Project Much? Hillary Clinton Claims Trump Wants To 'Kill, Imprison His Opposition'

Hillary Clinton, who once suggested murdering Julian Assange and whose party is trying to imprison their chief political rival, suggested that Donald Trump wants to murder and imprison his political opponents.

Appearing on a podcast with Marc Elias, the Democrat super-lawyer who laid the legal groundwork for vote-by-mail in 2020 & was involved in the "Steele Dossier" purchase, Clinton suggested that "Putin does what [Trump] would like to do. Kill his opposition."

[Maybe they just committed suicide like Vince Foster and all those other associates?]

According to Hillary, who helped France murder Gaddafi (after he wanted a mere 5 billion euros / year to stop illegals from flooding into Europe), Trump "really" wants to "imprison his opposition, drive journalists into exile, rule without any check or balance."

"We have to be very conscious of how he sees the world because in that world, he only sees strong men leaders. He sees Putin. He sees Xi. He sees Kim Jong Un in North Korea," the failed presidential candidate continued. "Those are the people he is modelling himself after and we’ve been down this road in our, you know, world history. We sure don’t want to go down that again."

According to Hillary, if Trump "ever gets back near the White House again, it will be like having a dictator. I don’t say that lightly. Go back and read Project 2025. They’re going to fire everybody. The person in the government who knows about the next pandemic? Get rid of him."

Project much?

Watch (h/t Modernity.news):

Hillary Clinton claims that Trump wants to murder his political opponents and become a dictator like Kim Jong Un in North Korea. Report: https://t.co/AeDFUkcCvw pic.twitter.com/jk24sUk0Lm

— m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) April 20, 2024

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/20/2024 - 16:40

What Are Mises' Six Lessons?

Authored by Jonathan Newman via The Mises Institute,

Ludwig von Mises’s Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow has become quite popular recently. The Mises Book Store has sold out of its physical copies, and the PDF, which is available online for free, has seen over 50,000 downloads in the past few days.

This surge in interest in Mises’s ideas was started by UFC fighter Renato Moicano, who declared in a short post-fight victory speech, “I love America, I love the Constitution...I want to carry...guns. I love private property. Let me tell you something. If you care about your...country, read Ludwig von Mises and the six lessons of the Austrian economic school.”

The “six lessons” he is referring to is Mises’s book, Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow, which was republished by our friends in Brazil under the title “As Seis Lições” (“The Six Lessons”).

If you are interested in what Mises has to say in this book, which is a transcription of lectures he gave in Argentina in 1959, here’s a brief preview, which I hope inspires you to read the short book in full. As a side note, if you are an undergraduate student who is interested in these ideas, the Mises Institute’s next Mises Book Club is on this text (pure coincidence!).

Lecture One: Capitalism

Mises begins his first lecture with an overview of the development of capitalism out of feudalism. Businesses began “mass production to satisfy the needs of the masses” instead of focusing on producing luxury goods for the elite. These big businesses succeeded because they served the needs of a larger group of people, and their success wholly depended on their ability to give this mass of consumers what they wanted.

Despite the amazing and undeniable increases in standards of living, even for a growing population, capitalism had its detractors, including Karl Marx, who gave capitalism its name. Mises says that while Marx hated capitalism and that Marx dubbed it thusly as an attack on the system, the name is a good one 

because it describes clearly the source of the great social improvements brought about by capitalism. Those improvements are the result of capital accumulation; they are based on the fact that people as a rule, do not consume everything they have produced, that they save—and invest—a part of it.

Prosperity is the result of providing for the future—more precisely it is the result of setting aside consumption today by saving and investing resources in production. Mises says that this principle explains why some countries are more prosperous than others. When it comes to economic growth, “there are no miracles.” There is only “the application of the principles of the free market economy, of the methods of capitalism.”

Lecture Two: Socialism

In the second lecture, Mises takes a closer look at Marx’s proposed system: socialism. Economic freedom means that people can choose their own careers and use their resources to accomplish their own ends. Economic freedom is the basis for all other freedoms. For example, when the government seizes whole industries, like that of the printing press, it determines what will be published and what won’t and the “freedom of the press disappears.”

Mises acknowledges that there is no such thing as “perfect freedom” in a metaphysical sense. We must obey the laws of nature, especially if we intend to use and transform nature according to our ends. And even economic freedom means that there is a fundamental interdependence among individuals: “Freedom in society means that a man depends as much on other people as other people depend upon him.” This is also true for big businesses and the entrepreneurs who lead them. The true “bosses” in the market economy are not those who shout orders to the workers, but the consumers.

Socialists despise the idea of consumer sovereignty because it means allowing mistakes. In their mind, the state should play the paternalistic role of deciding what is good for everyone. Thus Mises sees no difference between socialism and a system of slavery: “The slave must do what his superior orders him to do, but the free citizen—and this is what freedom means—is in a position to choose his own way of life.” In capitalism, this freedom makes it possible for people to be born into poverty but then achieve great success as they provide for their fellow man. This kind of social mobility is impossible under systems like feudalism and socialism.

Mises ends this lecture with a short explanation of the economic calculation critique of socialism. When the private ownership of the means of production is prohibited, then economic calculation is made impossible. Without market prices for factors, we cannot economize production and provide for the needs of the masses, no matter who oversees the socialist planning board. The result is mass deprivation and chaos.

Lecture Three: Interventionism

Interventionism describes a situation in which the government “wants to interfere with market phenomena.” Each intervention involves an abrogation of the consumer sovereignty Mises had explained in the two previous lectures.

The government wants to interfere in order to force businessmen to conduct their affairs in a different way than they would have chosen if they had obeyed only the consumers. Thus, all the measures of interventionism by the government are directed toward restricting the supremacy of consumers.

Mises gives an example of a price ceiling on milk. While those who enact such an intervention may intend to make milk more affordable for poorer families, there are many unintended consequences: increased demand, decreased supply, non-price rationing in the form of long queues at shops that sell milk, and, importantly, grounds for the government to intervene in new ways now that their initial intervention has not achieved its intended purpose. So, in Mises’s example, he traces through the new interventions, like government rationing, price controls for cattle food, price controls for luxury goods, and so on until the government has intervened in virtually every part of the economy, i.e., socialism.

After providing some historical examples of this process, Mises gives the big picture. Interventionism, as a “middle-of-the-road policy,” is actually a road toward totalitarianism.

Lecture Four: Inflation

There can be no secret way to the solution of the financial problems of a government; if it needs money, it has to obtain the money by taxing its citizens (or, under special conditions, by borrowing it from people who have the money). But many governments, we can even say most governments, think there is another method for getting the needed money; simply to print it.

If the government taxes citizens to build a new hospital, then the citizens are forced to reduce their spending and the government “replaces” their spending with its own. If, however, the government uses newly printed money to finance the construction of the hospital, then there is no replacement of spending, but an addition, and “prices will tend to go up.”

Mises, per usual, explodes the idea of a “price level” that rises and falls, as if all prices change simultaneously and proportionally. Instead, prices rise “step by step.” The first receivers of new money increase their demands for goods, which provides new income to those who sell those goods. Those sellers may now increase their demands for goods. This explains the process by which some prices and some people’s incomes increase before others. The result is a “price revolution,” in which prices and incomes rise in a stepwise fashion, starting with the origin of the new money. In this way, new money alters the distribution of incomes and the arrangement of real resources throughout the economy, creating “winners” and “losers.”

The gold standard offers a strict check against the inflationist tendencies of governments. In such a system, the government cannot create new units of money to finance its spending, so it must resort to taxation, which is notably unpopular. Fiat inflation, however, is subtle and its effects are complex and delayed, which makes it especially attractive to governments that can wield it.

In this lecture Mises also executes a thorough smackdown of Keynes and Keynesianism, but I’ll leave that for readers to enjoy.

Lecture Five: Foreign Investment

Mises returns to a principle he introduced in the first lecture, that economic growth stems from capital accumulation. The differences in standards of living between countries is not attributable to technology, the qualities of the workers, or the skills of the entrepreneurs, but to the availability of capital.

One way that capital may be accumulated within a country is through foreign investment. The British, for example, provided much of the capital that was required to develop the rail system in the United States and in Europe. This provided mutual benefit for both the British and the countries on the receiving end of this investment. The British earned profits through their ownership of the rail systems and the receiving countries, even with a temporary “unfavorable” balance of trade, obtained the benefits of the rail system including expanded productivity which, over time, allowed them to purchase stock in the rail companies from the British. 

Foreign investment allows the capital accumulation in one country to speed up the development of other countries, all without a one-sided sacrifice on the part of the country providing the investment. Wars (especially world wars), protectionism, and domestic taxation destroy this mutually beneficial process. When countries impose tariffs or expropriate the capital that belongs to foreign investors, they “prevent or to slow down the accumulation of domestic capital and to put obstacles in the way of foreign capital.”

Lecture Six: Politics and Ideas

The classical liberal ideas of the philosophers of the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries helped create the constrained governments and economic freedom that led to the explosion of economic growth Mises discussed in the first lecture. But the emergence of minority “pressure groups,” what we would call “special interest groups” today, directed politicians away from classical liberal ideals and toward interventionism. The groups that would benefit from various interventions lobby the government to grant them favors like monopoly privileges, taxes on competition (including tariffs), and subsidies. And, as we have seen, this interventionist spiral tends toward socialism and totalitarianism. The “resurgence of the warlike spirit” in the twentieth century brought about world wars and exacerbated the totalitarian trends even in the once exemplary nations.

The concomitant rise in government expenditures made fiat money and inflation too tempting. The wars and special projects advocated by the pressure groups were expensive, and so budget constraints were discarded in favor of debasement.

This, Mises says, explains the downfall of civilization. He points to the Roman Empire as an example: 

What had taken place? What was the problem? What was it that caused the disintegration of an empire which, in every regard, had attained the highest civilization ever achieved before the eighteenth century? The truth is that what destroyed this ancient civilization was something similar, almost identical to the dangers that threaten our civilization today: on the one hand it was interventionism, and on the other hand, inflation.

Mises finds hope in the fact that the detractors of economic freedom, like Marx and Keynes, do not represent the masses or even a majority. Marx, for example, “was not a man from the proletariat. He was the son of a lawyer. … He was supported by his friend Friedrich Engels, who—being a manufacturer—was the worst type of ‘bourgeois,’ according to socialist ideas. In the language of Marxism, he was an exploiter.”

