There are a multitude of false assumptions out there on what the collapse of a nation or “empire” looks like. Modern day Americans have never experienced this type of event, only peripheral crises and crashes. Thanks to Hollywood, many in the public are under the delusion that a collapse is an overnight affair. They think that such a thing is impossible in their lifetimes, and if it did happen, it would happen as it does in the movies – They would simply wake up one morning and find the world on fire. Historically speaking, this is not how it works. The collapse of an empire is a process, not an event.
This is not to say that there are not moments of shock and awe; there certainly are. As we witnessed during the Great Depression, or in 2008, the system can only be propped up artificially for so long before the bubble pops. In past instances of central bank intervention, the window for manipulation is around ten years between events, give or take a couple of years. For the average person, a decade might seem like a long time. For the banking elites behind the degradation of our society and economy, a decade is a blink of an eye.
In the meantime, danger signals abound as those analysts aware of the situation try to warn the populace of the underlying decay of the system and where it will inevitably lead. Economists like Ludwig Von Mises foresaw the collapse of the German Mark and predicted the Great Depression; almost no one listened until it was too late. Multiple alternative economists predicted the credit crisis and derivatives crash of 2008; and almost no one listened until it was too late. People refused to listen because their normalcy bias took control of their ability to reason and accept the facts in front of them.
There are a number factors that cause mass blindness to economic and social reality. First and foremost, establishment elites deliberately create the illusion of prosperity by rigging economic data to the upside. In almost every case of economic crisis or geopolitical disaster, the public is conditioned to believe they are in the midst of a financial “boom” or era of “peace”. They are encouraged to ignore fundamental warning signs in favor of foolish faith in the system. Those people that try to break the apathy and expose the truth are called “chicken little” and “doom monger”.
In the minds of the cheerful lemmings a “collapse” is something very obvious; they think they would know it when they saw it. It’s like trying to teach a blind person about colors; it’s not impossible, but it’s very difficult to get all these Helen Kellers to understand that what they perceive is not the whole reality. There’s a vast world hidden from them and they have no concept of how to observe it.
Crash events are like stages in the process of collapse; they create moments of clarity for the blind. However, they are also often engineered to benefit the establishment. There’s a reason why the elites put so much energy into hiding the real data on the state of the economy, and it’s not because they are trying to keep the system from faltering by using sheer public ignorance. Rather, a crash event is a tool, a means to an end. As Congressman Charles Lindbergh Sr. warned after the panic of 1920:
“Under the Federal Reserve Act, panics are scientifically created; the present panic is the first scientifically created one, worked out as we figure a mathematical problem…”
Central bankers and their cohorts manipulate economic data and promote the false notion of a boom before almost every major crash because they WANT to ambush the populace. They WANT to create panic, and then use it to their advantage as they rebuild and mutate the system into something unrecognizable only decades ago. Each consecutive crash contributes to the collapse of the whole, until eventually the society we once had is barely a distant memory.
This process can take decades, and the US has been subject to it for quite some time now. Once again in 2019 we are seeing the lie of an “economic boom” being perpetuated in the mainstream. The public was growing too aware of the danger and had to be subdued. More specifically, conservatives were growing too aware. The sad thing is that the boom propaganda is most prominent today among conservatives, who are desperately trying to ignore the fundamentals in an attempt to defend the Trump Administration.
The same people who were pointing out the economic bubble under Obama are now denying its existence under Trump. Trump himself argued that the markets were a dangerous economic fraud created by the Federal Reserve during his campaign, yet once he was in office he flip-flopped and started taking full credit for the bubble. What is mind boggling to me is that many people, even in the liberty movement, still choose to dismiss this behavior in favor of worshiping Trump as some kind of hero on a white horse.
This only reinforces my theory that the system is due for another major engineered crash event, and that the ongoing collapse of the US is soon to accelerate. Each case of economic calamity in modern history was preceded by peak delusional optimism and peak greed. When the people traditionally most vigilant against crisis suddenly capitulate and claim victory, this is when reality strikes hardest. This is when the establishment triggers yet another controlled demolition.
In order to determine how long an empire will last, one has to take into account the agenda of the elites that control its institutions. As long as they are in key positions of power within the system and as long as they can inject their own puppet politicians, they will have the ability to influence the collapse timeline of that system.
Can they prolong and stave off crisis? Yes, for a short while. However, once the machine of a crash has been set in motion the best they can do is slow down the Titanic; they cannot change its path towards the iceberg. And frankly, at this point why would they? I hear it argued often that the elites are going to “keep the plates spinning” on the economy and that they don’t want to lose their “golden goose” in the US economy. This reveals an naivety among skeptics of the true agenda.
Firstly, the elites have a highly useful political puppet in the form of Donald Trump; he is useful in that he inspires sharp national division, and, he is a self proclaimed conservative champion and nationalist. If the elites did not trigger a crash under Trump, then this would give the public the impression that conservative ideals and national sovereignty works. This is the opposite of what they want. Why would globalists that want the erasure of nation states and the creation of a centralized socialist “Utopia” seek to make conservatives and nationalists look good? Well, they wouldn’t.
The only concern of the banks is that they do not take the blame as their engineered collapse of the old world order hits the public with increasingly painful consequences. These consequences are already becoming visible.
The next major crash has begun in the form of plunging fundamentals, and far too many conservatives are placing their heads in the sand for the selfish sake of proving the political left wrong. Declines in US manufacturing, US freight, global exports and imports, mass closures in US retail, as well as all time highs in consumer debt, corporate debt and national debt are being shrugged off and rationalized as nothing more than “hiccups” in an otherwise booming economy. The Fed’s repo market purchases, barely keeping up with demand from liquidity starved corporations are also not being taken seriously.
Conservatives and analysts are going to have to forget about supporting Trump, a Rothschild owned proxy, and start acknowledging reality once again. The only question now is, will the elites allow the crash to spread further into mainstreet and strike markets before or after the 2020 election?
As noted above, to predict the timing of a collapse in a nation or empire, one has to examine the agendas of the elites that dominate its institutions. We can gain some sense of timing from the public admissions of globalist organizations like the IMF and the UN. Each has announced the year 2030 as a target date for the finalization of globalization, a cashless society and sustainability goals. This means that the elites have around ten years to create a crisis and then “solve” that crisis with globalism.
Ten years is a narrow window, and if the elites intend for conservatives to take the blame for the next crash, they will have to initiate it soon. They may not have a choice anyway, as the chain of dominoes was already been set in motion by the Fed in 2018 with its liquidity tightening policies.
We can also gauge timing of a collapse to a point by understanding the common tactics the establishment uses to hide what they are doing. Generally, when a collapse is about to accelerate the elites use crisis events as cover to distract the public and produce scapegoats. In my article ‘Globalists Only Need One More Major Event To Finish Sabotaging The Economy’, I outlined three potential distractions that could be used in the near term, and if any of these events took place, then people should watch for the collapse to move faster. Two of these events now appear imminent: The first being a war with Iran, and the second being a ‘No Deal’ Brexit.
Finally, we can take into account the globalist need for a scapegoat, and it appears that conservatives and nationalists are their target for blame. This leaves less than one year for a crisis event if Trump is intended to leave the White House in 2020, or less than four years if he is intended to stay in for a second term. Keep in mind that A LOT can happen in a single year, and a second Trump term is certainly not guaranteed yet.
But why create a collapse in the first place? Crash events allow the establishment to consolidate control over hard assets as poverty forces the population to sell what they have to survive. This poverty also creates fear, which makes the public malleable and easier to control. Each new crisis opens doors to political and social changes, changes which end in less freedom and more centralization. Collapse is a succession of crashes leading to a complete erasure of the original society. It’s not a Mad Max event, it’s a hidden and insidious cancer that takes over the national body and warps it into a wretched form. The collapse is complete when the nation either breaks apart, or is so damaged for so long that no one can remember what it used to look like.
