Category: zerohedge

Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

During Tuesday’s presidential debate, former vice-president Biden attempted to paint Donald Trump as the bad-on-crime candidate when he claimed that crime had gone done down during the Obama administration, but increased during Trump’s term.

Whether or not this is a plausible claim depends on how one looks at the data. And given that law enforcement and criminal prosecutions for street crime are generally a state and local matter, it’s unclear why any president ought to be awarded blame or plaudits for short term trends that occur during his administration.

Overall, however, it does look like homicides – which tend to be a good indicator of crime trends over all – are indeed rising this year. While many factors are likely at play, we may be seeing yet another side effect of the stay-at-home orders and resulting social fragmentation that have come to be part of the landscape of 2020. As workplaces were closed down, joblessness rose, and community organizations were shuttered, city and state governments may have been paving the way for more social conflict and crime.

Homicide in 2019

In assessing the larger context, we can turn to this week’s new report released by the FBI on 2019’s crime and homicides, and we have partial data from 2020 as well.

There is no doubt that 2019’s homicides were up slightly from where they were six years earlier. Back in 2014, homicides in the United States hit a 51-year low, falling to 4.4 victims per 100,000 residents. That is, homicides that year fell to the lowest rate seen since the post-war days when homicides were exceptionally low, and at some of the lowest rates seen since the eighteenth century.

Since then, homicide rates have risen, but have remained well below the high rates the nation experienced from the 1970s into the 1990s.

Nationwide, from 2018 to 2019, the homicide rate remained unchanged at 5.0 victims per 100,000 population. (That’s only about half the size of the homicide rates we saw during the late seventies and early nineties when homicides hovered around 10 per 100,000.)

But homicides have certainly not been evenly distributed. Total homicides in recent years were largely driven by high levels in a relatively small number of big cities like Baltimore, Memphis, and Chicago.

Nonetheless, homicide rates did increase from 2018 to 2019 in 24 states. Statewide homicide rates were unchanged in 7 states, and rates fell in 19 states.

As we’ve seen in similar analyses in the past, New England, the Pacific Northwest, and northern parts of the Midwest tend to report the lowest homicide rates. In 2019, the lowest homicide rates were found in Maine, Vermont, South Dakota, and Iowa. The highest rates were found in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alaska.

What Is the Trend in 2020?

When we begin to look at what data we have for 2020, it looks like the trend is upward. According to the Wall Street Journal the nation’s largest cities are seeing a lot more homicide in 2020 than in recent years:

A sharp rise in homicides this year is hitting large U.S. cities across the country, signaling a new public-safety risk unleashed during the coronavirus pandemic , and amid recession and a national backlash against police tactics.

A Wall Street Journal analysis of crime statistics among the nation’s 50 largest cities found that reported homicides were up 24% so far this year, to 3,612. Shootings and gun violence also rose, even though many other violent crimes such as robbery fell.

Some cities with long-running crime problems saw their numbers rise, including Philadelphia, Detroit and Memphis, Tenn. Chicago, the worst-hit, has tallied more than one of every eight homicides.

Less-violent places have been struck as well, such as Omaha, Neb., and Phoenix. In all, 36 of the 50 cities studied saw homicide rise at double-digit rates, representing all regions of the country.

Among these cities, perhaps the most discussed is Chicago which has indeed shown a sizable increase in 2020 over the previous year. According to The Atlantic, a look at recent homicide data “shows this year’s rate (the red line) rising above the five-year baseline (the gray line and shading) at several points throughout the year.”

Note that homicides began to rise in the wake of the lockdowns, but before the riots and protests. Trends similar to Chicago’s don’t show up in all other cities. But the general trend in big cities is clear.

But what is the cause? When it comes to homicide trends, it’s nearly impossible to prove any one thing is responsible. Criminologists and historians have been debating what drives homicide trends for more than a century.

But given that 2019 was so relatively uneventful in terms of homicide growth, it does appear unlikely that government-imposed stay-at-home orders, business closures, and church closures have played no role at all in rising homicides. Yes, other factors are also at work. The unemployment resulting from business closures—not wholly attributable to forced lockdowns—is likely a factor. It is also likely that the civil unrest connected to anti-police protests and riots have played a part. As suggested in the research of criminologist Randolph Roth, homicides tend to increase as perceptions of the state’s legitimacy go into decline.1

However, as the Wall Street Journal notes:

Institutions that keep city communities safe have been destabilized by lockdown and protests against police. Lockdowns and recession also mean tensions are running high and streets have been emptied of eyes and ears on their communities. Some attribute the rise to an increase in gang violence.

Homicides … are up because violent criminals have been emboldened by the sidelining of police, courts, schools, churches and an array of other social institutions by the reckoning with police and the pandemic, say analysts and law-enforcement officials in several cities.

Schools let out young adults in March because of the pandemic and after-school activities largely stopped. Churches and other social institutions were restrained for the sake of social distancing.

“Gangs are built around structure and lack thereof,” said Jeff La Blue, a spokesman for the Fresno police department. “With schools being closed and a lot of different businesses being closed, the people that normally would have been involved in positive structures in their lives aren’t there.”

