Ohio State Lawmakers Unanimously Pass Campus ‘Free Speech’ Bill, Professors Oppose The Effort

Ohio State Lawmakers Unanimously Pass Campus ‘Free Speech’ Bill, Professors Oppose The Effort

Authored by Jon Street vioa CampusReform.org,

The Ohio state senate unanimously passed a bill that would, among other provisions, ban free speech zones on the state’s college campuses. 

Ohio Senate Bill 40, or the “Forming Open and Robust University Minds Act,” was introduced by state Sens. Andrew Brenner and Rob McColley, both Republicans. The bill came as Campus Reform has reported on multiple schools banning or otherwise charging exorbitant security fees for conservative speakers to visit not only college campuses in Ohio but across the country.

The legislation, if signed into law, would ban “free speech zones,” prevent colleges from prohibiting “noncommercial expressive activity,” as well as preventing colleges from imposing security fees “based on the content of their expression, the content of the expression of their invited guest, or the anticipated reaction to an invited guest’s expression.” The bill would also prevent colleges from “creat[ing] ‘free speech zones’ or designat[ing] other outdoor areas of campuses where expressive activities are prohibited.”

“In seeing what was going on in other states and other universities throughout the United States, we felt [the bill] was needed to be brought here to Ohio so we can protect the freedom of speech for students on campus,” Brenner said, according to the Columbus Dispatch. 

David Jackson of the Ohio chapter of the American Association of University Professors, opposed the bill. 

“There is a substantial difference between banning an idea and disallowing a controversial speaker that would cause massive disruption and create crowds that campus police could not control,” Jackson told the Dispatch.

James Smith, chairman of the Ohio State University Young Americans for Freedom, applauded the bill.

“I admire Rep. Brenner’s continued fight for institutional reform affecting the ways speakers are (and sometimes aren’t) allowed to speak on Ohio college campuses. I believe FORUM is a step in the right direction for Ohio educational policy and will, if passed, help to make college campuses more of a marketplace for ideas and less dominated by leftist groupthink,” Smith said, according to YAF.


Tyler Durden

Wed, 02/12/2020 – 14:09

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CIA Encryption Meddling and Chinese Espionage Allegations Make It Clear: We All Need Strong Data Protection

U.S. officials have been insisting to tech platforms that overly strong encryption is a threat to public safety and that “back doors” must be provided for law enforcement to bypass security, all in the name of fighting crime.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials have also been claiming that China-based tech company Huawei can use secret security bypasses that are intended for law enforcement use only in order to access data that could be used by the Chinese government for surveillance purposes.

In summation: The same U.S. government that wants tech companies and telecoms to create secret software doors that would allow it to snoop on our private communications and data is also worried that other governments will be able to use those same back doors to do the same thing. This is what tech privacy experts have been warning U.S. officials (and U.K. officials and Australian officials) all along: Any back door that allows law enforcement to circumvent user privacy protections will ultimately be used by people with bad intentions.

The context here is a Wall Street Journal report that reveals U.S. officials have been quietly telling allies that Huawei can secretly access data from its phone networks through taps that the company built into the hardware it sells to cellphone carriers. Laws mandate that Huawei (and other telecom companies) install these “interception interfaces” into their equipment, but only authorized law enforcement officials are supposed to have access. Even Huawei itself is not supposed to be able to gain access without the permission of the phone carriers. But U.S. officials are insistent that Huawei has maintained secret access to these taps since at least 2009.

Huawei says these claims are not true and that these hardware taps can only be accessed by “certified personnel of the network operators.” The company also insists it is not surveilling data and passing it along to the Chinese government.

The story leans heavily on U.S. claims from secret intelligence that has recently been declassified, but it’s not exactly proof of the claims.

On a surface level, this is about the global tech market and the competition between China and the United States. But dig deeper and you can see the relevance to our encryption fight.

The FBI and Department of Justice insist that tech companies need to be adding similar, virtual back doors in our communication tools, phones, and apps in the name of fighting crime and terrorism. People like FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General William Barr are willing to discuss encryption back doors only in terms of how it helps the U.S. government. But this Wall Street Journal report makes it clear that the U.S. government is abundantly aware that any access point (real or virtual) to look at private data is a point of vulnerability.

