Jul 31

Today’s News 31st July 2020

  • 'Momentary Lapse Of Honesty': Esper Said NATO Purpose Is To "Avoid Peace In Europe"
    ‘Momentary Lapse Of Honesty’: Esper Said NATO Purpose Is To “Avoid Peace In Europe”

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 07/31/2020 – 02:45

    Was this a Freudian slip by the defense secretary, or is he going for Trump-style bluntness of naked and brutal honesty no matter how non-PC?

    During Wednesday’s press conference announcing the controversial Trump-ordered Pentagon plan to withdraw 12,000 troops from Germany, Mark Esper said the “importance” of NATO” lies in part with its mission to “avoid peace in Europe”. 

    Given the slip, Russian media was fast to pick up on it. RT called it “a momentary lapse of honesty”.

    “I’ve said that very publicly, I’ve said that very privately to my counterparts as well – about the importance of NATO, any alliance, sharing the burden so we can all deter Russia and… avoid peace in Europe,” Esper said

    It came while the Pentagon chief chastised Germany for being the “wealthiest country in Europe” but refusing to shoulder its fair share of defense spending, which the Trump administration has long urged Berlin must boost.

    About half the withdrawn troops are expected to return to the states, while the other will be ‘repositioned’ in places in Europe.

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    US Army Europe’s 41st Field Artillery Brigade at the military training area in Grafenwoehr, southern Germany. AFP via Getty Images.

    Meanwhile Russian media has said the troops will deploy near borders with Russia, such as the Baltic states or Poland.

    Sputnik, for example, interpreted Esper’s remarks as confirming that “the US troops would begin leaving Germany in just a few weeks and would then be repositioned to Belgium and Italy amid the Pentagon’s plans to deploy some of them closer to Russia’s borders,” according to its commentary.

  • A Post-Brexit Agrochemical Apocalypse For The UK?
    A Post-Brexit Agrochemical Apocalypse For The UK?

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 07/31/2020 – 02:00

    Authored by Colin Todhunter via Off-Guardian.org,

    The British government, regulators and global agrochemical corporations are colluding with each other and are thus engaging in criminal behaviour. That’s the message put forward in a new report written by environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason and sent to the UK Environment Agency. It follows her January 2019 open letter to Werner Baumann, CEO of Bayer CropScience, where she made it clear to him that she considers Bayer CropScience and Monsanto criminal corporations.

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    Her letter to Baumann outlined a cocktail of corporate duplicity, cover-ups and criminality which the public and the environment are paying the price for, not least in terms of the effects of glyphosate. Later in 2019, Mason wrote to Bayer Crop Science shareholders, appealing to them to put human health and nature ahead of profit and to stop funding Bayer.

    Mason outlined with supporting evidence how the gradual onset of the global extinction of many species is largely the result of chemical-intensive industrial agriculture. She argued that Monsanto’s (now Bayer) glyphosate-based Roundup herbicide and Bayer’s clothianidin are largely responsible for the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef and that the use of glyphosate and neonicotinoid insecticides are wiping out wildlife species across the globe.

    In February 2020, Mason wrote the report ‘Bayer Crop Science rules Britain after Brexit – the public and the press are being poisoned by pesticides’. She noted that PM Boris Johnson plans to do a trade deal with the US that could see the gutting of food and environment standards. In a speech setting out his goals for trade after Brexit, Johnson talked up the prospect of an agreement with Washington and downplayed the need for one with Brussels – if the EU insists the UK must stick to its regulatory regime. In other words, he wants to ditch EU regulations.

    Mason pondered just who could be pulling Johnson’s strings. A big clue came in February 2019 at a Brexit meeting on the UK chemicals sector where UK regulators and senior officials from government departments listened to the priorities of Bayer Crop Science. During the meeting (Westminster Energy, Environment & Transport Forum Keynote Seminar: Priorities for UK chemicals sector – challenges, opportunities and the future for regulation post-Brexit), Janet Williams, head of regulatory science at Bayer Crop Science Division, made the priorities for agricultural chemical manufacturers known.

    Dave Bench was also a speaker. Bench is a senior scientist at the UK Chemicals, Health and Safety Executive and director of the agency’s EU exit plan and has previously stated that the regulatory system for pesticides is robust and balances the risks of pesticides against the benefits to society.

    In an open letter to Bench, Mason responded:

    That statement is rubbish. It is for the benefit of the agrochemical industry. The industry (for it is the industry that does the testing, on behalf of regulators) only tests one pesticide at a time, whereas farmers spray a cocktail of pesticides, including over children and babies, without warning.”

    It seems that post-Brexit the UK could authorise the continued use of glyphosate. Of course, with a US trade deal in the pipeline, there are major concerns about glyphosate-resistant GMOs and the lowering of food standards across the board.

    Mason says that glyphosate causes epigenetic changes in humans and animals: diseases skip a generation. Washington State University researchers found a variety of diseases and other health problems in the second- and third-generation offspring of rats exposed to glyphosate. In the first study of its kind, the researchers saw descendants of exposed rats developing prostate, kidney and ovarian diseases, obesity and birth abnormalities.

    Glyphosate has been the subject of numerous studies about its health effects. Robert F Kennedy Jr, one of the attorney’s fighting Bayer (which has bought Monsanto) in the US courts, has explained that for four decades Monsanto manoeuvred to conceal Roundup’s carcinogenicity by capturing regulatory agencies, corrupting public officials, bribing scientists and engaging in scientific fraud to delay its day of reckoning.

    Kennedy says there is also cascading scientific evidence linking glyphosate to a constellation of other injuries that have become prevalent since its introduction, including obesity, depression, Alzheimer’s, ADHD, autism, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, kidney disease, inflammatory bowel disease, brain, breast and prostate cancer, miscarriage, birth defects and declining sperm counts.

    In her new document sent to the UK Environment Agency, Mason argues there is criminal collusion between the Department for Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Chemicals Regulation Division and Bayer over Brexit.

    She also claims the National Farmers Union has been lying about how much pesticides farmers use and have ignored the side effects of chlorpyrifos, chlorothalonil, glyphosate and neonicotinoids. The NFU says farmers couldn’t do without these inputs, even though they destroy human health and the environment.

    Of course, farmers can and do go without using these chemicals. And the shift away from chemical-intensive agriculture is perfectly feasible. In a recent article on the AgWeb site, for instance, US farmer Adam Chappell describes how he made the shift on his 8,000-acre farm. Chappell was not some dyed-in-the-wool organic evangelist. He made the shift for financial and practical reasons and is glad he did. The article states:

    He was on the brink of bankruptcy and facing a go broke or go green proposition. Drowning in a whirlpool of input costs, Chappell cut bait from conventional agriculture and dove headfirst into a bootstrap version of innovative farming. Roughly 10 years later, his operation is transformed, and the 41-year-old grower doesn’t mince words: It was all about the money.”

    Surely there is a lesson there for UK farmers who in 2016 used glyphosate on 2,634,573 ha of cropland. It is not just their bottom line that could improve but the health of the nation. Mason says that five peer-reviewed animal studies from the US and Argentina released in July 2020 have focused minds on the infertility crisis being caused by glyphosate-based herbicides.

    Researchers at The National University of Litoral in Sante Fe, Argentina, have published three concerning peer-reviewed papers including two studies on ewes and rats and one review. In one study, researchers concluded that glyphosate and glyphosate-based herbicides are endocrine disruptors. They also stated that glyphosate-based herbicides alter reproductive outcomes in females.

    But such is the British government’s willingness to protect pesticide companies that it is handing agrochemical giants BASF and Bayer enormous pay-outs of Covid-19 support cash. The announcement came just weeks after Bayer shareholders voted to pay £2.75 billion in dividends. The fact that Bayer then went on to receive £600 million from the government speaks volumes of where the government’s priorities lie.

    According to Mason, the new Agriculture Bill provides a real opportunity for the UK to adopt a paradigm shift which embraces non-chemical farming policy. However, Defra has stated that after Brexit Roundup Ready GA21 glyphosate tolerant crops could be introduced.

    It is also concerning that a post-Brexit funding gap could further undermine the impartiality of university research. Mason refers to Greenpeace, which notes that Bayer and Syngenta, both sell neonicotinoid insecticides linked to harmful effects on bees, gave a combined total of £16.1m to 70 British universities over five years to fund a range of research. Such private funding could create a conflict of interest for academics and after Brexit a potential shortage of public money for science could force universities to seek more finance from the private sector.

    Neonicotinoids were once thought to have little or no negative effects on the environment because they are used in low doses and as a seed coating, rather than being sprayed. But evidence has been mounting that the chemicals harm bees – important pollinators of food crops. As a result, neonicotinoids have been banned by the EU, although they can still be used under license.

    According to Bayer’s website, academics who reviewed 15 years of research found “no adverse effects to bee colonies were ever observed in field studies”. Between 2011 and 2016, the figures obtained from the 70 universities – about half the total in the UK – show Bayer gave £9m to fund research, including more than £345,000 on plant sciences. Syngenta spent nearly £7.1m, including just under £2.3m on plant sciences and stated that many years of independent monitoring prove that when used properly neonicotinoids do not damage the health of bee populations.

    However, in 2016, Ben Stewart of Greenpeace UK’s Brexit response team said that the decline in bee populations is a major environmental and food security concern – it’s causes need to be properly investigated.

    He added:

    But for this research to command public confidence, it needs to be independent and impartial, which is why public funding is so crucial. You wouldn’t want lung cancer studies to be heavily reliant on funds from tobacco firms, nor research on pesticides to be dependent on the companies making them.”

    Stewart concluded:

    As Brexit threatens to cut off vital public funds for this scientific field, our universities need a cast-iron guarantee from our government that EU money will not be replaced by corporate cash.”

    But Mason notes that the government long ago showed its true colours by refusing to legislate on the EU Directive (2009/128/EC) on the Sustainable Use of Pesticides. The government merely stated that current statutory and voluntary controls related to pesticides and the protection of water, if followed, afford a high degree of protection and it would primarily seek to work with the pesticides industry to enhance voluntary measures.

    Mason first questioned the government on this in January 2011. In an open letter to the Chemical Regulation Directorate. The government claimed that no compelling evidence was provided to justify further extending existing regulations and voluntary controls.

