Tag: finance

“I can’t even think about how much money I just paid in interest,” 44 year old Jamie Johnson said, thinking back to a payday loan he took out in April 2020.

His $5,000 loan – which eventually accrued interest at a clip of up to 589% annualized – was the topic of a new Bloomberg article on payday and predatory lending.

“It was just a big mess,” Johnson said, telling Bloomberg he used pandemic-relief unemployment insurance checks of $965 each week to hurriedly help pay back the debt for fear of being trapped in a neverending cycle of compounding interest and fees.

It’s stories like his that are the driving force behind payday and other high interest loan companies “emerging from the pandemic stronger than perhaps ever before”. The lenders raked in record earnings while Americans suffered during the pandemic. 

Lauren Saunders, associate director at the National Consumer Law Center, a non-profit that advocates for low-income borrowers, said: “Debt collectors had a big year, and so did predatory lenders. The idea that any company could keep charging 100% or 200% interest or more during this time of crisis is really outrageous.”

Additionally, studies have shown these types of loans are disproportionately targeted to black and Latino communities. In Michigan, where Johnson is from, “areas that are more than a quarter Black and Latino have 7.6 payday stores for every 100,000 people, or about 50% more than elsewhere,” the report notes.

The irony is that it was the trillions in government stimulus that allowed these predatory companies to prosper. As we noted throughout 2020, many consumers used their stimulus to save and pay down debt. The New York Fed estimates about 33% of all cash received from stimulus checks was used to pay down debt. This equates directly to a boon for companies like Enova International Inc. and Elevate Credit Inc., who engage in these types of loans.

Moshe Orenbuch, an analyst at Credit Suisse Group AG, said: “Earnings were definitely higher than we would have expected because they benefited from an improvement in the credit environment. Consumers tended to pay back debt with funds they were given by the government.”

Kimberly Richardson found herself in an equally ugly scenario: she fell into a debt trap that caused her to go from borrowing $1,500 to bankruptcy. Interest on her $1,500 loan was accumulating at a rate of 276% and she was prompted by her loan provider to take additional borrowings under her credit line. She paid CashNetUSA more than $10,000 on the $1,500 loan and then filed for bankruptcy.

Elevate told Bloomberg “it is committed to serving those with non-prime credit scores who are locked out of traditional financial products.” Enova told Bloomberg “its policy is to provide customers with flexibility and to help them be successful with their loan.”

The kicker is that the National Consumer Law Center had urged Congress to cap these types of rates after Covid-19 was declared a pandemic. But just the opposite happened: in July 2020, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau “repealed substantial portions of a 2017 rule that would have required lenders to determine consumers’ ability to repay loans.”

This rule could have wiped out as much as 68% of the industry’s revenue from payday loans.

Now, more than 12 states have caps limiting payday loans to 36% or less. Michigan and Tennessee remain excluded from this list, however.

And while there are some indications that the Biden administration may try to reverse course and regulate these loans further, the reality is that companies like Enova are once again licking their chops at a post-Covid boom.

Enova Chief Executive Officer David Fisher said on an April conference call: “As the economy opens back up, we believe that consumers will raise their spending potentially to elevated levels due to increased activity and pent-up demand. We saw the same dynamic following the financial crisis, which led to strong origination growth in 2010 and 2011.”

Authored by Art Carden via The American Institute for Economic Research,

The hits just keep coming. First, lumber prices exploded. Second, there was a terrible jobs report. Third, there was a gas shortage. These are all SAD stories–Supply And Demand. They are also, of course, stories about adaptation, adjustment, resilience, and unintended consequences.

First, consider the lumber market. As my AIER colleague Peter C. Earle points out, lumber prices at the beginning of May 2021 were about six-and-a-half times what they were at the beginning of April 2020. On the supply side of the lumber market, lockdowns have limited production. In August, the Financial Post reported that “A plague of tiny mountain pine beetles…has already destroyed 15 years of log supplies in British Columbia, enough trees to build 9 million single-family homes.” Good, old-fashioned protectionism is at play, as well, but the Wall Street Journal reports that tariffs and trade restrictions on Canadian lumber don’t play that large a role.

On the demand side, the US is in the middle of another housing and construction boom. Zillow is calling it “The Great Reshuffling” and reports that about 11% of Americans “have already moved during the pandemic.” My family is among them: we moved this past fall in search of more space, home office space in particular. Not long after moving, we added stairs to our back deck in no small part because we expect to be spending more of our time with friends outdoors. Moving, new building, and remodeling is being driven at least in part by low interest rates–we knocked our rate down from 3.75% to 2.49% when we moved–and, I suspect, aggressive Fed purchases of mortgage-backed securities during the pandemic. The Fed has added about $800 billion in mortgage-backed securities to their holdings since March 11, 2020:

It will be a while before people have done the empirical work that will untangle and measure the contributions of these different causes, but at a fundamental level, it’s a Supply And Demand story. The massive increase in lumber prices, of course, has some people worried, but as Thomas Sowell constantly reminds people, “There are no solutions. Only trade-offs.” People adjust to the new reality by making incremental substitutions that might not be terribly revolutionary or that might not be especially easy to see but that still reflect exactly how people respond to the signals they are getting from rising prices. High lumber prices say “Are you sure you need to do that project right now?” Sometimes, the answer is yes and other times the answer is no. We considered buying lumber and building a doghouse, but at current prices, we’re going to delay that project for a while.

