Maxciel Pereira dos Santos, a Brazilian government official who has been working with indigenous people to preserve the Amazon rainforest for over a decade, was shot and killed in front of his family in an apparent assassination on Friday. Santos was shot twice in the head while riding a motorbike through Tabatinga, a small city located in the Amazon rainforest, along Brazil’s border with Colombia and Peru.
Santos worked for a Brazilian government agency called the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI), which is tasked with protecting the land and interests of the indigenous people. The INA, a union that represents workers for the agency, said that Santos was killed in retaliation for his work at the Vale do Javari reservation, according to the Telegraph.
Santos was the chief of environmental services at the Vale do Javari reservation for over five years, and was essentially the head of the local enforcement authority that patrolled the area to protect native tribes from violent groups of raiders that frequently attack tribes so their land can be taken for development.
INA officials said the current administration has created an atmosphere where violence against native people and their allies has been encouraged.
A statement from the INA called on Brazilian officials to demonstrate that Brazil “no longer condones violence against those who engage, under the rule of law, in the protection and promotion of indigenous rights.”
The Vale do Javari reservation has the world’s highest concentration of uncontacted peoples and is rich in natural resources, which has made it a target for a variety of illegal miners, loggers, ranchers, and poachers. Large areas of the Amazon are demarcated for the indigenous population of over a million people, but these protections are rarely respected when a tribe is living in a place that becomes a target for development.
For example, earlier this year, a group of gold miners invaded a remote Amazonian village that was inhabited by the Waiãpi tribe and killed their leader, sending the rest of the tribe to flee in terror. Sadly, this was not an isolated incident. According to the annual report from international NGO Global Witness released last month, at least 164 environmentalists were killed under suspicious circumstances while engaging in activism against corporations and governments.
At least 20 of those murders occurred in Brazil alone, and the INA reported at least four other attacks on Indigenous land surveillance teams this year.
Despite the recent global controversy about his administration’s attitude toward’s protections in the Amazon, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro doubled down on his campaign promise to take land from indigenous populations and develop the rainforest.
In new statements last week, Bolsonaro responded to questions about land demarcations for natives, saying “it is too much land for so few Indians.”
As reported by the New York Times, Bolsonaro claims to know exactly what the indigenous people want. According to Bolsonaro, they don’t actually want to continue their tradition of living in the rainforest as their ancestors did, but would rather have electricity, fast food, and a minimum wage job instead. In other cases, Bolsonaro has been more honest with his intentions, suggesting that the native people were a “problem” that needed to “decimated” in the same way that the native people of North America were.
“The North American cavalry were the competent ones because they decimated their Indigenous people in the past and today, they don’t have this problem in their country,” Bolsonaro said.
War On Wealth: Warren Whacks “The 2%” With More Taxes To Pay For Social Security Scheme
Beer-swilling, $430K/year teaching, culturally appropriating 2020 Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren unveiled a plan Thursday which would bump Social Security benefits by $200 per month, while increasing payroll tax on incomes above $250,000 ($400,000 joint) by a whopping 14.8% – split evenly between employers and employees, according to Bloomberg.
In other words, self-employed Americans enjoying moderate success will enjoy a particularly swift kick in the nuts under a Warren administration.
If enacted in 2020, average Social Security benefits would rise from $1,395 per month to $1,595, according to an analysis by Moody‘s Mark Zandi shared by Warren’s campaign. The plan would also index Social Security benefits to a faster rate of inflation, while providing enhanced benefits to widows, widowers, and caregivers of children below the age of six.
According to Zandi, Warren’s plan would also kick the solvency can down the road around 20 years to 2054.
“We need to get our priorities straight. We should be increasing Social Security benefits and asking the richest Americans to contribute their fair share to the program,” wrote Warren in a Medium.com post, adding that her plan was “the biggest and most progressive increase in Social Security benefits in nearly half a century.”
Warren’s proposal indicates how far Democrats have moved since 2011, when President Barack Obama offered to cut Social Security benefits as part of a “grand bargain” compromise with Republicans to reduce the deficit. It’s in keeping with Warren’s broader policy pitch to enhance the middle class safety net by taxing upper incomes.
Her policy paper comes on the day of the third Democratic debate in Houston, the first time all of the four leading contenders will be on stage together.
She follows rival Bernie Sanders, a fellow senator and rival for the Democratic nomination, who pushed for an expansion of Social Security benefits during his unsuccessful 2016 presidential campaign. Legislation by Sanders to expand Social Security has been cosponsored by 2020 contenders Kamala Harris and Cory Booker. –Bloomberg
With Warren gaining ground on former Vice President Joe Biden, we may end up watching her explain this ambitious redistribution plan while debating President Trump.