The Atlantic also suggests a role for the pandemic response among other proposed causes such as rising gun sales and rising unemployment.

A Side Effect of Lockdowns?

When it comes to lockdowns as a source of conflict, the problem lies in the fact that governments have forced the closure of the very institutions which do much to defuse violence within communities. Indeed, the connection between these social institutions and violence has been suggested for decades by sociologists.

Known as “third places,” these institutions play a key told in encouraging peaceful human interactions. As noted by researchers at the Brookings Institutions:

Third places have a number of important community-building attributes. Depending on their location, social classes and backgrounds can be “leveled-out” in ways that are unfortunately rare these days, with people feeling they are treated as social equals. Informal conversation is the main activity and most important linking function. One commentator refers to third places as the “living room” of society.

Without these institutions, people living on the edges of criminality are more likely to feel alienated and lacking in community support of any kind. Violence often follows. During the worst of the lockdowns, city residents faced closed schools, closed churches, and closed businesses. As the Journal notes, under these conditions, violent gangs may offer a much-needed refuge from government-imposed isolation. Even with stay-at-home orders lifted, governments continue to impose restrictions on social institutions like churches and other meeting places and threaten them with police harassment in case of non-compliance. Yet, these third places cannot simply be shut down—or their services drastically reduced—without creating the potential for greater conflict and antisocial behavior.

It is likely folly to try to pin rising homicides in 2020 on any single cause, but we should not be shocked that a rising homicide rate is accompanying the so-called “new normal.” After all, the government-imposed shutdowns have done far more than shut down community organizations. They have thrown millions of Americans out of work – with more than ten million former workers currently collecting unemployment benefits – and have set the stage for a rising tide of evictions and bankruptcies. History has shown that economic malaise does not necessarily come with rising crime. But unemployment rarely helps matters.

Always glowing in her Schiff-protected bubble of virtue-signaling safety, former Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch told Congress that she knew little about Burisma Holdings and the long-running corruption probe against the company now so infamously linked to Joe Biden’s son Hunter, specifically testifying under oath, “It just wasn’t a big deal.”

Boom pic.twitter.com/eDtljChtMs

— Quoth the Raven (@QTRResearch) November 15, 2019

Well, according to new memos belatedly released to Just the News’s John Solomon, under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the State Department, Yovanovitch wrote top officials in Washington that she feared Burisma Holdings had made a second bribe to Ukrainian officials around the time a corruption probe against Hunter Biden’s natural gas employer was closed before Donald Trump took office.

As Just The News’ John Solomon writes:

Then-Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch’s concerns were first raised in a Ukrainian news story about a Russian-backed fugitive lawmaker in Ukraine, who alleged Burisma had dumped low-priced natural gas into the market for officials near Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to buy low and sell high, making a bribe disguised as a profit.

The scheme was confirmed by U.S. officials before Yovanovitch alerted the top State official for Ukraine and Russia policy in Washington at the time, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, the memos show.

“There are accusations that Burisma allegedly had a subsidiary dump natural gas as a way to pay bribes,” Yovanovitch wrote Nuland on Dec. 29, 2016, noting the story “mentions that Hunter Biden and former Polish President Kwasniewski are on the Burisma Board.”

The alert was the second in two years in which the embassy alleged Burisma had paid a bribe while Vice President Joe Biden’s son served on its board.

Back in February 2015, then-embassy official George Kent reported to the U.S. Justice Department evidence that Burisma had made a $7 million cash bribe to Ukrainian prosecutors before those prosecutors killed a separate corruption probe in the United Kingdom by failing to produce required evidence.

Read more here…

This was after Trump’s election win and just 22 days before President Obama left office.

Of course, this is all in addition to previous memos that revealed Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma conducted an aggressive lobbying campaign directed at the US State Department throughout the 2016 US election, with the goal of pressuring the Obama administration to lean on Kiev to drop corruption allegations.

You decide: The Vice-President’s son on the board of a foreign energy entity that was implicate not once, but twice, in alleged bribery schemes? Big deal? or “not a big deal”?

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Anyone claiming they can project the trajectory of the U.S. and global economy is deluding themselves.

Normalcy depends entirely on everyday life being predictable. To be predictable, life must be stable, which means that there is a high level of certainty in every aspect of life.

The world has entered an era of profound uncertainty, an uncertainty that will only increase as self-reinforcing feedbacks strengthen disrupting dynamics and perverse incentives drive unintended consequences.

It may be more accurate to say that we’ve entered the Empire of Uncertainty, an empire of ambiguous borders and treacherous topology.

A key driver of uncertainty is the Covid-19 virus, which is a slippery little beast. Nine months after its emergence on the world stage, discoveries are still being made about its fundamental nature.

Humans crave certainty, as ambiguity and uncertainty create unbearable anxiety. This desire to return to a predictable “normal” drives us to grasp onto whatever is being touted as a certainty: a cure, a vaccine, a fiscal policy to restore the “Old Normal” economy, etc.

