Month: September 2020

“They Backed Us Into A Corner” – Parents Protest Massachusetts’ New Mandatory Vaccination Rules

“They Backed Us Into A Corner” – Parents Protest Massachusetts’ New Mandatory Vaccination Rules

Tyler Durden

Tue, 09/01/2020 – 10:35

As Massachusetts and Virginia lead the country in a push toward mandatory vaccination for both COVID-19 and the flu (which public health experts worry could exacerbate the current COVID-19 outbreak), a large group of protesters converged outside the Massachusetts State House in Boston, holding signs that read “Unavoidably unsafe,” “My child, my choice,” “Parents call the shots” and “I am not a threat.”

Written in chalk in front of the statehouse was the phrase “No forced shots”. While some protesters wore masks, many didn’t.

The protest were inspired by an Aug. 19 announcement that influenza immunization will be required for all children ages 6 months or older who are attending Massachusetts child care, pre-school, kindergarten, or K-12 schools.

 

In other words, children must be vaccinated, or else. Full-time undergraduate students, and graduate students under 30, will also be required to get the vaccine.

Activists insisted that “informed and voluntary consent” is a basic human right.

“The flu vaccine should not be a mandate. It should be a choice,” Jessica Marchant said during a TV interview.

Others accused state officials of “taking advantage” of the fear caused by the virus.

“I think parents are vulnerable right now. They need their kids to go to school and they backed us into a corner,” Taryn Proulx told WCVB.

“We feel like we have to just comply or rearrange our whole lives and homeschool our children.”

Health experts have warned of a brutal “twindemic” caused by the flu circulating alongside SARS-CoV-2. While COVID-19 most seriously affects older adults, children are much more vulnerable to the flu.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2ELsXOF Tyler Durden

Congress Would Like the CDC To Ruin Halloween

dreamstime_xxl_126033725

On the one holiday of the year it’s traditional to wear masks, Congress is nonetheless asking the CDC for coronavirus guidelines.

A bi-partisan group of 30 lawmakers wonder what protocols the little ghosts, goblins, and vampires should adhere to when—and if—they trick or treat. As The Hill reports:

“We are writing to ask you to update your Halloween safety guidance to include considerations related to COVID-19 so that Americans across the country know how to celebrate the Halloween season safely this year,” the members, including Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), Rodney Davis (R-Ill.), Ann Kuster (D-N.H.) and Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.), wrote to Redfield last week.

They want to know if kids should attend parties, or package treats for each other, or even participate in some kind of drive-by trick or treating.

“With the appropriate guidance from the CDC, Americans can celebrate Halloween throughout the month of October in ways that prioritize community safety and adhere to rigorous socially distancing requirements,” the members wrote.

By the time you’re prioritizing “rigorous” anything, you’re generally not talking about a super-fun event. If I were to venture a guess, I’d bet that the CDC will recommend that this year, kids celebrate on Zoom with all the joy their parents have experienced in staff meetings these past six months.

Maybe the agency could recommend some new games, like, “Who can suck their mask in the farthest?” Or “Green scream!” where kids compete to see who can create the scariest green screen background (or who can wear enough green paint to blend in except for their eyes and mouth—kind of a cool idea). “Pin the tracer on the virus-infected contact” is another game the scientists might recommend, but apparently this is too hard even for grownups to play.

Halloween was actually ripe for some re-imagining. In recent years it has morphed from the traditional kids-have-the-run-of-the-neighborhood night into an orgy of infantilization, whereby adults walk or even drive their kids house to house, stunting any kind of independence and bravery that might have taken root on this one thrilling night.

This year, they have the perfect excuse to stay home, lock the doors and simply load the kids up with candy (or  in some households, fresh broccoli florets and kombucha). Boo. Hoo.

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‘Who Funds the Rioters?’ Is Not a Question the Federal Government Needs To Ask

rtrltwelve179530

Last week, following President Donald Trump’s Republican National Convention acceptance speech at the White House, protesters surrounded Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) and his wife on the streets of Washington, D.C. Video footage showed that the encounter grew tense, and the Pauls say they had to rely on the police to prevent the crowd from assaulting them.

These protesters deserve condemnation. It was wrong of them to make the Pauls fear for their physical safety. (They were also tactically confused: Why shout “say her name” at the senator who introduced a bill named after the “her” in question?) If the activists committed any crimes, they should be held accountable.

