“Biden’s job growth is mostly immigrants working for low wages.” Also this: “The Department of Homeland Security has been issuing an unknown number of two-year work permits to illegal immigrants, which will keep them in the workforce suppressing wages and fanning the flames of discontent amongst Americans unable to find jobs until the next presidential election.” What the hell?
“Disinformation Inc: State Department bankrolls group secretly blacklisting conservative media.”
The Department of State has funded a deep-pocketed “disinformation” tracking group that is secretly blacklisting and trying to defund conservative media, likely costing the news organizations vital advertising dollars, the Washington Examiner can confirm.
The Global Disinformation Index, a British organization with two affiliated U.S. nonprofit groups, is feeding blacklists to ad companies with the intent of defunding and shutting down websites peddling alleged “disinformation,” the Washington Examiner reported . This same “disinformation” group has received $330,000 from two State Department-backed entities linked to the highest levels of government, raising concerns from First Amendment lawyers and members of Congress.
“Any outfit like that engaged in censorship shouldn’t have any contact with the government because they’re tainted by association with a group that is doing something fundamentally against American values,” Jeffrey Clark, ex-acting head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, told the Washington Examiner. “The government or any private entity shouldn’t be involved with this entity that’s engaged in conduct that is either legally questionable or at least morally questionable.”
GDI compiles a “dynamic exclusion list” that it feeds to corporate entities, such as the Microsoft -owned advertising company Xandr, emails show. Xandr and other companies are, in turn, declining to place ads on websites that GDI flags as peddling disinformation.
The Washington Examiner revealed on Thursday that it is on this exclusion list. The list includes at least 2,000 websites and has “had a significant impact on the advertising revenue that has gone to those sites,” said GDI’s CEO Clare Melford on a March 2022 podcast.
GDI has identified that the 10 “riskiest” news outlets for disinformation are the American Spectator, Newsmax, the Federalist, the American Conservative, One America News, the Blaze, the Daily Wire, RealClearPolitics, Reason, and the New York Post.
Another huge story that the news media has done it’s best to ignore: a toxic derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. The blew it up to prevent a BLEVE and ended up releasing Phosgene gas. That’s carrying your World War I reenactment too far.
90-year California Democratic Senator old Dianne Feinstein to retire after 2024. But…
A few hour later she was evidently unaware she had retired. Increasingly, “crazy” or “senile” seem to be the two most common flavors of the Democratic Party…
One-Party Democratic California is so desperate for cash they want to tax people for leaving.
Desperate to stem the stampede of cash cows — affluent residents — out of their state, they are trying to pass an exit tax for households with assets of $50 million or more. Current residents would have to keep paying for years after they have decamped to less hostile states.
Heaven forbid that these legislators should instead come to terms with the reasons so many productive residents flee or what they could do to make their state a more attractive destination for people and businesses. They aren’t much concerned with that, merely with stopping the flight of all that revenue. If they cared about the livelihoods of the people leaving, they probably would have governed in a way that didn’t prompt people to head for the exits.
This is probably unconstitutional nine ways to Sunday. Wealth tax, Ex-Post Facto law, taxation without representation, etc. It’s also likely to be counterproductive, as rich people are not only likely to leave the state preemptively to avoid being subject to it, but are exactly the people that can hire top-notch lawyers to get it overturned.
Louis Rossmann, who recently fled New York City to Austin, has additional thoughts:
“They are showing and demonstrating here they have no confidence in their ability to govern better, or in their ability to actually give the customers of that state what they want, because they’re telling you ‘We’re not going to make things better. Rather, if you leave we are going to figure out a way to fine you.'”
“It demonstrates a sick ideology that’s both just authoritarian and disgusting in nature.”
“It’s not like [the tax rates in California and New York] just spiked up insanely over the past one or two years, they’ve been higher than the tax rate in Texas and Florida for as long as I’ve been alive, by a fairly large margin. This is not news. It’s something else in addition to that, and they don’t even appear to be interested in trying to figure out what that is.”
“Florida and Texas…have not had income tax for a very long time.”
“Maybe it would make sense to actually ask people what changed over the past two or three or five years that caused you to decide that you want to move your business and get the fuck out.”
“I could tell you from experience that losing half of your employees, putting all your stuff in a truck, carting it across the country. and spending months putting it all back together is insanely stressful, and not something that I’m going to do so I could save six or eight percent of my income tax.”
“Why are you then going to bake more taxes, and then have a fine for leaving that is then going to discourage anybody else that has the same concern from ever coming to your state thereby ensuring that the population of people that are productive and create value diminishes.”
“The idea of being taxed based on what you are worth at a particular time without actually cashing it out is insane to me.”
