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Yesterday we reported that the Trump administration would be dumping thousands of illegal migrants in Florida due to overcrowding at the border.

Now, we learn that San Diego will receive hundreds of migrant families from South Texas for processing, as the agency struggles to keep up with large numbers of Central Americans who have flooded into the country. The agency said that it was also considering distributing apprehended border-crossers to Detroit, Miami and Buffalo, New York, according to the Globe and Mail. 

Flights from Texas’ Rio Grande Valley to San Diego were slated to begin on Friday – continuing three times a week indefinitely. Each flight will carry 120 – 135 people, according to the Border Patrol’s interim San Diego sector chief, Douglas Harrison. Conservatively, that means at least 1,440 migrants per month, or 17,280 annually. 

“We don’t have an end date,” said Harrison. “This is a contingency operation. We’ve got to give the people in Rio Grande Valley some relief.” 

Plans to fly from Rio Grande Valley to Detroit, Miami and Buffalo were preliminary, Harrison said. Authorities were researching available airports and the ability for non-profit groups to provide temporary assistance.

Already, U.S. authorities are moving four buses a day from the Rio Grande Valley to Laredo, Texas, about 100 miles (160 kilometres) away. There is also a daily flight contracted through U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to Del Rio, Texas, about 275 miles away (440 kilometres) away.

Agents in the Rio Grande Valley will collect biographical information and do a medical screening before sending migrants to San Diego on flights contracted by ICE, Harrison said. Migrants will go from San Diego International Airport to a Border Patrol station, where they will be fingerprinted, interviewed and screened again for medical problems. Processing at the station typically takes hours. –Globe and Mail

ICE will decide whether to detain or release the families in San Diego. It has been longstanding practice to quickly release them into the community with notices to appear in immigration court. 

San Diego’s Rapid Response Network – a coalition of civic and religious groups that help asylum-seekers with temporary shelter – will undoubtedly come under further strain. The network said that it would shelter migrants who are flown in from Texas, and that the influx of new migrants “underscores the urgent need for a permanent, long-term migrant shelter in San Diego.”

Short flights cost the federal government about $6,000 each, officials said. It wasn’t immediately clear how much longer flights cost.

Border Patrol agents do some processing remotely by videoconference, but Harrison said stations in the Rio Grande Valley had run out of room even to do that. San Diego, he said, had room to hold migrants for up to 72 hours and staff to process them, which stations on the northern border lack. –Globe and Mail

Arrests at the border have nearly tripled the number from last year – reaching 98,977 in April. Around 70% were families or children traveling alone – however in March, former Homeland Security Chief Kristjen Nielsen said that border smugglers are using “child recycling rings” to thwart US Customs and Border Protection. 

“We’ve broken up child recycling rings — if you can believe it — in the last couple of months, which is where smugglers pick up a child, they give it to adults to present themselves as a family once they get over — because, as you know, we can only hold families for 20 days — they send the child back and bring the child back with another family. Another fake family,” Nielsen told Fox News‘s Tucker Carlson. 

The Rio Grande Valley is the most busy corridor for border crossings, followed by El Paso, Texas. The Border Patrol reports that it’s detaining around 8,000 people at a time in the Rio Grande Valley – double its maximum capacity. On Friday, the agency said that it would open four new temporary structures that will have generators, lighting and air conditioning. 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/30ston3 Tyler Durden

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk,

Illinois has its eyes on your pocketbook, again. This time: gas taxes, registration fees, Netflix, and Uber.

The Illinois Policy Institute reports Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office is using a major capital bill as a vehicle to grease lawmakers for a progressive income tax amendment. But the tax hikes to pay for it would make Illinoisans’ gas tax burden the second highest in the nation.

• Gas tax hike ($1.2 billion): The preliminary capital plan relies on doubling Illinois’ motor fuel tax to 38 cents from 19 cents per gallon, effective July 1. This would make Illinois’ total gas tax burden the second highest in the nation. Under the proposed gas tax hike, drivers filling up in Chicago would pay 96 cents in taxes and fees on a $2.46 gallon of gasoline – an effective tax burden of 39%.

