Evergreen State College closed campus on Thursday and warned students and faculty to stay away because of an unspecified threat of "campus violence" – though it's just as likely they're using the episode as an excuse to shut down the protests that have effectively brought life on campus to a halt over the past week since a campus biology professor objected to a planned demonstration that asked white students and faculty to leave campus for a day.
After the threat, the school asked students and faculty to either leave campus, or return to their dorms and await further instruction, local NBC affiliate K5 reported. It’s “unclear” whether the threat is related to the protests.
Protests erupted on the Evergreen campus last week after biology professor Bret Weinstein sent an email to colleagues objecting to a planned demonstration that asked white students and faculty to leave campus for a day. Students confronted Weinstein on campus last Tuesday, shouting over the professor and demanding that he resign until the commodtion drew the attention of campus police. The "triggered" protesters then retreated to the campus library, where they barricaded themselves inside. Police have told Weinstein to hold class off campus because they believe the angry SJWs are a threat to his safety.
University President George Bridges has more or less kowtowed to the protesters. Though he said he wouldn't fire Weinstein because faculty "need to be able to speak their mind," he has agreed to a list of demands from the SJWs that includes more sensitivity training for campus police officers.
Videos of the confrontations at Evergreen have circulated online, where they've been roundly mocked. This has apparently angered some of the protesters, who've demanded that the university investigate the “theft” of the videos.
Weinstein’s email objecting to the “Day of Absence Day of Presence” protest was circulated on Twitter. In it, he characterizes organizers’ demand that white students vacate campus for a day as “an act of repression.”
"There is a huge difference between a group or coalition deciding to voluntarily absent themselves from a shared space in order to highlight their vital and under-appreciated roles (the theme of the Douglas Turner Ward play Day of Absence, as well as the recent Women's Day walkout), and a group or coalition encouraging another group to go away. The first is a forceful call to consciousness….the second is a show of force and an act of oppression in and of itself.
Our planet continues to warm. Ice sheets continue to melt. The weather channel will continue to ‘scream science’, while you reprobate coalfags continue to destroy the planet and permit Germany and China to become ‘leaders’ of the free world. Plus, you’re going to let them profit from a gorillion dollar renewable fuels market.
The U.S. shale industry might have just received a huge windfall with the nine-month extension of the OPEC cuts. Shale output was already expected to come roaring back this year, but the extension of the cuts provides even more room in the market for shale drillers to step into.
The sky is the limit, it seems. However, there are growing signs that the U.S. shale industry could be reaching the end of the low-hanging fruit. Or, more specifically, drilling costs are starting to rise and the enormous leaps in production that can be obtained by simply adding more rigs also appears to be running into some trouble.
According to the EIA’s Drilling Productivity Report, productivity (as opposed to absolute production) is set to fall next month in the Permian Basin. In other words, the average rig will only be able to produce an estimated 630 barrels per day of initial production from a new well, down 10 b/d from the 640 b/d that such a rig might have produced in May. That is convoluted way of saying that the ever-increasing returns on throwing more rigs at the problem might be hitting a ceiling.
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This is a very notable development – it is the first time that the EIA predicts falling well productivity per rig since it began tracking the data several years ago. Still, because the rig count has increased so much, there will still be more production coming out of the Permian. It’s just that as drillers gobble up all the best spots to drill, it will become more and more difficult to find easy pickings.
Moreover, simply drilling the wells is only one part of the equation. As Collin Eaton of Fuel Fix notes, companies are drilling wells at a faster pace than contractors can frac them. The shortage of completion crews means that the backlog of drilled but uncompleted wells (DUCs) has shot up over the past year, rising by more than 60 percent to 1,995 in April 2017 from a year earlier.
(Click to enlarge)
The strain on contractors means that drilling costs will also rise. Oilfield service companies bore the brunt of the market downturn over the past three years, forced to slash their rates because of the lack of work. Oil producers have consistently and repeatedly boasted about their “efficiency gains,” but much of the cost-savings came from soaking service companies.
That could be at an end. The rise in drilling activity means that oilfield service companies finally have more leverage to hike their prices. The results could be an upswing in costs for producers. Service costs could jump by 20 percent this year, according to an estimate from S&P Global Platts.
