Popular Pill Exposed; Was This Intentional Mass Murder? thumbnail

Popular Pill Exposed; Was This Intentional Mass Murder?

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By MERCOLA Take Control of Your Health

  • In 2021, McKinsey & Company, one of the largest consultants to corporations and governments worldwide, settled a lawsuit brought by 47 state attorneys general over its role in the U.S. opioid crisis
  • A U.S. House investigation reveals McKinsey was advising the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on the safety of opioids, while at the same time advising Purdue how to maximize sales
  • Jeff Smith, a senior McKinsey consultant, worked on a risk evaluation and mitigation strategy (REMS) for OxyContin while simultaneously advising the FDA about the drug’s safety
  • McKinsey promoted its FDA connections when pitching services to its pharmaceutical clients. The FDA, meanwhile, claims it had no idea McKinsey was working with Purdue
  • Purdue knew the dangers of its drug, covered it up, and hired FDA insiders to advise its sales strategy and how to influence the FDA. They also hired Publicis to manage its marketing. Publicis, the world’s largest PR company, funds and partners with “fact checking” organizations to suppress and censor the truth

In 2021, McKinsey & Company, one of the largest consultants to corporations and governments worldwide, settled a lawsuit brought by 47 state attorneys general over its role in the U.S. opioid crisis. The firm agreed to pay $573 million in fines1 for driving up sales of Purdue Pharma’s OxyContin painkiller, even as Americans were dying in droves.

Between 1999 and 2019, nearly 500,000 Americans died from overdoses involving opioid drugs,2 and false advertising and bribery were at the heart of this tragedy. As reported by The New York Times:3

“McKinsey’s extensive work with Purdue included advising it to focus on selling lucrative high-dose pills, the records show, even after the drugmaker pleaded guilty in 2007 to federal criminal charges that it had misled doctors and regulators about OxyContin’s risks. The firm also told Purdue that it could ‘band together’ with other opioid makers to head off ‘strict treatment’ by the Food and Drug Administration.”

Worse Than We Thought

We now find out that the situation is even more corrupt than we previously thought. A U.S. House investigation4,5,6 into McKinsey, based on materials obtained through the discovery process of this and other lawsuits, has revealed McKinsey was advising the FDA on the safety of opioids, while at the same time advising Purdue how to maximize sales.

In one instance, McKinsey wrote “scripts” for Purdue to use in its meeting with the FDA to discuss the safety of OxyContin in pediatric populations. In another, Jeff Smith, a senior McKinsey consultant, worked on a risk evaluation and mitigation strategy (REMS) for OxyContin while simultaneously advising the FDA about the drug’s safety.7

As noted by investigative journalist Paul Thacker,8 “Just think about that for a moment — for years McKinsey played both cop and robber.” As reported by The New York Times, April 13, 2022:9

“Since 2010, at least 22 McKinsey consultants have worked for both Purdue and the FDA, some at the same time, according to the committee’s 53-page report …

The firm provided no evidence to the committee that it had disclosed the potential conflicts of interest as required under federal contracting rules — an ‘apparent violation,’ the report said.

McKinsey also allowed employees advising Purdue to help shape materials that were intended for government officials and agencies, including a memo in 2018 prepared for Alex M. Azar II, then the incoming secretary of health and human Services under President Donald J. Trump.

References to the severity of the opioid crisis in a draft version of the memo, the documents show, were cut before it was sent to Mr. Azar.

‘Today’s report shows that at the same time the FDA was relying on McKinsey’s advice to ensure drug safety and protect American lives, the firm was also being paid by the very companies fueling the deadly opioid epidemic to help them avoid tougher regulation of these dangerous drugs,’ Representative Carolyn Maloney, the New York Democrat who chairs the committee, said in a statement 

[ … ]

A bipartisan group of lawmakers last month introduced legislation10 aimed at preventing conflicts of interest in federal contracting, citing McKinsey’s experience with Purdue and the FDA.”

The FDA, in response, has stated that it “relies on its contractors to assess and report potential conflicts of interest,” The New York Times reports.11 In other words, it’s just pointing fingers and refusing to take responsibility for working with advisers that clearly could, and should, be suspected of having ulterior motives, based on their client base.

Isn’t it obvious that McKinsey, working to improve sales for its opioid-making clients, might give the FDA biased advise on behalf of those clients? Remarkably, in October 2021, the FDA wrote12 to senators claiming they had no idea McKinsey was even working for Purdue, and didn’t find out about it until media reported it in early 2021.

It seems beyond irrationally foolish that the press could find out about it, but not the FDA — somewhat like the head of the CDC, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, going on CNN and quoting Pfizer press releases as factual data.

McKinsey Advised FDA on Opioid Safety

The FDA hired McKinsey as an adviser in 2011. The company worked with the FDA office overseeing drug companies plans to monitor safety of risky products such as opioids, and internal documents show that, on multiple occasions, McKinsey promoted its FDA connections when pitching services to its pharmaceutical clients.13

For example, in a 2009 sales pitch, McKinsey wrote that it provided direct support to regulators, “and as such have developed insights into the perspectives of the regulators themselves.”14

In a 2014 email to Purdue’s chief executive, McKinsey consultant Rob Rosiello wrote, “We serve the broadest range of stakeholders that matter for Purdue. One client we can disclose is the FDA, who we have supported for over five years.”15

Evidence also suggests McKinsey took “steps to limit material that could be subpoenaed” once Purdue was sued, The New York Times reports.16 In one instance, printed hardcopies of slide decks were sent to Purdue instead of being emailed because they knew Purdue staff would be deposed and didn’t want their email correspondence to “get sucked into it.”

Did McKinsey Influence FDA Commissioner?

The Interim Majority Staff report17 by the Committee on Oversight and Reform, titled “The Firm and the FDA: McKinsey & Company’s Conflicts of Interest at the Heart of the Opioid Epidemic,” published April 13, 2022, also includes emails in which McKinsey employees claim to have influenced an opioid safety speech by then-FDA commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb.

Gottlieb denies the accusation, but the fact that McKinsey was working so intimately with the FDA means they certainly would have been capable of such influence. Gottlieb also has financial ties to the opioid industry, having received $45,000 in speaker’s fees from companies that manufacture and distribute opioids.18

In 2012, Gottlieb also wrote a Wall Street Journal essay, attacking the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) for pursuing the criminal activity of opioid distributors, saying it would burden patients, “including those with legitimate prescriptions who may be profiled at the pharmacy counter and turned away.”19

Intent to Harm

What we have here is a picture of gross conflicts of interest with an apparent intent to harm. Purdue Pharma was as crooked as they come, conducting sham studies and bribing doctors to prescribe its highly addictive opioid, while its consultant, McKinsey advised the FDA on the drug’s safety.

At the same time, Purdue also worked with the Publicis Groupe — the largest PR company in the world as of November 202120 — which funded the startup of NewsGuard, a “fact checking” group that rates websites on criteria of “credibility” and “transparency.” In April 2021, Publicis partnered with NewsGuard specifically “to fight the ‘infodemic’ of misinformation about COVID-19 and its vaccines.”21

NewsGuard’s health-related service, HealthGuard,22 is also partnered with the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) — a progressive U.K.-based cancel-culture leader23 with extensive ties to government and global think tanks that has labeled people questioning the COVID-19 vaccine as “threats to national security.”

At the beginning of May 2021, the Massachusetts attorney general filed a lawsuit24,25 against Publicis Health, accusing the Publicis subsidiary of helping Purdue create the deceptive marketing materials used to mislead doctors into prescribing OxyContin.26,27,28,29

Like Purdue, Publicis also cashed in on the opioid addiction it helped create by pitching its services to organizations working to end addiction. As reported by Forbes,30 the agency “won the account to work on drugfree.org after touting how it’s been ‘immersed in the evolving national opioid medication dialogue going on between pharma companies, the government and FDA, and the public via inside access as a trusted and informed consulting partner.’”

So, to summarize, Purdue knew the dangers of its drug, covered them up, hired FDA insiders to advise its sales strategy and influence the FDA, and is connected with a PR company that had the ability to suppress and censor negative news to manage its marketing. It’s hard to describe this scheme as anything but intentional mass murder.

The Spin Doctors

The reality may even be worse, and much larger, than that, seeing how Publicis is also a partner of the World Economic Forum (WEF),31 which is leading the call for a “reset” of the global economy and a complete overhaul of our way of life.32

As detailed in the featured video, Publicis’ fingerprints can be found throughout the net of censorship and misdirection that is now being cast across the digital landscape. As the No. 1 PR company in the world, Publicis has just the right credentials and influence to pull off a deception of this size.

It’s part of an enormous network that includes international drug companies, fact checkers and credibility raters, Google, Microsoft, public libraries, schools, the banking industry, the U.S. State Department and Department of Defense, the World Health Organization and Disney, just to name a few. As noted by investigative reporter David Marks in “How PR Giant Publicis Promotes Greed, Deception on Behalf of World’s Most Powerful”:33

“The essential skill of these expert spin doctors is their ability to fabricate a favorable interpretation of damaging information or activity or diminish the impact of the truth.

Through tried and true psychological ploys, repetition of false information or casting doubt on factual realities, ad agencies and PR firms target those who need to be influenced on behalf of their clients …

An examination of one of the largest entities neck-deep in managing these mass psychological operations reveals the depth of the dysfunction afflicting the planet. The vast activities of the Publicis Groupe demonstrate how the tentacles of greed, profit and privilege connect the catastrophic agendas of the most powerful enterprises on Earth …

Using sophisticated social psychology and incorporating the cutting edge of artificial intelligence, Publicis PR experts are masters of damage control, the manipulation of words and people, and of selling the unsellable. Publicis is organizing influential activities worldwide, overtly revealing its mission and priorities.

… [Its] website reveals who actually benefits from the company’s services: ‘The entire Publicis Groupe transformation was designed to put clients at the center of all we do. Their needs and objectives drive the solutions we provide in order to help them win and grow’ [ … ]

In considering the range of activities Publicis engages in, the dots are so close there is no need to connect them. The PR giant’s methodology is transparent.

Whether promoting opioids or pushing vaccines, rebranding status quo profiteering as a Great Reset, supporting cigarette sales, disguising the true nature of the fossil fuel industry, increasing soft drink consumption or covering for assassinations — Publicis has all the skills and facilities to create whatever fabrications are needed to sell products and influence how their wealthy collaborators are viewed.

The Publicis Groupe and its allies are at the hub of a worldwide insidious, destructive disinformation campaign, relying on the duplicitous ways of advertising and public relations in the loyal service of clients.”

A Plan to Drug the Useless Eaters?

As a WEF partner and global PR machine for some of the most powerful industries on the planet, it seems reasonable to assume Publicis is helping to coordinate the WEF’s Great Reset agenda. Sadly, that includes not only the management and control of the peoples of the earth, but also the elimination of “undesirables.”