Second, there is the labor market. The rhetorical battle is between people outraged by the laziness and moral failings of people who “don’t want to work anymore” and people outraged by the rapacity and callousness of people who expect others to go back to work for low wages. Maybe it is a sudden explosion of laziness. Maybe it is a sudden development of class consciousness that finally has us on the brink of Solidarity Forever.

Or maybe it’s a change in people’s incentives–specifically, the extension of high unemployment benefits. As David R. Henderson points out, “Paying people an extra $400 a week as long as they’re unemployed is a bad idea.” In a post for EconLog, Henderson notes that he got this wrong–”it’s ‘only’ $300,” but with these extra benefits, it shouldn’t be surprising that people aren’t jumping at employment opportunities. In his article on unemployment in the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, Lawrence Summers explains:

“…government assistance programs contribute to long-term unemployment…by providing an incentive, and the means, not to work. Each unemployed person has a ‘reservation wage’–the minimum wage he or she insists on getting before accepting a job. Unemployment insurance and other social assistance programs increase that reservation wage, causing an unemployed person to remain unemployed longer.” 

Why? A sign at a local fast food place advertises starting wages of $11 per hour. That doesn’t sound like much, but two people each working 35 hours per week at that rate would have a household income of $40,040. That’s about 80% of the Alabama median household income of about $50,000 and well above the federal poverty guideline of $26,500 for a family of 4.

According to this unofficial unemployment benefits calculator, someone in Alabama who earned $20,020 by working in fast food would, upon becoming unemployed, be eligible for $193 per week in unemployment benefits for 20 weeks. If you add to that the additional $300 per week in the new stimulus bill, you get $493 per week. Is it any surprise that fewer people want to work 40 hours a week at $11 an hour when they could take home about $50 a week more than that by remaining unemployed?

Scott Sumner offers an interesting hypothesis: “Because millions of unemployed workers in low pay service sector jobs earn more on unemployment than they did on their previous jobs, and because most of those jobs are unpleasant, employment will likely remain quite depressed all summer, before bouncing back in the fall.” Alabama is ending the payments on June 19, but that’s still more than a month from this writing of reservation wages propped up by high unemployment benefits.

Third, a cyberattack shut down an oil pipeline. This led to panic buying at gas stations, a tweet from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission saying, “Do not fill plastic bags with gasoline,” the usual social media hand-wringing about people panic-buying gasoline and storing it stupidly, and, of course, the usual sabre-rattling about “price gouging,” which I’ve previously called “knowledge embargoes.”

Once again, supply and demand does the explanatory work–and if we had left the mechanism alone and let prices rise after the pipeline shutdown, we wouldn’t have had the mess we were in (or, it must be admitted, the entertaining memes). People who don’t pay attention to current events would get the message that they need to conserve gas pretty quickly, and we wouldn’t be dealing with shortages. It’s a minor inconvenience, but when your gas light comes on (as mine did the other day), it’s cold comfort to pull into a gas station and discover that there is no gas at $2.89 a gallon rather than some gas at $5 a gallon. A station across the street had gas, fortunately–but they had run out of premium (which I don’t need for my Toyota Corolla) and customers were limited to $20 purchases. As economists emphasize whenever price gouging rules kick in, ignoring what supply and demand analysis has to teach us usually means making the problem worse rather than better.

An apparently apocryphal curse says “May you live in interesting times.” Alas, we do. We needn’t be confused, however. I tell my students that I love economics because it gives me a simple set of tools that makes a lot of sense out of seemingly-disparate situations. Are we wondering what is going on with lumber? It’s a SAD story. Labor? Also a SAD story. Gas? Another SAD story made genuinely sad by politicians ignoring the story’s lesson. While I wish I could say “They’ll know better next time,” it saddens me to say “They won’t.”

Angry that Japan has yet to respond directly to the concerns of the international community, China again urged Japan on Monday to face up to its responsibility and refrain from “wantonly” disposing the radioactive, polluted Fukushima water before reaching consensus with all stakeholders and international agencies through consultations.

China Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian made the remarks at a daily news briefing when asked to comment on Seoul’s request to the International Maritime Organization (IMO) calling for exploring ways to cooperate with the UN nuclear watchdog to ensure safety in Japan’s planned release of Fukushima nuclear polluted water.

Zhao expressed China’s understanding and support for the South Korean side’s actions, saying the international community as well as within Japan have expressed deep concern and opposition over the past month after Japan announced its decision.

