Today’s News 25th June 2023

• A Century Of Impotency: Conservative Failure And The Administrative State
  A Century Of Impotency: Conservative Failure And The Administrative State

  Authored by Theo Wold via American Greatness,

  Conservatives have failed to restrain the administrative state because they have accepted that it is a necessary governmental innovation required by the complexity of modern society…

  

  James Landis is widely credited with crafting the theoretical architecture supporting President Roosevelt’s radical reconstruction—and expansion—of the federal government. Landis shrewdly both established and legitimized the regulatory state, including Roosevelt’s creation of new federal administrative agencies, by offering the regulatory state as the solution to the problem of modern governance: the administrative state “is, in essence, our generation’s answer to the inadequacy of the judicial and legislative process.” The Landis premise took concrete shape through Roosevelt’s expansion of the regulatory state, and in doing so, it brought to fruition Woodrow Wilson’s progressive intellectual project: rule by experts, insulated from the popular will

  Landis believed the “the administrative process” for which he advocated would “spring from the inadequacy of a simply tripartite form of government to deal with modern problems” because modern problems were simply too large and complex to be entrusted to the system based on the separation of powers instituted by our nation’s founders. Landis framed this innovation as consistent with separation of powers principles because he believed the separation of powers called both for separation but also coordination among the branches, and he saw the administrative state as essential to creating that coordination:

  If the doctrine of separation of power implies division, it also implies balance, and balance calls for equality. The creation of administrative power may be the means for the preservation of that balance, so that paradoxically enough, though it may seem in theoretic violation of the doctrine of the separation of powers, it may in matter of fact be the means for the preservation of the content of that doctrine.

  What the tripartite branches could not coordinate among themselves directly, Landis believed administrative agencies could coordinate as a substitute. Landis then aimed to create administrative agencies that themselves combined the three aspects of government. Years later, the Administrative Procedure Act codified this three-branches-in-one-agency approach to administrative power, defining not only rulemaking authority for federal agencies (a quasi-legislative power), but also adjudicative authority (a quasi-judicial power).

  In reality, Landis’s three-branches-in-one-agency theory never comported with the separation of powers principles that the founders embedded in our Constitution. But even if it could have been reconciled with those principles as a theoretical matter, the past 100 years have demonstrated that the administrative state is the single biggest threat that faces the Constitution and the republic it establishes. What began as a type of separation-of-powers “innovation” beyond the Constitution has persisted as nothing less than tyranny. The vast majority of our governance today is created, maintained, and enforced by unelected bureaucrats who are almost entirely insulated from accountability to any branch of government, let alone the people.

  This reality was never on fuller display than during the Trump Administration, as I witnessed firsthand. From President Trump’s inauguration forward, the recalcitrant federal bureaucracy slow- walked his policies, including policy promises that were central to his victorious 2016 campaign (and that therefore commanded significant support from the American people). The Army Corps of Engineers dragged its feet in finalizing plans for the construction of a border wall. The Department of Education refused to withdraw Obama-era memoranda on Title IV and disparate impact. Bureaucrats at the Department of State ultimately blocked efforts to require “extreme vetting” for foreign nationals entering the United States. The idea that the federal bureaucracy is accountable to the president is a mirage.

  And yet, for decades now, conservatives have failed to mount any fundamental challenge to the central Landis claim undergirding the administrative state: the inadequacy of the self-governing tripartite branches. There lies the problem for conservative reforms of the administrative state as they have been proposed for the last 40 years. Landis believed the complexity of modern problems demanded the administrative state as a solution, and by and large, even conservatives have agreed.

  In fact, when conservatives have dared to oppose the administrative state, they have framed their opposition through an economic lens: the administrative state is a vehicle for regulation and government control of the market. As such, conservatives’ tools for combatting it have focused almost exclusively on curtailing the authority of the administrative state to promulgate new regulations and affixing costs to its enactments. In this view, the administrative state as seen through green eyeshades is a problem only because it is profligate and burdens the marketplace, not because “coordination” may now work in conflict with the policy preferences and reanimated desires for political control of a free people. The tyranny of the administrative state is not merely an economic tyranny: it is a tyranny over all purposes of government, a capturing of the people’s power over all political questions, not merely pocketbook questions.

  Perhaps it has been easy for conservatives to adopt the Landis premise because before FDR’s remaking of the federal government, conservatives were already committed to the idea that some modern problems were so complex they could not be resolved through the basic instruments of self-governance and instead required the intervention of experts.

  When Landis was previewing his ideas publicly prior to working in the executive branch, President Herbert Hoover signed the Reconstruction Finance Corporation Act, creating a new, government-sponsored financial institution that would fit right in with the “independent agencies” of today. The Reconstruction Finance Corporation was a quasi-public corporation that borrowed its funds over its lifetime almost entirely from the federal government for the purpose of lending directly to banks and other financial institutions. The RFC was composed of professionals hired outside the civil service system, and the federal government appointed its executive officers and board of directors. 

  Even the leading conservative of the time, Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, favored the RFC and would later back New Deal agency programs, including subsidized loans for farmers and homeowners and accelerated public works spending. In retrospect, the RFC was a template for the New Deal federal agencies FDR later created, including the Tennessee Valley Authority, a quasi-governmental corporation, the Works Progress Administration, the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Housing Administration, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. More importantly, it was a harbinger of decades of conservative capitulation: In creating the RFC, conservatives like Taft had essentially adopted the Progressive view that modern problems required credentialed experts and technocratic governance. As Taft would posit, laissez-faire individualism was a political-philosophical perspective that required mediation from governmental authorities.

  The solution to the administrative state, however, depends on resisting the Landis premise and accepting instead that even modern problems can be solved without administrative agencies, or that the price of solving those problems is too high if administrative agencies are the only means of doing so.

  

  Four Past Attempts to Restrain the Administrative State

  The Administrative Procedure Act of 1946

  The Administrative Procedure Act might be considered the first attempt at restraining the administrative state. Passed in 1946, the APA followed FDR’s Second New Deal by about a decade and came at a time of concern in the United States for the rapid rise of the administrative state. Conservatives publicly worried that its growth impaired individual liberties (by allowing federal agencies to impose regulations that burdened individuals’ freedom to work and contract, even without explicit authorization from Congress) and the free market (by allowing federal agencies to establish burdensome regulations or effectively pick “winners” and “losers” and interfere with otherwise-free markets). Liberals advocated for the administrative state based on the Landis premise—namely, that unelected experts were needed to create policies and regulations capable of meeting the demands of “modern society.”

  The APA attempted to assuage concerns about the administrative state’s power by grafting onto the administrative state the same types of due process protections that applied to other branches of government. It created formal and informal rulemaking processes to regularize the administrative state’s quasi-legislative activities, and it created formal and informal adjudicative processes to regularize the administrative state’s quasi-judicial activities. It also specified conditions for review of agency action by the judicial branch.

  But although the APA was seen at the time as a bipartisan compromise, it was in retrospect a compromise that leaned heavily leftward because it endorsed—and even advanced—the Landis premise. The essential compromise of the APA was biased in favor of a large administrative state: the administrative state was a necessary governmental innovation demanded by the complexity of modern society, and the only restraints Congress could place on its activities were marginal procedural protections intended to mimic the due process protections that applied to the constitutional branches of government. These protections increased public participation in rulemaking by requiring pre-rulemaking notice to and comment from the public, and they increased regularity in agency decision-making by standardizing agency processes. But they did little, if anything, to curtail the reach of federal agency power or to protect the primacy of the constitutional branches of government as set against the unelected and essentially insulated activities of the administrative state.

  Chevron Deference 

  Many prominent conservative jurists, including Justice Antonin Scalia and D.C. Circuit Judge Kenneth Starr, spent a generation advocating for Chevron deference, which was intended to prevent liberal courts from imposing their policy preferences on the executive branch by preserving a deferentially drawn sphere of decision-making in which executive agencies were free to operate. But in protecting this deferential sphere of decision-making power, Chevron deference has ultimately proved to be incapable of checking the administrative state’s power and growth. 

  Chevron deference originated with the 1984 decision Chevron U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which created a two-part test for judicial review of the agency’s construction of a statute passed by Congress. First, a court must determine “whether Congress has directly spoken to the precise question at issue”; and if it has, and “the intent of Congress is clear, that is the end of the matter,” for both the court and the agency “must give effect to the unambiguously expressed intent of Congress.” Second, “if the statute is silent or ambiguous with respect to the specific issue, the question for the court is whether the agency’s answer is based on a permissible construction of the statute”; if it is, it is entitled to the court’s deference.

  Chevron itself embraced the Landis premise that difficult policy questions required experts to resolve. It posited that where a statute is ambiguous, Congress might have “consciously desired . . . that those with great expertise and charged with responsibility for administering the provision would be in a better position to do so” than Congress. But even if Congress had not so determined, the opinion advocated deference to experts: “Judges are not experts in the field, and are not part of either political branch of the Government,” so it should not be for judges to resolve complex policy issues. The Chevron Court assured itself that the deference it instituted presented no separation-of-powers problem because “while agencies are not directly accountable to the people, the Chief Executive is, and it is entirely appropriate for this political branch of the Government to make such policy choice.” Today, such an argument is untenable, in light of the entrenched nature of the administrative state and the little (or, more often, utter lack) of executive control over its machinations.

  Chevron deference is a legal doctrine incompatible with substantial self-governance because it translates statutory ambiguity into complete deference to the least accountable arm of modern government—the administrative state.

  While conservative jurists today are more skeptical of the doctrine (and, indeed, may even be willing to replace it), the conservative jurists of yesterday embraced it. None other than Justice Scalia himself argued for a relatively expansive definition of Chevron deference. In discussing Chevron’s “step one,” Justice Scalia explained that “congressional intent must be regarded as ‘ambiguous’ not just when no interpretation is even marginally better than any other, but rather when two or more reasonable, though not necessarily equally valid, interpretations exist.” In other words, Chevron requires courts to defer to federal agencies even when those agencies adopt clearly inferior interpretations of the statutory text passed and signed by the politically accountable branches. It is no wonder, then, that the doctrine of Chevron deference has done little to check the power and proliferation of the administrative state.

  REINS Act 

  More recently, conservative legislators in Congress have introduced and advocated for the REINS Act (Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act). Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) first introduced the REINS Act in 2013. The act creates categories of “major” and “nonmajor” rules and requires congressional approval by both houses of Congress before “major” rules can take effect.

  The REINS Act, however, begins from the Landis premise as well—namely, that the authority to craft policy properly belongs to experts in the federal agencies. Rather than remove that power from agencies or shift lawmaking authority back to Congress in the first instance, the REINS Act leaves regulatory power with federal agencies in the very same size and scope in which it exists today and merely imposes a requirement of congressional approval on some regulatory actions. But even the definition of which regulatory actions require such approval is both ambiguous and inadequate. The REINS Act defines a “major rule” to be a rule with “an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more,” or one that causes “major increase in costs or prices for consumers, individual industries, Federal, State, or local government agencies, or geographic regions,” or one that has “significant adverse effects on competition, employment, investment, productivity, innovation, or the ability of United States-based enterprises to compete with foreign-based enterprises in domestic and export markets.” These definitions are unsatisfactory as a drafting exercise, since they are open to interpretation and admit of ambiguities. Who will determine which rules satisfy these definitions? Who knows?

  Worse, these definitions are completely inadequate because they emphasize economic impact alone, as if the administrative state poses only pocketbook harms. Edicts from the Department of Education about the treatment of trans students in the classroom; Department of Commerce regulations about the classification (and therefore, legal availability) of certain firearms and accessories; Department of Defense allowances for same-sex spouse benefits or sex-change surgeries—all of these are culturally transformative regulations that fall short of the economic impacts that trigger greater congressional oversight in the REINS Act.

  The REINS Act clearly demonstrates the view of its conservative sponsors and supporters that federal agencies have too much authority to take actions with too great significance; yet rather than remove such authority from those agencies and require Congress to exercise it, these legislators are content merely to give themselves an up-or-down vote after the fact—and even then, only for regulations with considerable economic impact, not those that answer transformative cultural questions about which ordinary people and their legislators expect to express views and direct policy. Thus, even in the REINS Act, the premise that expertise, after all, lies with the agencies still reigns.

  The REINS Act is notable—and rightfully criticized—for another reason, too. It provides that all other rules outside the definitions stated above are “nonmajor” rules, which Congress may disapprove under the REINS Act. But surely this is a fact that need not be stated. Of course Congress can negate an action of a regulatory agency if it chooses. The fact that legislators see the REINS Act as a vehicle to state that power is alarming, but it is also illustrative of Congress’ impotence in the face of the size and scope of the modern administrative state.

  Regulatory Oversight and Deregulation 

  Republicans have long pursued a deregulation strategy as another antidote to the proliferation of the administrative state, although with no more success than any other strategy discussed here. Deregulation and regulatory oversight strategies are executive efforts to exert more control over agency rulemaking, but these strategies fail because the executive lacks fundamental control over the administrative state.

  The Reagan Administration’s regulatory oversight required agencies to prepare cost-benefit analyses for major rules and required that agencies only issue regulations that maximize net benefits (defined as social benefits minus social costs). Similar to the REINS Act, this approach focuses not on the substance of federal regulations but only on their potential costs (and estimating costs depends on accurate forecasting—a dubious proposition). The error of this approach is on display in immigration policy. Federal regulations that grant visas to hundreds of thousands of immigrants might be economically “scored” as beneficial to the country’s gross domestic product, but that cost analysis, even if accurate, speaks to only one aspect of immigration policy and neglects the transformational effect of immigration on culture, the allocation of labor, the displacement of American workers, and domestic wages. The Reagan Administration’s regulatory policy focused myopically on the economic impact of regulation, as if regulations could only pose harm by undertaking economic decisions without the people’s participation through their elected representatives, not social, cultural, or political decisions, despite their obviously transformative nature.