    Lord Henley, the Under-Secretary of State for Defra, expanded further:

    “By making a small number of changes to our existing approach we can continue to help feed a growing global population with high-quality food that’s affordable – while minimising the risks of using pesticides.”

    In her numerous reports and open letters to officials, Mason has shown that far from having ‘high-quality food’, there is an ongoing public health crisis due to the pesticides being used.

    She responded to Henley by stating:

    …instead of strengthening the legislation, the responses of the UK government and the CRD have considerably weakened it. In the case of aerial spraying, you have opted for derogation.”

    Mason says that, recently, the day that Monsanto lost its appeal against Dewayne Lee Johnson the sprayers came around the Marina in Cardiff breaking all the rules that the EU had set for Roundup.

    We can only wonder what could lie in store for the British public if a trade deal is done with the US. Despite the Conservative government pledging that it would not compromise on the UK’s food and environment standards, it now proposes that chlorine-washed chicken, beef treated with growth hormones, pork from animals treated with ractopamine and many other toxic foods produced in the US will be allowed into the UK. All for the bottom line of US agribusiness corporations.

    It is also worth mentioning at this point that there are around 2,000 untested chemicals in packaged foods in the US.

    Ultimately, the situation comes down to a concentration of power played out within an interlocking directorate of state-corporate interests – in this case, global agrochemical conglomerates and the British government – and above the heads of ordinary people. It is clear, that these institutions value the health of powerful corporations at the expense of the health of the population and the state of the environment.

  • The Biggest Fraud Ever, Part 2: The Vaccine Swindle
    The Biggest Fraud Ever, Part 2: The Vaccine Swindle

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 07/31/2020 – 00:00

    Authored by Barry Norris via Argonaut Capital,

    Read Part 1 here…

    It was originally assumed that only those who had previously been infected by the virus and developed an antibody response had any immunity, hence the initial focus on testing for the presence of these antibodies as well as infection. However, studies of antibodies in formerly infected patients demonstrated accuracy issues which subsequently could be explained instead by the antibodies’ rapid decay in recovering patients.  The often disappointingly low levels of antibodies in population samples is often used as evidence that herd immunity is not a realistic goal without a vaccine.

    This is not correct.

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    At the end of May there was a significant breakthrough in understanding of COVID antibodies which was not widely reported: a Swiss study from Zurich led by Professor Onur Boyman demonstrated that a large proportion of the population had a natural immunity through existing antibodies on the mucous membrane (IgA) or cellular immunity (T cells), likely to have been acquired through previous exposure to coronaviruses such as influenza or the common cold (the absence of exposure to previous coronavirus is now thought to explain the opposite effect in 1918).

    The study found that that the presence of (IgG and IgM) antibodies generated on infection which tests had previously focused on, were NOT in fact required to defeat the virus and that existing (IgA and T cell) antibodies that gave a natural immunity. Moreover, the population with this natural immunity was demonstrated to be five times greater than those with the IgG and IgM antibodies on which tests had hitherto focused. If this could be substantiated, then the population already exposed to COVID would also be five times greater than previously assumed. In other words, if a population sample showed 10% had IgG and IgM antibodies (which might be subject to decay) then it was likely that at least half of the population had already been exposed to COVID.

    It followed that antibody studies that measured only IgG and IgM that were now predicting population-based mortality risk of 0.1% to 0.5% (lower than the 1% in the elderly population aboard the Diamond Princess) could be even further reduced by a factor of five to 0.02% to 0.1% and the level of symptomatic exposure from 20% to below 5% (consistent with the flu season ironically predicted by Fauci in March). Not only would this mean a further similar reduction in the estimated true mortality rate but it meant that there were far fewer people in the population who had never had exposure to the virus, so a far lower number who could potentially catch the virus in the future.

    In short, the infamous herd immunity was much closer than previously realised.

    Fig 7. Sweden’s curve flattens without lockdown

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    This explained why, by July, the virus had all but disappeared in populations like Sweden, New York (Fig. 7) and Wuhan (which reportedly tested its entire population of 11 million and found only 300 cases, all of which were asymptomatic) which were significantly affected by a “first wave”: if the ratio of those with IgA and T cell antibodies to IgG and IgM antibodies across population was confirmed at a factor of five then if 20% of the population had traditional IgG and IgM antibodies (such as New York with 21% and London with 17%) then the virus died out because there was simply no one left for it to infect. It followed that the virus could only survive in population samples where testing showed the presence of IgG and IgM antibodies was below 20% (and allowing for their decay probably well below).

    Nobel Prize winning biological scientist Michael Levitt had already come to the same conclusion based on a different approach: he predicted that the virus would “burn out” when it had infected 15-20% of the population though based on a pattern predicted by the “Gompertz curve” which indicated that the number of deaths after the peak is roughly double those from before resulting in Levitt accurately predicting the number of Chinese and Swedish deaths, months in advance. Levitt has recently bravely predicted that US COVID will “be done in 4 weeks [25 Aug] with a total reported death below 170,000”, compared to 149,000 today.

    Boyman’s theory on “IgA and T Cell immunity” explained the accuracy of Levitt’s “Gompertz curve” predictions and this was now being backed up by the empirical evidence which showed that the populations which were hit hardest with high initial rates of infection and mortality, were the ones where the virus had almost disappeared.  

    Almost none of this was reported by a media which choose instead to attach the misnomer “second wave” to outbreaks of COVID infection in populations which had not yet experienced any meaningful “first wave”: the Sunbelt states in the US, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan. The irony was that the vulnerability of populations which had not yet seen meaningful infection outbreaks and therefore the fallacy of lockdown had already been predicted by Levitt and Giesecke. It was also logical that population groups where IgG and IgM antibodies were still significantly below 20% would continue to see infections.

    COVID had become particularly political in the US. Despite the anomalously poor Democratic New York and New Jersey records on COVID mortality (Fig. 6), there was  hysterical reporting of rising infections, from very low levels, across Republican states (Florida, Texas and Arizona) which had largely avoided severe lockdown restrictions.

    Fig 6. The Swedish Anomaly?

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    The same rising trend could also be observed in Democratic California which had been subject to lockdown but was largely avoided in Republican Georgia which was notable in its lockdown defiance (Fig. 10). The suspicion remains that infections will continue to rise irrespective of lockdown until populations have reached herd immunity at which point the virus will largely disappear. The anomalously high death rates of New York and New Jersey could be explained by their being affected at a much earlier stage before better understanding of hospital treatment and curtailment of infection in care homes . As hard as the lockdown fanatics looked, there was no correlation of infections or mortality to lockdown policy.

    Fig 10. Analysis of US states and coronavirus

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    It was a clear misnomer to label rising reported infections in the US sun belt as a “second wave” if these states had never suffered from a “first wave” and rises in infection rate were a predominantly caused by more widespread testing of mostly younger people testing positive for COVID with no symptoms. It must also be borne in mind that “case numbers” are simply people reported as testing positive for COVID, almost entirely without symptoms, with no commensurate leap in hospitalisations or mortality, which has been conveniently ignored as not fitting the narrative. This also led to doubts about whether test results were being accurately reported with reports that some clinics were not reporting negative test results and others reporting cases as simply “probable infections” with individuals having some of the symptoms of COVID but not having been tested.

    We must also note that although infections in Arizona, Florida and Texas have seen a similar spike to that witnessed in New York, the mortality remains mercifully lower to a substantial degree (90%) (Fig. 11) which can only be explained by rising testing of a younger population median (since the hospitalisation rate is also lower), better hospital treatment and an improved care home policy (at which New York and New Jersey were anomalously poor). Although we should clearly expect mortality rates to rise in the sun-belt states from very low levels, it is likely that overall mortality remains well below New York levels and beings to taper off when infections begin to peak (which according to Levitt is still a few weeks away).

    Fig 11. COVID “first wave” infection curve of AZ/FL/TX similar to New York but mortality 90% below

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    We should also expect the mortality rate to reduce further as hospital treatment has evolved. We now know that invasive use of ventilators in fact caused COVID deaths which was particularly unfortunate given the initial scandalous news reports on their initial shortage and in the US questionable financial incentives for nursing staff to use ventilators. Doctors have also realised that the specific cause of death in many cases is pulmonary embolism, which can be treated though cheap and well-established blood-thinning medication. Several studies have also shown early intervention with the use of zinc and malaria drug hydroxychloroquine in combination has an immediate significantly reduced hospitalisation rate, of up to 80% and mortality by 50%. There is a great irony that the mortality rate could be reduced to almost zero by proven inexpensive drug combination, though this is not necessarily in the interests of the pharmaceutical industry which would prefer there to be a need for costly new drugs and vaccines.

    Yet inexplicably we still hear the daily groupthink catechism that the only “long-term solution” to beating COVID is a vaccine, often without any understanding of the historic limitations of vaccines particularly in the immunisation against coronaviruses (there is still no vaccine against the common cold and vaccines against influenza are patchy in their effectiveness).

    A significant obstacle to a successful vaccine is the rapid degradation of IgG and IgM COVID antibodies meaning that even a successful  vaccine might not give any benefit for longer than a few weeks. As the CEO of world leading testing company Roche Diagnostics recently commented:

    “What appears to happen is that people do lose antibodies over time. And that of course poses the question, will vaccines actually work if you lose antibodies”.

    Reports of successful antibody responses amongst healthy adults in vaccine trials should be viewed with more scepticism. It is also almost certain that any antibody response would be more difficult in population samples with impaired immune systems that are most at risk from COVID. Even an efficacious vaccine might have to be ramped in dosage that would be intolerable to those most likely to benefit from vaccination.  Leading Swiss epidemiologist Pietro Vernazza has demonstrated that the high-risk group is least likely to respond to the vaccine since their immune system is already impaired.  Whilst it is possible for vaccine trials to demonstrate antibody responses, whether these will have any practical lasting benefits in reducing COVID mortality risk which are tolerable for the population group most at risk from COVID is unlikely.