• Vehicle registration fee hike ($490 million): The preliminary capital plan would also hike vehicle registration fees, imposing a new cost structure based on the age of the car. The current annual fee of $101 would jump to $199 for vehicles 3 years old or newer, $169 for vehicles 4-6 years old, $139 for vehicles 7-11 years old, and $109 for vehicles 12 years and older. The $199 registration fee for newer vehicles would be higher than any neighboring state and third-highest in the nation, according to Ballotpedia research.

• New $1 per ride tax on ridesharing ($214 million): The plan would enact a statewide $1 per ride tax on ridesharing services such as Uber and Lyft. Chicago already levies a 72-cent per ride fee on ridesharing services.

• New 7% tax on cable, satellite and streaming services ($150 million): Chicago’s “Netflix tax” would expand statewide, with the state charging a 7% tax on users of streaming services, as well as cable and satellite customers. None of these services are currently taxed at the state level. Chicago currently stretches the definition of its 9 percent citywide “amusement tax” to include online streaming services such as Netflix and Spotify, as well as Playstation rentals.

• Tax hikes on beer, wine and liquor ($120 million): Taxes on booze would rise by up to 50%. The per-gallon tax on beer and cider would rise to 27.7 cents from 23.1 cents; the per-gallon tax on wine would rise to $2.05 from $1.39, and the per-gallon tax on distilled liquor would rise to $12.60 from $8.55. Bob Myers, president of the Associated Beer Distributors of Illinois, estimated Illinois loses out on up to $30 million per year to cross-border alcohol purchases.

• New statewide parking garage tax ($60 million): Daily and hourly garage parking would be hit with a 6% tax while monthly and annual garage parking would come with a 9% tax. Chicagoans already pay among the highest parking rates in the country. The state does not currently tax garage parking.

• Doubling the real estate transfer tax ($34 million): The proposal doubles the real estate transfer tax on non-residential real estate to $1 from 50 cents per $500 in value.

• Hiking registration fees for electric vehicles ($4 million): The registration fee for electric vehicles would rise to $250 per year from $34 every other year.

Q: What do we call this?

A: A start!

This is ongoing and it will never stop.

Progressive Tax Push

Pritzker wants to amend the state constitution to allow for “progressive” graduated income taxes. He claims it will be a tax on the wealthy.

He is a blatant liar. It will be a tax on everyone. The wealthiest will leave. And even if they don’t, there is already a general exodus. Illinois is losing population while neighboring states are gaining.

The most important point is that pension benefits to public unions and other unfunded obligations total nearly 50% of Illinois budget!

For discussion, please see Warren Buffett Would Not Locate a Business in Illinois: Let’s Explore Why.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2YGlaWN Tyler Durden

In keeping with their spectacular reputation of violating privacy and rigging elections, Facebook has said that it removed “hundreds of accounts” from Facebook and Instagram that were used to influence elections in Africa, according to CNN. Only it wasn’t Russia who was behind this latest intervention, but Israel.

Archimedes Group, an Israeli company, reportedly spent more than $800,000 in advertising (far more than the Kremlin allegedly spent on its “ad campaign” to crush Hillary Clinton and get Trump elected) and ran accounts that had nearly 3 million followers, for the purpose of targeting African elections. The group primarily targeted Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, Angola, Niger and Tunisia. 

For perspective, the $800,000 reportedly spent by the group compares to the $100,000 that has been claimed by the U.S. mainstream media to have been spent for ‘Russian bots’ used to allegedly sway the 2016 US presidential election, according to RT.

The company “used fake accounts to run Pages, disseminate their content and artificially increase engagement” and also “represented themselves as locals, including local news organizations, and published allegedly leaked information about politicians,” according to Facebook. 

Facebook’s Nathaniel Gleicher, the company’s head of cybersecurity policy said: “The individuals behind this network attempted to conceal their identities.”