But it isn’t all rosy for service companies either. Fuel Fix notes that they have to rebuild their rig fleets after scrapping so many during the last few years. Also, finding enough people to return to work after savagely cutting payrolls will be a challenge.
Overall, however, production is still expected to increase. Generous financing from Wall Street will ensure that capital is not a limiting factor. Consequently, the shale industry will continue to shower West Texas with money, rigs and people. Oil will flow in larger volumes this year and probably next year, barring another downturn. The Permian, for instance, is still expected to add more than 70,000 bpd of additional output between May and June.
Also, OPEC’s determination to prevent another downturn in prices provides some certainty to shale drillers. OPEC is erasing some of the risk for drillers to deploy resources in the Permian. On an annual basis, the EIA estimates that U.S. oil production will average 9.3 million barrels per day (mb/d) in 2017 and a staggering 10.0 mb/d in 2018.
But if well productivity has peaked, the marginal barrel will be a bit trickier to produce next year than it was in, say, late 2016.
Despite The Fed's hype and the market's hope, data released this morning is flashing a big red warning sign that economic growth may soften ahead – borrowing by small U.S. firms dropped to a six-month low in April.
Reuters reports that the Thomson Reuters/PayNet Small Business Lending Index dropped a third straight month in April to 123.1, down 5 percent from last April and the lowest level since October.
Movements in the index typically correspond with changes in gross domestic product growth a quarter or two ahead, which suggest the spike in small business optimism may fade fast just like the rest of the soft data since the election.
Reuters also notes a separate barometer of small companies' financial health suggests companies having more trouble paying off old loans. The share of loans more than 30 days past due was 1.7 percent in April, the highest rate in more than four years, PayNet data showed.
"That's a bad cocktail: falling investment and rising loan delinquency," said Bill Phelan, PayNet's chief executive and founder. "It certainly is going in the wrong direction."
Though still well below the crisis-era peak of 4.7 percent, the rise suggests an erosion in financial health that could spell trouble for future borrowing.
Amid a cacophony of autistic screeching from the left following Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Accord, at least one Democrat stands strong behind the President. Senior ranking Democrat Senator from West Virginia, Joe Manchin, issued a statement saying he ‘does not believe that the Paris Agreement ensures a balance between our environment and the economy.’
Manchin – a staunch advocate for the West Virginia coal industry, has drawn criticism from the left – with some calling him a “rogue conservative Democrat” for cozying up to President Trump, as well as his not-so liberal views on energy independence. In addition to being the only democrat to cross party lines and vote to confirm Jeff Sessions, Manchin had some harsh words for White House National Economic Council director, ‘globalist’ Gary Cohn last week – after the former #2 employee at Goldman Sachs made anti-coal comments in Europe…
“Yeah, Gary, I don’t know what the hell happened with Gary. Jesus Christ, what’s wrong with these people?” Manchin joked when asked for a response to Cohn’s comments this week that coal “doesn’t make much sense anymore.” Cohn’s comments run counter to President Trump’s position on the issue, too, since Trump said the “war on coal is over” with him as president. –Breitbart
Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein joined Twitter 6 years ago, in June 2011, and throughout that time he tweeted exactly zero times. He changed that today, when for the first time he took to twitter to slam Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris climate change agreement, which he called “a setback for the environment and for the U.S.’s leadership position in the world.”
Today’s decision is a setback for the environment and for the U.S.’s leadership position in the world. #ParisAgreement
Blankfein joined Elon Musk, Jeff Immelt and the broader tech and corporate community, as well as global politicians, Democrats and mayors in slamming the climate call. Ironically, it is none other than Blankfein’s former right hand man, Gary Cohn, who is Trump’s chief economic advisors which begs the question: is Blankfein’s critique just more carefully staged theater, meant to elevate the CEO of the “vampire squid” in the eyes of the general public and shape him into a kind, caring, nurturing idealist ready to carry the ideals of progressives everywhere, or is Trump’s decision proof that the grip of the “Goldman cicle” is finally easing on Trump. It is notable that during today’s ceremony, Cohn was part of a “stay-in” camp that included Trump’s daughter Ivanka.
