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In a span of roughly 12 hours, the Austrian government has been brought to the brink of collapse, with reports claiming that snap elections will be held this fall, after the country’s Vice Chancellor, the most powerful elected official in the Austrian far-right, resigned in the wake of a corruption scandal.

According to the FT, Heinz-Christian Strache, Austria’s vice chancellor and leader of the populist Freedom Party, resigned shortly after Der Spiegel and the Süddeutsche Zeitung published excerpts from hidden video footage where Strache can be heard offering government contracts to an individual purporting to represent a Russian oligarch. In exchange, Strache wanted the oligarch’s help to push more votes toward the Freedom Party.

Strache stepped down on Saturday, calling his own actions “dumb” and “embarrassing.” The identities of the people who met with Strache weren’t immediately clear, and it’s unclear where the video came from. Austria’s Freedom Party has nominally supported the Kremlin, but Bloomberg wouldn’t describe their relationship as close.

Bloomberg said the 17-month-old coalition could be preserved if Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, leader of the center-right Austrian People’s Party, accepts Infrastructure Minister Norbert Hofer to replace Strache, according to Austrian media. But there’s been speculation that Kurz could use a vote as an opportunity to dump the Freedom Party as his coalition partner and instead try and rebuild his party’s bridges with the Social Democrats.

The scandal is unfolding at a particularly politically sensitive time: European Parliamentary elections begin next week. But that’s not the only reason the timing of the scandal seems suspiciously convenient for the opposition: The footage was filmed two years ago, just weeks prior to the July 2017 election where the Freedom Party ended up the junior partner in a coalition led by the Austrian People’s Party. Strache, and his longstanding confidant, Johann Gudenus, now an FP MP, both appeared in the video. Apparently, they thought they were meeting with a representative of a powerful oligarch at a private villa in Ibiza.

In the footage, Strache, Gudenus and others are gathered in a private room around a large sofa. Strache, wearing jeans and a T-shirt and looking “visibly relaxed”, can be seen smoking and drinking.

During a conversation, Strache wondered aloud about the possibility that the Russian oligarch might buy an Austrian newspaper to be more sympathetic to the Freedom Party in the weeks before the vote, possibly boosting support for the party. In return, Strache suggested they start up an Austrian contracting giant that could handle government contracts.

We’re still waiting for a statement from Chancellor Kurz, and he could still opt to accept another FP MP as vice chancellor, continuing the coalition, but he could just as easily call another election.

While another election might damage the Freedom Party, particularly after this bribery scandal, over in Italy, a more powerful populist leader, Matteo Salvini, is struggling with the opposite problem: Whether to push for a general election to dump an uncooperative left-wing coalition partner.

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

Authored by Benn Steil and Benjamin Della Rocca via Council on Foreign Relations,

In a tweet on May 14, President Trump called on the Fed to “match” interest-rate cuts he expects from China “in order to make up for the business they are . . . losing” from his tariffs. But the Fed appears to be in no rush to oblige him. After the May FOMC meeting, Fed chairman Jay Powell opined that recent declines in inflation were “transient” and predicted that “inflation will move back up.”

Is he right?

In this post, we look at one important leading indicator of inflation: wages. Wage data are important because producers tend to raise prices to offset rising labor costs.

One way to gauge wage pressure on prices is to compare wage growth with price growth. When the gap is positive but small, upward pressure on prices is low; when it is large, pressure on prices is high. And as shown in the top left figure above, we find that the gap between wage growth and core inflation is now at its widest level in ten years. 

This fact suggests higher inflation to come.

One possible objection to our analysis is that we’ve failed to account for the possibility that discouraged workers, attracted by rising wages, will return to the labor force and drive wages back down. Yet we see no signs of this happening. According to OECD hours-worked estimates, the average U.S. employee now works more than at any time in the last decade—as shown in the top-right chart. 

Further, as the bottom-right chart shows, U.S. part-time employment is falling, even as total employment rises. These facts suggest that employers are being forced to squeeze more work out of existing workers, and that prices must rise to bring the gap with wages back down to more normal levels.

