Recording events from public land shouldn’t be a crime.
Yet when a woman in Utah, standing by a public road, filmed farmworkers pushing a cow with a bulldozer, the farmer drove up to her and said, “You cannot videotape my property.”
Soon the police came and local prosecutors charged her with “agricultural operation interference.”
They dropped the charges several months later since she was on public land.
But what if she’d posed as a farmworker, got a job on the farm, and then secretly recorded what she saw?
Increasingly, activists do that. More than 100 such undercover investigations have been done.
They then distribute video that sometimes shows animals being cruelly abused. In my video this week, we see calves being hit, kicked, and thrown.
Farmers, upset about such recordings, are now asking politicians to outlaw them, and several state legislatures have obliged. They’ve passed “ag-gag” laws—bans on sneaking onto farms to secretly record what they see.
Kay Johnson Smith of the Animal Agriculture Alliance supports such laws, though she doesn’t use the term “ag-gag.”
“We call it ‘farm protection,'” she told me. “Activists stalk farms to try to capture something that the public doesn’t understand. The agricultural community is the only business where this sort of tactic is really being used.”
Smith says the activists’ real agenda is not just preventing cruelty to animals: “These activist groups want to eliminate all of animal agriculture.”
I believe her. Many activists are animal rights extremists.
But I also worry that laws like ag-gag rules will stop people from revealing abuses. I’m an investigative reporter. I can’t do my job well if laws prevent me from showing the abuse. Audiences often won’t believe what I report if they can’t see it for themselves.
Videos made by the group Mercy for Animals have led to criminal charges. Some of their investigations led Walmart to create new purchasing policies.
The Animal Legal Defense Fund claims ag-gag laws violate the First Amendment. They’ve succeeded in getting several states’ ag-gag laws struck down.
When Iowa’s law was ruled unconstitutional, legislators simply replaced it with a narrower law that forbids activists to lie to get access to farms.
The activists argue that because farms lie about their practices, the only way to reveal the truth is to lie to get onto farms.
Activists simply “want to ensure that the American public knows how these foods are processed, what happens to animals,” says Animal Legal Defense Fund lawyer Amanda Howell.
“You’ve got tens of thousands of animals in warehouses standing on concrete floors never seeing the light of day…. If that affects people’s purchasing decisions, then there’s a reason for it,” says Howell.
“They want to make their movie…their sensational video,” retorts Smith. “If they really cared about animals, they would stop it right then! Instead, they go weeks and months without reporting anything to the farm owners.”
That’s often true.
Activists say long-term investigations are necessary because otherwise “a company can say this is a one-off,” says Howell. Long-term investigations “show that’s something that happens every day.”
I took that argument to Smith.
“What they really want is to stop people from eating meat, milk and eggs,” she said. “There are bad apples in every industry, (but) 99.9 percent of farmers in America, they do the right thing every single day. Farming isn’t always pretty.”
I asked Howell if she and her group do want to end all consumption of meat and eggs. It’s funny watching her response on the video. She never gives a straight answer.
But her evasions bother me less than corporations using politicians to censor their critics.
Whatever you think of the activists—and I have problems with many of them—government shouldn’t pass special laws that prevent people from revealing what’s true.
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The Trump administration last week cut its fourth and biggest arms sale to Taiwan, sparking a furious condemnation from Beijing that the US was undermining its sovereignty and “grossly interfering in China’s internal affairs”.
The weapons deal reportedly worth some $2.2 billion is expected to be given final approval by Congress in the next few weeks. It follows three other major arms sales since 2017 to Taiwan conducted by the Trump administration.
Beijing slammed the latest military transaction as a “violation of international law and the One China policy” – the latter referring to the long-established US consensus with China that Taiwan island is under Beijing’s sovereignty.
Since the Chinese communist revolution in 1949 Taiwan has always been viewed as a renegade province by Beijing, having sheltered retreating anti-communist nationalist forces. Previous US administrations have sold weapons to Taiwan since 1979 when Washington and Beijing normalized diplomatic relations.
However, the Trump administration appears to be blatantly exploiting secessionist tensions between Taiwan and mainland China. By massively arming the island, there is a danger that Taiwanese separatists will feel emboldened to declare independence, a move which Beijing has always said would trigger it to deploy military force in order to assert its sovereignty.
“The latest US approval of arms sales to the island of Taiwan will hurt delicate China-US relations at a sensitive time when China and the US are to resume trade talks, and Taiwan secessionists should know that they are only being used as a card by the US… China and the US are stuck in a trade war and the US is playing all kinds of cards to create trouble and pressure China. Taiwan is one of them and nothing more.”
