- The Right To Be Let Alone: When The Government Wants To Know All Your Business
The Right To Be Let Alone: When The Government Wants To Know All Your Business
Authored by John and Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent.”
– Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis
There was a time when the census was just a head count.
That is no longer the case.
The American Community Survey (ACS), sent to about 3.5 million homes every year, is the byproduct of a government that believes it has the right to know all of your personal business.
If you haven’t already received an ACS, it’s just a matter of time.
A far cry from the traditional census, which is limited to ascertaining the number of persons living in each dwelling, their ages and ethnicities, the ownership of the dwelling and telephone numbers, the ACS contains some of the most detailed and intrusive questions ever put forth in a census questionnaire.
At 28 pages (with an additional 16-page instruction packet), these questions concern matters that the government simply has no business knowing, including questions relating to respondents’ bathing habits, home utility costs, fertility, marital history, work commute, mortgage, and health insurance, among other highly personal and private matters.
For instance, the ACS asks how many persons live in your home, along with their names and detailed information about them such as their relationship to you, marital status, race and their physical, mental and emotional problems, etc. The survey also asks how many bedrooms and bathrooms you have in your house, along with the fuel used to heat your home, the cost of electricity, what type of mortgage you have and monthly mortgage payments, property taxes and so on.
And then the survey drills down even deeper.
The survey demands to know how many days you were sick last year, how many automobiles you own and the number of miles driven, whether you have trouble getting up the stairs, and what time you leave for work every morning, along with highly detailed inquiries about your financial affairs. And the survey demands that you violate the privacy of others by supplying the names and addresses of your friends, relatives and employer.
The questionnaire also demands that you give other information on the people in your home, such as their educational levels, how many years of school were completed, what languages they speak and when they last worked at a job, among other things.
Individuals who receive the ACS must complete it or be subject to monetary penalties.
Although no reports have surfaced of individuals actually being penalized for refusing to answer the survey, the potential fines that can be levied for refusing to participate in the ACS are staggering. For every question not answered, there is a $100 fine. And for every intentionally false response to a question, the fine is $500. Therefore, if a person representing a two-person household refused to fill out any questions or simply answered nonsensically, the total fines could range from upwards of $10,000 and $50,000 for noncompliance.
While some of the ACS’ questions may seem fairly routine, the real danger is in not knowing why the information is needed, how it will be used by the government or with whom it will be shared.
In an age when the government has significant technological resources at its disposal to not only carry out warrantless surveillance on American citizens but also to harvest and mine that data for its own dubious purposes, whether it be crime-mapping or profiling based on whatever criteria the government wants to use to target and segregate the populace, the potential for abuse is grave.
As such, the ACS qualifies as a government program whose purpose, while sold to the public as routine and benign, raises significant constitutional concerns.
The Rutherford Institute has received hundreds of inquiries from individuals who have received the ACS and are not comfortable sharing such private, intimate details with the government or are unsettled by the aggressive tactics utilized by Census Bureau agents seeking to compel responses to ACS questions.
The following Q&A is provided as a resource to those who want to better understand their rights in respect to the ACS.
Q: What kind of questions are contained in the ACS?
A: The ACS contains questions that go far beyond typical census questions about the number of individuals within the household and their age, race, and sex. The survey combines intrusive questions with highly detailed inquiries about your financial affairs. Furthermore, the questionnaire also demands that recipients provide information about their family and other people in their home, such as their educational levels, how many years of school were completed, what languages they speak, when they last worked at a job, and when occupants of your home are away from the house.
Q: How will this information be used?
A: The Census Bureau states that information from this survey is used to assist a wide variety of entities, from federal, state and local governments to private corporations, nonprofit organizations, researchers and public advocacy groups. The Bureau lists 35 different categories of questions on its website and offers an explanation on how the information is to be used. For 12 of those categories, the information is used to assist private corporations. For another 22, the information is used to aid advocacy groups, and in nine of those cases, the Census Bureau states that the responses will be used by advocacy groups to “advocate for policies that benefit their groups,” including advocacy based on age, race, sex, and marital status. Thus, information obtained through the ACS is not simply used to inform government policy in a neutral manner, but is also being provided to private actors for the purpose of promoting corporate and/or political agendas.
One concern raised by the Brookings Institute is the use of ACS information by law enforcement for “crime mapping,” a surveillance tool used to predict crime and preemptively target certain neighborhoods for policing. It is “most effective” when “analysts can see the relationship between various types of criminal incidents (e.g., homicides, drug dealing) and neighborhood characteristics (risk factors such as poverty, population density, and vacant housing), pinpoint where crimes are most likely to occur (hot spots), and focus police resources accordingly.” The Brookings Institute notes that because the ACS provides data every year, rather than every ten years, crime mapping is more effective and cheaper.
Q: Are my responses kept confidential?
A: While the Census Bureau claims that an individual’s information will be kept strictly confidential, it does require a recipient to put their name on the survey, ostensibly for the purpose of asking follow-up questions in the event of missing or incomplete answers. This means your answers could be linked to you even if it is forbidden by law to share your individual responses.
Q: Am I required by law to fully complete the American Community Survey?
A: Federal law makes it mandatory to answer all questions on the ACS. A refusal to answer any question on the ACS or giving an intentionally false answer is a federal offense. The Census Bureau also maintains that responding to the ACS is mandatory and that recipients are legally obligated to answer all questions.
Q: Is there a penalty for refusing to answer American Community Survey questions?
A: The law requiring answers to the ACS also provides that a person who fails to answer “shall be fined not more than $100.” The actual fine for a refusal to complete the ACS could be much greater because a failure to respond to certain ACS questions could be considered a separate offense subject to the $100 fine.
Q: Has the government prosecuted persons for refusing to answer the American Community Survey?
A: While The Rutherford Institute has been made aware of Census Bureau agents engaging in harassing tactics and threatening behavior, to date, we are unaware of the Census Bureau having levied any financial penalties for non-compliance with the ACS. However, a refusal to answer the survey violates the letter of the law and a prosecution might be brought if the government decides to adopt a policy to do so.
Q: How does the Census Bureau typically ensure that people complete the survey?
A: Those who do not answer the ACS risk repeated overtures—by mail, by phone and in person—from Census Bureau employees seeking to compel a response. Typically, the Census Bureau will telephone those who do not respond to the survey and may visit their homes to coerce the targets to respond.
The Census Bureau boasts a 97% response rate to the survey via these methods, but critics argue this constitutes harassment. One recipient who did complete the survey but whose answers were misplaced by the Census Bureau wrote about his experience. First, a Census Bureau employee left a note at his apartment asking him to contact her. When he did, the employee asked him to allow her into his home. When he refused, the employee “turned up twice unannounced at my apartment, demanding entry, and warning me of the fines I would face if I didn’t cooperate.” Only after he filed a complaint with the Census Bureau did the agency realize he had actually completed the survey, thus ending its attempts to enter his home.
Q: Is this an unconstitutional invasion of privacy?
A: There are significant and legitimate questions concerning the authority of the government to require, under threat of prosecution and penalty, that persons answer questions posed by the ACS. The ACS is not part of the enumeration required by Article I of the Constitution, and that constitutional provision only applies to a census for purposes of counting the number of people in each state. As noted, the ACS seeks much more information than the number of persons in a household.
In other contexts, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that citizens have no obligation to answer questions posed by the government and are free to refuse to do so. This same principle could apply to questions posed by ACS agents. However, because the government has not brought a prosecution for a refusal to respond to the ACS, the question of a person’s right to refuse has not yet been decided by a court.
Q: What are my options for objecting to the ACS survey as an intrusion on my Fourth Amendment rights?
A: If you receive notice that you have been targeted to respond to the ACS and you desire to assert your right of privacy, you can voice those objections and your intent not to respond to the ACS by writing a letter to the Census Bureau. The Rutherford Institute has developed a form letter that you may use in standing up against the government’s attempt to force you to disclose personal information.
If you are contacted by Census Bureau employees, either by telephone or in person, demanding your response, you can assert your rights by politely, but firmly, informing the employee that you believe the ACS is an improper invasion of your privacy, that you do not intend to respond and that they should not attempt to contact you again. Be sure to document any interactions you have with Bureau representatives for your own files.
If you believe you are being unduly harassed by a Census Bureau employee, either by telephone or in person, it is in your best interest to carefully document the time, place and manner of the incidents and file a complaint with the U.S. Census Bureau.
Remember, nothing is ever as simple or as straightforward as the government claims.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, any attempt by the government to encroach upon the citizenry’s privacy rights or establish a system by which the populace can be targeted, tracked and singled out must be met with extreme caution.