But none of these proposed certainties is actually certain, and those touting these certainties are non-experts who latch onto an “expert” opinion that resolves their need for certainty and predictability.

What we want, of course, is a return to old certainties that we’re familiar with. In the context of pandemic, the model most people are working from is a conventional flu pandemic: a certain number of people get the virus and become ill, a certain number of then die, and those who survive resume their old life.

But there is mounting evidence that Covid-19 doesn’t follow this neat pattern of “the dead are gone and everyone else picks up where they left off.” Counting the dead as the key statistic completely ignores the long-term consequences of Covid-19 that include permanent organ damage.

How many people who get the virus, even asymptomatically, and who end up with damaged heart muscles or other permanent organ damage is unknown. Why is it unknown? Because the system is set up to only count the living and the dead. Chronic disability among the survivors isn’t even being monitored, much less counted.

The longer-term consequences of the pandemic are not even being tracked on any comprehensive scale. Please read these articles and then ask: is there any plausible foundation for certainty?

New Insights into How COVID-19 Causes Heart Damage

COVID-vaccine results are on the way — and scientists’ concerns are growing Researchers warn that vaccines could stumble on safety trials, be fast-tracked because of politics or fail to meet the public’s expectations.

Opinion: Beware of covid-19 vaccine trials designed to succeed from the start

As Their Numbers Grow, COVID-19 “Long Haulers” Stump Experts (via Cheryl A.)

A significant number of otherwise healthy people who get the virus suffer long-term organ damage. Another set of people suffer disabling exhaustion, brain fog, etc. for months on end. Are there no economic or behavioral consequences to these lingering effects?

Of course there are, and that is a source of great uncertainty that won’t be dissipated for months or even years, as these long-termconsequences aren’t even being tracked. We have essentially no comprehensive data on long-term consequences because none is being collected on a systemic, rigorous basis.

Various piecemeal studies of the people who recovered from Covid have found that between 10% and 50% remain debilitated months later by a range of conditions that cannot be explained by a single cause or mechanism.

Italy’s Bergamo is calling back coronavirus survivors. About half say they haven’t fully recovered.

Persistent Symptoms in Patients After Acute COVID-19 (Italy)

COVID-19 Can Wreck Your Heart, Even if You Haven’t Had Any Symptoms (scientificamerican.com) A growing body of research is raising concerns about the cardiac consequences of the coronavirus

High odds severe Covid-19 can lead to kidney injury or failure, medical studies reveal

Thousands of New York ‘Long Haulers’ Struggle with COVID-19 Months After Diagnosis

Then there’s the inherent uncertainties of vaccines. There is as yet no evidence to support the claim that a 100% effective vaccine is just around the corner–or even possible.

Let’s say whatever vaccine (or vaccines) are 80% effective for X length of time in 80% of the patients. That means 20% of those getting the vaccine could still get the virus. And of those who are protected by the vaccine, 20% will not know that the effectiveness ended long before the claimed duration of the vaccine’s effectiveness.

A significant number of people will refuse to take the vaccine, and should one person who took the vaccine die, this number will increase.

As non-experts, we’re quick to conclude a cure is certain. We assume it will be like all the other miracle drugs of the past 50 years. But it’s increasingly evident that there is no cure for Covid-19 that eliminates 100% of all long-term consequences.

The point here is that the patient surviving doesn’t mean there is certainty that they won’t suffer long-term consequences of the infection.

There is also no certainty that those who get the virus cannot get re-infected later. Maybe the number of people who will get it again is small, but what this percentage might be is completely unknown.

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously differentiated between “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns.” The vast majority of the media, mainstream and alternative, is working on the assumption that we know all the unknowns, and it’s just a matter of time before it all gets sorted and we return to normal.

I am focused more on the unknown unknowns, of which I see an entire universe of possibilities. The evidence of long-term chronic consewuences strongly suggests that Covid-19 is not just another standard-issue flu. It’s increasingly apparent that it’s a very slippery snippet of RNA, and everyone assuming it’s just another flu virus and certainty will soon return will be proven wrong.

Meanwhile, other uncertainties loom large. The U.S. has fractured into warring camps very reminiscient of the final days of the Western Roman Empire. Rather than unite to save the core, factions are expending their last reserves on in-fighting and internal jockeying for the rapidly diminishing power of the central state.

Those concerned about a potential constitutional crisis or recount in the presidential election are merely extending what’s already visible: fractures have widened to the point there’s no middle ground left.

The emergency financial policies that were intended to restore normalcy–printing $3 trillion and throwing it around as recklessly as possible to bail out all the speculators who’d left the U.S. economy fragile and vulnerable to any shock–these policies are no longer working, and claiming they are working just fine only deepens the future waves of volatility.

Anyone claiming they can project the trajectory of the U.S. and global economy is deluding themselves. Where the economy will be in 9 months or 18 months, never mind five years from now, is not a known unknown, it’s an unknown unknown.

There are no roads out of the the Empire of Uncertainty nor are there any safe havens of absolute certainty within its shifting borders.