This implies that the fate of civilization depends on a battle of ideas, and Mises thought that good ideas would win: 

I consider it as a very good sign that, while fifty years ago, practically nobody in the world had the courage to say anything in favor of a free economy, we have now, at least in some of the advanced countries of the world, institutions that are centers for the propagation of a free economy.

May we continue Mises’s project and fulfill his hope. What the world needs is “Menos Marx, Mais Mises.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/20/2024 - 16:05

Elon Musk Says Tesla Will Fix "Incorrectly Low" Severance Packages For Laid Off Employees

Elon Musk stated last week that the severance packages given to some ex-Tesla Inc. employees during the company's largest workforce reduction were incorrectly too low. 

Tesla announced on Monday that it is cutting over 10% of its 140,000-strong global workforce to prepare for a new phase of growth, according to CNBC.

Details on the layoffs were sparse, but in a company memo, Elon Musk said the move was part of a strategic shift towards robotaxi development, stepping away from plans for a more affordable electric vehicle.

Musk wrote in an email last week: “As we reorganize Tesla it has come to my attention that some severance packages are incorrectly low. My apologies for this mistake. It is being corrected immediately.”

Nico Murillo, a former production supervisor, told Bloomberg: “Tried to badge in, and the security guard took my badge and told me I was laid off. Sat in my car in disbelief.”

As we've noted, Tesla missed its Q1 delivery guidance and, so far in 2024, its stock has been decimated. For Q1 2024, Tesla produced over 433,000 vehicles and delivered 387,000. It marks the first annual Q1 delivery decline for the automaker since 2020. 

Tesla's exact delivery number for the quarter was 386,810 vehicles, far below Bloomberg estimates of 449.080.

Tesla submitted a proxy statement for its June 13 shareholder meeting this week, requesting shareholders to approve relocating the company's state of incorporation to Texas and to ratify CEO Elon Musk's 2018 pay package, which was recently rescinded by a Delaware judge.

In the statement, Tesla board chair Robyn Denholm supports the move to Texas, noting that the company has been headquartered there since December 2021., per Yahoo. 

“2024 is the year that Tesla should move home to Texas. We are asking for your vote to approve Tesla’s move from Delaware, our current state of incorporation, to a new legal home in Texas. Texas is already our business home, and we are committed to it,”  Denholm said. 

“In 2018, we asked for unbelievable growth and accomplishments. Elon delivered: Tesla’s stockholders have benefited from unprecedented growth under Elon’s leadership and Tesla has met every single one of the 2018 CEO pay package’s targets,” she continued. 

Analyst Dan Ives of Wedbush added: “On the comp package which was already approved by shareholders at the time in 2018, this has been an area of contention among some investors but we would expect the 2018 package will be reapproved and the Delaware court ruling would be moot in essence as Tesla will now be moving to Texas.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/20/2024 - 15:30

Not 'The Onion': New Guinea Academics Say Cannibals Would Be Offended By Biden's Tale Of Uncle Being Eaten

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

Academics from Papua New Guinea say that the actual cannibals who live there would be extremely offended by Joe Biden’s made up story of his uncle being eaten by them during World War Two because they “wouldn’t just eat any white men that fell from the sky.”

As we highlighted earlier this week, Biden twice told the completely made up story as a way of attacking Donald Trump.

In reality his uncle wasn’t a reconnaissance pilot, wasn’t shot down over Papua New Guinea and definitely wasn’t eaten by cannibals.

It didn’t prevent the White House Press Secretary from calling doing her best to avoid admitting it was all lies, and calling it a “very proud” moment for Biden, before repeating the lie about Trump calling dead US veterans ‘losers’.

Press Secretary does her best to avoid admitting that Biden’s story about his uncle being shot down and eaten by cannibals was total made up horse shit. Then repeats the lie that Trump called fallen veterans ‘losers’pic.twitter.com/Kl9sv4sDMf

— m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) April 18, 2024

The story gets more ridiculous, however.

The Guardian now reports that outraged Papua New Guinea academics have blasted Biden’s tale as “unacceptable” and “very offensive.”

‘Lost for words’: Joe Biden’s tale about cannibals bemuses Papua New Guinea residents https://t.co/bYFg7KAgg5

— Guardian news (@guardiannews) April 19, 2024

Michael Kabuni, a political science lecturer at the University of Papua New Guinea, explained that cannibalism was historically practiced by some communities only in very specific contexts, such as after the death of a revered community member.

Kabuni noted that the native people only ever engaged in cannibalism as a sign of respect and that locals “wouldn’t just eat any white men that fell from the sky.”

“Taking it out of context, and implying that your [uncle] jumps out of the plane and somehow we think it’s a good meal is unacceptable,” Kabuni urged.

Allan Bird, governor of Papua New Guinea’s province of East Sepik, said he found Biden’s story “hilarious” and was “lost for words.”

*  *  *

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/20/2024 - 14:55

House Passes $95 Billion Aid Package For Ukraine, Israel And Taiwan - But Not US Border

The House on Saturday passed a set of foreign aid bills that would send $61 billion to Ukraine, $26 billion to Israel, and $8 billion to the Indo-Pacific region.

In total, the foreign assistance package totals $95 billion - which only passed after Speaker Mike Johnson cut a deal with Democrats in order to force it through by a vote of 311 to 112.

The Senate is expected to pass the package, which was negotiated in conjunction with the White House, marking a victory against conservative lawmakers who insisted on protecting the US border before sending money abroad to protect those of other countries.

“We cannot be afraid of our shadows. We must be strong. We have to do what’s right,” House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, said.

Democrats and some Republicans waved Ukrainian flags during the vote, a rare moment of bipartisanship in a bitterly and narrowly divided House.

“Traditional House Republicans led by Speaker Mike Johnson have risen to the occasion,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said. “We have a responsibility to push back against authoritarianism.” -Bloomberg

Earlier in the day, the House passed an $8 billion aid package aimed at countering Chinese aggression towards Taiwan, as well as a bill that would force Chinese-controlled ByteDance Ltd to divest from TikTok or face a US ban. The bill also allows for the confiscation of Russian dollar assets in order to help fund more assistance to Ukraine.

Speaker Johnson made it essentially impossible to vote for any of the bills before the House today without assisting in the effort to send $60 billion to Ukraine and up to $9 billion to Hamas.

He also made it impossible to condition any of those things on U.S. border security.

— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) April 20, 2024

Breaking down the Ukraine aid - of the $61 billion, $13 billion will replenish US stockpiles of weapons, and $14 billion will go towards US defense systems for Ukraine. $7 billion will go toward US military operations in the region. We assume the remainder will go directly to Ukrainian oligarchs.

The Israel bill, which passed by a vote of 366 to 58, includes $4 billion for missile defense.

Notably absent was so much as a dime for the US border...

"Nothing is done to secure our border or reduce our debt," said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), whose outrage was shared with Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Paul Gosar of Arizona, who say they're ready to boot Johnson from his Speakership.

"Ukraine is not even a member of NATO," Greene continued.

Who would have known!

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/20/2024 - 14:18

NPR Scandal Should Kill Taxpayer-Funded Broadcasting

Authored by Charles Lipson via RealClearPolitics,

“I don't want any yes-men around me,” said Sam Goldwyn, the Hollywood producer famed for his movies and malapropisms. “I want everybody to tell me the truth even if it costs them their job.” The brass at National Public Radio must have heard Sam, but they add a slight amendment. We want only “yes-men” (they/them) and will boot anyone who dares to dissent.

Lest there be any doubt, NPR just proved it by suspending, without pay, the staffer who exposed the pervasive problems there. He dared to write publicly that that National Public Radio was uniformly ideological, deeply committed to its strident left-wing views, and determined to exclude any alternatives. For saying that out loud, they cut off Uri Berliner’s paycheck for five days. It’s their way of saying, “Thank you for your feedback.” Q.E.D.

Berliner, disgusted by NPR’s response, resigned Wednesday with a fiery statement: “I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged.” Who could?

There are really two problems here, not one, and they go well beyond one journalist’s resignation. The first is political bias, which is a problem at all “elite” networks and newspapers, where “hard news” is heavily slanted. The second is that some of these outlets, notably NPR, PBS (the Public Broadcasting System) and their local affiliates, receive taxpayer funding.

Let’s take political bias first. It was once a cardinal rule of journalism that partisan or ideological viewpoints should be confined to editorials and opinion columns. The goal was to keep editorial views out of hard-news reporting, as much as possible. To do it, the editorial staff constantly fought with the business team, who wanted coverage to favor their advertisers.

Those days are long gone and so is even the ideal of unbiased coverage. We have returned to an earlier era when American newspapers were closely affiliated with political parties and local political machines and covered the news to favor them. Today’s newsrooms have revived that stance. They are as ideologically driven as a gender-studies class at Smith College. If you depart from that ideology, you are out, like Bari Weiss at the New York Times.

Because newsrooms now have so few dissenting voices, reporters and editors live inside the bubble and hardly notice their surroundings. If they do, they are determined to preserve that insularity.

The fragmentation of today’s media landscape encourages these strong, partisan stances. Newspapers, magazines, cable networks, and podcasts know the market is finely sliced. They have strong incentives to choose a narrow slice for themselves and appeal to it by confirming their audience’s bias, not challenging it. That’s as true for right-wing talk radio as it is for left-wing public radio.

Just as elite attitudes have moved further left, so have elite publications and broadcasts. Since the Democratic Party has trod that same path, even as Republicans have become more nationalist and populist, the bias in elite newsrooms has naturally moved further left. That includes outlets like NPR and PBS. Their audience drives EVs, not Ford F-150s.

What makes this bias a policy issue is that NPR, PBS, and their local outlets receive taxpayer money. They shouldn’t. It was justifiable for educational programming. It cannot be justified for news or entertainment.

Public funding for news programming is fundamentally wrong in a democracy when there are so many other ways to receive news and information. The problem is compounded when taxpayer money pays for coverage is partisan and biased. That’s not an issue for MSNBC or the New York Times. They are private businesses. They can do whatever they damn well please. Not so for NPR, PBS, and their local affiliates. They do receive taxpayer money.

When NPR faced criticism this week, it shot back with deceptive statistics, claiming less than 1% of its money is from the government. That’s three-card-monte accounting.

To understand why, we need to look at how Washington disburses taxpayer money for public TV and radio, some $500 million in the next fiscal year. That money doesn’t go directly to NPR. (Hence, the 1% claim.) They get it indirectly. First, the federal outlay goes to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private entity, as mandated in a 1967 law. The CPB sends nearly all that money to local public radio and TV stations as “community grants.” The stations then use part of that money to buy syndicated programs like NPR’s “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered.”

