Tag: finance

Trump “Strongly” Considering Concealed Carry In Schools

President Trump suggested that arming teachers would be an effective method of preventing future school shootings while sitting down for a listening session on school shootings at the White House on Wednesday.

“If you had a teacher who was adept at firearms, they could very well end the attack very quickly, and the good thing about a suggestion like that — and we’re going to be looking at it very strongly, and I think a lot of people are going to be opposed to it. I think a lot of people are going to like it. But the good thing is you’re going to have a lot of [armed] people with that,” said the President. 

Trump said that athletic director at Stoneman Douglas High School, Chris Hixon, had “saved a lot of lives,” however if he had been armed, he could have saved more. 

“He wouldn’t have had to run, he would have shot, and that would have been the end of it,” he said, adding that he only supported concealed carry for people “adept” with guns.

Trump also knocked gun-free zones around schools.

“A gun-free zone to a maniac, because they’re all cowards, a gun-free zone is ‘let’s go in and attack,'” he said. “I really believe if these cowards knew that the school was well-guarded from the standpoint of pretty much having professionals with great training, I think they wouldn’t go into the schools to start with, it would pretty much solve your problem.“

Trump then turned to the attendees for their thoughts, asking “So does anybody like that idea here, does anybody like it? … Do people feel strongly against it, anybody? Anybody? Strongly against it? We can understand both sides. Certainly, it’s controversial, but we’ll study that along with many other ideas.”

Several attendees voiced their displeasure with the notion. 

“Nobody wants to see a shoot-out in school,” said Mark Barden, whose son was killed in the December 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. “And a deranged sociopath on his way to commit an act of murder in a school with the outcome, knowing the outcome is going to be suicide, is not going to care if there is somebody there with a gun,” he continued.

“Schoolteachers have more than enough responsibilities right now than to have to have the awesome responsibility of lethal force to take a life.” 

Not all schoolteachers

After Butler County, Ohio Sheriff Richard K. Jones offered free concealed carry training to 50 teachers following the shooting, 250 teachers responded as reported by Fox 91 news. “We have 250 and growing fast. We will start training fast, next week.”

Jones stressed that he wants teachers to understand how to handle an active shooter situation, should they be allowed to carry firearms on campus. 

“If the school boards want to give the authority to teachers to be armed…[they] can do that, they have the authority to do it, but I’m going to do my part, and I assume I’m probably the only one in the state of Ohio that’s doing that – but something has to happen.” said the Sherriff. 

Parents speak out

Survivors of the Parkland, FL school shooting took turns sharing their pain, with some offering solutions, and others simply vowing to fight for gun control measures. 

“How many schools, how many children have to get shot? It stops here with this administration and me. I’m not going to sleep until it’s fixed. And Mr. President, we’re going to fix it, because I’m going fix it. I’m not going to rest,” said the father of one Parkland shooting victim.

Trump responds

In response to the emotional pleas, President Trump promised new measures to prevent guns from falling into the wrong hands. “We’re going to be very strong on background checks,” said Trump. “There are many ideas I have, there are many ideas that other people have, and we’re going to pick out the strongest ideas, the most important ideas.”

“It’s not going to be talk like it has been in the past,” he added. Trump notably criticized President Obama for failing to pass gun control legislation when they had a supermajority:

Indeed, it appears action is right around the corner – which President Trump and Congressional GOP will have to weigh against the wishes of their largely gun-advocating base. At a NRA convention in 2016, for example, President Trump stated “You came through big for me,” after the National Rifle Association and its affiliates spent over $50 million towards advertisements in the 2016 election, “and I am going to come through for you.”  

Trump spoke Friday with Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the Senate’s No. 2-ranking Republican, about supporting a bipartisan bill in the Senate to improve the federal background check system for gun purchases.

Trump also announced Tuesday that he has directed the Justice Department to propose a ban on bump stocks, which that allow semi-automatic weapons to fire much more rapidly, reinvigorating a ban push that has been stalled for months since the Las Vegas shooting. –The Hill

 In response to the shooting, Broward County Deputies have begun patrolling school grounds with rifles, including AR-15s. 

 

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CNN Doxxes Elderly Woman, Badgers At House Over Russian Trolls

CNN reporter Drew Griffin drove out to an elderly Florida woman’s home this week to badger her about Russian trolls who targeted the Facebook group she operates during the 2016 election. 

The woman, Florine Gruen Goldfarb, was unaware that her Team Trump Broward County Facebook page had been the target of Russian meddling efforts – a point which Griffin repeatedly and accusatorily made while Goldfarb stood outside of her home, defending herself. 