While government agents can approach, speak to and even question citizens without violating the Fourth Amendment, Americans should jealously guard what Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis referred to as the constitutional “right to be let alone.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/08/2023 – 23:40 - Senior Intel Official Warns Of TikTok's Influence On US Citizens
Senior Intel Official Warns Of TikTok’s Influence On US Citizens
Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
U.S. National Security Agency Director Paul Nakasone has said he is concerned about what data Chinese-owned TikTok may be collecting on users and how it could influence American children.
National Security Agency Director Gen. Paul Nakasone testifies before a House (Select) Intelligence Committee hearing on diversity in the Intelligence Community on Capitol Hill in Washington on Oct. 27, 2021. (Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters) Nakasone expressed his concerns during testimony delivered before the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 7.
Asked by Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) about any worries he has about TikTok’s influence on kids in America, Nakasone responded: “TikTok concerns me for a number of different reasons. One is the data that they have.”
“Secondly is the algorithm and the control, who controls the algorithm. Third is the broad platform influence operations, as we talked about previously. It’s not only a fact that you can influence something, but you can also turn off the message as well when you have such a large population of listeners,” Nakasone said.
The NSA is part of the Defense Department and is responsible for U.S. cryptographic and communications intelligence and security.
TikTok, which is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, has soared in popularity over the years and is now used by more than 100 million Americans.
However, Washington has repeatedly raised concerns that the app poses a threat to national security, with American user data potentially being used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Expanding Government Power to Ban TikTok
There are also concerns that the recommendation algorithm on the app may be used to manipulate what users see as part of influence operations.
Last month, the White House ordered that TikTok be removed from all government devices and systems within 30 days, although there are exceptions in cases of national security, law enforcement, or security research activities.
Nakasone’s remarks came the same day that Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and John Thune (R-S.D.) led a group of 12 bipartisan senators in introducing legislation intended to expand the federal government’s power in order to ban TikTok and other foreign-owned entities from operating in the United States.
The bill, also known as the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology (RESTRICT) Act, would increase the Commerce Department’s power to review and prevent information communications and technology transactions from tech companies that are owned by six adversarial foreign nations: China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela.
“Congress needs to stop taking a piecemeal approach when it comes to technology from adversarial nations that pose national security risks,” said Thune in a statement on Tuesday. “Our country needs a process in place to address these risks, which is why I’m pleased to work with Senator Warner to establish a holistic, methodical approach to address the threats posed by technology platforms – like TikTok – from foreign adversaries. This bipartisan legislation would take a necessary step to ensure consumers’ information and our communications technology infrastructure is secure.”
Read more here…
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/08/2023 – 23:00 - Up In Smoke: OK Voters Crush Pot Legalization Proposal
Up In Smoke: OK Voters Crush Pot Legalization Proposal
A dearth of polling had left the outcome of an Oklahoma marijuana legalization referendum in doubt — until Tuesday, when opponents positively crushed the measure, 63% to 38%. Remarkably, it failed in every single county.
State Question 820 offered Okies a chance to legalize consumption by adults 21 and older, along with possession of up to an ounce, and the growing of six mature plants and six seedlings.
Via The New York Times Proponents of legalization had understandably high hopes: The conservative state already boasts one of America’s most easy-going medical marijuana regimes, and a poll from October had likely voters backing recreational legalization 49% to 38%.
However, between the staleness of that poll and the fact this was a stand-alone vote rather than being part of a general election, prospects were far from certain. Conservatives tend to outperform when turnout is lower, and that seemed to be a major factor in this vote, which saw turnout of just 25.3%, compared to 40.1% in the midterms.
Oklahoma’s rejection continues a string of rejections of legalization drives in conservative states, as Arkansas, North Dakota and South Dakota voters shot down similar proposals in the November midterm election.
OK Gov. Kevin Stitt said he wants DC to decide how Oklahomans are allowed to intoxicate themselves (Ben Felder/The Frontier) Republican Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt opposed the legalization. In February, Stitt provided a pathetic rationale for his position that was an affront to the principles that animated the American Constitution:
“There shouldn’t be a patchwork of states doing different things. We need to let the feds tell us if it’s legal or illegal, we shouldn’t let the states tell us that.“
That proclamation would be cringeworthy no matter who uttered it, but the fact that those words came from a supposed “conservative” makes them all the more exasperating.
The 10th Amendment provides that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Despite profoundly flawed Supreme Court opinions to the contrary, the federal government has no constitutional authority whatsoever to declare marijuana or any other drug illegal.
Source: DISA Despite the Oklahoma setback, the trend toward individual marijuana liberty is overwhelming: Twenty-one states have now legalized recreational use, and a 41% plurality of Republicans back recreational pot freedom.
“We didn’t get State Question 820 across the finish line tonight, but the fact remains that marijuana legalization is not a question of ‘if,’ it’s a question of ‘when’,” said Yes On 820 campaign director Michelle Tilley on Tuesday evening.
Meanwhile, Oklahomans who want to use the plant can try to do so within the state’s medical cannabis regime. About one in ten Oklahoma adults holds a medical license. Unlike most states that allow medical use, Oklahoma has no list of qualifying conditions and patients can receive a doctor’s recommendation over the internet.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/08/2023 – 22:40 - Singapore's Central Bank Boosts Gold Reserves By 30% To Nearly 200 Tonnes
Singapore’s Central Bank Boosts Gold Reserves By 30% To Nearly 200 Tonnes
Submitted by Ronan Manly, BullionStar.us
In January 2023, Singapore’s central bank, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) returned to gold buying again, adding a massive 44.6 tonnes of gold to its official reserves, and thereby boosting Singapore’s gold holdings from 153.8 tonnes to 198.4 tonnes.
In percentage terms, this gold buying represents an incredible 29% increase in Singapore’s gold holdings in just one month. In fact, this is Singapore’s second largest largest gold purchase ever in one month, the only gold purchase that was larger was when Singapore first bought 100 tonnes of gold from South Africa in 1968.
In typically discreet fashion, MAS did not announce its recent gold buying via press release or via any other publicity. It merely updated the data on its website in the latest version (end of January) of a monthly report called ‘International Reserves and Foreign Currency Liquidity’.
Singapore: MAS Gold Holdings as of end December 2022 Then when the January 2023 version of the report was published at the end of February, it now shows a volume in fine troy ounces for gold of 6,378,041 ozs. That’s an increase of 1,434,600 ozs, or 44.62 tonnes. And in percentage terms, a 29.02% increase.
Singapore: MAS Gold Holdings as of end January 2023 71 tonnes in less than 2 Years
This is the second major gold buying spree by Singapore’s MAS in less than 2 years. The last time Singapore added to its monetary gold reserves was over a 2-month period between May and June 2021, when it bought 26.35 tonnes of gold over the two months, of which 16.4 tonnes was in May 2021 and 9.95 tonnes in June 2021. Those additions took Singapore’s gold holdings from 127.42 tonnes to 153.76 tonnes.
Prior to May-June 2021, Singapore had held 127.42 tonnes of gold, a figure which had not changed since at least 2002 (as far back as World Gold Council records go). 100 tonnes of this total had been purchased by Singapore in one transaction in 1968 (while attending a World Bank meeting in Washington D.C), and the other 27.42 tonnes was added at other undefined times between after 1968 but before 2002.
Singapore’s central bank (MAS) purchased a massive 44.6 tonnes of gold during January 2023, taking its total gold holdings from 153.7 tonnes to 198.3 tonnes. Link below https://t.co/TbXgsjTesz
— BullionStar (@BullionStar) March 6, 2023
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In the modern era, the latest gold buying by MAS means that in just 20 months since May 2021, Singapore has added made substantial gold purchases on three occasions (May 2021, June 2021 and January 2023), adding a total of 71 tonnes of gold to its reserves.
The May-June 2021 gold purchases by MAS were also very low key, and although they were added to the MAS ‘International Reserves and Foreign Currency Liquidity’ reports in June and July 2021, respectively, no one noticed these updates until the data was also updated onto the IMF’s International Financial Statistics (IFS) database in November 2021. See BullionStar article “In low key move, Singapore’s central bank adds 26 tonnes to its gold reserves”, dated 27 November 2021 for details.
Monetary Authority of Singapore Average Buying Price of US$ 1912
In a footnote to its ‘International Reserves and Foreign Currency Liquidity’. MAS states that the values of its ‘Official reserve assets and other foreign currency assets’ are stated as ‘Book value of assets converted at market exchange rates prevailing at end of month.”
This usage of book value valuation is actually quite handy as it allows up to roughly calculate what price MAS paid for the new 44.6 tonnes of gold.
As of end of December 2022, the 4,943,411 ozs of gold held by MAS was valued at a combined US$ 1.7945 billion.
As of the end of January 2023, the 6,378,041 ozs of gold held by MAS was valued at a combined US $ 4.5384 billion.
This means that the new 1,434,600 ozs of gold bought by MAS in January was valued at a book value of US$ 2.7439 billion, which is an average purchase price of US$ 1912.66. This price is in line with gold prices during January 2023, where the gold price began the year in the US$ 1800s, but rose to above US$ 1900 on 13 January and then stayed in the US$ 1910-1930 range for the rest of the month.
