States That Tax The Most Are Getting The Worst Results Per Dollar
Today in “more definitive proof that the government can’t spend your capital as well as you can” news, it should come as no surprise that states who spend less in taxes are getting better results, per dollar, than similarly sized states who collect far more in tax revenue.
At least that was the result of looking at the country’s four largest states: California, Texas, Florida and New York.
Aside from being the same size, the states differ greatly in politics and governance, the NY Post notes. California and New York are liberal hot beds dominated by Democrats who have put the nation’s highest and sixth highest marginal income tax rates.
Texas and Florida are the opposite: both states have been run by conservatives for years and offer the benefits of no income tax on workers while keeping spending on social programs much lower.
An analysis of these states reveals some stark differences, but mainly tells the tale that lower taxed states have excelled, on a per dollar basis, past those with heavy tax burdens in a number of areas.
Blue states show little ability to improve academic outcomes of their kids, while red states have been able to “foster more upward mobility and trust in government,” the Post writes.
New York spends about $23,000 per pupil on education – about twice the national average of $12,000. Florida and Texas spend about $9,000 per pupil. And the difference in outputs has been almost unnoticeable.
In 2017, the National Assessment of Educational Progress found that students in New York and Texas both scored around the national average in fourth and eighth grades, as did Floridians in eighth. Florida students in fourth grade scored above the national average, while California students in both grades scored below the national average.
In addition, minority students in Florida scored highest in the nation across the board. Black students scored 240 out of 500 on an average of the four tests used, which bests a 234 score average nationally. In New York, minority students scored above or around the national average of 236 for black students and 237 for hispanic students.
California and New York spend tons more on their anti-poverty programs than Texas and Florida. For instance, inclusive of Medicaid, California spent about $19,000 per person under the poverty line in 2017. New York spent over $21,000. Florida spent just $9,000 and Texas spent under $8,000.
But there’s no evidence that the extra spending is helping. The poverty rate fell 3% in California and 1.3% in New York from 2010 to 2018, while it fell 3% in Texas and 2.8% in Florida.
New York spends the most out of the four states on transportation, at $538 per capita. The national average is $476 while Florida, Texas and California spend $427, $399 and $339, respectively.
Per highway mile, Florida spends $241,000 and New York spends $215,000. This compares to $125,000 in California and $73,000 in Texas.
But the numbers find that there’s “no evidence” New York’s extra spending provides value to the people living there. Road quality in the state is ranked at 26th in the nation by the Federal Highway Administration, bridge quality is 37th and overall value of highways was 45th.
Florida is getting the better value for its dollar, yet again. Its roads rank 7th in the nation and its bridges rank 3rd. The Reason foundation has reported that overall, Texas taxpayers get the better value for their highways than the three other states.
Matt Gaetz Files Ethics Complaint, Criminal Referral Request Against Nancy Pelosi For Tearing Up SOTU Speech
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) has written a letter to the House Ethics Committee requesting an investigation into Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to tear up a copy of President Trump’s State of the Union address, arguing that “Her unseemly behavior certainly warrants censure.”
Gaetz has also requested a criminal referral for Pelosi’s potential violation of 18 U.S. Code § 2071 (Concealment, removal, or mutilation of documents).
Pelosi, still steaming after House Democrats’ impeachment gambit only drove President Trump’s approval ratings to all time highs, sat through Trump’s Tuesday night address staring daggers into the back of Trump’s head and mumbling to herself – only to test, pre-rip, and then tear up her copy of Trump’s SOTU speech.
Here’s Pelosi testing to see if she could rip the speech before the speech even started. She was planning to do it from the start. pic.twitter.com/1gEMlYrNB7
According to Gaetz, President Trump delivered remarks “which received overwhelming (and frequently bipartisan) support,” that were an “uplifting celebration of the diversity of the American experience and the triumph of the American Spirit.”
Pelosi’s theatrics were “utterly dismissive of the President’s achievements, and, more importantly, the achievements of the American People.”
Gaetz argues that Pelosi’s actions appear to violate clauses 1 and 2 of House Rule XXIII, and does not “reflect creditably on the House,” or follow “the spirit and the letter of the Rules of the House.”
BREAKING: I’m filing an ethics complaint against @SpeakerPelosi for destroying @realDonaldTrump‘s State of the Union speech.
