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The virus pandemic has upended global supply chains and produced shortages of certain commodities, sending spot prices sky-high. The latest shortage is steel, where many US manufacturers are having difficulty procuring cold-rolled and hot-rolled steel from mills, reported Reuters. 

At the moment, steel shortages are sending spot prices through the roof. The latest round of disruptions in the steel industry is impacting America’s manufacturing heartland, where aerospace parts maker in California struggles to find cold-rolled steel, while auto and appliance parts manufacturers in Indiana are having trouble securing hot-rolled steel.

 “Unfilled orders for steel in the last quarter were at the highest level in five years, while inventories were near a 3-1/2-year low,” Reuters said. Spot prices for hot-rolled steel hit $1,176/ton this month, the highest in 13 years. 

US hot-rolled steel prices are rising the most versus the rest of the world. 

S&P GSCI Industrial Metals is exhibiting a multi-decade symmetrical triangle. 

One of the main reasons for the undersupply of steel in the first quarter is the slow restarts of mills, which were halted during the virus pandemic. Steel producers may not meet demand this quarter or next. 

Soaring steel prices have pinched margins of steel-consuming manufacturers. New calls from within the manufacturing industry want the Biden administration to end former President Trump’s steel tariffs. 

Paul Nathanson, executive director at Coalition of American Metal Manufacturers and Users, said the current conditions are bad. 

“Our members have been reporting that they have never seen such chaos in the steel market,” Nathanson said.

He requested the Biden administration to terminate Trump’s metal tariffs to increase supply. 

Capacity utilization rates at steel mills are slowly increasing and have moved up to 75% after plunging to 56% in the second quarter of 2020 but is still under 82% observed right before the pandemic. 

“However, the recovery in automotive production and white goods manufacturing was quicker than expected when the strictest lockdown measures were lifted. The construction sector was less affected, as it was supported by government stimulus schemes in many regions. The restarting of steel plants was not sufficiently quick to meet growing demand, while inventory levels reduced to historical lows, with restocking across the steel value chain in Europe and the US creating additional demand. Steel prices rallied in all regions in late 2020 as a result,” Fitch Ratings explained in a recent report.

Steel-consuming manufacturers are voicing their frustration with the extremely tight market. 

“It is very frustrating,” said Hale Foote, president of California-based aerospace parts maker Scandic Springs. “I am looking at great business…but I don’t have any material supply.”

Since last August, domestic steel prices have surged 160%, leaving steel consumers in a massive predicament – whether to absorb or pass along additional costs. 

“We’ll be lucky if we break even at this price,” said Stuart Speyer, president at Tennessee-based Tennsco. He said steel costs of lockers, bookcases, and cabinets up nearly 100% in six months. 

Whirlpool warned last month that rising steel costs would reduce profit this year by at least 150 basis points. Farm equipment maker AGCO and crane maker Terex have increased prices to offset rising steel prices. 

Besides steel, the pandemic has also caused supply woes in the lumber and semiconductor industries. Political and geopolitical developments have also upended global supply chains. 

Given the short-term nature of the steel chaos rippling through America’s heartland – the mismatch in supply and demand could continue through the first half of the year. 

Are surging commodity prices the first leg in the next commodity supercycle? 

Authored by Martin Jay via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

It’s time the EU got its act together on Russia and accepted that Germany runs the EU and it will have its Russian gas pipeline at any cost. But don’t let that stop whining MEPs throwing stones at Putin.

As a body, the EU itself doesn’t fear much. It doesn’t fear the bloc falling apart as already France, Spain and Italy unite in their own ‘brexit’ plans; it doesn’t fear the extreme right gaining a majority in the European parliament in 2024 (a distinct possibility as EU citizens use the populist vote as an anti-immigration signal to the EU); it also doesn’t fear that the chaos of its own making with a vaccine could bring the entire project down as even its most diehard supporters in Brussels talk about the shambles of how the European Commission president has handled the matter.

But there is one thing the EU does fear, in fact: Russia. And they are right to.

Russia is the only entity which can cause real problems for the EU, not only in cyberattacks on companies, banks and media in both the 27-nation bloc but also in key institutions like the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. Putin could, if he chose, cause chaos, in fact within the EU at any moment he chose. And on top of that, the political scandals that he endures only serve him well internationally as it is the EU which practically advertises itself as being a fractured, disorganised and delusional fake superpower which in reality is chasing its own tale most of the time on the world stage and trying its best to cause distractions within its own servile media that it is relevant and has cohesion.

