Pelosi Tears Up Trump’s State Of The Union Speech After Handshake Snub
Update: And here is Pelosi’s response:
WATCH: At the end of President Trump’s State of the Union address, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tears up her copy of the speech. #SOTUpic.twitter.com/sDEkNBD0DW
Pelosi, as expected, snubbed Trump right back, introducing him only as “The President of the United States”, whereas traditionally the speaker has used the language: “I have the high privilege and distinct honor of presenting to you the President of the United States.”
Still, Trump will have the final laugh: in less than 24 hours the Senate will vote to acquit Trump of the impeachment farce passed by Pelosi’s House a few weeks ago, a process Pelosi herself did not want to pursue afraid that it would backfire and cripple the chances of the establishment’s favorite candidate, Joe Biden, but was ultimately was forced to concede by the radical left-wing in the Democratic party.
In retrospect, she should have gone with her gut feeling.
“The Federal Reserve is running the risk of fomenting an eventual financial crisis by easing banking regulations at the same time that it’s cut interest rates…say some former Fed officials, including ex-Vice Chairman Alan Blinder and financial stability experts Daniel Tarullo and Nellie Liang.”
– Bloomberg article on December 17th, 2019
Ignoring problems rarely solves them. You need to deal with them—not just the effects, but the underlying causes, or else they usually get worse. The older you get, the more you know that is true in almost every area of life.
In the developed world and especially the US, and even in China, our economic challenges are rapidly approaching that point. Things that would have been easily fixed a decade ago, or even five years ago, will soon be unsolvable by conventional means.
There is almost no willingness to face our top problems, specifically our rising debt. The economic challenges we face can’t continue, which is why I expect the Great Reset, a kind of worldwide do-over. It’s not the best choice but we are slowly ruling out all others.
Last week I talked about the political side of this. Our embrace of either crony capitalism or welfare statism is going to end very badly. Ideological positions have hardened to the point that compromise seems impossible.
Central bankers are politicians, in a sense, and in some ways far more powerful and dangerous than the elected ones. Some recent events provide a glimpse of where they’re taking us.
Hint: It’s nowhere good. And when you combine it with the fiscal shenanigans, it’s far worse.
Simple Conceit
Central banks weren’t always as responsibly irresponsible, as my friend Paul McCulley would say, as they are today. Walter Bagehot, one of the early editors of The Economist, wrote what came to be called Bagehot’s Dictum for central banks: As the lender of last resort, during a financial or liquidity crisis, the central bank should lend freely, at a high interest rate, on good securities.
The Federal Reserve came about as a theoretical antidote to even-worse occasional panics and bank failures. Clearly, it had a spotty record through 1945, as there were many mistakes made in the ‘20s and especially the ‘30s. The loose monetary policy coupled with fiscal incontinence of the ‘70s gave us an inflationary crisis. Paul Volcker’s recent passing (RIP) reminds us of perhaps the Fed’s finest hour, stamping out the inflation that threatened the livelihood of millions. However, Volcker had to do that only because of past mistakes.
Recently, reader Mourad Rahmanov, who has thought-provoking (and sometimes lengthy) reactions to almost every letter, kindly sent me some of his personal favorite John Mauldin quotes. One was this passage which succinctly captures my feelings about the Fed. (Context: This was part of my response to Ray Dalio’s comments on Modern Monetary Theory.)
Beginning with Greenspan, we have now had 30+ years of ever-looser monetary policy accompanied by lower rates. This created a series of asset bubbles whose demises wreaked economic havoc. Artificially low rates created the housing bubble, exacerbated by regulatory failure and reinforced by a morally bankrupt financial system.
And with the system completely aflame, we asked the arsonist to put out the fire, with very few observers acknowledging the irony. Yes, we did indeed need the Federal Reserve to provide liquidity during the initial crisis. But after that, the Fed kept rates too low for too long, reinforcing the wealth and income disparities and creating new bubbles we will have to deal with in the not-too-distant future.
This wasn’t a “beautiful deleveraging” as you call it. It was the ugly creation of bubbles and misallocation of capital. The Fed shouldn’t have blown these bubbles in the first place.
The simple conceit that 12 men and women sitting around the table can decide the most important price in the world (short-term interest rates) better than the market itself is beginning to wear thin. Keeping rates too low for too long in the current cycle brought massive capital misallocation. It resulted in the financialization of a significant part of the business world, in the US and elsewhere. The rules now reward management, not for generating revenue, but to drive up the price of the share price, thus making their options and stock grants more valuable.
