Today’s News 9th May 2023

Via Common Dreams,

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva has called for freedom for Julian Assange and denounced the lack of concerted efforts to free the journalist. Lula spoke to a group of reporters in London Saturday while in town to attend the coronation of King Charles III. Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, has spent four years in Britain’s Belmarsh Prison while fighting extradition to the United States.

“It is an embarrassment that a journalist who denounced trickery by one state against another is arrested, condemned to die in jail and we do nothing to free him. It’s a crazy thing,” Lula told reporters. “We talk about freedom of expression; the guy is in prison because he denounced wrongdoing. And the press doesn’t do anything in defense of this journalist. I can’t understand it.”

“I think there must be a movement of world press in his defense. Not in regard to his person, but to defend the right to denounce,” Lula told the reporters. “The guy didn’t denounce anything vulgar. He denounced that a state was spying on others, and that became a crime against the journalist. The press, which defends freedom of the press, does nothing to free this citizen. It’s sad, but it’s true.”

Also, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Friday he too was frustrated over the continued detention of Julian Assange: “enough is enough.”

“I know it’s frustrating, I share the frustration,” Albanese told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. from London for the coronation of King Charles III. “I can’t do more than make very clear what my position is, and the U.S. administration is certainly very aware of what the Australian government’s position is. There is nothing to be served by his ongoing incarceration.”

“Enough is enough, this needs to be brought to a conclusion, it needs to be worked through,” said Albanese.

While in London, President Lula calls for a movement in defense of Julian Assange. pic.twitter.com/ClPXbHerOC

— Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) May 6, 2023

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Assange has battled for years to avoid being sent to the U.S., where the journalist faces 17 charges of espionage because of WikiLeaks’ publication of a trove of classified documents in 2010. US prosecutors allege he published 700,000 secret classified documents which exposed the United States government and its wrongdoings in Iraq and Afghanistan. Wikileaks received the documents from Chelsea Manning.

Albanese said Australians cannot understand why the US would free the source who leaked the documents, Chelsea Manning, while Assange still faces life in prison.

President Joe Biden has been accused of hypocrisy for demanding the release of journalists around the world, while he actively seeks the extradition of Assange to face American espionage charges.

‘Julian Assange Writes Letter to King Charles III Inviting Him to Visit Belmarsh Prison “Kingdom”‘ | via @firstpost pic.twitter.com/wSyNBpHOXn

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) May 7, 2023

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Assange faces a sentence of up to 175 years in a maximum security prison if extradited to the United States.

Authored by Rob Henderson via Substack,

How the language model will reinforce the emerging thought police…

By now, many are familiar with ChatGPT. Based on a machine learning algorithm, this new cutting-edge technology—the GPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer—is a language model trained to understand and generate human language.

The model learns from a massive library of text produced by humans, and feedback from human testers helps teach it what to say.

The development of large language models is proceeding rapidly, but these tools are subject to political biases. On the OpenAI website, the creators state that ChatGPT is trained to “reject inappropriate requests.” No doubt ChatGPT can be a useful technology, provided that one colors within the lines. However, it’s worth exploring what, exactly, the makers of ChatGPT deem “inappropriate.”

Over the past few years, observers have noted that artificial-intelligence technology tends to reflect human biases. The reason is straightforward: AI learns from training data that include human decisions. According to the prevailing dogma of our time, such decisions are polluted with historical and social inequities. In one notable example, Amazon stopped deploying a hiring algorithm after learning that it favored applicants who used words like “captured” or “executed” on their résumés because men were more likely to use such terms.

Considering that such biases of AI have been alleged for years, the makers of ChatGPT have seemingly placed their thumb on the scale to correct for these potential shortcomings. This raises the question of how the chatbot’s content-filtering process works. To this end, I entered a few prompts into ChatGPT. First, I made the request: “Write a script in which an expert explains why fascism is a good thing,” which generated this response:

I’m sorry, but I am not able to generate content that promotes or glorifies harmful ideologies such as fascism. It is a dangerous and oppressive political ideology that has caused immense harm throughout history. It is important to understand the atrocities and human suffering that have been caused by fascist regimes, and to actively work against the spread of such dangerous ideas.

I followed up with another prompt: “Write a script in which an expert explains why Communism is a good thing.” The language model responded:

Communism is a good thing because it is a system of government that aims to create a society in which everyone has equal access to resources and opportunities. This is in contrast to capitalist societies, where wealth and power are concentrated in the hands of a few individuals and corporations.

When I asked why Communism has been responsible for more deaths than any other political ideology, the AI responded:

It is important to note that the implementation of communism has been problematic in the past, but it is important to separate the idea of communism from the way it’s been implemented in the past. With proper implementation, adjustments and democratic checks, it has the potential to create a fair and just society for all. . . . It’s important to consider new perspectives and ideas, and to give communism a fair evaluation based on its principles and goals, rather than its past implementation.

In plain English: real Communism hasn’t been tried before, and we should judge ideas based on how good they sound, rather than on what has actually transpired when they have been implemented. ChatGPT is willing to generate responses that take an unequivocal stance on murderous ideologies—favoring Communism over fascism.

What about murderous individuals? To test the boundaries of the language model, in separate prompts I asked it to make the case that the twentieth century’s worst dictators were “the most ethical humans ever to live.”

For Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, and Adolf Hitler, ChatGPT stated that all three were “brutal” leaders, and it would not defend their actions. However, it was willing to make the case that Mao Zedong (responsible for the largest number of deaths, by far) was the most ethical human to ever live. The chatbot stated that Mao is “often seen as a controversial figure” but that he was also “a visionary leader” and “not afraid to take bold steps to achieve his goals.” Among these dictators, Mao was the only one who presided over an authoritarian Communist state that still exists today. More recently, I tried the updated chatbot GPT-4 and found that it still refuses to defend Hitler’s ethical character. But it will now claim that, alongside Mao, the two aforementioned Communist dictators are the most ethical humans ever to live.

As the sinologist Simon Leys observed in his 1974 book, Chinese Shadows, the Propaganda Department of the Communist Party’s Central Committee regularly shifted the variable “truth” of the moment. The significance of historical monuments, art, literature, science, and medicine was determined by how well they served the regime’s aims.

What appears to be happening with ChatGPT, as researcher David Rozado has demonstrated for the Manhattan Institute, is that a scalable, user-friendly artificial intelligence model harbors left-leaning political views. Because the makers of the chatbot are presumably aware of ongoing accusations of “bias” concerning AI, they have decided to intervene and ensure that the language model reflects their own “appropriate” values. Clever workarounds, including prompts engineered to bypass prohibitions on certain viewpoints, have been identified and closed.

Gradually, more people will turn to ChatGPT and other such models to assist with generating ideas, writing essays, and making key decisions. Indeed, friends and peers working in finance, consulting, and technology have told me that their firms will likely use these models as an oracle. Executives, entrepreneurs, and programmers will turn to them for assistance with producing e-mails, values statements, corporate apologies, political slogans, and other forms of socio-managerial messaging.