The recent scandal involving Alexei Navalny might shock many in the West who balk on about human rights and lack of freedoms in Russia. But can Brussels really stand on a soap box and, with a straight face, preach to Europeans about such things? Guy Verhofstadt, an odious Belgian euro federalist MEP, recently took a swipe at the management of the EU under Ursula von der Leyen and harped recently that it was “time to get our act together on Russia”. On this particular occasion it was not over the preposterous scenario of the EU foreign policy chief recently visiting Moscow and trying to pull off the awkward back flip, triple axel circus stunt of both chastising Putin over the alleged poisoning of agents while at the same time presenting a begging bowl for the Russian vaccine. The spineless ruse was all about saving the EU from being a laughing stock by its own voters as yet another major policy — vaccines — is exposed as being a calamity in itself. But now it’s not vaccines or alleged assassinations, but energy which is troubling the euro federalists in Brussels who feel vulnerable to attack by Russia, when they know they are facing an unprecedented political crisis which the EU has never seen before. Verhofstadt is championing a call to block a controversial gas pipeline from Russia to Germany which is expected to put Berlin on a collision course with Brussels — a terrifying prospect for top apparatchiks in Brussels who are already fearful of a genuine groundswell of anti-EU resentment in Germany over the EU’s failed vaccine program.

Nord Stream 2 would serve Germany’s energy needs formidably but it also presents other bigger problems for the EU in that Brussels’ energy dependency on Russia increases, giving the latter more power over the former. While the EU tries to stop giggling as it imposes sanctions on Putin’s officials — which prevents them from travelling to the EU — the idea of the EU imposing any leverage on Russia is hysterical and practically a comedy in itself. Energy dependency is nothing new and has forced the EU to look at more radical plans so that some EU countries, like Italy for example, could be less reliant on Russian gas.

Perhaps the most vivid display of rank desperation was to bring in Gadaffi from the cold in 2004, with a Brussels visit which involved tents and female body guards clad in tight-fitting blue commando fatigues. Hilariously, Gadaffi took the podium in the press room and said nothing as journalists did their duty to their EU bosses and applauded him. The comedy is still alive and well in Brussels today now as the EU still cannot find the requisite magic to act as a superior power to Russia and to dish out the moral tutelage to Putin when in reality it grows weaker and weaker each day under the weight of Russia’s energy supplies.

Even on human rights it’s a joke. When the European parliament runs out of debating chambers named after European journalists murdered doing their jobs exposing graft — within the EU — few see the comic irony of MEPs supporting a motion which would pump more EU money into EU-friendly outlets, to actually boost the fake news coming from the Belgian capital.

Or even on a national level how EU countries are becoming more and more like dictatorships every day as human rights are eroded and the role of media is diminished. What did the EU even say about Julian Assange being held in a UK prison (whilst it was in the EU) or about draconian laws being passed in France which erode personal freedoms? Unfortunately, most EU citizens don’t know that scores of millions of euros each year are paid into a slush fund in Brussels which subsidies broadcasters’ production costs when covering EU events — and of course the recipients are very grateful for the bung, which doesn’t in any way — ho ho ho — affect their objective ‘reporting’ on the EU. Those same citizens are too quick to condemn Russia Today television as being a “Kremlin” tool, without even knowing that what their watching on their TVs about the EU is the epitome of fake news. The 10bn euro pipeline built by Gazprom is just the latest comedy which allows MEPs like Verhofstadt to call for “unity” and “standing up” to Russia. But how does an infant stand up to its towering, older brother how feeds him and keeps him warm? And when was the last time the EU had “unity” on anything big?

Business jet delivers tumbled in 2020 as the pandemic stressed corporations and shut down the global economy. 

General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA) reported Wednesday that general aviation fixed-wing shipments and billings plunged across the board in 2020. 

GAMA said manufacturers delivered 644 business jets, compared with 809 a year earlier. Many business-jet manufacturers saw steep declines in 2020 – Bombardier was down 28 planes, Gulfstream (-20), Dassault (-6), Embraer (-23), Textron Aviation (-74), and Honda Aircraft (-1). 

Gulfstream

Demand for turboprops also fell, down 15.6% from 525 in 2019, to 443 last year. 

As flight restrictions worldwide slowed travel for commercial and private aircraft, small piston plane deliveries saw the least of the declines, down just 12 units, to 1,312. Textron Aviation’s Skyhawk bucked the trend last year, nearly doubling deliveries from 126 in 2019 to 241 last year.

Skyhawk

Piston helicopter shipments plunged 20.7% to 142 units, while turbine helios shipments were down 16.9% to 532 units. 

Robinson R44 Raven (piston helicopter) 

GAMA President and CEO Pete Bunce said the virus pandemic “negatively impacted general aviation and stifled the industry’s growth.” 