What we are witnessing today is the beginning of a new crash, and the final phases of a collapse of our way of life. The economic boom narrative among conservatives is a farce designed to trick us into complacency. The bubble that we warned about under the Obama Administration has been popped under the Trump Administration. Nothing has changed in the ten years since the 2008 crash except that the motivation for keeping the crash hidden is quickly disappearing.
Crashes are inevitable, but collapse is only possible when the public remains unprepared. Our civilization and its values are under attack, but they can only be destroyed if we stay apathetic to the threat and refuse to prepare for their defense. We must adopt a philosophy of decentralization. We need localized and self sufficient economies, as well as a return to localized production. Beyond that, we have to prepare for the eventuality of a fight. The fate of the US economy has already been sealed, but the people who are destroying it can still be stopped before they use the collapse to force society into subservience. We have to offer security, we have to offer alternatives to the “new world order” and we have to remove the globalist threat permanently.
Make no mistake, we are living in the midst of an epoch moment; the outcome of collapse depends on us and our reactions. This is not the task of the next generation, it is a task for our generation. We do not have another couple of decades to take the danger seriously. The plates are not spinning, they have already dropped.
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2019 was a year that changed the face of migration on the U.S. Southwestern border. Not only did many more immigrants try to cross it, but a majority – almost 56 percent – arrived together with their families, fleeing violence in Central America. As a result of this fundamental change in who is seeking to immigrate to the United States, Non-Mexicans outnumbered Mexicans 4:1 at the Southern border in the fiscal year of 2019. These numbers are inferred from arrest records of Customs and Border Protection.
The number of undocumented immigrants reached its peak in May 2019, when more than 132,000 people were apprehended. In November 2019 (FY2020) was back down to approximately 33,500.
Because many of the new arrivals are applying for asylum, the Trump administration has overhauled its application process, making many asylum seekers wait in camps on the Mexican side without much assistance. These changes were implemented after another system overhaul – the separation of families in U.S. custody and the tendency to release fewer immigration detainees on bail – had caused chaotic scenes at detention centers and an international outcry.
Historically, Mexicans made up the largest share of undocumented immigrants to the U.S. but have been more successful at finding work in Mexico, where the economy is improving and workers are more sought after as the country’s population ages. As more asylum seekers and less work migrants arrive, the U.S. has also slashed the number of refugees it accepts annually to the historic low of 18,000 for 2020.
A remarkably non-propagandistic news-report, in the New York Times, by Eric Lipton, Maggie Haberman and Mark Mazzetti, included powerful evidence that the impeachment-effort against US President Donald Trump is motivated, in part if not totally, by a desire by US Senators and Representatives – as well as by career employees of the US Departments of Defense, State Department, and other agencies regarding national defense – to increase the sales-volumes of US-made weapons to foreign countries.
Whereas almost all of the contents of that article merely repeat what has already been reported, this article in the Times states repeatedly that boosting corporations such as Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Boeing, and Northrop-Grumman, has been a major — if not the very top — motivation driving US international relations, and that at least regarding Ukraine, Trump has not been supporting, but has instead been trying to block, those weapons-sales — and creating massive enemies in the US Government as a direct consequence.
In an Oval Office meeting on May 23, with Mr. Sondland, Mr. Mulvaney and Mr. Blair in attendance, Mr. Trump batted away assurances that [Ukraine’s current President] Mr. Zelensky was committed to confronting corruption. “They are all corrupt, they are all terrible people,” Mr. Trump said, according to testimony in the impeachment inquiry.
In other words, Trump, allegedly, said that he didn’t want “terrible people” to be buying, and to receive, US-made weapons (especially not as US aid — free of charge, a gift from America’s taxpayers).
The article simply assumes that Trump was wrong that “they are all terrible people.”
Indeed, Trump himself has sold hundreds of billions of dollars worth of US-made weapons to the Royal Saud family who own Saudi Arabia, and he refuses to back down about those sales on account of that family’s having been behind the widely-reported torture-murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and on account of their effort since 2015 to starve into submission — by bombing the food-supplies to — the Houthis in adjoining Yemen, and on account of their using US weapons in order to achieve that mass-murdering goal. Consequently, even if Trump is correct about Ukraine’s Government, he would still have a lot of explaining to do, in order to cancel congressionally authorized US weapons-sales to Ukraine but not to Saudi Arabia.
For the New York Times, in its ’news’-report — even this article that’s less prejudiced than most of mainstream US ’news’-reporting is — to simply presume that Trump had no valid reason for asserting what he did against Ukraine’s present (the Obama-installed) Government of Ukraine, constitutes merely anti-Trump (and pro-Obama) propaganda, on their part, and it would be more appropriate in an editorial or op-ed from them than in an alleged news-article, such as here. However, the actual news-value in that article is real. They quoted from “a piece in the conservative Washington Examiner saying that the Pentagon would pay for weapons and other military equipment for Ukraine, bringing American security aid to the country to $1.5 billion since 2014.” This was an anti-Democrat, pro-Republican, newspaper and article, saying:
Kurt Volker, the US special representative for Ukraine, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at a Tuesday hearing. “I think it’s also important that Ukraine reciprocate with foreign military purchases from us as well, and I know that they intend to do so.” The assistance comes at a pivotal moment for Ukraine’s newly minted president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a popular comedian who won a landslide victory in April. Zelensky has made ending the Russian-backed insurrection in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region his top political priority.
The Times, in order to appear nonpartisan, was there citing, as authority, the anti-Trump appointee by Trump, Kurt Volker, who said “it’s also important that Ukraine reciprocate with foreign military purchases from us as well, and I know that they intend to do so.” In other words: Volker was saying that Ukraine’s Government would follow through with America’s war against Russia, next door to Ukraine, and that therefore, US taxpayers should pay for Ukraine’s purchases of US-made weapons, such as from Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. He was saying that milking US taxpayers to boost those US corporations’ profits is good, not bad. He was saying that Ukraine is on US taxpayers’ dole, as if the Obama-installed, rabidly anti-Russian, Ukrainian Government is a charity-case which is the US Government’s business (and not merely those private stockholders’ business), and that therefore, Trump should continue Obama’s policy toward Ukraine, of using Ukraine in order ultimately to place on Ukraine’s border with Russia, missiles against Moscow, right across that border. This is what the New York Times is presenting in a favorable light.
Then, the New York Times ‘news’-report said:
For a full month, the fact that Mr. Trump wanted to halt the aid remained confined primarily to a small group of officials.
That ended on July 18, when a group of top administration officials meeting on Ukraine policy — including some calling in from Kyiv — learned from a midlevel budget office official that the president had ordered the aid frozen.
“I and the others on the call sat in astonishment,” William B. Taylor Jr., the top United States diplomat in Ukraine, testified to House investigators. “In an instant, I realized that one of the key pillars of our strong support for Ukraine was threatened.”
In other words: the Times’s further attack against Trump’s intention not to provide this US taxpayer boondoggle to Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, United Technologies, and other US weapons-making corporations — a boondoggle so as to continue free supply to the Obama-installed Ukrainian regime of US-made weapons against Russia — is that career US national-security personnel support and want to continue Obama’s war against Russia.
Then, the Times reported further:
“This is in America’s interest,” Mr. Bolton argued, according to one official briefed on the gathering.
“This defense relationship, we have gotten some really good benefits from it,” Mr. Esper added, noting that most of the money was being spent on military equipment made in the United States.
America’s war against Russia is designed to enrich investors in US ‘Defense’-contractors.
Isn’t it clear, then, what was actually behind 9/11, and behind America’s invasion of (instead of merely Special-Forces operation regarding) Afghanistan in 2001, and invasions of Iraq in 2003, and of Libya in 2011, and of Syria in 2012-now, etc., and coup against Ukraine in 2014?
The Times article closes with this impeach-Trump line:
But then, just as suddenly as the hold was imposed, it was lifted. Mr. Trump, apparently unwilling to wage a public battle, told Mr. Portman he would let the money go.
White House aides rushed to notify their counterparts at the Pentagon and elsewhere. The freeze had been lifted. The money could be spent. Get it out the door, they were told.
