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A new employment tax proposed by the Seattle City Council would charge roughly $500 per employee based in the city. And though it would only apply to the city’s largest companies, many of them are complaining to the press – some with good reason – about how the tax would discourage employment and ultimately damage the city’s economy.

The tax would only apply to businesses earning $20 million in revenue within the city limits – a group that includes roughly 585 companies, about 3% of the total number operating in the city, according to CNNMoney.

Businesses would be required to pay 26 cents per man hour per employee worked within the city limits, excluding vacation pay and sick time.

To what we imagine would be the delight of the Trump administration, Amazon would bear the brunt of the new tax. The e-commerce giant would be forced to contribute some $20 million annually on behalf of its nearly 45,000 employees in Seattle. Of course, Amazon will have a difficult time arguing that it can’t afford the tax after it smashed expectations in its latest quarterly earnings report. And with the city facing an unemployment rate of 3.8%, even lower than the nationwide rate of 4.1%.

The city says it would use the money to build affordable housing and also provide emergency shelter services to at-risk and homeless individuals.

But Amazon told CNNMoney that it has a better plan to help the homeless.

Amazon, which declined to comment on the proposal, notes that it already contributes economically in many ways to Seattle. For example, it will provide a permanent location for a shelter in one of its new office buildings by 2020. It would be run by the nonprofit Mary’s Place, which already had temporary use of two vacant Amazon buildings to shelter the homeless since 2016.

Starbucks did not respond to a request for comment.

Prosperous big businesses can in turn generate a lot of economic activity and revenue for their host city. And they may donate goods, services or money to critical social causes.

But the co-sponsors of the bill note that a major cause of homelessness is the higher cost of housing that results when more workers move to a city for jobs that pay more than long-time residents have been earning. And the demand to build affordable housing doesn’t keep pace.

But city council members have apparently been ignoring pleas from Safeway, which operates 21 grocery stores in the city. The company said that if the tax is passed, it will be faced with a dilemma: Either raise prices or consider closing stores, according to Q13 Fox.

The tax would threaten stores that are in many cases the only resources in under-served neighborhoods – something that would turn those neighborhoods into food deserts.

It’s been billed as a tax on the rich, only levied on business with revenue of $20 million or more annually. But Safeway contends that the tax would end up hurting the city’s poorest families.

Currently, there are 19 Safeway stores and two Alberstons in the Seattle city limits. Albertsons is the parent company of Safeway.

In two communities, Rainier Beach and Othello, it is the only mainstream store in the area.

Chelle Jackson, the store director at the Safeway in Rainier Beach, told Fox that her store would likely be forced to close if the tax doesn’t spare grocery stores.

“I grew up about five blocks up the street from here,” said Jackson. “It’s the only store that’s survived the generations around here.”

[…]

“It’s not about our company being in bad shape, it’s about losing stores in communities in Seattle who need them,” said Osborne.

The problem is that while Safeway stores earn more than $20 million a year, their margins are razor-thin, so the tax would have a disproportionate impact.

On paper, Osborne confirms Safeway’s Seattle stores bring more than over $20 million in revenue each year. But after expenses, Safeway says its Seattle locations end up with a small profit.

“The margins grocers operate within, they’re very, very small, almost razor thin,” said Osborne.

If grocers aren’t exempted, and Safeway decides not to close stores, Osborne said the other option Safeway has is to raise prices. Jackson said that would be devastating to her customers.

“It would mean they couldn’t get all the things they want on their shopping list, or they would have to cut back, and it might mean that kids don’t get to take lunch to school,” said Jackson.

Safeway has offered to let the city council review its stores’ financials, but apparently the offer hasn’t been accepted.

Safeway said if the council wants proof, they’ll gladly share their slim margins behind closed doors.

“We’re happy to share those numbers so the council members can see how close we are in some communities to it not being worthwhile in some communities to operate,” said Osborne. “We want them to believe us.”

Safeway wants to make it clear they believe building affordable housing and addressing the homeless crisis is an important cause they support, but in their opinion this tax isn’t the way to go.

“What we’re trying to point out is that we are addressing an affordability crisis, but we can’t address that by making food less affordable,” said Osborne.

Of course, many alternatives to the progressive employment tax have been offered by firms who (correctly) point out that the city council’s plan would do little to improve housing affordability and instead lead to a range of adverse consequences for workers and companies. Firms could be forced to cut pay or raise prices, which would hurt Seattle residents among every rung of the economic spectrum.

But then again, this is the same legislative body that crushed the poor and minority workers in particular by adopting a $15 minimum wage in the city.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2r9A6hU Tyler Durden

Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

What characterizes American government today is not so much dysfunctional politics as it is ruthlessly contrived governance carried out behind the entertaining, distracting and disingenuous curtain of political theater. And what political theater it is, diabolically Shakespearean at times, full of sound and fury, yet in the end, signifying nothing.

Played out on the national stage and eagerly broadcast to a captive audience by media sponsors, this farcical exercise in political theater can, at times, seem riveting, life-changing and suspenseful, even for those who know better. 

Week after week, the script changes—Donald Trump’s Tweets, Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, Michael Cohen’s legal troubles, porn star Stormy Daniels’ lawsuit over an alleged past affair with Trump, Michelle Wolf’s tasteless stand-up routine at the White House correspondents’ dinner, North and South Korea’s détente, the ongoing staff shakeups within the Trump administration—with each new script following on the heels of the last, never any let-up, never any relief from the constant melodrama.

The players come and go, the protagonists and antagonists trade places, and the audience members are forgiving to a fault, quick to forget past mistakes and move on to the next spectacle. 

All the while, a different kind of drama is unfolding in the dark backstage, hidden from view by the heavy curtain, the elaborate stage sets, colored lights and parading actors.

Such that it is, the realm of political theater with all of its drama, vitriol and scripted theatrics is what passes for “transparent” government today, with elected officials, entrusted to act in the best interests of their constituents, routinely performing for their audiences and playing up to the cameras, while doing very little to move the country forward.

Yet behind the footlights, those who really run the show are putting into place policies which erode our freedoms and undermine our attempts at contributing to the workings of our government, leaving us none the wiser and bereft of any opportunity to voice our discontent or engage in any kind of discourse until it’s too late.

None of the dangers posed by the government and its henchmen have dissipated.

They have merely disappeared from our televised news streams.

In the interest of liberty and truth, here’s an A-to-Z primer to spell out the grim realities of life in the American Police State that no one is talking about anymore.

A is for the AMERICAN POLICE STATE. A police state “is characterized by bureaucracy, secrecy, perpetual wars, a nation of suspects, militarization, surveillance, widespread police presence, and a citizenry with little recourse against police actions.”

