Month: February 2017

Submitted by Wolf Richter of WolfStreet.com

“Flat sales” are now a “welcome change.” The New Normal.

National restaurant data and anecdotal evidence has been piling up. “T Vogel,” a commenter on WOLF STREET, put it this way:

My wife and I make almost 30k more than the median family income in my town (northern CA) with no kids. Our rent just went up by 1k a month – landlord selling – starter houses are selling at 500k.

 

We are not spending a dime more than needed. I plan to skip our weekly night eating out now.

They’re not the only ones to skip restaurants. Costs are going up, not just of restaurant meals, but of life in general. Incomes are lagging behind. And consumers are adjusting…. That’s what a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll of more than 4,200 U.S. adults confirmed today.

One-third of the respondents said they were eating in restaurants less often than three months ago. The poll was conducted in the second half of January. Of them, 62% cited cost as the primary reason.

Restaurant prices have been rising. The price index for “food away from home,” a subcategory in the Consumer Price Index, increased between 2% and 3% every year since 2012. In January, it rose 2.4% year-over-year. Those price increases are cumulative, and they add up after a while.

It’s not just that eating out is getting more expensive; it’s that stretched households are pushed by price increases elsewhere to divert some of their limited means from eating out to other expenditures.

Yet grocery stores aren’t reporting blockbuster numbers either, Bob Goldin, partner at food industry strategy firm Pentallect, told Reuters. “There’s more splintering of the food dollar, and the pie isn’t growing,” he said. “Where you spend has changed more than the amount you spend.”

The national averages, as seen from the restaurant’s point of view, bear that out.

In its most recent Restaurant Performance Index, the National Restaurant Association lamented “soft same-store sales and customer traffic readings” in December, which kept the Current Situation Index (tracking same-store sales, traffic, labor and capital expenditures) in contraction mode for the third month in a row:

• 42% of operators said their same-store sales declined year-over-year.
• 47% of operators said their customer traffic declined year-over-year.

This sort of data has been coming out for a while. It got to the point where TDn2K titled its most recent Restaurant Industry Snapshot: “Flat Sales, Welcome Change for Restaurant Industry in January.”

And more specifically:

While same-store sales growth was flat (zero percent) in January, it represented a welcome break from the ten consecutive months of negative sales growth experienced by the industry through the end of last year.

These flat sales were a function of slightly higher per-person average spending and fewer people going to restaurants: same store traffic was down 2.5% monthly and 4.1% on a rolling three-month basis. As the report put it: “Although still negative, this was the best month for the industry since last May.”

On a two-year basis, same-store sales were down 0.8% from January of 2015.

There were some winners in January, with growing same-store sales: Upscale casual, family dining, and quick service. Casual dining “was able to achieve flat results in January,” hallelujah, thus breaking a streak of 13 months in a row of falling same-store sales.

And there were some losers with same-store sales declines, according to the TDn2K report: fine dining and fast casual.

You get the idea: It’s been so tough out there for restaurants that any sort of flat spot or even a smaller down-tick in the averages is welcome news for the industry. And it looks like it’s becoming a structural feature of the US economy, though not nearly as bad as the downward spiral of brick-and-mortar retail.

This of course contradicts the theory or hopes that millennials – who are said to prefer splurging money on “experiences,” such as eating out, rather than on products, such as clothes – would pull the restaurant business out of its funk.

That said, you wouldn’t necessary know this by walking around San Francisco. Yelp lists nearly 8,000 eating establishments in the City, many of them recent creations, including 500 cafés and 3,000 delis. A lot of the places are packed. Some can be impossible to get into on a Friday or Saturday night without a reservation days or weeks in advance. Others are nearly impossible to get into no matter when or what.

But then other restaurants are nearly empty. There has been a slew of recent restaurant closures, amid talk of a big shakeout, including something called the “Mid-Market Massacre” in an area around Market St., where restaurant after restaurant closes, done in by exorbitant rents, not enough traffic, too much competition, a finicky public that might have lost interest, and insufficient sales. So yes, it’s tough out there, even in San Francisco, in what must be one of the toughest businesses on earth.

via http://ift.tt/2mrA1C6 Tyler Durden

The Oscars – Worth Their Weight in Gold?

