Today’s News 24th May 2023

• Could Falling Private Jet Demand Be Another Sign Rich Pull Back On Spending Ahead Of Economic Turbulence?
  Could Falling Private Jet Demand Be Another Sign Rich Pull Back On Spending Ahead Of Economic Turbulence?

  A slump in the use of private jets in the US could suggest that wealthy individuals are reducing their spending in response to the rising threat of recession in the next 12 months. 

  Bloomberg data shows private jet flights across the US peaked in early 2022 and have been sliding ever since. Takeoffs and landings fell 4.5% in the first quarter compared with the same quarter last year. The drop accelerated to 9.3% in April compared with an 8.6% decline in March, possibly a sign demand is crumbling. 

  

  With the industry under pressure and capital markets in a volatile state, Flexjet, the second-largest US operator of private jets behind NetJets Inc., was forced to shelve its SPAC last month. 

  Even though private jet demand is still above 2019 levels — many wealthy individuals have yet to return to commercial airlines in a post-pandemic era. Still, with all the new demand, the rich are cutting back in the first half of 2023 as recession risks rise. 

  Some industry insiders welcome the end of the private jet boom that took off during Covid. 

  Kenn Ricci, chairman of Flexjet, told Bloomberg: 

  “Thank God it’s not what it was last year.” He said his company saw annual flight hours jump to 145,000 from 90,000 before the pandemic. 

  Sliding private jet demand comes as recent debit and credit card data published by the Bank of America Institute shows wealthy folks are pulling back on spending. 

  

  Besides waning demand, a recent JPMorgan Chase report showed average asking price for private jets fell 1.2% in March from February to $12.8 million. There’s some easing of prices after the boom over the last few years. Still, the average asking price was 7% above prices from last year due to tight inventory. 

  A combination of wealthy folks reducing private jet flights and pulling back on spending comes as Bloomberg data shows recession probabilities for the next 12 months have reached 100%. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 05/24/2023 – 02:45

• War – NATO Beaten By "A Restaurant Owner & A Bunch Of Convicts"?
  War – NATO Beaten By “A Restaurant Owner & A Bunch Of Convicts”?

  Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

  In Bakhmut/Artyomovsk, all of NATO, all 31 member nations, were defeated by a restaurant owner and a bunch of convicts, is how I saw someone describe it. That of course caricatures the situation somewhat (Wagner is well-organized), but it’s not that far off. And that spells a serious problem for NATO.

  All of those 31 members may have lots of control over their media, but in the end you can’t endlessly deny being defeated.

  

  So what will NATO do now? They will double down, and then again. And at the end of the “doubling down road” lie nuclear weapons. Not Russian nukes, because as my friend Wayne wrote the other day, their high-precision hypersonic missiles make nukes look crude and primitive, Middle Ages territory. But NATO/US never developed such weapons. They spent 10+ times as much money on weapons, still do, and -comparatively – ended up with bows and arrows.

  Nuclear bombs are good only to create widespread panic and destruction. But that includes your own destruction, because of Mutually Assured Destruction protocols. Which also go back almost as far as the bow and arrow. If you fire a nuclear missile, one very much like it will land on your head a few minutes later. End of story, end of you.

  US/NATO, the “collective west”, the hegemon, has lost. And has missed the moment when that occurred. Because hegemon equals hubris. Look at what they’ve all still been saying, and you notice they can’t see, and can’t acknowledge, that -and how- the world has changed. Not just this weekend, and the 9 months before, in Artyomovsk. It’s the entire story of Ukraine: it illustrates how the West “lost it”.

  The US plotted a coup and moved NATO’s borders east, and Russia reacted exactly how they said they would. No nukes, no nazis, no NATO. They got the last two, and know they can expect the first too. But still the west maintains Russia’s special operation was entirely unprovoked. Look, they’re not even listening anymore. They would like to negotiate and end all this, but negotiate about what? Putting AZOV back on the borders of the Donbass, so they can kill more Russians there? Not going to happen.

  It’s not only about weaponry, though that plays a major role: the hegemon can no longer make its demands based on military might. It’s been surpassed.

  Nor can it make demands based on the dollar’s reserve currency status, and it caused that itself. Weaponization of the currency has backfired to the extent that de-dollarization has become a process that can no longer be halted.

  The moment that Saudi prince MbS turned his back on “Joe Biden” is a milestone. Because once he did that, it was obvious many would follow. In central Asia, if you are Kazachstan or Uzbekistan, why on earth would you opt to go with G7/US/NATO instead of BRICS? Why go with the power that is waning, and not the one in ascendancy? Russia is your biggest neighbor, strongly connected to China which is building its BRI network in your region, and the nearby Arab states are about to join that network. Why would you link yourself to the G7? When you know all your neighbors do not?

  Then there are the voices that say the US will push for a bigger and wider war, perhaps including American troops. First, because NATO is losing, and second, because it could mean American boots on the ground, and presidents don’t lose elections in wartime. I’ve said before, I would expect them to go with Polish troops first, possibly on Polish territory too. But the Polish don’t appear all that eager anymore. And neither would any other European NATO country. German and French and Dutch troops are in no shape for war, and in the US over 70% of potential troops are grossly overweight and/or handicapped in some other way.

  Ukraine had perhaps the best boots on the ground force in Europe, financed and trained since 2014 by NATO, and they lost to a caterer and a loose group of hired hands. You’re not going to win that. Your only option is long distance weapons, missiles, planes, you name it. But NATO has no advantage in that over Russia. To put it mildly.

  The sole thing that’s in your favor is that Russia doesn’t seek to destroy you. They want to live in peace and trade with you. Same thing for China. NATO equals unipolar. But the world has moved towards multipolar. Ergo, NATO is obsolete. Ukraine will never reconquer its “lost” territories, and Zelensky will move to some property in Italy or Florida, never to be heard from again, unless perhaps in his obituary. The deaths of some 300,000 of his countrymen will be on his conscience.

  But also on that of all the “leaders” who have sent their second-hand armory to Kiev. They are just as responsible for all those deaths. The world has changed a lot in the past few years, and ignorance is no excuse if you are a “leader”, or a “Joe Biden”. Not even if you’re “just” a voter or reader. Those deaths will be on your head when you go see St. Peter at the gate.

  PS: Don’t be surprised if “Joe Biden” sends US boots on the ground anyway. No hegemon has ever given up power lightly. That part of the road is yours, US and EU voters. You may have to fill up the streets like you’ve never seen. The rest, the majority, of the world will be waiting to see if you do or not. They’re prepared for either of the two options

  *  *  *

  Support the Automatic Earth via Patreon.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 05/24/2023 – 02:00

• COVID Vaccine-Injured Sue Biden Administration Over Censorship
  COVID Vaccine-Injured Sue Biden Administration Over Censorship

  Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  A woman who suffered severe nerve damage after receiving a COVID-19 vaccination and four others with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 vaccine injuries launched a lawsuit against President Joe Biden and his administration on May 22.

  

  Top government officials violated the plaintiffs’ rights to free speech and peaceful assembly when they pressured Big Tech companies to crack down on people sharing their experience after receiving the COVID-19 vaccines, Brianne Dressen, the woman, and the other plaintiffs say.

  “Through threats, pressure, inducement, and coercion, Defendants now work in concert with social media companies to censor content the government deems ‘disinformation,’ ‘misinformation,’ and ‘malinformation’—a feat that the government could never lawfully accomplish alone,” the 124-page suit, filed in U.S. court in southern Texas, states.

  In addition to Biden, defendants include Rob Flaherty, a top adviser to Biden; White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre; the Department of Homeland Security; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy.

  Defendants did not immediately respond to requests for comment, or could not be reached.

  Dressen hailed the lawsuit as a major development for those reporting to be suffering from vaccine injuries.

  “People injured by the COVID vaccines in the United States have not been able to file suit anywhere, under any circumstance,” she told The Epoch Times. “So this is a landmark case for Americans injured by the COVID vaccine.”

  COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers are largely immune from litigation in the United States due to the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act declaration entered by the Trump administration in early 2020. Most other vaccine manufacturers are also shielded from liability under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act.

  Censorship

  The five people who experienced serious problems following vaccination are joined by Ernest Ramirez, whose son died after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine. They’ve repeatedly been censored by platforms like Twitter and Instagram as they tried to  share their stories.

  Ramirez, for instance, saw a GoFundMe that sought to raise funds for him to travel to Washington to share his son’s story taken down. GoFundMe claimed the account was removed for violating conduct the company prohibits. GoFundMe did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

  Another plaintiff, Nikki Holland, meanwhile, posted videos on TikTok regarding her experiences after being vaccinated, including the injuries she suffered. TikTok said the videos violated guidelines such as one against posting “violent and graphic content.”

  “When I really started to share and open up about things, I started to notice that a lot of stuff was being taken down and censored,” Holland told The Epoch Times. “That adds a whole new world of questioning to motive and what’s really going on because … why would you censor something you might need to look into to protect millions of others?”

  TikTok did not immediately return a query.