And in the most harshly worded indication that China will not stand idly by as Tokyo releases 1 million tons of radioactive Fukushima water into the Pacific, Zhao said that “Regrettably, the Japanese government has turned a deaf ear to the protests from many governments, international organizations, environmental groups and people in various countries and has to date refused to respond directly to the concerns of the international community.”

He reiterated that Japan’s decision to dump the nuclear polluted water into the sea will endanger the global marine environment and international public health and safety.

The spokesperson stressed that Japan’s move lacks transparency and is irresponsible, adding that its attempts would only serve its own selfish gains while leaving the international community and future generations with endless problems.

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

During a White House press briefing, a PBS journalist suggested that ending mask mandates was racist.

Yes, really.

Last week, the CDC disappointed face diaper extremists by lifting restrictions on mask wearing in numerous settings.

This prompted a massive backlash from those who have adopted the face covering as a kind of cult symbol, with a PBS journalist attempting to argue that not masking up will lead to the deaths of more black people.

“The CDC guidelines on masks is putting front line workers and especially people of color at risk and they’re calling for the CDC to reverse that, what’s the White House’s stance on…people of color (being) at risk,” said the journalist.

Leftists continue to be infuriated that mask mandates are ending because for the past year, they’ve been able to use them as a justification to ostracize and publicly shame conservatives, while the entire time claiming masks “aren’t political.”

Despite the CDC’s advice, authorities throughout liberal states are refusing to fully lift the mandates while zealots like AOC are insisting they will continue to mask up.

Meanwhile, two months after lifting its mask mandate, Texas recorded zero COVID deaths, the first time that has happened since data began to be collected.

Today Texas reported:

* 0 Covid related deaths–the only time that’s happened since data was tracked in March, 2020.

* the fewest Covid cases in over 13 months

* the lowest 7-day Covid positivity rate ever

* the lowest Covid hospitalizations in 11 months.

Thanks, Texans!

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) May 17, 2021

Even after the pandemic ends, those who have cemented mask wearing as a signal of virtue, compliance and political obedience will fight tooth and nail to keep the mandates in place under any flimsy justification.

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Not even being former Treasury Secretary of the United States can help your real estate appreciate in Manhattan right now, as Steven Mnuchin just found out the hard way.

Mnuchin just sold his Manhattan co-op for a “deep discount”, according to Bloomberg, reportedly suffering a 21% price reduction before finding a buyer for his duplex at 740 Park Ave. 

The five bedroom property was originally listed at $32.5 million in September of 2018 and finally just sold after being listed for $25.75 million. It marks the most expensive co-op to sell in Manhattan over the last 18 months. The final sale price will be recorded with the city in coming months. 

Co-ops like Mnuchin’s have been difficult to sell recently – not only because they are “old school” in the face of brand new high-end luxury condo skyrises – but also as many residents with deep pockets, including many businesses, have left New York in favor of red-leaning, tax friendly states, like Florida. 

Co-op owners get shares in a corporation that owns the building and don’t hold deeds to their specific units. Boards of the building can approve or deny buyers and have full say over all aspects of managing the building’s residents. 

Luxury condos have been “outselling co-ops nearly every year for a decade”, data from broker Olshan shows. Their data also shows that through April 25, 2021, there were 406 deals for condos listed at $4 million or more, compared to just 108 co-op purchases in the same category. 

And despite the “prestige” of 740 Park Ave., it hasn’t been spared from the trend. 

Real Vision senior editor Ash Bennington welcomes Tony Greer of TG Macro for a live Daily Briefing to analyze the tape and provide an update on his thoughts concerning the direction of inflation and the commodities trade. Greer touches on metals and mining as well as oil and discusses how likely it will be that inflation will become transitory based on last week’s CPI print.

Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

“The Truth, when you finally chase it down, is almost always far worse than your darkest visions and fears.” ~ Hunter S. Thompson

I think Hunter S. Thompson is being proven right by revelations becoming obvious daily. I’m a natural skeptic, so I rarely believe anything I’m told without verifying facts, analyzing data and understanding the motivation of those making declarations and assertions.

For most of my life I thought I generally understood how the world worked.

Doubts about my understanding began to creep into my mind between 2000 and 2008, as I watched my government cover-up the truth about 9-11, use it to institute an Orwellian surveillance state through the Patriot Act, invade Iraq based upon a false narrative of WMD and links to 9/11, and watching those controlling the Federal Reserve create the dot.com bubble and follow it up with a housing bubble – all done to benefit Wall Street banks, billionaires, connected politicians, and Deep State apparatchiks.

The national debt was $5.6 trillion in 2000, the budget was as close to balanced as it had been in decades, the defense budget ($300 billion) was at decades low as there was no major conflicts in the world, and term limits were still a legitimately discussed election issue. If someone was told on January 1, 2000 that in 2021 the national debt was going to hit $30 trillion, with annual deficits of $3 to $4 trillion, a defense budget of $750 billion as war looms on the near-term horizon, and all semblance of governing through legislation to benefit the citizenry had dissipated, they would have laughed, accused you of being a conspiracy nutjob, and said the nation would be a hyperinflationary banana republic with 50% interest rates if any of that came to pass. The truth is always far worse than your darkest visions and fears.