“You guys were involved in Being Patriotic, right?” Griffin asked, referring to the Facebook group flagged as one Russia’s troll accounts. “Very. Very patriotic, but not–” Goldfarb replied, before Griffin cut her off: “Being Patriotic was the group that contacted and helped to organize some of these activities,” the CNN host interjected. 

After the two argued over Russians for nearly two minutes, a flustered Goldfarb walks back into her house.

The Russian group “Being Patriotic” was detailed in last Friday’s indictment of 13 Russian nationals and 3 corporations. 

Goldfarb and members of her Facebook group attended a Fort Lauderdale rally held in a series of events organized by the Russian group. 

As Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller notes, it is unclear exactly what Griffin hoped to accomplish with the interview:

Goldfarb was more focused on who actually attended her rallies.

“Those people weren’t Russians. I don’t go with Russians,” she said at one point.

“Those people that were with me were all Trump supporters,” she added.

“And all apparently following the direction of Russians who were actually infiltrating,” Griffin replied.

“B.S.,” said Goldfarb.

CNN’s stalking and harassing of Goldfarb has not gone over well on social media:

Former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino asked if CNN is going to show up next at Joy Reid’s house, as the MSNBC host was heavily favorted by Russian trolls – which retweeted her content 267 times.

 

 

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Who Will Buy Trillions Of US Treasuries???

Authored by Chris Hamilton via Econimica blog,

As of the latest Treasury update showing federal debt as of Wednesday, February 15…federal debt (red line below) jumped by an additional $50 billion from the previous day to $20.76 trillion.  This is an increase of $266 billion essentially since the most recent debt ceiling passage.  Of course, this isn’t helping the debt to GDP ratio (blue line below) at 105%.

But here’s the problem.  In order for the American economy to register growth, as measured by GDP (the annual change in total value of all goods produced and services provided in the US), that growth is now based solely upon the growth in federal debt.  Without the federal deficit spending, the economy would be shrinking.

The chart below shows the annual change in GDP minus the annual federal deficit incurred.  Since 2008, the annual deficit spending has been far greater than the economic activity that deficit spending has produced.  The net difference is shown below from 1950 through 2017…plus estimated through 2025 based on 2.5% average annual GDP growth and $1.2 trillion annual deficits.  It is not a pretty picture and it isn’t getting better.

Even if we assume an average of 3.5% GDP growth (that the US will not have a recession(s) over a 15 year period) and “only” $1 trillion annual deficits from 2018 through 2025, the US still continues to move backward indefinitely.

The cumulative impact of all those deficits is shown in the chart below.  Federal debt (red line) is at $20.8 trillion and the annual interest expense on that debt (blue line) is jumping, now over a half trillion.  Also shown in the chart is the likely debt creation through 2025 and interest expense assuming a very modest 4% blended rate on all that debt.

So, for America to appear as if it is moving forward, it has to go backward into greater debt?!?  If you weren’t troubled so far, here is where the stuff starts to hit the fan.

With the change to the Unified budget, effective as of 1969, the Social Security surplus was “unified” into the federal budget.  The government gave themselves a ready buyer for US debt while simultaneously allowing the SS surplus to be spent in “the present”.  Congressionally mandated to buy US debt, from 1970 to 2008, the Intra-Governmental Holdings (over half from the Social Security surplus) purchased over 45% of all federal debt issued.  This meant “only” 55% of US debt was auctioned into the market, or “marketable debt”.

But the annual SS surplus has declined by 90% (from over $200 billion a year at the peak in 2007 to perhaps $20 billion this year) and, according to the SS trust fund, the last surplus will be recorded in 2020 or 2021.  After that (or essentially now), the Congressionally mandated buyer (which consumed almost half of all US federal debt for 4 decades) will cease.  Not only will the IG Holdings no longer be a buyer, they will need additional debt created to make good on those $2.9 trillion in SS “reserves”…and all the debt issued will be “marketable”.

The chart below shows the “marketable” debt vs. IG Holdings from 1970 through 2025.  As noted above, IG consumed nearly half of all US debt up to 2008…but since ’08, IG has consumed just over 10% of all the new issuance and nearly 90% of new debt been auctioned into the market.  IG has essentially ceased to be a buyer…meaning that marketable debt will continue to soar.

So who is a buyer of US Treasury debt? 

Only three possible groups remaining; “foreigners”, the Federal Reserve, and private domestic sources (pensions, banks, mutual funds, individuals).