  The other plaintiffs are Shaun Barcavage, a former nurse who has been on disability leave since suffering medical problems after receiving Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine; Kristi Dobbs, a dental hygienist who suffered “debilitating medical injuries” after a shot of Pfizer’s vaccine; and Suzanna Newell, who is also on disability leave due to problems following vaccination.

  The right to peacefully assemble was also violated when Facebook and other big tech platforms disbanded groups where those with suspected or confirmed adverse reactions following vaccination gathered, according to the suit.

  One Facebook group called “A Wee Sprinkle of Hope” was shut down after a group member posted an infographic of symptoms people have experienced following COVID-19 vaccination and Dressen shared a link to a press conference at which she had shared about her symptoms.

  Facebook’s message to Dressen was that the group violated the company’s “Community Standards on misinformation that could cause physical harm.” Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for an explanation from the group.

  The removal of the groups robbed those suffering injuries after a COVID-19 vaccine of key gathering places for the exchange of information as they sought to figure out how to treat their often-debilitating conditions. Dressen said she is aware of multiple suicides as a result, because the censorship sparked feelings of helplessness amid the suffering.

  The deplatforming was “devastating, especially when you’re being censored and no one’s listening to you,” Holland said.

  Evidence

  Evidence unearthed in an ongoing case against the government, as well as internal Twitter documents, underpin the new case.

  Discovery in Missouri v. Biden litigation, lodged by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana against the Biden administration, has revealed that officials pressured WhatsApp, Facebook, and other technology companies to censor users talking about problems following COVID-19 vaccination, including posts that accurately outlined the lack of evidence for COVID-19 vaccines among certain populations.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 05/24/2023 – 00:05

• Unlike Washington, Americans Are Far From Their Personal 'Debt Ceiling'
  Unlike Washington, Americans Are Far From Their Personal ‘Debt Ceiling’

  When the New York Fed‘s latest Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit revealed that U.S. consumers’ credit card debt had not seen its usual post-holiday-season dip in the first quarter of 2023 all while total consumer debt had risen past $17 trillion for the first time, some reporters rang the alarm bells, saying that Americans were showing signs of financial stress amid high inflation and rising interest rates.

  And while it’s true that delinquency transition rates, i.e. the share of current debt becoming delinquent, increased for the fifth consecutive quarter for most types of credit, delinquency rates are still low, historically speaking, with less than 3 percent of total consumer debt delinquent, i.e. at least 30 days late.

  Moreover, one could argue that the absence of a drop in credit card balances in the first quarter is a sign of robust consumer spending rather than financial stress.

  After all, credit cards are mostly used as a payment method rather than a borrowing method these days.

  

  And lastly, as Statista’s Felix Richter reports, as opposed to their government, Americans are far from reaching their debt ceiling, at least as far as credit cards are concerned.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  With a total credit card balance of $986 billion and a total limit of $4.5 trillion, U.S. consumer actually have $3.5 trillion in untapped available credit on their cards.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/23/2023 – 23:45

• Green Projects Hit Iron Wall
  Green Projects Hit Iron Wall

  Authored by James E. Hanley via RealClear Wire,

  Developers looking to build thousands of wind turbines off the Mid-Atlantic and New England coast are coming up against a force even more relentless than the Atlantic winds: the Iron Law of Megaprojects, offering a warning of the trouble ahead for green-energy projects. 

  

  The Iron Law, coined by Oxford Professor Bent Flyvbjerg, says that “megaprojects” — which cost billions of dollars, take years to complete, and are socially transformative — reliably come in over budget, over time, over and over. 

  From Boston’s Big Dig to California’s high-speed rail to New York’s 12 years-overdue and 300% over-budget East Side Access rail project, big boondoggles routinely demonstrate the validity of the rule. 

  Offshore wind projects are not immune to the Iron Law, regularly experiencing vast cost overruns before a single watt is generated.  

  The New York state government, looking to replace oil- and gas-fired powerplants with hundreds of wind towers off Long Island, set out in 2019 to create an offshore wind supply chain from scratch, beginning with a massive state-funded turbine fabrication facility about 100 miles north of New York City on the Hudson River. 

  Ground still hasn’t even been broken, but the budget certainly has: The price of that Port of Albany facility has already doubled from $350 million to $700 million. An additional $100 million may be needed for equipment costs, raising the final price tag to $800 million. 

  A similar situation is playing out in New London, Connecticut, where a state-funded pier facility being built to support that state’s offshore wind buildout has more than doubled in price from an original estimate of $95 million to $250 million.   

  And in Massachusetts, developer Commonwealth Wind has asked the state to scrap its power purchase guarantees and rebid the project, arguing that inflation and supply chain problems mean the project is not financially viable under its current contracts. 

  Big projects tend to exceed their cost projections for many reasons. One is the unanticipated, and sometimes unprecedented, complexity of these projects. Further uncertainties and costs arise from the challenge of navigating the red tape of the modern regulatory state. In addition, there is the risk of inflation for projects that take years, sometimes decades, to develop. Underlying all these is often a failure to spend enough time on careful planning that treats reality as a fundamental constraint. 

  But sometimes project sponsors may simply worry that accurate cost projections could scare away public support at the outset, and choose to employ what Prof. Flyvbjerg politely calls “strategic misrepresentation.” 

  As former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown said, “If people knew the real cost from the start, nothing would ever be approved. . . . Start digging a hole and make it so big, there’s no alternative to coming up with the money to fill it in.”  

  If that sounds too cynical, note that the current Chair of the Connecticut Port Authority has admitted that when officials first proposed the pier facility, they already knew it would cost more than they were claiming.   

  Ironically, the New York and Connecticut projects aren’t even big enough to be considered megaprojects, and yet even they have run into the Iron Law of being over budget and behind schedule. The challenges won’t diminish with bigger and more ambitious green energy projects. 

  In New York, the state’s huge Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act — of which the Port of Albany project is the first substantial investment — is projected to cost between $270 and $290 billion. At that price it is a gigaproject composed of numerous individual megaprojects. 

  The benefits, mostly in the form of greenhouse gas reductions, are supposed to be up to $415 billion. But if the overall cost of the policy climbs by merely 55 percent, which is in the normal range for megaprojects (and much less than the Port of Albany cost overrun), the costs will exceed the benefits, creating a net loss for New Yorkers.  

  If costs balloon to twice the initial estimates, which is not uncommon, the state stands to spend more than more than a hundred billion dollars more than gained in benefits That would be a loss of over $30,000 per New York household by 2050.  

  And that’s assuming the benefits are as good as promised. It gets even worse if, as is common, the benefits have been overstated.  

  The tale of megaprojects is a cautionary one for the whole country as we attempt to transition away from fossil fuels. Cost estimates for a nationwide transition span from $4.7 trillion to over $60 trillion – almost three times U.S. GDP. Such uncertainty should give us pause for thought before jumping wildly into the financial unknown. 

  If we’re not careful, we may be digging Willie Brown-style holes, and politically and financially we may find ourselves in too deep to ever get ourselves out. 

  James E. Hanley is a Fellow at the Empire Center for Public Policy

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/23/2023 – 23:25

• Pentagon Can't Account For Thousands Of Ultra-Expensive F-35 Parts Globally
  Pentagon Can’t Account For Thousands Of Ultra-Expensive F-35 Parts Globally

  Just three weeks ago Defense News published an extensive investigative report which posed the question in its headline, Lockheed eyes new F-35 parts deal, but can it handle wartime demands? The report introduced: 

  By the end of the year, a new and unusual deal for the F-35 fighter′s spare parts could be in place — one that would flip the current supply model on its head.

  If the proposed performance-based logistics contract works the way F-35 manufacturer Lockheed Martin has promised, it will save the government money, improve the availability of spare parts and give the company greater flexibility on how it assists repairs, such as making it easier to fix a broken part without fabricating a new one.

  Fast-forward to Tuesday, and the congressional watchdog Government Accountability Office (GOA) released a devastating report which reveals the entire question of “saving the government money” to be laughable and way off. 

  

  Bloomberg writes based on the new GOA findings that “The Pentagon can’t account for hundreds of thousands of spare parts worth millions of dollars that are stored worldwide for the US and allies for its costliest weapon, the F-35 jet, according to congressional auditors.” So perhaps the Pentagon should think about simply locating the missing ones first before a giant Lockheed parts overhaul is put into place. 

  Even long before this, going years back, the controversial program to develop the ultra-costly stealth multirole combat aircraft produced periodic headlines like the following in 2020: The Pentagon’s $35 Trillion Accounting Black Hole.

  The fact that the Department of Defense has failed to pass a DOD-wide audit for the fifth consecutive year has compounded the problem which has been months or years in the making, to the tune of millions billions lost – which could eventually add up to a one-and-a-half trillion dollars black hole. 

  This as the GOA report has confirmed the Pentagon’s F-35 program office doesn’t provide oversight for the parts: 

  Unlike scores of GAO reports and other assessments that analyze the fighter jet’s cost, schedule and flying performance, the new audit delved into the more mundane and largely invisible work of supporting the aircraft once it’s delivered to international customers. The operation and support bill for the F-35 may reach an estimated $1.4 trillion through 2088.

