Month: October 2024

Authored by Carl M. Cannon via RealClearPolitics,

This article was originally published on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024 – with the election in 40 days, which in the Judeo-Christian tradition is a number of profound significance. It signals, among other things, the difficulty of maintaining one’s spiritual faith in the face of adversity.

The Bible tells us that the rains of the “great flood” lasted 40 days and 40 nights. Moses fasted for 40 days – and spent 40 days and nights atop Mount Sinai waiting to receive the Lord’s law. The New Testament tells us that Jesus fasted for 40 days and nights in preparation for his ministry – and ascended to heaven 40 days after his crucifixion.

Is it merely a metaphor? Perhaps. But a comforting one, as the number 40 also suggests that God has patience with us. This year, in America, He will need it.

Friday is also the day of the week when I reprise a quotation intended to be uplifting or educational. Today’s words of wisdom concern the secular issue of criminal justice policy, as rendered not in the Old Testament, but in the Old West – by none other than Wild Bill Hickok.

But first, some context: Eight years ago this week Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump held their first debate. More than midway through the session – by then they were openly contemptuous of one another – the pair sparred over criminal justice policy. The context was rising homicide rates, particularly in Chicago and several other large cities.

The two candidates talked past one another. Trump tried to pin the violent crime increase on progressive Democratic Party reforms such as getting rid of “stop and frisk” in New York City. Clinton denied crime was really increasing and, with an assist from NBC anchorman Lester Holt, tried to pivot the discussion into a conversation about race.

Suffice it to say that nothing enlightening was uttered that night. But, in fairness, criminal justice policy is complicated. It’s difficult to even know the basic facts. In 2024, for example, despite assurances from Kamala Harris and her fellow Democrats (repeated word-for-word by the press) that violent crime is declining in this country, the picture isn’t that simple.

The source for the Democrats’ claim is the annual FBI Uniform Crime Report, which does show declining homicide rates. But the FBI numbers aren’t as solid as they once were. The reasons vary. For one thing, not every major police department even reports their numbers to the FBI anymore. Also, there is some evidence that more crimes, even serious felonies, are going unreported.

Another government metric, which comes from the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, is the National Crime Victimization Survey. It’s not perfect, either, but it shows an increase in crime. I suspect the truth is somewhere in the middle, as it often is, but I will say this: When someone smugly assures you that crime is going down, check and see if you still have your wallet in your pocket or purse.

Which brings me (at long last) to Wild Bill Hickok.

Crime, a perennial political hot potato in this country, was the main issue in a local election held in central Kansas more than a century and a half ago. Tired of being brutalized by itinerant cowboys and local roughnecks who liquored up in the saloons in the county seat of Hays City, the citizens of Ellis County turned to an outsider in a special election on August 23, 1869.

The results were disputed, but ultimately Wild Bill Hickok was installed as sheriff. It didn’t take long for people to notice a difference.

Just a few days later, a bad hombre from Missouri named Bill Mulvey showed up in town. Mulvey’s reputation as a mean drunk preceded him, and the journey to Hays hadn’t mellowed him out. When informed that Wild Bill was the new law in town, Mulvey shot out the mirrors in the saloon where he was drinking whilst using bad language and issuing menacing warnings.

They were not veiled threats. Mulvey went so far as to boast that he’d come to Kansas to kill Bill Hickok. This may have just been whiskey talk, but as events unfolded it happened the other way around.

According to one eyewitness account, Mulvey rode up the street on his gray horse, rifle at the ready. Wild Bill strode out to meet him. Hickok broke the ominous silence by suddenly calling out to an imaginary gunman behind Mulvey.

“Don’t shoot him in the back!” Hickok shouted. “He is drunk.”

When Mulvey turned around, Hickok drew his pistol and shot him in the head.

A few weeks later, at 1 a.m. on September 27 – 155 years ago today – Hickok and his deputy came upon a gang of drunken cowboys tearing the hell out of John Bitter’s Beer Saloon. When Hickok ordered them to desist, one of the men, Samuel Strawhun, turned as if to rush the sheriff. Hickok quickly shot and killed him, quelling the melee.

The city fathers of Hays were left to contemplate that after only five weeks in office, Wild Bill Hickok had killed two men in the name of restoring order. Voters mulled it over, too, and in the regular November election that year, Hickok was voted out of office in favor of his deputy.

This tension between freedom and law and order is not a new one.

