Australian Five- And Ten-Cent Coins To Disappear As Pandemic Ushers In ‘Cashless Society Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/20/2020 – 01:00
Australia’s five and ten cent coins could bite the dust as the coronavirus pandemic has supercharged the decline of coin circulation.
Leading up to the pandemic, coin circulation in Australia experienced a sharp decline in the use of 5 and 10 cent coins.
Royal Australian Mint CEO Ross MacDiarmid told ABC News that he expects 5 and 10 cent coins to be phased out of circulation in the coming years, adding that the pandemic has likely shortened the natural life of coins.
“There’s no doubt there has been a significant decline in demand for circulating coin over the last five to six years,” MacDiarmid said.
“Decline in demand for coins (is) roughly 55 to 56 per cent,” he said.
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) recently published data showing the rapid decline of physical currency used in transactions over the last half-decade. The RBA pointed out an unprecedented decline in the use of cash because of the virus pandemic forced people to transact online and use contactless payments.
“ATM withdrawals in April were down 30 per cent from the month before and over 40 per cent lower than 12 months earlier,” RBA Assistant Governor Michele Bullock said in June.
“Rising inflation, coupled with the growth of online and contactless payments, are rendering the lowly silvers obsolete, despite their place as a mainstay in cafe tip jars, charity tins, and school canteens,” said ABC.
MacDiarmid said the outgoing coins would be redeemable at banks and can still be used in shops.
He said the government has carefully taken a look at the 50 cent coin:
“We are monitoring its use in circulation to see whether there’s a need somewhere in the future for a different 50c piece to be produced,” MacDiarmid said.
“It’s not something we’ve necessarily raised with the Government but it’s something that perhaps could be raised in the future,” he added.
MacDiarmid cited a figure, pointing to the steep decline of coins over the last five decades. He said there are only 4 billion coins in circulation, down from 15 billion in 1965.
The decline of physical money attributed to the virus pandemic has also been seen in the US over the last two months. A coin shortage has forced many businesses to only accept exact change and or only accept credit and debit cards.
The demise of the Australian 5 and 10 cent coins amid the rise of contactless payments, supercharged by the virus pandemic, along with the coin shortage in the US, forcing folks to use contactless payments as well, certainly suggests a cashless society is ahead.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3aFB9eR Tyler Durden
Politicians are renowned for their shortsightedness. During the post-war period, for example, Republicans have very publicly opposed most tax increases. I like small government, so I’m good with that. Where I part ways with the Grand Old Party is with its failure to oppose big spending that’s funded with debt, meaning future tax hikes.
Their lack of spending restraint, also encouraged by Democrats, is inconsistent and means that a new source of government revenue is likely in our future. And, if that is the case, it may very well be a wealth tax.
Support for taxing wealth (as distinct from income) has been picking up momentum in the United States as progressives have argued that the tax is an effective way to reduce inequality. We frequently heard calls for tax hikes on the rich like those during the Democratic presidential primary season when both Sens. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) prominently proposed such a wealth tax. And while Joe Biden hasn’t endorsed a wealth tax, his spending plan is so vast that it’s difficult to see how it won’t be on his agenda soon. Always eager to demonstrate its progressive cred, California is considering adopting such a tax, which would make that state the first in the nation to do so.
A wealth tax has many problems. While it makes for great “soak the rich” soundbites, in reality, it’s ineffective at reducing inequality. What wealth taxes do best is to disrupt the accumulation of capital. Since most wealth is invested and provides capital for innovators and producers to draw upon—and for workers to work with—all Americans would suffer from a wealth tax.
In a recent paper published by the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, economists John Diamond and George Zodrow of Rice University’s Baker Institute added to the extensive evidence on wealth taxation’s negative effects.
The authors simulated the Warren wealth tax’s economic effects and how that impacts the lifetime earnings of different income groups. They estimate that long-run GDP would be 2.7 percent lower than it would be without a wealth tax. They also found declines in lifetime wealth from the upper to lower-middle classes.
To gauge the wealth tax’s impact, Diamond and Zodrow had to make assumptions about how the money would be used. Paying down the national debt, for instance, has different implications for capital allocation than beefing up welfare programs. Since tax proponents tell us they prefer to do the latter, the simulation assumes that wealth tax revenues would be used for redistribution in similar proportions to current spending. The authors thus found small increases in lifetime per-household wealth for bottom income earners, ranging from $100 to $500.
These very small “benefits” (to use the term rather loosely) come at very high costs. Initial losses in average household income would amount to about $2,500.
Europe has traditionally shown a greater affinity for taxing wealth than the United States. But even in Europe, the administrative difficulties, low level of revenue collection and utter lack of impact on inequality have led many nations to abandon wealth taxation. Whereas 15 European countries have implemented wealth taxation, only three have stuck with it.
Nations like France, which dropped its wealth tax in 2018, learned the hard way that taxpayers don’t sit idly by while the fruits of their life’s labor are looted. They go elsewhere.
The wealthy are already fleeing California as it continues to increase its fiscal reliance on a tiny number of highly successful individuals. This trend cannot continue, and to quote economist Herbert Stein, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”
It’s bad enough for legislators in the state with the nation’s largest economy to hit the accelerator as they approach a cliff. It would be even more foolish for the rest of the nation to follow suit.