What has occurred in the last year has befuddled me, as the level of treachery, deception, disinformation, and false narratives has reached excessive elevations, indicating a sense of urgency and desperation by those wielding power over society. It has been depressing and frustrating to witness the level of obedient compliance by the majority of frightened sheep in this country, with complete subservience to authoritarian dictates of their overlords.

The extremeness of the response to a bad annual flu virus leads me to believe the truth behind what has happened and is happening is far worse than most can conceive or comprehend. The level of pure malevolence and disregard for humanity exhibited by the despots wielding power over our political, economic, medical, and social structures has pushed the country to the edge of civil chaos, calculated political pandemonium, global conflict, and unavoidable debt manufactured financial collapse.

Sometimes I find myself wondering whether I’m the crazy one for not believing a piece of cloth will protect me from catching a flu virus with a 99.8% survival rate, or not voluntarily allowing a Big Pharma corporation, with no liability for the consequences of its experimental gene therapy, to treat me as their animal test subject to increase my survival chances to 99.85%, or questioning why I need to wear a face diaper because I can catch the virus while walking to my restaurant table but not once I sit down, or why six foot distancing is safe but 5 foot distancing is dangerous. Why are the predictions of doom by “experts”, which never come true, overlooked and disregarded by the corporate fake news media?

Why did Dementia Joe call the governors of Texas, Florida, and Mississippi Neanderthals six weeks ago for ending mask mandates and this week he ended the mask mandate for the entire country? I thought he followed the science. But it appears raging inflation, a terrible jobs report due to his policy of paying people not to work, a hemorrhaging border crisis, gas pipelines proving to be somewhat important, the Middle East exploding, and his woke executive order agenda being ridiculed on a daily basis, convinced Joe’s handlers to distract from his 100 days of disaster by reversing the ridiculous Covid restrictions and sending the Covid cult into convulsions of fury.

Their pathetic lives of mask virtue signaling, twitter haranguing, and vaccination shaming are about to be invalidated, as a return to normalcy will relegate the Biden brigade to their previous status of inconsequential drones on Facebook posting pictures of their nine cats.

What little faith I had in humanity after this past year of cowardly compliant obedience to totalitarian governmental dictates and proclamations, was fully extinguished this weekend while making an early morning stop at Wal-Mart. The Biden administration’s sudden reversal on masks, after fear mongering and preaching doom for months, immediately led to Trader Joe’s, Costco and Wal-Mart announcing no more masks required to enter their stores, with an unenforceable caveat about being vaccinated. After a year of mask mandates, I pondered whether I should enter the Wal-Mart like this fine gentleman.

But I just sauntered in like everyone else, expecting to see dozens of other unmasked Americans breathing fresh air, thankful to be free of those disgusting face diapers which have done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to reduce the spread of this over-hyped annual flu with a scary name and largest marketing campaign in history. Instead, I witnessed dozens of masked sheep still following orders even after those orders had been rescinded by their self-appointed science shepherds.

An overwhelming feeling of disgust swept over me, as I only witnessed two other sensible human beings out of the hundred or so roaming the aisles. My disappointment with the vast majority of citizens in this country has now reached all-time lows. I am chalking it up to a new version of PTSD, in the era of covid hysteria, PMSD (Post-Mask Stress Disorder). A large portion of the populace have developed a mental illness, purposely provoked by their own lying government and authoritarian politicians. This entire scam has been a lesson in abuse, fear propaganda, lies, false appeals to science, and censorship of the truth.

There are now millions of sheep who do not know how to readjust to reality and lose the masks, which convinced them they were brave, noble and “in this together”. Trying to use facts and reason to convince these people masks never worked and their chances of dying from this flu were no higher than the annual flu is a useless endeavor. The Covid Cult cannot let go of their mask virtue signaling because they will lose that feeling of superiority and arrogance towards the unmasked masses.

The loss of this covid cudgel is being rapidly substituted with these Big Pharma multi-billion-dollar profit generating experimental gene therapies, disguised as vaccines. They desperately want to condescendingly force the jab upon everyone and force vaccine passports upon the masses as their new virtue signaling badge of compliant obedience. After spending tens of billions of your tax dollars on a vaccine marketing campaign, employing famous athletes, Hollywood influencers, medical “experts”, and non-stop TV commercials, only 37% of the American population is fully vaccinated. It has been a gigantic FAIL.

Everyone who wanted to be vaccinated, is vaccinated. They have resorted to cash payments, million-dollar lottery prizes, free donuts, free burgers & fries, and a multitude of other bribes to get the jab. Now they are falling back on the totalitarian methods used during the lockdown. Get the jab or wear a mask forever threatens Dementia Joe. Colluding with corporations and schools to force employees and children to get the jab. Threatening to impose vaccine passports to travel, enter sports and concert arenas, and to generally cancel the non-vaccinated. It is failing.