Benjamin Franklin referenced it in the context of frontier strife between settlers and Native Americans in 1755. Twenty years later at a conference in Boston intended to forestall war between the colonists and the British, Ben Franklin reprised a slightly different version of his aphorism. The Massachusetts Conference, as it was called, was in vain. War was coming. And Franklin’s comment explains why: “They who can give up essential Liberty to obtain a little temporary Safety,” he wrote, “deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

And that is our quote of the week.

Carl M. Cannon is the Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics and executive editor of RealClearMedia Group. Reach him on X @CarlCannon.

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

Leading website Guancha has published the transcript of a first-class lecture at Renmin University on China-U.S. relations by Martin Jacques, author of When China Rules the World. Jacques is one of the very few Westerner scholars with on the ground experience who actually understands the Chinese psyche and way of life in contrast to the West.

A particularly intriguing section of the lecture concerns research by Danny Quah, the dean of the widely respected Lee Kuan Yew Institute in Singapore. This is the money quote:

“Between 1980 and 2020, Europe’s share of global GDP fell from 26% to 15%. In other words, it fell by 11 percentage points, a very large drop. Although the decline in the United States was smaller, it fell from 21% in the 1980s to less than 16% in 2020. From another perspective, Asia and East Asia are constantly rising. The share in 1980 was 11.5%, and it has risen to 25% in 2020. Among this 25%, China has made the largest contribution, accounting for 18% of the world.”

What this graphically illustrates is the acute swing in the world’s center of economic gravity – no matter the rhetorical tsunamis emanating from the Hegemon. In 1980 the economic center was Atlanticist. Quah though believes that the economic center will reach the Sino-Indian border only by 2050.

When we take China compounded with the 10 members of ASEAN, without even considering South Asia, it’s fair to argue that the economic center will already be in the East by 2030, and will be Sino-Indian before 2040.

Jacques is correct that by then “the ‘Asian Age’ will replace the ‘Western Age’, and since 1750, the world has always been in the Western Age.” On a personal note, after living and working in Asia for most of the past three decades, I qualify our century as “The Eurasian Century”.

And that, in a nutshell, is the reason why the Hegemon/Atlanticist elites are in Deep Panic mode. The free lunch – of exploiting the wealth of the Global South – is coming to an end.

Hong Kong back in the spotlight

China has already designed the masterplan of its development strategy all the way to 2035 and in many aspects all the way to 2049. The current juncture though is extremely tricky.

The People’s Bank of China is taking the necessary master tweaks of the economy very seriously. Earlier this week the PBoC announced cuts to the outstanding mortgage rate and the reserve requirement ratio: that’s the amount of cash commercial banks need to hold as reserves. The PBoC also cut the benchmark policy rate and boosted capital markets.

Then the Politburo, chaired by President Xi Jinping himself, intervened in full force, vowing to protect China’s private enterprises; finally stabilise the always wobbly property sector; and adopt the necessary fiscal expenditures.

That’s the domestic front. On the external front, China is on a roll. The top priority is the slowly but surely internationalization of the yuan. And that’s where the crucial role of Hong Kong comes in – as detailed in a report by Renmin University.

China is already de-dollarizing at nearly breakneck speed. The U.S. dollar’s share of bilateral trade has already fallen from 80% to less than 50%.

China is now trading with the world mostly in yuan – and the petroyuan is not even in full force. Since the start of the SMO by Russia in Ukraine in February 2022, the yuan is the de facto Asian reserve currency for Russia. In parallel, Beijing is accelerating currency swaps all across the spectrum and designating more clearing banks around the world.

Hong Kong is in a class by itself when it comes to state of the art financial institutions. Hence the connection is inevitable for global investors: all sorts of deals are open in China via Hong Kong, with the added bonus of avoiding Hegemon sanctions.

So from now on Hong Kong will be even more of a Holy Grail for all sorts of yuan-denominated transactions. Talk about a magnet for finance tech wizards.

Hong Kong is already the world’s top market for the offshore yuan – processing nearly 80% of all settlements. Three months ago, according to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), the Special Administrative Region had $151.7 billion in offshore deposits.

A top HKMA executive not by accident attended the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok earlier this month. With high U.S. interest rates and low PBoC interest rates, offshore yuan bonds will be issued like there’s no tomorrow.

Nuclear destruction or an imperfect evolving new order

From Beijing to Hong Kong, Chinese politico-economic elites are quite comfortable with the fact that for the first time in History, the rise of a great power is not being conditioned by imperialism, war, slavery, looting and all of the above, but under what has been codified since the Little Helmsman Deng Xiaoping’s late 1970s reforms as “peaceful development.”