“This organization and all its subsidiaries are now banned from Facebook, and it has been issued a cease and desist letter,” Facebook wrote in a blog post. It detailed the group’s presence on the site by disclosing:

• Presence on Facebook and Instagram: 65 Facebook accounts, 161 Pages, 23 Groups, 12 events and four Instagram accounts.
• Followers: About 2.8 million accounts followed one or more of these Pages, about 5,500 accounts joined at least one of these Groups and around 920 people followed one or more of these Instagram accounts.
• Advertising: Around $812,000 in spending for ads on Facebook paid for in Brazilian reals, Israeli shekel, and US dollars. The first ad ran in December 2012 and the most recent ad ran in April 2019.
• Events: Nine events were hosted by these Pages. The first was scheduled for October 2017 and the most recent was scheduled for May 2019. Up to 2,900 people expressed interest in at least one of these events, and a portion of their accounts were previously identified and disabled as fake. We cannot confirm whether any of these events actually occurred.

Meanwhile, the website that reportedly links to Archimedes Group claims it “took significant roles in many political and public campaigns, among them Presidential elections and other social media projects all over the world.”

“Archimedes has created and operates in it’s [sic] own unique field within the social media realm.”

RT notes that the firm has interesting similarities to a former Israeli social media manipulation firm:

Archimedes’ slogan is oddly reminiscent of another secretive Israeli social media manipulation firm, Psy-Group (motto: “Shape reality”), which closed its doors after coming under scrutiny during the Mueller investigation for its possible involvement in the election of Donald Trump. Psy-Group drew up a detailed prospectus for a Facebook meddling campaign seven months before the 2016 election, but supposedly never deployed it in real life. Both Psy-Group and Archimedes touted their ability to operate multiple fake online avatars simultaneously.

According to Facebook’s blog, here is a sample of the content posted by some of these pages:

Caption: Faithful to only himself, Martin Fayulu criticizes and rejects the results of the presidential election, which has unfolded transparently and in an exemplary calmness. It is time for him to admit his defeat to president Tshisekedi who has been elected in a democratic way.

Caption: Mali: Justice Survey on a Mysterious Gold Mine from Airbus to Mali

Airbus group is quoted in a judicial investigation for scam on a Malian gold mine in balance sheet deposit, whose shareholders have been ruined. The investment project of the aerospace giant in this mine, LED by a close to Malian power, seemed intended to clear occult funds to facilitate the obtaining of military markets in the country. This is a very embarrassing new business….

Incidentally, just a days ago we reported how another secretive Israeli company used WhatsApp voice calls to install spyware across countless phones.  WhatsApp, which is used by 1.5bn people worldwide, discovered in early May that attackers were able to install surveillance software on both iPhones and Android phones by ringing up targets using the app’s phone call function. The malicious code, developed by the secretive NSO Group, a notorious and controversial Israeli hacking and surveillance tools vendor, could be transmitted even if users did not answer their phones, and the calls often disappeared from call logs.

It is unclear how many apps were infected with the spyware trojan, which could for example, allow anyone to get access to John Podesta’s email password (and then blame say, Vladimir Putin for example) as WhatsApp is too early into its own investigations of the vulnerability to estimate how many phones were targeted using this method, although it is likely a substantial number.

Still, one should perhaps ask: is it Russia – already the usual suspect for any alleged rigging on the internet – that is the true culprit here, or Israel, which never makes mainstream media headlines, yet whose actions are far more flagrant, bold and manipulative.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/30v1VRK Tyler Durden

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

Let the weekly absurdity begin!

New SAT scoring will combat Asian privilege

The infamous SAT has been used since 1926 as a sort of university entrance exam to objectively test high school students’ scholastic aptitude. Until now.

Test administrators announced plans this week to include an ‘adversity score’ for every student taking the SAT.

This score will excuse poor test results if the student lives in a high crime neighborhood, went to a poor high school, is living in a single parent or low income household, and so on.

And this should really put a dent in Asian privilege. Yes you read that right. With an average SAT score of 1223, Asians achieve the highest marks among all the ethnic groups tracked by SAT administrators.

But these same Asian test takers also typically come from dual-parent, higher-income households. So they’ll be penalized because of their parents’ success.

This is truly amazing thing to be teaching young people.