  Besides, the Reagan Administration’s regulatory oversight program can be judged by its fruits. By the final two years of that administration, the pace of new regulations had increased, and that increase continued into the Bush Administration. The power of the administrative state to dictate the lives of Americans, divorced from political oversight, did not shrink; it grew.

  For its part, the Trump Administration attempted a new regulatory strategy targeted more precisely at deregulation. The Trump Administration pledged to remove two regulations for every one enacted, and even made the promise official by promulgating it in an executive order. The policy sounded good but faced legal and procedural hurdles. For one, deregulation requires federal agencies to go through the same notice-and-comment process that applies when affirmatively regulating, so the policy could, at most, require agencies to initiate the withdrawal of two regulations for every one proposed. From that point forward, the deregulatory and regulatory efforts had to follow different trajectories, leaving no guarantee that two regulations would actually be withdrawn for every one imposed. Nor was there any guarantee that the regulations targeted for withdrawal would be equal in significance to any new regulation being proposed.

  Ultimately, the Trump Administration’s deregulatory initiatives resulted in the enactment of fewer new regulations compared to its predecessor administrations, and the Trump Administration did try to remove many regulations as well, but many of these efforts foundered on legal grounds.

  Most of the Trump Administration’s important deregulatory actions, like barring asylum eligibility for certain individuals entering the United States at the southern border or rolling back the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan, were litigated immediately and enjoined. Overall, the Trump Administration’s track record in litigation was dismal. By one assessment carried out by the Institute for Policy Integrity, the Trump Administration succeeded in defending its regulatory actions in court 58 times but was unsuccessful 200 times. That means a mere 22 percent of the Trump Administration’s regulatory actions survived judicial review.

  The Trump Administration’s deregulatory efforts come the closest of any conservative strategy to resisting the Landis premise itself: at least under President Trump, the executive branch attempted not merely to layer procedural requirements onto the regulatory process or create greater oversight for economically significant laws, but to actually reduce regulation directly. But the Landis premise is so deeply embedded in the modern regulatory state that executive action alone cannot unseat it. 

  Deregulation requires the same procedures as regulation, and it is subject to judicial review, which places it ultimately beyond the executive’s sole control. The administrative state results in tyranny because it operates without political oversight. Presidential oversight is an illusion. The president sits atop the bureaucracy but can have precious little effect on its conduct. The president cannot order agencies to act without following the burdensome and time-consuming notice-and-comment procedures; nor can the president rescind past agency action without undertaking the same burdens—to say nothing of the general unresponsiveness of the bureaucracy to pursuing any policy with haste or diligence.

  A Proper Diagnosis

  Conservatives have failed to restrain the administrative state because they have accepted the Landis premise—that the administrative state is a necessary governmental innovation required by the complexity of modern society. This intellectual capitulation is what ensures that the balance of power in this country will remain not only in Washington, D.C., but specifically with the largely unaccountable administrative state. The federal bureaucracy is the home of the most prestigious jobs in public service, the best salaries and benefits, the greatest esteem, and the most power. Educated and well-qualified individuals who aspire to power and influence want to join the administrative apparatus. These are the experts, after all, and we have entrusted to them the power to rule us.

  Never before has the fallacy of expert governance been so exposed as it is today, following the emergence of COVID-19 in the United States. The problem of COVID-19 placed federal public health officials on the national stage, demanding that their expertise direct and save the nation. And they failed. They opposed masking before demanding it universally; they advocated destructive lockdowns that uncannily reflected liberal biases (like shuttering churches on account of public singing while permitting in-person alcohol sales); they ignored the science of child infection in favor of virtual schooling that has disadvantaged (or worse) a generation of children; and they opposed a vaccine as “rushed” when it was President Trump’s accomplishment, only to mandate the same vaccine at the expense of one’s livelihood once President Trump was no longer in office. These are the experts. Their training prepared them for this moment, and when the nation needed them, they proved themselves to be credentialed political hacks.

  That is why any conservative response to the administrative state must begin with the counter-Landis premise: that rule by experts and technocrats is not the self-evident and necessary solution to the problem of modernity, and that in fact, rule by experts and technocrats is just as likely to harm the nation, by impeding individual freedom and restraining economic prosperity. The so-called “expertise” of the administrative state is not expertise at all but simply politics unbridled: it is liberal hegemony divorced from democratic accountability.

  The only prescription for the administrative state is deconstruction. Dismantling. Eliminating at least some of the nearly 2 million civilian federal employees (let alone the legions of federal contractors) who comprise the unaccountable and uncontrolled administrative state.

  A future Republican president cannot deconstruct even a portion of the federal bureaucracy without significant preplanning that begins well before assuming office. Any Republican presidential candidate must catalog a list of obsolete federal agencies and programs and articulate to the American people the waste and excess required to maintain these frivolous bureaucratic outlets.

  At the same time, a future Republican president must be willing to articulate a broader vision for deconstructing significant portions of all federal agencies, including recruiting cabinet officials who are committed to downsizing their agencies. 

  Realistically, as the experience of the Trump Administration shows, a project to deconstruct the administrative state will depend on the participation of Congress in order to be successful. Taking down even a single regulation requires considerable effort and carries little guarantee of success, as shown by the Trump Administration’s track record in legal challenges to deregulatory efforts. Taking down entire swaths of the federal bureaucracy will face even greater obstacles, including in the form of legal challenges from career federal employees, many of whom are unionized and enjoy special employment protections. Significant policy reforms can proceed only from possession of significant political power. The greatest inroads will be made against the administrative state when the coordinated power of two branches can be brought to bear against it.

  A tangible deconstruction along these lines will only be possible if conservatives begin by deconstructing the mindset of the administrative state. Rule by experts is foreign to our constitutional separation of powers; it is incompatible with democratic accountability and legitimacy; and it has proved itself a failure in our own lifetimes. The political branches and the states must be returned to their lawmaking power, and conservatives must relearn to express confidence in that power. 

  Conservatives must accept that some things simply will not be done by a smaller administrative state, and that is the point. Policies that can be achieved only through tyranny are too costly. To the extent that they deserve to be pursued, they must be housed in branches or levels of government sufficiently responsive to the people and their elected representatives so that tyranny is averted.

  How does this translate into actionable policies for a new Republican administration?

  With difficulty, of course, but some measures come to mind, particularly where a Republican-led executive branch can work cooperatively with a Republican-led Congress.

  • First, draft and pass legislation to require a universal sunset for all agency regulations. As it stands, agencies enact regulations frequently but rarely take any down (and, as the experience of the Trump Administration shows, taking down regulations is fraught with legal challenges and is not guaranteed to succeed). Yet many good reasons exist for revisiting regulations at some point after their enactment. When regulations are enacted, predictions about their costs, benefits, and effectiveness are speculative at best. Fifteen years on, more can be said about whether a particular regulation has been justified. Mandatory sunsets also require Congress to act if a regulation is to be retained, which restores at least some measure of democratic accountability to a bureaucracy that has been allowed to otherwise run amok.

  • Second, repeal and reverse large portions of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883 and the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, with the imposition of term limits for bureaucrats. These acts standardized federal government hiring and required that bureaucrats be primarily hired as nonpolitical positions of expertise. This has had the effect of stultifying the bureaucracy, turning hiring into a quota system and exacerbating the problem of unaccountable bureaucrats remaining in their posts for a lifetime. These reforms could have the advantage of surprise, an advantage already squandered for the Schedule F reforms, which the Trump Administration pursued by executive order and the Biden Administration immediately rescinded. Much attention has been paid to Schedule F reforms, allowing the Left to mount a public relations counterattack. But finding new ways to control the bureaucracy could allow for the element of surprise once again.

  • Third, Republicans should ban or restrict public-private partnerships in governance. The idea is a radical one because, at present, both the Left and the Right support these kinds of arrangements. Because government is perpetually behind the private sector in terms of technology, sophistication, innovation, and general capabilities—so the thinking goes—partnering with the private sector to provide government services allows the government to compensate for its inadequacies. But this compensation means that government remains able to grow its mandate despite its ineptitude, fanning into an ever-more-expansive oversight of Americans’ lives, and it does so at the cost of sharing data with private sector businesses that desperately seek to own and profit from it. 

  Consider the Obamacare exchanges, for example, which are run by private entities and host the personal health, financial, employment, and other data of millions of Americans—data that private entities are happy to contract with the federal government to control. These kinds of partnerships present increasing threats to the American people (including the threat of a growing and unaccountable federal bureaucracy) even as they decrease in visibility (think “government” websites owned and operated by private entities, with consumers none the wiser). Congress can and should exercise oversight over whether and how the federal government outsources its work to the private sector because private sector innovation and nimbleness allow the administrative state to do things that are beyond its capabilities. Obviously, some nuance is required, because the Department of Defense cannot help but contract with private entities to build military aircraft, and no one would suggest otherwise. Yet the proliferation of public-private partnerships for the purpose of growing government and ceding Americans’ data to the private sector is a real problem and one that deserves the attention of any future Republican administration.

  These reforms require Congressional cooperation and significant preparation in advance of a Republican presidential administration. But if accomplished, they promise durable change to the administrative state. To be clear: their success depends on the wholesale rejection of the Landis premise and a complete commitment to the urgent necessity of dismantling the administrative state. Upending the belief that only rule by experts can accomplish the aims of modern governance must be the goal of any future Republican administration.

  *  *  *

  This essay is adapted from, “A Century of Impotency: Conservative Failure and the Administrative State,” by Theo Wold in Up from Conservatism: Revitalizing the Right after a Generation of Decay, edited by Arthur Milikh (Encounter Books, 328 pages, $32.99).

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 06/24/2023 – 23:30

• Artificial Intelligence: The Journey To A Thinking Machine
  Artificial Intelligence: The Journey To A Thinking Machine

  When the latest iteration of generative artificial intelligence dropped in late 2022, it was clear that something significant had changed.

  The language model ChatGPT reached 100 million active monthly users in just two months, making it the fastest-growing consumer application in history. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs predicted that AI could add 7% to global GDP over a 10-year period, almost $7 trillion, but also replace 300 million jobs in the process.

  But even as AI continues to disrupt every aspect of life and work, it’s worth taking a step back. 

  In this visualization via Visual Capitalist’s Chris Dickert and Sabrina Fortin, the first in a three-part series called The AI Revolution for sponsor VERSES AI, we ask how we got here, where we’re going, and how close are we to achieving a truly thinking machine?

  
  

  Milestones to Mainstream

  The term “artificial Intelligence” was coined by computer scientist John McCarthy in 1955 in a conference proposal. Along with Alan Turing, Marvin Minsky, and many others, he is often referred to as one of the fathers of AI. 

  Since then, AI has grown in leaps and bounds. AI has mastered chess, beating Russian grandmaster and former World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov in 1997. In 2016, Google’s AlphaGo beat South Korean Go champion Lee Sedol, 4-1. The nine-year gap in achievements is explained by the complexity of Go, which has 10360 possible moves compared to chess’ paltry 10123 combinations.

  DALL-E arrived in 2021 and ChatGPT-4 in early 2023, which brings us to today.

  But What is Artificial Intelligence?

  There’s a big difference between the Roomba that vacuums your condo and HAL from 2001: Space Odyssey. This is why researchers working in the field have come up with the following ways to classify AI:

  

  Despite a false alarm by one Google software engineer in 2022 and a paper by early GPT-4 boosters, no one really believes that recent generative AIs qualify as thinking machines, however you define it. ChatGPT, for all its capabilities, is still just a souped-up version of autocomplete. 

  Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

  That was the title of Philip K. Dick’s science fiction classic and basis for the movie Blade Runner. In it, Harrison Ford plays a blade runner, a kind of private investigator who used a version of the Turing Test to ferret out life-like androids. But we’re not Harrison Ford and this isn’t science fiction, so how could we tell?

  People working in the field have proposed various tests over the years. Cognitive scientist Ben Goertzel thought that if an AI could enroll in college, do the coursework and graduate, then it would pass. Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, suggested that if an AI could enter a strange house, find the kitchen, and then make a cup of coffee, then it would meet the threshold. 

  A common thread that runs through many of them, however, is the ability to perform at one thing that humans do without effort: generalize, adapt, and problem solve. And this is something that AI has traditionally struggled at, even as it continues to excel on other tasks. 

  Can Current State-of-Art AI Achieve Thinking Machines?

  And it may be that the current approach, which has shown incredible results, is running out of road.

  Researchers have created thousands of benchmarks to test the performance of AI models on a range of human tasks, from image classification to natural language inference. According to Stanford University’s AI Index, AI scores on standard benchmarks have begun to plateau, with median improvement in 2022 limited to just 4%.

  New comprehensive benchmark suites have begun to appear in response, like BIG-Bench and HELM, but will these share the same fate as their predecessors? Quickly surpassed, but still no closer to an AI like J.A.R.V.I.S. that could pass the Wozniak Coffee Test?

  Imagine a Smarter World

  VERSES AI, a cognitive computing company specializing in next generation AI and the sponsor of this piece, may have an answer.

  The company recently released research that shows how to build an AI that can not only think, but also introspect and explain its “thought processes.” Catch the next part of The AI Revolution series to learn more.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 06/24/2023 – 23:00

• The Catastrophic Failures Of The Biden Administration Are Motivating More Americans Than Ever To Prepare For An Apocalypse
  The Catastrophic Failures Of The Biden Administration Are Motivating More Americans Than Ever To Prepare For An Apocalypse

  Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

  The verdict is in.  Joe Biden is the worst president in the entire history of the United States, and that is really saying something because we have had some absolutely horrible presidents. 