The dynamics over Taiwan have resonance with how the Trump administration has used sanctions to hamper commercial market access for Chinese tech giant Huawei, allegedly on the grounds of protecting US “national security”. There is also the suspicion that Washington and its Western allies have exploited political unrest in Hong Kong as another means to undermine Beijing’s sovereignty and meddle in China’s internal affairs. Trump’s dealings with Taiwan thus seem to be part of a broader tactic to antagonize and pressure China.
Last month, American media reported White House sources as saying that President Trump was deliberating using Taiwan as a “bargaining chip” in his trade dispute with China.
The timing of the latest arms sale comes only two weeks after Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping appeared to strike an amicable agreement at the G20 summit to resolve the long-running trade war between the world’s two biggest economies. Over the past year, Trump has been piling tariffs on Chinese exports in a bid to extract concessions from Beijing favoring American interests. China has responded with its own sanctions on US trade and appears unwilling to unilaterally accommodate Trump’s economic demands.
Selling weapons to Taiwan and inflaming nationalist tensions on the island would serve Trump’s negotiating agenda for making “America First” in his trade dispute with Beijing.
A look at the weapons being sold to Taiwan begs questions. The mainstay of the recent sale is an inventory for over 100 Abrams tanks. As Chinese military experts point out, these 60-ton vehicles are unsuited to Taiwan’s dense river network and weak roads. The strategic military value is therefore questionable. But the political value is immense, if the real purpose is to antagonize Beijing.
Moreover, the latest proposed purchase is unlikely to be the last. Earlier this year, the Taiwanese authorities requested to buy 66 F-16 fighter jets from the US. That deal was put on hold by the Trump administration seemingly to mitigate tensions with China over the ongoing trade war. If Trump doesn’t get the far-reaching economic concessions he is seeking from China, one can expect the sale of F-16 squadrons to be green lighted in another act of exerting leverage on Beijing.
The grave trouble is that Trump is recklessly provoking China by using Taiwan as a pawn. Already US warships have increased patrolling through the Strait of Taiwan, the narrow strip of sea separating it from the mainland. The Pentagon cynically calls these maneuvers “freedom of navigation” exercises.
By arming Taiwan with audacious weapons inventories, the danger is that secessionist politicians on the island will adopt a more belligerent position towards Beijing, feeling that they have Washington’s backing if a conflict were to break out.
Thus the Trump administration is shamelessly using Taiwan as a form of blackmail against China. The fiendish American logic is: “do as we say on trade policies or else expect more trouble in your own backyard.”
But in this pursuit, Trump is risking war with China from his egotistical desire to be the winner on trade. It’s a reprehensible reckless tactic that this president is using elsewhere with regard to Iran, Russia, Venezuela and anyone else whom Trump wants to roll over. It’s hardly smart business acumen. It’s simply criminal use of state terrorism as a negotiating technique.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2LoWHT3 Tyler Durden
A startup in Sweden called Biohax International has microchipped more than 4,000 people across the country who can use their hands to open secured doors, replace credit cards and cash, pay for transportation tickets, and share emergency information with medical personnel, reported New York Post.
The microchip is about the size of a grain of rice, and the procedure to inject it into a hand costs about $180 — is similar to getting a vaccination.
“It’s very ‘Black Mirror,'” Swedish scientist Ben Libberton told The Post.
Biohax founder Jowan Österlund told Fortune magazine that his chips are considered “moonshot” technology — has sparked institutional interest in the last 6 to 8 months. Some have even said they want to take the technology of microchipping humans to a global level.
“Tech will move into the body,” Österlund said. “I am sure of that.”
Österlund said the tiny microchips are implanted in the hand allows people to unlock doors or gym lockers, operate office printers, pay for lunch, or purchase a train ticket, all with their hand.
The company has positioned itself for the cashless society, expected to flourish in Europe in the next several years.
Österlund insists the technology is completely safe — but said some people fear the chips could fall victim to cybercriminals.
Libberton told The Post that the potential health benefits of internal microchips would be accurate health metrics taken from within the body.
“Think if the Apple Watch could measure things like blood glucose,” he said.
Libberton suggested that if big corporations got a hold of this highly personalized data – it would be super invasive.
“The problem is, who owns this data?” he asked. “Do I get a letter from my insurance company saying premiums are going up before I know I’m ill? If I use the chip to buy lunch, go to the gym and go to work, will someone have all of this info about me? Is this stored and is it safe?”