Her conduct was beneath the dignity of the House, and a potential violation of law (18 USC 2071).
US Army Developing Uniforms That Destroy Bioweapons In Minutes
Chemists working with the US Army are developing new uniforms that can quickly break down toxic substances, protecting troops from bioweapons, according to Wired.
Omar Farha’s lab at Northwestern University is testing a fabric that can neutralize nerve agents.
The new fabric is part of a collaborative effort between the college and the Army, which might take upwards of a decade to test and then commissioned as the next-generation battle uniform.
The fabric can destroy nerve agents VX, soman, and sarin. These dangerous chemicals can be made in a Biosafety Level 4 laboratory (BSL-4), like the one found in Wuhan, China.
The Wired noted, the Army already has uniforms to protect troops from nerve agents, but there are no uniforms that can also destroy the toxins.
Jared DeCoste, a researcher with the Army who isn’t involved in the project, said the military has been searching for uniforms that can shield troops from bioweapons and, at the same time, destroy the chemicals.
According to Farha, the important ingredient in the new fabric is a crumpled crystalline molecule called MOF-808:
“This molecule essentially harvests water from ambient air. Water vapor likes to condense onto MOF-808 molecules because of their shape and chemical properties. When MOF-808 makes contact with a nerve agent, the water attached to the molecule breaks down the toxin, while zirconium atoms that recur throughout MOF-808’s crystal serve as the catalyst, accelerating the nerve agent’s breakdown. As long as the fabric is worn in a place where the humidity level is at least 30 percent, it can collect enough water to break down nerve agents in minutes.”
Dr. Francis Boyle, the man who drafted the Biological Weapons Act, recently said in an explosive interview that the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan likely came from a BSL-4 in the city.
He believes the virus is potentially lethal and an offensive biological warfare weapon or dual-use biowarfare weapons agent genetically modified with a gain of function properties.
The threats of biological warfare in the 2020s is undoubtedly a concerning matter for the Army, perhaps that’s why next-generational suits to repel and neutralize toxins will be standard issue by the end of the decade.
The investor George Soros objects that Facebook is doing what the U.S. Government allows it to do, but he doesn’t object to the U.S. Government’s allowing it. Yet, he claims to be opposing the Republican Government of Donald Trump, while he demands that the leadership of Facebook be replaced — supposedly for violating a law that the Trump Administration maybe isn’t enforcing. Is Soros really that incoherent? Or is there an ulterior motive here?
“I repeat and reaffirm my accusation against Facebook under the leadership of Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg. They follow only one guiding principle: maximize profits irrespective of the consequences. One way or another, they should not be left in control of Facebook.”
He cited, for blame in this, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which allows passive online media – media that exercise no editorial control over what their users post online – to be not responsible for, and not subject to lawsuits for, whatever is posted to their sites.*
Soros noted that Facebook is not censoring posts to its site in a way that will help Democratic candidates, but instead in a way that will help Republican candidates. He apparently wants censorship, but it must be his type of censorship, not theirs.
He is clear about his support for some sort of censorship. But is he proposing that the Government will somehow force this change from a Republican Facebook to a Democratic Facebook, or instead that Facebook’s stockholders will, somehow, do this — get rid of their founder and two top leaders? Soros doesn’t respect his readers enough to so much as even just touch on that basic question in his presentation — is the Government to get rid of Zuckerberg and Sandberg, or are the stockholders supposed to do it?
Soros is addressing his commentary only to fools who don’t care about what case he’s trying to persuade them to believe. If his article were, at all, serious, it would have been less holier-than-thou against businesses that supposedly adhere to “only one guiding principle: maximize profits irrespective of the consequences,” and it would have outlined a proposal — and not just asserted “One way or another, they should not be left in control of Facebook.” But why shouldn’t they? He really doesn’t say. He doesn’t cite even a single concrete example. He presents no case, at all.
He didn’t object that by Facebook’s doing any censorship at all, Facebook doesn’t actually fit into Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and Facebook is instead serving as an online publisher (a member of the press) and therefore is supposed to be legally responsible for what is being posted to their site — responsible for it in just the same way that the New York Times and Washington Post and NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC, are responsible for what they publish (responsible, that is, to civil suits, but not to any criminal laws). Soros isn’t hiring lawyers to present such a case against Facebook, which would be a serious case to present, holding Facebook liable for any libels that it has published; he is instead trying to smear the leaders of Facebook, without supplying facts, or, really, any case, at all.