The average LBMA PM closing gold price in January 2023 was US$ 1898.62. The max close was US$ 1932.45 on 26 January, the min close was US$ 1834 on 5 January. MAS therefore appears to have made its recent gold purchases mostly during the second half of January 2023.
Showcase in the GIC (Sovereign Wealth Fund) Office in Singapore commemorating Singapore’s first gold purchase of 100 tonnes in 1968 – “A Torn Dollar Bill And Gold For Singapore”. Showcase in the GIC (Sovereign Wealth Fund) Office in Singapore commemorating Singapore’s first gold purchase of 100 tonnes in 1968 – “A Torn Dollar Bill And Gold For Singapore”.
On a book value basis, the addition of 44.6 tonnes of gold also means that Singapore’s total gold reserves now constitute 1.56% of its official reserve assets, up from 0.62% of official reserve assets at the end of December.
Conclusion
For such a massive central bank gold buying event, this latest purchase of 44.6 tonnes of gold by Singapore during January has had almost no coverage in the mainstream financial media.
This is despite Singapore’s purchase, at 44.6 tonnes, being the biggest single central bank gold purchase of 2023, and despite it also being more than the total gold holding additions which China claims to have made over both January and February (39.8 tonnes in total).
The MAS January gold purchase, which boosts Singapore’s gold holdings up to 198.4 tonnes, also shoots Singapore 3 places higher in the rankings of ‘World Official Gold Holdings by Country’, and Singapore now sits in 26th position, behind Belgium which claims to hold (227.4 tonnes of gold), and Algeria (which claims to hold 173.6 tonnes of gold.
The 2022 edition of the World Gold Council’s central bank gold reserve survey found that central banks hold gold for a number of reasons, chief among then that gold “performs during times of crisis“, gold is “a long-term store of value“, gold “has no default risk“, and gold is “an effective portfolio diversifier“. MAS annual reports say very little about gold, except that gold “is held as a long-term investment“.
As to where Singapore’s 198.4 tonnes of gold is stored, that is the billion dollar question. There is no mention at all in the annual reports or financial statements of where MAS claims that Singapore’s gold is being vaulted.
It’s probable that a portion of Singapore’s gold is stored in the vaults of the Bank of England in London, and possibly another part is stored in Switzerland under the custody of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) – which uses vaults of the Swiss National Bank.
There have been rumors that some of Singapore’s national gold reserves are also held in secret subterranean vaults in Singapore guarded by legendary Gurkhas of the Singapore Police Force’s Gurkha Contingent. As to how true these rumors are, one would have to ask Singapore’s MAS, and MAS would most likely, politely decline to say.
This article was originally published on the BullionStar.us website under the same title “Singapore’s central bank MAS boosts gold reserves to nearly 200 tonnes“.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/08/2023 – 22:20 - New Mexico Moves To Hobble Private Paramilitary Border Patrols
New Mexico Moves To Hobble Private Paramilitary Border Patrols
New Mexico lawmakers are advancing legislation which would restrict private paramilitary border patrols which have emerged in recent years to try and reduce the flow of migrants illegally crossing the southern US border.
Albuquerque police detain members of the New Mexico Civil Guard, an armed paramilitary group, following the shooting of a man during a protest over a statue of Spanish conquerer Juan de Oñate on June 15, 2020, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. (Adolphe Pierre-Louis/The Albuquerque Journal via AP, File) The legislation is similar to what lawmakers have proposed in Oregon and Vermont, which have introduced initiatives to rein in activities by private militarized groups, Fox News reports.
Idaho lawmakers, meanwhile, are moving in the opposite direction – and have advanced a bill which would repeal a state law banning private militias.
Democratic state Rep. Raymundo Lara of Sunland Park is cosponsoring the New Mexico initiative and says it gives district attorneys new tools and discretion by making it a crime for armed paramilitary organizations to engage in public patrols capable to causing injury or death with provisions regarding intimidation. The bill includes felony penalties including prison.
The bill emerged Monday from House committee vetting for a possible floor vote, with the backing of Democrats. Republican House legislators have raised concerns that the proposal could interfere with neighborhood-watch style groups that respond to crime or limit opportunities for businesses in New Mexico that have provided tactical training to visiting security forces. –Fox News
According to Lara, the Democratic state rep, the New Mexico proposal is in response to incidents in 2019 in which armed members of the United Constitutional Patriots stopped migrants near the international border, as well as a 2020 incident in which men with rifles and tactical equipment were present at an Albuquerque protest.
Recently, the New Mexico Civil Guard was banned by a state district court judge from ‘acting as a military unit’ without authorization.
The bill, introduced by Lara, defines a paramilitary group as three or more individuals with a command structure aimed at publicly functioning as a combat, enforcement or security unit. Banned activities include interfering with government operations, government proceedings, actions that deprive others of their rights, and posturing deceptively as peace officers.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/08/2023 – 22:00 - Will There Be Mass Noncompliance On ATF's Pistol Brace Rule?
Will There Be Mass Noncompliance On ATF’s Pistol Brace Rule?
Submitted by Gun Owners of America,
On Jan. 31, the ATF published its final rule regarding pistol braces to the federal register. Entitled “Factoring criteria for firearms with attached stabilizing braces,” this rule essentially amends the definition of “rifle” to include millions of firearms previously classified as pistols.
For those unfamiliar with firearms law, what that means is that ATF can then classify all pistol-braced firearms with barrels under 16 inches (most, if not all pistol braced firearms on the market fit this definition) as Short Barreled Rifles, or SBRs which the National Firearms Act or NFA regulate.
Owners of these firearms now face a choice. Destroy their guns (or at least the brace), register them with ATF as SBRs, or turn them in.
This rule essentially functions as a massive registration scheme for pistol-braced firearms, and the ATF knows this. ATF is no stranger to using existing federal law to create “regulations” subverting the legislative process, as they used a similar method in 2018 to “ban” bump stocks.
ATF, after determining that bump stocks were not machine guns on many separate occasions, changed its mind and reclassified bump stocks as machine guns. By doing so, they regulated bump stocks under the NFA, which banned all machine guns produced after 1986.
This method of banning what was effectively a range toy opened the floodgates for potential ATF overreach, as presidents Trump and Biden found that they could use “regulatory authority” to subvert Congress and govern exclusively by executive fiat, having federal agencies like ATF make law through regulatory rulemaking.
Now the ATF has taken the drastic step of reclassifying pistol braces. The difference here, though, is while estimates of bump stock ownership amounted to around 520,000, estimates of pistol brace ownership are estimated to be between 10 to 40 million.
So, what did the American public do when ATF mandated that bump stocks be turned in on destroyed? Did they turn in their bump stocks to ATF?
No, they did not.
In fact, according to ATF, only 0.105% of bump stocks in circulation were ever turned in. That amounts to about 546 out of a total of 520,000.
According to @ATFHQ, gun owners turned in a whopping 0.105% of all bump stocks (or 546 of ~520,000) after President Trump’s arbitrary & unconstitutional ban😂 pic.twitter.com/1GPqK43IQ7
— Aidan Johnston (@RealGunLobbyist) January 18, 2023
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Should ATF expect the same for pistol-braced firearms? Only time will tell, but if the bump stock ban was any indication, gun owners don’t seem to be too keen on turning in their firearms to the federal government.
And who can blame them? ATF hasn’t exactly been forthcoming or consistent in its rulemaking process. Not too long ago, ATF stated in court that their recent “definition of frame or receiver” rule allows companies to sell pistol frame blanks without background checks, as long as those frames do not include jigs and tools to manufacture into firearms. Then, months later, ATF issued an open letter reversing their position and classifying these same frames as firearms.
Aidan Johnston, Director of Federal Affairs for Gun Owners of America, had this to say:
“The ATF is not a legislative body, and they are playing with people’s lives and livelihoods with their thoughtless and draconian ‘rules,’ and that’s why GOA will be attacking this rule from every angle—legally, legislatively, and administratively.”
GOA has a history of overturning these unconstitutional rule changes. In 2020, when the ATF under the Trump administration attempted to regulate pistol braces, GOA rallied our members to take action. GOA members flooded the proposed rule with comments. Because of this, ATF abandoned its attempt and withdrew the rulemaking.
While GOA just took ATF to court over this issue and filed for a preliminary injunction to halt the rule, we’re also interested in cutting the ATF’s ability to regulate Short Barreled Rifles, Short Barreled Shotguns, and similar types of firearms.
To strip the ATF of its ability to regulate these types of firearms, we’re targeting the core of the issue, the National Firearms Act. The outdated and unconstitutional NFA allows ATF the leeway to make these sorts of unconstitutional rule changes. We’re working with Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas and Congressman Andrew Clyde of Georgia to pass the SHORT Act, which would remove Short Barreled Rifles and Shotguns from the NFA.