President Trump needs a trade deal with China as quickly as possible to avert a sharp slowdown of the US economy, as recent polls have made clear. There won’t be any deal unless the US finds some way to walk back its efforts to keep China’s top telecommunication firm Huawei out of world markets. The summary dismissal today of National Security Adviser John Bolton increases the prospects of a deal, although the immediate motivation for Bolton’s departure most likely lies elsewhere.
China and the United States seemed on track for a trade deal in early December 2018 when XI Jinping and Donald Trump dined on the sidelines of a summit meeting in Buenos Aires – except that Canada arrested Huawei CFO Meng Wangzhou at the Vancouver Airport. Trump didn’t know about the arrest, but his national security adviser John Bolton did, as Bolton later said in a radio interview.
A few weeks earlier, the US government began a campaign to persuade its allies to exclude Huawei from the rollout of 5G broadband networks, as the Wall Street Journal first reported Nov. 23, 2018. The Meng Wanzhou arrest, the first use of extraterritorial powers in the case of an alleged sanctions violation, was a declaration of war on the Chinese national champion. In the ensuing months, the United States banned US technology firms from supplying components and software to Huawei and demanded that its allies boycott its 5G network systems.
All of the presidential orders targeting Huawei were drafted by Bolton’s staff at the National Security Council offices in the Executive Office Building next to the White House. Trump’s national security adviser didn’t devise the campaign against Huawei, but he represented the views of the US intelligence community to the White House and helped formulate the rationale for the effort to derail Huawei’s market leadership. Huawei, the US government alleged, might build secret back doors into its routers and steal data, compromising the cybersecurity of any country it supplied. So dangerous was Huawei, US officials alleged, that the US might cut back on intelligence sharing with such countries.
This in my view was a willful deception on the part of America’s spies, intended to distract attention from a different sort of problem. I do not believe that Ambassador Bolton set out to deceive anyone, but it seems likely that he was captured by the intelligence community’s agenda. As I wrote in Asia Times July 7:
The US intelligence community’s alarm at Chinese leadership in 5G mobile broadband has less to do with a threat of Chinese eavesdropping than with the likelihood that electronic eavesdropping will become next to impossible, thanks to quantum cryptography. I have had a number of conversations on the topic with US as well as Chinese sources, but this conclusion appears obvious from public sources.
America’s intelligence community spends nearly $80 billion a year, including $57 billion for the National Intelligence Program and $20 billion for the Military Intelligence Program. Signals intelligence (SIGINT), mainly electronic eavesdropping, takes up the lion’s share of the budget. Among other things, the National Security Agency recorded more than half a billion calls and text messages of Americans in 2017.
In response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Security Agency admitted – for the second time — that it improperly eavesdropped on Americans. The spooks’ ability to tap the conversations of prospective terrorists, foreign leaders like Germany’s Angela Merkel and pretty well anyone it wants is a source of enormous power as well as justification for continued funding.
In the meantime, America’s efforts to suppress Huawei have taken on a life of their own. In the Wall Street Journal today, financier George Soros, a bitter political enemy of President Trump, demanded to know if Trump will “sell out the US on Huawei” by including the technology issue in an overall trade deal. Soros wrote, “China is a dangerous rival in artificial intelligence and machine learning. But for now it still depends on about 30 U.S. companies to supply Huawei with the core components it needs to compete in the 5G market. As long as Huawei remains on the entity list, it will lack crucial technology and be seriously weakened… However, President Trump may soon undermine his own China policy and cede the advantage to Beijing.”
I do not think that the ban on exports of US components to Huawei will slow down its efforts in 5G broadband. With few exceptions, these components are easily sourced elsewhere, and China has had a blank check program to eliminate dependence on US technologies since March 2018, when the US banned sales of handset chips to China’s ZTE.
Still, it is odd to find the liberal Mr. Soros attacking President Trump, as it were, from the right. The US Establishment wants to throw whatever monkey-wrenches it has into the works in the hope of delaying Huawei long enough to figure out what it wants to do next. It doesn’t appear to be working. Last week Deutsche Telekom became the latest European country to inaugurate 5G networks using Huawei equipment.
Morris Lore reports at lightreading.com, “Before Deutsche Telekom’s 5G launch, Three, Vodafone and BT-owned EE had all turned on Huawei-built 5G networks in the UK, despite government indecision on the future role of Chinese suppliers. Vodafone is also using Huawei’s equipment to support 5G services in Italy, Romania and Spain, explaining why it has been Europe’s most vociferous opponent of the anti-Huawei campaign. Elsewhere, Huawei is live in Switzerland and Finland, where it equips Sunrise and Elisa respectively.”