Looking ahead, Bunce said, “It will be important for the general aviation industry to work together with our commercial sector colleagues to keep our interlinked but very fragile supply chain secure, while continuing to engage global regulatory authorities to leverage their mutually recognized safety competencies to keep pace with accelerating technological innovations that improve aviation safety and environmental sustainability and facilitate industry recovery.”

While demand for new private jets and other aircraft types slumped in 2020, used private jet sales in the second half of last year soared. 

By Giulio Meotti of Gatestone Institute,

A shocking investigation was just published by the French weekly Le Point on how Beijing is buying the favor of Western universities.

An Italian associate professor, for example, Fabio Massimo Parenti, at the Lorenzo de Medici International Institute in Florence, was hosted in Xinjiang, where up to two million Uyghurs are estimated to be locked up in “re-education camps”. In addition, many British schools are now closely under Chinese radar of influence and propaganda. Nigel Farage, the leader of Britain’s Reform UK Party, recently tweeted that “Chinese billionaires with direct links to the CCP are buying up British schools – and flooding the curriculum with their propaganda,” and listed the names of some in the UK “under Chinese control”:

• Abbots Bromley School

• Bournemouth Collegiate

• St Michael’s School

• Bosworth College

• Bedstone College

• Ipswich High School

• Kingsley School

• Heathfield Knoll School

• Thetford Grammar

• Wisbech Grammar

• Riddlesworth Hall

• Myddelton College

• CATS Colleges

Beginning in September 2019, in Urumqi, the capital of the Uyghur region of Xinjiang in western China, Christian Mestre, honorary dean of the University of Strasbourg faculty of law, participated in an “international seminar on the fight against terrorism, de-radicalization and the protection of human rights”. The seminar was organized by the People’s Republic of China. Mestre’s statements were transcribed by both the state media, the Xinhua news agency, as well as the nationalist newspaper Global Times.

“I hope that France and other European countries can adopt the answers provided by Xinjiang”, professor Mestre said while visiting one of the “vocational education centers”, the name given by Beijing to its re-education camps.

“These people are not in prison,” the professor attested, “but sent to compulsory training”. Nothing to see here, as they say.

That was the beginning of an impressive investigation by the French weekly Le Point on how China has bought the favor of many Western academics. “It is worthy of Aragon’s travels to the Soviet Union or the collaborators in Nazi Germany”, said Marie Bizais-Lillig, a colleague of Mestre. The reference is to Louis Aragon, the French writer who visited Soviet Union under Stalin and came back convinced of the genuineness of the communist system, and then dedicated himself to its defense.

A survivor of China’s re-education camps in Xinjiang recently revealed what happens there. Gulbahar Haitiwaji had lived in France for ten years. Her husband and daughters had political refugee status, but Gulbahar preferred to keep her Chinese passport to visit her elderly mother. In November 2016, she bought a ticket to China, where she was swiftly deported to a re-education camp for her people, the Uyghurs. She was detained for two years before being released under pressure from France. Early this year, she published a chilling account, “Rescapée du goulag chinois“. [“Survivor of a Chinese Gulag”]

Gulbahar is the first Uyghur to have been released and repatriated to France. “Xi Jinping, she sums up, “wants Xinjiang without the Uighurs”.

She was moved from one detention center to another. First the pre-trial detention center, with the rules hanging on the wall: “It is forbidden to speak Uyghur; it is forbidden to pray; it is forbidden to go on a hunger strike…” She had to defecate into a plastic bucket in front of the others.

She was chained to her bed for 20 days in 2017. She was taken to one of those new “vocational training centers”, the name given by the regime to its gulags. The Baijintan Camp — three buildings “as big as small airports” on the edge of the desert — is surrounded by fences topped with razor wire. Prisoners no longer see daylight, only neon. Cameras follow the detainees’ every movement.

“Thanks to our great country. Thanks to our dear President Xi Jinping”, the detainees must repeat from dawn to dusk.

After taking on new names (Gulbahar became “Number 9”), their clothes and hair are removed. Chinese re-education then begins to take hold of their mind. A camp guard shows the group of inmates a wall: “What color is it?”, he asks. “White”, they reply. “No, it is black. It is I who decide what color it is”.

Then come strange “vaccinations”. “Women no longer menstruated. Once I returned to France, I really felt the existence of sterilization…”

In France, during the past 15 years, 18 Confucius Institutes have been opened, ostensibly to teach Chinese and promote Chinese culture. In Europe, in 2019, Belgium expelled the rector of the Confucius Institute of the Free Flemish University of Brussels, after security services accused him of being a spy.

A Tibet expert, Françoise Robin, of the National Institute of Oriental Languages ​​and Civilizations (Inalco), calls these institutes “Propaganda weapons”, In 2016, Inalco invited the Dalai Lama for a conference. “We received official letters from the Chinese embassy asking us not to receive him,” Robin said.

