Month: July 2024

A Parkinson’s disease specialist from Walter Reed Medical Center visited the White House at least nine times in the past year, according to journalist Alex Berenson of Unreported Truths, while the NY Post has reported that a cardiologist was present during one of the visits.

Dr. Kevin R Cannard traveled to the White House’s medical clinic each time, meeting with either President Joe Biden’s personal physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor, or a naval nurse who coordinates care for the president and other senior officials. O’Connor notably gave Biden a clean bill of health after his February annual physical.

The visits spanned July 28, 2023 with the latest being March 28 of this year. That said, Berenson notes that the most recent logs are from April 1, so it’s unknown if Cannard has visited more recently.

According to Cannard’s physician profile page, he is a “neurologist and movement disorders specialist at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center” who specializes in treatments for “early Parkinson’s disease.” Since 2012, he has served as the “neurology specialist supporting the White House Medical Unit,” per his LinkedIn page.

His most recent paper was published in August 2023 in the journal Parkinsonism & Related Disorders, and focuses on the “early-stage” of the crippling disease.

Since Biden’s health is O’Connor’s primary responsibility, it is highly probable the meeting was about the commander in chief, according to Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Tx), the doctor for both Presidents Obama and Trump.

“It’s highly likely they were talking about Biden,” Jackson told The Post. -NY Post

“He should only be [regularly] treating the president and the first family,” Jackson continued.

Walter Reed cardiologist Dr. John. E. Atwood was also present during a Jan. 17 meeting, the NY Post reports.

According to Jackson, who has never treated Biden, O’Connor and Biden’s family are trying to “cover up” Biden’s declining cognitive health.

Ya think?

“I believe he and Jill Biden have led the cover up. Kevin O’Connor is like a son to Jill Biden — she loves him. It’s crazy. Kevin O’Connor was in that job on day one of the Biden administration because they knew they could trust Kevin to say and do anything that needed to be said or done and cover up whatever needed to be covered up. He is part of the Biden family,” said Jackson, who has warned about Biden’s cognitive decline for years.

Authored by David Stockman via InternationalMan.com,

What passes for central banking today is really a perverse form of Wall Street-pleasing monetary manipulation. It employs the vocabulary of central banking, but in practice it fundamentally undermines main street prosperity, even as it showers the 1% (the top wealthiest people) with unspeakable financial windfalls.

Stated differently, virtually everything the Fed does for the alleged benefit of the American economy is both unnecessary and a ruse. The Fed has actually become a captive of the Wall Street traders, gamblers and high rollers, and functions mainly at their behest.

The proof of this proposition starts with the startling historical fact that the post-war US economy did just fine without any interest rate targeting, heavy-duty bond-buying or general macroeconomic management help from the Fed at all. For all practical purposes today’s omnipresent Fed domination of the financial and economic system was non-existent at that point in time.

We are referring to the full decade between Q4 1951 and Q3 1962 when the balance sheet of the Fed remained flat as a board at just $51 billion (black line). Yet the US economy did not gasp for lack of monetary oxygen. GDP grew from $356 billion to $609 billion or by 71% (purple line) during the period. That’s nominal growth of 5.1% per annum, and the majority of it represented real output gains, not inflation.

Change in Federal Reserve Balance Sheet Versus GDP, Q4 1951 to Q3 1962.

As it happened, this halcyon span encompassed the immediate period after the so-called Treasury-Fed Accord of March 1951, which finally ended the WWII expedient that had pegged Treasury bills at 0.375% and the long-bond at 2.5o% in order to finance the massive flow of war debt.

The effect of the WWII pegs, of course, was that the Fed had been obliged to absorb any and all US Treasury supply that did not clear the market at the target yields. Not surprisingly, the Fed’s 1937 balance sheet of $12 billion had risen by 4.3X to $51 billion by the time of the Accord, thereby reflecting what amounted to the original version of backdoor monetization of the public debt, which was justified at the time by the exigencies of war.

By contrast, in the post-peg period shown below interest rates were allowed by a newly liberated Fed to find their own market clearing levels. So there was no continuous guessing game on Wall Street about where the next monthly Fed meeting would peg short-term interest rates. Back then, it was understood that the forces of supply and demand down in the bond pits of Wall Street were fully capable of discovering the right interest rates, given the financial and economic facts then extant.

The combination of high growth, robust investment, strong wages and smartly rising real family income, on the one hand, and rock-bottom inflation on the other, surely constitutes the gold standard of performance for a modern capitalist economy.

And yet, and yet. It was all accomplished under a regime of persistent “light touch” central banking that assumed free market capitalism would find its own way to optimum economic growth, employment, housing, investment and main street prosperity. No monetary Sherpa at the Eccles Building was necessary.

