Sep 08

Today’s News 8th September 2020

  • Kremlin Says NATO Jets Engaged In "Mock Missile Strikes" Against Russia
    Kremlin Says NATO Jets Engaged In “Mock Missile Strikes” Against Russia

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 09/08/2020 – 02:45

    The Kremlin has lashed out at US and NATO forces, saying amid the ongoing tit-for-tat intercepts over the Black and Baltic Seas, NATO is dangerously escalating its tactics to include “mock missile strikes” targeting Russian border areas. 

    Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu made the comments in a Russian broadcast interview on Sunday, where he noted a significant increase in foreign surveillance and provocative aerial drills in the vicinity of Russia’s airspace. Importantly he described that: 

    “The most alarming is that if earlier – even though not that frequently – there were mainly reconnaissance aircraft, they’ve now begun regular training flights with large numbers of planes, during which the mock missile strikes are conducted.”

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    Indeed within the past week the US has sent multiple B-52 bomber flights over the Black Sea in the direction of Russia’s borders, resulting in two close-up intercepts after Russian fighter jets were scrambled. 

    As we described earlier, it appears the US is attempting to sweep up valuable intelligence data on Russia’s aerial sensors and communications tech in the process. Both sides typically have reconnaissance aircraft nearby when such tense encounters happen.

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    In late August a Russian intercept of a B-52 flight resulted in what the Pentagon slammed as “unsafe” maneuvers by the Russian side, which even limited the US bomber’s ability to change course, given the Russian aircraft reportedly came within a mere 100 feet of the bomber’s nose. 

  • WWII: How An Error Turned The Tide During The Battle Of Britain
    WWII: How An Error Turned The Tide During The Battle Of Britain

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 09/08/2020 – 02:00

    Authored by Brad Bird via The Epoch Times,

    Eighty years ago this month one of the great turning points of the Second World War took place, one that saved the radar and airfield defences of an England on the brink of invasion.

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    With the fall of France in June 1940, nothing but the English Channel stood between Hitler’s blitzkrieg and British soil. Many, including Prime Minister Winston Churchill, expected invasion to be imminent. Preparations were made as well as possible, including small arms practice by the Royal Family and the prime minister himself.

    The heart of Britain’s army, its Expeditionary Force fighting in France, had been forced to leave most of its weapons and machinery in France, as—in what became known as the Miracle of Dunkirk—more than 300,000 men escaped capture to return home via Dunkirk by way of a large civilian flotilla in early June.

    To the amazement of many, Adolf Hitler chose this time to sight-see near Paris. The British, he was convinced, were not among Germany’s natural enemies, and he desired not to conquer the island but to reach an accommodation with its government. Churchill would have none of it, and on July 10 the Battle of Britain, an attempt by the Germans to achieve air superiority prior to invasion, began.

    Airfields and radar stations, Britain’s newest and most promising technology, were targeted by the Luftwaffe from the start. Serious damage was done to landing strips, aerodromes, and fighter planes on the ground, as well as radar structures. At one point, Air Marshal Hugh Dowding despaired that the British could keep up the fight.

    Then the navigational error that turned the tide occurred.

    On the night of Aug. 24, a formation of Heinkel bombers lost their bearings and flew over London. (Some claim this was deliberate.)

    Thinking they were clear of the city, they released their bombs and went home.

    Hitler had forbidden the bombing of London in hopes of sparing German cities the wrath of British attacks. An angry Churchill, sensing a chance to save his embattled airfields, ordered a reprisal raid. Eighty-one Wellington bombers flew to Berlin.

    The political and cultural heart of Nazi Germany, Berlin was deep inside the Third Reich. Putting aside reason, advice, and the fact his air force had nearly crippled British defences by pummeling their aerodromes and radar stations, on Sept. 4 Hitler promised a cheering crowd that since Britain had dared to bomb Berlin, he would smash her cities.

    Hundreds of bombers attacked London, and before the Blitz was over many other centres such as Coventry were also in flames, with more than 40,000 civilians killed. But the aerodromes and radar stations were largely spared from that point, and the damaged ones were repaired. This enabled the young men in Hurricanes and Spitfires to prevail, preserving air superiority over English soil and the English Channel and making invasion untenable.

    In this manner, England was saved.

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    A German Messerschmitt fighter plane is paraded outside the Houses of Parliament in London after being shot down by Allied Spitfire pilots, circa 1940. (Keystone/Getty Images)

    Churchill’s Genius

    Another part of the story also needs to be stressed. Had almost anyone other than Churchill been prime minister, Hitler might well have achieved a peace pact—and then broken it to slaughter innocents, as he had done before. Respected men like Viscount Halifax and Neville Chamberlain argued for accommodation, not war; they wanted peace, not another bloodbath such as they had witnessed from 1914 to 1918.

    Like Churchill, they were products of the First World War, when almost a full generation, the cream of British manhood, was mowed down by machine guns and shelling in the trenches of France. Some 887,000 soldiers from the United Kingdom and its colonies died in the Great War, while 1.6 million were wounded. (Germany suffered 4.3 million dead and missing). Britain was also crippled financially, its treasury depleted.

    Chamberlain, having misread Hitler’s intentions (after being lied to and deceived at Munich in 1938), and lacking conviction and direction as Hitler’s armies roared across the Low Countries early in 1940, had been pressured by his own party to step down. While many Conservatives favoured replacing him with the predictable but dour Halifax over the brilliant but unstable (so they said) Churchill, the majority embraced Churchill’s genius, his clarion calls to prepare, his bulldog tenacity, and his long grooming for war as a soldier, writer, statesman, and historian. It helped that he was a descendant of John Churchill, a British hero, the 1st Duke of Marlborough (1650-1722).

    Even as a youth, Churchill felt destined for greatness.

    “We are all worms,” he liked to say, in mock humility, “but I’m a glow worm.”

    Indeed.

    There was no one else like him in Parliament. It was an epic case of preparation meeting opportunity. Had Churchill been killed in the Boer War as a young man, or if illness had put out his light as a youth, then accommodation with Hitler may well have been reached in May-June 1940. Disarmed, England would have been weak. Almost certainly, the same slaughter of Jews, intellectuals, the infirm, Gypsies, and homosexuals which took place on continental Europe (some six million dead to 1945 in addition to six million Jews) would also have happened in England.

    Many in England and North America had openly admired Hitler’s success in rejuvenating the German economy during the Great Depression. Mackenzie King, Canada’s prime minister and usually a shrewd judge of character, met with the German dictator in June 1937 and left convinced of his peaceful intentions. American hero Charles Lindberg, whose solo trans-Atlantic flight in May 1927 was the first of its kind, also admired the Austrian-born fascist with the peasant background and beguiling ways.

    But Churchill knew better. Almost alone in the 1930s, the man many regard as the greatest Englishman who ever lived, sounded the alarm week after week in the House of Commons as friends fed him gen (facts) about Germany’s rearming in breach of the Treaty of Versailles, or about Jews and others being persecuted. Alone among the Conservatives, embattled within his own party, accused of war-mongering and malice, Churchill stared down the gullible minions around him and soldiered on in his tireless efforts to see that England was ready for the conflict to come. She scarcely was.

    Thanks largely to Churchill’s “few” – the pilots of Hurricanes and Spitfires who fought courageously to stop Hitler’s invasion – England won the Battle of Britain. While 1,497 Allied aircrew died in the victory, including 22 Canadians (more than 100 Canadians took part), some 2,500 German aircrew also perished.

    Eight American pilots fought in the Battle of Britain, including ex-barnstormers and a Minnesota farm boy.

    Thanks are also due to the many women in Britain’s civil defences such as those in fire brigades, ambulance drivers, nurses, and air raid wardens, not to mention the many in factories making armaments.

    With the great assistance of Churchill’s friend President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the United States, and the indomitable efforts of Soviet armies to repel Hitler’s troops on the Eastern Front (where 27 million Soviet troops and civilians died, and 4 million Germans), the Allies went on to win the war.

    Yet it all hinged, in those early months of the conflict, on a certain raid of Heinkels going astray over London. Such are the vicissitudes of war.

  • At A Time Of Rapidly Creeping Authoritarianism, Assange's Case Is More Crucial Than Ever
    At A Time Of Rapidly Creeping Authoritarianism, Assange’s Case Is More Crucial Than Ever

    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 09/08/2020 – 00:00

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    My home state of Victoria has become the center of attention in the anti-lockdown movement for its authoritarian crackdown against not just people who are in violation of lockdown protocol, but people who merely post about staging future anti-lockdown protests on social media.

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    Police have been breaking into people’s homes and arresting them in front of their children under charges of “incitement” for posting about anti-lockdown protests on Facebook, drawing international headlines. This is obviously a major threat to human rights that sets a dangerous precedent and will have many undesirable knock-on effects, and it should be condemned unequivocally.