But we can’t do it alone. We need your help fighting back against the rogue ATF and the anti-gun Biden administration. Help us fight by calling your Senators and Congress members and asking them to support the SHORT Act.
* * *
We’ll hold the line for you in Washington. We are No Compromise. Join the Fight Now.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/08/2023 – 21:40 - "Dovish" Janice Eberly Is Frontrunner To Replace Brainard As Fed Vice Chair: Report
“Dovish” Janice Eberly Is Frontrunner To Replace Brainard As Fed Vice Chair: Report
After it emerged that the recently appointed Chicago Fed president Austan Goolsbee – prominent Democratic politician and Obama advisor – got the job thanks to the recommendation of a firm which employs his wife, casting into doubt the objectivity not only of the selection process but of Goolsbee’s qualifications and thereby destroying any chance Goolsbee had of failing up even more and taking the Fed vice chair seat recently vacated by Lael Brainard, the list of potential candidates shrank to just a few potential names.
Well, as of this evening, the number of possible Lael Brainard replacements has shrank to just one, and according to Bloomberg the frontrunner in the White House search for the new Fed vice chair is Northwestern University Professor Janice Eberly.
Citing “people familiar”, Bloomberg reports that Eberly – who served as chief economist at the Treasury Department under Barack Obama – has emerged quickly as a candidate in the weeks since Brainard was picked as President Joe Biden’s top economic aide. As part of her vetting process, Eberly met for an interview with Jeff Zients, Biden’s chief of staff, as well as with Brainard and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, a former Fed chair. A final decision has yet to be made made.
The Biden administration has indicated that it wants to fill the crucial position relatively soon, although preferably with a candidate that fits the mandatory Democrat identity policy checklist: a woman, a racial minority, or LGBTQ. Eberly, to the best of our knowledge, checks at least one of these boxes. Biden also been urged to choose a Latino candidate to succeed Brainard, with 34 lawmakers signing a letter calling for such a trailblazing appointment.
For some progressives that’s not enough, however, and they have been urging the White House to fill the vacancy with someone who would do more to defend the Fed’s mandate to support the labor market, and be less likely to push for further interest-rate hikes they warn could derail the economy. In other words, someone who is willing to nudge up the Fed’s inflation target.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday that the White House would announce developments “in the near future.”
Bharat Ramamurti, deputy director of the White House National Economic Council, told Bloomberg Television this week that the administration wants to “find somebody who truly believes in the Fed’s dual mandate, somebody who believes in the president’s economic vision.”
Eberly, if nominated, could run into opposition from lawmakers who have pushed for more diversity among the Fed’s upper ranks, testing Biden’s support in the Senate. Biden’s nominee must be confirmed by the US Senate, where Democrats hold a slim majority.
Other names that have been in the mix for the role include Harvard University professor Karen Dynan, who along with Eberly was seen as a leading candidate for the position. While Dynan also held a key role in the Obama administration, succeeding Eberly as chief economist at the Treasury, Eberly is seen as the more dovish of the two, Bloomberg Chief US Economist Anna Wong wrote in a research analysis.
Dynan would be one of the Fed’s most hawkish voices, Wong projected. “Eberly, on the other hand, might be closer to Brainard in her optimism that the Fed can get inflation back to target without generating a significant slowdown in the labor market,” Wong wrote.
Here is some more on Eberly’s bio from her page at Northwestern:
Janice Eberly is the Senior Associate Dean for Strategy and Academics, the James R. and Helen D. Russell Professor of Finance and former Chair of the Finance Department. Before joining the Kellogg faculty, she was a faculty member in Finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Professor Eberly served as the Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the U.S. Treasury from 2011 to 2013 after being confirmed by the U.S. Senate. In that capacity she was the Chief Economist at the Treasury, leading the Office of Economic Policy in analysis of the U.S. and global economies and financial markets and development of policy recommendations on micro and macroeconomic issues.
Professor Eberly’s research focuses on finance and macroeconomics. Her work studies firms’ capital budgeting and investment decisions and household consumption and portfolio choice. She also examines the interaction of these spending and investment choices with the macroeconomy. Her current research emphasizes household finance and intangible investment. Her work has been published in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, Econometrica, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics, among other academic journals. She has received a Sloan Foundation research fellowship and grant funding from the National Science Foundation and the CME Trust.
Professor Eberly has been an Associate Editor of the American Economic Review and other academic journals and Senior Associate Editor of the Journal of Monetary Economics. Previously Professor Eberly served on the staff of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors and on the advisory committees of the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). She was elected Vice President of the American Economic Association for 2020.
Professor Eberly is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is Editor of the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. She has won numerous awards for her teaching, including Chairs’ Core Teaching Awards and Outstanding Professor Awards from the Executive Master’s Program. She is a Trustee of the TIAA-CREF funds since 2018. Professor Eberly received her Ph.D. in Economics from MIT.
Her full CV is here.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/08/2023 – 21:20 - MTG's "National Divorce" May Be The Only Way To Prevent Bloodshed
MTG’s “National Divorce” May Be The Only Way To Prevent Bloodshed
Submitted by Ben Sellers via Headline USA,
Democrats’ righteous indignation last month at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s calls for a “national divorce” came as no surprise.
Conscious uncoupling / Graphic by Ben Sellers, Headline USA; photo by Hilary Weeks via GOOP; state illustrations by Office of Paul Sahre It was just the latest in an endless parade of things that the Left was for before it was against, to borrow a catchphrase from consummate waffler John Kerry.
It is hard, in fact, to come up with a position on their current platform where Democrats have not flip-flopped when political opportunism or necessity struck.
And so it was that the only party ever to have seceded from the Union found itself comparing Greene to its own former leader, Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
Jefferson Davis Greene wants a “national divorce” she is a traitor and needs to go to jail for sedition….why isn’t anybody doing anything…. pic.twitter.com/CFnXxkYiV3
— Anthony Fowler (@antfowler30) February 25, 2023
But in fairness to Democrats of yore, while one could armchair-quarterback whether the ends justified the means in eradicating slavery, the provocative actions of radical Republican abolitionists like John Brown—who murdered innocent families, and raped women and children—offered at least some justification to antebellum Southern Democrats.
Their own elected leaders, Democrat presidents Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, had failed to fix the problem of how to phase out the barbaric practice, and the prospect of Republican President Abraham Lincoln effecting a peaceable solution that did not threaten their lives and livelihoods seemed grim, even to the vast majority of Southern families who owned few or no slaves.
The impasse was a lot like the current one that America faces under an extreme Left that, like John Brown, would rather destroy every last shred of civility and compromise than to coexist with the “evil” customs of the status quo.
Instead of slavery, though, the great evil of the modern era is democracy itself.
NO ALTERNATIVES
A system that gives everybody one voice and one vote is, after all, inherently unfair to a party that regards itself as perpetually oppressed and marginalized by the cultural (and political) majority.
That leaves only a limited range of solutions, not unlike those in the classic 1996 movie Independence Day.
Indeed, Greene’s call for a brokered settlement—a conscious uncoupling, if you will, of red- and blue-majority states—may be the only realistic solution that will avert a national strife so horrific that it will make the bloody and violent Civil War feel like the leisurely, guided tours of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by comparison.
Already, President Joe Biden has raised the stakes by warning would-be freedom fighters that it will take more than a few hunting rifles to secure their God-given right to liberty.
If the only glue binding together the union is a threat of military force and unthinkable bloodshed, then it is already lost.
Nonetheless, not everyone is on board yet with the formal terms of Greene’s divorce proposal.
Shockingly, while Democrats would get prime territory from the bargain—including America’s three most populous cities, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, as well as its most desirable coastal real estate—some have scoffed at the idea.
What, after all, is the point of their unrelenting pursuit of wealth and power through Leninist social revolution if, in the end, there is nobody of consequence for them to exert their dominion over?
Or, more cynically, perhaps, maybe their kneejerk aversion to the idea comes by virtue of the fact that Greene said what they, themselves, had secretly been thinking.
And in some cases, as with the unabashedly leftist New York Review, those thoughts were not so secret.
UNITED IN DISUNITY
Just weeks before the 2022 election, as the idea of a red-wave reckoning against the Biden administration was at its fever pitch, leftist academes Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson offered up the very same idea as Greene but seemed to draw none of the performative objections that she did.
“Several commentators have suggested that, historically, radical swings in domestic politics and virulent strains of racism and fascism have in fact been normal in the United States, and that talk of prospective large-scale political violence is therefore overblown,” said the stochastic terrorist duo in their Sept. 22 screed titled “These Disunited States.”
“But the breadth and depth of the present threat to the country seems unprecedented in post–Civil War America,” they continued. “… The US now appears to be in a state of ‘unstable equilibrium’—a term originating in physics to describe a body whose slight displacement will cause other forces to move it even further [sic] away from its original position.”