The debate would now begin as to why the hold was lifted, with Democrats confident they knew the answer.
“I have no doubt about why the president allowed the assistance to go forward,” said Representative Eliot L. Engel, Democrat of New York and the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “He got caught.”
In other words: Trump yielded to the threat of being impeached. Trump, the sales-person who had sold the Saud family hundreds of billions of dollars worth of US weaponry, recognized that unless Russia is going to be the main target of US weaponry, Trump’s own Presidency will be in jeopardy.
US foreign policies are a vast sales-promotion scheme, for America’s billionaires, who crave to control Russia, above all. Trump won’t buck them. Instead, he’s continuing Obama’s policy on Ukraine.
This Is The Top Job For Americans Hoping To Make Six Figures With No Experience
Given the insane cost of college in the US, who can blame prospective students for trying to game out which career paths have the highest short-term payouts immediately after graduation?
To that end, the two men behind the website theinterviewguys.com (h/t to MarketWatch’s Quentin Fottrell) analyzed some data from the BLS’s Occupational Requirements Survey to glean some insights on which jobs offer the highest salaries to those who are just starting their careers post-graduation.
They found that in 2019, the highest-paying job for college graduates that required no previous work experience was being a pharmacist.
Roughly 64% of pharmacist job postings required no previous work experience in the field, while also carrying a median starting salary of $126,000 a year, more than twice the average wage in the US. Next up was another position in the health-care field: Nurse practitioner. 60% of job postings for nurse practitioners required no prior work experience, while advertising a median salary of $114,000.
Of course, the high median salaries in these fields aren’t an accident, or some kind of happy coincidence. Rather, students face a difficult curriculum during their undergrad years, plus at least some grad school. Pharmacy students must obtain a doctoral degree in pharmacy just to be eligible to enter the workforce, and they must also pass the Pharmacy College Admission Test.
Looking further down the income distribution, the pair found that high school teachers and special education teachers most often required no previous work experience (According to their research, the interview guys found that more than 91% of postings in those fields stipulated that no prior experience in the field was necessary).
However, median salaries for these teaching jobs came in at just over $60,000. Police patrol officers also ranked high on the list of jobs requiring no prior experience in the field (something that the SJWs will surely latch on to as an example of the rank injustices permeating the law-enforcement community). The median salary for patrol officer jobs came in at just over $65,400.
For college graduates, jobs offering high starting salaries with little required experience fall into a category that the study’s authors have dubbed “the sweet spot.” After all, one of the most infuriating struggles that recent grads face is surmounting the ‘experience’ barrier. Every year, hundreds of thousands of American students embark on unpaid or for-credit internships in the hopes of gaining precious work experience.
Some employers, in turn, have been castigated for taking advantage of this situation by relying on unpaid interns or “perma-interns” who receive pay, but no other benefits, for their work.
In many professional-class fields, jobs with low starting wages often lead to higher-paying positions after three or four years in the workforce.
And more often than not, jobs with a low barrier to entry pay much less than other positions. But with unemployment at 50-year lows, some jobs that were traditionally seen as menial or blue-collar labor are seeing upward pressure on wages as jobs like long-haul trucker and fast-food cook become increasingly difficult to fill.
“Quantum” may possibly have been one of the most common words we’ve been reading, listening to, and even writing about last year – and there is a big reason for that… quantum is no longer the future, quantum is now.
Physicists have been able to demonstrate quantum teleportation between two computer chips for the first time.
A few years ago, we were just beginning to understand the main aspects of quantum physics. Even Albert Einstein died not agreeing with a lot of the theories enclosing this new world for physics because in some aspects it was not “matching” the special relativity theory (that’s one of the reasons why the “theory of everything,” explaining how everything was created in a physical perspective hasn’t been published yet).
But not understanding everything about quantum physics doesn’t mean we can’t take advantage of its amazing properties, one of them being entanglement. Entanglement describes how when a pair or group of particles is generated, interact, or share spatial proximity and the quantum state of each particle cannot be described independently, this is one of the fundamental contrasts between classical and quantum physics.
Scientists from the University of Bristol, in collaboration with the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), have successfully developed chip-scale devices that are able to exploit the application of quantum physics by generating and manipulating single particles of light within programmable nano-scale circuits.
These chips encode quantum information in light generated inside the circuits and can process information with high efficiency and extremely low noise. This could be translated into an ability to create more complex quantum circuits that nowadays are required in quantum computing and communications, that in the present, are the most powerful supercomputers that exist.
Quantum teleportation offers quantum state transfer of a quantum particle from one place to another by utilizing entanglement. Establishing this entangled communication in the lab was not easy stuff.
“We were able to demonstrate a high-quality entanglement link across two chips in the lab, where photons on either chip share a single quantum state,” Bristol Co-author Dan Llewellyn said.
“Each chip was then fully programmed to perform a range of demonstrations which utilize the entanglement… the flagship demonstration was a two-chip teleportation experiment, whereby the individual quantum state of a particle is transmitted across the two chips after a quantum measurement is performed. This measurement utilizes the strange behavior of quantum physics, which simultaneously collapses the entanglement link and transfers the particle state to another particle already on the receiver chip.”
“Based on our previous result of on-chip high-quality single-photon sources, we have built an even more complex circuit containing four sources… all of these sources are tested and found to be nearly identical emitting nearly identical photons, which is an essential criterion for the set of experiments we had performed, such as entanglement swapping.”
The results showed efficiency in the quantum teleportation of 91 percent and other important features such as entanglement swapping used for quantum repeaters and networks and four-photon GHZ states, required in quantum computing and quantum internet.
These developments are predicted to have immense impacts on modern society, quantum physics is here to stay.
Worse still, at least 25 percent of 12th grade students have tried nicotine vaping products, according to a poll conducted by New England Journal of Medicine, cited by the New York Times.
But now, the Trump administration on Thursday announced plans to bar sales of flavored e-cigarette cartridges, except for menthol and tobacco flavors.
“The United States has never seen an epidemic of substance use arise as quickly as our current epidemic of youth use of e-cigarettes,” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement about the change, which goes into effect in 30 days.
The FDA released its statement announcing the new policy on Thursday, saying the move was not a “ban” but an announcement prioritizing the agency’s law enforcement powers against tobacco products. The agency “has attempted to balance the public health concerns,” the statement said.
Will this ‘ban’ push smokers back to ‘real’ cigarettes?
While lighting up a cigarette was once considered a sign of class and sophistication or, at the very least, an act of coolness, smoking seems to have lost some of its spark in recent years. According to a new report published by the Federal Trade Commission, cigarette sales in the United States dropped to 216.9 billion in 2018, the lowest level since the FTC started tracking cigarette sales in 1967.
Over the same period, cigarette advertising and promotional spending increased from $1.2 billion in 1980 to $8.4 billion in 2018, most of which came in the form of price discounts for retailers and wholesalers.
Interestingly, the number of cigarette smokers in the United States, while also declining, has not dropped at a similar rate as cigarette sales over the past four decades. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an estimated 34.2 million adults in the U.S. were smoking cigarettes in 2018, down 34 percent from 51.6 million in 1980.
When I wrote that the coup against President Trump had morphed into a Civil War, I wasn’t kidding. The sham impeachment created the perfect environment for the Democrats and Republicans to get something definitive from him by playing the House and the Senate off each other.
With the Senate Neocon Occupied Territory the escalation of belligerence since Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushed through the impeachment vote has been serious.
First, there was the rider to the NDAA which upped the sanctions on everyone willing to work on Nordstream 2. Then Lindsey Graham pushed the frankly insane DASKA bill through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
It is under these circumstances we should view the events in Iraq over the last week, especially the killing of IRGC Quds Forces Commander Qassem Solemaini.
Because I’ve warned from the beginning of this impeachment, Trump was just 17 votes in the Senate away from conviction. And failure on his part to respond to an attack on our troops now or our soil, the embassy in Baghdad, would have been enough to turn that many against him and install Mike Pence.