In a 2015 interview (video above), Yuval Noah Harari, a history professor and adviser to WEF founder Klaus Schwab, discussed what Schwab refers to as The Fourth Industrial Revolution (i.e., transhumanism), noting that we’re now learning to “produce bodies and minds” (meaning augmented bodies, and cloud and artificial intelligence-connected minds) and that one of the greatest challenges we face will be what to do with all the people that have become obsolete in the process.

How will unaugmented people find meaning in life when they’re basically “useless, meaningless”? How will they spend their time when there’s no work, no opportunity to move up in some kind of profession? His guess is that the answer will be “a combination of drugs and computer games.”

This raises a disturbing question. Was the opioid crisis the result of an intentional plan — a conspiracy in the literal sense of the word — to hook the masses on an addictive drug? This is purely speculative, of course, but it surely fits in with The Great Reset agenda as a whole.

If people are addicted, the drug and medical industries make money (and they’re without doubt part of The Great Reset network), and if people die, well, that’s in accordance with The Great Reset plan too, as they insist there are too many “useless eaters” on the planet, and they either must be managed or eliminated.

Publicis Is Part of the Global Monopoly

In closing, it’s worth noting that Publicis is partially owned by the Vanguard Group,34 one of the two largest asset management firms in the world. Together with BlackRock, Vanguard has a hidden monopoly on global asset holdings and exerts control through their ownership of some 1,600 American companies.35

Combined, BlackRock and Vanguard own nearly 90% of all S&P 500 firms.36 To learn more about how Vanguard and BlackRock own just about everything in the world, and have monopoly control over all industries, check out the 45-minute video above, “Monopoly — Follow the Money.”

In short, the idea that there is competition in the marketplace is a cleverly disguised illusion. In reality, everything is controlled by a small group of asset managers that win no matter what. The end goal is to own and control all the world’s assets, which includes people.

The WEF slogan “You’ll Own Nothing and Be Happy” really summarizes The Great Reset plan for mankind. They will own everything; you will own nothing, not even your own body, and you’ll be too drugged up and lost in a make-believe computer game world to realize you’re a slave. If they can somehow make a profit from your useless existence, they’ll let you live. If they can’t, you’ll be eliminated. That’s really what the plan comes down to.

The plan for global authoritarianism is advancing with each passing day, but all is not lost yet. By informing ourselves and sharing what we know with others, we can reach the critical mass needed to end their plan and take back control.

It’s going to require standing together, unified in favor of freedom and liberty. It’s going to require legal and legislative efforts to weed out the corruption and infiltration that has occurred throughout the corporate world and our governments. It’s going to require honest men and women to step into positions of power that they never wanted. It may take a lot of time and effort, but if we want our descendants to experience freedom, no price can be too great to pay.

Sources and References

RELATED TWEET:

Opiates have gutted rural America, structurally and spiritually: pic.twitter.com/2Z90mlYHQw

— Kyle Kashuv (@KyleKashuv) April 24, 2022

EDITORS NOTE: This MERCOLA column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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Disney Has Lost $50 Billion In Value Since Woke War With Florida

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By The Geller Report

UPDATE: New LEAKED Video Shows Disney CEO GROVEL in Front of Employees

Go WOKE, go broke. Trusted by hundreds of millions, Disney’s golden, reverent reputation – build over the last hundred years – destroyed in mere moments. This is a lesson, not just for corporate America, but America herself.

Disney CEO Bob Chapek should be fired for appeasing the Left.

Disney went woke

Exxon Mobil banned woke #GoWokeGoBroke pic.twitter.com/SIspmKfGJS

— John 1776 Cardillo (@johncardillo) April 23, 2022

Disney has lost $50 billion in value since war with Florida began

By Washington Examiner, April 23, 2022

Disney’s stock has lost nearly $50 billion in value since the start of March, when it took a political gamble to oppose Florida’s controversial new education law.

Disney’s stock was down more than 2% on Friday and by more than 8.5% over the past few days as Florida lawmakers work to punish the company for wading into the state’s politics. The stock’s market cap has declined by about $46.6 billion since March 1, just days before the company came out against the legislation.

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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Tidal Wave Nears Border, but Team Biden Goes Full Steam Ahead

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By Jarrett Stepman

Editors’ Note: The following article is an excellent description of the southern border crisis, an open border threatening all citizens and the national security of the United States. The statement is often made that the Biden administration doesn’t have an effective policy to address this crisis. Our national headlines should be shouting that this crisis and invasion of our country is exactly the administration’s policy. With large numbers of Hispanic American citizens leaving the Democrat party, the radical leftists running the executive branch want many millions of non-skilled, unvetted illegal residents flooding into the country who will be highly dependent on government services and ultimately Democrat voters, whether legal or not, in the decades to come. Damn the fentanyl, the criminals, the terrorists, the cartels or any other factor undermining our national security and sovereignty – just flood the nation (yes, all fifty states) with illegals and the hell with American citizens – whatever it takes to maintain Democrat power is the goal. The previous America First policy controlling and protecting our southern border is now the Americans Last policy of the Biden presidency.

A disaster is looming.

President Joe Biden appears to be going full steam ahead on ending Title 42. This is the health policy, created in the 1940s and implemented by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under President Donald Trump, that allowed the swift deportation of illegal immigrants during the pandemic to prevent the further spread of COVID-19.

It has been one of the few things keeping the exploding southern border numbers under even the slightest control during the Biden presidency. The administration announced it would end Title 42 on May 23, but according to Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin, it is starting to peel it away even sooner.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection recently released its March statistics for illegal immigrant border encounters. It’s a sign of what’s to come.

“In total, there were 221,303 encounters along the southwest land border in March, a 33 percent increase compared to February,” the agency reported. “Of those, 28 percent involved individuals who had at least one prior encounter in the previous 12 months, compared to an average one-year re-encounter rate of 14 percent for FY2014-2019.”

Of course, many others came through without being apprehended.

The March numbers are the highest monthly total in two decades. And this is before Title 42 is set to be discontinued.

It’s not just raw numbers of illegal border crossers that are worrying. According to the agency, over 40 migrants on the terror watchlist have been apprehended since Biden became president. These are people who have been known to be involved in or are “reasonably suspected” of being involved in terrorist activity.

The U.S. Border Patrol is already swamped. In March, Customs and Border Protection estimated that, in addition to the over 221,000 encounters, over 60,000 border crossers slipped through without being apprehended—about 2,000 per day. Drastically increasing the total numbers of those attempting to cross the border—which will inevitably happen if Title 42 is rescinded—puts the country at risk that more potential terrorists will slip through.

When Biden was considering ending Title 42, a handful of border state Democrats warned him against it. But now that he’s made the announcement, the list of Democrats in opposition is growing. One of the opponents is Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., chairman of the Homeland Security Committee.

Several Republicans on the committee wrote him a letter in early April expressing deep concern about what ending Title 42 would mean for the country. Peters seemed to have been receptive to the message.

“Unless we have a well-thought-out plan, I think it is something that should be revisited and perhaps delayed,” Peters said to reporters, according to The Hill. “I’m going to defer judgment on that until I give the administration the opportunity to fully articulate what that plan is. But I share … concerns of some of my colleagues.”

The entire situation conveys the impression that the Biden administration is reckless and partisan and that it caters to the most extreme voices on its left flank. It’s part of the toothless Caesarism that we’ve become used to over the past year. The administration does its best to create vast restrictions on Americans at home, but does nothing to protect the American people or our interests from threats abroad.

If the administration really does think it is necessary to end Title 42, it could at least show some commitment to options that would help maintain order at the border. Biden has even failed to do that.

Predictably, the administration has chosen to do everything to remove those options, too.

The Biden administration has done everything in its power—or beyond its power—to eliminate the Migrant Protection Protocols—better known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy. The policy, like Title 42, was created under Trump and was designed as an answer to President Barack Obama’s “catch and release” border policy.

The Remain in Mexico policy makes it so asylum-seekers—those claiming to flee war zones, political violence, or persecution—must wait in Mexico while applying for asylum in the U.S. It deters people who may want to come to the United States with bogus asylum claims. Once in the country, many dodge their court dates or never get a court date at all.

Biden ended the Remain in Mexico policy on Day One of his presidency and is now engaged in a legal battle to put the policy entirely off the table.

So, what’s the administration’s plan if it gets its way? The Wall Street Journal editorial board did a good job of explaining what’s on tap:

The administration’s alternative seems to be a new policy that would let federal asylum officers grant residence to most claimants, rather than wait in the queue for Justice Department immigration judges. The asylum officers approve claims at a higher rate than judges, who weigh more seriously whether a claimant is fleeing genuine danger. That message will spread throughout Latin America as further incentive to make the trek and cross the border seeking asylum.

Battling the Remain in Mexico Policy, combined with ending Title 42 and the general lack of support for Border Patrol, suggests that the administration isn’t willing to uphold American law and protect our border.

Instead, it is doing everything in its power to not only keep those floodgates open but to open them even wider, forcing the American people to pay the price for its recklessness.

*****

This article was published by The Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

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Endgame For the Fed: Is Checkmate Coming?

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By Mark Wallace

For more than 40 years, the Federal Reserve has fostered, encouraged, and otherwise helped to create the most reckless credit expansion in the nation’s history. Total credit market debt of all varieties — federal, state, local, household, financial and nonfinancial – has ballooned from 330 percent of gross domestic product in 1960 to over 900 percent of gross domestic product in 2021. Adjusting for the size of the economy and for inflation, we now have three times as much credit and debt as we had in 1960.

In many ways, credit can be a wonderful thing. It can enable a worker of meager financial means to acquire a motor vehicle that will allow him to take a job otherwise inaccessible to him via public transportation. It can enable a young married couple to buy a house and to build equity in that house over the 30-year term of the mortgage or deed of trust. Credit can enable an entrepreneur to buy a business and to do a better job of running the business than the previous owner was able to do.

The expansion of credit on a nationwide scale is expansionary in economic terms because virtually no one borrows money to put it under a mattress. People borrow money to spend it, whether on goods and services or on investment assets. The spending of borrowed money on goods and services buoys the real economy, creating demand for a product that would not otherwise exist. It also buoys investments, such as stocks, bonds, and real estate. For example, real estate rises in price because of the availability and price of credit. If you doubt this, ask yourself this question: if it were totally impossible to borrow money to buy a house if you could buy a house only by paying the full purchase price in cash, how much would houses sell for? The answer is obvious, isn’t it? They would sell for far, far less than they sell for today.

Although taking on more debt puts money into a borrower’s pocket, debt service — paying interest and principal — takes money out of that borrower’s pocket. That means less money the borrower has to buy goods and services or invest. Overall economic effects on the nation, though, are determined not on an individual borrower basis but on the basis of all the borrowers and lenders — on a nationwide basis, in other words. As long as credit and debt are expanding on a nationwide basis, expansionary economic policies remain in effect. The economy remains robust, unemployment rates remain low, and for the stock and bond markets it’s “party on, Garth.”