So, Republicans, if you really believe in lower taxes, think of that next time you feel generous with taxpayers’ money.
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“Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest—forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries.”
– Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
And so it begins again, the never-ending, semi-delusional, train-wreck of an election cycle in which the American people allow themselves to get worked up into a frenzy over the misguided belief that the future of this nation—nay, our very lives—depends on who we elect as president.
For the next three months, Americans will be dope-fed billions of dollars’ worth of political propaganda aimed at keeping them glued to their television sets and persuading them that 1) their votes count and 2) electing the right candidate will fix everything that is wrong with this country.
Incredible, isn’t it, that in a country of more than 330 million people, we are given only two choices for president? How is it that in a country teeming with creative, intelligent, productive, responsible, moral people, our vote too often comes down to pulling the lever for the lesser of two evils?
The system is rigged, of course.
It is a heavily scripted, tightly choreographed, star-studded, ratings-driven, mass-marketed, costly exercise in how to sell a product—in this case, a presidential candidate—to dazzled consumers who will choose image over substance almost every time.
As author Noam Chomsky rightly observed, “It is important to bear in mind that political campaigns are designed by the same people who sell toothpaste and cars.”
In other words, we’re being sold a carefully crafted product by a monied elite who are masters in the art of making the public believe that they need exactly what is being sold to them, whether it’s the latest high-tech gadget, the hottest toy, or the most charismatic politician.
This year’s presidential election, much like every other election in recent years, is what historian Daniel Boorstin referred to as a “pseudo-event”: manufactured, contrived, confected and devoid of any intrinsic value save the value of being advertised.
After all, who wants to talk about police shootings, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture schemes, private prisons, school-to-prison pipelines, overcriminalization, censorship or any of the other evils that plague our nation when you can tune into a reality show carefully calibrated to appeal to the public’s need for bread and circuses, diversion and entertainment, and pomp and circumstance.
But make no mistake: Americans only think they’re choosing the next president.
In truth, however, they’re engaging in the illusion of participation culminating in the reassurance ritual of voting. It’s just another Blue Pill, a manufactured reality conjured up by the matrix in order to keep the populace compliant and convinced that their vote counts and that they still have some influence over the political process.
It’s all an illusion.
The nation is drowning in debt, crippled by a slowing economy, overrun by militarized police, swarming with surveillance, besieged by endless wars and a military industrial complex intent on starting new ones, and riddled with corrupt politicians at every level of government.
All the while, we’re arguing over which corporate puppet will be given the honor of stealing our money, invading our privacy, abusing our trust, undermining our freedoms, and shackling us with debt and misery for years to come.
Nothing taking place on Election Day will alleviate the suffering of the American people.
Unless we do something more than vote, the government as we have come to know it—corrupt, bloated and controlled by big-money corporations, lobbyists and special interest groups—will remain unchanged. And “we the people”—overtaxed, overpoliced, overburdened by big government, underrepresented by those who should speak for us and blissfully ignorant of the prison walls closing in on us—will continue to trudge along a path of misery.
With roughly 22 lobbyists per Congressman, corporate greed will continue to call the shots in the nation’s capital, while our so-called representatives will grow richer and the people poorer. And elections will continue to be driven by war chests and corporate benefactors rather than such values as honesty, integrity and public service.
Just consider: while billions will be spent on the elections this year, not a dime of that money will actually help the average American in their day-to-day struggles to just get by.
Conveniently, politicians only seem to remember their constituents in the months leading up to an election, and yet “we the people” continue to take the abuse, the neglect, the corruption and the lies. We make excuses for the shoddy treatment, we cover up for them when they cheat on us, and we keep hoping that if we just stick with them long enough, eventually they’ll treat us right.
When a country spends billions of dollars to select what is, for all intents and purposes, a glorified homecoming king or queen to occupy the White House, while tens of millions of its people live in poverty, nearly 18 million Americans are out of work, and most of the country and its economy remain in a state of semi-lockdown due to COVID-19 restrictions, that’s a country whose priorities are out of step with the needs of its people.
Then again, people get the government they deserve.
No matter who wins the presidential election come November, it’s a sure bet that the losers will be the American people if all we’re prepared to do is vote.
As political science professor Gene Sharp notes in starker terms, “Dictators are not in the business of allowing elections that could remove them from their thrones.”
To put it another way, the Establishment—the shadow government and its corporate partners that really run the show, pull the strings and dictate the policies, no matter who occupies the Oval Office—are not going to allow anyone to take office who will unravel their power structures. Those who have attempted to do so in the past have been effectively put out of commission.
So what is the solution to this blatant display of imperial elitism disguising itself as a populist exercise in representative government?
Stop playing the game. Stop supporting the system. Stop defending the insanity. Just stop.
Washington thrives on money, so stop giving them your money. Stop throwing your hard-earned dollars away on politicians and Super PACs who view you as nothing more than a means to an end. There are countless worthy grassroots organizations and nonprofits working in your community to address real needs like injustice, poverty, homelessness, etc. Support them and you’ll see change you really can believe in in your own backyard.