It takes a different kind of mindset to become comfortable with the permanent ambiguity and uncertainty of unknown unknowns playing out, very likely in increasingly chaotic waves of increasing amplitude. Letting go of certainty is difficult because it’s so comforting. But there is another kind of comfort that comes with embracing uncertainty as a state of being and a state of awareness.

*  *  *

My recent books:

A Hacker’s Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook coming soon) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($5 (Kindle), $10 (print), ( audiobook): Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake $1.29 (Kindle), $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 (Kindle), $15 (print) Read the first section for free (PDF).

*  *  *

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A disturbing number of Americans feel that political violence is justified if the other side wins the election, according to Politico – which says that they’ve been tracking trends in public opinion that “provide strong grounds for concern.”

“Our research, which we’re reporting here for the first time, shows an upswing in the past few months in the number of Americans—both Democrats and Republicans—who said they think violence would be justified if their side loses the upcoming presidential election,” reads a Thursday article.

The outlet noticed an uptick in the number of respondents who say they would condone violence committed by members of their own political party – which coincided with a willingness by both Democrats and Republicans to justify violence as a means to achieve political goals.

Here’s what Politico found (emphasis ours):

Notably, those at the ideological extremes are more likely to condone violence, with ‘very liberal’ respondents over 50% more likely than ‘very conservative’ individuals to do so.

Politico‘s takeaway is that about 20% of Americans with strong political affiliation are “quite willing to endorse violence” if the other side wins the presidency – and that both history and social psychology warn us to take these threats very seriously. The outlet compares the rising discontent to armed street mobilizations in the 1920s and 1930s in Europe, when violent clashes between rival partisans “ravaged fragile democratic cultures, bullied and marginalized moderate forces, and gave rising autocrats an excuse to seize emergency powers.”

That said, just because someone approves of partisan violence doesn’t mean they’re ready to pick up a gun. Still, “even a shift of 1 percent in these surveys would represent the views of over a million Americans.”

Furthermore, two of us have found in our research that violent events tend to increase public approval of political violence—potentially creating a vicious cycle even if violence is sparked in only a few spots.

Viewed in this light, the events of this summer are especially worrying. Competing protesters from the right and left have clashed violently in Portland, Ore.; Kenosha, Wis.; and Louisville. Left-wing extremists have repeatedly laid siege to federal buildings in Portland, and on several occasions, armed right-wing protesters entered the State Capitol in Michigan. –Politico

Of course, Antifa might not be bringing their best.

This is Antifa. pic.twitter.com/hrDaSRvkqM

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) October 1, 2020

And may want to work on ducking.

Read the rest of the report here.

Authored by Jeff Deist via The Mises Institute,

When Dr. Ron Paul suffered a health scare during his live Liberty Report show last Friday, I was perhaps less worried than most. His remarkable vitality, vigor, and energy are well known to those around him, along with his penchant for exercise, clean living, and light eating. Having known him thirty years, I simply had no recollection of him ever being sick or out of commission. This is a man who had never missed a day of work or an event, at least in my memory. In my mind he was simply always there, a fixed feature of life. So my immediate reaction was to think he would be fine.

As it turns out, he is fine. Even unstoppable.

In Dr. Paul’s congressional office during the early 2000s, his mostly Generation X staff joked about how Ron would bury us someday despite being several decades older. Now that we’re in our fifties, the joke hits a bit closer to home! But we were all familiar with his relentless nature. His pace was legendary: waking early, printing articles to read, gathering newspapers, putting together his busy schedule for the day, and preparing for votes.

It was always tough to keep up with him, literally, legging around Capitol Hill to hearings, media hits, or finalizing details for one of his infamous “special order” speeches at the end of the congressional day. Ron bid for our office in the Cannon House building primarily for its proximity to the Capitol building itself, so he’d spend the least amount of time “commuting.” When he needed knee replacements there was no question about doing both the same day, over the congressional Christmas break. Always true to form, he was up and about almost immediately and eschewed even over-the-counter pain medication.

He was always moving, and absolutely hated to wait. His years as a busy obstetrician, with babies arriving at all hours of the night in far-flung rural Texas hospitals, certainly served him well when it came to the less serious job of Congress—with its late night votes and sudden schedule changes. Unlike medicine, however, the work of Congress is defined by motion rather than action. And unlike many of his colleagues, when the votes ended Ron headed back to his nondescript condo in Alexandria. There were no DC steakhouse dinners with lobbyists, no Capitol Hill bars and nightlife, and certainly none of the fleshy graft which ensnared so many pols over the years.

Dr. Paul’s energy spills over into his life at home, where he is always busy walking, biking, swimming, tending to his prized tomatoes, and hosting a steady stream of family and guests. His “retirement” from Congress at the end of 2012 finds him producing five live Liberty Report episodes every week with his cohost, Daniel McAdams, along with writing, public speaking, and media appearances. But he is much happier without the dreadful weekly slog back and forth to Bush Intercontinental Airport on the far side of Houston, along with the infuriating kabuki theater known as TSA. His family life is no doubt much improved.

