, corporate finance, the Fortune 100, the DHS, the FBI, the DOJ, the CIA, all major NGOs, global think tanks, and the entire surveillance-state apparatus — the Woke machine’s eagerness to jettison civil liberties and resort to political violence whenever it wants is testimony to complete and unmitigated institutional power in the near-total absence of accountability.
Institutionally, America is now a one-party town with the power and will to lavish DEFCON 1 levels of hatred and fear upon half the population of the country with casual disregard. We should be so lucky to confine their hate to only two minutes a day.
Unfortunately, all one-party towns breed intolerance and corruption. As a study in illiberal intolerance that would humble both Big Brother and Mustapha Mond in equal measure, the Wokeists are the ruling elite’s Praetorian Guard in a global class war against poor and middle class people of all colors worldwide. Against you, your family, and your community.
So there you have it: the compliance mechanism of state-sponsored default addiction borrowed from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World on the one hand paired with the enforcement mechanism of 24/7 surveillance, linguistic thought control, and institutional terror borrowed from George Orwell’s 1984 on the other. Both at digital scale. They come together now as Huxwell — a global 21st-century adaptation of 20th-century totalitarianism.
Huxwell — equal doses of both dystopian visions, equal measures of drug-induced compliance and Stasi-style enforcement — with a little Mary Shelley tossed in for good measure…
Huxwell, however, ain’t your father’s totalitarianism. Three primary factors distinguish 21st-century Huxwellian totalitarianism from its 20th-century counterparts:
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Digital scale
Back in the 20th century, Western totalitarianism was confined to specific nations and cultures. Today, however, it engulfs entire continents like North America, Europe, and Australia. Driven by global institutions of immense digital scale and reach, the totalitarian hegemony of Huxwell follows in the imperial footsteps of Western consumer culture: powered over the past two generations by trillions of microchips and thousands of server farms. And unlike Nazi Germany, Huxwell cannot be crushed by external forces because the forces large enough to crush it are all in league with it. -
Rise of the Bureaucrat
Today’s Western totalitarians, at least those emerging now in Western democracies, are less akin to the larger-than-life fascists of the 20th century —like Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao — and more like your Uncle Joe and Aunt Jacinda. Today’s Western totalitarians are career politicians and unelected apparatchiks: dull, nondescript, and wholly unremarkable except in the power they wield and their unquestioning loyalty to the state. The Huxwellian totalitarians of today personify what Hanna Arendt described as the banality of evil. -
The Great Age of Addiction
Back in the 20th century addiction was still the exception to the rule. In the 21st-century rise of Huxwell, addiction is the rule.
Huxwell: the confluence of state-sponsored default addiction and the institutional tyranny of runaway digital scale. Huxwell: the go-to Chief Compliance Officer and Enforcer-in-Chief — all rolled up into one totalitarian mega-state. Huxwell: a monster designed to crush populist political resistance while the ruling elite ransack the joint. Huxwell, the Great Reset come to life…
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Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/22/2023 – 19:00 -
- Sen. Murphy Slams Biden Plan To Commit 'American Blood' To Saudi Arabia
Sen. Murphy Slams Biden Plan To Commit ‘American Blood’ To Saudi Arabia
Among the few influential Congress members to push back against Saudi Arabia and Washington’s decades-long close partnership has been Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut.
This week it was widely reported that as part of US efforts to achieve Saudi-Israel normalization, the White House could strike a new defense pact with Riyadh, which would require American military intervention if Saudi Arabia were to ever come under direct attack.
“Under such an agreement, the United States and Saudi Arabia would generally pledge to provide military support if the other country is attacked in the region or on Saudi territory,” the NY Times reported earlier this week.
AFP via Getty Images The report said, based on a US official, that such an agreement would resemble current military pacts with Japan and South Korea.
Sen. Murphy on the heels of this reporting is warning that the US shouldn’t commit “American blood” to Saudi Arabia.
He posed in a Wednesday CNN interview when discussing US-Saudi relations, “Is this the kind of stable regime that we should commit American blood to defending?”
According to a description of the CNN segment in Responsible Statecraft:
Appearing on CNN, Murphy said that he supported the idea of the Biden administration brokering a deal in the Middle East, saying it would be “good for the United States if there is peace between the Gulf and in particular between Saudi Arabia and Israel,” but questioned the price that Washington is willing to pay to accomplish that objective.