Politicians depend on votes, so stop giving them your vote unless they have a proven track record of listening to their constituents, abiding by their wishes and working hard to earn and keep their trust.
It’s comforting to believe that your vote matters, but Franklin Delano Roosevelt was right: “Presidents are selected, not elected.”
Despite what is taught in school and the propaganda that is peddled by the media, a presidential election is not a populist election for a representative. Rather, it’s a gathering of shareholders to select the next CEO, a fact reinforced by the nation’s archaic electoral college system. In other words, your vote doesn’t elect a president. Despite the fact that there are 218 million eligible voters in this country (only half of whom actually vote), it is the electoral college, made up of 538 individuals handpicked by the candidates’ respective parties, that actually selects the next president.
The only thing you’re accomplishing by taking part in the “reassurance ritual” of voting is sustaining the illusion that we have a democratic republic.
In actuality, we are suffering from what political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page more accurately term an “economic élite domination” in which the economic elite (lobbyists, corporations, monied special interest groups) dominate and dictate national policy.
We said nothing while our elections were turned into popularity contests populated by individuals better suited to be talk-show hosts rather than intelligent, reasoned debates on issues of domestic and foreign policy by individuals with solid experience, proven track records and tested integrity.
We turned our backs on things like wisdom, sound judgment, morality and truth, shrugging them off as old-fashioned, only to find ourselves saddled with lying politicians incapable of making fair and impartial decisions.
We let ourselves be persuaded that those yokels in Washington could do a better job of running this country than we could. It’s not a new problem. As former Senator Joseph S. Clark Jr. acknowledged in a 1955 article titled, “Wanted: Better Politicians”: “[W]e have too much mediocrity in the business of running the government of the country, and it troubles me that this should be so at a time of such complexity and crisis… Government by amateurs, semi-pros, and minor-leaguers will not meet the challenge of our times. We must realize that it takes great competence to run a country which, in spite of itself, has succeeded to world leadership in a time of deadly peril.”
We indulged our craving for entertainment news at the expense of our need for balanced reporting by a news media committed to asking the hard questions of government officials. The result, as former congressman Jim Leach points out, leaves us at a grave disadvantage:
We bought into the fairytale that politicians are saviors, capable of fixing what’s wrong with our communities and our lives, when in fact, most politicians lead such sheltered lives that they have no clue about what their constituents must do to make ends meet. As political scientists Morris Fiorina and Samuel Abrams conclude, “In America today, there is a disconnect between an unrepresentative political class and the citizenry it purports to represent. The political process today not only is less representative than it was a generation ago and less supported by the citizenry, but the outcomes of that process are at a minimum no better.”
We let ourselves be saddled with a two-party system and fooled into believing that there’s a difference between the Republicans and Democrats, when in fact, the two parties are exactly the same. As one commentator noted, both parties support endless war, engage in out-of-control spending, ignore the citizenry’s basic rights, have no respect for the rule of law, are bought and paid for by the corporate elite, care most about their own power, and have a long record of expanding government and shrinking liberty.
Then, when faced with the prospect of voting for the lesser of two evils, many simply compromise their principles and overlook the fact that the lesser of two evils is still evil.
Perhaps worst of all, we allowed the cynicism of our age and the cronyism and corruption of Washington, DC, to discourage us from believing that there was any hope for the American experiment in liberty.
Granted, it’s easy to become discouraged about the state of our nation. We’re drowning under the weight of too much debt, too many wars, too much power in the hands of a centralized government, too many militarized police, too many laws, too many lobbyists, and generally too much bad news.
It’s harder to believe that change is possible, that the system can be reformed, that politicians can be principled, that courts can be just, that good can overcome evil, and that freedom will prevail.
Yet I truly believe that change is possible, that the system can be reformed, that politicians can be principled, that courts can be just, that good can overcome evil, and that freedom can prevail but it will take each and every one of us committed to doing the hard work of citizenship that extends beyond the act of voting.
A healthy, representative government is hard work. It takes a citizenry that is informed about the issues, educated about how the government operates, and willing to make the sacrifices necessary to stay involved.
Most of all, it takes a citizenry willing to do more than grouse and complain.
The powers-that-be want us to believe that our job as citizens begins and ends on Election Day. They want us to believe that we have no right to complain about the state of the nation unless we’ve cast our vote one way or the other. They want us to remain divided over politics, hostile to those with whom we disagree politically, and intolerant of anyone or anything whose solutions to what ails this country differ from our own.
What they don’t want us doing is presenting a united front in order to reject the pathetic excuse for government that is being fobbed off on us.
So where does that leave us?
We’d better stop hanging our hopes on a political savior to rescue us from the clutches of an imperial president.
It’s possible that the next president might be better, but then again, he or she could be far worse.
Remember, presidential elections merely serve to maintain the status quo. Once elected president, that person becomes part of the dictatorial continuum that is the American imperial presidency today.
If we are to return to a constitutional presidency, “we the people” must recalibrate the balance of power.