Even more crucially, no money printing was necessary, either. The sterling economic results depicted below happened during a 11-year period when the Fed did not purchase one net dime of U.S. Treasury debt!

Per Annum Change, Q4 1951 to Q3 1962

• Real Final Sales: +3.8%.

• Real Domestic Investment: +4.1%.

• Nonfarm productivity growth: +2.5%.

• Real hourly wages: +3%.

• Real Median Family Income: +2.3%.

• CPI Increase: +1.3%

Federal Reserve Liabilities, 1937 to 1962

There is absolutely nothing about this period that makes the superior macroeconomic performance summarized above aberrational, flukish or unreplicable. In fact, President Eisenhower cut defense spending sharply and eliminated the fiscal deficit entirely during his second term. So, the cumulative increase in the public debt during this 11-year period was just $30 billion or a tiny 0.6% of GDP owing to Korean War borrowing early in the period.

But even this modest debt increase wasn’t monetized by Fed bond-buying. Instead, it was effectively financed out of private savings in the bond pits. Long-term bond yields, therefore, actually rose from the 2.5% pegged level shown below for 1942 to 1951 to upwards of 4% by the end of the period, as dictated by supply and demand. Still, the CPI averaged just 1.2% during 1959-1962, meaning that real yields bordered on +3.o% during the early 1960s.

That is to say, at the time, the Fed had seen no need to push real rates to zero and even into negative territory as has been the case for much of the last two decades. The fact is, the main street economy prospered mightily even when inflation-adjusted rates were providing a solid return to savers and investors.

Long-Term US Treasury Bond Yield, 1942 to 1962

What ended the benign economics of 1951 to 1962, of course, was the scourge of War Finance. LBJ (Lyndon B. Johnson) escalated the Vietnam War dramatically after 1963, causing the debt to soar and the 10-year UST to climb to nearly 6% by early 1968. But Johnson was not about to allow market clearing interest rates to fund his misbegotten venture in bringing the blessings of the Great Society to southeast Asia.

So he gave “the treatment” to the Fed Chairman at his Texas ranch and ordered to cut the Federal funds rate to accommodate LBJ’s surging Federal deficit. The latter had grown from $4.8 billion and -0.8% of GDP in 1963 to $25.2 billion and -2.8% of GDP by 1968.

Unfortunately, after steadily and appropriately raising the Fed funds rate from 2.9% in December 1962 to 5.75% by November 1966 as Johnson’s inflationary deficits grew, the funds rate was brought down rapidly to 3.8% by July 1967. In turn, that unleashed a red-hot wave of speculation and inflation, with the CPI rising from a 1% Y/Y (year-on-year) gain in August 1964 to a +6.4% peak in February 1970.

There is no mystery as to why the inflationary genie was now out of the bottle. Between Q3 1962 and Q4 1970, the Fed’s heretofore flat balance sheet (black line) soared skyward, rising from $52 billion to $85 billion over the eight-year period. That amounted to a 6% per year gain, meaning that the precedent for aggressive balance sheet expansion had now been firmly established.

Inflation-Adjusted Yield on 10-Year UST Versus Fed Balance Sheet Growth, 1962 to 1970

The first victim, of course, was inflation-adjusted bond yields (purple line above). As shown above, the healthy +3% real yield of 1962 fell to barely +1% by the end of 1970.

Yet the crucial essence of this “guns and butter” breakdown cannot be gainsaid. To wit, the Fed was not driven to this first round of post-war money-printing and debt monetization because the private economy had gone into a mysterious swoon or failure mode and therefore needed a helping hand from the nation’s central bank.

To the contrary, this was a Washington driven departure from sound central banking pure and simple. And as we will amplify below, it was off to the races of Rogue Central Banking from there.

Once the inflation genie was out of the bottle with the CPI clocking in at 6% by the fall of 1970, the Fed struggled for more than a decade to put it back. Consequently, any focus on stimulating growth, jobs, housing and investment was infrequent and definitely secondary to inflation-fighting.

We amplify the 1970s flood of central bank money and the resulting inflationary mess below, but it is important to note at the onset that despite four recessions (1970, 1975, 1980 and 1981) and very little pro-growth help from what was now an inflation-preoccupied Fed, the US economy did expand at a decent clip during the interval between Q4 1969 and Q2 1987.

The economic growth rate (real final sales basis) averaged a solid +3.1% per annum, but that occurred due to the inherent growth propensities of private capitalism and despite the roadblocks thrown up by periodic bouts of monetary stringency. In fact, three Fed chairman served during that 17.5-year interval—Burns, Miller and Volcker—and with varying degrees of success their focus was overwhelmingly on suppressing inflation, not goosing growth.