At the end of the day we are held captive by a minority of power-mad Trotskyites without any capacity for forgiveness or humility. They believe in societal order through the whip and the sword.
Truly Maoist in their thinking, the only political power that exists comes from the barrel of a gun. This is why there has been zero opportunities for diplomacy with Iran.
Iran is to be destroyed. If not today, tomorrow. If not then then the day after. It will not end.
And any potential diplomacy was sabotaged at every turn. Peace can only happen through subjugation. Demands placed on Iran after Trump’s disastrous decision to exit the JCPOA were nothing short of regime change, arch neocon Secretary of State Mike Pompeo saw to that.
A man like Solemaini would never submit to this. And yet, fighting a war against the Empire is always reduced to terrorism to sell it to the public.
Like it or not Trump executed the man most responsible for the systemic destruction of ISIS and neutering of Al-Qaeda in Syria and Iraq. He’s also a man, over the years, who has fought the U.S. to a standstill across the Middle East.
Those were his pertinent crimes.
The results of these fights were to empower Israel’s enemies in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. Russia and China supported this in their own interests. Turkey came to realize it was being used.
There was no way around that. It was a direct consequence of winning the battle to preserve Syria from becoming a failed state.
And that is a goal any rational person should wish for.
This is the most dangerous escalation of Trump’s administration. Nothing he’s done to this point compares with killing Solemaini and taking immediate credit for it.
Nothing he’s done is more tone deaf or disproportionate to whatever crimes were the proximate cause. And nothing he could have done would be more galvanizing of resistance to U.S. occupation of Iraq and Syria.
Trump, to his credit, held back the neocons at critical junctures over the past couple of years. After the Russian ELINT plane was shot down, Putin negotiated a truce which would have seen Iranian forces in Syria pulled back from the Golan Heights as a start to changing the dynamic there.
Benjamin Netanyahu said no all Iranians out of Syria. The war between Israel and the Shia forces backed by Iran continued. The path to peace could have begun then if Trump had the moral courage to force that outcome.
But the neocons at home had him under suspicion of treason. His National Security staff wouldn’t allow that to happen. If he hadn’t pulled out of the JCPOA and left room to negotiate we wouldn’t be here today.
But he did. And we are downstream of this bad decision. It’s been one escalation after another and a series of increasingly dangerous confrontations. This doesn’t end with Iran going meekly to bed, folks.
They aren’t disobedient children but they aren’t animals either.
Killing Solemaini was presaged months ago with the U.S. designating the Quds Force a terrorist organization, which gives the U.S. unilateral legal cover to summary execution of anyone affiliated with them, especially if they are not on home soil.
But, at the same time, Trump assassinated (note the difference) members of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces in the raid as well, since these are considered members of the Iraqi military and the attack occurred on Iraqi soil.
So, in simplistic and, I believe, legal terms Trump committed an Act of War against Iraq. Iran obviously considers killing Solemaini, legal definitions aside, such as well.
This is an act Trump cannot walk back. He can’t ask Iran to come to the negotiating table now or ever. It’s an act of overt war. Whether it leads directly to forces facing off in high level combat is debatable. It will certainly continue escalating from here.
Israel has been itching for the U.S. to attack and destroy Iran’s nuclear R&D facilities. The only way to achieve that was to get Trump to pull out of the JCPOA, forcing Iran back into enrichment and then using that as the casus belli.
Welcome to 2020.
And the sad truth is that it means more killing, more murder and more of everything bad. There is no Just War rationalization for this. While no one rational wants to see Iran with nuclear weapons the end result of the policy led us to that potential outcome.
No rational person should want anyone with nuclear weapons and yet Netanyahu sits on hundreds of warheads.
Beating people into submission doesn’t work. The neocons told Trump to smack Iran in the mouth, that’s the only lesson these animals understand.
By the way, they say that about everyone.
Solemaini may have been responsible for hundreds of American deaths, but Iran and the U.S. have been at war for forty years. At some point that has to be processed honestly.
Americans supporting this refuse to comprehend that we’re as much to blame as Iran is for the violence. We’re not the good guys and they aren’t the bad guys. Everyone sucks here. For every Iranian that shouts “Death to America” there are Americans who sing “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Bomb, Bomb Iran.”
Trump was elected to end this belligerence but he’s incapable of separating strength from weakness. A mafiosi-type who uses violence indiscriminately, Trump is a weak man. This was indiscriminate in that Trump believes the political calculus is in his favor, so he can get away with it. He shores up his support in the Senate just long enough to beat the impeachment and can sail to re-election.
But, who he is was written on the bombs he threw at the Al Shairat airbase and the MOAB he dropped in Afghanistan in April 2017 to prove a point to Putin and Xi he wasn’t a wimp.
But he is a wimp. And a coward. And neither man was impressed by this. He hasn’t won a single negotiation of note in three years. Killing Solemaini was the result of having no capacity for diplomacy.
China’s won the trade war. Russia gets their pipelines. Syria will be returned to Syrians and Iraq will reject U.S. presence there. Venezuela won’t fall and North Korea has nukes. Nothing has changed and yet everything has.
A strong man admits his mistakes and makes concessions to those he’s harmed. He doesn’t hide behind how unfair it is the political machine is arrayed against him.
And, now, he’s a failed president no different than Obama who he despises.
The only thing more pathetic than Trump right now is the gaggle of jackals running against him. Weep for the future.
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“Dire Circumstances”: Aussie Wildfires Intensify After Killing Half A Billion Animals; Record Numbers Evacuate
The brushfires raging across Australia which have killed an estimated 480 million animals have intensified over the last 12 hours, according to NASA, causing a record number of residents evacuate as forecasters predict worsening conditions.
Authorities on Friday urged evacuations for Australians living in parts of New South Wales and Victoria to avoid brushfires which are expected to rage out of control over the weekend. Temperatures in the area topped 104 F across much of the state, and no end to the destruction is currently in sight. According to NSW Transport Minister Andrew Constance, this is “the largest evacuation of people out of the region ever.”
I would love some big creators to help raise awareness for our beautiful country. AUSTRALIA is on fire, and we need all the help we can get. 500m animals dead. Thousands stranded on beaches. Pls RT with link to @RedCrossAUpic.twitter.com/2CwHp4CqRi
“Conditions are set to mirror or even deteriorate beyond what we saw on New Year’s Eve,” said the Bureau of Meteorology’s Jonathan How, adding that strong and dry winds would pick up over the weekend.
Over 1,300 homes have been destroyed, while 17 deaths have been reported.
In a harbinger of the searing conditions expected, a number of fires burnt out of control in South Australia as temperatures topped 40 degrees C (104 F) across much of the state and strong winds fanned flames.
Victoria declared a state of disaster across areas home to about 100,000 people, with authorities urging people to evacuate before a deterioration expected on Saturday. –Reuters
“If they value their safety they must leave,” said police emergency responder Michael Grainger. “I’d suggest personal belongings are of very, very little value in these circumstances,” adding “These are dire circumstances, there is no doubt.“
In the southern seaside resort town of Mallacoota, over 4,000 people were forced to take refuge on the beach and in boats as an “apocalyptic” scene unfolded amid a dark orange sky.
The evacuation operation is now in full swing in Mallacoota. These people are being taken out on LARC-V army vessels @theheraldsun pic.twitter.com/ebvMF038tA
In today’s political discourse, the minimum wage is frequently mentioned by the more progressive members of Congress. On a basic level, raising the minimum wage appears to be a sympathetic policy for low-income wage earners. Often kept out of the conversation, however, are the downstream effects of this proposal. The consensus among economists has always been that a price floor on “low-skilled labor” leads to unemployment “among the very people minimum wage legislation allegedly helps.” Surely those who retain their employment will reap the higher hourly pay but not without consequence to the rest of the “low-skilled” labor market.
