The Left said that Israel’s economy could not withstand the military and diplomatic onslaught being leveled at the Jewish State. As usual, the Left was full of sh**!
The Leftists don’t understand that Israelis are an indomitable people. Israel’s tech sector achieved $10.5 billion in M&A deals and $12 billion in startup funding. How many countries not named the United States could thrive in the midst of such a vicious onslaught? The answer is zero.
While missiles rain down and reservists deploy, Israel’s tech sector has shattered all previous records in 2024. With $10.5 billion in M&A deals and $12 billion in startup funding, the nation’s innovation ecosystem is proving more resilient than ever.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2025-01-19 16:51:572025-01-19 16:51:57Against All Odds: Israel’s Tech Sector Shatters Records in 2024
The tiny Delta Smelt fish have not been seen in the wild in California in over a decade.
And yet, California Democrats flushed annual water flow into the ocean to save this little fish that they can’t even find in its natural habitat.
Now several cities are burnt to the ground.
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They sacrificed entire communities for a fish that doesn’t exist.
A 2021 report by Dan Bacher in the Sacramento News revealed that there have been NO DELTA SMELT seen in the wild since 2012. They’re extinct.
For the seventh September in a row, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife has caught zero Delta smelt during its Fall Midwater Trawl Survey of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
The last time Delta smelt – an indicator species for the broader ecological health estuary – were found in CDFW’s September survey was in 2015. Only 5 were caught by state biologists at the time.
After that, the only year that Delta smelt were caught during the entire four-month survey was in 2016, when a total of 8 smelt were reported.
The final results of Fish and Wildlife’s four-month survey of pelagic (open water) fish species, conducted from September through mid-December, won’t be available until around the start of next year. The current September 2022 data is available here on the annual state surveys webpage.
Recent research has shown that the water releases are not providing the benefits to the small fish that they originally thought. Their population numbers are nearly nonexistent in the wild…..
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https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2025-01-19 01:26:002025-01-19 01:26:00The Infamous Delta Smelt Fish Has Not Been Seen in Nearly a Decade – California Allowed Its Cities to Burn to the Ground Over a Fish That They Can’t Even Find Anymore
It is easy to fall into conspiracy thinking when a situation seems to benefit multiple groups. Often, the explanation is simpler: each group is chasing money, rather than following a grand pre-planned scheme. This dynamic applies to mass immigration in Western Democracies. Some observers claim there is a hidden plot, but closer scrutiny reveals that capitalists want cheap labor, politicians want dependable voter blocs, and academics provide ideological cover through theories of identity politics. The result is the same: borders remain open, social cohesion weakens, and society moves closer to “Brazilification,” in which multiple ethnic groups coexist but harbor mutual resentment, while a small elite remains protected behind guarded walls.
Historically, economic motives have always dominated decisions about human migration. In the Americas, colonists imported enslaved people to work the land and increase profits. Brazil illustrates this better than anywhere, having received about 4.9 million Africans—more than any other part of the Americas during the transatlantic slave trade (Telles 2004). The native populations were nearly destroyed by Old World diseases such as smallpox and malaria. With Indigenous labor decimated, enslaved Africans were brought in to address the resulting shortage. Moving into the twentieth century, a similar logic shaped labor imports in Western Europe. In October 1961, West Germany faced a shortage of truck drivers. Rather than raising wages for Germans, capitalists arranged for the arrival of Turks, referred to as “guest workers” intended to leave after two years (Hunn 2005). However, businesses soon lobbied to change the rules so Turkish drivers could remain indefinitely, having recognized the expenses tied to constant turnover. This exemplifies the typical pattern: drive wages lower, import cheaper labor, and maximize profit.
Great Britain followed a comparable approach, granting citizens of its Commonwealth nations the right to move to the UK after World War II. The rationale was to fill factory jobs, driving positions, and other roles without paying British citizens the higher wages that might have been necessary otherwise. Recruiting workers from the Caribbean, India, or Pakistan became the default solution. Over time, these migrants brought their families, settled long-term, and established communities. The same pattern surfaces repeatedly: capitalists expand the labor pool to keep wages low, while politicians permit or even promote it to serve their own interests. This process produces a perpetual influx of newcomers who may not share host-country cultural norms and are not strongly incentivized to assimilate. Employers simply need bodies to fill roles, with little regard for the cultural implications.
This influx naturally drives wages downward. Economists point to the fact that adding more workers often suppresses or even reduces wages in real terms (Hira 2010). In the United States, the pursuit of inexpensive labor accelerated with the advent of H-1B visas, a program that brings in foreign software engineers. Silicon Valley corporations such as Facebook, Google, and Apple continually petition for more H-1B slots because the cost of hiring skilled labor from India or China can be lower than hiring American programmers. Those foreign workers earn less and rarely challenge workplace policies, largely because losing a job can lead to losing visa status. This situation fosters what some call a “race to the bottom” in the American labor market, as profits go up for tech giants while local workers face stagnating pay.
Over time, these migrant workers understandably wish to bring their families. Expanded family units often introduce cultural differences that may not align with local norms or languages. Meanwhile, the corporations that demanded a cheaper workforce rarely consider the social ramifications of large immigrant enclaves lacking integration. Politicians, particularly on the left, realized that such enclaves could become valuable voting blocs. Academia then supplied a theoretical shield: identity politics. Rather than promoting assimilation or addressing legitimate cultural conflicts, identity politics labels any opposition to mass immigration as “racist.” Initially, this may look like a humanitarian effort to defend newcomers; in reality, it provides cover for corporate interests that thrive on unending expansions of the labor supply.
In the United States, the Democratic Party once championed the working class. By the 1990s, party leaders recognized that workers might not remain loyal, especially if they blamed large-scale immigration for depressing wages. Consequently, the party pivoted to a strategy of courting specific ethnic and racial groups through identity politics, assuming that those groups would become dependable voters (Huntington 2004). This shift marginalized broad working-class issues, turning the focus toward group identities. New immigrants learned they could maintain linguistic and cultural distinctiveness without significant assimilation, since demanding integration would be painted as bigotry. By positioning itself as the defender of minority cultures, the Democratic Party guaranteed support from immigrant communities—ensuring a steady stream of loyal voters.
In essence, an uncomfortable alliance took shape: businesses prioritize cheap labor, certain politicians seek new voters, and some academics promote a narrative praising diversity above unity. The unintended price is diminished social cohesion. Democracies function best when people share a foundation of customs or at least mutual respect. Fragmenting into separate ethnic or religious enclaves undermines that trust. James Madison, in The Federalist Papers, cautioned that too many competing factions can tear a republic apart (Madison 1787). Under globalization and identity politics, groups form around perceived victimhood while suspicion spreads among the native population.
Brazil’s historical trajectory offers a cautionary glimpse into the potential outcome of extensive diversity without a unifying culture. European colonists, Indigenous peoples, and enslaved Africans intermingled for centuries, creating a deeply stratified, multiethnic society. Although the nation has attempted to embrace the concept of a “racial democracy,” color-based hierarchies endure. Lighter-skinned Brazilians often wield economic power, while darker-skinned Brazilians bear the brunt of social and institutional disadvantages (Telles 2004). Western Democracies risk reproducing these divisions on a broad scale, evolving into societies with a wealthy, predominantly white minority in secluded communities, while large groups of immigrants and disenfranchised locals remain stuck at the lower rungs. Gated enclaves and private security become the norm, a scenario evocative of Brazil’s stark class separations.
Critics sometimes dismiss these warnings as exaggerated, yet unfolding events in Western nations point to real problems. Violent crime has risen in certain European areas, sometimes tied to marginalized migrant populations, such as in parts of Sweden or France. The Yellow Vest protests in France highlighted deep economic disparity and signaled that many native workers felt ignored while new waves of immigrants settled in. Brexit reflected the sentiment that Britain had forfeited its sovereignty to the European Union’s open-borders approach. Donald Trump’s electoral victory can be read as a reaction to years of lax immigration policies and an economy perceived to prioritize elite interests over those of ordinary citizens. None of these occurrences stand alone; all are rooted in overlapping drivers of globalization, cheap labor practices, and cultural tensions.
Pointing out these dynamics often leads to accusations of xenophobia or racism. That is the potency of identity politics. Mentioning the necessity of limiting immigration or promoting assimilation routinely incurs charges of intolerance. Historically, assimilation proved crucial for uniting immigrants and natives under a common national identity. In the United States, earlier waves of immigrants learned English, adopted local customs, and developed a shared sense of “American-ness.” That process is now sometimes framed as erasure of other cultures—reinforcing the idea that integration is oppressive rather than stabilizing.
There is no single secret conspiracy behind these policies. Instead, overlapping interests repeatedly converge to produce similar outcomes. Corporate lobbying, political maneuvering, and academic reverence for “diversity” result in policies that perpetuate mass immigration, irrespective of the social consequences. Viewed from afar, it may seem orchestrated, but it unfolds through everyday decision-making that caters to short-term economic and political gains.
Democracies are inherently fragile. Trust evaporates when different factions suspect each other of imposing alien norms. Alienation can breed paranoia, which in turn fosters violence. Greater diversity demands robust integration policies, but those measures are swiftly denounced as culturally insensitive or racist. Meanwhile, corporate leaders and allied politicians exploit the situation, reaping the benefits of low-cost labor and dependable voting constituencies. The result is a patchwork of enclaves, each forging separate cultural identities and harboring deep-seated suspicions of the others. Madison’s fears about factions prove timely in an era where identity politics and globalization generate a surge of segregated interests.
Brazil provides a prime example of the lasting damage that can arise from failing to unite a highly diverse population under a shared framework. Centuries of uneven power relations have led to rampant crime, corruption, and largely unaddressed social rifts. Western Democracies risk staggering down the same path: small elites remain behind barricades while ordinary individuals live in fractured communities, separated by language, tradition, and economic standing. The upheavals represented by Brexit, the Trump phenomenon, and the Yellow Vest demonstrations attest to the intensifying fault lines in the West. If systemic grievances remain unresolved, bigger eruptions may follow.
Some contend that these concerns are exaggerated, but neglecting them only deepens the societal divisions. This discussion does not boil down to hatred of immigrants; it concerns the reality that extensive demographic changes require governance and consistent cultural principles. The blend of capitalist profiteering, political opportunism, and identity-focused academic discourse has eroded the push for assimilation. In the absence of meaningful reforms, societies across the West face creeping “Brazilification,” characterized by rigid stratification by race, ethnicity, and class, with wealthy elites insulating themselves from the majority through physical and economic barriers.
Eurostat (2017). “Asylum and first time asylum applicants by citizenship, age and sex.”
Hira, R. (2010). “The H-1B and L-1 Visa Programs: Out of Control.” Economic Policy Institute.
Hunn, K. (2005). Nächstes Jahr kehren wir zurück …: Die Geschichte der türkischen “Gastarbeiter” in der Bundesrepublik.
Huntington, S.P. (2004). Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity. Simon & Schuster.
Madison, J. (1787). Federalist No. 10, in The Federalist Papers.
OECD (2019). International Migration Outlook. OECD Publishing.
Pew Research Center (2018). “U.S. Foreign-Born Population: How and Why is it Changing?”
Telles, E. (2004). Race in Another America: The Significance of Skin Color in Brazil. Princeton University Press.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2025-01-18 14:52:202025-01-18 14:52:20The Economic Roots of Mass Immigration
The American youth of today have become captivated by Japanese art, with anime emerging as the most popular genre of entertainment for Gen Z. This medium enthralls audiences with its unique blend of artistic storytelling, cultural depth, and emotional resonance. Unlike traditional Western animation, anime caters to a broad spectrum of viewers, offering genres and themes ranging from action-packed adventures and heartwarming romances to philosophical explorations and dark thrillers. Its rise in popularity can be attributed to factors such as increased accessibility through streaming platforms, the global influence of Japanese pop culture, and the visually striking art style and complex characters. This cultural phenomenon has transcended entertainment, becoming a significant aspect of American pop culture and a bridge to exploring Japanese traditions and modern society.