B is for our battered BILL OF RIGHTS.

C is for CIVIL ASSET FORFEITURE, which allows government agents to seize and keep private property whether or not any crime has actually taken place.

D is for DRONES equipped with lasers, tasers and scanning devices, all aimed at “we the people.”

E is for ELECTRONIC CONCENTRATION CAMP, a.k.a., the surveillance state.

F is for FUSION CENTERS that serve as a clearinghouse for information shared between state, local and federal agencies.

G is for GRENADE LAUNCHERS, part of the more than $18 billion worth of battlefield-appropriate military weapons, vehicles and equipment distributed to domestic police departments across the country.

H is for HOLLOW-POINT BULLETS, which have been stockpiled by the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration.

I is for the INTERNET OF THINGS, a “connected” industry that propels us closer to a future where a person’s biometrics can be used to track their movements, target them for advertising, and keep them under perpetual surveillance.

J is for JAILING FOR PROFIT, a $70 billion private prison industry that relies on the complicity of state governments to keep their privately run prisons full by jailing large numbers of Americans for inane crimes.

K is for KENTUCKY V. KING, a Supreme Court ruling that gives police the green light to break into homes, without a warrant, even if it’s the wrong home as long as they think they have a reason to do so.

L is for LICENSE PLATE READERS, which enable law enforcement and private agencies to track the whereabouts of vehicles, and their occupants, all across the country.

M is for MAIN CORE, a database of names and information to be used by the government in times of national emergency or under martial law to locate and round up Americans seen as threats to national security.

N is for NO-KNOCK RAIDS, of which more than 80,000 are carried out every year.

O is for OVERCRIMINALIZATION, which renders every American a criminal.

P is for PATHOCRACY: tyranny at the hands of a psychopathic government, which “operates against the interests of its own people except for favoring certain groups.”

Q is for QUALIFIED IMMUNITY, which allows officers to walk away without paying a dime for their wrongdoing.

R is for ROADSIDE STRIP SEARCHES and BLOOD DRAWS.

S is for the SURVEILLANCE STATE.

T is for TASERS, which have been used by police as weapons of compliance more often and with less restraint—even against women and children—and in some instances, even causing death. 

U is for UNARMED CITIZENS SHOT BY POLICE.

V is for VIPR SQUADS, which carry out “soft target” security inspections whenever and wherever the government deems appropriate, at random times and places, and without needing the justification of a particular threat.

W is for WHOLE-BODY SCANNERS, which are being used not only to “see” through your clothes but to spy on you within the privacy of your home.

X is for X-KEYSCORE, one of the many spying programs carried out by the National Security Agency that targets every person in the United States who uses a computer or phone.

Y is for YOU-NESS. Facial recognition software promises to create a society in which every individual who steps out into public is tracked and recorded as they go about their daily business. 

Z is for ZERO TOLERANCE in which young people are increasingly viewed as suspects and treated as criminals by school officials and law enforcement alike, often for engaging in little more than childish behavior.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the reality we must come to terms with is that in the post-9/11 America we live in today, the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned.

We have moved beyond the era of representative government and entered a new age.

You can call it the age of authoritarianism. Or fascism. Or oligarchy. Or the American police state.

Whatever label you want to put on it, the end result is the same: tyranny.

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Following the imposition of taxes on foreign investors and empty houses, Vancouver real estate has lost its crown as the craziest housing market in Canada – ceding its position to the resort town of Whistler – around two hours north.

Benchmark property prices in Whistler have surpassed Vancouver for the first time – with the average townhouse in Whistler selling for C$1 million vs. Vancouver’s C$835,000, and detached homes selling for a premium of 4% over Vancouver’s at C$1.67 million. The housing crunch in Whistler is so bad that businesses have taken to buying multi-million-dollar properties to house employees who can’t otherwise afford to live in the popular vacation destination.

“It’s an absolute gong show,” said Russell Kling, a former hedge fund manager turned developer, whose Pangea Pod Hotel is set to open this summer aimed at delivering more affordable tourist accommodation. Whistler was the most expensive place in Canada to spend New Year’s Eve — C$745 for a double room compared to C$414 in second-place Quebec City.

“People told us, ‘Your biggest issue will be accommodation — if your staff can’t find accommodation, it doesn’t matter how much you pay them,’” recounts Kling, whose co-founder is his wife, Jelena. “So we took that risk off the table and purchased a home.”

The seven-bedroom residence cost “close to a couple million dollars” and will house the hotel’s general manager and a handful of key employees. The Klings even looked at buying a second staff property. “But so much of this stuff now — forget about buying, I wouldn’t want to put my worst enemy there,” he said. –Bloomberg

While the explosion in real estate prices is mind-boggling already, the rental market is even crazier – with one recent listing for two girls to share a double room (and we presume, the one bed) at C$780 per month, each.

Many renters spend more than 50 percent of their income on housing. Mayor Wilhelm-Morden, incensed by landlords raking in cash from illegal short-term rentals, has imposed a C$1,000-a-day fine for violators, saying Whistler won’t tolerate “employees shoved out the back door” to make way for tourists. –Bloomberg

And it’s not just the price of housing and rentals that’s exploded in Whistler – visiting is now prohibitively expensive as well, with overnight rates during peak winter season topping anywhere else in the nation. It’s become so bad in Whistler that a take-home income of $2,180 per month is barely enough to get by. As Bloomberg reports: 

Phil Bonham, a 31-year-old ski patroller, has been living out of a 1984 Dodge camper van for four years, unable to afford the surging cost of housing.

Styrofoam cutouts are wedged into his windows to keep out the chill during cold snaps, when temperatures can plummet to minus 25 degrees Celsius (-15 Fahrenheit). He doesn’t bother with the propane-fired refrigerator in the tiny kitchen between the driver’s seat and bed — nothing thaws anyway in winter, and he eats fruits and vegetables immediately before they freeze.

The small wood-burning stove in the back corner is the “hippie killer,” a reference to stoves like this that have been known to asphyxiate people in their sleep as they try to stay warm. The winter before last, he found himself lying under the van during a snow storm rebuilding pieces of the engine — “a bit of a low point,” as he describes it. But that’s what a take-home wage of about C$2,800 ($2,180) a month after taxes buys in Whistler. –Bloomberg

“I only expected to do it for a season,” Bonham said in a Bloomberg interview in a parking lot near the ski slopes, where he identified at least seven other vehicles being used as full-time residences. “Without getting a second job or a girlfriend, there’s no way I could afford a room to myself. And I make a decent wage in comparison to many other jobs in Whistler.”

