Month: July 2024

Authored by Aaron Gifford via The Epoch Times,

New research indicates that U.S. public school spending has doubled since 2003, outpacing the rate of inflation and showing no clear correlation between more dollars per pupil and higher eighth-grade math and fourth-grade reading scores.

The Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University released its latest findings last month. The report, titled “Will Academic Recovery Stall When the Federal Relief Funds Dry Up?”  also draws attention to the fiscal cliff many districts face in the year ahead as they weigh expenditures against desired achievement.

School districts are required to earmark whatever is left of their post-COVID American Rescue Plan Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds by Sept. 30. The liquidation deadline is Dec. 31. ESSER, established in 2021, allocated $122 billion over three phases to help schools with learning recovery efforts.

Most of the ESSER money was spent on labor—more teachers, classroom aids, counselors, reading coaches, tutors, subject area specialists, and administrators, but it was not applied to raise pay rates for existing teachers, Edunomics Lab Director Marguerite Roza told The Epoch Times on July 10.

While one device (laptop or tablet) per child became an industry standard largely funded by federal money, equipment purchases did not make up a significant portion of expenditures, Ms. Roza said. She and her team of researchers interviewed school administrators and analyzed data at the federal and state levels dating back 20 years, including information from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which runs The Nation’s Report Card website. Many comparisons cited involved shorter time frames, and the findings were largely focused on the pandemic era.

“The priorities and the value these investments brought varied by state,” Ms. Roza told The Epoch Times on July 10.

“Some states were able to eke out more value.”

At the national level, math scores declined sharply between 2013 and 2022, with 30 states reporting that students were more than half of a grade level behind before scores began rising slightly between 2022 and 2023, according to the report.

For reading, the negative trend line began in 2017, with the average score in 30 states dropping below grade level in 2020 and continuing downward until last year, the report noted.

Meanwhile, the national average per-pupil spending rate increased by 100 percent between 2003 and 2023 to $16,100 ($1,350 of the 2023 amount came from federal relief funds).

Total inflation for the two decades was 67 percent, according to the report.

The report also notes that U.S. schools now have more instructional staff than ever before, with that number increasing from 3,465,906 in 2005 to 3,842,000 this past academic year ending in the spring of 2024. By contrast, the number of K-12 public school students during the same period increased slightly, from 48,150,528 to 49,033,092.

Ms. Roza stressed that results were varied at the state level. Mississippi, Illinois, Ohio, and Kentucky reported reading/English Language Arts assessment scores averaging above grade levels during the 2022-2023 academic year, while average scores in California, Oregon, Washington State, Virginia, and South Dakota were below grade level.

Mississippi’s overall per-pupil spending rate has been much lower than that of the schools it outperformed, but its ESSER aid per student, at about $1,600 compared to California’s estimated $1,300, is higher. The report also noted that the Golden State disproportionately spent more money on social-emotional learning, tutoring, and summer programs.

“But,” Ms. Roza said, “within the states, some individual districts saw some real growth, and some saw lackluster growth. Compton (California) saw quite impressive scores.”

For math assessments, all states surveyed reported average scores around or above grade level in the 2022-2023 school year, with Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and Mississippi showing the most progress, with average scores approaching or exceeding half of the next grade level, according to the report.

In the absenteeism measurements section, the report shows that attendance improved in most states between 2022 and 2023, highlighted by Hawaii and Michigan’s 7 percent increases. South Carolina reported a 5 percent decrease, and Louisiana reported a 4 percent decrease.

“Is it possible to get improved outcomes without sizable funding increases? Yes. There are policy strategies that wouldn’t require new funds,” Ms. Roza said. “What really matters is implementation.”

She said this research is a work in progress. The 2024 national and state reading and math assessment scores should be available by October, and final ESSER expenditure figures by school district and state should be available next month.

The U.S. Department of Education notes that while learning recovery in the wake of the pandemic is the highest priority of ESSER, the program also aims to rebuild the educator workforce and help schools operate safely. With the ESSER program ending, many school districts must find other ways to cover those added labor costs, either by increasing the tax levy, making cuts in different areas of the budget, or obtaining more state aid.

In the Guymon Public School District in the Oklahoma panhandle, about $7 million in ESSER funds were applied to replace the high school’s heating, cooling, ventilation, and air conditioning system, which was considered a facility safety issue. Superintendent Dixie Purdy said the district did not come to rely on aid for other programs and is financially sound heading into future school years.

In a survey run by YouGov, respondents who identified as Democrats or as Independents who were Democratic-leaning were divided over whether or not U.S. President Biden should step aside in the presidential elections, with 42 percent saying he should while 43 percent said he should not.

