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Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

In my entire lifetime, this is the worst that drought conditions have ever been in the western half of the country.  During the past 20 years, the amount of territory in the West considered to be suffering from exceptional drought has never gone higher than 11 percent until now.  Today, that number is sitting at 27 percent.  The term “mega-drought” is being thrown around a lot these days to describe what is happening, but this isn’t just a drought.  This is a true national emergency, and it is really starting to affect our food supply.

Just look at what is happening up in North Dakota.  The vast majority of the state is either in the worst level of drought or the second worst level of drought, and ranchers are auctioning off their cattle by the thousands…

“Normally this time of the year, we’re probably looking at 400-600 head and a lot of times would be every other week,” said former auctioneer Ron Torgerson.

On Sunday and Monday, more than 4,200 head of cattle were sold at Rugby Livestock and Auction.

Needless to say, ranchers in North Dakota don’t want to get rid of their cattle, but the drought has pushed prices for hay and corn so high that many of them simply have no choice.

One of those that has already been forced to sell a large number of cattle is rancher David Bohl…

As the drought continues, the price of hay and corn has gone way up. It’s more expensive for ranchers to try and supplement feed than it is to sell the cattle.

Bohl has already sold 200 of his head in the last month.

“Everybody is in the same situation, they’re going to have to sell probably 25 to 50% of them because there’s nowhere to go with them we just got no food to feed them,” Bohl said.

As cattle herds shrink all over the western half of the country, this is going to push beef prices significantly higher than they are right now.

And in many areas, they are already at ridiculous levels.

Meanwhile, the drought continues to push the water level in Lake Mead into the danger zone.  According to CBS News, Lake Mead will soon hit the “lowest level ever recorded”…

For more than eight decades, the iconic Hoover Dam has relied on water from Nevada’s Lake Mead to cover up its backside. But now, at age 85, it finds itself uncomfortably exposed. Much of the water the dam is supposed to be holding back is gone.

“This is like a different world,” said Pat Mulroy, the former head of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. She told CBS News senior national and environmental correspondent Ben Tracy that Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir, is on track to soon hit its lowest level ever recorded.

Since the year 2000, the water level in Lake Mead has declined by a whopping 30 feet, and it is currently at just 37 percent of capacity.

The dam’s hydropower output has already been reduced by about 25 percent, and once the water level gets low enough it will stop producing electricity completely.

In addition, many farmers that rely on water from Lake Mead are facing a very uncertain future at this point…

For the first time ever, the federal government is expected to declare a water shortage on the lower Colorado River later this summer. That will force automatic cuts to the water supply for Nevada and Arizona starting in 2022. Homeowners have higher priority and, at first, won’t feel the pain as badly as farmers.

Dan Thelander is a second-generation family farmer in Arizona’s Pinal County. The water to grow his corn and alfalfa fields comes from Lake Mead. “If we don’t have irrigation water, we can’t farm,” he said. “So, next year we are going to get about 25% less water, means we’re going to have to fallow or not plant 25% of our land.”

Unless something changes, Thelander and other farmers in the region could potentially have all water cut off in 2023.

That is just two years away.

Of course there are many farmers in California that have already been informed that they will not be getting any water allocated to them at all here in 2021.  It is being projected that farmers in the state will not grow anything on 500,000 acres this year, and that is really bad news because California grows more than a third of our vegetables and two-thirds of our fruits and nuts…

Along with wildfire risks, short water supply is putting immense pressure on the state’s agricultural industry, which grows over a third of the country’s vegetables and supplies two-thirds of the fruits and nuts in the US. Already farmers are culling crops and fallowing fields in anticipation of water shortages. Karen Ross, California’s food and agriculture secretary, told the California Chamber of Commerce that she expected 500,000 acres would have to sit idle this year.

So what are we going to do if this mega-drought persists several more years and agricultural production in California is dramatically reduced for an extended period of time?