I will show that foreigners have essentially ceased buying, that the Federal Reserve isn’t a buyer and in fact is reducing it’s balance sheet…and this means there is only one buyer remaining to soak up the surging marketable debt.

But before I detail these…I want you to remember Harry Markopolos.  Markopolos is a financial investigator and he gave clear evidence of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi to the SEC as early as 2000, again in 2001, and again in 2005.  The SEC did not see what they didn’t want to see and it wasn’t until the great financial crisis of ’08 that Madoff’s fraud was exposed and the loss of approximately $65 billion realized (below, from Wikipedia).

When Markopolos obtained a copy of Madoff’s revenue stream, he spotted problems right away. Madoff’s strategy was so poorly designed that Markopolos didn’t see how it could make money. The biggest red flag, however, was that the return stream rose steadily with only a few downticks—represented graphically by a nearly perfect 45-degree angle. According to Markopolos, anyone who understood the underlying math of the markets would have known they were too volatile even in the best conditions for this to be possible.

As he later put it, a return stream like the one Madoff claimed to generate “simply doesn’t exist in finance.” He eventually concluded that there was no legal way for Madoff to deliver his purported returns using the strategies he claimed to use.

As he saw it, there were only two ways to explain the figures—either Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme (by paying established clients with newer clients’ money) or front running (buying stock for his own account, based on knowledge about his clients’ orders).

With that in mind and the largest single buyer (IG) now a seller, let’s look at the remaining “buyers” and consider the nearly $21 trillion US Treasury market:

BUYERS –

Federal Reserve…presently allowing Treasury bonds and MBS (mortgage backed securities) to mature, reducing it’s balance sheet on a monthly basis.  The Fed plans to roughly halve its balance sheet from $4.5 to $2.2 trillion between now and 2022 (a $250 billion annual reduction in Treasury holdings).  That is a net increase of available Treasury debt of $250 billion annually above and beyond the trillion plus in new issuance and trillions being rolled over every year.

Foreigners…foreigners presently hold $6.3 trillion in US Treasury debt but since QE ended in late 2014, foreigners have essentially gone on strike, adding just $150 billion in a little over three years (chart below).

Foreigners added an average:

  • ’00–>’07 +$160 billion annually
  • ’08–>’14 +$540 billion annually
  • ’15–>’18 +$50 billion annually

The current pace of foreign Treasury buying is less than 1/3 the pace of the early ’00’s and a 90% reduction from the pace of ’08 through ’14, when QE was in effect.

Just three buyers hold over half (55%) of all debt held by foreigners; China, Japan, and what I call the BLICS (Belgium, Luxembourg, Ireland, Cayman Island, Switzerland).  The chart below shows each nations/groups US Treasury holdings from ’00 through December of ’17.  Entirely noteworthy:

  • China ’00–>’11 +$1.2 trillion…but China has been a net seller of Treasury’s since the July of 2011 debt ceiling debate
  • Japan ’00–>’11 +$600 billion…Japan’s holdings did rise after the July 2011 debate but are fast declining now toward the same quantity it held in July of 2011
  • BLICS ’00–>’11 +$300 billion…It has been the $800 billion surge in BLICS buying since July 2011 that has kept foreign demand alive.

As for the BLICS, their buying patterns since ’07 have grown increasingly bizarre, as if profit isn’t their motive?  However, if maintaining a bid for US debt is the motive, the massive surges in buying at the worst of times makes sense.

So, I’ve shown US federal debt is surging but the only thing keeping the US economy “growing” is the size of the deficit and debt incurred.  I’ve shown the traditional sources of net Treasury buying have ceased except for the domestic public.  That the Intra-Governmental holdings are essentially peaking and will be a net seller within a couple years and all new debt issued will be “marketable”.  I’ve shown the Federal Reserve plans to “roll off” approximately $250 billion a year for up to four years.  I’ve shown that China ceased net buying Treasury debt in 2011 and foreigners have essentially gone on strike since QE ended.  The only real foreign bid remaining is from some pretty shady demand that looks an awful lot like it could be central bank buying, but regardless the BLICS, foreign demand for Treasury’s (on a net basis) has essentially stopped.

This leaves the domestic public to purchase all the surging new issuance, plus the portion the Fed (and soon enough, the IG) is rolling off, and with little to no assistance from foreigners (even the possibility the strike turns into an outright selloff!?!).  The domestic public currently holds about $6 trillion in Treasury debt and will need to buy in excess of $1.5 trillion annually (indefinitely) between picking up the roll off and the new issuance.  If the public “willingly” do this at low interest rates, it will represent 7.5% of GDP going toward Treasury purchases that yield well below needed returns.  If the Public don’t do this “willingly”, interest rates will soar far more than shown above and the US will be overwhelmed by debt service.  The only other option is that the Federal Reserve makes a U-turn to re-start QE and openly engage in endless monetization.

