Month: September 2024

Authored by Crystal-Rose Jones via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Recorded cases of dementia, as well as deaths and prescriptions for the disease, are on the rise across Australia as the nation grapples with the effects of an ageing population.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s Dementia in Australia report, released on Sept. 13, estimates that out of every 1,000 Australians, 15 are suffering from the neurodegenerative disease.

Prescriptions for dementia drugs have increased 46 percent in a decade.

A total of 688,000 dementia medication prescriptions were dispensed to around 72,400 Australians aged 30 and over in 2022–23, compared to 472,000 scripts dispensed in 2013–14.

According to Dementia Australia, more than 100 different diseases can lead to dementia, with the disease commonly associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

While it mainly affects the aged, various forms of dementia can also affect children and younger people, depending on the cause.

Dementia is currently the second leading cause of death in Australia behind heart disease, with reported deaths from dementia rising steadily from 8,500 in 2009 to 17,899 in 2022.

The AIHW says improved reporting systems and greater dementia awareness could influence numbers. Nonetheless, figures for dementia deaths in Australia remain high.

The COVID pandemic has also been a significant factor in dementia deaths, according to the report, with sufferers more likely to suffer a fatal reaction to the virus.

Aged Care Demand

The report’s findings add weight to an already burgeoning aged care system in Australia, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese recently unveiling a $10 billion (US$6.7 billion) aged care overhaul.

Figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in July showed that 17.1 percent of Australians were aged over 65.

The number of Australians older than 85 will triple over the next four decades.

Aged care is one of the biggest pressures on the budget, and without action, spending is expected to more than double as a share of GDP over the next 40 years.

The reforms, announced on Sept. 13, will invest more in-home care support to allow older people to stay home for longer.

The move could benefit aged care facilities by freeing up care for dementia sufferers who often have to move to monitored facilities.

In 2021–22, more than 242,000 people were living in permanent residential aged care, and more than half (54 percent or about 131,000) of these people had dementia.

The reforms, which have bipartisan support from the Liberal-National Coalition, include new standards to drive service quality, new protections for whistleblowers, and a new independent statutory complaints commissioner.

Authored by James Bovard via The Mises Institute,

In the glorious age of the Kamala Ascendency, the TSA is no longer restraining its contempt for American travelers. After squeezing millions of butts and boobs and never catching a terrorist, TSA decided to have fun by taunting its victims. 

After a traveler asked online, “Why does TSA need social media anyways?” TSA’s Instagram account taunted: “Idk Kyle, why do your friends keep bringing stuff they shouldn’t in their carry-on?”

Almost 40,000 people liked that post (slightly fewer than the total number of TSA employees). 

The TSA Instagram team added another smack at travelers who failed to devote their lives to pleasing federal agents: “You see how we don’t have 20 different things shoved in our pockets before airport security? Very cutesy, very demure.” Obviously, any American who does not approach a TSA checkpoint stripped down like a convict entering a prison shower bears all the blame for whatever problems he causes.

TSA officials pirouetted as if they had the moral high ground. But TSA has perennially relied on idiotic seizure statistics in lieu of competently protecting the American public.

A 2003 TSA press release proudly announced that it had “intercepted more than 4.8 million prohibited items at passenger security checkpoints in its first year, contributing to the security of the traveling public and the nation’s 429 commercial airports.” TSA chief James Loy bragged to a congressional committee:

“We have identified, intercepted, and therefore kept off aircraft more than 4.8 million dangerous items.”

Except that TSA is Idiocy Incarnate. Every fingernail clipper that the TSA seized from a hapless grandmother became proof that the federal government is protecting people better than ever. TSA checkpoint seizures included frying pans, dumbbell sets, horseshoes, and toy robots—all of which presumably would have been used to carry out suicidal hijackings. Covert government tests showed TSA screeners were utterly inept at detecting firearms and mock bombs.

I have been snared by TSA’s changing and boneheaded rules for cigar cutters. In 2018, I was flying out of Washington National Airport, heading to a Mises conference. A slack-jawed TSA dweeb came up after my checkpoint screening and he gleefully announced: “Your bag triggered an alarm—we have to search it.”

I followed him to a special area off to the side for bag searches. The dude starts going through my bag, pushing underwear and socks and a lonely necktie aside but finding no Uzis. Then, in one of the bag’s side flaps, this aspiring Sherlock Holmes reached in and plucked out a grave danger to safe aviation. 

“You aren’t allowed to take cigar cutters on carry-on,” he announced with the air of an elementary school cafeteria monitor catching a kid who filched an extra donut. 