NPR last financial statement showed that about one-third of its revenue came from local stations’ purchasing NPR programs. A significant chunk of the money to make those purchases came from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. To hide that source of taxpayer funding for NPR was its three-card-monte trick.

The larger problem here is not the deception or partisan bias, bad as they are. It’s not the scale of public funding, either. The fundamental problem is that taxpayers should not be underwriting any domestic news organizations, for any amount. Reporting should be completely independent of city, state, and federal government so journalists can report political issues without fear or favor.

Government-funded broadcasting to foreign audiences is different. American taxpayers have legitimate reasons to fund the Voice of America and other channels, primarily to get honest news past the dictators’ censors. But the VOA is prohibited, by law, from broadcasting within the United States or creating programs for U.S. audiences. That’s entirely proper. The same logic should apply to news and news-interview programs from NPR and PBS and their local affiliates.

What about “educational TV”? There were good reasons for a publicly funded network devoted to that mission in the 1950s and 1960s. There were only three major networks and, of course, a genuine need for educational content. That non-political service lasted from 1954 until 1970. It was succeeded by the Public Broadcasting Service, which quickly dropped any mention of “educational.” Member stations of the old National Educational Television were folded into PBS. Their schedules now include a mix of entertainment, educational programs, news, and news interviews.

National Public Radio, by contrast, has never included much educational content. For years, it has been simply a left-wing alternative to right-wing talk radio. That would be fine only if all the funding were private. It’s not.

The evidence shows that the best educational TV, such as “Sesame Street,” does help children learn. So there are good reasons to continue underwriting such programs. Ideally, they should be provided free to anyone who wishes to broadcast them, post them on the web, or use them in class.

But there is no reason for federal, state, or city governments to own any broadcast channel, other than to broadcast public meetings and hearings. For everything else, including educational programs, there are countless channels on cable TV and YouTube.

A good example of what the government can properly fund are the wonderful videos about scientific discoveries, presented in accessible language by Fermilab’s Dr. Don Lincoln. The lab is funded by the government, and Dr. Lincoln conveys its work to the public by posting brief lectures on the web. He is doing what “educational TV” did in the 1950s. In the 2020s, programs like Dr. Lincoln’s can be posted online for the public to use, free. We don’t need public TV or radio to do it, and we don’t need their publicly funded podcasts.

If private institutions want to publish their own educational videos, either free or for sale, the world is open to them. Let “the Great Courses” do that by selling them online. Let “Prager University” do it. Let MIT broadcast its science courses. Let a million podcasts bloom. Privately.

If the federal government wishes to fund genuinely educational content, fine. It’s also fine to provide public services like weather information, which taxpayers already fund. But if the federal government, cities, or states wish to fund news and news interview programs, that’s not fine. Let private entities do it. Exclusively.

What should be done with existing public broadcasting frequencies on radio and television? Put them up for auction and put the money into the public treasury. If civic groups or philanthropies buy them, fine. If commercial enterprises buy them, that’s fine, too. The Department of Education can still fund education programs and make the content available to anyone who wishes to use it or broadcast on their channels. $500 million should buy a lot of new content each year.

What the government should not fund, produce, or broadcast are news or news-interview programs. The issue is not just political bias. The issue is that the heavy hand of government should not control any broadcast news within the U.S. Let the president, Cabinet secretaries, senators, and representatives hold press conferences. Let the White House, Pentagon, or State Department hold briefings. That’s more than enough to get their message out.

They don’t need to fund broadcast networks. That would be true even if their journalists and presentations were fair-minded. They aren’t, and that’s one more reason to end this public funding. But it is not the main reason. The main reason is that it is simply wrong for the government, with its deep pockets and coercive power, to control any broadcast network. Not in a free country.

Charles Lipson is the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of Chicago, where he founded the Program on International Politics, Economics, and Security. He can be reached at charles.lipson@gmail.com.

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/20/2024 - 14:00

Israeli Security Chief Slams 'Lame' Attack On Iran, Deepening Division Among War Leaders

Days ago, The Wall Street Journal featured a headline that underscored Israel's war leaders don't trust one another. This comes as they are dealing simultaneously with the operation in Gaza, repelling Hezbollah daily drone and missile attacks in the north, and of course the new tit-for-tat crisis with Iran.

"Long-simmering grudges and arguments over how best to fight Hamas have soured relations between Israel’s wartime decision makers—Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and the former head of the Israeli military, Benny Gantz," the publication wrote. "The three men are at odds over the biggest decisions they need to make: how to launch a decisive military push, free Israel’s hostages and govern the postwar strip."

Via EPA

Israel's former national security adviser Giora Eiland said "The lack of trust between these three people is so clear and so significant." But the deep mistrust goes beyond the three wartime leaders and deeper into the governing coalition and national security cabinet as well.

The infighting is now on display even more in the wake of Israel's retaliatory attack on Iran which took place in the early morning Friday hours. While there's consensus that Israel aimed for a 'limited' attack, CNN and others have analyzed satellite images near Isfahan which ultimately show "no extensive damage on an Iranian airbase believed to be the main target."

Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir has thrown fresh fuel to the fire, mocking Netanyahu's decision-making by calling it "lame". Ben Gvir had previously wanted Israel to "go berserk" in retaliation.

His words have once again resulted in intense controversy and infighting:

Ben Gvir, who leads the ultranationalist Jewish Power party, made a one-word post on X following the Israeli attack. Written in Hebrew, the Telegraph explained that the post used a “slang word that literally translates as ‘scarecrow’ but also means ‘lame.’” Reuters translated the word to “feeble.”

The post highlighted a public rift within the government in Tel Aviv. Ben Gvir is considered on the extreme end of Israel’s political spectrum and is popular among the right-wing settler movement. He lives in a West Bank settlement and has called for the resettlement of Gaza by Israelis.

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid subsequently blasted Ben Gvir over the comment, saying: "Never before has a minister in the security cabinet done such heavy damage to the country’s security, its image and its international status."

"In an unforgivable one-word tweet, Ben Gvir managed to mock and shame Israel from Tehran to Washington. Any other prime minister would have thrown him out of the cabinet this morning," he added.

Meanwhile, PM Netanyahu continues to face mounting calls for his removal, especially from hostage victims' families who have been leading large protests. They are outraged that he has not prioritized getting the hostages back.

WSJ wrote further that "Gantz, the general who led Israel’s last major war against Hamas a decade ago, has previously expressed a desire to oust Netanyahu as prime minister." The defense chief had "called earlier this month for early elections in September after tens of thousands of people demonstrated against the prime minister’s handling of the war—a sign that Gantz’s base has grown frustrated with his role in a Netanyahu-led government."

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/20/2024 - 13:25

Oh, The Irony: Congress Passes FISA-702 Extension, Allowing Warrantless Document Searches & Electronic Surveillance Of Americans, On Patriots Day 2024

Authored by 'Sundance' via TheConservativeTreehouse.com,

The fourth amendment to the United States constitution says:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Late last night, early this morning (after midnight), the United States Senate passed a FISA reauthorization bill that directly and specifically violates every tenant of the 4th amendment.

The senate voted to authorize warrantless federal government searches of every American’s private papers, effects, emails, electronic data records, cell phone calls, contact lists, text messages, buying habits, purchases, banking records, social media posts, direct messages, private communications and every keystroke of every electronic device in your life. 

All of it continues to be subject to the capture, review and surveillance of an unelected opaque law enforcement mechanism, and congress supports it.

The issue is magnified because the Supreme Court has never ruled on the constitutionality of the FISA-702 data collection system, because the Supreme Court also says no American has standing to challenge the federal government violation of their 4th Amendment right to privacy.  It’s all infuriating…  It’s all FUBAR!

Oh, and if you are reading this… you’re likely on the list.

Last night Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) teamed up with Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) and added an amendment that would have required the government to get a warrant before reviewing any communications incidentally collected from Americans. 

The amendment was the last effort priority for a smidgen of hope; the IC railed against it, saying it would stop them from acting on critical “national security” information in real time. It failed by a vote of 42 to 50.

Another Democrat Senator, Ron Wyden (Oregon), a senior member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, vowed and pledged that FISA-702 would never be renewed by any measure that required his signature. 

“I’ll do everything in my power to stop it,” he previously said.  “Searches have gone after American protesters, political campaign donors, even people who simply reported crimes to the FBI. The abuses have been extensive and well documented,” Wyden argued to colleagues.

Wyden’s effort to strike the language failed by a vote of 34 to 58.

“Egregious Fourth Amendment violations against U.S. citizens will increase dramatically if this bill is passed into law,” Utah Republican senator Mike Lee warned. 

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) offered an amendment to block DHS, FBI, DOJ, IRS, and various ancillary intelligence, law enforcement, national parks and government agencies from buying Americans’ electronic NSA data from third parties and federal contractors. 

Paul’s amendment failed by a vote of 31 to 61.

The House and Senate bill does include provisions that would force the Intelligence Community to notify political leadership in Congress about 702 database searches involving lawmakers, but you Comrade Citizen are not allowed to know about the searches done on you.  You comrade prole must improve your elite status if you wish to have participate in any benefit from the shredded and reconfigured 4th amendment, now reserved for the entitled class.

As noted by The Hill, Senator Mike “Lee offered an amendment to require the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to appoint an outside lawyer to argue for the rights of a U.S. person the government wants to surveil secretly. It would have also required government employees appearing before the FISA court to disclose factual evidence that might call into question the accuracy of their statements. It also failed even though it had previously passed the Senate with 77 votes in 2020.”

Tonight the Senate passed the House-passed FISA expansion bill—after rejecting seven different amendments requiring a warrant and otherwise reforming FISA 702.

This is a horrible bill.

It shows wanton disregard for the rights of Americans.

This is not a day to celebrate.

— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) April 20, 2024

Go figure!

Hey, stop me when you start to notice something that looks like history rhyming.

There’s an inversion afoot.

People in DC claim they cannot see it….

People in DC claim they don’t see the parallels…

People in DC hate my pesky annoyances….

People in DC are our abusers….

Throw sand into the machine whenever possible…

Here are the 60 Senators who—bolstered by a lie about a phony deadline—decided to vote away our Fourth Amendment rights late on a Friday night when no one was paying attention. pic.twitter.com/yUB6vUCh0m

— Amy Peikoff (@AmyPeikoff) April 20, 2024

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/20/2024 - 12:50

Bill Maher Calls Out Hollywood Pedophilia And The Gay Agenda In Schools

It's not the easiest thing for a person to step away from their peer group and question the dogmatic political path the mob has chosen to follow.  When it comes to the woke left, stepping out of line is doubly difficult because any deviation from the approved ideology usually means immediate cancellation and excommunication (one's career is in danger).  Only a few years ago it would have been unheard of for a mainstream celebrity to break from the progressive pack and speak publicly about inconvenient truths.  Those few that did were quickly blacklisted.

