This Video Shows How Far Those In Power Will Go To Maintain Control Of A Quarantine

This Video Shows How Far Those In Power Will Go To Maintain Control Of A Quarantine

Authored by J.G.Martinez G. via The Organic Prepper blog,

In our modern world, information is power. We know all that. Whether if some information we find allows us to sleep at night, that´s a different question.

Technology has made readily available information we never thought could be possible. This has allowed the shaping of our society in ways we never imagined.

Under severe circumstances, those in control will take extreme measures to keep it. This is, has been, and very likely will continue being a norm. Losing control is the worst nightmare for politicians. They know, that once public law enforcement organizations have been overrun, they will be targeted. Should they have their conscience clean, that wouldn´t happen. But in every society of the world, with the extremely few exceptions, the norm seems to be these politicians don´t have it so clean. Therefore, they will do whatever they have to do, to avoid losing their grip.

How is China maintaining control?

Now let´s analyze Chinese idiosyncrasy. Their culture has been going on for thousands of years. They are right to be proud. Whether that strange and modern concept of “human rights” was respected, it´s not part of the equation. Poor people had “human” rights thousands of years ago? I am not by any means an expert in history; but I would say, most of the actual “empires” are on a basis of total lack of respect for individual rights.

How is it possible that 1.5 billion people are kept under control so they don´t take over the status quo? It´s a mystery for me. But the future is unpredictable and can be really surprising. Things can change. The only constant is change.

We never can underestimate how far the system can go, just to avoid that huge beast called “the masses” getting out of control. This being said, I am going to describe what is in the videos of the link I submit here. This is my personal opinion, strictly. I´m totally responsible.

Warning: The video has some strong violent scenes including female mistreating.

Expect violent measures

Never been in the military, but I know most of the uniformed forces all over the world some kind of protocol to counterattack every possible contingency. That is something great. Law-abiding citizens will applaud this. Including me of course. But things are different when the contingency is becoming increasingly…threatening.

And this is exactly what seems to be happening. The reactions are extremely violent. The actions are extreme, and it´s hard to understand, if everything is under control, then why this footage is online? Despite all the censorship? These are the dystopian methods used by a desperate government.

Remember, the doctor who first alerted about this outbreak was thrown in a corner to die. It was a plain death sentence. I don´t know in China, but in Venezuela, the time and effort needed to provide someone with the means to be a real, prepared and competent doctor in medicine (not like those posers in Cuba who just want to get off the island to ask for asylum and going to work in someone´s restaurant) is huge: 7 years, and 10 years with an specialty. This shameless contempt for human life, once the owner of such life decides to make a move against whatever affects the interests of the totalitarian regime in charge, is a trait that sooner or later will be the nemesis of such soulless machinery of propaganda, built to feed decadent bureaucrats. Those who have seen how creepy the uniformity of certain “party leadership” is, will understand perfectly what I intend to say.

Maybe some of those watching this video could understand the methodology.

I don´t, and please don´t ask me to do so.  They act so violently, for being authorities, that one could think they seem to be on the verge of collective hysteria.

The video shows, in the first 20 seconds officers with masks dragging people out and immobilizing people on the floor. People are chased on the streets, by officers with sticks. Carried on hanging from legs and arms, by personnel with full-body hazmat suits.

An “officer” hits with both fists several times to a woman. Obviously he loses it after the woman reacts badly to his requests, and he starts throwing fists like a little girl. Shame on him.

Incredibly, a building gets its steel gates welded, shutting it closed for good. Officers in white hazmat suits barricade (on the outside!) a building gate. A pile of dirt and debris is found burying another gate. All of these buildings were suspicious of being infected with the disease.

Officers are seen fighting over people on the floor. They even kick the faces of some citizens. I know people can be annoying, but these officers don´t act like they´re controlling a disease: they look like thugs mobbing someone. I mean, how much time a trained officer lasts getting someone handcuffed? Dragging people on the streets is their idea of “crisis management”?

Another outrageous image is several people handcuffed, but chained by the waist to each other, just like circus monkeys. Jeez, I don´t even like monkeys being chained like that.

Desperate authorities are dangerous

Just to be clear, this is NOT a political article, God forbid it. This is a small exhibition of how the desperation of authorities can lead to very dangerous situations for us citizens. No matter where you are. Or even who you are.

Just imagine why I´m so concerned. I´m a foreigner in this country. The only person I care about, and the reason I am here, is a kid. I don´t have a fridge. I have to eat outside, or open a can otherwise.

Just think someday an outbreak makes its way here, and some sort of quarantine is enforced. What the heck am I going to do? Of course, I have some cans and water stored. A small couple of flashlights, and some other stuff. But I won´t be able to make it more than a week, and that is with luck.

What would happen if I have to defy the quarantine, get out the 7 blocks to the next supermarket, to buy some food (if there even is food left)…and a bunch of police throws me in a patrol car with other (possibly infected) guys?

If I never was exposed or contaminated, now I´m done. My only way to escape would be, to fight back (and with the risk they take my papers off me) and run. No one is going to get to look for me in any hospital or some other place. I would be on my own. (This book is an excellent guide to being prepared for quarantines so you can stay out of harm’s way.)

This is starting to be a situation that has been slowly occupying spaces in my mind. After all, 5 years ago I was sitting in my living room, enjoying a cold beer while playing videogames with my kiddo and torturing my annoying neighbors with the full power of my home theater.

5 months from here, God knows what will happen.

Do you see why I´m so concerned about this stuff? It´s amazing this has not made viral yet. The rest of the world (especially some countries in Latin America) seems not to give a f*** about the virus.

My brother-in-law is a really, really nice guy. I appreciate him a lot. I´m almost 20 years his senior but I see him as my (another) younger brother, indeed. He´s a simple man, a country boy now living in a huge city. Sent him the video and he said, immediately “Jose, this is serious. We will have to look for a place without so many people around! Your cottage would be the ideal place!! If you have some plan let me know.”

Thanks for your reading, and I look forward to your comments.

Be safe.


Tyler Durden

Mon, 03/02/2020 – 22:00

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China Warns Of Looming “Locust Invasion” As Coronavirus Outbreak Fades

China Warns Of Looming “Locust Invasion” As Coronavirus Outbreak Fades

Is the world’s largest constitutionally atheist state facing a revival of the 10 biblical plagues of Egypt? It’s starting to look that way.

Just days after Beijing promised to send a a 1,000-duck “army” to Pakistan to help farmers fend off one of the largest locust swarms in decades, senior government officials warned that China could soon face an “invasion” of desert locusts and urged local authorities to prepare for battle, even as the country struggles to get back on its feet after being shut down for so long.