That is mirrored in several concepts such as win-win; mutual prosperity; equality; “community of shared future for mankind”; and as a master geoeconomic project, the interlocking connectivity corridors across the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

While China invests in infrastructure development around the world, the Hegemon imposes sanctions, engages in bombing, supports variations of the Forever Wars, finances and weaponizes color revolutions.

Hegemon “strategy” barely qualifying as utter mediocrity ranges from the U.S. government funding a $1.6 billion campaign to smear China to Republicans divided on whether regime change in Beijing is their ultimate goal and the Democrat ambassador in Beijing convinced that Washington’s China policy is not too hawkish.

Then there’s puny functionary and Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell – the man who invented the “pivot to Asia” during the first Obama administration – ordering the Europeans to go hawkish on China and defining Beijing in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee as “the most significant challenge in our history”.

Very few IQs above room temperature across Asia pay attention to such clowns. In contrast, what is now emerging in informed discussions from South to Southeast Asia is that BRICS progress will not be steady enough if the emphasis remains on consensual decisions.

A daring proposition is emerging that Russia and China – the actual BRICS leaders – should announce at the summit in Kazan next month that they are backing a yuan/ruble/gold alliance: as in if the world needs to choose between NATOstan hegemony or a BRICS alternative, better start with sound (real) money.

Beyond the feasibility of such proposal, there’s a serious critique of Utopia; the Global Majority must be pushed to face the harsh reality it faces – nuclear destruction or an imperfect evolving new order – and make a stand, fast.

Meanwhile, like a river undisturbed while traversing a rocky wilderness, China silently flows away on its path to peaceful primacy.

This map, via Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao, shows the U.S. states that work the hardest, as scored out of 100 by a Wallethub study conducted in July 2024.

Naturally trying to measure and compare “hard-work” requires a little bit of data analysis.

How Is Hard Work Quantified?

Here’s what Wallethub did. First they analyzed all states on 10 indicators and assigned them different weights.

These indicators are then divided into two categories. The main one, “Direct Work” contributes 80 points to the total score.

Meanwhile, “Indirect Work” indicators help the state achieve the last 20 points.

Clearly, states that score better on higher-weighted indicators end up with a higher overall score, as seen below.

Ranked: America’s Hardest-Working States

Wallethub states North Dakota is the hardest-working American state, giving it a rounded score of 67/100. The state’s 98% employment rate helped in securing first place.

Overall Rank	State	State Code	Total Score
1	North Dakota	ND	67
2	Alaska	AK	64
3	Nebraska	NE	60
4	Wyoming	WY	60
5	South Dakota	SD	60
6	Maryland	MD	58
7	Texas	TX	57
8	Colorado	CO	55
9	New Hampshire	NH	54
10	Kansas	KS	53
11	Virginia	VA	52
12	Oklahoma	OK	52
13	Georgia	GA	52
14	Hawaii	HI	51
15	Tennessee	TN	49
16	Mississippi	MS	49
17	Iowa	IA	48
18	Alabama	AL	47
19	Louisiana	LA	47
20	Missouri	MO	46
21	Minnesota	MN	46
22	Maine	ME	46
23	North Carolina	NC	45
24	Indiana	IN	45
25	Montana	MT	44
26	South Carolina	SC	44
27	Idaho	ID	44
28	Utah	UT	44
29	Arkansas	AR	43
30	Florida	FL	43
31	Vermont	VT	43
32	Arizona	AZ	41
33	Wisconsin	WI	41
34	Pennsylvania	PA	40
35	Washington	WA	40
36	Delaware	DE	40
37	Kentucky	KY	40
38	Massachusetts	MA	39
39	California	CA	38
40	Illinois	IL	38
41	Oregon	OR	38
42	Ohio	OH	37
43	New Jersey	NJ	37
44	Rhode Island	RI	37
45	Nevada	NV	37
46	Connecticut	CT	37
47	New Mexico	NM	35
48	Michigan	MI	34
49	New York	NY	34
50	West Virginia	WV	32

Note: Figures rounded.

Meanwhile, Alaska ranks second with 64 points, due to its average workweek crossing 41 hours. It’s the only state in the study which crossed the standard 40-hour metric.

And Nebraska comes in third with 60 points. Wallethub states that more than 7% of its workforce has multiple jobs, the third-highest of all states.

A quick overview of the map reveals that the strip of states in the center of the country are the hardest-working, with scores falling as one moves east and west respectively. Interestingly this is also America’s farming country, a demanding sector that requires long hours.

Another interesting phenomenon is how Alaska and North Dakota have high direct work ranks but are bottom of the pack for indirect work.