    “This is awful. ‘Incitement’ is going to be used to crack down on all sorts of protests — including on issues we agree with and think are worth protesting,” explained Australian author and analyst Ketan Joshi of one such arrest.

    “Every time I post about this, I am stunned by the number of people who seem furiously unwilling to draw any connection between what’s happening above and the history of climate and anti-racist protest in Australia.”

    “Those who claim Covid-19 is being exploited by governments to dismantle our diminishing freedoms have just been handed a chilling new piece of evidence to support their case,” tweeted journalist Jonathan Cook.

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    Indeed this ham-fisted approach seems to be a lot more popular among residents of Melbourne and the state of Victoria who are subjected to it than to a large portion of the outside world. Part of this discrepancy is due to Australia having an entire culture built around the phrase “No worries, whatever you reckon’s a fair thing,” but another part is the fact that people in other self-proclaimed democracies are accustomed to having a bill of rights to protect them against such intrusive overreach.

    Many Australians are unaware of this, but we are in fact the only developed democracy that does not have a bill of rights built into its legal infrastructure. An inordinate amount of trust is instead placed upon our legislature and judicial system to always do the right thing on a case-by-case basis, a premise that has been fully discredited by things like the Facebook post arrests, the silencing of sexual assault victims in Victoria, the police raids on two Australian journalists last year, the almost-instituted ban on reporting political corruption in Queensland, and the trial, conviction, sentencing and imprisonment of a man entirely in secret whose very identity itself is classified, just to pick from a few very recent examples.

    As we’ve discussed previously, it’s a guarantee that there will be authoritarian agendas rolled out during the Covid-19 pandemic which our rulers have no intention of ever fully rolling back. We know this because that’s what always happens; the US Patriot Act was mostly already written prior to 9/11 and the pre-planned Orwellian measures were simply slid in at a time of chaos and confusion when people were less likely to push back on creeping authoritarianism.

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    The trouble is, we can’t see it.

    For months I’ve been getting many people telling me every day that I need to be sounding the alarm about this virus giving cover for an authoritarian power grab that will thrust us into a dystopia from which we will never recover. Few of them can agree on exactly what form this power grab is taking, and none can lucidly explain in their own words exactly what they know and how they know it when I ask them to, but they want me to write essays defending their viewpoint.

    It’s not that they’re wrong to be suspicious; again, it’s a guarantee that authoritarians and plutocrats are at the very least opportunistically shoring up power and wealth for themselves in a whole host of ways amid the confusing upheavals of 2020. It’s just that I can’t write essays which I can competently defend about things I cannot see. The level of evidence and argumentation that I apply to the rest of my work simply is not there at this time. I’ve been looking at this thing from every angle, and a powerful evidence-based argument for any kind of centralized monolithic global power grab in relation to this virus just isn’t forthcoming.

    This doesn’t mean such a power grab doesn’t exist, it just means that if it does exist, the bulk of it is happening in secret. And it is a very safe bet that there are at the very least a lot of agendas being planned within establishment power structures around the world which we would object to if they weren’t hidden behind thick veils of corporate, financial, and government opacity.

    Which brings us to Julian Assange, whose extradition trial of world-shaping importance is set to resume a few hours from this writing.

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    Assange started a leak publishing outlet on the premise that corrupt power can be fought with the light of truth. Corrupt power responded by smearing, torturing and imprisoning him, thereby proving his thesis unassailably correct. The depravity of the powerful can only operate behind veils of secrecy, because if it happened out in the open our greatly outnumbered rulers would risk finding themselves on the wrong end of a guillotine blade. Assange sought to hold power in check by reducing the amount of hiding space it has for its malfeasance, which is why he is currently behind bars.

    If we had transparency for the powerful as we ought, there wouldn’t be any wild theorizing about what they’re up to behind the walls of secrecy. Indeed, the various agendas that are doubtless being schemed toward by oligarchs and unaccountable government agencies wouldn’t even exist, because people only plot such evils when they are out of the public eye. Whatever’s going on with this virus would be clear as day, and the fact that people are paranoid and distrustful of authority figures about the matter is solely the fault of those authority figures’ refusal to have transparency and accountability.

    The more secrecy the powerful are able to obtain, the more wars they start, the more exploitation, oppression and thievery they can get away with, the more power they can steal from the people and shift to themselves. Which is precisely why they are going after a journalist who made it his vocation to deprive them of secrecy.

    As Jonathan Cook recently put it,

    “Assange had to be made to suffer horribly and in public — to be made an example of — to deter other journalists from ever following in his footsteps. He is the modern equivalent of a severed head on a pike displayed at the city gates.”

    We must not allow them to get away with this. Especially now, when transparency for the powerful is more important than ever.

    Looking at you, Australia.

    *  *  *

    Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my books Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

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  • Global Times Announces New Tesla Service Center Hours After Video Surfaces Of Dramatic Crash Aftermath
    Global Times Announces New Tesla Service Center Hours After Video Surfaces Of Dramatic Crash Aftermath

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 09/07/2020 – 23:30

    In what may or may not be damage control from Tesla, the CCP – or both – Tesla is suddenly reportedly setting up a new sales and service company in Southwest China, according to a Tweet by state-owned Global Times.

    The service center is being set up in Yunnan Province and will include “car sales, second-hand car dealing and vehicle maintenance” according to the Tweet. 

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    The report of $1 million being deployed to fund this service center in China comes just hours after the Global Times had “raised doubts” over the the car’s functions and quality, following horrifying video of a crash aftermath in Nanchong City. 

    Global Times’ article yesterday offered an update of the crash, confirming that the car was reportedly being driven by a 51 year old woman and the accident resulted in 2 dead and 6 injured. The possibility of drunk driving and driving under the influence of drugs had been excluded, according to the report. Media outlets claimed that “the car had gone out of control”. 

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    By raising the issue, The Global Times seemed to have possibly given a nod that the government could be concerned as to the origins of the accident. “Some netizens suggested that the driver had made a mistake, but others doubt the effectiveness of Tesla’s autobrake and intelligent driving functions,” the article said. 

    The article also noted several other similar incidents involving Tesla vehicles over the last few months:

    Tesla cars have reportedly been responsible for several accidents in the past three months, according to a report from autoju.com. On August 17, a driver from Wenzhou, East China’s Zhejiang Province, said his Model 3 suddenly sped up and rushed into the parking lot, damaging about a dozen cars. He also noted that the car’s brake was not working. Another driver from Hangzhou also reported in May that her Tesla once accelerated for no reason. 

    Recall, it was only hours after Consumer Reports posted a scathing review of Tesla’s Full Self Driving option that video surfaced on Twitter of what was claimed to be Shuangfu Street in Nanchong City, the scene of where a Tesla allegedly “ran out of control and crashed into multiple cars.”

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    The videos appended to the Tweets appeared to show bodies strewn throughout the street, police on the scene and concerned onlookers.

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    The videos painted a disturbing scene, showing what appear to be lifeless bodies on the street in the aftermath of the event. The video also clearly shows a wrecked black Tesla Sedan, which appears to have rear ended a parked car.

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  • New York Assistant Principal Under Fire For Video Screaming "F**k The Police"
    New York Assistant Principal Under Fire For Video Screaming “F**k The Police”

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 09/07/2020 – 23:00

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    Steven Lysenko clearly is not part of the Blue Lives Matter movement.  Lysenko was shown recently on a video screaming “F**k the Police” and other profanities. That is a common form of political expression. The problem is that, in addition to be anti-police, Lysenko is the assistant professor of Spencerport High School.

    As will come as no surprise to readers of this blog, I do not support Lysenko’s views but I strongly oppose those who want to discipline or fire him because of his exercise of free speech.

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    In the video, Lysenko was part of protests that followed the death of Daniel Prude in Rochester, New York, which we discussed earlier.  The death raises very serious and disturbing questions of police abuse and racial justice.

    In the videotape, Lysenko (who teaches outside of Rochester) is denouncing the response of the police to the protest by saying “We didn’t do anything but chant and sing,” Lysenko says in the video clip.

    “Our peacekeepers ended up shooting pepper spray at us for singing and chanting and telling them what a s—-y-assed job they were doing. They can f— right off America! F— the police. F— Rochester Police Department.” 

    Not to forget his manners, he then ends with “thank you.”

    In response, the Spencerport Central School District released a statement that, although the district supports “racial equality and systemic change,” it does not condone an employee using profane language on social media.  Accordingly, “This will be addressed as a confidential, personnel matter.”

    The controversy has divided the community with some calling for Lysenko to be fired while thousands of others signed a change.org petition in support of him.

