- Letter To A Mainstream Straddler: Live Not By Half-Lies
Letter To A Mainstream Straddler: Live Not By Half-Lies
Authored by Margaret Anna Alice via Off-Guardian.org,
I get it. You don’t want to be called a “conspiracy theorist.”
You don’t want to be tarred an “anti-vaxxer.” A “science-denier.” A “far right-wing extremist.”
You’ve got your reputation to protect. Your credibility. Your grant funding.
So you water down the truth. You tiptoe around it. You don’t go there.
And the philanthropaths, the tyrants, the Big Liars, the demociders, and their enablers continue to profit. Continue to conspire. Continue to torture. Continue to slaughter.
They tell you right to your face what they’re doing.
But if you turn around and quote them, you’re the crazy one.
If you ask why a child, teen, athlete, or other healthy adult suddenly had a heart attack, got turbo cancer, or died, you’re the “truly disgusting” one.
If you provide scientific evidence that a warp-sped experimental injection being peddled by a trillion-dollar industry in collusion with governments, federal agencies, the media, and Big Tech is dangerous, you—not the corporations raking in billions—are the grifter.
If you ask what’s causing the sudden deaths and injuries that began surging in 2021 in hopes of preventing future such tragedies, you’re “morally reprehensible” (and yet “mocking anti-vaxxers’ COVID deaths … may be necessary”).
If you point out that we should maybe think twice about pushing a product estimated to have killed thirteen million human beings and counting, you are the “major killing force globally” and guilty of “undermin[ing] public confidence” in said product.
If you call genocide genocide, you are the enemy, the misinformation spreader, the anti–semite.
If you dare point out Never Again is already happening, you get inquisitioned—even though Holocaust survivors and their relatives agree.
If you call out governments for practicing totalitarianism and enacting policies that cause lethal collateral damage, you’re the granny-killer.
If you challenge people to face the livid, electrifying grief of those who have lost loved ones to financially incentivized hospicide, you are making them uncomfortable.
You know you’re living in a world of lies when the mob is more enraged at the whistleblowers revealing the deceptions, corruption, and murder than they are at the lying liars, corrupt corrupters, and murdering murderers themselves—indeed, they trip over themselves racing to defend their narcissistic abusers.
As Edward Snowden says:
When exposing a crime is treated as committing a crime, you are being ruled by criminals!”
But guess what?
Once they start calling you all those hideous names, you realize they’re nothing more than magician’s smoke.
You gradually start to give fewer and fewer f*cks.
You know you’ve hit zero when you feel the exhilarating liberation that comes from shouting the unfettered truth.
That’s the words-can-never-hurt-you stage.
You become untouchable.
You start collecting libels like Purple Hearts.
The more scars you can count, the more evidence of your efficacy, your threat to the hegemony.
That’s when you can truly LIVE. And by truth, not by lies.
If enough of us stand up and do that, we can hold the perpetrators accountable. We can present the unadulterated evidence of their crimes. And we can find justice … or die trying—like the members of the White Rose, whose piercing words still ring out nearly a century later:
“We will not keep silent. We are your guilty conscience.”
I’m going to tell you a secret.
Stick it out long enough, and that tarnished reputation turns into burnished gold.
Because when you are slandered by the propagandists, that means you are the good guy, even though the menticided public believes the opposite.
In Upside-Down World, persisting in seeing things right-side up—despite the incessant, relentless, never-ending gaslighting—means you have valiantly guarded your most precious possessions: your integrity and your sanity.
As e.e. cummings writes:
To be nobody but
yourself in a world
which is doing its best day and night to make you like
everybody else means to fight the hardest battle
which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.”Most gratifying of all, you will find fellow members of your karass, and together you will set about fulfilling your wampeter.
Once you are living in alignment with your values, you will feel the deepest joy fathomable.
And when the COVID criminals have been found guilty, when the spells dissolve, the people will gradually awaken from their coma and recognize you for the hero you are.
Or not. Most will be too ashamed to admit they’ve been conned. To realize they shielded fascist tyrants and attacked those trying to rescue them.
Few find that courageous humility within themselves to acknowledge their complicity in totalitarianism.
And so they will swathe themselves in soothing denial and lash out at anyone who tries to puncture it.
But you will keep trying, anyway. Because that’s what truth-tellers do. That’s what people who care about saving lives do. That’s what people of integrity do, whether or not anyone ever recognizes it.
You know in your heart what is true, and you speak it. And no one one can ever shut you up again.
Even if they kill you.
Your bravery will outlive you.
Your words will remain like candles, lighting the path for future truth-droppers. And you will be at peace, in life and beyond.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/01/2023 – 23:40 - SpaceX Doubles Number Of Rocket Launches
SpaceX Doubles Number Of Rocket Launches
Launching rockets into orbit is an expensive business.
So costly that, thus far, only government space agencies or government-related companies have transported astronauts or satellites into space.
Still, as Statista’s Florian Zandt details below, the private space industry has been booming in the last couple of years, with companies like Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX providing varying degrees of suborbital and orbital space travel and transportation.
In 2022, according to Bryce Tech, eleven private providers launched 94 rockets – of which SpaceX alone sent 61 rockets into orbit.
You will find more infographics at Statista
This compares with 71 launches by space agencies or government-related companies.
The leader in this category is the prime contractor for the Chinese space program, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (35 launches). It is followed by Roscosmos (21 launches), the space agency of the Russian Federation.
However, the private and public sectors are often intertwined rather than strictly separated. For example, SpaceX has been awarded NASA contracts worth $2 billion in the agency’s fiscal year 2022 alone.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/01/2023 – 23:20 - The World Economic Forum's 'AI Enslavement' Is Coming For You!
The World Economic Forum’s ‘AI Enslavement’ Is Coming For You!
Authored by J.B.Shurk via The Gatestone Institute,
The mission objective of the World Economic Forum (WEF) is remarkably simple: the smartest, best people in the world should rule everyone else. In WEF parlance, their schemes of total supervision and behavioral modification will create a “sustainable” future for humanity. Humans become nothing more than “things” to be counted, shuffled, categorized, tagged, monitored, manipulated, and controlled. They become nothing more than cogs in the WEF’s great trans-humanist, technocratic machine.
Pictured: WEF founder and executive chairman Klaus Schwab in Davos on May 23, 2022. (Photo by Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)
When Sir Thomas More wrote his socio-political satire about a fictional island society in the New World, he gave it the fabricated name, Utopia, derived from simple Greek and meaning, “no-place.” Although More was humorously telling his audience that his idealized community existed nowhere, centuries of central planners chasing the fantasy of utopian societies have failed to get the joke. Worse, for every peaceful religious community seeking separation from modern civilization, there is a power-hungry tyrant seeking to impose his will upon everyone else.
It seems as if not a generation goes by when some megalomaniac does not rise to proclaim, “If only the world does exactly as I demand, I will deliver you paradise here on Earth.” Usually, these same narcissists go down in history remembered as either vainglorious buffoons or bloodthirsty tyrants — often both.
Today, Klaus Schwab rises as leader of the World Economic Forum (WEF) to promise a “Great Reset” for the human race. He envisions a future Utopia achieved through technological precision, centralized management of Earth’s resources, careful observation of citizens, the merger of human and artificial intelligence, and the monopolization of government power by a small professional class with recognized expertise. Although the WEF has spent the last 50 years organizing conferences, publishing policy proposals, and connecting global leaders in industry, banking, information technology, intelligence gathering, military strategy, and politics, its mission objective is remarkably simple: the smartest, best people in the world should rule everyone else.
Separated from all its pretensions about “saving the world” from unchecked population growth and climate apocalypse, the WEF is nothing new. Its foundations have been around at least since the time of Plato, when two and a half millennia ago the Greek philosopher proposed that the ideal city-state would be ruled by “philosopher kings.” Just as Plato surveyed the world and predictably concluded that people from his own vocation should logically govern everyone else, the World Economic Forum’s global “elites” have come to a strikingly similar determination. Far from advancing anything forward-looking or modern, Schwab and his acolytes walk in the footsteps of an ancient Greek. For a half-century, the WEF’s members have been on a quest to devise the perfect global government without any say from Western nations’ voting populations, and to no-one’s surprise, those same “philosopher kings” have nominated themselves to do the ruling. How convenient.
As is true of almost all visions of Utopia, the WEF’s new world order will be remarkably centralized. “Experts” on climate change will determine what kinds of energy may be used by businesses and consumers. “Experts” on sustainability will determine what foods humans (at least the non-“elite” variety) may eat. “Experts” on disinformation will determine what kinds of news and which side of a debate may be known and promoted. “Experts” on healthcare will determine how many times each citizen must be injected with ever-newer “vaccines,” whether citizens must be kept in lockdown “for their own good,” and whether face masks must be worn to prove continuing compliance. “Experts” on extremism will determine what kinds of speech are “harmful.” “Experts” on racism will determine which groups in society have unfair “privilege.” “Experts” in inequality will determine whose property must be taken and which groups the State should reward. “Experts” in whatever the State requires will determine that the State is acting reasonably every step of the way. However, freedom of thought, freedom of speech, individual rights, and other personal liberties will mean little in a WEF-constructed future running on philosopher-king-approved expertise. At no time can an individual’s needs, wants or concerns be allowed to obstruct the “greater good.” This is Schwab’s drab vision of Utopia.
Should he and the WEF clan pull it off, they will do so by using technology to enfeeble, rather than empower, the human race. Already, people have become familiar with the new terms of their future enslavement. Central bank digital currencies will allow governments not only to track every citizen’s income and purchase history in real time but also to limit what a person may spend depending upon government-determined social credit scores, perceived infractions of the “common good,” or perhaps unfair possession of “systemic privilege.” Digital vaccine passports will not only provide universal tracking of every person’s movements but also ensure stick-and-carrot compliance with future mandatory orders during declared “health emergencies.” Personal carbon footprints measuring each individual’s “culpability” for so-called man-made climate change will have the effect of recording everything a person eats and everywhere a person goes, while constantly “nudging” each citizen with digital rewards or penalties to modify behavior toward the government’s preferred standards. It should go without saying that when any government possesses such omnipotent powers, invasions of privacy will only expand, declared “health emergencies” will become only more numerous, and government “nudging” will become only more intrusive.
If this sounds more dystopian than utopian and every bit like an unwanted prison overseen by unaccountable government agents, that is precisely what it is. WEF zealots do not even hide their intentions anymore, already going so far as to push the construction of “Smart Cities” or “Fifteen Minute Cities” in which tens of millions of people can be relocated, live side-by-side in small apartment complexes, and move through a constant maze of entrances and exits accessed solely through digital ID verification and approval. In essence, the goal is to create a digital panopticon implementing all of the surveillance programs above, to provide future rulers with absolute control, while leaving everyone else in a permanent state of docile incarceration. In WEF parlance, such schemes of total supervision and behavioral modification will create a “sustainable” future for humanity. No doubt prison wardens feel much the same way when convicts are kept behind bars in rows of secured cages. The difference is that in the WEF’s Utopia, no crime must be committed to reap Schwab’s unjust “rewards.”