    Vaccines hastily developed, rushed to market without proper trials by panicked governments ready to throw money at any promising trial candidate, creates a clear moral hazard for pharmaceutical companies and a public healthcare risk which might rival the virus itself.  We remain sceptical of biotech companies raising equity on tricked up trials, only never to deliver medication that has any practical application, or insiders dumping stock after supposedly promising “game changing” data, or even worse mandatory vaccination of a population on the basis of an erroneous assumption that herd immunity hasn’t already been reached, with the potential for dangerous and unnecessary side-effects in population groups who would otherwise (if they had not already been exposed to COVID) have been asymptomatic.

    There is a notable discrepancy between binary expectations that a vaccine will solve COVID and the definition of success for those involved in developing a vaccine. According to Sarah Gilbert, who leads the Oxford Astrazeneca experimental vaccine:

    “We need a vaccine with a high level of efficacy against disease, which also has a significant impact on virus transmission. It doesn’t need to cure you… We want a vaccine to stop people from going to hospital and dying. If you can do that, I think people will be pretty happy”

    In other words, Gilbert’s definition of “success” was mitigation rather than cure, which better hospital treatment is already achieving anyway.

    There is a more fundamental question of whether a vaccination program for the entire population is at all desirable, given that most of the population has a natural immunity, only a small cohort develops symptoms, an even smaller cohort at risk of hospitalisation and the best estimate of mortality risk from COVID now almost statistically insignificant. We are probably already at the stage in terms of hospital treatment whereby no one who does not already have existing comorbidities should die from COVID. If any vaccine does not stop transmission and comes with side-effects which may be dangerous (and could potentially cause a mortality risk where one was previously absent, such as the potential neurological damage caused to children from the vaccinations against “swine flu” a decade ago) it has to be asked whether the exclusive promotion of the vaccine solution by the pharmaceutical industry (and the advice of potentially compromised public health officials like Fauci) is now more likely to end up an investment swindle.

    We now know that there was no credible “science” behind lockdown and whilst its imposition may have originally been motivated by the precautionary principle, the perpetuation of the “Spanish Flu” narrative has been a uniquely destructive, particularly considering the exclusion of healthcare provision for non-COVID illness, prolonged absence of child education, and the well-documented economic devastation. Although our understanding of COVID is by no means complete, we now know that its mortality risk can be best mitigated by the management of infection within the care home and hospital environment, better immediate treatment of hospitalised patients and sensible social distancing measures. None of this required lockdown. Nor does it require a vaccine.

    The degree of intentionality behind the actions taken by governments, the media and the pharma industry is an unknown, but this continued perpetuation of that narrative in contrast to the empirical evidence is arguably the biggest fraud of all.

  • Here Are The Top Highlights From Ghislaine Maxwell's Unsealed Court Records
    Here Are The Top Highlights From Ghislaine Maxwell’s Unsealed Court Records

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 07/30/2020 – 23:40

    Dozens of exhibits related to Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein were unsealed Thursday evening, providing insight into allegations against the financier and his purported ‘madam,’ as well as other high-profile individuals, including Bill Clinton, Alan Dershowitz and several other people whose names one can only guess (and the internet has).

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    The documents, related to a 2015 civil defamation lawsuit against Maxwell by Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, were ordered to be released on July 23 by US District Judge Loretta Preska – which also included flight logs from Epstein’s private jets, as well as police reports from the multiple locations where Epstein maintained residences.

    Among the findings:

    Bill Clinton was allegedly on pedo island with ‘2 young girls’

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    Sordid details from alleged sexual encounters

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    Virginia Giuffre asked Comey’s FBI for evidence in their possession, and was ignored.

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    Of course:

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    Maxwell was in communication with Epstein in January of 2015 – contradicting her claim that she hadn’t been in touch with him in more than a decade.

    Alan Dershowitz is mentioned several times (and has gone to great lengths to defend himself – suggesting on multiple occasions that this very document release would in exonerate him).

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    Dersh defends:

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    Epstein accuser(s) allegedly had to have sex with this guy…

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    And former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson (D)

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    Other speculative mentions (redacted): Prince Andrew, Jean Luc Brunel, and more.

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    Trump is in the clear (which we’ve known for some time):

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    And some food for thought…

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    Check back for more…

  • Militant Antifa Group Urges Deadly Violence Against Feds
    Militant Antifa Group Urges Deadly Violence Against Feds

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 07/30/2020 – 23:20

    Via FarLeftWatch.com,

    Over the weekend there were multiple shootings at “mostly peaceful” demonstrations across the US.

    These tragic shootings follow an ongoing campaign of agitation, targeted political violence, and organized insurgency.

    And while DNC leaders like Congressman Nadler claim this violence is “just a myth“, it is unquestionably escalating in frequency, intensity, and organization.

    The latest example of this escalation comes from the Columbia, SC based far-left militia group, Civil Defense Corps. According to their website, they are actively recruiting “former infantry” and will be using these armed “Reserve Units” to “investigate hate crimes and threats against minorities as well as the LGBTQ+ community”. The group claims to be a 501(c)3 and even has a somewhat formal application process. In addition to general employment information and professional references, there are four questions for the applicant. The first two are “Are you comfortable around firearms?” and “What is your opinion on MAGA?”.

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    Unfortunately, this group does not stop at just recruiting armed anti-Trump extremists, they also actively use their social media accounts to coordinate offline harm. In a recent Facebook post (archive), they encouraged their followers to shoot Federal agents “in the face”.

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    On their Instagram page (archive), they openly flaunt their proclivity towards militancy and their affiliation with the domestic terrorist movement, Antifa.

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    The Facebook page (archive) of the leader of this militia group, Walid Hakim, is littered with Communist iconography and Black Lives Matter logos. And after encouraging his Facebook followers to shoot Federal agents “in the face” using his Civil Defense Corps account, he later used his personal account to encourage people to attend an upcoming protest at South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) in downtown Columbia, SC.

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    So what else do we know about this group? Well, they have generated some local press in which they were referred to as a “Leftist Peace Group” and they claim (archive) to have the “vocal support” of the Mayor of Columbia, Stephan Benjamin.

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    The Mayor’s office did not immediately respond when we reached out to confirm his support of this far-left militia group.

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    The mission of Far Left Watch is to investigate, expose, and combat the far-left and the institutions that empower them. Every dollar you contribute empowers us to be a more efficient and effective watchdog organization.

  • Pentagon Admits Risk Of 'Mistakenly' Firing Land-Based Nuclear Missiles In Rare Memo
    Pentagon Admits Risk Of ‘Mistakenly’ Firing Land-Based Nuclear Missiles In Rare Memo

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 07/30/2020 – 23:00

    The Pentagon has made a not-so-comforting admission that its nuclear arsenal is subject to errors and ‘mistakes’ — namely the potential for land-based missiles carrying nukes to be fired by mistake.

    The almost unheard of public acknowledgement of such a danger, which it should be noted (if not already obvious) could trigger global nuclear apocalypse, actually came as part of an argument for why the DoD nuclear weapons program needs much more funding and a ‘restart’:

    The Trump administration, in a closely held memo to lawmakers this spring, justified developing the first new U.S. atomic weapon since the Cold War by citing vulnerabilities and risks in the current nuclear arsenal that are rarely or never acknowledged in public.

    In an unclassified five-page white paper sent to Congress in May, the Pentagon and the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration, or NNSA, affirm a point they have long minimized: the dangers of land-based missiles ready to launch minutes after a warning of enemy attack.

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    August 5, 2019 explosion near Achinsk, Russia. Via AP

    Recall that in late May of this year it was revealed that the White House is actually mulling conducting the first US nuclear test since the end of the Cold War. The last was conducted 28 years ago.

    Administration officials suggested it would send a strong “message” to Russia and China at a moment landmark Cold War era nuclear arms reduction treaties are unraveling, and at a moment the US hopes to revise New START to account for China’s high tech arsenal.

    “The document, which was obtained by CQ Roll Call and has not previously been disclosed, makes the fullest case yet for the $14 billion W93 submarine-launched atomic warhead program and its MK7 reentry vehicle, which would cost several hundred million more dollars,” Roll Call reports.

    Citing a “variety of risks” in the current nuclear arsenal and launch processes, officials described that “the W93 warhead must be funded, starting in fiscal 2021, because of what it described as perils and vulnerabilities in the Navy’s inventory of sub-launched weapons, as well as in the Air Force’s land-based missiles and bombers.” Fear of a false or accidental fire stem from the US nuclear systems being originally designed to launch minutes after a perceived enemy nuclear attack.

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    Via Flickr

    Such arguments, even if made behind the scenes among US technicians and scientists, rarely if ever make it into the media or official reports subject to the public eye.

    Further, AntiWar.com’s Jason Ditz makes a salient point: “If this argument proves successful, it may also encourage the Pentagon to slip flaws into their future designs as a way to ensure that they can get more funding for an ultimate successor.”

    But it remains that over the past decades there hasn’t been any observable major nuclear ‘accidents’ on the scale that this new Trump admin memo envisions as possible.

  • One Nation Under House Arrest: How Do COVID-19 Mandates Impact Our Freedoms?
    One Nation Under House Arrest: How Do COVID-19 Mandates Impact Our Freedoms?

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 07/30/2020 – 22:40

    Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The freeman of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle.”

    – James Madison

    We have become one nation under house arrest.

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    You think we’re any different from the Kentucky couple fitted out with ankle monitoring bracelets and forced to quarantine at home?

    We’re not

    Consider what happened to Elizabeth and Isaiah Linscott.

    Elizabeth took a precautionary diagnostic COVID-19 test before traveling to visit her parents and grandparents in Michigan. It came back positive: Elizabeth was asymptomatic for the novel coronavirus but had no symptoms. Her husband and infant daughter tested negative for the virus.

    Now in a country where freedom actually means something, the Linscotts would have the right to determine for themselves how to proceed responsibly, but in the American Police State, we’ve only got as much freedom as the government allows.

    That’s not saying much.

    Indeed, it’s a dangerous time for anyone who still clings to the idea that freedom means the right to think for yourself and act responsibly according to your best judgment.

    In that regard, the Linscotts are a little old-school in their thinking. When Elizabeth was asked to sign a self-quarantine order agreeing to check in daily with the health department and not to travel anywhere without prior approval, she refused.