While Whistler has a permanent population of less than 12,000 residents, there are over 1,300 applicants waiting to either rent or buy homes at below-market rates in a lottery of resident-only housing managed by the Whistler Housing Authority – which aims to provide housing for at least 75% of the town’s employees. Officials in December said that target “will be very challenging to continue to meet.” 

Putting even more upward pressure on the Whistler real estate market is its transition from a skiing mecca into a four-season destination for all sorts of outdoor activities, including golf, hiking and mountain biking. 

“We’re as busy now in the summer as in the winter,” said Mark Lamming, owner of Whistler bakery, Purebread.

In order to try and explain the run up in housing costs, Mayor Nancy Wilhelm-Morden has assembled a task force to try and determine how young families can afford to live in the area – finding that “Suites that once housed local tenants are being replaced by lavish, sparsely used vacation chalets. Online home-share websites have made it easier for owners to illegally rent properties intended for residents to higher-paying tourists.”

Further complicating matters is Whistler’s bevy of restrictive zoning laws prevent builders from easily alleviating the crunch.

Much of the supply-side woes are also self-imposed. Canada’s first resort municipality, Whistler was purpose-built in the 1980s in the image of a pedestrian-free Swiss alpine village, and restrictive zoning and land-use rules to prevent over-development also choke supply. Meanwhile, a byzantine web of rules dictate how residences can be used in the broader community. –Bloomberg

One in three Whistler businesses could not find enough staff last year, according to the housing authority. In order to try and mitigate the problem, the town council has committed to an additional 1,000 new resident beds over the next five y4ears – however one local developer says that’s less than half of what’s needed. 

[I]n a letter to council dated Oct. 31, local developer Steve Bayly questioned the accuracy of the RMOW assessment.

“In my view, 1,000 beds fall short of the current need. Most concerning is that 850 of the beds are predicted to come from in-fill (300) and private sector development (550) where Whistler has had little success in the past,” Bayly wrote.

Further, with 2,500 new employees gained in the last five years and more growth projected, the RMOW’s target of 1,000 beds, even if fully realized, may fall well short of future need.

“In my view, total additional employee beds needed to run the resort at build out may be as high as 2,500 new beds and that is before such things as future leakage and gentrification,” Bayly wrote. –Pique

Vancouver

Two miles to the South of Whistler, Vancouver’s market has softened – with residential home sales totaling 2,517 in March – a 29.7 decrease from March 2016, and 23% below the 10-year March sales average.

There were 6,542 home sales on the Multiple Listing Service® (MLS®) in Metro Vancouver during the first quarter of 2018, a 13.1 per cent decrease from the 7,527 sales over the same period last year. This represents the region’s lowest first-quarter sales total since 2013. –RE Board of Greater Vancouver

“We saw less demand from buyers and fewer homes listed for sale in our region in the first quarter of the year,” Phil Moore, REBGV president said. “High prices, new tax announcements, rising interest rates, and stricter mortgage requirements are among the factors affecting home buyer and seller activity today.”

That said, Vancouver experienced its lowest first-quarter new listings total since 2013, which may continue to put upward pressure on prices. 

“Even with lower demand, upward pressure on prices will continue as long as the supply of homes for sale remains low,” Moore said. “Last month was the quietest March for new home listings since 2009 and the total inventory, particularly in the condo and townhome segments, of homes for sale remains well below historical norms.”

Maybe staff-strapped Whistler businesses can chip in for a few tour buses to cart employees back and forth two hours each way from the “far more affordable” Vancouver? 

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Authored by Erik Sandberg via Medium.com,

Some of the most vocal critics of the ethics of the U.S. governmental and surveillance agencies have been the ones who worked and built their tracking programs. The problem many of these individuals feel  –  like Bill Binney, a former technical director at the NSA  –  is that the spying mechanisms and frameworks have been abused by successive American governments following the travesty that was 9/11.

The sheer amount of data that was being fed in to the National Security Agency in the lead-up to 9/11 is also a moot point in that the event was an entirely avoidable catastrophe. Programs originally designed and implemented to protect U.S. citizens are now being used against its population.

Listen to the full interview in our weekly Newsvoice Think podcast.

Speaking to Bill Binney, we wanted to find out a bit more about how the National Security Agency functions and in what ways it violates the U.S. constitution. He told Newsvoice Think that it’s now practically impossible for any member of the public to communicate safely, privately or in a fashion that doesn’t end up in an NSA repository unit.

Bill Binney on the Fairview surveillance program

“The Fairview surveillance program has been used to spy on the Donald Trump administration, even before he took office. Now they’re starting to talk about this program simply because the politicians are getting hit with it. The poor suckers and thousands of citizens that have been jailed via this program. They don’t count. They’re the Department of Just-Us.”

Bill Binney on protecting ourselves against spying…

With Telegram hitting the news early in 2018, the focus on encrypted messaging apps and their primary function was much debated. In Iran, the government there blamed Pavel Durov’s product and banned it for inciting and encouraging revolution in a country already nervous and encircled by U.S. bases in the Middle East. The argument on encrypted messaging apps rages on with many in the U.K., such as Amber Rudd and even the Prime Minister calling on access in unique cases such as terrorist activity. Bill Binney, however, was sceptical on whether there is any way that the public can protect themselves from intrusion on their metadata.

Bill Binney on the relationship between the press and the CIA…

Censorship isn’t secluded to just Iran, though. With journalists across the globe still being jailed or in extreme cases, as witnessed recently in Slovakia, killed for their investigative work and reporting. Binney describes that the CIA have been involved and have colluded with the press since the ’50s and that the former director of the CIA, William J. Casey once said: “We’ll know when our propaganda campaign has succeeded; when everything and everyone in the country believes is false.”

Bill Binney on Mike Pompeo and the intelligence communities…

While Russia’s influence on the 2016 U.S. elections continues to hark debate, Bill Binney found himself at the centre of the furore late in 2017. At the behest of Donald Trump, he was summoned by the then CIA director Mike Pompeo who wanted his thoughts on Russian ‘hacking’.

“The intelligence community was not telling them the truth. They’re trying to drum up a new cold war. Look what they said in public testimony about spying, look what they said about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq: Nobody’s been telling the truth about these major issues.

Then they go off and kill hundreds of thousands of people based on a lie so they can go and build these military industrial complexes.”

*  *  *

With Newsvoice, you can be a part of the media. Our mission is to democratize the news, and move the power over to our readers. Get involved by downloading the app, or visit us at Newsvoice.com.

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While China has embarked on ambitious plans for economic and military domination over the next several decades, they may end up defeating themselves without a single shot fired – thanks to their longstanding birth restrictions, shrinking fertility rate and exploding elderly population.  