Now, if Westerners appreciated just what is coming their way, they might go apoplectic and resist the WEF’s new world order. For this very reason, the most important war being waged today is one that is never discussed openly in the press: the covert war over information. When people are allowed to openly debate ideas in the public square (including the digital square of social media and web pages free from search engine shadowbans), that “free market of ideas” will go where the people debating those ideas take them. For government “narratives” not only to survive but also to dominate all dissenting opinion, government-allied platforms must tilt the scales of free speech in their favor by ridiculing, censoring or outright criminalizing the thoughts and words of dissident minds. In any other market, such intentional interference would be considered anticompetitive collusion in violation of antitrust laws, but because the World Economic Forum’s acolytes treat competing free speech as dangerous “misinformation,” the “free market of ideas” has been transformed into a controlled “safe space” for the government’s friends.
What happens when government ambivalence toward free speech is combined with the amoral technocratic force behind the WEF’s plans for global Utopia? Well, as Herr Schwab recently proclaimed at the World Government Summit in Dubai when discussing artificial intelligence (AI), chatbots, and digital identities: “Who masters those technologies — in some way — will be the master of the world.” (After that, is one-world-government still considered a “conspiracy theory”?) If the WEF controls the digital world, then it will essentially control the people. Once the stuff of science fiction, WEF technocrats even have a plan to “hack” into employees’ minds by monitoring and decoding their brainwaves.
Google is onboard with such thought control: it has declared its intent to expand a “pre-bunking” program meant to “immunize” people against what Google sees as “propaganda” or “misinformation” by indoctrinating unsuspecting Internet users with Google’s own home-brewed yet approved propaganda. By manipulating Google’s users without their knowledge, the search engine behemoth can ward off competing ideas — brilliant!
Microsoft founder Bill Gates feels the same way. In an interview with German newspaper Handelsblatt, the self-styled vaccine expert argues that AI technologies should be used as powerful tools to combat “digital misinformation” and “political polarization.” This comes on the heels of a recent discovery that Microsoft has already been using a British think tank, Global Disinformation Index (GDI), to secretly blacklist conservative media companies in the United States and prevent them from generating advertising revenue. The kicker? The U.S. State Department has been funding GDI’s “disinformation” work through taxpayer funds to the National Endowment for Democracy and its own Global Engagement Center, which are then transferred to GDI before GDI launders the tawdry viewpoint discrimination back to Microsoft and other companies behind a thin veil of “objectivity.”
Following the WEF model of creating an all-powerful partnership between private industry and government authority, Microsoft and the State Department have figured out how to undermine dissent by having third-party organization, GDI, label all such speech as “harmful disinformation” on its “Dynamic Exclusion List.”
Likewise, publicly funded news outlets throughout the West — including Germany, Canada, Switzerland and Belgium — are working together to “develop online-based solutions” to target “hate comments and increasing disinformation.” What could possibly go wrong when State-controlled institutions collude to control the dissemination of information? As former Twitter “Trust and Safety” executive Yoel Roth testified before Congress, “Unrestricted free speech paradoxically results in less speech, not more.” From this Orwellian doublespeak standard, the clear line separating protections for free speech from outright censorship is whether the speaker articulates points of view in agreement with the WEF’s ruling coalition of Big Tech titans and government authorities or not. In Schwab’s Utopia, there is no room for truly free speech.
What happens when the job of censoring the public is placed entirely in the digital hands of artificial intelligence? Even though some political leaders have cautioned that AI could be an “existential threat” to humanity, and even as technology pioneers such as former Google chief Eric Schmidt admit that AI-powered computer systems should be seen as every bit as powerful as nuclear weapons, the rush toward AI-constructed Utopia is full speed ahead. That should give anyone of sound mind troubling pause. After all, the cognitive biases of Big Tech “elites” such as Gates, Schmidt, and others will almost certainly translate into digital biases for any artificial intelligence.
ChatGPT, an AI software program launched late last year, is already scaring the bejesus out of people with its overt political bias. In one instance, the AI concluded that using a racial slur was worse than allowing a city to be annihilated by a nuclear bomb. In another, the AI justified the suppression of Trump voters as necessary to “defend democracy” and prevent the spread of “dangerous speech,” while simultaneously arguing that “AI should not be used to suppress the free speech” of Biden supporters. Meanwhile, no sooner had some experimenters gained access to Microsoft’s new AI-powered chatbot than the synthetic brain started threatening people.
These troubling early signs give credence to Schmidt’s warning that AI should be regarded as equally and inherently dangerous as nuclear bombs. Where he and other WEF-allied global “elites” differ from the scientists involved in the Manhattan Project, however, is in their seemingly urgent desire to turn these awesome AI weapons directly against Western peoples.
Clearly, if Schwab’s World Economic Forum intends to usher in an AI-powered Utopia where he can be the “master of the world,” then he has little use for human beings. In a very real sense, humans become nothing more than “things” to be counted, shuffled, categorized, tagged, monitored, manipulated, and controlled. They become nothing more than cogs in the WEF’s great trans-humanist, technocratic machine — useful for a time, perhaps, but ultimately a burden to feed and house and logically expendable. If artificial intelligence can do the thinking that Schwab needs and support the ideas that Schwab adores, then humans are just in the way. Should the World Economic Forum get its centralized Utopia, the “thingification” of the human race will be a giant step toward its eventual disposal.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/01/2023 – 23:00 - Nomura Is First Bank To Call For 50bps Rate Hike In March
Nomura Is First Bank To Call For 50bps Rate Hike In March
In the past year, Japanese bank Nomura has had a penchant for making several headline-grabbing outlier predictions about the Fed: in June, Nomura was the first bank to call for a 75bps rate hike (a view that quickly became consensus after the infamous Hilsenrath weekend report that blew up the Fed’s forward guidance), followed one month later by an even more show-stopping forecast for a 100bps rate hike in July. Verdict: it got one out of two right (the former, not the latter), yet still not a bad track record when the bank takes the bold step to break away from the echo chamber herd.
This week, the bank has done it again, because with the Fed seemingly torn between keeping its 25bps rate hike cadence or expanding it to 50bps to give the tightening campaign a little extra “oomph” after the latest FOMC minutes found that a higher than expected “few” favoed a 0.5% rate hike, Nomura’s strategist Aichi Amemiya writes that he now expects a 50bp hike in March followed by 25bp hikes in May and June “as persistent inflation drives the Fed to a more hawkish stance.”
Here’s his reasoning, excerpted from the note (available to pro subs in the usual place):
Resurging inflation leads to our revised forecast of a 50bp rate hike in March and a higher terminal rate
Incoming inflation data suggest the underlying inflation trend may have stopped moderating in recent months. Although the Fed downshifted to a slower pace of rate hikes in 25bp increments in February, the recent persistence of inflation, in addition to strong labor markets and easy financial conditions suggests: 1) the Fed is unlikely to rely on goods-led disinflation, as it could be short-lived; 2) the underlying trend inflation may be re-accelerating, thus raising the risk of under-tightening and 3) aggressive policy action might be needed to tighten financial conditions. Against this backdrop, we revise our near-term Fed call as follows (Fig. 1):
- A 50bp rate hike in March.
- Two 25bp rate hikes in May and June to a terminal rate of 5.50-5.75%. Previously, we had expected one more 25bp rate hike in March to a terminal rate of 4.75-5.00%.
- Our expectation for the first cut is unchanged at March 2024.
- We maintain our view that balance sheet reduction will continue until March 2024.
The 50bp rate hike in March may sound aggressive. That said, we think the Fed is further from a pause on rate hikes than we had originally believed and it is possible more front-loaded rate hikes will be needed to tighten financial conditions and control inflation.
Furthermore, in light of the continued recent easing in financial conditions (chart below, right), Nomura suggests that the Fed may also be motivated to hit a higher terminal rate.
Amemiya followed up on his forecast today, after Minneapolis Fed President Kashkari spoke at a moderated discussion, and Atlanta Fed President Bostic released an essay on “Striking a Delicate Balance” between reducing inflation and inflicting too much economic pain: Kashkari responded to the question about the size of rate hikes, indicating he is open-minded to either 25bp or 50bp, which lends support to Nomura’s call for a 50bp rate hike in March. However, he stressed that he is focused on the “dots,” referring to the FOMC participants’ projections for the federal funds rate. He said the March dots are much more important than how much the Fed will raise at the March meeting. He also said January data are concerning, and that he is leaning towards pushing up his policy path. That suggests he may revise up his 2023 dot to 5.625% from 5.375% in December.
According to Nomura, “while we expect a 50bp rate hike at the March meeting, alternatively, the Fed could raise the median 2023 dot to 5.625% which may have a similar market impact. However, our key point is that we will likely see renewed hawkishness at the March meeting, either in the form of a 50bp rate increase or higher-than-expected dots.”
Meanwhile, Bostic’s essay came across hawkish, in our view, however his terminal rate expectation remained at 5.00-5.25%. It’s also interesting that he mentioned “a narrative has gained momentum among some commentators that the Fed should consider reversing its course of raising the federal funds rate.” This comment is somewhat out of line with our perspective that recent market developments have tended towards expecting and pricing in a higher terminal rate.
And while other banks are becoming increasingly hawkish, not one is willing to stake its credibility on predicting that the Fed will once again backtrack on its hiking strategy, and boost rates by 50bps this month after raising 25bps in February as that would be a tacit admission of yet another serious error, the third in a row (after “transitory inflation” and the 50bps to 75bps June rate hike switcheroo).
For what it’s worth, after pricing in just one 25bps rate hike in March for much of February, the odds of a 50bps are now at 25bps and rising.
More in the full note available here for pro subs.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/01/2023 – 22:40 - A Contagion Of Cowardice
A Contagion Of Cowardice
Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,
Jordan Peterson’s interview with Jay Bhattacharya is one of the more insightful conversations to come out of the post-pandemic period. It’s fascinating to see Peterson coming to terms with the sheer scale of the lockdown during which time he was rather sick. We could have used his voice then and I have no doubt that he would have been fantastic.
Fortunately for the whole world, we did have Jay. It’s not just his credentials or his position at Stanford University. It’s his erudition that gave him the reach to make sense of our times. In this interview, Jay explains the unfolding of events in ways I personally found compelling.
Summing up his message, the response upended a century of public-health practice based on computer modeling that was not informed by any medical knowledge or public-health experience. That modeling came to be fused with a military-style response that waged a war on a pathogen with no exit strategy. Powerful industrial interests saw their chance to realize every hidden agenda.
That was further complicated by severe political division. Even though the lockdowns began under the Trump administration, opposing them mysteriously came to be seen as “right-wing” even though the pandemic policies violated every civil liberty, massively harmed the poor, divided the classes, and trampled essential freedoms, which one might suppose were concerns of the left, once upon a time.
Jay knew from the beginning that these policies were a disaster but his method of dissent was to stick with the genuine science. He worked with colleagues very early in the pandemic on a study from California that proved that this war on the “invisible enemy” was futile. Covid was everywhere and only a mortal threat to a narrow group in the population needed to have its guard up while the rest of society moved on. That study was released in April 2020 and the implications were undeniably devastating to the war planners and the lockdown pushers.
The conclusion of the study seems rather commonplace now: “The estimated population prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in Santa Clara County implies that the infection may be much more widespread than indicated by the number of confirmed cases.” But at the time, when dissent was rare if non-existent in scientific literature, and when the planning elite had declared its number one goal was to track, trace, and isolate, and thereby minimize infections through compulsion while we wait for a vaccine, this conclusion was anathema.
