‘We Will Cut Taxes.’ Ducey Lays Out His Final Arizona Budget Priorities thumbnail

‘We Will Cut Taxes.’ Ducey Lays Out His Final Arizona Budget Priorities

By Cole Lauterbach

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey is reaffirming his commitment to lowering the state’s tax burden.

In his final budget address, the Republican governor took the podium in the joint session of the state Legislature on Monday to give special attention to his seven-year record of shrinking and streamlining government.

“We will cut taxes,” Ducey said. “It’s really not that complicated; it’s just basic common sense. Government takes in more than it needs to pay the bills, and the taxpayer should get to keep his or her hard-earned dollars.”

The speech marks Ducey’s eighth and final budget address. The two-term Republican is term-limited after the current year. Ducey boasted about the state’s historic tax cut that he signed but remained tied up in court, contrasting it with federal proposals to increase taxes.

“It all makes our commitment of returning money to the people more important than ever. Washington D.C. might have their eye on your paycheck – but at this Capitol, the only special interest on our mind is the taxpayer,” Ducey said.

If it withstands a legal challenge, Arizona’s progressive income tax that tops out at 4.5% would gradually flatten out to 2.5% with another cut for wealthy filers who must pay Prop. 208’s 3.5% surcharge for income over a certain amount.

Ducey highlighted Arizona’s economy, one of the few states fully recovered from the pandemic-related job losses. A report from Arizona’s Office of Economic Opportunity estimates the state will create an additional 700,000 jobs by 2030, many of which are in the technology sector.

In addition to educational programs to assist in learning loss, Ducey proposed a new push to educate Arizonans to take on technology jobs. Computer chip fabrication factories such as Intel, solar panel companies like Meyer Burger and others plan to expand in Arizona in the coming years. Ducey wants to provide the education needed to fill these high-paying jobs.

“Let’s invest in the worker, arming them with the skills they need for our growing semiconductor and advanced manufacturing industries,” he said. “So come June, we’re launching a summer camp with an emphasis on catching kids up in key areas: math, reading, and American civics. We will lead the way to eliminate learning loss.”

Despite pay increases in recent years, Arizona public school teachers remain some of the lowest-paid in the nation.

As of Jan. 1, Arizona is officially in a Tier 1 Colorado River water shortage. The change doesn’t affect residential Arizonans, but the nearly 18% reduction of water to the state will hit the agriculture industry. To address this, Ducey is proposing a $1 billion investment to “secure Arizona’s water future for the next 100 years.”

Ducey plans to submit his budget for legislative consideration on Friday.

*****

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

Inflation Hit a 40 YEAR HIGH in December and Bidenflation ‘Tax’ Costing Americans $5K Per Year thumbnail

Inflation Hit a 40 YEAR HIGH in December and Bidenflation ‘Tax’ Costing Americans $5K Per Year

By The Geller Report

Bidinflation ‘Tax’ Costing Americans THOUSANDS Per Year.


They are laughing at your struggle as they consolidate their power and move to federalize stealing elections.

Inflation rose at the fastest pace in nearly four decades in December, as rapid price gains fueled consumer fears about the economy and sent President Biden’s approval rating tumbling.

The consumer price index rose 7% in December from a year ago, according to a new Labor Department report released Wednesday, marking the fastest increase since June 1982, when inflation hit 7.1%. The CPI – which measures a bevy of goods ranging from gasoline and health care to groceries and rents – jumped 0.5% in the one-month period from November.

Economists expected the index to show that prices surged 7% in December from the year-ago period and 0.4% from the previous month.

Bidenflation ‘Tax’ Costing Americans $5K Per Year

By  Dillon Burroughs • Daily Wire Jan 11, 2022   DailyWire.com •

A new report published on Tuesday revealed that inflation under President Joe Biden is costing American families an average of $5,000 per year.

The report by the Washington Examiner noted West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin is correct to speak out over his concerns regarding inflation that is impacting the nation’s households worse than any time in the past 40 years

The report based the $5,000 “Bidenflation tax” on two recent studies.

“A new analysis by the Penn Wharton Budget Model found inflation costs the average U.S. household $3,500 in higher prices. The analysis showed that ‘inflation requires the average U.S. household to spend around $3,500 more to achieve the same level of consumption of goods and services as in previous years,’” Bruce Thompson noted in the report.

Worse, the same study found that lower-income households are impacted more.

The second part of the inflation “tax” was based on inflation pushing taxpayers into higher tax brackets, resulting in higher taxes.

A recent Congressional Budget Office report showed that just “a 1 percent increase in inflation would increase individual income taxes by 1.1 percent.” The two factors combine for tremendous additional stress on American family finances.

“At today’s 6.8% inflation rate, this translates into a 7.5% tax increase, a $1,500 tax increase for a household earning the median family income. With $3,500 in lost purchasing power and $1,500 in higher taxes, this painful Biden inflation tax is costing the typical family $5,000 a year,” Thompson noted.

U.S. Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Mike Crapo (R-ID) said in a December statement that if the Democrats’ reckless tax-and-spend bill is passed, American households can expect this stealth tax to be even higher.

“Americans have been extremely clear that inflation and rising costs are their top concerns right now,” Crapo wrote.

“Inflation is now at 6.8 percent, reaching a near 40-year high. The producer price index is up 9.6 percent, the fastest pace on record. This analysis is telling us that even without the Democrats’ reckless tax-and-spend legislation, lower-income households will experience a $3,500 stealth tax. If Democrats push forward with their bill, which is front-loaded with inflationary spending and full of job-killing tax hikes, Americans can expect to pay even more to keep up with rising costs without getting ahead,” he added.

An op-ed by Freedom Works economist Stephen Moore highlighted the concern in remarks responding to Biden’s speech after the December jobs reports.

“While the president was boasting of wage gains for bartenders, kitchen help and waitresses, he ignored an inconvenient truth: for six straight months now, prices have been rising faster than wages,” Moore wrote.

“While the president was boasting of wage gains for bartenders, kitchen help and waitresses, he ignored an inconvenient truth: for six straight months now, prices have been rising faster than wages.” #Bidenflation #ampFW https://t.co/H47FDbjDWr

— FreedomWorks (@FreedomWorks) January 10, 2022

“Wages are up on average by about 4.6% this past year, but price inflation is up more than 6%,” he added.

In a related Twitter post, Freedom Works noted: “Most low/moderate income workers are suffering a DECLINE in the purchasing power of their paychecks. The Biden Inflation Tax is a direct result of all the debt spending that is pouring like an uncapped fire hose into the economy.

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

Quick note: Tech giants are shutting us down. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense, Pinterest permanently banned us. Facebook, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. We will not waver. We will not tire. We will not falter, and we will not fail. Freedom will prevail.

Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America’s survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.

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DEATH SPIRAL: CNN Loses 90% Of It’s Audience thumbnail

DEATH SPIRAL: CNN Loses 90% Of It’s Audience

By The Geller Report

CNN was once the standard for providing news. Today they are a laughing stock. How much longer before Warner Media says enough? How can Jeff Zucker  show his face in public?

DEATH SPIRAL: CNN Ratings Drop 90% in Key Audience, Loses 80% of Total Viewers

By The First, January 12, 2022

CNN continued its downward death spiral in early 2022 as new data showed the cable news network shedding 80% of its total audience compared to January 2021.

“Fox News Channel kicked off the new year as the No. 1 basic cable network from Jan. 3-9, 2022, as CNN saw staggering declines, shedding nearly 90% of its early 2021 audience in multiple categories.

CNN averaged 2.7 million viewers from Jan. 4-10 last year as the network experienced a brief post-election spike but plummeted to only 548,000 average viewers last week, for a stunning year-over-year drop of 80% of its total audience,” reports Fox News.

“MSNBC also dropped significant viewers compared to the same week last year, losing 67% of its total audience, 80% among the key demo and 83% of younger people. MSNBC averaged only 88,000 viewers among the advertiser-coveted demo to finish behind even struggling CNN in the category. Fox News crushed both liberal options with 223,000 average viewers among the demo, and it retained at least 65% of viewers in all total day categories,” adds Fox.

Read the full report here.

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

Quick note: Tech giants are shutting us down. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense, Pinterest permanently banned us. Facebook, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. We will not waver. We will not tire. We will not falter, and we will not fail. Freedom will prevail.

Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America’s survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.

Follow me on Gettr. I am there, click here. It’s open and free.

Remember, YOU make the work possible. If you can, please contribute to Geller Report.

Melania Trump Launches NFT ‘The Head of State Collection’ thumbnail

Melania Trump Launches NFT ‘The Head of State Collection’

By Dr. Rich Swier

On January 9th, 2022 First Lady Melania Trump launched a new Non-Fungible Token (NFT) “The Head of State Collection.”

A Non-Fungible Token is a unique and non-interchangeable unit of data stored on a blockchain, a form of digital ledger. NFTs can be associated with reproducible digital files such as photos, videos, and audio. Melania has now entered this brave new world of NFTs.

Watch history unfold…

This January, someone will own three breathtaking assets: the authentic white Hervé Pierre hat worn by Melania Trump as she and President Donald J. Trump welcomed French President Emmanuel Macron to the White House in 2018, and the digital NFT and original watercolor of “Head of State” by renowned artist Marc-Antoine Coulon.

The Head of State collection is Mrs. Trump’s first auction through her NFT platform, accompanied by an authentic collectible from a first lady’s time in the White House. A portion of the proceeds will benefit Mrs. Trump’s Fostering the Future initiative through the Be Best platform.

You can follow the story on social media (start at the beginning here) and study the collectibles at MelaniaTrump.com through January 25th.

View the Collection

Melania’s Vision

Melania Trump’s personal journey has been enlightening; from Slovenia through Europe and into the United States of America — including as First Lady. The beauty and hardships of individuals, majestic landscapes and profound architecture have entered her lens and remain in her heart.

Marc-Antoine Coulon’s breathtaking watercolor embodies Melania Trump’s cobalt blue eyes, providing the collector with an amulet to inspire. Melania’s Vision provides the collector with strength and hope.

A portion of the proceeds from the sale of the artwork will be donated to support children in the foster care community.

Click here to hear Melania’s message.

About Melania’s ‘The Head of State Collection’

In an article in Small Business Trends titled “Melania Trump Launches NFT Collection, Selling NFT at AuctionGabrielle Pickard-Whitehead wrote:

Former First Lady Melania Trump has announced an NFT (Non-Fungible Token) auction featuring one-of-a-kind items commemorating the Trump Administration’s first official state visit.

The NFT auction is titled ‘The Head of State Collection’ and features three items, including the hat she wore to receive President Macron of France. The French president and his wife were the first official visitors to the White House during the Trump Administration in April 2018.