Economically speaking, the problem is easy to understand; a shrinking labor pool due to restrictive reproductive laws tends to drive up wages, while a rapidly growing elderly population requires more spending on pensions and health care. “In a worse-case scenario, slowing growth and a labor shortage could leave China unable to care for hundreds of millions of retirees,” notes the Wall Street Journal.

China’s clinging to birth restrictions defies a clear demographic trend: Its workforce is shrinking and the population is rapidly aging. By 2050, there will be 1.3 workers for each retiree, according to official estimates, compared with 2.8 now.

No matter what the government does now, it is too late to significantly change the overall trend because of social attitudes, say demographers such as Gu Baochang, a professor of demography at Renmin University in Beijing. –WSJ

While some experts have argued that slower population growth could mitigate pressure on China to create new jobs as technology increases productivity, others think China is in deep trouble…

“They should have lifted all birth restrictions before 2010,” says Baochang. “Whatever steps they take now, China’s low-fertility trend is no longer reversible.” In three decades, 1/3 of China’s population is predicted to be over the age of 60.

The chart below shows annual change in million persons (red line) and total child bearing population (blue columns).  From 2018 through 2033, China (with net emigration, to boot) will see an average annual decline of nearly 6 million Chinese capable of creating more Chinese (or the equivalent of losing the population of a Missouri, Wisconsin, or Maryland every year for at least the next decade and a half). –Chris Hamilton, Economica blog

Meanwhile, China’s one-child policy, and now two-child policy, has conditioned the population to shun large families. 

In a generation that grew up without siblings, a one-child mind-set is deeply entrenched. Maternity-leave policies have been expanded but some women say taking leave twice is a career impediment. An All-China Women’s Federation survey found 53% of respondents with one child didn’t want a second.

Even without birth limits, China’s economic development would have reduced fertility rates, says Martin Whyte, a Harvard University Chinese-studies expert. That has been the pattern elsewhere in the world: When incomes rise, the sizes of families tend to go down. –WSJ

If the nation drops birth policies now, says Whyte, “China will learn what many other countries have learned—that it is much more difficult to get people to have more babies” than to force them to stop having them.

Rapid Aging

In May of 2017, Moody’s cited China’s rapidly aging population as a major factor in their decision to downgrade their sovereign rating, as an explosion in elder care is expected to erode household savings and strain government coffers – jeopordizing the government’s already hefty debt load. The ratings agency predicted China’s economic growth could potentially slow to around 5% over the next five years vs. a 2017 rate of 6.9%. 

“China is really interesting and unique,” said Marie Diron, a Moody’s analyst of sovereign risk, “because it is aging so much earlier than anyone else.”

Compounding China’s problem is the fact that it has one of the lowest retirement ages in the world, at 55 on average – while Beijing has been reluctant to implement a plan to gradually raise it. 

Officials had originally indicated they would present the plan last year. It was left out of measures unveiled at the congress in March, in which Beijing said the new ministry “will actively deal with the aging of the population,” with measures to develop the elderly-care sector and health-care reform.

Past policy changes haven’t fixed the trend—not even ending the one-child policy did. Newborns rose by 1.3 million in 2016, the first year without the policy—less than half the official projection—to 17.86 million, from 2015, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. 

In 2017, births slowed to 17.23 million, well below the official forecast of more than 20 million. -WSJ

Breakin’ the law

China’s reluctance to further soften their tone on birth restrictions is also leading to friction within local communities and at the workplace. 

When Ms. Li, the Qingdao professor, refused to abort her third child, she said, her university employer accused her of selfishly putting at risk her supervisors’ careers, the school’s future and co-workers’ bonuses. A university spokeswoman didn’t respond to faxed inquiries.

With the help of local church friends, her family moved to the Philippines, where she gave birth in November. –WSJ

Other countries with shrinking workforces have tried to stave off economic disaster by raising retirement ages or relying on immigration. Singapore, for example, has very liberal immigration policies and offers a “baby bonus” as high as 10,000 Singapore dollars ($7,500) along with grants available for parents which can be used for healthcare and education. 

Japan, meanwhile, has shuffled healthy retirees back into the workforce – along with various technological aides to make up for age-related deficiencies. 

In some cases, the solution lies in technologies that help offset senior workers’ deficiencies, like the exoskeletons used by Obayashi at its construction site. The Fujisawa Aikoen nursing home about an hour outside Tokyo started leasing the “hybrid assistive limb,” or HAL, exoskeletons from maker Cyberdyne Inc. in June.

At an office-building construction site in the center of Japan’s capital, 67-year-old Kenichi Saito effortlessly stacks 44-pound boards with the ease of a man half his age.

His secret: a bendable exoskeleton hugging his waist and thighs, with sensors attached to his skin. The sensors detect when Mr. Saito’s muscles start to move and direct the machine to support his motion, cutting his load’s effective weight by 18 pounds. –WSJ (2015)

“In Hokkaido, 60-year-old potato-pickers use rubber “smart suits” making it easier to bend over. Baggage handlers at Tokyo’s Haneda airport employ similar assistance,” reports the Journal.

Back to China, President Xi Jinping has acknowledged the need to breed – stating in 2015 that China needs more births, while omitting a traditional reference to “family planning” in his party-congress report.

“I think Xi’s views about demography are clear: He considers population more as a resource than a burden,” said Huang Wenzheng, a researcher at the Center for China and Globalization, a Beijing-based independent think tank, and a co-founder of a hedge-fund firm that invests globally. “But of course he cannot easily abandon the family-planning policy because that would be a sharp turn away from his predecessors’ policies.” –WSJ

 

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Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

On April 23rd, the great independent investigative journalist, Craig Murray – a former British diplomat – headlined at his blog, “Condemned By Their Own Words”, and he posted there the translated-to-English transcript (excerpted below) to this Israeli radio Hebrew broadcast on April 21st, in which an Israeli Brigadier-General, named Fogel, explained why Israel’s troops are doing the right thing to shoot and even to kill Gazans who come (an unspecified) too close to the wall which separates Israel from Gaza:

Any person who gets close to the fence, anyone who could be a future threat to the border of the State of Israel and its residents, should bear a price for that violation. If this child or anyone else gets close to the fence in order [the soldier thinks possibly] to hide an explosive device or [to] check if there are any dead zones there or to cut the fence so someone could infiltrate the territory of the State of Israel to kill us …

Nesiel [the interviewer]: Then, then his punishment [for being suspected] is death?

Fogel: His punishment is death. As far as I’m concerned then yes, if you can only shoot him to stop him, in the leg or arm – great. But if it’s more than that then, yes, you want to check with me whose blood is thicker, ours or theirs. It is clear to you that if one such person will manage to cross the fence or hide an explosive device there …

Nesiel: But we were taught that live fire is only used when the soldiers face immediate danger. … It does not do all that well for us, those pictures that are distributed around the world.