Coordinated monetary policy is the problem, not the solution. And while I have little hope for change in that regard, I have no hope that monetary policy will rescue us from the next crisis.
Let me amplify that last line: Not only is there no hope monetary policy will save us from the next crisis, it will help cause the next crisis. The process has already begun.
Radical Actions
In September of 2019, something still unexplained (at least to my satisfaction, although I know many analysts who believe they know the reasons) happened in the “repo” short-term financing market. Liquidity dried up, interest rates spiked, and the Fed stepped in to save the day. I wrote about it at the time in Decoding the Fed.
Story over? No. The Fed has had to keep saving the day, every day, since then.
We hear different theories. The most frightening one is that the repo market itself is actually fine, but a bank is wobbly and the billions in daily liquidity are preventing its collapse. Who might it be? I have been told, by well-connected sources, that it could be a mid-sized Japanese bank. I was dubious because it would be hard to keep such a thing hidden for months. But then this week, Bloomberg reported some Japanese banks, badly hurt by the BOJ’s negative rate policy, have turned to riskier debt to survive. So, perhaps it’s fair to wonder.
Whatever the cause, the situation doesn’t seem to be improving. On Dec. 12 a New York Fed statement said its trading desk would increase its repo operations around year-end “to ensure that the supply of reserves remains ample and to mitigate the risk of money market pressures.”
Notice at the link how the NY Fed describes its plans. The desk will offer “at least” $150 billion here and “at least” $75 billion there. That’s not how debt normally works. Lenders give borrowers a credit limit, not a credit guarantee plus an implied promise of more. The US doesn’t (yet) have negative rates but the Fed is giving banks negative credit limits. In a very precise violation of Bagehot’s Dictum.
We have also just finished a decade of the loosest monetary policy in American history, the partial tightening cycle notwithstanding. Something is very wrong if banks still don’t have enough reserves to keep markets liquid. Part of it may be that regulations outside the Fed’s control prevent banks from using their reserves as needed. But that doesn’t explain why it suddenly became a problem in September, necessitating radical action that continues today.
Here’s the official line, from minutes of the unscheduled Oct. 4 meeting at which the FOMC approved the operation.
Staff analysis and market commentary suggested that many factors contributed to the funding stresses that emerged in mid-September. In particular, financial institutions’ internal risk limits and balance sheet costs may have slowed the distribution of liquidity across the system at a time when reserves had dropped sharply and Treasury issuance was elevated.
So the Fed blames “internal risk limits and balance sheet costs” at banks. What are these risks and costs they were unwilling to accept, and why? We still don’t know. There are lots of theories. Some even make sense. Whatever the reason, it was severe enough to make the committee agree to both repo operations and the purchase of $20 billion a month in Treasury securities and another $20 billion in agencies. They insist the latter isn’t QE but it sure walks and quacks like a QE duck. So, I and many others call it QE4.
As we learned with previous QE rounds, exiting is hard. Remember that 2013 “Taper Tantrum?” Ben Bernanke’s mild hint that asset purchases might not continue forever infuriated a liquidity-addicted Wall Street. The Fed needed a couple more years to start draining the pool, and then did so in the stupidest possible way by both raising rates and selling assets at the same time. (I don’t feel good saying I told you so but, well, I did.)
Having said that, I have to note the Fed has few good choices. As mistakes compound over time, it must pick the least-bad alternative. But with each such decision, the future options grow even worse. So eventually instead of picking the least-bad, they will have to pick the least-disastrous one. That point is drawing closer.
Ballooning Balance Sheet
Underlying all this is an elephant in the room: the rapidly expanding federal debt. Each annual deficit raises the total debt and forces the Treasury to issue more debt, in hopes someone will buy it.
The US government ran a $343 billion deficit in the first two months of fiscal 2020 (October and November) and the 12-month budget deficit again surpassed $1 trillion. Federal spending rose 7% from a year earlier while tax receipts grew only 3%.
No problem, some say, we owe it to ourselves, and anyway people will always buy Uncle Sam’s debt. That is unfortunately not true. The foreign buyers on whom we have long depended are turning away, as Peter Boockvar noted this week.
Foreign selling of US notes and bonds continued in October by a net $16.7b. This brings the year-to-date selling to $99b with much driven by liquidations from the Chinese and Japanese. It was back in 2011 and 2012 when in each year foreigners bought over $400b worth. Thus, it is domestically where we are now financing our ever-increasing budget deficits.
The Fed now has also become a big part of the monetization process via its purchases of T-bills which also drives banks into buying notes. The Fed’s balance sheet is now $335b higher than it was in September at $4.095 trillion. Again, however the Fed wants to define what it’s doing, market participants view this as QE4 with all the asset price inflation that comes along with QE programs.
