Tag: finance

Authored by Jezzamine Wolk via CampusReform.org,

Amid a nationwide movement to remove statues, symbols, and words in the name of inclusion, Campus Reform rounded up recent examples of words that have been banned on college campuses.

1. MSU eliminates the terms ‘foreign’ and ‘alien’

Michigan State University announced it would no longer use the terms “foreign” and “alien” in order to create a more inclusive environment. In October, Provost Teresa Woodruff addressed the Associated Students of MSU general assembly to announce the new “non-pejorative” language. Woodruff stated that moving forward, international students should be referred to as “non-domestic” or “international” to help “create a culture of not us vs. them, but of each other.”

2. UPitt scraps “homecoming king” and “homecoming queen” titles

After the University of Pittsburgh’s Alumni Association called for a policy change to end the use of the terms “king” and “queen,” the university announced in October that it will no longer use the traditional titles. Vice Chancellor for Alumni Relations Nancy Merritt called the terms “antiquated” language. Instead, the school will provide a “Spirt of Pitt” award to homecoming royalty.

3. UC tells students ‘do not’ say ‘Chinese Virus’ and do not allow others to say it

In March, the University of California’s Council of Chief Diversity officers released a “guidance document” regarding how to hold a “positive and inclusive” campus climate during the pandemic. The list tells students and faculty to “reject racism, sexism, xenophobia and all hateful or intolerant speech, both in person and online.” It also instructs students to not use terms such as “Chinese Virus” and to not allow the use of these terms by others.

4. UVA instructor wants to ban the term ‘student-athlete’ 

An instructor at the University of Virginia called to abolish the phrase “student-athlete,” claiming it has “arguably racial” undertones. In an op-ed, Molly Harry defended calling the term racially charged by saying that “today, the majority of revenue-producing athletes in the sports of football and men’s basketball are Black. They are coached mostly by White men.” She also pointed out that the man who coined the term student-athlete was a White man. 

5. Vanderbilt lists “sexual reassignment surgery” as an “outdated” term

In December, Vanderbilt University published a “Gender Affirmation Toolkit” for its employees in an effort to create a safe work environment. The toolkit explains how to properly use terms like “gender identity,” “gender expression,” and “sexual orientation.” It also listed “sexual reassignment surgery” on its list of “outdated” and “demeaning” words.

6. Leading ‘anti-racist’ prof calls the term ‘legal vote’ ‘racist’

In November, Boston University’s Director of the Center for Anti-Racist Research Ibram Kendi said the phrase “legal vote” is racist. He said it is “as fictionally fraught and functionally racist as the terms ‘illegal alien’ and ‘race neutral’ and ‘welfare queen’ and ‘handouts’ and ‘super predator’ and ‘crackbaby’ and ‘personal responsibility’ and ‘post racial.”

“The misinformation of widespread voter fraud—or ‘illegal voting’ —in Detroit, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Phoenix where Black and Brown voters predominate is baked into the term ‘legal vote,'” Kendi added. “No matter what GOP propaganda says, there’s nothing wrong with those voters and votes.”

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) announced in a Wednesday caucus meeting that while he condemns controversial statements espoused by QAnon-supporting Rep. Marjorie Greene (R-GA), he doesn’t believe she should loser her committee assignments. 

“Past comments from and endorsed by Marjorie Taylor Greene on school shootings, political violence, and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories do not represent the values or beliefs of the House Republican Conference,” said McCarthy in a statement following the meeting. “I condemn those comments unequivocally. I condemned them in the past. I continue to condemn them today. This House condemned QAnon last Congress and continues to do so today.”

McCarthy, who met with Greene on Tuesday, added:

“I made this clear to Marjorie when we met. I also made clear that as a member of Congress we have a responsibility to hold ourselves to a higher standard than how she presented herself as a private citizen. Her past comments now have much greater meaning. Marjorie recognized this in our conversation. I hold her to her word, as well as her actions going forward.”

Democrats, meanwhile, are gearing up for a floor vote to strip Greene her of her posts due to her beliefs.

“I spoke to Leader McCarthy this morning, and it is clear there is no alternative to holding a Floor vote on the resolution to remove Rep. Greene from her committee assignments,” said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (R-MD), who rejected a deal from McCarthy to remove Greene from the Education and Labor Committee but allow her to remain on the House Budget panel. “The Rules Committee will meet this afternoon, and the House will vote on the resolution tomorrow.”

Democrats were perhaps emboldened to take action against Greene after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell threw her under the bus, saying in a statement that: “Loony lies and conspiracy theories are cancer for the Republican Party and our country.”

McCarthy also annoucned that he supports keeping Rep. Liz Cheney in her leadership role – risking alienation from both establishment anti-Greene Republicans and MAGA anti-Cheney Republicans.

Authored by Jennifer Lahl. op-ed via The Epoch Times,

It isn’t good enough that men want to compete in woman’s sports and invade women’s spaces, rendering sex-based protections null and void. Now, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has published the findings from the largest study on its kind, “Perceptions and Motivations for Uterus Transplant in Transgender Women.”