Libberton added, “It’s not just about the chip, but integration with other systems and data sharing.”
Those who have been chipped don’t have to worry about being followed by the government or corporations, that is because the chips aren’t powered, thus cannot support GPS or 3G, LTE, and or 5G.
There are a handful of companies progressing human microchipping at the moment, such as Cyberise. Me, in Melbourne, Australia, Three Square Market in Wisconsin and Dangerous Things in Seattle.
The proliferation of human microchipping and the cashless society could become more widespread when governments ban cash after the next global reset.
So basically Biohax is an eyeopener into how you will pay for things in 2025.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2GbTTEz Tyler Durden
It is undoubtedly my favorite part of every wedding. That awkward, but strangely forthright moment when the preacher asks the crowd for any objections to the couple’s marriage. No one ever objects, of course, but it’s still a raw, if tense, moment. I just love it.
I suppose we had that ubiquitous ritual in mind back in 2007 when Keith – a close buddy and fellow officer – and I crafted our own plan of objection. The setting was Baghdad, Iraq, at the start of the “surge” and the climax of the bloody civil war the U.S. invasion had unleashed. Just twenty three years old and only eighteen months out of the academy, my clique of officers had already decided the war was a mess, shouldn’t have been fought, and couldn’t be won.
Me and Keith, though, were undoubtedly the most radical. We both just hated how our squadron’s colonel would hijack the memorial ceremonies held for dead troopers – including three of my own – and use the occasion of his inescapable speech to encourage we mourners to use the latest death as a reason to “rededicate ourselves to the mission and the people of Iraq.” The whole thing was as repulsive as it was repetitive.
So it was that after a particularly depressing ceremony, perhaps our squadron’s tenth or so, that we hatched our little defiant scheme. If (or when) one of us was killed, the other promised – and this was a time and place where promises are sacred – to object, stand up, and announce to the colonel and the crowd that we’d listen to no such bullshit at this particular ceremony, not this time. “Danny didn’t believe in this absurd mission for a minute, he wouldn’t want his death to rededicate us to anything,” Keith would have said! Luckily it never came to that. We both survived, Keith left the army soon after, and I, well, toiled along until something snapped and I chose the road of public dissent. Still, I believe either of us would have actually done it – even if it did mean the end of our respective careers. That’s called brotherhood…and love.
I got to thinking on that when I read a story this week which was both disturbing, refreshing, and sickening all at the same time. A major opinion poll’s results were released which demonstrated that fully two-thirds of post 9/11 veterans now think the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan “weren’t worth fighting.” That’s a remarkable, and distressing, statistic and one that should give America’s president, legislators, media, and people as a whole, serious pause. Not that it will, mind you, but it should! It’s doubtful that US military combat vets – who are more rural, southern, and conservative than the population at large – have ever so incontrovertibly turned on a war, at least since the very end of Vietnam.
On one level I felt a sense of vindication for my longtime antiwar stances when I read about the study – in the Military Times no less. But that was just ego. Within minutes I was sad, inconsolably and completely melancholy. Because if, as a “filibuster-proof” majority of my fellow veterans (and maybe even our otherwise unhinged president) believes, the Iraq and Afghan wars weren’t worth the sacrifice, then consider the unsettling implications. It would mean, for starters, that the US flushed nearly $5.9 trillion in hard-earned taxpayer cash down the toilet. It means that 7,000 American soldiers and upwards of 244,000 foreign civilians needn’t have lost their ever precious lives. Hundreds of thousands more might not have been injured or maimed. 21 million people wouldn’t have become refugees. The world, so to speak, could’ve been a safer, better place.
Those ever-so-logical conclusions should dismay even the most apathetic American. They should make us all rather sad, but, more importantly, should inform future decisions about the use of military force, the role of America in the world, and just how much foreign policy power to turn over to presidents. Because if we, collectively, don’t learn from our country’s eighteen year, tragic saga, then this republic is, without exaggeration, finished, once and for all. Benjamin Franklin, that confounding Founding Father, wasn’t sure the American people could be trusted to “keep” the republic he and other elites formed. It’d be a devastating catastrophe to prove him right, especially in this time of rising right-wing, strongman populism in the Western world.