The meteoric rise of anime in the United States also underscores a subtle yet deeply rooted dissatisfaction with modern American entertainment. Hollywood movies, sitcoms, and cartoons have faced mounting criticism for failing to resonate with audiences, particularly younger viewers. Modern Disney films, for instance, are losing millions of dollars on nearly every new release, signaling a disconnect between content creators and their intended audience.
One of the primary grievances with modern American entertainment is the overemphasis on characters’ emotions at the expense of action and plot. For example, in the Disney+ series She-Hulk, the titular character spends nearly seven episodes focusing on personal issues without fully embracing her superhero identity. This results in a narrative where, despite the series’ title, the central character rarely embodies the action and stakes associated with being the Hulk. The issue isn’t the character’s gender but rather the lack of engaging storytelling and meaningful action. Modern American art often reveals a deeper truth about its creators: an aversion to risk and a preference for introspection over dynamism.
Additionally, there is a growing cultural disconnect between the characters in modern American entertainment and the audiences they aim to represent. Characters are often portrayed as facing trivial difficulties that are easily overcome, failing to reflect the real struggles and sacrifices many viewers experience. Traditional storytelling tropes, such as the hero’s journey, are often ignored. Historically, superheroes would face minor challenges in Act 1, followed by a significant defeat in Act 2, forcing them to overcome adversity at great personal cost before ultimately triumphing in Act 3. These stories resonated because they mirrored the struggles of real life, where success often requires sacrifice and perseverance.
However, modern entertainment frequently bypasses these traditional arcs. Instead of compelling narratives, audiences are presented with characters who rarely face significant adversity or make meaningful sacrifices. This disconnect leaves viewers feeling unfulfilled and alienated, as the stories no longer reflect their values or experiences. Take, for instance, the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot, which replaced the original male leads with women. The film was widely criticized, not because of the gender swap but because it lacked depth and compelling storytelling. Support for the film often seemed driven by political agendas rather than genuine appreciation for its content, further alienating audiences.
This phenomenon is not limited to film but extends to literature as well. For decades, identity politics has infiltrated the publishing industry. While genre fiction by authors like Stephen King and J.K. Rowling continues to thrive, much of what is considered “serious” literature struggles to find an audience. Many readers question the purpose of identity politics in entertainment, as it often prioritizes representation over substance.
The portrayal of “diverse” characters in modern American media often exacerbates the problem. Characters from minority groups—whether Black, Hispanic, or LGBTQ+—are frequently depicted as facing either insurmountable challenges, such as systemic oppression, or trivial ones that require no real effort to overcome. Moreover, these characters often lack depth, focusing excessively on their identity rather than engaging with broader conflicts or narratives. For example, the 2023 series Velma reimagined the classic Scooby-Doo characters but shifted the focus to discussions about race and ethnicity, sidelining the mystery-solving that defined the original series. This approach alienates audiences who seek meaningful stories rather than overt political messaging.
Writers and filmmakers who attempt to address real-world struggles often face suppression from major studios and publishers. The gatekeepers of American entertainment, shaped by academic ideologies, prioritize identity politics over relatable and compelling storytelling. This has led to a shrinking market for American entertainment, as audiences increasingly turn to international media for narratives that resonate with them. Diverse characters in American films and shows are often portrayed as infallible, with minimal obstacles to overcome. They are rarely challenged by other characters, and their victories are framed as personal rather than tied to broader narratives. This lack of stakes and growth leaves audiences disengaged.
The root issue lies in how modern American entertainment avoids addressing the realities of the human experience. In life, good often loses in the short term, and victory comes only through immense sacrifice and effort. By shielding characters from real adversity, creators betray a desire to escape the challenges of the real world. Yet, this escapism fails to connect with viewers who understand that hardship and struggle are intrinsic to meaningful storytelling.
A bitter conclusion emerges: the creators of modern American entertainment do not respect the minorities they claim to champion. Those who oppose identity politics view individuals as unique, valuing the content of their character rather than reducing them to stereotypes. In contrast, identity politics often portrays minorities as monolithic groups defined solely by their struggles, rather than as complex individuals with diverse experiences. This patronizing approach diminishes the authenticity of their stories and reinforces negative stereotypes.
For instance, in many modern narratives, white characters are often the only ones depicted as facing significant adversity, while minority characters are protected from meaningful challenges. This dynamic reinforces the idea that minorities are incapable of overcoming obstacles, an idea that is both insulting and untrue. Audiences who value individuality and meritocracy reject these portrayals, seeking stories that celebrate universal human struggles rather than dividing people into identity groups.
This is why modern American entertainment struggles to resonate. It prioritizes political messaging over authentic storytelling, leaving audiences yearning for narratives that reflect the complexity and depth of real life. In contrast, international media like anime thrives because it embraces universal themes, compelling characters, and dynamic storytelling. By focusing on the human experience rather than identity politics, anime and other international entertainment mediums offer audiences the connection and inspiration they crave.
Ultimately, the decline of modern American entertainment serves as a wake-up call for creators. To regain the trust and attention of audiences, they must return to the fundamentals of storytelling: compelling characters, meaningful adversity, and universal themes. Only by respecting the intelligence and individuality of their viewers can they hope to create art that truly resonates. Until then, the American youth will continue to look abroad for the stories that speak to their hearts and minds.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2025-01-18 14:52:182025-01-18 14:52:18From Hollywood to Anime: Why Modern American Entertainment is Garbage
Having been born in Honduras, I’ve seen firsthand the effects of political violence—a grim reality familiar to many across Latin America. Political violence often functions as a tool for power, used by politicians and parties to suppress dissent and consolidate control. “One hand washes the other,” as the saying goes: the politicians empower the rioters, and the rioters support the politicians.
But political violence is not always spontaneous. There are instances when unrest erupts out of sheer frustration with leadership, triggered by significant or seemingly trivial events. A prime example is the Rodney King Riots in 1992—six days of civil unrest fueled by public outrage over police brutality. However, not all instances of political violence arise organically.
On December 4, 2024, in Midtown Manhattan, the nature of political violence took a chilling turn.
The Catalyst: The Murder of Brian Thompson
In the early hours of that day, Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was shot and killed outside the New York Hilton Midtown Hotel. Thompson, a controversial figure, had become a lightning rod for public anger due to UnitedHealthcare’s perceived exploitation of patients and sky-high premiums. His policies, which were widely criticized for prioritizing profit over patient care, made him a symbol of corporate greed in the American healthcare system.
The accused, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, was no ordinary suspect. A University of Pennsylvania graduate with a degree in economics, Mangione’s profile defied expectations. He came from a middle-class family in New Jersey and had excelled academically. Yet, Mangione’s later writings, found in his apartment, revealed a deep disillusionment with the U.S. healthcare system and the broader economic inequalities he believed it represented. His online posts spoke of “economic violence” inflicted on ordinary Americans and labeled corporate executives like Thompson as “tyrants.”
Mangione’s act of violence was not an isolated incident of personal grievance but a reflection of a larger, growing sentiment of frustration and anger. To many who felt crushed by systemic inequities, his act symbolized a form of retribution, however morally repugnant. The public’s response was startling. What would have been universally condemned a decade ago was met with a mix of cheers, sympathy, and outrage. On social media, hashtags such as #JusticeForMangione and #CorporateAccountability trended, illustrating a troubling shift in societal attitudes toward violence as a political statement.
This reaction demonstrates how polarization and systemic failures can transform acts of individual violence into symbolic gestures that resonate with larger political movements. Mangione’s crime was not merely personal; it was politicized, amplified by ideological divisions, and framed as a radical but inevitable response to perceived injustices.
The Rise of Polarization
The growing use of political violence cannot be separated from the deepening polarization within our society. The divisions between the professional-managerial class and other groups have intensified, often manifesting in ideological clashes. These groups, representing diverging interests and priorities, are locked in an escalating conflict.
Class tensions exacerbate this divide. While issues like feminism, migration, and LGBTQ rights dominate headlines, they are often symptoms of a broader problem: systemic inequality. The professional-managerial class, serving entrenched economic interests, benefits from a system that marginalizes others. This deepens societal rifts and drives people to ideological extremes.
Both sides of the political spectrum bear responsibility for this polarization. On the Left, groups like Antifa engage in activities that are tacitly condoned by some leaders, eroding public trust in institutions. On the Right, inflammatory rhetoric and the rise of extremist factions contribute to the cycle of hostility. Acknowledging the culpability of both sides is essential for an honest conversation about the roots of political violence.
Historical Lessons
The people who inflict violence and get away with it, they usually win and then they start inflicting this political violence on not just their opponents but ultimately on the entire people. Why? Because they need the violence to stay in power and staying in power becomes an end of itself and therefore the use of violence becomes an end of itself. They need to keep on using the violence, more and more repression, and abuse to stay in power. This story is not new, it is a tale as old as time and the United States is not an exception to this.
History is replete with examples of leaders who weaponized political violence for short-term gain, leaving behind legacies of destruction and trauma. Adolf Hitler’s rise in Nazi Germany serves as a stark example. In 1934, during the Night of the Long Knives, Hitler ordered the purge of the Sturmabteilung (SA) leadership, a paramilitary group that had helped him gain power but was perceived as a threat to his regime. This violent consolidation of power eliminated rivals and secured the loyalty of the military, but it also entrenched a culture of fear and repression that defined the Nazi regime. Similarly, his use of the Gestapo to silence dissent further illustrates how political violence suppresses opposition at the cost of long-term stability.
The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia relied heavily on violence to overthrow the Provisional Government. Following their seizure of power in 1917, the Bolsheviks, under Lenin and later Stalin, initiated the Red Terror. This campaign targeted perceived enemies of the revolution, including political opponents and members of the bourgeoisie. Stalin’s Great Purge in the 1930s further amplified this violence, leading to the execution and imprisonment of millions. These actions secured short-term control but created a legacy of fear and societal fragmentation that haunted Russia for decades.
These examples illustrate a critical lesson: political violence, while seemingly effective in the short term, fosters resentment, fear, and instability. It is a tool that prioritizes coercion over consensus, making its gains unsustainable.
Grievances vs. Violence
Americans have legitimate grievances about the healthcare system, economic inequality, and systemic failures. Sky-high costs, denied claims, and deaths from medical negligence fuel anger and hopelessness. However, resorting to political violence undermines the very foundation of democracy.
Violence silences opposition and instills fear, bypassing the democratic process of debate and mutual understanding. While it may yield immediate results, these changes lack the durability of reforms achieved through consensus and dialogue. A society that normalizes violence sacrifices its ability to resolve conflicts peacefully, trading stability for temporary power.
A New Era of Violence in the United States
In the United States, political violence is a relatively new phenomenon compared to other parts of the world. Yet, its trajectory is all too familiar. It begins with the illusion of progress but ultimately suppresses opposition through fear.
The murder of Brian Thompson and the subsequent public reaction marks a turning point. Mangione’s actions, whether seen as a desperate protest or a reprehensible crime, underline the dangerous potential of systemic failures to fuel political violence. When grievances are ignored or dismissed, they fester and manifest in ways that threaten the foundations of a democratic society.
We must ask ourselves: Is this the society we want? A society where fear, not reason, dictates change?
Political violence is not a shortcut to meaningful progress; it is a dangerous detour that erodes the foundations of democracy. History teaches us that societies built on fear and repression are inherently unstable, fostering division and ultimately leading to ruin.
A Path Forward
To combat the rise of political violence, we must address the underlying causes of polarization. This includes tackling economic inequality, rebuilding trust in institutions, and fostering civic education that emphasizes dialogue and mutual respect. Politicians, community leaders, and everyday citizens must prioritize consensus over conflict and dialogue over division.
We must also resist the temptation to justify violence, regardless of its source. Condemning violence consistently and unequivocally sends a clear message: no grievance, however legitimate, justifies the erosion of democratic principles.
