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Over the past week, as China has shared data about the novel coronavirus with foreign partners who quickly mapped its genome as the world races to develop a vaccine for the virus which can develop into a potentially deadly case of pneumonia. But several experts, including the drug company Novartis, warned that developing a vaccine might take a year.

In the meantime, epidemiologists are still struggling to understand the mysterious new virus (a virus that some fear was once studied as a potential biological weapon). So far, researchers have determined that the average incubation period for the virus is between five and six days. But as more cases are confirmed, researchers are finding a surprisingly large number of young people and children infected with the virus who display few or no symptoms – yet they’re still contagious.

Bloomberg shared the story of a 10-year-old boy from Wuhan whose entire family including his grandparents fell ill. Yet he displayed no symptoms, and wasn’t tested for the virus until both his parents insisted.

The boy’s case was first made public by the Lancet medical journal, which received attention from the international press after publishing research on the outbreak last week. Only five members of the family, including the boy, were infected during a trip to Wuhan. They infected a sixth relative after returning to their unnamed hometown.

A professor of microbiology who spoke with Bloomberg said the case of the 10-year-old boy is extremely concerning because it suggests that many of those infected with the virus might be able to evade typical screening techniques. This could easily fuel a community outbreak if the original case isn’t quickly discovered.

“You may have mild disease spreaders that would be feeding sort of a community outbreak and they don’t go to hospital because they don’t feel that bad,” said Ralph Baric, professor of microbiology and immunology at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who has studied coronaviruses for decades and warned about their threat before the 2003 SARS outbreak.

We already knew that patients who have contracted the virus have shown a wide range of symptoms, ranging from what presents as a mild cold, to something more akin to life-threatening walking pneumonia.

It was “a rather unexpected finding,” Yuen and colleagues wrote. Yet it doesn’t come as a complete surprise to doctors in China trying to unravel the means and ways the new virus is spreading.

“Children and infants’ symptoms are comparatively mild, while older people have more severe symptoms, as of our findings so far,” Feng Zijian, deputy director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters Wednesday.

“One of the worrying things is the walking pneumonia and especially the younger kids in whom you don’t get as much of an immune reaction,” said John Nicholls, a clinical professor of pathology at the University of Hong Kong and part of the research team that isolated and characterized the SARS virus.

As more cases of the new coronavirus appear around the world, doctors and medical research teams are rushing to try to develop a vaccine or treatments that could prevent its spread. But, as in the SARS outbreak, the most effective methods are thought to be in identifying and isolating patients soon after infection, and then tracing and isolating their potential contacts.

Hesitant to completely close travel with China, most airports, airlines, railroads and some governments have instead opted for increasing screenings (though several airlines recently announced plans to cancel flights to China – at least for now) of travelers as their first and most important line of defense.

But if thousands of children exhibit no symptoms, instead acting as silent carriers of the virus, this will undoubtedly complicate efforts to combat the virus’s spread, even with 56 million quarantined and transportation links between the mainland, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan temporarily severed.

“Public health controlled SARS because SARS let it,” said Mark Denison, director of infectious diseases and and a pediatrics professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. That’s unlike influenza, where a larger portion of patients transmit the virus while they are silently incubating the infection.

“So the question is, is this virus more SARS-like, or is it more flu-like?” Denison said. “The data suggests that it’s somewhere in the middle: that it is a more mild disease, but that there may be more transmission.”

This could lead to a growing number of the most vulnerable patients – senior citizens and those with co-occurring health problems – contracting the virus across the world, as whole families catch the virus from asymptomatic children.

Authored by Sara Carter via SaraACarter.com,

Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn filed a supplemental motion to withdraw his guilty plea Wednesday citing failure by his previous counsel to advise him of the firm’s ‘conflict of interest in his case’ regarding the Foreign Agents Registration Act form it filed on his behalf, and by doing so “betrayed Mr. Flynn,” stated Sidney Powell, in a defense motion to the court.

Flynn’s case is now in its final phase and his sentencing date, which was scheduled for Jan. 28, in a D.C. federal court before Judge Emmet Sullivan was changed to Feb. 27. The change came after Powell filed the motion to withdraw his plea just days after the prosecutors made a major reversal asking for up to six months jail time. The best case scenario for Flynn, is that Judge Sullivan allows him to withdraw his guilty plea, the sentencing date is thrown-out and then his case would more than likely would head to trial.