He is not objecting to the Trump Administration’s prejudicially granting this non-enforcement to Facebook, the publisher — the Trump Administration’s treating them as if they weren’t being publishers, but just passive information-providers; treating them as if Facebook weren’t selecting what to transmit and what not to transmit on their networks, to their audience.
(Facebook, and other online media such as Twitter, don’t even hide the fact that they exercise censorship, while they claim to be only “passive” media and thus protected by Section 230. Like I said: this case against Facebook would be serious, if it were brought, because these online platforms really do censor-out whatever they wish to censor-out.)
Why did Soros object to Facebook’s controllers, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, instead of object to Donald Trump — who is granting this prejudicial treatment, to that publisher (allowing it to be treated in accord with the Section 230 exemption)? Is it because Soros is too stupid to know better, or to understand the difference?
Soros knows enough to be expressing his viewpoint in a partisan manner, as a Democrat who spends tens of millions of dollars each election-cycle in order to support conservative Democrats against progressive Democrats.
And, then, in the general election, Soros supports conservative Democrats (such as that same conservative liberal Clinton) against sometimes even more conservative Republican Party nominees, for the given federal office. (The idea that Soros pumps about himself, that he’s progressive, is one big fat lie: he’s nothing of the sort.)
Why would he not be objecting to Trump here — the Republican who will soon be running against whomever the Democratic Party chooses to be its nominee?
The reason is that Trump isn’t really his target here: this is not the season during which the President will be chosen, but is instead the season in which each Party is to be selecting its nominee to then run against the other Parties’ nominees. And, since Soros is addressing, really (and only), fellow Democrats, his agenda could reasonably be viewed as being to affect whom they will be voting for in the present primaries.
In other words, George Soros wants as free a hand as possible, as a Democratic Party mega-donor, in order to determine whom the Democratic Party’s nominee will be. He wants Facebook to be censoring his way, not their way. Then, later, if that nominee suits his purposes, Soros will donate funds proportionately, to that Democratic Party nominee, against Donald Trump. Perhaps right now Soros is using the opinion-page of the Democratic Party’s New York Times in order to warn Facebook to avoid using its censorship so as to favor and oppose ‘the wrong’ Democratic Party candidates. And, maybe, that newspaper favors and opposes the same candidates that Soros does, and so perhaps that’s why they published his tripe here, rather than higher-quality submissions they could have chosen instead to publish.
Google, during the 2016 election-cycle, was slanting its ‘news’ to favor conservative Democrats against progressive Democrats, and then to favor the Democratic Party nominees against the Republican Party’s nominees, whereas Facebook was slanting its ‘news’ to favor Republican Party nominees against Democratic Party nominees. Twitter censors-out whatever neither Party wants the public to know,such as that Julian Assange is being tortured awaiting his extradition to the U.S. — for a trial that will likely never happen — all of these years of his imprisonment, lately in solitary confinement moreover, and never once being tried in a court of law, for anything, at all.
Since George Soros is a Democratic Party billionaire, he is objecting against Facebook instead of against Google. Similarly, Republican Party billionaires (and the ‘news’-media that they control) attack Google and other pro-Democratic-Party media.
Thus, Soros says:
“Facebook can post deliberately misleading or false statements by candidates for public office and others, and take no responsibility for them”
instead of:
“President Trump is not enforcing federal laws that hold publishers liable for lies they publish.”
So, Soros knows, and understands, a thing or two about propaganda. And, of course, he knows that Julian Assange is his enemy, just as much as Assange is, say, an enemy of Google’s Eric Schmidt, and of Cambridge Analytica’s Peter Thiel (who supported Trump).
This is just a game that virtually all of the billionaires play, against democracy itself. They want to control the country. Ever since around 1980, they have been accustomed to doing so.