At the same time, 64 percent said that the Democratic Party should support Biden rather than try to replace him, if he does choose to keep running.

YouGov then asked which candidates respondents would approve of hypothetically.

As Statista’s Anna Felck shows in the following chart, Vice President Kamala Harris came out on top with 73 percent support.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Harris was also considered by supporters of the party as the person most likely to be able to hold onto the presidency.

By contrast, Pete Buttigieg received 57 percent support, while Bernie Sanders received 52 percent, although he also saw the highest level of disapproval of the polled politicians at 34 percent.

When asked to compare the attributes of Biden and Harris, a varied picture emerges.

For example, far more respondents considered Harris to be mentally fit (56 percent to Harris, nine percent to Biden, 25 percent equally matched) and a better communicator (47 percent to Harris, 15 percent to Biden, 25 percent even), while Biden received higher scores on being qualified for the role (34 percent to Biden, 13 percent to Harris, 41 percent equal) and being a strong leader (31 percent to Biden, 16 percent to Harris, 34 percent to both).

The most popular answer to this question on several of the character traits however was that they were equally matched.

Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

The tremendous suffering that we are seeing all over the world right now is only just the beginning.  As I have documented repeatedly, we are in the midst of the worst global food crisis in modern history, and we haven’t seen this many countries engaged in military conflict since World War II.  In other words, this is a time of famine, and it is a time of war.  This represents a major problem for those that believe that humans are intrinsically good and that humanity is moving into a new golden era of peace and prosperity.  If humans are intrinsically good, why is there so much evil all around us?  Of course the truth is that the evil that we see all around is the product of the evil in human hearts.  Humanity is the reason why there is so much war, so much famine, so much greed, so much corruption, and so much suffering.

While billionaires in the western world live the high life, vast hordes of people on the other side of the planet are literally starving to death.

In Sudan, right now more than 25 million people “are facing high levels of acute food insecurity”…

In addition to the threat of violence, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification reported that 25.6 million people in Sudan are facing high levels of acute food insecurity, and 8.5 million people are facing emergency food shortages. The IPC also warned about the risk of famine across 14 areas, impacting residents and refugees in areas like Greater Darfur and Greater Kordofan.

There have been some nightmarish famines in Sudan before, but this is the worst.

The CEO of World Vision, Edgar Sandoval, says that people in Sudan are literally fighting over anthills because it is the only source of food available in some cases…

Sandoval also met another mother and her son, who weighed only 26 pounds. He said his heart broke as the mother wept, telling Sandoval that people in her community are fighting each other over anthills because they’re so hungry. She said they’ll eat the millets stored there by the ants.

“And they’re fighting for that as the only source of food,” Sandoval said. “I think that speaks to the level of desperation that the Sudanese people are facing. It’s the situation that children and moms in particular are facing.”

Can you imagine what it would be like to be that hungry?

And can you imagine what it would be like to watch your own children beg for food?

It is being reported that 730,000 children in Sudan are at “imminent risk of dying”…

In June, the United Nations Children’s Fund announced that nearly 9 million children in Sudan face acute food insecurity and access to safe drinking water. More than 3,800 children have been killed since the fighting escalated in April 2023, and almost 4 million children under the age of 5 are suffering from acute malnutrition, with 730,000 projected to be at an “imminent risk of dying.”

When I try to explain what is happening in Sudan to clueless people here in the western world, they look at me like I am from outer space.

Many of them have never heard about the hordes of people starving on the other side of the planet because the mainstream media is absolutely obsessed with talking about Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

But this is really happening.

As I discussed in a previous article, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is warning that over 2.5 million people could starve to death in Darfur and Kordofan alone by the end of September…

The Ethiopian famine killed a million people between 1983 and 1985, according to UN estimates. Thomas-Greenfield said that in a worst-case scenario, a famine in Sudan could become even more lethal.

“We’ve seen mortality projections estimating that in excess of 2.5 million people, about 15% of the population in Darfur and Kordofan – the hardest hit regions – could die by the end of September,” the ambassador said.

“This is the largest humanitarian crisis on the face of the planet. And yet, somehow, it threatens to get worse,” she added.

Meanwhile, military conflicts all over the world just continue to intensify.

The Russians continue to gain ground in several areas of eastern Ukraine, and this is making a number of Ukraine’s neighbors very nervous.

In fact, the head of the Polish military just stated that his forces need to prepare for “full-scale conflict”…

Poland needs to prepare its soldiers for all-out conflict, its armed forces chief of staff said on Wednesday, as the country boosts the number of troops on its border with Russia and Belarus.

Poland’s relations with Russia and its ally Belarus have deteriorated sharply since Moscow sent tens of thousands of troops into neighboring Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, starting a war that is still being fought.