“TSA’s website says explicitly that cutters are allowed on carry-on.” I had done my due diligence pre-flight. This particular cutter was a cheap plastic device with two tiny medal blades that sliced together like a guillotine.

“Uh… no. You aren’t allowed to take this onboard.”

“TSA at other airports has never prohibited cigar cutters.”

“We have strict rules here. It doesn’t matter what the rules are at other airports.”

“What harm could it do?”

“It has a sharp edge.” 

“Do you think I’m going to use it to break into the cockpit and circumcise the pilot?”

He just stared and kept breathing through his mouth. 

I threw up my arms: “Fine—take it—I have a flight to catch.” 

After getting out of sight of that checkpoint, I popped open my carry-on bag and confirmed that the TSA wizard missed my back-up cigar cutter. 

No shameless emotional string-pulling would be complete without a canine cameo. On Monday, [8/26], TSA announced the winner of its 2024 Cutest Canine Contest Winner—a dog named Barni who sniffs in the San Francisco airport.

But TSA failed to mention the role that its dogs have in plundering any traveler who is caught with more than $5,000 in cash—the magic threshold for feds considering money “suspicious.” Most American currency has micro-traces of narcotics, and a stack of bills usually suffices for a positive alert from a drug sniffing dog—thus entitling the feds to commandeer the cash. Dan Alban, a savvy Institute for Justice attorney, observed: “This is something that we know is happening all across the United States. We’ve been contacted by people who have been traveling to buy used cars or buy equipment for their business and had their cash seized.”

If TSA wants to set a record for social media likes, it should craft a meme with a Monty Python-style witch drowning to illustrate TSA’s devotion to the Fifth Amendment and private property rights.

But TSA is positively gloating nowadays over its latest high-profile seizure campaign. “Peanut Butter is a liquid. We said what we said,” declared the TSA Twitter account last week, sounding like Moses on Mt. Sinai announcing a supplement to the Ten Commandments. And since TSA claims that peanut butter is a liquid, it can effectively confiscate any jar it sees people have in carry-on luggage. TSA’s Instagram account last week posted a photo of the U.S. Olympic team in the rain on a boat and labeled it, “TSA’s social media team on our way to explain why peanut butter is a liquid.” TSA offered mock heroics in lieu of common sense.

I got snared by that bone-headed rule when I was flying out of Dallas last November. After the x-ray sounded an alert, a beefy young female agent hoisted my bag and carted it to the end of the checkpoint area. She summoned me to explain its contents and my depravity. “Is there anything sharp in this bag?”

“No,” I replied. 

She unzipped my bag and began pawing through it. In lieu of a machete, she found a small half-full jar of peanut butter. “You can’t take liquids on a flight,” she announced solemnly.

“It’s peanut butter. It’s not liquid.”

“It’s liquid and it’s prohibited,” was her decree. Did TSA covertly classify peanut butter as a bioweapon, or what?

“Ya, whatever,” I said as I abandoned the jar to federal custody. I’d had worse losses on earlier trips. 

Chatting with another jaded traveler as I put my boots back after clearing the Dallas checkpoint, he asked if I was upset about losing my peanut butter.

I smiled: “I’ll settle accounts with TSA later.”

Plenty of irate travelers settled accounts with TSA on Twitter after it posted its pompous decree on peanut butter as a liquid. 

@gaborgurbacs replied, “You can demonstrate it by drinking a bottle. Post the video.” @la_smartine retorted, “You meant ‘is a bomb’. You’re welcome.”

@amitylee13 groused, “Your agency has exceeded its expiration date, unlike my peanut butter you stole from me.”

@_GlenGarry  tweeted, “Peanut Butter won’t invade your privacy or assault you in public spaces.”

@ErikVoorhees replied, “Thanks for keeping Americans safe from peanut butter.”

@BecketAdams scoffed that TSA was “a permanent DMV for airports staffed by peanut butter-drinking perverts.”

@DrCarolLow warned, “They’ll steal your yogurt as well.”

@NHpilled snarked, “No wonder you guys have failed 90-95% of your b0mb tests.”

Some Twitter users thumped the arbitrariness of the rule—since people can load as much peanut butter as they please onto a sandwich and march unmolested through TSA checkpoints. As @thisone0verhere  scoffed, “Peanuts are not [liquid] so I will see you and my new portable food processor on my next flight.”

The latest controversies are a reminder of the deluge of substitute agency names for that TSA acronym—“Too Stupid for Arby’s,” “Tear Suitcase Apart,” “Thousands Standing Around,” “Take Scissors Away,” “Total Sexual Assault,” “They Steal Anything,” “Tactics to Suppress Accountability,” and “Three Stooges Audition.” 