As it happened, the growth rates of jobs, productivity and real median family income during this period were not especially outstanding, but these metrics didn’t plunge into an economic black hole, either.

Self-evidently, these outcomes on main street were the work of market capitalism, not the central bank. The latter was leaning hard against inflation during most of the period—so this absence of central bank “help” is just further proof that easy money stimulus is not necessary for solid growth and main street prosperity.

Per Annum Change, Q4 1969 to Q2 1987

• Real Final Sales of Domestic Product: +3.1%.

• Labor hours employed: +1.5%.

• Nonfarm productivity: +1.8%.

• Real Median Family Income: +1.2%.

For avoidance of doubt, here is the path of the Federal funds rate as the above macroeconomic performance was unfolding. To wit, the Fed’s recurrent anti-inflation initiatives caused the funds rate to gyrate wildly like some kind of monetary jumping bean. In the run-up to each of the four recessions designated by the shaded areas of the graph, the increase in the Fed funds rate was as follows:

• 1970: +340 basis points.

• 1974: +960 basis points.

• 1980: +1,290 basis points.

• 1981: +440 basis points.

Needless to say, these successive rate-raising campaigns amounted to hammer blows to the main street economy. There is no way that these violent interest rate swings and the consequent start and stop economic cycles—four recessions in only 17 years— were a tonic for growth during this era of high and volatile inflation.

In effect, the reasonably solid macroeconomic performance quantified above represents a kind of free market minimum. It reflects the relentless drive of workers, consumers, entrepreneurs, businessmen, investors, savers and speculators to better their own economic circumstances—even in the face of inflationary roadblocks and anti-inflation financial manipulation by the central bank.

Federal Funds Rate, August 1968 to June 1987

Of course, the inflationary roadblocks were enormous, and far beyond any prior peacetime experience. Compared to the 1.3% inflation average during 1951 to 1962, the CPI rose at a 5.6% rate over 1969:4 to 1987:2.

And that included the benefit of the sharp drop in inflation engineered by Paul Volcker during the final four years of the period. Thus, during the decade of the 1970s through the Y/Y inflation peak at 14.6% in April 1980, the CPI rose by an average of 7.7% per annum.

In turn, this introduced the wage-earning classes for the first time to the treadmill of robustly rising nominal wage rates, which become almost entirely consumed by sharply rising consumer prices. Thus, during the decade ending in the inflationary peak of Q2 1980, average hourly earnings in nominal terms rose by 7.6% per annum. But, alas, what stuck to the walls of workers’ bank accounts was a gain of only 1.1% per annum during the same period. All the rest was eaten up by inflation.

Y/Y Change in the CPI, 1960 to 1987

If the wage/price treadmill effect introduced after 1969 was the whole story, the impact might be considered minimally tolerable. The resilience of market capitalism was shown to be sufficiently strong so as to overcome much of the inflationary headwinds, along with the Fed’s punishing cycles of anti-inflation tightening.

Unfortunately, however, what also materialized out of the 1970s inflation era were two exceedingly harmful corollaries.

The first was the notion that the job of the central bank was to manage the rate of change in the general price level, rather than the far more modest original remit. The latter presumed the presence of noninflationary gold-backed money—so inflation-management would have been an oxymoron. Consequently, the Fed’s actual statutory mandate was simply to provide liquidity and reserves to the banking system based on market rates of interest. The Fed heads didn’t need to know from the CPI, PCE deflator or any other modern inflation measuring stick that had not yet been invented.

As it happened, however, management of the short run pace by which the general price level is rising was a fateful portal into statist central banking and the plenary management of the macro-economy in which the inflation indices are inextricably embedded. Eventually the bastard son of this strategic opening to vastly expanded state power materialized as the holy grail of 2% inflation.

Yet, here’s the thing. Until the gold-backed dollar was deep-sixed by Nixon in August 1971 and the possibility of rising, persistent and eventually double-digit peacetime inflation materialized in the 1970s, the idea of central bank management of the inflation rate didn’t even exist. That’s because peacetime price stability was the default condition of the gold standard world. Indeed, from the Napoleonic Wars forward, “inflation” and wartime were pretty much synonymous because fiat money was almost invariably a temporary wartime expedient.

The other legacy of the inflationary 1970s was the breakout of high and ever rising unit labor costs in the US economy. This unnecessary but pervasive economic deformation eventually resulted in the massive offshoring of the US industrial economy.

The implication, of course, is that it would have been far better to stick with William McChesney Martin’s golden era of high growth, low inflation, a flat Federal Reserve balance sheet and interest rates driven overwhelmingly by supply and demand forces in the private financial markets. But as it happened, the Fed’s balance sheet during the decade of high inflation was the very opposite of flat.

