Education “experts” say parents lack the expertise to teach their kids.
Without state schooling, “learning losses…could well be catastrophic,” says The New York Times. Home schooling “will set back a generation of children,” according to a Washington Post column. Harvard magazine’s “Risks of Homeschooling” article quotes a professor who calls for a “presumptive ban.”
The professional education establishment actually tried to ban it 98 years ago. Then, they tried to ban private schools, too! But the Supreme Court stopped them, writing, “the child is not the mere creature of the state.”
I wish the state would remember that.
Anyway, the educator’s complaints about home schooling “setting back a generation” are bunk.
Eleven of 14 peer-reviewed studies found home schooling has positive effects on achievement.
In my new video, education researcher Corey DeAngelis explains, “Children who are home-schooled get much better academic and social results than kids in government schools.”
Even though they are more likely to be poor, “Home-schoolers score 30 percent higher on SAT tests.” They also do better in college, and they are less likely to drink or do drugs.
“Mass home schooling during this pandemic,” says DeAngelis, “may actually be a blessing.”
Debbie Dabin, a mom in Utah, is one of many parents who started home schooling this spring and now is “definitely considering home schooling” next year.
Dabin bought teaching materials over the internet from a company called “The Good and the Beautiful.” Her son likes the lessons better than what he got in school. “It’s great,” Dabin says. “He likes the activities; he wants to do them.”
Before the pandemic, he’d told his mom he hated school.
I hated school, too. Classes were boring. Listening to lectures is a poor way to learn, and unnecessary today.
In addition to home-school teaching programs, there are also free internet games that teach things like math, reading, and writing, while customizing the speed of lessons to each learner’s needs.
Sites like Education.com teach math by letting kids adjust pizza toppings.
For older kids, YouTube channels like TED-Ed and Khan Academy offer “free educational videos from the world’s foremost experts on civics, history, mathematics,” adds DeAngelis.
“Not good enough!” say “experts.”
Michael Rebell, a professor at Teachers College at Columbia University, worries that if parents home-school, “There’s no guarantee that kids are learning democratic values, civic knowledge.”
“Were they learning that in their regular schools?” I asked.
“Well…it’s in the curriculum,” he responded.
So what? The Nation’s Report Card, the government’s biggest nationwide test, reveals that government-school students don’t know much about history or civics.
One question asked fourth graders, “Which country was the leading communist nation during the Cold War?” Only 21 percent answered the Soviet Union. More said France or Germany. American students did worse than if they had guessed randomly.
Another question: “America fought Hitler and Germany in which war?” More picked the Civil War than World War II.
Nevertheless, said Rebell, home schooling is still worse because “there’s no effective regulation to know what’s going on.”
“You sound like you think—because there’s regulation, that makes something happen,” I said.
“I do,” he replied. “Where there’s no regulation, that’s a worse situation.”
But “no regulation” is the wrong way to think about it. There is plenty of regulation. It just comes from legislators and families instead of education bureaucrats.
If this pandemic steers more parents away from state schools, that’s probably a good thing.
Philosopher John Stuart Mill warned: “State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another…which pleases the predominant power in the government (and) establishes a despotism over the mind.”
A silver lining to this pandemic is that now more parents are learning about their options outside the government system.
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The recent court decisions overturning COVID-19 lockdowns in Wisconsin and Oregon focused on abstruse issues of statutory interpretation. But both cases also addressed a more fundamental question: Is the rule of law suspended during a public health emergency?
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, state officials have imposed unprecedented restrictions on our liberties and livelihoods, acting on the assumption that they can do whatever they think is necessary to protect the public from a potentially deadly disease. The courts, which were initially reluctant to second-guess state responses to COVID-19, are beginning to recognize that public health powers, while broad, are not a blank check.
The Wisconsin case involved a dispute between two branches of the state government. The Republican leaders of the state legislature argued that Andrea Palm, a Democrat who runs the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, was exercising powers she had never been granted when she ordered the closure of “nonessential” businesses and confined residents to their homes except for purposes she approved, threatening violators with fines and jail.
This case was not simply a partisan spat. It raised the question of whether a single executive branch official can unilaterally criminalize heretofore legal behavior, based on nothing more than her own judgment of what is required to protect public health.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court last week concluded that Palm’s order qualified as a “rule” under state law, meaning she could not legally impose it without following emergency rulemaking procedures she admittedly ignored. Those procedures, Chief Justice Patience Roggensack said in the majority opinion, provide “the ascertainable standards that hinder arbitrary or oppressive conduct by an agency,” ensuring that the “controlling, subjective judgment asserted by one unelected official…is not imposed in Wisconsin.”
Palm argued that her order was authorized by a statute that says her department “may authorize and implement all emergency measures necessary to control communicable diseases.” But as Justice Daniel Kelly noted in a concurring opinion, that broad interpretation erases the distinction between the legislative and executive branches.
“Under our constitutional form of government, the Legislature cannot possibly have given the Secretary the authority she believes she has,” Kelly wrote. “If we agreed with the Secretary’s reading of [the law], we would have to conclude the statute violated the separation of powers by conferring on the Secretary the power to make laws without going through the rule-making process.”
In the Oregon case, Baker County Circuit Judge Matthew Shirtcliff concluded that Gov. Kate Brown had violated the statute she cited as the authority for her business closure and state-at-home orders. Under that law, Shirtcliff said in a ruling on Monday, such orders can last no longer than 28 days.
Whether or not you agree with these decisions or the policies they overrode, the principle at stake is vitally important. Even in an emergency—especially in an emergency—government officials are bound by the law.