• 89th Oscars to air this weekend
• Oscars have been dipped in 24 karat gold since 1929
• If the Oscars were made of solid gold they would weigh 330 ounces
• 330 ounces of gold is worth $408,210 at today’s prices (nearly €400k & £330k)
• Oscars cannot be sold, making them a tricky investment piece
• Steven Spielberg keeps his gold Oscar with the Academy for ‘safe-keeping’
• Shows importance of owning gold in safest ways
• Price of gold has climbed from $20.67 since the first Oscars ceremony to over $1,237 today

‘We All Dream In Gold’ read the strap line for last year’s Academy Awards. This is no doubt still the case for the nominees of the 24 awards set to be given out at this Sunday’s 89th Oscars.

Since the first awards in 1929 nearly 3,000 oscar statues have been awarded to the lucky darlings of the film industry. After the teary speeches, after-parties and press junkets following their win, what is left for those who have achieved the highest-level of recognition in the film industry?

Winning an Oscar is an expensive business, studios spend millions trying to get their hands on at least one, each year. But film and celebrity is a fickle trade and few people can remember who received Oscars last year, let alone when they were first launched in 1929.

How much value do they really bring?

As we all dream in gold, we’ve spent some time thinking about the golden Oscars, asking just how golden they are and how they hold up when compared to gold itself.

What is an Oscar?

Designed by George Stanley, the Oscar (rumours abound why it is has that nickname) shows a knight standing with a reel of film, clutching his sword. There are five spokes on the base, one representing the branches of the Academy: Actors, directors, producers, writers and technicians.

Fun fact, whilst the Oscars have been going on since 1929 and seemingly little has changed in regard to the appearance of the statue, the mould currently used was only created last year.

The Academy wanted a version of the statue that was closer to the original 1929 design. A 3D printer created the version that is used today and provides the trophies with their more authentic look.

The awards weigh around 8 and a half pounds, and are made from Britannia metal or Britannium and plated in copper, nickel silver, and on the top layer is 24-karat gold. Excluding three years during the Second World War, the statue has always been dipped in gold. So when the Academy says that we all dream in gold, they’re not wrong when it comes to the Oscars.

Worth its weight in gold?

As mentioned above, the gold on the Oscar is the icing on the cake, a cake which is made up of a few layers and alloys. However there is very little gold when it comes to the actual Oscar, in fact just 0.38 microns (one-two hundredth of the thickness of a human hair).

This year’s statues are rumoured to have a monetary worth of $629 each, demonstrating just how little gold Oscar is wearing.

This isn’t to say the Academy Award trophies aren’t worth anything.

Since the first ceremony in 1929, the price of gold has climbed from $20.67 to $1,237 today. Just the gold alone, in those 13.5 inch statues have climbed by nearly 60 times in price.

It is a classic example of how the dollar has devalued over the years – the dollar has devalued and has lost 98% of its value against gold in those 88 years.

But what if Hollywood had really wanted to show its stars how much they valued them? What if the dreams of gold really came true and the Oscar was made of solid gold?

At 8.7 lb, the statue in its current form is equivalent to 126.9 troy ounces but this weight has been taken on from the fact that the statue is made up of Britannia metal. Britannia metal is an alloy consisting of approximately 92% tin, 6% antimony and 2% copper.

Assuming that we are working with 24 karat gold with a density of 19.282 g/cm3, then research tells us that the cubic centimetres of this much tin is around 531.25, and it would take nearly 22.6 pounds of gold to fill it. This means a solid gold Oscar would weigh around 330 troy ounces and at today’s price would be worth around $408,210. A significant uptick from last year’s which were worth around $382,000.

Had actors and actresses received solid gold Oscars nearly 30 years ago, in 1991, then they would have seen a climb in value of over 3 times over. Not bad for a few months’ work on a film and not a bad return on any investment.

Regardless of whether or not someone remembers who won and what for, the solid gold Oscar wouldn’t care. The gold would act as a timeless store of value and insurance, no matter what the public and critics think of you and your film in the years ahead.

You can sell your gold but not your Oscar

Some of you might be arguing that the Oscars bring so much more than just a piece of gold, and the kudos that comes with them is priceless. If you were to sell an Oscar, you might argue, then you would get far more thanks to the kudos that comes with it being ‘an Oscar.’

Some trophies from the pre-1950s era have been sold and have done very well. David Copperfield bought Michael Curtiz’s 1942 Oscar for Casablanca, in 2003 for $299,000 later selling it for over $2 million. The 1939 Oscar for Gone With the Wind was estimated to sell for $300,000 in 1999 but was bought at a far higher price of $1.54 million.