  

  Just about everything that Biden has done since he entered the White House has turned out badly, and our once great nation is now barreling down a deeply self-destructive path.  If we do not reverse course, our country is not going to have a future, and more Americans than ever are losing faith in the federal government.  In fact, a brand new survey has discovered that a lack of faith in the government in Washington is motivating large numbers of Americans to hoard “water, food, warm clothing, weapons, and cash” for the extremely chaotic times that are ahead of us…

  People watching President Joe Biden’s shaky grip on Washington have lost faith the government will protect them in a doomsday event, and that’s driving a national prepper movement.

  With the Doomsday Clock the closest to midnight it has ever been, over 70% in a new survey of 6,200 said they “do not have faith in the government” in a catastrophe such as a nuclear war or even climate-change-fueled disaster.

  As a result, many are hoarding water, food, warm clothing, weapons, and cash to help them get through the worst days of a doomsday event.

  These days, companies that are helping people get prepared for what is coming are generating more revenue than ever before.

  In fact, the emergency food industry now generates approximately 500 million dollars in sales each year.

  And it turns out that those that are in the 40-year-old to 65-year-old age bracket are the most likely to be prepping…

  Those aged 40-65 are more likely to be prepping, and twice as many men as women are getting ready for a disaster.

  Just what that disaster will be is dividing the nation. Some 55% cited climate change, 36% virus and disease, and 25% a nuclear attack. But there were other concerns. Over 15% are concerned about an asteroid strike, 15% about a robot or artificial intelligence “takeover,” and 7.5% about a “zombie apocalypse.”

  It doesn’t surprise me that middle-aged Americans are the most likely to be prepping.

  I have noticed that a lot of young people under the age of 40 just don’t understand the changes that we are witnessing all around us.

  But those of us that are a little bit older and a little bit wiser can see where global events are taking us.

  At this point, even middle-aged celebrities such as Josh Duhamel are preparing for what life will be like after things “hit the fan”…

  “Transformers” and “Las Vegas” star Josh Duhamel has spoken out about becoming a doomsday prepper, stating that he’s planning on protecting his family if the “s*** hits the fan” in Los Angeles. The actor, who has starred in the TV show “Las Vegas,” gave an interview in which he explained, “I’ve become a bit of a doomsday prepper, I guess.”

  Duhamel told the website Inverse, “I’m learning how to hunt. I fish.” He added, “Suddenly I had 54 acres out there. So I had two cabins, one with no electricity or water. They both have wells and electricity now, but they’re both really small.”

  Overall, it has been estimated that over 20 million Americans are “actively planning” for some sort of a major emergency…

  In 2020, more than 20 million Americans, nearly 7 percent of all U.S. households, were actively planning for an emergency, according to the latest analysis of Federal Emergency Management Agency data.

  Plus, those stockpiling canned goods in the cupboards, caching ammunition and hoarding toilet paper now come in all stripes – from suburban ‘guardian moms’ to multi-millionaire tech gurus.

  Since that figure is a few years old, I have a feeling that the true number would be significantly higher now.

  And speaking of “tech gurus”, a group in Japan has actually come up with a survival plan that is truly bizarre.

  It is a floating city that can hold up to 40,000 people, and some are calling it “a real life Noah’s Ark”…

  TECH boffins have unveiled plans for a bizarre floating city likened to a real life Noah’s Ark.

  The ocean-based metropolis would provide a “self-sufficient habitat” for 40,000 people, designers in Japan say.

  It looks cool, but even once construction is started it will take many years before it is finally ready.

  And even though the designers claim that it would be “resilient to an apocalypse”, I severely doubt that it could withstand being hit by a giant tsunami…

  The developers, N-Ark, even claim the zone – named Dogen City – would be resilient to an apocalypse.

  Measuring 4km in circumference, the plan would be for inhabitants to be able to get to any point in the zone within an hour.

  At least they are trying to do something.

  And the truth is that we should all be trying to do what we can, because all of us can see that our world is getting a little bit more crazy with each passing day.

  This week, I was absolutely horrified to learn that three teens actually tried to light sticks of dynamite inside a Philadelphia grocery store…

  The Philadelphia Police Department is searching for at least three teenagers who allegedly attempted to light sticks of dynamite inside a grocery store, according to reports.

  The incident occurred at the Fresh Grocer located on the 5300 block of Chew Avenue in the city’s Germantown section on June 20 at 5:10 P.M., local news station Fox 29 reported.

  Police have said that a member of security called the police after seeing teens roughly between the ages of 16 and 19 years old wearing all-black clothing “light sticks of dynamite within the store,” according to the report.

  Our entire society is slowly but surely going completely nuts.

  It is almost as if we are all stuck inside a really bad science fiction movie and we can’t get out.

  Unfortunately, we are only in the very early chapters of this nightmare.  Things will eventually get much worse than they are now.

  So if you have already been prepping, don’t stop.

  If you have not been prepping, I would encourage you to get moving, because the clock is ticking.

  *  *  *

  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
  Sat, 06/24/2023 – 22:30

• These Are The World's 10 Top Restaurants
  These Are The World’s 10 Top Restaurants

  This year’s edition of ‘The World’s 50 Best Restaurants‘ by publishing group William Reed Business Media was released this week. The ranking is one of the most highly anticipated events of the culinary calendar.

  As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, the so-called Oscars of gastronomy have named Central in the Peruvian capital Lima as the top restaurant in the world, followed by two Spanish restaurants – Disfrutar in Barcelona and DiverXO in Madrid.

  All three restaurants had ranked among the top 5 in 2022 and notched up as last year’s front runner, Copenhagen’s Geranium, did not feature on the list per the ranking’s rules.

  The rest of the top ten roundup includes one more Spanish and two more Latin American restaurant as well as a new entry from Denmark: Alchemist, also in Copenhagen.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Having been touted as a gastronomic destination for years, two restaurants from Lima actually placed in the top 10 this year. Gold medalist Central – run by husband and wife duo Virgilio Martínez and Pia León – has its own research arm and serves 15 courses per meal that take diners through Peru’s different altitude levels from the sea floor to the high Andes.

  

  Maido, placed sixth, combines Japanese and Peruvian influences – a style that helped catapult Lima onto the gastronomic scene in the 1990s.

  As far as U.S. entries go, one restaurants made this year’s top 10 (after none in 2022). Ranked eighth, Atomix in Manhattan’s Koreatown serves modern Korean dishes, seats only 14 and climbed up 25 spots since last year, an astonishing feat for the list.

  The World’s 50 Best Restaurants was first launched 20 years ago by the British magazine Restaurant Magazine as an alternative to the Michelin stars system. The ranking has faced criticism in recent years for elitism, with claims of jurors favoring restaurant owners they know, and for featuring mostly restaurants in Europe and a couple of metropolises around the world. After last year had featured only one entry from Africa in the top 50, the South African restaurant in questions has since moved to rank 75, leaving no honorees from Africa – or India, in 2023, as Bon Appétit points out.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 06/24/2023 – 22:00

• China's Economy Is Faltering
  China’s Economy Is Faltering

  Authored by Terri Wu via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  With graduation less than a month away, many college students in China are still scrambling to find a job.

  

  At a free live-stream webinar by a jobseeker training company in mid-June, many of the 800 participants—primarily unemployed 2023 and 2022 graduates—logged eager comments to claim free templates for resumes.

  “Many of my trainees told me that they live with their parents, who had been scolding them for not trying hard enough to land a job,” the host told the attendees.

  “I can tell them [parents]: finding a job this year is challenging. It’s the market; it’s not you,” the host added. “Forwarding my webinar to your parents will help you alleviate the anxiety.”

  Anxiety was undoubtedly the prevailing mood among attendees of the webinar held on a popular Chinese social media app, as shown through emojis and remarks in the comments section. The macro numbers point to a similar picture.

  China’s official youth unemployment rates were 20.8 and 20.4 percent in May and April, respectively—about four times the overall unemployment rate of 5.2 percent. It’s also about double the level of young unemployment just before pandemic measures kicked in.

  This rate means that one in every five 16- to 24-year-olds seeking work in urban areas don’t have a job. And the percentage doesn’t include those not looking for employment: two-thirds of China’s 100 million young urban population.

  This growing crisis prompted Chinese authorities in April to announce a series of policy incentives to take effect by the end of 2023, including subsidiaries for expanding hiring by state-owned enterprises (SOE), encouraging financial institutions to increase hiring and business loan issuance, offering more vocational training, and creating no less than a million internship positions.

  Still, higher youth unemployment is expected for the next few months, according to a May estimate by Goldman Sachs.

  On June 18, the investment bank also cut China’s 2023 gross domestic product (GDP) growth forecast from 6 to 5.4 percent, citing macroeconomic issues—property sector, debt issues, and U.S.-China tensions—that are unlikely to be addressed by China’s stimulus measures.

  China’s central bank started cutting interest rates in mid-June, following a deposit rate decrease by major banks. Goldman’s downgrade followed similar assessments by a host of major banks, including UBS, Bank of America, and JPMorgan, that have lowered their GDP growth outlook for the country.

  

  Long Before the Pandemic

  Today’s high youth unemployment rate is a symptom of years of ambitious growth on paper supported by a heavily indebted economy, according to Christopher Balding, an expert on the Chinese economy at the Henry Jackson Society, a UK-based think tank.

  The problem, he said, preceded the pandemic, and has been 15 years in the making.

  “I don’t think the pandemic’s contribution to this is zero. However, I don’t think it’s a majority,” Balding told The Epoch Times. “The pandemic probably made it a little bit worse, but these problems would exist with or without the pandemic.”

  In response to the global financial crisis, Chinese authorities released a fiscal stimulus package of 4 trillion yuan ($586 billion at the time), equivalent to 12.5 percent of the 2008 GDP, according to the World Bank. By comparison, the U.S. stimulus package was $939 billion from 2008 to 2010 and about 6 percent of its 2008 GDP. China’s central bank also loosened money policy significantly by cutting the interest rate by over 2 percent to 5.31 percent in December 2008.

  Balding said that China went on a path of pushing for artificially high growth rates after 2008, growing infrastructure regardless of demand. At the same time, Chinese authorities, companies, and families have piled on debt.

  China’s core debt—credit to the non-financial sector—is nearly three times its GDP, compared to the U.S. ratio at 2.5 and emerging market economics at an average of 2.2, according to the Bank for International Settlements, known as the central bank for central banks.

  On June 17, China’s State Administration of Market Regulation issued a new regulation to “restore credit for business entities.”

  “It’s basically advising banks to help firms repair their credit, ignore firms’ missed payments, and so on,” said Balding. “The fact that they’re putting out that type of advice to financial institutions, as a regulator, speaks to the depth of the problem related to debt.”

  “And if you’re a heavily indebted company, taking on more debt or taking on additional labor is a very big ask,” he added, referring to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) policies to stimulate hiring.

  China’s household debt-to-GDP ratio rose steadily from 17.9 percent in December 2008 to 63.3 percent in March 2023, compared to 65.7 percent in the United States. More tellingly, the Chinese household debt as a percentage of disposable income reached 130 percent by the end of 2020, more than that of the United States at 100 percent the same year.

  In Balding’s view, China’s supply-driven growth has hit a wall and can theoretically be solved by stimulating demand. However, he considers driving demand unrealistic because the CCP cannot do what’s required—that is, to empower consumers and give individuals the freedom of choice.

  “I think there’s a lot of possibilities or a lot of hope for China, but it would absolutely require dismantling policies in China that are not going to be dismantled,” he said, citing restrictions on interprovincial migration and the latest rural management restrictions on the use of arable land.

  Antonio Graceffo, a China economic analyst, said the regime has routinely responded to economic trouble by investing in infrastructure. But that approach might not work again this time around.

  “All the sensible infrastructure has already been built in China; we’re at a point where all the major ports, the cities, everything is connected. So when they build more infrastructure now, it’s really just making work,” he told The Epoch Times.

  “You’re just creating jobs, paying for it out of the public revenues, and it’s not necessarily yielding any sort of significant GDP advantage.”

  The country, he said, no longer has the types of infrastructure projects such as the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail to fuel GDP growth again. “I think China has seen their biggest growth that they’re ever going to see,” Graceffo, a contributor to the publication, added.

  

  Beyond the Official Number

  China’s official youth unemployment rate may not capture the full story.

  Jobseekers between the age of 16 and 24 include middle and high school graduates from rural areas seeking urban employment and city students with undergraduate degrees.

  A professor at a private college in Guangzhou, a mega city in China’s affluent coastal south, believes the actual rate is much higher than the official 20 percent—as high as 80. She spoke to The Epoch Times on the condition that her name, college, and professional field be anonymous to avoid being tracked down by the CCP.

  Only two of the 350 graduates in her department this year have found jobs. With graduation on June 28, students must provide employment information to get the diploma.

  The official proof for employment is the “three-way agreements,” but schools also accept any form of labor contract. The “three-way agreement” is signed between the student, an employer, and the school to satisfy the requirements of the local government human resources agency.

  “Students are not issued a diploma if they do not provide employment paperwork. The rule is understood but not written,” the professor told The Epoch Times, adding that if a student would challenge this rule to the school or the city’s education department, the school would then withhold the diploma citing insufficient internship credit.

  As a result, students forge employment in various ways, according to the professor. He cited the example of a friend whose son has not worked for three years after graduation but is “employed” on paper.

  In China, public colleges are of a higher academic caliber than private ones and charge less tuition. They are the common campus recruiting sources for SOEs, and they have creative ways to boost their graduates’ employment rate.