    Lysenko has been outspoken in his support of Black Lives Matter. On June 3 on Twitter, he declared:

    “To any students-past or present-who follow me here: know that when you post “#WhiteLivesMatter, you are condoning White Supremacy. I that I will not abide!”

    That last statement raises an issue of what Lysenko means by not “abiding” opposing views.  However, so long as such intolerance is not displayed at school, Lysenko should be free to express his views outside of his employment. In the video, he identifies himself not as an assistant principal but an officer with a local anti-racism group.

    Here is the video:

    We have previously seen teachers (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here,and here) students (here, here and here) and other public employees (here and here and here) fired for their private speech or conduct, including school employees fired for posing in magazines (here), appearing on television shows in bikinis (here), or having a prior career in the adult entertainment industry (here).  We previously discussed the Vermont principal who was removed for  expressing her opinion of Black Lives Matter on her personal Facebook page. We also recently discussed the firing of a Michigan coach who expressed support for President Trump. However, this did not begin with the recent protests.  We also discussed a teacher who threatened other teachers who supported police.

    I hope that all of the roughly 4000 signatories to the petition in support of Lysenko would oppose his firing even if the controversial statement were flipped.  I doubt that but from a free speech perspective it does not matter. The price of free speech is tolerance for views that we may find offensive or disturbing. Unlike Lysenko, we do “abide” opposing views.  Some may not deserve free speech protections but they are protected nonetheless.

  • India Test Fires 'NextGen Hypersonic Weapon' As Border Tensions With China Surge
    India Test Fires ‘NextGen Hypersonic Weapon’ As Border Tensions With China Surge

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 09/07/2020 – 22:30

    With a military standoff between India and China intensifying, the Indian military has decided to increase geopolitical instabilities in the region, on Monday, as it test-fired a new class of ultra-modern weapons that can travel at hypersonic speeds. 

    The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), an agency under the Indian Ministry of Defence, tasked with weapon development, released a statement Monday announcing it “successfully flight tested” a domestic hypersonic technology demonstrator vehicle (HSTDV) for the first-time. 

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    Defense minister Rajnath Singh congratulated DRDO for the “successful” launch of the HSTDV, describing the advanced engine technology as a scramjet propulsion system. Singh said the vehicle hit speeds in excess of Mach 6 (4,600 mph). 

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    Here’s a video of the HSTDV launch. 

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    “The cruise vehicle separated from the launch vehicle and the air intake opened as planned. The hypersonic combustion sustained and the cruise vehicle continued on its desired flight path at a velocity of six times the speed of sound or nearly 2 km/second for more than 20 seconds,” the DRDO statement read. India’s first test of the HSTDV ended in failure in June 2019. 

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    The successful test of the hypersonic vehicle is an important milestone for India as it now joins the US, Russia, and China in the hypersonic club. 

    “This has been some time in the making and the challenge now is to make a time-bound transition to the prototype testing phase. China is quite ahead in hypersonics and India cannot afford to lag behind,” Air Vice Marshal Manmohan Bahadur (Retired), additional director general, Centre for Air Power Studies, said. 

    The timing of the launch comes as India and China are locked in a monthslong military standoff along the Line of Actual Control, a 2,175 mile disputed border between both countries, that stretches from the Ladakh region in the north to the Indian state of Sikkim.

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    In the event of an unintentional war along the heavily disputed border, and China already developing hypersonic weapons and deploying stealth fighter jets, India is now playing catch up as it must modernize it forces as a hot conflict may be inevitable. 

  • Stockman Sidesteps 'Systemic Racism', Says Real Evil Is "Relentless Aggrandizement Of State Power"
    Stockman Sidesteps ‘Systemic Racism’, Says Real Evil Is “Relentless Aggrandizement Of State Power”

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 09/07/2020 – 22:00

    Authored by David Stockman via The Future of Freedom Foundation,

    Law And Order Howling

    When all else fails, Fake Republicans like Richard Nixon back in the day and Donald Trump today turn to “Law & Order” demagoguery to incite the electorate in their direction.

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    So doing, they conveniently abandon the real job of the Conservative Party in American democracy, which is to fight against the Government Party (usually the Dems) on behalf of free markets, fiscal rectitude, sound money, smaller government, federalism and maximum personal liberty.

    Thus, when America was plagued with the short-term outbreak of riots in dozens of major American cities in 1968—Detroit, Cleveland, Newark, Gary, Chicago, Philadelphia—Tricky Dick Nixon put himself over the top at the polls in November by running for National Sherriff rather than as the scourge of Lyndon Johnson’s drastic ballooning of the state in the form of “guns and butter” finance and the eruption of Great Society spending programs.

    As it happened, however, Nixon didn’t need an electoral mandate for Law and Order because the summer of 1968 eruptions in the urban ghettos quickly burned themselves out, while mainly harming the residents living therein.

    More importantly, policing the big cities is not the job of the Federal government or the President, anyway; and is, in fact, one of the principal functions implicitly reserved to the states and their sub-units by the 10th Amendment to the Constitution.

    Indeed, administration of local law and order is one of the main reasons we have 87,575 units of government separate from the Federal government, including the 50 states, 3,034 counties, 35,933 cities, towns, municipalities and townships and 48,558 other units including school districts and special purpose units of local government (e.g. police, fire, library districts etc).

    Far more so than the giant Federal bureaucracies that have insinuated themselves into the law and order business, such as the FBI, DEA, BATF and the far-flung operations of the Homeland Security Department, the overwhelming share of these local government units are actually creatures of their respective electorates. If law and order breaks down or is wanting, therefore, the solution is to house clean at City Hall or the county courthouse, not import Federal money, laws, regulations and rhetorical posturing from Capitol Hill or the Oval Office.

    And if the local electorate fails to clean house, it will bear the brunt of the adverse consequences of too many homicides, robberies or destructive attacks on private property within the jurisdiction in question. After all, most serious crime—especially homicides and violent assaults on persons and property—are the work of local residents, not regional or national crime rings.

    Moreover, if the electorates of badly governed jurisdictions like Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, Chicago, New York and Baltimore at the moment fail to remedy their own crime problems, the ultimate brilliance of Federalism comes powerfully into play: That is, on the margin residents and businesses vote with their feet, causing local economic decline and diminution of tax revenues, and thereby eventually generating electoral demands for corrective action.

    At the same time, presidential Law & Order demagoguery by GOP presidents readily becomes a cover for betrayal on Federal policy matters that actually count. Until the Donald came along, of course, Tricky Dick Nixon was the poster boy for this kind of doctrinal perfidy.

    The man’s policy sins are almost too egregious to reprise. Richard Nixon…

    • Famously abandoned sound money when he slammed the gold window shut at Camp David in August 1971;

    • Made a mockery of free markets when he imposed wage, price, rent and interest controls on the entire US economy shortly thereafter;

    • Fecklessly fueled the growth of Big Government by putting Federal bureaucrats in charge of domestic energy industries and employing subsidies and import controls to pursue the folly of national energy autarky;

    • Deeply wounded the cause of fiscal rectitude by adopting the specious Keynesian notion of “full employment budgeting”, which amounts to an excuse for chronic government deficits whenever an imaginary figure called “potential GDP” is not realized (most of the time);

    • Attempted to vastly expand the Welfare State through a guaranteed annual income (Family Assistance Plan) and an incipient form of national health insurance (Family Insurance Program);

    • Eroded Federalism through revenue sharing handouts from Washington and a vast expansion of federal grant-in-aid programs; and

    • Fueled a 50-year assault on the social and economic stability of the nation’s declining urban centers via the abomination of the the War on Drugs.

    Needless to say, the latter betrayal gets us to the present moment. There is no more of a Law & Order crisis today that demands presidential attention and Washington intervention than there was in 1968.

    The overwhelming bulk of the American electorate is not in any danger owing to the antics and defaults of the clowns running Portland, Minneapolis, Chicago or even New York City. In due time, their electorates will select better leadership or the citizens will flee for better governed environs.

    But as we demonstrate below, there is an elevated and unnecessary level of friction between the police and citizens in the nation’s urban centers. The latter is overwhelmingly caused by and exacerbated by the War on Drugs and the criminalization of related social behaviors such as gambling, prostitution etc. that can be solved by repeal of bad laws, not costly and counter-productive efforts to get tough on crime; and most certainly not be sending Federal cops into cities which are wittingly or unwittingly abetting crime and riots and thereby bringing ruin upon themselves.

    So just as in Nixon’s time, by relentlessly obsessing about crime ridden Democrat cities the Donald is abandoning his real job. If there is a real crisis in America, it is the crushing burden of debt and speculation on the main street economy, not any serious or long-lasting outbreak of serious crime.