Murphy ticked off a list of human rights abuses that Saudi Arabia has been linked to, specifically the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the recent reported killing of hundreds of migrants crossing over the country’s border with Yemen. Under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s leadership, Saudi Arabia also launched the war on Yemen, which continues to be one of the greatest humanitarian disasters in the world today. In 2018, Murphy was one of the lead co-sponsors of a War Powers resolution that would have ended the United States’ involvement in that war.
And addressing the reports that the Biden administration is pursuing a defense pact with the kingdom, Murphy continued, “I would be very wary of committing the United States, through a treaty, to the defense of Saudi Arabia.”
Various polls continue to show the American public has soured on the historic US-Saudi partnership, which has been based largely on oil and weapons, especially after recent revelations of Riyadh’s involvement in the 9/11 terror attacks.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/22/2023 – 18:40 - Will "Poor Man's Cocaine" Fuel The Next US Drug Crisis?
Will “Poor Man’s Cocaine” Fuel The Next US Drug Crisis?
Authored by Jim Crotty via UnDark.org,
The cheap and highly addictive stimulant Captagon shows signs of following in the opioid fentanyl’s footsteps…
THE OPIOID CRISIS continues to rage across the U.S., but there are some positive, if modest, signs that it may be slowing. Overdose deaths due to opioids are flattening in many places and dropping in others, awareness of the dangers of opioid abuse continues to increase, and more than $50 billion in opioid settlement funds are finally making their way to state and local governments after years of delay. There is still much work to be done, but all public health emergencies eventually subside. Then what?
First, it’s important to realize that synthetic opioids like fentanyl will never fully disappear from the drug supply.
They are too potent, too addictive, and perhaps most importantly, too lucrative. Opioids, like Covid-19, are here to stay, consistently circulating in the community but at more manageable levels.
More alarming is what may take its place. Since 2010, overdoses involving both stimulants and fentanyl have increased 50-fold. Experts suggest this dramatic rise in polysubstance use represents a “fourth wave” in the opioid crisis, but what if it is really the start of a new wave of an emerging stimulant crisis?
Substance abuse tends to move in cycles. Periods with high rates of depressant drug use (like opioids) are almost always followed by ones with high rates of stimulant drug use (like methamphetamine and cocaine), and vice versa. The heroin crisis of the 1960s and 1970s was followed by the crack epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, which gave way to the current opioid epidemic. As the think tank scholar Charles Fain Lehman quipped, “As with fashion, so with drugs — whatever the last generation did, the next generation tends to abhor.” The difference now is the primacy of synthetic drugs — that is, illicit substances created in a lab that are designed to mimic the effects of naturally occurring drugs.
Today, anyone with a few thousand dollars and internet access can find instructions to build their own little drug empire. Look no further than “Breaking Bad,” the hit television series in which a high school chemistry teacher starts cooking high-quality methamphetamine out of an RV to help provide for his family. “Breaking Bad” is of course a work of fiction, but in the age of synthetic drugs, the plotline is not that far-fetched.
Back in the real world, methamphetamine has already become a significant threat. From 2015 to 2019, overdose deaths attributed to methamphetamine nearly tripled, according to a study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a staggering increase driven primarily by its combination with fentanyl. And yet, even with methamphetamine’s use on the rise, it still trails America’s favorite illicit stimulant drug — cocaine — by a significant margin. In the latest National Survey on Drug Use and Health, more than twice as many adults aged 18 or older reported using cocaine over methamphetamine in their lifetime.
Cocaine holds a special place in American pop culture. Long considered a party drug, cocaine has often been associated with celebrities, lawyers, and so-called finance bros, and its sale and use has been romanticized in music, TV, and cinema. The sad reality is that for the year preceding April 2023, more than 27,000 Americans died while using cocaine, according to provisional statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is indeed a hell of a drug.
But its days may be numbered.
The vast majority of cocaine is currently produced in three countries in the world — Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia — primarily due to a favorable climate and a cultural affinity for the coca plant from which cocaine is derived. But what if, instead of being produced in the jungles of South America, cocaine — or something like it — could be manufactured anywhere?
This is not a new idea. In the last decade alone, illicit drug chemists have synthesized more than 1,200 new psychoactive substances, or NPS, also known as designer drugs or research chemicals, in search of a better high. So far, none of these lab-made drugs have threatened to unseat cocaine, but with advances in artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, and biotechnology, it is only a matter of time until some enterprising chemist strikes white gold.