Fogel: Look, Ron, we’re even terrible at it [at suppressing those pictures]. There’s nothing to be done, David always looks better against Goliath. And in this case, we are the Goliath. Not the David. That is entirely clear to me. … It will drag us into a war. I do not want to be on the side that gets dragged. I want to be on the side that initiates things. I do not want to wait for the moment where it finds a weak spot and attacks me there. If tomorrow morning it gets into a military base or a kibbutz and kills people there and takes prisoners of war or hostages, call it as you like, we’re in a whole new script. I want the leaders of Hamas to wake up tomorrow morning and for the last time in their life see the smiling faces of the IDF [Israel’s army]. That’s what I want to have happen. But we are dragged along. So we’re putting snipers up because we want to preserve the values we were educated by [that Israel’s soldiers are jury, judge, and even executioner, when suspecting a Gazan — Gaza is Israel’s free-fire zone].

The interviewer didn’t challenge any of that, though he didn’t like “those pictures are distributed around the world” (except, perhaps, in U.S. and UK and some of Israel’s other allies — but Israel wants all nations to block the truth). 

Murray closed by adding a very brief comment of his own:

“There is no room to doubt the evil nature of the expansionist apartheid state that Israel has now become. Nor the moral vacuity of its apologists in the western media.”

Since this was, of course, a damning statement about mainstream ‘news’ media in The West, these mainstream ‘news’ media, including Facebook, can be expected to dislike that — and they evidently do.

On April 25th Murray headlined “Blocked By Facebook and the Vulnerability of New Media”, and he reported: 

This site’s visitor numbers are currently around one third normal levels, stuck at around 20,000 unique visitors per day. The cause is not hard to find. Normally over half of our visitors arrive via Facebook. These last few days, virtually nothing has come from Facebook:

What is especially pernicious is that Facebook deliberately imposes this censorship in a secretive way. The primary mechanism when a block is imposed by Facebook is that my posts to Facebook are simply not sent into the timelines of the large majority of people who are friends or who follow. I am left to believe the post has been shared with them, but in fact it has only been shown to a tiny number. Then, if you are one of the few recipients and do see the post and share it, it will show to you on your timeline as shared, but in fact the vast majority of your own friends will also not receive it. Facebook is not doing what it is telling you it is doing – it shows you it is shared – and Facebook is deliberately concealing that fact from you.

Twitter have a similar system known as “shadow banning”. Again it is secretive and the victim is not informed. I do not appear to be shadow banned at the moment, but there has been an extremely sharp drop – by a factor of ten – in the impressions my tweets are generating.

I am among those who argue that the strength of the state and corporate media is being increasingly and happily undermined by our ability to communicate via social media. But social media has developed in such a way that the channels of communication are dominated by corporations – Facebook, Twitter and Google – which can in effect turn off the traffic to a citizen journalism site in a second. The site is not taken down, and the determined person can still navigate directly to it, but the vast bulk of the traffic is cut off. What is more this is done secretly, without your being informed, and in a manner deliberately hard to detect. The ability to simply block the avenues by which people get to see dissenting opinions, is terrifying.

Furthermore neither Facebook nor Twitter contact you when they block traffic to your site to tell you this is happening, let alone tell you why, and let alone give you a chance to counter whatever argument they make. I do not know if I am blocked by Facebook as an alleged Russian bot, or for any other reason. I do know that it appears to have happened shortly after I published the transcript of the Israeli general discussing the procedures for shooting children.

There is a widespread and coordinated operation by the major media against any independent sites which document things that the Establishment, the aristocracy, the “Deep State,” or however you call the controlling owners of the corporations that advertise in and own the media, hire their journalists and editors to block from reaching the public. This is a multifaceted but coordinated operation, of censoring-out the key truths, which are those truths that none of the controlling owners want the public to know (such as Craig Murray has now, apparently, done once too often for Facebook to continue allowing). This is how they are enabled to use the government so that it serves them, and not the public-at-large. This is, likewise, the source of the obscene inequality of wealth that results, the vast economic inequality that they all benefit from at the public’s expense. Money is power, and they have it. And they use it, against the powerless. Though the controlling owners compete amongst themselves to sell to the public, they all suppress these key truths from reaching the public; because, if they did not, then the ‘wrong’ politicians would get elected to public offices. Whereas some of the ‘right’ politicians are Republicans, and some are Democrats, they all serve the same aristocracy, just different sides of it.

Here’s another example of how this works: The CIA is a branch of the U.S. federal government that virtually only serves America’s aristocracy, which is why it lies — consciously misrepresents — in almost everything it says publicly about international relations, such as it did in 2002, when it said that Saddam Hussein still had and still was building weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. government, of which the CIA is a part, used that ‘information’ to ‘justify’ invading and occupying a nation (Iraq) which had never invaded nor even threatened to invade the United States. They’re doing the same in Syria, Libya, Ukraine, Yemen, etc. It’s key truths that are kept hidden from the public. The key truths are the ones that expose and disprove the lies that the Establishment push.

Wikipedia is an example of this. Wikipedia is edited by the CIA, not only in the sense that anyone (including you) can edit what is on Wikipedia, but also in the sense that Wikipedia itself blocks edits or changes that introduce facts and evidence which disprove some of the allegations that are made in Wikipedia articles, and that Wikipedia doesn’t tell such a person why a revision or addition to the article was rejected and will not be considered by Wikipedia: the secret people who control the articles, and the secret process by which they do it, are secrets, disclosed to no outsiders, but known to the people who control Wikipedia. The perpetrators know what the key truths are, but the public do not, because the media hide the key truths.

Furthermore, major news media that report things which aren’t so, are no longer simply burying their after-the-fact ‘corrections’ so that perhaps only 1% of the people who were deceived by an article get to see that it had been false, but now also by simply refusing to issue any ‘correction’ at all — they’re totally ignoring the reader’s right not to be deceived by that major news medium. (Most such ‘news’ media have also terminated or else severely limited their reader-comments section, because otherwise a reader-comment could slip through that disproves the given ‘news’ article, and the aristocratically controlled media’s goal is to block those truths from reaching their audience.)

The Washington Post, which made famous the accusation that non-mainstream newsmedia are fake news, is itself a leader of fake ‘news’ and was so during 2002 and early 2003 by stenographically reporting to its readership the George W. Bush administration’s falsehoods about “Saddam’s WMD” and the rightfulness for America to invade a country (Iraq) that never invaded nor even threatened to invade the United States.