Long, correct discussion of why long-term capital gains are taxed at a lower rate snipped. (I doubt many of my readers don’t already understand, or disagree.) Ditto the discussion of how investment creates jobs.
“People deciding to defer their gratification, to decide ‘I will wait for the large payoff 10 to 20 years from now rather than make a decision that results in me getting more money right now,’ and I think that that it should be discussed more often because if it’s not, then we are going to end up with stuff like this.”
He discusses the slippery slope argument: The bill already states the tax will start at billionaires, but then in two years hit people with a net worth of $50 million or more. “Once it gets low enough like once this makes its way off to 10 million or a million, because again this is going to slip.”
And just wait until it hits the net worth not only of individuals, but of businesses.
One huge advantage Texas has over one-party Democrat-rule states is the salutary habit of running budget surpluses year after year after year. (Or, to be technically correct (“the best kind of correct!”), biennium after biennium after biennium.)
Now Comptroller Glenn Hegar has officially forecast that the Texas budget for 2024-2025 (the one the legislature will pass in the just-started legislative session) will be a $32.7 Billion surplus.
The historic Texas budget surplus estimate has grown even larger as Comptroller Glenn Hegar announced a $5 billion increase in an updated Biennial Revenue Estimate (BRE) on Monday.
The Texas Legislature convenes for the first day of its 88th Regular Session on Tuesday and now appears to have at its disposal $32.7 billion — a sum that has more than its fair share of stipulations and restrictions. Hegar’s July 2021 projection pegged the number at $27 billion.
“Even with constitutional spending limits and an inflation-influenced new normal, the enormous amount of projected revenue gives the state a remarkable, or a truly ‘once-in-a-lifetime,’ opportunity for historical actions this legislative session,” Hegar said, presenting the BRE Monday.
Tempering reactions, he added, “Don’t count on me announcing another big revenue jump two years from now.”
“The revenue increases that we’ve seen have been in many ways unprecedented and we cannot reasonably expect a repeat. We are unlikely to have an opportunity like this again.”
Overall, the comptroller estimates $188 billion available in general-purpose spending for the 2024-2025 budget, a 26 percent increase from the current biennium. The state will also receive an estimated $176 billion in federal dollars and other revenues that are non-discretionary, earmarked already with specific purposes.
Over half of the general revenue-related funds come from sales taxes and 13.2 percent from oil and gas severance taxes. Due to the high oil and gas prices over the last year, severance tax collections rose 116 percent in 2022; the average annual increase from 1996 to 2021 was just 7.5 percent.
Without new appropriations, Hegar estimates the Economic Stabilization Fund to reach a balance of $27.1 billion, slightly constrained by a constitutional limit.
Texas has had a Republican trifecta (House, Senate and Governor’s mansion) for two decades, and in that time it has followed the budget maxim of former governor Rick Perry: “Don’t spend all the money!” Conservative governance, free market policies, low taxes and fiscal prudence have all combined to keep the economy growing even in difficult times, a record few Democratic-dominated states even remotely approach.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation has more thoughts on how Texas government can reduce the Texas tax burden even further.
State budgets for Texas and California are in the news, and once again the two largest states in the union are headed in opposite directions:
In Texas, lawmakers are wrangling about what to do with a $27 billion surplus.
The Texas Legislature is in for a fight over how to spend its expected pot of money from inflation-driven record consumption tax collections.
Trying to direct the Legislature and the Texas House specifically often resembles herding cats — 150 members with 150 different ideas on how the $27 billion projected surplus should be appropriated.
Comptroller Hegar indicated this week that the total might grow even more by the New Year. He will provide an updated certified revenue estimate in January.
Whether it grows or not, the sum will be a large pot with which the Legislature can do a lot.
The foremost suggestion is to buy down property taxes through ramped-up compression of local ad valorem tax rates.
Gov. Greg Abbott has called for spending “at least half” on “the largest property tax cut ever in the history of Texas.” Lt. Governor Dan Patrick first called for using $4 billion to cut taxes and then upped that to possibly more than half of the total.
The Legislature already has $3 billion earmarked for a buydown next session from holdover American Rescue Plan Act funds.
That’s the estimated deficit Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers will confront when crafting a budget for the upcoming fiscal year, the Legislature’s nonpartisan fiscal advisor announced Wednesday.
The projection marks a stunning reversal from back-to-back years of unprecedented prosperity: The budget for California’s current fiscal year clocked in at a whopping $308 billion, fueled by a record $97 billion surplus that was by itself enough to treat every state resident to a $7,500 vacation. The year before, Newsom and lawmakers approved what was at the time a record-busting $263 billion budget that included a $76 billion surplus.
Snip.