And speaking of “vampire squids”, before Blankfein is raised on a progressive pedestal, in case someone is confused just who stood to benefit the most from the continuation of the “green” agenda, we urge you to reread Matt Taibbi’s 2010 masterpiece, “The Great American Bubble Machine.” Spoiler alert: it’s Goldman Sachs.
It was not really surprising to see comedian Kathy Griffin put out a video of herself holding the bloody, decapitated head of President Trump. This is not surprising because Ms. Griffin apparently lives in a bubble populated by ideological fanatics, some of whom really do wish violence on the president.
In entertainment circles, it is now commonplace to demean Donald Trump in almost barbaric ways. It's a nasty business and business is good. Stephen Colbert has gone from worst to first in the late night ratings by eviscerating President Trump daily. The cable news programs that also do this have seen their audiences grow as well. Many Trump haters have an addiction and their habits need to be fed. That man standing under the street lamp signaling cars to pull over may be Colbert.
So, Ms. Griffin must have been stunned when outrage came her way. It is clear from the video of her putting together the beheading exposition that she was fully engaged in her presentation and had no qualms about doing it. But almost immediately after she dropped the grotesque image on the net, she began to get hammered on social media. Presto, she had an epiphany. She made a terrible mistake, she said. The video was not funny. She asked for forgiveness.
Shortly after the contrition, CNN fired Kathy Griffin from its New Year's Eve coverage but gave the story little airtime. Speculation about Russia compromising the Trump campaign drives CNN's news agenda, and there is little room for anything else.
I know Kathy Griffin a little; her mom is a fan of mine, and I signed a few things for her. I sincerely hope Ms. Griffin's career does not sustain more damage. I take her apology to be sincere. The comedian was just pandering to the folks with whom she hangs.
But all Americans should understand that the demonization of Donald Trump by the left-wing national media has desensitized folks like Ms. Griffin to the point where right and wrong is not even considered anymore.
The anti-Trump media is now the mob holding torches while marching up to Frankenstein's castle; it is Steven Spielberg's vicious shark attacking at will.
In my 42 year journalism career, I have never seen anything like it. Compared to Trump, Richard Nixon was treated like Beyoncé.
It all has to do with revenge. The progressive left feels betrayed by the American people who rejected Hillary Clinton and voted Trump into office. So they are going to destroy Trump's presidency and delegitimize him as a human being in full view of the people who like him. He's evil, and if you support him — you're evil too. Thus, the anti-Trump media believes it is justified in bringing harm to the president. It's for the greater good, you know. We need to send a message.
Of course that rationalization is off-the-chart dangerous.
As stated, it is more than likely that Kathy Griffin believed she would be pleasing her audience while bringing attention to herself. I don't believe Ms. Griffin's remake of Peckinpah's "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia" will have any lasting effect or even wise anybody up. But she certainly got the attention.
The brutal truth is that we have become a hateful nation with the media leading the way. There is big money to be made in the destruction industry and few restraints in place. How many news organizations do you think are seeking the truth about President Trump? How many?
The answer may be zero. It is much easier and more profitable to put a cable news panel together and kick the hell out of the man, or run five "Trump is a jerk" op-eds a day in the paper.
Donald Trump may not fully understand the destructive forces arrayed against him but, if he wants to succeed as president, he should listen up. There is blood in the water and truth doesn't matter. The anti-Trump media not only wants Trump's head, but the scalps of those who dare to even give him a fair shake. In many newsrooms, anyone supporting Trump risks unemployment.
So, like a modern day Salome, Kathy Griffin has served up an image that is stark and offensive but also may be prophetic. The president better take heed or risk the symbolic fate of John the Baptist.
After abysmal March and April auto sales and growing speculation on Wall Street that auto sales are looking less like a “plateau” (Ford’s term) and more like a debt-fueled bubble on the verge of an “2007-like” collapse (Bloomberg’s term), analysts were looking toward May auto sales for signs of hope. Unfortunately, the “hope” fizzled for the 5th straight month as overall auto sales declined again, with domestic light vehicles sales printing at an annualized 12.59 million, the lowest sales number going back more than three years, with GM missing badly even as its dealer inventory rose to a post-bankruptcy record “channel stuffing” high, while those carmakers who did beat expectations, did so by using record incentives and discounted sales to rental and other fleet customers (such as Ford).