You could take a leaf out of Steven Spielberg’s book. The ET director and one of the most successful directors of all time has previously bought two 1950s Oscars and rather than kept them in his cloakroom (as many seem to do) he has handed them both over to the Academy ‘for safekeeping’.

This is a similar approach taken by many who invest in the most precious of metal – gold. Gold investors often use storage facilities provided by the likes of GoldCore in Zurich, Singapore, Hong Kong and elsewhere, in order to maintain the safekeeping of their assets.

But before you start thinking you could go out and invest in an Oscar, it is no longer possible. Unlike investing in gold bars, which are borderless and cannot be controlled by one authority, the Oscars market is restricted. Those who receive Oscars are prevented from selling their awards at market price as since 1950 the trophies have been considered the perpetual property of the Academy.

The ‘Regulations’ section of the oscars.org website reads, ‘Award winners shall not sell or otherwise dispose of the Oscar statuette, nor permit it to be sold or disposed of by operation of law, without first offering to sell it to the Academy for the sum of $1.00. This provision shall apply also to the heirs and assigns of Academy Award winners who may acquire a statuette by gift or bequest.’

The idea is that the honour of winning an Oscar is maintained, were it to be sold then some believe it would be cheapened. This is where a solid gold Oscar would be very different.

The market for gold is affected by economics and the desire to hold gold as a form of insurance, rather than the prestige that comes with owning a piece of something that is gold-plated and was once owned or won by somebody who happened to be famous and or was a great actor.

 Gold does not discriminate, the Oscars do

Few will have missed the furore that surrounds the Academy Awards when it comes to recognition that it shows to ethnic minority groups. The issue has its own hashtag #OscarsSoWhite.

But what few people discuss is the discrimination when it comes to the benefit of winning an Oscar. A 2008 paper by Kevin Sweeney, finds that “an Oscar increases a male winner’s salary by 81% holding all other variables constant.”

But this is not the case for women, Sweeney finds that, “Female winners do not experience this same clear boost in their salaries…women, experience significantly lower salary increases from winning an Academy Award than men. In such cases, winning an Academy Award did not have a statistically significant effect on women’s salaries in the sample.”

As mentioned above, gold does not discriminate when it comes to who you are or when you won, and it certainly doesn’t care what nationality you are.

Gold is a stateless form of money, something that has been bought for generations as a store of value across the globe. The Chinese Aunties don’t care who won an Oscar when it comes to Chinese New Year, parents don’t mind which film won when it comes to buying their daughter’s wedding jewellery in India and central bankers can’t give two hoots about the best costume winner when they are accumulating gold reserves and diversifying their foreign exchange reserves.

These people and everyone who chooses to own gold, know that it will hold its value and act as a form of insurance and money in the months and years to come.

Give the gift of gold

February is the month of love and this year’s Oscars attendees will certainly be feeling it when they get hold of the 2017 Academy Awards’ infamous ‘Everyone Wins’ goody bags. Last year each of the gift bags were worth £232,000 and included (according to Forbes):

‘ a year’s worth of Audi rentals ($45,000), 15-day private tour of Japan ($54,000), VIP all-inclusive trip to Israel ($55,000) and a lifetime’s supply of Lizora skincare products ($31,200).’

This year the bags have even more bizarre, luxury products:
“including a female sex toy, the Nuelle Fiera Arouser for Her, deluxe Swiss toilet paper …” according to the Telegraph.

The swag bags are provided by Distinctive Assets, whose Managing Director said “We are gifting them for the same reason that they are paid upwards of $20 million for a single film…because their personal brand has value as a commodity.”

The commodity that is celebrity is (as we said early on) is very fickle and comes and goes with the tides. Gold, the ultimate commodity and money, is not.

Its shine has not been tarnished over the years and it still sees constant and universal demand.

This year, celebrities are not the only commodities that will be on show. A 14 carat gold and diamond OM bracelet is part of the swag bag. As we wrote earlier this month, gold jewellery is a bad investment when compared to a pure gold bar or sovereign coin. Demand for gold jewellery is falling and the resale price is appalling compared to the initial purchase price. Celebrities would be better served, if they were gifted with a few gold bars or coins which will hold their value, in contrast to a flimsy gold bracelet or bangle.

Who will win Best Picture this year?