Some articles with further and slightly different details on much of the above.(HERE) (HERE) (HERE)

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Goldman: “It Is Possible The Fed Does Five Hikes This Year”

It took the market about 30 minutes to read today’s FOMC minutes, and realize that despite the post-FOMC kneejerk narrative which “found” the minutes to be dovish if only to justify the jump in stocks, the Fed was decidedly hawkish, and may well be looking at the higher number in the ongoing debate whether it will hike rates 3 or 4 times in 2018.

To some, such as IHS Markit Executive Director Ken Matheny, the Fed was clear enough, and the economist revised his FOMC forecast up to 4 rate hikes this year after the report.

Relative to forecasts submitted in December, Committee members generally revised up their expectations for GDP growth in response to looser financial conditions and expectations of stimulus from the tax cut. They agreed that a stronger near-term outlook increased the likelihood that a gradual upward trajectory for the federal funds rate would be appropriate.

The discussion in the minutes was consistent with our forecast that the FOMC will raise the federal funds rate several times in 2018 as it seeks to balance the risks of too low inflation against overheating and financial excesses. We continue to expect a total of four rate hikes in 2018, with the next hike at the upcoming meeting on March 21.

And while 4 rate hikes will certainly be frowned upon by the market, it will hardly be disastrous: after all, that has long been the baseline case of some of the more hawkish banks, such as Goldman Sachs.

What was more surprising, however, is what Goldman said shortly after the minutes were released: in a podcast with David Mericle, Goldman’s senior US economist reiterated his expectation for four rate hikes this year, adding that the risk is not to the downside, but rather higher, predicting that “by later in the year, it’s certainly possible that they wind up adding another one and do five hikes for the year”, with the fifth hike taking place during a non-press conference meeting.

Needless to say, 5 rate hikes would send the short end just shy of 3%, and assuming the 10% remains roughly where it is, flatten to the yield curve to a pancake, beginning the countdown to the next recession. It would also have a very adverse effect on the stock market, where i) the equity risk premium is rapidly collapsing, and where ii) if the short end offers the same yield with a fraction of the duration risk, well investors will promptly move “up in quality while reducing duration” as Guggenheim’s Scott Minerd observed earlier today.

* * *

Below is the key excerpt transcribed from the just released Goldman podcast, highlights ours:

Marina Grushin: Welcome to the Top of Mind podcast. I’m Marina Grushin. Inflation worries and rising rates were among several factors that jolted equity markets out of complacency earlier this month. Yet equities have largely looked through last week’s upside surprise in core CPI, which increased at the fastest pace in 12 years. Goldman Sachs economists see this as part of a rebound in inflation that will continue alongside quarterly Fed hikes. So how easily will risk assets digest these developments over the coming weeks and months?

Joining us today to discuss the inflation path and the risks around it is David Mericle, Goldman Sachs senior US economist.

David, thanks for joining us. You’ve been calling for a pickup in wage and price inflation for some time now, and the latest data have shown signs of reacceleration… but these numbers can be volatile. So what makes you think that inflation is now on a more sustainable upward trajectory?

David Mericle: I was admittedly surprised by the soft inflation data last year, but I think it would be a mistake to make too much of it. Over the course of 2017, the market bought hard into the claim that inflation was just structurally lower for one reason or another, whether it was the alleged effect of globalization or of Amazon or whatever. We have been very skeptical of these stories, which, in my view never had a whole lot of evidence in their favor. And I think the weakness last year, in the end, was largely idiosyncratic and transitory and didn’t tell us anything profound or new about the inflation outlook.

I do see the latest wage growth and inflation news as encouraging, but I think it would be equally wrong to get too carried away at this point in expecting a very rapid acceleration on the basis of a couple of prints. In a labor market that is likely to see historically low levels of unemployment in the coming years, both wage growth and inflation are likely to gradually move higher.

But that’s just one part of our 2018 inflation forecast. On top of conventional Phillips Curve effects, we also expect boosts to core inflation from higher energy prices, from dollar depreciation, from the fading impact of the ACA on healthcare inflation and from the dropping out of some unusual downside base effects last year. Each of these should contribute a bit to pushing inflation closer to the target by the end of the year.

Marina Grushin: And you’ve now upgraded your year-end core PCE forecast by 0.1pp to 1.9%. At this point, are the risks around that tilted to the upside or the downside?