This study looked at reproductive aspirations of transgender women (biological males). Surveying 182 transgender women, researchers found that more than 90 percent believed that a uterine transplant might “improve quality of life in transgender women, alleviate dysphoric symptoms, and enhance feelings of femininity.”

I find it no coincidence that this study was released on Jan. 20, 2021 – the same day President Joe Biden took the oath of office and signed his executive order on Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation.

This study concluded that transwomen (biological males) have the “desire to have physiologic experiences unique to cisgender women, such as menstruation and gestation, as well as potentially having a physiologically functioning transplanted vagina.”

Also, the authors found that transgender women “may expect the ability to menstruate to enhance satisfaction with their desired gender and uterus transplant and anticipate improvements in perceptions of their femininity.” Those surveyed also cited that potentially having a functional vagina transplanted might also enhance sexual function and quality of life.

Oh boy! When good common sense and human biology 101 are thrown out of the window of reason, we are left with gibberish and nonsense. Here, in a prestigious medical journal, the authors use phrases such as “categorized as female at birth,” which in scientific terms, means when a baby is born and has XX chromosomes, she is a little girl baby. She isn’t categorized as female; she IS female. In the same way, when a baby is born with XY, he isn’t categorized as male, he IS male.

First, a word or two about uterine transplants. They are, for the most part, still in the experimental stage. To date, there have only been about 70 uterine transplants around the world and most of these have come from living donors. A living donor might be a woman who has completed her family and doesn’t want to have any more children, so she offers to donate her uterus. The first baby born from a uterine transplant was born two months premature in Sweden.

Current practice is to remove the uterine transplant once the woman has had the children she wants, so that she doesn’t have to stay on anti-rejection medications for the rest of her life. Also, the data isn’t in yet on the effects to the babies born from a transplanted uterus, mainly because we don’t have a large enough sample of these children. Babies are exposed to anti-rejection medications for the duration of their time in utero and are always delivered by c-section, which undoubtedly confers additional risks to mother and baby.

Of course, in this study, the transgender women reported that “the potential benefits of uterus transplant outweigh the significant risks with which it is associated and may improve quality of life, happiness, and dysphoric symptoms, while enhancing feelings of femininity.”

There was much hay to be made when Tampax tweeted “People who bleed” and “Fact: Not all women have periods” and then doubled down with “Also, a fact: Not all people with periods are women. Let’s celebrate the diversity of all people who bleed!”

Women immediately pushed back hard on social media calling out Tampax for such scientific ignorance shouting, “Women Bleed.”

It isn’t people.

It isn’t people categorized a particular way.

It is women.

Women give birth.

And women shouldn’t have to compete with men in order to make them feel better and more like women. That’s not our job.

*  *  *

Jennifer Lahl is the founder and president of the Center for Bioethics and Culture and producer of the documentary films, “Eggsploitation,” “Anonymous Father’s Day,” “Breeders: A Subclass of Women?” and “Maggie’s Story,” and “#BigFertility,” which was an official selection in the Silicon Valley International Film Festival. She is back behind the camera, producing a film on the ethics of allowing children to medically and surgically transition.

Surveying the wreckage of WallStreetBets raid on the silver markets – which thankfully for many on both sides of the trade – never got as out of hand as the heavily-shorted stock malarkey, offers a few insights into just what happened below the surface as silver prices round-tripped up and down by around 12% from Friday’s close.

Source: Bloomberg

So what happened?

Flows

The initial Reddit post gave instructions to focus on purchases in the iShares Silver Trust ETF.

SocGen’s Commodities Research Group note monitored the inflow into this targeted ETF and other major silver ETFs and funds, and found counterintuitively that both saw outflows on 28 January, the first day of the rally.

Over the following two days, 29 January and 1 February, historically high inflows into the iShares ETFs were met by similarly sized outflows from other silver ETFs and funds.

As investors who followed Reddit’s blueprint continued to stockpile ETF shares, other investors sold and probably took profits, with silver having already rallied almost 48% in 2020.

Price

On the price action side of things, the iShares Silver Trust is physically backed and does not directly impact the silver future market.

However, during the three-day rally, the aggregated open interest on all silver future contracts (regardless of maturity) jumped by 16,979 contracts, the fifth-largest three-day increase since 2010. Most of the open interest increase was built on 28 January – the 9,480 contract increase represents the second-largest daily increase since 2010.

As shown in the figure below, such changes in open interest are rare.

Given that silver ETFs saw outflows on 28 January and the spot price jumped 4.89%, this first leg of the rally seems, in fact, to have been driven by future contracts rather than ETFs.

As SocGen notes, gold and silver tend to never experience backwardation (spot price higher than long-dated forward prices). Such backwardation appears when a commodity market is tight on the short term due to low inventories and/or low current supply. As a result, large commodity consumers have an incentive to pay a premium to secure short-term deliveries, known as convenience yield.

In the chart below, we define the front end of the silver forward curve as being ‘in backwardation’ if the 4-month time-spread is positive.