That’s when the attacks began. It was like he had to be shut down. The popular press began to go after him savagely, smearing both the study and his motivations (this later became outright censorship). At this point, he began to realize the intensity of the campaign against dissent and the push for full unity in favor of the policy response. It was not like normal times when scientists could disagree. This was something different, something fully militarized, when a “whole-of-government” and “whole-of-society” consensus was being demanded by every institution. That meant no heresies against orthodoxy were allowed.
At this point, the interview breaks and Peterson begins to ask probing questions of the sort he likes concerning the spiritual struggle all of us face in life, a subject that clearly consumes him. Peterson believes that all seeming political struggles are ultimately personal ones. Do we back off and acquiesce to conventional wisdom or do we continue to walk toward the light as shown by our conscience?
He asks Jay if he faced this moment, and Jay admits that he did indeed face this. He realized that continuing in this direction – researching to discover facts and telling the truth as he saw it – would massively disrupt his career, his life, and everything he had worked for. Everything would be different, away from comfort and into an uncertain and isolated frontier.
He faced that choice and made the decision to go ahead, undeterred. But the decision cost him dearly. He could not sleep. He lost tremendous amounts of weight. He faced social and professional ostracism. He was dragged through the mud daily in the press and scapegoated for every policy failure. He was accused of conspiring with the purveyors of dark money and every other form of professional corruption. He found himself vexed beyond which he had ever been in his entire career. But still he forged ahead, eventually gathering with other scientists to make what is now a famous statement of public health that has stood the test of time.
It’s fascinating to consider how few in academia and professional life made this choice. And the reasons why are also intriguing. Many in these high-end professions, particularly in academia, have far less job flexibility than we think. We might suppose that a tenured professor in the Ivy League could and would say anything he wants.
The opposite is true. They are not like the barber or auto mechanic who can leave one job and easily start another a few blocks away or in a different town. They are, in many ways, trapped in their own circle of influence. They know this and dare not depart from industry norms. And too often those norms are formed by funding. Yale University, for example, gets more overall revenue from government than from tuition. That’s typical among such institutions. And now we know that media and tech are also on the payroll.
These conflicts of interest combined with careerism played themselves out in brutal ways over the last few years. The high-end professionals who left their jobs to work in the Trump administration, for example, found that they had no jobs waiting for them at all when that presidency came to an end. They were not welcomed back, certainly not by academia. They were discarded. I personally know of many cases where people on advanced career tracks lost all merely by agreeing to what they believed would be public service.
The lockdowns era made this much worse. All over the country, scientists, media figures, writers, think-tank officials, professors, editors, and influencers of all sorts were pressured to go along. Not just that: they were threatened to go along. And it wasn’t just the opinions that mattered. There were all sorts of compliance tests along the way. There was the “social distancing” test. If you didn’t practice in it, that somehow marked you as an enemy. The masking was another: you can tell who was who and what was what based on the willingness to cover one’s face.
The vaccine mandate, appallingly, became another wedge issue that enabled all kinds of professions to purge people. Once the New York Times claimed (summer 2021) to have evidence that the unvaccinated were more likely to be Trump supporters, that did it. The Biden administration and many university administrators felt that they had the ultimate weapon to achieve the purge about which they had longed dreamed.
Comply or get tossed out. That was the new rule. And truly this largely worked. Diversity of opinion in many sectors of society – media, academia, corporate life, the military – is dramatically reduced after this epoch. It doesn’t matter that courts later came along to say it was all bad law. The damage had been done.
Still, we have to be curious about those who did not go along. What drove them to depart from their fellows? This is why Gabrielle’s Bauer’s book Blindsight Is 2020 is so valuable. It doesn’t cover them all but it does highlight the voices of many who dared to think for themselves. And yet here is the truth: among this dissident set, very few aren’t doing something completely different today from what they were doing in 2019. They have changed jobs, changed professions, changed towns and states, and even seen families and friendship networks shattered.
They all paid a huge price. I’m not sure I know any exceptions to the rule. Going against the grain and daring to stand up for truth in a time of totalitarianism is exceedingly dangerous. Our times have proven that. (Brownstone’s Fellows program is designed to give many of these purged people a bridge to a new life.)
I titled this article a contagion of cowardice. It might be too severe to call it that. Many people went along for entirely rational reasons. Another point to consider is that moral teaching in the great religions has not typically required absolute heroism. What it does require is not doing evil. And those really are different things. Staying quiet might not be evil; it’s only the absence of being heroic. St. Thomas even writes this in his treatise on moral theology: the faith celebrates but never requires martyrdom.
And yet it is also true that heroism in our times is absolutely necessary for the preservation of civilization when it is so brutally under attack. If everyone chooses the safe path, and crafts one’s decisions around the principle of risk aversion, the bad guys truly do win. And where does this land and how far can we slide into the abyss under those conditions? The history of despotism and death by government reveal where this ends up.
The best case for heroism over careerism and cowardice is to look back over these three years and observe just how much difference a few can make when they are willing to stand up for truth even when there is a big price to be paid for doing so. Such people can change everything. This is because ideas are more powerful than armies and all the propaganda that a machinery of power can muster. One statement, one study, one sentence, one small effort to puncture the wall of lies can bring down the whole system.
And then the contagion of cowardice comes to be replaced by a contagion of truth. Those who stood up for that form of contagion deserve our respect and gratitude. They also deserve to survive and thrive in the new renaissance that so many today are working to build.
More than people right now are willing to admit, civil society as we knew it collapsed over these three years. A massive purge has taken place within all the commanding heights. This will affect career choices, political alliances, philosophical commitments, and the structure of society for decades to come.
The rebuilding and reconstruction that must take place is going to rely – perhaps as it always has – on a small minority who see both the problem and the solution. Brownstone is doing its best and the most possible given our resources and the time in which we’ve had to operate. But much more needs to be done. The rebuilding requires a spiritual-level commitment to intelligence, wisdom, bravery, and truth.
Watch the full interview below:
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/01/2023 – 22:20 - USPS Purchases Ford EV Vans To Electrify Nation's Largest Federal Fleet
USPS Purchases Ford EV Vans To Electrify Nation’s Largest Federal Fleet
The United States Postal Service (USPS) announced plans to purchase thousands of electric delivery vehicles from Ford Motor Company. The move is part of the USPS’s efforts to ‘greenify’ 75% of its fleet over the next five years.
USPS awarded a contract to purchase 9,250 Ford E-Transit Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs). The first delivery of the EV mail trucks will begin in December of this year.
“These domestically sourced vehicles will be 100 percent electric and are part of the 21,000 COTS vehicles included in the Postal Service’s vehicle acquisition plan announced in December 2022. The Ford E-Transit BEVs are manufactured in Kansas City, Missouri,” USPS wrote in a statement.
In addition to the 9,250 EV mail trucks, USPS awarded contracts to three suppliers for the purchase of 14,000 charging stations to be installed at mail facilities.
“We are moving forward with our plans to simultaneously improve our service, reduce our cost, grow our revenue, and improve the working environment for our employees. Electrification of our vehicle fleet is now an important component of these initiatives,” Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said in the statement.
The contract is a significant pivot for USPS, which had announced early last year that it would replace its 30-plus-year-old fleet of mail trucks with gasoline-fueled models made by Oshkosh Corp. That would’ve disappointed the Biden administration, which has been attempting to electrify the federal government’s fleet of vehicles. USPS has the nation’s largest federal fleet.
After facing criticism from some members of Congress and receiving a $3 billion funding boost from the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, the postal service changed its approach in December. The organization then announced a new plan to acquire 66,230 electric delivery vans by 2028, costing $10 billion.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/01/2023 – 22:00 - Chris Hedges: Russiagate Spells Journalism's Death
Chris Hedges: Russiagate Spells Journalism’s Death
Authored by Chris Hedges via ScheerPost.com,
The media caters to a particular demographic, telling that demographic what it already believes – even when it is unverified or false. This pandering defines the coverage of the Trump-Russia saga…
Reporters make mistakes. It is the nature of the trade. There are always a few stories we wish were reported more carefully. Writing on deadline with often only a few hours before publication is an imperfect art. But when mistakes occur, they must be acknowledged and publicized. To cover them up, to pretend they did not happen, destroys our credibility. Once this credibility is gone, the press becomes nothing more than an echo chamber for a selected demographic. This, unfortunately, is the model that now defines the commerical media.
The failure to report accurately on the Trump-Russia saga for the four years of the Trump presidency is bad enough.
What is worse, major media organizations, which produced thousands of stories and reports that were false, refuse to engage in a serious postmortem. The systematic failure was so egregious and widespread that it casts a very troubling shadow over the press. How do CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, The Washington Post, The New York Times and Mother Jones admit that for four years they reported salacious, unverified gossip as fact? How do they level with viewers and readers that the most basic rules of journalism were ignored to participate in a witch hunt, a virulent New McCarthyism? How do they explain to the public that their hatred for Trump led them to accuse him, for years, of activities and crimes he did not commit? How do they justify their current lack of transparency and dishonesty? It is not a pretty confession, which is why it won’t happen. The U.S. media has the lowest credibility — 26 percent — among 46 nations, according to a 2022 report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. And with good reason.
The commercial model of journalism has changed from when I began working as a reporter, covering conflicts in Central America in the early 1980s. In those days, there were a few large media outlets that sought to reach a broad public. I do not want to romanticize the old press. Those who reported stories that challenged the dominant narrative were targets, not only of the U.S. government but also of the hierarchies within news organizations such as The New York Times. Ray Bonner, for example, was reprimanded by the editors at The New York Times when he exposed egregious human rights violations committed by the El Salvadoran government, which the Reagan administration funded and armed. He quit shortly after being transferred to a dead-end job at the financial desk. Sydney Schanberg won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting in Cambodia on the Khmer Rouge, which was the basis for the film “The Killing Fields.” He was subsequently appointed metropolitan editor at The New York Times where he assigned reporters to cover the homeless, the poor and those being driven from their homes and apartments by Manhattan real estate developers. The paper’s Executive Editor, Abe Rosenthal, Schanberg told me, derisively referred to him as his “resident commie.” He terminated Schanberg’s twice-weekly column and forced him out. I saw my career at the paper end when I publicly criticized the invasion of Iraq. The career-killing campaigns against those who reported controversial stories or expressed controversial opinions was not lost on other reporters and editors who, to protect themselves, practiced self-censorship.
But the old media, because it sought to reach a broad public, reported on events and issues that did not please all of its readers. It left a lot out, to be sure. It gave too much credibility to officialdom, but, as Schanberg told me, the old model of news arguably kept “the swamp from getting any deeper, from rising higher.”
The advent of digital media and the compartmentalizing of the public into antagonistic demographics has destroyed the traditional model of commercial journalism. Devastated by a loss of advertising revenue and a steep decline in viewers and readers, the commercial media has a vested interest in catering to those who remain. The approximately three and a half million digital news subscribers The New York Times gained during the Trump presidency were, internal surveys found, overwhelmingly anti-Trump. A feedback loop began where the paper fed its digital subscribers what they wanted to hear. Digital subscribers, it turns out, are also very thin-skinned.