Now their visit will be commemorated in Melania Trump’s NFT auction, with the NFT itself being an exclusive digital artwork with motion. An original watercolor on paper by Marc-Antoine Coulon also joins the NFT in the auction, along with the hat described as an ‘iconic military masterpiece’.

[ … ]

The Head of State Collection has been previewing on Melania Trump’s website, with the online-only auction due to commence on January 11 and run through to January 25. The opening bid has been set at $250,000, with initial and subsequent bids accepted using the SOL cryptocurrency.

Read more.

https://t.co/GLLk1g7xGU

— MELANIA TRUMP (@MELANIATRUMP) January 9, 2022

Very Beautiful..💎Elegance is when the inside is as beautiful as the outside.

(Coco Chanel) pic.twitter.com/tkEsrm7zM0

— Diana (@Diana55619557) January 9, 2022

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

Youth Depression, Suicide Increasing During Pandemic Response thumbnail

Youth Depression, Suicide Increasing During Pandemic Response

By Kerry McDonald

As data on the unintended consequences of pandemic policy becomes gloomier, policy makers are beginning to acknowledge tradeoffs.

Government policies meant to curtail the COVID-19 pandemic have resulted in unintended consequences that threaten lives—including, tragically, the lives of young people who are generally spared from the worst effects of COVID-19.

School closures, stay-at-home orders, and shutdowns of businesses deemed “non-essential” are contributing to surging rates of depression and suicide among young people, as well as rising incidences of drug overdoses and related deaths.

The New York Times reported this week that an alarming increase in student suicides has prompted schools in Las Vegas to move quickly to reopen schools for in-person learning. In the Clark County, Nevada school district, 18 students took their lives during the nine months of school closures, which is double the number of students who committed suicide in the district in all of 2019. The youngest child was just nine years old.

According to the Times: “One student left a note saying he had nothing to look forward to.”

Youth despair amid lockdowns and related public health orders appears to be worsening. While US aggregate suicide data for 2020 won’t be available for a couple of years, due to reporting lags, state and county-level data reveal dismal trends. In Pima County, Arizona suicides were up 67 percent in 2020 compared to the previous year for children ages 12 to 17, and statewide childhood suicides had also increased since 2019. West Virginia has seen a spike in student suicide attempts during the pandemic. Parts of Wisconsin reported skyrocketing suicide rates among young people in 2020, while hospitals in Texas and North Carolina are seeing more young suicidal patients.

CDC data show a 24 percent increase in emergency room mental health visits for children ages 5 to 11, compared to 2019. Among adolescents ages 12 to 17, that increase is 31 percent. Last summer, the CDC reported that one in four young adults had contemplated suicide in the previous month.

Childhood and adolescent mental health has been deteriorating over the past decade, with youth depression and suicide rates climbing. But the isolation and hopelessness brought on by the pandemic response has exacerbated this trend. Earlier this month, a high school student and football star in Illinois, who had struggled previously with depression, committed suicide. His father says that his son’s “depression worsened significantly after Covid hit.”

Another high schooler and football player in Maine, Spencer Smith, took his own life last month after leaving a note saying that he felt locked in his house and the peer separation with remote learning was too much for him to bear any longer. “The kids need their peers more than ever now,” his father, Jay Smith, said. “They need face-to-face contact so they can let their emotions out.”

Some researchers recognized early on in the pandemic that there would be significant unintended consequences of lockdowns and government orders, warning of high mental health costs and other declines in public health. “The COVID-19 crisis may increase suicide rates during and after the pandemic,” noted a June 2020 paper in QJM: An International Journal of Medicine. “Mental health consequences of the COVID-19 crisis including suicidal behavior are likely to be present for a long time and peak later than the actual pandemic.”

Later, the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, a document that urges a “focused protection” response to COVID-19 rather than universally restrictive pandemic policies, explained that public health policy must look at all aspects of public health—not just one virus and not just near-term effects.

Harvard University biostatistician, Martin Kulldorff, told The Wall Street Journal that “you can’t just look at COVID, you have to look holistically at health and consider the collateral damage.” One of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, Kulldorff adds: “You can’t just look short-term.”

What Kulldorff and other public health researchers expose is the fact that there are tradeoffs to any policy.If it saves just one life,” a mantra echoed during the COVID response as a rallying cry for lockdowns, fails to acknowledge the lives damaged or lost due to these lockdown policies. Lockdown harms and deaths are as real as COVID harms and deaths and should be taken seriously when considering a holistic pandemic response.

Economists scrutinize tradeoffs, and many have been highlighting COVID-related tradeoffs since last spring. As FEE’s Antony Davies and James Harrigan wrote in April: “Regardless of whether we acknowledge them, tradeoffs exist. And acknowledging tradeoffs is an important part of constructing sound policy.”

This basic economic principle was beautifully articulated by Henry Hazlitt in his classic book, Economics in One Lesson:

The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.

Nine-tenths of the economic fallacies that are working such dreadful harm in the world today are the result of ignoring this lesson. Those fallacies all stem from one of two central fallacies, or both: that of looking only at the immediate consequences of an act or proposal, and that of looking at the consequences only for a particular group to the neglect of other groups.

As data on the unintended consequences of pandemic policy becomes gloomier, policy makers are beginning to acknowledge tradeoffs. School reopenings in Las Vegas are one positive sign of this policy shift, but more needs to be done to loosen harmful pandemic restrictions and allow for social and economic life to rebound.

The justification for the widespread lockdowns and pandemic restrictions enacted since last spring was to save lives, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that these mandatory measures are costing lives and may be ineffective at slowing the spread of the coronavirus.

This is particularly important now as more research shows that the harms of lockdowns and related policies may outweigh their benefits. A new peer-reviewed study in the European Journal of Clinical Investigation finds that restrictive, mandatory policies may not be any more effective at controlling the spread of the coronavirus than more voluntary measures.

“We do not question the role of all public health interventions, or of coordinated communications about the epidemic, but we fail to find an additional benefit of stay-at-home orders and business closures,” the researchers conclude.

There is no perfect policy response to a pandemic, but acknowledging tradeoffs, examining consequences across groups and over time, and advocating for a more voluntary, decentralized approach can minimize human costs and maximize overall health and well-being.

*****

This article is reprinted with permission from FEE, Foundation for Economic Education.

3 Reasons Nuclear Power Has Returned to the Energy Debate thumbnail

3 Reasons Nuclear Power Has Returned to the Energy Debate

By Jason Bordoff

If we believed our own rhetoric about the climate crisis, support for nuclear would be much higher.

If you still needed proof that nuclear energy has returned to the conversation after decades of disfavor, it came with an unexpected celebrity boost last month. Tesla CEO Elon Musk and the Canadian singer Grimes separately used their star power to advocate against the closure of nuclear power plants, echoing growing pressure for California to reconsider plans to shut its last such plant. Over the weekend, Europe also saw a fresh boost for nuclear energy with the leaked draft of a European Commission plan to include zero-carbon nuclear energy on its list of what counts as a “green” investment.

Notwithstanding Germany’s long-planned closure of three of its remaining six nuclear plants on New Year’s Eve, even as Europe struggles with energy shortages, support from celebrities and the EU was just the latest in a string of good news for nuclear energy in 2021. In the United States, private investment in nuclear projects and companies reached eye-popping levels. U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm became increasingly vocal in support of nuclear power as a zero-carbon energy source. In Europe, several countries—including France—recently announced new plans to build nuclear reactors in order to meet looming deadlines to decarbonize their electricity systems.

A decade after the Fukushima nuclear accident set back nuclear power’s prospects worldwide, the outlook may finally be brightening for three reasons: the urgency of meeting increasingly ambitious climate goals, significant advances in nuclear technology, and national security concerns about China’s and Russia’s growing leadership in nuclear power.

Until recently, nuclear power’s outlook seemed bleak. Following Fukushima, Japan suspended nearly all of its 50 nuclear reactors; today, only nine have resumed operations. Several other countries, most notably Germany, decided to phase out nuclear power. Still others, such as Spain, Switzerland, and Italy, scrapped plans to add new nuclear plants. Between 2011 and 2020, a total of 65 reactors were either shut down or did not have their operational lifetimes extended.

In the United States, the number of nuclear reactors peaked at more than 100 in 2012. Since then, 12 reactors have been shut down, while only one was added. (Nuclear power continues to supply about 20 percent of total U.S. electricity generation.) Cheap natural gas unlocked by the shale revolution and dramatic cost declines in wind and solar power have made it harder for nuclear power to compete. Meanwhile, projects to build new nuclear power plants in the United States have ballooned in cost, seen their timelines lengthened, or been scrapped altogether. Two reactors being built in Georgia are now projected to cost twice as much and take more than twice as long to complete as originally estimated. Two other reactors under construction in South Carolina were scrapped in 2017 after $9 billion in expenditures, leaving ratepayers with nothing to show for their money.

So, given all these setbacks, why the sudden new interest in nuclear power?

First, as the urgency to combat the climate crisis grows, there is growing recognition that the pathway to net-zero emissions will be faster, easier, and cheaper if nuclear energy is part of the mix of solutions.

As Grimes explained in her viral video calling for California to reverse its decision to shut the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, “This is crisis mode, and we should be using all the tools that we have.” She went on: “If we push the closure back by a decade, it will help the state decarbonize faster and make the transition to clean energy faster and cheaper.”

The pop star’s claims are backed up by analysis. To achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, global electricity use will need to more than double, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), as cars, home heating, and other sectors are electrified. Vast amounts of electricity will also be required to make fuels, such as hydrogen and ammonia, to power sectors that are harder to electrify, such as ship transportation and steelmaking.

In Global Energy Crisis, Anti-Nuclear Chickens Come Home to Roost

In virtually every country that has closed nuclear plants, clean electricity has been replaced with dirty power.

Why This Energy Crisis Is Different

Climate change and the policies to curb it lie behind skyrocketing gas, coal, and electricity prices in Europe and Asia.

All that electricity must then come from zero-carbon sources. Solar and wind power can provide much of that but not all. They are intermittent, as the sun does not always shine nor the wind always blow, and face other limitations, such as the greater amount of land needed. Batteries, whose costs have fallen sharply, can store renewable energy for hours but not yet days or weeks to handle seasonal fluctuations or extended periods of low winds or gray skies.

Thus, the cheapest path to decarbonize electricity is to have some amount—estimates vary—of so-called firm generation: reliable sources that can produce low-carbon electricity on demand whenever it is needed. Today, nuclear power is the only carbon-free energy source operating at scale that can reliably deliver power at any time.

*****

By , a columnist at Foreign Policy and the co-founding dean of the Columbia Climate School.