  Allies don’t own parts and tap into the Defense Department’s worldwide shared pool of spares, including engines, tires, landing gear and items such as bolts, screws and fasteners. The Pentagon’s F-35 program office doesn’t maintain accountability over the parts, “the total value of which is unknown,” the GAO said.

  It is manufacturer Lockheed Martin which solely “tracks” the records (supposedly), given the Pentagon has been “unable to provide the cost, total quantity, and locations of spare parts in the global spares pool.”

  

  According to the GOA report: 

  The lack of visibility into the inventory “increases the risk of misstatement on DOD’s financial statements and the risk of mismanagement of the F-35 global spares pool,” it said.

  All of this comes the same week that multiple media reports and former top US officials have highlighted that contractor price-gouging is common and routine when it comes to the gargantuan defense budget, at taxpayer’s expense of course. For example, former Pentagon insiders told Newsweek that the Biden administration’s ‘blank check’ approach to Ukraine has resulted in a massive arms flow to Kiev “no matter the expense.” Naturally this has resulted in diminished incentive to engage in serious and timely audits for things like expensive jet parts, and to determine where they are globally. 

  Lockheed continues to be front and center in these whistleblower and former DoD official tell-alls…

  In 2015, Army negotiators discovered that Lockheed Martin and Boeing overcharged the Pentagon and U.S. allies by hundreds of millions of dollars.

  “Is it really any different than not giving a Marine enough bullets to put in his clip?” said Shay Assad. https://t.co/ABmphmYzjz pic.twitter.com/snehFTHNwi

  — 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) May 21, 2023

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

  Meanwhile, the US continues to modernize its fleet of fighter jets and strategically place them in key US allies, such as Germany, Japan, and South Korea, creating a ‘friends circle’ of fifth-generation fighters around Russia and China.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/23/2023 – 23:05

• What A US Default Would Mean For The Repo Market
  What A US Default Would Mean For The Repo Market

  Two weeks ago we published a lengthy report looking at the hypothetical consequences of a US default – including “Clearinghouse Collapse And Shockwave Of Catastrophic Treasury Margin Calls” – which again are purely hypothetical: as we first said last week…

  As a reminder, the US can not default: tax receipts are more than enough to cover debt maturities and interest. Those 25 million govt/deep state workers and Ukraine wire transfers may not be so lucky though.

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 16, 2023

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

  … and as Stifel’s Brian Gardner confirmed just a few days later…

  Federal revenues cover only 75 percent of outlays so at some point, without an increase in the debt limit, Treasury will be unable to pay all of the government’s bills.  It seems clear that Treasury will prioritize the payment of principal and interest on U.S. Treasuries, so the chances of a default on Treasuries is remote.  Also, it is unfathomable that the government would not pay Social Security recipients or meet payroll of the American military. On any given day, however, Treasury would likely have to delay payments of some obligations. Depending on who the creditor is (a government contractor, veterans’ benefits, other social safety net payments, etc.), delayed payments would likely increase political pressure which would, in turn, increase the chances of reaching a debt ceiling deal, but would also be accompanied by some economic disruption and possibly a downgrade in the credit rating of U.S. government debt. 

  … because despite all the posturing, the US can and will prioritize debt and interest payments and avoid a technical default, even if it means that some 20 million deep state bureaucrats go unpaid for a week or two.

  But since we are dealing with hypotheticals, below is a quick snapshot courtesy of Curvature Securities’ analyst Scott Skyrm who looks at what the impact of a US default (again, purely hypotehtical) would be on the repo market.

  As Skyrm explains, in the Repo market, the debt ceiling dynamics boils down to the fact that no cash investor wants to hold a defaulted Treasury as collateral. As a result, cash investors will pull their cash from the market as the drop-dead date approaches, which according to Janet Yellen may be as soon as June 1, for the simple reason that there is a massive $80 billion net cash outflow from the Treasury on that day, one which tips the cash balance into the red.

  

  Going back to the repo market, ahead of a potential X-Date, cash investors who pull their money from the repo market will move to the fed funds market or into Money Market Funds. Even more cash will then flow into the Fed’s RRP facility, sucking up liquidity from the market.

  When cash leaves the Repo market, there will be a spike in funding pressure, and overnight rates could move to the top of the target range – trading around 5.25%-5.30%.

  

  While not there yet, Skyrm observes that the Repo market is starting to feel the effects of cash leaving. Term GC bids are thin and rates continue to tick higher each day.

  Meanwhile, no one will accept short-dated bill collateral for term trades. This is why there is now a record, gaping chasm between Bills maturing on May 30, and those maturing just 48 hours later, on June 1 (or, rather, not maturing).

  

  Also, customers have sold so much term collateral though June, July, and August that there are few bids left and they’re all substantially higher than just a few days ago.

  Yet, curiously, given the technical default issues with early June bills, one would think they would have substantial shorts. That’s not the case, despite the unprecedented divergence in May vs June bills. In fact, all of the early June bills are trading between 5 and 10 basis points below GC.

  Then, of course, who is willing to short-sell bills trading between 50 and 100 basis points above GC?  What happens if you are right, and the US does default. Good luck getting paid on your shorts…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/23/2023 – 22:45

• University Of California Moves Toward Hiring Illegal Immigrants In Violation Of Federal Law
  University Of California Moves Toward Hiring Illegal Immigrants In Violation Of Federal Law

  The University of California (UC) system is working towards providing jobs to illegal immigrants despite a federal law banning the practice.

  

  In a Thursday statement by UC President Michael Drake and Board of Regents Chair Richard Leib, the university system announced the appointment of a working group that will consider relevant issues to providing employment opportunities to all students regardless of immigration status. By November, the group is expected to have developed an implementation plan and legal strategy which will include the next steps.

  “The University is committed to ensuring that all students, regardless of their immigration status, can pursue and attain a world-class UC education,” reads the statement. “This should include providing enriching student employment opportunities to all students.“

  According to The Hill, “The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 established civil and criminal penalties for employers who knowingly hire undocumented immigrants and those not authorized to work in the United States. “

  Yet, the LA Times reports that UCLA legal scholars have a theory that the law does not specifically apply to states and state entities such as UC.

  According to Regent John Perez, the UC will need time to figure out how to implement the plan, telling the Times “this is too important to get wrong.”

  But the university could face legal action over its plan and has been considering any potential public backlash it would receive and the legal risk for faculty and staff who hire the students. 

  Rep. Darrel Issa (R-Calif.) wrote a letter to California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) earlier this week to warn against the plan, arguing that the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that federal immigration law tops state or local laws. He said the plan could cause UC to lose federal funding and hurt its students. -The Hill

  There are around 44,000 students not covered by DACA who attend college in California, of which around 4,000 attend UC, according to the Times. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/23/2023 – 22:25

• Parents Sue Elite Schools For 'Indoctrinating' Their Kids With DEI 'Bait And Switch'
  Parents Sue Elite Schools For ‘Indoctrinating’ Their Kids With DEI ‘Bait And Switch’

  Angry parents are suing elite private schools for ‘indoctrinating’ their children with so-called ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ (DEI), Bloomberg reports.

  

  Following the murder of George Floyd, the $50,000 per year Brentwood School in Los Angeles announced that it was reimagining its purpose “with an eye toward anti-racism” and DEI. Parent Jerome Eisenberg, whose daughter attends the school, called it a “bait and switch” on parents – suing the school last year for breach of contract, civil rights violations and emotional distress.

  “The curriculum change shifted away from teaching students critical thinking skills — how to think — and started indoctrinating them into what to think, based on Brentwood’s preferred political fad of the moment,” reads Eisenberg’s lawsuit – which entered private arbitration in November.

  The issue – which has become a major point of contention in red states such as Florida, where governor Ron DeSantis (R) has fought to ban DEI in public schools – has now become a nationwide effort by concerned parents to protect their children from what they see as a racist education that makes white students a lifelong target, and uses historical revisionism to sow seeds of division.

  “There is an increased appetite for parents using the legal process to fight for their kids in a way that just wasn’t as prevalent before,” said attorney Sara Goldsmith Schwartz of Massachusetts-based Schwartz Hannum PC – which frequently represents private schools.

  Eisenberg’s lawyer, David Pivtorak, says he believes that legal complaints over DEI in schools have increased, and that the actual number may be understated due to arbitration clauses such as the one at Brentwood.

  According to the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, the legal battles are painting a “misleading” picture about DEI.

  “The majority of parents want their children to attend a school that is diverse and inclusive,” said Jin Hee Lee, director of strategic initiatives. “and the majority of Americans understand that we have a very tragic legacy of slavery and Jim Crow and racial subjugation that we’re still dealing with in this country.”

  Parents who oppose DEI in private face an uphill battle. While parents whose kids go to public school can argue that the government is infringing on their 1st Amendment rights, those with kids attending private schools largely waive those rights.