The locusts are reportedly approaching China via Pakistan and India. Swarms could enter Tibet from Pakistan and India, or the southwestern province of Yunnan through Myanmar, depending on climate conditions, the notice said. Swarms could also fly across Kazakhstan and into China’s Xinjiang region, according to Reuters.

To be sure, the National Forestry and Grassland Administrations said on its website that the risk of the swarm entering China and attacking farms is “low”. But if the swarms do arrive, Beijing will be limited by a paucity of knowledge about the locusts’ migratory patterns and techniques to fight them (aside from the ducks, apparently).

Swarms could also attack the southwestern province of Yunnan via Myanmar. It all depends on climate conditions. Swarms could also fly across Kazakhstan and into China’s Xinjiang region.

Chinese customs officials at Khunjerab, a crossing between China and Pakistan in southwestern Xinjiang, have started monitoring the surrounding 2 km for locusts. They inspect vehicles crossing the border and, if they find locusts or locust eggs hidden, they destroy them.

The desert locusts have already ravaged crops and pastures in several countries in Africa, as well as India and Pakistan.

Thankfully, as we mentioned above, Beijing has a secret weapon:


Tyler Durden

Mon, 03/02/2020 – 21:40

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Chris Matthews, MSNBC’s Least Woke Host, Retires Amidst #MeToo Allegations

Long-running MSNBC primetime host Chris Matthews announced his retirement during his show’s opening on Monday night—implicitly due to allegations of sexual harassment recently revisited by critics and purported victims, as well as scrutiny over his questioning of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) and wariness of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.).

“After conversations with MSNBC, I decided tonight would be my last Hardball,” said Matthews. “Compliments on a woman’s appearance that some men, including me, might have once incorrectly thought were okay, were never okay. Not then and certainly not today. And for making such comments in the past, I’m sorry.”

His resignation followed days of criticism from various corners of the internet: from female journalists taking note of his alleged history of making sexist remarks toward female guests, from those in Warren’s camp who thought his recent questioning of her was too sharp, and from Sanders supporters who took umbrage with a World War II analogy that was unflattering toward their candidate.

On Saturday, GQ‘s Laura Bassett noted that Matthews “has a pattern of making comments about women’s appearances in demeaning ways,” and listed several of the accusations: calling co-worker Erin Burnett a “knockout,” saying Sarah Palin was “very attractive,” and allegedly making sexually-charged comments about female guests on his show—including Bassett, who claimed that he once told a makeup artist to keep putting makeup on her because “I’ll fall in love with her.”

“This tendency to objectify women in his orbit has bled into his treatment of female politicians and candidates,” she wrote.

There’s enough here for a reasonable person to be perturbed, and Matthews himself admitted that he said things he should not have said. Even so, the sudden resignation shows the punitive power of a #MeToo movement that has often failed to draw important distinctions between genuinely disturbing behavior and mere boorishness.

Moreover, the other two recent criticisms of Matthews—his handling of Warren, and a comment about Sanders—were incredibly overblown. Indeed, the Warren episode is a great example of why some people are justifiably concerned that #MeToo overreach will render important and necessary conversations between men and women impossible.

After the South Carolina debate, Matthews grilled Warren over her contention that former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a rival for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, had told a pregnant female employee to “kill it.” Bloomberg denied making this remark, and Matthews pressed Warren to state whether she thought he was lying. Here was how Bassett framed this exchange:

MSNBC host Chris Matthews, whose long history of sexist comments and behavior have somehow not yet gotten him fired, tested the boundaries of his own misogyny again on Wednesday night. After the tenth Democratic presidential debate, the Hardball anchor grilled Elizabeth Warren about one of her lines of attack against Mike Bloomberg during the debate: that a pregnant female employee accused Bloomberg of telling her to “kill it.”

“You believe he’s lying?” Matthews asked Warren of Bloomberg’s denial.

“I believe the woman, which means he’s not telling the truth,” said Warren, who recently had to defend her own credible story of pregnancy discrimination.

“And why would he lie?” Matthews said. “Just to protect himself?”

“Yeah, and why would she lie?” Warren responded pointedly.

“I just wanna make sure you’re clear about this,” Matthews said. Right there on America’s purportedly liberal network, the anchor spoke to a 70-year-old United States senator who is running for president—and a renowned Harvard Law professor, no less—like she couldn’t possibly understand her own words, as if she were a child choosing between a snack now or dessert later.

Bassett implied that it was a misogynistic act and a betrayal of liberal values to scrutinize Warren here. But this is nonsense: Warren’s credibility is very much an issue. She has a long history of misrepresenting her family’s situation. And when her surrogates accused Sanders of privately warning Warren that a woman couldn’t win the presidency, CNN implicitly took her side and failed to press the issue with her. Rather than being criticized, Matthews should be applauded for actually forcing Warren to stand by her smears.

Anyone who suggests that harshly scrutinizing Warren is a form of sexism—on the same spectrum of behavior as commenting about women’s appearances—is undermining the #MeToo movement’s more praiseworthy goals. They are conflating sexual harassment with the sometimes uncomfortable but vitally important job of forcing politicians to own what they say. It’s not sexist to make Warren explain in detail what she believes, and the candidate is more than capable of holding her own in such situations.

The Sanders incident, while not framed as a harassment issue, was similarly silly. Matthews had stated on air that Sanders’s victory in the Nevada caucus called to mind Nazi Germany’s sudden and decisive victory over France in 1940. Matthews was thus accused of likening Sanders supporters to Nazis, but obviously his analogy was merely referencing one side’s overwhelming advantage over an opponent, and had nothing to do with the ideology of the Third Reich.

Matthews has a had a long career, and it may or may not have been the right day for him to retire. But at a time when his flaws are on full display, it’s also worth remembering his positive attributes. Matthews was one of the more principled anti-interventionists on television: a Democrat with an independent streak who often seemed to intuitively grasp the appeal of Donald Trump better than his cable news colleagues. And he was not afraid to call out incompetence on his own side, recently lamenting—correctly—that the Iowa caucus debacle made it look like the Democratic Party was incapable of organizing even a “three-car funeral.” Alas, as the entire left-of-center media quickly pivots to woke cultural signaling, there was no longer room for someone like him.

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SCOTUS Denies Certiorari in Bump Stock Case (But Justice Gorsuch Blasts Lower Court’s Reasoning)

In 2018, the Trump Administration declared that possession of “bump stocks” was illegal under federal law. This was a legally questionable move, but was apparently more politically palatable than imploring Congress to enact a bump stock ban. Nonetheless, in Guedes v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the Trump Administration’s action.