“Today, we need to prepare our forces for full-scale conflict, not an asymmetric-type conflict,” army chief of staff General Wieslaw Kukula told a press conference.

Of course Poland is a member of NATO, and so if Poland ends up fighting Russia we will be fighting Russia too.

This week, Chinese forces are engaged in very alarming military exercises that are taking place just miles from the Polish border…

Belarus and China kicked off 11-day joint military training exercises Monday, Belarus’ defense ministry said – with activities taking place just miles from the border of Poland, a NATO and European Union member.

The joint anti-terrorist training “Attacking Falcon” exercises in Belarus would see military personnel from both countries “act together” as one unit in certain stages, Maj. Gen. Vadim Denisenko of the Belarusian military said in a Telegram post.

I think that Chinese forces are there to ward off a potential invasion of Belarus.

Ukraine has been building up large numbers of troops and vast quantities of equipment near the border with Belarus for quite some time, and there had been fears that Ukraine may try to do something really stupid.  In fact, officials in Belarus were so concerned that they were publicly warning that they would use tactical nuclear weapons if they were invaded.

Meanwhile, NATO has started delivering F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine…

NATO allies on Wednesday announced they had started transferring F-16 jets to Ukraine and stepped up promises to Kyiv on eventual membership in the alliance at a 75th anniversary summit clouded by political uncertainties in the United States.

In response, Russia has been bombing the daylights out of the airfields where those F-16 fighter jets were supposed to be based.

I really wish that leaders on both sides would sit down and try to find a peaceful way out of this mess.

But that isn’t going to happen.

In the Middle East, western powers are desperately trying to avert a full-blown war between Israel and Hezbollah…

Israel and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah militant group have been exchanging near-daily fire along the Israel-Lebanon border since Oct. 8. The US and France are attempting to broker a diplomatic solution that would end the fighting. Should those negotiations fail, Israeli officials anticipate a full-blown war with the Iran-backed militia.

Sadly, I am entirely convinced that such a full-blown war could be just months away.

This war in the Middle East is still only in the early stages, and the utter carnage that we will eventually witness will shock the entire world.

We really are living in a time of “wars and rumors of wars”, and famines will intensify as global conflict spreads.

So no, a new golden era of peace and prosperity is not on the way.

Instead, our future will be filled with war, famine and a tremendous amount of pain.

*  *  *

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

The Biden administration has collected $1 billion – a few days worth of Ukraine funding – from wealthy tax cheats, in what the Associated Press frames as a showcase of how the agency is making use of monies received from the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.

The outlet suggests that the announcement is part of a public push to raise awareness that a Republican takeover of the White House or Congress could mean future budget cuts for the IRS – which last year launched a series of initiatives aimed at pursuing high-wealth individuals who have shirked their tax obligations.

According to the agency, the campaign is focused on taxpayers with over $1 million in income and over $250,000 in recognized tax debt.

“President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act is increasing tax fairness and ensuring that all wealthy taxpayers pay the taxes they owe, just like working families do,” said Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in a statement.

Among the initiatives are measures to halt “partnership basis shifting,” potentially raising $50 billion over the next decade, and targeting improper deductions on personal flights via corporate jets. Eugene Steuerle from the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center emphasized the positive impact of these efforts, suggesting increased public support for the IRS if they “can show they’re having a positive impact and it’s not impacting average American taxpayers, there would be more public support for this activity and the agency.”

That said, Republicans are not backing down from threats to make deep cuts to the IRS.

House Republicans built a $1.4 billion reduction to the IRS into the debt ceiling and budget cuts package passed by Congress in the summer of 2023. The deal included a separate agreement to take $20 billion from the IRS over the next two years and divert that money to other non-defense programs.

House Republicans’ fiscal year 2025 proposal out of the Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee in June proposes further cuts to the IRS in 2025, and would cut funding to the Direct File program that is being expanded to allow Americans to file their taxes directly with the IRS. -AP

All of that said- according to Demian Brady, VP of research for the National Taxpayers Union Foundation, says that the IRS is still targeting non-high net worth partnerships for audits. 

“It should also be noted that nearly two-thirds of audits initiated in 2023 were on those making less than $200,000.“

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

The above headline would be a great title for the Babylon Bee except for one thing. It’s true.

President Biden arrived at the NATO summit in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. JACQUELYN MARTIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS via the Wall Street Journal

Revisions and More Revisions

The Wall Street Journal comments on The Tight-Lipped Approach to Biden’s Health Disclosures

An opaque picture of President Biden’s health has emerged since his disastrous debate performance as a result of shifting accounts of his medical care by the White House and the president’s own refusal to undergo more testing.