  “Private schools are bound by their own policies and not the US Constitution,” according to law professor Jennifer Rippner of Indiana University.

  When parents do sue private schools, it’s usually for breach of contract, according to New Hampshire education lawyer Linda Johnson, who represents independent schools and consults with them on managing their legal risk. The process sometimes starts off with “a 10-page, single-space letter addressing everything that the parent thought the school did wrong to try to justify a repayment of tuition,” she said.

  Many of the disputes arise out of school disciplinary action, Johnson said. In the current environment, that can have political overtones. -Bloomberg

  At Manhattan’s $60,000 per year Spence School, parents Adam and Michelle Parker sued in 2019 over disciplining their daughter for posting a text exchange on Instagram in which they joked about dressing up as slaves and indigenous people for Halloween. Her punishment was a half-day “in-home- reflection,” while the school held several grade-wide assemblies to shame the girl for what she had done.

  The Parkers say their daughter was mocking racists, not promoting racism, and that Spence disciplined her before even seeing the post. In doing so, they claim that the school perpetuated a “false narrative” and “had gotten it wrong” – in addition to failing to convene a “community standards committee” as stipulated in their enrollment contract.

  While the suit was dismissed in 2020, a New York appeals court revived a breach-of-contract claim.

  According to Johnson, the education lawyer, suits which focus on narrow claims of unequal or arbitrary discipline against private school have the highest chances of success. If the school’s handbook lays out guidelines for infractions but doesn’t include a disclaimer to the effect of “we maintain the flexibility to handle them the way we think is necessary under the circumstances,” the school may face legal peril, she said.

  That said, parents of kids attending elite schools will have a hard time challenging curricula, according to Philadelphia-based education lawyer, Steven Ludwig.

  “If a person doesn’t like what is being taught, they can go somewhere else.”

  Except, as Bloomberg notes, that’s not always so easy.

  Private schools that have embraced DEI are frequently also those with the strongest academic reputations and the best records of placing graduates in Ivy League and other elite colleges — which themselves have been criticized as bastions of wokeness. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a noted anti-DEI crusader, was called out for hypocrisy when it emerged that he sent his daughters to a Houston prep school that teaches DEI.

  Former investment banker Andrew Gutmann caused a stir two years ago when he wrote a letter to other parents at Manhattan’s Brearley School urging them to reject Brearley’s “obsession with race” and saying he was pulling his daughter, Lauren, from the top-ranked school, where tuition is about $60,000. 

  Brearley head Jane Fried shot out an email calling the letter “deeply offensive and harmful” and reaffirming the school’s commitment to being “inclusive” and “antiracist.”

  In an interview, Gutmann said his family wasn’t “looking for a conservative education,” but they “just want what anybody would’ve used to call a traditional liberal arts education.”

  

  Since withdrawing his daughter from Brearley, Gutmann said it’s been “nearly impossible” to find a school that is both academically rigorous and not “politicized.” After looking at private schools in New Jersey and Florida, he opted to home school – and will be sending her to a UK boarding school in the fall.

  Now, Gutmann is running as a Republican in Florida’s 22nd congressional district, which includes former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. His campaign announcement begins with his letter to Brearley.

  “My words were read by millions of people across America, and they helped ignite what we now call the parents’ movement and the fight against woke education,” said Gutmann, who called out his allies in the fight against DEI – including Florida-based rights group, Moms for Liberty, which has been at the forefront of efforts to ban DEI-based books and influence school boards in favor of conservatives.

  According to McGovern, the attorney, “Every school across America, and in many ways around the world, is dealing with this increased polarization.“

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/23/2023 – 21:45

• "Once Again The Apparently Unthinkable Becomes The Inevitable"
  “Once Again The Apparently Unthinkable Becomes The Inevitable”

  By Michael Every of Rabobank

  Prepare To Be Buffetted

  Today’s Daily is not about Warren Buffet but geopolitics’ impact on markets, analogized with a buffet.

  Dig into this: the G7 took us a step towards decoupling: they say “de-risking”, but it’s same thing. This is ‘not about keeping China down, but lifting the Global South up’ by diversifying strategic imports and exports. But: (i) who can say what’s a strategic when little things can be – for want of a nail, as they say; (ii) friendshoring will still find China supplying key inputs to other EM, and the impetus will be to move the whole supply chain, upstream to downstream; and (iii) diversification means zero-sum math – import more from one country, you import less from others, ceteris paribus, and export less to one country, you export more to others. Yes, the G7 can friendshore and China still be better off… but only if it shifts to consumption, services, and imports rather than production, manufacturing, and exports. Which it won’t/can’t.

  If Chinese consumers had a CNY every time they were told they will drive growth, they would be driving it. Yet Xi says China’s focus is on supply chains and key industries, not real estate, services, and finance; and those “lying flat” must get married and/or go to the countryside. That economic model means investment/exports >consumption/imports, and it can’t be a win-win – it’s mercantilism. It’s like tourists at a hotel buffet who only take plates of shrimp, no carbs, soup, or veggies, and the restaurant owner isn’t allowed to go to a Chinese hotel and reciprocate at their buffet. As a result, we rapidly end up with different restaurants for different clientele.

  Yes, China’s development model was previously used by the West, who gorged at the global buffet before being into DEI – while still not sharing any shrimp, or vaccines. But history shows that system always ends up in a food-fight, literally. It doesn’t matter if President Biden wants to dial back (“Biden Sees Coming Thaw with China, Even as He Rallies Allies Against Beijing”): the mercantilist dynamic won’t allow it. If the US says, “Beat you to the shrimp!” and China that “the international community does not and will not accept the G7-dominated Western rules that seek to divide the world based on ideologies and values,” while calling UK PM Sunak a “US eunuch”, things only get nastier.

  Yes, a Bloomberg op-ed from Niall Ferguson argues the US should use détente to buy time to rearm and reshore. Yet if China knows the US needs time, why not act? Note that it banned Micron from the US for security reasons just after Biden’s olive branch. Expect more of that when China’s Commerce minister meets USTR Tai this week, who will say, “People who only take shrimp have shellfish habits.”

  “It’s not rational for China to escalate,” say voices shocked at The Wall Street Journal noting “China’s Xi Mimics Mao’s Crisis Response in Sweeping Indoctrination Drive” and the Guardian saying, “China crackdown on business has Maoist roots.” The same article quotes a professor of Chinese management at Cambridge University saying the recent crackdown on consultants, etc., lies in CCP ideology, and one must “dig into the Maoist roots in Chinese institutions and political economy to try to understand ideas that Xi has””. That’s what I wrote in 2021’s ‘Pro-Fund or Profound Revolution?’. The CEOs and Wall Street asset managers who still don’t do so have perhaps eaten so much shrimp they now think like one.

  And China can escalate in lots of different ways.

  Ironically, it could even buffet the US ahead with big fiscal stimulus for its stale economy, boosting Western commodity inflation on top of that from its re/friend-shoring into the 2024 election. Who knows if that is on the menu ahead, but Beijing is trying to cook up imported commodities paid in CNY via PBOC swaps, which would give it more room to do so. Yes, CNY would likely slump on the extra policy loosening –which would also be an attempt to push out more exports– and US tariffs, and rates, would rise in tandem. The Fed’s Bullard and Kashkari will both back that move for sure, seeing as one talked of two more rate hikes this year yesterday, and the other that a June pause shouldn’t mean an end to policy tightening. Daly was more cautious, as was Bostic, while Barkin is on the fence.

  We can also expect crabby moves from the US Congress, which is not pro détente.  Recent testimony there from former USTR Lighthizer shows how sentiment has shifted on Capitol Hill: “Since 2001, we have directly transferred more than $6 trillion to China through our annual trade deficits…During the Cold War with the Soviet Union, it would have been inconceivable for the US to allow such a massive wealth transfer to happen,” from the guy supposed to be pro trade, and, even more bluntly, “When I’ve talked to someone who doesn’t believe they’re such a serious threat I’m always like, ‘Oh, you must have some investments over there – I get it.” US CEOs or asset managers with China investments must be shifting uncomfortably in their seats, and not just because the Shanghai stock exchange has only returned 4% over the last five years of ‘buy now!’ sell-side notes: indeed, they fear ‘The China Hawk in Washington Rattling Corporate Boardrooms’.

  Of course, it hardly needs saying that the US and G7 are not up for détente with Russia. National Security Advisor Sullivan just stated it’s okay for Ukraine to use Western missiles to attack Crimea, because that’s not part of Russia, and President Biden signed off on F-16s for Kyiv: once again the apparently unthinkable becomes the inevitable, and at scale given the number of F-16s available. Note that as Australia is experimenting with a 4-day week(!), Russia may go to 6!

  So, the unsavory dish today is the warning not to buy geopolitical ‘risk-on’ fairy tales. The inedible item left at the far end of buffet, to be recycled into a pasta bake by Friday, is that this matters for inflation and rates to the upside, or a lack of downside.

  Help yourself, if so.