If TSA’s social media team wants to be marginally less useless, they should sponsor a contest for better substitute names for TSA.

According to survey data, three in ten people in the United States had been clinically diagnosed with depression at a point in their lives in 2023.

As Statista’s Anna Fleck points out in the chart below, this is the highest rate since the question started being asked, up 10.6 percentage points from 2015. The rate of increase was particularly steep in the first year of the pandemic, jumping up from 22.9 percent in 2020 to 28.6 percent in 2021. Meanwhile, 17.8 percent of respondents said that they currently had depression in 2023.

You will find more infographics at Statista

These averages hide figures even more extreme, as Gallup data reveals how rates among women, young adults, as well as Black and Hispanic respondents have risen particularly fast.

According to the survey, 36.7 percent of women report having been diagnosed with depression in their lifetimes versus 20.4 percent of men. For young people aged 18-29, 34.3 percent had been diagnosed with depression, while for 30-44 year olds it was 34.9 percent. Lifetime depression rates among Black and Hispanic adults have now surpassed those of White respondents.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, 18.4 percent of U.S. adults reported having been diagnosed with depression at some point in their lives. Again, this figure hides disparities, with the CDC data similarly finding that depression prevalence was higher among women (24 percent) than men (13.3 percent).

Authored by John R. Lott Jr. via RealClearPolitics,

Understandably, we want to blame someone besides the 14-year-old who murdered four people last week at Apalachee High School in Georgia. People are shocked and upset that the father taught the boy to shoot and hunt and bought the boy a rifle for Christmas. But that doesn’t mean it made any sense for police to arrest the father the day after the school shooting on two counts of second-degree murder, four counts of involuntary manslaughter, and eight counts of cruelty to children.

This isn’t the first time that parents are being held liable for their children’s actions. Jennifer and James Crumbley were sentenced to prison for 10 to 15 years after their son perpetrated the 2021 Oxford High School shootings in Michigan. Their crime? Letting their son have access to the father’s pistol, which was used in the murders.

The problem here is that there are a lot of mistakes to go around, and all too frequently, many fail to identify these murderers before they commit their crimes. As I will discuss later, the question is, what policies do you put in place when you know that we won’t identify these killers before they strike?

Georgia police interviewed the boy in May 2023 after he used the Discord communication platform to threaten to shoot up a school. Making a threat to murder people is a crime. But police concluded they didn’t have enough evidence for an arrest. The boy claimed that he had stopped using the platform months earlier and “promised I would never say something [like that].”

Because the police couldn’t directly tie the boy to the messages, the bodycam footage of the interview reveals an officer saying: “I gotta take you at your word.” But why he says that is a mystery. The police knew the IP address of the home where someone made the posts, which is how they found the boy. And while the boy and his father had recently moved from there, all the police needed to know was the posts’ dates to see if the boy lived in the house at the time.

The officers didn’t even need the level of proof required in a criminal case. If a judge finds that someone is a danger to himself or others, there is a range of options, including outpatient mental health care. Gun confiscation or involuntary commitment may also be options.

If law enforcement officers took the boy at his word, how can we blame the father for doing the same?

If anything, the Georgia boy’s mother should be commended. Thirty minutes before the attack, she called her son’s school to warn of an “impending disaster.” “I told them it was an extreme emergency and for them to go immediately and find [my son] to check on him,” said the mother, in a screenshot of the message that she sent to the boy’s aunt.

But the school didn’t act. Isn’t the school mainly at fault for that?

Red flags are always easier to notice in hindsight. Indeed, since 1998, 51% of mass public shooters were seeing mental health professionals before their attacks. But none of the mental health professionals ever identified these murderers as a danger to themselves or others. In many cases, people had raised concerns about these killers before they carried out their attacks, but the professionals never recognized the threat. If experts miss the danger signs, how can we blame a parent for not seeing them?

Should the families lock up their guns so only adults have access? Not surprisingly, crime rates rise when governments prevent people from defending themselves. When people are required to lock up their guns, criminals more frequently invade people’s homes and then are more successful in murdering or otherwise harming their victims.

If locking up guns could have prevented all five of the mass shootings committed by minors since 2000, including this latest shooting, there would have been 25 fewer deaths and 19 fewer people wounded. Of course, these killers may very well have obtained weapons in other ways. But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that all those attacks simply would not have occurred. The number of lives saved would still be only about 1/14th of the number of lives lost in just a single year because mandatory locks kept people from getting to their guns in time.