It will be real interesting to see what happens in 2020 to the repo market when the Fed tries to end its injections and how markets respond when its balance sheet stops increasing in size. It’s so easy to get involved and so difficult to leave.
Declining foreign purchases are, in part, a consequence of the trade war. The dollars China and Japan use to buy our T-bills are the same dollars we pay them for our imported goods. But interest and exchange rates also matter. With rates negative or lower than ours in most of the developed world, the US had been the best parking place.
But in the last year, other central banks started looking for a NIRP (Evergreen note: Negative Interest Rate Policy) exit. Higher rate expectations elsewhere combined with stable or falling US rates give foreign buyers—who must also pay for currency hedges—less incentive to buy US debt. If you live in a foreign country and have a particular need for its local currency, an extra 1% in yield isn’t worth the risk of losing even more in the exchange rate.
I know some think China or other countries are opting out of the US Treasury market for political reasons, but it’s simply business. The math just doesn’t work. Especially given the fact that President Trump is explicitly saying he wants the dollar to weaken and interest rates go even lower. If you are in country X, why would you do that trade? You might if you’re in a country like Argentina or Venezuela where the currency is toast anyway. But Europe? Japan? China? The rest of the developed world? It’s a coin toss.
The Fed began cutting rates in July. Funding pressures emerged weeks later. Coincidence? I suspect not. Many factors are at work here, but it sure looks like, through QE4 and other activities, the Fed is taking the first steps toward monetizing our debt. If so, many more steps are ahead because the debt is only going to get worse.
As you can see from the Gavekal chart below, the Fed is well on its way to reversing that 2018 “quantitative tightening.”
Louis Gave wrote a brilliant essay recently (behind their pay wall, but perhaps he will make it more public) considering four possible reasons for the present valuation dichotomies. I’ll quote the first one because I believe it is right on target:
The Fed’s balance sheet expansion is only temporary.
The argument: The Fed’s current liquidity injection program is not a genuine effort at quantitative easing by the US central bank. Instead, it is merely a short-term liquidity program to ensure that markets—and especially the repo markets—continue to operate smoothly. In about 15 weeks’ time, the Fed will stop injecting liquidity into the system. As a result, the market is already looking through the current liquidity injections to the time when the Fed goes “cold turkey” once again. This explains why bond yields are not rising more, why the US dollar isn’t falling faster, and so on.
My take: This is a distinct possibility. But then, as Milton Friedman used to say: “Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” The question here is: Why did the repo markets freeze in mid- to late September? Was it just a technical glitch? Or did the spike in short rates reflect the fact that the appetite of the US private sector and foreign investors for short-dated US government debt has reached its limit? In short, did the repo market reach its “wafer-thin mint” moment?
If it was a technical glitch, then the Fed will indeed be able to “back off” come the spring. However, if, as I believe, the repo market was not the trouble, but merely a symptom of a bigger problem—excessive growth in US budget deficits—then it is hard to see how, six months before a US election, the Fed will be able to climb back out of the full-on US government monetization rabbit hole in which it is now fully immersed.
In this scenario, the markets will come to an interesting crossroads around the Ides of March. At that point, the Fed will have to take one of two paths:
The Fed does indeed stop its “non-QE QE” program. In this scenario, US and global equities are likely to take a nasty spill. In an election year, that will trigger a Twitterstorm of epic proportions from the US president.
The Fed confirms that the six-month “temporary” liquidity injection program is to be extended for another “temporary” six months. At this point bond yields everywhere around the world will shoot up, the US dollar will likely take a nasty spill, global equities will outperform US equities, and value will outperform growth, etc.
Looking at the US government’s debt dynamics, I believe the second option is much more likely. And it is all the more probable since triggering a significant equity pull-back a few months before the US presidential election could threaten the Fed’s independence. Still, the first option does remain a possibility, which may well help to explain the market’s cautious positioning despite today’s coordinated fiscal and monetary policies (ex-China).
Just this week Congress passed, and President Trump signed, massive spending bills to avoid a government shutdown. There was a silver lining; both parties made concessions in areas each considers important. Republicans got a lot more to spend on defense and Democrats got all sorts of social spending. That kind of compromise once happened all the time but has been rare lately. Maybe this is a sign the gridlock is breaking. But if so, their cooperation still led to higher spending and more debt.
As long as this continues—as it almost certainly will, for a long time—the Fed will find it near-impossible to return to normal policy. The balance sheet will keep ballooning as they throw manufactured money at the problem, because it is all they know how to do and/or it’s all Congress will let them do.