But some critics of these activists—including Paul himself—want the government to investigate the purported funding sources of the protests. As Paul explained in an op-ed for Fox News:

After we got back to our hotel room and some safety we heard something frightening. The “protesters” were staying on our floor—including the room next door to us. They were talking about their mob activities and even saying they thought we were here on this floor. We had to develop a 3 a.m. plan with the Capitol Police to get to safety.

My question is: Who are these people? Who paid for their hotel rooms? Who flew them in? Law enforcement needs to look at the funding of violent criminal activity like this.

And national Democrats need to confront it. It’s organized. It’s paid for. It’s violent. It’s not about Black lives or any lives; it’s about anarchy and destruction. The American people are starting to catch on and grow tired of it.

Rep. Ken Buck (R–Colo.) expressed a similar demand on Twitter.

This is misguided, for several reasons.

First, the notion that the violent protests cropping up in U.S. cities are funded by a secret, shadowy cabal is a myth. Conspiracy theorists on all sides of the political spectrum like to imagine that their enemies are financed by some secret puppetmaster but, in general, people who show up to protests are usually not paid actors. People engaged in militant, far-left activism may travel from city to city, and they may be loosely connected with other activists in a semi-organized fashion, but they probably aren’t sitting on some secret pile of money.

Second, a mandate to monitor and investigate protest groups would give the federal government frightening license to target not just dangerous activists but also mere political opponents of the administration. Open-ended investigations into alleged funding sources—absent any evidence of larger financial crimes—strikes me as exactly the kind of witch hunt that many Republican critics of the deep state purport to oppose when the target is either Trump or a pro-Trump figure. If specific activists are arrested for violence, looting, or rioting, it may be appropriate—on a case by case basis—for law enforcement to ask questions about their specific circumstances. But any open-ended probe would pose a serious concern on civil libertarians grounds.

The frustrating reality is that much of the wanton property destruction following anti-police protests in cities like Kenosha, Wisconsin, and Minneapolis is opportunistic and only vaguely ideological. When public order breaks down, some subset of the population will rob stores, smash windows, and set buildings on fire. Others flock to protest in hot zones because they like the fight. These are the maladjusted, not paid foot soldiers in some wealthy villain’s war.

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Kentucky Authorities Offered Leniency to Breonna Taylor’s Ex if He Would Implicate Her in Drug Crimes

spnphotosnine964760(1)

They’re trying to “paint a picture of her which was vastly different than the woman she truly was,” says lawyer. Kentucky authorities’ defense for fatally shooting Breonna Taylor in a late-night raid for nonexistent drugs and drug money has always turned on the idea that Taylor—a 26-year-old emergency room technician who lived with her sister—was part of her ex-boyfriend’s alleged drug scheme. Now, new documents show how far they were willing to go to manufacture evidence for this narrative.

“On Tuesday, we were told Breonna Taylor’s ex-boyfriend Jamarcus Glover was offered a plea deal, which would have required him to say that Taylor was part of his drug operation,” Vice news correspondent Roberto Aram Ferdman noted yesterday, adding that “the family’s attorney shared a picture of a plea deal that appears to show it is true.”

To accept the deal, Glover would have had to sign a statement saying that Taylor was among several others who helped him in an “organized crime syndicate” as he “trafficked large amounts of Crack cocaine, methamphetamine, and opiates” in the Louisville area and sold it “from abandoned or vacant homes.”

If he agreed, the Jefferson County Office of the Commonwealth’s Attorney was willing to shrink his possible 10-year prison sentence to only probation.

Even if Taylor had been part of this supposed “crime syndicate,” it wouldn’t justify what police did here, of course. They were still trigger-happy goons who did a middle-of-the-night raid, without announcing themselves clearly, as part of an unwinnable but endlessly violent, discriminatory, and abusive war on drugs that makes everyone less safe and routinely leads to avoidable tragedies like these.

But their actions are all the more appalling when you consider the weakness of their evidence that anything illegal was at Taylor’s house. In fact, they raided the home and killed Taylor as she had been disentangling herself from Glover, trying to move on from their relationship and whatever tangential involvement in his activities it may have brought.