Government-mandated minimum wage increases directly result in a higher price floor for hourly labor. The more indirect consequences include reductions in hours worked, layoffs, automation, operational changes, and loss of opportunity. In Economics 101, students are taught about trade-offs. A trade-off, as defined by the Business Dictionary, is “a technique of reducing or forgoing one or more desirable outcomes in exchange for increasing or obtaining other desirable outcomes in order to maximize the total return.” We incur trade-offs every day, such as the decision to buy dinner from a restaurant for $10 or to eat our holiday leftovers. Businesses incur trade-offs as well.
For example, let’s consider your local grocery store. The grocer may employ ten people, including one manager and nine employees. The manager makes well over the current minimum wage, but six of the nine other employees make the current minimum wage. If the current minimum wage is increased from $7.25 to $12.50 per hour, the rate of increase is 72.4 percent. While this increase may sound reasonable from the perspective of some readers, this is a large increase given the relatively low profit margins in this industry. What are the downstream effects?
The employer may either reduce the hours worked for employees or lay off staff. Several things result:
Those who are not laid off will reap the benefits of a higher minimum wage, but they will have to work harder to make up for less staff.
Staff making a wage higher than the old minimum wage but lower than the new rate will also request that their wages be increased to distinguish them from their peers (those who retained their jobs at the higher minimum wage) and to compensate them for their skills.
Those who are laid off will be forced to find other employment.
There may be a lack of employment due to these employees being priced out of the market.
The Effects on Youth Employment
Meanwhile, rapid advancements in technology may result in fewer job opportunities when the cost of labor is higher. Think of your local Kroger’s self-checkout line or Chick-fil-A’s mobile-ordering application.
Not surprisingly, American Action Forum’s evidence indicates that minority youth may be the most negatively affected by wage price floors. Various studies have analyzed the impact of minimum wage increases, most of which have been gradual increases implemented over a period of years. In an EconTalkpodcast with Russ Roberts, Jacob Vigdor shared his main findings about Seattle’s minimum wage increase: “First of all, the minimum wage did appear to raise wages. … That’s what we expected to see. But when we looked at employment, we actually saw a reduction.” Vigdor further mentions that hours worked decreased as wages went up.
The study showed that the amount of money paid in the low-wage labor market declined overall, or in the aggregate. The results varied depending on the level of experience of the worker; those with the most work experience came out ahead. Vigdor’s study shows that on average their paychecks were twenty dollars higher per week. But the biggest loss “in terms of much lower pay would be amongst the workers who hadn’t even entered the labor market yet when the minimum wage started to increase, because they were finding it harder to find any work at all.”
The key takeaway from Vigdor’s study was the minimum wage’s effect on workers who had yet to enter the labor market. In effect, the higher minimum wage created a barrier to entering the hourly labor market for those without experience. Who tends to lack experience? Young individuals and immigrants.
As any young individual seeking an internship or their first job knows, the hardest thing about the search is having sufficient experience. Experience means that the individual needs less training and can be productive on the first day. Businesses understand that “on-the-job training is an investment, and at $15 an hour that investment doesn’t make sense from the business owner’s perspective.” This investment makes even less sense when it is understood that the teenager will only work for a few months and then leave, a dilemma that many employers face during summer and winter breaks.
The Employment Policies Institute addresses teen unemployment in an article titled “The Teen Unemployment Crisis: Questions and Answers.” It notes that one of the goals of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) is to “protect the educational opportunities of minors.” Problematically, increasing the cost of labor disincentivizes companies from hiring workers, especially those who require training. Additionally, as technology rapidly advances, easily automated functions may become obsolete for workers. Policymakers must consider the interests of ensuring a viable labor market for our nation’s youth while promoting policies that incentivize businesses to pay decent wages.
Although many teenagers may be predisposed to sympathize with progressive policies like minimum wage increases, they ought to understand the larger implications of such proposals. Markets can withstand gradual change, but they may be unable to adequately adjust to steep increases in the cost of labor. In New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, US Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis famously described how a “state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country”; Justice Brandeis coined the phrase “laboratories of democracy.” Twnety-nine states and the District of Columbia, as of 2019, have experimented with minimum wage increases. But studies have demonstrated that these progressive “successes” do not come without unintended consequences.
Dem Senator Insists Iranian General “Most Significant Leader US Has Ever Assassinated”
Though it might sound hard to believe, Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy insisted during what we imagine was a hastily-arranged appearance on “the Rachel Maddow Show” Thursday night that Iranian General Qasem Suleimani could be “the most significant foreign political leader the United States has ever assassinated.”
Murphy, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who has long had designs on joining the Democrats’ Congressional leadership, was likely invited to appear on the show by its producers after news of the assassination, which took place early Friday morning (local time) near the Baghdad International Airport.
A statement released by the Pentagon after news of the attack broke claimed Suleimani was “actively developing plans” to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq when a two-car convoy that he was traveling in was targeted in a drone strike.
During his brief appearance via phone, Murphy told Maddow that “there’s no doubt that Qasim Suleimani was an enemy of the United States…the question tonight is whether Suleimani is a greater threat to the United States as the functional head of the Quds force, or as a maryr.”
He also warned about Iran’s ability to retaliate against US assets in the region.
“The danger here is of course that we are going to get into a conflict in the region that will ultimately accrue to the detriment of US national security interests no matter how we feel about the fact that Suleimani is dead this evening. They have the capability to launch assassination attempts right back at US political leaders, and their proxy forces can threaten US forces and Israel itself throughout the region.”
“They can end up spilling into a set of consequences that ultimately do a lot more damage to US national security interests than the assassination itself cures.”
“There are plenty of grave consequences for our relationship with Iraq, This is a very dangerous moment, this could be the most significant political leader that the US has ever assassinated.”
Murphy also threw in some criticisms, claiming “you can’t do this with Congressional authorization” (though it looks like President Trump just did) and some pundits have been discussing the possibility of the House using this as the basis for a third article of impeachment.
Murphy, of course, wasn’t the only Democratic power player to weigh in on the assassination. The four remaining top presidential contenders have all published comments essentially saying the same thing: That Qasem was a bad actor in the region, but that Trump’s decision to do something about it was still wrong.
Former Vice President Joe Biden’s statement got the most attention after he accused Trump of tossing “a stick of dynamite into a tinder box”.
Elizabeth Warren warned Soleimani was a “murder, responsible for the deaths of thousands, including hundreds of Americans” but added that his assassination will “increase the likelihood of more deaths and new Middle East conflict.”
Soleimani was a murderer, responsible for the deaths of thousands, including hundreds of Americans. But this reckless move escalates the situation with Iran and increases the likelihood of more deaths and new Middle East conflict. Our priority must be to avoid another costly war.
And Bernie Sanders accused Trump of breaking his promise to end America’s “forever wars.”
“Trump’s dangerous escalation brings us closer to another disastrous war in the Middle East that could cost countless lives and trillions more dollars. Trump promised to end endless wars, but this action puts us on the path to another one,” he said in a tweet, while also managing to bring up the fact that he voted against the War in Iraq.
When I voted against the war in Iraq in 2002, I feared it would lead to greater destabilization of the region. That fear unfortunately turned out to be true.
The U.S. has lost approximately 4,500 brave troops, tens of thousands have been wounded, and we’ve spent trillions.
As for Pete Buttigieg, he hadn’t yet tweeted a statement on the attack as of 8 am ET.
Fortunately, Murphy’s brief appearance on Maddow isn’t the only reason we’re talking about Murphy this morning.
In a hilarious example of Dems committing flagrant acts of hypocrisy while condemning the Trump Administration for carrying out such a bold and potentially “game changing” attack, conservatives are pointing out that Murphy – a Democratic Senator who is known for his hawkish foreign policy views – was practically begging for an attack like this just two days ago in a tweet that he and his social media team have somehow not yet deleted.
Two days apart. It really is sad what partisanship is doing to people.
First @ChrisMurphyCT complains that we are impotent and just praying for the bad guys to go away, then he declares it was wrong for us to take out the worst bad guy in the region.