Speaking of family, Ron and his wife, Carol (née Wells), stand atop a pyramid of children (five, with three MDs), nineteen grandchildren, and ten (for now) great-grandchildren. The Pauls have been married sixty-three years; their children have been married 167 years combined! Family, more than anything he has done in medicine or politics, will be Dr. Paul’s lasting legacy.

But there were a lot of nights and weekends away from that family over the years, starting all the way back in the 1970s. So a bit of history is in order. Today happens to be the birthday of Ludwig von Mises, who played a brief but important role in the Ron Paul story. Nixon cut off gold convertibility by foreign central banks in 1971, and the alarmed young obstetrician began reading everything he could on money and inflation—including Mises. A year later, Dr. Paul managed to get away from his busy medical practice for a day to hear the great man speak at the nearby University of Houston. That talk, titled “Why Socialism Always Fails” (listen here!), made a deep impression on Ron. He knew he had to do something.

That “something” took form in his decision to run for Congress in 1974. And in a very real sense Dr. Paul is the only Misesian ever to serve in Congress. 

His first stint in the US House only deepened his concerns about the monetary system, and in 1984 he took the gambit of giving up his seat to run against Phil Gramm for US Senate. Gramm prevailed, but Ron returned home to his medical practice determined to remain active. He became involved in the precious metals community, began building contacts, and ultimately became the Libertarian Party candidate for president in 1988. 

Those involved with that presidential campaign, including Lew Rockwell and the late Kent Snyder, can tell you it was no luxurious affair. With no internet, mobile phones, email, or social media, campaign events were hit or miss. Local newsletters and bulletin boards were the only source of information, and media appearances were distinctly “earned” in those days. Often a supporter in a beat-up car was the only campaign contact in any city, hopefully there to meet Ron after another cheap Southwest flight. Small groups of twenty or thirty people would gather at someone’s home or a local diner, hear Ron speak, and pass the hat for travel funds. It was a shoestring of a campaign, and hardly energizing or optimistic. But Ron persevered, knowing his efforts would bear fruit someday.

So the “famous” Ron Paul of 2012—who spoke to five thousand students at Berkeley, raised $30 million, and appeared in CNN debates—first spent years away from his family and his medical practice building up his reputation. 

His return to the House of Representatives in the 1990s was both helped and hindered by his identification as a libertarian. His extensive contacts and earlier time in Congress gave him a fundraising base and name recognition, but also earned him the ire of the GOP. Upon informing Republican leaders of his intention to run for Congress again, and suggesting he could win the south Texas seat from a sitting Democrat, the party swung into action against him. His by then well-known antiwar and anti-Fed views alarmed them, and his departure from the party in 1988 angered them. So Newt Gingrich, the powerful speaker of the House, convinced that Democrat (Greg Laughlin) to switch parties by promising him a seat on the powerful Ways and Means Committee.

Dr. Paul thus found himself in a primary race against the sitting congressman he intended to face in the general election. But Ron knew the district, and campaigned effectively against the outsiders trying to dictate who would hold the seat—especially Newt Gingrich, who blundered by flying to Texas for a Laughlin event. Meanwhile, then governor George W. Bush and his chief of staff Karl Rove were working behind the scenes to help Laughlin as well, but to no avail. When Ron won the primary, they called him over to the statehouse in Austin to offer both their surprise and their congratulations.

His Democratic opponent in the general election, a trial lawyer named Charles “Lefty” Morris, attempted to paint Ron’s position on the drug war as irresponsible and crazy. But Ron’s campaign responded with an ad showing the mild-mannered doctor in his medical coat, the down-to-earth trusted physician who had delivered thousands of babies across the congressional district. His personal reputation for sobriety, as a family man deeply involved in his community, blunted the political hits—which is of course an important lesson in itself.

But even winning the general election in 1996 did not endear the GOP to Dr. Paul. Congressional leaders took the almost unprecedented step of disregarding his earlier time in Congress for purposes of seniority. Undaunted, Ron requested and received a seat on the Banking committee, considered a boring backwater. Little did they know the Enron scandal and the Arthur Andersen collapse a few years later would make the newly christened “Financial Services” Committee one of the most powerful and sought after. (Why? Remember the Sarbanes-Oxley bill regulating public companies, and all the lobbying surrounding it? Imagine the post-congressional career riches!) And little did they know that the Greenspan-Bernanke economy would implode about a decade later, making monetary policy a hot issue and presenting Dr. Paul with numerous chances to grill both men at committee hearings. 

Ultimately, he was awarded his delayed but rightful chairmanship of an important monetary policy subcommittee in 2010. Not surprisingly, Ron immediately turned the opportunity into a teachable moment—inviting Austrian economists as witnesses and luncheon speakers, and creating a truly intellectual atmosphere for interested members and staffers who had started to question the status quo.

It was a brief but glorious time, when Mises finally had a voice in Congress. 