Continue reading this article at Foreign Policy.

480 720 Jason Bordoff 2022-01-08 06:48:203 Reasons Nuclear Power Has Returned to the Energy Debate

What I See for 2022: Interest Rates, Mortgage Rates, Real Estate, Stocks & Other Assets as Central Banks Face Raging Inflation thumbnail

What I See for 2022: Interest Rates, Mortgage Rates, Real Estate, Stocks & Other Assets as Central Banks Face Raging Inflation

By Wolf Richter

An extra-special cocktail of three powerful ingredients with no cherry on top awaits us in 2022.

Super-inflated asset prices such as housing, stocks, and bonds; massive inflation; and central banks that have started to react.

Many central banks have started pushing up interest rates; others have ended asset purchases. And Quantitative Tightening (QT) – central banks shedding assets – is on the table.

Rising interest rates in the US won’t catch up with raging inflation in 2022 – CPI inflation is now 6.8%, the highest in 40 years.

But unlike 40 years ago, inflation is now on the way up. In the early 1980s, it was starting to head down. We need to compare the current situation to the 1970s, when inflation was spiraling higher. So we’re entering a new environment where the economy will be doing things we haven’t seen in many decades. It will be a new ballgame for just about everyone.

As is always the case, the year-over-year inflation figures will fluctuate. CPI could go over 7% or 8% and then fall back to 5% only to jump again, providing moments of false hopes – as they did during the waves of inflation in the 1970s – only to race even higher.

Inflation has now spread deep into the economy, with services inflation picking up, and there are no supply-chain bottlenecks involved. This includes the inflation measures for housing costs. Those housing inflation measures have begun to surge.

We know that the figures for housing inflation, which account for about one-third of total CPI, will surge further in 2022, based on housing data that we saw in 2021, and that is now slowly getting picked up by the inflation indices. They started heading higher in mid-2021 from very low levels, and they’re going to be red-hot in 2022.

This is inflation is fueled by enormous monetary and fiscal stimulus, globally, but particularly in the US – with nearly $5 trillion in money-printing since March 2020, and over $5 trillion in government spending of borrowed money.

The stimulus has broken price resistance among businesses and consumers. Enough businesses and consumers are willing to pay even the craziest prices – a sign that the inflationary mindset has taken over for the first time in decades. All this stimulus has broken the dam.

Inflation is not going away until central banks remove the fuel via QT to allow long-term interest rates to rise, and by pushing up short-term interest rates via rate hikes, and until these policy actions are drastic enough to shut down the inflationary mindset and reestablish price resistance among businesses and consumers.

Central banks around the world react

The Bank of Japan ended QE in May 2021 – the longest-running money-printer has stopped printing money.

The Fed started tapering QE in November and doubled the speed of the taper in December. If it doesn’t accelerate it further, QE will end in March.

The Bank of Canada ended QE in October. The Bank of England ended QE in December. The ECB announced that it would cut its huge QE program in half by March. Several smaller central banks that did QE have ended it.

Central banks in developed markets already hiked rates:

  • The Bank of England: by 15 basis points, in December, for liftoff.
  • The National Bank of Poland: three hikes, totaling 165 basis points, to 1.75%.
  • The Czech National Bank: five times by a total of 350 basis points, to 3.75%.
  • Norway’s Norges Bank: for the second time, by a total of 50 basis points, to 0.5%.
  • The National Bank of Hungary: many small hikes totaling 180 basis points, to 2.4%.
  • The Bank of Korea: twice, by 50 basis points total, to 1.0%.
  • The Reserve Bank of New Zealand: twice, by 50 basis points total, to 0.75%.
  • The Central Bank of Iceland: four times, by 125 basis points in total, to 2.0%.

Central banks in developing markets have been much more aggressive in hiking rates to get inflation under control and protect their currencies; a plunge in their currencies would make dollar-funding very difficult. They’re trying to stay well ahead of the Fed. Among them:

  • The Central Bank of Russia: seven times, totaling 425 basis points, to 8.5%.
  • The Bank of Brazil: multiple huge rate hikes, by 725 basis points since March, to 9.25%.
  • The Bank of the Republic (Colombia): three hikes totaling 125 basis points, to 3.0%.
  • The Bank of Mexico: five hikes, totaling 150 basis points, to 5.5%.
  • The Central Bank of Chile: four hikes, 350 basis points in total, to 4.0%.
  • The State Bank of Pakistan: three hikes, totaling 275 basis points, to 9.75%.
  • The Central Bank of Armenia: seven hikes, totaling 350 basis points, to 7.75%.
  • The Central Reserve Bank of Peru: five hikes, totaling 225 basis points, to 2.5%.

There are some exceptions, particularly Turkey, which has embarked on an all-out effort to destroy its currency via inflation and is succeeding in doing so by cutting rates. Over the year 2021, the lira has collapsed by nearly 80% against the dollar, with inflation raging at over 20%.

But in the US in my lifetime, there has never been a toxic combination of interest-rate repression to near-0%, amid 6.8% inflation, as the Fed’s money-printing continues for now.

*****

Continue reading this article at  Wolf  Street.

FLORIDA: DeSantis Investing $10m in Semiconductor Production to Combat China thumbnail

FLORIDA: DeSantis Investing $10m in Semiconductor Production to Combat China

By The Geller Report

Once again, Governor Ron DeSantis is the best governor in the nation. No one is fighting harder for the American people than the great governor. When DeSantis becomes POTUS in either 2025 or 2029, he will take the fight to China and all of America’s adversaries. And he will win. #DeSantis2024!

The Chinese Communist Party steals America’s technology and is a threat to the semiconductor supply chain.

I am investing funds to increase microchip and semiconductor manufacturing in Florida so that the CCP cannot hold our supply chain hostage. pic.twitter.com/ji1emvw7AG

— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) January 5, 2022

DeSantis investing $10m in semiconductor production to combat China

By Red State Observer, January 6, 2022

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) announced a nearly $10 million investment in semiconductor production for the state of Florida to combat the United States’ reliance on China and other foreign countries for vital supplies, parts, and materials.

On Wednesday, DeSantis announced the investment whereby millions from the Florida Job Growth Grant Fund will go to Osceola County, Florida, and Valencia College to support semiconductor manufacturing.

DeSantis said the investment will support about 5,400 jobs in Florida, and Osceola County officials have suggested that tens of thousands of jobs will be supported by the investment once the infrastructure for the project is fully completed.

“Manufacturing is something that we need to do a better job of … semiconductors are a huge issue,” DeSantis said:

If you look at how the supply chain works, we are overly dependent on foreign nations, including Tawain which is a good ally of ours, but which is one that is under serious pressure from the Communist Party of China and so we have an opportunity to do more here in the United States and I think the more manufacturing of semiconductors here, the better off we’ll be. [Emphasis added]

The Chinese Communist Party steals America’s technology and is a threat to the semiconductor supply chain.

I am investing funds to increase microchip and semiconductor manufacturing in Florida so that the CCP cannot hold our supply chain hostage.

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

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Strength Of U.S. Dollar Slips After Poor Jobs Report thumbnail

Strength Of U.S. Dollar Slips After Poor Jobs Report

By The Geller Report

In 4 out of the last 5 months, the U.S. economy performed below expectations. But Decembers job report was the Biden Administrations worst one yet. It was gad awful. Less than half the jobs expected were created. As such, the U.S. dollar took a hit. America will not be able to withstand a second term of the Biden Administration.

This is the worst jobs report of Biden’s presidency so far.

Less than HALF the jobs expected were created.

It’s clear: His “plan” is not working!

— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) January 7, 2022

In 4 out of the last 5 months, the economy has added fewer jobs than expected.

Joe Biden is failing Americans.

— GOP (@GOP) January 7, 2022

Joe Biden has failed as president. pic.twitter.com/rUKzDOSP9A

— GOP (@GOP) January 5, 2022

Strength Of U.S. Dollar Slips After Poor Jobs Report

By Daily Wire, January 8th, 2022

The price of the U.S. dollar slipped on Friday following a weaker-than-expected jobs report as the U.S. economy struggles to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns.

The Department of Labor reported on Friday morning that the U.S. economy added 199,000 jobs in the month of December. The gain was roughly half of what economists predicted.

The unemployment rate dropped to 3.9%, outpacing economists’ expectations of 4.1%. The share of working adults, however, still has not returned to pre-pandemic levels as many continue to stay out of the workforce, according to Axios.

“Employers want to create new jobs, and are hiring the formerly unemployed, driving down the jobless rate,” Axios reported Friday. “But that isn’t coaxing more people to work. The share of adults in the labor force was unchanged in December and remains 1.5 percentage points below pre-pandemic levels.”

The report preceded a dip in the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar, which fell in value compared to a basket of other currencies. As Reuters reported:

The dollar index fell 0.269% at 96.001. Even with Friday’s weakness, the dollar was still on track for a weekly gain, its first in three weeks.

The euro was up 0.3% to $1.1325 as it strengthened against the greenback in the wake of the payrolls report, after showing little reaction to data showing euro zone inflation rose to 5% in December.

Euro zone policymakers have said they expect inflation to gradually slow down in 2022 and a rate hike will likely not be needed this year.

The Japanese yen strengthened 0.12% versus the greenback at 115.71 per dollar. The yen has taken the brunt of the damage while the greenback has strengthened recently, with the dollar hitting a five-year high versus the yen earlier this week.

Sterling was poised for its third straight weekly gain and was last trading at $1.356, up 0.24% on the day, even after data showed growth in Britain’s construction sector cooled in December as the Omicron variant of coronavirus spread.

Biden reacted to the jobs report on Friday, ignoring the poor jobs added number and instead focusing on the unemployment rate.

“It’s a historic day for our economic recovery,” Biden said, according to Fox Business. “Today’s national unemployment rate fell below 4% to 3.9%, the sharpest one-year drop in unemployment in United States history … Years faster than experts said we’d be able to do it, and we have added 6.4 million new jobs since January of last year.”

Biden also touted that from the time he took office in January 2021, the U.S. “went from 20 million people on unemployment rolls to under 2 million on the unemployment rolls today.”

“This is the economy I promised and hoped for, for the American people,” the president said. “Where the biggest benefits go to the people who work the hardest and who are more often left behind. The people who have been ignored before. The people who just want a decent chance to build a decent life for their families.”

RELATED ARTICLE: Milton Friedman: “Inflation is a disease.”

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

Quick note: Tech giants are shutting us down. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense, Pinterest permanently banned us. Facebook, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. We will not waver. We will not tire. We will not falter, and we will not fail. Freedom will prevail.

Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America’s survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.