“If we tolerate unconstitutional government orders during an emergency, whether out of expediency or fear, we abandon the Constitution at the moment we need it most,” Texas Supreme Court Justice James Blacklock observed earlier this month. “Any government that has made the grave decision to suspend the liberties of a free people during a health emergency should welcome the opportunity to demonstrate—both to its citizens and to the courts—that its chosen measures are absolutely necessary to combat a threat of overwhelming severity. The government should also be expected to demonstrate that less restrictive measures cannot adequately address the threat.”
Whether COVID-19 control measures can pass that test, Blacklock suggested, depends on emerging knowledge about the epidemic. “As more becomes known about the threat and about the less restrictive, more targeted ways to respond to it,” he said, “continued burdens on constitutional liberties may not survive judicial scrutiny.”
I have no doubt that state officials like Palm and Brown sincerely believe they are only doing their jobs. Fortunately, judges are beginning to do theirs.
The only real defense that is valid during this exercise in mass tyranny is total refusal to comply with any and all government mandates. We are in the midst of the largest psychological operation (PSYOP) in the history of mankind. By questioning everything concerning this manufactured “virus pandemic,” the resulting attitude cannot leave anything other than extreme doubt, and doubt is what can bring the masses out of the dark and into the light. The newest term being targeted toward the masses is the coming of the “Dark Winter,” which is nothing more than propaganda based lies meant to prepare the sheep for a planned continuation and escalation of this fake pandemic in order to bring about world domination.
Operation Dark Winter was the code name for a senior-level bio-terrorist attack simulation conducted from June 22–23, 2001, which was designed to carry out a mock version of a covert bio-weapon’s attack on the United States. The players involved in this were the Johns HopkinsCenter for Civilian Biodefense Strategies(CCBS) and Center for Strategic and International Studies(CSIS), and the project designers were Randy Larsen and Mark DeMier of Analytic Services. It is very interesting that the same Johns Hopkins along with the evil Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation conducted Event 201, a coronavirus “simulation” just this past October, on the verge of this so-called pandemic. The same players, same objectives, but now it is real.
Rick Bright, the former director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, and claimed whistleblower, has been all over the mainstream news as of late projecting the “darkest winter in modern history.”
Using this term was no accident, and in fact was meant as propaganda to frighten and alarm the already cowardly and pathetic public. It was also meant to instill a mindset of a killing plague soon to come. This was completely staged in my opinion, but it will nonetheless be accepted by a society steeped in fear due to this “crisis.”
I would expect the term “dark winter” to become a new buzzword, as this new term the second time around, is strictly tied to the original scenario, but applied to today’s panic. None of this is coincidence, none of it is accidental, but it is sinister. If things continue as they have been, and this lockdown remains in place, whether fully or partially, the anticipation of this “dark winter” will be on the minds of most all American sheep, especially if it is continually used as the threat of things to come.
With that in the minds of the people, they will be expecting the worst, and will probably get exactly what they expect; another planned pandemic.
The current government plan, regardless of what is partially opened this summer, is to continue to mandate social distancing and masks as some sort of faux protection against this non-existent threat, to continue to shame those dissenters that refuse to comply with government orders, and to use more force to stop any dissent. In addition, testing as many people as possible with flawed tests will continue, and more demands to test will be forthcoming. While that is happening, the contact tracing of individuals will become more and more evident as tracking technology is advanced and implemented nationwide. All of this is leading to this current crisis stage’s ultimate goal, which is forced mass vaccination.
As I wrote a few days ago, “the government has announced that a contract for $138 millionhas been issued to fund production of 500 million pre-filled Covid-19 vaccine “injection devices,” this before any vaccine is available or tested.”As any should be able to see, this is a complex, but easily identifiable plot that is coming to fruition very quickly and with little resistance. It is planned down to the last detail, just as were all the practice runs that were acted out in the past. I have always thought that bad people will expose what they are up to if only people would listen. Well, this time, they have told the public over and over again what was coming, but few listened.
The “injection devices” are already available, and now Trump is mobilizing the entire military to make war against the American people, by sending armed soldiers into the streets to vaccinate by force everyone in the country. Without mass resistance, this next phase will be successful, and then the following phase of population control would have already been implemented due to the poisoning, sterilizing, and possibly chipping of all those vaccinated. These plans are being accomplished out in the open, and with the consent, implied or not, of the people in this country.
Multiple agendas are being advanced, and the destruction of the economy and the resulting dependence of the population on government are going forward and being accepted. Pending legislation to print more money and dole it out to those out of work is already in process, as $3 trillion will most likely be distributed in small part to appease those not working, but most of that newly printed money will be used to continue the transfer of wealth to the few at the top. As debt, poverty, and bankruptcy continues to decimate the general population, the top of the heap will continue to buy up assets at depressed prices with taxpayer money, so in essence, those now starving are helping to enrich the perpetrators of this fraudulent virus scam.
We are definitely facing a horrible pandemic, but it is not due to any virus. The real pandemic is that the United States government and the enforcers for the controlling ruling class, are waging war on American citizens, and will not relent until the people themselves stop it. This totalitarian takeover will never cease by using the political system, as that corrupt system is why we are in this mess in the first place. A belief in nation instead of self led to nationalistic pride where none was deserved, and has brought complacency, weakness, and dependence on government, and left the people without the will to self rule. The result is obvious, but more than that, it is now fatally dangerous. As I said earlier this year here:
“No vibrant society can exist in a state of obedience. While many great minds have discussed the natural desire of man to obey authority, including Sigmund Freud, this trait in man does not allow the capability to seek or claim freedom. The obedient are bound to a life of rule, as that is their nature.”
Freedom and independence can only be achieved and held by non-obedient, non-conforming individuals. Therefore, we must in order to defeat this criminal government force, become a nation of dissenters by not complying with any government order concerning this government created fake crisis.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2WNiwQX Tyler Durden
US Cities Will Lose $360 Billion From The COVID-19 Lockdown Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/19/2020 – 23:45
The coronavirus lockdown in the U.S. is going to cost cities an astounding $360 billion in revenue through 2022, according to estimates from the National League of Cities.