But what happens if, for whatever reason, credit and debt (the mirror side of credit) begin to decline on a nationwide basis? Should that occur, the amount of money flowing into goods and services into the purchase of goods and services would decline, as would the amount of money flowing into investment assets. In economic terms, this is contractionary. Because the amount of credit and debt outstanding is in the trillions, if the magnitude of the contraction in total credit outstanding were sufficiently severe, the resulting economic contraction could quickly turn into an economic depression far exceeding anything this country or any other country has ever experienced. Society would unravel.

The Fed has striven mightily to prevent this from ever occurring. The Fed’s response to economic developments in 1987, 200-2002 and 2007-2009 has been the same: “flood the market with liquidity.” Do whatever needs to be done to keep total credit from contracting, because that will spell disaster. If credit does indeed contract in large amounts, the Fed will be exposed as having run the greatest Ponzi Game in history. The truly massive amount of debt it has created — measured not in the billions but in the tens of trillions — will be the fuel for a giant crash. As Warren Buffet famously said, it’s not until the tide goes out that you learn who has been swimming naked. It’s no accident that Ponzi games such as Enron and Madoff Securities are not exposed until the stock market crashes.

The Fed’s tools to prevent a devastating credit contraction and crash — flooding the market with liquidity — don’t work to curb rising inflation. Flooding the market with liquidity would only make inflation worse. The Fed’s tool to combat inflation is to raise interest rates — to raise debt service requirements. That is where the Fed is now. Consumer price inflation is bubbling along at an 8.5 percent rate (the highest in 40 years). Producer prices are galloping at an even higher rate: more than 11 percent. When inflation was 7.6 percent in 1978, the Fed pushed the federal funds rate to 8.5 percent. And now, with inflation higher than it was in 1978, where is the federal funds rate? At 9 percent? No. At 8 percent? No. At 7 percent? No. It is at 0.33 percent!

The Fed is hugely behind the curve. The most recent rise was a paltry one-quarter of one percent. The Fed is clearly terrified at the prospect of raising interest rates, otherwise, the rate increase would have been at least one full percentage point or more. The Fed is demonstrating by its actions that it is not serious about fighting inflation. It is gambling that inflation will subside of its own accord, with little help from the Fed.

If over the next six months to one year, inflation does indeed subside, with the federal funds rate rising to perhaps 1 percent or 1.5 percent, the Fed will be shown to have made the correct decision. But no one has a crystal ball in that regard.  If the inflation rate keeps advancing, and we have double-digit consumer price inflation six months or one year from now, the Fed’s hand will be forced. Serious interest rate increases will be required. In that scenario, the probability that the Fed will err, either on the upside (raising interest rates too high and creating a market panic and resulting crash) or on the downside (runaway, Weimar-style inflation as a result of tepid interest rate boosting) hugely increases.

The historical precedents here are strongly against the Fed. The market can panic more quickly than the Fed can counter the decline by lowering interest rates and engaging in “quantitative easing.” Note that 2000-2002 was a more serious downturn than 1987 and that 2007-2009 was more serious than 2000-2002. The trend is clear. The next downturn likely will be far worse than 2007-2009 if the Fed errs in the direction of raising interest rates too far or too fast. The reason for this is that declines are generally roughly proportional to the amount of total credit market debt outstanding.

To date, the equities markets have come back after each drubbing, but if a decline goes far enough, that pattern may not necessarily repeat. Instead, we may end up in a Japanese/Nikkei scenario where equity prices in 2050 or 2060 are lower than they are today. Note that the Nikkei is lower now in 2022 than it was 33 years earlier in 1989. In Great Britain, following the disastrous South Sea Bubble, equities went into a more than 50-year bear market.

The historical precedents are not any better if the Fed errs on the downside and allows inflation to really get out of control. Inflation has a way of accelerating, as the Weimar experience shows. (The source of the data that follows is “The Great Disorder” by Professor Gerald D. Feldman, a 900-plus page tome that will tell you more about Weimar Germany than you ever wanted to know). In August 1914, the dollar exchange rate of the paper mark in Berlin was 4.21— one U.S. dollar would buy 4.21 marks. At the time of the Armistice in November 1918, it was 7.43. Things became steadily worse after that. By January 1922, one U.S. dollar would buy 191.81 paper marks. Relatively speaking, though, that had been a walk in the park compared to the complete and utter disaster —- resulting in the total destruction of the mark, and I do mean total —that unfolded beginning in August 1922 and finishing up a mere 16 months later in December 1923.

In August 1922, one dollar bought 1,134.56 paper marks. By June 1923, one dollar was buying 109,966 marks. Was that the end of it? No, things got worse, much, much worse. Two months later, in August 1923, one dollar would buy 4.6 million marks. One month after that, in September 1923, a dollar would get you almost 99 million marks. In October 1923, the exchange rate was 25 billion paper marks for one U.S. dollar. By December 1923, one dollar would get you 4.2 trillion marks.

One conclusion that may be drawn is that it took only about five years for inflation to destroy the mark. Another is that when things really get out of control, as they did for Germany beginning in August 1922, the end is nigh, as little as 16 months away.

In conclusion, the Fed is now sailing between Scylla and Charybdis, between the monster of a stock market crash and resulting depression on one hand and the whirlpool of runaway inflation on the other. Despite an 8.5 percent inflation rate, the U.S. dollar has remained strong. Across the Pacific in Tojo-land (Japan), the Japanese yen has been rapidly depreciating. Japan is even farther along the economic-profligacy scale than the U.S. is. The ratio of debt to GDP is far higher. The Japanese economy has been aptly described as “a bug in search of a windshield.” Keep an eye on Japan: it may provide an important clue of what finally happens when monstrous credit and debt expansion over decades (especially sovereign debt) goes off the high board.

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VIDEO: TRUTHsocial Migrates to Rumble’s Cloud Datacenters to ‘Reopen the Internet’

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By Dr. Rich Swier

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Trump Media & Technology Group CEO Devin Nunes joins ‘Just The News Not Noise’ to discuss Truth Social’s migration to Rumble’s cloud datacenters and the key role Rumble is playing in reopening the internet on April 22, 2022.

©Dr. Swier. All rights reserved.

0 0 Dr. Rich Swier 2022-04-24 05:43:14VIDEO: TRUTHsocial Migrates to Rumble’s Cloud Datacenters to ‘Reopen the Internet’

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Fractured Arizona Lawmakers Vote Down Stopgap Budget

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By Cole Lauterbach

With Arizona lawmakers unable to come to terms on a regular budget and the end of the fiscal year approaching, legislators tried and failed to get a “skinny budget” out of committee.

GOP leadership sponsored a dozen budget bills heard in the House Appropriations Committee Wednesday. The package of legislation is seen as a fail-safe that would essentially put the state’s governmental operations and spending on auto-pilot in case lawmakers fail to come up with a full budget to replace it, addressing a more than $5 billion revenue surplus.

“I don’t want to hear the term ‘skinny budget,’” said Rep. Regina Cobb, R-Kingman. “This is not a skinny budget. This is $13 billion.”

Some Republicans voted for the bills but expressed displeasure with a stopgap measure.

“I’m not a fan of this baseline budget,” said Rep. Steve Kaiser, R-Phoenix. “I would really prefer to see a budget that’s fashioned in a bipartisan manner that is more robust than what we’re doing here.”

Democrats nearly unanimously opposed the bills, saying they didn’t take advantage of the surplus to increase teacher pay, address environmental goals, or increase state services.

“Our state has incredibly difficult challenges that Arizonans want us to fix right now,” said House Minority Leader Reginald Bolding, D-Phoenix, said in a statement. “We can’t leave our schools behind once again.”

With a slim majority and Democrats opposed, Representatives Michelle Udall, R-Mesa, and Jake Hoffman, R-Queen Creek, cast votes in opposition that doomed the effort to fail.

“When Congress passes continuing resolutions and fails to pass a robust budget, we all look at them and say ‘why can’t you do your job?’” Udall told the committee. “I feel like this is doing the same thing. I feel like this not paying attention to the revenues, not paying attention to the needs of the people of this state are.”

In voting against it, Udall said there are a lot of vital needs that the state has in the coming year, and the interim budget fails to address them.

“With $5.3 billion, there’s a lot that we can do to meet those needs and to provide tax relief to help with other issues like inflation,” she said.

Hoffman took issue with the elevated level of state funding that was on par with last year’s budget, which was boosted with one-time federal funds.

“Government spending is wildly out of control at every level of government, whether it’s the feds or at the state level,” he said. “We have a $5 billion surplus. That doesn’t mean that we’re doing a good job. It means we’re overtaxing the people we were sent here to represent.”

Gov. Doug Ducey’s office has expressed skepticism about a reduced placeholder of a budget as the final appropriation of his tenure as the state’s top official.

Lawmakers have until July 1 to enact a budget.

*****

This article was published by The Center Square and is reproduced with permission.

State Supreme Court Reaffirms Arizona’s Nation-Lowest Flat Income Tax thumbnail

State Supreme Court Reaffirms Arizona’s Nation-Lowest Flat Income Tax

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By Cole Lauterbach

Arizona’s high court has pulled a ballot question from the November election that could have erased the state’s largest-ever income tax cut.

The Arizona Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a veto initiative to repeal a gradual change from Arizona’s progressive income tax to a flat 2.5% wasn’t appropriate for the ballot process. The court didn’t immediately offer an analysis of the opinion.

Lawyers representing the Arizona Free Enterprise Club (AFEC), a taxpayer advocating nonprofit, argued before the court that the state’s constitution bans government functions such as tax cuts from being challenged at the ballot box.

“Today’s decision from the Arizona Supreme Court is a big win for taxpayers in our state,” said AFEC President Scot Mussi. “The legislature passed historic tax cuts last year that benefit all Arizona taxpayers. It’s time for Invest in Arizona and out-of-state special interest groups to accept this reality and stop making a farce of the referendum process.”

Invest in Arizona, a union-sponsored nonprofit based out of Phoenix and affiliated with Portland-based Stand for Children, was primarily responsible for gathering signatures to get the measure on the ballot.

Passed in 2021, the law reduced individual income tax rates for all taxpayers by gradually reducing the state’s four income tax rates to one 2.5% rate by 2022. With the court’s opinion, the rate is now in effect.

David Lujan, president of the Arizona Children’s Action Alliance, said the court is protecting the state’s ultra-wealthy.

“Let’s be clear about who wins with these tax cuts – the richest 1 percent of Arizonans who will get an average tax cut of more than $19K,” he said. “Household making $64K annually gets avg tax cut of $47 and our state loses billions for education and other needs.”