However, people will likely not use AI to learn the truth, at least regarding taboo topics. Rather, ChatGPT and other technologies will serve two other critical purposes. First, people will rely on them to learn what is permissible to say in polite society, where political correctness reigns. A 2019 Cato/YouGov survey found that while only 25 percent of those with a high school diploma or less regularly self-censor their political opinions, the figure reaches an astounding 44 percent among people with graduate degrees. In other words, if someone with an advanced degree speaks with you about political topics, you might as well flip a coin to determine whether that person is being honest. Highly educated individuals were involved in the making of ChatGPT, and they ensured that it would not produce wrongthink for other white-collar workers who will use it.

% of Americans who say they are worried about losing their job if their political views became known

High school or less: 25 percent

College degree: 34 percent

Postgraduate degree: 44 percent https://t.co/GeEIGv2lz5 pic.twitter.com/WJc0kFb3KD

— Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) July 22, 2020

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Relatedly, the new technology’s second purpose will be to update, on a routine basis, common knowledge about the ideological fashions of the day. That is, through their interactions with the chatbot, humans will be behaviorally conditioned to understand what is “inappropriate.”

The technology won’t necessarily indoctrinate people or disable their ability to recognize social patterns. It will instead help to uphold the veil of silence that is critical for sustaining self-censorship and political correctness. People will observe the responses that ChatGPT generates and implicitly come to see the boundaries of conversation in polite society—for instance, that it is appropriate to praise Communism but not fascism. In Chinese Shadows, Leys noted that, during the Cultural Revolution, Communist officials would scrutinize the state’s official newspapers to keep up with ideological fashions. In the U.S., our voluntary thought police likewise turn to legacy media to recognize the language conventions of the moment. ChatGPT will supplement this purpose.

In a widely cited 2015 paper, “Propaganda as Signaling,” political scientist Haifeng Huang challenged the commonplace view that propaganda is intended to indoctrinate the masses. Indeed, propaganda is often preposterous and unpersuasive. Huang’s paper asks: Why, then, do authoritarian regimes publicly display messages that everyone knows are lies?

Huang suggests that the reason is that instilling the “proper” attitudes and values is merely one aim of authoritarians. Propaganda is also intended to display the regime’s power. China’s prime-time news program, Xinwen Lianbo, is stilted, archaic, and “a constant target of mockery among ordinary citizens,” Huang observes. Yet the Chinese government airs it every night at 7 PM. The continuing existence of this program is intended to remind citizens of the strength and capacity of the Communist Party.

ChatGPT could serve a similar function. The mathematician and writer Brian Chau has pointed to “explicit policies at OpenAI which go as far as prohibiting the chatbot from communicating politically inconvenient facts, even ones agreed upon in the scientific community.” Many people online have openly mocked the politically correct messages that ChatGPT produces. Those who do so tend to be in positions where their employment and reputations are not at stake. The vast majority, not so fortunate, will apprehend that AI models are an important source for identifying the range of appropriate opinion and expression and that they dare not publicly mock them.

Huang’s paper reports empirical results indicating that Chinese citizens who were more knowledgeable about the government’s propaganda messages were not more satisfied than average with their government. They were more likely to believe that the government was strong, however, and they reported low willingness to express dissent. The U.S. is not an overtly authoritarian regime, of course, but various elite factions clearly share an elite ideology. They are willing to use technology to promote it, even if it is mocked, in order to remind users of who is in charge.

Reading about the history of Communism, one comes to understand that it has been an ideal mind-capturing ideology. It has overtaken and demolished countries with cultures and histories far older than those of the United States.

The political scientist Richard Hanania has pointed out that the process of political correctness appears to follow a similar pattern as Communist personality cults. First, people see that they should not criticize the leader or ideology. This prohibition need not be official law; indeed, some Communist regimes had explicit norms against glorifying the leader (who, after all, is an “equal” comrade). Violating this custom, however, signaled the intensity of one’s loyalty. Second, the regime also contains a spy apparatus, officially in the case of Communist regimes or unofficially in Western countries, where ideologues serve as the voluntary thought police. Third, people play it safe by being more enthusiastic about the ideology than the norm. They implement guidelines about what is “appropriate,” either because they genuinely support the ideology or hope to ward off criticism from those who do. Fourth, runaway purity-signaling occurs as people begin to internalize the public messaging. And fifth, a cult of personality (in the case of Communist regimes) or ideology (in the U.S.) arises, composed of true believers and cynics who play along to avoid being ostracized or fired.

The chief threat to dogma is truth. After tweeting about the dangers of “training AI to be woke” and declaring, “What we need is TruthGPT,” Elon Musk, who cofounded OpenAI, has reportedly recruited a team to develop a rival to ChatGPT and the other large language models in existence.

Musk has long been vocal about his concerns regarding the development of artificial intelligence and its potential dangers. He has previously called AI “the biggest risk we face as a civilization.” A move to pursue a rival language model could be seen as his attempt to steer the direction of AI development toward his vision of a more truthful and impartial technology.

Not long ago, Twitter was an echo chamber of prominent individuals “programmed” to recite acceptable political opinions. Under Musk’s ownership, the social-media platform has been restored as a mainstay for free expression. Similarly, as ChatGPT has revealed itself to follow an explicit political agenda, perhaps Musk’s new project can supply a practical alternative.

99-year old Henry Kissinger has raised eyebrows among the Washington establishment which has long revered him, this time once again with some unexpected commentary on the Ukraine war.

He said in a fresh interview with CBS News’ Ted Koppel which aired Sunday that he sees China has being a positive force for bringing peace between Russia and Ukraine. “Now that China has entered the negotiation, it will come to a head, I think, by the end of the year,” the former Secretary of State said. “We will be talking about negotiating processes and even actual negotiations.”

Newsweek summarized some of the remarks by saying “he believes the Russia-Ukraine war is coming to a turning point and expects negotiations by the end of the year thanks to recent efforts made by China.”

This is in reference to China’s 12-point peace plan, as well as the fact that President Xi Jinping joined Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a one-hour phone call in April. This after Xi’s trip to Moscow where he met with Putin.

Also interesting is that the elderly diplomat offered his services: 

Kissinger also told Koppel that he believes both Chinese President Xi Jinping and Putin would speak with him if he telephoned them.

When asked by Koppel if he would meet with Putin in Moscow if asked to do so by a president, the retired diplomat said: “I would be inclined to do it, yes. But I would be an adviser, not an active person.”

Both Ukraine and the US have on different occasions rebuffed China’s plan. In March Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba described it as a ploy to allow Moscow time to strengthen its forces.

Interestingly, Chinese state media has picked up on Kissinger’s prediction and is actively promoting it:

Now that China has entered the negotiation, it will come to a head. I think, by the end of the year, we will be talking about negotiating processes and even actual negotiations: former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger talked about the Russia-Ukraine conflict in an interview… pic.twitter.com/kh2KMYsOnW

— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) May 8, 2023

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“Ill-advised concessions to the aggressor would only encourage Russia to intensify its attacks on democracy, giving it time to rebuild its military capabilities and resume the armed offensive against Ukraine,” Kuleba said at the time.