Overall Rank	State	Direct Work Factors Rank	Indirect Work Factors Rank
1	North Dakota	1	41
2	Alaska	2	34
3	Nebraska	5	5
4	Wyoming	6	2
5	South Dakota	3	26
6	Maryland	7	4
7	Texas	4	31
8	Colorado	9	7
9	New Hampshire	12	9
10	Kansas	10	25
11	Virginia	16	12
12	Oklahoma	8	44
13	Georgia	11	32
14	Hawaii	14	29
15	Tennessee	15	36
16	Mississippi	13	46
17	Iowa	18	24
18	Alabama	17	48
19	Louisiana	19	38
20	Missouri	24	20
21	Minnesota	26	8
22	Maine	33	1
23	North Carolina	23	30
24	Indiana	25	28
25	Montana	27	22
26	South Carolina	21	42
27	Idaho	30	6
28	Utah	35	3
29	Arkansas	20	50
30	Florida	22	47
31	Vermont	31	14
32	Arizona	28	39
33	Wisconsin	29	40
34	Pennsylvania	36	16
35	Washington	39	13
36	Delaware	32	37
37	Kentucky	34	35
38	Massachusetts	40	15
39	California	37	27
40	Illinois	42	19
41	Oregon	46	10
42	Ohio	43	21
43	New Jersey	45	17
44	Rhode Island	44	23
45	Nevada	38	43
46	Connecticut	49	11
47	New Mexico	41	45
48	Michigan	48	33
49	New York	50	18
50	West Virginia	47	49

However, Nebraska performs equally well in both categories. The Cornhusker state has a low share of idle-youth, and has the fifth-highest volunteer hours per capita in the country.

Interestingly, many of America’s hardest-working states have much lower cost of living requirements. See how the data shakes out in The Income an Individual Needs to Live Comfortably in the States.

Authored by Christian Milord via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Once again, Surf City in California appears to be ahead of the curve on common sense issues.

For years, Huntington Beach officials have fought for ideas like voter ID requirements in political elections and for greater local autonomy regarding residential housing construction in the city over the next decade. The city has also pushed back against the concept of California as a sanctuary state.

Along with a few other city councils and school boards in California, including the Chino Valley Unified School District, Huntington Beach City Council has battled for the protection of parental rights regarding their own children’s wellbeing in the schools.

The council has filed a lawsuit against several state officials over Assembly Bill 1955 (labeled the “Safety Act”), which mandates that public schools hide any changes in the gender identity or sexual orientation of students from parents, unless the student gives permission to share the information.

This month, the Huntington Beach City Council filed suit with support from America First Legal Foundation in its fight to protect parental rights. A number of parents have also signed on to the recent lawsuit against the state. Under the Education Code, parents have the “absolute right” to access student records.

Huntington Beach Mayor Gracey Van Der Mark has called the bill an “egregious piece of legislation that seeks to compel educators to keep secret from parents sensitive, private, and often life-saving information related to their child’s gender issues and/or expression.”

Why would any school official want to hide critical information from parents regarding this issue unless they have something to hide? Students are in the community and with their families about 80 percent of an average week, so why would any school think they can dictate terms to parents? While some parents do abandon children or are derelict in their duties, most parents are in charge of their children’s upbringing and protection. Their children don’t belong to government entities.

One would hope that state leaders would have recognized by now that the unscientific transgender issue is primarily a social contagion. It is being advanced by social media influencers and some medical personnel who haven’t clearly thought out the moderate to longterm effects of gender transitions. What they label as “gender-affirming care” actually condemns healthy young people, who might have some gender identity confusion, to a life of regret and suffering.

Indeed, some nations in Europe and elsewhere have paused cross-sex hormones and radical sex change surgeries for children. They have begun to realize the devastating effects and suffering of transition recipients who were not fully informed about the mental and physical consequences of such life-altering decisions.

Whether the state’s intentions are good or not, controversial gender issues and political activism aren’t within the province of public education. The role of public education is to impart a rigorous curriculum that will build character and prepare students for higher education and for life in general. Public education should not be using minors as guinea pigs in an experiment that defies moral and natural laws.

Most children have challenges as they experience puberty. These youngsters learn to deal with the process of growing up with some counseling, guidance, and spiritual advice from parents and others who genuinely care about their entire wellbeing. Despite individual human flaws, most can celebrate the gender they were born with, as it was gifted by God and their parents.