Republicans hailed the opinion as relief for taxpayers facing the nation’s most severe inflation.

“This ruling is another big win for our state’s taxpayers and it couldn’t have come at a better time,” Gov. Doug Ducey said. “With inflation hitting Arizonans hard, this decision ultimately means more of their hard-earned dollars can stay in their wallets.”

House Majority Leader Ben Toma, R-Peoria, said the ruling means surety for taxpayers.

“In 2021, Republican legislators provided historic tax relief to all Arizona taxpayers. The Supreme Court’s decision provides clarity and certainty that Arizonans will get this relief at a time when they need it most,” he said.

*****

This article was published by The Center Square and is reproduced with permission.

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Encountering the Natives of Flyover Country

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By G. Patrick Lynch

In the late 19th and early 20th century, it was commonplace for newspapers in the US and Europe to hire what were known as “stringer” journalists who would work on commission to produce stories about the lives of foreigners in distant lands. They might go to Africa or the West Indies, or describe cowboys and Native American tribes on the American frontier. Some, like the renowned German writer Theodor Fontane, traveled all over Europe producing columns for the people back home. As literacy and print media grew, so did the demand for exotic stories.

Glenn Hubbard, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors (2001-2003) and now a professor at Columbia University, has in some ways copied this older style. Hubbard’s book, The Wall and the Bridge, is a sort of mish-mash of superficial economic history and recycled public policy ideas. But at its core, this book is a form of stringer journalism about the far-off and exotic land of Youngstown, Ohio.

Hubbard bravely takes a group of MBA students into the wild and savage-filled lands west of New York City to encounter that creature all but extinct on the civilized streets of Manhattan or Brooklyn: the Trump voter. His is not the drama-filled tale of JD Vance, nor the fictional account of Claas Relotius. Instead, Hubbard tries, unsuccessfully in this reviewer’s mind, to craft economic policy prescriptions based on his “experience”  visiting the once-thriving steel manufacturing city. Hubbard wants to use the example of Youngstown to help salvage the prestige and credibility of East Coast intellectual elites like himself, that was lost with the rise of populism in the US and elsewhere.

What this method reveals about Hubbard and his ilk may be far more interesting than the policies he’s proposing. Hubbard first suggests offering job retraining to American manufacturing workers displaced by growing globalization. He awkwardly labels this “reskilling” and “opportunity policy.” None of this is particularly original except for his tired use of awkward terms from public policy. Politicians have been discussing job retraining and education since the 1980s and little of it has translated into widespread success in the American Rust Belt. Furthermore, it’s obviously self-serving for a college professor to trumpet education as the solution to this problem (let’s help these workers by throwing more money at my profession!). On several occasions, Hubbard mentions time spent at seminars at Youngstown State University and speaks highly of the institution. Does he seriously believe “reskilling” steel workers to become psychologists and Women’s Studies majors to be a solution? Additionally, such education programs can only succeed if those prescribing the “reskilling” can accurately predict which jobs will be good and secure, as well as guarantee that workers in places like Youngstown will be able to get them locally.

Second, he proposes expanding “social insurance.” Anyone familiar with Washington-speak, and skeptical of government programs, can understand what Hubbard is proposing here. He’s arguing for the creation of a new welfare program for Trump-landia to help buy them off. Setting aside for a moment the fiscal implications of such a proposal during an era of high inflation, exploding government spending and debt, it is fanciful to imagine that we can arrest support for populism simply by writing checks to rural America. This proposal grossly oversimplifies what’s going on in areas where President Trump won large majorities in 2016 and 2020.

By way of justifying this approach, Hubbard offers a profoundly superficial review of the work of Adam Smith. He correctly notes that among Smith’s more prominent targets in his writing were the mercantilists who supported protective tariffs and the British colonial system, based on a flawed understanding of the nature of national wealth and prosperity. He also accurately describes Smith’s views on the vital role some government policies, such as rule of law, can play in maintaining the market order.

But from there, things go horribly wrong. Hubbard claims that Smith was writing in response to Hume, which is completely wrong—if anything Smith was replying to Mandeville in much of his work. Hubbard proceeds to discuss “neoliberalism,” a term he seems to use in much the same way as those on the modern left, to describe a heartless anarcho-capitalist system. This “neo-liberal” night watchman state would be completely indifferent to the needs of those displaced by the creative destruction. Hubbard compares two “neoliberals,” Hayek and Friedman, to the more nuanced Smith who, for example, supported universal education and public goods such as national defense. Smith’s broader understanding of a widely-shared prosperity, he claims, is the only reasonable foundation for a free market economy in a representative political system.

Sympathy, for Smith, helps explain why we can rein in self-interest and connect with individuals outside of our kinship networks and local communities.

Smith was completely silent on the issue of social welfare or “reskilling” and had significant reservations about manufacturing and industrial work. Hayek in fact supported a limited safety net in The Constitution of Liberty for the exact reason that Hubbard cites. Of course, knowing that that would have involved actually reading more of Hayek, rather than casually labeling and caricaturing him. At the very least, Hubbard is playing fast and loose with both thinkers.

Making matters worse, Hubbard appears to have little understanding of Adam Smith the complete scholar. One really can’t understand the Wealth of Nations without tackling Theory of Moral Sentiments and Hubbard in particular could have benefited from spending some time with Smith’s moral theory.  Smith was first and foremost a moral philosopher, not merely a cold, calculating economist. Smith’s complex explanation of how human social order evolves and functions would take pages to flesh out, but at its core, the argument is based on what Smith called sympathy, what today we’d refer to as empathy. Sympathy, for Smith, helps explain why we can rein in self-interest and connect with individuals outside of our kinship networks and local communities. Sympathy helps curb the external manifestations of self-interest in our social and personal interactions. We listen and try to understand the plight and position of others when we are not interacting with them in market settings.

Hubbard claims that he and his cadre of MBA students sat down and listened to the stories and concerns of displaced steel workers in Youngstown. But when we consider how Hubbard approaches the “problem” of populism among the people of Youngstown, all we see are Hubbard’s own biases and preferences as a neoclassical economist. We don’t see much Smithian sympathy.

Modern economics, with its reliance on simplified models of human choice, struggles to understand why people don’t simply leave Youngstown, or other areas in which support for populism has been robust. Economists like to view the world strictly in terms of mechanical choices and decisions based on material gains and costs. That perspective provides the kinds of “solutions” that Hubbard is proposing here. He does not tell himself that, “these people are making subjective evaluations to stay in Youngstown and we should try to understand why they want to stay and support folks like Trump.” Instead, he reasons that “these people are materially constrained to make bad choices because they can’t afford to make better decisions.” His solution is to lower the costs of leaving or “reskilling” in their decision-making to allow them to make the “correct” choice.  

But is that the solution to the problem, if there really is a problem here? People understand they are materially worse off but choose to stay. Hubbard and his students listened to the people of Youngstown as neoclassical economists. The biases of their training did not allow them to think about their support for populism through a lens of subjective decision making rather than purely materialistic concerns.

A Smithian sympathizer would have gone beyond the economic lens of Hubbard to consider non-pecuniary factors in understanding the people he met. The job losses that Hubbard is addressing here did not just happen in the past few years. Plant closures and steep job cuts began during the Carter administration. The individuals who are still living in Youngstown are not there because they are unable to leave for economic reasons. Like most of the folks living in smaller towns throughout the Rust Belt, they simply prefer to stay. Their world views on topics such as family ties, religion, immigration, sexual norms, social values, and such are as important, if not more so, than economics. They are not trapped by material forces in these areas. They are making choices that a mechanical choice model simply can’t account for.  

Noble Laureate James Buchanan explained the limits of the neoclassical approach in his essay “Is Economics a Science of Choice” by noting that economists want to limit choice to the action of “choosing” a lower objective cost. This removes choice from the process and makes it seem purely objective in terms of economic calculation. Buchanan rightly points out that

[i]n the logic of choice, choosing becomes a subjective experience. The alternative for choice as well as the evaluations placed upon them exist only in the mind of the decision maker. Cost, which is the obstacle to choice, is purely subjective, and this consists in the chooser’s evaluation of the alternative that must be sacrificed in order to attain the which is selected. This genuine opportunity cost vanishes once a decision is taken. By relatively sharp contrast with this, in the pure science of economic behavior, choice itself is illusory. In the abstract model the behavior of the actor is predictable by an external observer.

And make no mistake, Hubbard is assuming away non-economic choice for those people in Youngstown. His book focuses exclusively on that approach and completely misses any possible impact social or cultural factors may have had in the election. In explaining his model early in the book he mentions that manufacturing job losses in rural parts of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin were critical in deciding the election. No one doubts that economic changes played a role in those areas, but Hillary Clinton spent little time campaigning in those states and even less time addressing the non-economic policies that were important to those voters. Nor does he, or really any elite, to this day acknowledge that Clinton lost the female vote for non-college-educated white women, few of whom were employed by manufacturing plants in those areas. Economics was part of a larger story, but it alone doesn’t determine the choices made. Social issues did and continue to play a huge role.

It is perhaps too much to expect an explorer in New Guinea to place himself into the mind of tribes that practice cannibalism. It is not too much to ask an intelligent and highly educated academic with significant political experience to take seriously the idea that economics is only part of what is driving the rise of populism. Voters have reasons for rejecting elite control over policy. One gets the sense that Hubbard, observing a group of natives feasting on human brains, might have concluded that “reskilling” the locals towards tofu factories and organic farming would have solved the problem. I for one have my doubts about this approach.

*****

This article was published in Law & Liberty and is reproduced with permission.

‘DEFEAT THE SPAM BOTS’: Musk Signals He Has All The Money He Needs To Take Over Twitter thumbnail

‘DEFEAT THE SPAM BOTS’: Musk Signals He Has All The Money He Needs To Take Over Twitter

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By The Daily Caller

Elon Musk says he has the funds lined up to take over Twitter and is considering taking the offer straight to shareholders, according to multiple reports.

Musk, who is one the largest shareholders of Twitter, secured $46.5 billion to pay for his offer totaling $54.20 per share, according to Securities and Exchange (SEC) filings released on April 20.

“If our twitter bid succeeds, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying!,” Musk tweeted on Thursday. “And authenticate all real humans.”

Musk will finance the offer with the help of multiple banks who will provide him with debt to finance the deal, according to the SEC filings. The Tesla chief executive officer will provide his own $21 billion in cash and receive an additional $25 billion in debt from banks including Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Barclays, The Wall Street Journal reported.

If our twitter bid succeeds, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 21, 2022

“The Reporting Person is seeking to negotiate a definitive agreement for the acquisition of Twitter by the Reporting Person and is prepared to begin such negotiations immediately,” the filing said.

To secure the bank loans, Musk will issue $62.5 billion, or one third of his ownership, of Tesla shares as collateral, according to the WSJ. In order for Musk to raise the necessary $21 billion in cash, Musk will most likely have to sell a large portion of his stock in his various businesses including SpaceX and Boring. 