Since the debate, where Biden at times struggled to complete his thoughts and often appeared to freeze with his mouth agape, the White House has rejected calls for greater transparency about the 81-year-old president’s health.

On at least three occasions since the debate, the White House has had to correct or clarify official statements about Biden’s medical treatment. Most recently, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said a January visit by neurologist Kevin Cannard to the White House had been for the president’s annual physical, after telling reporters earlier in the day that the visit wasn’t related to Biden’s care.

On Tuesday, the White House said that the neurologist, Kevin Cannard, had examined the president as part of his annual physical on Jan. 17, the same day that Biden’s performance in a meeting to secure Ukraine funding raised concerns among some lawmakers about the president’s acuity. During the meeting that day, Biden moved slowly, spoke softly and read from notes, deferring frequently to other lawmakers and staffers, some people who attended the meeting said. Cannard’s appointment was scheduled five days in advance, visitor logs show. The White House said there was no connection between the meeting and the exam.

New answers
On Tuesday, the White House corrected a previous statement on the Jan. 17 visit by Cannard, the neurologist, to the White House. In a briefing that afternoon, Jean-Pierre told reporters that the Jan. 17 visit by Cannard wasn’t related to care for the president. Later that day, Jean-Pierre contacted the Associated Press, whose reporter had asked about the visit, to say that the visit was in fact for the president’s physical, one of three times she said Cannard had seen Biden for a physical.

Later that day, the White House released a letter from O’Connor in which he confirmed that Cannard had examined Biden for his annual physicals and said the president hadn’t seen a neurologist outside of those examinations.

Even that letter left some questions unanswered about why Cannard had visited the White House residence clinic—intended for the first family and senior-most staff as determined by the Defense Department—eight times if he had only examined the president three times. Bates said Thursday that Cannard only went to the residence clinic once, even though visitor logs show he signed in there on eight separate days.

George Stephanopoulos Interview

Let’s review some pertinent parts of the Stephanopoulos Biden Interview as noted in my post “It’s a Biden Question” a Musical Tribute to the Stephanopoulos Interview

Stephanopoulos: I know you said you have an ongoing assessment. Have you had a full neurological and cognitive evaluation?

Biden: I’ve had– I get a full neurological test everyday with me. And I’ve had a full physical. I had, you know, I mean, I– I’ve been at Walter Reed for my physicals. I mean–uhm yes, the answer.

Stephanopoulos: I– I know your doctor said he consulted with a neurologist. I– I guess I’m asking– a slightly different question. Have you had the specific cognitive tests, and have you had a neurologist, a specialist, do an examination?

Biden: No. No one said I had to. No one said. They said I’m good.

Stephanopoulos: Would you be willing to undergo an independent medical evaluation that included neurological and cognit– cognitive tests and release the results to the American people?

Biden: Look. I have a cognitive test every single day. Every day I have that test. Everything I do. You know, not only am I campaigning, but I’m running the world. Not– and that’s not hi– sounds like hyperbole, but we are the essential nation of the world.

Stephanopoulos: … the American people have been watching, yet their concerns about your age and your health are growing. So that’s why I’m asking — to reassure them, would you be willing to have the independent medical evaluation?

Biden: Watch me between– there’s a lotta time left in this campaign. There’s over 125 days. [Yes, we watched you repeatedly duck very pointed tough questions]

Stephanopoulos: So the answer–

Biden: They’ll make a decision.

Stephanopoulos: Right—the answer right now is, no, you– you don’t want to do that right now.

Biden: Well, I’ve already done it.

The Price of Lying and Cover-Ups

The above transcript is of someone who is either delusional or a liar or both.

It’s not recent either. It’s been ongoing for four years.

The coverups have finally taken a toll. People now see the truth: They’ve been lied to for years by the president and a Press willing to lie for him.

WSJ comments on Biden’s Frailty and the Political Price of Insincerity

How did they let it get this far? How did Democratic power brokers and progressive media personalities—groups not known for their indifference to winning elections—wait until July 2024 to urge President Biden not to run for re-election?

Any mildly observant person could see four years ago that Mr. Biden had declined further than a commander in chief should. These pages noted Mr. Biden’s diminished state during and after his 2020 campaign. In the 2012 debate with Paul Ryan, the editorial board remarked on Nov. 19, 2020, Mr. Biden “was aggressive and confident. In 2020, in the rare times he speaks off the cuff without a teleprompter, he looks more tentative, as if grasping for an argument or words that he knows are around here somewhere.”