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Remember, YOU make the work possible. If you can, please contribute to Geller Report.

Covid-19 Economic Zombification thumbnail

Covid-19 Economic Zombification

By Daniel Fenandez

Editors’ Note: Discussion of “Minsky Moments” may strike the reader as obscure. However, it is noted in this article that the whole world, including real estate much of the private corporate sector, has become more leveraged than before the 2008 financial crisis. With the sharp rise in inflation,  global central banks have the difficult choice of either letting the inflation run, or increasing interest rates and reducing money supply growth, the very fuel which is supporting the record-setting debt expansion. Either choice could be upsetting to financial markets. Economic trauma always takes on greater power when financial leverage is excessive. Just as debt expansion fuels the boom, its contraction can fuel a bust. Thus, for those of us with money in markets, either building our estates or living off our estates in retirement, this issue becomes very immediate. Economic theory cannot time these events precisely but it can tell us the kind of environment in which we are operating. This level of debt, coupled with a sharp rise in inflation, suggests some sort of confrontation is ahead with serious consequences for investors. That confrontation is the Minsky Moment, and it can be very real for those with money at risk.

Economists and finance specialists are warning of the potential arrival of a new “Minsky moment” in increasing numbers. The last time this term was used with such conviction was in 2008, at the onset of the Great Recession. It seems that 2021–22 could have some parallels with the world’s last severe recession.

The Twentieth-First Century: The Century of Debt

Until now, the 21st century could be called the century of debt, and if things continue the way they are, it could well be called the century of the great debt default. At the beginning of the century, extremely low-interest rates promoted by central banks in practically the entire developed world caused a frenzy of private credit creation and a gigantic financial and real estate bubble that exploded in 2008 with dire consequences for the world economy.

Central banks, heavily pressured by politicians, redoubled their commitment to low-interest rates, causing public overindebtedness to a degree unprecedented in times of peace. In 2020, when the growth model based on the accumulation of public debt and low interest rates seemed to start to weaken, the Covid-19 recession arrived. The worldwide excess of public spending in 2020 has not been corrected, and it does not appear it will be corrected anytime soon. The new public debt is adding fuel to the fire. And the accumulation of it (and also private debt, especially that issued by companies) could be reaching the point of no return.

Global debt reached $200 trillion at the beginning of 2011, while global GDP was $74 trillion (275 percent debt/GDP). In the second quarter of 2021, global debt reached almost $300 trillion with a global GDP of $83.9 trillion (330 percent debt/GDP).

What Is a Minsky Moment?

Hyman Minsky was a post-Keynesian economist who developed a very insightful taxonomy of financial relationships. According to him, the finances of a capitalist economy can be summarized in terms of exchanges of present money for future money. The relationship proposed by Minsky is as follows:

Present money is invested in companies that will generate money in the future.

When companies make a profit, they return the money to investors from their profits.

Income or profit expectations determine the following:

  1. The flow of present money to companies
  2. The price of financial assets such as bonds and stocks (financial assets that articulate the exchange of present money for future money)

Present business income, meanwhile, determines the following:

  1. Whether expectations about past income (included in already-issued financial assets) have been met
  2. How to modify expectations about future income (and therefore, indirectly, the flow of present money to companies and the price of financial assets issued in the present)

Minsky articulates three possible types of income-debt relationship in companies (although he extends the analysis to all economic agents):

  1. Hedge. Hedge finance companies can meet all of their debt obligations with their cash flows. That is, their inflows exceed their outflows. Such companies are stable.
  2. Speculative. Companies can pay the interest on their debt but cannot pay down the principal. They are forced to constantly refinance. These companies are unstable, as any minor problem can bankrupt them.
  3. Ponzi. Ponzi companies do not generate enough income to pay down the principal or pay the interest. They must sell assets or issue debt just to pay the previous interest on their debt. They end up defaulting on the new debt sooner or later. Their chances of survival are minimal.

According to Minsky, when things are going well in an economy and income expectations are met, corporations begin to err on the side of optimism and excessively increase their debt. This causes a shift from a stable situation (in which hedge companies are the norm) to an unstable one (in which Ponzi companies are the norm). In a Ponzi situation, the economy will experience widespread defaults and a financial and economic crisis.

An economy is said to be in a Minsky moment if debtors are unable to pay down their debts (a speculative situation) or unable to pay the interest and the principal (a Ponzi situation).

Minsky was partly right. He accounts for a common truth of financial crises: issuance of debt was abused in previous periods. As a caveat, though, taking into account monetary and financial state interventions—mainly but not solely those of central banks—perhaps the cause of this degradation of debt quality is not a market problem, or at least not exclusively. The crisis may be exogenous to the market (caused by public authorities) or endogenous but amplified by exogenous factors (public authorities contribute to it).

The Economy Has Been Zombifying for Two Decades

As already discussed, global debt has grown more rapidly than the global economy over the last ten years, so it seems credit quality has indeed degraded. The income needed to pay off debt is growing much more slowly than is the debt itself.

An additional piece of evidence to support this argument is the increase in the number of “zombie companies.” A zombie company is one whose earnings before interest and taxes are less than or equal to its debt service (it coincides exactly with Minsky’s definition of speculative and Ponzi companies, taken together). A zombie is a wonderful metaphor because a zombie moves and appears to be alive but is in fact dead. A zombie company also moves and appears to be alive—it generates activity, employs workers, and produces goods—but in reality is (almost) dead. It is (almost) certain to die given its inability to pay its debt with its own means. The number of zombie companies has increased exponentially in the United States in recent years, according to a Bank for International Settlements (BIS) report. Furthermore, the probability of remaining in a zombie state has increased. And in fact, zombification is a reality in almost every part of the world.

Figure 2

Source: Banerjee & Hofmann

Figure 3

Source: Banerjee & Hofmann

However, the BIS data end in 2017. What has Covid-19’s impact been on an already-zombified global economy?

Covid-19 Hit a Zombie Economy: Now What?

The most recent data on company interest coverage (financing cost/earnings) are from the Fed, and refer to the North American economy. In the figure below we can see that the median coverage ratio began to fall at the end of 2018, which is consistent with our hypothesis that the economy’s growth model, based on cheap debt, was beginning to run its course. The pandemic has hammered the median coverage ratio. Although the ratio has been recovering since the second half of 2020, it is currently at the level seen in 2009, in the middle of the Great Recession.

Even more revealing is the interest coverage ratio of the companies in the first quartile (that is, the 25 percent of companies with the lowest ratio). This indicator has been below 1 since 2012; in other words, zombification has accelerated since then. Keep in mind that a ratio lower than 1 means that a company’s profits are insufficient for it to pay its financing costs (it is a Ponzi company).

The interest coverage ratio for companies in the twenty-fifth percentile reached almost 0 just before the pandemic (their profits had almost disappeared). Since then, the ratio has been negative (these companies recorded losses). Observe that these companies have not recovered, while companies in other quartiles have. Their ratio is currently just above −1, which means that their losses (before interest) are nearly equal to their financing cost. This is a total disaster. At least 25 percent of US companies are financially dead.

Valuation of Zombified Companies

One would expect that these companies would begin to go bankrupt, and this is indeed what is happening. According to the Fed, 2.5 times more zombie companies (as a fraction of all companies) went bankrupt in 2020 than in 2019 (<2 percent in 2019 and around 4.5 percent in 2020).

Curiously, the zombie companies that survived 2020 are seeing their valuation skyrocket. Their aggregate value already exceeds $6 trillion, while in 2019 it was close to $2 trillion.

Figure 5

Conclusion

Markets are now extremely complacent. The fundamentals do not seem to justify their optimism. Zombie companies, which were already a problem in 2019, have not been killed off; indeed they have multiplied. The zombie apocalypse could be closer than we imagine.

*****

This article was originally published by AIER, American Institute for Economic Research and is reproduced with permission.

Biden Wrecking Ball: Over 3 Million Jobs Lost Due To Employer Closures Or Lost Business thumbnail

Biden Wrecking Ball: Over 3 Million Jobs Lost Due To Employer Closures Or Lost Business

By The Geller Report

Destroying your livelihood, your ability to make a living, is a form of murder.

The Biden Effect: Over 3 Million Jobs Lost Due To Employer Closures Or Lost Business

A new report revealed on CNBC Friday that 3.1 million people have been unable to work due to their employer closing or losing business as inflation and government regulations continue to cripple the job market.

The information was discussed during a “CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer” report on Friday morning.

“3.1 million people reported they’ve been unable to work because their employer closed or lost business,” Cramer said.

CNBC: “3.1 million people reported they’ve been UNABLE TO WORK because their employer closed or lost business.” pic.twitter.com/vkKREXflEf

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) January 7, 2022

“This is what I’m hearing from a lot of CEOs is that basically, look, we can’t staff, or we’re looking for people, or a lot of our customers are going under,” he added.

The report also comes as CNBC reported the nation’s economy added just 199,000 jobs in December, falling far short of expectations.

BREAKING: The U.S. economy added 199,000 jobs in December, falling far short of expectations. https://t.co/lize4vONr5 pic.twitter.com/7EewsHHRCc

— CNBC (@CNBC) January 7, 2022

The December drop was largely blamed on the large surge of COVID-19 cases in December.

“The new year is off to a rocky start,” wrote Nick Bunker, economic research director at job placement site Indeed told CNBC. “These less than stellar numbers were recorded before the omicron variant started to spread significantly in the United States. Hopefully the current wave of the pandemic will lead to limited labor market damage. The labor market is still recovering, but a more sustainable comeback is only possible in a post-pandemic environment.”

Rising inflation was another issue cited in the report.

“Average hourly earnings rose more than expected as the U.S. sees its fastest inflation pace in nearly 40 years. Wages climbed 0.6% for the month and were up 4.7% year over year. That compares with respective estimates of 0.4% and 4.2%,” CNBC said.

Related to the lower than expected job numbers in December was the growing number of vaccine mandates and COVID-19 restrictions in American workplaces. Some companies reinstated mask mandates in December in response to the surge in cases related to the Omicron variant, a factor that may have lowered customer traffic and impacted jobs.

Other businesses closed storefronts temporarily or limited services during December. One notable example was Apple. It temporarily shuttered some locations, including ending in-store shopping in its New York City locations in December……

RELATED ARTICLE: After First Year, New Poll Shows RECORD HIGH Disapprove of Biden Job Performance

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

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Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America’s survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.

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Phoenix Six-Figure Job Growth Ranks Second Among Large U.S. Metros thumbnail

Phoenix Six-Figure Job Growth Ranks Second Among Large U.S. Metros

By Elizabeth Troutman

Phoenix has the second-highest percentage change in high-paying jobs out of a list of large U.S. metros, according to a Stessa report.