Here’s the math: domestic car sales continued their decline on a year-over-year basis, although there was a silver lining within SUVs and pickup trucks, which rose for many manufacturers. May car sales came in at an annualized 4.50 million units (according to Stone McCarthy calculations), compared to April’s pace of 4.80 million, and last May’s 4.98 million. Light truck sales declined in May to 8.09 million compared to the 8.32 million selling pace reached in April, and below the 8.13 million units sold a year ago. In total, May domestic light vehicle sales fell to 12.59 million units, below expectations and far below April’s 13.12 million selling pace. In fact, as shown in the chart below (blue column) this was the worst monthly print going back more than three years.
This was the worst six month drop in domestic light vehicle sales going back to the depths of the financial crisis.
A breakdown in units by OEM, shows another similarity to 2007: while domestic car sales plunged by almost 8%, light truck sales continued to grow as more Americans once again buy SUVs instead of sedans, a growing problem for Hyundai, which saw a 19% drop in its car sales (even if its light truck sales also tumbled).
While every US automaker posted an annual decline, one name stood out, Ford, which reported a 2.3% increase in total light vehicles sold. There was a reason for that: without discounted deliveries to bulk customers, Ford’s sales would have dropped in May, as actual consumers cut back on purchases.
Describing the May number, Jessica Caldwell, executive director of Edmunds, said “it’s a bit of smoke and mirrors” as carmakers “really pushed the deals over the holiday weekend to prop up their May numbers.”
According to Bloomberg data, the industrywide selling rate including imports, slipped in May to about 16.8 million light vehicles, compared with 17.2 million a year ago. This would mark the third straight month of a sales pace short of 17 million, which last happened in 2014, and the fifth months in a row of declines. The ongoing slump reinforces estimates for the U.S. auto market’s first annual contraction since 2009 while on a year-over year basis, the Y/Y decline was the worst since 2011.
There’s more bad news.
All of the above numbers would have been far worse if not for generous incentives, and automakers spending what amounted to a record sum on incentives to support slumping sales and clear growing dealer inventory. According to J.D Power, incentive spending reached a record of $3,583 per vehicle in May.
And yet, despite all that discounts and incentives, inventories keep growing, and in May the average number of days a vehicle spends on dealers’ lots has topped 70 for the first time since 2009, during the depths of the industry’s crisis. “Continued elevated incentives reflect the challenges of balancing record levels of inventory and are likely to remain elevated unless production is adjusted to meet consumer demand,” said Deirdre Borrego, senior vice president of automotive data and analytics at J.D. Power.
As Bloomberg notes, “while a pace of more than 16 million is historically strong and plenty profitable, slower sales have saddled automakers with too much inventory and precipitated bigger discounts. “We will see more production cuts, particularly in passenger cars,” Autotrader’s Michelle Krebs said. And nowhere will the cuts be more acute than at GM, which as reported earlier ended May with a record 963K units in dealer inventory, or 101 days of supply.
“After seven years of growth, sales were bound to reach a plateau” Krebs added, and despite OEMs’ refusal to accept reality, what happens next is clear: it’s all downhill from here.
A “sugar bomb” will detonate on June 5 unless the US and Mexico can reach an agreement on sugar imports within the next week.
If the US takes action, Mexico has threatened to retaliate. Corn and high fructose corn syrup are likely targets.
Mexico is the key buyer of US corn syrup.
Sweet Deals
Whenever manufacturers or growers cannot compete, they moan about “dumping”.
In a sweet deal for the express benefit of the sugar lobby at a huge expense to everyone else, sugar tariffs forced prices higher in the US than anywhere else in the world.
Mexico has canceled existing sugar export permits to the United States in a dispute over the pace of shipments, according to a letter seen by Reuters, in a flare-up industry sources said could temporarily disrupt supplies.