Democrats disregarded this and 10,000 similar observations because they took them to be insincere, and the political left has become so accustomed to insincerity as not to recognize its opposite. On the left—particularly in the New York Times and other elite outlets—substantive complaints are routinely presented as procedural or ethical ones. Rather than make a straightforward argument that a person or policy is wrong on the merits, elected Democrats, following the media’s lead, typically raise technical or otherwise secondary objections they plainly don’t care about.

Having convinced themselves that the president’s infirmity was a right-wing invention, Democrats find themselves in the unenviable position of having to acknowledge the truth of what their opponents have been saying for years. The whole mess might have been avoided if Democrats had credited their critics with sincerity.

The Lie Is Disclosed

One cannot put a disclosed lie back in the bottle.

The press has been forced to admit Biden’s This lie, and now they are in a race to protect their own reputations.

As a result, the Left-wing media is now in competition to unsweep the dirt it swept under the rug out of fear of losing more readership.

Unprecedented Setup

Biden now has to deal with an openly hostile press. This is an unprecedented setup for Democrats in general and Biden specifically.

There are two things I am sure of: 1) More clarifications will be needed. And 2) The press will be hostile until Biden drops out.

When is that?

Is Biden Bluffing or Do Democrats Have a Defendable Strategy?

I discussed the possibility of a Biden bluff (Nate Silver’s theory), and a purposeful timeline strategy (my theory), in Is Biden Bluffing or Do Democrats Have a Defendable Strategy?

If Biden does not drop out before or during the live convention, my theory will be proven false.

There is no way other than direct admission to prove either theory correct. However, if Biden drops out on the schedule I propose, or during the live convention, it is strong evidence my theory is the correct one.

I have specific timelines for two events. See above post for details.

China unveiled Friday that it has been conducting major joint naval drills with Russia along its southern coast, during the same week that NATO leaders met in Washington D.C.

The drills have apparently already been underway for a while, since “early July” – according to a Chinese military statement, and have been dubbed Joint Sea-2024. They are slated to continue for several more days into mid-July.

The defense ministry identified that the drills, which include an aerial component, are centered near the southern city of Zhanjiang, and aim “to demonstrate the resolve and capabilities of the two sides in jointly addressing maritime security threats and preserving global and regional peace and stability.”

The exercises “will further deepen China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for the new era,” the ministry continued.

China and Russia are without doubt signaling the West that their relations and cooperation on the levels of defense, industry, and technology will remain ironclad. 

Leaders of NATO this week issued a communique which among other things declared that Beijing “cannot enable the largest war in Europe in recent history” without facing repercussions.

China has remained officially neutral on Ukraine, but has still faced US sanctions for supplying Russia with industrial parts and goods which are vital to Russia’s defense manufacturing sector.

One analyst was cited in The New York Times as pointing out that the NATO statement was especially strong and full-throated: 

“It’s a very rare move for NATO to openly accuse China, saying Beijing is massively supporting Russia’s defense industrial base,” said Liou Shiau-shyang, an expert on China and Russia at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a government-funded research group in Taiwan. “Clearly, the United States has won over some skeptics who did not see China as a key player in the Russia-Ukraine war.”

Meanwhile China has responded in part through a series of English language op-eds in state-run Global Times, with themes of NATO constantly “hyping” the China threat.

For example, one Tuesday article in the publication charged that Washington is using NATO to expand its hegemony into southeast Asia:

NATO, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary but should have been ditched into the trash bin of history long ago, is now weak internally and facing numerous challenges. The uncertainty concerning the French parliamentary elections, the US upcoming presidential elections, and the increase in European defense spending have raised concerns. NATO is no longer a united organization on many issues. This already loose alliance, under the leadership of the US, is now hoping to build unity by spreading the rumor that “China is threatening regional security.” 

In fact, the US is not only aiming to contain China through NATO, but to control the entire Asia-Pacific region. In order to achieve this goal, NATO is trying to woo regional countries in many ways, constantly creating and exaggerating security crisis in the Asia-Pacific. 

The fact has remained that the more that Moscow and Beijing find themselves in US crosshairs and under Western pressure, the closer they become, despite having been historic rivals throughout much of the prior hundred years. Biden did not have an answer to this when asked Thursday about this policy backfiring on this front.

On this foreign policy master point: One reporter basically said to Biden, look, two years ago, we asked if your sanctions policy was merely going to bring Russia and China much closer together rather than accomplish its goals. You assured us it wouldn’t. You were totally wrong.… https://t.co/gYIaE0vkKN

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) July 12, 2024

It was only in early 2022, very soon before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, that Presidents Xi and Putin declared their countries’ partnership to have “no limits”.

Authored by Jeff Louderbeck via The Epoch Times,

As former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden prepare to receive their respective party’s nomination at their national conventions, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is inching closer to getting on the ballot in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

On July 10, Indiana county election officials announced they had certified around 39,000 petition signatures to place the independent candidate on the state’s general election ballot.