The future of our society depends on our ability to recognize political violence for what it is: a dangerous illusion of progress. By learning from history and committing to peaceful resolution, we can build a more just and stable society for all.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2025-01-18 14:52:172025-01-18 14:52:17Luigi Mangione, Political Violence, and The Illusion of Progress
Wildfires, compounded by poor governance, have ravaged Los Angeles and other areas of California. We really feel for the people who have lost their homes. For many, their family wealth was in that home, and with so many going naked without insurance, this means they have been wiped out. Property loss aside, the death count is rising and will likely continue to do so.
Many have had their businesses destroyed or their employer wiped out. Schools have been destroyed. All of this is very disruptive to families and the greater community.
We feel bad that Californians have been so severely abused by their government. Stories continue to surface about fire trucks from other jurisdictions being stopped to pass emission standards. Huh? Can you imagine the quantity and toxicity of what is being poured into the air as homes burn with all kinds of plastics, insulation, and roofing materials being incinerated?
When it comes to staffing public safety institutions and fire departments, California imposes its “woke agenda” on all hiring practices. We have nothing personally against overweight lesbians, provided they are the very best candidates for the job. This fire suggests they were not selected on merit but instead on their sexual preferences.
And then there are the empty reservoirs, fire hydrants without water, and general abuse of the watershed by putting the interests of a tiny fish ahead of millions of people. It exposes one of the key problems with environmentalism. That problem is the ridiculous assumption that a “pristine state of nature” can be recreated (if such a condition ever existed), forgetting that 40 million people already live in California and are now an integral part of “the environment.”
California created such a hostile regulatory environment and ran such terrible fire prevention policies that major insurance companies have been pulling out of the state. Imagine how bad it must be that a company would not want access to all those clients and the seventh largest economy in the world.
Beyond these recent apparent examples of poor governance, California’s one-party system has created an economic bully of the first order. California often leads the nation in coercing companies to comply with their regulations as if they ran the entire country. Without being “California compliant” you can’t sell certain types of autos, heavy trucks, and even firearms in the state. Since, in many cases, companies can’t afford separate production lines, California “standards” are imposed through coercion and economic blackmail on the rest of the country.
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Politically, Californians such as Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Adam Schiff, Diane Feinstein, and others have forced their woke agenda on the rest of the country as well. The state has become a political bully.
California is among the most smug and sanctimonious states related to illegal immigration.
Through Hollywood and fashion, California has become a cultural bully as well. In fact, it is hard to think of a damaging social trend that did not start in California. At one time, the state banned travel by state employees to 26 other states because they were insufficiently compliant with the demands of the LGBTQ+ community.
In short, California has been an obnoxious bully on various political, cultural, and economic fronts for years.
Now, this giant Blue Bully has to look to Arizona and Alabama to bail them out of the problems self-inflicted through years of arrogant Progressivism.
As much as we feel for the people of California, it must also be noted that a large majority of Californians voted for all this crap and that now they want the rest of the country to pick up the cost for the consequences of their flawed voting. The state is arrogant, and many of its voters are also.
That raises the interesting question: how do we separate the innocent from the guilty? About 40% of Californians voted for Trump. And many of the eastern, rural counties still lean conservative. But why should the rest of us pay for the consequences of the poor political choices of the majority of voters and their overpowering arrogance? Further, is it wise for the rest of us to continue to facilitate the bad judgment and philosophy that promotes the right to poop in public wherever one wishes to? Are fire protection and law enforcement “California values?”?
California can set its priorities with its own money, but when they ask for our money, don’t we have a right to say something about how it is spent?
Furthermore, recent state actions demonstrate an almost neo-confederate type of attitude, which is a danger to the existence of the union. You can’t allow states to violate Federal law, even if they disagree with that law. John C. Calhoun was bad enough in South Carolina but would be insufferable in California.
No, we should not facilitate bad behavior by California. It is not optimal for the rest of us; frankly, it has not been good for them.
Therefore, as the cries rise for us to “help California,” that help should be contingent upon them adopting some sane economic and environmental policies. Otherwise, we will have to pay for the next disaster that is sure to follow.
As far as the voters are concerned, we are not sure that Californians fully understand how both they and their state are viewed by the rest of us. They have been bullies on many fronts, so the primary cost and consequences must fall on Californians for this rebuilding. They will have to re-direct their spending. Instead of spending on fire prevention, they have spent more than three times that amount just on their failed homeless policies.
And what about the expense of offering free medical care to all illegal aliens? Why should the rest of us spend money on that? Or their sanctuary cities programs. Money is fungible – aiding them in one area allows them to spend money on nonsense in another.
No, California is currently spending a lot of money on the wrong things that should be re-directed to rebuilding and environmental reform. We should withhold funds until we see that both the voters and their political leaders are willing to reconsider their priorities.
In short, they have the money to start rebuilding if they do not squander their cash on their woke agenda. The rest of us are not required legally or morally to support their woke agenda.
Yes, help should be given, but with strings attached to require better governance. Notably, we must see a change in their neo-confederate actions.
However, if they can’t come down from their lofty arrogance, at least government funds should be withheld. What private charities and free enterprise choose to do is different. That is money gathered by voluntary action. But from the perspective of tax dollars confiscated by force, you can’t demand that others subsidize your lousy behavior.
California’s Democrats just opened a special session appropriating $50 million to “fight Trump.” Until that legislation is repealed and redirected to help the injured homeowners, we suggest not giving one dime to the Big Blue Bully. Once they abandon free health care for illegals, end sanctuary cities, and adopt sane environmental policies, then it is likely a Federal role will be necessary.
The fiscal condition of the US government is already tenuous at best. It is estimated that it may require upwards of $275 billion to rebuild the area of Los Angeles. It could be well more than that if reconstruction is delayed by California’s legendary bureaucracy. This will make it even more difficult for the Trump Administration to reduce the deficit and fight inflation. And what if more fires destroy more of California? Until California reforms itself, the expense could be never-ending.
It is time for fiscal tough love for all Americans, but especially for the Big Blue Bully.
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To support the growth of health and prosperity worldwide for the 8 billion on this planet in the coming decades, and the increasing demand for electricity, and for the 6,000+ products in our materialistic society, and for the various transportation fuels ⏤ will challenge humanity’s creativity to support the supply chains to meet those growing demands.
Government-mandated winners and losers are only applicable to those few in the wealthier countries that can afford huge subsidies, but the reality is that there are no silver bullet answers.
Politicians in wealthier countries are pursuing the most expensive ways to generate intermittent electricity. Energy poverty is among the most crippling but least talked-about crises of the 21st century. We should not take electricity, products, and fuel for granted. Wealthy countries may be able to bear expensive electricity and fuels, but not by those that can least afford living in “energy poverty.”
It should be one of everyone’s New Year’s resolutions to acquire a passion to stimulate discussions to enhance everyone’s Energy Literacy. To support and facilitate those CONVERSATIONS, at least three are required:
A Moderator: Teacher, student, or Podcast host.
A representative of the products and fuels of our materialistic society and
A representative of the pro-renewables for zero-emissions electricity.
Here are just a few open-ended starter questions for Teachers, Students, and Podcaster Moderators to stimulate 3-way Energy Literacy conversations:
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(1) Limitations of just electricity from renewables. Renewables, like wind and solar, only exist to generate occasional electricity. Since these so-called renewables CANNOT manufacture any of the more than 6,000 products AND the various transportation fuels made from fossil fuels for vehicles, planes, and ships that are demanded by the infrastructures of today, the same infrastructures that did not exist 200 years ago, the question for our conversation is: WHY eliminate fossil fuels when there is no known “replacement” to fossil fuels that can support the materialistic demands for products and fuels of the population and economy that are supporting the 8 billion on this planet?
(2) Most of the products in our materialistic society are made from fossil fuels. Everything that NEEDS Electricity, like iPhones, computers, data centers, and X-ray machines, need electricity to function. All the parts of toilets, spacecraft, and more than 50,000 merchant ships, more than 20,000 commercial aircraft, and more than 50,000 military aircraft are also made from the products based on derivatives manufactured from crude oil, so the question for our conversation is: Why rid only the wealthy countries with “green” movements, of fossil fuels as that would just divert the supply chain of oil to refineries in developing countries, to meet the demands for products and fuels that did not exist 200 years ago?
(3) Only wealthy economies have “green” movements. Of the 8 billion now on planet earth, of which 80% are making less than $10/day and lack many infrastructures being enjoyed by those in the wealthier countries such as Transportation, Airports, Water filtration, Sanitation, Hospitals, Medical equipment, Appliances, Electronics, Telecommunications systems, Heating, and ventilating, so the question for our conversation is: Why are the wealthy countries the only ones pursuing a “green movement” with subsidies and mandates?
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(4) Planet Earth’s resources are limited! Our 4-billion-year-old planet has limited natural resources like oil, gas, coal, lithium, cobalt, manganese, etc., that are being extracted at alarming rates. Even with technological advances in the next few decades, we may find “more.” Still, at current rates of extraction of those resources, the planet may be sucked dry in 50, 100, 200, or 500 years, so the question for our conversation is: Should there be a greater focus on the limitations of Earth’s natural resources now being extracted for the enjoyment by wealthier countries on Earth as our 4-billion-year-old planet will continue to be here, with or without humans,?
(5) Developing countries are THE only source for the materials for wealthier countries to go “green”. Since the current “green movement” technology requires significant rare earth minerals and metals to construct EV batteries, wind turbines, and solar panels that are not easily available in the few wealthier countries are being mined in developing countries, so the question for our conversation is: Are the wealthy country mandates and subsidies ethical and moral, to continue financially encouraging China and Africa to continue the egregious human rights violations of vulnerable minority populations by exploiting “their” poor with yellow, brown, and black skin, and financially supporting environmental degradation to “their” landscapes just to reinforce mandated EV’s, and subsidizing of wind turbines, and solar panels in “wealthier country backyards”?
(6) The Future of EV Batteries. The first cell phone, more than 50 years ago in 1973, the Motorola DynaTAC, weighed 2.5 pounds and was 9 inches tall. Today’s cell phones are generally under 7 ounces with almost unlimited functions, easy charging, and virtually unlimited applications. In the coming decades, the current 1,000-pound lithium battery in EVs will seem barbaric, just like the first cell phone, future EV batteries will be lighter, cheaper, longer range, and shorter charging times, so the question for our conversation: How long do you think it will take humanity ingenuity and creativity driven by the free enterprise environment, to meet the humongous growing demand for efficient electricity, that will most likely exceed what we experienced in cell phone development that took 5-decades?
(7) Electricity came about AFTER the discovery of oil. ALL six methods to generate electricity, from hydro, coal, natural gas, nuclear, wind, and solar, for the generation of electricity, are ALL built with the products, components, and equipment that are made from the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil, so the question for our conversation is: Why rid the world of fossil fuels as that would eliminate our ability to generate electricity?
(8) So-called renewable power has proven to be very expensive electricity. The few wealthy countries able to provide heavy subsidies to transition to occasional electricity generation from breezes and sunshine has proven to be ultra-expensive for Germany, Australia, Great Britain, New Zealand, all of the EU, and the USA. These few wealthy countries that currently represent about one of the eight billion of the world’s population still remain ignorant that billions in Africa, Asia, and Latin America still live on less than $10 a day – and that billions still have little to no access to electricity, so the question for our conversation is: How will the “green movement” help those in poorer developing countries join the industrialized society being enjoyed by those in the wealthier countries?
(9) The supply chain to support zero-emission mandates must be ethical and moral. The zero-emission mandates from the few wealthier developed countries require key challenges in the supply chain requirements from the raw materials sector for rare earth minerals and metals that need to be overcome if the electricity generation transition is to be realized, so the question for our conversation is: Why is there no conversation about securing sustainable supply chains, promoting responsible sourcing practices with labor and environmental laws and regulations, and ensuring a just and equitable green and digital transition for everyone, both poor and wealthy?