Consider the bizarre leftist war on Star Wars actress Gina Carano, who expressed conservative views on the trans issue and was told she had to participate in a company sponsored Zoom struggle session.  The message was clear:  She was expected to sublimate herself in front of a crowd of 45 finger-wagging LGBT people in order to make amends.  When she refused and continued defending her personal conservative ideals online, she was made an example of and cast out of Hollywood. 

Bill Maher is, if anything, clever about his timing like most comedians.  His rebellion against the woke mob has been carefully crafted in a way that has allowed him to avoid outright cancellation.  It's not as impressive a revolt as Gina Carano's because the risk today is far less, but at least he's willing to address the obvious hypocrisy within the social justice crowd and admit that maybe, just maybe, conservatives had it right all along.  

His latest surprising monologue covers an issue everyone has known about for years but almost no one in the media has been willing to address seriously because it involves many of their friends in the entertainment industry.  Hollywood was quick to jump on the feminist bandwagon at the helm of the "Me Too Movement", but this only exposed a small part of Hollywood's degeneracy.  Actresses trading sex for favors from producers and executives is hardly that shocking a revelation.  The thing they really don't want to talk about is the industry's penchant for pedophilia...

It turns out for pedophiles in Hollywood, "It's A Small World After All." pic.twitter.com/4qUtOhXZYL

— Bill Maher (@billmaher) April 20, 2024

One of the deepest darkest secrets of film, television and music media is that the business has long been used as a vehicle for child abusers to target kids in an environment where parental supervision is limited (and lots of money can be gained).  This reminds us of yet another environment where parental supervision is limited:  Public schools.  The political left has also targeted these institutions as ample ground for grooming.  Why?  As Bill Maher notes, the groomers are naturally gravitating to where the children are.

"Leave the kids alone" is a mantra that the woke movement simply refuses to understand or accept.  The reason is relatively transparent - Leftists are less inclined to have children of their own, and so, in order to increase their numbers and power they are required to indoctrinate your kids instead.  This is all done under the guise of "inclusion" and the "greater good" but the results of this kind of activism are becoming deeply disturbing.  Even moderate liberals are noticing that woke behavior is destroying what remains of their image.

It may be that people like Bill Maher are finally realizing that progressive extremism is opening the door to a Trump win in November and they are in a panic to pull their compatriots back from the brink.  Most of the world hates woke activists with a passion and they just want to go back to the days when race and sexuality were not at the center of every single discussion, whether it be in movies or in the classroom.  Progressives have become so drunk with power after receiving the backing of governments and corporations that they flew too close to the sun; now they are getting roasted in the flames of public distrust.   

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/20/2024 - 12:15

Why Is Gold Rising Now, Where Is It Headed Tomorrow?

Authored by Matthew Piepenburg via VonGreyerz.gold,

Needless to say, we at VON GREYERZ spend a good deal of time thinking about, well… gold.

The Complex, the Simple, the Math and the History

Year after year, and week after week, there is always a new way to examine gold price moves and decipher the obvious and not-so obvious forces which flow behind, ahead, above and below its monetary and, yes, metallic, move through time.

Today, deep into the early decades of the 21st century, and well over 100 years since the not-so immaculate conception of the Fed in the early 20th century, we could (and have) spent pages and paragraphs on key turning points in the rigged to fail history of paper vs. metallic money.

At times, this effort can and has seemed intense and even complex, with all kinds of historical facts, mathematical comparisons and “big events.”

The turning points of gold’s relationship with fiat currencies, and its role in preserving wealth, for example, are known to an admitted minority—as only about 0.5% of global financial allocations include physical gold.

Gold’s Language

Yet the need, role and direction of gold is fairly blunt, at least for those with eyes to see and ears to hear.

History, for example, has some clear things to say about paper money.

And so does gold.

From the Bretton Woods promises of 1944 and Nixon’s open and subsequent welch on the same in 1971 to the 2001 outsourcing of the American dream to China under Clinton (and the WTO) or the recent weaponization of USD in Q1 of 2022, gold has been watching, acting and speaking to those who understand her language.

The Big Question: Why Is Gold Rising Now?

And this year, with gold reaching all-time-highs, piercing resistance lines and racing toward what the Wall Street fancy lads call “price discovery,” we are understandably getting a lot of interview requests, phone calls and even emails from friends otherwise silent for years and now suddenly asking the same thing:

“Why is gold rising now?”

The Wall Street side of my odd brain, like it or not, gets all excited by such questions.

Never at a loss for words, my pen and mouth rapidly seek to wax poetic on the many answers to why gold matters forever in general, and why it is rising in particular now.

Toward that end, the list of the fancy and not-so-fancy answers to this question in recent years, articles and interviews could look as simple (or as complex) as the following list of 7 key factors:

The Malignant Seven

1. Every debt crisis leads to a currency crisis—hence: Good for gold.

2. All paper currencies, as Voltaire quipped, eventually revert to their paper value of zero, and all debt-soaked nations, as von Mises, David Hume and even Ernest Hemingway warned, debase their currencies to retain power—hence: Good for gold.

3. Rising rates (and fiscal dominance) used to “fight inflation” are too expensive for even Uncle Sam’s wallet, thus he, like all debt-soaked nations, will debase his currency to pay his own IOUs—hence: Good for gold.

4. Global central banks are dumping unloved and untrusted USTs and stacking gold at undeniably important levels—hence: Good for gold.

5. After generations of importing US inflation and being the dog wagged by the tail of the USD, the BRICS+ nations, prompted by a weaponized Greenback, are now turning their tails slowly but surely away from the USD dog—hence: Good for gold.

6. The Gulf Cooperation Council oil powers, once seduced (circa 1973) into a Petrodollar arrangement by a high-yielding UST and globally revered USD, are now openly selling oil outside of the 2024 version of that far less-yielding UST and far less-trusted USD—hence: Good for gold.

7. That legalized price-fixing sham otherwise known as the COMEX employed in 1974 to keep a permanent boot to the neck of the gold price, is running out of the physical gold needed to, well…price fix gold—hence: Good for gold.

In short, each of these themes–from sovereign (and unprecedented) debt levels, historical debt lessons, the secrets of the rate markets, global central banks dumping USTs or the implications of changing oil markets to the OTC derivatives scam masquerading as capitalism–all DO explain why gold is rising now.

This list, of course, may be simple, but the forces, indicators, lingo, math and trends within each theme can be admittedly complex, as each theme is in fact worthy of its own text book rather than bullet point.

Indeed, currencies, markets, history, bonds, geopolitics, energy moves and derivative desks are complicated little creatures.

But despite all this complexity, study and deliberation, if you really want to address the question of “why is gold rising now?”—the answer is almost too simple for those of us who wish to appear, well… “complex.”

The Too-Simple Answer to the Big Question

In other words, the simple answer—the answer that cuts through all the fog, lingo and math of “sophisticated” financial markets–boils down to this:

GOLD IS NOT RISING AT ALL. THE USD IS JUST GETTING WEAKER AND WEAKER.

At VON GREYERZ, we never measure gold’s value in dollars, yen, euros or any other fiat currency. We measure gold in ounces and grams.

Why?

Because history and math (as well as all the current and insane financial, geopolitical, and social events staring us straight in the eyes today) teach us not to trust a currency backed by man (or the “full faith in trust” of the UST or a Fed’s mouse-clicked currency), but instead to seek value in monetary metals created by nature.

Fake Money & Empty Promises

Once a currency loses a gold backing (nod to Nixon), it is nothing more than the empty promise of a government now free to print and spend without a chaperone to buy votes, market bubbles and even a Nobel Prize (i.e., what Hemingway called “temporary prosperity”) but then hand the bill and inflation to future generations (what Hemingway then called “permanent ruin”).

Gold Does Nothing

So yes, gold, as Buffet and others have quipped, “does nothing.” It just sits there and stares at you.

But while this yield-less pet rock sits there “doing nothing,” the currency by which you measure your wealth is in fact quite busy melting like an ice cube–one day, month and year at a time.

Here’s to Doing Nothing: Price vs. Value

Sometimes a picture can say a thousand words and make the most complex economic topics or themes, like “price vs. value” or “store of value,” make immediate sense.

Think, for example, about a 1-ounce bar of gold just doing nothing in say… 1920.

Well, if you had 250 of those do-nothing ounces in a shoe box in 1920, which was “priced” then at around $20 USD per ounce, you could afford the average US home, then priced at $5000.

Today, however, the average price of a US home is $500,000.

So, if your grandfather left you a shoebox with 5000 crumpled Dollars inside, it would not even pay for the landscaping needed for that same house today.

But if your grandfather had instead handed you a shoebox with those same 250 singe-ounce bars of gold (today “priced” at 2300/ounce), you could buy the same average home and the landscaper too—with a nice tip for the latter.

So, do you still think those little gold bars just stared back at you, doing nothing?

After all, the shoe box with the 5000 USDs inside was very busy doing one thing very well, namely: Losing its value like snow melting off a spring mountainside…

So, which shoebox would you want to measure your wealth?

The one measured in fiat dollars actively losing value? Or the one measured in gold ounces “doing nothing” but retaining its value?

Sometimes the complex really is that simple.

The Next Big Question: Where’s Gold Headed Tomorrow?

The pathway to answering such a question is just as clear as the one we just traveled.

The aforementioned “Malignant Seven” are each factors which we believe will continue to push the USD down and hence gold higher, because, and to repeat: It’s not that gold will get stronger, it’s just that all fiat currencies in general, and the weaponized, distrusted and over-indebted USD in particular, get weaker.

But for those still understandably and realistically convinced that despite its myriad and almost endless flaws, the US (and its Dollar) is still, for now at least, the best horse in the glue factory, a case can be made that measured relative to other currencies (i.e., the DXY), that the USD is supreme, and that when and as financial markets weaken, investors will flock to it like a lifeboat in a tempest.

Milkshake Theory?

Such a credible view is held by very smart folks like Brent Johnson, with whom I have discussed the USD at length.

Brent’s “milkshake theory” intelligently argues that powerful demand forces from the euro dollar, SWIFT and derivative markets, for example, create a massive, “straw-like” sucking sound for the “milky” USD, which demand will keep it strong, and send it stronger, in the seasons ahead.

He may in fact be right.