The Legislative Analyst’s fiscal outlook doesn’t take into account soaring inflation rates or the increasingly likely possibility of a recession. Due to inflation, “the actual costs to maintain the state’s service level are higher than what our outlook reflects,” the analyst’s office wrote. The estimated $25 billion deficit thus “understates the actual budget problem in inflation-adjusted terms.” And, if a recession were to hit, it would result “in much more significant revenue declines,” meaning California could bring in $30 to $50 billion less than expected in the budget window.
I don’t think there’s any “if” about a recession anymore.
For a while California’s tech and entertainment industry strengths were outrunning its massive blue state economic mismanagement and green energy delusions. That’s no longer the case.
The problem with the blue state model is that they either run out of other people’s money, or people take it with them when they move before the state can take it away. Still others leave to avoid the outrageous cost of living. No wonder U-Haul ran out of trucks to leave the state.
Budgets are hard to balance even in good times, given competing priorities and political factions. It becomes much harder in a recession. And it becomes nearly impossible when you try to fund not only the regular Democratic Party graft and fraud, but social justice madness and green energy delusions.
Which is why so many Californians are getting out while the getting is good…
Can the pound reach parity versus the dollar? It’s now a one-in-four chance when it comes to options pricing.
The UK currency is heading for its biggest daily loss since early May after Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng outlined the government’s plans to stimulate the economy with tax cuts and spending. The simultaneous sharp sell off in Gilts [historical term for UK government bonds – LP] suggests that tackling inflation will be a very hard task for UK authorities and that the currency market sees no easy way out for the Bank of England.
To attract foreign investors, a weaker pound may be the answer and that is what FX traders are betting on.
Cable fell as much as 2.1% to touch $1.1021, the lowest since March 1985, and was at $1.1036 as of 12:38pm in London. Risk reversals, a barometer of market positioning and sentiment, show that traders see the greatest downside risks for the pound over the medium term in two years.
According to Bloomberg’s options pricing model, the pound holds a 26% chance of touching parity versus the greenback in the next six months. That compares to a reading of 14% Thursday.
I think the real odds are probably higher than that.
Dollar-pound parity is something that’s never happened, with the nearest it came to some 1.05 dollars to the pound in the mid-1980s. But there’s always a first time for everything, and with the Bank of England doing more quantitative easing and the UK government going on a spending spree during soaring inflation while the Fed ratchets up interest rates, now is as good a time as any.
Besides making imports from the UK less expensive, what effects will dollar-pound parity have on the financial world? Hard to say for sure, but my prediction is: Weird things.
There are a variety of reasons for this, starting with the fact that currency trading is itself a weird thing. You may think “American financial houses buy pounds to purchase English goods, while UK financial houses buy dollars to purchase American goods,” but there’s a whole ecology of counter-party trades, hedging strategies, currency reserve requirements, portfolio balancing, and a host of other considerations.
Here’s a brief video that cover some of the basics for how brokerages handle FX trading:
That’s a fairly streamlined view, as it doesn’t cover how liquidity pools are set up, different hedging strategies, etc.
There are even traders who specialize in just trading different duration T-Bills, selling the eight-week-out and buying the four-week-out (or vice versa) for esoteric arbitrage reasons.
None of that will change if the market hits dollar-pound parity. So where’s the danger? That comes from the possible non-linear effects of the market doing something that a lot of algorithmic instrument designers never considered a possibility.
For a simple example, let’s talk about the swaps cases. To summarize a whole lot of very complex cases, a whole bunch of local UK governments entered into interest rate swap agreements. Interest rate swap agreements are a legitimate hedging strategy to minimize exposure to interest rate swings, but a few municipalities saw it as a license to print money. To quote Wikipedia, the source of all vaguely accurate knowledge:
The position of Hammersmith and Fulham London Borough Council was quite different from most of the other local authorities. From about 1985 onwards Hammersmith had entered into interest rate swap transactions on an extremely large scale. At one stage it was calculated that Hammersmith was a counterparty to 0.5% of the global trade in swaps, and 10% of the sterling denominated trade. Moreover, quite exceptionally, all of Hammersmith’s positions in the swap market were betting on a fall in interest rates. Most large participants in the swap market have their exposure balanced by taking positions on both sides and across multiple currencies, but Hammersmith was essentially repeatedly entering into one-way bets that sterling interest rates would fall; a bet that they would end up losing spectacularly when interest rates climbed from around 8 per cent to 15 per cent in the space of ten months.
This was, to put it in technical terms, “a really fucking stupid thing to do.” The swaps cases were unwound with great expense and difficulty, and various English banks ended up taking a bath (which you know they must have regarded as some sort of diabolical violation of the natural order) after courts determined that the authorities in question didn’t have the authority under English law to enter into such agreements.