Today, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in Guedes v. BATF. There was no recorded dissent, but Justice Gorsuch wrote a brief statement on the cert denial that was quite critical of both the Administration’s action and the rationale of the D.C. Circuit’s opinion. Specifically, Justice Gorsuch raised an eyebrow at the abrupt change in the federal government’s interpretation of the applicable statute, questioned the D.C. Circuit’s conclusion that an agency could receive Chevron deference even if the agency affirmatively waived any Chevron claim, and reiterated his view that Chevron deference is inappropriate in the criminal law context.

Wrote Gorsuch:

Does owning a bump stock expose a citizen to a decade in federal prison? For years, the government didn’t think so. But recently the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives changed its mind. Now, according to a new interpretive rule from the agency, owning a bump stock is forbidden by a longstanding federal statute that outlaws the”possession [of] a machinegun.” 26 U. S. C. §5685(b), 18 U. S. C. §924(a)(2). Whether bump stocks can be fairly reclassified and effectively outlawed as machineguns under existing statutory definitions, I do not know and could not say without briefing and argument. Nor do I question that Congress might seek to enact new legislation directly regulating the use and possession of bump stocks. But at least one thing should be clear: Contrary to the court of appeals’s decision in this case, Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. 467 U. S. 837 (1984), has nothing to say about the proper interpretation of the law before us.

In the first place, the government expressly waived reliance on Chevron. The government told the court of appeals that, if the validity of its rule (re)interpreting the machinegun statute “turns on the applicability of Chevron, it would prefer that the [r]ule be set aside rather than upheld.” 920 F. 3d 1, 21 (CADC 2019) (Henderson, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (noting concession). Yet, despite this concession, the court proceeded to upholdthe agency’s new rule only on the strength of Chevron deference. Think about it this way. The executive branch and affected citizens asked the court to do what courts usuallydo in statutory interpretation disputes: supply its best independent judgment about what the law means. But, instead of deciding the case the old-fashioned way, the court placed an uninvited thumb on the scale in favor of the government.

That was mistaken. This Court has often declined to apply Chevron deference when the government fails to invoke it. . . . Even when Chevron deference is sought, this Court has found it inappropriate where “the Executive seems of two minds” about the result it prefers. . . . Nor is it a surprise that the government can lose the benefit of Chevron in situations like these and ours. If the justification for Chevron is that “‘policy choices’ should be left to executive branch officials ‘directly accountable to the people,'” . . .  then courts must equally respect the Executive’s decision not to make policy choices in the interpretation of Congress’s handiwork.

I would actually go farther than Justice Gorsuch here. Under SEC v. Chenery, an agency action may only be upheld on the rationale relied upon by the agency. Therefore if the agency did not conclude that the statute was ambiguous and did not make an affirmative decision to resolve the ambiguity in a particular fashion, then the agency’s action should not be upheld on that basis.

The underlying logic of Chevron, as interpreted and expounded upon in subsequent cases such as Mead, reinforces this conclusion. As I explain in my essay “Restoring Chevron‘s Domain,” Chevron deference is premised upon the idea that Congress has delegated to an agency the power to resolve an ambiguity in the statute at issue. Moreover, as Mead and related cases make explicit, for an agency to take advantage of such deference, it  must actually exercise the power that Congress delegated in the course of reaching and declaring its interpretation of the statute. Thus it should follow that if an agency does not seek to exercise such delegated power, and disavows any reliance upon Chevron, then Chevron deference should not be available.

Gorsuch goes on:

To make matters worse, the law before us carries the possibility of criminal sanctions. And, as the government itself may have recognized in offering its disclaimer, whatever else one thinks about Chevron, it has no role to play when liberty is at stake. Under our Constitution, “[o]nly the people’s elected representatives in the legislature are authorized to ‘make an act a crime.'” United States v. Davis, 588 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) . . . . Before courts may send people to prison, we owe them an independent determination that the law actually forbids their conduct. A “reasonable” prosecutor’s say-so is cold comfort in comparison.That’s why this Court has “never held that the Government’s reading of a criminal statute is entitled to any deference.” United States v. Apel, 571 U. S. 359, 369 (2014). Instead, we have emphasized, courts bear an “obligation” to determine independently what the law allows and forbids. . . . That obligation went unfulfilled here.

I understand Justice Gorsuch’s disquiet with the application of Chevron to statutes that impose criminal penalties, but denying Chevron deference in such cases is not so simple. The U.S. Code is filled with regulatory statutes with provisions that may be applied both civilly and criminally. It would be quite odd to conclude that these provisions can have one meaning when applied by an agency to a civil violation, but another when applied in a criminal context. Thus to deny Chevron deference where criminal sanctions are on the table would be, in effect, to deny Chevron deference across a wide range of subject matter, if not to throw Chevron out altogether. As I am not (yet) convinced Chevron deference is at the root of the problems with the administrative state, I am not convinced this is the wisest course.

Gorsuch continues:

Chevron‘s application in this case may be doubtful for other reasons too. The agency used to tell everyone that bump stocks don’t qualify as “machineguns.” Now it says the opposite. The law hasn’t changed, only an agency’s interpretation of it. And these days it sometimes seems agencies change their statutory interpretations almost as often as elections change administrations. How, in all this, can ordinary citizens be expected to keep up—required not only to conform their conduct to the fairest reading of the law they might expect from a neutral judge, but forced to guess whether the statute will be declared ambiguous; to guess again whether the agency’s initial interpretation of the law will be declared “reasonable”; and to guess again whether a later and opposing agency interpretation will also be held “reasonable”? And why should courts, charged with the independent and neutral interpretation of the laws Congress has enacted, defer to such bureaucratic pirouetting?

Despite these concerns, I agree with my colleagues that the interlocutory petition before us does not merit review. The errors apparent in this preliminary ruling might yet be corrected before final judgment. Further, other courts of appeals are actively considering challenges to the same regulation. Before deciding whether to weigh in, we would benefit from hearing their considered judgments—provided, of course, that they are not afflicted with the same problems. But waiting should not be mistaken for lack of concern.

Indeed, while the Court did not take this case, it could well take another raising similar issues, if not one actually challenging the bump stock ban itself. To be continued.

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Google’s Creepy Line Exposed

Google’s Creepy Line Exposed

Authored by M G via The Burning Platform blog,

The Creepy Line is a particularly sinister term used in an unguarded remark by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt in 2010. In hindsight, what is most disturbing about the comment is how casually he explained Google’s policy regarding invading the privacy of its customers and clients.

“Google policy on a lot of these things,” Schmidt says about 45 seconds into the introduction, “is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it.” Time pointer needed.

The Creepy Line is an 80-minute documentary available through several options available here. 

For now, it is available for free at Amazon Prime, but I’m not sure how long it will be offered there considering many current concerns regarding censorship of anti-establishment themes on various social media platforms.

This film offers a very frank look at the number one source of news in our country: Facebook and Google.