    “I shouldn’t have to ask for consent because I’m an adult who can make that decision. And as a citizen of the United States of America, that is my right to make that decision without having to disclose that to somebody else,” said Elizabeth. “So, no, I wouldn’t wear a mask. I would do everything that I could to make sure that I wouldn’t come in contact with other people because of the fear that’s spreading with this. But no, I would have just stayed home, take care of my child.”

    Instead of signing the blanket statement, Elizabeth submitted her own written declaration:

    I will do my best to stay home, as I do every other time I get sick. But I cannot comply to having to call the public health department everytime that I need to go out and do something. It’s my right and freedoms to go where I please and not have to answer to anyone for it. There is no pandemic and with a survival rate of 99.9998% I’m fine. I will continue to avoid the elderly, just like PRIOR guidelines state, try to stay home, get rest, get medicine, and get better. I decline.

    A few days after being informed that Elizabeth’s case was being escalated and referred to law enforcement, the Linscotts reportedly found their home surrounded by multiple government vehicles, government personnel and the county sheriff armed with a court order and ankle monitors.

    “We didn’t rob a store,” Linscott said.

    “We didn’t steal something. We didn’t hit and run. We didn’t do anything wrong.”

    That’s the point, of course.

    In an age of overcriminalization—when the law is wielded like a hammer to force compliance to the government’s dictates whatever they might be—you don’t have to do anything wrong to be fined, arrested or subjected to raids and seizures and surveillance.

    Watch and see: just as it did in China, this pandemic is about to afford the government the perfect excuse for expanding its surveillance and data collection powers at our expense.

    On a daily basis, Americans are already relinquishing (in many cases, voluntarily) the most intimate details of who we are—their biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)—in order to navigate an increasingly technologically-enabled world.

    COVID-19, however, takes the surveillance state to the next level.

    There’s already been talk of mass testing for COVID-19 antibodies, screening checkpoints, contact tracing, immunity passports to allow those who have recovered from the virus to move around more freely, and snitch tip lines for reporting “rule breakers” to the authorities.

    As Reuters reports:

    As the United States begins reopening its economy, some state officials are weighing whether house arrest monitoring technology – including ankle bracelets or location-tracking apps – could be used to police quarantines imposed on coronavirus carriers. But while the tech has been used sporadically for U.S. quarantine enforcement over the past few weeks, large scale rollouts have so far been held back by a big legal question: Can officials impose electronic monitoring without an offense or a court order?

    More to the point, as the head of one tech company asked, “Can you actually constitutionally monitor someone who’s innocent? It’s uncharted territory.”

    Except this isn’t exactly uncharted territory, is it?

    It follows much the same pattern as every other state of emergency in recent years—legitimate or manufactured—that has empowered the government to add to its arsenal of technologies and powers.

    The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal immigration, asset forfeiture schemes, road safety schemes, school safety schemes, eminent domain: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns and have since become weapons of compliance and control in the police state’s hands.

    It doesn’t even matter what the nature of the crisis might be—civil unrest, the national emergencies, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters”—as long as it allows the government to justify all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security.

    It’s hard to know who to trust anymore.

    Certainly, in this highly partisan age, when everything from the COVID-19 pandemic to police brutality to football is being recast in light of one’s political leanings, it can be incredibly difficult to separate what constitutes a genuine safety concern versus what is hyper-politicized propaganda.

    Take the mask mandates, for example.

    Currently, 19 states have not issued mask mandates in response to rising COVID-19 infection numbers. More than 30 states have enacted some form of mask requirement. A growing number of retailers, including Walmart, Target and CVS,  are also joining the mask mandate bandwagon. Georgia’s governor, in a challenge to mask requirements by local governing bodies, filed a lawsuit challenging Atlanta’s dictate that masks be worn within city limits.

    In some states, such as Indiana, where masks are required but there are no penalties for non-compliance, government officials are urging people to protect themselves but not to get into confrontations over masks or turn into snitches.

    In other states, such as Virginia, the Nanny State is using more strong-handed tactics to force compliance with mask mandates, including the threat of fines, jail time, surprise inspections of businesses, and complaint hotlines that encourage citizens to snitch on each other. Officials in Las Vegas deployed 100 “compliance ambassadors” to help educate and enhance enforcement of the state’s mask mandate. One couple in Knoxville, Tenn., took mask-shaming to new heights when they created a Facebook page to track compliance by businesses, employees and customers.

    In Miami, “residents now risk a legal penalty if they venture into public without a face mask. The city has assigned at least 39 police officers to make sure that residents are following the city’s mandatory mask ordinance. Offenders will be warned but, if they refuse to comply, they will be fined. The first offense will cost $100 and the second another $100. With a third — God forbid — the offender will be arrested.”

    These conflicting and, in some cases, heavy-handed approaches to a pandemic that has locked down the nation for close to six months is turning this health crisis into an unnecessarily politicized, bureaucratic tug-of-war with no clear-cut winners to be found.

    Certainly, this is not the first crisis to pit security concerns against freedom principles.

    In this post-9/11 world, we have been indoctrinated into fearing and mistrusting one another instead of fearing and mistrusting the government. As a result, we’ve been forced to travel this road many, many times with lamentably predictable results each time: without fail, when asked to choose between safety and liberty, Americans historically tend to choose safety.

    Failing to read the fine print on such devil’s bargains, “we the people” find ourselves repeatedly on the losing end as the government uses each crisis as a means of expanding its powers at taxpayer expense.

    Whatever these mask mandates might be—authoritarian strong-arm tactics or health necessities to prevent further spread of the virus—they have thus far proven to be uphill legal battles for those hoping to challenge them in the courts as unconstitutional restrictions on their right to liberty, bodily autonomy, privacy and health.

    In fact, Florida courts have upheld the mask ordinances, ruling that they do not infringe on constitutional rights and that “there is no reasonable expectation of privacy as to whether one covers their nose and mouth in public places, which are the only places to which the mask ordinance applies.”

    Declaring that there is no constitutional right to infect others, Circuit Court Judge John Kastrenakes concluded that “the right to be ‘free from governmental intrusion’ does not automatically or completely shield an individual’s conduct from regulation.” Moreover, wrote Kastrenakes, constitutional rights and the ideals of limited government “do not absolve a citizen from the real-world consequences of their individual choices, or otherwise allow them to wholly skirt their social obligation to their fellow Americans or to society as a whole. This is particularly true when one’s individual choices can result in drastic, costly, and sometimes deadly, consequences to others.”

    Virginia courts have also upheld mask mandates.

    These court decisions take their cue from a 1905 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Jacobson v. Massachusetts in which the Court upheld the authority of states to enforce compulsory vaccination laws.

    In other words, the courts have concluded that the government has a compelling interest in requiring masks to fight COVID-19 infections that overrides individual freedoms.

    Generally, the government has to show a so-called compelling state interest before it can override certain critical rights such as free speech, assembly, press, privacy, search and seizure, etc. Most of the time, the government lacks that compelling state interest, but it still manages to violate those rights, setting itself up for legal battles further down the road.

    We can spend time debating the mask mandates. However, criticizing those who rightly fear these restrictions to be a slippery slope to further police state tactics will not restore the freedoms that have been willingly sacrificed on the altar of national security by Americans of all political stripes over the years.

    As I’ve warned, this is a test to see how whether the Constitution—and our commitment to the principles enshrined in the Bill of Rights—can survive a national crisis and true state of emergency.

    It must be remembered that James Madison, the “father” of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the fourth president of the United States, advised that we should “take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.

    Whether or not you consider these COVID-19 restrictions to be cause for alarm, they are far from the first experiment on our liberties. Indeed, whether or not you concede that the pandemic itself is cause for alarm, we should all be alarmed by the government’s response to this pandemic.

    By government, I’m not referring to one particular politician or administration but to the entire apparatus at every level that conspires to keep “we the people” fearful of one another and under virtual house arrest.

    This is what we’ve all been reduced to: prisoners in our skin, prisoners in our homes, prisoners in our communities—forced to comply with the government’s shifting mandates about how to navigate this pandemic or else.

    Right now, COVID-19 is the perfect excuse for the government to wreak havoc on our freedoms in the name of safety and security, but as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, don’t believe for a minute that our safety is the police state’s primary concern.

  • Billboard Ad Revenue Collapses As Americans Stay Home 
    Billboard Ad Revenue Collapses As Americans Stay Home 

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 07/30/2020 – 22:20

    The unintended consequence of Americans driving less because of the virus pandemic has resulted in a collapse in billboard advertisement revenue, reported Bloomberg. 

    Researcher Magna Global said 2Q20 billboard ad revenue is projected to plunge 40% from a year earlier. 

    Wall Street estimates Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings Inc. and Outfront Media Inc., some of the largest outdoor advertising companies, could post upwards of 50% revenue declines for 2Q. 

    Current revenue growth estimates for the industry show depression in 2020 and revival in 2021. However, 2021 estimates are too optimistic. 

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    During lockdowns, with tens of millions of Americans confined to their couches, advertisers abandoned billboards for online advertisements. This pressured advertising companies, likely resulting in an environment where outdoor advertising remains depressed through the back half the year. 

    Consultancy firm KPMG International noted, the other week, “social-distancing measures” have “dramatically cut the amount of miles Americans travel by car.” 

    KPMG estimates a 10% permanent reduction of the almost 3 trillion miles driven each year, and vehicle ownership is expected to slump in the years ahead. 

    The report states, the new normal could be as many as “14 million fewer cars” on US highways. Fewer cars on roads are bad news for outdoor advertising companies. 

    Shown below, Atlanta’s rush-hour congestion was eliminated during lockdowns. 

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    TomTom Traffic data shows Atlanta’s rush-hour congestion has disappeared through July.  

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    Rush-hour is also non-existent in New York City. 

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    The overall conclusion is that advertisers will shift away from outdoor advertising spending for online options as millions of Americans stay home for various reasons, if that is because of permanent job loss or remote work, this is all terrible news for companies that own billboards. 

  • Rickards: Americans Should Fear The "Anarchy From Above"
    Rickards: Americans Should Fear The “Anarchy From Above”

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 07/30/2020 – 22:00

    Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,

    Chesterton – G.K. Chesterton – once wrote of “anarchy from above.”