If this intelligence is true, it means that any government-mandated encryption bypass is potentially abusable and the U.S. should not be demanding tech companies make them, lest the Chinese government (or Saudi government, or Russian government, or United Arab Emirates, or identity thieves with hacking skills) get their hands on whatever mechanism created for law enforcement use only.

If the intelligence is not true, it nevertheless makes it clear that the United States understands that back doors create huge vulnerabilities. Government officials know full well that the Justice Department’s demands are unreasonable and should be shut down, and lawmakers like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.) should not be proposing bills to force companies to implement encryption back doors.

But then, perhaps I should simply stop treating the Justice Department and Congress as though they’re making these arguments in good faith. You see, yesterday, the Washington Post published a very different story about encryption and data privacy. It turns out that, for decades, the CIA and German intelligence owned and secretly operated an encryption company named Crypto AG. They sold compromised encryption technology to other countries, then secretly spied on them. The Washington Post reports that

they monitored Iran’s mullahs during the 1979 hostage crisis, fed intelligence about Argentina’s military to Britain during the Falklands War, tracked the assassination campaigns of South American dictators and caught Libyan officials congratulating themselves on the 1986 bombing of a Berlin disco.

Germany left the partnership in the 1990s, fearing exposure. So the CIA ran the company until 2018 when it liquidated Crypto AG and sold it off to two companies, one of whom apparently had no idea about its secret background.

We should be wary of the U.S. government doubling down on its efforts to compromise encryption, especially now that Crypto AG is not of use to the CIA. We know full well those back doors are going to be used for a lot more than trying to track down alleged pedophiles, and the federal government knows that, too.

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This Is What Happened After One Chinese Company Rushed To Reopen After The Corona-Chaos

This Is What Happened After One Chinese Company Rushed To Reopen After The Corona-Chaos

Earlier today, Rabobank’s Michael Every laid out succinctly the dilemma facing Beijing, when he said that “China appears to have perhaps decided that the economic damage being wrought by a demand collapse and supply-chain shutdown is just too much to bear.” As reported overnight, Xi Jinping stated that China will meet its economic goals AND win the battle vs. the virus, and Beijing is urging firms to increase output even as the capital itself is largely locked down – and other cities are physically locking people into their homes. That’s as even the US admits that the Phase One trade deal will be slow off the market due to the virus impact.

Of course, China is no stranger to Double Think: as Every put it, “a freely-floating, controlled currency; market-determined, state-directed interest rates; and free-trade mercantilism. Yet increase economic activity from here and the virus will spread, both internally and globally. Concentrate on just the virus, and the local and global economic impact will be enormous.”

That, in a nutshell, was how Rabobank saw China’s “dialectic that has no comfortable Fichtean synthesis to the thesis and antithesis.” Either way, as Every concluded “things are going to get nasty for economies and markets – especially with official WHO word that a vaccine is 18-months away.”

Today, two days after China officially returned to work, we got the first confirmation of just how catastrophic Beijing’s order to rush back to work in rebooting the economy could be, when as Jennifer Zeng reported, a ompany in Suzhou reopened, and immediately at least one CoVid2019 case found. As a result, the company’s 200+ employees couldn’t go home and were immediately placed under quarantine. They managed to organize quilts for themselves.

This is just the first such case. Expect many more – especially across Hubei and its neighboring provinces – as latent cases of Coronavirus which were never caught and cured spark new infections and mini epidemics, all of which dutifully captured on a smartphone clip for everyone in China to watch and freak out even more.

Which reminds us of another comment from Rabobank, which last week explained why the dilemma facing China is “truly awful”:

The quandary for China between releasing the quarantine straitjacket in days to stop its economy from getting truly sick, and allowing a virus like this to spread further as people start to mingle again is truly awful. There are no good options. For a world with a serious lack of final end-demand, and which has been relying on China, along with increasingly “Chinese” central banks, this is going to be a nasty shock either way that Mr Market is treating like he is Mr Magoo.