The cancellations are the latest dispute of a years-long trade row between Mexico – the United States’ top foreign supplier of sugar – and its neighbor at a time when cane refiners are struggling with prices and tight supplies, U.S. industry sources said.
The letter described as “absurd” an interpretation by “low-level” U.S. Commerce Department officials of a clause in so-called suspension agreements.
The dispute centers on an interpretation of how the Mexican government issues export licenses to ensure supplies enter the United States at a regulated pace.
The U.S. sugar industry late last year pressed the Commerce Department to withdraw from a 2014 trade agreement that sets prices and quota for U.S. imports of Mexican sugar, unless the deal can be renegotiated.
U.S. sugar prices have soared since late last year when Washington said the 2014 deal that suspended large duties on sugar from Mexico after a trade investigation may not be working as intended.
The U.S. domestic raw sugar contract on ICE Futures U.S. settled at 31.71 cents per lb on Tuesday, the highest in nearly five years.
The license cancellation by Mexico adds to protracted marketplace uncertainty, said Richard Pasco, president of the Sweetener Users Association trade group.
“We need adequate supplies and the lack of resolution is a problem,” he told Reuters in a phone interview on Tuesday.
A ship loaded with sugar was stranded in port on the east coast of Mexico because of the break down in stop-gap measures designed to ease a long-standing trade dispute with the United States over sugar exports.
The vessel, carrying between 20,000 and 30,000 tons of raw sugar, is stuck in a port in the eastern Mexican state of Quintana Roo after Mexico canceled permits to export sugar to the U.S., Mexican sugar chamber head Juan Cortina said on Thursday.
The Mexican government said it canceled the permits to avoid reaching seasonal export limits under trade accords with the U.S. though it disputes actually reaching the limits.
Cortina said the 54 permits canceled with 23 mills involve between 100,000 and 120,000 tons of sugar.
Both countries were in talks to renegotiate the deals, but they ended when former U.S. President Obama left office in January.
Still, he warned that if the U.S. cancels the agreements, Mexican sugar producers will insist that the Mexican government halt fructose imports from the U.S.
Cortina said that if sugar is dropped from NAFTA, the U.S. will suffer more because Mexico is the only market for its fructose.
One of the main problems of NAFTA between U.S.A. and Mexico is the price of sugar. The producers of sugar in the United States are protected from the government and the sell their product in higher prices than the imported sugar. The government offers a domestic guaranteed price to the producers. For this reason, the price of sugar in U.S.A. is 40% higher than the rest of the world (PaulKrugman- International Economics). In 2014, the sugar growers in U.S.A. criticized that the government permitted the import of cheaper sugar from Mexico. In August 2014, the USA government set sugar tariffs in the Mexico, but after 3 months of negotiations, they decided to get rid of tariffs on the imports of Mexican sugar because it was a violation of NAFTA. The U.S.- Mexico sugar agreements establish limits on exports of Mexican sugar to the United States, including quantitative limits and minimum prices.
If NAFTA is canceled between Mexico and U.S., Mexico will take its business somewhere else. Mexico has started to strengthen its relations with Latin America countries, E.U. and China since November. However, the price of sugar may rise because of this situation between U.S. and Mexico. U.S. and Mexico are major sugar producers and the trade dispute on sugar will have a strong effect on the price. Furthermore, in October E.U. decided to remove limits on its own sugar beet and this will lead to the increase in production and probably the European growers will boost market supply and cut prices.
War on High Fructose Corn Syrup
In a different kind of Sugar War, D&C comments on Mexico’s national strategy to prevent and control obesity and diabetes.
Mexico’s sugar war is now being waged on the digital front. Attacks are being launched against health experts and activists who advocate for stricter laws and regulations because they want to prevent obesity and diseases like diabetes.
On 17 August 2016, Simón Barquera received a text message that his daughter had just had an accident and was in critical condition. The message contained a link that supposedly gave information about the hospital where she had been taken. But it was a trap. If Barquera, a respected health expert with Mexico’s National Institute for Public Health, had clicked on the link, it would have installed spyware on his smartphone. It was the latest message of this kind in an entire series. All in all, Barquera received nine messages with infected links, according to a report from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto.