Early in the film, you will discover how Google acquired an enormous and permanent cache of data about users. Initially, the data was used to refine search algorithms used to help index the websites and information uploaded to the world wide web. Now, however, it is used to fine-tune ads and content that most suits your interests, storing the information to better provide content suggestions for you. But, this film will give you a really disquieting idea (at least it should) about what else they may be doing with that data.

Initially, Google was simply the most popular Search engine, basically the largest available “indexing” algorithm on the net. Then, Google came up with Google Chrome, a browser, to track and log not only what you look for but also where you go and every keystroke you make while there. In fact, Google realized they could serve you best if they know what you are doing even when offline, which is why the the Android system can track you everywhere you take your phone. With all the free apps available and used globally, Google has a very accurate picture of what everyone’s daily life looks like anywhere in the world.

At intervals during the presentation, Professor Jordan Peterson offers insight from his own experience with social media and agenda setting.  For those unfamiliar with Peterson, he was propelled into fame when he very publicly refused to use the new gender pronouns approved by Canada’s Political Correct Policy. Peterson’s outspoken refusal to yield to the thought police led to him being interviewed as being a spokesman for the Millennial Mindset, especially their willingness to accept new technology without questioning it.

“These are all free services but obviously they’re not,” notes Peterson, during his commentary, as he discusses the impact upon his life his sudden notoriety and the negative publicity Google and You Tube caused for him. He discusses his own battle with depression as well as insights into his daughter’s experiences with social media, which gives him special psychiatric insight into teenage (millennial) angst, perhaps.  Some may find his frank openness about the issues off-putting, but he comes across to me as a man who has walked through hell and doesn’t want to talk about it, but has decided he will do so, if you are interested. I find Peterson’s point of view extremely relevant, especially in light of the the news regarding Peak Prosperity’s de-platforming today and the implications for our own sources of information going forward.

He is not the main speaker during the film, but Peterson does an excellent job explaining how the surveillance business model works.  This leads to a discussion of how Google Maps, Google Docs, and the use of Gmail (even drafts of emails you don’t send!) combine together to form and shape your thoughts and behavior, similar to a bunch of people in a control room with dials which monitor and control your every interaction with the world. (15:28)

Less than ten minutes into the movie, you might have already decided to turn to non-Google search engines, but there is no hope of your retrieving any information they already have on you. It belongs to them, a legal point discussed several times during the presentation.

We already know Facebook censors conservative views and downplays trending stories favorable to conservatives, and the movie assures us Google and You Tube work on similar algorithms. Algorithmic choices must be based on something, but to remain supposedly objective, nothing should be completely filtered out, only put into some sort of rational order. Rational could be chronological, or most viewed, or relevant, for instance, but for that rational variable in the algorithm, something will come first.

As long as nothing is excluded, albeit, as long as you can find them on the list somewhere, there is at least a rational reason for their placement and the semblance of objectivity is retained.  Whether you agree with the rationality is not relevant at this point.  Except, that we know filters are restricting information for very irrational reasons.

In the discussion, we discover Facebook Social Engineers insert stories into news feeds which they want people to see. This means not only is Facebook a gatekeeper for your news, they are also propaganda pushers. The concerns that Facebook could easily influence elections by sending messages to certain types of individuals most likely to be influenced deserves at least some discussion by some governmental agency, doesn’t it?

Well? the discussion with Zuckerberg during the film shows his disregard for users’ privacy concerns.  That CYA attitude is obvious throughout when we are reminded of all the “terms of use” we have agreed to over the years.

Facebook and these other internet entities claiming company rights without accountability are communities without voting citizens. Since the majority of voters claim to get their news from Facebook or Google associated sources, this is an issue people should realize really will impact our ability to use social media for reliable news.  We have no access to details concerning how decisions are made regarding censorship on any of these platforms.  We have every reason to believe they are not necessarily rational or definitely are not ethical. While Facebook seemed at one time to be a wonderful way to connect humanity across the world, it brought with that connection an overabundance of unintended consequences which may introduce a new Dark Age.

Google and Facebook are a kind of corporate partnership which has unprecedented power and influence over public opinion. Psychologist and Google critic Robert Epstein (a large contributor to the documentary) found that, by sheer coincidence, the day after he wrote an article called “Could Google Tilt a Close Election?” he couldn’t access the Internet through any browser. If you are time-constrained and hope for the meat of the matter, around the 34-minute point, Peterson discusses his reaction to Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s comment about getting close to the creepy line but not crossing it.  He suggests cultures once taught children to stay away from the creepy line, but that somehow, digital capability has altered the understanding of what the creepy line represents.

The movie discusses the concepts behind Search Engine Manipulation Effect (SEME) which has powerful implications since 90% of searchers select the first on the list. At 38:30 a good introduction to the impact of Negativity Bias helps explain the ability to suppress ideas deemed “negative” in public opinion.

“If they have this kind of power then democracy is an illusion,” says Roger Epstein.

“There have to be in place numerous safeguards to make sure not only that they don’t exercise these powers but that they can’t exercise these powers.” 

At 44:28, you will discover that the Federal Government runs on Google and when you learn how much of our nations classified data is trusted to Google, it should make most of us even more aware of our lapses in internet discernment in days gone by.

I believe, it is vital to note the film was made by the makers of “Clinton Cash.”

And Google executive Eric Schmidt, infamous for his “creepy line” comment, became part of the Clinton campaign in 2016 but by then, we’d all come to realize there was something a little creepy about Google, anyway, hadn’t we? While the video does provide a lot of anecdotal evidence with some scientific (social statistics) analysis to support the idea that internet gatekeepers introduce liberal bias, the evidence is sketchy about how internet platforms are monetized and what we might do to resist the influence these tech giants possess in our government institutions.

This is a discussion  we should force our federal servants to have because those agencies have become part of the hiring grounds for big tech companies.  They simply hire influence.  It is a discussion we do need to have as we face the direction technology is pushing us toward: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Artificially Intelligent Decisions.

Instead of War Games’ discovery there is no way to win, AI may decide nobody really has a need to know who won. Google got caught before favoring its own commercial services by antitrust regulators, which is discussed in the movie. Assuming those who control Google might very well show favor in politics is a valid worry when considering the ability of many of their hired “monitors” to delete or insert content based on their own bias at will. (The video discusses several known instances of this happening.)

Unfortunately, there is not an obvious solution, but one suggestion is that Google, Facebook, YouTube, et al be legally defined as media companies and be subject to the same legal burdens which apply to mainstream media corporations. In other words, the suggestion is that they be held accountable for their actions. These enormous companies have created algorithms that in turn have created sorting systems that attempt to direct and control (quite successfully) every aspect of our lives, without our even being fully aware of their impact on our decisions.