And since Beijing has no way out, especially since the epidemic is still raging despite Beijing’s “doctored”, no pun intended, infection and death numbers, expect China to unleash the most draconian censorship crackdown on any reports Covid-2019 has not only not been purged but is making unwelcome appearances across China’s enterprises, which will be quietly put under blanket quarantine even as Beijing pretends that all is well and its economy is once again humming on all cylinders until eventually the epidemic reaches a critical mass and China has no choice but to once again admit the full extent of the social and economic fallout. And just like in the case of SARS, don’t expect such “honesty” to emerge for at least several weeks if not months.


Tyler Durden

Wed, 02/12/2020 – 13:52

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Five Americans Charged With Breaking Iran Oil Sanctions

Five Americans Charged With Breaking Iran Oil Sanctions

Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,

Five U.S. citizens have been charged with an attempt to violate U.S. sanctions against Iran by buying oil from Iran and selling it in China, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania said in a statement.

The accused are all but one from Texas, with the last one from New York, and they were each charged with “one count of conspiracy and one count of violating IEEPA, based on allegations that from July 2019 to February 2020 they conspired in Philadelphia and elsewhere to arrange for the purchase of oil from the Islamic Republic of Iran, in violation of United States economic sanctions imposed on Iran, for sale to a refinery in China.”

  • Nicholas Hovan, age 33, of New York, NY;

  • Zhenyu Wang, a/k/a “Bill Wang,” age 39, of Dallas, TX;

  • Robert Thwaites, age 30, of Dallas, TX;

  • Nicholas James Fuchs, age 26, of Dallas, TX; and

  • Daniel Ray Lane, age 38, of McKinney, TX.

The alleged conspiracy involved a shell company based in Poland, through  which they would buy the oil, with plans for two shipments every month that would generate profits seen at some $28 million monthly. What’s more, one of the accused, Daniel Ray Lane, had offered to launder the money from the sale of the Iranian oil through a company he owns called STACK Royalties.

“These defendants allegedly conspired to circumvent economic sanctions enacted to protect the United States’ national security,” a special agent from the FBI, which uncovered the scheme, said in the DoJ statement.

“In their minds, sanctions weren’t so much an impediment as an opportunity. They thought they could make their millions and escape the United States Government’s notice. Well, as these charges show, they were wrong. The FBI takes sanctions violations extremely seriously and will bring all our investigative resources to bear, to end such harmful and illegal activity.”

If the accused are convicted they will be facing a maximum prison sentence of 25 years and a fine of up to $1.25 million each.

The United States is pursuing a maximum pressure campaign against Iran aiming to cut off its oil export entirely, but so far the campaign has fallen short of its goal. However, the sanctions have severely reduced the flow of oil from Iran overseas, crippling the country’s economy.


Tyler Durden

Wed, 02/12/2020 – 13:35

Tags
Law Crime
Politics

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CIA Encryption Meddling and Chinese Espionage Allegations Make It Clear: We All Need Strong Data Protection

U.S. officials have been insisting to tech platforms that overly strong encryption is a threat to public safety and that “back doors” must be provided for law enforcement to bypass security, all in the name of fighting crime.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials have also been claiming that China-based tech company Huawei can use secret security bypasses that are intended for law enforcement use only in order to access data that could be used by the Chinese government for surveillance purposes.

In summation: The same U.S. government that wants tech companies and telecoms to create secret software doors that would allow it to snoop on our private communications and data is also worried that other governments will be able to use those same back doors to do the same thing. This is what tech privacy experts have been warning U.S. officials (and U.K. officials and Australian officials) all along: Any back door that allows law enforcement to circumvent user privacy protections will ultimately be used by people with bad intentions.

The context here is a Wall Street Journal report that reveals U.S. officials have been quietly telling allies that Huawei can secretly access data from its phone networks through taps that the company built into the hardware it sells to cellphone carriers. Laws mandate that Huawei (and other telecom companies) install these “interception interfaces” into their equipment, but only authorized law enforcement officials are supposed to have access. Even Huawei itself is not supposed to be able to gain access without the permission of the phone carriers. But U.S. officials are insistent that Huawei has maintained secret access to these taps since at least 2009.

Huawei says these claims are not true and that these hardware taps can only be accessed by “certified personnel of the network operators.” The company also insists it is not surveilling data and passing it along to the Chinese government.

The story leans heavily on U.S. claims from secret intelligence that has recently been declassified, but it’s not exactly proof of the claims.