But police and county authorities wouldn’t let her. They were insistent on casting the net as wide as possible and taking Taylor down with Glover—at any cost, apparently. And now that Taylor can’t defend herself, they’re trying to manipulate the legal system to get Glover to go along with it.

The attempt shows “the lengths to which those within the police department and Commonwealth’s Attorney went to after Breonna Taylor’s killing to try and paint a picture of her which was vastly different than the woman she truly was,” Taylor’s lawyer, Sam Aguiar, said.

Glover didn’t ultimately take the deal, offered to him in July, and rejects the idea that he is somehow responsible for Taylor’s death. “The police are trying to make it out to be my fault and turning the whole community out here making it look like I brought this to Breonna’s door,” he told The Courier Journal. “There was nothing never there or anything ever there, and at the end of the day, they went about it the wrong way and lied on that search warrant and shot that girl out there,” he said.

FREE MINDS

Antifa Airlines thwarted? President Donald Trump is again rambling on about insane conspiracy theories on national television, this time about how Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden is being controlled by a cabal of shadowy “thugs” that the president can’t talk about.

A garbled memory of a viral rumor? A further attempt to portray Biden as soft on crime in advance of the election? A dog whistle for QAnon? Any way you look at it… WTF?

In related news:

Meanwhile, Biden asks America: “Do I look like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioters? Really?”

FREE MARKETS

Marijuana decriminalization vote in three weeks. A date has been set for the U.S. House vote on a bill that would decriminalize marijuana at the federal level:

ELECTION 2020

A Military Times poll suggests active-duty troops aren’t too fond of Trump. It reports:

In the latest results — based on 1,018 active-duty troops surveyed in late July and early August — nearly half of respondents (49.9 percent) had an unfavorable view of the president, compared to about 38 percent who had a favorable view. […] Even with the steady decline, Trump’s popularity in the poll remains better than former President Barack Obama. Obama had a 36 percent favorable rating and a 52 percent unfavorable rating in a January 2017 Military Times poll. […] Among active-duty service members surveyed in the poll, 41 percent said they would vote for Biden, the Democratic nominee, if the election was held today. Only 37 percent said they plan to vote to re-elect Trump.

QUICK HITS

• More good news about the ability of masks to defeat facial recognition technologies.

• The latest research on COVID-19 fatality rates confirms that older patients make up a hugely disproportionate amount of deaths from the virus. “Patients 65 or older account for about 16 percent of confirmed cases but four-fifths of COVID-19 deaths,” notes Reason‘s Jacob Sullum:

The crude case fatality rate indicated by the CDC’s numbers (deaths divided by confirmed cases) is about 0.25 percent for patients younger than 50 and nearly 16 percent—63 times higher—for patients older than 64. While the overall crude CFR is 3 percent, the rates among adults range from 0.07 percent for patients in their late teens and 20s to 29 percent for patients 85 or older—more than 400 times higher.

• The Department of Homeland Security has “confirmed NBC News reporting that migrant children who had been separated from their parents were left waiting in vans for hours, in some cases overnight, while waiting to be reunited.”

• Vox’s Matthew Yglesias makes the case for building more housing and letting more people in.

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Congress Would Like the CDC To Ruin Halloween

dreamstime_xxl_126033725

On the one holiday of the year it’s traditional to wear masks, Congress is nonetheless asking the CDC for coronavirus guidelines.

A bi-partisan group of 30 lawmakers wonder what protocols the little ghosts, goblins, and vampires should adhere to when—and if—they trick or treat. As The Hill reports:

“We are writing to ask you to update your Halloween safety guidance to include considerations related to COVID-19 so that Americans across the country know how to celebrate the Halloween season safely this year,” the members, including Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), Rodney Davis (R-Ill.), Ann Kuster (D-N.H.) and Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.), wrote to Redfield last week.

They want to know if kids should attend parties, or package treats for each other, or even participate in some kind of drive-by trick or treating.

“With the appropriate guidance from the CDC, Americans can celebrate Halloween throughout the month of October in ways that prioritize community safety and adhere to rigorous socially distancing requirements,” the members wrote.

By the time you’re prioritizing “rigorous” anything, you’re generally not talking about a super-fun event. If I were to venture a guess, I’d bet that the CDC will recommend that this year, kids celebrate on Zoom with all the joy their parents have experienced in staff meetings these past six months.