But I think differently.

Why?

Two primary reasons stick out.

No “Straw” for the UST

First, despite the undeniably powerful demand forces at play for the USD, demand for USTs is, and has been, tanking around the world since 2014.  That is, foreigners don’t trust the US IOUs as much as they did before America became a debt trap.

Ever since foreign (central bank) interest in USTs began net-selling in 2014, and gold interest began net-buying in 2010, the only buyer of last resort for US public debt has been the US Fed, and the only tool the US Fed has to purchase that debt is a mouse-clicker (“money printer”) at the Eccles Building.

Unfortunately, creating money out of thin air is not a sustainable  policy but a near-term fantasy. More importantly, such a policy is inherently, and by definition: Inflationary.

My US Realpolitik Theory…

The second, and perhaps more important reason the USD’s declining future is fairly easy to see (or argue), is this:

EVEN UNCLE SAM WANTS AND NEEDS A WEAKER DOLLAR.

Why?

Because the only way out of the biggest debt hole the US has ever seen is to inflate its way out of it by debasing the currency to “save” an otherwise rotten system.

We’ve argued this for years, and the facts supporting this historically-repeated pattern (and view) haven’t changed; they’ve just grown worse.

That is why it was easy to foresee that inflation would not be “transitory” despite all the useless commentary (and Fed-speak) arguing to the contrary.

That is also why it was easy to see that Powell’s “war on inflation” was a political ruse—an optics play.

Powell’s real aim was (and remains) inflationary via negative real rates (i.e., inflation higher than 10Y bond yields).

Thus, even while pursuing his “higher-for-longer” and anti-inflationary rate hikes, actual inflation, which Powell needed, was still ripping.

But he (and the BLS) was able get around this embarrassing CPI reality by simply lying about the actual inflation…

In other words: Classic DC fork-tonguing…

China is Not Turning Japanese

But in case you still need further proof that the US wants and needs a weaker USD to fake its way out of their self-created debt disaster via an increasingly diluted USD at YOUR expense, just consider what’s happening with China.

Unbeknownst to many, Yellen has been scurrying off to Asia to convince, cajole or even threaten China into accepting a weaker USD vs the CNY.

Why?

Because the prior, “stronger” 40-year version of the Dollar has rendered expensive US exports (and trade deficits) unable to compete with cheaper Chinese goods.

This floating currency game was a trick the US played on Japan when I was a kid—i.e., weaken the USD to fight the then-rising Sun of Japan’s then rising power.

But China ain’t Japan. It won’t float its currency in dollar terms.

So, what then can the US do to weaken the USD without upsetting China?

Does DC Finally Want Higher Gold Prices?

Well, as Luke Gromen once again makes beautifully clear, the easiest path forward for all parties concerned is to simply (and finally) let gold go much, much higher.

The surest and steadiest path to a weaker USD is higher gold.

Yellen’s Treasury Department could use its Exchange Stabilization Fund to buy/sell gold and other financial securities to control the USD without having to rely so much on the Fed’s now embarrassing money printer.

Gold is now a critical pivot point and tool for the US. If gold went, for example, to $4000 while CNY gold sits at 16,000, China’s central bank would have to re-rate higher in Dollar terms, pushing the CNY higher.

But such an arrangement won’t upset China, as it holds a lot more gold than the World Gold Council reports.

Rather than float the CNY in Dollar terms, China could instead float its CNY in GOLD terms.

In short: A veritable win-win for the China and the US, with gold now leading the way.

Or stated otherwise, you know it’s gonna be a gold tailwind, when both China and DC are seeking higher gold.

Based on the foregoing, do you still think gold does nothing?

Think harder.

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/20/2024 - 11:40

What Are The Biggest Perceived Dangers Of AI?

As with every technological advancement, generative artificial intelligence tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT, image generator Midjourney or Claude, the chatbot created by AI startup Anthropic, are used for productivity and creation as well as increasingly for scams and abuse.

Among this new wave of malicious content, deepfakes are especially noteworthy.

These artificially generated audiovisual content pieces include voter scams via impersonating politicians or the creation of nonconsensual pornographic imagery of celebrities.

However, as Statista's Florian Zandt reports, a recent survey by Microsoft shows, fakes, scams and abuse are what online users worldwide are most worried about.

71 percent of respondents across 17 countries surveyed by Microsoft in July and August 2023 were very or somewhat worried about AI-assisted scams.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Without further clarifying what constitutes this kind of scam, it is most likely connected to the impersonation of a person in the public eye, a government official or a close acquaintance of the respondents.

Tying for second are deepfakes and sexual or online abuse with 69 percent.

AI hallucinations, which are defined as chatbots like ChatGPT presenting nonsensical answers as facts due to issues with the training material, come in fourth, while data privacy concerns, which are related to large language models being trained on publicly available data of users without their explicit consent, takes fifth place with 62 percent. Overall, 87 percent of respondents were worried at least somewhat about one problematic AI scenario.

Despite the huge market for artificial intelligence - estimated to be between $300 and $550 billion in 2024 by various sources - the survey results indicate that ignoring its potential pitfalls and dangers could prove detrimental to society at large. This is especially true in sensitive areas like politics. With the U.S. presidential elections looming in the fall, the social media landscape is bound to be rife with artificially generated mis- and disinformation.

At a recent hearing on the topic of deepfakes and AI used in election cycles, the CEO of deepfake detection company Reality Defender, Ben Colman, praised some aspects of generative AI while highlighting its dangers as well:

"I cannot sit here and list every single malicious and dangerous use of deepfakes that has been unleashed on Americans, nor can I name the many ways in which they can negatively impact the world and erode major facets of society and democracy", said Colman.

"I am, after all, only allotted five minutes. What I can do is sound the alarm on the impacts deepfakes can have not just on democracy, but America as a whole."

Will this new path for mis-, dis-, mal-information simply become 'regulated' to fit with the government's definitions of 'truth'... "for our own good?"

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/20/2024 - 11:05

Middle Class Can't Afford Homes In Nearly Half Of Top 100 US Metros, Study Finds

By Sam Bourgi of CreditNews,

Housing is becoming an exclusively upper-class privilege in a growing number of cities.

According to a new study by Creditnews Research, in 2024, middle-class households could afford to buy an average home in just 52 of the country’s 100 largest metros.

Just five years earlier, they could afford a home in 91 of the top 100 metros.

The situation is far worse for lower middle-class households, as they can only afford a home in seven of the largest 100 metros.

In total, 41 out of the 100 metros require a gross annual income of $100,000 or more to qualify for an average home. In 13 metros, an average income of more than $155,000 is needed.

In those cities, even the upper-middle class doesn’t qualify for an average home.

The study determined affordability by looking at how much income households need to earn to afford a down payment, mortgage payment, and related fees for an average home.

A home is considered affordable if monthly housing and mortgage costs don’t exceed 28% of a household’s gross income.

“There’s no two ways about it: Housing affordability has worsened significantly since Covid,” the report said. Since the pandemic, 39 of the most populous metros have fallen below the affordability threshold.

As expected, the most affordable areas for the middle class are located in the Midwest, Rust Belt, and parts of Texas, while the West Coast, Tri-State Area, and Hawaii are largely out of reach.

Affording a home is no longer a guarantee for the middle class

Being considered “middle class” doesn’t carry the same significance as it did just a few years ago.

“In the past, if you were middle class, it was almost assumed you would become a homeowner,” said Ali Wolf, chief economist of Zonda, a housing market research firm.

“Today, the aspiration is still there, but it is a lot more difficult. You have to be wealthy or lucky.”

That's all thanks to a “perfect storm” of elevated mortgage rates, sky-high home prices, and a lack of inventory, making housing more unaffordable.

The result is that middle-income buyers, or those with an annual income of up to $75,000, could only afford about one-quarter of listings on the market last year.

According to Nadia Evangelou, the director of real estate research at the National Association of Realtors, “Middle-income buyers face the largest shortage of homes among all income groups, making it even harder for them to build wealth through homeownership.”

Mortgage rates creep closer to 7%

After falling between November and January, mortgage rates are creeping back up.

According to Freddie Mac, 30-year fixed-rate mortgages reached 6.88% in the week of April 11 and at some point climbed well above 7%.

“As mortgage rates increase, it’s never good news for the housing market, especially when more sellers are in the mix,” said HousingWire lead analyst Logan Mohtashami.

“We saw a bounce in demand early in the year as rates fell. However, just like last year, when mortgage rates headed higher, it limits sales growth.”

The reversal seems to be driven by a surprise spike in inflation, which has come out higher than expected for four consecutive months

“For homebuyers, the latest CPI report means mortgage rates will stay higher for longer because it makes the Fed unlikely to cut interest rates in the next few months,” said Chen Zaho, Redfin’s economic research lead.

“Housing costs are likely to continue going up for the near future, but persistently high mortgage rates and rising supply could cool home-price growth by the end of the year, taking some pressure off costs.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/20/2024 - 10:30

Utah Students Stage Walkout To Protest 'Barking And Biting Furries' In The Classroom

American schools have changed a lot in just the past five years.  Not long ago, it was understood by even the most progressive educators that some rules need to be put in place to keep kids in check.  Structure has always been a good thing for small people with developing brains and uncontrollable emotions.  Sadly, the educational system has been inexorably hijacked by the most extreme elements of the far left and by extension the principles used to maintain order among often impetuous and impulsive children have been quickly eroded in the name of "deconstruction." 

For those outside of what is now referred to as "Gen Alpha" (the generation born from 2010 onward), most people grew up with restrictions in school, including dress codes.  While some institutions might have been more oppressive than others, overall there was a balance between "expressing one's individualism" and keeping that expression from disrupting one's education - Schools should focus on academia, not catering to people's narcissism. 

Today, the progressive ideology has devolved into a bizarre form of cultism in which almost all behavior is justified as long as it is minority behavior.  This includes the behaviors of the mentally unstable and deranged; such people are swiftly becoming the most popular minority on the victimhood totem pole.

Nebo Middle School in Utah County has recently witnessed what might be the beginning of the end of the "anything goes" era in public schooling, with students (not just parents) protesting en masse over the disruptive inclusion of children identifying as furries and allegedly harassing other kids.  Students claim that furries bark in class, bite and scratch other children while generally creating chaos.

School officials deny these incidents and claim that the protest was triggered by "internet rumors."

       

This kind of story might seem like fluff and silliness, but that's how wokism was able to invade American schools in the first place - No one took it seriously until it was too late.