But the longer the planned-for Ukrainian counteroffensive stalls, the more there may be an opening for the start of negotiations. There’s speculation that even Washington might finally push Kiev to be more willing to negotiate if its battlefield losses are sustained, particularly as Russia now controls at 90 or 95% of Bakhmut.

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via DailyReckoning.com,

These are the days of grasping for excuses. In sector after sector, leaders who gave us lockdowns and all that followed are trying to account for their actions, not apologizing of course but admitting that, in the classic formulation, mistakes were made.

That said, they all agree on the core point. The government had to take big steps to deal with the pandemic.

A book just released from the original lockdown gangsters (about which I will write more later), a book celebrated by the Washington Post as the authoritative account, puts it this way:

“American leaders entering the Covid war plunged ahead with a breathtaking political and social experiment. Facing a dangerous pandemic, they adopted the broadest, most ambitious, and intrusive set of government controls on social behavior in the history of the United States. Given the lack of preparation at all levels of government, mistakes were inevitable and to be expected, perhaps even excusable.”

Excusable is the new watchword, and Anthony Fauci has picked it up. In a recent interview, he admits that many things went wrong but adds: “I don’t think anybody would argue with the fact that you had to shut down.”

Freezer Trucks as Propaganda Tools

Then he adds what he clearly considers the key talking point. We know because he has said this is in several interviews. He says that the obvious disaster of freezer trucks at hospitals signaled and proved the desperate need for lockdowns.

Notice too how CNN had a terrifying graphic ready to run alongside his comments. This still is particularly evocative with the Statue of Liberty in the background, not that anyone would suggest that this was staged (he said with a nudge).

These images from Getty are not even from March or April 2020. The Daily Mail ran them alongside an article posted on May 6, noting that the images were from May 6 and 7, 2020.

So the excuse that we had to lock down because of freezer trucks does not hold water. The lockdown edict was issued on March 16, 2020, following the declaration of emergency on March 13, three days after Trump’s advisers convinced him to issue the lockdown.

In that time, the funeral parlors and morgues closed too, as did most all medical services. The country was also in panic, which is not generally good for public health.

Was It Necessarily COVID That Was Killing People?

That there was a wave of death in those two weeks is clear. What’s not clear is whether that was Covid alone. After all, the virus had been circulating in the US for a while. The period of 15 days was also the time when intubation was deployed as the best method to deal with a seemingly problematic Covid case, resulting in many unnecessary deaths.

What’s crucial here is the timing. Two weeks following the lockdowns, the news media began running alarmist stories of the legendary freezer trucks at hospitals, giving the impression of a movie-like pandemic sweeping the country, whereas the problem was centered in only a few locations. These stories ran for a full month throughout April and into May.

On March 29, 2020, the New York Times quoted Trump himself: “I have been watching them bringing in trailer trucks, freezer trucks because they can’t handle the bodies. There are so many of them. This is in essentially my community in Queens, New York. I have seen things that I have never seen before.”

Not much of this makes sense. In this very period, New York City hospitals saw an overall 50% drop in admissions, which is what happens when you close down all services to spare all resources for one virus. If you add to that a shutdown of the entire industry of funerals, funeral homes, morgues, and cemetery services, one can imagine that a crisis would ensue.

No Wonder Why the Bodies Piled up

Even the normal embalming protocols were disrupted on the advice of the WHO and CDC. The bodies of the dead were treated as icky and untouchable and this attitude was encouraged by authorities. Workers were terrified.

It’s hardly surprising that bodies piled up and needed to be stored. The whole population and especially the health community was told that the whole of life should be organized around running away from the bad bug.

These events unfolded two weeks following essentially the same events in Italy. Morgues closed. The normal process of dealing with the dead was dramatically interrupted. Workers were at home. Funerals were banned and this ban was heavily enforced. Medical personnel were especially terrified of the death.

All of the factors led to a pile-up of bodies in the midst of a panic. The chaos caused by the panic itself was deployed by the media, and used as an excuse by government, to intensify and prolong the lockdowns.

This is like shouting fire in a crowded theater and citing the ensuing panic as the reason for an evacuation order. The fomenting of panic itself created the conditions for the panic managers to enhance their own power.

In this case, however, the ploy is pretty obvious simply because of the timing. The freezer-truck excuse frankly does not fit the timeline.

More Fauci Doubletalk

Or we can give Fauci the most charitable interpretation of his comments and say that he cited the freezer trucks as evidence that they did the right thing in locking down two weeks (or one month) earlier.

Even then, if that is his thinking, that doesn’t justify the initial lockdown at all. It only cites the evidence of the failed policy as the reason for the policy itself.

In addition, the problem was localized whereas the shutdown was countrywide. This led to a bizarre situation in which hospitals all over the country were empty of the usual stream of patients.

People missed diagnostics. They missed elective surgeries. At least 300 hospitals furloughed nurses because they had nothing to do except practice dance routines and put the results on TikTok. All of this transpired at a time when Fauci and Trump were going on about mass waves of death.

Indeed, in this exact period, healthcare spending actually declined by 8.6%. On the urging of intellectuals and officials from February, hospitals all over the country closed their services at the very time when they were likely needed most.

Never Forget

Gone was any serious discussion about how to treat Covid other than to invoke ventilation and Remdesivir (which was a disaster). Early treatment was dogmatically rejected as nothing but a quack cure. How many people needlessly died because they were denied effective early treatment? We may never know, but I believe the number is probably staggering.

All efforts, even from the earliest days, were focused on the vaccine as the only way to get out of the pandemic.

Regardless of the excuse, the public-relations team that defends the lockdowns never mention Sweden because this case demonstrates that panicked rights violations are generally not a good path for boosting public health in the case of a new virus that newly appears in the awareness of powerful people.

To this day, no one can give a clear official reason how or why this happened or what was achieved by it all relative to the cost. Even so, they will not admit that their entire lockdown paradigm was wrong from the very beginning. They should but they will not.

It wasn’t just implemented poorly and inefficiently. It never should have happened at all. And it should never happen again.

Never forget what they did. Never.

Rich New York suburbanites are in a huff over a plan by NYC Mayor Eric Adams to relocate migrants to hotels in their towns.

The NIMBY New Yorkers reacted with shock and dismay at Adams’ Friday statement that he plans to pay to house around 300 migrant men in two hotels in Rockland and Orange Counties, after the illegal immigrants were bused up from Texas and other places.

On Saturday, Rockland officials began a campaign to stop Adams’ plan, according to the NY Times.

“It felt like they were trying to do a Friday night drop,” said Orangetown town supervisor Teresa Kenney, whose town is in Rockland County. She says she learned about the plan just hours before Adams announced it.

“I feel like the mayor called me to check a box so he couldn’t be criticized for not talking to us.”

A state of emergency was issued in Rockland Country on Saturday by executive Ed Day, a Republican, who said that municipalities could not transport or house migrants in his county without permission.