To America’s great embarrassment, the whole of Eurasia has ignored its imprecations against Huawei. Bolton’s high-profile campaign, joined by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, has failed, and President Trump doesn’t like to fail.
Bolton is quite the China hawk. In January 2018, three months before he took office, he argued in the Wall Street Journal that the US should station troops in Taiwan. China is glad to see the back of him. Global Times editor Hu Xijin tweeted, “Bolton has never played a positive role on China issues either, although it won’t be the reason why he was fired. I believe people who hold extreme political stance are paranoid and difficult to get along with. The news of Bolton being fired likely drew applause in the White House.”
Just what form a trade-and-technology deal might take is far from clear. The US cannot simply let the Huawei matter drop, but it might agree to comprehensive testing and screening of Huawei products. Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei told New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman that Huawei is “open to sharing our 5G technologies and techniques with US companies so that they can build up their own 5G industry.” He added that American companies can “change the software code. In that case, the US will be assured of information security.”
In short, Huawei has offered to call the American bluff about its purported data theft and open its proprietary technology to American inspection. The intelligence community and the China hawks, in general, will not like that, and Bolton’s departure removes one hawk from a particularly important nest.
My view is that Huawei’s dominance of a game-changing technology does indeed present a threat to the United States, but that John Bolton’s weasel war dance won’t do the United States any good. If the US wants to maintain technological superiority, it has to create national champions that can best Huawei, and that requires a massive commitment of federal R&D funding. In the meantime, President Trump may have to compromise with China to avoid a recession and defeat in the 2020 elections.
The third debate among candidates for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination is tonight at 8 p.m. (scroll down for information on where and how to watch, who is participating, who was excluded, and more). The field has been trimmed to 10 candidates and a persistent 10-point gap has opened up between the three front-runners and everyone else. With time before the primaries growing shorter and the list of dropout candidates growing longer, there’s every reason to expect the political promises to get a lot more desperate, and the personal attacks much uglier.
As an independent libertarian who believes in maximal personal and economic freedom, high levels of immigration and free trade, and non-interventionist foreign policy blended with cultural soft power and diplomacy, my vote is up for grabs. Though I typically vote for the Libertarian Party candidate, I have voted Democratic in the past (once, for Walter Mondale in 1984) and could see doing so again under the right circumstances. So I’ll be watching tonight with a volatile mix of deep interest, hope, dread, and boredom.
More specifically (and in ascending order of importance), I’ll be watching for three things: Andrew Yang’s rumored big stunt, Joe Biden’s overall ability to comport himself, and whether anyone on stage will posit any meaningful limits to what the government can do to regiment virtually all aspects of our lives. The last is especially important in the wake of last week’s CNN’s Climate Town Hall, when all the candidates effectively agreed that environmental apocalypse had to be stopped by any means necessary.
3. What is Andrew Yang’s big stunt? The campaign manager for the avuncular tech entrepreneur and monomaniacal champion of a universal basic income has promised that his candidate will do “something no presidential candidate has never done before in history.” Just what the hell that might mean is anyone’s guess, but it’s worth tuning in for.
Andrew Yang’s campaign manager just called to tell me that at tomorrow night’s debate, Yang will be doing "something no presidential candidate has ever done before in history.” He declined to go further than that.
Yang has zero chance of becoming the Democratic nominee, but his enthusiasm, intensity, and basic honesty and decency are attractive qualities. With a nod toward his progressive rivals Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.), he is avowedly not a socialist. It is troubling that belief in free enterprise is deeply contested in today’s Democratic Party, but Yang rarely fails to talk up the benefits of capitalism, especially its ability to produce lots and lots of stuff.
That said, his fears about automation leading to a jobless future are simply wrong, and his support for Medicare for All should worry any of us who think the already-immensely regulated and government-financed healthcare system in the United States needs more free market forces in it, not fewer. His claim that his plan to give all Americans $1,000 a month would “permanently grow the economy by 12.56 to 13.10 percent” doesn’t pass the smell test either, even as it’s nice to hear someone on the Democratic side talk about growing the economy rather than merely redistributing existing wealth.
2. Can Joe Biden (Literally) Keep It Together? The longtime former senator and former vice president has been the frontrunner since announcing his candidacy. It’s easy to see why: He’s got great name recognition and eight years as Barack Obama’s second banana helped launder his reputation as a gaffe-prone joke.
It’s important to underscore that Biden’s documented history of bizarre plagiarism and racist-seeming comments are the least-troubling aspects of his decades in power. He’s an unreconstructed drug warrior (who is still dragging his feet on saying he’s OK with marijuana legalization) and is far more hawkish than the other Democrats or President Donald Trump. That is to say, his actual policy preferences over the years are bad news from a libertarian perspective.