The furry issue is only a small part of a much larger debate that includes subjective identity, trans indoctrination, gender pronoun propaganda, equity over merit propaganda, personal truth vs objective truth, moral relativism, etc.  The question is this:  Should public institutions cater to mentally unstable people exhibiting aberrant or self-centered behaviors to the detriment of everyone else all in the name of equity?  Can we just admit that there is such a thing as too much freedom?

Where is the line?  Well, it's safe to say that dressing up as a cartoon animal and trying to bite people in the classroom is probably somewhere past the point of no return.  The school denies these events and blames rumor, but rumors alone don't motivate an entire student body to walk out and protest something as strange as furries.  There must be a problem that isn't being addressed, and these days this usually means there's a politically correct reason behind the refusal to punish certain students.

“We just wanted to learn.”

So this is insane. Hundreds of students at Mt. Nebo High School in Payson, Utah staged a mass walkout from school to protest the school’s tolerance of “furries.”

The students say that those who participate in the furry subculture are not only… pic.twitter.com/T5GTtR5qDx

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) April 18, 2024

If the youngest generation grows up without any boundaries or responsibility, what kind of adults will they eventually become?

On the positive side, the Nebo walkout suggests that the younger generation is not as brainwashed by inclusion rhetoric as many people might believe.  They are acting to keep the worst elements of their own community in check whether woke school officials like it or not.  Tolerance of all behaviors leads to acceptance of the worst behaviors.  Any school administrators that don't understand this basic fact should be removed from their positions.

In the meantime the number of parents in the US choosing to home school their kids continues to climb, and we all know the real reason why. 

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/20/2024 - 09:55

Goofy Greens And Regulators Threaten Nuclear Revival

Authored by Duggan Flanakin via RealClear Wire,

Despite its commitment to “no more gas, oil, or coal,” Friends of the Earth has launched a campaign against one of the nation’s “greenest” governors, California’s Gavin Newsom. Their goal? To stop the U.S. Department of Energy from doling out $1 billion to keep the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant (no gas, oil, or coal there) open past its planned 2025 closure date.

Newsom, whose policies are among the world’s most aggressive against gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles and tools, last year stated that, “the Diablo Canyon power plant is important to support energy reliability as we accelerate progress towards achieving our clean energy and climate goals.” Diablo Canyon today supplies nearly a tenth of California’s electricity.

The aptly named FOE claims that “the environmental impacts from extending the lifespan of this aging power plant at this point in time have not been adequately addressed or disclosed to the public.” Other groups, too, spread fear about nuclear energy. But by far the most powerful obstacle for nuclear energy enthusiasts to overcome lies within the federal government.

While nuclear energy has accounted for about 20% of the electricity generated in the U.S., and in 2023 supplied nearly half the nation’s carbon-free electricity, a new report from the Government Accountability Office says the Nuclear Regulatory Commission must more fully consider possible impacts of climate change on the nation’s mostly aging nuclear power plants.

The message? The GAO report says that climate-related threats to nuclear power plants range from worsened droughts that dry up water supplies needed for cooling reactors to sea level rise and storm surge flooding. Despite its regulatory obtuseness, the report said the NRC should include “data” from future climate projections [scary scenarios?] in safety risk assessments along with the historical data the NRC relies upon. All this adds costs.

Douglas McIntyre, the former editor-in-chief of 24/Wall St., last month said that, despite the obvious need for nuclear power, “many Americans, perhaps remembering Three Mile Island, do not want nuclear energy to be part of the solution.” And a recent Pew Research poll found that, “Critics highlight the high cost of nuclear power plant projects and the complexities of handling radioactive waste.”

By contrast, the U.S. Department of Energy has argued that the U.S. will need an additional 550 to 770 gigawatts of clean, firm capacity to reach net-zero carbon dioxide emissions and that nuclear power is one of the few proven options that can fill this need. Moreover, nuclear power plants create high-paying jobs with concentrated economic benefits for the communities most impacted by the energy transition.

These dichotomous messages from the DOE and NRC are highlighted in a recent article by ThorCon International co-founder Robert Hargraves, who bluntly stated that the U.S. is not building commercial nuclear power plants – while 16 other nations are – “because NRC and EPA regulators are so misinformed about radiation.”

Regulatory overkill is a likely culprit in the failed six-reactor, 462-megawatt project NuScale had planned in cooperation with Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, part of the DOE’s Carbon Free Power initiative for small modular reactors. Several towns pulled out and sank the project as the estimated price for power rose from $58 per megawatt-hour (MWh) to $89/MWh.

Misguided safety assumptions created a regulatory jungle so complex that startup Atomic Canyon is offering AI to help applicants navigate the NRC’s database of 52 million documents. U.S. nuclear energy regulators, Hargraves charged, do not analyze data about human health effects of radiation from nuclear power; instead, they rely on groupthink consensus evolved in NGOs originally misled in the 1950s by grant-seeking geneticists.

For decades these geneticists claimed radiation damage to chromosomes was increasing. But when children of the survivors of the Nagasaki and Hiroshima atomic bomb attacks exhibited no such effects, the anti-nuclear scientists switched to alleged cancer impacts. And a major flaw in their analysis is what caused the cost of nuclear energy to skyrocket.

While studies of those survivors found no excess cancers in people receiving less than 0.1 Gray (joules of energy absorbed by kilogram of tissue), regulators set public radiation limits 100 times lower, mistakenly limiting accumulated dose rather than dose rate. In the real world, setting a maximum daily dose of 0.02 Gray (rather than the current maximum cumulative annual dose of 0.001 Gray) would provide a large safety margin.

Salisbury University Professor of Finance Danny Ervin pooh-poohs the fears of nuclear foes, saying “the next wave of nuclear can’t come soon enough.” That “next wave” includes scalable nuclear reactors, notably the TerraPower initiative sparked by Bill Gates. This advanced facility, coupled with a molten salt energy storage system, will be capable of increasing output for nearly six hours during peak demand periods at a projected cost of about $4 billion.

The plant will be powered by an advanced Natrium reactor cooled with liquid sodium instead of water [eliminating one concern of skeptics]. With a capacity to generate up to 500 megawatts, it will provide ample energy to power approximately 400,000 homes.

Of equal importance is that its location at a former coal-fired power plant in Wyoming enables easy integration into the existing electric grid while stimulating the local economy. This contrasts with wind turbines and solar arrays, which often are located far from existing transmission lines, require massive footprints, and operate intermittently, thus requiring backup power generation.

Over in England, X-Energy, in partnership with Babcock International subsidiary Cavendish, has proposed to develop a 12-reactor plant using the company’s Xe-100 high-temperature gas-cooled reactor design.  The Teesside array, which should be operational by the early 2030s, is the first of what the companies hope will be a fleet of up to 40 of the 80 MWe power plants in locations across the United Kingdom.

Cavendish Nuclear managing director Mick Gornall boasts that, “a fleet of Xe-100s can complement renewables by providing constant or flexible power, producing steam to decarbonize industry, and manufacturing hydrogen and synthetic transport fuels. Deployment will also, he said, create thousands of high-quality, long-term jobs nationwide.

Uranium-rich Nigeria thinks it has a solution to the radioactive waste management issue that has been a big bugaboo for the nuclear energy industry worldwide. The solution relies on the NST SuperLAT, which NuclearSAFE Technology co-founder Dr. Jimmy Etti-Williams calls “a breakthrough in nuclear waste management.”

SuperLAT will, says Etti-Williams, process, package, load, store, and transport nuclear waste in casket containers to several thousand feet underground, yet able to be retrieved as needed for fuel in reactors to generate low-carbon-footprint energy. This geological nuclear waste disposal technology is designed to isolate and dilute nuclear waste in line with universal regulations.

The SuperLAT technology should, says Etti-Williams, satisfy International Atomic Energy Agency and other stakeholder concerns about nuclear waste storage accidents, leakages, or terror risks. He boasts that Nigeria can have its own uranium plants to boost its own and pan-African development efforts.

There’s an old saying, which first appeared in 1902 in Puck’s Magazine, with the message, “People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.” It is high time, many now believe, for the nay-saying over-regulators to stop interrupting nuclear progress.

And on that front, too, there is good news. Nuclear Matters has announced an online gathering entitled, “The Path to Progress: Modernizing the NRC,” scheduled for May 2.

At the event, a four-person panel moderated by the Nuclear Energy Institute’s John Kotek will discuss the urgency of NRC modernization in order to unlock the benefits of nuclear technology innovation to revitalize the U.S. nuclear energy industry.

The anti-nuke FOEs (sic) will have little left to argue once these and other innovative nuclear projects prove successful and safe when brought to the fore in other nations – places like England and Nigeria. But those who seek reliable, safe, and clean technologies to generate the electricity in quantities needed tomorrow will only be satisfied if the archaic rules can be recrafted to accommodate them.

Duggan Flanakin is a senior policy analyst at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow who writes on a wide variety of public policy issues.

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/20/2024 - 08:10

Ukraine Claims First-Ever Shootdown Of Russian Strategic Bomber, Moscow Denies

Another Russian military aircraft has fallen from the sky in a fiery wreck, social media video widely circulating on Friday shows. But precisely how it happened is being hotly disputed.

Ukraine is now touting that for the first time ever, its forces have downed a Russian long-range bomber which was actively engaged in attacks on Ukrainian cities. "For the first time, anti-aircraft missile units of the air force in cooperation with the defense intelligence of Ukraine destroyed a Tu-22M3 long-range strategic bomber," Ukraine's military announced.

"This was the plane that bombed Dnipro and Kryvyi Rih. We took our revenge for our cities and civilians," air force spokesperson Illya Yevlash told international press, as cited in AFP.

However, Russia's military is disputing claims by Ukraine officials, instead saying a "technical malfunction" led to the crash which resulted in at least one crew member killed. 

A statement said further, "The pilots ejected, 3 crew members were evacuated by the search and rescue team, and the search for one pilot is currently underway." The military further said, "There was no ammunition on board; the plane crashed in a deserted area."

EuroNews has said it can't verify which side's version of events is true:

The Ukrainian report said military intelligence cooperated with the air force to bring down the Tu-22M3 bomber with anti-aircraft missiles. 

Russia commonly uses the bomber - which can also carry nuclear warheads - to fire Kh-22 cruise missiles at Ukrainian targets from inside its airspace.

Watch confirmed video of the strategic bomber falling quickly while engulfed in flames:

One of the Russian Tu-22 strategic bombers that took part in today’s attack on Ukrainian cities won’t be flying again. Ukraine says it shot down the plane, Russians say it was a malfunction. One of the four crew members is dead. https://t.co/DlA0wCze8a pic.twitter.com/L9h7ulm1UW

— Yaroslav Trofimov (@yarotrof) April 19, 2024

Russian authorities have indicated that the plane went down in the Stavropol region some 400km from eastern Crimeaa.