Universities and the SAT administrators don’t want high school students to identify as strong, self-reliant, independent individuals who seek to solve problems and overcome adversity.

Instead they’re encouraging young people to make their socioeconomic circumstances the strongest part of their identities. And, based on those socioeconomic circumstances, cultivate a guilt or victim mentality, and expect penalties or handouts for the rest of their lives.

Click here for the full story.

Harvard lynch-mob runs professor off campus

Harvard Professor Ronald Sullivan has spent his career as a lawyer defending some of the poorest people in the country.

He was previously the public defender in Washington DC and personally overturned dozens of wrongful convictions.

Professor Sullivan also represented Michael Brown’s family after the teen was shot to death by police. Huffington Post even called him the “man who dealt the biggest blow to mass incarceration.”

But now he and his wife– the first black student housing deans in Harvard history– have been run off campus by an angry mob of #metoo zealots.

His crime: joining Harvey Weinstein’s defense team.

Sullivan believes in justice for ALL, and that even a man like Weinstein who has already been convicted by the Twittering classes in the court of public opinion, is entitled to competent legal defense.

“It is particularly important for this category of unpopular defendant to receive the same process as everyone else — perhaps even more important…

“To the degree we deny unpopular defendants basic due process rights we cease to be the country we imagine ourselves to be.”

Powerful words that absolutely ring true. But now all these whiny students at Harvard claim they no longer feel safe with Sullivan on campus, and they’ve demanded the university do something.

Sadly, Harvard has buckled under the pressure, and they announced earlier this week that they would not renew his appointment as Faculty Dean at Harvard College’s Winthrop House.

These Social Justice Warriors are starting to feed on their own.

Click here for the full story.

Prison for online trolls in Australia

Online trolls could soon face up to five years in prison, if the Prime Minister of Australia gets his way.

It’s already illegal to “menace, harass or cause offence” online in Australia. That’s right. It’s illegal to offend someone in Australia.

And that cybercrime carries up to three years in prison if “reasonable persons” would consider the online behavior offensive or menacing.

But the Prime Minister wants a stiffer penalty of up to five years for offending someone else’s delicate feelings.

As usual, the government keeps their laws nice and obscure so that they can make the case that practically anyone has broken them.

Click here for the full story.

Charges dropped against Florida Man with “I Eat Ass” bumper sticker

Speaking of offending people, last week a sheriff’s deputy in Florida arrested a man because he had a bumper sticker which eloquently read “I Eat Ass.”

I almost have to admire the transparency. This man leaves no question about where he stands on the issue.

The officer pulled the man over because of the obscene sticker, and insisted he removes all or part of it. But the man refused, citing his First Amendment free speech right to display potentially offensive bumper stickers.

So the officer charged him with violating obscenity laws, as well as resisting arrest without violence.

The prosecutors determined bringing a case against him would be met with a valid First Amendment defense, so the charges were dropped.

Read the full story here.

San Francisco chasing away tech companies with IPO tax hike

San Francisco has long had what they refer to as an “IPO tax”; this is a tax on the value of shares that companies give to their employees.

And the tax is on the value of the shares itself. So when a big company goes public and all those employee shares are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, the city of San Francisco rakes in the tax revenue.

Ten years ago during the last recession, San Francisco cut its IPO tax. There was a bit of revolt by some local tech firms who threatened to leave the city over the tax, and San Francisco wanted to prevent this exodus at all costs.

But not anymore.

Now the local government intends to raise the tax from 0.38% to 1.5%, an almost 4x increase.

This is pretty hilarious given that they slashed the tax a decade ago to tempt companies to stay.

But now that it’s cool and trendy to chase productive businesses away, San Francisco wants to jack up the IPO tax.

This is in addition to new taxes passed in November on large corporations to support the homeless population.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2HEaLUJ Tyler Durden

Venezuela’s hyperinflationary chaos has taken its toll on all aspects of life including dating, the focus of a new Bloomberg profile highlighting the challenges and pitfalls of single life in Caracas: blackouts, political rallies, condom shortages, tear gas, Molotov cocktails and deadly protests.