Pennsylvania is going to be hit the hardest, according to Bloomberg. The state is at risk of losing 40% of its total revenue this year. Not far behind are Kentucky, Hawaii, Michigan and Nevada. The projections take into account the expected rise in unemployment and assume that every 1% of unemployment will cause tax revenues to drop about 3%.
The analysis was performed by looking at how unemployment would affect specific state and city revenue streams. It combined those changes with each respective state or city’s tax structure to estimate the impact.
Bloomberg’s piece says that the states need help “from the Federal Government” to avoid drastic budget cuts, but the truth of the matter is that they need help from the Fed. The Federal Government, nobody seems to notice, is broke.
The analysis comes a day after the Fed said it may need to implement more stimulus than the $3 trillion it has already enacted. Democrats are currently proposing $1 trillion bailouts for state and local governments.
Clarence Anthony, the league’s chief executive officer, said: “If America’s cities are not provided the funds from the federal government, we won’t be a part of the economic solution. This survey, and the findings, puts a face on the impact of the pandemic and the need for city leaders to get direct funding to respond quicker than at the state level, where most of the funding has gone in the past.”
He continued: “If any communities are facing a big challenge in America, it’s the small cities that may be wiped out, not only by the pandemic and the lack of access to health care. They’re being wiped out because of the loss of jobs to the small businesses, the loss of industry, and loss of hope.”
The numbers are starting to pile up for major cities: San Francisco is expecting budget shortfalls of $3.6 billion over the next four years and Houston is facing a $169 million shortfall, causing it to furlough 3,000 workers. Houston will have to use its rainy day fund to balance its budge.
Good, that’s what a rainy day fund is for.
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said:
“It’s the toughest budget we’ve had to put together since I’ve been mayor.”
Philadelphia has had to scale back its 2021 fiscal budget proposal due to a $650 million deficit that is five times larger than the deficit the city faced after the Great Recession. California announced last week it is facing a $54 billion shortfall and New Jersey said it is facing a $10.1 billion deficit.
In sum, U.S. cities will lose $134 billion in 2020, $117 billion in 2021 and $110 billion in 2022.
“This is an unprecedented time and it’s going to take unprecedented strategies,” Anthony concluded. Yeah, like blowing up the U.S. dollar on a global scale.
It’s a bold strategy, Cotton. Let’s see if it pays off for him.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2TncWT2 Tyler Durden
The recent court decisions overturning COVID-19 lockdowns in Wisconsin and Oregon focused on abstruse issues of statutory interpretation. But both cases also addressed a more fundamental question: Is the rule of law suspended during a public health emergency?
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, state officials have imposed unprecedented restrictions on our liberties and livelihoods, acting on the assumption that they can do whatever they think is necessary to protect the public from a potentially deadly disease. The courts, which were initially reluctant to second-guess state responses to COVID-19, are beginning to recognize that public health powers, while broad, are not a blank check.
The Wisconsin case involved a dispute between two branches of the state government. The Republican leaders of the state legislature argued that Andrea Palm, a Democrat who runs the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, was exercising powers she had never been granted when she ordered the closure of “nonessential” businesses and confined residents to their homes except for purposes she approved, threatening violators with fines and jail.
This case was not simply a partisan spat. It raised the question of whether a single executive branch official can unilaterally criminalize heretofore legal behavior, based on nothing more than her own judgment of what is required to protect public health.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court last week concluded that Palm’s order qualified as a “rule” under state law, meaning she could not legally impose it without following emergency rulemaking procedures she admittedly ignored. Those procedures, Chief Justice Patience Roggensack said in the majority opinion, provide “the ascertainable standards that hinder arbitrary or oppressive conduct by an agency,” ensuring that the “controlling, subjective judgment asserted by one unelected official…is not imposed in Wisconsin.”
Palm argued that her order was authorized by a statute that says her department “may authorize and implement all emergency measures necessary to control communicable diseases.” But as Justice Daniel Kelly noted in a concurring opinion, that broad interpretation erases the distinction between the legislative and executive branches.
“Under our constitutional form of government, the Legislature cannot possibly have given the Secretary the authority she believes she has,” Kelly wrote. “If we agreed with the Secretary’s reading of [the law], we would have to conclude the statute violated the separation of powers by conferring on the Secretary the power to make laws without going through the rule-making process.”
In the Oregon case, Baker County Circuit Judge Matthew Shirtcliff concluded that Gov. Kate Brown had violated the statute she cited as the authority for her business closure and state-at-home orders. Under that law, Shirtcliff said in a ruling on Monday, such orders can last no longer than 28 days.
Whether or not you agree with these decisions or the policies they overrode, the principle at stake is vitally important. Even in an emergency—especially in an emergency—government officials are bound by the law.
“If we tolerate unconstitutional government orders during an emergency, whether out of expediency or fear, we abandon the Constitution at the moment we need it most,” Texas Supreme Court Justice James Blacklock observed earlier this month. “Any government that has made the grave decision to suspend the liberties of a free people during a health emergency should welcome the opportunity to demonstrate—both to its citizens and to the courts—that its chosen measures are absolutely necessary to combat a threat of overwhelming severity. The government should also be expected to demonstrate that less restrictive measures cannot adequately address the threat.”
Whether COVID-19 control measures can pass that test, Blacklock suggested, depends on emerging knowledge about the epidemic. “As more becomes known about the threat and about the less restrictive, more targeted ways to respond to it,” he said, “continued burdens on constitutional liberties may not survive judicial scrutiny.”