Officials in Europe recently sounded the alarm about counterfeit Captagon, an amphetamine-like drug that produces many of the same physiological effects as cocaine. Often referred to as “poor man’s cocaine,” Captagon is already wildly popular in the Middle East where it sells for as little as $3 per pill and fuels the Gulf states’ party scene.
Captagon is the trade name for fenethylline, a chemical compound related to natural neurotransmitters like dopamine and epinephrine. It was first developed in the 1960s to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, narcolepsy, and depression, but was later banned worldwide due to its high potential for abuse. Although still referred to as Captagon, virtually all the pills seized today are counterfeit and comprised of a hodge-podge of dangerous substances, including fenethylline, amphetamine, methamphetamine, and even caffeine.
In this way, Captagon is a lot like the counterfeit oxycodone pills flooding the U.S. drug market: They are advertised as one drug but contain another. And because they come in pill form, they are more approachable to the average drug consumer, who tend to associate pills with legitimate prescription medications.
While most drug overdose deaths are currently attributed to synthetic opioids like fentanyl, cocaine and methamphetamine carry significant risks of their own. Stimulants place extreme strain on the body’s regulatory and cardiovascular system and increase the risk of heart attack, stroke, or death. And unlike opioids, there is no miracle overdose reversal drug like naloxone — which was recently made available over the counter in the U.S. — or medication-assisted treatments for stimulant use disorders.
Interestingly, late last year the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration did not increase the annual production quotas for several amphetamine-based prescription medications, including Adderall and Ritalin, although drugmakers had raised concerns about ongoing shortages. The agency’s response was due partly to concerns that aggressive marketing of these drugs could spark the next crisis. Recent studies suggest the use of ADHD medication by young adults does not necessarily lead to the use of illicit drugs in the future, but if shortages persist, will users turn to the black market as they did with prescription opioids?
The illicit drug trade is surprisingly regional, and preferences come and go. Just because a substance is popular in one region of the world doesn’t mean it will inevitably become popular in another. But Captagon displays all the hallmarks of the next big thing for the American public. Like fentanyl, it has a natural user base, is cheap and easy to make, and is highly addictive. It also avoids bizarre side effects (such as a notorious case of face-eating and other unusual behaviors) sometimes encountered with NPS.
It is difficult to predict what form the next drug crisis may take, but I believe one thing is certain: There will be another crisis. Early indications and warnings will be essential to identify the next threat and protect health and safety. Public health and law enforcement organizations must improve data collection and monitoring of emerging drug threats through intelligence collection, wastewater analysis, and forensic testing. They must also enhance information sharing and collaboration across the prevention, supply reduction, and treatment continuum. And the U.S. and its partners must act now to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past — before it’s too late.
* * *
Jim Crotty is the former Deputy Chief of Staff at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and a member of the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime’s network of experts. He is currently a Supervisory Criminal Research Specialist with the DC Metropolitan Police Department and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/22/2023 – 18:20 - Democratic Mayor Of Dallas: "American Cities Need Republicans… & I'm Becoming One"
Democratic Mayor Of Dallas: “American Cities Need Republicans… & I’m Becoming One”
While the Democratic Mayor of Dallas says the city has thrived, Eric Johnson writes in a very frank WSJ op-ed that, elsewhere, Democratic policies have exacerbated crime and homelessness.
“The future of America’s great urban centers depends on the willingness of the nation’s mayors to champion law and order and practice fiscal conservatism.
Our cities desperately need the genuine commitment to these principles (as opposed to the inconsistent, poll-driven commitment of many Democrats) that has long been a defining characteristic of the GOP.”
As we have written in detail previously, cities governed by Democrat mayors have seen the largest increases in homicide rates over the past year as well as registered the highest homicide rate per capita in Q1 out of 45 cities, according to a new report.
Homicide rates in 45 of the most populated American cities rose by approximately 10 percent on average between Q1, 2021 and Q1, 2023, and continue to rise, according to an April 26 report by WalletHub. Blue cities were found to have a higher increase in homicide rates compared to red cities. The report designated a city as red or blue based on the mayor’s political affiliation.
The top five cities that saw the greatest increase in per capita homicide are Richmond, Virginia; Memphis, Tennessee; Durham, North Carolina; Garland, Texas; and Washington, D.C.
Except for Garland, where Mayor Scott LeMay is a Republican, the remaining four cities have mayors who are affiliated with the Democratic Party.