In January, Moscow said that Ukrainian forces shot down a Russian military transport plane that was carrying Ukrainian POWs. In February, Ukraine said it shot down two Russian A-50 spy planes within a matter of weeks.

Images show a large debris field in the Friday crash aftermath...

Via Telegram

Several Russian aircraft of various types have been downed throughout the more than two-year long war, but Friday marks the first time a Tu-22M3 bomber has been reported downed.

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/20/2024 - 07:35

The Regime That Doesn't Care

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

We’ve all come across warnings against doom scrolling.

This is the practice of waking up in the morning, scouring headlines, seizing on the bad news, and dwelling on the darkness. You do this during downtimes in the day and in the evening. Your mood worsens, permanently.

It cannot be good for the human spirit.

The term implies that we are somehow looking for doom because it gives us a dopamine rush or something. Testing this idea, I’ve variously tried to avoid doing that. But there is a problem. It is impossible to avoid simply because the bad news is so ubiquitous. In fact, I’ve come to distrust any venues that are not reporting it!

Many people have concluded that if we are looking for something other than doom, we should leave what we called “the news” entirely and focus on culture, religion, philosophy, history, art, poetry, or find something practical and productive to do.

I recently met a wonderful Mennonite family living in Amish country in Pennsylvania. They live a completely unplugged life: no cell phones, no internet, no TV. There are only books, community worship, farming, tending to livestock, shopping at local stores, and visiting with neighbors.

I never could have imagined that there would come a time when I would say to those who have completely seceded from modern life: you might be doing it the right way. There is something truly brilliant about the choices you have made.

Sure, they have created a bubble for themselves, one of their own choosing as an extension of their understanding of their faith tradition. One point I observed: they surely seemed happy. Not in a fake way that we see on social media but authentically happy.

Once you leave that world and dip back into normal life, it’s just undeniable. The headlines are filled with tragedy at home and abroad, much of it an outgrowth of population despair. The list is familiar: learning loss, substance addiction, suicide ideation, public and private violence, massive and well-earned distrust of everything and everyone, raging conflict at all levels of society.

It’s hard consolation that so many predicted this outcome of the pandemic response. We knew from the empirical literature that unemployment is associated with suicide, that isolation is connected with personal despair, that loss of community leads to psychopathology, that dependency on substances produces ill health.

So many warned of this outcome from what governments did. In many ways, the world before lockdowns seemed fixable. Afterwards, too much is broken and ruined to imagine redemption.

A good example for me is mainstream corporate media. There was a time when I could listen to NPR or read the New York Times (NYT) and disagree but think: well, that’s a perspective I reject but still I benefit from knowing it. It seemed like we were all part of the same national conversation.

This is no longer true. What made the difference? Probably the realization that they are not just confused or pushing some biased outlook but rather actively covering up and lying. Realizing that is incredibly disorienting.

There is something about pretending that the lockdowns and all that followed were completely normal that discredits them. They do it constantly. Sometimes the media will report on learning loss or the suicide epidemic or rising ill health in the population. But there seems to be this studious attempt to pretend that no one knows why it is happening.

Or my least favorite tactic: pretending as if the pandemic necessitated all this and that it was not an outgrowth of deliberate decision-making on the part of elites.

This stuff makes me want to scream: they locked us down when it was totally unnecessary!

As my friend Aaron Kheriaty often observes, they believe we are stupid. They actually think we cannot make connections, have no memory, no knowledge of anything serious, and will just eat up their porridge of baloney daily while exercising no critical intelligence over any of it.

This rubs me wrong particularly on the subject of the mRNA shots designed to address the virus. We know for certain that they were oversold and failed in all the ways they were supposed to succeed. We are further flooded with evidence of their harms both from personal experience and the scientific literature.

But do we read or hear about this in the legacy media? Absolutely not. Even when it is overwhelmingly clear that the shot should be considered a possible cause in the sudden rise of heart attacks, sudden death, turbo cancers, and maladies of all sorts, this whole subject is somehow unsayable in the corporate media.

The silence on this topic is so conspicuous and apparent that it discredits everything else. And what is the reason for it? Well, pharma advertising provides a stunning 75 percent of revenue for mainline television. That’s an astounding number. The networks are simply not going to bite the hand that feeds them.

That’s true for TV and probably something similar applies to everything else too.

What does this mean for the rest of us? It means that every time we turn on the TV, we are risking getting propagandized by companies that are seriously in league with the government to generate the highest possible revenue stream for themselves regardless of the consequences.

And why zero focus on vaccine injury? Incredibly, the companies themselves are indemnified against liability for any harms they cause. Just think about the implications of this. Even if you know for sure that you have been harmed by a product you were forced or otherwise manipulated to take, there is almost nothing you can do about it.

That’s an incredible fact, and goes a very long way toward explaining the silent treatment.

The discrediting of major media in this context reveals a deeper and more terrifying truth. Much of the elite class of economic and social managers do not have our best interests in mind. Once you realize this, the color of the world changes for you. Once you gain that insight, there is pretty much no going back from it.

Millions have come to this realization over the last four years. It has changed us as people. We desperately want to live normal happy lives but we are overwhelmed by what we’ve learned. It’s like the curtain was pulled back and we have seen what is really going on. The whole of official culture is screaming at us to ignore that man behind the curtain.

I’ve recently taken my own advice and thrown myself into reading history as a refuge. My choice was probably not the best if my goal was to brighten my spirits. I have been reading “The Vampire Economy” by German economist and financier Gunter Reimann, published in 1939 (and which I scanned and uploaded with the author’s permission).

The book was written as the Nazi Party had gained full control of government (and everything else) and the full war in Europe was about to commence with the German invasion of Poland.

Reimann brilliantly dissects the reality of a regime that cared nothing for the spreading suffering of the people.

“Nazi leaders in Germany do not fear possible national economic ruin in wartime,” he writes.

“They feel that, whatever happens, they will remain on top, that the worse matters become, the more dependent on them will be the propertied classes. And if the worst comes to the worst, they are prepared to sacrifice all other interests to maintain their hold on the State. If they themselves must go, they are ready to pull the temple down with them.”

That’s a bracing analysis and it could apply to many regimes in history, not just the Nazis. Indeed, good government in history has rarely been the norm. Power often benefits from suffering. As Americans we are not used to thinking this way about our elites. But it is probably time to realize that this trajectory is very much in play.

This might be the most striking change among millions of Americans over the last five or so years. We’ve come to realize that our leaders in so many sectors of American life (or global life, for that matter) do not favor our best interests. This is a troubling realization but it explains so much. It’s why the elites did not care about the harms of lockdowns or untested shots and are unconcerned about inflation, mass immigration, the rise of crime, squatting and the insecurity of property, exploding government debt, growing population surveillance, or anything like the normal rules of civilized life.

The regime, in the broadest possible way we can conceive of that term, simply doesn’t care. Even worse, it grows and benefits at our expense. They know it. We know it. They like it this way.

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/20/2024 - 07:00

US Fentanyl Crisis Is A 'CCP-Run Operation', Says Peter Schweizer

Authored by Terri Wu and Jan Jekielek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Three months after the U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctioned a Chinese mafia leader for fentanyl trafficking, he received an award in Beijing.

Peter Schweizer in March 2022. (NTD)

In March 2021, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Overseas United Working Committee recognized Wan Kuok Koi, also known as “Broken Tooth,” as a “patriotic businessman” and the “chief representative” of all international Hongmen associations. Hongmen is synonymous with triads, or Chinese transnational organized crime syndicates, to many Chinese.

The awarding entity is a CCP United Front organization and a platform under the China Association for Science and Technology. It also pushes China’s flagship infrastructure program, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), worldwide. According to the Treasury Department notice, Mr. Wan has established a security company protecting BRI investments in Southeast Asia.

In a recent interview with EpochTV’s American Thought Leaders (ATL), investigative writer Peter Schweizer cited Mr. Wan’s case as an example of the CCP’s take on the United States’ fentanyl crisis.

“The notion that ‘oh, China’s trying very hard, but they can’t fix this’ is an absolute joke in my mind,” he said.

In addition, the author of a new book titled “Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans” told ATL that the U.S. fentanyl crisis is a “CCP-run operation.”

“The drug cartels are certainly involved, but they’re the junior partner,” Mr. Schweizer said, adding that the CCP is present at “every link of the chain.”

The Chinese production of fentanyl precursors is widely known. However, Mr. Schweizer’s research also shows that China provides pill-pressing machines at cost for fentanyl-laced fake pill production, distributes the synthetic opioid in the United States, facilitates the Mexican drug cartels’ financial transactions, and provides secure communication systems to cartels so they can bypass detection by U.S. law enforcement.

Currently, fentanyl overdose is the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18 to 45. The deadly drug was responsible for about 75,000 deaths, or 200 per day, in 2022. Compared with 3,105 deaths in 2013, the death toll increased 23-fold.

Facing this crisis, which has been growing exponentially, the U.S. government has yet to come up with an effective solution. In Mr. Schweizer’s view, U.S. leaders’ inaction is a significant factor.

He documented in his book how senior U.S. leaders, albeit initially voicing concerns about China’s involvement in fentanyl trafficking, have remained largely silent on the issue.

One of those leaders is President Joe Biden.

At a Senate hearing in 1992, the then-chair of the Judiciary Committee warned that “China is poised to become the lynchpin of the heroin trade.”

Then-Sen. Biden also criticized the then-Bush administration’s lack of action on confronting China, saying that “the truth is that the cooperation between the United States and China in fighting drugs is limited, at best, and as is its course, the administration is turning a blind eye to China’s renegade behavior.”

Yet, the Biden administration has been taking a similar approach: touting its counternarcotics cooperation with China, which relies on voluntary domestic control measures. CCP leader Xi Jinping didn’t keep similar past promises that he made to former Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

Ambassador Robert Lighthizer (L); Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute (C); and Michael Pillsbury, senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation (R); at The Heritage Foundation's Leadership Summit in National Harbor, Md., on April 20, 2023. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times)

Different than heroin or cocaine, fentanyl takes the lives of people who mostly take the drug unknowingly. A New York University study in 2023 showed that a majority of the people who took fentanyl didn’t intend to do so.

Therefore, Mr. Schweizer thinks calling the fentanyl crisis a drug problem is missing the mark.