Nor will there be any refuge overseas. The NIRP countries will remain stuck in their own traps, unable to raise rates and unable to collect enough tax revenue to cover the promises made to their citizens. It won’t be pretty, anywhere on the globe.
Luke Gromen of Forest for the Trees is one of my favorite macro thinkers. Like Louis Gave, he thinks the monetization plan will get more obvious in early 2020.
Those that believe that the Fed will begin undoing what it has done since September after the year-end “turn” are either going to be proven right or they are going to be proven wrong in Q1 2020. We strongly believe they will be proven wrong. If/when they are, the FFTT view that the Fed is “committed” to financing US deficits with its balance sheet may go from a fringe view to the mainstream.
Both parties in Congress are committed to more spending. No matter who is in the White House, they will encourage the Federal Reserve to engage in more quantitative easing so the deficit spending can continue and even grow.
As I have often noted, the next recession, whenever it happens, will bring a $2 trillion+ deficit, meaning a $40+ trillion dollar national debt by the end of the decade, at least $20 trillion of which will be on the Fed’s balance sheet. (My side bet is that in 2030 we will look back and see that I was an optimist.)
My 2020 forecast issue, which you’ll see after the holiday break, I’m planning to call “The Decade of Living Dangerously.” Sometime in the middle to late 2020s we will see a Great Reset that profoundly changes everything you know about money and investing.
Crisis isn’t simply coming. We are already in the early stages of it. I think we will look back at late 2019 as the beginning. This period will be rough but survivable if we prepare now. In fact, it will bring lots of exciting opportunities. More on that in coming letters.
Russian Evacuees From China To Be Quarantined In Remote Siberian Region
The Russian Air Force on orders from President Vladimir Putin is currently in the midst of evacuating some over 150 Russian nationals from China and sending them to be “monitored” for coronavirus symptoms in a region of Western Siberia.
“Russian citizens and people from other countries evacuated from China will be temporarily accommodated in the Tyumen Region where they will be placed under quarantine, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova told reporters on Tuesday,” official news agency TASS reports.
Image source: Russian Defense Ministry/TASS
This also after the first two cases of coronavirus in Russia were confirmed last Friday. Two Chinese nationals have already been quarantined in Tyumen and the far eastern Zabaykalsky region, and are expected to recover.
Tyumen Region is in Western Siberia, and was among the first regions of the harsh and remote eastern areas of Russia to be settled starting in the 16th century.During pre-revolutionary Russia and into Soviet times, the region historically served as a place of exile, including as part of the gulag system of labor camps in the north.
Some 147 people will be flown by the Russian Air Force from Wuhan and Hubei Province to the Tyumen area where they are expected to be monitored by medical authorities for at least 14 days.
“We are preparing ourselves for a possible wide spread of the infection,” Deputy Health Minister Sergei Krayevoy said, according to the Interfax news agency.
…Two Russian military planes were due to help evacuate 130 Russians stranded at the epicentre of the outbreak in China’s Hubei province, officials said. — Reuters
Russian authorities over the weekend restricted direct flights to China and shut the massive land border with China, which extends for 2,600 miles, which will no doubt have significant economic impact for both countries, given China remains Russia’s largest and most important trading partner.
Makeshift testing and quarantine zone for the novel coronavirus at Myeongdong shopping district in Seoul, South Korea. Getty Images.
“Our citizens as well as citizens of the Eurasian Economic Union and Ukraine will be accommodated in the Tyumen Region as the best prepared region where they will be placed under quarantine,” Deputy Prime Minister Golikova said in her statement Tuesday.
She indicated further that an evacuee list is still being finalized between the foreign ministry, the Russian Embassy in China, and the Chinese government.
On Monday, Russia’s Federal Service for Supervision of Consumer Rights Protection and Human Well-Being (Rospotrebnadzor) revealed that more than 4,000 total people who had contacts with suspected coronavirus infected individuals remain under medical supervision in Russia.
“Since December 31, Rospotrebnadzor examined 29,651 flights, and 1,627,142 people, discovered 379 people with diseases, who previously were in China for 14 days. Currently, more than 4,000 people who contacted with suspected coronavirus patients remain under medical supervision,” an official statement from the health agency said.
Through incredibly good fortune, I’ve been unable to watch the tedious impeachment trial. I’m traveling and my destinations don’t have television. I can’t report having the same luck, however, with the daily immigration news. Bulletins pour into my email inbox, and since immigration has been my journalism beat for more than 30 years, I’m professionally obligated to keep current. The news is relentlessly dreary, and reflects how far from the rule of law California has drifted.