With only 37% of the public sheeplike enough to get the jab, any “woke” business that continues to invoke mask mandates or require proof of vaccination will find their profits dissipate faster than Trump’s lead in swing states at 3:00 am. If you were to believe the fake news media and government drones, you would believe the majority have been vaccinated and the “anti-vaxxers” were a crazy conspiracy theorist minority. As with most things being fed to you daily, this is a big fat lie. The rational, resistant (not hesitant), critical thinking MAJORITY are done with this scamdemic. Biden and his handlers are being forced to throw in the towel, for now.

The propaganda press polluters of the truth are still selling a completely false narrative about the vaccines being the reason cases, hospitalizations and deaths have plummeted since January 1 of this year. The excess mortality rate in the country is now back below the averages from 2015 – 2019. The crash in death rates occurred while less than 15% of the population had been vaccinated. The bloviating about needing 70% of the population vaccinated to stop the pandemic is complete and utter bullshit.

Masks never protected anyone from infection and the vaccine is unnecessary to resume normal life. This flu follows the same infection pattern as the annual flu (which mysteriously disappeared from the globe in 2020-21) and has run its course. Vaccine rates per state are showing ZERO impact on the downward trend of cases and deaths. They are falling and have been falling with or without the vaccine.

The India variant and “surge” fear mongering has fallen on deaf ears as their death rate per 100,000 is only a fraction of the U.S. and U.K. These propaganda tactics have worn out their welcome. Very few are believing the feckless mainstream media miscreants. Their ratings are lower than whale shit.

No matter how hard they try to reinstall the fear, enough people are tired of this farce to derail further attempts at lockdowns, mask mandates and vaccine passport requirements. Every day with declining cases, vaccination rates, and deaths makes it harder for the Covidian cult medical tyrants to pretend there is a national emergency. Their sense of desperation is palpable. This sense of desperation is seen in their attempt to force this experimental therapy on children and their complete lack of concern or acknowledgement of the hundreds of thousands of adverse reactions and thousands of deaths attributed to their gene therapy experiments on human guinea pigs.

These medical experts and doctors seem to have forgotten the first rule of their Hippocratic Oath – DO NO HARM. More likely, they sold their souls to Big Pharma for big bucks. The science says 1 in 300,000 of children under 18 will die from Covid but based on actual data 3 in 300,000 will die from the vaccine. They are pushing these vaccines on children for profits, not for health reasons. Always follow the money.

I believe Solzhenitsyn’s famous quote about “how we burned in the camps later” regarding what would have happened if they resisted and killed their oppressors when they had the chance will be restated years from now when the long-term consequences of these experimental gene concoctions are felt by the children forced to participate in this evil experiment. If we had only resisted.

This is communism in a new repackaged marketing campaign, where Bernays’ propaganda techniques have been perfected through technological mind manipulation by Big Government conspiring with Big Tech and Big Business. The tripe of political correctness, wokeism, anti-racism, cancel culture, and fear of the annual flu has been taken to a level never seen before. Theodore Dalrymple captures the essence of this new communism.

“Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.” ― Theodore Dalrymple

Dalrymple is correct in pointing out how these modern communists use humiliation and shaming to ram their false narratives and authoritarian agendas down our throats through the power of fake news media and the Silicon Valley social media censorship tyrants. They blatantly flog provably false narratives through their media mouthpieces, disguised as impartial journalists, medical experts, university professors, and anyone the masses might look up to. Those who knowingly assent to these obvious lies have become just as evil as those telling the lies.

The lies have been piled high in the last year as the annual flu was weaponized to cover-up the disintegration of our financial system and as a means to fraudulently conduct a coup against a president; the deaths of two black law breakers were utilized to usher in the colossal lie of systematic racism bought into by woke corporations and college campuses across the world; a clearly stolen election was declared honest by those controlling the narrative; lockdowns and masks were pronounced to be the only way to slow the spread even though all data refutes those assertions; an armed insurrection (with no arms) lie on January 6 has been used to wall off Washington DC and sell the big lie of white supremacy being a threat to the republic; the Federal Reserve creating trillions out of thin air and pumping it into the pockets of billionaires and Wall Street fat cats has not created raging inflation and an all-time high in wealth inequality according to the talking heads on CNBC and the rest of the fake news media complex; emergency use authorized vaccines were the only solution to a flu that doesn’t kill 99.8% of those infected, even though ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine have proven to be effective and safe in combating covid; and lastly these vaccines have been declared safe even though they are killing and maiming thousands and no one knows the long term effects on those who have chosen to be their lab rats.

We have become a society of emasculated liars, purposely deceiving ourselves because we are too cowardly to admit we have been had by those ruling over us with an iron fist. As a society we have decided resistance is futile and if we go along to get along, we will still be allowed to subsist, play with our techno-gadgets, and be sent stimmy checks, welfare payments, and be granted the ability to pay for stuff we cannot afford on credit. The willfully ignorant have chosen to become debt slaves and obey their masters, rather than resist tyranny and demand their independence from this dystopian nightmare we are currently living under.