Personally, I’m not going gaga over ‘La La Land’ like most people seem to be, so I’m rooting for ‘Arrival’. But sometimes these things come down to personal preference.

Look out for our-post Oscars coverage next week. I’m afraid that doesn’t mean we’ll be giving you an actress-by-actress account of who wore what designer, instead we’ll be looking at the winning pictures and how much gold it takes to win an Oscar.

Interestingly the films nominated for this year’s Best Picture Award are diverse in their costs in terms of gold ounces. We will show you in previous years how much the price of movies has and hasn’t changed when it comes to spend in dollars and gold.

Conclusion

Celebrity, fame and awards all have their worth and they’re good fun for lots of people. In the same way, imagining what holding a solid gold Oscar in our hands would be like is also fun.

Winning an Oscar and being acknowledged for being a great actor would be wonderful. Winning a solid gold Oscar would be even better – a conversation starter and contrary to the Oscar ‘regulations’ in the event of financial crisis and collapse, it could be sold for close to its gold melt or spot value.

When it comes to protecting your life savings, or having essential financial insurance for a rainy day, we just think it’s better to own the good, timeless commodity and currency that are gold coins and bars.

But let’s be honest, most of us are unlikely to win any sort of Oscar – be it one made from base metal or investment grade gold bullion, and so a few gold coins or gold bars are better guarantees of wealth and financial security in the long-run.

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Gold and Silver Bullion – News and Commentary

Gold steady post Fed minutes; focus on Trump economic policy (Reuters)

Asian stocks slide lower after Fed’s rate-hike uncertainty (MarketWatch)

Gold scores a boost after Fed minutes, following 3rd losing session (MarketWatch)

Dollar Falls With Stocks Amid Dovish Fed Minutes (Bloomberg)

Trump budget coming in mid-March, Spicer says (MarketWatch)

France exit the Euro?  Largest sovereign default in history would lead to contagion (CNBC)

The Mother Of All Financial Bubbles: “This Is The Very Definition Of Unsustainable” (Zerohedge)

Why the Royal Mint’s bullion sales were up big in January 2017 (Coin World)

Gold Looted From Ancient Empire Returned to Romania (National Geographic)

Gold’s Fundamentals Strengthen (The Daily Gold )

Gold Prices (LBMA AM)

23Feb: USD 1,237.35, GBP 992.97 & EUR 1,173.13 per ounce
22Feb: USD 1,237.50, GBP 994.21 & EUR 1,178.22 per ounce
21Feb: USD 1,228.70, GBP 988.86 & EUR 1,166.16 per ounce
20Feb: USD 1,235.35, GBP 991.49 & EUR 1,163.21 per ounce
17Feb: USD 1,241.40, GBP 1,000.57 & EUR 1,165.55 per ounce
16Feb: USD 1,236.75, GBP 988.41 & EUR 1,163.29 per ounce
15Feb: USD 1,225.15, GBP 985.27 & EUR 1,161.81 per ounce

Silver Prices (LBMA)

23Feb: USD 18.00, GBP 14.42 & EUR 17.06 per ounce
22Feb: USD 18.00, GBP 14.47 & EUR 17.14 per ounce
21Feb: USD 17.89, GBP 14.41 & EUR 16.97 per ounce
20Feb: USD 17.98, GBP 14.42 & EUR 16.92 per ounce
17Feb: USD 18.01, GBP 14.50 & EUR 16.91 per ounce
16Feb: USD 18.10, GBP 14.49 & EUR 17.02 per ounce
15Feb: USD 17.88, GBP 14.39 & EUR 16.94 per ounce

Recent Market Updates

– Gold To Benefit from Rising Inflation and Higher Than “Official” China Gold Demand
– Russia Gold Buying Is Back – Buys One Million Ounces In January
– Gold The “Ultimate Insurance Policy” as “Grave Concerns About Euro” – Greenspan
– Sharia Standard May See Gold Surge
– Gold Price To 2 Month High As Fiery Trump Declares World Order
– Gold’s Gains 15% In Inauguration Years Since 1974
– Turkey, ‘Axis of Gold’ and the End of US Dollar Hegemony
– Gold Up 5.5% YTD – Hard Brexit Cometh and Weaker Dollar Under Trump
– Bitcoin and Gold – Outlook and Safe Haven?
– Physical Gold Will ‘Trump’ Paper Gold
– Gold Lower Before Trump Presidency – Strong Gains Akin To After Obama Inauguration
– Gold Rallies To $1,207 After Trump Press Conference Shambles
– Prince Owned Land and Gold Bars Worth $800,000

Interested in learning more about physical gold and silver?
Call GoldCore and speak with a Gold and Silver Specialist today!