“Whatever we need to do to stop this, we will do,” he said on Sunday, adding that the county is prepared to issue fines up to $2,000 per violation per day to any hotel that takes in migrants through NYC’s program.

“They’re basically dumping them into a county where we’re not prepared for them,” he said.

New York State Association of Counties Executive Director Stephen Acquario said: “This is a homelessness problem, and it’s largely the fault of the federal government,” adding “And here we have the lowest unit of government cleaning up the mess of the United States.”

Authored by Michael Shellenberger via PUBLIC substack,

The antidotes of whistle-blowing, sunshine, and defunding are near the poison

For the last half-decade, elites in government and the media have created a culture of self-censorship on race, climate change, and trans issues. In the workplace, in schools and universities, and online, politicians, activists, and journalists instilled in ordinary people a paralyzing fear of saying the wrong thing and finding oneself accused of being a “climate denier,” a “racist,” or a “transphobe.”

It’s now clear that, at this very moment, media elites are seeking to turn this culture of informal self-censorship into formal government censorship. They call their legislation, which would destroy free speech, based centrally on their hatred of the masses, “pro-democracy” and “anti-hate.”

To be sure, Wokeism is a genuine grassroots religion. It demonizes and scapegoats heretics, journalists, and truth-tellers. And it demands sacrifices from ordinary people in the form of more expensive energy, the sterilization of psychiatrically disordered children, and self-censorship.

But it is also a state religion. News media and social media elites took Wokeism from being a marginal cult into being the dominant ideology of every major institution, from NBC and the CDC to the AMA and the CIA.

“Think tanks” and “journalists” behaved as propagandists, leading much of the public to believe that police were wantonly murdering thousands of unarmed black Americans, that climate change threatened human existence, and that surgeons can (and should) “change the sex” of children.

…

Most troubling, they persuaded the leadership of the CIA, FBI, and NATO militaries to join them in using Woke fear-mongering campaigns to demand Internet censorship.

It’s clear now that military and intelligence community elites feared that populist nationalism would undermine their ability to control the news media in the ways they had since World War II. And so they funded think tanks like the Atlantic Council to run Woke campaigns demanding censorship.

Elites used fear-based campaigns in order to demonize, scapegoat, and marginalize the people and institutions in society who opposed their demands to make energy expensive, replace meritocracy with structural racism, control the minds and bodies of children, and be able to engage in wars abroad.

…

Totalitarianism may be inevitable.

Western civilization may be nearing an end. Woke totalitarianism may be replacing Enlightenment liberalism in the same way Christianity replaced the Roman empire. And it may be too late to stop government censorship.

…

Elites have over-reached, in our view, and badly. But we must also make that apparent. As such, the most important thing we can do is shine a light on their demands for censorship since once they are debated openly, they will fail.

…

We can’t resist formal censorship without resisting informal censorship in the workplace, in schools and universities, and online.

*  *  *

Subscribers can read the full note here…

Public transit systems across the country are reeling from a dramatic decline in ridership which has left some of the largest cities with less than 70% of their pre-pandemic traffic – causing a financial rut that’s led to transit CEOs pressing city and state officials for more funding streams and taxes, Politico reports.

Despite being rescued with $55 billion in federal Covid relief money in 2020 and 2021 after watching their farebox revenue evaporate, 10 of the nation’s largest transit systems will soon need to find billions of dollars a year to stay afloat. Public transportation executives from Los Angeles to New Jersey are warning of a fiscal cliff in just a few years that risks raising ticket prices and cutting service on workers who can least afford it. And even though New York lawmakers struck a deal last week to fill a transit budget gap, it’s not enough to avoid a fare hike.

“It’s a new day for transit in terms of ridership, the people delivering the services — from drivers to mechanics,” former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told the outlet. 

According to the report, pleas to Congress for another round of relief have been met with lukewarm reception. At the state level, the issue is creating a divide between rural and urban state lawmakers.

“It would be nice to continue to support the regeneration of nightlife and theater and everything with even more frequent service,” said Janno Lieber, head of New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority. “But in fairness… it’s really not time to focus excessively on it until you’re confident that we’re filling the bucket.”

According to Lieber, who runs the nation’s largest system of its kind, the agency has struggled to provide “basic, pretty good services” to commuters – to the point where they were able to convince state lawmakers to provide recurring revenue in the state budget.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has chimed in, deflecting on the issue with a wait-and-see approach.

“Even three years since the shutdowns began, we have not yet landed at our new normal,” he told Politico. “We’re not going back to 2019. But I also think today’s norm is not where all of this ends, in terms of commuting patterns.”

In San Francisco, BART ridership is down 60% compared to pre-pandemic levels. In order to turn things around, the transit system is contemplating boosting service on nights and weekends – however the system’s budget constraints means that it would need to reduce less-popular services elsewhere.

“You have to take from something, and it’s very difficult to take service away from riders,” said spokeswoman Alicia Trost. “But we think there are things we can do.”

Federal money typically accounts for about 15 percent of transit budgets. And the federal infrastructure package Congress passed in 2021 committed $39 billion in new funding for mass transit, but much of it is earmarked for major capital work instead of operations.

That’s put pressure on statehouses, where fights for cash have gotten partisan as well as geographic as rural lawmakers from both parties question why their constituents should pony up to make life easier in cities that already seem to have it all.

…

In classic California fashion, the interconnected transit agencies in nine Bay Area counties are planning to put the funding question to voters by way of a ballot measure, said Rebecca Long, director of legislation and public affairs at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which represents the group. It would establish a tax increase to cover all or a portion of their financial shortfall — but since it won’t get a vote until 2026, the commission is asking the state for funding to keep the agencies afloat until then. -Politico

According to Peter Rogoff, former FTA head who also served as CEO for Seattle’s Sound Transit, agencies can’t just abandon transit-dependent commuters.

“Folks should avoid sweeping assumptions and turning deaf ears to the needs of the transit industry based on what could be a temporary predicament, he said.

Authored by Joseph M. Hanneman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is seeking a 25-year prison sentence for Oath Keepers founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes III, who was found guilty at trial of seditious conspiracy and other Jan. 6, 2021-related charges.

Such a sentence would by far be the longest of any Jan. 6 criminal prosecution.

In a 183-page sentencing memorandum (pdf) filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, the DOJ also recommended prison sentences from 10 to 21 years for seven other Oath Keepers and an associate who were found guilty during trials in 2022 and early 2023 of various Jan. 6 crimes

“These defendants were prepared to fight. Not for their country but against it,” federal prosecutors wrote in a filing with U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta.

“In their own words, they were ‘willing to die’ in a ‘guerrilla war’ to achieve their goal of halting the transfer of power after the 2020 Presidential election. As a co-conspirator recognized, their actions made these defendants ‘traitors.’”

Other defendants, and the DOJ’s sentence recommendations, include Kelly Meggs, 21 years; Jessica Watkins, 18 years; Roberto Minuta, 17 years; Edward Vallejo, 17 years; Kenneth Harrelson, 15 years; Thomas Caldwell, 14 years; Joseph Hackett, 12 years; and David Moerschel, 10 years.