While the country experiences a massive exodus of roughly 10% of its total population, the effect on dating apps is almost comical. Many people listed on apps can see their prospective partner’s location status zoom from just “1 mile away” to “1,000 miles away” in just days, as citizens emigrate to places like Chile, Mexico and Peru. 

This leaves people asking themselves why they should even date in Venezuela to begin with. “What if you finally find the right one and her visa comes through?” the article asks. While some couples can brave the distance, romances are often cut short when one half of a relationship moves out of the country. 

While for most it is a sad outcome that almost every romantic partner eventually moves out the country, for people with “looser social agendas” as Bloomberg puts it, this can actually be liberating – knowing that most everyone you’ve hooked up with is probably leaving and that you’ll never have to see them again.

 There’s a fair amount of looking back to the days when dating was common in the Las Mercedes district, and when lines would form outside of discos and salsa clubs – and when a night cap might include a trip to a “love motel”. But now, those with little money have to find their way to one of the fast-dwindling bars in the town that give the big city of Caracas a “small town feel”. 

Other “unique” issues also arise due to the chaos in the country. For example, the author recalls a friend being thrown out by his girlfriend after she discovered that he had moved in with her only because she had running water. 

The biggest concern to many – crime – is rampant at night, as documented here repeatedly. Streelights are out making it “spooky” to walk around. However, this hasn’t stopped citizens from going out after sundown: the wealthy still roll up to Las Mercedes’ remaining restaurants in SUVs and armored cars, while regular citizens walk from place to place after being dropped off at the nearest metro stop, about a mile away. 

Movie theaters are still in business, but often wind up closing before 8PM. And the author recounts one of his latest dates when, after he suggested Netflix as an alternative, the power wound up going out. There goes that idea. 

And some citizens, like Eduardo Sandoval, don’t need much to be happy. A recent date of his included just sitting on a bench at a mall and cuddling with his girlfriend. “At times like these, you look for any escape from the routine,” he concluded.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2HqcrlK Tyler Durden

Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

Living on the edge, being dragged down by debt, and having little hope for the future is no way to live.  But that is precisely where most Americans find themselves in 2019.  Despite a supposedly “booming economy”, the middle class continues to shrink and most of the country is barely scraping by from month to month.  In fact, a brand new survey that was just released by Charles Schwab discovered that 59 percent of all Americans are currently living paycheck to paycheck…

Overall, 59 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, according to the survey of 1,000 U.S. adults by Charles Schwab.

However, the Millennial generation (people ages 23-38) was the most likely to struggle in between payday, at 62 percent, followed by Generation X (60 percent), Generation Z (55 percent) and Baby Boomers (53 percent).

I realize that those numbers look really high, but this is really where we are at as a society.

In fact, a study that was just conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago found that 51 percent of all “working adults” would not be able to cover basic necessities “if they missed more than one paycheck”…

Missing more than one paycheck is a one-way ticket to financial hardship for nearly half of the country’s workforce.

A new study from NORC at the University of Chicago, an independent social research institution, found that 51% of working adults in the United States would need to access savings to cover necessities if they missed more than one paycheck.

So when the next recession strikes, millions of Americans that suddenly lose their jobs could find themselves facing financial disaster almost immediately.

The survey that was just released by Charles Schwab found that there are a lot of reasons why Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, and “rising college debt” is one of them…

‘Spending is certainly one factor,’ said Terri Kallsen, executive vice president for Schwab Investor Services.

‘But especially for younger Americans, we know there are factors beyond their control that make it difficult to save, including rising college debt, stagnant wages and the high cost of living, particularly in urban centers,’ she told DailyMail.com.

Today, Americans owe more than 1.5 trillion dollars on their student loans, and it is a bubble that keeps getting worse with each passing year.  The following numbers about our growing student loan debt crisis come from CBS News…

Currently, 43 million Americans have student debt. The average household with student debt owes almost $48,000 and 5.2 million borrowers are in default.

Meanwhile, college costs keep rising. At Ohio State, a public university, in-state students pay $27,000 a year. Stanford University costs $74,000.