David Mericle: I think there are risks in both directions, though I would say that the risks to the upside were, at least until very recently, quite underappreciated in financial markets. Last year some unexpected weakness emerged in categories that just aren’t that cyclical. In recent research, we found that the historically cyclical categories of core inflation have largely picked up as expected, while the acyclical categories lagged last year. But the reality is that a pretty large share of the core consists of categories that largely follow sector-specific trends rather than broader cyclical trends, so I think those categories in particular always present risks in both directions.

In thinking about upside risks, I think the key question is whether we should expect to see an inflection point as the labor market gets extremely tight. It’s a hard question to answer looking at the aggregate inflation data because we really only have two good historical examples of this—the late 1960s and the late 1990s—and they turned out very differently, and they both differ in important ways from the current situation. But if you look at city-level inflation and wage growth data in the US, you actually have a lot more examples. And looking at that data, we’ve found that there does seem to be a bit of a kink in the Phillips Curve at very low rates of unemployment—rates below 4%. So I think there is an upside risk to our forecast, and I think even now the market might not fully appreciate it.

Marina Grushin: The concern with that upside risk, of course, is how it might influence the Fed. In your view, what would have to happen for the Fed to tighten policy more aggressively?

David Mericle: We expect them to hike four times this year. They wrote down three hikes in their December dot plot, but that projection, in my view, already felt a bit dated at the time and not really in sync with their economic projections. It feels even more dated now that the fiscal stimulus has grown and the inflation and wage data have finally shown signs of life. So, let me consider our four hike scenario as the baseline here, and I would say that I see risks around our forecast as two-sided as well. I doubt that they would hike at a non-press conference meeting in the first half of this year; it just doesn’t seem necessary yet. But by later in the year, it’s certainly possible that they wind up adding another one and do five hikes for the year.

I don’t see higher inflation as the most obvious catalyst for picking up the pace, at least not in 2018. I don’t think that core inflation is likely to be meaningfully above 2% by year-end, and even if it were moderately above, after so many years of below-target inflation, I don’t think Fed officials would be particularly anxious about being a bit above their target, which is symmetric after all. Instead I think signs of labor market overheating are more likely to create enough anxiety at the Fed that they feel the need to pick up the pace. If the unemployment rate falls to the level we expect—3.5% by end-2018—if the economy shows no signs of slowing down, and especially if they were to again seemingly fail to get traction over broader financial conditions, as occurred in 2017, then I think under those circumstances it would be very natural to consider acting more aggressively and picking up the pace.

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Sheriff Clarke Alleges Student Gun Control Effort Has “Soros’ Fingerprints All Over It”

George Soros’ fingerprints are “all over” the push to demand gun control in response to last week’s Parkland, FL high school shooting, claimed former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke Jr.

Clarke made the startling allegation in a Tuesday tweet, saying “The well ORGANIZED effort by Florida school students demanding gun control has GEORGE SOROS’ FINGERPRINTS all over it.” Adding “It is similar to how he hijacked and exploited black people’s emotion regarding police use of force incidents into the COP HATING Black Lives Matter movement.” 

Clarke, a vocal Trump supporter who resigned as sheriff last year amid speculation he would join the Trump administration, is a senior advisor and spokesman for the pro-Trump America First Action PAC; he fired off the tweet in advance of a planned appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) later this week. 

Several conspiracy theories have emerged in the wake of the Valentine’s day shooting, which left seventeen people dead when a gunman opened fire on students in the early afternoon. A clip which was promptly featured on YouTube earlier, claimed that various students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School are “crisis actors” who are being used as political cudgels in efforts to repeal the Second Amendment. 

An aide to Florida State Rep. Shawn Harrison (R) was fired Tuesday after emailing a reporter to suggest that student David Hogg and others are crisis actors. “Both kids in the picture are not students here but actors that travel to various crisis when they happen,” wrote now-fired aide Benjamin Kelly – drawing condemnation from the likes of Florida Senator Marco Rubio (R) and Harrison. 

“On behalf of the entire Florida House, I sincerely apologize to the students targeted and again commend them for their courage through this unspeakable tragedy,” said Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran (R) over Twitter. 

 

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‘Crumbs’ Crushed – Soaring Economic Optimism Could Ruin Dems’ “Blue Wave” Midterms

Bad news for Democrats: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) tax bill “crumbs” are feeding a monster rally in optimism across the country.

As Liz Peek writes at The Hill, approval of the GOP tax cuts climbs steadily higher, fueling faster growth and increasing investment and undermining Democrats’ chances of a “blue wave” in November.