And this fact, in turn, suggests that the Fed won’t be helping Mr. Trump fight his trade war.

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

lran is currently in “a full intelligence war” with the United States, according to statements by the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Major General Hossein Salami on Saturday.

“We are in a full intelligence war with the United States and the enemies of the Islamic Republic. This war is a combination of psychological warfare, cyber operations, military operations, diplomacy, fear, and intimidation,” Salami, who became head of Iran’s elite military force last moth, was quoted as saying by Fars news agency. He further noted Americans in the region face “great risks” at this point. “America has lost its power, and even though they look powerful, they are frail,” he said. 

But what’s most likely to capture the West’s attention is his invoking the 9/11 terror attacks: “In reality America’s story is the same as the story of the World Trade Center that collapsed suddenly with one strike,” he said, using the example both as a threat and to claim the mighty US empire can be brought to its knees with one strategic blow. 

His combative statements came days after he said provocatively that the IRGC stood on the “cusp of a full-scale confrontation with the enemy.” In that prior address , Salami notified his forces, “This moment in history, because the enemy has stepped into the field of confrontation with us with all the possible capacity, is the most decisive moment of the Islamic revolution,” according to Fars.

Washington has already deployed the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group and new Patriot missiles, along with a B-52 bomber group to the Persian Gulf region, but Saudi Arabia and other gulf states this weekend have reportedly agreed to host American forces “at sea and on land to deter Iran” according to a new report in Israeli media, citing Arabic sources:

Saudi Arabia and a number of Gulf states have agreed to let the United States deploy its forces at sea and on land to deter Iran from a possible attack, Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reported on Saturday.  

An unnamed Saudi official told Al-Awsat that the “agreement was aimed at deterring Iran from a military escalation, including attacking American targets… and not with the aim of entering into a war with it.” 

Saudi Arabia has blamed the IRGC of “sabotage attacks” on two of its vessels as they entered the Strait of Hormuz a week ago, which further involved damage to two other international vessels. 

Iran for its part dismissed these and other accusations as part of “psychological warfare” – according to one top Iranian parliamentarian and spokesman this week.

Meanwhile, even as the IRGC chief highlights an ongoing “full intelligence war,” de-escalation could be on the horizon, given that multiple headlines Friday noted “Trump doesn’t want war” and appears to be clamping down on hawks in his own administration. 

Trump tweeted something Friday which actually lends credibility to Iran’s dismissing both the “sabotage” accusation and heightened bluster out of Washington over the past two weeks as a continuing Psyop — part of Bolton and Pompeo’s broader “maximum pressure” campaign. 

With all of the Fake and Made Up News out there, Iran can have no idea what is actually going on!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 17, 2019

Ironically, Trump and Gen. Salami appear somewhat in agreement over this being fundamentally an “intelligence war” and not yet headed toward an actual direct war, given the US president tweeted the following astounding statement : “With all of the Fake and Made Up News out there, Iran can have no idea what is actually going on!”

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Q9wcRf Tyler Durden

Authored by Jesse Colombo via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

Art and collectibles prices have exploded in the past decade as a result of the extremely frothy conditions created by central banks. Hardly a week goes by without news headlines being made about ugly, tacky, or just plain bizarre works of art fetching tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of dollars at auction houses like Sotheby’s and Christie’s (often sold to rich buyers in China or Hong Kong). Make no mistake: we’re currently experiencing a massive art bubble of the likes not seen since the Japan-driven art bubble of the late-1980s that ended disastrously. Two art market records were made in the past week: the $91.1 million “Rabbit” sculpture by Jeff Koons, which set the record for the highest amount paid for a piece of art by a living artist, and the sale of Monet’s ‘Meules’ painting for $110.7 million, which set a record for an Impressionist work.

The New York Post reports on the Koons sale –

A sculpture of a silver rabbit by artist Jeff Koons sold at Christie’s auction house in Manhattan Wednesday for $91.1 million, setting the record for the highest amount fetched for a piece of art by a living artist.