At times, their thought-piece turned into a farcical clown-show of projectionism, spuriously suggesting that Republicans alone were to blame for refusing to roll over to a radical agenda that the Biden administration lacks any mandate or authority to enact.
“Although Democrats occasionally reveal impulses toward reconciliation, Republicans largely do not,” they whined. “Most have put up implacable resistance to Biden’s efforts” in areas like the economy and the environment where Biden’s policies have proven to be abject failures.
But ultimately, their proposed solution proved that there is one area in which the radical Left and members of the conservative Right, such as Greene, can find common ground.
“The splits between the two halves of the nation—red and blue, right and left—increasingly appear irreconcilable,” they said.
“Today, new state legislation on abortion, LGBTQ rights, gun rights, free speech, and public health is making red and blue states radically different,” they continued—accurately, albeit from the wrong vantage point. “Many Americans have relegated their political adversaries to the category of ‘the other,’ an ominous prelude to the dehumanization that facilitates violence in civil conflict.”
Simon and Stevenson went on to suggest that the threat of right-wing violence just might lead to entirely justifiable left-wing violence, and that the danger of a radical Republican establishment assuming control through the democratic process would be a valid reason for leftists to want to secede, rather than allowing practices they disagree with to become further entrenched.
“Before civil strife acquires critical momentum, Democrats need to embrace a more radical political solution to stave it off,” they decided.
“Purposeful defederalization is one possibility,” they added. “There is a case to be made that the raison d’être for federalism has passed.”
SALVAGING A HOUSE DIVIDED
The ironic juxtaposition of this five-month-old treason treatise with the reaction to Greene’s tweet is, of course, a source for smug amusement for conservatives. But then, pointing out Democrat hypocrisy has grown a bit old and tiresome, like shooting fish in a barrel.
There is a more important point to be gleaned from it, which is that the idea of a separation may be the only way to save a country so dangerously divided that both parties agree a split is necessary.
Achieving such an end will not be easy—and it may take a bipartisan coalition of candidates who actively campaign on negotiating its terms in the same way that the country was forged.
That would allow us to establish a special relationship between the new nations—let’s call them Trumpland and Obamica—recognizing that there will still be more in common between them than any other two countries given their shared cultural history and, presumably, their roots in democratic principles.
Perhaps, at least for a time, there might even be an open-borders agreement to allow those caught in the wrong territory to resettle elsewhere.
Some might argue that dividing the nation in two would weaken its position as a global super-power to counter the occidental alliance of China and Russia.
However, those countries are already exploiting America’s intrinsic ideological differences in order to weaken and distract us. So, to remove the bickering from within should help sharpen our focus on the extrinsic threats.
While it is true, as Lincoln said, that a house divided against itself cannot stand, a house built on a seismic fault-line such as ours is better off relocating altogether.
Ben Sellers is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/realbensellers.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/08/2023 – 21:00 - UMass Casualties: 'Borg' Drinking Fad Sends 46 To Hospital
UMass Casualties: ‘Borg’ Drinking Fad Sends 46 To Hospital
Twenty-eight ambulances were sent to the University of Massachusetts Amherst last weekend after binge-drinking students embraced a drinking fad popularized on TikTok.
The volume of patients had Amherst appealing to neighboring towns and the regional EMS task force for help, CBS reports.
Forty-six students were sent to the hospital, all of whom were eventually discharged.
One of the borg-toting partiers at UMass Amherst (TikTok/kettlebellkel) The fad drink is called a Borg, which stands for “blackout rage gallon.” Online recipes call for taking a gallon jug of water, emptying up to half of it, and topping it off with vodka and some kind of flavoring. Some drinkers add energy drinks or powders, while others choose electrolytes.
The binge drinking at UMass coincided with the student body’s annual “Blarney Blowout” St. Patrick’s Day partying at off-campus apartmetns. “Literally anybody and everybody was carrying a borg around,” freshman Tess Mollo told the Daily Hampshire Gazette. “It seems like that was the main attraction of Blarney.”
This Borg trend which was popularised in 2020 has spread like wildfire and in American colleges.
One part water, one part vodka and an energy shot.
— Kimmie 2 Times (@Trackmann2) February 10, 2023
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Borgs are touted as a better way to drink, with the idea that staying hydrated will minimize hangovers. However, the jugs are for just one person to drink from — and, depending on the ratio, some of them contain 17 to 40 shots of alcohol.
“If you measure wrong … you don’t know the exact amount of alcohol you’re putting into it, so it’s dangerous,” sophomore Maddie Saart told the Gazette.
In a statement, UMass said the incident was “the first time the university has observed notable use of borgs,” and that it will “consider steps to improve alcohol education and intervention.” The Amherst Fire Department says none of the cases were life-threatening. Two students were arrested for underage drinking.
Part of the borg-life is giving one’s jug an amusing name, such as Borgan Freeman, Ruth Bader Gins-borg, or Sponge-Borg Square Pants. The Borg hashtag has racked up almost 83 million views on TikTok.
@kettlebellkel bad day to be a borg at umass #umass #blarney ♬ original sound – kelley Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/08/2023 – 20:40 - "The End Of Oil In America": Biden May Reject Alaska Oil Project
“The End Of Oil In America”: Biden May Reject Alaska Oil Project
Authored by Naveen Anthrapully via The Epoch Times,
Alaska’s Republican governor Mike Dunleavy is not expecting the Biden administration to approve the Willow project—an oil and gas plan proposed by crude oil producer ConocoPhillips.
“We’re preparing for them to deny this,” Gov. Dunleavy said on Fox News. “And it’s sad to say that, but their idea of a compromise, apparently, is to allow only two drilling pads for this oil play called Willow, about 180,000 barrels per day at peak, instead of the three or more that really the investors, ConocoPhillips, need to have to make this thing work for everybody.”
“It’s an unfortunate game that’s being played between the White House, the extremists, and environmentalists that got him there and, unfortunately, the people of Alaska in this country,” Dunleavy said.
“We’re preparing, hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst.”
The $8 billion Willow oil field development project was initially proposed in 2018. It is set within the 23 million-acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPRA), the largest expanse of federal public lands in the country, located on Alaska’s North Slope.
ConocoPhillips had initially proposed five pads as part of the project. In the oil industry, a pad refers to a temporary drilling site. Under the Trump administration, the Department of the Interior (DOI) had approved the proposal in October 2020.
But a lawsuit by multiple groups, including Earthjustice, forced the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to recommend scaling down the number of pads from five to three. The Biden administration is expected soon to announce its decision on the matter.
Opposition And Support
Environmental activists have vehemently opposed the project, citing pollution concerns. A petition at Change.org asking the Biden administration to not allow the Willow project has garnered more than three million signatures.
“If this project were to be approved, Willow would emit more climate pollution annually than more than 99.7 percent of all single-point sources in the country. The first oil to be used from this project wouldn’t be for years,” the petition insists.
However, lawmakers and trade unions from Alaska are pushing for the Biden administration to approve the project that is expected to hire 2,500 construction workers in the state. Willow is projected to output 180,000 barrels of oil per day, or around 1.5 percent of total American oil production.
Over its 30-year lifespan, Willow is expected to produce over 600 million barrels of oil while contributing up to $17 billion in revenues for state and federal governments as well as local communities.
The Alaska House and Senate have passed a unanimous resolution supporting the Willow project.
“The elected leaders who wrote and passed these resolutions recognize Willow’s economic significance, its national security benefits, its environmental advantages, and its ability to create needed opportunities all across the state,” said Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, in a press release on Feb. 27.
“The message from Alaska is crystal clear: we urge the Biden administration to listen to our voices, as well as BLM career scientists, and re-approve Willow to allow an economically viable project to advance.”
Future of American Energy
The Willow project forces the Biden administration to choose between two sides: environmental groups and supporting Democrats that make up a key portion of the president’s support base, and Democrat-leaning constituencies in Alaska that are looking forward to the project.
There is speculation that the Biden administration may decide to approve the project, but reduce the number of pads from three to two, something that Dunleavy pointed to during the Fox interview. However, doing so could make the project economically unviable, pushing ConocoPhillips away from it.
The Alaska governor predicted that President Joe Biden would seek out help from other nations to meet its oil demand while shutting down the Willow project.
“Alaska probably has more sanctions put against it by our own government than our government has against Venezuela,” Dunleavy said. “So, this is not the end of oil, it’s just the end of oil in America.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/08/2023 – 20:20 - USAF Reveals Stunning Images Of B-21 Raider Stealth Bomber
USAF Reveals Stunning Images Of B-21 Raider Stealth Bomber
New images of the B-21 Raider stealth bomber have been released by the US Air Force, showcasing a wider perspective of the aircraft’s fuselage.