I have no doubt that state officials like Palm and Brown sincerely believe they are only doing their jobs. Fortunately, judges are beginning to do theirs.
Seldom mentioned among the motives behind the persistent drumming on alleged Russian interference was an over-arching need to help the Security State hide their tracks.
The need for a scapegoat to blame for Hillary Clinton’s snatching defeat out of the jaws victory also played a role; as did the need for the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex (MICIMATT) to keep front and center in the minds of Americans the alleged multifaceted threat coming from an “aggressive” Russia. (Recall that John McCain called the, now disproven, “Russian hacking” of the DNC emails an “act of war.”)
But that was then. This is now.
Though the corporate media is trying to bury it, the Russiagate narrative has in the past few weeks finally collapsed with the revelation that CrowdStrike had no evidence Russia took anything from the DNC servers and that the FBI set a perjury trap for Gen. Michael Flynn. There was already the previous government finding that there was no collusion between Trump and Russia and the indictment of a Russian troll farm that supposedly was destroying American democracy with $100,000 in Facebook ads was dropped after the St. Petersburg defendants sought discovery.
All that’s left is to discover how this all happened.
Attorney General William Barr, and U.S. Attorney John Durham, whom Barr commissioned to investigate this whole sordid mess seem intent on getting to the bottom of it. The possibility that Trump will not chicken out this time, and rather will challenge the Security State looms large since he felt personally under attack.
President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr, 2019. (Wikimedia Commons)
Writing on the Wall
Given the diffident attitude the Security State plotters adopted regarding hiding their tracks, Durham’s challenge, with subpoena power, is not as formidable as were he, for example, investigating a Mafia family.
Plus, former NSA Director Adm. Michael S. Rogers reportedly is cooperating. The handwriting is on the wall. It remains to be seen what kind of role in the scandal Barack Obama may have played.
But former directors James Comey, James Clapper, and John Brennan, captains of Obama’s Security State, can take little solace from Barr’s remarks Monday to a reporter who asked about Trump’s recent claims that top officials of the Obama administration, including the former president had committed crimes. Barr replied:
“As to President Obama and Vice President Biden, whatever their level of involvement, based on the information I have today, I don’t expect Mr. Durham’s work will lead to a criminal investigation of either man. Our concerns over potential criminality is focused on others.”
In a more ominous vein, Barr gratuitously added that law enforcement and intelligence officials were involved in “a false and utterly baseless Russian collusion narrative against the president. It was a grave injustice, and it was unprecedented in American history.”
FBI lawyer Lisa Page.
Meanwhile, the corporate media have all been singing from the same sheet since Trump had the audacity a week ago to coin yet another “-gate” — this time “Obamagate.” Leading the apoplectic reaction in corporate media, Saturday’s Washington Postoffered a pot-calling-the-kettle-black pronouncement by its editorial board entitled “The absurd cynicism of ‘Obamagate”?
The outrage voiced by the Post called to mind disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok’s indignant response to criticism of the FBI by candidate Trump, in a Oct. 20, 2016 text exchange with FBI attorney Lisa Page:
Strzok: I am riled up. Trump is a f***ing idiot, is unable to provide a coherent answer.
Strzok – I CAN’T PULL AWAY, WHAT THE F**K HAPPENED TO OUR COUNTRY …
Page– I don’t know. But we’ll get it back. We’re America. We rock.
Strzok– Donald just said “bad hombres”
Strzok– Trump just said what the FBI did is disgraceful.
Less vitriolic, but incisive commentary came from widely respected author and lawyer Glenn Greenwald on May 14, four days after Trump coined “Obamagate”: ( See “System Update with Glenn Greenwald – The Sham Prosecution of Michael Flynn”).
For a shorter, equally instructive video of Greenwald on the broader issue of Russia-gate, see this clip from a March 2019 Democracy Now!-sponsored debate he had with David Cay Johnston titled, “As Mueller Finds No Collusion, Did Press Overhype Russiagate? Glenn Greenwald vs. David Cay Johnston”:
(The entire debate is worth listening to). I found one of the comments below the Democracy Now! video as big as a bummer as the commentator did:
“I think this is one of the most depressing parts about the whole situation. In their dogmatic pushing for this false narrative, the Russiagaters might have guaranteed Trump a second term. They have done more damage to our democracy than Russia ever has done and will do.” (From “Clamity2007”)
In any case, Johnston, undaunted by his embarrassment at the hands of Greenwald, is still at it, and so is the avuncular Frank Rich — both of them some 20 years older than Greenwald and set in their evidence-impoverished, media-indoctrinated ways.
Deranged by Trump
Sadly, as is apparently the case with Covid:19, older people seem particularly susceptible to what has been called Trump Derangement Syndrome—the notion that Trump is uniquely evil, while, for instance, George W. Bush, who illegally invaded Iraq—what Nuremberg termed the worst war crime, the crime of aggression—was not.
Johnston now has his own website: DCReport.org. A piece dated May 8, bears the title “How Barr Is Advancing Trump’s Quest to Become President For Life.”
Adducing “evidence” of this purported effort by Barr, Johnston indicates that he does not like what Barr’s Justice Department did in moving to drop the charges against Gen. Michael Flynn. He does not like it, not one bit! Here are some additional gems from Johnston’s latest:
“— Flynn and his company were on Putin’s payroll
— Flynn made himself susceptible to blackmail by taking Russian money and lying about it.”
Johnston drivels on:
“Trump denies the Russians helped him become president. But America’s intelligence agencies, the bi-partisan chairs of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the 418-page Mueller report and emails from none other than Donald Trump Jr. all make clear the Kremlin helped Trump defeat Hillary Clinton. The only issue on which the facts are not complete was whether Trump was a passive beneficiary or he knowingly worked with the Kremlin, whether obliquely or hand-in-glove.