Koons’ “Rabbit” surpassed the previous record, which was set just last November when British painter David Hockney’s “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)” sold for $90.3 million. Both totals include the auction house fees.

Art dealer Bob Mnuchin, the father of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, made the winning bid for the Koons work, Bloomberg reported. Mnuchin made the purchase for a client, according to the report.

The sculpture, which stands just over 3 feet high, is made of stainless steel and based on an inflatable children’s toy, according to the auction house.

“Rabbit” by Jeff Koons is displayed at Christie’s in New York on May 3, 2019. Photo credit: AP

Reuters reports on the Monet sale –

One of the few paintings in Claude Monet’s celebrated “Haystacks” series that still remains in private hands sold at auction on Tuesday for $110.7 million, setting a record for an Impressionist work.

The oil on canvas, titled “Meules” and completed in 1890, is the first piece of Impressionist art to command more than $100 million at auction, said Sotheby’s, which handled the sale.

That also represents the highest sum ever paid at auction for a painting by Monet, the founder of French Impressionism and a master of “plein air” landscapes who died in 1926, aged 86.

“Meules” was one of 25 paintings in a series depicting stacks of harvested wheat belonging to Monet’s neighbor in Giverny, France.

The works are widely acclaimed for capturing the play of light on his subject and for their influence on the Impressionist movement.

“Meules” by Claude Monet is displayed at Sotheby’s New York on May 3, 2019. Photo credit: Reuters

Last month, I wrote about “bubble drunk” millennials in Hong Kong who paid $28 million for Simpsons art:

The Kaws Album’, KAWS. Courtesy Sotheby’s.

Today’s art bubble (like many other bubbles that are currently inflating) formed as a result of the Fed and other central banks’ extremely loose monetary policies after the Great Recession. In a desperate attempt to jump-start the global economy again, central banks cut and held interest rates at virtually zero percent for much of the past decade. The chart of the Fed Funds rate below shows how bubbles form when interest rates are at low levels:

In addition to holding interest rates at record low levels for a record length of time, central banks pumped trillions of dollars worth of liquidity into the global financial system in the past decade:

Assets around the world – from art to stocks to property – have been levitating on the massive ocean of liquidity that has been created by central banks. For example, the S&P 500 has soared 300% since its low in early-2009:

In order to understand today’s art bubble, it is helpful to learn about the art bubble of the late-1980s that ultimately crashed and burned. Throughout the 1980s, Japan had a bubble economy that was driven by debt and bubbles in property and stocks. Japan’s economy was seemingly unstoppable – almost everyone in the West was terrified that Japan’s economy and corporations would trounce ours while destroying our standard of living in the process. Of course, few people knew how unsustainable Japan’s economy was at that time.

As a result of hubris and the enormous amount of liquidity that was flowing throughout Japan’s economy in the late-1980s, Japanese businesspeople and corporations started to speculate in art, often bidding previously unheard of sums that Western art collectors would never have dreamed of paying. For example, Yasuda Fire and Marine Insurance paid a record $39.9 million for Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” at a London auction in 1987. Ryoei “wild fellow” Saito, Chairman of the Daishowa Paper Manufacturing empire, paid $160 million for the world’s two most expensive paintings – a Van Gogh and a Renoir. At the peak of the art market in 1990, Japan imported more than $4 billion worth of art, including nearly half of all Impressionist art that was on the market. Of course, the art market plunged along with Japan’s bubble economy in the early-1990s.

Vincent van Gogh “Sunflowers” 1888.

Unfortunately, today’s art bubble will burst just like the art bubble of the late-1980s. China, with its massive debt bubble, is currently playing the role that Japan played in the Eighties. While most people are probably not worried about the coming art market bust and won’t be directly affected by it, the point of this piece is to show how the art market acts like a barometer for the amount of froth there is in the global economy and financial markets. When the art market goes ballistic, that is typically a sign that the economic cycle is in its latter stages. We are fast approaching a time when art speculators will deeply regret paying $91.1 million for a steel rabbit sculpture and tens of millions of dollars for Simpsons art.