A new survey shows confidence among small business owners at a record-high of 62 in the first quarter, up five points from last year’s fourth quarter. The CNBC/SurveyMonkey poll shows that the number of people who think the Republican tax bill will help their firms has doubled compared to three months ago. 

[ZH: Even Democrats are being forced to admit it with their highest consumer confidence in over a year]

Not only is the optimism among people who own small firms at an unprecedented level, but consumers are also feeling increasingly upbeat. A recent survey from the University of Michigan reported consumer sentiment at 99.9 in February, up from 95.7 in January and considerably higher than consensus expectations of 95.5.

The reading, which averaged 86.2 from 1952 to 2018, was the second highest score since 2004, and reflected optimism about both current conditions and future expectations. 

Without a doubt, the public’s cheerier view of the tax cuts passed in December is helping. A recent New York Times poll showed that 51 percent of the country now approves of the bill, up from 46 percent in January and 37 percent in December.

The rise suggests an ongoing trend, especially since only 33 percent of respondents said they expect a tax cut. Realistically, more than 80 percent of the country will see some relief. When people witness the change in their paychecks, as early as this month, approval of the bill should increase.

Other surveys confirm the rosier expectations. The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) announced that its January reading of small business sentiment jumped two points to 106.9. Even more encouraging is that an all-time record number of small business owners agreed that “Now Is a Good Time to Expand,” according to the NFIB. 

That is the problem for Democrats: Rising optimism creates a virtuous circle, leading to the kind of investment and spending by families and businesses that creates higher demand, more jobs and increased wages.

The NFIB survey shows 20 percent of business owners ready to add employees, a record-high level, and 29 percent intending to make capital investments. The number of companies ready to hike wages also rose last month, to the highest level since 1989. The White House’s tax cuts and lighter regulatory approach have both contributed to the better outlook, according to an NFIB spokesman.

Economic growth has already ticked higher, with estimates for the current year coming in at around 3 percent or better, solidly higher than 2017. Wall Street’s leading economics team at Evercore ISI just bumped their 2018 growth estimate to 3.5 percent from 3 percent; their surveys of a wide range of businesses recently hit a three-year high.

As the country warms to the GOP tax cuts and to the resulting bounce in the economy, Democrats will have to explain why every single member of their caucus voted against the bill. They will also have to answer for having misled the country, saying that most middle-class Americans would see their taxes rise.

The NYT survey shows a remarkable divide, with 89 percent of Republicans approving of the tax bill, up from 80 percent in December, while only 19 percent of Democrats view the tax reform act positively, up from 8 percent at the end of last year. The impact of the bill, needless to say, will not vary by party. Democrats will have some explaining to do.

Republicans trying to hold onto seats in the upcoming elections will warn voters: “If you like the tax cuts you can keep them — but not if you vote Democrat.” Clips of Nancy Pelosi dismissing $1,000 bonuses as “crumbs” will flash across the nation’s TV screens, highlighting just how out of touch Democrats are.

Already, the tax bill and accelerating economy have narrowed Democrats’ advantage in the so-called “generic ballot.” The Real Clear Politics average of polls still shows Democrats ahead, with an average lead of nearly 8 points, but that’s down from 13 percentage points just a few weeks ago.

One recent survey from Politico shows the GOP pulling ahead for the first time since last April. That poll showed Independents nearly split down the middle, with an astonishing 49 percent undecided. That presents both parties with a real opportunity. 

The question is, which party has the better message and can capitalize on that opportunity? Will it be Republicans touting growth, lower taxes and wage gains? Or will it be Democrats, continuing to focus their energies on hating President Trump? The voters will decide.

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This Is What Extreme Security In “America’s Safest School” Looks Like

Welcome to Southwestern High School in suburban Indiana, where the classrooms door are bullet-resistant…

…ceilings have built-in smoke-bombs…

…cameras are everywhere, and the Sheriff’s department – only 10 miles away – can track an intruder in real-time.

Additionally, as The Daily Signal reports, the school has a top-of-the-line security system – which can be activated in the event of an emergency by teachers who wear special key fobs – that has been called “revolutionary” and is reported to have cost $400,000. It was installed after the Indiana Sheriff’s Association selected the school as a test site.

“I think that Newtown, Sandy Hook, really made people understand, made us all understand that this could happen to us,” Dr. Paula Maurer, Southwestern Consolidated Schools superintendent, told local affiliate Fox59.

“Now is the time to do something about it. We have some answers. We have the technology. We have ways to make our kids safer and we have to do it.”