In recent years, Sacramento has waded into the culture wars that have an impact on businesses and taxpayer-funded government agencies such as public schools. Sacramento ought to stick to providing essential services, such as educational improvements, fire prevention and suppression resources, infrastructure repair, law enforcement, water storage facilities, etc. Leave personal and sensitive issues out of the classroom, because students already have enough challenges to cope with on a daily basis.

Moreover, instead of inserting divisive issues into the schools and keeping parents in the dark, school officials at all levels ought to focus on raising test scores in the public schools. They should approve additional charter schools, keep phones out of the hands of students during the school day, and teach both academic and occupational courses to secondary students. Kudos to the “Parents’ Rights” city of Huntington Beach and other governing bodies that fight back against the pervasive unlawful intrusions of Sacramento politicians.

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

Iron ore and Chinese property stocks surged after three of the country’s largest metro areas loosened homebuyer rules. This move follows last week’s central government stimulus package, which was aimed at stabilizing the vicious downturn in the housing market.

Bloomberg reports that Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen eased homebuying rules: 

On Sunday, the trading hub of Guangzhou became the first tier-1 city to remove all restrictions, saying it will stop reviewing homebuyer eligibility and no longer limit the number of homes owned.

Both Shanghai and Shenzhen said they will allow more people to purchase residences in suburban areas, as well as allow others to buy more homes. Shanghai, China’s financial hub, and Shenzhen, the southern city known for its tech industry, also announced they were lowering minimum downpayment ratios for first and second homes to 15% and 20%, respectively, in a bid to boost demand.

Goldamn’s James McGeoch told clients this AM: 

The weekend Spec was that China fiscal would come ahead of the holiday, as a “gift” to the 75th anniversary on National Day, released in the press release of the Second State council Meeting. Focus on property and consumption in the headlines i have read and the iron ore indexes up a short 10% (SGX $112 and DCE +10%).

Iron ore’s stunning multi-day reversal has sent prices from $90/ton to $108/ton. Gains overnight topped 11%, adding to 11% last week following the central government’s move to deploy stimulus (read here).

A separate note from Goldman’s Thomas Evans early last week told clients to “fade iron ore rallies” on potential short covering ahead of the long holiday in China, noting “steel overcapacity and growing supply in iron ore are the two biggest headwinds to ferrous supply chain, which can’t be fixed any time soon.”

In equity markets, a Bloomberg gauge of Chinese real estate stocks jumped as much as 14% after the news. There was also mention that China’s central bank would allow mortgage refinancing.

Bloomberg’s Jake Lloyd-Smith penned a note this Am titled “Iron Ore’s Sudden Euphoria May Be Overdone,” in which he said: 

Beijing’s pre-holiday salvo, plus follow-through steps in key urban centers, will do much to improve the mood. Over time, this may stabilize the real estate market. But whether that’s enough to persuade mills that have been complaining of an industry-wide crisis to change course and actually increase steel output on a sustained basis in the coming quarter remains to be seen.

The slowdown in China’s property market has been a significant challenge for steelmakers, with some slashing production and warning about an outlook that mirrors 2008 and 2015. 

Meanwhile, Citigroup analysts led by Wenyu Yao noted that China’s stimulus will be supportive: “Bullish momentum could persist into LME Week.”

The most interesting aspect of China’s recovery will be its shape. Analysts warn that the property market still faces headlines. 

“It may take time and could still prove challenging to turn around residents’ bearish views with existing policies,” Morgan Stanley’s Cheung told clients. 

Perhaps the days of a ‘V-shape’ recovery are long past. 

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

National and state Democrats are suing the Georgia Election Board to stop a new rule that requires workers to hand count ballots in the upcoming presidential election.

In a filing released on Sept. 30, the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Party of Georgia said the rule is illegal because the board only has the authority to promulgate regulations that are “conducive to the fair, legal, and orderly conduct of primaries and elections” and “obtain uniformity.”

Approved by the board on Sept. 20, the rule requires workers to hand count ballots to confirm that the number of ballots matches the number generated by machines.

If the new rule is allowed to take effect, “the general election will not be orderly and uniform—large counties will face significant delays in reporting vote counts, election officials will struggle to implement new procedures at the last minute, poll workers will not have been trained on the new rule because it was adopted too late, and the security of the ballots themselves will be put at risk,” Democrats allege.

The suit, set to be lodged in the Superior Court of Fulton County, notes that the attorney general and secretary of state of Georgia both opposed the rule. The office of Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr said that the rule likely exceeded the board’s authority and appeared “to conflict with the statutes governing the conduct of elections.”

Members of the election board did not respond to requests for comment on the legal action by publication time.