In that mercifully quiet week between Christmas and New Years, I re-watched Ken Burns’ documentary of the first Civil War, in contemplation of a possible second. What an almighty bloodbath that was. Thousands butchered in minutes in one battle after another, heads and limbs flying, men turned inside-out, and horses, too. The blue and the gray were hostage to their battlefield tactics and didn’t seem to learn from the insane extravagance of souls wasted in massed assaults against massed artillery again and again and again. The population of the whole nation (Confederacy included) was 31 million in 1860 and the war killed two percent of that, almost entirely young men.
Another impression left by that documentary was the startling beauty of the countryside in that day, and of the little towns that dotted that landscape where all the carnage and horror played out. Not a strip-mall in the whole gorgeous panorama. The rolling fields neatly fenced in the stillness of a summer’s day. A peaceful tranquility we today cannot even imagine. Everything human-scaled and so many buildings graced with beauty deliberately made: pediments, steeples, cupolas, columns, and swags. Walt Disney could not have imagined a more tender and appealing place. The lyrical names of those towns are linked to rivers of blood: Shiloh, Spotsylvania, Missionary Ridge, Cold Harbor….
And the last impression accumulated over each installment was that this we did it to ourselves, and couldn’t seem to stop, just as today various parties to current events can’t seem to stop their provocations to a new episode of national domestic violence. This time it is the very government at war with itself, and so far the war is merely legalistic, the battles of lawyers — of which, one senses, we have far too many for our own good. The Department of Justice in particular is at war with itself, one faction in it refusing to cooperate with the other, hiding documents, trafficking in political muck, kluging up the works with deceptions, and still at it in the yet-unresolved case of General Flynn, which should have been thrown out of court months ago based on obvious prosecutorial malice.
Likewise, The New York Times, NBC News, and many other companies can’t seem to give up on their mendacious retailing of obvious falsehoods, in league with rogue government agencies. Their readers and followers learned nothing from the stunning failure of Robert Mueller’s long investigation to find any crimes, and most don’t even understand that the purpose of it was simply to antagonize the president while trying desperately to come up with ammunition against him for the next election — using all the resources of federal machinery. In other words, it was just a government-sponsored elaboration of the “opposition research” conjured up by Hillary Clinton’s Fusion GPS hirelings in 2016.
The bigger picture of all this chicanery is right out there to see for anyone really paying attention.
Mr. Obama and Hillary hijacked the most pernicious instruments of government — the CIA and FBI — to win the election, and then to overthrow the actual winner. Slowly slowly, they were found out, despite all the smoke they were blowing and hiding in. Barr & Durham have hardly said a thing about their efforts to unwind the massive hairball of subterfuge and ass-covering that is their purview. Yet, the particulars of what went on, and who did what, are now pinned to the wall. We know exactly what Christopher Steele was and how that all worked. We know how John Brennan played it and how James Clapper and Jim Comey went along with it, and took it further and deeper, and where Rod Rosenstein and Andrew McCabe stepped in, and exactly how Mr. Mueller got roped in to front his operation — despite his mental incapacity. And we also know that Barack Obama approved of all that activity through 2016 into January 20, 2017.
When it comes into the courts some months from now, Brennan, Comey, and the rest will surely cop a plea that they were following Mr. Obama’s presidential instructions. The impeachment hysteria is an exact index of the rising fear of that coming finger-pointing. Mr. Obama has been drawn into the heart of this matter. His reputation will be destroyed — and with it, the Progressive agenda that he represented for two terms, and which still holds his party hostage as much as the battlefield tactics of 1864 held the armies of North and South hostage.
We have heard very little from Mr. Obama in recent months, and only a few squawks out of Hillary. The Lawfare shock troops are working feverishly in the background to invent new congressional chicanes to trap Mr. Trump, but their legal cleverness can’t overcome the weakness of their cause, just as the soldiering of Robert E. Lee and his generals could not overcome the tragic wrongfulness of fighting for slavery. A century and half from now, people in this land (whatever it is called by then) will say that coup against Mr. Trump was a valiant endeavor, just as people today will say that the Civil War of 1861 – 1865 was about some metaphysical truths above and beyond slavery.
Hillary is still on the loose and she still has many partisans in the ranks of government, and they are scheming desperately now to save their skins. I don’t believe that Mr. Obama actually commands any troops in this fight. He remains the mere symbol that he was from the very start, when the Democratic Party hoisted him out of obscurity as the grand prize for post-war liberalism. After the election, I think Mr. Trump was prepared to drop his wish to “lock her up.” But he has had three years to discover just how much malice was arrayed against him, and now he going to run her to ground.
Negative-Yield Bond Pool Declines As Hopes For Global Recovery Soar
Europe’s pool of negative-yielding government bonds declined in December to its smallest size since May, Tradeweb data showed on Thursday.
Trade optimism and the hopes central bankers can engineer a soft landing in the global economy in 1H20 have been some of the reasons behind the shrinking negative-yielding government bonds.
Eurozone government bonds quoted by Tradeweb showed negative yields fell to 4.14 trillion euros in December, which is about 52% of the total eight trillion-euro market. The latest figures are down from 57% in November.
In September, the negative-yielding government bonds surged to the highest level ever, at 5.63 trillion euros, or about 70% of all government bonds in Europe were negative.
As for the global pool of negative-yielding bonds, well, it peaked at around $15 trillion last year and has been estimated by Tradeweb to be around $12 trillion today.
And if the global recovery that markets have already priced in doesn’t materialize — then it’s likely that a mad-dash back into bonds could be seen, destined to increase the pool of negative-yielding government debt to new record levels. Perhaps that is what gold is expecting.
The threat posed by Iran-backed Hezbollah sleeper cells embedded in major American cities has once again come to the fore following the killing of Iran’s Quds Force General Qasem Soleimani.
Following last night’s assassination of the Iranian military leader, authorities in both New York and Los Angeles announced that they were ramping up security in readiness for possible revenge attacks on U.S. soil.
This is because Iran is known to have placed Hezbollah terrorist sleeper cells throughout not just Europe but the United States too.
Last year, the the criminal prosecution and conviction in New York of the Hezbollah operative Ali Kourani revealed that the terror outfit has already plotted to attack U.S. interests inside the country and is ready to activate if it considers the existence of either Hezbollah or Iran to be at stake.
Following the arrest of Kourani and another Hezbollah operative named Samer el-Debek, the U.S. intelligence community reversed its belief that Hezbollah was unlikely to attempt attacks within the U.S.
“It’s our assessment that Hezbollah is determined to give itself a potential homeland option as a critical component of its terrorism playbook,” said National Counterterrorism Center Director Nicholas Rasmussen.
Authorities in major U.S. cities are monitoring developments and ramping up security in preparation for any potential Iranian-backed terror attacks following the killing of Iran’s Quds Force General Qasem Soleimani.#WWIIIhttps://t.co/Mtf1HPQrmp
“We in the intelligence community do in fact see continued activity on behalf of Hezbollah here inside the homeland,” he added.
Hezbollah has never directly attacked the U.S. homeland, but Kourani, working for the Hezbollah-controlled Islamic Jihad Organization, was confirmed to have been conducting surveillance of FBI and U.S. Secret Service offices, as well as a U.S. Army armory and John F. Kennedy International Airport, all in New York City.
“While living in the United States, Kourani served as an operative of Hezbollah in order to help the foreign terrorist organization prepare for potential future attacks against the United States,” said U.S. Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers.
In casing both JFK and Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, “Kourani told the FBI that he provided Hezbollah with details about security procedures, the uniforms worn by security officers, and whether the officers were armed. His surveillance, Kourani told the FBI, focused on exit points, security checkpoints, camera locations, baggage claim procedures, and what questions airport screeners asked passengers,” reported ForeignPolicy.com.
With the world now waiting for Iran’s response to Soleimani’s killing, we can only hope that it doesn’t come in the form of a massive Hezbollah-backed terror attack targeting a major American city.
