Month: August 2024

General Motors has been cutting staff in China and eventually will meet with its local partner SAIC to explore a “larger structural overhaul” of the business oversees.

The shift indicates that GM likely won’t eclipse its peak sales in the country it set in 2017, according to Bloomberg.

GM is reducing staff in its China-focused departments, including research and development. In coming weeks, GM and its partner SAIC will discuss potential capacity cuts as part of a strategic shift for American brands in China.

Bloomberg writes that this marks a significant change for GM, which once made billions in the Chinese market. The automaker is scaling back as foreign brands struggle with intense competition and overcapacity in the world’s largest car market.

GM is shifting its focus to producing electric vehicles, particularly upscale models, and importing premium vehicles. The company is considering reducing factory capacity and further job cuts, though these plans haven’t been publicly disclosed yet.

Despite these changes, GM will still produce affordable vehicles and EVs locally in partnership with SAIC Motor and Wuling Motors, with some of these models being exported from China, according to the report. 

GM’s 30-year contract with state-owned SAIC expires in 2027, and the company aims to restore profitability before then. The goal is to strengthen the SAIC-GM partnership, which produces Buick, Cadillac, and Chevrolet vehicles, so it can self-fund operations and development.

A second partnership, SAIC-GM-Wuling, which makes small, affordable vehicles, has fared better, particularly with the Hongguang Mini EV. However, GM lost $104 million in its Chinese operations in the most recent quarter, contributing to a $210 million loss for the first half of the year.

In the latest quarter, GM’s China sales dropped 29% to 373,000 vehicles, with steep declines across its U.S. brands like Buick, Cadillac, and Chevrolet. In contrast, sales from the SAIC-GM-Wuling partnership fell only 12%, as it produces compact EVs that remain in high demand in China, which GM views as a stronger growth opportunity.

Chief Financial Officer Paul Jacobson commented earlier this month: “We’ve got to remain competitive and that means that we’ve got to take a look at the business with our partner to ensure that we can restore it to profitability and that we can restore it to self-sustaining cash flow going forward. China can be a good asset for us and remains a good asset for us.”

By Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner of Wirepoints

When the DNC delegates come to Chicago, they’ll be visiting the city that for more than a decade has experienced the most murders in the country. Chicago suffered 617 total homicides in 2023, marking the 12th year in a row it has led the country. 

And it will be 13 years in a row if Chicago’s 2024’s homicide numbers continue at their current pace. The below chart shows how the top five cities nationally for total homicides may change from year to year, but what always remains true is Chicago’s position at the very top – often the extreme outlier.

That’s just one of the findings from Wirepoints’ analysis of publicly-available 2023 homicide data from the nation’s 75 largest U.S. cities.

St. Louis was the nation’s other murder capital in 2023 when based on homicides per capita. The Gateway City suffered 60 homicides per 100,000 residents, taking the top spot away from 2022’s capital, New Orleans.* The city was struggling even before George Floyd, with a homicide rate of 64.5 in 2019.

Looking at homicides on a per capita basis is the most logical way to measure the weight crime imposes on a given community. It also allows for an apples-to-apples comparison across cities. However, ranking cities by the number of homicides is also important due to the sheer number of murders that occur in big cities. St. Louis may have a homicide rate that’s much higher than Chicago, but it suffered less than a third of the murders Chicago did. They both deserve to be crowned murder capitals.

Below we list the nation’s top 20 cities by total homicides and per capita homicides and in Appendix A and B we list out all 75 cities. 

Homicides have continued their year-on-year decline in most cities across the nation. That lessening bloodshed is good news, but it doesn’t change the fact that homicide rates remain far above their 2019 pre-covid, pre-George-Floyd levels.

The report below includes the following sections:

• A look at total homicides in 2023
• A look at homicides rates in 2023
• A comparison of 2023 homicides to their 2019 levels
• A comparison of 2024 homicides to 2023 YTD 
• The DNC and the reality of Chicago crime

---

Chicago, New York, led the nation in number of homicides

Chicago led the nation in criminal homicides 617 murders in 2023. That was by far the most among the nation’s top 75 cities. Not even New York, which is three times bigger than Chicago, or Philadelphia came close, with those two cities suffering 391 and 389 murders, respectively. 

Rounding out the top ten were Memphis (367), Houston (351), Los Angeles (327), Washington D.C. (274), Dallas (268), Baltimore (263), and Detroit (252). See Appendix A for the complete 75-city ranking.