In September 2014, Mestre’s faculty of law at Strasbourg University hosted a series of events on Tibet, with lectures, exhibitions, dances and concerts organized “at the request of the Consulate General of China in Strasbourg”, according to the terms of an email sent by the dean. “The inaugural conference assured [everyone] that Tibet was never annexed, [and] that the Chinese intervention of 1950 had been requested by the Tibetans,” Nicolas Nord, a law professor, recalled.

The Economist recently suggested what the Chinese regime is really doing in Tibet: eradicating the influence of Buddhism from their people’s minds.

That may be why the proposed new head of the CIA, William J. Burns, said that if it were up to him, he would close Confucius Institutes in Western universities. In Britain, they are also apparently worried — justifiably, it seems. According to the Daily Mail, hundreds of independent schools that were left in serious financial difficulty by the Wuhan Virus pandemic have since been targeted by Chinese investors. China is evidently seeking to expand its influence in the British education system, as they are in the United States. Seventeen schools in the UK are already owned by Chinese companies, and that number is destined to rise. In addition, The Times revealed that the University of Cambridge received a “generous gift” from Tencent Holdings, one of the largest technology companies in China involved in state censorship.

One’s mind goes back to the “Cambridge Five”, the British spy network — Anthony Blunt, Donald Maclean, Kim Philby, Guy Burgess and John Cairncross — in the service of the Soviet Union and also based at the famous British university. Kim Philby, who died in exile in the Soviet Union, never regretted his betrayal of the UK : “It was only at the end of my stay in Cambridge that I made the final decision to dedicate my life to communism”.

At the time, many in the West could truthfully have said they did not know how many people had been killed or jailed by the Soviet regime. Today, we know a lot about China’s cruelty, including the mass murder by the Wuhan Virus that the Chinese Communist Party forced upon the world, first by lying that the virus was not transmissible person-to-person, then by stopping domestic flights from Wuhan but letting international flights continue. As a consequence, every country on the planet was infected, resulting in the murder of more than 2.5 million people.

We also know about the number of people locked up in the laogai, the Chinese “administrative prisons” (estimated at 50 million). We know about the number of Chinese girls that the regime prevented from being born when the “one child policy” was in effect (estimated at 30 million). We know about the number of people killed at Tiananmen Square, the last time the regime was openly challenged by its citizens (estimated at 10,000).

“Places inhabited by ethnic minorities, such as Xinjiang and Tibet, have stood out as shining examples of China’s human rights progress”, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said hours before addressing the annual conference of the United Nations Human Rights Council. Probably even the Soviet Union could not have thought that one up.

Authored by Michael Rectenwald via The Mises Institute,

Read Part I: Reduced Expectations And Bio-Techno-Feudalism here…

Read Part II: Corporate Socialism here…

Read Part III: Capitalism With Chinese Characteristics here…

Read Part IV: “Stakeholder Capitalism” Vs. “Noeliberalism” here…

In previous articles, I’ve discussed the Great Reset and introduced several ways of understanding the economics of it. The Great Reset can be thought of as neofeudalism, as “corporate socialism,” as “capitalism with Chinese characteristics,” and in terms of “stakeholder capitalism” versus “neoliberalism.” In future installments, I intend to treat the technological (transhumanist) and monetary (centralized banking and digital currency) aspects that Klaus Schwab and others anticipate and prescribe.

But in this essay, I wish to consider the ideological aspect of the Great Reset. Just how do the planners mean to establish the reset ideologically? That is, how would a reset of the mass mind come to pass that would allow for the many elements of the Great Reset to be put into place—without mass rebellion, that is? After all, if the Great Reset is to take hold, some degree of conformity on the part of the population will be necessary—despite the enhanced, extended, and more precise control over the population that transhumanist technology and a centralized digital currency would afford.

This is the function of ideology. Ideology, as the Marxist historian of science Richard Lewontin has argued, works “by convincing people that the society in which they live is just and fair, or if not just and fair then inevitable, and that it is quite useless to resort to violence.” Ideology establishes the “social legitimation” that Lewontin sees as necessary for gaining the assent of the ruled. “The battleground is in people’s heads, and if the battle is won on that ground then the peace and tranquility of society are guaranteed.” Ideology on this account is not the same as world view. It is rather the mental programming necessary for domination and control short of the use of force. Ideological indoctrination is easier, less messy, and less expensive than state and state-supported violence.