Under the three successive Chairmen, the Fed’s balance sheet grew at the following compound annual rates:

• Arthur Burns (Feb. 1970 to March 1978): +6.9%.

• William Miller (March 1978 to August 1979): +9.5%.

• Paul Volcker (August 1979 to August 1987): +6.8%.

Growth Lift-off of Federal Reserve Balance Sheet, Q1 1970 to Q2 1987

In a word, Volcker sharply slowed the runaway growth of the Fed’s balance sheet which had occurred under the regime of William Miller – the hapless former CEO of a conglomerate which made golf carts, snowmobiles and Cessna aircraft. But when all was said and done, the Volcker Fed still pumped new money into the economy at a rate barely below that of Arthur Burns. And Burns, of course, was the villain central banker who had ignominiously succumbed to Nixon’s entreaties to “give me money, Arthur” in support of his re-election campaign in 1972.

*  *  *

The amount of money the US government spends on foreign aid, wars, the so-called intelligence community, and other aspects of foreign policy is enormous and ever-growing. It’s an established trend in motion that is accelerating, and now approaching a breaking point. It could cause the most significant disaster since the 1930s. Most people won’t be prepared for what’s coming. That’s precisely why bestselling author Doug Casey and his team just released an urgent video with all the details. Click here to watch it now.

After battering Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and leaving a trail of destruction through the Caribbean that may exceed $5 billion in damages, Beryl, currently a tropical storm, has moved back into warm waters and is expected to restrengthen into hurricane status with landfall impacts expected across northern Mexico or southern Texas on early Monday. 

AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Tyler Roys told Bloomberg that Beryl will make landfall around northern Mexico or southern Texas as a Category 1 hurricane between 0400 and 0600 local time Monday. 

Computer models show Beryl’s forecasted track has been shifting slightly north in recent days, which may allow the storm to stay in warmer Gulf waters longer.

“It would not shock me if there is further intensification,” Roys said, adding, “Right now we are with Category 1, but if the trend continues and the track sneaks a little further north, there could potentially be more funny business going on with intensification. It is something we are watching.”

Roys said Beryl will likely bring heavy rains across eastern Texas, an area swamped with rain this year. This will elevate flood risks across the region early next week. 

Another major danger is the storm’s threat to oil and gas leases in the US Federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico and energy infrastructure on shore and inland. 

Beryl’s threat to oil/gas infrastructure (list courtesy of Bloomberg): 

• Tropical Storm Beryl’s threat to oil and gas leases in the US Federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico increases as its path shifts north after reaching Yucatan, according to National Hurricane Center data and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management data

• Storm could be in path of leases with ~14 million cu. feet/d of natural gas production and ~1,583 b/d of oil and condensate output versus ~6.8 million cu. feet/d of offshore gas output on Thursday.

• Storm’s potential path doesn’t pass over any major offshore oil or gas platforms, but is near some

• Projection is based on Feb. BOEM production data broken down by lease and platforms within projected cone of storm

• Projections are for location of Beryl through weekend and into next week

Beryl threatens some major offshore oil/gas platforms: 

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the acting governor while Gov. Greg Abbott traveled overseas, issued a pre-emptive disaster declaration for 40 counties.

“Everyone along the (Texas) coast should be paying attention this storm,” Patrick said, adding, “We hope and we pray for nothing more than a rain event.”

Last week, Beryl was the earliest storm on record to strengthen into a Category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic. 

Each year, The Economist publishes a ranking of the cities with the best living conditions. 

In 2024, the Liveability Index saw slight improvements, despite geopolitical conflicts, civil unrest and housing crises.

This is partly due to advances in healthcare and education in a number of cities in developing markets. 

As Statista’s Anna Fleck shows in the following chart, Vienna has been crowned as the world’s most liveable city, having secured an impressive score of 98.4 points.

The Austrian capital has come first three years in a row thanks to its high scores in the categories of stability, infrastructure, education and healthcare.

You will find more infographics at Statista

The Danish capital of Copenhagen and the Swiss city of Zurich are the next two cities to round off the podium.

Although both of the Australian cities of Sydney and Melbourne and Canada’s Vancouver remain in the top ten, all three cities have seen their infrastructure scores drop due to their respective housing crises. For this reason, Toronto in Canada fell to rank 12 in 2024.

At the bottom of the list come Damascus in Syria, Tripoli in Libya and Algiers in Algeria.

The Ukrainian city of Kiev also features in the bottom 10, having been added back to the index last year after it was removed due to Russia’s invasion in 2022. It ranks 165th, with a score of 26.8. 