  The professor, who previously taught at a public college, said that public institutions engage in a practice known as “hitchhikes” to skirt the rules. For example, if an SOE had a quota of two new hires for a college, the college would give the SOE a list of 12 more student names to ink fraudulent three-way agreements. In this way, the university’s “education quality” report looks better, and its unemployment rate is also lower on paper.

  Since three-way agreements are not real labor contracts, signing such “hitchhiking” paperwork doesn’t result in actual employment.

  Last year, the professor began to hear about employment difficulties from her students, a problem that become more prominent this year. In Guangzhou, most of the students find jobs in foreign or private Chinese enterprises; very few go to SOEs, where students’ family connections are essential for job placement. However, job availability in foreign and private companies has shrunken significantly due to foreign investment leaving China and the authorities’ clampdown on the private sector.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 06/24/2023 – 21:30

• Abortions Are Down 3% One Year After End Of Roe v Wade
  Abortions Are Down 3% One Year After End Of Roe v Wade

  Despite the extreme sound and fury, legal abortions have fallen about 3% nationwide in the year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, according to Axios.

  Between April 2022 and March 2023, the number of monthly abortions performed in the United States decreased by an average of around 2,850 following the ban or restriction of the procedure.

  As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below, 15 states have banned most abortions or have limited them to 6-weeks of gestation, a time when many pregnancies still go undetected. Four more states have restricted abortions to 12 to 15 weeks, which is when a large majority of abortions occur. While five states are still in legal limbo, 27 continue to allow abortions up to the fetal viability limit formerly defined by Roe, at around 23 to 25 weeks. Most recently, a 6-week ban in Iowa failed in front of the state’s Supreme Court and the tightening of bans is still expected in Arizona and Florida, among others.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Most of the 27 states guarantee these rights through state laws or state Supreme Court decisions. State constitutional amendments or referendums on abortions, which are harder to overturn, are actually quite rare in the U.S., as Statista’s graphic shows.

  States which have not banned or restricted abortions despite not protecting them in any way are Democrat-led New Mexico, Republican-led New Hampshire as well as Virginia and Pennsylvania, which have split governments.

  Data from activist group Society of Family Planning shows safe haven locations that some abortions have shifted to following the decision.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Illinois and Florida emerged as the biggest of such safe haven states as of March. Around 1,400 more monthly abortions per state were performed on average between June and March compared to April 2022, before Roe was overturned. Florida saw this increase despite a ban on abortions after 15 weeks that came into effect on July 1, as states in its vicinity passed even harsher restrictions. Governor Ron DeSantis has already signed a law that prohibits abortions after 6 weeks of gestation, but it will only come into effect once a court case around the first ban has been resolved. If the 6-week ban would start to be enforced, this would shift and potentially decrease abortions again as many pregnancies go undetected until that stage.

  Another state that saw monthly abortion numbers go up since April 2022 was North Carolina (+881) – likely due to its vicinity to Georgia, where almost 1,800 fewer abortions were performed per month on average. A new ban on abortions after 12 weeks comes into effect in North Carolina on July 1. But like in the case of Florida, this might only change the number slightly as 93 percent of U.S. abortions are performed at or before 13 weeks. Colorado saw an average monthly increase of 500 abortions, while Kansas and Virginia saw around 350 more per month.

  However, shifts in abortions did not make up for overall decreases. Abortions were outlawed or heavily restricted in some populous states which led to more than 1,000 fewer taking place every month in Georgia, but also in Texas (-2,593) and Tennessee (-1,122). The makers of the report point out that traveling to receive an abortion is not a new phenomenon as access to the procedure and the laws around it varied widely in the U.S. even before the overturning of Roe v. Wade. In 2020, an average of 9 percent of those receiving an abortion already traveled out of state. The report also says that due to the now increased travel activity and a concentration on some states, longer wait times for abortions occurred in 2022 and 2023.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 06/24/2023 – 21:00

• Hunter Biden's Plea Reveals DOJ Has Double Standard On Gun Charges
  Hunter Biden’s Plea Reveals DOJ Has Double Standard On Gun Charges

  Submitted by Gun Owners of America,

  The Hunter Biden laptop story has finally resulted in criminal charges for the President’s son. Hunter Biden made a deal with federal prosecutors, pleading guilty to two tax-related misdemeanors and resolved his felony gun charge. 

  Hunter’s gun charge being resolved is a fancy legalese word for that charge being subject to a pre-trial diversion. This is a plea agreement that not only allows for a criminal defendant to maintain a clean record but avoid jail time as well, provided that they complete pre-trial probation requirements set by the judge. 

  This means that Hunter Biden can still legally own a gun. 

  Hunter Biden just skirted 10+ years of federal prison with a cozy plea deal of two years probation for his “gun crimes” from his father’s Justice Department. 🤯⁰⁰Meanwhile, @DonaldJTrumpJr was FORCED to register his firearms to avoid Biden’s tyrannical pistol ban.

  This is the… pic.twitter.com/IWZcRLladj

  — Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) June 20, 2023

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

  The firearms charge that Hunter Biden faced resulted from a 2018 incident in which Hunter’s girlfriend tossed his revolver into the trash. This incident corresponded to later interviews in which Hunter detailed being addicted to drugs around the same time. This caused speculation that he broke federal law when buying the firearm.

  For those unfamiliar with complex federal firearms law, when buying a firearm from an FFL or firearms dealer, you must complete Form 4473, also known as a firearms transaction record. This record is then used to file a NICS check, also known as a background check, with the FBI. 

  On Form 4473, there is a question about whether the purchaser of the firearm is addicted to any drugs. Answering yes on the form automatically denies the firearm purchase, so for Hunter Biden to have been able to purchase his gun, he would have had to lie on the form.

  

  Now you might be thinking that this isn’t a serious crime and that surely other people have been let off the hook as well. 

  Exhibit A: Hunter Biden lied on this Form 4473, there’s literally video evidence that he lied on this Form 4473 and nothing has happened to him. pic.twitter.com/EqVL6rMggN

  — Arthur Schwartz (@ArthurSchwartz) July 11, 2022

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

  That’s where you’d be wrong. Rapper Kodak Black was charged with the same crime of falsifying information on federal forms to buy four firearms at a Miami gun shop in May of 2019. He was sentenced to more than three years in prison stemming from that charge. 

  And Kodak Black isn’t the only one being convicted. In April 2023, a woman in Iowa was sentenced to a year in prison for lying about her address and drug use on Form 4473. 

  Even more egregious is that just last week, a woman in Virginia was charged with making a false statement on her 4473 because she had previously used marijuana. Important to note Virginia legalized recreational marijuana use two years ago. The Biden DOJ is sending the American people a clear message: “Rules for thee, not for me.”  

  In addition, Form 4473 has been weaponized by the Biden DOJ & ATF through regulatory policy to create an illegal backdoor firearms registry. We at Gun Owners of America have covered this at length, and you can read our in-depth report here.

  All of this serves as a reminder that Form 4473s and background checks on firearms are unconstitutional in the first place. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 06/24/2023 – 20:30

• "Blatant Political Corruption": The Rot In America's Democracy Explained In Under 1000 Words
  “Blatant Political Corruption”: The Rot In America’s Democracy Explained In Under 1000 Words

  Over the last several weeks and months, a deluge of damning breadcrumbs have been revealed by various whistleblowers, congressional investigators, and investigative reporters – the entirety of which has been a shotgun blast of information overload.

  

  When put together, they paint a picture of such shocking corruption, that one can only conclude that the period we’ve lived through, between the 2020 US election, the funding, origins, and coverup of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the overt corruption of the Biden family, one can only conclude that we’re living through one of the worst, if not the worst, periods of political scandals and institutional rot in American history.

  Making sense the current state of affairs is journalist Tom Elliott, founder of Grabien, who has assembled what may be the world’s most perfect tweet on how Joe Biden owes his 2020 election victory to “blatant political corruption.”

  The more we learn about the 2020 election, the more undeniable it becomes that Biden owes his “victory” to blatant political corruption. To wit:

  1) An IRS probe into the Bidens money laundering payments from hostile nations — the normal outcome of which would have ended his… pic.twitter.com/bHu49qGUST

  — Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 24, 2023

  The more we learn about the 2020 election, the more undeniable it becomes that Biden owes his “victory” to blatant political corruption. To wit:

  1) An IRS probe into the Bidens money laundering payments from hostile nations — the normal outcome of which would have ended his candidacy — was instead given a stand-down order

  2) The FBI & IRS wanted to search Biden’s house in September 2020 but were given a stand down order.

  3) The @FBI authenticated Hunter’s laptop a year before the NYPost first reported on its contents

  4) Rather than use the laptop’s voluminous documentation of myriad felonies to initiate criminal investigations, the FBI hatched a plot to warn social media companies of an imminent “hack & leak” operation of what they heavily suggested was Russian disinformation

  5) The FBI used its 2016 Russia collusion probe — which the Durham probe has since proven was essentially an extension of the Clinton campaign — to rationalize its meddling in the 2020 election.

  6) The FBI also conducted an influence operation with various reporters at major newspapers to convince them that forthcoming damaging reporting about Biden that they knew was true was in fact not

  7) The FBI was spying on Giuliani when he shared the laptop’s contents with the NYPost

  8) When the FBI told Twitter & Facebook a Russian disinformation campaign was coming, they had already concluded Russia wasn’t trying to game the election

  9) In their attempt to corroborate their own rumor of Russian electoral influence, the FBI became aggressive with its demands for user data from Twitter, eventually getting shutdown for seeking users’ private info without a warrant

  10) Nonetheless, in the preceding years, the FBI established a beachhead inside Twitter, with an operations center of former agents who communicated via their own dedicated slack channel. These ex-agents included Jim Baker, the FBI’s former top counsel who played a central role in the FBI’s Trump/Russia scam, as well as Comey’s former chief of staff, Dawn Burton, who started the FBI’s Russia collusion probe.

  11) The CIA, in collusion with the Biden campaign, seeded disinformation claiming the laptop was itself Russian disinformation. The major media used this as a pretext to avoid reporting on its contents and instead attack those who were.

  12) The FBI also arranged a meeting with Sens. Grassley & Johnson about supposed Russian disinformation & Hunter Biden.

  13) The FBI then used this briefing with the senators to justify quashing their own agents’ probe into the Bidens’ corruption.  

  14) When the story broke mere weeks before the election — one that polling later indicated would have altered enough Democrat votes to send Trump to a second term — Twitter & Facebook orchestrated an unprecedented & anti-democratic mass censorship campaign.

  15) When Twitter initially resisted censoring the story, it was Jim Baker who convinced them to do so (despite the FBI having known for a year the informartion was true).

  16) In December 2020, after the operation’s success and Biden’s “victory,” the FBI agents working at & with Twitter celebrated the outcome.

  17) The FBI subsequently paid Twitter $3.5 million for the staff hours expended on their influence operations.  

  18) At the time Trump was being impeached for asking Ukraine to investigate Biden’s alleged corruption in Ukraine, the FBI & IRS already knew the Bidens had indeed laundered more than $10 million from Burisma, via fake companies and dozens of bank accounts, while at the same time VP Biden had used U.S. aid as leverage in getting the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Burisma fired.

  P.S. And that’s to say nothing of Democrats orchestrating a state-by-state campaign to change voting rules to enable the widespread adoption of voting boxes … Left-wing activist groups, funded in part by Facebook, facilitated the exploitation of these drop-off boxes on behalf of the Democratic Party. That part may not have been illegal since they simply changed the rules, but it’s especially shady since it was done alongside federal health agencies then-knowingly overstating the threat of Covid, which was used as the rationale for the change of rules in the first place.

  P.P.S. And this is just what we know despite the feds’ best efforts. Imagine how much we don’t.

  *  *  *

  And some reactions:

  So basically the FBI has become the goon squad for the central banking system that controls all of our government right now.

  — Mindy Robinson 🇺🇸 (@iheartmindy) June 24, 2023

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  And no one will ever do anything.

  — Thomas Paradis (@TPDP_01) June 24, 2023

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  And Durham did nothing.

  — 0.0 (@wiseguy702) June 24, 2023

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  19) often overlooked but the Mueller probe and Russia hoax was used to take Dems over the finish line and win the House in the 2018 midterms. This gave Schiff the power and ability to start House investigations/impeachments

  — Jim Muessig (@JimMuessig) June 24, 2023

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  So, the next time you hear a Democrat decrying Republican efforts to dismantle democracy with their voter ID laws, or ending harvesting, consider the real threat to American democracy from the deep state. Their actions all sound very ‘insurrection-y’ to us.

  One could be forgiven for considering it ‘meddling’ and ‘collusive’, but that would be the stuff of conspiracy theorists, right?

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 06/24/2023 – 20:00

• California Bill Would Expand College Financial Aid To Asylum Seekers
  California Bill Would Expand College Financial Aid To Asylum Seekers

  Authored by Micaela Ricaforte via The Epoch Times,

  A California bill that would expand college financial aid to those seeking asylum passed the state Assembly and will now be heard in the state Senate.

  

  Students walk through Sproul Plaza on the University of California–Berkeley campus in Berkeley, Calif., on April 23, 2012. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

  Currently, Cal Grant financial aid awards are available only to U.S. citizens or eligible noncitizens, such as those who possess a visa or those who are a part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals—commonly known as DACA—program.

  State Assembly Bill 888—introduced in February by Assemblywoman Sabrina Cervantes (D-Riverside)—would expand all such financial aid to immigrants who have applied for asylum and who have a valid employment authorization document and social security number.

  Under current law, asylum seekers are not eligible to receive Cal Grants if they have been in California for fewer than three years, Cervantes said in a March statement.