So consider this a plea to Congress, to the corporate media establishment, and to all of you: when even traditionally more conservative and martial military veterans raise the antiwar alarm – listen! And next time the American war drums beat, and they undoubtedly will, consider this article encouragement to do what Keith and I promised way back when. Object! Refuse to fight the next ill-advised and unethical war. Remember: to do so demonstrates brotherhood and love. Love of each other and love of country…
* * *
Danny Sjursen is a retired US Army officer. He served combat tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan and later taught history at his alma mater, West Point. He is the author of a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, Ghostriders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2XT6EKj Tyler Durden
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative to the Arctic was outlined last year in an official Arctic policy white paper that detailed China’s push to build infrastructure and conduct commercial shipping travel in the Arctic.
China hopes to establish a ‘Polar Silk Road‘ through developing the Northern Sea Route would save commercial vessels 20 days versus that traditional route through the Suez Canal.
China’s growing influence in the Arctic has led to the new commissioning of the 13,996-ton Xuelong 2 (Snow Dragon II), was transferred last week to the Polar Research Institute of China, part of the natural resources ministry, in Shanghai, after undergoing two weeks of sea trials, reported South China Morning Post.
China’s 1st domestically-built polar research vessel and icebreaker “Xuelong 2” has started its 12-day trial voyage pic.twitter.com/tuF6OcwjqA
Qin Weijia, director in charge of polar research with China’s State Oceanic Administration, told journalist during a press conference that the new icebreaker will be Station on the 36th Chinese scientific expedition to Antarctica, where it would carry out “scientific research.”
Snow Dragon II is China’s second icebreaker and the first to be domestically built.
Experts believe the icebreakers could pave the way for China to become a dominant player in the Arctic, which would be met with severe Western backlash.
The commissioning of the new icebreaker coincides with an escalating economic war between China and the US.
China’s increasing presence in the Arctic, especially its partnership with Russia, recently triggered US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. He described China as having “aggressive behavior” and has transformed the region into “an arena of global power and competition.”
Last Wednesday, Defence One reported that US’ top naval commander in Europe, Admiral James Foggo III, said early estimates show China is rapidly increasing its presence in the Arctic.
“Though it [China] sits more than 900 miles south of the Arctic Circle, the country has long been interested in the region’s resources,” he said.
Foggo said it’s essential for the US Navy to continue modernization efforts and ramp up patrols in the Arctic as the region becomes “more accessible, to protect the American people, our sovereign territory and rights, and the natural resources and interests” of the US and its allies.
China has zero territorial claims in the Arctic, but that hasn’t stopped the rising power of the world from establishing footholds in the regions.
China’s long game is setting up the ‘Polar Silk Road’ by using icebreakers to clear shipping channels in the Arctic would allow for quicker shipping between China and Europe.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Lq825x Tyler Durden
During the face-off earlier this year between India and Pakistan over a terrorist attack that killed more than 40 Indian paramilitaries in Kashmir, New Delhi made an existential threat to Islamabad.
The weapon was not India’s considerable nuclear arsenal, but one still capable of inflicting ruinous destruction: water.
“We will divert water from eastern rivers and supply it to our people in Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab.”
India controls three major rivers that flow into Pakistan.
If India had followed through, it would have abrogated the 1960 Indus Water Treaty (IWT) between the two counties, a move that could be considered an act of war.
In the end, nothing much came of it. India bombed some forests, and Pakistan bombed some fields. But the threat underlined a growing crisis in South Asia, where water-stressed mega-cities and intensive agriculture are quite literally drying the subcontinent up. By 2030, according to a recent report, half the population of India — 700 million people — will lack adequate drinking water. Currently, 25 percent of India’s population is suffering from drought.
“If the wars of this century were fought over oil, the wars of the next century will be fought over water,” warns Ismail Serageldin, a former executive for the World Bank.
Bilateral Strains
While relations between India and Pakistan have long been tense — they have fought three wars since 1947, one of which came distressingly close to going nuclear — in terms of water sharing, they are somewhat of a model.
After almost a decade of negotiations, both countries signed the IWT in 1960 to share the output of six major rivers. The World Bank played a key role by providing $1 billion for the Indus Basin Development Fund.
But the ongoing tensions over Kashmir have transformed water into a national security issue for both countries. This, in turn, has limited the exchange of water and weather data, making long-term planning extremely difficult.
The growing water crisis is heightened by climate change. Both countries have experienced record-breaking heat waves, and the mountains that supply the vast majority of water for Pakistan and India are losing their glaciers. The Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment report estimates that by 2100, some two-thirds of the area’s more than 14,000 glaciers will be gone.