“If the paper reported something that could be interpreted as supportive of Trump or not sufficiently critical of Trump,” Jeff Gerth, an investigative journalist who spent many years at The New York Times recently told me, they would sometimes “drop their subscription or go on social media and complain about it.”
Giving subscribers what they want makes commercial sense. However, it is not journalism.
News organizations, whose future is digital, have at the same time filled newsrooms with those who are tech-savvy and able to attract followers on social media, even if they lack reportorial skills. Margaret Coker, the bureau chief for The New York Times in Baghdad, was fired by the newspaper’s editors in 2018, after management claimed she was responsible for its star terrorism reporter, Rukmini Callimachi, being barred from re-entering Iraq, a charge Coker consistently denied. It was well known, however, by many at the paper, that Coker filed a number of complaints about Callimachi’s work and considered Callimachi to be untrustworthy. The paper would later have to retract a highly acclaimed 12-part podcast, “Caliphate,” hosted by Callimachi in 2018, because it was based on the testimony of an imposter. “‘Caliphate’ represents the modern New York Times,” Sam Dolnick, an assistant managing editor,said in announcing the launch of the podcast. The statement proved true, although in a way Dolnick probably did not anticipate.
Gerth, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter who worked at The New York Times from 1976 until 2005, spent the last two years writing an exhaustive look at the systemic failure of the press during the Trump-Russia story, authoring a four-part series of 24,000 words that has been published by The Columbia Journalism Review. It is an important, if depressing, read. News organizations repeatedly seized on any story, he documents, no matter how unverified, to discredit Trump and routinely ignored reports that cast doubt on the rumors they presented as fact. You can see my interview with Gerth here.
The New York Times, for example, in January 2018, ignored a publicly available document showing that the FBI’s lead investigator, after a ten month inquiry, did not find evidence of collusion between Trump and Moscow. The lie of omission was combined with reliance on sources that peddled fictions designed to cater to Trump-haters, as well as a failure to interview those being accused of collaborating with Russia.
The Washington Post and NPR reported, incorrectly, that Trump had weakened the GOP’s stance on Ukraine in the party platform because he opposed language calling for arming Ukraine with so-called “lethal defensive weapons” — a position identicalto that of his predecessor President Barack Obama. These outlets ignored the platform’s support for sanctions against Russia as well its call for “appropriate assistance to the armed forces of Ukraine and greater coordination with NATO defense planning.” News organizations amplified this charge. In a New York Times column that called Trump the “Siberian candidate,” Paul Krugman wrote that the platform was “watered down to blandness” by the Republican president. Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic, described Trump as a “de facto agent” of Vladimir Putin. Those who tried to call out this shoddy reporting, including Russian-American journalist and Putin critic Masha Gessen were ignored.
After Trump’s first meeting as president with Putin, he was attacked as if the meeting itself proved he was a Russian stooge. Then New York Times columnist Roger Cohen wrote of the “disgusting spectacle of the American president kowtowing in Helsinki to Vladimir Putin.” Rachel Maddow, MSNBC’s most popular host, said that the meeting between Trump and Putin validated her covering the Trump-Russia allegations “more than anyone else in the national press” and strongly implied — and her show’s Twitteraccount and YouTube page explicitly stated — that Americans were now “coming to grips with a worst-case scenario that the U.S. president is compromised by a hostile foreign power.”
The anti-Trump reporting, Gerth notes, hid behind the wall of anonymous sources, frequently identified as “people (or person) familiar with” — The New York Times used it over a thousand times in stories involving Trump and Russia, between October 2016 and the end of his presidency, Gerth found. Any rumor or smear was picked up in the news cycle with the sources often unidentified and the information unverified.
A routine soon took shape in the Trump-Russia saga.
“First, a federal agency like the CIA or FBI secretly briefs Congress,” Gerth writes.
“Then Democrats or Republicans selectively leak snippets. Finally, the story comes out, using vague attribution.”
These cherry-picked pieces of information largely distorted the conclusions of the briefings.
The reports that Trump was a Russian asset began with the so-called Steele dossier, financed at first by Republican opponents of Trump and later by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The charges in the dossier — which included reports of Trump receiving a “golden shower” from prostituted women in a Moscow hotel room and claims that Trump and the Kremlin had ties going back five years — were discredited by the FBI.
“Bob Woodward, appearing on Fox News, called the dossier a ‘garbage document’ that ‘never should have’ been part of an intelligence briefing,” Gerth writes in his report.
“He later told me that the Post wasn’t interested in his harsh criticism of the dossier. After his remarks on Fox, Woodward said he ‘reached out to people who covered this’ at the paper, identifying them only generically as ‘reporters,’ to explain why he was so critical. Asked how they reacted, Woodward said: ‘To be honest, there was a lack of curiosity on the part of the people at the Post about what I had said, why I said this, and I accepted that and I didn’t force it on anyone.’”
Other reporters who exposed the fabrications — Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept, Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone and Aaron Mate at The Nation — ran afoul of their news organizations and now work as independent journalists.
The New York Times and The Washington Post shared Pulitzer Prizes in 2019 for their reporting on “Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connection to the Trump campaign, the President-elect’s transition team and his eventual administration.”
The silence by news organizations that for years perpetuated this fraud is ominous. It cements into place a new media model, one without credibility or accountability. The handful of reporters who have responded to Gerth’s investigative piece, such as David Corn at Mother Jones, have doubled down on the old lies, as if the mountain of evidence discrediting their reporting, most of it coming from the FBI and the Mueller Report, does not exist.
Once fact becomes interchangeable with opinion, once truth is irrelevant, once people are told only what they wish to hear, journalism ceases to be journalism and becomes propaganda.
* * *
NOTE TO READERS FROM CHRIS HEDGES: There is now no way left for me to continue to write a weekly column for ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show without your help. The walls are closing in, with startling rapidity, on independent journalism, with the elites, including the Democratic Party elites, clamoring for more and more censorship. Bob Scheer, who runs ScheerPost on a shoestring budget, and I will not waver in our commitment to independent and honest journalism, and we will never put ScheerPost behind a paywall, charge a subscription for it, sell your data or accept advertising. Please, if you can, sign up at chrishedges.substack.com so I can continue to post my now weekly Monday column on ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show, The Chris Hedges Report.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/01/2023 – 21:40 - Beijing To Fast-Track Taiwan 'Reunification' Plans After "Extraordinary" Year Of Tensions
Beijing To Fast-Track Taiwan ‘Reunification’ Plans After “Extraordinary” Year Of Tensions
Increased military interactions with the US, including ramped-up American naval sail-throughs and flyovers of the contested Taiwan Strait, appear to have hastened Beijing’s timeline for Taiwan “reunification”.
A top Chinese lawmaker and adviser, National People’s Congress deputy Li Yihu, announced this week, “The [Communist] Party’s overall strategy for resolving the Taiwan issue in the new era has basically taken shape, and the strategic goals and focus of the future reunification cause have also become very clear.”
He specified the process will be sped up, saying ahead of the annual National People’s Congress meeting which kicks off March 5 that “The mainland will promote national reunification on a fast development track.”
Via Reuters Notably this also comes after then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s ultra-provocative visit to the self-ruled island in August, and further after multiple weapons packages have been announced by the Biden administration. Current Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is also said to be planning a Taiwan visit in the near future.
Li Yihu specifically cited an “extraordinary” year for tensions in the region, as well as heightening global events and rivalries:
A series of new policies, including on Taiwan, are expected to be unveiled during the gathering, along with the defense budget and a government reshuffle. Comments made by NPC deputies such as Li can provide some insight into Beijing’s policymaking, which remains largely secretive.
In the interview, Li – who is also dean of the Taiwan Research Institute at Peking University – said 2022 was an “extraordinary” year for cross-strait ties and that its major events would “have a certain impact on the future direction” of the relationship.
Without doubt he also had in mind the Russia-Ukraine war, and the comparisons which some US officials as well has pundits have increasingly made between the Ukraine and Taiwan situations.
Beijing has consistently rejected such comparisons, stressing that Taiwan is under Chinese sovereignty, also finding the idea that the situations are parallel to be an offensive.
It may have “become very clear” to Li Yihu what the plan is, but this scmp article doesn’t provide any information at all about what it might be https://t.co/gbAMv5m5CF
— Joel Atkinson 舟綽 (@Joel_P_Atkinson) March 1, 2023
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President Xi Jinping and his officials have long emphasized a Chinese plan of peaceful unification via political processes, also as the mainland has deep involvement with opposition movements and parties in Taipei. But it’s unclear whether Washington’s pushing past “red lines” have changed the calculus. Certainly we are witnessing the beginnings of a more assertive and aggressive Chinese posture vis-a-vis the Taiwan question.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/01/2023 – 21:20 - "There Are Simply Too Many People Who Have College Degrees And Too Few Jobs That Require Them"
“There Are Simply Too Many People Who Have College Degrees And Too Few Jobs That Require Them”
By Howard Wang of Convoy Investments
I anticipate that inflation will gradually decrease over the next year and a half to an equilibrium rate of approximately 3%. This path will be bumpy, with month-to-month fluctuations. We believe that the markets continue to expect inflation to decrease more quickly than it will. Below I show the actual inflation rate vs the market’s expectation of future inflation over the next 5 years. This mispricing of inflation expectations mean that inflation-linked bond remains an attractive asset class for us.
The primary driver of inflation is money supply. After the 2020/21 printing spree, during which the Fed was calling for transitory inflation despite all signs pointing to inflation, we saw a delayed effect of approximately a year or so. I believe there is now a similarly delayed but inevitable disinflationary process as most inflationary factors are eliminated. We are now facing high-interest rates, falling stock markets, low savings rates, slowing housing markets, decreasing money supply, lower fiscal spending.
Commodity inflation is now significantly lower than service inflation. So the primary question this year is what happens to the labor market.
I believe services inflation is partly caused by a misallocation of labor in our society, which has been building up for many years due to an education bubble. This effect was amplified by Covid. There are simply too many people who have college degrees and too few jobs that require them. As a result, we are seeing layoffs in certain sectors like tech and finance while other blue-collar service sectors are still struggling to find enough workers. This issue will take some time and some pain to resolve as the money supply falls and the overall economy slows down. For now, the labor market continues to be tight. Below, I show our labor cost pressure gauge, which indicates some progress, but there is still a long way to go.
While many people think high payroll numbers are inflationary, I believe they are a sign of disinflation because it means that more people are returning to the labor pool. Below I show the civilian participation rate in the US, which is steadily rising but still substantially below Covid levels.
In terms of consumer financial health, we are getting close to pre-Covid levels. Below, I show the household financial obligations as a percentage of income. This metric dropped significantly during Covid and has been rising fairly rapidly since then, as high inflation and high finance costs are pressuring consumers from all sides.
The shortage of manual labor will create a crop of companies that can use AI/tech or clever labor management/ outsourcing to provide cheaper labor. These are opportunities that we will keep an eye on.