Just weeks after assuming office Trump held an unannounced meeting in the Oval Office with Russia’s foreign minister and Russian ambassador and a “photographer” for the Kremlin-owned Tass news agency. The Russiansrevealed the meeting. They also disclosed that Trump gave them “sources and methods” intelligence, which is closely guarded to protect human and technological assets.
This latest abuse of power to protect a criminal crony who was on Vladimir Putin’s payroll and a secret foreign agent is more than an impeachable offense. Trump, Barr and Shea also sent a clear message: Team Trump harbors no regard for the rule of law, the foundation of our liberties and democratic freedoms.”
Frank Rich Not Immune
Rich. (Wikipedia)
David Cay Johnston enjoys the company of other erstwhile respected pundits, notably Frank Rich. In younger days, both wrote for The New York Times, where, sadly, writers of all ages are showing acute susceptibility to the syndrome.
In a New York magazine article by Frank Rich performsing what he passes off as analysis of the recent statement of President Donald Trump about Obamagate. Read it and lament over what has become of yet another formerly respectable journalist.
“‘Obamagate’, in Trump’s brilliant coinage, is a conspiracy so vast, a crime so dastardly, that it should guarantee his reelection as soon as he figures out how to tell voters exactly what it is. As best as I can glean from his spokespeople on the Rupert Murdoch payroll — at Fox News, the New York Post, and the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal — it was a coup that involved both installing Trump in the White House so that he could preside over the most corrupt and incompetent administration in American history and propelling a beloved national hero, the Kremlin sycophant and former Obama official Michael Flynn, to prison. For a moment, it seemed that at least that second goal might be thwarted by Bill Barr’s effort to hand Flynn a Get Out of Jail Free card. But thanks to the deep-state intervention of a U.S. district judge in Washington this week, Flynn may end up behind bars after all. Obamagate Accomplished!”
Has Rich lost it? Is this dismissive gibberish meant to be facetious, sarcastic? Is it a pedantic attempt at reductio ad absurdum? — like Saturday’s Washington Post editorial board pronouncement of “ The absurd cynicism of ‘Obamagate’”.
Does Rich keep up with the news, or is he now filing from Joe Biden’s basement? Is Consortium News included in his diet of reading? Quick. Someone tell Rich that “Russia-Trump collusion” and the far-fetched charges that the Russian Internet Research Agency helped Trump become president — as well as the tall tale that Russia “hacked” the DNC emails — have all collapsed.
‘Statutory Senility’
My father, for many years a professor at Fordham Law School, used to speak jocularly of another all-too-familiar syndrome he nonetheless took seriously: he called it “the age of statutory senility.” As Chancellor of the Board of Regents, he resigned well before he reached that age, offering his own example to superannuated Board colleagues (to no avail).
These days, I think he would probably consider 70 the age of “statutory senility”, especially were he able to read the blather of once respected journalists — like Frank Rich, whose work he used to enjoy. Let’s make sure someone is working on a vaccine for the Trump Syndrome.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3e8n4qZ Tyler Durden
“Thousands Are Starving” – Protesters Demanding Food Clash With Police In Santiago Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/19/2020 – 23:05
The coronavirus hit Chile at a particularly delicate time. Back in October, the Chilean military deployed tanks and troops onto the streets of Santiago – the Chilean capital – and President Sebastian Pinera declaring a state of emergency to quell a violent uprising triggered by – of all things – a hike in metro fares (can you imagine that happening in NYC?).
Now, some of the nation’s poorest are rising up against the government again in a violent protest movement over the lack of government assistance. Specifically, food shortages have left thousands of Chileans with nothing to eat, and the mandatory closures have made it impossible for them to work or buy food.
Video of the crowds of demonstrators and clashes with police were shared by reporters on social media.
In a televised address last night, President Piñera pledged to get food to those in need, according to the Santiago Times, the capital’s largest English language newspaper.
Chile has more than 46,000 cases of the virus, along with 478 deaths, but a recent spike in cases and deaths prompted Piñera go impose a lockdown in and around the capital. The strict measures, which were heavily enforced, went into effect this weekend.
As the unrest swelled, dozens of Chilean lawmakers went into “preventative isolation” after being “exposed” to the virus. Meanwhile, local officials cautioned that they were caught in a “very complex situation” because of “hunger and lack of work”. In a statement, local officials said they had distributed about 2,000 aid packages but warned the central government that this fell far short of meeting demand. Piñera later pledged his government would provide 2.5 million baskets of food and other essentials over the next week or so.
“We will prioritize the most vulnerable families,” he said, describing the plan as “historic”.
Following the announcement, Santiago Mayor Felipe Guevara tweeted in Spanish and asked residents to follow the rules.
“I understand the deep anguish of millions of Chileans, thousands are starving,” he wrote.
The unrest seen yesterday isn’t unique to Chile. Across the region, Latin American governments are confronting how to stop the virus and enforce lockdowns without the financial resources to provide for workers during the lockdown. In Brazil, hundreds of people from Sao Paulo’s largest favela marched to the state governor’s palace demanding more support last week and in Colombia, citizens have been hanging red cloths outside their homes to signify hunger. Finally, in El Salvador, people have been banging pots to protest against the lockdown.
Although Santiago is one of the most prosperous cities in Latin America, a stark rich-poor divide and a growing sense of economic inequality have prompted mass protests in late 2019. Many of the demands lodged by protesters last year, from increased pensions to higher pay, remain unresolved.
Imagine what will follow when these governments confront the cost of these lockdowns and are forced to cut services even further while raising taxes?