    Anarchy. The word implies a mob amok. Anarchy implies violence. And chaos.

    Anarchy implies the murder of law, of order… both borne away by the whirlwind.

    American cities have been scenes of anarchy.

    How else would a fellow explain Minneapolis police taking to their heels — and abandoning their base to the fiery mob — who proceeded to set it ablaze?

    How else would he explain Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (presently defunct)… or “antifa’s” siege of Portland, Oregon (ongoing).

    It is anarchy from below. Yet as Chesterton noted:

    “It isn’t necessary that anarchy should be violent; nor is it necessary that it should come from below.”

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    “A Government May Grow Anarchic as Much as a People”

    Thus he concludes, gravely, sternly, presciently:

    “A government may grow anarchic as much as a people.”

    That is, it may impose anarchy from above…

    Governments have shuttered America’s restaurants, ale houses, barber shops, nail salons, gymnasiums, arenas, beaches… and all places of public resort.

    Governments have ordered churches to scatter their flocks — and bolt their doors.

    And has the Grim Reaper called on a loved one recently?

    Then you may have been unable to pay your last respects. That is because governments restricted graveside sendoffs to a handful of bereaved.

    These are the grim but necessary costs of containing a pandemic, we have been told.

    Yet the same governments that barred you from your sister’s funeral, that locked you out of Sunday service… have blessed the mightiest mass gatherings we have ever encountered.

    We refer of course to the George Floyd protests.

    Anti-Law

    15-26 million Americans swarmed the streets… each one a potential plague-spreader… in over 2,000 cities… in all 50 states of this union… plus the District of Columbia.

    Authorities not only permitted these disease incubators to infest the streets — they waved them in.

    That is, certain Americans can swarm in their thousands, in their tens of thousands, in their hundreds of thousands, in their millions… yet others cannot gather in their dozens to worship almighty God or plant a relative.

    Reduce it to its essence. And this is what you must conclude:

    The rules are arbitrary. The rules are capricious. The rules war against logic itself.

    The rules likewise war against justice itself…

    The umbrella of law must cover all alike. Else it is not law. It is anti-law, a travesty of law, a bonfire of law.

    It is anarchy from above…

    “Arbitrary Distinctions”

    Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute:

    The lockdown mandates employed mind-numbingly arbitrary distinctions. Wine stores and pot dispensaries were deemed “essential” and thus allowed to stay open; medical offices were required to close. Large grocery stores got the green light; small retail establishments with only a few customers each day were out of luck. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer notoriously used her red pen within megastores to bar the sale of seeds, gardening supplies, and paint.

    Next we come to the “excesses” of the protests:

    Government officials, having shut down commerce due to unblemished ignorance of how markets work, now enabled the torching and looting of thousands of businesses due to the shirking of their most profound responsibility: protecting civil peace.

    Blue state governors and mayors ordered law enforcement to stand down or use at most (in New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s words) a “light touch” with the rioters…

    Most remarkably, public officials overtly admitted to choosing the forms of assembly that would be allowed based on the content of the protesters’ speech. Mayor de Blasio explained that protests over “400 years of American racism” are not the same as a “store owner or the devout religious person who wants to go back to services.” While the store owner or worshipper may be “understandably aggrieved,” he conceded, their grievances must still be suppressed in the name of coronavirus safety. Not the grievances of the protesters and rioters, however.

    New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy congratulated the Black Lives Matter activists and distinguished them from mere “nail salon” entrepreneurs protesting their ongoing business stasis. The two are in “different orbits,” Murphy said.

    “A Nightmare Marriage of Anarchy From Above… With Anarchy From Below”

    The activist and the nail salon entrepreneur may inhabit “different orbits.”

    Yet the virus circles in both. And in vastly greater quantities — we must assume — in the protesters’ circle.

    Why then is the activist exempt from the rules that bind and chafe the nail salon entrepreneur?

    The result is a nightmare marriage of anarchy from above… with anarchy from below.

    Ms. MacDonald:

    They engineered the destruction of trillions of dollars of wealth, through thoroughly arbitrary decision making. And then they stood by as billions more dollars of work burned down. Public order and safety, equal treatment under the law, stability of expectations… have been decimated.

    Not Just the Blue State Politicians

    Ms. MacDonald butchers and scourges blue state politicos.

    And our applause is like thunder.

    Yet The Daily Reckoning’s political stance is aggressively, ruthlessly, militantly neutral…

    We level our darts at liberals, at conservatives, at progressives, at moderates.

    That is because they all invade our peace and dignity in one form or other — as well as our wallet.

    And we remind you that red state officials have also imposed arbitrary economic lockdowns and antisocial distancing dictates.

    These bipartisan assaults on enterprise have yielded up to 150,000 “deaths of despair.”

    These are killings by suicide, by drink, by drug, etc.

    How many Americans has the virus murdered?

    145,000… as the official figure runs.

    Anarchy From the Very Top

    Yet we have failed to mention the arbitrary, chaotic and lunatic policies of the United States government — and its central bank.

    The federal budget deficit exceeded $863 billion in June alone. As our former colleague David Stockman notes…

    The entire public debt was $863 billion in 1980. The federal government had required 192 years and 39 presidents to scale that inglorious height.

    Thus in 30 days, David shrieks, the government of the United States borrowed nearly two centuries worth of debt.

    This year’s deficit may near or exceed $5 trillion.

    The Federal Reserve — meantime — has unleashed monetary bedlam…

    “Unelected, Unaccountable Bureaucrats”

    It has fabricated $3 trillion in four months’ space. It may fabricate $7 trillion more by year’s end if our sources are accurate.

    And who can say what additional skullduggeries it will get up to?

    Are We the People granted a vote on any of it?

    Wealth manager Tim Price:

    Our entire central bank controlled financial system is based on the premise that unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats should be able to direct individuals’ consumption and production behavior from ivory tower conclaves.

    And so it goes. And so it goes.

    Here we stand in July, Anno Domini 2020…

    America confronts anarchy from above, anarchy from below, anarchy to the left, anarchy to the right…

    Anarchy in every direction…

  • "Rumors Of Structural Faults ​​​​​​​" – China's Three Gorges Dam Could Be Nearing collapse
    “Rumors Of Structural Faults ​​​​​​​” – China’s Three Gorges Dam Could Be Nearing collapse

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 07/30/2020 – 21:40

    Concerns are rising that China’s Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest dam, could be on the verge of collapse triggering a devastating 250-foot tidal wave that would wipe out cities, reported The Sun. 

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    Satellite image via NASA shows water moving through the Three Gorges Dam in mid-June. 
     

    A major concern, after several weeks of raging floodwaters rushing through the dam at 60,000 cubic meters per second, is that part of the structure has shifted under enormous pressure, potentially jeopardizing the structural integrity of the dam.

    Rumors of structural faults in the walls of the 14-year-old dam have grown as heavy rains deluged the swollen Yangtze River.

    China’s secretive leaders – already facing a backlash over the Covid-19 pandemic which started in Wuhan in Hubei Province – have played down the threat.

    But authorities are said to have quietly ordered the evacuation of 38 million Chinese in the threatened zone – equating to more than half the population of the UK.

    Heavy rainfall is forecast to continue to pound the Yangtze River basin in the coming days after localized floods claimed at least 141 lives. – The Sun

    Dam operators, quoted by local media, said there are two weeks before reservoirs around the dam reach maximum level. Floodgates were used earlier this week to discharge excess water but still not enough to lower water levels. 

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    China’s state-run Global Times quoted a local official that said the structure is “safe and in good condition.”

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    A CGI video published on Twitter showed a potential scenario of the dam collapse, would flood cities along the Yangtze River. 

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    We’ve recently highlighted speculation the dam could be set to fail.  

    Three Gorges Dam Overview 

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    If a structural failure of the dam results in flooding conditions downstream, the Communist Party of China has a new scapegoat to blame the faltering economy, and or has the ability to wash away all the virus evidence in Wuhan, including the biosafety lab. 

  • Domestic Violence More Than Doubled Under Lockdowns, New Study Finds
    Domestic Violence More Than Doubled Under Lockdowns, New Study Finds

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 07/30/2020 – 21:20

    Authored by John Miltimore via The Foundation for Economic Education,

    The unintended consequences of the COVID-19 lockdowns have been severe: mass unemployment, increased drug overdoses and suicides, and widespread social unrest are but a few of them.

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    Last week, the National Bureau of Economic Research released a paper detailing another: increased domestic violence.

    Analyzing government-mandated lockdowns in India, researchers Saravana Ravindran and Manisha Shah found evidence of a 131 percent increase in complaints of domestic violence in May 2020 in “red zone districts,” or districts that experienced the strictest lockdown measures, relative to districts that had less strict measures (“green zones”).

    The researchers, who used a difference-in-differences empirical strategy, found the increase in domestic violence complaints was consistent with a surge in Google search activity for terms related to domestic violence over the same period.

    The authors’ findings “contribute to a growing literature on the impacts of lockdowns and stay-at-home policies on violence against women during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

    The findings, which also found a decline in reported sexual assaults because of decreased mobility, are similar to those from research that found lockdowns led to a 100 percent increase in intimate partner violence calls in Mexico City. A study analyzing data from police departments in four US cities showed smaller increases in domestic violence, 10-27 percent, during lockdown periods.

    Globally about one-third of women experience “intimate partner violence” (IPV), which negatively impacts female earnings, labor participation, earnings, mental health, and household consumption.

    The global increase in domestic violence during the lockdown period has received relatively little attention, though CNN recently reported on the increase south of the US border.

    In Mexico, federal lawmakers shut down most of its economy on March 23, urging people to stay indoors. Activists told the network the action spurred “an onslaught of domestic violence,” and data show 911 calls for domestic violence are up 44 percent from the same time the previous year.

    “The lockdowns triggered violence in so many ways,” Perla Acosta Galindo, Director of Más Sueños A.C., a women’s community center, told CNN. “People can’t work, there’s alcoholism, overcrowding; it’s a lot.”

    To some degree, the COVID pandemic has been portrayed as a morality play. Some would have you believe those who care about people support lockdowns; those who don’t care about people oppose them. We’re presented with false choices: we can support the economy or protect American lives.