Powell alleged in a motion in December, 2019 that Flynn was strong-armed by the prosecution into pleading guilty to one count of lying to FBI investigators regarding his conversation with former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Others, close to Flynn, have corroborated the accounts suggesting prosecutors threatened to drag Flynn’s son into the investigation, who also worked with his father at Flynn Intel Group, a security company established by Flynn.

In the recent motion Flynn denounced his admission of guilt in a declaration,

“I am innocent of this crime, and I request to withdraw my guilty plea. After I signed the plea, the attorneys returned to the room and confirmed that the [special counsel’s office] would no longer be pursuing my son.”

He denied that he lied to the FBI during the White House meeting with then FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok and FBI Special Agent Joe Pientka. The meeting was set up by now fired FBI Director James Comey and then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was also fired for lying to Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s investigators. Strzok was fired by the FBI for his actions during the Russia investigation.

Flynn stated:

“When FBI agents came to the White House on January 24, 2017, I did not lie to them. I believed I was honest with them to the best of my recollection at the time. I still don’t remember if I discussed sanctions on a phone call with Ambassador Kislyak nor do I remember if we discussed the details of a UN vote on Israel.”

Powell Targets Flynn’s Former Legal Team

Powell noted in Wednesday’s motion that Flynn’s former defense team at Covington & Burling, a well known Washington D.C. law firm, failed to inform Flynn that their lawyers had made “some initial errors or statements that were misunderstood in the FARA registration process and filings.” She also reaffirmed her position in the motion that government prosecutors are continuing to withhold exculpatory information that would benefit Flynn.

A spokesperson with Flynn’s former law firm Covington & Burling, stated in an email to SaraACarter.com that “Under the bar rules, we are limited in our ability to respond publicly even to allegations of this nature, absent the client’s consent or a court order.”

In Powell’s motion, she stated that Covington and Burling was well aware that it had a ‘conflict of interest’ in representing Flynn after November 1, 2017. She stated in the motion it was on that day, when Special Counsel prosecutors had notified Covington that “it recognized Covington’s conflict of interest from the FARA registration.” Moreover, the government had asked Covington lawyers to discuss the discrepancy and conflict with Flynn, Powell stated in the motion.

“Mr. Flynn’s former counsel at Covington made some initial errors or statements that were misunderstood in the FARA registration process and filings, which the SCO amplified, thereby creating an ‘underlying work’ conflict of interest between the firm and its client,” stated Powell in the motion.

“Government counsel specified Mr. Flynn’s liability for ‘false statements’ in the FARA registration, and he told Covington to discuss it with Mr. Flynn,” states the motion.

“This etched the conflict in stone. Covington betrayed Mr. Flynn.”

Powell included in her motion an email from Flynn’s former law firm Covington & Burling between his former attorney’s Steven Anthony and Robert Kelner. The email was regarding the Special Counsel’s then-charges against Paul Manafort, who had been a short term campaign manager for Trump. Manafort and his partner Rick Gates, were then faced with ‘multiple criminal violations, including FARA violations.”

Internal Email From the motion:

In the internal email sent to Kelner, Anthony addresses his concerns after the Manafort order was unsealed.

I just had a flash of a thought that we should consider, among many many factors with regard to Bob Kelley, the possibility that the SCO has decided it does not have, [with regard to] Flynn, the same level of showing of crime fraud exception as it had [with regard to] Manafort. And that the SCO currently feels stymied in pursuing a Flynn-lied-to-his-lawyers theory of a FARA violation. So, we should consider the conceivable risk that a disclosure of the Kelley declaration might break through a wall that the SCO currently considers impenetrable.

In February, 2017, then Department of Justice official David Laufman had called Flynn’s lawyers to push them to file a FARA, the motion states. In fact, it was a day after Flynn was fired as the National Security Advisor for Trump. Laufman made the call to the Covington and Burling office “to pressure them to file the FARA forms immediately,” according to the motion.