The study is based on the “Global Liveability Index“, which determines and compares the varying quality of life of each city’s residents, grouped under five subcategories: infrastructure, healthcare, culture and environment, education and stability. The full list comprises 173 cities.

By Stefan Koopman, Senior Macro Strategist at Rabobank

To no one’s surprise, Labour won the UK election. Less than five years after Boris Johnson’s decisive win over Jeremy Corbyn, the Conservatives experienced their worst defeat in history.

Constituencies that were once considered secure Tory bastions have turned away from them. At the same time, a surge of smaller parties and independents has created a complex and divided political landscape. Indeed, Labour’s victory looks to be largely driven by a widespread desire to oust the Tories rather than a strong endorsement of its own policies. Nonetheless, Keir Starmer’s efforts to make Labour electable again after the years of Corbyn have worked out in their favour. In less than five years, he has restored trust in Labour on a number of key issues, including fiscal policy.

With 34% of the vote, Labour looks to have secured almost 64% of the 650 seats in the UK parliament. It’s clear they understood the central truth of the British electoral system: the popular vote is less important than the geographic distribution of the vote. The Tories, ending up at just c. 120 seats, warn that such a “super majority” would give Starmer’s Labour unchecked power. It is, however, important to note that the UK has no such thing as a super majority. Parliament is sovereign and can enact any legislation through the normal legislative process, regardless of whether the majority is 10 or 200. Britain has no special categories of legislation beyond the reach of a regular majority and even then, a simple majority would suffice to scrap such legislation. The real issues lie in the over-empowerment of the executive, the lack of constitutional checks and balances, and the distortions caused by the electoral system. However, a majority is a majority.

That said, landslides like this can be risky, with potential opposition emerging from within an overly large parliamentary party. Many Labour MPs will have little hope of promotion due to the limited number of government positions available, and numerous junior MPs will likely realize they are at high risk of losing their seats in 2028/29. This outcome is unlikely to be repeated. Labour has secured such a broad and geographically efficient vote that maintaining this coalition of voters seems impossible. At the constituency level, seats are tighter than at any point since 1945. This could lead to policy inertia, especially given Starmer’s cautious and calculated approach. This, we think, may also limit significant progress on EU-UK trade relations.

Labour mostly looks inward when it tries to tackle the pressing issue of economic growth. The current planning system, which allows local communities to block development, has hindered the construction of much-needed housing and infrastructure and is up for deep reform. Labour now has the parliamentary majority to do so, but the relatively slim majorities on a constituency level suggest that there is not as much political headroom as some polls have suggested.

Despite its plans to boost economic growth through political stability and expedited investment, growth may not come quickly enough to avoid difficult fiscal decisions. The pressure on real departmental spending is already very high, as the Tories had postponed many tough decisions to a post-election Budget, knowing they were likely to lose the election and thus not have to own these cuts. As the population ages, many budgetary choices will become more challenging, not easier. This makes it hard to envision Labour making cuts to balance the books and meet the rule that debt should be declining as a share of national income after five years. Consequently, it will be difficult to achieve Labour’s ambitious goals, including reducing NHS waiting lists and hiring more public sector workers, without raising taxes or changing the fiscal rules.

However, the shadow of Liz Truss – who has lost her seat – still looms over Westminster. Her policies of unfunded tax cuts are not ones that other politicians want to be associated with. Shadow Chancellor Reeves has emphasised the importance of market-friendly and prudent budget management and has been reluctant to discuss any changes to the fiscal rules. It’s also why this election was, from the market’s perspective, a non-event. A lot of water will flow through the Thames before politicians in Westminster dare to take bold fiscal action. Eventually, however, this will become inevitable to lift the UK out of its low-productivity, low-growth quagmire.

Fitch, Moody’s Ratings, and S&P Global Ratings recently reaffirmed Maryland’s coveted triple-A credit rating. However, Moody’s downgraded the state’s outlook from stable to “negative,” citing significant concerns about looming structural deficits due to Annapolis’ out-of-control education spending. And while education spending soars, test scores are going in the wrong direction.

“The negative outlook incorporates difficulties Maryland will face to achieve balanced financial operations in coming years without sacrificing service delivery goals or adding to the weight of the state government’s burden on individual and corporate taxpayers,” Moody’s wrote in the report last month. This is the first time the credit rating agency has issued a negative outlook for the state since 2011, several years after the GFC meltdown. 

A looming fiscal cliff is primarily driven by edu programs, including the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future education reforms. When the reform was passed, the genius progressive lawmakers in Annapolis did not pass a funding mechanism. 

“It’s a self-created hole,” Republican State Senator Justin Ready told investigative journalist Chris Papst of Fox45 News’ Project Baltimore late last month, adding, “I’m disappointed but not surprised that we were downgraded to negative.”