Dr. Paul’s other committee, Foreign Affairs, dovetailed perfectly with his warnings about monetary policy. Ron was able to make the connection between central banking and war finance, and also press Congress for a full-fledged declaration of war before invading Iraq in 2003. Here he built the foundation for a crossover antiwar coalition, and gave his most impassioned arguments against war, the ultimate form of expansionary state power. It was here he opposed American quagmires in the Middle East, setting the stage for his 2008 and 2012 campaigns. And it was in the Foreign Affairs Committee that he cemented his reputation as the greatest peace advocate in Congress for decades.

Despite his troubles with congressional leaders, Dr. Paul had many personal friends in Congress. He was well-liked and respected. His great friend, the late Walter Jones, stands out as someone who took Ron’s antiwar message to heart and changed his position. Jones’s district contained the huge Army base Ft. Bragg, and in part due to Ron’s influence, he came out strongly against the war in Iraq. He attended many military funerals and comforted many spouses, in some part thanks to the humility he saw in Ron. The great Jimmy Duncan of Tennessee also was a close friend, talking to Ron about reading antiwar.com articles by “Jus-tin Ray-mon-duh” in his distinct Southern drawl. Spencer Bachus of Alabama, chair of the Financial Services Committee during the crash of ’07, told the entire House Republican caucus that “Ron Paul was right” in his predictions of housing and equity bubbles. Barney Franks of Massachusetts was always cordial and ready to collaborate, as was the great peace advocate Dennis Kucinich of Ohio.

The outpouring of love and affection shown to Dr. Paul last week after his incident shows the degree to which his revolution lives on. Ideas matter, but they are worthless without good people to advance and personify them. Dr. Paul is loved because he is genuine, a quality in short supply today. A quality which cannot be bought, borrowed, summoned, or faked. It’s a quality our dangerously politicized country needs, in spades.

Ron Paul seems unstoppable, but of course no one is. He gave us, and continues to give us, a genuine alternative vision for a nonpolitical world.

But who will take his place?

The virus-induced economic downturn has triggered another kind of emergency that is unleashing food insecurity for millions of Americans. Food banks across the country have reported skyrocketing demand this year as widespread unemployment has crushed low-income households. 

According to a new report published by the Community FoodBank of New Jersey (CFBNJ), titled “COVID-19’s Impact on Food Insecurity in New Jersey,” statistical projections from Feeding America were used to anticipate more than one million New Jerseyans could suffer food insecurity this year. 

CFBNJ found residents of the Mid-Atlantic state who have limited access to food is expected to surge by more than 50% by the end of the year because of the unrelenting economic downturn. Statewide, people who experienced food insecurity could total 1.2 million, or about 13.5% of the state’s population. 

CFBNJ is the state’s most prominent food bank, is warning about a hunger crisis forming in the state, which has surpassed the national average and neighboring states, including Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New York.

New Jersey’s number of food-insecure residents is estimated to increase by 56%, from the pre-pandemic level of 774,000 food-insecure people, higher than the national average of 46%, as well as higher than the 45% rise for both New York and Pennsylvania.

New Jersey is projected to see a greater increase in food insecurity than the US average or neighboring states.

A disproportionate increase in food insecurity among children for the state. 

Atlantic County, home to Atlantic City, a resort city on the state’s Atlantic coast, is top of the list for food insecurity. 

Before and after view of food insecuirty on a county by county basis. 

The main driver behind the state’s hunger crisis is the collapse of the leisure and hospitality industries, resulting in widespread unemployment and economic devastation of households. CFBNJ said today’s crisis far exceeds what was seen at a depth of the 2008 financial meltdown. 

“In less than a year, COVID-19 is erasing nearly a decade of advancement towards food security in New Jersey and nationwide,” said Carlos Rodriguez, president and CEO of CFBNJ, in a statement. 

“It’s clear from the data presented in this report that no part of our state will be spared from the pandemic’s effects on hunger. The public, private, and nonprofit sectors must work together in response to the long-term elevated need that we’re going to see throughout New Jersey,” said Rodriguez.

CFBNJ warned food insecurity problems could linger for a couple of years. 

We’ve also shown food insecurity is a nationwide problem and only getting worse. And maybe that’s why The Salvation Army is on a mission to save Christmas. 

Managing editor, Ed Harrison, joins managing editor, Roger Hirst, to break down today’s price action. Using Julian Brigden’s Expert View from September 28th as a springboard, Roger discusses the pressures that central banks are under to create reflation in an environment of low productivity, low growth, and a weaker dollar when they have instead contributed to asset price inflation. Roger and Ed also analyze the rebound in equities by considering how US equities are carrying out a bullish narrative of recovery as compared to poorer equity performance outside of the US. Wrapping up their conversation, Roger also offers his thoughts on the NASDAQ futures short position as well as how pensions are being threatened now. Real Vision reporter Haley Draznin takes a look at the rise in SPACs as first blank-check ETF makes its trading debut today.