I am sure that some wise guy will post a comment after this article about importing more fruits and vegetables from South America, but South America is experiencing a historic drought too.

In fact, at this moment Brazil is experiencing the “worst drought in nearly a century”, and scientists are anticipating that it will not end any time soon.

Needless to say, the droughts that we are witnessing are setting the stage for many of the things that I have been warning about, and the future of agricultural production in the western hemisphere is looking quite bleak for the foreseeable future.

In the short-term, this crisis is going to result in substantially higher prices at the grocery store.  I know that grocery prices have already risen to painful levels, but the truth is that food prices will never be as low as they are right now.

So I am encouraging everyone to stock up while they still can.

As I have said so many times, we really struggle to feed everyone in the world during the best of years, and 2021 is definitely not one of the best of years.

Global food supplies are getting tighter and tighter, and this definitely has enormous implications for our future.

*  *  *

Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

There should be little doubt that the timing is intentional: China on Thursday passed its sweeping new law to ‘safeguard’ Chinese businesses and entities from Western and especially US sanctions, just hours ahead of President Joe Biden sitting down with G-7 leaders in Cornwall to argue for a common stance on curtailing China’s influence. AFP observes: “China’s quick rollout of a law against foreign sanctions has left European and American companies shocked and facing ‘irreconcilable’ compliance issues, two top business groups said Friday, despite Beijing saying the move would unlikely impact investment.”

The Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law, as we described earlier, is designed shield Chinese entities and institutions from “the unilateral and discriminatory measures imposed by foreign countries” and ultimately the “long arm jurisdiction” of the United States.  

It effectively enables the Chinese government to sanction all who comply with US/EU sanctions by drawing a bright red line, forcing entities to choose whether to comply to Washington’s side or Beijing’s side. Upon its introduction early this week in the National People’s Congress there were few details given, other than vowing that “if Chinese entities are hit with unjustified sanctions, the proposed law is supposed to crystallize actionable countermeasures against the foreign governments and institutions…expecting the legal effort to make up for losses that Chinese entities would suffer.”

With the law’s passage, details have been revealed as follows:

Countermeasures in the Chinese law include “refusal to issue visas, denial of entry, deportation… and sealing, seizing, and freezing property of individuals or businesses that adhere to foreign sanctions against Chinese businesses or officials,” according to the text published by the standing committee of the National People’s Congress, China’s top legislature.

Thus it “answers” current US tactics in a serious escalation: whereas Washington currently often seeks to punish third party entities or countries for direct or even indirect dealings with a sanctioned regime (the cases of Venezuela and Iran are clear examples, or even European companies which worked on the Russia-to-Germany Nord Stream 2 pipeline), Beijing has now given itself the ‘legal authority’ to do the same. 

The foreign ministry announced upon the law’s passage: “The law aims to firmly safeguard the sovereign dignity and core interests of the country and oppose Western hegemony and power politics,” according to state media. And a Global Times op-ed asserted: “It will act as a powerful deterrent against countries imposing sanctions,” and further: “We will not hesitate to fight back against forces that arrogantly challenge us and will continue to enrich our legal toolbox.”

China’s quick rollout of a law against foreign sanctions has left European and American companies shocked and facing “irreconcilable” compliance issues, two top business groups said Friday, despite Beijing saying the move would unlikely impact investmenthttps://t.co/7fYXW5Giwh

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) June 11, 2021

And here’s more on how it will coerce companies into “choosing” to conform to US or Chinese law, which could have devastating fallout down the line for Western companies operating in China:

The restrictions can apply to family members of individuals who fall foul of Beijing.

The law also allows the country’s courts to punish companies that comply with foreign laws, and says that businesses or people in China do not need to comply with foreign restrictions.

This could potentially cover the legislators, government officials, law enforcement officers, or even banks or companies who implement foreign sanctions.