In 2023, we can expect volatility with ups and downs on a month-to-month basis, but the market will remain relatively range-bound. The Fed needs to make a real effort to contain inflation, as uncontrolled inflation in a country with $31T in debt is a recipe for disaster. At the same time, they need to ensure that the markets and the economy do not crash too hard, and they need to make sure that inflation does not tank too much, which would make debt servicing even more challenging. As I mentioned in my last letter, the Fed has to walk a tight rope, and the markets will follow.
Therefore, I expect the markets to be volatile but sideways, with long rates remaining high and sideways, offering attractive yields if you can stand the volatility from the duration. Cash/Treasury bills will continue to be a strong performer as they offer excellent returns and safety.
The longer the markets remain sideways while inflation is high, the more time inflation has to eat away at its real valuation. Over time, I expect the stock market to grow at a rate of something like real GDP + inflation + 3-4%, which currently translates to about 10% nominal returns a year. For example, below is a chart showing the S&P 500 nominal price versus where the S&P500 should be based on the economy. While the price is -16% below its peak, on a growth/inflation-adjusted basis, it has already seen a -26% adjustment. If inflation remains high and markets remain sideways, we may not need to see a drastic drop in prices for the valuation adjustment to happen.
The traditional 60/40 stock-bond portfolio will continue to face challenges. The 60/40 portfolio is based on the idea that stocks generate returns while bonds provide protection during recessions, so they are negatively correlated and diversify each other. While this thesis worked in the two decades before 2022, it does not hold true if the recession is caused by inflation, as in those scenarios, both bonds and stocks drop. Looking back to the 70s and 80s, we find that stocks and bonds were positively correlated. Below, I show a loose relationship between how stocks and bonds correlate with each other over time and the inflationary environment. While bonds now provide relatively attractive long-term yields, it will struggle to diversify against short-term drops in the stock market. Investors may need to have an explicit allocation to real assets as an inflation hedge.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/01/2023 – 21:00 - Future Ford Vehicles Could Repossess Themselves
Future Ford Vehicles Could Repossess Themselves
Ford Motor Company filed a US patent application that shows autonomous or semi-autonomous vehicles could potentially repossess themselves if their owners miss lease or loan payments.
The idea of self-driving cars repossessing themselves might sound dystopian, but it is not surprising that automakers are considering this technology to ensure payment. Repossession is a common practice, and as we’ve described recently, cracks are beginning to form in the subprime auto loan market (read: here & here).
While this patent application was first filed in Aug. 2021 and formally published on Feb. 23, it could be years before Ford implements such a technology.
The patent, titled “Systems and Methods to Repossess a Vehicle,” explains how a future lineup of Ford vehicles would be capable of “[disabling] a functionality of one or more components of the vehicle.”
If a driver misses a car payment, the vehicle will disable air conditioning, radio, GPS, and cruise control to irritate the driver.
If the owner misses more payments, the repossession cycle will worsen. The car would emit an “incessant and unpleasant sound.” Worse, the vehicle might lock out the driver on certain days until payments are made.
And still, if the lockout doesn’t work and payments are missed, the vehicle could drive to a safe, nearby location for a repo team to seize it and avoid confrontation with the owner.
It is worth noting that filing a patent application does not necessarily mean the technology will be implemented, but the takeaway is a glimpse of the dystopic future.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/01/2023 – 20:40 - Secession Is Inevitable. It's About When, Not If
Secession Is Inevitable. It’s About When, Not If
Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,
Never is a very, very long time in politics. Yet whenever the topic of secession or so-called national divorce comes up, how often do we hear that “secession will never happen.” It’s difficult to tell if people using the term “never” actually mean it. If they mean “not in the next ten or twenty years,” that’s plausible. But if they truly mean “not in the next 100 (or more) years,” it’s clear they’re working on the level of absolutely pure, unfounded speculation. Such statements reflect little more than personal hopes and dreams.
Experience is clear that the state of most polities often changes enormously in the span of a few decades. Imagine Russia in 1900 versus Russia in 1920. Or perhaps China in 1930 versus China in 1950. If someone had told the Austrian emperor in 1850 that his empire would be completely dismembered by 1919, he probably would have refused to believe it. Few British subjects in 1945 expected the empire to be all but gone by 1970. In the 1970s, the long-term survival of the Soviet Union appeared to be a fait accompli. For a visual sense of this, simply compare world maps from 1900 and 1950. In less than the span of a human lifetime, the political map of the world often changes so as to be unrecognizable.
Yet there are always those who are quite comfortable with the status quo and who tell themselves it will continue indefinitely. Many find comfort in the hope that their favorite national regime will be a thousand-year reich, living on indefinitely into the rosy future of “progress.” Claims to political immortality are also frequently important as rallying cries in support of the state. As French Marxist philosopher Régis Debray noted, the idea that “France is eternal” may be empirically untrue, but the sentiment nonetheless serves to motivate the French soldier or French nationalist to preserve his regime.
Meanwhile, the opposite impulse, a recognition of the regime’s mortality is seen by many as a kind of heresy against the national political idols. It may be obviously true, but to say it out loud is “treason.” The cry of “traitor,” of course, has long been the go-to strategy for those with an emotional attachment to the regime. Like many heresies before it, this one must not go unpunished. Thus, “traitor” was the cry of the French republican who thought it better to butcher women and children in the Vendée rather than allow that portion of France to be independent. It was the cry of the Turkish imperialist who carried out a genocide against Armenian separatists.
The reality is that the current shape of any regime is more tenuous than many hope. The debate is not whether the US regime will fundamentally change in size and nature. The question is when and in what way. Those who are willing to examine the possibility of gradually unwinding state power peacefully through decentralization—rather than letting internal national conflicts explode into violence and revolution eventually—display a far better grasp of political history than the knee-jerk unionists.
The emotional nature of this opposition to secession can be seen in the fact that the opposition grants no middle ground in the debate. The only allowable options are the status quo or war.
Options for the “middle ground” include a confederation built on a consensus model in the style of the old Dutch Republic. There is the model of the very loose confederation in the style of the old Swiss confederation. There is the option of a customs union with voluntary membership, such as the European Union. There is the option of a mutual defense compact among independent polities, as we find in a multitude of defense leagues. None of these options require a state that imposes nationwide regulation and taxation in the manner of the enormous administrative state that we have today.
Yet most of those who oppose secession also oppose all of these options. We don’t hear, “Well, secession is too far, so let’s move toward a much more decentralized model.” Why do we never get this olive branch from the centralizers? Because their opposition to secession is more about supporting the status quo. They want a national government to impose nationwide policy in a way that reflects the national ruling class’s values. It’s the colonialist mindset all over again: “Oh, we can’t let those people in state X set their own rules for elections/abortion/trade. Those people are too unenlightened/racist/stupid to be allowed local autonomy.”
This intransigence can also be found in the way that the opposition often delights in the idea of using violence against potential separatists. Congressman Eric Swalwell, for instance, suggested the US government use nuclear weapons against internal separatists. And then there are those who make light of the idea of a second blood-soaked civil war. Indeed, the insistence on tying twenty-first-century decentralization to a war in the mid-nineteenth century (160 years ago) implies that the unionist “solution” back then justifies the same solution now. Note the emphasis is always on the American Civil War and not on the many examples of peaceful secession movements: Iceland from Denmark, Norway from Sweden, Singapore from Malaysia, Malta from the British Empire, and the Baltic states from the Soviet Union (to name a few). Instead, the average American antisecessionist is apparently obsessed with making war against his own neighbors.
I guess Marjorie Taylor Greene and the rest of Northern Georgia did not learn their lesson about secession the first time.
*SHERMAN INTENSIFYING* pic.twitter.com/ivz4NYEAVf
— Nunca Trumpismo (@NeverTrumpTexan) February 20, 2023
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Of course, that sort of thing can only be carried out today if modern Americans are willing to die and kill—or have their children die and kill—in the name of “preserving the union.” How many are willing to do this? Hopefully not many. Those who are willing to do it can only be described as fanatics.
The presence of these proviolence antisecessionists does remind us of the continued danger of political union, however. Those who favor union may interpret mere discussions of disunity as a sign of the need for ever-greater federal control over the population. This is also the strategy preferred by states: tendencies toward disunion are countered by an ever-stronger and ever-more-unyielding state. The strategy is tried and true. This is how a fragmenting Roman Empire was preserved for another 150 years after a breakup seemed all but assured during the third century. The emperor turned the empire into a military dictatorship. The same method of imposing unity has been employed countless times across countless polities—and at great cost to human rights and self-determination. Yet not even Diocletian’s dictatorship could ultimately prevent the secession of the western regions of the empire. (Justinian’s later attempts at reunifying Italy with the empire failed as well, and only brought enormous and unnecessary death and destruction.) Secession and disintegration have always been inevitable for large diverse states. The Romans were not immune. The Americans are not immune.
The answer lies not in doubling down on political unity, maintained through endless violence or threats of violence. Rather, the answer lies in peaceful separation through expanded self-determination, regional autonomy, confederation, and consensus. The choice we now face is between a rearguard attempt at preserving political unity “forever” and facing the inevitable reality. On one side, there are the unionists with their devotion to the status quo and their colonialist mindset. On the other side are those who seek to temper the power of the central state and pursue local self-determination. The centralizers are on the wrong side and will ultimately be on the losing side as well.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/01/2023 – 20:20 - Hunter Biden's Criminal Defense Lawyer Quits Amid "Unease And Dissent"
Hunter Biden’s Criminal Defense Lawyer Quits Amid “Unease And Dissent”
Hunter Biden’s criminal defense attorney, Joshua Levy, has quit the ‘first son’s’ legal team amid an environment of “unease and dissent” among the 4-lawyer legal team.
Levy’s departure came after the addition of Abbe Lowell, who is also on Hunter’s team, and was hired in December to defend Hunter and the Biden family amid nine congressional probes which include wire fraud and money laundering.
Levy was hired to work on opposing congressional investigations looking into the complex web of Biden family dealings, the NY Times reports.
Mr. Lowell’s addition led to the exit of another lawyer — Joshua A. Levy — who specializes in helping clients facing congressional inquiries.
President Biden’s personal lawyer, Bob Bauer, had recommended Mr. Levy for the job. But Mr. Levy had clashed with Kevin Morris, a lawyer and close adviser to Hunter Biden who has lent him money to pay his back taxes and some other bills, according to a person familiar with the strategy. Mr. Morris and Hunter Biden brought on Mr. Lowell late last year, prompting Mr. Levy’s departure. -NY Times
According to the report, Levy was not pleased with Lowell’s legal strategies – such as bombarding Rudy Giuliani, former Biden associate-turned-whistleblower Tony Bobulinski, and 12 others with “litigation hold” demand letters in order to preserve records from the “laptop from hell” – a strategy seen by some critics as a desperate PR stunt to change the narrative in favor of the Bidens.
According to Mike Davis, founder and president of the pro-Trump Article III Project, the letters were a “desperate, frivolous, and laughable” effort that would end up damaging the Biden family position since the lawsuit will lead to discovery, including Hunter Biden’s on-camera deposition, Breitbart reports.
Lowell’s involvement in Hunter’s defense has not only forced the exit of Levy but has also triggered infighting with attorney Chris Clark, another high-profile attorney who leads Hunter’s criminal defense. Clark’s professional history includes working as a partner at the same Washington, DC, law firm where Rep. Liz Cheney’s husband works. The firm’s biography of Clark says he represents Hunter in the “grand jury investigation regarding tax issues.” -Breitbart
In December, NBC News reported that Lowell will be primarily responsible for coordinating Hunter Biden’s response to the anticipated congressional oversight investigations, as well as other legal issues.