Authored by Megan Brenan via Gallup.com,

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Trump’s job approval is up from 42% earlier in September

• Except for approval on economy, issue approvals are below 50%

• 56% expect Trump will win the election; 40% think Biden will

In Gallup polling conducted over the two weeks leading up to the first presidential debate, President Donald Trump’s job approval rating is 46%, its highest point since May. Although still short of the majority approval that incumbent presidents typically need in order to be confident of reelection, more Americans say they expect he, rather than Joe Biden, will win the election.

Trump’s Pre-Debate Approval Rating Remains Below His Personal Best

Trump started the year with the highest approval rating of his presidency (49%) amid his acquittal on impeachment charges, but it subsequently descended to the 38% to 42% range during the summer as the coronavirus pandemic, the resulting economic downturn, and racial injustice issues afflicted the nation.

Although the increase of four percentage points in Trump’s latest rating is not statistically significant, the poll’s internals suggest a rise in his support the second half of the Sept. 14-28 field period coincident with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death and lying in state, as well as Trump’s announcing that he would quickly make a nomination to the Supreme Court. This suggests that some viewed his handling of the situation positively.

Line graph. President Donald Trump’s job approval rating since January 2019. Currently, 46% of Americans approve, marking a four-point increase from earlier in September.

While the president’s approval rating has edged up, he remains underwater, with 52% of Americans disapproving of his job performance. The current 87-point gap between Republicans’ (94%) and Democrats’ (7%) approval of Trump is still among the largest in Gallup’s history. Independents’ approval of Trump, now 39%, remains significantly below the 46% to 47% ratings for this group from April and May.

Besides Economy, Trump’s Approval Ratings on Issues Are Below 50%

In addition to Trump’s overall job approval, Gallup asked Americans whether they approve of his handling of six issues. The economy is the only one with majority-level approval (54%), marking an improvement from 47% and 48% readings in early June and mid-August.

His ratings on the other five issues are at or above where they were in mid-August but remain below 50%. These include crime (48%), foreign affairs (46%), relations with China (46%), response to the coronavirus (44%) and race relations (38%).

Majority of Americans Predict Trump Will Win Reelection

Regardless of whom they personally support, 56% of Americans expect Trump to prevail over Biden in the November election, while 40% think Biden will win. Although majorities of partisans think their party’s candidate will win, Republicans are more likely to believe Trump will win (90%) than Democrats are to think Biden will (73%). Fifty-six percent of independents predict that Trump will win.

Looking back, Gallup has asked Americans for their predictions in the late summer or fall of every presidential election year from 1996 through 2012, and an ABC News/Washington Post poll included a comparable question in 2016. In each of these polls, Americans accurately predicted the winner of the popular vote, though not the winner of the Electoral College. That is, in 2000 and 2016, the public predicted Al Gore and Hillary Clinton, respectively, would win the election. Although both of these Democratic candidates won the popular vote, George W. Bush and Trump, respectively, won the most electoral votes and ultimately became president.

The prediction of a Trump victory is not consistent with the average of recent national presidential vote-preference polls, which show Biden with a significant lead, but it is consistent with Americans’ expectation of a victory for the incumbent president in every race in which one has been running. The two most recent elections in which an incumbent lost — 1980 and 1992 — occurred before Gallup began asking Americans to handicap the presidential election race.

Bottom Line

While Trump’s approval rating has improved, it remains below the 50% threshold for an incumbent that has historically been associated with presidents winning a second term. In addition, Americans’ satisfaction with the way things are going is near its historical low point, and while economic confidence has recovered from its record drop in the spring, it remains negative. Despite these strong indicators that suggest Trump’s reelection is imperiled, more Americans still believed before the debate that he is the favorite to win.

View complete question responses and trends (PDF download).

As the radical left prepares for a Biden presidency and possible takeover of the U.S. House and Senate by laying the groundwork for their Marxist socio-economic policies at the state level, California has signed a new bill consider paying reparations to descendants of slavery. 

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 3121 into law on Wednesday. The bill allows the state government to form a nine-member task force to develop a detailed plan for reparations and who would be eligible to receive them.

“This is not just about California, this is about making an impact, and a dent, across the rest of the country,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said moments after signing the bill. 

“California’s rich diversity is our greatest asset, and we won’t turn away from this moment to make right the discrimination and disadvantages that Black Californians and people of color still face,” Newsom said.

CA just became the first state in the nation to mandate the study and development of proposals for reparations.

Our past is one of slavery, racism, and injustice. Our systems were built to oppress people of color.

It’s past time we acknowledge that. https://t.co/sY8UWffqzt

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) September 30, 2020

The recommendations of the task force are non-binding and would be submitted in a report to the state legislature one year after the first meeting. 

Readers may recall reparations became a popular subject after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in late May. 

In June, Robert Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television (BET), called for trillions of dollars in reparations for slavery. He said the government should pay out $14 trillion in reparations, for “damages that are owed.” 

The Brookings Institution suggested in their April 2020 report that reparations could take the form of student loan forgiveness, free college education, and down payment grants for homeowners. 

Direct transfer payments under the guise of reparations appear to be not about compensating those who are descendants of slavery but instead increasing funding for social programs. To make it more clear, reparations will dramatically expand the “welfare state.” 