In its story “This Immigration Lawyer Understands Her Clients; She’s Undocumented,” the Los Angeles Times was almost giddy over illegal alien Lizbeth Mateo and her representation before the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) of a fellow illegal alien. Let that sink in: an illegal alien lawyer defending an illegal alien in a U.S. Court. According to a former legacy Immigration and Naturalization employee, no one can serve as an attorney or be a member of the state bar if they are criminals – Mateo entered and reentered the United States illegally. Nor are they eligible to represent an alien before the EOIR since their immigration status conflicts with the laws at issue.
Instead of focusing its story on the absurdity and legal questionability of an illegal immigrant subject to immigration laws, including arrest and deportation, representing another illegal immigrant, the Times instead referred to Mateo as “polished, savvy” which may be true but is also incomplete.
Mateo is certainly savvy. Several years ago, she and eight other activists, known collectively as the The Dream 9, traveled to Mexico, then demanded and received reentry permission so they could protest what they perceived as President Obama’s harsh immigration policy.
That California would be the epicenter of such an outrageous immigration failure surprises no one.In 2013, as it began its slide into the depths of incomprehensible catering and entitlement-dole-out to unlawfully present migrants, then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed AB 1024, legislation that allowed illegal aliens who passed the California bar to receive law licenses.
During the same week, Brown also approved state-issued drivers licenses for aliens. A boastful Brown said, “While Washington waffles on immigration, California’s forging ahead, I’m not waiting.” One year later, Brown signed more expansive legislation that ordered the 40 licensing boards which the California Department of Consumer Affairs recognizes to, by 2016, accept applications regardless of immigration status. To replace the previously required Social Security number on all professional license applications, aliens could substitute the easily acquired federal Individual Taxpayer Identification Number.
Brown was correct, but not in the way he imagined, when he called Washington an immigration waffler. In the nearly seven years that have passed since Brown signed AB 1024, Congress has done little to end the privileges like driving, sanctuary city protection, and access to lower in-state university education fees that states and counties have awarded to illegal immigrants. As a California native and long-time immigration analyst, the question I’m most often asked is: What happened to the Golden State? In recent memory, California was a conservative bastion under U.S. Sen. Richard Nixon, and Governors Ronald Reagan and Pete Wilson.
But then, as president, Reagan went rogue and signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. During the ensuing years, tens of thousands of legal and illegal immigrants arrived.
The legal immigrants and their children who came of age in the late 1990s and early 2000s favor higher immigration levels, self-define as Democrats and vote accordingly.
Among the illegal alien contingent that came to California, many have remained, and some have received amnesty and therefore voting rights. They too support immigration expansion.
Today in California, as the EOIR example proves, federal immigration laws are meaningless. If they’re willing to objectively study California’s immigration history, other states could learn an important lesson. Too much identity politics accelerates great states’ declines and fall. In about a half-century, California went from being America’s most coveted destination to today’s societal mess from which residents with options can’t flee fast enough.
Huffington Post Investigation Exposes Rampant Sexism At The Washington Post
The fury of twitter blue checkmarks over the Washington Post’s decision to suspend female reporter Felicia Sonmez has manifested in a #MeToo-style hit piece directed at the Washington Post.
In a laughable piece by reporter Emily Peck, the Huffington Post relies on anonymously sourced quotes and evidence-free assertions from ‘staffers and contractors’ bashing the paper for unspecified indiscretions like valuing ‘male characteristics’ over ‘female characteristics’, without ever describing or explaining what they mean.
The piece begins by describing two recent scenarios where reporters received ‘death threats’. The backlash to Sonmez’s tasteless tweet about a nearly two-decade-old retracted rape allegation against Kobe Bryant in the wake of his untimely and extremely brutal passing, and an incident involving national security reporter Shane Harris.
Sonmez was suspended, and offered no protection. Harris received protection within 72 hours.
Now, were either of these reporters truly in danger? Probably not.
Both male and female journalists receive death threats and abuse constantly online, and there are zero reported incidents of reporters being murdered in the US by angry twitter followers. But from this one incident, Huffpo extrapolates an entire culture of misogyny, a culture that, according to many in the WaPo newsroom, doesn’t actually exist.
HuffPo cited data from the WaPo union suggesting that the pay gap between men and women at the Post has narrowed in recent years, though, thanks to a larger number of men in senior positions, the median pay for men is still skewed slightly higher than the median pay for women. But rather than explain what these numbers actually mean, HuffPo simply points to the discrepancy and asserts that it’s evidence of a ‘gender pay gap’ attributable solely to latent sexism.