    These types of arguments only serve to divide. They can also obscure a basic truth: there are human costs to lockdowns, besides the economic ones, that can ravage lives just as badly as any disease.

    The Washington Post, for example, recently reported on ”a hidden epidemic within the coronavirus pandemic”: drug overdoses. One Ohio coroner said he can’t process the bodies fast enough.

    “We’ve literally run out of wheeled carts to put them on,” Anahi Ortiz told the paper.

    Statistics suggest the trend is national in scope. Data from the Overdose Detection Mapping Application Program show that overdoses were up 18 percent in March, 29 percent in April, and 42 percent in May from the same periods the previous year.

    These statistics should come as no surprise. Social scientists have been writing about the deadly consequences of social isolation for years.

    It’s not just higher stress levels, disrupted sleep patterns, and altered immune systems. One 2015 study determined that social isolation substantially increased the risk of stroke (32 percent) and heart disease (29 percent).

    Social isolation is also linked to suicide. While there is no comprehensive 2020 data on suicides, anecdotal evidence suggests many are struggling to cope with quarantine life. In May, during the peak of the lockdowns, one California doctor told local media his hospital has seen “a year’s worth of suicide attempts in the last four weeks.”

    As the French economist Frédéric Bastiat stressed, every policy, “produces not only one effect, but a series of effects.” The immediate and intended effects are what he calls “the seen,” while the indirect, unintended consequences are “the unseen.” “The seen” usually gets all the attention, while “the unseen” often goes neglected.

    In this case, “the seen” are the victims of the virus and those who hopefully avoid spreading or catching the disease because of the lockdowns. They are, without a doubt, worthy of our care and attention.

    But we also must not ignore “the unseen”: the millions of human beings who, as a result of the lockdowns, have become victims of domestic violence, drug overdoses, depression, suicide, and more.

    As Antony Davies and James Harrigan wrote, “The uncomfortable truth is that no policy can save lives; it can only trade lives.” It may one day be determined that the lockdowns saved more lives than they destroyed, although recent evidence suggests the correlation between lockdown severity and COVID-19 deaths is weak. But let’s not underestimate the devastating human toll of this policy.

    The lives ruined or snuffed out by the lockdowns deserve better than that. They deserve to be seen.

  • Here Are The States Where The End Of $600 Unemployment Checks Will Hurt The Most
    Here Are The States Where The End Of $600 Unemployment Checks Will Hurt The Most

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 07/30/2020 – 21:00

    Tens of millions of Americans are dealing with a pandemic shock of job loss, no savings, insurmountable debts, a potential rent eviction wave, hunger crisis, and a fiscal cliff where federal government lifelines of Washington stimulus checks are set to expire on Friday. 

    A perfect storm of depression is swirling above households where the virus-induced downturn has easily set them back a decade. With auto loans, credit cards, and other bills deferred, for the time being, expiring $600 per week checks, seen as lifelines for many, will unequally pressure folks in different metropolitan areas.  

    No matter what, households will be hit with a cash crunch, even though their debt servicing payments have been deferred, their income streams have been severed. We recently noted a quarter of all personal income is derived from the government.  

    With Americans more dependent on the government for income streams than ever, Republicans and Democrats are at odds of how large the next round of stimulus should be. There’s talk Republicans want to reduce the upcoming series of direct payments from $600 to $200 per week, something Democrats have criticized. 

    White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said both parties are “nowhere close to a deal,” while a fiscal cliff is set to hit on Friday. This means formerly full-time workers across the country will struggle to survive. 

    The value of the $600 benefit becomes clearer when you consider existing safety nets for jobless Americans.

    A weekly unemployment check is usually a fixed percentage of a worker’s previous income, known as the replacement rate, subject to a maximum total. But there’s wide variation in the amounts states offer for both of these metrics.

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    h/t Bloomberg 

    While the replacement rate has a fairly wide range, the real differentiator is the maximum weekly amount. The U.S. average is $472, but Arizona and a handful of southern states offer no more than $275 in benefits per week. North Carolina, one of several states that reduced the duration of benefits following the Great Recession, cut its maximum weekly benefit from $535 to $350 in 2013. And the true value of any weekly check is effectively reduced if the recipient lives in a high-cost city. – Bloomberg 

    The flat pre-tax $600 per week payment tremendously benefited folks in 67% of all US cities.  

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    h/t Bloomberg 

    Due to higher living costs, the weekly lifeline is less effective in 34% of all cities. 

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    h/t Bloomberg

    An example of this compares Morgantown, West Virginia—a relatively cheap place to live with prices 10% below the national average—to the Portland area in Oregon, which has slightly above-average living costs. The gap between wages in the two cities is about 25%. Before the $600 check arrived, Morgantown’s median-wage unemployed workers received a price-adjusted $118 less per week in regular benefits than their Portland counterparts. But since then, Morgantown workers have received a cost-adjusted benefit of $1,096 versus Portland’s $1,124. Their benefit gap shrank from 28% to less than 3%. – Bloomberg

    Here are the areas where weekly payments helped folks the most.

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    h/t Bloomberg

    Areas where the checks weren’t as potent due to higher living costs.

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    h/t Bloomberg

    “With payments now expiring, workers in states with low maximum benefit amounts will suffer the biggest shock,” Bloomberg warns. 

    As the $600 weekly payment expires Friday – and likely, the dollar amount of the next round of checks won’t be as great as before, this means MSAs that experienced the largest artificial boost of consumption, such as towns like Morgantown, well, those areas may soon experience a consumption collapse.

  • The Myth Of The Failure Of Capitalism
    The Myth Of The Failure Of Capitalism

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 07/30/2020 – 20:40

    Authored by Ludwig von Mises via The Mises Institute,

    [From The Clash of Group Interests, and Other Essays, translated by Jane E. Sanders]

    The nearly universal opinion expressed these days is that the economic crisis of recent years marks the end of capitalism.

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    Capitalism allegedly has failed, has proven itself incapable of solving economic problems, and so mankind has no alternative, if it is to survive, than to make the transition to a planned economy, to socialism.

    This is hardly a new idea. The socialists have always maintained that economic crises are the inevitable result of the capitalistic method of production and that there is no other means of eliminating economic crises than the transition to socialism. If these assertions are expressed more forcefully these days and evoke greater public response, it is not because the present crisis is greater or longer than its predecessors, but rather primarily because today public opinion is much more strongly influenced by socialist views than it was in previous decades.

    I

    When there was no economic theory, the belief was that whoever had power and was determined to use it could accomplish anything. In the interest of their spiritual welfare and with a view toward their reward in Heaven, rulers were admonished by their priests to exercise moderation in their use of power. Also, it was not a question of what limits the inherent conditions of human life and production set for this power, but rather that they were considered boundless and omnipotent in the sphere of social affairs.

    The foundation of social sciences, the work of a large number of great intellects, of whom David Hume and Adam Smith are most outstanding, has destroyed this conception. One discovered that social power was a spiritual one and not (as was supposed) a material and, in the rough sense of the word, a real one. And there was the recognition of a necessary coherence within market phenomena which power is unable to destroy. There was also a realization that something was operative in social affairs that the powerful could not influence and to which they had to accommodate themselves, just as they had to adjust to the laws of nature. In the history of human thought and science there is no greater discovery.

    If one proceeds from this recognition of the laws of the market, economic theory shows just what kind of situation arises from the interference of force and power in market processes. The isolated intervention cannot reach the end the authorities strive for in enacting it and must result in consequences which are undesirable from the standpoint of the authorities. Even from the point of view of the authorities themselves the intervention is pointless and harmful. Proceeding from this perception, if one wants to arrange market activity according to the conclusions of scientific thought—and we give thought to these matters not only because we are seeking knowledge for its own sake, but also because we want to arrange our actions such that we can reach the goals we aspire to—one then comes unavoidably to a rejection of such interventions as superfluous, unnecessary, and harmful, a notion which characterizes the liberal teaching. It is not that liberalism wants to carry standards of value over into science; it wants to take from science a compass for market actions. Liberalism uses the results of scientific research in order to construct society in such a way that it will be able to realize as effectively as possible the purposes it is intended to realize. The politico-economic parties do not differ on the end result for which they strive but on the means they should employ to achieve their common goal. The liberals are of the opinion that private property in the means of production is the only way to create wealth for everyone, because they consider socialism impractical and because they believe that the system of interventionism (which according to the view of its advocates is between capitalism and socialism) cannot achieve its proponents’ goals.

    The liberal view has found bitter opposition. But the opponents of liberalism have not been successful in undermining its basic theory nor the practical application of this theory. They have not sought to defend themselves against the crushing criticism which the liberals have leveled against their plans by logical refutation; instead they have used evasions. The socialists considered themselves removed from this criticism, because Marxism has declared inquiry about the establishment and the efficacy of a socialist commonwealth heretical; they continued to cherish the socialist state of the future as heaven on earth, but refused to engage in a discussion of the details of their plan. The interventionists chose another path. They argued, on insufficient grounds, against the universal validity of economic theory. Not in a position to dispute economic theory logically, they could refer to nothing other than some “moral pathos,” of which they spoke in the invitation to the founding meeting of the Vereins für Sozialpolitik [Association for Social Policy] in Eisenach. Against logic they set moralism, against theory emotional prejudice, against argument the reference to the will of the state.

    Economic theory predicted the effects of interventionism and state and municipal socialism exactly as they happened. All the warnings were ignored. For fifty or sixty years the politics of European countries has been anticapitalist and antiliberal. More than forty years ago Sidney Webb (Lord Passfield) wrote: “it can now fairly be claimed that the socialist philosophy of to-day is but the conscious and explicit assertion of principles of social organization which have been already in great part unconsciously adopted. The economic history of the century is an almost continuous record of the progress of Socialism.”2 That was at the beginning of this development and it was in England where liberalism was able for the longest time to hold off the anticapitalistic economic policies. Since then interventionist policies have made great strides. In general the view today is that we live in an age in which the “hampered economy” reigns—as the forerunner of the blessed socialist collective consciousness to come.

    Now, because indeed that which economic theory predicted has happened, because the fruits of the anticapitalistic economic policies have come to light, a cry is heard from all sides: this is the decline of capitalism, the capitalistic system has failed!