The first step is to start locally—in your own communities, in your schools, at your city council meetings, in newspaper editorials, at protests—by pushing back against laws that are unjust, police departments that overreach, politicians that don’t listen to their constituents, and a system of government that grows more tyrannical by the day.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People,the only thing that will save us now is a concerted, collective commitment to the Constitution’s principles of limited government, a system of checks and balances, and a recognition that they—the president, Congress, the courts, the military, the police, the technocrats and plutocrats and bureaucrats—answer to and are accountable to “we the people.”
This will mean that Americans will have to stop letting their personal politics and party allegiances blind them to government misconduct and power grabs. It will mean holding all three branches of government accountable to the Constitution (i.e., vote them out of office if they abuse their powers). And it will mean calling on Congress to put an end to the use of presidential executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements as a means of getting around Congress and the courts.
As historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. concludes:
“I would argue that what the country needs today is a little serious disrespect for the office of the presidency; a refusal to give any more weight to a President’s words than the intelligence of the utterance, if spoken by anyone else, would command… If the nation wants to work its way back to a constitutional presidency, there is only one way to begin. That is by showing Presidents that, when their closest associates place themselves above the law and the Constitution, such transgressions will be not forgiven or forgotten for the sake of the presidency but exposed and punished for the sake of the presidency.”
In other words, we’ve got to stop treating the president like a god and start making both the office of the president and the occupant play by the rules of the Constitution.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3iY9E3e Tyler Durden
Party At Ground Zero: Wuhan Water Park Hosts Massive Concert With No Social Distancing Or Masks Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/19/2020 – 23:45
What was once ground zero for a pandemic still ravaging its way across the globe appears to simply be “over it”.
Thousands of concert-goers piled into the Wuhan Maya Beach Water Park last weekend to attend a massive electronic music concert – without social distancing measures and without masks, according to photos posted on CNN.com.
The scene would be considered “unthinkable” in many other parts of the world, yet in Wuhan – who had arguably the strictest lockdowns of any geographic location – life is starting to look like it did pre-pandemic.
The city hasn’t reported any new cases since mid-May, after lifting a 76 day draconian lockdown in early April.
The Wuhan Maya Beach Water Park reopened late in June and crowds finally began to come out in August.
Despite the turnout for this concert, the water park says it is only doing half the business it did the year prior. The park currently gets about 15,000 daily visitors during weekends and is trying to entice new business by offering half price discounts.
Wuhan was the original epicenter of the coronavirus and accounts for 60% of all cases in the country, according to China.
Whether or not China has been honest with its infection numbers remains to be seen; but maybe the world should take a cue from ground zero relaxing its lockdown measures in what is also likely a nod to the growing body of evidence that the virus may not be as devastating as the world once thought.
VIDEO: 🇨🇳Crowds packed out a water park over the weekend in the central Chinese city of #Wuhan, where the #coronavirus first emerged late last year, keen to party as the city edges back to normal life pic.twitter.com/sIrvzSFdin
At the same time, it is also worth noting that China has supposedly issued and granted the “first invention patent to a domestically developed COVID-19 vaccine candidate,” according to state-owned mouthpiece The Global Times.
The vaccine is “a recombinant adenovirus vaccine named Ad5-nCoV co-developed by Chinese biopharmaceutical firm CanSino Biologics Inc, one of the vaccine candidate’s co-developers, with the other being a team led by Chinese military infectious disease expert Chen Wei.”
The Global Times hilariously claimed that the launch of the vaccine “would enhance the international market’s trust in Chinese-developed COVID-19 vaccines amid the US’ groundless accusations of Chinese hackers trying to steal novel coronavirus data on treatments and vaccine development from them.”
Fox’s Laura Ingraham had a sharper take on the situation:
How convenient. You lie about this virus, it kills an extraordinary number worldwide, then turn it all into billions in profit on a vaccine. “Patent affirms efficacy of vaccine developed by China” – Global Times https://t.co/eI8gurjNDi
Politicians are renowned for their shortsightedness. During the post-war period, for example, Republicans have very publicly opposed most tax increases. I like small government, so I’m good with that. Where I part ways with the Grand Old Party is with its failure to oppose big spending that’s funded with debt, meaning future tax hikes.
Their lack of spending restraint, also encouraged by Democrats, is inconsistent and means that a new source of government revenue is likely in our future. And, if that is the case, it may very well be a wealth tax.
Support for taxing wealth (as distinct from income) has been picking up momentum in the United States as progressives have argued that the tax is an effective way to reduce inequality. We frequently heard calls for tax hikes on the rich like those during the Democratic presidential primary season when both Sens. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) prominently proposed such a wealth tax. And while Joe Biden hasn’t endorsed a wealth tax, his spending plan is so vast that it’s difficult to see how it won’t be on his agenda soon. Always eager to demonstrate its progressive cred, California is considering adopting such a tax, which would make that state the first in the nation to do so.
A wealth tax has many problems. While it makes for great “soak the rich” soundbites, in reality, it’s ineffective at reducing inequality. What wealth taxes do best is to disrupt the accumulation of capital. Since most wealth is invested and provides capital for innovators and producers to draw upon—and for workers to work with—all Americans would suffer from a wealth tax.