That same day, through the We the People Party, Mr. Kennedy said he turned in the required number of signatures to get on the ballot in Georgia.

The campaign also announced that the New York State Board of Elections determined the candidate submitted 108,680 valid signatures for ballot access in that state, more than double the 45,000 required.

On July 11, Mr. Kennedy’s campaign announced it had submitted enough signatures to gain ballot access in Colorado. The campaign turned in more than 30,000 signatures, more than double the 12,000 required, according to a statement.

Last week, the Libertarian Party of Colorado (LPCO) nominated Mr. Kennedy as its presidential candidate, though the national party selected Chase Oliver at its national convention in May.

“We hope to place RFK Jr. on two ballot lines in Colorado, where in the tradition of fusion voting, Coloradans will see him running as an Independent and with support from the Libertarian Party of Colorado,” LPCO Chair Hannah Goodman said in a statement.

The Kennedy–Shanahan ticket is officially on the ballot in nine states: California, Delaware, Hawaii, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah.

The campaign has submitted signatures for ballot access in Alaska, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington.

The ticket has also collected enough signatures for ballot access in Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, New Hampshire, and Nevada.

Mr. Kennedy initially ran for the Democratic Party nomination. After encountering multiple roadblocks from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and claiming that the organization was “rigging the primary” to favor President Biden and prevent other candidates from competing, he chose to run as an independent in October 2023.

In January, Mr. Kennedy’s campaign announced that it had filed paperwork in six states to create the We The People political party. This move was made to get his name on the ballots with fewer voter signatures than those states require for unaffiliated candidates, reducing his overall signature requirement by about 330,000.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. meets with reporters after a voter rally in Holbrook, New York, on April 28, 2024. (Richard Moore/The Epoch Times)

Mr. Kennedy has accepted nominations from third parties in some states.

In April, Mr. Kennedy qualified for ballot access in Michigan through the Natural Law Party before getting on the ballot in California with a nomination from the American Independent Party.

Mr. Kennedy qualified for the ballot in South Carolina through the Alliance Party on May 31.

He said on June 17 that he would appear on the ballot in Florida through the Reform Party of Florida.

The Reform Party was founded in 1995 by Ross Perot, who in 1992 ran as an independent and tallied 19 percent of the popular vote in a race won by then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton against President George H.W. Bush.

Legal Challenges

Democrats and Republicans alike have expressed concern that Mr. Kennedy could take away votes from their respective presidential candidates.

Earlier this year, the DNC announced the creation of a team to counter third-party and independent presidential candidates.

The committee hired Lis Smith, a veteran Democrat strategist who managed Pete Buttigieg’s unsuccessful 2020 presidential campaign, to spearhead a communication plan to counter the campaigns of Mr. Kennedy, independent Cornel West, and Green Party nominee Jill Stein.

Over the past two months, the DNC and Clear Choice, a super PAC aligned with President Biden to counter third-party presidential candidates, have objected to Mr. Kennedy’s appearance on the ballot with legal filings in four states, including the battlegrounds of Nevada and North Carolina.

“We knew that we would face legal challenge after legal challenge, so we are prepared,” Mr. Kennedy told The Epoch Times, calling the objections “frivolous and an attempt to keep Americans from having another choice.”

“Every case that we brought to court, we’ve won easily, and we will continue to win,” he said.

Problems in North Carolina, Nevada

The ballot access status of parties headlined by Mr. Kennedy and Mr. West remains undetermined after a July 9 meeting of the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE).

The NCSBE officially certified the Constitution Party to run candidates in the state’s November general elections, but it delayed action for an unspecified time on Mr. Kennedy’s We the People party and Mr. West’s Justice for All party.

It was the second time in less than a month that the panel didn’t vote to add We the People and Justice for All to the state general election ballot.

North Carolina election officials have confirmed that We the People surpassed the minimum of 13,865 valid signatures required to register as a political party for the 2024 general election.

Democrats on the elections board have cited concerns about how the party represented itself while circulating petitions and gathering signatures.

The board’s chairman, Alan Hirsch, said on July 9 that he wanted to give staff members enough time to complete their investigations into the signatures submitted by We the People and Justice for All.

The board will “meet again soon” to decide whether to recognize the parties, NCSBE spokesman Patrick Gannon said, noting that “there is still time” for the groups to get their candidates on the North Carolina general election ballot if they are certified.

In Nevada, Mr. Kennedy’s campaign said in a statement last week that it had turned in the required signatures for the second time.