The possibility that interests rates can rise should be an obvious one. But the idea that the pound might be worth less than the dollar is one that people have probably thought about a good deal less, since it hasn’t happened ever. It’s quite possible it hasn’t been contemplated in some percentage of the trillions in derivatives markets and hedging instruments around the world.
For many financial systems, this is going to be an untested use case. Some systems may work just fine, others may break down, and still others may experience race conditions or cascading failures; think of the flash crash of 2010, or the 1987 Black Monday crash. Somewhere, somehow, something is likely to go off the rails.
Hopefully, whatever does blow up won’t be big enough to take down the entire market, or at least not for long. Hopefully it won’t uncover massive problems like the 2008 subprime meltdown uncovered, and there won’t be a firm of systemic importance like AIG was there.
Ukraine is carving out big gains in Kharkiv, Texas is in the money, Biden taps Clinton’s bagman to divy up the graft manage climate change funds, more groomers unmasked, and some big changes in the UK. Plus a bit about tanks. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Ukrainian successes on the Kharkiv City-Izyum line are creating fissures within the Russian information space and eroding confidence in Russian command to a degree not seen since a failed Russian river crossing in mid-May.
Ukrainian forces in the Kharkiv Oblast counteroffensives advanced to within 20 kilometers of Russia’s key logistical node in Kupyansk on September 8.
Ukrainian forces will likely capture Kupyansk in the next 72 hours, severely degrading but not completely severing Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to Izyum.
Ukrainian forces are continuing to target Russian GLOCs, command-and-control points, and ammunition depots in Kherson Oblast.
On Thursday, the state comptroller reported that the Lone Star State’s tax revenue rocketed by 25.6% to a total of $75.21 billion.
It’s only the fifth time since 1988 that revenue grew by a double-digit percentage — and it’s double the next largest increase over that 34-year span.
“Revenues continue to outpace even our most recent forecast as All Funds tax collections closed the fiscal year $841 million above the projection in our Certification Revenue Estimate,” said state Comptroller Glenn Hegar in an official release.
That’s a stark contrast to California, which saw July revenue come in 12% below forecast.
Texas has been a major beneficiary of migration from California: Over the last census cycle, 34% of new Texans arrived from California alone. Meanwhile, New York saw personal income tax collection fall 3.2% from April 1 through July.
Joe Biden has hired John Podesta to be the new Clean Energy Czar, citing his experience in progressive causes….
Bottom line, John Podesta is being now being hired to divvy up the $316 billion in Green New Deal money recently authorized by congress. That is what Podesta specializes in, the distribution of taxpayer money to DNC allied groups and networks in advance of the 2022 midterms. Podesta, Hillary’s fixer, is a bagman, nothing more.
Worse, one of the many bag clients he’s adept at channeling money into Democratic pockets for is China.
President Joe Biden on Friday tapped John Podesta to oversee $370 billion in climate spending, a move that has China hawks on Capitol Hill concerned over Podesta’s encouragement of Chinese investment in American infrastructure and praise for the top U.S. adversary on climate change.
Podesta has called for Chinese investment in American infrastructure, arguing in 2013 that there are “great opportunities for Chinese firms to directly invest in this nation, to build American infrastructure, to create American jobs, and generate steady and handsome returns.” He added, “There’s also the ability for Chinese firms to invest here and learn best practices, and take those home to the tremendous and growing middle class market in China.”
Instead, in the intervening decade, the Chinese government has committed widespread economic espionage—one 2017 estimate found that China steals up to $600 billion in trade secrets a year. Engineers in China, meanwhile, use popular social media platform TikTok to access nonpublic data from U.S. users.
Podesta has also praised China’s efforts to combat climate change, arguing in 2015 that the Chinese “are beginning to do a fair amount.” China, which is the world’s top carbon emitter, went on to dramatically accelerate its coal consumption, which reached a record high in 2020.
That record has China hawks on the Hill concerned that America’s top adversary has a new—and powerful—ally in the White House. Podesta’s role will see the liberal consultant implement $370 billion in spending toward alternative energy, a sector that China dominates when it comes to raw materials. As such, alternative energy companies receiving the Podesta-steered funding could turn to China to secure supplies. The new Biden aide will likely take no issue with that dynamic, given that he has argued the United States and China should “align” on a green economy. Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.) and Ted Cruz (R., Texas) argued that the move reflects the White House’s soft-on-China stance.