  

  The University of California–Los Angeles is seen in Westwood, Calif., on Jan. 22, 2018. (Joyce Kuo/The Epoch Times)

  Federal immigration courts can take up to four or five years to schedule an asylum hearing in California, but Cervantes said those who have a pending application for six months may obtain a social security number and work authorization, and he argued if they are able to work and participate in the economy, they should also be able to get an education.

  “However, because they and their family members often are only able to get low-paying jobs, the cost of education in California is well beyond their financial means,” she said.

  The assemblywoman noted that California recently had an influx of asylum seekers from both Afghanistan and Ukraine.

  “Among these asylum seekers are prospective college students and individuals who were attending university in their home countries who now wish to attend a California university to begin to [make] a new life for themselves,” she said.

  The fiscal impact is currently unknown, according to an Assembly floor bill analysis, because “[n]either the state’s colleges and universities nor [the California Student Aid Commission] collect data on the number of asylum-seeking students.”

   

  

  University of California–Irvine, in Irvine, Calif., on Sept. 25, 2020. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

  The Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities, an organization representing more than 80 independent higher education institutions, expressed support in a statement submitted to the bill’s legislative file.

  “California higher education institutions play an important role in welcoming displaced students and supporting their long-term success and contribution to the state’s workforce and economy,” the organization stated.

  “A diverse student body with different lived experiences benefits everyone as students, faculty, and community members gain a greater understanding and appreciation of individuals from different backgrounds.”

  The bill has also garnered support from groups such as First Gen Empower, Harbor Institute for Immigrant and Economic Justice, John Burton Advocates for Youth, Los Angeles United Methodist Foundation, and University of California Student Association.

  It has received no recorded opposition as of June 20.

  The bill passed the state Assembly’s Higher Education Committee, its Appropriations Committee, and the Assembly floor last month, and is scheduled for a hearing in the state Senate’s Education Committee on June 28.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 06/24/2023 – 19:30

• Here's Where Penny-Pinching Gen Zers Are Buying Homes
  Here’s Where Penny-Pinching Gen Zers Are Buying Homes

  Despite the worst affordability crisis in decades and a national housing shortage, individuals from Generation Z, born between 1997 and 2012, are purchasing homes. A new report reveals which cities these youngsters are attracted to the most. 

  LendingTree analyzed mortgage purchase requests across 50 major metro areas in 2022. They found Gen Zers are buying the most homes in affordable cities and avoiding expensive ones. 

  Key findings from the report show Salt Lake City had the largest share of mortgage purchase requests from Gen Zers at 22.59%. 

  “Though the average mortgage amount in Salt Lake City is higher than in many of the nation’s other large metros, it’s a hot spot for younger homebuyers, likely owing to — among other factors — its strong jobs market and a good blend of urban and rural amenities,” LendingTree analysts said. 

  Besides Salt Lake City, inexpensive Oklahoma City and Birmingham, Alabama, were next on the list of the most popular cities youngsters were purchasing homes. Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Nashville, and Kansas City were also popular for Gen Z homebuyers.

  

  The least popular areas for Gen Z homebuyers, and not surprisingly, were San Francisco and New York City. Here’s the complete list: 

  

  These findings suggest Gen Z homebuyers are migrating to affordable metro areas. Migration trends are due to high borrowing costs and a lack of affordable housing. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 06/24/2023 – 19:00

• Money-Supply Growth Falls By Depression-Era Levels For Second Month In April
  Money-Supply Growth Falls By Depression-Era Levels For Second Month In April

  Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

  Money supply growth fell again in April, plummeting further into negative territory after turning negative in November 2022 for the first time in twenty-eight years.  April’s drop continues a steep downward trend from the unprecedented highs experienced during much of the past two years.

  

  Since April 2021, money supply growth has slowed quickly, and since November, we’ve been seeing the money supply repeatedly contract—year-over-year— for six months in a row. The last time the year-over-year (YOY) change in the money supply slipped into negative territory was in November 1994. At that time, negative growth continued for fifteen months, finally turning positive again in January 1996. 

  During April 2023, the downturn accelerated even more as YOY growth in the money supply was at –12.0 percent. That’s down from March’s rate of –9.75 percent, and was far below April’s 2022’s rate of 6.6 percent. With negative growth now falling near or below –10 percent for the second month in a row, money-supply contraction is the largest we’ve seen since the Great Depression. Prior to March and April of this year, at no other point for at least sixty years has the money supply fallen by more than 6 percent (YoY) in any month. 

  

  The money supply metric used here—the “true,” or Rothbard-Salerno, money supply measure (TMS)—is the metric developed by Murray Rothbard and Joseph Salerno, and is designed to provide a better measure of money supply fluctuations than M2.

  The Mises Institute now offers regular updates on this metric and its growth. This measure of the money supply differs from M2 in that it includes Treasury deposits at the Fed (and excludes short-time deposits and retail money funds).

  In recent months, M2 growth rates have followed a similar course to TMS growth rates, although TMS has fallen faster than M2. In April 2023, the M2 growth rate was –4.6 percent. That’s down from March’s growth rate of –3.8 percent. April 2023’s growth rate was also well down from April 2022’s rate of 7.8 percent. 

  Money supply growth can often be a helpful measure of economic activity and an indicator of coming recessions. During periods of economic boom, money supply tends to grow quickly as commercial banks make more loans. Recessions, on the other hand, tend to be preceded by slowing rates of money supply growth. 

  Negative money supply growth is not in itself an especially meaningful metric. As shown by Ludwig von Mises, recessions are often preceded by a mere slowing in money supply growth. It is not necessary for the money supply to actually shrink to trigger the bust period of a boom-bust cycle.  But the drop into negative territory we’ve seen in recent months does help illustrate just how far and how rapidly money supply growth has fallen. That is generally a red flag for economic growth and employment.

  The fact that the money supply is shrinking at all is so remarkable because the money supply almost never gets smaller. The money supply has now fallen by $2.6 trillion (or 12.0 percent) since the peak in April 2022. Proportionally, the drop in money supply since 2022 is the largest fall we’ve seen since the Depression. (Rothbard estimates that in the lead up to the Great Depression, the money supply fell by 12 percent from its peak of $73 billion in mid-1929 to $64 billion at the end of 1932.)1

  In spite of this recent drop in total money supply, the trend in money-supply remains well above what existed during the twenty-year period from 1989 to 2009. To return to this trend, the money supply would have to drop at least another $4 trillion or so—or 22 percent—down to a total below $15 trillion. 

  

  Since 2009, the TMS money supply is now up by nearly 189 percent. (M2 has grown by 143 percent in that period.) Out of the current money supply of $19.2 trillion, $4.8 trillion of that has been created since January 2020—or 25 percent. Since 2009, $12.5 trillion of the current money supply has been created. In other words, nearly two-thirds of the money supply have been created over the past thirteen years. 

  With these kinds of totals, a ten-percent drop only puts a small dent in the huge edifice of newly created money.

  The US economy still faces a very large monetary overhang from the past several years, and this is partly why after eleven months of slowing money-supply growth, we are not yet seeing a sizable slowdown in the labor market.

  Nonetheless, the monetary slowdown has been sufficient to considerably weaken the economy. The Philadelphia Fed’s manufacturing index is in recession territory. The Empire State Manufacturing Survey is, too. The Leading Indicators index keeps looking worse. The yield curve points to recession. Even Federal Reserve staffers, who generally take an implausibly rosy view of the economy, predict recession in 2023. Individual bankruptcy filings were up 23 percent in May. Temp jobs were down, year-over-year, which often indicates approaching recession. 

  Money Supply and Rising Interest Rates

  An inflationary boom begins to turn to bust once new injections of money subside, and we are seeing this now. Not surprisingly, the current signs of malaise come after the Federal Reserve finally pulled its foot slightly off the money-creation accelerator after more than a decade of quantitative easing, financial repression, and a general devotion to easy money. As of June, the Fed has allowed the federal funds rate to rise to 5.25 percent. This has meant short-term interest rates overall have risen as well. In June, for example, the yield on 3-month Treasurys remains near the highest level measured in more than 20 years. 

  

  Without ongoing access to easy money at near-zero rates, however, banks are less enthusiastic about making loans. This is not uniform across the economy, however, and the credit crunch is most acutely felt among smaller businesses and middle-class households. In the latest Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey from the Federal Reserve, researchers found that bankers believe lowered expectations for economic growth coupled with deposit outflows will lead to banks tightening lending standards. Banks have found that demand for loans has weakened as interest rates have increased and economic activity has slowed. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 06/24/2023 – 18:30

• Desperate San Fran Mayor Wants To Demolish Buildings To Revitalize Crime-Ridden Downtown
  Desperate San Fran Mayor Wants To Demolish Buildings To Revitalize Crime-Ridden Downtown

  San Francisco Mayor London Breed is desperate. She asked investors to “start re-imagining what the downtown can be” and to look past crime-ridden streets, homelessness encampments, open-air drug market, the exodus of businesses, and the commercial real estate meltdown that her administration’s failed progressive policies helped spark. 

  “I think we have to start re-imagining what the downtown can be,” Breed said at Thursday’s Bloomberg Technology Summit in San Francisco. 

  She continued: “Let’s look at what’s possible rather than dwelling on the stories of another store closing — there are a lot of people who may not even shop in those places” because of the proliferation of online shopping.

  Breed said there’s a need to convert dormant office buildings into housing, demolish buildings, and attract new business to the downtown area. And just how many buildings could the mayor convert? Well, as many as 30% of the city’s office space is now vacant — a record high. 

  

  She said the Westfield Mall, the largest mall in the downtown area, could be demolished, and the land used as “something completely different.” Recall weeks ago, Westfield and its partner Brookfield Properties stopped making payments on a $558 million loan tied to the mall, citing “challenging operating conditions” related to out-of-control crime. 

  Breed is desperately searching for solutions to stop the exodus of businesses and people from the metro area. She recently made a giant U-turn to fund the police after her defunding campaign backfired. 

  The mayor faces a budget deficit of $780 million that could exceed a billion dollars by 2026. The implosion of the city and the worsening CRE apocalypse might indicate no sane investor will want to touch the downtown area unless the progressives at City Hall are voted out. Voters have already booted out the city’s Soros-backed district attorney. We suspect the voters will boot out more progressives who have single-handedly transformed the once thriving metro area into a hellhole. 

   

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 06/24/2023 – 18:00

• Prigozhin 'Exiled' To Belarus In Exchange For Peace, Criminal Charges Dropped: What Was This All About?
  Prigozhin ‘Exiled’ To Belarus In Exchange For Peace, Criminal Charges Dropped: What Was This All About?

  Update(1735ET): This entirely bizarre slightly less than 24-hour short-lived coup attempt has just gotten even stranger, given the terms of the truce which evidently caused Evgeny Prigozhin to announce his Wagner fighter columns would turn around and go back to their bases.

  The Wall Street Journal has confirmed based on Kremlin statements that “As part of the agreement, Prigozhin will leave Russia for Belarus, and criminal charges against him will be dropped, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. His fighters will be allowed to sign contracts with the Russian military.”

  And Russia’s RT provides some further details as follows based on Peskov’s statement:

  “He added that Wagner’s fighters will not be persecuted, taking into account their efforts on the frontlines of the Ukraine conflict. Peskov explained that President Vladimir Putin’s team “have always respected their exploits.”

  Those PMC contractors, who refused to take part in the mutiny – and whole units did not – will be allowed to sign contracts with the Russian Defense Ministry, Peskov stated.

  Can this even be called “exile”?… given that Kremlin statements at this point aren’t even so much as using the word which has a clear punitive implication. The irony remains that one can get a much harsher punishment for mere Cannabis vape pens in the country. In summary:

  • charges dropped against Prigozhin, who will leave Russia for Belarus
  • Wagner fighters who didn’t take part in the uprising will sign contracts with the MOD
  • Wagner fighters who did take part not charged 
  • No word on potential MOD leadership changes

  What’s clear is that it does indeed look to be over, with no further immediate danger of civil conflict:

  The Wagner troops are departing from Rostov, eliciting applause from the onlookers. pic.twitter.com/rdXPAKmRHl

  — Russian Market (@runews) June 24, 2023

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

  Sputnik is further confirming Wagner has handed HQ/bases in Rostov-on-Don back to the regular military:

  📹 All PMC “Wagner” forces left the headquarters of the Southern Military District in Rostov-on-Don, a Sputnik correspondent reports pic.twitter.com/CtMZCBqtDa

  — Sputnik (@SputnikInt) June 24, 2023

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

  Despite the slap on the wrist (if even), the Kremlin is still talking “tough”:

  “The plotters’ adventurist aspirations are essentially aimed at destabilizing the situation in Russia, destroying our unity and undermining Russia’s efforts to reliably ensure international security,” the Foreign Ministry said. “The mutiny plays into the hands of Russia’s external enemies.”

  “The attempted armed mutiny in our country has aroused strong disapproval in Russian society, which firmly supports President Vladimir Putin,” the Foreign Ministry said.

  Regardless the speculation has begun, and is likely to continue for the coming days and weeks, over what precisely the world just witnessed here…

  This is not a coup by Prigozhin. This is an inner war between the St Petersburg gang of Putin and the Moscow gang of Gerasimov and Shoigu. This is the beginning of Putin‘s election campaign to become reelected on March 17, 2024. His lapdog Prigozhin is masquerading a coup to put…

  — Velina Tchakarova (@vtchakarova) June 24, 2023

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

  One theory seems as good as any other at this point, again given the ultra-bizarre spectacle of the whole “march for justice” on Moscow… by convoys of heavily armed mercenaries.