Phoenix saw a 217.1% increase in six-figure jobs from 2015 to 2020, marking the second-largest percentage increase among the nation’s largest metropolitan areas.

More Phoenix workers made six-figure salaries in 2020 than the national average. Out of Valley workers, 180,740, or 8.6% of the workforce, made six-figure salaries in 2020, while only 7.9% of workers nationally made $100,000 or more. Only 57,000 workers in the Valley reported salaries of $100,000 or more in 2015. Phoenix’s percentage beats all but two of the study’s 15 largest metros, including first-ranked Nashville.

“We are leading the nation in high-wage industry growth, including semiconductors, electric vehicle manufacturing, biosciences, start-ups and more,” Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego’s office told The Center Square. “Our efforts to accelerate and strengthen the business operating environment in Phoenix and the greater region are reflected in this exciting job growth, a sign of our economic vitality.”

In response to the report, Gallego called Greater Phoenix a “national leader and top relocation destination for families, jobs, and businesses.”

Phoenix provides residents with more opportunities and a higher quality of life, Gallego said.

Tucson ranked eighth on the list with a 156.2% percentage change in six-figure jobs between 2015 and 2020.

*****

This article was published on January 1, 2022, and is reproduced with permission from The Center Square.

Forty-Five Years of Mask Studies Prove They’re Worthless thumbnail

Forty-Five Years of Mask Studies Prove They’re Worthless

By Kelleigh Nelson

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” –  H.L. Mencken

“Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.” – C. S. Lewis

“A good deal of tyranny goes by the name of protection.” – Crystal Eastman

“Fear of death has been the greatest ally of tyranny past and present.” – Sidney Hook


The masking of America, especially our children, has been detrimental to our mental and physical health.  I weep when I see parents put these evil things on their little ones.

This article is for parents with children in our government schools.  The following information needs to be distributed to school boards who will not listen to worried parents. Use it to save your little ones!

DOJ Calls Parents “Domestic Terrorists”

Parents who are standing up against the masking of their children at school board meetings are being threatened. Attorney General Merrick Garland admits he took the word of the National School Boards Administration that parents voicing concerns at their local school board meetings should be targeted as “domestic terrorists.”

Citing an increase in harassment, intimidation and threats of violence against school board members, teachers and workers in our nation’s government run schools, AG Garland met with federal, state, Tribal, territorial and local law enforcement leaders to discuss strategies for addressing this “disturbing trend.”  What?  Parents concerned for their children is a “disturbing trend?”

However, when Garland was questioned by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), not one citing of intimidation or violence could be shown by parents across the USA against any school board members.  The lies of the stakeholder authoritarians keep pile up.

At an elementary school in Portland, Oregon, kindergartners were videotaped eating lunch outside and sitting on buckets socially distanced in 40-degree weather. That is child abuse, and parents are infuriated. State and local health departments are still mandating masks for school children and parents have realized how detrimental masks are to their child’s mental and physical health.  They’ve complained to their local school boards.

The mask tyranny has even hit the red state of Tennessee in Shelby County.  Parents were enraged that they weren’t allowed into the board meeting and police were there to keep them out.

Oxygen Deprivation

Research reveals that prolonged use of Covid masks, homemade or N95, can cause anywhere from five percent on up to 20 percent loss of oxygen, leading to hypercapnia (excessive carbon dioxide in the bloodstream typically caused by inadequate respiration), panic attacks, vertigo, double vision, tinnitus, concentration issues, headaches, slowed reactions, seizures, alterations in blood chemistry and suffocation due to air displacement.

We are killing our children!  Wake up America and get these things off your children’s faces!

We cannot allow children to continually breathe in exhaled carbon dioxide (CO2).  Even National Institutes of Health (NIH), a stakeholder in this vile jab for Sars-coV-2, states this is dangerous to your health.  It can lead to a light-headed, dizzy, flustered feeling from repeatedly re-breathing back in your own already processed air. Those are just the beginning warning signs of much more serious health problems.

According to Amesh A. Adalja, MD, and senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Maryland, “wearing a mask day in and day out can lead to alterations in blood chemistry,” and that leads to “changes in level of consciousness.”

A German neurologist, Dr. Margarite Griesz-Brisson, MD, PhD (in pharmacology), who specializes in neurotoxicology and environmental medicine, warns that oxygen deprivation from prolonged Covid-mask wearing can cause permanent neurological damage.  She states in her research, “The re-breathing of our exhaled air will without a doubt create oxygen deficiency and a flooding of carbon dioxide. We know that the human brain is very sensitive to oxygen deprivation. There are nerve cells for example in the hippocampus, that can’t be longer than 3 minutes without oxygen – they cannot survive. The acute warning symptoms are headaches, drowsiness, dizziness, issues in concentration, slowing down of the reaction time – reactions of the cognitive system.”

People think they’ve gotten used to wearing masks, but what they’ve actually gotten used to is having less oxygen in their brains.  They no longer mind the masks because once a person has chronic oxygen deprivation, all of those symptoms disappear.  The person gets accustomed to the deprived state; however, their efficiency remains impaired and the lack of appropriate oxygen delivery to the brain continues to dangerously progress.  They literally are losing their minds.

People have so fallen for the fear factor of this virus with a 99.8% recovery, that they are wearing their masks in their cars, their homes, when they are outdoors or exercising.  Children are forced to wear their masks all day at school, with minimal or zero mask breaks, even during recess.  This is child abuse!

Masking Our Wee Ones

The oxygen deprivation mask syndrome is sweeping the globe and more are at risk.

Dr. Mark McDonald, a double board-certified clinical psychiatrist told of the damage to our children. Dr. McDonald said, “We’re not in a medical pandemic, we’re in a fear pandemic.”

He believes that what is driving the fear now is propaganda.  He said that children, unlike adults, don’t just bounce back; those children will not regain their psychological health.  As a child psychiatrist, he treats children all day long.

He stated, “The developmental stage children need to go through, babies, toddlers, young adults, is being foreclosed on them.  Brown University Department of Pediatrics published a study in mid-September that found that babies born after January 1st, 2020, when this whole pandemic started, had an IQ point drop of 20 points compared to babies born before January 1, 2020.  That’s huge!  Why?  They don’t see faces, they don’t play, they don’t have exposure to friends, they don’t go to school.  They’re basically locked in their homes looking at their parents for two years and their brains have not developed.”

“My concern is that we are building a generation of young people who are so traumatized that they will never fully recover from this.  Even if we give them therapy and treatment, they’re always going to be damaged from this and be scarred emotionally.  I don’t mean for it to be depressing, I mean for it to be alarming so that everyone can finally say, ‘STOP.’ We’ve got to stop the damage and then figure out what to do about it.”

It’s way past time to acknowledge what has been done wrong and the biggest problem was masks on children who rarely get or pass the virus.  To close their faces off from their peers and to wear face diapers in public is a developmental atrocity to our youth; I see it as child abuse.  Many parents home school, and those children have no social disabilities, but masks are a blockage that destroy interpersonal relationships and change the lives of these children for decades to come.  And they destroy the brains of these youngsters by depriving them of proper oxygen.

Fear is a great driver, when fear is in the minds of people, they actually don’t want much public discourse, they don’t want much discussion, they basically just want to be told what to do.  The easiest thing to do is to defer to some type of agency.  The agencies who are calling the shots here are ones that typically don’t call the shots.

The FDA doesn’t tell doctors how to treat patients.  The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) is a drug regulatory, drug safety watchdog agency.  The National Institutes of Health (NIH), they don’t tell doctors how to treat patients.  They’re a government funded research organization.  The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) certainly doesn’t because they’re an infectious and chronic disease, epidemiologic and analytic organization.  We should not look to those groups to advise physicians how to treat patients.

Nor should we look to other unelected parties to tell us what to do, and that includes our local health departments who have advocated mandates that are destructive not only to children, but to all citizenry.  And the latest is the euphemistically named Congressional bill H.R.550 (Immunization Infrastructure Modernization Act of 2021) which paves the way for state and local health departments, as well as public and private health care providers, to share personal health data with the federal government. The bill has hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars allocated to the tracking system’s success.

Mask Studies

Do masks actually work? The best studies suggest they don’t, appeared in The Washington Examiner on August 12, 2021.  (Please read the short article.)

“Of the 14 Randomized Controlled Trials (RCT) that have tested the effectiveness of masks in preventing the transmission of respiratory viruses, three suggest, but do not provide any statistically significant evidence in intention-to-treat analysis, that masks might be useful. The other eleven suggest that masks are either useless — whether compared with no masks or because they appear not to add to good hand hygiene alone — or actually counterproductive. Of the three studies that provided statistically significant evidence in intention-to-treat analysis that was not contradicted within the same study, one found that the combination of surgical masks and hand hygiene was less effective than hand hygiene alone, one found that the combination of surgical masks and hand hygiene was less effective than nothing, and one found that cloth masks were less effective than surgical masks.”

One free-thinking university professor at New York University was finally cleared for questioning masks in his class on propaganda.  Mark Crispin Miller took the stance of many independent scientists, questioning some of the motives of government and public health officials, as well as their often-vacillating stances on Covid-19.  Both students and other professors found it reprehensible that Miller was “thinking outside the box.”

Detrimental Surgical Masks

In August of this year, I wrote an article, The Mask Nazis Have Blood on their Hands, and told the story of Dr. Orr who found that not wearing surgical masks cut infections in half.  When I’ve told people about this, they wanted the article.

“Dr. Orr was a surgeon in the Severalls Surgical Unit in Colchester. And for six months, from March through August 1980, the surgeons and staff in that unit decided to see what would happen if they did not wear masks during surgeries. They wore no masks for six months, and compared the rate of surgical wound infections from March through August 1980 with the rate of wound infections from March through August of the previous four years. And they discovered, to their amazement, that when nobody wore masks during surgeries, the rate of wound infections was less than half what it was when everyone wore masks.”

Their conclusion: “It would appear that minimum contamination can best be achieved by not wearing a mask at all” and that wearing a mask during surgery “is a standard procedure that could be abandoned.”

Dr. Arthur Firstenberg took all of this a step further in his research and published the following in August of 2020.  He scoured the medical literature, sure that this was a fluke and that newer studies must show the utility of masks in preventing the spread of disease. But, “the medical literature for the past forty-five years has been consistent: masks are useless in preventing the spread of disease and, if anything, are unsanitary objects that themselves spread bacteria and viruses.”