Democratic County Administrator Robert Telles charged in the death of journalist Jeff German, “an investigative reporter with the Las Vegas Review-Journal who had spent the last few months exposing misdeeds and turmoil in the official’s office.” For all Sundown Joe’s dark mutterings about “UltraMAGA,” it seems like Democrats are the ones doing all the killing…
A now-former elementary school teacher previously charged with sexual abuse of a 7-year-old student was arrested again and charged with sexually assaulting a second victim.
Victor Moreno, 28, was charged in July with continuous sexual abuse of a child, a first-degree felony, and an improper relationship between a student and educator, a second-degree felony.
The accused pedophile’s victim was a second-grade girl in Irving Independent School District, where Moreno was a teacher at the time of the alleged assaults during the 2020-2021 school year.
Snip.
Meanwhile, a teacher’s aide in Mesquite Independent School District was arrested Tuesday after being accused of engaging in inappropriate relationships with students.
Bryan Garcia, 22, was charged with two counts of sexual assault of a child and one count of indecency with a child.
“Higher Ed’s New Woke Loyalty Oaths: A ballooning number of hiring and tenure decisions require candidates to express written fealty to political doctrines.” And you can bet those doctrines have nothing to do with constitutionally limited government based on universal rights…
Indeed, they’re talking about restarting old production lines to start manufacturing older BMP-2s. “The costs and challenges of bringing more modern designs into production are now surely aggravated by Western sanctions cutting access to many basic electrical components, requiring pricey and time-consuming workarounds.”
This is like a scene from a porn movie, only a lot creepier. “Las Vegas landlord requires tenant to sign sex contract in order to lease home.”
“Kim Kardashian Is Starting Her Own Private Equity Company.” Why not? But I’m betting being a genius at self-promotion doesn’t equate to being a genius at investing, especially since she’s starting in the middle of a fierce, widespread downturn…
Easiest way to win Dad of the Year? Pick your son up from school in a tank. Looks like a Scorpion light tank, most likely the FV107 Scimitar reconnaissance variant.
“FBI Drops Investigation After Discovering Trump’s Top Secret Nuclear Documents Were Just Print-Outs Of Hillary Clinton Emails.”
The House on Thursday passed the bipartisan Chips and Science Act, which aims to increase domestic production of computer chips to allow the U.S. to become more competitive against China in the global technology market.
The bill passed the House in a 243-187 vote one day after passing the Senate in a 64-33 vote. The legislation now heads to the desk of President Joe Biden.
Biden called the passage of the bill on Thursday “exactly what we need to be doing to grow our economy right now.”
“Today, the House passed a bill that will make cars cheaper, appliances cheaper, and computers cheaper,” Biden said. “It will lower the costs of every day goods. And, it will create high-paying manufacturing jobs across the country and strengthen U.S. leadership in the industries of the future at the same time.”
Twenty-four Republicans voted to pass the measure, despite Republican leadership making a last minute push to discourage GOP lawmakers from supporting the bill. GOP leaders sought to keep the bill from passing after news broke on Wednesday that Senator Joe Manchin (D., W. Va.) had reached a deal with Democratic leaders on a nearly half-a-trillion dollar spending package targeting energy and climate, health care, and increased taxes on the wealthy.
Snip.
The measure includes $39 billion to “build, expand, or modernize domestic facilities and equipment” for semiconductors, $2 billion to specifically manufacture semiconductors and $11 billion for Department of Commerce research and development.
“Research and development” is no doubt going to be a rich conduit of graft to Democratic Party cronies having nothing to do with semiconductors.
For reference, $29 billion is probably just enough to build two state-of-the-art 300mm chip fabrication plants.
As I’ve argued before, the reasoning behind the bill is specious and it won’t result in a single new chip being fabbed in the next two years.
The most recent stats I can find show that the United States has some 47% of the semiconductor market. We (and Taiwan, and South Korea) are kicking China’s ass in semiconductors.
The chips China make are generally either: A.) Cheap, or B.) intended for their internal market. No one sends cutting edge chips to be fabbed in China because they don’t have the tech to do it and everyone know they’ll steal your designs and crank out knock-offs on the sly whenever possible. China’s semiconductor industry is mostly smoke and mirrors all the way down.
Semiconductor subsidies have all the hallmarks of a classic Washington boondoggle: The wrong action at the wrong time for the wrong problem.
Second, the shortage wasn’t the result of a “chip shortage,” it was the result of “a lack of available foundry wafer starts.” Automakers cancelled their orders for display drivers when it looked like Flu Manchu lockdowns were going to depress the economy for a while, and were caught off-guard by the V-shaped recovery under Trump, and got sent to the back of the line to get their product fabbed after they changed their mind. Remember, just about all foundries are running flat-out 24/7/365, pausing only to switch to different chips for different customers. There’s no slack in the system, and those wafer starts are already spoken for (and possibly paid for) by other customers well in advance. Just as nine woman can’t give birth to a fully grown baby in one month, you can’t just “make chips quicker” in an existing fab.