It is time we educate ourselves before we become “re-educated.”

Overall, I think The Creepy Line is a good way to begin a much needed public debate, but it is at least a way to get yourself educated a bit about why you should send a donation to The Burning Platform today and thank Jim Quinn for continuing to host a wide variety of contributors here at this page while he can.


Tyler Durden

Mon, 03/02/2020 – 21:20

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Chris Matthews, MSNBC’s Least Woke Host, Retires Amidst #MeToo Allegations

Long-running MSNBC primetime host Chris Matthews announced his retirement during his show’s opening on Monday night—implicitly due to allegations of sexual harassment recently revisited by critics and purported victims, as well as scrutiny over his questioning of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) and wariness of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.).

“After conversations with MSNBC, I decided tonight would be my last Hardball,” said Matthews. “Compliments on a woman’s appearance that some men, including me, might have once incorrectly thought were okay, were never okay. Not then and certainly not today. And for making such comments in the past, I’m sorry.”

His resignation followed days of criticism from various corners of the internet: from female journalists taking note of his alleged history of making sexist remarks toward female guests, from those in Warren’s camp who thought his recent questioning of her was too sharp, and from Sanders supporters who took umbrage with a World War II analogy that was unflattering toward their candidate.

On Saturday, GQ‘s Laura Bassett noted that Matthews “has a pattern of making comments about women’s appearances in demeaning ways,” and listed several of the accusations: calling co-worker Erin Burnett a “knockout,” saying Sarah Palin was “very attractive,” and allegedly making sexually-charged comments about female guests on his show—including Bassett, who claimed that he once told a makeup artist to keep putting makeup on her because “I’ll fall in love with her.”

“This tendency to objectify women in his orbit has bled into his treatment of female politicians and candidates,” she wrote.

There’s enough here for a reasonable person to be perturbed, and Matthews himself admitted that he said things he should not have said. Even so, the sudden resignation shows the punitive power of a #MeToo movement that has often failed to draw important distinctions between genuinely disturbing behavior and mere boorishness.

Moreover, the other two recent criticisms of Matthews—his handling of Warren, and a comment about Sanders—were incredibly overblown. Indeed, the Warren episode is a great example of why some people are justifiably concerned that #MeToo overreach will render important and necessary conversations between men and women impossible.

After the South Carolina debate, Matthews grilled Warren over her contention that former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a rival for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, had told a pregnant female employee to “kill it.” Bloomberg denied making this remark, and Matthews pressed Warren to state whether she thought he was lying. Here was how Bassett framed this exchange:

MSNBC host Chris Matthews, whose long history of sexist comments and behavior have somehow not yet gotten him fired, tested the boundaries of his own misogyny again on Wednesday night. After the tenth Democratic presidential debate, the Hardball anchor grilled Elizabeth Warren about one of her lines of attack against Mike Bloomberg during the debate: that a pregnant female employee accused Bloomberg of telling her to “kill it.”

“You believe he’s lying?” Matthews asked Warren of Bloomberg’s denial.

“I believe the woman, which means he’s not telling the truth,” said Warren, who recently had to defend her own credible story of pregnancy discrimination.

“And why would he lie?” Matthews said. “Just to protect himself?”

“Yeah, and why would she lie?” Warren responded pointedly.

“I just wanna make sure you’re clear about this,” Matthews said. Right there on America’s purportedly liberal network, the anchor spoke to a 70-year-old United States senator who is running for president—and a renowned Harvard Law professor, no less—like she couldn’t possibly understand her own words, as if she were a child choosing between a snack now or dessert later.

Bassett implied that it was a misogynistic act and a betrayal of liberal values to scrutinize Warren here. But this is nonsense: Warren’s credibility is very much an issue. She has a long history of misrepresenting her family’s situation. And when her surrogates accused Sanders of privately warning Warren that a woman couldn’t win the presidency, CNN implicitly took her side and failed to press the issue with her. Rather than being criticized, Matthews should be applauded for actually forcing Warren to stand by her smears.

Anyone who suggests that harshly scrutinizing Warren is a form of sexism—on the same spectrum of behavior as commenting about women’s appearances—is undermining the #MeToo movement’s more praiseworthy goals. They are conflating sexual harassment with the sometimes uncomfortable but vitally important job of forcing politicians to own what they say. It’s not sexist to make Warren explain in detail what she believes, and the candidate is more than capable of holding her own in such situations.

The Sanders incident, while not framed as a harassment issue, was similarly silly. Matthews had stated on air that Sanders’s victory in the Nevada caucus called to mind Nazi Germany’s sudden and decisive victory over France in 1940. Matthews was thus accused of likening Sanders supporters to Nazis, but obviously his analogy was merely referencing one side’s overwhelming advantage over an opponent, and had nothing to do with the ideology of the Third Reich.

Matthews has a had a long career, and it may or may not have been the right day for him to retire. But at a time when his flaws are on full display, it’s also worth remembering his positive attributes. Matthews was one of the more principled anti-interventionists on television: a Democrat with an independent streak who often seemed to intuitively grasp the appeal of Donald Trump better than his cable news colleagues. And he was not afraid to call out incompetence on his own side, recently lamenting—correctly—that the Iowa caucus debacle made it look like the Democratic Party was incapable of organizing even a “three-car funeral.” Alas, as the entire left-of-center media quickly pivots to woke cultural signaling, there was no longer room for someone like him.

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SCOTUS Denies Certiorari in Bump Stock Case (But Justice Gorsuch Blasts Lower Court’s Reasoning)

In 2018, the Trump Administration declared that possession of “bump stocks” was illegal under federal law. This was a legally questionable move, but was apparently more politically palatable than imploring Congress to enact a bump stock ban. Nonetheless, in Guedes v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the Trump Administration’s action.

Today, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in Guedes v. BATF. There was no recorded dissent, but Justice Gorsuch wrote a brief statement on the cert denial that was quite critical of both the Administration’s action and the rationale of the D.C. Circuit’s opinion. Specifically, Justice Gorsuch raised an eyebrow at the abrupt change in the federal government’s interpretation of the applicable statute, questioned the D.C. Circuit’s conclusion that an agency could receive Chevron deference even if the agency affirmatively waived any Chevron claim, and reiterated his view that Chevron deference is inappropriate in the criminal law context.