— Henry Gao (@henrysgao) June 10, 2021

Meanwhile, as the G-7 continues in the UK, Beijing officials blasted what they called “small circle diplomacy”. 

The Chinese Communist Party’s chief diplomat Yang Jiechi told Antony Blinken in a phone call ahead of the summit that “genuine multilateralism is not pseudo-multilateralism based on the interests of small circles” in denunciation of what’s being seen as an “anti-China” meeting.

There should be little doubt that the timing is intentional: China on Thursday passed its sweeping new law to ‘safeguard’ Chinese businesses and entities from Western and especially US sanctions, just hours ahead of President Joe Biden sitting down with G-7 leaders in Cornwall to argue for a common stance on curtailing China’s influence. AFP observes: “China’s quick rollout of a law against foreign sanctions has left European and American companies shocked and facing ‘irreconcilable’ compliance issues, two top business groups said Friday, despite Beijing saying the move would unlikely impact investment.”

The Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law, as we described earlier, is designed shield Chinese entities and institutions from “the unilateral and discriminatory measures imposed by foreign countries” and ultimately the “long arm jurisdiction” of the United States.  

It effectively enables the Chinese government to sanction all who comply with US/EU sanctions by drawing a bright red line, forcing entities to choose whether to comply to Washington’s side or Beijing’s side. Upon its introduction early this week in the National People’s Congress there were few details given, other than vowing that “if Chinese entities are hit with unjustified sanctions, the proposed law is supposed to crystallize actionable countermeasures against the foreign governments and institutions…expecting the legal effort to make up for losses that Chinese entities would suffer.”

With the law’s passage, details have been revealed as follows:

Countermeasures in the Chinese law include “refusal to issue visas, denial of entry, deportation… and sealing, seizing, and freezing property of individuals or businesses that adhere to foreign sanctions against Chinese businesses or officials,” according to the text published by the standing committee of the National People’s Congress, China’s top legislature.

Thus it “answers” current US tactics in a serious escalation: whereas Washington currently often seeks to punish third party entities or countries for direct or even indirect dealings with a sanctioned regime (the cases of Venezuela and Iran are clear examples, or even European companies which worked on the Russia-to-Germany Nord Stream 2 pipeline), Beijing has now given itself the ‘legal authority’ to do the same. 

The foreign ministry announced upon the law’s passage: “The law aims to firmly safeguard the sovereign dignity and core interests of the country and oppose Western hegemony and power politics,” according to state media. And a Global Times op-ed asserted: “It will act as a powerful deterrent against countries imposing sanctions,” and further: “We will not hesitate to fight back against forces that arrogantly challenge us and will continue to enrich our legal toolbox.”

China’s quick rollout of a law against foreign sanctions has left European and American companies shocked and facing “irreconcilable” compliance issues, two top business groups said Friday, despite Beijing saying the move would unlikely impact investmenthttps://t.co/7fYXW5Giwh

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) June 11, 2021

And here’s more on how it will coerce companies into “choosing” to conform to US or Chinese law, which could have devastating fallout down the line for Western companies operating in China:

The restrictions can apply to family members of individuals who fall foul of Beijing.

The law also allows the country’s courts to punish companies that comply with foreign laws, and says that businesses or people in China do not need to comply with foreign restrictions.

This could potentially cover the legislators, government officials, law enforcement officers, or even banks or companies who implement foreign sanctions.

— Henry Gao (@henrysgao) June 10, 2021

Meanwhile, as the G-7 continues in the UK, Beijing officials blasted what they called “small circle diplomacy”. 

The Chinese Communist Party’s chief diplomat Yang Jiechi told Antony Blinken in a phone call ahead of the summit that “genuine multilateralism is not pseudo-multilateralism based on the interests of small circles” in denunciation of what’s being seen as an “anti-China” meeting.