* * *
* The U.S. Constitution, in its First Amendment, prohibited any type of governmentally imposed censorship but allowed censorship by members of the privately owned “press.” Section 230 was written to exclude passive online providers from being referred to as being “press” or a “publisher,” but it was poorly written, by lobbyists for corporations in the same category as Facebook and Google, and has yet to be revised by lobbyists for their print and broadcast competitors, who might define more precisely Section 230’s key phrase “interactive computer service” so as to state explicitly that only passive ones are being referred to by that phrase. Right now, even the New York Times online could conceivably qualify as being not a “publisher” and therefore not liable as publishers have been in the past. A corrupt government writes laws corruptly (such as Section 230 is) so that the laws reflect little else than the contending mega-corporate interests; and Section 230 is an example of this (as are most of our laws). With a big enough budget for its lawyering, any mega-corporation or association of large corporations can get the laws, in a corrupt country, written so as to serve its interests. Of course, such a country is no democracy. (But a corrupt country will have a corrupt press so that the public will think it’s a democracy.) Under such circumstances, judges make the final decision in particular cases. There already do exist some legal precedents for interpreting “interactive computer service” to apply only to passive ones. However, most billionaires are probably similar to Soros in wanting the internet to continue being used so as to propagandize the public — shape people’s attitudes and beliefs — instead of to inform the public (which entails no censorship whatsoever and is therefore overwhelmingly disfavored by billionaires and their corporations and their PACs and their lobbyists). Julian Assange is an example of the way a billionaires-controlled world treats leading anti-censorship activists. America is becoming a bastion of censorship, as one would expect of any dictatorship. This is certainly not what the people who wrote the U.S. Constitution had intended or even expected. After 9/11, it has become a seemingly permanent police-state. It’s what one would expect from a country that’s controlled by its billionaires. The 2020 U.S. elections should be about this problem, but, of course, are not.
The footage is haunting – like something out of an apocalyptic horror movie.
Roughly 80% of virus-related deaths have occurred in Wuhan since the outbreak began. But there’s reason to believe the death toll – particularly in Wuhan – might be much higher.
Solar power is cheaper than ever, it’s ultra-abundant, and it emits zero greenhouse gases. But it’s far from perfect–for now. One of the biggest limitations of solar energy (which applies to wind power as well) is that it is variable and is not dispatchable. Variability refers to the fact that solar power is dependent on a completely unreliable factor: the weather. Solar panels don’t generate energy if the sun isn’t shining, meaning that they don’t function for an entire half of every day and function far under capacity during overcast daylight hours. They also can’t be turned on and off according to the grid’s needs, known as dispatchability. Instead of being able to respond to the energy needs of the grid, the grid has to work around the productivity of the solar panels.
Researchers have been hard at work for years to address these two shortcomings with all different kinds of approaches.
The most predominant strategy, and the one that is furthest along in development and implementation, is energy storage. When solar panels create excess energy, that is, more than the grid can absorb, the energy will be stored for later use when the sun isn’t shining. Energy storage is extremely promising, but currently is simply too expensive to be applied across the industry at a scale large enough to compete with fossil fuels. In order to reach 100 percent renewable energy in the United States, energy storage needs to be cheaper–a lot cheaper.
“The answer is $20 per kilowatt hour in energy capacity costs. That’s how cheap storage would have to get for renewables to get to 100 percent,” reported Vox late last year based on findings from an MIT study.
“That’s around a 90 percent drop from today’s costs. While that is entirely within the realm of the possible, there is wide disagreement over when it might happen; few expect it by 2030.”
In the meantime, there are a few teams of scientists taking a very different approach: developing a solar panel that can derive energy from the night sky. Oilprice reported on one of these projects last year. While the article proclaimed that “this ‘Anti-Solar Panel’ Could Generate Power From Darkness,” however, calling it a solar panel is a bit of a misnomer. The process does not use photovoltaic cells but operates entirely based on changes in temperature. The study from Stanford, poetically called “Generating Light from Darkness” explains:
“We use a passive cooling mechanism known as radiative sky cooling to maintain the cold side of a thermoelectric generator several degrees below ambient. The surrounding air heats the warm side of the thermoelectric generator, with the ensuing temperature difference converted into usable electricity. We highlight pathways to improving performance from a demonstrated 25 mW/m2 to 0.5 W/m2. Finally, we demonstrate that even with the low-cost implementation demonstration here, enough power is produced to light a LED: generating light from darkness.”
Now, there is another new study that touts its own anti-solar panel technology. Not too far from the team in Palo Alto, another team of researchers from the University of California, Davis have published their own, even more poetically titled paper: “Nighttime Photovoltaic Cells: Electrical Power Generation by Optically Coupling with Deep Space.” A report from Popular Mechanics explains the study in layman’s terms.