The horrific deaths and injuries from school shootings rightly get a lot of attention. But we don’t hear about the deaths that occur because people can’t readily access guns to protect themselves and their families. Those deaths are no less horrific. 

The national media rarely mention defensive gun uses, even when young children use guns to save lives. But dozens of recent cases have been reported by local news outlets. 

Fortunately, there was a security officer at the school, though Kamala Harris has argued for banning all guns from schools, even for law enforcement. But even when school resource officers are in the right place at the right time, they have a tough job. Uniformed guards may as well be holding neon signs saying, “Shoot me first.” Attackers know that once they kill the security officer, who is the only person with a gun, no one else can stop them.

Having armed teachers carrying concealed firearms takes away that tactical advantage. Twenty states allow this under a variety of rules. Outside of suicides or gang violence in the middle of the night, there has not been one instance of a death or injury from an attack at a school that has armed teachers. 

Not surprisingly, the attacks in Georgia and Michigan both occurred in schools that banned teachers and staff from having guns. Other schools in Georgia have armed teachers, but not Apalachee High School.

We could blame law enforcement, schools, mental health experts and the parents. But, politically, it seems to be easier to blame the parents instead of the “experts.” The bottom line is that if we keep failing to identify these murderers, what is the backup plan? Let’s take real action to protect our schools and arm teachers.

John R. Lott Jr. is a contributor to RealClearInvestigations, focusing on voting and gun rights. His articles have appeared in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, USA Today, and Chicago Tribune. Lott is an economist who has held research and/or teaching positions at the University of Chicago, Yale University, Stanford, UCLA, Wharton, and Rice.

In this graphic, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu ranked the biggest single-day stock swings in U.S. history, by total change in market capitalization in U.S. dollars.

These numbers were sourced from the blog of Charlie Bilello, Chief Market Strategist at Creative Planning.

Data and Highlights

All of the numbers we used to create this graphic are listed in the tables below, starting with single-day market cap gains.

Many of these single-day gains are related to news around artificial intelligence.

For instance, on July 31, 2024, Nvidia jumped 12%, gaining a massive $327 billion in market cap. This was due to better-than-expected results posted by AMD, another U.S. semiconductor company with a focus on artificial intelligence (AI).

A few weeks earlier on June 11, 2024, Apple shares recorded their best day since 2022 after the company revealed its on-device AI system, Apple Intelligence.

Next, let’s look at the biggest single-day market cap losses in U.S. history.

Again, we can see that all of these losses were recorded in the past few years. Given today’s multi-trillion dollar valuations, billions in company market cap can be gained or wiped out in a single day.

Volatility in 2024

2024 is proving to be a volatile year for tech stocks, particularly Nvidia, as investors have recently rotated into more defensive sectors like Utilities and Consumer Staples. For reference, the S&P 500’s utilities sector has climbed over 21% YTD in 2024.

Looking at the Nasdaq-100 index, we can see the beginning of a “falling tops” pattern since July 2024, meaning each peak in price is lower than the previous peak. Falling tops typically indicate a bearish trend.

Authored by Paul Tice via RealClearEnergy,

Reports of the impending death of the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) movement have been greatly exaggerated.

While several sustainability-minded companies and Wall Street firms have recently adopted a lower ESG profile due to the public backlash, this is largely a tactical retreat until the government provides air cover. Financial regulators are now riding to the rescue, passing rules that make the entire climate-focused ESG system compulsory and prescriptive.

In March 2024, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued final climate disclosure rules that require every large U.S. corporation to report in detail all the climate-related physical and transition risks faced by their businesses, along with the size of their carbon footprints.

The new SEC rules will force the management of all reporting companies to act as meteorologists and disclose every conceivable weather impact to their businesses over exceedingly long investment horizons, thereby reinforcing the climate change narrative. They will also discourage investment in the traditional energy sector by highlighting the outsize regulatory, litigation, contingent liability, and reputational risks now facing the industry due to government climate policies.

However, rather than de-risking the financial markets by improving disclosure for investors as promised by the SEC, the agency’s new rules will have the opposite effect. By imposing a climate test on all issuing and investing companies—basically, every financial market participant in the U.S.—the SEC’s goal is to help force the clean energy transition by stigmatizing carbon-emitting industries in general and specifically redirecting capital flows away from fossil fuel producers.

The SEC’s climate disclosure rules are part of the federal government’s coordinated climate plan and the latest piece in a sweeping regulatory attack on the oil and gas industry since President Biden took office. Defunding oil, gas, and coal companies arguably represents one of the most effective ways to shrink domestic hydrocarbon supply and cut national emissions.