Maybe the agency could recommend some new games, like, “Who can suck their mask in the farthest?” Or “Green scream!” where kids compete to see who can create the scariest green screen background (or who can wear enough green paint to blend in except for their eyes and mouth—kind of a cool idea). “Pin the tracer on the virus-infected contact” is another game the scientists might recommend, but apparently this is too hard even for grownups to play.

Halloween was actually ripe for some re-imagining. In recent years it has morphed from the traditional kids-have-the-run-of-the-neighborhood night into an orgy of infantilization, whereby adults walk or even drive their kids house to house, stunting any kind of independence and bravery that might have taken root on this one thrilling night.

This year, they have the perfect excuse to stay home, lock the doors and simply load the kids up with candy (or  in some households, fresh broccoli florets and kombucha). Boo. Hoo.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2DgVcUy
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‘Who Funds the Rioters?’ Is Not a Question the Federal Government Needs To Ask

rtrltwelve179530

Last week, following President Donald Trump’s Republican National Convention acceptance speech at the White House, protesters surrounded Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) and his wife on the streets of Washington, D.C. Video footage showed that the encounter grew tense, and the Pauls say they had to rely on the police to prevent the crowd from assaulting them.

These protesters deserve condemnation. It was wrong of them to make the Pauls fear for their physical safety. (They were also tactically confused: Why shout “say her name” at the senator who introduced a bill named after the “her” in question?) If the activists committed any crimes, they should be held accountable.

But some critics of these activists—including Paul himself—want the government to investigate the purported funding sources of the protests. As Paul explained in an op-ed for Fox News:

After we got back to our hotel room and some safety we heard something frightening. The “protesters” were staying on our floor—including the room next door to us. They were talking about their mob activities and even saying they thought we were here on this floor. We had to develop a 3 a.m. plan with the Capitol Police to get to safety.

My question is: Who are these people? Who paid for their hotel rooms? Who flew them in? Law enforcement needs to look at the funding of violent criminal activity like this.

And national Democrats need to confront it. It’s organized. It’s paid for. It’s violent. It’s not about Black lives or any lives; it’s about anarchy and destruction. The American people are starting to catch on and grow tired of it.

Rep. Ken Buck (R–Colo.) expressed a similar demand on Twitter.

This is misguided, for several reasons.

First, the notion that the violent protests cropping up in U.S. cities are funded by a secret, shadowy cabal is a myth. Conspiracy theorists on all sides of the political spectrum like to imagine that their enemies are financed by some secret puppetmaster but, in general, people who show up to protests are usually not paid actors. People engaged in militant, far-left activism may travel from city to city, and they may be loosely connected with other activists in a semi-organized fashion, but they probably aren’t sitting on some secret pile of money.

Second, a mandate to monitor and investigate protest groups would give the federal government frightening license to target not just dangerous activists but also mere political opponents of the administration. Open-ended investigations into alleged funding sources—absent any evidence of larger financial crimes—strikes me as exactly the kind of witch hunt that many Republican critics of the deep state purport to oppose when the target is either Trump or a pro-Trump figure. If specific activists are arrested for violence, looting, or rioting, it may be appropriate—on a case by case basis—for law enforcement to ask questions about their specific circumstances. But any open-ended probe would pose a serious concern on civil libertarians grounds.

The frustrating reality is that much of the wanton property destruction following anti-police protests in cities like Kenosha, Wisconsin, and Minneapolis is opportunistic and only vaguely ideological. When public order breaks down, some subset of the population will rob stores, smash windows, and set buildings on fire. Others flock to protest in hot zones because they like the fight. These are the maladjusted, not paid foot soldiers in some wealthy villain’s war.

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Kentucky Authorities Offered Leniency to Breonna Taylor’s Ex if He Would Implicate Her in Drug Crimes

spnphotosnine964760(1)

They’re trying to “paint a picture of her which was vastly different than the woman she truly was,” says lawyer. Kentucky authorities’ defense for fatally shooting Breonna Taylor in a late-night raid for nonexistent drugs and drug money has always turned on the idea that Taylor—a 26-year-old emergency room technician who lived with her sister—was part of her ex-boyfriend’s alleged drug scheme. Now, new documents show how far they were willing to go to manufacture evidence for this narrative.