Wrote Gorsuch:

Does owning a bump stock expose a citizen to a decade in federal prison? For years, the government didn’t think so. But recently the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives changed its mind. Now, according to a new interpretive rule from the agency, owning a bump stock is forbidden by a longstanding federal statute that outlaws the”possession [of] a machinegun.” 26 U. S. C. §5685(b), 18 U. S. C. §924(a)(2). Whether bump stocks can be fairly reclassified and effectively outlawed as machineguns under existing statutory definitions, I do not know and could not say without briefing and argument. Nor do I question that Congress might seek to enact new legislation directly regulating the use and possession of bump stocks. But at least one thing should be clear: Contrary to the court of appeals’s decision in this case, Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. 467 U. S. 837 (1984), has nothing to say about the proper interpretation of the law before us.

In the first place, the government expressly waived reliance on Chevron. The government told the court of appeals that, if the validity of its rule (re)interpreting the machinegun statute “turns on the applicability of Chevron, it would prefer that the [r]ule be set aside rather than upheld.” 920 F. 3d 1, 21 (CADC 2019) (Henderson, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (noting concession). Yet, despite this concession, the court proceeded to upholdthe agency’s new rule only on the strength of Chevron deference. Think about it this way. The executive branch and affected citizens asked the court to do what courts usuallydo in statutory interpretation disputes: supply its best independent judgment about what the law means. But, instead of deciding the case the old-fashioned way, the court placed an uninvited thumb on the scale in favor of the government.

That was mistaken. This Court has often declined to apply Chevron deference when the government fails to invoke it. . . . Even when Chevron deference is sought, this Court has found it inappropriate where “the Executive seems of two minds” about the result it prefers. . . . Nor is it a surprise that the government can lose the benefit of Chevron in situations like these and ours. If the justification for Chevron is that “‘policy choices’ should be left to executive branch officials ‘directly accountable to the people,'” . . .  then courts must equally respect the Executive’s decision not to make policy choices in the interpretation of Congress’s handiwork.

I would actually go farther than Justice Gorsuch here. Under SEC v. Chenery, an agency action may only be upheld on the rationale relied upon by the agency. Therefore if the agency did not conclude that the statute was ambiguous and did not make an affirmative decision to resolve the ambiguity in a particular fashion, then the agency’s action should not be upheld on that basis.

The underlying logic of Chevron, as interpreted and expounded upon in subsequent cases such as Mead, reinforces this conclusion. As I explain in my essay “Restoring Chevron‘s Domain,” Chevron deference is premised upon the idea that Congress has delegated to an agency the power to resolve an ambiguity in the statute at issue. Moreover, as Mead and related cases make explicit, for an agency to take advantage of such deference, it  must actually exercise the power that Congress delegated in the course of reaching and declaring its interpretation of the statute. Thus it should follow that if an agency does not seek to exercise such delegated power, and disavows any reliance upon Chevron, then Chevron deference should not be available.

Gorsuch goes on:

To make matters worse, the law before us carries the possibility of criminal sanctions. And, as the government itself may have recognized in offering its disclaimer, whatever else one thinks about Chevron, it has no role to play when liberty is at stake. Under our Constitution, “[o]nly the people’s elected representatives in the legislature are authorized to ‘make an act a crime.'” United States v. Davis, 588 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) . . . . Before courts may send people to prison, we owe them an independent determination that the law actually forbids their conduct. A “reasonable” prosecutor’s say-so is cold comfort in comparison.That’s why this Court has “never held that the Government’s reading of a criminal statute is entitled to any deference.” United States v. Apel, 571 U. S. 359, 369 (2014). Instead, we have emphasized, courts bear an “obligation” to determine independently what the law allows and forbids. . . . That obligation went unfulfilled here.

I understand Justice Gorsuch’s disquiet with the application of Chevron to statutes that impose criminal penalties, but denying Chevron deference in such cases is not so simple. The U.S. Code is filled with regulatory statutes with provisions that may be applied both civilly and criminally. It would be quite odd to conclude that these provisions can have one meaning when applied by an agency to a civil violation, but another when applied in a criminal context. Thus to deny Chevron deference where criminal sanctions are on the table would be, in effect, to deny Chevron deference across a wide range of subject matter, if not to throw Chevron out altogether. As I am not (yet) convinced Chevron deference is at the root of the problems with the administrative state, I am not convinced this is the wisest course.

Gorsuch continues:

Chevron‘s application in this case may be doubtful for other reasons too. The agency used to tell everyone that bump stocks don’t qualify as “machineguns.” Now it says the opposite. The law hasn’t changed, only an agency’s interpretation of it. And these days it sometimes seems agencies change their statutory interpretations almost as often as elections change administrations. How, in all this, can ordinary citizens be expected to keep up—required not only to conform their conduct to the fairest reading of the law they might expect from a neutral judge, but forced to guess whether the statute will be declared ambiguous; to guess again whether the agency’s initial interpretation of the law will be declared “reasonable”; and to guess again whether a later and opposing agency interpretation will also be held “reasonable”? And why should courts, charged with the independent and neutral interpretation of the laws Congress has enacted, defer to such bureaucratic pirouetting?

Despite these concerns, I agree with my colleagues that the interlocutory petition before us does not merit review. The errors apparent in this preliminary ruling might yet be corrected before final judgment. Further, other courts of appeals are actively considering challenges to the same regulation. Before deciding whether to weigh in, we would benefit from hearing their considered judgments—provided, of course, that they are not afflicted with the same problems. But waiting should not be mistaken for lack of concern.

Indeed, while the Court did not take this case, it could well take another raising similar issues, if not one actually challenging the bump stock ban itself. To be continued.

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Boeing Bets Big On Max Production Restart By Mid-Year With New Hires

Boeing Bets Big On Max Production Restart By Mid-Year With New Hires

Boeing is making a massive bet with the hiring of new mechanics for its shuttered 737 Max production line that a restart could begin imminently, reported Bloomberg. 

Max production lines were suspended last month as there was no clear pathway for the planes to return to the skies via the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

Boeing started hiring hundreds of new employees late last year with the expectation production would resume by mid-2020. In early December, Boeing hired 115 new mechanics to its Pacific Northwest manufacturing hub. Another 122 were brought on in early January and another 143 by mid-month. IAM District 751, Boeing’s largest labor union, said the plane manufacturer had hired 730 new workers, a figure that is entirely net increases, despite 31 mechanics leaving. 

Boeing’s labor and supply chain management expenses related to the Max have been soaring since the planes were grounded about a year ago, and the company incurred even higher costs associated with production shutdowns last month. About 3,000 employees remain on payroll to avoid a fracturing of its supply chain. 

Boeing’s timetable for a mid-year production restart could be a little too optimistic with planes grounded. The FAA has provided limited details on when the aircraft will return to the skies. 

There are some signs that Boeing’s restart could be nearing, or maybe it’s just more gambling by its suppliers: Spirit AeroSystems Holdings Inc., Boeing’s top supplier with 3,200 employees, said it would resume Max fuselage production at the end of March.