Senator Ready’s district includes Carroll and Frederick Counties, located west of Baltimore. Several years ago, he attempted to warn leftist lawmakers in Annapolis that education spending would spark fiscal turmoil. However, his warnings were ignored while progressives were more focused on pushing woke policies. 

“We have a very high-taxed state and local governments, and so we were concerned. We saw this as being unsustainable, an unsustainable increase,” said Ready.

He continued, “Education spending was always increasing. This is just putting a rocket ship on it without the kind of accountability that’s needed.” 

Maryland’s fiscal projections show an expected $1 billion budget deficit by 2025, $1.3 by 2027, and more than $3 billion by 2028. Soaring deficits are a function of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, also called the Kirwan Plan, which pumps $30 billion in taxpayer funds into public education over ten years and then adds $4 billion per year after that.

Papst offers some very troubling news for residents:

“In order to pay for it, according to those statistics, the state would have to either increase the personal income tax rate by 39% or raise the sales tax by 89% or increase property taxes by 535%.” 

For years, Democrats in the state have advocated for increased education spending but rarely address test score performances that are heading in the wrong direction, an issue even the Washington Post could no longer ignore: 

Over the years, Papst’s team has led an effort to uncover fraud and corruption in the state’s public school systems. 

• “I Don’t Give A F***”: Top Maryland Education Official Caught Using Encrypted Msg App As Grade Scandal Deepens
• “Educational Homicide”: 13 Baltimore City High Schools Have Zero Students Proficient On State Math Exam
• Education Nightmare: Baltimore & Chicago Public Schools Spend, Spend, Spend As Test Scores Drop

Fox News picked up on Papst’s reporting last year.

Baltimore spends $32,000 per student and their teachers make over six figures when you account for pensions.

Yet 23 Baltimore schools have 0 students are proficient in math.

Parents are furious and politicians don’t care. pic.twitter.com/jCDCIZyfJ7

— 1776 Project PAC | Text 1776 to 76176 (@1776ProjectPac) February 14, 2023

Some folks on X have called soaring education expenses a grift by the Democratic Party that loots taxpayers and enriches teachers’ unions that only fund progressive causes.

It’s your freedom, job security, safety – the democrats failed on issues most important to Marylanders. Throwing more money to fund Teachers Unions while kids perform worse in public schools is a recipe for disaster which was in place for 50+years in Baltimore. pic.twitter.com/xFvow2MdC7

— Ms.G (@GSchifanelli) September 23, 2022

Union bosses insist that we pay for only govt (union-run) schools. Results prove just how bad an idea this is.
Baltimore public schools have chronic absenteeism. Taxpayers spending $21K/student there — 4th highest spending for a big school district.https://t.co/dSuBO2TfVt

— Richard Rider (@SD_TaxFighters) June 1, 2023

The union that helped create the system in Baltimore where more than a dozen schools have zero students who can do basic math while spending one of the highest amounts of money per student, support this rich, white, savior complex having progressive because he opposes standards. https://t.co/cXL2GmA3oU

— Derek Hunter (@derekahunter) March 15, 2024

Why more Marylanders aren’t demanding accountability from progressives in Annapolis transforming the state into what could soon be the next Illinois is troubling. 

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

On Thursday, the Philippines said the US was pulling out a new missile system it deployed to the Southeast Asian country for annual military exercises.

The US sent the Typhon missile system for the Balikatan exercises, which were held in April and May. The Typhon is a controversial launcher since it would have been banned by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, a treaty between the US and Russia that the Trump administration withdrew from in 2019.

The INF prohibited land-based missile systems with a range between 310 and 3,400 miles. The Typhon can launch nuclear-capable Tomahawk missiles, which have a range of about 1,000 miles. It can also fire SM-6 missiles, which can hit targets up to 290 miles away.

Philippine Col. Louie Dema-ala told AFP that the US planned to withdraw the Typhon from the Philippines following the military exercises.

“As per plan… it will be shipped out of the country in September or even earlier,” he said. “The US Army is currently shipping out their equipment that we used during Balikatan and Salaknib (exercises).”

China strongly condemned the deployment of the Typhon system, which US officials have acknowledged was developed to prepare for a future conflict with Beijing over Taiwan or the South China Sea.

Russian President Vladimir Putin also recently mentioned the deployment. He made the comments when calling for Moscow to follow the US and develop missile systems previously banned by the INF.

“We need to start production of these strike systems and then, based on the actual situation, make decisions about where — if necessary to ensure our safety — to place them,” Putin said last week.

“Today it is known that the United States not only produces these missile systems, but has already brought them to Europe for exercises, to Denmark. Quite recently it was announced that they are in the Philippines,” the Russian leader added.