Despite his frontrunner status, his 2020 campaign in many ways seems to be a reboot of Hillary Clinton’s failed bid four years ago. He is the establishment candidate, the ultimate insider who seems a little too smug and entitled. His advanced age—he’s 76—becomes more and more of an issue every time he confuses web addresses and text messages or seems to believe Margaret Thatcher is still prime minister of Great Britain. During last week’s CNN event, one of his eyes turned red from an apparent blood vessel popping. That wouldn’t be a good look in relative youngsters such as Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D–Hawaii) or South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg. In an old man such as Biden, having body parts that “are now generating their own gaffes” is a major problem. His slow-out-of-the-blocks performances in the first two debates suggest he’s either unwilling or unable to sustain the energy needed to run for president, much less run the country if elected.
Biden’s main selling point is a feeling that he is the one Democrat who is centrist enough to beat Donald Trump. Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) earlier this year, the president begged the Democrats to let him run against the Green New Deal and the new “socialism” being espoused by the like of Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.). Even though he was a major player in an administration that increased the size, scope, and spending of the federal government, Biden is the only Democrat who can easily push back against the notion that his party is going pink. But all of that is for naught if his body breaks down again during a three-hour debate, or if he goes full Admiral Stockdale or fails to come out swinging and with sustained stamina. It might be Biden’s nomination to lose so far, but he’s always one mental or physical screw-up away from joke status.
1. Will anyone here limit the federal government? The Yang and Biden subplots will make tonight’s debate more interesting but they are indeed minor diversions from more serious matters. The major question for me—and I suspect for many of the large number of voters who are taking the 2020 election much more seriously than they did the 2016 race at the same point in time—is whether any Democratic candidate will speak about limiting the power of the federal government. To date, the Democratic candidates have proposed massive expansion after massive expansion.
There’s Medicare for All, a vague term that means different things to different candidates but always include tons more spending of tax dollars and regulations emanating from Washington. In the more fully fleshed-out versions by people such as Sanders, it means getting rid of private health care altogether, something favored by only about 10 percent of us. Then there are the plans for student-loan forgiveness, free college for everyone, job guarantees, reparations for slavery, and for taxes paid by same-sex couples who couldn’t file 1040s as married, and on and on.
At the Climate Town Hall, Elizabeth Warren waved away a question about whether she would regulate what sorts of light bulbs she would let people buy if she became president. That’s exactly the sort of small, divisive thing the energy companies want us to fight about, she said before going off on an error-riddled tear about how “three industries are responsible for 70 percent of carbon pollution” and how she would force them (which means us as consumers) to be more responsible. She’s also in favor of breaking up big tech companies. Warren and all the other candidates were more than ready to dictate more and more decisions we get to make in our daily lives. Sen. Kamala Harris (D–Calif.), for instance, said we should ban plastic straws before talking about how bad paper straws were. Is there any space for a Democratic candidate who won’t limit what you get to do in the name of the environment, economic fairness, or demographic equality?
All the Democrats on tonight’s stage are making a variation on the same pitch: The American economy is fundamentally broken, the system is rigged against you, you deserve better, and I will make everything all right. In an age of anxiety, resentment, and fear—all of which are being stoked by Donald Trump—that sort of paternalism will appeal to many people, perhaps even enough to put a Democrat in the White House.
Yet there are also signs that rank-and-file Democrats are much less progressive than party activists or presidential candidates. African-American Democrats, a key group for the party, tend to be less left-wing than the party leadership on many issues and polls consistently show that “moderates and conservatives” make up about 50 percent of Democrats while only about 19 percent consider themselves “very liberal.”
There’s no question that the folks up on stage tonight—even relative centrists such as Joe Biden—are more liberal than the party they might up end representing in the presidential race. Even in a moment when an appetite for bigger government is at a 68-year high, the grand plans of this crop of candidates may well be too much for voters in 2020.
Tonight’s Democratic Debate is being hosted by ABC News and Univision from Houston. It runs from 8 p.m. ET until 11 p.m. ET and includes the following candidates:
Former Vice President Joe Biden
New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker
South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg
Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro
California Sen. Kamala Harris
Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar
Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren
Entrepreneur Andrew Yang
For more details on format and where to watch, go here.
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2LtIJhS
via IFTTT
The third debate among candidates for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination is tonight at 8 p.m. (scroll down for information on where and how to watch, who is participating, who was excluded, and more). The field has been trimmed to 10 candidates and a persistent 10-point gap has opened up between the three front-runners and everyone else. With time before the primaries growing shorter and the list of dropout candidates growing longer, there’s every reason to expect the political promises to get a lot more desperate, and the personal attacks much uglier.