(10) Nuclear power plants are prolificating around the world. For more than 7 decades, nuclear power has proven to be the safest, most compact, emissions-free, and cheapest way to produce continuous, uninterruptable, and dispatchable electricity; it has resulted in increased activities in China, Russia, and Japan with about 60 new nuclear power plants under construction across the world and a further 110 planned, so the question for our conversation is: Why do you think that America is supporting subsidies for unreliable wind and solar generated electricity that is NOT continuous nor dispatchable, and avoiding nuclear-generated electricity that is continuous, dispatchable, and emissions-free?
(11) Nuclear power generation has an impressive safety track record. America has a track record of almost 70 years of nuclear power plant operation without any injuries, including over 70 years of nuclear Navy reactor operations for all their submarines and aircraft carriers, so the question for our conversation is: Why is there so much public resistance in America to allowing nuclear power to compete with other forms of power generation on the open market?
(12) The USA is falling behind in technological developments in nuclear power generation. While nuclear power generation is proliferating around the world in China, Russia, and Japan, with about 60 new nuclear power plants under construction and a further 110 planned, nuclear power design and construction came to a slow end in America in the early 1980s due to the handling of the anti-nuclear movement and an incompetent Nuclear Regulatory Commission, so the question for our conversation is: What will it take to stimulate American interest to just catch up with foreign countries domination of technological developments in nuclear power generation?
(13) CO2 starvation. The minimum threshold for plant life is 150 ppm of Carbon Dioxide (CO2), but today, CO2 levels are about 420 ppm. Carbon dioxide is essential for life on Earth, as humans need it to regulate respiration and control blood pH, while Plants use it to create oxygen through photosynthesis. So, the question for our conversation is: With CO2 levels today nearing the starvation levels for plant and human life on Earth, why the focus on reducing CO2 levels to end life?
(14) Government-subsidized projects have yet to produce Environmental Impact Reports. To date, all wind and solar generation of electricity has been funded by government subsidies as NONE have been financed by private entrepreneurial investor funds, but all those subsidized renewable projects have yet to be accountable for Environmental Impact Reports (EIRs) that detail the life cycle for renewables that run from design, procurement, and construction through operations, maintenance, and repair, as well as the life-ending decommissioning and disposal or recycling and restoration of the landscaping back to its original pristine condition, so the question for our conversation is: Why are government subsidized renewable projects toward wind, solar, and electric vehicles EXEMPT from the same Environmental Impact Reports that extensively discuss decommissioning, recycling, and restoration of the landscaping back to its original pristine condition for wind, solar, and EV battery materials when they are required when those projects are funded with private money?
(15) Earth’s natural resources are not being replenished. As the world’s population depletes, the 4-billion-year-old Planet Earth’s natural resources of crude oil, coal, natural gas, and the critical minerals and metals to support the “green” movement like lithium, cobalt, manganese, etc., over the next 50, 100, or more years, our grandchildren may be unable to enjoy the more than 6,000 products of our materialistic society, being enjoyed by the current residents on this planet, so the question for our conversation is: To continue the preservation of human life on earth, how do we get serious about conservation, efficiency improvements, and recycling the waste that humans are generating?
The Prickly Pear is focused on delivering timely, fact-based news, and citizen opinion that reflects our mission to “inform, educate and advocate about the principles of limited government and personal liberty.”
To achieve that mission, Prickly Pear often engages with like-minded contributors and organizations who share our values. We encourage to support these partners in any way you can, as these partners make our efforts possible.
Direct support of the Prickly Pear can be made at the link below. Every dollar is greatly appreciated!
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If you thought TikTok was bad, just wait until you hear about RedNote.
As the Supreme Court weighs the future of TikTok, teen girls obsessed with the app aren’t taking any chances. They’ve already begun to migrate to another Chinese psyop, a new social media app endearingly called “RedNote.”
The real name of the app is Xiaohongshu, and it’s widely popular in China with 300 million users. That translates literally to “Little Red Book” — a nod to the pamphlet of Mao Zedong quotes widely distributed during China’s Cultural Revolution — but it was shortened by American teens to simply, “RedNote.”
The app is culturally very Chinese, so it’s no surprise that it never caught on with Americans. But with TikTok’s fate hanging in the balance, US mobile downloads tripled over the past week, CNN reported. That’s more than 700,000 Americans about to get obliterated by Chinese propaganda (to say nothing of the data vulnerability). TikTok at least has a patina of Americanism; RedNote is straight-up, well — Red.
“Our government is out of their minds if they think we’re going to stand for this TikTok ban,” one seemingly American user said in a RedNote video message, which has racked up more than 45,000 likes. “We’re just going to a new Chinese app, and here we are.”
Of course, the numbers could very well be manipulated here. It plays to China’s advantage to make it appear as though American teens have a love affair with China over their own government. So in a mutual show of cultural respect, Chinese users are reportedly helping these “TikTok refugees” learn to navigate the app. One Chinese tech analyst told CNN that the potential TikTok ban “unexpectedly created one of the most organic forms of cultural exchange between the US and China we’ve seen in recent years.”
That’s surely what China would like you to believe, but the truth remains to be seen. However, for any American who simply can’t resist this Chinese entrapment, perhaps they should consider changing their allegiances more permanently. I’ve heard China is lovely this time of year.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2025-01-16 13:51:252025-01-16 13:51:25Think TikTok’s Bad? Check Out The Latest Chinese App Driving American Kids Wild
On Thursday, Joe Rogan and Marvel megastar Josh Brolin traded stories about the preponderance of Covid vaccine injuries among their friends. Brolin even described contracting “a mild case of Bell’s palsy” earlier this year, which Rogan attributed to the vaccine, noting he knew several people who suffered facial paralysis following Covid vaccination.
There is no perfect medicine. The benefits and harms of any treatment must be carefully considered in order to prescribe the safest, most effective course of action for a patient. While the FDA and CDC continue to extol the benefits of the Covid vaccines, they have ignored a growing body of evidence that these products can also be harmful. The code of medical ethics demands a transparent and balanced accounting of their impact on the American people. Only then can we set the best course for healthcare policy and future pandemics.
An honest accounting begins with clinical trials, supposedly “the most rigorous in history.” Pfizer’s own legal arguments suggest otherwise. Responding to a whistleblower lawsuit alleging major deviations from protocol, Pfizer’s lawyers noted that the company’s “Other Transactions Authority” agreement (OTA) with the Pentagon didn’t require clinical trials to comply with FDA regulations because the vaccine was a military prototype for “medical countermeasures.” This agreement allowed Pfizer to “grade its own homework,” so to speak — a point emphasized by DOJ lawyers in a separate filing in Pfizer’s support.
This effort revealed 1,233 deaths in the first three months of the vaccine rollout, and a litany of injuries: “industrial-scale blood diseases: blood clots, lung clots, leg clots; thrombotic thrombocytopenia, a clotting disease of the blood vessels; vasculitis, dementias, tremors, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, epilepsies.”
These harms are echoed by data from V-safe, a smartphone-based tool created by the CDC. Among 10.1 million registered V-safe users, 7.7 percent reported side effects so serious they were compelled to seek medical care, many more than once.
The main culprit is the Covid spike protein encoded in the vaccine’s mRNA technology. This protein is an antigen, or foreign immunogenic substance, located on the outer coat of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, that triggers an immune response. The mRNA in the shots instructs the body’s cells to produce identical spike proteins, inducing the immune system to create antibodies that bind to them, theoretically protecting vaccinated individuals against the virus. Unfortunately, this plan has a fatal flaw: The spike itself is toxic and potentially deadly.
Hundreds of peer-reviewed articles have demonstrated the spike’s potential for harmindependentof the rest of the virus. Potential complications include myocarditis, blood clots, neurological injuries, and immune dysfunction. Pfizer’s own pre-market biodistribution studies show that vaccine components leavethe injection site in the arm and penetrate every major organ system within hours, where mRNA can linger for weeks, forcing cells to churn out more and more of the toxic spike protein, which can persist for months. There is no way to predict how much spike protein the mRNA injections will produce in any individual, and there is no “off switch.”
These trends coincided with mass Covid vaccination, including an unaccountable 59 percent surge in deaths among Americans ages 15-44 in the third quarter of 2021 compared to 2019. Crucially Covid contributed only part of this excess mortality: in that quarter the US suffered around 201,000 excess deaths, with Covid officially accounting for 123,000, leaving 78,000 excess deaths — 39 percent of the total — still unexplained.
Medical ethics demand a balanced approach to every intervention, weighing potential benefits against potential harms. However, in the case of the Covid vaccines, federal agencies have chosen only to proclaim benefits. By surfacing data that bear upon both the positive and negative impacts of the Covid vaccines, and evaluating the pandemic performance of CDC, FDA, and other health agencies, the new administration can restore confidence and integrity in medicine and public health.
Harvey Risch, Senior Scholar at Brownstone Institute, is a physician and a Professor Emeritus of Epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health and Yale School of Medicine.
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The Prickly Pear is focused on delivering timely, fact-based news, and citizen opinion that reflects our mission to “inform, educate and advocate about the principles of limited government and personal liberty.”
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Regardless of who’s occupying the White House, the global beast system marches forward. Don’t be caught in the camp of ‘irrational exuberance’ or you will be deceived.
The United Nations is calling on governments around the world to fight climate change and other “emergencies” by mandating biometric digital ID systems, giving governments worldwide the ability to tag and track the masses in their every move.
Digital ID systems that have already been implemented in other countries are typically tied to the financial system, allowing the government to track one’s spending habits as well as their movement.
A biometric digital ID requires the recipient to upload a face scan, eye scan, palm scan or other unique identifier, which is then integrated into a central system and tracked by an app on the person’s phone. Eventually, the plan is to place this surveillance device “under the skin,” as the Israeli historian and World Economic Forum adviser Yuval Harari has repeatedly stated.
As reported by Slay News, the digital ID demands were made anew by unelected foreign bureaucrats who serve on the United Nations Development Program, or UNDP.
UNDP officials made the case for why digital identity is allegedly a key weapon in their anti-human climate agenda in an article titled: “Why legal identity is crucial to tackling the climate crisis.”
If governments assign digital identities to citizens, they explained in the article, authorities can track populations more easily in an “environmental disaster.”
The UNDP further argued that countries that roll out digital identity programs will have more data about their taxpayers that can then be used in an emergency.
We all know how governments use so-called emergencies to enact tyrannical and authoritarian policies they would otherwise never get away with. They do this by using the news media to whip up fear in the population, dividing the people against each other. During Covid, more than a few states implemented 24-hour snitch-lines where residents could call and turn in their neighbors for not following the lockdown rules.
Governments should know the income and health status of every taxpayer, as well as their education level, the UN agency states in the document.
This would help authorities have a more “targeted response” to citizens during, for example, a weather disaster, according to the world body.
However, as noted by Slay News, a digital identity is not only for tracking taxpayer movements and backgrounds.
It can also be used to track how much energy taxpayers are consuming.
Once a government has this data, it can force citizens to change their energy-consumption habits.
The UNDP euphemistically refers to this state coercion in Orwellian fashion, calling it “inspiring behavior change.”
When’s the last time you were “inspired” to perform a certain action by the government, may I ask?
“Leveraging digital legal ID data to track energy consumption, inspire behavior change, and enhance sustainability measures can mitigate climate-related disasters,” the UNDP officials wrote.
That’s a nice way of saying, we will force you out of your gasoline-powered vehicle, out of your house on an acre or more of land, and into a tiny apartment in the city eating bugs and riding public transit.
The United Nations has long pushed for a global ID system that would digitally tag every human being on the planet. This is embedded within the global body’s 17 sustainable developement goals associated with its Agenda 2030 document, adopted by some 190 nations, including the U.S., in September 2015.
Sustainable Development Goal Target 16.9 (“legal identity for all, including birth registration, by 2030”) is key to advance the 2030 Agenda commitment to leave no one behind, and equally relevant is SDG 17.19 — support to statistical capacity-building in developing countries, monitored by the indicator “proportion of countries that have achieved 100 per cent birth registration and 80 per cent death registration”.