The Twitter board is expected to reject Musk’s unsolicited offer after it used the “poison pill” to block Musk’s effort to buy the company, the WSJ reported. The poison pill prohibits Musk from owning over 15% of the company and allows investors to purchase shares at a discounted price, reducing the value in Musk’s ownership.

Tesla and Twitter did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

HARRY WILMERDING

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: Is The Twitter Board Required To Accept Elon’s Offer?

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Company Contrast: Overstock.com thumbnail

Company Contrast: Overstock.com

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By 2ndvote .com

Each week 2ndVote takes a look at popular companies that either score well or score poorly. We then provide alternatives that either better align with the 2ndVote values, or that should be avoided to the best of your ability. This weekly series is called The Company Contrast, and the company we will be focusing on this week is Overstock.com (3.34).

Overstock.com is an online retailer of home goods and furniture. The company was founded in 1999, primarily liquidating returned and surplus goods from other stores. Today the company sells both closeout and new merchandise. Overstock.com has a good track record of neutrality on most issues with two exceptions. CEO Jonathan Johnson has advocated for school choice as a past Republican gubernatorial candidate. The online store is also full of firearms accessories and gun safes, indicating a general support for the second amendment. Head over to overstock.com next time you need to shop for home goods.

This is a stark contrast to other home good retailers, such as Bed Bath & Beyond (1.21). Founded in 1971, Bed Bath & Beyond has grown to be one of the biggest distributors of domestic merchandise in the United States. They have received the lowest score possible on all issues save basic freedoms due to a one million dollar contribution to the NAACP, which advocates against most conservative values. Due to Bed Bath & Beyond having competitive alternatives, this company is a good candidate for consumers to choose to shop elsewhere.

EDITORS NOTE: This 2ndVote column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Weekend Read: A Witches’ Brew of Negative Trends thumbnail

Weekend Read: A Witches’ Brew of Negative Trends

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By Neland Nobel

So, the witches’ brew in summary is sky-high stock valuations, extraordinarily high debt burdens, rising interest rates, rising inflation rates, inverting yield curves, a bond bear market, supply chain crisis caused by lockdown, energy price shock, food price shock, war, radical social change, monetary regime upheaval, and poor political leadership.

Having spent almost all of a professional career in financial services dealing with clients, it is easy to attest that almost all periods of time have hazards for the investor. It was always worthwhile to remind investors, who longed for what they thought were the “good old days” that it always has been difficult.

There are always adverse trends and perverse political developments. But within that, there continues to be human progress. Much of it has been technological, but unfortunately little of it has been social or moral progress.

Living through this period was instructive, but if you are younger, you will need to read some history to fully understand.

Just a brief history should remind us all that the “good old days” were full of difficulties such as raging inflation and war in the 1960s and 1970s.  Remember how unsettling The John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy assassinations were? You can add to that race riots, Watergate, defeat in Viet Nam, the Iran hostage crisis, and the Crash of ’87?

Or how about the Russian default, the Thai-Baht crisis, the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management, the tech bubble of 1999, or the crash of 2007?

Along the way, we had several large wars in the Persian Gulf.

You might remember we got a twofer in 2007-2008, the dual pleasure of a housing bust and banking crisis, followed by a stock market bear crash.

Go back even further and you have Sputnik, the U-2 incident, the Suez Crisis, Hungarian Revolt,  the Korean War, and two World Wars.

The stock market peaked in 1966 and did not return to those highs in inflation-adjusted constant 1966 dollars until 1995. Much of this occurred in what many regard as a better time in the country’s life.

In an earlier period, if one had purchased stocks in 1928, it took until 1956 to break even in inflation-adjusted terms.

Since the crash of 2008, we have had an uncommonly good run in stock values, including inflation-adjusted levels. The last few incredible years are not even shown on the chart.

The point is the “triumph of the optimists” has always carried both the stock market and economy eventually higher, although the progress was uneven. Sometimes there is a pause for years, even decades. Only in hindsight does it seem easy.

Thus, in the long term stocks, and the nation, have persevered. But there can be setbacks that take years to mend. This is particularly dangerous for older people who don’t “have the long term.”

Markets cycle. That is what they do. They go up and down, but generally more up than the down. The same is true of the economy in general.

Having set the context, we admit it would be hard to think of a similar period that had more toxic trends to deal with than the one we face today. And remarkably, almost all of them are the product of deliberate policy choices.

The question before us then is this: will this toxic brew of problems seriously set back the stock market?

What is truly scary is that any one of the trends we are about to mention, by themselves, has often caused a recession. But rarely do we see such a cluster of such potentially powerful adverse trends together, reinforcing one another when just one of these is dangerous enough on its own.

Right now, investors face a historically overvalued stock market and real estate market. Yes, expensive markets can surprise and just get more expensive. But expensive markets are also vulnerable and once they turn, the downside risk is magnified because of the gross departure from reasonable historic value.

If there is one “iron law” in market history, it is a reversion to the mean. Remarkably, so far the stock market still hovers not far from its highs and has taken only a mild correction.

Rapidly rising interest rates, especially when accompanied by inversion of the yield curve (short-term rates move above long-term rates), have reliably signaled recession. We are now seeing that as the FED must regain some credibility after uncorking the worst inflation in 40 years. Either they raise rates sufficiently high to kill off inflation by reducing demand (a recession), or we let the inflation fires burn uncontrollably for years. This is not a very good set of choices.

The rise in rates has been so far been largely disregarded by the stock market but the bond market is being hit hard. The bond market is much larger than the equity market so this loss is certainly just as important as what goes on in the stock market. But, it does not get the attention of the public.

Debt levels are far worse than they were 40 years ago. In 1980-1982 when Reagan and Volker were driving rates to nose bleed levels, Federal debt as a percentage of total output was about 30%.

Today, debt to GDP is 130%, or more than four times greater relative to output, and in many countries, it is substantially higher than that.

The cost of debt service is a function of two things: the amount of debt and the interest rate paid to borrow. Today the amount of debt is so much higher than before that interest rates well below the 1980 peak could clobber the economy and the Federal budget. How high do they go before they hurt?  Who knows?

Whether the borrower is a government or a business, or a homeowner, rising rates on a huge pile of debt normally create default at the margin. Credit spreads (the interest rate between secure paper and speculative paper), are widening, indicating rising rates are beginning to bite and induce distress.

So far one country, Sri Lanka, has gone bankrupt. We fear they won’t be the last or the biggest.

During the prior periods previously mentioned, the world went through several flu epidemics and the polio crisis. The government never quarantined the healthy, such as the lockdown policies we have seen over the past two years. We also never saw the government print $7 trillion dollars and hand out money to anyone who could fog a mirror.

Lockdown has royally screwed up the world’s supply chain because except for perhaps Sweden, most of the world followed the U.S. model, which in turn, followed the model of China. As the West now emerges from lockdown, China, the manufacturing hub of the world, is once again going back into lockdown in their most populous city. That is not going to help the supply chain crisis.

Then along came Russian aggression in Ukraine, which is upending the world’s energy and food markets, and increasing defense spending. Usually, a rapid rise in energy costs alone can cause a recession. Now we get to add to that a food crisis.

For reasons cited in previous articles, the West’s response to Russia, the sanctions but particularly the seizing of central bank assets, is likely to induce a change in the international monetary structure. Once again, simply this painful adjustment, has often by itself, been sufficient to cause a recession.  The monetary crisis of 1971, preceded the 1973-1974 stock market crash, which was the worst at the time since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Again, it is not surprising that these difficulties came during a time of political upheaval (Watergate). Weak political leadership often occurs during economic crises. Inflation raged under Carter, a weak and indecisive President.

Clearly, political leadership is weak today, or perhaps even worse, it is senile.

We won’t even go into social and moral upheaval although many students of history point to 1966-1968 as a similar period. As mentioned before, the stock market peaked and did not recover to its previous highs for almost 30  years. We seem to be moving from men and women wanting to have sex without restraint (the sexual revolution born in the late 60s) to the abolition of what male and female even mean. Where will this trend end and how much damage will it do to society?

The changes in social conditions in “The Roaring Twenties”, also gave birth to the sober 1930s with the onset of the Depression.

Do social and moral upheaval cause these economic problems? It is unlikely they are the cause, but moral confusion does seem to accompany economic upheaval. We will leave that one to the social historians but that the two trends tend to come together is of concern.

So, the witches’ brew in summary is sky-high stock valuations, extraordinarily high debt burdens, rising interest rates, rising inflation rates, inverting yield curves, a bond bear market, supply chain crisis caused by lockdown, energy price shock, food price shock, war, radical social change, monetary regime upheaval, and poor political leadership.

If that list is not sufficient, we have one more to add that seems unique to economic history. In the past, when faced with difficulties, political parties tended to compromise for the benefit of the country and its citizens.  After all, people elect politicians and politicians often are pragmatic.

Today’s Democrats are such harsh ideologues, especially the fanatical environmentalists, that things we could normally do as a society to ease the pain (such as drill for more energy while Russia is using energy as a weapon), cut more timber to lower construction costs, plant more acreage to grow food, and mine more metals to reduce our dependence on hostile sources like Russia and China, are taken off the table. They simply can’t be considered for ideological reasons.

Today’s Democrats would rather starve the world than bend at all on their quasi-religious belief that all climate change is caused by man’s activities. There is a strong anti-human element that has converted reasonable conservation into a religion that puts the earth first and mankind second.

Their central planning instincts have gone manic. Hubris has run amok. Unable to even clean up homeless encampments or keep the streets safe, or stop the spread of Covid, they earnestly believe they can actually change the climate of the earth in 100 years. That the earth’s climate is always changing for a variety of reasons is lost on them. They believe that they, and they alone, are responsible for altering something as complex as the earth’s temperature cycles.  

Their false belief that our economic activity is an existential risk to the earth is now a real existential risk to our safety,  freedom, national security, and standard of living.

Can you imagine during World War II, a political party arguing that we should not produce more energy because losing to Hitler is better than increasing carbon emissions? But indeed, Democrats are maneuvering us into energy and mineral dependence on both Russia and China, which will sacrifice our freedom and standard of living, to their earth god.

Whether they intend this policy straight jacket or even realize this, is immaterial. But their heated and fervent resistance narrows greatly possible responses to problems.

This development imposes a paralysis on possible policy options that transcends political disagreement and gets into the realm of religious war. It is hard to compromise on religious beliefs especially when they become government policy and are thus forced on others by law. Indeed, that is what has caused religious wars.

What is also baffling is that their religious practice is imposed on us, while giving rivals like China, Russia, and India a free pass. Why is Chinese carbon better than ours?