In a recent paper published by the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, economists John Diamond and George Zodrow of Rice University’s Baker Institute added to the extensive evidence on wealth taxation’s negative effects.
The authors simulated the Warren wealth tax’s economic effects and how that impacts the lifetime earnings of different income groups. They estimate that long-run GDP would be 2.7 percent lower than it would be without a wealth tax. They also found declines in lifetime wealth from the upper to lower-middle classes.
To gauge the wealth tax’s impact, Diamond and Zodrow had to make assumptions about how the money would be used. Paying down the national debt, for instance, has different implications for capital allocation than beefing up welfare programs. Since tax proponents tell us they prefer to do the latter, the simulation assumes that wealth tax revenues would be used for redistribution in similar proportions to current spending. The authors thus found small increases in lifetime per-household wealth for bottom income earners, ranging from $100 to $500.
These very small “benefits” (to use the term rather loosely) come at very high costs. Initial losses in average household income would amount to about $2,500.
Europe has traditionally shown a greater affinity for taxing wealth than the United States. But even in Europe, the administrative difficulties, low level of revenue collection and utter lack of impact on inequality have led many nations to abandon wealth taxation. Whereas 15 European countries have implemented wealth taxation, only three have stuck with it.
Nations like France, which dropped its wealth tax in 2018, learned the hard way that taxpayers don’t sit idly by while the fruits of their life’s labor are looted. They go elsewhere.
The wealthy are already fleeing California as it continues to increase its fiscal reliance on a tiny number of highly successful individuals. This trend cannot continue, and to quote economist Herbert Stein, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”
It’s bad enough for legislators in the state with the nation’s largest economy to hit the accelerator as they approach a cliff. It would be even more foolish for the rest of the nation to follow suit.
So, Republicans, if you really believe in lower taxes, think of that next time you feel generous with taxpayers’ money.
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In 2016, then–Vice President Joe Biden appeared on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. He was there to talk about the “rape kit backlog,” the untested rape kits languishing indefinitely across the U.S.—an issue he’d been working on alongside Mariska Hargitay, one of the show’s stars.
The scenario was reversed Wednesday night, with Hargitay getting a spot at the Democratic National Convention to make her pitch for a President Joe Biden. But the subject was the same: ending the “rape kit backlog.”
“I created the Joyful Heart Foundation to help survivors heal and to change the way society responds to sexual violence,” she said. Biden “will end the backlog of hundreds of thousands of untested rape kits….Testing kits not only makes our country safer, but it sends a vital message to survivors that what happened to them mattered.”
It’s a real problem. Rape kits—which contain DNA evidence from rape victims’ bodies that can be used to locate the alleged offender—too often remain untouched. It goes without saying that testing such kits can help find rapists, and yet hundreds of thousands of them have collected dust in police stations over the years.
But this “backlog” isn’t really a backlog: Law enforcement agencies shoved those kits aside without ever sending them to a lab. That’s called negligence. And it’s not something that should be rewarded by throwing more money at the responsible parties, which is precisely what Hargitay would like to do.
The entire purpose of the Debbie Smith Act of 2004 is to send cash to state and local law enforcement agencies so they are able to test rape kits. The legislation has been reauthorized multiple times over the last 15 years, and it has funnelled more than a billion dollars toward the cause.
Even so, Biden and Hargitay successfully lobbied for the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, launched in 2015, which has given federal money to police departments that already had the money to test such rape kits but opted not to. Worse yet: That same year, when the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office announced it would kick in $38 million to the cause, those funds came from civil asset forfeiture seizures, the program that allows police officers to take possessions from people merely suspected of committing crimes.
By and large, police budgets have grown over the years, with staffs increasing and DNA technology continuing to advance. Yet Meaghan Ybos, founder and executive director of People for the Enforcement of Rape Laws, has documented an incredible level of rape-kit negligence:
In 2009, a Human Rights Watch report exposed over 12,000 untested rape kits in law enforcement storage throughout Los Angeles County. That same year, inquiries by the Cleveland Plain Dealer about the failure of law enforcement to stop serial rapist and mass murderer Anthony Sowell spurred the city’s police department to announce plans to process over 4,000 untested rape kits of its own. Also in 2009, after the FBI took control of the Detroit Police Department property room, officials revealed over 8,000 rape kits in police storage had never been submitted to a lab. In 2013, the Memphis Police Department admitted it had failed to test over 12,000 rape kits. In 2014, a New Orleans Police Commander who had been lauded in 2011 for testing at least 800 unprocessed rape kits revealed the department had failed to submit more than 400 rape kits collected since 2011. In 2017, the Wayne County Prosecuting Attorney’s office admitted at least 555 rape kits collected by Detroit Police since the 2009 public outcry weren’t tested until 2015, a fact that was never announced to the public.
Hargitay partially explains that by saying sex crimes departments are scantily resourced and understaffed. But it is the police departments themselves that allocate staffing and other resources. When violent crime gets the short end of the stick, that’s not a funding issue; it’s a priorities issue.
Given all that, law enforcement’s apathy toward rape kits and the ensuing investigations can’t be explained by a dollar amount. Nor can it be solved by one.