    Obviously, when it comes to crime, it doesn’t get more serious than homicide. Yet as shown below, the homicide rate per 100,000 in recent years has been barely half of what prevailed during the 1970-1995 period, and has continued to edge lower.

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    The same is true of total violent crimes, which also includes rape, robbery and aggravated assault, as well as homicides. As shown below, the rate per 100,000 in the most recent year was about half the early 1990s level.

    Moreover, although not shown, preliminary FBI statistics indicate that neither the homicide rate nor the total violent crime rate appreciably changed in 2019.

    Violent Crime Per 100,000

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    While the last full year for which FBI statistics are available is 2018, the preliminary data from the FBI for 2019 indicates that all four categories of violent crime were down versus prior year:

    • Homicide: -3.9%;

    • Forcible rape: -7.3%;

    • Robbery: -7.4%;

    • Aggravated assault: -0.3%.

    To be sure, during 2020 to date there has been an upsurge of homicides in a handful of big cities owing to the BLM demonstrations and riots after the late May murder of George Floyd by the police in Minneapolis.

    Still, even in the 25 largest US cities shown below, total violent crimes in 2020 YTD are essentially flat with 2019 (up 0.4% during the first 7 months) and property crimes are actually down by -7.7% year-to-date.

    As to the surge in homicides, 80% of the 576 increase in cases over 2019 is attributable to just eight cities including Chicago (+173), NYC (+60), Philadelphia (+56), St. Louis (+42), Houston (+39), Atlanta (+30), Louisville (+27). and Los Angles (+25). By contrast, a nearly equal number of big cities, including Dallas, Newark, Baltimore, Miami, Las Vegas, Plano and Lincoln have experienced little change or even declines from 2019.

    In short, notwithstanding the cable TV tsunami of coverage of urban protests and riots and the Donald’s false characterization of Law & Order as a national crisis, there is no break-out of homicides and other violent crimes, even in the big cities. For the nation as a whole, the downward trend in crime rates which has been in effect for nearly 20 years remains in place.

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    Needless to say, when it comes to the Donald’s real job as a Republican president, he has presided over what can only be described as a horror show. Owing to the total demise of fiscal rectitude and the last vestiges of sound money (the Fed’s belated, short-lived attempt at normalizing its balance sheet in 2017-2018) on his watch, the burden of total debt (public and private) grinding down the US economy has soared to $77.6 trillion.

    In terms of of annual rates of gain, the blue bars below show that borrowing is again off to the races, vastly exceeding the egregiously large gains that were recorded during the Obama years, and at a time at the top of the longest business cycle in US history when the nation’s bloated burdens of debt should have actually been paid down.

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    The problem, of course, is that the Donald is not guided by anything which even remotely resembles policy or theosophical principles, let alone fundamentally conservative ones. For instance, he had a chance to appoint the majority of the Fed’s Board since taking office, but ended up putting Powell and other avid money-printers in the open Chairman’s role and other board seats.

    Not surprisingly, the bloated, elephantine $4 trillion balance sheet the Donald inherited and which was supposed to be drastically retrenched after the financial crisis ended has now exploded to $7 trillion, and the Donald self-evidently wants to to grow to $10 trillion and beyond.

    That’s capitalism-destroying financial-fraud, yet it lies at the heart of the Trumpian economic program.

    Balance Sheet of the Federal Reserve:

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    At the end of the day, the Donald simply views the Federal government as a larger-scale version of the Trump Organization; and that as its Maximum Leader-CEO, it is his prerogative to steer things in whatever direction promises (by the Donald’s lights) to redound to his greater glory (and presently, his re-election).

    At the present moment that means wasting a good crisis on the shrill partisanship of his blustery campaign against crime, riots, looting and plunder in the “Dem-controlled” big cities of America.

    In fact, however, there is a very particular and different crime problem in the big cities than the one the Donald excoriates owing to the misbegotten

    War on Drugs and the excessive criminalization of social life.

    To wit, unlike the declining homicide rate in the US overall (brown line), the murder rate for black citizens in the 50 largest cities in the US has been flat since the turn of the century and has actually turned upward in recent yeas (dark blue line).

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    Needless to say, this unfortunate trend is not the result of systematic racism; it’s the consequence of bad laws and the resulting excessive friction between law enforcement officers and the urban neighborhoods where inappropriately criminalized activities are more prevalent owing to lack of jobs, the disaster of public education and the prevalence of broken homes, which now encompasses more than 70% of children born into black households.

    Rather than overt racism or even simmering racial animosity, the real evil is the relentless aggrandizement of state power. Among its many ills is the rise of the Nanny State—a conflation of too many laws, crimes, cops, arrests and thereby opportunities for frictions between the state and its citizenry and for abuse by the gendarmes vested with legal use of violence.

    The nation has now been enthrall for several months to an emotionally charged symptom of this rogue Nanny State—the unjustified murder of unarmed black citizens by the police. Among the most recent notorious cases, of course, are George Floyd for allegedly passing a counterfeit $20 bill, Eric Garner (NYC 2014) for selling un-taxed cigarettes, and Rayshard Brooks for falling asleep drunk in his car at a subsequently incinerated Wendy’s in Atlanta.

    Nor are these notorious cases aberrations. During the recent past there were 38 such police killings of unarmed black citizens in 2015, and then 19, 21, 17 and 9 during 2016 through 2019, respectively. That’s 104 black lives lost to the ultimate abuse of police powers.

    Of course, the number should be zero. There is no conceivable excuse for heavily armed cops—-usually working in pairs or groups—to murder lone, unarmed civilians, regardless of race or anything else.

    And the fact is, being non-black is no guarantee against the same unjust fate. During the same period, a total of 127 unarmed white lives were wasted by the police, as well. That included 32 white killings in 2015 followed by 22, 31, 23 and 19 in 2016 through 2019, respectively.

    Overall, 302 unarmed citizens were killed by the police during the last five years, with the balance in the chart below accounted for by 71 deaths among Hispanic and other victims. That is, the real issue is illegal and excessive police violence, not racial victimization.

    Indeed, the fact that 34% of these police killings involved black citizens compared to their 12% share of the population is not primarily a sign of racism among police forces. It’s actually evidence that the Nanny State, and especially the misbegotten War on Drugs, is designed to unnecessarily ensnare a distinct demographic— young, poor, often unemployed urban citizens— in confrontations with the cops, too many of which become fatal.

    Alas, young black males are disproportionately represented among this particular in-harms’-way demographic, and that’s the reason they are “disproportionately” represented in the two charts below.

    Stated differently, the Nanny State tends to be racist in effect, even if that is not necessarily the intent of the crusaders and zealots who have launched the state into anti-liberty wars on drugs, vice and victimless inequities and peccadillos.

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    Then again, the charts above and below are only part of the story. As it happened, a total of 4,558 citizens were actually killed by police over that period, but according to the DOJ statistics, fully 93% or 4,256 of them were armed.

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    So viewed in context, the unarmed/I can’t breathe victims account for only a small fraction of lethal violence between citizens and police, and there really isn’t much difference in the unarmed/armed ratio among racial groups. To wit, over the 2015-2019 period as a whole—

    • 1,164 black citizens were killed by police—of which 104 or just 8.9% were unarmed;

    • 2,151 white citizens were killed by police—of which 127 or just 5.9% were unarmed;

    • 1,243 Hispanic and other citizens were killed by police—of which 71 or just 5.7% were unarmed;

    But here’s the thing. This data does not really support either the Sean Hannity/Law & Order fulminations of the Foxified Right or the 400 years of racism and victimization mantra of the CNN/progressive Left.

    Contrary to the Left, 93.4% of the dead victims of police violence were themselves armed; and the 91.1% incidence among blacks is not meaningfully different than the 95% rate among whites and Hispanics. The chart below shows the inverse—the share of victims of police deaths who were not armed.

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    At the same time, the above statistics do not prove that the cops were mostly right or justified, either, as per the Donald’s Law and Order Howling.

    As we shall explore below, the real issue is did 4,558 citizens end-up on the losing end of police fire because they were hardened criminals and sociopathic threats to society or were they set-up by an overreaching legal system that puts too many citizens and police officers alike in harms’ way?

    But preliminary to that, it needs be said that the rightwing mantra about police as heroic victims of criminal violence doesn’t wash, either. They have the overwhelming firepower in these instances of police-on-citizen violence as attested to be the facts regarding felonious deaths of law enforcement officers during the same five year span.

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    It turns out that during 2015 through 2019 there occurred 256 police deaths in the line of fire, bringing the total of police and citizen deaths in these encounters to 4,814. That is to say, the cops won 95% of the time, as well they might given their overwhelming superiority in arms, training, back-up support and legal immunity from being too quick on the trigger finger.