This is hardly helpful in dealing with the toxic brew of negative trends that we must respond to. Dealing with inflation has always been difficult enough without the complication of religious war over the earth god. The price of energy is being deliberately driven higher, and thus inflation higher, to force the world to adopt the policy proscriptions of the rabid environmentalist.

If the stock market can get through recent highs, and the nation avoids recession, it will be remarkable. The question remains:  is that a bet we are willing to make?

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Get a Government Job, Do What You Want

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By Bruce Bialosky

When talking points are created or written, they seem to be automatically rejected by the opposition. Using the term “Deep State” will set a liberal’s hair on fire and cause them not to listen. The question is whether federal employees act in a manner of their choosing as opposed to following the wishes of the President and the presidential appointees. If there are government employees who act as though they are “above” supervision (by the person for whom you voted) you should be steamed. There are and it happens frequently.  

I previously wrote about the Federal Government’s Senior Executive Service (SES). The government website states: “Members of the SES serve in the key positions just below the top Presidential appointees. SES members are the major link between these appointees and the rest of the Federal workforce. They operate and oversee nearly every government activity in approximately 75 Federal agencies.” Think Dr. Fauci. Not stated, however, is that they make a lot of money and cannot be fired. If they do not like what the presidential appointee says they can just nod their head, smile, walk away and do what they wish.  

A study recently came out from the America First Policy Institute by James Sherk, https://americafirstpolicy.com/latest/20222702-federal-bureaucrats-resisted-president-trump.

The study details how our public employees decided to do what they want. If you are a “never-Trumper” you may be celebrating this, but then you are just deluding yourself regarding how much of this goes on during Democrat administrations. Yes, most Washington federal employees are Democrats. Mostly they believe they are smarter and more knowledgeable than those of us in the big wasteland of America and we should follow their lead.  

The relationship between the number of positions that an administration can control versus the overall workplace is minuscule. There are estimated 3,800 positions under presidential control out of 2.2 million federal employees. This situation is made worse by the Senate confirmation process, which regularly drags on as operated today. As of this column’s timing, President Biden has named 516 appointments with 332 confirmations out of a total of 1,200 requiring Senate approval. This is over a year into his term.  

Though the report repeatedly states that many of the staff “diligently and impartially” do their jobs, there are still a substantial number of miscreants. Their tactics are outlined as follows

  • Withholding information.
  • Refusing to implement policies.
  • Intentionally delaying or slow-walking priorities.
  • Deliberately underperforming.
  • Leaking to Congress and the media
  • Outright insubordination.

There are many tales in the report supporting the above points. The personnel in two areas were significantly hostile. The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division and the EPA are the most obstreperous. As the reports cites, career employees treated Trump Administration appointees not as their bosses, but more “like an occupying army to be resisted.”

Under the category of withholding information, the report states this is a common tactic. “Career staff have agency-specific expertise. Career employees can frustrate that agenda simply by withholding their expertise or knowledge.” During the Trump years this was done frequently. National Labor Relation Board (NLRB) career staff presented case precedents to support their own positions as opposed to presenting cases supporting the Administration’s position or cases for both sides or the argument.  

As a tangent to this there are documented cases of staff misrepresenting facts causing political appointees to circumvent them and do their own research. The report cites a particularly egregious case of the FDA doing this about COVID.  

Then there are staff who just will not work on projects they ideologically disagree with. The report cites a case during the Obama Administration where DOJ staff refused to work on a case looking into Ivy league schools discriminating against Asians. Some perceive their employment positions are to advance their own political ideology.  

Another trick up the sleeve of employees pursuing their own agenda is to produce a report that is so deficient it is junk. As stated in the report, “Draft regulations are complex documents with many legal facets. Sophisticated career staff can draft regulations that formally comply with their directives but are unlikely to withstand judicial review.” They waste our money in multiple ways pursuing their own needs. The report cites a case where experienced staff lawyers and top-level staff spent 30 days producing a report that had to be junked resulting in political appointees having to draft their own document.

Leaking information is a frequently used technique that a compliant press eats up, then refers to the source as “government experts.” Though the report identifies many cases of this, you lived through it yourself. Whenever reporters write “experts say,” whatever follows should be perceived as suspect.  

And then there is the last bastion of the disloyal employee – outright intransigence or insubordination. If you cannot be fired and you think the department is your domain to be manipulated with your own political agenda, you resort to just saying “take a leap into the ocean” to your political appointee superior. Or simply ignore them.  

The best case of this is that President Trump issued a hiring freeze when he came into office. At HHS, some staff just erased hire dates and changed them to January 19, 2017, the day before Trump took office.  

We can go on and on and on, but you get the point. The report is easy to read and not that long. It is essential to understand how some federal employees have taken over major swathes of our government for their own means. Major civil service reform is in order, but doubtful, because Democrats receive so much money from federal employee unions. The idea of these being “public servants” has been thrown out the window.  

*****

This article was published by FlashReport and is reproduced with permission from the author.

Elon Musk on Lockdowns: ‘Sweden Was Right’ thumbnail

Elon Musk on Lockdowns: ‘Sweden Was Right’

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By Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

Instead of rebuking Sweden and states such as South Dakota who exposed the failure of lockdowns, we should be thanking them.

When people think of polarizing countries, Sweden rarely leaps to mind. At least that was the case before 2020.

Sweden’s decision to take a “lighter touch” to the coronavirus pandemic—foregoing strict lockdowns and relying primarily on social responsibility to encourage social distancing—has made it a lightning rod for criticism.

Many commentators claimed Sweden was behaving recklessly and selfishly by refusing to enforce an economic lockdown like most other nations around the world.

Though its per capita death rate remained well below European neighbors such as the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Spain—each of which enforced strict lockdowns—Sweden became, as one CBS report claimed, “an example of how not to handle COVID-19.”

As I previously observed, however, the fact that Sweden was coming under fire had less to do with the results of its policies than the nature of its policies. There were far better “cautionary tale” examples than Sweden—such as Belgium, a nation with a similar population whose per capita death toll is 50 percent higher than Sweden’s.

Unlike Sweden, however, Belgium had a strict lockdown that, as the BBC reported back in May, was enforced with “drones in parks and fines for anyone breaking social distancing rules.” But nobody cared about Belgium because they had followed the lockdown script.

Months later, Sweden’s decision to avoid lockdowns only looks better. While much of Europe is experiencing a second wave of the virus, Sweden’s numbers are a stark contrast. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization and thousands of physicians and public health officials are now arguing against the use of lockdowns as a method of taming the virus.

The reason for this is obvious. While the harms of lockdowns are clear—trillions of dollars in economic losses, widespread mental health deterioration, and social decay—there is no compelling evidence that lockdowns reduced COVID-19 deaths or the spread of the virus.

The results of Sweden’s strategy become clearer with every passing week. And more people are beginning to notice.

“Sweden was right,” Tesla founder Elon Musk recently tweeted.

Sweden was right pic.twitter.com/bzc2lFDjZQ

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 10, 2020

Musk, of course, has been suspicious of the efficacy of lockdowns for months.

In May, he took the bold step of restarting production of Tesla’s car plant in Fremont, California, in defiance of orders from government officials that the plant remain closed.

“Tesla is restarting production today against Alameda County rules,” Musk tweeted. “I will be on the line with everyone else. If anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me.”

Tesla is restarting production today against Alameda County rules. I will be on the line with everyone else. If anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 11, 2020

Musk’s act of civil disobedience paid off. Alameda County health officials caved, reversing the shutdown order and providing provisional approval for the plant to reopen.

The toll of COVID-19 has been severe. As of mid October, nearly 1.1 million people worldwide have died, according to Johns Hopkins University data, including 216,000 Americans.

Unlike previous pandemics, however, the human costs have been accompanied by a global recession and an economic collapse unprecedented in modern history. (This would seem to confirm Musk’s early assessment that the danger of panic posed perhaps a greater threat than the virus itself.)

As Harvard economist David M. Cutler and former World Bank chief economist Lawrence H. Summers noted in a new study, the toll of the Pandemic of 2020 is unlike anything the modern world has seen before.

“Output losses of this magnitude are immense. The lost output in the Great Recession was only one-quarter as large,” the authors write. “The economic loss is more than twice the total monetary outlay for all the wars the US has fought since September 11, 2001, including those in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.”

The economic results of the lockdown experiment are undeniable. Meanwhile, evidence is scant that they saved lives. In fact, new research suggests the lockdowns exacerbated the spread of the virus.

Unfortunately, many people still want to deny the data and the science. As one commentator recently put it in the Washington Examiner, the better Sweden’s numbers get, the angier people seem to become.

This is the danger of allowing a virus to become politicized. It obscures reality. Many seem intent on defending lockdowns because they were designed to help people (or perhaps because President Trump has resisted them), but such thinking should be avoided.

“One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results,” the Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman famously observed.

Instead of rebuking Sweden and states such as South Dakota who exposed the failure of lockdowns, we should be thanking them.

Without them, we may never have learned a truth that is becoming more obvious every day: the lockdowns failed.

AUTHOR

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.

Sweden Now Has a Lower COVID-19 Death Rate Than the US. Here’s Why It Matters

Why Sweden Succeeded in “Flattening the Curve” and New York Failed

Sweden’s Actual COVID-19 Results Compared to What Modelers Predicted in April

BBC: Sweden’s Economy Is Doing Way Better Than the Rest of the EU During the COVID-19 Pandemic

5 Charts That Show Sweden’s Strategy Worked. The Lockdowns Failed

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Urge To Spend thumbnail

The Urge To Spend

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By Thomas C. Patterson

Loma Verde, California is building a $24 million recreation center with a pool . Forest Lakes , Minnesota is getting a $1.5 million golf clubhouse, while San Antonio is purchasing a $15 million theme park.

These may seem frivolous when rampant inflation is threatening, but never mind, they’re all “free“, a synonym for “paid for by the feds“.

America is awash in cash. Hundreds of other communities are enjoying similar goodies. States in no fiscal difficulty whatsoever have been given billions in budget boosts. 

Checks for thousands of dollars have gone to citizens not even claiming to be in need.  Millions of Americans receive enough government cash that they can now avoid the inconvenience and degradation of work.

These are outcomes from President Biden’s $1.9 trillion dollar American Rescue Plan, although the link to Covid may seem obscure to some. But the bigger point is that our governing culture today sees government spending as a positive good, which may be prompted by any excuse or none at all.

This is a continuation of the age-old argument over the role of government. For those who see government as a benign force that can efficiently, by use of its taxing power, address the common welfare and assure equitable outcomes, every dollar transferred from private to public hands is a positive.

Moreover , Big Government clearly increases the power and prestige of government officials. It creates beneficiaries highly likely to vote for those politicians who “cared“ enough to send Other Peoples’ Money their way.

Vastly expanded government has also affected the attitudes of Americans toward the role of government in their lives. To an extent unthinkable to earlier generations, Americans now assume the federal government will take responsibility for such matters as healthcare, education, childcare and aging parents.