    Liberalism cannot be deemed responsible for any of the institutions which give today’s economic policies their character. It was against the nationalization and the bringing under municipal control of projects which now show themselves to be catastrophes for the public sector and a source of filthy corruption; it was against the denial of protection for those willing to work and against placing state power at the disposal of the trade unions, against unemployment compensation, which has made unemployment a permanent and universal phenomenon, against social insurance, which has made those insured into grumblers, malingers, and neurasthenics, against tariffs (and thereby implicitly against cartels), against the limitation of freedom to live, to travel, or study where one likes, against excessive taxation and against inflation, against armaments, against colonial acquisitions, against the oppression of minorities, against imperialism and against war. It put up stubborn resistance against the politics of capital consumption. And liberalism did not create the armed party troops who are just waiting for the convenient opportunity to start a civil war.

    II

    The line of argument that leads to blaming capitalism for at least some of these things is based on the notion that entrepreneurs and capitalists are no longer liberal but interventionist and statist. The fact is correct, but the conclusions people want to draw from it are wrong-headed. These deductions stem from the entirely untenable Marxist view that entrepreneurs and capitalists protected their special class interests through liberalism during the time when capitalism flourished but now, in the late and declining period of capitalism, protect them through interventionism. This is supposed to be proof that the “hampered economy” of interventionism is the historically necessary economics of the phase of capitalism in which we find ourselves today. But the concept of classical political economy and of liberalism as the ideology (in the Marxist sense of the word) of the bourgeoisie is one of the many distorted techniques of Marxism. If entrepreneurs and capitalists were liberal thinkers around 1800 in England and interventionist, statist, and socialist thinkers around 1930 in Germany, the reason is that entrepreneurs and capitalists were also captivated by the prevailing ideas of the times. In 1800 no less than in 1930 entrepreneurs had special interests which were protected by interventionism and hurt by liberalism.

    Today the great entrepreneurs are often cited as “economic leaders.” Capitalistic society knows no “economic leaders.” Therein lies the characteristic difference between socialist economies on the one hand and capitalist economies on the other hand: in the latter, the entrepreneurs and the owners of the means of production follow no leadership save that of the market. The custom of citing initiators of great enterprises as economic leaders already gives some indication that these days it is not usually the case that one reaches these positions by economic successes but rather by other means.

    In the interventionist state it is no longer of crucial importance for the success of an enterprise that operations be run in such a way that the needs of the consumer are satisfied in the best and least expensive way; it is much more important that one has “good relations” with the controlling political factions, that the interventions redound to the advantage and not the disadvantage of the enterprise. A few more Marks’ worth of tariff-protection for the output of the enterprise, a few Marks less tariff-protection for the inputs in the manufacturing process can help the enterprise more than the greatest prudence in the conduct of operations. An enterprise may be well run, but it will go under if it does not know how to protect its interests in the arrangement of tariff rates, in the wage negotiations before arbitration boards, and in governing bodies of cartels. It is much more important to have “connections” than to produce well and cheaply. Consequently the men who reach the top of such enterprises are not those who know how to organize operations and give production a direction which the market situation demands, but rather men who are in good standing both “above” and “below,” men who know how to get along with the press and with all political parties, especially with the radicals, such that their dealings cause no offense. This is that class of general directors who deal more with federal dignitaries and party leaders than with those from whom they buy or to whom they sell.

    Because many ventures depend on political favors, those who undertake such ventures must repay the politicians with favors. There has been no big venture in recent years which has not had to expend considerable sums for transactions which from the outset were clearly unprofitable but which, despite expected losses, had to be concluded for political reasons. This is not to mention contributions to non-business concerns—election funds, public welfare institutions and the like.

    Powers working toward the independence of the directors of the large banks, industrial concerns, and joint-stock companies from the stockholders are asserting themselves more strongly. This politically expedited “tendency for big businesses to socialize themselves,” that is, for letting interests other than the regard “for the highest possible yield for the stockholders” determine the management of the ventures, has been greeted by statist writers as a sign that we have already vanquished capitalism.3 In the course of the reform of German stock rights, even legal efforts have already been made to put the interest and well-being of the entrepreneur, namely “his economic, legal, and social self-worth and lasting value and his independence from the changing majority of changing stockholders,” above those of the shareholder.

    With the influence of the state behind them and supported by a thoroughly interventionist public opinion, the leaders of big enterprises today feel so strong in relation to the stockholders that they believe they need not take their interests into account. In their conduct of the businesses of society in those countries in which statism has most strongly come to rule—for example in the successor states of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire—they are as unconcerned about profitability as the directors of public utilities. The result is ruin. The theory which has been advanced says that these ventures are too large to be run simply with a view toward profit. This concept is extraordinarily opportune whenever the result of conducting business while fundamentally renouncing profitability is the bankruptcy of the enterprise. It is opportune, because at this moment the same theory demands the intervention of the state for support of enterprises which are too big to be allowed to fail.

    III

    It is true that socialism and interventionism have not yet succeeded in completely eliminating capitalism. If they had, we Europeans, after centuries of prosperity, would rediscover the meaning of hunger on a massive scale. Capitalism is still prominent enough that new industries are coming into existence, and those already established are improving and expanding their equipment and operations. All the economic advances which have been and will be made stem from the persistant remnant of capitalism in our society. But capitalism is always harrassed by the intervention of the government and must pay as taxes a considerable part of its profits in order to defray the inferior productivity of public enterprise.

    The crisis under which the world is presently suffering is the crisis of interventionism and of state and municipal socialism, in short the crisis of anticapitalist policies. Capitalist society is guided by the play of the market mechanism. On that issue there is no difference of opinion. The market prices bring supply and demand into congruence and determine the direction and extent of production. It is from the market that the capitalist economy receives its sense. If the function of the market as regulator of production is always thwarted by economic policies in so far as the latter try to determine prices, wages, and interest rates instead of letting the market determine them, then a crisis will surely develop.

    Bastiat has not failed, but rather Marx and Schmoller.

  • Ohio Withdraws Ban On Hydroxychloroquine; Fauci Accused Of 'Misinformation Campaign'
    Ohio Withdraws Ban On Hydroxychloroquine; Fauci Accused Of ‘Misinformation Campaign’

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 07/30/2020 – 20:39

    Update (1240ET): The Ohio Board of Pharmacy withdrew a rule preventing the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 after Governor Mike DeWine called on the board to halt the rule, according to the Dayton Daily News.

    “As a result of the feedback received by the medical and patient community and at the request of Gov. DeWine, the State of Ohio Board of Pharmacy has withdrawn proposed rule 4729:5-5-21 of the Administrative Code,” reads a Thursday statement from the board.

    “Therefore, prohibitions on the prescribing of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine in Ohio for the treatment of COVID-19 will not take effect at this time.“

    The board will reexamine the rule with the help of the State Medical Board of Ohio, clinical experts and stakeholders to determine the next step.

    The rule, which was scheduled to go into effect today, would prohibit pharmacies from selling or dispensing hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine for coronavirus unless the use is approved by the board’s executive director. The rule would also void all previous approvals of the drug. –Dayton Daily News

    On Thursday, DeWine said that he agreed with FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn, who said that the decision to use HCQ should be between doctor and patient.

    “Therefore, I am asking the Ohio Board of Pharmacy to halt their new rule prohibiting the selling or dispensing of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine for the treatment or prevention of COVID-19,” DeWine said earlier in the day.

    *  *  *

    Update (1240ET): Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (R) says he agrees with FDA Commissioner Steven Hahn (see below), and has asked the state medical board to “halt their new rule prohibiting the selling or dispensing of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine for the treatment or prevention of COVID-19.”

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    *  *  *

    With the science behind the use of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) to treat COVID-19 far from settled, more than a few people have noted the aggressive campaign against the widely-prescribed anti-malaria drug.

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    The anti-HCQ push has infected Silicon Valley as well – as tech giants have been labeling pro-hydroxychloroquine content as ‘misinformation’ – most recently banishing a press conference by a group of doctors touting the drug from just about every platform.

    To that end, Yale epidemiologist Dr. Harvey Risch has accused Dr. Anthony Fouci of waging a “misinformation campaign” against the drug, according to Just The News.

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    On Tuesday during an interview on “Good Morning America,” Fauci further downplayed the drug’s purported benefit, claiming that “the overwhelming prevailing clinical trials that have looked at the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine have indicated that it is not effective in [treating] coronavirus disease.“

    Risch, however, is sharply criticizing Fauci’s approach to evaluating the drug’s effectiveness, arguing that repeated trials and tests have shown that it is markedly effective at treating COVID-19 so long as it is administered properly. 

    …

    On Tuesday, Risch went further, charging in an interview with Just the News that Fauci is perpetrating a “misinformation campaign” in his opposition to the drug. 

    Fauci “has been maintaining a studious position that only randomized controlled trial evidence has any value,” Risch said, “and everything else he calls anecdotal.” –Just The News

    In a Newsweek Op-Ed published last week, Risch called HCQ “the key to defeating COVID-19,” and said it was particularly effective in conjunction with one of two antibiotics and zinc, saying it has “shown to be highly effective.”

    Risch said the drug could save 100,000 lives if widely deployed.

    Meanwhile, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Stephen Hahn noted that some medical observational studies “suggest a benefit” to the drug, also according to Just The News.

    “So the FDA looks at all what we call ‘the totality of data,’” Hahn said in a Tuesday morning radio interview with Florida radio host Drew Steele. “There are observational studies that suggest a benefit. There are five randomized trials that did not show a benefit to hydroxychloroquine, both in the prophylactic setting and in the treatment — both early and late.” –Just The News

    More recently, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) announced that he would be taking “zinc, erythromycin and hydroxychloroquine” after being diagnosed with COVID-19 on Wednesday.

    If you’re looking for those positive studies, click into this thread:

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    And for an even longer thread on positive reports involving HCQ, click this tweet:

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  • Vegas Bust – Recovery Road Could Take 3 Years 
    Vegas Bust – Recovery Road Could Take 3 Years 

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 07/30/2020 – 20:20

    Las Vegas economic analyst Jeremy Aguero warned that Sin City’s economic recovery could take between 18 and 36 months to revert to 2019 growth activity levels, reported Las Vegas Review-Journal.  