As an independent libertarian who believes in maximal personal and economic freedom, high levels of immigration and free trade, and non-interventionist foreign policy blended with cultural soft power and diplomacy, my vote is up for grabs. Though I typically vote for the Libertarian Party candidate, I have voted Democratic in the past (once, for Walter Mondale in 1984) and could see doing so again under the right circumstances. So I’ll be watching tonight with a volatile mix of deep interest, hope, dread, and boredom.
More specifically (and in ascending order of importance), I’ll be watching for three things: Andrew Yang’s rumored big stunt, Joe Biden’s overall ability to comport himself, and whether anyone on stage will posit any meaningful limits to what the government can do to regiment virtually all aspects of our lives. The last is especially important in the wake of last week’s CNN’s Climate Town Hall, when all the candidates effectively agreed that environmental apocalypse had to be stopped by any means necessary.
3. What is Andrew Yang’s big stunt? The campaign manager for the avuncular tech entrepreneur and monomaniacal champion of a universal basic income has promised that his candidate will do “something no presidential candidate has never done before in history.” Just what the hell that might mean is anyone’s guess, but it’s worth tuning in for.
Andrew Yang’s campaign manager just called to tell me that at tomorrow night’s debate, Yang will be doing "something no presidential candidate has ever done before in history.” He declined to go further than that.
Yang has zero chance of becoming the Democratic nominee, but his enthusiasm, intensity, and basic honesty and decency are attractive qualities. With a nod toward his progressive rivals Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.), he is avowedly not a socialist. It is troubling that belief in free enterprise is deeply contested in today’s Democratic Party, but Yang rarely fails to talk up the benefits of capitalism, especially its ability to produce lots and lots of stuff.
That said, his fears about automation leading to a jobless future are simply wrong, and his support for Medicare for All should worry any of us who think the already-immensely regulated and government-financed healthcare system in the United States needs more free market forces in it, not fewer. His claim that his plan to give all Americans $1,000 a month would “permanently grow the economy by 12.56 to 13.10 percent” doesn’t pass the smell test either, even as it’s nice to hear someone on the Democratic side talk about growing the economy rather than merely redistributing existing wealth.
2. Can Joe Biden (Literally) Keep It Together? The longtime former senator and former vice president has been the frontrunner since announcing his candidacy. It’s easy to see why: He’s got great name recognition and eight years as Barack Obama’s second banana helped launder his reputation as a gaffe-prone joke.
It’s important to underscore that Biden’s documented history of bizarre plagiarism and racist-seeming comments are the least-troubling aspects of his decades in power. He’s an unreconstructed drug warrior (who is still dragging his feet on saying he’s OK with marijuana legalization) and is far more hawkish than the other Democrats or President Donald Trump. That is to say, his actual policy preferences over the years are bad news from a libertarian perspective.
Despite his frontrunner status, his 2020 campaign in many ways seems to be a reboot of Hillary Clinton’s failed bid four years ago. He is the establishment candidate, the ultimate insider who seems a little too smug and entitled. His advanced age—he’s 76—becomes more and more of an issue every time he confuses web addresses and text messages or seems to believe Margaret Thatcher is still prime minister of Great Britain. During last week’s CNN event, one of his eyes turned red from an apparent blood vessel popping. That wouldn’t be a good look in relative youngsters such as Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D–Hawaii) or South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg. In an old man such as Biden, having body parts that “are now generating their own gaffes” is a major problem. His slow-out-of-the-blocks performances in the first two debates suggest he’s either unwilling or unable to sustain the energy needed to run for president, much less run the country if elected.
Biden’s main selling point is a feeling that he is the one Democrat who is centrist enough to beat Donald Trump. Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) earlier this year, the president begged the Democrats to let him run against the Green New Deal and the new “socialism” being espoused by the like of Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.). Even though he was a major player in an administration that increased the size, scope, and spending of the federal government, Biden is the only Democrat who can easily push back against the notion that his party is going pink. But all of that is for naught if his body breaks down again during a three-hour debate, or if he goes full Admiral Stockdale or fails to come out swinging and with sustained stamina. It might be Biden’s nomination to lose so far, but he’s always one mental or physical screw-up away from joke status.
1. Will anyone here limit the federal government? The Yang and Biden subplots will make tonight’s debate more interesting but they are indeed minor diversions from more serious matters. The major question for me—and I suspect for many of the large number of voters who are taking the 2020 election much more seriously than they did the 2016 race at the same point in time—is whether any Democratic candidate will speak about limiting the power of the federal government. To date, the Democratic candidates have proposed massive expansion after massive expansion.