The good news in 2023 vs. 2022 was the 10% drop in homicides across the surveyed cities. Since the massive jump in 2021 after George-Floyd, homicides have fallen the last two years (see Appendix C for full data).

Notable in 2023 was Philadelphia’s 24% decrease in homicides – a fall of 121 murders – which allowed the City of Brotherly Love to drop from the number 2 position in total homicides to number 3. New York City, which dropped 11% in homicides, went up to the second position. 

Other key cities which had been battered by violence in 2020 and 2021 also saw drops. For example, New Orleans, Baltimore, St. Louis and Milwaukee all dropped by 20% to 24%.

Two cities were particularly notable for moving in the wrong direction in 2023. Memphis and Washington D.C. had increases in homicides of 37% and 35% respectively. Memphis’ increase of 100 murders pushed the city into 4th-place nationally.

---

St. Louis, Memphis led the nation in homicide rates

St. Louis’ 20% drop in homicides in 2023 wasn’t enough to help the “Gateway to the West” avoid suffering the nation’s worst homicide rate – 60.0 homicides per every 100,000 in population. As mentioned above, Memphis finished second with a rate of 59.3. New Orleans, last year’s top city for homicides per capita, came in third with 52.7 murders per 100,000. 

Rounding out the top ten were Baltimore (46.5), Cleveland (42.5), Washington D.C. (40.4), Detroit (39.8), Kansas City (35.6), Milwaukee (30.6), and Oakland (28.9). Those homicide rates are all multiples higher than the 2020 national average of 6.5 per 100,000, the most recent reliable national calculation available.

The list of the cities with the top homicide ratios among America’s 75 largest cities includes those with relatively smaller populations, like Greensboro, New Orleans and Cleveland. It’s worth looking at, then, how their homicide ratios performed in 2023 vs 2022.

Greensboro, NC suffered the worst increase, with its homicide rate jumping 75% to 24.5 per 100,000 – a consequence of the city of 300,000 people experiencing 74 murders in 2023. Memphis also suffered a dramatic jump of nearly 40%.

A majority of America’s most murder-prone cities saw their homicide rates fall. Some declines were modest, such as Cincinnati’s rate falling 9% over the year or Las Vegas’ 12% decline. But a number of other cities experienced far larger drops. Cities like Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee and Baltimore all had their homicide rates drop by nearly 20% or more. New Orleans experienced the biggest drop of 24%, though its 2023 rate was still a sky-high 52.7 per 100,000.

It’s also important to compare homicide rates across the big cities because that’s where most of the nation’s murders occur. Among the nation’s 20 biggest cities, Philadelphia suffered the highest homicide rate of 25.1 per 100,000 residents in 2023. Chicago was second with a rate of 23.2, followed by Dallas at 20.6, Indianapolis at 19.4 and Columbus at 16.2.

Notable is just how low the homicide rate is in many big cities, including Los Angeles, Austin and New York City.

---

While homicides continue to fall, many city rates are still above 2019 levels

Despite the drop in homicides in most major cities in 2023, homicide rates still remained above those in 2019. Chicago, for example, saw murders drop by nearly 200 compared to its 2021 spike. Nevertheless, its homicide rate remained 25% above that in 2019 (23.2 vs. 18.5). Ditto for New York City’s homicide rate, up 23% over 2019. And Houston’s rate remained 27% higher.

Of the top 15 cities with the highest 2023 homicide rates, 12 were higher than they were in 2019. And eight of those cities had homicide rates that were 60% higher or more compared to 2019. For example, Milwaukee’s 2023 homicide rate of 30.6 was 87% higher than its 2019 rate. And Memphis’ homicide rate of 59.3 was 103% higher.

Looking at the nation’s other murder capital, St. Louis’ homicide rate was 7% lower than in 2019. But that was of little comfort to residents of St. Louis. The rate was dramatically high back then, with the recent drop making little difference. 

---

The continued decline of homicides in 2024

Year-to-date data for 2024 show that homicides are continuing their downward trend this year, with many of the nation’s biggest cities experiencing a drop in total murders of about 30% or more.

Philadelphia has endured far less bloodshed so far in 2024, with homicides dropping 41% compared to the same period in 2023. Jacksonville homicides are down 38%. San Antonio has recorded 61 murders as of the end of July. That’s 29% fewer than the same time last year. Dallas homicides have fallen by 21% YTD. 