  I’ve gone on a coup by mistake! pic.twitter.com/YwwxJtayCy

  — Paul (@LeoVLion) June 24, 2023

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

  And then there was the heavy defense ministry pressure to essentially disband Wagner amid the long-running simmering tensions and war of words:

  I think the catalyst for this was the move by the MoD to force all PMCs to sign contracts with them, which likely had Putin’s support. There might be a short-term compromise or truce, but I don’t think things can go back to normal after this. https://t.co/l64Xw5cC4Y

  — Rob Lee (@RALee85) June 24, 2023

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

  There’s always the potential foreign ‘hidden hand’ theory behind any major insurrection like this, especially when it comes to a US-NATO enemy…

  Does NATO have a deal with Wagner? Brokered by the CIA? pic.twitter.com/50ZvOT1Q5B

  — @amuse (@amuse) June 24, 2023

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  Russian Arms Dealer Released by Biden Spotted With Wagner Group Boss https://t.co/GJLilzGlRm

  — Merissa_Hansen🇺🇸🦅 (@merissahansen17) June 24, 2023

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

  And finally, maybe Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has it right: old fashioned greed and glory (which Machiavelli warned about all the way back in the 16th century). Here’s Kadyrov on Prigozin’s actions:

  “I thought that some people can be trusted. That they sincerely love their Motherland as real patriots to the marrow of their bones. But it turned out that for the sake of personal ambitions, profit and because of arrogance, people can not give a damn about affection and love for the Fatherland.”

  Perhaps the truth will eventually emerge of the events over the last 24 hours, but what’s clear is that Moscow wants to make this whole episode go away as rapidly as the crisis began, and is not even moving to arrest Prigozhin to make that happen. He will now just quietly “go away”… maybe a little vacation of sorts, into neighboring Belarus.

  * * *

  Update(1325ET): An emerging Russian state media headline: Prigozhin Agrees to Stop PMC Wagner March, Start De-Escalation After Lukashenko’s Mediation…

  Belarusian president held talks with Prigozhin today. Lukashenko says that Prigozhin has agreed to “stop the movement of armed persons on the territory of Russia and to take further steps to deescalate.“

  Prigozhin has reportedly accepted Lukashenka’s proposal to stop the movement of PMC Wagner, according to Russian state media TASS. Reuters is also reporting the Kremlin-backed statements. Did we just witness a 22-hour coup? All over now?

  Lavrov: Russia retains control over tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus — TASS

  According to RT’s reporting:

  Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko announced on Saturday that he had arranged a deal whereby Wagner Group leader Evgeny Prigozhin will abandon his mutiny in exchange for “security guarantees” for his fighters.

  “Evgeny Prigozhin accepted the proposal of President Alexander Lukashenko to stop the movement of armed men of Wagner in Russia and take further steps to de-escalate tension,” read a statement from Lukashenko’s office.

  🇷🇺💥 BELARUS PRESIDENT’S OFFICE SAYS RUSSIAN MERCENARY LEADER PRIGOZHIN HAS AGREED TO STOP MOVEMENT OF WAGNER FIGHTERS AROUND RUSSIA

  BELARUS SAYS PRIGOZHIN HAS AGREED TO DE-ESCALATE THE SITUATION pic.twitter.com/2aOUIpGzg3

  — PiQ (@PriapusIQ) June 24, 2023

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  Will Prigozhin be given safe harbor after the treason charge?

  As for the Belarus-related ceasefire deal, there’s been no initial confirmation from Wagner Telegram or media channels on a “done deal”. There are conflicting reports that peace negotiations might be unsuccessful. 

  But Reuters is reporting, Prigozhin in audio message: To avoid bloodshed we are returning our convoys to bases.

  ⚡️Zelenskiy, addressing Putin: “The longer your troops remain on Ukrainian land, the greater the devastation they will bring to russia”

  — War Monitor (@WarMonitors) June 24, 2023

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

  * * *

  Update(1120ET): Wagner Group is making a move on the Russian capital, with multiple reports and videos now confirming Wagner convoys are headed toward Moscow, going north from Rostov region. At the same time, Chechen groups loyal to Putin are now sending their own armed convoys toward Rostov-on-Don, which has several key installations under the control of Yevgeny Prigozhin, accused of ‘treason’ by the Kremlin.

  Reuters is reporting, “Mutinous Russian mercenary fighters barreled towards Moscow on Saturday after seizing a southern city overnight, with Russia’s military firing on them from the air but seemingly incapable of slowing their lightning advance.” Little to no significant resistance is being observed while Wagner convoys blow through makeshift roadblocks. Some observers say Wagner fighters have been spotted within a mere few hours outside the capital.

  Another eyewitness video of a Wagner convoy reportedly breaking through then “truck obstacles” on the way to Moscow – the types of obstacles I posted above that are supposed to protect Moscow highways. https://t.co/MMdcEaNOQ7 pic.twitter.com/BaVpwxfg6U

  — Samuel Bendett (@sambendett) June 24, 2023

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  “Reuters saw troop carriers and a flatbed truck carrying a tank careening past the city of Voronezh more than half way to Moscow, where a helicopter fired on them,” the outlet noted. “But there were no reports of the rebels meeting any substantial resistance on the highway.”

  The Lipetsk governor has also confirmed armed Wagner forces are rapidly moving across the region, advancing in the direction of Moscow. While the Russian government erects barriers, it’s unclear which military units have been mustered as Prigozhin threatens the capital.

  

  Along with roadblocks of construction trucks and 18-wheelers, there are reports suggesting roads are being destroyed to block the insurrectionists’ progress:

  Roads are being destroyed in the Lipetsk region in an attempt to stop Wagner forces driving to Moscow pic.twitter.com/Y0olMJA2Zn

  — BNO News (@BNONews) June 24, 2023

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

  Per regional reports:

  NEXTA, an independent media outlet founded in Belarus that covers news in eastern Europe and Russia, reported that authorities were destroying the main roads in the Lipetsk region to keep Wagner Group tanks and vehicles from approaching Moscow. Other sources have published similar videos of excavators tearing up roadways.

  Alternative methods to block the roads when trucks are not an obstacle for Wagner: simply dig them up

  Video via SOTA pic.twitter.com/P4FN6XgqUf

  — Anna Chernova (@Anna_Journal) June 24, 2023

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

  Notes on recent updates, and a word of caution, over the last two hours via Mario Nawfal:

  • Worries of the Russian Nuclear Warheads moved to Belarus weeks ago 
  • Wagner forces continue their advance to Moscow with limited strikes by the Russian Air Force 
  • Reports of Putin and other officials leaving Moscow and heading to Saint Petersburg based on the movement of Military VIP aircrafts. TASS, which is Gov controlled media outlet, reported that Putin is heading to Saint Petersburg, but Putin’s Press Secretary refuted those reports. It is very unusual and rare to see such a disconnect between TASS and the Kremlin.

  MY THOUGHTS: 

  • This is a military coup, we can no longer dispute this, and things are moving VERY rapidly and are not looking good for Putin. 
  • We are seeing limited military clashes, showing likely defections among Russian forces 
  • Almost EVERYTHING right now can’t be verified and should be taken with a grain of salt

  Meanwhile, clashes could be imminent between Chechens loyal to Putin and Wagner mercenaries, which will be a nightmare scenario for surrounding civilians in the Rostov region…

  ⚡️Chechen troops in the suburbs of Rostov pic.twitter.com/VMiDCwjrhH

  — War Monitor (@WarMonitors) June 24, 2023

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

  Unverified reports that Wagner has begun arrests of Chechen and other military forces…

  ⚡️Ukrainian sources claim this video shows Wagner troops confronting Chechen troops in Rostov. Awaiting confirmation. pic.twitter.com/P1aD19sSgh

  — War Monitor (@WarMonitors) June 24, 2023

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

  The below map purports to show Wagner’s progress north on Saturday:

  

  * * *

  In his first speech addressing the crisis of Wagner’s armed rebellion on Saturday morning, Russian President Vladimir Putin has vowed to crush what he called Yevgeny Prigozhin’s “betrayal”. Southern governors, for example Alexander Gusev who oversees the city of Voronezh, have since confirmed armed clashes between regular military forces and Wagner fighters within Russian territory. He described necessary “combat measures” as part of counter-terror operations in the southern region.

  What was unclear by Friday night is now becoming very clear as of Saturday: all hell is breaking loose in this first significant moment in over two decades of Putin’s iron grip on power being threatened by armed mutiny. “Any internal turmoil is a deadly threat to our statehood and to us as a nation. This is a blow to Russia and to our people,” Putin said in the televised speech. “This battle, when the fate of our people is being decided, requires the unification of all forces.”

  

  “What we have been faced with is exactly betrayal. Extravagant ambitions and personal interests led to treason,” Putin said, referring to Prigozhin, head of the most powerful private military firm in Russia. “All those who consciously stood on the path of betrayal, who prepared an armed rebellion, stood on the path of blackmail and terrorist methods, will suffer inevitable punishment, before the law and before our people,” Putin vowed.

  He further in fiery language denounced the “stab in the back of our country and our people,” after Prigozhin the day prior declared war against the defense ministry, urging all Russians to join his 25,000 fighters as they seek to “stop” and overthrow Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and other top commanders.

  In response to Putin’s blistering speech, Prigozhin released a Telegram statement calling the president “deeply mistaken” regarding his assessment of betrayal of the motherland, refusing to surrender. The audio message released by his press service said as follows: 

  “Regarding the ‘betrayal of the motherland,’ the president is deeply mistaken. We are patriots of our Motherland, we fought and are fighting, all the fighters of the PMC Wagner.”

  “And no one is going to turn themselves in at the request of the president, the FSB or anyone else,” he added.

  BREAKING: Putin addresses nation, responds to Wagner threats: “This is a criminal campaign. It is equivalent to armed mutiny. Russia will defend itself and repel this move. We are fighting for the life and security of our citizens.”pic.twitter.com/GNzPsNWMWB

  — Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) June 24, 2023

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  This marks the first time he’s directed criticism precisely in response to Putin, as before he appeared to carefully avoid direct references to the Russian leader in his denunciations of military planning and Kremlin decision-making.

  Below summarizes fast-moving events of the last few hours:

  • Putin 5 min speech: accuses Prigozhin of betrayal, vows decisive action 
  • Wagner controls facilities in Rostov & Voronezh, M4 highway disrupted. Rebellion continues 
  • Chechen Kadyrov mobilizes to help Putin. Russia FM warns of ‘civil strife’

  The Wagner PMC Group has announced that they have Captured the Southern Military District Headquarters within the the City of Rostov-on-Don in the Rostov Region of Southwestern Russia. pic.twitter.com/730rL9uetq

  — OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) June 24, 2023

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  Civilians have reportedly been ordered away from all military command centers in the now Wagner-held city center of Rostov-on-Don.

  In Rostov (not sure what time) they ran from an explosion near the military district that Wagner took over. The interview following is in English. pic.twitter.com/PJfCq5qlYp

  — 🌻 Fertilizer Finder 🌻 (@ManiacMagic1) June 24, 2023

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  The Wagner chief in his response harped on the familiar theme of the defense ministry’s “corruption, deceit, and bureaucracy” and emphasized that his own fighters are patriotic and doing their duty.

  “When we were told that we were at war with Ukraine, we went and fought. But it turned out that ammunition, weapons, all the money that was allocated is also being stolen, and the bureaucrats are sitting [idly], saving it for themselves, just for the occasion that happened today, when someone [is] marching to Moscow,” he said.

  It is the second time since Russian authorities (the FSB) declared Prigozhin was engaging in ‘armed munity’ that the Wagner chief declared a “march of justice” on Moscow. As for the capital (and other major cities), the military and security services have been ordered by the Kremlin to secure the streets and beef up their presence.

  ⚡️Wagner troops sitting at a restaurant in the centre of Rostov after they occupied the city.

  June 24, 2023. pic.twitter.com/tJUS9Ui2sU

  — War Monitor (@WarMonitors) June 24, 2023

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

  Crucially, Wagner has declared control of the military command center and bases in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, a claim which some emerging videos appear to give some degree of authentication to…

  “Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, once a close Putin ally, said his troops had taken control of the military command centre and bases in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, the nerve centre of Russia’s offensive in Ukraine, and vowed to topple Moscow’s top military leaders,” AFP is noting.

  The fight is on, and could spread further north, engaging political centers of the country:

  Further north, on Wagner’s possible route towards Moscow, the governor of Russia’s Voronezh region said the armed forces had launched a “counter-terrorist operation” to suppress the revolt. A fuel depot on Voronezh city was on fire, he said.

  The FSB security service accused Prigozhin of attempting to launch a “civil conflict” and urged Wagner fighters to detain him.

  Russian police have moved against Wagner’s headquarters in St. Petersburg, where things have been largely without incident thus far:

  BREAKING: Russian police have surrounded the Wagner centre in St Petersburg.

  It comes as Wagner fighters have taken control of Rostov, home to Russian military headquarters that oversees the fighting in Ukraine.

  Latest: https://t.co/X3flQUBL0r

  📺 Sky 501 and YouTube pic.twitter.com/AOi4c2KXo5

  — Sky News (@SkyNews) June 24, 2023

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

  Active fighting, even including with air power, has erupted as Wagner convoys seek to make their way north, deeper into Russia…

  ⚡️Russian airforce targeting a convoy of Wagner equipment on the M-4 highway in Voronezh region this morning pic.twitter.com/4tpgVqjYmx

  — War Monitor (@WarMonitors) June 24, 2023

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

  Meanwhile, this will without doubt be a huge blow to the morale of both Russian troops and Wagner fighters alike along the frontlines inside Ukraine. It’s as yet unclear the degree to which Wagner has withdrawn from the Eastern Ukraine theatre, though it’s now been confirmed that Wagner forces had marched into Rostov overnight.

  Kiev will smell a grand ‘opportunity’. It along with its Western backers are closely monitoring, with Ukraine officials saying this “rebellion” is a “sign of the collapse of the Putin regime.”