Laufman’s push for Flynn’s FARA seemed peculiar considering, Flynn’s company ‘Flynn Intel Group’ had filed a Lobbying Registration Act in September, 2016. Former partner to Flynn Bijan Rafiekian, had been advised at the time by then lawyer Robert Kelly that there was no need for the firm to file a FARA because it was not dealing directly with a foreign country or foreign government official, as stated during his trial. In Rafiekian’s trial Kelly testified that he advised the Flynn Intel Group that by law they only needed to file a Lobbying Disclosure Act and suggested they didn’t need to file a FARA when dealing with a foreign company. In this instance it was Innova BV, a firm based in Holland and owned by the Turkish businessman, Ekim Alptekin.

Flynn’s former Partner’s Case Overturned, Powell Cites Case In Motion

In September, 2019, however, in a stunning move Judge Anthony Trenga with the Eastern District of Virginia Rafiekian’s conviction was overturned. Trenga stated in his lengthy acquittal decision that government prosecutors did not make their case and the “jury was not adequately instructed as to the role of Michael Flynn in light of the government’s in-court judicial admission that Flynn was not a member of the alleged conspiracy and the lack of evidence sufficient to establish his participation in any conspiracy…”

An important side note, Laufman continually posts anti-Trump tweets and is frequently on CNN and MSNBC targeting the administration and its policies.

These despicable remarks reflect contempt for democracy and government accountability, and constitute further evidence of the President’s unfitness to lead our great nation. Republican Members of Congress, stand up and fulfill your oaths.https://t.co/a8BwWkLTkv

— David Laufman (@DavidLaufmanLaw) September 26, 2019

Powell said prosecutors reversed course on their decision to not push for jail time for Flynn in early January because she said, her client “refused to lie for the prosecution” in the Rafiekian case.

Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

Despite a massive and peaceful turnout on the Lobby Day rally on January 20th, the Virginia State Congress remained totally unphased by what the people wanted and proceeded to advance numerous unconstitutional gun laws over the following week.

While everyone has been focused on the Wuhan coronavirus, state lawmakers have been quietly eroding gun rights.

“Red Flag” gun law passed

Proving they don’t care at all about the opinions of the people of Virginia, the state’s Senate passed a “red flag” gun law only two days later. Here’s the summary of SB240.

Creates a procedure by which any attorney for the Commonwealth or any law-enforcement officer may apply to a general district court, circuit court, or juvenile and domestic relations district court judge or magistrate for an emergency substantial risk order to prohibit a person who poses a substantial risk of injury to himself or others from purchasing, possessing, or transporting a firearm. If an emergency substantial risk order is issued, a judge or magistrate may issue a search warrant to remove firearms from such person.

An emergency substantial risk order shall expire on the fourteenth day following issuance of the order. The bill requires a court hearing in the circuit court for the jurisdiction where the order was issued within 14 days from issuance of an emergency substantial risk order to determine whether a substantial risk order should be issued.

Seized firearms shall be retained by a law-enforcement agency for the duration of an emergency substantial risk order or a substantial risk order or, for a substantial risk order and with court approval, may be transferred to a third party 21 years of age or older chosen by the person from whom they were seized. The bill allows the complainant of the original warrant to file a motion for a hearing to extend the substantial risk order prior to its expiration. The court may extend the substantial risk order for a period not longer than 180 days.

The bill provides that persons who are subject to a substantial risk order, until such order has been dissolved by a court, are guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor for purchasing, possessing, or transporting a firearm; are disqualified from having a concealed handgun permit; and may not be employed by a licensed firearms dealer. The bill also provides that a person who transfers a firearm to a person he knows has been served with a warrant or who is the subject of a substantial risk order is guilty of a Class 4 felony. The bill creates a computerized substantial risk order registry for the entry of orders issued pursuant to provisions in the bill. (source)

Of course, we all know the dangers of red flag gun laws. Anyone can swear out a complaint against a gun owner – including an abuser who doesn’t want his victim to be able to protect herself or himself. Add to that, numerous law-abiding citizens have been killed when police burst in to serve the warrant and seize the gun owner’s firearms.

But that’s not all that Virginia has in store for gun owners.

Also two days after the rally of gun owners, the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced a proposed new law that would make it more difficult for Virginians to get a concealed carry permit in the form of SB263.

Concealed handgun permits; demonstration of competence. Removes the option for concealed handgun permit applicants to demonstrate competence with a handgun by completing an electronic, video, or online course conducted by a state-certified or National Rifle Association-certified firearms instructor. The bill does not affect any in-person means of satisfying the requirement to demonstrate competence with a handgun under current law. (source)

Obviously, this makes it more difficult for rural residents to take the required training and it makes it more expensive for poverty-stricken gun owners.