    In this context, it should be noted that police deaths are sometimes reported at much higher levels – a total of 492 over the last five years rather than the 256 indicated above. However, exactly half of that larger total is considered accidental or non-felonious and includes traffic cops stepping into the wrong lane and even heart attacks in the squad car resulting from too many stops at Dunkin’ Donuts.

    So the question recurs as to why there were 4,814 fatal encounters between police and citizens during the past five years.

    We think the answer starts with a staggering statistic. Namely, the fact that there were 10,310,960 arrests in the US during the most recent year (2018) excluding traffic violations.

    That’s 3,153 arrests per 100,000 population including babies, grannies, toddlers, tweeners, the disabled, the infirm and religious leaders including nuns, priests, preachers, rabbis and imams.

    So when you talk about the subset of the population which actually get arrested with high frequency and accounts for most of these arrest totals–—young men between 16 and 35 years—the true arrest rate is far higher; it’s upwards of 15,000 per 100,000 population.

    Either way, these arrests rates are far out whacko. Americans are not nearly that lawless, even when you allow for the chronic rotten apples in the population and the anti-social propensities of some young men.

    And that hints at the real problem: We have way too many crimes and way too many cops who are way too heavily armed attempting to enforce laws that are not really the business of the state in the first place. In the most egregious kind of example, Eric Garner was apprehended and killed for selling “loosies”, or cigarettes one a time.

    In fact, there are an estimated 300,000 Federal laws and regulations whose violation can lead to prison time; and when you throw in state and local jurisdictions, which historically have had an affinity for outlawing victimless crimes and the infinite forms of human vice, the total number of criminal offenses in America is surely well into the millions.

    That’s why a disaggregation of the FBI’s UCR (Uniform Crime Reports) arrest statistics for 2018 tell you all you need to know about why the nation’s police forces are way over-funded and why a huge amount of confrontation and friction—including violent encounters––between citizens of all races are unnecessary.

    In a word, some citizens sometimes can’t breathe their last breath because in far too many instances liberty can’t breath in today’s unhinged Nanny State, either.

    Self-evidently, the legitimate law enforcement function of the state is protection of the life and property of its citizens. But when you look at the FBI’s own national arrest data for 2018, it appears that only about one-quarter of arrests were clearly pursuant to those core functions, meaning that the overwhelming bulk of arrests–-7,621,232-–were for drugs, gambling, prostitution, disorderly conduct and the like.

    Among the core law enforcement functions, the 26% of all arrests broke out as follows:

    • 521,103 arrests for violent crimes against persons (5% of total);

    • 1,000,329 arrests for driving under the influence (DUI), a clear threat to the lives and property of other drivers (9.7%);

    • 1,167,296 arrests for crimes against property (11.3% of total)

    Even when you drill down in these categories, however, the reality of way too many cops is evident. There were just 11,970 arrests for murder and negligent manslaughter in 2018 across the entire USA at all levels of law enforcement. Clearly, these are the most violent and heinous of violent crimes, yet they amounted to just 2.2% of all “violent crimes” reported via the UCR and a mere 0.1% of all arrests by the police.

    Next in order of severity were arrests for rape, armed robbery under threat of violence to persons and aggravated assault. There were 25,205, 88,128 and 395,800 arrests in these categories, respectively, amounting to 0.2%, 0.9% and 3.9% of all 10.3 million recorded arrests.

    Thus, these four categories are the core of violent crime arrests and totaled 521,103 arrests in 2018 or just 5.0% of total arrests That compares to 850,000 sworn law enforcement officers in the USA, of which about 750,000 are employed by the 18,000 units of state and local government.

    To be sure, nearly 1.6 cops for every annual arrest in these four core functions sounds more than a bit lop-sided, but there are some additional arrests that add to the legitimate work loads of the police. These include the following crimes and their share of total arrests:

    • burglary: 178,611 (1.7%);

    • larceny-theft: 887,622 (8.6%);

    • motor vehicle theft: 91,676 (0.8%);

    • arson: 9,387 (0.09%).

    • DUI: 1,167,296 (11.3%)

    Needless to say, these are all serious crimes that need to be enforced for the protection of life and property. But by their very nature, the vast bulk of the arrests in the above five categories do not ordinarily involve violent criminals, nor does their enforcement require combat-strength arms and tactics among police forces.

    DUI arrests, for example, overwhelmingly involve citizens engaging in socially reckless behavior, but not habitual criminal activity. A detailed study awhile back, for example, showed that 65% of arrests resulted in no correctional supervision at all and another 27% of cases consisted of individuals sentenced to probation or jail who had no prior arrest records for crimes other than DUI. By contrast just 8% of DUI arrestees had prior non-DUI criminal records, and even then most of them were for lesser offenses.

    Likewise, the FBI’s UCR system defines larceny-theft as follows:

    The unlawful taking, carrying, leading, or riding away of property from the possession or constructive possession of another. Examples are thefts of bicycles, motor vehicle parts and accessories, shoplifting, pocket-picking, or the stealing of any property or article that is not taken by force and violence or by fraud.

    Nevertheless, larceny-theft accounts for 76% of all crimes against property reported in the UCR arrest data for 2018.

    So the question recurs. If the nation’s huge and heavily armed police forces are involved in the arrests of core criminal in just 5% of their apprehensions and are dealing with serious but mainly non-violent criminals in another 21% of arrests dealing mainly with burglaries, drunk drivers, car thieves and arsonists, what are they doing the rest of the time?

    Here is a spoiler alert. The single largest category of arrests in 2018 was for drug abuse violations, which totaled 1,654,282.

    In fact, while total arrests in 2018 were no higher than they were in 1977 despite a 100 million/50% growth in the US population, and had actually dropped from a peak of nearly 13 million in 2006, the opposite trend was extant in the case of War on Drugs arrests.

    As shown by the chart below, arrest in 2018 were nearly at peak levels and were up by more than 171% since 1977—the vast majority of which are made for drug possession generally, and marijuana possession most often.

    War on Drugs Arrests, 1980-2016

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    Not surprisingly, the next largest arrest category after drugs is one called “other assaults” for which 1,063,535 arrests were made in 2018. Yet the FBI’s own definitions raise considerable doubts as to why these are even a matter of law enforcement by the state:

    Other assaults (simple)―Assaults and attempted assaults where no weapon was used or no serious or aggravated injury resulted to the victim. Stalking, intimidation, coercion, and hazing are included.

    Then, of course, we have all the victimless and vice crimes, including the following number of arrests::

    • Prostitution and commercialized vice: 31,147;

    • Sex offenses excluding rape and prostitution: 46,937;

    • Gambling: 3,323;

    • Liquor law offenses: 173,152;

    • Curfew and loitering law violations: 22,031;

    • Vagrancy: 23,546;

    • Public drunkenness: 328,772;

    • Disorderly conduct: 329,152;

    • Forgery and counterfeiting: 50,072;

    • Weapons carrying and possession: 168,403;

    • All other offenses: 3,231,700.

    The latter huge number tells you all you need to know. The UCR lists 27 enumerated categories of crime including all of those itemized above–plus the usual suspects like fraud and embezzlement for which there were about 135,000 arrests in 2018. Yet when the whole lists is exhausted, 32% of arrests occurred for crimes that are so minor even the FBI is embarrassed to enumerate them:

    All other offenses—All violations of state or local laws not specifically identified as Part I or Part II offenses.

    So, yes, we do think there is way, way to many crimes and cops, and that de-criminalizing and de-funding law enforcement are the only route to reducing police violence.

    Indeed, over the past four decades, the constant dollar cost of policing in the U.S. has almost tripled, from $42.3 billion in 1977 to $114.5 billion in 2017, according to an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data conducted by the Urban Institute. Yet that 171% gain compares to only a 20% increase in violent crimes from 1.0 million in 1977 to 1.2 million in 2017.

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    That is, real police spending per violent crime is up from $42,300 in 1977 to $95,400 in 2017.

    Better that police did not spend 90% of their time on matters other than protecting the life and property of the citizenry; and in the process turning the Nanny State into an instrument of violence against citizens, and especially the young, poor and minorities who become ensnared in its vast over-reach.

    *  *  *

    This article was originally published at David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

  • Wealthy 20-Year-Old Arrested For Role In Black Lives Matter Riot That Caused $100,000 In Damage
    Wealthy 20-Year-Old Arrested For Role In Black Lives Matter Riot That Caused $100,000 In Damage

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 09/07/2020 – 21:30

    A 20 year old from a wealthy family is being charged for her role in participating in a 3 hour Black Lives Matter “protest” in Manhattan that resulted in nearly $100,000 worth of damage being done to businesses.