As discussed above, this is very rare and has happened on only 18 days since 2000 and only twice has the time-spread exceeded $0.02/oz.

This makes 1 February’s $0.057/oz time spread an outlier and the second-steepest backwardation observed on the front-end of the silver forward curve since 2000.

This exceptional situation may have happened as Swiss coins sellers were reportedly overwhelmed by online purchases of silver coins.

To meet their delivery,they paid a premium to secure quick access to rebuild their silver inventories.

Since then, the market has normalised and as of 2 February close, the silver 4-month time-spread was back in negative territory.

SocGen concludes with some calming tones, noting that gold and silver have huge above-the-ground stocks in the form of bars, coins, jewellery or silverware. These large inventories are often used as store of value and exposed to opportunistic sales when the price rises. This means, in SocGen’s words, that a shortage of precious metals is very unlikely as supply can instantly flow in if prices move high enough to incentivise precious metals sales.

However, while SocGen does a great job explaining the mechanics of what happened, back in the real world of supply and demand, US Mint prices for silver coins remain at an extreme premium to paper prices…

As it admits, albeit subtly, that it’s unable to meet demand.

Authored by J. Peder Zane via RealClearPolitics.com,

Democrats are the party of make believe.

Through their domination of the media, academia, Hollywood, and growing swaths of corporate America, they successfully peddle propaganda as reality. They insisted President Trump was a dictator and a treasonous ally of Vladimir Putin who refused to denounce white supremacy. They dismissed questions about the business dealings of President Biden’s family as “Russian disinformation” that had been “totally discredited.”

When investigations and fact checks revealed those claims to be false, they just kept on repeating them. Tell a lie long and loud enough and many accept it as truth.

Having secured the White House and control of the Senate in the last election, Democrats and their allies are adding a strong dose of intimidation to their campaign of deceit. They are using social media to silence dissent from their views while creating blacklists to make it difficult for their opponents to find gainful employment. In a sign of how far gone they are, many journalists at influential outfits are now questioning the wisdom of the First Amendment and calling for government regulation of speech.

As cancel culture spreads, they gaslight the public by denying that it is happening. At the same time they argue that Republicans must be silenced and even “deprogrammed” because they are delusional liars. To conservative ears, the national discourse often boils down to this: Are you going to believe us or your lying eyes?

The caricature of conservatives certainly describes some people on the right. Sen. Mitch McConnell has spoken out against his party’s lunatic fringe. But there is little evidence they enjoy meaningful support. The Jan. 6 criminal assault on the Capitol was a disgrace, but it was also widely condemned by Republicans – a stark contrast to Democrats who have largely ignored or even celebrated the repeated violence perpetrated by antifa. Casting that action as an attempted coup – pretending the mob could have gained control of the government – is deceitful propaganda aimed at smearing 74 million Trump voters.

U.S. history is full of examples of movements that many Americans considered dangerous. Usually these were progressives who fought for unions, and marched for civil rights, and demanded an end to foreign wars. Most people see those causes as worthy, even though communists were interspersed among the activists’ ranks. We also now see that the suppression they provoked was shameful. As future Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis noted in 1913, sunlight is “the best of disinfectants”; the way to defeat dangerous ideas and behaviors is to expose them to reason.

This is a foundation of our pluralistic democracy.

History reveals two main reasons why factions seek to limit speech:

• first, because it is an effective means to quash dissent and

• second because they won’t or can’t defend their own ideas.

Today’s Democrats and their allies are driven by both rationales. Their control of most communication channels has empowered them to spread narratives that delegitimize their opponents by caricaturing them as racist conspiracy theorists.

It may be impossible to change the minds of those who embrace the accuracy of that portrayal, but it is worth asking: If your view is true, why advance so many mistruths to support it? For Democrats this propaganda coup is a twofer: As it marginalizes Republicans, it keeps the focus off the ramifications of their own ideas and politics. Their argument boils down to this: Let us do what we want because otherwise those Neanderthals will be in charge. This strategy is increasingly essential for Democrats as they advance leftist ideas that are hard to support through fact-based metrics – i.e. reality instead of ideology.

Democrats are the party of activist government. Their core progressive idea – the plinth course of their Great Society programs – is that the combination of vast federal resources and elite expertise can solve most of society’s problems. There have been some successes – credit progressives and libertarians for helping advance the rights of marginalized groups. But the last half-century has also seen the breakdown of the nuclear family, continuing hopelessness and blight in many cities, and the failure of public schools to raise educational achievement despite massive increases in per pupil spending.

While many African Americans have entered the middle class since the 1960s, blacks still lag behind other Americans in a wide variety of measures of health and wealth despite massive government interventions. The reasons for these failures are myriad and complex. The rise of a competitive global economy, for example, has gutted manufacturing jobs and depressed low-skill wages.

But the bottom line is that many progressive programs have not delivered on their promise of prosperity and opportunity for many of the groups they specifically aimed to help.

This is a particular problem for Democrats because African Americans remain their core voting base. The demonstrable shortcomings of their efforts help explain why they have embraced the concept of systemic racism and sound their incessant alarms about white supremacy despite America’s significant progress toward social justice. The message: Our programs would have worked but for rampant racism.