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

US airstrikes killed 17 Afghan police officers and wounded 14 others due to a “miscommunication” while fighting with Taliban forces, according to Stars and Stripes, citing Afghan officials. 

The “friendly fire” incident, which took place in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province Thursday evening, occurred after Afghan security forces called in US air support amid heavy fire from Taliban fighters just outside the province’s capital, Lashkar Gah. 

The incident began after a police officer and two of his men decided to take down a Taliban flag from a nearby water tower on Thursday night, within walking distance from a police training center. When they arrived to remove the flag, police tripped a mine, which exploded and alerted the Taliban to their presence. 

The guerrillas began firing on them. Police at the nearby training center arrived to assist the first three officers but were unable to drive the Taliban back, he said.

The police unit then requested air support. Residents of Lashkar Gah heard a very loud explosion around 8:30 p.m. Thursday, they said. –Stars and Stripes

The US military says they were told that the area was clear of allied units. 

“Unfortunately, they were not and a tragic accident resulted,” said spokesman Colonel Dave Butler, adding “Afghan Security Forces as well as Taliban fighters were killed in the strikes.” 

“We’re examining the miscommunication to ensure it is not repeated. We regret this tragic loss of life of our partners and are committed to improvement every day with every mission.” 

The governor of Helmand province, Mohammad Yasin, said an investigation has been launched, calling the airstrike a “tragedy.” 

Thursday’s attack comes about two months after miscommunication led to a U.S. airstrike that killed at least five Afghan soldiers and wounded nine others at a checkpoint in neighboring Uruzgan province, another area of heavy Taliban activity. 

In that March incident, a firefight had erupted after soldiers at a checkpoint began shooting at a patrol of their own troops, who were accompanied by American advisers on a planned nighttime raid outside the provincial capital Tirin Kot. –Stars and Stripes

As Stars and Stripes notes, fighting in Helmand has claimed the lives of more American, British and Afghan soldiers than any other area of Afghanistan during the 18-year war, as insurgents have held control over more than half of it, according to US military data from October. 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2LPY1iY Tyler Durden

Authored by Dagny Taggart via The Organic Prepper blog,

The discovery and widespread use of antibiotics many decades ago have saved millions of lives. Infections that were once a death sentence were easily treated with the medications. Unfortunately, many antibiotics are now becoming ineffective because bacteria have become resistant to the drugs.

We have overused antibiotics with reckless abandon and are now beginning to see the consequences. Some bacteria have mutated into “superbugs”.

We’ve used antibiotics so freely, some bacteria have mutated into so-called “superbugs.” They’ve become resistant to the very drugs designed to kill them. A study commissioned by the British government estimates that by 2050, 10 million people worldwide could die each year from antibiotic-resistant bacteria. That’s more than currently die from cancer. (source)

Infections by drug-resistant microbes may eventually be the leading cause of death.

The World Health Organization predicts that worldwide death rates from drug-resistant microbes will climb from the current 700,000 per year to 10 million by 2050. At that point, they will have surpassed cancer, heart disease, and diabetes to become the main cause of death in the human race.

Antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest health threats of our time, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):

Antibiotic resistance has the potential to affect people at any stage of life, as well as the healthcare, veterinary, and agriculture industries, making it one of the world’s most urgent public health problems.

Each year in the U.S., at least 2 million people are infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and at least 23,000 people die as a result. (source)

Karen Hoffmann, who heads the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, told Newsweek those figures may be on the low side:

“It’s probably a vast underestimate. We don’t have a good reporting system for multiresistant organisms, so we don’t really know.”

Studies suggest the cost to the U.S. health care system of treating patients with these resistant infections tops $3 billion a year.

Bacterial infections are becoming more difficult to treat.

Infections caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria are difficult (and sometimes impossible) to treat. In most cases, antibiotic-resistant infections require extended hospital stays, long-term medical care, and costly and toxic alternatives.