There’s Medicare for All, a vague term that means different things to different candidates but always include tons more spending of tax dollars and regulations emanating from Washington. In the more fully fleshed-out versions by people such as Sanders, it means getting rid of private health care altogether, something favored by only about 10 percent of us. Then there are the plans for student-loan forgiveness, free college for everyone, job guarantees, reparations for slavery, and for taxes paid by same-sex couples who couldn’t file 1040s as married, and on and on.
At the Climate Town Hall, Elizabeth Warren waved away a question about whether she would regulate what sorts of light bulbs she would let people buy if she became president. That’s exactly the sort of small, divisive thing the energy companies want us to fight about, she said before going off on an error-riddled tear about how “three industries are responsible for 70 percent of carbon pollution” and how she would force them (which means us as consumers) to be more responsible. She’s also in favor of breaking up big tech companies. Warren and all the other candidates were more than ready to dictate more and more decisions we get to make in our daily lives. Sen. Kamala Harris (D–Calif.), for instance, said we should ban plastic straws before talking about how bad paper straws were. Is there any space for a Democratic candidate who won’t limit what you get to do in the name of the environment, economic fairness, or demographic equality?
All the Democrats on tonight’s stage are making a variation on the same pitch: The American economy is fundamentally broken, the system is rigged against you, you deserve better, and I will make everything all right. In an age of anxiety, resentment, and fear—all of which are being stoked by Donald Trump—that sort of paternalism will appeal to many people, perhaps even enough to put a Democrat in the White House.
Yet there are also signs that rank-and-file Democrats are much less progressive than party activists or presidential candidates. African-American Democrats, a key group for the party, tend to be less left-wing than the party leadership on many issues and polls consistently show that “moderates and conservatives” make up about 50 percent of Democrats while only about 19 percent consider themselves “very liberal.”
There’s no question that the folks up on stage tonight—even relative centrists such as Joe Biden—are more liberal than the party they might up end representing in the presidential race. Even in a moment when an appetite for bigger government is at a 68-year high, the grand plans of this crop of candidates may well be too much for voters in 2020.
Tonight’s Democratic Debate is being hosted by ABC News and Univision from Houston. It runs from 8 p.m. ET until 11 p.m. ET and includes the following candidates:
Former Vice President Joe Biden
New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker
South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg
Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro
California Sen. Kamala Harris
Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar
Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren
Entrepreneur Andrew Yang
For more details on format and where to watch, go here.
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2LtIJhS
via IFTTT
US Budget Deficit Hits $1 Trillion With One More Month Left In The Fiscal Year
The fiscal year that started on Oct 1, 2018, is now in its final month, and yet according to the US Treasury, in the first 11 months of the fiscal year, the US Treasury has already accumulated a more than $1 trillion budget deficit.
According to the latest budget data, In August, receipts rose 4% y/y to $228.0b in Aug, which however were dwarfed by $428.3 billion in outlays (a 1.1% drop Y/Y). The result was that the August monthly deficit was $200.3 billion, in line with expectations, if fractionally smaller than the $214.1 billion deficit posted in August 2018.
The biggest source of income, at $106 billion was income tax, with social insurance second at $96 billion. On the outlays side, the government spent the most money on entitlements such as Social Security ($88BN) and Medicare ($85BN). It may come as a surprise to some that National Defense was only third at $64BN.
However, more concerning is that on a YTD basis, i.e., the first 11 months of the year, the deficit surged 19% to at $1067.2BN, up 19% compared to $898.1BN last year, with YTD receipts in 2019 up 3.5%, while outlays rose double that, or 7.0%. The August deficit surged despite the gentle nudge from customs duties, which jumped to $64 billion in the fiscal year-to-date from $36.7 billion a year earlier, reflecting the Trump administration’s tariffs on Chinese imports, steel and other goods. Even still, income from duties represents a small share of overall federal revenue.
This means that for the first time since 2011, the US budget deficit will surpass $1 trillion at some point during the fiscal year.
It’s not the end of the world yet though, as it’s likely the year-end deficit could narrow from a tax revenue bump. As the chart above shows, September, the last month of the fiscal year, typically produces a surplus because quarterly tax payments are due.
A few hours ago, the European Central Bank announced a bonanza stimulus package: interest rate cuts, money printing, quantitative easing, the whole nine yards.
Europe’s economic growth has ground to a halt. The German economy actually shrank last quarter, according to official statistics.
So the European Central Bank is throwing everything including the kitchen sink at this problem. Their stimulus package is like a monetary defibrillator trying to shock Europe’s economies back to growth.
It’s pretty amazing when you think about it: interest rates in Europe are already NEGATIVE. They’ve been cutting rates for years, and it hasn’t worked.