Chicago officials can also point to a decline in homicides in 2024, but the decrease is one of the smallest among cities with populations over 1 million. Windy City homicides are down just 10% compared to last year – the 2nd-lowest reduction behind only Los Angeles’ 2% decline and just behind New York City’s own 10% reduction. 

It’s important to note, however, that while Los Angeles and New York have small declines like Chicago, both those cities experience a far lower number of homicides to begin with.

---

The DNC in Chicago

Count on Chicago’s leadership to tout the city’s recent decline in homicides as an achievement of the city’s commitment to equity and social justice. Chicago experienced a 12% decline in homicides in 2022, another 13% drop in 2023 and a further 10% reduction so far in 2024.

But that drop in homicides must be taken within the context of the massive surge in murders Chicago experienced post George Floyd. In 2021, they jumped to 804 from just 500 two years earlier, a 62% spike.

And even with the recent declines in homicides, Chicago is still on track in 2024 to exceed its 2019 murder levels, considering that YTD homicides are running 23% higher than they were in the same period in 2019.

Chicago’s murder record must also be compared to that of its two big-city peers: New York and Los Angeles. Chicago is the extreme outlier among the three, especially when viewed on a per capita basis over time.

All three cities had nearly identical homicide rates in the late 1980s before experiencing a decline in homicides during the 1990’s. New York and Los Angeles’ declines were far deeper and more sustained, however, leading to the disparity in homicide rates seen today: Chicago’s 2023 homicide rate, at 23.3 per 100,000, is 5 times higher than New York’s (4.7 per 100,000) and 2.7 times higher than LA’s (8.6 per 100,000).

Even worse, Chicago’s soft-on-crime policies continue to encourage more crime. 

Banned police foot and car chases have emboldened criminals to go on robbery sprees. An increased felony-theft threshold has incentivized shoplifting and other crimes. The elimination of cash bail has resulted in a drop in the number of offenders held behind Cook County bars to the lowest level in 40 years. And the overall failure to prosecute crimes of all types has led to an ever-faster revolving door. Criminals are not deterred from committing crimes.

It’s no surprise then, that violent crimes have hit a six-year high in 2024 despite the 10% drop in murders this year, and that the number of victims of violent crime is at a 13-year high.

While the DNC will do its level best to promote Chicago as a triumph of city management and progressive policy, the constant bloodshed is a reminder of the city’s many failures – and an example of criminal justice policies that other cities would do well to ignore.

Download a PDF copy of the report

With Monday night’s unfiltered discussion between Donald Trump and Elon Musk generating a reported billion views, it’s no wonder the left collectively freaked out.

Not only did the Washington Post ask the White House if there was anything they could do to stop the conversation from taking place…

The Washington Post’s Cleve Wootson: “One more, @ElonMusk is slated to interview [@realDonaldTrump] tomorrow — tonight on — on @X. I don’t know if the president is going to — feel free to say if he is or not — but I — I think that misinformation on Twitter is not just a campaign… pic.twitter.com/zKxJNF1zbf

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) August 12, 2024

…The EU’s Thierry Breton, the current Commissioner for Internal Market of the EU, sent a letter to Musk threatening X with punishment if they didn’t crack down on “content that promotes hatred, disorder, incitement to violence, or certain instances of disinformation.”

Musk responded appropriately:

To be honest, I really wanted to respond with this Tropic Thunder meme, but I would NEVER do something so rude & irresponsible! https://t.co/jL0GDW5QUx pic.twitter.com/XhUxCSGFNP

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 12, 2024

For the uninitiated:

Theory Fucks His Own Face After All…

In a harsh rebuke, Brussels has accused Breton of going rogue with the letter to Musk – saying he never sought approval from European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen to send the letter.

“The timing and the wording of the letter were neither co-ordinated or agreed with the president nor with the [commissioners],” the Commission said in a Tuesday statement reported by the Financial Times.

“Thierry has his own mind and way of working and thinking,” said one EU official who asked not to be named.

As the Times notes (lol), “Musk responded to the letter from Breton with a meme from the 2008 film Tropic Thunder, that showed one character yelling: “Take a big step back and literally fuck your own face.”“

Politico Europe reports that four separate EU officials said that Breton’s threat to Musk caught many off guard within the Commission.