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Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,

Last month we noted that Hillary Clinton is looking to start her own “fabulous” TV show in an effort to remain relevant following a disastrous Presidential election loss in 2016. The show, according to an insider, would be “completely controlled” and will likely focus on undermining the efforts of President Donald Trump, while whipping her supporters into a frenzy.

Now, in a three minute video address to fellow Democrats, the former Secretary of State says she is going to keep the fight going with the help of former President Barrack Obama and his wife Michelle, who incidentally, recently started their own organization aimed at marginalizing the new Trump administration.

The challenges we face as a party and a country are real. So, now more than ever, we need to stay engaged in the field and online, reaching out to new voters, young people and everyone who wants a better, stronger and fairer America.

 

We as Democrats must move forward with courage, confidence and activism, and stay focused on the elections we must win this year and next.

 

Let resistance plus persistence equal progress for our party and our country.

 

…Keep fighting and keep the faith… and I’ll be right there with you every step of the way.

As we reported earlier this week, tens of millions of dollars are actively being funneled into so called non-profit organizations who are involved in a variety of activities that include direct attacks on the alternative media which tanked Hillary’s Presidential run, infiltration of the Trump White House, and instigation of purported “grass roots” movements through the use of paid agitators like the anonymous provocateurs we recently saw at protests in Berkeley, California.

Make no mistake, Hillary Clinton is running for President in 2020 and the video you just watched is the opening salvo in a conflict that is designed to divide and conquer the American people.

via http://ift.tt/2miTQ1r Tyler Durden

Having surpassed gun homicides for the first time in 2015, the epidemic of heroin and opioid related deaths in the US continues to grow. Amid the dismal failure of the 'war on drugs', it seems US lawmakers are finally waking up to reality, and are pressing the nation’s drug czar for more data on the dangerous synthetic opioid fentanyl, including how it is trafficked and how many people it has killed, in the latest effort to thwart a spiraling drug crisis.

A recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report shows that nearly 5,000 more people died from opioids in 2015 than in 2014. Both heroin and opioid use have exploded in the US, after decades of doctors over-prescribing painkillers in the 1990s and 2000s. A report from the CDC released Thursday found that the drug problem has become so deadly that heroin deaths outnumbered gun fatalities last year for the first time in US history. Until 2007, gun deaths outnumbered heroin deaths five to one, according to the Washington Post. But 2015 saw 12,989 people die from heroin and 12,979 die from gun homicides.

And now, as The Wall Street Journal reports, America's politicians are finally spotting a problem with this trend. Last week, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators filed a measure, the Synthetics Trafficking and Overdose Prevention Act, that seeks to curb shipments of synthetic drugs such as fentanyl by tightening U.S. postal system requirements for packages coming from other countries.

“The national opioid crisis is being compounded by the re-emergence of illicit fentanyl and its analogues, which are synthetic opioids far more potent than morphine or heroin,” said Mario Moreno Zepeda, a spokesman for the Office of National Drug Control Policy. “Given the urgency of the opioid overdose epidemic, we will reply to the Committee’s inquiries promptly.”

 

The four-page letter from the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee, signed by bipartisan committee leaders and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, calls the fentanyl crisis a top oversight priority. Addressed to Kemp Chester, acting director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and sent Thursday, the letter includes 15 questions such as how much fentanyl comes into the U.S. through the mail and how many counterfeit fentanyl pills authorities have seized.

 

“On top of opioid overprescribing and heroin overdoses, we believe the United States is now facing another deadly wave: fentanyl,” said Tim Murphy, (R, Penn.) and Diana DeGette (D., Colo), chairman and ranking member of the subcommittee on oversight and investigations, in a statement. “We are urgently seeking answers to determine whether the federal government recognizes the unique threat of fentanyl.”

Fentanyl has emerged as the chief drug threat in many parts of the country. Authorities believe it is pouring into the U.S. from China, sometimes with a stop in Mexico. The drug appeals to traffickers because it is made only with chemicals, and not the poppy plants needed for heroin, making it cheap and easy to produce.