Some may argue that the ideology of the Great Reset is simply socialist-communist ideology. After all, in many respects, socialist-communist ideology supports what the Great Reset promises to deliver. And this may work for some. There are those who would welcome, on socialist grounds, the “fairness,” “equality,” or “equity” that the Great Reset promises. Socialists might overlook or excuse the oligarchical control of society on the basis of the supposed fairness, equality, or equity among the mass of the population, and on the presumption that the oligarchy will be overthrown in the not-so-distant future. Socialism embeds a levelling predisposition that puts a premium on “equality” among the visible majority, even when that equality comes as a great loss for many otherwise “middle-class” subjects. In fact, when I briefly entertained the rantings of members of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, including its leader, Bob Avakian, they admitted to me that worldwide socialism would mean reduced standards of living for much of the world, especially in the United States. They had no problem with this; in fact, they seemed to relish the prospect. No doubt, as Friedrich Nietzsche suggested, socialism is fueled, at least in part, by ressentiment—by resentment and envy for the property owner. Much could be said about socialists’ apparent approval, or at least conditional and temporary acceptance, of big monopolistic oligarchical corporatists and their preference for big business over small. Socialists see monopolization under capitalism as inevitable, as necessary for producing a more consolidated target to be overthrown, and as a sign of the imminent collapse of capitalism and the coming socialist-communist apocalypse.

Likewise, many socialists will be amenable to the Great Reset on principle—especially those who accept its rhetoric at face value. But for all its newfound popularity, socialism-communism still doesn’t represent the majority. While popular among Millennials and other millennialists, socialism-communism remains unsavory for many.

It is regarded as alien, obscure, and loosely connotes something negative.

But more importantly, for reasons that I’ll give below, socialist-communist ideology is not the ideology that best fits the goals of the Great Reset. This is where wokeness comes in.

What exactly is wokeness? As I write in Beyond Woke,

According to the social justice creed, being “woke” is the political awakening that stems from the emergence of consciousness and conscientiousness regarding social and political injustice. Wokeness is the indelible inscription of the awareness of social injustice on the conscious mind, eliciting the sting of conscience, which compels the newly woke to change their be­liefs and behaviors.

This is as close to a definition of wokeness as I can manage, gleaning it as I have from the assertions of those who embrace it. Of course, the etymology of the word “woke,” and how it became an adjective describing those who are thus awakened into consciousness of social and political injustice, is another matter. I discuss the etymology in Google Archipelago:

“Woke” began in English as a past tense and past participle of “wake.” It suggested “having become awake.” But, by the 1960s, woke began to function as an adjective as well, gaining the figurative meaning in the African American community of “well-informed” or “up-to-date.” By 1972, the once modest verbal past tense began to describe an elevated political consciousness. In 2017, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) recognized the social-conscious awareness of woke and added the definition: “alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice.”

Yet there are as many definitions of wokeness as people who’ve heard of it, as is the case with most anything the least bit controversial. I’m sure that others can and will add to the definition or suggest that wokeness should be defined altogether differently. But the above definition and historical-semantical renderings are sufficient for our purposes. According to adherents, then, wokeness is enhanced awareness of social and political injustice and the determination to eradicate it.

But what could wokeness have to do with the Great Reset? As a corrective, wokeness is not aimed at the sufferers whose complaints, or imagined complaints, it means to redress. Wokeness works on the majority, the supposed beneficiaries of injustice. It does so by making the majority understand that it has benefited from “privilege” and preference—based on skin color (whiteness), gender (patriarchy), sexual proclivity (heteronormativity), birthplace (colonialism, imperialism, and first worldism), gender identity (cis gender privilege), and the domination of nature (speciesism)—to name some of the major culprits. The list could go on and is emended, seemingly by the day. This majority must be rehabilitated, as it were. The masses must understand that they have gained whatever advantages they have hitherto enjoyed on the basis of the unfair treatment of others, either directly or indirectly, and this unfair treatment is predicated on the circumstances of birth. The “privilege” of the majority has come at the expense of those minorities designated as the beneficiaries of wokeness, and wokeness is the means for rectifying these many injustices.

And what are the effects of being repeatedly reprimanded as such, of being told that one has been the beneficiary of unmerited “privilege,” that one’s relative wealth and well-being have come at the expense of oppressed, marginalized, and misused Others? Shame, guilt, remorse, unworthiness. And what are the expected attitudinal and behavioral adjustments to be taken by the majority? They are to expect less. Under woke ideology, one will be expected to forfeit one’s rights, because even these rights, nay, especially these rights, have come at the expense of others.

Thus, wokeness works by habituating the majority to the reduced expectations that I introduced in my first installment on the Great Reset. It does this by instilling a belief in the unworthiness of the majority to thrive, prosper, and enjoy their lives. Wokeness indoctrinates the majority into the propertyless future (for them, at least) of the Great Reset, while gratifying the Left, its main ideological propagators, with a sense of moral superiority, even as they too are scheduled to become bereft of prospects.