India’s response to declining water supplies, like that of many other countries in the region, is to build dams. But dams not only restrict downstream water supplies, they block the natural flow of silt. That silt renews valuable agricultural land and also replenishes the great deltas, like the Ganges-Brahmaputra, the Indus, and the Mekong. The deltas not only support fishing industries, they also act as natural barriers to storms.
The Sunderbans — a vast, 4,000 square-mile mangrove forest on the coasts of India and Bangladesh — is under siege. As climate change raises sea levels, upstream dams reduce the flow of freshwater that keeps the salty sea at bay. The salt encroachment eventually kills the mangrove trees and destroys farmland. Add to this increased logging to keep pace with population growth, and Bangladesh alone will lose some 800 square miles of Sunderban over the next few years.
As the mangroves are cut down or die off, they expose cities like Kolkata and Dhaka to the unvarnished power of typhoons, storms which climate change is making more powerful and frequent.
The Third Pole
The central actor in the South Asia water crisis is China, which sits on the sources of 10 major rivers that flow through 11 countries, and which supply 1.6 billion people with water. In essence, China controls the “Third Pole,” that huge reservoir of fresh water locked up in the snow and ice of the Himalayas.
And Beijing is building lots of dams to collect water and generate power.
Over 600 large dams either exist or are planned in the Himalayas. In the past decade, China has built three dams on the huge Brahmaputra that has its origin in China but drains into India and Bangladesh.
While India and China together represent a third of the world’s population, both countries have access to only 10 percent of the globe’s water resources — and no agreements on how to share that water. While tensions between Indian and Pakistan mean the Indus Water Treaty doesn’t function as well as it could, nevertheless the agreement does set some commonly accepted ground rules, including binding arbitration. No such treaty exists between New Delhi and Beijing.
While relations between China and India are far better than those between India and Pakistan, under the Modi government New Delhi has grown closer to Washington and has partly bought into a U.S. containment strategy aimed at China. Indian naval ships carry out joint war games with China’s two major regional rivals, Japan and the United States, and there are still disputes between China and India over their mutual border. A sharpening atmosphere of nationalism in both countries is not conducive to cooperation over anything, let alone something as critical as water.
And yet never has there been such a necessity for cooperation. Both countries need the “Third Pole’s” water for agriculture, hydropower, and to feed the growth of mega-cities like Delhi, Mumbai, and Beijing.
Stressed water supplies translate into a lack of clean water, which fuels a health crisis, especially in the sprawling cities that increasingly draw rural people driven out by climate change. Polluted water kills more people than wars, including 1.5 million children under the age of five. Reduced water supplies also go hand in hand with waterborne diseases like cholera. There is even a study that demonstrates thirsty mosquitoes bite more, thus increasing the number of vector borne diseases like zika, malaria, and dengue.
Regional Pacts Won’t Cut It
South Asia is hardly alone in facing a crisis over fresh water. Virtually every continent on the globe is looking at shortages. According to the World Economic Forum, by 2030 water sources will only cover 60 percent of the world’s daily requirement.
The water crisis is no longer a problem that can be solved through bilateral agreements like the IWT, but one that requires regional, indeed, global solutions. If the recent push by the Trump administration to lower mileage standards for automobiles is successful, it will add hundreds of thousands of extra tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, which, in turn, will accelerate climate change.
In short, what comes out of U.S. auto tailpipes will ultimately be felt by the huge Angsi Glacier in Tibet, the well spring of the Brahmaputra, a river that flows through China, India, and Bangladesh, emptying eventually into the Bay of Bengal.
There is no such thing as a local or regional solution to the water crisis, since the problem is global. The only really global organization that exists is the United Nations, which will need to take the initiative to create a worldwide water agreement.
Such an agreement is partly in place. The UN International Watercourses Convention came into effect in August 2014 following Vietnam’s endorsement of the treaty. However, China voted against it, and India and Pakistan abstained. Only parties that signed it are bound by its conventions.
But the convention is a good place to start. “It offers legitimate and effective practices for data sharing, negotiation, and dispute resolution that could be followed in a bilateral or multilateral water sharing arrangement,” according to Srinivas Chokkakula, a water issues researcher at New Delhi’s Center for Policy Research.
By 2025, according to the UN, some 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water shortages, and two-thirds of the world’s population could be under “water stress” conditions. There is enough fresh water for seven billion people, according to the UN, but it is unevenly distributed, polluted, wasted, or poorly managed.