Unable to change the facts, they work to alter the definition of reality. President Biden codified this make-believe style of government on his first day in office when he signed the Modernizing Regulatory Review memorandum. As the government seeks justifications for new controls on society, it directed agencies to “fully account … for regulatory benefits that are difficult or impossible to quantify.”

Difficult or impossible to quantify? Translation: make ’em up. This is just the latest, frightening evidence that the party that claims to embrace science, facts and truth is driven by ideology. When you’re running a make-believe society, it’s no wonder you have to silence dissent.

If you thought that in exchange for the billions in taxpayer funds that Congress gave to the largest US commercial airlines, these same companies would put layoffs on hold for at least a few months, you’d be wrong, because in a letter from American Airliens CEO Doug Parker, the largest US carrier warned that starting this Friday, the company which has now received two rounds of bailouts, will begin issuing aptly titled “Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification” (WARN) notices covering approximately 13,000 team members. As a reminder, WARN notices may be required by law in advance of potential furloughs in certain locations, and while American is quick to note that “these notices do not necessarily equate to furloughs” the reality is that another 13,000 American airlines are about the be let off.

Why the sudden reversal from the company which in December was so giddy about the bright future, it had to wear shades? Because as it lays out in the letter “we are nearly five weeks into 2021, and unfortunately, we find ourselves in a situation similar to much of 2020. As we closed out last year with the successful extension of the Payroll Support Program (PSP), we fully believed that we would be looking at a summer schedule where we’d fly all of our airplanes and need the full strength of our team. Regrettably, that is no longer the case. The vaccine is not being distributed as quickly as any of us believed, and new restrictions on international travel that require customers to have a negative COVID-19 test have dampened demand.”

Translation: “we need another few billion in PPP aid, because we already burned through the money we received just two months ago.”

American’s announcement is shocking because as CNBC reminds us, “the latest $15 billion Congress approved for U.S. carriers late last year required airlines to recall the employees they furloughed in the fall and maintain payroll through March 31. It was the second round of Covid aid for the industry; Congress gave airlines $25 billion last March to keep them from cutting employees through the fall.”

However, as so many correctly said, the money would last at most for a month before American would come crawling back for more… and to think of all the billions spent on buybacks in the past decade.

American’s announcement follows just days after US airline CEOs reporting record annual losses of $34 billion, and warned they didn’t expect a strong rebound in air travel in the near future.

American’s CEO Doug Parker told staff last week that the carrier is still overstaffed for current demand projections and that there could be furloughs.

“I don’t want anybody to be surprised if the company issues WARN notices in the near future,” Parker said in a town hall with staff last week, audio of which was reviewed by CNBC. He said the company will work with labor unions to reduce furloughs through voluntary measures.

And in a world where everyone is now habituated to receiving a taxpayer-funded bailout every month, airline labor unions are now seeking $15 billion more in federal payroll support for the industry to keep jobs through Sept. 30. They will probably get it… and then another… and another.

It appears Chinese authorities have finally induced Jack Ma to cave. After the co-founder of Alibaba and Ant was feared possibly missing as he disappeared from public few during the final months of last year which coincided with increased government scrutiny on his hugely successful and rapidly expanding Ant Financial fintech – since subject of an antitrust investigation initiated in December – only to briefly re-emerge for a live-streamed conference in January, China has apparently made it clear that the only way Ma could make amends for previously pointing out that Chinese banks are unsound is if Beijing gets regulatory control over Ant.

New Bloomberg reporting finally puts to rest months of speculation over whether Ma would resist the Chinse crackdown which also saw authorities abruptly halt a planned-for blockbuster IPO in November, notably after Ma personally pissed off President Xi: “Ant Group Co. and Chinese regulators have agreed on a restructuring plan that will turn Jack Ma’s fintech giant into a financial holding company, making it subject to capital requirements similar to those for banks.”

While not yet officially announced, “The plan calls for putting all of Ant’s businesses into the holding company, including its technology offerings in areas such as blockchain and food delivery, people familiar with the matter said,” Bloomberg writes further.

And there’s likely more severe moves toward further regulation from central authorities to come: 

Ant’s restructuring plan marks the first big step in what’s expected to be a lengthy overhaul process, as regulators draw up detailed capital requirements and other guidelines for companies that span multiple financial business lines.

To translate, in short Ant Group will now be overseen by China’s central bank.

We noted before that the silencing of Ma or even any official reporting on the antitrust probe for that matter clearly indicates the sensitivity of this topic at the highest levels of Chinese politics, essentially suggesting that Ma had outlived his usefulness, and that Beijing would never tolerate a billionaire with so much power and influence, both at home, and in the West.

China’s central bank nationalizing Ant Financial is global security concern. The dystopian scenario chapter of my book The Big Nine explains why. This announcement is very bad…
https://t.co/rMA0aooKmK

— Amy Webb (@amywebb) January 27, 2021

China’s regulatory framework dictating rules for financial holding companies was only unveiled in September, thus “they’ll almost certainly force the company to slow the torrid pace of expansion that has made it China’s dominant fintech player and one of the world’s most valuable startups,” Bloomberg notes further.