Ken Herbert, an analyst with Canaccord Genuity, said 200 of the recent Boeing hiring’s had been mechanics for the Max production line. Herbert said other workers had been shifted to other product lines but would be diverted back to Max production when restart occurs.

Doug Alder, a Boeing spokesman, told Bloomberg that “we’ve maintained our staffing levels on the 737 program to focus on factory initiatives, while temporarily assigning some employees.” 

Getting Max production off the ground by mid-year could be a difficult task for Boeing, and the number of resources it’s allocating into its supply chain for immediate restart could prove disastrous if delays continue.

Hints of new delays are coming from Southwest and United Airlines, who have extended Max cancelations until late August to the early September timeframe.

And more issues are developing, with about half of undelivered Max planes have foreign-object debris (FOD) in their fuel tanks.

Boeing’s big bet on mid-year production restart could prove disastrous if more delays are seen. 


Tyler Durden

Mon, 03/02/2020 – 21:00

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Is China’s Economy Finally Starting To Recover? Here Is What The Real Data Shows

Is China’s Economy Finally Starting To Recover? Here Is What The Real Data Shows

Over the weekend, China-watchers – or at least the ones who don’t really watch China all that closely and instead rely on others’ “hot takes” – were shocked to learn that in February both the Chinese manufacturing and non-manufacturing PMIs had crashed far below consensus expectations, tumbling to record low levels, surpassing even the economic contraction observed at the peak of the global financial crisis.

Meanwhile, anyone who was following out periodic updates of China’s “alternative”, high-frequency indicators demonstrating the real state of the economy was hardly surprised, because as we showed over the past few weeks, after China’s catastrophic post-Lunar New Year collapse the economy has yet to stage a material rebound as profiled previously:

And yet, judging by the market’s torrid surge on Monday, it appears that – as so often happens – traders took China’s latest numbers in stride, and specifically as an indication of Beijing “kitchen sinking” the collapse in February, with a V-shaped recovery sure to follow.

Or maybe not, because while not only has China’s economy not picked up even modestly, but it is only a matter of time before Beijing, which has forced people to go to work against their will, succumbs to a second wave of coronavirus infections, one which will result in an even worse economic slump than the current one, which incidentally has yet to show any actual recovery!

So what do the latest high-frequency economic indicators show? It may come as a surprise to some that not only has China’s economy barely posted any improvement since our last update on this topic a week ago, but it has in fact lost ground in some metrics. Courtesy of Goldman, here is the latest “alternative” data:

First, daily coal consumption has barely rebounded from the recent lows, and is in fact where it was when the Lunar Near Year started, and tracking almost 30% Y/Y:

In line with the reduced daily coal consumption, railway-loaded coal volumes are also tracking substantially below the average level of the past three years, and what’s worse, the 2020 series appears to have slowed down in recent days.

An even more ominous indicator is China’s traffic congection index – a proxy of overall trade and commerce – which has barely budged since its new year lows and remains far below the same period in previous years.

With commerce frozen and amid fears that the government is lying about the true extent of the coronavirus spread, it will hardly come as a surprise that passenger traffic has failed to stage even a modest rebound from its new year lows, and is about a quarter of where it was one year.

One of Wall Street’s favorite real-time indicators, traffic congestion in major Chinese cities, has seen a modest rebound in recent days, however even it remains just barely above its level at the start of the lunar new year, and is below half where it has been in recent years.

It’s not just passenger traffic that is moribund: the load factor on domestic flights remains a fraction of where it has been in recent years.

Even the one area where there was been a modest rebound in recent days, daily property sale, remains in dire territory, or about 68% down compare to last year.

Looking at end markets for commodities used in construction, the operating rate of rebar  slumped further on both weak demand and high inventories. Likewise, the operating rate of HRC and galvanized steel, mainly used in the manufacturing sector, is now at just 50% of capacity and shows no signs of recovery.

And, as Goldman points out, while the bank has found increased orders from cable and wires fabricators while, operating rate of copper rod producers remained as low as 50% for big companies and 30% for medium-sized producers. What’s more, some small producers have not restarted yet at all, according to a Goldman survey with onshore contacts.

There is a silver lining to China’s ongoing economic paralysis: anyone who ventures into one of the country’s thousands of cinemas will have the building all to themselves.

The failure of China’s economy to reboot comes even as authorities have ordered owners of closed factories – whose employees are scared to return to work – to boost electricity usage to pretend that the economy is back to normal, and to fool those people who look at the charts above, into getting the impression that China’s economy is humming again. We described this bizarre example of central planning on Saturday, and here is Rabobank’s Michael Every commenting on this very phenomenon on Monday morning:

Saturday’s China PMI data were frankly shocking. Manufacturing was at 35.7 and services at 28.9: these are not recessionary levels, but outright depressionary. The private Caixin PMI was also awful at 40.3, again saying a deep downturn is biting. Of course, the real issue is if we get a V-shaped recovery in output – or in virus infections. Optimists, and Chinese stocks this morning, are cheering the former – and Chinese stocks are always freely traded and never, ever manipulated by the authorities, as well all know. Realists, and NASA satellite imagery of no pollution over China, lean towards the latter: as does one anecdotal, unsubstantiated report trending over the weekend that China has been ordering factories to leave the lights on to make them look busier from space and to boost electricity output in case pesky foreigners start trying to use that as a GDP proxy.

Finally, for all those expecting that Beijing will unleash another massive stimulus to kick-start the economy which remains paralyzed at a time when most analysts said activity would be back to normal by the first week of March, we give the last word to Nomura’s China economist Ting Lu, who not only correctly predicted the plunge in PMIs, but also said that “the likelihood of another round of massive stimulus appears low as policy space remains limited.””

“We believe markets might underestimate the scale of the current growth slump. Due to a slower-than-expected rate of business resumption, we have cut our year-on-year Q1 real GDP growth forecast to 3.0% and expect Beijing to ramp up policy easing measures in coming months. That said, the likelihood of another round of massive stimulus appears low as policy space remains limited.”

In short, for China – which was the world’s growth dynamo during the global financial crisis and helped the world rebound from the 2009 global depression while raking up tens of trillions in debt – the end of the economic road may finally be here.


Tyler Durden

Mon, 03/02/2020 – 20:40

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Why Ranked-Choice Voting Might Make Little Difference In Heavily Contested Primaries

One advantage of using primaries to select nominees for President is that when the selection process takes place over time, it is easier for similarly-minded voters to coordinate on nominees. Today is a good illustration, as the departures of Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar from the race for the Democratic nomination facilitate the coordination of moderate Democrats, presumably to the benefit of Joe Biden. Whatever one’s politics, it may seem perverse that the more candidates who cluster around a particular set of issue positions, the greater the advantage for candidates outside the cluster. And it may also seem perverse that candidates sometimes must drop out to best address the ideological interests of their supporters.