There should be little doubt that the timing is intentional: China on Thursday passed its sweeping new law to ‘safeguard’ Chinese businesses and entities from Western and especially US sanctions, just hours ahead of President Joe Biden sitting down with G-7 leaders in Cornwall to argue for a common stance on curtailing China’s influence. AFP observes: “China’s quick rollout of a law against foreign sanctions has left European and American companies shocked and facing ‘irreconcilable’ compliance issues, two top business groups said Friday, despite Beijing saying the move would unlikely impact investment.”

The Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law, as we described earlier, is designed shield Chinese entities and institutions from “the unilateral and discriminatory measures imposed by foreign countries” and ultimately the “long arm jurisdiction” of the United States.  

It effectively enables the Chinese government to sanction all who comply with US/EU sanctions by drawing a bright red line, forcing entities to choose whether to comply to Washington’s side or Beijing’s side. Upon its introduction early this week in the National People’s Congress there were few details given, other than vowing that “if Chinese entities are hit with unjustified sanctions, the proposed law is supposed to crystallize actionable countermeasures against the foreign governments and institutions…expecting the legal effort to make up for losses that Chinese entities would suffer.”

With the law’s passage, details have been revealed as follows:

Countermeasures in the Chinese law include “refusal to issue visas, denial of entry, deportation… and sealing, seizing, and freezing property of individuals or businesses that adhere to foreign sanctions against Chinese businesses or officials,” according to the text published by the standing committee of the National People’s Congress, China’s top legislature.

Thus it “answers” current US tactics in a serious escalation: whereas Washington currently often seeks to punish third party entities or countries for direct or even indirect dealings with a sanctioned regime (the cases of Venezuela and Iran are clear examples, or even European companies which worked on the Russia-to-Germany Nord Stream 2 pipeline), Beijing has now given itself the ‘legal authority’ to do the same. 

The foreign ministry announced upon the law’s passage: “The law aims to firmly safeguard the sovereign dignity and core interests of the country and oppose Western hegemony and power politics,” according to state media. And a Global Times op-ed asserted: “It will act as a powerful deterrent against countries imposing sanctions,” and further: “We will not hesitate to fight back against forces that arrogantly challenge us and will continue to enrich our legal toolbox.”

China’s quick rollout of a law against foreign sanctions has left European and American companies shocked and facing “irreconcilable” compliance issues, two top business groups said Friday, despite Beijing saying the move would unlikely impact investmenthttps://t.co/7fYXW5Giwh

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) June 11, 2021

And here’s more on how it will coerce companies into “choosing” to conform to US or Chinese law, which could have devastating fallout down the line for Western companies operating in China:

The restrictions can apply to family members of individuals who fall foul of Beijing.

The law also allows the country’s courts to punish companies that comply with foreign laws, and says that businesses or people in China do not need to comply with foreign restrictions.

This could potentially cover the legislators, government officials, law enforcement officers, or even banks or companies who implement foreign sanctions.

— Henry Gao (@henrysgao) June 10, 2021

Meanwhile, as the G-7 continues in the UK, Beijing officials blasted what they called “small circle diplomacy”. 

The Chinese Communist Party’s chief diplomat Yang Jiechi told Antony Blinken in a phone call ahead of the summit that “genuine multilateralism is not pseudo-multilateralism based on the interests of small circles” in denunciation of what’s being seen as an “anti-China” meeting.

Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

So in case you haven’t been keeping up it’s been pretty thoroughly confirmed that the US government’s highly anticipated UFO report due this month won’t contain any significant revelations and certainly won’t verify anyone’s ideas about these phenomena being extraterrestrial in origin, but it absolutely will contain fearmongering that UFOs could be evidence that the US has fallen dangerously behind Russian and Chinese technological development in the cold war arms race.

Unknown US officials have done a print media tour speaking to the press on condition of anonymity (of course), with first The New York Times reporting their statements about the contents of the UFO report and then CNN and The Washington Post. Each of these outlets reported the same thing: the US government doesn’t know what these things are but is very concerned they constitute evidence that Russia and/or China have somehow managed to technologically leapfrog US military development by light years. All three mention these two nations explicitly.