This is just another way of describing what is, in essence, a social-credit scoring system, similar to what’s already in place in communist China.
If you drive too much, spend too much on the wrong products, such as meat or dairy, or if you’re guilty of wrongthink, you will see your social-credit score dip, meaning you will be banned from getting loans, or the best housing, jobs or educational opportunities.
This agenda will no doubt be brought up at the 2025 World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, later this month. President Trump has reportedly agreed to address the WEF remotely.
None of this agenda has any place in any country that claims to be free.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2025-01-15 17:51:572025-01-15 17:51:57United Nations renews push for globalized digital marking system to deal with ’emergencies’
30-year Treasury bonds sold at auction on Friday at highest yield in at least 16 years despite Fed’s 100 basis points in rate cuts.
Since the Fed’s 100 basis points in rate cuts, the 10-year Treasury yield has risen by 114 basis points, including by 9 basis points on Friday, to 4.77%, the highest since November 2023, upon news of a continued solid labor market in an economy that is growing substantially faster than the 15-year average growth rate, with inflation re-accelerating in the wings. And seeing these upside risks to inflation, the Fed is gingerly shifting back into its wait-and-see mode.
Also on Friday, the 20-year yield rose to 5.04%; the Treasury Department sold 30-year bonds at auction with a yield of 4.91%, the highest auction yield since before the Financial Crisis; and a daily measure of mortgage rates rose to 7.24%.
The Effective Federal Funds Rate (EFFR), which the Fed targets with its policy rates, has remained at 4.33% since the December rate cut, down by 100 basis points from the pre-cut levels (blue). I’m not sure we’ve ever seen anything like this before – a 114-basis-point surge of the 10-year yield while the Fed cut by 100 basis points – but there’s a good reason for it.
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The reason for this phenomenon of the Fed cutting by 100 basis points while longer-term yields soar by over 100 basis points is the unusual situation the economy went through, and why the Fed cut rates.
Normally the Fed cuts rates when it sees a recession on the horizon. And the bond market, also seeing a bad economy ahead, begins to send longer-term yields lower.
But this time around, the Fed cut without a recession in sight, with a solid labor market and above average economic growth despite the highest policy rates in decades. It cut by 100 basis points because inflation cooled a lot from 9% in 2022. But it cooled a lot without a steep recession and big job losses, it cooled despite the economy growing at an above-average rate, which is another rarity. It caused major recession predictors that normally work well to produce false positives.
The yield curve un-inverted last year and is steepening nicely.
Short-term yields haven’t really budged since before the December rate cut, which had already been fully priced in at the time. Now there is no more rate cut priced in within the short-term window of those securities before they mature. For example, on Friday, the 3-month yield was 4.32%, same as in the days just before the December rate cut.
But everything from the 2-year yield and longer has risen substantially since the rate cut. This caused the yield curve, which had gracefully un-inverted entirely just before Christmas, to steepen.
The yield curve had inverted in July 2022, when the Fed’s big rate hikes pushed up short-term Treasury yields very fast, but longer-term yields rose more slowly, and so the short-term yields blew past them.
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The chart below shows the yield curve of Treasury yields across the maturity spectrum, from 1 month to 30 years, on three key dates:
Gold: July 25, 2024, before the labor market data spiraled down (which was a false alarm).
Blue: September 16, 2024, just before the Fed’s rate cuts started.
Red: Friday, January 10, 2025.
This yield curve is getting closer to looking healthy again, though it remains relatively flat and the steepening process still has some ways to go:
The Prickly Pear is focused on delivering timely, fact-based news, and citizen opinion that reflects our mission to “inform, educate and advocate about the principles of limited government and personal liberty.”
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In another sign that the anti-woke movement is only gaining steam, even conservative shareholders are getting off the sidelines and into the fight. While Americans stick it to the Bud Lights and Targets of the world, investors are building a small army of activists to dismantle these radical politics from within. And according to Axios, they’ve been surprisingly effective.
Since 2020, the number of anti-DEI shareholder proposals has tripled, a surge that’s putting even more pressure on CEOs to back off their political agendas. Companies like Apple, Coca-Cola, Starbucks, and Boeing were some of the major targets of the 13 resolutions brought before Russell 3000 firms last year, research from Conference Board shows. But unlike the wave of grassroots pushback that’s swallowed big brands since Bud Light’s Dylan Mulvaney fiasco in April of 2023, this is a movement that’s been bubbling under the surface for decades.
While Robby Starbuck has gotten the lion’s share of the attention for bringing Fortune 500 businesses to their knees, there’ve been a number of conservative foot soldiers working day in and day out for decades to stem the tide of extreme politics on Wall Street. Justin Danhof, one of the earliest pioneers of shareholder activism on the Right, jokes that “13 years ago, we could have filled a room on ESG with me standing in a restroom yelling at myself in a mirror.” Even a few years ago, he said, “it might have been the size of a locker room.” And now, he shakes his head in disbelief, “We’re filling rooms on this issue.”
Look, Justin said, “I was lonely for a very long time. But I’m not lonely anymore. There are so many great Americans — so many great warriors — that understand that ESG and DEI through corporate America is a threat to your everyday life, and you are now standing up and fighting back.”
No longer an “outlier,” Danhof tells The Washington Stand that “the growing number of shareholder proposals promoting excellence and meritocracy are an important part of the equation in driving corporate change, because they open up the door for honest dialogue. It helps create a balanced conversation as opposed to the nearly monolithic demand for DEI heretofore.” He thought back to the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, when there was “a rush to implement DEI everywhere and all at once in corporate America. Many of these initiatives were poorly planned and implemented. Under investor scrutiny, the case for DEI often collapses.” As it’s doing on a broad scale now.
Scott Shepherd, another expert who’s been in the trenches of shareholder warfare before acronyms like ESG and DEI were even mainstream, loves what he’s seeing from the grassroots. After so many decades of being taken for granted, everyday Americans are forcing “a stampede” of retail behemoths like Walmart, Toyota, Nissan, Ford, Coors, McDonald’s, and so many others to overhaul their entire strategy. But this return to political neutrality can — and should — be part of a broader strategy. Boycotts are good, Shepherd told the crowd at Family Research Council’s Pray Vote Stand Summit late last year, “but it’s not enough. You’ve got to get in the fight if you own shares. … If you are getting a pension, you’ve got to make sure that pension is following fiduciary duty, not voting according to ESG [and DEI].”
What he means is that this is a multi-front war. We’re seeing individual consumers push back with their wallets and voices on social media platforms — and their impact cannot be overstated. But we’ve also seen a powerful legislative response coming from state leaders and treasurers divesting from the nefarious asset managers like BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard. And last, but certainly not least, there’s this spike in activity that we’re seeing from shareholders, who are taking on companies from the inside with targeted resolutions. Together, they’re creating a perfect storm that’s squeezing CEOs until they surrender.
Just last Thursday, the market was stunned when Larry Fink’s BlackRock, the mastermind of woke investment, decided to officially pull out of the United Nations’ Net Zero Asset Managers (NZAM) coalition. Fink, who’s been bloodied more than most in the ongoing backlash against DEI and ESG, stunned a lot of people by walking away from this project, given his obsession with climate initiatives.
“This should be music to the ears of every consumer in the entire country,” Will Hild, the executive director of Consumer’s Research, declared to The Daily Wire. “It’s a good thing for consumers because it’s going to help alleviate some of the inflationary effects of ESG and net zero.”
Of course, Fink — like so many executives — sees the writing on the wall of a Trump administration that openly embraces fossil fuels. Still, Hild contended, “This is a huge win for consumers and a decent start for BlackRock rolling back their destructive influence on our economy.” But, he cautioned, there’s a long way to go.
That sentiment is certainly echoed by the movement’s longest champions. Stefan Padfield, executive director of the Free Enterprise Project at the National Center for Public Policy Research, underscored the need for conservatives to stay in the game. He talked about a call he had just last week with “a major, major player.” And when they approached him about changing the business’s woke stance, the guy “basically laughed. … He thought this was a joke.” As he explained to The Washington Stand, “You’ve got the actual radical activists, [who] are all in on this sort of neo-racist, neo-Marxist agenda. And they would happily sacrifice the share price if it puts them on the ‘right side of history.’ Everything’s political. All you can do is get rid of them, because they’re not going to stop what they’re doing.” And that, he acknowledged, takes time.
“We’ve seen the Robby Starbuck phenomenon. He’s had some great wins,” Stefan pointed out. “All he’s doing is showing people the actual DEI programs, the actual documents [from their own corporations]. … And he’s talked about how he’s gone to at least some executives and shown them this stuff, and they were surprised. And when they saw how bad it was, they just said, ‘Yes, we’re going to get rid of it.’” Obviously, Padfield explained, “That’s a huge problem. I mean, it’s great that they’re responding appropriately, but the fact that they didn’t know [what they were promoting], that’s a big deal.”
With Donald Trump days away from retaking the White House, there’s plenty of reason for optimism, Padfield stressed. Remember, he said, “It’s taken a while for the actual damages to percolate up. We’ve had an administration that has basically run cover for this stuff — if not flat out just like forced it down the throats of all of society. So there’ve been no repercussions on that. And in fact, companies were rewarded for doing this stuff.” That’s about to change.
In the meantime, he encouraged people to lean into the successes conservatives are having — including the ones that go largely unnoticed. One of the reasons there were just 13 anti-DEI resolutions, Padfield agreed, is because so many of these victories are happening in negotiations behind closed doors. Just last week, Free Enterprise Project celebrated AT&T’s decision to stop pressing suppliers to comply with their woke policies. Because the phone giant agreed to respect their vendors’ civil liberties, the group withdrew their shareholder proposal on the subject. Who knows how many other victories have been decided before investors catch wind?
For now, Padfield said, “It’s fantastic to celebrate the wins, but it’s taken a long time.” It’s really just “the flip side” of “of what the Left has done, right? I mean, they had their own long march.”
But now? Stephen Soukup, author of “The Dictatorship of Woke Capital,” is “optimistic. “When my book came out,” he recalled, “I did probably 100, 150 podcasts and radio interviews, and I would have to explain at each and every interview what ESG was. It didn’t matter who the host was, how famous they were, how prominent they were, how well they understood politics. Nobody knew what ESG was. Now everybody knows what ESG is. Now everybody knows what DEI is, [and they know] what the issues we’re facing are. And I think that’s important.”
Looking over at Danhof during the summit, he smiled. “My job early in the movement was to drag Justin out of the bathroom, where he was yelling at himself, and raise awareness about this issue. And I think that that’s one of the things that we’ve done remarkably successfully, is raise awareness about what a small group of elites is doing to our corporate culture, doing to our capital markets, and thereby doing to our entire society.”
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Asset management behemoth BlackRock wrote a letter to institutional investors Thursday announcing its exit from an emissions-focused investor group, according to the Financial Times (FT).
The firm, which manages over $10 trillion and has been a leader in environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing, has left the Net Zero Asset Managers (NZAM) coalition — a United Nations – sponsored collection of financial services companies that have pledged to achieve net-zero portfolios by 2050 or sooner, the FT reported. The move comes less than two weeks before President-elect Donald Trump, who plans to embrace fossil fuels in his second term, takes office, and follows the exits of a slew of other corporations, including Goldman Sachs Group, Wells Fargo & Co., Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (RELATED: UN Reportedly Moves To Unlock Tens Of Millions In Climate Funding For Country Run By Terrorists)
In the letter to investors, vice-chair Philipp Hildebrand wrote that the asset manager’s membership in NZAM had “caused confusion regarding BlackRock’s practices and subjected us to legal inquiries from various public officials,” according to the FT.
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The firm began its ESG initiative in 2020, with CEO Larry Fink stating that “climate risk is investment risk” and that climate change would spark a “fundamental reallocation of capital.” However, the world’s largest asset manager exit has been backpedaling on its ESG efforts as of late, only supporting about 4% of the 493 environmental and social investment proposals shareholders put forward between the end of June 2023 and the end of June 2024, down from a rate of 47% in 2021.