On a surface level, this is about the global tech market and the competition between China and the United States. But dig deeper and you can see the relevance to our encryption fight.

The FBI and Department of Justice insist that tech companies need to be adding similar, virtual back doors in our communication tools, phones, and apps in the name of fighting crime and terrorism. People like FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General William Barr are willing to discuss encryption back doors only in terms of how it helps the U.S. government. But this Wall Street Journal report makes it clear that the U.S. government is abundantly aware that any access point (real or virtual) to look at private data is a point of vulnerability.

If this intelligence is true, it means that any government-mandated encryption bypass is potentially abusable and the U.S. should not be demanding tech companies make them, lest the Chinese government (or Saudi government, or Russian government, or United Arab Emirates, or identity thieves with hacking skills) get their hands on whatever mechanism created for law enforcement use only.

If the intelligence is not true, it nevertheless makes it clear that the United States understands that back doors create huge vulnerabilities. Government officials know full well that the Justice Department’s demands are unreasonable and should be shut down, and lawmakers like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.) should not be proposing bills to force companies to implement encryption back doors.

But then, perhaps I should simply stop treating the Justice Department and Congress as though they’re making these arguments in good faith. You see, yesterday, the Washington Post published a very different story about encryption and data privacy. It turns out that, for decades, the CIA and German intelligence owned and secretly operated an encryption company named Crypto AG. They sold compromised encryption technology to other countries, then secretly spied on them. The Washington Post reports that

they monitored Iran’s mullahs during the 1979 hostage crisis, fed intelligence about Argentina’s military to Britain during the Falklands War, tracked the assassination campaigns of South American dictators and caught Libyan officials congratulating themselves on the 1986 bombing of a Berlin disco.

Germany left the partnership in the 1990s, fearing exposure. So the CIA ran the company until 2018 when it liquidated Crypto AG and sold it off to two companies, one of whom apparently had no idea about its secret background.

We should be wary of the U.S. government doubling down on its efforts to compromise encryption, especially now that Crypto AG is not of use to the CIA. We know full well those back doors are going to be used for a lot more than trying to track down alleged pedophiles, and the federal government knows that, too.

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“It’s Like A Horror Film”: Botched Wuhan Quarantine Left Dead Bodies In The Street, Sick Waiting Days For Care

“It’s Like A Horror Film”: Botched Wuhan Quarantine Left Dead Bodies In The Street, Sick Waiting Days For Care

Western media organizations have published a series of in-depth reports attempting to illuminate what life on the ground at the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak looks like. But few have captured the atmosphere of the situation quite like a team of AFP journalists who lingered in Wuhan after the lockdown, and have detailed their experiences in diary format.

The diary begins on Jan. 23, the day Wuhan was placed under lockdown. It starts as one might expect: Though the news was a shock, few tried to escape the city before the lockdown officially went into effect. Police chase the last travelers out of the railroad station.

But the situation doesn’t really start to escalate until Jan. 25, or New Year’s Day in China.

Those who went to worship at the city’s Guiyan temple, normally packed this time of year, found it empty: nobody was allowed inside.

“No-one is allowed inside in order to prevent the virus spreading,” a uniformed man – who is not wearing the compulsory mask – tells AFP.

On the fourth day of the crackdown, conditions in Wuhan really started to deteriorate. This marked the beginning of hard times for Wuhan. Overwhelmed hospitals arbitrarily turned people away if their swab tests came back negative for the virus. One man told an AFP reporter that he had been turned away by four hospitals, despite being seriously ill. “I haven’t slept,” he said. He was getting ready to wait in line all night to hopefully be admitted to another hospital.

For the first in their memory, the AFP reporters said Chinese out on the streets approached them to complain about the government’s handling of the lockdown.

“Like a horror film,” says one witness, who tells AFP bodies were left unattended for hours.

About 20 kilometers from the center for the city, police had set up roadblocks around the city’s perimeter. Nurses and other reinforcements were let in to help the exhausted medical personnel staffing the city’s hospitals. 

By day five, all non-essential traffic had been banned from the city. Taxis have been requisitioned by the state to help transport people to hospitals.

One vast stretch of muddy ground in Wuhan was suddenly busy with cranes and heavy machinery as the state scrambled to build a new 1,000-bed facility. Soon, a second would begin nearby.