“The EU is not in the business of electoral interference,” said one of those officials. “DSA implementation is too important to be misused by an attention-seeking politician in search of his next big job.”

Meanwhile, a Trump campaign spokesperson responded by saying “The European Union should mind their own business instead of trying to meddle in the US presidential election,” while Musk later posted that he would be “happy to host” Kamala Harris for a similar discussion.

In response to Breton’s letter, X CEO Linda Yaccarino said it was an “unprecedented attempt to stretch a law intended to apply in Europe to political activities in the US,” while Trump campaign official Chris LaCivita said that the “European Union is attempting to meddle in the US Election,” adding “They can go to hell.”

European Union is attempting to meddle in the US Election …they can go to hell https://t.co/d9ullhN0N2

— Chris LaCivita (@LaCivitaC) August 12, 2024

Never go full Thierry…

Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

Historically – as during the days of the classical gold standard – central banks maintained stocks of gold to facilitate the conversion of gold-backed national currencies. Those days are long gone, but in modern times, many central banks continue to own gold, and many central banks buy gold as part of their open-market operations. For example, in his article last week—”Central banks purchase gold to offset their own money destruction“—Daniel Lacalle writes: 

The rising purchases of gold by central banks are an essential factor justifying the recent increase in demand for the precious metal. Central banks, especially in China and India, are trying to reduce their dependence on the dollar or the euro to diversify their reserves. 

The US’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, is not among these banks buying gold. Obviously, the Fed has no interest in buying up gold as a means of “de-dollarization.” Moreover, the Fed is presently concerned with purchasing more dollar-denominated government debt to keep interest rates low on the Federal government’s huge deficits.  

But we must also note that another reason the Fed isn’t buying gold is that the Fed hasn’t been in the gold-owning business for a very long time. 

That is, the Fed has owned no gold since 1934, when the Fed handed over all its gold in exchange for gold certificates. This is how the Fed’s Board of Governors summarizes the situation:

The Federal Reserve does not own gold.

The Gold Reserve Act of 1934 required the Federal Reserve System to transfer ownership of all of its gold to the Department of the Treasury. In exchange, the Secretary of the Treasury issued gold certificates to the Federal Reserve for the amount of gold transferred at the then-applicable statutory price for gold held by the Treasury.

Gold certificates are denominated in U.S. dollars. Their value is based on the statutory price for gold at the time the certificates are issued. Gold certificates do not give the Federal Reserve any right to redeem the certificates for gold.

The statutory price of gold is set by law. It does not fluctuate with the market price of gold and has been constant at $42 2/9, or $42.2222, per fine troy ounce since 1973. The book value of the gold held by the Treasury is determined using the statutory price.

Although the Federal Reserve does not own any gold, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York acts as the custodian of gold owned by account holders such as the U.S. government, foreign governments, other central banks, and official international organizations. No individuals or private sector entities are permitted to store gold in the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or at any Federal Reserve Bank.

A small portion of the gold held by the U.S. Treasury (roughly $600 million in book value)–about five percent–is held in custody for the Treasury by the Federal Reserve Banks, as fiscal agents of the United States. The vast majority of this gold is located in the vault at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and a very small portion is on display in several Federal Reserve Banks. The remaining 95 percent of U.S. Treasury gold ($10.4 billion in book value) is held in custody for the Treasury by the U.S. Mint.

It is possible to imagine that the Fed could start buying gold, but it’s hard to see why the Fed would be motivated to do so. 

Moreover, given that the Fed’s gold certificates have essentially no connection to the actual market price of gold, changes in the price of gold have virtually no effect on the value of the Fed’s assets. 

The only way gold prices would become relevant to the Fed’s portfolio would be for the Congress to change the statutory price of gold from $42.2222. If the Fed wanted to actually take possession of that gold, the Congress would also have to authorize the Fed to redeem its certificates in gold.

This is all very unlikely barring a very big change in the ideology of the ruling regime.

Indeed, barring said ideological change, I suspect that in a true crisis, the Fed’s extremely tenuous claim to owning its pre-1934 gold stockpile would be null and void altogether.

If the Treasury finds itself truly strapped for cash, the Congress would only have to declare the Fed’s gold certificates permanently unredeemable.

Or, the Treasury could simply buy back the gold certificates at the ridiculously low statutory price. Then there would be no doubt about who owns that gold.