BlackRock has also walked back some of its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts, editing their DEI language to be less racially oriented.
Fellow investment firm Vanguard left NZAM in 2022, while financial services firm State Street remains in the environmental coalition.
“The news of BlackRock’s departure from NZAM should be music to the ears of every American consumer,” Will Hild, executive director of conservative nonprofit Consumers’ Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “NZAM is an illegitimate cartel of asset managers pushing harmful and costly net zero policies across the entire economy. The activities of NZAM and its members raise prices on Americans everywhere from the gas pump to the grocery store.”
When reached for comment, BlackRock referred the DCNF to a report confirming their departure from NZAM.
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I hope you do, because you’re about to be sacked with some.
Here we go. . . First, climate change does cause forest fires. That isn’t how this works. Fires require an ignition source and fuel.
Ignition sources may be natural (e.g., lightning) or it can be man-made (e.g., by accident from improperly disposed cigarette butts, improperly discarded pellet / wood stove ash, an out-of-control campfire or fallen power lines, or perhaps even intentionally by arson). But, climate change is not one of them.
The origin of the Pacific Palisades fire hasn’t been determined. But, what is known is that it is being fueled by dried out vegetation and is being stoked by Santa Ana Winds (SAWs) with hurricane-force wind gusts. These winds are a byproduct of a tight horizontal pressure gradient between a tropospheric ridge situated over the Great Basin and a cut-off low spinning over Baja California. Southwesterly downslope flow accelerated by a tight gradient can easily dry out vegetation, especially small-diameter fuels like twigs and leaves, priming a forest for a fire should one be ignited.
While the warming atmosphere — and, for sake of argument, we will assume that it is entirely due to mankind’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions — might make weather conditions more conducive for forest fires in Southern California, there is yet to be an established “consensus” on exactly how fires will change in the region with increased global warming. The reason for this is because air temperature during the event and precipitation deficits over the preceding weeks and/or months aren’t the only — or necessarily even the most important — factors in fire burn area (e.g., Keeley et al., 2021).
Keeley et al. (2021) found that all SAW-driven fires in Southern California that occurred between 1948 and 2018 had a human ignition source. While the majority between 1948 and 1983 were linked to campfires, arson and powerline failures have been the dominant cause since 1984. These results are similar to those in Balch et al. (2017), which found that 97% of fires in Southern (Mediterranean) California were caused by a human ignition source between 1992 and 2012.
The maximum temperature during SAW-driven fires ranged from 42.6-95.4°F (5.9-35.2°C). For January, these values ranged from 44.1-81.1°F (6.7-27.3°C). With a statistical t-test, they found that fires that burned over 1,000 hectares (2,471.05 acres) were not linked to higher-than-average air temperatures, and this also held true for very large fires burning >5,000 hectares (12,355.27 acres). Only 5-20% of the variation in area burned during winter is explained by air temperature.
Precipitation surplus / deficits in the week before a SAW event also did not play a significant role in the incidence and severity of wind-driven fires in the area between 1948 and 2018. This is largely because small-diameter fuels like twigs and leaves will dry out quickly when the weather conditions change.
The study concludes that 75% of SAW events do result in forest fires.
Rather, more human ignitions increase the likelihood that a fire escapes containment and becomes a large destructive fire, regardless of air temperature or soil / fuel moisture conditions both preceding and during a fire event. So, while rising air temperature and lower precipitation can increase fire risk in the future, it is a very small part of the bigger picture.
Keeley et al. (2021) concludes that,
“ ℎ ℎ ℎ ℎ .”
What’s more, it is unclear at this point in time exactly how SAW events will change in response to a warming climate.
One study, Rolinski et al. (2019), has found a recent observational increase in SAW days over the past two decades and links this to increased jet stream ridging patterns in California.
However, Guzman-Morales & Gershunov (2019) finds that a weakening of the southwest pressure gradient that drives these SAWs in their global climate models (GCMs) in response to GHG forcing on the climate system, although the trends are diminished in the late autumn and winter months.
There is evidence of some influence of GHG forcing on creating a more favorable fire weather environment in Southern California in recent decades.
However, burn area associated with SAW events isn’t very dependent on the air temperature during the fire, and antecedent precipitation and fuel moisture aren’t very critical either. This is because downslope airflow is sufficient enough to dry out most vegetation in just a matter of hours, creating a tinderbox should a forest be set ablaze. And, how SAW evolve with a changing climate is unclear.
But, placing powerlines underground can significantly reduce fire risk in the future, and having better forest management (e.g., controlled burning and mechanical thinning of underbrush) will as well.
Climate change is real, but grifters like Senator Bernie Sanders need to stop pinning every natural disaster that happens on it, and using these crises as a crutch to advance their political agendas. Junk science is bad for policymaking and leads to ineffective solutions to the challenges facing society.
*****
This article was published by CFACT, the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, and is reproduced with permission.
Image Credit:YouTube Screenshot Inside Edition
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Iran has increased its oil exports every year since Joe Biden’s administration took office, and last year it exported an average of 1.55 million barrels of oil.
Shandong Ports Group, one of the largest oil terminals that receives oil from Iran, Russia and Venezuela, has banned the entry of oil tankers that have been sanctioned by the United States, in parallel with the significant decline in Iranian oil exports in the past two months.
Most of Iran’s oil is transported to Chinese refineries through this port.
Iran also supplies another part of its oil to the ports of Dalian and Jawshan, to small and independent Chinese refineries, called Teapots, but its volume is much smaller than the oil unloaded in Shandong.
To secretly export oil to China, Iran needs oil tankers called the “ghost fleet” (or “dark fleet”) and to deliver its oil to the ports where the automatic identification system should be turned off.
In October and September, the US imposed sanctions on dozens of tankers belonging to the “ghost fleet,” and Iran’s oil exports to China fell to less than 1.3 million barrels in November and December, 550,000 barrels less than in September.
Reuters reported, citing Kepler statistics, that Shandong ports received 1.74 million barrels of Iranian, Russian and Venezuelan oil per day last year, equivalent to 17% of China’s total oil imports.
Now, no tanker on the sanctions list will be able to deliver Iranian, Venezuelan and Russian oil to Shandong ports.
Reuters has published the names of eight very large oil tankers, each with a capacity of two million barrels, that unloaded their cargoes at Shandong ports last month, most of which were Iranian oil.
In this regard, Homayun Falakshahi, a senior expert at Kepler, told Radio Farda that the most important factor in the fall in Iran’s oil exports in the past two months is the imposition of US sanctions on dozens of “ghost fleet” oil tankers.
He said that since September, unsold oil reserves in Iranian waters have more than doubled to 20 million barrels.
Mr. Falakshahi also stressed that the so-called “teapot” refineries have low efficiency and are highly polluting, and the Chinese government has asked them to renovate or retire.
In recent months, at least three “teapots” have officially declared bankruptcy.
The source of Iran’s declining oil exports is also the fact that Donald Trump, the US president-elect, is set to enter the White House in less than two weeks and is expected to revive the “maximum pressure” policy against Iran.
Sanctions imposed on Iran during his previous term in office reduced daily oil exports from 2.5 million barrels to 350,000 barrels.
Arizona Congressman David Schweikert has been banging the drum about budget excesses. And for a long time, the public, the political class, and the markets have largely ignored his warnings. His speeches are often given for YouTube but to an empty Congressional chamber.
But with the interest rate on the long bond actually rising over 1% AFTER the Fed cut interest rates, you have to wonder if we have not entered a new stage in this long-going debt crisis. What does it mean when the Fed gives a cut, but the markets say otherwiseand send interest rates in the opposite direction? Has the Fed lost control of rates? If so, why? And if they have lost control, what does that mean?
The old joke is that deficits do not matter anymore…until they do.
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At this point in time, there is great hope that we can cut out a lot of waste and fraud from the budget with DOGE, Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Donald Trump. We are all for cutting such waste and fraud, but we fear it will not be nearly enough.
In that regard, it is unclearwhat “success” would look like.
We suspect cutting something around $500 billion would be considered a tremendous success. However vast that sum, it would be little to reverse our negative course. Overwhelmingly, the spending comes from Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and related programs. Insofar as these three programs are concerned, Congress does not even vote on these benefits, and they are on automatic pilot. In addition, no reform of these programs is on the table. DOGE can make recommendations, but how much of this will get through a closely divided House of Representatives?
Moreover, much of this has to do with poor demographics and extending benefits to people who have not paid into the system, like the mass of illegals. It is not clear that pro-natal policies have worked anywhere to increase the birth rate, and even if they did, it would take YEARS to reverse the demographic problem.
These programs are not even in the official “debt ” numbers. They are “unfunded liabilities”. However, with both trust funds for Social Security and Medicare running down, a future unfunded liability now becomes a present liability that must be funded. In short, unfunded liabilities must now be dealt with by raising taxes, borrowing, or inflating the currency.
The hope of Trump 2.0 largely rests on the idea that we can grow out of our debt problem. Through tax cuts, deregulation, and unleashing the American entrepreneurial spirit, we can quickly increase revenue to pay down some of our bloated debt.
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We hope and pray that this can be done but remain skeptical.
Trump faces at least four significant headwinds in significantly ramping up growth:
The Democrats have not given up and will fight like hell, tying deregulation up in court and blocking reform in the House and Senate. Weak-kneed Republicans cannot be depended on to carry the day. There is little evidence that either Democrats or RINOs have learned much from the last election.
The US dollar is soaring, putting pressure on the economies of many less developed countries (many of our customers) and making US industrial activity uncompetitive, making industrial recovery difficult. Chinese stocks and bonds are sliding badly; their economy is not recovering after repeated stimulus from their ham-fisted Communist government. China’s recession will be felt around the world.
Interest rates are rising against the “instructions” from the Fed. This reminds me of the 1980s and the “bond vigilantes,” where market forces took rates higher because they lacked confidence that inflation could be controlled. Rising rates will tend to suppress economic activity, even as Trump attempts to stimulate growth.
Despite what the press tell you, Biden did not hand over a healthy economy to Trump. Instead, it is an economy ginned up by the rapid growth of government and $9 trillion in deficit spending. Moreover, the internal finances of the government and much of the private sector are characterized by excessive debt, which will be adversely affected by interest rates perversely moving higher.
To be sure, there are positives. Deregulation is something that can be done if not blocked by constant lawsuits. AI may well deliver productivity gains. Cheaper energy and ending wars will all help. So we are not saying not to try; we are saying it won’t be easy given the circumstances Biden has left Trump to clean up.
Finally, the public does not know how much Biden and the Democrats have wrecked public finances. The government itself is subject to the discipline of rising rates and will not be in a position to be of great help if things turn south. If they start again with excessive intervention (QE and other liquidity provisions) or resume massive deficit financing, this could aggravate both inflation and rising rates.
To get a better sense of the scale of the problem of wrecked public finance, take time to listen to Schweikert’s rant below:
Your Support is Critical
The Prickly Pear is focused on delivering timely, fact-based news, and citizen opinion that reflects our mission to “inform, educate and advocate about the principles of limited government and personal liberty.”
To achieve that mission, Prickly Pear often engages with like-minded contributors and organizations who share our values. We encourage to support these partners in any way you can, as these partners make our efforts possible.
Direct support of the Prickly Pear can be made at the link below. Every dollar is greatly appreciated!
Arizona Congressman David Schweikert has been banging the drum about budget excesses. And for a long time, the public, the political class, and the markets have largely ignored his warnings. His speeches are often given for YouTube but to an empty Congressional chamber.
But with the interest rate on the long bond actually rising over 1% AFTER the Fed cut interest rates, you have to wonder if we have not entered a new stage in this long-going debt crisis. What does it mean when the Fed gives a cut, but the markets say otherwiseand send interest rates in the opposite direction? Has the Fed lost control of rates? If so, why? And if they have lost control, what does that mean?
The old joke is that deficits do not matter anymore…until they do.