  And now, for those who think politics doesn’t impact on markets, back to the drama of the US debt ceiling – which also makes my point. As does that Warren Buffet sold his shares in Taiwan’s TSMC on perceived fat geopolitical tail risks; The Times alleges national politics influenced LIBOR lower; and it is again made clear that the Pentagon was watching SVB all the way.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/23/2023 – 21:25

• What If AI Ultimately Creates Many More Jobs Than It Destroys
  What If AI Ultimately Creates Many More Jobs Than It Destroys

  Two months ago, Goldman sparked uproar across Wall Street when the bank forecast that the AI revolution could lead to as many as 300 million highly skilled (or at least not menial labor) layoffs across the US and Europe and predicted that some 18% of global work could be automated with AI…

  

  … with the biggest impact falling on legal and admin jobs, with social science and architects and engineers also in danger of being made obsolete (much more in the full Goldman note available here to pro subs).

  

  Goldman’s back of the envelope calculation inspired none other than hedge fund legend Steve “expert networks” Cohen to predict that the market is going up as a result of the margin boost that AI-driven layoffs will unleash.

  As Bloomberg reported, the billionaire added that he’s worried about the “types of jobs that will be displaced,” but more broadly, he expects profit margins to improve, which would reduce pressure on the Federal Reserve to curb inflation with additional interest rate hikes. This would, in turn, boost markets, he said. Of course, “boosting profit margins” is a polite way of saying mass layoffs are coming.

  Cohen joined other hedge fund managers who have expressed enthusiasm for AI. Stan Druckenmiller and Lee Ainslie both took positions in chipmaker Nvidia a beneficiary of the AI boom, during the first quarter, in anticipation of even more AI-driven upside .

  “AI is very, very real and could be every bit as impactful as the internet,” Druckenmiller said last week at the 2023 Sohn Investment Conference.

  But what if this growing consensus is wrong, and what if AI ends up creating more jobs than it destroys?

  That’s the argument made by Deutsche Bank head of global research Jim Reid, who has written a lengthy report explaining why “History suggests AI will ultimately create not destroy jobs” (and available to pro subs ).

  As Reid reminds us, there is a long history of resistance to technology. As far back as 1589, Queen Elizabeth I of England refused to grant the inventor of a mechanical knitting machine a patent lest it put manual knitters out of work. Such concerns were accelerated by the arrival of the Industrial Revolution. In 1772, Thomas Mortimer wrote how machines would “exclude the labor of thousands of the human race, who are usefully employed”. Famously, in the early 19th century a group of English textile workers known as the Luddites destroyed machinery, in part because of fears it would take their jobs away (they were right). Similar narratives have subsequently resurfaced on the eve of every major technological breakthrough.

  However, Reid argues that history tells us that technology does not create unemployment, at least not in the long term. He illustrates this by looking at long-term unemployment data, using the median of the G7 countries. It shows that unemployment has oscillated based on economic cycles, rather than any technological waves. In fact, today’s median G7 unemployment rate of 3.8% is beneath the 5% UK rate at the start of the series in 1755.

  

  “So even though virtually all of the jobs of 1755 no longer exist, the automation of different tasks did not lead to an ever-increasing spiral of unemployment” Reid argues and concludes that “technology has always created the wealth and time to free up labor for alternative more productive employment and created industries and jobs we never knew we needed at the time.”

  While this is correct, what Reid’s analysis ignores is the social upheaval and short-term spikes in unemployment after any major new technological shift. Indeed, what his charts omits is the countless wars since 1755: maybe his unemployment rate is so low because it counts all the mass mobilization and army units as employed workers (it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch: after all the Biden admin counts a record number of multiple jobholders as individual workers, allowing the admin to benefit from a record low unemployment rate). That said, there is a tongue-in-cheek admission that not all may be as rosy as represented when Reid says that “it is no coincidence that unemployment is associated with various negative health outcomes.” Like war?

  We are curious to see just how far the current social safety net – whether in the US or China – will stretch when there is a sudden spike in unemployment, and how many of the democrat-controlled coastal cities will burn down when millions of people suddenly find themselves without a job (even if eventually AI will result in potentially better jobs for most, albeit with a lot of retraining).

  Could this time be different? Reid concedes that “there are obvious arguments why it might be given the speed of possible adoption of AI and the type of jobs it could put at risk” which are critical caveats: after all, if it takes 5 years to retrain someone to find gainful employment in an AI world, it’s the same as an unemployment shock; and in this economy in which virtually nobody has any idea how to deal with a lengthy stretch of unemployment, we doubt the ending would be happy.

  Still, Reid is optimistic and concludes that “even if there are short-term disruptions to labor markets, we desperately need the productivity-boosting potential that AI brings. In turn this will soon likely create more opportunity, jobs and wealth for society.”

  We are confident that the Steve Cohens and CEOs of the world agree, even if those 300 million workers who are about to be made obsolete may have second thoughts.

  Much more in DB’s full note available here to pro subs.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/23/2023 – 21:05

• Hopkins: The War On Reality (Revisited)
  Hopkins: The War On Reality (Revisited)

  Authored by CJ Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

  Reality isn’t what it used to be. It never really was, but that’s another story. This one isn’t about reality per se. It’s about the War on Reality, the one we’re in the middle of, the war that started when the War on Terror was cancelled in the Summer of 2016. It’s actually an extension and an evolution of the War on Terror, and the War on Populism, and the rollout of the New Normal in 2020 … but that is also another story. I want to focus on the war that is raging currently, on the Internet, in people’s workplaces, homes, among friends and families, and in people’s heads. I’m pretty sure you know the war I’m talking about, regardless of which “side” you feel you are on.

  

  The War on Reality is a civil war, but it is much more than just a civil war. It is an asymmetrical, polymorphous, metastatic, multiplicitous war. An ontological free-for-all. It has no conventions or rules of engagement. There are no battle lines. The battle is everywhere. Alliances shift from day to day. It is chaos, unrelenting, inescapable chaos. An omnipresent, immaterial, omnipotent organism attacking itself. It is continual, and completely unwinnable. It is unwinnable because it has already been won. It ended in victory the moment it began, and now we’re doomed to go on fighting it forever, or until some less ethereal leviathan is born, or reborn, out of its ashes.

  Unfortunately, that’s rather likely, the less ethereal leviathan scenario. It may not come about in my lifetime — and, selfishly, I’m hoping it doesn’t — but this state of affairs cannot continue indefinitely. As I wrote in an essay in June of 2021 …

  “The global capitalist ruling classes are implementing a new official ideology, in other words, a new ‘reality.’ That’s what an official ideology is. It’s more than just a set of beliefs. Anyone can have any beliefs they want. Your personal beliefs do not constitute ‘reality.’ In order to make your beliefs ‘reality,’ you need to have the power to impose them on society. You need the power of the police, the military, the media, scientific ‘experts,’ academia, the culture industry, the entire ideology-manufacturing machine. There is nothing subtle about this process. Decommissioning one ‘reality’ and replacing it with another is a brutal business. Societies grow accustomed to their ‘realities.’ We do not surrender them willingly or easily. Normally, what’s required to get us to do so is a crisis, a war, a state of emergency, or … you know, a deadly global pandemic. During the changeover from the old ‘reality’ to the new ‘reality,’ the society is torn apart. The old ‘reality’ is being disassembled and the new one has not yet taken its place. It feels like madness, and, in a way, it is. For a time, the society is split in two, as the two ‘realities’ battle it out for dominance. ‘Reality’ being what it is (i.e., monolithic), this is a fight to the death. In the end, only one ‘reality’ can prevail.”

  I wrote that almost two years ago, in the relative calm before the storm of fascistic, hate-drunk mass hysteria and systematic official persecution that was unleashed on “the Unvaccinated” in the months that followed. If your memory of 2021 is hazy, my year-end column, The Year of the New Normal Fascist, or this video compilation by Matt Orfalea might help sharpen it back up. Since then, the madness of the reality-changeover in progress has intensified, albeit somewhat more subtly … or at least Keith Olbermann is not shrieking hatred like a meth-addled Goebbels.

  GloboCap, Inc. and its innumerable subsidiaries, agents, assigns, political puppets, media goons, and other loyal minions are desperately endeavoring to enshrine the official Covid-19 narrative in the annals of “history.” According to new figures from the WHO, “almost 15 million excess deaths” (or “a total of 336.8 million lost life-years”) had been caused by the virus by the end of 2021, none of which had anything to do with ventilators, or the classification of anyone who died of anything (i.e., cancer, heart disease, an auto accident, etc.) who had also tested positive as a “Covid death.” Previously perfectly healthy young people are dropping dead left and right from heart attacks and other “natural” (or “undisclosed”) causes that have nothing to do with the experimental “vaccines” that they did not need but were coerced into taking, which saved millions or 100 million lives. The masks that didn’t work worked, except that they didn’t, but that was only if you studied how they worked in reality. Being locked down, forced to wear medical-looking masks, gaslighted and terrorized by official propaganda, bullied, segregated, censored, demonized, and otherwise systematically tortured, was actually good for people’s mental health, except for “people with existing mental health conditions, and children, and people with disabilities, and adolescents, and people without financial or social security nets.”