The Treasury could then simply sell off all the gold to Wall Street banks in exchange for dollars that would go to luxury hotels for illegal immigrants or more bombs for the State of Israel. 

The United Auto Workers union – which has endorsed Kamala Harris’ 2024 bid – said on Tuesday that it took umbrage with comments regarding worker strikes made by former President Trump and Elon Musk during Monday night’s conversation on X, and have filed federal labor charges against the pair.

In a Tuesday statement, the UAW said that Trump and Musk engaged in “illegal attempts to threaten and intimidate workers who stand up for themselves by engaging in protected concerted activity, such as strikes” – pointing specifically to a comment in which Trump said “You walk in, you say, You want to quit? They go on strike, I won’t mention the name of the company, but they go on strike and you say, That’s OK, you’re all gone. You’re all gone. So, every one of you is gone.”

Trump was apparently referencing the 2022 gutting of Twitter staff afteR Musk took over the company and renamed it X.

Musk’s crime was apparently laughing at Trump’s comment.

It is illegal to threaten to fire workers for going on strike, or to actually do so, according to the union.

“Both Trump and Musk want working class people to sit down and shut up, and they laugh about it openly,” said UAW president Shawn Fain in a statement. “It’s disgusting, illegal, and totally predictable from these two clowns.”

“When we say Donald Trump is a scab, this is what we mean,” Fain continued. “When we say Trump stands against everything our union stands for, this is what we mean.”

Trump campaign senior adviser Brian Hughes called it a “frivolous lawsuit” and “shameless political stunt intended to erode President Trump’s overwhelming support among America’s workers.”

As Axios notes, When labor charges are filed, the National Labor Relations Board decides whether to investigate the allegations. If it concludes there were violations, it could impose penalties.

As CNBC notes further:

Trump’s praise of union busting is notable because the Republican presidential nominee is currently fighting to win support from organized labor in a tight race against Vice President Kamala Harris.

The UAW, which represents more than 400,000 autoworkers, has already endorsed Harris. But another major U.S. labor union, the Teamsters, has yet to make an endorsement.

A spokesman for the Teamsters did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Trump’s support for union busting.

In July, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien delivered a speech at the Republican National Convention.

He said his attendance was intended to underscore that the union’s powerful political endorsement was still available to whichever candidate pledges to champion workers’ interests.

“Companies fire workers who try to join unions, and hide behind toothless laws that are meant to protect working people but are manipulated to benefit corporations,” O’Brien said at the RNC in Milwaukee.

“This is economic terrorism at its best,” said O’Brien.

Musk, meanwhile, is no stranger to labor battles – with Tesla having clashed with unions for years – and the NLRB finding in 2021 that the company violated labor laws when it fired a union activist. 

SpaceX has also been accused of labor violations for firing eight employees for what they said was an internal open letter criticizing Musk and his public conduct.

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The backlog of payment actions at the Social Security Administration (SSA) is now at a “record-breaking” level, causing the agency to make more than a billion dollars in improper payments to beneficiaries, according to the SSA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG).

The SSA’s backlog of pending actions hit an “all-time high” of 5.2 million as of February, the OIG said in an Aug. 8 statement, citing an analysis published in June. Pending actions at the agency’s claims processing centers that remain unresolved for a long period of time have resulted in “larger improper payments, including growing underpayments or increasing overpayments to beneficiaries.”

Overpayments put social security beneficiaries under a great burden since the agency will ask them to pay back the overpaid amount at any time. Some recipients may not be in a financial position to repay.

Meanwhile, underpayments mean beneficiaries do not receive their correct monthly payment, which is financially challenging for many recipients.

The delay in resolving pending actions caused the SSA to make $1.1 billion worth of improper payments by February, the OIG stated.

“Customer satisfaction has been an ongoing concern for SSA,” Michelle Anderson, acting inspector general for SSA, said. “This report continues to highlight the urgency for SSA to reach its pending actions performance goal and to ensure beneficiaries receive their proper payments as promptly as possible.”

SSA blamed the “record-breaking” backlog on increased workload, staff reductions, and lower-than-expected funding for overtime. Overtime funding could be used to pay workers to resolve more pending actions, thus reducing the backlog, the agency said.

The SSA had reviewed the draft version of the OIG report and sent a response to the watchdog in June. The agency agreed on the need to cut down the processing centers’ pending actions backlog and processing delays. However, this would require “additional resources,” it said in its response.