If countries don’t come together around the conventions — which need to be greatly strengthened — and it becomes a free for all with a few countries holding most of the cards, sooner or later the “water crisis” will turn into an old-fashioned war.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2LlzsJT Tyler Durden
Tens of millions of Americans in 43 states may have been exposed to toxic fluorinated compounds known as PFAS in their drinking water.
In a report from May, the non-profit Environmental Working Group (EWG) showed how PFAS had exposed upwards of 19 million Americans through contaminated groundwater. EWG found 610 contaminated locations ranging from public water systems, military bases, military and civilian airports, industrial plants, dumps, and firefighter training sites.
Now the environmental advocacy group has identified 58 more military sites where high levels of PFAS used in firefighting foam have been detected in groundwater or drinking water, from Elmendorf Air Force Base and Fort Richardson, Alaska to Fort Eustis, Virginia, reported the Military Times.
Many of the new locations contain PFAS levels over 100,000 parts per trillion.
“The EPA and the Department of Defense have utterly failed to treat PFAS contamination as a crisis demanding swift and decisive action,” said Ken Cook, president of EWG, in a statement announcing the additional contaminated sites.
“‘It’s time for Congress to end new PFAS pollution and clean up legacy contamination,” Cook said.
For decades, the military and other civilian agencies used firefighting foams that contained PFAS. These dangerous chemicals are also in hundreds of everyday household products.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has warned that the toxic chemicals are present in the blood samples of the general population. Prior studies have shown the dangerous chemicals have been linked to weakened childhood immunity, thyroid disease, cancer, and other major health issues.
DoD officials are prioritizing cleanup operations for 401 of the sites, said Deborah Morefield, manager of the Defense Environmental Restoration Program in the office of the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the environment.
The cleanup process occurred under a law known as the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, or CERCLA, she said. “‘It’s a long process, and it ‘doesn’t happen overnight.”
Under new DoD policy, the firefighting foam has been banned from training, maintenance, or testing exercises, Morefield said. “It’s only being used for real fire emergencies, and even in those cases, we’re treating it as a spill response. We’re collecting and trying to make sure it ‘doesn’t get into the environment further,” she said.
Morefield said Congress had allocated additional monies for cleanup sites. “We are trying to get our hands on this, trying to make sure we get the appropriate funding to move forward to take care of our cleanup responsibilities.”
Congress introduced new legislation earlier this year that would require the EPA to set new limits for PFAS by 2021-22.
EWG’s reports reveal that America’s drinking water crisis goes way beyond Flint.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YTReqw Tyler Durden
With President Donald Trump’s two previous nominees to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors – Stephen Moore and Herman Cain – having withdrawn in the face of stiff resistance in the Senate, the president has nominated two economists – Judy Shelton and Christopher Waller – to those posts.
Waller’s nomination seems safe. He’s an insider, the current executive vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Shelton, on the other hand, is encountering some resistance because she’s an unconventional choice. Her opponents condescendingly scorn her as a “goldbug,” because of her minority viewpoint that the dollar should be backed by gold.
Greg Ip, the erudite economics writer for The Wall Street Journal, questioned whether Shelton is suitable for the position in his most recent column. (It should be noted that the Journal’s editorial page unhesitatingly supports her nomination.) Monetary policy and its political ramifications are incredibly complex, far from an exact science, and people of goodwill can disagree strongly about them. Let me say that while Ip makes some valid points, he’s off target on others, and so I disagree with the doubts he raises about Shelton’s nomination.
Ip diplomatically starts off with two balancing statements, the first true (in certain contexts), the second an indisputable truism:
“Mainstream economists consider the gold standard … impractical—and dangerous,” and
“Mainstream economists have no monopoly on truth.”
Is a gold standard “impractical”? Yes, it is today, but it shouldn’t be. A gold standard is unsustainable, thus impractical, in a country such as ours where the government doesn’t control spending and balance its budget. Gold is “honest” money. Is it “dangerous”? Yes, but only to power structures that depend on fiat money(i.e., money unbacked by anything of real nonmonetary value)for their perpetuation.
One reason why Shelton favors a gold standard is that it has a virtue that Ip acknowledged in his article:
“When all countries were on gold, it made exchange rates stable and predictable.”
Indeed, a multinational gold regime facilitates free and fair trade—a Trump policy goal that most politicians at least pay lip service to. Contrariwise, spasmodic exchange rate fluctuations complicate and undermine free trade.