“If we are to try to imagine any solutions to this, it’s not going to be ‘Believe women,’ or more training for the police, or trauma-informed training,” says Ybos, who was raped in 2003 and had her own kit sit untouched for nine years in Memphis, Tennessee. “People bring things up like, ‘We need more female police officers.’ No. No. Solutions like that, that compartmentalize this and don’t address the policing issues overall—this is just going to be a perpetuation of the problem that caused this situation.”
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In 2016, then–Vice President Joe Biden appeared on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. He was there to talk about the “rape kit backlog,” the untested rape kits languishing indefinitely across the U.S.—an issue he’d been working on alongside Mariska Hargitay, one of the show’s stars.
The scenario was reversed Wednesday night, with Hargitay getting a spot at the Democratic National Convention to make her pitch for a President Joe Biden. But the subject was the same: ending the “rape kit backlog.”
“I created the Joyful Heart Foundation to help survivors heal and to change the way society responds to sexual violence,” she said. Biden “will end the backlog of hundreds of thousands of untested rape kits….Testing kits not only makes our country safer, but it sends a vital message to survivors that what happened to them mattered.”
It’s a real problem. Rape kits—which contain DNA evidence from rape victims’ bodies that can be used to locate the alleged offender—too often remain untouched. It goes without saying that testing such kits can help find rapists, and yet hundreds of thousands of them have collected dust in police stations over the years.
But this “backlog” isn’t really a backlog: Law enforcement agencies shoved those kits aside without ever sending them to a lab. That’s called negligence. And it’s not something that should be rewarded by throwing more money at the responsible parties, which is precisely what Hargitay would like to do.
The entire purpose of the Debbie Smith Act of 2004 is to send cash to state and local law enforcement agencies so they are able to test rape kits. The legislation has been reauthorized multiple times over the last 15 years, and it has funnelled more than a billion dollars toward the cause.
Even so, Biden and Hargitay successfully lobbied for the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, launched in 2015, which has given federal money to police departments that already had the money to test such rape kits but opted not to. Worse yet: That same year, when the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office announced it would kick in $38 million to the cause, those funds came from civil asset forfeiture seizures, the program that allows police officers to take possessions from people merely suspected of committing crimes.
By and large, police budgets have grown over the years, with staffs increasing and DNA technology continuing to advance. Yet Meaghan Ybos, founder and executive director of People for the Enforcement of Rape Laws, has documented an incredible level of rape-kit negligence:
In 2009, a Human Rights Watch report exposed over 12,000 untested rape kits in law enforcement storage throughout Los Angeles County. That same year, inquiries by the Cleveland Plain Dealer about the failure of law enforcement to stop serial rapist and mass murderer Anthony Sowell spurred the city’s police department to announce plans to process over 4,000 untested rape kits of its own. Also in 2009, after the FBI took control of the Detroit Police Department property room, officials revealed over 8,000 rape kits in police storage had never been submitted to a lab. In 2013, the Memphis Police Department admitted it had failed to test over 12,000 rape kits. In 2014, a New Orleans Police Commander who had been lauded in 2011 for testing at least 800 unprocessed rape kits revealed the department had failed to submit more than 400 rape kits collected since 2011. In 2017, the Wayne County Prosecuting Attorney’s office admitted at least 555 rape kits collected by Detroit Police since the 2009 public outcry weren’t tested until 2015, a fact that was never announced to the public.
Hargitay partially explains that by saying sex crimes departments are scantily resourced and understaffed. But it is the police departments themselves that allocate staffing and other resources. When violent crime gets the short end of the stick, that’s not a funding issue; it’s a priorities issue.
Given all that, law enforcement’s apathy toward rape kits and the ensuing investigations can’t be explained by a dollar amount. Nor can it be solved by one.
“If we are to try to imagine any solutions to this, it’s not going to be ‘Believe women,’ or more training for the police, or trauma-informed training,” says Ybos, who was raped in 2003 and had her own kit sit untouched for nine years in Memphis, Tennessee. “People bring things up like, ‘We need more female police officers.’ No. No. Solutions like that, that compartmentalize this and don’t address the policing issues overall—this is just going to be a perpetuation of the problem that caused this situation.”
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Memes are a dominant force in popular culture today, and there is good reason for this; they allow people to inject an argument into discussion without having to actually compose that argument. In other words, by sharing a meme, everyone already knows what you are saying without an explanation. We all do this from time to time.
When I refer to a woman screaming at a man on the sidewalk for not wearing a mask as a “Karen”, most people immediately understand why this woman is a problem. She fits an archetypal mold, she has made herself into a walking, talking stereotype. The meme describes a thing everyone has experienced and is tired of dealing with. Memes make debate easier – They take on a life of their own.
That said, problems arise when dishonest people try to hijack a meme for their own agenda.
For example, how many times have you seen crazed leftists call a conservative a “snowflake” because he/she is criticizing crazy leftist behavior? The meme refers to people who let their emotions get in the way of reason and they have “meltdowns” when faced with facts that disagree with their feelings. It also refers to people who fear competition and discomfort so much that they are trying to reshape the world so that it is “more fair” and less threatening to their self esteem. It does not apply to people who are logically debunking terrible behavior and terrible arguments.