Democrats are asking the court to invalidate the rule and permanently block it.

The rule, approved by a 3–2 vote, requires the hand count to be done before the election is certified.

“I can guarantee you, as a voter, I would rather wait another hour to ensure that the count is accurate than to get a count, or to get a number, within that hour, and then to find out at the close of an election, after certification has already taken place, that we have people suing because the count was not accurate,” Janelle King, one of the members who voted for the rule, said before the board voted on it.

Sara Tindall Ghazal, one of the members who voted against the rule, cited the number of election officials who said it should not be implemented. The Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials is among the groups that expressed opposition.

Ghazal also expressed concerns over the board possibly overstepping its authority.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has revealed more details of a close call incident between US fighter jets and Russian aircraft off the coast of Alaska which took place one week ago.

Four Russian military planes had breached Alaska’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) – though which is still deemed international airspace – before being intercepted and shadowed by US planes. But on Monday NORAD published video of the incident, which for the first time reveals that a Russian Su-35 came very close to the American jets. Watch:

“The conduct of one Russian Su-35 was unsafe, unprofessional, and endangered all – not what you’d see in a professional air force,” NORAD said in a fresh statement.

The video shows that while US pilots were mirroring a Russian long-range bomber from a safe distance, the Russian Su-35 buzzed the US aircraft at a high rate of speed, apparently in an effort to warn the US plane off.

Immediately after the Sept.23rd incident NORAD had tried to downplay the encounter…

“The Russian aircraft remained in international airspace and did not enter American or Canadian sovereign airspace,” it wrote in a press release. “This Russian activity in the Alaska ADIZ occurs regularly and is not seen as a threat.”

But clearly based on the video the Russian jets did maneuver threateningly close to the American fighters. The American pilot’s voice is caught on video acting shocked and surprised at how close the Russian jet came.

NORAD has previously said Russian bomber flights near Alaska occur “regularly”. But recently China has also joined some Russian patrols of northern Pacific areas, including areas extending near Alaska.

“On Sept 23, 2024, NORAD aircraft flew a safe and disciplined intercept of Russian Military Aircraft in the Alaska ADIZ. The conduct of one Russian Su-35 was unsafe, unprofessional, and endangered all – not what you’d see in a professional air force.” – Gen. Gregory Guillot pic.twitter.com/gXZj3Ndkag

— North American Aerospace Defense Command (@NORADCommand) September 30, 2024

The threatening aerial maneuvers by the Russian side are likely on the increase as a result of tensions connected with the Russia-Ukraine war, in which NATO has been upping its involvement.

Authored by Anna Nagurney, Professor and Eugene M. Isenberg Chair in Integrative Studies, UMass Amherst, via The Conversation: 

Whether you’re buying a can of sardines or a screwdriver, getting products to consumers requires that supply chains function well.

The availability of labor is essential in each link of the supply chain. That includes the workers who make sure that your tinned fish and handy tools smoothly journey from their point of origin to where they’ll wind up, whether it’s a supermarket, hardware store or your front door.

Amazingly, 90% of all internationally traded products are carried by ships at some point. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was hard not to notice the supply chain disruptions. For U.S. ports, there were many bouts of congestion. Demand for goods that were either more or less popular than they would normally be became volatile. Shortages of truckers and other freight service providers wreaked havoc on land-based and maritime transportation networks.

Consumers became exasperated when they saw all the empty shelves. They endured price spikes for items that were suddenly scarce, such as hand sanitizer, computer equipment and bleach.

I’m a scholar of supply chain management who belongs to a research group that studies ways to make supply chains better able to withstand disruptions. Based on that research, plus what I learned while writing a book about labor and supply chains, I’m concerned about the turmoil that could be around the corner for cargo arriving on ships.

Concerns over pay and technology

The International Longshoremen’s Association’s six-year contract with the East Coast and Gulf Coast ports will expire on Sept. 30, 2024, at midnight unless the two sides reach an agreement before that deadline. Without a breakthrough, the 45,000 port workers intend to take part in a strike that would paralyze ports from Maine to Texas.

Should they walk off the job, it would be the first such work stoppage for the East Coast ports since 1977.

Labor and management disagree over how much to raise wages, and the union also wants to see limits on the use of automation for cranes, gates and trucks at the ports in the new contract. The union is seeking a 77% increase in pay over the next six years and is concerned that jobs may be lost because of automation.