“We’ve got to go fast so we can beat the virus,” said one construction worker who had been working for nine hours, and was preparing to go off-shift near the construction site.

Volunteers ferry the sick to and from the hospital.

“We need to take the initiative and help out,” he says as he waits outside a clinic to take a patient home.

Countries have started to plan evacuations of their citizens from Wuhan. More than a dozen would eventually follow through. To boost morale, the government set up a display on the banks of the Yangtze river; four Chinese characters are lit up in pink: “Let’s go Wuhan.”

On day 6, the AFP spoke to a French doctor who had decided to stay in Wuhan, a Dr. Philippe Klein.

“It’s not an act of heroism,” he said. “It’s been well thought out, it’s my job.”

More signs of the government crackdown are beginning to appear: Guards take the temperature of customers at supermarkets and other stores hawking essential goods.

Then on day 8, the reporters saw their first dead body in the street. He’s a man, in his sixties, who is lying on his back in front of a closed furniture store. Officials in hazard suits slowly approach the body, taking every conceivable precaution.

The team of forensic experts who investigated the body are immediately sprayed with disinfectant. “It’s terrible,” one said. “So many have died in recent days.”

That was two weeks ago. Though there are fewer bodies in the streets, and sick suspects aren’t being turned away by hospitals so often, the situation has gotten considerably worse.

Epoch Times reporter Jennifer Zeng, who has been assiduously grabbing videos posted to Chinese social media and sharing them on Twitter, warned on Wednesday that the food shortage in Wuhan is becoming a crisis as the lockdown continues, despite the fact that China is supposedly once again open for business.

This is one of the most details reports describing the opening days of the lockdown, and it seems to comport with everything else we’ve come to understand about the outbreak in Wuhan. These are the consequences of Chinese officials not recognizing the virus’s potential because they waited to share information about the virus and its genetic sequence with the international community, as BBG reports.


Tyler Durden

Wed, 02/12/2020 – 13:20

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2OJbsjR Tyler Durden

Blistering Demand For Stellar 10Y Auction As Yield Tumbles

Blistering Demand For Stellar 10Y Auction As Yield Tumbles

After yesterday’s solid but tailing 3Y auction, moments ago the US Treasury sold $27BN in 10Y notes at a sharply lower yield compared to January: stopping out at 1.622%, today’s 10Y issuance stopped through the 1.623% When Issued, and was almost 25bps lower than January’s 1.8690%; it was also the lowest yield since the October recession scare when the 10Y priced at 1.59%.

The internals were even more impressive: the bid to cover of 2.58 was not only far above last month’s 2.45, but also the highest since June 2018.

Completing the picture, Indirects jumped to 61.3% from 55.2%, and well above the 58.8 in December. And with Directs dipping slightly to 14.8% from 16.1% and in line with the recent average, that left 23.9% for Dealers, several points below the 26.7% six auction average.

In short, anyone concerned that primary market demand for US paper would drop as yields declined, can put such fears on hiatus for at least the next 9-12 months, by which point the first hint of what MMT in the US will look like should begin to unleash chaos within the US bond market.


Tyler Durden

Wed, 02/12/2020 – 13:16

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Business Finance

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2OP3TZ3 Tyler Durden

“Not Terribly Encouraging”: Mitt Romney Hints He Might Oppose Fed Nominee Judy Shelton In Latest Attack On Trump

“Not Terribly Encouraging”: Mitt Romney Hints He Might Oppose Fed Nominee Judy Shelton In Latest Attack On Trump

Is this the beginning of the second round of Republican resistance to President Trump’s slate of nominees for the Fed board of governors? Or just the latest example of Mitt Romney trying to sabotage Trump out of spite?

Or maybe he simply hates low interest rates?

Whatever the reason, the freshman senator from Utah is reportedly ‘undecided’ on whether he’ll back one of Trump’s two latest nominees for the two empty seats on the board of governors.

Judy Shelton, known for her opposition to the Fed and support for the gold standard, has repeatedly spoken out against the Fed’s loose monetary policy. But like Stephen Moore before her, she has changed tack more recently to support President Trump’s agenda for the “non-partisan” and “apolitical” Fed.