To be fair, the term “snowflake” can be abused as a way to dismiss a younger person out of hand when they are expressing discontent with problems in the world. Memes can be misused by both sides of the political spectrum.
By the same token, a “Karen” is grown adult (not always a woman) who is aggressively uppity and unreasonable and who throws temper tantrums when they don’t get their way. It’s a person who acts like a spoiled toddler, and they do this because it has worked many times in the past in our “customer is always right” retail world. No one has ever smacked them upside the head and taught them a lesson in humility.
A “Karen” is NOT someone who is simply complaining or criticizing over a legitimate problem in a logical way. Yet, I have seen this meme misused as well to attack and shut down people who are doing exactly that.
And what about the “Okay Boomer” meme? The idea being that older people are disconnected from the “changing times” and that they have nothing to contribute anymore to the discussion because the planet has left them behind. This is one of the few purely leftist memes I’ve seen in the past few years. It’s a futurist meme which comforts children in their common false notion that they have the world all figured out and advice from “old people” is useless. It’s a way for people with zero life experience and zero success to dismiss people with decades of life experience along and an array of successes and failures to draw knowledge from.
Being told you are a “newbie” is not always fun, but it’s sometimes necessary. The Boomer meme is a tool for young people to feel better about themselves and their lack of wisdom or education. These days, anyone who is over 30 years of age and disagrees with leftist politics or aspects of Zennial culture is called a “boomer” by default.
Memes can be entertaining, but the fact that they are so easy to exploit also leaves them open to abuse by narcissists and sociopaths. Leftists in particular are guilty of hijacking memes and twisting them for their own ends. They see memes as part of a culture war they are desperate to win. For them, controlling the meaning of words is paramount.
The newest meme trend I’m seeing these days is called the “try-hard” meme, i.e. “Stop acting like such a try-hard…” Now, this is another case where a phrase is being co-opted to fit a false narrative. Originally, a “try hard” was someone who takes recreational things much too seriously and turns fun into war. For example, a guy who plays a game of volleyball with his family and starts pummeling spikes down into their faces like he’s in a professional match. In other words, people who beat their chests and act overtly competitive in situations that don’t call for it.
These days, I’m seeing the meme used to describe ANYONE who excels at anything. That’s right, if you push yourself to be the best, if you are competitive and win often, if you are focused on self improvement as an individual, then there’s something “wrong” with you.
Leftists in particular have always had a problem with competition and it stems from the Marxist roots of their philosophy. There is this notion among lefties that the world is supposed to be “equal”. Now, there are different types of equality, and I think the majority of Americans agree with the idea of equal opportunity. Meaning, (at least in the West) we think every person regardless of their circumstances should be given the CHANCE to PROVE they can work hard and succeed. People should not be stopped from pursuing that chance merely because of who they are.
However, leftists and Marxists think that equality of opportunity is not enough. They think that there should also be equality of outcome.
This one delusion sits at the core of all Marxist thinking.
Equality of outcome is impossible because not all people are born equal. Some people are, frankly, born superior to others. Some people are born smarter. Some people are born stronger, taller and faster. Some people are born with innate musical or artistic talent. Some people are born with innate mathematical understanding. Some people are born extroverted and are good at making friends. Some people are born introverted and are better at self reflection and awareness. Some people are born to be basketball players and some are born to be engineers.
The psychological reality of mankind is that we are not born as blank slates; we are born with inherent qualities and the seeds of unique individual talents. Marxists suffer from a complete mental disconnect with this concept. If they were to admit that people are born with individual qualities and advantages and are not blank slates, then the foundation of their philosophy falls apart. They rationalize their social engineering agenda under the premise that all people need to be “molded” into equal units. They think people must be reeducated to reject bad beliefs and bad habits they were taught as blank slate children and learn to accept that everyone starts life out exactly the same. Therefore, the majority of people who succeed are those that were given an unfair advantage, and success should be treated with disdain and suspicion.
But if people have inherent psychological characteristics and inherent advantages, then their personalities and qualities cannot be reformed. Those “bad beliefs and habits” might actually be completely natural and necessary. You might be able to hold them back through force or fear, but you can’t change the core of who they are. If our biological and genetic imperatives prevail, Marxists become obsolete and useless.
The secret is to discover what your innate strengths are in life and take advantage of them to succeed. If you do not have innate talent, then you must at least have an innate ability to work hard. If you don’t have the ability and drive to work hard to become good at a thing, then you don’t deserve to get recognition for that thing. You are not entitled to feel like a winner merely because you exist. It’s really as simple as that.
The try-hard meme is basically the equivalent of excellence-shaming; you are supposed to feel ashamed of being better than others at a certain task or talent. I’m not sure where this hatred for competition comes from, but I suspect it has something to do with leftists and their early childhoods. Many of them are “late bloomers” who did not have many experiences winning, or they were never pushed by their parents to mature and excel. They grew to despise the idea that winning and success are so elevated in our society, while at the same time they still crave that feeling of being the best at something.