Decarbonization, which the SEC’s rules will now abet and accelerate, is the real threat to the American economy and the U.S. financial markets. If the current administration succeeds in its goal of reducing U.S. net greenhouse gas emissions by 50%–52% by 2030 versus a 2005 baseline—on the way to net-zero emissions by 2050—the macroeconomic impact will be decidedly negative.

For starters, it will competitively hamstring the U.S. economy while doing nothing to solve the purported problem of global climate change since most developing countries—particularly China and India—are not playing by the same climate rules. Notwithstanding reports to the contrary, there is no global energy transition currently underway.  Since 1990, when the United Nations first started warning the world about the dangers of man-made global warming, annual global greenhouse gas emissions have increased by more than 50%, mainly due to the continued use of fossil fuels (especially coal) by developing countries.

Increased U.S. reliance on intermittent wind and solar power generation while simultaneously electrifying whole new swaths of the economy—starting with transportation—will strain and destabilize the American electricity grid and increase electricity prices across the board.

Constraining the domestic production of fossil fuels will lead to higher oil and gas prices, which will feed through the entire U.S. economy and raise the cost of almost everything, especially food. A regulatory-forced downsizing of the domestic oil and gas industry will also lead to significant job losses and shrink U.S. GDP, while the failure to maintain American energy independence will heighten national security risk for the country.

Germany’s recent economic woes show what lies in store for the U.S. if the Biden administration continues down its current climate policy path. Since embarking on its Climate Action Plan 2050 in 2016, Germany, the largest economy in Europe, has gone from the growth engine of the E.U. bloc to the “sick man of Europe” as climate-driven energy policy mismanagement has led to a downward spiral of deindustrialization and degrowth over the past decade.

There is no evidence that economic growth can be decoupled from emissions or fossil fuels. Aggressive emissions reduction during the current decade will result in a diminished U.S. economy by 2030, one marked by anemic growth, higher inflation, increased unemployment levels, and a hollowed-out domestic industrial base. It is difficult to see how such a macroeconomic backdrop would be constructive for Wall Street or Main Street.

Decarbonized financial markets will be, by definition, more volatile, riskier, and less diversified, with fewer investment choices for investors. Since energy-consuming industrial, utility, and technology companies represent the lion’s share of most benchmark U.S. stock and bond indexes, this will amplify the market’s exposure to fluctuating energy prices. Average U.S. corporate credit quality—especially for energy and other heavy industry—is also likely to trend lower by the end of the decade, with bankruptcy and debt default rates moving higher. By 2030, the U.S. may resemble an emerging country’s financial market more than a developed one.

The SEC has now stayed the implementation of its climate disclosure rules pending the resolution of the various lawsuits that are challenging the rulemaking on the grounds that it exceeds the agency’s statutory authority. Issuing climate disclosure rules as a backdoor means of changing the U.S. energy mix and restructuring the overall economy would seem to go well beyond the SEC’s role as the top cop for the U.S. financial markets.

Most egregiously, with these climate disclosure rules, the SEC will no longer be an objective market referee, at least when it comes to the ESG factor of climate change. The SEC will now become an active partisan player in the Biden administration’s drive to decarbonize the U.S. economy, in direct contravention of its regulatory mandate to remain impartial and simply ensure full disclosure and fair dealing across well-functioning financial markets. By mandating the integration of climate factors into both corporate policy and investment risk management, the agency will be supplanting the governance role of corporate executives, bank credit officers, and investment portfolio managers.

By attempting to achieve specific market outcomes based on an emissions litmus test, the SEC will also be picking corporate winners and losers and influencing asset pricing and financial market access by tilting the playing field away from traditional energy and other high-carbon-emitting sectors, which is an inversion—if not a perversion—of the SEC’s regulatory function.

Paul Tice is a senior fellow with the National Center for Energy Analytics and author of the new report “The SEC’s Climate Rules Will Wreak Havoc on U.S. Financial Markets.”

Authored by Kevin Spivak via RealClearPolitics,

Largely shedding Joe Biden’s canard that Trump must be defeated to save democracy, Kamala Harris’ conceit is that she prosecutes criminals and Donald Trump is one. “I know Donald Trump’s type,” she sneers.

As San Francisco district attorney and then California attorney general, Harris supported jailing parents of truants, suppressed evidence, keeping an innocent man on death row, repeatedly covered up misconduct, leading to the dismissal of more than 600 cases, incarcerated prisoners beyond their sentences, violated Federal laws that protect donor privacy, and failed to disclose conflicts of interest arising from her personal relationships. Her record of abusing prosecutorial power fits perfectly with Democrat lawfare against Trump and his advisers.