Back in July 2008, the European Central Bank’s main interest rate was 3.25%.
By the end of 2008, it was clear the global economy was slowing down, and the central bank had slashed interest rates to just 1%.
But they kept going.
By 2013, the ECB had reduced its primary interest rate all the way to zero.
And in 2014, they took the unprecedented step of cutting rates even further– to NEGATIVE 0.10%.
European rates have been negative now for FIVE YEARS. Yet Europe’s economies are still in the dog house.
These results completely defy prevailing economic wisdom.
According to the ridiculous playbook that nearly all central bankers use, cutting interest rates is supposed to stimulate economic growth.
If interest rates are lower, it makes it easier and cheaper for people to borrow money. If it’s cheaper to borrow money, people buy more stuff… which creates more economic growth.
But that’s not happening.
They’ve been cutting rates, even below zero, to the point that you can actually get PAID to BORROW money in Europe. Yet those economies are still stagnating.
So the central bank’s solution? If what you’re doing isn’t working, do more of the same!
It’s astonishing how these economists cling their ridiculous theories…
Unsurprisingly, the European prices of both gold and silver shot up this morning.
Gold is now selling in Europe for nearly 1,400 euros as I write this letter— an ALL-TIME high.
That’s because precious metals are a refuge from keeping your savings held hostage by unelected central bankers who can slash interest rates to negative levels and conjure unlimited quantities of paper currency out of thin air.
It’s not just Europe either.
Across the water in the United States, the central bank has already indicated that they’re going to start cutting rates as well… plus they’re facing pressure from the Tweeter-in-Chief to make interest rates negative, just like in Europe.
That’s a big reason why precious metals prices have been climbing so rapidly; in the past two months alone, the silver price is up 22%.
I’ve been talking about this for months, encouraging you to buy gold and silver. But this isn’t over. There’s a lot more monetary insanity to come from the United States and Europe… so gold and silver prices likely still have a lot of room to rise.
(Silver could actually triple in price, and it still wouldn’t beat its previous record high.)
One big driver of gold demand is actually coming from foreign central banks and governments. They can see what’s happening to the US dollar and euro, and they’re keen to diversify their reserve assets away from negative interest rates.
Russia has been on a gold-buying spree lately, gobbling up more than 18 metric tons of gold in the month of June alone, and nearly 100 metric tons since the beginning of 2019.
China has also added 100 metric tons of gold to its foreign reserves since the beginning of 2019.
Even the central bank of Poland has acquired 100 metric tons of gold this year, nearly doubling its gold holdings from last year.
This is a powerful trend that could continue sending prices higher. So it’s still a reasonable time to buy physical gold and silver.
Over the past few weeks I’ve written to you about why you should consider buying coins (rather than bars), and definitely avoid precious metal ETFs.
Next week we’ll discuss how you could make potentially explosive gains from an increase in gold and silver prices through mining companies.
Marianne Williamson Admits “Conservatives Are Nicer” In Hot Mic Moment
Spiritual guru and long-shot Democratic candidate Marianne Williamson appears to have had a transcendental revelation over the past several weeks; that conservatives are way nicer than liberals.
Williamson first noted her observations in an interview with the New Yorker‘s David Remnick published September 3rd, in which she said “I know this sounds naive. I didn’t think the Left was so mean. I didn’t think the Left lied like this,” adding “I thought the Right did that. I thought we were better.”
She also slammed Democrats for being “condescending” to people of faith after a leftist backlash over a tweet suggesting that prayer was responsible for Hurrican Dorian not doing more damage to the United States.
Then, in a hot-mic moment recorded during an interview with Eric Bolling, Williamson said “What does it say that Fox News is nicer to me than the lefties are? What does it say that the conservatives are nicer to me?… It’s such a bizarre world,” adding “You know, I’m such a lefty. I mean, I’m a serious lefty, but they’re so… I didn’t think the left was as mean as the right, they are.”
Marianne Williamson (@marwilliamson ) said that conservatives are nicer to her than those on the Left. This is a generalization, but for a Democratic Presidential Hopeful to say this is pretty interesting!
After expressing frustration about the release of the clip, Williamson clarified that it was how she felt on “that day” and expected that she knew running for president wouldn’t be a “walk in the park.” She added how Republicans “don’t have to be attacking” her during a Democratic primary while other Democrats “are working for other candidates.” –Fox News
Gundlach: 75% Odds Of US Recession Before 2020 Election
DoubleLine CEO Jeff Gundlach sees a 75% chance of a US recession before the 2020 election.