This narrative was then picked up by cable news, with MSNBC inviting former CIA director and defense secretary Leon Panetta on to explain to their audience that the US government should assume UFOs are Russian or Chinese in origin until that possibility has been exhausted.

“Is it your assumption that it is Russia or China testing some crazy technology that we somehow don’t have, or are we sort of over-assuming the abilities of China and Russia and that the only other explanation is that if it is not us ourselves then it is something otherworldly?” MSNBC’s Chuck Todd asked Panetta.

“I believe a lot of this stuff probably could be countries like Russia, like China, like others, who are using now drones, using the kind of sophisticated weaponry that could very well be involved in a lot of these sightings,” Panetta replied.

“I think that’s the area to go to very frankly in order to identify what’s happening.”

“It sounds like you think we should exhaust that out, exhaust that hypothesis first before you start dealing with other hypotheses,” Todd said.

“Yeah, absolutely,” said Panetta, who for the record is every bit as much of a tyrannical, thuggish imperialist cold warrior as any other CIA director.

This UFOs-as-Chinese/Russian-threat narrative has quickly been picked up and thrust into mainstream orthodoxy by all the major branches of the mass media, from Fox News to Reuters to The Guardian to Today to the BBC to USA Today. Whenever you see the imperial media converge to this extent upon a single narrative, that’s the Official Narrative of the empire. We can expect to see a lot more of this going forward.

Interestingly, the only mass media segment I’ve seen on this topic since the New York Times story broke which doesn’t promote the UFOs-as-Chinese/Russian-threat narrative is a guest appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight by Lue Elizondo, the military intelligence veteran who got the ball rolling on the new UFO narrative which emerged in 2017. Elizondo goes out of his way to tell Carlson (who himself has been promoting the idea that UFOs may be a foreign adversarial threat with cartoonish melodrama) that there’s no way these could be Russian or Chinese aircraft.

Elizondo, who seems to favor the UFOs-as-extraterrestrials narrative, argues that there are extensive records of military encounters with these phenomena stretching back seventy years, which rules out China since it could barely keep its head above water back then and rules out Russia because it shared its UFO knowledge with the US after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

I don’t know what’s going on with that last bit; I see no reason to trust that an American spook is acting in good faith on such an easily manipulated topic, but it is entirely possible that Elizondo set out on this road out of a sincere desire for government disclosure on UFOs and is now trying to regain control of the narrative now that he sees the cold war arms race direction it has taken.

Chris Melon, another major player in the new UFO narrative, recently complained on Twitter that “some important information was not shared” with the public in the UFO report. So who knows, maybe the initiators of this new UFO narrative were acting in good faith and their efforts were just swiftly hijacked by forces beyond their control to advance preexisting cold war agendas.

Clearest indication yet that the Imminent UAP report to Congress was neutered by access problems, this from @ChristopherKMe4: “Undoubtedly, some important information was not shared, potentially for a variety of reasons. Congress should inquire about that” https://t.co/9jmZRDFdsH

— Ross Coulthart (@rosscoulthart) June 5, 2021

Regardless of whether or not that’s true, it was always inevitable that this strange new rabbit hole of UFOs going mainstream was going to lead to more cold war propaganda. I’ve been interacting a bit with the online UFO community for the first time ever, and it seems like they’re mostly decent people with good intentions and a lot of hope for this new governmental investigation. But it also seems like they’re largely a community which mostly just talks to itself and is only just beginning to meet the cold harsh light of day that is the impenetrable depravity of the US war machine.

The US government is pure swamp; you can’t use the swamp to fix the swamp. Democrats were never going to use a Special Counsel to remove Trump, Trump was never going to take down the Deep State, and the US government isn’t going to investigate itself and tell everyone that aliens are real.