    Clara Kraebber was arrested after a barrage of destruction in Manhattan’s Flatiron district last Friday. The group was spotted chanting “Every city, every town, burn the precinct to the ground!” , according to RT.  Her group carried signs saying “Death to America” and “Free All Prisoners”. 

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    Kraebber is the daughter of an architect and child psychiatrist and comes from a family who owns homes in both the Upper East Side and Connecticut. She was demonstrating with groups calling themselves the “Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement” and the “New Afrikan Black Panther Party”.

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    She is currently an undergraduate at Rice University, where tuition averages about $50,000. According to RT, her family paid $1.8 million for their Upper East Side home and their second home – in Connecticut – features four fireplaces. 

    Eight people in total were arrested and charged with rioting – some were also charged with having weapons and burglary tools. Protesters lit trash cans on fire and wrote graffiti, including the word “abolition” near Foley Square.

    A law enforcement source stated: “This is the height of hypocrisy. This girl should be the poster child for white privilege, growing up on the Upper East Side and another home in Connecticut. I wonder how her rich parents feel about their daughter. How would they feel if they graffitied their townhouse?

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  • "No Recovery In Sight": Container Volumes At The Port Of Los Angeles Flatline
    “No Recovery In Sight”: Container Volumes At The Port Of Los Angeles Flatline

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 09/07/2020 – 21:00

    Submitted by Christopher Dembik, head of macro analysis at Saxo Bank

    In today’s edition, we focus once again on global trade and the U.S. economy in these unusual circumstances.

    One of our favorite coincident trade indicators is the evolution of container volumes at the Port of Los Angeles. As it is the number one port in the U.S. in terms of container volume and value and the busiest entryway for ocean trade with China, any major change in data could be of great significance for the global and U.S. outlooks.

    The least we can say is that the economic panorama has hardly improved in recent months if we rely on shipping data.

    YoY statistics about container volumes are still in contraction with the latest figure for July out at minus 6.11% after a lowest point reached at minus 30.94% at the start of the outbreak in March. If we look at the below chart, there is no V-shaped or U-shaped recoveries in sight for the shipping industry but rather a W-shaped recovery.

    Despite the effective containment of the outbreak in China, the global supply chain has not fully-recovered and global trade remains hampered by the resurgence of the virus in many countries, notably in some U.S. states, and related economic uncertainty.

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    The shipping industry will certainly take years to recover from coronavirus. Statistics for the month of August, that should be released around September 15, should confirm the Port of Los Angeles is not out of the woods yet and the economic recovery has reached a plateau in many developed countries, including the U.S., in August, as pointed out by numerous high-frequency data.

  • Dear Gavin Newsom, Explain This $hit!!!
    Dear Gavin Newsom, Explain This $hit!!!

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 09/07/2020 – 20:30

    We are sure, somewhere deep down in the bureaucracy of banality that is California’s representative government, there is good reason for each of these ‘policies’… but seriously, one could be forgiven for thinking that the Golden State’s massive liberal majority is just making it up as they go along to punish the most undeserving people the most vociferously.

    Presented with little comment, res ipsa loquitor…

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  • "It Was Like Stepping On My D*ck": Jake Tapper Reamed Buzzfeed Ben For Steele Dossier Upstage
    “It Was Like Stepping On My D*ck”: Jake Tapper Reamed Buzzfeed Ben For Steele Dossier Upstage

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 09/07/2020 – 20:00

    Hours after CNN reported the existence of the now-infamous Steele Dossier on January 10, 2017 – choosing to withhold key details because they hadn’t been “independently corroborated,” BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith decided to kick the door in – publishing the salacious and unverified document funded by Hillary Clinton and the DNC.

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    The decision seriously pissed off CNN‘s Jake Tapper – who emailed Smith later that day, writing “I think your move makes the story less serious and credible[.] I think you damaged its impact,” according to emails released Friday and reported by the Daily Caller‘s Chuck Ross.

    The emails were released in response to a federal judge’s order to unseal documents from a lawsuit against BuzzFeed, which was sued in February 2017 by a Russian businessman who was accused in the dossier of being a Russian agent.

    Lawyers for the Russian, Aleksej Gubarev, picked out the Tapper-Smith exchange in hopes of showing BuzzFeed failed to do its due diligence before publishing the dossier, which was funded by Democrats and compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele. –Daily Caller

    “That was pretty uncollegial[.] Not to mention irresponsible[.] No one has verified this stuff,” Tapper continued.

    Smith replied, saying that publishing the dossier was “not an easy call,” to which Tapper responded “Collegiality wise it was you stepping on my dick,” adding “You could have waited til morning.”

    “Professionally this is unverified info[.] Your guys unlike us don’t even seem to know who the former agent i[s],” Tapper continued, seemingly referring to dossier author Christopher Steele.

    Smith replied that “of course” he knew who wrote the dossier.

    Three years and many investigations later, the Dossier was proven to be a hoax, the FBI was revealed to have spied on Trump’s campaign, manipulated evidence, and lied to the FISA court – and Democrats pivoted to Ukraine in their unsuccessful attempt to remove Trump from office.

  • Beijing Delays Visas For Journalists From WSJ, CNN & Bloomberg As President Xi Cracks Down On Dissent
    Beijing Delays Visas For Journalists From WSJ, CNN & Bloomberg As President Xi Cracks Down On Dissent

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 09/07/2020 – 19:35

    In its latest attack on Western journalists that’s part of both a broader “New Cold War” with the US, and a crackdown on dissent in the aftermath of the pandemic, engineered by President Xi, Beijing is throwing up new roadblocks to stop western journalists from Bloomberg, CNN & WSJ from remaining in China.

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    The delays were couched as retaliation for the Trump Administration’s latest limitations on visa term limits for reporters working in the US on behalf  of state-controlled Chinese press. These organizations have been subjected to myriad new requirements by Trump and the administration in a push to limit electoral interference from Beijing.

    Here’s more from Bloomberg:

    Chinese authorities delayed renewing the press credentials of some journalists working for American media outlets, including Bloomberg News, CNN and the Wall Street Journal, in response to the Trump administration limiting visa terms for Chinese reporters in the US.

    The journalists in Beijing were told their residence permits will at this stage be extended until Nov. 6, which appears to coincide with the date when the 90-day visas given to Chinese press in the U.S. will need to be renewed. Two non-Americans at Bloomberg News received a letter allowing them to work and stay in the country in lieu of having official press credentials, which in the past were normally good for 12 months.

    An organization for foreign correspondents put out a statement slamming Beijing’s decision.

    A Bloomberg spokesperson declined to comment. The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China called on Beijing to reverse the move.

    “These coercive practices have again turned accredited foreign journalists in China into pawns in a wider diplomatic conflict,” the group said in a statement Monday. “The FCCC calls on the Chinese government to halt this cycle of tit-for-tat reprisals in what is quickly becoming the darkest year yet for media freedoms.”

    A spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry played down the delays, saying all the reporters affected would be allowed to stay in China for an extended period.

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    As per usual, Beijing denounced the Trump Administration’s latest crackdown on Chinese state media with characteristically aggressive rhetoric.

    At a regular news briefing later Monday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian accused the U.S. of “kidnapping” journalists and taking “hostages” in the dispute. “For China, all options are on the table,” he said, noting that the U.S. had also refused to rule out any actions.

    “If the U.S. truly cares about American journalists in China, it should extend the visas for all Chinese journalists as soon as possible instead of kidnapping Chinese and American journalists out of selfish political purposes,” Zhao said.

    Beijing has said the U.S. has expelled more than 60 Chinese media personnel and denied visas to more than 20 others. Meanwhile, the FCCC said the Chinese government had forced a record 17 foreign correspondents to leave in the first half of this year and put at least a dozen more on visas as short as one month.

    The Trump Administration has frequently taken the lead on curbing the influence of Chinese state-backed media in the US. Social media companies like Twitter have often been more focused on censoring the President and his allies.

    And for all the criticism of Beijing published by NYT and WaPo, they were still more than willing to take the CCP’s ad money.

  • California (Quietly) Limits Unpopular Law That Restricted Freelancers
    California (Quietly) Limits Unpopular Law That Restricted Freelancers

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 09/07/2020 – 19:10

    Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom quietly signed a law on Sept. 4 repealing parts of an unpopular law that put independent contractors in the state out of work and limited the earnings of freelancers, including visual artists, musicians, writers, translators, and film support crews by classifying them as employees.

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    The enactment of the new measure, which came after months of political and legal pressure from the trucking industry, companies such as Uber and Postmates, and groups such as the American Society of Journalists and Authors Inc. and the National Press Photographers Association, is a rare defeat for the labor movement in solidly progressive California.