Earlier this year, four patients became infected with an unusual version of E. coli at Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center in New York earlier this year. Because E. coli has developed resistance to several drugs, for some infected patients their last hope is the antibiotic colistin, a toxic substance with potential side effects that include kidney and brain damage. But, the Columbia E. coli had a mutation in a gene, MCR-1, that confers a terrifying attribute: imperviousness to colistin.

“We’re looking to the shelf for the next antibiotic, and there’s nothing there,” says Erica Shenoy, associate chief of the infection control unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, told Newsweek. “We’re facing the specter of patients with infections we can’t treat.”

E. coli isn’t the only bacterium that is becoming resistant to treatment.

Drug-resistant strains of Staphylococcus, Enterobacteriaceae, and Clostridium difficile have been steadily overcoming antibiotics. According to Newsweek, “one study found that the number of deaths due to resistant infections quintupled between 2007 and 2015.”

Other kinds of infections are also becoming resistant to treatment.

Just as antibiotic overuse has contributed to the rise of resistant bacteria, overuse of antimicrobial drugs is helping fungi becoming resistant.

Treatment-resistant versions of the fungus Candida auris have been occurring across the world. Last May, an elderly man became infected and doctors were not able to save him.

What happened after his death is horrifying:

The man at Mount Sinai died after 90 days in the hospital, but C. auris did not. Tests showed it was everywhere in his room, so invasive that the hospital needed special cleaning equipment and had to rip out some of the ceiling and floor tiles to eradicate it.

“Everything was positive — the walls, the bed, the doors, the curtains, the phones, the sink, the whiteboard, the poles, the pump,” said Dr. Scott Lorin, the hospital’s president. “The mattress, the bed rails, the canister holes, the window shades, the ceiling, everything in the room was positive.” (source)

Scientists are exploring alternatives to antibiotics.

In response to the growing number of bugs that are drug-resistant, scientists are learning to identify and isolate them in hopes of preventing large outbreaks. They are also making efforts to tighten up the use of antibiotics in an effort to slow the development of resistant strains, but many experts say it is too late, and that these actions will only buy us a little time:

At the moment, the oldest and weakest patients in hospitals are most affected, but the risks are spreading. “We’re seeing healthy young people with urinary tract and skin infections that we don’t have a pill for,” says Helen Boucher, an infectious disease specialist at Tufts Medical Center in Boston. “And we may not be able to perform organ transplants, and even routine surgeries like joint replacements. We should all be scared.”

Medical experts are pinning their hopes on entirely new strategies for dealing with infection. To find novel ways of killing bugs, they’re looking in exotic places—in viruses and fish slime and even on other planets. They’re using insights gained in genomics and other fields to come up with new technologies to kill bugs and keep them from spreading. And they are re-examining practices in hospitals and other spreading-grounds for bacteria, putting in place more holistic strategies for managing the bacteria in our bodies and in our hospitals and doctors’ offices.

The alternatives sound promising, but they are far off. It’s not clear that we can invent new weapons before the superbugs, like a zombie army at the gates, overwhelm our defenses.

“We need to make a huge investment in other approaches,” says Margaret Riley, a drug-resistance researcher at the University of Massachusetts. “And we need to make it 15 years ago.” (source)

There isn’t much incentive to develop new antibiotics, mainly because the development of one new antibiotic costs about $2 billion and takes about 10 years, and the likelihood of drug companies making a profit on such drugs is low.

“The point of having a new antibiotic would be to use it as infrequently as possible, for as short a time as possible,” Jonathan Zenilman, chief of the division of infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore, told Newsweek.

“Why would a pharma company want to develop a drug for a market like that?”

Researchers are looking into antibiotic alternatives, including the use of special soaps and infection control techniques, treatment with genetically-modified viruses called bacteriophages that are a natural enemy of bacteria, and other non-antibiotic treatments.

A recent 60 Minutes report explored the danger posed by superbugs, starting with the shocking case of David Ricci:

To read the transcript of this video, please click here: Could Antibiotic-Resistant “Superbugs” Become a Bigger Killer Than Cancer?

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2w7EXlw Tyler Durden

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