The entire major media, and almost all of the ‘alternative’ media, are owned or otherwise controlled by the ruling aristocracy and censor out crucial facts that disprove allegations that the government (the ruling aristocracy) wants the public not to know. Above all, they exclude articles like the present one, which (like all articles I do) is being submitted to all of them for publication free-of-charge. So: wherever this article is not published, you know that fake ‘news’ is published. For example, that’s how America now is invading and occupying many countries — all on the basis of lying, because none of these nations invaded the United States, ever, and none is invading the United States now; America’s invasions, in recent decades, have all been blatant violations of international law.

If the American people knew this, then would we vote for the politicians who tolerate it, and who vote for it? If so, then the American public, and not only the American aristocracy, stands convicted, even though there is no force in the world that enforces international laws, except against the countries that the U.S. aristocracy wants to take over via coups or invasions. For the American public knowingly to support this outlaw aristocracy would be for it to be complicit with them in its constant and enormously destructive crimes against humanity. But the aristocracy doesn’t want to share the guilt, because then it would share the knowledge, and then the aristocracy’s enormous power would erode and maybe even collapse. Hiding the key truths is thus essential to the aristocracy. That explains the ‘news’ media.

And this explains America as the permanent-war-for-permanent-‘peace’ champion of the entire world. Of course, if international law were equitably enforced, then every U.S. President in recent decades would be and die in prison. So, obviously, only the few (and none of them are anything close to being “mainstream”) honest newsmedia will publish this article. You can web-search for this article to find out which ones they are. All the others don’t want you to know the truths that this article reports and (via its links) documents.

Is this article alleging a conspiracy? No major corporation exists that doesn’t carry out conspiracies, because that’s essential to their success. The very allegation that conspiracies don’t exist amongst the most powerful people and even within and between the most powerful organizations, is ludicrous, but the aristocracy everywhere brainwashes the public everywhere, to think that only the ‘they’ perpetrate conspiracies, the ‘we’ don’t. They all do; it’s the way that the world actually works, which is the reason why the aristocracy hide this — the most basic fact about the world. They do it in order to block the public from understanding how things actually happen. And they block the public from understanding that no mass of people conspires — ‘the Jews’ ‘the Masons’, etc. — but that only the very few people at the very top can, and do, and that they must in order to remain successful and in power. It’s called, and it is, in fact, “strategizing.” That is what a conspiracy does, anywhere: it develops and executes strategy. To keep the public dumb and misled, the hired propagandists allege the exact opposite.

So: just web-search for this article, and you will see yet more evidence that what it says is true — that it is hidden, not published, by all the ‘respectable’ news-outlets. Like most of the articles I write, it is sent to all of them as a dare — and none of them accepts the dare and publishes anything from me. This is one of the ways I know that what I write about the way that the ‘news’ media work, is true, and that what they say about the way that they work, is false. I am continually testing them, and hoping for one of them to prove me wrong, just one time. It hasn’t happened, yet.

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Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) issued a stunning and unprecedented rebuke to Palestinian leadership while speaking to US Jewish groups in the midst of the prince’s American tour last month.

MBS reportedly told the heads of Jewish organizations in a closed-door meeting in New York on March 27th that Palestinians should either accept peace proposals or “shut up,” according to Axios.

Multiple diplomatic sources, including a leaked Israeli foreign ministry cable sent from the Israeli consulate in New York, confirm the statements which shocked the audience to the point that “people literally fell off their chairs.”

The unexpected words came just as the Trump administration is reportedly finalizing its long-vaunted plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace, drafted under the leadership of Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Jason Greenblatt, and after tensions were inflamed with Trump’s official recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in December.

Axios reports the Saudi crown prince’s words as follows:

“In the last several decades the Palestinian leadership has missed one opportunity after the other and rejected all the peace proposals it was given. It is about time the Palestinians take the proposals and agree to come to the negotiations table or shut up and stop complaining.“

Since Saudi Arabia’s founding in 1932 and subsequent diplomatic embroilment in Israeli-Palestinian matters, especially after the Jewish state’s establishment in 1948, it has staunchly been on the Palestinian side (though often merely from a distance), accusing the Israelis of genocide and expansionist aggression against surrounding Arab nations. As a charter member of the Arab League it actively fought against the establishment of Israel, and also voted against the original U.N. Partition Plan for Palestine. The Saudis sent troops to fight on the allied Arab side in multiple conflicts with Israel, and the two have never had diplomatic relations. 

However, events in the region of the past few years such as the war in Syria, and related to this their common concern over Hezbollah and Iran’s growing influence, has brought the two unlikely and strange bedfellows into a closer relationship, especially in the area of intelligence sharing and possible joint covert action in pursuit of regime change in Damascus. 

This is big news. Seems to vindicate notion that Iran has reshaped priorities in the region, brought Saudi and Israel closer. Unclear when Trump plan lands, though. https://t.co/gRYnVisRTP

— Olivier Knox (@OKnox) April 29, 2018

Like Israel, MBS has lately made it clear that the kingdom’s top priority is thwarting Iran, as Axios further reports of the crown prince’s main points during the meeting with American Jewish leaders:

He made clear the Palestinian issue was not a top priority for the Saudi government or Saudi public opinion. MBS said Saudi Arabia “has much more urgent and important issues to deal with” like confronting Iran’s influence in the region.

Regardless of all his criticism of the Palestinian leadership, MBS also made clear that in order for Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to normalize relations with Israel there will have to be significant progress on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

But US-Palestinian relations are at their lowest point in many years, with the Palestinian Authority (PA) under Mahmoud Abbas currently boycotting the White House since the December 6th recognition of Jerusalem, and later plans to relocate the American Embassy there from Tel Aviv. Once the new White House peace plan is rolled out, if ever, it will most certainly be dead in the water from the moment it’s publicized. 

At the same time ongoing protests in the Gaza Strip as part of the “Great March of Return” protests have resulted in immense Palestinian casualties — more than 40 dead and thousands wounded since March 30 according to Israeli media sources — with the vast majority killed and injured as a result of live ammunition used by Israeli security forces. 

So with Gaza currently inflamed, Palestinians will no doubt see the timing of Saudi crown prince bin Salman’s words as the ultimate and final stab in the back — though the Saudis have already long been seen by Palestinians as compromised double-dealers, using their plight as a geopolitical chess piece only when convenient. 

Furthermore, the Saudis will now be perceived even more as a U.S. pawn (and thus Israeli pawn too) on the Palestine question — this as newly sworn in Secretary of State and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo flew to Saudi Arabia over the weekend in a hasty visit to cement the anti-Iran alliance while reinvigorating support for new sanctions against Iran. 