“To turn even low-level heat into energy, scientists have to use a thermal cell instead of a photo cell. The materials must be able to absorb the lowest wavelengths of energy.”
The report continues, “In a thermal radiation cell, we reset the parameters so Earth is the new sun, and its even minimal accumulated heat dwarfs the cold, midnight black of outer space. Letting heat seep out of thermal cells at night, drawn out by the cold night sky, could let scientists capture the energy as it goes out the same way we capture the sun’s energy as it comes in.” This is known as a heat sink.
While these studies are promising and innovative solutions to making renewable energy competitive and reliable on a large scale, they’re still in their initial stages, and commercialization can’t come fast enough. With catastrophic climate change right around the corner and the UN begging for investment in renewables, it’s a race against the clock, and right now it’s not certain if we will win.
Twitter Says It’ll Censor Deepfakes And Basically Anything Else It Wants To Ahead Of 2020 Election
Just days after banning Zero Hedge, Twitter has announced it’ll also be implementing new rules to address deepfakes and “other forms of synthetic and manipulated media” as we head closer to the 2020 election.
Because we can’t have a repeat of 2016, right?
The company said it is going to not allow users to “deceptively share synthetic or manipulated media that are likely to cause harm,” according to CNBC. The rules go into effect after March 5 this year, where the company will now label some Tweets containing synthetic or manipulated media.
Social media can, and will, have a profound effect on the state of the election heading into November this year. Altered media often shows up, with candidates words sometimes parroted or mocked in certain ads that seek to undermine them. Lawmakers have been trying to figure out a way to hold social media companies accountable for the spread of misinformation.
According to CNBC, last month the “House Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce held a hearing where experts shared warnings of both deepfakes and potential over-regulation of tech platforms that host them.”
Twitter is now going to test media in three different ways to see if it meets parameters that violate its policy.
Is the media synthetic or manipulated?
Was it shared in a deceptive manner?
Is it likely the content will cause serious harm?
The article notes that if all three of these come back “yes”, that Twitter said it would be likely to remove the content.
But we’re willing to bet – and we know from experience – that Twitter is just going to remove the content it wants to, regardless.
In fact, the new policy is broad enough that it’ll allow the company to even take action against “cheapfakes”, which are low-tech edits meant to deceive other users. And what example is immediately brought up in CNBC’s article? One video where a Twitter user simply slowed down a video of Nancy Pelosi:
The doctored video of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that circulated on social media last year, for example, would be an example of such amateur editing, since the video was simply slowed down to give the effect that her speech was slow and slurred. More sophisticated deepfakes can involve transposing a person’s face on a video of another person, for example, which could give false impressions of a person’s words or actions.
So we guess we won’t be seeing any videos of her tearing up the State of the Union Speech in slow motion.
🚨 NEW LOW FOR NANCY PELOSI: She ripped up @realDonaldTrump’s #SOTU speech for the cameras on national TV.
This speech was about American heroes and American workers. She decided THAT was worth literally tearing apart.
Twitter also said that some world leaders would be exempt from some of its policy standards. They company said it’s because “it’s important for users to see and be able to debate their messages.” But we know it’s likely because Twitter doesn’t want to lose the traffic they drive and popularity they bring to the site.
Again it seems like a case of Twitter enabling itself for purely arbitrary and discretionary bans of whomeever it wants, whenever it wants.
Recall, we wrote about Facebook implementing similar censorship policies, alongside of YouTube, heading into the 2020 election. We wonder if these social media sites realize that, instead of helping the public make informed decisions, they are giving them an excuse to vote for the party with the least government outreach.
Americans’ views on their personal financial situation have been climbing since 2018 and are now at or near record highs in Gallup’s trends. Nearly six in 10 Americans (59%) now say they are better off financially than they were a year ago, up from 50% last year.
These data come from Gallup’s annual Mood of the Nation survey, conducted Jan. 2-15. The survey was completed after months of historically low levels of unemployment and as the Dow Jones Industrial Average neared the 30,000 mark for the first time.
The current 59% of Americans who say they are better off financially than they were a year ago is essentially tied for the all-time high of 58% in January 1999. That was recorded during the dot-com boom, with conditions similar to the current state of the economy — a stock market rocketing to then-record highs and unemployment at multidecade lows — though GDP growth was higher at that time.