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“Creepy”, Mysterious, Unexplained Drones Are Flying In Precise Formations Over Colorado, Nebraska
Nobody knows where they are coming from, or why they are there.
Back on Christmas we wrote about large, non-governmental drones flying in mysterious patterns in Colorado. Since then, sightings have only increased, despite there being no explanation as to why.
Local sheriff’s departments in regions of Nebraska and Colorado have been “bombarded” with reports of large drones with “blinking lights and wingspans of up to 6 feet” flying over rural towns and open fields, according to MSN News. The drones have even prompted a federal investigation – yet no one has been able to explain them.
Missy Blackman, who saw three drones hovering over her farm outside Palisade, Neb said: “It’s creepy. I have a lot of questions of why and what are they, and nobody seems to have any answers.”
Sheriff James Brueggeman of Perkins County, Neb. saw the drones on patrol one night. He commented: “In terms of aircraft flying at night and not being identified, this is a first for me personally.”
He said he has heard rumblings of people wanting to shoot down a drone, but has urged residents to contact law enforcement instead.
Brueggeman said: “I think it’s kind of a joke, but you have to remember the part of the country we live in. People here don’t like their privacy to be invaded.”
Dawn George, who lives near Wray, Colo. said: “They’re high enough where you couldn’t shoot one anyway, but they’re low enough that they’re a nuisance.” She says her dogs bark at the drones when they fly over.
The drones are attracting attention at the same time the FAA proposed new regulations that would require most drones to be identifiable. A spokesman for the FAA, Ian Gregor, said the timing of the rule was coincidental, but also that the agency had opened an investigation into the “mystery” drone sightings.
Gregor said: “Multiple F.A.A. divisions and government agencies are investigating these reports.”
Meanwhile, the drones have been the talk of rural Colorado and Nebraska. Sighting are increasing and so are the inquiries of witnesses and those in the area. Some have suggested simple answers, like a mapping operation or land survey, but many ask why those tasks would be undertaken at night.
Senator Cory Gardner, Republican of Colorado said he would“closely monitor the situation.”
But regulations around drones are still fuzzy:
Unmanned drones, which have exploded into popular usage in recent years and can be used for everything from mapping to photography to farming, can be difficult to track. Operators of all but the smallest drones have been required to register with the federal government since 2015, but there is no straightforward, legal way for state and local officials to identify the owner of a particular drone or to track that drone’s location.
Reggie Govan, a former chief counsel to the F.A.A. who now teaches at the University of Pennsylvania Law School said: “Like in many other areas of drone regulation, the statutory and regulatory framework is lagging the technology. It’s just that simple.”
Govan says the government has tracking tools to figure out where the drones are coming from, but the vast distance they fly over could make it difficult. Limits in drone detection have allowed rogue operators to approach the White House without raising alarms and even deploy homemade bombs in a Pennsylvania neighborhood, in one case.
Michael Yowell, a sheriff’s captain in Lincoln County, Colo said: “Most people are very reasonable, and they say it could be somebody mapping or doing topography. But you can’t rule out what you don’t know.”
The sightings started in Northeast Colorado in mid December and have grown more widespread since then. Almost all sightings have occurred between sunset and 10PM, but they have occasionally been spotted during daylight hours. One witness said she looked at them through binoculars and saw no markings, just plain silver and white coloring. Captain Yowell tried to photograph the drones but couldn’t get a clear picture.
Yowell said: “We want to know, at around 10 o’clock, when we start to lose visuals of these, which direction are they homing? Which way are they heading? We hope that’s how we can contact somebody on the ground.”
Residents like Dawn George are worried they may never get answers: “All the sudden, it’s just going to stop and we’re not going to have answers. And that’s very unsettling to a lot of people. It’s the fear of the unknown.”
The IRS has just released new domestic migration data for both 2017 and 2018 and it shows Illinoisans left the state in record numbers. In both years, Illinois lost more people and more taxable income than in any past year reported by the IRS.
The IRS data complements the new Census Bureau data that shows near-record out-migration of Illinoisans in 2019.
Grim Numbers
Illinois lost more than 130,000 tax filers and their dependents in 2017 and another 88,000 in 2018. Illinois’ 2018 loss was the third worst in the country, with only California and New York losing more residents, 153,000 and 160,000, respectively.
Illinois lost $6.8 billion in Adjusted Gross Incomes to net out-migration in 2017 and $5.6 billion in 2018. Illinois’ 2018 loss was the third worst in the country, with only California and New York losing more AGI, $8.0 billion and $9.6 billion, respectively.
The three biggest gainers nationally in 2018 of residents and their incomes were Florida, Arizona and Texas. Florida was the biggest winner by far, gaining a net 115,000 people and $16 billion in AGI. Arizona gained 65,000 people and $3.5 billion in AGI. Texas gained 77,000 people and $3.4 billion in AGI.
When measured on per capita basis, only New York lost more AGI than Illinois in 2018. Illinois lost $435 in AGI per person while New York lost $484 per person.
The biggest per capita winners of AGI were Nevada, up $766 per person, Florida, up $762 per person, and Idaho, up $646 per person.
Illinois’ neighbors suffered far smaller AGI losses than Illinois in 2018, ranging from a loss of $145 per person in Iowa to just $52 per person in Missouri.
Domestic in-migrants to Illinois earned far less than the Illinois residents who left the state. The average AGI of those who left in 2018 was approximately $85,000, while those who entered the state had incomes of just $66,000.
The wealth gap between residents leaving and coming to Illinois has more than tripled since 2000. In 2000, those moving into Illinois earned on average $5,000 less than those leaving Illinois. In 2018, the gap is now nearly $19,000.
Illinois was a net loser of people to 43 states in 2018, while it netted gains from just six states. The total gain from those six states, however, was trivial – just 667 net residents. In contrast, Illinois netted losses of 88,664 people to the other 43 states.
Illinois’ biggest resident losses weren’t just to Florida and Texas, two of the nation’s biggest in-migration winners. Indiana and Wisconsin were the second and fourth largest net winners of Illinois’ residents.
All of Illinois’ neighbors netted gains vs. Illinois. Indiana gained nearly 26,000 Illinois residents but gave up just 15,000 of its own. That left Indiana with a net gain of nearly 11,000 residents vis-a-vis Illinois. Wisconsin ended up with a net gain of more than 7,000 residents vs. Illinois. Kentucky, Iowa, Michigan and Missouri all netted gains of 1,200 to 2,900 residents vs. the Prairie State.
Any way the data is sliced, Illinois is chronically losing its population and its tax base. It is a national outlier along with New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. For full information on Illinois’ demographic and out-migration losses, see Wirepoints: Out-migration.
The outflow is particularly alarming given the state’s pension shortfall, which is already the highest in the nation. As the state’s population and tax base continue to shrink, the risk of insolvency for the state continues to rise.
And more tax hikes will only exacerbate the situation – Illinoisans already face the highest total tax burden in the nation, according to Kiplinger and Wallethub.
Illinois’ legislature shows no signs of pursuing the spending and pension reforms needed to make Illinois competitive again. Until that changes, expect the Illinois exodus to only get worse.
We are moving to Southern Utah this year. Going house hunting in February (will rent for a year) and we will sell this one rather than trying to rent it.
Property taxes are too much of a killer to keep it (as in ~$15,000 a year on a ~$400K home).
Round Two: US Drone Airstrikes Kill Six Pro-Iran Militia Commanders
Whether he is eating ice cream or not, Trump appears to be on a rampage to recreate the end of The Godfather.
Less than 24 hours after a US drone shockingly killed the top Iranian military leader, Qasem Soleimani, resulting in equity markets groaning around the globe in fear over Iranian reprisals (and potentially, World War III), the US has gone for round two with Reuters and various other social media sources reporting that US air strikes targeting Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units umbrella grouping of Iran-backed Shi’ite militias near camp Taji north of Baghdad, have killed six people and critically wounded three, an Iraqi army source said late on Friday.
Iraqi official media has also confirm that two vehicles were targeted north of Baghdad, carrying commanders of the pro-Iran militias in the PMUs.