    The new law, known as AB 2257, passed both chambers of the state legislature unanimously on Aug. 31.

    The Democratic governor announced on his website Sept. 4 that he had signed the measure but offered no explanation for why he had done so. The governor’s office could not immediately be reached for comment.

    The new law took effect immediately upon signing.

    AB 2257 amended AB 5, which attempted to determine who is a contractor and who is an employee and forced companies to reclassify their freelancers as employees. The new law provides greater flexibility to freelancers.

    When AB 5 took effect Jan. 1, that law made it hard for so-called gig-economy companies to classify people who work for them as independent contractors instead of employees. The idea being the measure was to prevent freelancers from being unfairly exploited by employers.

    Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, a San Diego Democrat, wrote AB5 to implement a 2018 California Supreme Court decision known as Dynamex Operations West Inc. v. Superior Court, that deemed many freelancers to be employees, a status that entitled them to the minimum wage, overtime pay, unemployment insurance, and health benefits.

    Employees in California are entitled to benefits not available to contractors, such as the minimum wage, health insurance, and paid time off. AB 5 was strongly backed by labor organizations critical of hard-to-unionize freelance jobs. Unions hoped the law would give them an edge in recruiting new members.

    AB 5 was enacted ostensibly to help workers by preventing their “misclassification” as non-employees.

    It adopted the so-called “ABC” test to determine employee status, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). The test stipulates that workers may only be considered independent contractors when a business proves the workers:

    “a. Are free from control and direction by the hiring company;

    b. Perform work outside the usual course of business of the hiring entity;

    and c. Are independently established in that trade, occupation, or business.”

    But mere weeks after the enactment of AB 5, which is still being challenged in the courts, the law ran into headwinds as freelance workers and others in a state with many independent contractors suddenly found themselves out of work or with their ability to earn a living severely restricted.

    It stopped freelance writers from accepting more than 35 assignments from a single publisher and hindered the ability of musicians to accept regular paying gigs. Companies outside California stopped using freelancers in the state as they feared financial penalties for violating the law.

    Gonzalez admitted there were problems back in February.

    Gonzalez wrote in a Feb. 6 tweet that she was willing to consider easing the restriction affecting journalists. “Based on dozens of meetings with freelance journalists & photographers, we have submitted language to legislative counsel that … will cut out the 35 [articles] submission cap & instead more clearly define freelancer journalism,” she wrote.

    Later in the month she reported progress on writing what turned out to be AB 2257.

    “Having heard additional feedback from a variety of freelance writers, photographers and journalists, we are making changes to Assembly Bill 5 that accommodate their needs and still provide protections from misclassification,” she said February 27.

    AB 2257 abolishes the 35 item submission limit for writers and photographers contained in AB 5. It also exempts translators, appraisers, and registered foresters from the restrictions.

    Gig-economy companies are supporting a state ballot initiative this Nov. 3, Proposition 22, that would treat app-based drivers as independent contractors, not as employees.

  • Goldman Warns Of "Near-Term Setback" For Stocks As Record Bullish Nasdaq Sentiment Suffers Near-Record Shock
    Goldman Warns Of “Near-Term Setback” For Stocks As Record Bullish Nasdaq Sentiment Suffers Near-Record Shock

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 09/07/2020 – 18:45

    In a stark reminder of the market excesses reached last week, Goldman writes that the Nasdaq had one of the largest 2-day declines in the last 30 years after the SoftBank gamma trade was exposed.

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    Meanwhile, the sheer buying frenzy into this plunge was unprecedented, and was characterized by a significant increase in options positioning into US equity and US Tech in particular, with the put/call ratio in the US reaching a historical low, the single stock skew back to pre-Covid levels and the spot-vol correlation turned into positive territory. “Such stretched option positioning has historically highlighted a negative asymmetry of near-term equity returns”, Goldman writes, pointing out that Nasdaq net equity future positioning at the peak was close to historical highs.

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    The silver lining is that as the meltup breadth was relatively narrow, so was the selloff, and here a key catalyst in addition to merely positional unwind is that the US 10y real rates increase (+8bps since the lows) “has likely triggered a rotation out of longer duration equities such as ‘Growth’ and Tech.”

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    Echoing what we said in our discussion of the unprecedented divergence between real rates and breakevens, Goldman points out that with nominal yields being anchored by central banks, “breakeven rates and real rates are more likely to move in opposite direction” adding that “while phases of increasing breakeven rates coupled with lower real rates are usually very friendly for both risky assets and safe assets, lower breakeven rates and higher real rates tend to be very negative for markets as all assets typically decline.” In line with this framework, since Sep. 2 most assets are down and multi-asset investors struggled to diversify the correction.

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    This also means that amid the gamma trade unwind, the dollar performance, usually positive in this environment, was mixed given the resilience of EM FX.

    Nonetheless, despite conceding that the risk of corrections remains elevated, and warning that “a near-term setback” is likely, Goldman expects the current bull market to continue “as the improved growth outlook coupled with supportive monetary policies should maintain the search for yield elevated and foster a compression of the ERPs.” Specifically, Goldman lists the following ten reasons why despite one of the biggest 2-day crashes in the Nasdaq on record, the levitation will continue:

    1. We are in the first phase of a new investment cycle, following a deep recession. The ‘Hope’ phase – the first part of a new cycle, which usually begins in a recession as investors start to anticipate a recovery, is typically the strongest part of the cycle. That is what we have been seeing this year.
    2. The economic recovery looks more durable as vaccines become more likely.
    3. Goldman economists have recently made upward revisions to their economic forecasts and it is likely that analysts’ expectations will follow.
    4. The bank’s Bear Market Indicator (which was at very elevated levels in 2019) is pointing to relatively low risks of a bear market despite very high valuations.
    5. Policy support remains very supportive for risk assets. There is both a central bank ‘put’ – a belief that central banks will be there to provide as much liquidity as is required – and a fiscal ‘put’ as governments have scaled up their willingness to support growth.
    6. The Equity Risk Premium has room to fall.
    7. The resumption of zero nominal interest rate policy in the recent past, together with the extended forward guidance, has created an environment of greater negative real interest rates. This should be highly supportive to risk assets in an economic recovery.
    8. Equities offer a reasonable hedge to higher inflation expectations.
    9. Equities look cheap relative to corporate debt, particularly for strong balance sheet companies (60% of US companies and 80% of European companies have dividend yields above the average corporate bond yield).
    10. The digital revolution continues to gather pace. We think this transformation of the economy and stock markets has further to go. These companies could continue to drive valuations and returns in this bull market.

  • How Do Trump & Biden Compare On Support From Military?
    How Do Trump & Biden Compare On Support From Military?

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 09/07/2020 – 18:20

    Authored by Karl Evers-Hillstrom via OpenSecrets.org,

    President Donald Trump is edging out Democratic nominee Joe Biden in political donations from members of the military, even as more U.S. troops say they would vote for Biden over their current commander in chief.

    Trump has raised nearly $1.1 million from military members, compared to roughly $859,000 for Biden. Trump receives far more campaign cash from members of the U.S. Air Force and beats out Biden among members of the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps. Biden fares better with members of the Department of Defense and U.S. Navy. 

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    President Donald Trump salutes graduates at the U.S. Air Force Academy-Falcon Stadium in Colorado Springs, Colo. last year. Image: Official White House Photo

    The president’s campaign cash lead with military donors was much higher when earlier this cycle when he had a larger overall fundraising advantage over Biden. That narrow lead could continue to slip when the campaigns officially report their August fundraising figures, as Biden raised record money last month. 

    Trump has claimed he has strong support from the military, touting pay raises he and Congress authorized for active-duty troops. But a recent Military Times poll found that Biden leads Trump by 4 points among active-duty troops. Roughly 38 percent of active-duty troops said they had a favorable view of Trump, compared to 50 percent holding an unfavorable view of the president. 

    The president’s support with the military has declined during the course of his presidency. A 2016 Military Times poll found that Trump had a 2-to-1 lead over then Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. At the start of his presidency, Trump’s approval with troops sat at 46 percent. His decline has come amid criticism from former high-ranking defense officials. The most shocking rebuke came from former Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who described the president as a threat to the Constitution after Trump sent troops into Washington, D.C., to quell protests. 

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    Via OpenSecrets.org

    Citing anonymous officials at the Defense Department and U.S. Marine Corps, The Atlantic reported last week that Trump described dead American troops as “losers” and “suckers.”

    Trump strongly denied the report, calling it “Fake News.” Trump has previously disparaged military heroes in front of large audiences, including the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), saying in 2015, “I like people who weren’t captured.” He’s also publicly feuded with Gold Star families. 