California’s new law doesn’t say reparations must be cash payments, as other options for payouts could include forgiving student loans, job training, and or payment for public works projects. 

Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, a Democrat from San Diego who authored the bill, said California “has come to terms with many of these issues, but it has yet to come to terms with its role in slavery.” 

The task force’s capabilities, under the new law (read the full text of 3121 here): 

• Hold hearings and sit and act at any time and location in California.

• Request the attendance and testimony of witnesses.

• Request the production of books, records, correspondence, memoranda, papers, and documents.

• Seek an order from a Superior Court compelling testimony or compliance with a subpoena.

• Any subcommittee or member of the Task Force may, if authorized by the Task Force, take any action that the Task Force is authorized to take pursuant to this section.

Do we assume California needs no further federal bailout dollars if it’s so willingly investigating such a massive program of redistribution?

The nine-member task force created to study exactly how African-Americans should be compensated has until the middle of 2023 to present its findings and potential solutions to the governor.

It’s no wonder people are fleeing the state at record rates.

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via PJMedia.ocm,

The news media until recently had rarely criticized the medical advice of experts – especially those who worked for federal bureaucracies, international organizations or elite universities.

Yet the much-praised Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, has demonstrably weakened the effort to fight COVID-19.

During the critical initial weeks of the virus’s spread, Tedros parroted Chinese propaganda. He falsely assured a complacent world that the virus was likely not transmissible between humans and did not warrant travel bans. That Tedros was the first WHO director not to have a medical degree was seldom cited by the media.

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel is known to the public for his past advocacy of the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act. Although he now advises 77-year-old presidential candidate Joe Biden, Emanuel once wrote an article for The Atlantic titled “Why I hope to die at 75,” contending that that life after age 75 is, and should be, mostly over — now an eerie idea in a time of a pandemic that targets the elderly.

Emanuel has often weighed in on the COVID-19 pandemic, sometimes in overly pessimistic fashion by suggesting that some acquired collective immunity and a viable vaccine were not likely to come soon.

Yet Emanuel also has been largely exempt from media criticism. No reporters have questioned his epidemiological expertise despite his background as an oncologist specializing in breast cancer.

The esteemed Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has given conflicting advice on the use of masks, quarantining and the methods of viral transmission.

Yet such inconsistency is either ignored or chalked up by the media to the usual learning curve of dealing with a new epidemic.

So why — other than politics — is there now a concerted media attack on Dr. Scott Atlas, an adviser to the Trump administration on COVID-19 policy?

Atlas has had a distinguished career as one of world’s top neuroradiologists. He has become a national expert on public health policy, especially in the cost-benefit analysis of government programs.

After COVID-19 arrived in the U.S., Atlas consistently warned that government must follow science, not politics, in doing the least amount of harm to its people. He has reminded us that those under 65 rarely die from COVID-19, and that those infected who are younger than 20 usually do not show any serious symptoms.

Accordingly, Atlas has urged the states to focus more resources on the most vulnerable — those over 65, who account for the vast majority of COVID-19 deaths — and allow younger Americans to re-enter schools and the workforce with appropriate caution.

Atlas has also warned that the available test data on COVID-19’s infectiousness, spread and morbidity must be handled with care, given that those who feel sick are more likely to get tested. He argues that those with some natural protection from the virus, either through antibodies from an asymptotic past infection or through T-cells, may be a far larger group than previously thought.

But most importantly, Atlas has warned that government must be careful not to endanger Americans with draconian lockdowns that curtail needed medical examinations, procedures and treatments.

Just as dangerous as the disease may be quarantine-related spikes in mental illness, substance abuse, child and spousal abuse, and depression from lost livelihoods. Children may be suffering irreparable harm from being locked down and kept out of school.

Atlas has shown that these policy choices, unfortunately, entail bad options and even worse ones, rather than good choices and even better alternatives. He has not played down the dangers of COVID-19 but rather has reminded us to look at scientific data that often belies media sensationalism.

Many in the media, some of his former colleagues at Stanford Medical School and some other Stanford faculty members have claimed that Atlas — a colleague of mine at the Hoover Institution — has acted unprofessionally. They allege that he has downplayed the lethality of the virus, implying that he is aiding the administration’s efforts to ease out of the quarantine.

Yet few if any of these complainants have cited supporting evidence, either from what Atlas has written or said. Often the accusations turn puerile, suggesting that Atlas can’t be a public health expert because he was originally a neuroradiologist.

In fact, rarely reported is that many members of the Stanford community are honored by its medical school receiving global acclaim for its diversity of expert scientific opinion on the virus.

Nobel Prize-winning biophysicist Michael Levitt of Stanford and several stellar Stanford epidemiologists have been praised worldwide for their careful critiques of often media-generated misconceptions – especially on the overreliance on COVID-19 positive test data to calibrate viral prevalence and morbidly.

How ironic that some critics fault Atlas for not following science, but they do so in a fashion that is completely … well, unscientific.