We continue to elect corrupt politicians and willingly follow the orders of traitors, crooks, and despots, so we have become collaborators, rather than casualties. As a society we do not want the responsibility of freedom and have gladly exchanged our liberties for the illusory chimera of security. Those controlling the levers of power have taken advantage of this cowardly trait to abscond with the nation’s wealth and keep the masses in constant fear of new bogeymen (terrorists, white supremacists, flu viruses, and now aliens).

As I observe what is happening over the last week or so, I fall back on the words of the patron saint of sanity in a world gone mad.

Everything our government tells us every day is a lie. Biden’s sudden reversal on masks, supposedly based on science, is a lie. The story about the DarkSide Russian hackers shutting down the Colonial pipeline is a lie. It is just as likely it was done by the CIA. If a pipeline can be hacked then voting machines can be hacked, but they continue to lie about that. Anyone with critical thinking skills knows this virus came from a Wuhan bio-lab, which was funded by Fauci to develop these gain of function viruses. Fauci lied to Congress and has lied to the American public since February 2020 about masks, lockdowns, risks, and vaccines. They are lying about vaccine effectiveness and risks.

Every time Jerome Powell or one of his Fed cronies opens their mouth, they are lying. Anyone with any financial acumen knows stock, bond, crypto, housing, and virtually all markets are experiencing the biggest bubble in world history, but the financial “experts” tell you to buy before it is too late. They are lying because they are paid handsomely to do so. Lies about the selfie insurrection in the Capitol continue unabated. Biden and his handlers have been lying about their man made purposeful border crisis. Lies about Dominion voting machines and rigged election results are perpetrated by the paid hacks on CNN, MSNBC and even Fox, every day. The lies will continue until morale improves, or the ruling class can abscond with another trillion or so.

This pandemic is over. It has served its purpose to those in power. Biden is now playing the part of President Snow in Hunger Games by giving the plebs a little hope. Dangling the return to relative normalcy in exchange for being jabbed with their DNA altering cocktail is the latest narrative being peddled to the sheep. Many have or will make that trade. But, as of now, the majority are not falling for it. My hope is the spark is not contained and that good men and women do not stand idly by while evil continues to flourish. It is time for decent human beings to stand up and be counted and not allow a darkness to settle upon this nation, ushered in by the likes of Gates, Schwab, Soros, Obama, Biden, Bloomberg and their ilk.

The ruling class would prefer a Hunger Games plot where they continue to pit groups against each other: blacks versus whites, masked versus un-masked, vaxxed versus unvaxxed, liberal versus conservative, men versus women, modestly rich versus poor, taxed versus untaxed, and neighbor against neighbor. They want us fighting each other so we do not realize they are the true enemy.

This entire plandemic was a test to see how far they could push us before we pushed back. As a nation, we failed the test miserably. They are loosening the reins for now, but they now know they can force the masses to cower and beg for safety and security. They are supremely confident they can easily manipulate the masses, based once again on using the Big Lie method.

Recent developments make me suspicious something big is happening and the narrative is going to take a dramatic turn. First the take down of Cuomo by a previously fawning press and now the man who bankrolled the pandemic, creepy Bill Gates, is in the process of being taken down over his relationship with the king of pedophilia – Jeffrey Epstein (who didn’t kill himself). Fauci is about to be thrown to the wolves over his funding of the Wuhan bio-weapon lab. All the pandemic superstars are being cast aside.

Why now? Crucial infrastructure is supposedly being hacked. War is breaking out in the Middle East. Saber rattling between China – Taiwan and Russia – Ukraine is provoking worries of global conflict. Raging commodity inflation, labor shortages, and financial markets giving signs of an imminent crash could be the trigger for the next leg down in this shitshow portion of the Fourth Turning. Something big is coming and I expect it will happen before the 2022 elections. If you thought the last year was bad, you ain’t seen nothing yet. But don’t worry, the planet will be fine.

“We’re so self-important. So arrogant. Everybody’s going to save something now. Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save the snails. And the supreme arrogance? Save the planet! Are these people kidding? Save the planet? We don’t even know how to take care of ourselves; we haven’t learned how to care for one another. We’re gonna save the fuckin’ planet? . . . And, by the way, there’s nothing wrong with the planet in the first place. The planet is fine. The people are fucked! Compared with the people, the planet is doin’ great. It’s been here over four billion years . . . The planet isn’t goin’ anywhere, folks. We are! We’re goin’ away. Pack your shit, we’re goin’ away. And we won’t leave much of a trace. Thank God for that. Nothing left. Maybe a little Styrofoam. The planet will be here, and we’ll be gone. Another failed mutation; another closed-end biological mistake.” ― George Carlin

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The corrupt establishment will do anything to suppress sites like the Burning Platform from revealing the truth. The corporate media does this by demonetizing sites like mine by blackballing the site from advertising revenue. If you get value from this site, please keep it running with a donation.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told Fox News the amount of fentanyl seized at the southwest border could kill everyone in New York. 

Abbott said US border agents intercepted a mindboggling 800% increase in fentanyl shipments in April versus the same time last year. 