Personally, I don’t know why anyone would ever pay $74,000 a year to go to Stanford.

And as far as Ohio State and other public universities are concerned, the truth is that you can get a better education from the Internet without too much effort.  I spent eight years studying at public universities, and the quality of education is a joke.

But we fill the heads of our high school students with all of this nonsense about how college “is the key to a bright future”, and we encourage them to not even worry about how much it will cost.

So they pile up enormous loans, and many of them don’t even realize that they are destroying their financial futures until it is too late.

When 25-year-old Taylor Smith first discovered how high her student loan balance had gotten, she immediately had a panic attack…

To pay for her education at Texas A&M University, Smith worked full-time throughout college. She also cobbled together 11 student loans.

“I probably graduated with about $53,000 in student debt,” Smith said. “That number hit me for the first time my last semester of college. And it was the first time I saw the full balance. And I had a panic attack immediately.”

Our system of higher education is deeply broken, and radical change is desperately needed.

Another reason why Americans are living paycheck to paycheck is because of social media envy.  The following comes from USA Today…

Call it keeping up with Instagram.

Thirty-five percent of Americans admit they feel pressured to spend more than they can afford after seeing images of their friends’ lives on sites like Facebook and Instagram, according to Schwab’s 2019 modern wealth survey. The FOMO effect is most dramatic for young adults. About half of millennials and 44% of Generation Z (those born approximately between 1995 to 2015) acknowledge their spending habits are at least partly shaped by social media.

Once upon a time, Americans were concerned about keeping up with the neighbors, but these days social media is where everybody shows off.

And this is particularly true when it comes to Instagram.  As far as I can tell, Instagram is the perfect social media platform for narcissists.  Everyone is constantly posting photos that show how attractive, wealthy and adventurous they are, and those with the most followers tend to be ultra-attractive, ultra-wealthy and/or ultra-adventurous.

But for most of us, life is not a constant stream of Instagramable moments.  Instead, life is about doing the laundry, trying to save some money on the groceries and scooping poop out of the cat litter.

If you try to keep up with the fantasies that you see on Instagram, the truth is that you will go broke really quick.

And study after study has found that is precisely where about half the country currently is…

A study from home repair service HomeServe USA found that roughly 50% of consumers either have nothing set aside to cover an emergency or less than $500 put away. And research from the Federal Reserve has indicated that roughly 4 in 10 Americans couldn’t afford a $400 emergency.

One of the things that I always stress with my readers is that if you ever want to make financial progress in life, you have got to start building wealth.

If your paycheck goes up, that doesn’t mean that you should start spending more money.  Instead, you should look at it as an opportunity to start saving more money.

But for most Americans, the future is now, and that means that most of them will ultimately end up facing financial disaster down the road.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2JMkOcU Tyler Durden

To say that race is a fraught issue for the American system of higher education doesn’t quite capture the divisiveness that affirmative action has fostered over the years. Just look at the DoJ-backed lawsuits against Harvard and a handful of other elite colleges suspected of discrimination against Asian applicants.

The College Board touched on these sensitivities when it inadvertently sparked a vicious backlash over its ‘adversity scores’. These attempts to quantify whether a student came from a ‘privileged’ or ‘oppressed’ background would be shared with colleges, but not the applicants.

GIven the controversies of the past week, a WSJ report on how college admissions scandal mastermind Rick Singer, the consultant charged with earning millions for bribing coaches and helping students cheat on the SATs in what the FBI called “Operation Varsity Blues”, advised many of his clients to misrepresent their race couldn’t have been better timed. 

Apparently, it’s difficult for the admissions committees to pick up on this type of deception.

One of WSJ‘s anonymous sources with insider knowledge of Singer’s operations said that ‘Native American’ was a popular option, since most families could credibly claim an affiliation stretching back generations that may or may not be accurate, and it was impossible to tell if a white student was actually mixed-race just by looking at him or her. One student checked the ‘Native American’ box even though “there was absolutely nothing Native American about this kid.”