“On Tuesday, we were told Breonna Taylor’s ex-boyfriend Jamarcus Glover was offered a plea deal, which would have required him to say that Taylor was part of his drug operation,” Vice news correspondent Roberto Aram Ferdman noted yesterday, adding that “the family’s attorney shared a picture of a plea deal that appears to show it is true.”

To accept the deal, Glover would have had to sign a statement saying that Taylor was among several others who helped him in an “organized crime syndicate” as he “trafficked large amounts of Crack cocaine, methamphetamine, and opiates” in the Louisville area and sold it “from abandoned or vacant homes.”

If he agreed, the Jefferson County Office of the Commonwealth’s Attorney was willing to shrink his possible 10-year prison sentence to only probation.

Even if Taylor had been part of this supposed “crime syndicate,” it wouldn’t justify what police did here, of course. They were still trigger-happy goons who did a middle-of-the-night raid, without announcing themselves clearly, as part of an unwinnable but endlessly violent, discriminatory, and abusive war on drugs that makes everyone less safe and routinely leads to avoidable tragedies like these.

But their actions are all the more appalling when you consider the weakness of their evidence that anything illegal was at Taylor’s house. In fact, they raided the home and killed Taylor as she had been disentangling herself from Glover, trying to move on from their relationship and whatever tangential involvement in his activities it may have brought.

But police and county authorities wouldn’t let her. They were insistent on casting the net as wide as possible and taking Taylor down with Glover—at any cost, apparently. And now that Taylor can’t defend herself, they’re trying to manipulate the legal system to get Glover to go along with it.

The attempt shows “the lengths to which those within the police department and Commonwealth’s Attorney went to after Breonna Taylor’s killing to try and paint a picture of her which was vastly different than the woman she truly was,” Taylor’s lawyer, Sam Aguiar, said.

Glover didn’t ultimately take the deal, offered to him in July, and rejects the idea that he is somehow responsible for Taylor’s death. “The police are trying to make it out to be my fault and turning the whole community out here making it look like I brought this to Breonna’s door,” he told The Courier Journal. “There was nothing never there or anything ever there, and at the end of the day, they went about it the wrong way and lied on that search warrant and shot that girl out there,” he said.

FREE MINDS

Antifa Airlines thwarted? President Donald Trump is again rambling on about insane conspiracy theories on national television, this time about how Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden is being controlled by a cabal of shadowy “thugs” that the president can’t talk about.

A garbled memory of a viral rumor? A further attempt to portray Biden as soft on crime in advance of the election? A dog whistle for QAnon? Any way you look at it… WTF?

In related news:

Meanwhile, Biden asks America: “Do I look like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioters? Really?”

FREE MARKETS

Marijuana decriminalization vote in three weeks. A date has been set for the U.S. House vote on a bill that would decriminalize marijuana at the federal level:

ELECTION 2020

A Military Times poll suggests active-duty troops aren’t too fond of Trump. It reports:

In the latest results — based on 1,018 active-duty troops surveyed in late July and early August — nearly half of respondents (49.9 percent) had an unfavorable view of the president, compared to about 38 percent who had a favorable view. […] Even with the steady decline, Trump’s popularity in the poll remains better than former President Barack Obama. Obama had a 36 percent favorable rating and a 52 percent unfavorable rating in a January 2017 Military Times poll. […] Among active-duty service members surveyed in the poll, 41 percent said they would vote for Biden, the Democratic nominee, if the election was held today. Only 37 percent said they plan to vote to re-elect Trump.

QUICK HITS

• More good news about the ability of masks to defeat facial recognition technologies.

• The latest research on COVID-19 fatality rates confirms that older patients make up a hugely disproportionate amount of deaths from the virus. “Patients 65 or older account for about 16 percent of confirmed cases but four-fifths of COVID-19 deaths,” notes Reason‘s Jacob Sullum:

The crude case fatality rate indicated by the CDC’s numbers (deaths divided by confirmed cases) is about 0.25 percent for patients younger than 50 and nearly 16 percent—63 times higher—for patients older than 64. While the overall crude CFR is 3 percent, the rates among adults range from 0.07 percent for patients in their late teens and 20s to 29 percent for patients 85 or older—more than 400 times higher.