Speaking at a London event this week, the billionaire money manager reiterated his August outlook, telling the audience “We should be on recession watch before the 2020 election,” adding “We’re getting closer but we’re not there yet.”
According to Gundlach, an inverted yield curve is not the best indicator of a recession – “It’s the inversion occurring and then going away.”
He’s also neutral on gold following its latest run.
In his June public webcast, he predicted a 45% chance of recession by the end of the year amid the US-China trade war, while in August, Gundlach said that the yield curve looks “full-on recessionary” and “a lot like 2007.”
“There’s no way to sugar coat it,” he told Yahoo Finance, “When you have a 40 basis point inversion, well, then that usually leads to a problem.”
Gundlach added that we will probably start seeing the yield curve steepen, but that wouldn’t necessarily be a good sign.
“That would almost seal the fate of recession coming,” he said. “It’s not so much the inversion — the inversion is a warning that there’s one coming. But, you start to get in the imminence category once it first starts steepening out from the inversion, because, by then, the Fed has realized it’s behind the curve, the market knows it too, and everybody knows the Fed’s going to be slashing interest rates.” –Yahoo Finance
Gundlach’s forecast is roughly in line with The New York Fed:
Source: Bloomberg
Meanwhile, billionaire investor and founder of Bridgewater Associates, Ray Dalio, sees a 25% chance of recession through 2020, telling Bloomberg last week that central banks will be limited in their ability to avert it. He also loves gold, and says it could be gearing up for a big decade of returns.
Dalio thinks there are four factors that will affect the severity of the downturn, via Business Insider.
Effectiveness of central-bank policies
The wealth gap, which will affect how the next recession will look “socially, politically, and so on”
The 2020 elections, which he called “an issue between capitalists and socialists, or the rich and the poor”
The emergence of China in relation to the US
According to Dalio, central banks worldwide “have to face the fact that when the next downturn comes there will not be the power to reverse it in the same way,” and recommends that the Fed cut interest rates slowly and by small increments.
The Department of Health and Human Services says the Trump administration’s pending ban on flavored e-cigarettes is necessary because of recent increases in underage vaping. The department cites “preliminary numbers from the National Youth Tobacco Survey” (NYTS) that “show a continued rise in the disturbing rates of youth e-cigarette use.” Yet those data also show that smoking by teenagers continues to fall, which undermines the claim that e-cigarettes are a gateway to the real thing and suggests that vaping is actually a substitute for smoking.
According to the NYTS, the prevalence of past-month cigarette smoking among high school students fell from 8.1 percent in 2018 to 5.8 percent this year, even as the prevalence of past-month vaping rose from 20.8 percent to 27.5 percent. Since 2011, the smoking rate has fallen by 63 percent, while the vaping rate has increased more than 18-fold. Based on these data, Boston University public health professor Michael Siegel found a negative correlation of –0.89 between vaping and smoking among high school students.
Those opposing trends suggest not only that more vaping does not result in more smoking but that teenagers who otherwise would be smoking are instead vaping, a much less dangerous habit. In fact, a 2018 study, based on data from the NYTS and other surveys, found that the decline in smoking among teenagers and young adults accelerated as vaping became increasingly common.
The National Survey on Drug Use and Health shows a similar pattern. “Fewer than 1 in 6 people aged 12 or older in 2018 were past month cigarette smokers,” the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which oversees that survey, noted last month. “Cigarette use generally declined between 2002 and 2018 across all age groups. Some of this decline may reflect the use of electronic vaporizing devices (‘vaping’), such as e-cigarettes, as a substitute for delivering nicotine.” (Emphasis added.)
The Monitoring the Future Study likewise shows that smoking rates among teenagers have hit record lows in recent years. The prevalence of past-month cigarette smoking among high school seniors, for example, fell from 18.7 percent in 2011 to 7.6 percent in 2018, a 59 percent drop. While the rising popularity of vaping does not account for the entire decrease, it certainly seems to have helped.
By banning the kinds of e-cigarettes and e-liquids overwhelmingly preferred by adults who used to smoke, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will drive many of them back to a far more hazardous source of nicotine. The same sort of harm-maximizing substitution is apt to occur among teenagers, who may respond to the ban by switching from vaping to smoking. If so, the fear that vaping is a gateway to smoking will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Former FDA Administrator Scott Gottlieb, whose concerns about vaping by teenagers started this ball rolling, acknowledged that some teenagers who vape might otherwise be smoking. “It’s probable,” he told me last year. “It’s implausible for me to say that there aren’t kids out there who are using e-cigarettes instead of combustible tobacco and probably, if they never had this opportunity, would have used combustible tobacco.” But that reality, Gottlieb said, does not figure in the FDA’s decisions. Maybe it should.
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