The SSA pointed out that the agency has “over 650 fewer employees working on processing centers’ workloads now than we did eight years ago, while our beneficiary count has risen from roughly 64 million people to nearly 72 million in that same time period.”

Moreover, the SSA is experiencing staffing challenges with high separation rates in key roles. Without adequate funding, the agency is “left to prioritize growing workloads with our current resources in mind.”

Improper Payment Issue

The OIG pointed out in its report that the SSA failed to reduce its processing center pending actions over the past six years, causing the backlog to rise from 3.2 million in fiscal year 2018 to 4.6 million last year.

As the backlog kept growing, pending actions remained unresolved for longer periods, the report stated. Of 139 actions by processing centers (PCs) analyzed by the OIG, almost three-fourths were pending for 300 days or more, with 43 percent unresolved for 500 days or longer.

“Once processed, PC pending actions can result in improper payments,” the report reads.

“The longer it takes SSA to process PC pending actions, the longer beneficiaries wait for underpayments due or they receive larger overpayments to pay back.”

In one instance, the SSA initially identified an overpaid beneficiary in June 2021 when the person had received $9,000 in excess money from the agency. However, the SSA only took action to collect overpayments about two years later, in May 2023. During this time, the overpayments continued, with the overpaid amount totaling $62,000.

Even though the beneficiary sought a waiver arguing that the agency was at fault and that the individual could not afford to pay back the money, the person had to agree to make partial payments to resolve the case, the report stated.

For improper payments, the SSA has taken certain actions. In March, the agency announced a new rule easing burdens on overpayment recipients.

Earlier, the SSA would have withheld 100 percent of a beneficiary’s monthly benefits until the overpaid amount was collected.

However, the new rule dismissed this practice. Instead, the agency now collects 10 percent or $10, whichever is greater, of the overpaid amount from the monthly benefits to recover overpayments.

“Social Security is taking a critically important step towards our goal of ensuring our overpayment policies are fair, equitable, and do not unduly harm anyone,” Martin O’Malley, commissioner of Social Security, said at the time.

In February, the SSA proposed a rule for using information from payroll data providers in its calculations. The proposed Payroll Information Exchange is expected to reduce manual reporting errors, which could then reduce improper payments, the agency stated.

Despite corporate media’s unabashed u-turn to support Kamala Harris, her campaign has been busted creating made-up headlines next to the names of real news outlets to trick people into thinking they’ve stumbled upon the real thing, Axios reports.

Upon hearing the news, The Guardian lost their shit, telling Axios: “While we understand why an organization might wish to align itself with the Guardian’s trusted brand, we need to ensure it is being used appropriately and with our permission. We’ll be reaching out to Google for more information about this practice.”

The ads include links to real articles from the outlets, however the headlines and supporting text were altered.

Spokespeople for other spoofed outlets such as CNN, USA Today and NPR, said they had no idea their brand was being featured this way.

Examples include The Independent UK, NPR, AP, The Guardian, USA Today, PBS, CNN, CBS News, Time and others, including local outlets like North Dakota radio station WDAY Radio.

• For example, an ad that ran alongside an article from The Guardian shows a headline that reads “VP Harris Fights Abortion Bans – Harris Defends Repro Freedom” and then includes supporting text underneath the headline that reads, “VP Harris is a champion for reproductive freedom and will stop Trump’s abortion bans.”
• An ad featuring a link to an NPR story reads, “Harris Will Lower Health Costs,” with supporting text that says, “Kamala Harris will lower the cost of high-quality affordable health care.”

For example:

Meanwhile, according to Google’s ad transparency center, the Trump campaign isn’t running these types of ads – and says that because ads on Search are prominently labeled as “Sponsored,” they’re “easily distinguishable from Search results.” A Google spokesperson added “we’ve provided additional levels of transparency for election ads specifically.”

Nevermind that news outlets pay to promote their own articles all the time.

And nevermind that there was a “glitch” which hid the ad disclosure.

A source familiar with the Harris campaign’s ads team said the campaign buys search ads with news links to give voters searching for information about Vice President Harris more context.