• The Department of Homeland Security has “confirmed NBC News reporting that migrant children who had been separated from their parents were left waiting in vans for hours, in some cases overnight, while waiting to be reunited.”

• Vox’s Matthew Yglesias makes the case for building more housing and letting more people in.

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US Manufacturing Storms Ahead: ISM Smashes Expectations As New Orders Soar To 16 Year High

US Manufacturing Storms Ahead: ISM Smashes Expectations As New Orders Soar To 16 Year High

Tyler Durden

Tue, 09/01/2020 – 10:14

Following more rebounds in ‘soft’ manufacturing survey data in Europe and Asia (and LatAm – Brazil Manufacturing PMI exploded to a record in July), both ISM and Markit’s measures of US manufacturing sentiment were expected to continue their v-shaped recovery, and they did just that, when first the Markit PMI printed at 53.1, the highest level since January 2019, followed by the ISM Manufacturing, which smashed expectations, printing at 56.0, the highest since November 2018.

Just like last month, the ISM surge was driven largely by New Orders which spiked from 61.5 to 67.6, the highest level since Jan 2004, and while employment continued to rise, from 44.3 to 46.4, it remains in contraction territory.

Looking across the data, virtually all ISM components improved with the exception of Inventories which dipped for both producers and customers, a sign that destocking is taking place and which is actually bullish for even more future demand.

On ISM, Chair Timothy Fiore said that “The August PMI registered 56 percent, up 1.8 percentage points from the July reading of 54.2 percent. This figure indicates expansion in the overall economy for the fourth month in a row after a contraction in April, which ended a period of 131 consecutive months of growth. The New Orders Index registered 67.6 percent, an increase of 6.1 percentage points from the July reading of 61.5 percent. The Production Index registered 63.3 percent, up 1.2 percentage points compared to the July reading of 62.1 percent. The Backlog of Orders Index registered 54.6 percent, an increase of 2.8 percentage points compared to the July reading of 51.8 percent. The Employment Index registered 46.4 percent, an increase of 2.1 percentage points from the July reading of 44.3 percent. The Supplier Deliveries Index registered 58.2 percent, up 2.4 percentage points from the July figure of 55.8 percent.

Looking ahead, Fiore said : “Don’t see why this can’t continue, maybe not as strong, pretty good shape.”

And while the Fed is desperate to average inflation higher, the ISM confirmed that at the commodity level, virtually everything was more expensive:

Meanwhile, unlike last month, when the Markit PMI unexpectedly missed, this time there was convergence between the two series, with Markit noting that the strongest Mfg PMI since Jan 2019 “was underpinned by stronger new order growth as exports rose at the quickest pace for four years.”

The ISM Survey respondents were mixed even as optimism about the future seemed to prevail (except for airlines), although some expressed concerns about the ongoing covid crisis, while others noted that some weakness is starting to emerge:

  • “Watching COVID-19 situations in Mexico, Brazil, Philippines [and] Hong Kong. High rates of COVID-19 surging. Currently, lines of supply no longer impacted by COVID-19 related events.” (Computer & Electronic Products)
  • “Business is very good. Production cannot keep up with demand. Some upstream supply chains are starting to have issues with raw material and/or transportation availability.” (Chemical Products)
  • “Airline industry continues to be under great pressure.” (Transportation Equipment)
  • “Current sales to domestic markets are substantially stronger than forecasted. We expected a recession, but it did not turn out that way. Retail and trade customer markets are very strong and driving shortages in raw material suppliers, increasing supplier orders.” (Fabricated Metal Products)
  • “Homebuilder business continues to be robust, with month-over-month gains continuing since May. Business remains favorable and will only be held back by supply issues across the entire industry.” (Wood Products)
  • “We are seeing solid month-over-month order improvement in all manufacturing sectors such as electrical, auto and industrial goods. Looking to add a few factory operators.” (Plastics & Rubber Products)
  • “Rolling production forecasts are increasing each week compared to prior forecast.” (Primary Metals)
  • “[Production ramp-up] has been a struggle. We have started and stopped lines numerous times at all 18 of our manufacturing plants due to COVID-19 issues. Surprisingly, our direct suppliers have done an excellent job on shipping ingredients and packaging on time.” (Food, Beverage & Tobacco Products)
  • “Strong demand from existing and new customers for our products, stable-to-decreasing input costs for our operations, and record numbers of new business opportunities from prospective customers’ reshoring measures. All trends continuing from the first quarter of fiscal year 2017.” (Electrical Equipment, Appliances & Components)
  • “Capital equipment new orders have slowed again. Quoting is active. Many customers waiting for the fourth quarter to make any commitments.” (Machinery)
  • “We are starting to see parts of our business rebound in August, while other parts remained weak. Some of our export business has come back for the first time since the start of COVID-19; however, domestic portfolios remain mixed.” (Paper Products)