 

The synthetic narcotic is also extremely potent, potentially 50 times the strength of heroin, ratcheting up the risks for users. Some take it unexpectedly because dealers may mix it into the heroin supply, or press it into fake versions of prescription pain pills that are supposed to contain a much less powerful narcotic.

 

Fentanyl played a major role in driving opioid deaths in the U.S. up nearly 16% to 33,091 in 2015, according to the most recent federal data, and hard-hit states have reported even more grim statistics for 2016.

An Energy and Commerce aide said the fentanyl crisis “is surging, with no end in sight,” and that it is more than a footnote to the nation’s heroin problem.

via http://ift.tt/2lWZNAB Tyler Durden

At least 28 people were injured, five seriously, on Saturday evening after a pickup plowed into a crowd during a Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans, police said according to WDSU.  The number of people injured could increase, according to a report in NOLA.com.

#mardigras Video Of Aftermath 21 people injured (several in critical condition) after car crashed into people during Endymion parade. http://pic.twitter.com/pTppanyYFv

— Brandi Saari (@brandilmelb) February 26, 2017

#mardigras MAN ARRESTED! for after car ploughs into crowd at Mardi Gras In New Orleans.Has Not been confirm yet Put Man might Been Drunk. http://pic.twitter.com/5xVZEI6tps

— Brandi Saari (@brandilmelb) February 26, 2017

#mardigras Update News On car ploughs into crowd at Mardi Gras In New Orleans 21People Have been injured http://pic.twitter.com/SRgqM9NiFH

— Brandi Saari (@brandilmelb) February 26, 2017

#mardigras Update News On car ploughs into crowd at Mardi Gras In New Orleans http://pic.twitter.com/vLmxBqNiOL

— Brandi Saari (@brandilmelb) February 26, 2017

#mardigras Police say 21 injured after vehicle drives into crowd during New Orleans Mardi Gras celebrations http://pic.twitter.com/WkQwqLELij

— Brandi Saari (@brandilmelb) February 26, 2017

New Orleans police said the crash happened around 7 p.m. at Orleans and Carrollton avenues, where the Krewe of Endymion parade rolled through. According to CNN the driver is in police custody.

Police Chief Michael Harrison said it appeared the suspect, who was driving a pickup truck that hit two cars before running into the crowd, was likely highly intoxicated. None of the injuries was life-threatening and there were no known fatalities, a source with direct knowledge of the incident told CNN.

The CNN source said, “It appears to be a drunk driver,” and added there were no preliminary indications that it was a terrorism-related incident.

According to BBC, the driver of a silver truck seemed unaware of what he had done, one eyewitness told local media. “He was just kind of out of it,” Kourtney McKinnis told the New Orleans Advocate.

The incident occurred near the intersection of Orleans and Carrollton Avenues where the Krewe of Endymion parade was underway.

Video from CNN affiliate WDSU showed a gray pickup truck that had run into a dump truck near the intersection.

Photo of scene at #neworleans #MardiGras #breaking. Via https://t.co/7mZX0FK9FI http://pic.twitter.com/xoyNOTOf5N

— Breaking Norfolk (@breakingnorfolk) February 26, 2017

Witnesses told the station that the pickup came down one of the streets and struck several cars before hitting people in the crowd watching the parade.

“I saw the gray truck flying down Carrollton Avenue,” a female witness told WDSU. “He sped up and he lost control and you could see was getting ready to turn and I knew he was going to run into all those people.”

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Submitted by James Holbrooks via TheAntiMedia.org,

If Republicans in Arizona’s senate have their way, police in that state could soon have the power to seize assets and property from protesters, the Arizona Capitol Times reports.

From a February 22 article:

“Claiming people are being paid to riot, Republican state senators voted Wednesday to give police new power to arrest anyone who is involved in a peaceful demonstration that may turn bad — even before anything actually happened.

 

“SB1142 expands the state’s racketeering laws, now aimed at organized crime, to also include rioting. And it redefines what constitutes rioting to include actions that result in damage to the property of others.

 

“But the real heart of the legislation is what Democrats say is the guilt by association — and giving the government the right to criminally prosecute and seize the assets of everyone who planned a protest and everyone who participated.”

Essentially, under this bill cops could arrest anyone at a demonstration that suddenly turns violent, however peaceful it might’ve started. They would even be able to target people who had nothing to do the property damage.

Stephen Lemons, writing for the Phoenix New Times, covered a hearing on S.B. 1142 by Arizona’s Senate Judiciary Committee last week.