If there are indeed extraterrestrials and they are indeed flying around our world in strange aircraft, we are more likely to get the truth about this from the extraterrestrials themselves than from the US military. The war machine only does killing and destruction; it’s not going to suddenly develop an interest in truth and transparency. The sooner UFO enthusiasts realize this the better.

*  *  *

The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.

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On Wednesday, President Biden told US troops stationed in the UK that the Joint Chiefs told him “the greatest threat facing America” is “global warming” – a curious pivot from “white supremacy.”

Sooo…. White Supremacy was the biggest problem in America up until Hunter said the n-word.

Now we’re back to climate change… got it.

— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) June 10, 2021

On day later, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs ‘corrected’ Biden, asserting instead that the biggest threats facing the US are China and Russia, according to US News, (and who allegedly had a big role in scamming half of pandemic unemployment funds to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars).

“Climate change does impact, but the president is looking at a much broader angle than I am,” Army Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a congressional panel Thursday morning in response to a question by Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) “I’m looking at it from a strictly military standpoint. And from a strictly military standpoint, I’m putting China, Russia up there.”

Milley then backpedaled a bit, saying “Climate change is a threat. Climate change has a significant impact on military operations, and we have to take that into consideration.”

On Wednesday, Biden spoke to US forces at Royal Air Force Base Mildenhall, where he recounted an alleged discussion which took place while he was Vice President with the Joint Chiefs in their cloistered “tank” meeting room at the Pentagon.

“This is not a joke. You know what the Joint Chiefs told us the greatest threat facing America was? Global warming,” he claimed.

BIDEN: “This is not a joke. You what the Joint Chiefs told us the greatest threat facing America was? Global warming.” pic.twitter.com/apH7RtQWft

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) June 9, 2021

In response to Biden’s Wednesday comments, former President Trump issued a statement.

“Biden just said that he was told by the Joint Chiefs of Staff that Climate Change is our greatest threat. If that is the case, and they actually said this, he ought to immediately fire the Joint Chiefs of Staff for being incompetent,” said Trump.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Remember when networks and legal experts (correctly) denounced President Donald Trump for his attacks on judges who ruled against him?

Two years ago, I ran a column noting that Democrats were adopting the same attacks on conservative judges but the media was entirely silent.

Now,  California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democrats are lambasting a federal judge who ruled in favor of gun rights in a recent decision — accusing him of being in the pocket of the NRA and a danger to the country.  The response to Newsom’s attack from all of those same media and legal experts has ranged from outright support to conspicuous silence.

We recently wrote about the decision of U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez to strike down the ban on “assault weapons.”  In Miller v. Bonta, Benitez found that the ban on weapons like the AR-15 are based on both a misunderstanding of the weapons and a misinterpretation of the Constitution.  I previously discussed many of the same issues surrounding the AR-15 which remains one of the most popular weapons in the United States

The recent decision led to a barrage of personal attacks from Newsom, state Attorney General Rob Bonta and legal experts.  Newsom called Benitez a “stone-cold ideologue” who writes “press releases on behalf of the gun lobby.”  He warned that everyone needs to “call this federal judge out” because “he will continue to do damage.”

Benitez has indeed ruled for gun owners in the past.  However, he was upheld in that decision (which is still on appeal). In 2017, he struck down the state’s nearly two-decade-old ban on the sales and purchases of magazines holding more than 10 bullets. As recently discussed, the Ninth Circuit upheld his decision, which is now scheduled to be reheard by an 11-member panel. These cases have a very strong chance for review before the Supreme Court given the division across the country and the 6-3 conservative majority on the Court.

One can have good-faith reasons to disagree with both decisions.  Indeed, I am all in favor of passionate and pointed analysis of judicial rulings. Moreover, there are occasions where a judge’s personal bias is an issue.  Despite previously praising Judge Emmet Sullivan, I wrote columns that later criticized him for what appeared bias in his handling of the Flynn case. This is not such a case. Newsom is attacking this judge because he ruled in favor of gun rights arguments that are supported by many judges, lawyers, and citizens. These arguments have never been rejected by the Supreme Court. Indeed, he was relying on strong case law in favor of the Second Amendment claims raised by the litigants.