    Aguero said Vegas has a long way to go before a vibrant recovery is seen, dashing hopes for a V-shaped recovery in the back half of 2020. He recently spoke at the Las Vegas Perspective, an online presentation focusing on the economic impacts of the gaming industry due to the virus-induced recession, hosted by the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance.

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    “Our economy is in recession,” Aguero said, warning that the velocity of job loss today was much greater than the economic crash a decade ago. He said the Great Recession left 96,000 people out of a job within 2.5 years, this time around, 280,000 people lost their jobs in less than two months. 

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    He said airlines serving Las Vegas would struggle for years. The latest data from Las Vegas’ McCarran International Airport shows 11.7 million passengers passed through the airport in 1H20, compared to 25.2 million in 1H19. 

    Casinos in Vegas reopened June 4 under strict social distancing measures, reduced occupancy levels, and mask-wearing. 

    Last week, multiple Vegas casinos notified staff of furloughs and possible layoffs were ahead.

    Here’s what MGM Resorts International told their employees:

    “As you were previously informed, MGM Employees who are not recalled on or before August 31, 2020, will be separated from the company on that date and it now looks like that will, unfortunately, include the majority of employees working in our division,” the letter, signed by the president of the division George Kliavkoff, said.

    The business environment is worsening as Tropicana Las Vegas is now for sale. 

    Washington believes continued rescue packages worth trillions of dollars will save the economy, though it might not be enough to save Vegas. 

    But, Robinhood daytraders panic bought casino stocks: 

    MGM

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    LVS

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    The great Vegas bust is underway. 

  • Dunkin' Could Close 1,150 Global Locations
    Dunkin’ Could Close 1,150 Global Locations

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 07/30/2020 – 20:00

    By Jonathan Maze of Restaurant Business,

    Dunkin’ could close as many as 800 U.S. locations this year, and another 350 internationally, as part of a global effort to reassess its real estate portfolio and shed locations that don’t fit with the company’s long-term plan. The company revealed the possible closures Thursday, saying that it is working with operators to close the locations.  CEO Dave Hoffmann said the closures would be concentrated on “off-strategy locations” that typically have “low average weekly sales.”

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    The 800 U.S. restaurants slated for closure includes 450 restaurants inside of Speedway locations Dunkin’ previously said were slated to close.

    “Since this management took over, we have been focused on quality over quantity,” Hoffmann said.

    He said that as the company looked at its future strategy, “these locations weren’t part of that future. They were unprofitable for franchisees. We felt like it was the right management move.”

    CFO Kate Jaspon said on Thursday that if all 800 U.S. restaurants were to close, that would represent 8% of the domestic store base, but just 2% of system sales. On average, she said, the restaurants the company wants to close generate a quarter of the system’s average weekly sales and have lower profit margins.

    The stores are “well below average for sales and profitability,” Jaspon said. “Closing these restaurants will enable [franchisees] to do greater investment in the brand.”

    Dunkin’ operates nearly 9,600 U.S. locations, and more than 13,000 globally. Its U.S. operators have already been closing some restaurants—franchisees closed 40 more restaurants than they opened during the second quarter ended June 27. That includes 10 Speedway restaurants. The chain’s U.S. same-store sales declined nearly 19% in the quarter, but executives said that those results improved through the quarter.

    Currently, they said, about 4% of domestic locations are still temporarily closed, including 70 traditional restaurants and 300 that are primarily in transportation hubs and on college campuses. As the locations closed, executives said they took the opportunity to assess its real estate portfolio and look at weaker locations. It is working to convince operators of restaurants that cannot be remodeled in its new design or can’t be moved to a more higher traffic area.

    Most of the closings, Jaspon said, are expected to take place this year. “The closures position us and our franchisees for more profitable future growth,” she said. Hoffmann described the closures as a “good scrubbing of the portfolio” to weed out unprofitable locations that don’t fit with the company’s long-term plan.

    Nor does the effort represent a shift out of its traditional urban markets. Those locations have more likely struggled during the pandemic, in part because they’ve been in hard-hit areas and rely on consumers walking in the door.

    In contrast, its newer Midwest drive-thru units have performed better and saw positive sales at the end of the quarter as consumers opted for low-contact service. But Hoffmann said that the company is not going away from its urban locations. “There’s a great place for us in urban markets,” he said. “As the economy opens up, they have performed well for us.”

  • As Americans Ditch Airports And Hotels, RV Boom Saved GDP From Even Bigger Collapse
    As Americans Ditch Airports And Hotels, RV Boom Saved GDP From Even Bigger Collapse

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 07/30/2020 – 19:40

    RV travel is booming this summer as American families ditch airports and hotels for campgrounds. 

    Reuters is reporting new data via the RV Industry Association (RVIA) shows wholesale shipments of RVs posted their highest monthly total in June since October 2018. Shipments totaled 40,462 units in June or about +10.8% YoY. 

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    Shipments in April plunged because of lockdowns, were down 82% YoY, and -30% in May. 

    “We didn’t anticipate this turn being as strong as it has been,” Craig Kirby, RVIA’s president. “People don’t want to fly, they don’t want to stay in a hotel. In an RV, you can cook your own meals and sleep in your own bed.”

    In late May, baby boomers, cooped-up in homes, exiting lockdowns, panic bought RVs to get out of the house and travel, since flying on airplanes or going on cruises were not in their best interest. 

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    Kirby said some manufacturers are developing RVs “with dedicated workspaces that allow for the desks and other systems to be stowed away once work is over.” 

    He said mobile workspaces in RVs could be the next big trend for the industry – especially since people can now remotely work. 

    Google search term “By RV” explodes to record highs.

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    Kirby said first-time buyers are surging. Dealers are reporting 50% to 80% of sales are first-time purchasers. A year ago, that figure was around 25% to 35%. He said RVs are attracting millennials. 

    Cross-generational panic buying of RVs was so great in Q2 GDP, it partially saved growth from crashing further, which registered at a mindboggling 32.9% annualized rate. 

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    Winnebago Industries Inc.’s CEO Michael Happe said a turnaround in the industry has begun.

    “We have seen an incredible rebound in retail demand and dealer demand since early May across all our businesses,” Happe told investors on a conference call last month.

    Dealerships have also reported increasing sales since lockdowns ended. Olathe Ford RV Center’s general manager Daryn Anderson told The Kansas City Star that folks have turned to RVs because they feel it’s safer than airplanes and hotels. He said RV demand is exploding. 

    “All of a sudden, the phone started ringing and the internet got busy,” Anderson said. “The next thing we knew, the last two months have been records by huge margins.”

    Anderson attributed this boost in business to people’s desire to get out of the house.

    “I think people are quarantining, but they’re also tired of sitting inside their houses and not being able to go out and do things,” Anderson said. “So, they’re buying campers and maybe going to a lake or a state park or a national park. They’re far enough away from the next person, and they can still have a little bit of an adventure and be able to enjoy themselves.”

    While the pandemic has clearly altered the shift in how people travel, there is also reason to believe, with at least ten million people about to get evicted, America’s working poor could end up moving from apartments and homes to mobile RV trailers. 

  • Flynn Update: Order To Dismiss Case "Vacated"; Case Will Be Reheard In August
    Flynn Update: Order To Dismiss Case “Vacated”; Case Will Be Reheard In August

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 07/30/2020 – 19:20

    Authored by Sara Carter via SaraACarter.com,

    The internal battle in the courts and Department of Justice regarding the case against former national security advisor Michael Flynn has been nothing short of a roller coaster ride. Now it seems the decision by a federal appeals court is prolonging the case.

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    The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued the order Thursday that challenged the Department of Justice’s request last month to drop the case against Flynn.

    That order will allow the courts to revisit U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan’s request that the case not be dismissed and the case will be reheard by the full federal appeals court in Washington D.C.

    The order to hear the set oral arguments is now scheduled for August 11.

    Sidney Powell, Flynn’s defense attorney, could not be immediately reached for comment.

    “Further ordered is that the court’s order filed June 24, 2020 be vacated,” stated the order.

    It also stated that an “oral argument before the en banc court 9:30 am on Tuesday, August 11.”

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    U.S. Attorney General William Barr disclosed this week that he has appointed U.S. Attorney John Bash from the Western District of Texas, to investigate the “unmasking” Flynn that led to the national security leak in The Washington Post.

    The Post’s David Ignatius revealed in January, 2017 the details of a classified telephone conversation between Flynn and former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. That conversation had been intercepted by U.S. intelligence officials monitoring the Russian Ambassadors communications.

  • Hong Kong Police Arrest 4 Teens For Mere Online Posts Under New Security Law
    Hong Kong Police Arrest 4 Teens For Mere Online Posts Under New Security Law

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 07/30/2020 – 19:00

    The ill effects of the Hong Kong national security law which took effect June 30 are continuing to be felt. Hong Kong pro-democracy, anti-Beijing activists have continued to be on edge and now largely ‘underground’ since last month’s formal passage of the sweeping national security law in response to the mass protests and unrest which gripped the city for much of last year. 

    On Wednesday four activists were arrested for merely making online posts expressing pro-independence sentiment. The AP reports that all of the them are young, between 16- and 18-years, and were further said to have been ‘organizing’.

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    HK police in riot gear, file via Getty Images/BBC

    “Our investigation showed that a group has recently announced on social media that they have set up an organization for Hong Kong independence,” said Li Kwai-wah, head of the new HK police unit tasked with enforcing the law.

    “They said they want to establish a Hong Kong republic, and that they will unreservedly fight for it,” the police commander described.

    “They also said they want to unite all pro-independence groups in Hong Kong for this purpose,” he added.

    When the law took effect at the start of the month, a few prominent anti-Beijing activists decided to flee, such as Nathan Law, on fears the law would certainly be used to punish their activities, and even apply retroactively. 

    This also as the law harshly cracks down on dissent with possible maximum life jail sentences for some crimes, largely dependent on the ambiguous and highly open to interpretation (with no independent review) question of what constitutes ‘foreign interference’ or sponsorship of a ‘terror’ organization. 

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