Sound familiar?

pic.twitter.com/JzfXMAPwKP

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2019

Another family charged in the scandal listed their son as “Black/Hispanic” despite having no evidence to support either claim. One source told WSJ that Singer would argue that choosing not to misrepresent their child’s race would risk putting them at a serious “competitive disadvantage.”

A son of Marjorie Klapper, a parent scheduled to plead guilty Friday for participating in the scheme, was incorrectly listed on his Common Application as being black and Hispanic, the people said. William “Rick” Singer, the college counselor who has agreed to plead guilty in the case and is awaiting sentencing, also arranged for a proctor to cheat on the ACT admissions test for the teen, according to a Federal Bureau of Investigation affidavit filed in the case.

Ms. Klapper, who lives in Menlo Park, Calif., was one of many parents charged whose child was misrepresented as a minority, according to one of the people, who is familiar with the investigation.

Mr. Singer frequently gave families the option of misrepresenting race and would say that not doing so could put their child at a “competitive disadvantage,” said one of the people, who is familiar with his business.

None of the parents, nor Singer, are facing charges related to misrepresenting an applicant’s race. But the fact that this symbol for corruption in the higher education system so easily exploited the same ‘loophole’ that got Elizabeth Warren into Harvard – and would even preach about the risks of not doing it – should tell us all we need to know about this new push to gauge every child’s “adversity.”

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2HE5ht1 Tyler Durden

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk,

Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party is on the verge of overtaking the Tories. From zero members to 100,000 in just Five weeks!

Nigel Farage has some exciting news.

The Brexit Party now has over 100,000 registered supporters. Join now and help us overtake the Conservatives. https://t.co/O4pHVCtrrF pic.twitter.com/NCnUJ4LXV5

— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) May 15, 2019

Party Membership

On the surface it would appear Labour ought to be ruling by a landslide. Since it isn’t, its numbers are more than a bit suspect. Note that only 20% of the Labour total is registered.

Numbers from UK Political Party Affiliation.

Ability to Disrupt

The New Yorker writes Nigel Farage Makes Trumpian Trouble with His New Brexit Party

The thirty-odd per cent that the Brexit Party is polling is far from a majority, but the basic problem of Brexit politics is the lack of a coherent majority anywhere. Cross-party talks on a Brexit compromise have stalled. A second referendum doesn’t seem to be on offer. Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, has proved adept at hiding his own position, in order to paper over divisions in his party, but not at actually leading anyone anywhere, except perhaps to a new general election.

It would be a mistake to dismiss the European elections as a mere sideshow in the fight among Britain’s parties, either because the U.K. will withdraw its M.E.P.s should Brexit go through, or because the Parliament is viewed, by many, as mostly just the showy part of a make-work E.U. bureaucracy. The U.K. is not out of the Union yet, and it will be sending seventy-one M.E.P.s to the Parliament, nearly a tenth of the total.

In Denial

“The BBC is in denial, the Tory and Labour parties are in denial, I think you’re all in for a bigger surprise Thursday week than you can even imagine,” said Farage.

The biggest denier of all is Theresa May.

Transformation

The Guardian asks Has the Rise of the Brexit Party Blown Away UKIP?

Why is that a question?

UKIP is gone Support is at 3% and headed to zero. The Brexit Party picked up all of it.

New Slogan

Change Politics For Good

Farage’s new slogan is “Change Politics For Good“.

On the heels of serious missteps by Labour Leader Jeremy Corby and Tory Prime Minister Theresa May, now in the same political bed, that is an excellent slogan.

Four Former UKIP AM’s Join Brexit Party

The BBC reports Four former UKIP AMs have joined Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, announcing plans to form an assembly group.

AMs are MPs from the Wales National Assembly.

“I’m very pleased as leader of the Brexit Party to welcome four members of the Welsh Assembly who will now re-designate as of this afternoon as Brexit Party members,” Farage stated.

Mark Reckless, Mandy Jones, Caroline Jones and David Rowlands are the four joining the Brexit Party.