On Friday the House advanced the following bills to the Senate for further approval.

HB2 would criminalize the private transfer of firearms in the Commonwealth. Unlike SB70, which was passed by the Senate, HB2 would criminalize almost all firearm transfers – not just sales. Under this extreme legislation, even lending a brother your rifle for a deer hunt or letting your daughter borrow a handgun for self-defense could land otherwise law-abiding Virginians with a felony conviction and up to 5 years in jail. Additionally, the recipient could face up to a full year of incarceration.

HB674 would create a “red flag” gun confiscation procedure that is similar to that created by SB240. Just like the senate bill, HB674 would empower the government to strip an individual’s constitutional right to keep and bear arms and seize their firearms pursuant to an ex parte order. However, whereas SB240 would require a commonwealth’s attorney or two law enforcement officer to petition the court, HB674 provides even less safeguards – allowing a single law enforcement officer to petition for a confiscation order.

HB812 would ration the right to keep and bear arms by limiting Virginians to one handgun purchase per 30-day period. Unlike SB35, which has passed the full Senate, HB812 does not provide an exemption to this restriction for CHP holders.

From 1993 to 2012, Virginia had a “one-handgun-a-month” law that rationed the number of handguns law-abiding gun owners could purchase to one a month. In 1993, Gov. L. Douglas Wilder and other gun control advocates sold the handgun rationing measure as a way to curb gun trafficking from Virginia to more restrictive Northeast states, particularly New York. HB812 comes along after New York City billionaire and gun control financier Michael Bloomberg spent an exorbitant sum in the 2019 election cycle. According to ATF Trace data, there were fewer firearms traced to Virginia in the three years after the law was repealed than in the three years prior to repeal.

HB9 would re-victimize burglary and robbery victims by penalizing a crime victim who fails to report the theft of a firearm to law enforcement within 24 hours of discovering the theft. These victims would be fined up to $250.

In the aftermath of a burglary, victims are occupied with a host of concerns. The first and foremost concern is the physical safety and well-being of themselves and their loved ones. To place an additional burden on crime victims in their moment of despair is the ruthless act of a callous state that exhibits no regard for the hardship victims face as they put their lives back together.

HB412 would eliminate Virginia’s state firearms preemption law. Current law ensures that those living and traveling throughout Virginia are subject to the same predictable state statutes wherever they are in the Commonwealth. With this regimen, law-abiding gun owners can move about the state without fear of being ensnared by a confusing patchwork of disparate local ordinances. Unable to predict or comprehend the contours of the various ordinances in Virginia’s 95 counties and 38 independent cities, CHP holders would be forced to forego their Right-to-Carry for fear of running afoul of an obscure or complicated local law.

HB1004 would prohibit those subject to a §19.2-152.10 protective order from possessing firearms. Those subject to a §19.2-152.10 protective order are already prohibited from purchasing or transporting firearms while the order is in effect. Unlike other protective orders that trigger a firearm possession prohibition, a petitioner for a §19.2-152.10 protective order does not need to bear any relation to the respondent.

The absence of a relationship requirement opens the §19.2-152.10 protective order procedure up to abuse. Verbal altercations between co-workers, neighbors, or less formal acquaintances where one party perceived, or claimed to perceive, the other as making a “threat” could result in the extinguishment of a person’s Second Amendment rights and the forfeiture of their firearms.

HB1083 severely restricts parental decisions about firearms in the home by making it a Class 6 felony to leave an unlocked and loaded gun in the home with a child or teenager under the age of 18. Current law only applies this restriction to children under the age of 14 and provides that the punishment for such conduct is a Class 3 misdemeanor. This law is unnecessary as Virginia already has a child abuse and neglect statute that provides felony penalties for parents who engage in dangerous conduct. (source)

Is it any wonder that parts of Virginia are considering secession from the state?

The protest meant nothing in the eyes of Virginia lawmakers.

The advancement of these gun laws is a slap in the face to every gun owner who has protested in person, written or emailed his or her members of Congress, and attended local meetings.

It shows that the people currently in office don’t care what Virginians have to say about the laws they pass. It underlines their blithe dismissal of the Sanctuary municipalities and of the massive peaceful protest that even saw protesters cleaning up the area before they left.