While Ant is still said to be mulling ways to revive its initial public offering, this latest news is the clearest indicator throughout the saga that it will be a long time in coming, if ever at all. 

Authored by Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner via Wirepoints.org,

The core goal of education has always been to teach students how to think, not what to think.

That may be about to change in Illinois. A sweeping, controversial rule is pending for Illinois K-12 teachers that should prompt everyone, of all political stripes, to fear for how students may soon be taught.

Like every state, Illinois has a set of rules and standards for how teachers are trained, licensed and reviewed. In general, those rules are about competency, but do not impose any political or ideological belief system on teachers or their curriculum.

The Illinois State Board of Education wants to change those requirements with what it calls “Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading” (CRTL) standards. They would largely replace the old apolitical focus on “critical thinking” with requirements that encourage “progressive viewpoints and perspectives.”

Worse, the new proposed standards effectively go beyond requirements for what should be taught in classrooms. They effectively impose a political litmus test for teachers to get or keep a job in Illinois’ educational system.

No matter their personal politics, no reasonable person should want kids’ classrooms politicized. Nor should they want teachers prevented from entering the profession, or pushed out, based on what they believe. The pending standards would open up a Pandora’s Box where school curriculum and children become yet another political football every time there’s a major shift in political power.

These new rules are a distraction from what really matters for students – reading, writing and arithmetic. Today, nearly two-thirds of Illinois elementary children fail to meet requirements in English language arts and math readiness, according to the Illinois Report Card.

The CRTL standards are coming up for a vote on February 16. Here are 9 key facts you should know about the proposed rules:

1. Who created the new rules. 

The proposed CRTL standards were not created by Illinois lawmakers. They were not debated or voted upon in the Illinois General Assembly. Instead, the standards were created by special interest and advocacy groups at the request of the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE).

From ISBE: “The standards were developed by the state’s Diverse and Learner Ready Teacher Network, which consists of current teachers, school and district administrators, education advocacy group members, and representatives from institutions of higher education. The network was charged by ISBE to develop standards that will be used to drive educator preparation and in-service educator professional development.”

Illinois’ General Assembly has nothing to do with the creation of these standards because they’ve left most rulemaking up to the state’s administrative agencies. It’s been an increasingly common practice for lawmakers to pass a broad law with the expectation that unelected bureaucrats will craft the rules to enforce it. That’s the case here with Illinois’ teaching standards.

2. Who the new rules affect. 

The proposed standards would impact all current and future licensed public school teachers, administrators and support personnel in Illinois. The standards will be applied to every part of a teacher’s career, from their university education, to their training and licensing and their annual assessments in the classroom. Private schools that require publicly licensed teachers will also be affected, as the pool of available teachers in Illinois will be impacted.

From ISBE: “Establishes certain standards that shall apply to the issuance of all Illinois professional educator licenses endorsed in teaching, school support personnel, and administrative fields. The standards set forth in this Part shall apply both to candidates for licensure and to the programs that prepare them.

3. The new teaching requirements will politicize education. 

The CRTL standards directly require teachers to inject progressive politics in the classroom. The rules state, among many other requirements, that “The culturally responsible teacher will: Embrace and encourage progressive viewpoints and perspectives that leverage asset thinking toward traditionally marginalized populations.”

There is no language in the standards that requires teachers to “embrace or encourage” any other political viewpoint or ideology. 

4. New rules largely displace critical thinking with critical race theory. 

While many of the individual CRTL requirements are innocuous or common-sense, when taken as a whole they open the door to classrooms becoming heavily politicized. Teachers and administrators who desire to inject politics into school are actively encouraged to do so under these rules.

The new standards broadly embrace the tenets of critical race theory, centering on a requirement to be a “culturally responsive teacher.” The standards require teachers to encourage student advocacy, replace objective measures of student achievement with vague requirements based on activism, promote the idea that there is no objective truth, and more.

“The culturally responsive teacher and leader will:

• Create a risk-taking space that promotes student activism.

• Ensure teacher and students co-create content to include a counter-narrative to dominant culture.

• Consider a broader modality of student assessments such as performance portfolios, essays, multiple choice, state exams, oral examination, community assessments, social justice work, action research projects, and recognition beyond academia.

• Understand and value the notion that multiple lived experiences exist, that there is not one “correct” way of doing or understanding something, and that what is seen as “correct” is most often based on our lived experiences.” 

“Systems of Oppression – Culturally responsive teachers and leaders…

•  …understand that there are systems in our society that create and reinforce inequities, thereby creating oppressive conditions. Educators work actively against these systems in their everyday roles in educational institutions.

• …Know and understand how a system of inequity reinforces certain truths as the norm.”