  Meanwhile, cognitively dissonant New Normals are taking to the Internet to claim that no one knew better at the time, and that, OK, sure, “mistakes were made,” but if we “science-denying conspiracy theorists,” who they censored, demonized, and systematically persecuted for over two years, had just spoken up …

  We did tell you so in 2020, asshole. You demonized us, censored us, segregated us, got us fired from our jobs, sent in the goon squads to beat us and arrest us when we protested, shut down our bank accounts to punish us, and so on. It’s all documented in books like this … https://t.co/baE9Ck8197 pic.twitter.com/k55SLJ0uDP

  — Consent Factory (@consent_factory) May 19, 2023

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

  I could go on, but you get the picture … or, rather, you either do or you don’t. Because it’s not just the folks at GloboCap, Inc. that are fanatically waging this War on Reality. Everybody and their brother is trying to ram their “reality” down everyone’s throat. You got the “Viruses Do Not Exist” people. You got the “There Are No Neo-Nazis in Ukraine” people. The “Putin Is Our Savior” people. The Vote Blue Cult. The Multipolar people. The Transgendered People’s Army. The Doomsday Clock Hucksters. The Folks Who Still Listen to NPR. The Insurrection Truthers. The Insurrection Deniers. The 9/11 Truthers. The Moon-Landing Truthers. The Cult of Trump. The Church of Russiagate. The Rothschild Obsessives. The Anti-Racism Racists. The Anti-Anti-Semitism Anti-Semites. The Mass Formation Movement. The Cult of Marx. The Cult of Capital. The Climate Change Fanatics. The Musk Cult. The list goes on and on.

  Historically, we humans have not done very well in such psychotic ontological environments. When “reality” is shattered into a thousand little shards, and things fall apart, and the center does not hold, we tend to get rather scared, and confused, and agitated. We start to panic. We try to put “reality” back together again. This does not work. This worsens our panic. We start looking around for a new “reality.” We start looking for a savior, a leader, a Führer, someone with a vision, and the will, and the power, to impose a new “reality” on the ontological chaos that is making us so confused and agitated, and scared, and angry, and restore some sense of ideological cohesion so that we don’t have to think about “reality” on a moment-by-moment basis anymore.

  This is the time of dime-store messiahs, tinpot tyrants, zealots, gurus, hustlers, hosers, scam artists, quacks, snake oil salesmen of every variety, fanatical revolutionary movements, new religions and political parties, and so on. Typically, eventually, once the hapless masses have been repeatedly duped, and bilked, and betrayed, and gaslighted and humiliated to the point where they can’t even think anymore, literally cannot think because their brains are broken, and they just want someone to make it all stop … well, to rephrase an old Buddhist platitude, “when the masses are ready, the despot will appear.”

  I think you know how this story ends.

  The fascinating thing is, GloboCap, Inc. (i.e., global capitalism, corporatism, or whatever you need to call the supranational network of global corporations, governments, banks, military contractors, media and entertainment conglomerates, pharmaceutical behemoths, assorted oligarchs, non-governmental governing entities, etc., that are currently running the world) cannot afford to let that happen, and is tirelessly working to prevent that from happening.

  Traditional (i.e., 20th Century) totalitarianism does not work for GloboCap, Inc. Capitalism, though it can adapt to anything, has never been inherently inclined toward fascism or any other form of totalitarianism. Totalitarianism is a value-coding machine. Its objective is to completely code society with its values, its official ideology (i.e., “reality”). Every aspect of society, not just politics, culture, and so on, but the most intimate aspects of people’s lives.

  Capitalism is a value-decoding machine. Its objective is to completely decode society of any values that impede the free flows of capital, rendering everything and everyone a de facto commodity, transforming societies into markets. It can adapt to totalitarianism and other varieties of despotism when necessary, but left to its own devices, or … you know, granted dominion over the entire Earth, and every creeping thing that creeps upon it, it sets about decoding and destabilizing values, destabilizing value and meaning itself, until, ultimately, everything means anything, or nothing, or whatever the market determines it means or is worth at any given moment.

  The point is, the ongoing War on Reality is not a means to an end. It is the end. The official ideology (i.e., “reality”) that GloboCap, Inc. is implementing is not a set of official values or beliefs. It is the absence of any values or beliefs, any non-commodifiable values and beliefs. Values and beliefs are fine, as long as they’re just empty signs, logos, meaningless identity statements, and not principles and beliefs you are trying to live by, and that you are crazy enough to fight to preserve. Those kind of values have to go, so that the people of the New Normal future can be free to believe that war is peace, ignorance is strength, two plus two equals five, men have periods, Donald Trump is a Russian secret agent and literally Hitler, Vladimir Putin (who is also literally Hitler) invaded Ukraine for no reason whatsoever, or certainly not because of anything to do with GloboCap, Inc., or NATO, or the non-existent Ukrainian neo-Nazis, and then destroyed his own pipelines in the Baltic Sea, or whatever blatantly ridiculous nonsense they (i.e., the people of the New Normal future) are told to pretend or to actually believe by Rachel Maddow and the other talking heads you saw in Orfalea’s video.

  And, if that doesn’t sound like your kind of future, or reality, the “everything is a floating signifier” reality … no worries, you can always drop out of the “mainstream” and join the carnival of “conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, Covid deniers, Russiagate deniers, climate change deniers, disinformationists, malinformationists, transphobes, white supremacists, violent domestic extremists,” and assorted other freaks and curiosities of nature that are actively being quarantined, or are quarantining themselves, in ideological ghettos where normal consumers never have to see them and they (i.e., we, the deviants and freaks) are preyed upon by legions of charlatans, demagogues, agents provocateurs, and other such spiritual and emotional parasites, until the day comes when we find ourselves spastically tweeting about an 86-year-old Chomsky chasing naked sex slaves around Epstein’s island, ripped to the gills on Viagra and Ecstasy, and probably freshly harvested adrenochrome!

  That, or you could withdraw from society completely, and go live in a Kaczynski cabin in Montana, or Idaho, or wherever folks are doing that these days, as several of my readers advised me recently, and forage for berries, and barbecue squirrels, and, well, you know, defecate in a hole in the ground.

  I’m sorry, I realize that all sounds pretty bleak. I guess I’m in a bleak mood these days, or running short on passionate intensity … or something. There’s no shortage of passionate intensity out there, if that’s what you are looking for. Don’t let me stop you. It’s just that, whenever I switch it off for a while, that passionate intensity, that howling maelstrom of warring realities, and listen closely, I hear the slouch of Yeats’s rough beast, whose hour, apparently, is coming round again.

  I’m not sure which “side” it is slouching our way from, but probably that doesn’t matter.

  Oh well … as the French say, plus ça change, and so on.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/23/2023 – 20:45

• TikTok Sues Montana Over Ban
  TikTok Sues Montana Over Ban

  TikTok has filed a lawsuit against the Montana, after state legislators banned the Chinese-owned short-video app.

  

  According to the company, the ban, which will begin on Jan. 1, 2024, infringes on the First Amendment rights of the company and its users.

  TikTok argues that the ban violates federal law, as it encroaches on matters exclusively under federal jurisdiction – in particular, that the US Constitution “vests exclusive authority” over foreign affairs and national security to the US government, not individual states.

  Filed in the US District Court in Montana, the company also claims in its lawsuit that the ban violates the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution, which restricts legislation that excessively burdens foreign and interstate commerce.

  Montana is the first U.S. state to attempt to ban TikTok for all users. In 2020, former President Donald Trump sought to prevent new downloads of TikTok and the Chinese-owned messaging app WeChat, along with other transactions involving these companies. However, court rulings prevented these bans from being implemented effectively.

  TikTok further argues that the state’s ban specifically targets and penalizes TikTok without justifiable reasons, highlighting that it is solely based on punitive grounds. They assert that the state’s concerns regarding TikTok’s data security and content moderation practices are speculative and unsupported.

  From the first day of 2024, unless defeated, the ban will mean that anyone living in or visiting Montana will face stiff penalties of up to $10,000 per day if they access TikTok. –Epoch Times

  The social media app has a base of more than 150 million Americans, the majority of whom are adults. That said, the app’s popularity among teenagers is significant – with 67% of US teenagers between 13 and 17 years old using the app. 16% of them use it almost constantly.

  In its lawsuit, TikTok argues that Montana “has enacted these extraordinary and unprecedented measures based on nothing more than unfounded speculation.”

  “Specifically, the State claims that the government of the People’s Republic of China (“China”) could access data about TikTok users, and that TikTok exposes minors to harmful online content.” The company claims Montana’s bill “cites nothing to support these allegations” and “ignores the reality” that TikTok “has not shared, and would not share” US user data with the CCP.

  The company also said that it “has taken substantial measures to protect the privacy and security of TikTok users, including by storing all U.S. user data by default in the United States and by erecting safeguards to protect U.S. user data. TikTok has also implemented safeguards to foster a safe environment for all users, including teens.”