“We also get a much better look at the B-21’s deeply-recessed air intakes — arguably the B-21’s most impressive feature so far,” the military blog The Drive wrote.
The new images come after the USAF and Northrop Grumman revealed the B-21 at the defense manufacturer’s facility in Palmdale, California, in early December.
No photographs of the B-21, which has been under development since 2015, were released to the public until last December. Even with a team of 8,000 workers from Northrop, USAF, and 400 suppliers across 40 states working on the project, there were no leaked images.
There is still much to be learned about the B-21, but it is widely understood that it will replace the USAF’s Rockwell B-1 Lancer and B-2 bombers by the end of the decade.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/08/2023 – 20:00 - Exploring The Five Best US Cities For Bitcoin Enthusiasts
Exploring The Five Best US Cities For Bitcoin Enthusiasts
Authored by Jenna Hall via BitcoinMagazine.com,
As Bitcoin adoption grows, some cities are embracing the technology as hubs for businesses, events and lifestyles tailored to Bitcoiners…
Bitcoin has taken the world by storm since its creation in 2009. In fact, about 46 million Americans own bitcoin. And as its popularity continues to grow, so does the desire for those adopting it to utilize it in their everyday lives.
As a result, several cities in the United States have emerged as hotspots for Bitcoin enthusiasts, entrepreneurs and investors. Take a look at five cities leading the way in Bitcoin adoption and innovation, and what makes them such attractive destinations for Bitcoiners.
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
Washington State has a long history with Bitcoin and blockchain technology. In 2018, Wenatchee, a small town three hours east of Seattle, became an epicenter of bitcoin mining in the United States. Since then, cities in Washington like Seattle have seen a dramatic increase in both people and businesses interested in utilizing digital currencies.
Seattleites can buy and sell their digital assets at any of the 202 bitcoin ATMs in the city. Speaking of buying and selling, the state of Washington doesn’t tax the purchase of bitcoin — a unique advantage for Bitcoin enthusiasts living in the state.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
As a major center for technology and innovation, Los Angeles has a growing number of businesses and individuals experimenting with bitcoin and other digital currencies. Some individuals have even been able to successfully pay the rents for their apartments in Los Angeles using bitcoin.
The city has truly embraced the use of blockchain technology, with many boutiques, restaurants, toy stores, florists and other businesses accepting bitcoin as payment. In 2021, the iconic Staples Center was renamed Crypto.com arena, further cementing the relationship that bitcoin and other digital currencies have with the City of Los Angeles.
MIAMI, FLORIDA
Miami mayor Francis Suarez has made it clear that he’s an advocate of digital currencies and wants to make Miami the “capital of crypto.” In fact, in 2021, Mayor Suarez became the first American politician to officially take his city salary in bitcoin and, in a recent interview, he said he’s still getting paid this way.
Every year, the City of Miami hosts several events and conferences for blockchain enthusiasts to attend, including the upcoming 2023 Bitcoin Conference, the largest Bitcoin conference in the world. There is also ample opportunity to use bitcoin in everyday life there, with the city having around 886 bitcoin ATMs and numerous shops, businesses and restaurants accepting bitcoin.
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK
With its prominence in both the financial and technological worlds, New York City is a prime destination for Bitcoin users and blockchain companies alike. The city’s position as a hub for cryptocurrencies was solidified in 2015 when the New York State Department of Financial Services introduced a licensing framework for virtual currency businesses, though many Bitcoin proponents have seen this as antagonistic to innovation.
Still, people living in New York have access to over 179 bitcoin ATMs and Consensus, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency events, was launched in the city in 2015. The city’s mayor, Eric Adams, has said he’d like to see New York turned into a “Bitcoin hub,” taking the mantle from Miami.
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
With San Francisco being one of the biggest tech capitals of the world, it probably doesn’t come as a surprise that it’s also one of the top cities to live in for Bitcoin users. The city is a home to many well-known cryptocurrency exchanges that make buying and selling bitcoin possible, including Binance.US and Coinbase.
The San Francisco and San Jose areas boast 474 bitcoin ATMs and have a wide variety of businesses, restaurants, retail stores, nightclubs, hotels and property managers that accept bitcoin. The city also hosts many blockchain conferences and events, including the annual San Francisco Blockchain Week, when blockchain companies and enthusiasts come together from all over the world to discuss the future of digital currencies.
The world of Bitcoin is constantly changing and evolving, and so are the cities embracing it. From New York to San Francisco and beyond, each of the country’s Bitcoin hotspots has something unique to offer. Whether you’re looking for a thriving startup scene or a supportive community of Bitcoin enthusiasts, these cities are sure to provide an exciting environment for anyone looking to deepen their involvement in the world of Bitcoin.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/08/2023 – 19:40 - Another Atmospheric River To Pound Central California
Another Atmospheric River To Pound Central California
California has suffered from a devastating drought that caused widespread problems for many years. Climate alarmists (such as Greta Thunberg) screamed at the top of their lungs that the world would end… However, following a few short months of a conveyor belt of atmospheric rivers, extreme to severe drought conditions have dramatically eased.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports a new atmospheric river is approaching the Central Coast of California, which is likely to result in rain, wind, and thunderstorms towards the end of the week.
“We’re expecting the onset to begin early Thursday morning along the coast, but by late morning we are expecting it to become more widespread,” Roger Gass, a forecaster with the weather service, told news website SFGATE.
“We’ll see rain increase in intensity and coverage through the day Thursday and raining continuing into the night and into Friday morning,” Gass said.
Parts of the storm will begin to hit the Central Coast on Wednesday afternoon. The main part won’t arrive until Thursday afternoon and last through Friday. Several feet of snow is expected for areas above 6,000 feet in elevation. Below 5,000 feet, such as the Sierra Nevada foothills, rainfall totals are forecasted to range between 2 to 7 inches.
“Will there be a moderate to strong & warm Atmospheric River storm this weekend in CA? Yes. Will there be flooding from hvy rain & snowmelt? Also yes,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain tweeted.
The latest deluge comes as extreme and severe drought conditions in the state have eased since the parade of atmospheric river storms began battering the state in late December.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/08/2023 – 19:20 - Chevron CEO Warns That Premature Transition To Low-Carbon Would Be "Painful And Chaotic"
Chevron CEO Warns That Premature Transition To Low-Carbon Would Be “Painful And Chaotic”
Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,
Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said that maintaining secure and affordable energy supplies amid the push to decarbonize is one of the biggest challenges of the day while warning that a premature shift to low-carbon risks a disorderly transition that would be “painful and chaotic.”
Wirth made the remarks during Monday’s session of S&P Global’s CERAWeek conference in Houston, Texas, one of the biggest annual events for the energy industry.
He told attendees that maintaining secure and affordable supplies amid the transition to the low-carbon economy was “one of the greatest challenges of all time.”
Wirth warned that a disorderly energy transition could be “painful and chaotic.”
“We have to be very careful about turning system A off prematurely and depending on a system that doesn’t yet exist and hasn’t been proven,” he added.
His warning about the risks of a premature energy transition were echoed by other speakers, who urged industry leaders to avoid poorly thought-out policies that would disrupt energy supplies and drive up prices for consumers.
While some advocated for faster decarbonization, others emphasized the need for a well-planned and coordinated timeline for the transition.
Wirth’s remarks highlight one of the key themes of the event, namely the so-called energy trilemma, which is balancing energy affordability, security, and transition.
‘Cannot Responsibly Unplug the Energy System of Today’
Daniel Yergin, vice chairman of S&P Global and chairman of the CERAWeek conference, told Forbes that a major focus of the conference is how best to navigate in a “much more turbulent and confusing energy picture” that characterized the past year, which he said has been “very dramatic” for the industry.
Yergin cited Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as one example of the turbulence impacting the industry. Disruption to fossil fuel supplies to both industry and consumers helped push fuel prices higher and contributed to decades-high inflation in the United States and elsewhere.
During Monday’s conference, some industry insiders viewed the fallout from disruptions to Russian supply as a reminder to avoid hasty and ill-considered policies that cut off fossil fuels or drive up prices.
Sultan al-Jaber, chief executive of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company and president-designate of the COP28 climate summit, said in a keynote speech at the event that energy industry leaders should look to their experience and expertise to find ways to “decarbonize quicker” and “future-proof sooner.”
At the same time, al-Jaber warned that the world “cannot responsibly unplug the energy system of today until the system of tomorrow is ready.”
Liam Mallon, president of ExxonMobil Upstream Company, said during one of Monday’s sessions that each country would naturally take a different path on energy transition, depending on the available resources.
U.S. energy envoy Amos Hochstein said that the most difficult part of decarbonizing is mapping out and coordinating a timeline.
“I think if you’re going to go through the greatest transformation that the world has seen in over 100 years, of unplugging from one energy system and creating a whole other one, you can’t just do it without planning it out,” Hochstein said.