• The campaign has complied with all of Google’s rules, although a technical glitch in Google’s Ad Library made it appear as though some ads lacked the necessary disclosures Google requires when they ran. (A Google spokesperson confirmed the glitch and said it’s investigating what happened.)
• “Election advertisers are required to complete an identity verification process and we prominently display in-ad disclosures that clearly show people who paid for the ad,” the spokesperson said. -Axios

That said, according to Google the ads don’t violate its rules – however other platforms have taken action against such deception. Facebook, for example, banned advertisers from editing text from Instant Article news links in their ads in 2017, citing its “continuing efforts to stop the spread of misinformation and false news.” 

A candidate so good they have to deceive voters…

Authored by Jeff Minick via The Epoch Times,

In 2007, President George W. Bush dedicated a memorial in Washington DC to the 100 million people murdered by communism over the past century. Here is a portion of what he offered in remembrance of those victims:

“They include innocent Ukrainians starved to death in Stalin’s Great Famine or Russians killed in Stalin’s purges; Lithuanians and Latvians and Estonians loaded onto cattle cars and deported to Arctic death camps of Soviet communism. They include Chinese killed in the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution; Cambodians slain in Pol Pot’s Killing Fields; East Germans shot attempting to scale the Berlin Wall in order to make it to freedom; Poles massacred in the Katyn Forest and Ethiopians slaughtered in the ‘Red Terror’; Miskito Indians murdered by Nicaragua’s Sandinista dictatorship; and Cuban balseros who drowned escaping tyranny.”

This horrific record doesn’t include the countless millions who were imprisoned, tortured, or saw their dreams and potentialities ruined by Marxism. Yet not only do countries like China and North Korea remain communist, but here in the West, where we should know better by now, we have professors, teachers, corporate personnel, politicians, and ordinary citizens who salute the Red Star. They may not answer to the name of Marxist, but they go along with the movement.

This being the case, it’s up to parents, grandparents, and mentors to inoculate the young against falling prey to this ideology. Below are some vaccines we can give our young people to help prevent infection from this virus.

Read the Right Books

George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” is appropriate for middle schoolers. His classic “1984” should be on every high schooler’s reading list. Ayn Rand’s “We the Living,” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” Ruta Sepetys’s “I Must Betray You,” and other novels will give readers a look into life under communism. For a truly chilling look at how Marxism works in schools, read James Clavell’s overlooked short story “The Children’s Story,” now available online for free. YouTube also has a video drama of this story.

Teach them the truth about totalitarianism and communism through books such as these.

Listen to Real-Life Stories

If you know someone who grew up in a former communist country or who has escaped from a country like China or Cuba, invite them to speak to your children. These first-hand accounts can provide a powerful witness.

If you don’t have access to such people, you can find interviews with freedom fighters and survivors online at the Victims of Communism Memorial Witness Project. Here men and women from around the world share the stories of their ordeal and the miseries of life under Marxist governments.

Kitchen Table Learning

Discuss the daily news with your teens, both events abroad and here at home. Turn on the evening news and critique it. Point out that words like “privileged,” “marginalized communities,” “the oppressed,” “gender identity,” and more are all terms associated with the left.

Within the United States are far-left groups that either declare themselves Marxist or follow Marxist precedents. Others conceal themselves under innocuous titles. The Party for Socialism and Liberation, for instance, takes an “old-fashioned” approach to Marxism with its radical support of Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong. Other far-left groups fly under a variety of banners, often seeking these days to forward radical agendas of race and gender. Make your children aware that these groups are rarely concerned about liberty or human rights for all people.

This election year provides the perfect opportunity to compare the platforms and candidates of our political parties. Make the most of this opportunity to teach your children about the issues debated and how they reflect on such concepts as freedom, collectivism, and tradition.

The Best Antidote of All

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Teach those words from our Declaration of Independence to your children. Explain that no government can grant or take away their unalienable rights, that they are a core part of what it means to be human.

Teach your children about the men and women who built this country, who fought against injustice where they found it and who loved freedom. Teach them early on the stories of American explorers, scientists, soldiers, poets, and all the others whose work and sacrifices gave us the privileges we enjoy today.

Teach them that liberty and its many benefits demand responsibility. Do not let them confuse, as so many do today, liberty with license. Liberty means having the freedom to do the right thing, not simply to do as we wish. Responsibility implies duty, the obligation to be accountable for our actions, and to step up when necessary and defend our rights as a free people.

Do these things with love, and the torch of American liberty will never be extinguished.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Cooler than expected headline and core PPI (dovish for monetary policy hopefuls) trumped the margin-compression (bearish for corporate profitability and therefore stocks) aspect of the producer prices data this morning exaggerating a weak-dollar/BTFD stocks trend that emerged overnight.