The incoming House Oversight Committee chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., said at a news conference in November that Hunter Biden and other Biden family members will be a major focus, specifically if the family’s business activities “compromise U.S. national security and President Biden’s ability to lead with impartiality.” -NBC News
The White House in November accused Congressional Republicans of stoking long-debunked conspiracy theories” in regards to allegations from House lawmakers that President Biden was actively involved in overseas business dealings with his son Hunter.
“Instead of working with President Biden to address issues important to the American people, like lower costs, congressional Republicans’ top priority is to go after President Biden with politically-motivated attacks chock full of long-debunked conspiracy theories,” said White House Counsel office spokesman, Ian Sams.
Except, here’s former Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski explaining how the Biden family brought him in on a shady Chinese energy company deal.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/01/2023 – 20:00 - The Top 3 Reasons The US Has Entered The Inflation Death Spiral
The Top 3 Reasons The US Has Entered The Inflation Death Spiral
Authored by Nick Giambruno via InternationalMan.com,
Rapidly rising food, housing, medical, and tuition prices are squeezing Americans, and many do not understand the real cause of their falling living standards…
That confusion opens the door for opportunistic politicians who promise supposed freebies to ease the pain of inflation. Many, unfortunately, succumb to this siren’s call.
Perverse as it is, the policies offered to people suffering from inflation create even more inflation. In other words, inflation has a way of perpetuating itself, much like a heroin addiction.
We are already seeing cockamamie schemes in the US, like “inflation relief checks,” which attempt to solve the problems of inflation by creating more inflation.
The political-inflation cycle follows a clear pattern:
Step #1: In a fiat currency system, the government will inevitably print an ever-increasing amount of currency to finance itself.
Step #2: This makes prices and living costs rise faster than wages.
Step #3: The average person feels the pain but doesn’t understand what’s happening.
Step #4: More people support politicians who promise freebies to relieve the pain inflation causes.
Step #5: The government prints more currency to pay for the freebies.
Step #6: This creates even more inflation, and the cycle repeats.
At this point, we have to ask ourselves whether the political situation in the US will improve.
Unfortunately, the data points to a troubling but inevitable answer… “no.”
Reason #1… is simple: a growing majority of US voters receive government money.
When you count everyone who lives off political dollars instead of free-market dollars, we’re already well north of 50% of the US population.
In other words, the US has already crossed the Rubicon. There’s no going back.
The growing majority of voters who collect net benefits from the government is a built-in constituency to perpetuate policies financed by ever-increasing inflation. That’s why I think the US has entered an unstoppable inflation death spiral.
The notion that people living off government largesse and political dollars will come around to a libertarian way of thinking is a pipe dream.
In short, there is simply no hope for positive change from the political system. That means one thing is sure: an ever-increasing amount of inflation to pay for all these government programs.
For many decades, Argentina has infamously been trapped in a perpetual cycle of hyperinflation and socialism from which it cannot escape. And now, the US has entered that same inescapable cycle.
Reason #2: Central Planning Doesn’t Work
Although many don’t realize it, interest rates are simply the price of money.
And they are the most important prices in all of capitalism.
They have an enormous impact on banks, the real estate market, and the auto industry. It’s hard to think of a business that interest rates don’t affect in some meaningful way.
However, interest rates are controlled by a politburo of central planners at the Federal Reserve, not set by the market like any other price.
It’s bizarre that most people don’t understand the implications of this or thoughtlessly accept it as a “normal” part of a supposed free-market economy.
Further, it should be self-evident to everyone that economic central planning doesn’t work.
In Marx’s Communist Manifesto, the 5th plank calls for the “centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.”
That is a perfect description of the Federal Reserve and other central banks.
In reality, the Fed is nothing more than a politburo of bureaucrats attempting to centrally plan the economy by tinkering with the money and interest rates—the most important prices in all of capitalism.
Even if we presume the Fed has benign intentions—which it doesn’t—central planning is impossible, and failure is inevitable.
That’s why the Fed is in a mission-impossible situation—much like it was impossible for the Soviets to centrally plan their economy.
Here’s the bottom line…
The Fed can’t save the day any more than the State Planning Committee of the USSR could.
Reason #3: Inflation Is the Only Way To Manage an Impossible Debt Load
The media, politicians, and financial analysts often flippantly use the word “trillion” without appreciating what it means.
A trillion is a massive, almost unfathomable number.
The human brain has trouble understanding something so huge. Let me put it into perspective.
If you earned $1 per second, it would take 11 days to make a million dollars.
If you earned $1 per second, it would take 31 and a half years to make a billion dollars.
And if you earned $1 per second, it would take 31,688 years to make a trillion dollars.
So that’s how enormous a trillion is.
When politicians carelessly spend and print money measured in the trillions, you are in dangerous territory.
It took until 1981 for the US government to rack up its first trillion in debt. The second trillion only took four years. After that, the next trillions came in increasingly shorter intervals.
Today, Congress has normalized multi-trillion dollar federal spending deficits.
The US federal debt has gone parabolic and is well over $31 trillion.
If you earned $1 per second, it would take over 995,000 YEARS to pay off the current US federal debt.
And that’s with the unrealistic assumption that it would stop growing.
The US federal government has the largest debt in the history of the world. And it’s continuing to grow at a rapid, unstoppable pace.
The debt will keep piling up as the US government continues to pay for political promises. It’s virtually inevitable.
Below is a chart of the Congressional Budget Office’s deficit projections for the next decade. These estimates will almost certainly be too rosy, as they often are.
Even by the CBO’s optimistic projections, the US government will have a cumulative deficit of over $15 trillion for the next ten years.
Historically, there has been a vast foreign appetite for US federal debt, but not anymore.
In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the US government has launched its most aggressive sanctions campaign ever.
As part of this, the US government seized the US dollar reserves of the Russian central bank—the accumulated savings of the nation.
It was a stunning illustration of the dollar’s political risk. The US government can seize another sovereign country’s dollar reserves at the flip of a switch.
The Wall Street Journal, in an article titled “If Russian Currency Reserves Aren’t Really Money, the World Is in for a Shock,” noted:
“Sanctions have shown that currency reserves accumulated by central banks can be taken away. With China taking note, this may reshape geopolitics, economic management and even the international role of the U.S. dollar.”
China is one of the largest holders of US Treasuries, and it indeed took note of what happened to Russia. It’s probably why Beijing cut its Treasury holdings to a 12-year low.
Even US allies, like Japan, have also cut their Treasury holdings.
There are numerous other examples. But it’s clear the world isn’t hungry for more US debt right now.
So, who is going to finance these incomprehensible budget shortfalls? The only entity capable is the Fed’s printing presses.
In other words, the government has no choice but to finance itself through legalized counterfeiting and debasing the currency.
Allow me to simplify this fraud in three steps.
Step #1: Congress spends trillions more than the federal government takes in from taxes.
Step #2: The Treasury issues debt to cover the difference.
Step #3: The Federal Reserve creates US dollars out of thin air to buy the debt.
It’s also crucial to note that inflation is a big bonus to debtors. It allows you to borrow in dollars and repay in dimes.
And since the US government is the biggest debtor in the history of the world, it is the single largest beneficiary of inflation.
The US government can only finance itself with the Fed’s printing presses. It is also incentivized to debase the currency as it attempts to deal with its impossible debt burden.
What Happens Next
When you put together the pieces, the big picture becomes clear.
I believe the US has entered an inflationary death spiral for three reasons:
Reason #1: A growing majority of voters who collect net benefits from the government is a built-in constituency to perpetuate policies financed by ever-increasing inflation.
Reason #2: Even if we presume the Fed has benign intentions—which it doesn’t—central planning is impossible, and failure is inevitable.
Reason #3: The US government cannot finance itself without the Fed’s printing presses. It is also incentivized to debase the currency as it attempts to deal with its impossible debt burden.
In short, it’s game over.
The US government is fast approaching the financial endgame.
They have no choice but to “reset” the system—that’s what governments do when they are trapped.
Think of it like this.
Imagine a spoiled child playing a board game, and rather than admit he is losing, he flips the board.
This is what governments will do now that they are financially checkmated. They can’t win, even in their own rigged game, and now they are left with the choice of losing power or flipping the board. Since power does not relinquish itself voluntarily, we should presume they’ll choose to flip the board.
I suspect it could all go down soon… and it won’t be pretty.
It could result in an enormous wealth transfer from you to the parasitical class—politicians, central bankers, and those connected to them.
What exactly will the “reset” look like?
What can the average person do about it?
I just released an urgent PDF guide, “Survive and Thrive During the Most Dangerous Economic Crisis in 100 Years.” Download this free report to discover the top 3 strategies you need to implement today to protect yourself and potentially come out ahead.
With the global economy in turmoil and the threat of a “Great Reset” looming, this guide is a must-read. Click here to download it now.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/01/2023 – 19:40 - Animals Dying Across Ohio State Parks After East Palestine Train Derailment
Animals Dying Across Ohio State Parks After East Palestine Train Derailment
After a catastrophic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, early last month, President Biden, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, corporate media outlets, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, Environmental Protection Agency, and some local officials have ensured air monitoring and water sample tests show everything is under control.
But is it? Well, not according to the local newspaper Ohio Star. Reporter Hannah Poling said a confidential source told her that a wildlife biologist and consultant for the federal forestry received hundreds of reports over the last several days from forestry workers discovering “hundreds of dead animals in Ohio’s parks.”
Several labs across the country have received specimens of whole minks, deer, elk, worms and livers of such animals, and they are finding toxicities that are off the charts, the source said.
“These highly toxic levels are the exact chemicals that were released from East Palestine. Wayne National Forest and Shawnee State Forest in Ohio, are downriver from East Palestine and are two parks where samples are from,” the source continued.
Meanwhile, the BBC reported:
Nearly 45,000 animals have died as a result of a toxic train crash this month in an Ohio town, environmental officials have said.
The figure from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources updates the initial estimate of 3,500 animals dead after the 3 February derailment.
The source also told the Ohio Star that Governor DeWine attempted to block scientists from entering state parks:
The governor and the railroad were blocking scientists from getting soil samples in East Palestine, but they were able to still grab some for testing. Likewise, the soils are highly contaminated,” the source said.
The source claims that the Ohio governor only uses his own hand-picked scientists to “give him the results he wants.”
“It is heartbreaking to me that politicians like DeWine make an issue like this political. It should not be. He should be doing all he can to protect people, animals and the environment and not just cover his own behind,” the source added.
There have been countless reports of health concerns by the residents of East Palestine and surrounding communities following the derailment of ten railcars carrying hazardous materials, including vinyl chloride, that first responders eventually burned off.
After the burn, “some residents say they have been diagnosed with bronchitis, lung issues, and rashes that doctors and nurses suspect are linked to the chemical exposure,” said Ohio Star.
According to local TV station WKBN, residents have sent a list of demands for Norfolk Southern and the federal government, outlining the much-needed help their community deserves after a botched response.