The protest may have meant nothing to lawmakers, but to gun owners, it meant everything. It means that people in Virginia will stand up for their rights. It means they will not back down. It means they’re willing to put themselves on the line to protect the 2nd Amendment in a state that still has a flag that says “Sic Semper Tyrannis.”

But as for the state government? You know, the one purchased by presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg?

This is not a government that represents the people of Virginia.

Yesterday, we shared the story of an American citizen who has elected to stay behind in ‘virus-plagued’ Wuhan to be with his girlfriend (and his dog). Doug Perez told reporters that he passed up an offer to board the chartered plane that departed the international airport in Wuhan last night with roughly 240 Americans (mostly diplomats) on board.

Fortunately, the US is planning more evac flights now that the first has landed safely in Alaska on its way to California (yet another ‘hot zone’). But in the mean time, some 800 Americans have been left behind (either voluntarily or involuntarily). And they’re not the only ones. 

Only the US, France, Japan, The EU, the UK and South Korea have successfully confirmed plans for evacuation flights with China. The UK has said rescued Britons will need to agree to spend two weeks in a quarantine once returning.

Several foreigners in Wuhan and elsewhere have now been diagnosed with the virus (including several Pakistanis and Australians). And as others fear abandonment, they shared their fears and reservations with a reporter from the FT.

Some have been frantically calling their embassies and consulates, but have either been ignored, or unable to get through.

“We have not had any specific information on evacuation. It has been a very difficult time,” said Giuseppe, an Italian national who works at a ceramics company in Wuhan.

One man, a British-born teacher whose Canadian wife is pregnant is worried that they won’t be able to receive adequate medical care for the birth. Desperate for help, he figured that sharing his story with the press might be his young family’s only hope.

Tom Williams, a British teacher in Wuhan whose Canadian wife is 35 weeks’ pregnant, appealed to the government for help in an online post. “I just want to share our story so I can try and get my wife, son and unborn child safely out of the city,” he wrote.

Officials in Beijing said Monday that they would advise against evacuating foreign citizens, but that if governments demanded it, they would cooperate.

“They said they don’t encourage or recommend evacuation. At the same time, they also said if foreign governments decide to evacuate their citizens, they would co-operate,” said one diplomat.

A Spanish football coach of the Wuhan football team said he’d been indoors with his girlfriend for six days.

Dani Carmona, a Spanish coach at a Wuhan football team, said he had stayed indoors for six days with his girlfriend. “We spend the day watching movies, reading…waiting for the permission from the Chinese government and the Spanish embassy to leave,” he said.

The US chartered a plane to remove consulate officials, selling tickets to some non-government staff, including workers at a glass factory owned by industrial company Corning, at a cost of $1,000 per head.

“These travellers will be carefully screened and monitored to protect their health, as well as the health and safety of their fellow Americans here at home,” the US state department said.

The US chartered plane was primarily for consular employees, though tickets were sold to some non-government workers. Many described to the FT how they waited anxiously for word about whether they and their families would get the $1,000-a-pop tickets.

The US chartered a plane to remove consulate officials, selling tickets to some non-government staff, including workers at a glass factory owned by industrial company Corning, at a cost of $1,000 per head.

“These travellers will be carefully screened and monitored to protect their health, as well as the health and safety of their fellow Americans here at home,” the US state department said.

Demand for tickets far exceeded supply. Priscilla Dickie, a 35-year-old Chinese language student, had waited anxiously to hear if she and her eight-year-old daughter could board the flight before getting the go-ahead to leave.

“Waiting for that call was really bad,” she said, speaking to the Financial Times at the airport as she passed through a series of “stressful” medical screening tests, with those deemed to be sick facing the possibility of being turned back.

Another American claimed there are still hundreds of Americans left in the city who are growing increasingly desperate.

Patrick Stockstill, a mortgage loan officer from Rhode Island in the US who had also secured seats on the flight, warned that many US citizens remained stuck in the quarantine zone.

“The one thing I want to bring awareness to is that there are still lots of US citizens in Hubei who have not been able to get out,” said Mr Stockstill, who was visiting family in Wuhan and is travelling with his children, one aged three years, and one three months.

Let’s hope they have a decent stockpile of facemasks.