Earlier this year, Mr. Kennedy submitted more than 20,000 signatures in Nevada, around 10,000 more than the minimum to gain ballot access. Initially, the Secretary of State’s office approved the circulation of Mr. Kennedy’s nominating petition. In March, Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar said that the petitions were signed without the name of a vice president and were therefore invalid.

In December last year, Mr. Kennedy told The Epoch Times that ballot access laws for independent and third-party candidates are “among the worst forms of voter suppression in America today” and state officials should work together to “streamline and standardize ballot access procedures.”

Mr. Kennedy has said that he expects to attain full ballot access sometime this summer.

“Critics and pundits have doubted us since the beginning of our campaign and have said we won’t be able to get on the ballot,” Mr. Kennedy said. “We’ve proven them wrong in the most difficult states to gain ballot access, like California, New York, and Texas, and we’ll keep proving them wrong.”

Although he left the Democratic primary to run as an independent, Mr. Kennedy said in a July 11 post on social media platform X that “if the Democratic Party calls, sure, I’ll answer.

“The Democratic Party is scrambling around to find a candidate who can beat Donald Trump. They can stop looking. I’m the only one who can beat him.”

For the 10th week in the last 12 (basically since taxes), money-market funds saw inflows and last week was bigly with $51BN added pushing the total AUM to a new record high $6.15TN…

Source: Bloomberg

The Fed balance sheet rose by $2.5BN last week…

Source: Bloomberg

But as The Fed balance sheet rise, banks saw large deposit outflows last week, -$67BN on an SA basis…

Source: Bloomberg

BUT on an NSA basis, deposits rose by $42BN….?

Source: Bloomberg

Excluding foreign deposits, domestic banks saw $83BN in deposit outflows on a seasonally-adjusted basis – the biggest since April’s Tax Day decline. The drop was dominated by large banks losing $72BN (small banks saw an $11BN decline). On an NSA basis, domestic banks saw $43BN inflows (large banks +$30BN, small banks +13BN)…

Source: Bloomberg

Did the genii at The Fed just make the ‘adjustment’ clean up?

Source: Bloomberg

On the other side of the ledger, there was an overall shrinkage in loan volumes with large banks seeing volumes drop $4.7BN while small bank loans rose $4.3BN…

Source: Bloomberg

Bank reserves at The Fed rose last week but the chasm between US equity market cap and those reserves remains near record highs…

Source: Bloomberg

And that liquidity gap is evident on a global scale…

Source: Bloomberg

Are stocks pricing in a massive central bank balance sheet expansion?

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

“If the entire political and media elite can manufacture the lie for 4+ years that candidate now-President Biden isn’t cognitively impaired, what else might they have lied about and are lying about now?”

– Stephen Miller

You can’t deny that “Joe Biden” did his goodest last night facing down a half-dozen pre-selected reporters representing blob-adjacent news orgs such as Reuters and NPR at the post-NATO meetup damage-control event billed as a “news conference.” Only a week after he declared himself to be the “first black woman vice-president,” he pivoted to correct the record, telling the DC press corps that he’d “picked Vice-president Trump to be vice-president. . .” and everyone in the room saw that they were back in that mortifying scene in The Caine Mutiny when the confused and incompetent Captain Queeg reaches for the ball bearings in his pocket.

At the end of the harrowing hour, he minced his way offstage, leaving his Party of Chaos evermore so perplexed as to how they might lever this burnt-out old hack out of the nomination they foolishly secured for him months ago.

It ain’t gonna be easy, as “JB” repeatedly insisted he had no intention of stepping aside, despite the forces mustering against him in Congress, the media, and Hollywood. Even CNN is turning on him. Meanwhile, the #VeepTrump clip went viral on social media. So much for damage control.

You understand, don’t you, what a fiasco the 75th Anniversary DC NATO meetup itself was?

Everyone in the room, including the key prime ministers and presidents, could sense how flimsy the alliance now appears, as led by our maundering near-zombie president. Like “Joe Biden,” NATO’s raison d’être has been exposed as badly out-of-date and dangerously unhinged. Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg kicked things off declaring that “Ukraine is on an ‘irreversible’ path to NATO.” This controverts what everybody in NATO knows is Mr. Putin’s clearest red line, and is therefore either a jape or a bit of recklessly provocative idiocy.

The truth of the matter is this: following its transition out of the failed Soviet experiment thirty years ago, Russia was never a threat to its European neighbors. All the talk of Vladimir Putin seeking to reassemble the old USSR empire was knowingly false, as is the chatter now about Russia looking to invade Europe. What Russia actually sought was to be regarded, once again, as a normal European nation able to conduct normal business with the rest of Europe. The USA wouldn’t allow it.