“But I gotta tell you there’s a new dynamic about what’s going on at the border that Americans need to know about and that is increased apprehension of fentanyl coming across the border,” the governor said. Yes, there may be people coming across but there are dangerous drugs coming across the border.”

“We had almost an 800% increase April over April of the amount of fentanyl that has been apprehended by the Texas Department of Public Safety,” Abbott said, indicating that amount of fentanyl seized could “kill every single person in the state of New York.”

The governor bashed the Biden administration for their poor job at managing the crisis at the border. 

Readers may recall President Biden canceled U.S.-Mexico border wall construction – only to admit the southern US border is in a “crisis” – then the administration reinstated the US Army Corps of Engineers to continue building on a 13.4 mile stretch of border wall in the Rio Grande Valley. 

Seriously what a shitshow. 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued the Biden administration over alleged immigration law violations. He said his state is working to keep all Americans safe by apprehending illegal immigrants and stopping drugs from flowing onto city streets. 

“On the national level with regard to the Border Patrol, they apprehended last month—in the month of April, more than 170,000 people,” the governor said. “That is a tenfold increase over the prior April where they apprehended about 17,000 people.”

While Abbott is combating drug traffickers as much as he can even though the Biden administration appears clueless about the severity of the border crisis but maybe as of late is beginning to realize the shitshow, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) posted some troubling opioid overdose deaths showing a drastic increase countrywide since the virus pandemic began in March 2020.

Texas is doing as much as it can to combat drug traffickers and illegal immigrants. It’s time the Biden administration get serious about the crisis at the border. 

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

There is an extraordinary column in the Washington Post from Glenn Kessler on a key figures in past coverage on the removal of Confederate statues. The Post ran a widely cited article on how Robert E. Lee’s own descendant wanted the general’s statues to be removed.

The problem is that no one at the Post appears to have actually checked to see if Rev. Robert W. Lee was an actual descendant. It now appears that he is not, according to Kessler. While Kessler strangely does not believe this wants his signature “Pinocchios,”  he should be credited for doing something that no one in the media seemed inclined to do: confirm the story, even belatedly.

It was, as the old journalistic saying goes, “a fact too good to check.”

Kessler is rebounding from a controversy over what many viewed as a “hit job” that he wrote on Sen. Tim Scott (R., S.C.) in which he suggested that Scott had lied about this family history. Despite an accusatory headline, Kessler actually found nothing that refuted Scott’s “from cotton to Congress” account.  This family claim by Rev. Lee may have been entirely fabricated and certainly was made without clear factual basis.

Rev. Lee was lionized by the Post and other media after he denounced Gen. Lee at the MTV Video Music Awards.

“My name is Robert Lee the Fourth. I am a descendent of Robert E. Lee, the Civil War general whose statue was at the center of violence in Charlottesville. We have made my ancestor an idol of white supremacy, racism and hate. As a pastor, it is my moral duty to speak out against racism, America’s original sin. Today, I call on everyone with privilege and power to answer God’s call to confront racism and white supremacy head-on.”

The media could not get enough of the image and Rev. Lee fueled the frenzy. In an opinion article in The Washington Post, June 7, 2020, Rev. Lee was identified as “Plaintiff Reverend Robert Wright Lee IV (“Lee”) is a white resident of Iredell County. Lee is the fourth great-nephew of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.”

Even lawyers took the claim at face value in what could be viewed as an even more serious breach. In a lawsuit seeking removal of a Confederate statue, filed in Iredell County, the court was told “Plaintiff Reverend Robert Wright Lee IV (“Lee”) is a white resident of Iredell County. Lee is the fourth great-nephew of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.”  Lawyers are not allowed to make such representations to the Court without a good-faith basis, particularly on the background of a key party. Lee is prominently featured as the second named Plaintiff in the lawsuit.

The Post has found no evidence that Rev. Lee is in any way related to Gen. Lee.  He may be just a guy named Lee.

Editor’s note: In a May 14 Fact Checker column, Glenn Kessler reported that a search of genealogical records had found no evidence that the Rev. Robert W. Lee IV, author of this column, is descended from the family of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. In response to a subsequent inquiry from Post Opinions, Lee stood by his claim to be a descendant but was unable to provide any supporting evidence. He said documents that would support his claim are in the possession of another family member and that he no longer has access to them.

Robert W. Lee IV is the pastor of Unifour Church and author of the book “A Sin by Any Other Name: Reckoning With Racism and the Heritage of the South.”

Kessler noted that “the Rev. Robert W. Lee IV has, since 2016 “parlayed his ancestry on behalf of what many may regard as a noble cause” — not to mention parlayed to international notoriety.

What is interesting is that Rev. Lee does not contest that he has been falsely claiming the distinction. He issued a statement on Sunday that notably did not contest the findings or, more importantly, supplied any proof of his earlier claims. Instead, he cites his own credentials as an anti-racism activist:

“My mission and ministry has been confronting white supremacy as a sin. Regardless of whether you believe me or the article, the fact remains that either lineage participated and profited from racism and slavery. That ends with me.”