ADVERTISEMENT
At this point in time, there is great hope that we can cut out a lot of waste and fraud from the budget with DOGE, Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Donald Trump. We are all for cutting such waste and fraud, but we fear it will not be nearly enough.
In that regard, it is unclearwhat “success” would look like.
We suspect cutting something around $500 billion would be considered a tremendous success. However vast that sum, it would be little to reverse our negative course. Overwhelmingly, the spending comes from Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and related programs. Insofar as these three programs are concerned, Congress does not even vote on these benefits, and they are on automatic pilot. In addition, no reform of these programs is on the table. DOGE can make recommendations, but how much of this will get through a closely divided House of Representatives?
Moreover, much of this has to do with poor demographics and extending benefits to people who have not paid into the system, like the mass of illegals. It is not clear that pro-natal policies have worked anywhere to increase the birth rate, and even if they did, it would take YEARS to reverse the demographic problem.
These programs are not even in the official “debt ” numbers. They are “unfunded liabilities”. However, with both trust funds for Social Security and Medicare running down, a future unfunded liability now becomes a present liability that must be funded. In short, unfunded liabilities must now be dealt with by raising taxes, borrowing, or inflating the currency.
The hope of Trump 2.0 largely rests on the idea that we can grow out of our debt problem. Through tax cuts, deregulation, and unleashing the American entrepreneurial spirit, we can quickly increase revenue to pay down some of our bloated debt.
ADVERTISEMENT
We hope and pray that this can be done but remain skeptical.
Trump faces at least four significant headwinds in significantly ramping up growth:
The Democrats have not given up and will fight like hell, tying deregulation up in court and blocking reform in the House and Senate. Weak-kneed Republicans cannot be depended on to carry the day. There is little evidence that either Democrats or RINOs have learned much from the last election.
The US dollar is soaring, putting pressure on the economies of many less developed countries (many of our customers) and making US industrial activity uncompetitive, making industrial recovery difficult. Chinese stocks and bonds are sliding badly; their economy is not recovering after repeated stimulus from their ham-fisted Communist government. China’s recession will be felt around the world.
Interest rates are rising against the “instructions” from the Fed. This reminds me of the 1980s and the “bond vigilantes,” where market forces took rates higher because they lacked confidence that inflation could be controlled. Rising rates will tend to suppress economic activity, even as Trump attempts to stimulate growth.
Despite what the press tell you, Biden did not hand over a healthy economy to Trump. Instead, it is an economy ginned up by the rapid growth of government and $9 trillion in deficit spending. Moreover, the internal finances of the government and much of the private sector are characterized by excessive debt, which will be adversely affected by interest rates perversely moving higher.
To be sure, there are positives. Deregulation is something that can be done if not blocked by constant lawsuits. AI may well deliver productivity gains. Cheaper energy and ending wars will all help. So we are not saying not to try; we are saying it won’t be easy given the circumstances Biden has left Trump to clean up.
Finally, the public does not know how much Biden and the Democrats have wrecked public finances. The government itself is subject to the discipline of rising rates and will not be in a position to be of great help if things turn south. If they start again with excessive intervention (QE and other liquidity provisions) or resume massive deficit financing, this could aggravate both inflation and rising rates.
To get a better sense of the scale of the problem of wrecked public finance, take time to listen to Schweikert’s rant below:
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore
Your Support is Critical
The Prickly Pear is focused on delivering timely, fact-based news, and citizen opinion that reflects our mission to “inform, educate and advocate about the principles of limited government and personal liberty.”
To achieve that mission, Prickly Pear often engages with like-minded contributors and organizations who share our values. We encourage to support these partners in any way you can, as these partners make our efforts possible.
Direct support of the Prickly Pear can be made at the link below. Every dollar is greatly appreciated!
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2025-01-13 01:30:002025-01-13 01:30:00Congressman Schweikert Unleashes Fiery Rant on Budget Chaos
Arguably, for the first time in modern U.S. history, the federal government is:
open to making radical changes in government agencies,
has the right political perspective, and
is receptive to citizen inputs.
Yes, there are always reasons to be skeptical — but the upside is so great that we should assume the best, and offer assistance. For those who are incurably cynical and say no, then you are foregoing your future rights to complain!
I’m polling my Critical Thinking Substack readers as to their best ideas regarding the Department of Health and Human Services (FDA, CDC, etc.), Department of Education, Department of Energy, EPA, and Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). [I have a connection with RFKjr, but if you have any good relations with the upper echelon of any of the other Departments, please email me.]
Let’s say that this is the scenario:
a)we are given five (5) minutes for a face-to-face meeting with the Secretary of each of these Departments, and
b) we are asked to limit our suggestions to three (3) items. Due to these rules, we need filter out many ideas so that we are left with just three (3) succinct, important, doable recommendations.
Since we’re starting off a New Year, I’ll dedicate upcoming commentaries to each of the above-mentioned Departments, one at a time. In each commentary, I’ll propose MY suggested three (3) recommendations for a specific Department, and then Critically Thinking readers can constructively weigh in with support or any improvements on what I’ve proposed…
Then we’ll try to get each end product to each Department’s Secretary.
To get the ball rolling, I’ve drafted up three (3) recommendations for DHHS (RFK Jr.). Feel free to suggest edits of mine, or better ideas, in the Comments, below…
Bobby should formally adopt the slogan: “Real Science, not political science,” or something akin to that.
That should be the umbrella of his campaign to reform US health policies: he wants to root out the political science that has infested many US healthcare agencies. It’s important to specifically spell this out as most citizens are technically challenged and are not aware that this is what is transpiring.
IMO, this is the core health issue, as Big Pharma and other self-serving parties are aggressively pushing political science. As a result, the FDA, CDC, AMA, etc., have completely lost touch with their mission statements, statutory obligations, etc.
For example, the FDA’s use of Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs) of Paxlovid and formal Approval of Remdesivir is simply putrid. On the other hand, the FDA’s resistance to such therapies as Ivermectin (e.g., here) is criminally incompetent.
See the unique side-by-side comparison I put together of these two options, plus every other major pre- and post-COVID treatment. To my knowledge, no one else in the country has published this type of analysis. This powerful (but easy to understand) table quite clearly exposes which COVID-19 treatment options are Real Science and which are political science.
The FDA’s drug, etc. Approval process (particularly EUAs), needs to be radically upgraded.
The objective would be to change Approvals/EUAs so that they are genuinely Science-based — not due to politics. Tackling this critically important part of the FDA’s incompetence would be a wise and powerful strategy, as fixing the FDA’s therapy Approval process would have enormous ramifications across the rest of the FDA and the medical establishment in general. This would profoundly benefit American citizens.
Since the objective here is to cut to the chase, I wrote out a two-page summary of major changes that the FDA should be mandated to make, regarding their awarding of any medical product an EUA or the more formal Approval.
Since Bobby will have some power over the FDA, these very specific — and scientifically justified — reforms should be able to be mandated on the FDA. Accomplishing these would be among the most significant US medical changes over the last 50 years…
The public needs to be re-educated about the extreme importance of maintaining good health.
Prevention is a hundred times better than experimenting with ailment cures. This includes basics, like: balanced nutrition, proactive care (e.g., exercise, good sleep, etc.), and maintaining a strong immune system. These are low-cost, mostly simple efforts that almost every American would benefit from fairly quickly.
Note: the fact that Fauci, Birx, et al stunningly didn’t say a word about any of these regarding COVID-19, is proof positive of their estrangement from real Science.
Yes, I am fully aware that there are a multitude of other healthcare related issues — and several of them are significant. The question is, if you only had five minutes to speak to RFK Jr., and were limited to your three (3) best recommendations, what would they be?
Media Balance Newsletter: a free, twice-a-month newsletter that covers what the mainstream media does not do, on issues from COVID to climate, elections to education, renewables to religion, etc. Here are the Newsletter’s 2024 Archives. Please send me an email to get your free copy. When emailing me, please make sure to include your full name and the state where you live. (Of course, you can cancel the Media Balance Newsletter at any time – but why would you?
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2025-01-12 12:51:282025-01-12 12:51:28Critically Thinking about the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Federal Healthcare
It makes sense that the 2008 bailouts inspired a lot of emotion, rhetoric, and hyperbole. Hundreds of billions of dollars had just been lost, the government was rescuing arguably undeserving institutions and their creditors, and the financial system seemed to be wavering on the edge of an abyss. Sixteen years after the panic, though, Todd Sheets manages to stay calm, analytical, and generally convincing in his new book discussing the Great Housing Bubble, its causes, its acceleration, its collapse, and the costly aftermath. 2008: What Really Happened dispassionately reviews the actions of key parts of the US government that were central to creating each stage of the bubble and bust over a decade.
In the early 2000s, Sheets tells us, he “had a growing concern that the Fed’s cheap-money policies were destined to end badly.” Then came the first financial crisis of the then-new twenty-first century. This disaster, we should remember, arrived shortly after we were assured by leading central bankers that we had landed safely in a new age of “The Great Moderation.” In fact, we landed in a great overleveraged price collapse.
In economics, the future is unknowable; we are usually confused by the present, and we can easily misinterpret the past. Sheets believes that “historical review reveals … a lengthy delay from an economic crisis to an understanding of what really happened.” He tells us that the book is a result of deciding, while reflecting on the crisis, that “I was confused about big-picture economic matters I had long taken for granted and realized it was time for a new self-study program … focused on financial history.”
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Five Phases of the Bubble
Sheets’ study has resulted in an instructive historical framework for understanding the development from growing boom to colossal bust. He proposes five principal stages:
1. The pre-Bubble era, pre-1998: This era is now 26 years, or a whole generation, away from today. Sheets emphasizes the long historical period when average house price increases approximately tracked general inflation. “In the century preceding the housing bubble, house prices more or less tracked inflation,” he writes, “increases in real house prices were negligible.” He believes this is historical normalcy. One might argue that the average real increase in US house prices had been more like 1 percent per year (as I did at the time in graphing the Bubble’s departure from the trend), but that does not alter the fundamental shift involved.
2. Liftoff, 1998–2001: “Beginning in 1998, housing prices suddenly departed from these long-term historical trends,” Sheets notes. In other words, the Bubble starts inflating ten years before the final panic. “Real home prices suddenly begin to increase at an average annual rate of 4.7% during Liftoff.” Why did they? We will discuss below Sheets’ proposals for the principal cause of each phase.
3. Acceleration, 2002–2005: In this phase, “the rate of real home price appreciation began to accelerate even more rapidly”—it “shot up again, to an average annual rate of 8.3%, reaching a peak of 10.4% in 2005.” Remember that Sheets is always dealing always in real price increases—those on top of the general rate of inflation. At this point, it seemed to many people that buying houses with the maximum amount of mortgage debt was a sure-fire winning bet. From 1998 to 2006, Sheets calculates that in real terms, house prices “appreciated over 10 X the level of cumulative appreciation in the 100 years before the bubble.”
4. Deceleration, 2006: “The rate of increase in real house prices slowed dramatically” in the transition year of the inflation turning into deflation of the bubble.
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5. Crash, 2007-2012: Home mortgage debt had by now become much more important to the US economy than before, surging strikingly, as Sheet’s table of mortgage debt as a percent of GDP shows:
A lot of people had made a lot of money on the way up, but any potential mortgage debt losses now had a much bigger potential negative impact than before. How much bigger? We were about to discover. Then, “beginning in 2007, real house prices declined … eventually falling about one-third.” Indeed, house prices fell for six years, until 2012. Between 1998 and 2012 we thus approximated the biblical seven fat years followed by seven lean years. There were vast losses to go around, defaults, failures, continuing bad surprises, and a constant cry for government bailouts, as inevitably happens in financial crises.