Third, remember that cutting edge semiconductor fabs are hideously expensive. Moore’s second law states that the cost of a new, cutting edge semiconductor plant doubles every four years. Samsung’s planned fab in Taylor, Texas is going to cost $17 billion.
Fourth, nothing about these subsidies will address the real problem with American semiconductors, which is that the overwhelming majority of cutting edge chip designs have to flow through TSMC fabs in Taiwan. What will solve that problem is TSMC opening a state-of-the art fab in Arizona in 2024. No amount of U.S. taxpayer money will make that already-under-construction fab start producing chips any quicker.
Could these subsidies boost American semiconductor manufacturing 2-3 years from now? Possibly. Knowing the cycling nature of the industry and the tendency of government subsidies to backfire, new/upgraded fab lines might come online just as the industry is experiencing a glut.
But the real key to restoring America to the cutting edge of semiconductor manufacturing is the already-in-progress inshoring of cutting edge foreign owned fabs from Samsung and TSMC, and having American semiconductor manufacturers like Intel and GlobalFoundries master sub-10nm chip fabrication processes, something they have heretofore been unable to do. (Intel is closer, having been on the cutting edge until they lost their way, while GlobalFoundries stopped all development on their 7nm node because they couldn’t find a way to make the investment pay off.)
Throwing buckets of budget-busting borrowed taxpayer money around isn’t going to make any of those things happen any faster.
Russian forces have retreated from a Ukrainian airfield that was key to their original plan of overthrowing Volodymyr Zelensky’s government.
Hostomel airport, just oustide Kyiv, was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting of the Ukraine war, as Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, sought to establish an air bridge to the capital.
Control of the airport, 20km from Kyiv, changed hands several times, as Ukrainians at first defended fiercely and then attacked the Russian occupiers.
Five weeks on, the Russians have moved out having failed in their mission, according to a senior US defence official, as it abandons plans to take the capital and shift forces to the east.
This is a huge win for Ukraine, but it also means that surviving Russian forces can shift over to east Ukraine where the war is still hot.
Also: “Ukraine forces pulled off a rare attack on Russian soil Friday when two military helicopters destroyed a fuel depot in the city of Belgorod, situated roughly 40 miles north of the border with Ukraine.”
A key inflation metric monitored by the Federal Reserve soared 6.4 percent in February compared to a a [sic] year ago, reaching a new 40-year high.
The latest price surge, which affected the price of fuel, groceries and other consumer essentials, represents the largest year-over-year increase since January 1982, according to data released by the Commerce Department on Thursday.
Not taking into account food and energy fluctuations, which tend to be more erratic and can overemphasize inflation, the personal consumption expenditures price index, the preferred inflation gauge of the Federal Reserve, jumped 5.4 percent in February from a year prior. Including gas and groceries, PCE surged 6.4 percent.
It’s gonna get worse…
The Biden Administration is evidently all-in on tranny madness and grooming your children:
The Biden Administration has now determined that "gender affirming care" – including puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries – is a right of trans youth and "appropriate" and "necessary" for their health.
The Biden Justice Department will come after states that disagree.
Speaking of DeSantis, he has some pretty sweet talent lined up for this:
Johnny & Ronnie Van Zant, brother of original Lynyrd Skynyrd lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, made DeSantis’s new campaign video, “Sweet Florida,” replete with shots at the press, a dig at Fauci and loads of beach and flag-waving b-roll pic.twitter.com/Wd3F7u466Q
Through brand names like “comprehensive sex education” and one of its parent programs, “Social-Emotional Learning (SEL),” our government schools have been turned into Groomer Schools, and parents are beginning to notice. What many will not understand, however, is that this isn’t just a fluke of our weird and increasingly degenerate times. It is, in fact, a long-purposed Marxist project reaching back into the early 20th century. In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, join James Lindsay as he explains the long history of the sexual grooming that has come into our schools through Critical Gender Theory and Queer Theory as they have crept into educational programs.
There’s an hour long video there I haven’t watched all of yet…
Speaking of groomers:
An Oregon elementary school teacher has been arrested near Seattle for two charges of attempted child rape & more. Andrew Bert Hammond, a fourth-grade teacher at Newby Elementary School, allegedly proposed to meet at a hotel & had handcuffs & duct tape. https://t.co/o2aJnzmZpX
Just how bad is the graft, waste and fraud in that $1.5 trillion porkulus bill? This bad. Look over that vast list of special subsidies and ask yourself “How many of these programs are designed to channel taxpayer money into the pockets of Democratic activists.” The answer seems to be “Most of them.”