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Zl1L1d Tyler Durden
There’s a passage in Teddy Roosevelt’s famous 1910 “Citizenship in a Republic” speech I want to share with you today:
If a man’s efficiency is not guided and regulated by a moral sense, then the more efficient he is the worse he is, the more dangerous to the body politic. Courage, intellect, all the masterful qualities, serve but to make a man more evil if they are merely used for that man’s own advancement, with brutal indifference to the rights of others. It speaks ill for the community if the community worships those qualities and treats their possessors as heroes regardless of whether the qualities are used rightly or wrongly. It makes no difference as to the precise way in which this sinister efficiency is shown. It makes no difference whether such a man’s force and ability betray themselves in a career of money-maker or politician, soldier or orator, journalist or popular leader. If the man works for evil, then the more successful he is the more he should be despised and condemned by all upright and far-seeing men. To judge a man merely by success is an abhorrent wrong; and if the people at large habitually so judge men, if they grow to condone wickedness because the wicked man triumphs, they show their inability to understand that in the last analysis free institutions rest upon the character of citizenship, and that by such admiration of evil they prove themselves unfit for liberty.
The above words strike me as a perfect description of the deep hole we find ourselves in presently throughout these United States of America. It takes a whole nation to screw things up as badly as we have, and boy have we ever.
Yes it took parasites, sociopathic oligarchs and a power drunk national security state to bring us to our current state of affairs, but it also took the rest of us. For far too long we as a people have been apathetic, hoodwinked spectators to the life unfolding around us. Voting for “the lesser of two evils” for decade upon decade thinking it might be different this time. Putting up with the economic game that’s been put in front of us, despite the fact that it demonstrably and systematically rewards and incentivizes predatory and destructive behavior. As a people, we have been superficial, indifferent and gleefully ignorant of reality. It’s time to change all that.
You can consider today’s post a rallying cry to step into the arena. Stepping into the arena is often portrayed as becoming involved in national politics or some other large platform action, but I see it differently. If you think the only way to have a real impact is by voting or running for Congress, you’re likely to give up and remain passive. The truth is your entire life can be repurposed to be an expression of increased kindness, wisdom and strength. It’s the most impactful long-term action most of us can have on this earth, and anyone can do it.
Change yourself before trying to change the world. If enough people did this the world would change without you even trying.
I think what keeps a lot of people on the sidelines of a conscious life is an inability to intimately process the above. Many people discount the little things, the countless actions of daily existence that impact those around you and cumulatively make you who you are.
I think one reason mass media puts so much emphasis on voting at the national level is the owners of these propaganda channels know voting will change absolutely nothing. The oligarchy and national security state are fully in charge, and they’re not going to allow the pesky rabble to get in the way of such a lucrative racket by voting. Getting those who are politically inclined to spend all their time and energy on a rigged and completely corrupt phantom democracy in D.C. is a great way to keep them busy with nonsense. It’s also a perfect way to demoralize that portion of the population which understands it’s just theater. If you can be convinced that voting at the national level is the only way to change things, you’re much more likely to recede into apathy and become intentionally disengaged. This happens to a lot of people, but it’s a big mistake.
When I look back at my life thus far, it was during my decade on Wall Street when I was the most ignorant and superficial . So focused on stroking my ego, making a bunch of money and career advancement, I lost a lot of who I am at my core during that time. I often wonder if that’s the case for a lot of people who achieve conventional success within the current paradigm. It’s fortunate I removed myself from that situation and began thinking more deeply about who I am and what really matters.
Stepping up and getting into the arena will mean something different for each of us, but the one word that keeps popping into my head is resilience. There are several clear ways to become more resilient. There’s mental and emotional resiliency, there’s financial resiliency and there’s physical resiliency (where and how you live). I see all three as fundamentally important and functioning best when working together. Resiliency starts at the most basic level because if you and your family aren’t resilient, then you won’t be much use to anyone else. If the people of a community or nation lack resiliency it provides the perfect space for authoritarianism and evil to manifest and flourish.
Case in point, see the following comments by Alan Dershowitz during a recent interview.
“You have no right not to be vaccinated, you have no right not to wear a mask… If you refuse to be vaccinated the state has the right to take you to a dr’s office & plunge a needle in your arm.”@AlanDersh take on vaccines & masks is vile & un-American. pic.twitter.com/j2C1Rk3d7h
This is despotism plain and simple, and it’s being expressed by a guy who still has considerable influence despite his many Jeffrey Epstein related controversies. It’s going to take a resilient, courageous and ethical public to stand up to scoundrels like this and just say NO. No, you will not grab me, drag me off somewhere and inject something into my body without my consent. We’ve been passive spectators in the destruction of our society for far too long. It’s time to both say no and to create something better.
When I walked away from New York City and Wall Street ten years ago it was clear what sort of trajectory the country was on, and it’s only gotten worse since. We’re now in the crucial period spanning 2020-2025 that will decide what the next several decades look like. The big battle for the future is here. Right now. If there’s ever been a time in your life to step up, this is it.
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via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3e0Vz2j Tyler Durden
China’s Military Seeks Bigger Budget Amid “Growing Threat Of US Conflict” Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/19/2020 – 22:29
With Sino-US diplomatic relations plumbing the lowest levels in modern history, China’s military leaders are pushing for a substantial increase in their budget to be announced at the National People’s Congress that starts on Friday, arguing that the world’s largest standing army needs more resources to cope with volatile challenges at home and overseas. And at the top of the list, according to the South China Morning Post, is the growing confrontation with the US.
With China-US relations sinking amid a trade war, spats over civil liberties and Taiwan, and conflicts over Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, recent months have added accusations between Washington and Beijing about the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic. From Beijing’s viewpoint, the military threats are surfacing on its doorstep with US bombers running about 40 flights over contested areas of the South China and East China seas so far this year, or more than three times the number in the same period of 2019. US Navy warships have sailed four “freedom of navigation operations” in the area in the same period, compared with eight in all of last year.