    Biden does best compared to Trump with donors from the U.S. Navy. Trump clashed with Navy leadership and fired Navy Secretary Richard Spencer over the department’s handling of a Navy Seal accused of war crimes who was pardoned by Trump. Trump also fired a Navy captain who wrote a letter to military leadership asking for help with a COVID-19 outbreak on his warship. That captain, Brett Crozier, received a roaring applause from his crew when he left the ship. 

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

    Biden has sought to make inroads with former military officials who have expressed disgust with Trump’s presidency. More than 70 former senior national security officials, all Republicans, endorsed Biden last month, calling Trump “unfit to lead.”

    Former Secretary of State and four-star general Colin Powell endorsed Biden during the Democratic National Convention, calling the Democrat “a president we will all be proud to salute.” Trump responded on Twitter by calling Powell “a real stiff who was responsible for getting us into the disastrous Middle East Wars.”

  • Daily Briefing – September 7, 2020
    Daily Briefing – September 7, 2020


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 09/07/2020 – 18:10

    In this Real Vision Daily Briefing, managing editor, Ed Harrison, and senior editor, Ash Bennington, answer questions from Real Vision subscribers, about markets, their respective journeys, as well as Real Vision itself. Ed shares his experience of working in the foreign service, and he describes how his time spent working in the fixed income markets caused him to become more receptive to Austrian economics. Ash discusses his journey of transitioning from working in fintech to becoming a financial reporter, and he also explores his passion for cryptocurrency.

  • Old Man Winter To Plunge Restaurants Into Further Chaos
    Old Man Winter To Plunge Restaurants Into Further Chaos

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 09/07/2020 – 17:55

    Expanded patios have been key to survival for some restaurants, clubs, and entertainment venues able to make up for the lost indoor space due to public health orders limiting capacity, or, in some cases, outright banning indoor gatherings. With fall and winter steadily approaching, some restaurateurs are fretting the cold season as it could put them out of business, reported CP24. 

    “If the next few months of COVID does not go away or they don’t find a solution or medication or something, it’s going to cripple the city for sure,” said Charles Khabouth, who operates Toronto-based Ink Entertainment, a company that runs dozens of clubs, restaurants, entertainment venues, and music festivals.

    Ink Entertinament Properties 

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    Khabouth warned, “It’s going to get worse because come October, November, December, it gets cold, there’s no traffic, people are not on patios and people are not walking around.” 

    To his point, heating degree day (HDD), a measurement designed to quantify the demand for energy needed to heat a building, will steadily increase in Canada and the US through mid-Oct. 

    HDD Canada 

    HDD US 

    In Canada and certain northern parts of the US, cold weather could render outdoor seating or standing areas for restaurants or clubs useless, further pressuring cash flows as indoor spaces continue to be limited or banned. This poses a significant problem for operators that must shrink operations in the colder months as people stay home, unwilling to have a meal or drink in freezing outdoor weather. 

    Ahead of the winter season, operators must choose to keep staff and operations running at full tilt or reduce the workforce in anticipation of collapsing demand come October, November, December, January, and February. 

    Some restaurants are purchasing electric and gas heaters to keep patrons warm during the upcoming cold season – with those added costs, does that mean operators will pass it along to patrons? 

    Here’s the next question: Will Old Man Winter lead to an even larger bust cycle of restaurants? 

  • O'Reilly: What's The 'Matter' With BLM?
    O’Reilly: What’s The ‘Matter’ With BLM?

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 09/07/2020 – 17:30

    Authored by Bill O’Reilly,

    A friend of mine has a sign on his lawn that says “Black Lives Matter.” Since I grew up with him in Levittown, New York, where blacks were not allowed to purchase homes, that piqued my interest.

    He explained to me that justice is important to him and he believes African-Americans are denied a fair shake in America.

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    Millions of people believe that and their opinions should be respected.

    I see the justice issue as more about poverty than skin color at this point in history.

    My opinion should be respected as well.

    Then I asked my friend if he was aware of the philosophy behind the Black Lives Matter movement. I mean a sign is one thing, a well thought out political plan is quite something else.

    Most Americans, including my boyhood chum, have no clue.

    Enter Alicia Garza, one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter Global Foundation and a proud Marxist, and we’re not talking Groucho here. Nope, Alicia is a follower of Karl Marx, one of the architects of communism. She freely admits that.

    Ms. Garza is also an “opinion contributor” for USA Today and she lays it all out there – if you read between the lines.

    On August 30, Alicia Garza wrote this:

    “We are in the midst of a black rebellion, spurred by decades of unequal treatment and undue violence against our communities…

    “My work is about uprooting structural racism from every aspect of our society – our economy, our government and our communities.”

    You can read “uprooting” as “overthrowing” because that is exactly what the Black Lives Matter Global Foundation wants to do. The well thought out plan is to use racial disenchantment to batter the entire “white” power structure and eventually destroy the capitalistic system.

    It could work because few understand the end game including the Democratic Party, and more than a few corporations that are pumping millions of donated dollars into the Black Lives Matter “movement.”

    The smoke signals are key.

    The far left including BLM are now demanding “economic” justice.

    That means onerous taxation on the affluent and the seizure of private property through a series of “wealth taxes.”

    Then there’s “housing justice.”

    That means the government pays for sheltering low-income Americans.

    “Education justice” means free college.

    “Worker justice” means guaranteed jobs and a “living wage.”

    You get the idea.

    A central government run by “woke” activists would provide pretty much everything and would confiscate private and corporate wealth to pay for it.

    So that’s what’s in play and, again, the pro athletes, the casual liberal folks, the corporate virtue-signalers have no blankin’ clue.

    However, some in the media do understand but will not report the truth for fear their bosses will harm them.

    So the next time you see a BLM sign please consider there is much more to this movement than words on paper or graffiti on a wall. Marxism is now being slyly mainstreamed in America. Somebody resurrect Paul Revere.

  • NYC Commercial Real Estate Sales Plummet 54% To Lowest On Record
    NYC Commercial Real Estate Sales Plummet 54% To Lowest On Record

    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 09/07/2020 – 17:05

    While Wall Street debates if it is time to move on from the Big Short 2.0 (malls) to the Big Short 3.0 (hotels), the broader commercial real estate market continues to implode and nowhere more so than in ground zero of the covid/riot crisis, New York City, where CRE deals have hit a brick wall as the pandemic continues to roil the local economy.

    According to the Real Estate Board of New York, investment sales totaled $10.5 billion across 1,229 recorded deals in the first half of 2020, a 32% drop in transaction volume and a 54% plunge in total consideration compared to the first half of 2019, and a record low since the Real Estate Board of New York began reporting the data in 2015.

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    Apartment buildings suffered the biggest drops in prices, at 50% on average. Offices and hotels saw decreases of 28% and 37%, respectively, while prices for retail properties were flat.

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    Some more details:

    • Citywide investment sales transactions declined 32%, consideration declined 54% and the average price declined 32% year-over-year.
    • Multifamily rental, elevator transactions declined 7%, consideration declined 56% and the average price declined 53% year-over-year.
    • Multifamily rental, non-elevator transactions declined 32%, consideration declined 42% and the average price declined 13% year-over-year.
    • Office transactions declined 27%, consideration declined 47% and the average price declined 27% year-over-year.
    • Garages/gas stations/auto transactions declined 31%, consideration increased 18% and the average price increased 71% year-over-year
    • Vacant land transactions declined 30%, consideration declined 19% and the average price increased 15% year-over-year.
    • Industrial transactions declined 37%, consideration declined 60% and the average price declined 37% year-over-year.
    • Hotel transactions declined 70%, consideration declined 81% and the average price declined 37% year-over-year.
    • Retail transactions declined 27%, consideration declined 27% and the average price remained flat year-over-year.
    • Commercial condo transactions declined 68%, consideration declined 98% and the average price declined 93% year-over-year

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    “We continue to see the devastating and long-lasting impacts the pandemic has had on the health and stability of the New York economy,” James Whelan, the trade group’s president, said in a statement Friday.

    “Real estate is a fundamental driver of the city’s economy”, he added summarizing perfectly just why NYC is in so much trouble.

    The total tax revenue for the City and State generated from investment sales was $314 million, with $62 million in NYS transfer tax and $252 million in NYC transfer tax. Total tax revenue in the first half of 2020 was down 49% from the previous 6 months and 58% from the previous 12 months, suggesting that NYC will likely hike taxes on investment sales to make up for the shortfall, resulting in even greater declines in investment sales.

    According to the REB NY, the largest transaction in the first half of 2020 was the $978 million sale of the Lord & Taylor Building, 424 5th Avenue, from WeWork to Amazon in March. As Bloomberg notes, many deals have been frozen as the gap between what buyers are willing to pay and what sellers will accept has widened to a record.

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