From 1998 to 2000, at least half of Americans rated their financial situation better than that of a year ago. However, in most surveys from 2001 to 2018, the percentage saying their personal finances were better off than the previous year was under 50% — with a low of 23% in May 2009, during the Great Recession.
Record-High Level of Optimism About Financial Future
In addition to U.S. adults’ highly positive report on their current financial situation, Americans are also expressing peak optimism about their future personal financial situation. About three in four U.S. adults (74%) predict they will be better off financially a year from now, the highest in Gallup’s trend since 1977.
Since Gallup began asking this question in 1977, Americans have consistently been more optimistic than pessimistic about where their personal financial situation is headed, with more saying their finances will be better in a year than they are now. The previous record high, 71%, was seen in 1998 during the dot-com boom.
Partisan Divide in Optimism
Given today’s highly politically polarized environment, it is perhaps not surprising that Republicans and Democrats see their personal finances differently. There is a 33-percentage-point gap between Republicans’ (76%) and Democrats’ (43%) reports of being financially better off today than they were a year ago.
There is also a partisan gap when it comes to optimism about one’s future finances, though it is smaller than the difference seen in attitudes toward current conditions. Among Republicans, 83% say their personal financial situation will be better in a year, compared with 60% of Democrats.
Independents fall in between on both measures, with 58% saying they are better off now than a year ago and 76% reporting they will be better off next year.
Bottom Line
Americans’ levels of optimism about both their current financial situation and where it will be a year from now are at or near record highs. These views align with President Donald Trump’s contention that Americans are doing better under his presidency, and with his use of the economy and job growth as key selling points for his reelection. Republicans’ positive views on their finances are something of a given for a GOP president, at least during good economic times.
The majority levels of optimism among political independents are more significant for Trump’s reelection prospects — and something Trump will want to maintain in 2020 to stay competitive.
US Launches Criminal Probe Into JPMorgan For Gold Price Manipulation
There was a time when the merest mention of gold manipulation in “reputable” media was enough to have one branded a perpetual conspiracy theorist with a tinfoil farm out back… and immediately banned from social media.
That was roughly coincident with a time when Libor, FX, mortgage, and bond market manipulation was also considered unthinkable, when High Frequency Traders were believed to “provide liquidity”, or when the stock market was said to not be manipulated by the Fed, and when the ever-confused media, always eager to take “complicated” financial concepts at the face value set by a self-serving establishment, never dared to question anything.
That has now changed…
In November 2018, a former JPMorgan precious-metals trader admitted he engaged in a six-year spoofing scheme that defrauded investors in gold, silver, platinum, and palladium futures contracts.
John Edmonds, 36, of Brooklyn, New York, pleaded guilty under seal on Oct. 9 in the District of Connecticut to commodities fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, commodities price manipulation, and spoofing. As Justice notes in a statement:
“From approximately 2009 through 2015 John Edmonds engaged in a sophisticated scheme to manipulate the market for precious metals futures contracts for his own gain by placing orders that were never intended to be executed,” said Assistant Attorney General Benczkowski.
“The Criminal Division is committed to prosecuting those who undermine the investing public’s trust in the integrity of our commodities markets through spoofing or any other illegal conduct.”
That was followed, a year later, by the DOJ charging the entire precious-metals trading desk at JPMorgan of being deeply involved in what prosecutors described as a “massive, multiyear scheme to manipulate the market for precious metals futures contracts and defraud market participants.”
The DoJ charged Michael Nowak, a JPMorgan veteran and former head of its precious metals trading desk and Gregg Smith, another trader on JPM’s metals desk, in the probe. (Blythe Masters was somehow omitted).
“Based on the fact that it was conduct that was widespread on the desk, it was engaged in in thousands of episodes over an eight-year period — that it is precisely the kind of conduct that the RICO statute is meant to punish,” Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski told reporters.
Here’s where it gets extra interesting: according to Bloomberg, the unusually aggressive language language embraced by prosecutors reminds legal experts of indictments utilizing the RICO Act – a law allowing prosecutors to take down ‘criminal enterprises’ like the mafia by charging all members of the organization for any crimes committed by an individual on behalf of the organization.