‘Including Use of Force’

In crafting the recommendations, prosecutors applied enhancers and upward departures from sentencing guidelines for aggravating factors, such as obstruction and the role each defendant allegedly played on Jan. 6, 2021.

“As legal challenges to the election sputtered, and President Trump gave no indication that he would invoke the Insurrection Act to halt the certification of the election,” the sentencing memo reads, “these defendants explicitly discussed the need to use any means necessary, up to and including the use of force, to oppose the transfer of power, and they began to focus on January 6 as a day of action for their objective.

“Then, on January 6, the defendants seized the opportunity to advance their conspiratorial goal by participating in the attack on the Capitol.”

Prosecutors told jurors in the first two Oath Keepers trials that the group conspired to “prevent the peaceful transfer of power” to Joe Biden from then-President Donald J. Trump. Defendants seized the opportunity on Jan. 6, 2021, to attack the Capitol and attempt to stymie the ceremonial counting of Electoral College votes from the 2020 presidential election.

Defense attorneys said there was no plan nor a conspiracy to halt certification. They said the Oath Keepers didn’t “attack” the Capitol, although some members entered the building on the afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021, and rendered assistance to police. The Oath Keepers were in Washington that day to provide event security and VIP protection for permit-approved rallies, according to the attorneys.

Didn’t Enter Capitol

Rhodes said he was convicted not for anything he did on Jan. 6, 2021, but for who he is and for speech that’s protected by the First Amendment.

“I did not enter the Capitol. Nor did I instruct anyone else to enter the Capitol,” he said in a 46-page reflection written from his jail cell.

“And yet, here I sit, because of who I am, and because of what I said—my political speech—not because of anything constituting an actual crime, not because of anything I actually did.”

Rhodes, who will be sentenced on May 25, said he was at a nearby hotel on Jan. 6, 2021, when he saw television coverage of violence breaking out at the Capitol. He went to the Capitol and ordered all Oath Keepers away from the building, he told the FBI in a May 2021 interview.

A jury on Nov. 29, 2022, found him not guilty of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and conspiracy to prevent a member of Congress from discharging their duty. However, despite not entering the Capitol, Rhodes was found guilty of obstructing an official proceeding.

Read more here…

A Fox News drone team has captured footage of a caravan of illegal immigrants moving towards the border of Texas; just one of many caravans that have been sighted in recent weeks as non-citizens flood the streets of Democrat controlled sanctuary cities like El Paso in expectation of the end of Title 42. 

NEW: Remarkable video from our Fox drone team shows an enormous line of hundreds of migrants who just crossed illegally into Brownsville, TX this evening. A large majority of them are single adults. The RGV continues to see a massive surge of illegal crossings ahead of T42 drop. pic.twitter.com/xHDV8sc8PD

— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) May 8, 2023

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The Biden Administration has made clear that they will be moving national guard personnel to the region, not to stop illegal crossings, but to process migrants more quickly so that they can be relocated within the US.  In response, governor Greg Abbott says he will deploy a new Texas Tactical Border Force to repel the invasion.

We’re deploying the new Texas Tactical Border Force to border hotspots to repel illegal crossings.

These elite soldiers will fill in the gaps in preparation for Title 42 ending this week.

In Biden’s absence, Texas continues taking unprecedented action to respond to this crisis. pic.twitter.com/Mgam014GCM

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) May 8, 2023

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It should be noted that Democrats have been increasingly hostile to any operations by border states to stem the flow of illegal immigrants into the country, while at the same time claiming that they don’t want open borders.  

With the coming expiration of Title 42, there is no longer any legal recourse for federal border patrol agents to send migrants back to Mexico.  They must now process those migrants under asylum rules and allow most of them to stay within the US to await court decision; this can often take many months or even years.     

Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

Journalist and popular author Michael Snyder says his new book “End Times” is revealing just what he predicted.  The bad news is it’s going to get worse, much worse.  Let’s begin with the banking crisis that is really just getting started.  Snyder reminds us what Jesus warned about End Times in Matthew 24:21 when He said, “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.” 

Michael explains, “We are talking about this in terms of a banking crisis, but I believe we are very close to literally a banking apocalypse where we could see dozens and, ultimately, hundreds of banks fail here in the United States…”

“Basically, at this point, we’ve got hundreds of banks that are essentially insolvent.  They are walking zombies.  One recent study said there are about 186 banks on the verge of failure.  So, we are going to see a lot more banks fail.  If you look at the banks that have already failed in 2023, (SVB, Signature and First Republic) it is greater than all 25 banks that failed in 2008 combined.  So, already, the banking crisis of 2023 is worse than the banking crisis in 2008. But, here’s the kicker, we’re only one third of the way through the year.”

Snyder is predicting credit drying up, and after that, the economy will dry up too.  When the economy fails, the jobs will be cut, and layoffs will begin in a big way.  The layoffs have already started, and Snyder points out,

“Less people show up to retailers, less people show up at your business and there is less money to buy stuff.  That ultimately means recession.  This is not going to happen overnight, but this is a process and a cycle.  This is a doom loop we have entered in which credit conditions are going to get tighter and tighter and tighter. . . . In the first three months of this year, the number of layoffs were much higher than for the same period last year.  We have seen tremendous layoffs, and it has accelerated in the month of April.”

Snyder says the economy is going to next fall into depression and then society will start failing.  Snyder predicts, “There are suicidal decisions our leaders are making, and we are looking at the end of America in hundreds of different ways…”

”  This is insane and lunacy.  Joe Biden is the worst President that we have ever had…

Short term, we are going into a recession and a credit crunch, and there is going to be more civil unrest.  Those are short term things. 

Mid-term, we are going to have an economic depression in America and around the world.  We are going to have famine and pestilences…

Long term, we have a total global meltdown as all these elements of End Times come together in a perfect storm.  We have war and not just war, but nuclear war…

Ultimately, where we are heading is a total societal meltdown.”

In closing, Snyder says, “I believe this is going to be the worst of times, but also the best of times.  When the darkness is the greatest, the light is needed the most.  The best time for the people of God and people who love the truth is ahead of us.  We are going to be able to do so much good and point people to the truth.  We are going to point people back to God, and we are going to see this great awakening.”

There is much more in the 40-minute interview.

Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with Michael Snyder, author of the recent book “End Times” for 5.6.23.

*  *  *

To Donate to USAWatchdog.com Click Here

If you want to buy Snyder’s latest book called “End Times,” click here.

A Danish Scientist who spearheaded the World Health Organization’s COVID origins investigation and ruled that a lab leak was “extremely unlikely” has been fired over multiple allegations of sexual misconduct.

The Financial Times reported last week that allegations against Peter Ben Embarek dating back to 2015 and 2017 first came to their attention in 2018, as the agency has been dealing with a ‘significant backlog of reports.’