The highest homicide rate per capita in the first quarter of 2023 was in Memphis at 14.19 per 100,000 residents. New Orleans, Louisiana, came in second at 12.76, followed by Baltimore, Maryland, with 10.47, St. Louis, Missouri, with 9.91, and Detroit, Michigan, with 8.52.
Excluding St. Louis, the other four cities have mayors affiliated with the Democratic Party. The mayor of St. Louis, Tishaura Jones, was a former Democrat member of the Missouri House of Representatives.
“In other words,” the Dallas Mayor adds:
“American cities need Republicans – and Republicans need American cities.”
And that’s exactly what he does – changing his party affiliation to ‘Republican’, ready to leave office in 2027 as a Republican.
He is able to lift the ‘mask’ and see the problem that troubles so many of America’s cities.
“Unfortunately, many of our cities are in disarray… Most of these local leaders are proud Democrats who view cities as laboratories for liberalism rather than as havens for opportunity and free enterprise.”
Again, he nails it, daring to suggest the unmentionables that we have previously reported, Gregg W. Etter, a professor at the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Central Missouri, blamed the tendency of politicians to seek “simplistic, one-size-fits-all solutions to complex problems” as a reason behind the spike in homicides across the nation.
Politicians offer such solutions to gain favor with political interest groups during elections, he pointed out. For instance, when faced with the issue of police using force in isolated instances, such politicians might support defunding the police rather than dealing with problematic officers.
This ends up resulting in a less-effective police force, higher response times, lower morale among officers, and an “increasing unwillingness” to engage in proactive policing, he said.
“This has left many police forces in a strictly reactive mode, only responding to crimes that have already occurred. In addition, no-cash bail rulings have put many dangerous criminals back onto the streets even though they are arrested several times for violent crimes,” Etter said.
“In cities where these two things are happening, the crime rate has spiked. You have less police officers and more dangerous criminals at large.”
“Too often, local tax dollars are spent on policies that exacerbate homelessness, coddle criminals and make it harder for ordinary people to make a living,” writes Johnson.
“And too many local Democrats insist on virtue signaling – proposing half-baked government programs that aim to solve every single societal ill – and on finding new ways to thumb their noses at Republicans at the state or federal level. Enough. This makes for good headlines, but not for safer, stronger, more vibrant cities.”
He concludes, with a strong suggestion at the ballot box
“…the overwhelming majority of Americans who call our cities home deserve to have real choices—not “progressive” echo chambers—at city hall.”
We can only imagine the anger raging among the leftists as this one man steps up and unleashes the terrible truth about liberal-run urbania. You’re not supposed to say any of that in your out-loud voice.
Is it time for change?
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/22/2023 – 18:00 - Alternate Trump Electors Push Back Against State Racketeering Charges In Federal Court
Alternate Trump Electors Push Back Against State Racketeering Charges In Federal Court
Authored by Matthew Vadum and Jackson Elliott via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Three alternate presidential electors who argue their efforts to support former President Donald Trump in Georgia in the 2020 election were shielded by federal law, urged a federal judge on Sept. 20 not to return state racketeering charges against them to state court.
The federal removal hearing before Judge Steve C. Jones of the Northern District of Georgia is apparently the first test in federal court of alternate electors’ argument that they are immune to state prosecution because they were acting as federal officers. The judge was appointed in 2011 by President Barack Obama.
The evidentiary hearing in Atlanta lasted a little under three hours.
On Sept. 8, Judge Jones rejected the motion of former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to remove the state election interference case against him to federal court. The judge ruled that he lacked jurisdiction to hear the case and found that Mr. Meadows’s “political activities,” such as “working with or working for the Trump campaign,” went beyond “the outer limits of the Office of the White House Chief of Staff.”
Mr. Meadows has asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to review the judge’s decision. His lawyers argued in a brief filed on Sept. 18 that he “is entitled to removal under [the federal officer removal statute] because he has met the threshold for removal, which is low[.]”
President Trump, Mr. Meadows, the three alternate electors, and 14 other co-defendants were indicted (pdf) by a state grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, on Aug. 14 over the former chief executive’s challenge to the election in Georgia.
All the defendants in the case are accused of violating the Georgia RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act from Nov. 4, 2020, which is the day after the presidential election, to Sept. 15, 2022, for their allegedly illegal efforts to challenge the presidential election results in Georgia, a state that President Joe Biden ultimately won—albeit narrowly.
The three alternate electors—David Shafer, Shawn Still, and Cathleen Latham—are all charged with violating the Georgia RICO statute, impersonating a public officer, and criminal attempt to commit filing false documents.