Energy Security
Yergin told Forbes that the disruptions of the past year or so have revived discussions about energy security, which had largely fallen off the table in the United States thanks to the shale revolution and with an added boost from former President Donald Trump’s domestic energy policies.
“If you remember, seven or eight U.S. presidents talked about becoming energy independent, and it often seemed like, oh, well, that’s just a campaign slogan, but it will never happen,” Yergin told the outlet.
“But then, lo and behold, over a decade or so, the U.S. became energy independent. And that had a big economic impact. It’s also had a big political impact. And it also meant that people sort of forgot about security. But that sure is back on the table today,” he added.
In 2019, under Trump, the United States produced more energy than it consumed for the first time in 62 years, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
Republicans have been critical of President Joe Biden for pushing energy policies that they see as hampering domestic production. They have often singled out Biden’s cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline and measures that restricted impending energy projects like halting new oil and gas leases.
Biden has made fighting climate change and de-carbonizing the economy one of the hallmarks of his presidency.
Trump, meanwhile, recently outlined his vision for America’s energy policies, vowing to pull the United States out of the Paris climate deal if elected while pledging to eliminate regulations that hold back domestic energy production and promising to rapidly approve energy infrastructure projects.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/08/2023 – 19:00 - JPMorgan Sues Jes Staley Over Potential Epstein Fallout
JPMorgan Sues Jes Staley Over Potential Epstein Fallout
JPMorgan is suing former executive Jes Staley to hold him responsible for any damages which may stem from lawsuits accusing the bank of facilitating Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation.
As Bloomberg reports, the bank filed a third-party complaint on Wednesday afternoon against Staley in Manhattan federal court. According to the filing, Staley should be held liable if allegations about his relationship with Epstein are found to be true.
The filing comes weeks after the US Virgin Islands revealed bombshell emails between Staley and Epstein from 2010 referencing Disney princesses, presumably in the context of girls procured for sexual activities.
“That was fun,” Staley allegedly wrote to Epstein. “Say hi to Snow White.“
To which Epstein replied: “[W]hat character would you like next?”
“Beauty and the Beast.”
Epstein also emailed Staley photos of young women in seductive poses, the filing continues.
JPMorgan responded – claiming that the emails fail to show that minors were victimized, or that “force, fraud or coercion” were used against women. The bank has asked the judge to dismiss the case, in which the USVI and Epstein accusers say JPMorgan is liable for facilitating Epstein’s sex trafficking of minors, because they ignored obvious red flags while continuing to provide banking services to the prolific pedophile.
The close ties between Staley, once JPMorgan’s private banking chief, and Epstein have been at the core of two suits claiming the bank knew or should have known about Epstein’s crimes and kept him on as a client anyway. But Staley himself was not named as a defendant in either suit. -Bloomberg
As Bloomberg further notes, JPMorgan’s new filing could shift some of the liability to Staley himself.
Staley and Epstein exchanged upwards of 1,200 emails over a period of several years. In 2013, Staley left JPMorgan to become CEO of Barclays, which he left in 2021 following a probe by the UK Financial Conduct Authority into his relationship with Epstein.
Epstein, meanwhile, had around 55 accounts with JPMorgan between 1998 and 2013, which contained hundreds of millions of dollars. At least 20 individuals paid through JPMorgan accounts were “victims of trafficking and sexual assault in Little St James,” according to the USVI.
We can only assume this filing means that there’s something big coming, and JPMorgan knows it.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/08/2023 – 18:40 - Politico Surrenders To Woke Tantrum By Millennial Staffers, Now Has 'Banned Words' List
Politico Surrenders To Woke Tantrum By Millennial Staffers, Now Has ‘Banned Words’ List
Progressive millennials within Politico threw a giant temper tantrum, and got their way.
As Amber Athey, author of The Snowflakes’ Revolt writes in The Spectator, what began as a meltdown over conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who guest-authored the outlet’s flagsahip newsletter in December of 2020, has turned into a complete ‘lord of the flies’ organization with petulant children ‘taking ideas from college campuses into the newsroom and pushing the editorial line further to the left than ever before,’ as Athey describes it.
A few months after the Shapiro meltdown, a March 2021 article by political reporter Gabby Orr about how Republicans have positioned themselves as defenders of women’s sports against transgender athletes was the next shoe to drop. The internal revolt which followed ‘marked a sea change in how the publication reported the news.”
Orr was then dragged into a meeting with offended colleagues;
As a source briefed on the situation explained to me, Orr was informed by Politico’s director of editorial diversity initiatives Robin Turner that two colleagues had voiced concerns about her story. Turner wanted to arrange a meeting to discuss them. During the meeting, Orr was asked about her employment history at the Washington Examiner, a center-right outlet, and asked why the story omitted any transgender voices — though it had extensively quoted Kate Oakley, senior counsel at the Human Rights Campaign, an activist organization dedicated to LGBTQ+ issues.
Orr’s colleagues also complained that she quoted conservatives, such as American Principles Project director Terry Schilling and former White House policy adviser Stephen Miller, without “contextualizing” their comments. Schilling had pessimistically praised left-wing activists for their ability to convince the American public that transgender people were facing a wave of violence even though when “you look at the numbers… it’s, like, forty people.” Orr, her colleagues argued, should have explicitly told readers that those remarks were offensive and transphobic. -The Spectator
One meeting attendee was offended by the phrase “biological women,” which appeared a grand total of three times in the piece, and was deemed ‘offensive to transgender readers.’
Following the meeting, Robin Turner, the outlet’s director of editorial diversity, suggested that the offended colleagues be crowned “sensitivity readers,” to ensure that Orr wouldn’t cause further offense to sensitive readers.
Six months earlier, Orr had written a 5,000-word Politico cover story on the same subject – trans athletes – which drew zero internal complaints. According to Athey, however, it was a ‘bad-blooded Zoom meeting about Shapiro guest-editing Playbook’ which emboldened progressive staff to start pushing back against articles that didn’t pass their woke purity tests.
Things get worse
On July 2, 2021, Politico brought in three transgender individuals they thought would help the newsroom learn to report on transgender issues in a “more comprehensive and inclusive way.” In another Zoom meeting, they lectured reporters about the ‘inherent transphobia’ in their reporting.
In an email Athey obtained from Politico editors summarizing the “highlights” from their inclusivity sermons, reporters were told that a “neutral” position on transgender issues likely came from “white, cisgender men,” and therefore should be assumed to be inaccurate. What’s more, gendered words can be rooted in “exclusion,” and can cause “trauma” for transgender and gender-neutral individuals.
According to one former Politico reporter, the panelists complained that the word “mother” could potentially be offensive when used by reporters. The trans activists also mocked reporters struggling with the grammatical implications of referring to people by plural pronouns, such as “they/them.”
“So many non-trans journalists get caught up in the ‘meaning’ of certain words that they don’t realize the many ways that a certain word can mean different things to different people, and the ways in which various languages carry trauma and carry triggering motivations for folks and how our feelings about the meaning of certain words are rooted in exclusion,” said Tre’vell Anderson, then editor-at-large at Xtra.
What?
The panelists warned journalists that they cannot simply cover “both sides” of the transgender issue, because they might be elevating transphobic voices. “The job of journalists historically always has been to speak truth to power and it’s a violation of journalistic ethics to entertain any conversation that paints transphobia as legitimate,” Sosin said.
What do these folks consider to be anti-trans or transphobic? Sosin has said that the phrase “biological male” is an “anti-trans slur” and that it’s transphobic for women not to want to share a bathroom with a man. Howe complained on Twitter that they were called “sir” on the phone by a FedEx employee. Anderson has described bills banning biological males from women’s sports as “anti-trans” legislation. Factual language, honest mistakes and reasonable concerns about deep-rooted biological differences will not be tolerated by the trans lobby. -The Spectator
According to one source, the gender discussion was a gateway triggering, causing colleagues to argue over terms such as “birthing person” vs “birthing moms,” due to potential offense.
The woke mob then tried to unionize, according to one former staffer, which “was merely an extension of the woke crowd showing their true colors after the Shapiro firestorm.” The Daily Beast even called them out, questioning whether they were the “woke police,” following concerns expressed over the effort.
Banned words
Several weeks after the transgender sermon, Politico appointed a new standards editor to oversee editorial content – former White House correspondent Anita Kumar. Under her, a new 2022 style guide was implemented which includes a list of ‘noninclusive’ words deemed verboten. Via The Spectator:
-
- Mankind
- Man-made
- Manhunt
- Crack the whip: unacceptable because of origins in slavery
- Waiter or waitress: server should be used instead
- Biological gender, biological sex, biological woman, biological female, biological man, or biological male
- Illegal immigrant or illegal alien
- Cake walk: “originated during slavery” and thus perpetuates “racist motifs”
- In reference to illegal migration: onslaught, tidal wave, flood, inundation, surge, invasion, army, march, sneak and stealth
- Anchor baby
- Chain migration: this is a term used by “immigration hard-liners”
- Peanut gallery: “the cheapest seats often occupied by Black people and people with low incomes”
- Third-world countries: too “derogatory”
The guide also warns reporters not to say a transgender individual ‘identifies’ as a certain gender, or to describe the border crisis as a ‘crisis’ because “while the sharp increase in the arrival of unaccompanied minors is a problem for border officials, a political challenge for the Biden administration and a dire situation for many migrants who make the journey, it does not fit the dictionary definition of a crisis.”