“Beijing feels security threats posed by the US and other foreign countries are increasing, so the People’s Liberation Army wants a budget increase to support its military modernization and combat-ready training,” said Song Zhongping, a Hong Kong-based military commentator and former officer in the PLA, quoted by the SCMP.
Although the actual size of China’s defense budgets are a matter of dispute, military insiders say the PLA will want to match or exceed last year’s 7.5% growth rate, with one estimating a 9% jump, as tensions escalate on several fronts, including the perennial Taiwan friction.
While those increases may not seem outlandish, and pale in comparison to the total US military budget, they would be against a backdrop of a domestic economy severely hammered by the Covid-19 outbreak and the threat of a global recession. In late March, investment bank China International Capital Corporation slashed its real GDP growth forecast for China in 2020 to 2.6% from 6.1% in January.
One year ago at the NPC in March 2019, China announced defense spending of 1.18 trillion yuan (US$176 billion) which is the world’s second largest. But the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates China’s defense spending at US$261 billion, which is a little over a third that of the US$732 billion of the US.
Lu Li-shih, a former instructor at the naval academy in Taiwan, said the suspicion between Beijing and Washington was the worst since the resumption of diplomatic relations in the 1970s, but he rated the chance of a military conflict as low (for now). Collin Koh, a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, meanwhile, said the PLA and US military counterparts had communication channels.
“Bilateral military ties … might not be always efficacious, but at least do serve as existing ‘pressure valves’ to forestall and potentially mitigate the risks that arise from growing tensions between Beijing and Washington,” Koh said.
Still, as the SCMP reports, President Xi Jinping, who chairs the all-powerful Central Military Commission, ordered the PLA on January 2 to boost its combat capacity as relations worsened with Washington. That was a repeat of Xi’s “be ready to win wars” order when he laid out his military expansion plan to the Communist Party’s national congress in 2017. The message has not changed.
Neither has the focus of attention: Taiwan. In last July’s defence white paper, the PLA said two of its most challenging threats were from pro-independence forces in Taiwan and separatists in Tibet and Xinjiang, saying the army “will defend national unification at all costs”.
Ni Lexiong, a specialist in China’s naval strategy and former professor at the Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, said under President Donald Trump, US arms sales to Taiwan – including 66 F-16 Viper fighter jets – gave the PLA additional bargaining chips in asking for more money.
Beijing considers Taiwan a part of China’s territory that must be returned to the mainland fold, by force if necessary. The PLA has planned for such an event since 1949, when the Nationalist Party was defeated in the Chinese Civil War by the Communist Party of China and fled to the island.
Tensions over Taiwan have ratcheted up since Tsai Ing-wen became president in 2016. She was re-elected in a landslide in January on a platform of standing up to Beijing and defending Taiwan as a liberal democracy. She will be inaugurated for a second four-year term on Wednesday, just two days before the NPC opens.
In response, the FT reports that Taiwan is fearful that Beijing will step up direct military pressure this year in the wake of the coronavirus epidemic, with increasingly frequent incursions into airspace traditionally respected as a safety buffer zone. Such operations are below the threshold of war but would expand the area China dominates militarily, mirroring the approach Beijing has taken to establish virtual control over the disputed South China Sea.
“Once the pandemic recedes, the Chinese communists will fly across the Taiwan Strait median line more and more often, until the line disappears,” said a recently retired Taiwanese senior military official. “They will create a new status quo under which they will regularly operate much closer to our airspace, and move around there at will.”
The median line was drawn by the US in 1954. While the line does not have international legal force, both Taiwan and China have long had a tacit understanding not to cross it to avoid unintended clashes. But in March 2019, Chinese military aircraft crossed the line for the first time in 20 years and have done so on at least two more occasions.
Taiwan’s concerns follow veiled warnings from China and come as President Tsai Ing-wen starts her second term on Wednesday, with her country’s international reputation and her own popularity boosted by Taipei’s containment of the coronavirus pandemic.
Last week, Japanese news agency Kyodo reported that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was planning an exercise for August that would simulate the seizure of Pratas, a Taiwan-held atoll at the northern entrance of the South China Sea. At the same time, the Chinese government announced two month-long live-fire drills near the port of Tangshan, interpreted by some military experts as an exercise for an attack on Taiwan.
A senior Taiwanese government official said these signals and the PLA’s probing of the median line had heightened concerns that anger over Taipei’s handling of Covid-19 was driving Beijing to take a more provocative course. Taiwan prevented a local outbreak and has seen only 440 confirmed cases and seven deaths, after cutting travel from China early. This success attracted global attention and support for the diplomatically isolated country’s attempts to participate in the World Health Organization.
“Because of this, cross-Strait relations have become very tense right now,” the senior official said.
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Alexander Huang Chieh-cheng, a professor of international affairs and strategic studies at Tamkang University in Taipei, said that while a military conflict between the mainland and Taiwan would be unlikely in the coming two years, as Beijing needed to concentrate its efforts on economic recovery after the Covid-19 pandemic, the risk of conflict had increased.
“Beijing is expected to continue its sabre-rattling against Taipei, staging more war games to try to intimidate the Tsai government in her next four years in office as long as she rejects the 1992 consensus,” Huang said, referring to a decade-old agreement between Beijing and Taipei to define cross-strait relations. Huang was a former vice-chairman of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council which oversees the island’s policies towards the mainland.
China has been running increasing numbers of military flights into Taiwan’s airspace, and in recent media articles some retired Chinese military officials have suggested that the US was not in a position to defend Taiwan because all four of its aircraft carriers in the Indo-Pacific had been hit by Covid-19 outbreaks. Later comments in an influential party journal, the Study Times , suggested a military venture was not part of Beijing’s immediate plans.