Amazon delivery vans, manufactured by Rivian, keep catching fire.

That was the topic of a new report from Quartz.com this week which highlighted that the blue Prime vans seen all over the country keep catching fire at Amazon distribution centers.

“One starts to wonder why,” QZ.com asked. 

The report notes that footage from Third Coast Drone reveals Rivian vans ablaze outside an Amazon facility in Houston.

While the video doesn’t show how the fire started, it captures firefighters working to control the flames. Importantly, the footage also reveals that each van was parked at a charging station.

This isn’t the first time Rivian vans have caught fire at an Amazon location, the report notes.

Last August, a similar incident occurred in Salt Lake City, where vans burned in a distribution center parking lot. Posts in Amazon worker subreddits revealed that drivers have reported issues with the vans charging in high heat and suspected the chargers as the cause of the blaze.

Chargers have been blamed for fires before, either due to improper home wiring or inadequate cooling.

What’s still unclear is whether professionally-installed chargers, like these Rivian units, are prone to the same issues as Level 2 chargers plugged into home dryer outlets.

Heat-related issues with electric vehicles are likely to become more common as global temperatures rise.

The transition to EVs still remains worthwhile according to QZ—just, maybe consider charging in the shade until these issues are resolved.

Sure thing. We’ll be back to diesel powered delivery trucks in no time!

Authored by Jack Kashill via American Greatness,

One wonders what thoughts passed through the fevered mind of Officer Lila Morris as she struck the seemingly lifeless Rosanne Boyland over the head with a branch, then struck her again, and then struck her a third time so hard that the branch snapped in half.

If Morris thought Boyland a hateful white supremacist who deserved her fate, one could, if not forgive her, at least understand how she came to think that way. For the last two years, Morris had heard little else about these MAGA minions and the monster who led them.

President-elect Joe Biden had set the tone when he launched his presidential campaign in April 2019, implying President Donald Trump had called the neo-Nazis involved in the Charlottesville dust-up “very fine people.” No major candidate has ever begun a presidential campaign with a more divisive and slanderous opening gambit (one that Snopes conceded was false just this past week).

Biden continued the slander throughout the campaign. Just four weeks before the 2020 election, he weighed in on the well-timed bust of an FBI-massaged plot to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer. “There is a through line from President Trump’s dog whistles and tolerance of hate, vengeance, and lawlessness to plots such as this one,” fumed Biden. “He is giving oxygen to the bigotry and hate we see on the march in our country.”

If Morris feared the depredations of these Hun-like hordes, she was in good company.

“Just remember, we’re on the right side of history,” Rep. Val Demings told a colleague as they huddled fearfully in the House gallery on January 6.

“If we all die today, another group will come in and certify those ballots.”

“White supremacy and patriarchy are very linked in a lot of ways,” congressional drama queen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told CNN’s Dana Bash.

“There’s a lot of sexualizing of that violence. And I didn’t think that I was just going to be killed. I thought other things were going to happen to me as well.”

When Bash asked AOC if she thought she was going to be raped, AOC answered, “Yeah, yeah. I thought I was.”

The left has been feeding its base a steady diet of racial fear and loathing for generations.

Ocasio-Cortez is Puerto Rican. Demings and Morris black. Also black is Michael Byrd, the Capitol Police lieutenant (now captain) who shot and killed January 6 protestor and Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt.

Babbitt and Boyland were both white.

The phrase “had the races been reversed” is such a manifest truism that pundits on the right no longer bother to complete the thought

If the shooting death of the attractive 35-year-old Babbitt was too public to ignore, the death of the obscure 34-year-old Boyland was not.

Biden’s incoming Department of Justice preferred to keep it that way. The nature of that death raised troubling questions not only about race but also about sex.

In the cause of equity, the DC Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) saw fit to put a small, slight woman at the front of a contested police line. In the DEI-drenched precincts of Washington, no one dared protest this madness either before January 6 or after.

In the days following Morris’s meltdown, all parties fell in line to preserve both the myth of heroic police resistance and the imagined role women played in that resistance. Consider this tweet from WUSA news anchor Lesli Foster on February 7, 2021:

“You MUST hear about Ofc. Lila Morris. MPD Acting Chief Contee says Morris ‘fought like hell’ in the tunnel of death…. Morris was injured, then got back in the melee. Women, too, fought hard to reclaim the #Capitol.”

Foster’s tweet included a photo of Morris being feted for her heroism at the Super Bowl, one of just three officers so honored.

A high percentage of the selected video footage that entertained Democrats for the last three years was shot in and around this “tunnel of death.” While protestors were freely walking into the Capitol through multiple other entrances, the police defended the tunnel as though it were the Alamo.