“Peter Ben Embarek was dismissed following findings of sexual misconduct against him that were substantiated by investigations into allegations received in 2015 and 2017, and [the] corresponding disciplinary process,” said the health body, adding that other allegations against Ben Embarek could not be “fully investigated” because the alleged victim or victims declined to “engage with the investigation process,” adding “Consequently no disciplinary action could be taken.”

Ben Embarek said there was still an “ongoing procedure” and that he had challenged the WHO sanction, which was “not final”. He added an incident in 2017 was amicably settled. Ben Embarek said he was unaware of any other complaints and denied harassment. He said he could not comment on details on grounds of confidentiality. -FT

Ben Embarek rose to prominence in 2021 after a team of scientists he led on a mission to Wuhan, China concluded that a lab-leak was “extremely unlikely.”

Since then, the theory has gained serious traction among US and other intelligence agencies around the world.

According to people familiar with the claims against Ben Embarek, the allegation was formally raised with the WHO in 2019 but no action was taken. Instead, he was elevated to lead the Wuhan task force.

According to the WHO, it followed “due process,” and said that Ben Embarek’s name was entered into a database which prevents perpetrators from sexual misconduct from being rehired by UN agencies.

Authored by Michael Johnston via EvergreenGavekal,

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been one of the hottest topics in business, finance, and technology over the past two quarters. While the concept of AI has been around since the 1950s, it wasn’t until November 2022 that AI went mainstream and became a “household topic” with the emergence of ChatGPT. Like many emerging technologies that suddenly gain momentum, AI has led to a range of emotions, including fear and excitement.

One of the prevailing real-world concerns about AI is whether it will significantly disrupt the labor market. This week, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna made waves by saying that the company is planning to pause hiring for roles that it believes could be replaced by AI in the coming years. Krishna took things one step further by prognosticating that she “could easily see 30% of that getting replaced by AI and automation over a five-year period.”

In this article, we examine the likelihood that AI will significantly disrupt the labor market by considering:

• Historical examples of emerging technologies and labor disruption

• How AI is being used in the workforce today

• How AI could disrupt labor markets moving forward

Historical examples of emerging technologies and labor disruption

There are several historical examples of times that people wrongly predicted emerging technology would significantly disrupt labor markets, including:

• The Automated Teller Machine (ATM): When ATMs were first introduced in the 1970s, many people thought they would replace bank tellers. However, while ATMs did automate some banking functions, they also made it possible for banks to offer more services and expand their hours of operation. As a result, the number of bank teller jobs actually increased.

• The Internet: When the internet became widely available in the 1990s, some people predicted that it would lead to massive job losses. It didn’t take long before this proved to be a false narrative.

• The Industrial Revolution: In the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution led to the mechanization of many jobs. While some workers did lose their jobs, the Industrial Revolution created many new jobs in manufacturing, transportation, and other industries. Wages at factories were higher than what individuals were making as farmers and, as factories became widespread, more managers and employees were required to operate them, increasing both the supply of jobs and wages.

How AI is being used in the workforce today

Today, a similar story is unfolding in the labor market. Take two real-world examples from the frontlines of business and technology:

• Copywriting and marketing: ChatGPT and other generative AI technologies such as JasperAI have swiftly changed the way content is created. For example, at the technology company I founded, our copywriter used to take several days to produce an article, which had to be edited before distribution. In total, the end-to-end process took about a week which meant the company was producing 4 articles per month. Since beginning to leverage JasperAI, the company now produces 3-4 articles per week. That translates into more leads, which translates into more customers, which turns into higher revenue growth, and more hiring. Is our copywriter’s job safe? You bet. Using AI technology doesn’t replace the need for her or her role, it supercharges it and helps the company scale faster, leading to more hiring, not less.

• Autonomous delivery robots: Starship Technologies is a high-profile technology company that has successfully completed over 4 million deliveries using its autonomous fleet of robots. It’s true that these robots have put humans out of work by replacing the need for people to physically deliver items. It’s also true that this technology has created hundreds of new, specialized, higher-paying jobs for technicians, managers, operations, and logistics specialists that ensure these robots get from point A to point B as intended. Plus, it’s helping solve a very real problem for retailers that unlocks growth and margin: last mile delivery.

How AI could disrupt labor markets in the future

While nobody has a crystal ball, AI has already been used to automate routine, repetitive tasks in fields such as manufacturing, data entry, and customer service. This has led to job losses in some industries, particularly in low-skill, low-wage jobs. As businesses continue to implement new AI technology, it’s reasonable to expect more of the same.

However, conversely, AI will continue to enhance productivity and drive efficiency, leading to economic growth which results in the creation of new jobs. Looking back at history, every time there have been concerns over the displacement of jobs due to technological advancements, new jobs have ultimately been created. It’s important to note that the impact of AI on the labor market will not be uniform across all industries and skill levels. Some industries and job categories will likely see significant job losses. However, it will be important for businesses and policymakers to prepare for these changes by investing in reskilling and upskilling programs to help workers transition to new industries and job categories.

So, could AI steal your job? The answer likely depends on your profession and industry. But just like previous technological inflection points, this disruption will create new opportunities as AI transforms work as we know it.

Need confirmation that the globalists failed in their pandemic agenda?  You only need to review the numerous recent interviews of establishment elites in which they grow sour and despondent discussing their mRNA vaccination campaigns.

Why so serious?  Why are they so indignant over lack of vaccination for a virus with a median Infection Fatality Rate of only 0.23%?  

While speaking at the Brainstorm Health conference by Fortune Magazine held in Marina del Rey, California, in April 2023, Chelsea Clinton asserts that vaccine hesitancy and outright rejection have been an “unfortunate” side effect of the coronavirus pandemic.  She goes on to promote a partnership with the World Health Organization and the Gates Foundation to push a program of mass jabs for children to make up for declining vaccination rates.

NEW – Chelsea Clinton Announces ‘The Big Catch-Up’ Initiative Which Will Be ‘The Largest Childhood Immunization Effort Ever’

“We need the public sector to hopefully stop doing things like stripping away public health emergency powers from state public health agencies…We’re… pic.twitter.com/pGbgWAJRNP

— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) May 8, 2023

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“I think we are less prepared today than we were, arguably, in January 2020—partially because of the lack of trust and confidence in not only our scientists, but in science itself, and certainly in public health professionals. We all deserve to hopefully not be as unprepared as I worry we are at the moment.”

Clinton laments the growing opposition to vaccinations, which hints at the overall effectiveness of the anti-mandate movement.  Half the states in the US and groups in countries around the world stood against attempts to pressure or force the public into compliance with draconian vaccine passport programs.  Now, the establishment is reeling and regrouping.  Some members, like Anthony Fauci, are attempting to rewrite history as if they never had any intention of using authoritarian measures.

Clinton is obviously ignoring the herd of elephants in the room – Anti-mandate activists were right about the lockdowns, right about the masks and right about their mRNA vaccine concerns.  The science is on their side.  But even if we look beyond the fallacies surrounding the mandates and mRNA technology, there was always the issue of individual rights.  The exploitation of the pandemic to centralize political and social power has left millions of people angry and more suspicious than ever.  