Last year, we reminded readers about this in a post about gold’s reaction to the news of Shelton’s nomination that on April 21, Shelton published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal entitled “The Case for Monetary Regime Change.”

Since President Trump announced his intention to nominate Herman Cain and Stephen Moore to serve on the Federal Reserve’s board of governors, mainstream commentators have made a point of dismissing anyone sympathetic to a gold standard as crankish or unqualified.

But it is wholly legitimate, and entirely prudent, to question the infallibility of the Federal Reserve in calibrating the money supply to the needs of the economy. No other government institution had more influence over the creation of money and credit in the lead-up to the devastating 2008 global meltdown. And the Fed’s response to the meltdown may have exacerbated the damage by lowering the incentive for banks to fund private-sector growth.

What began as an emergency decision in the wake of the financial crisis to pay interest to commercial banks on excess reserves has become the Fed’s main mechanism for conducting monetary policy. To raise interest rates, the Fed increases the rate it pays banks to keep their $1.5 trillion in excess reserves—eight times what is required—parked in accounts at Federal Reserve district banks. Rewarding banks for holding excess reserves in sterile depository accounts at the Fed rather than making loans to the public does not help create business or spur job creation.

Meanwhile, for all the talk of a “rules-based” system for international trade, there are no rules when it comes to ensuring a level monetary playing field. The classical gold standard established an international benchmark for currency values, consistent with free-trade principles. Today’s arrangements permit governments to manipulate their currencies to gain an export advantage.

Money is meant to serve as a reliable unit of account and store of value across borders and through time. It’s entirely reasonable to ask whether this might be better assured by linking the supply of money and credit to gold or some other reference point as opposed to relying on the judgment of a dozen or so monetary officials meeting eight times a year to set interest rates. A linked system could allow currency convertibility by individuals (as under a gold standard) or foreign central banks (as under Bretton Woods). Either way, it could redress inflationary pressures.

Judy Shelton is author of the 1998 book Money Meltdown; and she once concluded that “central bankers, and their defenders, have proven less than omniscient.”

So why does Trump want Shelton on the board? Simple: she previously said that if appointed, she would lower interest rates to 0% in one to two years.

Last year, Trump’s first slate of candidates for the two empty seats, former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain and WSJ op-ed columnist Stephen Moore, were pulled after Republicans raised questions about sexual misconduct allegations and other issues.

Jim Rickards and others said at the time that the end of Moore’s nomination would open the door for a Shelton nomination. Trump is also reportedly set to nominate Christopher Waller, an uncontroversial Fed insider and executive vice president and director of research at the St. Louis Fed.

Every time Romney tries to screw Trump by siding with Democrats on legislation, voting to impeach, or stymieing his nominees, just remember this photo from Romney’s dinner with Trump when he was supposedly under consideration for Secretary of State.

The question now is whether other Republican moderates who don’t exactly have the best relationship with Trump – people like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski – join Romney.


Tyler Durden

Wed, 02/12/2020 – 13:00

Tags
Business Finance
Politics

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Chinese Propaganda Video Shows Coronavirus Victims Dancing In Detainment Facility

Chinese Propaganda Video Shows Coronavirus Victims Dancing In Detainment Facility

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

Apparently keen to offset video footage of screaming Chinese people being abducted from their homes and taken to detention camps, the ruling Communist Party put out a video showing “mild” coronavirus victims housed in a “temporary hospital” being directed to dance by workers in hazmat suits.

The video was published by People’s Daily, the largest newspaper in the country and the official news organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

It shows what are purported to be “infected patients with mild syndromes” dancing to Chinese music. Some of them appear to be less enthusiastic than others and one is reminded of the mandatory exercise sessions in George Orwell’s 1984.

“Virus can’t put out the passion for life!” states the tweet accompanying the video.

Another clip shows a medic in a hazmat suit performing “Chinese traditional Qigong outside a quarantine chamber” as a way of telling the patients, “Don’t worry. Things will get better.”

The two videos are in contrast to plenty of other video footage which shows alleged coronavirus victims being chased down by authorities and dragged kicking and screaming to internment camps.

As we highlighted yesterday, another video clip shows a woman trying to scale down a building to escape quarantine. She loses her grip and falls to her death.