One question remains. Why is wokeness more suited to the objectives of the Great Reset than socialist-communist ideology? To answer this question, we must recall the selling points of socialism-communism. Despite the levelling down that I mentioned above, socialism-communism is promissory. It promises benefits, not deficits. It does not operate by promising the majority that they will lose upon its establishment. Quite to the contrary, socialism-communism promises vastly improved conditions—yes, fairness, equality, or equity but also prosperity for the mass of humanity, prosperity that has been denied it under capitalism. The workers of the world are called to unite, not under the prospect of reduced expectations, but on the basis of great expectations—not, according to Marx, to establish utopia, but at least to destroy and replace the current dystopia with a shared cornucopia. We know, of course, how this promise is kept. But it is nevertheless still proffered and believed by all too many in our midst.

We have seen, on the other hand, the subtractive character of woke ideology. Wokeness demands the forfeiture of advantages on moral grounds. Unlike socialism-communism, it does not offer empowerment or advocate the takeover of the means of production and the state by political means. Wokeness is a form of recrimination that compels the abdication, not the acquisition, of goods.

Woke ideology, I contend, has tilled the soil and planted the seeds for the harvest that the Great Reset represents to the ruling elite. Was wokeness intentionally crafted for this purpose? I don’t think so, but it nevertheless can and is being adopted for these ends, just as other ideological formations have been used for other ends. The ruling elite appropriates the available means at its disposal to effect its plans, including available ideologies. Woke ideology was available and ready for appropriation and application. Wokeness serves the Great Reset best, and thus we see the language of wokeness in the books and other literature devoted to its establishment: fairness, inclusion, etc.

Naturally, wokeness will not work on everyone. But the demand has been made so universal that unapologetic, noncompliant dissenters are figured as regressive, reactionary, racist, white supremacist, and more, and are dismissed, if not punished, on those grounds. Wokeness has thus attained dominance. Countering it will be a major requirement for challenging the Great Reset.

America’s most liberal cities have transformed into ground-zero for what has become an all-out drug and homelessness crisis. Cities like Seattle, Washington, and others, are using taxpayer dollars to fund various types of programs such as needle exchanges and safe spaces to do drugs. 

A Seattle-backed homeless shelter called the Downtown Emergency Service Center (DESC) uses taxpayer dollars to get addicts high. DESC employees hand out heroin and crack pipes, syringes, and even “booty bumping” kits. 

Local AM radio station KTTH reports DESC plastered flyers at their Navigation Center location on 12th Avenue South, encouraging addicts to come to the non-profit facility to collect “new tools and methods to continue their destructive and deadly addictions.”

For more on this, KTTH Radio Host Jason Rantz recently joined the Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” show to discuss how Democrats are destroying the city of Seattle. 

Rantz tweeted a three-minute clip of him and Tucker talking about taxpayer funds used by DESC to purchase heroin pipes, syringes, and “booty bumping kits.” 

A homeless shelter uses Seattle city funds to feed an addicts deadly disease. Tax dollars are used to buy heroin pipes, syringes, and “booty bumping kits,” which allow users to rectally inject drugs for a more intense high. I discussed my exclusive on @TuckerCarlson Tonight. pic.twitter.com/QhbiK46ydp

— (((Jason Rantz))) on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) February 23, 2021

“The city is now funding a homeless shelter that is passing out heroin pipes and distributing so-called ‘booty bumping kits’ so that junkies can inject drugs rectally,” Rantz told Tucker. 

“Well, when you teach addicts, who are already the hardest to get off the street a more efficient way to get high in a way that lasts longer, when you’re doing it with the so-called ‘booty bumping kit,’ all you’re doing is making it that much easier for them to stay addicted,” he continued.

In case you’re wondering, KTTH sheds more light on “booty bumping kits:”  

This process has an addict inject drugs rectally, usually meth or cocaine mixed with water, through a needless syringe. A rectum is very efficient at absorption, so the high is described as more intense and longer-lasting. The flyer says this method to get high is a “good choice if your veins are hard to hit,” and that it “doesn’t leave tracks.” -KTTH explains 

As ZH readers are undoubtedly aware, when liberal-run cities take part in funding these social experiments – many of them tend to fail. 

For example, San Francisco’s needle exchange program resulted in hazardous waste increases across the city. More addicts got high and violent crime surged and drug-fueled vagrants terrorized people on the street. 

… and it comes as no surprise that overdose deaths in the Democratic stronghold have killed almost four times more people than COVID-19 this year. These progressive ideas seem great on paper, but in actuality, they tend to disappoint. 