5. The requirements may run afoul of the U.S. Constitution.

Not only are many of these requirements unfairly vague, but there’s also the question of constitutionality, since some may compel speech or actions that go counter to a teacher or student’s beliefs. “The primary problem with this proposal,” according to a legal group that has criticized it, “is that it unconstitutionally compels speech. This rule requires people of faith to affirm ideologies they don’t believe in and endorse behaviors that may be inconsistent with the values that they live by.”

6. What would happen to teachers who don’t comply?

First, teachers who dissent would probably never get licensed because the CRTL standards would govern how teachers are licensed and trained in Illinois. It would be incorporated into teacher preparation programs at college and university schools of education in the state.

If a dissenting teacher made it past that, she would face an evaluation process based on the new CRTL standards as well. She could therefore lose her place in the classroom and generally suffer an impaired career.

7. These requirements distract from improving education. 

Despite per student spending that is the highest in the Midwest, Illinois’ education system continues to fail students. As mentioned above, nearly two-thirds of Illinois’ grade 3-8 children fail to meet expectations in reading and math readiness.

Teaching requirements that place more emphasis on activism and advocacy rather than critical thinking and objective measures of achievement will only make those scores worse. 

8. Who decides if the CRTL standards will become law.

The Joint Committee on Administrative Rules (JCAR), a bipartisan legislative oversight committee authorized to review rules put forward by state agencies, will vote on whether to accept or object to the new teaching rules. The CRTL rule changes will be decided on by JCAR on February 16.

JCAR’s membership is made up of six Democrats and six Republicans. The members are listed below. To successfully object to the CRTL standards, eight committee members must object to the new rules. 

9. Who you should contact to let your thoughts be known: 

ISBE

Azita Kakvand 
Illinois State Board of Education 
100 North First Street, Springfield, Il 62777-0001   
(217) 782-6510 
rules@isbe.net 

Members of JCAR  

• office@repkeithwheeler.org – Keith Wheeler
• demmer@ilhousegop.org – Tom Demmer
• rephalpin@gmail.com – Michael Halpin
• repfranhurley@gmail.com – Frances Ann Hurley
• reick@ilhousegop.org – Steve Reick
• illinois32district@gmail.com – André Thapedi
• bill@billcunningham.com – Bill Cunningham 
• senatorcurran@gmail.com – John Curran
• lightford@senatedem.ilga.gov – Kimberly Lightford
• amunoz@senatedem.ilga.gov – Antonio Munoz
• senatorrezin@gmail.com – Sue Rezin
• ddewitte33@gmail.com – Don DeWitte

Remember when Harry Markopolos warned  the SEC – repeatedly – that Bernie Madoff was running a giant ponzi scheme… and the SEC did absolutely nothing, eventually leading to the biggest fund fraud in modern history, with countless investors losing billions?

Well, after the recent reddit revolution sent a handful of highly shorted stocks soaring and blew up a couple of hedge funds while making other hedge funds much richer, the SEC has decided that this time it will be proactive in cracking down on fraud and according to Bloomberg SEC investigators are now “combing social media and message board posts for signs that fraud played a role in dizzying stock swings for GameStop Corp., AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. and other companies.”

According to the report, the scrutiny – which comes following news that a non-recused Janet Yellen will head a task force of financial regulators addressing the recent surge in GameStop and other stocks, as well as silver, and which will inevitably also look at Citadel which paid Janet Yellen 810,000 in non-conflict of interest dollars for a handful of speeches last year – is being done in tandem with a review of trading data to assess whether such posts were part of a manipulative effort to drive up share prices.

The report notes that the SEC is “on the hunt for misinformation meant to improperly tilt the market” although how it can make that determination will be very interesting to watch: after all, the original Reddit post that laid out – in tremendous detail – just how the Gamestop squeeze would work, and which eventually sparked thousands of copycat articles and posts, was published back on September 8, titled “The REAL Greatest Short Burn of the Century” and is still available for anyone to read. There was absolutely nothing manipulative about it, and in fact it laid out the thesis very clearly – spark a huge short squeeze, something which countless funds, management teams and retail investors have tried to do in the past, and occasionally like in the case of Volkswagen, succeeded.

The thesis (of the post which explicitly was prefaced that it “is all for entertainment purposes only”) is simple:

The intro:

Sup gamblers. Feel bad about missing the gain train on TSLA? Fear not – something much greater and stupider is here.

You know Citadel? The MM that took all our money today? Well now we finally won’t be at the mercy of the MMs. Instead, we’re going to temporarily join forces with the Galactic Empire and hijack the death star.

Our choice of weapon… $GME.

The setup:

Huh?? Isn’t GME an absolute piece of trash stock? NO (will explain below), and even if it is, it’s not entirely relevant. The this turn around is going to make TSLA’s short burn look like warm afternoon tea.

Why? Well, most short squeezes are mostly math. This one is special because we have math AND great underlying news.