The system came at no cost to Southwestern High School after Net Talon, the Virginia security company behind the design, offered to fund the installation. The school also used grant money to cover some costs. It raises the question of whether such a system could be implemented elsewhere and, perhaps more glaringly, how it would be funded.

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Why Are The Taxpayer-Funded Salaries Of A Quarter-Million Federal Employees, A State Secret?

Authored by Andrew Andrzejewski, op-ed via FoxNews.com,

Why is the U.S. government withholding salary information on nearly 255,000 employees whose salaries are paid for by American taxpayers?

Over the past 11 years, our organization, OpenTheBooks.com, summed up and posted online the salaries and bonus information for nearly every person employed in federal government agencies – a tally that mostly keeps growing and growing.

This year, our auditors filed our standard Freedom of Information Act request for the same information in Fiscal Year 2017 – and we got a big surprise.

For the first time, the government’s response involved massive and targeted deletions of salary data. A total of 254,839 federal salaries were removed from the Civil Service payroll. That’s a huge increase from the 3,416 salaries redacted in total in Fiscal Year 2016.

Considering that there are 1.35 million people employed by executive agencies, about one out of every five salaries are now hidden from the public.

In military terms, that’s the headcount equivalent of 17 Army divisions. It’s about equal to the urban population of Buffalo, New York, or Madison, Wisconsin.

Worst of all, it’s an affront to taxpayers who have the right to know who makes how much and in what position in the federal bureaucracy. It’s our money, and we should be able to follow it.

What we can’t follow now is truly a mammoth sum. We calculated – using median salaries for the departmental numbers the government did cough up – that‘s about $20 billion in total federal payroll costs now lacks transparency. The number could be lower, of course – but it could also be a lot higher.

The disappearing people and money came from all over the government: no fewer than 68 federal departments redacted salaries. Even small agencies like the National Transportation Services Board and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation joined the disappearing act.

The biggest numbers, however, came from areas like the Department of Homeland Security, the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and the Office of Personnel Management. In the past, the feds produced nearly all the salaries from these agencies.

These redactions didn’t blackout secret positions at the CIA or other intelligence agencies (we didn’t even ask for those) – but rather staffers employed by non-secret agencies. They include 51,000 “compliance inspectors and support staff” who work for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

In other words, many of the employees whose salaries are being kept secret are TSA agents performing airport baggage screenings and pat-downs. Disclosing these salaries – or any of the others – doesn’t trigger national security concerns.

Here’s a sample of other positions with hidden salaries: 13,000 Internal Revenue Service agents and officers; 7,500 miscellaneous program administrators, clerks, and assistants; 5,800 lawyers; and 1,500 information technology managers.

The feds redacted salaries even in more innocuous positions: 267 student trainees at assorted agencies, 92 public affairs officers and 62 photographers.

We strongly believe that transparency in government is crucial – especially at agencies where performance and hiring priorities have come under scrutiny.

This year, more than 6,600 salaries were redacted at the often-stumbling Department of Veterans Affairs. Over the past few years, just one in 10 of newly added VA positions were actually doctors. In Fiscal Year 2017, just 6 percent of the VA’s 8,727 new hires were doctors – according to the data not blacked out.

Less transparency means less government accountability. These redactions hinder your ability to examine the salaries of civil servants in your own neighborhood. Over the past two years, we literally mapped the bureaucratic swamp by ZIP code, pinning all federal disclosed bureaucrats by employer location on our interactive map for Fiscal Year 2016.  

Not this year. We can’t map what we can’t see.

Who made the call to redact these salaries, at a time when President Trump has been calling for a downsized federal workforce and a greater emphasis on performance?

It wasn’t a Trump appointee. The president doesn’t yet have an executive nominee in place at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), where the salary numbers reside. Acting OPM Director Kathleen McGettigan, a 25-year staffer, heads up the office because she was next in line – not because the White House appointed her.

In their closing letter to our salary request, OPM made no legal argument in passing along the abbreviated information to us. Only after we asked the agency about the missing information did a representative issue a response.

In essence, it said the government wouldn’t release the information because it was, well, too local. As the reply put it, in far too many words:

“On an ongoing basis, OPM reviews its methods for creating data files to ensure consistency with its Data Release Policy governing the release of records related to federal employees in positions or agencies that require location information to be redacted. Because the Adjusted Basic Salary field (in those records) contains locality pay, OPM recently began redacting this information for certain classes of employees, hence the drop that your IT department noticed.”

This didn’t make much sense, so we asked again. You can read the agency’s next attempt at a response via its spokesperson here.