Now, following setbacks for prosecutors, Trump will have a reprieve in further substantive proceedings until after the election.

• Colorado, Maine, and Illinois declared Trump an “insurrectionist,” ineligible for the presidency under the 14th Up to 32 other states were considering doing the same. In Trump v. Anderson, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rejected this travesty. Among other failings, the states violated a requirement that Congress determine the process, and Trump has never been indicted for, let alone convicted of, insurrection.
• The left’s least favorite judge, U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, dismissed the Mar-a-Lago classified records case, holding that Jack Smith’s appointment as special prosecutor violated the Appointments Clause of the Constitution (Article II, § 2) and his use of a permanent indefinite appropriation violated the Appropriations Clause (Article I, § 9). The government refused a compromise that might have saved the case, and is appealing.
• In Trump v. United States, a 6-3 court held that a president is immune from prosecution for official acts, his motives cannot be questioned, and his official acts may not be used as evidence in a prosecution of his private acts. Smith has filed a superseding indictment that suffers many of the same defects as the initial indictment, including as to immunity, novel legal theories, and the First Amendment rights of free speech and petition. Despite U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkin’s best efforts to move the case forward, she has bowed to reality and delayed the next hearing until after the election.
• In Fischer v. United States, the Supreme Court threw out federal prosecutors’ use of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2) to prosecute Jan. 6 defendants for interfering in congressional proceedings, holding that the statute is limited to tampering with, or destroying, official records. That ruling also will narrow Trump’s election fraud case.
• A Georgia appeals court agreed to hear a challenge to Fani Willis’ right to remain as prosecutor, scheduling arguments too late for a trial this year. Even if Willis prevails, the immunity decision, First Amendment, and misapplication of the Georgia RICO statute likely will doom her case.
• A Nevada court dismissed an indictment against six Republicans accused of submitting certificates to Congress falsely declaring Trump the winner of the state’s 2020 presidential election.

The New York cases are more problematic abuses by prosecutors who ran on platforms of “getting” Trump:

• There are at least a dozen reasons Trump’s conviction in New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s business records case should be reversed. Trial Judge Juan Merchan has delayed sentencing until Nov. 26, but he first must rule on whether to vacate the verdict because he allowed testimony by federal officials (Hopes Hicks and Trump’s assistant) about Trump’s official acts as president, now prohibited by the Supreme Court’s immunity decision. More damaging, in Erlinger v. United States, the Supreme Court held that a unanimous jury verdict is required for any factual finding that increases a potential sentence. Merchan did not require unanimity to identify the so-called “other crime” used to convert an expired business records misdemeanor into 34 felonies.
• Judge Arthur Engoron found Trump liable in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ so-called civil fraud case for misstating asset values in loan applications, though the banks testified they did not rely on the statements, lost no money, and would continue to do business with Trump. Engoron ordered Trump to pay $455 million and forfeit his New York businesses. The New York appeals court stayed most of Engoron’s ruling and allowed Trump to post a reduced bond of $175 million for his appeal. The finding of liability may survive, but the penalties should be vacated as excessive under the 8th Amendment and Article I §5 of the New York Constitution, among other flaws.

If Trump is elected, he can order that the federal prosecutions against him end, or pardon himself, and the state cases likely will be delayed until he leaves office. If Harris wins, the Democrats can be expected to press forward. Though Trump’s legal team has carved back most of the cases and will continue to do so, a conviction still could mean jail time.

Democrats are doing better in their lawfare against Trump’s advisers, who have limited immunity defenses. Several are defendants in Georgia, Arizona, and Michigan. Rudy Guliani and John Eastman are being disbarred, and at least eight other Trump lawyers face disciplinary proceedings. Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon were jailed for refusing to testify to the Jan. 6 Committee. The last time a recalcitrant congressional witness was jailed appears to be 1948.

But for Trump’s wealth and perseverance, he might now be in jail. Democrats financially destroyed or jailed his closest political advisers and are broadly threatening Republican party lawyers. Usually, Harris talks about the criminal justice system from the far left. But, like other progressives, when she is in pursuit mode, the Constitution, equal justice, and fundamental principles are mere affect.

Kenin M. Spivak is founder and chairman of SMI Group LLC, an international consulting firm and investment bank. He is the author of fiction and non-fiction books and a frequent speaker and contributor to media, including The American Mind, National Review, the National Association of Scholars, television, radio, and podcasts.

One might think that weeks of debate prep with an actor playing Donald Trump would prepare Vice President Kamala Harris for a simple post-debate interview. One would be wrong.

On Friday, Harris gave her first interview since last week’s debate – this time, instead of going with a major news network, she sat down with an ABC News affiliate in Philadelphia.