Prosecutors charged the head of JP Morgan’s global metals trading operation and two other traders with “conspiracy to conduct the affairs of an enterprise involved in interstate or foreign commerce through a pattern of racketeering activity” – language that is typically used to describe a RICO charge.
And now, 5 months later, Bloomberg reports that things have escalated even further.
According to two people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reports that U.S. authorities that accused six JPMorgan Chase & Co. employees of rigging precious-metals futures are building a criminal case against the bank itself.
So more than 11 years after the farce began, this previously unreported investigation of the global bank’s parent company – part of a wide-ranging federal clampdown on market manipulation – raises the prospect of criminal charges and significant fines against America’s largest bank.
Additionally, Bloomberg notes that, according to a third person familiar with the matter, authorities are conducting a similar racketeering investigation of a second financial firm involving spoofing.
And all of this is occurring as more and more investors realize the value of gold as a hedge against the idiocy of politicians and policy-makers… in other words, just as manipulating precious-metals prices lower would be at its most use to the banking elites.
Conspiracy theory becomes conspiracy fact… and we wonder whether any of this would be public had Twitter’s newly-minted “censor anything we don’t like” policies been in place?
My fellow taxpayers, this is your quarterly warning that Uncle Sam is not a good steward of your money. The Congressional Budget Office just released its most recent 10-year projections for federal spending and revenues. The picture is not pretty.
A quick overview: This fiscal year, 2020, the federal government will collect $3.6 trillion in tax revenues. But due to its spending addiction, the government will expend $4.6 trillion. This means that the government will have to borrow $1 trillion this year alone, in order to cover a deficit of 4.6 percent of GDP. This is the first trillion-dollar deficit not due to a global recession.
The money to fund the deficit comes from individual and institutional investors, both domestic and foreign. And for all the anti-China rhetoric out there, it’s worth remembering that China is the second largest foreign investor in our federal debt, right behind Japan. I guess that’s one Chinese import the Trump administration doesn’t seem to mind.
According to the CBO, this enormous overspending will continue and expand over the next decade, from 21 percent of GDP to 23.4 percent. Revenue as a share of GDP is projected to grow from its current 16.4 percent level to 18 percent in 2030, or $5.75 trillion. But that’s not enough to cover the $7.5 trillion the federal government will spend then, hence a projected budget deficit of $1.74 trillion.
Because deficits accumulate, it’s not surprising that our debt is growing. Debt held by the public will rise from 81 percent of GDP today to above 98 percent by 2030—from $17.2 trillion today to $31.4 trillion then. When you add in the debt that Uncle Sam owes to other accounts within the government, like Social Security, you get a much bigger number.
All of the above, of course, assumes that the law as written today won’t change. The CBO scores our budget outlook on the assumption that existing legislative provisions persist. However, everyone knows that some things will change. Congress will evade rules meant to limit spending, and—as always—it will indulge in a bipartisan spending binge while refusing to let popular tax cuts expire.
This, in part, explains why deficits in this report are $160 billion higher though 2029 than in the CBO’s prior estimates. As the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget explains in recent commentary about the CBO report, “The largest contributor to the projected increase is the appropriations package enacted in December, which included a permanent repeal of taxes enacted to finance the Affordable Care Act and the revival of various zombie extenders. That package added $500 billion to deficits through 2029, with interest.”
This time will be no different. There will be more spending and less revenue than projected. For instance, even if Congress is entirely under the control of Democrats, nobody really believes that they will let all of the middle-class tax cuts expire as planned in 2025. I would not be surprised if the Democrats even manage to extract some spending increases for low-income Americans from the Republicans in exchange for extending these tax provisions. Also, given an opportunity to adopt another bipartisan spending package that adds hundreds of billions of dollars to the deficits, politicians on both sides of the aisle will shamelessly expose their spending addiction.
Then, of course, depending on the president’s erratic behavior on trade, the effects of the trade war could have an even worse impact on the budget than currently projected. According to the CBO, the tariffs imposed over the past two years will reduce GDP in 2020 by 0.5 percent (or more than $100 billion) and “reduce average real household income by $1,277.” The administration is happy to brag about the additional revenue collected from the tariffs, but there is a negative side to these import taxes, too.
Thankfully, the economy is doing well for now. This good performance is masking many of the ill effects, not just of the trade war but also of our overall fiscal situation. The reality, however, is that a growing economy during a time of peace should not be accompanied by growing deficits.