Mr. Shafer is a former Georgia state senator and former chairman of the Georgia Republican Party. He chaired the group of electors that met on Dec. 14, 2020, to cast their votes for President Trump.
Mr. Still is currently a Georgia state senator and used to be finance chairman of the Georgia Republican Party. He was elected in 2022 but was not in office when the electors met in December 2020. He served as secretary of the group of electors.
As the state constitution requires, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) appointed a three-member panel to recommend whether Mr. Still should remain in office despite being indicted. The panel did not recommend the senator’s suspension, the governor’s office said on Sept. 15.
Ms. Latham used to chair the Coffee County Republicans.
In addition, Mr. Shafer and Mr. Still are each charged with two counts of forgery in the first degree; Ms. Latham is charged with one count of forgery in the first degree.
Mr. Shafer is also charged with three counts of false statements and writings; Mr. Still, two counts; and Ms. Latham, one count.
Ms. Latham is also charged with two counts of conspiracy to commit election fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit computer theft, one count of conspiracy to commit computer trespass, one count of conspiracy to commit computer invasion of privacy, and one count of conspiracy to defraud the state.
At the Sept. 20 removal hearing, the presidential electors’ attorneys told Judge Jones that the case should be heard in federal court because electors are, like congressmen, federal officers whose official conduct may not be challenged in state court.
Before the results of any presidential election are certain, both parties appoint electors who are expected to vote for their party’s standard-bearer based on the popular vote in the state. Both sets of electors are federal officers who are entitled to protection under federal law when they are doing their duty, the lawyers argued.
The attorneys likened what happened in the 2020 election in Georgia to what transpired when Republican Richard Nixon challenged the 1960 presidential vote in Hawaii. Eventually, Democrat John F. Kennedy narrowly prevailed after recounts, winning the state’s three electoral votes and becoming president.
But before Congress finalized the state results, Hawaii sent competing slates of Republican and Democrat electors to Congress for official certification. Presiding over the congressional count, then-Vice President Nixon considered both electoral slates but then ruled that the Democrat slate should be accepted and the Republican slate should be rejected.
The 1960 Hawaii Republican electors were not charged with a crime, so the 2020 Georgia Republican electors should also not have been charged with a crime, the lawyers implied.
The 2020 Georgia Republican electors were acting in good faith and were not impersonating electors, they said.
Before the so-called safe harbor date of Dec. 8, 2020, the state handles certification of the electors, but after the safe harbor date, Congress has jurisdiction over the election, the lawyers said.
Mr. Shafer’s attorney, Craig Gillen of the Savannah law firm of Gillen, Withers, and Lake, said the Trump electors did nothing wrong.
“What bothers me is that these three electors have been labeled by the state and implicitly by the media as fake,” he said.
“By federal law, these people were not fake, sham, or impersonators.”
“Both sets of electors were contingent,” he said, adding that the Electoral Count Act of 1887 contemplates states sending multiple slates of electors to Congress for the official counting of the electoral votes.
But after the safe harbor date, “the power is no longer with the state of Georgia—it’s gone back to Congress,” he said.
“You either like Donald Trump or you hate Donald Trump,” and this fact prejudices some people against those in the former president’s orbit, Mr. Gillen added.
Prosecutor Anna Green Cross pushed back, saying the state was “not the least bit interested in the political affiliation of those who committed criminal acts.”
The suggestion that the state is politically motivated in this case is “borderline offensive,” she said.
Moreover, there were attempts to keep the alternate elector meeting “completely under wraps,” Ms. Cross said.
“These private actors did not transform themselves into public electors by a criminal act,” she said.
Mr. Still’s lawyer, Tom Bever of the Atlanta law firm of Smith, Gambrell, and Russell, suggested the charges were absurd.
The electors were charged with casting a ballot, impersonating electors, and forgery of their own signatures, Mr. Bever said.
“There is no question that each of these people became an elector and was appointed an elector in a completely proper manner,” the attorney said.
Mr. Bever said the Trump electors’ meeting was not held in a clandestine manner.
“Literally, the whole world was watching,” he said.
The meeting was attended by attorneys and the media, he said, adding it was “hardly your normal setting of a racketeering act.”
The electors “never dreamed they had done anything wrong,” Mr. Bever said.
Judge Jones concluded the hearing without deciding on the removal motions. It is unclear when he will rule.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/22/2023 – 17:40
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