Despite several softball questions, Harris had absolutely no answer when reporter Brian Taft asked he about “one or two specific things” she’d do as president when it comes to “bringing down prices and making life more affordable for people.”

“Well, I’ll start with this,” Harris began. “I grew up a middle-class kid. My mother raised my sister and me. She worked very hard. She was able to finally save up enough money to buy our first house when I was a teenager. I grew up in a community of hardworking people. You know, construction workers and nurses and teachers. I try to explain to some people who might not have had the same experience, but a lot of people will relate to this.”

She then kept going – spitting word salad all over the place.

Watch:

Oh my goodness this is an absolute train wreck.

Reporter: What are your specific plans to bring down prices?

Kamala: “I grew up a middle class kid… I grew up in a neighborhood of folks who were very proud of their lawn. Ya know?”pic.twitter.com/lhOdWoygy2

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) September 13, 2024

Oh, and that’s not what the station even aired:

Just for the sake of clarity, the 1st clip came from the @TrumpWarRoom account, which I believe sourced it from WPVI’s website. The 2nd clip came from WPVI’s 6 PM broadcast, which my news-clipping service recorded live. WPVI aired portions of the interview from 4 PM – midnight…

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) September 14, 2024

As PJ Media notes further, the carnage didn’t stop there – as Harris was unable to articulate how she’s different from President Joe Biden.

“I wonder if there are one or two spots, policy areas or approaches, where you would say ‘I’m a different person,” Taft asked.

“Well, I’m obviously not Joe Biden,” replied Harris, nervously. “And, umm, you know, I offer a new generation of leadership, For example, thinking about developing and creating an opportunity economy where it’s about investing in areas that really need a lot of work and maybe focusing on, again, the aspirations and the dreams but also just recognizing that at this moment in time some of this stuff we could take for granted years ago, we can’t take for granted anymore.”

Reporter: How are you different from Joe Biden?

Kamala: *Nervously repeats herself and fails to explain how she’s different from Joe Biden* pic.twitter.com/ALh0vE5aZh

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) September 13, 2024

More ‘problematic’ moments for Harris: 

Kamala uses a lot of words to say absolutely nothing:

“My focus is very much about what we need to do over the next 10-20 years to catch up to the 21st century around, again, capacity, but also challenges.” pic.twitter.com/8nEjI8kDpf

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) September 13, 2024

“What do you understand [President Trump’s] appeal to be and how do you speak to his voters?”

KAMALA: *word salad* pic.twitter.com/66jQazkjRo

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) September 13, 2024

This queen is not slaying…

Via Money Metals,

Sound money advocates are hailing their hard-fought victory today as New Jersey’s Senate Bill 721 was signed into law – thereby removing sales taxes on purchases of gold, silver, and other precious metals above $1,000 effective January 1, 2025.

The long-anticipated bill signing by Gov. Phil Murphy positions New Jersey alongside 44 other states that recognize the importance of exempting constitutional sound money from burdensome taxation.

Supported by the Sound Money Defense League, Money Metals Exchange, and in-state activists, Senate Bill 721 enjoyed unanimous support from both sides of the political aisle, including 13 Democrat and Republican formal sponsors.

“In 2024, New Jersey was one of seven states to have passed legislation that removes taxes on precious metals, reaffirms gold and silver as constitutional money, empowers state treasurers to invest in physical gold, and more,” reported Stefan Gleason, president of Money Metals and Chairman of the League.

“Our work isn’t done,” said Gleason. “With New Jersey reversing its policy, New Mexico, Maine, Vermont, Hawaii, and Kentucky are the only states that still charge sales tax on the metals. Those are our biggest targets moving forward.”

Eliminating sales taxes on the monetary metals is good public policy for many reasons:

• Levying sales taxes on precious metals is inappropriate. Sales taxes are typically levied on final consumer goods. Computers, shirts, and shoes carry sales taxes because the consumer is “consuming” the good. Precious metals are inherently held for resale, not “consumption,” making the application of sales taxes on precious metals inappropriate.

• Studies have shown that taxing precious metals is an inefficient form of revenue collection. The results of one study involving Michigan show that any sales tax proceeds a state collects on precious metals are likely surpassed by the state revenue lost from conventions, businesses, and economic activity that are driven out of the state.

• Taxing gold and silver harms in-state businesses. It’s a competitive marketplace, so buyers will take their business to neighboring states, thereby undermining in-state jobs. Investors can easily avoid paying $169 in sales taxes, for example, on a $2,550 purchase of a one-ounce gold bar.