Social choice theorists have identified alternative approaches to resolving elections in a single round that in theory avoid imposing a disadvantage on clustered candidates. These mechanisms require voters to rank either all candidates or some of their favorites in preference order. The mechanism that seems to receive the most attention these days is ranked-choice voting. This algorithm, sometimes referred to as instant runoff voting, eliminates candidates one by one based on who has the fewest first-place votes; when a voter’s first-place candidate is eliminated, the second-place candidate assumes the top spot.

Ranked-choice voting, however, does not have a desirable property, known as the Condorcet criterion. An algorithm meets this criterion if it guarantees that it will always select a candidate who beats all other candidates in pair-wise comparisons, should such a candidate exist. For example, suppose 45% of voters have the preference ordering (1) Left (2) Center (3) Right, 40% have the preference ordering (1) Right (2) Center (3) Left, and 15% have Center as their first choice. Then, a majority of voters prefer Center to Left, and a majority prefer Center to Right, so a Condorcet method would choose Center. But ranked-choice voting would eliminate Center, ultimately selecting Left instead.

Defenders of ranked-choice voting suggest that this is highly unlikely in practice. For example, an analysis of 138 elections in the Bay Area using ranked-choice voting found that each election of the 138 had a Condorcet winner and that the ranked-choice mechanism in fact selected this winner. This may seem surprising, given the simplicity of the example above in which a Condorcet winner exists but ranked-choice voting does not select it. Another surprising result is that only 7 of the 138 elections chose a candidate trailing in the first round, indicating that ranked-choice voting rarely produces a result different from that of a system that simply chooses the candidate with the most first-place votes.

One possible explanation for these phenomena is that voters ranking their preferred candidates are not doing so in a vacuum, but instead are placing some weight on other voters’ preferences. Political scientists have long noted the possibility of bandwagon effects, and it is plausible that a voter might want to vote for the election winner, or at least for a candidate who is the obvious alternative to the winner. Voters might do this even with a voting system in which they rank all their choices. A related possibility is that a voter does not want to “waste” a vote and seeks to act strategically, even though ranked-choice voting and Condorcet methods greatly limit (without eliminating) the possibility of strategic behavior. A voter who deep down prefers Elizabeth Warren, for example, might mistakenly believe that placing her near the top of the ballot will limit the voter’s ability to make a choice between Bernie Sanders and Biden. We can think of this as a bandwagon effect too, though the motivation is quite different.

If voters change their heart-of-hearts rankings to favor candidates who are more popular among other voters, adoption of ranked-choice voting might make little difference. Consider, for example, a ranked-choice poll from about a week ago of Democratic primary voters. Given the rankings of voters, Sanders was the Condorcet winner and also would have won a ranked-choice vote, though with only a narrow head-to-head edge over Biden. This is in part because 27% of Sanders voters had Biden as a second choice and 38% of Biden voters had Sanders as a second choice. These results may seem surprising given the conventional wisdom that Sanders and Biden are in separate lanes, but makes perfect sense if there are some voters who will tend to place the candidates who have the best chance of winning at the top of their ranked-choice ballot.

To what extend do bandwagon effects undermine Condorcet methods? As a quick back-of-the-envelope approach, I ran a simple simulation many times (C# source code here). The gist is that I assumed that there are 10 candidates, each of whom has two attribute values randomly distributed from 0 to 1. Each voter also has a preferred value for each attribute and ranks candidates based on the sum of the absolute difference from the voter’s preference to each candidate’s attribute value. However, half of voters are susceptible to a bandwagon effect, in which they give some benefit to the two candidates who have the highest number of first-place votes overall. I then varied the size of this bandwagon effect.

This simulation allows us to distinguish latent Condorcet winners from apparent Condorcet winners. A latent Condorcet winner is a candidate who beats all other candidates in pair-wise comparisons when there are no bandwagon effects. An apparent Condorcet winner is a candidate who beats all other candidates in pair-wise comparisons when bandwagon effects exist. Arguably, we would like an election method to tend to choose latent Condorcet winners, even though voters’ revealed rankings factor in bandwagon effects.

This simulation can help us answer whether bandwagon effects explain why apparent Condorcet winners seem to exist so often and why ranked-choice voting picks these so often. The figure immediately below shows how often the simulation produced latent and apparent Condorcet winners. With no bandwagon effects, Condorcet winners exist around 90% of the time; the other 10% of the time, some form of the Condorcet paradox emerges. But as bandwagon effects increase, the proportion of the time that a Condorcet winner emerges rises to 100%. Unfortunately, these are apparent Condorcet winners, reflecting how the voters vote but not necessarily the assumed latent preferences. This helps explain the result above that a Condorcet winner almost always appears to exist.

Similarly, the next figure demonstrates that the probability that ranked-choice voting chooses the apparent winner increases with bandwagon effects. Of cases in which an apparent Condorcet winner exists, ranked-choice voting succeeds at identifying that winner only 80% of the time in our simulations without bandwagon effects, but 100% of the time when the bandwagon effects are large. Again, this helps explain the result that ranked-choice voting seems to choose Condorcet winners, despite the absence of theoretical guarantees that it will do so.

Changing from ranked-choice voting to a Condorcet method will not much improve the voting system’s chance of selecting the latent Condorcet winner. The next chart illustrates the probability that a voting method selects the latent Condorcet winner. Condorcet methods are better than ranked-choice voting in the absence of bandwagon effects, but both are equally bad given bandwagon effects.

This suggests that when implementing some form of preference balloting in elections with many candidates, the most important challenge is to persuade voters that they should reveal their true preferences and shouldn’t worry about wasting their votes. Perhaps this information might be easier to convey with ranked-choice voting than with more complex Condorcet methods, because the dynamics of ranked-choice voting are more intuitively understood. If so, ranked-choice voting might be preferable to Condorcet methods, despite the latter’s stronger theoretical properties. On the other hand, the superficial very strong apparent performance of ranked-choice voting may reveal that it is not easy to convince voters to express their true preferences. If that’s so, seemingly more primitive voting systems, such as our own Presidential primary system, could be preferable.

This analysis doesn’t tell us much about whether some type of Condorcet method might make a difference in a general election with a very small number of candidates. It seems plausible that adopting such a method might allow for the emergence of a centrist third party in the United States. Ranked-choice voting would be unlikely to make a difference, since the centrist candidate would have the fewest votes. But it seems plausible that a centrist candidate might be able to convince many voters to place her second on the ballot, and a Condorcet method could then choose this candidate as the winner. Precisely for this reason, ranked-choice voting, which makes little difference, may be much more politically feasible than a Condorcet alternative.

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