What was more curious is Rev. Lee previously harrumphing at the notion that anyone in the media was focusing on whether his claim of being a descendant was actually true: “Why the Post is so focused on my heritage and lineage while not focusing on the issues of the statue at hand is beyond me.”

pic.twitter.com/rmkBkXnkkm

— Rev. Rob Lee (@roblee4) May 16, 2021

It was certainly beyond most in the media who were only interested in using the image of a Lee descendant to support the removal of statue regardless of the truth of the matter. Rev. Lee used his claim to elevate his voice above others and add the support of a Lee family member to the cause of removing these statues. He then expressed surprise that anyone is interested in confirming if he misled millions on this claim.

The appeal of using a descendent to make such demands is obvious. The media did the same thing with a descendent of Thomas Jefferson.  The suggestion is that, if the family does not support these figures, only racists would fight to preserve statues.  The effort is to cut short a needed debate over how to describe what statues should be removed and what should be retained.

I have been writing and speaking for years about the movement to remove statues that range from confederate leaders to Columbus to Supreme Court justices to Founders (here  and here and here and here). I specifically  wrote about the call for the removal of monuments to George Washington and others as the list lengthens of figures to be cleansed from public historical displays.

As I have previously written, there are statues that should be removed but it is important that such decisions are made collectively and with circumspection:

Two decades ago, I wrote a column calling for the Georgia legislature to take down its statue of Tom Watson, a white supremacist publisher and politician who fueled racist and antisemitic movements. Watson was best known for his hateful writings, including his opposition to save Leo Frank, a Jewish factory manager accused of raping and murdering a girl. Frank was taken from a jail and lynched by a mob enraged by such writings, including the declaration of Watson that “Frank belongs to the Jewish aristocracy, and it was determined by the rich Jews that no aristocrat of their race should die for the death of a working class Gentile.”

Yet today there is no room or time for such reasoned discourse, just destruction that often transcends any rationalization of history.

The parading of claimed distant relatives calling for removals is a powerful way to undermine arguments that we are wiping away our own history rather than presenting these figures in their proper context.

Rev. Lee knew that his views on the removal of statues was not nearly as important as his self-identity as a descendant of Gen. Lee.

Yet, the fact that he may not have any familial connection to the general is being dismissed by Lee and others. It was useful as a narrative at the time and served its purpose.

The fact that it may be “fake news” is barely worth a mention on most news sites that ran with the story.  It is an example of the corrosive effect of advocacy journalism. It comes at too high a price — in this case for both Rev. Lee and the media. As Gen. Lee noted “Never do a wrong thing to make a friend or keep one; the man who requires you to do so is dearly purchased at a sacrifice.”

When it comes to living in the US, New Jersey isn’t seen as the worst state of the bunch… but it’s close: according to a recent YouGov poll, the Garden State ranks 3rd from the bottom, only above Alabama and Mississippi (DC is not yet a state, but the Biden admin is doing everything in its power to change that).

To be sure, while much of this catastrophic reputation may be without merit, the state’s governor is doing everything in his power to make it more than justified. Starting with the state’s stern refusal to not follow the new CDC regulations (confirming yet again that masking was indeed all about posturing and politics from day one and not “the science”), and unlike neighboring NY which will fully lift its capacity restrictions on Wednesday when it lifts its mask mandate, NJ Gov Murphy has decided to make his own “science” and is keeping its indoor mask mandate in place indefinitely.

But while the mask mandate (we hope) is “transitory”, a far more credible reason why New Jersey will soon be the most loathed state in the union, and that’s because according to a new study from fintech company Self, residents of New Jersey will face the highest tax burdens over a lifetime: just shy of $1 million.

While New Jersey is emerging as the 9th circle of taxation hell, at the other end of the scale, West Virginians will pay the least over their lives, at $321,000, the study showed.

Those living in New Jersey will pay on average a grand total of $931,698, well above the $827,185 for Massachusetts residents and $805,213 for Connecticut. Nationwide, Americans will pay $525,037 over their lives, which includes taxes on income, property, cars and retail spending, Bloomberg reported.

Putting this historic burden in context, the average person will spend about one-third of their earnings on taxes, according to the study, which is based on the 2019 Consumer Expenditure Report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, although that hardly presupposes that the average Garden State resident will make $3 million; quite the contrary once the mass exodus from the most taxes state begins in earnest and all the wealthiest residents bail for more hospitable pastures.

But wait, it gets better: the payments, which aren’t adjusted for inflation, will be even higher once Joe Biden’s proposed tax increases get approved by Congress. And, as we reported earlier, Biden is also pressing for significant relief for lower-income and middle-class families, including an extended, stepped up child tax credit which will push up the taxes even higher.

Most of the lifetime tax bill, nearly two-thirds, is in the form of state and federal levies on income. Auto taxes cost an average of $29,521 over the years. Californians and New Yorkers will pay the most in sales taxes, roughly $40,000, over their lifetimes.