The Washington Post doesn’t value women and men in the same way, these people said. This appears literally true when it comes to pay: Women in the newsroom are paid less than men, according to a report published last year by the union that represents employees. (The paper disputed the findings at the time.) One former Post contractor told HuffPost she was let go after asking for a raise.
The disparity courses through the culture and is borne out in the paper’s coverage, where stories of sexual harassment have sometimes been held to a higher standard than other coverage, some staffers said.
Crucially, the gender imbalance is clear in the masthead. Three of the four top editors at the Post are men. Only four of 17 department heads are women.
“The place is run by men and it creates a particular atmosphere and assigns a higher value to certain male characteristics,” said one female reporter. “I’ve been a victim of it in a broad way, as most women in the newsroom have.”
Is the paper really “run by men”? Not really. HuffPo dings WaPo for only having four women among 17 section heads without mentioning that this is much higher than the average for the industry, and most industries. Many of the top editors have female deputies – and, critically, more than half of WaPos newsroom consists of female reporters.
It’s not that The Washington Post doesn’t have high-profile women, staffers emphasized to HuffPost. There are star female reporters at the paper. Indeed, a majority of the newsroom staff — approximately 800 employees — is female, just like the U.S. workforce generally.
That’s actually not true. According to the Department of Labor, only 47% of the US workforce is comprised of women. Overall participation rates by gender are higher for men than for women. We suspect HuffPo got the labor force confused with the American academic landscape: As the Atlantic boldly declared a few years ago, “men are the new minority on college campuses”.
WaPo’s newsroom is actually disproportionately made up of women. If we were to adjust that for average participation rates per gender, it would suggest that management has actually discriminated against men in order to satisfy gender-warrior critics and present more solid optics.
Finally, HuffPo’s final example of misogyny involves a contractor who was allegedly ‘fired for asking for a raise’. But based solely off HuffPo’s account of the incident, it appears more likely that her position wasn’t renewed because of cutbacks at her bureau, and her strongly expressed dissatisfaction with her current position. A junior contract employee complaining to their boss’s boss about compensation isn’t really appropriate, and likely came across as ungrateful. We suspect her demeanor and conduct had something to do with her contract not being renewed – and that’s totally appropriate.
The situation can be worse for female contract reporters, who aren’t on staff yet but often put in full-time hours, particularly in foreign bureaus.
One former contractor, a woman assigned to an outpost overseas, told HuffPost that she had been fired after asking for a pay increase.
She first broached the subject in July at a breakfast meeting with her boss’s boss, foreign editor Doug Jehl, the woman told HuffPost, declining to be named for fear of career reprisals. She had just recently thrown her hat in the ring for a promotion to a staff position.
As a contractor, relative to her male counterparts, she was underpaid, she told Jehl, citing a conversation with the Post’s union. The subject set him off.
“It was like a red flag to a bull. He got angry. He raised his voice,” she said. He told her she’d have to leave the paper if she brought up the issue again, she recalled him saying.
The next morning, sitting at a Starbucks, Jehl said her contract would not be renewed after it expired at the end of the year. “‘You want more money and job security and we can’t give that to you,’” she recalled him saying.
She decided to take up matters with leadership a few months later in September, writing an email to Martin Baron, the executive editor of the paper. HuffPost reviewed the exchange. She described how much she liked working for the Post and how disappointed she was in the way her situation was handled.
Instead of accepting this, the contract reporter once again went around her boss’s boss’s head to complain to Marty Baron, the WaPo Executive Editor, directly. He assured her that the elimination of her position had nothing to do with her complaints, and that the paper would give her a glowing recommendation to any prospective employers. Yet this too was spun as an example of ‘sexism.’
She decided to take up matters with leadership a few months later in September, writing an email to Martin Baron, the executive editor of the paper. HuffPost reviewed the exchange. She described how much she liked working for the Post and how disappointed she was in the way her situation was handled.
“I don’t believe the way I’ve been treated reflects the values you espouse or aspire to for the Post,” she wrote.
She provided Baron with an outline of what happened:
When I asked him for a raise, he told me to look for a job in another company. Mine wasn’t a demand. It was a statement of my own perceived value to the company and as a reporter.
My sense is that you expect journalists to stand up for themselves and act professionally. I felt I did both. The next day, Doug told me my [job] application was not being considered, and my contract was not being renewed. I spoke to [managing editor] Tracy Grant about this on the same day, and she told me I could leave immediately and still get my salary through the end of the contract if I wished.