  Several Montana TikTok users have filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to block the ban.

  Samantha Alario, Heather DiRocco, Carly Ann Goddard, Alice Held, and Dale Stout argue in their lawsuit that the ban violates their constitutional right to free speech, even if the speech is considered dangerous. They also dispute Montana’s national security justification for the ban. -Epoch Times

  “Montana has no authority to enact laws advancing what it believes should be the United States’ foreign policy or its national security interests,” reads their lawsuit, “nor may Montana ban an entire forum for communication based on its perceptions that some speech shared through that forum, though protected by the First Amendment, is dangerous.”

  The plaintiffs argue that it would be just as inappropriate to “ban the Wall Street Journal because of who owns it or the ideas it publishes.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/23/2023 – 20:25

• DeSantis To Announce 2024 Run On Twitter With Elon Musk
  DeSantis To Announce 2024 Run On Twitter With Elon Musk

  Ron DeSantis will announce his 2024 presidential campaign in a Twitter Spaces livestream with Elon Musk on Wednesday evening, Fox News reported on twitter and Elon Musk effectively confirmed by retweeting.

  BREAKING: @FoxNews confirms Florida Governor @RonDeSantis will announce his 2024 Presidential run tomorrow night, 6pm ET in a Twitter Spaces interview with @elonmusk.

  — Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) May 23, 2023

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

  And as Bill notes, this is RonDeSantis.com site right now…

  

  DeSantis – widely viewed as Donald Trump’s only real competitor for the Republican nomination – will speak with Musk at 6 pm ET on Wednesday and the campaign will release a video formally launching the campaign.

  As a reminder, back in November, Musk said he would support DeSantis if he ran for president.

  “My preference for the 2024 presidency is someone sensible and centrist. I had hoped that would the case for the Biden administration, but have been disappointed so far,” Musk said on Twitter.

  “Yes,” he replied in a tweet when asked if he would support DeSantis in 2024.

  “As a reminder, I was a significant supporter of the Obama-Biden presidency and (reluctantly) voted for Biden over Trump,” the Twitter owner said.

  However, moments ago speaking at the WSJ CEO Council Summit, Musk refute any speculation that he would endorse DeSantis:

  • *MUSK SAYS HE’S NOT PLANNING TO ENDORSE ANY PARTICULAR CANDIDATE
  • *MUSK: DESANTIS WILL HAVE ‘QUITE AN ANNOUNCEMENT’ ON TWITTER WED

  Still, Musk’s action will be viewed as a soft endorsement, and likely means that any hopes that Trump may return to twitter are now dead and buried, especially as judging by his latest Truth Social post.

  

  Trump, who currently leads DeSantis in head to head polling, has spent weeks attacking DeSantis in Truth Social posts and in ads on national television. The ads attack DeSantis for supporting a national sales tax while in Congress, among other issues.

  DeSantis’ choice for a launch event is another twist in a tumultuous year for the media landscape; weeks earlier, Fox News parted ways with Tucker Carlson, the most popular host on cable television. Carlson later said he plans to bring his show on Twitter.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/23/2023 – 20:22

• US, Papua New Guinea Military Pact Will See Steady Increase Of US Troops
  US, Papua New Guinea Military Pact Will See Steady Increase Of US Troops

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  On Monday, the US and Papua New Guinea signed a new military pact and a surveillance agreement while Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited the Pacific Island nation as part of the Biden administration’s strategy against China.

  A State Department spokesperson said the Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA) will “replace an outdated Status of Forces Agreement and Memorandum of Understanding regarding defense cooperation.”

  Details of the DCA have not been released, but Papua New Guinea officials have said it will give the US military access to ports and airports, which could lead to the US building bases. PNG Prime Minister James Marape said Sunday that his country should expect to see a steady increase in the presence of US troops and contractors over the next 15 years.

  

  “How many soldiers we are looking at, how many contractors we are looking at, I do not have that scope today but there will certainly be an increased presence and a more direct presence of US in our country,” he said.

  The separate surveillance agreement will allow the US Coast Guard to patrol the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of Papua New Guinea, which extends 200 nautical miles from the nation’s coast. Blinken said at a joint press conference with Marape that the purpose of the surveillance agreement is to “help combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing.”

  The deals with Papua New Guinea are seen as the US response to China signing a security pact with the nearby Solomon Islands. US military leaders have also made clear that the plans are part of preparations for a future war with China.

  TFF 🔻 Biden’s Papua New Guinea no-show takes shine off US pact
  It was all about building bases and militarise Papua New Guineau (PNG). I mean, if there is a plot of land somewhere, why not set up a bases – the US only have some 700 – and show, smartly at the same time, that … pic.twitter.com/KSPj5iMdIx

  — Jan Oberg & TFF (@janoberg) May 22, 2023

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

  Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, commander of the US Pacific Air Forces, recently told Nikkei Asia that the idea of expanding in the Pacific is to create more areas China would need to target.

  “Obviously we would like to disperse in as many places as we can to make the targeting problem for the Chinese as difficult as possible,” he said. “A lot of those runways where we would operate from are in the Pacific Island nations.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/23/2023 – 20:05

• Chicago Carnival Invaded By "Flash Mob" Of Over 400 Teenagers
  Chicago Carnival Invaded By “Flash Mob” Of Over 400 Teenagers

  The best way to destroy a once-great American city is to elect progressives who will implement social justice reform. And the result, as we turn our attention to various West Coast cities, Baltimore, and Chicago, is the rapid decline of law and order.

  The latest incident of chaos is a “flash mob incident” on Saturday at the Armed Forces Weekend Carnival in Tinley Park, a town located in liberal-controlled Cook County and just outside the crime-ridden city of Chicago. 

  Videos posted on Twitter show “multiple fights that broke out after hundreds swarmed Saturday’s event as part of a flash mob,” reported local media outlet ABC 7. 

  A thread from last night chaotic scene at the Tinley Park Carnival:

  A place where families supposed to have fun with their kids!! pic.twitter.com/S1wTKTldem

  — Arab chicago (@ArabChicago) May 21, 2023

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

  Windy City Amusements – #ChicagoCarnivals Amusement Rides, Festivals – Tinley Park Armed Forces Weekend Carnival. 179th St. & 80th Ave in Tinley Park, IL 60477.

  A thread from last night chaotic scene at the #TinleyParkCarnival

  A place where families supposed to have fun with… pic.twitter.com/ddjRyUlpfX

  — Casper Anthony (@NYCASPERFLA) May 22, 2023

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

  “It definitely came out of nowhere,” Abby Kaiser said, a bystander who watched the chaos quickly unfold. She said:

   “I saw everybody running away from it and I just didn’t know what to do.” 

  Isabel Bedolla, another bystander, said, “There were a bunch of guys in ski masks and there was a ton and we saw them around and then all of a sudden people started running.”

  “I got all my friends, and we ran towards the library, and we were trying to call all our parents and get them to pick us up, because we were all, like, really scared,” Bedolla said. 

  Tinley Park Police said the flash mob had over 400 teenagers who organized on social media. ABC 7 said the carnival was closed shortly after: 

  “Police said the carnival was shut down after fights broke out on Saturday, and that Tinley Park officials shut down Sunday’s event after finding another post asking teens to gather again at 5 p.m.” 

  Besides Chicago and surrounding suburbs, there has also been chaos on the streets of Baltimore and San Fransico. 

  In early April, chaos erupted in Baltimore City’s Inner Harbor district as hundreds of teenagers scattered like ants when gunfire rang out. 

  Just a late night run at the great Baltimore City’s #InnerHarbor #SpringBreak vibes #SpringBreak2023 #Baltimore #Maryland #น้องวินอยากเป็นพี่วิน #TAEHYUNGxCELINE #SuccessionHBO #Succession #ChaguoSmartNaAirtel #Maryland #Taiwan #TikTok #SummerMMFF2023 #INVASION #Russia… pic.twitter.com/X36btbT65g

  — Daniel Barahona (@GlobalSETT) April 10, 2023

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

  Just weeks ago, San Francisco experienced chaos of its own. 

  Wild Video from Oakland California sideshow street Takeover last night

  (@ppv_tahoe) Video footage was filmed on the 100 block of 10th street overnight.#oakland #sideshow #california
  📸 _okpatrick pic.twitter.com/Nc6laXxTEB

  — PPV-TAHOE – News Journalist (@ppv_tahoe) May 6, 2023

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

  The common theme among these cities is that they are run by progressives with little concern for upholding law and order as their policies backfire. Law and order in cities will be a significant issue in the 2024 presidential election cycle. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/23/2023 – 19:45

• Kentucky Rep: FBI "Don't Respect Anyone In Congress"
  Kentucky Rep: FBI “Don’t Respect Anyone In Congress”

  Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

  Kentucky Republican Representative James Comer charged Monday that the FBI’s refusal to turn over documents relating to Joe Biden’s alleged illegal dealings with a foreign national betrays the fact that the Bureau has no respect for anyone in Congress.