The founders of our Constitution would not be pleased. Their original intent was to create a more just and independent society than the autocracies which had plagued mankind for millennia. Regrettably, Americans have blandly looked on while much of their birthright has been stolen. 

Much of the recent confiscation of our nation‘s economic output has come under the pretext of Covid spending. But remember that the Covid financial crisis was a self-inflicted wound. The lockdowns were unprecedented and proved ineffective as a pandemic response strategy, but they precipitated a huge expansion of government power.

America has so far spent $6.4 trillion in Covid relief bills. The $1.9 trillion in the 2021 American rescue plan alone was enough to buy every Covid vaccine, ventilator and hospital in existence. But much of the money went to beyond-obvious pork and to support Democratic political constituencies.

New York, among others, is reportedly sitting on $12.7 billion in unneeded Covid funds that they hope will revert to “unassigned“ dollars. The money was pushed out so carelessly that the Labor Department IG estimates $163 billion of the $872 billion in Covid unemployment funds were dissipated in fraud.

The consequences of all this unnecessary spending are predictable and enormous. In 2009, then-President Obama warned against continuing deficits when the debt had doubled from $5 trillion to  $10 trillion under his predecessor.

It was $20 trillion by the time he left office, stands at $30 trillion today and will reach $45 trillion by 2032 according to Biden’s own budget projections.

But trifles like stifling debt and lack of need can’t suppress the political urge to spend. With Covid receding and no extraordinary expenses pending, Joe Biden’s new budget proposal rings in at $5.8 trillion, fully 31% higher than in 2019.

Federal revenues rose 18% in 2021, then 26% this year but it’s not enough. Biden‘s $2 trillion projected deficit means the debt will have climbed $7 trillion in just the last three years. Multi- trillion dollar deficits have effectively been normalized.

It could be worse. We narrowly escaped passage of the $3.5 trillion Build Back Better boondoggle. Yet now Biden has the gall to demand $30 billion more for Covid expenses when at least $500 billion from the last Covid relief bill is still unspent.

The mindless, immoral imperative to spend more knows no bounds. Time is running out to reverse course. When will we come to our senses?

*****

Thomas C. Patterson, MD is a retired Emergency Medicine physician, Arizona state Senator and Arizona Senate Majority Leader in the ’90s. He is a former Chairman, Goldwater Institute.

Elon Musk has secured a $46.5 billion financing commitment to acquire Twitter Inc. thumbnail

Elon Musk has secured a $46.5 billion financing commitment to acquire Twitter Inc.

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By Dr. Rich Swier

JUST IN: Elon Musk has secured a $46.5 billion financing commitment to acquire Twitter Inc and is considering starting a tender offer for its outstanding shares, a filing with U.S. regulators showed.

— Shaun Kraisman (@ShaunKraisman) April 21, 2022

Elon Musk has secured $46.5 billion in financing to fund his Twitter takeover bid, according to a Thursday regulatory filing.

The Tesla tycoon is also considering mounting a tender offer — which would involve trying to buy up stock from existing shareholders at $54.20 per share — in order to grow his stake in Twitter, the filing shows.

Twitter rose 0.6% on the news to $46.98 but remain well below Musk’s proposed takeover price of $54.20, indicating that investors are still skeptical that the deal will go through.

“He’s making the offer and it’s not conditioned on financing or business due diligence,” a hedge fund manager reviewing the situation told The Post, adding that he was surprised at the speed Musk’s dealmaking team is moving.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

What Is Motivating the Shanghai Lockdown? thumbnail

What Is Motivating the Shanghai Lockdown?

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By Jordan Schachtel

The most frequent question I get about the ongoing lockdown in Shanghai involves the potential motives of the Chinese Communist Party.

As someone who has covered COVID Mania for over two years, and has taken an unconventional approach to the motives and outcomes behind the continuation of the pandemic narrative, I remain undecided on the dominant motive for the situation in Shanghai. However, there are lots of clues available for us to survey the possibilities.

One thing is for sure: the Wuhan lockdown of early 2020 was a lot different. It was certainly a barometer for lockdown extremism, but it occurred on a much smaller scale. And it appeared, in my view, that the government was putting on more of a Hollywood production than a real attempt to quash a virus. I wrote about that extensively in The Dossier.

This time, however, the Shanghai situation appears to be a different animal.

There are several possibilities that I think are worth exploring.

Germ Freaks

First and foremost, consider the possibility that Chinese authorities have become maniacal hypochondriacs, and, like most top-down authoritarian regimes, have engaged in irrational and destructive policymaking.

In the Chinese governmental system, there are very few guardrails to authoritarian behavior, so virtually nothing would be too extreme if the ends justify the means. China’s continuing ideology contends that individual rights are not of a concern. In fact, according to the CCP, this ideal of human freedom should be actively suppressed for the “greater good” of the state.

Yes, the Chinese government is engaged in complete pseudoscientific behavior, but that is the norm for world governments, not the aberration.

This virus may genuinely terrify the ruling class atop the CCP. Similar to the True Believers of COVID Mania in the West, they could be freaked out by the prospect of catching a cold, and are ready to use any and all instruments of power with the hopes that the virus can somehow be stopped in its tracks.

It’s a psyop

The data on lockdowns are quite clear: they don’t work, and they only cause problems in addition to the virus problem. Everywhere lockdowns were tried, they failed in catastrophic fashion. But that wasn’t the story of Wuhan, the location of the first COVID lockdown, where there was no benefit of hindsight.

The short term hard lockdowns in Wuhan in early 2020 were falsely advertised as an astonishing scientific success, but were most effective as an information operation to shut down the world, while seeding the idea that lockdowns would help to crush the virus.

This left some coming to conclude that China locked down Wuhan as part of an information operation to cripple the societies and economies of its adversaries, using the virus as a kernel of truth to advance their campaign. China, notably, remained almost completely open for years following the Wuhan lockdown, while the West went through an endless series of restrictions and rolling lockdowns.

Is China readying another targeted campaign against the West by locking down Shanghai?

National Hubris/Believing their own press

It’s possible that at some point down the line, Chinese authorities became convinced that their Wuhan lockdown actually worked, and that an aggressive level of nationalistic superiority was the reason that China justifies its position as the only country in the world to “eliminate” the virus through lockdowns.

China’s lockdown was routinely praised in the corporate press and through academic circles. Every country modeled their lockdowns, a novel concept that did not exist prior to 2020, after the Wuhan lockdown. This level of admiration may have acted to affirm China’s well-known, baked in superiority complex, and convince the Communist Party that it alone has the technocratic authoritarian capacity to wage a successful war on a virus.

Don’t disregard nationailstic hubris as the chief motivating factor behind the madness in Shanghai.

Internal politics

Although China is a one-party state, there remains tremendous infighting in the ranks of the Communist Party. Shanghai is perceived as one of the more “liberal” cities in China, and the lockdowns may have been motivated by competing political factions desperate to win over influence and power.

CFTV explains: “The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) often comes across as a homogenous group to those studying China. This united front, however, is a carefully cultivated image that the CCP portrays – both to the world and its domestic audience. Beneath the surface, however, there exist “factions”, which is a combination of informal politics, relationships, and networks that jostle to dominate politics in China.”

*****

This article was published by the Brownstone Institute and is reproduced with permission.

GEICO blundered with invite to Islamist, will it fix the mess? thumbnail

GEICO blundered with invite to Islamist, will it fix the mess?

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By Center For Security Policy

If anyone has reason to be furious about GEICO’s decision to invite Linda Sarsour to participate in a diversity seminar honoring Middle Eastern and North African Heritage Month for the company’s employees in early April, it’s the company’s corporate owner, Omaha-based Berkshire Hathaway.

For a company whose entire raison d’etre is to mitigate risk, GEICO’s selection of Sarsour is bewildering. Without meaning to, GEICO provided a clinic on how companies can make gross errors in partnerships when they move forward without an iota of research or an eye towards actual risk for the company, its communities, and our country. Even a few moments with that elusive search engine, Google, would reveal Sarsour’s incendiary and divisive rhetoric is hardly the message that a national insurance company in the business of risk management should promote.

In 2017, Sarsour called for “jihad” in America, comparing Donald Trump, an elected president, with unelected authoritarian tyrants in the Middle East. And at the height of the George Floyd riots during which protesters were destroying store fronts and setting buildings on fire in cities throughout the country, she declared that reforming law enforcement practices in the United States was impossible. “Burn it all down, start over,” she said.

In both instances, Sarsour said she wasn’t promoting violence, but given the realities of intergroup conflict in the U.S., it’s hard not to conclude that some of her listeners would interpret her words as license for attacks on property owned by GEICO customers.

It just doesn’t make sense for an insurance company to promote such a speaker, but that’s what GEICO did when it asked Sarsour to speak at a celebration of Middle East and North African Heritage Month.

GEICO officials did the right thing by canceling Sarsour’s presentation, but the company put itself into the proverbial Islamist frying pan and is not yet out of trouble. GEICO is facing an onslaught of bad publicity from Islamist groups like the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and its allies who now absurdly claim that its change in programming for its employees is surely a sign of “Islamophobia.”

Many Muslims would argue that the only anti-Muslim bigotry seen so far from GEICO officials was their perception that civilizational jihadists and Muslim Brotherhood legacy group sympathizers like Sarsour somehow represent “diversity” among the Arabic and Muslim communities. If events proceed as has other Islamist bullying episodes, CAIR and its allies will not stop until they force the company into apologizing for canceling Sarsour’s presentation and admitting to the sin of Islamophobia.

I’m certainly not a fan of cancel culture, as the Islamists have targeted me on a number of occasions. When I was targeted, however, I was booked to speak on the very principles our reform-minded Muslim organization promotes.

In this instance, GEICO did the right thing. When GEICO realized it booked the wrong person for the event they were hosting, the corporation changed direction.

By anointing Sarsour as a representative of Arab Americans with its invitation, GEICO unintentionally portrayed this community as being at war with the country where they live, and that’s simply not how it is, not to mention the venomous antisemitism that Sarsour embodies in her support of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement targeting Israel.

Most Arabs and Muslims living in the U.S. are not interested in promoting “jihad” in the streets of the cities in which they live, nor are they interested inflaming tensions in a country that has endured so much violence in recent years. They want to live in peace with their neighbors and have little tolerance for Sarsour’s inflammatory and self-aggrandizing rhetoric.

Sarsour also brings Islam into undeserved disrepute with her antics. The cycle is all too predictable. First, she engages in divisive rhetoric that incites tensions. And then, when people complain, she calls them white supremacists and Islamophobes, transforming Islam from a pietistic faith that changes people’s lives into a club with which to abuse her opponents in the public square.

GEICO didn’t know how unpleasant Sarsour was, but they did the right thing upon finding out.

The company needs to do more.