If the goal is to help people with addiction – why are progressives aiding in programs that keep people perpetually addicted? 

Why Seattle’s DESC believes they have the magic touch to solve an addiction crisis by employing similar failed programs seen in San Francisco is beyond us.

Authored by Melinda Mills, op-ed via The Financial Times,

I remember the evening a co-worker arrived at our door waving a phone, beaming “I’ve got it!” His Android mobile was the only way to use the UK government app that let EU citizens apply for UK settled status after Brexit. After some unsettling jokes about uploading my private biometric data on his device, we completed the deed and he disappeared into the night. As governments around the world ponder digital vaccine passports, that evening remains in my mind.

Vaccine passports are essentially certificates that link proof of vaccination to the identity of the holder, a potential silver bullet to return to our pre-Covid-19 lives. Before the pandemic, the EU was working on plans for cross-border electronic certificates to replace the paper booklets that many travellers carry. At this week’s EU summit some leaders pressed for further steps towards coronavirus passports.

A recent Royal Society report that I led came up with 12 different criteria that would need to be satisfied to make such passports feasible. This is a complex ecosystem that requires an understanding of everything from immunity and infection to technology, ethics and behavioural factors. But the underlying question must be: what would a vaccine passport be used for?

The head of Heathrow airport has called for digital health certificates to reboot international travel. Estonia and Iceland already link e-vaccination certificates to travel and exclusion from quarantine. Greece is pressing the EU to move quickly. There are precedents such as the airline industry group Iata’s travel pass initiative. But would these certificates only be required for international travel or could they be needed for getting a job, attending a football match, or buying some milk?

Israel recently introduced a green pass heralded as “the first step back to an almost normal life”. It opens entry to gyms, cinemas, hotels and meets some our technical criteria such as verifiable credentials, portability, (attempts at) security for personal data and interoperability. It is valid for six months after a second dose and for “those who have recovered from coronavirus”.

But this could be problematic. Current vaccines protect against severe disease, but we do not yet know whether they stop transmission, how quickly immunity wanes or if they are compromised by emerging variants. Whether someone who has “recovered” meets immunity criteria remains a question. In addition to an expiry date, we would need the ability to revoke a vaccine passport. Israel’s warning of severe punishment for forgery is another reminder of what could go wrong.

There is also the question of mission creep. Recall the UK’s early digital contact tracing app, which raised concerns about privacy, government surveillance and private sector data sharing. Or consider the technical problems with the Tawakkalna app, introduced in Saudi Arabia, which is used for entry into many places but recently froze.

All vaccine passports have the potential to block people from essential goods and services and exclude those who lack identification or do not own or cannot afford a smartphone.

The RS criteria for a workable vaccine passport included equity, ethics and non-discrimination. That means we must ask who would we exclude? There is higher vaccine hesitancy among ethnic minorities and the jabs are being rolled out by age. Plus some people are excluded entirely: children, pregnant women and those with allergies.

Others worry of a slippery slope towards digital health or ID cards. We are already partway there, as I discovered, with Apple’s link with healthcare institutions which allows me to download my immunisation and medical records on to my iPhone. This technology could mean greater efficiency in the health system and better outcomes. But there would be serious ethical concerns if a vaccine QR code that tracks movement is linked to other data — say housing and immigration status — without our knowledge, or if it increases surveillance of already disadvantaged groups.

Credit cards and social media data hold a wealth of behavioural and location data, that companies regularly mine. With vaccine passports, it will come down to trust in government and that can only be won through transparency. There is a risk that the government expends time and money to create a passport system only to have the public recoil in horror.

We also shouldn’t forget we are globally interconnected. When travel resumes, visitors and workers will cross borders and need global standards such the WHO’s Smart Vaccination Certificate. This could be a legal minefield of issues. Human rights and data protection need to be weighed against a duty of care and commercial freedom to act. Governments may make vaccine passports mandatory on economic grounds or to protect public health. Or they may decide to dodge that bullet, but allow businesses to require them instead.

There is also the question of whether a domestic vaccine passport is worth the investment. That depends, of course, on vaccine rollout, virus mutation and other factors. To work, a substantial proportion of the population needs to be vaccinated with universal access, which in most countries is months away. In the meantime, let’s put the pieces of this puzzle together and carefully judge if we like the picture that emerges. 

*  *  *

The writer directs the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science at Nuffield College, Oxford university

The White House has issued a belated response – or ultimately a weak attempt at damage control – amid growing bipartisan outrage that despite his prior “tough” talk on the campaign trail to “hold the Saudis to account”, crown prince Mohammed bin Salman is getting off scot-free.