Here are his amazing findings:

  • Ritter et al., in 1975, found that “the wearing of a surgical face mask had no effect upon the overall operating room environmental contamination.”
  • Ha’eri and Wiley, in 1980, applied human albumin microspheres to the interior of surgical masks in 20 operations. At the end of each operation, wound washings were examined under the microscope. “Particle contamination of the wound was demonstrated in all experiments.”
  • Laslett and Sabin, in 1989, found that caps and masks were not necessary during cardiac catheterization. “No infections were found in any patient, regardless of whether a cap or mask was used,” they wrote. Sjøl and Kelbaek came to the same conclusion in 2002.
  • In Tunevall’s 1991 study, a general surgical team wore no masks in half of their surgeries for two years. After 1,537 operations performed with masks, the wound infection rate was 4.7%, while after 1,551 operations performed without masks, the wound infection rate was only 3.5%.
  • A review by Skinner and Sutton in 2001 concluded that “The evidence for discontinuing the use of surgical face masks would appear to be stronger than the evidence available to support their continued use.
  • Lahme et al., in 2001, wrote that “surgical face masks worn by patients during regional anesthesia, did not reduce the concentration of airborne bacteria over the operation field in our study. Thus they are dispensable.”
  • Figueiredo et al., in 2001, reported that in five years of doing peritoneal dialysis without masks, rates of peritonitis in their unit were no different than rates in hospitals where masks were worn.
  • Bahli did a systematic literature review in 2009 and found that “no significant difference in the incidence of postoperative wound infection was observed between masks groups and groups operated with no masks.
  • Surgeons at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, recognizing the lack of evidence supporting the use of masks, ceased requiring them in 2010 for anesthesiologists and other non-scrubbed personnel in the operating room. “Our decision to no longer require routine surgical masks for personnel not scrubbed for surgery is a departure from common practice. But the evidence to support this practice does not exist,” wrote Dr. Eva Sellden.
  • Webster et al., in 2010, reported on obstetric, gynecological, general, orthopedic, breast, and urological surgeries performed on 827 patients. All non-scrubbed staff wore masks in half the surgeries, and none of the non-scrubbed staff wore masks in half the surgeries. Surgical site infections occurred in 11.5% of the Mask group, and in only 9.0% of the No Mask group.
  • Lipp and Edwards reviewed the surgical literature in 2014 and found “no statistically significant difference in infection rates between the masked and unmasked group in any of the trials.” Vincent and Edwards updated this review in 2016 and the conclusion was the same.
  • Carøe, in a 2014 review based on four studies and 6,006 patients, wrote that “none of the four studies found a difference in the number of post-operative infections whether you used a surgical mask or not.”
  • Salassa and Swiontkowski, in 2014, investigated the necessity of scrubs, masks, and head coverings in the operating room and concluded that “there is no evidence that these measures reduce the prevalence of surgical site infection.”
  • Da Zhou et al., reviewing the literature in 2015, concluded that “there is a lack of substantial evidence to support claims that facemasks protect either patient or surgeon from infectious contamination.”

Schools in China are now prohibiting students from wearing masks while exercising. Why? Because it was killing them. It was depriving them of oxygen and it was killing them. At least three children died during Physical Education classes — two of them while running on their school’s track while wearing a mask. And a 26-year-old man suffered a collapsed lung after running two and a half miles while wearing a mask.

Mandating masks has not kept death rates down anywhere. The 20 U.S. states that have never ordered people to wear face masks indoors and out have dramatically lower COVID-19 death rates than the 30 states that have mandated masks. Most of the no-mask states have COVID-19 death rates below 20 per 100,000 population, and none have a death rate higher than 55. All 13 states that have death rates higher 55 are states that have required the wearing of masks in all public places. It has not protected them.

“We are living in an atmosphere of permanent illness, of meaningless separation,” writes Benjamin Cherry in the Summer 2020 issue of New View magazine. A separation that is destroying lives, souls, and nature.

Arthur Firstenberg

August 11, 2020

Conclusion

This last portion of this article should be used by the many parents fighting school boards who want to put these horrid face diapers on children for many hours every day.  Feel free to distribute widely.  God help us to get these evil things off everyone’s faces, but especially the wee ones.

©Kelleigh Nelson. All rights reserved.

RELATED STUDY: COVID-19 Masks: How Effective and How Safe?

Here’s Why San Francisco is Experiencing a Shoplifting Surge That’s Putting Some Stores Out of Business thumbnail

Here’s Why San Francisco is Experiencing a Shoplifting Surge That’s Putting Some Stores Out of Business

By Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’s going on here.


“I’m new to San Francisco,” New York Times journalist Thomas Fuller told a grocery store clerk shortly after moving to the city. “Is it optional to pay for things here?”

It sounds like an absurd thing to ask, but Fuller explains in a new article that he was genuinely forced to wonder what was going on after he witnessed people walk into Walgreens and Safeway, grab stuff, and walk out. He says that the problem has only gotten worse in recent years—and is now literally forcing businesses to close their doors.

“Representatives from Walgreens said that thefts at its stores in San Francisco were four times the chain’s national average, and that it had closed 17 stores, largely because the scale of thefts had made business untenable,” Fuller reports. Meanwhile, CVS told him that San Francisco had become “one of the epicenters of organized retail crime” and that the chain has scaled back its security guards’ shoplifting enforcement because it’s become so dangerous.

You might understandably be wondering: What the heck is going on?

One of the richest cities in America is struggling with sticky fingers. https://t.co/bgliOnHFp1

— NYT National News (@NYTNational) May 21, 2021

In 2014, a ballot referendum passed that downgraded the theft of property less than $950 in value from a felony charge to a misdemeanor. In the years since, enforcement of shoplifting charges has waned significantly.

“It has become part of the landscape,” local politician Ahsha Safaí remarked of the shoplifting. “People say, ‘Oh, well, that just happens. [Thieves] are obviously choosing locales based on what the consequences are. there are no consequences for their actions, then you invite the behavior. Over and over.”

It’s not just based on anecdotes and it’s not just happening in San Francisco.

One study found that in Santa Monica, California, crimes unaffected by the ballot referendum fell by 9 percent but those that were downgraded increased 15 percent. Another analysis found that statewide, larceny thefts increased 9 percent after the 2014 change.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’s going on here. Many different factors impact crime rates, but when the government fails to protect property rights and enforce the law, theft becomes more common and innocent business owners are victimized. The resulting economic uncertainty discourages growth and, in extreme cases like San Francisco, literally leads stores to close.

Protecting property and enforcing the rule of law is one of the core, legitimate functions of government. That the Golden State has chosen to focus its government’s robust spending and involvement in social life elsewhere speaks to a grave misalignment in priorities.

COLUMN BY

Brad Polumbo

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a libertarian-conservative journalist and Policy Correspondent at the Foundation for Economic Education.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. Like this story? Click here to sign up for the FEE Daily and get free-market news and analysis like this from Policy Correspondent Brad Polumbo in your inbox every weekday.

STEEP LOSSES: Democrat-run states of NJ, NY & CT saw more wealthy residents flee in 2021, annual moving survey shows thumbnail

STEEP LOSSES: Democrat-run states of NJ, NY & CT saw more wealthy residents flee in 2021, annual moving survey shows

By The Geller Report

Droves of residents fled Democrat-run states with surging crime and COVID-19 restrictions last year — with New York, New Jersey and Connecticut among the five that suffered the steepest losses, a sobering new survey shows. Let’s hope these escapees don’t destroy the states they move to by importing their poisonous Democrat policies.

Democrat-run states of NJ, NY & CT saw more wealthy residents flee in 2021, annual moving survey shows

Droves of residents fled Democrat-run states with surging crime and COVID-19 restrictions last year — with New York, New Jersey and Connecticut among the five that suffered the steepest losses, a sobering new survey shows.

By Carl Campanile, New York Post, January 3, 2022:

New Jersey led the nation with 70 percent of the people involved in moves fleeing the Garden State, compared to just 30 percent who migrated in, according to United Van Lines’ 45th Annual National Movers Study.

Illinois — home to crime- and shooting-ridden Chicago — came in second with 67 percent of the moves recorded were of residents leaving the state, while just 27 percent were in-bound.

New York ranked third, with 63 percent of movers headed for the exits and 37 percent settling in.

Nearly 30 percent those who fled the Empire State said “family” was a primary factor in their decisions, with about 12 percent citing “cost.”

The survey also showed that the exodus largely involved the wealthy, with those making $150,000 or more comprising 45.3 percent of the total.

It’s unclear when those moves took place, but in April the state adopted a record $212 billion budget that targeted big earners with new taxes that rise as high as 10.9 percent.

Meanwhile, six of the top 10 metro areas suffering from the worst exodus were in the New York-New Jersey region.

Nearly 80 percent of the moves in Long Island’s Nassau-Suffolk counties were exiters — the highest outbound rate of any region in the country.

About 75 percent fled Binghamton and 73 percent exited Poughkeepsie/Dutchess County. Three New Jersey areas — Bergen-Passaic, Newark and Middllesex-Somerset-Hunterdon also had among the worst outbound rates.

Neighboring Connecticut didn’t fare much better — 60 percent of the moves recorded were outbound and 40 percent inbound.

Medical workers load patient into an ambulance

“The study also revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic continued to accelerate many decisions to move, indicating that Americans were on the move to lower-density areas ” United Van Lines said in a release.

Getty Images

For the entire Northeast, 60 percent of the moves were outbound.

The results from 2021 mirrored United Van Lines’ 2020 findings, when the COVID-19 pandemic first ravaged the NY-NJ metro region and later the entire country.

“The study also revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic continued to accelerate many decisions to move, indicating that Americans were on the move to lower-density areas and to be closer to their families throughout last year,” United Van Lines said in a release.

And sunny California is no longer the Golden State — with more people leaving than “California Dreamin’.”

California — long a driver of population growth — was fifth-worst for movers heading for the exits, with 59 percent fleeing the state while only 41 percent of newcomers moved in.

All five states with the highest outbound rates have a few things in common: they are run by Democrats, are high-taxed and suffer from spikes in crime.

Crime in New Jersey

States with highest moving rates have a few things in common: They are run by Democrats, are high-taxed and suffer from spikes in crime.

Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Less populous Vermont, represented by democratic socialist Senator and former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, broke the mold. It had the highest in-bound migration in the U.S., with 74 percent of the moves reported were of those coming into the state.

The other top in-bound states were South Dakota (69 percent), South Carolina (63 percent), West Virginia (63 percent) and Florida (62 percent).

In addition to the state-by-state data, United Van Lines also conducts an accompanying survey to examine the motivations and influences for Americans’ interstate moves.

This analysis found that about one-third of Americans who moved did so in order to be closer to family – a new trend coming out of the pandemic as priorities and lifestyle choices shifted.