To him, it’s “extremely convenient” for the Biden administration to treat fentanyl as a “drug addiction problem, rather than what it is—poisoning,” he said.

“It absolves you of trying to confront the CCP on this because you’re essentially saying this is a human nature problem in the United States.”

In Mr. Schweizer’s view, the first family’s financial ties to China prohibited them from confronting the communists to reign in the Chinese fentanyl actors—a move that could be effective “overnight” if CCP leader Xi Jinping wanted it to be, Mr. Schweizer said.

The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.

Mr. Schweizer’s findings don’t stop at the fentanyl crisis, which he sees as a part of the CCP’s broader approach of “disintegration warfare,” aimed at bringing down the United States by attacking its “soft underbelly” regarding Americans’ politics, economics, and psychology.

In the ATL interview, he also talked about the CCP’s links to activities that sow social discord by inflaming racial and gender divisions in U.S. society and “dumbing down the West” with TikTok.

The interview premieres on April 18.

Tyler Durden Fri, 04/19/2024 - 23:20

Major War Just Narrowly Averted & Biden Already Mulls $1BN+ In New Arms For Israel

President Biden is mulling his first new major arms sales to Israel since the unprecedented Iranian missile and drone attack which targeted the country last Saturday.

Though the world just narrowly avoided witnessing a major regional war explode with Thursday night's Israeli 'limited' retaliation on the Islamic Republic, the White House apparently thinks the 'answer' is to pump Israel with yet more and more weapons and ammo, to the tune of $1+ billion.

AFP via Getty Images

"The Biden administration is considering more than $1 billion in new weapons deals for Israel including tank ammunition, military vehicles and mortar rounds, U.S. officials said, at a time of heightened scrutiny of the use of American-made weapons in the war in Gaza," Wall Street Journal reports Friday.

"The proposed weapons transfers—which would be in addition to those in a military aid deal currently before the Congress—would be among the largest to Israel since it invaded Gaza in response to Hamas’s attack that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, on Oct. 7," the report continues.

This also comes while the administration has been talking out of both sides of its mouth - on the one hand condemning the immense civilian death toll in Gaza, and on the other vowing to remain firm in its "ironclad commitment" to Israel's defense.

The US administration has time and again said it has been urging Israel against escalating with Iran. The White House has also said it did not "greenlight" Israel's Thursday overnight attack, which reportedly targeted radar sites in Isfahan, which is home to a key Iranian nuclear facility.

As for the Gaza operation, Biden has still sought to press Israel to hold off on a Rafah ground offensive. And yet, the IDF is more ensconced in the Gaza Strip than ever. There are new reports of an Israeli military base being established in the heart of Gaza.

"Satellite images and photographs shared on social media show extensive development and construction at two outposts the Israel Defense Forces is building on the strategic road that divides the Gaza Strip into two," reports Haaretz.

"The army calls the construction of these outposts in what it calls the 'Netzarim Corridor' as a long-term achievement. The whole corridor is referred to as something that is here to stay," the report indicates.

Tyler Durden Fri, 04/19/2024 - 23:00

NIH Refuses To Release Details Of COVID-19 Vaccine Royalty Agreement

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) is refusing to release additional information about an agreement it reached over a COVID-19 vaccine that has earned it at least $400 million.

Syringes of Moderna COVID-19 vaccines at a vaccination site in Los Angeles, on Feb. 16, 2021. (Apu Gomes/AFP via Getty Images)

The NIH declined to provide any materials in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from The Epoch Times.

“The NIH withholds the entirety of the records as they are protected from release,” Gorka Garcia-Malene, an NIH officer, told The Epoch Times in a letter.

She cited an exemption outlined in the act that allows government agencies to partially or fully withhold information.

“In this case, exemption 3 incorporates 35 U.S.C. 209 (f), which reads in relevant part, ‘No Federal agency shall grant any license under a patent or patent application on a federally owned invention unless the person requesting the license has supplied the agency with a plan for development or marketing of the invention, except that any such plan shall be treated by the Federal agency as commercial and financial information obtained from a person and privileged and confidential and not subject to disclosure under section 552 of title 5,’” Ms. Garcia-Malene wrote.

“Exemption 4 protects from disclosure trade secrets and commercial or financial information that is privileged and confidential,” she added.

In February 2023, Moderna announced that it had paid $400 million to the NIH and would make additional payments in the future as part of a licensing agreement for spike proteins used in the company’s COVID-19 vaccine. The Epoch Times obtained a copy of the contract, which confirmed the payment but redacted details of the future payments.

The Epoch Times then lodged a new request, seeking more details about the future payments, which are said to be based on how many COVID-19 vaccines are sold.

Ms. Garcia-Malene was responding to the new request.

James Love, director of the nonprofit Knowledge Ecology International, said the information should be made public.

“The NIH put out several press statements about the royalty dispute with Moderna, and they should not now claim it is some secret confidential information. And when hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake, the public interest in transparency is large too,” Mr. Love told The Epoch Times in an email.

“There are a lot of NIH officials who resent transparency,” he added.

Inquiries to NIH spokespersons received away messages. Another request for comment, sent to one of the addresses provided in the away messages, was not returned.

The Epoch Times plans to appeal the NIH’s decision.

The NIH is one of several government agencies that receive royalty payments. Officials there have fought against attempts to acquire information on these payments, but in 2023, they disclosed some $325 million in royalties received between 2009 and 2020 after being sued.

Some experts say the payments, made to the agency and many of its top scientists, should be stopped.

“Neither the government nor any government employee should have any financial interest in a product for which the government has any involvement in licensing or promoting,“ Aaron Siri, managing partner of Siri & Glimstad LLP, told The Epoch Times in an email. ”It creates a dangerous conflict of interest.”

Move on BioNTech

The NIH is trying to obtain more money from COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers, according to recent filings.

BioNTech, Pfizer’s partner, said in the forms that the NIH served it with a notice of default because the NIH’s position is that BioNTech owes it money from COVID-19 vaccine sales.

BioNTech said it does not think it owes the NIH money but that “the ultimate outcome of these matters is uncertain and we cannot guarantee that our interpretation of these license agreements will prevail, or that we will not ultimately need to pay some or all of the royalty and other related amounts in dispute.”

The NIH did not return inquiries on the BioNTech filings.

The NIH has said previously it licensed its spike protein technology to BioNTech for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.

The Epoch Times has submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for the notice of default and related documents. Another request seeks information on whether the NIH has threatened or served Pfizer with a similar notice.

However much money the U.S. government receives in royalties will be much less than it has paid for the vaccines. The government has purchased hundreds of millions of shots, spending north of $30 billion.

Tyler Durden Fri, 04/19/2024 - 22:40

Housing Costs Are Crushing The American Middle Class, But How Can We Fix The Problem?

In a new poll conducted by the Financial Times and Michigan's Ross School of Business, data shows there is a rare bipartisan agreement among Republicans and Democrats – Both sides believe that there are no housing advantages for the their political opponents and 70% of leftists, independents and conservatives alike rate affordability as one of their top three concerns.  In other words, Americans disagree on almost everything else, but they all recognize that most of them are in deep trouble when it comes to keeping a roof over their heads.

It's not just the math, it's the daily drain on people's pocketbooks that makes the problem so undeniable.

While the Biden Administration has spent the better part of the past year claiming that “inflation is going down” the reality has been far more bleak.  Surveys also show that 62% of homeowners has struggled at least periodically in the past year to make their mortgage payments and half of all renters also reported difficulty keeping up with monthly payments.  Over 22% skipped meals, 20% worked extra hours and 20% sold belongings to pay their housing costs on time.  

Disturbingly, 60% of poll respondents who make $100,000 or more per year also ranked housing costs at the top of their list of worries going into 2024.  Meaning, the crisis is spreading well beyond low income families and is dragging down the middle class. 

Low income, fixed income and middle-income renters are all facing challenges.  The market has become so disjointed that middle-income earners are finding it nearly impossible in most states to find homes in their price range, either to buy or to rent.

The average middle class income is $58,000 to $98,000 annually.  The average yearly cost of a family home rental is $25,000 ($2100 a month and nearly half of a single earner's income on the low end of the middle class average).  This greatly supersedes the common 30% rent rule which suggests that housing should not eat more than 30% of a renter's salary.  In 2019 the average monthly rent for a home was $1400; that's a 50% increase in the span of only four years.   

In order to safely afford the monthly median home rental price of $2100, a tenant must make over $6000 after taxes per month.  This cuts more than 50% of the population out of the market.  It's not just the cost of housing, though, there's also a major crisis in availability.    

Across the US  there is a shortage of at least 7.2 million homes affordable and available to renters with extremely low incomes. Extremely low-income renters face a shortage in every state and major metropolitan area.  Middle-income housing is vanishing; known as the “missing middle”, this portion of the market has been bought out and inflated to the point that elasticity in prices has been crushed right along with home buyers and renters.  That is to say, if you make less than six figures then you are quietly and quickly being strangled out of housing access.  

But how do we solve this ongoing problem?  Government rent controls won't do anything other than create a larger shortage by scaring property owners out of the rental market.  The Federal Reserve's (supposed) attempts to use higher interest rates to deflate the bubble without triggering consequences to the greater economy have utterly failed.  The conundrum is that the biggest property buyers in the country are supported by the central bank and thus they remain unaffected by higher rates.  

These are massive corporate buyers like Blackstone and Black Rock which invest in companies that buy US houses.  Black Rock by extension owns a stake in nearly 7% of the nation's total rental properties.  In 2023 corporate investors accounted for 27% of all family home purchases.  Even in the case of house flipping, corporate purchases on a large scale tend to drive up prices for everyone else.

Then there's the issue of illegal immigration which is adding millions of “asylum seekers” every year to the population; all of those people are looking for housing.  With government programs and subsidies helping them they eventually find that housing, allowing them to eat up another piece of the pie.  This leaves legal citizens in the lurch and struggling with low availability.  

Finally, there's general inflation.  Building costs for materials and labor have skyrocketed, meaning building new houses might help over many years to stabilize the market but it does not solve the immediate supply crisis and the inflation associated with it.  Americans don't need more expensive houses, they need more affordable houses.  

To alleviate the crippled market conditions today would most likely require state imposed moratoriums on corporate home purchases, a moratorium on foreign purchases, not to mention the direct removal of illegal migrants.  Taking action on all three would free up supply and at least give US citizens room to breath by cutting back on their top most expensive necessity.  At bottom things cannot continue the way they have been otherwise the system can and will break under the pressure, leading to even worse economic outcomes.

Tyler Durden Fri, 04/19/2024 - 22:20