All of this will only serve to underscore Palestinians’ perception that regional and world leaders will continue to merely pay lip service to any Israeli-Palestinian peace process as Iran has now fully taken front and center stage. 

 

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Vice President Mike Pence’s Army physician, Dr. Jennifer Pena, is behind a series of salacious allegations against Ronny Jackson – President Trump’s White House physician and nominee to lead the Veterans Affairs Department, according to four administration officials who told the very connected Sara Carter.

According to four administration officials, the main allegations were brought forth by Vice President Mike Pence’s Army physician Dr. Jennifer Pena, who is assigned to Pence by the White House Medical Unit and does not work directly for the office of the Vice President. Those officials contend Pena has held a long-time grudge against Jackson because of his continuing promotions in the White House.

She began her career at the White House during the Obama administration. According to the officials, Pena, who is still active military and assigned to the White House Military Office, did not follow proper protocol to report on the allegations. Instead, she went directly to the Senate with the support of some current and former White House medical staff who were her loyalists. None of the allegations she allegedly brought forth have been substantiated. –Sara Carter

Jackson – who served under three Presidents, withdrew himself from consideration for the VA role on Thursday following bombshell allegations of being intoxicated while on the clock and improperly dispensing medication – reportedly passing out Ambien, Provigil and other prescription drugs “like they were candy.” 

President Trump responded to the allegations, telling reporters that Jackson was “one of the finest people that I have ever met.”

While Jackson has denied the claims as “completely false and fabricated,” he said he was withdrawing his name from consideration because he had become a distraction for Trump and his agenda. 

The White House had defended Jackson amid the allegations, which were detailed in a report released by ranking member Jon Tester (D-Mont.) on Wednesday. Tester and committee chairman Johnny Isackson (R-Ga.) jointly announced the postponement of Jackson’s hearing and sent a letter to the administration asking for “any and all communications” between the White House and Defense Department about “allegations” on Jackson from 2006 to the present.

Committee member Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) has said that the number of people who came forward with the allegations against Jackson that are detailed in the memo was in the double digits. Jackson allegedly wrote himself prescriptions and handed out drugs without prescriptions, including providing a “large supply” of the opioid painkiller Percocet to a White House military office staff member. Jackson also faces allegations that he drank on the job, and on one occasion “could not be reached when needed because he was passed out drunk in his hotel room,” according to the memo.

The report also said Jackson “got drunk and wrecked a government vehicle” at a Secret Service going-away party. A White House official, however, told Sara Carter that there is “no evidence or documentation of the allegations that Jackson drove drunk and wrecked a government vehicle,” nor is there any evidence that he overprescribed medication or drinking on the job. 

Jackson abdicated his role as White House physician during his nomination, he “continues to work in the White House Medical Unit,” according to Carter. 

“(Jackson) is disgusted that the accusations have carried so much weight with nothing to back them up,” said a senior Trump administration official, who knows Jackson. “This is a vendetta in particular and these false allegations were given to members of Congress then leaked to the press. There is absolutely no merit to any of these stories…he’s disgusted with the whole thing.”

“This is like something like out of the show Madame Secretary,” said a former Bush Administration official, who knows Jackson and served with him in the White House. The official referenced the American political television series starring Tea Leone, which shows the seedy side of Washington D.C. and the backstabbing tactics of those trying to rise to the top. –Sara Carter

“Dr. Jackson was always professional and kind,” said the former Bush official. “I never heard of any of these allegations against him until Pena brought them to Congress. I never saw any evidence of this. It’s tragic what’s happened to him.”

Jackson has held numerous security clearances – and never had a disparaging report from the FBI, according to White House officials. Such clearances require investigators to do a deep dig which can last for months; interviewing friends, family, former employers, neighbors, co-workers and even old friends. 

The White House on Friday said officials conducted a thorough review of presidential Jackson’s vehicle records. They only found three minor incidents but there was no evidence supporting a document released by Senate Democrats this week that he “wrecked” a car after drinking at a Secret Service going-away party. –SC

Secret Service has just informed me that Senator Jon Tester’s statements on Admiral Jackson are not true. There were no such findings. A horrible thing that we in D.C. must live with, just like phony Russian Collusion. Tester should lose race in Montana. Very dishonest and sick!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 28, 2018

The Secret Service released an official statement denying that its agents had to intervene during an overseas trip due to Jackson being intoxicated and pounding on a door which would have disturbed then-President Obama. 

Sen. Tester even admitted that he reviewed the FBI files and there was no derogatory information in there about Jackson but he still spread malicious rumors,” said a current Administration official.  “Certainly we would never nominate anybody who had derogatory information. Pena has had a long-standing feud with doctor Jackson…she’s very jealous that he’s been consistently promoted. This isn’t about being a whistleblower – there are other procedures for that. She went up to the hill and she spoke with approximately twenty-five Democrats…she’s a holdover in the White House and didn’t want Jackson to be nominated.”

Allegations made by Senator Jon Tester against Admiral/Doctor Ron Jackson are proving false. The Secret Service is unable to confirm (in fact they deny) any of the phony Democrat charges which have absolutely devastated the wonderful Jackson family. Tester should resign. The…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 28, 2018

….great people of Montana will not stand for this kind of slander when talking of a great human being. Admiral Jackson is the kind of man that those in Montana would most respect and admire, and now, for no reason whatsoever, his reputation has been shattered. Not fair, Tester!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 28, 2018

 

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On Saturday, the world’s first floating nuclear power unit (FPU) dubbed ‘Academik Lomonosov’ departed from the region of Baltiyskiy Zavod in St. Petersburg, towed by two deep-sea tugboats.

The ‘Academik Lomonosov,’ a massive barge containing floating nuclear reactors, leaves St. Petersburg over the weekend. (Source: Anton Vaganov/TASS) 

A-News captures video of the departure

A floating nuclear power plant made by Russia headed out for its first sea voyage on Saturday. The floating plant, the academic lomonosov will provide power for a port town and for oil rigs. pic.twitter.com/Eo0uBjVfht

— ANews (@anewscomtr) April 28, 2018

Russia’s first floating nuclear power plant has two KLT-40S reactor units that collectively generate 70 MW of energy. The tugs are currently underway — towing the vessel through the Baltic Sea to a port in northwestern Russia called Murmansk, where its reactors will be loaded with nuclear fuel.

According to the company that manufactured the floating power plant, state-owned Rosatom Corporation, Deputy Head of the Directorate for the Floating NPP Construction and Operation Dmitriy Alekseenko said in a press release that towing the vessel will occur in two stages: first from St. Petersburg to Murmansk, and then from Murmansk to Pevek.