In particular, GEICO needs to promote the work of moderate, reform Muslims on the American scene. Not only will this help improve intergroup relations in the U.S., but will preempt attacks from CAIR and its allies to portray GEICO as a bastion of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant bigotry in the U.S.

First off, GEICO should contact the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD), an organization founded to advocate for the preservation of the founding principles of the United States Constitution, liberty and freedom, through the separation of mosque and state.

GEICO could also contact the Muslim Reform Movement which seeks to “reclaim the progressive spirit with which Islam was born in the 7th century to fast forward it into the 21st century.” The organization’s website declares, “We support the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by United Nations member states in 1948.”

The company should consider hosting a talk by Asra Nomani, Raheel Raza, or Soraya Deen. They are all Muslim Reformers and women’s rights activists outspoken against the separatist Islamist ideas Sarsour touts. Soraya praised the company for canceling Sarsour’s talk and confronted Sarsour’s rhetoric directly, declaring that she is “is proud of her hate of Israel, Israeli Jews and Muslim reformers and atheists, not to mention conservatives, cops and the US military.”

GEICO made a terrible mistake by inviting Sarsour to speak at a “diversity and inclusion” seminar. Sadly, the cancelation of the event where she was slated to speak rendered the company vulnerable to attacks from Islamist groups like CAIR. The damage can be minimized and the attacks countered by highlighting Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. who love their country and want to see it succeed.

If GEICO does the right thing, it will help the U.S. turn a corner and start to heal from the ugly divisiveness and hostility that has dominated its public square for far too long.

It will also perhaps learn its own actuarial lesson in loss-prevention.

AUTHOR

M. Zuhdi Jasser

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser (@DrZuhdiJasser) is a physician, a former US Navy Lieutenant Commander and founder and president of American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) and co-founder of the Muslim Reform Movement. He is also a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy. His weekly podcast, Reform This! can be heard on the Blaze Podcast Network.

EDITORS NOTE: This Center for Security Policy column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Governor Ron DeSantis, ‘Florida is going to hold Twitter’s board of directors accountable for breaching its fiduciary duties’ thumbnail

Governor Ron DeSantis, ‘Florida is going to hold Twitter’s board of directors accountable for breaching its fiduciary duties’

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By Dr. Rich Swier

Bloomberg’s reported:

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said the state could take action against Twitter Inc. for launching a poison pill defense to thwart an unsolicited bid by Elon Musk.

“Why would you reject the 20% premium?” DeSantis said Tuesday at a press conference, accusing the company of censorship. “I don’t think that was a rejection based on financial concerns or business judgment. They rejected it because they know they can’t control Elon Musk. They know that he will not accept the narrative.”

Read more.

Watch Governor DeSantis explain how the Sunshine state will hold Titter’s Board of Directors accountable:

DeSantis announces that Florida is going to look at ways to hold Twitter’s board of directors accountable for breaching its fiduciary duties to the state, which is a shareholder of Twitter stock. pic.twitter.com/DpKdMrHUkr

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) April 20, 2022

The Governor has a fiduciary responsibility to insure that Florida’s pension fund, and the companies the pension fun has invested in, increase the value of their stock to keep the fund solvent. Twitter’s stock has not performed well and dropped 10% on April 20th, 2022.

(USD) Dec 2021 Y/Y
Revenue 1.57B
Net income 181.69M
Diluted EPS 0.21
Net profit margin 11.59%

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

Biden to Revoke ‘Conscience’ Rule for Health Workers! thumbnail

Biden to Revoke ‘Conscience’ Rule for Health Workers!

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By Save America Foundation

“Many people are not living their dreams because they are living their fears.” – Les Brown

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” – Theodore Roosevelt

One of the many great things done by President Trump was putting in place a conscience rule whereby Health Care workers could refuse to perform certain medical procedures or work if it conflicted with their sincerely held religious or moral beliefs.

The bill was never actually put in place as democrats and leftists in dozens of blue states and other liberal advocacy groups tied it up from 2019 onwards in Federal Courts.

Had it been implemented as planned, it would have allowed any and all health workers to legally refuse to provide services like abortions, contraception, gender affirming care, or any other procedure they objected to on religious and/or moral grounds.

The Democrats, as they get closer to losing power, and understanding that as many red states are introducing legislation to reduce or eradicate abortions and transgender care, they are telling this illegal regime occupying the White House to ensure that the Trump conscience bill never becomes law.

After all, these lefties love abortions! Especially those up to birth!! Destroying lives for political gain is their game. Just suck those babies out!! Murder them and call it a “woman’s choice” while refusing certain Americans the choice of if to take the poison – whoops – I mean China Virus Shot!

The plans to permanently remove Trumps conscious clause is underway at the Office of Management and Budget. Weird place to me to do this but what ever works I guess for these tyrants.

Progressive advocates see the removal of the clause as a major step in dismantling the Trump administration’s policy on reproductive rights, something every libtard in the nation hated. After all, they know better so don’t argue! If you do they will call you names covering everything they think will harm you, like racist, homophobe, anti LGBTQUI etc. What was that old expression? Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never harm me! We need to go back to that and stop fearing everything the left throws at us.

Planned Parenthood, one of the most reprehensible and disgusting companies out there that deal in blood, murder and mayhem, are delirious that the Biden Administration may get this done! Certainly no wailing and gnashing of teeth there!! Especially as they keep sucking up tax payers money!!

Jacqueline Ayers, the senior vice president of policy, organizing and campaigns for Planned Parenthood stated joyously “as state politicians continue to strip people of their sexual and reproductive rights and freedoms, it’s imperative that the Biden-Harris administration revoke this discriminatory policy and help ensure people can access the healthcare and information they need when they need it.” Healthcare? Since when did callous pre thought out murder of a living human being become healthcare? Just asking…..

Originally U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer, a Hussein Ovomit – I mean Obama appointed federal judge with a very leftist past and career, was the Judge who initially killed the Trump conscious clause. He got his law degree at Harvard… a liberal bastion of lefties, commies and America haters. He and his wife are both very progressive and woke Jews. Enough said and his bias is obvious.

We will continue seeing this administration under Dumbo in Chief, attacking and destroying as fast as they can, Trumps legacy and finest work.

I call it treason.

©Fred Brownbill. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Deaths & Injuries INCREASE 1000% Among 5 To 11-Year-Olds Who Took Pfizer COVID Shot

Are the Environmental Impacts and Human Atrocities Worth an EV Battery? thumbnail

Are the Environmental Impacts and Human Atrocities Worth an EV Battery?

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By Ronald Stein

EV buyers should be aware that they may be contributing to the pursuit of “blood minerals” to achieve their efforts to go green.

The worldwide movement toward the electrification of everything, from more electric vehicles (EVs) to more intermittent electricity by wind turbines and solar panels, the political actions are supportive of jumping onto the green train, most likely not knowing there is a darker side to green technology, associated with environmental degradation, humanity atrocities, and other embedded costs for materials.

It should concern everyone that those toxic components come from mining for the exotic minerals and metals that are required to manufacture EV batteries, wind turbines, and solar panels. This mining is occurring mostly in less-developed countries with yellow, brown, and black-skinned people with a lack of transparency about the human rights abuses and environmental degradation in those locations.

In an attempt to make the embedded costs of going “green” transparent to the world, the Pulitzer Prize nominated book, Clean Energy Exploitations – Helping Citizens Understand the Environmental and Humanity Abuses That Support Clean Energy   highlights how Asians and Africans, many of them children from the poorer and less healthy countries, are being enslaved and are dying in mines and factories to obtain the exotic minerals and metals required for the green energy technologies for the construction of EV batteries, solar panels, wind turbines, and utility-scale storage batteries.

The Tesla EV has a one-thousand-pound battery that contains 25 pounds of lithium, 60 pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds of cobalt, 200 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminum, steel, and plastic. Inside the Tesla battery are 6,831 individual lithium-ion cells

The environmental impact of battery production is significant. The production of lithium is either carbon dioxide polluting or wasteful of water — up to 500,000 gallons per ton of the mineral. Cobalt mining produces radioactive contaminants, including uranium. About 80 percent of the weight of a Tesla battery –requires mined materials. In practice, that means mining about 50 tons of raw ore per vehicle. If 10 million U.S.-based electric cars are sold in 2030 (about half of sales), that would translate to 500 million tons of new mining with all the accompanying emissions from mining equipment and the accompanying pollution.

All those toxic components come from mining. For instance, to manufacture each auto battery, you must process 25,000 pounds of brine for the lithium, 30,000 pounds of ore for the cobalt, 5,000 pounds of ore for the nickel, and 25,000 pounds of ore for copper. All told, you dig up 500,000 pounds of the earth’s crust for just – one – Tesla EV battery.

There was already a huge challenge in just making enough EV batteries. As physicist Mark Mills pointed out in the Wall Street Journal: “The International Energy Agency (IEA) finds that with a global energy transition like the one President Biden envisions, demand for key minerals such as lithium, graphite, nickel and rare-earth metals would explode, rising by 4,200 percent, 2,500 percent, 1,900 percent and 700 percent, respectively, by 2040”.

Amnesty International has documented children and adults mining cobalt in narrow man-made tunnels,  and the exposure to the dangerous gases emitted during the procurement of these rare minerals, not to mention the destruction of the local ecosystems when the wastewater and other unusable ores are let loose onto the environments they have no choice but to live in because their wages are so infinitesimally small, it should cause us to take a step back and examine our moral obligations to humanity.

Not only might the planet not have the capacity to meet this demand, but many of these materials come from places that are hostile or that we do not control – such as China/Mongolia, the Congo, and Bolivia – leading to an unpredictable supply.

Most electric vehicles in use today are yet to reach the end of their cycle. The first all-electric car to be powered by lithium-ion batteries, the Tesla Roadster, made its market debut in 2008. This means the first generation of electric vehicle batteries have yet to reach the recycling stage. An estimated 11 million tons of spent lithium-ion batteries will flood our markets by 2025, without systems in place to handle them.

The actions of society are currently supportive of jumping onto the EV train, knowing that EV’s have a very dark side of environmental atrocities, and the non-existing transparency of human rights abuses occurring in other countries, both of which are directly connected to the mining for the exotic minerals and metals that are required to manufacture wind turbines, solar panels, and EV batteries.

 America could promote sustainable mining in those developing countries by restoring the land to a healthy ecosystem after the mine closes and by leaving surrounding communities with more wealth, education, health care, and infrastructure than they had before the mine went into production. Like mining in America, mining in developing countries must be the objective of corporate social responsibilities and the outcome of the successful ecological restoration of landscapes.

America’s passion for EV vehicles to reduce emissions must be ethical and should not thrive off human rights and environmental abuses in the foreign countries providing the exotic minerals and metals to support America’s green passion.

*****

This article was published by The Heartland Institute and is reproduced with permission.

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