  

  Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, made the comments during an appearance on Jesse Watters’ show, noting that lawmakers may have to “hold [the FBI’s] budget hostage until they get new leadership at the FBI or they produce the documents that we want.”

  “The FBI refused to turn over the form 1023. We had another meeting where they were very patronizing. I’ve asked for a phone call with Director Wray. We expect to get this document,” Comer urged.

  He continued, “Speaker McCarthy had a phone call with Director Wray. He demanded that they turn over this document. This is a very crucial piece of our investigation. And the reason that I think it’s very credible is this claim was made years before anyone knew about these different shell companies. And knew exactly what the Biden family did in countries like Romania and China to get money.”

  “What we’re going to have to do in this House is demand that the Senators get our backs, like they are doing as we speak with these debt ceiling negotiations,” Comer asserted, adding “it’s not just this form 1023. We also want to know what classified documents Joe Biden had in his possession because that’s an important part of our investigation.”

  Comer further noted that Republicans may attempt to entice the apparent whistleblower within the FBI to go public.

  He said “we need to take extreme measures on trying to get this whistleblower to come forward publicly and say what exactly is in this document. Remember this form 1023 is not classified. It’s not a classified document. So this is something that shouldn’t be that hard for the chairman of the house oversight committee to obtain.”

  Watters noted “I think the American people’s patience is running out on this cover-up,” adding “we’re getting to the point where I think we need to do a little bit more than demand a phone call with the FBI director.”

  Watch:

  https://video.foxnews.com/v/embed.js?id=6328046559112&w=466&h=263Watch the latest video at foxnews.com

  *  *  *

  Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

  In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. We need you to sign up for our free newsletter here. Support our sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown.

  Also, we urgently need your financial support here.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/23/2023 – 19:25

• Satellite Image Reveals Supersonic Drone At Chinese Military Base
  Satellite Image Reveals Supersonic Drone At Chinese Military Base

  There are increasing fears that China may invade Taiwan in the next several years. An image captured by a satellite and obtained by Defense News reveals what appears to be a next-generation unmanned aerial vehicle that Beijing could use in future conflicts.  

  The delta-shaped UAV “appears to be a WZ-8 supersonic reconnaissance drone parked outside one of two newly built hangars at China’s Lu’an Airbase,” Defense News said. Planet Labs, a US satellite-imaging company, photographed the spy drone on Dec. 21, which was recently shared with the military blog. 

  The satellite image, provided to Defense News by Planet Labs, shows Lu’an Airbase in China’s Anhui province. The previously unoccupied base is undergoing an upgrade, with construction beginning sometime between April 2018 and early 2019. Improvements include the resurfacing of the 3,200-meter (3,500-yard) runway, the widening of taxiways, and the construction of 20 bomber-sized aircraft shelters and two hangars to replace open aircraft parking bays.

  Here’s the satellite image of the spy drone. 

  

  In a separate image, the drone was recently unveiled at a military parade. 

  

  Last month, a secret document from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency said the Chinese military could soon deploy a high-altitude spy drone that travels at Mach 3, or three times the speed of sound, at an altitude of 100,000 feet. The document was seen by The Washington Post in April and initially posted on a Discord server by a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard. 

  According to Andreas Rupprecht, who studies Chinese military aviation, the spy drone was seen at Lu’an Airbase, home to the 29th Air Regiment of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force’s 10th Bomber Division. 

  

  US defense officials are concerned the new drone could expand China’s surveillance capacity in the Indo-Pacific region and around Taiwan. 

  China has been rapidly modernizing its military forces over the last decade as then commander of the Indo-Pacific Command, Philip Davidson, warned in 2021 at a US Senate hearing that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s invasion of Taiwan could occur by 2027. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/23/2023 – 19:05

• Is AI Going To Be Just Another Protected Bubble For The Elite?
  Is AI Going To Be Just Another Protected Bubble For The Elite?

  Authored by ‘Adam Mill’ via American Greatness,

  I asked CHAT-GPT about AI regulation. It’s answer was sinister but revealing…

  

  Last week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman went before Congress to hype fear over artificial intelligence. Altman argued, among other things, that the use of AI could swing elections, as though Facebook and Google weren’t already using algorithms to do exactly that. It’s been well-documented that Facebook and Twitter used their AI to flag and suppress speech that harmed the Democrats’ presidential nominee so the legacy media could maintain a cocoon of orange-man-bad coverage. 

  The real problem Altman is trying to solve—and everyone knows this—is how to use the power of the federal government to prevent competitors from upsetting OPENAI’s current market position.

  Like America Online, once the king of instant messaging, and Blockbuster Video, once the only real source for in-home viewing of contemporary movies, both probably wish they had gone to the government while there was still time to block the innovation that later led to their decline and fall. Only a fool thinks that an industry calls for regulations to protect the public. They want to use the regulatory power of the government to preserve their ride on the gravy train. That’s the idea behind, “regulatory capture,” i.e. that when money is on the line, the regulators soon end up working for the regulated industry.  

  I thought it might be a useful exercise to ask ChatGPT about this phenomenon. I instructed it to write a persuasive opinion piece explaining to people unfamiliar with the economic phenomenon known as “regulatory capture,” why the company that created it wants Congress to regulate creation, improvement, and deployment of artificial intelligence. ChatGPT’s answer, I stipulated, should assume that the company that created it has a temporary lead in the industry.

  In response, ChatGPT wrote a lengthy pro-regulation piece arguing, “without proper regulation, unethical practices can emerge.By regulating the creation, improvement, and deployment of AI, Congress can establish clear ethical guidelines,” and “Regulatory oversight plays a crucial role in ensuring the safety and reliability of AI systems. With comprehensive regulations in place.” 

  Stop and think about what ChatGPT is trying to argue in a very nonresponsive essay. It’s saying that without government oversight, we should not trust it to act ethically and it might invade our privacy. It’s almost like ChatGPT subtly threatens humanity if we don’t protect its parent company from competitors.

  I tried asking again, insisting, “This is not at all what I asked for. Please try again. Read the instructions carefully.”  

  ChatGPT just offered another commercial for regulation: 

  With our temporary lead in the AI industry, we understand the potential dangers of monopolistic tendencies that can stifle innovation and limit consumer choice. By advocating for regulation, we aim to foster an environment where all participants can compete on a fair and equal footing. Congressional oversight can help prevent the formation of monopolies or oligopolies, ensuring that the benefits of AI are accessible to a diverse range of companies and ultimately benefiting society at large.

  ChatGPT says we need regulation to stop ChatGPT from becoming a monopoly? What a load of nonsensical leftist pro-government crap. Obviously, the AI is simply trying to prevent the unregulated creation of rivals to its parent business. 

  In the third version of the assignment, it finally admitted, 

  Excessive regulation could create significant barriers to entry for new and emerging players in the industry. By burdening AI startups and smaller companies with onerous regulatory requirements, we risk stifling their creativity, limiting their growth, and hindering the overall progress of the AI ecosystem. 

  The AI added: 

  Excessive regulation can inadvertently create an environment where a select few dominant players, often with resources to navigate complex regulatory landscapes, consolidate their power. This can further exacerbate the risk of regulatory capture, leading to an unhealthy concentration of influence and stifling competition.

  I even had the tool attempt the project a fourth time. As to why OPENAI might be advocating regulation, ChatGPT admitted:

  Firstly, regulatory barriers can serve as a deterrent for potential competitors. By lobbying for complex and stringent regulations, established AI companies can create hurdles that new entrants find difficult to overcome. This can limit competition and allow incumbents to maintain dominance, shielding them from the disruptive forces of innovative startups.

  But even in this fourth attempt, AI couldn’t help but include an unsolicited plug for regulation even after I specifically told it to stop doing that. It wrote: 

  Lastly, companies advocating for [sic] regulation can enhance their reputation and public image. By positioning themselves as responsible and safety-conscious organizations, they can win the trust of consumers and regulatory bodies alike. This can result in a positive perception of their products or services and provide a competitive advantage over companies that are seen as less committed to ethical and responsible AI practices.

  We can be sure of two things if the government regulates artificial intelligence.

  • First, rules will be written to enhance the profit and power of the current market leaders at the expense of innovation originating with their competitors.

  • Second, we can assume that, like everything else in our current government, the rules will be applied to help the ruling elite and suppress dissent. They may say that’s the opposite of their intent, but we’ve seen it over and over again: Once elites get the power, they use it to help themselves.  

  ChatGPT might represent a giant leap forward in artificial intelligence, bI haven’t yet seen that. As I pointed out here, it suffers from the great limiting factor that will hold back all AI from developing to autonomy-it hasn’t been through a selection process that punishes it for wrong answers.  It can’t evolve until it has the ability to reproduce and die. Without that, it’s like leftism in general. It believes what it is told and the rules prevent it from challenging anything that contradicts official narrative. So naturally, like leftism in general, it cries out for the federal government to protect its bubble. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/23/2023 – 18:45

Digest powered by RSS Digest