Last December, we showcased the bureaucracy President Trump inherited: 1.97 million Civil Service employees costing about $137 billion a year (including the U.S. Post Office). That expense worked out to $1.1 million per minute.

We also found a 165 percent growth in bureaucrats making $200,000 or more; 30,000 rank-and-file employees out-earning all 50 governors at $190,000; and the average salary at 78 agencies exceeding $100,000.

Now, with its newly minted excuses, the bureaucracy itself is trying to fight back against open government. We don’t think taxpayers, legislators or the president should allow them to get away with it.

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Adam Andrzejewski is the CEO & founder of OpenTheBooks.com, a non-profit, nonpartisan government financial watchdog group.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/2CCqC1b Tyler Durden

AR-15, Grenades, Tactical Vest Found At Home Of Teen Who Took Gun To Maryland High School

The 18-year-old Maryland high school student accused of taking a loaded handgun and knife to school in Montgomery County, Maryland, last week, had a weapons cache at his home, including an AR-15-style rifle, multiple grenades, a detonator for C4 land mines, more guns, tactical vest, and a list of grievances, prosecutors said. The incident occurred one day after the mass school shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in South Florida which left 17 children dead.

On Tuesday afternoon, Alwin Chen appeared at a Montgomery County District Court via closed-circuit television (CCTV) wearing glasses and a green jail jumpsuit. A judge ordered Chen, of Germantown, Maryland, to be held without bond, and ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.

Chen was arrested after a school resource officer received information that he was concealing a loaded handgun in his AP Psychology class Thursday afternoon. Prosecutors also said he had a “list of grievances” in his possession at the time of the arrest.

“The list of grievances against students and school, possibly a motive for why he was going to use the gun,” assistant state’s attorney Frank Lazzaro asserted in open court. “This is about as dangerous of a situation that the court could possibly imagine.”

According to WJLA, an ABC-affiliated television station licensed to the District of Columbia, Chen told authorities his reasoning for the concealed loaded handgun was for “target practice” after school, but later changed his story and explained the weapon was for protection against bullies.

During police questioning, authorities say Chen changed his story. He initially stated he was going to “target practice” after school let out, but then explained he brought the two weapons to class for protective purposes because students had been harassing and bullying him.

Prosecutors also divulged that Chen had taken a gun to school on at least one prior occasion. However, they would not elaborate about when that offense occurred -or- if that information came to light before or after Chen’s arrest.

Later in the evening, a search warrant was served in Germantown, Maryland, where Chen lived with his parents.  Montgomery County Police were shocked when they found the following items:

  • Two rifles, two handguns, shotgun,
  • Ammunition
  • Inert grenades
  • Ballistic vest
  • Replica electrical firing device (referred to as a clacker) – NOTE: In open court, an officer stated they seized a “detonator for a C-4 land mine.” That appears to have been an incorrect statement.
  • Journal, which reportedly made no “threat nor any expression of wanting to cause harm to anyone at the school.” NOTE: This journal appears to be different than the “list of grievances” prosecutors repeatedly mentioned in court.

“He had written down a list of grievances and reasons why he brought the gun to school with him,” Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy stated Tuesday at the base of the courthouse steps. “He indicated that he had some difficulties with some other students in school, and because of those difficulties, he brought that gun to school.”

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A Facebook post written by a Florida “Teacher of the Year” for the 2017-2018 academic year has received more than 740k shares because it places the blame for mass shootings not on guns, but on modern American culture.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/2sRc9zd Tyler Durden

Head Of Ford North America “Leaving Immediately” For “Inappropriate Behavior”

In an announcement that, in many ways, mirrors the sudden departure of former Lululemon Chairman and CEO Laurent Potdevin earlier this month, Ford announced late Wednesday that Raj Nair, an executive vice president and the president of Ford North America, would be leaving “effective immediately” due to unspecified reports of “inappropriate behavior.”

Ford

An internal review determined that certain behavior by Nair was “inconsistent” with Ford’s code of conduct.

“We made this decision after a thorough review and careful consideration,” said Ford President and CEO Jim Hackett. “Ford is deeply committed to providing and nurturing a safe and respectful culture and we expect our leaders to fully uphold these values.”

Nair said he “sincerely regrets” his actions…

Said Nair: “I sincerely regret that there have been instances where I have not exhibited leadership behaviors consistent with the principles that the Company and I have always espoused. I continue to have the utmost faith in the people of Ford Motor Company and wish them continued success in the future.”

Nair has been president of Ford North America since June 1. Prior to that, he served as Ford’s head of global product development and chief technical officer.

A successor for Nair has not yet been named.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/2sN22vb Tyler Durden