Below is the list of demands:
- Relocation for anyone who wants it. Folks don’t feel safe and aren’t getting their questions answered. Anyone who wants to be relocated to hotels or safe housing should have the opportunity to do so, paid for by Norfolk Southern.
- Independent environmental testing. The EPA must immediately begin and continue to test soil, water, and air, including for dioxins throughout the region, and commit to regular public meetings to explain findings. Norfolk Southern must pay for an independent scientist, hired by residents, to represent the community and participate in all technical meetings regarding testing, cleanup, and safety plans.
- Ongoing medical testing and monitoring: We still don’t know what the short and long-term health impacts of this disaster will be. Federal Health & Human Services must provide ongoing health monitoring to evaluate those in the impacted region, guarantee health coverage, and Norfolk Southern must cover the cost.
- Dispose of the toxic waste safely: The EPA cannot take the solid waste from the derailment and dispose of it in the Heritage Thermal toxic incinerator, in nearby East Liverpool, that has already been polluting our communities for years. This will only further spread the contaminants. Norfolk Southern must stop destroying evidence – we need a safety plan before resuming cleanup from the derailment site.
- Norfolk Southern pays 100% of the costs. Taxpayers shouldn’t foot this bill. Norfolk Southern made this mess, they should clean it up. The company must commit to paying 100% of the costs for testing, relocation, cleanup, medical monitoring and costs, and an independent science advisor.
The Biden administration’s lack of leadership and physical presence after the train derailment was a crucial mistake. What happened is that Biden’s opponents, such as former President Trump, seized on this opportunity for political points ahead of the 2024 presidential election cycle. Trump met with local officials and residents last week. Some have said this is “Biden’s Katrina.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/01/2023 – 19:20 - The New Racism Of The Elect
The New Racism Of The Elect
Authored by Julian Adorney via The Mises Institute,
A new movement is emerging on the left.
This movement sells guilt and self-flagellation and calls it antiracism. Its leaders present themselves as the absolute authority on race relations and claim that being a good white person means following their instructions. But when it comes to racism, “the elect” (to borrow Columbia University linguistics professor John McWhorter’s term for members of this movement) misdiagnose the problem and posit solutions that will make bigotry in the United States worse.
The commentators of the elect are myriad, but three books represent the face of the movement.
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The first is White Women: Everything You Already Know about Your Own Racism and How to Do Better, a New York Times bestseller by Regina Jackson and Saira Rao.
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The second is White Fragility, the bestseller by Robin DiAngelo that launched a movement.
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The third is lesser known but equally impactful. Is Everyone Really Equal? is a textbook for education graduate students in which DiAngelo and coauthor Özlem Sensoy lay out the intellectual underpinnings of this new movement.
The elect attempt to tackle bigotry, but their leaders assume we’re still stuck in the 1920s. Jackson is a black woman and Rao is a South Asian woman. They make a big deal of the fact that they’re willing to work together in spite of having different ethnicities. They call it an “incredibly radical act” that “can’t be overlooked.” The authors seem to think they live in a world where people of different skin colors all hate each other and that their personal willingness to bridge the gap is somehow transformative.
That’s a grim worldview, and luckily, it doesn’t match reality. In 2015, the Pew Research Center noted that 46 percent of newlywed US-born Asian Americans were in an interracial marriage and that 18 percent of African American newlyweds were married to someone of a different race. The plain fact is that lots of Americans are comfortable spending their lives with someone of a different racial background. What Jackson and Rao describe as “radical” is, for most of us, an ordinary fact of life.
It’s not just Jackson and Rao. DiAngelo sees racists everywhere. In White Fragility, she claims that all white people are racist. This is true, she stresses, even if you have a black spouse, have black children, or marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for civil rights in the 1960s. As she puts it, “Racism is unavoidable and . . . it is impossible to completely escape having developed problematic and racial assumptions and behaviors.” And if you think for whatever reason that you’re not racist, then you’re part of the group that “cause[s] the most daily damage to people of color.” God forbid we actually admit that people of different races can see each other as human beings.
In Is Everyone Really Equal? DiAngelo and Sensoy go even farther. They argue that different ethnic groups are locked in a bare-knuckle brawl for power. As an example, they note that children in wealthy schools often learn different things than children in poor schools, but they argue that children and parents in wealthy schools are actively maintaining this discrepancy.
“Because this system benefits the affluent child,” the authors claim, “she will be less invested in removing these barriers for others. In fact, she (and those who advocate for her) will most often resist removing these barriers.”
It’s true that people do advocate for their own interest, but DiAngelo and Sensoy go much farther. They posit a world of mustache-twirling villains who use their position on top to place a boot on the necks of the people on the bottom. DiAngelo and Sensoy seem blind to the possibility that people of different racial groups might have some empathy for each other, let alone friendship or love.
Fortunately, most of us don’t live in the hateful world that the authors imagine.
In the real world, members of different races do in fact care for each other, as shown by (for instance) the multitude of white people who advocate for criminal justice reform because they believe that doing so will help minorities in addition to creating a more just society.
To be clear, the United States does have real problems with racism and other forms of bigotry. Conservative commentator David French talks about how having a black daughter opened his eyes to the frequent racism of his fellow Americans. The American Jewish Committee reported that one in four Jewish Americans experienced anti-Semitism in the past year.
But it’s also important to note that we no longer live in 1920. According to Gallup, 94 percent of Americans approve of interracial marriage. According to an index created by the Anti-Defamation League (a nonprofit dedicated to measuring and combating anti-Semitism), 10 percent of Americans harbor anti-Semitic attitudes, whereas 24 percent of Western Europeans harbor the same. These numbers reflect a country that’s completely at odds with what DiAngelo, Jackson, Rao, and Sensoy seem to see.
Not only do the elect misdiagnose the problem, but their proposed solutions would exacerbate bigotry and racial tensions in the United States. None of these authors aspire to treat people of all races, genders, and ethnicities with equal dignity. Jackson and Rao say terrible things about white women.
In an interview with Forbes, they sneer at how white women react when they’re confronted by the authors. They call this reaction “the full white woman” and describe it as, “the Broadway musical, crying, eye-rolling, arms folded, just the whole thing.” In White Fragility, DiAngelo claims openly that all 204 million white Americans are racist and dismisses anyone who disagrees with her as suffering from “white fragility.”
Is Everyone Really Equal? is, if anything, even worse. Early in the book, DiAngelo and Sensoy critique the idea that “people should be judged by what they do, not the color of their skin.” They call this idea “predictable, simplistic, and misinformed.” For DiAngelo and Sensoy, the goal seems to be the opposite of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream that his “four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
For the elect, the goal is not a cosmopolitan society where everyone is seen as human first.
Rather, the goal seems to be a world where we are defined by our immutable characteristics first and where those immutable characteristics determine how we may be treated. Some races must be treated with respect, while others can be derided.
The elect position their solution as the only way to combat racism, but they’ve got it exactly backwards. Commentators on every side of the political spectrum offer real solutions to tackle bigotry. But we’ll never get to the tolerant and cosmopolitan society most of us want until we stop listening to people who think our immutable characteristics define who we are and how we should be treated.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/01/2023 – 19:00 -
- Trump Unveils 'Universal Import Tariffs' As Part Of 2024 Campaign
Trump Unveils ‘Universal Import Tariffs’ As Part Of 2024 Campaign
Former President Donald Trump unveiled a key talking point for his 2024 campaign – an “America First” trade plan which would include universal tariffs on most goods imported into the US.
Trump laid it out in a Feb. 27 statement, which called for a system of universal baseline tariffs on most foreign products, while rewarding American domestic production. The new policy will “tax China to build up America,” according to Trump.
“Joe Biden claims to support American manufacturing, but in reality, he is pushing the same pro-China globalist agenda that ripped the industrial heart out of our country,” Trump said in a video titled “Pro-American Trade to End our Reliance on China.”
Trump claims his plan is a matter of “both economic and national security,” and would “implement a bold series of reforms to completely eliminate dependence on China in all critical areas.”
As Rabobank notes;
In short, his proposed “America First” policy would phase in a system of universal, baseline tariffs on most foreign products, the revenue from which would reduce taxation on firms producing in the US. Moreover, tariffs “would increase incrementally depending on how much individual foreign countries devalue their currency.”
Honestly, I am not shocked. I am sure no other markets Daily uses the word “mercantilism” as freely as this one has for around a decade – I had to explain the word in 2015, and then how pre-WW2 US presidents were mercantilists; when Trump floated his first tariffs, I argued phasing them in to allow onshoring FDI before imported goods got more expensive would be logical; ‘Weaker currency = higher tariffs’ was factored into our report on ‘Balance of payments -and power- crises’; and clearly there is still US momentum to change things even if means breaking things, which we factored into our ‘The World in 2030’ report – which we may arrive at early; moreover, as argued last year, and this, ‘Bretton Woods 3 Won’t Work’.
* * *
To that end, since Trump left office in 2021, the former president has been highly critical of Joe Biden – who he says has punished domestic producers, while rewarding multinational corporations that outsource labor to hostile nations such as communist China.
“Biden’s pro-China economic program puts America last and it’s killing our country,” said Trump, adding “My cutting-edge trade agenda will revitalize our economy by once again putting America first. We will quickly become a manufacturing powerhouse like the world has never seen before.”
Trump’s plan would strip China of its most favored nation trade status, while adopting a four-year plan to phase out all Chinese imports of essential goods, as well as a ban on federal contracts for any company that outsources to Beijing.
Under Biden, the US-China trade deficit has risen nearly 10% to $382.9 billion in 2022 alone. The Biden admin, meanwhile, has proposed a nearly $2 trillion tax increase on Americans.
“Very simply, the Biden agenda taxes America to build up China,” said Trump, adding that he would instead “tax China to build up America.”
As the Epoch Times notes;
Universal Baseline Tariff Would Fill US Treasury’s Coffers, Says Trump
Trump said if he were in charge, he would instead impose a universal baseline tariff on foreign producers of most imported goods, rather than raise taxes on American producers.
He said that he would gradually increase tariffs if other countries manipulate their currency or otherwise engage in unfair trading practices, like China.
The former president believes that if tariffs on foreign exporters go up, domestic taxes on American workers, families, and businesses would decrease substantially.
“That means a lot of jobs coming in,” the 45th president said.
Trump said higher tariffs will “increase incrementally depending on how much individual foreign countries devalue their currency.”
He slammed the practice of other countries devaluing their currency, while subsidizing their industries, saying they were engaging in what he described as “trade cheating and abuse.”
He noted that they still “do it now like never before,” but that his administration had largely stopped it “and it was going to be stopped completely within less than a year” if he stayed in office, according to Trump.
“As tariffs on foreign producers go up, taxes on American producers will go down, and go down very substantially.”
In addition to reducing the nation’s massive trade deficits and bringing back home millions of manufacturing jobs, the 2024 Republican presidential candidate said that his economic program would rake in “trillions and trillions of dollars” for the Treasury Department from foreign countries, which would instead be invested in “American workers, American families and American communities.”
45th President to Continue His Administration’s Trade Policy
Trump called his new economic plan the “linchpin of a new Strategic National Manufacturing Initiative, that builds on my historic success in ending NAFTA.”
He called his replacement of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) one of the most “tremendous” achievements of his administration.