“Generally, avoid references to a transgender person being born a boy or girl, and opt for phrasing such as ‘identified at birth as boy/girl,’” the guide cautions. “A person’s biology does not take precedence over their gender identity, and such oversimplifications can invalidate the person’s current, authentic gender.”
Reporters should also consider “using gender-neutral language like ‘pregnant people’ or ‘people using birth control’… as there are non-female identifying people who are able to become pregnant, require reproductive healthcare, etc.”
Oh, and “Unlike Black, white should not be capitalized in any instances.“
As Athey notes towards the end, “Thanks to the constant complaints by woke staffers, transgender coverage at Politico now reads like pure propaganda rather than well-informed and reasoned reportage.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/08/2023 – 18:25 -
- New Bill Would Classify Conservative Speech As 'Domestic Violence Extremism'
New Bill Would Classify Conservative Speech As ‘Domestic Violence Extremism’
Authored by Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov via Headline USA,
Proposed legislation that would classify conservative free speech as domestic terrorism is being called “the most dangerous bill in legislative history.”
One of the infamous J6 violent rioters kneels in front of the Washington Monument. / PHOTO: AP Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson is aggressively pushing legislation that would establish a 13-member panel to determine what constitutes disinformation and misinformation rising to the level of “domestic violence extremism,” according to The Center Square. The panel would also collect data on incidents of their pickings of domestic violent extremism and classify noncriminal activities or speech as such.
Free speech advocates blasted the bill for targeting conservatives and criminalizing anyone who expresses an opinion that runs counter to a regime-approved narrative.
“This commission is specifically designed to target conservatives and quash any government opposition, which is why the legislation purposefully ignores Antifa and Black Lives Matter extremists. Indeed, it expressly supports those tactics,” wrote Seattle KTTH talk-show host Jason Rantz, who called it “the most dangerous bill in legislative history.”
According to Rantz’s interpretation of comments that AG Ferguson made in a January interview with PBS, the idea behind the bill is to “take preemptive measures to stop actual domestic terrorist acts through community intervention,” such as compelling people identified as “extremists” to undergo counseling.
“Let’s engage in prevention, of getting folks — avoiding them being radicalized in the first place. If somebody is radicalized and wants removal, move away from that, how can we help them with counseling, for example, to get them away from that ideology?” Ferguson told PBS host Laura Barrón-López.
“So, looking at from a more holistic standpoint, we think, addresses prevention, addresses helping folks who’ve been radicalized and take a more holistic view of this to address what is a huge challenge, not just in Washington state, but all across the country.”
However, Rantz noted that the bill goes far beyond just that goal.
“They say this is about violence, but it’s not about violence. It’s actually about speech,” he told Fox News on Friday.
“We already have laws on the books that very clearly address violence. What they’re trying to do with this commission is create what they’re calling a ‘public health approach’ to some of these ideologies.”
Rantz also explained that the commission could see the opposition to critical race theory, mask mandates and radical gender ideology connected to “white supremacy.”
“They are singularly focused on the Right,” Rantz said. “What this commission will end up doing is… recommending legislation that could not only lead to imprisoning people for having certain kinds of political positions, but also forcing them into counseling.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/08/2023 – 18:20 - Capital Markets Have Reached The 'Singularity'
Capital Markets Have Reached The ‘Singularity’
Most investors have lived (and died) by the adage that “there is no alternative” to equities for the last decade or more – as global central bank repression has forced every Tom, Dick, & Harriet into ever more risky assets in search of yield… or some return.
However, a funny thing happened when “don’t fight The Fed” began to mean doing something that the commission-rakers and asset-gatherers wanted it to mean – stock prices fell, bond yields rose, and inflation chewed up any real income gains the average-joe felt.
“This is the way” that markets have been for a year or so now to the point where something shocking has just happened.
While we all know you should never “cross the streams”, it appears we have reached the capital market equivalent of the ‘singularity’: rates, equities, and credit yields have all converged.
For the first time since 2001, 6-month US money closed above the earnings yield (1/PE) of the S&P 500.
Additionally, investment-grade (IG) credit yields are still above 6 month money as they have also been selling off, but the gap has narrowed substantially in recent months. This hasn’t inverted since 1980 but has got close in recent weeks.
Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid explains why this matters:
Earnings yields were below 6m money for long periods in the 1980s and 1990s without it impacting equity returns too much until the peak inversion around the dotcom boom/bust.
One might argue that for most of the 1980s and 1990s, collapsing yields and real yields meant that both bonds and equities could rally in unison.
For credit though, this type of curve spread has been a good lead indicator of credit spreads. As this curve gets flatter, the higher the probability is of spreads widening over the next 18 months and visa-versa.
Intuitively, when yields on short-end money are competitive with longer duration risk assets, there should be more circumspect investment behaviour with animal spirits slowly draining away. The front-end should become more attractive to the detriment of riskier ventures out the curve. This is why we think an inverted curve is such a good predictor of the economy over subsequent quarters.
Translation: Brace – the singularity is upon us.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/08/2023 – 18:00 - Republican Governors Show Clean Tech Leadership
Republican Governors Show Clean Tech Leadership
Authored by Heather Reams via RealClear Wire,
Deployment of new clean energy technologies, lower energy costs, and reduced global emissions all have one thing in common: American leadership. While President Biden and Democrats across the country promote top-down energy mandates and other policies that lead to higher energy prices, conservatives understand that—by unleashing American resources, accelerating permitting for energy infrastructure and innovative clean technologies, and supporting a strong, diverse energy portfolio—we can strengthen the United States’ role as a global leader in emissions reduction and provide affordable, reliable energy for American families.
With the new Republican majority in the House and strong Republican leaders in the Senate, I am optimistic we will advance solutions that will get us all closer to these goals. More importantly, we should recognize the excellent progress already being made in states led by Republicans across the country.
Despite Washington rhetoric and in the face of federal permitting challenges, Republican governors are leading with a unifying, all-of-the-above energy platform based on free-market principles—proving that strong, state-led clean energy initiatives that lower energy costs, enhance American manufacturing, and reduce emissions are now the key to maintaining the United States’ role as a global leader in carbon emissions reduction and providing the global market the world’s cleanest produced goods and resources.
Under Governor Doug Burgum’s leadership, North Dakota has become the second largest per-capita energy-producing state in the nation and is on track to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030. In his State of the State address, Governor Burgum specifically pointed to carbon capture, utilization, and storage as tools to reshape energy policy in his state and across the country, and he highlighted U.S. industry’s role in reducing global emissions.
In his address to Alaskans, Governor Mike Dunleavy pointed to Alaska’s leadership in oil and gas production as well as the state’s development of innovative new technologies like hydrogen and advanced nuclear. He refers to Alaska as a “resource powerhouse” and pledged to unlock the Last Frontier’s potential to develop carbon-free, renewable sources. This all-of-the-above attitude is the approach the United States should adopt as we continue to lead the world in clean energy innovation.
Georgia Governor Brian Kemp recognizes that U.S. clean energy development is not only beneficial to our environment and global emissions reduction but also for his state’s economy. He has embraced the idea of a clean energy economy, fostering a business environment that invites and encourages investments in clean energy manufacturing, from electric vehicle charging to battery recycling. In his inaugural address, he vowed that by the end of his term, Georgia would be “the electric mobility capital of America.”
Finally, West Virginia Governor Jim Justice, as a leader in one of our nation’s most coal-dependent states, openly spoke about his interest in pursuing renewable energy sources while embracing emerging technologies that lower emissions from coal, natural gas, and oil production, maintaining and creating good-paying jobs for West Virginians.
There is a reason businesses and manufacturing are moving in droves to Republican-led states. They know that to have advanced manufacturing and clean energy technologies, you must be able to build it. But the truth is even the most targeted smart investment is meaningless without addressing the current regulatory and bureaucratic hurdles hampering production and slowing innovative technologies. Congress must enact permitting and licensing reforms to accelerate technology deployment and allow the United States to truly unleash American energy.
Republican governors are working to deploy U.S.-made clean energy technologies, responsibly develop American energy, and secure domestic supply chains. Speaker McCarthy and House Republicans have developed an equally effective agenda to lead this nation. Now, it is up to all of Congress to take a page from these governors’ books.
Heather Reams is the president of Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions (CRES).
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/08/2023 – 17:40
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