So, they adopt the Marxist creed, which tells them that yes, they are losers, but it’s not because they are lazy and they suck; no, they are losers because they are victims of a society that is holding them back from their true potential. Marxism tells them that the people who succeed were actually given special treatment because of their class or the color of their skin. The winners are actually very bad people who don’t deserve success. If only the system was forced to be more fair, then THEY would be the winners. Thus, in order for losers to “win”, they must join a mob of other losers and gain power through collective control. The successful people must be given an extreme handicap by the mob to “level the playing field”.
I think the Marxist ideal is leading these kids down a path of brutal delusion, because they are never going to achieve the Utopian society that they seek. The world will never be “fair”, and the idea that you can force such conditions upon a culture without serious consequences is childish and mentally unstable. Make no mistake, we are entering an era in which the facade propping up limp-wristed and weak people is falling away. When it comes to economic strife, crisis and survival, there is no appeal to equality. You’re in the jungle, baby, and if you have no merit, you’re gonna die.
The people willing to work hard and the people who seek to self improve are going to do well. The people that want a trophy just for participating are not going to make it.
By extension, trying to socially engineer our country to cater to the lowest common denominator would grind all progress to a standstill and make the crisis even worse. If “trying hard” becomes something to be ashamed of, or something that is punished, then there is no more incentive to improve or innovate or go beyond that which has already been accomplished. Our evolution ceases, and humanity stagnates.
While human competition has its ugly moments in history, at the very least it must be encouraged among individuals. It must continue to be rewarded. For if we start rewarding mediocrity it will be the exact opposite of the biological drives that keep us alive. It will lead to self destruction of the entire species.
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Mauritius Arrests Captain Of Japanese Oil Tanker That Ran Aground, Causing Massive Oil Spill Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/19/2020 – 23:05
The captain of a Japanese oil tanker that ran aground off the coast of Mauritius on July 25, causing a devastating oil spill in one of the world’s cleanest ocean environments, is now under arrest.
Additionally, International Tankers Owners Pollution Federation Ltd and Le Floch Depollution will both begin cleaning 3 sites on the country’s shoreline that were affected, joining local efforts from fishermen, according to Reuters.
The tanker, MV Wakashio struck coral reef off the coast of the Indian Ocean and began to spill oil on August 6. As a result, Mauritius announced a state of environmental emergency. The spill spread over a “vast area of endangered corals” according to the report. Some are calling it the country’s “worst ecological disaster”.
Inspector Siva Coothen said:
“We have arrested the captain of the vessel and another member of the crew. After having been heard by the court they have been denied bail and are still in detention.”
The country’s coast guard had “repeatedly tried to reach the ship” in order to warn it about its dangerous course. They said they received no reply.
An official for Mauritius said:
“The route set five days before the crash was wrong and the boat navigation system should have signalled that to the crew and it seems the crew ignored it. The boat did also fail to send out an SOS (when it ran aground), and did not respond to attempts by the coastguard to get in touch.”
The crew had been questioned about whether or not they were having a birthday party on board but, so far, there have been no definitive answers. There were also scattered reports that the ship was moving closer to the shoreline to find a Wifi signal or a cell phone signal; those reports have also not been confirmed.
The deputy captain was also arrested. Emergency crews were able to remove most of the ship’s remaining oil before it split in two on Saturday.
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Authorities in Melbourne, Australia will use high-tech surveillance drones to catch people outside not wearing masks as well as to scan for vehicles that are in violation of curfew by being more than 5km from home.
“High powered drones will be used to find people not wearing masks and cars too far from home,” according to a 7News Melbourne news report.
The drones will also be used to ensure skate parks and playgrounds remain empty.
The surveillance devices can be flown up to a distance of 7km and produce images so clear they can “read a vehicle’s number plate from 500 meters away.”
Privacy advocates are concerned that there is no sunset clause on the use of such technology and the drones could continue to be used to spy on citizens after the pandemic ends.
7News Melbourne spoke to two residents who said they weren’t worried because they were behaving and had “nothing to hide.”
Police are preparing to launch their aerial arsenal as part of a crackdown on COVID rule breakers. High powered drones will be used to find people not wearing masks, and cars too far from home. https://t.co/5zYfOfohG3@tdolling#7NEWSpic.twitter.com/Yy84UBTH0V
The measures are just the latest example of what represents one of the most draconian coronavirus lockdowns in the developed world after the state of Victoria announced a “state of disaster” in response to an uptick in COVID-19 cases.
There have been several instances of police physically tackling people for not adhering to mask wearing rules, including one incident when a woman was placed in a chokehold by a male police officer.
Police have also been given the power to enter people’s homes without a warrant and perform quarantine spot checks.
Drivers are also being asked to show their papers at highway checkpoints simply to get to work.
Anyone caught outside without a mask or violating the 8pm-5am curfew also risks being made to pay a massive fine.
As the post below illustrates, the rules are also being enforced by Australian Defence Force troops patrolling parks and other outdoor areas.
Police also fined a couple for allowing their child to play further than 5km from their home, while also executing a search warrant against and seizing computers belonging to two men who were planning an anti-lockdown protest.
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