It is the strikingly different response to the attacks on the judge that caught my attention. As discussed in the earlier column, legal experts expressed outrage over attacks by Trump of judges as “Obama judges” or “political judges” during his term. There was however no push back on Democratic members denouncing “Trump judges” and “Trump Justices.”  Esquire magazine published a column denouncing judges who ruled against ObamaCare, declaring that the Republican arguments “don’t need to make sense. They just need the right judges — and they’re everywhere in the federal judicial system.” One Nation article explained how Trump jurists “swarming our judicial system . . . will linger, like an infected wound poisoning the body politic.” CNN ran headlines about “Republican-appointed judges” supporting the ObamaCare challenge, while Democratic members of Congress denounced federal judges ruling for the Trump administration as examples of why new judges must be appointed by Democrats.

Benitez ruled on arguments that have long been discussed by many of us as raising serious questions over the constitutionality of these laws. Again, one can disagree with the arguments but they are not fringe or fanciful positions. Indeed, Newsom’s demand for an appeal may be great news for the gun rights groups. Liberal states and cities have repeatedly pushed appeals that resulted in magnifying their losses. The District of Columbia is a great example of such poor choices in triggering the decisions in Heller. Later the Supreme Court expanded on its pro-gun rights case law in  McDonald v. City of Chicago. The Supreme Court just took up a new major gun rights case out of New York.

Benitez and his family fled communist Cuba and remains a powerful American success story.  He was able to get through law school as a first generation American. Benitez was confirmed 98-1 and had the strong support of Sen. Dianne Feinstein and other Democrats. (Only Sen. Dick Durban voted against him). Feinstein rejected the negative review of the ABA based on his “temperament” and noted that her own inquiries found that lawyers “say he is a man of the highest ethical standard, that he has superb demeanor, intelligence, pragmatism, and fairness. And the chief public defender notes that he has good judicial temperament and is courteous to his employees and the attorneys who appear before him.”

Newsom’s attack omits that Benitez was upheld by other judges in his earlier decision. That does not mean that the opinion is manifestly right (Indeed, it is being appealed). However, the opinion advanced well-established arguments and authority in reaching its conclusion. A majority on the Supreme Court would likely agree with much of the opinion. It is not about him. It is about the law.  That is why I criticized Trump for his attacks on judges and why we should be equally critical of Newsom and Democratic leaders doing the same thing now.

A former ADT security technician was sentenced to four years and four months in federal prison for repeatedly hacking into customers’ video feeds in North Texas and spying on attractive women and couples engaging in sexual activity inside their homes, according to CBS Dallas.

Telesforo Aviles, 35, pleaded guilty to computer fraud in January – admitting to adding his personal email address to customers’ “ADT Pulse” accounts, which gave him real-time access to video feeds from their homes. In some instances he claimed he needed to add himself temporarily to “test” the system, while in other cases he added himself without customer knowledge.

According to plea papers, Aviles watched numerous videos of naked women and couples engaging in sexual activity, which he admitted he would view for sexual gratification.

Aviles accessed roughly 200 customer accounts over 9,600 times without their consent.

“This deliberate and calculated invasion of privacy is arguably more harmfrul than if I had installed no security system and my house had been burglarized,” said one female victim in a statement to the court. “This sick and corrupt individual’s actions will have a lasting emotional and mental toll on me.”

“This defendant, entrusted with safeguarding customers’ homes, instead intruded on their most intimate moments,” Acting US Attorney Perak Shah said in January.

Aviles faced up to five years in prison.

Unfortunately for the victims, they couldn’t opt-out of Aviles’ intrusions like Amazon Sidewalk customers. You never know who’s on the other end.