On PMI, Chris Williamson, Chief Business Economist at IHS Markit notes, made an interesting observation: while new export orders surged, “new orders and export sales at smaller manufacturers continued to fall, highlighting an unbalanced recovery in favor of larger firms.“

“The manufacturing upturn gained further ground in August, adding to indications that the third quarter should see a strong rebound in production from the steep decline suffered in the second quarter.

“Encouragingly, new order inflows improved markedly, outpacing production to leave many companies struggling to produce enough goods to meet demand, often due to a lack of operating capacity. Backlogs of uncompleted work consequently rose at the fastest rate since the early months of 2019, encouraging increasing numbers of firms to take on more staff.

“Key to the upturn was a jump in new export orders, which rose at the fastest rate for four years, reflecting improving demand in many foreign markets, and benefitting larger companies in particular. Disappointingly, new orders and export sales at smaller manufacturers continued to fall, highlighting an unbalanced recovery in favor of larger firms.

Overall a strong report for the month of August which may end up being a problem for the broader economy as it eliminates the need for an urgent intervention by Congress to reboot the fiscal spending that expired on July 31.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/34TT1Sc Tyler Durden

Venezuela Turns To Gold Mining To Escape Economic Ruin

Venezuela Turns To Gold Mining To Escape Economic Ruin

Tyler Durden

Tue, 09/01/2020 – 09:57

Is gold money? Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro sure seems to think so.

Having exhausted all other options and having run out of space on its paper currency to print more zeros, Venezuela has grapsed on to the idea that gold mining is likely going to be its answer to get itself out of economic ruin. As a result, the country is now pushing into some protected areas of the Amazon to expand its gold mining. In fact, the amount of land used for mining has “more than tripled” since March of last year, according to Bloomberg. In April of this year, more new lots for mining were authorized, foreshadowing further geographic expansion into the back half of 2021.

The broke Venezuela government is be trying to formalize and coalesce around a gold industry that has been mostly illegal and is best known for destroying natural resources throughout the country. In a move that will send the blood pressure of ESG advocates around the world soaring, authorities are now supplying equipment and offering help in hopes that new gold will be sold to the government no matter the environmental consequences. 

While the country’s number of mines has declined, it is due to operations merging with one another. The scope of mining is now about 116,655 hectares, up from 33,926 hectares a year ago. State gold purchases have grown by 15x to 9.7 tons from 2016 to 2018.

Venezuela remains crippled by U.S. sanctions and reduced oil output, which has made gold an easy resource for President Nicolas Maduro to focus on. Maduro has already sold reserves to allies like Iran while fighting to have the country’s bullion held abroad to be repatriated. By mining new gold, he is now looking to “tap surging prices of the metal”, according to Bloomberg. 

Mining is now starting to infringe upon national parks and protected areas. 

Tina Oliveira, Amazon director of Wataniba, said: “Mining areas in the Venezuelan Amazon have grown chaotically, even in areas surrounding towns and cities.”

Mining Minister Gilberto Pinto, said: “Our policies are focused on the use of new technology as to reduce irreversible environmental modification. Remediation clauses in our joint-venture contracts are very strict.”

Opposition lawmaker Olivia Lozano said: “The regime handed out lots of mining areas to its allies, who mine gold and split it with the government, then ship it abroad.”

The mining region of Piar is being sent machinery and office trailers by the government to help with the efforts. Materials are then being processed at the “Manuel Piar complex in Ciudad Guayana, run by state-owned Corporacion Venezolana de Mineria, and guarded by intelligence police and the military.”