To be clear, this will happen whether or not we participate. I prefer us idiots to be a part of history. Here’s what’s up:

Short interest:

GME currently has between 85% – 99.8% short interest, depending on what site you use. For context, 20% is already considered high as the moon. TSLA and NFLX were around 30-40% at their peak. But GME’S ACTUAL SHORT INTEREST IS OVER 110%. In case you think I’ve gone nuts, look below:

The author, u/Jeffamazon, was of course correct – as January’s 1650% surge in GME demonstrated – and all he did was apply the same strategy that Porsche management did in late 2008 when it too sparked a historic squeeze in Volkswagen shares.

To the SEC, however, this is not sufficient, as the regulator is skeptical that mere retail investors could come up with something this sophisticated (even though this website has shown year after year since 2013 that going the most shorted stocks was and remains the best strategy for this broken market), and is instead looking into whether sophisticated investors (i.e., hedge funds) manipulated and herded the retail investing horde for their own ulterior benefit, a thesis that was promoted by noted short-seller Carson Block:

The prevailing narrative is that Wall Street short-sellers were caught flatfooted over the past two weeks as retail traders banded together via Reddit message boards and bought up stocks that hedge funds were betting against. But some market participants, including famed short-seller Carson Block, have started to speculate that the short squeezes that drove GameStop, AMC and other stocks to exorbitant heights might have also involved professional investors who either took advantage of the Reddit-fueled frenzy or helped hype it.

While the SEC hasn’t confirmed or denied that Block’s thesis is behind its probe, acting chair Allison Herren Lee said in a statement earlier this week that the agency was looking at “compliance with regulatory obligations, adequate and consistent risk disclosure, and determining if any fraudulent or manipulative behavior has occurred.”

There is also mounting concern about the possibility of bot activity in Reddit’s WallStreetBets chat after a spokesperson for the forum told CBS News that there was a “large amount” of it and that some posts were being blocked by an automated moderation system.

Of course, the real reason for the SEC to eager get involved is because the agency remains as clueless as always about how susceptible stocks are to violent short squeezes in a market that has never been more illiquid, and if nothing else, it wants to demonstrate that it is willing to learn, especially now that vocal and even more clueless politicians such as Elizabeth Warren are involved and the SEC will likely be called in to testify in Congress.

While shares of GameStop have sharply retreated this week, pressure is growing on the SEC to figure out what happened. Senator Elizabeth Warren, one of Wall Street’s leading critics in Washington, has demanded that the SEC investigate the “casino-like swings.” Both the House and Senate are planning to hold hearings on the market mania, which triggered big losses for some retail investors and prompted Robinhood Markets, whose app was used by many of the traders, to raise $3.4 billion to cover collateral demands.

The fingerpointing reached as high up as the Treasury, where the person whose actions were most directly responsible for today’s asset bubble and last week’s bizarro market activity – Janet Yellen, who before taking over the Treasury was in charge of the Fed for years – is now overseeing the regulatory oversight of what happened. 

“Secretary Yellen believes the integrity of markets is important and has asked for a discussion of recent volatility in financial markets and whether recent activities are consistent with investor protection and fair and efficient markets,” the Treasury Department said in a late Tuesday statement.

It’s unclear what the SEC will do if and when it discovers some criminally collusive social media posts: while the SEC doesn’t regulate social media or message boards, Bloomberg notes that the agency has brought cases against people accused of making false claims about stocks online. In one case in 2000, the agency went after a 15-year-old for buying microcap stocks and then hyping the shares before quickly selling them for a profit. The teenager agreed to repay more than $270,000 in profit to resolve the allegations. In December, the SEC sued a day trader for planting false rumors about companies.

Yet what will make the SEC’s life very difficult is that nothing that has been said about GME on message boards is false: the company was indeed the most shorted small-cap company in the US (it’s SI as a % of float was 140% just a few weeks ago) as for the rest, well it’s just a snowball effect that emerged once the price started rising. Incidentally, the first sharp spike in GME stock took place two Fridays ago when Citron’s Andrew Left conceded that he would no longer discuss his GME short thesis. Sensing blood, that’s when the reddit traders started bidding up the name ever higher hoping that the Citron founder would be the first casualty.

And indeed he was, although there would be many others.

In any case, even if the SEC has a clear mandate to throw someone under the bus, it’s unlikely this will happen any time soon: SEC investigations often take months or even years to complete so it’s likely that the GameStop tumult will be long over by the time the probe wraps up.

Still, the agency’s findings could have implications for the broader retail market and lead to policy changes for short-selling, trade settlement, online apps and disclosure rules.

And while we certainly welcome the SEC’s effort to clamp down on social media manipulation, perhaps once it is done with Wallstreetbets, the SEC can look into the private website of www.valueinvestorsclub.com (VIC), created by hedge fund managers Joel Greenblatt and John Petry, where similar “pitching” of ideas happens all the time, only instead of millions of retail investors armed with $600 stimmy checks, the VIC audience is several dozen multi-billion dollar hedge funds.

Hey SEC, there is this thing called https://t.co/FS6kvfQlCB…

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 3, 2021

It would stand to reason that if what the redditors did was wrong, then the favorite online hangout of a select group of hedge funds should fall under the microscope too.

Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

When information becomes a “threat”, even thinking the wrong thing can be dangerous.  Over the past several weeks, I have heard the word “misinformation” uttered in the same sentence as “terror” or “terrorists” countless times.  In the old days, the “extremists” and the “terrorists” were on the other side of the globe, but now we are being told that they live among us.  So how can we identify them?  Well, we are being told that “the bad guys” can be identified by what they believe.  Those that do not embrace the propaganda that big tech and the corporate media are relentlessly pushing are being systematically “deplatformed”, “canceled” and pushed to the fringes of society.  But apparently that is not nearly enough, because the New York Times is now asking for the Biden administration to appoint a “reality czar” that will be given authority to deal with “misinformation” and “extremism”.

So exactly what will be done to those that are guilty of committing “thought crimes” against the government?

Sadly, I think that we are eventually going to find out.

For decades, the elite have been telling us that we need to have a “tolerant” society.  But now that they have almost total control, we are being told that in order to have that tolerant society they must be extremely intolerant of dissenting viewpoints.

They seem to have embraced a very radical form of the “paradox of tolerance”, and as a result our society is becoming more dystopian with each passing day.

For example, this week U.S. Representative Jackie Speier suggested that it is time to start referring to Republicans as “the terrorist right”.

That is close to half the country.  Does she really want nearly half the nation to be considered “terrorists”?

Last month, I wrote about a new bill that has been introduced in Congress which is essentially the Patriot Act on steroids.  But of course the Patriot Act was primarily focused on terror threats from overseas, while even Democrats are admitting that this new bill appears to be specifically targeting Americans that do not have the correct political views.  If you doubt this, just consider what Tulsi Gabbard is saying about this new bill…

This is an issue that all Democrats, Republicans, independents, Libertarians should be extremely concerned about, especially because we don’t have to guess about where this goes or how this ends. What characteristics are we looking for as we are building this profile of a potential extremist, what are we talking about? Religious extremists, are we talking about Christians, evangelical Christians, what is a religious extremist? Is it somebody who is pro-life?

In the end, they don’t have to put millions of people in prison to chill free speech in America.

All they have to do is set a few examples and most others will willingly fall in line.

It is all about behavioral conditioning.  They want to shape what we do, what we say and what we think by creating fear.

As Grace-Anne Kelly has aptly pointed out, this is something that they are doing to our children as well.

Conditioning our children. pic.twitter.com/J5M5dKRdIp

— Grace-Anne kelly (@GraceAnne_kelly) February 1, 2021

Fear is the mind killer. 

The elite understand that it is the best way to control large masses of people, and that is why they are continually looking for new ways to keep us in a constant state of fear.

Ultimately, what they want are vast herds of “sheeple” that are extremely easy to manipulate.

If you would like to see what this looks like, spend some time studying the Chinese system.

In China, the government is so utterly dominant over the population that hardly anyone objects when “mandatory anal swabs” are implemented.

Unfortunately, the U.S. is moving in the same direction very rapidly.

Decades ago, Americans would get very upset when the government would decide to start dangerous new military conflicts.

But now Joe Biden can roll U.S. military forces into Syria without hardly anyone even noticing.

And it appears that the Biden administration is also setting the stage for a potential war with Iran…

Iran could be “weeks away” from having sufficient material to develop a nuclear weapon if it continues to violate the 2015 nuclear deal, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Monday in an interview with NBC News.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are getting ready to raise our taxes, and many Americans are actually begging them to do it.

The Democrats also want to end the Second Amendment, but of course millions of people are quite eager for that to happen as well.

After everything that they have already gotten away with in the past few months, they probably figure that they may as well go nuts because nobody is going to stop them.

This isn’t about one political party implementing an agenda now that they are in power.

Rather, this is about one group of people wanting to permanently neuter and silence the opposition.  From now on, those that dare to question the official narratives handed down by our overlords will be branded “terrorists”, and this new “war on terror” will be designed to absolutely crush dissent wherever it is found.  I really like how investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald recently made this point…

“The last two weeks have ushered in a wave of new domestic police powers and rhetoric in the name of fighting ‘terrorism’ that are carbon copies of many of the worst excesses of the first War on Terror that began nearly twenty years ago. This New War on Terror—one that is domestic in name from the start and carries the explicit purpose of fighting ‘extremists’ and ‘domestic terrorists’ among American citizens on U.S. soil—presents the whole slew of historically familiar dangers when governments, exploiting media-generated fear and dangers, arm themselves with the power to control information, debate, opinion, activism and protests.”

For a time in January, 1984 by George Orwell became the number one selling book on Amazon, and right now our society is moving in that direction at a pace that is absolutely breathtaking.

They really do want complete and total control, and they aren’t going to stop until they get it.

Needless to say, if we continue on this path as a nation, we are quite doomed.

The good news is that even Democrats such as Tulsi Gabbard are publicly pushing back against these assaults on our liberties and freedoms.

The bad news is that she is definitely in the minority, and there seems to be a consensus building in both parties that “extremism” in the United States must be crushed.

This is a very dark time in our history, and it appears that things will never be quite the same ever again.

*  *  *

Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.