After negotiating with the leaders of Mexico and Canada, Trump replaced the NAFTA accords with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which covered more than $1.3 trillion of commerce throughout North America.
The USMCA required that 75 percent of automobile components be manufactured in the United States, Canada, or Mexico in order to avoid tariffs.
The new trade agreement required that 40 to 45 percent of automobile parts be made by workers who earned at least $16 an hour by 2023.
The USMCA was expected to create thousands of new jobs tied in the auto industry in North America and bring in around $30 billion of new investments into the sector.
In addition, the trade deal was designed to open up new markets for American agricultural products like wheat, poultry and eggs.
“We’re also going to end other unfair trade deals, and we’ll end them quickly,” added Trump.
For example, the former president scrapped the Obama administration’s agreement to participate in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement in January 2017.
This deal was created to further trade ties between the U.S. and eleven other countries around the Pacific.
The remaining countries negotiated a new trade agreement called the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, which incorporates most of the provisions of the TPP and entered into force in December 2018.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/01/2023 – 18:40 - Getting Ohioans Back To Work Means Battling Obesity
Getting Ohioans Back To Work Means Battling Obesity
Authored by Rea S. Hederman, Jr. via RealClear Wire,
As America teeters on the edge of recession, various factors have contributed to its broken supply chains, historic inflation, and depleted workforces. One factor that has gone largely overlooked has been a silent burden for employers and employees alike: obesity. This is one of many critical topics highlighted during Obesity Care Week.
Recent national studies highlight the economic costs that obesity imposes on America’s beleaguered workforce. According to a National Institute of Health study, workers with obesity are almost twice as likely to miss work. More likely to be sick or absent from work for longer periods of time, these workers lag in work experience, which reduces their future pay. Researchers estimate that such productivity losses cost America $1.0 trillion annually.
Similarly, workers with obesity are more likely to suffer diabetes and other debilitating diseases that increase healthcare, health insurance, and workers’ compensation costs for employers. A study by Duke Health, for example, revealed that workers with obesity filed twice as many workers’ compensation claims and that average medical claims per 100 employees were more than $50,000 for those with obesity compared to only $7,500 for those without.
Obesity’s indirect costs are expensive, too. Adults with obesity are more likely to remain under employed or forfeit better wages. A Journal of Business and Psychology study warned that workers suffering obesity may lose more than $114,000 in earnings due to productivity losses. And adults with obesity are more likely to remain unemployed entirely, costing them a lifetime of potential income and savings.
Ohio feels the negative side effects of obesity more acutely than most states. With one-third of its workforce fighting obesity, Ohio ranks 15th in the nation. Over the last several years, obesity-related health issues have cost the Ohio Department of Medicaid hundreds of millions of dollars. Additionally, a forthcoming study by The Buckeye Institute’s Economic Research Center estimates that obesity has sidelined more than 32,000 workers — more than enough to construct and fully staff Intel’s new semiconductor plant in central Ohio. And those missing workers have deprived the state of nearly $20 million in tax revenue.
Other states have already taken promising steps to better help those suffering obesity. Ohio should do the same.
Nutrition counseling, surgery, and medication are helpful to obesity sufferers, and Ohio’s state employee health plans have adopted an “all of the above” approach to fighting obesity and getting people with the disease back into the workforce. As those efforts proceed, researchers, employers, and regulators should monitor the results — in Ohio and across the country — and enhance the most successful.
In the meantime, Ohio should also pursue commonsense regulatory reforms to make access to obesity treatments easier and more affordable. Ohio’s nutrition licensing requirements, for example, remain some of the nation’s worst and most stringent, restricting access to diet and nutrition counseling and artificially raising prices. Relaxing those regulatory requirements will lower prices and increase access to life-changing counseling for thousands.
Reducing obesity through prevention and better care in the workforce is a win-win-win for Ohio, employers, and employees battling obesity. Bringing obesity-sufferers back into the labor force will reduce state-funded healthcare costs, boost tax revenue, help alleviate worker shortages and supply chain woes, and provide or increase earnings for those under- or unemployed. Studying obesity prevention and treatment methods, encouraging the public and private sectors alike to implement best practices, and prudent regulatory reforms like relaxing nutrition counseling licensing requirements could help get Ohio on the road to recovery and wellness.
Rea S. Hederman Jr. is executive director of the Economic Research Center and vice president of policy at The Buckeye Institute.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/01/2023 – 18:20 - 'Big Short' Michael Burry Predicts "Terrible Consequences" From Biden's Student Loan Forgiveness
‘Big Short’ Michael Burry Predicts “Terrible Consequences” From Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness
Investor Michael Burry says “terrible consequences” are in store if student loans are forgiven.
“Let’s not forget that the student debt problem is built on a foundation of terrible major choices,” Burry tweeted on Tuesday.
“Bailing generations out of those bad choices will mean more bad choices, tuition hikes, and terrible consequences for America.”
Burry’s comments come as the US Supreme Court considers Tuesday oral arguments over President Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, which was legally justified based on the pandemic. The program offered up to $20,000 of loan forgiveness per borrower – an initiative which has been put on hold while the high court debates the case, according to Politico.
During more than three hours of oral argument, conservative justices on the court repeatedly questioned whether the Education Department had the legal authority it claimed to discharge federal student loan debt to help borrowers recover economically from the national emergency spurred by Covid-19.
Chief Justice John Roberts emerged as one of the most hostile voices on the court towards the debt relief plan, repeatedly invoking its overall cost and raising questions about its fairness. -Politico
“We’re talking about half a trillion dollars and 43 million Americans,” said Roberts early into the arguments, who also slammed the Biden administration’s claim that the debt cancellation plan wasn’t much different than existing programs that forgive student debts in specific circumstances.
“Because there’s a provision to allow [a] waiver when your school closes…because of that Congress shouldn’t have been surprised when half a trillion dollars is wiped off the books?” asked Roberts, who added that the administration’s decision not to wait for Congress to craft debt-forgiveness legislation may have cut short debates Congress could have had over special treatment vs. people who have paid off their loans.
“Nobody’s telling the person who was trying to set up the lawn service business that he doesn’t have to pay his loan,” said Roberts. “He still does, even though his tax dollars are going to support the forgiveness of a loan for the college graduate who’s not going to make a lot more than him over the course of his lifetime.”
The 51-year-old Burry who rose to fame betting against the housing market before the 2008 crash took on “well into six figures of educational debt” going to UCLA and then Vanderbilt University for his medical degree. He began his residency at Stanford University, but dropped out to focus on investing.
Meanwhile, Justice Samuel Alito hammered the fairness aspect as well.
“Why is it fair? Why is it fair?….Why was it done?” Alito asked Biden administration lawyer, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar.
In all, four of the conservative justices–Roberts, Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch–seemed most skeptical of the claimed legal basis for the debt relief plan, while all three of the court’s liberals appeared inclined to reject the challenges to the program.
The high court’s two other members–Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett–were less clear in their views. Barrett, notably, questioned some of the GOP states’ arguments that they had standing to bring the lawsuit. -Politico
Prelogar focused her argument on how the Biden administration was acting within the law to avoid borrower distress during national emergencies, and refuted claims by the plaintiffs that they had been harmed in any way by the policy.
When asked by Justice Clarence Thomas how “half a trillion dollars” fits uinder the “normal understanding of ‘modifying'” falls under the scope of the so-called Heroes Act, Preloger countered that the heart of the provision’s purpose was to allow the secretary to ensure that borrowers don’t suffer financially during a crisis.
Justice Elena Kagan agreed.
“This is an emergency provision,” she said, comparing the pandemic to an earthquake. “You don’t think Congress wanted to give … the secretary power to say, ’Oh, my gosh, people have had their homes wiped out, we’re going to discharge their student loans?'”
As Bloomberg notes, in 1970 the average student debt was just $1,070 – which rose to $31,100 in 2021, an increase of more than 2,800%.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/01/2023 – 18:00 - Watch: Sen. Hawley Exposes Biden Archivist Nominee With Her Own Past Partisan Tweets
Watch: Sen. Hawley Exposes Biden Archivist Nominee With Her Own Past Partisan Tweets
Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,
In a hearing Tuesday, Senator Josh Hawley completely eviscerated Joe Biden’s National Archivist nominee by presenting her with her own past tweets which are extremely partisan.
During the Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing, Hawley exposed how Dr. Colleen Shogan routinely criticised Republican representatives and their policies, despite the fact that she had locked her Twitter account as soon as she was nominated for the supposedly non-partisan role heading up the National Archives and Records Administration.
As Hawley presented each of her past statements, Shogan refused to comment, prompting the Senator to accuse her of stonewalling.
Hawley noted that in February of 2022 Shogan tweeted complaining about mask mandates being lifted.
“I asked you to provide the public posts that had previously been available on Twitter because the ones that we have were pretty disturbing,” Hawley noted, adding “You responded as follows, and I quote, ‘My personal Twitter account is comprised of posts about my mystery novels, events at the White House Historical Association, Pittsburgh sports teams, travels and my dog.’ Is this an accurate statement?”
“My social media is in my personal capacity,” Shogan responded.
Hawley shot back, “Answer my question, please, because you’ve testified under oath that you only posted about your dog, and sports teams and novels, and you also said you wouldn’t give this committee any of your public posts.”
Shogan still refused to answer, prompting Hawley to remind her “You are under oath before this committee, and I have to say, you have placed this issue squarely in record by repeatedly refusing to answer.”
The deluge continued for over 7 straight minutes, as Hawley presented anti-Trump tweets, anti-second amendment tweets and anti-religion tweets, proving once again that the Biden administration is only interested in filling the government with people who will follow its agenda in lockstep.
Hawley noted “I have never seen a witness stonewall like this before. Never. And I’ve seen a lot. This is extraordinary. … I mean, this is unbelievable, and you want to be the archivist of the United States. You lied to us under oath, you lied to us in your [Questions for the Record], you just lied to me a second ago under oath, and now you’re sitting here stonewalling, not answering questions about public posts that you’ve made.”
The Senator continued, “I have never seen a witness blatantly lie under oath like Dr. Shogan has just done to this committee, stonewalled this committee, and just repeatedly refused to answer my questions about her own posts that are in public.”
“For these reasons, I will oppose your nomination and I strongly, strongly urge this committee to take action on this and force this witness to own up to the fact that she is misleading us right now before our eyes,” Hawley asserted.
Watch:
Despite all of this, Shogan will likely be confirmed, given the Democratic majority in the Senate.
Elsewhere during the hearing, Senator Rand Paul noted that last month the National Archives had forced visiting students, in Washington for the March for Life, to remove clothing with pro-life messages on it.
“It’s hard to imagine a more offensive way to violate their freedom of speech,” Paul noted, adding “Nothing like this can ever happen again. We must understand who ordered it.”
Paul also further told the nominee, “The difference in how Archives appear to have handled disputes over documents held by former President Trump and Vice President Pence, and President Biden on the other hand, raised questions about the impartiality of the agency.”
“Specifically, the agency seems to have aggressively publicized the search for documents at President Trump and Vice President Pence’s residences, but tried to keep quiet about the documents President Biden kept at, at least three locations,” Paul added.
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Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/01/2023 – 17:40
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