Via MoneyMetals.com,

As foreign governments reportedly accumulate gold and de-dollarize their sovereign wealth funds, a Republican congressman is asking tough questions of the U.S. Treasury about its secretive gold activities.

Representative Alex Mooney (R-WV) – sponsor of the Gold Reserve Transparency Act of 2021 (H.R. 3526) to require the first true audit of America’s gold in decades – wrote to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen this week requesting detailed information about the U.S. gold holdings delegated to the Federal Reserve and the International Monetary Fund and posed other questions.

From Rep. Mooney’s letter:

1. According to testimony in 2011 by Mr. Gary Engel, the Director of Financial Management and Assurance at the Government Accountability Office, about 5 percent of the U.S. gold holdings were stored at the time at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He also stated that this gold is not considered “audited” and that no assaying or inventorying of that gold had occurred since at least 1986.

   At the current time, what amount of U.S. gold holdings is vaulted at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (or by the Federal Reserve using other depositories)? Also, has this gold been recently audited, assayed, and/or inventoried? If so, please provide me with a copy of any relevant reports.

2. For what purpose(s) is United States gold bullion stored at the Federal Reserve?

3. According to testimony by Mr. Engel, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York holds gold for other nations as well. Is the U.S.-owned gold stored at the Federal Reserve held in a physically segregated manner from the holdings of other nations?

4. During the 2011 hearing, Rep. Luetkemeyer referenced a report that 261 million ounces in U.S.-owned gold is part of the IMF’s reserves. At present, how many ounces of U.S.-owned gold are in the possession of the IMF or pledged to the IMF – and where is that gold kept? Also, please describe the purpose and nature of this arrangement as well as what oversight procedures are in place.

5. How much U.S.-owned gold is in the possession of and/or used by the Exchange Stabilization Fund as part of its activities? What is the purpose and nature of the ESF’s gold activities?

6. Please provide details as to what U.S.-owned gold is currently pledged, swapped, leased, or otherwise encumbered – and for what purposes – including, but not limited to, arrangements involving the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), World Bank, IMF, and other financial institutions, foreign or domestic.

Mooney’s inquiry comes shortly after he introduced H.R. 3526 to require the Comptroller General to immediately conduct a full assay, inventory, and audit of the United States’ gold reserves and repeat the process every five years.

There is evidence the U.S. Treasury may have sold, swapped, leased, or otherwise placed encumbrances upon some of America’s gold over time.

U.S. Congressman Alex Mooney (R-WV)

However, federal government officials have strongly resisted disclosure of these activities for decades.

To address these concerns, H.R. 3526 also requires a full accounting of any and all sales, purchases, disbursements, or receipts, a full accounting of any and all encumbrances, including due to lease, swap, or similar transactions presently in existence or entered into in the past 15 years, and an analysis of the sufficiency of the measures taken to ensure the physical security of such reserves.

To fulfill its obligations under the Gold Reserve Transparency Act, Government Accountability Office auditors would gain access to any depository or other public or private depositories where reserves are kept as well as related records.

“People are rightly concerned about the state of America’s gold holdings,” said Jp Cortez, policy director at the Sound Money Defense League.

“The lack of full transparency by the Federal Government has hobbled public confidence. The Gold Reserve Transparency Act will ensure our gold reserves are accounted for.”

The full text of the bill, which has been referred to the House Financial Services Committee, can be found here.

Real Vision managing editor Ed Harrison welcomes Raoul Pal, CEO and co-founder of Real Vision, to the Daily Briefing to discuss the changes in the macro policy paradigm globally. Pal will be analyzing the impact these shifts will have economically, whether global macro investments can still perform in light of these shifts, and whether crypto ultimately benefits in the aftermath. He will also be unveiling the legendary headline guest at the upcoming Festival of Learning (June 23-25). Don’t have your ticket yet? You can get it through this link:http://realvision.com/festival-of-learning-2021