In his response, Baron said they were sticking to their decision to let her go, stating that it was part of a rethink of the entire bureau. He acknowledged the circumstances of her dismissal only slightly. “I’m disappointed to hear that you believe the changes in the bureau have not been handled properly,” he wrote. “We will have nothing other than positive things to say about you to any potential future employers.”
We look forward to watching WaPo, HuffPo, Buzzfeed, CNN and the rest of the #resistance media eat each other alive with accusations of imagined sexism.
In this essay, I introduce a slew of neologisms – new words – to capture the tone and substance of much discourse, rhetoric, dysfunction, and bias in academia and psychology. It’s partly inspired by an article entitled ‘Lexicon for Gender Bias in Academia and Medicine’ by Drs Choo and May in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), although that one was coming at this from a different perspective.
They argued that “mansplaining” was just the “tip of the iceberg” and so coined terms such as “Himpediment,” defined as a “man who stands in the way of progress of women.”
Adminomania: A delusion that increased administrative and bureaucratic intrusions into people’s lives will actually improve something, fueled primarily by a pervasive blindness to unintended negative side effects. See Title IX.
Athletic gynocide: The elimination from sports competitions of people identified at birth by doctors or other adults as female because they cannot successfully compete with people identified at birth by doctors or other adults as males but who identify as females.
Bias bias: A bias for seeing biases, often manifesting as either claiming bias when none exists, exaggerating biases that do exist, or overgeneralizing to large swaths of life from studies finding bias in some narrow or specific context.
Biomindophobia: Fear that biology influences the mind.
Blancofemophobia: Prejudice against white women, as exemplified by dismissing the beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors of white women with phrases such as, “White women white womening.” See here for a real-world example.
Brexistential fear: An irrational fear that Brexit will lead to the end of the world as we know it.
Brophobia: Fear of men having a conversation among themselves.
Chapeaurougeauphobia: Fear and loathing of Trump supporters.
Cisandrophobia: Fear of and prejudice against heterosexual men.
Decontextaphilia: An unhealthy attraction to quoting others out of context.
Emotional imperialism: The strange belief that your feelings should dictate someone else’s behavior.
Epistemological impugnment: A form of intellectual bullying that involves declaring or implying that a claim should not be believed, not on the basis of logic or evidence showing it to be false, but by tainting the source with real or imagined failings in some other area. This often manifests as unsubstantiated allegations and guilt-by-association.
Equalitarianism: A dogmatic, quasi-religious belief that all groups are equal on all traits that matter, usually accompanied by the belief that the only credible source of group differences is discrimination and outrage at anyone who suggests otherwise. Often accompanied by the belief that women and minorities are inherently or essentially more virtuous.
Europhobia: Fear of Europeans and prejudice against Europeans, their descendants, and practices and ideas that originated in Europe.
Evopsychophobia: Fear of evolutionary psychology, especially of the possibility that social groups (such as men and women) might have evolved different psychological traits and behavioral tendencies.
Genetophobia: Fear of genetic explanations for human behaviors, competencies, traits, and preferences. Often manifests as blank slatism and environmental determinism.
Heterophobia: Fear of and prejudice against heterosexual men and women.
Identity colonialism: The assumption that you have a better grasp of what’s harmful to a marginalized group than members of that group.
Implicit ESP delusions: People afflicted by these delusions believe they can read others’ minds. This belief is not explicitly articulated because it would sound silly if it was. How, then, can it be diagnosed? These delusions often manifest as accusations that someone else is “disingenuous,” or insincere; also, that the accuser knows someone’s “real” motivations.
IQaphobia: Fear of measuring intelligence because one believes that only Nazis and eugenicists do that.
Istaphobia: Fear of being called an “ist” (racist, sexist, fascist, etc.), usually followed by self-censorship.
Kafkatrap: A rhetorical move whereby protesting your innocence is interpreted as proving your guilt. Example: If you deny that you are a racist, you are a racist.
Marxism denialist: Someone who conveniently ignores or forgets that Marxism/communism has been a brutal disaster whenever it has achieved national hegemony, or argues “it was not real Marxism,” or dismisses the relevance of that brutal history. These symptoms are usually accompanied by camouflaging Marxist ideas/ideology in social science neologisms e.g., “system justification theory.”
Nazinoia: A delusional tendency to see Nazis as hiding behind ideas or practices one opposes, and by accusing anyone to the right of Bernie Sanders of being Nazis, fascists, white supremacists, or alt-right.
Occam’s shoehorn: What you use to fit the data to your narrative, no matter how difficult.
Occam’s trumpet: Ignoring all possible alternatives to “bias” as explanations for inequality and triumphantly proclaiming that bias is pervasive.