• Taxing precious metals is unfair to certain savers and investors. Gold and silver are held as forms of savings and investment. New Jersey already does not tax the purchase of stocks, bonds, ETFs, currencies, and other financial instruments.

• Taxing precious metals is harmful to citizens attempting to protect their assets. Purchasers of precious metals aren’t fat-cat investors. Most who buy precious metals do so in small increments as a way of saving money. Precious metals investors are purchasing precious metals as a way to preserve their wealth against the damages of inflation. Inflation harms the poorest among us, including pensioners, New Jerseyans on fixed incomes, wage earners, savers, and more.

Executive director of the Sound Money Defense League, Jp Cortez, traveled to Trenton to testify in support of exemption before numerous Assembly and Senate committees. “The recent passage of S721 in New Jersey highlights the wave of support we are seeing in the states for sound money legislation.”

“This victory is a direct result of grassroots pressure from in-state advocates, persistent messaging and communication, and the growing awareness that taxing constitutional money is a backwards policy,” Cortez said.

There is a fly in the ointment, however. S721 ultimately included a “poor tax” provision that discriminates against small-time savers of precious metals who make purchases below $1,000 at a time.

New Jersey is one of only seven states (CA, CT, FL, MD, MA, NY) that includes this regressive tax scheme while exempting all larger purchases of gold and silver coins, bars, and rounds. Its score is expected to rise sharply on the Sound Money Index, where it had languished in 49th place.

img credit: Nicolas Raymond/Flickr

The below is not a Russian state media headline. 

Ironically on the very day that the Biden administration declared a global war on Russian state media and pro-Moscow ‘influence campaigns’, Politico published a rare piece directly going after President Zelensky, saying he’s making terrible decisions and increasingly acting like an autocrat and power-hungry dictator. 

Of course, earlier in the war if any non-mainstream publication dared to issue similar warnings about what’s really going on in Kiev, they were immediately put on the receiving end of severe pushback complete with loud denunciations of being ‘pro-Kremlin’ and somehow standing against NATO and democracy etc. etc. etc…

But now in mid-September 2024 here is no other than the ultra-establishment Politico bluntly highlighting Zelensky’s “autocratic way of governing” while calling him “largely unaccountable” as he accrues an unprecedented level of power:

And unfortunately, the reshuffle is doing nothing to ease long-standing worries about Zelenskyy’s highly personalized and, according to some, autocratic way of governing — including his dependence on a clam-like inner circle of trusted friends and advisers within the presidential administration.

Accruing power and largely unaccountable, some of these individuals are unpaid and some have even been the focus of past graft probes.

Corruption in Ukraine? you don’t say…

These were things that only a short while ago you weren’t allowed to speak in public discourse, and when MSM publications did quietly take on the subject they typically cast US-backed Zelensky as some kind of crime-fighting anti-corruption hero who was going to clean the place up. It was the comforting narrative that the beltway echo chamber told itself while shoveling tens of billions of taxpayer money into Kiev’s coffers.

Politico further comments on how Zelensky has recently booted even officials who were highly trusted and favored by the West: “Kuleba’s departure in particular is seen as yet another example of how Zelenskyy’s coterie ejects outliers who are ready to question and challenge,” the publication writes.

“It’s in line with the earlier dismissal of armed forces commander General Valery Zaluzhny, who had clashed with Zelenskyy over war strategy and the need to mobilize many more to fight,” the report continues. “Zaluzhny’s high favorability ratings didn’t endear him to a watchful and jealous presidential administration either.”

But again, the ultimate irony in all this is that currently the world is being berated and lectured by a Biden administration which claims that if you ever say negative things about Ukraine or Zelensky, or anything so much as perceived as not being ‘fully supportive’ of the Zelensky government… then you must be some kind of paid Kremlin agent.

RT is one of the reasons the world has been not fully supportive of Ukraine – State Dept pic.twitter.com/PhvJYKwE87

— RT (@RT_com) September 13, 2024

Oops… more from Politico: “Zelenskyy’s defenders say war requires a firm hand, and there’s no time for democratic niceties when battling a Russian autocrat who wants to erase Ukraine and doesn’t believe it should exist as a state. But while agreeing that the clamor of democracy shouldn’t be allowed to adversely affect Ukraine’s defense, Zelenskyy’s critics note that other wartime leaders took a markedly different approach.” And of course, it’s well known that Zelensky has canceled all future elections on an indefinite basis, in the name of martial law.

When the gatekeepers themselves begin to turn on the narrative, it’s clear Washington has lost the plot. Perhaps that’s why the US administration has begun to look more desperate, for example with its newly announced global war on RT News.