“8 Joe Biden Scandals Inside Hunter Biden’s MacBook That Corporate Media Just Admitted Is Legit.” China, Ukraine, Russia, etc.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki is leaving for MSNBC. So many angles: A.) Rats, sinking ship. B.) That revolving door between Democratic staffers and the MSM continues apace. C.) I hear she has an offer to star in Chairman of the Board 2.
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the supply chain: “22,000 Union Workers At 29 West Coast Ports May Strike…West Coast union dockworkers may strike if they don’t come to an agreement to replace their existing contract with marine terminals. The contract is set to expire at the end of June.” Labor strikes are yet another part of the classic winter of discontent formula the Biden Administration is using to bring back the worst of the 1970s.
Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner has presided over a surge in violent crime, and his new policy promises more of it. Krasner recently announced plans to de-prosecute crimes for offenders aged 18 to 25, ignoring how this age group tends to contain the most violent of criminal defendants.
Krasner’s office has established a new unit that will move some 18-to-25-year-old defendants into “rehabilitative programming” instead of seeking criminal punishments. As Krasner’s data dashboard demonstrates, “rehabilitative programming” is just a euphemism for dismissing charges. Krasner promises that the program will be limited to nonviolent offenses, including drug trafficking and other offenses. (The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that gun crimes will not be included, but Krasner has previously stated that prosecutions for illegal gun possession are “not only ineffective but unjust and racially discriminatory.” The link in the district attorney’s office data dashboard about Philadelphia’s Gun Violence Task Force takes the reader to a page that states “Article Not Found.”)
This new program reflects Krasner’s determination not to think like a prosecutor, but instead to think like the criminal defense lawyer he was. The program was developed by Sangeeta Prasad, a fellow with the district attorney’s office who previously served as a public defender in New York, New Mexico, and Philadelphia. Before assuming her current post, she had no prior experience as a prosecutor, just like Krasner. The chief public defender for Philadelphia has called the new unit “an incredible initiative,” but Philadelphia courts were not invited to the press conference announcing the plan and stated that they were not aware of the experiment.
The new initiative comes at an awkward time. In 2021, Philadelphia experienced the highest number of homicides in its history, and the violence is continuing in 2022. Indeed, Philadelphia homicides have risen every year that Krasner has been in office, as carjackings, shootings, and drug overdoses soar. What makes the policy more bizarre is that it runs counter to decades of criminological research. One of the iron laws of criminal conduct is the so-called age-crime curve, which demonstrates that the majority of serious crimes are committed by defendants between the ages of 15 and 25. This finding obtains around the world and has been replicated time and again.
Speaking of repeat offenders, Millen, Georgia police Officer Larry “Ben” Thompson quit after being caught on tape having public sex while on-duty. Fair enough, but his lengthy record of misdeeds makes you wonder why he wasn’t fired long ago, since he managed to shoot another officer in the arm (“negligent discharge”) and killed a guy in a traffic accident in route to a call. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Nevada/Utah Ponzi scheme leads to FBI shootout. “The alleged $300 million scheme, run by a lawyer named Matthew Beasley, came to a head when FBI agents went to his home earlier this month and Beasley drew a gun on himself, before pointing it at agents, prompting them to shoot him.”
“[Fort Worth Superintendent] Kent Scribner will leave the district this August instead of in 2024, when his contract ends. In response to recent outcry from parents regarding Superintendent Kent Scribner’s support of CRT-based policies, Fort Worth ISD’s school board voted 7-0 to move up Scribner’s last day as superintendent to August 31, 2022.”
Ouch! Texas “Taxpayers’ Property Appraisals Rising 20% to 50% as Supply Chain Disruptions Meet Population Growth.” Austin-Round Rock is slated for the biggest increase, some 35.4%.
Don’t look now, but there’s another big Zero Day Internet infrastructure exploit out in the wild. “Spring4Shell is a remote code execution vulnerability in Spring Framework that can be exploited for remote code execution without authentication.” Spring is a Java framework that’s almost 20 years old, so the issue could potential be lurking in a lot of places…
Speaking of false accusations of racism, Gibson’s Bakery win over Oberlin in court yet again. “A three-judge panel on the Ninth District Court of Appeals issued a unanimous decision to uphold a 2019 ruling by Lorain County Judge John Miraldi, who initially awarded the bakery more than $40 million in punitive and compensatory damages, Cleveland.com reported. However, the sum was later reduced to $25 million, though the bakery was awarded more than $6 million for lawyers’ fees.”