In Mexico, soft drinks are as much a part of everyday life as meat and fast food. Mexico leads the world in per-capita consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages: on average every Mexican drinks 163 liters of so-called “refrescos” per year. That’s almost half a liter a day.
The country also has some of the highest rates of obesity and diabetes in the world. According to a UN report, over two-thirds of adult Mexicans are overweight or obese. Mexico has even surpassed the US as the country with the most overweight people. According to the OECD, Mexico has the highest diabetes rates of any developing country. Diabetes and heart diseases are among the leading causes of death.
Abelardo Ávila Curiel from Mexico’s National Institute of Nutrition assessed his country’s obesity problem as “a serious epidemic” in an interview with CBS. “Among the poor we have overweight parents and malnourished children,” the expert said. “The worst aspect is that children are being programmed to be obese.”
The marketing of soft drinks has been very successful. Companies like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo spend billions every year to make sure their drinks become an integral part of daily life for children, minorities and low-income people. Their distribution systems reach remote villages. Aggressive marketing campaigns guarantee bulk sales. The corporations are involved in political lobbying and fund research that glosses over the impacts soft drinks have on consumers’ health. In order to improve their image, companies also finance social campaigns or sporting events.
Sugar Showdown Video – May 31
“Mexico and the US are locked in a dispute over sugar exports. The US threatens to impose duties unless a deal is struck by next Monday while Mexico vows retaliation.”
Bad Policy
Trade wars are horrendous policy. If team Trump goes after NAFTA, Mexico is sure to retaliate. Both countries will lose. In this case for what?
The only beneficiary of sugar tariffs is the US sugar lobby (sugar growers). Consumers of cane sugar (individuals and manufacturers alike) all suffer from higher prices.
Allegations of dumping are nonsense. Regardless, health aspects aside, everyone but the sugar lobby would benefit if sugar was free.
If dumping and low prices benefit consumers, and they clearly do, it’s a good deal. Standards of living rise when prices drop.
Trump’s NAFTA Policy Maneuvers
Trump has changed his mind so many time and on so many things I have no idea which way this will break. Here is a series of articles up to this point.
Out in the suburbs, cutting grass in the summertime is one of those classic starter jobs, an opportunity for teenagers to get out of the house, make a little money, and gain a little independence. Everyone’s got a lawn, no one wants to mow it, and, hey, all these kids don’t have anything to do while they’re out of school for a few months.
Alainna Parris, of Gardendale, Ala., was engaged in that bit of Americana this spring, offering to cut her neighbors’ lawns for $20, $30, or $40. She was, that is, until someone working for another lawn service threatened to report her to city officials for cutting lawns without a license, according to ABC 33/40 in Birmingham.
A business license from the city costs $110.
“One of the men that cuts several yards made a remark to one of our neighbors, ‘that if he saw her cutting grass again that he was going to call Gardendale because she didn’t have a business license,'” Elton Campbell, Alainna’s grandmother, told the television station.
“He’s coming after a kid when a kid is at least trying to do work. There’s kids at home on iPads and electronics and not wanting to go outside,” Parris said, according to ABC 33/40.
A $110 license might not be a major burden to most businesses, but is probably more than someone cutting lawns for $20 a pop would be able to afford. Alainna says she’s working in the summer to pay for “admissions and trips” that she wants to take, but the government’s cut will put a damper on that.
And, sure, the business license application is just two pages long and doesn’t require too much unreasonable information. But then there’s the promise (on page two) that “upon receipt of the completed form, the municipality will provide you any additional forms and information regarding other specific requirements to you in order to complete the licensing process.”
Sounds fun. At least she’s getting a good lesson in what it’s like to be an adult.
When ABC 33/40 asked Gardendale Mayor Stan Hogeland about the complint lodged against Alainna, he said sending someone after a child making extra money over the summer is not a priority, and said he “would love” to have a provision in the city’s rules to make it easier for teenagers to make money doing jobs like cutting grass.
Would he favor letting them do that without a license? Whoa, now, let’s not get crazy.
“Maybe a temporary license during the summer months that targets teenagers,” he suggests.