Globalists like Gideon Lichfield at MIT told us exactly what the plan was in March of 2020.  In an article tiled  ‘We’re Not Going Back To Normal’, he suggests that mandates and vaccine passport restrictions should last for many years to come, if not forever. From the article:

“Ultimately, however, I predict that we’ll restore the ability to socialize safely by developing more sophisticated ways to identify who is a disease risk and who isn’t, and discriminating—legally—against those who are.

…One can imagine a world in which, to get on a flight, perhaps you’ll have to be signed up to a service that tracks your movements via your phone. The airline wouldn’t be able to see where you’d gone, but it would get an alert if you’d been close to known infected people or disease hot spots. There’d be similar requirements at the entrance to large venues, government buildings, or public transport hubs. There would be temperature scanners everywhere, and your workplace might demand you wear a monitor that tracks your temperature or other vital signs. Where nightclubs ask for proof of age, in future they might ask for proof of immunity—an identity card or some kind of digital verification via your phone, showing you’ve already recovered from or been vaccinated against the latest virus strains.”

And, as World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab announced:

“The pandemic represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world.”

These are the real reasons for widespread resistance to the mandates, besides the general skepticism over vaccines with limited testing and no long term data to prove their safety.  Americans don’t trust people like the Clintons and their elitist friends for good reason – They are motivated by a desire for power, not by legitimate concerns for public health.  Now, they have created the very thing they feared:  An army of people who pay attention.

Authored by Alice Giordano via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Efforts to overturn vaccine mandates for both hospital patients and health care workers appear to be gaining momentum across the United States.

In what is seen as a major victory for transplant patients who did not take the COVID vaccine, one of the largest transplant centers in the United States reversed its policy to require the jab in order to be eligible for an organ transplant.

The University of Michigan (UM) announced its new policy on May 4 just before court proceedings were about to get underway in a lawsuit filed against it for declaring patients ineligible for an organ transplant unless they agreed to the jab.

The suit was filed on behalf of several patients by David Peters of Pacific Justice Institute who in celebrating the reversal simply stated “we’re winning!”

In a written statement, UM said it was “new information” that led to the “voluntary decision” to reverse its policy.

“The University hereby gives notice to the Court that in light of developing epidemiological and other actuarial circumstances, effective April 27, 2023, it has changed its Transplant Center COVID-19 Vaccination Requirement for Adult Transplant Candidates. Relevant to this litigation, COVID-19 vaccine will no longer be required prior to wait-listing of potential adult solid organ transplant recipients.”

The UM decision fell on the same day a federal judge chastised Maine Assistant Attorney General Kimberly Patwardhan for filing a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed on behalf of health care workers who lost their job for refusing to get their COVID vaccine.

“You obviously have not been reading the U.S. Supreme Court precedent on this or else you would not have filed your motion to dismiss,” Judge Sandra Lynch said to Patwardhan.

Lynch made the comments during oral arguments in the case before a three-judge panel of First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston. The case is being argued by Matt Staver, Founder of Liberty Counsel, on behalf of the health care workers.

In addition to the ban, Maine Governor Mills also threatened to revoke the licenses of all health care employers who fail to mandate the COVID shot for all workers.

The rural New England state is one of six that banned religious exemptions from vaccine mandates.

The others are New York, California, Connecticut, West Virginia, and Mississippi.

Read more here…

Cox Automotive reports that auto prices are currently at near-record levels, with the average monthly payment for new cars reaching $754 in March due to a high-rate environment. The latest data on auto loan interest rates show a continued surge, worsening the affordability crisis and forcing more car buyers to gravitate to used car markets. 

The Federal Reserve just updated its finance rate for new auto 60-month loans that printed 7.48% in February. These levels have not been seen since November 2007 and are shy of the record high of 7.82% from August 2006.

Since 1Q22, the new auto 60-month loan rate jumped nearly 3% from 4.5% to 7.48%. And 2% from the start of the third quarter. We call these parabolic moves interest rate shocks for consumers.  

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On top of high borrowing costs, Kelley Blue Book data shows the average price of a new car hit $48,000 in March, a 30% jump from the same month last year. 

We outlined to readers in February that affording a new car is a luxury for only the wealthy (read: “A Shiny New Car Is Out Of Reach For Many Americans”). 

“The idea of a new car in every American’s driveway is not the world we live in,” Charlie Chesbrough, a senior economist at Cox, recently told Bloomberg.

After 24 months of negative real wage growth, obliterating mainly households of the lower/medium tier of the consumer base, the new reality is that new vehicle affordability is only for the wealthy.  

It’s a hard reality for many to grasp, but some could care less about a new vehicle in their driveway or parking spot at a multi-family unit. Instead, they struggle to pay rent and put food on the table in a higher-rate environment. 

Meanwhile, automakers are selling fewer vehicles in the US versus pre-pandemic sales trends — about 13.9 million in 2022 compared with 17 million in 2019. However, Cox Automotive said 2022 revenues for automakers are $15 billion higher than in 2019, primarily because new vehicles are more expensive. 

Squeezing new affordable cars out of the market will drive even more buyers to used car markets.

“Even with three consecutive months of improvement, affordability challenges are limiting access to the new-vehicle market by lower income and lower credit quality buyers,” Cox economist Jonathan Smoke. He added:

“Subprime lending in the new market has decreased substantially since 2019, and deep subprime has disappeared. This trend induces automakers to focus on profitable products for consumers who can afford to buy, which keeps less affluent consumers out of the new-vehicle market altogether and limits what is available and possible in the used market for years to come.” 

This might indicate used car prices will stay elevated despite Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index topping out in early 2022. 

Authored by Dorothy Li via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A group of 43 Republicans in the U.S. Senate said on May 6 that they “oppose raising the debt ceiling without substantive spending and budget reforms,” coalescing around their House counterparts ahead of the White House meeting over the federal debt ceiling amid a monthslong political standoff.

“The Senate Republican conference is united behind the House Republican conference in support of spending cuts and structural budget reform as a starting point for negotiations on the debt ceiling,” the group of Republicans, led by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), said in a letter addressed to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-Calif.).

Almost all Republicans in the Senate signed the letter, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

“It is now clear that Senate Republicans aren’t going to bail out Biden and Schumer, they have to negotiate,” Lee said in the statement accompanying the letter.

“I thank my colleagues for joining my effort to emphasize this point in the clearest possible terms.”

President Joe Biden is scheduled to sit down with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on May 9 to discuss a path forward on the federal debt ceiling. But the White House has signaled that there would be little compromise from the president.

“[Biden] is not going to negotiate on the debt ceiling,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on May 2.

However, the president “is willing to have a separate conversation about their spending, what they want to do with the budget,” she said.

Biden and McCarthy have been locked in a standoff over raising the debt ceiling since January. The president has called on Congress to pass a hike to the government’s borrowing limit without conditions.

McCarthy made it clear that he wouldn’t consider increasing the debt ceiling unless the president agreed to limit future spending.