We were driving on the PA Turnpike when a warning came across about sudden snow squalls and possible dangerous highway conditions. We got snow but nothing like THIS! Prayers for all involved. 🙏🏻 pic.twitter.com/IrNX6inRQi
I know there’s a lot going on in the world today, but can we just take a moment to reflect on how crazy it is that the United States House of Representatives just passed a $1.5 TRILLION spending bill that no one has read?
The House passed an expansive $1.5 trillion spending bill on Wednesday night that includes funding for the government through the end of the fiscal year…
So that piddling, measly $1.5 trillion isn’t the full budget, it’s just through the end of the fiscal year, which is to say September 30. That’s more than Ronald Reagan’s first two budgets for their entire fiscal years combined.
…emergency aid for Ukraine’s war effort, but also a number of ambiguous programs abroad…
Really, who doesn’t like paying for “ambiguous programs abroad”?
..with pandemic relief funding being thrown out at the last minute.
The omnibus package was bifurcated into two votes, both of which received bipartisan support: one for defense spending and one for domestic social spending. For the former, which included funding for the Pentagon, Department of Homeland Security, and national security, the House voted 361-69. For the latter, the vote was 260-171. The renewal of funding for the government came before a federal funding was set to expire Friday.
Over 2,700 pages in length…
And here’s how you know that no single human being read all 2,700 pages, because it was unveiled yesterday. Of course, that’s the entire point, so no one can point out the graft and payouts earmarked for political cronies.
…the bill includes approximately $14 billion for humanitarian, security, and economic support for Ukraine and Eastern European countries as they counter the Russian invasion but also under $40 million for “democracy programs” for Venezuela, an authoritarian socialist country. Another provision allocates $6 million in spending to an international leadership fund with some Russian recipients that are “engaging in free market development, humanitarian activities, and civic engagement.” However, the money will “not be used for officials of the central government of Russia,” it specifies.
The $15.6 billion in Covid-19 funding was scrapped due to a disagreement between the parties over how to finance it. Republicans had proposed redirecting previously allocated pandemic funds from state governments to offset the federal cost of Covid-19 relief, which Democrats opposed. The White House and Democratic leaders were reportedly angered that the Covid-19 money was abandoned, with a number of members airing their discontents and potentially jeopardizing the entire spending measure. The removal of the funds came as a shock to many rank-and-file Democrats and delayed the legislative process for hours.
Inflation is hitting 40 year highs, and the U.S. budget deficit for this year is estimated at over a trillion dollars, but the federal budget never, ever undergoes a diet. The last balanced budget was back in 2001.
Uncontrolled spending is the root issue for many of our current woes, and if left unchecked will be the ruin of this nation.
With several of the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates still in effect — such as those affecting members of the military, federal contractors, and healthcare workers — Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) is calling on lawmakers to block government spending that funds the enforcement of those mandates.
Roy, along with 48 other Republicans in Congress, sent a letter to the GOP leadership in each chamber pledging to refuse consideration of “any federal government funding vehicle [. . .] that funds the enforcement of COVID-19 vaccine mandates at any level of government.”
The letter comes in advance of February 18, 2022, the date through which the federal government is currently funded thanks to two continuing resolutions (CRs) that were passed by Congress last fall.
According to the top-ranking Republican in the Senate Appropriations Committee, Congress is headed toward passing another stop-gap measure to continue funding the government without any shutdowns.
Republicans like Roy — who also expressed frustration with the national debt surpassing $30 trillion — don’t want to see that funding continue to support the COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
During a House floor speech on Friday, Roy explained his position, saying, “[W]hen members of this body or the United States Senate vote for a continuing resolution — I want every American to listen to me — when they vote for a continuing resolution to fund government, they are voting to fund the enforcement of vaccine mandates that are causing our men and women in uniform to be forced out of service, to be discharged.”
Members of the Texas delegation who signed Roy’s letter include Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Reps. Louie Gohmert (R-TX-01), Dan Crenshaw (R-TX-02), Lance Gooden (R-TX-05), Ronny Jackson (R-TX-13), Randy Weber (R-TX-14), Pete Sessions (R-TX-17), Troy Nehls (R-TX-22), Michael Cloud (R-TX-27), Michael Burgess (R-TX-26), and Brian Babin (R-TX-26).
Opposition to vaccine mandates is widespread in America, and almost universal among Republicans, which makes defunding them an excellent hill to defend. The only question is why more GOP legislators haven’t signed this pledge.
If Biden and congressional Democrats didn’t want their unconstitutional regulatory schemes held hostage to continuing resolutions, they should have tried to get them passed into law and passed an actual budget rather than a continuing resolution. Too bad pandering to their far left-wing base was more important than writing a budget Manchin and Sinema could sign off on.
He who lives by the continuing resolution dies by the continuing resolution.