Highlighting that certain senate Democrats “noted the obvious: that public protests often involve different groups with varying tactics,” he pointed out that, hypothetically, peaceful protesters could be held responsible “for the violent actions of a different faction or of individuals who act out while others remain calm.”

But it gets even worse than that, as the Arizona Capitol Times pointed out Wednesday: “By including rioting in racketeering laws, it actually permits police to arrest those who are planning events.”

Planning events. Meaning cops will have the authority to investigate activists before the demonstrations even take place.

This is what Republican state senator Sonny Borrelli, the author of S.B. 1142, called targeting “the money source” in his defense of the bill before the committee meeting last week.

Citing the conservative notion that a legion of privately funded progressive protesters is clogging up governmental works all over the country, Borrelli said the law would go after those “paid to go out and create this damage.”

And if it takes cops infiltrating political groups on the taxpayers’ dime — on the razor-thin pretext of maybe preventing a potentially violent demonstration down the road — so be it, at least according to Republican attitudes in Arizona.

“I should certainly hope that our law enforcement people have some undercover people there,” state senator John Kavanagh said, referring to police authority under S.B. 1142 to investigate political demonstrations while in the planning stages.

 

“Wouldn’t you rather stop a riot before it starts?” he also said.

Again, potential riot.

The bigger issue at play, as noted by the Arizona Capitol Times, is the chilling effect such legislation would have on free speech. After all, if a person could get arrested for simply participating in a political demonstration — regardless of their own peaceful motives and actions — that person might decline to get involved.

S.B. 1142 would actively enforce the notion of guilt by association. If would punish the innocent who are wishing only to exercise their right of free expression, all because of the actions of criminals.

Such legislation would further complicate an environment of political unrest, made of both positive and negative forces, as State Senator Martin Quezada, Democrat out of Phoenix, highlighted Wednesday:

“When people want to express themselves as a group during a time of turmoil, during a time of controversy, during a time of high emotions, that’s exactly when people gather as a community. Sometimes they yell, sometimes they scream, sometimes they go too far.”

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By EconMatters

We discuss the Gold Market, the 10-Year Bond Market, and the US Dollar Index in this market video going into the FOMC Meeting in three weeks. Is March a Live FOMC Meeting?

© EconMatters All Rights Reserved | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Email Digest | Kindle   

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Universities in America have typically been dominated by a liberal
bias.  Why is that?  Because, working for a University is sort of
like working for the Government.  There is reason for the expression,
those who can’t do – teach.  Grow a 2nd brain – understand why by reading THIS BOOK. 

The mindset of employees at such insitutions is quite different
than one might think.  We’re not going to name any names in this essay; this
isn’t about a person or individual University.  It’s about the
intellectual class, really the only public intellectual class in America with
any respect; the Ivory Tower.  If you haven’t heard this expression
before, it refers to the high brow raised lip attitude class of University
Professors and their associates.  They have influence on every aspect of
society.  They are like Adam Smith’s hidden hand – the subtle advisors who
are secretly directing politics, big business, technology, and culture.
 Fortunately however, they don’t have any power, and don’t really control
society, like the Illuminati do.  Their influence however should be noted;
they’ve influenced Presidents of the United States, Bankers, the Media (most
notably) and literally every aspect of human life in America.  I mean, who
doesn’t trust and respect a University Professor?  They know what they’re
doing – right?

From Google:

a state of privileged seclusion or separation from the facts and
practicalities of the real world.

“the ivory tower of academia”

Now to be fair, not all University Professors are alike, we shant
‘profile’ them, as they profile individuals who have ideas they don’t like.
 There’s do-ers out there, especially around Silicon Valley where many
have left their Ivory Tower positions to join startups or start them
themselves.  But the Ivory Tower class remains; and it remained until the
Trump victory in November – a major influence on society and hallmark of
American culture.  But all that’s been shattered.  Their hidden
influence on the media, should be noted by readers of Zero Hedge and other
sites, people ‘in the know’.  Because they shape public opinion, possibly
more than the CIA with all of it’s domestic mind-control operations.
 Venues like “NPR” and even “The Simpsons” are
carefully crafted with leftist messages, agendas for open expansion of foreign
affairs, expansion of government, anti-male value systems, and other
‘progressive’ ideas are implanted like seeds, waiting to grow like weeds when
the next rain comes.  