Phobophobia: Fear of being called a “phobe” (Islamaphobe, trans-phobe, etc.). Usually followed by self-censorship.
Phrenological Reflux Disease: This disease is characterized by an inability to digest scientific work on group differences, especially common with respect to intelligence without intermittent ejaculations of “phrenology!” or “phrenologist!”
Quackademic: A person in academia who should not be allowed around students.
Racebsion: An excessive, persistent, and disturbing assumption that race is at the center of everything. See theNew York Times’s 1619 Project.
Subjectiphilia: An infatuation with subjective experience as empirically triumphant, e.g., using “lived experience” as if it could end an argument.
Triggeritis inexplicablus: Outbursts and meltdowns in response to reading or hearing certain unwelcome words or ideas.
Trollusions: A pathological tendency to see those who bluntly disagree with you as trolls.
Trumpcession: An intellectually debilitating condition, common among academics, characterized by attributing all bad things to Trump and Trump supporters.
Twitterphobia deficientus: Not worrying quite enough about how other people might perceive what you tweet.
Twokademia: Academic grievance grandstanding on Twitter.
Undo Process: Reckless disregard for due process protections for those accused of demographic-related violations, e.g., harassment, bias, discrimination.
Wokademia: Academic grievance grandstanding.
Wokanniblism: A low-carb, high-protein diet consisting mainly of eating your own.
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Lee Jussim is a professor of social psychology at Rutgers University and was a fellow and consulting scholar at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University (2013-15). He can be followed on Twitter @PsychRabble
Elizabeth Warren Tries Disappearing Act After Being Caught Exiting Private Jet
Native-American? Woman of the people? Billionaire-bludgeoner? Climate-change alarmist?
It would appear, by the looks of this latest clip catching Senator Elizabeth Warren exiting a private jet, that not everything she says is true (allegedly)!
By far the most entertaining part of the brief video is her camera-evasion techniques once she realizes she is being filmed, finding refuge behind one of her staff…
Well we know at least one person who is going to be very disappointed in you lizzy…
But the hypocrisy goes even deeper. As Fox News reports, Warren, who funds her trips with campaign cash, tweeted as recently as last Thursday about Trump administration officials using private aviation on the taxpayer’s dime. She specifically referenced former Trump Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, who still owes the U.S. government over $300,000 in travel expenses, according to an Inspector General report.
Between June and September, Warren paid over $150,000 to “Advanced Aviation,” a private jet charter service, according to FEC filings. Last week the Washington Examiner reported she had spent over $700,000 total on private aviation.
Watch Live: Trump Delivers Third State Of The Union Address
With Democrats on the back-foot following the twin catastrophes of the Iowa Caucus and their unsuccessful push to call John Bolton as a witness in Trump’s Senate impeachment trial, which is expected to end Wednesday with a resounding acquittal and Trump’s approval rating at record highs.
With stocks near record highs and all of Trump’s geopolitical rivals on the back foot, this will be the first SOTU for Trump that won’t be overshadowed by government shutdown-related shenanigans or the Russia collusion narrative.
It’s also important because it’s the last SOTU of Trump’s first term. Trump never really stopped campaigning, though he officially launched the 2020 campaign with a major speech in Florida last year. With a second term hanging in the balance, expect Trump to luxuriate in his rivals’ many mistakes and unforced errors.
Tuesday night’s speech is only Trump’s third state of the union, since the big speech he delivered after inauguration day back in 2017 wasn’t technically a state of the union.
The address starts at 9 pm ET. Readers can watch it live below:
Since the gist of the speech is typically leaked to the press before Trump starts speaking, online betting markets are focused on the length of Trump’s speech, as well as the number of times he’ll say certain words, like “China” or “Democrat”.
Here’s a roundup of SOTU-related Over/Unders, courtesy of Sports Betting Dime.
A few years ago, researchers at the Constitution Center put together this ‘State of the Union’ bingo board the reflects topics reliably mentioned by both Republican and Democratic candidates.
While Democrats like to complain about President Trump’s frequent errors of grammar and spelling, the grade-reading level of the (typically) annual address has declined in recent decades, a trend that started long before President Trump rode that Trump Tower escalator to glory.
If you’re curious about what to expect, the Hill has a primer on five topics to watch, including China, impeachment, his message to Democrats and any big new legislative proposals (Trump will reportedly call on Congress to support previously announced policy plans, possibly including his long-awaited ‘bipartisan’ infrastructure bill, though White House advisors have been tight-lipped this year about what’s going into the speech).