Caught in a scrum, Boyland found herself unwillingly pushed to the tunnel entrance. At this point, the MPD, now in riot gear, made a concerted surge to drive back the scrum. The chemical irritant sprayed by the MPD displaced the oxygen in the tunnel, causing people to feel faint. Rosanne collapsed, and as many as 30 people were shoved on top of her.

Once the others were pulled off, Rosanne lay momentarily lifeless and exposed at the tunnel entrance. That’s when Morris went after her. “I was horrified,” said use-of-force expert Stan Kephart upon seeing the video. “We don’t train officers to hit people in the head with a blunt object.” Added Kephart, “It was definitely a crime.”

To protect Rosanne from both the crowd and the police, Texan protestor Luke Coffee stood over the dying woman, holding a crutch horizontally above his head. For his efforts to save Rosanne, he was charged with a felony for striking Morris. Not until Coffee’s January 2024 trial was Morris forced to testify about January 6.

Under oath, Morris conceded that Coffee never hit her. She also admitted that a baton or stick, was only to be used with a hand on either end as a way to push crowds back. “Are you ever trained to hold it like a bat and strike over somebody’s head?” asked Coffee’s attorney, Carol Stewart. “No,” said Morris.

To preserve the narrative of heroic police resistance, the DC medical examiner’s office sat on Boyland’s autopsy report for the maximum 90 days and then attributed her death to “acute amphetamine intoxication.” Amphetamine was the active ingredient in the Adderall that Boyland had been taking by prescription for ten years to deal with her ADHD.

The Boyland family was stunned. Boyland’s brother-in-law Justin Cave had reached out to childhood friend and MSNBC anchor Ayman Mohyeldin to help the family get to the bottom of Boyland’s death, but Mohyeldin was stonewalled by the medical examiner at every turn. “All our requests were denied,” admitted the surprised MSNBC anchor. “The trampling, the riot, the video evidence, none of this was even mentioned in the official autopsy report.”

Morris remained an unquestioned hero until September 2021, when that damning video surfaced of her striking Rosanne. Disturbed by what he saw, J6 video expert Gary McBride filed a police brutality complaint with the DC Metropolitan Police Department. McBride believes Rosanne was still alive when Morris struck her. “When she takes that second hit to the head, watch her left arm, her left arm straightens up and lifts off the ground,” he told the Epoch Times.

Morris need not have worried. Two months after McBride filed his complaint, he was informed via email, “The use of force within this investigation was determined to be objectively reasonable.” Morris would remain on the force and would face no criminal charges. The DOJ never investigated.

If the Boyland family had any hope of clearing Rosanne’s name, that hope lay with the House Select Committee. Before finishing its work, the committee would interview more than a thousand witnesses but none who witnessed Boyland’s death, not even Lila Morris. The eight-hundred-page final report, released in December 2022, goes into great detail about the two-hour battle at the “tunnel of death” but does not mention the name of the woman who died there, not even in the footnotes.

*  *  *

Jack Cashill’s new book, Ashli: The Untold Story of the Women of January 6, is now available in all formats.

The Walt Disney Company has become one of America’s wokest companies, injecting left-wing diversity, equity and inclusion or DEI agenda into nearly every aspect of its business, from theme parks to video content. Consequently, Disney is no longer the babysitter for American parents, with families increasingly avoiding theme parks and movies. Bob Iger’s recent return as CEO sent wokeism into warp speed. 

The website blogmickey shares an interesting account of Walt Disney World Resort, located about 20 miles southwest of Orlando, Florida, on July 4, indicating that “Disney may have forecasted as much—shortening typical holiday period park hours and not decorating as much as they have in the past.” 

Blogmickey previously “covered some of the cutbacks in hours” at the theme park but also “noticed that Disney has scaled back on some of the patriotic decors.” 

Let’s take a view of what Main Street USA looked like on the Fourth of July in 2023 versus this Thursday: 

Notice how Disney stealthily removed patriotic flags. 

“This year, it is only installed in Town Square. Not groundbreaking by any means, but when details matter, details should matter,” Blogmickey said. Considering DEI is rooted in Marxism, as per Real Clear Education’s findings, it should make sense why US flags are being scaled down at the theme park during the holiday. Clearly, Disney has not received the memo like the rest of corporate America (read: “Backlash Is Real”: DEI Exodus Gains Steam Across Corporate America)… 

A 1989 video shows that on July 4, there was a lot of ‘America’ throughout the theme park.

Let’s not forget that wait time ride tracking website Thrill Data shows that this year’s July 4 recorded wait time averages at Walt Disney World to be underwhelming, with some of the lowest times over the past decade.

Putting woke ideology ahead of entertainment has destroyed an American institution. Iger’s long list of failures is piling up.