Sheets helpfully divides Phase 5, the Crash, into four component stages. For many of us, he reenergizes memories that may have been fading by now, and for those younger without the memories, provides a concise primer. Thus:
5(a) Awareness, June 2007-October 2007: “Hedge funds managed by Bear Stearns and BNP Paribas that were heavily concentrated in US home mortgages announced significant write-downs.” Oh-oh, but there was still much uncertainty about the implications for wider problems. “The markets still had no idea of just how precipitously housing prices would fall.” The Federal Reserve embarrassingly and mistakenly opined that the problems were “contained.” The stock market rose until October 2007. Showing some earlier awareness of looming problems, in March 2007 the American Enterprise Institute had a conference on “Implications of a Deflating Bubble,” which I chaired. We were pessimistic, but not pessimistic enough.
5(b) Stress, November 2007-August 2008: “A steady procession of substantial mortgage-related write-downs and losses were announced by a wide swath of financial institutions.” Two of my own favorite quotations from this time epitomize the growing chaos. “Hank,” the chairman of Goldman Sachs told the Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, “it is worse than any of us imagined.” And as Paulson himself summed it up: “We had no choice but to fly by the seat of our pants, making it up as we went along.”
In July 2008, “the Fed invoked special emergency provisions that enabled it to supply bailout financing” to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the dominant mortgage companies. Fannie and Freddie are called “GSEs,” or government-sponsored enterprises. Their creditors believed, even though the government denied it, that “government-sponsored” really meant “government-guaranteed.” The creditors were correct. In the same July, “President Bush signed a bipartisan measure to provide additional funds” to Fannie and Freddie. These two former titans of the mortgage market, the global bond market, and US politics were tottering. But Sheets stresses a key idea: “Markets found additional reassurance in the idea that federal authorities would continue to intervene,” as they did when Fannie and Freddie went broke but were supported by the US Treasury in early September. In a financial crisis, the universal cry becomes “Give me a government guarantee!”
5(c) Panic, September 2008-February 2009: The Treasury and the Fed provided government guarantees and bailed out the creditors of Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac. But on September 15, 2008, “the authorities unexpectedly allowed Lehman Brothers to fail.” Whereupon “the money markets lurched into a state of panic,” their confidence in bailouts punctured. As Sheets relates, this was followed by a series of additional, giant government guarantees and bailouts to try to stem the panic.
5(d) Recovery, March 2009-forward: “What the [panicked] short-term financing markets were looking for,” Sheets concludes, “was unconditional assurance that none of the remaining critical institutions—Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, or Bank of America—would become the next ‘Lehman surprise.’ The final bailout package for these critical institutions was announced in mid-January of 2009.” In 2009 bank funding markets stabilized and the stock market recovered. That is where Sheets’ history concludes, but we should remember that house prices did not finally stop falling until 2012, and the Fed’s abnormally low interest rates resulting from the Crash continued for another decade—through the financial crisis of 2020 and until 2022. But that is another story.
Problems spread to leading, household-name financial institutions. The bust had arrived, just as it had so many times before in financial history, and it kept getting worse.
What were the fundamental causes of the ten-year drama of the housing bubble and its end in disaster? “A plausible theory of causation must explain the sudden onset and the distinct phases of the bubble,” Sheets sensibly argues, thus that different phases had different main causes. As he identifies the principal cause of each phase, it turns out that the US government, in various manifestations, is the prime culprit.
“The Liftoff phase of the bubble in 1998 was triggered by the rapid expansion undertaken by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” Sheets concludes. The timing fits: “The sudden acceleration of GSE growth coincided with the onset of the housing bubble.” And the magnitudes: “88% of the excess growth in mortgages outstanding relative to the Base Period originated from the GSEs.”
Fannie and Freddie could have so much impact because they were the dominant competitors, had key advantages granted by the Congress, had deep political influence and allies—but most importantly—operated with a government guarantee. This was only “perceived” and “implied” it was said, but it was nonetheless entirely real. That enabled their debt obligations to be sold readily around the world, as they set out to and did expand rapidly, notably in riskier types of mortgages, seeking political favor as well as more business.
Fannie and Freddie’s rapid expansion was linked to the push of the Clinton Administration to expand homeownership through “innovative” (i.e. risky) mortgages. This was a perfect combination of factors to launch a housing bubble. Sheets correctly observes that Fannie and Freddie’s role was “aided and abetted by federal housing policy.”
He sympathetically discusses Franklin Raines, Fannie’s CEO from 1999–2004, whose “move back to Fannie Mae coincided almost exactly with the onset of the housing bubble.” This section should also have considered James Johnson, CEO from 1991–1998, the real architect of Fannie’s risky, politicized expansion. Both of them combined politics at the highest level in the Democratic Party with housing finance, a combination which produced, as Sheets says, “just the opposite of what was intended.”
Sheets’ conclusions are consistent with those of Peter Wallison’s exhaustive study, Hidden in Plain Sight, which states, “There is compelling evidence that the financial crisis was the result of the government’s own housing policies.” So that no one misses the point, Sheets reiterates, “We can safely conclude that the Liftoff phase of the housing bubble was caused by the GSEs, with the support of the federal government.”
In the acceleration phase, Sheets writes that “the Federal Reserve became the driving force behind the further escalation of real housing price appreciation” by suppressing interest rates to extremely low levels, including negative real interest rates. This made mortgage borrowing seem much cheaper, especially as borrowers shifted to adjustable-rate mortgages.
“The Fed dramatically lowered short-term interest rates in order to deal with the collapse of the Internet stock bubble in 2000 and then held rates at historically low levels. … The Fed pushed the real fed funds rate down to an average of minus 0.6% during the Acceleration phase.” And “Where did the stimulus go? Into housing.”
Sheets notes that after the Internet stock bubble burst in 2000, the Fed lowered short-term interest rates and held them at historic lows. That stimulus, he says, went into housing. I call this the “Greenspan Gamble,” after the famous Fed chairman of the time, who was then admired as “the Maestro” for his timely monetary expansions. As Sheets says, the Fed ended up with the housing bubble instead—which cost Greenspan his “Maestro” title.
After the Fed started increasing rates again in 2005–2006, the housing bubble decelerated, and then collapsed in 2007. House prices started to go down instead of up, the start of the six-year fall. Subprime mortgage defaults went up. Specialized subprime mortgage lenders went broke. The problems spread to leading, household-name financial institutions. In the fourth quarter of 2007, “Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wachovia announced steep profit declines due to mortgage write-downs, … Merrill Lynch announced the largest quarterly loss in the firm’s history, … Citigroup revealed [huge] pending write-downs … [and there was] the steady drumbeat of massive mortgage write-downs, historic losses, and jettisoned CEOs”—all this showed the bust had arrived, just as it had so many times before in financial history, and it kept getting worse.
When Fannie and Freddie went down in September 2008, it provided an affirmative answer to the prescient question posed by Thomas Stanton way back in his 1991 book, A State ofRisk: “Will government-sponsored enterprises be the next financial crisis?” That took the crash to the brink of its panic stage. As discussed above, the panic began when the funding market’s expectation that Lehman Brothers would be bailed out by the government was surprisingly disappointed. Peak fear with peak bailouts followed.
Sheets believes this no-bailout decision for Lehman was a colossal mistake, describing the date of Lehman’s bankruptcy as “a day that will forever live in financial infamy.” He provides a summary of internal government debates leading up to the failure, considers the argument that the Treasury and the Fed had no authority to provide a bailout, and finds it unconvincing: “I believe that they could have chosen to bail out Lehman if given sufficient political backing, and that such a step would have averted the Panic stage of the crisis.”
Wallison relates that the decision seems to have originated as a negotiating position of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulsen, who explained that he thought “we should emphasize publicly that there could be no government money … this was the only way to get the best price.” Paulsen also “declared that he didn’t want to be known as ‘Mr. Bailout.’” Wallison is a former general counsel of the Treasury Department and thinks, like Sheets, that authority to rescue Lehman was available: “Paulsen and [Fed chairman] Bernanke … telling the media and Congress that the government didn’t have the legal authority to rescue Lehman … was false.”
What would have followed if there had been a bailout of Lehman, since the deflation of the housing bubble would still have continued? That is a great counterfactual issue for speculation.
2008: What Really Happened ends a good read with two radical thoughts about politically privileged institutions:
Given the understanding of the bubble set forth here, the keys to preventing a similar crisis in the future are relatively straightforward: Eliminate the role of the GSEs in the national housing markets. Eliminate or dramatically curtail the ability of the Federal Reserve to inflate asset bubbles.
Great proposals, with which I fully agree. But Sheets, like the rest of us, does not expect them ever to happen, so he does expect, and so do I, that we will get more bubbles and busts.
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Can you believe the people he is picking to be in his cabinet? There are so many billionaires. They have not worked for the departments or agencies for which they could possibly helm. Do they even have a college education? And if they have a college education, did they go to the right schools? Have you even heard of some of these colleges? Barbarians are storming us.
He thinks they are going to overhaul the departments that they are appointed to oversee. How are they going to do that without having worked in them for years and have known all the players? You know if they are outsiders the people who run these departments will not listen to them and neither should they. They don’t understand how things operate in Washington.
Can you believe this Musk guy wants to cut two trillion dollars out of the budget? He can’t do that. And he wants to demand that government employees work from their government offices instead of home. He is going to ruin their lives. If they make cuts, then my state will not get its promised allocation of funds. How will we exist?
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“I talked to and argued with groups from academia, from the media, from the financial community, from the foundation world, from you name it. I was appalled at what I found. There was an unbelievable degree of intellectual homogeneity, of acceptance of a standard set of views complete with cliché answers to every objection, of smug self-satisfaction at belonging to an in-group.” That is a quote from the great Milton Friedman. There is no date to the quote, but he left us in 2006. Things have only gotten worse since then.
An arguably mental midget made this statement, “Milton Friedman isn’t running the show anymore.” Biden made that while running for president. Well, he should have been because instead he hired Jared Bernstein to be his Chair of The Council of Economic Advisers. A man with no economics background. If he were the chair, can you imagine the others in that group? And look at the economic mess they created.
You can see the problem with Trump’s choices. First, they are not properly educated. Even if they have the “correct” education pedigree, then they don’t have the “correct” work experience. Even if they have run big businesses or were a state’s governor, they still are just not us. They don’t attend our soirees, and they don’t understand how things really work.
The resistance has been formed. The fascinating part of the resistance is it radiates from failed governments. Brandon Johnson, the Mayor of Chicago, has stated Trump is a threat to everything sensible. He accused Trump of wanting to dismantle public education. Mayor Johnson needs to focus a little on the horrendous performance of the school system he was hired to oversee by the teachers’ unions to protect their interests. Maybe Trump should actually do what Johnson is accusing him of doing.
California — which is a mess in so many ways — has decided to “Trump proof” the state. You have heard him shoot off his mouth (Newsom) about this while neglecting the $30 billion state budget deficit. California Speaker of the Assembly Robert Rivas joined in by promising America that California will protect them against Trump. He went big and decided Governor Newsom was thinking small. Attorney General Rob Bonta correctly predicted “progress will prevail.” Let’s see — San Francisco dumped their mayor; Oakland recalled their mayor; and Los Angeles voted out their negligent DA out of office by over 20%. There is progress.
After what was done by the last Administration with their crew of people that had only one person with any experience in the private sector, one might think we need some barbarians. What did all those distinguished degrees and vast experience in government positions or gladhanding from the outside do for us? Maybe all that vast experience was not really the path to running the government.
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As stated by the brilliant Thomas Sowell, “The fatal danger of our times today is a growing intolerance and suppressions of both opinions and evidence that differ from the prevailing ideologies that dominate institutions, ranging from the academic world to the corporate world, the media, and governmental institutions.”
They may think these people are Barbarians at the gate, but if so, they are brought on by their predecessors’ own malfeasance and ineptitude. Bring on the Barbarians. They could not possibly do any worse.
The Prickly Pear is focused on delivering timely, fact-based news, and citizen opinion that reflects our mission to “inform, educate and advocate about the principles of limited government and personal liberty.”
To achieve that mission, Prickly Pear often engages with like-minded contributors and organizations who share our values. We encourage to support these partners in any way you can, as these partners make our efforts possible.
Direct support of the Prickly Pear can be made at the link below. Every dollar is greatly appreciated!
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