Read the rest ……

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

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Barbra: ‘Joe Biden’s Economic Record… the Best in 40 Years’ thumbnail

Barbra: ‘Joe Biden’s Economic Record… the Best in 40 Years’

By Discover The Networks

In a stunning example of how the entertainment-media complex colludes to disseminate the totalitarian left’s blatantly false messaging, Democrat mega-donor and former entertainer Barbra Streisand took to Twitter on New Year’s Eve to insist that puppet President “Joe Biden’s economic record in his first year is the best in 40 years.”

She added ludicrously, “The media largely ignores this.” Barb’s suggestion that the almost uniformly leftist, sycophantic news media would somehow cover up such an accomplishment, if it were remotely true, is laughable.

The blame isn’t entirely Streisand’s. She was simply echoing one of Biden’s own tweets. On Dec. 29, he or his handlers wrote, “We’re ending 2021 with what one analyst described as the strongest first-year economic track record of any president in the last 50 years. Let’s keep the progress going.”

Biden didn’t identify that “one analyst,” because he or she doesn’t exist. The demonstrable truth is that Biden’s first year has left Americans with skyrocketing inflation, energy prices explicitly aimed at bankrupting the fossil fuel industry, economic “growth” that even the state media functionaries at CNN have labeled “disappointing,” and fears that 2022 will bring even more financial misery for the middle class.

To paraphrase Chico Marx: Who ya gonna believe – Hollywood and the media, or your lyin’ eyes?


Barbra Streisand

99 Known Connections

In February 2020, Streisand tweeted: “Trump is directly responsible for the hate and discrimination that is growing in this country. And for our children — This is heartbreaking!” Her tweet was in response to a recent Washington Post report about alleged incidents of young children saying things like “build the wall” and “go back to where you came from” to their nonwhite peers. But the Post article provided no statistical evidence whatsoever to back up the claim that such incidents were in fact becoming more common.

In February 2020 as well, Streisand was angered when President Trump, during his address at the National Prayer Breakfast, said of congressional Democrats who self-identified as people of faith: “They love people and sometimes they hate people. I’m sorry. I apologize. I’m trying to learn. … It’s not easy. When they impeach you for nothing and then you’re supposed to like them, it’s not easy folks, I do my best.” Streisand tweeted in response: “It would’ve been so nice to hear President Trump bring people together in bi-partisan fashion at the prayer breakfast. You know, let’s let bygones be bygones and work together to put through infrastructure, healthcare. But no, his insults and vindictiveness always shines through.”

To learn more about Barbra Streisand, click here.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Discover the Networks column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Arizona Republic Report Leaves Out Important Details and Context On Universal Licensing thumbnail

Arizona Republic Report Leaves Out Important Details and Context On Universal Licensing

By Jeffrey A. Singer

The Arizona Republic recently published a report entitled, “Universal Licensing: Arizona opened the doors to less qualified workers‐​the public bears the risk.” In its investigation of Arizona’s universal licensing recognition law enacted in 2019—a reform so successful and popular that it is being emulated by more than a third of other states—it mentioned irrelevant incidents and presented out‐​of‐​context data to malign this bold and enlightened reform.

The article begins and ends with a heart-wrenching story about a California‐​licensed veterinarian who received a temporary Arizona license, granted under a 1967 law, to work at a Mesa, Arizona clinic. She’s been accused of poor surgical technique while operating on a kitten brought to the clinic on death’s doorstep. The kitten died and the veterinarian was fired from the clinic. Her temporary license expired after 30 days, and she was never granted the permanent license for which she applied. Yet readers are expected to view this as an indictment of Arizona’s universal licensing law.

Universal licensing dilutes the authority of state occupational licensing boards, so it is no surprise that a spokesperson from an organization representing that constituency, the Federation of Associations of Regulatory Boards, would be quoted in the article criticizing universal licensing over the fact that Arizona grants licenses to workers from states with less onerous licensing requirements—providing their out‐​of‐​state licenses are in good standing for at least a year.

It is wrong to assume that more onerous requirements are better. In many cases, incumbent occupations lobby state licensing boards to make requirements tougher for new entrants, usually “grandfathering” those already licensed, to reduce competition. Thus, EMTs must complete, on average, 33 days of training and pass 2 exams to get a license while cosmetologists need 11 months of training and interior designers need 73.

When it comes to the medical profession, licensing requirements are virtually identical in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. They include graduating an accredited medical school, passing a standardized national licensing exam, and completing at least one year of postgraduate training. Yet few people realize that private third‐​party certification organizations do the heavy lifting when it comes to quality assurance.

For example, I am a general surgeon. As a licensed medical doctor, I can legally decide to switch my specialty to obstetrics and gynecology or dermatology, or even psychiatry and display it on my door. However, health care facilities will not grant me practicing privileges without proof I completed postgraduate training in the specialty and will likely require board certification. Specialty boards will not grant me certification unless I complete accredited specialty training and pass their exams. Health plans will not include me on their provider panels without proof I completed the specialty training, and I will be unable to get malpractice insurance coverage for the same reason. Note how many independent, private third parties provide information and protection to consumers of already‐​licensed physicians. These are the real guarantors of safety.

The Republic report implies to readers that malpractice is automatically a reason to deny or revoke a license. Oftentimes, when medical or other professional malpractice cases are settled, the defendants do not stipulate liability. Both settlements and convictions get reviewed by licensing boards. But unless convictions are repetitive or egregious, boards rarely restrict or revoke licenses. The same is true when boards investigate complaints directly lodged by customers or patients.

Yet the authors of the report infer that something must be amiss if an applicant receives a universal license from a licensing board when they have a history of a malpractice settlement in the state where they are already licensed. If every malpractice settlement justified denying or revoking a license, the entire country would have a desperate shortage of doctors, dentists, and other health care practitioners.

Historically, it has been the incumbent members of professions and occupations who lobbied state legislatures to license and regulate them—not the customers, clients, or patients. While incumbents promoted licensing under the guise of protecting the public, they were really protecting themselves by reducing competition from new entrants and, in the process, inflating prices for their services. The report’s authors cite another organization that represents the interests of incumbents, the Alliance For Responsible Professional Licensing, that defends occupational licensing by saying “licensing helps to solve problems of income disparity, boosting wages most at the bottom end of skill distribution.” But that doesn’t account for the innumerable people who are locked out of the opportunity to lift themselves from poverty by using their skills to make an honest living.

For example, at one time Arizona required African‐​style hair braiders to spend nearly one year and close to $10,000 to get a cosmetology license, which includes training to use chemicals to dye or treat hair, as well as hair cutting. They’re taught nothing about hair braiding. A lawsuit pushed lawmakers to end that requirement in Arizona, but such obstacles to hair braiders still exist in several other states. Louisiana florists “protected” the pubic from people who want to simply arrange flowers by successfully lobbying for a law that requires them to get a license. License requirements include passing a four‐​hour exam during which the applicant must arrange flowers while being judged by licensed florists. Louisiana is the only state that licenses flower arrangers. Does the Federation of Associations of Regulatory Boards criticize Arizona for having less onerous requirements on flower arrangers who relocate from Louisiana? The Republic’s reporters didn’t say.

The proliferation of occupational licensing laws, from interior decorators to fire alarm installers, may have boosted the income of those protected by a license, but they have prevented many people from lifting themselves out of poverty by entering such fields of endeavor. Indeed, in 2016 President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors issued a report detailing how licensing leads to higher prices and reduced opportunity. The Obama administration convinced Congress to appropriate grants to help states “enhance the portability of occupational licensing.”

In an earlier time, licensing laws were also used to exclude racial and ethnic minorities. The Cato Institute held a policy forum on this subject in November 2020 called “Race and Medical Licensing Laws.”

Furthermore, most state licensing boards deny licenses to people who have a history of a felony conviction. With nearly one‐​third of Americans these days having a record in the criminal justice system, licensing laws deny many people a second chance to better themselves. In May 2021 Governor Ducey signed into law HB 2067, which provides “Certificate[s] of Second Chance” to people convicted of certain felonies, which will help them obtain occupational and business licenses. The law does not apply universally to all crimes and convictions. For example, driving with a suspended license and criminal speeding are among the convictions excluded. Nevertheless, the new law at least helps some who’ve made mistakes in the past to clear the occupational licensing hurdle and forge a new and better life.

Arizona ignited a national trend in breaking down barriers to people of all backgrounds seeking to make an honest living while expanding options and choices for consumers. Universal licensing reform has bipartisan appeal. From blue states like New Jersey to red states like Missouri, lawmakers are uniting around the goal of removing the barriers to upward mobility that occupational licensing laws erect. Sadly, by citing irrelevant narratives, cherry-picking data, and failing to provide adequate context, the Arizona Republic article did this reform a great injustice.

*****

This article was published on January 2, 2022, and is reproduced with permission from The CATO Institute.

The Fed’s Doomsday Prophet Has a Dire Warning About Where We’re Headed thumbnail

The Fed’s Doomsday Prophet Has a Dire Warning About Where We’re Headed

By Christopher Leonard

Thomas Hoenig knew what quantitative easing and record-low interest rates would bring.

Thomas Hoenig doesn’t look like a rebel. He is a conservative man, soft-spoken, now happily retired at the age of 75. He acts like someone who has spent the vast majority of his career, as he has, working at one of the stuffiest and powerful institutions in America: the Federal Reserve Bank. Hoenig has all the fiery disposition that one might expect from a central banker, which is to say none at all. He unspools sentences methodically, in a measured way, never letting his words race ahead of his intended message. When Hoenig gets really agitated he repeats the phrase “lookit” a lot, but that’s about as salty as it gets.

This makes it all the more surprising that Tom Hoenig is, in fact, one of America’s least-understood dissidents.

In 2010, Hoenig was president of the Federal Reserve regional bank in Kansas City. As part of his job, Hoenig had a seat on the Fed’s most powerful policy committee, and that’s where he lodged one of the longest-running string of “no” votes in the bank’s history.

Hoenig’s dissents are striking because the Fed’s top policy committee — called the Federal Open Market Committee, or FOMC — doesn’t just prize consensus; it nearly demands it. The committee likes to present a unified front to the public because it is arguably the most powerful governing body in American economic affairs. Hoenig’s string of dissents shattered that appearance of unanimity at a critically important time, when the Fed was expanding its interventions in the American economy to an unprecedented degree. It was a hinge point in American history, and the economy has never been the same since.