Iraqi officials media now confirm that two vehicles were targeted north of Baghdad, carrying commanders of the pro-Iran militias in the PMUs. #iraq#QassemSuleimani
The strikes reportedly took place at 1:12 am local time.
Hezbollah’s Mayadeen confirms that an airstrike hit a moving target in Taji northern Iraqi capital of Baghdad.
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Mayadeen was first media outlet that confirmed the death of Soleimani and Muhandis last night.#Iraqhttps://t.co/cwebUoxlzAhttps://t.co/j5R73kZpyv
According to unconfirmed reports, a US MQ-9 Reaper drone targeted a convoy carrying several high ranking officials of PMU (Hashd al-Shaabi) in Taji, North of Baghdad. The casualties are said to be mostly among members of the IRGC-backed Asaib Ahl al-Haq. It is not known whether Qais al-Khazali is dead or alive.
#BREAKING: #USAF‘s MQ-9 Reaper drone targeted a convoy carrying several high ranking officials of #PMU (Hashd al-Shaabi) in #Taji, North of #Baghdad. Casualties are mostly among members of #IRGC backed Asaib Ahl al-Haq. It is not known whether Qais al-Khazali is dead or alive! pic.twitter.com/CGGebcLn0M
Separate reports claim that Shibl al-Zaidi, a commander of Kataib Imam Ali brigades, an Iranian-backed militia and the PMU’s 40th Brigade, is among those the six who were killed in the strike.
Not confirmed yet, but it is reported Shibl al-Zaydi, secretary general of #IRGC backed Kata’ib al-Imam Ali (#PMU‘s 40th Brigade) is among whom are targeted by the #USAF in this airstrike at #Taji, North of #Baghdad tonight! pic.twitter.com/SteN0vg5iB
That said there are conflicting reports, with some noting that a Twitter account allegedly belonging to al-Zaidi tweeted that he is alive after the attack.
The twitter account, who we presume is run by al-Zaydi, tweeted this out saying they aren’t dead: https://t.co/6Mh24mgjOO
I guess the de-escalation of last night’s air strike wasn’t enough to fully de-escalate and stop war, so today the US has ordered another airstrike at a top Iraqi militia commander to further de-escalate and stop even more war.
… to the objectively concerned, with some wondering how much further is Iraq going to let US operate freely in country before they decide to kick their assets out? These airstrikes really make the Iraqi government look weak like they can’t deal with their problems by themselves, which may or may not be true, but the point stands.”
How much further is #Iraq going to let US operate freely in country before they decide to kick their assets out? These airstrikes really make the Iraqi government look weak like they can’t deal with their problems by themselves, which may or may not be true, but the point stands.
Of course, the other point is when and how will Iran respond, as it is now clear that if Tehran does nothing it will only embolden the US to pick off its top generals one at a time, while any substantial escalation could ignite a regional war with even more dire consequences.
Former national security adviser Ben Rhodes, the architect of the Iran nuclear deal, purposely structured the JCPOA as a treaty that was not a treaty because he and his boss, President Obama, had no intention whatsoever of doing with the JCPOA what the Constitution mandates for all treaties, which is to obtain the approval of two-thirds of the Senate.
Rhodes and Obama simply rammed through what was in effect a treaty without seeking the approval of even one Senator.
Yet here is Rhodes after the strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the secretive Iranian Quds force that sows mischief (and kills Americans, and ordered the attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad) outside Iran’s borders.
Congress has to assert itself and determine exactly what our Iran policy is. Did we mean to do this? Do we have any plan for what comes next? What is the legal basis for all this?
Rhodes’s tweet is incomprehensible unless one or both of the following two conditions applies:
1) Rhodes is very, very stupid;
2) Rhodes thinks one set of laws and principles applies to presidents he likes and another set applies to presidents he doesn’t like.
Congress gets to “assert itself” in the Trump Administration’s foreign policy? When Rhodes was in charge of President Obama’s foreign policy (a documentary showed him bossing around Secretary of State John Kerry), he not only didn’t solicit Congress’s opinion on Iran policy but took extraordinary action purposely to cut the Senate out of a matter of which it should have had oversight.
Moreover, as David French at The Dispatchpoints out this morning, the strike that killed Soleimani actually was authorized under the Constitution because (as Rhodes may or may not remember) Congress did approve of U.S. military actions in Iraq. Those actions were re-authorized by the Obama Administration.
Iranian-backed militias attacked U.S. troops lawfully present in a combat zone under valid legal authorities. Moreover, America’s military response isn’t limited to immediate self-defense or tit for tat. It can act to remove the threat. That threat includes enemy commanders. /4
Trump Jabs Dems Over Iran Reaction, Rages That ‘Killer’ Soleimani “Should Have Been Taken Out Years Ago!”
Update (0900ET): President Trump has expanded his comments this morning, switching focus to Soleimani’s terrible deeds…
“General Qassem Soleimani has killed or badly wounded thousands of Americans over an extended period of time, and was plotting to kill many more… but got caught!
He was directly and indirectly responsible for the death of millions of people, including the recent large number of PROTESTERS killed in Iran itself.
While Iran will never be able to properly admit it, Soleimani was both hated and feared within the country. They are not nearly as saddened as the leaders will let the outside world believe. He should have been taken out many years ago!“
* * *
Having tweeted a patriotic US flag last night following the actions to assassinate Soleimani…
President Trump’s first direct tweet (he has retweeted numerous comments from others) since the attack is a clear jab at the Democrats over their actions (or lack of them) on Iran’s death-dealers…
“Iran never won a war, but never lost a negotiation!”
Iran never won a war, but never lost a negotiation!
This follows leading Democrats comments speaking from both sides of their mouths unable to praise Trump’s actions while admitting Soleimani was a very bad guy…
Biden – who trump is clearly taking aim at – said the following…
“Soleimani was a murderer, responsible for the deaths of thousands, including hundreds of Americans.
But this reckless move escalates the situation with Iran and increases the likelihood of more deaths and new Middle East conflict. Our priority must be to avoid another costly war.”
Rail Traffic Continues To Plunge Amid Industrial Recession
US freight railroads have long been used as a barometer of the country’s economic health, continue to show declines in traffic, suggesting the industrial recession could persist into 2020.
The Association of American Railroads (AAR) published a new report that shows US weekly rail traffic for the week ending December 21 was down 10.5% to 507,589 carloads and intermodal units compared with the same week last year.
Total carloads for the week were 245,048 carloads, down 11.5% compared with the same week in 2018, while weekly intermodal volume was down 9.5% to 262,541 containers and trailers.
The AAR tracks ten carload commodity groups on a weekly basis — with Petroleum and Petroleum Products and Other segments showed marginal growth over the week as all other segments including Chemicals; Coal; Farm Products excl. Grain, and Food; Forest Products, Grain, Metallic Ores and Metals; Motor Vehicles and Parts; and Nonmetallic Minerals registered declines.
For the first 51 weeks of 2019, US rail traffic across all segments was 12,780,814 carloads, down 4.8% from the same period last year; and 13,550,432 intermodal units, down 5.1% from last year. Total rail traffic in the first 51 weeks was 26,331,246 carloads and intermodal units, a 5.9% drop over last year.
Canadian and Mexican railroads also reported traffic declines for the week and in the first 51 weeks as both countries are teetering if not already in a recession.
North American rail volume for the week was down 9.2% to 350,256 carloads over the same week last year, and 348,566 intermodal units, down 8.2 % over the previous year. Total combined weekly rail traffic in North America was 698,822 carloads and intermodal units, down 8.7%.
North American rail volume for the first 51 weeks of 2019 was 35,963,299 carloads and intermodal units, down 3.9% compared with 2018.
In a separate report, AAR described how 400,000 railcars currently sit in storage amid slumping rail demand.
But it’s not just rail traffic that is tumbling, class-8 truck orders collapsed last month, all of this is a symptom of an industrial recession that shows no signs of abating into 2020.
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