Dockworkers on the West Coast, who are not on strike, are paid much higher regular wages than their East Coast and Gulf Coast counterparts who are preparing for a strike. The West Coast workers earn at least an estimated US$116,000 per year, for a 40-hour work week, versus the roughly $81,000 dockworkers at the East Coast and Gulf Coast ports take home, not counting overtime pay.

Management is represented in the talks by the U.S. Maritime Association, which includes the major shippers, terminal operators and port authorities.

White House officials are calling for dock workers and port operators to settle their differences as a strike looms.@MrSethHarris, former top labor policy advisor to President Biden, joins Yahoo Finance to discuss: pic.twitter.com/rund2TWQI3

— Yahoo Finance (@YahooFinance) September 27, 2024

What to expect if there’s a strike

As many as 36 ports would have to stop operating if a strike happens, blocking almost half of the cargo going in and out of the U.S. on ships.

If the strike lasts just a day, then it would not be noticeable to a typical consumer. However, businesses of all kinds would no doubt feel the pinch. J.P. Morgan estimates that a strike could cost the U.S. economy $5 billion every day.

Even if only a one-day strike happens, it could take about five days to straighten out the supply chain.

If a strike lasts a week, the results would quickly become apparent to most consumers.

Some shipping companies have already begun to reroute their cargo to the West Coast. Even if there’s no strike at all, costs will rise and the warehouses could run out of room.

The effects on everything from bananas and cherries to chocolate, meat, fish and cheese could be severe, and the shipping disruption could also hamper trade in some prescription drugs if the strike lasts at least a week.

If the strike were to last a month or more, supplies needed by factories could be in short supply. Numerous consumer products would not be delivered. Workers would be laid off. U.S. exports, including agricultural ones, might get stuck rather than shipped to their destinations. Inflation might increase again. And there would be a new bout of heightened economic anxiety and uncertainty – along with immense financial losses.

All the while, West Coast ports would face unusually high demand for their services, wreaking havoc on shipping there too.

Yes, we’d have no bananas

My research group’s latest work on supply chain disruptions and the effects of various transportation disruptions, including delays, quantifies the impact on the quality of fresh produce. We did a case study on bananas.

This isn’t a niche problem.

Bananas are the most-consumed fresh fruit in the U.S.

Many of the bananas sold in the U.S. are grown in Ecuador, Guatemala and Costa Rica. About 75% of them arrive at ports on the East and Gulf coasts.

Although bananas are relatively easy to ship, they require appropriate temperatures and humidity. Even under the best conditions, their quality deteriorates. Long delays will mean shippers will be trying to foist mushy brown bananas on consumers who might reject them.

Alternatively, banana growers may opt to find other markets. It’s reasonable to expect to find fewer bananas and much higher prices – possibly of a lower quality. Flying bananas to the U.S. would be too expensive to sustain.

Fresh meat and other refrigerated foods could spoil before they can complete their journeys, and fresh berries, along with other fruits and vegetables, could perish before reaching their destinations.

If there’s a port strike, tons of fresh produce, including bananas, that would arrive after Oct. 1 would end up having to be discarded. That is unfortunate, given the rising food insecurity rate in the U.S.

1947 Taft-Hartley Act

More than 170 trade groups are urging the Biden administration to intervene at the last minute to avoid a strike.

The government can invoke the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, which allows the president to ask a court to order an 80-day cooling-off period when public health or safety is at risk.

However, President Joe Biden reportedly does not plan to invoke it – even as he urges the two sides to settle their differences.

So if you’re planning to bake banana bread or were thinking you might get an early start on your holiday shopping, I’d advise you to make those shopping trips as soon as possible – just in case.

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

“It’s really hard to govern today… The First Amendment stands as a major block.”

– John Kerry.

Thus spake the Haircut-in-Search-of-a-Brain who ran for president in 2004. Something must have been amiss in Conception Central the night God made John Kerry. Maybe they were low on inventory up there for the stuff that goes inside the head, so they overdid it on the roofing material. Maybe they assigned him an extra testicle, too, in compensation. It certainly took balls (but not brains) to assert from the stage of the World Economic Forum (WEF) that free speech is cluttering up America’s march to totalitarianism.

Mr. Kerry’s hapless utterance tells you all you need to know about how the party of John F. Kennedy turned years later into a demon-driven cult seeking to smash everything that was once noble and upright about our country. If there is any such thing as disinformation — and the claim is dubious since, really, there is only truth and untruth — then the chief dispenser of it is our own depraved government. Every morsel it issues is some species of Orwellian counter-think.