“At the first stage, the FPU with no nuclear fuel on board will be towed from the territory of Baltiyskiy Zavod to the landing of Atomflot FSUE in Murmansk. Then, at the second stage (roughly in the summer of 2019) it will be sent from Murmansk to the seaport of Pevek, loaded with nuclear fuel and with the crew on board,” Alekseenko said.

After ‘Akademik Lomonosov’ is towed to Murmansk, “nuclear fuel will be loaded into the reactor, and it will be physically started-up in Murmansk this autumn,” said Rosatom’s press release.

Rosatom said the second leg of the journey, from Murmansk to Pevek, will begin in the second half of 2019. The vessel is expected to be towed “along the Northern Sea Route to the work site, unloaded at the mooring berth, and connected to the coastal infrastructure in Pevek,” added the press release.

Pevek is a small Arctic port town and the governmental center of Chaunsky District in Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia, located on Chaunskaya Bay.

Once the floating nuclear power plant is moored and connected to the coastal infrastructure in Pevek, the nuclear reactors aboard will be used to power 100,000 homes in the region, a desalination plant, and critical energy infrastructure assets. Rosatom said the floating power plant “will replace the Bilibino nuclear power plant and Chaunskaya TPP that are technologically outdated,” and become the most northerly nuclear facility in the world.

However, the floating nuclear power plant has been extensively criticized by antipollutionist — Greenpeace has called it a “floating Chernobyl.”

“Nuclear reactors bobbing around the Arctic Ocean will pose a shockingly obvious threat to a fragile environment, which is already under enormous pressure from climate change,” Greenpeace nuclear expert Jan Haverkamp said in a statement.

“The floating nuclear power plants will typically be put to use near coastlines and shallow water … contrary to claims regarding safety, the flat-bottomed hull and the floating nuclear power plant’s lack of self-propulsion makes it particularly vulnerable to tsunamis and cyclones.”  

Meanwhile, Rosatom states  the vessel meets all requirements from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and “does not pose any threat to the environment.”

“The FNPP is designed with the great margin of safety that exceeds all possible threats and makes nuclear reactors invincible for tsunamis and other natural disasters. In addition, the nuclear processes at the floating power unit meet all requirements of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and do not pose any threat to the environment.”

Do you want to know one of the most probable reasons why Russia would want a floating power plant in the Arctic? 

Speaking to reporters in 2017 after a conference with Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that Russia’s proposal to jointly explore the Northern Sea Route was “a great idea,” and that “China welcomes this idea and supports efforts with partners in the region to develop a ‘Silk Road on ice’.”

The Answer:  Provide the needed energy to built infrastructure for the ‘Silk Road on ice.’ 

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Authored by Tom Luongo,

Elections are governed by the middle-aged, political movements are sustained by youth. It’s no secret that older folks vote in higher proportions than younger. They simply have the most at stake in any election as changes in policy, usually taxes, affect them most.

But, the energy which sustains a political party comes from how well it can mobilize the youth.  And for two generations the youth in America sustained the Democrats through their appeals to emotion and ‘fairness’ through the lens of cultural Marxism and democratic socialism.

It doesn’t hurt that the institutions of education and media have been completely taken over by these ideologies to the point where we find ourselves today.  But, like all things that swing too far in one direction the counter trend begins to take hold.

So, color me not shocked when I see the results of a new poll that says Millennials are souring on the Democratic Party.  I knew they would and said so back in October of 2016 in an article called The Authenticity Gap.

But the big problem for Hillary is those [Bernie] millennials will not turn out for her.

This is a generation more aware of how screwed they are than mine was.  And while their political identity is in flux– reared on diet of Comedy Central snark as a coping mechanism for the lying — they have a near obsession with natural things – real fiber clothing, lumberjack fashion, farm-to-table food choices, etc.

They’ve turned their Masters of Social Justice into Ph.D’s in Cocktails, Cappuccinos and Craft Beers… and bless their hearts.  I can finally get a good whiskey sour when I visit my friends in South Florida.

At least now some of them are entrepreneurs.

Their cultural identity is one big cry for authenticity in a sea of smarm.Hillary’s authenticity gap is simply too big for many millennials to square with that value system.

Eighteen months later after Hillary’s historic rebuke it’s morphing into a general disdain for the reaction to it.  Millennial voters are moving away from Democrats in numbers that can only be termed horrific.

From the story at Reuters:

The online survey of more than 16,000 registered voters ages 18 to 34 shows their support for Democrats over Republicans for Congress slipped by about 9 percentage points over the past two years, to 46 percent overall. And they increasingly say the Republican Party is a better steward of the economy.

Although nearly two of three young voters polled said they do not like Republican President Donald Trump, their distaste for him does not necessarily extend to all Republicans or translate directly into votes for Democratic congressional candidates.

The Democrats need the Millennials.  They are moving out of the youth vote and into the Middle Aged voting block.  The Homeland generation (as termed by Strauss and Howe of Fourthturning.com) or Generation Z will only further this trend as the Artist generational archetype.

The Millennials are the generation that will build the next version of society.  Their rejection of the Democrats while not embracing Trump or necessarily the Republicans points towards a different political identity which the Democrats have not figured out or have shown any willingness to counter.

Now with Kanye West trying to blow apart the co-dependent relationship between black voters and the DNC oligarchy, this country is ripe for a complete realignment of the political power structure.

This is not to say that the Libertarians or Greens will somehow swoop in to collect these disaffected Millennials.  No.  I think both parties are terminally compromised by DNC and RNC operatives and money to see them capitalize on this transition state.

I remember full well just how strongly the youth vote was energized for Ron Paul’s runs for president in 2008 and 2012 were.  He, smartly, encouraged them and made the point over and over that his movement wasn’t about him it was about the ideas of liberty and a new way to look at our politics.

It wasn’t enough to win him the presidency, and more’s the pity, but it set the stage for what we saw in 2016 and what we’re continuing to see today.  Trump is the current beneficiary of the flux we find ourselves in.  The Millennials and minorities the Democrats have taken for granted and mis-used if not outright abused for the past generation will not turn out for mid-term elections.

The history of voting in this country is quite clear on this.

So, whatever Blue Wave the DNC thinks its coming it’s not happening in 2018 if the fund-raising numbers are any indication, which are, frankly, terrible.  And if it doesn’t happen in 2018 and the pillars of the Democratic Party — Clinton, Obama, etc. — go to jail for attempting to frame a sitting president then it won’t happen in 2020 and beyond.

The Democrats are facing the kind of terminal loss of confidence that destroys political parties and the ideologies which back them.  It couldn’t happen to a nicer group of oligarchs.

*  *  *

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