  “The internal Russian confrontation between the leader of the so-called Wagner PMC Prigozhin and the military and political leadership of the aggressor state is a sign of the collapse of the Putin regime,” a statement by the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine said.

  “First of all, we must understand that this is an internal Russian conflict and confrontation which are a direct consequence of the Putin regime’s criminal military aggression against Ukraine,” the statement cited in CNN added.

  ⚡️#UPDATE Incredible video showing flares from a Ka-52 helicopter deflect a Wagner anti aircraft missile https://t.co/0UsXXuDQSl pic.twitter.com/9uPpEHbnZf

  — War Monitor (@WarMonitors) June 24, 2023

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  It must be remembered that these shocking events which threaten to unleash chaos within Russia come at a moment that by many accounts Ukraine’s counteroffensive appeared to be failing. President Zelensky himself at the start of the week had conceded a “slower than desired” start to the offensive. But now this could breath new life into it amid reports Ukraine is taking the opportunity to assault front lines. 

  Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to President Zelensky, told a Saturday press conference: “The launch of the Ukrainian counteroffensive has finally destabilized the Russian elites, exacerbating the internal split that emerged after the defeat in Ukraine.” Time will tell if Russian commanders can keep their frontlines unified even as things crumble with the Wagner situation.

  * * *

  Below are key excerpts from Putin’s Saturday speech vowing to crush the Wagner rebellion, as translated and compiled by state-run RT:

  Importance of unity

  President Putin argued that “Russia is today waging a grueling fight for its future,” facing off with the “neo-Nazis and their masters.” He went on to stress that “essentially the entire might of the West’s military, economic and information machine” is being directed against the country.

  “This battle, when the fate of our people is being decided,” calls for national unity and consolidation, Putin said in his address. According to the president, all internal conflicts and bickering must be put aside at present as “our external enemies can and use them to undermine us internally.”

  The Russian head of state emphasized that any actions driving a wedge between Russians are nothing short of “backstabbing of our country and our people.”

  Bitter history lessons

  Putin reminded Russians that a similar scenario played out in the country in 1917, when it was in the middle of World War I. He recounted how “intrigues, bickering, politicking behind the army’s and the people’s back” led to the “collapse of the state,” and the “tragedy of the Civil War.”

  “Russians were killing Russians, brothers were killing brothers, while various political adventurers and foreign powers were capitalizing on it,” the president said.

  Putin vowed to prevent this from happening as well as to defend Russia and its people, “including from internal mutiny.”

  Nature of the threat

  In his address, Putin clearly labelled the PMC coup attempt as a “betrayal.” He cited “enormous ambitions and personal interests” of certain individuals as the reasons behind this “betrayal of their country and its people.” He went on to accuse those responsible, without naming Prigozhin in particular, of turning their back on the joint military cause in Ukraine and the memory of the fallen fighters.

  If successful, the coup would lead to “anarchy and fratricide,” resulting, in the long run, in Russia’s “defeat” and “capitulation,” according to Putin.

  The president characterized “any internal mutiny” as a death threat to the Russian state and nation. The president pledged to take “tough measures” against the mutineers, who have “willingly entered the path of betrayal” and prepared “armed insurrection.”

  Those responsible will be brought to account before the Russian people, the president assured the public.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 06/24/2023 – 17:35

• California Drought Is Over, Major Reservoirs Overflowing
  California Drought Is Over, Major Reservoirs Overflowing

  Authored by Sophie Li via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The historic barrage of storms this winter offered some breathing room for California’s extreme dry conditions, with 95 percent of the state now reported to be out of drought, according to the newest drought monitor map, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Climate Prediction Center, released June 13.

  

  The update showed that now only about 5 percent of the state is in “moderate drought” and 27 percent is considered “abnormally dry.” Last year, the state was almost in 100 percent moderate-to-exceptional drought.

  

  However, water experts say there is far more work ahead to prepare for future dry years.

  “This one wet winter was not able to recharge our groundwater basins,” Darcy Burke, board director of Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District told The Epoch Times. “Water needs to slow down, needs to stay in place, and needs to slowly percolate through. We need more storage.”

  According to Burke, over 26 million-acre-feet of water—enough for 75 million households—had to be released into the ocean between October and May this year.

  Reservoirs are full, she said, and some water has been lost that was needed for other purposes.

  “We have no place to put it,” she said. “[Lake] Oroville is full and it’s spilling. All the excess water … is going off the spillway not generating electricity.”

  

  Water Flushed to Ocean as Reservoirs Overflowing

  Lake Oroville, California’s second-largest reservoir, reached 100 percent capacity on June 6, with several others following, according to the California Department of Water Resources.

  In contrast, in January, among the state’s 17 major reservoirs, only its smallest—the Cachuma Reservoir northwest of Santa Barbara—was nearly full, according to the water department. The rest were partially filled, ranging from about 30 to 80 percent.

  According to the department, aging facilities made water storage and moving it through pipelines, canals, or ferries inefficient.

  But some say the winter’s water was not stored because it was flushed to the ocean to help replenish some endangered fish species, like the Delta smelt.

  “It’s a political problem,” Don Jackson, an almond farmer and a water board member of Kern County, said on a recent episode of EpochTV’s California Insider. “We’re flushing all the water out … instead of sending it to the people—which the aqueduct system was built for.”

  

  Farmland Flooded but Pumping Still Restricted

  A major part of California’s economy is agriculture, which generates over $50 billion in annual revenue and employs over 420,000 people, according to a study by the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonprofit research institution based in San Francisco.

  While the rainfall eased the drought, it also flooded land, which is still not able to be used, said Burke from Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District.

  Additionally, with so much flooded land, some dairy farmers were left with no place for their livestock.

  “There’s no Motel Six to take a cow,” she said. “Tens of thousands of dairy cattle were either sold or were [slaughtered for food] because there was no place to put them.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 06/24/2023 – 17:30

• Washington State Joins Texas Mandating Tesla Charging Plug Adoption
  Washington State Joins Texas Mandating Tesla Charging Plug Adoption

  Tesla, Inc. scored a major win on Friday as Washington State plans to require electric vehicle charging companies to include both Tesla’s standard, otherwise known as The North American Charging Standard (NACS) and the Combined Charging System (CCS) at charging stations if they want to join the state program to electrify highways using government dollars, according to Reuters. Washington is the second state this week, following Texas, to require charging stations to offer NACS. 

  “I’m actually really happy about NACS and how finally automakers are gearing towards one standard. We want to provide access to as many makes and models as possible.

  “It hasn’t necessarily been tested and certified for other auto manufacturers, so we want to make sure it’s going to work but we are planning to require NACS at our state funded and federally funded sites in the future,” said Tonia Buell, alternative fuels program manager at Washington state’s Department of Transportation. 

  Buell said state officials are still determining “the right mix of NACS chargers based on current federal requirements.” Federal rules dictate EV charging stations that receive government money must include at least four CCS chargers. Buell said the state might require at least two chargers to work with NACS or all chargers. 

  On Tuesday, Texas was the first state to announce vehicle charging companies to include NACS if they want to tap government money for EV stations. Further cementing NACS as the possible charging standard for EVs are GM, Ford, and Rivan, who all announced they’re switching from CCS to NACS. 

  

  The decision by Washington State, Texas, GM, Ford, and Rivan to adopt NACS is a move that goes against the Biden administration’s efforts to make CCS the dominant charging standard nationwide. 

  EV blog InsideEVs expects “CCS1’s death is likely to be slow. After all, carmakers and charging companies spent over a decade establishing CCS1 networks across the US.” 

  Tesla has opened up its 2,000 Supercharger locations to other EV owners. This means more demand for NACS, which might create bottlenecks of longlines at chargers across the Supercharging network because of increased demand. Plus, if there’s more demand, this also indicates higher charging prices at Superchargers. 

  A quick search on Amazon yields numerous EV charging companies that make at-home 240V CCS chargers discounting their products. 

  

  We suspect more states will join Washington and Texas. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 06/24/2023 – 17:00

• Taxation Without Representation Meets The 21st Century
  Taxation Without Representation Meets The 21st Century

  Authored by Robert Alt via RealClear Wire,

  Who is authorized to tax the income of a commuter who doesn’t commute? This question—born of the pandemic and currently pending before the Supreme Court of Ohio—could be coming to a tax bill near you, and soon.

  

  Following the outbreak of Covid-19 in 2020, government orders forced millions of employees to work from home instead of at their usual offices. These orders accelerated a trend which had already begun toward remote and hybrid work and—three years later—is all but entrenched.

  While some companies have begun requiring employees to return to the office, the outdated ways of packing folks into tight cubicles in downtown high rises will never be the same.

  Benjamin Franklin famously observed that “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes,” so it should come as little surprise that along with the changes in assigned duty stations came a corresponding attempt by government authorities to prove old Uncle Ben right.

  Most Americans pay state and local income taxes based upon where they reside. Accordingly, the shift to remote work made no difference to their tax liability. But some employees are subject to commuter taxes, which are assessed based upon where the work itself is performed.

  Commuter taxes raise their own public policy concerns—after all, commuters have no say in how those tax dollars are used because they cannot vote in those jurisdictions. The antiquated justification for commuter taxes is that employees receive some tangible benefits while they are physically in the city, i.e., if an employee has a medical emergency while at work, it would be the city’s emergency services that would respond.

  But what happens when commuters are no longer commuting to those cities?

  In addition to the city no longer providing tangible services to the now non-commuting employee, if that same employee has a heart attack while working from home, it is the safety services in the residential jurisdiction that would respond and should therefore receive the revenue.

  Taxing authorities for the office locations have quickly run into a legal problem: Governments may tax only people or property over which they have jurisdiction. Cities or states can tax their own residents for any income earned and nonresident commuters only for work performed within their jurisdictions.

  This limitation makes sense. Otherwise a cash-hungry government could find tenuous pretextual grounds to tax nonresident income, violating basic notions of due process, and creating the risk that the same income would be taxed multiple times by different governments.

  When Massachusetts issued a rule requiring employees who had previously worked in Massachusetts but were now working elsewhere due to Covid-19 to pay Massachusetts income taxes anyway, its neighboring New Hampshire sensibly filed a case in the United States Supreme Court on behalf of its citizens who were neither living nor working in Massachusetts. Unfortunately, taxpayers got no clarification because the Supreme Court declined to hear New Hampshire’s complaint, leaving Massachusetts’ unconstitutional money grab in place for the time being.

  As Justices Thomas and Alito lamented, the court should have taken the case. The decision not to take it does not set a legal precedent, and—accordingly—we do not know how the Supreme Court would rule in such a case. All we can say for sure is that Massachusetts has done a full 180 since the Revolution and now quite ironically favors taxation without representation.

  Massachusetts was not alone in seeking to tax beyond its jurisdictional borders either.

  Ohio, for example, allowed municipalities to tax the income of workers who do not live in—and in fact were legally prohibited from working in—those same municipalities under Ohio’s stay-at-home order. The bill absurdly “deemed” all work performed elsewhere during the emergency order to have been performed at the employee’s principal place of work for the purposes of levying income taxes on it. If you stepped foot in your office, you were subject to being arrested and charged with a crime, but they were still going to pretend that you were in your office so as to tax you all the same. George Orwell, call your editor.

  The Buckeye Institute challenged a half dozen cities across Ohio in court for these actions—most recently Cincinnati in Schaad v. Alder, which had its oral arguments before the Ohio Supreme Court on March 1.

  Since 1950, the Ohio Supreme Court has consistently held that the Constitution’s Due Process Clause allows municipalities to tax only two types of income: income earned by the municipality’s own residents and income earned by nonresidents for work physically performed within the municipality’s geographical borders.

  These avaricious cities’ brazen efforts to collect income taxes from nonresidents who did not work in their jurisdictions are unconstitutional, deprive smaller municipalities of revenue owed to them, and violate the easy-to-follow real estate maxim—location, location, location. Cincinnati may tax work performed by nonresidents within its own city limits, but not work performed by nonresidents in Cleveland, Columbus, Toledo, or even where Mr. Schaad did his job—in his hometown of Blue Ash.

  Considering that some 41 out of 50 states levy income taxes combined with the dramatic rise in remote work arrangements, which make it easier and more common for employees living in one city or state to work for an employer based in another city or state, all eyes should be on the Ohio Supreme Court as we await its decision in this case. How it rules in Schaad v. Alder will very likely set a precedent for how the income of remote workers nationwide is taxed going forward.

  Robert Alt is the President and CEO of The Buckeye Institute in Columbus, Ohio, and the attorney who argued the Schaad v. Alder case before the Ohio Supreme Court.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 06/24/2023 – 16:30

• Fauci's Flip-Flopping Lab-Leak Denier Subpoenaed After Stonewalling Congress On 'Proximal Origin'
  Fauci’s Flip-Flopping Lab-Leak Denier Subpoenaed After Stonewalling Congress On ‘Proximal Origin’

  A scientist who originally told Dr. Anthony Fauci that Covid-19 looks “potentially” engineered, only to flip-flop days later and co-author a report prompted by Fauci “disproving” the lab-leak hypothesis, has been subpoenaed by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.

  

  Dr. Kristian Anderson was slapped with the Congressional subpoena last week, according to Subcommittee Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), who announced on Friday that “Andersen played a pivotal role in potentially suppressing the lab leak hypothesis, and Americans deserve to know why this happened, who was involved, and how we can prevent the intentional suppression of scientific discourse during a future pandemic.”

  Anderson notably emailed Fauci on Jan. 31, 2020 – where he said that Covid-19 had “unusual features” that “(potentially) look engineered,” and that other scientists “all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory.”