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Tyler Durden

Wed, 02/12/2020 – 12:39

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It turns out the Bolsheviks love the top 1%

One of the really interesting things about where I live here in Puerto Rico is that my house is located within the grounds of a resort… so I bump into a fair number of tourists when I’m at the gym or walking on the beach.

People engage me in conversation a lot– they can’t imagine actually living in such a paradise, and they’re full of questions about what it’s like.

I always enjoy talking about Puerto Rico and giving visitors a candid view of the advantages and disadvantages of living here. But almost invariably as part of that conversation, someone asks:

“Yeah, but don’t you lose the right to vote when you move here?”

Yes, it’s true that Puerto Rican residents cannot vote in a national election. Puerto Rico does hold a presidential primary. But once the party nominees are decided, Puerto Ricans cannot participate in the general election in November.

And I’ve heard this dozens of times since I moved to Puerto Rico in 2018– it seems people REALLY cling to their right to vote.

My view is that it’s a completely pointless exercise, and one that I was happy to trade for Puerto Rico’s generous tax incentives.

I always respond in the same way when people bring up this issue– “Do you really think your vote actually counts?”

And what’s happened so far this month in the primary race really proves the point.

Just look at the Iowa race; the party is so hapless and incompetent that they can’t manage to properly count the votes (yet these same people want to be in charge of your healthcare and children’s education…)

And when they do count the votes, it still doesn’t seem to matter.

More people voted for Bernie Sanders in the Iowa race than for any other candidate. Yet Pete Buttigieg ‘won’ the state because he received the most delegates.

Then there are ‘superdelegates’, i.e. party elders who can choose whichever candidate they want regardless of who the voters pick.

And of course, by the time the national convention takes place this summer, it’s entirely possible that no single candidate will have won enough delegates to lock up the nomination.

At that point, all the votes will be discarded and it will be up to the party insiders– delegates and superdelegates– to decide who the nominee should be.

How can these people possibly say with a straight face that votes actually matter?

The even bigger quirk is the outsized importance of these earliest caucuses and primary races.

About 300,000 people voted yesterday in the New Hampshire primary. That’s less than 0.1% of the US population.

And yet those 300,000 New Hampshire voters have enormous influence over the entire Presidential race.

Joe Biden came in a distant 5th in yesterday’s New Hampshire primary. As a result, the media is now saying that he is no longer viable, and his former campaign donors are lining up to fund other candidates.

But in actuality the gap between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders (who came in first place) was just 50,522 votes.

Nationwide, that’s a drop in the bucket. It’s scarcely a rounding error.

That’s 50,522 people in New Hampshire who have effectively sealed the fate of Joe Biden’s campaign.

And if he drops out in the next few weeks, it means that people who live in states that don’t hold their primaries until May or June won’t even have the opportunity to vote for Joe Biden.

Don’t get me wrong– I have no love for Joe Biden… or any of these people for that matter. I like politicians as much as I like a visit to the proctologist.

But it strikes me as a bizarre that a tiny fraction of a percent of the population has so much influence over a national race. Is this really the most advanced republican democracy in the world?

These Bolsheviks are constantly howling about economic inequality and complaining about wealthy people in the top 1%.

Well, they have managed to engineer massive electoral inequality and created a top 1% among voters.

A voter in New Hampshire has far more influence than a voter in, say, Kentucky, who won’t have the opportunity to vote until May 19th.

By then, the pool of candidates that a Kentucky voter will have to choose from in his/her primary election will be much more limited.

This is effectively a form of disenfranchisement. This idiotic system gives a handful of voters more power, and more choices, than other voters.

And I have to say, for as ‘woke’ as this Bolshevik party pretends to be, it’s certainly ironic that this top 1% voting elite happens to be in states that are predominantly white.

Try explaining to a Native American living in South Dakota whose primary isn’t until June 2nd that his/her vote counts as much as the white guy in New Hampshire.

This system is a complete farce, rampant with insider corruption, comical incompetence, and a  deliberate lack of innovation.

And I don’t exactly cry myself to sleep every night that I’m no longer able to participate… I’m more than happy to trade away my voting rights for the extraordinary 4% tax incentives of living in Puerto Rico.

Source

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