Authored by Elizabeth Bauer via Forbes.com,

I’ve said it before: Illinois cannot continue kicking the can on its pensions. I’ve said repeatedly (and fellow soapbox-stander Adam Schuster repeated the message in the Chicago Tribune last week) that the state’s spending on pensions is costly, not only in terms of dollar amounts spent – over 25% of the state budget – but in terms of spending that ought to be spent on needs such as services for those with disabilities, the unemployed, students, and so on, but isn’t, because it’s going to pensions instead.

And I’ve lamented that Gov. Pritzker just doesn’t get it, most recently in an interview in which he said that stretching out the funding target was not off the table, and seemed to suggest interest in the CTBA “solution” involving Pension Obligation Bonds and a reduced funding target of 70%.

All of which prodded me to look at the largest of the state pension plans, the Teachers’ Retirement System, in more detail. This plan is, like the other main plans, about 40% funded, and its unfunded liability is 60% of the total. It is also notable in having cut the benefits for the Tier 2 workers most sharply, so that, given the valuation’s assumptions and funding method, the benefit that they accrue is, in total, less than their required contributions. (Direct state employees mostly participate in Social Security so that their pension is a supplement, not a replacement, and the State Universities System has quirks of its own, including a pure Defined Contribution option for new hires.)

And I plowed through the data in order to assess, how reasonable are these funding targets? And what can go wrong?

Now, current legislation dictates that the state must make contributions as a level percentage of pensionable pay, to reach a target of 90% funded in 2045, but the contribution schedule is actually slightly lower than this target now, and jumps up later, so in order to do my own calculations, I replicated (approximately and in a more smoothed manner) the contribution projections. There are also some finer details which I simplified but the basic concepts below should still be clear.

Chart One: what happens if there’s a run of bad luck?

I calculated three hypotheticals, in each case keeping the dollar amount of contributions unchanged:

In the first, I projected asset growth in the case that the 7% assumption turns out to be 6% instead. In the second, I assumed a long-term 6.5% return but also adjusted the liabilities to reflect the changes that’d be needed for a new valuation interest rate. And in the third, I kept the assumptions unchanged at 7%, but dropped the assets immediately by 33% to reflect a market crash.

Not good, eh? A drop to a 6.5% asset return/valuation interest rate assumption is not just reasonable but likely, and this keeps the plan from reaching anything close to its 90% objective — instead, only 62.5%.

Chart Two: Bad luck with a 70% target

The colors shift because I’ve excluded the original target to illustrate the fact that setting a 70% target produces an even greater risk of poor funded status. (Note that the CTBA’s projections look different because of their POB proposal, and recall that I am, well, anti-POB, especially with respect to anyone who promotes pension obligation bonds as a form of “refinancing”.) In the wholly-realistic 6.5% discount rate scenario, it barely budgets from the present funded status, and maxes out at 46.6%.

Chart Three: The effect on the unfunded pension liability, with a 90% target and “bad luck.”

Note that while the funded status for the two low-return scenarios was similar, they diverge in terms of absolute pension underfunding. In the actuary’s current projection, the unfunded liability peaks in 2029 at $86 billion. With a discount rate drop, it peaks at $110 billion in 2037.

Chart Four: Unfunded pension liability with a 70% funding target.

Yes, you see that right, in the scenario in which the plan targets a 70% funded level, and doesn’t adjust its contributions afterwards, the unfunded liability reaches $139 billion for the teachers’ plan alone in 2045, and has not yet peaked and begun to decline.

Are you starting to see my point?

Even with a 90% funding target, the state is at risk of liabilities growing year after year — or (not modeled here) even more money being spent on pension funding rather than daycare subsidies for low-income families, for example. And with a 70% target, of course, those numbers are even worse.

But wait, there’s more!

The final two of the six charts are an attempt to approximate the impact on the pension liabilities of a “repair” of the Tier 2 benefits. As it is, there is effectively no employer contribution. I modeled the impact of a 6% employer contribution (less than a Social Security contribution) and a 9% contribution, such as in a notional account plan (a “cash balance plan” in the private sector), along with the removal of the pay cap that is lowered every year in inflation-adjusted terms. This is approximative, but is a very conservative scenario.

Chart Five: Tier 2 “repairs” with a 90% target

Chart Six: Tier 2 “repairs” with a 70% target

To be clear, these are based on the baseline valuation, with “original” representing the original contributions for the 90% target.