At the midpoint, Ip’s article becomes problematical. He writes, “To goldbugs … the gold standard’s main appeal is ideological.” Why “ideological”? Aren’t ideologies belief systems that people cling to even when confronted by overwhelming evidence that what they crave doesn’t work as advertised (see “socialism”)? Advocates of a gold standard do so for reasons of benevolence. They want a currency that’ll hold its purchasing power and that makes it harder for government to absorb and commandeer private functions through the printing press. The monetary ideologues today are those who advocate fiat currencies that transfer economic power from Main Street to the governing elite.
Ip chides Shelton for having “accused the Fed of printing money to finance Mr. Obama’s deficits.” That sounds like a fairly accurate accusation to me.
We can debate whether the various rounds of quantitative easing (QE) financed the Obama deficits directly, but the Fed’s ZIRP (zero interest rate policy) certainly did make it easier for President Barack Obama to run immense deficits. The Fed enabled Uncle Sam to “tote the notes” of federal debt more easily by driving down its annual interest expense. Concurrently, ZIRP deprived millions of American savers of the ability to earn modest, safe returns on their savings at banks. In essence, under ZIRP economic power shifted to Washington and its Wall Street auxiliaries at the expense of the U.S. middle class.
As for Shelton’s 2011 declaration that inflation would “inevitably result” from the Fed’s money creation, she appears to have been wrong in the short term, but may prove to be tragically correct in the long term.
To explain: In the short term, prices didn’t rise much in response to the Fed’s money printing. OK, so Shelton doesn’t have a crystal ball. Nobody does. Recall that former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke famously stated, circa 2007, that the housing market wouldn’t have a significant impact on the economy—only to have the housing bubble burst and trigger a financial crisis that became the Great Recession.
We’re all learning about the effects of various Fed policies as we go. We can see now in retrospect that the Fed’s policy of paying banks to hold excess reserves rather than lend those funds out to finance private-sector economic activity (a policy that Shelton has openly criticized) restrained consumer prices, even as government spending soared—another way in which economic power was siphoned from the private sector to the public sector.
In the long term, though, it’s possible that the chickens of the multi-trillion expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet during the QE years will ultimately come home to roost in dollar depreciation. Then, the dollar may lose its status as the global reserve currency and domestic prices might soar. Let’s all hope it doesn’t, but we need people on the Federal Reserve Board who, like Shelton, want to avoid a return to the destructive inflation of the 1970s.
I agree with Ip that Shelton appears to be somewhat partisan. He also writes, though, that the Fed “prides itself on political independence.”
Does anybody really believe that the Fed is above partisan politics? After pursuing ZIRP-like policies to the very end of the Obama presidency before finally starting to raise rates shortly after Trump became president, how can anyone believe that the Fed is free of partisan sympathies?
Another example: Janet Yellen displayed her partisanship for all to see by using her authority as Fed chair to try to persuade economists to jump on board the progressives’ climate change agenda and urge Congress to pass a tax increase (i.e., a carbon tax). That was totally inappropriate, and is a sure sign that a fresh voice such as Shelton’s should be added to the board of governors.
Shelton is 100 percent correct when she questions why a dozen people (the Federal Reserve Board of Governors) should set the prices of capital (interest rates) any more than they should set the price of cars, houses, or bubble gum.
Markets can do that and do it better—as they did before there even was a Federal Reserve system. Shelton opposes policies that would be more at home in a centrally planned economy. That alone is reason enough to confirm her.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2ShUeup Tyler Durden
Records obtained by CBS 17 North Carolina show that a Raleigh, North Carolina man is facing multiple child sex charges stemming from a case dating back to January.
The 32 year old man, Alejandro Duarte Aldama, was arrested last week and charged with “indecent liberties with a child and statutory sex offense – child less than 13; defendant 18+” according to a Wake County arrest warrant.
The warrant claims that he “attempt[ed] to engage in a sex act with…a child who was under the age of 13, namely 6 years old” on Jan. 4.
A follow up report by Breitbart says that law enforcement officials said Aldama “entered the U.S. without inspection, which indicates that he is in the country illegally”. Raleigh, where he had been living, is a sanctuary city that protects illegal aliens from being deported.
As the article points out, this isn’t the first case out of North Carolina this year involving illegal aliens and sex crimes against children:
North Carolina, this year, has seen a number of cases in which illegal aliens have been accused of sex crimes against children. In February, an illegal alien was charged with raping a 14-year-old girl in Harmony, North Carolina, before attempting to flee the U.S. Likewise, two illegal alien teenagers were charged last month for allegedly gang-raping a 13-year-old girl in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Aldama is currently being held on $1 million secured bond.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/30Edh4T Tyler Durden
There seems to be an unwritten rule with lawmakers that, every time they create a terrible piece of legislation, they give it the most noble-sounding name.