Here’s one example, how Academia helped the Media with their war
against Trump.  Have you been hearing recently “Studies show
that..” .. “Obamacare is more popular after the election“
 or some such nonsense.  Who are they polling?  They claim their
polls aren’t biased, they are scientific.  But these are the polls and methods that had
Trump losing by a landslide!

What does this all mean?  We’re experiencing a
major paradigm shift, (this is an Ivory Tower word, from Thomas Kuhn’s “The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions – a must read for investors).

As a bright example take
a look at what Brian Nosek is doing to crack the glass bubble surrounding the Ivory Tower:

Sometimes it seems surprising that science functions at all. In
2005, medical science was shaken by a paper with the provocative title “Why most published research findings are false.” Written by John Ioannidis, a professor of medicine at Stanford
University, it didn’t actually show that any particular result was wrong.
Instead, it showed that the statistics of reported positive
findings was not consistent with how often one should expect to find them. As Ioannidis concluded more recently, “many published research findings are false or exaggerated, and an
estimated 85 percent of research resources are wasted.”  It’s likely that
some researchers are consciously cherry-picking data to get their work
published. And some of the problems surely lie with journal publication
policies. But the problems of false findings often begin with researchers
unwittingly fooling themselves: they fall prey to cognitive biases, common
modes of thinking that lure us toward wrong but convenient or attractive
conclusions. “Seeing the reproducibility rates in psychology and other
empirical science, we can safely say that something is not working out the way
it should,” says Susann Fiedler, a behavioral economist at the Max Planck
Institute for Research on Collective Goods in Bonn, Germany. “Cognitive biases
might be one reason for that.”  Psychologist
Brian Nosek of the University of Virginia says that the most common and
problematic bias in science is “motivated reasoning”: We interpret observations
to fit a particular idea. Psychologists have shown that “most of our reasoning
is in fact rationalization,” he says. In other words, we have already made the
decision about what to do or to think, and our “explanation” of our reasoning
is really a justification for doing what we wanted to do—or to believe—anyway.
Science is of course meant to be more objective and skeptical than everyday
thought—but how much is it, really?  I
was aware of biases in humans at large, but when I first “learned” that they
also apply to scientists, I was somewhat amazed, even though it is so obvious.  Whereas the falsification model of the
scientific method championed by philosopher Karl Popper posits that the
scientist looks for ways to test and falsify her theories—to ask “How am I
wrong?”—Nosek says that scientists usually ask instead “How am I right?” (or
equally, to ask “How are you wrong?”). When facts come up that suggest we
might, in fact, not be right after all, we are inclined to dismiss them as
irrelevant, if not indeed mistaken. The now infamous “cold fusion” episode in
the late 1980s, instigated by the electrochemists Martin Fleischmann and
Stanley Pons, was full of such ad hoc brush-offs. For example, when it was
pointed out to Fleischmann and Pons that their energy spectrum of the gamma
rays from their claimed fusion reaction had its spike at the wrong energy, they
simply moved it, muttering something ambiguous about calibration.

The implications for politics and the broader economy are huge.
 Studies, focus groups, corporate funded research retreats, are one of the
Establishment’s, and the Ivory Tower’s biggest tools.  The election was a
crack in the dam – it’s a proof that you can’t manipulate public opinion to fit
your own.  But it’s far from the only crack, just the most obvious one.  What’s
happening is a major system-wide Ivory Tower Psychosis, the most basic form of
mental illness – but it’s happening at a class level, as a group.
 Emotionally injured leftists are fleeing to Canada, or promoting
secession for California (which is really a good idea by itself, who needs a
Federal government).  Reality is crashing down on them, as it doesn’t fit
with ‘their reality’ – but ‘their reality’ was artificially created for
decades, depending on how you calculate.. For decades, Establishment leaders like
George Bush created their own reality with their power, and even called it the “Reality Based Community” that is, people who live in
the bubble of the Ivory Tower:

The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the
reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe
that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.”
… “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he
continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own
reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll
act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s
how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be
left to just study what we do.”

It’s like the Media’s recent admission that it’s the media’s job
to control what people think.  Well, not exactly.

The Ivory Tower Bubble has popped; and we’re seeing the casualties
on a daily basis.  It’s certainly not the last establishment-class that
we’re going to see crack from the pressure of reality.

To
learn how the Elite manipulate the news which in turn manipulates markets,
checkout Splitting Pennies – Understanding Forex for only $6.11 on Amazon, also
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