Just yesterday, former Attorney General Eric Holder, speaking of Mr. Trump returning to office, told MSNBC’s Jen Psaki:

“They will use the mechanisms of the DOJ to go after people who are their political foes. This is something that has never really happened in the history of this republic.”

Mr. Holder may have been born at night, but probably not the night before last.

Apparently, he has not noticed the uses to which current AG Merrick Garland has put “Joe Biden’s” DOJ, bending heaven, earth, and the law to put Mr. Trump behind bars and bankrupt him — not to mention the scores of Trump-adjacent lawyers prosecuted in cockamamie cases based on their efforts to pursue ballot fraud in the 2020 elections.

Hillary Clinton was similarly on-point last week with Margaret Hoover on PBS’s Firing Line, declaring:

“The press needs a consistent narrative about the danger that Trump poses.”

Of course, she asserts this incessantly — and the media parrots her — without ever specifying what that danger is. So, I will tell you: Hillary Clinton and hundreds of Democratic Party affiliated officials past and present fear that they will be subjected to legal process in crimes ranging all the way up to treason for their conduct the past decade, including the mass murder and injury of millions with their Covid policy, their deliberate abetting of millions crossing the border illegally, their use of several government agencies to abridge the First Amendment, their abuse of DOJ and FBI power in malicious prosecutions, their shell games funneling taxpayers’ money to hundreds of crony NGOs, and their use of Ukraine as a money laundry for the entire Beltway criminal cartel. Surely even more than that.

It was the last item on that list that prompted impeachment No. 1 of Mr. Trump, who came uncomfortably close to inquiring about it in that fateful 2019 phone call to President Zelensky. And, of course, it was exactly in that maw of corruption that the Biden family helped itself to millions of grifted dollars while Joe was out-of-office, and his bagman-crackhead son gamboled about the globe shaking loose more millions from exotic money-trees wherever he landed. All of which is to say that the “danger” Mr. Trump poses is to them personally and directly, certainly not to “our democracy,” their phony war-cry. So, now you know.

Many of these players have gone to ground the past year or more. You don’t hear much these days from the likes of Jim Comey, John Brennan, Jim Clapper, Andy McCabe, Tony Fauci, Peter Hotez, and many more who were so active shooting their mouths off on cable news after the blob managed to install “Joe Biden” as its “beard” in the Oval Office. Now, they all lie low in terror as the immense battery of lawfare against Mr. Trump failed spectacularly to stop him from running again, and the first two attempts on his life went awry. Meanwhile, Garland, Mayorkas, Christopher Wray, remain in the trenches, reduced to stonewalling every and all efforts to get straight answers out of them as to how badly they are running things. And out in front of all of them you have their supposed protector, Kamala Harris, the most feckless candidate imaginable. No wonder they’re so desperate.

In contrast to all this low-down treachery in-and-around the craven Party of Chaos and, its corrupt, depraved agents fearing the turn of genuine law against them, there was the Rescue the Republic event on the mall in Washington Sunday. The intelligence and honesty on view there was a startling reminder of the sentiments that birthed our country in the first place. RFK, Jr, Tulsi Gabbard, Jordan Peterson, Matt Taibbi, Senator Ron Johnson, Del Bigtree, Dr. Pierre Kory, Dr. Robert Malone, and many more figures aligning with the Trump campaign, delivered one stirring message after another informing us that the cardinal virtues of honor, fortitude, courage, and justice are still alive in the background of this sore-beset nation. I’ve never heard a more eloquent extempore appeal to our shared human virtues than the speech delivered by UK national Russell Brand, supposedly a comedian. It was Shakespearean.

And so, tomorrow we slot into October, the month of promised “surprises” and generally not the happy kind. Hillary alluded to that in her Firing Line palaver. Does her posse (Huma, Alex Soros) have something up their sleeves? Fake Special Prosecutor (illegally appointed and unconfirmed by the Senate) Jack Smith is coming into Judge Tanya Chutkan’s DC federal courtroom with a big fat brief detailing his superseding indictment cooked up to replace the previous case derailed by the Supreme Court decision earlier this year on presidential immunity. Teams of assassins are roaming the land hunting Mr. Trump. And those are just the known unknowns.

But there’s something else in the air little more than a month away from this fateful election day. It feels like just enough Americans have recovered their senses to act against war, censorship, wide open borders, and the despotic rule of a malevolent bureaucratic blob nobody voted for. Mail-in ballot fraud is already being discovered. Mr. Trump might survive this campaign ordeal after all despite his enemies’ best efforts. The nation could climb out of this slough of self-destruction and despair after all. We used to say proudly this is a free country. It can be that again.