“The Biden administration defended its decision not to sanction Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman personally for his role in the death of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, as the White House confirmed no more actions against the kingdom are imminent,” Stars & Stripes reports Sunday. This means that not so much as suspension of weapons sales are on the table, apparently.

This despite the newly declassified intelligence assessment identifying MbS as “approving” the operation to kill or capture the Washington Post journalist. 

Biden’s answer as to why the US is stopping short at sanctioning dozens of lower-level Saudi officials (and not MbS) that the newly declassified intelligence assessment identified as orchestrating Jamal Khashoggi’s Oct.2018 murder appears to simply be that the Saudis are “our allies”:

“The United States has not historically sanctioned the leaders of countries where we have diplomatic relations or even some where we don’t have diplomatic relations,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on “Fox News Sunday.” “Behind the scenes there are a range of diplomatic conversations.”

A White House statement indicated that no further actions will be taken against Riyadh (other than slapping up to 76 officials with ‘travel restrictions’):

“The recalibration of relations with Saudi Arabia began on January 20th and it’s ongoing,” the White House said in a statement. “The Administration took a wide range of new actions on Friday. The President is referring to the fact that on Monday, the State Department will provide more details and elaborate on those announcements, not new announcements.”

Also, this is quite the statement…

“The President should not meet with the Crown Prince, or talk with him, and the Administration should consider sanctions on assets in the Saudi Public Investment Fund he controls that have any link to the crime.”

— Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) February 26, 2021

Certainly the Saudis now have little to worry about given the White House is meekly talking “recalibration of relations” in the wake of US intelligence identifying MbS as having ordered the brutal killing and dismemberment. 

So it took no time at all for things to return to “business of usual” in terms of Washington relations with the Saudi regime. The Saudi prince literally got away with murder… and now has a perpetual “get out of jail free card” simply because he’s a White House “ally”. Ultimately this of course comes as no surprise at all.

Unlike the recent retail sales report which stunned sellside expectations with a 5-sigma blowout beat, Friday’s personal spending report came in generally as expected, even if it too came in scorching hot, with personal incomes soaring 10% M/M and a whopping 13% Y/Y thanks to the December $900BN stimulus hitting household checking accounts.

But for all those planning on extrapolating this surge in spending into February and further into Q1, you may want to hold the champagne.

According to the latest aggregated credit and debit card data from BofA, total card spending declined 2% yoy for the 7-days ending Feb 20th with Bank of America chief economist Michelle Meyer writing that “this weakening owes to the winter blizzard that created major disruptions to Texas and the surrounding region.” BofA remains optimistic, and believes this is a temporary setback and expect a recovery as is typical with natural disasters.

Some more details on the big driver behind February’s spending plunge:

The winter blizzard: The blizzard that rampaged the South and left millions without power created major disruptions to economic activity. We found particular weakness in card spending in TX, LA, OK, MS, AR and TN. Combined card spending in these six states ran at a -25% yoy pace for the 7-days ending Feb 20th. Subtracting these states from the total, card spending increased 1.3% yoy over the same period, which was likely still held down by poor weather conditions given the breadth of the blizzard.

As Meyer further notes, no sector was immune to the blizzard related retrenchment in consumer spending.

Predictably, restaurant spending plunged in the states where the blizzard hit, down 39% yoy, while the rest of the country actually saw an improvement in restaurant spending to -9.4% yoy, likely reflecting easing COVID-related restrictions with restaurant activity in California accelerating. Grocery store spending also declined in the affected states after increasing prior to the storm.

Even retail spending online (card not present) weakened meaningfully in affected states, likely reflecting the loss of power in the region.

Next, BofA takes a tangent In order to understand consumer spending patterns around natural disasters, we looked at the daily data around Hurricane Irma in 2017. Florida, the epicenter of the hurricane, saw a similar sized drop in spending of around -40% yoy when the hurricane hit. Spending then normalized around 10 days after the initial rainfall from Irma.

If history is a guide, BofA concludes that we are likely to see spending in TX and surrounding states return back to trend in the next week or so. We could even see spending run above trend as households restock.

That would be the optimistic view. The less optimistic view comes from similar card spending data, but this time from JPMorgan, which found a similar plunge in Texas spending but also an acute dropoff in total spending across the US, not all of which could be explained by the Texas freeze.

In other words, after the record January spending boom sparked by the latest round of stimulus, it is quite possible the Americans retrenched again and whether it is due to the cold weather or concerns that quite some time may pass before the next government handout stimulus is sent out, we may well be in for a rough patch as US spending – which drives 70% of US GDP – hibernates at least until such time as the first (of many) Biden stimulus is passed and those $2,000 $1,400 stimmies are sent out. Which, incidentally, would be good news for a market suddenly terrified that the US economy is overheating and something must be done to halt the surge in output and/or spending…