“The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated suspicions and mistrust between Beijing and Washington, and likewise between Beijing and Taipei,” Ni said. “China is facing a new round of containment posed by the US-led Western countries similar to the Cold War.”
Meanwhile, Xi’s national “rejuvenation” strategy for China includes reshaping the PLA into a top-ranked fighting force by 2050, which includes launching at least four aircraft carrier strike groups by 2035, cutting-edge weapons research and development, and revamping the whole military command structure.
China now has two aircraft carriers; the Liaoning is a refitted vessel bought from Ukraine, while the Shandong is the first domestically built. The Shandong is still undergoing sea trials to meet what is known as initial operating capability, or IOC, for warships.
The navy has scheduled sea trials for two newly launched Type 075 helicopter docks, a type of amphibious vessel, with 40,000 tonnes of displacement. It also has plans for eight Type 055 guided-missile destroyers, its most powerful warship and among the most advanced in Asia. The first was commissioned in January and three others are being fitted out.
The PLA modernisation of both traditional and non-traditional military operations would not slow, said Song in Hong Kong. The PLA is also arguing for more funds, citing other complicated and non-traditional security challenges at home, from separatism to terrorism and religious extremism.
China’s military also found itself at the forefront of a different battle this year as tens of thousands of personnel were drafted into the fight against the Covid-19 disease outbreak in the initial epicentre, Wuhan, in January. The PLA provided doctors to treat patients, as well as soldiers and logistics for quarantine lockdowns, all additional expenditures that affect short- and long-term planning.
Beside fighting pandemics, the military is also expected to do its part in providing jobs for the rising ranks of unemployed as businesses struggle to recover from the economic damage done by the disease. More than 8.7 million students will graduate this summer and the PLA has been asked to absorb more of them, another reason to request more funding.
So… the Chinese army is about to grow by millions? Whatever you do, don’t call it a draft or you will be banned by Twitter.
A military insider said the Covid-19 pandemic added a large, unexpected financial burden on the PLA (not to mention a source of new “volunteer” recruits). “Military leadership is still fighting with the decision makers of the NPC for a budget increase up to 9 per cent for the coming year, even though the global and domestic economic situations are worrying,” said the person, who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the talks.
The PLA deployed more than 4,500 military medical personnel to worst-hit Hubei province and its capital Wuhan, as well as other logistic support elsewhere in the province from February.
“President Xi also ordered scientists from the Academy of Military Medical Sciences to join the global race to find a vaccine for Covid-19, which is a long-term and costly investment,” the person said. “It’s very difficult to predict the military cost from the Covid-19 pandemic, because we don’t know how long it will last.”
And speaking of the army’s involvement in the coronavirus pandemic, recall that a Chinese military virologist and bioweapons expert Major General Chen Wei went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology with military scientists in January to study the new virus. But aside from that, there is absolutely no connection between the Chinese army and the coronavirus outbreak. None at all.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3cL6Ofe Tyler Durden
“Masks On, Clothes Off” – First Strip Club In America Reopens Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/19/2020 – 22:25
Dozens of states are already in the process of reopening their crashed economies. Now the first strip club in the country, located in Wyoming, has resumed pole dancing operations and threw a grand reopening party last Friday called “masks on, clothes off.”
“When they [state officials] reopened the restaurants and bars in Wyoming, we were super excited because it’s been very difficult for us,” Kim Chavez, the owner of “The Den,” told FOX31.
“It’s been horrible to go almost three months without any kind of income,” Chavez’s husband, Greg Chavez, said.
Wyoming has had one of the lowest confirmed cases and deaths of COVID-19 in the US. As of Tuesday morning, confirmed cases stood at 577 and deaths at 10. Such a low count prompted state officials to reopen bars and restaurants last Friday, which included The Den.
“It was pretty busy,” Greg said, referring to the reopening party. “People had money to spend, and people were out. I think they were excited to be feeling normal again.”
FOX31 said The Den is the first strip club in America to reopen in the post-corona world. People from surrounding states piled into the strip club for the reopening party.
“Last night was crazy. We had people from Omaha and Utah, Nebraska, South Dakota. They made the trip,” Kim said.
Strippers at The Den. h/t Travor Hughes/USA Today
While normal pole dancing operations have resumed, the reopening has ushered in new health protocols to keep staff and patrons safe as the risk of transmission is still elevated with the threat of a second coronavirus wave that could materialize later this year. Things inside the club looked different:
“We just need to practice social distancing. We need to make sure that our customers feel safe when they’re here. We need to protect our staff. And just make sure that we’re doing our best to keep everybody protected and safe,” Kim said.
All dancers and employees are required to wear masks inside the facility and regularly wash and sanitize hands. Strict social distancing guidelines have been set that includes no contact between dancer and patron.
“We can do the dances on stage, but no lap dances,” Greg said.
Patrons are not required to wear masks but are asked to sanitize hands before entering the club. Sanitizing stations have been placed around the facility for staff and patrons to use. Dancers are required to sanitizer the pole before performing a show.
USA Today interviewed several dancers who were glad just to be back at work:
“Twenty-two dollars,” dancer Cleo said. “Not too bad!” adding that it’s her first income she’s earned in quite some time.
Cleo stripping at The Den. h/t Trevor Hughes/USA Today
“I’m super-excited. I’m a little nervous because the virus is still out there, but I’m glad to be able to go to work because a lot of people can’t yet,” said dancer Doris Craig. “The stimulus money was nice, but that’s going to run out, and I don’t like to feel like I’m dependent on the government.”
Another dancer by the name Breauna Grover, said she’s not too worried about the virus — adding that it poses little danger.