Are these six charts enough? It was tempting to produce “worst-case” scenarios but those would be too easy to brush aside, and even these hypotheticals, intentionally made realistic, should be enough to make it clear that it’s not remotely reasonable to shrug off pension debt as something for the next generation to deal with.

Added next-day comments:

I’m often asked, “how long until the plan runs out of money?” And, in fact, that’s a fair quesiton to ask, with respect for the even-worse-funded Chicago plans, where they’re still making their way up the funding “ramp” and are so poorly funded that if they chicken out and markets have poor returns, they will become insolvent. In an article in September 2019, I explained some of the math; to take one example, if the mayor replaces the scheduled “ramp” increases for the municipal plan with inflatoinary increases instead, the plan becomes insolvent in 2027, even without adding in any “bad luck” scenarios.

But there isn’t as dramatic an answer for the state plans — the 23% vs. 40% funded status ratios do make a difference. Nonetheless, I spent so much time typing up these numbers that I might as well make the most of them: the following table illustrates the insolvency year under the valuation assumptions, and a second scenario in which assets earn only 6% and there is a market crash.

If the state continues its current contribution level — which is, yes, 48% of pensionable payroll, and, yes, that’s a lot — the plan reaches 90% funding under current assumptions and avoids insolvency in the “bad luck” assumptions; however, its funded status is very shaky, staying 27% – 28% during the entire modeling period. And if the state were to drop its contribution down to significantly lower levels, then the plan would end up insolvent in either scenario.

Sadly, though, I doubt this table will persuade any of the politicians who need to be persuaded, many of whom would likely say, if off the record, “what’s wrong with insolvency anyway? We’re paying for the benefits our fathers and grandfathers promised; why not demand the same of our children and grandchildren?”

And one final comment: none of these scenarios take into account another likely issue in Illinois, that of declining population. A contribution of 48% of pensionable payroll directed almost entirely at paying off past debt, will grow to even higher levels, as a percentage of pensionable payroll, if the number of teachers declines over time in line with the number of residents. That’s not pretty, either.

Germany’s leading business daily Handelsblatt dropped a Huawei bombshell Wednesday morning which resulted in an immediate vehement denial from the Chinese telecoms giant. “Huawei Technologies has never, and will never, do anything to compromise the security of networks and data of its customers,” the Chinese company insisted in response.

The German newspaper claims to have seen a “smoking gun” classified document in possession of the Federal Foreign Office which definitively links Huawei’s 5G efforts with Chinese state intelligence operations to compromise Europe’s security. Specifically, the leaked foreign ministry internal document cites intelligence shared by US State Department intel officials which is represented as “smoking gun” proof that Huawei remains an unsafe partner for Berlin.

“At the end of 2019, intelligence was passed to us by the U.S., according to which Huawei is proven to have been cooperating with China’s security authorities,” the leaked document says, according to Handelsblatt.

Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) consistently warned for months that Chinese spooks could exploit “back doors” or other vulnerabilities built into Huawei products and data infrastructure.

At the same time Chancellor Angela Merkal has both delayed and downplayed: “I don’t think I make myself particularly secure if I completely eliminate providers in their entirety and then don’t know how they develop – I am sceptical about that,” she said recently at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

At the height of internal German and EU debate over calls for a blanket ban on Huawei ‘s 5G technology, fearing security risks and backdoor Chinese surveillance, the newspaper report is fueling fresh controversy.

Huawai added as part of its statement: “The Handelsblatt article repeats old, unfounded allegations without providing any concrete evidence whatsoever.”

Handelsblatt included a small selection of what it says is the classified “smoking gun” document on its website.

The specific intelligence information shared by the US side is not contained in the report, while the German foreign ministry has not offered official comment. 

The Handelsblatt report concludes that at the very least “The Federal Government apparently knows far more about Huawei’s intelligence contacts than it communicates publicly.” 

The German report notes further that US Ambassador Richard Grenell, a noted China hawk, gave the German government a damning “Huawei dossier” which included the new intelligence. 

Grenell has apparently even issued the veiled threat that “we (the Americans) will be forced to examine how much information we can share with our allies if they ignore this risk.”

The Handelsblatt report also appears timed to tip the scales at a crucial moment that Merkel’s government and her conservative ruling party remain split on the future fate of Huawei’s role in erecting next generation networks.