Between 2008 and 2014, the Federal Reserve printed more than $3.5 trillion in new bills. To put that in perspective, it’s roughly triple the amount of money that the Fed created in its first 95 years of existence. Three centuries’ worth of growth in the money supply was crammed into a few short years. The money poured through the veins of the financial system and stoked demand for assets like stocks, corporate debt and commercial real estate bonds, driving up prices across markets. Hoenig was the one Fed leader who voted consistently against this course of action, starting in 2010. In doing so, he pitted himself against the Fed’s powerful chair at the time, Ben Bernanke, who was widely regarded as a hero for the ambitious rescue plans he designed and oversaw.

Hoenig lost his fight. Throughout 2010, the FOMC votes were routinely 11 against one, with Hoenig being the one. He retired from the Fed in late 2011, and after that, a reputation hardened around Hoenig as the man who got it wrong. He is remembered as something like a cranky Old Testament prophet who warned incessantly, and incorrectly, about one thing: the threat of coming inflation.

But this version of history isn’t true. While Hoenig was concerned about inflation, that isn’t what solely what drove him to lodge his string of dissents. The historical record shows that Hoenig was worried primarily that the Fed was taking a risky path that would deepen income inequality, stoke dangerous asset bubbles and enrich the biggest banks over everyone else. He also warned that it would suck the Fed into a money-printing quagmire that the central bank would not be able to escape without destabilizing the entire financial system.

On all of these points, Hoenig was correct. And on all of these points, he was ignored. We are now living in a world that Hoenig warned about.

The Fed is now in a vise. Inflation is rising faster than the Fed believed it would even a few months ago, with higher prices for gas, goods and automobiles being fueled by the Fed’s unprecedented money printing programs. This comes after years of the Fed steadily pumping up the price of assets like stocks and bonds through its zero-percent interest rates and quantitative easing during and after Hoenig’s time on the FOMC. To respond to rising inflation, the Fed has signaled that it will start hiking interest rates next year. But if that happens, there is every reason to expect that it will cause stock and bond markets to fall, perhaps precipitously, or even cause a recession.

“There is no painless solution,” Hoenig said in a recent interview. “It’s going to be difficult. And the longer you wait the more painful it will end up being.”

To be clear, the kind of pain that Hoenig is talking about involves high unemployment, social instability, and potentially years of economic malaise. Hoenig knows this because he has seen it before. He saw it during his long career at the Fed, and he saw it most acutely during the Great Inflation of the 1970s. That episode in history, which bears eerie parallels with the situation today, is the lodestar that ended up guiding so much of Hoenig’s thinking as a Fed official. It explains why he was willing to throw away his reputation as a team player in 2010, why he was willing to go down in history as a crank, and why he was willing to accept the scorn of his colleagues and people like Bernanke.

Hoenig voted no because he’d seen firsthand what the consequences were when the Fed got things wrong, and kept money too easy for too long…..

*****

Continue reading this article at Politico.

The Thirty Tyrants thumbnail

The Thirty Tyrants

By Lee Smith

The deal that the American elite chose to make with China has a precedent in the history of Athens and Sparta

In Chapter 5 of The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli describes three options for how a conquering power might best treat those it has defeated in war. The first is to ruin them; the second is to rule directly; the third is to create “therein a state of the few which might keep it friendly to you.”

The example Machiavelli gives of the last is the friendly government Sparta established in Athens upon defeating it after 27 years of war in 404 BCE. For the upper caste of an Athenian elite already contemptuous of democracy, the city’s defeat in the Peloponnesian War confirmed that Sparta’s system was preferable. It was a high-spirited military aristocracy ruling over a permanent servant class, the helots, who were periodically slaughtered to condition them to accept their subhuman status. Athenian democracy by contrast gave too much power to the low-born. The pro-Sparta oligarchy used their patrons’ victory to undo the rights of citizens, and settle scores with their domestic rivals, exiling and executing them and confiscating their wealth.

The Athenian government disloyal to Athens’ laws and contemptuous of its traditions was known as the Thirty Tyrants, and understanding its role and function helps explain what is happening in America today.

For my last column I spoke with The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman about an article he wrote more than a decade ago, during the first year of Barack Obama’s presidency. His important piece documents the exact moment when the American elite decided that democracy wasn’t working for them. Blaming the Republican Party for preventing them from running roughshod over the American public, they migrated to the Democratic Party in the hopes of strengthening the relationships that were making them rich.

A trade consultant told Friedman: “The need to compete in a globalized world has forced the meritocracy, the multinational corporate manager, the Eastern financier and the technology entrepreneur to reconsider what the Republican Party has to offer. In principle, they have left the party, leaving behind not a pragmatic coalition but a group of ideological naysayers.”

In the more than 10 years since Friedman’s column was published, the disenchanted elite that the Times columnist identified has further impoverished American workers while enriching themselves. The one-word motto they came to live by was globalism—that is, the freedom to structure commercial relationships and social enterprises without reference to the well-being of the particular society in which they happened to make their livings and raise their children.

Undergirding the globalist enterprise was China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001. For decades, American policymakers and the corporate class said they saw China as a rival, but the elite that Friedman described saw enlightened Chinese autocracy as a friend and even as a model—which was not surprising, given that the Chinese Communist Party became their source of power, wealth, and prestige. Why did they trade with an authoritarian regime and send millions of American manufacturing jobs off to China thereby impoverish working Americans? Because it made them rich. They salved their consciences by telling themselves they had no choice but to deal with China: It was big, productive, and efficient and its rise was inevitable. And besides, the American workers hurt by the deal deserved to be punished—who could defend a class of reactionary and racist ideological naysayers standing in the way of what was best for progress?

Returning those jobs to America, along with ending foreign wars and illegal immigration, was the core policy promise of Donald Trump’s presidency, and the source of his surprise victory in 2016. Trump was hardly the first to make the case that the corporate and political establishment’s trade relationship with China had sold out ordinary Americans. Former Democratic congressman and 1988 presidential candidate Richard Gephardt was the leading voice in an important but finally not very influential group of elected Democratic Party officials and policy experts who warned that trading with a state that employed slave labor would cost American jobs and sacrifice American honor. The only people who took Trump seriously were the more than 60 million American voters who believed him when he said he’d fight the elites to get those jobs back.

What he called “The Swamp” appeared at first just to be a random assortment of industries, institutions, and personalities that seemed to have nothing in common, outside of the fact they were excoriated by the newly elected president. But Trump’s incessant attacks on that elite gave them collective self-awareness as well as a powerful motive for solidarity. Together, they saw that they represented a nexus of public and private sector interests that shared not only the same prejudices and hatreds, cultural tastes and consumer habits but also the same center of gravity—the U.S.-China relationship. And so, the China Class was born.

Connections that might have once seemed tenuous or nonexistent now became lucid under the light of Trump’s scorn, and the reciprocal scorn of the elite that loathed him.

A decade ago, no one would’ve put NBA superstar LeBron James and Apple CEO Tim Cook in the same family album, but here they are now, linked by their fantastic wealth owing to cheap Chinese manufacturing (Nike sneakers, iPhones, etc.) and a growing Chinese consumer market. The NBA’s $1.5 billion contract with digital service provider Tencent made the Chinese firm the league’s biggest partner outside America. In gratitude, these two-way ambassadors shared the wisdom of the Chinese Communist Party with their ignorant countrymen. After an an NBA executive tweeted in defense of Hong Kong dissidents, social justice activist King LeBron told Americans to watch their tongues. “Even though yes, we do have freedom of speech,” said James, “it can be a lot of negative that comes with it.”

Because of Trump’s pressure on the Americans who benefited extravagantly from the U.S.-China relationship, these strange bedfellows acquired what Marxists call class consciousness—and joined together to fight back, further cementing their relationships with their Chinese patrons. United now, these disparate American institutions lost any sense of circumspection or shame about cashing checks from the Chinese Communist Party, no matter what horrors the CCP visited on the prisoners of its slave labor camps and no matter what threat China’s spy services and the People’s Liberation Army might pose to national security. Think tanks and research institutions like the Atlantic Council, the Center for American Progress, the EastWest Institute, the Carter Center, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and others gorged themselves on Chinese money. The world-famous Brookings Institution had no scruples about publishing a report funded by Chinese telecom company Huawei that praised Huawei technology.

The billions that China gave to major American research universities, like $58 million to Stanford, alarmed U.S. law enforcement, which warned of Chinese counterintelligence efforts to steal sensitive research. But the schools and their name faculty were in fact in the business of selling that research, much of it paid for directly by the U.S. government—which is why Harvard and Yale among other big-name schools appear to have systematically underreported the large amounts that China had gifted them.

Indeed, many of academia’s pay-for-play deals with the CCP were not particularly subtle. In June 2020, a Harvard professor who received a research grant of $15 million in taxpayer money was indicted for lying about his $50,000 per month work on behalf of a CCP institution to “recruit, and cultivate high-level scientific talent in furtherance of China’s scientific development, economic prosperity, and national security.”

*****

To read the rest of this article, click here, and go to Tablet Magazine.

TAKE ACTION: CVS is Putting Racism Ahead of Health thumbnail

TAKE ACTION: CVS is Putting Racism Ahead of Health

By 2ndvote .com

CVS (3.42) is one of 2ndVote’s top-ranked drug stores with a previous score of 3.72 which has recently dropped to a 3.42. But that score might drop even further as company executives spent $600 million on Critical Race Theory (CRT) employee training programs. Fox Business reports that CVS implemented a four-week program last year which required staff to engage in self-reflection about bias and to stop alleged biases by other staff.

The program was launched as other major corporations responded to George Floyd’s death with false claims that America – and, by association, Americans – are racist. As leading CRT critic Chris Rufo noted in September, the program was implemented by a CEO who makes tens of millions of dollars per year, and would mostly impact people making only a few tens of thousands of dollars per year.

We are launching a campaign urging CVS to return to prioritizing customers’ health needs and the well-being of their staff. This is a huge course change for them, and we need your help to redirect CVS to treat their 300,000 employees and millions of customers truly equally – on the basis of their humanity, not their skin color.

The details of the program are outlined in this document, and they go well beyond training staff to view each other through a racial prism. CVS’ vendor partners will be chosen on the basis of their race, not the value they bring to CVS, its staff and customers, and the general public. CVS’ charitable donations will be based upon race, not upon the quality of a charity’s work.

Of course, no corporation can ever be “woke” enough for those who believe America is racist. Just a few months after the initiative launched, an alleged CVS customer harassed a CVS manager who called police on alleged shoplifters. Apparently, $600 million wasn’t enough to convince the customer that CVS cared enough.

2ndVote doesn’t want CVS to take sides on America’s continued debate on how to heal the scars of slavery and racism. Tell CVS to invest their well-earned money into real programs that uplift our citizens instead of teaching their employees to judge a customer based on the amount of melanin in their skin.

Use this link to use your voice TODAY!

With your help, we can show them how to get back on track.

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