The ‘cool’ PPI knocked the ‘inflation-surprise’-macro-index down to its lowest since February… but at the same time ‘growth-surprise’ data has also stagnated significantly…

Source: Bloomberg

But, it was the dollar index that stood out today, tanking to post-payrolls plunge lows…

Source: Bloomberg

… dumped to its lowest in four months, breaking below its 200DMA…

Source: Bloomberg

Interestingly, as the dollar tanked, it was a buy-all-the-things day with bonds (prices) up, stocks up, and crypto up; but of particular note was weakness in oil (well, Iran hasn’t blown anything to shit today), and gold (flat – at record highs – as WW3 appears to be postponed… for now).

Nasdaq was the biggest winner on the day (surging 2.5%), but all the majors were up strong today…

Seems like we could have seen this one coming…

Goldman Sees Surge In Stock Buyback Orders As Volatility Fades https://t.co/sOXXasrUwr

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 12, 2024

Mag7 stocks continued to roar back to life…

Source: Bloomberg

…and ‘most shorted’ stocks were squeezed hard, having now erased exactly 50% of their plunge from last week…

Source: Bloomberg

VIX was sold once again, back down to an 18 handle (and the levels before the payrolls panic)…

Source: Bloomberg

But shorter-dated vol is aggressively bid into tomorrow’s CPI and NVDA’s earnings

Source: Bloomberg

Treasury yields tumbled on the day, extending lower after the cool PPI. The Short-end outperformed (2Y -8bps, 30Y -4bps)…

Source: Bloomberg

The 2y Yield broke back below 4.00%…

Source: Bloomberg

Rate-cut expectations jumped around 10bps on the day, mainly focused on the 2024 shift…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin surged back to $61,500, erasing all of the weakness from Sunday…

Source: Bloomberg

Crude oil prices dipped after WTI double-topped at $80…

Source: Bloomberg

Gold was relatively flat today, holding at record highs…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, for context, today’s tumble in the dollar was NOT driven by a resumption of the yen-carry trade…

Source: Bloomberg

…of course tomorrow’s CPI print will decide which way yen breaks out.

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

The New York Times reports that the federal government is accelerating the naturalization of immigrants in America as part of a process of “reshaping the electorate, merely months before a pivotal election,” according to one observer quoted in the piece.

“The federal government is processing citizenship requests at the fastest clip in a decade, moving rapidly through a backlog that built up during the Trump administration and the coronavirus pandemic,” reports the newspaper.

One Honduran woman marveled at the fact that authorities were able to process and approve her application in as little as six months.

The story highlights how many of these new citizens will immediately become eligible to vote in key battleground states, including Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

The piece includes a very revealing quote from Xiao Wang, chief executive of Boundless, a data analysis company.

“The surge in naturalization efficiency isn’t just about clearing backlogs; it’s potentially reshaping the electorate, merely months before a pivotal election,” said Wang.

“Every citizenship application could be a vote that decides Senate seats or even the presidency,” he added.

The New York Times will just go and publish the entire strategy without a care in the world. pic.twitter.com/U3x8Hodzwd

— ~~datahazard~~ (@fentasyl) August 13, 2024

In other words, knowing that immigrants are far likelier to vote Democrat, the Biden administration is importing them at breakneck speed in order to tip the scales for Kamala Harris.

3.3 million immigrants have become citizens during Biden’s time in office, with data showing that more will vote Democrat than Republican.

This has partly driven the Trump campaign’s efforts to appeal more to “Jamal” and “Enrique,” and not so much “Karen,” although the strategy has caused division amongst Trump’s base.

The legacy media has consistently denounced the idea of mass migration being a deliberate ploy to increase the voter base for Democrats as part of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, while simultaneously admitting it’s happening.

A poll conducted by YouGov in 2022 found that 73 per cent of Trump voters believed Democrats are “trying to replace white Americans with immigrants and people of color” who overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.

According to the media, when people on the right talk about it in a negative way, it’s a horrendous form of extremist radicalization, but when leftists celebrate it, it’s a progressive virtue.

SUPERCUT!

Dangerous Demagogues Spread ‘Great Replacement Theory’ pic.twitter.com/g5x4KgylrM

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) May 17, 2022

*  *  *

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.