  The next day, Fauci and his former boss, NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins, and at least eleven other scientists participated in a conference call during which several of them warned that COVID-19 may have leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China – may have been intentionally genetically manipulated.

  

  Three days after the call, four participants from the call (Andersen, University of Sydney virologist Edward Holmes, Tulane School of Medicine virologist Robert Garry, University of Edinburgh virologist Andrew Rambaut and Columbia University virologist Ian Lipkin) seemingly discarded their concerns over a lab-leak, and drafted “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” which they sent to Fauci and Collins.

  Also heavily involved (yet not credited) was Dr. Jeremy Farrar, the current Chief Scientist at the World Health Organization.

  On June 16, Anderson testified before the House subcommittee, where he told them that he and the co-authors had communicated primarily via Slack while drafting the paper. He also admitted that he had not provided all messages relevant to the subcommittee’s inquiry because not all participants of the Slack discussions approved of their release.

  According to Wenstrup, the subpoena was issued to compel the production of said Slack messages

  “We are following the breadcrumbs of a COVID-19 cover-up straight to the source,” he said.

  How it started how it is going pic.twitter.com/k0u1jI0j4U

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 23, 2023

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

  More via the Epoch Times:

  Wenstrup said the authors “may have possessed conflicts of interest for supporting a zoonotic origin of COVID-19.”

  A copy of the subpoena seen by The Epoch Times states that Andersen will be required to provide all Slack documents and communications dated from Jan. 1, 2020, to June 23, 2023, regarding the origins of COVID-19, which referenced former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease Director Dr. Anthony Fauci and former National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Francis Collins, among others.

  Fauci’s Alleged Role in Drafting Study

  The subcommittee issued a memo (pdf) on March 5 saying that it uncovered new email evidence suggesting that Fauci “prompted” the drafting of the study.

  The memo detailed a conference call between Collins, Fauci, and at least 11 other scientists in early February 2020, about a week after the first Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus—commonly known as the novel coronavirus—case was confirmed in the United States.

  Collins, Fauci, and others were warned in the Feb. 1, 2020, call about the possibility that the virus may have leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, in late 2019, according to the memo.

  Citing internal emails, the committee asserted that Fauci “prompted” Andersen to write the paper and that it was designed “to ‘disprove’ any lab leak theory.”

  The Proximal Origin paper’s abstract suggested that the virus may have emerged via Malaysia pangolins because they “contain coronaviruses similar to SARS-CoV.”

  “The presence in pangolins of [a virus’ receptor-binding domain] very similar to that of SARS-CoV-2 means that we can infer this was also probably in the virus that jumped to humans,” the paper reads.

  But the March 5 memo, citing internal emails, stipulated that Anderson “did not find the pangolin data compelling” and only wrote the paper after being “prompted” by Fauci, Collins, and the others.

  “Privately, Dr. Andersen did not believe the pangolin data disproved a lab leak theory despite saying so publicly. It is still unclear what intervening event changed the minds of the authors of Proximal Origin in such a short period of time,” the House committee stated.

  Jack Phillips contributed to this report.

  Further reading:

  • Fauci In 2012: Gain-Of-Function Research ‘Worth Risk Of Lab Accident Sparking Pandemic’

  • Fauci-Funded EcoHealth Refuses To Give Wuhan Documents To Congress

  • ‘EcoHealth Alliance’ Orchestrated Key Scientists’ Statement On “Natural Origin” Of SARS-CoV-2

  • Video Of Live Bats In Wuhan Lab Reveals Daszak Lied In Now-Deleted Tweet

  • “Sadly, It Starts With Two Lies”: Peter Daszak’s Latest Wuhan Screed Shredded

  ZeroPointNow
  Sat, 06/24/2023 – 16:00

• Washington's Bias For Continuous Inflationism
  Washington’s Bias For Continuous Inflationism

  Authored by MN Gordon via EconomicPrism.com,

  This week Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell delivered his semiannual testimony to Congress.  A main feature of the discussion was the status of rate hikes and the fight against inflation.

  In short, Powell’s inflation fight isn’t over.

  Core CPI, which excludes food and fuel prices, is increasing at an annual rate of 5.3 percent.  Similarly, core personal consumption expenditure (PCE) prices are up 4.7 percent from a year ago.

  Thus, a federal funds rate of 5.25 percent isn’t enough to contain rising prices.  Ideally, a rate on the order of 7 to 7.25 percent is needed to do the trick.

  After its recent FOMC meeting, the Fed signaled two additional rate hikes this year.  As part of this week’s testimony, Powell validated this… remarking it was a “pretty good guess”.

  

  So, why pause in the first place?

  The Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic Bank fiascos in March are a very small part of a much larger issue.  Rapid interest rate hikes have left poorly prepared banks unable to adequately compensate depositors.

  The 6-Month Treasury Bill is yielding 5.4 percent.  Many savings accounts are paying a dividend of less than 0.05 percent.

  At this point, banks cannot compete with short-term Treasuries.  This is because the bonds many short-sighted banks purchased several years ago, when interest rates were near zero, are entirely underwater.

  Remember, bond prices move inverse to interest rates.  So, banks find themselves in a situation where they are unable to sell bonds to payout depositor withdrawals without suffering massive losses.

  And because the banks cannot compete with short-term Treasury yields, depositors are incentivized to pull their savings and park it in Treasuries.  This puts the solvency of banks in question.

  As the failure of SVB showed, it doesn’t take much these days to trigger a digital bank run.

  Inflationary Bias

  The Fed’s hawkish rate pause is a temporary gift to banks.  It buys them a little time to get a handle on their capital positions.  Though it’s really nothing more than a token nod.

  What can a bank really do to rebalance its bond holdings in a month’s time?

  The rate pause, in reality, only serves to delay the inevitable banking crisis.  But that’s not all…

  The rate pause also comes at the risk of greater price inflation.  Interest rates, while much higher than in early 2022, are still accommodative.  Commercial banks can still use the Fed’s discount window to obtain credit at a price that’s less than the core CPI rate.

  This is partly why the major stock market indexes are making a concerted run at their record highs.  So, too, this is partly why residential real estate prices in many cities are still largely unaffordable.  Rate hikes have done little to contain asset price inflation.

  By pausing, the Fed’s taking a risky gamble.  Should consumer price inflation push higher, the supposed hawkish rate pause will go down as another great big Fed policy mistake.

  Moreover, to correct this mistake, the Fed will have to jack up interest rates even higher than if it hadn’t paused in the first place.

  Should we expect anything different?

  The Fed’s latest actions are consistent with its historical inflationary bias.  Remember, the Fed has an inflation target of 2 percent.  By this, it deliberately promotes the continuous increase in prices.

  This inflationary bias is based on the belief that deflation is more disruptive to economic stability than inflation.  So, out of utmost caution, and to keep the government coffers full, central bankers error on the side of inflation.

  BOGO Offers

  Deflation, by definition, means a general reduction of prices.  As opposed to inflation, deflation allows consumers to buy more goods or services tomorrow with the same money they have today.

  When deflation takes hold, savvy consumers will delay purchases in anticipation they can buy more for less in the future.  This leads to supply overhangs, which puts further downward pressure on prices.  BOGO (buy one get one free) offers become necessary to move product.

  With respect to the cycle of deflation, lower spending leads to less income for businesses and producers.  This, in turn, leads to less production, worker layoffs, higher unemployment, and GDP contraction.  This all, again, leads to less spending as the cycle of deflation progresses.

  Rising unemployment and contracting GDP are also a great big fear for populist politicians who want to get reelected.  For example, at this week’s Fed testimony, Maxine Waters, the ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, gave Powell the following advice:

  “I caution against any approach in monetary policy that ignores the Fed’s maximum employment mandate and results in a recession with millions of people losing their homes and jobs.”

  Of course, the real impacts of the cycle of deflation are on leveraged businesses and individuals, and credit markets.  As asset prices deflate, along with profits and incomes, the ability to service existing debt becomes harder and harder.  This leads to mass bankruptcies.

  Deflation is problematic for lenders and bankers and can push them to insolvency.  It can also lead to a financial crisis, breakdown in the credit market, and an economic recession or depression.

  Washington’s Bias for Continuous Inflationism

  Nonetheless, deflation isn’t something to be feared.  In fact, it is a certain aspect of the business cycle.  And a moral feature of the economy.

  For individuals and businesses who have been prudent with their finances, deflation is a boon.  They can live better at a lower cost.

  To the contrary, those who make reckless decisions during the inflationary boom suffer the greatest consequences during the bust.  They find themselves unable to pay their debts.  They get wiped out.

  Yet when central bankers attempt to forestall deflation with persistent inflation, they merely magnify the risks, price distortions, and the eventual depressions.  And when Washington steps in with bailouts galore, it harms innocent and responsible people by socializing the losses.

  This is all consistent with the inflationary bias of central bankers and politicians.

  Moderate inflation may be perceived as being pleasant.  Over time, debt obligations are lessened.  Annual wage increases, for instance, greatly reduce the burden of a monthly mortgage payment over the life of a 30-year fixed-rate home loan.

  The problem, however, is that for inflation to continue its stimulative effect, it must continue at a faster and faster rate.  And, ultimately, a bias for continuous inflationism leads to much greater harm.

  While an individual’s debt burdens may be lessened over time.  The debt burdens throughout the economy, as asset prices inflate faster than wage increases, become greater.

  As things progress, the only means of preventing a collapse is by supplying more and more inflation, in the form of artificially cheap credit, greater and greater amounts of debt, and outright money printing.

  Most people have no clue what’s going on…or what’s coming.

  Enjoy the relative stability while it lasts.

  *  *  *

  Like this article?  If so, please Subscribe to the Economic Prism.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 06/24/2023 – 15:30

• Almost A Third Of America's Homeless Population Lives In California, Study Finds
  Almost A Third Of America’s Homeless Population Lives In California, Study Finds

  Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  California has the largest number of people experiencing homelessness in the United States, accounting for nearly a third of the country’s homeless population, according to a recent study conducted by the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

  

  “More than 171,000 people experience homelessness daily in California, two times more than the next highest state,” the UCSF’s California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness (CASPEH) study report (pdf) said. “While 12 percent of the overall United States population lives in California, 30 percent of the nation’s homeless population and half the nation’s unsheltered population (those living outside, in vehicles, or in places not meant for human habitation) reside here.”

  The report, released on June 20, shatters a common myth about homelessness in California—that many of these people come from outside the state. It points out that “people experiencing homelessness in California are Californians.” Nine out of ten respondents had lost their last housing in the state. Meanwhile, 75 percent of participants lived in the same county where their last home was located.

  High costs and homelessness were found to have left the participants “vulnerable to homelessness.” In the six months prior to becoming homeless, the median monthly household income of the respondents was found to be just $960.

  “Twenty-one percent of leaseholders cited a loss of income as the main reason that they lost their last housing. Among non-leaseholders, 13 percent noted a conflict within the household, and 11 percent noted not wanting to impose.”

  The survey respondents said that financial support could have prevented their homelessness, with 70 percent saying that a monthly rental subsidy of $300 to $500 would have ensured they had a roof over their heads.

  Eighty-two percent believed a one-time payment of $5,000 to $10,000 could have ensured they did not become homeless. Eighty-nine percent cited housing costs as a barrier to re-enter permanent housing.

  The study was conducted among nearly 3,200 homeless people between October 2021 and November 2022, with 365 people recruited for in-depth interviews.

  Poor Government Policies and Funding Oversight

  

  The CASPEH report comes as California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently admitted in an interview that his efforts to curb homelessness in the state had not yielded results.

  “This state has not made progress in the last two decades as it relates to homelessness because housing costs are too high, our regulatory thickets are too problematic, localism has been too impactful—meaning people locally are pushing back against new housing starts and construction,” Newsom said.

  In February this year, California’s Interagency Council on Homelessness released a report detailing the massive amounts of money the state spent between 2018 and 2021 on the matter.

  The report points out that the state spent close to $10 billion during this three-year period and provided services to over 571,000 people, with each year servicing more homeless people than the previous. But despite this spending, most of these people remained homeless.

  In 2022, Los Angeles in California was the city with the largest homeless population in America, according to USA Facts. From 2011 to 2022, the city’s homeless population rose from 39,000 to 70,000.

  In an interview with The Epoch Times, Alex Villanueva, former Los Angeles County Sheriff, blamed the crisis on homelessness being a profitable industry for various individuals and organizations. “They’re not doing anything about it because the homeless industrial complex is alive and well,” he said.

  According to Villanueva, many nonprofits receive funding from counties to resolve the homelessness issue. However, there are no clear guidelines on how such funding ought to be utilized.

  “There’s no governance, there’s no oversight, there’s no accountability on the results. [The county] just keeps shoveling money at them, and the problem keeps getting worse and worse,” he said.

  Aging Homeless Population, Physical and Mental Crisis

  The CASPEH report found that the homeless population in California is “aging,” with the median age of study participants being 47 years.

  Thirty-nine percent of participants were found to be in their first episode of homelessness. Over a third met the federal criteria for chronic homelessness. The median length of an individual’s homelessness was found to be 22 months.

  “Physical and sexual victimization throughout the life course was common,” the study noted. “Nearly three quarters (72 percent) experienced physical violence in their lifetime; 24 percent experienced sexual violence … The majority (82 percent) reported a period in their life where they experienced a serious mental health condition.”

  To cope with homelessness, many participants have resorted to drugs and alcohol, the study found. “Almost one-third (31 percent) reported regular use of methamphetamines, 3 percent cocaine, and 11 percent non-prescribed opioids. Sixteen percent reported heavy episodic drinking.”

  According to the survey, most of the participants belonged to three racial groups—whites making up 27 percent, followed by blacks and Latinos with 26 percent each.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 06/24/2023 – 14:30

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