The USA PATRIOT Act from 2001 was a great example. It sounds great. Who wouldn’t love a law named for Patriots?
And yet that was easily among the most freedom-killing laws ever passed in US history, giving the federal government nearly unlimited authority to wage war and spy on its own people.
There are so many other examples– the USA FREEDOM Act from 2015 (which renewed many of the worst provisions of the PATRIOT Act).
Or the HIRE Act from 2010, which created some of the most heinous tax rules of the last fifty years.
The names of these laws all sounded wonderful. But their effects were absolutely terrible.
The new SECURE Act will likely be no different.
If you haven’t heard of SECURE, it’s a new piece of legislation aimed at ‘fixing’ the US retirement system.
SECURE stands for “Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement”, which is pretty clever when you think about it.
People want to associate their retirement with a word like ‘secure’. So even without knowing anything about the law, most people will probably have good feelings about it based solely on the name.
But if you actually read the legislation, SECURE contains a number of predictably terrible consequences.
For starters, SECURE is a basically a gigantic tax increase. And it’s a tax increase that will particularly affect your children when you pass away.
Under current law, you could leave your IRA to your children in a fairly tax efficient way. That’s actually one of the nice things about an IRA.
If your kids inherit your IRA, they’re required to pay out a small portion of the funds each year… and those distributions would be taxable income.
But the current rules only require tiny distributions; your kids are allowed to stretch out the annual payouts over the course of their lives, resulting in very minor taxation.
The new rules completely eliminate this benefit.
Under the SECURE Act, your kids would have ten years to pay out (and be taxed on) the entire value of your retirement account.
This means that the annual payouts would be MUCH larger… thus bumping your children up to a higher tax bracket… meaning that they’ll end up paying much higher taxes on your retirement savings.
This is tantamount to a huge estate tax increase. And it’s one that primarily affects the middle class.
For wealthy people, retirement accounts typically only comprise a small percentage of their assets. So this rule change won’t have much of an impact.
But for the middle class, retirement accounts are often one of the largest sources of their estates. And this legislation will be a significant hit for them.
The US House of Representatives already passed the SECURE Act. And just in case you’re about to start hating on your least favorite political party, you should know that it was passed with almost unanimous support from both parties.
(though I have my doubts whether most members of Congress even read the legislation…)
It’s currently in the Senate and seems likely to pass, so this is a reality to prepare for.
In related news, Congress also made some movement on the Rehabilitation for Multiemployer Pensions Act.
Sadly this one doesn’t have a catchy acronym. But in essence the legislation is their comical attempt to address the multi-trillion dollar problem of unfunded pension plans in the Land of the Free.
We’ve talked about this before a number of times– the vast majority of state, local, and even corporate pension plans in the United States (and worldwide for that matter) simply don’t have enough money to keep their promises.
Moody’s Investor Service estimated last year that the total pension funding gap in the US is $4.4 trillion. A few months ago the American Legislative Exchange Council estimated it at nearly $6 trillion.
Bottom line, it’s a big number.
Pension plans in the United States are currently guaranteed by a quasi-government agency called the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation.
The PBGC is sort of like an FDIC for pension funds… so that if a pension plan goes bust, the PBGC will step in with a bailout.
Problem is, the PBGC itself is nearly insolvent and will run out of money in 2025. And its balance sheet is trivial compared to the multi-trillion dollar pension problem.
So Congress came up with a solution: go into DEBT!
According to the new legislation, whenever a pension plan runs out of funds, Congress wants them to borrow money in order to keep making payments to beneficiaries.
This raises an obvious question: who would be insane enough to loan money to an insolvent pension fund?
Well, you’ll be pleased to know that your esteemed members of Congress have courageously signed you up for the task, putting the American taxpayer on the hook for this potential $6 trillion liability.
Clearly this plan is the work of genius.
If nothing else, these two laws point to an obvious conclusion: it’s more important than ever to get your house in order when it comes to retirement planning.
Pension funds aren’t going to be able to keep their promises. Even Social Security, according to its own annual report, will run out of money in 15 years.
And even when you responsibly set aside your own money for retirement, lawmakers will suddenly change the rules and impose a major tax increase on the middle class.
Just imagine the things they’ll do if the Bolsheviks come to power next year…
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2GcQMMY Tyler Durden