It sure is a lot of fuss, all for a “pet rock”…

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2DmfTP6 Tyler Durden

Russia 4th Country To Top 1 Million COVID Cases; New US Hotspots Emerge As Sun Belt Outbreak Slows: Live Updates

Russia 4th Country To Top 1 Million COVID Cases; New US Hotspots Emerge As Sun Belt Outbreak Slows: Live Updates

Tyler Durden

Tue, 09/01/2020 – 09:40

Summary:

  • Russia cases top 1 million, 4th country to do so
  • New hotspots emerge in Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota and Alabama
  • India new cases slow after week of record gains
  • Sweden considers new local restrictions
  • WHO warns countries can’t just abandon COVID protections
  • Obese people at much higher risk of death, study shows
  • Hong Kong pressures residents to submit to testing scheme

* * *

Russia has finally surpassed 1 million confirmed COVID-19 cases, becoming the fourth country on earth to pass the 1 million milestone, even as the number of new cases reported daily continues to slow. Public health officials reported 4,729 new infections on Tuesday, bringing the total to 1,000,048. The death toll increased by 123 to 17,299, a strikingly low mortality rate, even as many experts suspect that Russia has dramatically undercounted deaths.

Russia is now behind only the US, Brazil and India for largest outbreak in the world.

Nearly 25.5 million cases of the virus have been confirmed around the world, according to Johns Hopkins University. Overnight, the global death toll topped 850k, as the global death toll as of Tuesday morning was 850,535 people. Some 16.8 million people have recovered.

Epidemiologists and viral disease experts like Dr. Scott Gottlieb have criticized the Trump Administration for shifting toward a “herd immunity” approach that many have said could lead to thousands of unnecessary deaths. On Tuesday, the WHO’s Dr. Tedros warned that “no country can simply pretend the pandemic is over,” an oblique insult to the US.

Despite fears about the CCP collecting and storing DNA from Hong Kong dissidents, Chief Executive Carrie Lam encouraged the city’s 7 million-plus citizens to get tested for COVID-19 via a new mass testing drive organized by the city, with the help of the mainland.

On the mainland, Chinese students began to return to their classrooms following 2 weeks without a single locally transmitted case.

The large-scale testing would help people understand that the screening “isn’t as painful or as difficult as they imagine,” Lam insisted.

After reporting a string of global single-day records for new cases, India’s tally is nearing 3.7 million, as millions of masked students sat for college admission exams after the government refused to delay them. Meanwhile India, which has the third-highest case count and third-worst death toll, reported 69,921 new coronavirus infections on Tuesday, its lowest in six days.

Finally, Obese and overweight people are at high risk of suffering severe cases of the virus, according to a new French study that effectively confirmed what we already knew. Research presented at a conference this week shows how carrying extra pounds can put patients at a higher risk of COVID-induced death.

While it’s tempting to declare victory over the US outbreak as the number of new cases continues to slow along the Sun Belt, it looks like more hot spots are emerging in the Midwest and parts of the deep south, as Alabama, North Dakota, South Dakota and Iowa see record numbers of new cases.

A team of Bank of America analysts pointed out that although the nationwide 7-day average positivity ratio has fallen from 6.2% to 5.8%, state-level data clearly point to outbreaks in Alabama, Iowa, North Dakota and South Dakota. These four states have the most new cases per capita over the last week, as well as the largest seven-day change in new cases per capita – not to mention the highest positivity ratios, north of 18%, which have risen sharply in all four states.

As we head into flu season, if these cases do not drop significantly below current levels, the probability of a large surge increases.

Circling back to Europe, Sweden is ready to impose stricter rules on local communities in the event of sudden Covid-19 outbreaks, but said it remains committed to its broader national strategy of limited restrictions on movement.

As case numbers in France and Spain continue to climb, Sweden has jumped on a European bandwagon favoring locally targeted measures over sweeping national efforts to try and stamp out new infections.

“To deal with the local outbreaks that we fear may happen, regional authorities could issue stricter recommendations if needed,” Johan Carlson, the director-general of Sweden’s Public Health Agency, said on Tuesday.

Guidelines to tackle local outbreaks could include more restrictive work-from-home rules and a return to online education for Sweden’s schoolchildren. Limitations on public gatherings, and closures of public transport, could also factor in.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3bsttx7 Tyler Durden