Mr Reckless, who left the Tory group on Tuesday ahead of the announcement, said: “Brexit is being blocked and the Brexit Party group in the Welsh assembly from today will be supporting Nigel Farage, supporting the Brexit Party in everything that they are doing to protect our democracy and to ensure that Brexit is delivered.”

Fastest Growing Party

The Independent writes the Brexit Party is ‘Fastest Growing Political Force in the Land’.

Mr Farage revealed the momentum behind his party – which tops polls for the MEP elections – as he warned a cross-party Brexit deal between Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn would fuel it further.

Branding any softer Brexit agreement as a “coalition of politicians against the people”, he said: “I think millions of people would give up on both Labour and the Conservatives.”

He added: “This would be the final betrayal. Frankly, if May signs up to this, I can’t see the point of the Conservative Party even existing. What is it for?”

“Work it out. We have raised getting on for £2m through individual people joining through our website. I can’t think that any other party in the UK has raised money like that.”

Brexit vs labour

The numbers suggest Farage is correct. Support for the Tory party declined far more than Labour.

But the real story is the Brexiteers are united. Remainers are split between Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, and the newly formed Co-operative Party.

The latter is headed towards oblivion.

Hooray for Farage

Hooray for Farage and the Brexit party!

A customs union makes zero sense. It would be the worst possible action.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2JpDNdT Tyler Durden

Hermeus Corporation, a startup company, developing a hypersonic passenger plane for Mach 5 travel around the world, announced a seed round investment by Khosla Ventures and private investors. The financing will further the development and testing of the plane’s hypersonic propulsion system, reported a press release from Hermeus.

“Hermeus is developing an aircraft that not only improves the aviation experience with very reduced flight times, but also has the potential to have great societal and economic impact.” said Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures.

Hermeus, which was founded last year, is concentrating on earthly hypersonic flight rather than deep space exploration. Its new propulsion technology could propel the aircraft faster than Mach 5, essentially cutting flight time between New York and London from seven hours to 90 minutes or less.

“We’ve set out on a journey to revolutionize the global transportation infrastructure, bringing it from the equivalent of dial-up into the broadband era, by radically increasing the speed of travel over long distances.” said co-founder and CEO AJ Piplica. “We’re excited to work with Khosla Ventures to turn this vision into reality.”

Hermeus’ founders are alumni from SpaceX and Blue Origin. All four founders worked together at Generation Orbit, where Piplica served as CEO and Glenn Case, Mike Smayda, and Skyler Shuford served as technical directors in the development of the Air Force’s X-60A, a hypersonic rocket-plane.

Hypersonic flight is the ability to fly at exceptionally high speeds – surpassing Mach 5. Potential advantages of hypersonic flight are reduced travel times and improved space access.

Besides fifth-generation jet fighters, hypersonic technologies are the aerospace industry’s hottest frontiers into the 2020s.

The US, China, Russia, Germany, Britain, India, Australia, and even Indonesia have been researching hypersonic aircraft.

China and Russia are the leaders in hypersonic technology. Since 2005, China has written more important white papers on hypersonics than any other country or international group. The Chinese have invested in hypersonic test facilities, and as of recent, have started to test hypersonic vehicles. As for Russia, Moscow is expected to deploy a hypersonic missile system this year.

“With experience from the best of New Space companies, the Hermeus team is well-positioned to disrupt the hypersonics industry,” said one of the startup’s advisers Rob Meyerson, the former president of Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture.

In addition to Meyerson, Hermeus’ advisory board includes:

• Rob Weiss, former executive vice president and general manager at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works.

• Keith Masback, former CEO of the US Geospatial Intelligence Foundation, with earlier leadership roles at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the US Army Intelligence Master Plan Office.

• Katerina Barilov, founder of Sparkplug Capital and managing director at Shearwater Aero Capital.

• George Nield, former associate administrator for commercial space transportation at the Federal Aviation Administration.

• Mitch Free, founder and CEO of ZYCI and former director of technical operations at Northwest Airlines.

So it seems the great hypersonic race is well underway – the first country to mature this disruptive technology will not just revolutionize commercial flight but will either maintain their empire [the US] or become the next dominant superpower [China].

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2LQ6VNv Tyler Durden