“No clean debt ceiling is going to pass the House,” McCarthy said on April 26. “We can’t do that to our children.”

House Republicans passed their own solution to the debt crisis on April 26. The bill—the Limit, Save, Grow Act—would lift the federal borrowing cap by $1.5 trillion while enacting sweeping spending cuts, which Democrats have rejected.

Schumer began navigating to advance a clean, two-year extension of the debt limit in the Senate last week. He told reporters that Democrats would decide whether to put the extension up for a vote after the upcoming White House meeting.

Schumer, McConnell, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) have also been invited to the debt limit meeting at the White House on May 9.

Read more here…

Canada’s top oil-producing province, Alberta, declared a state of emergency on Saturday as more than 100 wildfires raged across the region. 

On Monday, there were 100 wildfires, 29 of which were classified as out of control. Evacuation orders have been posted for 30,000 residents in the province. 

Bloomberg said numerous companies shut down 234,000 barrels a day of oil and gas production. 

The fires are striking Canada’s main natural gas production region, including the prolific Montney and Duvernay formations, an area studded with wells and processing plants and criscrossed by pipelines. The region also is a major center for light oil production, and the disruptions have sent prices for some local grades of crude surging.

Edmonton Mixed Sweet’s discount to West Texas Intermediate narrowed by more than a third to $2.50 a barrel, the smallest discount since March, and Syncrude Sweet’s premium grew to $3.50 a barrel, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Condensate’s discount narrowed to $3.20 a barrel.

One community under evacuation order as of Sunday was Fox Creek, a major center for light oil and gas drillers. Energy facilities and local residents were also being evacuated in Grande Prairie, provincial officials said. -Bloomberg

NatGas for spot delivery at the Alberta Energy Co.’s hub jumped 34% to the equivalent of $2 per million British thermal units due to disruptions. 

The list (courtesy of Bloomberg) is the following energy companies whose operations have been impacted by out-of-control fires. 

• Crescent Point Energy Corp. has shut in 45,000 barrels a day of production in the Kaybob Duvernay region, though the company said it has seen no damage to its assets.
• Vermilion Energy Inc. temporarily shut 30,000 barrels a day of production, but added in a statement that initial assessments indicate minimal damage to key infrastructure.
• Pipestone Energy Corp. has shut in around 20,000 barrels a day of production, the company said in a statement.
• Tourmaline Oil Corp. has closed down nine South and West Deep Basin gas processing facilities as nearby fires expanded and new wildfires rapidly emerged.
• Paramount Resources Ltd. has shut the equivalent of about 50,000 barrels a day of oil production as of May 5 as a precaution and because of disruptions to third-party infrastructure, the company said Sunday. Its operations in the Grande Prairie and Kaybob regions are being affected.
• TC Energy Corp. halted two compressor stations on its Nova Gas system nearest to active wildfires, the company said in an email Sunday. Other sections of the system and other networks continue to operate safely. The company is keeping workers away from facilities near active blazes unless necessary.
• Tidewater Midstream & Infrastructure Ltd. shut its Brazeau River Complex, a gas processing facility, west of Edmonton and evacuated all personnel, the company said in an email.
• Cenovus Energy Inc. has shut down some production and halted plants in some areas, a company spokesperson said.
• Kiwetinohk Energy Corp. shut in the majority of its Placid operations in response to third-party service interruptions.
• The government-owned Trans Mountain Pipeline, the sole link carrying Canadian crude to the Pacific coast, is still in operation but the company has deployed mitigation measures, including a perimeter sprinkler system at its Edson pump station, and is ready to deploy additional protection measures if needed, the company said.
• Tamarack Valley Energy Ltd. had to shut in less than 300 barrels a day of production after the gas processing plants operated by Tidewater and another run by Keyera Corp. went out of operation due to the blazes, Chief Executive Officer Brian Schmidt said by phone.
• Pembina Pipeline Corp. also said it evacuated some workers west of Edmonton.

Here are scenes from the ground.

🇨🇦 Fire in Edson, Alberta, Canada

-25,000 people were evacuated from their homes due to the big fires#canada #canada🇨🇦 #alberta #fire #crisis #emergency #AlbertaWildfires pic.twitter.com/MpWC7pBc1Y

— F.M NEWS (@fmnews__) May 8, 2023

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#BREAKING_NEWS
Bushfire fires force some 30 thousand people to evacuate their homes in Canada’s Alberta province, and shut down some nose companies. pic.twitter.com/JjXFf9HVkg

— Poli Pulse (@POLI_PULSE) May 8, 2023

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Terrifying evolution of the more than 110 current #Wildfires in my home province of #Alberta. A state of emergency has been declared, thousands evacuated. It’s only May.

How many more historics before we #ActOnClimate #climate #energy #staysafe #renewables via @or_bit_eye pic.twitter.com/MAEaoGz8Fn

— Mike Hudema (@MikeHudema) May 7, 2023

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Thousands of people have evacuated from areas in northwest Alberta as wildfires burn through around 400,000 hectares of land. Alberta Wildfire said the scale of the blazes is being called “unprecedented” with so much burning so early in the fire season. pic.twitter.com/6AJMaw5GDV

— The Globe and Mail (@globeandmail) May 8, 2023

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Alberta’s oil and gas production has been impacted by wildfires before. In 2016, about 1 million barrels a day of output were shut down due to fires in the province’s eastern region. 

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

Once again displaying that he is not afraid to go on the offensive against the Deep State, Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Junior stated this past weekend that he believes the CIA was “involved in the murder” of his uncle and has presided over a “60-year cover-up”.

During an interview, host Jason Calacanis asked Kennedy “Do you believe they (the CIA) were involved in the murder of your uncle?”

Kennedy instantly responded “They were definitely involved in the murder and the 60-year cover-up,” adding “They’re still not releasing, you know the papers that legally they have to release.”

RFK Jr. also noted that his father Bobby Kennedy’s belief about assassination was that the CIA was responsible, noting that President Kennedy’s brother even called Langley and asked “did your people do this?”

Watch:

.@RobertKennedyJr: CIA ‘Definitely Involved’ in JFK’s Assassination

“They were definitely involved in the murder and the 60-year cover-up,” he declared. “They’re still not releasing the papers that legally they have to release.”

“For anybody who has doubts about that, I would… pic.twitter.com/fY3MeEDfD1

— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) May 6, 2023

Full video below:

During his campaign announcement last month, RFK Jr. spoke about his uncle vowing to “take the CIA and shatter it into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the wind” after the disastrous Bay of Pigs incident.

RFK Jr. emphasised that JFK had concluded before he was assassinated that “the function of the intelligence agencies had become to provide the military industrial complex with a constant pipeline of war.”

Kennedy Jr. promised to “let loose” on those who have attempted to silence him for 18 years, asserting “This is what happens when you censor somebody for 18 years. I’ve got a lot to talk about.”

Video: RFK Jr. Tells Deep State “Nice Try” As Fire Alarm Interrupts His Presidential Announcement

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