Exactly why remains partially mysterious. Surely, post-1991, it was in the interest of US military contractors to maintain their Cold War revenue streams. To do that, a foreign hobgoblin had to be invoked — and perhaps China was not the best candidate, since it had begun manufacturing everything on sale in the Walmart — so Russia, with practically no export economy, was cast in that role. And the politicians, too, surely liked creaming off their share of that military-industrial revenue stream, so they went along policy-wise, with figures like John McCain and Lindsay Graham leading the charge. But the US intel blob and State Department had darker motives, driven by an animus that has slowly revealed itself to be insane — just as the Democratic Party has turned obviously insane, adopting a playbook that could have been written by Franz Kafka.

Being likewise insane, the intel blob and the neocons at State harbored an unappeasable hatred toward Russia that, since the Soviet collapse, allowed no accommodation and gelled into a naked avarice for seizing the resources of Russia with a long-term plan to subvert the Russian state, break it up the way they broke up Serbia in the 1990s, and direct a corporate looting operation of Russia’s oil and mineral riches. Ukraine was the doorway they had to go through to get that done.

And so, the blob and State neocons overthrew democratically-elected Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, and installed Poroshenko followed by Zelensky. Veep “Joe Biden” was given the Ukraine “portfolio,” making him a sort of viceroy, and he took full advantage, plopping his son Hunter on the board of Burisma, the huge Ukrainian natgas company that American oil and gas companies drooled over. Hunter managed to milk the Ukrainian government for tribute to the Biden Family bank accounts far above the roughly million-dollar-a-year salary he grifted from his no-show job on the Burisma board. (Hunter also apparently dabbled in a set of bioweapons labs set up in Ukraine by the CIA.) Thus, along with the sheer insanity of the CIA and State Department, the Biden family had a deep and criminal involvement in Ukraine that had to be concealed.

That degenerate relationship has been revealed since the discovery of the laptop that Hunter stupidly left in a Wilmington computer repair shop, and all the disclosures that have followed — including the sedulous recovery of bank records for the many shell companies the Bidens used to conceal their moneygrubbing in Ukraine and other foreign lands.

When Mr. Trump first scented it in the fall of 2019, they impeached him for it. But now that he threatens to return to the White House, the blobists and the Bidens are running out of options to evade an accounting for all this mischief.

That desperation is what drives disintegrating “Joe Biden” to remain president and to continue pressing the malevolent and foolish proxy war against hobgoblin Russia and its vilified president, Mr. Putin. So, now you know.

*  *  *

Support his blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page or Substack

A bad data week…

Source: Bloomberg

…was good news for doves as rate-cut expectations soared…

Source: Bloomberg

…and despite yesterday’s bloodbathery, all the US majors managed to rally into the green for the week early on today, with Small Caps literally exploding higher (up around 7% on the week!). A late-day selloff dragged Nasdaq red on the week though…

That was the Russell 2000’s best week since November and broke it out to its highest since Jan 2022…

Source: Bloomberg

…and the biggest RTY/NDX outperformance week since Nov 2020…

Source: Bloomberg

Small Caps were aided by a massive short-squeeze this week which saw “most shorted” stocks soaring 10% – the biggest squeeze since Dec…

Source: Bloomberg

And while MAG7 stocks ended the week lower, it was only marginally, as today’s bounce back erased some of yesterday’s losses…but the late-day selling was predominantly among the mega-cap tech names…

Source: Bloomberg

And of course, after yesterday saw all 7 names ending red (for the first time since April), the rebound today was ‘inevitable’…

Source: Bloomberg

0-DTE tracked stocks up and down today but the late-day selling pressure in stocks was NOT related to 0-DTE flow, in fact they bought the dip…

Source: SpotGamma

Stocks vs bonds this week… no idea!!!

Source: Bloomberg

Treasury yields tumbled on the week, led by the short-end…

Source: Bloomberg

…which prompted a dramatic bull steepening and almost un-inversion of the curve (2s30s)…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar tumbled for the second straight week (the biggest two-week drop since December), erasing all of the gains seen since June payrolls…

Source: Bloomberg

Thanks in large part to USDJPY and BoJ ‘help’…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin managed gains on the week as ETF inflows dominated the German govt’s dumpfest (as they emptied their coffers of every coin)…

Source: Bloomberg

BTC ETFs saw inflows for 5 straight days…

Source: Bloomberg

Gold surged back up near record highs this week, closing the week back above $2400…

Source: Bloomberg

Thanks to weakness today, crude prices ended the week lower as WTI rejected $83.50…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, it was a big week for market moves but in the big picture equities remain in a universe of their own relative to global liquidity…

Source: Bloomberg

Are stocks expecting a massive liquidity fest?